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Zimbabwe democracy activists take to streets

Namibians protest in their capital, Windhoek, on Wednesday against a three-day state visit by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. PHOTO: AP

Dozens of people were arrested as pro-democracy activists defied a police ban on demonstrations and took to the streets to protest growing economic hardship and repression in Zimbabwe.

The National Constitutional Assembly said many of those arrested were assaulted. It vowed to continue with the demonstrations.

"We believe that demonstrating for a new constitution is a genuine cause that cannot be blocked by a corrupt police force whose mandate is merely that of protecting a failed regime," the movement said in a statement.

The demonstration on Wednesday coincided with a bleak new warning by the head of the Zimbabwe state central bank that the nation is broke and using foreign currency needed for fuel and spare parts on food.

Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono told a panel of lawmakers that many black farmers, including politicians, who resettled on former white-owned farms, were failing to produce food.

"There are some people who have become professional land occupiers, vandalizing equipment and moving from one farm to another," Gono told a parliamentary committee on Home Affairs, according to the daily Herald, a government mouthpiece.

He said his priority was to allocate hard currency for imports of corn, the staple, to avert a looming food crisis. Currency was diverted from almost every government department to buy food, he conceded.

Under President Robert Mugabe's land reform program, at least 5,000 white-owned farms have been seized with virtually no compensation since 2000. Many are derelict.

Mugabe faces growing unrest and strikes. Last week police slapped a three-month ban on demonstrations following skirmishes with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

The National Constitutional Assembly said it had defied the ban and marched in Harare and the cities of Bulawayo, Mutare, Masvingo and Gweru. Police arrested 50 demonstrators in Harare and 25 in Mutare, it said.

"Police brutality against demonstrators is a clear sign that we are living in a military state where freedom of expression and association is not respected," it said.

Official inflation is nearly 1,600 percent, the highest in the world.

In the past month alone, prices of many household supplies have doubled and the International Monetary Fund has forecast official inflation at 4,000 percent this year.

Earlier this month, Mugabe fired Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa who had spoken out against flooding the crumbling economy with freshly printed money that pushed up inflation.

Zimbabwean central bank official Gono told lawmakers hard currency earnings were a tiny fraction of the US$2.5 billion to US$3.5 billion needed "for the economy to function well."

"If we were talking about local currency, I would say: Don't worry, in the next 30 minutes we will print money," the official media quoted Gono as telling the lawmakers.
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