Owen Maseko says his paintings of 1980s brutality are an attempt to help the country heal itself
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010 22:19
ZANU PF youths yesterday
got more than they bargained for from the visiting
African National Congress
Youth League (ANCYL) President Julius Malema,
after he strongly denounced
the party's violent tendencies during elections.
The firebrand ANCYL
leader said it was possible for Zanu PF youths to be
militant without being
violent. Addressing a Zanu PF youth rally in Mbare
yesterday afternoon, the
controversial Malema appeared to be singing from
the same hymn sheet with
the Zanu PF supporters, urging them to be militant
in "defence of the
revolution".
"You must be militant, you must be radical; you must be
resolute in defence
of your own organisation," said Malema.
But
while they were still applauding, he changed the tune, and told them
what
they least expected to hear: denouncing violence.
"But militancy does
not mean cutting people hands, militancy does not mean
violent politics,
militancy means you must be vigilant, you must be on the
ground, you must be
in each and every corner of Zimbabwe."
The silence among the youths -
who for all along had been applauding even
the smallest of greetings - was
enough evidence that they did not expect
that from Malema.
And he
didn't stop there. He warned them that violence could attract an
international invasion.
"Once we engage in violent means of
politics, we run the risk of giving
imperialists the reason why they must
invade Zimbabwe. If you fight people
physically, you are giving them an
opportunity to slaughter everybody,
because theirs is to slaughter those who
disagree with them," added Malema.
Malema added that while they
supported President Jacob Zuma's mediation
efforts in Zimbabwe, a lasting
solution would only come from Zimbabweans. He
however stressed his warning
against using violence, saying politicians
should be able to negotiate and
resolve their differences peacefully.
"We want you to hold peaceful
elections because we know that under peaceful
elections, Zanu PF will win,"
added Malema.
"We are critical thinkers, we believe in sitting down
and negotiating. We do
not opt for violence. Those who think violence is a
means for solutions,
they cannot think, that is why they introduce violent
politics in the
politics of Zimbabwe."
As widely expected, Malema
however showered praise on the land reform
programme and the current
indigenisation law.
"In South Africa we are just starting, but we
hear that here at home in
Zimbabwe you are very far. The land question you
have addressed it.
"We hear you are going straight to the mines; that
is what we are going to
start doing in South Africa. We want the mines. They
have exploited our
minerals for a long time, now it is our turn to also
enjoy from these
minerals," he said.
And in Malema's view, the
future of indigenisation is so bright even people's
skin colours may
change.
"Today they are so bright, they are colourful, we refer to
them as white
people. Maybe this colour came as a result of exploiting these
minerals.
Maybe some of us if we get an opportunity to exploit these
minerals, we can
also develop some nice colour and look like
them."
In a spirited defiance of a recent court ruling banning the
song Dubula
Ibhunu (Kill the Boer), Malema vowed never to stop singing the
song. And he
did sing it, with sufficient backing from the entire Zanu PF
youth
leadership and other senior officials.
"They are today
burning liberation songs in South Africa because the
untransformed judiciary
is still controlled by the whites who are resistant
to change. anything they
do not like they decide to go to court and bury
it," he
added.
"It is a sad day that in our own country during democracy we
can't sing
liberation songs, you will be arrested for undermining a
judgement by the
court. What is the difference between what they are doing
now with what they
did during apartheid?"
He said he was prepared
to be jailed for singing the song.
"They must know we will never
retreat. If it means singing this song in
South Africa is a straight way
into jail, we are prepared to go to jail and
sing this song, we are prepared
to be arrested, we are prepared to be
exiled. they will never tell us which
songs to sing, which leader to
worship."
Malema also attacked his
country's predominantly white media for demonising
him and President Jacob
Zuma.
"We do not need the so called independent newspapers to tell us
who Zuma is.
we are not products of newspapers, we are products of the
struggle. We are
products of the poor people in the townships and in the
rural areas."
Earlier in the day, Malema visited a former ANC house
in Avondale and the
National Heroes Acre "to reconnect with our
struggle".
BY VUSUMUZI SIFILE
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010 22:06
PARLIAMENT is now
pushing for a special investigation into Mines and Mining
Development
Minister Obert Mpofu's interest in the companies that were
controversially
given licences to mine the Chiadzwa diamonds after MPs were
barred from
touring the fields last week.
Mpofu reportedly refused to give members of
the parliamentary portfolio
committee on Mines and Energy the go-ahead to
visit the Canadile diamond
storage facilities in Mutare as well as the Mbada
Diamonds and Canadile
Mining operations in Chiadzwa.
Yesterday the
minister became abusive when he was asked to comment on the
latest
developments saying: "Don't call me, you are an idiot."
The committee led
by Guruve South legislator Edward Chindori-Chininga had
travelled to Mutare
on Tuesday after getting approval from the Home Affairs
co-ministers but
were told that they could not proceed with the tour without
Mpofu's
clearance.
Mpofu recently told the same committee that he could not
rule out the fact
that some of the directors behind the diamond companies
were crooks.
He said it was difficult to find a clean diamond
investor the world over and
there are indications that the MPs already have
plans to investigate him for
an alleged property-buying spree that began in
November last year. The
minister has reportedly bought in cash over 27
properties in his hometown of
Victoria Falls and in Bulawayo.
The
committee was also scheduled to meet the Marange council and families to
be
relocated from the diamond fields. The team was expected to counsel the
affected families.
Meetings scheduled with Manicaland governor
Christopher Mushowe also hit a
snag after he snubbed the
team.
Attempts to get a comment from Chindori-Chininga and the
parliament public
relations department were futile.
Parliament
officials said they had prepared a statement that would be
released once
approved by Clerk of Parliament Austin Zvoma.
But sources told The
Standard that the police and Ministry of Home Affairs
had agreed to the
visit, but Mpofu and Mushohwe refused to issue the
clearance.
"The Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC)
prepared all the
required letters to request clearance for the committee to
visit Chiadzwa
responding to a request by the Office of the Clerk of
Parliament," said a
member of the committee.
"The police could
not go ahead without the approval of the Minister of Mines
since the
reservation of the area was declared in terms of Mines and
Minerals
act.
"The Minister of Mines refused to give authority for the police
to give
clearance, yet the Ministry of Home Affairs had
agreed."
Parliament officials reportedly spent the whole of Tuesday
and Wednesday
trying to secure the clearance.
"All the MPs in the
committee did not take that lightly, and they are
determined to dig the
matter to establish what Mpofu could have been trying
to hide," said a
member of the committee.
"The best way forward is for the full house
of Parliament to set up a
special committee to investigate the minister, who
is also a Member of
Parliament.
"This creates unnecessary
conflict between parliament and the executive
which seems to shield him in
the current probe by the committee."
A committee of parliament can
only play an oversight role to keep checks on
ministers and officials, but
cannot investigate an MP for corruption.
Where there are allegations
of corruption, parliament sets up a special
committee selected and set up by
the full House of Assembly to investigate a
member.
"The Minister
is already making accusations that the committee is on a
witchhunt,
"These are just tactics to delay and derail the oversight
probe by the
committee on Mines and Energy and hopefully continue to create
unnecessary
friction and conflict between institutions of governance," said
the member.
"If you will recall Hon Mpofu created the same conflict
and friction between
parliament and the executive when he lied before a
parliamentary committee
on International Trade about Zisco and was found in
contempt of parliament
and sentenced to a suspended
sentence."
The current probe has already established some
irregularities in the
exploitation of the Chiadzwa diamonds by Mbada
Diamonds and Canadile Mining.
Some of the senior officials involved
in the project have dubious
backgrounds, with some of them having once been
prosecuted in Angola and
South Africa.
BY VUSUMUZI SIFILE
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010
22:04
INSTEAD of commemorating the Biblical suffering, death and
resurrection of
Jesus Christ during Easter, some Christian families in
Muzarabani and Shamva
had to endure their own suffering - but for political
reasons. Reports from
rights organisations, Victims Action Committee (VAC),
Crisis in Zimbabwe
Coalition and the Restoration of Human Rights (Rohr)
Zimbabwe said some
churches were last week persecuted for political
reasons.
VAC said 28 people, including 10 children under the age of
12 and two
teenagers, were on Wednesday forced to flee their homes after
being
threatened with violence.
A Zanu PF supporter, Ishmael Jeni
is alleged to have threatened the victims
at a prayer meeting held at Zhanda
village of Chishapa area in Shamva.
"Jeni threatened to descend on
them with a group of Zanu PF youths at night
to destroy their houses to
drive them from the village for being supporters
of the MDC," VAC
said.
"The families faced a similar fate during the round of violence
in March
2008 and now they are squatting in the nearby bushes with no access
to food,
water and shelter."
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition and
Rohr Zimbabwe reported that Zanu PF
supporters burnt down an Apostolic Faith
Mission church building in
Muzarabani before threatening villagers there
with violence.
"The church premises are near MDC-T losing council
candidate for ward 17 in
Charunda Village, Wirimayi Gono," MDC chairman for
Muzarabani South Freddie
Matonhodze said.
"The youths who burnt
down the building said they were doing so because Gono
and his supporters
attended that church."
Matonhodze said the building suffered the same
fate during the June 2008
run-off period and its owners had just completed
rebuilding it.
He said attempts to also burn a homestead belonging to
one MDC supporter
were thwarted by villagers who manhandled the leader of
the rowdy youths,
Paradzai Chabayanzara and handed him over to the
police.
He was however later released without
charge.
"Zanu PF district chairman Tapara Diamond then called a
meeting where he
told the villagers that he was launching what he called
Operation Hapana
Anotaura for the constitution-making process," Matonhodze
said.
"He said chiefs and other people had already been appointed to
talk on
behalf of the community when the outreach teams arrive and he does
not
expect to hear anyone else making any contribution during the
consultations."
Matonhodze said MDC supporters were then
informed that Zanu PF youths from
other constituencies had been invited into
the village to spearhead
violence.
About 55 people then fled
their homes at night to seek refuge at St Albert
business centre, Matonhodze
said.
MDC-T provincial treasurer Gilbert Kagodora yesterday said the
people, who
spent close to a week in the open without food and water, have
returned to
their homesteads after police assured them of
protection.
Several attempts to get a comment from police
spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena
were futile as he was unreachable after
promising to gather facts relating
to the matter which he said he was not
aware of.
MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa confirmed receiving the
reports and said the
party's security teams were already investigating the
attacks.
He said the violence was very unfortunate and promised that
his party would
assist the displaced families.
Matonhodze said his
community took its case to the Organ on National Healing
and Reconciliation
which is reported to have failed to resolve the raging
control for the
Anglican Church in Harare.
Sources within the Anglican Church said
officials from the government arm
last week conducted a string of meetings
with excommunicated Anglican Bishop
Nolbert Kunonga and Bishop Chad Gandiya
with the hope of reconciling the two
factions.
"The officials
suggested that we operationalise Judge President Rita Makarau's
order on
sharing premises but Kunonga refused saying that the only option
will be for
the other faction to join him," a source said.
BY JENNIFER DUBE
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010
22:03
BULAWAYO - Five suspended Zapu officials say they are taking the
party's
interim leader Dumiso Dabengwa to court to force him to set up a
disciplinary body to hear their case. Smile Dube, a former Bulawayo police
spokesman, former airline boss Evans Ndebele, former Bulawayo councillor
Charles Mpofu, Ray Ncube, Charles Makhuya and Nhlanhla Ncube were slapped
with the suspensions last year for allegedly holding illegal
meetings.
The officials are now accusing Dabengwa, a former Zanu PF
politburo member
of deliberately delaying the hearings to keep them away
from seeking
positions at the party's congress later this
year.
Mpofu who said he was speaking on behalf of the group accused
Dabengwa of
flouting the party's constitution by delaying the
hearings.
"It's been months now since we were suspended and there has
not been any
talk of a hearing," Mpofu said.
"It's a violation of
our constitution. It's a deliberate move not to call a
hearing over our case
so as to frustrate us into quitting the party."
"We have resolved
that the only option is via the courts.
"We are going to court to
seek recourse on the matter because it is our most
sincere conviction that
the suspensions were unjustified and both
unprocedural and unconstitutional
and that this could be the major cause for
their failure to execute the
matter to its logical conclusion."
Dabengwa could not be reached for
comment on the matter.
But the party's Bulawayo chairman, Canaan
Ncube denied charges that there
were deliberate attempts to frustrate the
officials into quitting the party.
Ncube said Zapu did not have a
disciplinary committee to preside over the
case. "We have not yet set up a
disciplinary committee.we were still working
on it. The party has no real
intention to bar them from the party," Ncube
said in a telephone
interview.
Divisions rocked Zapu last year over infighting by various
factions bidding
to take control of the party at its congress, which has
since been
suspended.
Zapu's congress, originally scheduled for
May, has been pushed forward to
August.
The Congress is expected
to debate and endorse the amended Zapu
constitution, party policy and
manifesto.
Also, the congress will elect a substantive national
executive committee and
the Council of Elders.
BY NQOBANI
NDLOVU
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010
20:09
A special Harare City Council meeting last week adopted a report
exposing
alleged illicit land deals involving flamboyant businessman,
Phillip
Chiyangwa and Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo.
The
report which covers the period between October 2004 and December 2009
shows
that irregular acquisitions, mainly by prominent Zanu PF officials,
were
rampant during the period under investigation.
The report
recommends that Chiyangwa be arrested for allegedly using
underhand means to
acquire land, some of it in the plush Borrowdale
neighbourhood.
It also recommends that disciplinary action be
taken against some council
officials including director of urban planning
services Psychology Chiwanga
and finance director Cosmas Zvikaramba who
allegedly aided the corrupt
acquisitions.
However Mayor Muchadeyi
Masunda and some councillors differed sharply on the
way forward amid fears
that the report could be swept under the carpet like
previous reports
raising issues of corruption in the local authority.
At a meeting on
Thursday where the 54-page report was presented, Ward 28
Councillor
Wellington Chikombo appealed to Masunda to ensure that the report's
recommendations were implemented.
Chikombo has genuine fears
given that he, together with other councillors
were last year appointed into
a special committee that investigated alleged
theft of meat from Jameson
Hotel.
The meat was supposed to be consumed at the inauguration of
Masunda as the
Mayor but mysteriously disappeared only to be found in the
freezers of the
Harare hotel.
Council instituted a probe and a
subsequent report on the matter is yet to
be implemented months after being
endorsed by council.
At the special meeting last week, some
special-interest councillors
unsuccessfully tried to block discussions on
the land acquisition report but
MDC-T councillors who dominate council
successfully pushed for the
discussions.
Led by Thembinkosi
Magwaliba, special-interest councillors said they were
named in the report
and felt they should have been given an opportunity to
defend themselves
while others said they had not been given enough time to
read through the
document.
Masunda's attempt to protect the named officials by
discussing the document
in committee without the media and other
non-councillors or through avoiding
mentioning names was also rejected by
MDC-T councillors.
Led by Panganai Charumbira, the MDC-T councillors
threatened to walk out of
the meeting should the mayor protect the named
officials, as that would be
equal to discrimination since he (Masunda) never
protected MDC-T councillors
from attack by the state media.
It
was MDC-T's voice that carried the day as the report was discussed and
endorsed by the majority.
"We are done," Dumba said in an
interview. "The report has been adopted by
council and it is now an official
document.
"The next step is for the mayor to implement the
recommendations as you
heard him being delegated by council to do
so.
"The issues the special interest councillors were raising do not
hold any
water.
"All information in that document is factual as
we only extracted it from
the files thus eliminating any need for us to
interview anyone regarding
it."
But Masunda said the report
cannot be immediately implemented as it had some
loopholes, among them
failure to give named people a right to reply.
"The committee has to
attend to some matters left hanging in the air and
then present me with a
complete report," Masunda said. "I will then sit down
with the Chamber
Secretary and discuss the way forward.
"In all fairness, I will have
to give all the people cited in that report,
especially council
functionaries, an opportunity to give their side of the
story.
"I
have a moral and professional obligation to ensure that nobody is treated
unfairly and thus I cannot jump the gun the same way the media has been
reporting on the report saying some people should be
arrested.
"Each and every one of the named people should be allowed
to present his or
her own side of the story and that is what we call
fairness and
transparency."
Presenting the report, Dumba said
some pages which could contain evidence to
some allegations raised in the
report were missing from council files and
Masunda said that was another
flaw which needed to be addressed.
Dumba said some people had taken
advantage of the fact that council files
are public documents and plucked
out pages which could contain some of the
evidence.
Masunda said
some form of evidence should be availed for him to assess
whether the city
had been prejudiced in any way.
BY JENNIFER DUBE
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010 20:05
THE
harassment of Zimbabwean journalists continued last week when detectives
descended on the offices of a weekly newspaper that exposed a massive land
scandal involving a controversial businessman and a Zanu PF government
minister.
The Standard revealed last week that a special council
committee
investigating the allocation of land by previous administrations
had
recommended that businessman Phillip Chiyangwa be arrested for alleged
corruption.
Titled "Special Investigations Committees
report on City of Harare's Land
Sales, Leases and Exchanges from the period
October 2004 to December 2009",
the 54-page report also names Local
Government minister Ignatius Chombo,
former Harare mayoress Sekesai
Makwavarara among other senior Zanu PF
officials who were involved in
clandestine dealings involving prime land in
Harare.
But in a
bizarre twist, two officers from the notorious Law and Order
section on
Wednesday descended on The Standard offices in Harare where they
demanded to
interview two reporters who co-authored the story, Feluna Nleya
and Jennifer
Dube.
The two identified only as Detective Inspector Muchada and a
Kutiwa said
they were investigating a case of criminal defamation in which
Chiyangwa,
the flamboyant businessman with close links to President Mugabe,
was the
complainant.
Nleya and Dube were asked to reveal their
sources in an interrogation that
lasted close to an hour.
The
detectives also talked to The Standard Editor Nevanji Madanhire and the
group Editor-in-Chief Vincent Kahiya. The police action is seen as an
attempt to gag the council report which has opened a can of
worms.
Earlier in the week, police had summoned freelance journalist
Stanley Gama
over a related story published by The Sunday
Times.
"Gama was asked to reveal the source of the document,
something we find
ridiculous given the fact that this is a widely publicised
report whose
contents are also available on the internet," his lawyer Selby
Hwacha said
on Thursday. "In the absence of a charge, we regret to say that
we feel this
is harassment."
Hwacha made the comments after Gama was
summoned for the second time to sign
typed copies of his
statement.
The police however did not turn up again at The Standard
although they had
promised to return for the signing of typed statements.
Coordinator of the
Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ), Andrew Moyse
said the
questioning of journalists was a sign that Zimbabwe was now
behaving like a
police state.
He said given the fact that the
reports were based on a legal council
investigation, there was no basis for
harassing the journalists.
"The papers have a duty to publicise the
findings of that investigation
which was genuinely carried out by the city
council," said Moyse.
"The questioning of journalists merely
illustrates the fact that there is
still no media freedom in
Zimbabwe.
"That story was based on an authentic report of an investigation by
the
council. The media have a duty to inform the public about such
findings."
The national director of the Media Institute of Southern
Africa (MISA)
Zimbabwe, Nhlanhla Ngwenya said this was yet another betrayal
of the
inclusive government's insincerity on media reforms.
"That
incident shows that there is lack of political will to promote and
protect
media freedom," said Ngwenya.
"For us, when we look at this vis-à-vis
the Zimbabwe Media Commission, it
shows that no matter how many new papers
are registered, we will continue to
have these problems.
"It
vindicates our position that the only way out is an overhaul of the
media
legislation."
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said there was
nothing wrong with the
police action as the detectives were verifying
information they "came
across."
"You people (journalists) seem to
have a very wrong impression that you
should not have any contact with the
police," he said.
"You seem to think that there should not be any
contact with any law
enforcement agents whatsoever which is a very wrong
impression altogether."
But the incidents fly in the face of recent
claims by President Robert
Mugabe and Information Minister Webster Shamu
that the harassment of
journalists would now be a thing of the
past.
In a rare meeting with editors of all media houses last month,
Mugabe
stressed his government's commitment to media reforms, saying the ZMC
"must
be operating now".
Last week, Shamu told a meeting of
African journalists in Harare that
"journalists should not be arrested for
telling the truth and being
constructively critical".
"Harassment
of journalists should stop to enable them to deliver their
duties smoothly,"
said Shamu.
BY OUR STAFF
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010 20:02
The
upsurge in the number of people being killed in maize fields and open
spaces
with overgrown grass has sparked debate in the Harare City
Council.
Councillors contributing to a debate on grass cutting at a full
council
meeting last week said the killings, which mainly occur at night
were now a
major challenge, especially in high-density
areas.
“People are being massacred (sic) day in and day out
in an open space near
Mereki,” said Councillor Julius Musevenzi of Warren
Park.
“Now, if the open space is being a risk to the same people it
is supposed to
benefit, then it is serving no purpose.
“Some
residents applied to build their church and some recreational
facilities in
that area and I see no reason why that project cannot be
approved given the
risk associated with that area in its current state.”
Herbert Gomba,
the chairperson of Council’s Environment Management committee
said they
could not approve the application because the proposed project
was not in
line with council’s Master Plan.
“That Warren Park space and many
other open spaces are reserved for
environmental and climate change
purposes,” Gomba said. “We do not want to
end up being like Chitungwiza
which does not have any open spaces.
“The fact that people are being
mugged is not enough reason why we can
convert the use of any open space.
The responsible committee should see to
it that residents are mobilised to
cut the grass.
“The environmental aspect outweighs any reason being
given.”
Gomba said there have been some proposals to convert a number
of open spaces
including some wetlands.
Environmentally conscious
residents in Ballantyne Park and Borrowdale have
in the past objected to big
construction projects on wetlands by property
mogul Phillip
Chiyangwa.
“The major reason why we should preserve wetlands is that
our water sources
start from them and by disturbing them, we are making it
possible for the
water table to go deeper,” Gomba
said.
Chairperson of the Education, Health, Housing and Community
Services and
Licensing committee Charles Nyatsuro said depending on
circumstances, both
cutting grass and changing the use of open spaces would
suffice as solutions
to problems being faced by residents.
He
said residents in his Ward Six, which covers Milton Park were taking the
initiative to cut grass while it has been observed that open spaces
encourage residents in such areas as Kuwadzana to plant maize during the
rainy season. This, he said, provided criminals with hiding
places.
“Funding for cutting grass during this season was inadequate
as only $1 200
was allocated per ward, with groups of 20 people each
expected to cut grass
on an area covering 40 hectares,” Nyatsuro
said.
“Some areas are bigger than others and after each group
co
vered its 40 hectares, some areas remained unkempt and we are looking
for
money to address that.”
Police could not provide statistics of people
murdered in the hotspots this
season but councilors said the numbers were
already too high.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said some
criminals waylay people in
unkempt areas, those with tall grass and also in
maize fields especially
during the rainy season.
Crimes usually
committed in these areas include theft, harassment, assault,
rape and
murder.
He said it is not always possible for the police to protect
everyone hence
the force always encourages residents to shun these areas
especially at
night.
“The force cannot recommend what should be
done about these areas since they
are council property but as a resident, I
would encourage council to cut the
grass instead of opening them up because
we need these open spaces for
breathing purposes for example,” Bvudzijena
said.
BY JENNIFER DUBE
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010 19:58
ZIMBABWE
has been hit by a serious shortage of drugs after the country's
leading
pharmaceuticals manufacturer, Caps Holdings (Pvt) Limited closed one
of its
factories late last year.
The move by the Caps Holdings subsidiary
followed a directive from the
medicines regulatory authority which
questioned the company's decision to
produce drugs from its
newly-refurbished plant before it had been inspected.
The
closure has resulted in patients failing to access both over-the-counter
(OTC) and prescribed drugs.
Pharmacists who spoke to The Standard in
Harare last week said the situation
could worsen if immediate remedial
measures were not taken.
They said children and patients with
diseases such as high blood pressure
and asthma were the most
affected.
"It's a situation which can degenerate into a crisis if
nothing is done
urgently," said a pharmacist who requested
anonymity.
"The alternative drugs, mostly imports, are beyond the
reach of ordinary
people."
Drugs regulatory body, the Medicines
Control Authority of Zimbabwe (Mcaz),
last November ordered Caps to recall
some of its drugs from wholesalers as
the regulator had not yet inspected
the pharmaceutical company's new
state-of the-art manufacturing
plant.
An inquiry by The Standard last week established that Caps
products that are
not readily available on the market include Flumel, 4Cs
for colds and flu,
Status for asthmatic patients as well as Urazide for high
blood pressure
patients.
Also not available on the market are
vitamin supplements such as 12 + 12,
Medox BCO and Neodexone eye drops for
eye infection as well as paracetamol
syrup, said the
pharmacists.
One pharmacist said they are now relying on generic
drugs to cover up for
the unavailable medicines.
Dr Billy Rigava
of the Private Hospitals Association said he had not
received complaints
from members but knew that patients were struggling to
get
drugs.
"It might not be very critical but the closure will affect the
supply of
drugs in the long run," said Rigava.
Mcaz
director-general Mafios Dauramanzi could not be reached for comment as
he
was said to be out of the office for the greater part of last
week.
Two months ago, Dauramanzi said the regulator had not carried
out an
analysis on the recalled drugs and had not compiled any report
.
Health and Child Welfare Minister, Henry Madzorera refused to
comment
referring all questions to his permanent secretary Gerald Gwinji who
was
unavailable.
Caps officials were also not immediately
available for comment.
BY CAIPHAS CHIMHETE
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010
19:57
BULAWAYO — War veterans’ leader, Andrew Ndlovu is being
investigated for
fraud following complaints that he forged documents that
convinced the High
Court to liquidate Zexcom Foundation Investment Fund
Limited. Zexcom, a
company formed by war veterans with their 1997 windfall,
was put under
liquidation in December last year after allegations surfaced
that the
directors were embezzling funds.
Bulawayo Judge Nicholas
Ndou appointed Victor Muzenda as the provisional
liquidator following an
application by Ndlovu and two other war veterans
Robert Mlalazi and John
Ngwenya.
However it has since emerged that the police’s Serious Fraud
Squad has been
investigating complaints that Ndlovu forged signatures of the
respondents in
the case and also lied that he had served them with the court
papers.
The allegations against Ndlovu (55) are contained in
documents on the case
filed under CR114/ 02/ 10 at Bulawayo
Central.
The police say Ndlovu submitted a forged certificate of
service, which he
also claimed to have served to Zexcom.
“As a
result of the accused person’s actions, a provisional order to
liquidate
Zexcom Foundation was granted by the High Court — a default
judgement was
granted (by the same court).
“As a result of the accused person’s
actions, Zexcom Foundation was
prejudiced.
“The accused person
had no right to act in the manner he did.”
An affidavit signed by
Sibusiso Bhebhe, a Zexcom employee claims that Ndlovu
and his colleagues
forged signatures of the respondents and the foundation’s
date
stamp.
He said he only got to know about the case when he saw a story
in the
Chronicle newspaper that he had been served with the papers through a
messenger from Sansole and Senda law firm.
One of the officers
handling the case only identified as N Zondo comfirmed
in a letter that
Ndlovu was being investigated for fraud but refused to
comment further
saying the case had been handed over to prosecutors.
BY NKULULEKO
SIBANDA
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010 19:15
THE
Zanu PF Leadership Code, which sought to define the party as a socialist
movement forbids its officials from owning more than one house for purposes
of earning rentals. This is but one condition that seeks to prevent party
officials from taking advantage of their positions in government to amass
wealth. The code was adopted at Zanu PF’s second people’s congress in
1984.
But how many still abide by the code?
In the past
few months there have been stunning revelations about how Zanu
PF leaders
have been amassing wealth while the rest of Zimbabweans wallow in
poverty.
Last month, President Robert Mugabe told journalists he
owned Higfield Farm
in Norton and Gushungo dairy farm in Mazowe, which he
wants to turn into “a
centre of excellence.”
This is at variance
with a provision in the Zanu PF code that says a leader
is prohibited from
owning “a business, a share or an interest in a business
organised for
profit, provided that this shall not be interpreted as
prohibiting such
petty side-line activities as chicken runs, small plots and
gardens on one’s
residential property.”
Zanu PF believes that a leader who
concentrates on acquiring property
becomes an enemy of the masses.
But a
cursory look at the profiles of selected Zanu PF ministers and
officials who
have been in the news in the last few months for their
appetite for
acquiring property would make Mugabe a saint.
Ignatious Chombo, Minister
of Local Government, Urban and Rural Development.
In a maintenance
application filed at the High Court by his estranged wife,
Marian, it is
revealed that Chombo, a university lecturer for most of his
professional
life, has suddenly become one of Zimbabwe’s richest land owners
with 100
residential stands and dozens of houses around the country.
He
allegedly owns a staggering 13 companies, 15 vehicles, a bus, a 3 098ha
farm
in Raffingora and properties in South Africa. About 30 of the listed
residential stands are in the plush Harare neighbourhood of Borrowdale.
Marian wants half of Chombo’s wealth.
A recent investigation by
the Harare City Council implicates Chombo in
massive scams involving the
acquisition of urban land.
The report says: “It remains disturbing to
note that minister Chombo would
identify pieces of land in the city,
influence council officials to apply to
him for change of land use and then
sit over the same applications and
approve the changes.
“He would
then write to council officials asking to buy the same stands and
obviously
get them.
“Land reserved for recreational activities would end up having
title deeds
in his company’s name.”
Obert Mpofu, Minister of Mines
and Mining Development
Mpofu who is currently in the eye of a storm has
attracted unwanted
publicity following reports that he has bought at least
27 properties in
Bulawayo and Victoria Falls in the last few
months.
He is also believed to be behind the construction of a
state-of-the-art
shopping mall between Fourth Avenue and Fife Street in
Bulawayo.
Already an owner of one of the tallest buildings in
Bulawayo — York
House —Mpofu is probably the richest politician in
Matabeleland.
Mpofu also owns a farm just outside Bulawayo and some
pieces of land within
the city.
He rose from humble beginnings as
a line manager at the Zimpapers
headquarters in Harare before he moved to
Zimbabwe Grain Bag (Pvt) Ltd as
general manager.
It was during
that time that he became a whistle blower leading to what is
now known as
the Willowgate scandal, which claimed the scalps of several top
Zanu PF
officials.
He was first appointed Zanu PF non-constituency MP in 1987
and was elected
MP for Bubi-Umguza in 1990. In 1995, he lost the
constituency to the late
Jacob Thabani of MDC only to regain it in 2005 in
an election marred by
massive violence against Zanu PF
opponents.
In 2007, as Minister of Industry and International Trade,
Mpofu spearheaded
the price freeze, which analysts say quickened the
collapse of Zimbabwe’s
already battered economy.
The price freeze
spawned the shortage of basic commodities that only eased
with the formation
of the inclusive government last year.
As Minister of Mines, Mpofu
has come under scrutiny for licencing companies
owned by “crooks” to exploit
the Chiadzwa diamonds.
A staunch Mugabe loyalist, he is seen as one
of the few politicians from
Matabeleland from the liberation war movement
who still give Mugabe an ear
and in turn enjoys the unflinching support of
the ageing leader.
He was also one of the people who foiled the
so-called Tsholotsho coup,
which sought to replace Zanu PF’s ageing
presidium with Young Turks.
Phillip Chiyangwa, Former Zanu PF Mashonaland
West Chairman
Chiyangwa has never attempted to hide his opulent
lifestyle.
When The Standard contacted him seeking a comment on an
investigation by the
Harare council exposing how he irregularly acquired
vast tracts of land, he
showed up in his R4 million Bentley GTC Continental
convertible. The Bentley
is just one of the several expensive vehicles found
in his garage.
His is also a rags-to-riches story, having started off
as a mine worker at
Chakari before he was called up as a member of the BSAP
African Reserve. Now
Chiyangwa is counted among the richest people in
Zimbabwe.
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010
18:33
THE health delivery system received a major boost recently after
the United
States donated a new and upgraded bio-safety, level-two-plus
laboratory at
Harare hospital. The new facility - equipped with
state-of-the-art
equipment -will enhance the capacity of the Ministry of
Health and Child
Welfare to offer clinical and diagnostic testing as well as
research on
indigenous and exotic agents which may cause serious diseases
after
inhalation.
These diseases include mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB),
typhoid, anthrax and
the H1N1 virus.
The US Centre for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) and the US President's
Emergency Plan for Aids Relief
provided US$120 000 for the renovation of the
laboratory and procurement of
supplies.
In addition, CDC trained laboratory personnel on how to conduct
tests and
quality assurance.
The facility will be administered through a
partnership between government's
National Microbiology Reference Laboratory
(NMRL) and the privately-run
Biomedical Research and Training Institute
(BRTI).
Health and Child Welfare Minister, Henry Madzorera, speaking at the
hand
over ceremony said there was no longer a need to send samples to South
Africa for testing.
"This is a huge boost to our health sector," he said.
"The launch of this
laboratory means we are no longer going to export
testing samples to South
Africa or Zambia for H1N1 and many other
diseases.
"We now have the capacity to test our own samples."
He said the
ministry now also had the capacity to determine the extent of
the problem of
Multi- Drug Resistant TB (MDR-TB) in the country.
Madzorera said many
Zimbabweans continued to succumb to MDR-TB because the
public health sector
did not have sufficient capacity to detect and treat
such cases.
TB
remains a major problem in the country because of the low detection rate
of
42% compared to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) target of 70%.
Zimbabwe
has a treatment success rate of 68%, which is also less than the
WHO target
of 85%, a sign that the drug resistant TB strain is prevalent.
But the only
available data on MDR-TB is from a survey that was conducted in
1995. The
study showed that 1,9% of TB cases involved drug-resistant
strains.
One
of the first projects of the facility at Harare hospital is to conduct a
survey on MDR-TB.
US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray said the
co-operation between the
government, the private sector and the
international community was
"historic."
The new laboratory also has the
capacity to test for HIV in infants, a plus
for the success of the
Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission programme.
Children born to HIV
positive mothers had to wait up to one and a half
years before they could
be tested as most laboratories in the country had no
capacity to carry out
the tests earlier.
"I was particularly pleased by the fact that we can now
diagnose HIV early
in infants at the rate of 70 samples an hour, which is a
great enhancement
of our service delivery," Madzorera said.
"Previous
testing methods only allowed Zimbabwe to determine HIV status in
100 samples
a day."
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010
18:19
FED-UP of being fleeced by the police, most commuter omnibus
drivers who ply
the Mufakose-City route recently openly defied the officers
who man a
roadblock at Harare’s Rugare suburb refusing to pay them a daily
“tollgate
fee.” The officers set up the roadblock where they openly demanded
US$3 from
every commuter omnibus that passed through the checkpoint without
issuing
out any tickets.
The drivers pay “tollgate fees” once a day so
that the officers would not
issue them with a ticket for any offence they
may commit during the day.
The daring officers accept the money in full view
of passengers.
But recently, the police officers got a rude shockwhen
disgruntled drivers
refused to pay the bribes after the fee was unilaterally
raised to US$5 per
kombi.
The officers were seen taking down the vehicle
registration numbers of the
defiant drivers and threatening to take
unspecified action.
“This is now too much,” complained one driver, who
requested anonymity. “I
can’t give him half the money I make for a trip for
him just to pocket.”
Clayton Machumi (30), who plies the Kambuzuma-City
route, said they had now
code-named the Rugare roadblock “the tollgate”
because no commuter driver
passes through the checkpoint without paying the
daily passage fee.
“We go through this every day,” said Machumi. “If you
refuse to pay them,
they just order you to park your vehicle on the road
side and ignore you
while they attend to those willing to pay.
“After
that they will issue you with a ticket with a huge fine.”
Blessing Sitiya
(24), who plies the same route, said the officers were
making a killing
because scores of commuter omnibuses use the same road
every
day.
“Considering the number of kombis that ply this route, it will not
surprise
me if each officer pockets over US$50 in the three or four hours
they would
be at the roadblock,” said Sitiya.
Those that ply
Kuwadzana-Mbare and Warren Park routes also pay the tollgate
fees each
morning.
For several days, this reporter observed the police officers
pocketing the
money from the drivers.
One of the officers would be
collecting the money from touts (mahwindi)
while others would be making sure
that no kombi passes through without
“greasing” (paying a bribe).
At
times, they stash their loot in a container hidden in the tall grass
where
no one is allowed to go.
What makes this roadblock peculiar is that the
officers come in their
private cars, which they use to block all roads that
drivers might use to
escape payment.
This scenario is not unique to those
who ply the Mufakose-City route but has
become prevalent all over the
country, particularly along the highways.
Drivers who ply the Harare-Norton
route also complained that they fork out
as much as US$15 per day to bribe
traffic police.
“They set up at least three roadblocks along the way and at
each point we
pay US$5.
“This is happening everywhere,” said one driver,
who requested anonymity for
fear of victimisation.
Other drivers last
week said corruption among traffic police officers has
become uncontrollable
as they demand bribes openly.
They urged Police Commissioner General
Augustine Chihuri to establish a
commission of inquiry into the operations
of the police, particularly those
in traffic and criminal investigations
departments.
Many of them have become rich overnight following the
dollarisation of the
economy in February last year.
“If Chihuri fails to
stamp out this now, he will never be able to
effectively control or instill
discipline in his charges.
“The whole police force is rotten to the core,”
said one Dread, who plies
the Harare-Chitungwiza route.
Police chief
spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena
urged motorists
to report all officers who demand bribes.
“We urge all those affected
motorists to report to us so that we deal with
the culprits,” said
Bvudzijena. “We won’t hesitate to dismiss them once we
find them
guilty.”
Bvudzijena, however, added that the commuter omnibus drivers were
equally
guilty because they were paying bribes to the police.
“They are
equally guilty because they are partners in crime.
“They should be issued
with tickets,” he said.
He said the police have their own internal systems of
dealing with rogue and
corrupt elements.
As if demanding bribes is not
enough, some police officers recently went on
the rampage as they used
truncheons to smash window panes of buses that
picked passengers on
undesignated points along Chinhoyi Street in Harare.
Several passengers were
left bleeding profusely after they were injured by
fragments of shattered
glass.
One young man was thrown into a waiting vehicle by the officers with
blood
oozing from his forehead.
His sin was that he had demanded to know
why one of the officers had smashed
the window panes that injured
him.
But the officer shouted, “We are going to deal with you at Central
Police
Station. Tisu mutemo wacho mufana (We are the law young man) You
think you
can win against us? You will see. ”
Surely, they took the law
into their hands.
But Bvudzijena said, “That is criminal. That’s not the way
police operate.
People affected must report to the police straight away.
Police have a civil
way of handling such cases.”
Corruption has worsened
in the past two decades following the breakdown of
the rule of law and the
general economic collapse blamed on President Robert
Mugabe’s scotched-earth
policies.
Zimbabwe was ranked 146 on the Transparency International (TI)
perceptions
of corruption index for 2009 alongside countries such as Kenya,
Ukraine,
Cameroon, Russia, Ecuador and Sierra Leone.
Nigeria, once ranked
as Africa’s most corrupt nation, fared better than
Zimbabwe on
130.
BY CAIPHAS CHIMHETE
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010
18:17
GOVERNMENT’S decision to bar non-governmental organisations from
offering
direct assistance with fees to orphaned and vulnerable children has
seen
thousands of children dropping out of school.
NGOs were
disbursing fees under the National Action Plan for Orphans and
Vulnerable
Children but following the policy shift, the funds are now being
channelled
to the Basic Education Assistance Module (Beam) run by the
government’s
department of social welfare.
Under the Programme of Support (POS), NGOs were
able to identify
beneficiaries both in urban and rural areas.
POS is a
basket funding mechanism where various international organisations
provided
over US$80 million to support orphans and vulnerable children in
different
interventions.
“Everything was running smoothly under the POS programme,”
said an official
in one of the NGOs based in Mashonaland East who preferred
to remain
anonymous.
“We had mechanisms to identify needy children and
funds were flowing
smoothly.”
“However following the policy shift on Beam
we have experienced problems and
most of the children who were benefiting
have not been taken on board.
“There are new people involved and we do not
know what’s happening despite
having handed over the lists of children who
were being supported.”
Godwin Phiri, the board Secretary of National
Association for
Non-Governmental Organisations also confirmed that there
was concern among
donors that a lot of children had been left out during the
transition.
Phiri said there was also a need for more transparency in the
selection of
beneficiaries as most deserving cases were left out.
“Unicef
helped to restore Beam after the programme was suspended for a
number of
years due to lack of funding but the programme still faces a
myriad of
challenges.
The director of social services in the Ministry of Labour and
Social
Welfare, Sydney Mhishi said the possibility that thousands of
children were
left out of BEAM “cannot be ruled out.”
“The donor
community has pledged US$15 million for assistance at primary
school level
for 2010 to assist 625 000 beneficiaries and the government
budgeted US$15
225 000 for secondary to assist 140 200 beneficiaries,”
Mhishi
said.
“This gives a total of 765 200 pupils to be assisted in
2010.
“However our projections are that up to one million children both
primary
and secondary may require assistance.”
He said the programme
would be expanded if efforts to mobilise more funds
bear fruit.
According
to recent studies nearly a quarter of all children in Zimbabwe are
orphans
and this has been blamed on the effects of the HIV/Aids
virus.
BY PERPERTUA CHIKOLOLERE
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Monday, 29 March 2010 09:47
ZIMBABWE School
Examinations (Zimsec) directors have allegedly launched a
witch-hunt
targeting employees after information was leaked that the exams
body is
bleeding because of mismanagement, corruption and nepotism. This
comes amid
indications Education, Sport and Culture Minister David Coltart
has brought
in independent experts to clean up the rot.
A joint audit report by
the Comptroller and Auditor General and Ernst &
Young leaked to The
Standard a fortnight ago titled Zimsec Capacity
Assessment: November 2009
said the institution's management systems were
weak and its credibility
severely diminished.
The report said Zimsec director Happy Ndanga
could be making "errant
decisions" because the institution has been running
without a board for a
long time.
"A day after the story was
published the directorate immediately stopped
salary negotiations with
managers accusing them of taking sensitive
information to the press," said a
source.
"But the rot is just getting worse, just last week a former
temporary worker
was arrested for selling fake exam
slips.
"Zimsec has also bought 13 BT 50 trucks for regional managers
and the
directors would be taking delivery of the vehicles yet it is said
there is
no money for the smooth running of examinations."
The
audit raised concerns about the lack of security and the employment of
under-qualified clerks on a temporary basis, which it said impacted on the
credibility of the examination system.
Coltart yesterday said
although he had not seen the report he had secured
the services of an
independent accounting firm and an expert who is not
attached to Zimsec to
address management weaknesses that were already known
before the
audit.
He said GTZ, a German organisation, had provided "generous"
funding to help
the independent experts who will soon come from the
Cambridge University
Overseas Examination Board, which administered the
examinations before they
were fully localised in 2002, to investigate how
the localisation of the "O"
and "A" examinations could have gone
wrong.
"I want to stress the fact that I am not neglecting the
problems at Zimsec,"
Coltart said. "We are doing everything possible to
rectify the problems
that have been outlined in the
report."
Zimsec employees had raised concern that Coltart appeared to
be siding with
the directors who have reportedly dismissed the audit report
as biased.
Current and former workers at the exams body said the findings by
the audit
team were only a tip of the iceberg.
Tobias Moyo, a
former human resources officer who retired on medical grounds
in 2008 and
has been battling to get his pension, made stunning revelations
about record
keeping at Zimsec.
"The human resources office does not keep records
of people who are leaving
and those who are being hired," Moyo
said.
Moyo said he was told that the processing of his pension was
not a priority
and that thousands of other former employees were also in the
same boat.
BY KHOLWANI NYATHI
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010 18:04
FINNFUND,
Finland’s development financial institution, says it will offer
lines of
credit but is most unlikely to do equity investments in Zimbabwe
until the
risks associated with the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment
Regulations are removed. The development comes a week after another Nordic
institution, Norfund, said it was withholding its proposed US$,5 million
investment and would raise pressure on the government to amend the
regulations.
Jaakko Kangasniemi, Finnfund MD told Standardbusiness: “We
are mostly
unlikely to do equity investments before the risk of confiscatory
policies
under the banner of empowerment has been reduced.”
Kangasniemi
said Finnfund is concerned about the indigenisation regulations
which scare
away investors.
“We are very concerned. Badly implemented empowerment
policies can easily
be confiscatory and non-transparent, discouraging
foreign investments,
damaging economic growth and employment creation as
well as creating
unwarranted transfer of resources to persons with the right
political
connections,” he said.
Kangasniemi said Finnfund is preparing
“a small line of credit to a
financial institution in Zimbabwe to be used
for on-lending to SMEs”.
Finnfund’s lines of credit range from € 1 million to
€ 10 million (about
US$1.3 million to US$13 million).
He said the fund
was still waiting for a business plan from a Zimbabwean
company it was
holding negotiations with.
“Various difficulties in the operating environment
are holding things up,”
he said.
Analysts are unanimous that the
reluctance by Nordic countries to invest in
Zimbabwe will scare away
potential investors sitting on the fence, waiting
to take a cue from the
Nordic development financial institutions.
“If gold rusts what will iron do?
These [Nordic institutions] are the most
sympathetic investors unlike the
British and Americans,” said an analyst who
has been tracking Nordic
investments across the continent.
Nordic countries are seen to be sympathetic
to developing countries and were
the first to send delegations to Zimbabwe
when the inclusive government was
formed last year.
Norfund’s Kjartan
Stigen led a delegation of four Nordic development
financial institutions
that came to Zimbabwe last year to scout for
investment
opportunities.
The mission was made up of representatives from Swedfund
(Sweden); Norfund
(Norway); Finnfund (Finland); and Industrialisation Fund
for Developing
Countries (IFU) from Denmark.
Meanwhile, Maria Lannér,
director of Communications at Swedfund said they
hoped that the political
and economic environment would continue to improve.
She said this would
eventually lead to an increased interest from Swedish
companies to invest in
Zimbabwe.
BY NDAMU SANDU
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010 18:36
Just on 11 this
morning Voti Thebe, Acting Director of Bulawayo’s National
Gallery, rings to
ask me to come straight down to his place although he
wouldn’t be around.
He has accompanied police to the Charge Office and an
exhibition, which had
opened at the Gallery Thursday, is being closed.
First I ring Minister David
Coltart who thankfully, I find, already knew
and had spoken to relevant
people in the inclusive government. He says he
understands a lawyer, Pulu,
had been engaged. Coltart gives me a hint of
what it was all about by
saying there weren’t any specific references in
this exhibition to any
particular person, “although the glasses...”
The Gallery receptionist is
expecting me and I am taken to the exhibition in
the main ground floor
gallery where staff is covering with newspaper the
windows, which give views
into the Gallery from the pavement of Leopold
Takawira Avenue.
The whole
exhibition area, walls, pillars, paintings is drenched in a sticky
looking
red and as you enter you see a sign that directs you to “Place your
ballot
here”. “Here” is a toilet stuffed and overflowing with ballot papers
where a
sinister black figure wearing spectacles seems about to pull the
chain to
flush the toilet.
Telling the truth and reclaiming the past in
Zimbabwe...
This acrylic 2010 exhibition is by Owen Maseko, also now at the
police
Charge Office with Thebe. While the atmosphere is one of terror and
bloodshed, it is also oddly elegant with graceful figures of pregnant women
and others fleeing, or trying to flee, along the walls. Even the friezes of
a sinister black man wearing glasses are elegant.
One of the most
haunting depictions is a set of galvanised faces, loud
mouths wide open,
imperfect teeth on display, eyes contorted under deeply
etched foreheads
....... they made us sing their songs while they tortured
and killed our
brothers and sisters .........
I join the staff who are papering the windows
and look at what had been
possible to see from the street, but was now being
hidden.
Breaking the silence — through telling the truth. Two black bodies,
also
drenched in a sticky red, hang by the ankles....dissidents or ordinary
civilians? ................The idea was not only to leave bodies but to
leave pieces of bodies, as a warning to others...
... they disappeared
are denied a place among the living and also denied a
place among the
dead......
In Matabeleland most fundamental is the problem of aggrieved
spirits and the
presence of the murdered dead.
Amongst the paintings
writing fluidly covers spaces across the walls and
around the pillars.
In
our country, perpetrators of violence are still in powerful positions,
and
survivors remain silenced and afraid. The overwhelming residues of
unprocessed pain, anger, suspicion and grief remain in the community as a
negative, silent weight, a dark, even humiliating secret that undermines
shared community activities, causing finger pointing and
division....
Destroying the cohesive functioning of communities has been a
deliberate
strategic policy by many governments of African countries.
We
don’t trust each other any more.
Only the guilty are afraid, only if you know
that you are partly
responsible, or you participated in the orchestration of
this event. “I
survived with gunshot wounds, the other 55 died.”
We can
still be eliminated at any time ... this wound is huge and deep.
As no one
will now be able to see the exhibition; they also won’t be able to
see what
was put in place at the exit for departing viewers under the
exhortation
GUKURAHUNDI ..the rain which washes away the trash/chaff before
spring time
....... times fearful, unforgettable and unacknowledged. A bowl
of pieces
of chalk sits at the way out. Visitors are invited to “pick a
chalk and
write something in this ballot room”. Although the exhibition
opened only
the evening before last, Thursday March 25, the sticky red wall
is already
full of white, chalky comments.
Leaving the Gallery I call in to say goodbye
to an old lady in their little
shop. “What is going on?” she asked. I
explain. When I remain silent she
sighs heavily, waves her hand irritably
in the air at something unseen and
says “Well, that is our
country”.
By Judith Todd
Notes from Bulawayo
Saturday,
27 March 2010
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/
Saturday, 03 April 2010
19:13
TWELVE years ago, war veterans went on a shopping binge after
President
Robert Mugabe was forced to dole out Z$50 000 to each of them as
compensation for their role in the liberation struggle. They splashed money
recklessly on all manner of luxuries. Some went to the ridiculous extent of
buying cabbages to feed their cattle.
Predictably, the cash
quickly ran out leaving many sinking back into
obscurity and pervasive
poverty.
Fast forward to present day, the "war vets" have now
reincarnated as
"varimi" (small-scale farmers) after benefiting from
President Robert Mugabe's
widely discredited land reform
programme.
They have bounced back on the scene as small-scale tobacco
farmers who bring
their produce to the auction floors in
Harare.
This new breed of "war vets" is loaded with cash and is
evidently willing to
buy anything as long as it has got a price
tag.
After visiting Boka Tobacco Auction Floors and Burley Marketing
Zimbabwe
(BMZ) in Harare last week one gets a sense of de javu all over
again.
The farmers have fitted perfectly into this void left by the
war vets.
But they are sitting ducks and they are at the mercy of
some wily vendors
out to make a fast buck.
The new farmers
scramble for Buddie starter packs which cost US$2 each on
the formal market
but go for US$17 at the auction floors.
Car traders are also cashing
in on the gullibility of the new farmers
outside the floors.
A
1995 Mazda B1800 truck is going for US$5 000 while a 1992 Mercedes Benz
SE320 is listed as a "giveaway" for US$10 000.
To an ordinary man
in the street, this is daylight robbery, but the "varimi"
see it as a good
bargain.
With vendors invading the place from all over the country,
competition for
space has reached its peak.
They are competing
for space with graves on the periphery of Granville
Cemetery that is
adjacent to the auction floors.
The Harare City Council has moved in
to peg vending sheds at the location
for a fee of US$25 (administration) and
US$70 monthly rentals. Even
established banks and companies such as Dore
& Pitt, Farm & City Centre
have also set base
there.
Farmers who spoke to The Standard last week said delays in the
payment of
their tobacco left them at the mercy of
vendors.
Veronica Madhume (51) from Rusape said she had been at the
auction floors
for some days waiting for her produce to be
bought.
"I am hungry and if anyone comes to me with a bottle of Coke
and is selling
it for US$5, I will buy it because I do not know how to move
around Harare.
"The Easter Holiday is almost here and once I get my
money I will hire
transport back to my land no matter what fare they charge
me.
"I just want to return home because I am tired of sleeping on
concrete
floors and the mosquitoes are just too much."
Tobacco
farmer Luke Mugwisi (38) says house owners in the nearby suburb of
Glen
Norah were now taking advantage of the situation.
"As you can see
there are not enough toilets and bathrooms here so some
farmers go to Glen
Norah where they are charged US$2 for a bath," he said.
"The
authorities must provide mobile toilets before an outbreak of diseases
here."
Agnes Marowa of Centenary said most farmers do their
ablutions in the bushy
area just outside the premises of the auction
floors.
Just a few metres away, vendors could be seen serving food to
hungry farmers
even though there was no running water.
Chances of
the farmers contracting water-borne diseases such as cholera and
typhoid are
very high considering the absence of enough running water at a
place where
thousands gather every day.
They sleep in the open, or under any
available shelter like verandas and in
cars.
But a security
guard, who mans the premises, said at least 100 people were
arrested every
single day for pick-pocketing, stealing and at times muggings
during the
night.
"I think the police should deploy more plainclothes police
officers here
because a lot of farmers are going back home empty-handed,"
said the
security guard.
"The thieves are so daring that they at
times challenge us."
Prostitution has also become rampant at the two
auction floors.
Even young girls in their teens are commuting from as
far as Chitungwiza,
Norton, Hatcliffe and Epworth in search of
clients.
They have a unique way of identifying potential clients who
can easily
splash out money. "I don't just go for anybody," said a
24-year-old woman
who identified herself as Elleanor.
"I go for
those with huge jackets, a bag and usually with hats because I
know they are
farmers and have the money to pay me."
They charge an average of
US$30 for a "quickie" (short-time) and between
US$100 and US$150 for the
whole night.
This, health officials at Hopley said, has resulted in
the high incidence of
sexually transmitted infections (STIs) at the compound
as most of the
farmers are quite happy to forego the use of condoms on
"beautiful city
girls".
Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board
chief executive officer Andrew Matibiri
referred all questions regarding the
conditions at auction floors to Zitec,
which runs the
place.
Efforts to get a comment from Zitec last week were
fruitless.
BY CAIPHAS CHIMHETE AND NIGEL MATONGOERE
http://www.timesonline.co.uk
April
4, 2010
Every day millions of dollars’
worth of diamonds leave Zimbabwe from the
world’s richest diamond field. But
none of that money reaches the country's
desperate poor. Who are the men
plundering a nation’s future?
Jon Swain
One night in February,
eight men armed with AK-47 assault rifles raided the
Zimbabwe headquarters
of a British-based diamond company. Overpowering its
four guards, they stole
computers, files and a pick-up truck that they
dumped in a nearby hotel car
park, its keys still in the ignition. Then they
vanished into the night as
swiftly as they had come.
It was a raid carried out by hard men who knew
their business and wanted
this to look like an ordinary robbery. They were
not regular thieves,
however, but agents of the shadowy Central Intelligence
Organisation (CIO),
and this was the latest development in a
David-and-Goliath struggle that
pits one man against a cabal of corrupt
figures at the summit of the
Zimbabwean state.
The outcome of the
battle has international ramifications. At stake is the
unimaginable wealth
to be had from the world’s oldest and, it is said,
richest diamond field,
with the potential to bring in a billion dollars a
year. “Whoever owns the
diamond field controls Zimbabwe and could buy any
country in Africa,” one
western diplomat says.
Andrew Cranswick is the “David” whose offices — a
modern two-storey building
enclosed by a high wall in an avenue close to the
central police
headquarters and State House in Harare — were raided. The
operation was
staged by the CIO to intimidate and discourage him from
continuing his fight
to operate the diamond field. In 2006 Cranswick’s
company, African
Consolidated Resources (ACR), set up by both white and
black Zimbabweans,
was looking for new mining opportunities in Zimbabwe. It
pegged a claim to
an abandoned, unexploited field, bought for a nominal sum
on the chance of
finding diamonds there. Problems arose when diamonds were
found.
The field is in southern Marange, a dry, barren, sparsely
populated district
in the hills southeast of Harare, close to the Mozambique
border. To his
surprise and delight, Cranswick discovered that the diamonds
making up the
bulk of the find were not, as might have been expected,
low-grade industrial
diamonds. Among them was a large proportion of valuable
gem diamonds. But
his euphoria was short-lived. Zimbabwe’s Mines and
Minerals Act demands that
those discovering valuable gem diamonds must
declare the fact and give the
GPS position to the government. Within hours,
CIO agents seized the
diamonds, worth US$6m, and Cranswick has not seen them
since.
A white African adventurer — bronzed, rugged, totally at ease in
the bush —
Cranswick, 47, does not scare easily. He was born in Zimbabwe and
grew up on
a farm in the middle of nowhere during the Rhodesian war, which
saw the end
of white minority rule and led to President Robert Mugabe’s rise
to power in
1980. As a teenager he slept with a Sten gun under his
bed.
Although the Zimbabwe High Court ruled in September that ACR clearly
owns
the Marange field, Cranswick, the CEO, has a colossal fight on his
hands to
get it back from the government. In February the Supreme Court
ordered all
mining to cease pending a final ruling on ownership. Its
judgment has been
ignored. Meanwhile, millions of dollars from the diamonds
are being siphoned
off by President Mugabe, his diamond-loving wife, Grace,
and their greedy
inner circle to enrich and entrench themselves in power a
few years longer.
Mugabe’s circle has failed to give any of the profits from
Cranswick’s
diamond field to their own impoverished state.
Since
early 2009, Zimbabwe has had a unity government. But real power lies
with
Mugabe and the security chiefs in control of the armed forces, police
and
intelligence services. The government is powerless to stop this inner
circle. A parliamentary committee looking into operations in Marange was
snubbed for months. “The government has not received a cent from the biggest
find of alluvial diamonds in the history of mankind,” Tendai Biti, the
finance minister, has complained.Cranswick’s battle for justice is risky. In
March, the CIO raided his house and offices. He has received death threats.
Last year, a gang of Israeli diamond smugglers put out a contract on him to
make sure he did not get in the way of their supply of diamonds smuggled out
of Marange. Now, impeccable sources told me that beside his name in secret
government files is written the word “Bull-Bar” — CIO code for a person
designated to meet with a “road accident”. Cranswick has made light of it,
but this is no joke. A surprising number of Mugabe’s opponents have died in
strange road crashes in the past 30 years. Cranswick is on guard not to
become another victim. But he also says he is not going to lose sleep over
it. Risk is part and parcel of living and working in Zimbabwe. It goes with
a certain freedom he likes, which he knows he could not have
elsewhere.
What extra precautions will he take? “Check my car regularly
and drive
faster,” he said. His colleagues raised their eyes to the ceiling.
He
already has a legendary appetite for speed.
“Andrew is the classic
entrepreneur personality,” said one. “He’s very
bright. His brain is very
agile and he’s also a bullish, couldn’t-give-a-shit,
don’t-stand-in-my-way
type of person. Andrew is liked in the City [of
London] because he’s an
Indiana Jones character. He knows how to drive
through obstacles that crop
up in Africa, increasing shareholder value, and
they admire
him.”
After training in geology, Cranswick worked for Anglo American in
South
Africa, then settled in Mugabe’s independent Zimbabwe, got married and
had
two daughters. Exploiting Zimbabwe’s emerging-market status and the tech
boom, he founded a group of IT companies, including the country’s first
commercial internet service provider, which he sold for a couple of million
dollars in 2000 at the height of the dotcom boom. He took his family to
Perth and bought and ran the biggest cattle ranch in Australia. But the lure
of Zimbabwe was too strong. Soon he was back home, involving himself in ACR,
the mineral exploration company he founded in 2003. He has based it in
Britain and listed it on the London Stock Exchange to attract foreign
investment.
Mutual friends in Zimbabwe had told me Cranswick had a
fascinating story to
tell, and they were right. It was in a King’s Road
coffee shop at the end of
2009 that I first heard his unlikely tale of
coming upon the world’s richest
diamond field in an empty corner of Africa.
Telling me how he had discovered
the diamonds and how destabilising for
Zimbabwe the discovery could be, he
invited me to come and see for myself.
In the event, it was not possible to
get into Marange, as security forces
blocked our way. But I soon saw how
easy it was to buy diamonds smuggled out
of the mine.
In January, within minutes of checking into a hotel at
Manica, a seedy town
a few miles over the border inside Mozambique crammed
with black-market gem
dealers, I was offered a clear 11.66-carat diamond for
$29,000 by one of
scores of Lebanese diamond dealers operating there. The
man said smugglers
brought diamonds across the border daily hidden in their
mouths. Nobody
cared that they were illegally mined.Cranswick had not
initially expected
much to come of his claim at Marange: the mining giant De
Beers had pulled
out of Zimbabwe, letting its claim on the field lapse —
surely it would not
have turned its back on something big. But once he did a
bit of work with
his geologists, Cranswick found precious diamonds scattered
all over the
stony ground. To the untrained eye they looked like pebbles.
They were so
common that children were using them in their catapults to
shoot birds.
Zimbabwe was in the middle of an economic and humanitarian
nightmare. Once
the breadbasket of southern Africa, under Mugabe it had
descended into
joblessness and hunger. Astrono-mical inflation had destroyed
its currency.
Corrupt politics had ruined it. As he drove to Marange in
2006, past vast
tracts of fertile farmland lying fallow as a result of
Mugabe’s disastrous
land reforms, Cranswick could not help thinking how the
wealth from the
diamonds could be used to turn the country around. Zimbabwe
was the country
of his birth; he wanted it to succeed and he wanted to be
part of the
success.
Within hours of Cranswick reporting his find,
the telephone rang in his
Harare offices. It was someone from the CIO —
whose chief, Happyton
Bonyongwe, owns a big farm near Marange taken from a
white family —
demanding the surrender of the diamonds. They wrote a
receipt, but
Crans-wick has not set eyes on the gems since, despite a
Supreme Court order
for them to be returned. Worse was to come: the
government cancelled ACR’s
title and banned it from the site, much as it had
evicted white farmers from
their farms.
This was the moment Cranswick
realised his discovery had opened a Pandora’s
box. He recounted the chaos
that some of the most senior figures in the
regime then unleashed on
Marange. Having evicted ACR, the government at
first encouraged a diamond
rush open to anyone to boost its flagging
popularity: 35,000 people flocked
to Marange from all over Zimbabwe and, as
word spread, from as far afield as
West Africa, India, Pakistan and China to
mine or buy diamonds. Mining was
primitive, involving digging by hand in
mud, sand and gravel, then panning
with hand-held sieves. Chaos and violence
ensued as miners trampled over
each other in the rush.
Millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds were
smuggled out via Mozambique and
South Africa, then shipped to Europe, India
and the Middle East for cutting
and polishing. It was an uncontrollable
free-for-all. Police operations to
quell the smuggling targeted only the
small players, leaving alone the
powerfully connected smugglers and buyers,
who operated with impunity.
These so-called diamond barons were working
for the personal accounts of a
select wealthy few, the sharks at the top of
the military and security
services — people such as General Constantine
Chiwenga, the ambitious,
thuggish army chief; Emmerson Mnangagwa, the
wealthy defence minister;
Solomon Mujuru, a retired army general who
commanded Mugabe’s guerrilla
forces during the war against white rule in the
then Rhodesia, and his wife,
Joyce, Mugabe’s vice-president; Gideon Gono,
governor of the central bank;
and Augustine Chihuri, the powerful police
chief. And, of course, the
Mugabes themselves.
One example: in August
2008, a diamond dealer was caught by an over-zealous
policeman at a road
block outside Marange with 262 diamonds valued at $1.3m
in his vehicle’s air
cleaner. It was no surprise when he walked out of court
a free man after
being cleared of any wrongdoing and with the magistrate
criticising the
police for doing a shoddy job; he was operating for Mujuru.
In October
2008, diamond fever hit such a peak that a joint operation of the
army,
police and intelligence officers was launched to take over the field.
Its
real aim was to give the syndicates operated by the sharks free rein. By
this time the province of Manicaland in which Marange is located was in new
hands. Mugabe had appointed as governor Christopher Mushowe, his former
butler and a relative of his wife. Mushowe is part of the ring profiting
from the diamonds.
Dubbed Operation Hakudzokwi Kamunda (You Won’t
Come Back), the crackdown
began on October 27 with military helicopters
indiscriminately firing
automatic weapons to drive out the diggers. On the
ground, hundreds of
soldiers opened fire without warning. In the panic
miners were trapped and
died in the tunnels they had dug. In three weeks,
more than 200 perished.
The police caught a girl who had been selling
cigarettes to the panners.
Wanting to make an example of people who were
helping out, they put her in a
circle and set their dogs on her. She was
torn to pieces in front of her
parents, who were left to bury her remains.
Some had their stomachs slashed
open by soldiers looking for stones. One man
said he knew of 14 panners who
were shot dead in one morning. Survivors were
forced to bury the dead in
mass graves.
The killings caused
international outrage. Zimbabwe was accused of trading
in “blood diamonds”,
which fuel conflict, and a campaign took root to ban
its diamonds from world
markets. There were calls for Zimbabwe’s suspension
from the Kimberley
Process certification scheme (KP) — a mechanism set up
with UN backing to
prohibit the sale of blood diamonds. Angelina Jolie and
Brad Pitt called for
a ban on any purchase or sale of Marange diamonds.
Any hope that
referring Zimbabwe to the KP would bring about proper, legal
and secure
management of the mine has proved unfounded, however. “The
Kimberley Process
is well-meaning but toothless. It is easily bypassed if
good stones are on
offer, and it can’t be relied on to bring the field into
proper management,”
Cranswick said. “First of all it has to make sure there
is no smuggling, and
to do that it needs at least 20 or 30 monitors driving
and flying around on
a regular basis until the field is secured by a fence,
which it is not. It
should be checking to see whether any diamonds are being
smuggled into
Mozambique. The British perhaps could bring pressure.
Mozambique is a member
of the Commonwealth now. Kimberley should be
monitoring the actual machinery
at the mine and counting every single gem
that comes out of that machine at
source before it has been fiddled with, so
that it can be accounted
for.”
Returning to his own struggle, Cranswick notes that nothing in
Zimbabwe is
ever black and white. He avoids getting involved in local
politics, wanting
to retain the links he needs with members of Mugabe’s
regime in order to
operate in the country. But he has kept going with his
own legal battle.
Last September, he scented victory when he won a High
Court judgment
declaring that the mineral rights of the diamond fields
belonged to ACR and
ordering the state to return the ground and the seized
diamonds.
Secret government documents obtained by The Sunday Times show
that quite the
reverse happened. Cranswick’s long-drawn-out legal process
had given Mugabe’s
lieutenants and their foreign backers — Chinese,
Israelis, South Africans —
time to entrench their systems for keeping
control of the fabulously rich
field. The old operation in which an ad hoc
set of diggers plundered the
diamonds on their behalf amid general
lawlessness has expanded into a new,
sophisticated money-making machine
largely hidden from the eyes of the
world.
The documents set out the
measures that are being taken. The Chinese army is
helping to construct a
military airstrip on ACR’s field with a one-mile-long
runway capable of
taking the biggest military transport planes. Armed
Chinese soldiers are on
the site. There are shipping containers filled with
weapons. This move
follows arms-purchasing visits by Chiwenga to China last
year. A tented army
camp has been set up under a retired brigadier, and
millions have been
invested in state-of-the-art mining machinery capable of
extracting
thousands of carats of diamonds an hour. A sophisticated
operation is also
in train to get the most valuable stones out of the
country. Stones worth
$3m-$7m are smuggled out every day. The Chinese
embassy in Harare is
involved in smuggling some out in the diplomatic bag,
according to Zimbabwe
intelligence leaks, and one of the key figures is a
Chinese man with links
to Grace Mugabe — all in defiance of the Supreme
Court’s order to halt all
mining at Marange.
The figure at the centre of the operation comes as
little surprise to those
who know him: the minister of mines, Obert Mpofu.
His name is on an EU and
US sanctions list of undesirable Zimbabweans, and
he loathes Cranswick,
blaming him for stirring up an embarrassing legal
storm. “That man will
never mine in this country as long as I am minister.
Cranswick has caused
all this chaos. His company is listed in Britain, yet
he holds Zimbabwe to
ransom,” Mpofu says.
In July 2009, with
top-level backing, Mpofu entered into joint ventures with
two questionable
partners to exploit the field. It did not matter that
neither was an
established professional mining company like ACR, nor that at
the time legal
title to the mine was hotly disputed. “No background checks
and due
diligences were allowed, as this was blocked by Honourable Mpofu,”
said a
secret report I was shown. The paper also revealed that he had “paid
dividends to many officials to shut their mouths”; one deputy minister was
paid $10m.The first partner Mpofu found was the New Reclamation Group
(Reclam), operating through a subsidiary, Mbada Diamond Mining. South
Africa’s
biggest scrap-metal company, Reclam has been prosecuted in South
Africa for
illegal price-fixing. Its executive chairman, David Kassel, and
Mpofu knew
each other from a fraudulent steel deal in Zimbabwe.
Mbada
is chaired by Robert Mhlanga, a former Zimbabwe air vice-marshal. He
is
Mpofu’s cousin, was also involved in the steel deal, and insiders say he
is
acting as a front for the Mugabes. He has a close relationship with the
86-year-old president going back to when he was the country’s first black
helicopter pilot.
Mhlanga has made a fortune in Africa. He was in the
diamond trade in Congo
in the late 1990s, when Zimbabwean troops fought in
the war there. He was
also a key witness in an attempt in 2003 to frame the
now prime minister
Morgan Tsvangirai, a fierce political opponent of Mugabe
and now his
reluctant coalition partner, for treason. Operating from
expensive offices
in Johannesburg, Mhlanga has such strong links to Mugabe
that he flies his
helicopter in and out of Zimbabwe at will without passing
the usual
immigration and customs controls. He parks his helicopter at the
mine. He
has diplomatic status and direct access to Mugabe.
The
second company Mpofu signed up to mine at Marange is Canadile Miners of
South Africa, which is believed to be smuggling out $1m-$2m of diamonds
every day. “Reclam have to pretend, because of their shareholders, that they
are squeaky clean and complying with the Kimberley Process,” says Cranswick,
“but Canadile are not interested. They are mostly smugglers and crooks who
want their diamonds and money, full stop.”
The registered director of
Canadile is a retired Zimbabwean major, Lovemore
Kurotwi. Inside sources
said he was primarily working for a military
syndicate that “goes all the
way to Chiwenga”, the army chief. He is the
nephew of the late army chief
General Vitalis Zvinavashe, a member of the
Zanu-PF politburo named by the
UN as one of the main figures to profit from
the plunder of Congo’s diamond
riches. He is also linked to Mnangagwa, the
defence minister.
The
riches Mhlanga made in Congo are nothing compared with those being made
at
Marange. I was told that his company, Mbada, is smuggling out gems worth
$2m-$5m every day. “Diamonds are airlifted to South Africa at unscheduled
times weekly,” said a secret government intelligence report of goings-on at
Marange. “Air Vice Marshal R Mhlanga airlifts the diamonds to South
Africa.”
The report also sensationally revealed that Marange diamonds
were sometimes
airlifted from Charles Prince Airport in Harare disguised as
de-mining
equipment. “The mind boggles why they need a military-style
airstrip on our
concession,” said Cranswick. “It must be for dubious
purposes. After all,
the world’s entire production of diamonds in a single
day can be carried in
one helicopter.” Mpofu has finally admitted to the
parliamentary committee
investigating Marange that he was aware some of the
directors of the two
companies mining there were involved in shady deals.
“He said he had done
his research and this was the trend worldwide. The
committee was fooling
itself by thinking it could get a clean diamond
investor,” said a source who
attended the briefing by the minister, which
was held in camera.
Cranswick claims he has repeatedly tried to negotiate
a joint venture with
the government to extract and market the diamonds from
Marange, but to no
avail. He has proposed a deal in which ACR would retain
49%; 2% or 3% would
be for the benefit of the local community; and the
balance would be held by
whoever the government approves. “What is at stake
is not just big profits
but the future of Zimbabwe. If the bad guys keep it,
then it is the end of
the country. Now 100% of the gems are going out of the
country. They are
selling none of them here in Zimbabwe.”
Zimbabwe is
not Sierra Leone, where diamonds brought war, warlords and
terrible
atrocities. But unless it can be stopped, the great theft of
diamonds from
Marange heralds a darkening future for Zimbabwe, with billions
of dollars
lost to the nation’s coffers and potential funding for a future
military
coup in place.
Comment
David Ashton wrote:
How's this for bad
luck for Zimbabwe. Mugabe is being brought to his knees
and then he gets
hold of this fabulously rich diamond mine. There's no hope
of getting him
out now. The world won't do anything. South Africa won't do
anything. He's
got free rein, and any sanctions are but a minor annoyance.
As pointed out
above, diamonds are easy to sell through dubious channels.
Andrew has no
hope of getting his concession back.
April 4, 2010 12:15 AM BST on
community.timesonline.co.uk
http://www.timeslive.co.za
Apr 4, 2010 12:00 AM | By Harare
Correspondent
ANC Youth League (ANCYL) leader Julius Malema will be roped in
to cut deals
in Zimbabwe - mainly in farming and mining - say party insiders
of Robert
Mugabe's Zanu-PF.
Malema was received with much fanfare
by a group of Zanu-PF-linked
businessmen when he arrived in Harare this
weekend. Most of those who
welcomed him are campaigning for the state
seizure of foreign-owned
companies.
Zanu-PF insiders believe Malema's
visit was motivated as much by business as
by politics.
A Zanu-PF
official told the Sunday Times: "Look at the people who were at
the
forefront of receiving Malema. They are not in the Zanu-PF Youth
League -
some of them are not even in Zanu-PF - but (they) are in business.
This
tells you what they are up to and what will be going on behind the
scenes.
"They are like vultures hovering over a cadaver. Malema is
going to be
dealing with business sharks, not those party youths who have no
money."
When Malema arrived at the airport, Zanu-PF youths sang a
variation of the
contentious song Dubul'ibhunu (Shoot the boer).
The
welcoming party included the head of Youth Development, Indigenisation
and
Empowerment, Saviour Kasukuwere, Mugabe's nephew; business magnate
Philip
Chiyangwa; and Themba Mliswa, a tycoon who has been involved in
seizing
farms and muscling his way into established businesses.
Kasukuwere and
Chiyangwa said Malema was visiting Zimbabwe to exchange notes
on
"indigenisation" and economic transformation.
However, the ANCYL said the
visit - hosted by the Zanu-PF Youth - was about
"strengthening relations
with former liberation movements".
Kasukuwere said: "This visit is about
forces with a common history coming
together to ensure that we take control
of our resources for the benefit of
the majority.
"Our resources
cannot remain under the control of Anglo American, Zimplats
and the
Australians."
Malema is set to visit Zimplats - which is majority-owned
by South Africa's
Implats - on what Zanu-PF said was "a familiarisation
tour".
The company has sought assurances that it will not be grabbed by
Mugabe's
cronies.
Malema is expected to meet Mugabe today.
Owen Maseko says his paintings of 1980s brutality are an attempt to help the country heal itself
One of Zimbabwe's most prominent artists has defied Robert Mugabe's regime in a hard-hitting interview with the Observer as he awaits trial for "undermining the authority of the president".
Owen Maseko, whose latest exhibition has been closed down by the authorities, said a failure to confront the past is preventing the country from healing itself, after 30 years of brutal rule by President Robert Mugabe.
Speaking after spending four nights in police cells, Maseko, 35, said: "There are mass graves in our country. If people are to move on, they need to rebury their brothers, sisters and mothers in peace."
Maseko was arrested less than 24 hours after his new exhibition opened at the National Gallery in Bulawayo. The move marked the second clampdown in a week on artistic activity in Zimbabwe, suggesting that a new offensive against freedom of expression is under way.
Maseko's works - three installations and 12 paintings, many featuring violent recollections of the murder of up to 20,000 Ndebele people in the south of the country in the 1980s - are now locked out of view. Police have used newspapers to cover windows through which "Two Dissidents" - figures of a man and a woman hanging upside down - could be seen from the street.
Maseko is charged with undermining the president's authority, under the Public Order and Security Act. The eight officers who interrogated him for 12 hours after he was arrested nine days ago wanted to know his political affiliation. "I explained that, as an artist, I have to be relevant to the society I live in," he said. "I do not have political motivations, just inspiration. If I express a burning issue inside myself, I am healing myself and I am helping others to be healed, because I am bringing into the open a topic that people are afraid to talk about."
Maseko's exhibition is called Sibathontisele (Let's Drip On Them), an allusion to blood, but also to the form of torture using burning plastic that was institutionalised during the Gukurahundi military offensive against Ndebele civilians in the 1980s.
The Gukurahundi - a Shona word for the spring rains that sweep away dry season chaff - was Mugabe's response to the rivalry after independence in 1980 between his Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) and Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu). Mugabe is a Shona, whereas Nkomo was from the Kalanga, a tribe associated with the Ndebele from Matabeleland, whose capital is Bulawayo. Mugabe destroyed Nkomo's power by terrorising the people of Matabeleland. Eventually Nkomo retired from politics and the two parties merged into the Zanu-Patriotic Front.
"I was eight in 1983, but I remember a plane that flew low over our Bulawayo suburb and army loud-hailers screaming: 'You are surrounded.' Every family in Matabeleland has painful memories from this time and everyone knows people who disappeared," said Masuko. "The soldiers organised mass executions and burned people in their homes. They forced others to watch and made them sing Shona songs. That's the subject of my painting, Babylon Songs."
The artist is due to appear in court on 12 April. He is appealing to the high court for permission to reopen the exhibition. One of his starkest installations is a reflection of the artist's despairing view of elections: "It is called Ballot Room and shows a Perspex ballot box with a toilet inside filled with Ndebele names."
In February 2009, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) joined a unity government, promising to oversee the drafting of a new constitution leading to free elections. Attacks against MDC supporters continue, however. Two days before Maseko's exhibition was due to open, police briefly confiscated 66 photographs from an exhibition organised by the human rights organisation ZimRights, in Harare.
Maseko said: "The climate for artists is difficult, complicated. Many have been tremendously supportive of me, but many are watching to see what happens. We do now have a debate under way around the new constitution and, as a result of what is happening to artists, discussions around the issue of censorship have now been launched.
"Despite what has happened to me, this feels very liberating."
http://www.ipsnews.net
By Ignatius
Banda
BULAWAYO, Apr 3, 2010 (IPS) - The plumes of smoke rising above
the dense
working class suburbs of Bulawayo are a sign of the environmental
impact of
Zimbabwe's electricity crisis.
In January, the Hwange
Thermal Power Station broke down. Zimbabwe
Electricity Supply Authority
(ZESA) spokeperson Fullard Gwasira announced
that the country's power supply
had dropped to just 750 megawatts, barely a
third of Zimbabwe's peak demand
for 2,200 MW.
Faced with frequent power cuts, millions of people across
the country have
increasingly turned to wood as an alternative energy
source, to cook and
heat their homes during the winter.
Deforestation
is not a new phenomenon in Zimbabwe. The country lost more
than 20 percent
of its forest cover between 1990 and 2005, an average loss
of 312,900
hectares, according to statistics compiled by environment website
Mongabay
from a variety of sources including the the United Nation's
Environment
Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Still more alarming,
the rate of forest loss accelerated by 16 percent
between 2000 and 2005 as
political and economic crisis gripped the country.
The controversial land
reform exercise that began in 2000, which saw
veterans of the 1970s war of
liberation occupy many large farms owned by
Zimbabwe's white minority, has
contributed to reduced agricultural yields
and environmental
degradation.
Two or three times a week, James Chulu hires a donkey-drawn
cart to tour the
small farming plots in areas on the outskirts of Bulawayo
to buy wood for
sale in the city. Conservationists say the new occupiers of
land in areas
like Nyamandlovu and Plumtree are felling trees without
replanting anything
for the next generation.
"They have been selling
us the firewood for sometime now," Chulu said. "But
after ZESA began cutting
electricity for hours (at a time) last year, the
demand has gone up and we
have virtually stripped the woodlands."
Thabilise Gumpo, of conservation
group Environment Africa, is just one of
many concerned
observers.
"We will be left with no forests or trees and one has to
imagine the deserts
we are creating in the process all because of the
electricity outages," she
told IPS. "But it is difficult (to raise
objections) when this is the only
energy source the people have. The
environment has been the worst casualty
here."
So severely depleted
is the supply of wood, that residents have begun to
sacrifice precious fruit
trees. Judith Mwale, a widow and grandmother whose
face and posture betray
60 years of toil, can't afford the wood sold by
vendors like Chulu, one U.S.
dollar for a bundle of three small pieces.
"I had no choice but ask some
young men in the neighbourhood to chop down
the trees. How else would I
prepare my meals and feed these children?" Mwale
asked.
"What can we
do?" Chulu says, shrugging his shoulders. He and Mwale both
exemplify a
common local attitude that the environment will take care of
itself.
But environment activist Gumpo fears that future generations
will "inherit
the wind."
"It is a difficult gospel to preach," she
says of conservation, at a time
when a broke government is both failing to
maintain its own generating
facilities or to settle huge electricity bills
for power imported from
neighbouring South Africa, the Democratic Republic
of Congo and Zambia.
Chulu can't wait for another power cut. For him it
remains business as
usual.