The latest news from Zimbabwe suggests that the situation there is going to become even nastier. First, there was the astounding statement last week from Robert Mugabe that the country’s cholera epidemic was under control — a statement clearly untrue given all the aid agency reports to the contrary. The UN has since confirmed that over 18,000 people are now infected and that nearly 1,000 have died. Then came the astounding allegation from the country’s information minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, that the outbreak was a calculated “genocidal onslaught” by the country’s former colonial power, the UK. The British government intended to use the epidemic as an excuse to invade, he said. The claims pouring out of the regime in the past week were that not only the UK but France, indeed the whole EU, as well as the US, were involved in an invasion plot — with the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera in it as well. These are beyond far-fetched. The EU has never invaded anyone; it does not have any military policies. It is not going to start with Zimbabwe. As for the idea that Al Jazeera is in a political plot with London and Washington, it is laughable.
But this is not the last stage of paranoia. There is a much more sinister game being played. That can be seen in the reports coming out of Zimbabwe during the last couple of days. First, there was the accusation that Botswana was plotting to overthrow it. Then came the charge that the opposition was training for a coup. Now there is the report that the air force chief was hurt in an assassination attempt. It all fits a pattern. Having created the myth of an impending invasion aided by a fifth column, the bankrupt regime (bankrupt in all senses) intends to accuse the opposition of treason and arrest its members.
Given the lies that have flowed from the regime, even the report about attack on the air force chief, Perence Shiri, cannot be taken at face value. While there are probably many with a grudge against him — he is accused of having organized attacks on the opposition earlier this year and of masterminding the slaughter of 20,000 people in the country’s Matabeleland region in the 1980s — the attack on him, if it happened at all, could equally have been an attempted robbery. What is clear is that the regime is using the story to the full to prop up the claim that there is a military threat.
Dr. Johnson never heard of Zimbabwe or Robert Mugabe. But he would have immediately recognized present events there as a classic case of his often inaccurately used observation that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel: Mugabe is trying to use patriotism to save himself. It will not work. Nothing lasts forever. A state of emergency may well come in the next few days, with opposition member arrested. But, nasty though events may turn, the regime will go — and sooner than people think. Mugabe’s manic desperation indicates the end is near. But if this next stage is brutal, the final act may well prove bloody for Mugabe and his associates.
They would do well to remember what happened to Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu.
