Police and Zanu-PF lead bargain hunt after officials order shops to act

The Guardian
By Chris McGreal in Harare
Monday July 16, 2007

Zimbabweans are shopping like there’s no tomorrow. With police patrolling the aisles of Harare’s electrical shops to enforce massive government-ordered price cuts, the widescreen TVs were the first things to go, for as little as £20. Across the country, shoes, clothes, toiletries and different kinds of food were all swept from the shelves as a nation with the world’s fastest shrinking economy gorged itself on one last spending spree.

Car dealers said officials were trying to force them to sell vehicles at the official exchange rate, effectively meaning that a car costing £15,000 could be had for £30 by changing money on the blackmarket. The owners of several dealerships have been arrested.

President Robert Mugabe’s order that all shop prices be cut by at least half, and sometimes several times more, has forced stores to open to hordes of customers waving thick blocks of near worthless money given new value by the price cuts. The police and groups of ruling party supporters could be seen leading the charge for a bargain.

Mr Mugabe has accused business interests of fuelling inflation, running at about 20,000%, to bring down his government. A hotline is in place to report “overcharging”, and retailers who flinch at slashing prices are being dragged before the courts. Several thousand have been arrested for “profiteering” over the past week, including the chief executives of the biggest retailers in the country, some of them foreign-owned.

Economists say the price cuts will only deepen the national crisis, leaving many shops bare because they will not be able to afford to restock while official retail prices remain lower than the cost of buying wholesale or importing. Mr Mugabe has dismissed such warnings as “bookish economics”.

Some businesses fear that Operation Reduce Prices is intended to pin the blame on the private sector for Zimbabwe’s economic problems as a step towards seizing control of many companies in the way that white-owned farms were expropriated at the beginning of the decade, sparking the crisis.

Parliament is expected to pass legislation in the coming weeks that will effectively give a controlling stake in all publicly traded companies to ruling party loyalists and others chosen by the government. The impact of the price cuts was felt almost immediately as fuel virtually disappeared from sale after garages were forced to sell petrol for 23p a litre, less than they paid the state-owned supplier.

The police and army broke the locks on petrol pumps at some garages and tanks ran dry amid panic buying. Now petrol is available only on the blackmarket, at more than seven times the official price and three times what garages had been charging. By Saturday, most minibus taxis had gone from the roads because drivers could not find petrol. Crowds of workers were left on kerbs for hours trying to get to or from their jobs.

The riot police had to be called out to the South African-owned Makro super store in Harare after thousands of people stormed the shop after it was forced to slash prices. The scenes were replicated in stores throughout Harare. The Bata shoe chain’s shops were stripped bare in two days by people snapping up pairs for as little as 20p.

Food is still available, although bread, sugar, cornmeal and other staples are hard to find, and meat has all but disappeared because livestock owners say it is now uneconomic to slaughter their animals. Much of the meat that is available is goat slaughtered in backyards and sold in informal markets.

The rest of the food supply – already severely undermined by drought and lack of production on land seized from white farmers – is also under threat after Mr Mugabe threatened to take over manufacturers if they shut down their plants on the grounds that they were uneconomic. “Factories must produce. If they don’t, we will take you over … We will seize the factories,” he said.
Last week, the government said it was reviving the State Trading Corporation, shut down two decades ago because of mismanagement, to take over businesses that collapse or are seized. But many factories are unable to produce goods because electricity and water are unavailable for much of the day.

The price cuts were ordered by the joint operation command, a committee of army, intelligence and police officers closely tied to the ruling Zanu-PF and chaired by Mr Mugabe. The government despatched security personnel and party cadres, including its notorious “green bomber” thugs, to enforce the price cuts, in some cases by beating up shop managers who did not implement them quickly enough.

“Zanu-PF is at heart a military organisation and that’s exactly how it’s gone about this, as a military operation,” said David Coltart, an opposition MP. “The benefits will only last a few weeks at most and then we’re going to have to live with the consequences. They believe they can dictate price cuts and print money with gay abandon but ultimately it will rebound. Not ultimately, very soon.”

Business leaders say one reason for the price cuts is to quell unrest in the security forces, which saw a dramatic increase in inflation last month wipe out a 600% pay rise in May. They also fear the campaign is a step towards doing to private companies what was done to white farmers. Mr Mugabe is pressing a law through parliament in the coming weeks that will require all businesses to be at least 51% Zimbabwean owned and managed.

Zanu-PF has dressed up the move as an affirmative action measure to help previously disadvantaged black people. But firms will not be able to choose their new partners. They will be selected by the government. The measure will be paid for by taxing the same businesses forced to hand over control.

Mr Coltart said the move was essentially a means for the ruling party and military to take over the economy. “We can’t expect a rational policy to emerge. You will see the military in charge of manufacturing. We’ve already got the military in charge of railways and grain marketing and the electoral process. There are military men now involved in all sorts of other businesses. The militarisation of the state will continue,” he said.

In a letter to the cabinet the governor of Zimbabwe’s central bank, Gideon Gono – until recently considered one of Mr Mugabe’s closest allies – said that price controls must be scrapped and foreign investments and property rights protected to put the country on the path to economic recovery. He also said that the seizure of white-owned farms had been counterproductive because it cost Zimbabwe foreign currency earnings by losing tobacco exports and scaring off investors.

Many of Mr Mugabe’s opponents agree with Mr Gono but they are quietly heartened by the latest upheaval. They are fond of quoting the US ambassador to Harare, Christopher Dell, who recently said that Zanu-PF was committing regime change on itself with its disastrous economic policies and that Mr Mugabe would be gone by the end of the year.

International Herald Tribune

By David Coltart
Published: July 13, 2007

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe:

As I marched in protest with a handful of fellow Zimbabwean lawyers in Bulawayo recently, I looked into the eyes of the riot police and believed that I saw the beginning of cracks in the regime.

The Law Society of Zimbabwe called a strike in protest against recent attacks on and arrests of members of the legal profession, so we gathered here at the High Court on June 27th to march to the offices of the governor of Bulawayo to present a petition.
The riot police stood on the steps of the High Court and told us that the march was illegal and that we had to move away. Approximately 15 of us then started a three-block march to the governor’s office – followed by a stately procession of police vehicles that included members of the “Law and Order” political section.

As we – the 15 dangerous lawyers – arrived at the governor’s office, the riot police spread out, with shields raised and batons drawn. We were ordered to stop, told that our march was illegal and that we should disperse immediately or be dispersed by force.
We explained that we wanted to deliver a petition protesting against the persecution of our colleagues in Harare. The commanding officer was not interested. He threatened us again, called for reinforcements and ordered us to disperse. Further detachments of riot police officers and other policemen had arrived, bringing the strength of their forces to around 40. We asked the commanding officer to take our petition to the governor, but he refused.

So we left our letter at his feet and turned to march back to the High Court. Once more, we were ordered to disperse, and once more we ignored the order. Shortly after that, another truck-load of about 20 policemen arrived, armed with shotguns and FN military rifles. Our group walked a block, followed by this truck and the other riot policemen. Then we were stopped again and told to disperse under threat of force.

Again we ignored the order and walked a further block, almost as far as the High Court building. At this juncture we noticed further reinforcements arriving and, having decided that we had made our point, we dispersed to our offices.Let me remind readers that our march could not be filmed by any television station because there are no independent TV stations in Zimbabwe. Nor was it covered by any independent journalists because there are no independent daily newspapers left and foreign reporters are severely constrained.

Our march was conducted with the knowledge that, over the last seven years, not a single police officer has been prosecuted for any of their assaults against law-abiding Zimbabweans exercising their constitutional right to demonstrate peaceably.
We knew that the police officers who recently attacked the Law Society’s president, Beatrice Mtetwa, have not been arrested or prosecuted, nor will they be. We all knew that the police know that they have absolute license to bash whomever they like as hard as they like.

As President Robert Mugabe said in September after the arrests of labor union activists: “Some are crying that they were beaten. Yes, you will be thoroughly beaten. When the police say move, you move. If you don’t move, you invite the police to use force.”
Nearly all the lawyers who took part in the march have represented many exceptionally brave political and civic activists who have been demonstrating for years and who have been brutally assaulted and tortured by the police. To that extent the actions of this band of lawyers is not remarkable. But it still took great courage to go outside the relative security of their offices show solidarity with others who have stood for their rights and the rights of all the people of Zimbabwe.

My abiding memory of the events is the expressions on the faces of the riot police. Although they were brandishing batons and could have harmed us, when I looked into their eyes I saw no enthusiasm for what they had been ordered to do. In fact, if I sensed any emotion it was pity. The officer in charge was hesitant and almost apologetic. Most of his men were in tattered uniforms and many looked malnourished. When we avoided a violent confrontation they looked relieved and when they followed us they were not menacing.

On the other hand, the police reinforcements were threatening, but they were probably core loyalists. It struck me that we now may be up against a paper tiger, that the regime is only protected by a thin veneer of die-hard loyalists, and that the vast majority of the police officers understand that change is coming.

I remembered Arthur Hugh Clough’s “Say not the struggle naught availeth:”

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main.”

Despite all the fear and depression in Zimbabwe today, I sense that the tide of popular opinion is silently flooding in and that this dreadful regime will find itself overwhelmed from within.

By the Financial Gazette
21 June 2007
Njabulo Ncube
Harare

BIG brother is watching.

This aptly describes the jittery mood within the media and telecommunications sectors in Zimbabwe following the passing by Parliament last Wednesday of the controversial Interception of Communications Bill, despite opposition to some of its provisions by opposition legislators and free speech advocates.

The passage of the Bill, which allows government to monitor e-mails, telephone calls, the Internet and ordinary mail, has drawn widespread criticism.

Under the Bill, service providers will be compelled to install the enabling equipment on behalf of the government.

The new law empowers the chief of Defence Intelligence, the director-general of the Central Intelligence Organisation, the police commissioner and the commissioner general of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority to intercept telephonic, e-mail and postal messages.

A monitoring centre or agency, which will be the sole facility through which authorised interception shall be effected, will be established.

Contributing to the debate during the Bill’s reading stages, Bulawayo South Member of Parliament David Coltart said the judiciary, and not the Attorney-General, should be empowered to review the exercise of the powers of the Transport and Communications Minister in the issuing of warrants for the interception of any communication. Coltart stressed that the decision on the right to grant a warrant should be the preserve of the judiciary and not the Executive.

In separate interviews this week, stakeholders in the communications field condemned the new law — which they referred to as the “spying bill” — saying it was the latest demonstration of government’s paranoia and extension of a drive to stifle freedom of expression.

MISA-Zimbabwe national director Rashweat Mukundu, said the passing of the Bill marks yet another sad chapter in the country’s long history of free speech violations, as it will have serious implications on citizens’ fundamental right to freely express themselves without hindrance.

Section 20 of the Constitution guarantees a citizen’s freedom to receive and impart ideas without interference.
“By passing this Bill, especially without any amendments, the House of Assembly has regrettably and sadly dealt yet another devastating blow to the country’s deepening human rights and political crisis, which is being duly recorded by historians and will be judged accordingly by posterity,” said Mukundu.

Internet service providers will be required to bear the burden of additional costs, as they will be expected under the law to install enabling equipment and software, called spyware, despite the acute foreign currency shortages in the country.
Jim Holland, spokesman for Zimbabwe’s Internet Service Providers (ISP), said most ISPs could not afford to install the equipment that would allow government unfettered access to data.

“Potentially, they (government) could insist that anyone operating as an Internet service provider would be forced to monitor it, which is beyond business’s budget,” said Holland.

Wellington Chibebe, secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), said the Bill deals a major blow to the enjoyment of human rights. “It is an unwarranted invasion of people’s privacy. If signed by the President, this Bill will join other draconian pieces of legislation such as the Public Order and Security Act, and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act,” said Chibebe.

The ZCTU boss said the need to have such laws was a sign of growing paranoia within President Mugabe’s government.
“The government has taken it upon itself to stifle whatever little freedom Zimbabwean citizens had. The ruling party has perceived and convinced itself that it has enemies bent on toppling it. A government elected by the people, for the people, as ZANU PF claims to have been elected, surely has nothing to fear from its people,” he said.

“It also boggles the mind why government would want to pass the cost of acquiring and installing the spying equipment on to the service providers. This will push some small service providers out of business, as they might have to purchase the equipment outside Zimbabwe’s borders.

“If President Mugabe has any decency left in him, he will not put his signature to this ill-thought and ill-timed Bill. The ZCTU urges President Robert Mugabe instead, to concentrate on finding solutions to the Zimbabwean crisis rather than continue to find ways of harassing and violating innocent people’s rights.”

The government argues that countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America have similar laws in place to protect their sovereignty and to fight crime and terrorism.

Voice of America
By Peta Thornycroft
Southern Africa
15 June 2007

Zimbabwe this week passed a new law allowing the government to monitor telephones, mail and the Internet. For VOA, Peta Thornycroft reports that the Zimbabwe government justifies this new law by saying it is necessary to protect national security.
President Robert Mugabe regularly tells his country that Zimbabwe’s sovereignty is under threat, which is the reason he uses when he puts the army and police on alert. He says the main opposition political party, the Movement for Democratic Change, is a “puppet” of the west, and that its leaders take their orders from Washington and London.

The new law, the Interception of Communications Act, sailed through both houses of parliament, where the ruling ZANU-PF has a large majority.

Opposition Movement for Democratic Change legal secretary David Coltart said the new law was what he described as “typically fascist legislation.” He said this law gives enormous powers to “a tiny coterie of people” to intercept e-mails and all other communications.

Coltart said the law was “not subject to review in any way by any independent authority.” He said he had no doubt it will be abused to “interfere with legitimate democratic activities”

Transport and Communications Minister Chris Mushohwe said similar legislation existed in the west. He said Zimbabwe needed the legislation to prevent crime and guard national security. Few Zimbabweans have access to telecommunications, and those that do have long believed that the government was already monitoring phone calls and e-mail.

This week riot police interrupted a stage play, called “The Good President” at a theater in the country’s second largest city, Bulawayo, saying it was a political gathering and that police permission was needed before it could go ahead.
Most opposition political meetings and rallies are presently banned in Zimbabwe.

By Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)

Zimbabwe’s House of Assembly on 13 June 2007 passed the controversial Interception of Communications Bill without amendments despite opposition to some of its provisions by opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) legislators.
MISA Zimbabwe National Director Rashweat Mukundu said the passing of the bill marks yet another sad and retrogressive chapter in the country’s unfolding crisis as it has serious implications on the citizens’ fundamental right to freely express themselves without any hindrance in the form of the envisaged spying law.

Section 20 of the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, and the freedom to receive and impart ideas without interference with one’s correspondence.
“By passing this bill, let alone without any amendments, the House of Assembly has regrettably and sadly contributed yet another devastating blow to the country’s deepening human rights and political crisis, which is being duly recorded by historians and will be judged accordingly by posterity,” said Mukundu.

“The future viability and development of the telecommunications sector will also be seriously compromised by this draconian law, considering that Internet service providers will have to bear high costs as they will be expected to install the enabling spying equipment in a country that is experiencing acute foreign currency shortages.”

Under the bill, service providers will be compelled to install the enabling equipment on behalf of the government while empowering the chief of defence intelligence, the director-general of the Central Intelligence Organisation, the commissioner of police and the commissioner general of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority to intercept telephonic, e-mail and cell phone messages.

The bill, which seeks to empower the government to spy on telephone and e-mail messages, was presented to Parliament on 26 July 2006.
It also proposes to establish a monitoring centre or agency which shall be the sole facility through which authorised interception shall be effected.

Contributing to the debate during its reading stages, Bulawayo South legislator David Coltart, who was elected on an opposition MDC ticket, said the judiciary and not the attorney-general should be empowered to review the exercise of the powers of the minister of transport and communications in the issuing of warrants for interception of communication.

Coltart also argued that the decision on the right to grant a warrant should be the preserve of the judiciary and not the executive.

By Reuters

Published: June 13, 2007, 4:44 PM PDT

The lower house of Zimbabwe’s parliament passed a bill on Wednesday allowing the government to monitor phones, mail and the Internet to protect national security.

While conceding the country needed to protect itself against terrorism, opposition members said they feared the bill would pave the way for President Robert Mugabe’s government to curtail freedom of speech and breach privacy.
The Interception of Communications bill sailed through the lower house without amendments and will now be sent to the upper house, where it is expected to face little opposition. Mugabe’s ruling party has a majority in both houses.

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) legislator David Coltart called the proposed law a “fascist piece of legislation” that Mugabe’s government could use in an ongoing crackdown on political dissent.

“I recognize the need for legislation of this nature, especially after the emergence of al Qaeda and international terrorism,” Coltart said. “The objection is what checks are there to stop the abuse of this law.”

Published in the Washington Post by Michael Gerson

A nation is dying, its leader a tyrant, its neighbors indifferent

Thursday, June 14, 2007

WASHINGTON – When I talked earlier this week with David Coltart, a
Zimbabwean member of parliament and human rights lawyer, his office in
Bulawayo had been without power for five hours. The central business
district of Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, he said, was “a ghost town,”
with “hardly anyone on the streets” and “signs everywhere of total economic
collapse.”
Four days previously the price for a liter of gasoline had been 55,000
Zimbabwean dollars; that morning gas stations were advertising 85,000
dollars. Inflation, by conservative estimates, gallops at 3,700 percent.

Perhaps 31/2 million people — about one-fourth of the population — have
left the country, in a massive drain of youth and ambition. “Land reform”
has been a land grab for ruling party elites, who are proving that
intimidation and brutality are powerless to make the corn grow. Orphans,
many with the signs of childhood malnutrition, have begun coming to Mr.
Coltart’s parliamentary office for help.

Zimbabweans have discovered with horror that their founding father, Robert
Mugabe, is an abusive parent, as if George Washington had grown mad with
power, expropriated Monticello and given Jefferson a good, instructive
beating.

With elections for president and parliament set for next year, Mr. Mugabe
can hardly run on his record. So he has kicked off the campaign season by
attempting to destroy his opposition and rig the election in his favor. In
early March, his police crushed a protest rally and began arresting and
torturing political opponents. In response to international criticism, Mr.
Mugabe coolly replied, “We hope they have learned their lesson. If they have
not, then they will get similar treatment.” Constitutional changes are
moving forward that will allow Mr. Mugabe to handpick his successor. Next
week parliament will debate measures that permit the interception of e-mails
and the suppression of democratic groups, with the excuse of fighting
“foreign terrorism.”

Mr. Mugabe, having spent a lifetime consuming his country, now seems
determined to drink it to the dregs.

For years, nations in the region did nothing in response, and called their
silence “quiet diplomacy.” More recently, those efforts have progressed from
nonexistent to inadequate. After the recent round of beatings and arrests, a
summit of the Southern African Development Community — a 14-country
regional organization — appointed South African President Thabo Mbeki to
mediate the political conflict in Zimbabwe. Yet the summit refused to
clearly criticize the regime’s human rights violations. “We got full
backing,” boasted Mr. Mugabe, “not even one criticized our actions.”

South African diplomats tell American officials that there is no serious
alternative to the regime — that the opposition is weak and divided. But
perhaps that opposition is dispirited because in March and April of this
year, 600 of its leaders were arrested or abducted, 300 hospitalized and
three killed. Any hope of “mediation” in this atmosphere is a sham. How do
you sit down at the negotiating table when one side is using a truncheon on
the other?

The precondition for mediation is an end to beatings and torture on Mr.
Mugabe’s part — and the South Africans should insist on it. They should
also start considering more muscular options if Mr. Mugabe continues on his
current path. South Africa has tremendous leverage if it chooses to use it.
A cutoff of energy, fuel and trade could end Mr. Mugabe’s regime in a matter
of days.

The hesitance of many democracies to confidently promote democracy is one of
the great frustrations of recent years. The South Korean government does its
best to downplay massive human rights abuses in the North. India and Japan
do business with the brutal regime in Burma. It would be progress if South
African diplomats even raised the issue of human rights in Zimbabwe and
began showing the kind of moral clarity that once benefited their own cause.

In Zimbabwe, a collapsing economy, malnutrition, high rates of disease and a
failing health care system have produced some of the lowest life
expectancies in the world — 34 years for women and 37 years for men.

So Mr. Mugabe, at age 83, has achieved a rare distinction in the history of
tyranny — living twice as long as his citizens are expected to live.

According to Mr. Coltart, the most vivid image of Zimbabwe is found in the
cemeteries, which “are filled to overflowing.” “There are burials at any
time of the day,” he told me, “row after row of fresh dirt, with no
headstones, because the poor can’t afford them … It is the way,” he said,
“that I imagine the Battle of the Somme.”

That terrible battle during World War I lasted 142 days. Zimbabwe has
suffered for years — and the burials go on.

Financial Times by Alec Russell

Published: May 21 2007 03:00

The people of Nswazwi are once again on the move. Three decades ago their tiny settlement of thatched mud huts, a few miles from the border with Botswana, was caught up in Zimbabwe’s liberation war. Many residents fled across the frontier before returning home to enjoy the fruits of freedom. Now, again, abandoned huts and empty kraals (enclosures) testify to an exodus.

Since the days of Lobengula, the 19th-century Matabele king, lustrous cattle have grazed in this remote corner of Zimbabwe. But now food stocks are running low; the average household income is a few US dollars a month; and the intimidation from the regime is intensifying. Those who remain are clearly struggling. Local tracks are dotted with people who cannot afford the bus fare to the local town. And so they walk for hours in the sun, bearing scraps of food that they hope to sell or barter – and this in a country that was until recently dubbed the bread-basket of southern Africa.

These are tense times. Few people talk openly to strangers, lest agents of the feared Central Intelligence Organisation are watching. Hidden behind the corner of a cattle kraal, a young girl said she wanted to speak out. “There are so many who are going,” she said. “They say they will come back one day but I don’t think so. It is so difficult to get food now. We are finishing off last year’s maize and then we will have no stocks.”

The situation in Nswazwi is mirrored across Zimbabwe, where security forces tightly monitor the main roads and most journalists, including this correspondent, have to operate undercover. “Every year we say this must be the end,” said a veteran of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), who acted as a guide for the FT. He recalls how his first car cost $Z5,000, a thousandth of what half a tank of petrol costs now – or rather what it cost when he spoke, for the next day the prices went up. “Mugabe can’t last much longer,” he added. “Or maybe he can . . . ”

In the latest grim signal of Zimbabwe’s vertiginous decline, the official rate of inflation was last week put at 3713.9 per cent. Economists believe it may be much higher. With unemployment at over 50 per cent, three or four million out of a population variously estimated between 12 and 15 million have fled the country in search of work. Perversely, their remittances are a crucial prop to the regime. Yet the government blandly delivers statistics as if inflation were four per cent and not four thousand.

Gideon Gono, the Zimbabwean central bank governor, said on Thursday that inflation had been fuelled by chronic food shortages. The government attributes these to the sanctions imposed by the European Union and the US, as well as to the drought affecting southern Africa, and denies a link to the land expropriations that have led to the near-total collapse of Zimbabwe’s commercial agriculture. The sanctions include a ban on arms sales, a freezing of assets in European banks and a travel ban on senior officials in the government and Zanu-PF.

Mr Gono said he would continue large-scale printing of money despite the warnings of the International Monetary Fund that this would merely increase inflation. “We offer no apology, we offer no remorse for our intervention in all spheres of the economy when we do the unorthodox,” he told MPs.

Some commentators have argued that, such is the economic chaos, the regime must be near its “tipping point”. But comparisons suggest Zimbabwe may well fall a lot lower before this happens. The country is not policed with the ruthlessness of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nor has it been reduced to the state of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) under its late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. By the end of his ruinous regime in 1997, many roads and railways built by the Belgians had been reclaimed by the jungle and visitors were routinely fleeced by officials on arrival at Kinshasa’s Ndjili airport. Despite all Mr Mugabe’s catastrophic decisions in the past decade or so, unlike Zaire in its last days Zimbabwe still somehow staggers along with the odd vestige of normality.

One evening at the Bulawayo Country Club earlier this month, a young white couple were discussing their wedding plans with a caterer. “So do you want fish as well as pâté?” she asked. “And when are you going to do the speeches? Do you want me to wait before bringing in the meat?” Similar exchanges have been overheard in the club’s panelled interior for years and will no doubt be heard for years to come. But the most myopic visitor or resident could not now miss the evidence of a society under terrible strain.

On the fringes of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, queues form outside shops on the rumour of deliveries of sugar or other foods. Banknotes are exchanged in brick-sized wads. Many shops change prices twice a day. Most business is done by barter. One world-weary businessman says that after years of marriage he has changed his mantra to his wife. “I no longer say: ‘You are spending too much.’ I now say: ‘You are not spending quickly enough.’ Whenever we have cash we spend it.”

For seven years since Mr Mugabe first faced a serious challenge to his rule with the formation of the MDC, Zimbabwe’s opposition has been in a state of increasing despair. Since 2000 there have been three elections, two parliamentary and one presidential. With the economy in freefall, each should have been a stiff challenge for Mr Mugabe. But he won all three easily, relying on a formula of populism, thuggery and skulduggery at the polls.

Now more than ever, Mr Mugabe’s back is against the wall. His Zanu-PF party is in disarray. Ten days ago, party meetings in Bulawayo, an opposition stronghold, and the central town of Masvingo broke up in chaos amid clashes between supporters of the two factions vying to replace the president. Also, his sovereignty has for the first time in his 27 years in power been
compromised: regional leaders have mandated South Africa to mediate between Zanu-PF and the MDC ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections due next March.

Yet barring a move from within Zanu-PF – and insiders suggest that this, despite the party’s unhappiness, is unlikely for the moment – the earliest the 83-year-old can be expected to leave office is after the elections. In the meantime, the opposition is struggling to speak with one voice and overcome regional scepticism as to its viability as a political force. All the while, Mr Mugabe’s supporters are doing their best to ensure that it is in no state to contest the election.

“The regime has thrown all caution to the wind,” says David Coltart, a veteran human rights lawyer and a leading MDC MP. “It has been pushed into a corner and is now lashing out. As with so many dictatorships, the closer they get to the end the more vicious they become. They are deadly serious now. This isn’t an aberration. This is an attempt to crush the opposition before elections.”

He was speaking shortly after police beat two of Zimbabwe’s best-known human rights lawyers in Harare. This was merely the latest act of state-sponsored brutality since March 11, when Morgan Tsvangirai, the head of one of the MDC’s two wings, and other leaders were beaten in the streets of the capital. These are dangerous times for the opposition as Human Rights Watch, the US rights group, made clear in a report this month that recorded the summary arrest and torture of hundreds of activists since the attack on Mr Tsvangirai.

Day by day, the fabric of the old law-abiding and functioning order becomes more threadbare and people more desperate. Earlier this month, on Suzanne Street on the northern fringe of the city hundreds of people had gathered outside a high metal gate. Briefly it opened and some bags were thrown out. The crowd surged forward. Behind the gate was a chicken farm. The crowd was waiting for chicken heads and feet for the pot, or to sell on. “There is a new rule,” said a pastor watching in dismay. “If you buy it, don’t eat it, but sell it, make your mark up.”

The pastor was on his way back from delivering food to impoverished victims of Murambatsvina (Operation Clear Out the Trash), the government’s brutal 2005 campaign to raze informal settlements in the main cities. Hundreds of thousands of people had their homes destroyed and were then dumped in the countryside. Now many are eking out an existence on land confiscated from white farmers a few years ago.

Ten miles outside Bulawayo, Edward Sibanda, 52, is living on a dusty five-hectare plot with his wife and four children. It used to be part of a successful commercial farm. His experience highlights the folly and crime of both Murambatsvina and the expropriations. A decade ago the commercial farmers accounted for half Zimbabwe’s foreign currency earnings. Now most of their land is in small plots and all but uncultivated. Mr Sibanda ticked off on his fingers what he needed to make a go of it: “We have no rain, no tractors, no petrol, no tools, no food.”

He is one of many who can no longer afford monthly school fees ($Z15,000 – just over 50 US cents at the unofficial rate) for his children. Zimbabweans were long regarded as some of the best educated people in Africa and in his early years, Mr Mugabe rightly took pride in his government’s investment in schooling. Now, a malnourished and uneducated generation is growing up. A nurse burst into tears as she described the implosion of the health service. “We’ve got kwashiorkor [a type of childhood malnutrition] again. I didn’t see it 25 years ago when I was trained. Now you are seeing the telltale signs, golden hair and pot bellies.”

South African officials are increasingly concerned about the crisis on their northern border. Western criticism of the country’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” over the past few years has infuriated Pretoria, which argues that trumpeting its concern would be counter-productive. But privately, officials concede the crisis sends all the wrong signals to the foreign investors they want to attract. They also fear it risks overshadowing the 2010 football World Cup in South Africa, which they hope will be a showcase for the post-apartheid state.

Now they are pushing forward with their mediation plans. They have held several meetings with the opposition factions and written formally to Mr Mugabe seeking his response to their mandate. Meanwhile, western agencies have done their sums and calculated that the world will need to stump up one billion US dollars a year for a decade after the regime falls.

The best-case scenario is for the region somehow to force Mr Mugabe to step down in favour of a coalition between reformist elements of the Zanu-PF and the MDC. But no one is holding their breath. A senior former cabinet minister believes Mr Mugabe has only one goal: to stay until he dies and so avoid the risk of prosecution. As a senior opposition figure concedes, Mr Mugabe knows all too well that the MDC’s promises of amnesty are meaningless.

“I think we are in for growing violence and eventually some sort of conflagration this year, next or even the year after,” says one diplomat with long experience of Zimbabwe. Given Zimbabweans’ relative quiescence in the face of the growing tyranny, until recently that might have been dismissed as alarmism. Moses Nzila-Ndlovu, an MDC MP, fears that is no longer the case.

“There are so many people who have been traumatised and brutalised by Zanu-PF. If the MDC were cheated at the elections again there could be carnage. There is so much anger. And even if Mugabe goes, it may not end there. Look at it from the perspective of the ordinary people. You have a pot, boiling. Lift up the lid and the steam boils over.”