They are the words every foreign correspondent dreads hearing. “We are going to have to detain you for a little while, sir.” In my case, they were uttered by Senior Immigration Officer Godfrey Kondo, a dapper good-looking man. They hit me like a boxer’s blow to the solar plexus. I felt a frisson of fear run up my spine.

Journalists are banned from reporting in Zimbabwe and have to resort to all manner of ruses to gain entry. Mine had been to slip in through the back door of the quiet second city of Bulawayo, capital of the southwestern area of Matabeleland where Robert Mugabe is still remembered for a series of brutal massacres in the 1980s and has few friends.

It had worked before, but since the veteran dictator lost elections on March 29 vigilance against “neo-colonialists” and “Western imperialists” has risen to unprecedented levels.

I had taken a set of golf clubs and as few items as possible that could link me to reporting. I used a second passport, which carried no mention of my work with The Times, or so I thought.

Mr Kondo, whose meticulous attention to detail was impressive, spotted a years-old entry stamp to South Africa with an oblique reference to “reporting duties”.

I tried to bluff it out, saying I used to work forThe Timesbut, at 54, I was far too old for news reporting. Mr Kondo hesitated and rushed outside the terminal building. The plane which had brought me in from South Africa had just departed again. “Now, we have a bit of a problem,” he confided. I was put in the back of an enclosed van and taken off to the local headquarters in the town some 15 miles away.

There, I was ordered to sit in the office of an elderly colleague who sat under a glowering portrait of President Mugabe. He told me of his love for Britain, where two of his children now lived.

The rest of the time was spent chatting about football and the chances of Liverpool, my place of birth, winning another European Cup final. I relaxed.

“We’ll deport you tomorrow. You’ll just have to spend one night with us,” Mr Kondo told me as we drove off to the airline office to reserve me a seat on the next day’s flight. Then he hit me with: “I’ll have to leave you with the police tonight, but I’ll come early and pick you up as you’ll be a bit dirty. It is not very comfortable there.”

Within minutes of arriving at Bulawayo central police station, I began to panic. I desperately tried to send an SMS on my roaming phone to alert friends to my plight, but frustratingly failed to obtain a signal.

I was taken to a dingy room with paint peeling off the walls and broken filing cabinets, where I was told to hand over all my possessions and clothes except for a pair of trousers and one top. I chose to keep a fleece as I judged the cells would be chilly.

The policeman’s breath smelt of the sweet aroma of African beer. While his attention was elsewhere, I grabbed my phone back off his desk and stuffed it into my crotch. Barefoot, I was led across the courtyard to the cells where I could see dozens of eyes watching me through the slits in the doors.

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