About 3 000 Zimbabwean ruling-party supporters on Thursday gathered in Parliament to denounce a prominent white opposition lawmaker who brawled with a government minister during a heated debate in the house.
The demonstrators waved placards slamming Movement for Democratic Change lawmaker Roy Bennett, who shoved Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa to the ground on Tuesday, angered by what he later described as racist and personal attacks.
”We want Bennett to be arrested for beating up a minister,” said Peter Hlongwane, a spokesperson for the demonstrators. ”If he’s tired of living in Zimbabwe, he should go to Britain.”
He said the protestors will allow other lawmakers into Parliament on Thursday, but will bar Bennett, who is one of just three white legislators in the opposition party.
”Head of Bennett now,” demanded one poster held up by a supporter of the ruling Zanu-PF.
”Where is the rule of law Bennett?” demanded another.
The lunchtime demonstration, which appears to have been sanctioned by police, blocked the main road leading past Parliament.
Bennett charged at Chinamasa on Tuesday, saying afterwards the minister had made comments that ”agitated” Bennett.
”Again for the umpteenth time, he [Chinamasa] took attack and threw racial and all sorts of abuse at me. I confronted him and pushed. He fell over,” Bennett said.
State media have carried news of the altercation as one of their top items for the past two days, and interviewed people denouncing the lawmaker’s actions as representative of a ”violent party”.
On Thursday Bennett appeared before a specially convened parliamentary disciplinary committee, but the proceedings were delayed, sources said.
Meanwhile, the ruling party in Bennett’s native Manicaland province has reportedly banned him from returning there, a news report said.
”We no longer want him in the province and he should never dare risk his life by coming here,” Mike Madiro, the Zanu-PF chairperson for Manicaland, said according to a report in the Daily Mirror newspaper on Thursday. — Sapa-AFP