Home > The Magazine > Features

Thursday 4 December 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Shame on Mugabe’s stooges

Rian Malan

Wednesday, 16th May 2007

Rian Malan is appalled that Zimbabwe has been put in charge of Sustainable Development by the UN — and says it is symptomatic of the way in which Mugabe is indulged by foolish go-gooders from New York to South Africa

This year the rains truly failed, and millions face starvation. The response of Mugabe’s government was dumbfounding: it announced last month that it was revoking the licences of every aid group operating in Zimbabwe. Later, the regime relented somewhat: charity would be tolerated provided donors ‘stuck to their core business’ and otherwise behaved themselves. ‘Government will not accept food offers from anyone for political purposes,’ said the information minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu. Furthermore, aid would be accepted only if it was ‘not attached with innuendoes of failure’. The reason for this, explained Comrade Ndlovu, is that ‘Zimbabwe deserves the same dignity as any other country’.

As I read this I seethed with outrage. This parasite didn’t even have the manners to say please or thank you. But this is beyond etiquette. In the absence of food aid, a ruler who behaved like Mugabe would long since have been torn limb from limb by his starving subjects. One recalls the demise of Louis XVI, of Mussolini and Ceausescu. Is it not time to abandon Mugabe to a similar fate?

Liberals will think this unfair to innocent people, and they are right: hundreds of thousands might die if the food convoys do not start rolling into Zimbabwe soon. On the other hand, as R.W. Johnson reminds us, armies of the innocent have already perished at Mugabe’s hand, but he continues to thrive. His party recently announced that his reign has been extended to at least 2010. He presumes to dictate terms to charities. Blacks everywhere continue to adulate him, and to insult the West by appointing his despicable government to positions of honour. There is only one way to end to end this farce: cut off the aid and let Mugabe face the music.

No, I am not advocating anything as dire as regime change. The trick would be to tie food aid to acceptance of some very modest preconditions — an end to torture, respect for the rule of law, untrammelled free speech and no interference in the distribution of food aid. In other words, conditions so mild and reasonable that even Mugabe’s most ardent fans cannot dispute their justness. If he rejects them, his disciples will be left in no doubt as to his moral repugnance, and his long-suffering subjects will know exactly who to blame for their hunger pangs. The end, one hopes, should come swiftly.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

More articles from: Rian Malan | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

I will always defend a big spender like J.M. Keynes

Nancy Dell�Olio

Nancy Dell’Olio makes an impassioned case for Keynesian economics as the necessary remedy for the global crisis. It is to the Cambridge economist that we should turn once more

How I became Bulgaria’s etiquette guru

Dylan Jones

Dylan Jones is astonished to find in Sofia that the former communist country has embraced his guide to the mores of modern life — and that not everybody looks like Borat

Rudd has lurched from indecision to phoney war

Matthew Castray

Matthew Castray looks back on the Australian Prime Minister’s first year in office and audits an administration which has reviewed much and done very little

Incompetence is fine: but being offensive is sure to get you sacked

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that something has gone wrong when 15 South Lanarkshire social workers are sacked over a dodgy Gary Glitter joke while none of their counterparts in Haringey has even been reprimanded over the ‘Baby P’ case

Brown has played into the hands of the Tory Bullingdon Boys he loathes

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson says that the Pre-Budget Report killed off New Labour without landing a punch on the Tories. It has paved the way for a new Conservatism, in which Cameron woos aspirational voters, focuses on government debt and looks for responsible spending cuts

Russia’s aggression in Georgia is a portent of perils to come

Philip Bobbitt

Philip Bobbitt says that the crisis reflects Russia’s determination to remain an old-fashioned nation state, dominating its region. Intellectual imagination will be needed to thwart that ambition: a recognition that the post-Cold War world needs new global institutions

The tightrope walk and the terrorists

Sarfraz Manzoor

Sarfraz Manzoor talks to Philippe Petit, whose stunning walk between the Twin Towers in 1974 is the subject of a new film — and discovers the mirror image of the horrors of 9/11

Big Brother versus YouTube: let the Beijing Games commence

Mark Leonard

Mark Leonard, Britain’s pre-eminent analyst of modern China, says the Olympic genie is out of the bottle. The prospect of global scrutiny has actually increased repression as the authorities try to stamp out dissent. But digital technology is impossible to police

If the liberal press is to be believed, nobody has ever been stabbed — ever

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle imagines the hoodie at home, allegedly innocent of any wicked intent, arming himself with a Stanley knife only because of the supposed alarmism of the right-wing media

We have a duty to protect Zimbabwe

Peter Oborne

Robert Mugabe is murdering, starving and brutalising his people in the run-up to the presidential elections next week, says Peter Oborne. We should act now to prevent civil war and ethnic cleansing