The Africans are dying again. This time it's the Somalis, thousands of them.

Emaciated and parentless children, looking like walking skeletons, are arriving in camps in Kenya after walking for days without drink or food. Behind them lie arid lands and warfare.

Don't bother looking for the story on the front page of your newspaper. It is on page 11, hidden among sexier stories. Our front pages are reserved for earth-shattering events such as the death of Amy Winehouse.

Eleven million people are affected by the famine sweeping across the Horn of Africa. No, you have not heard about it from our politicians. Don't worry. Black life is cheap. It is the cheapest thing in the world.

We are here again. We are back in the 1970s, when Europe and other Western powers looked at our continent, shook their heads and muttered about African mismanagement. They said they would send "humanitarian aid", they would send doctors.

We are back in the 1980s. Bob Geldof or someone like him will help put together a song, we will all mutter that "We are the world", money will be raised and some of it will buy food and medical supplies for those children and their starving families.

But Africa will not lift a finger to help its own. That is because black life is at its cheapest in the regard of African political leaders. Black lives are nowhere as invisible as they are to African leaders. African leaders do not see black people - especially not when they die.

Over the past few weeks President Jacob Zuma has been running a spirited campaign against the Nato bombing of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. He has travelled the world, drumming up support for this dictator, a man who has been in power for an astonishing 42 years.

Zuma has found his courage. In defence of Gaddafi, he has managed to stand up to David Cameron of the UK and Barack Obama of the US. He has been a hero in defence of one man.

He has not raised a sweat to highlight the plight of thousands of starving, dying, fellow Africans on the Horn of Africa.

The chairman of the African Union, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, of Equatorial Guinea, cannot be relied on to lift a finger for starving people either. In power since 1979, and accused of rigging elections, jailing opposition activists and running one of the most corrupt, oppressive and undemocratic states in the world, Nguema is exactly what the African Union is not supposed to be about.

Nguema and Zuma coming to the rescue of a discredited, megalomaniac dictator such as Gaddafi is exactly what they would do. How much did Gaddafi contribute to the rise of dictators in Africa? If Gaddafi is deposed by his own people, will the people of Equatorial Guinea start wondering aloud why their own man has been in power for so long?

The Nguemas and Zumas of this world have serious intellectual muscle behind them in support of Gaddafi. Thabo Mbeki, our former president, has been active in beating the drum for Gaddafi, too.

In yesterday's Sunday Times, Mbeki said: "What happened in Libya might very well be a precursor of what might happen in another country. I think that all of us need to consider this matter, because this is a major disaster.

"We can't say that we can't stop these Western powers from acting in the way that they have been acting because they will do it again tomorrow.

"I think we can, provided that we act and they can see that if they take this kind of action, they are going to meet the resistance of the entire African continent."

Such vigour! Such energy! How about showing the West that, with our massive mineral wealth, with our intellectual might, we are capable of helping our own people dying on the Horn of Africa?

It is these same men whose voices are quiet while the people of Africa die of hunger. You are likely to hear from Nguema, Zuma and Mbeki when they start accusing "the West" of wasting time instead of helping. Their silence over the past few months while they have wasted jet fuel defending Gaddafi - who, by the way, is being attacked by his own people - will not be remembered.

•   I have lied to you in this article. South Africa cares for dying fellow Africans. On Friday, our government pledged a massive R1-million for famine relief.

"We are planning to give [about] R1-million," said Deputy Foreign Minister Marius Fransman.

That is less than the price of Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande's R1.1-million car. See how greatly our government values black life?