Zimbabwe votes in first election without Mugabe

Harare : Zimbabweans voted yesterday in the country’s first election since ageing autocrat Robert Mugabe was ousted last year, with the opposition vowing to overcome alleged ballot fraud and defeat the ruling ZANU-PF. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former ally in the ZANU-PF party, faces opposition leader Nelson Chamisa of the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) in a historic vote for the southern African nation. Long lines of voters waited outside polling stations from morning, with election authorities saying early signs suggested a high turnout nationwide.

“I just have to do this. I have to see a better Zimbabwe for my kids. Things have been tough,” Tawanda Petru, 28, an unemployed man voting in Mbare, a low-income district of the capital Harare, told AFP. “I’m going to vote for Chamisa, for change. I am not afraid, I can tell you.”

Mugabe, 94, who was ousted by the military in November, voted at his regular polling station in Harare alongside his wife Grace after making a surprise intervention on the eve of the election to call for voters to reject ZANU-PF. During a two-hour press conference at his sprawling mansion in Harare, Mugabe had said he might vote for the opposition MDC -- underlining Zimbabwe’s haywire political scene since his fall. Mnangagwa, voting in his Kwekwe constituency in central Zimbabwe, said Mugabe had the right to express his mind under the country’s new “democratic space”. “I am very happy that the process for campaign was peaceful (and) voting today is peaceful,” the current president added.