If Mnangagwa could engineer a smart coup what stops him from organising smart rigging?

Mnangagwa “needs legitimacy and cash. He can’t get cash until he gets legitimacy,” said Piers Pigou, an International Crisis Group analyst.

Sibusiso Moyo, Zimbabwe’s Foreign Minister — and a former army officer who played a role in the takeover — insisted that “nothing is going to be hidden . . . we are expecting the will of the people to take place”.

Biometric registration of more than 5m voters would help ensure a transparent vote, he added. Mnangagwa has denied any role in past vote-rigging.

In part because of biometric records, some diplomats in Harare are confident that blatant attempts at cheating, such as doctoring the voter roll, would be exposed.

The EU will send election observers for the first time since Mugabe expelled them in 2002 and Mnangagwa has said other international observers will also be welcome.

There are fewer reports of violence at this point compared with the same period before the 2008 and 2013 polls and there is more freedom to speak in public on politics, said Eldred Masunungure, director of the Harare-based Mass Public Opinion Institute.

“This election looks likely to be the freest, fairest and possibly the most peaceful since 2000,” Masunungure added.

“You would never have spoken about Mugabe even mildly critically in a kombi [minibus taxi] before. Even in rural areas, people are saying they can breathe freely.”

But intimidation may be harder to spot if ZANU-PF reverts to the more subtle forms of coercion that were seen in the run-up to previous polls — including making food aid dependent on support or bribing traditional chiefs to corral voters.

The biggest question mark remains the attitude of Mnangagwa’s military backers.

“The army is loyal to ZANU-PF. I don’t see them letting it lose power. People are still afraid,” said Lincoln, a currency trader who declined to give his full name.

Residents of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city and an opposition stronghold, told the Financial Times that army units patrolled the streets at night subjecting them to random identity checks.

“If they could engineer a smart coup,” Mr Masunungure warns, “what more is needed to organise a smart rigging?”

By Joseph Cotterill for the Financial Times

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