Loser claims votes rigged in Zanu election

Zanu Harare South MP and Deputy Minister for Energy and Power Development Hubert Nyanhongo, who lost the provincial chair to Amos Midzi, said he would challenge the result.

Nyanhongo accused Midzi of rigging the election and called for a re-vote.

Official results gave Midzi, former minister of mines, a 1,052 margin of victory in the contest for this lucrative political position. Nyanhongo polled 807 votes.

Nyanhongo on Monday said that rather than requesting a recount, he would challenge the election results through the national commissariat, based on errors in the voting process, which he maintained clouded the outcome of the election to the point that the true winner was unknown.

Both Midzi and Nyanhongo had bussed in hordes of supporters to the party headquarters for the elections.?Sources said there were also machinations by competing factions in Zanu (PF) to install loyalists in key posts.

Zanu (PF) has been restructuring ahead of its December 8 to 13 congress, but the process has heightened factional clashes between supporters of retired army commander General Solomon Mujuru, who backed Midzi, and Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, who backed Nyanhongo.

Midzi furiously rejected the vote-rigging accusations.

In any case, the normal thing when you have an election and you dont believe in the process, you dont participate, Midzi said. Once you participate, it means you have accepted the rules of the game. You cant say after you have played 90 minutes towards injury time and you say all the regulations were wrong.

The new Harare provincial chairman said Nyanhongos change of tack was in sharp contrast to his reaction soon after the Saturday poll, when he congratulated Midzi for his victory.

While Richard Ndlovu, the Zanu (PF) political commissar, was not immediately available for comment, sources in the commissariat said Nyanhongo had not yet lodged a formal complaint.

Mugabes party has gone for more than a year without a provincial chairman in Harare after violence broke out at last Decembers inconclusive elections between Nyanhongo and Midzi. Policee had to use teargas and water cannons to quell violence at the Zanu (PF) headquarters as the rival camps clashed.

Zanu (PF) is torn by intense factionalism, much of it linked to the festering issue of Mugabes unresolved succession.