From The Pgh Post Gazette
By Tony Norman

If there’s any justice, the photo that ran on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times will be used as evidence against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe when he is finally put on trial in The Hague.

The four-column photo shows a crying 11-month-old boy. Because it is winter in Zimbabwe, he is dressed in a tiny blue romper suit. Below the knees, the boy is wearing what at first glance looks like a pair of ill-fitting white socks.

Tipped off by toes sticking out of an opening in the left one, a closer look reveals them to be a pair of tiny white casts.

Titled “Suffering Great and Small,” the cutline reads: “An 11-month-old with broken legs found shelter in a church in Harare, Zimbabwe. His mother said youths with the governing party shattered his legs while trying to make her disclose the whereabouts of her husband, an opposition supporter.”

Zimbabwe descended into hell a long time ago thanks to the madness of its ostensible “liberator” and his ruling party of thugs, goons and sadists known as ZANU-PF.

In the pantheon of living African despots, Mr. Mugabe has been first among equals for nearly 30 years. Once upon a time, he was even considered a hero because he helped pry the country, then known as Rhodesia, from under the oppressive lash of its apartheid-style government.

Few nations have had as precipitous an economic collapse after liberation from colonial rule as Zimbabwe.

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