COMING from anywhere else in Africa, Zimbabwe seems like a model country. The capital Harare, is a charming town, with clean streets and attractive modern buildings, one of the few cities in Africa where the traffic lights still work. The people are friendly, and violent crime is uncommon. You would see more beggars on O'Connell Bridge. Most of the police are unarmed.
Zimbabwe also has a very good human rights record, by regional standards. Human rights groups such as the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace readily confirm that there are no political prisoners, and that police brutality and ethnic violence are not serious problems.
Yet, despite all these positive signs, a lot of people in Zimbabwe are worried about their country's future as a constitutional democracy. After 16 years in power, President Robert Mugabe has just won another six year term in what ended up as a one candidate election. Critics say that while political opposition is legal, Dr Mugabe and his Zimbabwean African National Union Popular Front (Zanu-PF) have made it difficult to the point of impossible.
Zimbabwe is a de fricto one party state, they say, with no democratic remedy against a growing corruption and disregard for individual rights. If this does not change, they fear it could go the way of other former British colonies such as Nigeria and Kenya which have degenerated since independence into corrupt and sometimes brutal dictatorships.
Dr Reginald Matshaba Hove, chairman of the county's largest human rights group, Zim Rights blames the dearth of democracy on the 14 amendments Zanu has added to the constitution it inherited from the Lancaster House agreement in 1979.
One of the first amendments abolished the upper house of parliament, so that all laws even constitutional amendments can be easily pushed through parliament. Another allows the president to personally nominate 30 of the 150 MPs. Other constitutional and legal changes give the president the power to rule by decree and to annul elections. The government can even ban voluntary organisations.
. Democratic opposition is short circuited by an electoral act that guarantees state funding of Zim $32 million ($3.5 million) a year to any party that can muster over 15 seats in parliament in practice, Zanu. Splits and defections are discouraged by a rule that unseats any MP who loses or rejects the party whip. Constituencies are manipulated. Today, only three of Zimbabwe's 150 MPs do not belong to Zanu.
The government has also proved contemptuous of the constitution's bill of rights, dismissing it as a document "made in England" to protect the white minority after the white Rhodesian state became black ruled Zimbabwe in 1980. The courts still function, but Dr Mugabe has on occasion moved swiftly to legislate away constitutional setbacks, even on issues relating to the bill of rights like capital punishment.
"On one occasion the president went publicly and said that if the chief justice wasn't happy with the legislation being passed by the executive through the legislature then he should resign," says Dr Matshaba Hove. Controlled by such an all powerful government, the constitution can do little to protect the rights of individuals, he says. Nor do the media function well in this respect.
Broadcasting is monopolised by the state and news centres sycophantically on the doings and sayings of Dr Mugabe. The country's daily newspapers have also fallen under the control of Zanu.
The main independent newspaper, the weekly Financial Gazette has been gagged by other means. Last year, the paper's editor and proprietor were accused of "criminal defamation" under colonial era laws and imprisoned for 48 hours after reporting on the secret remarriage of the 72 year old Dr Mugabe.
This year, the paper found itself under fresh attack for publishing a Reuter report from Lesotho which said Dr Mugabe had thrown a tantrum when his aircraft was asked to land behind President Nelson Mandela's as both leaders arrived for King Moshoeshoe's funeral. The editor, Trevor Ncube was sacked and the owner ordered the staff to cease publishing articles that might offend Dr Mugabe.
A former political columnist, Iden Wetherell, who also lost his job over the Lesotho affair, believes it is no coincidence that the Gazette's holding company is heavily in debt to a state owned bank. The Lesotho story must have touched a particularly raw nerve with Dr Mugabe, he says.
"He wanted to be seen as the conquering hero when apartheid ended and now they see him south of the Limpopo as just another African disappointment. This is why you don't dare compare anything here with South Africa.
Prof John Makumbe, a lecturer at the University of Zinbabwe's politics department, believes that an atmosphere of fear pervades Zimbabwean politics even though overt violence is seldom used. "When you say there needs to be democracy in Zimbabwe, you see people swallow their tea and 0" he told a recent conference in Harare. "They, want to, be able to say they weren't there.
He believes that Zimbabwe has now become the most undemocratic country in southern Africa. "Is this because we didn't write our own constitution?" he asks with heavy irony. "Or is it because we have a government so ingenious, so clever, that they were able to convert a capitalist constitution into a constitution for a one party state?"
Dr Matshaba Hove says that the fear of violence has underpinned Zimbabwean politics ever since 1983, when Dr Mugabe sent in troops to quell unrest amongst the country's Ndebele minority. Thousands of civilians are believed to have been massacred in the ensuing operations in Matabeleland. "We as a nation have never come to terms with that."
There are many in Zimbabwe, including Mr Mike Auret of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, who believe that state forces may also have engineered a number of "disappearances" and mysterious deaths, possibly to cover up corruption.
According to Dr Matshaba Hove, the main check left on government misconduct is its dependence on donor aid, and the willingness of donors to attach democratic strings to their largess.
"Donor conditionality does work somewhat, merely because some governments for some strange reason are more responsive to the withdrawal of aid than to the aspirations of their own people" he says.
"But at the same time it is easily ridiculed by politicians as a neo-colonialist and neo-imperialist measure designed to force their country to accept western culture. As such, its long term effect on protecting rights is limited."