Bush's visit to Africa could trigger change

Africa is a continent in crisis, created in large part by corrupt leaders who have brought many nations to their economic knees. In its most recent survey, Transparency International, the corruption watchdog group, found that all but four of the 15 African nations surveyed were in the bottom half of its "corruption perception index." TI surveyed 102 countries worldwide.
The four countries with relatively favorable ratings were Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Mauritius.
And earlier this year, the World Bank said that if worldwide economic growth stays on track, poverty will remain severe in Africa, where the number of poor is likely to climb from 315 million in 1999 to 404 million in 2015.
It is this reality that will confront President Bush when he visits Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria for eight days starting Monday. The attention the administration has been paying to Africa is commendable, especially since many Americans do not see a vital national interest in what goes on in Liberia and the Congo, which are both in the grips of bloody civil wars.
As Bush noted in February when he announced that the United States will spend $15 billion to fight AIDS abroad over the next five years -- most of the money will go to African and Caribbean nations -- "It's important to our fellow citizens as they listen to this dialogue on this initiative to understand that there are many mass burials and unmarked graves on the continent of Africa."
The president continued, "So many people are dying. But the graves are unmarked. The pandemic is creating such havoc that there are mass burials, that there are wards of children that are dying because of AIDS. Not a ward, not some wards, but wards after wards full of dying children because of AIDS. That there are millions of orphans, lonely children, because their mom or dad has died -- children left, in some cases, to fend for themselves."
While there are countless reasons why AIDS has become such a killer in Africa, the lack of legitimate government in many countries is a major cause. Corrupt leaders who have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into private bank accounts must be held responsible. Corrupt government officials who have stolen badly needed medicines from government warehouses and then sold those medicines on the black market must be brought to justice.
And organizations like the African Union, which only last year admitted that government corruption has been the continent's No. 1 enemy, must be challenged to come up with a plan for bringing about regime change in those countries that have become colonies of death for innocent African men, women and children.
Bush's AIDS initiative has rightly won him worldwide acclaim, but as the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, he also has a responsibility to use the United States' moral leadership on the issue of governance.
African Union officials have estimated that capital flight from Africa to secret bank accounts in Europe and elsewhere now tops $140 billion a year. Some of the money is from corrupt deals, but a large amount is undoubtedly from leaders selling Africa's mineral wealth and pocketing the proceeds.
The president should announce an initiative similar to the one he launched shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America: The U.S. went after the assets of terrorist organizations and even froze the bank accounts of countries that have been known to harbor terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida.
The initiative has been quite successful, which is why it would not take much to replicate it with regard to the bank accounts and other holdings of current and former African leaders.
In launching the war on Iraq, Bush argued that brutal dictator Saddam Hussein was not only a threat to world peace, but was depriving the Iraqi people of the most basic of human rights, the right to live free.
Similar situations exist in many African countries and the world will be watching to see what message Bush delivers to those deprived citizens.