Cicero's Songs

What has happened in Zimbabwe is hateful... the regime that swore it would fight for freedom ended up being the enemy of freedom. The price has been, instead of the country being a benchmark for freedom, it has ended up being a benchmark for tyranny. President Mbeki, has revealed himself as indecisive at best- and a man in deep denial about the nature of the regime in Harare. He does not think that the "winners" need account for themselves. However, the agenda remains how to eliminate the political crime, rather than acknowledge "what happened" - and those gathering at Sharm-El-Sheik need only decide how to ostracise the tyrant. In the end the AU -and South Africa in particular- will need to commit troops to police the ruined country. The question now is whether they have the political courage to prevent the final lurch into collapse. After the bitter words from the Gabonese President, the answer is clearly that they do not. It is not the duty of the West to interve...

Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the 84 year old despot of Zimbabwe, has lead his country to ruin. Yet despite his obvious and complete failure he is sustained in office by two things: the first is his own belief that he is not just the administrator of Zimbabwe, but is some real sense its owner. His sense of entitlement is rooted in his own measure of the struggle that brought majority rule to the country in 1980. No matter that the portly Joshua Nkomo was a better known figure internationally; he was an Ndebele and Mugabe- who loathed Nkomo with a passion- always knew that the larger Shona , of which he was himself a part, would have the decisive influence in the new state. Just to make sure, of course Mugabe unleashed his death squads in Matebeleland - crushing any resistance from Nkomo's ZIPRA , the armed wing of his ZAPU party, which had been the partner of Mugabe's own ZANU in the Patriotic Front. Nkomo died in 1999 having been forced to merge his own party into ZANU to for...

"In Zimbabwe, people really do believe this is a general election - because the generals decide who gets elected." - Comrade Fatso, Harare Zim is facing an end game of sorts- whatever the 84 year old dictator Robert Gabriel Mugabe may try to do to avoid it. It has been clear for at least a decade that the population of the once prosperous land between the Zambezi and the Limpopo were tiring of their incompetent, corrupt and brutal ruler. The massacre of the Ndebele in the mid-1980's which may have killed 10,000 people and which certainly ended the idea of Zimbabwe as a pluralist democracy was simply the first step in the dreadful decline of the country. Perhaps, symbolically the leader of the group most involved in the death squads of the time, North Korean trained Fifth Brigade- Col. Perence Shiri- is rumoured to have attempted suicide as it became clear that Zanu-PF might lose power. Now the rampant corruption has brought the country to its knees and the regime now face...