Mugabe begins sixth term after beatings, intimidation and murder do their job.

As Mugabe swears himself in for a sixth term in office, at a ceremony which many country's boycotted, there are growing noises amongst the international community which signal that this time the world is ready to take action against the Zimbabwean dictator.

Britain's Africa minister, Mark Malloch Brown, said Britain would join the US in pressing for more sanctions. "This is Mugabe against the world and that makes both sanctions and other political pressures much more plausible because they will be universal," he said.

"In the past what he called sanctions were a very limited set of European and American measures against individuals around him. We can now go way beyond that to global measures."

Even the very few foreign observers (599) allowed into the country have proven far less compliant than Zanu-PF had hoped them to be, openly talking of how undemocratic the process they witnessed was:

The Pan African Parliament monitors said yesterday that the result should not stand. Marwick Khumalo, a Swazi parliamentarian who headed the delegation of 50 observers, said it concluded "the atmosphere prevailing in the country did not give rise to the conduct of free, fair and credible elections".

"The political environment throughout the country was tense, hostile and volatile ... characterised by an electoral campaign marred by high levels of intimidation, violence, displacement of people, abductions, and loss of life," he said.

Khumalo also said the Zimbabwe electoral commission had failed to fulfil its duty as an independent body.

And now, Mugabe heads off to the African Union summit where many of his fellow African leaders are refusing to accept his legitimacy.

Kenya's prime minister, Raila Odinga, urged the AU to send troops to free the people of Zimbabwe and called Mugabe "a shame to Africa".

Tanzania, Swaziland and Angola have already spoken out against him. Nelson Mandela has condemned him. The ANC have called his actions "a flagrant violation of democracy". And Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called Mugabe "a Frankenstein for his people" and has said he would support him being removed from office, by force if necessary.

It is fair to say that the pressure now being applied by the African Union is unprecedented. Only the terminally weak, Thabo Mbeki, and a few others continue to pretend that Mugabe has any sort of legitimacy.

Hopefully, Mugabe will feel the wrath of other African leaders when he attends the AU summit, and that he will leave realising that even his fellow Africans do not accept him as the leader of Zimbabwe.

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Tags: Mugabe, Zimbabwe, Mbeki, South Africa, Mandela, ANC