Britain's newspapers said yesterday that Morgan Tsvangirai could not be blamed for pulling out of Zimbabwe's presidential election but urged South Africa to turn on President Robert Mugabe.
National dailies branded Mugabe “tyrannical” in their editorials and raised comparisons with Adolf Hitler as they urged Zimbabwe’s neighbor South Africa to wield its influence and lead world outrage at Mugabe’s regime.
Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party, withdrew from the two-man second round run-off on Sunday, saying violence had made a fair vote impossible.
The move all but hands victory to Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence from Britain in 1980.
The Daily Telegraph said it was hard to see what else Tsvangirai could have done.
“His candidature risked bestowing a semblance of legitimacy on the whole wretched business; and in the meantime, it was intensifying the violence,” it said.
The broadsheet said peaceful change in Zimbabwe was largely dependent on South Africa, as it was when the country gained its independence.
The 'Daily Mail'
Nobody could blame Tsvangirai for pulling out, the Daily Mail said.
“This sick farce of a contest was never going to end in a fair result anyway. Indeed, Mr Tsvangirai was almost suicidally brave to fight on for as long as he did,” the tabloid said.
“What makes this tragedy worse is the way this corrupt and murderous tyrant [Mugabe] has been allowed to get away with it,” the editorial said.
THE ‘GUARDIAN’
The Guardian said Tsvangirai’s decision was a “triumph for terror.”
“Making that call was excruciating because it killed any lingering hope that Mr Mugabe’s tyrannical rule might be ended by the ballot box,” it said.
Southern African leaders have slowly begun turning against Mugabe and he needs electricity and supplies from neighboring states, the editorial read.
“A wind of change blowing through southern Africa might — just — still finish Mr Mugabe,” the paper said.
THE ‘INDEPENDENT’
The Independent said that while nobody could blame Tsvangirai for withdrawing, the decision “still leaves a bitter taste.”
The daily said an opportunity had been lost, but Mugabe would be weakened by the development nonetheless.
The 11th-hour pullout by Zimbabwe’s opposition leader from a presidential run-off complicates efforts to end the deadlock, but a breakthrough is still possible, South African media said yesterday.
The Star newspaper quoted sources close to the mediation efforts in Zimbabwe as saying they were “still hopeful there will be a breakthrough, leading to the formation of a national unity government.”
The 14-nation South African Development Community (SADC) regional bloc has appointed South African President Thabo Mbeki to mediate in Zimbabwe.
Mbeki visited Zimbabwe last week and held separate talks with Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
Tsvangirai’s withdrawal would “likely deepen Zimbabwe’s political crisis,” but “it may open an opportunity for [SADC] leaders, especially … Mbeki, to salvage a negotiated settlement,” the Business Day newspaper said.
THE ‘TIMES’
The Times, in an editorial, called for decisive regional action, including kicking Mugabe — an African liberation icon — out of the SADC.
Regional leaders and Mbeki — accused of treating Mugabe with kid gloves — have “failed to act ... even as evidence of the torture, murder and mutilation of opposition campaigners mounted.”
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of