Seven years or so ago, just prior to a brief trip to South Africa with the Indian Prime Minister, I rang up a friend in London who was familiar with the region. "Enjoy the country while it lasts", he told me somewhat despondently.

The belief that a post-colonial country is it own worst enemy may sound hideously incorrect but has become conventional wisdom. India and smaller countries such as Cyprus, Singapore and Trinidad may be notable exceptions. Yet, when you look at the track record of New Commonwealth countries such as Nigeria, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania and, of course, Zimbabwe, it is possible to understand why the Third World became an object of ridicule.

South Africa, one of the most beautiful places on this planet, could just as easily have gone down the road to hell. Many pundits predicted it would. Fortunately, the statesmanship of men like Nelson Mandela and his colleagues in the African National Congress ensured that the transition from apartheid was peaceful, wholesome and not accompanied by bloody-minded recrimination. Regardless of the many problems it confronts, South Africa is a vibrant and pulsating democracy.

By right, its neighbour Zimbabwe should have travelled the South African way. The end of white minority rule in 1980 was accompanied by a free and fair election which put the guerrilla leader Robert Mugabe at the helm. At the time of its transition from Rhodesia, Zimbabwe was socially iniquitous but economically on a sound footing. It had the potential of matching Australia and Argentina in agriculture and the infrastructure of manufacturing was all there.

Today, as Mugabe plots the ways and means of subverting the people's mandate, Zimbabwe is in a shambles. The TV shots of Harare may convey the superficial impression of a reasonably efficient and modern city but the reality is of an economy close to collapse. Inflation has touched the absurd heights of 400,000 per cent. The amount of money needed eight years ago to buy a reasonably well-heeled bungalow in Harare isn't enough to purchase a can of Coke today. A policy of reckless populism, a form of cronyism, has led to farmlands being turned into wasteland and food shortages gripping the country.

Like most other African dictators who ruined their own countries, Mugabe has mouthed the verbiage of anti-imperialism, socialism and anti-Westernism. Experience has shown that this spurious radicalism appeals to mindless liberals and pathetically confused countries such as ours. In the heyday of socialism, India was in the habit of trotting out fire-breathing and incompetent dictators like Nyerere, Nasser and Mobutu to take the salute on Republic Day. This was our way of honouring those who made it seem that old-style imperialism wasn't such a bad thing after all.

With the solitary exception of South Africa where Mandela proved he was a cut above the rest, India has got its priorities all wrong. We have consistently abjured democracy for radical-sounding piffle. Jawaharlal Nehru was the worst culprit because he was vain and imagined he knew the world better than everyone else. Like most trendy Left-wing intellectuals he never bothered to understand the policy rationale of those who ruled India before him. His repudiation of India's foreign policy inheritance wasn't centred on understanding; it was grounded in haughty Brahmanical prejudice.

This is why he couldn't detect the dangerous underside of African decolonisation. This is why, despite his impeccable democratic credentials at home, he was instinctively supportive of every tinpot dictator who could mouth radical inanities. This is why he could never come to terms with mystical intellectual traditions of Tibet and preferred the uncluttered idiom of the Communists. Nehru thought that the Communists were different from the feudal lords who ruled China previously. He never really grasped that the red flag was also the banner of old-style Han imperialism.

Since Nehru never understood this danger, his legatees also pretend that Hu Jintao is good. Just as Mugabe is good, Nyerere was good and Mobutu even better. Wonder why Idi Amin was spared our grovelling.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, April 06, 2008