Mail and Guardian
John Grobler | Windhoek, Namibia
05 April 2007
07:43
Working closely with the Central Intelligence
Organisation's
(CIO) directorate of counter-intelligence, Zanu-PF has been
setting up
secret death squads comprising members of the National Youth
Service
training programme.
The squads petrol bomb
political opponents' homes, commit acts
of sabotage and torture opponents to
President Robert Mugabe's regime, a
former member of one such death squad
said this week.
John Gweru (22)*, who joined the National
Youth Service in late
2005 out of desperation, related graphic and often
stomach-turning details
of secret prisons and torture camps, systematic
rapes at the Bindura farm
training camp and secret jails across the
country.
In a voluntary written statement to the Mail &
Guardian running
to more than 50 pages and several hours of videotaped
evidence given to
human rights activists, Gweru painted a picture of a
regime that has
descended to thuggish depravity in its attempt to hang on to
power.
Gweru fled Zimbabwe early this year after he could no
longer
stomach "the work" and eventually found his way to Namibia, where he
took
shelter with other Zimbabweans in the small coastal town of
Lüderitz.
But a week ago, someone, who he later realised was
his former
handler at the CIO, began following and photographing him. Gweru
realised
his life was at risk when the shack he was living in was broken
into and a
satchel containing evidence of the CIO's spying activities on
Western
ambassadors and Zimbabwean ministers was stolen.
Gweru had taken the documents from Lands and Security Minister
Didymus
Mutasa's house because he wanted evidence of the intelligence
organisation's
activity. These included reports on spying activities at the
British Council
and the United States embassy in Harare, he said.
He then
contacted the M&G to tell his story because, "if I die,
I want people to
know why I died", said the quietly spoken former "green
bomber" -- as the
National Youth Service volunteers are known.
In the course of
several exhaustive interviews, Gweru related
how he and three other
individuals, whose identity the M&G knows but cannot
divulge, who were
selected for their mental and physical prowess during
initial para-military
training, came to be known as the "Charlie four" unit.
There are also other
such units, but Charlie four was considered to be the
best, Gweru
said.
Charlie four, which reported to senior Zanu-PF and CIO
officials
in Harare, eventually took its orders from a man named Joshua
Sibanda, who,
Gweru said, appeared to be the head of the CIO's directorate
of
counter-intelligence operations.
Sibanda -- who always
wore a CIO ID card identifying him as
Phillip Chitiyo -- also contacted the
M&G as well as human rights workers in
Namibia this week, and offered to
"make a deal on that young man".
In several telephonic
conversations, in which Sibanda identified
himself by his real name and made
it clear that he had access to Namibian
cellphone records, he threatened
that "he [Gweru] will not get away".
Namibian security
officials contacted for comment expressed
serious alarm at Sibanda's
activities and promised to investigate what they
termed "a totally illegal
foreign operation".
Throughout their training, which included
political
indoctrination, weapons handling, martial arts and torture
techniques, it
was always impressed upon members of the squads that they
were to support
the presidential campaign of Emmerson Mnangagwa and not
vice-president Joyce
Mujuru, who was considered a political liability by the
CIO, Gweru said.
In a period of training over six months --
and interspersed with
"technical assignments", which included guarding and
spying on certain
government ministers' homes in Harare --Gweru said he had
been involved in
sabotaging the Harare-Bulawayo railway line, breaking up an
MDC rally at
which opposition activist Trudi Stevenson's arm was broken, and
petrol-bombing certain offices and homes.
Each
"assignment" was effectively seen as a test of the group's
loyalty and
reliability, and the assignments became increasingly violent as
time went
on.
Namibian human rights activists who heard Gweru's
testimony said
the details he has provided are consistent with reports they
have about
torture, violence and the existence of secret prisons in
Zimbabwe. Gweru,
who was moved out of Namibia to an unknown European
destination by human
rights workers this week, continues to fear for his
life, and for the lives
of his remaining relatives in
Zimbabwe.
'Beating where it hurts'
Throughout
training it was made clear to the Youth Service
members that the worst
possible fate awaited anyone who dared run away. They
were shown several
secret jails in which people who had defied the Mugabe
regime were being
held, Gweru said.
On their first visit to Zanu-PF
headquarters in Harare in the
middle of last year, a certain Tawanda took
them down to the B2 section, a
former parking garage underneath the
building. There, Tawanda used a remote
control to open a hidden door to a
section of prison cells, Gweru said.
Among the prisoners were two white men,
one of whom told Gweru that he had
been abducted and accused of being a CIA
spy. Tawanda later told the group
that the people were all "political
prisoners".
The same day, they were taken to the Central
Intelligence
Organisation (CIO) headquarter's top floor where they were
shown a cell
containing six people in leg chains and manacles and covered in
blood. They
were told not to talk to them, Gweru said.
A
day later at Bindura farm, their instructors identified only
as Muza,
Mazhombwe and Mkarati arrived in two vehicles, one of which was a
prison van
with three men dressed in uniforms.
They were told that the
men were long-term prisoners "who would
not be missed by anyone" and on whom
they were to try their newly acquired
torture techniques: "electronically,
randomly and beating where it hurts".
When the first prisoner
was manacled to a special table, they
were told to beat him under the feet.
When Gweru's instructor did not find
him enthusiastic enough for his
instructors' liking, he was "lashed" with a
rubber baton and given gin to
drink and marijuana to smoke.
He and his colleagues then
proceeded to beat the prisoners's
feet until they turned black and their
victim defecated before passing out.
Gweru wept as he recalled how the
second man was tortured with an electronic
device that looked like an
"old-fashioned amplifier" until he also defecated
and passed
out.
For the third man, Mkarati took out a first-aid box that
contained packaging tape, a hammer, a screw-driver and a pair of pliers,
which Mkarati then used to rip pieces of the victim's ear off after taping
up his mouth. Mazhombwe then took over and used the pliers to rip out one of
the victim's testicles.
Months later, the group was
driven to a farm in the Goromonzi
area, guarded by the Zimbabwean Defence
Force. They were taken to a basement
where there were about 20 people in leg
chains, all showing signs of severe
torture.
These
people, they were told, were also "political prisoners"
who had attempted to
assassinate President Robert Mugabe. Some were as young
as 18 to 22 years,
Gweru said.
Early on in his training, it was made clear to
Gweru that once
he were part of the National Youth Service system, there was
no getting out.
At one stage, he and four of his friends were forced to
gang-rape a female
Youth Service volunteer as "punishment" for making an
illegal phone call,
and he and his friend Gideon decided to run
away.
Female volunteers, who numbered between 50 and 60 of
the 250
youths at Bindura Farm, were regularly raped, Gweru said. Some of
the male
youths would boast about "fixing" this or that girl, and many
sported bite
marks on their shoulders, he said.
At night,
he could hear screams coming from the adjacent female
dorms, and their
instructors regularly used the women as sex slaves.
No one
was allowed to leave -- when he and Gideon were caught
trying to escape,
they were locked up. The next day they were publicly
flogged by Mazhombwe.
Because Mazhombwe liked him, Gweru was not beaten so
badly. Gweru had also
told his "instructors" that he just wanted to get out
of the camp for a bit
but was going to return before the 5am whistle.
His friend
Gideon, however, was defiant: he was fed up with
being "treated like a dog"
and insisted that he would leave. Drunk,
instructors beat Gideon so savagely
that some of the women who were forced
to watch started
crying.
Two days later, when he was released, Gweru found out
that
Gideon had died from the beating. The cook who brought him sadza and
cold
cabbage told him: "Let that be a lesson to you."
Assignments
The most testing assignment from Sibanda, Gweru's
Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO) handler, came in October last
year.
Sibanda told Gweru and his three colleagues to deliver
a package
to Lake Kariba. Once there, they were to locate a spot close the
Zambian
border where they would find a speedboat. Sibanda provided them with
cash
and the keys to a silver Honda, which had a large trunk wedged in the
back.
Sibanda told them that they would find the instructions on what to do
with
the trunk in the back of the car.
On the way to Lake
Kariba, they realised that there was someone
in the trunk. Once they had
arrived at the lake they found the speedboat
with a bag of cement
inside.
They realised they were being watched by someone
wearing
camouflage. Inside the trunk was a man whose arms had been sliced
and whose
wrist-bones were exposed from being handcuffed. The man spoke with
difficulty as his lacerated tongue bled profusely when he appealed to them:
"Please help me, my sons."
Knowing that they were being
observed, they continued the
operation, taking the boat to a point about 50m
into the lake, Gweru said.
At this point they heard a vehicle
starting and could see a
green Jeep Cherokee, as used by the Zimbabwean
Defence Force speeding off.
They subsequently dumped the trunk into the
lake.
A few months later Gweru had had enough. In early
January he
fled via Botswana "as far away as I could" before ending up in
the remote
southern Namibian coastal town of Lüderitz.
Checking the story
Fully aware of the risk that the Mail &
Guardian could be set
up, the paper's Namibian correspondent, John Grobler,
went to unusual
lengths to check the credibility of "John
Gweru".
Gweru phoned Grobler on March 28 from Lüderitz to say
he had
fled from Zimbabwe and feared for his life. Insisting a meeting could
not
wait, he travelled to Windhoek and met Grobler on March
30.
Grobler then took him through a four-stage verification
process,
designed to check his account for inconsistencies and
improbabilities,
comprising:
a.. A two-and-a-half-hour
debriefing by Grobler alone on March
30;
b.. A
three-hour debriefing in the presence of the executive
director of Namibia's
National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), Phil ya
Nangoloh;
c.. A 55-page written statement by Gweru,
compiled without
assistance;
d.. A four-and-a-half-hour
videotaped interview at the NSHR's
Windhoek headquarters on April 2, in the
presence of Zimbabwean journalist
Prince Chipanda.
There were
no inconsistencies between the accounts, and Grobler,
ya Nangoloh and
Chipanda all believe Gweru has told the truth. The M&G would
generally
not publish single-source stories, but we believe we have gone as
far as
possible to verify Gweru's account. It concurs with evidence coming
out of
Zimbabwe from numerous sources.
Grobler said he had been
further convinced by Gweru's "palpable
fear" at any mention of his handler,
Sibanda, and his visible anguish while
recounting his
experiences.
The M&G knows Gweru's real name, and has a
copy of his passport.
* Not his real name
IOL
Peter
Fabricius
April 05 2007 at 04:35AM
South African
President Thabo Mbeki's regional initiative to rescue
Zimbabwe began in
earnest on Wednesday with meetings by his senior officials
with Zimbabwe's
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in Pretoria.
Regional leaders
met for a Southern African Development Community
(SADC) extraordinary summit
in Dar es Salaam last Thursday and tasked Mbeki
to facilitate dialogue
between the Zimbabwean government and opposition to
agree on how to hold
free and fair elections next year.
Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz
Pahad said Mbeki's delegation met
Welshman Ncube and Tendai Biti - the
secretaries-general of the split MDC's
two factions - on Wednesday to
discover what they thought would be needed to
ensure free and fair
elections.
Mbeki had earlier disclosed in an
interview with Britain's Financial
Times published on Tuesday that his
officials had already met Ncube and Biti
on the Friday before the SADC
summit to seek their views.
He hoped that when they met again on
Wednesday the MDC officials would
present the South African officials with a
document setting out their
conditions for free and fair
elections.
Then "immediately we will engage Zanu-PF, saying it is
necessary to
respond to all of these".
South African officials
had earlier said that at their first meeting
with the MDC, Ncube and Biti
had agreed that Zimbabwe's constitution would
have to be amended
fundamentally to allow free and fair elections.
Mbeki indicated in
the Financial Times interview that from previous
interactions with the MDC,
he expected among the things they would want
would be changes to laws which
restrict public meetings and the media.
Mbeki was due to fly to
Tanzania last night to co-chair a meeting on
Thursday on South
African-Tanzanian relations with his counterpart,
President Jakaya Kikwete.
It seemed likely that he would report to Kikwete
on the outcome of the
meeting his officials had with Ncube and Biti.
This is because his
SADC mandate stipulated that he should report back
regularly to the chairman
of SADC's Organ on Politics, Defence and Security,
which is responsible for
regional security. Kikwete is the current chairman.
Mbeki also told
the Financial Times that he believed his current
initiative on Zimbabwe
would succeed where previous ones had failed, because
for the first time he
had an official mandate from SADC, which would deal
with either of the
Zimbabwean parties which was unco-operative.
However, he and Pahad
emphasised that South Africa and SADC could only
encourage the Zimbabweans
to talk to each other.
"Only they can agree. If not, the conflict
will become increasingly
violent. But if they don't agree, we can do nothing
but say: 'We don't like
this.'
"None of us has the power to
force them to do anything they don't want
to do. It's a very daunting
challenge."
This article was originally published on page 2 of
The Mercury on
April 05, 2007
Zimbabwejournalists.com
5th Apr 2007 01:34 GMT
By Sinikiwe Dube
HARARE - The
two-day strike called by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions
fizzled out
yesterday but running battles between the police, secret agents
and the army
continued in the densely populated and volatile communities of
Budiriro and
Glen View where residents were being routinely beaten-up.
Budiriro and
Glen View have over the past few years graduated to become the
bedrock of
opposition politics in Harare in the same way Highfield and Mbare
were
regarded during the liberation struggle.
There were running battles
yesterday as supporters of the two-day action and
unemployed youths
barricaded roads to stop commuter buses from travelling to
the city centre
with commuters intending to go to work.
Commuter buses ran normally in
other areas under the heavy police and troop
presence. Analysts say the
two-day strike against poor wages, access to
retroviral drugs, better
working conditions and related issues, was largely
a flop due to the fear
instilled in the people by government statements
ahead of the
strike.
But many also agree that the economic situation in Zimbabwe today
makes it
largely impossible for any strike action to be effective as each
person is
fighting for their own survival and to keep their jobs in a
country with
over 80 percent of its population out of jobs.
Shumirai
Kangwete of Budiro told zimbabwejournalists.com the situation in
her area
was tense ahead of the stayaway and remained so even afterwards.
"The
people are tired of these unofficial curfews. We have to switch off the
lights at a certain time and today it was particularly bad because of the
road barricades," she said. "People are being beaten rotten at the shopping
centres so at the end of the day you just end up staying at home unless you
have something really life threatening to attend to. It is really
bad."
Another resident who did not want to be named said: "People have
just been
expressing themselves but the police have been so heavy-handed. We
do not
condone violence at all. It actually looks like the police and army
want
there to be violence in this area. They are gagging for it. They keep
on
pushing us to the limits. They continue to beat us up in the night. Saka
tofarirawo kupi if we cannot go to the pub to have one or two to drown our
sorrows."
The residents spoke as the Zanu PF government gave an
ultimatum to all
companies that closed down and allowed employees to heed
the strike, to
explain their actions or face unspecified
punishment.
Obert Mpofu, the Industry Minister, said his government
viewed all those who
heeded the ZCTU call, mainly white employers, as siding
with the labour
union thereby worsening the already terrible economic
situation in the
country.
"We are receiving reports of the companies
that chose to side with the
organisers of the stay away and we are going to
deal with them accordingly.
They have been given 24-hour directives to
submit their reasons for failing
to open for business," said
Mpofu.
"To suggest that these mostly white owned companies have the
welfare of the
workers at heart would be dishonest as they are the same
people who hike
prices wily nilly. We have taken enough of this misbehaviour
and this is the
last time they will do such a thing."
Meanwhile the
ZCTU has declared the stayaway a "major success" despite the
fact that most
businesses were open for business. Heavy industrial areas are
reported to
have been largely closed though.
"The workers heeded the call to stayaway
while some companies contributed by
shutting down although we are aware that
some of them were forced to open
their business premises by security
officials," said ZCTU information
officer Last Tarabuka.
On the other
hand, the Zimbabwe government said the stayaway a "flop".
Information and
publicity Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said the ZCTU called
the strike for
political interests rather than out of economic concerns for
its
members.
"The people of Zimbabwe have responded by giving the
regime-change agenda a
cold shoulder. The workers ignored the
ZCTU-orchestrated stayaway sponsored
by hostile Western governments led by
Britain and the USA and reported for
work. The police and the army ensured
that there was adequate security
around the country," he
said.
"Government would like to thank the people of Zimbabwe for ignoring
the call
for the ZCTU-orchestrated stayaway sponsored by hostile Western
states led
by Britain and America," said Ndlovu.
The Employers
Confederation of Zimbabwe (EMCOZ) yesterday said it was too
early to make an
accurate assessment of the strike's impact.
Zimbabwejournalists.com
5th Apr 2007 01:04 GMT
By a Correspondent
HARARE - The
Zimbabwe National Students Union (Zinasu) yesterday claimed
elements from
the dreaded Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) had bombed
the New
Complex 4 Dining Hall.
Zinasu said a huge and frightening ball of fire
engulfed the building
destroying property worth trillions of Zimbabwean
dollars after a suspected
petrol bomb was thrown into the building at around
2200 hours Tuesday night.
Students had to vacate campus residence fearing
for their safety. "The act
is a 'direct attack on the students' right to
learn," a student at the
university said.
"Students constitute the
largest reservoir of human rights defenders in
Zimbabwe, hence a prime
target of bombing by the brutal and despotic regime
of Robert
Mugabe."
The UZ information and public relations director, Taurwi Mabeza
said the
fire started early Wednesday morning.
"It is still premature
to say a lot. We don't know what caused the fire and
police investigations
are still in progress," she said.
Police spokesperson Andrew Phiri said
the police were looking into the
matter as "malicious injury to property" He
said police investigations have
so far revealed that an unidentified student
raised alarm saying he had seen
fire coming out from the
building.
"It is still not yet clear what could have caused the fire but
we are still
investigating to ascertain whether it was an electrical fault
or as a result
of malcontents," said Phiri.
But the students think
the government had something to do with the incident.
The government,
which blames the opposition MDC for carrying out a spate of
bombings, has
been fingered for orchestrating the bombings to create a
situation where it
imposes unofficial curfews and strike fear into the
hearts of the ordinary
people.
Four police stations, a passenger train and shops have been
petrol bombed
over the past month.
"Last month they petrol bombed a
Bulawayo bound train which had more than
750 passengers," said Zinasu.
"Surprisingly, more pro-democracy activists
have been arrested and
barbarously tortured in connection with the terrorist
acts by the state
security agents."
The students also claim the army has since joined in
the attacks and
soldiers are "indiscriminately imposing barrack gangsterism
on innocent
civilians". Scores of victims are receiving medical attention
from different
medical centers after being attacked by the armed and drunk
military
officers in the country.
"Zinasu condemns in strongest the
possible terms the continued use of
banditry and guerrilla terrorism tactics
by the government. It calls upon
all patriotic citizens to continue fighting
for social justice, democracy,
rule of law, human rights culture, academic
freedoms among other
fundamentals."
Monsters and Critics
Apr 5, 2007, 7:11 GMT
Harare/Johannesburg -
Zimbabwe's industry minister said the government would
take action against
the few firms that supported a largely unsuccessful
two-day strike this
week, reports said Thursday.
'We are receiving reports on other
businesses that sympathized with the
organizers of the stay-away and we are
going to deal with them,' Obert Mpofu
was quoted as saying in the official
Herald newspaper.
'We want to identify those abetting the stay-away so
that we can confront
them and find what their motives and agendas are,' the
minister said,
adding: 'We will actually invoke certain measures which will
not be very
comfortable with them.'
The 350,000-strong Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) called a strike
on Tuesday and Wednesday to
press for higher wages, better working
conditions and free access to
anti-AIDS drugs.
But the two-day strike was largely ignored, prompting
state media to declare
it a flop.
The ZCTU said that in some cases
firms that planned to support the strike
were threatened by state
agents.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Monsters and Critics
Apr 5, 2007, 7:07 GMT
Harare/Johannesburg -
Zimbabwean police were not armed with a search warrant
when they raided the
headquarters of the main opposition party last week,
arresting dozens of
officials, trashing offices and seizing documents and
computers, it emerged
Thursday.
Police conceded this point in the Harare High Court on
Wednesday, where they
had gone to seek permission to make copies of the
information they seized
during the raid, the state-controlled Herald
newspaper reported.
'Police had argued that the information was needed
for a criminal
investigation but conceded that they did not have a search
warrant when they
raided the offices of the Morgan Tsvangirai-led faction
(of the Movement for
Democratic Change, MDC),' the paper said.
The
court allowed the police to copy the data, the paper added. Police say
they
need the information to help them in a criminal investigation of the
party.
Police here accuse the MDC of organizing a string of
petrol-bomb attacks on
police stations, stores and a passenger train during
the last three weeks of
rising political tensions.
The MDC denies the
charge, accusing the state of trumping up charges in
order to justify a
crackdown.
At least 20 opposition officials and activists, including Paul
Madzore, the
member of parliament for Harare's populous Glen View suburb,
are in police
custody facing charges including banditry and
terrorism.
A lawyer for the detained officials told Deutsche
Presse-Agentur dpa his
clients had repeatedly been denied bail.
The
lawyer, Alec Muchadehama, said Magistrate Gloria Takundwa had also
denied
his clients permission to be seen by a medical practitioner of their
choice
following severe beatings allegedly received while in police custody.
He
was due Thursday to appeal against some of the magistrate's decisions in
the
High Court.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Mail and Guardian
Christopher Dube and Rapule Tabane
05 April 2007
08:02
The pressure on Robert Mugabe is gathering force
following last
week's Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit
with Thabo Mbeki's
appointed team of officials, from the presidency and
foreign affairs, who
are talking to the main protagonists in the Zimbabwean
crisis.
"There is now greater awareness ... that there is a
problem in
the country and that the solution can only be derived through
dialogue,"
said Mukoni Ratshitanga, the presidential
spokesperson.
Mbeki confidently told the Financial Times this
week that Mugabe
will step down willingly, while Mozambican President
Armando Guebuza has
also spoken out against the Zimbabwean government,
expressing concern about
Harare's failure to pay its electricity bills and
Zimbabwean nationals
smuggling goods across its porous
borders.
This week, Movement for Democratic Change leader
Morgan
Tsvangirai -- who was in South Africa for medical consultations after
his
assault last month -- also met with Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, and
former
United States secretary of state Madeleine
Albright.
Meanwhile, MDC negotiators were in meetings with
South African
government officials this week, and much of the MDC leadership
is scheduled
to arrive in South Africa for a consultative retreat in the
days ahead.
Chief among the MDC's demands is that elections
cannot be held
under the existing constitutional and electoral framework.
MDC officials
argue that the party won't rush into an electoral process that
will deliver
flawed results.
Mbeki this week said that
his mediation efforts will focus on
MDC demands for constitutional and
electoral reforms, including repealing
the information access and security
laws that have been used to ban
newspapers critical of the government and to
bar political meetings.
An MDC source told the Mail &
Guardian that the South African
government is working on two scenarios. One
scenario, reflected in Mbeki's
recent pronouncements about "genuinely free
and fair" elections, will
involve sweeping electoral reforms will include
the constitutional reforms
that the MDC has been campaigning for. But Mbeki
reportedly believes there
may not be enough time to achieve constitutional
reform before the elections
scheduled for March next year: "Mbeki is saying
a constitutional reform
process will take a longer time," the source
said.
It is believed that Mbeki prefers a second scenario for
change,
which is based on internal reform of Zanu-PF. According to this
scenario,
Mugabe will step down at the December national conference, three
months
before the elections, and Joyce Mujuru will be appointed as acting
president. In the three months before the elections, Mujuru would have
enough time to consolidate her position as state president. This, analysts
say, is why Mbeki was bold enough to say that Mugabe will step down
willingly.
At home in Zimbabwe, some are also questioning
whether Zanu-PF
officially endorsed Mugabe as the next presidential
candidate at their
meeting in late March. Former minister Jonathan Moyo said
the central
committee meeting which endorsed Mugabe last week was
unprocedural. "No one
moved a motion to nominate him, no one seconded it and
Mugabe himself did
not accept the nomination."
According
to the second scenario, Zimbabwe's Parliament will be
expanded from 150
seats to 210 and the upper house (Senate) will be expanded
from 66 seats to
84 to "accommodate the various factions".
Meanwhile,
discussions to reunite the two factions of the MDC
are apparently at an
advanced stage: "The next month will see the
reunification of the divided
opposition," the source said. Mbeki has
reportedly told the factions that he
wants to speak to a united MDC.
But, as the MDC wins friends
in the region, the situation in
Zimbabwe has worsened considerably over the
past few weeks, with a
significant deterioration in the human-rights record.
The abduction of
opposition supporters is a sinister new development, and
people are now
regularly being picked up, beaten and
dumped.
Edward Chikombo, a cameraman for the Zimbabwe
Broadcasting
Corporation, was reportedly abducted from his home in the
Glenview township
outside Harare last week, and has since been found dead.
It is thought that
the killing may be linked to the smuggling out of the
country of television
pictures of the badly injured
Tsvangirai.
Although Mugabe claims the Dar es Salaam SADC
meeting as a
victory, he was in fact censured by the assembly of regional
leaders. An
analyst in Zimbabwe said this week that the crisis in the
country is now at
the top of SADC's agenda. The region also openly supported
the idea of
national dialogue in Zimbabwe and the repeal of repressive
legislation.
Mugabe cannot have wanted that.
The analyst
argued that, for the first time, SADC is speaking
with one voice on Zimbabwe
and that this could make a difference. "I'm
cautiously optimistic -- the
regime is lashing out because it is desperate,
its actions can be seen as
the last kicks of a dying horse."
"What South Africa needs to
do now is to continue to enunciate,
loud and clear, the principles
underpinning its foreign policy -- born out
of South Africa's own liberation
-- to continue disowning Mugabe's tyranny,"
the analyst added.
New Zimbabwe
By
Staff Reporter
Last updated: 04/05/2007 11:37:01
ZIMBABWE'S Vice President
Joyce Mujuru -- seen as a potential challenger to
President Robert Mugabe --
has lavished praise on the 83-year-old leader.
Mujuru's praise, coming
just days after Mugabe won support from the ruling
Zanu PF party to stand
for a new term in elections set for next year, will
compound critics who
have been predicting an internal Zanu PF putsch.
Mugabe is currently away
in the Far East. The second Vice President Joseph
Msika is acting
president.
Addressing local government officials, mayors and governors in
Harare
Wednesday, Mujuru said "Zimbabweans should be proud that God gave the
country a great leader in President Mugabe", the state-run Herald newspaper
reported.
"He (Mugabe) has given us the opportunity to be governors,
vice presidents
and provincial administrators," Mujuru was quoted as saying.
"He should not
be the one to come and wake us up from our bedrooms for us to
go and work.
Working is left to the individual."
Foreign diplomats
have been saying in recent weeks that they now believe a
change of
leadership will come from within Zanu PF after witnessing yet
another brutal
suppression of opposition protests by President Mugabe.
Arthur Mutambara
and Morgan Tsvangirai, the two leaders of the splintered
opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC), were arrested with dozens
of their supporters
after police crushed a rally in Harare on March 11.
Tsvangirai and other
opposition activists were treated for injuries after
being severely beaten
in police custody.
Mugabe accused the opposition of receiving financial
and material backing
from Britain and the United States in an attempt to
push him out of power,
and vowed Tsvangirai would never rule Zimbabwe as
long as he lived.
A recent report by the BBC concluded that British and
some other Western
governments believe that the most likely way for
President Mugabe to leave
office is by a "palace coup" led by factions in
his own party.
Ruling out a military-type coup as "unlikely", the BBC
said diplomats
believed there would be an accumulation of overwhelming
pressure instead.
Foreign diplomats do not appear to think that
Tsvangirai is strong enough at
the moment to effect a change. "The
opposition was swept off the streets,"
one diplomat told the
BBC.
They are therefore looking to people inside the ruling Zanu PF
party.
Rumours of a possible palace coup led by Mujuru swirled after she
was seen
secretly meeting South Africa's deputy president. Mugabe also used
his
birthday interview with state television in February to accuse Mujuru of
seeking to oust him.
Gugulethu Moyo, a Zimbabwean political analyst
and human rights lawyer says
internal divisions within Zanu PF appear to be
overstated.
She said: "It is true that Mujuru, supported by her husband
Solomon,
entertains presidential ambitions, but she also sees Robert Mugabe
as a good
bogeyman, a good detraction from their corrupt activities and
plunder of the
country's mineral resources.
"Zanu PF is like an old
car whose parts are now held by chewing gum but
still remains on the road.
Sell it to someone and it all comes crashing
down. Mujuru realises this and
is keenly aware that as soon as Mugabe goes,
the whole thing will
collapse.
"Zanu PF has always had internal strife, but at the end of the
day they know
their interests lie in being together somehow. And that
diminishes chances
of a palace coup."
If Mugabe wins elections next
year, he will be 90 when his term expires.
Some Zanu PF officials have been
quietly discussing with opposition elements
on a united front to contest
Mugabe at the next election, but many remain
scared to put their cards on
the table.
Public disapproval of President Mugabe's government has been
growing
following the collapse of the economy. The United Nations Economic
Commission for Africa says Zimbabwe's economy was the worst performer in
2006, with output slipping by 4.4%.
The country also has the highest
inflation in the world at 1700%. While an
economic revival appears unlikely,
in the short term, particularly with
Mugabe at the helm, observers say he
could yet win another term next year if
the opposition remains divided and
the police clampdown on opponents
continues.
Washington Post
By Arnold Tsunga
Thursday,
April 5, 2007
When the heads of state of the Southern African
Development Community
convened last week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to
discuss the political
situation in Zimbabwe, hopes among the Zimbabwean
people ran high. President
Robert Mugabe had recently extended his brutal
efforts to crush dissent from
his political opponents to include ordinary
Zimbabweans. His ruling party
left a trail of fractured bodies and two dead
in its most recent crackdown.
With the economy in shreds and the tense
political situation posing a
security threat not only to Zimbabwe but
potentially to its neighbors, too,
there was an expectation that African
leaders would finally act.
At the summit, however, the African leaders
showed their indifference to the
suffering that we ordinary people of
Zimbabwe continue to endure. At the
closing news conference, Tanzanian
President Jakaya Kikwete announced that
he and his fellow heads of state
were "in support of the government and
people of Zimbabwe."
"We got
full backing; not even one [SADC leader] criticized our actions,"
Mugabe
boasted after the summit.
Zimbabweans were left to wonder how neighboring
governments can continue
claiming to support the brutalizer and the
brutalized at the same time.
As Mugabe's government continues its assault
on the media, its political
opponents, civil activists and human rights
defenders, the danger to the
population is growing. Nearly two years after
the government's program of
mass evictions and demolitions -- Operation
Murambatsvina, or "Clear the
Filth" -- hundreds of thousands continue to
suffer catastrophic
consequences.
In hindsight, we can see that this
scheme was just the beginning. Mugabe
sought to destabilize the population
by arbitrarily destroying people's
homes and property without notice,
process or compensation; and by
displacing thousands into rural areas, where
they lack basic services such
as health care, schools and clean water.
Today, HIV-AIDS is rampant in my
country, and there are acute food
shortages. Young Zimbabweans have no
meaningful educational opportunities,
and Mugabe has wrecked the country's
economy through macroeconomic chaos,
endemic corruption and political
patronage. Millions of black Zimbabweans
who love their country have been
forced to migrate out of this insecurity
and hopelessness to live as
second-class citizens in foreign
lands.
Last month, Human Rights Watch documented how police forces in
Harare,
Bulawayo and Mutare have beaten Zimbabweans in the streets, in
shopping
malls and in bars. The terror has prompted many families in those
areas to
obey a self-imposed curfew after dark.
Mugabe is stronger
than ever, though removed from the fact that Zimbabweans
want to be
liberated from oppression. Of course, a weakened and terrified
population
cannot fight back.
With Mugabe poised to rig five more catastrophic years
in office, it is time
for regional leaders to recognize that his campaigns
of oppression make
apartheid Rhodesia and South Africa look like amateurs.
As Bishop Desmond
Tutu has said, we as Africans must hang our heads in shame
at our failure to
make a difference to the suffering men, women and children
of Zimbabwe.
When will Southern Africa's leaders decide they will no
longer align
themselves with tyranny? When will they abandon their failed
strategy of
"quiet diplomacy" and move to help the people of
Zimbabwe?
African leaders and the international community must demand
that the
government of Zimbabwe stop its violence against political
opponents; create
a democratic environment through the repeal of repressive
legislation; enact
a democratic constitution; and hold free, fair elections
that are supervised
by the international community.
If Southern
Africa's leaders finally break their silence about the
catastrophe in their
neighborhood, this could be the year Mugabe leaves
office and Zimbabwe
reintegrates itself into the world. Or they could remain
silent and
complicit, and this year could mark the beginning of an even
steeper decline
into oppression.
The writer is executive director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for
Human Rights and
secretary of the Law Society of Zimbabwe.
Jamaica Gleaner
published: Thursday | April 5,
2007
John Rapley
You would think that every decade or so, a
country of over 10 million could
produce one or two people with the capacity
to lead it. Not, however, if you
happen to be Robert Mugabe. The Zimbabwean
president, who looks determined
to die in office, has been running his
country for nearly four decades, and
is apparently unwilling to concede the
possibility that anybody else is up
to the job.
This week, the
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions launched a national strike
that looks
calculated to increase the pressure on Mr. Mugabe to leave. It is
not clear
how much of a difference a national strike will make in an economy
that has
already all but collapsed. Inflation in Zimbabwe is so high that
prices are
said to change as customers stand in check-out lines. Four-fifths
of the
working population is unemployed. Millions have left the country in
search
of work. Besides, opposition by urban workers to Mr. Mugabe is hardly
new;
his support base has long been in rural areas.
A broken record
The
refrain about Mr. Mugabe is heard so often that it is starting to sound
like
a broken record: He was a good leader who didn't know when to quit. And
yet,
Mr. Mugabe does not fit the stereotype of the avaricious despot
unwilling to
relinquish the spoils of power. By most accounts, he remains -
personally -
a highly principled man.
Nevertheless, his tenaciousness is turning ever
more repressive. In the
process, his attempts to curtail the opposition are
becoming ham-fisted.
Recent intimidation of opposition politicians has
apparently served to
reunite what had been a divided political
movement.
Mr. Mugabe's latest manoeuvre has been to get his ZANU-PF
(Zimbabwe African
National Union-Patriotic Front) political party to endorse
him as its
candidate in next year's presidential election. And while the
principal
grouping of regional states, the SADC (Southern African
Develop-ment
Community) held a summit meeting in response to the recent
outcry over
beatings and killings of the opposition, it failed to speak out
against Mr.
Mugabe. He looks good to go.
In public, that is. Behind
closed doors, it may be that Mr. Mugabe is
feeling even more pressure than
he is on the streets. Nobody seriously
expected the SADC meeting to issue a
strong public statement against Mr.
Mugabe. That is not the organisation's
style. But there are indications that
the session was not one that would
have left the Zimbabwean president
feeling very comfortable.
Plainly,
discomfort with Mr. Mugabe is rising throughout the region. In an
interview
with London's Financial Times, South African President Thabo Mbeki
hinted
that Mr. Mugabe might agree to go peacefully. There are also
suggestions of
a brewing plot within ZANU-PF.
Consummate survivor
Still, I
wouldn't want to bank on him going anytime soon. As they always
say, Mr.
Mugabe is the consummate survivor; in that, he is aided by an
opposition
which seems unable to get its act together. Zimbabwe's
influential Roman
Catholic bishops - Mr. Mugabe is himself a devout
Catholic - have joined the
chorus of condemnation that emerged from Africa's
conference of Catholic
bishops last week. And yet, in an apparent show of
his frustration, the
Archbishop of Bulawayo - an outspoken Mugabe critic -
lamented that
Zimbabweans were cowards for failing to remove their leader.
Mr. Mugabe
may get to keep his country, but it will be a bitter prize. Nor
is it
obvious that the deus ex machina of a coup would offer any
improvement: the
reported coup-plotters have a reputation little better than
his. Stuck in a
burning pan, Zimbabwe's only choice may be to leap into the
fire.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John
Rapley is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI)
Date: 04 Apr
2007
The
President of the Security Council for April, Emyr Jones Parry of the
United
Kingdom, this afternoon introduced the Council's programme for the
month to
correspondents at Headquarters and, in his national capacity,
welcomed
Iran's statement this morning regarding the release of 15 captured
British
sailors.
Addressing the programme of work, he said the Council would be
very busy
during the coming month, with four mandates up for renewal and
discussions
about the Council's priorities, such as Chad, the Central
African Republic
and the Sudan. On 17 April, there would be an open debate
based on a letter
"from me to me" containing a concept paper on those parts
of climate change
that were relevant for the work of the Council. The debate
on Kosovo had
started yesterday, and he expected a Council mission later in
the month to
Belgrade and Pristina.
Speaking in his national
capacity, he expressed his pleasure with the
statements out of Tehran this
morning. His Government would be very pleased
if its "policy of trying to
resolve this without confrontation, trying to be
steady, calm, measured in
our approach, but, at the same time, insisting"
would come to fruition, and
would make sure that, in the future, any
misunderstandings would be resolved
in the quickest and most reasonable way.
Responding to correspondents'
questions on Kosovo, Mr. Jones Parry said
yesterday's discussion had
demonstrated how sensitive the issue was, and how
carefully the
Secretary-General's Special Envoy for the Kosovo Future Status
Process,
Martti Ahtisaari, had formulated his proposals. There had been a
natural
sense of wanting more information within the Council, as the
"dismemberment
of a State" was being addressed. At the same time, many had
acknowledged
that the point had been reached of taking the "logical and
necessary" next
step. If that would be done in a carefully managed way,
stability, rights
and reconciliation between Kosovo and Serbia could be
achieved. The Council
would first identify the timing, leadership, nature
and terms of reference
of the Council mission. At the end of the month,
there would be a meeting of
the contact group, probably at the level of
political directors. He did not
expect an early tabling of a draft
resolution.
Asked if the Ahtisaari
proposal could still be changed, or if the document
was considered "closed",
he said the Council did not yet have a position on
that. In his national
capacity, he said Mr. Ahtisaari's proposals should be
fully supported, as he
had exhausted all possibilities.
Addressing questions about Darfur,
including about possible sanctions
against the Sudan, he said this morning's
discussion had underlined that the
concern was not only Darfur, but also the
contagion of the situation in Chad
and the Central African Republic. The
three tracks of humanitarian access,
political action and delivery of
security should be addressed in parallel,
more so, as the mandate of the
African Union Mission in the Sudan would
expire on 30 June. The Council had
said there was a need for three phases;
the first being the "light phase",
which was being carried out. Full
agreement with Khartoum on the second
phase, the "heavy support package" had
not yet been reached. The nature of
third phase was that the "hybrid
operation" had to be "crunched".
The
problem with the Sudan, he said, was that there had not been consistent
and
positive support by the key actors, the Government and the rebels. If it
became clear that, in the window now available for progress on the political
track, that progress was not made, then the work being done by some on
further sanctions would emerge in a draft resolution. That resolution would
increase the number of names covered by the current resolution. The issue of
the arms embargo would also be addressed, as would monitoring of prohibited
air movements over Darfur. The work on such a resolution was now being
"stayed", also on the request of those closely involved in the negotiations.
Tomorrow's consultations, where the Secretary-General would brief, would
offer an opportunity for greater clarity on what was being
discussed.
In light of this morning's discussion about Chad and the
Central African
Republic, he said there was a need to better protect the
civilian population
and the displaced persons camps. In Chad, there were
ongoing discussions
between the Government and the Department of
Peacekeeping Operations on an
advanced mission. There was agreement on
increased policing in the camps,
but there was no understanding yet on a
military deployment. If further
clarification on that was forthcoming
speedily, a resolution could be tabled
on a police and military presence in
Chad and the Central African Republic.
Otherwise, the situation in the
Central African Republic should be tackled
first.
Asked why Zimbabwe
was not on the agenda, Mr. Jones Parry said that issue
had been discussed at
the very end of the South African presidency in March.
No one had expressed
the need at that stage to come back to it. From a
British point of view,
there was a very keen concern and a need to rally
behind the people of
Zimbabwe, but the Council had no plans to address the
matter. It was not
because he wanted to avoid a confrontation with South
Africa, but because
the situation had been discussed in the last seven days.
Asked the same
question about Iran, he said there were no plans to address
the nuclear
issue during April. Resolution 1747 (2007) had requested a
return to the
matter in 60 days and had also asked for a report on
compliance with
resolutions 1737 (2006) and 1747. The policy remained quite
clear, however,
namely a commitment to an incremental increase of pressure
in case of
non-compliance, with measures being reversible in case of
compliance.
Conditions for Iran entering into negotiations were quite
simple: suspension
of research, development and enrichment.
In reply to a question about the
Western Sahara and United Nations Mission
for the Referendum in Western
Sahara (MINURSO) mandate renewal, specifically
how the Council was going to
handle the expected proposal from Morocco on
autonomy, he said such a
proposal was expected on 10 April. The Council's
response would depend on
its contents, taking into account all parties'
views. On the one hand, there
was the proposal for autonomy within Morocco;
on the other hand, there was
the view that self-determination for the region
should include the option of
independence. He was not confident that the
Council would find a lasting
solution in the next few months, but he was
confident, however, that
MINURSO's mandate would be renewed.
Asked about the mandate extension for
the United Nations Organization
Mission in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (MONUC) and whether
sanctions against individuals were considered, for
instance in the cases of
recruitment of child soldiers, he said he could not
anticipate this
afternoon's discussions. Colleagues would certainly look at
the events of
the past few weeks, and how what would happen to the
opposition leaders
would reflect on political developments. There was a
commitment shared by
all members of the Council to stand by MONUC and the
Democratic Republic of
the Congo, that the improvements reached justified
the investments made and
that "we have just to keep at it".
On
Somalia, he said the briefing of Tuesday, 24 April, could not be
scheduled
earlier, because the report was due on 20 April. Consultations on
the issue
were already being planned for 12 April. The Council was not
considering a
United Nations peacekeeping force at the current stage. The
priority was to
create a condition where there was peace to keep and where
there was a
prospect for some stability. If that could be achieved, then the
United
Nations would certainly consider a peacekeeping force.
Asked about this
morning's statement from Tehran and speaking in his
national capacity, he
said the United Kingdom had received a lot of support
from the United
States. The United Nations was also solid in its support,
with the
Secretary-General being clear in his public statements and
reiterating those
statements in private contacts. He stressed that there was
no linkage
between the capture of the 15 sailors and pressure in Iran
regarding the
nuclear issue, saying he had made that clear from the
beginning. He did not
know how much impact the statement to the press by the
former President of
the Security Council had had, but it had been part of
applying incrementally
increasing pressure. There had been no "negotiations"
as such, but there had
been discussions between officials and the
ambassadors of both
countries.
Addressing the issue of climate change, and what it had to do
with the
maintenance of international peace and security, he said people
living in
the Maldives, confronted with the possibility of a rise of three
metres of
the sea level that would make their State extinct, would certainly
see it as
a threat to their security. Climate change affected the supply of
water and
the potential of shifting patterns in famine and surplus. Those
traditional
"triggers for conflict" would be exacerbated by a change in
climate. The
redistribution of people currently living in low-lying areas
must be
managed, which could also cause potential instability. It was a
complex
issue and literally one of the big challenges for the world in the
coming
century.
He said the debate would be presided over by his
Foreign Secretary, but,
apart from that, there were no plans to "elevate"
the meeting to include a
presidential statement or a resolution. The fact of
holding it and
highlighting it was important. Claims that the United Kingdom
was the leader
in climate change issues were misplaced. Certainly, the
country wanted to
play a leading role, but everybody had to do that, as the
issue was too big
to be left to any one country or organization. He assumed
that, sometime
next year, there would be a summit devoted to climate
change.
Answering a question about what "diplomatic trophies" he wanted
to see on
his shelf after his presidency, he said it was always futile to
talk about
achievements. He promised, however, "blood sweat and tears" to
ensure that
the programme of work was delivered and that as much impact was
being made
as possible in the areas addressed. One of the privileges of the
job was
that one "could try to make a difference".
For further
information on the Council's programme of work for April, see
the Security
Council's website at www.un.org/docs/sc.
Mail andGuardian
Editorial
04 April 2007 11:59
This
week the Mail & Guardian reports, in horrifying detail, the
confessions
of a former member of the Zimbabwean National Youth Service who
was
allegedly recruited and trained by President Robert Mugabe's secret
police
to murder, torture and petrol-bomb members of the opposition Movement
for
Democratic Change. Sickened by state brutality and now seeking refuge in
Namibia, the young man tells of systematic rape and other abuses in secret
internment camps which recall those used by South American "torture states"
in the 1970s and 1980s. His account is a ringing indictment of a regime
which, despite Mugabe's pious anti-imperialist rhetoric, will stoop to any
crime in its desperate clinging to power.
State violence
against citizens has been the norm in Zimbabwe
since 2000, when, after
losing a constitutional referendum, Mugabe and his
party suddenly realised
they were in grave danger of electoral defeat. The
strategy then was to use
violent land seizures to regain popular support,
and repression by the
security forces and Zanu-PF thugs to exclude the MDC
from Zanu-PF's rural
stronghold. But in recent weeks state violence has
become more systematic
and more shameless, with the abduction, torture and
public beating of
oppositionists a particularly sinister new trend. The
state media has been
enlisted in a hysterical campaign to project the MDC as
a violent
organisation that has provoked a deserved security force
crackdown, and its
leaders as "terrorists". In a scarcely credible article
this week, the
Herald accused the political attaché at the British embassy
in Harare of
financing the opposition and warned that she risked "going home
in a
body-bag". Zimbabwe is on the brink of becoming a fully fledged police
state.
Yet, despite the horrors, there is cause for
optimism. Based on
its communiqué calling for Britain to honour its land
reform obligations and
the lifting of sanctions, last week's Southern
African Development Community
conference in Dar es Salaam has been widely
read as a victory for Mugabe. It
was nothing of the sort. The communiqué was
little more than a public
relations exercise; behind closed doors, regional
leaders took a much
tougher line. And Mugabe cannot be pleased with the
substantive outcome. For
the first time, SADC spoke with one voice --
regional leaders want a
national dialogue in Zimbabwe, an end to repressive
legislation and the
savage mauling of the MDC, and have designated President
Thabo Mbeki to
drive this agenda. It cannot have escaped Mugabe's notice
that even his
ally, Angola, urged him to draw lessons from Angola's
experience of national
reconciliation.
From Mbeki's
public pronouncements since the conference, there
are already signs of
greater urgency and a new approach. He told the
Financial Times that he and
fellow leaders in the region had been shocked by
the police beating of MDC
leaders, and that he had been mandated to pursue
constitutional and
electoral reform in Zimbabwe.
As the chorus of international
condemnation has grown over the
past decade, SADC has been Mugabe's shield.
But there are unmistakable signs
that regional leaders, worried by the
implications of Zimbabwe's meltdown
for their own countries, have lost
patience. The shield is being lowered --
and that is the most positive
development in the Zimbabwean crisis for
years.
Corruption doublespeak
There is something mesmerising about Thabo
Mbeki when he is
really on song, when he gives a speech that wraps up an
issue in his broader
political project. Which makes it all the more
frustrating when his
interventions are so much at odds with the vision he
articulates from the
podium.
Nowhere is this more evident
than in his approach to corruption.
Mbeki was on song this Monday when he
told delegates to the United Nations
Forum on Fighting Corruption and
Safeguarding Integrity that graft is a
barrier to "the objective of
liberating billions of human beings from the
scourge of poverty". "All of us
are agreed," he added, "about the negative
consequences of corruption on the
lives of especially the ordinary people
but also all the citizens of our
countries."
We agree that poverty may not only cause
corruption, but is
entrenched by it.
No doubt, some of
Mbeki's ANC colleagues would have been amused
to hear him reciting the
philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and suggesting a
benevolent dictatorship was one
possible response to the greed and nastiness
of humanity. But of course he
didn't mean it; he favours a democratic
approach based on respect for our
common humanity.
He went on to say remedial action must "go
beyond the rhetoric
of perceptions and blame. It must constructively utilise
approaches
developed in the multilateral setting, and must involve global
cooperation,"
not just in the developing world, perceived as corrupt, but in
rich
countries too.
At this point, the credibility gap
yawns too wide for us to stay
with him.
Mbeki's
government has ignored, frustrated and sidestepped
crucial international
investigations into the arms deal, aimed precisely at
discovering who in
Europe corrupted a new government in the developing
world, and at punishing
those who damaged its institutions and its poor.
Then there
is the unedifying spectacle of the Post Office,
backed by a minister in
Mbeki's Cabinet, attempting to destroy its suspended
boss Khutso Mampeule,
who was silly enough to try and clean up a sty of
corruption.
And finally there is Jackie Selebi, now so
deeply mired in
allegations of corruption as to be utterly without
credibility. "Trust me",
says Mbeki, in the tones of a benevolent dictator,
while playing the brutal
Hobbesian game of succession
politics.
The problem with forked tongues is that it makes
you deaf.
SABC
April 05, 2007,
07:15
John Makumbe, a senior lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, has
attributed the poor response to the two-day strike to poor
planning.
The strike, called by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions
(ZCTU), is said
to have had no effect on the country's economy. The Harare
government has
described it as a dismal flop. However, the ZCTU is adamant
the action was
effective and was the beginning of more
protests.
Makumbe says the timing was also bad. "It was on the days that
the schools
were closing. There had to be transport to ferry the children
and so when
public transport is on the road, people going to work use it
too. Secondly,
there was no arrangement. The organisation was not adequate,
it was quite
poor. Thirdly, Zimbabwe has an unemployment rate of 80% and so
you are only
asking only 20% of the working force to stay
away."
Opposition MDC members in Britain say they will try to make up for
the fact
that people in Zimbabwe are not free to express themselves. Jeff
Sango, the
MDC spokesperson for the central London branch, says the struggle
will not
end now. "What we are trying to do is to support what they're doing
in
Zimbabwe under a very harsh and brutal regime. We will carry the struggle
from outside just like Robert Mugabe did from outside Rhodesia."
Los Angeles Times
Letter
April
5, 2007
Re "The party's over. Will Mugabe ever leave?" Current, April
1
Martin Meredith describes the collapse of the structures of Zimbabwe's
once
fairly prosperous nation under dictator Robert Mugabe's ever-worsening
rule.
It was almost like reading about Cuba when Fulgencio Batista took over
in
the 1930s. At first, Batista ruled from behind puppets. When he gathered
in
the reins of power by doling out land and infrastructure to the rich and
then chumming up with American interests and Mafia figures, he felt free to
take over directly. The big difference was that Cuban peasants and students
revolted. Batista and his pals, most of whom ended up in Florida, were
kicked out.
I suspect that when Mugabe finally goes, there will be a
similar exodus. The
civil and military leaders who depend on Mugabe's
largesse, and those who
became wealthy from his dispensations, will leave
the country. In their
place, I don't doubt, will arise another dictator who
will grasp any spoils
left behind. Has the "civilized" world learned nothing
in the past 70 years?
S.J. BAER
Woodland Hills
nowtoronto.com
Squeeze on brutal dictator by
his partners in crime could usher him out of
history
By GWYNNE DYER
It
will take a while yet, but the long and brutal reign of Robert Mugabe in
Zimbabwe is probably nearing its end. Not because of the democratic
opposition at home, whose members are regularly beaten up and sometimes
killed by the regime's police.
Not even because neighbouring
countries in southern Africa are at last
putting pressure on Mugabe to go.
Just because his own partners in crime
have decided that it's him or
them.
The key moment actually came last December, when for the first time
the
senior ranks of the ruling Zanu-PF party stood up to Mugabe and refused
to
accept his proposal to postpone the next presidential election from 2008
to
2010. It was typical Mugabe salami tactics - give me two more years and
maybe I'll decide to resign in 2010 - but this time it didn't
work.
All that has followed - the vicious assaults on opposition leaders
by
Mugabe's police in mid-February, the South African government's decision
a
week ago to start talking to Mugabe's Zanu-PF rivals and Zimbabwean
opposition leaders, and the emergency meeting of the leaders of the
14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Tanzania on March
28 - is a response to this new perception that Mugabe doesn't have
long.
"I have been to these SADC summits, and I know that behind closed
doors they
are brutally frank," Mugabe's former information minister,
Jonathan Moyo,
told The Guardian last week.
"They will remind Mugabe
that he told them he would retire at the end of his
term in 2008.... They
will tell him his rule in Zimbabwe is dragging down
the whole southern
African region."
None of that got into the meeting's closing communique,
which ritually
expressed solidarity with Mugabe, but Moyo is probably right,
because
Zimbabwe is becoming a blight on the region.
Inflation in
Zimbabwe, at 1,700 per cent, is the highest in the world (the
next-highest,
in Burma, is only 60 per cent), and average income is less
than a 10th of
South Africa's. Ten years ago, Zimbabwe was seen as the
breadbasket of
Africa, and it earned ample foreign exchange from exports of
tobacco and
other cash crops; now it cannot feed half its people, and the
tobacco crop
is down by four-fifths.
There are an estimated 3 million Zimbabwean
economic refugees in South
Africa (two-thirds of the country's working-age
population), and they are
the main support of those left at home, because
unemployment there is 80 per
cent or more. Zimbabwean life expectancy is now
the lowest in the world: 37
for men, 34 for women.
Then there is the
unbridled brutality of the police force, the official
contempt for the law,
the propaganda that blames all the failings of the
regime on foreign
imperialists plotting against it - it's not exactly the
image southern
Africans want for their region.
On the whole, southern Africa does not
fit that image. From South Africa to
Tanzania, most of the governments in
the SADC are democratically elected and
law-abiding. Most economies are
showing good growth, and nobody is starving.
But it is a well-known fact
that people on other continents have trouble
telling one African country
from another, and that investors are the most
ignorant of
all.
Zimbabwe's multiple failures take up more space in the international
media
than all the news about all 13 other members of the SADC combined, and
so
its neighbours' patience has run out.
In fact, it ran out some
time ago, but being realists about the nature of
politics in Zimbabwe, the
other SADC leaders saw no point in publicly
demanding change. Now, however,
there is blood in the water. Mugabe managed
to bully Zanu-PF's central
committee into nominating him for the presidency
again on Friday, but
everybody knows that two major factions in the party
want him to quit. That
has opened the door for others to demand change as
well.
The ideal
outcome would be an alliance between Zanu-PF dissidents and
Zimbabwe's
democratic opposition in a transitional government leading to
free,
internationally supervised elections. The reality may be a good deal
messier, because the Old Man doesn't know how to let go. He has just
imported 3,000 "security personnel" from Angola to stiffen his own police,
who are deserting in droves and going to work in South Africa as security
guards because inflation has made their wages almost worthless.
But
one way or another, Mugabe's long misrule has reached the beginning of
the
end.
news@nowtoronto.com
NOW
| APRIL 5 - 11, 2007 | VOL. 26 NO. 31
The Star
Letters
April 05, 2007 Edition 1
Predictably, the latest
"conference" on Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe's trail
of economic destruction
of that miserable country has produced no surprises
from African
leaders!
As one might expect, the outcome has followed the previous
pattern, (by
African leaders and diplomats). not to rock the boat, not to
criticise
Mugabe or his cronies, but, seemingly, rather to take the part of
the
perpetrator of Zimbabwe's economic madness and destruction!
A
call to remove all sanctions and restrictions, etc!
But there are no
sanctions as such against Zimbabwe, only targeted and
personal ones against
Mugabe, his family and his cronies.
Unwillingness by the IMF or World
Bank to loan or give money to Zimbabwe is
hardly sanctions, but rather
stipulations and conditions on the money use to
which Mugabe is not prepared
to agree to, or be bound.
But then why should these organisations and
Western governments pay for
Mugabe's disastrous and idiotic Marxist
revolution?
Even the People's Republic of China seems to have
reservations on that
issue.
They obviously learned something from
Chairman Mao's follies of the 1960s.
Of course the call for "dialogue"
between the Zanu-PF and the opposition MDC
is nothing new.
It is
really, by definition, an extension of our ANC government's "quiet
diplomacy" - and "Zimbabweans must sort out their own problems", which all
seems to have gone nowhere in the last five years.
Where are the
tangible results?
How does one "negotiate" with someone holding a brick to
one's head?
Or, in a crime-ridden city, is one told to "negotiate some
deal" with the
Mafia or just get out?
One fears that the real reason
for any such negotiations would be attempts
to produce some results or
agreement (involving the MDC) vindicating Mugabe
and his cronies, absolving
them from all responsibility for human rights
abuses, destruction of the
Zimbabwe economy, the worthless Zim dollar, the
horrific unemployment ratio,
and, needless to say, no real concessions by
Mugabe or Zanu-PF.
Such
an agreement would probably be used to attempt to legalise Mugabe's and
the
Zanu-PF's actions in "defending democracy", no matter how brutal and
unprovoked.
Mugabe, who attended the conference, seemed quite pleased
with the result.
So, exactly where do we go from here?
Must we
expect much more of the same, while Zimbabwe continues daily to
disintegrate?
JW Chambers
Airfield, Benoni