It's tyranny stupid! (the willing blindness of Geldof, Bono and other rock & roll economists)

THERE'S a puzzling idea doing the rounds on Africa. It occasionally surfaces in Tony Blair's speeches as Britain gears up for a G8 summit at which he will be pushing for debt write-off and a doubling in aid to African countries. I spotted it when Bob Geldof unveiled his Live8 concert plans. It's pretty much a constant theme in the pronouncements of Hilary Benn, Aid Minister.

It runs something like this: the bad old days in Africa, when leaders in Gilbert & Sullivan military costumes sent their wives to buy up London's most desirable real estate, are over. The Mois, Mobutus and Bokassas are either dead or in retirement. Western governments, whose generosity was once held in check by the ghastliness of the dinosaur leaders, can fully engage with a new generation of upright, forward-thinking African leaders with the continent's welfare at heart.

Of course, the argument runs, we must still be responsible with our money. But with this new generation at the helm, we can write off the billions of dollars in 'odious' debts made to the old, discredited type of African leader, confident the money freed up will go into health, education and building roads. And if the G8 will only sign up to the principle, the funds generated by a surge in aid will be put to more effective use.

'Things are changing on the continent, with African governments showing a new vision ... Africa, at last, looks set to deliver,' the commission's report gushes, while assuring us it has done its best to be 'blisteringly honest'.

To which, in 'blisteringly honest' mode, I can only say: utter balls. Whenever I hear talk of a 'new generation of political leaders' in Africa, I have to suppress a laugh. That's not the Africa I see on my travels, and if plans for an African recovery are built on such naivete and wishful-thinking, they are doomed to go the same way as every other grandiose project drawn up for the continent.

Let's take a few examples. Uganda, say, where President Yoweri Museveni, who once said no African leader should spend more than 10 years in power, has now governed for nearly two decades and is set on amending the constitution to allow him to stand again. It's strange that the Museveni case doesn't weigh more on Geldof's mind, as Sir Bob was recently demonised in Uganda's press for telling Museveni to step down.

And then there's Kenya. True, the opposition won the elections there in 2002 and, for once, an old-style Big Man leader agreed to stand down. But the public mood has turned sour and angry, for the corruption of President Mwai Kibaki's new administration makes Daniel arap Moi's regime look almost restrained. The American ambassador to Nairobi worked out that the sums stolen could have paid for every HIV-positive Kenyan to get antiretroviral treatment for a decade.

Take Ethiopia and Eritrea, whose leaders are arms-shopping while relying on the international community to feed their drought-hit millions. Or Ivory Coast, where Laurent Gbagbo has encouraged the militias who support his presidency to talk the language of genocide. Or Ghana, where President John Kufuor's new administration, local commentators estimate, include more than a dozen members of his family. But enough.

The point is that there are precious few signs of this enlightened 'new leadership'. The fact that more African countries are run by nominally elected governments instead of military dictatorships obscures just how structurally similar the new administrations often remain to what went before. The elites that have sabotaged development since independence have adapted to the times, learning to play the democracy game with panache. Africa's lootocracies have reinvented themselves.

Recent events in Togo illustrated this point. When dictator Gnassingbe Eyadema, 38 years in the saddle, died in February and the army anointed his son as heir, neighbouring countries said that this was unacceptable in modern Africa. Elections were held and guess what? The loathed dictator's son was 'democratically' elected.

Come to think of it, we've been here before. In 1997, when a regional group of African powers joined forces to eject Mobutu Sésé Seko from Zaire, Western leaders latched on to the idea that Africa had produced a set of renaissance leaders who, working together, would find a solution to the continent's ills. Within a few years, the renaissance metaphor took on a new meaning as those same leaders went to war with one another.

Like most people who write on Africa, I pin my hopes on the emergence of a breed of young, educated, technologically aware Africans who, less burdened by the rigid demands of tribal loyalty and free of the inferiority complexes of the colonial era, will stride confidently towards the future. But we are not there yet.

We are stuck in an uneasy interim, where the remnants of the dinosaur breed - Omar Bongo in Gabon, Paul Biya in Cameroon, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe - cling on by their fingertips, while too many of the new breed merely mouth the new credos while gleefully exploiting self-enrichment systems set up by their predecessors.

This doesn't mean we should give up on aid, abandon the campaign to write off debt, or stop trying to level the playing field when it comes to trade. But it means that the same tedious, carping rules apply. Conditions on aid will have to be set and strictly policed. Donors will have to keep a sharp eye out for ever more sophisticated scams, as quick to apply the stick as to offer the carrot.

Let's drop the Pollyanna rhetoric. Instead of congratulating the continent on what is, after all, an overdue and still tentative shift towards accountable government, we should acknowledge that one of Africa's biggest blights has been its appalling leadership.

In our current mood of officially sanctioned optimism, we are in danger of signalling to Africa that, just as in the old days, we would rather prop up a corrupt president, especially one regarded as an ally in Bush's war on terror, than risk losing influence in the region. By stubbornly whitewashing over a grubby reality, we undermine the very domestic forces - church groups, civic society, opposition parties - struggling to hold African governments to account. They understandably feel betrayed. We should be wary of admiring African leaders more than the put-upon citizens of those nations do themselves.

A Good Man In Africa

"We had shown that Edmund Burke was right when he said, 'Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little,' " - Sir Bob Geldof

There are some who can talk the talk and others who can walk the walk, but there are precious few who can tell it like it really is and get things done.

Rock singer and activist Bob Geldof had a reputation for having a big mouth and a dangerous quality long before most of the world had ever heard of him.

His organisation of the Band Aid record and Live Aid concerts in 1985 certainly changed that. A total of £70 million was raised for famine relief - still the most money raised for charity by a single event.

When asked if he'd forgotten James Joyce's dictum that to succeed an Irishman needs three things: silence, cunning, and exile, he replied: "No I hadn't, but as I'm Irish I have a highly defined sense of the ridiculous."

Bob Geldof is certainly not given to linguistic economy. One of the latest press cuttings describes him as a "hectoring, self-promoting yob". But those who know him says he is friendly and impeccably mannered. The only yobbish side to him is his language, which is absolutely filthy. Most of his comments about Robert Mugabe could not be reported in any newspaper.

"My personal opinion is that Robert Mugabe is a murderous tyrant," Geldof told Sky News. "He's embarked on a campaign of state terror and famine in a bid to wipe out the opposition. I think it's up to the African leaders to come out and call the shots. Mugabe has to be called for what he is - a tyrant. You people should be demanding that Mugabe steps down. I don't care where he goes. He can join Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia, he can join the ghetto of tyrants, but get him out of there.

"Most African governments are "absolutely useless, absolutely f***ing pathetic, without the asterisks. African leaders need to get a f***ing grip to win the West's confidence and to save the continent from resembling the wastelands of Mad Max."

Geldof and the U2 singer Bono have established a lobbying group called Data, which seeks to shame Western governments into writing off Third World debt - and to fight Aids. Shortly before Geldof's visit to Ethiopia last month, they met Tony Blair at Downing Street. "Mr Blair has a great passion on Africa and we want to turn that passion into cash. We have faith he will do the right thing," said Bono, but conceded that Geldof had not been as positive about the meeting as he was. "He's a bleak, pessimistic Irish bastard and I love him."

Geldof, 51, is well aware that celebrity activism can look silly. "We're a pair of stroppy Irishmen, though Bono's much smoother than me and very sharp. I'm just a half-assed pop singer," he said. "At least Bono is a full-on rock star."

Maybe, but Geldof knows how to cut through the bull. Geldof dismissed suggestions that he had exaggerated Ethiopia's current crisis. What's more, Aids, rather than famine, is becoming Ethiopia's nightmare. An estimated one quarter of Addis Ababa's population is HIV positive, and the levels in rural areas are rising sharply. He met Meseret Tadesse, a ten-year-old Aids orphan who is one of three million people in Ethiopia infected with the virus. "This is a disgrace. I am a father and have a ten-year-old daughter. This girl wants to be a doctor when she grows up. Instead she will die within a year."

"I have not come here crying wolf," said Geldof. "Everyone's desperate not to use the F-word - by which I mean famine."

He's enraged that Africa's poor still go hungry while the West produces food surpluses - but is also critical of Africa itself. "African leaders should be more accountable, less corrupt. Almost to a man, they are hopeless. Would you vote for any of them? They are feckless and incompetent." Just like our lot, really.

About 13 million people in Ethiopia are currently dependent on food aid in a drought crisis made worse by HIV/Aids. Geldof is adamant that the EU is the greater villain for delivering just a small fraction of Ethiopia's staple needs and refusing, unlike the US and Britain, to supply any supplementary foods, such as oil, which give a balanced diet.

"The EU have been pathetic and appalling, and I thought we had dealt with that 20 years ago when the electorate of our countries said never again," he said. Warning that the "horror of the 80s" could return, he added: "The last time I spoke to the EU's aid people, they didn't even know where their own ships were. The food is there, get it here."

"I'm not a bleeding heart, I'm not an optimist. I'm not even a pacifist. I'm a pragmatist, this is doable," he said. "So let's do it."

Geldof is phenomenally well informed, fluent and passionate and denounces the incompetence that continues to allow people to starve.

At the end of his five day journey, officials from the World Bank, IMF and aid agencies packed the Hilton hotel to be roasted by the Irishman: "You're supposed to help Ethiopia, that's your job. I don't think dialogue is always constructive; it can be an excuse for inaction. I'm used to the sophistication of your arguments, but f**** that. It's sophistry." Whatever you may think of the man, there is something magnificent about his anger.

Many contemporary figures swelled with pride after learning of their inclusion in the BBC's list of the 100 Greatest Britons. Not so Sir Bob Geldof who, at 74, was ranked 18 places above Sir Walter Raleigh.

"I think it's balls. Utterly facile, asinine balls. How can I be on such a list? I've never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life."

Asked about the phenomenon of "compassion fatigue" and why the West should still care about a dirt-poor country seemingly incapable of helping itself, Geldof replied: "Yes, I'm sick of it myself. I'm sick of looking in the mirror at this mournful, lugubrious face. I'm worn out. I don't know how to describe five million starving children any more."

But added: "I'm Irish. It's my duty to attack governments." When the final story about this Knight is written, it might well emerge that his greatest virtue was to have used his character flaws to do something of real value

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