MUCH has changed in Zimbabwe in the seven months since Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in as prime minister. The fuel queues are gone. Once-empty shop shelves are stocked with goods. You can buy Marmite Cheese Spread in Spar.
But prices are still high. Teachers went back to work on Monday after a three-week strike over pay: their paypackets, worth £95, may be 150 times larger than last year's but the sum barely covers the bill from the state TelOne phone company, let alon
e anything else.
Tariffs are being set high to recoup losses of the last decade. Discontent is rising. If anyone complains, Mr Tsvangirai gets the blame.
President Robert Mugabe is cynically using continued EU and US sanctions on his ZANU-PF elite to foster dissatisfaction with the former opposition leader.
Official media, still controlled by the presidential spokesman, has long maintained that "illegal western sanctions" caused food and drug shortages, hyperinflation and hospital shut-downs. The message is repeated on every news bulletin, with remarkable success.
Ask almost any Zimbabwean, from manicurist to university lecturer, how to repair the economy and he or she will reply: "We need sanctions lifted."
As Zimbabweans feel the pinch, they're being told that Mr Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has "failed" to get sanctions lifted.
The MDC is being shoehorned into a defensive position. Which is exactly where ZANU-PF wants it. Mr Mugabe, who at 85 shows no signs of slowing down, is enjoying himself.
He welcomed an EU delegation to Harare with open arms this month (though he later lectured them on Zimbabwean history). Delegates said he was at ease and relaxed.
His ministers emulate his style. Wildlife operators in the southern Masvingo area speak of a "friendly" phase of land reform that's just been launched, this time without the messy militias. The ranchers were summoned to a meeting with ZANU-PF officials and informed they had "new partners" who'd been given 25-year leases on their properties.
"The ministers were all almost jovial," said a businessman. "They know exactly what they are doing and will not be deterred."
No matter that the properties are protected by international investment treaties: with his protégé, the Democratic Republic of Congo president Joseph Kabila, at the helm of the regional Southern African Development Community, Mr Mugabe can do just as he likes.
Should anyone back home challenge him, state radio reminds Zimbabweans once an hour that the president is commander-in-chief of the defence forces. In the last fortnight, army commanders have made threats against foreign-based radio stations and NGOs.
Determined not to suffer another election loss, Mr Mugabe's party is "restructuring". It's a bloody process: two women were badly injured at the weekend when rival factions of the ZANU-PF women's league threw chairs at each other in Harare.
Ominously, former information minister Jonathan Moyo is back on the scene. The brains behind internationally condemned press laws, Professor Moyo was dismissed from ZANU-PF in 2005 after plotting against Joyce Mujuru, Mr Mugabe's choice of vice-president.
After penning vitriolic anti-MDC pieces, his application to rejoin the party should succeed. ZANU-PF secretary for administration, Didymus Mutasa calls him an "important asset".
The MDC's victories are being overturned. Though a government committee ruled in July the banned Daily News could apply for an operating licence, the newspaper is still not on the streets: Mr Mugabe is stalling the appointments of media commissioners who will issue the licences. Meanwhile, the ZANU-PF-controlled Zimpapers group is bringing out new titles.
With reports of intimidation of MDC supporters in rural areas, Mr Tsvangirai is frustrated. "We in the MDC have shown respect, conciliation and understanding to ZANU-PF and what have we got in return? Nothing," he told his supporters this month.
He's asked them to decide whether he should stay in the coalition. Few believe he will pull out. A snap election would be held under the current Lancaster House constitution, which gives Mr Mugabe unfettered powers.
A commentator recently likened the power-sharing government to an attempt to keep a lion pride co-existing with a family of zebras during a drought.
As ordinary Zimbabweans try to stretch their 'Obamas' – local slang for US dollars – they're wondering when the lions will pounce.
• Jane Fields has reported from Zimbabwe for The Scotsman since 2001.
