CHINA, MUGABE, WEAPONS, AND SOUTH AFRICAN LONGSHOREMEN:

On Friday, the An Yue Jiang, a Chinese ship carrying arms bound for Zimbabwe, left the port of Durban. Earlier, a high court refused to allow the weapons to be transported across South African soil.

The decision capped a surprising turn of events. On Thursday, Themba Maseko, a spokesman for Pretoria, said that his country would not stop the shipment as long as formalities had been completed. Dockers of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, however, refused to unload the cargo, fearing that Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe might use the weapons against his opponents, who are locked in a post-election standoff with him. Mugabe appears to have lost his post in the March 29 presidential election but is unwilling to step aside. . . .

But let’s not call these South Africans “ordinary.” They have done more to stop Chinese autocrats from aiding Mugabe than their own leader, Thabo Mbeki–and than the most powerful individual on earth, President George W. Bush.

We should be sending guns to Zimbabwe, but not to Mugabe. On the other hand, the slam at Bush isn’t completely fair:

More recently, police arrested an American, Peter Spitz, in Florida, for trying to sell ten Russian helicopters (apparently Mi-8s) to Zimbabwe. Spitz was caught in a sting, and he boasted of having 30 Russian made helicopters and warplanes in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan).

He’ll stop weapons to Zimbabwe, so long as it doesn’t mean standing up to China.