The world has been shocked by the sheer brutality of the Zimbabwe Republican Police (ZRP) in suppressing a peaceful demonstration by the labour body ZCTU in Harare last week. Despite the fact that the union leaders, together with some opposition MDC party officials, had not resisted arrest, all 15 of them were severely beaten in police custody.

Wilf Mbanga

Within hours of being taken to the holding cells at the notorious Matapi Police Station in Mbare, these men and women had sustained between them five fractured hands, seven fractured arms, two ruptured ear-drums, and innumerable bruises, lacerations and other injuries.

They were kept in the filthy holding cells for two days without medical attention or access to their lawyers. They were denied food and blankets.

Speaking in New York during his annual trek to the United Nations General Assembly, President Robert Mugabe added insult to these injuries by claiming that the police brutality was simply a case of over-zealousness on the part of one or two policemen.
Meanwhile, back home, his minister of home affairs, Kembo Mohadi, was counter-manding a court order by Harare magistrate, Peter Mufunda, who had ordered an inquiry into the police brutality.

To their credit, Zimbabwean activists were quick to issue statements assuring the regime and the world that their sufferings at the hands of Mugabe’s thugs in police uniform – whom many pronounced a disgrace to the once-proud and highly professional police force – would not deter them from future action.

In separate interviews, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), the Zimbabwe National Student Union (Zinasu), Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) as well as the ZCTU and MDC all vowed to stage mass demonstrations in the weeks ahead.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main wing of the MDC, said his party would not be intimidated by the violence. “No intimidation of opposition leaders can triumph over the will of the people,” he declared. CHRA chairperson, Mike Davies, said the organisation was working on new tactics to respond to police violence.

The excessive use of force upon defenceless citizens by the police force is seen as a symptom of the highly-charged political atmosphere in the country as a result of accelerating economic hardships and the effects of bad governance and widespread corruption.




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Wilf Mbanga, one of the founders of the independent Zimbabwean daily newspaper "The Daily News", is currently living in the UK. He writes about the current situation in Zimbabwe.