Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, on Friday said his party could roll out protests against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government over its inability to improve the country’s flagging economy.
Tsvangirai has led the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) since 1999 and in April sacked his secretary-general, who was calling for the former Zimbabwean prime minister to step down after losing a third election to Mugabe last year. Some Western observers say the poll was rigged.
Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader, said the African country had an unsustainably high unemployment rate, estimated at above 80 percent, which forced many people into informal employment.
SUFFERING
After posting strong growth during four years of Mugabe and Tsvangirai’s unity government between 2009 and last year, the economy is suffering a dollar crunch due to lack of foreign investment, forcing many firms to shut down or keep workers without pay.
“We are going to mobilize. The form and content is left to the MDC to plan and execute,” Tsvangirai told journalists.
A senior party official told reporters that mass protests are “very much an option.”
Previous anti-Mugabe protests — the last of which occurred in 2007 — have been met by a heavy police and military resistance, but Tsvangirai said the veteran leader would be making a mistake by setting security forces against the public.
“Let him be warned that if we cannot live as free men and women in our country of birth, we will rather die as free people,” Tsvangirai said.
SECURITY FORCES
However, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) spokesman Rugare Gumbo said Harare’s security forces would deal with any protests.
“We have our security forces which are fully equipped to deal with that, so we are not worried about anything,” the spokesman for the ruling party said.
In a letter seen by media on Friday, Tsvangirai warned leaders of the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) that they should “take seriously our position on the developments in this country, which developments are slowly gravitating towards an inevitable implosion.”
‘LINE IN SAND’
“We in the MDC are drawing a line in the sand and we hereby inform our colleagues in SADC, well in advance, that the people of Zimbabwe shall be writing their own script for an endgame to the struggle for freedom and democracy,” he said.
Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, began a year-long run as chairman of the regional group last week.
ELECTIONS
Tsvangirai, who ran in the last election under a cloud of sex scandals, said his party would not participate in future elections until there were changes to the rules, as well as a credible voter register.
The next elections are scheduled for 2018.
Fear has largely undermined previous efforts by the opposition to confront Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and it is unclear if the opposition party can convince the public to mobilize, political analysts say.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese