All of Zimbabwe’s radio stations are state run, and at some point, they’ll start announcing some results for yesterday’s election. So I’ve been listening to Power FM, what I find to be the most tolerable station, all night, and it’s a wonder I’m still sane. There’s nothing announced yet, and people are getting increasingly anxious. Our SMS subscribers are texting us regularly – where are the results? Why the delays? Power FM must be getting similar inquiries, as every now and again the DJ mentions that yes, the results will come out eventually, but they haven’t yet. Meanwhile, the hourly news broadcast has been updated from saying that results will start to be announced “early today” to “starting today.”

But the MDC isn’t waiting. Ballot papers were counted at polling stations, and many of these have finished. Based on these preliminary results, the MDC is claiming victory.

The few results we’ve had emailed in from polling stations support this.

Chiredzi

Chiredzi Gvt A Primary Sch. Polling Station
Presidential: MDC 99 / ZPF31 / SM25
House of Assembly: MDC83 / ZPF 28 / IND 38 / MUT 7
Senate: MDC 89 / ZPF 44 / IND 23

Chiredzi Gvt B Primary Sch. Polling Station
Presidential: MDC 110 / ZPF 44 / SM 22
Parliamentary: MDC 79 / ZPF 44
Senate: MDC 102 / ZPF 19 / IND 21

Marondera Urban

Godfrey Huggins Polling Station
Presidential: MDC 144 / ZPF 39
Parliamentary: MDC 137 / ZPF 48 / Mutambara 7

Borradaile Polling Station
Presidential: MDC / 254 ZPF / 74 Makoni 40
Parliament: MDC 250 / ZPF 8

Good on the MDC for not waiting around. Their proactive approach is a good first step in combating a stolen election. But claiming a win at the Meikles Hotel is one thing – communicating it to the people, and converting it to victory, is another thing altogether. It’s time to the MDC to get out of the press conferences, and onto the pavement.

Alright. So my cynicism is officially unsuspended. As Zimbabwe’s election day has progressed, reports indicate increasingly that, aside from a few areas in Harare and Mutare’s high density suburbs, voter turn out has been low- or at least the queues have been very short, despite the fact that analysts predicted long queues in urban areas due to a dearth of polling stations. The MDC’s Director of Elections, Tendai Biti, is asking for voting to be extended, but it sounds like there is only a small number of polling stations for which this might be necessary.

I went for a run this evening, and found myself checking people’s little fingers for the tale-tale sign of pink ink – to indicate that someone had voted. I was dismayed to see not one pink finger.

I bumped into a neighbour of mine who had moved house some time back. I was surprised to see her, and I asked if she had come back because she had registered here and wanted to vote. She’s 19, so this would have been the first election she could vote in. She just laughed at me. She didn’t vote, she said, because she never had time to register.

Listening to ZBC (Zanu PF Broadcasting Corporation) news on the radio, it sounds like they’re claiming high turn out in the rural areas, but low turn out for the cities. The MDC has scheduled a press conference for 1am – apparently they think some results will already be in by then. Is apathy going to end up the biggest winner in this election?

Kubatana has opened up its Election SMS line for voters’ feedback and election nyayas. Here are some of their messages:

If the soldiers have already voted, what are they doing today on this public holiday?

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It is clear they are aready rigging. Pasina izvozvo ZANU haihwinhi. We need to plan way forward not kuenda kucourt kwavo. (Zanu PF won’t win. We need to play way forward, not go back and challenge this election in court.)

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How can the ZEC claim the elections will be free and fair when they order ballot papers that are not equal to the number net registered voters.

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Ko mapurisa 5 anodei paPolling station imhosva here kuvhota. (Why do we need five police officers at a polling station? Is it a crime to vote?)

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The Army have moved Tanks frm Inkomo Barracks, why?

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There is a war chopper since Wednesday roving n the skies nearer to the ground in Mutoko its frightening.

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Their rigging machinery is now defunct & malfunctioning. Their days are numbered! The masses say NO! The aged dictator’s time is nigh, darkness overshadows him.

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Airforce jets overflying Masvingo of the past 2days.intimidation of the opposition.

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Really Zim will be alive from tomorrow. Our vote will be change not for blood – peace shall reign.

Going to bed last night on the eve of Zimbabwe’s 2008 Harmonised Election, I sent a text message to a friend of mine: How often does a dictator concede power in an election?

I woke up this morning to his reply – Rarely. This election is just one of many phases. But as he said, it is also a part of the thrill, the rush of being on that white water and hearing the thunder roaring in the distance.

So despite my better judgement, I’ve suspended my cynicism for the day, and I’ve been enjoying the rush of looking at polling stations, watching groups of people walking down the road and being certain that they’re all on their way to the same place – the polling station nearest them. On my bike this morning, I was relieved to see that the voting queues in the Avenues were longer than the bread queues. Or the ATM queues.

And I’m not the only one caught up in this sense of excitement. I watched a group of teenaged boys jump out the car in their bare feet, untie a Simba Makoni flyer from a tree on the side of the road, and smile victoriously as he ran back down to the car waving his prize in the air. I got a text message from a friend of mine at 6:30. She was already at her polling station, she told me, and there were about 200 people there. Ten minutes later I heard from someone else on the other side of town – a hundred people at his polling station, complete with deck chairs, flasks, a festive picnic atmosphere. Surreal he told me.

And in a way he’s entirely right. There is such spectacle, such drama and performance associated with the process through which we choose the people to represent us. The songs and the rallies, the t-shirts and the posters. All whips up to this tremendous sense of excitement and anticipation and What If notions of possibility and hope. That sense that maybe, just maybe, this one day will make all the difference.

Of course, it’s not all smooth sailing. I found a voter education flyer on the side of the road this morning, spelling out just how complicated the process of voting for four different offices – and putting these papers into four different ballot boxes – can be. Apparently at one polling station in a low-density suburb of Bulawayo, it took them 45 minutes to process 13 voters. In Harare, one foreign-born citizen was turned away from the polling station and told he had to go get the paperwork proving that he had renounced his foreign citizenship before he could vote.

But there’s a sense of purpose today, a vibe, an anticipation and smell of promise that Some Thing might just happen.

So everything is feeling quite festive here in Harare the day before our Harmonised Election. The posters are everywhere, and they add so much colour to the place. There’s people in all sorts of election T-shirts everywhere, and I’m beginning to wish that every week was election week. Things just feel so much more possible.

On the road yesterday, I spotted a whole lot of MDC (Tsvangirai) graffiti, especially on the roads and on the kerbs of the roundabouts. And I wondered if the youth on the MDC spray paint team are cursing the day the MDC split – Vote MDC is just so much easier to write than Vote MDC Tsvangirai! Quicker, uses less paint, and runs you less risk of getting caught in the process. Maybe it’s high time each of the MDC factions chose their own names.

Running this morning, I noticed a $500 bill on the grass on the side of the road. Wet and abandoned, clearly not worth enough for anyone to bother picking it up. The other day, my colleague and I were distributing papers in Harare’s Avenues suburb. I spotted two $100,000 notes on top of the post boxes in one of the blocks of flats – again, so worthless it was just spare change lying there.

But if Mugabe’s biggest opponent in this election is inflation, Tsvangirai’s is the vote rigging which began long back. These elections are being held under such patently unfair and unequal conditions, they’ve been stolen before a single vote has been cast.

So, like Bev Clark was asking yesterday, what’s the plan to defend our vote? At the MDC’s rally on Saturday, Tsvangirai also stressed the importance of defending the vote. But what does that look like, really? I had my bag snatched a few years ago. I screamed like hell, I swore a blue streak at the muggers, and kicked at them when they tried to grope me as well. Imagine if we felt that passionately about protecting our vote.

One of our subscribers wrote in with this recommendation for defending the vote:

How about bombarding Mbeki, Zuma, Guebuza and other influential SADC leaders with examples of ZANU PF’s disrespect for democracy and human rights and demanding action? If hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans write or e-mail these leaders, giving examples of why they are wrong to support Mugabe in his misrule of Zimbabwe they will at least not be able to deny knowledge of the worst atrocities or to claim that these people are in power by the choice of the people of Zimbabwe, and may be persuaded to apply meaningful pressure for change.

This is a good idea, and I do have a soft spot for letter writing campaigns. But what about the campaign here? Surely the president of South Africa or Mozambique is more likely to listen to Zimbabweans’ need for change if they can see us actively doing something to express our frustration here – not simply running to outsiders for help? It’s been one of my continuing frustrations – that we turn to the courts, or South Africa, or SADC for help, rather than reclaiming our vote ourselves.

So yes, I’ve let myself get a bit swept away by the hype and the music and the colours and the anticipation. But deep down I know that, as important as 29 March is, even more important is what we do, collectively and individually, when that vote is stolen, like I know it will be.

In the past three days, three different people have told me the experiences of three different friends of theirs who have been sexually abused in the past few months. A 16 year old girl raped by her uncle who lives next door. A 19 year old woman raped by a neighbour. A twelve year old girl molested by her own teacher.

The angry bitter jaded part of myself wonders why I’m so surprised. In February, UNICEF announced that child rape has increased by 42% in the past three years – largely due to an increase in family and social tensions thanks to Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown. According to Dr. Festo Kavishe, UNICEF’s chief representative in Zimbabwe, social workers report that adults unable to provide normal care, food and schooling vent their anger on children.

To combat this, UNICEF has launched the Stand Up Speak Out campaign, aimed at raising awareness of all forms of child abuse, the damage caused, how child abuse can be prevented, and importantly where to get help. But these places to get help are also struggling to cope up with the economic collapse.

In past years, Childline had as many as 45,000 people phoning into their help line each year. But this number is dropping – not, clearly, because the need for the service is any less than it has been in the past. Rather, people are losing faith in the systems meant to assist them, and so aren’t bothering to ask for help. Across the country, the social welfare offices are understaffed, stretched too thin, and unable to manage their caseloads. Bulawayo has been without a government social worker since November, so cases just aren’t being attended to at all. When the magistrates were on strike, of course, the backlog just grew. Support organisations like Childline are trying to make up the difference, by assisting with transport and brining case workers to clients, but they are also underfunded and there is only so much a largely volunteer staff can do. And more than that, for how long should non governmental organisations do the work an elected government is sworn to do – that of ensuring and protecting the rights of all of its citizens, regardless of economic difficulties.