FOR all their complaints about dwindling democracy, Dr Robert Mugabe's critics have to admit that his administration still retains the support of the country's black majority, writes Edward O'Loughlin.
His Zanu PF party, which incorporates its former rivals from Dr Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwean African People's Union (Zapu), is the only political movement with mass support across the entire country. Only 32 per cent of voters turned out in last month's election, but 92 per cent of them voted for Mr Mugabe.
Any realistic opposition to the powers that be will have to come from within Zanu or its tradition, the experts say, and with most of the party's leaders now in their 70s, attention is beginning to focus on the new generation. Last year, the party elders had to resort to widespread manipulation not to say rigging to keep a number of young Turks from obtaining party nominations for the parliamentary elections.
Finding herself deselected by dubious means, the popular young MP for Harare South, Ms Margaret Dongo, ran as an independent and was narrowly beaten in a campaign marked by government threats and physical intimidation.
She discovered that the poll had been rigged, with numerous Zanu supporters registered from outside the constituency, dead men voting and crudest of all clear evidence of ballot stuffing. The Supreme Court agreed with her and she easily won the subsequent by election, becoming the only independent MP in parliament.
According to Ms Dongo, there is growing dismay among some of the younger Zanu MPs at the growing corruption and autocracy of the party leadership. Herself a combatant in the liberation war, she accuses the older generation of using Zanu's leading role then to justify their increasingly self serving rule.
Their complacency will force some of the younger Zanu politicians to rebel in the coming years, she believes, so the next parliamentary elections should feature a greater number of independent candidates.
In the meantime, though, she expects the extra parliamentary opposition parties to remain weak and divided.