South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has criticized his country for endorsing the recent Zimbabwean presidential election. 

Archbishop Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate, said Sunday South Africa did itself a disservice by calling the election legitimate. 

South Africa was one of the few African countries that endorsed Zimbabwe's March 9 to 11 election in which President Robert Mugabe extended his 22-year grip on power, although South African President Thabo Mbeki was one of the three Commonwealth leaders who suspended Zimbabwe from the organization. The 54-nation Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe last week after its monitors said the election was neither free nor fair. 

Bishop Tutu says he is deeply disappointed that South Africa could be among those countries that could say the Zimbabwe's presidential election was "legitimate or free or fair". 

The former Anglican bishop of Cape Town added: "where democracy is not being upheld, we ought to say, for our own sake, it is not so." 

Bishop Tutu says he used to have a high regard for Mr. Mugabe but he added that the Zimbabwean leader's recent behavior is "totally unacceptable." 

Mr. Mugabe's government has marked more white-owned farms for seizure, extending a controversial state-backed and often violent take-over of hundreds of commercial farms by self-styled veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war. 

More than 100 people, most of them from the opposition, have been killed, mainly blamed on the Mr. Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party in the last two years. Thousands of farm workers have been assaulted and displaced from invaded farmlands. 

Some information for this report provided by Reuters.

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