The solidarity among African leaders that has sustained president Robert Mugabe's brutal regime in Zimbabwe may be on the verge of disintegrating.

Mugabe's decision to shut down Zimbabwe's only independent newspaper, The Daily News , could prove to be crucial in weakening the support that he still enjoys in the region.

Three years ago, a truck packed with explosives careened into the building housing the newspaper's office. Its printing press was destroyed. With the assistance of foreign donors, The Daily News acquired a new press and managed to keep publishing a first-rate newspaper.

Despite government attempts since then to shut the paper down - by arresting and even torturing some of its staff, as well as tampering with its circulation and newsprint supply - The Daily News has adhered to its slogan of 'telling it like it is'.

As Zimbabwe plunged into economic chaos and Mugabe ( photo ) stepped up his repression, circulation, once around 100,000 a day, fell by roughly a third.

Last month, Mugabe's riot police, armed with AK-47 rifles, raided the paper, halting production and looting much of its equipment-though not the new printing press, which was too big to carry away.

Persistent incidents

The purported reason for closing The Daily News is that the paper has refused to register under the bizarrely named Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) of 2002 on the grounds that it violates Zimbabwe's constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.

Under the AIPPA, reporters are required to file their home addresses with the government; presumably this is what the word 'privacy' in the title of the Act means.

Reporters may face criminal prosecution for publishing inaccurate information; apparently, this is the basis for the reference to 'access to information'.

At least a dozen journalists have been arrested under AIPPA, including the only foreign correspondent permanently based in the country, Andrew Meldrum of the British newspaper The Guardian , who was subsequently deported.

The Mugabe regime has committed outrage after outrage. Its catalogue of crimes includes:

- stealing the 2002 elections that enabled Mugabe to hold on to power;

- torturing and murdering supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change;

- transformation of a fertile, prosperous country once considered Africa's breadbasket into a place where half the population barely survives on foreign food handouts; and,

- as exemplified by its attacks on The Daily News , the suppression of critical voices.

Past solidarity

Yet Zimbabwe's neighbours, particularly those in southern Africa, have defended Mugabe.

In late August, the heads of state of 13 members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), including Mugabe and President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the leading regional power, met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to consider the challenges before them.

Among the 54 paragraphs of the Summit Final Communiqu, two dealt with Zimbabwe. One proclaimed "solidarity with Zimbabwe... to encourage and sustain the positive developments that are taking place".

The other condemned "the Commonwealth, the European Union (EU), and the United States of America (US) sanctions as they hurt not only ordinary Zimbabweans but also have profound social and economic implications on the region as a whole".

The suggestion that international sanctions are a cause of Zimbabwe's economic woes is ludicrous, as the measures imposed have nothing to do with trade. Indeed, it is the governments cited in the communiqu that are donating the food that keeps Zimbabweans alive.

The targeted sanctions address such matters as the foreign bank accounts of Mugabe and his associates and their right to travel to Europe and the US on holidays and shopping trips.

Test of commitment

Yet the closure of The Daily News seems to have prompted the first signs that things may be changing.

Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo responded to the closure by announcing that Mugabe would not be invited to the December meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting scheduled to take place in his capital, Abuja.

Mbeki reacted to Obsanjo's announcement with what South Africa's business weekly, The Financial Mail , described as "surprise and consternation".

Much depends on whether Africa follows the path now being charted by Obasanjo or whether the continent's leaders stick to the line of SADC and Mbeki.

It is not only the future of Zimbabwe that is at stake. Also at issue is whether the rest of the world takes seriously the commitments to democracy and good governance in the New Economic Partnership for Africa Development (NEPAD) and the Constitutive Act for the new African Union.

Mbeki and Obasanjo took the lead in making these commitments. Zimbabwe tests whether they will deliver.

ARYEH NEIER, president of the Open Society Institute and a founder of Human Rights Watch, is the author most recently of 'Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights'.