Facing intimidation, still they queued all day long

They had slept at polling stations. Many others were heading there before first light, and, as the sun set, they stayed to make sure their votes were cast. From dawn to dusk, when the polls closed, this appeared to be a country that was not only voting for change, but yearning for it as well.

Whatever malevolence Robert Mugabe's vote riggers may yet contrive, there was no doubting yesterday that the people of Zimbabwe were doing their best to make life as difficult as possible for the old poll fixer.

For this is a nation that has seen too many hopes dashed against the intractable mathematics of an election held under the Mugabe regime to feel confident that change would happen.

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Zimbabwe has one of the lowest life expectations in the world, women unlikely to live much beyond 34 and male expectancy averaging at 37. Out of a population of 12.3 million, around 1.8 million live with HIV. Eighty per cent are unemployed and for those lucky to have jobs, wages have not kept pace with inflation running at more than 100,000 per cent. A loaf of bread costs 7 million Zimbabwean cents. One American dollar is worth 50 million cents, a mammoth jump from the 80 cents it was worth in 1980, the year the country gained independence.

Yesterday, election monitors and opposition reported a number of grounds for anxiety. In one place, opposition party agents were barred from polling stations; at others, six stuffed ballot boxes were found before voting got under way in one district, and the longest queues in Harare were at two polling stations on the edge of a vacant plot where 8,450 people had registered as residents.

In the face of such entirely predictable shenanigans, people did the only thing they could: vote. As the sun came up in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, they were already waiting to do so. Heavy green tents threw back their entry flaps to find patient but determined queues had already formed.

At the Burnside shopping centre in what was once an affluent suburb of Bulawayo, hundreds were waiting within an hour of dawn. For those at the front there would be a few minutes in the comparative dark, ticking boxes, folding papers, posting their vote, then emerging into the light with a little finger stained pink with permanent ink.

On the pavement, groups scanned lists of polling booths; the only question was where to vote. No one needed to ask who was being voted for. For those who did, the answer might be the defector from the ruling party, Simba Makoni, or the former union stalwart Morgan Tsvangirai, but it was more a question of who was being voted against. Everyone had had enough of Comrade Bob, as Nelson Mandela condescends to call Robert Mugabe.

The same ritual was repeated across the bankrupt southern African country yesterday as an election that appeared a depressing formality only weeks ago drew one last surge of hope. From the barren fields of rural Mashonaland through the townships of Harare, those who have stayed alive and stayed behind registered their discontent.

Paul, 23, was on the last leg of a voting odyssey. Like millions of others of his countrymen, he works in South Africa but had been persuaded to go home to vote. "My boss said take 10 days if you need, but vote. At the border they don't look at your face; they just stamp your passport."

Before crossing into Beitbridge he saw a billboard on the South African side, it read: "Zimbabweans please go home. (Make a change.)"

Paul finally reached the polling station at his old school to join another long line. The feared police presence in the poorer townships was nowhere to be seen. The only fear was of the government tactic of limiting the number of polling stations in the high-density opposition strongholds. A polling agent at the school explained: "There are only 10 polling stations here for 7,000 people. We're worried there won't be time for everyone to vote."

Across the city, the elite girls' college offered a surreal vision of a Zimbabwe that was stillborn at independence. The blue gates open on to a broad avenue framed by the brilliant red of flamboyant trees. Inside is a more leisurely world. Seemingly well-off voters, black and white, exchanged polite conversation on a row of white chairs before a smiling policeman ushered them inside the school hall for their chance to make their mark. The queue here would struggle to fill a doctor's waiting room. The girls who play on the tennis courts were predominantly white; there are few of them left and fewer still of the middle-class blacks who had been told in the euphoria of liberation that this was the life that awaited them.

The life that most Zimbabweans lead is to be found in the crowded slum townships. Here emaciated women hawk vegetables to passing cars. At the main polling station a ragged-trousered line was kept at bay by a policeman with a rifle guarding a wire fence, rationing access to voters.

"The old man is lost," said Dixon, 48, who runs a butcher's shop nearby. "Change is coming. We are smelling it. If Morgan wins and then he fails, in five years' time he leaves and somebody else comes."

His conviction is incongruous in a country that had seemed inured to disappointment. Surely too many presidential polls and local elections had been rigged for real optimism. Too many slums flattened, markets looted, activists beaten, opponents murdered by a man who boasted he holds "a degree in violence" for anyone to think he would go quietly. Yesterday that man stood outside a polling booth in Harare and affected surprise when asked about potential fraud. "We don't rig elections," he said.

Despite the 84-year-old's words there was very real cause for concern at the way the vote was unfolding. The election commission has ignored the law in refusing to release electronic copies of the up-to-date voters' register but did agree to sell copies for $30,000 to third parties.

A copy of that roll obtained by The Independent on Sunday revealed serious flaws. A single snapshot of names in one area was shown to a local man who was able to identify 57 names of registered voters who were either dead or had left the country permanently. The tens of thousands of supposed loyalists in the security forces have been made to vote en masse in advance but a senior army source told the IoS that they had favoured former finance minister Makoni and not Mugabe.

The main cause for concern centred on the government's insistence that votes cast in the presidential poll would be taken to a central location for counting, opening the way for serious fraud. Under law all votes should be counted at the polling station and results posted outside.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change swears that this time it will not sit on its hands. A senior MDC Tsvangirai official said that 55,000 volunteers had been posted at polling stations all over the country, armed with cameras and mobile phones. They would monitor results station by station and announce their own result as early as this afternoon from a command base in Johannesburg.

South-east of Bulawayo lies a symptom of the country's staggering economic ruin. It should be boom time at How's gold mine. The government buys all the gold at How at state-regulated prices and in worthless Zimbabwean dollars. The result has been to bankrupt a gold mine. A band of hitch-hikers waits by the gate. They have all voted for Tsvangirai and repeat the mantra that this time "change is coming".

Then one of them leans forward and asks if anyone wants to buy gold. A mine that should be worth billions of any dollars has been reduced to a source of a handful of black market nuggets, sold by men who would rather be mining.

This is why, in the face of 30 years of unfulfilled promises, they were still queuing to vote as the sun set.

What happens next?

Polls for those on the country's disputed register of 5.9 million voters closed at 7pm local time last night, at 9,000 polling stations.

The vote is not just for President, but for 210 legislators, 60 senators and 1,600 local councillors.

Votes are counted straight away at polling stations around the country, and preliminary results are expected to be announced on Monday.

The winning candidate must receive more than 50 per cent of the vote, otherwise a second round between the two leading candidates must be held within 21 days.