Harare | Saturday
TENSION continued to rise in Zimbabwe late on Friday as violence escalated in the country’s second largest city following the murder there of a leader of the 1970s war of independence.
Clashes were reported between government loyalists and members of the main opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and Zimbabwean television showed pictures of a college in Bulawayo burning and also buildings in the northern city of Kadoma on fire.
There were no reports of any serious injuries, however.
Earlier on Friday, the Bulawayo offices of the main opposition party were firebombed, the party’s leader said.
Veterans of Zimbabwe’s 1970s war of independence, close allies of President Robert Mugabe, were blamed by the MDC.
Morgan Tsvangirai, party leader, claimed the attackers had been ”acting under police protection” and had chased firefighters from the scene.
”There is a deteriorating situation in Bulawayo,” Tsvangirai told a news conference in the capital Harare.
”As we speak, civil strife is taking place… I hope it will not degenerate to the point of losses of lives.”
Another representative for the party said that people associated with MDC were being harassed on the streets.
Zimbabwean Interior Minister John Nkomo appealed late on Friday for calm. ”Each Zimbabwean can contribute to maintaining stability,” he said.
He added that they had firm indications that a certain number of MDC leaders were directly implicated in the murder of the war veteran Cain Nkala.
Tsvangirai claimed, however, that the death of Nkala was being ”politically exploited.”
Fifteen MDC members, including an MP, have been rounded up by police in connection with the murder, while MDC supporters, according to Tsvangirai, have been singled out for attack by angry war vets.
A first group of MDC activists was arrested at the beginning of last week. They reportedly took police to a site near Bulawayo where Nkala’s decomposing body was found.
Nkala had been abducted from his home in Magwegwe eight days earlier by armed men. The police said he had been strangled with one of his shoelaces.
On Wednesday and Thursday, two more groups of MDC activists were arrested for Nkala’s murder. Fletcher Dulini Mcube, MP for Lobengula-Magwegwe, near Bulawayo, was detained in that wave of arrests.
MDC leaders have denied any involvement of the party in the murder, saying that two of the suspects in police custody who admitted to having taken part in the abduction and murder of Nkala did so under torture.
The secretary general of the MDC, Welshman Ncube, has accused police of ”protecting” the real perpetrators of the crime.
Nkala was suspected of having taken part in the abduction and probable slaying of Patrick Nabanyama during the campaign for Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections in June 2000.
Nabanyama, who worked on the campaign of MDC parliamentarian David Coltart, has not been seen since his abduction.
Early on Friday, a group of angry war veterans demonstrated in Bulawayo, calling for Nkala to be given ”national hero” status, an honour usually reserved for high-ranking or well known Zimbabweans who fought in the country’s war of independence.
Tsvangirai Friday called for MDC activists to show restraint.
”I urge our members not to rush into emotion,” he said, adding that Nkala was ”a victim of lawlessness and anarchy which is state sponsored.”
He accused the authorities of ”executing” MDC members before matters are brought before court.
”What kind of justice is that?”
The MDC leader, President Robert Mugabe’s main opponent in presidential elections due early next year, said the current unrest has ”everything to do with the presidential election.”
”We have to face reality — there will be no fair and free elections,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) on Friday announced its full support for Zimbabwe’s land reform programme.
”The SADC region supports 100% the land reform programme because the people of Zimbabwe really need land”, SADC chairman Bakili Muluzi told journalists in Maputo after holding talks with Mozambican head of state Joaquim Chissano.
The Malawian president explained that SADC supports the land reforms in Zimbabwe ”but maybe the way it is being done needs to be reviewed in order to respect the rule of law and the democratic way of handling the issue”. – Sapa-AFP
16