Getting our teeth into Zimbabwe

Last Modified: 23 Jun 2008
By: Newsroom blogger

Inside the morning meeting...

Zimbabwe tops the prospects list in the week the much-disputed election enters its second, unscheduled round.

This despite the fact Morgan Tsvangirai - who's MDC party claimed victory in the original election - pulled out of the run-off over the weekend.

He cited the growing pre-poll violence which has seen rallies banned, MDC leaders arrested, food withheld in opposition areas, and a reported 150 dead.

'Zimbabwe's inflation rate means that when you enter a shop, by the time you get to the cash till, the price has gone up.'

Our diplomatic editor Jonathan Rugman will look at the ongoing international efforts to put pressure on Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe and, more crucially, its neighbours in southern Africa.

This, says the programme editor, is "something we can get our teeth into today".

Why? Well, as the 7pm programme goes off air - and as More4 News goes on air - the UN Security Council is due to meet.

Diplomatic efforts to date have had limited results and one senior voice asks rhetorically: "What can the west hope to do? When an economy is in tatters, political and economic sanctions are hardly likely to work."

Attention turns to other African powers, notably South Africa. "It's a case of one-to-one chats in the hope that something will give," offers another voice familiar with the situation.

Perhaps we should threaten sanctions. "You can't punish friends of an enemy."

"But China faces enormous pressure because of its stance towards Darfur."

"But at what point does food become a weapon. After all, that's exactly what we deplore about Mugabe."

Inflation is running at two million per cent, notes another voice.

"What does that mean?" asks a puzzled member of the team.

"It means that when you enter a shop, by the time you get to the cash till, the price has gone up."

Elsewhere in Africa, we were expecting the sentencing of Simon Mann today. The attorney general of Equatorial Guinea, where the ex-Etonian has been on trial for his part in an alleged plot, promised as much on Saturday.

But the foreign desk has just got off the phone with our team in EG and it looks like the hearing has been cancelled.

There's an outside chance that the team will spend the day at Black Beach prison instead - to film not to serve time.

Either way, we're told the sentence needs to be handed down by Thursday before the new EG government is sworn in.