Some day Bobby Mugabe will get what he so richly deserves

Quiet chant of 'hungry, hungry' rouses a nation to oust Mugabe:

IT STARTED with a whisper, a mother besotted with grief at losing her son, people said afterwards. As she muttered the single word "hungry", the crowd around her shifted uneasily and looked scared. Nobody wanted a night in a Zimbabwean jail.

On a platform in front of them, their great leader Robert Mugabe was denouncing Tony Blair for "spending sleepless nights plotting how he can remove the Zimbabwe government" and telling them to "bury Blair, vote Zanu-PF". But then another woman, shaded from the sun by a large coloured umbrella, repeated the word: "Hungry."

The people of Gwanda had been gathered to hear the president tell them why his party, which has been in power throughout Zimbabwe's 25 years of independence, should be voted in for another term. Instead, they thought about the fact that the Lutheran priests who used to bring them food had been driven out by the government and a low chant of "hungry, hungry, hungry" reverberated through the crowd.

Agitated secret service men from the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) started to take names. The 81-year-old president, perspiring behind his large, plastic-rimmed glasses, was hustled away. But the damage was done.

The story of the Gwanda rally may prove apocryphal but by the end of last week it was being recounted in villages and bars across the country. From Matabeleland to Manicaland, the refrain of "hungry" seemed to be on everyone's lips. Along rutted tracks winding between failed maize crops, one person after another held up open-fingered palms and said "chinja" or change, the slogan of the opposition.

Hope springs eternal. Bobby won't go quietly, but that's OK - as long has he goes.