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While the world, and I, was paying attention to the situation in Harare, I predicted that Mugabe would effectively wait out the world’s short attention span and then keep power in the mess that remains of his country. He’s certainly outlasted the world’s attention span, but I would love to be wrong and see this power-sharing deal work out.

Peter Maas argues that Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang — nope, never heard of him either — is actually worse than the far-more-famous Robert Mugabe. Obiang’s qualifications:

Years of violent apprenticeship in a genocidal regime led by a crazy uncle? Check. Power grab in a coup against the murderous uncle? Check. Execution of now-deposed uncle by firing squad? Check. Proclamation of self as “the liberator” of the nation? Check. Govern for decades in a way that prompts human rights groups to accuse your regime of murder, torture, and corruption? Check, check, and check.

He goes on to speculate that no one criticizes the reign because, like the Saudis, they worry about access to the country’s (rather modest) oil reserves.

Seeking refuge in the Dutch embassy, he’s ended his campaign to defeat Mugabe. For those wondering why, this gallery — absolutely not for the faint of heart — gives some indication of the reasons.

I don’t know what’s more astounding, the number he was given or the number that haven’t been taken away. For those institutions that haven’t rescinded, consider this horror.

It sometimes feels like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is following my program a tad too well.

A convoy carrying the Movement for Democratic Change leader was stopped at a police roadblock at 1000 GMT, party spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

The MDC leader and his entourage were taken to a police station in the far west of the country, said Mr Chamisa.

“It appears they want to disrupt our campaign programme,” he said.

UPDATE (06/04/2008): He has been freed.

Anne Applebaum is understandably upset that Robert Mugabe is able to safely and easily visit Rome:

It’s hard to think of any other single gesture that would so effectively reveal the ineffectiveness of international institutions in the conduct of both human rights and food-aid policy. Even someone standing atop the dome of St. Peter’s, megaphone in hand, shouting, “The U.N. is useless! The EU is useless!” couldn’t have clarified the matter more plainly.

Count me among those opposed to this.

JOHANNESBURG — After more than a month’s delay, Zimbabwe officially announced the results of the March 29 presidential elections on Friday, saying that the opposition candidate had won but by not enough to avoid a runoff against President Robert Mugabe.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, won 47.9 percent of the vote, compared with Mr. Mugabe’s 43.2 percent, the electoral commission’s chief elections officer, Lovemore Sekeramayi, told reporters.

Ministers in Mr. Mugabe’s government had maintained for weeks that a runoff would be necessary against Mr. Tsvangirai.

R.W. Johnson’s coverage of what’s happened in Zimbabwe over that last weeks is incredibly insightful and covers the all-but-unreported politics that have allowed Mugabe’s intransigence. His conclusion:

When such an elite [as the long-ruling Zanu-PF] feels its power threatened, it tends to fall back on its original self-definition as a national liberation movement. If one posits the problem in those terms then it follows that the defeat of an NLM can only mean the triumph of the forces of colonialism and apartheid which it came into existence to fight. In that view national liberation, once achieved, is the end of history. There can never be a point when it would be desirable for the gains of liberation to be lost, so the theory provides a watertight rationale – and a legitimating self-righteousness – for the ANC, Zanu-PF and the region’s other ruling NLMs to cling to power indefinitely. Seen this way the drama of Zimbabwe may indeed prefigure a more general crisis as these movements age and decay. We have seen enough of movements that believe they will remain to see the state wither away or to usher in a thousand-year Reich to know that bringing them to accept a less intransigent view of themselves is seldom a gentle business.

More crackdowns, little outside attention, no (meaningful) outside intervention. Mr. Mugabe has thus succeeded in carrying out step three, still working on four. Also of note, Morgan Tsvangerai wrote another plea for outside help in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition and, depending on who you ask, it’s president elect penned a Op-Ed in The Guardian today. The most bruising line:

How can global leaders espouse the values of democracy, yet when they are being challenged fail to open their mouths? Why is it that a supposed “war on terror” ignores the very real terror of broken minds and mangled bodies that lie along the trail left by Mugabe?

(via Passport)

When I saw this story this morning, I just hoped it wasn’t an April Fool’s Joke. 

Advisers to President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe are in talks with the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, amid signs that Mr. Mugabe may be preparing to resign, a Western diplomatic source and a prominent Zimbabwe political analyst said Tuesday. The negotiations about a possible transfer of power away from Mr. Mugabe come after he apparently concluded that a runoff election would be demeaning, a diplomat said.

Also of note, an interesting (and hopefully outdated) Op-Ed by Heather Holland, author of Dinner with Mugabe (Economist review), about how the world shouldn’t isolate Mugabe if he claims victory.

The opposition has announced that they’ve won, even while “official” results aren’t announced.

In a press conference at 1.30 am on Sunday morning Zimbabwe time Tendai Biti, the secretary general of the larger of the two wings of the MDC, said that preliminary results showed sweeping margins of victory across the country, even in Zanu-PF’s traditional heartland. ”We’ve won this election,” he said. ”We must savour these scenes as for the rest of our lives we’ll say we were there.”

I’m hoping this doesn’t turn out like Kenya, but I’m increasingly fearing it will.

Zimbabwe’s been under the thumb of Robert Mugabe for over two decades. The difficult-to-read election this coming weekend will determine if his time is up. I’ve been saving stuff on this topic for a week, looking to avoid flooding readers with it. Now here it.

From The Economist’s massive — and well done — article:

And yet, despite this stack of advantages, Mr Mugabe is plainly on the defensive. He must fear that Zimbabwe is in a state of such economic and political ruin that he needs more of a head-start than the 20% or so of votes provided by the standard forms of rigging. For Zimbabweans, however, there are two worries. One is that Mr Mugabe steals the election. The other is that he just fails to, especially if that means the president is forced into a run-off. In that case, he may resort to outright violence. “The violence has so far been contained, more or less,” says a former ZANU-PF minister who has joined Mr Makoni, “but if the election goes to two rounds it’ll go right up.”

Also:

• In a review, The Economist tackles the making of Mugabe
• The Financial Times says Mugabe’s denying his opponents food
• The Guardian says the opposition had to eat it’s campaign poster (via BB)
• The BBC reports that Mugabe won’t let the opposition MDC win during his lifetime
• Newsweek has a story about the country’s hyperinflation

The Economist tackles the troubling situation in Zimbabwe and the hopeful — if remote — possibility that Robert Mugabe may finally have to leave office.

ROBERT MUGABE, Zimbabwe’s ageing president, celebrated his official birthday at the weekend. The 84-year-old threw a party at Beitbridge, on the border with South Africa, and launched his campaign for a sixth term in office. He has ruled for nearly three decades and expects to win re-election in a general and presidential election in March. He rehearsed his usual stump speech, hurling abuse at anyone who dares to stand up to him (he called one opposition leader, Simba Makoni, a “prostitute” and a puffed up frog) and blaming outsiders—notably George Bush and Britain’s Gordon Brown—for his country’s ever more miserable economic collapse.

As vivid proof that Robert Mugabe has mismanaged Zimbabwe’s economy all the way into hyperinflation, his government is introducing new denominations:

$1 million, $5 million and $10 million notes. The highest existing note, introduced just last month, is $750,000. The new $10 million note is the equivalent of about $4 in American currency at the black market exchange rate used by most Zimbabweans. A hamburger at an ordinary cafe costs about $15 million in Zimbabwe money, or $6 American. Cash has dried up and long lines have become a feature at banks and A.T.M.’s.

For a brief but informative introduction to Zimbabwe, two paragraphs from The Economist’s Backgrounders.