The New York Times has reported that yesterday in Zimbabwe, a court dismissed charges against a leading human rights lawyer accused of obstructing justice. The lawyer, Alec Muchadehama, was part of a legal team representing political activists who later faced charges of ‘plotting to overthrow’ Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Mr. Muchadehama himself was arrested last month and accused of trying to use an unsigned court judgment to free his clients.

Forgoing that Zimbabwe is near a lost cause, and that recent reports of internal Zanu-PF struggle for a successor to the throne have left shreds of hope from the nation’s citizenry in disarray, I’m consistently baffled at who actually believes attempted coups take place anymore in the regimes of autocratic dictatorships. Zimbabwe and Venezuela are law-on-the-cuff countries where political threats are met with physical threats and freedom of speech is met with accusations of treason.

How one attempts to encourage a lift on international embargoes while at the same time claiming cholera is no longer an issue (if you recall, Mugabe ‘arrested‘ it last month), and prosecuting nay-sayers in a vicious campaign of intolerance and racism is beyond me and beyond logic. Robert Mugabe has all but lost the shrewdness that captivated Zimbabweans in the 1980’s. He has consistently accused the British of foul intentions, even when the most criminal actions are obviously taking place domestically. It is only due to disorganization in a lack of internet censorship that we in the west can witness how utterly hopeless the situation continues to be in that nation, and scrutinize overall politicians’ claims to have dissolved attempted coups by arresting those with moral fortitude to speak under the guise of would-be kings.