adminMashudu Netsianda Senior Court Reporter
THE High Court yesterday gave MDC-T the green-light to stage its planned demonstrations in Bulawayo. The march has been scheduled for May 28.
The ruling by Justice Martin Makonese follows an urgent chamber application filed at the Bulawayo High Court by the Morgan Tsvangirai-led party challenging a decision by the police to bar its planned demonstrations in the city.
MDC-T sought an order interdicting police from interfering with its planned protests or discouraging its supporters from participating in the envisaged march. The opposition party argued that police had no legal basis to bar its supporters from staging a demonstration.
In its application through lawyer Kholwani Ngwenya from TJ Mabhikwa and Partners, MDC-T cited Home Affairs Minister Ignatius Chombo, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri and the officer commanding police in Bulawayo Central District as the respondents.
“The judge granted us our order as per our request and the march will go ahead on the May 28. The police have been ordered not to interfere or interrupt the march because the judge is agreeing with us that such conduct by the police is unreasonable and an infringement on the people’s rights to freely demonstrate,” said Ngwenya.
The demonstrations will start at the Bulawayo City Hall car park at 10AM and end at King Lobengula’s Kraal along Masotsha Ndlovu Avenue at 2PM.
James Sithole, who is the party’s organising secretary for Bulawayo province, in his founding affidavit, said the planned protest dubbed “March against poverty and corruption”, sought to bring to the fore MDC-T’s position on the declining socio-economic and political conditions in the country through a “peaceful demonstration.”
MDC-T last month had a similar demo in the capital where its rowdy supporters flooded the streets of Harare’s central business district and disrupted traffic flow and harassed Harare City Council workers prompting police to warn the opposition party’s leaders that they would not be allowed to infringe on the rights of innocent citizens.
During the protest, a Choppies Supermarket security guard was hospitalised after sustaining serious injuries at the hands of the marauding MDC-T supporters who ran amok downtown in the wake of an address by party leader Tsvangirai calling for the unconstitutional removal of President Mugabe from power.
Sithole said his party extended the courtesy of informing the police of the planned demo but they did not sanction it.
“The reasons for not sanctioning the peaceful demonstration were primarily that police has serious reservations due to the fact that a similar demonstration that we conducted on April 14, 2016 in Harare was not peaceful. They further said the economic environment was not conducive for a political demonstration of any form and fears that it could be infiltrated by bad elements hence they could not guarantee the security of participants,” he said.
National police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba recently said the rowdy behaviour exhibited by some supporters was the reason why sometimes they were reluctant to clear such gatherings.
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