Officials count vote for ex-veterans’ parliamentary seat

Zimbabwe began counting votes on Monday after a weekend by-election for a parliamentary seat left vacant by Chenjerai Hunzvi, the late leader of liberation war veterans who spearheaded the invasion of white-owned farms. Reuters reported that four parties contested the election, but analysts said the real contest was between the ruling ZANU-PF, for which Hunzvi had held the seat, and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Analysts said ZANU-PF was likely to retain the seat in Chikomba, a traditional stronghold of the ruling party in southeast Zimbabwe. “A defeat for ZANU-PF would be very shocking and of great significance ahead of next year’s presidential poll,” Brian Raftopoulos, a political analyst at the Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies, was quoted as saying. Hunzvi, a key political ally of President Robert Mugabe, died in June.

While voting in Chikomba was peaceful on Saturday and Sunday, the report said, the MDC accused ZANU-PF supporters of killing, two weeks ago, a headmaster who backed the opposition. ZANU-PF officials blamed MDC militants for the death, saying the man had defected to the ruling party. Results of the by-election were expected late on Monday.

Meanwhile, President Robert Mugabe gave a stiff warning to white farmers on Friday against resisting land reform. “I emphasise this against the background of a very dangerous trend where some commercial farmers are attacking the land demonstrators and resisting settler emplacements,” the official ZIANA news agency quoted him as saying.

“That will have to stop forthwith, unless these commercial farmers are ready for a conflict situation,” Mugabe told a meeting of ZANU-PF’s central committee. “We continue to watch this closely to see whether or not this amounts to a resurgence of military structures of the colonial period.” He added that the government would remove occupiers from land it did not plan to acquire.

According to farmers and analysts, violence on Zimbabwe’s farms has continued in spite of an agreement in Nigeria two weeks ago between Britain and the Zimbabwean government.

[For more information, see ‘IRIN focus on Zimbabwe’s continuing crisis’ http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/sa/countrystories/zimbabwe/20010917.phtml]