Robert Mugabe makes poll plans to bury power-sharing

HE is just two months shy of his 88th birthday, but Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe isn't giving up.

On the contrary, the most despised of Africa's despots - to the despair of adversaries and those who have so long forecast his political demise - is preparing to mark the occasion by standing for re-election for another six-year term.

Not for him the sort of retirement at 87 of that most famous of postwar West German chancellors Konrad Adenauer, who took office at the age of 73. Rather, having been in power almost 32 years, Mugabe, it seems, may be seeking to emulate the longevity in office of that other notable central African potentate, the Homburg-hatted Hastings Kamuzu Banda, of Malawi, who was 101 when he died in 1997, three years after he reluctantly left office.

It would be an "act of cowardice," Mugabe told 6000 cheering delegates of his ruling Zanu-PF party during a two-hour, Fidel Castro-style harangue the other day, for him to retire now. "It would be wrong, completely wrong, when the West is still holding sanctions against us and pursuing regime change," he said. "I am not a coward. I am lucky God gave me this longer life than others to be with you."

On cue, they nominated him by acclamation as the party's candidate for the election Mugabe is determined to hold early next year, aimed, he says, at "digging the grave" of the power-sharing deal he was forced to accept with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

It was a powerful performance by the octogenarian demagogue, one that confounded critics and those expecting to see him on his last legs. And in it was a telling reminder of just how little progress has been made by the international community in getting rid of Mugabe and dismantling his brutal regime.

There have been years of opprobrium, isolation, and sanctions. Even neighbouring African countries have turned against him. He has looked vulnerable. But as he cunningly sets about plotting the destruction of the power-sharing government, the old boy has a surprisingly strong deck of cards to play.

This was seen during the Zanu-PF conference when Gwede Mantashe, powerful secretary-general of South Africa's ruling ANC, pledged direct help to ensure the re-election of Mugabe's party. It is a stance that is diametrically at odds with longstanding South African policy to pressure Mugabe not to hold elections until after constitutional changes to ensure they are fair and free.

Given the unique potential South Africa has to influence events in its landlocked neighbour, the assurance of direct ANC help will have been music to Mugabe's ears. But it's not his only good news. Amid the moves to bury the power-sharing government has come a welter of controversy about the personal life and loves of opposition leader Tsvangirai, most dramatically with an unedifying account of how he has walked away from a "marriage" that embarrassingly lasted 12 days - a spectacle he blames on dirty tricks by Mugabe's notorious spy agencies.

The "marriage," Tsvangirai said, had been "hijacked" and was a "dark patch in my private life." This and other "brief flings" have, it seems, done little for his standing. Hence his Movement for Democratic Change, victors in the election Mugabe outrageously stole in 2008, is against the ropes.

As well there is the sudden lifting of international sanctions on the sale of "blood diamonds" from Marange, a field estimated to hold more than a quarter of the world's diamond reserves and which will realise a staggering $2 billion a month, providing the regime with an unmatchable war chest to buy votes and crush the opposition.

The 2008 election is acknowledged to have been a travesty. But the outrage and sanctions that followed have done little to mend Mugabe's ways. And now as he prepares to force an election aimed at destroying the power-sharing government, the cards all seem to be falling his way.

With his pretty, 47-year-old wife Grace Marufu (Gucci Grace, to some) on his arm, Mugabe exudes confidence that he has years at the helm ahead of him. That is both a fearful prospect for long-suffering Zimbabweans, and a sad comment on the international community's inability to get rid of one of the world's most loathed despots.