Africa --and Zambia in particular--is wild country, blending the most violent and the most gracious of natural environments, and it is also thickly layered with despair and a loss of bearings. The small white population made Rhodesia work only by almost despotic control, and the battle of the Rhodesian whites against self-rule was awful and violent on both sides. But although it wrested rule of the region away from whe white minority, it did not address the deeper causes at play that brought about despair and confusion.

There WAS a structure to the native lives under the tribal system, which got completely shattered by the imposition of "modern" hierarchical rule. Tribes do not, apparently, smoothly transition to statehood and do not federalize easily. The tribal ethos having been lost, individuals are desperate for orientation. The natural economy having been displaced by large farms and urban centers and state controls, there is a lot of desperate poverty.

Mugabe is trying to control the region with despotic tight-fisted control, but I'd be very surprises if it did anything to remedy the core causes of chaos -- a huge often violent region naturally, and an absence of economic opportunities, and a loss of tribal moral guidance with no substitute. If the "ideal" for Zimbabwe is to make it into a "modern" nation, it will require a LOT of education, a lot of reorganization, and some kind of moral spark which steers the lives of those who live there.

ANother thought, and then I will shut up. It seems to me to be demonstrated both in Zambia and in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, that the inability to transcend tribalism's code of violent antagonism to other tribes is the paradigm that has to shift. The world has shrunk down to the point where the sandbox is not big enough for tribes to roam around and combat other tribes, killing for the sake of old grudges or a disagreement about belief. But until that paradigm is shifted in the minds of those tribal men and women, there is no easy path out of the constant violence that is part of the paradigm. The two things that can cause such a change or reformation -- a grassroots re-eduction by some compelling vision, such as happens when a new political, economic or religous pricniple sparks huge numbers of people to re-think what they are doing -- or a lot of time allowing the shift to occur over generations. A charismatic ruler with a lot of political savvy might be able to do it.

I don't see either of those things happening broadly although there are many pockets throughout Africa, I think, where revitalization is occuring as people learn how to become citizens of the world.

I am not persuaded that more invasion, more fire-power, and more death would accomplish much of anything.

A