Zimbabawean Update

In the wake of his election victory Mad Bobby Mugabe is moving quickly to consolidate his control of Zimbabwe, and the Chinese are helping him do so.

The Scotsman reports:

Chinese help Mugabe to bug media in Zimbabwe

TREVOR GRUNDY

IN A move to control the flow of information in and out of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s beleaguered government has acquired sophisticated phone-tapping, radio jamming and internet-monitoring equipment from communist hardliners in China.

Sophisticated Chinese bugging equipment is being installed clandestinely in homes, offices, restaurants and even lavatories. Chinese technicians handed it over to the Central Intelligence Organisation earlier this year in an effort to block the circulation of what Mugabe calls "hostile propaganda".

Bobby is getting old and looking to the future and doing everything possible to ensure that ZANU remains in power after he is gone and the steps he is taking are pretty scary.

Hi-tech bugging includes updated versions of pirated Israeli-made equipment which enters Zimbabwe through Cuba. It’s a copy of the sophisticated equipment Mossad uses to spy on Palestinians.

Wilf Mbanga, who edits the new weekly paper, the Zimbabwean, said: "The plan is to tap all landlines belonging to anyone of importance or prominence in Zimbabwe."

After this year’s general election Mugabe told party hardliners that he had turned again to the East.

On Independence Day (April 18), to cheers from party loyalists, he said: "We are returning to the days when our greatest friends were the Chinese. We look again to the East, where the sun rises, and no longer to the West, where it sets."

Read about it here.

And go here to read about his creation of a mandatory national youth indoctrination corps.

And here, here, and here for earlier postings on post-election Zimbabwe.