Tsvangirai would be as mad as Bob to stand in these circumstances

South African President Thabo Mbeki, having failed to query how Zanu-PF knew the result of the presidential election a month before the ZEC, and ignored all reports of murder, torture and intimidation which started immediately thereafter — no doubt in anticipation of the run-off Mugabe had decided on — has now advised religious leaders that he is sending a team to investigate the claims of violence being made in Zimbabwe.

This is the same president who urged quiet diplomacy until the world could no longer bear the atrocities and placed it on the Security Council agenda. This is the man who believes in the softly-softly approach until our UN team abandoned all of that in order to side with China.

This is the same president, whose team at the UN could not meet with the MDC representative in New York, but raced across to meet Mugabe who was boycotting a meeting by Southern African “leaders” — I use the word in the broadest possible sense — to try and resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe. Can you imagine the contempt that Mugabe has for these leaders if he can’t even be bothered to attend a summit called to assist his own country?

This is the same president who encouraged “quiet diplomacy” while 85% of Zimbabwe are unemployed, 150 000% inflation exists, there is a life expectancy of around 35 for adults and a quarter of the Zimbabwean population live in exile. This is despite the fact that the overwhelming number of South Africans and Zimbabweans support the end of Mugabe and the introduction of the new, duly elected Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC.

This is the same president who watched as, prior to elections, Mugabe banned overseas observers, only allowed government media, stopped rallies, murdered and tortured his opponents and their supporters, rigged the ballots, arranged the constituencies to suit his party, ensured that only a certain amount of MDC voters would have time to cast their ballot and then lost!!!

Mr President, with millions in exile — they’d rather serve tables or work in gardens than live under Mugabe – with vote rigging and Mugabe’s ZEC counting the votes — the butcher of Zimbabwe still lost! Can you even begin to imagine how much Zimbabweans hate Mugabe, and that under these conditions the ZEC still has had to concede that Mad Bob was beaten.

This is the same president who, post elections, sat back and watched as Mugabe called it a run-off within days of the election but had the ZEC furiously counting votes week after week, immediately began a campaign of murder and intimidation in anticipation of the run-off, boycotted the summit, used South Africa to block UN intervention, used South Africa to import Chinese arms until South African unions told them to sod off, forced thousands more into exile this time via Botswana, arrested his own monitors for not being biased enough, released the result while the ZEC was going through the process of verifying the numbers with parties (staggering!) and now calls for this run-off in conditions more dangerous to Tsvangirai than those prior to elections?

I have a few questions for Mbeki:

Why are you following a line that is totally indefensible and contrary to the wishes of the people of South Africa and Zimbabwe?

How can you ever expect Morgan Tsvangirai to stand in a run-off under these circumstances?

Can South Africans also expect Chinese troops and arms on our streets at some time in the future if party popularity wanes?

Is recolonisation in Africa acceptable if a “liberation leader” invites the colonisers?

When all is said and done, why is South Africa doing the dirty work for Mugabe?

We deserve an explanation as to why this is in the interest of the people of this country.

Why we don’t load-shed in Zimbabwe, route arms and prop up a regime that is costing our country billions in caring for the millions of exiles who cannot bear to live under that tyrant any longer.

Perhaps there is a suitable explanation. I’m sure the whole country would love to hear it.