Opposition leader rallies support and warns Zimbabwe's president he cannot 'steal the vote this time' as landmark poll looms and fears of post-election violence growvote this time' as landmark poll looms and fears of post-election violence grow
"WHAT Robert (Mugabe] does not understand is he can no longer steal this vote with the co-operation of the Movement for Democratic Change," Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's main opposition leader, shouted to an ecstatic crowd.
Yesterday, more than
8,000 people waited for two hours in a hot and dusty stadium in Chitungwiza, ten miles from Harare, to catch a glimpse of Mr Tsvangirai at his last rally before tomorrow's landmark election.
When the MDC leader finally appeared, the crowd went wild, screaming and whistling as people surged across the stadium to see him.
There were shouts of "chinja maitiro" – "change your ways", the MDC's slogan. Many in the crowd waved red cards to show it is time for Mr Mugabe, Zimbabwe's 84-year-old president, to leave office.
"Watch out, Robert," Mr Tsvangirai said. "It's over now."
When, by startling coincidence, Mr Mugabe's helicopter flew over the stadium, youths jumped to their feet and waved the MDC salute in open defiance.
In the final build-up to the election, excitement yesterday was at fever pitch.
Mr Tsvangirai, a former trade unionist, has assumed almost demi-god status among Zimbabwe's young urban working class.
"They say Jesus Christ got beaten for mankind and Morgan got beaten for Zimbabwe," an MDC official said a few days ago, referring to the brutal police assault on the opposition leader at a prayer rally in March last year.
The man his supporters call "super-sub" – super substitute – lost by only 400,000 votes to Mr Mugabe in the last polls in 2002. Both men are contesting tomorrow's election.
This time, however, there is a third candidate, Simba Makoni, the affable former finance minister who appeals to the educated business class and looks set to whittle away at support for both Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai.
Earlier this month, Mr Tsvangirai was leading in one private opinion poll with 28.3 per cent of the vote, against 20.3 per cent for Mr Mugabe and 8.6 per cent for Mr Makoni. But with fears of rigging and post-poll violence running high, the outcome is far from certain.
Voters not only have to choose a president, they also have to vote in a new parliament, senate and local councillors in a procedure which analysts are warning is ripe for chaos and confusion.
Nearly every tree trunk on the dusty 280-kilometre road from the eastern border city of Mutare and Harare has a campaign poster or two plastered to it.
Pedestrians waved to a passing car with open palms, Mr Tsvangirai's trademark salute. Further on, youths clasped their hands high above their heads in the gesture Mr Makoni uses.
In Headlands, a former commercial farming area 70 miles from the capital, one vegetable vendor dared to voice his support for the MDC, even though he lives in a stronghold of the ruling Zanu-PF.
"People are suffering too much," he said. "(Tomorrow] we are going to have a new president, Mr Tsvangirai."
Both Mr Tsvangirai and Mr Makoni have made the eight-year economic crisis sparked by Mr Mugabe's controversial white land grab in 2000 a key election issue.
Annual inflation is believed to have surged from 100,580 per cent in January to at least 200,000 per cent on the back of Mr Mugabe's unbudgeted pre-poll handouts of huge salary increases for civil servants and giveaways of buses, tractors and computers.
Prices have rocketed. A single egg cost Z$6 million (£100 at the official exchange rate) in Harare this week. Mr Tsvangirai's supporters call Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF the "ruining" party.
In Mutare earlier this week, luxury 4x4s cruised the roads with posters of Mr Mugabe on their windscreens. The president was due in town to address a rally – people were frogmarched from Sakubva market to attend, an observer said.
Throughout the week, Mr Mugabe handed out 450 cars to hospital doctors in what his opponents called a vote-buying tactic in a country with one of the worst HIV/Aids infection rates in the world.
Tomorrow's presidential, parliamentary and local council polls are seen as the most important since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980, but few expect the vote to be fair.
Earlier this week, the MDC claimed it had evidence of planned ballot rigging, with Mr Mugabe intending to declare a majority with 58 per cent of the vote. He must win more than half of the vote to avoid a run-off that could unite the opposition behind a single candidate.
The full article contains 801 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
