Opposition rises up

last updated 8 January 2015

Harare, Zimbabwe

Government troops fired live ammunition and beat demonstrators with whips and rifle butts this week to try to quell opposition protests against President Robert Mugabe. Police detained dozens of supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, including the party’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. But the party said its protests would not stop until “Mugabe gives a clear signal that he will leave office.” Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe despotically for all of its 22 years of independence from Britain, has brought the country economic ruin and famine. His paramilitary units have beaten or killed most of his black political opponents and driven out many of the country’s white farmers. Last year he rigged the presidential election, which Tsvangirai would otherwise have probably won.