Regular NARN caller Quentin from Zimmerman must be happy – or happier, anyway – today.  After thirty years of leading their mutual homeland Zimbabwe on a social and economic kamikaze ride, Robert Mugabe is calling it a long-overdue quits:

Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe is ready to step down after he accepted he failed to win the country’s presidential election, a senior source in his ruling party and diplomats told AFP Tuesday.

An official in Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party said the long-ruling president was prepared to step down but was still trying to win agreement from the army’s chief of staff Constantine Chiwenga.

Ed notes at Hot Air:

He took the former nation of Rhodesia and reduced it to pauper status. Zimbabwe had a booming agriculture industry and the beginnings of industrialization when he took charge. Thanks to a mix of statism, post-colonial petulance, and sheer stupidity, Zimbabwe cannot feed itself after being a net exporter, and all of the capital that promised to bring modernization to the country has fled to avoid confiscation.

I’ll leave the obvious Minnesota/DFL parallels to the rest of you.

UPDATE:  Not so fast, says South Africa’s Johannesburrg Mail and Guardian:

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and the Zimbabwe government both denied on Tuesday that they were in talks to arrange the resignation of President Robert Mugabe. At a news conference on Tuesday evening, Tsvangirai confirmed, however, for the first time personally that his party had won the elections.

Keep your fingers crossed.  Zimbabwe has suffered enough.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm and is filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.