We must speak out on Mugabe

Events of the past few days in Zimbabwe demonstrate - if proof were needed - that the country is close to meltdown. This week Robert Mugabe publicly warned of reprisals against people demonstrating against his regime. Another opposition leader has been arrested. Elsewhere, a high court judge seized and took over a farm while the owner was away.

Yet while George Bush has openly encouraged pro-democracy protesters in Tehran to oppose their regime, both he and Tony Blair continue to sit on the fence over Zimbabwe.

My own experience tells me that we have only to look at what happened in a country like Sierra Leone, where I grew up, to realise what is possible in Zimbabwe. The damage wrought by Mugabe's regime closely mirrors events in Sierra Leone a decade ago. It has been called "a new kind of war": economic ruin followed by the breakdown of law and order give rise to armed conflict, culminating in anarchy.

As in Sierra Leone before the war, in Zimbabwe an ageing ruler clings onto power. The police, the army and the judiciary have been subverted to the cause of keeping him there and allowed to reap the rewards of kleptocracy. Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, is faced with a second treason charge, under laws which have been grotesquely misused for the purpose.

The most recent charge stems from his call for people to stay away from work. In Sierra Leone in the 1970s my own father, who defied the president and blew the whistle on a violent and corrupt regime, was one of the first to be tried on trumped-up charges of treason.

My family and others were terrorised in our homes by unemployed youths recruited as government thugs. They wore red shirts. In Zimbabwe Mugabe's "Green Bombers" perform a similar function.

The parallels are not lost on ordinary Zimbabweans. I received an anonymous article from a writer who had read my memoir on the upheavals of post-colonial Africa, The Devil that Danced on the Water.

They commented: "The similarities are frightening ... I am convinced that, unless God, somehow, intervenes in our situation, we are heading the same tragic way that Sierra Leone went."

I have been back to Sierra Leone four times since the British sent troops there, and not once have I heard Sierra Leonians dismiss Britain's role in ending the bloodshed as an act of "neocolonialism". On the streets of Harare there are desperate calls for Bush and Blair to come and "Saddam" us.

Yet Mugabe, when he wants to silence Whitehall and nudge South African president Thabo Mbeki back into line, needs do no more than to raise the spectre of colonialism, and Britain turns tail. This week he did so again by threatening to expel Britain's ambassador in Harare.

Colonialism had plenty to answer for, but the British government cannot continue to be paralysed by Mugabe's rhetoric. Military intervention would be premature, but the injustices taking place in Zimbabwe are as deplorable as those in Iran or Iraq. The squeamishness of Blair and Jack Straw in speaking out is more misplaced now than ever.

The ordinary office and factory workers in Zimbabwe who risked the wrath of Mugabe's thugs in staying away from work this week deserve more robust support from Britain.

Let's get this shoe on the road

I have often thought that great clothes were one of the rewards of being a woman. Booking opens this week for Eddie Izzard's new show, Sexie, and I have already been online to buy my tickets. Visitors to the Sexie website are treated to shots of Izzard astride a motorbike in six-inch black leather boots, with convenient hyperlinks to: The Man, the Myth, the Shoes.

The heterosexual Izzard is a very modern transvestite, at once all man and all woman. I watched him on Parkinson interviewed alongside Nigella Lawson.

Discussing why Izzard felt compelled to dress as a woman, Nigella humourlessly suggested it was because his mother died when he was six.

Izzard promptly put her in her place. You'd think Nigella, of all people, would understand.

It's the clothes, stupid.

A serious business

Why does JK Rowling always look so serious? She has sold tens of millions of her books, and half the world's children wish she was their mother. Now she is richer than the Queen.

If I were her, I wouldn't be able to wipe the smile off my face.

I should have her problems...

Iman, the beautiful Somalian supermodel who now earns her living lending credibility to de Beers trinkets, complains that she lacks self-esteem and used to shake with nerves on the catwalk. I sympathise.

Catwalk nerves can be so debilitating. While we're on the subject, here are some other problems I wish I had to wrestle with:

No matter how much I eat I can't seem to put on weight.
I worry about attracting gold-diggers.
I've never really liked the taste of alcohol.
What is the trick to juggling so many household staff?

If only the Empire had lasted longer

Last week my memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Award for non-fiction and I attended the ceremony at the Savoy. In the event, Tim Binyon's excellent biography of Pushkin was the evening's winner, but I was delighted to receive an honorary mention as "runner-up".

During the short discussion on each book, hosted by Kirsty Wark, the historian Andrew Roberts took the opportunity to observe that Britain should have held on to her colonies for longer.

Over drinks afterwards, some people became indignant on my behalf. It's a knee-jerk reaction in the liberal world and one I am used to. The truth is, Roberts's contention is neither controversial nor, indeed, new. Back in the 1960s a number of African politicians argued that their countries were not ready for independence.

It was the United States which, wanting access to more overseas markets, obliged Britain to relinquish its empire as a condition of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe.

And while I wouldn't want the sun still to be shining on the British Empire, in retrospect those African politicians who made themselves unpopular by saying so at the time were right.

A more considered departure might have left Africa better equipped to face her future.

Going up in smoke

For many years now I have been a social smoker who enjoyed a cigarette with dinner and a glass of wine. As smoking becomes increasingly non-U, most of my friends have all but banned smoking in their homes. Gareth Thomas's Private Member's Bill aimed at putting an end to smoking in restaurants is due for a second reading next month.

If it succeeds, will we now have to call ourselves "anti-social smokers"?