After escaping from her rapists, Asatu went into hiding and prayed for help and to be reunited with her 27 year-old boyfriend, who she fears has been murdered. "I said to God, 'If these are your plans, I want nothing to do with them. If you are looking after me, then help in my hard times.' " Driving through the streets of Harare, it is hard to imagine the terror surrounding the election, an election that, despite the systematic intimidation of opponents — mass beatings, murder and disappearances — the 85-year-old Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party lost. The stand-off that followed eventually ended in the creation of an "inclusive government" in which Morgan Tsvangirai is Prime Minister but Mugabe remains President and keeps control of the army. Today, roadside stalls offer fresh tomatoes and green vegetables and there seems to be an extraordinary number of imported, luxury cars racing over the pot-holed roads. For Zimbabwe's ruling elite, with their fortunes built on illicit mining and diamond deals and milked public funds, life continues uninterrupted. They live in vast walled mansions protected from their people by electrified fences, security guards and watchdogs. Their only inconvenience, it appears, is the international travel bans placed on the 200 more-notorious citizens and generals. If there was any doubt about Zimbabwe's institutionalisation of fear, it is dispelled after just a few days in the capital. On the outskirts of Harare, at a secret location, I meet a "venerable" member of Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front. "If I am caught talking to you, I am a dead man," are his opening words. The international media are banned and foreign reporters face imprisonment if caught. Our meeting takes place in a deserted warehouse. "It is a most dangerous time. The party is divided and there are many who believe Mugabe should not be in the inclusive government at all." He describes a bleak political landscape. The party of liberation long ago morphed, in Orwellian style, into the party of greed and self-interest. But tensions are rising within the Zanu-PF; a mood of desperation grips the inner circle surrounding the President.

"These are the people who have acquired a lot of wealth and don't want to lose it — they think they can hold on. They worry that if the MDC succeeds, they will be brought to justice, they will be held accountable. Nobody should rule out a coup. They control the army, the police and the CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation)," he says. Mugabe's problem, the politician says, is that he has indulged his cabal of supporters for 50 years. "He cannot dump them and he cannot discipline them. He should have retired 10 years ago when he had the chance. Now nobody knows where all this is going, especially if Mugabe retires or dies without naming a successor." The politician describes himself as moderate. He knows Mugabe, knew his first wife ("who would never have let it come to this"), and is well acquainted with the rival powerbrokers and faction leaders Emerson Mnangagwa and Solomon "Rex" Mujuru (and his Vice-President wife, "Avarice" Joyce Mujuru) — who, he says, are manoeuvring to replace Mugabe should he resign or stumble. Mnangagwa, often mentioned as Mugabe's heir-apparent, was head of security when the first massacres of political opponents took place in the 1980s. Zimbabwe may not yet meet the technical criteria of a failed state, but to most observers that is surely academic — with 90 per cent unemployment, a compromised justice system and a bankrupt economy staggering along on US dollars and South African rand. The United Nations estimates 75 per cent of the population still depend on food aid. And state-sanctioned violence, including the seizure of white-owned farms, continues. Most of the nation's factories are in mothballs and, in the capital, constant blackouts interrupt what business there is. Silos that once held grain for export are empty. Harare's public hospital wards are filled by empty beds, stripped of sheets, pillows and blankets. Zimbabwe's cholera and AIDS-HIV patients are forced to attend clinics operated by non-government organisations — or, if they have $A10, get a consultation in a private hospital.

On the other side of Harare, in a modest building on a street where the traffic lights wink intermittently, the former union leader, now Prime Minister, Tsvangirai plays a deadly game of poker with the nation's founding President. Tsvangirai and the MDC were dealt an impossible set of cards under the Global Political Agreement brokered by the unsympathetic former South African president Thabo Mbeki, after last year's election stalemate. Tsvangirai won more votes but has been forced to play a subservient role to the discredited Mugabe. The lines of demarcation, like so much in the agreement, are vague and open to interpretation — usually the President's. The agreement makes no reference to the Prime Minister's powers and responsibilities. Recently, Mugabe stripped Nelson Chamisa, an MDC minister, of half his communications portfolio — the half that contained phone and internet snooping powers. Chamisa tells me, in a hurried encounter at a union conference, he is confident of getting his full ministry back. But from all accounts, he is the only minister in the 61-member cabinet who believes it. "This is the last supper for some," Chamisa says. "Political bacteria and corruption still threaten the Government, but we are shining a torch on it." Brave words. MDC insiders say Tsvangirai, still grieving for his wife, who recently died in a road crash, and a grandchild who drowned soon after in a pool, is asserting himself with fresh determination. He told a rally this month he was committed to making the inclusive government work. For weeks, MDC and Zanu-PF ministers have been haggling over the nitty-gritty of office: the appointment of ambassadors, regional governors and senior public servants, and the ousting of discredited Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono. Gono trashed the economy by printing worthless currency — a $Z100 trillion note can be bought as a keepsake for $US20 ($A26) — and stole money from private bank accounts to keep the government afloat while amassing a small fortune for himself, the President and his cronies.

The cabinet negotiations have been acrimonious, with Zanu-PF ministers sabotaging progress in the MDC-controlled portfolios of health and education. Violence and intimidation by the Zanu-PF-controlled Central Intelligence Organisation, the military and the prosecutorial wing of the Attorney-General's Department has prevented an international bail-out. In open violation of rule-of-law undertakings, farmers are beaten, jailed and driven off their land; MDC activists remain missing or imprisoned; and this week journalists were prosecuted for printing publicly available information. It is enough to ensure that donor funds remain at a dribble. The question most are asking in Harare is whether the MDC ministers are being set up by Mugabe to fail. When the next election is held — and nobody really knows when — will Mugabe blame the MDC for unfunded schools, empty hospital beds, food shortages and a spike in cholera and AIDS-HIV? David Coltart is the MDC Education Minister. I find him on the top floor of the department building, a drab 18-storey edifice in Harare's CBD. The building's toilets were unblocked and the water, he says, was reconnected with funds donated by Australia. A polite and genial minister, Coltart is, when we meet, in the middle of an industrial crisis, rushing from one meeting to the next. Teachers have threatened to strike, claiming the $US100 a month they receive is not enough. A senator and a white minister, Coltart is surprisingly, if cautiously, optimistic, believing the inclusive government was always going to be tough. "The majority of people in all the parties want to make the agreement work, even though there are hawks out to derail it. We are trying to stop the country from falling into complete chaos. "I have hundreds of thousands of kids that had no education last year," he says.

The education system is a shambles. Coltart says he has no idea how many teachers are employed even though 90,000 people receive salaries. The bureaucracy has been loaded with so-called "ghost workers", Zanu-PF activists who collect wages as teachers but who never set foot in a school. They are the thugs and foot soldiers, deployed to intimidate voters, carry out abductions and enforce Mugabe's political will. They probably include the cadres who abducted Asatu. "We need 140,000 teachers — that is the establishment figure — but we are not sure how many teachers we have. There is no computer (data)base. Trade unions tell me the real number of actual teachers is only 60,000." Like other MDC ministers, Coltart has set up an audit to identify the ghosts. What Coltart needs most is money. With just $US40,000 a month to operate 7000 schools, he can't hire more teachers even if he wants to. While Zanu-PF ministers continue to breach the Global Political Agreement, the prospect of an injection of UNICEF money — and there's plenty available — is unlikely: Britain is opposed to releasing the funds while the farm invasions continue. Coltart acknowledges there is good reason to believe the MDC has been set up to fail, but he clings to optimism. He says the agreement allowed the country to break the circle of "viciousness" and has provided a way forward. "We are going in the right direction since that truly awful time in May last year (when Morgan Tsvangirai was admitted to hospital after a beating). We have our good days and our bad days. "There is a critical mass of people inside the Government (including Zanu-PF ministers) who want this to work. If we can improve the lives of people and we get a free and fair constitution, the MDC will be able to take absolute power."

Another minister who supports Coltart's qualified optimism is Jameson Timba, the MDC's deputy minister for the media. While there are many outstanding issues yet to be settled, Timba says, MDC ministers are making significant progress. "We now have a semblance of order," Timba says. There is food on the shelves, prices have gone down, and there is deflation." He says agreement has been reached, but not yet announced, on many big issues, including the appointment of ambassadors, regional governors and permanent secretaries. But he says serious obstacles remain, including the farm invasions — strenuously opposed, without success — and the antics of the Zanu-PF hardline Attorney-General Johannes Tomana, who was behind the jailing of MDC politician Roy Bennett and other party activists. Tsvangirai acknowledged as much this week, when he publicly accused Zanu-PF hardliners of deliberately violating the Global Political Agreement and blocking access to international funds, thereby endangering the lives of all Zimbabweans.

Otto Saki, a senior lawyer and co-ordinator of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, which has been monitoring the agreement, says violations have been many and varied. Comparing the inclusive-government pact to a "forced marriage that nobody wanted", he says the violations can be expected to continue. Saki says the Zanu-PF is split between moderates and hardliners, but he believes the hardliners and Mugabe are dominant. "Zanu-PF is like the Mafia, once you are in it, you cannot get out. Accidents do happen and we have had people killed by non-existent trains and cars that nobody has ever seen." He says the future of the inclusive government is uncertain, possibly fated to fail. The Prime Minister cannot quit because that would hand a "blank cheque" to the hardliners. There has been speculation that Mugabe may step down when the Zanu-PF Congress meets at the end of the year. That could pave the way for a smooth transition or, more likely, a bitter and bloody power struggle between his would-be replacements Emerson Mnangagwa and Solomon Mujuru. While politicians haggle over the nation's future and their own, Asatu says she is resigned to the fate God chooses for her. She would like to go back to school and study — a faint hope for a single mother in a country where the education system barely functions. She would also like to reopen her roadside vegetable stall, but has no money for that. "I do want justice, but God will decide that," she says. Asked what name she will give her baby, she says without hesitation: "Struggle. I will call my baby Struggle."

Russell Skelton is a contributing editor.