State repression of political dissent heightens tensions in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean police raided the headquarters of the country's leading opposition party on Mar. 28 and arrested its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, before freeing him a few hours later, party officials said. Riot police cordoned off the party headquarters building in Harare, the capital, late in the morning, shortly before Tsvangirai was scheduled to give a news conference, and arrested more than 20 people inside. Police acknowledged that the raid took place, citing investigations into bombings of civilian targets. But a police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, said Tsvangirai was never in custody during the incident although 10 suspects were arrested in connection with the bombings. "Should our investigation indicate he's also a participant or a leader in the petrol bombings, we certainly will arrest him," Bvudzijena said, speaking from Harare. "There's nothing linking him to the petrol bombings so far." The incident was the latest in a turbulent month as President Robert Mugabe seeks to retain control after 27 years in power. The police beatings of Tsvangirai and about 50 other activists on Mar. 11 provoked international outrage and a resurgence of pressure from southern African leaders frustrated by Zimbabwe's long social and economic decline. While the world's attention has focused on the attacks on opposition figures, Mugabe's government has stepped up efforts to portray Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as a violent group bent on overturning the government through a campaign of terror. Bvudzijena listed 10 bombings, none fatal, targeting police stations, ruling party activists and a passenger train. Opposition activists Piniel Denga and Ian Makone were arrested on Mar. 27. Bvudzijena said that Denga had sticks of dynamite and detonators and that Makone had an unlicensed weapon. In the raid on party headquarters that followed the arrests, police also seized files and computers. The party's secretary general, Tendai Biti, dismissed the police allegations as "rubbish" designed to distract attention from the government crackdown on political activity. Mugabe has repeatedly vowed more violence against opposition figures who attempt to organize protests in defiance of a police ban. "We are dealing with a madman," Biti said, speaking from Harare. "A mad person will throw anything at you." The situation in Zimbabwe has deteriorated since Mar. 11, when Tsvangirai was brutally beaten by police wielding iron bars at Harare's airport. Others were prevented from flying to Johannesburg, South Africa, to seek medical care. And opposition activists have detailed a series of quiet abductions of party members, typically by plainclothes agents driving unmarked cars. Mugabe's feared secret police are among the few government agencies that have been given major budget increases as Zimbabwe's fiscal squeeze intensifies. Germany, which holds the European Union presidency, said it was "deeply concerned" at the latest arrests. But Zimbabwe's Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said the arrests were a police matter, adding, "You [the West] are too much concerned with your Tsvangirai because he is your puppet and you make him an international hero." Mugabe, who on Mar. 30 swept aside his critics to pave the way for another six years as president, said last week that the police had every right to "bash" Tsvangirai. It is illegal to protest, he argued, and those that do so are "terrorists" and will be "bashed." The "terrorist acts" that the President briefed his fellow African leaders about at a conference on Mar. 28 in Tanzania have so far consisted of isolated reprisals against police stations and minor acts of sabotage against railway lines. But there are no street protests, no demonstrations of opposition. "It's not realistic to expect mass protests," Tsvangirai says. "The way the cities were designed makes it impossible." The country's two main cities, Bulawayo and Harare, were built by British colonists and based on a defensive blueprint, concentrating the commercial areas in the center, while the bulk of the black population was housed outside the city in townships. "Here, the people are excluded from the city, it was a deliberate colonial design," says the MDC leader. "People have to be bussed into the center, making it easy for police to seal it off." So, he says, the opposition will content itself with boycotting school fees, work "stayaways" and withholding taxes and wait for the regime to implode. Something, he argues, has to give. Zimbabwe has become a nation haunted by extraordinary statistics: the highest inflation in the world, nearly 1,800 percent; the largest population loss to migration in peacetime, 25 percent; the lowest life expectancy in the world for women, 34. The quiet fury at this crisis finds its most eloquent voice in the Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube. Sitting in a safe house on the outskirts of the second city, Mugabe's most fearless and relentless critic speaks quietly and deliberately, with his eyes almost closed and fingers folded in prayer. "Zimbabweans are very timid," he says. "We are not willing to be self sacrificing. We don't seem to get the idea of dying for your country. I was hoping the politicians would do it, but it seems they have no appetite." Two years ago, when a staggering nationwide campaign of slum clearances and looting of street markets, dubbed Murumbatsvina, or "drive out rubbish," displaced half-a-million people and destroyed the livelihoods of millions more, the opposition could not mobilize a mass response. "Morgan [Tsvangirai] has been useless," says the archbishop. "Murumbatsvina was the best time [to mobilize], people were angry." He is equally scathing about South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, who has refused to criticize Mugabe in public. "He is a damn fool. When Bush came, he said, 'I will make you my point man,' and Mbeki said, 'I will sort it out.' He hasn't sorted anything out. All we need is a bit of leadership and we can get [Mugabe] out." There is growing concern among opposition figures that the closure of all democratic space for protest–all political rallies and gatherings have been banned for three months–will force a bloody showdown. As one student leader put it at the memorial service for a Harare activist murdered by police: "If they make peaceful revolution impossible, they make violent revolution inevitable."