That said, it would be an almost impossible task for the opposition to pull the country back to anything like normality, given the sheer thoroughness and consistency with which Mugabe and his henchmen have wrought havoc in Zimbabwe; there's something to be said, one may suppose, for making such a mess of things that no one else can ever put it right (maybe there's a lesson here for UK...)
Well quite. But even given the normal dehistoricisation of reporting these days (see Kenya), I've been surprised at the extent to which the UK media have been treating Zimbabwe's problems as something completely down to 'evil' Mugabe and his 'henchmen', as if our interference in the country was a distant-past issue. When the New Labour government came to power it quickly removed itself from any remaning obligation to 'put right' Zimbabwe and assist in the massively delayed land reform process (at this point, whites represented about 1% of the population and still owned 70% of the land). In a letter to Zimbabwe's agriculture minister, Clare Short stated that she "should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not colonisers."
The amounts of money necessary to facilitate the redistribution were back-of-the-sofa sized, so Short allowed herself to be a little less frank in saying that "[ i]f we look to the present, a number of specific issues are unresolved, including the way in which land would be acquired and compensation paid - clearly it would not help the poor of Zimbabwe if it was done in a way which undermined investor confidence." Mugabe was unwilling to sell off the country (a reason he still enjoys a certain amount of popular support, despite his abuses) and Zimbabweans have been made to pay for it since, probably now with a civil war. We should be so proud.
