Back in 1884-85, European countries were carving up the African continent and dividing it amongst themselves at the Berlin Conference. There and then King Leopold II tried very hard to acquire a colony. He strongly believed a country’s greatness lied in the possession of colonies. The Belgian people, nor the Belgian government were interested in this. But Leopold II got his way and hired the famous explorer Stanley (“Dr Livingstone I presume?”) to set boundaries for his own private colony named Congo. He extracted great personal wealth out of this, at the expense of the Congolese people. Under his rule an estimated 8 to 30 million were killed. No accurate numbers are available. To put this in perspective: the estimated number of Jews killed in WWII is 6 million.
When laborers (including children) did not work to expectations, their hand was cut off. This and other atrocities made King Leopold II notorious till today. Due to these human rights abuses, the first mass human rights movement was formed: “the Congo Reform Association”. Should we now claim that the Human Rights movement exists thanks to Belgium?

I had 17 years of education in Belgium and I can not remember that this was mentioned even once.

SA in numbers

South Africa is usually abbreviated to SA - it has around 43 million inhabitants - 2.4 million of those live in Cape Town - Cape Town is the capital of Western Province - and that is 1 of the 9 provinces of SA - SA has 11 official languages and a lot more unofficial ones - English is spoken most in business and official matters - but is only the fifth most spoken language - in 2006 income per capita of SA was $5,390 - that of Belgium was $38,600 i.e. 7 times higher - SA is to host the 2010 soccer world cup - it is the first African country ever to do so - and they are really looking forward to that