Ian Khama deserves the Nobel prize

Botswana's President Ian Khama deserves the Nobel prize for doing the unthinkable: telling an African leader to step down because he has passed his sell-by date

The Herald's reaction is that it is un-African for a fellow African president to criticise Mugabe. So it responds by calling President Khama 'queer'. That really is 'un-African'.

The Vigil, on behalf of Zimbabweans, apologises to President Khama, who has helped to make his country an island of good governance and prosperity in an ocean of corruption and inefficiency.

President Khama will no doubt already know that Mugabe's mouthpiece the Herald is like Pinocchio, the puppet in the children's story whose nose grows longer every time he tells a lie. So he will not be surprised if the Herald's nose is now so long as to stretch all the way to Botswana.

We believe the Herald would be a worthy winner of the Ig Nobel Prize awarded every year at Harvard university as an alternative to the Nobel Prize. After all,this year an award went to a team for their psychology paper 'From Junior to Senior Pinocchio; a Cross-Sectional Life Span Investigation of Deception'. They were chosen for 'asking a thousand liars how often they lie and for deciding whether to believe those answers'.

In fact, the Herald would qualify for two Ig Nobel awards. A second one went to Japanese researchers 'for investigating whether things looked different when you bend over and view them between your legs'.

British Ambassador Catriona Laing might think that the Herald report on her remarks about the police's handling of the Harare demonstrations came from between their correspondent's legs. So might the UN view the paper's report of Mugabe's 'mega success' at the recent New York meeting.

The IG awards for the Herald would be suitable (and timely) - they carry a cash prize of a Zimbabwean ten trillion dollar note.