A Commonwealth team is to travel to Zimbabwe as early as next week on a reconnaissance mission aimed at establishing the number of monitors that would be needed.

Following the collapse of talks in London it has been left to South Africa to take the diplomatic initiative to encourage Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, to end political violence which could spark instability, economic collapse and a flood of refugees across the region.

The Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, emerged empty-handed after eight hours of talks with three Zimbabwean cabinet ministers. The collapse appeared to end all dialogue at ministerial level between Britain and Zimbabwe, leaving President Robert Mugabe a free hand in the run-up to the promised elections, due next month.

This is the watering hole of Rhodesia's old political elite - who happen to remain Zimbabwe's economic elite too - a patriarchal bolthole that has done all it can to stay frozen in time, steeped in nostalgia.

Mark Impey, the auctioneer, walks from bail to bail with sellers in tow and buyers keeping pace opposite. Amid his fluent, lyrical patter you can make out the prices he is quoting for each bail. Meanwhile the buyers keep one eye on the tobacco leaves, rubbing them between their fingers and then thrashing them against the rest of the bail. The best leaves are orange and have the feel of soft leather.

The killings mark a sharp escalation in political violence over the last few days as members of Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party switched the emphasis of their campaign of political intimidation away from white farmers to individual supporters of the opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), ahead of next month's elections.

His eyes do not follow you around but are fixed in a glare which is too stern to be avuncular but not piercing enough to be sinister. Omnipresent and omniscient - there is no escaping the father of the nation.

Gangs of Zanu-PF supporters roamed the countryside burning houses, abducting workers and beating and burning anyone suspected of supporting the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.

In a weekend of mixed signals, a handful of farm occupations were overshadowed by deals between self-styled war veterans and farmers that allowed squatters to stay on land in return for peace and the promise that farmers would not harbour activists for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

By the time he was ready for combat the struggle was over. He returned to a black president, Robert Mugabe, a new country, Zimbabwe, and a new kind of oppression.

"It wasn't completely unexpected," he says. "They had warned us that we might be targeted and so we had been preparing ourselves for a couple of weeks. But while we thought we might have to leave we never thought something like this would happen.

The story of slavery and colonialism is similarly relegated to, at best, an unfortunate episode from less enlightened times, and at worst a civilising force, rather than the theft of land and labour that impoverished an entire continent and enriched a few individuals. And so the recent events in Zimbabwe are depicted as the plight of white farmers at the hands of black mobs, rather than the cynical attempt to undermine democracy by an embattled president desperate to retain power.

His friends describe him as retiring but he knew how to hold a crowd.

They had come in a convoy of 14 cars and a tractor trailer, many of them carrying hunting weapons.

As further violence engulfed the nation yesterday, on the 20th anniversary of its independence, a white farmer was killed by supporters of Mr Mugabe, a black foreman was reported to have been killed, another farmer was beaten and abducted and scores of civilians were intimidated by government agents.

Joel Klein takes no prisoners. The head of the US government's monopoly-busting anti-trust division fights hard and fights to win. But he is no bully either - he fights clean and he likes to pick on opponents who are bigger than him. And as Bill Gates is now discovering to his chagrin, he has a nasty habit of winning.