Zimbabwe’s opposition presidential candidate resumed campaigning on Thursday, the morning after he spent nine hours in police detention near the country’s second main city, his party said.
Morgan Tsvangirai said in a statement that the hours he spent in a Bulawayo police station after being stopped at a roadblock while campaigning demonstrate the lengths to which President Robert Mugabe was prepared to go to ”try and steal” the June 27 presidential run-off.
But police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said police merely wanted to establish that one of the vehicles in Tsvangirai’s convoy was properly registered. He said police had asked only the driver to accompany them from the roadblock to the station, but others in the party insisted on coming him and waiting while the documents were reviewed.
”There’s no way you can say we are restricting his campaigning. We are not,” Bvudzijena said.
The opposition and rights groups have accused Mugabe of orchestrating violence and intimidation in the run-up to the vote.
Rights activists in Zimbabwe said on Thursday that alleged Mugabe supporters petrol-bombed an office of Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change in the southern province of Masvingo on Wednesday, killing at least two party officials.
60 dead
The party says at least 60 of its supporters have been killed since the March 29 first round of presidential voting.
”Our resolve for a new beginning, and a new Zimbabwe remains unshaken,” Tsvangirai said on Thursday. ”We are convinced of the justness of our cause, and we will not waver until we restore the dignity of all the people of Zimbabwe.”
According to his party, police released Tsvangirai and about 14 other party officials late on Wednesday after charging him with ”attracting a large number of people”. Police have broad powers to restrict gatherings in Zimbabwe.
Bvudzijena said no charges were filed. A spokesperson South African President Thabo Mbeki said the president had intervened on Tsvangirai’s behalf. Mbeki was appointed by Zimbabwe’s neighbors to mediate between Tsvangirai and Mugabe, though Tsvangirai has in recent weeks said Mbeki should step down, portraying him as biased in favour of Mugabe.
On Thursday, Mbeki spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga said he could not describe the conversation Mbeki had a day before with Zimbabwean officials about Tsvangirai’s detention.
”The president did engage the [Zimbabwean] government and Mr Tsvangirai was released,” Ratshitanga said. ”That’s all I can say. You can make your own judgement about it.”
Tsvangirai (56) left Zimbabwe soon after the March 29 first round and delayed his return late last month after his party said he was the target of a military assassination plot. He returned 12 days ago, a week later than initially planned.
At least two of Tsvangirai’s rallies since his return have been banned on security grounds by police, who said they could not guarantee his safety.
Although police granted permission for Tsvangirai to hold rallies this week, Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party ordered the army to camp on the grounds of the venues, the opposition said in a statement.
Three assassination attempts
Tsvangirai has survived at least three assassination attempts. In one in 1997, unidentified assailants tried to throw him from a 10th-floor window.
Last year, he was hospitalised after a brutal assault by police at a prayer rally. Images seen around the world of his bruised and swollen face have come to symbolise the plight of dissenters in Zimbabwe. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga said the turmoil in Zimbabwe was ”a big embarrassment to the entire continent.” Odinga is sharing power with his rival after a disputed election set off violence that killed more than 1 000 Kenyans, Odinga, speaking at a forum on Africa in South Africa, added he believed Tsvangirai’s experience on Wednesday was ”a very strong statement by Mugabe that he is not prepared to relinquish power”.
Odinga said he had advised Tsvangirai to participate in the run-off, and that he did not believe a Kenyan-style power-sharing solution would necessarily work for Zimbabwe.
But if there were to be a coalition, Odinga said, then ”Mugabe must take the lowest position. He must not be allowed to be leader or president. Mugabe lost the popular vote and the parliamentary vote so he must become a junior partner.”
Mugabe came in second in the first round in March, but Tsvangirai did not win the 50% plus one vote necessary to avoid a run-off.
Tsvangirai’s party won control of Parliament in legislative elections held alongside the presidential first round, putting Mugabe’s Zanu-PF in the minority in that house for the first time since independence.
Simba Makoni, a former Zanu-PF loyalist who ran as an independent in March and came in third, said on Thursday that Mugabe and Tsvangirai should ”put the people first” and agree to work together in a transitional authority.
”We are convinced the last thing our country and its people needs is another election,” said Makoni, who, like Odinga, was attending a World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town. ”The violence gripping the country bodes ill ….”
While meeting with Mugabe on the sidelines of the food summit in Rome earlier this week, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon ”highlighted the need to stop the violence and to deploy neutral international observers”, UN deputy spokesperson Marie Okabe said on Wednesday.
She added the secretary general ”suggested” to Mugabe sending Haile Menkerios, the UN assistant secretary general for political affairs, as Ban’s envoy to Zimbabwe ”to discuss ways of how the United Nations can help in the election process”. – Sapa-AP