NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

The America Diaspora is a sequel to The Chinese Century.

One thing that is hard for newcomers to understand is just how far south we’re not in Joburg.

The latitude of this city, which is over 5500 feet above sea level (higher than Denver) is about 26 South. The latitude of my old home in Atlanta was about 32 north. In fact the latitude here is closer to that of Miami than it is even to Orlando.

It’s all Florida here. You can broil on the beach in Durban this week just as you can in February, the height of summer. The only reason we have any seasons at all here is our elevation.

I guess what I’m saying is that August, our February, is just beautiful. It’s dry, it’s clear, it’s in the 70s during the day and the 50s at night. It’s like Atlanta in the springtime, and with the 6 million trees in the city and suburbs, most of them oaks or walnuts, it feels like home.

The relative prosperity of South Africa, moreover, has made it a magnet for more than crazy Americans. All of the continent is our Mexico, and when one neighbor, Zimbabwe, is being run like Cambodia, well it’s hard to see the shantytowns disappearing (or the crime rate dropping far) soon.

The growing American contingent here is pressing Thabo Mbeki hard on Zimbabwe, with some success. Statements were made that might not have been made earlier, over Mugabe’s forced evacuation of his cities. The pictures smuggled out by Amnesty drew big coverage in the JoBurg papers, and on our Web site. It’s hard to see why Thabo remains attached to Mugabe, except for the fact that Mugabe was once elected, freely, and it’s hard for the President to let go.

But letting go is what he’s being pressed to do. Tony Leon is back again, this time making noises comparing Zimbabwe to Iraq, saying that without Mbeki propping him up Mugabe would fall, although I really think he’d have to be pushed. When pushed, and I’ve seen him pushed, Mbeki gets very legalistic on Zimbabwe. If it’s OK for outsiders to toss Zimbabwe’s leader, what is the standard? At what point is the line crossed, and could not some jealous men claim that we have crossed the line, and overthrow our duly elected government?

It sounds crazy, but the leaders across this continent are more afraid of being overthrown than of countenancing genocide. Genocide seems to be almost a casual thing here. It’s what tribes have been doing to one another since the beginning of time.

Europe was aloud to be tribal, and to go beyond tribalism to nation states, and even beyond that to the nation-less EC, because there was no force to challenge history. The borders were made by the people of those times, then made and remade again-and-again.

Africa is not that way. Nationhood was imposed from outside, borders fixed with some ethnic groups trapped as minorities, and others split among several countries, with no hope of redress. Then modernity appeared and made those old tribal borders irrelevant, yet the tribes were still there, swirled up inside cities, pureed like a salad dressing, but still an emulsion, forced together, not chosen.

Thus any power trip from any historical period can be used, and abused, and it is. Democracy overlain on tribalism can become the assent to genocide. A minority defending itself can commit genocide against the nation’s majority. Monarchy and communism and fascism have all been tried – none made the trains run on time. Every man and woman was and can be enslaved, by ignorance, or religion, or tribe, or simply greed.

It will take more than a few million Americans settling into South Africa to change all this. It will take more than a few tech businesses like Always-On Technologies, more than a few schools like Witswatersrand, more than even the lifetimes of my children or grandchildren, before Africa can truly sing.

But we have made a start. Despite AIDS, and poverty, and injustice, and Mugabe, we have made a start. We know it is only a start. There are a billion hearts here in Africa, most of them troubled, the vast majority burdened in ways Americans can’t imagine. They can be won only one at a time.

But here in Johannesburg, they are being won.

I finish my editorial, read it over and find it good, then hit send. If I were in America I’d be so worried about loss – monetary loss, the loss of rights, of democracy. While we stand far below that in Johannesburg, at least here we’re talking of gains.