Grandma's House

Robert Mugabe has done it again. It wasn't enough to destroy the agricultural base of Zimbabwe, now he's trying to drive out the trash. He's doing this by burning out the people who voted against him.

Police are under orders to destroy "illegal dwellings" and vendors' shacks as part of a campaign to clean up the city. About half the city's urban poor live in the shacks. About 10,000 street vendors have been arrested since the crackdown began eight days ago.

(Morgan) Tsvangirai (opposition leader) said Mugabe would use the operation as a pretext for calling a state of emergency, which would give the government unlimited powers of search, seizure and detention as the country goes into a food crisis with up to 4 million people needing aid.

Before the parliamentary elections, Mugabe refused assistance, saying the country had had a "bumper harvest." His ZANU-PF party was alleged to have controlled food deliveries to influence the vote.

After seven years of unprecedented economic decline, 80 percent of the work force is unemployed, and 4 million of Zimbabwe's 16 million people have emigrated.

Agriculture, once the mainstay, has been hard hit by Mugabe's seizure of 5,000 white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks.

How much more can the people of Zimbabwe take? Why isn't the U.N. doing something about this outrage?