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Samuel Khumalo's dreadlocks once reached down to his chest. All that remains of them now are prickly halos of hair that surround several centimeters of split, swollen scalp. The 40-year-old postal clerk and member of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions was among the first to arrive last month outside the governor's office in downtown Bulawayo for a peaceful protest against Zimbabwe's high taxes and cost of living. Several dozen demonstrators had barely begun to gather when police charged the crowd. Khumalo received two cracks to the head before police officers dragged him by his dreadlocks for nearly a kilometer, until they reached a police station where they thrashed him with their batons and ripped out his matted tresses with their bare hands. Khumalo and two other protesters were then blindfolded and driven 20 km out of town, beaten again and dumped in the bush. "They were saying, 'What you chaps started is war,'" Khumalo says.

Khumalo's ordeal is just one skirmish in President Robert Mugabe's long, bloody war on dissent. Over the past six weeks, Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party (ZANU-PF) has closed the country's only independent daily newspaper and stepped up its violent crackdown on political opponents and dissidents. The next target: nongovernmental organizations. Mugabe's parliament has drafted laws requiring aid groups to register with the government and allowing it to suspend their leadership. "They want to do to civil society exactly what they've done to the media," says John Makumbe, a professor of political science at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare. "They want to close them down. Any voice that is not a ZANU-PF voice is harmful to ZANU-PF, that is their thinking." The crackdown is forcing the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) underground. The party is reorganizing its communication structure, relying more on door-to-door campaigning and radio stations that beam broadcasts in from outside the country.

Seven months ago, wishful reports from within and outside Zimbabwe suggested that Mugabe, 79, a freedom fighter turned dictator, might finally be close to stepping down. Instead, he's been tightening his grip. Many take this to mean he is planning to stay. But since ZANU-PF is embroiled in a succession struggle after the death in September of Vice President Simon Muzenda, others believe Mugabe's crackdown is a negotiating ploy meant to strengthen his hand for transition talks with the MDC. The aging President may yet be looking for a way out.
Last week the MDC took its case to overturn the 2002 presidential election result to the high court in Harare. The party argued that Mugabe's victory is invalid because the government packed the electoral commission with its supporters, reopened voter registration without telling the MDC and limited the number of polling stations in cities, where the opposition is strongest. But almost nobody expects a Zimbabwean court to rule against Mugabe, and the MDC's real audience will be in South Africa, where President Thabo Mbeki has been one of the President's most faithful apologists. "As long as Mugabe thinks he is being supported by his African brothers, he will see himself as a victim, not as the perpetrator," says MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. "If the African countries were to stop supporting Mugabe, there would be a sea change."

Of course, you won't read about that in the Daily News, Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper. The publication was shut down in September after the Supreme Court ruled that it had broken the law by not registering under the country's tough new media regulations. "There is a reign of terror against all journalists," said Bill Saidi, editor of the Daily News on Sunday, at a meeting last week of his paper's supporters in London. "The independence we thought we were entitled to is not the independence we have." Publishers and journalists can't look to the courts for redress either. In the rare cases when a court does rule against the government, the decision is often ignored. After an administrative judge ordered that the Daily News should be allowed to reopen — citing bias on the part of the agency in charge of media registration — the police closed the paper down again as soon as the first issue hit the stands. They also arrested four of the paper's directors.

After the 2000 parliamentary elections, which were described by international observers as tainted by violence and intimidation, the MDC challenged the results for 37 seats, including one for which Tsvangirai had stood. Tsvangirai originally won his suit, but after the government appealed, the high court announced that the record of the trial had been stolen. Without it, the case cannot go forward — so the ZANU-PF candidate continues to hold office. Thirty-six other ZANU-PF M.P.s are now holding similarly contested seats. And Tsvangirai's treason trial, for allegedly plotting Mugabe's assassination, was again postponed two weeks ago. As long as it hangs over him, he can't leave the country.

Mugabe's crackdown is chopping out the knees of an already crippled economy. Zimbabwe was once a model of development. But since 2000, when Mugabe began his land-reform program — seizing white-owned farms and giving them to black Zimbabweans, mostly Mugabe's own supporters — the standard of living has plummeted. The country has lost one-third of its gdp, unemployment tops 75% and inflation runs at over 455%. Those who can flee the country have done so. Land reform has crippled the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, and the ensuing instability has scared away tourists. Donors and foreign investors won't return until the crisis is over. The country still has infrastructure and human capital that would be the pride of most African countries — good roads, reliable electricity supplies and, despite the brain drain, a well-educated work force — but recovery is unlikely without a change of government. "The economy can't be negotiated with," says Makumbe. "You can't legislate it. You can't imprison it. It just keeps going down."

Human-rights organizations worry that the government intends to use food aid as a political weapon. Mugabe's land reform has turned Zimbabwe from one of the region's largest grain exporters to its most needy. The World Food Program estimates that nearly half of Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people will run out of food in the months before the April harvest. In August, the government — which has funneled nationally subsidized grain to its supporters — announced it would take over the distribution of international aid as well. It backed down only after the wfp threatened to cancel its programs. "ZANU-PF is going to keep coming after the food," says Shari Eppel, a human-rights activist. "In a nation where everyone is starving, he who controls the food holds the key."

The Mugabe regime relies on graduates from its youth-training camps to intimidate its critics. Trainees — who are instructed in weaponry and a history of Zimbabwe based on ZANU-PF campaign material — wear green, military-style uniforms and are among the greatest human-rights violators, according to a report by the Solidarity Peace Trust, a regional human-rights group. Despite the pressure, the opposition remains defiant. While campaigning for the MDC during the 2002 presidential elections, Prisca Sibanda, 28, was abducted by youth-camp recruits, who beat her with sticks, stones and boots and burned her with a hot wire. She was three months pregnant at the time. Sibanda still hasn't recovered from the attack. A rift of scar tissue extends from her abdomen to the side of one thigh, where the boys dripped flaming plastic from a burning trash bag. Her baby, now just over a year old, survived the attack but her legs are weak and she can't crawl. Unable to walk long distances, Sibanda sat out August's local elections, but she says that once she recovers she will campaign again. "I won't change," she says. "I'll stand and do what I believe."

Mugabe's opponents have few options. While some say mass protest is needed to oust Mugabe, few believe that Zimbabweans have the stomach for it. "I see no way of getting him out right now," says Pius Ncube, the Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo and an outspoken critic of the President. "He's got the army. Nobody wants to risk his life in Zimbabwe. If the present impasse continues, people are going to perish."

"It's very important that the organization survive this onslaught," Tsvangirai says. "It has survived before, but I think this final round will be a test of wills." Tsvangirai says he favors a Truth and Justice Commission that would offer amnesty for those who confess their crimes. "We want a solution to the national crisis, not to pursue some old guard who for some reason didn't see the writing on the wall," he says. "This is the carrot that we hold: not retribution, but reconstruction." They'd better hope the government bites — because Mugabe holds the stick.

• STEPHAN FARIS | Bulawayo
• Mugabe tries to silence the opposition