Emmerson Mnangagwa wins second term as Zimbabwe’s president

The incumbent leader received more than 50% of the votes, according to the official tally

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has been re-elected to a second term, the African country’s electoral commission said on Sunday.  

According to commission head Priscilla Chigumba, Mnangagwa won 52.6% of the votes. His chief rival, opposition leader Nelson Chamisa, came in second with 44%, the official tally shows.

Mnangagwa’s party ZANU-PF thanked supporters, hailing the results as “a well-deserved victory” of the incumbent president. “We will continue to deliver on our targets as we march towards Vision 2030,” the party wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, referring to the government’s economic development program.

Chamisa’s Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) rejected the official results. In a statement, the party said the election has been “marred by vote suppression and egregious abuse.” The party said it had initiated an independent audit of the vote count.

The government was criticized by the opposition and international observers for “irregularities” during the voting. Officials failed to deliver paper ballots to multiple polling stations in the country’s capital Harare and some rural areas when polls initially closed on Wednesday. The delays led Mnangagwa to allow the voting to continue for an extra day.

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The campaigning centered around social issues, including corruption and high unemployment rate, as well as the country’s political future in the wake of the 2017 military coup, which ousted Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s leader for nearly four decades.

A vice president under Mugabe, Mnangagwa assumed power after the coup. He was elected to a full five-year term in 2018. The opposition disputed the election results that time as well.