President Sam Nujoma and his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki said they were convinced the elections in Zimbabwe on 31 March would be free and fair. Outgoing President Nujoma paid a blitz visit to Cape Town on Wednesday for a few hours to bid farewell to Mbeki. At a joint press briefing they told reporters that everything would go smoothly at the Zim polls.

"There will be a free and fair election in Zimbabwe," Nujoma said according to radio South African reports.

According to President Mbeki there was "no reason to think that anybody in Zimbabwe will militate in a way so that the elections will not be free and fair". Mbeki further said Zimbabwe was the only member in the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) "that has an electoral law in accordance with the SADC protocol on elections". The oppositional MDC however accused the army and police of launching a crackdown on its members.

"Although there have been one or two incidents whereby police officers have
acted without bias and arrested ZANU-PF supporters for committing acts of
violence, on the whole the police continue to behave in an overtly partisan
manner," MDC spokesman Paul Themba-Nyathi said in a statement.
Most incidents of violence perpetrated against MDC supporters went
unpunished and the police continue to deliberately misinterpret existing
statutes to proscribe MDC campaign activities, he said. The army apparently brutally attacked 15 MDC supporters as they departed from a rally in Nyanga, Nyathi added.