JOHANNESBURG, March 12 -- Zimbabwean police attacked peaceful protestors in their final push to get rid of Mugabe yesterday, shooting to death one activist and arresting dozens of others, including several of the country's most prominent opposition leaders, according to news reports.

The brutal attack on peaceful demonstrators in Highfield, a township west of Harare, the capital, was the most serious violent encounter in several years between police and forces fighting to end the chaos of 26 years of Mugabe’s looting of the country.

Among those imprisoned was Morgan Tsvangirai, 55, a 2002 presidential candidate, robotics professor and leader of the largest bloc of Zimbabwe's fractured opposition.

Lawyers sought an urgent court order Sunday night to have Tsvangirai freed. A political ally and former member of parliament, Roy Bennett, said police had severely beaten Tsvangirai, who was in "very serious condition" with head injuries.
Bennett, speaking in Johannesburg after consulting with other opposition figures by phone, said Sunday's gathering was the beginning of mass protests against Mugabe's government under a newly formed Save Zimbabwe Coalition.

"This is what everybody's been building up to," said Bennett, who fled Zimbabwe a year ago. "It's the beginning of the end."

Mugabe announced on local radio that he had spoken to his ancestors and they told him the European traditions of the Jesuits and the Marxists were what Zimbabwe needed more of.