Zimbabwe's main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party led by Morgan Tsvangirai, has called on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to ensure free and fair elections in Zimbabwe next year.

In a statement, MDC's spokesperson Obert Gutu said: "We would like to call upon SADC to do whatever is within its power to ensure that next year’s elections in Zimbabwe be held in a free and fair environment that will guarantee a credible outcome.

"From the year 2000, elections in Zimbabwe have always invariably been marred by allegations of serious electoral malpractices. We now look forward to the holding of elections whose outcome would not be subject to contestation."The southern African country was expected to hold crunch polls in 29018 amid calls by opposition parties for electoral reforms.

Early this year, the opposition parties, through their New Electoral Reform Agenda (Nera), said that their patience was "running out" and that they would use various channels to ensure that the reforms were implemented before the elections, said reports.

Previous ballots have been marred by allegations of the existence of ghost voters, with names listed of people who were long dead, were under age, or who never even existed.