How Mugabe holds on

"There is no way we can have a real struggle with... leaders who are scared of being beaten up or arrested for breaching the security laws," said veteran commentator Bill Saidi.

The country's main union organisation, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), had to scrap a series of mass anti-government rallies on Wednesday after its organisers were arrested for planning unauthorised protests.

First test for the new opposition

The day of action had been billed as the first test of the opposition's since a split in the ranks of its main political grouping, the Movement for Democratic Change, in November 2005.

The cancellation of the protests, which failed to attract the thousands that organisers had predicted, underlined the scale of the task for opponents of the 82-year-old Mugabe, who has been in power since Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980.

Even before the arrests of the masterminds of the protests in Harare and the second city Bulawayo, the day of action had been severely undermined by the decision of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai not to take to the streets.

While an MDC splinter group did endorse Wednesday's protests, Tsvangirai's camp merely voiced sympathy with the marchers' aims and said it was working on its own independent strategy.

"You don't win a revolution with isolated efforts"

"The events of yesterday are a lesson that you don't win a revolution with isolated efforts," political analyst Takavafira Zhou told AFP.

"There is need for brave leadership and serious concerted efforts by all political and civic groups. Otherwise, we will continue to have isolated efforts and the danger is the general populace will lose hope and interest in the resistance movement."

Demonstrations by the ZCTU, formerly headed by Tsvangirai, threatened to bring Zimbabwe to its knees in the late 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets.

But the heyday of the opposition has long since passed and divisions in the MDC, sparked by Tsvangirai's decision not to contest Senate elections, have played into the hands of Mugabe, who is presiding over inflation at nearly 1 000 percent and unemployment of around 80 percent.

Failure blamed on internal divisions

Saidi blamed the failure of the marches on "spineless" leadership who were too focused on internal divisions.

"What we need are leaders who are really committed to change and are ready to take risks, people who are ready even to die," he said.

The few demonstrators who managed to make it to the ZCTU's headquarters in downtown Harare, which was supposed to be the main focus point of the day of action, found themselves dispersed by baton-wielding riot police.

Demonstrations in previous years have been broken up with teargas, with Mugabe summoning the army to provide backup to the police.

A new public order act, which only allows for demonstrations if they have received prior approval, has been strictly enforced since 2002.

Marchers should "rethink tactics"

Jenni Williams, leader of the Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) pressure group, said the opposition had to rethink its tactics and criticised the ZCTU for revealing its hand too early.

"You don't have to announce beforehand like they did," said Williams.

Analyst Zhou said organisers of future protests should consider starting in the suburbs rather than in city centres, where the chances of running up against the authorities are higher.

"The major weakness is that when people organise their protests, they are usually in the city centre, where there is a heavy presence of police," he said.

The opposition has traditionally been stronger in urban areas but support for Mugabe has continued to hold up in the countryside despite the steep economic decline of the last seven years.

Williams said the opposition needed to look beyond the cities.

"We don't think that they (the rural people) are being mobilised sufficiently and empowered with information on their rights and on non-violent protests," she said.