I got into line to vote fairly early this morning. Anyone who knows me will tell you it’s no mean feat to get me anywhere on time – never mind early! That shows you how seriously I’m taking voting this year. In line by 6.20 am.

I know that Mugabe’s more unpopular than ever this election and yet still he holds so many of the trump cards: police and soldiers forced to vote in the presence of their commanding officers; free advertising on state media; presidential appointees running everything associated with the elections – constituency boundaries, location of polling stations, the voters’ roll itself.

So, I knew it was important to make sure I cast my own vote – no rigging leeway afforded the Zimbabwean regime by me staying away.

I think we must have been at a ‘model’ polling station – Courtney Selous School in Greendale, Harare – because there was media galore there. Media vans trailing cables and equipment parked along the road outside the school. A variety of journalists walking up and down the queues asking earnest questions and filming ‘democracy’ in progress. I can only hope that they moved on to a less ‘model’ polling station to film the real action!

I couldn’t fault the process at all. Timely, orderly, polite (if you don’t count the glaring somebodies who stood in a silent, evenly spaced row, watching the queue of voters intently).

We would’ve made good TV. Rainbow nation – laughing and chatting together as we slowly but surely moved forward in our orderly queues into the voting station. The subtext in reality is that most people were going through the motions of voting for change – with very little real expectation that we could overwhelm Mugabe’s rigging machine. That would take a huge turnout and a unified opposition to achieve.

After I left the polling station with my partner, we travelled around the area to see how other polling stations were doing. All we could see were short queues everywhere – where were all the voters? Living in the rural areas post-Murambatsvina? Or part of the displaced in the Diaspora? Or disenfranchised through obstructive officialdom working for Tobias Mudede, the Registrar-General?

At one point we stopped on the side of the road to take photos of the graffiti and posters on walls and lamp posts. A young man standing nearby thought we were covertly filming someone. Rather officiously he called out to us asking whether we had sought the people’s permission to film them. Since there was no-one in frame we asked him what he meant.

He was unexpectedly hostile and clearly thought we were foreign, asking us where we were from. After a bit of a chat across the 10 meters of tangled bush that separated us, he came down to the road to talk to us. To prove to him that I was indeed local I showed him the little finger on my left hand – newly pinked by voting ink. His attitude changed in a flash. He started to talk animatedly about change and was very proud about the graffiti’d Zanu PF posters on the walls nearby. I asked him if he had voted yet, and from his reply got a strong sense that he wasn’t registered to vote. Impotent in electoral terms – his site of struggle is restricted to the battle of posters on the city’s walls.

I’ve got a direct line to God. Well maybe I’m getting a bit carried away since I just get to speak with Will but he is from Vatican Radio after all. I’ve ended up being one of their contacts in Zimbabwe when they want an update on the mood of this place. Of course I can only ever give them my fairly narrow view of what its like in Harare BUT I do try.

Generally I don’t like getting up early. I particularly don’t like getting up early when I’m slightly hungover from mixing my cocktails and feeling quite nauseous from eating a bucket of spring onion dip and an enormous quantity of neat little raw vegetables. So when I was roused at 10 to 6 this morning with a cup of Tanganda and a suggestion that I shake myself into voting mood I wasn’t all that amused. Nevertheless I tripped down to Courtney Selous School hoping for a good experience. And it was. The queue moved fairly quickly; people were jovial and the process was efficient and friendly.

But driving around the city after voting I must say that the low turnout at suburban polling stations is really worrying. Are many people not registered? Or have people simply lost hope in the electoral process? Have we experienced one stolen election too many?

Election day in Zimbabwe. Woke up to reports on the BBC of long queues. Got dressed, walked down to Avondale School. The queue there about 100 people long at most. And three polling stations around the school. I voted (for myself!) and got a funny red/maroon ink colour on my left little finger. Four ballot papers, four ballot boxes, all as predicted.

Down to the ‘Command Centre’ at Mount Pleasant School and got a tag that says I am a Council Candidate. Then to all the stations, from 0930 to 1200. All six in order, and almost all have more than one polling station at each! Never a queue more than 50 people long. The queue at the ATM in Newlands is longer. There was no queue at Alex Park School. All seems to be going very well. Again, as predicted. They are all ready to count at the polling stations too; the tent in Strathaven was just waiting for diesel for its generator so they can have lights by tonight.

A wee rest, and then back out there.

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.

Campaigning has been interesting. Everyone now seems to be happy to say to me, “Mugabe must go,” which last elections everyone felt, but no one dared to say. Everyone however, wants ‘something’ for their vote. Tshirt, loaf of bread, beer. This worries me. Zimbabweans are going to hand over the running of their city and country to ‘someone’ for the next five years, and they will give it to you for $12million (a loaf of bread). No wonder the country is in chaos. No one seems to pay attention, or care, to who is running their affairs.

On the other hand, support is huge, and varied. Thursday, walking back from the shops (not even campaigning), someone unknown to me shouts from across the street, “Hi”, then “Don’t ever give up”.

From everything I have seen (all the way to Nyanga and back), the MDC (Tsvangirai) is massively popular. The Mugabe Zanu PF is massively unpopular. Zanu PF will steal the election again – they have to, they cannot go without a fight, so what is the opposition’s Plan B? I suspect they are going to sit down and discuss it again, as they did last time. So I am feeling a tad depressed. However, we play the part we can play. Which for you means, get out there and vote. Just by physically standing in a voting queue will mean that you have impact.