Even as some observers find rays of hope in Zimbabwe’s new coalition government, which took power yesterday, yet another bizarre story plays out that makes one wonder just how earnest Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF are about sharing with the Movement for Democratic Change.
Last week Zimbabwean police arrested an MDC official, Roy Bennett, on gun charges. Bennett is a white farmer and outspoken critic of Mugabe’s regime whom MDC Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has pegged as the country’s new Deputy Minister of Agriculture. Bennett has subsequently been charged with terrorism, which by most all accounts seems absurd, a clear form of government-by-vendetta that has become standard in the last decade and that also reveals the extent of ZANU-PF bad faith that lies beneath the patina of the coalition.
Oh, and perhaps apropos of nothing, but possibly apropos of everything, Robert Mugabe is reported to have purchased a $5 million (US dollars, natch) home in Hong Kong recently.