In the cities, the streets were all but deserted. In the country, the queues stretched for yards. But everywhere the mood was the same: fear, dread and resignation.

The dawn that illuminated President Mugabe’s pantomime election day could not have been more different to that of three months ago, when three challengers shared the ballot with him and voters got up before first light, excited to be part of the change they scented.

An e-mail being circulated from Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, urged supporters not to boycott the polls if doing so would put their lives at risk.“Whatever might happen, the results . . . will not be recognised by the world,” Mr Tsvangirai said. “God knows what is in your hearts. Don’t risk your lives.” The result, he added, would “reflect only the fear of the people of Zimbabwe”, and he urged the international community to reject the result.

Even by the standard of the past two terrifying weeks, the atmosphere of fear yesterday was extraordinary. In Harare, police patrolled every block while pickup trucks of Zanu (PF) youth militia hurtled around the streets, their passengers singing revolutionary songs and heckling the few passers-by, demanding to know why they were not voting.

At farms south of the capital, huge queues outside polling stations were watched over by party officials. There and in the slum areas of Mbare and Epworth, voters arrived at the stations in groups accompanied by a local Zanu (PF) marshal, who ticked their names off lists and summoned them one by one to vote.

Along highways in Masvingo and Mashonaland roadblocks had sprung up overnight, mostly manned by Zanu (PF) militants. Motorists were stopped and ordered to the polls if they could not show the telltale little finger dyed pink with indelible ink, proving that they had voted.

Frances, a staunch MDC supporter, said that she had gone to vote purely to get her finger marked because of “Operation Red Finger”, a reprisal campaign that the regime has promised to launch against anyone unable to prove that they voted.

“If we don’t vote, they don’t see the finger. We will be in trouble,” she said. “They called it Operation Red Finger – if you didn’t vote, why? It means you are an opposition supporter.”

At a rally, the militia gave warning that failing to vote would be fatal. “They are going to cut off our heads,” Frances said. “We believe them because many people in Mbare were butchered.”

In the event Frances opted to spoil her ballot. It was an act of almost foolhardy bravery: she had to dodge the party officials outside recording the serial numbers of everyone’s ballot paper in order to check them after the vote. Inside the station, election officials directed vendors from the sprawling Mbare market to their own ballot box, warning them that if a single MDC vote was found there they would all be driven out of the market. Similar patterns of intimidation were reported across the country, suggesting a highly orchestrated and centralised campaign. Voters in some areas were told to pretend they could not write and to ask for help from police or party officials; in others they were told to feign arm injuries.

International condemnation was swift. Foreign ministers of the G8 industrialised nations meeting in Kyoto denounced the systematic violence, obstruction and intimidation in Zimbabwe and demanded that the Government work with the opposition. “We will not accept the legitimacy of any government that does not reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people,” they said in a statement.

In an interview with The Times, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, called the country’s economic collapse and political brutality “a scar on the whole continent”.

He said: “I think that there’s now a real responsibility on the African Union, as well as SADC [Southern African Development Community]. There are leaders across the AU speaking out, and I think that’s very significant. The AU is going to have to be part of the solution. It’s very clear to the UK that there’s no legitimacy for the Government of Robert Mugabe.”

Both the US and the EU dismissed the election as a sham. In an interview with Channel 4 last night, Archbishop Desmond Tutu implored the Zimbabwean leader to quit. “For goodness sake, Mr Mugabe, you can end this tragedy – step down,” he said. He said that Africa’s leaders “should declare Mr Mugabe illegitimate if he claims that he is the newly elected President of Zimbabwe”.

But in a sign that he intends to challenge the authority and character of the AU, the Zimbabwean President said that he would be at the group’s summit in Egypt and would point out that other African countries “have done worse things”. He added that he wanted them “to point at me, and we would see if those fingers would be cleaner than mine”.

Mr Tsvangirai left his refuge in the Dutch Embassy again yesterday to let fly at President Mbeki of South Africa, saying that he could no longer see any role for him as mediator in the crisis and accusing him of being ready to recognise yesterday’s election. Archbishop Tutu was also critical, saying that Mr Mbeki’s “softly softly” approach had not worked.

Few outsiders have been allowed in to observe the vote. Among those present were monitors from the Pan-African Parliament and the SADC. Their early assessments were grim. “The people are reluctant to talk,” Khalid A. Dahab, the Pan-African Parliament spokesman, said. “Some of them are saying, ‘We were told to come here’. It’s just not normal. There’s a lot of tension.”

An SADC observer said that the elections “were worse than those we witnessed in Angola in 1992 after decades of war and are not credible”. Domestic monitoring groups called off their plans to observe the vote because of the extreme violence their volunteers have been subjected to during the past months of terror.

State newspapers had predicted a massive turnout, as Mr Mugabe had demanded, but government radio was forced to concede that voters were only “trickling in”, attributing the slow start to the chilly winter weather.

As the polls drew to a close, fears were rising of a rapid backlash against those who refused to turn out. In contrast with the unexplained delay that followed March’s election, this result is expected today and Mr Mugabe could be sworn in as early as Sunday, by which time retribution could be well under way.

People have been warned that the intimidation will not end with the vote. The all-day and allnight pungwes, or indoctrination sessions, that millions have been forced to attend are to continue in case people “forget” who they should support.

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