I’ve only just caught up with this report from last week:
A Foreign Office Minister today sympathised with a demand that Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe should be stripped of his knighthood.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean said she found it difficult that he continued to hold his knighthood.
She was replying to a call from Tory ex-Foreign Office Minister Lord Blaker at Lords’ question time.
Baroness Symons said: “I have a great deal of sympathy with your point, but we have done our best to avoid making the argument with Mr Mugabe a personal one between him and the UK.
“He never misses a single opportunity to point to the UK’s actions as being the actions of a colonial power directed against him.
“We want to avoid that but I find it very difficult that he continues to hold a knighthood.”
…..
Prime Minister Tony Blair said last month he would look at withdrawing the honorary title.
The position seems to have moved on, then, since last April. But, in any case, people of what I’ll just call, for short, Mugabe-ish tendencies surely go beyond a point where you’re going to care about what they say? And hasn’t he? (Via New Zimbabwe.)
Relatedly, here’s a story about white Zimbabwean commercial farmers who ‘have created more than 4 000 jobs in neighbouring Mozambique, where they settled after being ousted from their land back home’. It’s also here. (Via Southern Cross.)
(Updated at 12.30 PM.) And now see, also, this:
ZIMBABWE’S opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, accused of plotting to “eliminate” President Robert Mugabe, on Monday stood on the witness stand for the first time since his trial began last February, and denied the allegation.