Zuma rises as defender of Mugabe. What does Zuma have to gain? Why work so hard for the dictator? And why is the ANC so quiet about it?

So why was President Jacob Zuma in the UK this week speaking up for this man - a really vile dictator and oppressor? Why does South Africa's government give succour to this corrupt, thieving embarrassment to this continent?

I have written before in these pages that, by the end of his tenure, former president Thabo Mbeki had become the de facto foreign minister of Zimbabwe. Mbeki never failed to take to the podium anywhere and everywhere and go to bat for Mugabe, despite the torture of opposition activists in that country.

Zuma is proving just as enthusiastic as Mbeki in this dastardly deed.

SHOOT: This is the best evidence we have why South African leaders content to the destruction of a country in favor of themselves [the leaders] and at the expense of those who voted them into power.

clipped from www.timeslive.co.za In defending the Zimbabwe kleptocracy he reveals his quality Justice Malala: You may have seen the pictures or read the stories. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe turned 86 late last month and his supporters helped him celebrate with a party costing $300,000. Mugabe is right to celebrate. Life expectancy in the country he has systematically brought to his knees stands at 44. Men, women and children are dying daily of Aids. Hospitals have no medicine. Prisoners have no food. Reaching 86 is a privilege reserved only for those who can loot the state. clipped from www.fin24.com Zimbabwe struggles just to its pay civil servants but Chapfika said government would raise money with a new tax on companies or by floating international bonds - even though the government cannot honour bonds already issued. "We need indigenisation but the way they are trying to do it with these regulations will only kill the economy completely," independent economist Eric Bloch told AFP.