Retirement, illness, death, coups, flight, defeat — all have been mooted as causes of Robert Mugabe's imminent departure and all have been wrong. Some optimists even convince themselves that he will withdraw voluntarily. But the old rogue is not going anywhere except in a box or at the end of a gun.
He dare not because he has much blood on his hands and cannot trust anyone. Also he has an unabated lust for power. In his eyes elections are a charade put on to appease the West, to be ignored when the results are inconvenient. He will leave only when convinced it is his last remaining option.
Even the talks are fake. Mugabe is playing for time while trying to placate African leaders whose support is waning. He is just going through the motions. Meanwhile he has opened Parliament; outlined policies, attacked the West, added to his vast wealth and perchance built another spectacularly tasteless retirement home.
Not bad for a leader so discredited it took his vote riggers two months to get his tally up to 43 per cent.
But still Zimbabweans cling to hope. And audacity is rising. Far and away the most startling development in recent weeks has been the jeering of Mugabe amid all the pomp and ceremony of the opening of Parliament. Emboldened by the election the previous day of their candidate for the Speaker's chair, opposition loyalists heckled as Mugabe delivered his absurd address.
It made him seem a shrunken figure ripe for the satire of a latter-day Chaplin. He had arrived in a vintage Rolls Royce.
A million Zimbabweans driven from their hopes by thugs, despair or hunger watched from distant shacks and cheered. But they know his cunning. Already the loathed dictator has tried to restore his majority by persuading Arthur Matamabara, the quisling leader of a breakaway MDC faction, to take his side.
Matamabara signed a deal that gave him importance but not power, but it was overturned by principled members of his faction. Morgan Tsvangarai was not so easily swayed.
Undeterred, the government has arrested several opposition MPs on trumped up charges. Soon a by-election must be held and already the constituency has been declared a no-go area. The fix is in.
Encouragingly, this devious demagogue has lost his grip on the continent he once dominated. African trades unions have staged protests, workers have refused to unload ships bearing Chinese