After Three Decades, Robert Mugabe Signs Away His Power - But Not All of It

The new prime minister spoke about the future. The old president ranted about the past.

Morgan Tsvangirai focused on hope. It may be a tough road ahead, said the man about to take over the day to day running of Zimbabwe, but the alternative was the rapidly looming abyss of a failed state. He promised swift action to get food to the millions on the brink of starvation and to lift the dead hand of oppression.

There was no such vision from Robert Mugabe, who signed away 28 years of political domination yesterday by agreeing to share power only because he was looking into the same abyss and could offer no way out. He dredged up his favored targets (Britain and the west), blamed his opponents for the country's economic collapse and the political violence, and offered a coded warning to the people with whom he will share government that they had better not be colonial stooges.

But between the implied threats and recriminations, the old and new leaders of Zimbabwe promised commitment - begrudgingly in Mugabe's case - to making the deal work, while their supporters, celebrating in their thousands outside, could only guess at what it all means.

The men and women in Zanu-PF and Movement for Democratic Change T-shirts singing and eyeing each other with caution agreed that the deal was historic. They agreed that Mugabe's days in power were numbered. But there were lots of doubts that the foes could work together.

Tsvangirai said the deal for him to be prime minister while Mugabe clings on as president required painful compromises after eight years of struggle for democracy - after all, the people voted to make Tsvangirai the president. But it represented "the return of hope" for freedom from fear, poverty, hunger and oppression.

"I have signed this agreement because I believe it represents the best opportunity for us to build a peaceful, prosperous, democratic Zimbabwe. I have signed this agreement because my belief in Zimbabwe and its peoples runs deeper than the scars I bear from the struggle. I have signed this agreement because my hope for the future is greater than the grief I have for the needless suffering of the past years," he said.

Mugabe did not see it as hope of a brighter country at all. "There are a lot of things in the agreement I did not like and still do not like," he said. He was looking to blame and fell back on his favorite target, Britain, and how it wanted to get rid of him. But, he made clear, he is still there.

"They spoke of regime change and you heard them. They're still speaking of it. We had not done anything to Britain. Why, why, why the hand of the British? Why, why, why the hand of the Americans here?" he said. He settled into a favored theme: his seizure and redistribution of white-owned farms is irreversible - a "salient principle", as he calls it. He warned the MDC not to go against that.

Mugabe finally got around to a half-hearted endorsement of the deal. "We will do our best," he said while giving off the whiff of a defeated man seeing an unwelcome future before him.

Outside the convention hall where the agreement was signed, in the shadow of the Zanu-PF headquarters, there was hope tempered by uncertainty and suspicion.

Mugabe's supporters were generally pessimistic, including Willard, 23. "It is not a good deal. We can't work with these people. Their principles are different. They are violent," he said, gesturing toward the MDC supporters. "We need a better life. We need to drink beer every day."

Some of the MDC supporters celebrated finally being able to demonstrate their political loyalties in public. But Mutindi Stanislous, a 52 year-old agriculturalist, remained cautious. "It's not as good as we want, but for now we will accept it. We won the election. Zanu-PF lost. The leader of the MDC had to succumb to the pressure to save the people," he said. But Stanislous saw this as the beginning of the end for Mugabe.

Tendai Myamakope, a jobless 27-year-old, agreed. "We now know all Mugabe's tricks," he said. "Everything's got an end. He's going - but slowly."