But there is no denying the importance of the speech; it remains the strongest statement of principle about Britain's relationship with Africa ever made in the House of Commons. You cannot, he told the House, have one standard for men in Africa and another in Britain. At the time, this declaration was considered revolutionary, not least because the challenge to the indifference of the Colonial Office came from the Tory side of the House. The speech made a big impression – praised on both of sides of the House for its synthesis of passion and reason But sadly it didn't change anything.

We continued to treat humanity in Africa as a less equal species.It wasn't so much a rule of double standards as of no standards, or at least supporting only the standards that benefited the strategic aims of the superpowers and their acolytes. The crimes foreigners committed or aided and abetted in post-colonial Africa made the rule of the old overlords seem positively benign. Not long after Powell made his Hola Camp speech, the colonial powers began to abandon Africa to the wolves of tribalism, Cold War power politics and economic plunder. Yet the age had begun in hope with the birth of Kwame Nkrumah's pan-African dream in Ghana; across the continent nationalist leaders spoke of overcoming tribalism and marching forward in the spirit of equality and fraternity.Then they got a taste of the riches and pleasures that came with power. And like the colonial masters before them, they proved mightily disinclined to give it up.

For nearly 40 years the international community – the West and the Soviet bloc – indulged a succession of monsters in Africa. The Americans backed apartheid South Africa and the hideous Marshall Mobutu, the Soviets armed and trained the killing machine of the Dergue in Ethiopia (among others) and flooded the continent with weapons.There were other smaller players whose post-colonial meddling would have disastrous consequences. The French made possible the triumph of the murderous Emperor Bokassa in the Central African Republic and supported a genocidal regime in Rwanda; the British operated on the basis that only a strong man could rule an African society and looked the other way while appalling creatures such as Mugabe and Kenya's Moi ruined their countries.Though none of the fine fellows who ran Western or Soviet bloc foreign policy would ever admit to it, there can only be one honest conclusion. We allowed these terrible things to happen in Africa not so much because we were indifferent, but because we saw Africans as different: men and women who deserved less than we did, who could be subjected to endless indignities and cruelties, people of a lesser God. We were capable of compassion when they starved to death on television, but the inequalities and injustices that made the hunger inevitable, we refused to face.Apart from starving babies, the only spur to intervention was the plight of whites.

In the Congo, Rwanda and, latterly, Zimbabwe, we were moved to intervene only when images of desperate white refugees made it to our television screens. The argument in response to this is that foreign leaders are under no obligation to act in places such as Zimbabwe when Africa's own ruling class stands idly by. Ask yourself where that leaves the oppressed and exploited citizenry.I was never surprised that the Organisation of African Unity kept silent about the abuses committed by its members. Was the Prime Minister of Burundi, who had slaughtered 250,000 Hutu, going to criticise Idi Amin because he was butchering his people? It's worth bearing that in mind whenever you hear the likes of Mugabe or Moi ranting on about the new colonialism. The new colonialists in Africa are the likes of Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who deploy their armies in other people's countries to plunder their wealth.The Congo is the setting for the new scramble for Africa, as the armies of Zimbabwe, Namibia, Uganda, Rwanda and Angola (I'm sure I've missed a few) fight over mineral resources.