That certainly was the tone of Fiona Forde's dispatch for last week's World Report (RTE Radio 1, Saturday). Her piece was recorded after the Southern African Development Community summit in Lusaka, at which other leaders in the region surprised onlookers in the northern hemisphere by reaffirming their support for Mugabe and accusing the "colonial powers" of exaggerating Zimbabwe's economic crisis. Forde pointed out that inflation in Zimbabwe is officially at 7,400%; the unofficial rate, she said, is 13,000%. "Even the official figure is four times the April figure, and almost 10 times last year's figure. The IMF predicts it could hit 100,000% by the end of the year." She went on to decry some of Mugabe's efforts to control inflation . . .

his recent order that shop prices be slashed by 300%, his attempts to blame business, "telling the world that the economic situation was made worse by blatant profiteering . . . not his own inflation of course". She also reported last week's news of a parliamentary bill granting Zimbabweans a 51% share of foreign-owned companies. "In the same manner as he seized white-owned farms some years ago, he is now bent on seizing foreign-owned firms, arguing that Zimbabweans have not really benefited enough from Zimbabwe's resources, " she said, glossing over the reasonableness of that last point with a patina of first-world mockery.

There was a somewhat different tone to another report from Zimbabwe on From our Own Correspondent (BBC World Service, Sunday), as it investigated the attitude to Robert Mugabe in the region where his presence is felt. How was Mugabe able to maintain such support at the Lusaka summit despite making a mess of everything in his own country, reporter Peter Biles wanted to know.

"He may be a pariah in the capital cities of the European Union but here in the heart of southern Africa he knows he can count on a fair degree of undying loyalty, " said Biles. "You have to appreciate the bonds of loyalty that defined the struggle for independence in post-colonial Africa to understand why it is that Robert Mugabe is still treated with so much respect, even when his country is collapsing around him and he is largely to blame."

To find out where the Love Bob movement is coming from, Biles spoke to one of Mugabe's peers, Kenneth Kaunda, who was president of Zambia for 27 years. 'KK', as he is known, is the same age as Mugabe and, like him, became the first post-colonial president of a former British dependency. Unlike Mugabe, Kaunda relented under pressure to step down in 1991. Kaunda told Biles that Mugabe is regarded as a hero, "not just in Zimbabwe or here in Zambia but across the whole of southern Africa. . .

It's no good demonising him. We should all put our heads together, talk to him, and work with him on a solution". Like Mugabe, Kaunda blames successive British governments for Zimbabwe's problems, Biles said. On the other hand, he and other southern African leaders fear that Mugabe could bring the whole region down with him, and are trying to tread delicately. These two contrasting reports, taken together, show that the politics of Zimbabwe are quite a bit more complicated than we are led to believe.