Robert Mugabe: his “jaunty boast” before the election that he would step down if defeated confirmed to many that he felt certain of victory.

The overwhelming victory of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe’s July election is the biggest defeat for the United Kingdom’s policy in Africa in 60 years. Both the British Ambassador and the MI6 head officer in Harare called it wrong. So confident was the government that the winner would be Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), that the Department for International Development was already posting people to restart the aid programme and help the new government rebuild the economy. Not since 1951, when the British authorities released Kwame Nkrumah from jail and asked him to form a government has Britain got it so wrong in Africa. Nkrumah led Ghana to independence,

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