Groups hold protests on Summit's opening day

As the UN environmental summit got under way today, Zimbabwean and Ethiopian groups held the first in a series of planned protests.

As scores of riot police looked on, 200 singing and dancing members of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change marched through Johannesburg’s Sandton suburb, calling for new elections and the removal of President Robert Mugabe.

Zimbabwe has been gripped by more than two years of political violence which has been widely blamed on Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party.

A presidential election held in March - which returned Mugabe to power - was deeply flawed, according to local and international observers.

“There is an illegal regime in Zimbabwe,” said Moses Mzila-Ndlovu, the opposition’s shadow environment minister.

“We as the opposition are demanding that the election that Mugabe held must be annulled and fresh elections must be held.”

The protesters carried banners reading “Mugabe is starving his own people” and “New election now.”

Earlier today, about 20 members of the Oromo Liberation Front, staged their own protest near the summit venue, calling for what they described as an end to persecution by the Ethiopian government.

The front’s leadership left the country or went underground after quitting the transitional government in 1992 and accusing the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front of rigging elections.

There have been several clashes between Ethiopian troops and Oromo rebels over the past seven years.

But a cordon of police prevented both groups from approaching the summit’s main conference centre, and the protests ended peacefully.

About 8,000 security officers have been deployed to patrol the conference centre, aiming to head off the kind of street violence that marred previous anti-globalisation protests in Seattle and Genoa.

Organisers expect the biggest protest to take place on Saturday, when about 400 groups plan to march from the Alexandra township to Sandton to protest against world poverty, environmental decay and globalisation.