Twenty-seven members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) appeared in a Zimbabwe court facing public violence charges on Saturday after six people were killed in post-election protests that were met by a military crackdown.
Soldiers and tanks rolled into the capital Harare on Wednesday after protests erupted against President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ruling ZANU-PF party’s landslide win in the House of Assembly vote.
The army’s clampdown on civilians and the opposition’s allegations that the vote was rigged revealed the deep fissures in Zimbabwean society that developed during the four-decade rule of Robert Mugabe, when the security forces became a byword for heavy-handedness. Read more