Behind the gates of this “luxury villa” in Harare lives another member of the World’s Worst Dictator club — or so says our special Zimbabwe correspondent, who wasn’t mad enough to brave the snakes, dogs and guns and knock on the door to say g’day.

The villa on Gun Hill is said to be home to Colonel Haile Mariam Mengistu, who terrorised Ethiopia for 14 years from 1977, first as head of the dreaded Derg, the Communist military junta, and then as the country’s president.

In 2006, Mengistu was convicted of genocide by an Ethiopian court, for ordering the killing of up to 500,000 people in the co-called Red Terror, but attempts to extradite him to his home country have so far been unsuccessful.

Mengistu high-tailed it to Mugabeland in 1991 with help from the US — who offered to pay for his upkeep — and he’s been there ever since, courtesy of the Zimbabwean taxpayer and fellow dictator Robert Mugabe.

Last year, Mengistu published the first volume of his memoirs, in which he wrote: “We have been likened to Mussolini and Hitler … I have to set the record straight.

“I am here as a guest of the Zimbabwe people,” Mengistu told the press at the time, “I am not a personal guest of Mugabe. And veterans of the liberation struggle are well aware of this fact.”

Whether the exiled dictator still lives in his swish pad on Gun Hill is debatable. Some suggest he’s decamped to a house on Lake Kariba, a popular fishing and house-boating area. And our man Tony Wheeler (of Lonely Planet fame) was unable to get past guards assuring him, “Nobody lives here … they’re all state-owned properties.”

But Wheeler was able to pass on the surprising news that life in Zimbabwe — “that old centre of despotism, political violence and hyper-inflation” — seems to be looking up, thanks to power sharing with the opposition and the decision to dump Zimbabwe’s dollar (which bowed out with a $Z100 trillion note).

“Suddenly the shelves refilled, the pumps dispensed petrol again, beer flowed, hotels reopened and the economy, after years of decline, began to move forward.

“And the tourists are coming back”, says Wheeler, “Not in big numbers as of yet, but certainly far more of them than in recent years. They’ll be pleasantly surprised, Zimbabwe has always looked cleaner, tidier and more organised than many African countries and from the moment you step out of Harare International Airport there’s a feeling of ‘crisis, what crisis?’ That impression continues as you drive into town. Where are the potholed, disintegrating roads? Where are the rusting, tied-together-with-wire cars and buses? The traffic lights (mostly) work and cars stop at them. The shops are crowded, the shelves are full. It simply doesn’t look that bad.”

There’s even newspapers on the street, with criticism of the country’s appalling ruler. “They’re all firmly pro or anti-Mugabe,” says Wheeler, “There’s no middle of the road.”

Personally, I won’t be rushing there to check it out for myself. I’d still like to see Mugabe kicked out before I pay my visit. If there’s any justice in the world, a trial in The Hague awaits him.