News from Zimbabwe

The election troubles in Zimbabwe continue to mount- the MDC has pulled out of the election following arrests of their supporters and violence in Harare leading up to the run-off election. And now, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has taken refuge in the Dutch Embassy to consider his next moves and hopefully protect himself from being arrested by pro-government, pro-Mugabe forces.

I have a bad feeling about all of this, that's it not going to end well at all. I was thrilled beyond belief when the MDC forced a run-off election and it was actually done despite some fairly blatant attempts at government forces to rig some of the results. With the writing on the wall, Mugabe and the MDC both decided to gear up for the run-off, but having been caught out once, Mugabe wasn't going to be caught out again. Violence erupted and now it looks like Mugabe is going to steal another election.

And it's incredibly tragic. Mugabe was hailed as one of the rising leaders of Africa when he took over leadership of Zimbabwe after independence. And for two decades it worked. Maybe Zimbabwe wasn't the richest country in the world, but it functioned. And then Mugabe flipped out and decided to re-distribute farmland and expel white farmers. His economy collapsed and it's all been downhill from there. I'm not an expert on development in Africa or what's going to fix the problem- but the lack rule of law and good government and better leaders in some countries are a huge problem.

What's the solution? I don't honestly know.