Just when President Mugabe thought he had smashed a swell of restiveness into submission, it returned to haunt him. An international arts festival, taking place a stone’s throw from his office, has wowed crowds with its daring and politically provocative shows.

The opening performance stunned the 6,000 spectators on the lawns of the Harare Gardens. On stage, male dancers in suits and dark glasses descended with pickaxe handles on a crowd of young actors, evidently township opposition activists, as a woman singer growled: “I can’t get no satisfaction.” When the limp forms of the victims were carried off the stage, the song changed to Tracy Chapman’s Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.

The act was a violent, shocking danse macabre that reenacted the killings and savage assaults by Mr Mugabe’s security agents on opposition activists, including Morgan Tsvangirai, the Movement for Democratic Change leader, that began on March 11. From the back of the audience came shouts of “March 11, March 11”.

The master of ceremonies, flanked by two expressionless men in dark glasses, opened the show with a mock presidential tirade that began: “Tonight I am your leader. I will tolerate no opposition.” In Zimbabwe’s violently repressive atmosphere it was a highly risky act for the producers of the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) to stage before a dangerous, intolerant regime.

The anti-government flavour has continued throughout the six-day festival that ends tomorrow. In a locally produced play, Zimbabwe police misconstrued rumours of an “Orange Revolution” and beat up street vendors selling oranges who they suspected of plotting to bring down the Government by distributing poisoned citrus.

Exhibitions at the National Gallery adjacent to the festival grounds are filled with images of the ruination that has consumed the country in the past seven years of angry dissent and rebellion.

“The festival is informed by the circumstances in which we are making it,” said Manuel Bagorro, HIFA’s artistic director, who has driven the festival since its inception in 1998. “I don’t want it to feel impotent, that we are burying our heads in the sand.”

The festival is an astonishing, unique phenomenon. Mr Bagorro, Zimbabwean-born of a Portuguese father and an Irish mother, and his sister, Maria Wilson, somehow manage to produce – despite 2,200 per cent inflation, collapsing infrastructure and a rogue Government – what has become recognised as one of the world’s best arts festivals on a $1 million (£500,000) budget.

Without megastars, he manages to attract a rising generation of actors, playwrights, opera singers, dancers, classical and contemporary musicians, magicians, acrobats and comedians from all over the world. This week’s lineup ranges from the British soprano Anne Williams-King, who made her lead debut in Covent Garden last year, to Hong Kong-based Chris Wong, China’s biggest pop star who came to Harare with his own television crew.

“To put together a big-name, talent-heavy show like HIFA in today’s Zimbabwe is masterful,” said Rajiv Bendre, director of the British Council in Harare. “Even for many European capitals, it would be difficult to match this.”

Harare’s audiences – a record 48,000 by the third day – are hungry for culture and entertainment, and respond rapturously. It affects the performers strangely. On Thursday night, the French flautist Jean Ferrandis was on an extended note in a piece from Carmen when his accompanist, Patrick Zygmanowski, rose from the piano, stretched out his arm to Ferrandis and tapped his watch impatiently. The audience fell about and it set off a string of impromptu deadpan jokes.

Williams-King said: “I have been absolutely amazed at how wonderful the whole thing is. I have toured all over the world and I have never had such a reception from an audience. It is quite uplifting.”

Times Recommends

• Over the Wall
• Why Africa welcomes the ‘new colonialism’
• Which will come out on top: paper or gold?