A Study in Megalomania

Christina Lamb provides a chilling look at the despotic misrule of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe in today's Sunday Times.

ZIMBABWE has the highest inflation and lowest life expectancy in the world, not to mention the highest percentage of orphans. So desperate is the shortage of food that President Robert Mugabe’s own guards have been spotted shooting squirrels in Harare’s Botanical Gardens.

However, Mugabe, 82, may be rewarded by being made president for life at his party’s annual conference this week.

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Ms. Lamb describes what happens to those who object to this state of affairs:

Anyone who dares to complain about the situation risks being beaten or arrested. The government is also attempting to block access to outside media by confiscating shortwave radios in rural areas in a crackdown that started this month. Wind-up and solar-powered radios were distributed by non- governmental organisations to give people access to broadcasters such as the BBC.

According to Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for one faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, its offices have been inundated with complaints from people who have had their radios seized.

Members of so-called listening clubs, which meet to listen to news on shared radios, have been threatened and told they are “selling out the country” by listening to “foreign” broadcasts.