All well and good if the money given by individual charitable donation or by Governments in the form of overseas development aid actually ever gets through to those who actually need it.

I would venture to guess that very little of it ever does. So whether donations are curtailed, which remains to be seen, it will make very little difference on the ground as it were.

One thing of course should happen with any aid package in the future, and that is that from now on they come with strings firmly attached, they are to be administered by the donor country, not one penny is placed where any of these robbing thugs can get their hands on it, and the programmes dispensing this aid come with full publicity that:

"This aid is brought to you by the government and people of ...........(Insert name of donor country)"

I feel that Zimbabwe is beyond help, Mugabe and his cohorts will tear it apart just as Pol Pot attempted to tear apart Cambodia in order to rebuild it in whatever image is required.

South Africa will go the same way, the process is already a great deal further down the track than many think. The two countries in that region that may well fully realise their potential are Angola (potentially the richest country in the world) and Mozambique, both of which have already gone through the birth pains quite some time ago.