President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party has prevented opposition supporters receiving emergency food aid in Zimbabwe, a rights body said Wednesday, as the country reels under severe shortages.
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Judge Priscilla Chigumba, who was deciding a case brought by political activists, said the official police notice issued last week after some of the worst public violence in two decades was invalid, and therefore suspended.
Following the suspension of the ban on Wednesday, Biti said Justice Chigumba’s ruling was “a fearless judgement that asserts the independence of the courts”. Mugabe’s attack on judges’ alleged “recklessness” followed violent protests in Harare but was largely seen as the strongman’s order to the bench to rule in favour of Zanu PF.
Police banned rallies in Harare and the surrounding district on Thursday, after several violent clashes between police and anti-government protesters in recent weeks.
“The court has said the ban was unlawful”, lawyer Tendai Bit, a former finance minister who represented the activists, told journalists following the verdict.
Anti-Mugabe protests intensified earlier this April, when thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in protest over the country’s declining economy.
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According to local newspaper The Chronicle, the ban on protests was lifted because police had not consulted opposition members and civil society groups before issuing the ban.
