Meet Xi and Putin’s Hired Gun Inside the UN
If your dictatorship is facing U.S. or EU sanctions, you can count on Alena Douhan to announce that Western governments are the real human rights violators.
Harare
Madness in High Places
I am just back from a pilgrimage to Machiavelli’s town, San Casciano, and I’m happy to report that the sort of “virile Christianity” he favored is still alive and active i...
Op-eds
Beyond Mugabe’s Madness
Even by the ridiculously low procedural standards of Africa's club of presidents-for-life, last Friday's poll in Zimbabwe was a truly pathetic exercise. As Barry Bearak, the Pulitzer Pr...
Op-eds
Zimbabwe’s Runoff Rip-off
Three months ago, Zimbabweans went to the polls and by a clear majority repudiated the nearly three-decade misrule of the Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in general and t...
Op-eds
Enabling Mugabe to Cling On
Last Friday was the twenty-eighth anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence, although the country's long-suffering people of the country might be forgiven for not exactly marking the occas...
Op-eds
Zimbabwe Zigzags Onto Another Rough Patch
The ongoing stand-off in Zimbabwe between incumbent President Robert Mugabe and the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, shows how much the political landscape can shift back and forth in t...
Op-eds
Botswana’s Success Sparkles amid African Gloom
While the world has been watching the pathetic spectacle being played out in Harare, Zimbabwe, as Robert Mugabe clings desperately to the levers of power he has held for nearly three decades (see...
Op-eds
Just Move the UN Human Rights Council to Syria
With the Assad regime murdering hundreds of protesters, it’s patently grotesque that Syria might get a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. And yet, when the General Assembly vo...
Op-eds
Enabling Mugabe to Cling On
Last Friday was the twenty-eighth anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence, although the country's long-suffering people of the country might be forgiven for not exactly marking the occasion with dances in the streets. Sure, some 15,000 people were bussed to Gwanzura Stadium in the suburb of Highfield, southwest of Harare, to stomp their feet and chant "Ndibaba Vanogona" (Shona for "he is an able father") as President Robert Mugabe arrived to treat them to an hour-long harangue, to which the listeners dutifully responded with cries of "Down with the British!" But overall the mood seemed to have been succinctly captured by Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), who, from the safety of his refuge abroad, noted that it was "the saddest Independence Day since our liberation from colonial rule." And while the responsibility for this tragedy reposes primarily with the Mugabe regime, some of the blame must be shared by its enablers abroad.
Op-eds
Hu’s Selling Guns to Africa
In recent years, United States policy makers and analysts as well as American businesses and non-governmental organizations have begun paying closer attention to the already significant – a...
Op-eds
Canadian Tycoon Could Assist In U.N. Probe
Who are the two mysterious high-ranking U.N. officials fingered in one of the latest indictments of the oil-for-food scandal? The indictment, issued last Thursday, doesn't give the...