Opposition claims win in Zimbabwean election

The opposition party claimed victory Sunday based on early results in the Zimbabwean election.

This election is considered the most serious challenge yet to the 28-year rule of President Robert Mugabe, who is hoping to be voted back into office for a sixth time.

"It's a historic moment for all of us. We have won this election, we have won this election," Tendai Biti, secretary general of the main opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, told reporters, diplomats and observers at a Sunday morning briefing.

Polls closed late Saturday in nationwide elections amid allegations of ballot fraud.

The day began with residents in many districts lining up by the hundreds before polling stations opened for voting in presidential, parliamentary and local government elections.

Complaints emerged of elections observers being barred from some polling stations, reports of voters being turned away, as well as "several incidences of people thinking there were some dodgy dealings at the polling stations," the CBC's Adrienne Arsenault reported from the capital Harare.

She described the scene in the capital late Saturday as "fairly calm" following the vote.

The tally is expected to take several days, but there are fears that a victory for Mugabe amid allegations of a rigged vote could spark turmoil in the beleaguered southern African nation. Zimbabweans are caught in the daily grip of the country's economic collapse that has led to the highest inflation rate in the world.

"People here are very frustrated," Arsenault said. "They are poor. They are hungry. They are ill, and many of them are saying they think the answer to solving their problems is a political one. They want change."

About six million people were eligible to cast ballots in a three-way presidential battle that pitted Mugabe against Movement for Democratic Change Leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who narrowly lost the disputed 2002 elections, and former ruling party loyalist and finance minister Simba Makoni, who ran as an independent.

Makoni has shaken up Zimbabwe's politics with his appeal to disillusioned citizens, threatening to take votes from both the opposition and the ruling Zanu-PF party.

Tsvangirai accused Zanu-PF of rigging the vote in favour of Mugabe. The opposition leader urged supporters at a rally Friday to remain at polling stations until they closed and the counting began, to help prevent fraud.

'Flat-out rigging,' says opposition leader

In the largely rural Harare North constituency, more than 8,000 people were listed as registered voters in a stretch of land with cornfields and just a few empty shacks.

Some voters who lined up outside the district's polling station on Saturday told CBC News that they lived elsewhere in the country, but were given the land by Mugabe and were "repaying his kindness with their votes."

Opposition candidate Theresa Makone told the CBC's Arsenault that the practice is "flat-out rigging" in a constituency that she's trying to win. She said she has complained about "ghost voters," but no one is listening.

Few foreign news organizations have been allowed into the country to cover the elections. The CBC has radio and television reporters in Zimbabwe, but the government rejected applications from such major broadcasters as the BBC and CNN.

Government critics have alleged that Mugabe has tried to buy votes by giving supporters cars and televisions, a charge he denied as he prepared to cast his ballot on Saturday.

"We are not in the habit of cheating," he said. "We don't rig elections."

In downtown Harare, soldiers and police maintained a high profile in the streets, patrolling in armoured personnel carriers with water cannons.

The economy was one of the major election issues. Zimbabwe used to be one of the most prosperous countries in Africa. Now, the rate of inflation is more than 100,000 per cent, the unemployment rate is 80 per cent, and there are crippling shortages of food, medicine and electricity.

Zimbabwe's economy began failing about eight years ago, after Mugabe launched a land-reform scheme that saw thousands of white-owned farms invaded and seized by former war veterans and ruling party supporters.

Mugabe, 84, led Zimbabwe to independence from rule by a tiny white minority in 1980. In recent years, local critics and Western leaders have accused him and the Zanu-PF party of increasing authoritarianism and corruption.