President Robert Mugabe, the man who has ruled Zimbabwe since the end of white domination in 1980, retains his iron grip on the country's feared security apparatus, which killed more than 200 people in the 2008 presidential election season. Now nearing 90, he is running again on Wednesday, and there are few signs that he is ready to give up the reins after more than three decades in power.
"The 89 years don't mean anything," a confident Mr. Mugabe said in a rare interview. "They haven't changed me, have they? They haven't withered me. They haven't made me senile yet, no. I still have ideas, ideas that need to be accepted by my people."
But even with the shadow of the last election still looming, Edison Masunda was unafraid as he joined others streaming into a dusty field at the edge of the city center, part of a crimson wave of tens of thousands who gathered for the challenging party's final rally on Monday.
It was a far cry from the thick blanket of fear that smothered the country in 2008, when many opposition supporters dared not wear their party's red insignia or openly show their political loyalties, lest roaming bands of Mugabe supporters beat them up, or worse.
"I want to see a new Zimbabwe," said Mr. Masunda, a 25-year-old unemployed mechanic, as he prepared to cast a vote against the only president he had ever known, Mr. Mugabe. "We have no fear. Mugabe must go. The people will speak."
Mr. Masunda and the others massed in the field, renamed Freedom Square, within sight of the headquarters of Mr. Mugabe's party, emblazoned with its towering black cockerel insignia.
"Bye bye, Mugabe, bye bye!" they chanted in unison, palms aloft in a vast, synchronized wave.
Many Zimbabweans are calling this the most important election since Mr. Mugabe, a hero of liberation, first came to power. Wednesday's vote is being held on a tight timetable and a shoestring budget as a result of Mr. Mugabe's insistence that it be held by the end of August.
The voter registration process was truncated, and just two days before the election there was still no final list of voters, as required by law. Early voting by police officers and emergency workers was chaotic, and many were unable to cast their ballots.
The government has barred Western observers like those from the European Union, but the African Union and the regional trade bloc, the Southern African Development Community, as well as local organizations, have been accredited in large numbers and will be watching at the polls.
And while most foreign journalists were barred during the last election, social media will be a prominent part of the campaign. Both Mr. Mugabe's party, ZANU-PF, and its main challenger, the Movement for Democratic Change, are using Twitter and Facebook to get out news. Several Web sites have sprung up to monitor election irregularities, and the challengers are counting on voters to use their cellphones to announce results as they come in and to report abuses.
Dressed in a bright red suit at the final challenger rally, Nelson Chamisa, a candidate for Parliament, exhorted tens of thousands of party supporters to use their phones as a weapon for democracy. "If you have a cellphone, I want to see it," Mr. Chamisa shouted.
Almost every hand went up, and a chant of "Show your phone!" washed over the crowd.
Mr. Chamisa later said that the well-attended rally was a sign that voters were fed up with Mr. Mugabe and not afraid to defy him. "This is the final nail in the coffin of dictatorship," Mr. Chamisa said. "We are going to lower the coffin and bury it on Wednesday."
