The world's business

Boston Globe ^ | August 25, 2002 | staff

[Cincinatus' Wife]

THE WORLD SUMMIT on sustainable development that gets underway this week in Johannesburg has a sprawling agenda, encompassing food security, water shortages, global warming, population growth, economic inequality, health care, free trade and debt relief for developing nations. It is hard to see how a workable plan of action can ever be achieved in 10 days, even with over 100 heads of state attending - President Bush emphatically not among them. Still, these are problems that defy national boundaries; it is obvious that the solutions also will require global reach.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

South Africa is hosting this summit, however, president Thabo Mbeki does not feel the need to condemn Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe. Instead they have an agreement that South Africans owning farms in Zimbabwe will not be evicted. Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo doesn't denounce Mugabe's political cleansing either. Not many African leaders or LIBERAL activists do. Why is that?

Mugabe - Zimbabwe

Electronic Telegraph Mugabe men 'use rape as revenge' [Full Text] Hundreds of girls as young as 12 are being raped or forcibly kept as concubines in rural Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe's youth militia as part of a campaign that human-rights lawyers have branded "systematic political cleansing" of the population.

A Rape victim in Mutare

"They are raping on a massive scale," said Frances Lovemore, a counsellor at the Harare-based Amani Trust which monitors torture. "Girls as young as 12 or 13 are being systematically taken and used and abused because of their families' political views."

The organisation is compiling video evidence that it hopes to use to help to bring Mr Mugabe to trial at the international court of human rights. An investigation by The Telegraph found that rape camps had been set up for youth militia and riot police in rural areas.

Victims living in hiding related how they had been gang-raped by police and self-styled war veterans, and had their genitals burnt with iron rods. They said that they had been abused in revenge for their parents not supporting Mr Mugabe, 78, in the presidential poll in March.

Other opponents of the government were badly beaten. As a final indignity, in a land where half the population is on the verge of starvation, victims claimed that militia members often urinated on the family food.

A former militia member recounted how he and others were instructed to attack wives and daughters of opposition sympathisers.

Human rights activists believe that this is part of a programme to drive out, kill or terrify into submission all those who oppose the president. Didymus Mutasa, the of Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF, has even spoken of halving the population to six million.

Details of the violence have emerged as world attention focuses on Mr Mugabe's campaign to evict white farmers while famine threatens.

Critics say the land reform programme is a cover for his war on opposition. "This isn't about race or land, it's about a political tyrant who wants to kill, break down and cripple all opposition," said Roy Bennett, a farmer who is an MP in Manicaland, eastern Zimbabwe, for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. [End]

Mugabe poisons the wells (SPOT ON, MR. PRESIDENT)***This outburst of anger from Washington is hardly surprising. President Bush has an agenda for Africa which Mugabe's conduct is making ever harder to implement. The only nations that can deal effectively with someone such as Mugabe are African nations. For deep-seated reasons they are reluctant to condemn him.

South Africa's government, in particular, seems unwilling to lift a finger to check Mugabe's inhuman conduct against his own people. Observing this, much of the world is running out of sympathy for the continent. That great emotional stream that poured help into Africa at the time of the Ethiopian famine in 1984-85 has dried up. Some of the charities that serve Africa are finding it hard to attract public sympathy. In short, Mugabe is poisoning the wells of goodwill. He has not only ruined his own country but is on the way to turning much of the world against Africa. America shows us she has a firmer grasp of that sad truth than we do.***

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!