With elections only eight days away, President Mugabe looks like being overwhelmed by a wave of support for the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as the 84-year-old leader's grip on power falters.

Mr Tsvangirai's formidable backing in Zimbabwe's urban areas has been consolidated since the election campaign began five weeks ago and now, after a series of forays into the poverty-stricken rural areas where the ruling Zanu (PF) party has hitherto held control, it is clear that Mr Mugabe has a fight on his hands there, too.

On Wednesday Mr Tsvangirai pushed into Mashonaland West, Mr Mugabe's home province, to draw mostly large crowds of exultant peasants responding to his chant of chinja! - Shona for change - in a region where until very recently it would have been almost impossible for his faction of the Movement for Democratic Change to campaign.

In the small farming town of Karoi, 124 miles (200km) north of Harare, at least 8,000 people filled the local rugby ground to give the 56-year-old former national labour movement leader an ecstatic welcome, singing handidzokera shure (no going back) and waving red plastic cards to signify Mr Mugabe's “sending off”.

“It is unimaginable that we could have come to this place [before],” Mr Tsvangirai said in an exclusive interview after leaving St Boniface's Catholic mission in Urungwe district, where about 2,000 people respondedjoyously to his promise. “Bit by bit the rooster is going to be served up,” a reference to Mr Mugabe's symbol, the cockerel.

Mr Mugabe, by contrast, has been securing large numbers at rallies but by dragooning children and “rent-a-crowd” contingents, watched over by soldiers with automatic rifles and secret police. On Wednesday, after he held a rally 44 miles south of Karoi in his home town of Chinhoyi, I counted 11 heavy lorries, each laden with about 100 people, on the way back to the towns - some as far as 60 miles away - where they had been picked up.

About 18 miles outside Karoi a farmer said that Zanu (PF) had to call off a meeting with local officials on Sunday because only ten people turned up - in an area dominated by ruling party settlers occupying former white-owned land. “Zanu (PF) is finished,” he said.

In Magunje, a business centre near Karoi, Mr Mugabe cut short a rally last week after first the local electricity supply grid and then two diesel generators failed to power the public address system. “People at the back were shouting at him: ‘Can you see what is happening to the country?',” said one man who attended. Sources there said that two technicians of the national electricity utility were arrested on suspicion of switching off the power.

Last week a poll surprised analysts by reporting that a survey had given Mr Tsvangirai 28 per cent of the vote in the run-up to presidential elections on March 29. Mr Mugabe had 20 per cent and Simba Makoni, Mr Mugabe's former Finance Minister, 8 per cent. The election is being held simultaneously with parliamentary and local council elections. Mr Mugabe previously had been expected widely to be ahead.

The elation is overshadowed by what election watchdogs say is a determined effort to rig the ballot.

Mr Tsvangirai said that he was concerned about changes to the electoral law to allow policemen into polling stations, which could intimidate voters. He also said that there were too few polling stations in urban areas to cater for the large numbers of opposition voters. There are also fears about the hugely inflated voters' roll, which could disguise illegal ballots, and the denial of postal votes for three million Zimbabweans who have fled abroad from the economic collapse.

He also claimed to have evidence of an order to the state mint to print 600,000 postal ballots, permitted only for diplomats and members of the military serving abroad, when perhaps 20,000 might be needed. In addition, nine million ordinary ballot papers have been printed for an official electorate tally of 5.9 million voters.

Mr Mugabe's victories against the MDC in the last three national elections since 2000 have been dismissed by independent election observers as the work of violence and comprehensive rigging. With the climate of violence significantly reduced, “fraudulent activity may be his target now”, Mr Tsvangirai said.

“We will declare victory because the people will have won,” he said. Mr Mugabe would claim victory again but, Mr Tsvangirai said: “We know this is a people's victory which he is trying to deny.”

The MDC went to court to challenge its previous election losses but this time “we are not going to court,” he said. “If he steals the people's victory, what will the people do? They will not accept that.

“The people must defend their victory,” he said. He would not elaborate and declined to speculate on what might happen.

The chief and his challengers

Robert Mugabe

Founder and leader of Zanu (PF). Has governed since the end of white minority rule in 1980. In that time, life expectancy has dropped to 39.5 years, less than half his age, and inflation has hit 100,000 per cent

Morgan Tsvangirai

Founder and leader of the Movement for Democratic Change. Twice charged with treason for organising opposition against the Government. His skull was cracked by a beating in custody

Simba Makoni

Challenger from within Zanu (PF). Was sacked as Finance Minister after arguing that the currency should be devalued, but retains a strong base of party support

Source: Times archives

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