Mugabe cries: "It's a conspiracy!"

Paranoia is a terrible personality trait for a normal person, but it's indispensable for any dictator worth his weight in self-awarded medals. Hence, it comes as little surprise to learn that Robert Mugabe has kicked his fear of everything up a notch and put a stop the operations of all nongovernmental organization aid groups operating in Zimbabwe on the pretext that they were working with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party.

Ironically of course, Zimbabwe didn't need handouts of food or medicine until Mugabe himself turned one of the continent's most economically successful countries into one of the world's poorest, but I will reluctantly concede a point to Mugabe: starving your own people to death is, generally speaking, a politically pragmatic approach to getting rid of your domestic political enemies.

With the foreign do gooders out, the ruling Zanu-PF party is set to take over distributing food, and as it so happens, there only happens to be enough food to go around to people who areas where people have voted for Zanu-PF. That's a pretty astonishing coincidence, is it not? Actually, no, it is not. Mugabe has always used food as a weapon, and Zanu-PF continually tells the people, very straightforwardly, that if they want to eat or work, that they must vote for Zanu-PF, or else go poor and hungry.

The question is: how long can Mugabe hold on once Zanu-PF voters start going hungry, too?