AMID mounting signs of social unrest, the former head of Zimbabwe’s army has embarked on a charm offensive among foreign ambassadors in Harare, convincing President Robert Mugabe that he is plotting a coup.

Solomon Mujuru, whose wife Joice is vice-president, has met the British, French and US ambassadors, provoking fury from Mugabe, who now believes that leading players in his own Zanu-PF party are scheming to overthrow him.

In an unprecedented attack on senior party figures, Mugabe claimed last Friday that there was “an insidious dimension where ambitious leaders have been cutting deals with the British and Americans”.

He said: “The whole succession debate has given imperialism hope for reentry. Since when have the British, the Americans, been friends of Zanu-PF?”

Attacking the “monkey games” he alleged foreign diplomats were playing in support of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Mugabe threatened to expel them. But observers believe he is far more worried about the dangers from within his party. In particular he is concerned that the armed forces still seem loyal to the retired General Mujuru, whose contacts with foreign diplomats signify his ambition.

Sources close to the Foreign Office in London confirmed that Britain would be willing to work with any postMugabe leader to help restore both the economy and democracy in Zimbabwe.

The dramatic collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar – which has fallen from Z$9,000 to the US dollar to Z$17,500 at its unofficial rate in the past five days – is another sign of Mugabe’s waning authority.

Harare residents awoke yesterday to find that the price of petrol had risen overnight from Z$9,000 to Z$15,000 a litre, denoting a wholesale flight out of the currency as traders realised that the local dollar might be worth nothing at all if civil order broke down.

Nearly all the city’s police have been drafted into huge high-density shacklands on its periphery. These suburbs have been driven to the edge of revolt by starvation, unemployment, Aids and violent repression.

In Highfield township, an MDC stronghold where Morgan Tsvangirai, the party leader, was brutally beaten after police broke up an opposition prayer meeting last Sunday, the question on everyone’s lips was whether this brave protest would mark the beginning of the end for Mugabe’s 27-year rule.

Augustine Chihuri, the police commissioner, and other police chiefs have begun to worry about their personal safety after firebomb attacks on police housing. Chihuri, a Mugabe confidant, was seen loading up on Tuesday at a Harare gunshop with 250 pistol bullets and 400 shotgun cartridges for his private use.

Contingency plans are ready to move out as many of the 15,000 British passport holders as choose to leave and to rush in foreign aid as soon as the regime crumbles. Special forces are reported to have reconnoitred escape routes.

If trouble comes, the main aim of the police will be to prevent angry mobs from marching on the presidential palace and the luxurious homes of the Zanu-PF party elite. With inflation officially up to 1,729% last month, there are plentiful reasons for the elite to be nervous.

When Mugabe visited his sister Sabina in the Avenues Clinic last Wednesday, he found that she had been placed in a ward near Grace Kwinjeh, an opposition activist who had been so badly beaten by police that her right ear was nearly severed from her head.

In an interview, Kwinjeh said she could not remember how many times she had passed out. Every time she had fainted her attackers stood her up so that they could carry on beating her. At the hospital Mugabe simply ignored her.

With scant information in the state-controlled media, mobile phone networks jammed last week as people scrambled for news of the beatings, while nightly power cuts plunged much of the city into darkness.

The pictures of hideously beaten opposition leaders are still unseen here. Mugabe showed his contempt for the international response when he said his critics could “go hang”.

The flashpoint for a fresh confrontation may prove to be the burial of Gift Tandare, an MDC activist and married father of three who was shot dead by police on his way to last Sunday’s meeting. Party officials wanted a high-profile funeral for him in Harare, but the police, fearing unrest, refused to release the body to his family.

A government spokesman last night confirmed that Tandare had been buried in secret. His family was forbidden to attend. Apresidential spokesman said it would have been a “defilement” to give up any land for the burial of “the dead thug’s remains”.

Police barricaded roads near his home as hundreds of mourners tried to gather with his young wife in the Shona tradition.

At least 116 MDC activists were still in police detention and the entire party executive in the Midlands town of Kwekwe has been tortured in police cells.

But even if the MDC musters its full strength and rival factions unite, it is difficult to see the opposition toppling the regime if the police and army remain loyal. The main threat to Mugabe may prove to be from within Zanu-PF, as Joice Mujuru, the 52-year-old vice-president, battles for power with Emmerson Mnangagwa, 65, the rural housing minister.

Mujuru, a guerrilla commander in the war against Ian Smith, claims to have single-handedly shot down an army helicopter with her AK47. Her husband, the former guerrilla leader and the army’s boss for 10 years after independence, is one of the richest men in the country. “I didn't fight the liberation war to end up a poor man," he once declared.

Both Mujuru and Mnangagwa, the much-feared former head of the Central Intelligence Organisation, are in effect warlords, one supported by the armed forces, the other by the secret police.

Mugabe fell out with Mujuru last year when he tried to postpone elections from 2008 to 2010. The Mujuru faction blocked him.

Mugabe switched his support to Mnangagwa and now says that, at 83, he wants to stand for president again next year. But he may have a good reason to back Mnangagwa, who earned a fearsome reputation for atrocities in Matabeleland in the 1980s and would be mroe likely to shield Mugabe in retirement from the possibility of a trial for crimes against humanity.

Relations between Mugabe and the Mujuru camp have neer been worse, and it is clear that virtually the whole of the army high command sides with the vice-president, making it unwise for Mugabe to push too hard. "The fact that the Mujuru faction has the full endorsement of the army makes the prospect of a coup very real," said a senior civil servant.

One critical question is which way South Africa will lean. The ruling African National Congress contented itself with a statement referring to “the alleged mistreatment of opposition leaders in police custody”, urging that “these allegations be thoroughly investigated”.

Were President Thabo Mbeki to cut off credit or prevent fuel flowing into Zimbabwe, he could bring Mugabe to his knees, but his policy is one of laissez-faire.

Mbeki has, however, made it clear that he would like to see Mnangagwa succeed.

The final factor in this witches’ brew is the state of the police and the army. The lower ranks, in both cases, are in a woeful state – ill paid, often hungry and, in the case of the police, increasingly fearful of popular anger. Hundreds of soldiers have deserted.

Mugabe’s own presidential guard was given a thorough shake-up in January after a dispute over pay escalated into a mysterious incident in which shots were fired. According to usually well informed sources, 22 men were executed.

An open mutiny from the armed forces is unlikely, but the conditions make it easy for dissidents in the high command to manipulate the men below them.

Meanwhile, the townships tremble with anger. Arthur Mutambara, head of one of the MDC’s factions who was also arrested last weekend, said: “If there is going to be any war, this is the time to declare war.”

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