Independence came too early for Africa

Self-government is better than good government". That was certainly the assumption behind the anti-colonial movement which carried all before it in the second half of the 20th century. In India (not perhaps in Pakistan) and indeed in Asia generally, that assumption has proved justified.

Not so in Africa, where self-government has been a disaster. Not just in Zimbabwe but in Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. Only South Africa escaped but this is largely due to the presence of Mandela.

In other words, British Africa, unlike Asia, was not ready for self-government. The colonial power should have stayed on for at least another 50 years.

This was very much Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's view. During the Salisbury (now Harare) stopover of his 'wind of change' tour of British

Africa, I remember him musing over a whisky and soda that the Africans were "pushing us out just at the very moment when Britain... has the necessary money, resources, know-how and willpower ­ which we never had between the wars ­ to make colonialism work".

In those days, Aids, was a scourge of the future. But bearing in mind Macmillan's words, it is painful to speculate about what a colonial administration could and would have done to control it, not to mention all the other things it could and would have done by now really to make poverty history in Africa.

As it was, Britain's final gesture ­ welcomed enthusiastically by all the anti-colonialists ­ was to hand over power on a plate to Robert Mugabe. Anti-colonialists got it right in Asia, but about Africa they have been proved tragically wrong.