Opposition says 'Mugabe must go' as elections loom

CHEERING crowds greeted Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader, as he told a rally in Harare yesterday that President Robert Mugabe had "no option but to go" in this week’s parliamentary elections.

Waving flags, supporters climbed trees in the dusty Highfield suburb to get a better view of the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, to whom Mugabe supporters refer disparagingly as "chamatama" - the fat-cheeked one.

More than 5.6million Zimbabweans are due to go to the polls on Thursday for elections that Mr Mugabe’s party has vowed to win.

The opposition claims the ruling party has employed intimidation, propaganda and hundreds of thousands of non-existent voters in its attempt to steal the polls. "We are just saying, this time he [Mugabe] must go," said one supporter.

Mr Mugabe told his followers last week that the elections were "a matter of life and death". The president has been fighting his campaign on an anti-Blair ticket, warning Zimbabweans that Britain wants to recolonise the country and make them "slaves of the whites again".