The three members of the team will be drawn from current SADC Troika members South Africa, Zambia and Tanzania, and will be on the ground in Harare in two weeks' time, according to a source very close to the Zimbabwe process.

But for its 31 months of existence, Jomic has tended to deal with a wide array of extraordinary problems, from political violence to farm invasions, usually because the Zimbabwe Republic Police is habitually influenced by Zanu-PF. Zimbabwean citizens caught up in the breakdown of the rule of law have no hope of justice outside Jomic, which has made the badly-resourced body a "court of last resort", although it has no legal powers of enforcement.

As the months rolled by and SADC's Jomic monitors did not arrive, Zanu-PF created a second round of defence and insisted on "terms of reference" for the three. Finally the terms of reference are agreed but details are not yet available, perhaps because those terms are superfluous to the process. The three new monitors will be in place within two weeks, after Zulu and Maharaj's next visit to Zimbabwe.

Zanu-PF has been forced by South African President Jacob Zuma's mediators to accept the SADC personnel. The symbolism of foreigners checking on governance on a daily basis is extraordinary and a defeat for Zanu-PF, which fears that full implementation of the political agreement may indeed have a chance of producing freer elections.

SADC recognises the Jomic move as the facilitator of other interventions to drive the process towards free and fair elections.

Zanu-PF's final act of resistance has been to appoint former communications minister Jonathan Moyo - still Zanu-PF's ranking spin doctor - as its Jomic representative.

SADC's Zambian nominee, appointed under President Rupiah Banda, is awaiting approval by incoming President Michael Sata before his formal inclusion in SADC's Jomic team.

By Staff reporter and agencies