A top Zimbabwean opposition member of Parliament (MP) was arrested on Tuesday soon after his party announced MPs would not walk out on President Robert Mugabe’s annual parliamentary opening speech.
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) spokesperson Paul Themba Nyathi, the MP who was arrested, said in a statement before his incarceration the decision was aimed at ”reducing political tensions in the country so that an atmosphere conducive to dialogue can be created, with a view to amicable negotiations for a dignified exit for Mr Robert Mugabe”.
In return, the MDC expected Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF to end its harassment of the party, stop its campaign of violence and to restore law and order.
Immediately after he issued the statement, Nyathi was ordered to present himself at Harare central police station where he was detained under recent legislation for allegedly ridiculing Mugabe, said David Coltart, the party’s secretary for legal affairs.
Nyathi was accused of publishing a disrespectful cartoon last month ahead of a five-day national strike to protest against Mugabe’s rule. The cartoon showed a terrified Mugabe fleeing a mob of angry people.
”Our decision [on Monday] was meant to be the test for Zanu-PF to respond to our gesture,” Coltart said.
”It’s ironic that Paul should be arrested the very next day.”
The arrest came as heavily-armed paramilitary police ringed the city centre hours before the 79-year-old president was due to preside over the ceremonial annual opening of Parliament.
The MDC’s gesture was made amid mounting international diplomatic pressure on both parties to begin negotiations to end the country’s crisis.
Pressure was stepped up sharply on July 9 when United States President George Bush visited South Africa. He and South African President Thabo Mbeki agreed to make ”urgent” efforts to end Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis.
The day before the opening, the MDC said 11 of its candidates had been forcibly stopped by ruling party militias from formally registering for local government elections in urban areas around the country.
Three would-be candidates, one of them with a broken neck, were in hospital after ruling party youths attacked them when they tried to register.
In other areas, Mugabe supporters blocked roads leading to registration offices.
The seats were then allocated to ruling party candidates because the MDC had ”failed to contest them”, Nyathi said in a statement on Monday night.
The MDC, which has holds 54 seats in the 150 seat chamber against Zanu-PF’s 64, was due to boycott Mugabe’s address for a second time in two years, following his widely disputed victory in presidential elections in March last year.
The MDC said the boycott was a symbolic refusal to recognise Mugabe, whose presidency the MDC, most Western governments and international election observers said was won through fraud, violent intimidation and laws that gave the ruling party almost total control of the running of the election.
Nyathi said the decision by the MDC to drop its walk-out ”does not in anyway change our position that Mugabe’s position is disputed”.
A reception for MPs, leading national figures and the diplomatic corps, traditionally held at State House, Mugabe’s official residence, the day before the opening of Parliament, was cancelled on Sunday with no reasons being given. It was also expected to be marred by a boycott by opposition MPs and Western diplomats.
MDC sources said the party’s decision to sit in the chamber through Mugabe’s speech had been reached after lengthy negotiations between MDC vice president Gibson Sibanda and Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa.
The sources said Chinamasa had agreed that authorities would stop arresting opposition MPs and allow them to attend report-back meetings in their constituencies.
Most of the MDC’s MPs have been arrested by police in the three years since they were elected, but in no cases have there been any successful prosecutions. In most cases, courts have dismissed the charges before trials could begin.
Nyathi was last arrested in April for allegedly plotting to overthrow Mugabe. – Sapa