The first is from a former countryman :

Zimbabwe's Ahab
Robert Mugabe, poised to steal another election, has led his nation to ruin.
By Peter Godwin
March 25, 2008

Once it was Africa's shining city on a hill, a beacon of prosperity and economic growth in the gloom of a continent shrouded by poverty. Emerging in 1980 from a seven-year civil war against white settler rule, the newly independent nation of Zimbabwe embraced racial reconciliation and invited the country's whites (one in 20 of the population) to remain and contribute to the new nation.

I was one of those who gladly dismissed Rhodesia and became Zimbabwean. Upon the firm economic infrastructure he had inherited, Robert Mugabe, our first black leader, built a health and educational system that was the envy of Africa. Zimbabwe became the continent's most literate country, with its highest per capita income. Zimbabwe easily fed itself and had plenty left over to export to its famine-prone neighbors.

I remember crisscrossing the continent then as Africa correspondent for a British newspaper, and each time I returned to the newly renamed capital of Harare (previously it had been Salisbury), I was reminded that in comparison to what surrounded it, Zimbabwe was like Switzerland. The roads were well maintained, the elevators worked, electricity was constant, you could drink the water, the steaks were world-renowned. The Zimbabwe dollar was at near parity with its American namesake.
I can certainly echo that description in 1984--with the caveat that by then the civil war between the Shona and N'Debele was already in play in Bulawayo. Harare was to me after a year in Khartoum and trips to Zaire, Somalia, and Chad among other places remarkable. It even outshown Nairobi--which had not yet become Nairobbery as we called it by the mid-90s.

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Robert Mugabe: a bad man in Africa
New strategies must be found urgently to end the tyranny of Zimbabwe's leader

For a man so deluded about his past achievements, Robert Mugabe has a painfully clear understanding of his prospects at the polls. His rivals for the Zimbabwean presidency “may win some seats”, he said recently, “but they cannot win the majority. Impossible.”

Few would gainsay him. Zimbabwe's opposition movement is more vocal than in past years, but more divided. Its voters can expect systematic intimidation this Saturday from police at polling stations. Constituencies have been redrawn in favour of the ruling Zanu (PF) party. The count has been centralised and will be supervised behind closed doors by presidential appointees. There is not even a pretence of fair election coverage in the state media, and in any case voting, for millions, will take second place to the more urgent business of survival. This is why Mr Mugabe's election forecast is likely to be accurate. It is a tragedy for Zimbabweans; it is also proof of a colossal failure of international diplomacy.
And this one is on the mark as well. The African community of states has often pointed to colonialism as the root of all evil on the continent, an understandable but nonetheless mythological claim often echoed by Western scholarship. Colonialism did affect the continent; in may ways it was devastating. In others, it was progressive in that it pulled the continent into the 20th century. But it was not as it is often claimed "the original sin" from which all African woes grow. The African community has not done itself proud in sillently watching the travesty in Zimbabwe.

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Politics and power in Zimbabwe
By Robert I. Rotberg
March 26, 2008

THIS WEEKEND President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is expected once again to rig elections in order to hold onto power while neighboring Botswana, Africa's oasis of peace and good governance, will celebrate the retirement of President Festus Mogae after two productive terms. The contrast between Botswana and Zimbabwe could not be more stark, or more illustrative of good and evil in Africa.

Botswana, one of Africa's wealthiest countries per capita thanks to diamonds, tourism, and sensible management, has enjoyed more than four decades of honest, practical government under three popular presidents. On Monday, Mogae will give way to Vice President Ian Khama.

Guided by Mogae and two other democratic presidents, the small country has flourished and become the envy of all of Africa. Despite high HIV/AIDS numbers, its hospitals and clinics provide retroviral drugs to all sufferers. Its schools and universities provide increasing numbers of local and neighboring peoples with instruction.
As for Botswana, its success story lies in its continued accptance of whites in government and the economy. No doubt that continued happy relationship has survived because the country did not go through a civil war to achieve independence. Rather it was a gradual and guided process to independence unmatched on the continent.

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Tom