There was chaos once again in Harare on Thursday afternoon when police exhausted themselves attacking vendors stationed various locations in the CBD, shortly before the attacked men and women began preparing to return to sell.
In what is now a thrilling drama, vendors vowed to return to their selling posts albeit after being brutalised as more than thirty were arrested.
The cops used brute force on them resulting in many sustaining injuries. The police demonstrated that they have been given military training, the Zimbabwe Informal Sectors Organization (ZISO) said.
ZISO’s director Promise Mkwananzi said the municipality police were too swift in manhandling the vendors.
“The skill and efficiency which the vendors were decimated reflect military training,” Mkwananzi said.
“It could be that the regime shied away from a total military operation by camouflaging the army with municipal uniforms,” he said.
But Mkwananzi said the vendors cannot be cowed down.
“More than thirty vendors were arrested and heavily assaulted.
“We have resolved to reconstruct structures tomorrow and continue sell,” Mkwananzi said.
The move comes after government ordered the vendors off the Central Business District sending them off to remote outposts. Following the fall of the economy, Zimbabwe’s vendor community now numbers more than six million – Zimbabwe’s entire voting population.