Posted on 06/03/2003 4:37:00 AM PDT by Clive
Harare - Beatings and arrests may not have dampened the opposition's resolve to drive out President Robert Mugabe - but it does not bode well for a negotiated settlement of the Zimbabwean crisis.
Mugabe's government used unprecedented force on Monday to quell street protests aimed at forcing him to resign.
But the opposition still claimed victory after the entire country came to a standstill.
Zimbabweans overwhelmingly rejected appeals by the government to report for work on the first day of week-long protests, dubbed "the final push for freedom".
On Sunday, government helicopters dropped leaflets around the major cities and towns calling on Zimbabweans to ignore the protests called by the Movement for Democratic Change.
But along the streets of many cities and towns, the leaflets lay untouched. Businesses in most urban centres were shut as very few workers reported for duty.
"We are humbled by the strength and resilience of our people in the face of this naked brutality," said MDC spokesperson Paul Themba Nyathi.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was arrested on Monday and charged with contempt of court for defying a High Court interdict obtained by the government to call off the protests. He was later released. He also appeared in court on Monday for his treason trial arising from an alleged plot to kill Mugabe.
Six MDC parliamentarians, the executive mayor of Bulawayo and more than 50 other opposition supporters were arrested.
Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said 154 people were arrested across the country.
Police stopped 6,000 University of Zimbabwe students from marching into Harare. They then stormed the campus, forced some students to lie on the grass and pavements, and beat them with rubber whips. They also fired teargas into residential dormitories, engulfing much of the campus in black smoke.
In the city centre, a Reuters photographer saw police forcing about 50 people, some of them women, to lie on the street while they beat them with batons and homemade whips.
Police also stormed beerhalls and marketplaces in the townships and beat people for failing to go to work, witnesses said.
One march was broken up in Bulawayo by riot police who beat three opposition supporters, injuring them, before dragging them into a police truck, said democratic rights activist Jenni Williams.
Many Harare citizens said that while they had been thwarted from taking to the streets by the excessive use of force, they were still happy that the entire country had shut down.
"If this can't convince Mugabe that he is no longer wanted, then what will?" asked one engineer.
Witnesses said heavily armed riot police beat protesters and fired teargas and warning shots to stop marches in Harare and its surrounding townships.
The Avenues Clinic confirmed it had admitted one man who was shot and badly wounded in a leg in the Highfield township. The MDC said the police had directly shot at several protesters, injuring many.
"Their strategy is to ensure that the street protests don't take off at all," said one witness.
"They are achieving that by firing teargas at any small group of people trying to assemble and then firing shots at them."
In Harare, "green bombers" - militant youth brigades of Mugabe's ruling party - ran amok and assaulted any white people they came across.
A white activist, Topper Whitehead, said he survived death by a whisker after he repelled "green bombers" armed with knives and sped off in his truck.
Riot police and soldiers continued patrolling most towns and cities on Monday night.
The protests mark the MDC's latest attempt to tighten the screws on Mugabe, whom they accuse of driving Zimbabwe's economy to collapse with record inflation and unemployment, and shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency.
But the police successfully applied for an interdict to stop the protests, arguing that the actions were "meant to topple a constitutionally elected government".
Tsvangirai, who in March last year lost a presidential election widely dismissed as fraudulent, urged his supporters to defy the court order and go on strike.
Government ministers have vowed to crush the protests.
"Our soil is very sacrosanct. We shall not allow it to be recolonised," Defence Minister Sidney Sekeramayi told the state broadcaster. He accused the British and American governments of financing the protests.
'We are humbled by the strength and resilience of our people'
'If this can't convince Mugabe that he is no longer wanted, then what will?'
The people in all of Africa are merely being served what they had experienced before European colonialization.
Civilized behavior will continue to erode as the rule of "the jungle" is allowed to flourish and the European court system is encouraged to disappear.
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