THE ZIMBABWEAN government said yesterday that weapons carried by China's so-called "ship of shame", the An Yue Jiang, had arrived in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, despite an international campaign to prevent the 77 tonnes of arms reaching President Robert Mugabe's regime.

The arms, including three million AK‑47 bullets, more than 3000 mortar shells and launchers and some 1500 rocket-propelled grenades, came as Mugabe's police, armed forces and militias cracked down harder on political opponents ahead of a presidential run-off election.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change - whose supporters say won the March 29 presidential election outright - yesterday cancelled, yet again, his return to Zimbabwe, citing fears that he might be assassinated. Tsvangirai has been out of Zimbabwe for more than a month, mainly in South Africa. Meanwhile at home, at least 40 of his supporters have been killed by Mugabe's forces, thousands have been injured and hundreds tortured. Tsvangirai's absence is causing more and more anger among his support base.

Five weeks ago, dockers in the South African port of Durban refused to unload the An Yue Jiang's six container-loads of arms for Mugabe. The Chinese ship eventually left without unloading, after a coalition of South African and international human-rights organisations, along with church groups, widely publicised the issue.

Since then, the An Yue Jiang's location and destination have been a mystery. But as Mugabe's government confirmed that the weapons had been received, South Africa's Business Day newspaper and the Mozambican online newspaper Canal de Moçambique, yesterday published details of how the vessel got the weapons to Mugabe.

The ship was secretly refuelled offshore by the South African navy vessel SAS Drakensberg. The An Yue Jiang then rounded the Cape of Good Hope from the Indian Ocean into the Atlantic and headed for the Congo-Brazzaville port of Ponta Negra.

According to the South African and Mozambican newspapers, and subsequently confirmed by Mugabe's deputy information minister Bright Matonga, the arms were flown from Ponta Negra to Harare in giant transport aircraft belonging to Avient Aviation, a UK- registered freight charter airline operating out of Zimbabwe.

The newspapers reported that three weeks ago, two senior Zimbabwean ministers and two top army officers flew to Angola, where the An Yue Jiang stopped en route to Ponta Negra, to negotiate the subsequent offloading of the weapons.

The assistance of the Angolan government, which is close to Mugabe, comes in spite of an appeal by Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa, current chairman of the 14-member Southern African Development Community. Mwanawasa last month urged member states to bar the delivery of the arms to Zimbabwe, saying they would deepen the country's crisis.

South African Transport and Allied Workers' Union general secretary Randall Howard, whose docker members refused to unload the An Yue Jiang, said Southern African trade unions and civil society were in despair at the news that the arms had reached Mugabe.

"It shows a serious lack of respect for international solidarity by Angola and Congo-Brazzaville and it is an injustice to the people of Zimbabwe," said Howard.

"Both the Chinese government and Cosco the state-owned shipping company that sent the An Yue Jiang to Africa have regrettably demonstrated that profiteering remains the overriding consideration over human solidarity and saving lives."

Alarming reports are reaching South Africa about the scale of the crackdown in Zimbabwe on opponents of Mugabe.

Six retired South African generals, headed by General Gilbert Lebeko Romano, returned from a fact-finding mission last week to Zimbabwe, saying they had uncovered "shocking" levels of state-sponsored terrorism.

"What we have heard and seen is shocking," said the six generals in a statement. "We have heard horrific stories of extreme brutality and seen the victims. We have seen people with scars, cuts, gashes, bruises, lacerations and broken limbs, and bodies of those killed. It's a horrifying picture."

The handful of South African correspondents in Zimbabwe say the government's campaign of terror is widespread but largely unreported. Restrictions on movements, imposed by the government and reinforced by a lack of fuel, mean that country areas cannot be reached, and it is there that the government violence is most intense. Many who voted for Tsvangirai in March will be afraid to do so again in June.

Zimbabwe's economy is in a prolonged free-fall. Unemployment exceeds 80%. The world's worst rate of inflation now surpasses 165,000%. A Zim$500 million note went into circulation last week, and is worth less than a pound.

Meanwhile, the violence spilled over into South Africa. Last week, five townships in Johannesburg erupted as local residents attacked Zimbabwean neighbours, accusing them of stealing jobs, houses and women. Zimbabwean houses were looted and burned down. Three million Zimbabweans, a quarter of the population, have fled to South Africa as economic and human rights refugees. Three immigrants were killed, hundreds wounded and many Zimbabwean women were raped as the rampage continued this weekend.