The eyes of a world often drawn to disasters are currently fixed on Zimbabwe, a Southern African country of some 12 million.

As a person involved in African affairs since 1961, I have to say, "Here we go again." Why is it so often that it is an African country that is the latest example of people rendering evil unto each other, sometimes with a callousness that verges on insouciance?

There are answers to that question. I will pass along a few that are relevant to what has happened in recent years in some African countries. I use these comments on questioners with more or less acerbity, depending on whether I believe racism lies behind the query.

The first is that human viciousness is by no means limited to Africa.

It is certainly the case that what Zimbabwe President Robert G. Mugabe and his Shona tribal and other cohorts did to other Zimbabweans in advance of last Friday's clown-show elections was very bad. A photograph on the front page of The New York Times of June 26 of a baby whose legs were reportedly broken by Mr. Mugabe's oafs captured the essence of the 84-year-old dictator and his rule.

On the other hand, are Mr. Mugabe's pre-election depredations substantially worse than the behavior of the military rulers of Myanmar? They, in the wake of the typhoon that struck their country in May, denied the world access to their people to provide them assistance. Their reasons -- if "reasons" is ever the right word for brutal, inhuman behavior -- were, first, that they were afraid that an international presence in their country, even of aid workers, might constitute a threat to their rule. Second, the generals wanted first crack at the material the world provided, allowing the armed dolts that pass for their army to steal whatever was worth stealing before it was passed along to the homeless, hungry and sick storm victims.

Now, is the Burmese' behavior in this case better or worse than that of Mr. Mugabe's Zimbabweans? Would we like to draw general conclusions about Africans' or Asians' behavior and character? Or both? Or should we turn to the European concentration camps of the last century? Or maybe we should try the fate of our own Native Americans, Australia's Aborigines, or New Zealand's Maoris at the hands of white people of European origin.

But what is it about Africans in particular? Apart from the fact that there are some 52 African countries, thus running up the odds that something awful will be happening in one of them at any given time, two words -- slavery and colonialism -- explain at least part of the difference.

Slavery has been around a long time, and has taken many forms. At the same time, there is nothing in recorded human history quite like the phenomenon of the slavery to which some Africans were subjected. Caught in their home villages, by fellow Africans for the most part, carted off to the coasts, sold to whites or Arabs who transported to their countries those who could survive the journey by sea, to be sold again to more whites or to Arabs as objects, to be worked, for the most part, until they dropped.

Those Africans who didn't experience it certainly knew about it. It is impossible to gauge the impact of slaving and slavery on Africans in Africa, never mind African Americans in the United States and in the Caribbean. There is also a monumental difference between indenture, what is called domestic slavery, and the enslavement of the people of one visible race by another.

It would nonetheless be a stretch to say that Europeans and Americans are responsible for the various messes that occur in African countries now. At the same time, there is something poisonous in the water of relations between us and them. They know what we did to them, and it isn't easy to get over.

Some of it comes down to entitlement: You did this to us, now help us fix our situation.

Some of it -- for example, the proposal of the Bush administration to establish a U.S. military command in Africa -- is to say, don't get any bright ideas about establishing again any coercive military presence in our countries.

Some of it says we are going to do it our way, and it's none of your business if we choose to tolerate and even honor a Robert Mugabe even though his behavior is swinish. As a matter of fact, the more noise you make about him, the more we are going to treat him as an African president, whatever he does.

And, if you are so great on getting rid of inhuman leaders, why did you let Hitler do what he did as long as you did?

Now, all of that said, I think the Africans will now put the heat on Mr. Mugabe to bring opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai into the tent, to share power to at least some degree. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, did not want to share power with Raila Odinga, a Luo. But he did, under substantial pressure from other Africans and from Kenyans themselves.

If it occurs in Zimbabwe, that will constitute progress. The country has been independent 28 years. In 1804, 28 years after American independence, Vice President Aaron Burr shot the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, dead in a duel. Let's give them some time before we draw conclusions.