There were no celebrations on the streets of Harare on Friday. Hours after President Robert Mugabe agreed to cede some of his powers to opposition rivals in a national unity government, Zimbabweans were struggling to decipher the­ implications.

“It is not a deal made in heaven but it’s the best that we could get in the circumstances” is how one of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s top advisers described the agreement, brokered late Thursday by South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, after weeks of tortuous ­negotiations.