Of Crocodiles and Kings: Mugabe's Exit

The BBC is reporting this morning that opposition leaders believe that Robert Mugabe's own party (Zanu-PF) will force him out sometime this year. Part of that optimism is fueled by Mugabe's apparent decision not to continue to pursue postponing elections scheduled for 2008 for two additional years.

Zimbabwe's major trading partner, South Africa ,is ratcheting up the pressure to create an alternative to Mugabe, at least a notch or two, partly in response to widespread international condemnation of its silence and partly because the number of refugees seeking to escape the country is rapidly increasing. The normally cautious International Crisis Group, an independent think-tank, has today called for an urgent "regional meeting " to address the Zimbabwean situation.

According to Rebecca Harrison, reporting from the South African border town of Missina, the International Organization for Migration estimates that the number of Zimbabweans entering S.A. has now reached 20,000 per month.

An ever increasing number of the desperate, says Harrison, are willing to brave the crocodiles of the Limpopo river and numerous police checkpoints to escape life in Mugabe's challenged kingdom:

But while Mr. Mafema and his peers deal with the literal crocodiles, Mugabe has proven himself to be quite adept at coping with the political equivalents in his own party. Before he gives up we canreasonably expect a few more deft intra-party maneuvers.

As virtual monarch of Zimbabwe for the past twenty-seven years, Mugabe has been both long-lasting and impervious to international condemnation, to the sufferings of his people, to internecine ambition within his own party. And at the moment, the dictator has nowhere else to go.