As we saw in South Africa in the mid- to late Eighties, oppressive regimes become more violent as their grip on power and moral standing become more tenuous. So it is in Zimbabwe, where the weekend’s brutal repression of a MDC prayer meeting has revealed how desperate the ruling Zanu-PF and its security forces have become.

With images of a literally crippled opposition leadership lying in hospital; with a young activist dead; with the rule of law now wilfully ignored, it may be hard to see, but the end is nigh.

There are signs that Zimbabwe may be moving towards endgame. The attacks on MDC leaders have produced a wave of world revulsion, though sadly not from African states. This week’s petition by activists across Southern Africa is a hopeful sign of peoples’ unity to face down this awful blot on human rights.

If our leaders do not do the right thing, then we, the people, must.

This week’s bomb attack on a Harare police barracks underscores the growing risk of violent internal conflict. Robert Mugabe himself has admitted that the ruling Zanu-PF is in disarray. While his familiar bombast and rhetoric may not reveal it, the octogenarian leader is yesterday’s man. He is facing internal rebellion on top of international opprobrium.

Amid economic collapse, the Zimbabwean military is showing signs of restiveness over pay. Zimbabwe’s neighbour, Zambia, has called for more than mere sanctions to avert outright disaster. Coinciding with a visit to Harare by Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, it is rumoured that ­Tanzania, Lesotho and Namibia have been charged with finding a bolthole for Mugabe, to encourage him to relinquish power.

As unpalatable as it may sound, there is no small gain to be had if Mugabe is provided with a bolt-hole and a healthy pension so that he steps down. And, as we report today, Mugabe’s hopes of avoiding a presidential election until 2010 have been dashed by a ruling party plan, backed by South Africa, to stage both presidential and parliamentary polls in March 2008.

Increasingly, the debate about Zimbabwe must begin to shift to how it can be rebuilt, not how to fiddle with the status quo.

Sadly, after a portentous week, South Africa has said again that it will not engage in "rooftop diplomacy" and that it believes the solution lies in dialogue. Dialogue is only one tactic if the endgame is to result in a healthier Zimbabwe.

While the world looks to South Africa for moral and political leadership in assisting Zimbabwe, the government has played the blind man for five years now. At the ANC’s Stellenbosch conference in 2002, Thabo Mbeki defiantly described Mugabe as South Africa’s "ally", while Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma expressed support for his government as an example of Africa’s drive for autonomy. Underlying such statements is misplaced racial and ideological sympathy for a former African nationalist liberation icon, combined with a terror of falling out of step with a region and a continent that has indulged Mugabe’s enormities.

Mugabe is an evil man, but he is no fool. His constant self-projection as an anti-imperialist champion righting colonial wrongs — particularly on the land front — and of the MDC as a British puppet, have served as a highly effective smokescreen. It has persuaded the South African government to hold its collective tongue throughout his mounting outrages against the Zimbabwean Constitution, judiciary, media and opposition. It has misled the South Africans into trying to shield Mugabe from economic and political sanctions imposed by a scandalised world community. It has largely stood by during the meltdown of Zimbabwe’s economy.

In response to witness accounts and photographs of the brutal beatings of Tsvangirai and others (among them two women), a South African government statement referred to the "alleged" assault and called for all sides to observe constitutional norms — as if the MDC leaders asked for it by daring to stage a prayer meeting. A prayer meeting, nogal.

The government’s mantra against "rooftop diplomacy" is nonsense; it does not pull its punches on the Middle East and other world crises. Together with the continent’s leaders, it must speak, loudly and clearly, against violations of the UN charter on human rights and on the various rights protocols of the African Union.

The second requirement is intensified pressure, including economic pressure, on the Zimbabwean regime to respect democratic norms — which critically includes enforceable guarantees of free, fair and transparent elections next year.

Here South Africa must start exerting its muscle both in the counsels of the Southern African Development Community (which this week refused to comment on the MDC assaults) and the AU, rather than merely following the lead, or lack of lead, provided by others. AU members further to the north, such as Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, have historically been less beguiled by Mugabe’s liberation rhetoric and more open to the idea of intervention in his country’s troubled affairs, but they take their lead from South Africa and so have been less forthright than they might have been.

But perhaps the key intervention may involve the unpalatable idea not just of a safe haven for Mugabe but a negotiated settlement that offers immunity to all elements in the Zimbabwean state whose hands have been sullied by human rights abuse. Many other powerful figures, including a key contender for Mugabe’s crown, Emmerson Mnangagwa, have a vital interest in resisting real change. It may be that Zimbabwe can only be saved by the kind of trade-off for relinquishing power that was offered to the apartheid regime, and to military dictators in such countries as Chile and Argentina.

Somalia, perhaps? Or even Equitorial Guinea, spring to mind as bolt-holes.