He's not unhinged, but he is ridiculous: Richard Beeston's analysis | Top 10 denials of the truth

With breathtaking contempt for the suffering of his people, Robert Mugabe declared yesterday that “there is no cholera” in Zimbabwe.

As the UN announced that the death toll had risen to 783 and prepared for 60,000 cases, Zimbabwe’s autocrat claimed that his country’s doctors, with the help of unnamed “others”, had arrested the epidemic and with it the West’s pretext for regime change.

“Because of cholera, [Gordon] Brown, [Nicolas] Sarkozy and [George] Bush want military intervention. Now that there is no cholera, there’s no need for war,” he said.

Western officials were astounded. One senior diplomat said: “Mugabe’s claim makes him the King Canute of cholera, and embodies the criminal responsibility of the regime for this epidemic”.

Rachel Pounds, Save the Children’s director in Harare, said: “If anything is certain in the chaos of Zimbabwe today it is that the cholera outbreak is not under control.”

As Mr Mugabe spoke, South Africa declared part of its cholera-ridden border with Zimbabwe a disaster area, and hundreds of Western aid workers struggled to contain the epidemic before the rainy season rendered their efforts hopeless.

Only last week, the Zimbabwean Health Minister declared a national emergency and appealed for international help, saying: “Our central hospitals are literally not working.” Yesterday Zimbabwe refused entry to six French specialists.

Mr Mugabe’s remarks came during a nationally televised speech at the funeral of Elliot Manyika, the organiser of Zanu (PF)’s campaigns of political violence. Mr Manyika, who was buried with full honours at Heroes’ Acre in Harare, apparently died when his Mercedes burst a tyre and crashed last Saturday, though some suspect that he could have been a victim of infighting within the ruling party.

With Zimbabwe now ravaged by disease, starvation and an astronomical inflation rate, its economy and most basic services collapsing, and its security forces disgruntled, there is much speculation in Harare that the next state funeral could be that of the regime itself.

“There’s a feeling in the air that it’s the last days,” a doctor said.

The regime was “on its last legs — though nobody knows how long those legs are”, said a priest.

“We’re in the endgame, but the question is how long will it last,” said a Western official.

Harare’s diplomatic community agrees that the regime has never been weaker. One senior Western diplomat compared it to a termite mound: “It looks like a solid structure, but kick it and it turns to dust.”

The big problem is that no one can see where the kick will come from. Ideally, South Africa would force Mr Mugabe to go. Gwede Mantashe, the Secretary-General of the ruling African National Congress, hinted at such a course yesterday when he dismissed suggestions that only a military invasion could depose Mr Mugabe. “What will we do to make Mugabe retire? We will persuade him,” he said.

At the same time, Lord Malloch-Brown, Britain’s Africa Minister, arrived in Pretoria to argue that disease, instability and immigrants were flooding across South Africa’s border from the failed state to its north, threatening Jacob Zuma’s likely presidency and the 2010 World Cup.

So far, South Africa has been determined to pursue the September 15 power-sharing agreement that was brokered by its former president Thabo Mbeki — an agreement that the West believes Mr Mugabe has no intention of honouring.

“I think it’s pretty bloody distant,” one diplomat said of the prospect of the ANC rounding on the octogenarian leader. “Talk about fiddling while Rome burns. They’re doing nothing.”

The internal workings of Zanu (PF) are deeply opaque, but diplomats believe that the leadership is fractured; that security chiefs took charge after Mr Mugabe’s humiliation in March’s presidential election; and that they detest a power-sharing agreement he probably signed without consulting them. But they doubt that Mr Mugabe’s party rivals will turn on him because he remains its revolutionary leader and “they know if they cut each other’s throats they will all perish”.

There have been rumours of coup plots by junior army officers. Rank-and-file soldiers are certainly fed up.

Diplomats, though, are pessimistic. The soldiers were given extra money last week, they remain a reasonably professional army trained to follow orders, and there has been no previous coup in Zimbabwe.

“They are terribly British about this,” said one diplomat.

A popular uprising is no more likely.

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