Raids on opposition party offices and the rounding up of foreign journalists are threatening to push Zimbabwe further toward confrontation between current President Robert Mugabe and the apparent winner of national elections.
Police raided the Meikles hotel, which is used by the opposition, Movement for Democratic Change, and ransacked some of the rooms. Riot police also surrounded another hotel housing foreign journalists, York Lodge, and took away several of them, according to a man who answered the phone there.
"Mugabe has started a crackdown," Movement for Democratic Change secretary-general Tendai Biti told The Associated Press. "It is quite clear he has unleashed a war."
Things remain tense in Zimbabwe and they could easily descend into civil war like it did in Kenya.
Shame on author Heidi Holland for arguing in the April 1 New York Times that the west should negotiate with Mugabe (or was it an April Fool's joke?). As she well knows, Mugabe has been profoundly mentally disturbed since the early-80s battles in Matabeleland, if he wasn't disturbed all his life. Now that the raids are taking place all over Zimbabwe, isn't there one brave member of the Simba faction of ZANU who can simply take the old man out for good?
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