Mom is visiting this weekend,

Mom is visiting this weekend, so blogging will be light. But I must (belatedly) draw your attention to "Africa's Tragedy," Paul Harris's extraordinary indictment of African "governments," in The Observer. According to Harris, most of that blighted continent's problems have been caused by an incompetent, corrupt ruling class and a crippling dependence on foreign aid, not "colonialism".

Among the culprits: Namibia's Sam Nujoma, who keeps threatening to model his government after that of his buddy, Robert Mugabe.

In Namibia, President Sam Nujoma has been so inspired by the 'success' of Mugabe's landgrabbing that he is threatening to do the same in his country. He has also banned foreign programs from television, denounced Christianity as a foreign philosophy and called for a revival of ancestral worship of cattle gods.

In an interview late last year with respected German southern African journalist Thomas Knemeyer, Nujoma ranted and raved like a madman. The interview was so bizarre that Knemeyer's paper, Die Weld, printed a full transcript. At one point Nujoma took umbrage that in a previous article Knemeyer had mentioned his purchase of a private presidential jet. This is what Nujoma shouted: 'We are entitled to travel by jet just like other people. If you go to Germany you find all over jets, even private people have them, and therefore the Republic of Namibia cannot buy a jet? That is arrogance, arrogance.'

No, Mr President, it is not arrogance. What is arrogance is that the President of one of the poorest countries in the world thinks a good use of public funds is buying himself a private plane.

Nujoma, needless to say, is one of Jacques Chirac's honoured guests this weekend.

Posted by damian at February 22, 2003 07:55 PM