Associated Press

April 18, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

HARARE, Zimbabwe

When will all this end? It’s a common refrain in Zimbabwe. “Only when the old man goes,” said Tinaye Garande, a street vendor.

Zimbabwe today marks 30 years of the rule of President Robert Mugabe, swept to power during the country’s heady and optimistic independence in 1980.

Three decades later, the country — once an agricultural powerhouse and educational beacon — is mired in a continuing political stalemate and an impoverished, stagnant economy.

It is still an offense to publicly insult Mugabe — several cases are pending in the courts — and Zimbabweans know it.

Mugabe, 86, who dyes his hair unnaturally black and still walks with a spring in his step, is going nowhere. The ascetic former school- teacher holds a firm grip on his ZANU-PF party that in December chose him to lead it for another five years. And he has no plans to yield the reins of state power, said John Makumbe, a political scientist at the main University of Zimbabwe in Harare.

Critics say Mugabe, a political leader of the guerrilla army that ended white rule in 1980, has shown a toxic streak in his character.

He had been viewed favorably in the West for the strides in education and health services in the 1980s that gave Tinaye Garande and his “born free” classmates Africa’s highest literacy rate of more than 80 percent. But schools and social services collapsed in recent years.

Human-rights organizations have called for Mugabe to face trial at the International Criminal Court on charges of political violence, vote-rigging and human rights violations by state agents over the past decade. The allegations stretch far back: groups say Mugabe should be held responsible for the massacre of up to 20,000 civilians by loyalist troops who crushed an armed uprising against him in western Zimbabwe.

In 2000, Mugabe ordered the often-violent seizures of thousands of white-owned farms that disrupted the agriculture-based economy and led to acute food shortages.