The South African Sunday Times newspaper with a portrait on the front page of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is read Monday outside the High Court in Harare. Zimbabwean electoral officials have yet to say whether opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai or Mugabe won the March 29 presidential elections, and the two rivals have adopted sharply contrasting strategies in response.

Harare, Zimbabwe ? Militant supporters of President Robert Mugabe targeted whites Monday, forcing about a dozen ranchers and farmers off their land as Zimbabwe’s longtime ruler fanned racial tensions amid fears he will turn to violence to hold on to power.

Mugabe’s opponents pressed a lawsuit seeking to compel the publication of results of the March 29 presidential election that they say Morgan Tsvangirai won.

The opposition leader urged the international community to persuade Mugabe to step down.

“Major powers here, such as South Africa, the U.S. and Britain, must act to remove the white-knuckle grip of Mugabe’s suicidal reign and oblige him and his minions to retire,” Tsvangirai wrote in Monday’s edition of Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

“How can global leaders espouse the values of democracy, yet when they are being challenged fail to open their mouths?” he asked.

Tsvangirai was in South Africa meeting with “important people” on Monday, said Tendai Biti, secretary-general of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

He met with Jacob Zuma, president of the country’s governing African National Congress, according to spokesman Jessie Duarte. Both Duarte and Biti declined to give details.

Zuma had been a critic of South African President Thabo Mbeki’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” toward Zimbabwe. But when he was elected ANC leader, he voiced support for that policy. Mbeki, who mediated failed pre-election talks between Tsvangirai’s and Mugabe’s parties, was out of the country.

A Zimbabwe court postponed until today an expected ruling on an opposition petition demanding the release of the presidential election results. Mugabe’s ruling party has called for a recount and a further delay in the release of results.

After an increasingly authoritarian rule during 28 years in power, Mugabe has virtually conceded he did not win, and is already campaigning for an expected runoff against Tsvangirai on a platform of intimidation of his foes and exploitation of racial tensions.

During a talk at a funeral Sunday, the president urged Zimbabweans to defend land seized from white farmers in recent years, the state-controlled Herald newspaper said.

“This is our soil and the soil must never go back to the whites,” Mugabe said, referring to whites by the pejorative Shona term “mabhunu,” the Herald reported.

He spoke as militants began invading more white farms and demanding the owners leave. Such land seizures started in 2000 as Mugabe’s response to his first defeat at the polls – a loss in a referendum on measures designed to entrench his presidential powers.

Commercial Farmers Union spokesman Mike Clark said at least 23 farms were invaded and the owners of about half of them were driven off their land. He said the farms were in at least seven areas across the country, saying land grabs had “become a national exercise now.”