Mugabe's mess is Africa's problem

Many of you will know my opinion on the tragedy that is Zimbabwe (see my earlier Zim posts if not), but Mugabe's regime has truly outdone itself over the last few days. If you haven't come across the latest so-called "excesses" - which include police brutality that borders on torture and the police shooting of a protester at a prayer meeting, in a country already trying to cope with the highest level of inflation in the world - take a look at http://www.zimbabwejournalists.com/. The site is run by exiled journalists, and their incredible effort to get information about the crisis out there, while avoiding biased reporting, is truly laudable.

Now, please, please, will someone explain to me why it takes the torture of a 60 year old grandmother, amongst the scores of other people beaten, for the international community to even admit that there is a problem? How could it get to this point? When thousands and thousands of people protest a terrible situation for years on end, why does it take actual physical injury for the economic power houses to suddenly be up in arms? Freedom of speech is all well and good, but if no one listens to what you say, well, you might as well be living in Zimbabwe.

"Up in arms" is, of course, a slight exaggeration - the reactions have seemed closer to embarrassment than outrage from the African contingent, while the rest of the world appears suitably unimpressed but are waiting to see what Africa will do about it. So what will Africa do? The eyes of the world are on our continent - is she going to step up to the plate? Zimbabwe managed to get into this position while Africa merely looked on. As wonderful as it is that the world as a whole is suddenly noticing the problem (I saw Tsvangirai's injuries as a headline in a Jamaican online paper today), it is fairly obvious that we cannot rely on people with no stake in Africa to solve this. We cannot always assume that someone will step in and rescue us. So where are our great African leaders now?

It would be very good to see Mbeki exercising his right to speak up. If he remains close-mouthed over this (which he has up until this point), it does not bode well for the future of South Africa, particularly given the rather quiet land reclamation programme underway there. You know what they say about good men who do nothing...