'We still love the royal family'

Heidi Holland was the last western journalist to interview Robert Mugabe at length, in December 2007.

This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday April 05 2008.

An elegant Anglophile in a dark suit, white shirt and red silk tie with a fondness for aristocratic name-dropping, Robert Mugabe has always insisted that the yes-men around him dress as if they ruled from Westminster.

At the end of his first cabinet meeting after becoming prime minister of Zimbabwe 28 years ago, a colleague remembers him telling those in government who had appeared in Maoist collars, Hawaiian shirts and camouflage: "If you want to be cabinet ministers, please dress like cabinet ministers." Only when he goes on the campaign trail does Mugabe's Britishness make way for his angry African self, clad in gaudy prints with a baseball cap pulled low over his brow, punching the air and hurling abuse at Britain.

His ambivalent identity is visible wherever you look in Mugabe's personal realm. While waiting at State House to interview him, for example, I was given tea in an exquisite English porcelain cup, like those catalogued in the Victoria & Albert museum, by a white-gloved waiter. Instead of the cucumber sandwiches that would have completed the colonial picture, though, I received a bun and pork sausage on a matching gold-rimmed plate.

Such contradictions are hardly surprising when you consider that friendless, clever little Robert grew up in a Catholic mission where the kindly parental substitute for his hated absent father was an Anglo-Irish priest, and where he needed special permission to visit his "heathen granny" outside the walls of the Christian village where he grew up at Kutama, near Harare. Part of his failure to fulfil his early promise in office is due to his inability to pull off the pretence of being both an Englishman and an African, since the one despises the other.

Mugabe intimidates even the people who know him well at State House because he hardly ever smiles. Looking younger than his 84 years from behind his big wooden desk, there are no laughter lines around his mouth and eyes. It is only when you get up close that the comprehensively wrinkled old man's neck becomes visible. He touches up his hair, I suspect, because his younger brother with similar looks, albeit with a face marked by mirth, had a snow-white mane when I met him in 2006.

In Mugabe's own opinion, people fear him "because I'm quiet and I keep to myself". His preferred expression is deadpan but he doubled up with amusement when I revealed that his one-time admirer Mary Soames, widow of the last British governor in Rhodesia and Winston Churchill's daughter, had crossed him off her Christmas card list when under pressure following Mugabe's land grab in 2000 to demonstrate her disapproval of his misrule.

His unusual burst of laughter turned almost to tears as the Soames anecdote brought to Mugabe's mind the cordial relations he once enjoyed with the Queen. In a barely audible but aggrieved tone he said: "We still have our love for the royal family, as I was telling Prince Charles when we met in Rome at the funeral of the Pope. I sat next to him."

In his presence you can see that Old Bob, as Mary Soames calls Mugabe, is still the shy intellectual who worked over-diligently at school to earn the respect of the priests he admired and the nun-like mother who had messianic aspirations for him. His head drops forward self-consciously and he mumbles, looking down at his hands in his lap, when answering questions that touch upon his own deepest concerns rather than political abstractions.

The only decoration in his office, apart from a stern portrait of himself, is a massive map of a world he can only partially visit these days. The ancient portable radio on a table beside his desk, with a pull-up aerial and plastic handle above enormous dials, is identical to one my dad used to carry around the house with the cricket commentary blaring when I was a child. It speaks volumes about his lack of interest in material status symbols. And for that matter, it is a reminder that Mugabe is an avid fan of cricket, a quintessentially English game.

There has been little space for play in Mugabe's life. Taking time out only to listen to smuggled Elvis Presley records, he studied so hard during his 11 years of imprisonment - in an attempt to suppress the accumulated rage we see escaping from his every pore today - that he earned not only six university degrees but the respect of the fellow political detainees he worked tirelessly to educate in jail, who deferred to him as their headmaster.

He still rises every morning before sunrise to perform yoga, eats sparingly and avoids alcohol. I doubt there are any pictures of him frolicking in foam at the seaside. He talked a lot in the interview with me about his "suffering and sacrifices", clearly seeing himself as something of a martyr. The Catholics who educated him and gave him an austere sense of his own importance might be able to explain why he calls himself principled when referring to his inflexibility and aversion to compromise.

Accepting defeat is an emotional hurdle Mugabe has not had to negotiate in a long time. His addiction to power and the bombastic, cruel way he exercises it reflects weakness rather than strength, of course, and is probably due to his failure to develop a strong inner core in his deprived youth. The lonely child with long-buried grievances is still crouching inside Mugabe's old body, ever ready to take offence and inflict revenge.

His reliance on outward shows of strength is a cover for the hollow, shivering person underneath, who craves the love and admiration he never received simply for the person he was rather than for what he represented to others. His mother wanted him to be a god-like leader, his first wife, Sally Hayfron, saw him as a means to fulfil her own political ambitions, Zanu initially revamped its vile image by propelling articulate, neatly dressed and well-educated Robert Mugabe to the top, former white Rhodesians accepted his generosity but gave nothing in return, the British betrayed his trust, his own relatives accepted the free lunch he offered but then proceeded to raid the larder.

Mugabe is a disillusioned man relying on omnipotence and distortion as he approaches the end of a largely well-intentioned life. Power means everything to him. Without it, he might have to face the terrible mess he has made of Zimbabwe instead of blaming others - a devastating prospect. Unable to bear the latest rejection by his own people, on top of his long list of earlier grievances, Zimbabwe's increasingly dangerous president is likely to strike back at all those he reckons have betrayed him, regardless of the consequences.