The Daily Telegraph
19th February 2007
By Peta Thornycroft, Zimbabwe Correspondent
Police stop opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai from rallying
President Robert Mugabe’s regime tried to suppress rising discontent across Zimbabwe yesterday by banning all opposition political gatherings.
Heavily armed riot police enforced this edict by preventing one rally from taking place in the capital, Harare, and breaking up another in Bulawayo on Saturday.
Although the law had previously forced the opposition to seek police permission for any gathering, an outright ban has never been imposed before.
Kembo Mohadi, the home affairs minister, verbally informed an opposition politician that the cabinet had decided to proscribe all rallies last week.
He was quoted in court documents as saying: “With political tensions rising, security ministers decided on Tuesday to ban all political meetings, except those associated with by-elections.”
However, no formal order has been issued. Riot police barricaded the venue for a rally in the Harare township of Highfield.
They prevented Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of one faction of the divided Movement for Democratic Change, from telling his supporters that he would contest the next presidential elections, supposedly due in March 2008 but likely to be postponed.
Riot police assaulted several people and arrested others when they tried to gather for the meeting.
Police set up roadblocks and fired Israeli-made water cannons at the crowd. In Bulawayo, another faction of the MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara defied a police ban and marched through the city. Scores of people were arrested and assaulted.
“We are instructing lawyers to try and get people released. Unfortunately one young man was seriously injured by police,” said David Coltart, legal secretary to Mr Mutambara’s faction of the MDC.
Economic collapse and an inflation rate of 1,594 per cent – the highest in the world – are fuelling the unrest.