President Bush?s trip to Africa and promise of increased foreign aid will do little or nothing to solve the ongoing tragedy in most places on the south-of-Sahara African continent. Kenya is on the brink of a civil war. More than 1,000 people have been killed, and another 300,000 made homeless. Rebels have invaded Chad. In the Darfur region of the Sudan, millions of people have been displaced in a genocidal war. Ethiopia and Eritrea threaten war again. Somalian warlords are in a pitched battle. Zimbabwe, once an independent, thriving jewel on the continent, now ruled by a tyrant, is on the brink of disaster, experiencing a 66,000 percent rate of inflation, expected to be over 100,000 percent by year?s end. To put that inflation in perspective, the government has recently started printing 10 million Zimbabwe dollar notes. A hamburger sells for 15 million Zimbabwe dollars.
The recent African carnage is by no means new. During a 100-day period in 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were killed. There were an estimated 100,000 to 500,000 Ugandans murdered under the brutal rule of Idi Amin. Liberia, Ivory Coast and the Congo have been racked by war, and slavery exists to this day in Mauritania and Sudan. Added to this carnage is gross corruption, AIDS, famine and repression.
