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Zimbabwe police arrested 10 union officials on Friday as they tried to lobby the finance minister over low pay for teachers, witnesses said, extending a government clampdown on dissent that has hobbled the country’s main opposition.
Sibusiso Moyo, Zimbabwe’s minister of foreign affairs and international trade, has defended his government’s crackdown on anti-government demonstrations saying that while everybody had the right to demonstrate public safety issues had to be taken into consideration.
Zimbabwe police deployed in force on Tuesday to block a street protest for the third time in five days, as the main opposition party said hopes were vanishing that the government might become more tolerant of dissent than the regime it replaced.
Hundreds of police backed by soldiers and army helicopters deployed in Zimbabwe’s second city on Monday, in a show of force that stopped the main opposition party from launching an anti-government protest movement for the second time in four days.
The security sector is on high alert in Bulawayo as helicopters, armored vehicles and heavy security detail roam the streets in response to the planned series of protest by the MDC over the country’s deepening socio-economic crisis.
“Today we didn’t want to risk people’s lives by continuing to be confrontational because if we had chosen to be confrontational there will be blood in the streets,” Nelson Chamisa, the MDC leader, told reporters in Harare.
“We will continue to mobilise but what you are going to see is a mutation of our strategy because when you are facing a confrontational regime you must also use tactics that are going to be above them,” he said, without elaborating.
By Farai Mutsaka
Zimbabwe’s police fired tear gas Friday to disperse anti-government protesters in the center of the capital, Harare.
A few hundred demonstrators gathered in Africa Unity Square, despite a police ban on the protest that was upheld by Zimbabwe’s High Court.
Tendai Biti: “The constitution guarantees the right to demonstration … yet this fascist regime has denied and proscribed this right to the people of Zimbabwe,” he said on Friday.
“…We have jumped from the frying pan into the fire after the coup of November 2017… We don’t accept the conduct of this regime, the conduct of Mr Mnangagwa.”
By Farai Mutsaka
In a show of force to discourage anti-government protests, Zimbabwe police with water cannons patrolled the capital’s streets and warned residents “you will rot in jail” if they participate in the demonstrations planned for Friday.
Six anti-government activists have been abducted and tortured this week ahead of the protests, as tensions rise over Zimbabwe’s deteriorating economic conditions, according to human rights groups.
Zimbabwe’s main opposition Wednesday said it will roll out protests starting this week to try to force President Emmerson Mnangagwa to set up a transitional authority, even as the government warned against such action and a rights organization reported an escalation in abuses.