There was fear in the air in Harare late this week. As the leader for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai, lay badly injured in a private hospital, recovering from a police beating on Sunday, Harare residents scrambled for information, starved by state media.
Reports of rioting - almost all of them false - flew around the centre city. Patients cancelled hospital appointments at the private Avenues Clinic Thursday after helicopters were heard hovering and riot police drove by.
Blackouts knocked out suburbs for several hours each night. Cellphone networks jammed as people tried to get information, to find out what was really going on. The state-controlled Herald newspaper, the only remaining daily newspaper in Zimbabwe, sold briskly through street vendors starting early in the morning.
The paper, which closely toes the government line, said virtually nothing about the injuries of Tsvangirai, 55. Instead, it showed pictures of policemen injured in revenge attacks, including the fire-bombing of a police station in Harare's Marimba Park which left two female constables badly injured.
One state columnist called on the state to stop treating the renegade opposition leader with kid gloves. It was in sharp contrast to accounts in the privately-run Financial Gazette weekly, which carried a front-page picture of a battered Tsvangirai and the headline: Tsvangirai critical.
As tensions grew, prices rose. With inflation now running at a record 1,729.9 per cent, Zimbabweans were used to regular price hikes. But these hikes were significant. Petrol, which had been selling at 9,000 Zimbabwe dollars. Shot up to at least 15,000 dollars in some stations.
On the black market, the Zimbabwe dollar plunged to a new low of as much as 17,500 to the US dollar, down from 10,000 last week. The official rate is 250 Zimbabwe dollars to the greenback. Commuter omnibus drivers hiked their fares, provoking the wrath of the authorities.
The authorities were angry too about other things. Furious at European Union diplomats, who allegedly tried to take food to Tsvangirai and other opposition activists while in police custody, Mugabe told Western leaders to go hang. He upped the ante, warning Western diplomats could be expelled and announcing that from now on all police would be armed.
The 83-year-old president in power here since independence in 1980 defiantly argued that police had a right to bash, in comments carried by the Herald. They will get arrested and get bashed by the police, Mugabe said, referring to the opposition.
There were tensions too surrounding the burial of an opposition activist, shot dead as he and a gang allegedly tried to stone police officers. The MDC had been bombing of a ferry trying to organise a big funeral for Gift Tandare, a married father of three.
But state agents hastily buried the activist. Unconfirmed reports said his family had not been allowed to attend the burial. Presidential spokesman George Charamba called Tandare a thug in a column and said the traditional chief at the late activist's rural home had rejected the defilement of his land which Tandare's burial would have entailed.
As residents wondered whether Zimbabwe was headed for more violence, one paper quoted a popular local Shona proverb: "When the drum gets louder, its about to burst."
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