Zimbabwe's Split Opposition

With the same dedication he devotes to his business, he composes, hides and secretly distributes fliers, sometimes swapping cars to dodge arrest.

"When you are working for your country in a state of crisis, it's just such a thrilling experience. It's just such a wonderful emotion to be involved with people who are doing the same thing," he said in a quiet, clipped voice. "In today's modern world, it doesn't really happen that much anymore."

His aim, like that of other regime opponents, is simply to render the country ungovernable. But the big question is how to do so.

Sokwanele, the ghost organization to which he belongs, and a similar underground movement called Zvakwana (both meaning "enough is enough" in different African languages) are multiracial movements that eschew violence, each struggling for change by trying to mobilize people to resist the regime.

The nation's March parliamentary elections were condemned by the United States and European Union as neither free nor fair. However, Mugabe did not employ the type of overt violence he has used in past elections, and his victory was endorsed by powerful African allies such as South Africa. He followed up with a national police operation to scatter urban opposition supporters by demolishing informal shacks and traders' stalls across the country.

At this point, Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change is as deeply demoralized and divided as it has ever been. The limited impact of a two-day general protest strike the MDC organized in June has raised doubts on whether its plodding brand of peaceful resistance can ever pose a threat to the regime. The organization is almost broke, squabbling and believes itself to be infiltrated at the highest levels by the state intelligence organ, the Central Intelligence Organization.

Zvakwana and Sokwanele are more innovative, leaving fliers in buses or pasted up in small rural shopping areas, distributing "revolutionary" condoms branded with the exhortation to "Get Up, Stand Up," hiding anti-regime messages in matchboxes or wrapping soap or candles in them. Yet these too seem to have had little effect in encouraging people to actively resist the government.