Sunday Zim-date and Other News, for your reading (dis)pleasure

The Zimbabwe Standard reports that the MDC decided to reject the runoff election, calling instead of Mugabe to concede defeat. However, every time I open Google Reader there’s a contradictory headline about that, so take this one with a grain of salt. Or a huge heaping pile of salt. Another headline for the saltlick: The Cape Argus—which, if I remember correctly from my time in South Africa, is a bit like the New York Post of Cape Town—sets the casualty figures in Zimbabwe at 7,000. The paper is unclear about its source for this figure.

The Zimbabwe Standard also ran an op-ed on Sunday by Simba Makoni—an opposition candidate in the March 29 presidential elections who failed to win much support—arguing that a Government of National Unity (GNU) is the country’s only option. Though Makoni is right in his assessment of the deep divisions in Zimababwe’s political class, I have a hard time envisioning an effective GNU in the country. Mugabe and ZANU-PF have too long a history of violence and corruption—a well-documented keep-power-at-all-costs ideology—and I, for one, have little to no faith that they can be negotiated into any kind of power sharing agreement. Or if they are, that they will abide by its provision. Maybe I’m wrong, but I tend to take a learn-from-history approach to these things. (Read Martin Meredith’s Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe, and you’ll see what I mean.) Makoni’s argument is not disinterested—he personally could have much to gain by a GNU, as the SADC and the U.S. earlier this week proposed a GNU in which Makoni would be a key member—a proposition promptly rejected by the MDC.

In other Sunday news: Nicholas Kristof opines on Guantanamo Bay in his Sunday column. Rwandans are anxiously awaiting the trial of a former high-ranking civil servant for charges of genocide—it is set to begin tomorrow at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. The government of Malaysia proposed restrictions on the travel of unaccompanied women. The leader of Nepal’s Maoist party says their recent election victory is an indication of a “global resurgence of communism.” (Dear God, let’s hope not.) And finally, representatives of the Dalai Lama began talks with China to address human rights and other issues in Tibet.