Harare, Zimbabwe (News of the South)-Harare has a very large CBD population. From 7 in the morning until 9 in the evening the CBD is usually teeming with human bodies colliding, pushing and straining to move.
The situation is worsened by the line-up of vendors who like a live morass hinder pedestrian movement by spreading their products and produce in the same pavements where people are supposed to walk.
Commuter buses worsen the frenetic nature of the central town with their loud hooters, shouting touts and the sheer carnage of their movements which holds respect for no one save the likely passenger.
Today however the situation is different.
They are no vendors along sidewalks. The Copacabana shopping mall of second hand goods which usually bristles with activity from early morning till late evening, is empty and shut.
The line-up of shops along the highway street of Chinhoyi, are coldly shut with steel locks. The few people walking down the street are like the last remnants of an extinct generation, searching for the way out too.
A tout calls out and his voice is a lost presence in the silence. It’s unusual.
The sight of the town activity is a picture from a weekend day, Saturday or Sunday, yet there is something strange and unfamiliar about it. Something that tells you this is a usual day gone unusual.
After the protests that happened yesterday in Epworth, Mabvuku and Tafara the #ShutHarareDown protests have reached their peak with a complete order to shut down the CBD.
Many have obeyed the calls spread on social media whilst others have remained at home out of fear.
The authorities, most likely, have gagged down the tele-communications network today and Whatsapp, the medium for the protests calls, has been slow and tedious. Messages are only coming in after a long time.
“What’s up with network guys today”, a friend in one of the groups asks after a long time of silence.
“Mukufurirana zvisizvo saka taidzima”, another person answers.
It’s meant as a comic jibe but the veins of truth are plain to see.
A man who I was with in the commuter bus from Kuwadzana sidles up to me as I walk down Nelson Mandela.
“People were beaten yesterday by the police. They were going house by house beating all males. My friend has actually gone to stay at his mother-in-law’s house for the meantime until things stabilize.”
This recent unrest is a first for the normally reserved population of Zimbabwe which has been split along political party lines into sterility for a long time. Many of the initiatives have failed due to the apparent schisms brought by the main parties MDC-T and ZANU PF.
Once a project has been identified as a product of one of the parties the other side usually retreats and plays no part or in some cases it’s chased away.
This protest has however broken new grounds with its non-alignment to a distinct political party. Actually the nearest thing to a central organisation in the protests, is a new apolitical outfit calling itself Tajamuka.
It’s a medley of civil activists and mere public members with no attachment to the political parties. This has castrated the propaganda machinations which normally attack public initiatives along political party lines.
The same style has failed to apply in this situation where there is no central organizing unit.
State publication The Herald this week tried to demean the protests with a headline which in the situation can only be described as being bawdy.
The headline not only willfully missed the mark but created a false picture of petty squabbles.
Police Rein in Rowdy Youths, it said. While the violent may have been youths the protests have been a national movements cutting across political barriers.
This morning the publication had another tired leap to massage the protest into a fickle erection of the falsely minded.
Police Assure Workers of Safety, it said, trying to create the false picture that the larger public is merely caught in the ventures of a select few rowdy people.
It’s far from the truth. Whilst many may not support the violent protests of burning and beating each other, the general message this paper got from those it talked to, is that this is the way to go.
After the failed projects of the MDC and the non-materialization of promised jobs by ZANU PF, the Zimbabwean population has decided to stand up on its own. There is no cash in banks. Civil servants are striking. Some imports have been banned. They are no jobs, and some of the leaders have been insensitive.
The protests are a first in a country of a people who have time and again cynically laughed at themselves for their timidity when it comes to taking authorities to task.
A video of a Tajamuka public address circulated on social media showed a new attitude in the Zimbabwe population, as the young man and women told the crowd of people waiting in a banking queue that ‘it’s time for public action lest history judges us badly and our children suffer.’
I walk on down Mandela searching for something to write about, carefree in the quiet streets with only a few cars going by whilst the sidewalks are virtually empty of vendors.
Until I realise that im walking in a story.
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