PRESIDENT ROBERT Mugabe of Zimbabwe was hot on the campaign trail last week ahead of this weekend’s fiercely contested presidential poll. Despite his 78 years, the former guerrilla fighter pulled no punches against perceived enemies either at home or abroad.

He railed against British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other Britons for "poking their pink noses in our business." They want to recolonise Zimbabwe so let them "go to hell," he said, along with their "stooges" from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

His main opposition challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, was picked up and questioned on charges that he planned to assassinate President Mugabe. The evidence was a controversial videotape produced by an Israeli public relations man close to Mugabe.

Mr Tsvangirai said he had been charged with treason, the government said not. Then Tony Blair weighed into the war of words, calling Mugabe a "dictator." 

But for the majority of Zimbabweans, the rapid-fire exchange of rhetoric means little. They have other concerns, such as money, jobs and mealie (maize) meal.

"We don’t bother about such things," said mother of five Pauline Matongo, when asked about the alleged assassination plot. "We just want mealie meal. We want food to eat."

The shortage of mealie meal – ground maize flour used to make the cheap and filling sadza dish, Zimbabwe’s equivalent of ugali – is undoubtedly the issue most worrying Zimbabweans in the heated run-up to the election. The national daily requirement of 5,000 tonnes is not being met because the government has little hard to cash to import food. 

Long queues of desperate shoppers form at dawn every day outside supermarkets with empty shelves. It’s a long, often fruitless wait under the sun – and one that’s made even worse when government employees turn up and steal their places.

One day last week, affluent, mainly white, Zimbabweans were having lunch in trendy cafes at the shopping centre in the wealthy Harare suburb of Newlands. But around the back, approximately 200 black people – mostly domestic workers – were jostling for position in the mealie meal queue, at the deliveries entrance to a supermarket.

A truck pulled up at about midday, and the gates creaked as the hot, tired crowd surged forward. Then 25 uniformed men – from the police, the army and the prison service – appeared from around a corner. They organised the crowd into two orderly lines. First, however, they skipped the queue to help themselves. 

Of the 80 bags on sale, less than 60 went to customers. The remainder went to the uniformed men, who had also benefited from a 100 per cent pay rise in January. Everyone else went home empty-handed, and hungry.

"Yes, it is terrible," said electronics technician Richard Makunyi as he walked away. "But people are afraid because they can be beaten."

The food woes in a country once considered a regional bread basket stem partly from natural phenomena like floods and drought. But the main culprit is Mugabe’s undeniably disastrous economic policies.

Whatever the benefits or otherwise of confiscating white-owned land, the move has scared off foreign investment and dramatically reduced the national maize harvest. Factories are closing, the economy is in freefall – it contracted by almost eight per cent last year – and inflation is currently running at over 100 per cent. The Zimbabwean dollar, which officially trades at 55 to the US dollar, in reality sells for over six times that much on the black market. 

"Z$500 used to buy a trolley full of shopping," said an unemployed man, Michael Ndoverove. "Now you can only get a bottle of cooking oil."

The food shortage is about to get dramatically worse. According to aid agencies, up to 750,000 Zimbabweans are currently in need of food assistance. President Mugabe has repeatedly assured voters that 200,000 tonnes of maize is on the way, but aid agency sources say that as little as 15,000 has actually arrived.

Even worse, the drought that is currently scorching all of Southern African threatens to destroy the upcoming April harvest. Famine-like conditions are looming and no matter who wins the presidential poll, they will have to find large reserves of hard cash to fend off starvation.

Violence is also a pressing worry for the Zimbabwean electorate. At least 16 opposition supporters were murdered in January, a level of violence that continues on a daily basis. On Friday, the charred corpse of an MDC activist, Newman Bhebhe, was reported discovered.

Obert, an MDC activist was abducted in the northern town of Kachuta, 240 km north of Harare, a week ago and repeatedly tortured. He came to Harare last Friday to get medical treatment for extensive welts to his legs and groin. 

He said: "They brought me to a base where the commander was. He said, ‘Your name has come up. We are told to kill you and show our leaders the head’." He said that his torturers used a rubber whip cut from old car tyres and forced him to sing Zanu-PF songs.

There is also fear in the urban areas. In the Harare township of Mbare, few people were willing to speak to this reporter in the open. An interview with a women queuing outside a supermarket was cut short after a crowd of young men gathered around and made threatening statements in Shona.

"They say you are engaging in political discussions," said an employee of the nearby Spar Supermarket.

"People are afraid. Please, you must leave now."

Some analysts see the repressive measures as a measure of Mugabe’s lack of confidence in victory. In January, he halved the number of polling stations in urban areas, where the opposition MDC enjoys most support. A raft of draconian legislation passed at the same time gives the government sweeping powers over the electoral process.

And various opinion polls have given Tsvangirai a generous lead over Mugabe, although pollsters admit that gauging opinion accurately is difficult in such a tense environment.

Mugabe will also be keeping a worried eye on events in Madagascar. Former Antanarivo mayor Marc Ravalomanana sparked a crisis last week by declaring himself president. He claimed to have really won the December elections that he claims the incumbent, Didier Ratsiraka, had rigged.

Ravalomanana pulled the move off only thanks to massive public rallies of his supporters. Mugabe may fear that he will also face a popular uprising if the electorate suspects widespread vote fixing.

Already, the army leadership have stated they will not support a Tsvangirai victory, although according to some reports, the rank and file are divided in their support for the autocratic president.

This weekend’s poll will be a key test for democracy in the region as well as in Zimbabwe. Neighbouring countries such as Malawi, also headed by presidents of an autocratic bent, will be watching nervously. And South Africans, who have been reluctant to criticise their neighbour, will be hoping that the crisis that has dented their own economy will soon be over.

The end result may be determined by whether Zimbabweans’ anger with their plummeting living standards is stronger than the bully-boy tactics of their government. 

"For now, people are quiet. They will never say the truth because they fear violence and death," said Lucia, a cleaning worker in Harare. 

"But on the election day, they will know what is in their hearts."

• Declan Walsh is a Nairobi-based correspondent for the UK daily The Independent. This report was exclusively prepared for The EastAfrican.