Mugabe has lost it

using to accept the SADC package.
In the mistaken belief that Mugabe would be happy if power remained within Zanu (PF), Mbeki has been pushing for a reformation of the ruling party that would be acceptable to the opposition and the international community. After Mugabe’s graceful exit, duly protected from prosecution at The Hague, the new Zanu (PF) was expected to undertake meaningful dialogue with the opposition MDC leading to a government of national unity. The re-writing of Zimbabwe’s much-amended, undemocratic constitution was part and parcel of this plan.
But according to highly-placed sources Mugabe has told Mbeki that any deal involving his political demise is unacceptable. The complex succession battle raging within Zanu (PF) has forced him to fight a rear-guard action with his own party as well as battling the opposition.
What Mugabe does not seem to realise is that, in his desperate clinging to power, he has actually lost control of the country.
The insane economic measures implemented during the past few weeks, coupled with long-term lunatic economic policies such as the artificial pegging of the Zimdollar to hard currencies, has handed control to the black marketeers.
The economy, and hence the country, is now firmly in the hands of those who have managed to get hold of the goods and the forex that the entire populace needs to survive. And those people are, by and large, the top guns in the army and the police, cabinet minister and their mujibas in the youth militia. They have looted everything. They know there is no tomorrow. And they no longer need Mugabe.
Not only has Mugabe lost control, he no longer knows who his enemies are. At the weekend he lashed out at the dwindling white community, threatening to abandon his 1980 policy of reconciliation and drag them to Nuremburg-style trials for genocide during the liberation struggle.
Mbeki continues to put a brave face on an impossible situation, despite uproar within his own business community, whose extensive investments in Zimbabwe are seriously threatened. The human tide flooding across the Limpopo is causing enormous concern, with huge health and crime implications.
Meanwhile, the state-controlled media continues to pretend that all is well, reminiscent of Iraq’s ‘Comical Ali’ who was still issuing upbeat statements from his office in Baghdad when American tanks roared into town.
When the canned beans and candles run out, who will finally put an end to the madness?