Every year at this time my family spends a few months in South Africa, where my husband was raised. My oldest three children go to school here, which starts promptly at 7:45 a.m. I wake up at 6:15 a.m. to pack lunches, make breakfast, and leave time for the essential first cup of coffee.

The local newspapers — the Cape Times and its sister paper, the Cape Argus — make the New York Post seem positively brainy. They are filled with a remarkable amount of inane stories involving crime, sports, animals, and weather. “Nile Croc Caught in City River” was a recent front page headline, along with “Lively Puppy Just Refuses To Stay Dead and Buried.”

For many years I couldn’t get myself to read the paper, but last year I gave in and began to take five minutes to flip through it each morning over coffee.

Last week, replacing the usual hare-brained stories, was a picture of Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been badly beaten by president Robert Mugabe’s henchmen. His face was so swollen that his eyes were barely open. He had sutured gashes down the side of his head and a broken arm.

My stomach knotted as I read about the brutal pounding that he and dozens of his colleagues from the Movement for Democratic Change received. What was even more disturbing than the details of the torture, though, was the fact that neighboring South Africa stays silent as a vicious dictator continues to torture his opponents and slowly, over the past seven years, starve millions of his countrymen.

I have long ago lost hope that the United Nations will hold Mr. Mugabe accountable for his crimes against humanity. But how can South Africa — who so recently benefited from the power of international pressure — stay silent when the facts regarding Zimbabwe’s deterioration under Mr. Mugabe’s rule are glaring?

In 1980, when Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain, it was one of the continent’s wealthiest and developed countries. Today, just 27 years later, annual inflation is 1,700%, according to the Association of Zimbabwe Journalists. Unemployment is roughly 80% and the average life expectancy is less than 37 years, one of the lowest in the world. 18% of the adult population is HIV positive.

I didn’t hear my oldest son, Jacob, enter the room, but when I looked up from the paper, there he was, cuddled next to me in his pajamas. Maybe it was because I saw that he noticed the gruesome picture on the front of the newspaper, or maybe it was because it’s not that often that I have isolated time to talk to him about subjects he is ready for — or maybe it was because I just had to vent my frustration that I began talking to him.

“I see you looking at that picture,” I said to Jacob. “That’s a very brave man, Morgan Tsvangirai, who was beaten up by the president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. Robert Mugabe is a dictator. Do you know what that means?”

This started a long conversation about Zimbabwe, about the most recent elections in the country, and about families who had their farms confiscated by the government only to find that their life-long works had been given to Mr. Mugabe’s cronies. We talked about how a lush and green country is now brown and barren and how the breadbasket of Africa — the continent’s most fertile country — now has to import food.

“Why doesn’t someone kill him?” Jacob asked about Mr. Mugabe. I have often wondered this myself, I tell him. He is surrounded by scores of bodyguards. His car is bulletproof with door handles only found on the inside. His house is protected with countless soldiers and tanks from the country’s army.

I find it so hard to balance my desire to protect my children from the world’s harshest realities with my need to instill within them the conviction that they have a responsibility — and the ability — to try to change the world. Lately, I think I’ve been erring on the side of protecting them too much.

My younger son, who is 6 years old, joined the conversation when it continued later that afternoon. After Jacob told him the basic information about Zimbabwe and Mr. Mugabe’s rule of terror, Josh was silent for a few minutes. “Why doesn’t all the world go up on him?” Josh said. “There must be more good people in the world than bad?” There must be.

sarasberman@aol.com