He would address the crowds in Shona telling them Zanu-PF would rule for ever.Interviews with the world’s media, however, were conducted ably in English. In these he avoided the Soviet-style terminology that was compulsory in the country’s national press. There the president, his ministers, black Zimbabweans, and leaders and citizens of Communist countries – but not his main political and tribal rival, Joshua Nkomo – were accorded the epithet “comrade”. Whites, politely or worryingly, were plain Mr and Mrs.South Africa, meanwhile, was by edict never referred to in the national media without the adjectives “racist” or “apartheid-ruled”.Mugabe’s heart’s desire was for a one-party state and it was towards this holy grail, where all would be comrades, that he directed his energies.

It was an aim that coincided happily with the relentless consolidation of his own power. The tribal make-up of Zimbabwe is relatively straightforward. Eighty per cent of the people, including Mugabe himself, are Shona, and their capital is Harare; 20 per cent are Ndebele and their capital, Bulawayo, in Matabeleland, is Zimbabwe’s second city. Nkomo, initially a rival for the leadership of the country, led the Zapu party which represented the Ndebele people.

Mugabe’s main aim in the early years of independence was to put down armed Zapu opposition by sending his private army, the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, to crush resistance in Matabeleland. The bloody task achieved, he set about neutralising Nkomo by co-opting him into the government as a “minister without portfolio” Now Nkomo, too, was a “comrade”. The vision of unity, one people under Bob, shimmered on the horizon.Then a terrible thing happened. The Berlin Wall came down.It is a measure of the true smallness of this “statesman” that the greatest causes of global rejoicing to take place during his rule were for him the most damaging events.

The first of these, the collapse of the Soviet empire, meant the end of his dream of a one-party state. No longer able to play West off against East, he was forced to allow the existence of opposition parties and, for the first time, an independent press. Until 1989 anyone openly criticising the president risked arrest and torture. Thereafter, opponents were still intimidated, arrested and tortured, but the West could apply diplomatic and financial levers to Mugabe which has forced a degree of accountability.The latest beneficiary of this state of affairs is Mark Chavunduka. Detained last year for printing a story about a plot against Mugabe, linked to Zimbabwe’s disastrous intervention in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he was tortured on Mugabe’s instructions. Chavunduka heroically refused to reveal the names of his sources, was levered by the courts from the hands of the secret police and is now in the United States.The second moment of worldwide celebration – the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years in South African prisons – damaged Mugabe as much as the first.