About 2,500 Angolan paramilitary police, feared in their own country for their brutality, are to be deployed in Zimbabwe, raising concerns of an escalation in violence against those opposed to President Mugabe.

Kembo Mohadi, Zimbabwe’s Home Affairs Minister, confirmed their imminent arrival, with 1,000 Angolans expected on April 1 and the rest in batches of 500. Angola is regarded as the most powerful military nation in Africa, after South Africa.

The deployment comes amid reports of concern in President Mugabe’s Government over the capability of the country’s own police force to suppress outbreaks of unrest, which are mostly in Harare’s volatile townships.

The townships have been under curfew for about three weeks; one man has been shot dead and hundreds of civilians injured. Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, and about 30 opposition activists are still recovering from beatings they received when police suppressed an attempted rally on March 11.

Mr Mohadi said that he had signed an agreement for the deployment of the Angolan paramilitaries with General Roberto Monteiro, the Interior Minister of Angola, last week.

“We signed a memorandum of cooperation last Thursday and it is meant to ensure public order and security for both our peoples and the whole southern African region,” he said.

The police would be on “an exchange programme”, he claimed. “We have done that in the past, and it is not something new.”

Police sources who asked not to be named said previous training exchange programmes with southern African countries had involved only small numbers of officers at a time. “This is the first time that there has been such a large group,” said one. “Our capacity for training is badly run down, and we could never deal with so many. I doubt if any of them speak English. They can only be here for riot control and to back up our own riot police.”

Dubbed “Ninjas” for their all-black uniform of combat trousers and tunics, boots and balaclavas, the paramilitaries form part of the presidential guard of Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has been in power since 1979. They patrol in pickup trucks, with mounted heavy machine-guns, and are notorious for their violence. “Angolans are terrified of them,” an Angolan resident said.

They will significantly reinforce Zimbabwe’s police force, which used to have 25,000 officers but has been severely depleted in recent months by mass resignations due to discontent with low pay and poor conditions.

Zimbabwe and Angola are both members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the regional economic bloc. President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia was the first member of the community to speak out against Mr Mugabe, describing Zimbabwe as “a sinking Titanic”.

“SADC is an economic body, but it has a security and defence protocol, allowing for intervention only in cases of threat by an external force,” said Brian Raftopoulos, a political commentator on Zimbabwe. “But this is a domestic problem and Zimbabwe is not under external military threat.

It [the deployment] is interference. Mugabe is bringing a military power of the region into Zimbabwean politics.”

Sekai Holland and Grace Kwinjeh, two of the opposition activists who were severely injured on March 11, were granted an order by a high court judge yesterday for their immediate release from custody in hospital. They have a round-the-clock guard in their ward.

On Saturday, police hauled the women off an aircraft about to fly them to South Africa for medical treatment and returned them to hospital, under guard.

“We take one step at a time,” said Mrs Holland’s Australian husband, Jim Holland. “The next thing is to see what they do when they [the two women] try to leave hospital.”

Protest ends

— Police ended a peaceful sit-in protest at the Zimbabwean Embassy in London. Ten activists from Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change party were arrested

— Ephraim Tapa, the party’s chairman in Britain, accused police of depriving the demonstrators of their legitimate right to protest

— Tony Blair told the House of Commons that he would press other European countries to extend sanctions and urge other African nations to do more to help Zimbabwe

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