Reuters
Thu 3 Apr 2008,
18:45 GMT
(Adds comment from hotel employee, witness
account)
HARARE, April 3 (Reuters) - Zimbabean police on Thursday
arrested two
foreign journalists at a Harare hotel for covering the
country's election
without accreditation, police said.
"I can confirm
that we have arrested two reporters at York Lodge for
practising without
accreditation," said police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena,
who added the police
would identify them on Friday.
Witnesses said that armed riot police and
what appeared to be state
intelligence agents were at the hotel.
An
employee at the hotel told Reuters by telephone:
"There are just ordinary
policemen, some in plain clothes. Some of them are
armed." (Reporting by
Nelson Banya, Editing by Matthew Jones)
Associated Press
Apr 3, 3:23 PM EDT
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) --
Police raided opposition party offices late
Thursday in what a top party
official called the start of a government
crackdown in the wake of
Zimbabwe's elections.
Officers raided and ransacked several rooms at a
downtown hotel used by the
Movement for Democratic Change, party
secretary-general Tendai Biti told The
Associated Press, calling it the
beginning of a "crackdown" on the
opposition. No one was
arrested.
Paramilitary police in riot gear also surrounded a hotel used
by foreign
journalists in Harare and took away three or four reporters late
Thursday,
according to a man who answered the phone there.
The
opposition claims it won Saturday's presidential race outright. While
the
election commission has issued results for the parliamentary races held
alongside the presidential race, it has yet to release any presidential
count.
Monsters and Critics
Apr 3, 2008, 18:12 GMT
Harare - Several journalists,
including an American journalist, have been
detained in Zimbabwe during a
police search for journalists covering the
country's elections without
accreditation, media and diplomatic sources told
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
dpa.
The York Lodge, a hotel popular with Western journalists, was raised
Thursday evening by police, the hotel confirmed.
The raid was still
ongoing, a receptionist told dpa by telephone. Police
also searched the
Meikles, a hotel popular with Western travellers,
journalists said. The
police reportedly said they were 'looking for
documents.'
It was not
clear whether the journalists detained were accredited to cover
last
Saturday's presidential, parliamentary and local elections.
Zimbabwe's
government refused accreditation to most Western journalists,
accusing
Western countries that had been banned from sending election
monitors to the
elections, of using journalists as their eyes and ears.
Before the
elections the government threatened journalists who slipped into
the country
unaccredited with arrest and deportation.
nasdaq
HARARE (AFP)--The announcement of results of
elections to the Zimbabwean
senate, the largely ceremonial upper house of
parliament, have been
postponed indefinitely, the electoral commission
announced Thursday.
"The results have been delayed because of logistical
problems encountered in
some areas," deputy chief elections officer Utoile
Silaigwana said in an
announcement on state television.
"The
commission is once again appealing to the nation as the verification of
senatorial election results is still under way."
The delay to the
results for the 60-member senate, which had been expected
on Thursday, comes
after heavy criticism over a hold-up in announcing the
outcome to the
presidential election, which was also held on Saturday.
(END) Dow Jones
Newswires
04-03-081308ET
New York Times
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
Published: April 4, 2008
Despite losing
control of Parliament, President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe
and his party
were increasingly explicit on Thursday about their willingness
to continue
fighting for the presidency.
After days of public reticence about the
party’s intentions in the wake of
Saturday’s elections, Bright Matonga, a
deputy information minister for Mr.
Mugabe, indicated that the president was
not prepared to step aside and
would compete in a second round of voting if
results showed that neither
candidate had won a majority in the first
round.
“ZANU-PF is ready for a runoff,” Mr. Matonga told Agence
France-Presse. “We
are ready for a resulting victory.”
The Zimbabwe
election commission has yet to announce results of the
presidential race,
but it has confirmed that Mr. Mugabe and his party, known
as ZANU-PF, lost
control of Parliament — a huge setback in a nation where
Mr. Mugabe has long
dominated virtually all levers of power.
The main opposition party, led
by Morgan Tsvangirai, has announced its own
final tally in the presidential
race, proclaiming victory with 50.3 percent
of the vote to Mr. Mugabe’s 43.8
percent, just barely enough to avoid a
runoff.
Zimbabwe now waits to
see if the official count matches the opposition’s,
knowing it would not
require a very heavy thumb on the scale to force
another round of voting
three weeks from now.
There have already been signs that Mr. Mugabe would
endorse a second vote,
which, while not as humiliating as an outright
defeat, would still seem a
difficult pill for a man who has held power for
so long and considers
himself the father of the nation. Wednesday morning’s
edition of The Herald,
the state-run newspaper, reported that “the pattern
of results” shows that
no candidates “will garner more than 50 percent of
the vote, forcing a
rerun.”
The newspaper, considered a mouthpiece
for Mr. Mugabe, published no actual
election totals from Saturday’s vote and
attributed its conclusion to
analysts. But it probably means that governing
party insiders have urged the
president not to give up his — and their —
power, either persuading Mr.
Mugabe to keep on fighting or at least to
maintain the option.
A businessman with close connections to the party
hierarchy, speaking on the
condition of anonymity, said Mr. Mugabe had met
Tuesday evening first with
the chiefs of military and intelligence and then
with top members of his
cabinet and the party presidium.
“They urged
him to go to the bush,” the businessman said, meaning that in a
runoff the
party would employ tactics of intimidation and bloodshed that had
worked
well in earlier campaigns, especially in rural areas that could be
closed
off to opposition candidates.
President Mugabe was said to hesitate. Once
lauded as a liberator and
statesman, he became a ruthless autocrat, to be
forever remembered for
murderous campaigns against his enemies and an
ill-conceived takeover of
white-owned farmland that ended up wrecking the
economy.
He feels a strong sense of rejection in the election results,
and a part of
him wants to concede, according to the businessman’s account.
Still, he
said, Mr. Mugabe was urged to continue — though how serious these
plans were
could not be independently verified.
Mr. Matonga, the
deputy information minister, said the ruling party had “let
the president
down” in the initial election. “In terms of strategy, we only
applied 25
percent of our energy into this campaign,” he told Agence
France-Presse. The
runoff “is when we are going to unleash the other 75
percent that we did not
apply in the first case.”
If a runoff occurs, the opposition said it also
is ready, according to the
party’s secretary general, Tendai Biti. “We’ll
accept with protest, but it
is only a delay of the inevitable,” he
said.
He predicted that the president would lose the rerun by “an
embarrassing
margin” and suggested that Mr. Mugabe withdraw with
grace.
Mr. Biti also demanded that the election commission finish its
count of the
voting for president, implying that something suspicious was in
the works.
“There is a vacuum, and in a vacuum all sorts of mischief fills
in,” he
said. “Harare is bubbling with conspiracies and
counterconspiracies.”
Mr. Biti said the election commission’s tallies for
Parliament by and large
coincided with his party’s, because each side was
working off numbers that
were posted at every polling station. The
exception, he said, was the
province of Mashonaland Central, where there
were discrepancies.
The delay in publishing the results has brought
international criticism. In
Romania, where President Bush is attending a
meeting of NATO leaders, a
White House spokesman said Wednesday that the
administration supported calls
for Mr. Mugabe to accept the results of the
election, suggesting that he
should step aside, though stopping short of
calling on him to do so.
“It’s clear the people of Zimbabwe have voted for
change,” said the
spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe.
The mood among the
opposition is buoyant. The results showed that it had won
several seats in
rural areas where President Mugabe had previously been
enormously
popular.
Patrick Chitaka won a Senate seat in rural Nyanga-Mutasa in
Manicaland
Province. “We’ll wipe Mugabe out,” he said at the prospect of a
runoff.
“People are tired of being poor, and now that they know the bully
can be
thrashed they’ll come out in greater numbers than before. Even the
oldest
people with canes will come.
“In 2000 and 2002, Mugabe had
taken land from white people and could dangle
that issue,” he added. “But
now we have seen that he has not only destroyed
commercial agriculture, but
subsistence farming. The only people who
profited were bigwigs who
looted.”
But a runoff, if it comes to that, would also create
difficulties for the
opposition. Civic groups and Mr. Tsvangirai’s party
both deployed thousands
of election observers around the country, guarding
against chicanery at the
polls and making sure that the votes were counted
openly and the tallies
were posted in public view. It may be hard to
recreate that effort,
especially in an economically devastated nation where
a huge deployment
requires the use of scarce gasoline, and the cellphone
system is
problematic.
Then, too, the prelude to Saturday’s election
was relatively free of the
violence that characterized so many earlier
campaigns. With his back to the
wall, and with the support of military and
police leaders, Mr. Mugabe may
well unleash his desperation as rage, many
here worry.
“A lot of areas that traditionally voted for Mugabe this time
went for
Tsvangirai, and there will be recriminations against those people,”
said
Useni Sibanda, the national coordinator for the Zimbabwe Christian
Alliance.
If a runoff is set, the alliance plans to send delegations this
week to
South Africa, Zambia and Tanzania to ask the presidents of those
countries
to implore Mr. Mugabe to resign — or at the very least to send
observers to
monitor the election, Mr. Sibanda said.
news.com.au
From correspondents in
Harare
April 04, 2008 05:01am
Article from: Agence
France-Presse
THE politburo of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's
ruling ZANU-PF party
is to meet tomorrow to map out a strategy following
weekend general
elections, senior party sources said.
"The politburo will
meet tomorrow to discuss the election outcome and
explore what went wrong,"
one senior party official said.
"All I can confirm is there is a
politburo meeting. That's enough, that's
all I can say at the moment," said
Didymus Mutasa, ZANU-PF secretary for
administration.
Another source,
who is a member of the party's most senior organ, confirmed:
"Yes we are
meeting, it's a scheduled meeting but it's very important one."
No
results have emerged from last Sunday's presidential election, but the
electoral commission said Mr Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF had lost control of
parliament for the first time in nearly three decades.
The opposition
Movement for Democratic Change said its tallies showed Mr
Mugabe had also
lost the presidential vote and said he should concede
defeat.
The
ruling party is believed to have been debating whether Mr Mugabe should
stand in a possible run-off against opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai.
With Reuters
nasdaq
PRETORIA (AFP)--South African President Thabo Mbeki
urged all sides Thursday
to accept the official results of the Zimbabwean
general election in his
first reaction to the weekend
polls.
"Hopefully everybody will accept these results," Mbeki told
reporters in the
capital Pretoria after talks with Congo President Joseph
Kabila.
"If indeed (Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan) Tsvangirai has
been elected
( in the first round) that's fine and if there is a run-off
that's fine.
That is a matter we must await."
Mbeki was the chief
mediator between Zimbabwe's governing ZANU-PF party of
President Robert
Mugabe and Tsvangirai's opposition Movement for Democratic
Change in the
build-up to the elections.
The South African leader also revealed he held
a brief phone conversation
Tuesday night with Tsvangirai, whose party has
already published figures
giving their man a big enough victory over Mugabe
to negate the need for a
run-off.
"He told me that in the event that
the ZEC (Zimbabwe electoral commission)
comes up with different results
(than the MDC's) they were ready for a
second round or a run-off so we
await," said Mbeki.
While Mbeki has pointed to the holding of elections
as proof of his
mediation's success, the MDC claims it was a failure and
Tsvangirai has
called for the South African to show a "little courage" in
his dealings with
Mugabe.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
04-03-081358ET
Bloomberg
By
Brian Latham and Antony Sguazzin
April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe
President Robert Mugabe's advisers and
family are split over whether he
should quit or compete in a runoff election
to continue his 28-year reign,
two top members of his party said.
Five days after a strong opposition
showing in the March 29 election, Mugabe
is talking with security officials,
family members and personal advisers
about how to respond, said two
politburo officials from the ruling Zimbabwe
African National
Union-Patriotic Front. They declined to be identified.
Military chief
Constantine Chiwenga and Commissioner General of Police
Augustine Chihuri
are urging Mugabe to fight a runoff because they are
concerned that an
opposition-run government may charge security officials
with human rights
abuses and corruption, the politburo members said.
Central Intelligence
Organization Director Happyton Bonyongwe, family
members and personal aides
are urging Mugabe to resign, the party officials
said. Workers at the CIO
declined to put Bloomberg calls through to
Bonyongwe. No one answered the
phone at police headquarters and a person who
answered the phone at army
headquarters wouldn't transfer the call to
Chiwenga.
``There has been
factional fighting within Zanu-PF for a long time and I see
no reason why
that would have stopped,'' Brian Raftopoulos, a political
analyst at the
Cape Town-based Institute for Justice and Reconciliation,
said in an
interview. ``In fact, it has probably intensified now.''
Weaker
President
Official results from the presidential election may show that
neither
Mugabe, 84, nor opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, 56, won a
majority in
the presidential race, said George Charamba, Mugabe's spokesman.
That
outcome would require a runoff within three weeks.
``I am very,
very worried,'' Raftopoulos, a Zimbabwean, said. ``Mugabe could
easily roll
out the repression in a runoff for the presidency.''
The ruling Zanu-PF
is ready to ``unleash its full power'' behind Mugabe in a
presidential
runoff, Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga said today
in a phone
interview from the capital, Harare. ``We are ready for victory,''
he
added.
Zanu-PF's politburo will meet tomorrow to discuss its strategy
following the
elections, Agence France-Presse reported, citing unidentified
senior party
officials.
If Mugabe manages to retain the presidency,
he will be a weaker but by no
means impotent leader. His era of absolute
control of Zimbabwe ended after
opposition politicians won 111 of the 210
seats in parliament's House of
Assembly in the March 29 election, according
to official results released
yesterday.
`Bulldoze the
People'
The ``loss of parliamentary control is probably the most
significant event
since independence in 1980,'' said Alec Kaseke, a former
political science
lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare. Mugabe
``won't be able to
bulldoze the people in one direction or the
other.''
Before losing control of the Assembly, Mugabe had controlled all
levels of
Zimbabwe's government since he helped lead a guerrilla army that
overthrew
white-minority rulers in 1980. Mugabe has used nearly three
decades of
absolute control to push through constitutional amendments to
strengthen the
presidency.
Under the current constitution, Mugabe can
pass laws by decree, although
these must be ratified by the House of
Assembly and the Senate within 90
days. Without parliamentary approval, the
decrees expire after that period.
`Back Foot'
The Senate, created
in 2005 as a separate parliamentary chamber, can block
legislative
proposals, so it would be another check on the Assembly's
ambitions if
Mugabe partisans control it. Official election results from
Senate races
also haven't been released yet.
``There is no question that Mugabe is on
the back foot, the momentum is with
Tsvangirai,'' Marian Tupy, an analyst at
the Washington-based Cato
Institute, said in an interview. ``They may well
declare that there has to
be a runoff.''
Support for the president
withered as his policies spawned a decade-long
recession and the world's
highest inflation rate, 164,900 percent. He seized
white-owned commercial
farms and turned them over to black small-scale
farmers who mainly grew food
for their own families. That policy won him
support from poor Zimbabweans
deprived of land under colonial rule, while
slashing exports and causing
shortages of fuel and food.
Opposition leader Tsvangirai's Movement for
Democratic Change has released
no details of how it plans to tackle the
country's economic crisis, apart
from saying it plans to allow the Zimbabwe
dollar to trade freely against
other currencies. Officially, the Zimbabwe
dollar is pegged against the U.S.
currency. It trades at 55 million to one
U.S. dollar on the black market,
where most people buy their foreign
exchange.
`The Next President'
The MDC yesterday released its own
tally of presidential votes -- based on
results posted outside of individual
polling places -- and said he beat
Mugabe.
Tendai Biti, the MDC's
secretary-general, said Tsvangirai won 50.3 percent
of the votes, enough to
avoid a runoff. In remarks broadcast live from
Harare by the British
Broadcasting Corp., Biti said Mugabe obtained 43.8
percent.
``Morgan
Richard Tsvangirai is the next president of this country, without a
runoff,'' Biti said. ``The opposition has won the elections.'' The MDC would
participate in a runoff only ``under protest,'' he added. ``It is highly
unlikely that people's decisions will be reversed in a
runoff.''
Charamba, the Mugabe spokesman, dismissed the MDC's victory
claim, accusing
the party of ``trying to rig the elections.''
Markets
Reaction
An assessment of the vote by the independent Zimbabwe Electoral
Support
Network indicated that Tsvangirai may not be able to avoid a runoff.
A
sample of 435 polling stations, covering 5 percent of the population,
showed
Tsvangirai with 49 percent of the vote, Mugabe with 41 percent and
former
Finance Minister Simba Makoni, who ran as an independent, with 8
percent,
the group said.
The South African rand has gained 4.7
percent since polling day on
speculation that Mugabe's reign may be over,
bringing stability to the
region. The rand traded at 7.7620 to the dollar as
of 20:58 p.m.
Johannesburg time compared with 8.1432 on March 28, the day
before the
elections.
``A change of leadership in Zimbabwe is
positive for the entire region,''
said Russell Lamberti, an economist at
Econometrix Treasury Management,
which advises clients on bond and
foreign-exchange transactions in
Johannesburg. ``It's a significant
political development right on our
doorstep and it's definitely helping the
rand.''
Shares of mining companies with assets in Zimbabwe also rose.
Zimplats
Holdings Ltd., the company controlled by Impala Platinum Holdings
Ltd. that
runs Zimbabwe's platinum mines, jumped 11 percent to A$15.90 in
Sydney
trading.
Provoking Unrest
In Harare, shares on
Zimbabwe's stock exchange have been volatile. Still,
the benchmark
Industrials Index has risen 32 percent to 14.12 billion
points, while the
mining index has almost doubled to 12.29 billion points
since March
28.
``Everyone is waiting on the final results of the election,''
Emmanuel
Munyukwi, the chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe Stock
Exchange, said
in an interview from Harare. ``Right now everything is
anyone's guess.''
Government officials urged the MDC to await official
results, warning that
its claims of victory may provoke unrest and prompt
the government to take
action.
In parliamentary races, election
officials announced on state television
that the MDC secured 99 of the 210
seats in the House of Assembly. Mugabe's
ZANU-PF won 96. An MDC splinter
group led by Arthur Mutambara won 11 seats.
An independent candidate got
one. Three seats remain to be decided in later
by-elections.
The MDC
split in 2005 after some of its members, led by Mutambara, a
university
professor, decided to contest the first senatorial elections. The
move was
criticized by the larger Tsvangirai-led faction, which boycotted
the
poll.
Repeated talks since 2006 had failed by early this year to re-unite
the
party.
To contact the reporters on this story: Brian Latham via
the Johannesburg
bureau at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net; Antony
Sguazzin in Johannesburg at
asguazzin@bloomberg.net
News24
03/04/2008 19:10 -
(SA)
Harare - Despite the bloody nose given to Zanu-PF in Saturday's
parliamentary elections, the party of long-time Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe appeared ready on Thursday to soldier on in its increasingly
desperate bid to cling to power.
"President Mugabe is going to fight
to the last," Deputy Information
Minister Bright Matonga told the BBC,
denting but not entirely quashing
hopes that 84-year-old Mugabe would
finally call it a day.
Meanwhile, there were the first public signs of
African diplomats' efforts
to mediate between Mugabe and opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai when
Sierra Leone's former president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah
revealed he had met with
both men.
Although the results of the
presidential election have yet to be released,
Matonga predicted Mugabe
would square off against Tsvangirai in a runoff -
as called if neither
candidate takes more than 50% of votes.
'We'll be ready'
"This
time we will be ready," Matonga vowed, as Mugabe made his first public
appearance since the elections, looking, by all accounts,
relaxed.
But according to several sources, the MDC and Zanu-PF are
engaged in furious
behind-the-scenes horse-trading.
The slow release
of the results and the talk of a runoff could be part of a
ploy to buy more
time for the talks, in which neighbouring African countries
are believed to
have a hand.
Mugabe appeared on national TV, not as was feverishly
predicted two days ago
to announce he was finally relinquishing power, but
to bid farewell to a
group of African Union election observers.
Five
days after Zimbabwe's combined presidential, parliamentary and local
elections the country is convulsed by one question: will the "old man" who
has ruled the country for all of its 28- year post-independence history
fight another day or will he finally go?
The initial silence
emanating from State House after the opposition claimed
victory early in the
elections was interpreted as a positive sign. "He's
floored by his bad
showing," members of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic
Change trumpeted,
claiming a 67% victory. "He doesn't know what to do."
The MDC, who claim
Tsvangirai won the presidential vote outright with 50.3%
of the vote, had
begged Mugabe to save himself the "humiliation" of a
runoff, which must be
held within three weeks if neither candidate takes
more than 50% plus one
ballot.
Bloodshed
Analysts fear bloodshed in what would be seen as
a do-or-die contest by both
sides. Matonga vowed Zanu-PF would throw
everything it had at a second
round, raising fears of a return to the police
brutality against opposition
supporters that has marked election campaigns
in the past.
"It will be very violent," Mbembe said.
Among the
possible other outcomes of the talks that have been floated are
the
formation of a transitional unity government.
A meeting of Zanu-PF's
politburo (inner circle) scheduled for Friday is also
expected to give a
clearer indication of whether Mugabe will make his last
stand or as, Tutu
hopes, "step down with dignity, gracefully." - Sapa-dpa
News24
03/04/2008 11:10 -
(SA)
Harare - Former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano is in
Zimbabwe to help
broker talks between embattled President Robert Mugabe's
Zanu-PF party and
Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change on the
outcome of last
weekend's elections, diplomatic sources say.
Chissano
was president of Zimbabwe's neighbour, Mozambique, from 1986 to
2005. Since
stepping down he had regularly been called on by international
bodies to
mediate in conflicts.
A longtime friend of Zimbabwe's leader of 28 years,
Chissano was best man at
Mugabe's wedding to his second wife,
Grace.
He was also a member of a team of elder African statesmen and
women who
mediated in Kenya's bloody post-election conflict earlier this
year. -Sapa-dpa
Monsters and Critics
Apr 3, 2008, 18:24 GMT
New York - Former UN
secretary general Kofi Annan on Thursday urged
Zimbabwe's government not to
tamper with election results and to respect the
country's constitution, amid
growing calls for President Robert Mugabe to
end his 28-year
rule.
Annan, who last month led negotiations to resolve an electoral
crisis in
Kenya on behalf of the African Union, said from Geneva that the
people of
Zimbabwe had exercised their democratic rights, though the results
were
'still dribbling in' five days later.
Mugabe's Zanu-PF party was
defeated in parliamentary elections but results
from Zimbabwe's presidential
poll have yet to be released. Most analysts
predict a victory for opposition
Movement for Democratic Change leader
Morgan Tsvangirai.
'I strongly
urge the government and the Electoral Commission to scrupulously
observe the
electoral law and to declare the election results faithfully and
accurately,' Annan said.
'Any attempt to tamper with these results
would be rejected by the people of
Zimbabwe as well as by the international
community,' he said. 'The wish of
the people must be heeded and everyone
must accept the outcome.'
He warned that the world will be watching
Zimbabwe and its leaders, urging
them to respect the constitution and obey
the electoral laws.
BBC
17:24 GMT, Thursday, 3 April 2008 18:24 UK
By George
Alagiah
BBC News
"Robert Mugabe has now become a
bargaining chip" in this whole
process.
Those words, once
unthinkable, were uttered by a one-time supporter of
the ruling Zanu-PF and
now a member of one of the opposition parties in
Zimbabwe.
He
was referring to the frenetic bargaining and deal-making that is
apparently
taking place in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, as politicians
and the
military top brass adjust to the post election political scene.
For
the first time in 28 years Zanu-PF lost its majority in the lower
house of
parliament.
That is why the man who for so long symbolised the
liberation struggle
and ruled supreme is now being thought of as expendable
by some within the
party.
'Virtually
invisible'
The Thursday edition of the state-owned Herald
newspaper is a case in
point.
There is barely a mention of the
president in it.
There was a time when it when editors could not
put the paper to bed
without a eulogy to Robert Mugabe.
The man
himself has been virtually invisible since last Saturday's
polls.
Not surprising that his brief appearance on Zimbabwean
television on
Thursday has itself become news.
The future of
Zanu-PF and the future of Robert Mugabe, for so long one
and the same, are
now two separate issues.
There are those within the party who would
apparently ditch the
president if it meant survival of the party as a
political force.
For sure they will want as graceful and elegant an
exit for the "old
man" as he is referred to as a mark of respect but it is
my understanding
that in a choice between president and party it is the
party that will win.
That is what one faction within the party want
- we can call them the
reformers though in the Zanu-PF context that is a
relative term, many are
old, established faces within the
party.
They are not necessarily driven by a desire to rekindle
the party of
old but to protect the organisation that has given them so much
- a
lifestyle of some comfort and a social status to match.
In
this scenario, someone like Simba Makoni - who stood as an
independent
candidate for the presidency but was once Mr Mugabe's finance
minister -
would be persuaded to re-join the fold and given a plum job.
His
return to the party would lend credibility to claims that the
party has
indeed changed its spots.
Their problem is that the country looks
as if it might be heading for
a second round run-off between the top two
presidential candidates in the
first round - Robert Mugabe and Morgan
Tsvangirai of the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change.
Though no official results have been published, it seems the country
is
being prepared for such a contest - the Herald has touted it and
Zanu-PF's
spokesman Bright Matonga has said the party is ready to unleash
its full
might in a run-off.
Legally, only Robert Mugabe can contest the
run-off.
Rough ride
How do you simultaneously support
him in a run-off and also prepare
the ground to ditch him?
Others in the party have no such conundrum - let's call them the
hawks.
They think the party could win a run-off with Mr Mugabe
in charge.
If they get the better of the internal tussle expect to
see Zanu-PF
deploy all its tools - everything from media dominance to
thuggery - in an
all-out effort to put the presidency beyond the reach of Mr
Tsvangirai.
If there is a second round Zimbabweans may be heading
for a rough ride
indeed.
We are, of course, some way off a
second round.
First, the Election Commission has to publish the
presidential
results - something it has signally failed to do - and the
opposition has to
accept them.
On Thursday a spokesman for the
MDC said it would not accept a second
round without careful scrutiny of the
results.
Monsters and Critics
Apr 3, 2008, 14:49 GMT
Harare - Zimbabwe's tense
wait for the outcome of last weekend's crunch
presidential election may not
be over Friday as initially thought, it
emerged Thursday.
Speaking
after talks with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission the chairman of
a
Pan-African Parliament (PAP) team of election observers said: 'Hopefully
by
tomorrow they will (ZEC) be in a position to know (the presidential
result)
if by Saturday everything will be done or it has to last a few more
days.'
Marwick Khumalo was speaking to SABC Africa, an arm of South
Africa's
national broadcaster, five days after Zimbabwe's synchronized
presidential,
parliamentary and local elections.
ZEC had said it
would release the election results within six days of
voting.
Further
delays were likely to fuel reports of frenzied behind-the- scenes
diplomatic
activity aimed at achieving a peaceful resolution to the
electoral
standoff.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has already
declared
party leader Morgan Tsvangirai victorious over longtime,
authoritarian
President Robert Mugabe - a claim the ruling party
rejects.
SABC
April 03,
2008, 15:00
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has made his first public
appearance
since Saturday's election. Mugabe has met with the African Union
(AU)
Observer Mission head, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
President Mugabe's
appearance diffuses speculation and rumours that he had
left the country.
His party lost its majority in parliamentary election for
the first time in
28 years. However there is still no word on the
presidential
results.
Mugabe faced his toughest challenge yet to his 28 year rule -
being
challenged by Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan
Tsvangarai
and former Finance minister and politburo member Simba Makoni.
The
Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) was expected to start releasing
the
senatorial results today but it is yet to happen.
Meanwhile
Makoni say they will throw their weight behind Tsvangirai in a
presidential
run-off vote, which they consider to be definite. Tsvangirai
would be up
against Mugabe in a run-off. Makoni's chief strategist, Ibbo
Mandaza, says
the opposition needs to be united.
New Zimbabwe
By Vusa Tshabangu
Last updated: 04/04/2008 03:31:50
ZIMBABWEAN
President Robert Mugabe has been warned by his former propaganda
chief he
faces humiliation if he enters a run-off with opposition leader
Morgan
Tsvangirai.
With last weekend's presidential election unlikely to produce
an outright
winner - or 50 percent plus of the total vote - Zanu PF
officials indicated
Thursday that they were preparing for a second round of
voting which must be
held within 21 days under Zimbabwean law.
But
Moyo - credited with masterminding Zanu PF's 2000 parliamentary election
victory just a few months after the government had suffered a humiliating
rejection of its draft constitution - believes Mugabe should not “subject
himself to such indignity”.
“Why should the President, given all he
has done for this country, subject
himself to such indignity? This is a
run-off he cannot win, but it is also a
run-off he cannot postpone," Moyo
told reporters at a press club in Harare.
"The right thing for the
President in this situation is to withdraw. If he
withdraws, he would have
set a remarkable precedence. He must realise that
having lost the first
round, he cannot win the second. Mugabe and members of
his party, Zanu PF,
should be gracious in defeat.”
Moyo, re-elected as MP for Tsholotsho over
the weekend, said Zanu PF was now
disintegrating and could soon be
history.
“Zanu PF is now history. The total disintegration of the party
has started,
this time it’s the real disintegration. Only if they are
gracious in this
defeat will the people give them another chance. I wish
there were
responsible people who could encourage Mugabe to withdraw from
the run-off
and maintain his dignity,” said Moyo.
Over the past few
days, there has been speculation that the Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission
(ZEC)’s delay in announcing results of Saturday’s poll
was part of a plot to
rig the election in favour of Mugabe. ZEC officials
have denied the charge,
saying the delay was caused by the “meticulous
verification of
results”.
Moyo believes the delay is to allow the authorities to manage
the defeat of
Zanu PF, which they had not been prepared for.
‘The
authorities are magaing defeat and they are not used to managing
defeat. The
Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet does not even know
what to do
because he has never been in such a situation before,” he said.
“In fact,
this election is very difficult to rig. I would actually be
tempted to say
it is not riggable. Part of the reason for the delay is
because there is
anxiety in the security services, especially those service
chiefs who
unwisely, or rather foolishly, told the whole world that they
would not
salute any other winner than Mugabe.
Financial Times
Published: April
3 2008 19:06 | Last updated: April 3 2008 19:06
It may not be quite over.
But an end to Robert Mugabe’s ruinous rule seems
tantalisingly within reach.
The opposition’s election victory in parliament
is a milestone in the
struggle to prise Zimbabwe’s deluded autocrat from
power. It has ended
Zanu-PF’s 28-year run as the ruling party, sowing doubts
among officials and
security chiefs about the wisdom of continuing to
support Mr
Mugabe.
He could yet inflict a brutal confrontation on his country. But
many of his
acolytes are putting out feelers to Morgan Tsvangirai, the
opposition
candidate, who – according to as yet unofficial tallies – is
leading in the
presidential polls. Regional powers including South Africa
also appear more
willing than before to insist the end is nigh.
It is
vital therefore that the architecture to rebuild Zimbabwe is ready and
that
those within the regime still wavering are encouraged to abandon ship.
This
is no time for triumphalism. The opposition’s victory was convincing
because
the rules were stacked heavily against it, but it was also narrow.
If Mr
Tsvangirai is indeed to become head of state, he will need broad
support. He
must offer guarantees there will be no witch hunt and, as Mr
Mugabe once
did, provide assurance that there will be a place for all in the
new
Zimbabwe.
The country is on its knees. Its economy has collapsed. Its
people are dying
and its businesses are hollowed out. Overcoming this legacy
will be every
bit as tough as winkling Mr Mugabe out of power.
In the
longer term, the devastation wreaked by mishandled land reforms must
be
addressed in a way that both benefits the poor and revives commercial
farming. This will be delicate. The rule of law must be re-established fast
and legislation prepared to facilitate the return of investors.
The
immediate priority for any new government, if it is to establish
authority
over a country close to meltdown, will be to stabilise the
economy. If the
International Monetary Fund is ready with expertise and
largesse,
stabilisation could be achieved rapidly. To combat hyperinflation
the
government must stop printing money to finance the deficit and pay the
civil
service. In return the IMF and other donors must provide enough
foreign
exchange to maintain the state. There will be a small window to do
this and
keep up the hopes of Zimbabweans – and no time for dithering over
conditions.
Zimbabwe still has huge potential: a broad resource base,
a skilled diaspora
and a well of international sympathy to tap. With its
future restored, it
will repay its debts.
WASHINGTON, 3 April 2008 (IRIN) - It
is going to take more than a regime
change back home to get the several
million-strong Zimbabwean diaspora to
return, according to
analysts.
"It's both the economy and politics," said Mlamuli Nkomo, an
expert in
Forced Migration at the University of Witwatersrand, South
Africa.
"There has to be change of government first, and the economy must
be seen to
be on the recovery path thereafter. Once these two are achieved,
I think we
will witness dozens of Zimbabweans flocking back to their
motherland to
restart their lives, and participate fully in their country's
rebuilding
processes," Nkomo told IRIN.
It is estimated more than two
million Zimbabweans are living in South
Africa, with another two million in
the United Kingdom. As many as 45,000
Zimbabweans live in the United States
of America, according to the US-based
think-tank, the Association of
Zimbabweans Based Abroad (AZBA).
Despite the hardships many face in their
adopted homes, even being targeted
by xenophohic attacks in South Africa,
many would prefer to wait for an
economic recovery in Zimbabwe. The almost
dysfunctional economy has left
Zimbabweans struggling with an inflation rate
of more than 100,000 percent
and widespread food shortages.
"I need
to know if I can get a job that can give me a decent living wage
before I go
home," said Sibonginkosi Ndlovu,( not her real name) who works
in a fast
food outlet in South Africa. "I do not like South Africa, the
crime is high,
I do not feel safe and I'm always called a kwere-kwere
(illegal immigrant).
Zimbabwe is peaceful, people are friendly but the
economy has to get going
smoothly if I am to go back."
Professionals like Silas Dziike, a lawyer
based in Johannesburg, would
prefer to return if they are assured of a
decent income. "Professionals will
relocate and settle if there is an
enabling environment," he said. "For
example, doctors will go and work in
Zimbabwe if they can get a decent wage
and medicine is available in
hospitals".
According to Nkomo, some Zimbabwean businessmen, who have the
capital may
want to return and invest in their country, but would continue
to run their
operations overseas. Those in well-paying jobs will also not
return, at
least not in the first 15 years of transformation, he
said.
Skills needed
Dumaphi Mema of the think-tank, AZBA, said
that Zimbabwe should retain its
skilled workforce some day and rebuild. "The
country has been robbed of
brilliant minds in business, the health sector
and many other crucial
sectors of the economy.
"And should change
happen, it is imperative that the skilled labor returns
and take charge of
the economy...It may take an effort to convince some
people though," he
said. "But I know there are people who are saving money
in the diaspora who
are dreaming of returning home to open up businesses
when change
comes."
A study in 2004 by the International Organisation of Migration
found that
the majority (82 percent) of Zimbabweans had arrived in the UK or
South
Africa with a qualification, of which 38 percent held a bachelor's
degree or
higher, 19 percent had a diploma in higher education and three
percent had a
professional qualification.
However, many in the UK and
South Africa have had to take employment not
commensurate with their skills
or experience, and "an area of great concern
is the effect on the skills
base of this very highly skilled diaspora
population of not being able to
use their skills and qualifications" in
their new country of
residence.
This meant that "in future years, some Zimbabweans returning
from the
diaspora will return with a lower skills base than when they
left."
"Given that many Zimbabweans in the diaspora are key workers in
the
education and healthcare professions, their emigration, and the evidence
of
deskilling, creates clear and obvious concerns for the longer-term future
of
Zimbabwe", the IOM study said.
But the drawing power of the
foreign currency is going to govern decisions
to return home. "I believe the
mere fact that the British Pound is stronger
than the Zimbabwean Dollar
means some people would rather stay and work
abroad even if things changed,"
said Nomalanga Moyo, a Zimbabwean journalist
based in the UK. Moyo, who
worked for Zimbabwe newspapers as a sub-editor
before the papers' closure by
government in 2003, and now works for a
British tabloid.
"We have
people here in the UK doing menial jobs that are faring well; they
are
fending for their hunger-stricken families back home while others have
bought state-of-the-art properties with remittances," she
said.
[ENDS]
[This report does not necessarily reflect the
views of the United Nations]
Mail and Guardian
Imke van Hoorn | Johannesburg, South
Africa
03 April 2008 06:08
"As soon as
Mugabe is gone, I will go home. After five years I
will go back to my
brother and three sisters," John (24), told the Mail &
Guardian Online
on Thursday.
John, who preferred not to mention his surname,
is one of the
estimated three to five million refugees who have fled to
South Africa in
recent years, where they are anxiously waiting the results
of their home
country's presidential poll.
Though voting
took place last Saturday already, by Thursday
afternoon the Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission had not yet announced the
official
results.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
has already
tasted victory in the parliamentary poll and insists its leader,
Morgan
Tsvangirai, also won the presidential election.
Most of the Zimbabwean refugees said they would leave South
Africa as soon
as Mugabe stepped down. On Wednesday night, some of them held
a perhaps
premature celebration inside the Central Methodist church in
downtown
Johannesburg, a known haven for refugees.
At midday on
Thursday, a group of refugees and South African
activists gathered at the
corner of Plein and Klein streets to inform the
public about the latest
election results. A radio blared the song Asambeni
Ekhaya (Let's Go
Home).
Leo (27), from Harare, has been staying in the church
since
November last year.
"As soon as the election
results are published I will be gone,"
he said. "I will buy enough stuff for
my family and go home. My mother and
younger brother are still in Zimbabwe.
My mother is crying a lot on the
phone. I call my mother every day now,
asking for the election results."
Leo is convinced that
Tsvangirai will win. "Mugabe will be gone.
Tsvangirai must be in power.
Because of the split in Zanu-PF, things are
different now. This is the
chance for the MDC."
Would he also return if Mugabe stayed in
power and the MDC had
the majority in Parliament? "No, if Mugabe is still
there, I am not going."
He added: "I miss the food of my
mother, and I miss my bed. I
sleep on the ground here. If I come home, I
will have a party with my
family. Being together with them, not talking on
the phone … Here I am not
free. I am afraid of the cops asking for your
papers."
'He has to go'
John (24), also from
Harare, has been living in the church for
five years. Nowadays, he spends
his time listening to the radio on his
cellphone for the latest Zimbabwean
news.
"As soon as Mugabe is gone, I will go home. You have to
go back,
starting something, helping your country. Things will not change
automatically. But if Tsvangirai will be in power, there will be change ...
this time Mugabe definitely will go. He has to go; nobody wants him any
more," he said.
"If I go back to Zimbabwe, I go back to
my brother and my three
sisters. I am here for five years, but I've got my
home there. In South
Africa, life is tough. You don't belong here. People
don't like you and
don't understand the situation behind
[you].
"If the MDC only has the majority in Parliament and
Mugabe stays
in power, I will not go home. Nobody goes back if Mugabe stays
in power."
Patrick (30), from Chitumgwiza, arrived in South
Africa only two
weeks ago. He is very sceptical and doesn't believe Mugabe
will give up
power. "Tsvangirai is not going to win. Mugabe will never let
that happen.
No matter how many seats the MDC will have in Parliament,
Mugabe will have
the last say. Who is going to sign the Bills, the laws?
Robert.
"Mugabe will not give up power. He is too afraid for
the people
he killed in Matabeleland … and so many other people died. The
only chance
that there will be change in Zimbabwe is if Mugabe is dead. The
only time I
will go back to Zimbabwe is if Mugabe is dead. If he is still
alive, there
is no change.
"I have hoped for change, I
stayed a long time in Zimbabwe, but
I realised Mugabe's regime is too
strong, there is no change. That's why I
came here. I voted for Tsvangirai,
but I don't believe he will be the next
president."
Life
in South Africa
Fredrick (24), his wife, Tracey (20), and their
child, Malcolm
(4), also hail from Harare. Fredrick left Zimbabwe in July
last year and
Tracey came to South Africa six months
later.
"I will not go back to Zimbabwe," Fredrick said. "I
don't think
we will go back if Tsvangirai wins the elections. There is no
future there
now. I think it will take four to five years to change. I think
I am going
to stay here and fight for a better life in South Africa, a
better life for
my son."
Producing a printout from his
pocket that read "MDC claims
victory", he added: "I always go to the
internet shop for the latest news.
And I read the papers.
"In Zimbabwe I used to live with my parents. They live in the
rural areas
with no phone, so I didn't speak to them since I left Zimbabwe.
I only
called my brother. Home for me is my family. That's where I grew up;
that's
where I belong. If I dream about home, I dream about my family, being
together.
"I support Tsvangirai. With him, white farmers
will come back,
we need them for investment. The current government … they
don't know how to
run a country. We need investment."
And
what would he remember from South Africa? "The police. They
check for your
papers on the street, they came in here [the Central
Methodist church],
wanted people to go out."
At the end of January this year,
the South African Police
Service raided the church apparently in search of
guns, drugs and illegal
immigrants. In the raid, police allegedly assaulted
a number of immigrants.
Fredrick would also remember his
"sleeping place", a corner near
a venue that served food for the homeless.
"I sleep here with my phone in my
pocket, money in my shoes. And I will
remember it because my child is going
to the church crèche now and he starts
to speak Zulu now."
MDC activist Artwell (19), from Masvingo,
said he was trying to
persuading people to return to their
country.
"Yesterday [Wednesday] we celebrated the results. I
really think
there will be change now. We suffered a lot, but now it's time
to go home.
We must help our country, because things will be different;
there will be
change.
"I want to go home next week,
together with my brother. I want
to make sure Mugabe will be gone. People
should go home now. Home is the
best. I am going to meet my friends and my
brother at home."
VOA
By Joe De Capua
Washington
03 April
2008
With the current political situation in Zimbabwe, more
people are
speculating as to what would happen if President Robert Mugabe
finally left
office.
One question being raised is: Would any of the
white farmers who lost their
farms to land reform be willing to return to
Zimbabwe or at least help in
rebuilding the agriculture sector? Zimbabwe was
once considered a
breadbasket for Southern Africa.
Annabel Hughes is
the former executive director of the Zimbabwe Democracy
Trust, which for
seven years lobbied in Washington for democratic change in
Zimbabwe. She is
also the daughter of a former white farmer in Zimbabwe. She
spoke to VOA
English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua about what the
white farmers
might do.
“It’s amazing what’s happened just in the last few days how the
energy
between the Zimbabwean Diaspora has just fired up because of the
excitement
of the possibility of the Mugabe era being over. But it’s a very
complex
situation because as much as they would want to go home, because
they regard
themselves as Zimbabweans and that is their home, those farms
have been
invaded. They’ve been taken over by other people. Although
certainly most of
these farmers have access to their title deeds, there’s
going to be a
question of land tenure now. Who owns what? So, it’s not as
simple as just
people going back and taking up their lives as they would
have done before
because they’ve been given some cash,” she
says.
Many of the white farmers started over again in other African
countries,
such as Mozambique, Nigeria and Zambia. “I have a brother who
started again
in Zambia…although it hasn’t been easy. They’ve had to carve
farms out of
virgin bush, out of nothing. They had to rely on loans from
various
governments, from the Zambian government, because they have had
everything
literally stolen in Zimbabwe…. Multi-million dollar farms were
stolen in
Zimbabwe. All their farm workers were displaced…. So, yes in
certain
countries, certainly in Zambia and Nigeria, there’s been a great
success for
the agricultural exporting of these farmers into other
countries. For the
first time ever, Zambia started exporting food,” she
says.
Asked what it would take to rebuild Zimbabwe’s agriculture sector,
Hughes
says, “There is certainly the opportunity for Zimbabwe to return to
being a
bread basket for sub-Saharan Africa. It’s just that the next step
that will
have to happen, I believe, is there would have to be some sort of
commission
to work out the situation with land tenure.” She also says there
has been a
“deep, deep level of corruption,” not only among government
officials but
even among some white farmers who’ve tried to keep their land.
“It’s one
complete mess. And it’s all being run by the elite. On the whole,
those big
commercial farms that were run by white Zimbabweans and owned by
white
Zimbabweans are now in the hands of Mugabe’s cronies,” she says.
HARARE, 3 April 2008 (IRIN) - After a
quick glance at the morning news
headlines on 3 April, which proclaimed a
win for the Zimbabwean opposition,
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), an
elated Tavonga Mahara almost sang
out: “This is sweeter than a miracle!
ZANU-PF can be beaten after all!”
A resident of the Mbare suburb in the
capital, Harare, Mahara added,
“Surely, a new and brighter sun is on the
horizon; our votes did not go to
waste.”
Mahara’s excited shouts, as
he broke into a little jig attracted the
attention of other residents of the
suburb, who crowded around him cheering
wildly. MDC’s edge over the ruling
ZANU-PF in the parliamentary elections –
the only results that have filtered
out so far - has a special significance
for Mbare residents. Almost eight
years ago, President Robert Mugabe had
referred to the suburb’s residents as
“totemless people” for their support
for the MDC.
Mahara is
unemployed. Unable to cope with the country’s deepening economic
crisis, the
printing company he worked for shut down seven years ago. He now
hopes the
company might re-open.
Unemployment is estimated at more than 70 percent,
around 80 percent of the
population lives on less that a dollar a day,
industry has shrunk by about
two thirds, foreign currency reserves have
dwindled, inflation is estimated
at around 100,000 percent and basic
commodities are in short supply.
“I have been surviving from hand to
mouth because of the bad politics of the
government and I even failed to
send my children to school beyond the
seventh grade,” said Mahara, who has
survived economically as a vegetable
vendor. “My wife died two years ago
because I did not have the money to send
her to hospital and my old mother
in our rural home has no food; all that
will change.”
Hopes of
delivery
Sara Chitiga is among the several thousand who were left
homeless by the
ZANU-PF government's Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, aimed
at clearing
slums and flushing out criminals. The clean-up operation carried
out in the
middle of winter, left more than 700,000 people homeless or
without a
livelihood.
Some of the affected went back to their rural
homes while many were forced
into government-sanctioned resettlement camps
on the outskirts of urban
centres, with no source of employment. Chitiga, an
illicit liquor dealer,
lives in one such camp, Hopley Farm, 12 km southwest
of Harare, and is now
hopeful with a possible regime change that she might
move into a proper
house.
“My hope is that I will stop playing hide
and seek with the police as I sell
kachasu (home brewed alcohol) and
marijuana,” she said.
Skeptical
A new government would come not
without its own sceptics.
In 2000 the government dispossessed more than
4,000 white commercial farmers
of their land in a controversial land reform
exercise and reallocated it,
often after cutting it up into smaller plots,
to thousands of land-hungry
blacks.
Philmon Zinyere, a 53-year-old
veteran of Zimbabwe’s war of liberation who
was given a farm as a reward for
his efforts in the exercise is convinced
that an opposition-led government
would evict him and others who benefited
and is determined to oppose any
such move.
“[MDC leader Morgan] Tsvangirai is a puppet of the west,” he
told IRIN. “The
country will turn into chaos because he will return land to
our colonisers.
But we will not idly stand by as he does that; we will fight
back because
the land is our heritage.”
Tsvangirai has maintained
that he would not reverse the land reform
programme but would fine tune it
to improve agricultural production.
[ENDS]
[This report
does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
Christianity Today
An ally of Zimbabwe's corrupt president
fails in bid to launch a replacement
Anglican province.
George Conger |
posted 4/03/2008 09:15AM
Even before Zimbabwean president Robert
Mugabe's troubles in the country's
March 29 elections, an effort to create
an independent Anglican church loyal
to him had collapsed.
Support
for Mugabe ally Bishop Nolbert Kunonga of Harare and his breakaway
Anglican
Church of Zimbabwe has all but disappeared, with the bishop's
waning control
maintained by government security services.
Since his election as
Harare's bishop, Kunonga has been a source of
controversy within Zimbabwe
and the 77-million-member Anglican Communion.
Educated at Cambridge
University and Northwestern University, where he
earned a Ph.D., Kunonga
served on the faculty of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's
Unification Seminary in
Tarrytown, New York, before returning to Zimbabwe to
seek election as bishop
in 2001.
In a racially charged election that critics say was influenced
by the
country's secret police, Kunonga defeated the white archdeacon of
Harare in
the race for bishop. He proceeded to align the leading diocese of
Zimbabwe's
second-largest denomination with the government. About 3 percent
of the
country's 13 million people are Anglican.
Kunonga drove off
the diocese's white Zimbabwean clergy and purged its ranks
of those deemed
disloyal to the regime, causing half of the African clergy
to flee abroad.
To fill empty pulpits, he began ordaining clergy without
theological
training—including some members of the secret police, Zimbabwe's
vice
president Joseph Msika, and two government cabinet ministers.
The U.S.
State Department and the European Union have banned Kunonga from
entering
the U.S. or Europe due to his complicity in crimes of the regime.
In
August 2005 the bishop was also brought before an ecclesiastical court to
face a 38-count indictment of misconduct, ranging from incitement to
murdering fellow clergy to fraud, heresy, preaching racial hatred, and
theft.However, the trial collapsed after witnesses refused to return to
Zimbabwe out of fear for their lives.
In January, Kunonga announced
the formation of the Anglican Church in
Zimbabwe, independent of Canterbury
and the Central African Province, which
he claimed had been corrupted by
homosexuals. The province responded by
declaring Kunonga's seat vacant and
appointing a retired Zimbabwean bishop,
Sebastian Bakare, as his interim
replacement.
In an interview with Voice of America on February 25, Bakare
said all of
Zimbabwe's Anglican congregations had abandoned Kunonga, as had
most of the
clergy. There was "no doubt" the schism was "politically
motivated," he
said, as "Kunonga wanted to deliver the Anglican diocese to
ZANU-PF
[Mugabe's political party]."
Kunonga and Bakare are currently
at a standoff over Harare's cathedral.
Despite a court order to share the
building pending the outcome of
litigation, Kunonga has barricaded himself
inside and deployed state
security officers to keep opponents
away.
Observers say that Bakare's successful challenge of Kunonga
presaged a
weakening of Mugabe's power. The 84-year-old president's absolute
rule over
the country, which has lasted 28 years, has in recent years
brought social,
civic, and economic unrest, including an annual inflation
rate of more than
100,000 percent.
For the first time since
independence from Britian in 1980, Mugabe faced a
serious challenge in the
country's elections from within his own, and he
fared poorly despite
widespread efforts to rig the vote.
Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission said
Wednesday that the Movement for
Democratic Change, the main opposition
party, won a majority of seats in the
parliamentary elections. Official
results from the presidential election
have not yet been released, and MDC
and ZANU-PF officials have issued
conflicting statements over whether MDC
candidate Morgan Tsvangirai had won
enough votes to win the presidency
without a runoff election.
FinGaz
Shame Makoshori Staff
Reporter
YEAR-on-year inflation surged close to 165 000 percent in
February, official
data showed last week, underlining the weight of the task
ahead for any new
government.
Central Statistical Office figures seen
by The Financial Gazette indicated
that year on year inflation increased by
64 320 percentage points to 164
900, 3 percent in February, from 100 580.2
percent in December.
Non-alcoholic beverages, bread and cereals were the
major drivers of
inflation in February.
Month-on-month inflation in
February surged by five percentage points to
125,9 percent from 120,8
percent in January, and 240.1 percent in December.
The new data reveals the
depth of the economic crisis, which attracted more
attention during
campaigns for last week’s elections.
Official data on inflation is largely
based on the prices of goods and
services under price controls.
Even
though the controlled prices themselves have surged over the past
month,
many believe official numbers remain largely understated.
Inflation, which
has eroded the buying power of the country’s troubled
currency, has been the
focal point of government’s fight to restore the
faltering fortunes of the
economy.
A raft of measures by the central bank and the Ministry of Finance
to stem
the economic haemorrhage have met with impediments as the economic
crisis
continues, with prices of basic food commodities escalating
daily.
In December, official figures showed year on year inflation closed the
year
at 66 212.
However, rising interest rates as well as the
disappearance of basic
commodities from the formal market into the expensive
informal market and
the escalating fuel crisis have continued to push
inflation upwards.
Last week, key accommodation rates surged from 1 200
percent for secured
borrowing to 4 000 percent, and from 1 650 percent to 4
500 percent for
unsecured borrowing.
Economic analysts said the decision
by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) to
significantly increase withdrawal
limits starting this week was driven by
the need to catch up with runaway
inflation, which has eroded the value of
the beleaguered domestic
currency.
The RBZ said it will increase withdrawal limits for individuals 10
fold to
$5 billion from $500 million.
The Zimbabwe dollar has been
falling sharply on the parallel foreign
currency market where it was
fetching $40 million to the greenback last
week, from $6 million in January,
indicating the swift pace of inflation.
FinGaz
Staff
Reporter
THE Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) has declined to
endorse
government plans to expropriate foreign companies’ shareholdings to
empower
locals, saying it would not be swayed into taking part in political
projects.
Responding to questions on CZI’s stance to the empowerment
programmes likely
to move a gear up after the elections, CZI president
Callisto Jokonya, told
The Financial Gazette:
“As regards to what
politicians want to do the CZI is totally out of that.”
“We have plenty of
British companies as our members,” Jokonya said.
“We also have companies from
all over the world as our members (but) we are
organised business. We do not
worry about the shareholding of companies, or
who owns what in which
company. Anybody can say what he or she wants but
this is not part of the
CZI mandate. Remember whatever is done in companies,
they are guided by the
companies Act,” Jokonya said.
The CZI chief said despite the deteriorating
economic crisis that has
engulfed the country for nine years, and the
hostile policies the government
has imposed on investors, foreign investment
would continue trickling into
Zimbabwe.
“Investors are risk takers,” he
said.
“Where there is good money it is always a tough environment, that is
why I
have been an investor in this country.”
Jokonya runs Imperial
Refrigeration, one of the country’s biggest
refrigeration companies.
In
the run up to last week’s polls President Robert Mugabe reiterated his
threats that foreign companies that did not comply with government imposed
prices would be targeted for takeovers after the polls.
But
industrialists hoped a new government would reverse the programme to
shore
up the level of foreign direct investments.
President Mugabe said foreign
companies were hiking prices to influence
voting patterns and instigate the
toppling of his government, singling out
British owned companies for “the
regime change agenda”.
He said he would use the Indigenisation and
Empowerment Act, which empowers
the government to cede at least 51 percent
shareholding in foreign owned
firms, to achieve his controversial
goals.
There are 400 British companies still operating in Zimbabwe.
But in
a recent interview with The Financial Gazette, a top British diplomat
said
the number of British companies in Zimbabwe had declined to 40 in two
years.
An estimated 360 had joined the capital flight to more stable
economies in
order to escape the mounting macroeconomic turmoil in the
country.
Foreign-owned companies, including banks, have protested against the
controversial empowerment policies amid reports that potential foreign
investors have withheld their capital.
Expansion programmes have been put
on hold, triggering potentially higher
levels of unemployment.
“The
unemployment situation could worsen, we estimate that another one
million
people will flee Zimbabwe in the next 12 months,” the diplomat said.
“Our
fear is that they will destabilise the region because most of them will
flee
to Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and other countries.
These
countries have their own problems and they will not be able to cope
with the
influx of many more Zimbabweans,” the diplomat said.
FinGaz
Kumbirai Mafunda Senior Business Reporter
ZIMBABWE’S tobacco
auction floors will open their doors to merchants next
month amid concerns
over the availability of crucial packaging materials.
Industry players
disclosed this week that the annual tobacco auctions, a key
generator of the
country’s export receipts, would start on the April 22 and
stretch through
to October.
Officials at the country’s three auction floors, the Zimbabwe
Tobacco
Auction Centre, the Tobacco Sales Floor and Barley Marketing
Zimbabwe told
The Financial Gazette that foreign currency shortages hampered
efforts to
import wrapping paper and this could once again affect the
commencement of
the marketing season.
Officials at Hunyani Paper and
Packaging, manufacturers of the packaging
paper, confirmed the shortages of
the wrapping paper, which they attributed
to foreign currency
shortages.
The officials said they would need to import 300 tonnes of the
special
tobacco paper to meet requirements for the marketing season.
“We
are making arrangements to import the paper,” said an official who asked
not
to be named.
It is feared that if Hunyani fails to secure foreign currency to
import the
paper, they could fail to beat the opening deadline for the
auction floors
as deliveries could be delayed.
Last year, shortages of
the wrapping paper and hessian, material used to
manufacture packaging and
concerns over pricing delayed the commencement of
the selling season, which
was initially scheduled to start in March but was
later postponed to April
24.
Growers’ representative bodies fear that this year’s tobacco crop could
plummet to between 65 million kgs and 70 million kgs after last year’s
rebound to 73 million kgs, which earned an estimated US$170
million.
Economic analysts also fear that the drop in tobacco production,
once the
mainstay of the economy, could compound the country’s foreign
currency
crisis, which already is precarious.
Production of tobacco has
been on a freefall since 2000 when government
engaged in a controversial
land redistribution programme that displaced
white landowners with
unproductive black farmers, mainly government and
ruling party bigwigs and
their cronies.
Since then, tobacco output has plunged from an annual peak of
232 million
kgs to a disappointing 73 million kgs last year.
Foreign
currency receipts also plummeted to US$170 million, from $400
million before
the agrarian reforms. Until the confiscating of commercial
farms in 2000,
tobacco underwrote the economy, supplying up to 40 percent of
the country’s
total foreign currency earnings.
FinGaz
Staff Reporter
AIR Zimbabwe has suspended
flights to the resort town of Kariba owing
to a decline in passenger
volumes.
Air Zimbabwe spokesperson Pride Khumbula confirmed that
the national
airline was no longer flying to the resort town.
She
said: “We no longer fly into Kariba. They (flights) have been
suspended
because the loads were low. It wasn’t viable.
“But we still believe
that there is an opportunity there. It (Kariba)
is a destination with
potential.”
Prior to the cancellation of the flights to Kariba, Air
Zimbabwe used
to operate three flights into the resort town weekly.
Air Zimbabwe re-introduced flights to Kariba two years ago to assist
domestic, regional and international tourists to easily access the
town.
The national airline’s flights to Kariba have been erratic over
the
past years because of the depressed passenger movements on the
route.
The suspension of the flights to Kariba is testimony that
tourist
traffic into the resort town has been dwindling.
International tourist traffic has plunged in the last eight years
since
western and European governments urged their citizens to shun visiting
Zimbabwe following controversial presidential and parliamentary polls in
2000 and 2002, which were allegedly rigged in favour of President Robert
Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF party.
Since then foreign currency
receipts from the tourism industry, which
used to be a major foreign
currency earner, have slumped from US$777 million
in 1997 to less than
US$100 million.
Although the government has adopted a “Look East”
policy more than
three years ago to forge closer ties with China and other
Asian countries in
the hope of attracting a flood of oriental visitors, the
initiative has not
yet yielded much.
FinGaz
Shame
Makoshori Staff Reporter
HCCL set to increase exports to generate
foreign currency
LOCAL companies have expressed fears that poor coal
supplies, which
have persisted for over five years now, might drive them to
the brink of
closure.
Like other mining operations, coal miners
are facing foreign currency
shortages, fuel supply bottlenecks, intermittent
power cuts and high input
costs, which have affected output.
Last
week, Hwange Colliery Company Limited (HCCL), the country’s major
coal
mining concern, said it would increase exports in order to generate
more
foreign currency needed to import essential spares.
Industry players
are worried that the colliery company might limit
supplies to the domestic
market in search of the elusive foreign currency,
leaving farmers,
manufacturers and other companies in the lurch.
Marah Hativagone,
president of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of
Commerce, this week urged
Hwange Colliery to change its strategy and give
the local market enough coal
supplies before pushing excess product on the
lucrative export
markets.
“They (Hwange) have been failing to meet local demand because
of
equipment problems,” Hativagone said.
“While we understand they
need foreign currency, they should make an
effort to supply local industries
first,” she added.
Industrialists have battled to remain afloat over
the past nine years
due to serious coal shortages, forcing the majority of
them to scale down
operations.
Production capacity in most
companies has declined to about 20 percent
due to the erratic deliveries of
coal, a critical input in most industries
whose reserves in Matabeleland
North alone are estimated to last 500 years.
Many companies have
resorted to costly imports from South Africa to
mitigate the effect of
domestic supply constraints.
In September last year, companies said
they were importing coal from
South Africa at US$40 million per
tonne.
During that time, Hwange Colliery was selling a tonne of coal at
$14
million.
The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed company, in which
the government
controls about 38 percent shareholding, has been struggling
to produce
enough coal for the domestic market, whose appetite for the
product has
grown due to reduced power output from power utility,
ZESA.
In a statement issued last week, the company said it has taken
steps
to increase coal output.
“HCCL entered into a medium term
contract mining arrangement with
Clidder Minerals to boost production
capacity, while long term efforts are
being pursued,” said chairman Tendai
Savanhu.
He said the acquisition of mining equipment and refurbishment
of major
machinery would be undertaken during the year to increase coal
output.
“Contract mining will continue as a short term strategy to
ensure coal
availability while concluding recapitalisation programmes,”
Savanhu said.
Demand for both coal and coke is expected to remain firm
in Zimbabwe
and on the foreign market.
Last year, coal output
increased by a marginal one tonne to 2 071 526
from 2 070 358 tonnes in
2006.
Coal deliveries to the Zimbabwe Power Company’s Hwange Power
Station
were also down from 1 330 53 tonnes in 2006 to 1 315 799 tonnes last
year.
Coal supply constraints have previously been compounded by
logistical
constraints, especially high transportation costs and inefficient
road and
rail transport to deliver the coal.
And with analysts
forecasting a gloomy economic outlook and little
prospects for major
investments into coal mining in Zimbabwe, coal output is
expected to remain
stagnant.
This could further suffocate local companies, forcing them to
resort
to poor quality coal from Sengwa Mine in Gokwe, and Thuli Mine in
Beitbridge.
FinGaz
Ken Mufuka
ZIMBABWE’S
elections are being watched here with the sole unyielding purpose
of
confirming Mukuru’s demise. There is no other result, which will satisfy
observers here other than that Mukuru is “comprehensively” (a new word now
being used here) defeated at the polls.
In fact, Mukuru has rigged
the elections against himself.
Let us start with United States Secretary of
State, Sister Condoleezza Rice.
She announced yesterday that Mukuru has not
only been a disgrace to
Zimbabwe, a country which was once the pride of
Africa, but to the whole of
Africa and the world.
Definitely, she will
not countenance any other result other than a
comprehensive defeat of
Mukuru.
The Los Angeles Times, placed yesterday’s date for its lead story. It
confirmed that the opposition MDC was at the time leading in early results,
with a squeaker, giving exact numbers as 49.4 percent and 41.4 percent in
favour of the opposition party. But the paper “alleged” that Mukuru has been
known to steal the elections in two previous cases.
This story is also
repeated by the New York Times. Although it gave
virtually the same
percentages as the Los Angeles Times without the decimal
points, it also
repeated the fear that there was a plot to steal the
elections.
The
British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was also interviewed and expressed
similar fears at the delay in announcing the votes for president.
The
nightmare for Mukuru is that at this point he can do no good. The
possibility that he could win the election, even by a squeaker, has already
been discounted. It does not exist. There is a suggestion by an “expert”
that the delay in announcing the result is to determine who will bell the
cat. The person who will tell Mukuru that he is no longer Mukuru will be
swallowed by the earth on which he stands, if not by Mukuru’s wrath.
The
nightmare follows the books to a tee. The army officers have already
perjured (a lesser crime than treason) themselves by taking sides in
political debates. No matter what they do now, in the event that Mukuru
loses the election, there is no future for them. They will be lucky to get
away with a pension. Normally, as I suspect, those they have cursed as
sellouts may demand payback. Disgrace and impoverishment is the smallest
punishment that is possible.
My researchers have reminded me that one
service chief brother seized a
white man’s farm and sold its crops. That
white man is in exile here in the
US and is breathing fire and
brimstone.
To steal elections, after the Kenya scenario is a waste of time.
The Thabo
Mbeki model (also used in Kenya) is that all results are posted at
the point
of voting. Pictures of the numbers are then taken on digital
cameras and
sent all over the world in minutes.
My email box is buzzing
with figures and facts, which started one hour after
the elections were
closed on Saturday.
When Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki adjusted the numbers to
suit himself, his
numbers did not tally with those displayed on various
posted boards.
There are other reasons why the only free and fair result of
the election is
Mukuru’s demise. They have been showing military posses
(about 20 riot
police) marching in Harare streets with huge sticks and
rifles at the ready.
I am certain that the same picture is shown over and
over again.
There was an announcement that the military supreme council was
meeting and
that the announcement of the presidential elections had been
postponed at
their instructions.
All these “highly suspicious
developments” are supposed to support the
theory of stolen
elections.
Then there is the juicy story of Judge Chiweshe, the chairperson
of the
electoral commission, being chased by reporters after refusing to
announce
the presidential winner.
At the time of going to Press, brother
Morgan Tsvangirai was supposed to be
hiding in a safe redoubt somewhere, for
fear of an accident happening to
him.
All the reports, without exception,
repeat what has become accepted facts
that inflation runs at more than 150
000 percent, unemployment is at 80
percent, shops display empty shelves
while the party goons run rampant
carying out beatings, murders,
intimidations and other acts of lawlessness.
I am certain that the picture
being shown here of a Border Gezi posse is the
same picture being run a
thousand times. The reporter says that he is
reporting from
Johannesburg.
But Zimbabweans themselves will kill one with their sense of
humour.
Sister Majoni emailed me to say: “I heard that you were looking for
me.
Sorry, I am with Mai Tsvangirai at State House. We are cleaning windows.
Ms
Grace left without giving proper instructions.”
I fail to appreciate
this humor, at such an hour of most need.
Here is a perfect example where an
African leader boxes himself into a
scenario where he cannot possibly do any
good to himself or to his fellows.
That is the power of the media in this
world. It is a tragedy, which a few
of us saw and warned against, but nobody
listened to us.
l Ken Mufuka is a professor at Lander University (USA).
He can be reached
at:
kenmufuka@yahoo.com