Crowds showed little fear as they poured onto the streets of the capital, Harare, and other major cities when the main labour federation called a three-day stay-away this month after fuel prices were more than doubled. The army's response to the worst rioting since 1995 claimed the lives of at least a dozen people, and gunshot wounds accounted for 78 of the about 360 injuries.
Fuelling the anger of young people – three-fifths of Zimbabweans are under 25 – is a sharp decline in buying power of mostly unemployed urban residents and shortages of everything from gasoline to bread. Most are too young to remember Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front leading the country to independence from the UK in 1980.
"People struck and looted because they are hungry," said Abel Moyo, an unemployed 27-year-old in the northern town of Chinhoyi. "The people are poorer now than before independence. What have we been liberated from? Wealth?"
Mugabe toppled
Part of the new-found boldness may date to the fall of Mugabe, who ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist for almost 40 years before the military toppled him in late 2017 and installed Emmerson Mnangagwa as his successor. While tanks controlled the streets, people swarmed around and took selfies with the soldiers. He then led the party to election victory less than a year later.
While the military intervention shattered the mystique of Mugabe and Zanu-PF, Mnangagwa's promises of a "new Zimbabwe" with better living standards and political freedom have fallen flat: the nation's gripped by the worst economic crisis in a decade and the army has replaced the police in clamping down on protests.
