Mugabe Denies Jimmy Carter Visa for Humanitarian Fact Finding Visit

Celia W. Dugger reports for the New York Times from Johannesburg that Jimmy Carter, who is the same age as Mugabe, has been refused a visa to enter Zimbabwe along with Kofi Anan and Graca Machel. Dugger reports that Carter "...had never before been denied a visa."

Dugger writes:

"Mr. Mugabe’s decision to forbid a humanitarian visit by Mr. Carter, former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela’s wife Graca Machel was a measure of the Zimbabwean leader’s disdain for international opinion at a time when deepening hunger, raging hyperinflation and the collapse of health, sanitation and education services have crippled Zimbabwe.

He refused to let them fly into the country, they said, despite the intervention of both South Africa’s current president, Kgalema Motlanthe, and his recently ousted predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, who is mediating power-sharing talks between Mr. Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader who bested him in the March general election.

“It seems obvious to me that leaders of the government are immune to reaching out for help for their own people,” Mr. Carter said at a press conference in Johannesburg.

Mr. Carter said Zimbabwe's ambassador in Washington had advised him he would not be issued a visa after he applied for one several weeks ago, but he said the staff of the group sponsoring the trip, The Elders, thought the three of them would be get visas to enter the country on landing at the airport. A very senior official advised them Friday evening that they would not be allowed to enter the country.

Zimbabwe’s information minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, reached Saturday on his cell phone, said that he had been in an all day meeting and was unable to comment. The state-owned newspaper, The Herald, reported on Thursday that the threesome had been told to come later because the government was busy with power-sharing negotiations and the planting season."

Apparently the cell phone farmers in ZANU(PF) are busier planting than negotiating.

In the meantime, the death toll from the cholera outbreak, lack of medical services, and starvation continue to mount.

The big question moving forward is how the international community can continue to offer humanitarian aid while also exerting what little leverage it has on Mugabe. The parallels with the Burma regime and the Mugabe regime are increasingly clear based on this weekend's response to the group of Elders attempts to intervene on the behalf of the people of Zimbabwe.