Today, as expected, Robert Mugabe cruised to a landslide victory in his “one-candidate” poll amid a chorus of international outrage, disgust, and disbelief. In all the publications I can find defending his victory, I sense a distinct similarity with that particularly high quality of pro-authoritarianism propaganda coming out of the Kremlin – it’s as though Mugabe hired Vladislav Surkov, who advised him that focusing on Western examples of double standards is the key to whitewashing to poorly faked democratic process (however Zimbabwe did not have the luxury of bottomless resources to direct toward other forces such as the Nashi). Read below and see for yourselves. Like all good propaganda, it contains an element of rhetorical coherence: they are right to complain about the West treating Mugabe differently than a leader like Putin.

Nigeria: Zimbabwe’s Endless Descent Vanguard (Lagos) EDITORIAL – Lagos AFRICA has the notoriety of bearing some of the worst rulers in the world. Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe has been President since 1980, is not exceptional. At 82, Mugabe is unwilling to leave power. His 28 years have ruined Zimbabwe. These statistics give a hint of the peoples’ trauma — life expectancy is 37 years (men), 34 years (women) according to the World Health Organisation, orphans make up 25 per cent of the population, says UNICEF and it has the worst inflation in the world at 1,281 per cent last month. Mugabe is typical of African leaders. His only offence is that he is tangling with Western interests over land. Had he been an ordinary dictator, the West would not have cared about elections in the country.