Zimbabwe

Riot police beat protesters in Harare

Article published on the 2008-11-11 Latest update 2008-11-11 15:43 TU

Robert Mugabe
(File Photo: AFP)

Riot police on Tuesday beat dozens of students and activists who were protesting in Harare against the current economic and political crisis and calling for a new government to be formed. The demonstrators, who were from the National Constitutional Assembly, marched through downtown before they were attacked.

The NCA said its leader, Lovemore Madhuku, was arrested before the protest and that he will appear before police on Wednesday.

The Zimbabwe National Students Union released a statement, saying it wants "a transitional arrangement that will urgently work towards addressing the desperate humanitarian catastrophe in the country."

The protests came two days after a regional summit hosted by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) failed to break the power-sharing impasse between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The two sides have been wrangling over the control of key portfolios in the government. Analyst Jennifer Cook, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C., told RFI that on Sunday SADC issued "a compromise that gives Mugabe all the tools of power within the government."

"Mugabe is calculating that if he forms the government quickly he can lock in the ministries that have been allocated to him in the SADC agreement. Those include defence, justice, local government, media, and a share in the home affairs ministry, which controls the police," said Cook.

"Those are virtually all the ministries that really have the levers of oppression in the country that he has used to date," she added.

Before the SADC meeting, Wellington Chibebe, of Zimbabwe's largest trade union, said that any decision coming out of the regional group, which he called “an old boys network”, will not resolve the crisis.

"Those who will come out of the agreement and into office will be coming through the roof, instead of the normal process of an election. We will still not respect any government installed outside of an election process," Chibebe told RFI.

"Therefore, we will treat and view any outcome outside an election process as temporary, and will deal with that government as a temporary structure, not as a government per se," he added.