Just a coincidence, I'm sure

By Carl

This eye-popping story began last week and has now taken an intriguing turn:

Mr Mugabe made his first public comments on last week's fatal crash, reportedly telling mourners at Tuesday's church service: "I plead with you to accept it, it's the hand of God."

Suspicions have swirled over Mrs Tsvangirai's death given past acrimony between the prime minister and president.

But Mr Tsvangirai said on Monday it was unlikely foul play took a part in the collision, which involved an aid lorry.

You have to know, though, that Tsvangirai is playing his cards close to his chest. That it took Mugabe nearly a week to come out and say anything publicly about the death of the wife of his alleged "partner" in governance... well, imagine if Jill Biden died in a car crash in which Joe Biden was also injured. How quickly would Barack Obama offer his condolences and sympathy?

And too, it's a curious comment to make at a memorial, the "hand of God" bit. Almost sounds as if the reporter is signalling to the world that Mugabe, who is not exactly known for his subtleties, had a hand in this.

We're all familiar with the classic line from The Godfather: "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." Is there anyplace closer as president than to have your sworn enemy and rival as Prime Minister, where you can keep a eye on him?

It seems pretty clear what Mugabe's intent is here, if you follow this line of thinking to its logical conclusion and take the background of the election at its face: Mugabe, having lost the popular vote to Tsvangirai, rammed through a Bush SCOTUS-like overturn of the election results.

And now that he has what he wants, he intends to kill Tsvangirai. Indeed, it is something of a miracle that he survived the crash.

How a convoy of three vehicles, with one in the middle carrying the second most important person in the land, got involved in a car crash, is what has perplexed many people.

The oncoming lorry, which apparently belonged to a partner of the US government aid agency USAID, is thought to have crossed into the prime minister's path, sideswiping the right bumper of Mr Tsvangirai's Land Cruiser, which then rolled off the highway.

You read that correctly. This magic truck managed to pick off the middle vehicle of a heavily armed convoy. What makes this story troubling to us here in the States is the apparent if probably unintentional involvement of a truck with ties to the United States.

What to make of this, assuming that indeed it was an assassination attempt? Was it an attempt to draw the US into the African conflagration? Was it a clumsy and ham-handed assassination plot? Or was it just a fortuitous happenstance? Who the intended audience for that message is will be the factor that decides what the motivation for using that truck is.

Sadly, it will not surprise me if, when the uproar over the USAid truck gathers momentum, the right wing in this country starts using this incident to prove Obama's Muslim ties run deeper than a dalliance in a school in Indonesia.

Nevermind that millions if not billions of lives hang in the balance in this part of Africa and the effect this assassination would have beyond Zimbabwe's borders (to North Africa, China, and the Middle East). These numbnuts will focus on a truck that was probably planted.

Just a coincidence. I'm sure.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

An ugly perversion of democracy (in Zimbabwe)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It isn't often that I have occasion to praise Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and our Conservative government, but they are doing and saying the right things in response to the current situation in Zimbabwe:

OTTAWA — Canada was set to impose diplomatic sanctions against Zimbabwe after Prime Minister Stephen Harper condemned what he called a “corrupted vote” in the African nation.

The prime minister said Canada would add to international pressure on President Robert Mugabe and his regime to hold a free and democratic election.

“Our government has condemned the corrupt vote in the strongest possible terms,” Mr. Harper told a meeting of B'nai Brith International.

“And we are working with the international community to bring in strong measures to pressure the Mugabe regime which has illegitimately stolen the election.”

He called the election process in Zimbabwe “an ugly perversion of democracy.”

Harper is exactly right, but what is needed is not just pressure in support of a free and fair election but pressure to end the undemocratic rule of the authoritarian Mugabe and his brutal thugs.

That pressure likely won't come from Africa, which is soft on Mugabe and weak on democracy, and so it needs to come from the U.S., the U.K., and other mature democracies like Canada -- and preferably from the U.N. as well.

For now, though, it is good to see my country speaking out against the "violent, illegitimate sham," as opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai recently put it, that passes for Mugabe-enabling "democracy" in Zimbabwe.

(For my most recent posts on the situation in Zimbabwe, see here and here.)

Zimbabwe's illegitimate democracy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Way to go, Foggy Bottom (seriously):

The US will not recognise the outcome of Friday's presidential election run-off in Zimbabwe, a senior state department official has said.

Jendayi Frazer told the BBC that Robert Mugabe could not claim a legitimate victory amid the current campaign of violence against the opposition.

Which is true, of course. As opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who recently withdrew his candidacy in the face of Mugabe's brutal thuggery, put it, democracy in Zimbabwe is a "violent, illegitimate sham."

And the sham will only be reinforced by Friday's vote.

**********

More: "Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was fleeing soldiers when he took refuge at the Dutch Embassy in Harare, Senegal's president said, offering some of the first details on the latest twist in this southern African's country's political crisis."

Let me repeat that: Tsvangirai was fleeing soldiers (i.e., Mugabe's army).

I guess that's how you win an election in Zimbabwe (if you're a worthless piece of shit like Mugabe).

Violence and illegitimacy: All you really need to know about "democracy" in Zimbabwe

By Michael J.W. Stickings

All you really need to know is that it's a "violent, illegitimate sham." So says Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader who has dared to challenge Robert Mugabe's brutal thuggery:

The leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition party withdrew Sunday from a presidential runoff, just five days before it was to be held, saying he could neither participate “in this violent, illegitimate sham of an election process,” nor ask his voters to risk their lives in the face of threats from forces backing President Robert Mugabe.

The opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, the standard-bearer of the Movement for Democratic Change, said at a news conference in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, that his party was facing a war rather than an election, “and we will not be part of that war.”

A governing party militia blocked his supporters from attending a major rally in Harare on Sunday, the head of an election observer team said. The opposition said rowdy youths, armed with iron bars and sticks, beat up people who had come to cheer for Mr. Tsvangirai.

It was the latest incident in a tumultuous campaign season in which Mr. Tsvangirai has been repeatedly detained, his party’s chief strategist jailed on treason charges that many people consider bogus, and rampant state-sponsored violence has left at least 85 opposition supporters dead and thousands injured, according to tallies by doctors treating the victims.

Mr. Tsvangirai’s decision to quit the race seems intended to force Zimbabwe’s neighbors to take a stand. There are growing cracks in the solidarity that African heads of state have shown for Mr. Mugabe, an 84-year-old liberation hero whose defiant anti-Western rhetoric has long struck a resonant chord in a region with a bitter colonial history.

What else is Tsvangirai to do? He has waged a courageous battle against Mugabe, but Mugabe and his thugs aren't about to let him win. The popular will in Zimbabwe is not what the people want but what Mugabe wants.

The U.S. and the U.K. are "pressing to put Zimbabwe’s political crisis on the United Nations Security Council agenda [today]," but Zimbabwe's neighbours -- in particular, South Africa -- have thus far done nothing. Their post-colonialist support for Mugabe, which dates back decades, and current opposition to addressing the crisis at the U.N. are appalling reflections of just what sort of moral-political vacuum exists in some parts of the world. For these African states, it is all about supporting one of their own, or someone they consider one of their own, against the ex-colonialist West. And that means supporting the sort of brutal thuggery and sham democracy that has enabled Mugabe's authoritarianism. And that has forced his main rival out of an otherwise winnable race.

Like many others -- perhaps most notably the lead singer of a prominent Irish rock band that used to be really good -- I have been critical of the West's use and abuse of Africa, the combination of neglect, degradation, and rapacity that has kept much of the continent in a position of helpless submission from which it has been unable to escape (because not empowered to do so). But some of the responsibility for Africa's fortunes must rest with the leaders of countries like South Africa. They and their enablers deserve much of the blame for the continuing state of brutality and submission that keeps Mugabe in power and the people of Zimbabwe suppressed.

Democracy in Zimbabwe is a "violent, illegitimate sham" -- and, it seems, nothing is about to change anytime soon.