We spent a lazy Sunday with the Babyfather’s parents, at a lovely Hampshire pub. On the way back, we popped into Blockbusters to pick up a DVD (Little Miss Sunshine) to round off a lovely weekend. The last thing I expected was bad news, but a message left by Busy while I was out of range, and picked up on our return to the house, tore a discordant hole through the evening. A rally in Zimbabwe (masquerading as a prayer meeting) had been disbanded by police. One activist had been shot dead by police. Along with roughly 110 people, the leaders of the opposition party on both sides of the recent split were arrested.

But, most upsettingly for me, Busy and Blonde’s uncle, Mike Davies, chairperson of the Combined Harare Residents’ Association, was arrested with them. Mike is also a close friend of my parents, and I phoned my mum but they had no more news than what we already knew: lawyers were being denied access, and Professor Arthur Mutambara (the leader of the side of the opposition party which split from Morgan Tsvangirai’s last year) was missing. Missing is not a good thing to be in a Zimbabwean prison.

We have trickles of news coming through today, but more annoyingly, floods of rumours too. Many of these masquerade as news, and if you type in Zimbabwe on the Google news site as I write, you will likely still see a story which says that Mike and two others he was arrested with had been transferred to the Goromonzi torture centre. This is a relic of colonial days which, along with the intelligence body the CIO which used it then and now, Mugabe retained in his government, in what would be an amusing Orwellian parody if it wasn’t so bloody awful. High profile detainees there have included Philip Chiyangwa (cousin to Mugabe, and supposed ring-leader of an espionage ring passing Zimbabwe’s secrets to the South African government), and Ray Choto and Mark Chavunduka, journalists at the Zimbabwe Standard arrested in 1999 and tortured by the army. It’s not a good place to be, but we soon hear that Mike isn’t there, but in the relative safety of Highlands police station – in the leafy Northern Suburbs most popular among the remaining middle class white Zimbabwean. Which cells in which police station matter in these circumstances – some are definitely worse than others. As my younger brother – who, in his time as a young idealist political activist in Zimbabwe, spent time in most of them, good and bad, around Harare – will tell you, some of them are notorious for bed bugs, some for lice, some for cockroaches. Catching TB is a huge risk, and the standards of cleanliness vary from one to another, although none of them are clean. And those are just the comfort issues. If they want to torture you, you’re more likely to go to certain stations or camps.

Not knowing for sure is a really hard thing to cope with, and for that more than anything I sympathise with all of Mike’s family, at home and over here. We’ve had emails through from his family back home to say they now know he is definitely at Highlands, and one from my mum to say it looks like a bail hearing is set for tonight. So at least they should get to see him. If that is, in fact, true. I’ve lost count of the times in the past I’ve had phone calls to say my mum, stepdad, or brother have been arrested back home for various supposed transgressions against the regime, but I thought we’d stopped having to worry about this sort of thing. Until contact is made, it doesn’t matter that the sensible 99% of you knows that all will be well, that the police know the world’s eyes are on them and will be too scared to perpetrate severe acts of violence, that the people arrested are savvy and resourceful, you can’t help thinking that they are suffering with the 1% of your brain too worried to be sensible.

In the meantime, Mugabe announced today his intention to stand in the next elections, meaning if he wins (and how can we believe different given recent elections) he will be 90 when the next term of office runs out, and his dictatorship will have lasted 34 years. In the meantime, the man shot dead leaves behind a widow and three children of school age. In the meantime, Morgan Tsvangirai, president of one side of the split MDC has been seen with severe swellings, and with injuries limiting his vision and preventing speech. He has apparently passed out several times. Having ascertained that Mike is at Highlands Police Station, we are left wondering where are those who were supposed to be with him at Goromonzi: Nelson Chamisa, the Member of Parliament for Kuwadzana, and Elton Mangoma the MDC deputy treasurer. Mutambara’s whereabouts are still unknown, and Lovemore Madhuku, National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) Chairman was rushed to hospital with a broken arm and other serious injuries early in the morning. A human rights lawyer trying to see his clients, at one of the police stations to which they were believed to have been taken, was assaulted, and denied access to them.

And last night, in the streets of Highfields, the high density suburb where the rally was due to take place, police continued to clash with ordinary citizens, assaulting members of the public who, in the absence of anything better, armed themselves with stones to fight off an attack by water cannons, tear gas and guns.