Zimbabwe's highways are littered with police checkpoints, which is discomforting for foreign journalists working there illegally. But they are simply a pretext for extracting food or money from drivers.

“What are we having for Christmas?”, one policeman asked The Times. “I'm hungry,” another said bluntly. A third threatened to issue me with a ticket for stopping a yard past the point where he was standing. He then said that my companions - hitch hikers - were “unlawful passengers”. Eventually he backed down, but a black driver would have had to pay.

More alarming was when I was flagged down by two police officers near Bulawayo, prompting visions of Christmas in a lice-infested Zimbabwean prison. But they just wanted a lift.

In the car they raged against President Mugabe's regime. The senior one, a sergeant of five years' standing, claimed that his monthly salary did not buy even a litre of cooking oil. His work was merely “community service”. He said that he felt sympathy for the suffering of ordinary people, and that if they rebelled he would not fire on them.

Another passenger was a warden at Bulawayo's infamous Khami prison. The previous month he had earned 200 million Zimbabwean dollars - less than US$1 at today's rate. Of that sum he could withdraw only a fraction after queueing for four hours at the bank each morning. Every day and a bit, its value halved.

He said that he had five children to support and had not eaten bread for a year. He survived by stealing the prisoners' sadza - a porridge that is now a luxury for most - or by trading favours for food brought in by families. “There's no discipline ... We depend on the prisoners to stay alive.”

Four inmates shared cells designed for one; 400 shared a single tap. There were no working lavatories and it was overrun with rodents. Some prisoners suffered from pellagra, an illness caused by vitamin deficiency, and several died each day. Their bodies were seldom claimed because of the funeral costs. Most were kept in a stinking mortuary for the statutory 12 days, then put in sacks and given paupers' burials in the prison grounds.

Many prisoners were not criminals at all, the warden said. “They stole food to keep themselves alive.”

Zimbabwe's collapse is evident everywhere, with broken picnic tables in lay-bys serving as poignant reminders of happier times. The roads are crumbling and potholed. Few traffic lights or streetlights work. Many vehicles are ancient jalopies that frequently break down.

Everywhere, even in the country, people walk along the roadside for lack of transport. From the verges they hawk firewood, vegetables or a sour fruit called mazanje foraged in the bush. Some hold out live chickens to passing vehicles in desperation.

Outside the town of Victoria Falls two young brothers named Freedom and Promise were selling clumps of tiny fish on strings that they caught at great personal risk each day by wading into the middle of the crocodile-infested Zambesi. “We have no choice,” Freedom said.

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