KEY POINTS:
These days, obscene is an overused word. Once It was a stuffy legal term meaning dirty in the sexual sense, as in the Obscene Publications Act. What we now refer to as "Having a Jimmy" - acting like a complete pork chop at four in the morning -
would land you in court charged with using obscene language.
As much of what we used to find dirty in the sexual sense became acceptable, if not enviable, the word fell into disuse. Then came the Age of Money - the stock market boom, hedge funds, greed is good. The combination of overnight wealth, celebrity culture and conspicuous consumption created a new dimension of offensiveness.
Without a touch of class and a sense of what's seemly, vast wealth and extravagant lifestyles can be perceived as obscene. This is obviously a subjective area: you need more than a calculator to work out how much is too much and, judging by the fanfare that accompanies the publication of the Rich List, New Zealand's most loaded haven't crossed that threshold. Perhaps obscene wealth, like terrorism and high concept blockbuster movies, really requires critical mass.
Because of this imprecision I normally avoid using obscene in the sense of a brazen affront to the mythical right-thinking person but if the reception granted Robert Mugabe at this week's meeting of the African Union wasn't obscene, then we might as well retire the word.
There wasn't a hint of censure for the old fraud who stole an election from under the world's nose, the thug dispatching goons to whip voters into line, the lunatic ideologue who turned the breadbasket of Africa into a barren land, the psychopath who preens and struts in tailor-made suits while the currency collapses and his people starve.
Instead there was the silence of collusion and hugs all round. Instead President Omar Bongo of Gabon called Mugabe a "hero".
To understand where Bongo's coming from, it's necessary to grasp that for many African leaders the object of the exercise is to cling to power by whatever means for as long as possible, in the process making yourself obscenely rich at the expense of your compatriots.
Bongo is being uncharacteristically modest, for if anyone is a role model for the restless colonels and apparatchiks who comprise Africa's political class, it's him. Now that Fidel Castro has shuffled off the stage, Bongo is the world's longest-serving leader and one of the richest - his family owns 33 properties in France alone. Apart from the routine scam of diverting international aid money into his Swiss bank account, Bongo supposedly pockets more than $100 million a year for allowing French company Elf Aquitaine access to Gabon's oil reserves.
Contemplating these ghastly old kleptocrats brings to mind Rob Muldoon's counter-punch to black African leaders' attacks on this country over sporting contacts with South Africa during the apartheid era, which was that they were in no position to lecture anyone about morality and human rights. Muldoon had a point but it was a diversionary one. Being stubborn to the point of bloody-mindedness didn't make his cause right any more than some African leaders' hypocrisy made the sporting boycott campaign wrong. Besides, it's arguable that the stance which cost New Zealand dear was shaped at least as much by domestic political considerations, ego and a virtual addiction to confrontation as a commitment to the rights of the individual.
Over the succeeding three decades there's been little discernible improvement in the quality of African leaders, with the luminous exception of Nelson Mandela. Africa often seems trapped in a post-colonial mindset in which self-determination is seen as its own reward, even when it delivers misery. Black pride has eclipsed good government, tribalism has eclipsed democracy, power has eclipsed legitimacy and greed has eclipsed public service.
There's an understandable desire for the international community to 'do something' in Zimbabwe, even intervene to terminate Mugabe's misrule and put the country back on its feet. Don't hold your breath.
Zimbabwe's neighbours aren't likely to intervene because that would create a precedent which would cause sleepless nights in many a presidential palace. Nor could they accept intervention by a Western-backed UN force because that would smack of re-colonisation.
The leaders who hugged Mugabe at Sharm el-Sheikh would give up their pads on the Cote D'Azur and their hidden millions and tear down every statue of themselves they've ever erected rather than say or do anything which could be interpreted as a tacit admission that their people were better off under colonialism.
Rudyard Kipling famously portrayed imperialism as "the white man's burden". All the miseries of Africa are now largely the black man's burden. It's their land, their people, their problems, their opportunities, their destiny.
