It doesn't get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty percent of its people are facing acute food shortages.

So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the district of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought.

It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.