ZIMBABWEANS SAY “PLEASE SADDAM US!”

Among the businesses paralysed by the strike was Zimbabwe’s most profitable vehicle company. Its workshops were locked up, 10 new Mercedes Benz E240 saloons inside them awaiting delivery to Mr Mugabe’s cabinet. A further 22 are due to arrive later this week. The total cost of the order has been estimated to be equivalent to two weeks’ fuel supply for the entire country. On the eve of the strike workers at the firm had been seething. “If only George Bush would come here and Saddam us,” said one. “But he won’t and so we will have to strike, and be arrested and beaten. We have no choice. The ministers break the cars that we pay for and get new ones and we pay for those too. We have no fuel, no food, no medicines at the hospitals, and Mugabe doesn’t care.”

It would be better, of course, if South Africa — regarded by many, at least until recently, as a responsible nation — would address this genocidal thugocracy in its backyard. But Thabo Mbeki doesn’t seem to mind the goings-on in Zimbabwe, which makes me wonder about his vision for South Africa’s future.

I know we’re kind of busy right now, but how hard would it be to bring down Mugabe? Liberating Zimbabwe would have the salutary advantage of being obviously not for oil (though Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk could probably come up with some sort of conspiracy theory) — and it would be enough of a surprise that it would make dictators around the world even more nervous, and oppressed populations even more restive.

And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that these guys aren’t looking to the U.N. for liberation?