Much like the servant Grusha in the famous allegory The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Morgan Tsvangirai, Robert Mugabe's main opponent in Zimbabwe's presidential race, has dropped out of the runoff election rather than tear his beloved nation apart.

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Alicia Keys submitted an opinion piece for CNN in advance of the July 4th premiere of her documentary, Alicia in Africa, about her travels to the continent and her work there to fight the spread of AIDS.

My first visit to Africa completely changed my world view. I came to understand that AIDS was not simply a deadly disease but a force capable of orphaning children, uprooting communities and stifling economic progress.

What AIDS could not do was suffocate the hope of the remarkable people I met throughout Africa. If people who had suffered such unthinkable devastation could maintain hope, then I could certainly hope for an end to this pandemic in my lifetime.

With this goal in mind, [AIDS activist Leigh Blake] and I started Keep A Child Alive in 2003 and our clinic and orphan sites operate in six countries, supporting approximately 45,000 children and their families who have been victimized by AIDS.

APARTHEID ENDURES "Whites in South Africa earn five times more than their black counterparts on average, according to a new study, illustrating the enduring legacy of apartheid 14 years after its abolition. A study done for the UASA union made waves in the Rainbow Nation last week when it showed that whites bring home 450 percent more than blacks on average and 400 percent more than their mixed race peers. In line with the global trend, education is the single biggest determinant of earning power, it concluded, but in a country with South Africa's history the issue has a powerful racial dimension. 'That blacks weren't allowed on to certain beaches (during the apartheid era of whites-only rule) can be changed overnight but education has a long-lasting legacy,' said the author of the research …"

In her new article in The Times of London, epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani, an AIDS researcher for more than 10 years, says she believes political correctness has impeded the eradication of HIV and AIDS in Africa. Specifically, that the many nations and medical groups working to prevent the spread of the disease are unwilling to express this truth: "HIV is largely a sexually transmitted infection, so there must be something different about sex in Africa."

To help make her point, Pisani notes that though the popular assumption holds that poverty and a lack of education are the main reasons AIDS has spread like wildfire throughout sub-Saharan Africa, other impoverished nations are not nearly as plagued by the illness:

The truth is that a society in which many people have two or three partners on the go at any one time will produce a bigger epidemic than a society where people may have 10 partners in five years, but only one at a time. And it’s a fact that in parts of Africa, it’s more common for both men and women to have two or three simultaneous relationships than to have serial partners. Do people behave in this way because they are poor and ignorant? Not in Bangladesh, or Bolivia, or dozens of other countries where incomes and literacy are low. Indeed, in Africa, the incidence of HIV infection is highest in the richest households and the richest countries.

Pisani says these issues go unspoken because many people consider them racist. But without acknowledging them, she stresses, finding a way to combat the spread of HIV becomes even more nebulous than it already is.

Her grim solution? "Pray for better leaders."

MUGABE'S WHITE REFUGEES BRING PROSPERITY TO NIGERIA "Musa Mogadi says he is better off since 'the whites' came. He's got a new job, learned new farming skills, and he can chat on a mobile phone while zipping around the countryside on a motorbike. Three years ago, Mr. Mogadi got by as a subsistence farmer. But he now earns a regular wage as a supervisor on one of this town's new commercial farms. He's applied skills he learned from some of the two dozen white Zimbabwean farmers who moved to Nigeria in 2005, after being kicked off their land by President Robert Mugabe and later attracted by large parcels of land on offer under 25-year leases and commitments of support from the Nigerian government."

David here. A friend of mine (we'll call her Sarah) is spending the spring in Ghana, working in local schools to teach children English, among other subjects. Over the weekend, she and a few friends in her program planned to hop over to Benin to cover more West African ground.

Unfortunately, she became ill on the journey, and ended up in a Ghanaian hospital, never making it to Benin.

Doctors there diagnosed here with malaria, though, according to Sarah, that's what everybody is diagnosed with, at least initially. (An experienced traveler, Sarah knew to start a malaria medication regimen before arriving in Ghana.)

Despite some unnerving aspects of her hospital stay, such as hospital officials refusing to let her friends stay with her, Sarah emerged healthy after a weekend of rest and swallowing pills that she couldn't identify.

Total cost of her four-day hospital stay, with tests and medication?

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In a poll conducted by British newspaper The Independent, more than 35 AIDS researches in the UK and America shared bleak news: few doctors searching for an HIV vaccine are very optimistic.

… just two were now more optimistic about the prospects for an HIV vaccine than they were a year ago; only four said they were more optimistic now than they were five years ago.

Nearly two thirds believed that an HIV vaccine will not be developed within the next 10 years and some of them said that it may take at least 20 more years of research before a vaccine can be used to protect people either from infection or the onset of Aids.

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Not a single one of the sub-Saharan countries in Africa are on course to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon. Kimoon called the lag a "development emergency."

Set in September of 2000, the eight MDGs are as follows: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal free primary education; gender equality and empowerment of women and reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development. The UN had hoped the goals would be met by 2015.

Kimoon says that advances in specific goals in countries like Kenya and Ghana proves rapid achievement is possible, but stresses that increased foreign trade and investment are necessary for Africa's growth. Currently, the entire continent of Africa has a three percent share of the whole world's trading and investment. Unfortunately, poised to unravel the few but remarkable gains made over the last eight years is what Kimoon calls the "alarming" global food shortage, the scourge currently straining the good ol' US of A.

KEY TO THE CONTINENT A portion of a new Alicia Keys documentary, the not-very-creatively named Alicia in Africa: Journey to the Motherland, will air on tonight's seriously hyped American Idol: Idol Gives Back show. The documentary follows Keys' one-month trip to the continent, where she visited communities deeply affected by HIV and AIDS (that's quite a few communities!). "Everyone who visits Africa is changed by the experience, but not everyone can afford to go to Africa," says Keys. "Come with me on my journey and learn as I learn. Let's start a virus to stop a virus- send the film to everyone you know. Let's change this nightmare into our generation's greatest success story." The documentary can be viewed in full at AliciainAfrica.com.

Who says black celebs never go to Africa? And most of the time, cameras are not following them when they do.

Last year, the New York Times published a story that described the rape-as-warfare epidemic in the Congo in horrific detail. Here's an exerpt:

Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.

Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women…”

“The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling.”

An award-winning documentary on the subject premieres on HBO tonight at 10pm. The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo features first-hand accounts of women and men who have born witness to the horrors. It's definitely not something I'm dying to watch, but it's something that's important to see.

For information about how to help, click here.

Barry Bearak, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who had been covering Zimbabwe's recent controversial elections, was arrested today in the capital city of Harare. Officially, the Zimbabwean authorities are charging Bearak with "practicing without accreditation," but everyone knows his real crime is trying to let the world know how insanely steely and totalitarian President Robert Mugabe's administration is. Judging by this, pretty steely!

Related: Mugabe continues to refuse to step down, despite many claims that he lost at the polls. He is demanding a runoff election.