Zimbabwe silence may be Mbeki's demise:

Africa: Another bit of good news. Mbeki docile behavior to Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwe has been outrageous. If South Africa is supposed to be the beacon of hope for Africa, Mbeki made sure it went dark when it turned to Mugabe.

Once hailed as a leader focused on Africa's democratic and economic revival, Mbeki's silence on Zimbabwe has been blamed either on misplaced loyalty or crippling deference. A smiling Mbeki was photographed holding hands with Mugabe even as Zimbabweans had been waiting for weeks for the final results of a March 29 election. He was further slammed for saying there was "no crisis" in Zimbabwe after meeting the 84-year-old Zimbabwean strongman two weeks ago. "The election was a crisis (...) for everyone to see. He denied that was the case. He went against his own logic," said Ebrahim Fakir, a researcher at the Johannesburg-based Centre for Policy Studies. Susan Booysen, political analyst at the University of the Witwatersrand, put it bluntly: "One cannot come to any other conclusion than that he has botched (...) his legacy," she said. "People expected statesmanship. But at the end of the day, he didn't have the guts to stand up to a fellow liberation movement leader," referring to the pair's shared background in anti-colonial politics.