Recently in Other Affairs Category

Call me a cynic, but I don't exactly understand how this "historic agreement" between Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe and members of the opposition party (including Morgan Tsvangirai, who stepped down from the presidential race after Mugabe's political party went on a rampage of murder, torture and rape) is going to make much of a difference.

Hyperinflation is currently at more than 2 million percent (after Mugabe's government "paid" its own outstanding bills by simply printing more money), food has disappeared from grocery store shelves and Zimbabweans are fleeing into other countries. About a month ago, a couple at my church shared about a phone conversation they had with a friend in Zimbabwe who runs an orphanage. She was telling them how it costs more than $30 U.S. dollars to buy basics like a pint of milk or a loaf of bread. And that was a month ago. I can't even imagine how much worse the situation is now, because the cost was rising day by day when she told us about that.

Obviously we cannot lay all of the blame at Mugabe, although he bears the lion's share for piloting Zimbabwe into a land of extreme poverty and financial crisis. The political climate is clearly ripe with corruption, and Mugabe simply leaving office wouldn't change everything.

I suppose this agreement to work with members of the opposition party to turn things around is a step in the right direction. But as the BBC story I linked to above makes clear, recovery is going to be a very long, very hard journey--if indeed it comes.

I admit I didn't know much about Zimbabwe and its recent political history until a few summers ago when I read the memoir "Love in the Driest Season" by Neely Tucker. I was most angered to read this reputable foreign affairs journalist's account of how, in the 1990s, President Robert Mugabe covered up the swelling of the country's AIDS crisis as the disease sprang out of control and devastated the population.

Since arriving in Britain last September I've been able to follow the affairs of this former British colony more closely, since the newspaper we get at my house, The Daily Telegraph, includes lots of Zimbabwe coverage, especially today. This article discusses the world community's anger at Mugabe. I know that news organizations throughout America (and indeed the world) have spilled major ink on Zimbabwe in recent weeks, as Mugabe has tightened his iron grip on the country after losing an election to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai withdrew from the presidential run-off vote scheduled for Friday after his followers, determined to get Mugabe out of office, endured beatings, rapes and even murders.

I read the newspaper this evening with a growing sense of sadness and anger, so appalled at the injustices taking place in Zimbabwe. Nobody says Tsvangirai was a perfect leader, certainly not this Telegraph commentator, but he was the face of a movement crying for change.

Here's an article about how the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe has left even ordinary, middle-class people struggling to eat.

Finally, all of this reminds me about the worldwide reaction of disgust and anger when I read a few weeks ago that Mugabe had attended a global summit on world hunger. Kudos to Douglas Alexander, head of the British delegation to the UN conference, who refused to acknowledge Mugabe. Alexander said Mugabe's "profound misrule" was responsible for transforming Zimbabwe from a major food-producing country to one where millions of its people now must depend on food aid for survival.

What can we do? Express our anger, call for change and get the word out. And so I use this little blog to do so. Oh, and I'm also attending a special meeting my church is holding tomorrow night so that Christians in Nottingham can pray for Zimbabwe. In this age of unbelievable communication transmission and information technology, it seems I must do something. The only other thing to do is to refuse to read the paper or listen to the news and simply stick my head in the sand.