Alone again

Zimbabwe: Isolated by the West and the world, Robert Mugabe maintains his grip on a desperate and fearful nation | Priya Abraham

Robert Mugabe has always been a loner. As a child living at a Catholic mission outside Zimbabwe's capital Harare, he imbibed Jesuit discipline and studied voraciously but avoided other children. He is a cold fish who has rarely kept confidantes during his 27 years as Zimbabwe's dictator, save his first wife, Sally, whom he admired and who died in 1992.

Mugabe is more isolated than ever after his violent, month-long crackdown on opponents. When security forces disrupted a March 11 prayer rally and savagely beat opposition party chief Morgan Tsvangirai and some 50 others, the move sparked Western outrage and regional embarrassment. But his counterparts were reluctant to reprimand the 83-year-old, one of the continent's only colonial-era independence fighters still in power. When Mugabe's neighbors summoned him to an emergency summit on Zimbabwe's crisis three weeks later, they let him wax defiant in public.