Sure, A Crocodile Will Cry Crocodile Tears - So What Else Is New? Or, Why is the Western World letting the new, chameleonlike, Zimbabwean wolf in sheep's clothing pull his (well-fabricated) wool over their collective eyes?

In this third part of my series upon Zimbabwe and its recent election results, let me first say, however weak and impotent it may well sound, that I feel - deeply - for the folk there, as the world, or at least the Western component thereof - though methinks they're not alone - turn their gaze away and simply look the other way, considering the whole subject too difficult by half, and thus assign it to the too hard basket, if only by default. Or, alternatively, everyone - everywhere (to the extent that they're even interested or are able to take an active interest thereunto) - are holding onto sheer hope, wistfully hoping against hope that something, anything, is about to start going well in this oft-troubled land.

But unfortunately such pollyanne-rish wishful thinking will get no-one anywhere, least of all the people of Zimbabwe. For as we all know, gullibility or naivete is believing - despite all sane, credible evidence to the contrary - precisely what you already or always wanted to believe anyway. Otherwise known as putting your head firmly and irrevocably in the sand. Which of course never solved anything.

And thus and so last November an older Christian friend probably thought I'd been duly hoodwinked when, remarking upon the sudden elevation of former Mugabe strongman (and military massacre-overseer) Emmerson Mnangagwa, to Zimbabwe's Presidency, I mentioned he'd been cited as having had some religious conversion experience or the like in recent times - whether according to him or those around him. The aforementioned 'mighty man of God', who I'll simply call Lanwoo, completely pooh-poohed such a (naive) notion, and anyhow I myself well understood the utter implausibility thereof, but in view of the (numerically) large accessions to my own particular brand of evangelicalism in Zimbabwe - especially post- the return there of a good friend (I'll also simply call Lorhar) three decades back - I dared to hope, 'all things being possible' (with God), that things might've been somewhat different these days. Yes, eminently more hopeful.

So how've things changed since, how've things transpired, 'progressed', under Mnangagwa's nascent leadership? It's really quite hard - for me, at this distance, and without a whole lot of reporting even c/o the BBC, ever since - to say very much or at all conclusively. But stay tuned as I return shortly, focusing in - for our purposes in these opinion pieces - on the recently-concluded elections there. For they - sadly enough - seem to really 'say it all', and yes, as you can well guess, the picture ain't pretty!