AU says Zimbabwe polls 'credible'

President Robert Mugabe's rivals slammed his election victory claims, branding the vote a "sham". Source: AAP

ZIMBABWE President Robert Mugabe's party claims he is on course for a landslide win in an election branded a sham by his rivals, with the southern African regional bloc SADC saying it is too early to call the poll fair.

Partial results of Wednesday's poll have given the 89-year-old a commanding lead, with his ZANU-PF party garnering 87 seats out of 120 declared.

"Our opponents don't know what hit them," party spokesman Rugare Gumbo said on Friday. "It's the prediction that the president might likely get 70 to 75 per cent."

ZANU-PF also predicted it would win a two-thirds majority in parliament, enough to amend the new constitution that introduced term limits and curbed presidential powers.

Mugabe's bitter rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, has rejected the vote as a "huge farce" and "null and void".

"It's a sham election that does not reflect the will of the people," he said, pointing to a litany of alleged irregularities with the voters' roll.

The independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network reported up to one million voters were prevented from voting in Tsvangirai strongholds.

But Mugabe won an endorsement from the African Union on Friday, with former Nigerian president and military leader Olusegun Obasanjo saying the vote was basically free and fair.

"There are incidences that could have been avoided, but all in all we do not believe that these incidents will amount to the results not reflecting the will of the people," he said.

However, the SADC said it was too early to declare the election fair, but noted the vote was free and passed off without violence.

"We have said this election is free, indeed very free," said SADC's top election observer Bernard Membe on Friday.

"We did not say it was fair ... we didn't want to jump to a conclusion at this point in time," amid deeply divergent accounts of voting.

With the spectre of fresh unrest hanging over the crisis-wracked nation, the SADC called on all parties to accept the result.

"In democracy we not only vote, not only campaign, but accept the hard facts, particularly the outcome," said Membe, who is also Tanzania's foreign minister.

Foreign diplomats have expressed deep misgivings about a poll they have described privately as non-violent, but fundamentally flawed.

Jeffrey Smith, from the Washington-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, said it would be wrong to disregard the final results, but "we must also not be blind to potential irregularities both leading up to the vote and on the day".

So far Tsvangirai has limited his comments to condemnation of the poll, but already there are calls for mass protests, and warnings that may prompt a bloodbath.

The top brass from his Movement for Democratic Change will meet on Saturday to decide their response.

Ahead of the meeting, top MDC official Roy Bennett called for a campaign of "passive resistance".

"I'm talking about people completely shutting the country down - don't pay any bills, don't attend work, just bring the country to a standstill.

"There needs to be resistance against this theft and the people of Zimbabwe need to speak out strongly."

The disputed outcome risks plunging Zimbabwe - which battled a decade-long downturn marked by galloping inflation and mass migration - back into deep crisis.

"If certain people feel their choice was not accepted, they may resort to violence," said Sean O'Leary a spokesman for a 3000-strong group of poll monitors from the Catholic church.

Investors also expressed fears about the impact of a Mugabe victory, which could roll back the power-sharing government's efforts to stabilising the economy after crippling hyperinflation and joblessness.

"It's back to extreme volatility," Iraj Abedian, the CEO of Pan African Investments, told AFP from Johannesburg. "We can expect fairly radical positions that will have populist support, but which will have huge implications."

Abedian predicted banks and financial firms could become the targets of a new Mugabe government seeking to extend its program of indigenisation, after agriculture and mining.

"The land grabs caused chaos in the agricultural sector and it took 10 years for it to settle down.

"The financial sector would have a similar impact. It would cause chaos, but ZANU-PF and Mugabe seem to like that."

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