Where is the international outcry?

Jaco Strauss
Sent to Electronic Telegraph - 14 March 2000

IT IS interesting to note that the Western world united in condemning and snubbing Austria for the inclusion of the Freedom Party in their government. If the new government were to have passed objectionable laws or took similar action, such an attitude would have been understandable - but this happened even *before* the democratically elected government was formed.

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe the racist, homophobic, despot Robert Mugabe can encourage the confiscation of land, purely based on race and without any form of compensation. While this barbarous anarchism is destroying the last foreign revenue earner in that country, no international outcry is evident. This blatant looting of Zimbabwe is a price he is more than willing to pay in order to satisfy his power-mad obsession to steal another term.

Property rights, non-racialism and the rule of law are concepts so far removed from Mugabe's frame of reference that he makes Jorg Haider look like Mother Teresa. Where are the sanctions, boycotts and international condemnation that should naturally follow?

Or is it the same old patronizing Western racism of "we expect blacks to act that way" so the chaotic anarchism and human rights abuses are just simply ignored?

Jaco Strauss
Cape Town
South Africa

As far as I am aware this letter was not published by the Telegraph

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