Watch Morgan Tsvangirai speak out against Robert Mugabe

Zimbabwe's opposition is trying to thwart plans by the regime of President Robert Mugabe to rig Saturday’s elections by offering cash rewards to anyone who comes forward with evidence.

A website and postal address have been set up in the Hague promising $5,000 (£2,500) for the first 40 whistleblowers, a fortune in a country where inflation of 150,000% has reduced average salaries to the equivalent of £3 a month. Posters will go up this week advertising the rewards from an organisation called Zimbabwe Democracy Now. They warn: “It is illegal in Zimbabwe and anywhere else in the world for anyone to destroy, tamper with or try to hide election results.”

Among the offences listed are stuffing ballot boxes, voting in more than one station, bribing people with food, voting under orders from a superior and registering “ghost” or dead voters.

“We will see who is rigging the vote this time,” the posters declare. “We will not let our dreams be stolen.”

Travelling across Zimbabwe from the townships of Bulawayo to rural areas in Mugabe’s home province of Mashonaland West and businessmen’s haunts in Harare, I found that every person I spoke to was demanding change. Not one wanted the 84-year-old Mugabe to stay on after 27 years in power.

“Look at what has become of us,” said Promise, one of a huddle of four scrawny men selling firewood along the highway from Chegutu to Harare.

“We used to work on a farm but we were kicked off when they threw out the white men and now we hide like animals in the bush, running away from police and hunting for mice.” He broke off to sell a bundle of sticks to a rare passing car for Z$5m (about 5p). “Zimbabwean electricity,” joked the driver. The country often goes for days on end with no power.

“We are crying for change,” said Elijah, whose salary of Z$300m a month as a waiter sounds impressive until he explains that his daily bus fares are Z$50m and school fees are Z$1 billion a term for his four children. “But these people know how to crook elections.”

Mugabe may have produced an entire nation of millionaires but, with Z$1m now worth just a penny, he looks set for a crushing defeat. Not only is he facing a third challenge from Morgan Tsvangirai, the popular leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), but last month his former ally Simba Makoni joined the race, splitting the ruling Zanu-PF.

“The mood is such, there’s no way Mugabe can win legitimately,” said Tsvangirai. “How can he with 90% unemployment, his record of beating people and demolishing their houses, and when he’s an 84-year-old who wants to govern till he’s 90?”

Reports from human rights activists have predicted a flawed outcome in the country’s first simultaneous polls for president, parliament and councils.

Among the concerns cited are boundary changes, irregularities in registration, political intimidation and violence, lack of access to state-controlled media and partisan security officials.

Last week the government declared that police would be present inside polling stations, claiming they were needed “to help disabled people vote”.

Opinion polling is difficult in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe’s reign of terror has left most people afraid to express their views. But polls conducted by the Mass Public Opinion Institute, a Zimbabwean organisation, have found that support for Zanu-PF dropped from 41% in October 2006 to about 20% this month.

In the presidential race Mugabe is running at 20%, compared with 28% for Tsvangirai and 9% for Makoni, the new entrant. The remaining 42% who refused to express a preference are considered more likely to support the opposition than the government.

“Mugabe can’t win the election but he can steal the election,” Tsvangirai said.

“He could just announce victory like Kibaki,” he added, referring to President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, who had himself sworn back in within an hour of announcing the result, despite widespread allegations of fraud.

Sitting in the study of his home in Harare under a poster of Nelson Mandela, Tsvangirai admitted that it was dispiriting to contest repeated rigged elections. Both in 2000 and 2005 he was widely believed to have won the most support.

“I don’t want to go into the Guinness book of records for winning most elections and never getting power,” he said. “It’s like banging your head against a brick wall. Suddenly you find you’re 60 and you’re still at it. Of course you think, what’s the point?”

This time he hopes it will be different. “We’ve learnt over the past 10 years so we’ve put in some mechanisms,” he said.

Apart from the reward posters, the MDC will attempt a parallel count to try to announce a winner in the presidential elections before the election commission.

Thousands of phones and cattle-counters have been smug-gloed in under salt packets and distributed among MDC election agents so that they can call in results from each station for instant collation on a website. “We want to try to announce first and avoid the Kibaki scenario,” Tsvangirai explained.

There is another difference from previous elections. Not only does Mugabe’s rejection seem so overwhelming that it could test even such a master of electoral manipulation, but the police are also giving the opposition unprecedented freedom to campaign, suggesting that Mugabe has lost control of the state machinery.

“I’m going into places I could never go to,” said Tsvangirai last Thursday as The Sunday Times followed him to a series of rallies in Mashonaland West.

His first of the day was in Chinhoyi, just 30 miles from Mugabe’s home village. In previous elections the MDC could campaign only underground because of violence by a group known as the Chinhoyi Notorious Six.

To reach the town meant driving between once-lush fields at the centre of the country’s cotton industry. Most have been taken over by war vets and are now overgrown with weeds.

The first surprise was the lack of roadblocks – a common method of preventing people attending rallies. The “Welcome to Chinhoyi” sign was plastered with Tsvangirai posters.

Inside a stadium, thousands of MDC supporters were waving red cards, a symbol in this football-loving nation of their desire to send off Mugabe. They cheered as the local candidate declared: “It’s time to bring on super-sub Morgan Tsvangirai.”

Some say the MDC is being given such freedom because Mugabe already has the elections sewn up.

“Elections are a process, not an event,” remarked Raymond Motsi, a Baptist leader. “The elections on the day may be free but the process has not been fair.”

Among the many irregularities he pointed out was the manipulation of postal votes – not allowed for 4m Zimbabweans who have left the country but compulsory for police and soldiers who will be on duty during election day and have to vote in front of their superiors. Last month they were given large pay increases.

Food aid for government supporters has long been used as a political weapon but Mugabe has gone further this time. On one day alone he handed out 300 buses, 500 tractors, 20 combine harvesters, 50,000 ox-drawn ploughs, 680 motorcycles and 100,000 litres of petrol.

Yet this campaign has not been marred by the widespread violence seen previously. The candidacy of Makoni, the former finance minister, is said to have divided the security services.

This week General Solomon Mujuru, an ex-army chief whose wife Joyce is vice-president, is expected to back Makoni. This would be a severe blow for Mugabe as Mujuru still widely commands the security services’ support. Some believe they may rig the elections for Makoni.

The president’s posters show him making a menacing gesture above the unenticing slogan: “Get behind the fist”. His rhetoric at rallies is still in the language of anticolonialism and he dismisses Makoni and Tsvangirai as “British stooges”.

“He has nothing to offer but history and negativity,” said Tsvangirai. “The best thing he could do is step down gracefully; then we would give him an honourable exit. If that’s the price we have to pay to move the country forward, we are willing.”

While rumours abound that Mugabe’s family are already on their way to Singapore, the president has said in the past that he would leave State House only in a coffin. Those close to him say he believes he must stay in power to protect himself from charges of war crimes.

Opponents fear he may announce emergency rule to avoid defeat or a second-round run-off. Others worry that if Tsvangirai is allowed to win there could be a coup – security chiefs have already declared they will not accept him.

Click here to see Christina Lamb's book on Zimbabwe, House of Stone

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