The government of Zimbabwe has declared war on the people of Zimbabwe. The past 10 days has been unprecedented, even given the turbulent history of my country.
Barely a month after police brutality saw street battles with MDC supporters in Highfield high density suburb, another serious clash looms this Sunday when the Save Zimbabwe Campaign has planned to hold a rally there.

Save Zimbabwe is an initiative comprising churches, civil society and the opposition parties seeking a solution to the political crisis gripping Zimbabwe.
In bold defiance of a ban on all political meetings in Harare imposed by the Mugabe regime two weeks ago, opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara will join hands for the first time, together with National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) chairman, Lovemore Madhuku, to address the rally.
It is significant that both the clashes a few weeks ago and the planned unity rally will take place at the ceremonial home of Zimbabwean politics since independence in 1980.
Apparently crushed in spirit during the past few years by vicious government repression, poverty, disease and fear, the people of Zimbabwe appear to have received as new lease of life. Statements from the opposition MDC have been incredibly positive and courageous.
“No amount of teargas will stop us. No water canon will stop an idea whose time has come. No tanker or truncheon will stand between us and our collective vision of a new Zimbabwe. We are determined to save our country. On Sunday, 11 March 2007 at 1000hrs, let us all meet at Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfield and make a profound statement to tyranny and dictatorship,” read an internal statement issued to MDC members this week.
The official government response was brutal: Police being sent to safeguard troublesome ghettos in Harare will deal robustly with any violence and use deadly violence if necessary, the senior police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, vowed this week.
But, we are closer to breakthrough than ever before. Like those first rains after a long drought, we can smell it on the wind. Change is coming. A war against the people is a war that Mugabe cannot win. It is tragic that it should have come to this - all because of the utter corruption of a once good man by his lust for power and riches. But now, all his power and all his riches have turned to dust and he has become nothing but a scared old man, terrified of living out his remaining days in prison in The Hague, paying for his crimes against humanity, or finding a bolthole in some foreign land as so many dictators before him have been forced to do.


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Wilf Mbanga, one of the founders of the independent Zimbabwean daily newspaper "The Daily News", is currently living in the UK. He writes about the current situation in Zimbabwe.