An anti-government strike took hold on Tuesday, the second day of a national week of protest called by opposition groups against the increasingly repressive rule of President Robert Mugabe.
Opposition officials vowed to press on despite a crackdown by police and troops who have been crushing street demonstrations and have arrested dozens of protesters.
In the capital Harare, banks and most businesses were closed and traffic was light.
Riot police were stationed throughout the city. There were no reports of violence overnight.
On Monday riot police and soldiers in troop carriers and tank-like armored cars fired guns and tear gas and assaulted protesters to break up demonstrations against Mugabe.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said the actions brought the country’s economy to a standstill and organisers pledged a week of similar actions they say will mark mostv significant challenge to Mugabe’s 23 years in office.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said violence against protesters by police and the military did not deter the party’s leaders and supporters.
”There is no doubt that Zimbabweans have overwhelmingly heeded our calls despite the security agents’ repressive methods,” Tsvangirai told the independent Daily News.
”By the end of this week Zimbabweans will have driven a message home to Mugabe that they are fed up with the state of affairs in this country,” he said.
Zimbabwe is facing its worst political and economic crisis since independence in 1980. Foreign aid, investment and loans have dried up amid political violence, state-orchestrated human rights abuses, the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms and the conduct of disputed presidential elections last year.
Only international food aid has averted mass starvation.
Zimbabwe faces record 269% inflation and acute shortages of hard currency, local money, gasoline, medicines and other essential imports and food.
Opposition leaders were rounded up in police raids on Monday under the country’s draconian security laws that allow the government to ban any gathering.
One demonstrator was shot in the leg, and scores of others were forced to lie on sidewalks or the ground while police or soldiers beat them with rubber batons.
At least 154 people, most of them opposition activists or officials, were arrested across the country Monday, police representative Wayne Bvudzijena said in a statement.
One march was broken up in Bulawayo by riot police who beat three opposition supporters, before dragging them into a police truck, said democratic rights activist Jenni Williams.
Bvudzijena said police were forced to fire into the air in Highfield township in western Harare after opposition protesters tried to use a group of school children as human shields, an allegation the opposition denied.
Opposition officials said three people suffered gunshot wounds in that incident.
The state Herald newspaper reported that one man was stoned to death during violent clashes between opposition and ruling party supporters in the township of Mbare.
State television accused business owners of shutting out workers in support of the opposition strike.
Samuel Mbengegwi, the commerce minister, said government officials were carrying out ”surveillance and monitoring” of such business owners who risked being stripped of their operating licenses.
Tsvangirai was arrested at his home in Harare early on Monday but he was later released. His party lodged an appeal before the nation’s Supreme Court against charges that he had defied a court order to call off strikes and demonstrations called Monday through Friday.
He is scheduled to go to court later on Tuesday where he will hear a request by the state to tighten bail conditions and restrict his movements in light of the court order which declared the demonstrations are illegal.
Tsvangirai is currently on trial for treason. He and two senior opposition officials are accused of plotting to assassinate Mugabe, a charge they vehemently deny, saying the government has tried to frame them.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemned the Zimbabwean government’s actions and called for Mugabe to resume negotiations ith the opposition.
”The arrests today of MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai, other MDC MPs (members of parliament) and activists are further evidence that the government of Zimbabwe is not willing to extend to its people their basic right of peaceful protest,” he said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged organizers to ensure that the mass action remains peaceful and within the law, and he urged the government to respect basic freedoms of expression and assembly.
Annan reiterated his readiness ”to contribute to the search for a negotiated solution of the serious difficulties facing the country,” UN representative Fred Eckhard said in New York. – Sapa-AP