Zimbabwe's re-elected President fends off fraud claims

Zimbabwe's re-elected President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said those people questioning the results of last week's election, which an opposition leader dismissed as a "gigantic fraud", take their case to court.

The election commission said on Saturday that Mnangagwa, 80, had won the election with 52.6 per cent of the vote while the opposition Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC) leader Nelson Chamisa got 44 per cent.

Mnangagwa took over when longtime strongman Robert Mugabe was toppled in a 2017 military coup. His first term was marked by runaway inflation, currency shortages and sky-high unemployment.

Mnangagwa welcomed the election result, while Chamisa, speaking on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, said: "It's a blatant and gigantic fraud."

It was unclear whether the opposition would use the courts to dispute the election results, as Zimbabwe's judges have historically sided with the governing party.

Political analyst Munjodzi Mutandiri, from the Southern Africa Liaison Office, said the opposition had more to gain by taking to the streets than to the courts.

"The questions around judicial independence won't cure the legitimacy challenge (of the results) just as (the electoral commission's) impartiality and perceived lack of independence have created" the disputed results, he said.

CCC spokesman Promise Mkwananzi said in a statement that the official results differed from those tallied by the opposition.

"The CCC has initiated a comprehensive citizen's review of the vote count," he said.