A new Government in Zimbabwe was the necessary but not sufficient condition for rescuing it from the appalling state into which Robert Mugabe has allowed it to sink. He has now blocked regime change by terrorising his opponents, the Movement for Democratic Change, into withdrawing from the rerun of the presidential election that it was probably about to win. So the economy remains in ruins and human-rights violations continue, while hungry refugees pour across its borders. And with only one candidate left - Mr Mugabe himself - in what has become a mockery of an election, Zimbabwe now has little prospect of an early end to its agony. The one hope remaining is that the MDC could use its majority in Zimbabwe's parliament to negotiate an agreement to share power, following Kenya's example. But the hardliners in Mr Mugabe's party, Zanu-PF, seemed to have turned their backs on any such solution. And so the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference has issued a statement warning that Zimbabwe is heading towards a hopeless situation that could lead to "a vast humanitarian crisis that will engulf the whole Southern African region".

What is it about Africa that makes democracy there so difficult? Mugabe's post-colonial generation of nationalist leaders has more often than not used political power in an arbitrary and tyrannical fashion, accompanied by the corrupt plundering of national coffers for personal gain. They have generally subverted for their own advantage the institutions they inherited. Opinion in the West has been slow to blame them for this, perhaps from post-colonial guilt and a fear of sounding racist. In any event, as European settlers did in the colonial era and the slave traders did before them, outside commercial interests have not been backward in exploiting the situation for their own advantage - which partly explains the huge international debts by which many African countries are now over-burdened. China is currently among the worst ...

A gathering of a family around the supper table is a moment when the bonds that are shared are reinforced, the love its members have for one another is enhanced and the very experience of coming together can strengthen them as they go out into the world. But it is also a place where old jealousies can resurface, where squabbling can break out and enmities occur. That, sadly, is also true of those called to the Lord's ...

The papal nuncio to Great Britain has let it be known he has begun consultations to find a successor to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as Archbishop of Westminster. In that spirit The Tablet has been publishing a range of opinions from Catholics, lay and clerical, and today we complete the exercise with a list of the names, which - as far as it is possible to tell - the nuncio might be considering. It is necessarily ...

The most interesting American presidential primary contest in living memory has drawn to a close, with an outcome that 12 months ago would have seemed truly extraordinary. The young Illinois Senator Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan and mother American, has pipped Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and clear favourite last year, to the finishing post, represented by winning a total of 2,118 or more committed delegates ...

Relations between Christians and Muslims have never been more sensitive nor crucial to the peace and prosperity of the planet. Both have their fundamentalists, to whom outright conversion of the other is the only acceptable goal. The mainstream in each case, meanwhile, finds dealing with its own fundamentalists almost as tricky as dealing with the other faith. The Church of England is to debate a motion at its summer ...