Things really are getting better, insisted Morgan Tsvangirai at a conference in Johannesburg last week. I heard the Zimbabwe prime minister tell how the coalition government is holding together, the economy is picking up and he even has a good, strong working relationship with President Robert Mugabe.

Two days later I flew in to Heathrow airport, picked up the London Evening Standard and read an interview with the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, about the perils of coalition government with David Cameron. "We have a good, strong working relationship," Clegg said.

Tsvangirai upbeat about working with Mugabe Link to this audio

Tsvangirai has been beaten by police, survived an attempt to throw him out of a 10th-floor window and had an election stolen from his grasp.

His Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says that more than 200 of its supporters were killed in political violence two years ago.

Yet Tsvangirai speaks of Mugabe and power sharing in rather warmer terms than the British deputy prime minister can muster for Cameron or his own unity government.

Clegg was asked by the Standard if he and his wife have had dinner with the Camerons. His one-word answer was: "No." Tsvangirai, meanwhile, is rumoured to get on quite well with the 86-year-old Mugabe at their weekly meetings. He told last week's conference: "The hostility between President Mugabe and me is legendary. No one expected that we could talk to each other as human beings. That has meant daily compromise and conciliation."

Clegg sounded less than effusive about his party's marriage of convenience, admitting that "this plainly ain't easy".

"We are at the point where all the achievements of this government and the measures it is taking are obliterated by the fears of cuts," he said.

While Britain cuts, cuts, cuts, Tsvangirai preached an upbeat message of build, build, build. He spoke of a new 1,200km road, the rehabilitation of railways, the construction of power plants and the relaunch of Victoria Falls as a major tourist attraction.

While acknowledging that the MDC and Zanu-PF do not share a common vision, the prime minister described Mugabe in possibly his warmest terms yet, saying he could still rescue his legacy as founding father of the nation. "I think Robert Mugabe genuinely believes that he has left Zimbabweans talking. Perhaps not talking and agreeing, but talking across the political divide, and that he's committed to a peaceful Zimbabwe."

Asked why the world should believe that fresh elections next year will not result in another bloodbath, Tsvangirai replied that the progress of the past 18 months should be evidence enough.

That is unlikely to convince the 83 members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise who were recently detained overnight after protesting at the violent actions of Zanu-PF youth, or the artist Owen Maseko, who is locked in a long court battle over a politically sensitive exhibition that got him arrested and the works banned, or the white farmers who are still losing their properties, the activists still facing physical intimidation or the millions of people still living below the breadline.

Tsvangirai is walking a perilous tightrope. Human-rights organisations, local media and some of the MDC's own members are not so sure the 18-month-old inclusive government has been such a success. Mugabe, they say, still has the whip hand.

A revealing exchange took place at last week's conference, organised by the Economist magazine. Trevor Ncube, the owner of newspapers including South Africa's Mail & Guardian and Zimbabwe's newly launched NewsDay, said he received an average of three emails a week from exiled Zimbabweans saying they were going home, or at least thinking about it.

But there are still around 2 million Zimbabweans in South Africa including, by his estimate, 75% of the waiters working in the country's restaurants. "A lot don't have confidence that what has been started right now is sustainable," he said. "Not many people are driven by patriotism alone, ladies and gentlemen, let's not fool ourselves.

"They want to know how are my family going to benefit, how is my business going to benefit. The people who left and joined the diaspora have a low threshold for pain. Government has to create political stability that guarantees security for people to go back home."

Tsvangirai, who had already dismissed one journalist as "sounding like an MDC activist", called on the media to attract the diaspora back. "Trevor, in the media, if you continue to highlight that there are people being butchered and battered and it's all negative stories, to what extent is the media also contributing in creating an impression that the situation is unsustainable, and they will wake up one day with a collapsed government and chaos and anarchy? You guys in the media also have a responsibility in creating that environment."

Ncube responded: "It is the duty and the responsibility of the media to report what is taking place. If people are being butchered, that must be reported. I think sunshine journalism and protective journalism is not going to get us anywhere. We need a journalism that's resilient. It's a journalism that tells it as it is, it's a journalism that puts a mirror every day in the face of the country and says this is what Zimbabwe looks like, what aspects of that don't you want to be changed."

Tsvangirai, locked in a game of verbal tennis that didn't entirely prime ministerial, lobbed back: "I have no problem with that, provided there is a balance between truth and propaganda … What you are projecting is not the fact there is a coalition government, what you are projecting is the inclusive government is not working, it's going to collapse, that nothing is happening.

"It's not even about your [media] house, it's just the question of the media projecting the truth. I'm not here to suppress anyone's opinions about what they should write. I'm just saying that sometimes you miss the focus of the challenges the country is facing and how to take it forward."

Tsvangirai's great dilemma, like that of any opposition party which joins a big tent, is that with every passing month in government, he is increasingly obliged to accept responsibility for its actions. He is at risk of surrendering the function of a sceptical opposition to civil society and the press. Should he become president, his response to journalists who do not toe the line will be an acid test for the country's future.

By The Guardian UK

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