Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela

Robert Mugabe is winning the race to become the world's most repugnant person. Indeed, he's even been knighted by the Queen (I hate to say I told you so) in 1994, after his period of mass murder between 1982 and 1987 where he was estimated to have killed roughly 10,000 people in Zimbabwe. If you haven't been affected by the news coverage of Mugabe's pillaging regime since the prospect of democratic liberation in March, when they held the largely-ignored general election, then you haven't been alive. Obviously, the question then arises: What should we do? The UN has proved ineffective as usual, and condemning words from our salient role model, Gordon Brown, has only acted as a platform for Mugabe to plump up middle-age rhetoric about white imperialism. Should we wish to flex our international muscles and demonstrate again that we will not be talked to in this way by sending in the troops, this would be met with another wave of smarmy criticism from the growing numbers of Iraq-opposers, yet, more pragmatically, we simply don't have the resources anyway. And so, we're left with what we like to do normally, because it's safe: write about it in our papers, which is ultimately futile. In this vein, the New Statesman fills its front cover with photographs of riled Zimbabweans, and Peter Hain declares it's "Time to confront Mugabe" - with what exactly he doesn't say. Although, he does conclude that the election should be monitored internationally and an exit plan must be formulated, but he doesn't say how, probably because it's near impossible to actually implement what he so heroically suggests.

What I propose is a direct and systematic plea to Africa's key political figures, importantly, those whom Mugabe respects, to denounce the blunders of Mugabe's regime and decry the violent brutalization of democratic advocates. Primarily, I call upon Nelson Mandela, a first-hand witness to the dirtied hand of white imperialism, but also a revolutionary statesman for South Africa who negotiated a multi-racial democracy (someone who Mugabe does respect). However, according to George Bizos, Mandela's solicitor during his time as the president of South Africa, Mandela's doctor has warned him not to undergo stressful activities. Scoff, dear reader, scoff. This lame-duck excuse is pitiful and an insight into racial tensions among even the most advanced African lands. In the words of Christopher Hitchens last Monday, "By his silence about what is happening in Zimbabwe, Mandela is making himself complicit in the pillage and murder of an entire nation, as well as the strangulation of an important African democracy." Mandela has the influence to potentially quell the devastation of one of Africa's most resource-rich countries, but instead he reverts to the keep-safe fence-sitters of the African National Congress and, until very recently, Thabo Mbeki. Furthermore, Mugabe has been a devout Roman Catholic since childhood, enough so to warrant an invite to the late Pope John Paul II's funeral in 2007, despite a ban on his presence at any EU nation from 2003 onwards. He was able to get around this little snag, claiming that he was on Vatican soil, therefore, not encroaching onto his prohibition. When will the Vatican and the Catholic Church start using their waning influence to the best possible degree by excoriating the loathsome actions of one of its "flock"? Yet again, the feeble-minded individuals anointing these positions of international authority fail to make just little impact on the lives of thousands of starving, terrified, debilitated men, women, and children in Zimbabwe.