I recently had a run in with a famous pop star in a friend’s house. The “star” was lecturing us about aid to Africa. No one dared say a word. Except for me. My argument was that I refused to contribute to African kleptocrats purchasing more top of the line Mercedeses. In other words, all aid is stolen by the few, while the poor get poorer. The pop star’s good intentions were nothing but a ploy for personal agrandizement. The truth always purchases hatred, and he sure hated me. Too bad.

Just as it’s too bad for the millions starving in Africa, the richest of all continents. here’s another jerk, one I will name because he put his signature to the crap he wrote. Philip Gourevitch. In this week’s New Yorker he takes a shot at Robert Mugabe, one of the leading psychopathic monsters among the rest of the crooks and murderers who lead the Dark Continent. He writes that the South African honcho, Thabo Mbeki and his gang have dishonored themselves by failing to stand up to an oppressor (Mugabe) who is as contemptuous of his people as Ian Smith was.

What utter crap. Ian Smith, a wonderful man whom I had the honor to meet and dine with, was by far the greatest leader Rhodesia ever had. Under him all
the people, black and white, not only prospered, they had the highest standard of living in Africa. Where does this ignoramous Gourevitch get off writing such drivel? 80 percent unemployment, 37 years of life expectancy, less than a dollar a day average income and 1800 percent inflation, and this knee jerk liberal has to disparage Ian Smith under whose leadership by comparison made Rhodesia a paradise.

But even if Smith did not give the blacks the vote—which he of course did not—is it better to slaughter one’s people with the vote, or make them rich and secure without it? In 1983-1984, Mugabe, by then president after the Thatcher government had forced Smith to relinquish power, slaughtered 25,000
civilians—all black—with his North Korean trained Fifth Brigade, a bunch who could have taught German concentration camps commanders a thing or
two. Five hundred billion dollars, just think of it, has been sunk into Africa since independence in the early Sixties by the West, and none of it has reached anyone but people like Mugabe and the rest of the murdering thieves.

But it’s Smith who is still the bad guy. Go figure, as they used to say in Brooklyn.