Fair talk on Zim

Unathi Kondile, News24 User
A cold Cape morning followed by a long walk up the Mount Nelson driveway saw me at this year's press conference for the 2nd Cape Town Book Fair.
The line-up consisted of Trevor Ncube, the Zimbabwean publisher and 2007 recipient of the Freedom to Publish Award; Anna Maria Cabanellas, President of the International Publishers Association (IPA); Dudley Schroeder, Executive Director of the Publishers' Association of South Africa (PASA) and Vanessa Badroodien, Managing Director of the Cape Town Book Fair.
After introductory talks and welcomes from Badroodien, Cabanellas and Schroeder; Ncube then took to the podium, delivering a short yet emotionally charged talk on the state of publishing in Zimbabwe.
Whilst giving thanks for the Freedom to Publish Award, he went on to state the brain drain statistics of Zimbabwe that entail over four million well-educated Zimbabweans emigrating and boosting foreign economies.
Not that anyone could blame them as the situation in Zimbabwe is not conducive for intellectuals who'd like to pursue their careers without any creative restrictions or being subject to Mugabe's ongoing theatrics.
Foor for thought
This made me think. If there's one thing Mugabe has done right in his reign it would have to be the education he availed to his fellow Zimbabweans in the 80s, making Zimbabweans one of Africa's most educated nations.
One would think that being equipped with education would be enough to accelerate economic growth and habitable living environments, but no, instead we find that South Africa has Zimbabwean teachers, doctors and lawyers who are either domestic workers or sleeping outside home affairs.
When question time came, only one South African journalist had a question and the rest were from international media organisations.
The questions sought to find means in which Zimbabwe's press and society in general could be uplifted from their plight - questions which reiterated Zimbabwe's catch-22 situation, as presently, we have a offensive West taunting Mugabe and a virile Mugabe who's "voetsek-ing" them all.
No hope?
It is now widely believed that the only tangible hope of restoring the situation in Zimbabwe would come through President Mbeki and other Southern African regions.
However it is vital to note that coercive measures from these Southern African regions will yield no fruitful results - quiet diplomacy and calculated improvisations are the only route to get closer to the Zimbabwean villain in his hard-hitting and saddening reality show.
Why can't the West be more subtle in their dealings with Zimbabwe? Why do they always have to rub salt into wounds to get their way? By now you'd think they know the Mugabe they are dealing with, yet instead they keep on proving that it's their way or the highway.
Maybe the solution does lie with the West. They could easily lift their sanctions and start dealing with Mugabe on a humanitarian level, but no, to them Mugabe is the next Saddam Hussein.
And thinking Mugabe is the next Hussein makes with shudder to think what the West has in store for our poor old Zim neighbours.