Ronald Reagan once quipped - he always had good writers -- that the eleventh commandment of politics is "Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican." A similar law operates with even more urgency in the continental affairs of Africa. It could not have been easy then for Nelson Mandela, Africa's most respected statesman, to speak ill of Robert Mugabe. It is sort of like airing one's family's dirty laundry in public. But Mugabe's Zimbabwe, which began perhaps with the best of intentions, has veered, horribly, into what can only be properly construed as a nightmarish thugocracy. And when so many lives are at stake, as in the case of AIDS, one must speak frankly, customs notwithstanding.

You know your regime is in bad shape when veteran diplomats like Kofi Annan and the current UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, men who speak in profoundly guarded sentences, toss around words like "basket case." There is no other way to describe Mugabe's Zimbabwe, broken after 28 years of misrule. Tomorrow's runoff election will be a sham wholly without any semblance of legitimacy. Mugabe's opponent, the noble Morgan Tsvangirai, has withdrawn from the election citing thug violence against his supporters agitated, of course, by the reigning Zimbabwean strongman. The AIDS rate in Zimbabwe is a mind blowing 40%. In the wake of this electoral instability NGO's working in the HIV/AIDS sector have been prevented from providing care to those that need it most.

Now, how about some good news? Zimbabwe, though clearly sick, is in the hour of the wolf. And Nelson Mandela's public rebuke seems to be a tipping point, the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak. Observes The Financial Times, albeit at a distance:

"Something is stirring in Africa. Belatedly, often reluctantly, its leaders are speaking out on Zimbabwe. The rogue president in their ranks, they are coming to realize, poses a threat with the potential to destabilize their fragile continent, already caught in a growing storm.

"...The causes are complex, the faults not exclusively Africa's. Yet far from rising to the challenges, the region's leaders have seemed incapable of the co-ordinated response the crisis needs.

"But change may be under way. In Rwanda, President Paul Kagame is among the first to raise his head above the parapet, joining Botswana's Ian Khama and Zambia's Levy Mwanawasa in a growing band of African leaders who are prepared to condemn a tyrant."

Because of the still sore wounds of colonialism - and the anti-imperial rhetoric of the strongman - Mugabe's Zimbabwe is a problem that can only be solved by the governments on the continent. Western involvement in, say, an illadvised overthrow of Robert Mugabe would only feed into his diseased narrative of colonial power and Western interference as being at the root of Zimbabwe's sickness. Any such maneuver would only strengthen Mugabe's already weak hand. Nelson Mandela's public statements, however, have begun a dialogue about the fire in the kitchen that Africans have been avoiding for quite some time. And that, dear reader, is a good thing.

[Image: Mail and Guardian]