President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party lost control of Zimbabwe’s parliament on Wednesday for the first time since independence 28 years ago in a humiliating setback for the veteran autocrat even as the opposition declared it had also unseated him from the presidency.

Four days after unofficial figures from Saturday’s elections indicated the Movement for Democratic Change was sweeping to victory, the authorities finally conceded defeat in the parliamentary race and issued official results giving the MDC a slender majority in the lower house.