Jonathan Samkange is a member of his local Neighbourhood Watch Association. Police officers from the under-resourced local police unit frequently go to his house to ask him to drive them to a crime scene. So when police knocked on his door at 10.15pm on Monday night, he assumed they needed transport.
Robert Mugabe is not alone in his conviction that Western policies have not helped Zimbabwe. Many African leaders are sensitive to the loud Western condemnation of Mugabe — and their calls for Africa to "do something" — as an intrusion. The pace of Africa’s democratisation, they insist, is a matter of national sovereignty.