Peter Oborne

Living in a state of terror

Peter Oborne has just returned from Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe is clinging on to power by starving and terrorising his own people

issue 11 January 2003

THERE has been a row during the last fortnight about whether the government should ban the English cricket team from travelling to Zimbabwe for next month’s World Cup. But the cricket has obscured the real issue. And that is whether Britain and the world community will intervene to stop Robert Mugabe from torturing, terrorising and starving to death the people of Zimbabwe.

I spent two weeks in this beautiful country shortly before Christmas, making a film for Channel 4. We travelled illegally. Dr Mugabe does not want the world to know what he is up to, so he has banned foreign journalists. We posed as golfers, using secret cameras.

We learnt that the famine that looms for eight million Zimbabwean citizens – more than half the population – is no natural disaster. There is indeed a drought. But Mugabe, in an act of pure evil, has taken advantage of this for his own loathsome purposes.

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