Shame on the African Union

The 53-nation African Union summit meeting covered itself with shame by refusing to condemn Robert Mugabe's brutal suppression of the political opposition and his economic and social dismantling of Zimbabwe.

Instead it settled on a pallid recommendation that Mugabe enter into "dialogue" with the opposition -- whose members he has had killed, jailed, beaten and burned out of their homes -- with the goal of forming a power-sharing government.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of the presidential elections but after weeks of terror by Mugabe's soldiers, police and thugs backed out of the runoff rather than subject his followers to further violence.

The actual election was a sham with voters forced to go to polling places and vote for Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party. Most Western governments, including those of the European Union, say they will not accept the results or Mugabe's government as legitimate. The U.S. was drafting a proposed U.N. resolution that would ban Mugabe and his inner circle from traveling and freeze their overseas bank accounts. And it's a safe bet they have their money overseas because, thanks to appalling economic mismanagement, Zimbabwe has an annual inflation rate of over 1 million percent.

At the AU meeting at an Egyptian resort, Mugabe bluffed his fellow African leaders down with a characteristic mixture of arrogance and audacity. He told them their claims to power were no more legitimate than his and many had grabbed and held power in "more elections than I did." Sadly, there's something to that, but the rule of the African "Big Men," leaders of unchecked power and corruption, is slowly coming to an end. Mugabe is one of the last.

Surely, Mugabe's claims that he is fighting to prevent the return of white colonialists, nonsense in any case, must be wearing thin with his fellow African leaders. As The Wall Street Journal trenchantly observed, ". . . no one has done more harm to more black Africans in this century, in Zimbabwe or beyond, than Comrade Bob."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)