Pat Dollard

Tweet

Great. Now what are you going to do about it.

Times Online

International outrage over the crack-down in Zimbabwe grew yesterday as African leaders called for the release of a top opposition leader arrested on the capital charge of treason.

The whereabouts of Tendai Biti, the deputy leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), remained unknown the day after police arrested and handcuffed him as he disembarked at Harare airport.

The High Court ordered police to produce Mr Biti before the court this morning after the MDC filed a case on his behalf, saying it was deeply worried about his welfare. The party had earlier “dispatched a team of lawyers and human rights defenders to every possible police station in Harare in an effort to secure his whereabouts”, but they were unable to locate him.

In a rare reprimand, Botswana called in the Zimbabwean Ambassador to protest about Mr Biti’s arrest and the repeated detention of the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Forty of Africa’s most prominent figures, including the former leaders of Ghana, Nigeria and Mozambique, also signed an open letter calling for the violence to cease.

Mr Biti’s arrest for treason represented a fresh escalation in the war being waged on the Opposition by President Mugabe, the security leadership of the Joint Operations Command (JOC) and the “ war veteran” militias deputed to carry out the violence.

Diplomats said that Mr Biti was travelling back from secret talks with ruling party officials in South Africa, ostensibly aimed at creating a government of national unity and ruling out the need for the presidential run-off vote scheduled for June 27. Human rights groups and Western governments have insisted that no fair vote can be held in the current climate. One diplomat said that Mr Biti had left because he believed that “the talks were going nowhere”. His arrest, air-side, at Harare airport as foreign diplomats waited outside in the hope of preventing such an incident, confirmed fears that the talks were little more than a smokescreen to deflect attention from state-sponsored violence.

Earlier yesterday Mr Mugabe raised the spectre of civil war, telling his supporters that his war veterans said: “If this country goes back into white hands. . . we will return to the bush to fight.” Militiamen travelling around the country are telling people to “vote for Mugabe or prepare for war”. A senior Western diplomat said: “It makes one very dubious that there can be any meaningful negotiations on national unity. What sort of message is the JOC sending to people?”

Police, meanwhile, impounded Mr Tsvangirai’s two campaign buses yesterday morning as he was released from a police cell where he had spent the night detained without charge. James McGee, the outspoken US Ambassador to Harare, said that the arrests and campaign of violence had “made a travesty of the upcoming run-off elections”. Observers from the South African Development Community have started to arrive in Zimbabwe for the polls. But there are serious doubts about whether the regional grouping is prepared to deliver an unprecedented negative verdict on the election.