While the world watches the killings of Arab protesters with alarm, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe runs a regime of repression, corruption, starvation and torture with impunity.

Nor is it likely the 87-year-old autocrat will loosen his grip on power until he dies, says Zimbabwean-born Peter Godwin, author of The Fear, a personal chronicle of the dire changes that have overtaken the potentially rich southern African country during Mugabe’s 31 years in office.

“Mugabe’s political DNA is to react violently to any opposition,” Godwin said. “He’s a portrait in hubris. He’s willing to pull the whole temple down on top of him rather than give up power.”

Godwin was in Toronto for an event Wednesday at Campbell House Museum.

His book is an elegy for the millions of Zimbabweans traumatized by the regime: women gang raped, men broken by torture, villagers burnt alive, political opponents beaten and thrown in fetid jails.

And he says, although the savage attacks on opposition sympathizers eased off after the 2008 election, Zimbabwe’s destitute people continue to die from starvation and disease aggravated by enforced homelessness and a breakdown in medical and social services.

“It’s a silent genocide. In the last (decade) hundreds of thousands of people have died unnecessary deaths. We have to wake up to the fact that there are many more ways of killing people than at the point of a gun.”

Mugabe took over Zimbabwe in 1980, after years of guerrilla war against harsh white minority rule that brought down international sanctions.

But his leadership has been stained by bloodshed and ruthless determination to stay in power.

A shambolic campaign to return formerly white-owned land to black Zimbabweans resulted in the destruction of agriculture and collapse of the economy, as mounting corruption consolidated Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party in wealth and power, while many of the 12 million population were bankrupted by the world’s highest inflation.

After a 2008 election widely condemned as fraudulent — and marred by horrific attacks on thousands of suspected opposition voters — Mugabe gave in to African and international pressure to form a government of national unity.

His rival Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change became prime minister, and there was an agreement for a referendum to reform the constitution. But Mugabe is pushing for a quick election, and there are fears that a new bloodbath could begin.

If Mugabe, who recently returned from medical treatment abroad, dies in office, the prospects for Zimbabwe’s future are still murky if his party keeps its hammer-lock on power.

“He hasn’t allowed any obvious successor to emerge, and it could degenerate into an intra-party conflict that could be violently fought out,” Godwin said.

Both likely successors within ZANU-PF are aging, and one, Solomon Mujuru, is rumored to be seriously ill. But they are suspected of atrocities, and may fear leaving office and facing charges at The Hague.

Majuru, a feared former army chief, was charged with illegal seizure of land in 2001, but has become one of the most influential party leaders.

His wife Joyce, nom de guerre Spill Blood, is vice-president after an early career as a guerrilla leader in the struggle for liberation.

Although Tsvangirai is backed by the majority of Zimbabweans, Mugabe’s party could use the well-armed security forces to continue violence against their opponents.

But Tsvangirai’s own party is divided internally in a struggle for senior posts.

Meanwhile, Mugabe appears to be battening down for a new election battle, knowing that the international community is unlikely to intervene.

“It’s very Orwellian,” Godwin said. “He’s rational, but his world view has become so distorted that he makes amazingly destructive decisions.

“Initially he was surrounded by cabinet ministers who were colleagues and equals. One by one most have died, or fallen out, or been fired. Eventually there was nobody to stand up to him and challenge his views. He lives in an echo chamber where they are endlessly played back.”