Chicago Tribune - August 4, 2001

One-fourth of the population is infected with HIV. Some 500,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS.

Drivers sit in long lines to purchase rationed gasoline. Corn, formerly a major export, is in short supply. Construction projects abandoned by overseas investors stand frozen in place.

President Robert Mugabe's response to all this misery is to point blame elsewhere, particularly at white farmers. Whites comprise less than 1 percent of the country's population of 12 million, but own half of its arable land. Yet, for all his threats, Mugabe has avoided land reforms--outside of encouraging mob action against white farmers. He would rather have the scapegoats.

Once the world had reason to have higher hopes for Mugabe. He reached out to his country's white minority and presented a mostly pragmatic image to the world after Zimbabwe succeeded the breakaway British colony of Rhodesia in 1980, and Mugabe took over from Ian Smith's white-minority government.

But post-apartheid South Africa under Nelson Mandela's wise leadership drew investments and attention away from Mugabe in the 1990s. As Mugabe has become more isolated, he has turned to his rogues gallery of friends, including Moammar Gadhafi, who recently came roaring into oil-starved Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, in a gas-guzzling 100-car motorcade.

Is it too optimistic to think that Mugabe's reign could end in the near future? Mugabe suffered a serious political setback in elections last year, when he barely held on to a legislative majority. A coalition of unions, church groups and farmers called the MDC won 57 of 120 contested seats in that election, and poses an unprecedented threat to his chances for re-election in 2002.

This has made Mugabe more stubborn, even more tyrannical. South Africa, which fears an influx of refugees spilling out of an unstable Zimbabwe, has urged America, Britain and the IMF to lend a hand to ease Zimbabwe's shortages of goods and to promote land reform. Unfortunately, that might also help to promote Mugabe.

Mugabe could have learned a great deal from Mandela about human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law. Instead, he seems to have become more determined to rule by violence and intimidation and hope that no one outside Zimbabwe pays serious attention to his abuses of his own people.

He's worked that ploy before. Three years after taking power, he launched his 5th Brigade, trained by North Korea, ostensibly to quell rioting in the territory of his principal rival. More than 10,000 of the minority Ndebele tribe were slaughtered while the world looked away.

The world is looking now. During his trip to Africa in May, Secretary of State Colin Powell was sharply critical of Mugabe's tactics and signaled that it was time for the leader to step aside. It can't happen soon enough.

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