Despite a last-minute court order allowing the demonstration to proceed, the police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse a crowd of hundreds from a square in Harare, beating protesters with batons. Mr. Mugabe’s government has been challenged by a series of public protests in the past two months, fueled by widespread anger over the deteriorating economy. But the broad array of opposition figures and the swiftness of the police reaction, despite the court order, signaled a new level of tension. Leaders of an emerging coalition against Mr. Mugabe — including Morgan Tsvangirai, the nation’s longtime opposition figure, and Joice Mujuru, a former vice president who broke with Mr. Mugabe — were chased away from the square by the police and fled in their cars.
Opposition supporters clashed with the police on Friday in Harare. Officers used tear gas and water cannons to disperse hundreds protesting against the government.
Protesters left the square and ran into the central business district, some of them throwing stones at the police. Though the demonstration was organized by about 20 opposition parties and led by supporters, many ordinary Zimbabweans also joined the protest. “I was beaten by the police here exercising my constitutional right, beaten with baton sticks by a horde of around 10 police officers,” said Jonathan Malindati, 39, a jobless man who stood near the square, bleeding from his head and displaying baton marks on his back. “Police must safeguard the Constitution, which permits us to demonstrate,” he added. “They must not be sent to fight us by Mugabe.”
The demonstration on Friday, organized by the political opposition against what it calls Zimbabwe’s corrupt electoral commission, occurred amid a deepening economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe. A fight to succeed Mr. Mugabe, who is increasingly frail at age 92, has split the governing ZANU-PF party and emboldened his opponents. As the government has run short of cash, it has delayed paychecks to the military and the police for two consecutive months, and has struggled to pay other civil servants. Tambudzai Jabangwe, a 68-year-old widow, shouted at anti-riot police officers for protecting a government that was destroying jobs for the country’s children. “You are cruel, you have no heart,” she yelled before being chased away from the square.
Mr. Mugabe, second from right, in Harare
Later, Ms. Jabangwe said she had taken a bus from her home into the city to participate in the protest. “I am fighting for my grandchildren, who are educated but unemployed because of Mugabe who has shut down everything, every industry,” she said. Amid the turmoil of the protest, rumors spread on social media that Mr. Mugabe had fled the country. But the state media reported that he had left to attend a previously scheduled summit meeting in Kenya between African nations and Japan.
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Police spokesman Paul Nyathi on Saturday said they had recovered some property looted during the protests.
Zimbabwe has been the scene of anti-government protests
Police used batons, tear gas and water cannons in running battles with anti-government demonstrators on Friday, despite a court order that the protest could take place. President Robert Mugabe warned opposition leaders against attempting an Arab Spring type of revolution, according to the state-run Herald newspaper.
Frustrations over Zimbabwe's rapidly deteriorating economy are boiling over in this once prosperous but now economically struggling southern African country. Police have often used tear gas, water cannons and open violence to crush anti-government protests, which have become a near-daily occurrence.
Scores arrested in Zimbabwe after anti-government protests - Independent.ie
For a man who relied heavily on Chinese weaponry to stay in power, a Chinese-manufactured Type 89 armoured vehicle rolling into central Harare on November 15 must have been an ugly shock. It had come to depose him, not serve him, and Robert Gabriel Mugabe knew his game was finally up. Even bedecked with grinning soldiers and citizenry, the armoured vehicle was as much a symbol of oppression as liberation. It also triggered debate about the role China would have in Zimbabwe’s future, as well as its wider role on the continent. Mugabe’s downfall is knitted firmly into the story of Beijing’s increasingly active engagement on the world stage, notably in countries where Western nations have fallen out of favour.
China is bankrolling an impressive array of projects across Africa, everything from car factories to bridges, and expanding its military footprint in step with numerous weapons deals and training exercises. In South Africa, Chinese car manufacturer BAIC is building a US$826 million vehicle assembly plant in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, with an expected annual output of 55,000 cars. Chinese arms manufacturer Poly Technologies last year signed a partnership agreement with South African state arms manufacturer Denel to bid for a US$428 million naval vessel procurement deal. In East Africa, China is bankrolling a massive new infrastructure project that will connect South Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya through roadways, railways and oil pipelines. It has spent about US$9.9 billion on intra-city rail infrastructure in East Africa since 2000, CNN estimates.
Mugabe apin' fer the camera
In West Africa, China plans to invest US$40 billion in Nigeria, on the back of about US$46 billion already invested, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced this year. In June, South Africa’s Standard Bank announced “the world’s first dedicated” Africa China Banking Centre in Johannesburg. The bank, which 10 years ago sold a 20 per cent stake to the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, plans to extend credit lines into Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria and Ghana before the end of the year. In August, China officially opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, to serve as a base for peacekeeping and anti-piracy missions.
Zimbabwe was also among the recipients of Chinese largesse. China last year agreed to build a new 650-seat parliament in the country. Beijing has strongly rejected conspiracy theories suggesting the coup plotters had obtained superpower blessing before the big day. “It is beyond obvious that the purpose of certain elements trying to link the Zimbabwe political crisis with China is to undermine China’s image and to drive a wedge between China and Africa,” fumed a statement from the Chinese embassy in South Africa a few days after Mugabe’s downfall. Reports that it played a role in the coup were “self-contradictory, full of logical fallacies and filled with evil intentions”, the statement read. But the narrative that meddling foreigners were at it again, pulling puppet strings and carving out yet another compliant regime to suit their neo-colonial agenda, is a strong one, mined with memories of a cold war arm-wrestle between superpowers south of the Sahara.
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