The leopard can't change his spots, but can an appeaser?

South African President Thabo Mbeki has further discredited himself on the Zimbabwe situation by stating that this month's parliamentary elections in the country would be free and fair.

"Things like the independent electoral commission, things like access to the public media, things like the absence of violence and intimidation, those matters have been addressed," Mr Mbeki said on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the main opposition MDC party was "stunned" to hear of Mbeki's comments. "He [Mbeki] probably knows things that those of us who are on the ground do not know," he tartly commented.

The spokesman noted that although state media were running paid MDC ads, state media news coverage was given exclusively to the ruling ZANU-PF party. He added that those who attacked MDC activists usually went unpunished, while opposition rallies were rarely authorised and Zanu-PF was allowed to campaign freely.

Given the long history of thuggery (when not outright massacres, like in the early 1980s) as state policy of the Mugabe regime and given Mugabe's open contempt for international, even African, standards of basic decency, it's very hard to believe that Bob and his mafia have suddenly bought into the

Unlike most other African leaders, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has rejected the ostrich approach with regard to the crisis created by Mugabe. Though I'm sure he'd be derided as a stooge of Tony Blair by Bob and his apologists.

Had Mbeki not had a long history of appeasing the Mugabe regime, then perhaps his conclusions of "progress" in Zimbabwe might be taken seriously.