Harare, Zimbabwe – When Misheck Nyembe entered a meeting of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) in the densely populated residential area of Budiriro on January 14, he saw three armored police trucks and 30 baton-wielding anti-riot police officers driving around outside.
It was an odd sight as the meeting took place in the home of a CCC legislator, but Nyembe, 72, a staunch supporter of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, was unperturbed as it was not his first meeting.
“I didn’t care much about the police presence,” he told Al Jazeera at his home in Budiriro, an opposition stronghold in Harare. “I felt I had a right to be there.”
No sooner had he sat down than a group of baton-wielding police officers burst through the gates, causing pandemonium.
Outside, police officers sprayed tear gas. One of them grabbed Nyembe and pushed him into a truck. Many opposition supporters climbed a security wall and escaped, but Nyembe and 25 others were less fortunate.
They eventually spent 13 days in Harare jail until lawyers from the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum secured their release on bail.
A series of arrests
It was the latest in a string of arrests in Zimbabwe, where critics have accused President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government of clamping down on dissent and the right of assembly.
“There has been an increasing shrinkage of the social and political space in general, as evidenced by increasing opposition violence and arrests,” political analyst Rashwit Mukundu told Al Jazeera.
Several opposition figures and government critics have been arrested or imprisoned without trial in recent months. Opposition parties say nearly 100 of their supporters have been arrested and held in detention without trial since early 2022. The charges range from committing political violence to illegally convening meetings.
The dismembered body of Moreblessing Ali, a loyal CCC, was found in June, two weeks after she was kidnapped. Pius Mukandi Jamba, a well-known supporter of the ruling party, allowed to the murder and is in prison.
At Ali’s funeral, violence broke out between supporters of the ruling party and the opposition.
On July 9, police arrested 36 people, including leaders of the newly formed Zimbabwe Transformative Party, at a prayer meeting in Harare. They were accused of gathering without police permission. Most were released after more than three months in captivity, but the party’s leader, Parere Kunyenzura, was imprisoned for nearly 200 days.
Job Sikhala, deputy chairman of the CCC and member of parliament, has been in jail since June after being charged with inciting violence. His trial began in January.
Journalist Hopewell Chin’ono was jailed from July to September for what the state said was “inciting participation in a rally with intent to promote public violence, violations of the peace or bigotry”.
In 2021, another journalist, Jeffrey Moyo, was detained for 21 days when he was charged with obtaining false press credentials for two New York Times journalists who were in Zimbabwe on a reporting trip last year.
‘Illegal gatherings’
The presidential elections will take place in July. The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriottic Front (ZANU-PF) has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980. Its candidate is Mnangagwa, who overthrew Zimbabwe’s founding leader Robert Mugabe in a coup d’état in 2017.
The 80-year-old is seeking a second five-year term, but the opposition, led by the CCC’s Nelson Chamisa, who is nearly half his age, is confident of victory.
Zimbabwe’s floundering economy has been a thorny issue ahead of the vote, but so has the arrests of opposition supporters who police say are holding “illegal gatherings”.
Political parties must request permission from the police at least two weeks before an event. Security services have refused permission for many opposition rallies, saying there is no manpower to monitor events.
According to Chamisa, the police have blocked 68 meetings of his party in recent weeks.
The opposition accuses the police of being partisan and under the control of the ruling party, but ZANU-PF spokesman Chris Mutsvanga said the party is a “private voluntary entity … not the government of Zimbabwe”.
“Instead, there is an executive branch, a judiciary and a legislature,” he told Al Jazeera. “The ZRP [police] respond to these constitutional bodies, certainly not to ZANU-PF.”
Tafadzwa Mugwadi, another party loyalist, said his party remains popular and does not need help from state institutions such as the police or the election commission.
“The false agenda on reform is led by the CCC and its puppeteers in the EU and US, who want to find a smokescreen to justify continued illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe after 2023,” Mugwadi said.
‘Selective application of the law’
Analysts said concerns are growing over Zimbabwe’s shrinking democratic space.
Musa Kika – executive director of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, a coalition of 22 human rights organizations – told Al Jazeera that banning opposition rallies is a “tried and tested strategy” for terrifying the opposition.
“[It is] a cycle that repeats every election year,” he said. “This is clearly an abuse of the criminal justice system and abuse of the constitution that entitles to due process, etc.”
He and other activists said there has been “selective application of the law” because the opposition is not allowed to hold events while the ruling party has faced little or no hindrance.
In January, the authorities revoked the registration of 291 non-governmental groups and civil society organizations for “non-compliance with the provisions of [the] Private Voluntary Organization Act”.
Government critics said this violates the freedom of association enshrined in international human rights laws to which Zimbabwe is a party, including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
“Zimbabwe’s crackdown on civil society organizations must stop, especially in light of this year’s general election,” said Ashwanee Budoo-Scholtz, Human Rights Watch’s deputy director for Africa. “The government must stop using the Private Voluntary Organization Act as a tool to silence the exercise of fundamental democratic rights.”
For Nyembe, who has a back injury sustained when he was arrested, this was not his first experience of politically-related violence. He was part of Zimbabwe’s struggle for independence in the 1970s and remains determined to vote in the upcoming elections.
“I want a better future for my children,” he said. “My youngest daughter couldn’t find a job and had to go to South Africa.”