“A TOTAL OF 282 bakeries have been arrested for selling bread above the controlled price,” state radio reported on Friday. Yes, said the young woman with the flashing smile who runs the bakery where I get mine, they were arrested this morning.

“They took one of the guys minding the ovens and kept him at the police station for four hours.” A fine of 250,000 Zimbabwe dollars (about 30p, at today’s black market exchange rate) was demanded, enough for two loaves, at the new “illegal” price. Never mind that the price of flour has gone up 60 per cent, electricity by 280 per cent, in three months.

“Yo, this country,” she says, with a gesture of frustration. “The police are always trying to get into your head.”

So I went to another bakery where the Greek owner conceals loaves in brown paper bags under the counter, and glances shiftily around the shop before he hands it over to you, as if it’s a parcel of mbanje (marijuana).

Everything is illegal. Last night I dreamt I was stopped at a roadblock and the army confiscated a jerrycan of diesel from my vehicle and poured it down the sink. In the real world on Friday, I passed through a police roadblock on the city’s outskirts where police were confiscating bags of maize being brought by poor peasants to sell in Harare for a small profit. It may be sold only to the State.

Anything is illegal. Later that night at a Chinese restaurant I ran into Jack who is a regular at the bar at Reps Theatre, not far from me. A few days ago, he said, David Chapfika, the Deputy Minister of Finance, was there while patrons, mostly middle-aged whites, watched a World Cup game on the television. Chapfika switched the channel to the local station so he could watch the government propaganda news bulletin.

One of the drinkers switched it back to football. “We don’t watch that garbage here,” he said. Very few do. But 20 minutes later two policemen entered the bar and took the man away. They accused him of saying: “We don’t watch that Mugabe here,” confusing the word “garbage” with “Mugabe”. He was kept in the ordurous cells of Avondale police station for two freezing nights before being let go without charge.

And some things are very illegal, apparently. Tichaona Jokonya, the Minister of Information, suggested recently that journalists based here who work for Western media were traitors. “You know what the end of a traitor is?” he asked. “Death,” he said.

Interestingly, 12 days later, on Saturday, Jokonya was dead, found in his bath in what until recently was the Sheraton Hotel.

But nothing is illegal for the heavies of the ruling party. The example of John Nkomo, the speaker of the house of assembly and chairman of the Zanu (PF) party, is but one of many, many. He has been trying for months to have a black businessman evicted from a luxurious safari camp that Mr Nkomo had allocated to himself after it was grabbed from its white owner. The high court ruled the businessman was entitled to the camp. When he drove there last week to resume occupation, the place was surrounded by armed police who chased him away.

YOU DEVELOP a shell to cope. Everything is crazy and unbelievable and so some of the time you can laugh. But the shell cracks under the weight of despair and poverty that is everywhere. Like last week when I parked outside the suburban home of a friend. A young man up the road spotted me, turned and sprinted to me. “Please sir, have you got a job for me?” he said breathlessly, wide-eyed. Never seen him in my life before. A straw, any straw.

Most of us, the last few foreign correspondents left in the country, and doctors, lawyers, priests, anyone who has to face the hopelessness of President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, are on antidepressants or anxiolytics, or become worryingly eccentric.

Last week I was at my Polish dermatologist to renew my prescription for medication for stress-induced eczema.

“How iss yorr life in Zimbabwe this days?” she asked. There was a long pause when I was caught unexpectedly by the urge to burst into tears.

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