Zimbabwe Loses

Robert Mugabe got what he wanted. He got to remain in power for as long as he wants because his thugs have created such inhospitable conditions that the opposition leaders are simply too fearful for their own lives to conduct an electoral campaign.

Morgan Tsvangirai threw in the towel today, citing all the violence.

The opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, the standard bearer of the Movement for Democratic Change, said at a news conference in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, that his party was facing a war rather than an election, “and we will not be part of that war.”

A governing party militia blocked his supporters from attending a major rally in Harare on Sunday, the head of an election observer team said. The opposition said rowdy youths, armed with iron bars and sticks, beat up people who had come to cheer for Mr. Tsvangirai.

It was the latest incident in a tumultuous campaign season in which Mr. Tsvangirai has been repeatedly detained, his party’s chief strategist jailed on treason charges that many people consider bogus, and rampant state-sponsored violence has left at least 85 opposition supporters dead and thousands injured, according to tallies by doctors treating the victims.

Mr. Tsvangirai’s decision to quit the race seems intended to force Zimbabwe’s neighbors to take a stand. There are growing cracks in the solidarity that African heads of state have shown for Mr. Mugabe, an 84-year-old liberation hero whose defiant anti-Western rhetoric has long struck a resonant chord in a region with a bitter colonial history.

The South African government has backed Mugabe despite the violence perpetrated against the opposition. The other neighboring countries have been reluctant to pressure Mugabe to accept the results of the elections, which Tsvangirai won, but Mugabe managed to massage the results to require the runoff election that would have been scheduled for this Friday.

Now, Zimbabwe has nothing to look forward to except more of the same destructive policies that have ruined the country's economy and devastated the nation. The rest of the world looks on and no one will lift a finger to save this nation from this brutal thug and his goons.

Mugabe has all but ensured that he will win this election, if it is held through the sheer brutality of crushing the spirit of freedom and opposition to his regime.

UPDATE:
Tsvangirai put his faith in the UN to protect him and to guarantee free and fair elections. Once again, the UN has failed.

So has the African Union, which cannot manage the affairs on the continent with any effect either.

That means that Mugabe the dictator remains in power until such time he is deposed or dies. Let me be clear here. The democracy known as Zimbabwe is no more - Mugabe has total control now, and while I wish someone (the US, UK, or the AU) would pull off a Grenada or Panama operation to depose the dictator Mugabe, one has to wonder if any of the Africans will stand up for the freedoms that were hard won there and around the region. South Africa has stood alongside the dictator - and there's no other word to describe what Mugabe is - he's effectively destroyed the democratic machinery in Zimbabwe.

The other nations of Africa have yet to deal with these issues, and hoping that the old colonialists come in and take on the responsibilities of the Africans themselves is troubling.