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Michael Totten seems to be acquiring a taste for visiting totalitarian hellholes. This time he is wanding around the socialist paradise of Libya. As usual he paints an interesting picture.

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How quickly this (click on this picture to make the triumph even bigger!) . . .

. . . has turned into this:

After England sneaked the Ashes 2-1, they have now been soundly beaten 2-0 by Pakistan. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. If Warne don't get you then Shoaib Akhtar and Danish Kaneria must. I wonder what Al Qaeda will make of that.

All very catastrophic. Until you turn your mind to a real catastrophe. To put all of the above in perspective, spare a thought for cricket in Zimbabwe, a grain of sand through which to see the chaos of the world out there.

A year or two ago, there was a great exodus of international cricketers from Zimbabwe, but they were mostly white guys, with only the occasional black man involved. The Mugabe regime had no problem calling them a bunch of racists and Uncle Toms.

But just over a week ago, the new Zimbabwe captain, the impeccably black Tatenda Taibu, and a thoroughly gutsy cricketer by the way, having already expressed his extreme displeasure at what was happening to Zimbabwean cricket, and having lead another huge player rebellion, by the new multi-coloured lot, remember, resigned:

"I've resigned from Zimbabwe cricket as a whole," Taibu said from Harare on Thursday.

"I've had problems with the way Zimbabwe cricket is being run for the past few years," said the 22-year-old, the youngest captain in Test cricket history when he took over in May 2004.

Maybe that was what decided that Mugabe regime that something had to be done. Basically, a couple of Mugabe-ites had been given Zimbabwe cricket to "run", i.e. ruin, loot, etc., and the Mugabe regime (i.e. Robert bloody Mugabe) decided that they had to stop, or would at any rate make good scapegoats for what even they (Mugabe) now saw as a problem. So, the Zimbabwe equivalent of the men in big raincoats went round at 4 am to arrest the two miscreants. But, they had been tipped off and had fled.

Cricket people are complaining about the uselessness of cricket's global governing body, the ICC, in this matter. But you cannot really expect the ICC to sort out Zimbabwe cricket. The problem is not cricket in Zimbabwe, the problem is Zimbabwe.

Nevertheless, cricket, by dramatising so publicly the horror story that is Zimbabwe now, may actually be contributing something:

John Stremlau, professor of international affairs at South Africa's Witwatersrand University, said the Zimbabwe Cricket meltdown could become the catalyst for a much broader internal revolt.

"Inflation is more than 400 per cent, the US dollar to the Zim [Zimbabwe dollar] is running at 1 to 100,000 [on the black market] and everything's been criminalised and linked to the survival of the Zimbabwe cabal," he said.

"The mystery is when the tipping point will come and it'd be an interesting footnote to history if it was the flap over the cricket team."

Yes it would. The sooner Mugabe is tipped, alive or dead, into the bucket of history the better, and nobody is going to be particularly choosy about what tipped him. If cricket can help to see off this monster, good for cricket.

If that happens, then maybe the apparently myopic policy of other cricketing countries just carrying on playing with whatever cricketers Zimbabwe put into the field against them will have been justified, sort of. Results are what matter when you are dealing with something like Mugabe, not your mere conscience. Had cricket quarantined itself from Zimbabwe, this latest fiasco could not have happened, because any cricket problems in Zimbabwe would (a) not have attracted nearly so much outside attention, and (b) would have been blameable by Mugabe on outside interference.

Had Taibu not had the chance to prove himself to be the formidable cricketer and personality that he is, his resignation would not have counted for much. As it is, it just might count, as Professor Stremlau says, for rather a lot.

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In response to overwhelming popular demand (Julian Taylor can be a bit overwhelming sometimes) here is the text of the Marie Antoinette International Dead Liberty Award for the year 2005, which has been awarded by the Libertarian Alliance to Robert Gabriel Mugabe, and which I featured yesterday in one of these photographs.

Click on this:

I hope you (Julian Taylor) can read that okay, and that it need not be typed in, again.

So, since we are on the subject of Mugabe, how are things in Zimbabwe these days? Well, this story says quite a lot:

Harare, Zimbabwe, 11/17 - A magistrates court in Zimbabwe Thursday dropped corruption charges against President Robert Mugabe`s nephew, two weeks after his high profile arrest on suspicion of graft involving billions of dollars.

Leo Mugabe and his wife Veronica were arrested on charges of illegally selling flour on the local market and exporting it to Mozambique.

Trade in wheat and flour, both of which are in short supply here, is controlled and exports are banned to preserve stocks for the local market.

No evidence, according to the magistrate. I do not suppose that lack of evidence is usually much of a problem, in Zimbabwe nowadays. But this case must have been rather different.

I wonder how Robert Mugabe himself feels about this. I do not assume that he will automatically side with his nephew. As I wrote here, a while ago, I was briefly acquainted with another relative of his, and I can report that the Mugabe family is not the proverbial big happy one. They do not all stick together. They quarrel. And Robert Mugabe is easily stubborn enough and self-righteously cruel enough to throw a relative to the wolves, if he decided that this was the right thing for him to do, just as he has decided that wrecking Zimbabwe is the right thing for him to do and will stubbornly continue with that, until death or ruin stops him.

In other words, this Libertarian Alliance prize will change nothing in Zimbabwe, nothing at all. But, future recipients of the award may perhaps be influenced by it.

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I recall how, a few months back, during all the fuss about Making Poverty History by having a singsong, well dressed and articulate Africans were to be seen on our television screens explaining, throughout the week in question, that, actually, just chucking money at Africa would not really solve the problem. In fact, some of them said, it could well make things worse by making it less necessary for the governments that hoovered up most of the money to earn their money, so to speak, by taxing their own misgoverned and hence impoverished people. (I use the word "earn" in a very relative sort of sense here.)

Last night, the same thing happened again. Kofi Annan had been enthusing about that now quite famous hundred dollar laptop. And once again, well dressed and articulate Africans was summoned to the studios, and they said that, actually, if you are looking for a way to spend a hundred dollars on an African child, you could do a whole lot better than spend in on a laptop computer.

Victor Keegan also waxes enthusiastic about the hundred dollar laptop in the Guardian today, being understandably reluctant to enthuse about the other hot topic at the big UN shindig in Tunis where the hundred dollar laptop was being promoted, which is the UN plan to take over the internet.

But until the UN puts its own house in order by controlling member states imposing censorship on the web, such as China and Tunisia, it won't have the moral authority - let alone the management skills - to do the job itself.

Quite so, although I do not like that "until". My attitude to the internet is simple. It ain't bust. Don't unfix it by putting the UN in charge of it, ever. However, as it says here (you need to scroll past the woes of Sony):

The battle for control of the Net ended peacefully before the fight even began, but some are still unhappy with the outcome.

Me included. What they mean is that lots of people wanted more done on this front. I wanted less than they have already done, which is that they have set up a completely powerless talking shop to discuss "internet governance". And if you believe that the plan is for this talking shop to do nothing but talk for ever and be completely powerless for ever, then you will believe anything.

Although the hundred dollar laptop could not possibly be as big a catastrophe as the UN's planned strangulation of the internet, it could nevertheless waste a lot of money and cause a lot of grief. Imagine not having had any food for two days and being presented with one of these contraptions, as will surely happen to many wretched Africans if this boondoggle goes ahead.

As Tim Worstall explained at the ASI blog over a month ago, a posting that Kofi Annan has clearly not read but should have, that hundred dollar price assumes huge production runs, and also assumes that the various governments who are supposed to pay for these things will also bear the further costs of explaining to people how they work and of mending them when they go wrong. Worse, if these devices are to supply the internet connections that they are supposed to, these governments may have to contrive communicational infrastructure that does not now exist,. As Worstall points out, the kind of people now getting most enthusiastic about this gadget are also the kind of people who are most opposed to the idea of making aid conditional on things like that being done more sensibly.

Even at a hundred dollars, as the well dressed Africans were pointing out last night, these thing are absolutely not a bargain for an African child. Schooling for a year would make more sense. Better food would be nice.

On the face of it, making a kind of global Volkswagen of laptops is appealing. But the more usual method for making cheap stuff is for it to be made expensively first, and checked out by rich organisations and rich people, and then gradually - or, as often happens, not so gradually - cheapened. This is what is happening anyway with computers, and even more spectacularly with mobile phones, which already are hundred dollar portable computers with communication built in, if you think about it. Keegan mentions the success of cheap mobile phones in Africa, but does not seem to have absorbed the lesson of that success, which is that mobile phones are, it turns out, a whole lot easier to use in Africa than laptops. Ah yes, but those mobiles are being used to do business, not being given to the kiddies.

You get the feeling that Kofi Annan is really only trying to make the UN look necessary and useful, instead of a big pointless coagulation of corruption and foolishness which he is now unwilling or unable to clean up. Here, he reckons, is his chance to say that "Business isn't supplying this, but hey! – we can!". The truth is that they can probably not do this but that bad old big business maybe soon will and in many ways already is doing it. If it ever does make sense for Africa's children all to have laptops, this will surely not be until the price of them goes down to something nearer to ten dollars than a hundred. My guess is they will all have mobiles long before then.

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I often slag off the BBC, so let me praise them today. The BBC are banned from Zimbabwe. In the best traditions of journalism, back in August correspondent Justin Pearce went there anyway.

Following the mass evictions from and destruction of Harare's squatter camps, hundreds of thousands have been sent to their "home" villages. Never mind that the evictees are city people who may not have seen the village since childhood, or at all. Naturally, they become paupers. The lot of those who do not have even that much of a home village is even worse. People whose parents or grandparents originally came from other African coutries have been left in limbo.

What in this sorry tale can count as a sign of hope, you ask? Only this: even soldiers and policemen go hungry says a more recent BBC report. When even those who take service under the tyrant cannot be sure of their next meal, one may hope the end is near.

Do not expect the good times to roll once Mugabe's obsequies are done - or his noose is cut down. Chaos can be an ugly thing, and Zimbabwe's political culture has been brutalised. But without Mugabe's megalomaniac desire for tidiness, so typical of dictators, this campaign to sweep human beings aside as if they were rubbish will probably lapse.

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Well, I can not say this bad story came as a total surprise, given the near-total lack of respect for property rights and the rule of law in Africa:

South Africa says it will for the first time force a white farmer to sell his land under a redistribution plan.

The story goes on to say that the seizure is part of a drive to "redistribute" land to people who lost what was rightfully theirs as a result of the 20th Century apartheid regime. Hmmm. It seems to me that on an abstract level relating to rectification of previous injustices, there is some credibility to this idea. However, the big problem is that the people who will get chunks of this land are unlikely to have much to do with the people who were allegedly robbed of said land in the first place, assuming that such a claim can be validated. (Of course if there are people who could claim that they or their ancestors were robbed of what was rightly theirs, then I have no objection in principle to some restitution).

In practice, as we have seen all too clearly in nearby Zimbabwe, the spoils of any assault on white-owned farmland will go to the political hacks and cronies of the governing regime, and likely bring about a serious, possibly catastrophic loss of economic wealth and food in a part of the world, that is not, to put it mildly, greatly endowed with such things.

Perhaps the president of South Africa should put this book on his reading list. Or perhaps he should remember to heed his own words.

More than anything else, Africa needs stable, enforceable property rights, period, if it is clamber out of its current state. Sir Bob Geldolf and friends, please note.

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I like to interrupt TV coverage of test cricket with CEEFAX news of about other cricket matches, and this afternoon the news trickled through that England were (probably) winning – and then that they had finally won – the Ashes!

The ladies of Australia have had the same armlock on the Female Ashes as their menfolk have had on the Male Ashes in recent years, only more so. But today the English ladies beat the Australian ladies by 6 wickets to clinch a series win. With luck, England will get the Male Ashes back this summer as well. The men of Australia followed on today at Trent Bridge, and the men of England are well placed to get a win tomorrow and go one up with one to play in their series. Here's to us limeys making it a double.

I wonder if a lady will ever play international cricket for her men's team, so to speak. Cricket is not a game that is wholly conditional on brawn, although you do have to be fit, of course. Some of the greatest ever batsmen, like Bradman, Gavaskar and Tendulkar to name but three, have been quite small men. And bowlers, even quick ones, do not have to be giants either. And great slow bowlers can be quite small, and even physically handicapped. So, even if a female physique may be a handicap, it may one day be overcome.

Meanwhile the usual low-level politico-sporting storm rumbles and bumbles along about whether Civilisation ought, still, to be playing cricket games against Zimbabwe. At one time I was in the habit of making a bit of a fuss about such games here, because it was a way to make a fuss about Zimbabwe. But all the world that cares now knows that Robert Mugabe is ruining that unhappy country and the only question is whether someone can end his life and/or despotic reign before natural causes finally oblige. Other African rulers do not want anything done, because this might set a dangerous precedent. I mean, what kind of place would Africa become if merely being a thieving and destructive monster meant that you lost your job as tyrant? Very different, that is for damn sure. And since the rest of the world is disinclined to revive White Imperialism and barge in and rearrange matters without lots of local consent – the only new imperialists in Africa these days are the Chinese, and they are there for the minerals, not to take up the Yellow Man's Burden – it really does not matter what the cricketers do about Zimbabwe. Playing against the current politically deranged Zimbabwe team and thrashing it probably does just as much good (and just as little) as refusing to play against it.

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What do you do when you have driven your economy off a cliff? Why, you raise taxes.

Zimbabwe's finance minister has imposed a string of tax rises to bridge a huge spending shortfall and the effects of drought and slum clearances. A tax on drinks and cigarettes has been increased by 50% and mobile phone airtime will also be subjected to a 22.5% tax, Herbert Murerwa said.

Zimbabwe is beset with shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency, and rampant unemployment and inflation.

An opposition MP said the extra budget showed that the government was "broke".

The title is a forgivable slur on King Canute who recognised the natural limits of kingship. With reference to ZANU-PF, it is perhaps more acceptable to use the diminutive of his name, which is, of course, Cnut.

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Franklin Cudjoe, Director of the Ghanaan think tank Imani, who has been visiting the UK in order to contest the nonsense being spouted about how to solve Africa's problems by Live 8 etc., gave a fingerclickin' good talk at my home on Friday. The fingerclickin' being a reference to the amount of money stolen every second – $4,700 – by African governments. My thanks to Helen Szamuely for also reporting on this event.

Ghana sounds like a relatively prosperous and urbanised country, by African standards, and it was interesting to hear an African talking about the complications of airline deregulation and exactly how much members of parliament get paid per day (enough to keep them snugly on board the gravy train, no matter what they may have said at election time), rather than just famine, malnutrition, etc.

The anti-globalisation crowd say that multinational corporations are causing corruption in Africa. Actually, they often find it a huge barrier to trading in Africa. KLM wanted to run some flights from Ghana to neighbouring African countries, but the bribes demanded of them were too extortionate, and they pulled out. Travelling between countries in that part of Africa seems to involve choosing which bunch of state highwaymen you prefer to be shaken down by. It is understandable that, economically speaking, lots of colonial African countries used to look outwards, so to speak, with most of their trade being organised by their colonial masters. It is not so understandable why this is still the pattern.

I asked Franklin who in Ghana he thinks is doing the most to improve the place. His answer was the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development. What Africa needs is good government. And the way to start trying to get good government is to talk and write out loud with anyone who will listen – especially the next generation – about what that is and ought to be. There as here, in enterprises of this kind, the internet has helped

Franklin sounded a lot like Hayek – which is no coincidence, because he talked about how much Hayek had influenced his early thinking – in his insistence upon the intellectual struggle as the first step in trying to achieve anything more concrete. You get nowhere by nagging politicians direct. You have to change the assumptions within which they work. That takes time but it can be done, and by the sound of it he is doing his best.

Michael Jennings pointed out that all over the Far East, lots of those little upwardly mobile trading niches that used to be occupied by the Chinese diaspora are now occupied by the Ghanaan diaspora. Clearly there is nothing wrong with the talents of the Ghanaan people. They just need the right setting to flourish in.

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I have been waiting for the left to come out in support of Mugabe. After all, they worship Che Guevara, the warmonger and homophobe. They wear CCCP t-shirts even though that regime murdered 60 million people. So I was not at all surprised to read this John Vidal article in The Guardian this week:

It's open season on the Harare regime and it appears that anyone can say anything they like without recourse to accuracy or reality. Whipped into a frenzy of hypocritical outrage, the EU, Britain and the US, as well as the World Bank - all of which have been responsible for millions of evictions in Africa and elsewhere as conditions of infrastructure projects - have rushed to condemn the "atrocities".

The vilification of Mugabe is now out of control. The UN security council and the G8 have been asked to debate the evictions, and Mugabe is being compared to Pol Pot in Cambodia. Meanwhile, the evictions are mentioned in the same breath as the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans - although perhaps only three people have so far accidentally died. Only at the very end of some reports is it said that the Harare city authority's stated reason for the evictions is to build better, legal houses for 150,000 people.

In other words, the Guardian is saying that Mugabe is not so bad after all. Remarkable.

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At Hyde Park, Dido just introduced as the "African Ambassador for Music from Senegal", Youssou N'Dour*, who she was "in awe" of, "not just because he has a wonderful voice, but because of his wonderful beliefs". He came on stage to say:

"The debt cancellation is OK. The aid is OK. But, please, open your markets."

There will be an awful lot of well-intentioned nonsense given unquestioning, reverential coverage today, with ignorance and platitudes dressed up as profundity. Maybe, however, for perhaps the first time at an event of this type and on this scale, a kernel of truth will wriggle its way onto TV.

I consider this a small but notable victory for the notion that, if you permit free speech and are prepared to tolerate every misguided and moronic idea, eventually the truth will out.

* [edit]: add correct spelling and link.

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I am watching a news report on Newsnight, broadcast by the BBC, about private education in Nigeria. The report is the work of Professor James Tooley, who I think is one of the most interesting public intellectuals in the world.

Tooley has been roaming the world in recent years, finding cheap, successful, private schools, which are everywhere outperforming the shoddy state provided schools. Nigeria is no different.

It is one thing to see white blokes in suits saying at some pro free market conference that the private sector is better than the public sector. Watching Nigerian parents explaining the same thing, to a BBC news camera, is something else again.

So why, Tooley is asking, is everyone in denial? There is no global crisis in education. The private sector is supplying higher standards at a fraction of the cost.

Now we are in white blokes discussing it all mode, and Professor Keith Lewin of Sussex University is explaining that what Tooley has spent the last decade scrutinising with his own eyes is all a figment of his, Tooley's, imagination.

Tooley has the advantage over Lewin. He has been there. He has seen it. He has found schools which, until he and his colleagues found them, nobody not directly involved with the schools in question knew existed. This is market success, says Tooley, and we should celebrate it.

Tooley's report showed an incandescently eloquent private sector teacher in action. And he also showed a state school teacher in a state school classroom, a classroom filled with state school pupils who were busy trying teaching one another, while he, the state school teacher, was fast asleep at his desk.

Lewin says that this is all a tragedy, because he sees state failure. The state is, or should be, the educator of last resort. Market success is important to Lewin only because as far as he is concerned market success equals state failure, and state failure is bad bad bad. Lewin refers to "his colleagues in Africa", who agree with him and do not agree with Tooley.

Those, I would guess, would be the state education bureaucrats who, time and time again, do not even realise that there is a thriving educational private sector in their own country, pretty much right under their noses. The government bureaucrats whom Lewin (I suspect) spends most of his African research time communing with, have little idea about this ferment of private education. Insofar as they do know of it, they do not want to know of it, because it makes them feel irrelevant. This is because they are irrelevant. And if they are irrelevant then so is the living that Professor Keith Lewin of Sussex University makes helping to prepare all this state bureaucrats for their careers in state education.

Now Lewin is talking gibberish about why Britain nationalised its schools in 1870. What we have just seen, says Lewin, invites the withdrawal of the state from the provision of all public services. Well, yes.

The thing about Tooley is not just what he says. It is also the sincerity and enthusiasm with which he says it. He will never convert the Lewins of this world. But he does seriously contest what they say, and, just like the numerous private schools which he has found the world over – in Africa, in China, in India, in Pakistan, in fact everywhere he looks – he does it with a fraction of the resources that the Lewin side of this debate now commands.

For more about all this, read this Sunday Times article by Tooley, which I would never have found out about had it not been for the BBC.

The BBC, outrageously biased, rampant supplier of last resort of rampantly pro-capitalist propaganda.

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Richard B. North has a terrific set of articles about the current focus on Africa, debt-relief and poverty brought about partly by the efforts of Sir Bob "keep it off eBay" Geldof. It is fair to summarise that North is not totally blown away with admiration by the scruffy former lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, or indeed with the grandstanding of our own wonderful PM, Tony Blair.

Definitely not the sort of articles one would expect to get on a college degree reading list. How I wish the weblog existed when studying for my degree back in the 80s.

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Laziness in blogging is defined as examining the attitude of the United Nations or any other NGO in regard to some humanitarian crisis caused by your common garden dictator. Easy and rich pickings. For this particular example, let us take Robert "Gay Gangster" Mugabe as an egregious example of dictatorial excess and the World Food Programme as your normal international bureaucracy.

In reality, "Mad Bob" has ruined his country, urinated on the poor and used food aid as a tool of oppression and death. In UNWorld, Comrade Bob is a welcome member of the international community. As James Morris, 'United Nations Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs for Southern Africa' (such a big title for an oh-so important man), stated recently:

Mr Morris said the President told him that Zimbabwe welcomed assistance that was purely humanitarian.

"We have had a very positive discussion with President Mugabe. We have had a very good working relationship for several years. The President said he welcomed food assistance that comes with humanitarian commitment," said Mr Morris.

He said Zimbabwe and the World Food Programme (WFP), a UN agency, had a good working relationship stretching over several years.

Mr Morris knows that this is the case because Comrade Mugabe is committed to agricultural reform.

The UN envoy said it emerged during his talks with Cde Mugabe that the President was committed to the development of agriculture and ensuring food security in Zimbabwe.

"I thank the President for his commitment to agriculture," said Mr Morris.

The website of the World Food Programme is slightly better (or worse, if you think that a chink of reality can be damned by faint praise). Their "In Brief" on Mr Morris's visit to Zimbabwe notes many contributing factors, but the state is not given the starring role it deserves:

Food production in Zimbabwe is affected by several factors, including erratic rains, shortages of inputs such as fertilizer and inadequate tillage.

It is also affected by the spread of HIV/AIDS, which commonly afflicts people in their most productive years.

Moreover, the centralized pricing structure for maize in Zimbabwe creates a disincentive for production above subsistence levels.

However, a key reason for food shortages this year will be drought.

The commercial farming sector, which declined as a result of land reform, previously provided an important stabilising factor in maize production, particularly during years of erratic rains, as the crop was mainly produced by irrigation.

While communal farms traditionally produce the greater portion of food, they are largely dependent on rainfall.

This post is the product of laziness or the United Nations is a turkey shoot! Take your pick!

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There is an excellent article in the print version of The Economist describing the situation in the Congo.

That's the Congo. Private cellphone networks work and private airlines work because the landlines do not and the bush has eaten the roads. Public servants serve mostly to make life difficult for the public, in the hope of squeezing some cash out of them. Congo is a police state, but without the benefits. The police have unchecked powers, but provide little security. Your correspondent needed three separate permits to visit the railway station in Kinshasa, where he was stopped and questioned six times in 45 minutes. Yet he found that all the seats, windows and light fixtures has been stolen from the trains.

I put this paragraph up for all those people who have not experienced this sort of thing first hand and cannot accept that the single biggest obstacle to ending poverty in Africa is the nature of African nation states. Until that changes, sending aid under all but the most controlled circumstances is more often than not either subsidising the very people who cause the problems in the first place or, at best, flushing 90¢ on the dollar down the toilet in terms of helping the people you really want to benefit from your largess.

The solution? Good question, but it sure as hell is not more of the same. In Africa even more than most other places, truly, the state is not your friend.

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Sir Bob "Make Poverty History" Geldof is getting the vapours over the fact that tickets for his various supposed poverty-relief events have been put up for sale on that symbol of dark, rampant capitalism, eBay. In particular, he seems all upset that a big corporation like eBay should make any money from such a highminded event.

Horsefeathers, is all I can say. eBay, in my view, contributes vastly more to the sum total of human happiness and welfare than that preening stage army of hasbeens, wannabees and well-intentioned nitwits that have clustered around Sir Bob. As has already been recounted in detail here, Sir Bob Geldof is a man of infuriating contradictions, able to talk with piercing clarity and lack of cant about the corruption of African governments and yet also willing and able to spout the cheap pieties that seem to accompany many a post-colonial guiltfest such as Live8.

If Africa's economy were run with the same brio, dash and entrepreneurial brilliance of eBay, Sir Bob and his ilk would have to spend a little more time on what they supposedly do best.

UPDATE: thinking this through in the light of watching Geldof on the television, I can certainly applaud his desire to steer as much revenue to the poor of the world as possible but there seems no awareness on the part of the Live 8 crowd that what Africa needs is precisely the sort of business acumen of which eBay is a modern example.

UPDATE 1: eBay has blocked sales of such tickets on its pages, according to the BBC.

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Moeletsi Mbeki, the brother of South Africa's President, says that the private sector is key to modern economic development in Africa. But, he says, African leaders and Western donors are holding it back. On the website of his organization, the South African Institute of International Affairs, he argues that:

foreign donors could play a more constructive role than they are doing at present through their current efforts to sustain the political elites and African states with budgetary support and the like.

Instead of giving more money to African governments, Mbeki says donors should providing the expertise to help establish independent financial institutions like credit unions and savings banks and help shield them from political elites.

Moreover, African governments need less power and the private sector more:

Africa's private sector is predominantly made up of peasants and secondly, of subsidiaries of foreign-owned multinational corporations. Neither of these two groups have the complete freedom to operate in the market place because they are both politically dominated by others - non-producers who control the state. Herein lay the weakness of the private sector in Africa that explains its inability to become the engine of economic development. Africa's private sector lacks political power and is therefore not free to operate to maximize its objectives. Above all, it is not free to decide what happens to its savings.

African elites have prevented peasants from reinvesting their earnings in machinery to improve their productivity:

Fundamentally, the political elite uses its control of the state to extract the surplus or savings that if the peasant were free to retain they would have invested in improving their production techniques or to diversify into other economic activities. Through marketing boards, taxation systems and the like, the political elite diverts these savings to finance its own consumption and the strengthening of the repressive instruments of the state.

The economic looting of multinational companies after independence means that international investors are wary of investing in Africa:

When the colonialists retreated from the 1950s onwards, these colonial subsidiaries [Western companies] lost their key protector, the colonial state. Before long they, like the peasants, fell prey to the appetites and whims of the new African political elites who controlled the newly independent African states. The lucky ones were nationalized and their owners were therefore paid compensation; the not so lucky ones were 'privatized' [confiscated by individual politicians without compensation.]

Moeletsi Mbeki's comments are in stark contrast to those of Gordon Brown who thinks that simply throwing more at African governments is going to bring prosperity. Mbeki recognises that the West should be helping get more private investment into African and helping improve the institutions that enable business to thrive.

Crossposted from the Globalisation Institute Blog.

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The decision to write off billions of dollars in debt for various Third World nations is in effect a subsidy for bad governance. Oh sure, the debt relief is tied to various conditions aimed at improving the kleptocratic ways that are the norm in the world's various hellholes, but it is still just a way of saying that in the final analysis it is western taxpayers yet again who will be the ones picking up bill for the actions of various corrupt WaBenz bureaucrats.

And what of those poor nations who actually do repay their loans? What of those who keep corruption under control and who have a ruling class that does not see private businesses as a personal piggy bank to be raided as needed? What message is sent to them when they see the incompetent and corrupt rewarded with free money so that some celebrity activists can make economic illiterates feel good about themselves?

Which brings me to Geldof. I just cannot figure out this guy; on one hand he says self-evident sensible things like (emphasis added):

Bob Geldof admitted today no amount of aid to Africa could eradicate poverty on the continent while its Governments remain corrupt. The former singer was launching a 170-page compact summary of the Africa Commission's report which will be presented to the G8 summit this July.

And the maverick Irishman repeated his call for 'hundreds of thousands' to converge on Edinburgh to coincide with the summit at Gleneagles. He said: "The issue governance is at the forefront of this compact. You can't give aid to countries when they return it to us in debt payment, especially if you don't allow them to trade with us. None of that will function unless there is a decent Government."

But then says something as preposterous as:

Fears over corrupt African regimes should not be used to delay aid to the poverty-stricken continent, Bob Geldof said yesterday. Less than 48 hours after both Tony Blair and George W Bush insisted that corrupt regimes had to be tackled to ensure that aid was not wasted, the Live 8 organiser told them to "get off the corruption thing" and deliver the promised help.

So what is one to make of that? By his own admission, Africa's appalling governance is a huge contributing factor to poverty and woe (not to mention the continent's horrific record regarding civil liberties) yet we are urged to "get off the corruption thing". So to use Geldof's sort of language... what the fuck?

If governance is perhaps the single biggest factor (amongst several) that makes the Third World so damn poor, surely the Western taxpayers whose money Geldof is to keen to give away should indeed be asking if they really want their money to end up in someone else's Swiss bank accounts via Kinshasa or Freetown.

Sadly for Africa, most of the things written about the causes and solutions of poverty in the Third World, or at least the articles that get serious column inches, are drivel by 'celebrity activists' who are ill-informed and arrogant in equal measure. A prime example being the mind numbingly ignorant Chris Martin for example, who thinks 'shareholders', the people who provide the capital to wealth creating businesses, which are the "great evil of this modern world" rather than, say, the governments of North Korea, Cuba and Burma. But then such folks do not concern themselves with actual benefits to poor people in various far off places but rather with pithy soundbites and causing emotional surges brought on by 'doing something', regardless of whether or not it actually improves anything for anyone other that a few Mercedes Benz dealers in sub-Saharan Africa and some portfolio managers in Zürich.

No, none of this really has anything to do with helping common people in the Third World.

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A general strike now... will it evolve into more forcefukl resistance to Mugabe's thugs? I certainly hope so but do not underestimate the violence that Mugabe and his cotery will use to hang on to power (and their lives).

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Many of the commentariat in my previous post on the ongoing horror that is Zimbabwe indicated that the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) were a poor choice for me to suggest sending arms to in order to oppose the ZANU-PF tyranny. The MDC are purely a movement dedicated to bring about change democratically via the ballot box, right?

Then please explain this rather inspiring outburst:

The people of Zimbabwe have a right to defend to themselves and to rise up against the oppressive Mugabe regime, Tendai Biti, the MDC member of parliament, has said. Speaking in a radio interview with SWRadioAfrica’s Violet Gonda, he said leadership would emerge to direct popular uprisings.

"I can’t tell you by who, but I can assure you that there will be decisive action against fascism and I can tell you that the next few days are going to be interesting," said Biti.

Pressed to identify the leadership, Biti replied: "I can't tell you - and the hundreds of Central Intelligence Organisation officers who I know are listening to me right now – about who is going to provide the leadership, who is going to do what, and so forth – but what I can guarantee you is that the anger is overflowing in the veins of the average Zimbabweans. They will defend themselves. The time for smiling at fascism is over."

Sounds to me if someone would just provide them with enough guns and a few truck loads of ammunition, these boys are well and truly good to go. Well Godspeed, gentlemen, may you all soon be celebrating together in Harare whilst Mugabe hangs from a nearby lamppost.

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Robert Mugabe continues his insane demolition of houses and businesses as he increasingly starts to look like Pol Pot reborn, seeking to depopulate the cites and drive the now homeless and unemployed population into the countryside to eke out an even more miserable living, thereby dispersing and isolating people from communities which might oppose his tyrannical rule.

And where are the marchers in the west? Where are the protesters calling for justice in Zimbabwe? Where is the outrage from those tireless tribunes of the Third World, the UN? Why can I not hear the snarls of fury from the alphabet soup of NGOs? What of the legions of Guardian readers finding out about all this? What are they going to call for? Amnesty International is getting a lot of (bad) publicity from having called Guantanamo Bay 'a gulag' whilst now admitting they do not actually know what is happening there, yet why are they not straining every fibre of their being in opposition to this African horror? There is tyranny aplenty to be opposed without having to invent any.

Clearly the only chance for the people of Zimbabwe is for someone, anyone, to help them to rise up and meet violence with violence. They do not need aid, they need guns and ammunition so that supporters of the MDC can start shooting at anyone associated with ZANU-PF or the 'security' services. Time for Mugabe's swaggering police thugs to be met with a hail of gunfire rather than terrified sobbing. But of course the South African ANC government, far from being a possible solution to the rapidly deteriorating situation across the border, is aiding and abetting in the Cambodia-ization of Zimbabwe. I look forward to Saint Nelson Mandela taking a loud, public and sustained stand against Mugabe's madness. Yeah, right.

If Tony Blair was serious about doing something about poverty in Africa, he would be sending guns to the MDC and to anyone else who is willing to resist and threatening to have some gentlemen from Hereford put a .338 hole between Mugabe's eyes unless things change radically. What a pity Zimbabwe does not have oil or maybe more people would give a damn what is happening there.

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Mass starvation in Zimbabwe has not discouraged the British government from funding a campaign which promotes anti-white "land reform" in Africa. The UK's Department for International Development gave £338,000 last year in "civil society" funding to support War on Want, a hard-Left campaign group formerly run by George Galloway.

War on Want has been central in setting up the Landless Peoples' Movement in South Africa. The Movement says it supports "the gallant actions of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe" in taking land from white farmers. According to War on Want: "The LPM is still at the early stages of mobilising people. It is working on building up the movement's leadership and profile, and developing ways to attract new members, and build relations with government and other movements. War on Want supports and assists their work."

War on Want says that white people own too high a percentage of African land and it says WoW is "at the centre of the tough battle for land."

It is unclear why the Department for International Development has anything to do with War on Want, given that the policies it supports have led to Zimbabwe becoming the fastest shrinking economy in the world.

Crossposted from the Globalisation Institute Blog.

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The Globalization Institute's crack of dawn email of links continues to arrive, every week day, and continues to be well worth getting.

One of the recent links thus promulgated was to this editorial, from Kenya.

First few paragraphs:

With all the money they get as emoluments, one would have expected that our Members of Parliament would strive to ensure that they do an honest day's job all year round.

But a report on their performance released yesterday shockingly says that the legislators only did 57 full working days the whole of last year. Allowing for public holidays, weekends and the days Parliament was in recess, this translates to less than two months of work.

Yet, these are people who are enjoying a salary package of Sh500,000 and other perks. They are the people who have been entrusted with articulating the needs of their people in Parliament.

Despite this, the study conducted by the Institute for Civic Affairs and Development says, there are some MPs who never brought any Bills to the House, never contributed to any and never raised a point of order.

In plain terms, this could be called incompetence.

One of the more depressing and destructive assumptions now rampaging about the world and doing damage to it is that the basic job of politicians is to pass laws. The more laws they pass, the better they must be doing.

But would Kenya really be a better governed country if all its members of parliament were to bring Bills to the House, instead of only some? Is it really the ultimate criticism of a politician that he never tries to pass any new laws. If politics means passing more laws, then maybe Kenya is lucky that it is not getting as much politics as it is paying for. There are far worse political vices than laziness.

I get the rough idea. Kenya's parliamentarians are not the greatest, and I am sure that is true. But this is a very bad way to explain what is so wrong with them.

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Surprise surprise:

President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party today emerged victorious in the official results of a Zimbabwean parliamentary election criticised by the opposition and western powers as fraudulent.

With 84 of the contested 120 parliamentar