allAfrica.com: Ghana: Lessons From Past May Pave Way for Mugabe Exit (Page 1 of 2)

ZIMBABWE'S political crisis lurched on last week as President Robert Mugabe, the strongman who has ruled the California-size country in southern Africa for the past 28 years, refused to release the results of the March 29 elections.

In old-fashioned autocratic style, the government's police began to round up opposition supporters, writes Graham Bowley in The New York Times on Sunday.

The world is losing patience, but Mugabe is only the latest example of dictators in Africa and elsewhere - some more bloodthirsty than others - who have overstayed their welcome, and whom the West have tried to winkle out of power.

What lessons can be learned from past attempts to oust seemingly immovable oppressors? Do the lessons apply in the case of Zimbabwe? What are the options for dealing with Mugabe?

PAY OFF AND EXILE

This strategy has worked, sort of, before.

In 1997, President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now Congo, the very model of an African dictator dirty with corruption as his country collapsed around him, was promised safe passage by his former ally, the United States, and flew to Morocco. (He died of prostate cancer in exile soon after.)

In July 2003, leaders of the African Union bribed Charles Taylor - a murderous warlord with folllowers who would hack off the hands or feet of civilians - to leave Liberia for an early retirement in Nigeria. In similar fashion, the United States got Ferdinand Marcos to quit the Philippines by allowing him refuge in a Hawaiian villa.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who as ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill Clinton helped ease Seseko Mobuto from Zaire, said he believed the same strategy could be used with Mr. Mugabe.

"Maybe if he is offered safe passage we will rid ourselves of this despot," he said.

Yet Congo and Liberia are hardly good examples. Congo has tipped further into chaos since Mr. Mobuto left. And, despite promises, Nigeria returned Taylor to Liberia, which handed him over to an international tribunal to face charges of war crimes in Sierra Leone. That sequence of events may make autocrats like Mr. Mugabe think twice before they head for the airport.

SANCTIONS AND ISOLATION

A popular response to noxious regimes (think Castro or early Saddam). But they only work if the sanctions hurt.

"The greater the ties to the West, the greater the degree to which the elite is educated in the West and has career prospects in the West, then the greater the likelihood the coalition behind a regime will crack," said Steven Levitsky, professor of government at Harvard University, who has studied conditions under which autocracies crumble. (Another condition is a weak internal security apparatus with little stomach for a long fight against its people - hardly a description of Mr. Mugabe's battle-hardened forces, which came of age in a guerrilla liberation war.) Unfortunately, it's not clear what extra pain sanctions could exact on Zimbabwe, where 8 out of 10 people are unemployed and the annual inflation rate is more than 100,000 percent.

MILITARY INTERVENTION

In 1979, armies from Tanzania invaded Uganda and chased out Mr. Amin, a tyrant said to have sanctioned the murder of close to 300,000. Yet regime change is perilous, as the United States discovered following its toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

In Uganda, the man who replaced Idi Amin - Milton Obote - was arguably worse. Mr. Obote may have murdered more Ugandans even than his predecessor. "Intervention is always very difficult in Africa," said Michael Holman, former Africa editor of The Financial Times. "If you don't have a well-drilled army and decent civil service to fill the gap that threw up the problem in the first place then you are going to have a disaster on your hands."

POPULAR UPRISING

In 1998, President Suharto of Indonesia was forced to end his brutal and corrupt tenure after an economic meltdown, nationwide rioting and the withdrawal of government and military support. (He went into internal exile in a modest house in Jakarta, the capital, until his death earlier this year.) One hope among Zimbabwe watchers is that the moderates in Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party turn against him, dissent breaks out in the military, or ordinary Zimbabweans finally take to the street.

Earlier this year, in the election crisis in Kenya, opposition supporters streamed from Nairobi's slums to challenge President Mwai Kibaki's declaration of victory in a flawed vote, until he was finally persuaded to share power with the opposition leader Raila Odinga.

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