There is no room for middling outcomes—Saturday’s elections in Zimbabwe will either be historic or painfully routine. Clinging to the tatters of a liberation mandate claimed in Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence movement, Robert Mugabe is seeking a sixth term as head of a now-failed state. One challenger, Simba Makoni, is an exile from Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, whose experience as finance minister will—he hopes—reverse his opponent’s prideful neglect of the national economy (“million-dollar hamburger" and all). The other, Morgan Tsvangirai, is running on a solidly populist platform that also promises relief from the embarrassing poverty that has gripped the nation for a decade.

Both insurgents offer change we may believe in. But at 84, Mugabe epitomizes the respect-your-elders culture that has continually undermined democratic institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. He is feared in the manner reserved only for the reckless sadist: in 2000, he had thousands of whites were beaten and expelled from their lands; years later, a Harare slum-razing sent additional millions into homelessness and exile; state advisers and experts—kept close by cash and threats—are said to have no say in government. And shamelessly, “old man” Mugabe still pulls rank on the trail. Just this month he endowed his loyal police force with the power to enter polling stations on Saturday, bearing arms. Of an opposition victory, he said, "It will never happen as long as we are still alive—those [of us] who planned the liberation struggle."

Emblematically, Mugabe is not even the longest-serving despot on the continent; Togolese president-for-life Gnassingbé Éyadema passed away after 38 years of rule in 2005. (Colorful loon Mswati III in Swaziland is still in the running.)  Even then, democratic succession took a fight—army leaders tried an unconstitutional sleight-of-hand that the African Union, under then-Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo, met with swift and successful recrimination. These days, however, the AU’s ability to sanction and intervene militarily is diminished, its attention diverted toward three separate conflicts in east Africa. This vacuum has stoked the fears of independent election monitors, concerned that the winner of the vote tally will not see an inauguration day.

Of course, consensus has that the madman must be stopped. The challengers must be commended for rising to the occasion after nearly 30 years of political paralysis. Many fear, however, that the three-way race could split the “change vote,” allowing Mugabe a slim majority and foreclosing the possibility of a runoff election wherein either insurgent (or both!) could make their pitch to the Zimbabwean people. Somewhere in Africa, a blog maintained by McClatchy News services (which proved indispensable during the Kenyan election crisis), has provided good on-the-ground coverage of the election. One dispatch suggests history is there for the making:

After a catastrophic few years… Mugabe's most powerful political weapon – fear – appears to be eroding. To understand what 200,000 percent inflation means, a journalist friend I was traveling with, N., said that on Friday, he had lunch at a hotel in Harare, where a local beer cost 2 million Zimbabwean dollars (less than $1). He passed by the hotel after work the same day and the same beer was going for more than 4 million.

J., a public relations manager and Makoni supporter, came up to me at the hotel bar. "People are fed up," he said. "People used to be afraid to vote against Mugabe, but now they feel they have nothing to lose.”

Update: the Guardian reports that Mugabe is forcing locals to crumple and eat election posters belonging to his opponents. Nice.

--Dayo Olopade