If you haven't been following the situation in Zimbabwe—and if you get most of your news from Radar, you haven't; apologies—here's where things stand now: After elections in March which were widely considered to have been won by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, the government of long-time dictator Robert Mugabe announced that, actually, Tsvangirai didn't get enough votes to win outright, and there would have to be a run-off. Since then the government has done everything in its power to intimidate its people, threatening voters and torturing and murdering opposition leaders and their families. Yesterday, citing the risk to his supporters' very lives and the unlikelihood that Mugabe would allow a fair vote, Tsvangirai pulled out of the race.

How bad has it been?

Well, the week before last, this happened:

The son of a Zimbabwean opposition leader has been kidnapped and beaten to death along with three other men, in the latest politically-motivated killing attributed to the Mugabe regime.

Archfred Chipiyo was one of three men discovered by the roadside in Harare today with their skulls smashed after they were abducted by loyalists of the president's Zanu-PF party on Tuesday. The body of a fourth man was later discovered nearby.

A week earlier, when Mugabe's associates came looking for local opposition leader Patson Chirpiro and were unable to find him, they burned his wife alive.

Inside the hut where his wife of 29 years died, women sang softly to a subdued drum beat next to the cheap wooden coffin. The thatched roof had been destroyed in the fire so they sat under the open sky. The lid could not be closed because Mrs Chipiro's outstretched arm had burnt rigid. Her charred hand was found as women swept the hut.

Mr Chipiro, 51, a small, determined man, arrived from Harare on Friday afternoon to find his three brick huts ablaze. "I was trying to put the fire out," he said. "I thought my wife was hiding in the bushes."

His four-year-old nephew, Admire, heard him calling her. "He ran to me. He said, 'Auntie has been beaten and they threw her in the fire'."

And yesterday's New York Times carried this horrific story about the murder of the wife of Emmanuel Chiroto, the man recently chosen to be mayor of Harare, who was discovered with a "face so badly bashed in that even her own brother only recognized her by her brown corduroy skirt and plaited hair."

While Mr. Chiroto was away, two truckloads of men firebombed his home and abducted his wife and child. Opposition party officials hurriedly contacted Tanki Mothae, a Lesotho native who is a key manager of the election monitors from the Southern African Development Community.

"The house was completely destroyed inside," Mr. Mothae said in an interview. "The furniture, everything, was burned to ashes."

On Tuesday, Mr. Chiroto's little boy was dropped off at a police station. Wednesday, his wife's battered body was found in a Harare morgue.

Mr. Chiroto still has not had the heart to tell Ashley that his mother is dead, he said. The boy told his father he had sat on his blindfolded mother's lap as she was held captive and then he was left behind as soldiers took her away.

"We need to go get Mommy," the 4-year-old has told his father over and over. "We have to go! She's in the bush. Let's go to Mommy!"

Remember how one of the big justifications for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who gassed his own people and we owed it to the world to spread democracy etc? I guess we learned our lesson on that one, because other than muttering about additional sanctions, we're pretty much deciding that it's Africa's problem to deal with.