Zimbabwe -- The "Other Genocide"

Over the past few years I have written often about the horrific atrocities perpetrated by Mad Bobby Mugabe and his ZANU-PF gang of thugs in Zimbabwe. There has been little attention paid to these matters in the MSM.

Well-meaning transnationalists in the EU and elsewhere have from time to time hoped that some external agency, the "weight of international opinion", the ANU, South Africa, or NATO, might bring an end to Mugabe's atrocities. Other romantics have hoped for an indigenous revolt. But these have been hopeful fantasies, doomed to failure in the face of Mugabe's ruthless suppression of opposition. In fact, Mugabe's witches' brew of racism, Maoism, and post-colonial resentments, has threatened to spread into South Africa and other regional states.

At long last there are some signs that the MSM are beginning to waken to the horrors being perpetrated in what used to be one of the most prosperous lands in Africa. The New Republic has just published a piece calling Mugabe's policies what they are, barely concealed genocide.

The genocide in Zimbabwe is not as stark as others. There are no cattle cars and gas chambers. There are no machete-wielding gangs roaming the countryside. There are no helicopter gunships or Janjaweed. The killing in Zimbabwe is slow, oftentimes indirect, and not particularly bloody. But Mugabe's campaign of mass murder against those who oppose him has been no less deliberate than any of the other genocides in human history.

Read it here. It serves as a good introduction to this ongoing tragedy.

It is far too much to hope for decisive action from the West. Britain and the EU are overly sensitive to charges of racism and imperialism that Mugabe and his cronies regularly issue against them. The US has started to take notice because Mugabe has been trying to strike a deal with China which is expanding its presence in Africa, but has more important interests elsewhere. Other African states are loath to intervene, in part because Mugabe is still viewed by many throughout sub-Saharan Africa as a heroic figure of the anti-colonial struggle, but also because many of them have been guilty of similar, if lesser, atrocities in their own countries.

So Mugabe's victims have only the forlorn hope that the old monster will finally die -- he's 83. But that is not likely to bring relief. Many of Mugabe's cronies are at least as bad as he is, and a power struggle within ZANU-PF is likely to unleash even worse horrors on the long-suffering people of Zimbabwe.