Mugabe confident of victory
2005-03-31 14:13
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe casts his vote at a polling station in Harare. (AP)
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Four Chinese men face deportation from Zimbabwe after they were arrested for killing more than 40 tortoises for meat, a report says.
A dusty road leads to the village of Wedza, where veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war eke out a meagre living on their farm cooperative, which after a promising start now brings only despair.
Harare - President Robert Mugabe on Thursday predicted a landslide victory for his ruling party in elections that the opposition in Zimbabwe charged were not free and fair despite a campaign that broke away from the political violence of the past five years.
Looking cheerful and smiling, Mugabe dismissed opposition concerns of election fraud as "nonsense" and said he was "very confident, absolutely confident" of winning a two-thirds majority for his Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party.
"It's going to be a victory for us," said Mugabe who turned up at a polling station at a Highfield township community hall accompanied by his wife Grace and young son Chatunga. "By how much, well, that is what we will see."
"Everybody is seeing that these are free and fair elections," said the 81-year old veteran, Africa's last independence leader who is probably running his last elections ahead of his expected retirement in 2008.
Sounding equally confident, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai turned up at a Harare school to cast his ballots with his wife Susan.
"This is not going to be a free and fair election," said Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) which is posing the strongest challenge yet to Zanu-PF's 25 years in power.
"The people will speak today and I am hoping that the outcome will be an MDC victory, I have no doubts about that," Tsvangirai said.
Under an early-morning drizzle, people could be seen queuing at polling stations in Harare's oldest township of Mbare to vote in the parliamentary elections, Zimbabwe's sixth since independence.
"I wanted to be the first in the queue, to be served early," said Beauty Chigutirare who stood in the queue in Mbare along with women with babies strapped to their backs.
"We need change," she said. "We want jobs, we want good houses."
"I want my party, the usual party, to win," said ruling party supporter Comfort Size, a firewood vendor. "We would expect it to win. We would expect it to continue with what they have been doing."
Analysts attribute the absence of bloodshed to Mugabe's desire to regain legitimacy as a statesman after presiding over what the United States now considers one of the world's six "outposts of tyranny.'
Mugabe, who led his country to independence from British rule in 1980, has vowed to "bury" the opposition in the elections, accusing them of colluding with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to recolonise the country.
Once considered the breadbasket of southern Africa, Zimbabwe is facing food shortages with the government admitting for the first time last month that it would begin importing corn meal, the national staple, to feed 1.5 million needy Zimbabweans.
- AFP