Zimbabwe Gets a Hero

When Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's police force brutally beat the leader of an opposition party, Morgan Tsvangirai, they might have unwittingly  created their own Nelson Mandela. Photographs of a battered Tsvangirai being led to a hospital in police custody Tuesday circulated around the globe, prompting impassioned cries of protest.

Galvanized by a recent announcement that the strongman's term will extend beyond 2008, his 28th year of rule, anti-Mugabe activists were meeting when Tsvangirai and nearly 50 other party members were arrested and flogged for, ironically, "inciting to violence," charges that were never brought formally. (More Zimbabwe stories.)