@ True Grit: I think you are trying to give Police states a bad name . Whatever motivates undemocratic military or police led regimes, they usually try to keep order rather than destroy it. What we have here is a Criminal State, why make it sound like something more legal than it really is?

The rest have, without exception, choosen to die in office, die by the sword, or other interesting, but damaging exits of this nature.

So – does anyone seriously believe that this primitive, immature behaviour so manifest in African “leadership” (loosely used) is likely to simply evaporate conveniently just when we need Mugabe to disappear?

Naive in the extreme, I say – Bob will have to be removed against his will, or die, naturally or some other how.

This is NOT advocating voilence – it is simply a statement of a fact that is irrefutable.

What a ridiculous story! There is no need for Mr Tsvangirai to lie or mislead anyone about the political situation in Zimbabwe. The evidence is there for the whole world to see:
ZIMBABWE IS A POLICE STATE.

Killing and maiming the political opposition and its supporters; stealing farms under the pretext of land reforms; bulldozing and burning peoples homes; controlling the legal system to Zanu-PF’s advantage; rewarding cronies and henchmen with wealth stolen from the nation; abusing women; arming militia and allowing them to rampage above the law; banning a free press and intimidating independent journalists; allowing the economy to go into free fall; barring aid organizations from distributing food and medicines to the population; allowing people to go hungry and even starve if it does not suit the regime to give them food. All this adds up to only one analysis of the political situation: ZIMBABWE IS A POLICE STATE.

Both these parties would consider the people of Zimbabwe to be at best an inconvenience.

If Mugabe goes down that road he will be openly proving that he has no intention of ever being committed to democracy. He may not care whether the world will treat him as nothing more than a tin-pot dictator, because he may believe that he can rely entirely on the Chinese government to bail him out of the country’s misery while he and the JOC continue to intimidate their political foes.

It is therefore up to strong diplomatic forces in the world to convince, even to plead, with the Chinese authorities that they must not help Mugabe. How this can be done, given their own human rights record, I do not know. But there are some liberal elements in the Chinese administration, and it may be a feather in their cap if they can be seen to show progress
and help create a fairer world.