Zimbabwean authorities will block protests planned by the opposition against President Robert Mugabe’s bid to extend his nearly 27-year-rule, a senior minister was quoted as saying on Thursday.
”They have a programme of protests all the time,” Security Minister Didymus Mutasa told the privately owned Financial Gazette weekly.
”Although I don’t know what they intend to achieve, I want to warn them that I myself will be part and parcel of those who will be stopping them from protesting.”
Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, whose Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has split in two, on Wednesday announced he will lead a mass campaign against plans to extend Mugabe’s rule by another two years.
Tsvangirai did not elaborate, merely saying his party would use all legal means ”to stop Mugabe from becoming life president and from tinkering with the Constitution in order to perpetuate his rule to 2010”.
Once a formidable force posing the stiffest challenge to Mugabe’s stranglehold on power, the MDC is now a shadow of its former self after splitting in two following a row on whether to contest Senate polls in 2005.
The main beneficiary of the fallout has been Mugabe, who remains entrenched in power despite an economic meltdown that has seen inflation soar beyond the 1 000% mark and unemployment touch 80%.
Mutasa’s warning came just three months after police arrested scores of protesters during demonstrations called by the main labour union against the skyrocketing cost of living and high levels of taxation, which are eroding real incomes.
The 82-year-old leader’s term was set to expire in 2008, 28 years after he first assumed power with Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain, but Mugabe has indicated he has no intention of stepping down. — Sapa-AFP