Abstract
When most people think of Africa today, the image is childrenwith distended bellies slowly starving to death, or humanskeletons, more dead than alive, wasting away from AIDS, or riversrunning red, choked with bodies from the latest tribal massacre, orchildren with stumps instead of arms or legs, civil war victims whosedisfigurement made a point, although no one is really certain whatthat point might have been. Poverty, tribal violence, governmentsoverthrown, gargantuan corruption, pandemic disease, and death—this is the Africa of popular imagination. Sadly, there is far too muchtruth to the stereotype. At any given moment, a good fourth ofAfrican countries are in the throes of murderous communal violenceor civil war. Democracy survives or re-emerges in an unstable andever-shifting handful. Corruption is simply the price of survivalalmost everywhere. Even Botswana—ever democratic, honestlygoverned, growing in prosperity, always mentioned when talk turnsto whether or not Africa is a hopeless basket case—is not exempt,with one-third of its people suffering from HIV or full-blown AIDS.
