Hypocrisy and Other Western Crimes in Africa

When was the last time you ate an apple from Zimbabwe? Unless you are of a certain age or you have been to southern Africa, almost certainly never.

Why not? You don't like apples? Zimbabwe orchards are among the best in the world. What about bread made from the wheat grown in those fabulous highland farms? No?

Ian Smith's snub to the Empire, the unilateral declaration of independence in 1963, when the European elite took control of what was then Rhodesia in order to block a democratic constitution, was in part racism. But don't be too self-righteous. Smith and his backers did after all live in Africa. They were not master-race fantasists.

What white Rhodesians meant to protect was their own close control over their remarkably successful agricultural economy. When Britain abandoned its African relationships and joined its super-rich neighbours in the European Economic Community, it had to switch its agricultural suppliers from Africa (and Asia and Australia and Latin America) to France and Italy and eventually to Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Now, dear friends, if you really think you can save your political modesty with a hijab of nice-sounding words like 'independence' or 'freedom' - or anything else that gives you a warm-fuzzy feeling - I am going to have to insist on a strict dress code. It does not take economic analysis of any depth to understand that a business is likely to decline in value when it loses its customers, and that when it can no longer sell its goods it will be unable to maintain its workforce any more than its shareholders.

Robert Mugabe was in many ways justified in expelling white owners from farms that no longer had an economic use, and giving the wreck of what was left to his political supporters.

Zimbabwe's orchards and wheat-fields are worthless because you don't eat their produce. You don't eat their produce because you are not given the choice. It is the European Union's refusal to open its markets to African business that is destroying Zimbabwe - and Congo, and Ghana and Nigeria and Mozambique and Kenya and Uganda.

Imposing sanctions and talking sanctimoniously about human rights, freedom and democracy while imposing what is effectively a vicious economic blockade is tasteless beyond words. If we want to bring Africa into the modern world, we should do there as we have done in Eastern Europe and invite them, on the same conditions as were required of Bulgaria and Roumania, to join them our Economic Union.

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