T-shirts have teeth, apparently
The police raided the office of Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition on Tuesday 15 March.
“The police, who were armed with a search warrant signed by Chief Superintendent Peter Magwenzi said they were looking for anything subversive such as T-shirts, documents and fliers or anything incriminating.” (ZLHR press release)
You really have to laugh at them – there’s nothing else left to do. This incident reminded me of something I read recently. Some food for thought for civic organisations in Zimbabwe . . .
Faking it
Slobodan Miloševic, Serbia’s warmongering leader during the 1990s, was a master of manipulation in the former Yugoslavia. But, as the endgame approached, even Miloševic lost his touch.
He and his henchmen had little idea how to cope with the mischievous Otpor (“Resistance”), the student movement that proved more effective in energizing opposition to Miloševic than his political foes had ever been. Even as Otpor’s members were arrested and beaten, they mocked the authorities. As one of Otpor’s leaders pointed out later, the regime found itself in a bind. “I’m full of humour and irony and you are beating me, arresting me,” Srdja Popovic said in an interview for Steve York’s and Peter Ackerman’s documentary Bringing Down a Dictator. “That’s a game you always lose.”
In advance of elections in September 2000, the authorities became increasingly enraged at Otpor’s success. Police raided the group’s offices in the Serb capital, Belgrade, confiscating computers and campaign materials.
Otpor exacted sweet revenge. On phone lines which they knew would be tapped, they discussed how they would receive a large quantity of additional supplies of election stickers and other materials at a certain time and day. They invited news photographers to witness the delivery. Then, at the appointed hour, volunteers began unloading boxes from a truck, staggering toward the Otpor office, apparently weighed down by the weight of all the pamphlets and posters.
The waiting police triumphantly moved in to seize the boxes. As they did so, they realised that the cartons were not heavy at all, but strangely light. They were empty – as empty as the police action itself.
Orders were orders, however. The police could not stop confiscating what they had been ordered to confiscate. Under the mocking eyes of reporters and other onlookers, the police impounded a large quantity of empty cardboard boxes.
Source: Small Acts of Resistance – how courage, tenacity, and ingenuity can change the world
Authors, Steve Crawshaw and John Jackon