Zimbabwe’s Mugabe: Cool, Calculated Killer

For decades, the Zimbabwe leader has carefully calibrated his actions to a level of ‘acceptable’ violence that escapes condemnation while destroying opposition.

By Robyn Dixon
The Los Angeles Times
December 14, 2008

Reporting from Harare, Zimbabwe — For a very literal example of Robert Mugabe’s staying power, look no further than a recent crisis summit of southern African leaders designed to settle the political impasse that has seen the longtime Zimbabwean leader stubbornly cling to the presidency.

The leaders wanted him to leave the room so they could deliberate in private. He refused.

Between their misguided politeness and his famous capacity to intimidate, the presidents meekly backed down. Mugabe stayed.

Be it with his fellow African leaders, the West or the Zimbabwean opposition, the 84-year-old Mugabe has outmaneuvered — and outlasted — his critics for more than a quarter of a century, through a careful calibration of the international reaction to and domestic effect of his actions. As close as the end sometimes seems, Mugabe has managed to survive.

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To help understand his staying power, one need only rewind to the 1980s and the massacres of his early years in power, when he was a conquering hero who had thrown out the white minority regime of Ian Smith.

The name of the murderous operation, Gukurahundi, was as lyrical as a haiku: the wind that blows away the chaff before the spring rains.

Mugabe’s political opponents were the chaff. The spring rains were supposed to signify the golden era of a one-party state (or rather, a one-man state).

Western leaders and news media ignored the massacres of the “dissidents” by the army’s crack Five Brigade in Matabeleland province in southern Zimbabwe. Some estimates put the dead at 20,000.

Read the rest:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo
rld/la-fg-mugabe14-2008dec14,0,4418603.story

Above: Robert ugabe.  Photo:  Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi / Associated Press