Zimbabwe election officials say that President Robert Mugabe won the presidential election with 61 percent of the vote, compared to 34 percent for challenger Morgan Tsvangirai. 
 
 Voters look at posted results outside a polling station in Harare Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013 President Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF party said Thursday, that it has withdrawn an unauthorized message on its Twitter... (Associated Press) 
 
 Zimbabwe's main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Harare, Thursday, Aug. 1 2013. Tsvagirai said the election is "null and void" due to alleged violations in the voting process, but president Robert... (Associated Press) 
 
 Zimbabwe's main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Harare, Thursday, Aug. 1 2013. Tsvagirai said the election is "null and void" due to alleged violations in the voting process, but president Robert... (Associated Press) 
 
 The official state election commission announced results Saturday in which Mugabe Mugabe's ZANU-PF party won 158 of the 210 parliament seats, giving it a two-thirds majority in the legislature that enables it to make amendments to the new constitution and existing laws. 
 
 Tsvangirai rejected Mugabe's landslide victory, alleging massive voting fraud and calling for fresh elections. Tsvangirai said he will challenge the results in court. 
 
 Tsvangirai told a news conference that his Movement for Democratic Change party will not "participate in any government institutions" to protest what he said was voting fraud. Tsvangirai called for a peaceful response, despite the alleged voting fraud. 

 Image caption Robert Mugabe has led Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 
 
 Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has won a seventh term in office, officials say, amid claims of electoral fraud. 
 
 Mr Mugabe, 89, won 61% of the vote, against Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's 34%. 
 
 Mr Tsvangirai earlier said the elections for parliament and president were fraudulent and promised to take legal action. 
 
 He said his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would no longer work with Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party. 
 
 The two parties have been in a coalition since 2009, after the last election sparked widespread violence. 
 
 Results from this week's parliamentary election showed the MDC had been trounced, winning just 49 seats compared with Zanu-PF's 158. 
 
 In a news conference before the presidential result was announced, Mr Tsvangirai said Zimbabwe was "in mourning". 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption MDC party leader Morgan Tsvangirai called the election ''fraudulent and stolen'' 
 
 "The fraudulent and stolen election has launched Zimbabwe into a constitutional, political and economic crisis," he said. 
 
 He said he would produce a dossier of the alleged electoral fraud and he called on the southern African regional bloc, Sadc, to investigate. 
 
 His MDC colleagues had earlier called for a campaign of civil disobedience to isolate Zanu-PF. 
 
 The European Union, which maintains sanctions on Mr Mugabe and his senior aides, said it was concerned about "alleged irregularities and reports of incomplete participation" in Wednesday's election. 
 
 Former colonial power the UK said it had grave concerns about the conduct of the election, and urged a thorough investigation of all allegations of violations. 
 
 The US state department also called for an investigation and said the results were not a "credible expression of the will of the Zimbabwean people". 
 
 Monitoring groups disagreed over the conduct of the election. 
 
 The most critical account came from the largest group of monitors, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), which had 7,000 workers observing the vote. 
 
 Zimbabwe's election Robert Mugabe wins landslide in presidential election with 61% of vote 
 
 Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF wins three-quarters of seats in parliamentary election 
 
 Morgan Tsvangirai fails to get elected president for a third time, calls election a "sham" 
 
 Voting passes off peacefully, but observers claim "irregularities" resulted in one million being unable to vote Q&A: Zimbabwe elections 
 
 The organisation said problems with voter registration had left up to one million people unable to cast their ballots, mostly in urban areas regarded as MDC strongholds. 
 
 On Saturday, one of the nine members of the election commission resigned over the way the election was conducted. 
 
 Commissioner Mkhululi Nyathi said in his resignation letter: "While throughout the whole process I retained some measure of hope that the integrity of the whole process could be salvaged along the way, this was not to be." 
 
 However, the African Union, which had 70 observers, said its initial report suggested the election was "free and credible". 
 
 The AU's mission chief Olusegun Obasanjo said there had been "incidents that could have been avoided" and asked Zimbabwe's election authorities to investigate claims that voters had been turned away from polling stations. 
 
 Sadc, with 600 observers, broadly endorsed the election as "free and peaceful", but said it would reserve judgement on the fairness of the process. 
 
 Major Western groups were not invited to send observer missions. 
 
 Mr Mugabe has been president since 1987. He became prime minister when Zimbabwe won independence from the UK in 1980. 

 Early on Thursday morning, the day after Zimbabweans had gone to the polls to choose a new president and to send new representatives to our two houses of parliament and to urban and rural councils, I received a panicked call from a friend who works with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. 
 
 "We are facing a catastrophe," he said. The Movement for Democratic Change was on course to lose eight seats in Harare to Mr Mugabe's Zanu PF, he said. They had lost 22 of the 26 seats in Manicaland province, while all the seats in the southern province of Masvingo had gone to Zanu PF. 
 
 As the day unfolded and the results trickled in, the extent of the catastrophe became clear. What stood out the most was this shocking result: Zanu PF had won most of the seats in Matabeleland. 
 
 Just after independence, in the 1980s, in an operation called Gukurahundi, Mr Mugabe sent a North Korean-trained army brigade to the province to quell what the government said were secessionist elements. The Fifth Brigade killed thousands of people. 30 years later, Gukurahundi is a sore that has not healed, and the people of Matabeleland have not forgotten. 
 
 A poster of Robert Mugabe is seen ahead of the Zimbabwe election 
 
 Since the MDC emerged as the only threat to Zanu PF in 1999, Matabeleland has consistently voted MDC. But the results we were receiving suggested that the impossible had happened, that the people of Matabeleland had put aside Gukurahundi and found in themselves a new love for Zanu PF. They had voted Zanu PF, endorsed Zanu PF, they had embraced the party of the people who had killed their loved ones. 
 
 Later that day, I had lunch with friends at SAPES Trust, an organisation that hosts lively political debates and has the best African food in Harare. The usual SAPES crowd was there – journalists, political commentators, businessmen, diplomats. 
 
 On every face was the same shock and disbelief. There was no doubt in any mind that Zanu PF had pulled off one of the most spectacular cons in the history of electoral fraud. 
 
 In the run up to the election, SAPES had hosted a number of debates on what Zimbabwe could expect from the election. That it was played on an uneven field was clear. That the law had been flouted from the day that Mr Mugabe had proclaimed the election date right to the day of the election itself was equally clear. There was no doubt that the MDC would have to fight the hardest it had ever fought. And in addition to what was clearly and legally demonstrable were the rumours that hinted of what was to come and that said that an Israeli company had been paid vast amounts of money to manipulate the voters' roll. 
 
 And so we had expected theft, we had anticipated rigging, but the monumental scale of the theft took us all by surprise. 
 
 As we sat at our tables, trying to digest peanut butter rice and roadrunner chicken, sadza and T-bone steaks, a journalist shouted that Jonathan Moyo, one of the key Zanu PF plotters behind this election, had lost his seat. There was a small cheer, followed by laughter, but the laughter had a gasping, hysterical edge to it. 
 
 After lunch, I took part in a discussion for a South African TV station with two panellists who managed to lace their rage with eloquence. Ibbo Mandaza, SAPES founder and a former member of Zanu PF, was uncompromising in his assessment. If the Africans accept this, he said, referring to the Africa Union, then it means they have endorsed impunity. Brian Raftopolous, a political scientist agreed. The bar will have been set so low for African elections that they may as well not have any standards at all. 
 
 By the evening, the picture was complete. The MDC had been maimed beyond comprehension, the democratic space had shrunk and the hopes of Zimbabweans with it. That same day, former president Olusegun Obasanjo, the African Union's representative, left the country with this parting shot: "There is no such thing as a perfect election." 
 
 The next day, at a press conference full of protocol and hot air, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) observers delivered their verdict: the elections had been free and peaceful. And with those words, they have condemned Zimbabweans to at least five more years of Zanu PF's looting of state resources, Zanu PF's incompetence and mismanagement and human rights violations. 
 
 Zanu PF has won this election with a brutal and ruthless efficiency. If they can bring that singleness of purpose to managing the economy and bringing the country out of isolation, then Zimbabwe will be wealthy beyond measure. I won't be holding my breath. My thoughts are now on one single thing: how to survive the next five years with my sanity intact and my family whole and how to find a way to be happy again in a world that has showed that injustice wins over hope. But there is this: unless Zanu PF tampers with the new constitution, Zimbabwe now has presidential term limits. And that means that, come what may, there will be no President Mugabe of Zimbabwe in 2023. Now that is something to look forward to. 
 
 Petina Gappah is a writer, lawyer and fellow of the Open Society. She won the Guardian First Book Award in 2009 for her collection of stories, An Elegy for Easterly.
– Robert Mugabe promised up and and down he'd peacefully step aside if he lost Zimbabwe's election for president. Not surprisingly, his promise won't need to be tested: Election results out today show the 89-year-old won a seventh term over Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai by a margin of 61% to 34%, reports the BBC. What's more, his Zanu-PF will control two-thirds of the seats in Parliament and thus have a free hand to change the constitution as it sees fit, reports AP. Tsvangirai has already called the vote a farce and promised to challenge the results in court. Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah agrees with Tsvangirai in a column at the Telegraph, though she doesn't hold out much hope the results will be overturned. She does, however, see one silver lining in the form of the nation's new term limits. "Come what may, there will be no President Mugabe of Zimbabwe in 2023," she writes. "Now that is something to look forward to."