“We have won this election. We are the leaders. We are even surprised why Mnangagwa has been declared a leader,” Chamisa, a lawyer and pastor who heads the CCC, told a press conference in the capital Harare.

Zimbabweans voted on Wednesday and Thursday for a president and new parliament, in polling marred by delays that sparked opposition accusations of rigging and voter suppression.

“We knew we were going into a flawed election. We have a flawed voters roll, a flawed delimitation report. We had a flawed ballot. It was a flawed electoral environment,” Chamisa said.

Zimbabwe’s President Mnangagwa wins second term in disputed vote

Earlier in the day at the presidential palace, Mnangagwa challenged those who contested his re-election to go to court.

“Those who feel the race was not run properly should know where to go to,” he said.

The vote has been watched across southern Africa as a test of support for Mnangagwa’s ZANU-PF party, whose 43-year rule has been accompanied by a moribund economy and charges of authoritarianism.

Foreign monitors announced on Friday that the elections had failed to conform to regional and international standards.

That did not stop Mnangagwa from thanking “various election observation missions who have been witnessing our electoral processes without bias”.

Although he also countered criticism by saying “we have demonstrated that we are a mature democracy”.

“As a sovereign state, we continue to call on all our guests to respect our national institutions,” he said.

But for political analyst Rejoice Ngwenya: “The CCC has good grounds to go to court and challenge the outcome.”

In the streets of Harare, some people expressed their disillusionment.

Zimbabwe police arrest 41 election monitors as votes are counted

“The results were no good, there’s something wrong somewhere,” Godwell Gonye told Agence France-Presse.

Another man, who asked to remain anonymous, confessed he had not looked closely at the results.

“We accept them for as they are, it’s the decision of the majority and we respect it,” he said.

ZEC chairwoman Justice Chigumba said Mnangagwa had garnered more than 2.3 million votes and Chamisa more than 1.9 million.

By securing more than half the votes cast, the president avoided a run-off. Voter turnout was 69 per cent, the commission said.

Nicknamed “The Crocodile”, Mnangagwa first came to power after a coup that deposed the late ruler Robert Mugabe in 2017.

A year later, he narrowly beat Chamisa a first time in a vote the opposition leader condemned as fraudulent, and which was followed by a deadly crackdown.

This time, voting was forced to stretch into an unprecedented second day because of delays in printing of ballot papers in some key districts, including the opposition stronghold Harare.

But under Robert Mugabe, its first leader, the fledgling democracy spiralled into hardline rule and economic decline, with hyperinflation wiping out savings and deterring investment.

The opposition had hoped to ride a wave of discontent over corruption, rising prices, unemployment and entrenched poverty.

But ZANU-PF was also declared the winner in the parliamentary race, securing 136 of the 210 seats up for grabs under a first-past-the-post system, against 73 for the CCC. One seat was not assigned due to the death of a candidate.

Another 60 are reserved for women appointed through a party-list system of proportional representation.