July 08, 2008... Time to cut Africa loose.

With the 2008 G8 summit in progress amid further calls by African leaders and international sympathisers for yet more debt relief and billions of Dollars and Euros of money and humanitarian aid, the same leaders have the audacious affront to tell the G8 where to get off with regard to the disgraceful conduct of Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe. The where to get off amounts to: Mugabe will retire in a few years' time. But this is no more intelligent than saying that Mugabe will die in a few years' time. In the meantime, the EU must suffer the burden of the refugees coming out of Zimbabwe and/or neighbouring states. This is totally intolerable for the EU to persist with.

In the face of this deliberate lack of leadership in Africa, it is only proper that, the EU in consort with other western interests, now disentangle itself from Africa. All the African states are now fully impendent, and have other options to pursue outside of the EU, which the EU will not be stopping Africa from pursuing.

It is claimed by some in the EU, with an eye towards geopolitics including access to Africa's natural resources, that to go down such a path, would not be in the EU's interests. However, Africa has no natural resources to be accessed without vast investment to discover, extract and transport them out of Africa. This is why so little of Africa was colonised, why Africa had so little difficulty in gaining independence, and why it is only abandoned discoveries with some proven value, which is of interest to the Chinese, for example, at the currently elevated price for metals and oil.

At the very best, Africa's future is less than bright, and will not even attain that degree of brilliance if Africa's leadership is not forced to wake up and smell the coffee. The first step must be for Africa to swiftly and decisively deal with Mugabe, instead of shielding him from justice. Such is the audacity to hope.