Mugabe's Party Shows Strength

Zimbabwe's ruling party has swept to victory in a special election, state radio reported late Monday, following a campaign marred by political violence and intimidation.

The radio, reporting the results in southeast Zimbabwe's remote and mountainous Bikita district, said Claudius Makova had received 12,999 votes to 7,001 for opposition candidate Bonnie Pakai with most votes counted.

The result was seen as an index of President Robert Mugabe's popularity ahead of next year's presidential election. Mugabe, 76, has been in power since the country gained independence in 1980.

The special election in Bikita was called after the opposition lawmaker who won the seat in June died of cancer.

In the June vote, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change won by a narrow margin. MDC officials claimed Monday that violent campaigning by ruling party militants had intimidated voters this time around. Militants and veterans of the bush war that led to Zimbabwe's independence camped near several of the district's 40 polling stations, MDC spokesman Learnmore Jongwe said.

Earlier, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp. had reported that about 4,000 people were turned away from polling stations during the weekend after their names did not appear on voting lists.

The ruling party hurled its own accusations Monday: Makova, the election winner, said opposition militants trucked in from other districts caused the violent clashes that marked campaigning in the district.

More voters would have turned out if they had not been threatened by opposition activists, he told state television.

The clashes during the campaign left one ruling party supporter dead, but there were no reports of serious violence during this weekend's polling.

In parliamentary voting around the country in June, Mugabe's ruling party won a slender majority, taking 62 of the 120 elected seats. The run-up to those elections was marred by violence that left 32 people dead and thousands homeless. Election monitors said most victims were opposition supporters.

Zimbabwe is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence, with inflation and unemployment soaring. Political violence has been worsened by the illegal occupation of 1,700 white-owned farms by war veterans and ruling party militants.

Mugabe has called the occupation a justified protest against unfair land ownership by whites. His government has begun nationalizing hundreds of white-owned farms, which it says it will hand over to landless blacks without paying compensation to white owners.

By ANGUS SHAW