Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai vowed on Monday to step up the campaign to topple President Robert Mugabe despite a riot-police crackdown that prevented him from holding a major weekend rally.
Scores were hurt and about 130 arrested on Sunday as security services used tear gas and water cannons to break up a gathering of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters, which was due to have been addressed by Tsvangirai.
The event had been approved by the high court on Saturday, but police paid scant attention to the ruling by erecting roadblocks on the highways leading up to the rally venue next to the sprawling Highfields shantytown.
Tsvangirai himself abandoned plans to address the rally after arriving at the sports field, but he insisted on Monday that his party would not be cowed by the violence.
”We believe the time to act is now,” Tsvangirai said in a statement, adding he would forge ahead with his campaign to become president in polls that are meant to be held next year, though Mugabe plans to defer the vote to 2010.
”We make no apologies for organising and harnessing the power of the people. We must express ourselves out of the crisis through action. We have had enough. We say thus far and no further.
”We are going into a presidential election in 2008 convinced that the election shall give us a superb opportunity to reverse the chaos before us and embark on a massive reconstruction, rehabilitation and healing process.”
The opposition chief castigated the police for the manner in which they beat up and arrested his party supporters as they broke up the rally.
”Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF are at their weakest,” he said.
”They have lost confidence in our traditional state structures and are resorting to rogue militia and partisan paramilitary forces to confront the people.”
Among those arrested were a number of senior MDC officials, including legislators Paul Madzore and Tendai Biti, who were picked up on the eve of the rally.
They were detained at various police stations in and around Harare on Monday.
”The police had initially indicated they would bring them to court this afternoon [Monday],” their lawyer, Andrew Makoni, told journalists outside Harare Magistrates’ Court.
”Instead of bringing them to court they are sending them to other police stations. The idea is to make access to them difficult as we would have to drive to various police stations.”
Tsvangirai had planned to use Sunday’s rally to launch his latest campaign for the presidency of the troubled Southern African nation.
The next presidential elections are due to take place in 2008 but Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence from Britain in 1980, is trying to delay them to 2010 in order to coincide with parliamentary polls.
The MDC has pledged to resist the proposed poll delay, saying the country cannot afford another two years with Mugabe at the helm with inflation at nearly 1 600 percent and food shortages increasingly widespread.
Once a formidable force posing the most serious threat to Mugabe’s 27-year rule, the MDC has been hamstrung by infighting.
Nearly half its MPs joined a splinter group in late 2005 because of a row over whether to contest senate elections. — Sapa-AFP