Unexpected moral leadership

[Wolf DeVoon]

(TRIPOLI) Hanging around in North Africa, I've been exposed to the continent's endemic human rights disasters and incorrigibly corrupt governments at close range. It was never my intention to visit Africa and everything I've learned here made me eager to leave. North, south, east and west, Africa is a perfect hell on earth, from ocean to ocean. The worst of the worst is Zimbabwe, ruled by Marxist mass murderer and one-party dictator for life Robert Mugabe, age 83.

Here's what blew my mind and evaporated my prejudices about Africa and Africans. On March 11, 2007, Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was arrested and beaten following a prayer meeting in the Harare suburb of Highfields. Another member of the Movement for Democratic Change was killed by police acting on Mugabe's orders, while other protesters were injured. Tsvangirai emerged from jail with both eyes swollen shut, a wrist broken, his skull cracked, barely able to walk, requiring emergency hospitalization and blood transfusion.

Interviewed at home on release from hospital, Tsvangirai told reporters:

"Freedom is not cheap. Freedom is precious."

Folks, I have never heard anyone say it better, more succinctly, or with greater wisdom.