Not cricket

English politicians talk about Zimbabwe much like ex drug addicts talk about their friends who fail rehab. They know their perspective might be flawed, but guilt keeps them involved. Recently, the BBC has featured many black Africans denouncing Mugabe and his self election. This feels better. (Actually asking Africans about Africa is a fairly novel approach, but I'm sure it won't last.)

Mugabe is in fact repeating himself. In the 1980's, his army killed upwards of 20,000 civilians just to destroy Joshua Nkomo and his tribal influence and thus maintain a one party state. He has never been much of a democrat.

You would think that this fairly obvious historical pattern would be picked up on, but the media seem not to dwell on it. In fact, until the attacks on white farmers, Zimbabwe was held up as a shining example of economic prosperity. In short, given a few years, outsiders will forget about the mass murder of Africans if the economy is healthy and Communists are controlled. This is the secret that the continents dictators have used for years.

Nobody dares look too closely at Morgan Tsvangirai in case a simple "regime change" scenario may look less than fantastic. I'm sure he is a great guy, but I'm certain that if he needs the West to help him topple Mugabe then things will be bad for a long time.

There are no shortage of other great initiatives being suggested. "Why doesn't South Africa just turn off the power supply?" is as daft as it is ugly. Perhaps the French should have considered doing that to Britain when they lost the Olympic bid to London. Refusing Mugabe "access to his money" and "access to medical care" sound sharper, but depend on the dictators lack of foresight.

If Mugabe had simply done the usual trick of delaying an election forever, the West would have taken far longer to focus. As it is, we have our noses up against the glass but can't figure out whether to break it or not.

Sadly there are probably many people in the area who are hoping for the West, perhaps even Britain, to help them. Maybe when they see that our idea of help is to take away Mugabe's knighthood and stop the cricket team from coming over, they may figure out that they are better off doing the job themselves.