A tyrant dishonoured

Robert Mugabe made the transition from freedom fighter to tyrant almost a quarter of a century ago. He has been the diplomatic equivalent of the rogue elephant in the corner of the Foreign Office reception room ever since. Successive British governments (including Tony Blair last week) have largely side-stepped the issue, some to avoid offending South Africa and strategic or economic allies and others in a desperate effort to maintain their own impeccable, non-racist, PC credentials. Now Edinburgh University has taken the lead in belatedly stripping the dictator of the honorary degree it conferred on him 23 years ago for services to education in Africa. Education for his own citizens has come at a heavy price. The ordinary people are starving. Even the army, on whose bayonets his throne rests, is on short rations and increasingly restive. Inflation is approaching 3700%. What was once the breadbasket of southern Africa is a wasteland populated by subsistence-level squatters. The white farmers, most of whom were born in Zimbabwe and many of whom were third-generation Africans, are disenfranchised and landless. It was their industry which formerly provided the country with a food surplus for export.