Today the High Court endorsed the Police ban on the MDC protest march. This was late morning. The march was scheduled to start at 11.00 hrs. Instead the Court said a rally could be held at a stadium in Highfields (Gwanzura).

A crowd estimated at 60 000 began walking the 8 kilometres to the stadium from the MDC headquarters but after a few blocks were broken up by riot police. Eventually a small group of about 5000 people regrouped at the stadium and listened to a speech by the President of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai. When he had spoken to them they dispersed peacefully.

There was no violence on the part of the MDC crowd.

This incident shows the total futility of even the small reforms adopted by ZANU PF as a result of 8 months of negotiation in South Africa under the SADC process. The Act used to ban this activity is the Public Order and Security Act which was amended in the negotiations, fast tracked through Parliament and signed by Mugabe into law.

Now at the first hurdle, even these modest reforms are shown to have no effect on the behaviour of this rogue regime. We are back to square one. The State is also ignoring all the other reforms – no action on the media, no action on the Independent Electoral Commission or any of the other reforms agreed and implemented in recent weeks.

This is a fresh challenge to the Mbeki led mediation.

(Source: via email)