Zimbabwe’s state paper acknowledges Mugabe’s election loss

Angus Shaw

associated press writer

President Robert Mugabe’s long-ruling party lost its majority Wednesday, bolstering opposition claims that impoverished Zimbabweans voted for change in the struggling southern African nation.

The opposition also claimed victory for leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Saturday’s presidential vote, but the state-controlled newspaper predicted a runoff — the first official admission that Mugabe, the nation’s autocratic leader of 28 years, had not won re-election.

The Movement for Democratic Change expressed confidence Tsvangirai could win a runoff with an even larger margin, but there were fears an embattled Mugabe would roll out every weapon in his considerable political and government arsenal to stay in power.

Election observer Imani Countess of the Washington-based TransAfrica Forum told The Associated Press that the most alarming conversation she had in Zimbabwe was with a senior official of the ZANU-PF party discussing a runoff.

“He was very calm and jovial but made it very, very clear that if there was a runoff, that ZANU would use all the state organs at its disposal to ensure victory, and that is very, very worrisome,” she said.

Countess, whose group promotes Africa’s interests in the U.S., said the powerful elite that has benefited from Mugabe’s patronage since independence from Britain had a vested interest in ensuring he wins.

The 84-year-old Mugabe, who hasn’t commented on the voting, was accused of stealing previous elections that Western observers said were marred by violence, fraud and intimidation.

This election was different because local results were posted outside polling stations for the first time. That let independent monitors and party representatives make tallies independent of the official electoral commission, which reported no figures in the presidential race while slowly releasing results in parliamentary contests, including losses by eight Cabinet ministers.

Photo by Tsvangirayi Mukwazi, AP Wire

People queue for bread in Harare, Wednesday, April 2. A third of the population depends on imported food handouts. Life expectancy has fallen from 60 to 35 years and shortages of food, medicine, water, electricity and fuel are chronic.