On Tuesday, minibuses plying routes between Harare’s city centre and the suburban areas were suddenly seen driving around displaying colourful campaign posters emblazoned with the portrait of Mugabe waving his fist.
Investigations revealed that the A3-size Mugabe posters were plastered on minibuses on nearly all city routes, including the densely populated southern working class areas, where the veteran leader is thought to be highly unpopular.
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Bus drivers said that youths wearing Mugabe T-shirts had arrived at bus terminals earlier this week and marshalled bus crews into sticking the posters onto their vehicles.
The youths caught us by complete surprise. Within seconds they were all over the place, pushing and shoving commuters and demanding to see drivers and conductors of selected buses, whom they ordered to stick the President’s posters on the kombis, said one conductor at the Fourth Street terminal just outside Harare’s central business district.
They took down the registration numbers of our kombis and said they would monitor each of the kombis to ensure we did not pull down the President’s posters, threatening to deal with those who resisted, said the conductor.
A driver at the Market Square rank said: What it means displaying these posters on my bus is that the bus owner, driver, conductor as well as the passengers support Zanu (PF), but that is not necessarily the case.
On Tuesday evening a group of commuters at the Fourth Street rank refused to board the minibuses displaying Mugabe’s posters, digging in their heels for nearly 30 minutes before they finally boarded because they had no other way of getting home.
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One of the commuters remarked: This is a form of intimidation on the kombi drivers and on passengers but that will not affect how I am going to vote.
An officer at Harare Central Police Station said the law enforcement agency was not aware of any commuter bus owner or crew being forced to display posters of Mugabe on their vehicles. – ZimOnline
Post published in: News