Police stop National Constitutional Assembly protesters

By Tichaona Sibanda
17 January 2007

Authorities in Harare on Wednesday intercepted three buses ferrying hundreds of National Constitutional Assembly activists to Parliament and diverted them to the Morris Depot police-training academy.

An NCA official told Newsreel the activists were detained at Morris Depot for close to five hours before being released without charge. Police at the academy just north of the capital forcibly pulled the activists off the buses and impounded the vehicles, before ordering everyone to sit in groups.

The NCA, organisers of the aborted anti-government demonstration, said the activists were interrogated in the open and asked to explain their mission.

‘As far as we are concerned the activists were illegally detained. They were questioned by the police about their mission whilst the drivers were asked to produce permits to see if they were allowed to ply the route, which was not the case,’ said an NCA official who asked not to be named.

The reason the police gave for impounding the buses was that they were plying the wrong route. The NCA official added that he believed the mass detention was more of an intelligence gathering exercise because the police had nothing on them to charge or lock up the activists in cells.

Police intercepted the buses on their way to Parliament from the NCA offices in Eastlea. Two other buses managed to sneak through the security cordon but failed to reach the Parliament buildings because of a heavy police presence.

‘Unfortunately the demonstration did not go ahead as planned because the area surrounding the Parliament buildings was infested with police officers. There were more police details in the city centre than ordinary Zimbabweans today (Wednesday),’ said the NCA official.

The NCA said the aborted demonstration was an attempt to show displeasure over the idea by the Zanu (PF) party to postpone elections from 2008 to 2010 without asking the people through a referendum.