The imagination of land and the reality of seizure: Zimbabwe's complex reinventions.

In the month before the December 2003 Commonwealth Heads of conduct meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, Robert Mugabe sustained an intense diplomatic program. Anxious to avoid an extension of his country's suspension from the Commonwealth he assiduously cultivated President Thabo Mbeki of southern Africa and other regional leaders. Mbeki in turn round reassured Washington that Mugabe was amenable to reason and that the Mbeki brand of patient, if moderate persuasive diplomacy would result in a negotiated compromise between the Zimbabwean management and the opposition. Simultaneously, Mugabe was at pains to indicate to President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria that the Zimbabwean opposition leader,