Opponents of the thuggish dictatorship of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe often looked to the South African example for signs of hope.
"In the dying days of white rule in South Africa," The Economist once observed, "painters formed Artists Against Apartheid, and published a book of their work. An old copy was on sale in a Harare shop recently. Who had agreed to pen the introduction, fulminate against repression and praise the painters? Robert Gabriel Mugabe."
[In 2002, those who "insulted the army" in Congo faced the death penalty. In Angola, it was an offence to "slander the memory of the dead," and for those charged with defaming the Mozambican president, "truth is not a defence"... The Economist once proposed sending tyrants to a remote island. "It is not just the thought that each other's company might provide a punishment of kinds to those, say, who now tyrannise Cuba, Iraq, North Korea and Zimbabwe. It is also the belief that at least some of those rulers would slink off if they were guaranteed immunity from prosecution, plus a lifetime supply of gin and tonic..." Its proposed name for the island? "Despotamia"!]
Sources
The Economist, Nov. 6th, 2003
