It depends, if you go to the more developed areas, they remember the time when things like power worked properly and when they had proper sewage, plumbing and clean water. When the roads were properly paved and without potholes and when there was at least some sort of social housing provision. Most importantly, they remember when officials had enough scruples not to accept a bung and follow regulations. My Dad was in Kenya a year or two after Independence and returned in 1994/5 and I think he was more shell shocked than I was because he knew what was there fourty years previously and what wasn't there now. It broke his heart I think.
However, if you live out in the bush, especially somewhere like Zambia which suffered from constant attacks from white Rhodesia, you'll have more negative experiences justifiably because thats what you've had for most of your life.
However, no, we shouldn't go back. Going back does not solve problems, teaching them good governance, linking aid and loans towards fighting corruption and proper and accountable investment and other such measures however does solve problems.
We just need the political will to do that, thats all.
EDIT: And this leads me to my thoughts on British colonialism. Do you want to know why nations like Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia have suffered over the years from misrule and civil war while others like Malaysia and Singapore have gone on to become international success stories? Its because for the latter we had already developed layer upon layer of locally hired and trained civil servants and administrators ready to hand over to who knew the ropes and knew what to do. The former however, we just set up a Parliament, showed the equivelent of the modern office temp how to work the telex machine, had a hasty handover ceremony, said "cheerio" or "g'bye boyo" or "seeye later" (depending on what nationality the Foreign Office rep was) and essentially ran off.
What was worse, when the warning signs came along, like the President/head of the 'revolutionary peoples movement of *insert African region here*' started to become more and more autocratic, we buried our heads in the sand and pretended that nothing was happening. Guys like Mugabe were the darlings of the liberal left in the UK and much of his hate towards the UK has been borne out of the way that the liberal lefties paraded him around British Universities in the 1960s like their performing monkey which was quite frankly revolting and incredibly hypocritical.
We didn't lose an empire, we ran away from it. And it shows in the state that the majority of Commonwealth nations are in today. That has done more damage to Africa than Apartheid ever did. [/b]
.
