Long-time President Robert Mugabe, former Opposition Leader and Prime Minister-elect Morgan Tsvangirai, and Arthur Mutambara - leader of a breakaway faction of Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - signed the agreement in front of some 3,000 invited guests in Harare’s International Conference Centre.

The alliance between President Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party and a breakaway faction of the Movement for Democratic Change would restore the control of parliament that Zanu (PF) lost to the MDC in the March election. However, it will do little to help a country saddled with the world’s highest inflation rate and lowest life expectancy after years of grotesque misrule.