44 Harvest House

44 Harvest House, also known simply as Harvest House, is a six-storey building in Harare, Zimbabwe, located at 44 Nelson Mandela Avenue and Angwa Street. It serves as the National Headquarters of the Movement for Democratic Change party in Zimbabwe.

Situated in downtown Harare, Harvest House is the center of the MDC, physically and politically. It has offices for all the departments, the secretaries, assistants and advisors, and 2 conference rooms in which the MDC officials address the press or conduct meetings.

The building has two green concrete fronts, connected on the inside. The ground floor windows in front are protected by metal grates and vertical blinds. It has two poles on the front on which the Zimbabwe flag and the MDC flag fly.

According to the MDC constitution:

"1.4 The party is headquartered at Harvest House, No.44 Nelson Mandela Avenue, Harare and shall have offices at such other places as may be determined from time to time by the National Council.”

The MDC Party Secretariat is located at the Harvest House and is headed by a Chief of Staff and staffed by a mix of career servants and special advisers. It provides the party with support and advice on policy, communications, departments and public/media relations.

Members of staff at Harvest House are not allowed to hold any position in any structure in the MDC.

Strong security measures are present, if not always visible. Three guards customarily man the front door. More covert security measures exist: for example, plain-clothesmen guard the roofline above the street and in the vicinity of the building itself.

Despite these measures, security has been seriously breached more than a hundred times.

On March 2006 following the arrest of MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai, heavily armed police descended on Harvest House, they ransacked the building, breaking furniture, fixtures, destroying documents, they broke toilet seats and cisterns, they broke doors and several windows left offices of MDC officials strewn with papers, ripped telephone lines and took away computers. According to press reports the debris resembled a scene of bomb attack.

In May 2007, police raided Harvest House and arrested as many as 200 activists. The activists were taken away in police vans, even though the police had no search warrant.

The raid came a day after police extended a ban on political rallies.

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Wikipedia