So it now appears that foul play has been ruled out in the Tsvangerai crash, and MDC official Roy Bennett has been released from custody.

That being said, Mugabe’s attempts to maintain his political power have gotten truly surreal:

On his first day as education minister in a government so broke that most schools were closed and millions of children idle, David Coltart said he got a startling invitation.

“Come and get your brand-new white Mercedes,” an official told Mr. Coltart, a veteran opposition politician, as President Robert Mugabe peered down from a portrait on the minister’s office wall.

The offer of an E-Class Mercedes to every minister in the month-old power-sharing government was vintage Mugabe, an effort to seduce his political enemies with the lavish perks he has long bestowed on loyalists.

(I would have offered him silver, or metallic blue, myself.)

I’m an optimist, and see this as a sign of weakness.

Mugabe had previously dismissed the MDC entirely, and how he is trying to bribe them.