We now have a million orphans in Zimbabwe. In some schools 50 per cent of the students in grade one are orphans. Over 1000 people a day are dying in Zimbabwe - three quarters of them from diseases and other problems that we thought we had beaten in the 60s. Now nearly 90 people a day die from Malaria. 200 a day are diagnosed with Tuberculosis. 700 women die in childbirth every week and our average life expectancy is lower than it would have been for Phillip Nsingo's great Grandfather in the 1850s.
The dead and dying around the Indian Ocean are of course in our thoughts - but the death and destruction in Africa continues and is likely in the end to claim lives on an much greater scale. More to the point, much of what is happening in Africa is not happening because of some uncontrollable event like the earthquake which triggered the tsunami. It is happening because of the actions, and too often the inactions, of human beings.
We can point to the actions of people like Mugabe, yes. But Philip Nsingo is still dead and tens of thousands more die every day because western governments think it more appropriate to depose people like Saddam, (in the process compounding not relieving the suffering of the people of Iraq) while ignoring or at best tolerating despots like Mugabe - indeed offering them our support where it suits the domestic political agenda.
