Zimbabwe’s opposition was to hold rallies in the capital yesterday thanks to a favorable court ruling, an official said, with only weeks to go before its leader faces Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in a presidential runoff.
The court ruling on Saturday means a police ban cannot be enforced, said Nqobizitha Mlilo, a spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change. The embattled opposition, however, suffered setbacks elsewhere, including the arrest of a prominent member.
Opposition presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai, meanwhile, spoke to small groups of voters around Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second main city.
PHOTO: AFP
Also on Saturday, a government minister was quoted as accusing aid groups of campaigning for the opposition and using money donated by the US, among Mugabe’s harshest critics, to destabilize the government.
Tsvangirai beat Mugabe and two other candidates in the first round of presidential voting March 29, but did not garner the 50 percent plus one vote necessary to avoid a runoff.
Reporters traveling with Tsvangirai on Saturday said small crowds greeted him enthusiastically. At one stop, where it appeared he had planned a rally, riot police were on hand and told him no gatherings were allowed.
Tsvangirai’s spokesman, George Sibotshiwe, had said on Friday that Tsvangirai was told that all party rallies in the country had been banned indefinitely.
“We have to find a way of getting word to voters under these conditions,” Mlilo said on Saturday.
But he expressed confidence, saying Mugabe’s crackdown, which local and international rights groups say has included violence, “will only strengthen the resolve of Zimbabweans to finish this regime off.”
Mlilo said it was unlikely Tsvangirai would address yesterday’s rallies in Harare.
Police took opposition lawmaker Eric Matinenga from his Harare home on Saturday and detained him at a station outside the capital, accusing him of fomenting violence, said Beatrice Mtetwa, his lawyer.
Matinenga was detained on similar charges earlier in the week, but released because of a lack of evidence. Scores of opposition activists have been arrested in recent weeks.
Matinenga, himself an attorney, has represented opposition leaders in a string of high profile cases.
A police spokesman had said on Friday that even Tsvangirai could be arrested. Tsvangirai left the country soon after the March voting, and his party has said he was the target of a military assassination plot. He has survived at least three previous assassination attempts. Tsvangirai had only returned to Zimbabwe late last month to campaign for the runoff.
Tsvangirai’s party says at least 60 of its supporters have been slain in the past two months.
Mugabe’s critics also accuse him of using food as a political weapon, though he charges it is his Western enemies who have done so.
Earlier in the week, the government ordered all independent aid groups to suspend field work indefinitely, a move the UN says puts at least 2 million people at greater risk of starvation, homelessness and disease in a country in economic collapse.
Without the private agencies, impoverished Zimbabweans will be dependent on the government and Mugabe’s party, both of which distribute food and other aid.
Aid groups have denied charges they have taken sides in the political contest.
Bright Matonga, Mugabe’s deputy information minister, was quoted on Saturday in the Herald, a government mouthpiece, as saying the aid groups would have to apply for new operating permits.
“For a long time now, some of these [groups] have been operating like political parties rather than civil society. They have been going around the country distributing food, claiming to be helping the needy but then they tell the communities they visit that they will not get any more food aid if they vote for ... President Mugabe,” Matonga was quoted as saying.
Mugabe has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 and was once hailed as a liberator who promoted racial reconciliation and economic empowerment.
But he has been accused of clinging to power through election fraud and intimidation, and of destroying his country’s economy through the seizure of white-owned farms beginning in 2000.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS