Zimbabwe

[Cattach]

Is it about time that our soldiers were re-directed to this hell-hole of a nation. Mugabe and his cohorts need to be dealt with by our forces in a fight for freedom and humanity as soon as possible but will it happen unless they discover oil?

Dreadful regime but the last thing needed is to get militarily involved. All of Africa and many other countries too would see it as the Colonials back in town and the reaction against Britain would be horrific.

[Kenn]

There are numerous complex reasons as to why Mugabe has managed to cling onto power not least that he was once respected by those other african nations seeking independence from various colonial powers to whom he gave considerable help.This seems to be on the wane as those people start to realise that they have moved on and he has turned to repression and downright thuggery.
There is also the possibility that there could be another blood bath between the main tribal groups within the country, he has comitted mass murder before and no doubt would not hesitate to commit the same crime again.
He also has hold on the judiciary,police and army again achieved by very dubious ways.
Zimbabwe may not have oil but it does have considerable other mineral wealth most of which is sold through the various multi-national companies in South Africa.This would make big business in that country very reluctant to support any moves by their government to denounce him.
The only way he could be got rid of is if The League of african Nations sees fit either to find him an exit route or to intervene on humanitarian grounds, if The West were to even attempt to do any thing he would have the immediate propoganda that The Imperialists are trying to re-introduce colonialism.
I am not in any way defending him , he has to be one of the most evil men ever to tread this earth in his latter years and I for one would be delighted to see him gone.

[olivia]

I was listening to Radio 4 this morning and if I remember it correctly they were saying Mugabe had tried to step down once before but the leaders of the military wanted him to stay in power. It got me thinking that maybe he is now becoming a puppet dictator and may not be able to step down very easily even if he wanted to - after all his cronies would probably all lose their nice cushy little jobs wouldn't they if the other lot got into power?

[Kevin Milkins]

Dreadful regime but the last thing needed is to get militarily involved. All of Africa and many other countries too would see it as the Colonials back in town and the reaction against Britain would be horrific.

All is not well in the world at the moment, and thats for sure.
We could send our troups of much respected soldiers into war zones in many parts of the world to sort out all sorts of problems.
We are not doing so clever in this country just now and Gordon Brown ,our un-elected prime minister is under a bit of pressure to come up with some ideas to drag us out of the mire.
What if Germany or Russia saw our plight and decided to save us?

[oldmarine]

Seems to be quite a mess there.

[TBH]

Democracy is failing in Zimbabwe, it is the duty of the UN to stop this. Then again, seeing their failure to act in Rwanda there's not much chance of that happening.

[teenybash]

This morning I recieved and email showing the exterior and interior of Robert Mugabes house.
Luxurious, opulence are not adequate to descibe this dictators life style and surroundings.....surely the world cannot stand by and allow this narcisstic pyschopath to continue his reign of terror.
If anyone knows of a way to get the pictures from the email onto the org let me know and you can all see for yourselves....it is disgusting.......

[oldmarine]

I'm not convinced that anything much would change if Mugabe was taken out of the equation.

I'm more inclined to think that it is the military who are in power, with Mugabe their figurehead..........and removing him would only change the figurehead but not the underlying control.

If you were a turkey, would you be voting for Christmas...........so what makes anyone think that the military would be prepared to allow free and fair elections at any time?

The above smacks of a possible problem if Mugabe is taken out.

[Kenn]

TBH, democracy is not failing in Zimbabwe it has totally collapsed.
The rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer and have fled this opressive regime in their millions.
The country was still working albeit via the black market but with the new crisis and the road blocks that have been set up over the last couple of weeks, even getting to your place of work is now nigh on impossible and with the workers not being able to get there it will leave the businesses wide open to looting and destruction.
From what I hear, most people are holed up in their homes or have fled to the country as the place descends into even greater chaos.