Zimbabwe

The day I awoke my inner predator

Gweru on the central Highveld of Zimbabwe used to be called Gwelo when I was there as a boy but seemed otherwise largely unchanged when we passed through a couple of weeks ago. Sleepy, laid-back: a petrol station, a few stores and a scattering of offices and little townships of bungalows on the main tarred road between Harare and Bulawayo. Less in Zimbabwe has changed than people think. We were on our way, though, to a place that was certainly new to me: Antelope Park, a lush, green riverside encampment at the end of a long dusty road out of Gweru. At Antelope Park you can walk with lions. I

From the archives: Mugabe’s rise to power

A strange sort of anniversary, but an anniversary nonetheless: it is 31 years, to the day, since Robert Mugabe took power in Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia as it was still called. In which case, here is The Spectator’s leading article from the time. It is, for the large part, a good demonstration of the benefits conferred by hindsight. But its caginess about Mugabe is apparent in such observations as, “It is up to Mr Mugabe whether he leads his country into yet another black tyranny, corrupt and inefficient, or whether he builds on what has already been built.” Mugabe, it seems, made his mind up on that one some time ago.

The Feeble Mugabe Gotcha

Step forward the FT’s Jim Pickard: Some sceptics have often asked why Tony Blair was happy to help rid the world of some dictators and not others. The example most often cited is that of Robert Mugabe, who could have been deposed with even less effort than Saddam Hussein. Blair tries to justify the contradiction in his book, far from convincingly. “You need to ask if such action is feasible and practical. People often used to say to me: If you got rid of the gangsters in Sierra Leone, Milosevic, the Taliban and Saddam, why can’t you get rid of Mugabe? The answer is: I would have loved to; but