JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — President Mugabe’s regime stepped up its campaign of violence yesterday in the wake of Zimbabwe’s elections, evicting more than 60 commercial farmers.

The response to the polls, in which Mr. Mugabe is widely held to have come second to Morgan Tsvangirai, of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, in the presidential race, is a direct echo of what happened last time he lost a vote.

In 2000, two weeks after Mr. Mugabe lost a referendum on constitutional reform, the first white-owned farm was invaded and four weeks later the first white farmer killed.

This time the reaction has been quicker — even before the presidential election result has been announced.

“We’ve got over 60 farmers who have been evicted,” the president of the Commercial Farmers Union, Trevor Gifford, said.

“Every couple of minutes my phone is ringing with another case of eviction.

“Some are being given a couple of minutes or a day to vacate, but they have to leave what is there behind.”

Two of those forced from their land were black, he added. “They are targeting anyone seen as against the ruling party, it’s really sad,” he said. “We should be living in harmony, we need unity. There is enough land for everyone.”

Several farmers have launched court actions against eviction orders.

Mr. Mugabe has claimed that the MDC are Western stooges bent on reversing his land reforms.

Opposition supporters are also being beaten up, according to both the MDC and the campaign team of Simba Makoni, once a stalwart of the ruling Zanu-PF party who contested the presidential poll. An army source said that at least two military camps – Magunje near Karoi about 125 miles north of Harare, and Rusape, about 120 miles south east of the capital, had begun fitness training for a new intake of Mr Mugabe’s youth militia.

The violence appears to be geared toward putting Mr. Mugabe in a position where he can win a second-round run-off for the presidency. The MDC secretary-general, Tendai Biti, said the war veterans’ activity was concentrated in areas that were once Mr. Mugabe’s strongholds, where many voters had switched allegiance to the opposition.

“There’s been a complete militarization and a complete re-arming of mobs who led the terror in 2000 and 2006,” Mr Biti said. “I say to our brothers and sisters across the continent: Don’t wait for dead bodies in the streets of Harare.”

He said that the government was seeking to provoke protests that it could use as a pretext to declare a state of emergency, which would allow Mr. Mugabe to delay, or even annul, the election.

He said that he feared for the safety of five Electoral Commission officials arrested on Monday after the ruling Zanu-PF party claimed that the count was fixed against it.

A court yesterday began hearing an MDC application for an order to release the presidential results.