Those detained were later released without charge, Williams said. No immediate comment was available from the police. Marches were held in Bulawayo and the capital, Harare, to protest alleged violations of women's rights under the increasingly repressive government of President Robert Mugabe.
One poster read: "Our daughters are not sex slaves." The women are demanding that Mugabe's ruling party youth militias are disbanded immediately, the South African Press Association reported. Women activists say that many young women are forced into joining the militias and then are raped at training camps.
Demonstrators also held signs that read: "We want food our children." Almost half of Zimbabwe's 13 million people face possible starvation as a food crisis grips the country caused by both erratic rainfall and the government's chaotic and often violent seizure of white-owned commercial farms.
Some of the background for those who haven't been following Mugabe's reign of terror
That is so 90's.
"All these sanctions being imposed on us are unjustified because they are part of a racist campaign against our land reform program," said the official, who declined to be named.
Actually this should read "...they are part of a campaign against our racist land reform program,"...