Will the Zimbabwean deal work? It is hard to guess until we know the details for sure next week but it seems to look like this: Robert Mugabe stays President and chairs Cabinet meetings. He will also head the defence and security services including the Central Intelligence Organisation, Zimbabwe's secret police. Two ceremonial vice-presidents will be Zanu (PF) appointees.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), will be Prime Minister and vice-chair of the Cabinet. He will also chair the Council of Ministers, which oversees the Cabinet of 31 - 15 Zanu (PF), 13 MDC and three from a breakaway wing of the MDC. If the two MDCs work together in Cabinet they will therefore have a majority. Mr Tsvangirai must also be consulted on the appointment of judges and senior officials.

Put crudely, it seems that ceremonial power and state violence - or force if you prefer - are retained by Mr Mugabe while the business of running the country is handed over to Mr Tsvangirai. One important question is how long this arrangement is supposed to last. The MDC wants two years before another election, Zanu (PF) demands a full five years. But the most important question of all is whether the two sides want it to work.

In one way they do. If anything of Zimbabwe is to be salvaged and international help secured to rescue Zimbabweans from starvation and civil war, Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai have to make it work.

Good personal relationships were vital in the success of the transitional South African Cabinet in the 1990s and, so far, in Kenya's national coalition formed after the violence of last December's election. In Zimbabwe this goodwill does not exist. Nearly all the potential MDC Cabinet members have been detained, humiliated and even tortured over the past ten years. They will be sitting across the table from those responsible. For Mr Mugabe this is a circumstance forced on him and he will manoeuvre to keep as much power as he can. Pure politician, he has demonstrated time and again that staying in power is far more important to him than the interests of the people of Zimbabwe.

What of the armed forces? Zimbabwe's Government has recently been described as a military junta, ruled by the army and air force commanders, the Joint Operations Command. Rich, violent and younger than the octogenarian President, the generals have most to lose if Mr Mugabe goes. Their fear is that he may be able to obtain an immunity deal but they will be left swinging in the wind.

The other fear is that the MDC leaders will settle comfortably into the perks of the jobs and fail to implement the changes they have been fighting for. The MDC leader has been known to take unilateral decisions in the past, ignoring his party's executive and advisers. That caused the MDC to split. But Mr Tsvangirai has not come so far, and suffered such humiliation and pain, to give up now. Even if he were tempted, the eyes of Zimbabweans are on him; and if their lives do not change, his supporters will abandon him and start another movement. The very existence of this coalition government will open up more political space for criticism.

Twenty years ago Mr Mugabe would have been a fairly typical African ruler, commanding a state in which the economy and business as well as the politics were formally controlled by one man. Today he is in a small minority of rulers who rule by right of personal destiny. But the move to multiparty politics in Africa since the end of the Cold War has not produced healthy democracies.

Although a handful of presidents have lost their jobs and stood down, the vast majority of elections have been won by the sitting candidate. Angola's election last week was the latest example. Marshalling all the resources of the State to campaign for him, as well as deploying the vast wealth that the ruling elite has stolen over decades, President Eduardo dos Santos and the party that has ruled since 1975 romped home with more than 80 per cent of the votes.

As first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all democracy seems to create more problems than they solve in Africa, perhaps coalition governments will become the norm. When Kenya exploded after a close-run and flawed election last December, the leaders of government and opposition were forced to sit down and talk and eventually worked out a deal by which Mwai Kibaki continued as President but Raila Odinga, the opposition leader, became Prime Minister with real executive powers.

So far this model has worked. The violence, which was stirred up and partly paid for by the politicians, stopped immediately. Kenya now has a functioning government. If it works in Zimbabwe too, perhaps this model could work for other African countries trying to escape from civil war or debilitating political division.

Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society and author of Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (Portobello Books)

Times Recommends

• It’s the beginning of the affair
• Afghanistan: still a price worth paying
• Heroes of the downtrodden