BEIT BRIDGE, South Africa-Zimbabwe border – “Can you see into Zimbabwe with your equipment?,” one man asks us, pointing at our satellite dish. He is bemused by our presence here, on South African soil, when the real action is taking place in Zimbabwe.  He is desperate to know what is happening back home.   We explain that we have no secret equipment, no special powers of electronic observation. Our dish is for broadcasting to Atlanta. We can only tell him what we hear from other sources.   

Slowly, the wheel turns. In the blazing heat of the African sun here on the border, the people filtering through from Zimbabwe bring news. The streets are quiet, police are on patrol, but the country is waiting. For something. They cannot be sure what, but they are willing to wait. For now, as the news of change trickles out. 

Those Zimbabweans trapped on the South African side of the border are eager for news. “What are the results?” they ask us as we stand alongside our satellite dish waiting to go live.  The parliamentary results are trickling in, showing the opposition MDC just a short way ahead of the ruline ZANU-PF. 

But it is the results of the presidential vote that every body is waiting for.  They will be the moment – both practical and symbolic — when the direction of Zimbabwe’s future is finally clear. It is the president who matters more than anyone else.  He embodies the fate of the republic.    

People often ask why Zimbabweans have been willing to suffer so much with so little overt or violent resistance. There have been relatively few street demonstrations in the last seven years of the country’s collapse. No attempt to storm the parliament as we have seen in other countries where elections have been so blatantly rigged as in Zimbabwe. The answer must lie in the memories of violence so deeply layered into the country’s past. The brutality from both sides of the liberation war, the memory of the campaign known as the Gukurahundi in the early 1980s when Robert Mugabe’s troops killed an estimated 10,000 people in a sweep against alleged dissidents in the province Matabeleland. The generations of war have left their scars. That is why Zimbabweans are willing to wait, and to hope that Robert Mugabe will go peacefully. The alternative is too terrible to contemplate. They have seen it before and do not want to see it again. 

The first signs that their hopes might be rewarded are beginning slowly to come out. The opposition is claiming that they have won over 50 percent of the presidential vote. The government mouthpiece, The Herald, has today told its readers that Mr. Mugabe may not have won the election outright. There are reports that the generals who hold the key to the country’s stability are divided. They are talking among themselves about what strategy is best to take the country forward. Change is in the air.

BEIT BRIDGE, South Africa-Zimbabwe border – Is this the beginning of the end? The rumors, reports and downright speculation are starting to fly now.

Everyone at the border post here at Beit Bridge is asking the question: what have you heard? The results of the elections seem clearer and clearer. Robert Mugabe has lost, and a generation of political leadership is about to end.

“We are just hoping for change,” one man tells us. A woman sighs almost sadly, not willing yet to hope. “We’ll see,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.

This is now the moment of high politics, of secret meetings, of truths denied and lies defended. What is real? What is false? Its hard to make sense of it all but at last, it seems, real change is in the air. Checking and rechecking facts, rumors with trusted sources – that’s the best we can do here on the South African border.

We are hearing that Robert Mugabe has conceded defeat — some sources say it was as early as yesterday lunchtime. The ruling ZANU PF party and the opposition MDC are in serious talks about transition. If this is all true then this is the night of the generals. They hold the future of Zimbabwe in their hands. Will they support a transition or will they be loyal to their old comrade and leader from the liberation war Robert Mugabe. Some have openly said they will not salute someone who “did not fight in the liberation war” — meaning opposition leader Morgan Tsvangarai.

This is the moment of fate. Will they accept defeat and allow the political process to move forward into the future or will they remain stubbornly wedded to the loyalties of the past?

BEIT BRIDGE, South Africa-Zimbabwe border – Zimbabwean English has always been wonderfully inventive. The country itself is fondly nicknamed “Zim”, a beer is a “shumba” after one of the most popular brands “Lion” beer, and a crocodile is a “flatdog.”

CNN correspondent Robyn Curnow reports from the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe.

But now, it is something called “the Zek” that is consuming most Zimbabweans’ lives.

“I wonder why it is,” one man asked me early this morning on the South African-Zimbabwe border post, “that the Zek is taking so long.”

“The Zek??” I replied, mystified.

“Yes,” he said emphatically, “the Zek is really taking its time now. I wonder what it means? Maybe the government is not doing so well after all. If they were winning the Zek would be doing its work more speedily.”

“What,” I pleaded with him, ‘is the Zek?”

“The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission,” he told me. ZEC are its initials — so, of course, “the ZEK.”

What else could it be called?

With the opposition MDC claiming to lead the polls and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party trailing in the count at this stage, many people here at Beit Bridge on the border are beginning to hope — for what they are not quite sure yet.

There is still much fear in Zimbabwe. Those who have crossed the border from Zimbabwe tell us that police are patrolling the major cities and that the army has been called back to barracks to wait in readiness.

As the slow vote counting continues, this is the time of rumor. We hear from a number of credible sources that the generals met for hours last night and then again with President Mugabe this morning.

Then there are the unfounded stories. “The borders are closed!” someone says to me on my cellphone — when it is clear to me, standing on the very border that they are open.

Callers to the morning radio talk shows in Johannesburg were claiming that Robert Mugabe had fled to Malaysia last night!Where do these rumours come from?

It is impossible to tell, but one thing is clear. People, at last, are expecting something. Do they yet dare hope for a change?

“I would caution them,” another Zimbabwean man said to me at a gas station. “That old man has cheated many elections before this one. We will have to see what he does.”

BEIT BRIDGE, South Africa-Zimbabwe border – “What do you think will happen?” the man asked me.  His face was apprehensive.   “I’m not sure,” I replied.  He was a Zambian truck driver who had to pass through the whole length of Zimbabwe to get to his destination further north on the continent.  It was Saturday, the day of the elections and he was stuck at the border post in South Africa.

He glanced down at the ground briefly and then looked at me again.  “That’s why I want to get through Zimbabwe as soon as possible.  I’m scared they’ll close the border and then I’ll never get through.  Or — “. 

The rest of his statement he left unsaid, in the typical African way of politeness that seeks to avoid disturbing other people with unpleasantness.  I knew exactly what he meant.  On his mind was what many people around the world are wondering.  Will there be violence in the wake of Zimbabwe’s elections?

So far there has been none, and I’m sure my Zambian acquaintance got through okay.  But as the results come through, and the opposition MDC is claiming that it has won well over 60% of the vote, the question becomes more urgent.

The police have warned the opposition, or anyone else, not to announce any results before the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) has done so.  The MDC points out that the elections results are public knowledge.  A clash looms.  There are reports from inside Zimbabwe that police have already raided opposition offices.

On the border the trucks are flowing through the gates faster and faster.  Many of them heading not for Zimbabwe but for countries further north.  All of them are anxious that things might go wrong in that country and their route blocked.

In the blazing heat at the end of the rainy season, thousands of Zimbabweans make their way into South Africa by foot, searching for jobs, food, and perhaps some money to send home.   The elections are over; but they mean little to these desperate people.

 The results are coming out, and the world waits to see what will happen next.

BEIT BRIDGE, South Africa-Zimbabwe border – The sun rises over the Limpopo valley – a magnificent panoply of scarlet and gold soaring above a horizon of thorn and baobab trees.  A trio of baboons lope across the tarmac in the dawn light.  But as we approach the South African-Zimbabwe border post, the human suffering here is revealed all too clearly amidst the natural beauty.

The fruit and vegetable sellers – refugees from Zimbabwe – who have set up their small stalls sit bleakly in front of their produce.  Many have been up all night, hoping to sell a few pieces of fruit.  Also, the baboons might rob their stalls and the powerful animals can be dangerous.

It is our second day covering the Zimbabwe elections as best we can from the South African border.  CNN is banned from Zimbabwe.  Today voting begins and we are up early to broadcast live as the polls open.  An older man with a church membership badge on his shirt and a broad smile that reveals a pair of missing teeth comes up to us as we are setting up our cameras.  “May today see the rise of Tsvangarai!” he says loudly, stretching his arms wide. “May we see Mugabe fall on his back!”  he adds with a booming laugh, but which echoes with more than a hint of anger, even despair.

His mixture of contempt and hostility are haunting.  He has seen all of Zimbabwe’s painful road to collapse.  Born at the height of white colonial rule, he grew to adulthood in a country called Rhodesia where blacks were second, even third-class, citizens.  He would have lived through the brutal guerilla war against white minority rule that ended in 1980.  Then Robert Mugabe was a hero preaching a new dawn of freedom and reconciliation.  Now he is reviled by many of his own people – like this man – as a tyrant.  Many Zimbabweans have lost so much hope.

Are these elections a turning point?  Will they really be free and fair?  If so, will the divided opposition really succeed in defeating President Mugabe?  If he loses, will he step down?  If he wins, will those of his people who now despise him, accept the result?  Over the coming days as the votes are counted, these will be the questions many in Africa and the world will be asking.  Everything is at stake now.

BEIT BRIDGE, South Africa-Zimbabwe border – The heat at the Beit Bridge border post between South Africa and Zimbabwe is stifling and the roar of diesel engines often deafening.   A small, but steady stream of people cross through the gates of the frontier, carrying bundles of clothes and packages of food past the coils of razor wire that separate the two countries.

The CNN team reporting from the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

There is election fever in Zimbabwe — but we, like many international and African news organizations, are banned from that country so we have report on them as best we can from the South African side.  Our satellite transmission truck is parked in a taxi rank alongside a row of fruit and vegetable sellers.  We can go no further than the fence, so we rely on the people crossing the border to give us some sense of what is happening on the other side.

They tell us that, unlike previous election years, the levels of overt violence are down.  There are very few cases of people being beaten or jailed for supporting the opposition, but the threat remains.

“These elections might be free because people are not being harassed,” a man tells us, “but I cannot say they are fair.  They have never been fair, not for 28 years.”

Others are reluctant to talk on camera, fearing repercussions for themselves or their families back home. 

Zimbabwe’s catastrophic economic decline and hyper inflation is clear.  Not even the government dares dispute this.  It blames the targeted Western sanctions which it claims have destroyed an African country for daring to stand up to the West.

But what do the people of Zimbabwe believe?  No one here on the border supports President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for nearly three decades.  Many are wearing free T-shirts supporting Simba Makoni, the former cabinet minister who has declared himself an opposition candidate.  The other popular T-shirt – also free – bears the slogan: “The Party is Over.  Are You Hungry Enough?  Are You Angry Enough?”

But is the view of these migrants the whole picture?  An estimated 3 million Zimbabweans have left their country – a quarter of the population.  The people we speak to represent their voice — but what of those who have stayed on?  Do they support their President and his defiant stance against the West?  We can’t tell.  Because we cannot go to Zimbabwe, we cannot practice the oldest skills of our craft, asking questions of people and reporting what we hear to the wider world.

President Mugabe has effectively reduced our role to that of being uncertain outsiders, unable to verify for ourselves the desperation and rage we hear from Zimbabwean exiles.  He has succeeded in part in gagging us.  But in that very silence lies a paradox.  He cannot dispel the doubts that much of the world has about these elections.