More on Zimbabwe

Further to this post.

(Via Mick Hartley)


A defiant Robert Mugabe has sailed unchallenged through the first test of his presidency by his peers.

Freshly sworn in after a single candidate election, he received a leader’s welcome when he strode into the African Union summit in Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday and emerged unfazed, his authority intact.

He dined at a lavish luncheon given by his Egyptian hosts, hugged heads of state and other diplomats in the corridors and stayed at the Peninsula Hotel, one of the most luxurious in this Red Sea town. “Mr Mugabe is staying there as a courtesy by the Egyptian Government,” a hotel spokesman said...

The African Union’s public response to Mr Mugabe’s seizure of power was seen as a key measure of the organisation’s commitment to democracy after Zimbabwe’s violent run-off elections. However, protest from African leaders at the summit was muted, even as Western leaders from France, the United States and Canada joined Britain in ratcheting up pressure on the organisation to reject Mr Mugabe’s authority.

One may well wonder how he won the elections?

A baby boy had both legs broken by supporters of President Robert Mugabe to punish his father for being an opposition councillor in Zimbabwe.

Blessing Mabhena, aged 11 months, was seized from a bed and flung down with force as his mother, Agnes, hid from the thugs, convinced that they were about to murder her.
She heard one of them say, “Let’s kill the baby”, before Blessing was hurled on to a bare concrete floor.

This is the realty that the West fails to understand or confront: unimaginable savagery and the simultaneously unimaginable insouciance of the African Union Summit which "would like to congratulate the Zimbabwean people for their successes ".

Africans savaging other Africans, or Muslims savaging other Muslims. The West looks on, helpless and nearly- paralyzed with fear of one kind or another, while human beings are mutilated, broken, set on fire, burned alive, killed, maimed, beheaded. What does it all mean? What are these people -- the so-called "African Union" or "Arab League" or the UN Human Rights Council -- waiting for? What are they looking forward to? What will it take for them to do right thing, once and for all?