What Will Happen to Zimbabwe Without Mugabe?

HARARE, ZIMBABWE — Robert Mugabe has run this country for so long that his presence is like some common particulate in the air, taken in with every breath.

Gladys Sithole can barely recall a Zimbabwe without him, this inescapable "old man," as she calls him, with godlike powers and all-too-human failings.

A mother of three, Sithole was once a bookkeeper in a dry cleaning store, but jobs like that have mostly vanished. She is a street peddler now in a collapsed society, where an annual inflation rate of 100,000 percent melts money into nothing.

A presidential election is scheduled here for March 29, and Sithole said she hoped this time Mugabe would finally lose. Now 84, he is a former guerrilla fighter who has led the nation since independence in 1980.

"Mugabe was a hero of the liberation struggle, sure," she said. "But now there is an even bigger struggle, the struggle to survive, and he is killing us."

Mugabe is burdened not only by Zimbabwe's persevering misery, but also by two formidable rivals. One is Morgan Tsvangirai, a well-known opponent with trade union support. The other is Simba Makoni, a onetime Cabinet member backed by influential figures in the governing party itself.