Zimbabwe Police Violently Disperse Peaceful Protest of President’s Economic Policies

Zimbabwean police fired tear gas and deployed batons against demonstrators gathered outside the finance ministry this week, the latest in an escalating series of crackdowns on protests over President Robert Mugabe’s handling of a deepening economic crisis.

A Fight Over Bond Notes

Hundreds of activists converged outside the office of Zimbabwe’s finance minister, demanding the government abandon plans to introduce a new form of local currency known as bond notes, intended to circulate alongside the U.S. dollar that Zimbabwe adopted as its primary currency back in 2009, after hyperinflation destroyed the value of its own previous currency entirely. “We don’t want bond notes because they will wipe out the few US dollars left,” one protester told Al Jazeera, capturing a widely shared fear that reintroducing any form of domestic currency — even one nominally pegged to the dollar — risked reopening the door to the kind of runaway inflation that had already devastated ordinary Zimbabweans’ savings once before.

Police moved to disperse the demonstration with batons and tear gas, part of what has become a near-daily pattern of street protest in Harare this year, set against a backdrop of massive unemployment, a currency and cash shortage severe enough that banks have struggled simply to keep enough physical dollars on hand, and persistent allegations of high-level government corruption.

One Crackdown Among Many

The bond notes protest was far from an isolated incident. Zimbabwe endured a string of similar confrontations throughout August alone: police fired warning shots and deployed water cannon against a “Mugabe Must Go” demonstration on August 17, arresting or assaulting protesters including at least one journalist; further clashes broke out on August 24, when officers fired shots into the air after protesters looted a shop belonging to the country’s vice president; and on August 26, Zimbabwe’s High Court explicitly ruled that an opposition rally demanding electoral reform ahead of the 2018 election could legally proceed — only for police to violently disperse it anyway, in direct defiance of the court’s order, according to Freedom House’s country assessment covering the year.

That pattern of security forces disregarding court rulings meant to protect protesters’ rights points to a deeper institutional strain running through Zimbabwe’s crisis. Human Rights Watch’s own accounting of the year found that police abuse increased markedly throughout 2016, with excessive force becoming a routine response to dissent, even as Mugabe himself began publicly attacking judges for what he characterized as “reckless” rulings that permitted protests against his government in the first place — an accusation that further eroded the independence of a judiciary that had, in cases like the August 26 ruling, at least attempted to check police overreach.

A Government Fraying at the Edges

The economic protests unfolding through this period were compounded by a further, more surprising crack in Mugabe’s political base: the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, a historically pro-Mugabe group whose members fought in the country’s independence war and have often been deployed against his political opponents, publicly broke with the president in July, calling him “dictatorial” and demanding greater free speech protections. Mugabe responded by pushing out the group’s leadership, but the rupture signaled that discontent with his 36-year rule had begun reaching even the constituencies that had underpinned his hold on power for decades.

For the protesters facing tear gas and batons outside the finance ministry, the immediate fight was about bond notes specifically — but for a country contending with unemployment, cash shortages, and a leader entering his fourth decade in power, the currency dispute had become just one flashpoint in a far broader reckoning over who bears the cost of Zimbabwe’s economic decline, and how much longer the government intends to answer public frustration with force rather than reform.

For related coverage of Zimbabwe’s economic crisis, see our piece on the nationwide shutdown protest led by Pastor Evan Mawarire, or browse our full Labor & Economy archive.