World

Push For Reform In Zimbabwe

July 30, 2000 / 4:53 PM EDT / AP

Riot police sealed off a downtown square in Harare Friday, temporarily preventing about 200 people from holding a rally urging constitutional reform in Zimbabwe.

Supporters of the National Constitutional Assembly eventually were allowed into the square after senior police officials honored a court order permitting the rally, said Lovemore Madhuku, head of the assembly.

The civic organization used the rally to launch a campaign for democratic reforms to the constitution, but the gathering was smaller than planned because of the police confusion, Madhuku said.

“It was a struggle to hold the meeting at all. The interference was unwarranted and shows the government is against us. We were only asking to exercise our democratic rights,” he said.

On Tuesday, police banned the meeting, saying political tensions were running too high to allow the rally and a march through the city.

The group was granted a High Court order Friday to hold the gathering, Madhuku said.

Madhuku presented the court order to a police officer in charge of about 100 riot police armed with tear gas and stun guns who had encircled the square, but he was rebuffed.

The order was later taken to police headquarters.

A group of assembly supporters, with banners and flags, were at first kept out of the square, interrupting traffic in surrounding streets. Demonstrators carried flags emblazoned with the logo: “Marching for a new constitution.”

The assembly has spearheaded a campaign against government-backed amendments to the constitution that were rejected in a referendum in February 2000.

The defeat deeply rattled the government. The proposed amendments would have entrenched the sweeping powers of President Robert Mugabe and enabled him to seize white-owned farms without paying compensation.

Despite the defeat, the ruling party passed the land seizure amendment anyway and a policy of “fast track” confiscations began soon after. The government has earmarked 4,500 white-owned farms to be seized and given to landless blacks.

Soon after the referendum, ruling party militants began occupying the first of 1,700 white-owned farms. At least nine white farmers have been killed in violence since June.

In an agreement signed in September in Abuja, Nigeria, Zimbabwe pledged an immediate end to violence and farm invasions in return for British funding for orderly land reform.