>>And then there is Botswana - if it wasn't for AIDs...
>
>That seems to be a place where they got it right and the locals built on the good parts after independence.

Again ex-Britsh! :-)

>
>Compared to Zaire, the Congoa, Chad, Sierra Leone, Rwanda ...
>
>Rhodesia may have been the epitome of third generation colonialism - but it certainly wasn't Zimbabwe and whatever his faults Ian Smith wasn't Mugabe.
>

Actually, I watched a TV series about Rhodes a few years ago and it was rather shameful the way he and his private diamond army wrested the territry from the natives.