Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel should thus be commended for breaking with tradition and calling on the business community to counter the influence of labor unions. For almost a century, South African governments have championed the interests of labor unions through discriminatory and distorting regulations that harmed businesses and SA as a whole.

The common yet deeply mistaken narrative of South African history holds that apartheid was a natural outgrowth of capitalism. The country's businesses have been painted as villainous beneficiaries of racial laws that exploited black South Africans. But an honest look at the evolution of racial discrimination shows that the intended beneficiary of apartheid laws was white labor.

The recession that followed the First World War led to a fall in the gold price . In response , SA's mining companies tried to replace white labor with cheaper black workers. The growing tension between the mining companies and white labor led to the 1922 Rand Rebellion, in which white workers demanded protection from their black competitors. Support for Jan Smuts, who put down the rebellion, declined and his South African Party lost power in the 1924 election to a coalition government composed of James Hertzog's Afrikaner Nationalists and the socialist Labour Party. Race discrimination in the workplace, which Smuts put in place to mollify the disgruntled white workers, intensified under Hertzog. The Mines and Works Amendment Act of 1926, for example, firmly established the principle of the colour bar in mining. The pass laws and other legislation that came to characterise apartheid SA followed only three decades later.

There can be no doubt that the apartheid state originated in labor legislation that benefited one part of the labor force over another. Blacks were the main victims, but SA as a whole suffered. The colour bar resulted in a shortage of skilled and semiskilled labor. White wages increased to artificially high levels, reducing corporate profits, which hampered investment and growth. In fact, organised business often criticised apartheid policies.

Given SA's dreadful history with labor regulation, the African National Congress (ANC) should be championing freer labor markets. Unfortunately, the ruling party has chosen to emulate Afrikaner nationalists. Like the Nats, the ANC is catering to an important voting bloc of unionised workers. The general welfare of SA appears to be far from the ANC's agenda.

Let us be clear: overbearing labor legislation advances the interests of unionised workers at the expense of the unemployed. The more difficult the unions make it to replace workers and to compensate them at a market rate, the more difficult it is for the unemployed to enter the job market. Thus, in spite of 15 years of economic growth, unemployment still hovers at an unacceptably high level of 24%.

Unfortunately, all indications are that under the Jacob Zuma administration, the unions will have even more say in government policy. At least seven Cabinet members are former union leaders, while Congress of South African Trade Unions secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi has even declared that "we are the policy makers and the government implements. The government doesn't lead any more."

Businesses in SA should take up Manuel's challenge. For too long they have been intimidated by a false narrative that holds that the successes of SA's companies in the past depended on apartheid legislation. The time has come for the business sector to stand up to organised labor. SA's future economic growth and prosperity depend on it.

"The road ends here," reads a makeshift sign in the middle of the highway connecting Bulawayo with South Africa. For many miles, the once busy commercial artery between Zimbabwe's second largest town and its main market has simply ceased to exist. Motorists have to wind their way on an improvised gravel path through the open bush. All along the route, they can observe once productive farms lying abandoned and once productive farm workers scavenging for food.

The dilapidated state of infrastructure and widespread poverty are the results of the destruction of property rights and the rule of law by the government of Zimbabwe. Yet South Africa's new Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Gugile Nkwinti, clearly has not been to Zimbabwe in recent years. Speaking in parliament late last month, he announced that the ANC government would scrap its current "willing buyer willing seller" land redistribution policy, which allows the government to acquire land only at a market price and only with the consent of the land owner, and replace it with "less costly, alternative methods of land acquisition." The new policy will almost certainly include some form of land expropriation that could spell disaster for the South African economy.

South Africa's current land problems hark back to colonial times, when native lands were expropriated from their rightful owners, usually without compensation. The 1913 Natives Land Act preserved some 87% of the country's land for the exclusive use of the white minority. Since coming to power in 1994, the ANC government has made land restitution and redistribution its priorities. The government aims to transfer 30% of commercial agricultural land to black South Africans by 2014. As of today, only 5% of the land has actually been distributed.

The ANC has blamed the failure of the current land distribution policy on high prices and obstinate farmers. Some land has appreciated in value because of foreign investment in game reserves and real estate. Such price appreciation should be seen as a sign of investor confidence as well as a source of much needed foreign capital.

According to Mr. Nkwinti, however, "It shouldn't be a situation where we can't get land because it's too expensive because it's owned by Americans, by Germans, by other Europeans and people outside this country, and not Africans. . . ." "To redress [the] imbalances of the past," Mr. Nkwinti continued, "the government must have enabling laws that can allow the pace and the price of land acquisition to be in the hands of the state, rather than in the hands of the seller."

But land redistribution has failed not because of a faulty policy, but because of the ANC's own incompetence. The land reform bureaucracy has a reputation for inefficiency and lack of delivery. Since 2005, it has not been able to spend its own budget. In 2006, there were 1,000 vacancies in the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs. It is well-known that the lack of skills and capacity in government are partly a result of the politicization of the civil service and affirmative action.

Even when the government has succeeded in distributing land, much of it has ceased to be economically viable. According to the government's own statistics, some 50% of land reform projects have failed. A once thriving potato farm in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands is now a makeshift soccer field. A former tea estate in Magoebaskloof in Limpopo has become an overgrown forest. The list goes on.

Many of the new land owners have no farming or management skills. They have nothing invested in the land because the government gave them their farms for free after buying the land from the original owners. Furthermore, the uncertainty over the future of farmland has led to a fall in agricultural production. There was, for example, a 7.3% fall in maize plantings in the 2008-09 season. And that was at a time when food prices were soaring.

A policy of expropriation and restriction on private land use will only aggravate the decline of South African agriculture. The weakening of property rights in the agricultural sector will raise questions over the government's commitment to defend property rights in other parts of the economy. That will discourage new investment and thwart the much needed economic growth.

A new approach to land reform in South Africa requires privatization, not expropriation. Some 25% of South African land is owned by the government. Some of it belongs to nature reserves or is of a low agricultural quality. But no serious attempt has been made to determine the viability of the government land for redistribution. Fifteen years after the ANC took over, only one-third of state land has been audited.

Land expropriation does not lead to justice or prosperity. As the case of Zimbabwe shows, it is a road to economic destruction. South Africa must turn back now before it is too late.

Also still fearful is a woman, Patience, whom Thomson described as carrying a large book with "the names of people tortured, killed, raped or maimed by Zanu-PF mobs last year." Mortuary officials, hospital officials and court clerks covertly helped compile the list.

Thompson asked Patience what would happen if she brought this crimes list to the police or the Ministry of Justice so that those responsible would be prosecuted. (In this "coalition" government, Mugabe is still in tight personal control of the police, the spy service, the criminal justice system and the media.)

Looking Thomson straight in the eye, Patience answered his question: "I would be killed, even torn to pieces. I definitely believe that."

Explaining the sureness of her conviction, Thomson explained: "She believes they are desperate to destroy evidence like this, which, she says, could put them in court should President Mugabe eventually be forced from government."

Even Mugabe's rapists and murderers do not feel safe in Zimbabwe.

Thomson, who had reason not to feel safe himself in this police state, spoke about the incriminating evidence to the Movement for Democratic Change's Sekai Holland, whose rawly ironic title in this coalition government is: "Minister of State for National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration." Ms. Holland has had acute personal experience in the need for healing since she herself had been beaten so viciously by Mugabe's Zanu-PF surrogates that she was hospitalized for weeks.

"No one feels safe in Zimbabwe. No one," she said, adding that, "different members of the MDC are getting phone calls from people who give the names of people who are going to be assassinated (by clench-fisted Zanu-PF monsters)."

"I think," the minister of State for National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration, continues, "there is a department which meets to plan the survival of Zanu-PF as a ruling party. We are told they do have a list of people they will kill."

There have been many such fulfilled execution lists in the 29 years of Robert Mugabe's reign of horror.

Also interviewed by Thomson in his report was Harare University professor of Politics, John Makumbe.

He predicts:

"If the inclusive government does not work, we are going very close to Somalia. We are going into the scorched earth policy. That is what Mugabe is going to do. Destroy everything in the name of ideology, destroy everyone."

Who is going to stop him? The United Nations is as preeningly hollow as ever.

President Obama is concerned. On June 12, meeting with the Zimbabwe's purported "power-sharing" prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai at the White House, Obama - as described in a June 13 New York Times headline - "chided" Mugabe. Rather mildly, Obama said of Mugabe that he "has not acted oftentimes in the best interest of the Zimbabwean people and has been resistant to the kinds of democratic changes that need to take place."

Obama added that he was expecting Tsvangirai to "continue to provide us with direction in ways that he thinks we can be helpful."

But, as Robert Rotberg - president of the World Peace foundation and director of the Harvard Kennedy School's Program on Intrastate Conflict - says bluntly (Boston Globe, June 13):

"Mugabe, insufferably confident and arrogant at 85, hardly wants to be upstaged by his much younger prime minister. He seeks to protect himself and his security cronies from being investigated for corrupt dealings and human rights abuses. The destruction of a prosperous, largely democratic Zimbabwe happened on their watch. The blood of thousands is on their hands."

Back in Zimbabwe, Thomson is told by a 20-year-old survivor, Tapfuma (who, with his mother, had been beaten unconscious by the Zanu-Pf and will not go home under the new coalition government): "Zanu-PF, the people who did this, are still out there. They are still wearing their T-shirts."

Even Tsvangirai, desperately seeking foreign investors in his broken country, is so fearful they will reject any aid reaching Mugabe that on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (June 11), Tsvangirai said:

"I think that the new political dispensation represents a new Zimbabwe, which is looking forward to reconstruction, to reconciliation, and economic recovery."

How Mugabe must have smiled when told about that painfully false homage.

Africa, however, would surely be better off if rich countries followed the much-lambasted Italian example and cut their aid budgets. Decades of academic research have failed to show a positive correlation between foreign aid and economic development. In Africa, the correlation between the two is negative. In addition to breeding corruption, aid acts as a disincentive to genuine political and economic reform. It is time to free the aid debate from the grip of rock stars and celebrities.

In all likelihood, Italy's aid cut had more to do with the global recession than with any specific theory of economic development. The International Monetary Fund says the Italian economy will shrink 4.5 percent this year. The 2009 budget deficit and explicit national debt, Banca d'Italia predicts, will reach 3.7 percent and 111 percent of gross domestic product, respectively.

Bob Geldof has little interest in Rome's predicament. To him, the Italian government, now chairing the G-8, is a "crowd of shysters." "How can you possibly trust any government that promises something, does nothing, and expect them to lead the world?" the former pop star asked at a recent press conference. "How dare they?"

Let us step back and address the related issues of political trust and aid efficiency. It is true Italy has never been a paragon of good government. It is, for instance, one of Western Europe's most corrupt countries. But Italy has been a parliamentary democracy since 1946. Political competition between the parties is vigorous and civil society vibrant and strong. The Italian press regularly rakes Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi over the coals, and elections are free and fair.

Contrast that record with Africa's. In 2009, Freedom House classified a mere 10 out of 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa as "free." The rest were either "partly free" or "not free." Only seven countries in the region have a free press. Moreover, except for Botswana, Mauritius and South Africa, all the other countries in sub-Saharan Africa were deemed more corrupt than Italy. Out of the bottom 20 most corrupt countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), 11 were in Africa.

The 2008 CPI index ranked Ethiopia and Sudan, both top aid recipients, in 126th place and 173rd place, respectively. Both have appalling human rights record. The Ethiopian government killed nearly 200 protesters rather than concede an election loss in 2005. The Sudanese government's human rights record in Darfur and South Sudan is, to put it mildly, shocking.

Mr. Geldof questions the trustworthiness of a democratically elected Italian government to fulfill its aid promises in the midst of a severe and unexpected economic crisis. We question the trustworthiness of many African regimes not to embezzle or otherwise misuse the money of the Western taxpayers.

But the call for increased aid would be misguided even if it did not exacerbate the problem of African corruption. Between 1975 and 2005, per capita aid to sub-Saharan Africa averaged $24.60 per year. By contrast, in China it averaged $1.50 and in India $2.11. During the same period, the compounded average annual GDP growth rate per capita in China was 7.9 percent and in India 3.5 percent. In Africa it was a negative 0.16 percent. Nine countries in sub-Saharan Africa were poorer in 2007 than in 1960.

Many factors lie behind that vertiginous decline, but the evidence suggests that far from promoting economic reforms in Africa, aid has retarded the pace of reform. Thus, while the rest of the world liberalized and prospered, reforms in sub-Saharan Africa have been limited. The region remains the least integrated part of the global economy.

Thankfully, an increasing number of Africans are now calling for change. These are not members of the African elite who depend on aid for their lavish lifestyles. Nuhu Ribadu, the former Nigerian anti-corruption chief who lives in exile, thinks most aid to Nigeria is stolen and wants further aid disbursements to come with heavy preconditions. John Githongo, the former Kenyan anti-corruption chief who recently returned to Kenya after four years in exile, sees the West's determination to fund tainted governments like his own as a form of racism — Africa is held to lower standards. Dambisa Moyo, the Zambian author of the best-selling book Dead Aid, wants aid discontinued altogether.

Regrettably, these African dissenters are often ignored or attacked. When Ugandan journalist and democracy advocate Andrew Mwenda called for Western countries to stop giving aid to Africa, Bono heckled him with shouts of profanities.

Celebrities like Bono and Mr. Geldof may boast the best of the intentions, but through the years they have come to play an outsized role in the aid debate. When challenged, they and other aid advocates, such as Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, have dismissed the views of Africans directly affected by the issues. How dare they?

Moyo's growing popularity has even compelled the usually taciturn Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University to join the fray. Writing on The Huffington Post, he threw ad hominem attacks against both Moyo and his long-time critic Bill Easterly of New York University. Both responded, pointing out some of the problems associated with aid. But one argument needs further discussion: the aid debate has a racist undertone.

This year marks 20 years since the end of communism. As Oleh Havrylyshyn, a former International Monetary Fund official who teaches at the University of Toronto shows, the transition of central European and Baltic countries from communism to capitalism has been largely successful. Countries that embraced more rapid and more extensive economic reforms "tended to experience higher growth rates and lower inflation and received more foreign investment. Inequality increased less among rapid reformers than among gradual reformers. The same is true with respect to poverty rates."

Baltic countries, which were among the most enthusiastic reformers, benefited greatly from increased economic freedom. Between 1995 and 2007, real incomes in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania rose by an astonishing 167 per cent, 146 per cent and 125 per cent respectively. In the eurozone, they rose by 24 per cent over the same period. Moreover, longevity, environmental quality and school enrolment rose throughout the region, while child mortality declined. The current economic troubles in CEB take some shine off the region's accomplishments, but they don't erase them.

A political consensus in favour of economic liberalization emerged soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Common people were transfixed by western cars and fresh oranges that they saw on German television. Though they disagreed about the speed and the extent of economic reforms — western European and American economic models were both popular — there was little opposition to the general direction of policy changes. One of the most vehement promoters of rapid rather than gradual change, incidentally, was a Harvard University economist — Jeffrey Sachs.

No such consensus exists in Africa. During the 1990s, I lived in both, Czechoslovakia and South Africa. In the former, people saw socialism as a massive failure. In the latter, many saw it as respectable policy alternative. In the former, it was near impossible to find a self-declared communist. In the later, communists were in the government. In CEB, people tended to see the wealth of the western world as a result of high productivity in capitalist countries, while in Africa they tended to see it as a result of colonial exploitation.

Following the collapse of communism, virtually everyone assumed that the key to future prosperity in CEB lay in economic reforms, not in foreign aid. Implicitly, almost everyone understood that the people in the region would simply have to respond to market incentives, and produce goods and services that domestic and foreign customers would want to buy. Inability to compete with the west was inconceivable. Failure was not an option.

Such a mindset is demonstrably lacking when it comes to Africa. Globalization tends to be seen as a threat and seldom as an opportunity. Local politicians fret about competition from China and Bangladesh. Non-governmental organisations caution against liberalisation lest Africans be taken advantage of by unscrupulous westerners. Musicians and movie stars urge aid, not reform, as a solution to poverty.

The result? African incomes rose by mere 26 per cent between 1995 and 2007, less if countries rich in oil and mineral resources are taken out of the calculation. Nine out of 48 sub-Saharan African countries were poorer in 2007 than in 1960. Africa failed to grow in spite or perhaps because of all the aid that had poured to Africa over the last half-a-century. Instead of reforming their economies and growing their private sectors and domestic tax revenue, African governments relied on aid to survive.

In a nutshell, there appears to be a peculiar lack of confidence in Africans to react to market incentives like everyone else does and to benefit from globalization. Africans, the consensus of aid advocates and protectionists appears to be saying, should be shielded rather than exposed to market forces. But, what does that say about the underlying assumption with regard to the ability of Africans to succeed just as the people of CEB had succeeded?

Yet, it is the opponents of aid, not its advocates, who get the short end of the stick. When ABC's John Stossel questioned Sachs about the link between corruption and aid, for example, Sachs accused Stossel of treating poor Africans as "enemies." On the contrary, Stossel responded, it is the African elites that are the enemy of both the African people and of the western taxpayer. Or, as the British economist Peter Bauer put it half-a-century ago, foreign aid is a way of "taxing poor people in rich countries and passing it on to rich people in poor countries."

While the world debates whether Africa should adopt market reforms, other regions power ahead. The concept of "global poverty" is losing its meaning everyday. Soon, poverty will be solely an "African problem." To prevent that from happening, Africans must be treated not as hopeless recipients of charity but people equal to everyone else in ability.

Land Reform Ignored the Property Rights of Commercial Farmers

The government justified the land reform to the rest of the world by arguing that it redressed historical injustices and racial imbalances in the ownership of the land. The land reform ignored the prevailing legal situation with respect to farm ownership. It also ignored the issue of fair and reasonable compensation for assets taken over by the government.

The legal position was straightforward—commercial farmers held full freehold title. In addition, over 80 percent of the farmers also held a "certificate of no interest" issued by the Zimbabwe government. Under the Zimbabwean law, farmers who wished to sell their farms had to first offer them to the government at a market price. When the government declined to purchase such farms, it issued the farmers with the "certificate of no interest" and the farmers could proceed to sell their farms on the open market. In fact, the government purchased some 3.8 million hectares of farmland in that way between 1980, the year of Zimbabwe's formal independence from Great Britain, and the commencement of the land reform.

Farmers who held both the title and the certificates possessed an apparently unassailable legal right to the land and all the improvements they have made on that land. As such, they also had the right to be fully compensated when their assets were taken over by the state.

Unfortunately, over the last nine years, the government "acquired" thousands of farms without paying market price or, in many cases, any price to the farmers. To accomplish that, the government changed the law every time a farmer or a group of farmers secured legal judgments in their favor. Eventually a group of Zimbabwean farmers took their case to the Southern African Development Community's Legal Tribunal in Windhoek, Namibia. In 2008, those farmers obtained a decision instructing the government of Zimbabwe to protect the farmers' legal rights. The government, in spite of being a signatory to the treaty creating the SADC Legal Tribunal, ignored the ruling.

One small group of affected farmers also enjoyed the protection of a "Bilateral Investment Protection Agreement" signed between the government of Zimbabwe and foreign farmers. A group of farmers of Dutch origin, who had invested after 1980 and who were protected by the BIPA, took their case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In April 2009, the Hague tribunal ruled in favor of the Dutch investors and granted them nearly $22 million in compensation.

The attitude of the members of the Zimbabwean regime toward the farm acquisitions was straightforward—they were "taking the farms" from their owners. No police protection was afforded to the farmers or their staff, and no interference with expropriation was permitted. In the majority of cases, force was used—mainly by groups of young, politically motivated thugs. Those thugs acted on behalf of the future "beneficiaries" of farm expropriations—mostly members of President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party. Once the owners and their senior staff had been evicted, the new "owners" occupied the land and took advantage of the assets, including crops and livestock.

Many elderly and outstanding farmers were evicted in that way—leaving some of them so traumatized that they never recovered. One such farmer, Keith Harvey (aged 86), was evicted from his cattle ranch in the Midlands and subsequently went into a coma for two years. He eventually died. He was a former chairman of the Natural Resources Board and a life-long conservationist. He was a fine cattleman, a person of great integrity and totally committed to the country of his birth. Many other farmers lost their lives—either directly or indirectly—as a result of expropriations.

The Staggering Costs of the Land Reform

To date, no proper estimate has been made of the financial cost of the land reform. Therefore, I asked economists in the farming industry to come up with the numbers. According to the Commercial Farmers' Union, the total output of the agricultural industry in Zimbabwe in 2000 was 4.3 million tons of agricultural products, worth, at today's prices, some US$3.347 billion. This output has declined to just over 1.348 million tons of products in 2009, worth some US$1 billion—a decline of 69 percent in volume and a decline of 70 percent in value.¹

It is not often appreciated that smallholder farmers have been just as badly affected as the large-scale commercial farmers. Their production in 2008 was 73 percent lower than their production in 2000. According to the government-appointed Utete Commission, during the first three years of land reform, some 250,000 people and their 1.3 million dependents were forcibly displaced from commercial farms alone.²

In spite of those stunning figures, the farm invasions have continued with 480 new incidents of violence against farmers recorded since the power-sharing agreement between Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change was signed in September 2008. According to the CFU, even those farms that were granted legal protection by the SADC Tribunal were targeted—presumably as a punitive measure.

The international decisions in Windhoek and The Hague create very significant challenges for the new transitional government. Justice for Agriculture, an organization of commercial farmers, estimates the total value of potential legal claims at US$5 billion dollars—some 30 percent more than current Zimbabwean gross domestic product.³

It is clear that the land reform had been a costly failure. In 2008, CFU estimates, over 90 percent of all production from commercial farms came from the remaining largescale farmers—the same farmers who are now being targeted. JAG claims that more than half of all the farms taken over by the state are now derelict and abandoned. Many of the individuals who are now "taking" farms are doing so for the third or fourth time.

The combined costs of the land reform are staggering— they include US$2.8 billion in international food aid on an emergency basis, nearly US$12 billion in lost agricultural production over 10 years, and a potential US$5 billion in compensation—a total of some US$20 billion.

It is time to give all farmers secure tenure that will enable them to finance their operations properly. Such policies cannot be implemented until the issue of the rights of the farm owners is resolved and the issue of compensation addressed.

Notes

1. Personal communication with representatives of the Commercial Farmers' Union.
2. Unpublished report by the Utete Commission.
3. Unpublished report by Justice for Agriculture.

The G-20 will be no better at reducing African poverty than the G-8. Aid disbursements and debt reductions over the past few decades saw incomes in African countries stagnate or even decline. Domestic reforms, including unilateral trade liberalization, are more likely to reduce African poverty in the long run.

Sub-Saharan Africa lags behind the rest of the world in most indicators of human well-being. It scored a mere 0.472 on the United Nations' 2006 Human Development Index, which is measured on a scale from 0 to 1, with higher values denoting higher standards of living. The United States, in contrast, scored 0.948.

For decades, many development experts have advocated more aid and debt relief as solutions to African poverty. In 2005, for example, Columbia University professor Jeffrey D. Sachs unveiled his plan to end extreme poverty around the world by 2025. Rich countries, he argued, should commit themselves to increasing annual aid to the world's poorest nations from $73 billion in 2006 to $135 billion in 2015.

But aid has failed to stimulate growth in Africa. Between 1975 and 2005, for example, per capita aid to Africa averaged $24.60 per year. By contrast, in China, it averaged $1.50 and in India $2. Over the same period, Chinese and Indian incomes, adjusted for inflation and purchasing-power parity, rose by 888 percent and 174 percent respectively. In Africa, incomes fell by 5 percent.

Moreover, aid has encouraged waste and corruption. Inadvertently, it also has financed "around 40 percent of Africa's military spending," according to Paul Collier of Oxford University.

Similarly, the effects of debt relief remain ambiguous. For example, Oxfam and Jubilee 2000, two British nongovernmental organizations, have drawn a link between debt relief and poverty reduction. A recently released study from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, however, found, "The impact of debt relief on countries' poverty-reducing spending is unknown."

In fact, far from putting African countries on a firmer financial footing, debt relief often has led to yet more wasteful borrowing, necessitating more debt relief. Thus, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's Debt Relief Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) in 1996 was followed by the enhanced HIPC initiative in 1999 and then by creation of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative in 2005.

Trade liberalization has the greatest potential to help Africa emerge from poverty. According to a 2005 World Bank study, "moving to free global merchandise trade would boost real incomes in sub-Saharan Africa proportionately more than in other developing countries or in high-income countries. ... Farm employment and output, the real value of agricultural and food exports, the real returns to farm land and unskilled labor, and real net farm incomes would all rise in the region, thereby alleviating poverty." The primary reason Africa stands to benefit "proportionately more" is because Africa remains one of the world's most protectionist regions. For example, average applied tariff rates in Africa remain comparatively high.

Whereas such tariffs in high-income countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development fell from 9.5 percent to 2.9 percent between 1988 and 2007, in Africa they only fell from 26.6 percent to 13.1 percent between 1987 and 2007.

Unfortunately, the Doha, Qatar, round of negotiations on trade liberalization have ground to a halt, and the threat of protectionism looms large as the current global economic slowdown worsens. All major players deserve blame for the Doha fiasco. Global negotiations on trade liberalization happen along long-established mercantilist lines, where countries trade concessions on market access with one another.

Mercantilists see imports as a threat. In reality, imports increase competition and specialization, and increased specialization leads to increased productivity. In a competitive market, reduction of the cost of production then leads to cheaper goods and services, which in turn increases the real standard of living. That is a major reason why people living in more open economies tend to be richer. African states should liberalize irrespective of what the rest of the world does.

For all their good intentions, summits of rich nations, be they G-8 or G-20, give rise to unrealistic expectations. The heavy emphasis on aid and debt relief make foreign actions appear to be chiefly responsible for poverty alleviation in Africa. In fact, the main obstacles to economic growth in Africa rest with Africa's policies and institutions, such as onerous business regulations and weak protection of property rights.

Africa remains the poorest and least economically free region on Earth. The G-20 should do all it can to help Africa integrate with the rest of the world. It should eliminate remaining restrictions on African exports and end its farm subsidies. Africans, however, will have to make most of the changes needed to tackle African poverty.

Trade liberalization has the greatest potential to help Africa emerge from poverty. Yet that is where the least amount of progress has been made. Negotiations on trade liberalization have ground to a halt, and the threat of protectionism looms large as the current global economic slowdown worsens.

The Gleneagles Summit, for all its good intentions, gave rise to unrealistic expectations. The heavy emphasis on aid and debt relief made Western actions appear to be chiefly responsible for poverty alleviation in Africa. In reality, the main obstacles to economic growth in Africa rest with Africa's policies and institutions, such as onerous business regulations and weak protection of property rights.

Africa remains the poorest and least economically free region on earth. The West should do all it can to help Africa integrate with the rest of the world. It should eliminate remaining restrictions on African exports and end Western farm subsidies. Africans, however, will have to make most of the changes needed to tackle African poverty.

During its history, Zimbabwe has had several types of monetary systems. Central banking is the only system that worked badly. The long-term record of central banking in most of Africa is also poor-though not as wretched as Zimbabwe's. To retain central banking is to perpetuate a system that has destroyed the livelihoods of millions of Zimbabweans. In contrast, the longterm records of currency boards and dollarisation are good.

Historical experience shows that currency boards and dollarisation are both easy to implement. Governments have adopted them in the midst of war, economic crises and political turmoil. They have proven to be durable. Small initial stocks of foreign currency have never created a problem because, by promoting economic stability, currency boards and dollarisation have enabled the stocks to grow quickly.

The authors' theoretical arguments against currency boards and dollarisation are oft-repeated. Indeed, they always seem to arise whenever these monetary regimes are debated. But, in fact, they have never posed serious obstacles to establishing currency boards or dollarisation in practice.

In "Policy adrift in Darfur," the senators (Mr. Brownback has actually gone to Darfur) wrote: "If the United States does not change its approach to Darfur, an already grim situation is likely to spiral out of control. ... When the history of this tragedy is written, nobody will remember how many times officials visited the region or how much humanitarian aid was delivered. They will only remember the death toll."

As the death toll continued to mount, there was hope again on March 4 when the International Criminal Court at last issued an arrest warrant for Africa's Hitler, Gen. al-Bashir. He is charged with five crimes against humanity: murder, extermination, forcible transfer (of civilian populations), torture and rape.

This personification of evil will also be tried, if he can be apprehended, for two war crimes: intentionally directing attacks against civilians and for pillaging, his forces stealing livestock and burning villages, with black infants sometimes tossed into the flames. Strangely, the charge of genocide is not included, although there is ample evidence that Gen. al-Bashir fully intended to destroy the black tribes of Darfur - as his ruthless Janjaweed killers kept gleefully assuring their victims.

Also on March 4, before an orchestrated, huge crowd in Khartoum, Gen. al-Bashir, as he was dancing and swaying, told the ICC to "eat" its arrest warrant while the cheering crowd burned in effigy the court's undeviating chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who clearly should have been Time magazine's "Man of the Year."

In further strutting his contempt of the ICC, Gen. al-Bashir commanded 13 foreign humanitarian organizations to get out of the country within 24 hours as his thugs ransacked their offices, taking computers and whatever cash they could find.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, at last summoning what appeared to be real clear anger at the bloodthirsty head of a sovereign state, emphasized that 4.7 million of Gen. al-Bashir's people are in need of aid. These are such basic needs as food, drinking water and medical care.

Amid clinics closing and deteriorating sanitation, such infectious diseases as cholera will spread. On March 6, The Washington Times and the Associated Press quoted World Health Organization spokeswoman Fadela Chaib on an outbreak of meningitis in Nyala, south of Darfur. Precisely in that area the Dutch branch of Doctors Without Borders was carrying out meningitis vaccinations. But this indispensable humanitarian organization was one of the 13 expelled by Gen. al-Bashir.

Said one of its ousted workers, who had been assigned to one of Darfur's largest refugee camps, "People have nothing there. The meningitis outbreak alone could lead to thousands of deaths." (The Washington Post, March 5.)

On Feb. 21, anticipating the ICC's issuance of this first arrest warrant for a sitting head of state, Gen. al-Bashir's rightly feared head of Sudan's National Security and Intelligence Service, Salah Gosh (a sometimes CIA Intelligence source about terrorists in Africa, but not in Khartoum) has warned anyone anywhere who intended to actually arrest his commander in chief:

"Anyone who attempts to put his hands to execute [International Criminal Court] plans, we will cut his hands, head and parts because it is a non-negotiable issue." And with unexpected frankness, he added (as reported by the invaluable sudantribune.com):

"We [the government] were Islamic extremists, then became moderate and civilized, believing in peace and life for everyone. However, we will revert back to how we were if necessary. There is nothing any easier than that." Mr. Gosh somehow omitted saying actually when the former National Islamic Front government had become civilized.

Presumably, Gen. al-Bashir is a wanted man anywhere he travels. The ICC's court registrar, Silvana Arbia, declares that the obligation to surrender Gen. al-Bashir falls on all 108 countries that are part of the ICC; members of the U.N. Security Council; "and any other state as may be necessary." And chief Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo insists:

"The judges were clear. There is no immunity for heads of states before the ICC. As soon as al-Bashir travels through international air space, he can be arrested. It will be two months or two years, but he will face justice."

Will he really be in the dock at The Hague?

Next week: With Gen. al-Bashir still a free genocidaire, the only realistic way, so far, to ensure he and justice will finally meet begins with, as I shall explain, no-fly zones over Sudan. It will be up to NATO; the European Union, particularly France; and President Obama. George W. Bush was the first head of state to call this Sudan holocaust genocide. But it continued, and grew. Barack Obama's administration is "urgently" reviewing what should be done. We'll see.

But, despite the occasional dalliance with protectionism, treaties and good sense prevent a more serious romance.

Amid pledges of restraint from the big economies, India recently raised tariffs and placed other restrictions on some imported steel products.

Ecuador raised tariffs by 5 to 20% on 940 products. Argentina's restrictions include auto parts, textiles, televisions and shoes. And the Indonesian government is requiring civil servants to purchase only domestic products.

Similar actions have taken place in other countries and surely there will be more in the months ahead. But the risk of protectionism escalating to the point that it noticeably reduces global trade further is remote.

With the proliferation of international production, investment and joint ventures, the "Us versus Them" characterisation of global competition no longer applies.

It is now a competition between global supply chains to produce and deliver products made with parts and labour from many countries.

The successful supply chains are those with the fewest constraints — physical and administrative, including trade barriers.

According to recent estimates from the International Food Policy Research Institute, a US think-tank, if all World Trade Organisation members raised all tariffs to their maximum allowable rates, the average global tariff would double and trade would decline by 7,7% over five years, from the 5,5% growth this decade.

But, to put 7,7% in historical context, the value of global trade plummeted by 66% between 1929 and 1934, in the wake of the protectionist plague following the US Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930. In the 1930s there were no global rules, no sources of adjudication or remediation, and no generally accepted limits to unilateral actions by governments.

And there were far fewer domestic constituencies of any political consequence protesting against protectionism in the 1930s.

Now we have trade rules that work reasonably well and a vastly different global economy that makes import restrictions much more expensive to the country imposing them.

Most WTO members apply tariff rates well below their required or "bound" rates, a good indication that governments have little interest in the protectionist past.

Today there are burgeoning domestic constituencies in numerous countries who favour lower tariffs because their livelihoods depend on access to imported raw materials, components, and capital equipment.

When governments raise trade barriers, they deter foreign investment and reduce the appeal of their countries as locations for research, production, or assembly operations in the supply chain.

That dynamic is easier to appreciate when one considers that 55% of all US import value in 2007 consisted of raw materials, intermediate goods and capital equipment — the kinds of products the construction and manufacturing sectors purchase.

Put in this light, it is more obvious that tariffs raise the costs of production, which undermines economic growth — or, as in the current case, economic recovery.

Mexico, for example, understands this. In January it started cutting rates on about 70% of its tariff schedule. Those 8 000 items comprising 20 different industrial sectors accounted for about half of all Mexican import value in 2007.

The objectives are to reduce business operating costs, attract and retain foreign investment, raise productivity and give consumers more, better and cheaper goods and services.

Mexico is not alone. In February, Brazil suspended tariffs entirely on some capital goods and reduced duties to 2% on a wide variety of machinery and capital equipment, including communications and IT. Some analysts worry less about border barriers and more about camouflaged protectionism that favours "domestic champions", discourages competition or encourages "buying local".

It's not Thirties-style, tit-for-tat trade wars that they fear but Seventies-style government intervention that will limit choices, stymie competition, and strangle growth.

That kind of protectionism is already in evidence and, because it is more opaque, is more prone to abuse.

But, like tariffs, those kinds of policies are unsustainable because they will undermine trade, investment and economic growth.

Governments that stimulate trade and competition offer their people the greatest opportunity to recover in our global economy: Zimbabwe can grasp this opportunity too.

The MDC was born during the 1999 campaign, when Mr. Mugabe, Zimbabwe's leader since 1980, lost a constitutional referendum that would allow him to grab more power. Since then, Mr. Mugabe has silenced the press, abolished freedom of assembly, banned most foreign reporters and unleashed waves of violence against the opposition in which thousands of people perished. Over the last decade, Zimbabwe has held four parliamentary and two presidential elections. Each of those polls was rigged in favor of the incumbent, earning Harare much opprobrium in the West.

In contrast, most African election observers ignored Mr. Mugabe's vote-rigging. Abandoned by fellow Africans, Mr. Tsvangirai turned for support and encouragement to the West. That turned out to be a mistake. As Simon Badza, political analyst with the University of Zimbabwe, recently told the BBC, Mr. Tsvangirai "had very limited options. He was increasingly perceived as having no respect for African solutions to African problems. He couldn't continue defying SADC [the Southern African Development Community], a regional institution."

African solutions should of course be welcome when they genuinely allow Africans to resolve their own problems. Regional trade liberalization, for example, has the potential to increase the welfare of the African people. In its most malign form, however, the concept of "African solutions" can denote the worst kind of relativism, which holds that standards of just conduct do not apply on the African continent.

When Mr. Mugabe lost the 2008 parliamentary poll and refused to relinquish power, most African leaders ignored the election result and called for power-sharing instead. In a deal first struck last September, Mr. Mugabe was to stay on as president and Mr. Tsvangirai was to become the new prime minister. The cabinet seats were to be shared on an equitable basis. When even those generous terms were not enough for Mr. Mugabe, the SADC forced the MDC to share the control of the Home Affairs ministry that supervises Zimbabwe's police force and electoral machinery with Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party. In the end, the MDC relented.

For a decade, Zimbabwe has burned. It boasts the second-highest hyperinflation in recorded history and the world's shortest life-spans. Public services are nonexistent. Cholera and hunger haunt the land. Throughout the past 10 years, the SADC ignored its own treaties and commitments to good government and democratic accountability. It made a mockery of the so-called African Renaissance touted by South Africa's Thabo Mbeki and the new generation of African leaders to whom Bill Clinton referred.

Few contemporary African leaders owe their positions to free and fair elections, so it is unsurprising that they have no appetite for condemning Mr. Mugabe. The West has to recognize this fundamental lack of political freedom and accountability in Africa. That is especially important now that tens of billion of dollars have been promised to Africa as part of a new push for African development agreed at the 2005 G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. Proponents of aid understand that the greatest danger to further disbursements of aid is not its manifest failure to bring about economic growth in Africa, but the public's perception that it is stolen and wasted.

It is for that reason that some aid advocates have tried to sanitize Africa's democratic record. Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, for example, believes that poverty in the world can be cured by aid to the tune of $150 billion per year. In a 2004 interview, he said that "The idea that African failure is due to African poor governance is one of the great myths of our time."

Yet, far from being a myth, the SADC's actions toward Zimbabwe demonstrate that bad government in Africa is tolerated and sometimes even encouraged. Zimbabwe's power-sharing agreement is not a solution, but a delusion.

The people behind Cope are no angels. They share responsibility for guiding the ship of state into troubled waters. By increasing the competition for black voters, however, they may yet benefit South Africa.

Cope was born out of internecine conflict between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, the ANC leader. It was Mr Mbeki's defeat as the ANC president in December 2007 and his forced resignation as state president last September that precipitated the unravelling of the ANC. Both Mosiuoa Lekota and ­Mbhazima Shilowa, Cope's leader and deputy leader respectively, are close to Mr Mbeki.

The new party's birth comes at a propitious time. In the 2004 election, more than 50 percentage points separated the ANC from the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance. The governing party controls all nine provinces and every main city, bar Cape Town.

This hegemony ossified political discourse and undermined constitutional checks and balances. The ANC has used a combination of race politics and deployment of its "cadres" across much of South Africa's public and private sectors to destroy the wall between the party and the state. It diminished parliamentary accountability and hobbled supposedly independent institutions, such as the South African Broadcasting Corporation. It has also attempted to stifle debate on contentious policies, including Aids and Zimbabwe.

The tribal tensions behind the split – Mr Zuma, the presumptive state president, is a Zulu and the new party draws much apparent support from Xhosa-speaking regions traditionally associated with former president Nelson Mandela and Mr Mbeki – are somewhat blurred. They are certainly less sharp than the black-white division that has characterised voting for the ANC and the DA respectively.

Encouragingly, Mr Lekota and Helen Zille, leader of the DA, said they would co-operate and possibly form coalition governments in those provinces where the combined opposition won a majority. Mr Lekota also recently emphasised a return to "rainbow nation" politics and a retreat from the racial quotas that have driven the government's economic policies and public appointments.

The new party claims to be distinct from the ANC in "respecting the constitution and the courts". That is a welcome sentiment, for supporters of Mr Zuma, who faces unresolved bribery charges, have in recent months denounced South Africa's independent judiciary as "counter-revolutionary", and declared their readiness to "kill for Zuma". Mr Lekota's commitment to principled politics was, unfortunately, undermined by Cope's embrace of Allan Boesak – a disgraced anti-apartheid cleric convicted of embezzlement.

Cope might also come to regret its closeness to Mr Mbeki. After all, it was on his watch that South Africa's social, economic and political challenges became more acute.

At present, Cope seems committed to continue with Mr Mbeki's lacklustre policies, while the ANC has embraced economic populism, campaigning on a programme of more spending and more state intervention. Somewhat paradoxically, Trevor Manuel, the business-friendly finance minister, remains a member of the ANC cabinet, while one of Cope's apparent funders, Wendy Luhabe (Mr Shilowa's wife), is a billionaire beneficiary of the ANC's dirigistic economic policies. The loss of power, business deals and patronage is probably the most reliable explanation for the schism.

Based on municipal by-election results in Western Cape in December, it appears that Cope can cut deep into traditional ANC support, while the DA can count on the support of the white and coloured communities. That suggests the 2009 election could be good news for South Africa. Until now, the country's democracy has assumed some of the worst features of a one-party state. More political competition could revitalise South African democracy and help safeguard basic liberties.

Only Nelson Mandela, who'd come calling a week before my visit, had gone on walking on water. Together they had fought and defeated apartheid, but Helen's views, like Mandela's, had grown more suffered than listened to in the new South Africa. There was, as she put it, "no appetite" for her brand of classical liberalism under the iron fist of Mbeki's African National Congress. Though she felt that the end was near, she was determined to go on speaking out and to protect her legacy from "being airbrushed from South African history."

Helen Gavronsky was born into a family of Lithuanian Jews in Germiston, a suburb of Johannesburg, in 1917. She studied business and economics at the University of the Witwatersrand. During World War II, she worked as a statistician at the War Supplies Board and then returned to the University of the Witwatersrand to lecture on economic history. In 1953, she was elected to parliament on the United party ticket. Judging the UP too subservient to the apartheid regime, she switched to the Progressive party in 1959 and remained in parliament until 1989.

The ultimate goals of the Progs, as they were called, were an end to all race-based discrimination and universal suffrage. Yet as independence movements led much of Africa to tyranny and economic ruin, the white electorate in South Africa cooled on political reform. Between 1961 and 1974, Helen was the only unambiguously anti-apartheid politician in parliament. Yet she persisted in hounding the political establishment. When the National party government accused her of deliberately asking embarrassing questions, Suzman retorted, "It's not my questions that are embarrassing South Africa, but your answers."

Throughout her parliamentary career, Helen was subjected to relentless attacks from the government benches. There were shouts of "Go back to Moscow" and "Go back to Israel" as she rose to speak. Prime Minister P.W. Botha called her a "vicious little cat." "I am provocative, and I admit this," Helen later said. "It isn't as if I'm only on the receiving end, a poor, frail little creature. I can be thoroughly nasty when I get going, and I don't pull my punches."

To understand this tenacious and stubborn woman, one has to understand her philosophy. "I stand for simple justice, equal opportunity, and human rights. .??.??. [These are] the indispensable elements in a democratic society--and well worth fighting for," she said. A liberal of the old school, Helen wanted people to be treated on merit and not because of their race or gender. For years, she toured South African jails, visiting inmates--including Mandela on Robben Island--and advocating for more humane treatment of prisoners. She was one of the early campaigners for more transparency and accountability in anti-terror legislation.

As a trained economist, Helen saw the free market as the best way to reduce poverty. But she thought a free economy was about more than just material well-being; it would undermine the injustice of apartheid. With its restrictive labor laws and considerable degree of state planning, apartheid was meant to protect the white minority from cheaper black labor and the supposed predations of "Jewish capital." South Africa's leaders loved to rail against capitalism as the enemy of white civilization. Hendrik Ver-woerd, prime minister between 1958 and 1966, wrote, "There are people who [argue that] .??.??. simply everything .??.??. must be made subordinate to their so-called economic laws. .??.??. It is fortunate that under a Nationalist government these worshippers of economic laws have never had their way but a nobler and higher goal has been striven after--the maintenance of white civilization."

The National party politicians correctly surmised that the much-maligned profit-motive would lead private companies to compete for the best workers regardless of race. Like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the founders of apartheid saw capitalism as a revolutionary force that was inimical to the status quo. Thus, the early apartheid legislation received support from white trade unions and from the South African Communist party, which proclaimed, "Workers of the world, unite to keep South Africa white!" (The SACP later changed its position on civil rights, though its opposition to capitalism remained.) Helen, however, saw the freedom to earn a living free of government intervention as an important step toward defeating apartheid long before race equality became a rallying cry of the left.

It was perhaps only natural that Helen, who had seen the government used for evil, would be skeptical about its ability to promote virtue. As Mandela's vision of an inclusive "rainbow nation" gave way to the Afrocentrism of Thabo Mbeki, racial divisiveness reentered South African politics. Opponents of the ANC were regularly dismissed simply because of the color of their skin. "Debate is almost nonexistent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses," Helen said in 2004. "It is bad news for democracy in this country. Even though we didn't have a free press under apartheid, the government of that day seemed to be very much more accountable in parliament."

Helen derived great satisfaction from seeing all the apartheid legislation scrapped, and blacks and whites vote as equal citizens in the 1994 elections. But the apparent inability, or unwillingness, of the ANC to tackle AIDS, crime, corruption, and persistent poverty made her as scathing in her attacks on black nationalists under Mbeki as she had been on the white nationalists during apartheid.

Helen is often called an "icon," but she despised the word and the attention. Behind her self-deprecating response to international adulation lurked a worry. In its drive to consolidate power, the ANC has created a liberation myth that overemphasizes its role in bringing about majority rule. Such a myth is useful; it enables the ANC to monopolize the appearance of virtue and, with it, power. Helen's career reminds us that life under apartheid was more complex. She embodied the determination of a minority of white South Africans to oppose injustice wherever they saw it. No matter how stony the African soil is for classical liberal ideas, they will, courtesy of Helen Suzman, forever remain a viable alternative to race-based politics.

Mr. Mugabe's economic policies and repression are responsible for widespread poverty, sickness and violence that have gripped Zimbabwe, and while his rule appears to be coming to an end, Zimbabwe's story provides a somber lesson for the rest of the world. For too long, world leaders and international institutions have temporized with African dictators and accepted flawed elections as sources of incumbents' legitimacy.

In the March 2008 poll, despite what was widely seen as a flawed electoral process, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change gained a majority of the parliamentary seats in Zimbabwe. Mr. Mugabe refused to relinquish power, however.

The African Union and the Southern African Development Community did not call for him to go. Instead, they pushed for a power-sharing compromise between Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the MDC. Mr. Mugabe was to stay on as president and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai was to become the new prime minister. The Cabinet seats were to be shared on an equitable basis.

However, even those generous terms were not enough for Mr. Mugabe, who demanded that the MDC relinquish its claim for sole control of the powerful Home Affairs Ministry, which supervises Zimbabwe's police force and electoral machinery. Mr. Tsvangirai has rightly rejected this new demand. Over the years, the highly politicized police force has emerged as Mr. Mugabe's favorite tool against opponents, while Mr. Mugabe's control over the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has enabled him to rig successive elections.

Unfortunately, Africa's democratic awakening, which has seen the demise of many one-party dictatorships and military regimes since 1990, is, in many ways, only skin deep. In many countries, elections are either rigged in favor of the incumbents or ignored if their outcomes are unfavorable to the ruling regimes.

Take Kenya's presidential elections in December 2007. Prior to the vote, the opposition candidate Raila Odinga led the incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, in all opinion polls. Some had him 15 to 19 percentage points ahead. With half of the 210 constituencies reporting, Mr. Odinga had a commanding lead. The Electoral Commission of Kenya abruptly stopped the count. When the counting resumed, Mr. Kibaki surged past Mr.Odinga. An hour later he was sworn in to his second term at a hastily arranged State House ceremony.

According to the chief European Union monitor Alexander Lambsdorff, the tallying process "lacked credibility." In the ensuing violence, as enraged Kenyans took to the streets 1,000 people died and 600,000 were displaced.

In a compromise through a combined diplomatic effort of Kofi Annan, Condoleezza Rice and others, a new position of the prime minister was created for Mr. Odinga, leaving Mr. Kibaki as president. Mr. Kibaki and his henchmen subverted democracy, but Western countries, grateful for an end to violence, quickly resumed their aid payments to Kenya.

Umaru Yar'Adua, the chosen successor of Olusegun Obasanjo, won the Nigerian presidency in an election marred by fraud. Mr. Obasanjo himself came to power in a poll where, according to the EU observers, the "minimum standards for democratic elections [had] not been met." After losing the 2005 election, Meles Zenawi, the prime minister of Ethiopia, ordered his troops to shoot anti-government protesters in Addis Ababa, killing 200. Yet, the West rewarded Nigeria with debt forgiveness and Ethiopia with large amounts of foreign aid.

Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe has so far benefited from an analogous situation. He unleashed a wave of violence after losing the first round of presidential elections in March 2008 to Mr. Tsvangirai. Amnesty International estimates 180 people were killed and 9,000 injured, forcing Mr. Tsvangirai out of the subsequent runoff, and ensuring that Mr. Mugabe was installed in his sixth term as president of Zimbabwe.

It is perhaps understandable that many of Mr. Mugabe's fellow African leaders who came to power in similarly nefarious ways refrained from criticizing him and called for a power-sharing compromise instead. Unfortunately that does not explain why the South African government, which has the democratic credentials to speak out and act, has cosseted Mr. Mugabe behind the veil of so-called "quiet diplomacy."

True democracy is about more than periodic elections. It is about freedom to hold and promote different opinions unmolested by the agents of the state. It is about vibrant civil society, free media and independent courts. It is about having every vote counted in a transparent and credible way. It is about a government resigning when the voters say so. Unfortunately, in many parts of Africa, we seem to be witnessing not a triumph of true democracy, but the triumph of incumbentocracy.

As a person she had extraordinary reserves of stamina and courage which she used to great effect to expose both the perversities of apartheid and to keep alive the democratic values which were systematically eroded by the system which her belief in simple justice obliged her to oppose.

But as she acknowledged both to me and to the world, the parliament she served in offered her almost unlimited opportunities to play the role of doughty fighter, despite the fact that she never belonged to a party in power.

She once observed, "It is perhaps ironic that a government as authoritarian as that of the National Party had a deeply revered respect for the parliamentary system."

She used the system to the limits in order to shed light on the darkest corners of the apartheid state, and she used the powers and privileges of parliament, in the words of one of her election slogans to, "Fight to put things right", from improving the conditions of Robben Island prisoners, to exposing the harsh edges of the Group Areas Act.

She said to me quite recently that I had a much more difficult job than her because she had the protection of an impartial Speaker and the support of a media which believed in exposing the opposition viewpoint. Therefore, while Helen was a staunch liberal, and in the language of the old South Africa and in some of her stances (such as legalising Dagga) even something of a radical, she was also a conservative. She believed in conserving institutions like parliament and the courts of law and never supported the root and branch change which others called for often in the most destructive fashion.

This led Thabo Mbeki in 2006 to accuse her of being "in favour of change while determined to resist it". On this matter Mbeki was completely wrong because Suzman never believed in ideological change for its own sake, but favoured the sort of sensible transition which could make people's lives better regardless of race or circumstances.

She fortunately lived long enough to see the system she so vigorously opposed collapse and witnessed the birth of a new constitutional order, many of whose elements were the central pillars of her own convictions. She maintained a steadfast and unsentimental eye on current developments and remained utterly unafraid to confront the new government when necessary, and compliment it where possible. To her dying day she was utterly unimpressed by rank and uninterested in the trappings of political or state power.

We should look upon her mighty legacy of achievement - and learn from it. We will not see its like again.

The artist got his wish in the United States on November 4 when the tsunami of economic woes and popular discontent with the presidency of George Bush swept Barack Obama to power, and drowned any lingering attachments in the US to racial politics.

South Africa's sclerotic race-based politics, where every election since democracy could, in various ways, be predetermined on the basis of an ethnic census, is set for a shake-up with the formalisation of the Congress of the People (COPE) next Tuesday in Bloemfontein.

Might South Africans hope that this most significant breakaway from the ruling ANC since the formation of the Pan Africanist Congress nearly 50 years ago leads to a localised version of "letting the issues be the issue"?

Having enjoyed (the verb endured might be more apt) the title of longest-serving leader of the official opposition in Parliament since 1994, perhaps I can offer some (unsolicited) advice to the late-joiners to the opposition patch.

First, in a mechanical sense at least, any worthwhile democrat in South Africa will welcome an addition to the scattered ranks of the country's opposition forces. One of the reasons why our democracy has not fulfilled its early promise, and the high expectations so many of us had for it, is reflected in the last general election results.

More than 50 points separated the ANC and the principal opposition that I then led. This allowed the governing party to ignore dissenting voices, sideline alternative views, however meritorious, and suck most of the oxygen out of the democratic space which the Constitution, in theory, created for a multiplicity of players. Any reduction in that gap must be welcomed.

Second, it is commendable that COPE has clothed its somewhat threadbare policies in a robust defence of the Constitution - our founding democratic settlement. Recent polls suggest that South Africans retain an overwhelming faith in it, despite their misgivings about current politics and failing institutions.

At this time of deep political uncertainty in South Africa and huge economic upheaval around the world, it is worth recalling the words of US's investor sage, and its wealthiest man, Warren Buffett. He is fond of remarking in business: "It's only when the tide goes out that you discover who's swimming naked." The same yardstick should measure political leaders.

It is, therefore, perfectly fair to ask whether the leadership of COPE are the best guardians of our Constitution and worthy stewards for its future protection. This inquiry yields a far from reassuring answer, despite the excitement at the prospect of a new challenger to ANC hegemony.

Brian Pottinger, in his excellent new work The Mbeki Legacy, got it exactly right. He described the difference between the ascendant forces aligned to Jacob Zuma and the vanquished acolytes of Thabo Mbeki as being the difference between "ANC Classic" and "ANC Lite".

One should never underestimate the potency of the politics of resentment: that heady cocktail of hurt egos, withering resentments and loss of power. Indeed, it is difficult to discern any gulf of principle that separates the ANC from COPE. They both claim to be fighting for the real core, and the lost soul, of the governing party.

Ostensibly, the formation of COPE is not about getting even or bringing back the spirit of Mbeki through the back door. It is about the creation of an alternative based on principle.

When I delivered my lecture at New York University, Breyten Breytenbach was in the audience. He gave me a copy of his recently published excoriation of the current South Africa in the latest edition of Harper's magazine. It is subtitled Notes of South Africa's Failed Revolution. As exhibit A of his deconstruction, he presents the Marie Antoinette quote of Smuts Ngonyama: "I didn't struggle to be poor".

The words are entirely accurate, being the risible defence Ngonyama provided when asked to justify the R50-million he pocketed for his membership of a consortium that received a huge payola from the Telkom listing - in his case a result of "know-who" rather than "know- how".

Breytenbach, however, inaccurately cites Ngonyama as "spokesman for the African National Congress". Today he is head of policy for COPE. It is not his undeserved millions that concern me.

But, in his new incarnation, is he still the staunch defender that he once was of the cadre policy and deployment strategy of the ANC? In 1999, when I revealed this document, which stated that the accountability of all ANC cadres lay to the party high command and not to the institutions in which they were serving, Ngonyama described me as "a childish but confused individual".

In fact, as events over the past decade have made manifest, the ANC's decision to place its officials in every key post in every institution, especially those requiring robust independence, has led to the corrosion of the Constitution, which Cope has now vowed to protect.

Last week, The New York Times highlighted on its front page a recent Harvard University study, which pinned the needless death of more than 300 000 South Africans on then-president Mbeki's refusal to accept the scientific consensus on Aids and his promotion of crank remedies drawn from Aids dissidents.

When, in 2000, the Democratic Alliance rolled out the provision of antiretrovirals in the Western Cape and offered to extend the treatment in its municipalities, Ngonyama accused us of peddling "apartheid-era biological warfare". His other colleague in COPE, Mbhazima Shilowa, was at the time premier of Gauteng.

But that province resisted and fought the Constitutional Court case in July 2002 which the Treatment Action Campaign launched to force birthing facilities to provide antiretrovirals to HIV-positive mothers and babies.

Thirdly, nothing has divided South Africa's opposition forces more than questions of unity.

It is, therefore, reassuring to note that COPE leader Mosiuoa Lekota has pledged to work with other opposition parties, including my own, on the question of creating provincial governments in which the opposition commands a majority. I have warm regard for Lekota, not least because of the very kind remarks he made when I stood down as leader of the opposition.

But I also remember the entirely destructive role he played in 2001 in decimating opposition forces by luring Marthinus van Schalkwyk into the ANC in an attempt to monopolise all power in the hands of the ruling party.

At one level, that's politics. At another, it brings to mind the rueful remark of a famous British politician who said: "When you want to protect a principle, don't look for protection from among the tramplers."

My enduring hope for the new opposition party is that it will be staunch and resolute in its attachment to constitutional principles and practice: the very ideals its key leaders undermined when they occupied the seats of power.

That's an objective, market-based forecast, but I think it's wrong. Yes, the deleveraging of the economy has set loose deflationary forces. However, the Fed has put the money pump into overdrive, and it is hard to see any way in which deflation could be a headline-grabber for many more months, let alone five years. U.S. Treasury-indexed securities remain a buy.

Deflation isn't on everyone's mind, however. Zimbabwe's suffering citizens are caught up in the 21st century's first hyperinflation. In March 2007 Zimbabwe's inflation rate passed 50% a month, a good threshold for defining "hyperinflation" and equal to 12,875% a year. Since then, it's gotten much worse.

The cause of the hyperinflation is a government that forces the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to print money. The government finances its spending by issuing debt that the RBZ must purchase with new Zimbabwe dollars. The bank also produces jobs, at the expense of every Zimbabwean who uses money. Between 2001 and 2007 its staff grew by 120%, from 618 to 1,360 employees, the largest increase in any central bank in the world. Still, the bank doesn't produce accurate, timely data.

The last official inflation statistics, for July, are hopelessly outdated. Money-supply data are even worse; the most recent figures are for January 2008—ancient history.

In the absence of good official numbers, I've developed my own hyperinflation index for Zimbabwe. I derive it from market based price data starting in January 2007. The index tells us that Zimbabwe's inflation rate recently peaked at 80 billion percent a month. That means around 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent a year—or 65 followed by 107 zeros. To get a handle on it, realize that it's equivalent to inflation of 98% a day. Prices double every 24.7 hours. Shops have simply stopped accepting Zimbabwean dollars.

Where does this place Zimbabwe in the hyperinflation record books? Episodes of true hyperinflation are rare. They occur only when the money supply has been fed by an unconstrained printing press. No hyperinflation has ever been recorded when money was based on or convertible into a commodity. The first hyperinflation happened during the French Revolution. There were 28 other hyperinflations before Zimbabwe's, all in the 20th century.

The U.S. has had none of them. It came closest during the Revolutionary War, when it churned out Continental currency to pay the bills. The peak monthly inflation rate then was 47.4%, in November 1779. During the Civil War greenbacks were printed to finance the fighting, and inflation peaked in March 1864 at a monthly rate of 40%.

The accompanying table shows the six all time worst hyperinflations. The famous German episode was only the fourth most virulent. It wasn't even close to the Yugoslav experience under Slobodan Milosevic. Mugabe's mess now tops Yugoslavia's, and if it continues to grow at its current rate, it will overtake Hungary's world record in little more than a month.

Many think this will be the blow that finally topples Mugabe's 28-year dictatorship. Don't count on it. Yugoslavia's hyperinflation peaked in January 1994, but Yugoslavs suffered for nearly seven more years of high inflation until Milosevic reluctantly conceded defeat after the September 2000 elections. Bet on seeing Mugabe stick around for a while yet, unless old age (he's 84) or assassination gets him. Also bet on a return to at least mild inflation for the U.S.

The Middle East is always a safe bet for an explosion, but there is a very good chance the next eruption will be in Africa, with the most likely location being Congo, followed by Sudan. In Latin America, Argentina is headed for another debt default and financial meltdown, and Venezuela continues to rapidly deteriorate. And there is Russia, which is likely to react poorly as its once booming economy goes into to a sharp recession. Pressures will mount on the United States to become involved, particularly in Africa, as mass killings beginagain.

The high price of oil and other major commodities over the last few years acted as a protective blanket over increased tensions within major commodity-exporting nations. Now, as the high revenues from these exports sharply drop, the fights over the shares of a smaller and smaller pie will accelerate.

As the price of oil dropped in inflation-adjusted terms from almost $100 per barrel in 1980 to only $16 per barrel in 1997, the United States and most other oil-importing nations enjoyed rapid economic growth. But as the real price of oil rose, it began to take its toll on U.S. and European economic growth, particularly in the last year when oil roughly doubled in price. The rapid oil price rise pricked the property price bubble in the United States and Europe sooner than it would have occurred with more stable oil prices.

The end of property-price bubble led to the financial crisis because too many individuals and institutions were over-leveraged based on the foolish belief that property prices would only increase. But the big rise in oil prices and other commodities produced windfall revenues for the producing states. Unlike Norway and many of the Middle Eastern oil producers, most of the African producers of oil and other commodities, plus countries such as Venezuela, spent almost every penny they received and then some.

The old Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been unstable for years. It had a civil war in 1996-97 and another one in 1998-2003. The violence never totally stopped despite having large numbers of U.N. "peacekeepers." Congo suffers from many - perhaps 60 - different regional and local rebel groups, and much of the country is not effectively governed. Recently, there has been a major upsurge in violence in the eastern provinces, and an increasing number of conflicts with neighboring Rwandan units.

Legal and illegal mining accounts for a substantial portion of Congo's income. As this income decreases due to the worldwide fall in commodity prices, the incentives to steal from others will grow even greater. Given both the increasing economic stresses and the various ethnic and tribal hatreds, there is a real and immediate danger that the accelerating violence could escalate into a cross-border regional war with massive losses of life.

Sudan has been in more or less of a civil war almost since its independence from the United Kingdom in 1956. It also has had a continuing series of clashes with many of its neighbors. The government of Sudan in Khartoum is perhaps best known for its many years of ethnic cleansing in its Darfur region. These actions have caused the International Criminal Court to indict Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who now fears arrest.

Sudan has been controlled by an Arab minority in the north and centered in Khartoum. The more numerous non-Arab population of southern Sudan has been pushing for independence for decades, and there is now a referendum scheduled for 2011. The battles over the years between the Arab north and the non-Arab south have cost several million lives, far more than have been lost in Darfur.

Southern Sudan has extensive oil reserves and production shipped north for export. Most of the oil revenues stay in the north with the Arab-dominated government. Sudan has enjoyed very high growth in recent years, even though much of the country is impoverished. The northerners have shared enough of the oil revenue with the south to buy a temporary cease-fire, but both sides are arming. For instance, there is evidence the Ukrainian ship, containing Soviet-era tanks and other military material, recently seized by Somalian pirates, was destined for the southern Sudanese (who had obtained the cooperation of neighboring Kenya's army). Now, with the drop in oil prices, the question is, will the government in Khartoum accept lower revenues in order to keep the southerners from igniting another civil war? And even if they do, how long can they keep the lid on?

High oil and commodity prices enabled not only real economic growth in Africa over the last decade, but also allowed many different political and militia groups to acquire and store arms, knowing that the peace was unlikely to be permanent. Now with the prospect of greatly reduced total oil and other commodity revenue for the continent, many are likely to seek to maintain their own income by taking it away from some other group. Renewed mass killings are likely. The Western nations will be pressured to intervene, but trying to find real white hats when most of the hats are various shades of gray or black will be a challenge when trying to decide which faction to support. Those who come to do good, like other well-meaning interventions, may well find the goal becomes more and more costly and elusive.

That unity unraveled last week. In short order, the party membership of former national chairman Mosiuoa Lekota was suspended after he claimed that the ANC had moved away from its founding principles. Mbhazima Shilowa, the former premier of South Africa's wealthiest province, Gauteng, resigned from the party. Both said they would call a national convention early next month with a view toward forming a new opposition party.

This dramatic rupture in South Africa's ruling behemoth, which won nearly 70 percent of the vote in the 2004 election and governs the country's nine provinces and all but one of its major cities, creates hope that my country's somewhat sclerotic political system will be rejuvenated.

The seeds of this discontent can be traced to December, when the arrogant Thabo Mbeki was ousted as party president by the populist but ethically challenged Jacob Zuma, and even earlier to Zuma's 2005 ouster as deputy president of South Africa after he was implicated in a corruption case.

The democratic defenestration of the once all-powerful Mbeki and his ejection from the country's presidency last month have unleashed waves of disaffection that could lead to a reconfiguration of South Africa's largely one-party politics. Both Lekota and Shilowa are key Mbeki allies, and while Mbeki has not yet signaled his support for the incipient party, other ANC grandees who exited the government in solidarity with Mbeki may pitch their tents alongside them.

I was a close observer of the ANC in power, having led the largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, in parliamentary elections in 1999 and 2004. Despite my movement's strong anti-apartheid origins, pro-poor policies and liberal political program, the ANC branded us "the white party" in particular reference to my skin color. That did wonders for the Democratic Alliance in minority communities, but it excluded us from any meaningful share of the majority-black vote. Race mobilization helped the ANC secure its overwhelming majorities. By invoking ethnic solidarity and the struggle against apartheid, Mbeki kept restive and increasingly contradictory constituencies -- from black billionaires to rural peasants -- under one tent.

At least if a new party is formed, this "race card" will be ineffective against it. In addition to claiming credit for defeating apartheid, each party would attempt to outdo the other in loyalty to the "real core" of the ANC. Unlike previous schisms in the ANC's nearly 100-year history, this split is neither purely ideological nor tribal. Shilowa, for example, has strayed far from his trade union roots, and he and his powerful wife have amassed a fortune under government-directed "black empowerment" deals. Zuma and those who remain in the ANC government are surrounded by rich businessmen, including former politicians such as Tokyo Sexwale and Cyril Ramaphosa, who both ran afoul of Mbeki. And with the ethnic factor largely absent, both sides will have support across tribal lines.

More worrisome is the attitude of some activists and dissidents. Some of Zuma's supporters, especially his allies in the ANC Youth League, have announced that they would "kill for Zuma." The ANC secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, has described members of the judiciary as "counter-revolutionary." Others feel humiliated by the brutal ousting of Mbeki and his supporters and resent their exclusion from power. It is good that they wish to regain influence via the polls. But South African soil has remained stony to newcomers to the opposition.

Still, this could be the country's most significant post-apartheid political division and could make the outcome of April's election less predictable. In some combination or coalition, the old and new opposition forces could easily win control of the three most significant provinces: Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. Significant growth in the number of opposition members of parliament is also likely.

The ANC's overwhelming majority in South Africa's past three elections has allowed it to retain the trappings of multiparty democracy while depriving parliament of any meaningful role. In many respects, South Africa has begun to resemble a one-party state where major decisions are made by the party executive, not the national assembly. A larger and more racially diverse combination of opposition forces could significantly help to restore meaning and content to South Africa's vital but somewhat hobbled democracy.

Yet, in the second presidential debate, both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain used several bloody conflicts from the oft-forgotten continent to illustrate the reach and purpose of their foreign policy doctrines.

In suitably vague terms, Mr. Obama proclaimed that standing "idly by" in Rwanda "diminishes us." He announced that the genocide in Darfur can only be curtailed by an American-led effort to bolster the United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force there. Mr. McCain offered similar boilerplate assurances on preventing genocide, but pointed to the "limits of our capability." He cited the "humiliating" U.S. intervention in Somalia as a cautionary case of reach exceeding grasp. Mr. McCain went much further in the December 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs by naming Africa as the most compelling case for humanitarian intervention and promised to use "all elements" of U.S. power to halt the outrages in Darfur.

Do Africa's two minutes of presidential primetime raise the prospect of next president's heightened engagement with the continent?

After all, President George W. Bush's policies and programs in Africa have provided him with rare approval from his domestic opponents. His $15 billion AIDS-fighting PEPFAR initiative has provided 1.7 million Africans with anti-retroviral drugs. Sen. Joe Biden proclaimed it as one of Mr. Bush's "finest hours."

Similarly praised were Mr. Bush's extension of President Clinton's Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) that reduced or eliminated tariffs on most African exports to the United States, and the creation of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) that provides aid to African countries that embrace economic and political reforms. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain are enthusiastic supporters of the MCA.

Mr. Obama initially announced he would fund it more generously but has now pulled back that pledge in view of the deteriorating fiscal picture in the United States. Mr. McCain's plan would help Africa in a more durable way by abolishing wasteful agricultural subsidies for U.S. farmers that tamp down African agricultural exports.

While the Bush administration acted decisively and swiftly against Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki's electoral theft last December by dispatching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region and threatening to cut off aid to Kenya, its attempts to encourage democracy in Zimbabwe have been uneven and feeble.

By appointing Thabo Mbeki, the pro-Mugabe president of South Africa, as his "point man" for Zimbabwe, Mr. Bush effectively handed the issue over to an unreliable South African leadership. Moreover, Mr. Bush's focus on "the war against terror" allowed authoritarian allies of the United States, such as the Ethiopian regime of Meles Zenawi, to escape the democracy-deepening requirements of the MCA, thus weakening hopes the delivery of MCA aid could be depoliticized.

No matter who replaces President Bush, Africa will remain an important item on his agenda. Mr. Obama's campaign adviser on Africa, Witney W Schneidman, recently suggested his perspective is informed by the fact that "he is the product of the African Diaspora, the son of a Kenyan father, whose grandmother still lives in Kenya."

This unusual provenance has suggested to some that Mr. Obama will be a "soft touch" when it comes to Africa. In fact, a closer analysis of his record indicates otherwise: During his 2006 visit to Africa, he forthrightly attacked the disastrous AIDS-denialism of South Africa's then-health minister. In Kenya he railed against "the lack of basic rule of law and accountability" in Africa.

Mr. Obama's initiatives in the U.S. Senate, such as his 2005 amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill that funded the Special Court for Sierra Leone and helped to bring the regional warlord Charles Taylor to justice, suggests Mr. Obama might become impatient with the "big man solidarity" that the African Union invokes repeatedly to shield dictators from accountability - most recently Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.

Mr. McCain has elaborated little in the campaign on his grandiose project of creating "the league of democracies," to act "where the United Nations fails." He clearly envisages such a body to pierce the shield provided to tyrannies by Russian and Chinese U.N. Security Council vetoes. However, there is no appetite in Pretoria or in virtually any other country for such a league.

Africa's worst problems, from AIDS to Zimbabwe, and its best hopes, from deepening of liberal democracy to spreading of economic opportunity, can benefit from the continued engagement and partnership with the United States. Africa's development success, however, will mostly depend on the commitment of African ruling elites to the ideas of political and economic freedom.