If you learned economics from MTV, you might think the solution to Africa's chronic dysfunction was simply insufficient handouts from the West. While the global left peddles the inane notion that ever greater taxes on wealthy nations will cure Africa's ills, those who have even one iota of common sense know that the problem lies not in the West but in Africa itself.

Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of South African President Thabo Mbeki, writes in today's The Wall Street Journal (subscribers only) that poverty, disease and starvation are only symptoms, and a catastrophic leadership deficiency is the root cause:

At the root of Africa's problems are ruling political elites that have squandered the continent's wealth and choked its productivity over the last 40 years...

"Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else shall be given," urged Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah. The region's policial leaders have been doing so ever since...

Merely handing more aid money to African governments only reinforces the pattern of abuse. the key to development lies in a dynamic private sector.

So when the titanically self-congratulatory Bob Geldof and his ilk are done with their fleeting musical monuments to themselves, Africa's problems will remain. Until economic opinion-makers, which today laughably include entertainers, acknowledge what truly ails Africa, that continent will be condemned to a continuous cycle of aid money being funneled into corrupt systems. And while American liberals fight tooth and nail to prevent individuals from funding their own personal retirement accounts with their own earnings, they seem not to grasp the irony of demanding that our government fund African despots' personal accounts (probably Swiss) with a larger chunk of American taxpayers' money.

UPDATE: Read Mark Steyn's excellent piece on the hypocrisy of the "aristorockracy" (Sir Bob, Sir Elton, Sir Paul, etc.):

Seven years ago, you'll recall, Sir Paul's wife died of cancer. Linda McCartney had been a resident of the United Kingdom for three decades but her Manhattan tax lawyers, Winthrop Stimson Putnam & Roberts, devoted considerable energy in her final months to establishing her right to have her estate probated in New York state...

Linda McCartney avoided the 40 per cent death duties levied by Her Majesty's Government...

For purposes of comparison, Bob Geldof's original Live Aid concert in 1985 raised £50 million. Lady McCartney's estate was estimated at around £150 million. In other words, had she paid her 40 per cent death duties, the British Treasury would have raised more money than Sir Bob did with Bananarama and all the gang at Wembley Stadium that day...

The system that enriched them could enrich Africa. But capitalism's the one cause the poseurs never speak up for. The rockers demand we give our ... money to African dictators to manage, while they give their ... money to Winthrop Stimson Putnam & Roberts to manage. Which of those models makes more sense?

Steyn's usually a must-read anyway.

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