Zimbabwean police threatened on Monday to deal ”ruthlessly” with anyone who joins a general strike called to protest against a government demolition campaign that has left about 200 000 of the urban poor homeless in the middle of the Southern African winter.
A previously unknown group calling itself the Broad Alliance has urged people to stay away from work on Thursday and Friday in protest at police destruction of shacks around the country and the arrest of more than 30 000 street traders.
The government has said its campaign is aimed at cleaning up the cities. The opposition says the crackdown is meant to punish its supporters among the urban poor.
The state media on Monday alleged that the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was behind the strike call. But the party has not confirmed this.
Under Zimbabwe’s law, anyone convicted of attempting to ”coerce” President Robert Mugabe’s government risks a 20-year jail term.
Police Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena said his officers would act ”ruthlessly” against anyone taking part in the planned stoppage this week, according to the Associated Press. He claimed that opposition parties and civic groups had hired youths to build barricades on roads.
The UN estimates that at least 200 000 people, mostly the urban poor, have been made homeless by police who have demolished or burned thousands of shacks around the country. Police have also arrested 30 000 street vendors whom the government calls economic saboteurs, although many had municipal licences.
Civic groups and the MDC allege that the government is trying to force shantytown dwellers, who voted overwhelming for the opposition in the March 31 elections, back to rural areas where they can be more tightly controlled.
Despite international condemnation of the crackdown, police destroyed more houses at the weekend. Churches in the eastern Manicaland region said in a statement on Sunday that they were ”left shocked and numbed by the utter havoc and destruction … What we have seen would reduce the hardest heart to tears.”
They said babies, nursing mothers, the sick and the elderly had been left amid smoking ruins to face the cold.
An American teacher who was arrested for filming police destroying the shacks of poor people in Mutare, 400km east of Harare, pleaded guilty on Monday to breaking censorship and immigration laws.
Howard Smith Gilman (68) an unpaid geography lecturer at the United Methodist Church’s Africa University was held in prison for 10 days after being arrested on May 27.
His lawyer said he was fined 100 000 Zimbabwean dollars (R73) on the immigration charge and Z$200 000 on the censorship charge and would be deported. – Guardian Unlimited Â