African-style disaster
adds a Chinese flavor

Not enough, too weak and too late.

The United Nations does it again and to make it worse, blames the wrong people – those nasty, colonial whites!

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Zimbabwe's government has been conducting a massive campaign of destruction since May 19 – bulldozing and burning more than 250-million homes of the poor, destroying their belongings, and trucking the people to remote rural areas, in mid-winter, to exist in lean-tos and tents. In addition, nearly 40,000 vendors have been arrested or fined, their businesses torched.

It's called Operation Murambatsvina, which means "Clean Out the Filth." President Robert Mugabe calls it "Operation Restore Order," saying it's an urban renewal plan, eliminating black markets which sabotage the economy and removing unsightly illegal houses and businesses.

How's that for using eminent domain?

Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri was more blunt: "We must clean the country of the crawling mass of maggots bent on destroying the economy."

A U.N. report on the situation says the plan is "based on a set of colonial-era laws and policies that were a tool of segregation and social exclusion."

See, it's all the white guy's fault.

In fact, as Rhodesia under British colonial rule, nothing close to this disaster ever took place.

U.N. Special Envoy Anna Tibaijuka spent two weeks in Zimbabwe and issued a 100-page report critical of the government's demolition campaign, calling it a "catastrophic injustice" that "precipitated a humanitarian crisis of immense proportions."

It noted that at least 700,000 people are homeless and another 2.4 million affected by the program. The report called for an immediate end to the campaign and called for massive international aid.

However, Tibaijuka pulled her punches when it came to placing blame. In fact, she says her job wasn't to assess blame and that the focus should be on humanitarian relief. Not a word was said against Mugabe, only that it was done on the advice of some unidentified people. Zimbabwe was urged to prosecute those responsible.

She backed off further at a news conference, suggesting the campaign was done with good intentions and that "when a country tries to clean up cities and put things right, you can unleash the crisis that we are now dealing with in Zimbabwe."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has promised aid.

Uh oh. Watch your wallet!

He also says the people responsible should be held accountable.

I'll bet Mugabe is shaking in his boots.

Zimbabwe is a country brought to its knees by its own president. Robert Mugabe rules with an iron hand, arranges elections, eliminates enemies with torture and worse, controls the police, military and the media, ruins commerce, destroys agriculture, steals private property and kills the owners and the people who work for them, orders the deliberate killing of large game animals – elephants, cheetah, giraffe, zebra and all others, and now the wrecking crews.

That some children and adults were killed in the bulldozing is of no matter to Mugabe because he's also killing by other means – starvation: due to no food, no means to grow it, and no means to earn money to buy it. With triple-digit inflation, currency is virtually worthless and useless, with few shops and no stock. Forget driving, there's no fuel. Forget flying. Fuel shortages grounded the state airline.

At the Group of Eight meeting in Scotland, Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai asked the group to condemn Mugabe for his actions. They didn't. Tony Blair continued his criticism, but was accused by Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi of trying to "hijack the envoy's mission."

Zimbabwe is never denounced by the United Nations for anything.

South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki says "quiet diplomacy" is needed for economic problems, but says nothing about the human destruction. He's considering a financial bailout for Mugabe.

It's nice to have friends in high places.

None of this happened overnight, but it began as soon as Mugabe took office in 1980. It took time, after all, to destroy the thriving infrastructure the Brits put into place. But Mugabe did it. Over time, many whites and educated blacks left. Those who stayed hoped it couldn't get that bad. It has.

When the government moved onto the white-owned farms in 1999, under the pretense of sharing the land with the poor, it was the beginning of the end. The white farmers were beaten, raped, tortured and killed, as were blacks who worked for them. They were regarded as traitors. Farm animals were slaughtered, land savaged, homes and buildings burned and the land handed out to the poor.

Well, actually, not all of it. Choice properties were divvied up among Mugabe's cronies and distributed to others like Libya's Gadhafi for training bases.

For the "newly propertied," the situation was ludicrous. They had destroyed land, no buildings, no tools, no animals, and not a clue how to farm.

Then, in May 2005, Mugabe implemented his "elimination of poverty" or, in his poetic words, "Clean Out The Filth." Once the hovels are gone, the people are transported to the country and left, homeless, foodless, jobless – hopeless.

The U.N. report meant nothing. Barely was it released than armed riot police and young thugs rounded up homeless people who had sought refuge in churches. In one city alone, 17 churches were cleared out, the adults and children trucked to a "transit camp" (a former, white-owned farm) and then taken – somewhere.

And where was President Mugabe during this? Why, on a diplomatic trip to China, to negotiate a financial deal for economic help in exchange for resources and trade. It's especially nice since Beijing promises not to interfere in Zimbabwe's "internal affairs."

It's nice to have friends in high places.