President Mbeki

An apology. In the last instalment of these notes, I expressed a fear – close to a prediction – that President Mbeki, as one of the trio of Commonwealth leaders entrusted with the decision on whether to endorse the Zimbabwe elections as free and fair (and if not, whether to suspend Zimbabwe from the association), would resist any formal condemnation of the conduct of the elections and therefore also resist any proposal to suspend Zimbabwe. I’m very glad to have been proved wrong. Two out of the three leaders who made the decision were African leaders (the other was President Obasanjo of Nigeria). Some of us were afraid that this would make it much harder to get a just verdict. In fact, the two-thirds African majority in the troika gave the decision extra weight and authority. We doubters should be hanging our heads.