Zimbabwe Update -- Mugabe Speaks at the Opening of Parliament

The Times reports:

THE President arrived for the state opening of parliament in a black Rolls-Royce, medals pinned to his chest. He inspected a guard of honour of mounted police lancers. He then delivered a 35-minute speech condemning lawlessness and demanding “greater cohesion and unity” from his countrymen.

At first sight this was a fine example of democracy in action, except that the country was Zimbabwe, the President was Robert Mugabe and the parliament was elected in polls last March that were widely denounced as fraudulent.

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MPs of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change boycotted yesterday’s ceremonies, and even as Mr Mugabe was speaking his security forces were continuing their three-week drive to raze the shantytowns of Harare and Bulawayo — MDC strongholds — that has left up to a million people homeless.

The ruthless campaign seems to have worked.

Yesterday was supposed to mark the start of a two- day national strike against the urban blitz, which has destroyed hundreds of thousands of shacks, squatter camps and makeshift roadside shops. The strike, the first big attempt at mass protest for more than a year, was called by the Broad Alliance, a bloc comprising the MDC, the national labour movement and civil rights groups. But its hopes for a nationwide show of defiance against what it called a “criminal regime” were crushed again by a Government with the apparent ability to cow its subjects indefinitely.

Timothy Burke over at Easily Distracted has argued that popular protest demonstrations can be effective only when the leadership of a country is capable of being shamed. [I can't find the exact post, but here's the blog -- scroll around, he's got a lot of interesting things to say. While you're there check out his comments on the hermeneutics of Star Wars and Middle Earth.]

Mad Bobby is far beyond the point where he or his cronies can be shamed. They are inhuman thugs -- Maoist ideologues for whom human concerns and consequences are of negligible importance. The democratic reform imperative that started in Georgia and Ukraine has reached an end in Zimbabwe. Absent outside interference, and contrary to Belmont Club I do not think that it is in the works, Mugabe's tyranny will continue unabated at least for the forseeable future.

Read the Times account here.