President Robert Mugabe is responsible for much of Zimbabwe’s terrible suffering. But so long as Africa’s leaders allow Mugabe and his henchmen to bully them into silence - with phony claims of anti-colonialism and national sovereignty - they are fully complicit. Earlier this week, leaders from South Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Swaziland said they had failed to find a way to effect a power-sharing agreement between Mugabe and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

They handed the problem over to a summit of the 15-member Southern African Development Community. The group must come together quickly and be ready to bring whatever pressure is necessary to force Mugabe to cede real power. In a statement, the participating Southern African leaders “noted with concern disagreements in the allocation” of the Home Affairs Ministry and spoke of the need “to review the current political situation.”

We hope that behind the diplomatic patter there is a true sense of urgency that will finally galvanize all of southern Africa’s leaders to quick and effective action. Until then, the rest of the world must keep up the pressure: denying visas to Mugabe’s cronies; freezing their bank accounts; and looking for ways to make clear that the looting and terrorising of Zimbabwe will no longer be tolerated.