The Fear

"Don't go into town. That's the consensus. They'll be driving people to the stadium," she says.

This is the other side of The President's Birthday: The Fear. The fear that makes so many stay at home this Saturday, including the elderly residents of a cluster village near the centre of this eastern city. They'll be closing the shops anyway, goes the whisper. Trucks swerve past, laden with chanting supporters. Buses -- dozens of buses -- pull into the stadium. The fresh produce market, normally dotted with huge baskets, pyramids of fruit laid out on plastics and tarpaulins and ancient zambias, has been razed to make a VIP carpark. Across the road the new Spar store makes a good vantage point.

By night, the curry takeout on the golf-course in the lushly-green Murambi suburb has run out of everything but pork-chops. The VIPs did not stay in the stadium to feast on the huge pots of sadza, then.