Determined Mugabe Tightens His Grip

England's cricketers would have arrived in Zimbabwe just as President Robert Mugabe's government introduced a new raft of highly repressive legislation.

At the age of 80, Mr Mugabe appears to be tightening his grip on the country and on his party to ward off challenges to his rule, which has lasted 24 years.

Yesterday, on Mr Mugabe's orders, parliament remained in session until 3.15am to pass legislation that outlawed all foreign-funded human rights organisations and gave the government the power to shut down any other non-governmental organisation.

Another bill rammed through in the early morning session authorised army officers, police and internal security agents to work as election officials in the parliamentary elections due in March.

"Mugabe is determined. He wants to make sure that there will be no opposition to his rule anywhere," said John Makumbe, a political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. "So he is coming up with pre-emptive strikes. He is strangling the media. He is outlawing all human rights organisations. He is neutralising any challengers within his party."

In preparation for the annual congress of his Zanu-PF party on December 1, Mr Mugabe has successfully sidelined all potential successors.

This week, it was announced that Joyce Mujuru, cabinet minister for water development, will become the next vice-president - and as a woman in Zimbabwe's patriarchal society, it is almost inconceivable that she could become president.

It is against such a background that Zimbabwe's decision to refuse accreditation to journalists covering the cricket tour should be seen.

"It is not surprising that the British journalists have been barred from coming to Zimbabwe," said Mr Makumbe.

"Mugabe does not want anything to spoil the image that everything is normal in Zimbabwe, that people are playing cricket on lovely green lawns."

The last-minute decision to deny the journalists entry was taken by Jonathan Moyo, minister for information.

For three years Mr Moyo has waged a campaign to tame Zimbabwe's press. He has closed three newspapers and arrested more than 70 journalists.

He writes columns for the state newspaper and orchestrates television and radio news broadcasts that are shrilly pro-Mugabe.

Mr Moyo calculated that barring some, but not all, of the journalists 48 hours before the tour began would not lead to censure from the International Cricket Council. It is likely that the remainder of the British press corps would have been refused accreditation on arriving today.

That would have left coverage in the hands of the Zimbabwean state press, which would have lauded the matches as a triumph of sport's independence from politics.

In reality, cricket has become the most politicised sport in Zimbabwe. Mr Mugabe is patron of Zimbabwe Cricket, the governing body, which has been purged of all but stalwart Zanu-PF supporters.

The national team itself has been riven by allegations of political bias in selection, and 15 of Zimbabwe's leading players, all white, have refused to play for their country.

At cricket grounds, all spectators are searched for opposition newspapers. Protesters are arrested, beaten and held in cells for days.

Two years ago, a man distributing leaflets urging a boycott of the Cricket World Cup was dragged away by police and beaten so badly that he later died.

Meanwhile, ordinary Zimbabweans have paid scant attention to the tour. Few can afford to buy a newspaper any longer.

In a country where putting food on the table is an ever more desperate daily struggle, there are other priorities than keeping up with the news.