Blackout on social media apps continues after arrests, strikes and protests over fuel prices

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Zimbabwe’s high court has ordered the country’s government to restore the internet in full, ruling that the security minister did not have the power to issue such a directive.

The court said only President Emmerson Mnangagwa has the authority to make such an order.

Zimbabwe’s government closed the internet for much of last week. Over the weekend it restored a partial service, but maintained a blackout on social media apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

Zimbabwe’s capital is returning to normal after a week of turmoil in which Zimbabweans protested against dramatic fuel price rises and government security forces launched a crackdown in which 12 people were killed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters at a demonstration outside the Zimbabwean embassy.in Pretoria, South Africa. Photograph: Phill Magakoe/AFP/Getty Images

Most shops and businesses have reopened, although many people were stocking up on food items in case the country faces further unrest.

Zimbabwe warns brutal crackdown is 'foretaste of things to come' Read more

A spokesman for Zimbabwe’s largest trade union said police had arrested Japhet Moyo, the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions – whose organisation had called for last week’s nationwide strike to protest against the government’s proposal of more than doubling the price of fuel.

The strike and protests sparked off a government crackdown in which 12 people were killed, according to human rights groups. More than 600 people, including opposition members of parliament, have been arrested in connection with last week’s protests.

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Moyo was arrested at the airport in Harare on Monday and lawyers were investigating the reason why.

Mnangagwa, who was in Kazakhstan after visiting Russia last week, was expected to return to the country late on Monday after announcing on Sunday that he would not be attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Mnangagwa had been under growing pressure to return from a two-week overseas visit as accounts emerged of abuses by security forces, including dozens of people wounded by gunfire and others hunted down in their homes and severely beaten.

Indicating the severity of Zimbabwe’s economic problems, South Africa confirmed that it recently turned down Mnangagwa’s request for a loan of $1.2bn (£932m). “We just don’t have that kind of money,” the South African treasury spokesman Jabulani Sikhakhane told the broadcaster eNCA.