My wife, via her Zimbabwean network of friends over email, sent me a link to this article earlier today. I’m sure there are worse stories about corruption, violence, and the dehumanizing of humans in Africa, but this one’s near the top. And it’s only now just getting underway in my favorite of places.
His Excellency was perspiring, even though there was frost on the ground. In the palatial gardens of State House, the oak-panelled home of former British colonial rulers, Robert Mugabe’s face glistened with sweat as he was declared President of the Republic of Zimbabwe. He pulled at his cuffs and glanced over his shoulder.
After 28 years of bloody rule — and two hours before the election results were announced ‘live’ on state-controlled TV — Mugabe appeared anxious as he was sworn in for a record sixth term this week. His opponents had been killed or forced at gunpoint to vote in rigged elections.
Yet it wasn’t the international outcry over this that worried him. No, beneath the megalomania, what he must know is that he has already lost power, not to the persecuted opposition Movement for Democrat Change (MDC), but to a bloody — and secret — cabal.
The rest of the story is shocking, graphic, and so goddamned hard to believe. Read The Dirty Half-Dozen: The generals who are even more ruthless and bloodthirsty than Mugabe at the UK’s Daily Mail Online.
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