‘We are fed up and we are not afraid’
“YOU don’t want to give us jobs, you don’t want us to import goods, what do you want us to do?” a young protester shouted at police in Makokoba township in Bulawayo this week.
The police replied with teargas, batons and water cannon.
The young man was part of a group armed with stones who had set off for the Bulawayo CBD with the intention of destroying a Choppies store. The police thwarted them.
The JSE-listed supermarket chain is the target of a boycott because of its links with VicePresident Phelekezela Mphoko, who has been criticised for staying in a luxury hotel for the past 600 days at taxpayers’ expense.
Mphoko has justified his stay at the Rainbow Towers in Harare by claiming there was no other accommodation suitable for a “man of his stature”.
But the ultimate target of this week’s nationwide protests was a man of even greater stature, President Robert Mugabe, and the broken economy over which he presides.
The protests are a challenge unlike any others that Mugabe has seen off before, using a combination of force and oratory.
The citizen-led movement has not been steered by fragmented opposition parties, which are largely bystanders, or by the unions, which have been decimated by 90% unemployment. It drapes itself in the national flag, and it mobilises through social media, not formal rallies. It is a mixture of impromptu street protest and digital resistance.
The triggers for this week’s mass stayaways were the state’s ban on imports from South Africa, rampant police extortion of commercial drivers and the nonpayment of civil servants’ salaries.
But the ground was prepared by Evan Mawarire, a Harare clergyman who has become the face of the #ThisFlag movement, which began in April with online videos in which he condemned Mugabe’s mismanagement of the economy.
Mawarire does not take his role as revolutionary lightly.
“It is incredibly humbling and it is a very serious duty,” he told the Sunday Times this week.
“People come to me and say: ‘You are revolutionary and you got us here.’ It is important for me to always say that we are revolutionaries together.
“This government must admit to the people that it has failed rather than pretend that they know what they are doing . . . There is increasing critical mass awareness. The idea was always to get many citizens involved in holding the state accountable . . . Even if we get no response from the government, let it be recorded that we stood up against them.”
Mawarire has called for more stayaways on Wednesday and Thursday.
On Friday, the state offered a telling concession to popular demands: the ban on imports was partly lifted, with travellers now allowed to bring in limited amounts of restricted goods once a month, but only for private consumption. A Zimbabwe Revenue Authority notice said permitted items included a maximum of 1kg of coffee creamer, four litres of juice, 2kg of cereal and 24 bars of soap.
Authorities said the ban had been aimed at commercial importers, not families.
A cross-border trader who plies the Bulawayo-Beitbridge route said calm had returned to the border town and that traders were finding ways to circumvent the imports ban.
“They were not bothering us at the border; there was no problem with electrical things coming in. Groceries were crossing in, but it’s now all about smuggling. Money talks,” said the trader, who did not want to be named.
In the affluent suburbs of Bulawayo, many people stayed indoors in silent protest rather than taking to the streets.
“I was behind the stayaway and I hope our government got the message and is acting on it,” said a resident. “It was not just another day, it was special. It gave me hope that maybe the government would really take us seriously and make this country a better place.”
Social media platforms were jammed on Wednesday and authorities warned against subversive online messages.
But Mawarire repeated the Shona refrain he has popularised — “Hatichada, Hatichatya”, loosely translated as “We are fed up and we are not afraid”.
It gave me hope the government would take us seriously