OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: Mugabe Comes Out of Dictator's -- and Racist's -- Closet

Prime Minister Raila Odinga of Kenya, among Mugabe's most vocal critics on the continent -- and whose own rise to power earlier this year came about as a result of a power-sharing compromise with President Mwai Kibaki that ended weeks of violence following a disputed presidential election -- called on the African Union to send troops into Zimbabwe and labeled Mugabe "a shame to Africa."

Mugabe Spokesman to West: 'Go Hang Yourselves'

New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Sunday the African Union will lose credibility if it fails to isolate Mugabe. "African states should impose sanctions against Robert Mugabe and his illegitimate government in Zimbabwe after the sham presidential runoff," the organization said in a statement.

In Washington, President Bush said Saturday the United States was working on ways to further punish Mugabe and his allies. That could mean steps against his government as well as additional restrictions on the travel and financial activities of Mugabe supporters.

Bush also said he wants the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe as well as travel bans on Zimbabwean government officials. The U.S. plans to introduce a resolution in the council this coming week, but China -- which has veto power -- declined to either support it or oppose it.

For their part, Russia, which also has veto power, and South Africa, which doesn't, have said the situation is an internal matter. Chambara rejected criticism of the election, telling reporters that the West could "go hang a thousand times."

A Major Embarrassment for South Africa's Lame-Duck President Mbeki

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the regionally-appointed mediator for Zimbabwe, has worked for a negotiated solution in the country but has seen his own stature sink rapidly as he faced calls by Tsvangirai for him to be removed from his mediation post over his policy of quiet diplomacy -- ironically, the very same policy that in the 1980s brought discredit to the United States in its dealings with South Africa's former apartheid regime.

At his swearing-in ceremony, Mugabe lavished praise on Mbeki -- a deeply unpopular "lame duck" who has less than a year remaining in his tenure as president of South Africa and who already has lost control of his own ruling African National Congress party -- with Mugabe saying Zimbabwe was "indebted to his [Mbeki's] untiring efforts to promote harmony and peace."

Meanwhile, Mbeki's predecessor, Nelson Mandela, in a stunning indictment of his old friend Mugabe, lamented at what he called " the tragic failure of leadership in our neighboring Zimbabwe." Speaking Wednesday in London at a lavish dinner celebrating his 90th birthday, Mandela's comment was as much a slap at Mbeki's quiet diplomacy as it was about Mugabe's dictatorship.

It's Time to Say It: Zimbabwe Is Ruled By a Racist Dictator

Mugabe had declared opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai a puppet of former colonial power Britain and of wealthy whites. In a comment that can only be interpreted as a racist diatribe, Mugabe vowed that Zimbabwe "shall not again come under the rule and control of the white man, direct or indirect. Never, ever"-- even vowing to plunge the country into an all-out civil war to stay in power had he lost Friday's run-off election.

Yes, this blogger -- an African-American -- is saying it openly and clearly: Robert Mugabe is a racist. A black racist. Whereas other African freedom-fighters against European colonial rule and later white-minority rule in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe were seeking self-determination for the black African peoples in those three countries, Mugabe was -- and remains -- driven by something else: A deep-seeded hatred of whites and of anyone else he perceived as aiding and abetting whites, such as Tsvangirai.

In that regard, Mugabe -- who in recent years has even sported a moustache eerily reminiscent of Adolf Hitler's -- has more in common with the racist white-minority regimes of Ian Smith in the former Rhodesia that Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Popular Front ousted from power in 1980 and of P.W. Botha in South Africa. Mugabe is as contemptuous of white people as Smith and Botha were of blacks.

It is Mugabe's racist tunnel vision that colors everything he and his regime does and lies at the heart of his defiance of world opinion -- especially of the West. That Mugabe's attitude is shaped by his hatred toward whites has been made over and over again in his 28 years in power.

He has frequently portrayed Tsvangirai as a puppet of former colonial power Britain and wealthy whites, thousands of whom lost their land when he launched a controversial program of farm expropriations at the turn of the decade.

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