HARARE, ZIMBABWE — For a very literal example of Robert Mugabe's staying power, look no further than a recent crisis summit of southern African leaders designed to settle the political impasse that has seen the longtime Zimbabwean leader stubbornly cling to the presidency.
The leaders wanted him to leave the room so they could deliberate in private. He refused.
Between their misguided politeness and his famous capacity to intimidate, the presidents meekly backed down. Mugabe stayed.
Be it with his fellow African leaders, the West or the Zimbabwean opposition, the 84-year-old Mugabe has outmaneuvered -- and outlasted -- his critics for more than a quarter of a century, through a careful calibration of the international reaction to and domestic effect of his actions. As close as the end sometimes seems, Mugabe has managed to survive.
To help understand his staying power, one need only rewind to the 1980s and the massacres of his early years in power, when he was a conquering hero who had thrown out the white minority regime of Ian Smith.
The name of the murderous operation, Gukurahundi, was as lyrical as a haiku: the wind that blows away the chaff before the spring rains.
Mugabe's political opponents were the chaff. The spring rains were supposed to signify the golden era of a one-party state (or rather, a one-man state).
Western leaders and news media ignored the massacres of the "dissidents" by the army's crack Five Brigade in Matabeleland province in southern Zimbabwe. Some estimates put the dead at 20,000.
Mugabe drew his most important lesson from the West's blase reaction, analysts believe: that there's a level of "acceptable" violence that will escape international condemnation, but still destroy any threat to his power.
"He's never, ever been frightened of war," said analyst Tony Reeler of the Research & Advocacy Unit, an independent think tank in Harare, the capital. Mugabe learned that he could get away with "subliminal terror" that would not trigger international intervention, he said.
"It's just below the threshold that upsets people, and it's deliberately so," he said.
"Deliberate" is a word that defines Mugabe. Bony and severe, he is a teetotaler who freezes debate in Cabinet sessions with silence, former associates say.
