Zimbabwean opposition politician makes break for border

ZIMBABWE’S defeated opposition vowed yesterday to go to court to overturn the country’s election results as one of its senior members fled to neighbouring Zambia to avoid arrest.

Tendai Biti, a veteran figure in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), claimed asylum in Zambia after making a dash for the border, reportedly facing charges of inciting postelection violence.

There were conflicting reports about his whereabouts, with Zambia’s foreign minister saying Mr Biti was being kept at the border and would be denied asylum, while an MDC lawyer said he was already in Lusaka, the Zambian capital. Emmerson Mnangagwa was last Friday declared winner of Zimbabwe’s first elections since the downfall of Robert Mugabe in November, but the MDC claims the ruling Zanu-pf party won through “mammoth theft and fraud”.

According to Chronicle, Zimbabwe’s state-run newspaper, Mr Biti is among nine suspects sought for inciting protests last Wednesday in which the army opened fire, killing six people.

The asylum drama came as the MDC said it would lodge a court challenge against the election results in which Mr Mnangagwa won 50.8 per cent of the vote. The result was just enough to avoid a run-off between Mr Mnangagwa, the former Mugabe ally who replaced him, and Nelson Chamisa, his MDC rival, who scored 44.3 per cent.

“Those results represent a total negation of the will of the people,” Thabani Mpofu, an MDC lawyer, told reporters in Harare, claiming that the results published by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission “grossly mathematically fail to tally”.

Mr Mnangagwa, who is seeking to reverse Zimbabwe’s economic isolation and attract badly-needed foreign investment, had vowed the elections would turn a page on Mr Mugabe’s repressive 37-year repressive rule.