Morgan Tsvangirai

Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai claimed Tuesday to have defeated President Robert Mugabe in Saturday's presidential election and called on the longtime leader to respect voters' will. In his first public appearance since the vote, Tsvangirai endorsed official results released thus far and said any talks on a smooth transition could occur only after the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's final announcement of the tally.

President Robert Mugabe's party has lost its majority in parliament after 28 years in power, election officials announced Wednesday, as the aging Zimbabwean leader faced a more damaging blow: the virtual certainty of a runoff in the presidential race that he has scant hope of winning.

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is considering whether to pull out of the June 27 presidential runoff election, fearing it will be a charade, a spokesman said Friday. A growing number of African nations, the United States and former colonial power Britain have said they do not believe the balloting will be free and fair because of violence that the opposition blames on President Robert Mugabe.

Things have changed a lot in the land of the billion-dollar plastic shopping bag in the last couple of months. Before the March 29 presidential election, the biggest bank note was $50 million. Now, in the wake of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's decision to pull out of the runoff vote scheduled for Friday, there is a $50 billion bank note and one U.S. dollar buys more than 7 billion Zimbabwean dollars.

Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai sought refuge in the Dutch Embassy here just hours after he pulled out of the presidential runoff election scheduled for Friday, citing rising violence by supporters of longtime President Robert Mugabe. Despite the opposition's withdrawal, the Zimbabwe ruling party's crackdown continued unabated Monday, with 60 opposition activists arrested by riot police in a lunchtime raid at the opposition headquarters.

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his bitter rival, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, shook hands for the first time in a decade Monday, agreeing to settle the country's violent political crisis. The handshake in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, came after 120 opposition activists were killed in recent months in state-sponsored violence, thousands were jailed and tens of thousands of opposition supporters were driven from their homes.

Hopes for a way forward in Zimbabwe's elections dispute hang on a weekend meeting of the regional Southern African Development Community, after negotiations this week between the ruling party and the opposition failed to seal a deal. Despite upbeat talk from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the mediator of the talks, South African President Thabo Mbeki, little progress was made on the key issue: the division of power between Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Talks aimed at saving a power-sharing deal collapsed Sunday after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai rejected a call by regional leaders to share control of Zimbabwe's police with the party of President Robert Mugabe. Control of the police force, which has been used as a tool of repression by Mugabe's government for years, has been a deal-breaker for Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, since talks began after elections this year.

It was Day One for Zimbabwe's new government of national unity Friday, and already the paralysis had set in: The swearing-in ceremony that was supposed to usher in a new era of hope was delayed for hours by bitter squabbling. And in a sign that hard-liners in President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party remain bitterly opposed to the new prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, security forces arrested senior Tsvangirai ally Roy Bennett and charged him with treason.

Why are all those women carrying buckets of water on their heads? That was the first riddle that David Coltart, Zimbabwe's new education minister, faced last month as he walked into his high-rise headquarters. "The reason is that the whole of the Ministry of Education, 18 floors, has no water in it. So my first, immediate task was to get the pump repaired. If you walk down the stairwells you will gag, the stench is so bad on some floors," Coltart said in an interview in his new office.