Two of the world’s great tyrants — Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian
President who murdered thousands in the former Yugoslavia — and
Robert Mugabe, the current President of Zimbacle, today got served a
helping of just desserts.

Karadzic has been captured in Serbia after 13 years of evading the
law, and will now face charges at the Tribunal on the Former
Yugoslavia. It is highly likely that he will be found guilty and made
to pay at last for the horrors during his reign. His buddy Slobodan
Milosovic died last year before being convicted of any crimes.

Mugabe was today seen shaking hands with Morgan Tsvangirai at the
start of what looks like a possible deal for power-sharing up north.
This deal could go some way to vindicating Thabo Mbeki’s long-standing
desire for a peaceful, negotiated solution, although it has come very
late in the day, and only because of enormous international pressure
and almost complete annihilation of the Zimbabwean economy. With a
Zim$100,000,000,000 note just issued it is economy that would fit
nicely into a Monty Python film rather than a world map.

The desire to see Mugabe dragged before his own hearing in The Hague
may very well be frustrated forever — but if a negotiated settlement
is reached it could be another miracle story from near the southern
tip of Africa which has a few of them under its belt already.