The marchers, who set fire to street barricades during the clashes, were dispersed by heavy police action, according to the Associated Press. “The skirmishes have been started by the police but they should know we will not be stopped by that… until Mugabe resigns”.
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“What politics is that when you burn tyres? We want peace in the country”, said Mugabe accusing foreign powers of having a hand in the unrest.
More than a hundred police officers in riot gear, backed up by water cannons and armored trucks, occupied the venue that opposition parties planned to use for their demonstration. They also beat up people wearing red T-shirts, which is the color of the MDC party.
Zimbabwe police have deployed throughout the capital, Harare, in anticipation of a protest by a united group of opposition parties that includes a former vice-president.
“I am shocked”, Didymus Mutasa, a former member of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF government, said.
“We have had enough of ZANU-PF misrule”. People’s desperation is very deep.
“We fear these threats will further limit the right of Zimbabweans to exercise freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, which are enshrined in the Zimbabwean Constitution, protected under Zimbabwe’s worldwide human rights obligations, and core values of any functioning democracy”, the U.S. embassy said.
Officers speaking to CAJ News on condition of anonymity expressed solidarity with the protesting masses, pointing out they also were not exempt from the economic crisis besetting the country.
“They actually meant to say they would quash any legal gathering as they have done today by suppressing a sanctioned march”.
“The government is nearing a tipping point in its ability to control a population long used to violence and hardship, and who now have little to lose in putting themselves at risk in forcing political concessions”, he told AFP.
On Friday, Zimbabwean police fired teargas into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators in Harare 20 minutes after the Harare High Court declared the demonstration legal.
About 150,000 people are expected to take part in the march before they are to be addressed by the leaders of the opposition parties.
But the U.S. embassy said such action would be “undemocratic”.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, an NGO providing lawyers to demonstrators, said among those arrested are journalist and a pregnant woman.
Friday’s march was to demand free and fair elections.
He won the last vote in 2013 in a poll the opposition says was rigged.
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“All along, we have been saying these countries and their allies are sponsoring illegal regime change in Zimbabwe over the years through all sorts of machinations with the latest one being these violent protests targeting properties”.
