(dpa) - While Zimbabweans joined long lines outside polling stations Saturday to vote on the rule of President Robert Mugabe, some of their relatives living in South Africa were also having their say.
Around 500 Zimbabwean expatriates took part in a mock vote in Walter Sisulu Square in Soweto township outside Johannesburg Saturday morning to coincide with the election back home.
Zimbabweans cannot vote outside their country, so the exercise, organized by the Zimbabwean Solidarity Forum, carries only symbolic weight.
An estimated 4 million Zimbabweans have fled economic and political hardship at home in recent years, most to South Africa.
Wearing T-shirts marked "March 29, the party is over," in a dig at Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party, the mostly opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters were given pieces of paper marked with the names of the top three presidential candidates - Mugabe, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and former finance minister Simba Makoni.
"We are saying we are Zimbabweans and we have the right to vote," Zenzo Moyo, a teacher and political refugee from Bulawayo, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.