Africa’s oldest president, Mugabe Declared Winner Of Zimbabwean Election

Africa’s oldest president, Robert Mugabe, was declared winner of Zimbabwe’s election on Saturday, but his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, said he would challenge in court a result he called a fraud that would push the nation back into crisis.

Mugabe, 89, who has ruled the former British colony in southern Africa since its independence in 1980, was formally proclaimed re-elected for a five-year term barely an hour after Tsvangirai announced his planned legal challenge.

“We are going to go to court, we are going to go to the AU (African Union), we are going to go to the SADC (Southern African Development Community),” Tsvangirai angrily told a news conference in Harare.

While African observers have already broadly approved Wednesday’s peaceful vote, independent domestic monitors have described it as deeply flawed by registration problems that may have disenfranchised up to a million people.

The United States and European Union, which have imposed sanctions on Mugabe over previous flawed elections and alleged abuses of power, say they are concerned over reports of irregularities in the July 31 polls.

Western election observers were kept out by Harare.