Police on Saturday arrested the opposition mayor of Harare, Elias Mudzuri, on allegations that he was addressing an illegal meeting, a representative for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said.
Police picked up Mudzuri and three officials of the local residents’ association in the Harare township of Mabvuku while he was holding a report-back meeting to residents there, said representative Nkanyiso Maqeda.
”They then decided to arrest everyone else who was at the meeting,” he said. ”They took away about 100 people who are at the police station now.”
Mudzuri was told by police he had been arrested for failing to obtain police permission to address the meeting, in terms of draconian new security legislation which allows police to ban President Robert Mugabe’s political opponents from holding meetings. No police comment could be obtained.
Mudzuri is one of the MDC’s five mayors around the country, running the councils of the capital, Harare, the western city of Bulawayo and three other towns, who broke decades of corrupt control by Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party when they win municipal elections in the last two years.
However, all of them have come under sustained harassment from the party and security authorities trying to force them out of office and restrict their ability to administer their areas.
It is the first time any MDC mayor has been arrested, but Mudzuri, popular for attending to the capital’s rutted roads and trying to repair its crumbling infrastructure, has been subjected to what is widely regarded as a smear campaign by the state media, accusing him of corruption and incompetence.
The government last week announced its plans for Mugabe to appoint ruling party ”city governors” to try and break the influence of the opposition party’s rulers. ‒ Sapa