In the 1960s, Eric Hoffer was Right About Why 2023 Africa Would Fail- Lack of Maintenance

It was one of the great joys of this Blogger’s hasty life, to know the stevedore-philosopher Eric Hoffer. He was the author of the tome, THE TRUE BELIEVER; a tome, which everyone interested  in politics and the foibles of human nature, should read; he was one of the great minds of the 20^th Century. 

This  Blogger met Hoffer while he was in exile; he had antagonized the Liberal Elite with his working class insights; he was specifically in exile because of one heresy. He opposed the Elitist viewpoint that Afrofuturism was the inevitable future of Mankind. 

Hoffer maintained that post-colonial Africa was all fake glamour, a P.R. veneer; a veneer which would crumble, deteriorate, and atrophy,  because Africans did not have the will, nor instincts nor common sense to MAINTAIN democracy or infrastructure.  

As this Blog is being written, one of the super powers of post colonial  Africa, the Republic  of South Africa has declared a national disaster because of the breakdown of its power grid…..for lack of maintenance. 

Hoffer was so right; which is why Liberals hated him. 

“With South Africa enduring daily power outages of up to 10 hours, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a nationwide “state of disaster” on Thursday to address an electricity crisis so dire that day-old chicks are freezing to death, supermarket owners are rushing to sell meat before it spoils and many businesses have been forced to shut down. 

The blackouts are caused by an aging fleet of coal-fired power stations that the dysfunctional state power company, Eskom, is struggling to keep online. Power cuts have been a part of life in South Africa for nearly 16 years, but the past several months have been the darkest yet. 

From large industries to mom-and-pop stores, many businesses have closed or laid off workers in a country where one in three people is already jobless. With the outages driving up the cost of doing business, prices for everyday goods have shot up, as has the frustration of a populace losing faith in the government. 

“We are therefore declaring a national state of disaster to respond to the electricity crisis and its effect,” Mr. Ramaphosa announced in his state-of-the-nation speech. “The people of South Africa want action; they want solutions 

….The fatal flaw in Mr. Ramaphosa’s effort to rescue Eskom is that he has tried to do too many things at once, said Khaya Sithole, an economic analyst in Johannesburg. His plan, like those of previous administrations, failed to focus on the fundamental challenge: maintenance. 

“Maintenance does not amount to a new project, so if it’s not a new project, you’re not going to have a P.R. exercise where you’re cutting a ribbon,” Mr. Sithole said….NEW  YORK TIMES FEBRUARY, 2023.” 

On July 17, 2012, this Blogger published this:  

 

“Eric Hoffer was one of the great men of the 20th Century, a blind man who then could see, a migrant worker, a survivor of a suicide attempt, a stevedore, an essayist, a  genius. President Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983, no one has deserved it more. 

 

He wrote a wonderfully insightful tome, THE TRUE BELIEVER;THE TRUE BELIEVER is one of the politically seminal books of the 20th Century, along with 1984, ANIMAL FARM, and BRAVE NEW WORLD. Hoffer ranks with Orwell, and Huxley. 

 

Hoffer was a wunderkind, the son of immigrants. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English. Reading was his passion. 

 

When he was five, his mother fell down a flight of stairs, with him in her arms. She never recovered, and died two years later; Hoffer was traumatized, and went blind. No doctor could figure out why he was struck blind. 

 

Hoffer himself said it was trauma, "I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall.I lost my sight and for a time my memory". 

 

Reader, please imagine Hoffer, 15 years old, blind, in total darkness, not able to read, mother dead, father withdrawn. 

 

Imagine if you will, this teenager, walking down a New York street, in total darkness, with a cane, doomed to a life of total darkness, unable to read. 

 

While walking down the street, he turned a corner and: "HIS EYESIGHT INEXPLICABLY RETURNED.' 

 

One minute Hoffer was walking down the street, seeing nothing, then he turned a corner and without warning, he could see everything. 

 

" Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading." 

Hoffer was a young man when his father, a cabinetmaker, died. The cabinetmaker's union paid for the funeral and gave Hoffer a little over three hundred dollars. Hoffer then took a bus to Los Angeles in 1920. He spent the next 10 years on Los Angeles' skid row, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd jobs. 

 

In 1931, he attempted suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but the attempt failed as he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker. Following the harvests along the length of California, he collected library cards for each town near the fields where he worked and, living by preference, "between the books and the brothels". 

 

A seminal event for Hoffer occurred in the mountains where he had gone in search of gold. Snowed in for the winter, he read the  Essays by Montaigne... He also developed a great respect for America's underclass, which, he declared, was "lumpy with talent". 

 

When I met Hoffer, he was in  exile, after falling out with the Liberal Elite.  over Africa, In the early 1960s, France, Britain and Belgium freed a ton of African colonies. Liberals were delighted. 

 

A grand tour of the newly independent nations was arranged for the America Media, CBS sent Eric Sevareid and Eric Hoffer. 

 

The newly independent African nations gave the Liberal Media wonderful excursions, in the new capitals, among the newly finished buildings. The American Liberal Media was euphoric, except for Hoffer. 

 

He went on national television and said to Sevareid, that the newly independent African nations were in for a tough slough and probably would fail. 

 

Sevareid, aghast, asked Hoffer, how could he say that? 

 

Hoffer said:" As everyone was touring the building, me, the old stevedore was checking the janitor's closets....in not one country, not in one janitor's room did I find a mop, or a broom or cleanser. How can you advance if you cannot maintain?" ......GERRY MAXEY"

On January 7, 2017, this Blogger published the following about Hoffer and Africa. 

 

In 2017, against all known facts, the NEW YORK TIMES believes that the world's future progress depends on  benighted Africa, AFROFUTURISM.

Liberals have been peddling the cant that the future is Afro since the early 1960s; it was astute Eric Hoffer who destroyed that Liberal cant then.

It has been one of the great joys of this Blogger's life that Mr, Hoffer engaged in substantive conversations with him.

 

In 2017, there can be no AFROFUTURISM because Africa still does not have  brooms nor mops in the closets. …THE MAXEY CHRONICILES” 

In 2023, Africa and America’s Liberal Elite still have not learned the Hoffer lesson; a maintenance engineer is more important to Africa’s future than any fashion designer.

Eric Hoffer on break from his job as stevedore