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Beware the Ides of March

Some of President Robert Mugabe's oldest allies want him to leave – but who will play Brutus?

By overreacting to an opposition demonstration and savagely beating its leader Morgan Tsvangirai, the police in Harare served their master badly. President Robert Mugabe was already under stiff pressure within his own ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. He now risks losing the lingering sympathy of his few remaining foreign friends, and in particular of South Africa and others in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), who have so far kept his country's tottering economy from final collapse. Ghana's President and African Union Chairman John Kufuor said in London on 14 March that the AU found Zimbabwe's crisis embarrassing and was committed to finding a solution....

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Beware the Ides of March

Some of President Robert Mugabe's oldest allies want him to leave – but who will play Brutus?

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