A new Government in Zimbabwe was the necessary but not sufficient condition for rescuing it from the appalling state into which Robert Mugabe has allowed it to sink. He has now blocked regime change by terrorising his opponents, the Movement for Democratic Change, into withdrawing from the rerun of the presidential election that it was probably about to win. So the economy remains in ruins and human-rights violations continue, while hungry refugees pour across its borders. And with only one candidate left - Mr Mugabe himself - in what has become a mockery of an election, Zimbabwe now has little prospect of an early end to its agony. The one hope remaining is that the MDC could use its majority in Zimbabwe's parliament to negotiate an agreement to share power, following Kenya's example. But the hardliners in Mr Mugabe's party, Zanu-PF, seemed to have turned their backs on any such solution. And so the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference has issued a statement warning that Zimbabwe is heading towards a hopeless situation that could lead to "a vast humanitarian crisis that will engulf the whole Southern African region".

What is it about Africa that makes democracy there so difficult? Mugabe's post-colonial generation of nationalist leaders has more often than not used political power in an arbitrary and tyrannical fashion, accompanied by the corrupt plundering of national coffers for personal gain. They have generally subverted for their own advantage the institutions they inherited. Opinion in the West has been slow to blame them for this, perhaps from post-colonial guilt and a fear of sounding racist. In any event, as European settlers did in the colonial era and the slave traders did before them, outside commercial interests have not been backward in exploiting the situation for their own advantage - which partly explains the huge international debts by which many African countries are now over-burdened. China is currently among the worst offenders, both in driving exploitative trade deals and in buttressing oppressive regimes, including Mr Mugabe's.

Excusing Africa's problems by wholly blaming outside interests is also part of the problem, however, as it absolves Africans of responsibility for their own destiny. There are elements in African culture itself that contribute to its troubles. Thus the Catholic Church, which is in many African countries the strongest element in civil society, has had great difficulty advancing such ideas as the common good. It does not seem to resonate easily with indigenous values because it stretches solidarity beyond the immediate family and neighbourhood into the community. Human rights have similarly been regarded as a Western value system rather than as a statement of the fundamental worth of every person. A sense of common citizenship is often undeveloped. (That said, it must be admitted that Mugabe himself had a Catholic education.)

Africa, then, does not make promising soil for democracy and the rule of law. Indeed, it explains why the leaders of Mr Mugabe's neighbouring African states have so far been reluctant to sound too critical of him. It also suggests there are no quick fixes, either for Zimbabwe or for Africa in general. Changing the culture could take a generation. Fortuitously, the Catholic Church finds itself in the vanguard of that process, in partnership with other religious groups such as the Muslims, where they can be persuaded to see a common interest. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe suffers and Mr Mugabe gloats. But in the long run, there are grounds to be hopeful, light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Africa's friends must stay with her on that journey.

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