Hitch's Take on Mugabe

Recommended reading while Innes is grading papers, reading senior thesis drafts and winding down his courses:

Mandela Envy: Is Robert Mugabe's lawless misrule founded in jealousy? by Christopher Hitchens (Slate, April 21, 2008). "Knowing what they knew about his primitive politics and even more primitive methods, why did the leaders of the ANC continue to tolerate Mugabe when they themselves succeeded in coming to power democratically in the post-apartheid state? The answers are both illuminating and depressing." (Thanks go to Ritchie for this.)

This video, Baracky, morphs Obama with Rocky and turns Hillary into his opponents. In a free republic, the people have the security and the leisure to have a little fun with their politics. (Thanks to Andrew for the link.)

If you like fun, try Will Farrell, Christopher Walken and Blue Oyster Cult in the SNL sketch, "More Cowbell." (Warning: If you view this video (1) you will become noticeably more cheerful which could raise suspicions among people who know you, and (2) you will be singing "Don't Fear The Reaper" at least until you fall asleep tonight.)

The Nagging Problem of the Bottom Billion

Bono in Mali

Both Bono and I are interested in Africa, but Bono gets all the press. How is that fair?

Vast sums of money are spent trying to figure out why the people of that continent are so beset with poverty and oppression. One can simply resign oneself to the mess, saying "This is Africa," as Leonardo DiCaprio's character does in Blood Diamond (2006), but, as "God gives us all things richly to enjoy" (I Timothy 6:17), it must be on account of some sinful perversion of God's created order that these people are sitting on top of such wealth and yet in such want. The answer is not in the infusion of capital from the wealthy west (which was poor until we developed it). The answer is in Africa!

Paul Collier has written a book entitled The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford, 2007). What we once called The Third World (neither the Soviet sphere nor the Western alliance), we have come to call The Developing World, and indeed much of it is doing just that. But of the world's 6.7 billion people (last I checked), there are a billion who appear to be inextricably stuck in poverty and generally in a manner of life unworthy of human dignity. Collier calls it "the fourteenth century: civil war, plague, ignorance." Collier reports that most of these people are concentrated in 58 countries, and 70% of those people are in Africa.

He identifies four "traps" that have these people ensnared:

1. The Conflict Trap (e.g. civil war, recent tribal conflict in Kenya comes to mind),

2. The Natural Resource Trap (over dependence on extracting and exporting these, typically mismanaged by a corrupt government),

3. Landlocked with Bad Neighbors, and

4. Bad Governance in a Small Country.

It strikes me that all of these seem to come down to bad government. But if Western governments put the slightest pressure on these dictators they cry "colonialism!" and all the people rally to them (as well as the American left, needless to say).

He rejects the aid-oriented solution advocated by Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty, 2005) and Bill Gates. But he is not quite as opposed to it as William Easterly (The White Man's Burden, 2006). Aid is not a solution, but "a holding operation preventing things from falling apart." It is subject to a law of sharply diminishing returns. Collier actually suggests military intervention in what we have come to call "failed states," but I'm skeptical. Benevolent conquest is always tempting to well-meaning Americans, but for some reason the beneficiaries of our thumpin' good will never seen to recognize their blessings. Furthermore, it would require terror which only the resulting insurgents have the stomach to pull off. Beyond that, he suggests improving trade and various laws and charters for government to sign and honor.

Ah, yes. It all comes back to government. Why should these gangs of thugs called "governments" bind themselves to principles of justice? They need counterbalancing centers of power. Church. Economic interests. The small size of many of these countries is a problem for which James Madison has wise words in Federalist Paper #10. How do you trade with people who don't produce anything worth having? They won't produce anything without capital investment. No one will invest unless property is secure. If people can be sure of enjoying the fruit of their labors, they will labor.

The latest discussion of the merits of aid to Africa is in the City Journal (Winter 2008), "Hearts of Darkness: Trendy paternalism is keeping Africa in chains" by Michael Knox Beran.

You should also look at a recent New York Sun essay by Amity Shlaes ("One Flawed Gift," Feb. 28, 2008) author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. Her point is, "The 2.3 trillion in aid America and allies have spent in Africa over a half century has been a counter-productive distraction from achieving stable growth."

A missionary to a particular African country who, unlike his suffering church, was recently released from prison and expelled from the country, recommended Martin Meredith's The Fate of Africa which, I am told, attributes much of Africa's problems to bad governance. That conclusion should be universally obvious. Sadly, it is not.

Lighting Up Africa

If you are interested in global economic inequity, this picture from a recent article in The Economist might strike you as it struck me. The article begins:

Seen from space, Africa at night is unlit—as dark as all-but empty Siberia. With nearly 1 billion people, Africa accounts for over a sixth of the world's population, but generates only 4% of global electricity. Three-quarters of that is used by South Africa, Egypt and the other countries along the north African littoral.

Only 17 of Nigeria's 79 power stations are working. Yet Nigeria is an oil exporting country.

Only 6% of Congolese have access to electricity. Yet the mighty Congo River has the potential to produce 39,000MW of electricity by environmentally clean hydro power. That would require capital investment, however, and it seems that neither country that goes by the name Congo (yes, there's two of them now--one on either side of the river) has a good reputation for protecting investments.

These cases are typical. Yet ever more people are leaving the villages for the cities, adding to the strain. (The Economist writer reported several power outages in the course of writing his story in Dar Es Salaam.)

So is anything good happening?

Lilliputian windmills, water mills, solar panels and biomass furnaces could have a big collective impact.

Talk of the mass production of biofuels in Africa is premature, but advances have been made. Some investors are backing jatropha, a plant whose seeds produce an oil for burning in generators. There is also an effort to tap geothermal energy. The Great Rift Valley, from Eritrea to Mozambique, could produce 7,000MW. Kenya hopes to get 20% of its energy from geothermal sources by 2017.

Engineers think they can also use the steady winds in Africa's mountain ranges for power production. And if the costs of using the sun's warmth can be reduced to 30% below its present cost, vast solar farms could offer cheap, clean energy for African cities and in doing so boost incomes in rural areas. Egypt, which relies mostly on natural gas, is looking hard at solar power.

The World Bank has undertaken an initiative called Lighting Africa. We'll see how much of that is either frustrated or pillaged by local governments. Perhaps there will be some residual good.

Obama's Questionable Allegiances

Barack Obama needs a lot more foreign policy scrutiny than he has been getting, and perhaps now that he's a contender, he'll get it.

Daniel Johnson gives it to him in "The Kenya Connection" (New York Sun, January 10, 2008) and raises very disturbing questions. He brings to our attention the fact that in August 2006, Senator Obama spoke at rallies in Nairobi in support of one of Kenya's presidential candidates. Odd, don't you think? Even at that level of detail, it is curiously reckless for a United States Senator with presidential ambitions to be inserting himself into the internal political affairs of a foreign nation. The fact that Obama is of immediately Kenyan descent is no excuse. (His father was Kenyan.) In fact, it draws attention and invites deeper investigation.

Even more alarming is the candidate to whom Obama gave his public blessing: Raila Odinga, the man who claims to have had his election victory stolen from him on December 27 by his opponent, Mwai Kibaki, and in whose name people have been burning and slaughtering these past two weeks. (See the report and the film here.) Johnson fills us in on the background of this Odinga fellow, the president of choice for the man who could be our own President by this time next year.

• "Mr. Odinga's father, Oginga Odinga, led the Communist opposition during the Cold War and Raila Odinga was educated in Communist East Germany."


• "His eldest son is named after Fidel Castro and his daughter after Winnie Mandela."


• "Even more sinister has been Mr. Odinga's electoral pact with the National Muslim Leaders' Forum — a hardline Islamist organization that represents Kenya's Muslim minority. According to this document, dated August 29, 2007, Mr. Odinga promised the Muslim leaders that, if elected, he would establish Sharia courts, not only in the northern and coastal regions where Kenyan Muslims are concentrated, but throughout the country."


• "Mr. Odinga in effect offered to Islamize Kenya in return for Muslim votes, despite the fact that Muslims make up only 10% of the population, compared to the 80% who are Christian. Mr. Odinga himself is nominally an Anglican, yet he signed a document that refers to Islam throughout as 'the one true religion' and denigrates Christians as 'worshippers of the cross.'"


• Barack Obama's father and Raila Odinga share the same tribe, the Luo, and indeed Mr. Odinga claims that Obama's father is his uncle, and thus that Barack Obama is his cousin.
  

I am no Africa scholar, but it seems that Mr Obama, as a sitting U.S. Senator, campaigned on behalf of an anti-Western, communist sympathizing, Islam imposing, closely related fellow tribesman in a foreign country, Kenya, which had previously been a stable, pro-Western democracy, something rare in that region. This is VERY SERIOUS.

Even more serious are the doubts raised by Mr. Obama's attitude toward Islam, which has so far received much less scrutiny than might be expected in a post-September 11 presidential election. If Mr. Obama did not know about Mr. Odinga's electoral deal with the Kenyan Islamists when he offered his support, then he should have known. If he did know, then he is guilty of lending the prestige of his office to America's enemies in the global war on terror. We need to know exactly what Mr. Obama knew about Mr. Odinga, and precisely when he knew it.

Of course, the Democrats these days are not interested in foreign policy beyond "bring the troops home." These are perilous times.

No African Development Without Local Political Wisdom

Everyone puzzles over Africa. Much of the world is enjoying runaway economic growth and increasingly widespread prosperity, but that huge and wealthy continent is left largely behind. It's a human tragedy. In today's Wall Street Journal, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and one of the fathers of the 1960s Green Revolution in world food production, Norman Borlaug lays out what is required to save Africa from it's chronic development crisis. He emphasizes science and agriculture, but the subtext is a political challenge to the African leaders themselves.

He compares the Green Revolution in Asia to that of Africa. He says that small-holder agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa has been especially anemic. Unlike Asia which has a good road and rail network, "African farmlands are generally isolated from motorized transport systems." In addition, population growth "has resulted in progressive -- and now often dramatic -- degradation of the soil resource base, while fertilizer use has hardly increased at all, and is the lowest in the world." Whereas agricultural R&D in Asia has tripled over the last 20 years, in Africa is has grown by only 20%, and in half the countries it has actually declined. This is especially tragic given the "special production circumstances" that put Africa in particular need of research and development investment.

He recommends a "broad and more integrated perspective" that focuses on "transforming staple-food production" and giving greater attention to "post-production market linkages -- especially to grain markets and agro-industrial food processing that offer off-farm employment opportunities." Improvement also requires "[s]ubstantially greater investments in infrastructure -- roads, electrical power, water resources." Without this, "there is little hope for real progress in reversing the alarming food insecurity trends or in making agriculture an engine of economic growth."

Borlaug has been calling for an African Green Revolution for years (e.g. International Herald Tribune 1992; New York Times 2003). He did his great work in the 1960s. He is 93 and he is still beating the drum for this cause. So what's the hold up? There is a important political aspect to all this that Borlaug touches upon at several points, but does not emphasize. Perhaps he is being subtle. Perhaps he is leaving it to the multitude of political leaders, government and NGO officials, journalists and scholars to see the political point and make it explicit. Let me do my part.

These nations are governed by more or less sovereign governments. Implementing many of his recommendations presupposes governments that actually care about their people, i.e. that they are not tyrannies which sadly many of them are. In his opening paragraph, concerning Asia's Green Revolution and the global development agenda, Borlaug quietly underscores the critical role that wise political leadership must play: "Research and development, political courage, effective policies and good governance were the driving forces." African leaders are not known for their"political courage, effective policies and good governance."

One cannot help but wonder why "political courage" should be necessary, at least at the highest levels of power. Why shouldn't crass self-interest and naked ambition not suffice to bring the thug-tyrants of the African continent into line with this program? Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe comes first to mind. It is a marvel, especially in view of the enormous productive power that modern economic and political principles have made possible, that they see their personal security, prosperity, and glory in brutalizing their peoples whom they keep in heart-rending poverty, rather than in securing their peoples' property, enriching their nations' economies and establishing themselves as the fathers and protectors of these accomplishments.

John Locke argued this point, appealing the the shrewdness of every ruler, in his great Second Treatise on Civil Government (section 42):

This shews how much numbers of men are to be preferred to largeness of dominions; and that the increase of lands, and the right employing of them, is the great art of government: and that prince, who shall be so wise and godlike, as by established laws of liberty to secure protection and encouragement to the honest industry of mankind, against the oppression of power and narrowness of party, will quickly be too hard for his neighbours.

I am not an Africa specialist by any measure, but as a student of politics I find Africa a vivid illustration (all too often a sad one) of many political principles, and of course it draws my Christian concern. You might refer back to two of my previous posts on Africa.

Poor Africa and What To Do About It

In Blood Diamond, starring Leo DiCaprio, the characters have a saying: "This is Africa," meaning that it is a violent, unstable place where people do not live in hope of enjoying long life. I recently reported Nicholas Kristof’s hope for Africa. Gregory Clark is less sanguine, but presents what hope requires (“How to Save Africa,” New York Sun, July 20-22).

Dr. Clark is professor of economics at UC Davis. His argument goes as follows. Africa’s problem is that it is caught in what he calls the “Malthusian Trap.” Essentially, it is this. Ours is an industrial economy. It grows. So we need a growing population to work it. High birth rates and low death rates are good things. Africa has largely a pre-industrial economy. It doesn’t grow. A growing population in Africa, therefore, means falling standards of living. In an agrarian economy with fixed land resources, plague, war and crib death are good for average incomes. (Historically, imperial expansion – taking other people’s land – has also been good. I add that myself.) What Africa needs is not handouts. That just feeds the problem. Rather, Africa needs the sort of industrialization that China has been experiencing.

Clark concludes: “There is no simple formula for industrialization that is appealing to many. But that is where the focus must be of the attempts to help Africa.”

All of this tells us that Africa’s problem is not fundamentally economic, but political. Africa’s answer must come from within and among African nations.

Prof. Clark's book is A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton, 2007). He is responding to Jeffrey Sach's proposal, endorsed by Bono, for ending world poverty by 2025, in his book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (Penguin, 2006). Another good book on the economic damage that results from inserting large, well intentioned welfare payments into the Developing World is William Easterly's The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Penguin, 2006).

Hotel Rwanda Hospitable Again

Have you seen Hotel Rwanda? See it. I make all my Introduction to Politics students watch it (or Schindler's List, The Killing Fields, or The Inner Circle) to dramatize the fact that the stakes involved in politics are deathly high. In 1994, in a genocidal rampage, Rwandans from the Hutu tribe slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis and Tutsi sympathizing Hutus.

Now, 13 years later, Nicholas Kristof reports in The New York Times ("Africa: Land of Hope," July 5, 2007): Rwanda "is clean, safe and enjoying economic growth more than twice as fast as the U.S. or Europe." After the transition of many African nations to independence, "Africa drove over a cliff. Of those countries with good data, one-third now have lower per capita incomes than they did at independence (typically about 1960), and the five worst-performing economies in the world from 1960 to 2001 were all in Africa. What went wrong? The two most important reasons were that Africa was terribly governed and that it was torn apart by wars."

It is academically unfashionable to suggest that individuals, even "great men," shape and direct history, but Kristof points to the presidency of Paul Kagame who is "honest, intelligent and capable. President Kagame reads Harvard Businesss Review...." Kagame is candid in recognizing that his country lacks "that culture of hard work, that culture of being ambitious and wanting to achieve. I believe that those values were in Africans, but I don't know what dampened it -- what killed it." Kristof suggests that "malaria, anemia, worms and misrule" explain a lot. Of course, the misrule explains a lot of the malaria, anemia and worms. Marxist sympathizing, U.S. Constitution despising American leftists should take note.

Africa is the one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century. National independence, western educated leaders and an immense wealth of natural resources, yet devasting poverty, disease, despotism and bloodshed. Will the 21st century see the rise of Africa? Kristof sees hope: "when African countries have enjoyed stability and sound policies, they have often thrived. Indeed, the fastest growing country in the world from 1960 to 2001 was Botwana (South Korea was second, and Singapore and China tied for third). More and more African countries are now following the Botswana model of welcoming investors and obeying markets."

Hey, Mr. Kristof! Can you convince your friends in the Democratic party to show a similar respect for markets? (See The Wall Street Journal on the same day: "Trade Double-cross: House Democrats Go Protectionist," the lead editorial, and "Dodging the Guest-worker Bullet: the last thing our economy needed was the Senate's ham-handed attempt to regulate the flow of low-skilled labor," by Gordon H. Hanson, pp. A14-15.)

The words preached by Benjamin Colman in a 1730 sermon delivered in Boston are aptly noted here:

God hath set the world upon the gorvernments and rulers, whom he has made the pillars of it. ...[T]he peace, tranquility and flourishing of places are made to depend on the wisdom and fidelity of their rulers, in the good administration of the government. While the utmost misery and confusion defalls those places where the government is ill administered. The reason is given in the text [I Samuel 2:8], "God has set the World" on this foot; it can't stand on any other bottom. The virtue and religion of a people, their riches and trade, their power, honour and reputation; and the favour of God toward them, with his blessing on them; do greatly depend on the pious, righteous and faithful government which they are under." -- Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, Ellis Sandoz ed. (LibertyPress, 1991)