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Riot police quell protest in Harare suburb
Zim-Online
May 12, 2005

http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=9714

Harare - Armed police yesterday beat up and forcibly dispersed residents of Harare’s low income suburb of Mabvuku who had taken to the streets after going for three days without water. Member of Parliament for Mabvuku, Timothy Mubhau, told Zim Online that three people had been arrested by the police for demonstrating against the severe water shortage and that the police were still questioning more residents over the matter yesterday.

"Police came in six vehicles and there was pandemonium as people fled in all directions . . . three have been arrested and several residents are being interrogated by the police," Mubhau said. Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena could however not confirm the Mabvuku arrests saying he had still not been briefed about the morning protests in the suburb. Harare is grappling severe water shortages because there is no foreign currency for spares for broken down water pumps and also to pay for water treatment chemicals.

But Mabvuku has been the worst hit by the water shortage with residents there forced to drink sewer and refuse contaminated water from a stream flowing near the suburb. Mubhau, who won the Mabvuku parliamentary seat on an opposition Movement for Democratic Change party ticket, warned of more possible protests in the poor suburb saying residents there were still seething with anger after yesterday's clashes with the police. He said: "People demonstrated in the morning because they have gone for some days without water . . . the protests were quelled by anti-riot police but the anger is still mounting among the people because there is still no water."

The shortage of water in Harare is only one in a long list of basic survival commodities increasingly difficult to find in Zimbabwe since President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu PF party wrapped a landslide victory in a controversial poll last March. Fuel, electricity, food and essential medicines have all become scarcer in Zimbabwe chiefly because there is no hard cash to pay foreign suppliers.

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