Bob’s moustache
Is it a moustache, do you think? I’m not sure. Ask many professed Africa experts about Robert Mugabe’s moustache, and about half of them will say, ‘He hasn’t got a moustache, are you thinking of Daniel arap Moi?’ It’s a tiny thing, nestling in the dimple of his upper lip. It can’t be a birthmark, because he didn’t have it when he was younger. I reckon he grew it in the late 1980s, when he decided to give dictatorial tyranny a proper crack. A dictator needs facial hair. The full Stalin can’t be pleasant in a tropical climate, and the Hitler, that’s just derivative. Nobody wants to be just another Saddam, and the African gentleman may often struggle with the full Fidel. Bob needed something new.
Britain has lost an empire and found a role: to faff on about pirates and biofuels (The Spectator)