I don’t think the United States; or even the United States and Europe; or even the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, and India together have the power to make a refusal to recognize Mr. Mugabe stick. Look at Cuba. Look at Sudan. Look at Iran.

South Africa does have the power. But it won’t use it because the African National Congress likes Mr. Mugabe’s white-bashing. Despite popular sympathy for the plight of Zimbabwe and increasing anger at the number of refugees flooding South Africa, Mr. Mugabe’s policies serve a purpose of consolidating black power and terrorizing white people all over Africa. Mr. Mugabe’s neighbors would not be supporting him if he weren’t accomplishing something useful for them.

Are the United States and Europe prepared to boycott and diplomatically isolate South Africa because of its support for Robert Mugabe? I can’t even take such a suggestion seriously. It won’t happen. This is ironic because South Africa came close to making the decision to attempt to expel the United States and the United Kingdom from the United Nations due to the invasion of Iraq. If South Africa had attempted that diplomatic track, it may very well have succeeded in its goal of diplomatically isolating and expelling the United States. I think the United Kingdom would have caved in to South African pressure and the rest of Europe would have toed the line; even Canada would have turned on the United States given enough international pressure and there may have been international support for secessionist movements within the United States.

I suspect that the South African government orchestrated a wave of mass international protests against the Iraq War starting in 2002 and culminating in the actual invasion. The South African Communist Party was probably the key actor in this international campaign. One of its goals may have been to punish Vice President Cheney for his opposition against sanctions against South Africa in the 1980’s. It is telling that many ANC members interpreted the invasion of Iraq to mean that the United States would be soon invading South Africa; similar rhetoric also comes from Hugo Chavez. It is as if the Cold War never stopped, but merely that the headquarters of Communist opposition to the United States shifted from the Soviet Union to South Africa.

Then, there’s the unpopular subject of race. Mugabe’s invasion of white farms was very popular in southern Africa; as a rule, black people either approved these invasions or didn’t care. Remember, when Afrikaner terrorists attacked commuters from Soweto with booby trap bombs, black political pundits from the Johannesburg metroplex were outraged. They pointed out that while the Americans deserve the September 11 attacks, black South Africans do not deserve such abuse. So, why should white people give a damn when Mugabe brutalizes black people when helping white victims of his regime is politically incorrect? There is no nice way to say this, but if human rights don’t apply to white people, what incentive is there for white people to give a damn about the consequences for those who supported Mugabe when white people were the victims?

The latest slogan among Obama supporters coined by P Diddy is, I kid you not, “Obama or Die”. I don’t happen to regard that chant as a joke. I take P Diddy’s remark seriously. If a thug in Zimbabwe says “Vote Mugabe or Die”, he means it and that means he will murder dissidents. Although Senator Obama may not agree with P Diddy’s chant, and it may seem ridiculous for Senator Obama to disavow a slogan by a rapper he has probably never met, P Diddy’s death threat against those who vote against Obama isn’t quite the kind of change I can believe in. Such slogans hardly take the poison out of America’s political discourse. I think P Diddy knows exactly what he is doing.

Mr. Mugabe’s depredations are saddening, and they show what happens when people acquiesce in tyranny against others. To me, it is noteworthy how P Diddy is now attempting to bring Zimbabwe-style “democracy” to the United States, if only on a rhetorical level at the present time. The “Obama or Die” slogan is not the kind of chant that does credit to the Obama campaign.