Idon't support Robert Mugabe, you don't support Mugabe, nobody in the West supports Mugabe. But before slapping one another's backs, we need to consider some uncomfortable questions.

Why did millions of Zimbabweans vote for Mugabe? Yes, he is a tyrant and a vote stealer. Yet even independent observers concede that he still must have won more than 40 per cent in the presidential poll. Amid 80 per cent unemployment and hyperinflation, that seems so incredible that we have ignored it.

Some might just put it down to tribal loyalties, or claim those Zimbabweans are simply too cowed or ignorant to know what's good for them. Alternatively, we could ask whether repeated interference by Britain and the international community has helped to consolidate Mugabe's remaining support in Zimbabwe and Africa. Margaret Beckett, then UK Foreign Secretary, even admitted last year that “if it comes to a choice between the hero of the revolution and the colonial oppressor, they know whose side to be on.”

And “they” need not look back as far as the era of colonialism or white rule. The sanctions imposed by Western institutions over the past decade have, says one author, “made it nearly impossible for Zimbabwe to engage in normal international trade” and helped to make it the only African nation with a negative growth rate. Could it be that some ungrateful Zimbabweans took exception to such outside aid?

Other unasked questions include: what makes Mugabe's authoritarianism and militarism more objectionable than that of Western allies on the continent such as Uganda or Rwanda? Might a troubled British Government have its own reasons for leading a global moral crusade to counter Mugabe's impertinent description of Mr Brown as “a tiny dot in this world”?

And perhaps most importantly: shouldn't we learn our lesson about the perils of intervention - whether economic, political and military? Some feel Britain's guilty colonial past gives us a special responsibility to intervene now. But it is possible to conclude the opposite: that history shows that interfering in other people's crises does not work and will make matters worse. Iraq surely ought to serve as a warning against trying to liberate people “on their behalf”. Or are we too blinded by self-righteousness to see that less might be more?

We have come a long way since Cecil Rhodes, founder of the colony that is now Zimbabwe, announced in 1887 that “the native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise”. Yet many still seem to find it hard to accept that Africans can and must sort out their own problems. I may be wrong, but didn't Zimbabweans settle scores with an autocratic regime before?

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