Belfast Blogs.com

This is Robert Mugabe's new house:It cost around $26 million dollars and took five years to build, five years during which Zimbabwe's economy completely fell apart, inflation spiralled up to hundreds of thousands of per cent per year, and thousands of the poorest lost their shanty shack homes in slum clearances ordered by Mugabe.But Robert sleeps well at night:He dines well too. Even though 80% of the population are without work in Zimbabwe, Mugabe's kitchen and chefs ensure that he and his Zanu cronies are well fed:And they can always relax later for cocktails by the pool, and discuss perhaps the pressing matters of the day.Like the election they lost then stole back. Like the tens of thousands of citizens who've fled the country. Like the fact that they'll get away with it because the...

It's the endgame for Mugabe.He may have been asleep at the wheel for years, ruling Zimbabwe via syphilitic spite and paranoid oppression as it collapsed into a downward spiral of economic and social disaster.But no one's prepared to tell him to leave just yet.Strange to think that this year, these few weeks actually, will have accounted for the passing of Ian Paisley, Bertie Ahern and Robert Mugabe. Historians will have fun making sense of that list in years to come.At this point, of course, Mugabe, the great survivor, has outlasted the Irishmen. While the Western media, briefed by the MDC, are announcing that Zanu-PF have lost the parliamentary elections and Mugabe the presidency, it's worth looking at what the Zimbabwean media are saying.They're saying it's a hung parliament and that...