We all know that the UK foreign aid budget is a costly disgrace this country cannot afford. Across Africa our money is allowing tyrants to rob their people with the aid we pump in a real disincentive to reform. We help no-one with our efforts but Call Me Dave is so desperate to be seen as “nice” that he keeps on writing cheques. Well Mr Cameron please explain Zimbabwe to me.
A report out today from Partnership Africa Canada, a member of the Kimberley Process, the world regulatory body on the diamond trade, says that Mugabe and his cronies have stolen $2 billion from the Marange diamond fields which lie within his country. That $2 billion has been looted over a period of six years so let’s call that $330 million a year. Funds from diamond sales of that order should have shown up in the State Treasury but have not. They have, of course, headed off to Switzerland. Mugabe says that the report is false. The authors of the report say that the $2 billion number is a “conservative estimate” and it appears that Hitler’s own finance minister Tendai Biti backs up the claims from PAC.
Now what does this tell us? Well first a quick word about Hollywood, deluded lefty celebs and the film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo di Caprio. This 2006 epic told how a wicked evil White South African (racist ‘natch) played by Leonardo realised the error of his ways and in so doing helped stopped the trade in Blood Diamonds. It is a “true story” and celebrates the Pretoria conference of 2000 which ensured that all diamonds bought today are ethically sourced. Er … I guess up to a point. That being a gunpoint. Well so much for the deluded lefties. If you think the diamond ring you got for your civil ceremony at Islington Town Hall is bound to be ethical you might as well stop reading this blog now and piss off back to cloud cuckoo land over at the Guardian.
And then to foreign aid. Britain this year has handed over £80 million via DFID (and a stack more via the EU) for various programmes helping the poor of Zimbabwe. Now forget that this country was once the “bread basket of Africa” feeding itself and exporting to seven countries around it (okay, yes that was when the “evil” UDI regime of Ian Smith was in power), forget about the fact that last year Mugabe and the pathetic Morgan Tsvangirai of the pathetic MDC opposition ( now in bed with Hitler) spent $45.5 million on their own foreign travel needs last year (1.2% of the national budget) while spending, er… nil on building and maintaining schools. The money from blood diamond thievery dwarfs even what Mugabe Inc steals from the national budget.
This is pretty simple. If Britain ( budget deficit £120 billion and heading towards bankruptcy by 2020) continues to send money it does not have to Zim, then we will pay for schools medicines, etc so allowing Mugabe to steal cash that is actually generated domestically. And with the basic assistance provided by the West the chances of the people forcing regime change recede. And that pattern is repeated across Africa. And it will do so ad infinitum until Western aid is stopped. That will force change within Africa. Aid prevents it.
Aid helps to appease the people but rarely enables them economically and never politically. But aid encourages regimes to do whatever they have to do in order to stay in power and continue the stealing – why waste Zim’s money on medicines when you can steal the cash? You know that Oxfam and Call Me Dave will send over the vaccines anyway. In fact, if regimes like that of Mugabe can keep their folks poor but stop them revolting, guilty Western liberals will send even more aid. Simple.
The only losers from the current set up are 99% of the folks in Zim and 99% of the folks in soon to be Bankrupt Britain. But the 1% winners (Mugabe and his cronies with their stealing and Cameron et al who “feel good/less guilty” about making up for slavery/the evils of Empire and are nice by helping poor black folks) get to call the shots.
With hard evidence of just how much Africa’s Hitler and his corrupt regime is stealing from Marange please can David Cameron explain in a few simple words why it is “nice” or even remotely justifiable to continue sending cash the UK cannot afford off to Zimbabwe? Over to you Dave.