SW Radio Africa
By Gerry Jackson
19th January 2010
Thabita Taona, who was arrested Monday during a peaceful WOZA demonstration, will spend another night in Harare Central Police Station as an investigating officer has not been assigned to the case. Until this happens charges cannot be formally brought against her.
Police have been engaged in their normal delaying tactics but she has seen her lawyer and has received the food brought to her. WOZA report that Thabita has also been ‘extensively interrogated’ about who else was in the demonstration with her.
A WOZA statement says: ‘The man caught ‘in the cross-fire’, Comfort Nyakura, was released last night (Monday) after his employer confirmed that he had been at work at the time of the demonstration and was merely on his lunch break’.
Freelance journalist Shadreck Manyere was the third person arrested Monday, but he was not held for long.
Members of Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise were protesting the exorbitant school fees and the destruction of the education sector and had tried to present a report on the failing education system to Minister David Coltart. Their report contains recommendations and a list of demands from parents, but riot police disrupted the demonstration.