Mugabe wins yet again ....

Once more Robert Mugabe shows what a wily old political fox he is ... and yet again he wins the PR battle against the English .....

Mugabe (shown here with the President Bashir of Sudan .... no saint himself) is the only African leader subject to an EU travel ban (that in itself is interesting .... is Zim that much worse than say Somalia, DRC etc?) ... however the ban was overturned by Portugal in order to invite Zimbabwe to the landmark EU-Africa conference held this week in Lisbon ....

Immediately Gordon Brown declared that if Mugabe was going to attend then he would not (apparently to avoid any meeting between the two overshadowing the conference) .... and urged other European leaders to similarly boycott the summit ..... quoting David Milliband (our Foreign Secretary) "because of our distress at the tragedy unfolding in Zimbabwe, which affects people of all races, which we believe can be traced back directly to Robert Mugabe ..... it would be wrong for the UK Prime Minister - or other senior members of the British government - to stand by his side. This man's misrule has brought starvation to a country that was once the breadbasket of Africa".

No other European nation followed suit.

And instead - there were angry reprisals from several African nations. And of course Mugabe went and participated in the conference .... and Gordan lamely sent a proxy ....

When are our leaders going to work out that patronising stances are not its legitimate colonial right anymore? Yes Gordan is right to highlight that Mugabe is man who has brought his country to his knees .... but is he THAT much worse than say the leaders of Somalia, Sudan, Congo or Sierra Leone or Sudan etc etc .... this from a leader who recently welcome the King of Saudi Arabia to London and Chinese heads of state etc ....

Surely much more respect goes to Merkel ... who went ... and then took the opportunity to directly criticise without disengaging with the rest of Africa .....

With this sort of ex-colonial attitude .... its no wonder the Chinese are taking over Africa ....