Johannesburg/Harare  - The crackdown on dissenting voices in Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe's government continued Saturday as police arrested an opposition MP on charges of inciting violence - the second time advocate Eric Matinenga has been detained in as many weeks.

Police raided Matinenga's home in Harare early Saturday and took him to a police station in his eastern constituency of Buhera West, Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said.

"This is just calculated and systematic harassment by the regime," Chamisa said.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said Matinenga was facing charges of inciting violence and was likely to appear in court Saturday or on Monday in the eastern city of Mutare.

Last week, Matinenga was acquitted by a court of similar charges but Bvudzijena said: "We had not correctly charged him initially."

The MDC believes Matinenga is being victimized for successfully securing an interim order from the High Court in May, forcing the army to withdraw from rural areas in the run-up to a second round of voting for president on June 27.

Mugabe, 84, is seeking a sixth term as leader over MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the elections, despite taking fewer votes than Tsvangirai in the first round of voting in March.

Matinenga was arrested for the first time when he went to serve soldiers with the High Court order declaring they should leave rural areas where they have been fingered in brutal attacks on opposition supporters since the March elections. Over 60 people have been killed in these attacks.

His rearrest comes at the end of a week in which Tsvangirai was detained twice by police while attempting to campaign.

On both occasions Tsvangirai was released without charge but his campaigne was dealt a further blow when police on Friday banned him from holding several planned rallies, claiming they wanted to protect him.

The crackdown against the MDC in the final three weeks of campaigning forms part of a wider state clampdown on voices of dissent.

After ordering all non-governmental organizations and aid agencies to suspend their field work on Thursday the government is now demanding they all re-register.

"We have asked them to reapply for operating permits so that we can vet them and determine which ones are the fronts for political interests," Bright Matonga, the deputy information minister, was quoted by the state-controlled Herald newspaper as saying Saturday.

The government accuses some NGOs, including British-based agency Care International, of openly campaigning for the MDC in the last election.

Matonga claimed the US government had channelled some 6 million dollars through NGOs in what he called a bid to destabilize already economically wrecked Zimbabwe.

"They (NGOs) have been going around the country distributing food; claiming to be helping the needy but they tell the communities they visit that they will not get any more food aid if they vote for Zanu PF and President Mugabe," Matonga told the paper.

The ban on NGO field work in a country where the United Nations estimates a third of the population, 4 million people, is in need of food aid, has provoked an international outcry.

Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa, is no longer able to feed itself. The Mugabe-backed seizure by his allies of thousands of white-owned farms since
2000 has been largely blamed for the situation. (dpa)