Zimbabwe police have charged more than 120 people arrested on Tuesday for staging protests to demand better living conditions, as the opposition warned the people’s patience is being stretched to the limit.
Scores of protesters, including labour leaders, were charged for taking part in potentially riotous activities, while others — including a town mayor — faced charges of inciting violence, a defence lawyer said on Wednesday.
”They have been charged with the usual — taking part in a gathering conducing to riots or disorder,” lawyer Alec Muchadehama said.
The mayor of Harare’s dormitory town of Chitungwiza, Misheck Shoko, and outspoken pro-democracy activist and lawyer Lovemore Madhuku, along with seven university students, were charged with inciting violence.
”All the arrested are denying the charges,” Muchadehama said, adding they were still in police custody.
Opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai angrily reacted to the arrests, saying the ”rogue regime in Harare” has criminalised an action to express displeasure, anger and disgust over the state of affairs.
”Let me warn the Mugabe regime that targeting civil society for regular attacks means declaring a war against the people and the people shall respond,” Tsvangirai said in a statement.
”We cannot let the situation continue to worsen at a time when all forms of relief have vanished; when our entire coping mechanisms have been exhausted,” he said.
Tsvangirai, who last month vowed his party would mount a national crusade against the Senate elections, said preparations for ”peaceful democratic resistance” programme have reached an advanced stage.
”The eye of the storm is now on the horizon,” he warned. ”The people’s power is strengthening and soon every village … hamlet, town and city shall register the national sentiment on a scale never seen in this country.”
Truncheon-wielding anti-riot police broke up the marches as they began in central Harare at lunchtime on Tuesday.
The street demonstrations were organised by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) to register discontent at the high cost of living, unemployment and poverty.
They also demanded free access to anti-retroviral drugs for people infected with HIV/Aids.
The marches were planned simultaneously for six main cities and towns across the Southern African country and were meant ”to remind government and employers that workers are hungry, angry and tired”.
Those arrested included ZCTU president Lovemore Matombo, secretary general Wellington Chibebe and former opposition lawmaker Munyaradzi Gwisai.
The ZCTU said it was also protesting the acute shortages of petroleum-based fuels in the country, which has been hit by its most severe crisis since independence in 1980.
Zimbabwe’s economy has been on a downturn in the past five years, characterised by triple-digit inflation, high unemployment and chronic shortages of fuel and other basics such as cooking oil and sugar.
Police chief Augustine Chihuri said while it was within the right of the ZCTU to demonstrate, the protest was not properly organised and was ”ill-intended”. — Sapa-AFP