Despite a ferocious backlash by Zimbabwe's authorities to a flurry of popular protests against poor governance and a sinking economy, the African Union and the SA Development Community have failed to clearly condemn the crackdown and ''ban'' on further protests.This will not surprise Zimbabweans old enough to remember the government's merciless and bloody campaign against the Ndebele people in 1982, or the systematic violence and manipulation that marred the 2002 and 2008 elections that allowed President Robert Mugabe to keep extending his rule.In South Africa we even coined a term for engaging, under the SADC umbrella, in endless ''talks'' with the Mugabe government and the opposition, interspersed with occasional expressions of concern when things got really bad. We called it ''quiet diplomacy''.There was far less violence in the run-up to the 2013 polls after a government of national unity had run its course, but the AU and SADC did not take the opposition's allegations of vote-rigging seriously. Mugabe was later rewarded by being made chairman of the African Union.As a result, today he gets a free pass to unleash his police on peaceful protests, brand judges who allow marches to proceed as ''reckless'', and ban gatherings outright.According to news agency AFP, the 92-year-old president, who has declared his intention to run for re-election in 2018, told the central committee of his Zanu-PF party on Friday that the opposition was trying to fuel an uprising and that the government would take "very strong" action against public violence."Let these opposition parties and all those groups be warned that our patience has limits and will certainly run out," he said.The truth is that many of the protests have broad public support that cut across political parties and are driven by years of misrule.Will the AU and SADC again fail the people of Zimbabwe when Mugabe again unleashes the full might of the state on the protesters?..