The focus, for the moment, however, is on the present, and on what seemed the real prospect of change: in the aftermath of the general election held 10 days ago, the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has acquired about three-quarters of the seats in Parliament, and has also claimed the presidential race.
This latter claim, while perhaps premature, is understandable given the recent history of Zimbabwean elections, but also in light of the electoral commission's delay in releasing the vote.
Either way, the delays, the claims of victory by MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai, and the increasingly ominous agitation by security forces loyal to Mr Mugabe, do not augur well either for a peaceful outcome in the country, or for the image of African democracy - so recently ravaged by violence and bloodshed in the aftermath of the Kenyan elections.
Yesterday, the MDC succeeded in having its petition heard that the presidential voting results be released by the electoral commission. After a hearing lasting almost four hours in the Zimbabwe High Court, the judge adjourned proceedings to consider an argument by the commission
that he did not have jurisdiction.
The opposition believes - declaring as much last Saturday - that it won the presidential vote with a total of 50.3%. It has persistently called for the figures to be released, and the party's lawyers were at first prevented from presenting its petition to the court by security forces loyal to Mr Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party.
The latter are insisting on a recount, a move being strenuously resisted by the MDC on the basis that Mr Mugabe and his cohorts are bent on using the delay to remobilise support, particularly in the rural areas in which Zanu-PF has traditionally been strong.
Mr Tvsangirai's fears would seem to be well-founded. Out for the count towards the end of last week, several days later Mr Mugabe and Zanu-PF seem to be as far from conceding defeat as they have ever been.
Zanu-PF's frontline "activists'', the so-called "war veterans'' - a misnomer given that many were not alive and certainly not of arms-bearing age when the war of independence on white Rhodesia was prosecuted - have been mobilised in Masvingo province to evict several remaining white farmers from their land.
Some of these evictions were accompanied by television cameras from State broadcasting, adding to suspicions that Zanu-PF was attempting to stir up the issue of land ownership ahead of the mooted presidential run-off.
And the longer the delays in either releasing the presidential votes or of holding the rerun, the longer the activists have to exert their "influence'' among the rural populace who could formerly be counted upon - or coerced - into supporting Mr Mugabe.
But even over the rural poor, the ill-educated, and the terrified, the 84-year-old leader's vice-like grip seems to be weakening, and along with it the power of his rhetoric - that the country's problems are all down to remnant colonial power structures or to sanctions applied by
Britain and the United States.
Zimbabwe is in dire straits: up to 80% unemployment, inflation running at 100,000%, an average life expectancy for women of 34, for men 37 - and widespread corruption. Many of its remaining healthy workers have fled to South Africa seeking work.
It is a basket case. And yet South African President Thabo Mbeki, long criticised for soft-peddling on Mr Mugabe's perceived abuses of power, remains largely aloof.
Mr Tsvangirai has now called on the International Monetary Fund for support and on the major influential powers - South Africa, the US and Britain - to "act to remove the white-knuckle grip of Mugabe's suicidal reign and oblige him and his minions to retire''.
Whether this can or will happen, as an elaborate charade plays out over the next weeks, is yet to be seen. The portents are not good.
Genuine democracy has so long been absent in Zimbabwe that the public institutions once responsible for upholding it - and for many years now beholden for their existence, their livelihoods and their safety to Mr Mugabe - have almost certainly forgotten what it looks like.
