A Vision for Africa

This is Robert Mugabe's new house:

It cost around $26 million dollars and took five years to build, five years during which Zimbabwe's economy completely fell apart, inflation spiralled up to hundreds of thousands of per cent per year, and thousands of the poorest lost their shanty shack homes in slum clearances ordered by Mugabe.

But Robert sleeps well at night:

He dines well too. Even though 80% of the population are without work in Zimbabwe, Mugabe's kitchen and chefs ensure that he and his Zanu cronies are well fed:

And they can always relax later for cocktails by the pool, and discuss perhaps the pressing matters of the day.

Like the election they lost then stole back. Like the tens of thousands of citizens who've fled the country. Like the fact that they'll get away with it because the only people able to enforce change in Zimbabwe are other African leaders who are as corrupt as Mugabe and who in general owe him one.

Like Thabo Mbeki, for example.

Despots like Mugabe continue to pose as post-colonial heroes throughout the continent, even as their policies following independence from European Imperialism have caused unending poverty, disease and corruption:

But I have a vision for Africa. A way out for the billion or more who are denied a chance at life due to the horrific and disgusting corruption of pondlife like Mugabe.

It's time to redraw all the borders.

The colonial borders slice through tribes and lands willy-nilly, creating many of the internecine problems in Africa. End the conflicts, the fears, the mistrust, and you create the conditions to deal with all the other problems afflicting the continent.

Time to recolonise too.

It is self-evident from a quick read of any decent African political history such as 'The State of Africa', that corruption has been endemic in every single African state following independence and up to the present day in preposterous amounts.

Instead of aid, we need to send governmental ability. Yes, I am talking recolonisation. Temporary recolonisation, with African interests rather than European ones at the centre of the project.

I reckon that the UN needs to found an African border commission to ascertain what lands should go with what, according to the desires of those living there.

Then the current post-colonial states can be dissolved and reconstituted into forms which will not be so prone to the sort of tribal outrage we've seen recently in Kenya and in pretty much every sub-Saharan state at some point.

The UN could provide security during an interim period and initial elections. It might also be beneficial, while these new national entities are still bedding in, to beef up the African Union to the level of an EU, with oversight abilities, democratic representation and the ability to institute relevant continent-wide legislation and negotiate as a trade bloc.

Then a 'Peace Corps' type intervention would be necessary to assist the foundation of governments and state agencies, as well as ensuring the operation of critical services like hospitals during the transitional period.

A single currency would be strongly advisable, as well as an African central bank. Logic dictates that the Rand function as one or as the basis of one, and Joburg as the location of the other.

And all of this would be needed just to turn things around.

After that, the problems of HIV, malaria, education, life expectancy, development and famine would still remain to be addressed.

But in the sort of context that I envisage, at least the inter-tribal strife would be largely circumvented, which itself impacts on all the other problems.

And the foundation, in terms of a stronger African union, and smaller nation states, for consensus action, mutual dependency, group negotiation and single currency, would be in place for real development potential.

Aid doesn't work, trading with despots like Mugabe only funds elites like Zanu, and the level of military intervention the West has involved itself in thus far often only delays further conflict.

It's time to address the mistakes of the colonial and the post-colonial era. It will require a global effort, not just from former imperial powers but from other powers, such as the EU, US, Russia, China and Japan.

The alternative, of course, is to remain in our bubble of affluence in Europe, watching them starve and kill each other, while they try to gain illegal access to our affluence, for another sixty years.

Mugabe: the endgame

It's the endgame for Mugabe.

He may have been asleep at the wheel for years, ruling Zimbabwe via syphilitic spite and paranoid oppression as it collapsed into a downward spiral of economic and social disaster.

But no one's prepared to tell him to leave just yet.

Strange to think that this year, these few weeks actually, will have accounted for the passing of Ian Paisley, Bertie Ahern and Robert Mugabe. Historians will have fun making sense of that list in years to come.

At this point, of course, Mugabe, the great survivor, has outlasted the Irishmen. While the Western media, briefed by the MDC, are announcing that Zanu-PF have lost the parliamentary elections and Mugabe the presidency, it's worth looking at what the Zimbabwean media are saying.

They're saying it's a hung parliament and that the presidency will require a re-run, as neither candidate surpassed 50% of the vote.

Of course the Herald is a government-run mouthpiece for Zanu. We know this. But that's why it is informative at this time when we're being informed of MDC victory by breathless foreign correspondents who are actually in Johannesburg and nowhere near the ground.

It's very likely what the MDC are saying is correct. It's most probable they did win both elections. It's certainly likely that Zanu sought to rig the results.

But if Zanu had really rigged the results, as they have done in the past, we wouldn't still be at this political impasse in Zimbabwe.

So what is really happening on the ground? What can we understand by this long, drawn out count, by these gnomic reports of ties from the government media?

Simply this: Zanu wants power-sharing in government, and none of them have the balls to tell Mugabe he's lost. They want a second ballot to confirm it categorically, but only after they have obtained concessions from Tsvangirai.

What concessions? The ones he has already offered. No witch hunts. No prosecutions. National unity.

And if they don't get them? Well, there's always force of arms.

But there is not the appetite for a civil war on any side. The country is too beleaguered, too ravaged by hyperinflation, unemployment, the collapse of the farming and tourism industries, by the madman's stubbornness.

Once he's gone, things can get better. Zanu are happy to dispense with him in order to have a say in restoring this beautiful land to something like its former prosperity.

It's just that no one yet has the balls to tell him he's got to go.

Previously: Everyone waits for the madman to die