The Wardman Wire

Zimbabwe under Mugabe is thoroughly undemocratic. It has become the worst kind of dictatorship, the kind that doesn’t even bother to hide the disgusting things that it is doing, and just ignores, beats up, or kills anyone who disagrees with it.

Mugabe has destroyed the economy, taking Zimbabwe from the bread-basket of Africa to the basket case of Africa. His claim to power rests not on the ballot box, but through militias on the streets. He fights his opposition not in debates over the facts and over visions for Zimbabwe’s future, but with mass and extreme violence committed against people who have nothing wrong bar supporting the wrong political party.

When it has come to the state that the opposition candidate has to pull out, you know it’s bad.

But, put simply, there isn’t much that we can do.

We can tell Mugabe that he’s been bad, impose more sanctions, and strip him of his knighthood. We can can all even refuse to recognise the results of the presidential run-off election.

Yet it will have bugger all effect.

Due to historical colonialism, anything that we do - not just Britain but the entire West - will be condemned by Mugabe and other African leaders as an attempt to reclaim an empire. Hence, there is only only group of people that have the power and position to stop Mugabe.

I wish that this group was the Zimbabwean people, but they do not have the power as Mugabe terrorises them and restricts their choices at the ballot box to one.

No, the only group of people who can stop Mugabe and save Zimbabwe are the other African leaders. They must make the stand. They must tell Mugabe that enough is enough, that he may have been a great freedom fighter thirty or forty years ago, but now is no more than a despotic tyrant who is murdering his own people. They must grow a pair of balls and tell him to stand down and, if necessary, ask for Western help to achieve it.

It is up to Africa to save Zimbabwe. If they don’t, we can’t. If they won’t, Zimbabweans die.