Sunday, May 18, 2003

Not to worry!
The Sunday Times of South Africa reports that the UN is on the case - Zimbabwe elite 'looted DRC':
Key senior members of the Zimbabwe government are to be investigated by the United Nations for allegedly looting and illegally exploiting natural resources, including a fortune in diamonds, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to UN sources in Nairobi, investigators are to travel to Harare within days, where they will question, among others, the Speaker of the Zimbabwean parliament and former National Security Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa - the man widely tipped as a possible successor to President Robert Mugabe.

Mnangagwa was identified in a UN report on the looting of Congo, released in October last year, as the "key strategist" for the Zimbabwean branch of an elite network that benefited from a variety of criminal activities in Congo, including theft, embezzlement and the diversion of public funds, undervaluation of goods, smuggling, false invoicing, nonpayment of taxes, kickbacks to public officials and outright bribery.
The report was from last October and the "investigators" are showing up now? Another UN snoozer.

Also via the Times, Bobby Mugabe lives it up down south on a road trip to South Africa "to attend a graduation ceremony at Fort Hare University in the Eastern Cape and the funeral of ANC stalwart Walter Sisulu." Aside from the usual conspicuous consumption details of any Mugabe activity, we find:
Mugabe was warmly welcomed to the university by controversial praise singer Jongela Nojozi, who praised him for "chasing the whites" out of Zimbabwe. Mugabe smiled as Nojozi, dressed in furs and skins and wielding a spear, called on him to "please, please chase them from our land".
Nothing like a graduation with a festive air!

It sounds like ole Jongela would have been a less boring choice than Phil Donahue for North Carolina State. And their acts are about the same.