Open season on Obasanjo

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THE INSIDE VIEW

As Zimbabwe’s political agony drags on, newspapers and TV networks have started asking whether the story is worth the top news slots it occupies. Some papers are inclined to dismiss it as a story in the dying embers of the British empire; several US newsrooms take a similar view despite President Bush’s decision to put Mugabe on his revised ‘axis of evil’, along with Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, which is seen as a badge of honour at Harare’s State House. It is true that Zimbabwe’s politics are viewed through the distorting lenses of domestic politics in Britain and South Africa but that does not diminish the story’s significance. Political parties in London and Pretoria have postured instead of producing credible policies. We reporters should have been less indulgent towards those hollow professions of concern for Zimbabwe’s 13 million people. Now they are being visited again by organised political violence on top of an imploding economy. The nub of the story is that conditions in a country can continue to deteriorate as the hand wringing continues, showing up the impotence of the regional and international organisations. Meanwhile, a less headline-grabbing story is emerging from underneath the rubble: how to rebuild a free Zimbabwe 30 years after the first attempt. Let’s hope it attracts as much capital as the politics have prompted headlines.