Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is ready to step down after accepting he failed to win the country's presidential election, according to a senior source in his ruling party.

A ZANU-PF official said the long-ruling president was prepared to step down but was still trying to win agreement from the army's chief of staff Constantine Chiwenga.

Have Your Say: Will the end of Robert Mugabe's presidency fix Zimbabwe's problems?

"He is prepared to step down because he doesn't want to embarrass himself by going to a run-off," the source said on condition of anonymity. "There is only one person still blocking him, the army chief of staff."

Two senior diplomats in the capital Harare meanwhile confirmed that a deal had been done for Mr Mugabe to step aside in favour of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

"Everything indicates that Mugabe will leave power smoothly," said one of the sources.

When Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980s he was the people's hero, the man who had brought an end to colonial rule in Rhodesia (soon to be renamed Zimbabwe).

Where to next for Zimbabwean politics and the African nation? Dateline investigates.

TRANSCRIPT

The situation in Zimbabwe as we speak, as frustrating and inconclusive as it might officially be right now. But reading between the media lines from that non-country in hiatus, there's a perceivable momentum heading towards the end of the 28-year regime of the 84-year-old Robert Mugabe whom, as it turns out, George Negus met and interviewed a year after, as a self-exiled guerrilla fighter, he fought and forced out Zimbabwe's white British colonial overlords, led by the then prime minister Ian Smith. All over the world, back then, the Marxist Mugabe was hailed as a terrorist-turned-statesman. Since then, he's descended from national hero to international villain. It's something of a blast from the past, but here are excerpts from that report on Mugabe shown on Channel Nine's '60 Minutes' program in 1981.



REPORTER: George Negus

After a year of black majority rule, there is no doubting Robert Mugabe's popularity, at least among Zimbabwe's 7 million blacks. To Rhodesian whites, the British, the Americans and even the Russians, Robert Mugabe was the last person they expected or wanted to become the prime minister of an independent Zimbabwe. But in the election, as in the war, Mugabe managed to confound them all.

ROBERT MUGABE: I regard myself as a leader of a movement that fought for majority rule in the country, fought for the rights of the people and won.

This was the day last year when power actually changed from white to black hands, a day whites like Ian Smith believed would never happen. Smith had once declared that blacks would not rule Rhodesia in 1,000 years. Robert Mugabe, black Prime Minister, is literally living proof that 250,000 whites were on borrowed time. Surprisingly, Ian Smith himself, regarded by Mugabe as a dangerous war criminal, is alive and well and still a member of parliament.

GEORGE NEGUS: You once said that the crimes that Ian Smith had committed against your people were so serious that he should be brought to trial. In fact, it sounded very much, if you were quoted correctly, as though you were pronouncing a death sentence on Ian Smith. But now you say you can live with him quite peacefully. That is a drastic change of attitude.

ROBERT MUGABE: Oh yes, yes, certainly. A man who led a regime which was responsible for so much inhumanity, for so many massacres outside the country and within the country, in my opinion, had to stand trial, but we committed ourselves to an agreement which recognised the principle of reconciliation, the principle of forgiveness. I don't see anything to be gained just now by trying all those we believe to have committed crimes, even people who attempted to assassinate me during the elections, we have let go, they are all free now.

Mugabe may be a Marxist, but there is nothing obvious about daily life in Salsbury that gets even remotely close to the stereotyped Western view of a socialist state. White Rhodesia was a rich country by African standards. The new black Zimbabwe has its problems, but they are small compared to the poverty and famine of countries around it. Before Mugabe's election, whites were terrified there'd be a bloodbath. This hasn't happened and Mugabe says it never will.

ROBERT MUGABE: The white man takes his right foot, places it alongside everybody else and we will not build here the compartments that we have known to exist in the past. There won't be a minister for European affairs, as there was a minister for African affairs or native affairs in the past. We would want the whites to feel that they had the same rights as the blacks and the blacks to feel they had the same rights as the white.

GEORGE NEGUS: Why do think it was that so many people feared the whole idea of Robert Mugabe becoming prime minister of this country and why do you think so many people left for that reason alone?

ROBERT MUGABE: I think for two reasons, mainly because they feared majority rule. Majority rule would mean the overthrow of the past system which entrenched white privilege. The second reason is precisely because I had been built into a real, man-eating monster, but not in eating every man, but only white men. And I have not been a cannibal, I don't intend to be.

Mugabe's background is intriguing. He grew up here in the mission village of Kutama only 50 miles from the capital, Salsbury, but in so many African ways it could be from another world and another age.

GEORGE NEGUS: How would you describe the new independent Zimbabwe's relationship with the rest of the world, because to an outsider it looks like you are trying to be all things to all men so far as the big powers are concerned.

ROBERT MUGABE: No, we are not trying to be all things to all men, we are trying to be Zimbabweans to all men.

GEORGE NEGUS: The international cynic might say that that sounds like a wonderful ideal, but sooner or later you're going to be sucked into one camp or another.

ROBERT MUGABE: No, we won't be lured into anybody stomach that we refuse to be. We certainly will have friends but we would definitely refuse to become a puppet to anybody.

Although Robert Mugabe has had to live down a fearsome reputation as a Marxist revolutionary, he has won the hearts and the minds of his people and he is definitely out to hold on to this power. But in a continent bristling with tension, it is one thing to lead a revolution, it is something else again to prevent a new nation like Zimbabwe from tearing itself apart.

Thanks to me old mates from '60 Minutes' for that. Bit scary, actually, in more ways than one. I guess you could say there's change, gigantic change and Robert Mugabe.