Perhaps, you need to make a list of those African Leaders and Leaders-in-Waiting who are worth listening to and supporting.

As far as Mugabi is concerned if he had oil then EVERYONE would be looking to get rid of him and install a new regime to ‘protect the people’/steal the oil.

I think it may come back to humiliate us later.

The cold war may be over but the reach from the past is a long, long one…

Under Mugabe The Warlord his country can feed only a third of its people now…

Shame on all the politicians in the southern region of Africa who support him and not the opposition in his ‘country’. I guess the people who continue to oppose him and get beaten for their troubles do not registar on the political rader of these new African ‘Statesmen’.

Why be scared of a tin pot ruthless man like Mugabe? Give the right people the tools and they would go and get him…

If South Africa cannot show itself to be anti this type of figure then what real hope can any people in Africa invest in their ‘leaders’?

I despise the ‘quiet diplomacy’ of South Africa’s President.

I would offer the recent book by Peter Godwin – “When the Crocodile Eats the Sun” for a personal accounting of life in day-to-day Zimbabwe.

He has another title “Mukiwa, White Boy in Africa” – I can’t comment on it yet as I have just picked it up to read.

As you mentioned in the posting there is a strong contingent of people living in South Africa that would dearly love to return to Zimbabwe. I have a friend that has been in SA now for more than half his life, but if you asked him – he still thinks of Bulawayo as home…

I find my self of mixed feelings about the lack of interest the US shows in this region of the world. You rightly noted that if these nations could unite in an economic partnership – it would be a serious union. Perhaps given our (US) recent track record for interfering in other nations – it might be a blessing they aren’t on our radar!

Sala kahle

Sam, short answer: Mugabe is like Hussein. Saddam talked a big game, such a big game that – if you believed only half of it – you still had to class him as a major international threat. Then the US goes bludgering in there and finds nothing at all except a whole bunch of chaos.

Mugabe is the same. He has an awful lot to say. African leaders like him in the same way that South Americans like Chavez, he distracts scrutiny away from their own nefarious doings. But the body is quite dead and, before the disease spreads, it would be useful to operate.

I hear what you’re saying, but when you grab a drowning man and try to save him one of two things is going to happen. If you’re a great swimmer you can save him. If not, he’s going to drown you. Given what you’ve told us all about Mugabe, is there any real hope that Zim can be saved as long as he’s alive and strongarming?

So much of what the White ‘African’ men talked about regarding Rhodesia seems to have come true. I doubt that the individuals were gifted with the powers of prophesy but they warned and feared Mugabe from the outset.

They had a real and burning hatred for Mugabe which was then extended to all black people. One heard arguments about the lack of intelligence found in Africans, their lack of sophistication, their genetic inferiority when compared to the white race. It was truly scary stuff! When challenged they became angry and pulled the – we know what we are talking about little woman routine – shut up basically and get back to cooking and raising kids.

Their racism was open and each believed what he said. Their basic message to any and all who would listen…that the black man was not capable of raising himself and needed the patronage of the white man to compete and survive…

By demonstrating such hatred for people not of their kind (i.e. non-white) no one listened to them about Mugabe. I think many Rhodesians who came to the UK were guilty of this – their attitude stank from the outset.

When thinking of racism I think of those White ‘Africans’ living in the UK because they had to leave Rhodesia – many having had three generations of their family being born and raised on African soil.

When thinking of racism I also think of others like them (all the colours – white, black, yellow, brown) who deal in hate and extrapolate the hateful deeds and behaviour of individuals and apply it willy nilly to entire peoples.

Sometimes, I think that the artificial Countries that colonial powers built with the forced labour of the native inhabitants should no longer be seen as Countries.

Once the ‘outsider’ leaves it seems that so many of the African Countries created during Colonial times revert back to… Tribal Lands.

What future South Africa?