Zimbabwe opposition leader seeks refuge in the Dutch embassy as President Mugabe makes good on his promise, "Only God will remove me!"

“Only God, who appointed me, will remove me, not the M.D.C., not the British. Only God will remove me!”

--Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe [right], in Buluwayo Friday

Latest word is that Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who yesterday withdrew from the presidential runoff election scheduled for Friday because of the murderous violence directed against opposition supporters, has sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare, while police raided his party's headquarters.

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The lust for power is one of many things about human nature that I don't understand but surely acknowledge. It's different from plain old greed, which is to say wanting lots and lots of stuff, stuff that other people don't have. There's nothing mysterious about that. And while power can be useful in the exercise of greed, this compulsion to have control over other people is still something else.

It's something I'm always aware of when I look at the seeming unfixability of the U.S. political system. Power doesn't have that effect on absolutely everyone, but it's pretty remarkable what it does to an awful lot of people, including many people you don't expect it from. The fact is, you never know about someone until he/she has faced the temptation.

There may be a worse example of what power can do to a person than Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, but it doesn't leap to mind. Back in 1980, who thought of Mugabe as anything but a liberator? (If we were to go back in time we might well find people who saw something else in him, but it certainly wasn't evident then.) Yet as Mugabe, now 84, has clung ferociously to power over the last decade or two, presiding over the destruction of the country he played such a large role in creating, it's hard to think of any word for what he has become but "monster." Zimbabwe, so rich in resources and once boasting one of Africa's most functional infrastructures, is an economic ruin, and yet to retain his hold on power, Mugabe has shown all too clearly that there is no limit to the violence and terror he is prepared to unleash on his tortured countrymen.

Of course Mugabe already lost his latest bid for reelection. Is there anyone who doubts that his bitter enemy, Movement for Democratic Change leader Tsvangirai, won a clear majority of the vote in the March 29 election? The government machinery couldn't overturn the election result, but it could and did maneuver the numbers down to a mere 48-to-43-percent lead, thus requiring a runoff. Then the government unleashed an onslaught of violence that first led Tsvangirai to absent himself to South Africa and finally yesterday forced him to withdraw from the runoff.

About the only hope at this point is postponing the election, in the hope that . . . well, something can be done. The NYT reports that Marwick Khumalo, who is leading a team observing the election on behalf of the Pan-African Parliament, said yesterday: “How can you have an election where people are killed and hacked to death as the sun goes down? How can you have an election where the leader of one party is not even allowed to conduct rallies?”

Mugabe's standing among fellow African leaders has diminished considerably, but it remains to be seen whether his neighbors are prepared to do anything about the war he is waging on his own people.

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