About 50 Zimbabwean opposition activists clad in yellow T-shirts were knocking on doors and handing out election flyers in Harare when a dozen riot police arrived and told them to disperse.
For the campaigners, the intervention was one more sign of a strategy to wreck their chances of cracking the 43-year grip on power by Zimbabwe's ruling party.
It will be"the facade of an election," said Nic Cheeseman, a democracy expert at Britain's University of Birmingham.Twelve candidates have set their sights on the presidency, but the competition is essentially a race between two men a generation apart, in a country beset by corruption, inflation, poverty and joblessness.
Opposition members have been arrested, dozens of CCC events blocked and the party complains of being given little airtime on national television. Fears of vote-rigging are widespread.The CCC activists had gone last Saturday to knock on doors in Glen View, a working-class suburb of the capital - a tactic that they believed would sidestep the ban on rallies.
Inflation in this agriculturally rich country of 15 million people was 175.8 percent in June, according to official figures, but some economists estimate it has topped more than 1 000 percent.Afrobarometer this month gave Mnangagwa an eight percent lead, but a poll by Elite Africa Research put Chamisa about nine percentage points ahead.
"What we want is peace and unity," the president, whose nickname is"The Crocodile" in a tribute to his political skills, told a rally last week.
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