Skrywer: Dan Roodt

And those are just the attacks they have endured from their own members.

Even more than the Zimbabwean government’s frequently brutal abductions and assaults on members of the M.D.C., the internecine brawls are evidence that all is not well inside Zimbabwe’s political opposition, the force on which the West has pinned its hopes for democratic change.

As President Robert G. Mugabe’s 27-year rule enters what many analysts call a terminal phase, the selfproclaimed democratic opposition is near its nadir.

The Movement for Democratic Change is split into two bitterly opposed factions, at war over ideology, power and prestige. Each has called the other a tool of Mr. Mugabe’s spy service, the Central Intelligence Organization, and each has accused the other of betraying the party’s democratic ideals.

Now, with a crucial national election looming, the question is whether they can reform their tactics and patch up their differences long enough to mount a serious challenge to Mr. Mugabe — and if they do, whether ordinary people will care.

Some Zimbabweans are skeptical. “They don’t seriously challenge the regime,” said Mike Davies, who leads a civic group, the Combined Harare Residents Association. “You ask young people here what they want, and their No. 1 answer is ‘I want to get the hell out of Zimbabwe.’ They don’t buy into the M.D.C.”

Another expert, a political analyst in Harare, the capital, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of expulsion by the government, was dismissive. “As a political party,” he said, “they haven’t cut the mustard.”

An unlikely amalgam of whites and blacks, trade unionists and intellectuals, the Movement for Democratic Change nearly won control of Parliament in 2000, just a year after its founding, and nearly beat Mr. Mugabe in the 2002 presidential contest.

But by the end of 2006, repeated miscalculations and sometimes violent infighting had divided the party into two feuding camps, both almost irrelevant.

They might still be, had Mr. Mugabe’s riot police not severely beaten dozens of opposition members during a protest on March 11, including Morgan Tsvangirai, the popular figure who now heads the party’s largest faction.

Although Mr. Tsvangirai and his loyalists presided over the party’s decline — and not a little of the violence — his photogenic head wound and swollen eye instantly elevated the party’s profile in the world press, turning him into a symbol of democratic change in Zimbabwe.

For the M.D.C., Mr. Tsvangirai’s drubbing could be a godsend. Though the economy is in ruins, millions of citizens have fled the country and most of those who remain resent Mr. Mugabe, the president, now 83, who has declared his intention to seek a new term in elections next March.

Zimbabwe’s neighbors, belatedly alarmed at the unraveling next door, have appointed President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa to mediate guarantees of a free and fair election.

Most political analysts say Mr. Mugabe has already begun his campaign, in his own way. In February his agents began a wave of kidnappings and beatings of hundreds of Movement for Democratic Change leaders — a crusade, critics say, to destroy the opposition’s will to contest another election.

Faced with that crusade, the two M.D.C. factions have declared a temporary truce and pledged to wage a single campaign against Mr. Mugabe. But with 11 months left before the vote, they have yet to choose a presidential candidate or a parliamentary slate, much less a campaign plan.

Brian Raftopoulos, a Zimbabwean political scientist at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, says the clock is ticking. “They have to agree at the very minimum on a common election strategy and a common nominee for president,” he said. “I think they’ve got very little time to do that.”

In interviews, Mr. Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube, the general secretary of the opposing M.D.C. faction, said they were in serious talks to put aside their rivalry and refocus their energies on defeating Mr. Mugabe.

That will be a tall order, for as Mr. Ncube says, the two sides split over bedrock issues about how a democratic opposition should function.

Divisions began to fester early this decade, after Mr. Tsvangirai was lured into a government sting operation that videotaped him talking of Mr. Mugabe’s “elimination” and relishing the prospect of his own party’s ascension to power. Mr. Tsvangirai’s subsequent arrest and trial on treason charges becalmed the M.D.C. for more than a year, crippled his control of party affairs and raised questions about his competence.

Since he was acquitted in 2004, the party’s internal feuds have blossomed publicly. While political analysts say the party fell apart for many reasons, violence seems to have been the trigger.

In mid-2004, vigilantes loyal to Mr. Tsvangirai began attacking members who were mostly loyal to Mr. Ncube, climaxing in a September raid on the party’s Harare headquarters in which the security director was nearly thrown to his death.

An internal party inquiry later established that aides to Mr. Tsvangirai had tolerated, if not endorsed, the violence. One of them, Isaac Matongo, later became the chairman of Mr. Tsvangirai’s wing of the party. Mr. Matongo died in his sleep in Harare last Wednesday.

Divisive as the violence was, it was a debate over the rule of law that set off the party’s final breakup in November 2005. As Senate elections approached, Mr. Ncube’s supporters argued that the M.D.C. should field a slate of candidates; Mr. Tsvangirai’s argued for a boycott.

When party leaders voted on the issue, Mr. Ncube’s side narrowly won, but Mr. Tsvangirai declared that as president of the party he was not bound by the majority’s decision.

In the ensuing divorce, each side accused the other of treason, and each said the other had been infiltrated by Mr. Mugabe’s spies, a charge that was probably true for both. But in the 18 months since then, the two factions’ differences have persisted — as has the violence, albeit sporadically.

Unquestionably, the scattered violence within the party pales next to the systematic beatings and torture that human rights advocates say have become the Mugabe government’s policy.

According to a new Human Rights Watch report, “hundreds of opposition members and supporters, and civil society activists have been arrested, abducted or tortured, and scores have gone into hiding” since the March 11 rally.

Mr. Tsvangirai and Mr. Ncube have publicly deplored the violence within the opposition’s ranks. Mr. Tsvangirai said the split in the opposition was “sad and tragic,” but added that the “petty squabbles” between the factions were now “water under the bridge.”

But in a party founded on the nonviolent principles of Gandhi and King, the image of disarray and, to some critics, hypocrisy, has taken its toll in support from civic groups and the press.

Roy Bennett, a Zimbabwean in exile who is the treasurer of Mr. Tsvangirai’s wing of the party, says those who bemoan the state of the Movement for Democratic Change are missing the point.

“Is the opposition the problem in Zimbabwe?” asked Mr. Bennett, who now lives in South Africa. “The problem is Robert Mugabe and ZANUPF” — Mr. Mugabe’s party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

Mr. Ncube says he agrees, which is why the two sides are trying to present a common front in the 2008 elections. But he and others find a disturbing precedent in Zimbabwe’s original liberation movement, the one that in the 1970s defeated the government of the white autocrat Ian Smith in what was then Rhodesia.

That movement, too, was split — between Mr. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union and the rival Zimbabwe African People’s Union, or ZAPU. They put aside their differences until after liberation was a reality.

The result was an internecine war. It claimed tens of thousands of lives, perpetuated Zimbabwe’s long history of political violence and produced the nation’s current autocracy