Why is cholera happening in the twenty-first century?

Cholera slithered into God's presence. The other advisers stepped out of its way, shuddering.

"Are you still looking for a plan?" hissed Cholera. "Are you desperate yet? Are you ready to send me?" Smirking, he folded his arms and sat down in one of the comfortable red armchairs, coiling his tail under it. The others looked at his grey skin and feeble body.

"I'm doing my best," said Famine, "but they're used to me. I've been trying for too long."

"They're even used - to me," Confusion managed to say, with several voices issuing from various of her nodding heads.

Cholera looked at Famine scornfully. "There's nothing you can do to the rich," he crowed. "They hardly notice you! And even you," Cholera glared at Confusion, "Why, you just help them grow richer. They love you." Cholera lolled back, cocking one skinny knee over the other.

"You need something that affects everyone," he lectured: "Something that frightens them so much, they forget everything but trying to look after each other." Cholera looked cheekily at God. "It might work," he insisted. "No harm in letting me try. Human beings might yet surprise us all. They'd better, or planet earth will soon be empty."

"What's your choice?" he asked. "As I see it, it's got to be me or Plague. You've tried everything else. I think I'm the one, low-key, old-fashioned, go everywhere, get everyone, that's me. Plague is too easily quarantined, but wherever water can go, I can go."

So Cholera struck Zimbabwe, and its neighbours, rich and poor, oppressor and oppressed, city and countryside. The world watched and wept, and wished it had anything to spare from its commitments, its noble-hearted, failing commitments, in the rest of the world. Dying Africans helped or cursed each other. The virtuous became even more heroically unselfish and devoted, until they died, while the wicked became even more cruel and selfish, until they died likewise.

When the whole of sub-Saharan Africa was empty . . .