Zimbabweans can only despair after the sham runoff election preceded by Robert Mugabe's government terrorizing supporters of the opposition party.

The vicious megalomaniac has effectively devastated his country, which is now an economic basket case. Brutality, torture and murder are hallmarks of his regime and millions of Zimbabweans have fled the country.

The stench of international hypocrisy pervades the wretched state of affairs. The UN Security Council finally issued a statement expressing concern about election campaign violence, but even that was watered down at the behest of South Africa, Russia and China.

Other countries outside Africa have taken only token action claiming unctuously that the solution should rest in the hands of Africans.

But apart from some minor huffing and puffing, the Africans can't or won't act. In the latter category, we find South Africa's role particularly shameful.

That country's president, Thabo Mbeki, is fully in thrall of Mugabe, seemingly incapable of criticizing a former liberationist comrade. Mbeki and his African National Congress reject using South Africa's crucial economic leverage to pressure Mugabe and oppose meaningful international sanctions. They've forgotten if the world had not used sanctions, the apartheid regime would still be in power.

Sadly, Nelson Mandela's silence has been deafening. The former South African president made his first public comments about Mugabe only last week, noting merely "the tragic failure of leadership" in Zimbabwe.

This is the same Mandela who, not shy about giving forth on faraway problems, excoriated President George W. Bush over Iraq in January 2003. "What I am condemning is . . . a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust." Mandela said then.

But the tyrant next door perpetrating horrendous atrocities on fellow Africans merits merely a "tragic failure of leadership."

Obviously, there's still reason to cry the beloved country and its continent.

Source : http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/Opinion/Editorials/2008/06/30/6024031.html