Bread disappeared on Monday. It has happened before, only to turn up on the shelves again a few days later, though this time things look different. “No flour,” the young woman behind the counter said with an air of finality.

We live in a country where nothing, not even our daily bread, can be taken for granted as the economy slips into chaos and the streets are gripped by anarchy. We live in fear of what's coming next.

I was driving for a meal with friends the other night and passed a mob of about 30 youths, wearing T-shirts with Mr Mugabe's visage, long sticks at the ready. Such scenes have not been uncommon in recent years, and especially recent weeks, but this time I was witnessing them in the comfortable, safe suburb of Highlands. You feel a silent whoosh as reality suddenly drops away inside you.

At dinner I mentioned that war “veterans” had occupied the bars at the City Bowling Club and Reps Theatre. People stopped talking and fiddled with their food.

You get a bad dose of dread when you pass a crowd of Zanu (PF) rabble, with the taunting, knowing leers of a pack of bad dogs circling a cat in the open. The depression after hearing John the plumber's story of his family being held hostage in his rural area, to force him to return today to vote for Mr Mugabe, stayed with me for days.

Even reading Zanu (PF)'s daily Herald newspaper, swollen with venom and murderous threats, makes my stomach harden into a knot.

On bad days the ring of the mobile phone is like a fire bell going off next to you. It's the same with the people who show me their burnt-out homes in a township — when a car hoots or people shout in the street, the passers-by flick their heads in the direction of the noise, their eyes wide with terror.

There are many things that still give a semblance of normality. My neighbour's son won the Poetry Club cup for elocution. A teacher nearby takes her Jack Russells for obedience training. That innocent things can still occur inside this barbarous, surreal world is deeply reassuring.

But a sense of danger and despair intrudes constantly now. A doctor who deals with victims of violence says that he wants to cry all the time. My pharmacist assures me that everyone who can afford it is on some kind of antidepressant. Others drink themselves into a stupour every night.

The dread often grows into rage at the outrageous presumption of one little old man with a monstrous ego causing an entire nation's agony. More than anything else, there is a profound longing for the night to end. It would end so abruptly if he just went away, or if he died. The nation is at prayer, says a priest. But on and on it goes.

It was within catching distance when he lost the elections in March, but he tore up the result. Each day there are signs and hopes, sometimes big ones, such as this week when the entire international community, from the United Nations Security Council to Nelson Mandela, turned on him.

But each time the door is slammed shut, on your fingers. He appears almost supernaturally immovable.

Ranged against him, though, is an equally unworldly spirit, nurtured by the people to whom he has done the most wicked things. Men and women who have lost husbands, wives, children — burnt, hacked, with injuries inflicted with such force that doctors cannot believe what they are seeing.

Victims of political violence are eerily resilient. “They don't behave like victims of traffic accidents, who lie in bed and pull the blanket over their heads,” said Gertie the physiotherapist. “The ones who have been through torture, they come into the ward, very soon they are smiling, they are co-operative. They try hard to get better.”

Those who lost their loved ones don't break into sobs, as most white people I know would. They calmly relate how it happened, open the coffin lid to show the corpse in the pose of a horrific death, point out the blood smears on the walls and seem more worried about the loss of blankets and clothing.

Coping mechanism, said Liz, a psychologist. These people will be emotionally damaged forever. But all of them say the same thing: “We will not give in to Mugabe.”

As the election day grew closer, the violence became wilder, as if Mugabe knew that the more he brutalised Zimbabweans, the more determined they became to resist him.

Today he presides over an election that he cannot lose because he is the only candidate, having made it impossible for anyone to stand against him. It was the only way he could do it. Violence would not subdue the people.

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