IT WAS 10 minutes after the time arranged for lunch with one of President Robert Mugabe’s ministers and I had no idea whether the next person through the door would be him or someone from the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), Zimbabwe’s feared secret police.

Not only was I working without a permit – punishable with two years in jail – but I had also once been denounced by Mugabe’s spokesman as an “enemy of the state” for my reporting.

The meeting was a risk for the minister, too. But our go-between said he wanted the world to know that some in the regime were unhappy.

It had to be a trap, I thought. Then the minister walked in.

“I’ve been reading your book [about Zimbabwe],” he said, “and the CIO are outside.” Then he laughed.

It was not funny. Mugabe’s prisons are filthy, overcrowded and rife with tuberculosis and Aids.

We looked at the menus. Entrées started at Z$700,000 – two weeks’ wages for most Zimbabwean people.

“Prices are crazy,” I said. “Yes, we need to knock off some more zeros,” he replied.

“It’s because of our own policies. If this were a company and Mugabe was chief executive, he would have been fired long ago.”

I told him I had met many Zimbabwean professionals whose salaries were less than the bus fares to work. Surely the situation was not sustainable?

“The question is, will we wake one morning to the need to change or stay blind and let change be forced upon us?” he replied.

“We know we will be the first victims of any forced change.

“What’s keeping us going is remittances from Zimbabweans who left the country.

“Without those, 50% of the people who are struggling to survive at the moment would die.”

However, when I asked whether he or other ministers spoke out in cabinet against Mugabe, he laughed again.

“You outside are very naive. You have to realise that both the cabinet and the politburo [the supreme policy-making body of the ruling Zanu-PF party] all centre round one figure: Robert Mugabe.

“Look where the cabinet came from – 80% or 90% were nobodies before. They’ve made everything because of him, got rich, got farms . . . They don’t consider this a failure – to them it’s an incredible success.”

The Zimbabwean newspapers were full of reports of a foiled coup attempt so I asked about threats from the military.

“Look, if it was real it wouldn’t be all over the paper,” he replied.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if those officers said to be involved suddenly disappear.”

As the bill came, totalling almost Z$4m (£10,000 according to the official rate, about £5.80 at the market rate), we returned to the economy.

“It’s like a dam with the wall about to crash in on us,” he said.

“If we don’t create diversionary channels. the wall will come crashing in and wash us all away.

“That’s enough, I think,” he added, consulting his Rolex and pulling out several large bricks of bank notes.

Two days later I heard that the general supposedly behind the coup had died mysteriously when his car hit a goods train.

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