BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE – Gunshots reverberated in a congested bus terminal in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, as the Zimbabwe Republic Police engaged in a street battle with crowds last month. The windows of a brand new BMW police vehicle were smashed as the irate crowds tried to drive the officers away from the terminal. Meanwhile, revolts in Tunisia and Egypt were occupying international attention.
Henry Mhlanga, the superintendent in charge of traffic police in Bulawayo, downplayed the incident, saying it was unfortunate but that police were simply checking on unlicensed vehicles. But the Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association, a local residence association, says police were attempting to quash civil disobedience by reducing crowding in the streets. The association says the operation could have been an attempt to instill fear in Zimbabwe’s citizens to discourage them from replicating the recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.
After the debacle, police reinforcements swept through the terminal, arresting scores of people and impounding several vehicles. Tawanda Moyo, 21, a bus conductor for a local bus company, says he was arrested and taken to the central police station, where he was held for three days in an overcrowded cell without trial or access to legal representation.
“The police did not record any statement from us,” he says. “They just threw us into the cells and locked us up. The 17 of us who were in one cell were given only three bloody, soiled and tattered blankets. The only food we ate was that which was brought to us by friends.”
The group was released after three days. They say they each had to pay a bribe of $40 USD and received no receipts.
Bulawayo police would not comment on the situation.
After the string of political revolts in the Middle East and North Africa and a popular, anonymous Facebook group calling for the overthrow of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, there has been a marked increase in armed personnel on Zimbabwe’s streets. Local citizens say this increased presence has also led to the questionable arrests of citizen groups in several cities. Mugabe has publicly called for an end to violence, and police say they are just doing their jobs. As Mugabe calls for early elections, Zimbabweans say it is just another attempt to safeguard his power. Many doubt the country is ready for a free and fair vote.
The wave of revolution that began in Tunisia in January has since spread to a handful of other nations, engulfing Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan and Libya, where military action escalated this week. The uprisings have ousted the Egyptian and Tunisian leaders, who had been in power for 32 and 23 years. Zimbabweans say this has caused panic among its country’s longtime ruling party, as Mugabe has been in power for 31 years.
Chiedza Muti, 35, a vendor who sells her wares at a mall near the bus terminal in Bulawayo, says the Zimbabwe Republic Police has intensified patrols of the city since the other African revolts began.
“After every 30 minutes, a truckload of heavily armed anti-riot officers driving Isuzu vehicles drive by,” Muti says. “Sometimes they stop for some minutes to take a closer look at the situation on the ground. It’s very frightening to work with all those guns and helmets gleaming around in the streets.”
Locals like Muti say the increased police presence has led to the arrests of innocent citizens.
The Zimbabwe Republic Police arrested 46 people in late February in Harare, the capital city, for organizing an illegal meeting. Police allege the meeting was meant to plan an uprising against the government. According to court records, police say that the group, which included 11 women and was led by Munyaradzi Gwisai, a former opposition member of Parliament and prominent Mugabe critic, was watching videos and formulating a plot to overthrow Mugabe.
Police say the meeting was also illegal because it violated section 24 of the country’s Public Order and Security Act, which mandates that any organizer of a public gathering must notify the police of the gathering in writing at least four days in advance.
The group has been charged with treason, a crime that carries a life sentence or the death penalty in Zimbabwe. The group told the court that the meeting was organized to discuss the events in North Africa and the Middle East.
The group’s lawyer, Alec Muchadehama, says as many as 10 of the defendants were tortured at Harare Central Police Station. Police have not responded to these allegations.
In another town south of Harare, Masvingo, three Masvingo Polytechnic College students were arrested last month for watching a satirical movie depicting Mugabe’s assassination.
The students, Desire Chikwanda, 20, Monalisa Katsamure, 23, and Nyasha Chikumbirike, 23, were charged with undermining the authority of and insulting the president. The students were detained for two days before they were released on bail. Their trial began this month.
The heavy police presence in the streets and their crackdown on dissenting citizens may be the result of a Facebook group, Zimbabwe Million Citizen March. The group, which has more than 2,000 members, calls for Zimbabweans to take to the streets to topple Mugabe’s government. The campaign organizers wrote that Mugabe could never be removed democratically but that violence was also not the answer.
“Instead, we are going to demonstrate physically, by showing up in our numbers at important national institutions and turning the Zimbabwe flag there upside down, [to show] that the real people are not happy,” one organizer wrote.
The march didn’t happen after the government deployed police officers and army personnel to deter potential protesters.
Police tried to ban political rallies earlier this month, but the president and prime minister met and clarified that they had not suspended the people’s constitutional right of assembly, according to Luke Tamborinyoka, the prime minister’s spokesman.
In a recent statement, Mugabe called for an end to violence against citizens, according to CNN. A U.S. official, Susan Page, the deputy assistant secretary for African affairs, applauded the statement earlier this month but said its credibility would be determined by police’s response.
Page says the U.S. government was concerned about the recent rise in political violence against the public and that the United States would not lift sanctions on Mugabe and his officials, which were imposed in 2002, until they showed a greater respect for human rights.
Zimbabweans say that in addition to increasing police presence in streets, Mugabe has also called for early elections to protect his reign. A “compromise government” was set up here after the disputed elections in 2008.
Zimbabwe is currently ruled by the Government of National Unity, a coalition government that comprises three leading political parties: the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, ZANU-PF, which is Mugabe’s party, and two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, party, which are represented by the prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, and two deputy ministers. The first round of the 2008 elections failed to produce a winner, and the MDC refused to participate in a run-off because its leaders said that scores of its supporters had been tortured, raped, abducted and killed by ZANU-PF supporters.
Godfrey Malaba, ZANU-PF spokesman for Bulawayo, says that his party suffered a lot of bad publicity from allegations of rigging elections and violent campaigns. He says this created a need for elections so that the party could prove that it had the mandate of the people to govern the country.
The compromise government was supposed to guide the country through electoral reforms so that the process is in line with the guidelines of the Southern African Development Community, a regional body of countries in Southern Africa. But many say the arrangement has generated more harm than good and that the country is not ready for another election.
Edwin Ndlovu, Bulawayo’s provincial spokesman for the MDC-Ncube party, says that the country is not ready for free and fair elections and that little has been done to improve the electoral environment since the hotly disputed 2008 elections.
“Holding elections urgently is a recipe for another fraudulent election,” he says. “The current scenario favors ZANU-PF because they have the control of all the instruments of violence, that is, the police, army and the Central Intelligence Organization. They also have total control of the media that they are using as a propaganda tool.”
Ndlovu says that he is not alone in this belief.
“Even the chairperson of the Electoral Commission has said that the country is not yet ready for elections, so we are surprised by Mugabe’s utterances,” Ndlovu says.
Mugabe said in December that he wanted speed up the elections because he was tired of working with the opposition party.
Malaba defended Mugabe’s call, saying that the current Government of National Unity was a “loveless marriage.”
“The country may not be ready for elections, but our position is that we need to organize elections urgently so that we rule the country without the inconvenience of these other political parties,” he says. “The elections have to be held, and ZANU-PF will win so that we can deal with challenges facing the country.”
Tsvangirai said he would boycott an early election, according to Reuters. He said Zimbabwe first needed to vote on a new constitution, which he expected to be done by September, before he would discuss an election date with Mugabe.