Previous statements have said that they would not contest the election results in court, as it would be futile given that it is controlled by Mugabe. Now, they have decided to do so in the districts where the most flagrant violations occured.

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has reversed its earlier decision not to challenge the results of last week’s parliamentary election in court. The party is now taking cases of what it calls the most blatant irregularities to the Electoral Court.

The Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, will challenge one or two results from some of Zimbabwe’s 10 electoral provinces.

MDC Spokesman for Justice David Coltart told The Daily Mirror, the party has no faith in the judicial system, because the challenges it brought in 2000 were not resolved. But Mr. Coltart said it is a way of exposing fraud.

The party’s spokesman, Paul Themba Nyathi, told VOA that, while the MDC has evidence of what it calls massive fraud in many constituencies, the cost of challenging all of them is prohibitive. The opposition party, therefore, decided to challenge results where it alleges what the spokesman described as “irrefutable irregularities.”

Of course, the government makes it prohibitively expensive on purpose.

If you wish to lodge an objection to the retention of any name on the voters???????? roll a $100 000 fee is charged. This amount constitutes the sum total or more of many pensioner????????s monthly earning, and more than the minimum wage was up until two days ago. Hence Zanupf are able to count on the dead not being removed from the roll.

The opposition certainly can’t afford to challenge the results in all of the districts, so going after the districts with the worst, most obvious violations seems to be all they can do at the moment. Of course, they’ll still face likely the most biased judiciary on the planet. At the most, a successful challenge of these two districts could result in the loss of Mugabe’s 2/3 majority, which would be a very happy occassion. It’s a long shot, though.

In other outrageous events for the day, South Africa’s Mbeki is criticizing everybody else for focusing so much on the Zimbabwe elections.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African President Thabo Mbeki on Saturday rebuked Zimbabwe’s critics for making an “extraordinary” noise about that country while ignoring bigger African crises like the war in Congo.

“You get reports that something like three million people have died in the Congo over the last few years because of the wars that are going on,” Mbeki told the South African Communist Party, an ally of his ruling African National Congress.

“But the amount of noise that you will hear about Zimbabwe, and no noise about the Congo, must surely raise questions as to why,” he said in a speech at a meeting in Durban.

Critics say Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has hobbled the opposition in a bid to hang onto power and plunged the country into political and economic turmoil through a policy of land redistribution using intimidation and violence.

Mbeki’s approach to Zimbabwe has been described as “quiet diplomacy”. He has been reticent to criticise Mugabe despite campaigning for good governance elsewhere in Africa.

That policy has been attacked as too soft on Mugabe by opposition leaders in Zimbabwe as well as politicians and commentators in South Africa and the West.

Mbeki contrasted Zimbabwe’s situation with instability killing 1,000 people every day in the Democratic Republic of Congo, mostly from hunger and disease, on top of the 3.8 million people who have died since the war began in 1998.

“Why is it so easy to ignore the death of 3 million people and make extraordinary volumes of noise about another country where only a few people have died. There is something not right about it,” he said.

Mbeki also questioned why the killing of 300,000 people in Burundi’s civil war was “also not spoken about”.

Western observers said Zimbabwe’s March 31 general elections were skewed in favour of Mugabe’s ruling party, which won. Southern African nations gave the polls a clean bill of health.

Mbeki did not mention the poll.

Mbeki, whose second term expires in 2007, jokingly told delegates he had a problem with the ANC’s two-term presidential policy.

He said he understood the Communist Party wanted to run independent of the ANC in 2007 and if it did he would join the party “providing you remove the two term limitation”.

Behind every joke, there is a little bit of truth.