Mugabe Arrests Street Vendors, Destroys Marketplaces

Mugabe's latest tactic: arresting street traders and destroying marketplace stalls, calling these vendors "economic saboteurs." This London Telegraph article provides details.

Hundreds of police armed with batons and tear gas descended on the heaving street markets of the capital, Harare, and second city, Bulawayo. They wrecked stalls, destroyed goods and hauled away the traders.

Many were assaulted and the huge operation, codenamed Restore Order, provoked violent protests in the town of Chitungwiza, 20 miles south of Harare. Youths stoned police, injuring 11, in the most serious outbreak of urban disorder since Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF Party won the widely condemned parliamentary elections in March.

Supt Oliver Mapandika, a police spokesman, said the operation would rid the cities of illegal traders. He blamed them for price rises and shortages of basic essentials and said that 9,725 had been arrested.

"Death cannot come too soon for evil Mugabe"

Scotland's Sunday Herald interviews the heroic Pius Ncube, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo. "We’re all praying that the Lord will soon take Mugabe away," says Ncube. "Everyone is fed up with him, including his own [ruling Zanu PF party] people. We're all hoping against hope that something will happen. He's a very, very evil man. The sooner he dies the better."

Mugabe Bugs the Media

"In A move to control the flow of information in and out of Zimbabwe," reports the New Scotsman, "Robert Mugabe’s beleaguered government has acquired sophisticated phone-tapping, radio jamming and internet-monitoring equipment from communist hardliners in China." When people are starving, the best use of resources is surveillance equipment, right?