These are dark days in Zimbabwe. Government-sponsored violence and intimidation have swept the country over the past two months, leaving at least 30 people dead and thousands more tortured, raped and injured.

President Robert Mugabe's government has left no stone unturned, or unthrown, to cow the population into voting his Zanu-PF party back into power in the parliamentary elections on June 24th and 25th. Violence appears to be all that Mr Mugabe and his party can use in their campaign.

They certainly cannot use their economic policies. Zimbabwe's once-prosperous economy is in shreds as a result of Mr Mugabe's policies, of corruption and of the country's involvement in the murky Congo war.

"The world's fastest-shrinking economy" is what economists have dubbed Zimbabwe's GDP, which is forecast to contract by 5 per cent in 2000. All Zimbabweans are feeling the bite of the economic downturn. Living standards are dropping, health services and education are near collapse.

These are the causes of the increasingly bitter unpopularity of Mr Mugabe and his party. This became evident in February when Mr Mugabe's draft constitution was rejected in a national referendum.

It came as a shock to Mr Mugabe. The parliamentary elections were due and the new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was visibly growing in popularity.

Aged 76 and in power for 20 years, Mr Mugabe had to come up with something new to turn the situation around before the elections. Instead, he came up with something old: the threat of violence. The invasions of 1,400 white-owned farms by Mr Mugabe's supporters and the government's quasi-legal efforts to seize farms without compensation have grabbed most of the headlines.

But land is not the real issue. It is Zanu-PF's determination to stay in power at all costs.

The accusation against Mr Mugabe's brand of land redistribution is that it will turn the largescale farms into squatter camps and destabilise the remaining commercial farms. All international donors have rejected his plans. The farm invasions were designed to frighten white farmers and to intimidate their workers.

Thousands of farm workers, the country's largest labour force, were beaten and forced to attend ZanuPF rallies. Four white farmers and two black farm labourers were killed. Police stood by and took no action to prevent the crimes or to investigate them.

The intimidation spread from the commercial farms to Zimbabwe's rural areas, where an estimated 65 per cent of the country's 12 million people live. Zanu-PF activists went from village to village, beating those suspected of supporting the opposition MDC and burning down their homes.

Ten people were killed. People were told their ballots would not be secret and those who voted for the MDC would be killed. Once again police took no action and in many cases those beaten were denied medical care, as government hospitals and clinics were warned not to treat MDC supporters.

Rural teachers were targeted as potential MDC supporters. ZanuPF supporters arrived at schools in government trucks and pulled teachers from their classrooms. The teachers were beaten, sometimes unconscious, in front of their terrified students. Some female teachers were stripped naked. More than 300 rural schools have closed.

Zimbabwe's cities were hit with the intimidation in May. Homes of MDC candidates and supporters were firebombed in Harare's townships. A bouncer at a township nightclub was beaten to death for wearing an MDC T-shirt. In the resort town of Kariba, five MDC officials were dragged from their workplaces and beaten, two of them to death.

In Harare's Budiriro township a doctor's office became a torture centre where scores of residents were dragged, beaten and abused with electric wires. Yet again police took little action, although in the most serious cases some arrests were made.

No corner of Zimbabwe was safe from the violent political intimidation. More than 5,000 incidents of serious violence have been documented by Amani Trust, a Zimbabwean human rights group. The result is that it is impossible for the parliamentary elections to be free and fair.

"The conditions for credible democratic elections do not exist in Zimbabwe at this time," stated the American election-monitoring group, the National Democratic Institute. "The violence has created an atmosphere of anxiety and fear."

Amnesty International reached a similar conclusion.

"There is a deliberate and well-thought-out plan of systematic human rights violations. It has a clear strategy of state-sponsored terror in the run-up to the June elections," said Maina Kiai, Amnesty's director for Africa, on June 8th. "Under these conditions, free and fair elections do not seem possible."

Mr Mugabe has taken further steps to ensure victory. The election process itself is grossly skewed in favour of Zanu-PF. The roll of registered voters is highly inaccurate and open to fraud. Widespread rigging is expected.

The MDC, backed by labour unions, lawyers, church and civic groups, offers a choice of sound economic policies and respect for civil liberties. But the violence and the decidedly un-level playing field have severely hampered it. The party has had nearly to go underground just to keep functioning.

A heavy cloud of gloom and dread has hung over the country. Zimbabwe, once the hope of Africa for sustained economic growth and a healthy multi-racial democracy, appeared to be heading towards dictatorship and mismanagement.

But in the past two weeks something remarkable has happened. The MDC succeeded in fielding candidates for all 120 seats to be elected to parliament. This is something that no other opposition party has done since 1980.

The presence of international observers from the European Union and the Commonwealth has brought a reduction in violence. People are emboldened to attend MDC rallies across the country. They take off their jackets to reveal MDC T-shirts, which just weeks ago were viewed as death sentences.

The MDC appears unassailably strong throughout Zimbabwe's cities and seems likely to win 40 seats in Harare, Bulawayo and other urban centres. The two southern provinces of Matabeleland North and South could well provide another 12 parliamentary seats.

Matabeleland saw gross human rights violations in the mid-1980s in which Mr Mugabe's army is blamed for more than 10,000 deaths. Yet in 1985, the people of Matabeleland voted solidly for a now defunct opposition party. They appear ready to vote for the MDC. And the eastern province of Manicaland could provide another 12 seats. That area has always been fairly independent and in the referendum Manicaland voted overwhelmingly against Mr Mugabe's proposed constitution.

Those calculations give the MDC 64 seats, which is a majority of the 120 elected seats. But Mr Mugabe appoints 30 additional members of parliament, which will make it even harder for the MDC to win an outright majority of the total of 150 seats in parliament.

But if the MDC wins those 64 seats, there will be a great deal of pressure, both domestic and international, on Mr Mugabe not to defeat the course of democracy by loading the 30 seats with staunch Zanu-PF supporters. Mr Mugabe has steadily become an inflexible and autocratic ruler and it is very unlikely he will be able to cope with such a strong opposition in parliament.

Nothing is certain. The opposition may yet be frightened away. The polls may be rigged. But the possibility that the MDC could win a historic victory glimmers tantalisingly. Instead of featuring as yet another African disappointment, Zimbabwe could once again shine as the hope of democracy in Africa.