Tsvangirai rally to go ahead & Mutambara rally disrupted by police

By Violet Gonda
17 February 2007

The Secretary General of the Tsvangirai MDC, Tendai Biti was arrested on Saturday at the High Court in Harare on allegations that he was involved in organising Friday's demonstrations. Biti joins several MDC officials already in police custody including Last Maengahama and MP Paul Madzore.

 Freelance journalist Itai Dzamara said Biti was arrested in the afternoon after a court session - where the opposition party was making an urgent application to hold a rally. Lawyers fought to have him released so he could attend the delivery of judgment in the late afternoon but he was taken back into the custody of the police after the judgment.

 The High Court judge, Anna Maria Gowora, ruled in favour of the Tsvangirai MDC and ordered the police not to interfere with the rally that is scheduled for Highfields, Harare on Sunday.  Jessie Majome and Selby Hwacha, the lawyers for the Tsvangirai MDC said they were making another urgent application seeking the release of Biti and others in police custody.

 Morgan Tsvangirai plans to launch his party’s 2008 presidential election campaign on Sunday, despite Mugabe’s plan to move the elections to 2010.

 Meanwhile, there was drama in Bulawayo where the police disrupted a public meeting organised by the Mutambara MDC on Saturday. An information officer for the party said at least 10 people were arrested. The police had initially given the party the go ahead but later banned the meeting on the grounds that it was going to be too confrontational. 

The opposition party said an appeal was made to the Minister of Home Affairs, Kembo Mohadi, but he said he would not change the decision made by the police. A statement by the Mutambara MDC said: “In the course of the meeting he (Mohadi) stated that a decision had been taken to ban all political meetings, save for those directly related to elections, because of what he described as the volatile situation Zimbabwe is in.”  

However, the party defied the police ban and went ahead with the meeting. But supporters and MDC leaders including Professor Arthur Mutambara, Vice President Gibson Sibanda and Secretary General Professor Welshman Ncube were greeted by a heavy contingent of riot police when they arrived at the venue at Bulawayo City Hall.

 It’s reported Professor Mutambara strode past the police and attempted to enter the City Hall but the door had been locked by the police. After failing to get into the venue Mutambara is said to have marched with the activists from the City Hall to their Provincial offices several blocks away.  

The party said: “The meeting to launch the Defiance Campaign then took place within the grounds of the MDC offices. As that was happening the Police surrounded the offices preventing anyone from leaving or entering. The meeting concluded after one and half hours and the MDC leadership then left the building, walking through the police line.”

 The MDC legal team had drafted an urgent court application, seeking an interdict against the police but could not find a judge. The party said: “In a disgraceful reflection of the state of Zimbabwe’s judiciary the Registrar of the High Court in Bulawayo was unable to find a single judge to hear the urgent application which had been prepared.”

Professor Mutambara said his party had started the Defiance Campaign in earnest and would continue in conjunction with other democratic partners in the struggle.