|
|
Zimbabwe: Mugabe's Dragon
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
Business Day (Johannesburg)
EDITORIAL
20 May 2008
Posted to the web 20 May 2008
Johannesburg
AS OUR Saturday edition, The Weekender, was able to confirm this past weekend, the Zimbabwean government has managed to get its hands on the 77 tons of weapons that were on board the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang that tried and failed to offload them in Durban almost a month ago.
That confirmation comes from reliable sources inside the government in Harare. It is depressing enough news, without other unconfirmed reports from Mozambique that the South African Navy helped refuel the ship after it fled a court order in Durban.
The Presidency and in fact the president himself have flatly denied a Mozambican website report that he personally dispatched the SAS Drakensberg to refuel the An Yue Jiang.
We accept that denial at face value but the pity is that it had to be made at all. It ought to be utterly impossible that a modern South African head of state would connive to arm or protect a political thug such as Robert Mugabe. But Thabo Mbeki's appeasement of him over the years and his apparent indifference to the suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans can make even some lies about him and Zimbabwe seem plausible.
That is his burden. Of wider importance is the way in which those weapons may be used by Harare.
It is well known that there is state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe in an effort to reverse the March election defeat Mugabe suffered when a run off occurs. Equally, as seems entirely possible when Mugabe loses properly to Morgan Tsvangirai in the run off, his military cronies may try to stage a coup against the result.
After all, it is they who stand to lose the most should Mugabe go. If he is kicked out by the voters, so too, probably, will they be.
|
Then the Chinese weapons should come in most handy. The generals will use them. The Olympics could be under way in Beijing when the runoff votes are counted, so it's unlikely that anyone there will hear a rifle shot, or a skull crack, far away in southern Africa.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 Business Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
