The real danger for Africa is Western disengagement

'The new colonialists are the likes of Mugabe, who deploy their armies to plunder the wealth of other countries'

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I am going to start this piece on Zimbabwe by talking about Enoch Powell's finest speech. Among the broader public – that is, the decreasing number that take any interest in politics – Enoch Powell is chiefly remembered for his "rivers of blood" address. But how many know that Enoch Powell was the lone voice to speak up for a group of black men killed in suspicious circumstances in a British-run prison camp? The 11 men died in 1959 at Hola Camp in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising. I don't propose to retell the sorry saga of Hola or to ponder its place in a broader appreciation of Enoch Powell's career. But there is no denying the importance of the speech; it remains the strongest statement of principle about Britain's relationship with Africa ever made in the House of Commons.

Powell was outraged at the refusal of the authorities to treat the dead detainees as the legal equals of men detained in British prisons. You cannot, he told the House, have one standard for men in Africa and another in Britain. At the time, this declaration was considered revolutionary, not least because the challenge to the indifference of the Colonial Office came from the Tory side of the House. The speech made a big impression – praised on both of sides of the House for its synthesis of passion and reason. But sadly it didn't change anything. We continued to treat humanity in Africa as a less equal species.

It wasn't so much a rule of double standards as of no standards, or at least supporting only the standards that benefited the strategic aims of the superpowers and their acolytes. The crimes foreigners committed or aided and abetted in post-colonial Africa made the rule of the old overlords seem positively benign. Not long after Powell made his Hola Camp speech, the colonial powers began to abandon Africa to the wolves of tribalism, Cold War power politics and economic plunder. Yet the age had begun in hope with the birth of Kwame Nkrumah's pan-African dream in Ghana; across the continent nationalist leaders spoke of overcoming tribalism and marching forward in the spirit of equality and fraternity.

Then they got a taste of the riches and pleasures that came with power. And like the colonial masters before them, they proved mightily disinclined to give it up. For nearly 40 years the international community – the West and the Soviet bloc – indulged a succession of monsters in Africa. The Americans backed apartheid South Africa and the hideous Marshall Mobutu, the Soviets armed and trained the killing machine of the Dergue in Ethiopia (among others) and flooded the continent with weapons.

There were other smaller players whose post-colonial meddling would have disastrous consequences. The French made possible the triumph of the murderous Emperor Bokassa in the Central African Republic and supported a genocidal regime in Rwanda; the British operated on the basis that only a strong man could rule an African society and looked the other way while appalling creatures such as Mugabe and Kenya's Moi ruined their countries.

Though none of the fine fellows who ran Western or Soviet bloc foreign policy would ever admit to it, there can only be one honest conclusion. We allowed these terrible things to happen in Africa not so much because we were indifferent, but because we saw Africans as different: men and women who deserved less than we did, who could be subjected to endless indignities and cruelties, people of a lesser God. We were capable of compassion when they starved to death on television, but the inequalities and injustices that made the hunger inevitable, we refused to face.

Apart from starving babies, the only spur to intervention was the plight of whites. In the Congo, Rwanda and, latterly, Zimbabwe, we were moved to intervene only when images of desperate white refugees made it to our television screens. The argument in response to this is that foreign leaders are under no obligation to act in places such as Zimbabwe when Africa's own ruling class stands idly by. Ask yourself where that leaves the oppressed and exploited citizenry.

I was never surprised that the Organisation of African Unity kept silent about the abuses committed by its members. Was the Prime Minister of Burundi, who had slaughtered 250,000 Hutu, going to criticise Idi Amin because he was butchering his people? It's worth bearing that in mind whenever you hear the likes of Mugabe or Moi ranting on about the new colonialism. The new colonialists in Africa are the likes of Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who deploy their armies in other people's countries to plunder their wealth.

The Congo is the setting for the new scramble for Africa, as the armies of Zimbabwe, Namibia, Uganda, Rwanda and Angola (I'm sure I've missed a few) fight over mineral resources. Amazingly, one British commentator said Mugabe was talking of a return to socialism, though carefully inserting the qualification "credibly or not". Credibly or not! How can a man who has used confiscated land to reward his military henchmen, whose cronies have been allowed to amass vast wealth and who continue to loot the Congo, a man whose army murdered thousands of his own people in Matabeleland, even be mentioned in the same sentence as socialism?

Mugabe is as about as much of a socialist as King Leopold of the Congo was. The crisis for Africa is not – as Mugabe and a few ideologically committed writers have maintained – that the West wishes to re-colonise. Rather, it is the prospect of a progressive Western disengagement from Africa. The danger is of an Africa in which only two kinds of Western intervention are likely: the plundering of the corporate robber barons and the sticking plasters of aid agencies.

The Zimbabwe election is a moment of destiny. The picture is not entirely bleak. For once, Western leaders seem willing to treat African peasants as democratic equals and take a stand on their behalf. The fact that the Commonwealth observers refused to rubber-stamp the poll is hugely encouraging.

For more than two years, South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki, has traded away the enormous goodwill that accompanied his succession to the presidency. His insane policy on Aids and softly, softly policy on Zimbabwe have contributed to the crisis of South Africa's currency and undermined attempts to attract investment. There are strong domestic political reasons for Mbeki to avoid a showdown over Zimbabwe (many of his impoverished citizens regard Mugabe's anti-white rhetoric as a good thing), but if he cares about the future of Africa, he must act.

South Africa's President is the only person with serious leverage in Zimbabwe; and America and Europe are in a position to ask him to apply pressure. If Mr Mbeki's dream of a revitalised Africa is to bear fruit, he will need Western support. But that will not be forthcoming if he turns a blind eye to tyranny. Silence or diplomatic fudging will accelerate the process of disengagement. The danger for Africa is not a neo-imperialist agenda on the part of Tony Blair – it is the sound of Western feet galloping away from the continent.

The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent