HARARE, Zimbabwe — Soldiers took to the streets with armored cars and water cannons Friday as Zimbabwe’s security chiefs warned that they were ready to confront any violence during the weekend’s crucial presidential election in this economically wrecked African nation.
The opposition urged its supporters to defend their ballots against what they have charged is a plot by the ruling party to rig today’s vote.
President Robert Mugabe, the 84-year-old revolution leader facing the toughest challenge since he won power in 1980, told his final campaign rally that the election would show Zimbabweans’ opposition to former colonizer Britain, which he accuses of supporting the opposition.
Mugabe called for discipline at the polls despite “provocation from outsiders who are already claiming the elections are not free and fair.”
Running against Mugabe are opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, 55, who narrowly lost the disputed 2002 election, and former ruling party loyalist and finance minister Simba Makoni, 58. Preliminary results are not expected until Monday.
Tsvangirai urged opposition supporters to stay at polling stations until they close and counting begins.
“They would not rig in front of you,” he told about 4,000 people in Domboshawa, north of Harare. “We have won this election already. What’s left is for us to defend our vote.”
Friday night, election monitors from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community said they had observed “a number of matters of concern,” which they did not specify.
Zimbabwe’s security chiefs are firmly behind Mugabe and they gathered to warn against unrest, saying the armed forces were “up to the task in thwarting all threats to national security.” In Harare, soldiers on all-terrain vehicles and police on motorcycles escorted armored cars and water cannons making a show of force.
The security chiefs have made veiled threats of a coup if Mugabe should lose. The Defense Forces commander, Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, warned that his soldiers would not serve anyone but Mugabe.
Mugabe blames Britain and other Western nations for the ruin of this nation’s economy, which once exported food, tobacco and minerals. Zimbabweans now struggle to survive amid 100,000 percent inflation and dire shortages of food, water, electricity, fuel and medicine.
Some 5 million people, a third of the population, are thought to have fled the country in recent years. An average of 1,000 Zimbabweans pick their way through barbed wire barriers to sneak into South Africa every day, the Organization of International Migration says.
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