Prodded by Fear and Duress, Zimbabweans Go to the Polls

Yet in Zimbabwe, voters have lost hope that Mugabe, even at age 84 and struggling to manage the country's catastrophic economic collapse, can be removed. Many people spent election day scrambling to merely survive amid the widespread expectation that attacks will continue against those who failed to vote for Mugabe, as demanded by party enforcers who included young thugs, veterans of the 1970s liberation war and government military and security officials.

"What is happening today is not an election. It is an exercise in mass intimidation," Tsvangirai said at a news conference Friday.

The goals for other opposition activists on this day were painfully modest: warm blankets, a bit of food, some clothes, a decent funeral for their fallen colleagues. Above all, they longed to survive an onslaught many believe is aimed at nothing less than their obliteration.

In Chitungwiza, a dense bedroom community 18 miles south of Harare, dozens of opposition activists spent Friday huddled in a wrecked home infused with mourning and fear.

The mourning was for four of their compatriots killed June 17 in an attack on the home, which had been a haven for opposition activists. The fear was for what might come now that they had refused to vote. The ruling party youths who patrolled the streets here had warned that those who failed to cast ballots -- and couldn't show red ink on their pinkies, a mark applied at polling stations to prevent double-voting -- would be beaten or killed.

At midafternoon, Question Dingo, 33, a leader among the opposition activists, appeared to solve the problem by fishing out one of the bright red cards that they once waved at political rallies to signal their expectation that Mugabe, like a misbehaving soccer player, would soon be ejected from Zimbabwean politics. Dingo said he tore up the card, soaked the pieces in a bowl of water and dipped his left pinkie in the inky paste he had made. The stain it left was enough, he hoped, to allow him to survive.

"If they come," Dingo said, "I can just raise my finger."

He passed the bowl around to the dozens of activists who had taken refuge in the home in recent weeks. After the attack, in which ruling party youths battered down a concrete perimeter wall, firebombed a bedroom and looted the house, the activists moved back in because they had nowhere else to go. More than 30 now live there, with women and children sleeping on the floor inside, men sleeping on the ground outside in the Southern Hemisphere's cold winter nights.

"There are so many boys buried in Warren Hills Cemetery, killed by Mugabe," said Georgina Nyamutsamba, 57, gesturing to a nearby burial site. "Please help us. There are so many of us suffering in Zimbabwe. What can we do?"

She, too, had red ink on her pinkie, courtesy of Dingo's bowl. The only ones who refused were the owners of the house, Phillimon and Annastasia Chipiyo, whose gregarious, 28-year-old son was one of the four killed in the June 17 attack.

"I have nothing to fear," Annastasia Chipiyo said. "I've just lost my son."

Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.