Regarding : Well written, well reasoned, and logical. There are insightful politicians, leaders - like Mandela and Nyerere - who appreciated the importance of the positions they held and their ability to actually change the human condition by harnessing those bonds that all humans have. Gandhi had that insight too.

Our politicians are jackals in the wilderness of existence, men and women whose one vision is of "ME." As Ngugi tells it so well, today's leaders use their tribesmen as cannon fodder; the ladder's steps they step on to reach higher ground.

In my mind I think of Muhamad Ali Jinah's personal political ambitions and often wonder if the Indian Muslim population was left in a better place with the partition of India? Wouldn't it have been better for him to have been more humble and work things out for his followers?

In the end, the results of what we see in Africa is an inexorable and irreversible degradation of the countries' potential -- a tearing apart of whatever fabric each nation may have. Until (if that can ever be envisaged) the poor realize they are but tools of the wealthy of whatever tribe. From time to time we have seen the elite reach down to help the poor -- Castro, Che Guevara, Lenin, Marx and others who put their lives on line for what was right and just.

Maybe what will save Africa is another revolution?