karate

My son's karate teacher sizes me up. We have all done this in the past 8 years: which side is he on? Will I be taking a risk if I say..? I think she's pro-MDC but she looks remarkably like Vice President Joyce Mujuru -- could they be related?

After three lessons, he tells me about taking karate to Kenyan townships. He has a friend who has done this, empowering women to fight back. I ask him if there's anything similar in Zimbabwe.

He looks at me for a second. "I've just been approached by the Revolutionary Youth Movement," he says. "You know, it's linked to the MDC." There, he's put his cards on the table. I nod. "They want me to take this programme to the high-density suburbs," he says. "For self-defence."

After President Robert Mugabe lost the first round of presidential elections last year, countless MDC supporters were raped, assaulted and killed (when Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara tried to point this out at a ministerial retreat this weekend, Mr Mugabe's ministers walked out in protest). Would it have made a difference if they had had basic self-defence training, I wonder? If former opposition supporters are gearing themselves up to fight back, that obviously means they fear there'll be a next time. Which doesn't say much about their confidence in ZANU-PF's commitment to the power-sharing agreement.