Everyone waits for the madman to die

Last month, I went to the land where everyone is waiting for one madman to die.

It is also one of the most beautiful countries it has ever been my privilege to visit, populated by one of the most friendly peoples in the world.

I took Mini-Skinner with me. We went to a beautiful safari lodge where each night, as we sat on the veranda for dinner, literally dozens of elephants came to drink at the watering hole below us. Amazingly, there were only two other guests in the lodge.

We visited the nearby world heritage site, a spectacular place of awesome natural beauty that was almost deserted. We stared, awestruck, at one of the greatest natural wonders on Earth, appreciating the famous statement about it that 'Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.'

We went to the local craft market, where we were besieged by craft workers, desperate to sell their excellent work at almost any price, including swapping beautifully carved statues for the grubby, sweaty baseball cap on my head.

I changed one dollar into local currency, just for a souvenir. The country itself runs on what little foreign exchange it can lay its hands on. I got a 100,000 note in the local currency for my single dollar. I was actually short-changed, as the rate was around 260,000 that day. It's a lot more now.

Of course, I was in Zimbabwe, a country of immense natural resources, stunning scenery, amazing wildlife and wonderful people. A country that has been brought to the edge of ruin by one madman, Robert Mugabe.

Thanks to this syphilitic maniac who runs the country like his personal fiefdom, Zimbabwe is now suffering major social difficulties, international isolation and possibly the worst case of hyper-inflation ever seen, and that's including pre-Nazi Germany.

According to the International Crisis Group, which monitors world crises, Zimbabwe is now close to collapse. A quarter of the population has already fled the country, including almost all of the brightest and best, like the doctors, the academics, and the entrepreneurs, not to mention the white farmers. The inflation rate is expected to top 1.5 million per cent.

Tens of thousands of people have been murdered or incarcerated by his Zanu-PF thugs. The opposition parties are regularly intimidated, independent media discouraged by lengthy prison sentences, and the poor cleared from their shanties just as the whites have been murdered on their farms.

Even the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, himself black African born, is now calling for sanctions against Mugabe's regime in order to force the maniac to stand down.

There is an apocryphal story, possibly untrue but likely true, that when George Bush senior was calling a halt to the first Gulf War in 1991, he contacted John Major to ask that all British forces inside Iraq pull back to Kuwait.

Apparently, an SAS troop reported back that they were in Tikrit province, close to Saddam's family compound, and wished to know should they assassinate the Iraqi dictator first, or simply pull back.

History might have been very different if Saddam had been removed then. Perhaps the 1.2 million excess deaths in Iraq since the US occupation began might not have occurred.

But whether that tale is true or not, given the inability of Zimbabwe's neighbours, especially Thabo Mbeki's South Africa, to put manners on the madman, perhaps it is time for Britain to send the SAS deathsquad in to hasten the end of the man who seems intent on killing his country before syphilis kills him.

Performance art kills me

If ever there was need of evidence that performance art is spurious and dangerous nonsense for the most part, we now have it.

Everyone's favourite mass-murdering Loyalist psychopath painter Michael Stone has offered a defence of 'performance art' for his recent incursion into Stormont, armed with a bomb and guns.

I'm worried this could catch on. Saddam's defence for the gassing of the Kurds? 'I was aiming for the Turner Prize, m'lud.' The Ipswich ripper? 'It's my latest one-man show, learned gentlemen.'

Perhaps Michael Stone might even proffer this defence for his murder of three mourners at a funeral in 1988.

Hopefully if Stormont ever gets properly up and running, they can quickly pass a law preventing the defence of 'performance art' in psychopathic murder attempts. Then the Assembly members could legitimately tell Stone, 'Quit the performance, Michael, you're killing us!"

Getting rid of the evidence

In a totally unforeseen move, the US kangaroo court in Baghdad -

Sorry, let's try that again. The Iraqi High Tribunal has sentenced Saddam Hussein to death. He gets one appeal, then once that's refused (because it will be of course) he will be murdered by the state within 30 days.

I won't be weeping for Saddam, but it does strike me as a little odd when the White House has to issue a statement denying they were scheming for the verdict. Surely that's the biggest confirmation that they were?

Mind you, they probably would like rid of Saddam as quickly as possible. You wouldn't want him going and writing his memoirs in prison implicating all sorts of Western governments in all sorts of arms deals, now would you?