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If the best our Queen and Commonwealth can do to destroy the ranting, raging and rampaging Robert Mugabe is to take away his knighthood, impose a few travel restrictions, freeze the funds of his leading thugs and generally make life even more miserable for the tragic inhabitants of Zimbabwe, it may be time for New Zealand to get slightly Swiss, cut loose from this feeble organisation and go republican.

If the best the United States can do about the monstrous Mugabe is to table a resolution at the United Nations (which it only recently condemned as a complete waste of space), it’s time for Winston Peters to start attacking some genuine aliens.

If Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth (and the overwhelmingly powerful United States) ever needed a good reason to invade another country, Zimbabwe is it.

The United States and Britain had no trouble at all when it came to invading Iraq under false pretences. They have dug themselves a Middle Eastern hole that is now virtually impossible to vacate. They went there for the oil – but the project misfired so badly that oil has become the focus of a global economic crisis.

However, when it comes to dealing with a basket-case African nation that looks like a combination of the Weimar Republic and Nazi terror at its worst, they talk a lot and do virtually nothing. Meanwhile, the gigantic Anglo-American corporation is planning to expand its platinum mining operation in Zimbabwe, saying that it has a moral responsibility for its workers there. Yeah, right. Anglo-American is just one in a series of corporate robbers who have ripped out copper, diamonds, platinum and other riches from Africa, leaving nothing but poverty and waste in their wake.

Robert Mugabe is a megalomaniac who would best be removed by placing a bullet neatly between his eyes, and just above the little moustache he so proudly sports, in fond memory of Adolf Hitler (one of his heroes).

It’s hard (without being accused of racism) to escape the conclusion that the only time Africa had any semblance of law, order and prosperity was under European rule. However, the facts speak for themselves. Rhodesia was once Africa’s most successful nation. Since Mugabe and his savage terrorists emerged from the trees, it has been reduced to a hell on earth.

Instead of supporting former Rhodesian Premier and World War 2 Spitfire hero Ian Smith, Britain and the Commonwealth branded this patriot a criminal for declaring independence. The bewildered Smith died a miserable death in a Harare flat, having watched the utter destruction of his country. We supported a motley crew of killers and heaped honours on their ruthless and primitive leader. Now we reap the whirlwind.

There is a school of thought that says Zimbabwe is a far-away country about which we know little. But there is another that says if we do nothing, it only reinforces the depressing idea that all politics is useless and nothing can be done to improve the state of the world. Us civilised white folks have a guilty conscience about Africa, so for the last 50 years we have issued apologies to a series of cancerous and sometimes cannibalistic dictators who have hounded their own people to death, yet often found happy retirement on the French Riviera or in Saudi Arabia.

Mugabe is a true believer in dictatorship, mocking the international community, blatantly declaring that only God can remove him, and causing an apparently endless stream of pain and deprivation on his own people.

This man is a malignant tumour and if we are to have any faith in good governance, the only option is for the civilised world to get in there and cut him out. New Zealanders, being closely connected to a sometimes painful colonialist history, have a special interest in eliminating anyone who would corrupt or steal their own people’s inheritance.

The Commonwealth is an albatross around our necks. The concept of a commonly-shared wealth has no meaning unless those who sign up to it accept that forceful intervention may sometimes be required to protect the people that Great Britain once ruled and exploited. Otherwise, it is merely a Buckingham Palace dining club where fat, powerful and complacent people can enjoy a fine dinner, and offer profuse and worthless apologies. It is of no more relevance to the 21st Century than the Duke of Edinburgh Awards.

If the Commonwealth cannot deal with fascism in Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Fiji’s Frankly I’m Bananas or any other post-imperial trouble-maker, why on Earth should we keep on paying the membership subscription?

And just in case you were thinking that “this is not my problem”, remember that the ape mind-set that considers it normal to beat, rape or kill political opponents in Zimbabwe is the same mindless set that invades New Zealand homes, attacks innocent party-goers with clubs and machetes, and uses cars to run down and kill people.

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