Christian Alliance Bulawayo office raided by police
By Violet Gonda
24 November 2006

Zimbabwean police raided the offices of the Christian Alliance in Bulawayo on Friday, another indication of increased suppression of democratic space. Pastor Ray Motsi said the authorities were looking for subversive material but found none. He said; “In particular, they were looking for the source of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign that we are running at the moment.”

Christian Alliance is the convener of The Save Zimbabwe Convention, which came together in June this year. Stakeholders like the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, the National Constitutional Assembly, student bodies and political parties including the two MDC factions, converged to try to find a peaceful solution to the Zimbabwean crisis.

The group started a weekly ‘noise’ campaign, on Wednesday, to get people involved in some form of expression to show they are not happy with the economic and political crisis. Every Wednesday for five minutes during lunch Zimbabweans are urged to make as much noise as they can.

Pastor Motsi said; “We are calling on people to recognise that we need freedom of all kinds and in this freedom we need to take peaceful action.”

Zimbabweans are encouraged to whistle, hoot their car horns and bang pots and pans. The Mugabe regime has set up draconian laws like the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), which have shrunk the democratic space more and more. It is these repressive laws that the pro-democracy groups are fighting against.

Pastor Motsi said although there was no arrests the police said they wanted to know who produced the fliers urging people to protest and were keen to interview some of those involved in the work. Some material was taken from the Christian Alliance offices.

Human Rights Lawyer Otto Saki believes the authorities have never contemplated a scenario where people would resort to protests such as noise as a way of expressing their displeasure towards the current establishment and its ruling tendencies.

The lawyer said there is nothing that criminalises these protests but that the regime can use the law as it likes and apply it selectively.

Meanwhile, the pressure group Women of Zimbabwe Arise also announced similar ‘noise’ protests starting Saturday, to commemorate 16 days of activism against gender violence and human rights abuses.

Yesterday the WOZA Coordinator Jenni Williams said the noise protest would be for two minutes at 8pm every evening during those 16 days. “When people start hearing those drums beating with the propaganda news coming from ZBC, that should be their cue to go into their kitchens, go outside their doors. We want them to feel free to do whatever they want, bang pots, shake rattles, and use their loud horns like they do when they are supporting Highlanders. That’s the kind of noise we want to hear. We want to drown out the propaganda that is coming from this government until they start to tell the truth. And we also want to send a message that we are not happy and a hungry person is not a happy person.”