ZIMBABWE: It was a tale of two rallies in Harare yesterday. President and challenger entered the home straight of Zimbabwe's most bitterly contested election, and the contrasts were striking.
President Robert Mugabe railed before a small, timid crowd about land injustices, racial hatred and past victories. Mr Morgan Tsvangirai spoke to a cheering throng about prosperity, cultural diversity and a violence-free future.
"The whites want us to be slaves," Mr Mugabe thundered before 4,000 people in Harare's Mbare township yesterday morning. An hour later Mr Tsvangirai, addressing a crowd three times that number, promised the "Second Republic of Zimbabwe".
With political violence against opposition supporters continuing sometimes with the connivance of the police President Mugabe has drawn a storm of criticism from the international community. He has responded in a characteristically ebullient fashion, defying all attempts to censure him.
But although his controversial land reform policies may have some support in rural areas, yesterday's rallies suggested that his support base in the capital has all but collapsed.
Several hundred police and soldiers lined a grassy clearing in Mbare, where he sat alongside his young wife, Grace, party stalwarts and delegates from the Libyan embassy. (Libya's mercurial leader Col Muammar Gadafy has been one of Mr Mugabe's most loyal supporters, thanks to their shared contempt for Western powers.)
After opening remarks from Joseph Chinotimba - a war veteran recently acquitted on charges of shooting an opposition supporter Mrs Mugabe led an attack on Mr Tsvangirai as "the tea-boy" of the British government.
Then Mr Mugabe rose from his armchair. At first he recalled at length the struggle against Ian Smith's white racist regime and his 11-year stint in jail. Then he concentrated on now-familiar denunciations of Mr Tony Blair, whom he accuses of harbouring "neo-colonial" aspirations.
"What is their business here?" he asked. "How can the prime minister of Britain behave like a street kid?" The opposition Movement for Democratic Change comprised British "stooges" and "a party of murderers" guilty of abductions and killings.
However human rights groups report that of over 100 politically related deaths in the past two years, the majority have been of MDC supporters, usually killed by government supporters.
The crowd cheered on cue but was otherwise silent. In contrast a deafening cacophony of whistles, shouts and open-handed salutes - the MDC slogan - greeted Mr Tsvangirai at the Zimbabwe grounds in nearby Highfield.
Many of the 15,000-strong crowd wore red "No to violence" stickers on their foreheads.
Size was not the only difference. While the front rows of Mr Mugabe's rally was lined with middle-aged women wearing dresses bearing his face, the Tsvangirai rally was dominated by young people who pushed towards the front to get a better view of their leader. One preliminary speech was interrupted by an overladen tree branch that came crashing down, bringing several people with it.
Mr Tsvangirai who was last week accused of plotting to assassinate Mr Mugabe said he was finishing the "process of change" started two years ago, when the MDC came from nowhere to win a near majority of seats in parliamentary elections.
Land reform was necessary but not the most important issue, he said. The first priority was food. Mr Mugabe, on the other hand, only made passing reference to the food crisis gripping Zimbabwe,
Mr Tsvangirai said he had "plans in place" to secure enough maize to feed the country for a year. And whereas Mr Mugabe accused white businesses of deliberately closing down to "force blacks onto the streets and turn them against their government", Mr Tsvangirai spoke of the urgent need to attract foreign investors.
Both candidates have dubbed their campaigns the "third Chimurenga". The first Chimurenga or "liberation" was in 1896, when spiritual leaders rose against British colonists. The second was the 1970s guerrilla war. For Mr Mugabe the third Chimurenga will be the defeat of the MDC and their "British masters". For Mr Tsvangirai it will be the foundation of "the second republic of Zimbabwe". An opinion poll published 11 days ago showed Mr Tsvangirai in the lead, but in a sign of growing fears nearly 60 per cent of those surveyed refused to say how they would vote.