Though Zimbabwean government officials and other nonpartisan observers described the protests which the country's leading trade union tried to launch this week as a flop, some civil society activists saw the turmoil as a promising start to mass mobilization.
The civic leaders said Friday that while the government was able to block the worker protests that the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions had organized, its deployment of security forces nationwide signaled its fear of the potential of such protests.
Reporter Ndimyake Mwakalyelye of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe spoke with Gordon Moyo, executive director of the Bulawayo Agenda, based in the second-largest city, and Farai Maguwu, director of the Civic Alliance for Democracy and Governance.