Where are the Africans to condemn this despot?

All this has certainly created something of a challenge. But there's always a way. This time, reports suggest, it involved summarily deducting money from civil servants' already paltry wages and strong-arming near-bankrupt local businesses into "donating" money.

For the harried, overburdened people of Zimbabwe, this latest show of self-serving tyranny by Mugabe produces no moment of revelation, no change of heart; the scales have long since fallen from their eyes. It just deepens their antipathy.

"If they said, Come and join us,' and sent a car here to fetch me, I would never go," said one poverty-stricken Harare street vendor of the celebrations. "Even though I am starving, I would not go. I hate him." How long can he go on, Zimbabweans must ask themselves. How long indeed - and how long before statesmen from neighbouring African states bring their own moral weight to bear in ending the anachronistic nightmare that Mugabe's rule has become?

It is Zimbabwe's tragedy that, as other sub-Saharan African countries have moved, however haltingly, towards openness and democracy, it remains shackled to the past.

It is half a century since the first African nation, Ghana, threw off its colonial rule, prompting others to follow suit in quick succession. The next 20 years, in several countries, saw the rise of despotic leaders, who treated their fellow citizens with varying degrees of brutality. Some, such as Jean-Bedel Bokassa in the Central African Republic and Idi Amin in Uganda, instigated mass murder; others confined themselves to repression of dissent. What they all had in common was the imposition of one-party rule, economic mismanagement, corruption and the misappropriation of resources.

It is that totalitarian mould that produced Robert Mugabe. Yet it is a mould that has since been melted down and reshaped for a new century. This week, as riot squads fired tear gas and water cannon to break up an opposition party meeting in Harare, and a three-month ban was imposed on political rallies in Zimbabwe, audiences gathered in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to watch The Last King of Scotland, dramatising the years of Idi Amin's rule. Viewers emerged into what is now an increasingly prosperous and forward-looking capital city, reminiscing with tear-stained eyes on a closed chapter of their history. Uganda is not an untroubled country - an uprising by the brutal Lord's Resistance Army in the north continues - but, since Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986 replacing Amin's despotic successor, Milton Obote, Uganda has become steadily more open and stable.

The wind of change is once again blowing through the continent. To the north of Zimbabwe, Tanzania, one of the world's least developed countries, provides a shining example of good governance that has seen record economic growth rates in recent years, first under President Mkapa and latterly Kikwete, while in Mozambique to the east, multi-party democracy and careful economic management have at last brought economic growth to another desperately poor country. Against this backdrop, Zanu PF's brand of repressive, intolerant rule and President Mugabe's patrician style of brushing away criticism as if it were a troublesome mosquito, even as his people starve, would be laughable were it not so horrifying.

And, yet, from other African leaders there is only the occasional murmur of dismay, and otherwise silence. The great Mugabe, once such a potent symbol of post- colonial African confidence, still now, in his ninth decade and in the grip of political madness, cows all criticism. Like some malevolent old aunt whom no-one wants to stand up to, he sweeps ahead, unfettered. No-one, even now, will openly criticise the great freedom fighter .

Yet Mugabe's past glories have long since been eclipsed by his more recent crimes. The man who carried a nation's hopes on his shoulders on becoming President in the wake of white rule 27 years ago shrugged them off lightly. Having spent 10 years in prison at the hands of Rhodesia's white ruler Ian Smith and then fought bravely to obtain the fairest possible deal for black Zimbabweans, he may once have been a hero. But there soon followed repression, summary killings of opponents and, latterly, disastrous economic decline stemming from the seizure of white-owned farms, which led to sharp falls in production. Last year, the homes of 700,000 people, mostly supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), were bulldozed in Harare. Most are still homeless.

So where are the voices of condemnation? No wonder the MDC's leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has criticised African heads of state for failing to condemn Mugabe, saying it is damaging their "credibility". Among Mugabe's reticent neighbours is Thabo Mbeki in South Africa. Partly, some believe, his silence is due to solidarity stemming from a common struggle over the ending of white rule; he also, no doubt, fears that Mugabe would portray any critic as being in hock to the west. He prefers "quiet diplomacy", but there is little sign that strategy is working: Mugabe has been urged to stand down after this term in office but already looks set to resist that.

Such reticence comes at a cost. It is unquestionably wrong to imagine that Africa's problems stem from the corruption of its past leaders alone, and it is unquestionably right to blame much of the continent's current ills on the self-serving meddling of wealthy countries. But international observers have a right to be anxious about the security of democracy in Africa when a despot such as Mugabe goes unchallenged by his own neighbours. "Africa is still incredibly badly governed by Africans," said Michael Buerk said in this newspaper earlier this week. Many would disagree with that view and with plenty of evidence to support them, but in convincing the sceptics, condemnation by Mbeki and others of Africa's longest surviving despot would go a long way. Most importantly, it could end Zimbabwe's criminally unnecessary suffering.