APRIL 5, 2002. On Easter Monday, April 1, Denzel Washington descended in a private helicopter on Africa Unity Square, in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. He was bearing 2,500 solid chocolate Easter eggs. The eggs were for the first 2,500 fans that came to greet him as he alighted, The Herald breathlessly reported. The Mugabe regime mouthpiece added that Denzel was in town to cast his directorial debut film to be shot in Zimbabwe.

Denzel's descent on the convulsed (recent rigged re-election of tyrannical, homophobic, Robert Mugabe) and increasingly hungry (famine in some rural areas) South African nation was not the P.R. bonanza it would have normally been for the Mugabe regime. The reason may have been that Mugabe's radio and TV czar, Alum Mpofu, 43, had just been caught pawing a boy in a Harare restaurant.

Mpofu, who resigned on April 3 as head of the powerful Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, masterminded Mugabe's vicious campaign demonizing gay people and the opposition, which was denied media access during the electoral campaign that ended with the autocrat's questionable reelection.

His boss, Mugabe, has said that gay people are "worse than pigs and dogs."

Related link:

For the BBC's Mugabe's Descent into Dictatorship.

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