Mugabe-Phobia

Yes, that phrase has actually been used.

John Simpson Swoons.

Is it me or does John Simpson come across as being just a little bit too enthusiastic about Robert Mugabe:

Back in March, when the first round of voting took place, he was humiliated by being beaten into second place in the presidential race, and by losing the parliamentary election outright.

Now he's the sole effective candidate in Friday's presidential run-off, and he cannot fail to win with an overwhelming majority.

His opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, has been completely . The outside world, which mostly sympathises with him, can do nothing whatever to help him.

'When someone with the power of the Zimbabwean state at their disposal uses it to simply brutalise the opposition then 'outmanoeuvred' is hardly the right phrase. The 'victory' isn't a testament to Mugabe's cunning, given the massive odds in his favour it is hard to imagine how he could have done worse than losing control of parliament, pushing even his African co-leaders into condemning him and having to admit to losing the first round of voting.

Update: Daniel Finkelstein noticed the same report and also found it sinister.

The Enchanting Robert Mugabe,

In an interview in the Sunday Telegraph, luvvie king Richard Attenborough says:

I wonder, though, whether he still has kind things to say about Robert Mugabe, who visited the set regularly when he was making his film Cry Freedom, about the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. 'I thought Mugabe was the cat's whiskers at the time. We would go to his house and drink tea out of bone china with him and his wife, Sally. They were an enchanting couple. He said that the future of Zimbabwe was in this film, that the whole concept of a dual relationship between black and white was an absolute prerequisite. Then Sally died and I think this drove him insane. I think he went mad, turned into a bastard. A shit. That's my superficial reading of the situation.'

Cry Freedom came out in 1987 so was probably filmed in 1986. This was slap bang in the middle of Robert Mugabe's campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Matabeleland. Attenborough too busy filming a denunciation of racial oppression to notice that his 'enchanting' host was busy oppressing racial minorities as he filmed.