Dylan Miles

“Before we commence this guided tour of Mozambiquan paradise of the proletariat, this shining gem of African socialism, will you bear with me while I give you a few facts and figures. Nobody protested, so he went on. Until 1975 Mozambique was a Portuguese colony. For almost five hundred years it had been under Portuguese control and had been a reasonably happy and prosperous community of some fifteen million souls. The Portugese unlike the British or German colonists had a relaxed attitude towards miscegenation and the result was a large mulatto population, and an official policy of 'Assimilado' under which any person of colour , if he attained certain civilised standards, was considered to be white and enjoyed Portugese nationality. It all worked very well, as indeed did most colonial administrations, especially those of the British.' 'Bullshit,' said Claudia demurely. 'That's limey propaganda. 'Limey?" Sean smiled thinly. 'Carefull, your prejudice is showing, nonetheless your average Indian or African living today in a former British colony is a damned sight worse off now than he was then. Certainly that goes one hundred times more for your average black man living in Mozambique.' 'At least they are free,' Claudia cut in, and Sean laughed. 'This is freedom? an economy managed under the well-known socialist principles of chaos and ruination which has resulted in a negative growth rate of up to ten per cent per annum every year since the Portuguese withdrawal, a foreign debt amounting to double the gross national product, a total breakdown in the education system, and only five per cent of children regularly attending a recognised school, one doctor per forty five thousand persons, only one person in ten with access to purified drinking water, infant mortality at 340 per 1000 births. The only worse countries in the world are Afghanistan and Angola, but as you say, at least they are free. In America, where everyone eats three huge meals a day, freedom may be a big deal, but in Africa a full belly counts a hell of alot more'. 'It can't be as bad as that,' she protested. 'No,' he agreed. It's a lot worse. I haven't mentioned two other factors, the civil war and aids. When the Portugese were pushed out, they handed over to a dictator named Samaro Machel and his Frelimo party. Machel was an avowed Marxist. He didn't believe in the nonsense of elections, and his rule was directly responsible for the present condition of the country, and for the emergence of the National Mozambiquan resistance or as it is known to its freinds and admirers, Renamo. Nobody knows much about it, what its objectives are, who its leaders are, all we know it that it controls most of the country, especially the north, and that it made up of a pretty ruthless bunch of characters.' 'Renamo is a South African front organisation, directed, supplied and controlled from Pretoria,' Claudia helped him out. 'Committed to the overthrow of sovereign government and the destabilisation of the southern continent.' 'Well done, ducky, ' Sean nodded approval. 'You've been studying the wisdom and erudition of the Organisation of African Unity and the non-aligned nations. You have even mastered their jargon. If only South Africa had the military and technological capacity to commit half the skulduggery it is accused of, it would not be simply the most powerful country in Africa.”
― Wilbur Smith, A Time to Die

“The fearful necessity of war ought only to be taken seriously and sternly. There are lies enough in the world as it is. War should be treated as a hard fact; not as a game; otherwise it becomes a mere pastime for the idle and frivolous. There is no more honourable class than the military, and yet to what extremities they are driven to gain their ends!—In fact, what is the aim and end of war?—Murder.—And its means?—Treachery and spying.—Its procedure?—Pillage and robbery for the maintenance of the men! . . . That is to say, falsehood and dishonesty in every form, under the name of the Art of War.—What, I ask you, is the rule to which military men are bound? To slavery, that is to say, to a rigorous discipline, which condones idleness, depravity, drunkenness—and yet they are universally respected, except the Emperor respected. Every monarch in the world, the man who has killed the greatest number of his fellow creatures wins the highest rewards. A million of men meet—to-morrow, for instance—to solemn thanksgivings for the massacre and maiming of the figures? Why, Te Deums are loudly boasted of, for the more men killed the more brilliant it is thought to be, and the victory is acceptable to God to be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“He realised that the destruction of the forest symbolised the predicament of the entire continent. In a few fleeting decades, Africa had been over taken by its own inherent savagery. The checks that had been placed on it by a century of colonialism had been struck off. Chains perhaps those checks had been, but once freed of them, the peoples of Africa were rushing headlong, with almost suicidal abandon, towards their own destruction.”
― Wilbur Smith, A Time to Die

“Any man of reasonable intelligence can make money if that’s what he wants.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent