Fleeing from Zimbabwe

In the NYT today:

Human Wave Flees Violence in Zimbabwe

She said she had seen gangs loyal to Zimbabwe’s longtime president, Robert Mugabe, beating people — some to death — in the dusty roads of her village. She said Mugabe loyalists were sweeping the countryside with chunks of wood in their hands, demanding to see party identification cards and methodically hunting down opposition supporters.

She was among the latest desperate arrivals in what South Africa’s biggest daily newspaper is calling “Mugabe’s Tsunami,” a wave of more than 1,000 people every day who are fleeing Zimbabwe across the Limpopo to escape into South Africa.

I can’t think of a single black country that isn’t a failed state. Whites keep getting blamed for colonialism and granted they’ve been a rapacious lot, but I can’t help thinking colonial Africa was better for Africans than what they have now. And it isn’t even as if Africa was a peaceful place before Europeans turned up: they’ve been in a state of low-intensity warfare for untold centuries. With regard to Zimbabwe, a crack team of mercenaries could probably restore at least temporary order to the country (along the lines of Frederick Forsythe’s “The Dogs of War.”)

 

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