This week the Commonwealth finally rapped Zimbabwe over the knuckles. Declan Walsh in Harare examines what effect, if any, it will have on Robert Mugabe.
The Commonwealth may have humiliated Robert Mugabe but it hasn't hurt him, at least not yet. Last Tuesday's suspension order increased international isolation of the hoary autocrat - by now even the Swiss have banned him - but did little to weaken his grip on power at home.
If anything, Mr Mugabe has stepped up his lap-of-victory campaign of fear and retribution: locking up opponents, silencing the media and turning a blind eye to murder. Faced with the grim prospect of another six years of the same, Zimbabweans have descended into a blue funk. Some have already packed their bags and left.
But appearances are deceptive. Censure from the 54-nation group of former British colonies, famous for its inertia, may have little material impact. But in Mr Mugabe's case it had a powerful symbolism - one that could mark a defining moment for Zimbabwe, and for Africa.
Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa are leading lights in the notoriously chummy old boys' club of African presidents. In the past their peers have run roughshod over election rules and trampled on human rights. Some of them still do.
But after meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard in London this week they had to take a stand. Mr Mugabe may feel that beatings and ballot stuffing are part of regular elections. He might pretend that dismantling an economy goes with running a country. Maybe he even thinks that, put together, this is what's known as democracy.
But in suspending him for 12 months Mr Mbeki and Mr Obasanjo sent a clear message that they, at least, did not. For the first time, Africa's two most powerful leaders turned the heat on one of their own.
There is little doubt they did so reluctantly. After the London meeting, it was Mr Howard who read out the suspension order. The two Africans remained silent. Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon later admitted that there had been much "pushing and shoving and cajoling and pleading".
Neither man is an instinctive democrat. Mr Mbeki was worried that an election win by the Zimbabwean opposition, led by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai, would at best embolden his own unions to enter politics; at worst it would spark civil war. Mr Obasanjo let it be known that he was against suspension. Before the London meeting both men flew to Harare in a desperate bid to wring a compromise out of Mr Mugabe. He gave them nothing.
It was the first ever suspension of a country with an elected government and it probably saved the Commonwealth from self-destruction. Even Prince Charles had hinted that its days were numbered if Mr Mugabe was not brought into line.
But there were other, much more important, repercussions. Mr Mugabe learned that not everyone had bought into his "neo-colonialist" guff. His neighbours had other priorites, like building their reputations for the sake of engaging international trade. Two days later 63 developing countries from the Afro-Caribbean-Pacific grouping called for fresh elections within 12 months.
African countries made it clear they weren't willing to sacrifice their future for an old man who had lost sight of his.
Cynics argue that Zimbabwe is a special case, that the West fusses over it only because whites are involved. They have a point. Mr Mugabe started hogging the headlines two years ago when war veterans first hounded commercial farmers off their land.
The focus persists. This week Terry Ford was brutally murdered in his own front yard, becoming the tenth white to die. Many newspapers across the world carried a photo of Squeak, his loyal Jack Russell dog, curled up asleep, refusing to leave the side of his dead master. In the previous two years over 150 blacks, mostly opposition supporters, were killed. Few outside Zimbabwe can remember their names, or their dogs.
Others point out that Africa is crowded with bigger basket cases. Sudan, Angola, Congo, Sierra Leone - all have had nastier wars, larger food crises, more protracted strife. That is true. But Zimbabwe has assumed an importance beyond its own border because it symbolises Africa's towering potential, not its miserable failings.
Zimbabwe has the continent's highest literacy rates, some of its most sophisticated industry and an upwardly mobile black middle class. But in the past decade a thriving economy has been pulled apart, nut by bolt. Every economic indicator needled into the red. Now a food-rich nation faces starvation - all for the sake of keeping one man in power.
In recent weeks, as it became clear that Mr Mugabe was going to bludgeon his way to victory, a moment of reckoning loomed for Africa's leadership. If they couldn't help pull Zimbabwe back from the brink of self-destruction, what hope was there for anywhere else? Failure to rein in Mr Mugabe would have made a mockery of a new plan to trade good governance against aid, investment and increased trade access, known as the New Partnership for African Development (NePAD). Mr Mbeki and Mr Obasanjo and Tony Blair are its main sponsors.
Mr Blair will try to sell NePAD at next June's G8 summit of the world's richest countries in Canada. He will argue that if African countries are enticed into the democratic fold using the carrot of wealth creation, there will be less need for massive dollops of aid, and fewer wells of instability in which terror networks like al-Qaeda can flourish.
So far NePAD represents little more than fine words. It has a disturbing resonance with other initiatives, long since consigned to the bin.
The rich world has been grossly negligent in addressing trade imbalances with Africa. The distortions that started when ivory was first bartered for slaves continue today in the one-way street of global trade. As street protests in Genoa and Barcelona have shown, globalisation has become the apartheid of the new century.
There is a view that Africa is not ready for democracy, or at least not at Western standards. It is plain wrong. Two weeks ago I watched tens of thousand of Zimbabweans, restless young men and toothless old women, stand in line to vote. Some waited for three days for the chance to mark a ballot paper and drop it into a box. Many had braved intimidation, violence and threats to get there..
All believed their vote could make a difference.
They have been disappointed, for now. President Mugabe's machinations have defeated the will of the people. But Zimbabweans have shown that Africans are ready for first-class democracy, all right. If only their leaders were.