LONDON (AFP) — African icon Nelson Mandela and US President George W. Bush led heightened international pressure on Robert Mugabe ahead of the one-man presidential run-off election in Zimbabwe on Friday.
Mandela, the world's favourite elder statesman, broke his silence on the Zimbabwe crisis late Wednesday, adding his moral weight to growing international outrage at the violence in Zimbabwe.
The 89-year-old former South African president, who rarely speaks on such matters in his retirement, weighed in late Wednesday during a trip to London to attack his fellow African liberation icon.
"We had seen the outbreak of violence against fellow Africans in our own country and the tragic failure of leadership in our neighbouring Zimbabwe," the Nobel Peace Prize winner said at a fundraising dinner.
He told an audience that included former US president Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown: "We look back at much human progress, but we sadly note so much failing as well.
"It is now in the hands of your generations to help rid the world of such suffering."
US President Bush said Friday's elections "appear to be a sham," referring to Mugabe's insistence to press on with the vote despite opponent Morgan Tsvangirai's withdrawal due to attacks on his voters.
"You can't have free elections if a candidate is not allowed to campaign freely and his supporters aren't allowed to campaign without fear of intimidation," Bush said.
"This is not just, and it is wrong," he said.
Tsvangirai topped the March 29 presidential poll but did not secure the required majority to win outright, according to official results. His pull-out from the run-off with Mugabe has offered a victory by default for the 84-year-old, who has held power since independence from Britain in 1980.
The United States is counting on fissures within Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party to allow a negotiated end to the crisis with the opposition, the State Department indicated.
Democratic US presidential hopeful Barack Obama lashed out at African nations for keeping silent on Zimbabwe, saying they had pandered to Mugabe for too long.
He said the United Nations and other countries "in particular, other African nations, including South Africa... have to be much more forceful in condemning the extraordinary violence that has been taking place there."
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's neighbours in the 14-nation Southern African Development Community called for the vote to be postponed at a summit in Swaziland on Wednesday.
SADC chief Tomaz Augusto Salomao told reporters that "elections under the current environment undermines the credibility and legitimacy of the outcome."
He called on the country to "consider postponing the vote until a later day."
Australia has advised its citizens to avoid travelling to Zimbabwe due to the election-related violence. Those already there should consider leaving, the department of foreign affairs said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meanwhile urged Zimbabwe's leaders to respond to an opposition offer to discuss forming a "legitimate" government.
"That offer obviously ought to be taken up, but it can't be taken up from a position in which the Zimbabwean authorities declare themselves the victors," she told reporters in Japan.
And she added: "African voices are speaking out all over the place questioning the legitimacy of this election."
On Wednesday, Britain advised its citizens to avoid all travel to Zimbabwe.
The former colonial power also said it was stripping Mugabe of a knighthood bestowed in 1994.
The Foreign Office said the removal of the honour was a "mark of revulsion at the abuse of human rights and abject disregard for the democratic process."
"There is growing international condemnation of Robert Mugabe and his regime and what they are doing to suppress the democratic will of the Zimbabwean people," the British prime minister's spokesman said Thursday.
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