JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The crisis in Zimbabwe was “infecting the whole of southern Africa” and it was now “imperative” that there should be a new government there, the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said yesterday.

Mr. Miliband, on his first visit to the region, was speaking after visiting refugees from Zimbabwe in central Johannesburg.

He said he had seen the “human face” of the catastrophe in Zimbabwe during his tour of the Central Methodist Church, having met many orphans among those fleeing the country.

Around 2,000 Zimbabweans, double the usual number at any one time, were sheltering in the church’s hallways, stairwells and store rooms.

Many of them had fled beatings and pre-election violence that has seen more than 100 opponents of President Mugabe’s regime killed.

“No one who meets the people here could do anything other than redouble their efforts to secure international consensus that the Mugabe regime is not a legitimate representation of the will of the people of Zimbabwe,” Mr. Miliband said. “At the heart of President Mugabe’s rhetoric is the idea that this is a fight between Zimbabwe and Britain. It is not.

“It is a fight between two different visions for the future of Zimbabwe — one of which has the support of the Zimbabwean people and the other which is held together by a small clique that holds power on the basis of violence and intimidation today.”

Mr. Miliband will meet his South African counterpart, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, today to discuss the situation in Zimbabwe.