Will Mr. Mbeki Please Stand Up?

While not denying the complex problem of neo-colonialism, it is hard for a Westerner who truly hates to see injustice anywhere to believe that Robert Mugabe, or any of the host of African dictators of the past half-century, have anything but their own best interest in mind. When opposition activists are killed by the scores, beaten and harrassed by the tens of thousands, and people forced to flee the country by the hundreds of thousands as a result of disastrous economic policies on the part of the ZANU-PF (Mugabe's 'redistribution' of land to his own cronies, NOT to the people of Zimbabwe), it is clear that Mugabe is no longer a liberator. He is a corrupt and unprincipled despot who will stop at nothing to hold onto power. I do not believe that the people of Zimbabwe are so ignorant as to believe Mugabe's broken-record rationale of blaming every problem on the West. It is Mugabe, first and foremost who must take the blame, and the voting last spring proved that this is the view of most Zimbabweans, even in the face of violent intimidation. For this, I praise the brave people of Zimbabwe. Now if only some African leaders, South Africa's Thabo Mbeki in particular, would have the courage and intelligence to make a similar stand (as, it should be noted, Mr. Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently have) and put an end to this inhumane madness, perhaps the West would not feel compelled to 'interfere'.