"PROTESTS organised against President Mugabe and Zanu-PF in Harare appear to have gone unheeded as the capital has remained calm and business as usual.

Armored cars, trucks of riot police and Israeli-built water cannon vehicles swept through Harare since Saturday, fanning out into townships around the city.

Authorities had indicated that they were reading for an criminal activity that would ensue and any demonstrations that were not authorised by government.

Messages, many of them anonymous, posted on Zimbabwean websites and on Facebook called for protests Tuesday but there has been no open campaigning for demonstrators to turn out on the streets.

Some 15 percent of Zimbabweans have access to the Internet and social networking sites.

Many of them are largely based in the diaspora..."

And this...

Caesar Zvayi: The chalice that should not pass

"WELL yesterday, March 1, was supposed to mark the start of an ominous Ides of March against President Mugabe and Zanu-PF's rule in the form of a "Million Citizen March" through the streets of Harare to force President Mugabe out of office.

The organisers were clearly motivated by the ongoing uprisings in the Arab Maghreb and believed the protests that gripped Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen to mention just a few countries can be replicated in Harare, turning Africa Unity Square into Tahrir (Freedom) Square, so to speak.

Well it was business as usual on the streets of Harare, despite frantic agenda-setting attempts by flushed correspondents of BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera, confirming what I have always told my interlocutors that events in North Africa cannot be transposed to Zimbabwe for the simple reason that the countries, peoples and circumstances are different...

And in 2008, the time Zimbabwe was deemed to be at a tipping point, there was another attempt at a mass action organised under the banner of an ephemeral grouping called "Save Zimbabwe". Touted as a prayer meeting, the gathering soon degenerated into a violent confrontation between protesters and the police, confrontations that claimed one life and left, and again that never went beyond the environs of Machipisa in Highfield.

There is a reason why all the attempts at street protests failed. The MDC had and still has no cause that the majority would subscribe to apart from the perennial slogan, "Mugabe must go!" If you ask why he must go you are likely to get the following responses: "he has been in power for too long"; "he has destroyed the country"; "he is old"; "we need change, etc".
Engage them in debate on what precipitated the economic downturn of the past decade, and they soon resort to name-calling and character assassinations as they can't proffer evidence to indict Mugabe.

Therein is the bane of the MDC and its allies. There simply is no reason for Mugabe to go apart from assuaging westerners who have clearly stated that his actions and policies pose "a continuing and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States".

The fact of the matter is that what protesters in the Arab Maghreb are demanding is what has been implemented in Zimbabwe without streets protests..." http://www.herald.co.zw/