Thursday, July 03, 2008

UN Condemnation Too Little, Too Late
By Bashir Goth
Although one has to be delighted about this unprecedented unanimous condemnation of Robert Mugabe, one cannot also ignore that this has come too little too late. The world has been watching this African tyrant rob his people of their last dignity and turn a country that was once described as Africa’s bread basket into destitution. As I had stated in an earlier piece on Zimbabwe, the world knew that Zimbabwe was deteriorating into another African tragedy.

Since he came to political prominence in the 1960s, Mugabe was always concerned about Mugabe. Relying on the majority force of his Shona tribe, he eliminated the late Joshua Nkomo, a man known as Father Zimbabwe and the founder of the first freedom movement. In the 1980s he massacred 20,000 Ndebele civilians, Nkomo’s tribe, to declare himself as an autocrat. Mugabe considers himself a divine ruler who only God can remove from rule; he cannot allow a novice politician from his own Shona tribe to challenge him when he has subdued the independence heroes from the Ndebele.

Newsweek/Washington Post/PostGlobal