“They stole your voice and vote however by no means your hope. It’s a blatant and gigantic fraud,” Chamisa wrote Sunday on X, previously generally known as Twitter.
Addressing the media later at a information convention, Chamisa mentioned Zimbabwe was struggling by means of a “vicious cycle of disputed elections” and accused Mnangagwa, who first got here to energy following a navy takeover in 2017, of staging a “coup” towards the poll.
“You aren’t the final Zimbabwean; you aren’t the one Zimbabwean,” Chamisa mentioned, addressing Mnangagwa, who heads the ruling Zimbabwe African Nationwide Union — Patriotic Entrance, or ZANU-PF. “We’re all Zimbabweans, all of us rely. All of us matter and we are going to be certain we take our stand.”
However the opposition chief, who additionally ran for president in 2018, stopped in need of pledging to formally contest the outcomes. Beneath Zimbabwe’s structure, candidates who need to problem the ultimate rely must file a petition with the constitutional court docket inside seven days of the fee declaring a winner.
As an alternative, Chamisa, who leads the Residents Coalition for Change get together, mentioned that the get together and its supporters “have one million instruments at our disposal to attain our finish.”
The disputed vote comes as Zimbabwe, in southern Africa, grapples with hovering inflation and widespread corruption, the end in a part of a long time of financial mismanagement below former president Robert Mugabe, who based ZANU-PF.
Mugabe spent 37 years in energy earlier than the navy ousted him in a coup and put in Mnangagwa. The brand new chief vowed to sort out Zimbabwe’s catastrophic financial issues — however each inflation and unemployment stay sky-high. And key individuals in Mnangagwa’s circle have been ensnared in high-level corruption instances.
Late final yr, the US imposed sanctions on 4 individuals, together with Mnangagwa’s son, for graft and undermining democracy in Zimbabwe.
“We urge the Zimbabwean authorities to take significant steps in direction of making a peaceable, affluent, and politically vibrant Zimbabwe, and to handle the foundation causes of a lot of Zimbabwe’s ills: corrupt elites and their abuse of the nation’s establishments for his or her private profit,” the Treasury Division mentioned in a press release saying the sanctions.
Farai Mukupete, 58, is a Chamisa supporter and member of the Zimbabwean diaspora in Britain. When reached by telephone, he mentioned he was distraught by what he described as a “stolen election.”
“He’s enriching himself and his household,” Mukupete mentioned of Mnangagwa. “He’s constructing an empire for himself and his household out of the assets of this nation.”
Mukupete mentioned some Zimbabweans are beginning to view Mugabe extra favorably than the present president. “Although they hated Mugabe within the final years of his rule, persons are starting to say he was significantly better than Mnangagwa, regardless of all his failures,” he mentioned.
Exterior observers, together with the European Union, criticized Zimbabwean authorities for fostering a “local weather of concern” across the election, together with voter intimidation and the arrest of unbiased screens forward of the polls.
“Through the election course of, elementary freedoms had been more and more curtailed … which resulted in a local weather of concern,” the E.U. mission mentioned in a press release Friday. “The election course of fell in need of many regional and worldwide requirements, together with equality, universality, and transparency.”
Nkululeko Sibanda, a employee for the Chamisa marketing campaign in Harare, mentioned the extent of disorganization and violations he witnessed at polling facilities was “surprising.” In a telephone interview from the capital, he mentioned he spent many of the second day of voting arguing with election officers who mentioned they didn’t even have sufficient ink to stamp the ballots, which was required to validate them.
“It’s unbelievable,” he mentioned. “My hope is that ZANU-PF will come to its senses and understand that they can’t run this nation.”
On Sunday, Mnangagwa denied participating in fraud to win the election. On the X platform, he mentioned his victory was “a testomony to the facility of unity and progress.”
“Collectively, we are going to proceed constructing a brighter future for Zimbabwe,” he wrote.