Zimbabwe's Opposition Hopeful Casts Ballots Amid Cheerful Supporters

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, March 11, 2002

Zimbabwe's Opposition Hopeful Casts Ballots Amid Cheerful Supporters

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On a sunny Sunday morning, Zimbabwe's opposition hopeful Morgan Tsvangirai cast his ballots in a downtown constituency of the capital Harare, which is a traditional stronghold for his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) .

At Avondale Primary School, a well-equiped learning institute which catered the whites only during the British colonial rule, scores of local and international journalists thronged the school in anticipation of the presidential candidate's arrival.

Amid applause of hundreds of MDC royalists, Tsvangirai walked out of his deep green car amid heavy protection of dozens of plainclothes bodyguards.

When Tsvangirai in deep blue suit entered the polling station, a number of his supporters waved their unfold hands, a campaign sign of the MDC.

Also, some women supporters sang "Happy birthday to you" to celebrate his 50th birthday which falls on the day, the second polling day.

Tsvangirai, accompanied by his pretty wife who also cast her ballots, showed his passport in stead of voters' card to the polling agent to be confirmed before he dipped his fingers into ink.

His main rival, Zimbabwe's incumbent President Robert Mugabe, cast his ballots on Saturday in a primary school but he did not ink his fingers.

The 78-year-old veteran Mugabe, accompanied by his young wife, a formerly private secretary, and their two small sons, said after his voting that he was more confident of winning the election.

"I will accept the results more than anything because l will have won," said Mugabe.

Tsvangirai is a registered voter in Avondale, a whites dominantly inhabited area, where he enjoyed much support among those urbanites of European origin.

After his voting at 10:00 a.m. (0800GMT), Tsvangirai told journalists he hoped voters could make voting peacefully and fully express themselves.

"I think the voting time in Harare should be extended," he said in a London accent English before stepping into his car.

The polling station, which is a small hall, was circled by long queues of voters. Twenty percent of them are whites, who were sitting in their portable chairs under the shadow of trees, drinking soda while their black compatriots were standing, mostly arriving at the station 5 a.m. (0300 GMT), two hours before the official opening time 7 a.m. (0500 GMT).

At the polling station, some voters complained the pace of voting was very slowly as few as 60 people an hour were able to vote. On Saturday, the station was closed until 10 p.m. (2000 GMT), three hours later than the closing time.

Born in 1952 in Buhera in eastern Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai was the eldest son of a bricklayer.

The young Morgan left secondary school to become a textile weaver, but then went to work in a mine in Bindera, north-east of Harare, where he became involved in union activities and rose rapidly to become leader of the mining union.

In the late 1980s, Tsvangirai became head of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, which had been set up at Zimbabwe's independence.

But it was another decade before he really emerged as a political force. In December 1997 and early 1998, Tsvangirai led a series of strikes against tax increases which brought the country to a standstill.

These forced the government of President Mugabe to cancel two tax increases and, as it turned out, also to abandon a promised tax to help fund war veterans' pensions.

In 1999, Tsvangirai and his close friends created the MDC. Within months, the new party had defeated the government over its referendum on constitutional reform, which included clauses allowing the seizure of white-owned farms without compensation.

Tsvangirai is seen as representing a younger generation of Zimbabweans, particularly urban workers, who are less interested in Mugabe's historical role as Zimbabwe's founding father than what they see as his recent record of economic mismanagement.

Zimbabwe has more than 5.8 million registered voters who have cast their ballots at the 4,712 polling stations spread throughout the southern African country.

Five candidates are in the running in the presidential race. However, analysts said the race has come down to two men -- Mugabe of the ruling Zimbabwe African Union -- Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and MDC candidate Tsvangirai.

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