To summarize this article, I dared to enumerate the scenes that will most possibly play out in the world drama that is Zimbabwe today. After the voting day of the single-candidate sham of an election, these reality and possibilities are of the here and now:

Mugabe rules until 2014. He will be 90 years old by then and will have ruled his country for 34 years. That is a long time to pay for the heroic deed he did in the past.

State intimidation will continue in the months ahead. Authorities say that, after the poll, we will see a more cohesive control by the military junta of the organs of state – since, they have seized the state. The army, police, and government-sponsored militias continue to kill, beat, and displace opposition supporters, take control of the media, and suppress electoral bodies and the judiciary.

Of course, people will retaliate and a civil uprising ensues. All this junta control will not stop civil unrest. The ire of the people cannot be capped. The opposition MDC will also not fade away. It will surely fortify itself with the help of the West. The West will play a major role in this drama. With world outrage targeting Mugabe’s party and his junta, plus world sympathy for the Zimbabwean people, stringent economic and diplomatic sanctions will be leveled against the country’s government. This puts the situation on an even bigger world stage, with a more complicated plot and longer drawn efforts.

According to relief agencies, close to half the resident population now supplement their diets with food aid. This will not abate since the country’s economy has collapsed.

Latest figures from the Central Statistical Offices (CSO) show that annual inflation rose by 7 336 000 percentage points to 9 030 000% by June 20 2008, and is set to end the month at well above 10 500 000%. The Zimbabwean dollar now trades at US$1:$17 billion on the parallel market. On electronic transfers the rate was as high as US$1:$45 billion depending on volumes. Analysts said the Zimbabwean dollar is going to continue weakening.

With their current situation of hunger and violence, people of Zimbabwe might not even see another 6 years of harsh dictatorial rule, hyper-inflation, mass unemployment, and brutal repression. Millions more Zimbabweans are expected to flee their homeland. From an original population of 13 million, more than 3 million have already gone on exodus and are now refugees. Displacement offers an even more grim existence ahead.

In the meantime, Harare has the world’s second largest deposits of platinum, which bolsters Mugabe’s friendship with China.

Zimbabwe has enormous platinum reserves which, at the present rate of extraction, would take over 4,000 years to exhaust. The Chinese are widely reported to covet a stake in Zimbabwe’s platinum mines.

Mugabe’s 25-bedroom palace is covered with midnight-blue Chinese roof tiles. His air force trains on Chinese jets. His subjects wear Chinese shoes, ride Chinese buses, and zip around the country in Chinese propjets. He has even urged his countrymen to learn Mandarin and nurture a taste for Chinese cuisine.

Zimbabweans complain that their new Chinese buses break down regularly and that the Chinese goods that flood stores and roadside stalls are shoddy. They have coined a term for the phenomenon: zhing-zhong.

China and Zimbabwe signed a letter of intent to cooperate in law enforcement and the judiciary. Atop the list is a plan for China to train Zimbabweans in managing prisons.

As with tragic flaw, the disadvantaged hero must not deserve his misfortune, but he caused it by making a fatal mistake, an error of judgment, and a wrong decision at a moment of crisis that is the inevitable outcome of his character.

In Zimbabwe’s story today, there is a gallery of heroes that could have reversed the whims of fate: Movement for Democratic Change, the United Nations, Thabo Mbeki, other African leaders, Nelson Mandela, the reputedly-coercive West, the people of Zimbabwe themselves, even the entire world.

Zimbabwe’s tragic flaw is that it hoped for heroes, when there are none.