South African Police Deploy Force to Disperse Peacful Zimbabwean Solidarity Rally

PRETORIA: South African police responded to a peaceful rally in Pretoria today with rubber bullets and detentions.

An estimated 500 people were peacefully rallying on the steps of the Union Buildings in Pretoria this afternoon to ask for action on the crisis in Zimbabwe, when police arrived and asked them to leave. After the group refused to leave the grounds, police opened fire with rubber bullets, injuring 7 people, who were taken away in ambulances.

“The reaction from the police was completely over the top. People were singing and dancing when police started firing rubber bullets. This type of intolerance is part of the culture which must be changed – not only here in South Africa – but across the SADC region,” said Richard Smith from the Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum Secretariat.

Simultaneously, a delegation from the Save Zimbabwe Now! campaign, a civil society initiative in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe, when trying to present a memorandum to an Extraordinary Session of SADC leaders at a building adjacent to the rally, were detained.

Eight members of the delegation, including Kumi Naidoo, Honorary President of CIVICUS who is entering the sixth day of a hunger strike, and Nomboniso Gasa, Chair of the South African Commission for Gender Equality, were bundled in to a police vehicle and removed from the property. The groups were handing over a Memorandum asking for decisive action from SADC to acknowledge the extent of the humanitarian crisis in the country, and stop tacit support of the Mugabe regime.

“The detention and mistreatment of civil society activists trying to peacefully and non-violently draw attention to the gross violations of human and democratic rights in Zimbabwe is a sad reflection of the lengths to which South Africa’s government will go to suppress legitimate civil society demands and protect the Mugabe regime. Their actions are a new low in their complicity and dereliction of duty with regard to the crisis in Zimbabwe,” said Ingrid Srinath, Secretary-General of CIVICUS.

After being removed from the property, the eight campaigners were subsequently released, and returned to the venue of the Summit to attempt to present the Memorandum again.

Kumi Naidoo, Honorary President of CIVICUS, upon his release, said, “It is tragic that the SADC leaders were unwilling to receive an appeal from a broad cross-section of Southern African civil society which essentially appealed for the end of human rights violations humanitarian intervention, and justice for the people of Zimbabwe. By not receiving this simple letter, they are undermining their own stated commitments on the role of civil society in building a strong Southern Africa.”

Editors’ Note:

The Save Zimbabwe Now! initiative aims to support the efforts and activities of a myriad of organisations and individuals that have acted in solidarity with Zimbabweans over the years. It also aims to mobilise the support and solidarity of ordinary South Africans to raise their voices with regard to the role and positions of the South African government towards Zimbabwe.

Save Zimbabwe Now! commenced with a fast and hunger strike, in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe. Among the over 80 individuals fasting are Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bishop Paul Verryn, and Nomboniso Gasa and many others.

 Contact: Emily Wellman ewellman [at] idasa [dot] org [dot] za