ZIMBABWE: Mugabe arrests scholars as regimes topple

A University of Zimbabwe lecturer and dozens of students were this week charged with treason for allegedly plotting an Egypt-style uprising against President Robert Mugabe's government. The country has been gripped by political violence and arrests have escalated as Mugabe moves to silence dissent while autocratic regimes elsewhere on the continent fall.

Labour law lecturer Munyaradzi Gwisai was among a mixed bag of 45 - including students, trade unionists and others - who were arrested last weekend and remanded in custody this week, as Mugabe launched a crackdown on perceived opponents.

It was said that they had gathered to debate the toppling of governments in Tunisia and Egypt and the impacts of protests in other countries such as Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, where the dictatorial Muammar Gaddafi's rule is under threat.

On Monday Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, representing the lecturer and students, said their clients were arrested while participating in an academic discussion and were not attempting to overthrow the government by unconstitutional means, as defined by Zimbabwe's Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act.

"At least 35 police officers suspected to be from the Criminal Investigation Department Law and Order section and some members of the dreaded Central Intelligence Organisation cast an indiscriminate dragnet at the venue where the academic discussion was being held," a statement by the lawyers said.

The latest treason case follows the arrest of another student and six others in 2007 on allegations of plotting a coup against the long-time autocratic ruler. As previously reported in University World News, Rangarirai Mazivofa (23), a second-year agriculture student at the University of Zimbabwe, was released by the High Court in November last year on the grounds that he had been incarcerated for a long period without trial. But police indicated that they have launched a fresh manhunt for him on the same charges.

In recent weeks, Zimbabwe has been gripped by political violence blamed on Mugabe's Zanu-PF party. Analysts say the violence is a deliberate strategy on the part of the autocrat - a build-up to his plans to retain power in elections that he has proposed for later this year, 31 years after he first came to power on the country's independence from Britain in 1980.

Last week, another University of Zimbabwe law lecturer and co-chairperson of a legislative committee spearheading the drafting of a new constitution, Douglas Mwonzora, was arrested for alleged political violence with 23 villagers from a constituency where he is a member of parliament for the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, a rival party to Zanu-PF.

On Monday, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said the attorney general had vetoed a bail order that had been granted to Mwonzora.

The human rights lawyers added that more evidence of the escalating action against dissenting voices was the arrest of 10 artists earlier last month, while they were staging a play on national healing and related transitional justice issues.

The latest arrests came as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said in a public lecture on 15 February that protests that have happened in Egypt and Tunisia are possible in Zimbabwe due to repression.

"But, as we have witnessed so recently on our own continent, parties that have lost the support of the people have no guarantee that they can hang on to power indefinitely. The major lesson from Tunisia and Egypt is the sanctity and eventual triumph of people power; the lesson that the people's day will come tomorrow, notwithstanding today's repression," said Tsvangirai, who will be Mugabe's rival in the presidential poll.

The premier delivered the lecture on the anniversary of the second year of the unity government, the power-sharing pact between Zanu-PF and the MDC.

But student groups said the new government has failed to improve academic freedoms and access to higher education.

In a statement the Zimbabwe National Students Union, Zinasu, said when the National University of Science and Technology (Nust) reopened on 14 February, more than 60% of students were unable to register after failing to pay their fees.

"Thousands who had turned up for studies risk deferment or dropping out of tertiary education because of failure to pay fees. Tuition fees at Nust range from US$375-US$800, and in a country where the majority earn just below US$200, it can only be rational that the tuition fees regime is unreachable to the majority of the students," said the Zinasu statement.

"Thousands of Zimbabwean students continue to face such state-sponsored persecution for the simple reason that they belong to the poor of this country," the statement concluded.