Africa

Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe was heckled and jeered by a feisty opposition as he opened parliament recently.

The decline of Mugabe, an odious dictator in a class with Kim Jong Il and the Burmese generals, will give a seal of good-product approval to a continent that, despite persistent catastrophes, finally looks to be the beneficiary of a series of positive global trends.

Even without Mugabe, governance will be dicey throughout Africa. Just a few weeks ago, a military junta overthrew Mauritania's first democratically elected president. Off the coast of Somalia, piracy -- the maritime extension of anarchy on land -- is worse than anywhere in the world, including Nigeria. The governments of Liberia, Ivory Coast, and Chad still need United Nations peacekeeping missions to monopolize the use of force. Kenya and Sierra Leone, the victims of ethnic and tribal-based rebellions, are healing but remain fragile. At the root of many of these problems are a youth bulge and high rate of young male joblessness: over 40 percent of the population in most sub-Saharan African countries is younger than 15. African countries still dominate the bottom ranks in all human-development indices. On no other continent are institutions so weak or nonexistent.

New research into the ancient climate of the Sahara shows that the region went from lush and wet to dry and desolate within a few thousand years.

The classic evidence for a wet Sahara comes from the Tassili frescoes, a series of fifty Algerian cave paintings that depict humans living with crocodiles, buffalo, giraffes, and other animals that do not thrive in arid climates. Ten thousand years ago, it appears, our ancestors could have grown rice in the Sahara, or spent their weekends Jet-Skiing at their North African lake-houses. For millennia, they had no reason to fear their water running out, or their settlements' being reclaimed by desert sands, or of water running out. What the new reports about this bizarre climatological period don't much emphasize, though, is that the Sahara was wet during a period of comparative global heat, and that it became parched only as the planet chilled.

South African dockworkers refused to unload 3080 cases of weapons and ammunition from a Chinese vessel. The shipment was destined for Zimbabwe, possibly for use against opponents of President Robert Mugabe.

What could be more stirring than the sight of a few thousand Durban longshoremen standing up against one of Africa's great despots? Consider me duly stirred. But this triumph of organized labor in South Africa has a worrisome side as well.

Having apparently lost Zimbabwe's presidential election, Robert Mugabe is said to be considering stepping down after 28 increasingly tyrannical years in office.

Now is the first time in nearly a decade when it would be only foolish and loopy, and not downright insane, to invest in the Zimbabwean dollar. When I visited in 2001, Zimbabwean currency was losing its value at catastrophic rates, which led to scenes of South Africans' rushing over the border to spend their rand on quick, absurdly cheap holidays in Zimbabwe. It was like Weimar Germany with elephants and baobabs, and even with its own homegrown "Hitler." If Mugabe leaves, will tourism recover? Will the farms (Zimbabwe's main foreign-exchange earner) produce more? They could hardly produce less.

The Scottish parliament is considering a pardon for Helen Duncan, the last woman jailed under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.

Some initiatives -- such as this pardon -- have merit, even though their proponents are groups that exist in part to support those who have "experienced poltergeist activity." Helen Duncan spent nine months in the clink because she predicted the sinking of a British ship (an act of clairvoyance made admittedly less impressive by the fact that it was 1944, and British ships had U-boats snapping at their keels). MORE

A paper in The Lancet argued that developed countries' recruitment of health-care workers from Africa constitutes an international crime.

Sub-Saharan Africa has it bad. The Lancet notes that it "carries 25% of the world's disease burden yet has only 3% of the world's health workers." The doctors tend not to get paid on time, and they often have to fight the world's ghastliest diseases with the medical equivalent of bows and arrows. A tropical disease specialist in London once advised his patient to save airfare: rather than visit the Congo, he said, just open your mouth and leap into a cesspool. MORE

Bush's foreign aid legacy

Institutions born of so-called "bipartisan efforts" should be judged guilty until proven innocent, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation is a bipartisan baby.  Four years ago, Congress created the MCC to revolutionize foreign aid by parceling it out countries that showed progress in political and economic reform.  In his State of the Union address last Monday, George W. Bush praised this hulking sloth of a bureaucracy, quite rightly, as one of the legacies of his administration. MORE