Current affairs publications are littered with reports of horror and tragedy in Somalia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and the Darfur region in Sudan, and the multiple accounts of good in African nations are buried beneath a never-ending portrayal of a Sub-Saharan dystopia. The broadest stereotypical snapshots of African politics—especially political leadership—revolve around images of corruption, incompetence, venal human rights abuses and a myriad of impoverished countries governed with an iron fist by a series of undemocratic strongmen. Joaquim Chissano however, as “the antithesis of the stereotypical African Big Man”, defies such a hackneyed and dismal caricature.

Technological advances have rid humanity of many of its most malignant scourges. Some diseases, like Smallpox, have been virtually eradicated. Ancient killers like Measles, Rubella, and Polio have been tamed beyond recognition, in the ‘developed’ world at least. There are even optimistic whispers among the scientific community of the “Achilles’ heel of HIV” revealing a potential Aids vaccine. Science however, has only stretched so far. Millions of hearts will break tonight as loved ones slip from their grasp. Many families will watch in agony as those closest to them slowly crumble into a coma or vegetative state; stripped of dignity, paralysed by pain, an incapacitated shell of their former selves. Technology cannot save all.

In an election process as exclusive as the Vatican’s papal conclave, the South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon will soon succeed Kofi Annan as the Secretary General of the United Nations. In his acceptance speech to the General Assembly, Mr Ban stated his intention to oversee a “common agenda of reform and revitalization… We should demand more of ourselves as well as of our Organization”. The topic of reform has clambered up the agenda of the General Assembly in recent years in correspondence with the persistent criticism which has been directed towards the United Nations. Criticism and opposition are inevitable for an organisation so unquestionably consequential. David J. Whittaker wryly claims that the UN “muddles through watched by ‘uncritical lovers and unloving critics’”. It seems that in recent years the UN’s position in global public opinion has been perpetually undermined by consistent rhetorical attack, as it has been criticised variously as irrelevant, inefficient, incompetent and illegitimate.

It has been 35 years since President Nixon declared drugs to be “America’s public enemy number one”. The latest manifestation of the “ideology of prohibition” has since seen much of the world consumed by the “War on Drugs”. Drug prohibition has seen such illicit substances as heroin, cocaine and ecstasy outlawed, and its consumers universally criminalised, condemned as social pariahs. Through innumerable sound-bites, politicians and officials have claimed that outlawing illicit substances keeps the innocent safe, and the drugs off our streets. George W. Bush recently proclaimed, “Illegal drugs are the enemy of ambition and hope… When we fight the war on drugs, we also fight the war on terror”. The strategy is attractive to voters because it deals in absolutes: No Drugs, No Tolerance, at any time, in any place. It is assumed that utter prevention and complete expulsion will control the drug problem. Prohibition is sold to the public in these terms, and the illusion is lapped up. However, the substance of prohibition does not support the illusion. As in America in the 1920s, prohibition has failed. The War on Drugs has been a massive and tragic failure which has been perpetrated by fraudulent, superficial sound-bites. All counter-arguments and critiques are branded and demonised as soft on drugs, and soft on crime. The truth is stifled behind the rhetoric of base emotional pandering rather than rational debate.