Give Robert Mugabe credit for chutzpah if nothing else. Zimbabwe's President-by-declaration has announced that new elections will be called if a power-sharing agreement is not reached in the next two years. This generous, indeed absurd, timetable will of course allow talks to languish and thus will keep Mugabe right where he insists that he belongs, which is at the reins of power. Despots use their power in two seemingly disparate but interconnected ways: Through the sheer rule of force, and where force will not work or is unnecessary, through what we might call controlled anarchy. Over the next two years it is pretty clear that Mugabe would use force when convenient and otherwise allow the country to fester as it suits him.
But the two-year timetable is not even where the chutzpah comes in. After years of thumbing his nose at the United Kingdom and the rest of the world, indeed of aiming his most vitriolic ire at the leaders of the UK, Mugabe has appealed to London for help in dealing with the country's cholera epidemic (which, frighteningly, has spread across the Limpopo to South Africa.) Tellingly, perhaps, Mugabe has also declared a national emergency, which will give him expanded powers.
Regional leaders, meanwhile, are increasingly speaking out against Mugabe. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has even broached the idea of forcibly removing Mugabe from power and trying him at the Hague for gross human rights violations, and Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga has called for a regional coalition to help oust Zimbabwe's leadership. A storm appears to be brewing. Let us see if this one blows harmlessly out to sea or if it hits land with the ferocity that will be required to dislodge Mugabe from his perch.
