Comrade Fatso is keeping us inspired and fired UP with his daily election blog. He is one of Zimbabwe’s leading activist spoken word poets – you can find out more about Comrade Fatso by visiting his web site. In the meantime here is his post from the streets of Harare.

Today is peaceful. Calm. Like an anesthetised patient having her stomach slit open. We drove from the elite suburbs of Borrowdale to the peopled townships of Highfields. The queues of the morning had tired into afternoon strolls into empty polling stations. All over this expectant, pregnant town there was a feeling of calm. ‘Peace’. The vote happened. We went through the motions. But it’s a tense peace. Inside each polling station is an agent of oppression – a police officer. Youth militia parade townships ‘peacefully’. As I write on the calm street outside the Book Cafe there are twenty police officers sitting menacingly underneath a tree. Waiting. Yes, there is peace. As long as you vote and shut up. As long as you don’t disturb this fragile shack they have painted ‘peace’. Peace is not the absence of war. Peace can also be the presence of rigging. This is where we stand today. In a peaceful election where my comrade, Godobori, registered to vote in the town of Chitungwiza, had to go to different polling stations in various suburbs of the next door town of Harare after he had been ‘moved’ on the voter’s roll. He finally voted at 6:15pm. It is a calm election of ghost voters and living human beings who are dead to the voters’ roll. The rigging has already begun as dreams are stolen while dreamers sleep. But democracy isn’t about putting an X on a piece of paper every five years. Democracy means people reclaiming their lives and running their communities. Democracy means power at the grassroots where decisions are made face-to-face in neighbourhoods. Democracy means fighting to reclaim your power. So these elections will be determined not by the rigged result but by the people’s reaction. ZANU (PF) want to steal our dreams and tell us it was a nightmare. We have to turn our dreams into action.

For Daily Election Blogs by other MAGAMBA! poets and activists see www.myspace.com/magamba

Gerry Whitehead based in the Lowveld has sent in a situation report to keep us up to date with how the election went. Here’s what he has to report:

Polling stations run out of ballot papers
The following polling stations had run out of ballot forms by 11.30 am and were turning people away: -
Chiredzi West constituency.
Mukwazi Polling Station
Chigwiti Polling Station
Mkwasine Secondary School Polling Station
SD Adventist Primary School Polling Station
Polly Clinic Polling Station

The MDC (TSV) Chief election agent Nelson Muzamani spoke to the Chief Election Officer in Chiredzi and he said “it is out of my control”. He was aware of how many ballot forms he required. The rally that was held in these areas indicated that these were strong MDC (TSV) areas.Thousands of people were turned away from these polling stations and never got to vote, many were very angry.Also in this constituency ZANU PF were distributing maize 300 meters from the Chisamiso Primary School Polling Station.

Voting equipment and materials arrive late
Chiredzi North Constituency. Voting material and ballot boxes arrived late at many polling stations which meant that the people only started voting after 8.30am. There was a mix up with two polling stations getting the wrong voters lists in this constituency which resulted in some 800 people being unable to vote. In 7 hours only 4 people managed to vote. The police chief and the Chief Election Officer in Chiredzi were advised but by 6.30pm nothing had been done about it.

The Chiredzi constituencies are huge and mostly without communications so this is just a little of what is really going on. I believe that ZANU PF have planned this very carefully and believe that the SADC observers and the international communities will just accept it. All indications are that the Zimbabwean people will not accept ZANU PF winning.

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?

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.