HARARE (AFP) — Riot police beat dozens of students and pro-democracy activists marching on Tuesday through Zimbabwe's capital to demand a new government to tackle the country's worsening economic and political crisis.
Dozens of university students and activists from the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), a pro-democracy pressure group, held hands as they marched through Harare.
Riot police used to batons to break up the protesters, chasing them through the streets and beating passersby along the way, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.
The NCA said its leader Lovemore Madhuku was arrested before the protest. He was ordered to report to police in the morning and has not been released, the group said in a statement.
"The NCA emphatically condemns this unjustified obstruction of the organization's peaceful protest actions," it said.
The protesters were calling for a caretaker government to guide the country until President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai end their feud over forming a unity government.
Students wanted "a transitional arrangement that will urgently work towards addressing the desperate humanitarian catastrophe in the country," said a statement from Clever Bere, president of the Zimbabwe National Students Union.
The protest came two days after a regional summit failed to break an impasse on forming a unity government under a power-sharing deal signed nearly two months ago.
Mugabe has said that a new government will be formed soon, despite objections from Tsvangirai over the distribution of key cabinet posts.
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