From the Scotsman:
Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, has branded supporters of the main opposition party "traitors" and accused its leader of having "white blood", raising fears of fresh political violence during tomorrow’s parliamentary elections.
Addressing thousands of Zimbabweans at a rally in the central town of Chivhu, Mr Mugabe, 81, condemned black people who voted for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the state-owned Herald newspaper reported yesterday.
"If, as a black person you vote for MDC, know that you are a sell-out," Mr Mugabe said. "You are a traitor to the revolutionary cause."
At the rally, Mr Mugabe taunted Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader. "What sort of a man are you? Do you have white blood in you?" the president asked, alleging Mr Tsvangirai had called for sanctions against Zimbabwe.
Now there's an insult with some mileage behind it from the past hundred years: "a traitor to the revolutionary cause".
Meanwhile, the Times has details of the latest addition to Mugabe's property portfolio:
The dark blue tiles atop the pagoda-style roof were shipped in from Shanghai. The walls of the three-storey house with four acres of floorspace are lined with Italian marble. Arab craftsman decorated the ceilings of the 25-odd bedrooms.
I think we've seen this movie before.
Update: for a particularly bleak look at the situation in Zimbabwe, with AIDS, malaria, and malnutrition spiralling out of control, see Roger Bate at Tech Central Station on "Africa's Pol Pot":
Zimbabwe's rapidly escalating and politically-induced humanitarian disaster, which has manifested itself in chronic shortages of food, medicine, fuel, electricity and hard cash, has driven over three million Zimbabweans into South Africa, Botswana and other neighboring states. In a chilling echo of what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia in the 1970s, Didymus Mutasa, Secretary of President Mugabe's Zanu-PF government, said: "We would be better off with only six million people". Prior to the crisis, Zimbabwe's population estimate was 12 million; today 60 to 70 percent of the country's productive population is now living elsewhere. Since the World Food Programme (WFP) was thrown out of the country in December, what food remains is allocated along political lines, leaving over 5 million malnourished: Secretary Mutasa may get his wish.