I recommend Keith Richburg’s 1997 book, Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa. Given what he had written, it is not surprising one never sees this man on the idiot box.

However, back in 1994, he ought to have listened to the Afrikaner who predicted the descent of Zimbabwe into the African abyss. But they were the bad guys. I wonder if Richburg would care to throw the bones on South Africa—predict what’s in the offing there. Or will he wait until the truth is undeniable and another western outpost on the Dark Continent bites the dust.

Richburg writes this in the British Observer:

“[M]uch around the continent has remained the same. Some of those who I considered ‘new’ African leaders have proven themselves just as venal and anxious to cling to power as the Big Men of old. And some of the places offering a modicum of hope have fallen backwards. Ivory Coast and Kenya, two places that during my time were considered islands of stability, places where foreign correspondents went to regroup, file their stories and have a good meal before flying into the next war zone, have slipped into their own vicious violence. Both countries fell apart after elections that exposed deep ethnic divisions, sad confirmation again that even in the most seemingly stable countries, tribalism is never very far from the surface.

Somalia was a failed state ruled by warlords and rival militias when I last set foot there in 1994, and it remains today a place of violence and anarchy. And after the Rwanda genocide, the world said: ‘Never again’, only to watch as a new genocide takes place in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Despite all the talk about an African renaissance of democracy – and some notable election successes – by almost any measure repression remains widespread. According to the Economist democracy index, of the 44 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, 23 are listed as authoritarian, 13 as hybrids, seven, including South Africa, are called ‘flawed democracies’. The US-based democracy-monitoring group Freedom House rates 14 sub-Saharan African countries as ‘not free’ and 23 others were considered just partially free. Freedom House said the year 2007 ‘saw the deterioration of freedom on the continent’.

And for most, along with repression is the poverty. Africa is still home to most of the world’s poorest countries, a fact that many of the more optimistic like to obscure by pointing out facts such as how the stock market in Ghana provides one of the world’s highest returns on investment. A broader view was supplied by Kofi Annan. With the rise in global food prices, he warned recently of ‘100 million people on the brink of abject poverty’ which will be measured ‘in the number of infant and child deaths across Africa’.”

Read the complete column.