Zimbabwe

The blog site had its first visitor from Zimbabwe the other day.

So a big welcome to you - whoever you are - may you be the first visitor of many to come.

But this reminded of me a story I read in one of the newpapers the other day - about a chap in Zimbabwe who was arrested and thrown into jail.

For suggesting that Zimbabwe's 92-year-old President - Robert Mugabe - couldn't blow up all the balloons required to celebrate his birthday.

Now that seems like a perfectly sound observation to me - and if the poor chap was wrong - his comments were of no great moment and not said with any real malicious intent.

But he was 'shopped' as we say here in Glasgow - by some odious informer no doubt - some lickspittle of the murderous Mugabe regime.

A regime which lives in great opulence and Presidential palaces - while many ordinary people in Zimbabwe go hungry and starve. 

To think that people like me - people from a left-wing background - supported Robert Mugabe and the liberation struggle of his Zanu PF party - for things to turn into such a mess.

A man denied his liberty - probably beaten and tortured into the bargain - for poking gentle fun at the his country's president.

Marxist my arse - Mugabe is no more than a psychopath these days - whose thugs intimidate and murder the opposition in Zimbabwe.

Yet curiously the Mugabe regime is propped up by neighbouring South Africa - which I doubt would happen if Nelson Mandela was in vigorous good health.

So if - by a remarkable coincidence - the person who visited the blog site was the same person who ended up in jail - I take my hat off to you, Sir.

Great tyrannies are eventually overthrown by small acts of rebellion - the problem as ever lies in getting enough people to stand together - and join in.