Recently returned from a ten-day trip to Zimbabwe, Harare, Kariba dam and a day at Great Zimbabwe. I'd recommend going if you can sort out the mad situation in changing US money to Zim dollars. It's a good, cheap holiday.

When I first walked through Harare I wondered where this economic meltdown was. There were many people going to work and buying goods in shops in an impressive looking city centre. You get a different take when you talk to people. In the rural areas and the so-called ‘high density areas’ in the city, you see poverty and the ‘Third World’.

But, politically and economically, it's an enigma. On some vital details, I seemed to know more about Zimbabwe than Zimbabweans did. (Actually, I’d bought a report on the IMF’s disastrous structural adjustment programme while in Harare.) They also voiced some, but not all, of the anti-Mugabe tirade without much evidence to support it. There is evidence to support the idea that land reform was chaotic, but little evidence to say that corruption was widespread. (In fact, just after saying land reform was corrupt, people were apt to say that land was given to poor, ignorant people who didn't know what to do with it.) Most people seemed interested in getting on with their lives. Zimbabweans were friendly and calm. What I saw of them contradicted the Western media image. The idea that they are just waiting for the right moment (and Western support) to storm the Mugabe's presidential office and cart him off to jail is a joke. And those were the ones who are opposed to him.

I didn’t get a chance to speak in depth to people but I spoke to around 10 people. In general they:
- were anti-Mugabe (one was neutral)
- believed Mugabe fraudulently won past elections
- blamed Mugabe for the economic problems (apart from the neutral one)
- did not mention human rights abuses or said they were "isolated incidents"
- said land reform was right but mismanaged and/or corrupt
- said people were not eating enough but there was no starvation
- did not mention the IMF structural adjustment programme in the 1990s, which began the de-industrialisation of Zimbabwe
- did not mention the recent SADC support of Mugabe, and
- were not worried about Western finance of the opposition.

Zanu-PF's support is rural and city people generally support the opposition. We spoke to around ten of them. No one in the city I spoke to supported Mugabe. (This might also be because most were connected to tourism which has been hit hard since 2000.) Most thought he stole the last election. One said Mugabe thought he was God and God (i.e. death) is the only way to remove him from power. They seemed unaware of the recent meeting of SADC. SADC, a forum of regional governments, affirmed that Mugabe had been elected democratically, called for an end to official and unofficial sanctions, called for Britain to honour its commitments on land reform and called for (more) talks between Mugabe and the opposition.

People we spoke to did not regard human rights as a major issue. One person talked about "isolated incidents". Two others said the BBC human rights and economic portrayal of Zimbabwe was "over exaggerated" and that they didn't recognise the Zimbabwe they saw on such reports. They said there was no starvation. No one mentioned opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, at all. But a person who said he was neutral on Mugabe, said his replacement might not be any better. He also recognised that the economic problems arose because of the West's attitude to Mugabe.

Another person said he 'knew' the elections were fraudulent because no one he knew had voted for Mugabe. He said Mugabe used his intelligence to fool regional presidents. Also, he believed that talking politics to the 'wrong' people could mean being disappeared by Mugabe's men or by the MDC opposition. Furthermore, he said that more white farmers than reported had been killed by thugs. (I don’t know what evidence he had to support this.) He said he wasn’t eating enough. When confronted with the idea that white people supporting the opposition must be of good will and one of them should be voted in as president, he said he would take up arms to prevent that from happening. He said that during colonialism no black person could walk in the centre of Harare. He said that he was happy that Mugabe stopped such racism. He said Zimbabwe's problems started with land reform, which should have happened but was mismanaged. He said he would prefer to vote as President someone other than Mugabe who was from Zanu-PF.

Two anti-Mugabe people I spoke to said that the land reform had been mismanaged and corrupt. People who could not manage land were given land. Also, although, banks gave loans to white farmers so that they could invest in the land, they refused to do so for black farmers because they had no assets. They thought the Western media was undermining Zimbabwe's economy. There was a lot of money in Zimbabwe given some of the houses that were being built. In terms of infrastructure, it was the second best African nation after South Africa. They, though, also said that Mugabe had some bad policies. They said that foreign businesses could not take their profits out of the country. They (wrongly) believed that the UK government had given Zimbabwe all the money it had promised for land reform. They were also unaware of the Lancaster House agreement made with the British as part of the independence settlement that meant no land reform should happen for 20 years.

Another anti-Mugabe person thought that land reform was populist, should have happened but was mishandled. Mugabe was an old man who should stand down. But he also said that Mugabe did a lot to develop Zimbabwe's infrastructure, education, roads, electricity, and health. Despite the alleged massacre of 20,000 people in the 1980s, he said that until 2000, Mugabe had been a "great leader". He also said that opposition leaders received land from the land reform programme but lied about it.

I had a brush with the police while taking pictures in African Unity Square, Harare. Three plainclothes officers claimed it was illegal. They suggested taking me to the police station. I was co-operative and said that according to the UK Foreign Office website, it was legal to photograph anything apart from government buildings and the security forces. We walked back to my hotel and talked, and laughed, on the way there. They asked whether they were inconveniencing me. After seeing my passport, they asked me what they should do. I suggested calling the British embassy and then they went away. I didn't feel intimidated by them but I eventually felt they wanted a bribe. Before the brush with the police, I passed by riot police patrolling Robert Mugabe Avenue in downtown Harare. I saw one man being hit by a baton (presumably for being anti-social) but he wasn't injured and was allowed to go away. Most other people were aware of the police but didn't seem too worried about them. There were quite a few road blocks that we passed. There were some MDC opposition people who were engaged in violence. But the police at the road blocks were again not at all intimidating.

The idea of the suppression of media by Mugabe is odd. There's no shortage of newspapers like The Zimbabwean Independent that don't miss an opportunity to attack Mugabe. Columnists wrote that they hoped Mugabe would die in office. The opposition newspapers were in confusion about the outcome of the recent Sadc meeting and were searching for a credible explanation. According to pro-government newspapers, particularly The Herald, the West has subsidised many newspapers. In fact, reporting standards on The Herald seemed higher than on the anti-Mugabe weekly Independent, which was happier with propaganda.

The only post-2000 defence of Mugabe I came across was from 'pro-government' newspapers. On 7 April 2007, The Sunday Mail's front page story was: 'Mbeki defends Zim, stuns West', 'South African President Mr Thabo Mbeki has reportedly defended Zimbabwe against the attacks that some Western governments have launched against the country, saying the onslaught is part of a broad strategy to topple liberation movements in the Sadc region and replace them with 'puppets'.

'President Mugabe revealed this while addressing Zanu-PF supporters before the 69th Ordinary Session of the party's Central Committee in Harare on Friday.

'Comrade Mugabe said Mr Mbeki told heads of Sadc states meeting in Tanzania last week that the strategy to topple liberation movements would succeed if the West was allowed to have its way in Zimbabwe.

'Other countries targeted under the broad strategy included South Africa, Angola and Namibia, Mr Mbeki said.

'The African National Congress (ANC), the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and Swapo are the liberation movement reigning in South Africa, Angola and Namibia respectively...'