31 July Protestors Will Be Treated Like Terrorists - Ziyambi

The government has warned pro-democracy activists who are planning to hold street protests on July 31 that they will be treated like terrorists and likely end up being jailed.

Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi told the Daily News on Sunday that authorities will not fold their hands and allow malcontents to demonstrate in the middle of a pandemic and infect other people with coronavirus. Said Ziyambi:

Anyone who goes into the streets against that advice is equivalent to a terrorist … so that we can deal with them accordingly.

All information has been put in the public domain to say that this pandemic is serious …  Anyone who then disregards those regulations and exposes people to danger in that manner I don’t see any reason why we cannot find a law that we can use in terms of terrorism activity to deal with those individuals.

Police on Monday arrested the main organiser of the protests Jacob Ngarivhume, leader of a small opposition political party called Transform Zimbabwe (TZ) and charged him with contravening Section 187(1)(a) as read with section 37(1)(a)(i) of the Criminal Law [Codification and Reform] Act, Chapter 9:23, “incitement to participate in public violence’.

Unbridled corruption which has cost the country billions of dollars and the general socio-economic decay which has accelerated since the November 2017 military coup has generated despondency and hopelessness among Zimbabweans.

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