AFP
2 hours
ago
HARARE (AFP) — Zimbabweans awaited Monday a court ruling that could
finally
mean they will find out whether Robert Mugabe or opposition leader
Morgan
Tsvangirai won the presidential election more than two weeks
ago.
All eyes will be on Justice Tendai Uchena as he decides whether to
force
Zimbabwe's electoral commission to immediately declare the result of
the
March 29 poll. A ruling was expected from around 1230
GMT.
Zimbabwe's opposition challenged Sunday a recount it said was loaded
towards
President Mugabe's party as rigging allegations were traded and
regional
leaders failed to apply much pressure on the
situation.
State media reported that 23 of Zimbabwe's 210 constituencies
would be
recounted next Saturday, three weeks after general
elections.
The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said
it was
mounting a legal challenge to the recount order, which in theory
could lead
to Mugabe's ruling party regaining control of
parliament.
At Saturday's emergency summit in Lusaka, Southern African
leaders discussed
the post-election impasse long into the night, but were
always unlikely to
find a swift solution after Mugabe decided to stay
away.
They stopped short of criticising the Zimbabwean government or
Mugabe, who
was not even mentioned in a four-page joint statement that
called only for
the result of the presidential poll to be delivered as
"expeditiously" as
possible.
Regional leaders have been chided for
their traditional reluctance to speak
out against Mugabe, seen by many as an
elder statesman who still deserves
respect for his role in winning
Zimbabwe's independence.
Nevertheless many are fed up with the economic
mess on their doorstep with
inflation in Zimbabwe now well into six figures,
unemployment at over 80
percent and average life expectancy down to 36 years
of age.
Opposition leader Tsvangirai was in Lusaka trying to press his
claim of
outright victory in the March 29 presidential election and persuade
participants to apply pressure on Mugabe to end his 28-year rule.
His
number two, MDC secretary general Tendai Biti, said the opposition was
broadly happy with the outcome of the summit but expressed reservations over
the continuation of South African President Thabo Mbeki's role.
Mbeki
was chief mediator between the governing ZANU-PF party and
Tsvangirai's MDC
in the build-up to the election, but has come under fire
for his policy of
"quiet diplomacy".
On his way to Lusaka to join other leaders and
delegations of the 14-nation
Southern African Development Community (SADC),
Mbeki dropped in on Harare
and held his first face-to-face talks with Mugabe
since the disputed
elections.
"The body authorised to release the
results is the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission, let's wait for them to
announce the results," he told
journalists afterwards, insisting there was
"no crisis" in his northern
neighbour.
Mbeki must show "more vigour,
more openness and a complete abandonment of
the policy of quiet diplomacy,"
Biti told journalists in Lusaka.
Meanwhile a British national and an
American journalist charged with
reporting on Zimbabwe's election without
official accreditation were due to
appear in Harare magistrate court later
on Monday.
zimbabwejournalists.com
14th Apr 2008 01:44 GMT
By SADC Secretariat
SADC
COMMUNIQUÉ
2008 FIRST EXTRA-ORDINARY SADC SUMMIT OF HEADS
OF STATE AND
GOVERNMENT
13 APRIL 2008
LUSAKA, ZAMBIA
1. The
Extra-ordinary Summit of the Heads of State and Government or their
representatives of SADC met in Lusaka, Zambia to discuss the political
developments in Zimbabwe following the recent Presidential, Senatorial,
National Assembly and Local Authorities elections’ held on 29 March
2008.
2. The meeting was chaired by His Excellency, President Dr Levy
Patrick
Mwanawasa S.C, Chairperson of the Southern African Development
Community
(SADC) and President of the Republic of Zambia.
3. The
Extra-ordinary Summit was attended by the following Heads of State
and
Government:
Zambia H.E. President Dr. Levy P. Mwanawasa,
Chairperson
of SADC
Angola H.E President José Eduardo dos Santos
Chairperson of
Organ on Politics, Defense and Security Cooperation
Botswana H.E.
President Lt. Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama
DRC H.E. President Joseph
Kabila
Mozambique H.E. President Armando Emilio Guebuza
Namibia
H.E. President Hifikepunye Pohamba
South Africa H.E. President Thabo
Mbeki
Malawi H.E. President Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika
Kingdom of
Hon. Deputy Prime Minister Lesao Lehohla
Lesotho
Mauritius Hon.
James B. David, Minister for Local Government
Kingdom of Hon. Charles
S. Magongo, Minister for Public
Swaziland Service and
Information
United Republic Hon. Seif A. Iddi, Deputy Minister
for
of Tanzania Foreign Affairs and International
Cooperation
Zimbabwe Hon. Emmerson D. Mnangagwa, Minister of
Rural Housing and
Social Amenities
Madagascar H.E. Ambassador Dr.
Dennis Andriamandroso
4. In his opening remarks, the SADC Chairperson
welcomed their Excellencies,
Heads of State and Government to Lusaka, Zambia
and indicated that the
purpose of the Extra-ordinary Summit was to discuss
the recent events in
Zimbabwe following the elections in Zimbabwe in an
open, objective and
honest manner. In this regard, SADC re-affirmed its
commitment to assist the
parties to deal with the current
situation.
5. The Extra-ordinary Summit was held in line with SADC
objectives to
promote common political values and systems transmitted
through institutions
that are democratic, legitimate and effective to
facilitate the
consolidation of democracy, peace, security and
stability.
6. The Summit welcomed and congratulated H.E. Lt. General
Seretse Khama Ian
Khama, President of Botswana on his assumption of
office.
7. The Extra-ordinary Summit noted and appreciated the briefing
by H.E
President José Eduardo dos Santos, Chairperson of the Organ on
Politics,
Defense and Security Cooperation on the Report of the SADC
Electoral
Observer Mission deployed in Zimbabwe during the
election.
8. The Summit noted that the Report of the Chairperson of the
Organ, on the
elections in Zimbabwe indicated that the electoral process was
acceptable to
all parties. Summit commended the Chairperson of the Organ for
the manner in
which the Observer Mission was handled. At the time of holding
the
Extra-ordinary Summit, the results of the Presidential election had not
been
announced by the election authorities.
9. The Summit commended
the people of Zimbabwe for the peaceful and orderly
manner in which they
conducted themselves before, during and after the
elections.
10. The
Summit commended the Government of Zimbabwe for ensuring that
elections were
conducted in a peaceful environment.
11. The Summit congratulated and
thanked the SADC Facilitator, President
Mbeki and his Facilitation Team, for
the role they had played in helping to
contribute to the successful holding
of elections. Summit requested
President Mbeki to continue in his role as
Facilitator on Zimbabwe on the
outstanding issues.
12. The
Extra-ordinary Summit noted and appreciated the brief by the
delegation of
the Government of Zimbabwe on the elections held in Zimbabwe.
The Government
of Zimbabwe indicated that the elections were held in a free
and peaceful
environment. The Government expressed concerns at instances of
inaccuracy of
some figures relating to the House of Assembly, Senate and
Presidential
elections.
13. Member States, with the exception of Zimbabwe, held
informal
consultations with Presidential candidates, Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai
of the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and independent candidate, Dr.
Simba
Makoni. Both, opposition leaders confirmed that the elections were
held in a
free, fair and peaceful environment. Whilst they do not have a
problem with
the election results of the Senatorial, Parliamentary and Local
Authority
elections, they expressed concerns on the delay in announcing the
results as
well as lack of their participation in the verification process
of the
Presidential results currently being conducted by the Zimbabwe
Electoral
Commission (ZEC).
14. The Summit urged the electoral
authorities in Zimbabwe that verification
and release of results are
expeditiously done in accordance with the due
process of law. Summit also
urged all the parties in the electoral process
in Zimbabwe to accept the
results when they are announced. By due process
of law, Summit understood
to mean that:
(a) the verification and counting must be done in the
presence of
candidates and/or their agents, if they so wish, who must all
sign the
authenticity of such verification and counting.
(b) SADC
offers to send its Election Observer Mission who would be present
throughout
such verification and counting.
15. If such verification and counting
makes it necessary for the parties to
go for a run-off, the Government is
urged to ensure that the run-off
elections are held in a secure environment.
SADC offers to send an Election
Observer Mission
16. The Summit
appeals to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to ensure strict
compliance
with the rule of law and SADC Principles and Guidelines governing
democratic
elections.
17. The Summit expressed its deep appreciation for the
gracious hospitality
extended to them by the Government of
Zambia.
Done at Mulungushi International Conference Centre
Lusaka,
Zambia
13 April 2008
Radio Australia
Updated 1 hour 53 minutes ago
Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC
party is urging an indefinite strike and has
rejected the Election
Commission's announcement that a partial recount will
be held.
[Reuters]
Zimbabwe's opposition party the Movement for Democratic Change
has called
for an indefinite national strike tomorrow.
It says it is
also mounting a legal challenge to the Election Commision's
announcement
that a recount is to be held in 23 consitutencies.
The MDC claims the
recount will be loaded towards favouring the ruling
ZANU-PF party of
President Robert Mugabe.
"We reject any attempt to recount the votes that
were cast on the 29th March
for the simple reason that it is not legal,"
Movement for Democratic Change
spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.
"It is
a serious trap; they would want to reverse the people's vote, they
would
want to discount the people's vote and the people's verdict and that
is why
we are not going to allow and accept this situation whereby they're
talking
about a recount," he added.
MDC opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai
claims to have won the presidential
election outright.
Reports from
Zimbabwe say independent tallies found Mr Tsvangirai did win
the most votes,
but not enough to avoid a run-off.
Emergency summit in Zambia 'a
failure'
The recount was announced at the weekend as southern African
leaders held an
emergency summit in neighbouring Zambia.
The
all-night, marathon meeting ended on Sunday without issuing a demand for
results from the March 29 elections to be announced immediately, as
requested by the Zimbabwean opposition and members of the international
community, including Britain.
"This is a completely intolerable
situation, its now time that having had an
election the democratic rights of
Zimbabwe are now respected," British Prime
Minister Gordon Brown told
reporters on Sunday.
" think it's important that if an election took
place two weeks ago, a
presidential election, where we know the votes have
been counted and that
the votes are published, and I think its important to
send a message that
the right, the democratic rights of the Zimbabwean
people, who have voted in
these elections, have got to be
respected.
"And I think the whole international community wants not only
the results to
be published but wants to know that the election were fair
and can be seen
to be fair."
VOA
By Peter Clottey
Washington, D.C.
14 April
2008
Zimbabwe’s main opposition Movement For Democratic
Change (MDC) leader
Morgan Tsvangira is calling for mass protest today
(Monday) across the
country to press home the opposition’s demand for
incumbent President Robert
Mugabe to step down. The MDC has accused the
government of an attempt to
thwart its victory in the March 29 election in
order to force a run-off. The
MDC has also expressed dissatisfaction with
the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission’s refusal to release results of the
presidential election more
than two weeks after the vote, saying it will
legally challenge the
commission’s plan for a partial poll
recount.
Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe High Court is due to rule today on the
opposition
MDC’s application to force the electoral commission to announce
the results
of the presidential election.
Mark Fungano is a
Zimbabwean political analyst with the University of Cape
Town in South
Africa. He tells reporter Peter Clottey Zimbabweans need to
stand up to
protect their votes.
“Morgan has called for a general strike today
(Monday) in Zimbabwe, and what
we now need to see is whether the people of
Zimbabwe are going to heed to
his call. As you are aware, previous calls for
strike and protests and
boycotts in Zimbabwe have not been really
successful, and one hopes that he
can be able to capitalize on the anxiety
and the frustration in Zimbabwe,
and these people are likely to boycott,”
Fungano pointed.
He said Tsvangirai’s call for a mass protest could be
detrimental to the MDC’s
objective if it fails to materialize.
“I
know that boycotts and mass stay-aways in Zimbabwe are highly successful.
But what I’m it sure about is people marching in the streets of Harare in
this time. And looking at the current environment where all the police and
the militias have been deployed, I think it would be a very risky venture
and to be playing into the hands of Robert Mugabe who is waiting for an
opportunity to declare a state of emergency,” he said.
Fungano said
the weekend’s meeting of heads of state and government of
Southern African
Development Community (SADC) to find a way out of the
Zimbabwe’s political
crisis would be insignificant.
“I don’t think much is going to come out
of the SADC initiative. I think we’ve
had numerous meetings that have been
held by SADC and the best that they are
able to come up with is a communiqué
that would say both parties need to
communicate and they need to discuss,”
Fungano noted.
He said South African President Thabo Mbeki’s quiet
diplomacy towards the
Zimbabwe crisis would not significantly change anytime
soon.
“I don’t think that Thabo Mbeki is going to shift from his stands
unless the
ANC (South Africa’s Ruling African National Congress party)
leadership led
by Jacob Zuma who has categorically stated that the results
needs to be
released and they are taking a different approach to Zimbabwe, I
think that
is the only thing that can push him (Mbeki). But other than that,
I think he
is going to maintain his quiet diplomacy on Zimbabwe because the
risky thing
about him being confrontational on Zimbabwe is that Mugabe is
waiting for an
opportunity to also shut the door from SADC. And I think the
moment that
happens I think the laws of the jungle will prevail in Zimbabwe
and Mugabe
will not communicate with anybody and he will ensure that he can
now become
an outright dictatorship in Zimbabwe,” he said.
The Times
April 14, 2008
The next 48 hours could shape
the fate of Zimbabwe
Any remaining doubts about Robert Mugabe's response to
Zimbabwe's
presidential election were demolished at the weekend. He intends
to steal
it. Gone are the hopes that he might retreat to his suburban
mansion under
cover of a guarantee of immunity from prosecution. The idea
that he might
heed a united call to step down at Saturday's emergency
regional summit is,
likewise, a memory. It is now painfully clear that Mr
Mugabe intends to keep
the presidency by force if necessary, and reverse his
historic parliamentary
defeat of March 29 into the bargain.
This is
the significance of the 23 recounts demanded by Mr Mugabe's Zanu
(PF) party
and granted by the Zimbabwe electoral commission. Zanu (PF) needs
only nine
more seats to win back control of Parliament. Given the
intimidation already
unleashed by loyalist “war veterans” in key
constituencies, the regime's
desired result appears a foregone conclusion.
But it would be a crime
against the people of Zimbabwe. It would mark the
worst failure to date of
the policy of “quiet diplomacy” by which South
Africa's President Thabo
Mbeki has claimed for eight years to be reining in
Mr Mugabe's de facto
dictatorship. And it would make a mockery of Britain's
longstanding support
for this policy.
Western governments hoped the weekend summit in Lusaka
would produce a
regional solution to Zimbabwe's crisis. It did not. Mr
Mugabe said he would
attend, then decided not to. Mr Mbeki paid court to him
instead, declaring
afterwards, against the evidence of four million
Zimbabwean refugees in his
own country, that were was “no crisis”. The SADC
summit closed with a
statement that made no mention of Mr Mugabe but did
include a surreal plea
for the release of election results “in accordance
with the due process of
law” - in a country that tore up due process nearly
ten years ago. In London
yesterday, Downing Street welcomed that
statement.
The Movement for Democratic Change has vowed to challenge the
proposed
recounts in court tomorrow, and has called a general strike for the
same
day. If the intimidation of the past two weeks is any guide, both
initiatives appear doomed. But on Wednesday the spotlight will shift from
Harare to New York, where Mr Mbeki and Gordon Brown will have a chance -
perhaps their last - to pluck diplomatic victory from the jaws of
humiliation. British efforts to lead effective action against Mr Mugabe at
the UN have hitherto foundered on two obstacles: the non-cooperation of
powerful members, notably China, out of narrow self-interest, and Mr
Mugabe's skill in turning criticism by Zimbabwe's former colonial master to
domestic advantage. But his rhetoric no longer wins elections, and as the
Olympic torch stumbles round the world, China's overwhelming need is to
burnish its image, not tarnish it further.
This is decision time for
Mr Brown. Has “quiet diplomacy” worked? After
eight years, the only positive
item on the balance sheet is one tolerably
fair election, and it is about to
be stolen. At the UN Mr Brown should
therefore heed his bolder advisers and,
with Mr Mbeki, call for a resolution
that would demand full publication of
the election results and reserve the
power to imposed targeted sanctions on
Mr Mugabe's inner circle, who are
clinging to power even more anxiously than
their leader. They have brought
their people purgatory, not liberation, and
they have blood on their hands.
If the UN fails to act, it will be
complicit.
Comment
The longer Mugabe and Zanu (PF) remain in power,
the worse Zimbabwe's
already apalling condition will become, and the more
reconstruction will
cost. The West will, inevitably, be called upon to pay
for it. However, if
Western leaders make it clear that the costs will be
borne out of the
overall Africa aid budget, which is what largely funds
Mbeki and co's
opulent lifestyles, it might just concentrate their minds a
little.
gordon w, didcot, UK
The Telegraph
By
Peta Thornycroft and Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg
Last Updated: 2:41am
BST 14/04/2008
The Zimbabwe Election Commission ordered a
recount of votes in more
than a tenth of constituencies yesterday in a move
condemned by the
opposition as ballot rigging.
The decision by
the ZEC - which has still to announce the result of
the presidential
election held more than two weeks ago - was in response to
claims by the
ruling Zanu-PF party that the parliamentary results had been
rigged by the
opposition.
The Movement for Democratic Change won 109 seats in the
210-member
House of Assembly, with Zanu-PF on 97.
The Daily
Telegraph revealed last week that ballot boxes were being
stuffed with extra
papers at a police station in Harare to boost Zanu-PF's
tally.
The MDC said it would challenge the decision in court.
Welshman
Ncube, an opposition activist and a co-author of Zimbabwe's
electoral law,
said: "ZEC is acting in collusion with Zanu-PF, and if they
think any of us
believe them when they are a gang of fraudsters they can go
to
hell.
"They have custody of the ballot boxes and so what guarantee have
we
got they didn't go back and tamper with the ballots? Clearly they have
opened these boxes and put ballots in there. So the outcome of the recount
is a foregone conclusion.
"Morgan Tsvangirai [leader of the
MDC] won a clear majority - that is
why the results have not been
released."
George Chiweshe, the ZEC chairman, said both the
commission and
Zanu-PF were complying with the law. "Are you calling me a
liar?" he
challenged The Daily Telegraph.
As tension rose in
the wake of the disputed results, Zanu-PF militants
continued to carry out
violent reprisals against people suspected of voting
for the
MDC.
Sikhoanyiso Ndlovu, Zimbabwe's information minister, said the
army
would not intervene in the crisis and rejected MDC claims that the
country
was being run by a military junta.
"The army will not
fight against Zimbabweans because it is there to
protect them, but it will
definitely meet any foreign invading forces bent
on reversing the gains of
our independence," he said.
Zimbabwe's elections were discussed at
an emergency summit of the
Southern African Development Community on
Saturday. Mr Mugabe boycotted the
meeting in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, in
protest at what he regarded as
meddling in his country's
affairs.
The Zambian president, Levy Mwanawasa, who called Zimbabwe
a "sinking
Titanic" last year, gave a clear hint for Mr Mugabe to stand
down.
"At critical times great men and women have taken bold steps
for the
benefit of posterity," he said. "That critical time has
come."
Zimbabwe's neighbours called for the rule of law to be
maintained and
an "expeditious" release of the presidential result, but gave
no deadline.
The leaders' communiqué misrepresented the opposition
view of the
elections, stating that: "Both opposition leaders confirmed that
the
elections were held in a free, fair and peaceful environment."
New York Times
By CELIA W.
DUGGER and LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: April 13, 2008
LUSAKA, Zambia — After
a marathon session to address Zimbabwe’s political
impasse, southern
Africa’s political leaders on Sunday urged the government
of President
Robert Mugabe to permit representatives of the opposition to be
present when
vote tabulations are verified, handing the opposition a
substantial
victory.
Zimbabwean election officials have yet to announce the winner of
the
presidential election held two weeks ago, spawning widespread suspicions
that Mr. Mugabe was refusing to accept his own defeat. Opposition parties
and independent election observers have complained that government
authorities have denied their access to the command center where the final
stage of vote counting is conducted.
In a statement after its all-night,
12-hour session, the Southern African
Development Community, a regional bloc
of 14 nations, also implicitly
acknowledged reports that the governing party
had sponsored violent attacks
on opposition supporters since the election on
March 29 by urging the
government to ensure that a runoff, if needed, will
be held “in a secure
environment.”
The bloc of nations, known as
S.A.D.C., offered to send election observers
to monitor the vote counting
process and a possible runoff.
Mr. Mugabe did not attend the summit
meeting, and his representatives left
the session without making any public
comments.
Kabinga Pande, Zambia’s minister of foreign affairs, said
Sunday morning,
after the heads of state and ministers had adjourned at 5
a.m., that the
main opposition presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai,
who made his case
to the leaders on Saturday night, should be pleased with
the outcome of the
meeting “because we’ve taken care of all his
concerns.”
And, indeed, when the No. 2 man in Mr. Tsvangirai’s party,
Tendai Biti, took
questions after Mr. Pande finished speaking, he praised
the African leaders.
“This is a major improvement and S.A.D.C. has acquitted
itself relatively
well,” he said.
But Mr. Biti did not answer a
question about whether Mr. Tsvangirai would
participate in a runoff if
recommendations from the summit meeting were
carried out. Instead he
reiterated the party’s position. “We won this
election without need of a
runoff and that position has not changed,” he
said.
But it will be
difficult for Mr. Tsvangirai to justify a boycott at this
point.
In
an interview on Friday, Mr. Tsvangirai said his goal from the meeting was
to
win guarantees that the vote counting would be fairly conducted and the
results were credible, and that a runoff, if needed, would be closely
monitored by outsiders to ensure it took place free of intimidation,
harassment and violence against his supporters.
“I know we can win an
election and humiliate Mugabe in a second round of
voting,” Mr. Tsvangirai
said then.
Results were posted for legislative elections held on the same
day as the
presidential vote, and Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, lost its
majority in
Parliament. Over the past week the governing party has demanded
recounts
involving an increasing number of seats.
On Sunday, a
state-owned newspaper, The Sunday Mail, reported that votes for
23 seats
would be recounted Saturday, raising the possibility that the
opposition’s
victory could be reversed, Reuters reported.
Zimbabwe’s people are
already suffering from hyperinflation of more than
100,000 percent.
Essentials like bread and soap have all but disappeared
from many shops,
according to news reports.
The government has banned political rallies,
while the opposition called for
a general strike.
Mr. Mugabe’s
decision not to attend the meeting in Lusaka was apparently a
snub to
Zambia’s president, Levy Mwanawasa, who leads the regional bloc and
once
compared Zimbabwe to a sinking ship.
Celia W. Dugger reported from
Lusaka, and Lydia Polgreen from Dakar,
Senegal.
The Times, SA
Justice Malala: Monday Morning Matters Published:Apr
14,
2008
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Master
of denial’s latest gaffe
I have to confess that I am plunged into a
deep, dark well of despair every
time President Thabo Mbeki opens his mouth
on Zimbabwe. I am praying for the
elections next year so that this
incompetent can be bundled out of office.
He is a disgrace to South Africa
and to Africa.
On Saturday, Mbeki had an hour-long meeting
with the election-thief Robert
Mugabe in Harare. Emerging from this meeting,
our wonderful president said:
“There is no crisis in
Zimbabwe.”
According to the Sunday Times, when Mbeki was asked about the
invasion of
white- owned farms and the beating-up of farm workers, he said:
“I wouldn’t
describe that as a crisis. It’s a normal electoral process in
Zimbabwe. We
have to wait for the Zimbabwe electoral commission to release
the results.”
Mbeki says there is no crisis but, more than two weeks
after they voted, the
Zimbabwean people are being denied the right to an
election result. He says
there is no crisis, but the people are living under
martial law. Opposition
MDC lawyers have been harassed, South African
equipment seized, and
thousands of soldiers, police and members of youth
militias are roaming the
streets.
On April 7 2004, Mbeki made a
speech in Kigali, Rwanda, where, in 1994, at
least 800000 people were killed
while the world looked on. Mbeki apologised
to the people of Rwanda, saying
that South Africa had been looking inwards,
at its own elections and
transition, and had not spoken up about what was
happening in that
country.
Then he said: “What did we, as Africans, do to stop the
slaughter? If we did
nothing, why did we do nothing?
“Why did the
United Nations, set up to ensure that genocide, as occurred
when the
Holocaust was visited on the Jewish people, did not recur anywhere
in the
world, stand by as Africans were exterminated like pernicious
vermin?
“Why were General Romeo Dallaire and his undermanned contingent
of UN
peacekeepers abandoned by the same people who sent them to
Rwanda?
“Why did those who dispose of enormous global power that has been
used to
determine the fate of all humanity decide that the slaughter in
Yugoslavia
had to be stopped at all costs, whereas the bigger slaughter in
Rwanda
should be allowed to run its course?
“Have all the guilty been
identified, whatever their contribution to the
commission of the genocide?
Have the necessary lessons been learnt? What are
those lessons? Who has
learnt them? What have these people done with the
knowledge they have
acquired?”
Reading these words today, and looking at the tragedy of
Zimbabwe, one
wonders what lessons Mbeki himself has drawn. Is his silence
and conniving
with Mugabe – and now with the military chiefs who have stolen
the
election – what has he learnt?
Mbeki has for ages blamed the West
and the UN for the Rwanda genocide. No
doubt, when Zimbabwe is discussed, he
will once again conveniently blame the
West. But truth is
persistent.
Mbeki supports and connives with Mugabe. When the war crimes
tribunal for
Zimbabwe is set up, Mbeki will loom over it as a supporter of
Mugabe.
There is an inexplicable impulse in Mbeki to refuse to see the
truth . In
the run-up to the ANC’s Polokwane conference last year, he
repeatedly
refused to step away from the presidential race, despite
incontrovertible
evidence that he was going to humiliate himself. Indeed,
after Mbeki lost
even the nomination of the ANC Women’s League to Jacob
Zuma, he nevertheless
said on TV that he would contest the
presidency.
What is happening in the South African government today with
regard to
Zimbabwe is not foreign policy. It is what happens when a single
individual
ignores the voice of his own party and people to ram through his
own
personal and jaundiced view. Our foreign policy has been hijacked to
suit
Mbeki’s misguided whims.
It is exactly this tendency in Mbeki –
an obsessive refusal to back down and
acknowledge the truth – that led to
him getting whipped in Polokwane.
The Scotsman
By
Jane Fields
In Harare
THE ex-soldiers came for Tapiwa Mbwada late on
Saturday.
Mr Mbwada was the organising secretary for the opposition
Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) in Hurungwe East, northern
Zimbabwe.
The attackers beat Mr Mbwada to death, according to the party's
secretary
for welfare, Kerry Kay.
Mr Mbwada's wife and brother were
also badly injured in the attack, carried
out by at least two men known to
be former soldiers in Robert Mugabe's army,
Mrs Kay said.
Last night,
there was mounting evidence that Mr Mugabe's thugs had begun
brutalising
villagers and farm workers who voted against him two weeks ago,
dealing the
dictator a defeat he refuses to accept.
As the official Sunday Mail
newspaper proudly headlined South African
president Thabo Mbeki's claim
there was "no crisis in Zimbabwe", opposition
officials spoke of beatings,
burnings and villagers being driven from their
homes.
"It's mayhem
out there," said MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa.
More than 100 people have
been injured and treated since the elections,
while many more brutalised
villagers are "still hiding in the bush", said
Mrs Kay.
About 55
families are believed to have been chased away from a tea estate in
southern
Chipinge. Meanwhile, up to 300 workers have been kicked off a farm
in the
eastern Mutasa district.
War veterans and Zanu-PF thugs burnt down 30
workers' homes at Silver Stream
farm in Centenary, northern Zimbabwe after a
vote count at a polling station
on the farm showed "a slight difference"
between votes for Mr Mugabe and for
Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC
leader.
"They're on a rampage," said Mrs Kay. "When they're beating, they
are
saying, 'We're going to teach you a lesson so next time you vote
properly'."
None of the attacks has been confirmed by the police – nor
are they likely
to be. Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, the information minister, said
Zimbabwe was at
peace. He added: "The army will not fight against
Zimbabweans."
Zimbabweans, meanwhile, face another week of waiting for
presidential
election results after the state electoral commission announced
it would run
a recount next Saturday.
There are fears Mr Mugabe
intends to use thousands of spare ballot papers
printed ahead of the polls
to overturn the MDC's slim parliamentary majority
and rule by decree.
Opposition lawyers said yesterday they would challenge
the recount.
A
judge is due to rule tomorrow on an earlier application from the
opposition
to force the electoral commission to release results immediately.
The MDC
has said it will embark on a national strike tomorrow if no results
are
announced.
Mr Tsvangirai says he won the poll outright with at least 50.3
per cent of
votes. His party says he will not take part in a second round of
voting
because of the intimidation supporters face.
RIGHTS GROUP
DEMANDS POLL ANSWER
AN EYE-catching advert (see above), illustrating the
frustrations felt by a
growing number of Zimbabweans and calling
for
the immediate release of election results, was created by the Youth
Initiative for Democracy in Zimbabwe (Yidez).
The group targets women
aged 18-30 – which covers the majority of Zimbabwe's
female population, who
have an average life expectancy of just 34.
Like another local rights
group, Women of Zimbabwe Arise, Yidez says it
wants to empower women who
have suffered socioeconomic and political
injustice in the country, where
more than 80 per cent of the population
currently live below the poverty
line.
Yidez is outspoken in its opposition to Robert Mugabe, whose
daughter Bona
is a teenage student who voted for the first time in this
year's elections.
In an article on the group's website, entitled How to
Deal With Fear as a
Dictator: A Letter to My Daughter on the group's
website, an activist
claims: "The most frightened person in our society is
the president
himself."
The full article contains 632 words and
appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Last Updated: 13 April 2008 11:41
PM
The Times, SA
Charles Molele: Harare
Published:Apr 13,
2008
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite
the tension and fear of a violent crackdown on the opposition,
Zimbabweans
went about their business as usual this week.
In hair
salons, bars and hotel lobbies people said they were “extremely
depressed”
by the political climate in the country.
“We don’t know what’s
happening,” said a hairdresser in Harare. “But I can
tell you things are
going to change.”
When asked how things would change when people were not
on the streets to
show their outrage at the government, the hairdresser
said: “We prefer it
this way. It’s calm but a lot is happening. Wait for
another few days and
you will see what I mean.”
Contrary to her
optimism, the crisis pervades Zimbabwean life.
The queues for bread, fuel
and foreign currency are not getting any shorter.
At a Nando’s fast-food
outlet there are shortages.
“Sorry, we don’t have burgers today. Only
chicken. The only cool drink we
have for now is Fanta Orange.”
At a
nearby store, it was the same.
“Sorry, we have no cool drinks at the
moment,” said one of the cashiers at a
restaurant, with typical Zimbabwean
politeness and a smile.
At Stanbic bank’s biggest branch in Harare, in
Samora Machel Avenue,
desperate Zimbabweans waiting in a queue for foreign
currency from their
families in foreign lands such as South Africa, the US
and Britain were sent
home for the umpteenth time after the bank ran out of
money again on Friday.
“I’ve been told the same story again and again for
more than a week now,”
said one of the men in the queue.
Most
businesses prefer to be paid cash in US dollars because the central
bank has
allegedly been withholding foreign reserves to pay for the
elections.
Though times are dire in the city, nightclubs are packed
with patrons eager
to drink and forget their political
problems.
Harare means the place of no sleep, and it lives up to its
name.
At night there are high-rollers everywhere in Hummers and BMW
sedans,
dressed to the nines and looking for young women.
“I am a
businessman. I work hard but I also like to have a good time. The
Hummer you
saw outside is mine,” said one of the well-dressed patrons at the
popular
Mannenberg jazz club.
The nightclubs Circus, Sports Diner and Tipperary’s
were packed to capacity
as clubgoers partied.
Prostitutes said they
were making a killing as the demand for sex had grown
during the
elections.
“I make more dollars per day — close to Z200 — than when
visitors are not
here,” one prostitute said outside the Sports
Diner.
But by the end of the week the city’s nightlife was almost back to
normal as
international journalists and election observers left the country
as their
accreditation expired.
The people that remained behind held
their breath.
By R.W. JOHNSON
FROM TODAY'S WALL STREET JOURNAL
EUROPE
April 14, 2008
HARARE, Zimbabwe
The mood here has
greatly darkened with each sign that the regime is intent
on reversing by
force the popular verdict of Zimbabwe's March 29 election.
Robert Mugabe
announced last week that his ruling ZANU-PF is challenging 21
parliamentary
results and recounting the presidential vote in 23
constituencies. The
electoral commission has been removed to a secret venue
to which the
opposition has no access. Major ballot-stuffing is feared.
Electoral
officials have been arrested, and the Mugabe-loyal war veterans
deployed.
It was all very different 10 days ago. The body
language on the streets of
Harare was notably more up-beat as the election
results slowly dribbled in.
Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic
Change had, with its allies, a
clear majority of 121-96 in parliament, and
the opposition leader was ahead
of Mr. Mugabe by roughly 49% to 42% in the
presidential vote. Everywhere you
could see people, beaten down by years of
terror and appalling economic
adversity, just daring to hope for the first
time. You even began to notice
the odd MDC T-shirt and even, very daringly,
an MDC-marked vehicle parked
outside party headquarters at Harvest House on
Nelson Mandela Street.
Harvest House itself, so often the focus of police
raids, wore a proud
ribbon of bunting announcing that it housed the MDC.
Whenever the crowd in
the street thought Mr. Tsvangirai might be about to
arrive there were shouts
of euphoria and triumph.
Everywhere people
talked excitedly of the changes they wanted to see.
Despite Mr. Mugabe's
ceaseless propaganda attacks on Britain and the U.S.,
these two countries
were seen as saviors, the ones most likely to help
quickly with food aid to
prevent further starvation and with emergency funds
to restabilize the
currency. It was useless for ZANU-PF to talk of this as a
neocolonial
outcome: Neocolonialism sounds pretty good to the man in the
Harare street,
and he would happily vote for just that.
The news traveled fast that
Gordon Brown had said that, if there was a
democratic change, British aid
could be there in just three days. Around the
long queues waiting outside
every bank – you can only draw out half a
billion Zimbabwean dollars a day
(about $12) – you saw many torn bank notes
lying on the pavement, for all
notes now bear an expiry date after which
they cease to be valid. The
thought of money which is actually worth
something, which can buy real
goods, is now as exciting to people in the
queues as manna from
heaven.
By the end of the week before last, the question being asked was:
If Mr.
Mugabe unleashes a fresh wave of terror, using the Green Bombers (his
youth
movement thugs) and the war vets (strengthened by placing senior army
officers, masquerading as veterans, at the head of every unit), how would
this affect the voting in the presidential run-off? My own estimate was that
this would not be enough to prevent Mr. Tsvangirai from winning: The
prospect of change was too exciting and too many people had glimpsed
it.
In any case, Simba Makoni, the third-place candidate, had already
lent his
support to Mr. Tsvangirai, so pushing him over the 50% line would
be almost
a formality – provided there was an honest count. And provided, in
particular, that officials adhered to the new rule of counting ballot boxes
at the polling station at which they were cast, with the results posted
publicly outside. This rule has made cheating a great deal harder in this
election. So a key question is whether that rule will be upheld for the
second round.
In the days which have since elapsed it has become
clear that Mr. Mugabe and
his hard-liners are willing to do whatever is
required to cheat their way
back to power. The Zimbabwe Election Commission
members have been forcibly
hidden away where no one but ZANU-PF can have
access to them, and the
election data is now classified as a matter of
national security. No one
doubts that Mr. Mugabe has appointed enough
crooked judges to be able to
rely on them to reverse results in his
favor.
Of course the theft of the election will be obvious to the world,
but the
regime's credibility could hardly be lower anyway. And you can see
why. Take
Gideon Gono, governor of the central bank, the man who prints all
the money.
He has now acquired huge land holdings – one stolen farm after
another – and
should Mr. Mugabe lose power he will surely cease to be a land
holder on
such a scale. Most of the other ZANU-PF elite are in the same
position and a
lot of their wealth is inside Zimbabwe: They cannot just flit
abroad and
continue to live the same lifestyle there. So they will do
whatever is
necessary to hang on.
Does that mean they will just hang
on forever? No, says Tony Hawkins, the
country's top economist. Mr. Hawkins
reckons that inflation is now nearing
200,000% and has worked out that if
you count in what is already in the
pipeline – the huge wage increases
conceded on election eve, the ratcheting
up of the government debt at
enormous rates of interest, and so forth – then
the inflation rate will hit
500,000% by June. He cannot imagine any
government coping with that. Normal
life of any kind will simply become
impossible. Instead, whoever is in
government will simply have to throw
themselves on the mercy of the
international financial community – whose
first demand will be for Mr.
Mugabe to stand down.
One cannot rule out this scenario. It is doubtful
if the hard-liners now
making decisions are relying on anything but gut
instinct. They have no
medium- or long-term plan; they just know desperately
that they don't want
to lose power or their ill-gotten gains. However, Mr.
Mugabe will not go
just because it's rational to do so. He will get into his
bunker and rage
against the world from there, just as Hitler did. In the end
someone will
have to push him. It would have been better by far if the
electorate had
been allowed to push him out now.
The alternative, if
we're forced to that, will be a push from some sort of
warlord or military
renegade as the economy, society and political power all
break down
together. Not only is that situation likely to be very messy, but
many more
people will die on the way to it.
Mr. Johnson is southern Africa
correspondent for the London Sunday Times
News24
13/04/2008 23:01 -
(SA)
Cape Town - Parliamentarians cannot remain silent about
Zimbabwe, a case of
"democracy gone wrong", National Assembly Speaker Baleka
Mbete said in Cape
Town on Sunday.
A SADC special meeting in Lusaka
on Saturday had urged a speedy resolution
to a "democratic process gone
wrong", Mbete said to applause at the opening
of the 118th
Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) meeting.
"We look forward to a lasting
solution in the interest of peace and
stability in Zimbabwe and in the SADC
region."
Another major concern was the "rapidly deteriorating situation"
in several
countries in the world.
Economic slowdown in US
The
Middle East, particularly Palestine, remained a "serious threat" to
peace
and stability, she said, again to applause.
"The building of the wall,
the violations of human rights and the continuous
aggression must stop
immediately."
Also of concern was the economic slowdown in the United
States and rising
food and oil prices which had severely affected developing
nations.
The IPU, a gathering of over 140 parliaments worldwide, would
try to find
solutions to the problem during the week's
discussions.
Mbete also called for the IPU to work more closely with the
United Nations.
More also had to be done to ensure more women were
represented in the IPU
and in the delegations of member
countries.
She said parliamentarians had to claim back their role as
overseers of
government, both domestically and internationally.
"The
view has developed among parliamentarians around the globe that we have
deferred foreign policy to the executive and have failed to ensure that the
voice of the people we represent is articulated in those policies," she
said.
Emancipation of women
In his speech President Thabo
Mbeki congratulated the IPU for its stance on
gender equality in government
and programmes that focused on the
emancipation of women.
Rising food
prices and the subsequent protests across the globe and in
several African
countries were an "increasingly serious problem" that was
impacting
negatively on efforts to fight poverty.
Hopefully the critical nature of
the matter would give "some impetus" to
World Trade Organisation
negotiations, he said.
He criticised the response of "very tepid, weak,"
to the UN's millennium
development goals, one of which was halving poverty
worldwide by 2015.
Ending poverty required significant and sustained
transfers of resources
from rich to poor countries.
This would not
happen automatically or be driven by market forces, he said.
In his
written speech, from which Mbeki omitted large sections in the
interest of
brevity, he wrote that farming subsidies had allowed
"agribusiness" to
expand its grip on world markets.
"Clearly, such industry concentration
makes for unfair competition,
inefficient markets and inappropriate
influence over policy areas such as
trade regulations."
Mail and Guardian
Tawanda
Mutasah: COMMENT
13 April 2008
11:59
On the surface, South Africa’s assumption of
the presidency of
the United Nations Security Council earlier this month has
no relevance for
the Zimbabwe electoral crisis. Desperate Zimbabweans could
call for help
from the UN, but this call comes when South Africa is
gatekeeper at the
Security Council. Pretoria has said in the past that it
does not believe
Zimbabwe is an agenda item for the UN.
President Thabo Mbeki has carved himself a role in which he asks
the rest of
the world to leave Zimbabwe to itself -- or in his hands. In the
wake of his
meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Mbeki has
said Zimbabwe
is “manageable”.
This is his verdict on a situation where
presidential election
results already known at polling stations could not be
released by the
National Command Centre for more than a tense week; a clear
popular vote
against Robert Mugabe is being reversed; opposition offices
have been
raided; farm invasions once again staged; journalists arrested. A
situation
where police and electoral officers languish in custody for asking
why
opposition votes were being undercounted is … manageable. And the world
should do nothing about it.
In the past eight years
Pretoria has helped sustain the
dictatorship in Harare in a number of ways,
including voting at the UN Human
Rights Council and its predecessor to block
discussion on human rights in
Zimbabwe; seeking to block the expulsion of
Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth;
certifying fraudulent elections in Zimbabwe
as “legitimate” and thus
providing Mugabe with much-needed political oxygen
in his battle for
electoral legitimacy; allowing parastatal bad debt on
electricity supplies
to Zimbabwe, even as South Africans experience power
cuts; soft-landing the
effect on Harare of international policy sanctions;
and framing the Zimbabwe
problem in terms so nebulous as to obfuscate any
meaningful diplomatic
action at the African or global
level.
Misconstruing his position as an advancement of
African
political self-reliance, Mbeki has consistently gone against African
opinion
that rejects Mugabe’s humiliation of his own people behind a
smokescreen of
Africanist rhetoric. Nelson Mandela, presidents Jakaya
Kikwete and John
Kufuor and former UN chief Kofi Annan are just a few of the
leading Africans
who realise that Mugabe does not represent the future that
Africa seeks for
itself. So are various civil society organisations, as well
as the Southern
Africa Development Community’s
parliamentarians.
In the past two weeks Mugabe has finally
removed the patina of
democratic pretence. His boot is firmly on the neck of
his people.
Zimbabweans cannot bear Mbeki saying the situation is
“manageable”. The
pretence that Mbeki understands his responsibility to
protect defenceless
Zimbabweans is now dangerous: possible other
contributions to resolving the
crisis could continue to be fenced
out.
African and international leaders should demand that
Mugabe
respect the will of the voters and that the rule of law be restored
in
Zimbabwe. Mbeki should join these leaders in calling for a genuine return
to
legitimacy in Zimbabwe through the creation of human rights and
democratic
conditions such as Mbeki would expect in his own
country.
This is to ask nothing more than that, in a manner
of speaking,
Mbeki reads aloud the Constitution of South Africa while
sitting next to
Mugabe.
Tawanda Mutasah is executive
director of the Open Society
Initiative for Southern Africa
Zim Online
by Own Correspondent Monday 14 April
2008
HARARE – South Africa’s official opposition on Sunday
criticised President
Thabo Mbeki for failure to use a weekend regional
summit to pressure
President Robert Mugabe to release results of a
presidential poll two weeks
ago and to conceded defeat if he lost the
vote.
An emergency summit of Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)
leaders
called to discuss Zimbabwe’s election stalemate ended with a rather
tame
statement calling on Harare election authorities to release results for
the
presidential poll "expeditiously."
Helen Zille, leader of the
Democratic Alliance opposition party said in a
statement that Mbeki – the
region’s official mediator in Zimbabwe as well as
its most powerful
president – should have used his muscle to urge Mugabe to
allow the release
of the results of the election he is believed to have
lost.
Zille
said: “President Mbeki had one last chance at the SADC summit to force
Mugabe's hand. Mbeki had to urge Mugabe to accept the results of the
parliamentary election and push for the immediate release of the
presidential poll results.
“Mbeki's tacit support for the dictator on
our doorstep is not only an
embarrassment for South Africa, but causes
millions of inhabitants of
Southern Africa and the international community
to lose faith in the
subcontinent’s ability to establish sustainable
democracy.”
Reports suggest it was Mbeki who was instrumental in blocking
SADC from
taking a tougher stance against Mugabe’s government for failure to
ensure
poll results are released.
The South African leader, who
stopped by in Harare for an hour-long meeting
with Mugabe before proceeding
to Lusaka, told journalists that Zimbabwe's
election deadlock was not a
crisis and that the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission had to be given time to
release the results of the March 29
presidential vote.
The ZEC has
released results of the House of Assembly and Senate elections
but withheld
results of the presidential poll, plunging Zimbabwe into a
political
stalemate that the opposition has warned could lead to violence
and
bloodshed.
Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party leader
Morgan
Tsvangirai says he won sufficient votes to takeover the presidency
but
projections by the ruling ZANU-PF and independent observers show that
the
MDC leader won with less than 50 percent of the vote, warranting a
second
round run-off against Mugabe.
The opposition leader, who
accuses Mugabe of staging a coup to keep himself
in power, says the veteran
leader is delaying issuing of presidential
election results to use the time
to prepare for a campaign of violence and
intimidation to cow Zimbabweans to
vote for him in the anticipated
run-off. — ZimOnline.
The Times
April 14, 2008
Hopes that the Southern African Development Community
would act to end the
deepening crisis were dashed when the group failed to
acknowledge an
emergency
Philip Webster, Political Editor, and
Catherine Philp in Harare
Gordon Brown will continue to put his faith in
Zimbabwe’s neighbours to help
to resolve the crisis there, despite growing
international condemnation of
President Mugabe.
Mr Brown began
preparing yesterday for meetings at the United Nations on
Wednesday with
President Mbeki of South Africa and Ban Ki Moon, the UN
Secretary-General.
He is unlikely to push for a resolution authorising
mediation in
Zimbabwe.
The Prime Minister’s stance will dismay those calling for the
international
community to take a tough line against the Mugabe regime.
Hopes that
Zimbabwe’s neighbours would act to end the deepening crisis were
dashed
yesterday when an allnight emergency summit of the 14-nation Southern
African Development Community (SADC) failed to acknowledge an emergency and
called only for the immediate release of election results.
Even that
call looked toothless as Zimbabwe announced that there would be a
recount of
results in 23 constituencies, 22 of them at the demand of the
ruling Zanu
(PF) party.
SADC leaders talked through the night in the Zambian capital,
Lusaka, to try
to reach agreement on what they could do about the election
impasse. Mr
Mugabe’s eleventh-hour withdrawal from the summit had raised
hopes among the
contingent from Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC)
that their voices would be better heard in his
absence.
But the surprise arrival in Harare of President Mbeki only hours
before the
summit meant that Mr Mugabe’s case was well heard. Western
diplomats, who
were instrumental in setting up the summit, were appalled to
hear Mr Mbeki
announced that there was “no crisis in Zimbabwe” after his
meeting with Mr
Mugabe – a sentiment later echoed by Zambia, previously the
strongest Mugabe
critic in the region.
Mr Mugabe reportedly voiced
outrage over the summit and at the invitation
extended to Morgan Tsvangirai,
the MDC leader, who claims to have won the
presidential vote
outright.
Two weeks after the vote no official presidential results have
been
announced. Even after yesterday’s announcement of a partial recount,
British
officials said that Mr Brown still saw the SADC and Mr Mbeki as the
keys to
progress. An informed source said that whenever Britain had tried to
get a
UN resolution on Zimbabwe in the past it had failed because of
opposition
from some members, and that Mr Mugabe had ended up in a stronger
position as
a result. “We do not want to do anything to undermine SADC and
Mr Mbeki,”
the source added.
However, Mr Brown used his strongest
language against Mr Mugabe at the
weekend. He described the situation in
Zimbabwe as “appalling” and said that
the world’s patience was “running
thin”.
For his part, the Zimbabwean leader dismissed Mr Brown as “a
little tiny dot
on this world”.
Mr Brown said: “The democratic rights
of the Zimbabwean people have got to
be respected. We cannot wait any longer
for the announcement of these
results.
“It is appalling if there is
intimidation and violence. It is completely
unacceptable and the whole eyes
of the world are on Zimbabwe now.”
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary,
insisted that there was a
“constitutional crisis” in Zimbabwe and that the
Mugabe regime lacked
legitimacy. “The scale of Morgan Tsvangirai’s lead in
the presidential
elections may not have been made public.
“However,
it is clear that there was a majority of people who voted against
President
Mugabe, despite the conditions under which the vote was held,” he
wrote in a
letter to his Tory and Liberal Democrat shadow spokesmen.
“Nine Zimbabwe
electoral commission officials have been arrested. There are
widespread
reports of state-sponsored violence against opposition activists.
No one can
be in any doubt that these are the measures of a regime whose
legitimacy has
gone but whose capacity to rule through fear and
intimidation, though
dented, remains potent.”
Mr Miliband added: “SADC states have most to
lose from the continued crisis
in Zimbabwe and they need to make clear their
interest in swift release of
the real results.”
The MDC condemned the
partial recount and said they would be challenging it
in court. An earlier
petition demanding the release of presidential results
is to be ruled on
today, but with the presiding judge under increasing
pressure, hopes of a
resolution were not high.
The electoral commission announced that
recounts of parliamentary and
presidential results would take place next
Saturday, delaying matters for at
least another week.
Reports of an
orchestrated campaign of violence against opposition
supporters, especially
in rural areas where the ruling party lost for the
first time, have fuelled
suspicions that Mr Mugabe is using delays to buy
time and cow opponents
before a run-off
zimbabwejournalists.com/
14th Apr 2008 01:47 GMT
By Civil Society
Organisations
Joint Statement on Zimbabwe by Civil Societies of
Botswana, Zambia and
Zimbabwe
The People of Zimbabwe and Zambia are
one, despite the false barriers of
colonial boundaries. Our struggles for
democracy and dignity are the same
although the local contexts may
differ.
We, the undersigned representatives of Civil Society
Organisations in our
countries, have met to discuss the electoral crisis in
Zimbabwe in the
spirit of genuine Pan-African solidarity.
We
appreciate the efforts of the SADC Heads of State to address the crisis
through the Extraordinary Summit of 12 April 2008 in Lusaka,
Zambia.
The statement released by the SADC leaders attempts to address
some of the
issues that concern us. However, the statement falls short of
the
expectations of the peoples of our countries.
We expected the
SADC leaders to make specific demands upon the Zimbabwean
regime, including
demands to:
1. Compel Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to immediately
announce the
true results of the Presidential election of 29th March
2008.
2. Prevent Robert Mugabe and his security personnel from tampering
with the
election results
3. Call upon the current Zimbabwean regime
to stop the continued arbitrary
arrests and detentions of the non-military
personnel of the ZEC.
4. Dismantle the de facto coup and apply pressure
on the military to hand
over power to a civilian government.
5. And
in the event that the results show no winner of 50% plus one vote, to
set up
a Heads of State team that will mediate between ZANU PF and MDC in
order
to:
a. Set an election run-off time line.
b. Establish a credible,
independent and impartial election management body
to replace ZEC whose
credibility and reputation has been damaged beyond
repair that will
implement the election run-off without fear or favour and
constituted by
people acceptable to all parties.
c. Ensure that the election run-off is
internationally supported, supervised
and observed and run under
circumstances where Zimbabweans are able to fully
and effectively
participate in their national affairs in an environment of
peace and
tranquillity, free from intimidation and political violence and
retribution.
d. Demand that the duly elected and constituted parliament
is immediately
convened and allowed to carry out their constitutional
duties.
e. Demand free access for regional observers including the media
during the
run-off period until after the results are accepted by the
majority.
6. Ensure measures are in place, until the run-off is held,
that Robert
Mugabe is not allowed to rule by decree supported by the
military.
The SADC Heads of States, ZANU PF, MDC and other concerned
parties to take
cognisant of the fact that should violence erupt in
Zimbabwe, it is
especially women and children that will be affected the
most, therefore this
situation should be treated with
urgency.
Endorsed By:
African Agenda for Peace Initiatives and
Conflict Management (AAPICOM)
Anti Voter Apathy Project
Caritas
Zambia
Churches in Manicaland
Citizens Forum
Civil Society APRM
Secretariat
Combined Harare Residents’ Association
Crisis Coalition
Zimbabwe
Ditshwanelo – The Botswana Centre for Human Rights
Foundation for
Democratic Process
General Agricultural Plantation Workers’ Union of
Zimbabwe
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)
International
Federation For Human Rights (FIDH)
International Socialist
Organisation
Manicaland Legal Practitioners’ Association
Media Institute
of Southern Africa-Zimbabwe Chapter
Media Monitoring Project
Zimbabwe
Namibia National Society for Human Rights (NSHR)
National
Constitutional Assembly
National Organisation of Non-Governmental
Organisations
Non Governmental Organisations Coordinatiing
Council
Organisation Development and Community Management
Trust
Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe
Restoration of Human Rights
Zimbabwe
Save Zimbabwe Campaign
Southern Africa Centre for Constructive
Resolution of Disputes
Students’ Solidarity Trust
Transition Monitoring
Group (TMG) Kenya
Transparency International Zambia
We the People
Women
of Zimbabwe Arise
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
Youth
Initiative for Democracy in Zimbabwe
Zambia Council for Social
Development
Zambia Social Forum
Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human
Rghts
Zimbabwe Coalition of Debt and Development
Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions
Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights)
Zimbabwe Human
Rights NGO Forum
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)
Zimbabwe
National Students Union (ZINASU)
Zimbabwe Students Christian
Movement
Zimbabwe Youth Movement
Other organisations
www.cathnews.com
Published: April 14,
2008
South Africa's Catholic bishops have accused Zimbabwe President
Robert
Mugabe of failing to respect the democratic process and called for
international mediation to end the political stalemate over the country's
disputed national elections.
Catholic News Agency reports that
Johannesburg Archbishop Buti Thlagale,
described the situation in Zimbabwe
as a matter of regional, continental,
and international concern.
"As
President of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference and on
behalf
of the Catholic Community in Southern Africa, I call on the leaders
of the
Southern African Development Community and the African Union to act
swiftly
to diffuse this tension by mandating a mediator of sufficient
international
repute, such as Kofi Annan, to ensure a solution that is
acceptable to all
Zimbabweans," Archbishop Thlagale said.
"The postponement of the release
of the results has only fuelled tension and
fear in Zimbabwe,” the
archbishop said.
"The credibility of a peaceful vote has been
undermined by this delay and
the posturing by political parties. This time
of uncertainty has created an
opportunity for lawlessness."
Meanwhile, an
emergency summit of southern African political leaders called
for the swift
verification of the results in the presence of all parties,
Associated Press
reports.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said it would conduct a full
recount of
the presidential and parliamentary ballots cast in 23
constituencies — all
but one of them won by the opposition.
Zim Online
by Lizwe Sebatha Monday 14 April
2008
BULAWAYO – A British journalist will appear in
a Zimbabwe court today
to face trial for violating the country’s immigration
laws when he allegedly
falsely declared on arrival at an airport that he was
a tourist.
The journalist, Clayton Jonathan Michael, 54, was
arrested last
Wednesday on arrival at Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International
Airport in
Zimbabwe’s second largest city of Bulawayo. He is detained at
Bulawayo
Central police station.
“He was denied bail and is
appearing in court on Monday (today),” his
lawyer Josephat Tshuma told
ZimOnline.
Michael is the third Western journalist arrested in
Zimbabwe in the
past three weeks for allegedly reporting without official
permission from
the government’s Media and Information Commission
(MIC).
New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak and British
journalist
Stephen Bevan were held in jail for days for allegedly covering
Zimbabwe's
just-ended election without accreditation. They were later
released on bail.
Two South African satellite technicians, Sipho
Maseko and Abdulla
Gaibee, also spent several days in jail after police
arrested them for
allegedly covering the election without
accreditation.
Zimbabwean authorities barred most foreign media
from covering the
March 29 elections and warned that it would deal severely
with journalists
who sneaked into the country to report
illegally.
Scores of foreign journalists sneaked into the country
but the dangers
were highlighted when police pounced on those unlucky to be
discovered.
Both local and foreign journalists must be accredited
with the MIC in
order to practice their profession in Zimbabwe, with those
failing to do so
facing arrest and imprisonment.
Zimbabwe is
widely regarded as one of the most difficult countries in
the world for
journalists to work in.
In addition to laws requiring journalists
to seek accreditation in
order to work in the country, newspapers are also
required to register with
the state media commission, with those failing to
do so facing closure and
seizure of their property by the
police.
Another law, the Public Order and Security Act, imposes a
sentence of
up to two years in jail on journalists convicted of publishing
falsehoods
that may cause public alarm and despondency, while the Criminal
Codification
Act imposes up to 20-year jail terms on journalists convicted
of denigrating
President Robert Mugabe in their articles.
Repression against the independent media usually peaks during
elections. –
ZimOnline
New Zimbabwe
By Tafadzwa
Musekiwa
Last updated: 04/14/2008 07:24:27
THERE is already talk that
Zimbabweans are preparing for Robert Mugabe to
stay. The reality is very
different from what political analysts want us to
believe.
Let’s put
this into perspective. Initially, we were told before the
elections that
Morgan Tsvangirai stood no chance in hell of winning these
elections,
because of the Simba Makoni and Arthur Mutambara alliance which
would split
the opposition vote, in the process giving Mugabe an absolute
majority.
That turned out to be the opposite, Tsvangirai won
resoundingly and the
other MDC faction and Makoni only managed to minimally
influence the vote.
We were also told that the delimitation of boundaries
for the constituencies
had favoured Zanu PF, and Zanu PF would get a
majority in parliament, yet
the reverse was also true. In fact, for the
first time Zanu PF are in the
minority in parliament since 1980.
I
have tended to take some of these analysts’ views with a pinch of salt.
Whilst they are occasionally accurate, most of the times they are not only
inaccurate, but tend to paint a gloomy picture about the political reality
on the ground.
Today, there are a lot of theories being thrown around
about how the
situation will unfold in Zimbabwe. The reality of the matter
is that
Mugabe – not necessarily Zanu PF -- is going down, but that doesn’t
mean
without a fight. What analysts are failing to tell us is that at the
end of
the fight, he will go down, which is what Zimbabweans are waiting to
see
happen in the very near future.
A seriously significant political
development has taken place in
post-independence Zimbabwe after this
election, i.e., Zanu PF has lost a
parliamentary majority and yet we are not
being told the implications of
this.
There is still disillusionment
and hopelessness among fellow countrymen at
the mere fact that Mugabe is
still the President of Zimbabwe as we speak. It
goes without saying Mugabe’s
departure was not going to be easy, and it’s
proving already that it’s
obviously not the end, it’s certainly not the
beginning, but in fact, it’s
just in the middle of the struggle.
In the absence of an expert view
regarding the implications of Zanu PF’s
defeat in parliament, I will try and
explain it in simpler terms, assuming
though hook or crook, Mugabe remains
president, which is unlikely anyway. I
will just briefly explain why it’s
very unlikely that Mugabe will retain
power as things stand. This will help
in explaining why we need not be
disillusioned.
For any government
under a parliamentary democracy like Zimbabwe to
function, no President,
unless in a state of emergency which has to be
justifiable, can effectively
run the country without a majority in
parliament.
If, for argument
sake, he has a minority, that majority has to support him
otherwise it’s
just impossible to run the country. I know some of you are
beginning to
think about Bingu Wamtarika in Malawi and Musharaff in
Pakistan. Hold your
horses. These presidents are not anywhere close to the
situation as we have
in Zimbabwe.
Bingu is effectively ruling by decree, but he can afford it,
at least in the
short term. As for Musharaff, well everyone knows that he is
America’s pawn
and can effectively do it without a problem, but even he
might not be in
office for long regardless.
The question is: can
Zimbabwe afford it? Or rather can Mugabe afford it? The
answer is a big NO,
not at the moment. For everyone to understand, let’s put
it simply and take
one instance.
With inflation pegged at over 100 00%, the likelihood that
parliament will
need to approve e.g. salaries for civil servants through a
supplementary
budget almost every month is real. Government or ministries
can’t just go to
the Reserve Bank to print money for their salaries. It will
be possible but
very illegal and unconstitutional.
No-one can argue
that Mugabe has ever done this, because he hasn’t, much as
we know him as a
despot who has no respect for the rule of law, he has
followed the law and
procedure in this regard. Parliament has always been
there and wiling to
approve yearly and supplementary budgets without a
problem. Will Mugabe do
it knowing that parliament won’t approve it? The
answer is, very unlikely,
why not? It effectively means if the problem
persists, he will have to
declare a state of emergency, something Mugabe
doesn’t want to do and won’t
do as long as he insists on being the
legitimate ‘democratic’
leader.
I am aware that he is effectively running the country under
emergency rule,
but that is different from actually declaring it. I have
just given one
simple example to illustrate where the struggle is so far.
The real
significance of his party’s defeat in parliament is a major
development that
has devastating implications to Zanu PF and Mugabe, no
wonder they a running
around looking for 22 seats to contest under the
assumption that they will
regain them and retain a majority in
parliament.
To my fellow countrymen, let’s take pride in the fact that so
far, half the
job is done and the MDC is doing the finishing touches on the
other half,
i.e. getting rid of Mugabe. Everyone is aware of Mugabe’s
pre-election
warnings that “Tsvangirai will never rule Zimbabwe, not in my
lifetime”,
“your votes are a waste if you vote the MDC” and so on. The fact
of the
matter, as opposed to political rhetoric, is that it is very possible
and it
is going to happen as long as the people of Zimbabwe have a final say
on who
they want to be their legitimate leader.
In the parliamentary
elections, let’s not forget that 54% of the electorate
voted against Zanu
PF. This is evidence enough to show that Mugabe has lost
support of the
majority of Zimbabwe’s electorate and will never rule
Zimbabwe again as long
as the people have a voice.
If and when Zimbabwe goes for a run off or a
rerun, the likelihood that the
54% that voted against Zanu PF will do it
again is self-evident. With the
voter turnout in the urban areas around 45%
in the March 29 parliamentary
elections, this time round be rest assured
that it will be around 75% if not
more, thus giving a resounding win to
Tsvangirai.
There is no other explanation that can convince any sober
person that Mugabe
will win the run off or a rerun. Like I said before, as
long as the people
have a final say, Tsvangirai will be President of
Zimbabwe and Mugabe will
never again rule Zimbabwe in my
lifetime.
Change is inevitable, but the man won’t go down without a
fight, yet the
most important thing is that he will go down after that
fight. The focus on
the opposition front should be the minimisation of
casualties in this battle
as the man goes down, and avoid being distracted
by sideshows like getting
caught up defending ourselves from baseless
allegations.
Tafadzwa Musekiwa is a former MDC MP currently exiled in
England. He can be
contacted on e-mail: tafadzwa_Musekiwa@yahoo.co.uk
New Zimbabwe
By
Gilbert Muponda
Last updated: 04/14/2008 06:20:20
ZIMBABWE’S economic
meltdown may show signs of receding should the political
impasse be amicably
resolved.
The latest official inflation figure for February is reportedly
165 ,000%.
Should the inflationary pressure maintain its recent momentum
till year end,
then Zimbabwe’s official inflation will be 2,017, 000 % by
mid year further
worsening to 24,672,000% by year end.
Once inflation
reaches such high levels as Zimbabwe's, it tends to move at
an accelerated
pace. This is based on current trends -- price controls,
shortages, money
supply and exchange rate disequilibrium. It should be noted
that only three
months ago, inflation was around 20,000, now it’s 10 times
higher.
Whilst price controls and other strong arm tactics can
temporarily delay the
slide, the presence of the black market makes it
difficult to contain
inflation by simply imposing price controls or
threatening business. Major
policy shift will be required to get Zimbabwe
back on track.
It is difficult to conceive how inflation can be
stabilised first, then
reduced subsequently, without political settlement.
During the election
period, every province got some ploughs, tractors,
combine harvesters,
computers and a whole lot of other goodies as is normal
in our motherland
ahead of elections.
The policy is: give now and pay
later. So the full price of such unbudgeted
expenditure will have to be
factored into future inflation, since the money
printing machines worked
overtime ahead of elections. Inflation rate is,
therefore, expected to
worsen before it can be tamed.
This could get worse should there be a
run-off election, since more money
will be printed to fund that campaign as
well. The above inflation forecasts
could turn out to be very
conservative.
Price controls as an inflation busting measure have created
a new problem --
that of having driven up activities in the informal
market. Zimbabwe’s
formal sector has been shrinking at an alarming rate
since everything is now
available on the black market or
underground.
This trend has disastrous consequences for the fiscus. Black
market
activities are difficult if not impossible to tax. This means the
government
loses an important tax base which would have normally been
available under
normal circumstances. This represents multiple revenue loss
since
underground hustlers can’t be taxed: no income tax, no V.A.T and no
sales
tax.
Once the tax base starts eroding, it’s almost impossible
to re-cast the net
effectively to return to optimal revenue collection
through taxation. The
tax system is central to the public finance system.
This is why governments
the world over try to please tax payers. But once
the nation relies on
printing money, the importance of tax payers and the
tax systems is
diminished. Any other public finance pattern that’s
materially divorced from
the tax system is likely to result in a fatal
outcome such as unsustainable
budget deficit or hyper inflation as in
Zimbabwe’s case.
Given that Zimbabwe is at such an important transitional
period, it is
important that the tax base be widened and strengthened. This
requires
deliberate and careful planning as many stakeholders are likely to
be
suspicious of any attempts to make them accountable in a manor that does
not
show any clear benefits for them. This will build a long term revenue
base
for Zimbabwe without over-reliance on donor aid and
borrowings.
Zimbabwe's financial markets do not yet possess the width and
depth required
to support an isolated economy. The lack of access to foreign
financial
markets and normal balance of payment support has limited the
options
available to raise funds for the government. Further, the shrinkage
of the
formal sector and closure of many businesses has eroded the revenue
base in
form of taxes.
A starting point would be for the new
authorities to acknowledge the
critical role played by the informal sector.
There is a need to absorb and
transform this sector into the formal complex,
and assist this sector to be
able to have infrastructure that will allow it
to access technical
expertise, financial resources and
grow.
Obviously, the informal sector alone cannot be expected to resolve
the
economic challenges facing Zimbabwe. In order to help a speedy recovery
of
the formal sector, Zimbabwe can borrow ideas from leading nations such as
Israel which have well developed policies and systems to help non-resident
citizens to return home and fill in a skills gap and strengthen the tax
base. This is central in resource mobilisation to sustain any reconstruction
effort.
Whilst foreigners will come and invest, it is important that
Zimbabweans
take their destiny into their own hands in terms of developing
the nation.
Gilbert Muponda is a Zimbabwe-born entrepreneur, exiled in
Canada. He can be
contacted at gilbert@gilbertmuponda.com. See his
website:
www.gilbertmuponda.com
New Zimbabwe
By Mutumwa D.
Mawere
(www.mmawere.com)
Last
updated: 04/14/2008 05:42:19
ANY birth brings with it hope and
optimism.
However, it cannot be said that the birth of a New Zimbabwe was
ever
expected to be easy. The delay in announcing the Presidential election
results and the attempt to revisit the parliamentary and senatorial results
clearly expose the fact that both President Robert Mugabe and his former
ruling party are facing a real and fundamental difficulty.
It cannot
be said that the election results are not known, but what is
significant is
that no-one has the courage to announce the bad news. One has
to ask whether
it is an easy task to be bearer of bad news to President
Mugabe. Is he the
type that will accept wily that Zimbabweans are capable
and competent to
know what is good for them?
Hope is really about imagining the
unimaginable and it seems that the people
of Zimbabwe have through the
ballot expressed themselves eloquently that the
days of a Great Leader
supported by a compliant legislature are gone.
Whatever happens,
President Mugabe’s legitimacy is on the line. He clearly
is no longer the
favorite First Son of Zimbabwe and now has to live with the
fact that he is
number two, a position to which the late Vice President
Muzenda was
condemned to. Vice President Muzenda often observed that he had
erased the
words “number one” from his vocabulary and had resigned himself
to believe
that being Vice President was all God had destined for him.
If ever
Zimbabwe needed the kind of hope and renewal that the world has been
waiting
for, the hour is almost upon us. What is required now is a
demonstration of
maturity and focus and not the political games that have
been on display in
the post-election period. The world already knows that
Mugabe has been dealt
a severe blow and change is unavoidable. Mugabe is
clearly under siege and
all he needs are excuses for remaining in power.
When the election date
was proclaimed, many believed that the SADC-mediated
process could not be
trusted to produce a desirable outcome that we now have
characterised by
Zanu PF conveniently playing victim.
No-one trusted President Mugabe to
be the author of his own demise and all
rational minds were expecting that
the elections would favour Zanu PF. It is
not absurd to ask the question of
how could a President and a party accused
of being masters at election
rigging be stupid enough to preside over a
process that undermines their own
existence.
Is there something we need to learn about election rigging in
Zimbabwe? It
occurs to me that at this defining hour in Zimbabwe’s history,
we should
learn to trust President Mbeki for helping facilitate a process
that has
produced the unimaginable outcome.
It would be wrong to
suggest that MDC-T’s support is a mirage and equally it
would be naïve to
accept the proposition that Zanu PF does not have its own
support
base.
If it is accepted that both Zanu PF and MDC-T are repositories of
Zimbabwean
people’s confidence at this defining hour, it is important that
minds are
put to use to build a foundation for a new Zimbabwe. In 1980, when
Zimbabweans voted ZANU into office, it must be accepted that hope was placed
on people whose thinking may have been poisoned by hate than challenged by
the future.
President Mugabe with limited experience in managing
economic processes was
placed at the helm of a relatively dynamic and
sophisticated dualistic
economic structure and after 28 years in power we
can safely conclude that a
post-colonial Zimbabwe may have benefited from a
different leader.
We have to accept that an ideology that informed the
liberation struggle may
not be suitable for prosecuting a national
democratic revolution in as much
as the anti-Mugabe rhetoric may not provide
the required fuel to advance the
struggle for a better Zimbabwe.
What
kind of Zimbabwe do Zimbabweans want to see? Do Zimbabweans want a
country
where the winner takes all or one that departs from the politics of
hate,
past and division to a new way of thinking that encourages Zimbabweans
to
use the minds and energy for positive change?
What Dr. Martin Luther King
called the “fierce urgency of now” best captures
the Zimbabwean condition.
The economy cannot afford five more years of
Mugabe. Even if there is a
runoff, it is important that Zimbabweans put
their differences aside and
focus on bringing the change that is believable.
I am not convinced that the
urgency of now is a monopoly of political
parties, but should inform the
actions of all role players in the unfolding
drama of Zimbabwean politics
and comedy.
Even if there is a runoff, which seems more than likely;
President Mugabe
will enter the race for the first time since independence
as an underdog. We
have to congratulate MDC-T for making Mugabe eat humble
pie for the first
time and, if anything, it is important that this
opportunity be seized by
all concerned to send the message home that
Zimbabwe can only have a
brighter future without President Mugabe at the
helm.
By pointing a finger at the alleged hand of imperialists in the
pre-election
and electoral process, President Mugabe has already
inadvertently conceded
defeat and we all now know that even if he were to
win, the future of
Zimbabwe will require the re-integration of the country
in the global
community of progressive nations. President Mugabe and his
government will
not be able to deliver any good news to Zimbabweans and it
is obvious that
there is a clear choice to be made between the past and the
future.
The hour of hope is fast approaching and it is important that
change agents
manage this final mile with maturity and focus. The real price
is evident
and the people have already spoken about what they want to see.
All we can
do is support the momentum of change and no force will stand in
the way of
change whose hour has arrived.
Mutumwa Mawere's weekly
column is published on New Zimbabwe.com every
Monday. You can contact him
at: mmawere@global.co.za
politicsweb
Paul
Trewhela
14 April 2008
Zanu-PF’s rule is founded, as Stalin’s was,
on the ordinary human emotion of
resentment.
The decision of the
states of the Southern African Development Conference to
endorse the
dictatorship of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe under the fiction of a
re-run
election was anticipated in an analysis of totalitarianism by the
English
philosopher, Roger Scruton.
In an essay, "The Totalitarian Temptation",
delivered in an address in 2003
to a conference on totalitarianism organised
by the University of Krakow in
Poland (a country that knew both Hitler's and
Stalin's boot), Professor
Scruton considered the origin of totalitarianism
to lie in the ordinary
human emotion of resentment. Totalitarianism he
considers to be present when
there is the "absence of any fundamental
constraint on the central
authority." It is a form of government that "does
not respect or acknowledge
the distinction between civil society and the
State.... [N]othing limits the
power of the State in the way that might be
limited by a representative
legislature or a system of judge-made, or
judge-discovered, law." Following
the model pioneered in Russia by Lenin and
Trotsky and perfected by Stalin,
its form is as follows: "Society was
controlled by the State, the State was
controlled by the party, and the
party was controlled from the top by the
leadership." This conception fits
the reign of Zanu PF as led by Mugabe in
Zimbabwe.
This party
leadership defines itself by its particular ideology. This
ideology is "not
a truth-seeking device but a power-seeking device." It is
"a power-directed
system of thought". Scruton suggests that "the interests
advanced by
totalitarian ideology are those of an aspiring elite". What is
important,
according to Scruton's analysis, following Nietzsche, is that
totalitarian
ideologies - like the race and class ideology of Zanu PF - are
"ways to
recruit resentment", or as Nietzsche put it, using a French word,
ressentiment. This is a "virulent and implacable state of mind, that
precedes the injury complained of".
Resentment occurs in all
societies, but what is unique about totalitarian
ideologies is that they
"rationalize resentment, and also unite the
resentful around a common cause.
Totalitarian systems arise when the
resentful, having seized power, proceed
to abolish the institutions that
have conferred power on others:
institutions like law, property and religion
which create hierarchies,
authorities and privileges, and which enable
individuals to asset
sovereignty over their own lives...Once institutions of
law, property and
religion are destroyed - and their destruction is the
normal result of
totalitarian government - resentment takes up its place
immovably, as the
ruling principle of the State."
That is the case in Zimbabwe , with the
endorsement of the SADC. Once in
power, "the resentful are inclined to
dispense with mediating institutions,
and erect a system of pure power
relations, in which individual sovereignty
is extinguished by central
control. They may do this in the name of
equality, meaning thereby to
dispossess the rich and the privileged. Or they
may do it in the name of
racial purity, meaning thereby to dispossess the
aliens who have stolen
their birthright. One thing is certain, however,
which is that there will be
target groups." In Zimbabwe , the totalitarian
project exercises its right
to rule through a combination of the two forms,
the appeal to equality and
to race (and, more specifically, but implicitly,
to tribe). It unites both
the Stalin (hostility to privilege) and the Hitler
(hostility to race)
forms. As such, it is "directed collectively against
groups, conceived as
collectively offensive and bearing a collective guilt".
As Scruton
argues, this project is "not conducted from below by the people,
but from
above, in the name of the people, by as aspiring elite".
Totalitarian
ideologies, very widely endorsed in southern Africa , as the
decision of the
SADC shows, "legitimize the resentments of an elite, while
recruiting the
resentment of those needed to support the elite in its
pursuit of hitherto
inaccessible advantages. The elite derives its identity
from repudiating the
old order. And it casts itself in a pastoral role, as
leader and teacher of
the people", as if it were a "priestly caste". The
elite then "justifies its
seizure of power by referring to its solidarity
with those who have been
unjustly excluded".
The leader of such a totalitarian project, according
to Scruton, is
frequently an embittered and isolated person, who seeks "some
opportunity to
take revenge on the world that has denied him his due". Such
people are
"fired by a negative energy, and are never at ease unless bent on
the task
of destruction". When such a person achieves power, he will
"compensate for
his isolation by establishing, in the place of friendship, a
military
command, with himself at the head of it. He will demand absolute
loyalty and
obedience, in return for a share in the reward. And he will
admit no one
into his circle who is not animated by resentment, which is the
only emotion
that he has learned to trust". Such a characterisation suits
Mugabe.
The political project of this leader "will not be to gain a share
of power
within existing structures, but to gain total power, so as to
abolish the
structures themselves. He will set himself against all forms of
mediation,
compromise and debate, and against the legal and moral norms
which give a
voice to the dissenter and sovereignty to the ordinary
unresentful person.
He will set about destroying the enemy, whom he will
conceive in collective
terms, as the class, group or race that hitherto
controlled the world and
which must now be controlled. And all institutions
that grant protection to
that class or a voice in the political process will
be targets for his
destructive rage."
At this point Scruton very
precisely identifies the sham and scam that the
electoral process has
revealed itself to be in Zimbabwe , as a typical
feature of the totalitarian
regime. He writes that the inevitable result of
the seizure of power in this
project will be the "establishment of a
militarized core to the State -
whether in the form of a party, a committee
or simply an army which does not
bother to disguise its military purpose.
This core will have absolute power
and will operate outside the law. This
law will itself be replaced by a
Potemkin version that can be invoked
whenever it is necessary to remind the
people of their subordinate
position."
In citing this "Potemkin
version" of law, Scruton refers to the supposed
tricky practice of Prince
Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin when acting as
chief minister to Empress
Catherine the Great of Russia, who held absolute
power in the late 18th
century. The Russian peasantry lived in abysmal
poverty and shabbiness.
Empress Catherine wanted however to believe that
everything was for the best
under her enlightened government. Potemkin was
alleged to have squared the
circle by having fake, cardboard villages
erected along the route the
Empress travelled on her tour of the Crimea.
Constitution, law and elections
in Zimbabwe are a Potemkin village. By
implication they are also actually or
potentially so throughout the states
of the SADC, South Africa included,
their leaders having so crassly endorsed
Mugabe's Potemkin-type electoral
scam.
As Scruton writes, under the totalitarian regime this "Potemkin
law" will be
a "prominent and omnipresent feature of society, constantly
invoked and
paraded, in order to imbue all acts of the ruling party with an
unassailable
air of legitimacy. The ‘revolutionary vanguard' will be more
prodigal of
legal forms and official stamps than any of the regimes that it
displaces.... In this way the new order will be both utterly lawless and
entirely concealed by law." In this way, as Scruton quotes the former
President of the Czech Republic , Vaclav Havel, the people oppressed under
the totalitarian regime are required to "live within the
lie".
Scruton gives also a telling characterisation of the Mugabe type.
He notes
the pathological character of the resentments carried by the great
leader in
the totalitarian project, people who "have an exaggerated sense of
their own
entitlements, and a diminutive capacity to observe them...Their
resentments
are not concrete responses to momentary rebuffs but accumulating
rejections
of the system in which they have failed to advance."
Intellectuals, it
seems, are "particularly prone to this generalized
resentment....Hence we
should not be surprised to find intellectuals in the
forefront of radical
movements, or to discover that they are more disposed
than ordinary mortals
to adopt theories and ideologies that have nothing to
recommend them apart
from the power that they promise." This fits Mugabe to
the tip of his little
moustache.
[Roger Scruton's essay, "The
Totalitarian Temptation" is in Roger Scruton, A
Political Philosophy
(Continuum, London and New York , 2006. pp.146-160)].
ABC Australia
This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around
Australia at
08:00 on ABC Local Radio.
AM - Monday, 14 April , 2008 08:19:00
Reporter:
Peter Cave
TONY EASTLEY: Attempts by southern African leaders to build a
unity
government to replace the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe fell apart last
night
increasing fears that the country is heading into an even more
dangerous
post-election period.
The political problems are enormous
but they could be overshadowed by a
humanitarian crisis.
What was
once one of the most productive agricultural economies in Africa is
now a
shambles and its people are going hungry. It's not the only country
suffering food shortages and we'll have more on that story in a
moment.
Our foreign affairs editor Peter Cave spoke to Sarah Jacobs from
Save the
Children Fund in Harare about the pitiful plight of Zimbabwe's
children.
SARAH JACOBS: Conditions of those children in Zimbabwe has
really reached
rock bottom. Obviously the whole country is in complete
economic meltdown
and its children are the most vulnerable who are really
baring the brunt of
that.
And Save the Children have been working in
Zimbabwe for nearly 25 years and
we're now seeing one in 10 children dying
before they reach the age of five.
A very high figure.
PETER CAVE:
And most of them, according to the latest figures, aren't
expected to see
the age of 40.
SARAH JACOBS: Yes. The Zimbabwe have the highest female
mortality rates. The
average is for a woman who's dying at the age of 34,
for both women and
children, families just cannot afford to buy or even
manage too grow enough
to eat. The health service is in complete shatters
and they are, then we
have children dying from easily preventable diseases
such as malaria and
diarrhoea.
They've got no way of getting drugs,
they have got no way of getting any
health care. And of course here there's
also an extremely high rate of HIV,
which is resulting in Zimbabwe having
the highest number of orphans in the
world. They're about 1.8 million
orphans here now.
PETER CAVE: How easy is it to fix something like
that?
SARAH JACOBS: It's obviously a massive challenge. Zimbabwe's been
going into
decline for the last 10 years and the numbers and the problems
are huge.
However, there is a lot that's is being done, and it can be done.
There are
numerous organisations, aid agencies, like Save the Children,
working on the
ground to get help directly to communities who so desperately
need it.
Save the Children, for example, is delivering malaria nets to
protect
children and families from mosquito bites and malaria which is such
a big
killer. We're working as well with the orphans, because of the
situation;
there are many, many children who are, whose parents have died.
They may be
13, 14-years-old and they're responsible for looking after their
entire
family, often other relatives also who are suffering from HIV and
AIDS.
So we deliver life-saving kits to them, we have been delivering
food aid and
we're also working with families and communities to help them
establish a
way of living. So, for example, distributing seeds, helping them
to
cultivate drought-resistant crops to help build up their ability to last
through these very difficult times.
TONY EASTLEY: Sarah Jacobs from
Save the Children Fund in Harare, speaking
there to our foreign affairs
editor Peter Cave.
USA today
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe
needs to go. That much is clear to just
about the whole world — except for
Mugabe himself, along with the corrupt
officials and others who have
profited from his misrule.
Yet, in what amounts to just the latest
chapter in an increasingly horrific
farce, the 84-year-old Mugabe,
Zimbabwe's ruler for 28 years, is determined
to cling to power. More than
two weeks after parliamentary and presidential
elections, a time in which he
has been virtually silent as rumors swirled
that he would accept an
opposition offer to exit quietly, he is instead
forcing a recount.
No
prizes for guessing the outcome. The new results are all but certain to
reverse mostly unofficial tallies in which his party lost its majority in
parliament and in which, at the very least, Mugabe would be forced into a
runoff for the presidency with opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai.
Dictators tend to lose touch with reality as they surround
themselves with
sycophants too scared to tell them the truth. Clearly,
Mugabe was taken by
surprise when the unofficial election results, posted at
polling stations
and tabulated by opposition and outside groups, showed his
party had lost.
There is no other logical explanation for why he allowed
such open
procedures in the first place, and for why he is retroactively
rigging the
outcome. For good measure, as the recount takes place, he has
unleashed
attackers on the opposition and its sympathizers.
If Mugabe
won't see the truth written so plainly in the election results,
the
international community needs to step up with the kind of pressure that
could force him to exit. The horror he has perpetrated on his people is
staggering. Because of his mismanagement and brutality, stores are empty,
inflation is at tens of thousands of percentage points per year, many are
starving and refugees are pouring into neighboring countries. Zimbabwe is,
almost literally, hell on earth.
The question is who and what might
force him to go. Neighboring countries in
southern Africa held an emergency
meeting about the crisis in the past few
days. Tellingly, Mugabe refused to
attend, though he did send a delegation.
But the regional summit's
attendants behaved little better than the
sycophants in Zimbabwe, offering
only a mild rebuke.
A graceful exit for Mugabe is unsatisfactory on one
level. It's always best
if brutal leaders face their misdeeds. Even so, it's
preferable to years of
more misery.
How to get him to accept? The
best stick: the threat of possible charges in
an international tribunal —
not just for Mugabe but also for those around
him. He might not have
perpetrated genocide, but the treatment of his people
could well rise to the
level of crimes against humanity. Adding that stick
now, at a time when
Mugabe is weakened, has to be an international priority.
Posted at 12:21
AM/ET, April 14, 2008
ABC Australia
Posted 5 hours 27
minutes ago
Updated 3 hours 33 minutes ago
Zimbabwe is braced for
what the Opposition hopes will be the first day of an
indefinite national
strike on Tuesday (local time).
The Opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) has called the strike
amid continuing unrest in the wake of
last month's elections.
The country's electoral commission has ordered
recounts in 23 constituencies
in what the MDC has denounced as an attempt to
rig the parliamentary
election in favour of President Robert Mugabe's ruling
ZANU-PF party.
The MDC insists its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won a
clear majority in
the presidential poll, the results of which are yet to be
released.
Zimbabwe's High Court is due to rule tonight (Australian time)
on whether to
force Zimbabwe's electoral commission to immediately declare
the result of
the March 29 presidential poll.
A regional summit in
Zambia over the weekend failed to broker an end to the
crisis.
The
summit stopped short of criticising the Zimbabwean Government or Mr
Mugabe,
who was not even mentioned in a four-page joint statement that
called only
for the result of the presidential poll to be delivered as
"expeditiously"
as possible.
HARARE - 14 April 2008
The following eyewitness account was sent to us last night by
ANGLICAN-INFORMATION. The correspondent's name has been withheld for
security reasons.
Third Sunday after Easter. Third Sunday after
Zimbabwe Presidential
Elections.
We still have no official result to
the election and the situation is
deteriorating. Violence and intimidation
is definitely occurring in the
rural areas. The Zimbabwe Association of
Doctors for Human Rights, who look
after torture victims at the main Harare
private hospital are seeing many
patients. Some have wounds, already
infected, as clinic nurses in some areas
refuse to see them, no doubt
because they are scared. At least one badly
burnt patient has been admitted.
Mbecki (President of South Africa) says
there is no crisis. What makes a
crisis?
The remaining white farmers are being attacked and told to leave
their
farms. It is said that villagers are being made to attack them. If
they
refuse their houses are being torched. One report from a mission farm
said
they (the farmers) were turned off last week. Then the police came and
drove
off the invaders. Today they have been attacked again.
Our
church was as usual at 11 o'clock, the required 90 minutes after the
start
of the original 8.30 am service (following the legal restraints
imposed to
separate the Kunonga faction from the Provincial diocese of
Harare). The
church was packed, perhaps 300 people but only 47 in the Sunday
School.
There are usually rather more (parents are afraid).
When we got to the
prayers for the nation, many people chipped in in
anguished tones - so
different to two weeks ago, when it was 'Tinotenda
Mwari', (Thank you, thank
you Lord.) One beautiful prayer said in English,
asked the Lord 'to come
among us, and guide the nation'.
The notices were given and Bishop
Sebastian Bakare has produced a booklet
for those preparing confirmation
candidates. Everyone has been asked to
study it in the house groups. He will
conduct a confirmation at the Bernard
Misecki Shrine in June. Those who were
confirmed by Kunonga after he was
sacked are invited to be presented again.
People were very frightened of
Kunonga.
Another notice was an appeal
for funds for the legal cases. Everyone was
asked to donate $100 million.
They started the collection there and then and
collected $5 billion.
ANGLICAN-INFORMATION reports that this is hugely
generous but with 100,000%+
inflation will be valueless in months.
There are rumours of fighting in
one of the township churches involving
former Bishop Kunonga's paid thugs.
The situation in Zimbabwe is extremely
volatile and the Central African
Province in the thick if it. Pray for
Bishop Sebastian Bakare and the people
and priests.
We will release more information as it becomes
available.
ANGLICAN-INFORMATION is a network acting as a free conduit for
news and
information related to the Anglican Diocese of Lake Malawi, and the
Province
of Central Africa. It is organised by an international team of
those who
know and love Africa and Malawi well. We reserve the right to
reflect on the
news as we receive it for the benefit of our worldwide
audience.
© Independent Catholic News 2008