======================================================================
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
======================================================================
(The Munyaradzi Gwisai referred to as a socialist in this article
is a member of the ISO.)
NY Times February 21, 2011
Arrests in Zimbabwe for Seeing Videos
By CELIA W. DUGGER
JOHANNESBURG — Dozens of students, trade unionists and political
activists who gathered to watch Al Jazeera and BBC news reports on
the uprisings that brought down autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt
have been arrested on suspicion of plotting to oust President
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
James Sabau, a spokesman for the police force, which is part of
the security services controlled by Mr. Mugabe’s party, was quoted
in Monday’s state-controlled newspaper as saying that the 46
people in custody were accused of participating in an illegal
political meeting where they watched videos “as a way of
motivating them to subvert a constitutionally elected government.”
The evidence seized by the police included a video projector, two
DVD discs and a laptop.
Lawyers for the men and women in custody said they had not yet
been formally charged but had been advised that they might be
accused of “attempting to overthrow the government by
unconstitutional means,” a crime punishable by up to 20 years in
prison.
Mr. Mugabe, who turned 87 on Monday, and his party ruled Zimbabwe
single-handedly from 1980 until 2009, when regional leaders
pressured him into forming a power-sharing government with his
longtime political rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, after a discredited
2008 election. Mr. Tsvangirai withdrew from a June runoff that
year to protest state-sponsored beatings of thousands of his
supporters. An estimated 350 people died in the violence.
“The illegal meeting’s agenda, Inspector Sabau said, was ‘Revolt
in Egypt and Tunisia: What lessons can be learnt by Zimbabwe and
Africa?’ ” the state-controlled Herald reported.
Inspector Sabau found the topic incriminating, but many
Zimbabweans have been asking themselves that very question as
democratic revolutions have swept Arab nations. Like former
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Mr. Mugabe is an octogenarian
autocrat in power for three decades. And also like Mr. Mubarak, he
has used the state security services to harass, jail and torture
his opponents.
But there are differences as well. The United Nations recently
found Zimbabweans to be among the world’s poorest people, often
making mere survival an all-consuming task. They also have less
access to the Internet than Egyptians, depriving them of one of
the tools that helped organize the mass protests in Cairo.
And while the army in Egypt did not side with Mr. Mubarak when his
people rose up against him, most analysts assume that the
leadership of Zimbabwe’s military would try to crush any such
movement — though such an effort would also severely test the
loyalty of impoverished soldiers to their military commanders.
Nonetheless, some of Mr. Mugabe’s most influential opponents have
also criticized Mr. Tsvangirai’s leadership, arguing that the
people power in north Africa offers an example for Zimbabweans to
resist Mr. Mugabe’s rule.
“Indeed, the single most important lesson from Tunisia and Egypt
is that we as Zimbabweans are our own liberators,” Trevor Ncube,
owner of three independent newspapers in Zimbabwe and The Mail &
Guardian in South Africa, wrote this week in The Mail & Guardian.
Mr. Ncube added later, “The world will only help us when we stand
up and fight for our freedom and reclaim our country from Mugabe
and the arrogant clique around him.”
Munyaradzi Gwisai, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe’s law
school, was an organizer of the gathering, which took place on
Saturday and allowed activists who had no Internet access or cable
television to see images from the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
Alec Muchadehama, a human rights lawyer who met Mr. Gwisai at the
Harare Central police station, said detainees told him that Mr.
Gwisai was one of seven people in custody who were beaten with
truncheons at the police station. Mr. Muchadehama, who often
represents arrested journalists and activists, said Mr. Gwisai and
others at the meeting were not plotting the government’s
overthrow, but were engaged in “an academic debate about what was
happening in Tunisia and Egypt.”
A socialist and iconoclast whose wife said he was expelled from
Mr. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change in 2002 for
supporting an aggressive land reform program at a time when Mr.
Mugabe’s party was encouraging violent seizures of white-owned
commercial farms, Mr. Gwisai, like many of his countrymen, has
been watching the unrest in Arab nations.
His wife, Shantha Bloemen, who works for the United Nations in
Johannesburg, said: “Obviously, all the happenings in Egypt and
Tunisia have been taking center stage. The meeting was an
opportunity to discuss what’s happened, especially for people who
don’t have access to the Internet or cable TV, both to express
solidarity and to discuss the implications for Zimbabwe.”
As Mr. Mugabe’s party pushes for elections this year in a drive to
reclaim sole power, human rights groups have warned that the
police and youth militia aligned with Mr. Mugabe’s party have
intensified harassment, beatings and arrests of Mr. Mugabe’s
political opponents. The revolts in North Africa appear to have
made Mr. Mugabe’s inner circle nervous — and the arrests were a
sharp warning to those emboldened by them, they said.
“This is a message that ‘If you attempt anything, we’re going to
arrest you, assault you, incarcerate you, lay false charges
against you, deny you bail, and occupy you with false trials,’ ”
Mr. Muchadehama said. “That’s the message — ‘Don’t attempt this,
it can’t be done here.’ ”
________________________________________________
Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
Set your options at:
http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com