Veteran African National Congress (ANC) MP Kader Asmal became the most senior ANC politician yet to break ranks on government's quiet diplomacy policy towards Zimbabwe when he made a speech that harshly criticised Pre-sident Robert Mugabe's regime.

Speaking at the launch in Cape Town yesterday of the book Through the Darkness -- A Life in Zimbabwe, by Judith Todd, Asmal said he was speaking out now because some of Mugabe's actions had become like those of Cambodia's Pol Pot.

Todd is the daughter of former Southern Rhodesia prime minister Garfield Todd, an opponent of white minority rule under Ian Smith.

While Asmal said SA should hope that the mediation efforts of President Thabo Mbeki would bear fruit, he took the unusual position of saying if mediation failed then the United Nations should become involved.

He said the refrain that only Zimbabweans could decide their future was hollow in the face of an uneven political playing field and a lack of normality. He described the recent depredations of Mugabe's security forces in Operation Murambatsvina (Operation Cleanup) as reminiscent of Cambodia's killing fields.

"Why do I speak now? I should have done so in the 1980s when thousands of people were murdered by the Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland. I did not do so. Neither did I do so during Operation Murambatsvina, when those who want to retain power refer to their fellow citizens as 's**ts who have to be removed'.

"We are constantly reminded by our betters that only Zimbabweans can decide their future. But you can only be conscious actors for change if there is a level political field, not only for the holding of elections, but also in the run-up.

"Instead we have the destruction of the rule of law, the judiciary, the press and the economy, and the brutalisation of the population, with a quarter of the country's population now living in the diaspora and with the army and the civil service instruments and controllers of the ruling party.

"If freedom of association and the culture of debate are effectively criminalised, how can all Zimbabweans decide their future with a semblance of equality with the Mugabe regime?"

Speaking about Todd's book, he said: "This is one person's painful story, of love for her fellow human beings and her touching relationship with her parents and anger at the roller-coaster ride to infamy and abuse of power in a country which has maliciously and illegally withdrawn her passport and persecuted her friends."