Now that our government has launched vigorous campaigns against HIV/Aids and crime, is it too much to ask that it revisits its approach to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe?

If ever there was a telling commentary on the state to which the old autocrat has reduced that country it was this week's news coverage of his ban on political rallies - it rated the briefest of mentions in most media.

However, it is worth reflecting on just how far down the path towards ruin he has taken that once- prosperous country. To do so requires little more than a reading of this week's activities by Mugabe.

On Wednesday he issued an ban on political rallies and protests - effectively a state of emergency.

This followed clashes between Mugabe's thugs - the police - and opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters in Harare. Riot squads fired teargas and a water cannon to stop an MDC rally.

On Tuesday Mugabe gave a televised 83rd birthday address in which he attempted to douse what even he described as a power struggle over who would be his successor in the ruling Zanu-PF party.

He denied that he was trying to cling to power by combining presidential and parliamentary elections, although that action conveniently ensures he should stays in office until at least 2010.

And he announced that Zimbabwe would nationalise diamond mining in an effort to arrest the country's economic slump.

Latest inflation figures, meanwhile, have soared to 1 594%, the world's highest. And refugees from that country continue to pour into South Africa.

South Africa's quiet diplomacy towards Zimbabwe has failed the people of that country and the region as a whole.

Shouldn't we be getting a little bit noisy by now?