The Telegraph
By
Sebastien Berger in Bulawayo
Last Updated: 12:56am BST
11/08/2007
There should be 63 workers in the factory in
Bulawayo. But instead the
managing director stands alone in a deserted
production room.
Under President Robert Mugabe's price control
programme, his customers
cannot cover the cost of their goods, so they have
stopped placing orders.
"They simply can't sell, otherwise they are
going to make a massive
loss," said the businessman, a British-born
naturalised Zimbabwean who
cannot be identified for fear of
reprisals.
"Every millilitre we would produce we would produce at a
huge loss."
The factory, on an industrial estate in Zimbabwe's
second city, is a
stark demonstration of what happens when economics are
ignored.
It is a basic principle of markets that price is
determined by supply
and demand. If an outside agency, such as the
ideologically Marxist Zanu-PF
government, instead sets the price too low,
suppliers will not produce -
hence the empty shelves in Zimbabwe's
supermarkets. Price inspectors have
descended on shops across the country to
enforce the government's order
cutting prices to June 18 levels, forcing
them to sell their stock cheap to
the queues of people who line up to take
advantage of the opportunity.
"It's literally looting that's taking
place," said the factory owner.
"Of course when those raids take
place they have informed all their
friends.
"We don't have any
stock for those people to pillage. We have no raw
materials in store, we
have no packaging. Then of course there is the next
level of threat. They
now say 'if you don't open to trade we will withdraw
your trading licence
and take over your business'.
"This is building fear and fear is
their weapon, their one and only
weapon these days. You have a bunch of
geriatrics who have thrived on ego,
power and greed.
"The
government is like a rabid jackal, snapping in a corner. It
doesn't care who
it infects with rabies, it knows it is going to die."
For now his
workers are still being paid from the firm's reserves, but
the situation is
untenable in the longer term.
"We have a three-month contingency
plan where we can sustain our
workers and staff, keep them fed and housed,"
he said. "Beyond that there is
no plan."
Already most
Zimbabweans are unemployed and the interconnected nature
of business means
the impact of the price controls ripples far beyond each
affected firm. For
example, no tinned food can be processed as the country's
only can
manufacturer cannot afford to import an essential compound.
Industrial production, estimated at 20 per cent of capacity before the
chaos
began, has fallen by two fifths.
Businesses will be taken over,
handed out to cronies of the government
and asset stripped, the entrepreneur
believes, in the same way as
white-owned commercial farms were, with similar
consequences for Zimbabwe's
economy.
It is not idle
speculation. Obert Mpofu, the architect of the price
control programme, this
week told the state-controlled Chronicle newspaper
that hyperinflation was
due to profiteering companies. By the end of the
year his task force will
have "completely wiped out corrupt individuals and
firms" in the economy, he
said.
So far around 7,500 retailers and managers have been arrested
for
failing to heed the price directive. Most have been fined or released
after
short periods in custody, and the businessman keeps a prison bag in
the
corner of his office in case he is detained.
"We have an
authority that really isn't interested in the welfare of
its citizens or the
country as a whole," he said.
"The crew have maintained the
officers, now the officers are going to
get their throats cut and they are
on the bridge, just running the ship on
to the rocks. They don't
care.
"They are destroying everything so when the new government
comes there
will be nothing left."
National Post, Canada
For 30 years, Robert
Mugabe has idolized north Korea's Stalinist leadership.
Predictably, the two
nations now share the same disastrous fate;
RW Johnson, National
Post
Published: Saturday, August 11, 2007
Visitors to the offices of
high-ranking officials in Robert Mugabe's
beleaguered government in recent
weeks have noticed the same book open for
study: Juche! The Speeches and
Writings of Kim Il Sung. "Some may actually
believe this stuff, but it's
more that they want to understand where the
President is coming from," one
insider told me.
It appears that those who have become anxious about
Mugabe's Canute-like
attempt to order inflation of 7,000% to be halved and
to subordinate the
economy in general to his political will, is not just
acting wildly. He has
a model:North Korea's Great Leader who, though he died
in 1994, is still
enshrined in that country's constitution as "president for
eternity." (To
this day, the current ruler, his son Kim Jong-Il, never
actually uses the
title of president.) Receiving the new North Korean
ambassador in May this
year, Mugabe told him that North Korea had been a
guiding light and friend
ever since it began to aid his ZANU guerrilla army,
Zanla, in the 1970s, and
that "everything in Zimbabwe is associated with the
exploits of president
Kim Il Sung."
Because Joshua Nkomo's rival ZAPU
movement was aligned with South Africa's
African National Congress during
this period, and thus with the orthodox
Moscow-led Soviet bloc, ZANU
perforce had to find its foreign funders and
arms-suppliers elsewhere, in
Beijing and Pyongyang. This was a rare
breakthrough for Kim Il Sung, so when
Zimbabwe became independent in 1980,
it immediately became North Korea's
most ambitious diplomatic objective.
Hundreds of North Korean military
advisers arrived, not only training but
equipping much of Mugabe's army,
particularly the notorious Fifth Brigade.
Indeed, for a few years North
Korea even dreamt of emulating the Cuban
model. From its Zimbabwean base, it
deployed over 3,000 troops helping the
Angolan, Mozambican and Ethiopian
governments.
What particularly appealed to Mugabe, however, was that the
North Koreans
were not only experts in martial arts but in the far blacker
art of
political indoctrination, having honed their skills in the notorious
"brain-washing" of U.S. and British prisoners in the Korean War. The
essential principle was that if, by physical torture, isolation and
relentless humiliation, you could break down someone's personality, it was
then possible to re-mould it along more "acceptable" lines.
The full
horror of such techniques, first glimpsed in Zanla's liberation war
tactics,
was fully revealed only in the mid-1980s when Mugabe ordered the
Fifth
Brigade to repress political opposition in the Matabeleland region.
Using
North Korean terminology, Mugabe explained that "The people there had
their
chance and they voted as they did. The situation there has to be
changed.
The people must be re-oriented."
Some 20,000 people died in the resulting
campaign of torture and murder, but
it was not just repression pure and
simple. What the villagers grew to fear
most was the dreadful all-night
singing sessions in which they would have to
sing ZANU songs with cheerful
enthusiasm at the same time that they were
savagely beaten; when they would
not only have to watch as friends or family
members were tortured or shot
but would themselves have to assist in the
process -- the emphasis always
being on achieving their utter humiliation
and incrimination so that they
could re-emerge at the end as Mugabe
loyalists.
One great focus of
such loyalty would be the pilgrimage to Heroes Acre, the
140-acre site in
the capital of Harare, which commemorates the heroes of the
liberation war.
Its huge granite obelisk and Stalinist architecture were
North
Korean-designed, such monuments being a regime speciality. (Kim Il
Sung
erected over 34,000 monuments to himself.)
Kim first announced his
philosophy of Juche ("self-reliance") in 1972,
whereafter North Korea cut
itself off from almost all foreign trade and
defaulted on all its foreign
debts -- steps which Zimbabwe has now emulated.
According to Juche, "man is
the
master of everything and decides everything," and the most important
work of
"revolution and construction is moulding people ideologically as
good
Communists with absolute loyalty to the Party and Leader."
Kim
had realized that to achieve this, he needed to isolate North Korea from
all
outside influences --crimes such as singing a South Korean pop song or
reading a foreign newspaper carry a life sentence. Kim would have strongly
approved of Mugabe's recent expulsion of foreign media, his crackdown on the
independent press and his slavish broadcast outlets. Indeed, Mugabe's Herald
newspaper has carried laudatory articles about Juche.
After independence,
Mugabe was at first prime minister. But his first visit
to North Korea had
an enormous impact on him. "He came back almost a
different man," one of his
former party stalwarts told me. "He was
tremendously impressed by the
stadiums full of people doing mass
callisthenics and colour displays
spelling out Kim's name or even depicting
his face. He came back wanting to
change the constitution so that he could
become president, like
Kim."
Nicolae Ceaucescu, the Romanian dictator, was similarly affected by
his
visit to Pyongyang, and returned to Bucharest to launch his
"systematization" program, knocking down old buildings and churches in order
to build marching lines of
apartments, North Korean style. Mugabe and
Ceaucescu became close to one
another so that the downfall and assassination
of the Ceaucescus in 1989
were a trauma in Harare, and all news of the event
was snatched off TV
screens. The fall of Cambodia's Pol Pot, who had also
embraced Juche, was
similarly unwelcome news in Harare.
When Kim, the
Great Leader, died in 1994, the Gregorian calendar was
abolished in North
Korea, and a new calendar installed in which Year One is
1912 (Kim's year of
birth), and in which the first day is April 15, Kim's
birthday. Zimbabwe set
up its own Committee to Honour the Memory of Kim Il
Sung, chaired by
Vice-President Joseph Msika. This holds a special month of
mourning for Kim
every year, with lectures, seminars and a memorial service
"praying for his
eternity."
The birthday of Kim's son, Kim Jong-Il, "the dear leader," is
effectively
celebrated as the North Korean Christmas: he is "the central
brain," "a
genius of 10,000 talents" and "the morning star."
Mugabe,
whose birthday (Feb. 21) falls only five days later, has now copied
this: He
too is celebrated as "our dear leader" with the same mass
synchronized
dancing by women in traditional dress and army parades. Feasts
are also
staged--even though, as in North Korea, the faithful celebrants are
often
near starvation.
"The central idea is also the same: Everything,
including the economy, can
be commanded and made to fall into line with the
Leader's will," one close
Mugabe-watcher told me. "In North Korea, anyone
unable to live with that
ended up in the gulag or fled as refugees to China,
so you ended up with a
country where everyone left was totally obedient.
This is undoubtedly
Mugabe's model." In both countries, regimes starting out
as Marxist have
both ended up as apostles of extreme monarchical
authority.
Juche, like Mugabe's radical socialism, was a fraud. In
reality, North Korea
depended utterly on Soviet aid, just as liberated
Zimbabwe's economy
depended completely on a few thousand white farmers. When
Soviet aid ceased
in 1991, North Korea's income halved and mass starvation
ensued, just as it
has in Zimbabwe following the eviction of the white
farmers. Anywhere up to
three million North Koreans died, but Kim Jong-Il
simply denied the facts of
starvation and at first turned away food aid.
Mugabe did exactly the same.
When the World Food Programme offered to help
Zimbabwe's starving in 2004,
he asked "Why foist this food upon us? We do
not want to be choked, we have
enough."
In the end, both regimes have
become massively dependent on foreign food
aid.
This week, Zimbabwe's
Parliament faces Mugabe's proposed constitutional
amendment enabling him to
choose his own successor and impose him without an
election. This, too,
exactly imitates the way in which Kim Il Sung
designated his own successor;
and it allowed Kim to continue to be
celebrated long after his
death.
But there is something else to which Mugabe might pay heed.
Although Kim
Jong-Il declared three years of mourning for his father, spent
nearly
$1-billion on his mausoleum and declared two national flowers for the
country, Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia, his father's death from a heart attack
and "heavy mental strains" followed a bitter argument with his son and is
still clouded with suspicion. Kim Jong-Il would not allow doctors to enter
his father's room till long after the death. And all the doctors, as well as
his father's bodyguards, were immediately killed in a series of helicopter
"accidents." Other functionaries who had been close to his father all
quickly disappeared without trace.
So while North Koreans are
encouraged to believe that Kim Il Sung still
rules and watches over the
country, it seems likely that the great man's end
was more like the usual
tyrant's exit.
-RWJohnson is emeritus fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford,
and Southern
Africa correspondent for the Sunday Times.
Zim Online
Saturday 11 August 2007
Own
Correspondent
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa's main opposition Democratic
Alliance (DA) party
on Friday urged regional leaders to impose limited
sanctions on Zimbabwe to
force President Robert Mugabe to co-operate in
efforts to resolve the crisis
in his country.
Acting DA leader, Joe
Seremane, said Southern African Development Community
(SADC) leaders who are
meeting in Lusaka, Zambia next week must pressure
Mugabe to save Zimbabwe
from further turmoil.
Seremane said South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki,
who was last March
tasked by SADC to lead efforts to mediate between
Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF
party and the main opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) party,
had virtually failed as the talks had "gone
nowhere".
"Today, President Thabo Mbeki is scheduled to report on the
progress of his
mediation with Harare to . . . SADC. This presents South
Africa with an
excellent opportunity to intervene decisively and positively
in the affairs
of that unhappy country.
"If the president is honest,
he will have to admit that the talks he has
brokered have gone nowhere, for
the selfsame reason that his interventions
have failed in the past.
President Robert Mugabe - as usual - refused to
show any sign that he is
committed to resolving the crisis in his country.
"It is time to change
gears," said Seremane.
Mbeki is expected to report to SADC leaders next
week on progress in the
Zimbabwe talks.
The South African president
is hard pressed to present a positive report on
the talks at the Lusaka
meeting after saying in the past that the talks were
progressing "very
well."
The crisis talks are however in danger of collapsing after ZANU PF
insisted
that it would not discuss the issue of a new constitution, a key
demand of
the MDC.
The ruling party has however said it would forge
ahead with plans to
unilaterally Zimbabwe's constitution through
Constitutional Amendment Bill
No. 18 using its majority in
parliament.
The ZANU PF delegation led by Justice Minister Patrick
Chinamasa and
Nicholas Goche has in the past failed to make it to the talks
in Pretoria
suggesting that the party was not taking the Mbeki-talks
seriously.
Seremane said SADC should consider slapping targeted sanctions
on Mugabe and
his senior lieutenants. He said the sanctions could involve a
travel ban and
the freezing of assets of senior ZANU PF officials in the
SADC region.
"Lest anyone at SADC be in any doubt, our president must
drive the point
home. The need for punitive measures has arisen because the
Mugabe regime
simply does not respond to polite pressure," said
Seremane.
"Zimbabwe has now been in crisis for seven long, lean years.
The steady
erosion, not only of the features of a free society, but of the
elements
that sustain life itself - food, water, housing, power - has been
all too
plain for her neighbours to see.
"If this regional
organisation and our government in particular, is serious
about avoiding a
human catastrophe, they must act at once, and with
resolution," Seremane
said.
South Africa has been very reluctant to openly criticise Mugabe
over the
past seven years but has instead pursued a policy of "quiet
diplomacy" where
it desists from openly attacking Mugabe in public. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
Saturday 11 August
2007
By Prince Nyathi
HARARE - At least 10 percent
of all school children in Harare's working
class suburbs are suffering from
chronic malnutrition or stunted growth,
according to a report released this
week by the Harare city council.
The department of heath council report,
that graphically captures the
worsening economic crisis in Zimbabwe, says
cases of kwashiorkor had last
year increased by 43.7 percent from the 2005
figures.
"Acute under-nutrition or wasting also increased during 2006,
compared to
the previous year. The number of kwashiorkor cases increased by
43.7
percent," says the report.
Kwashiorkor is a disease that is
caused by lack of proteins and is common is
impoverished
communities.
The report says most of the cases were recorded in Harare's
working class
suburbs of Dzivarasekwa, Kuwadzana, Mabvuku and Mbare where
there is
widespread poverty.
"Overally acute under-nutrition or
wasting increased during 2006, compared
to the previous year and it also
increased, with the Grade Threes worse off
than the Grade Ones," says the
report.
Zimbabwe is in the grip of a severe economic crisis that has
manifested
itself in rampant inflation of over 4 500 percent last May,
widespread
poverty and unemployment.
At least 80 percent of
Zimbabweans are out of employment leaving the few who
are still lucky to
hold formal jobs struggling to put food on the table for
their
families.
The report says none of the kwashiorkor cases were recorded in
children
above the age of 15.
"The findings may be due to the harsh
economic situation being felt
throughout the country by the majority of
Zimbabweans," says the report.
Health and Child Welfare Minister David
Parirenyatwa could not be reached
for comment on the
matter.
Zimbabwe, once touted as a shining beacon and a model economy for
black
Africa, is fighting its most crippling economic crisis described last
year
by the World Bank as unprecedented for a country not at war.
The
United Nations Children and Education Fund (UNICEF) last year said there
had
been a serious deterioration in care for Zimbabwean children resulting
in
many deaths for children under the age of five.
Zimbabwe is also at the
epicenter of an HIV/AIDS pandemic that is mowing
down at least 3000 people
every week leaving hundreds of thousands of
orphans without parental care. -
ZimOnline
VOA
By Ndimyake Mwakalyelye
Washington
10
August 2007
South African President Thabo Mbeki is shortly to
deliver a progress report
on the Zimbabwe crisis talks he is mediating to
his fellow leaders in the
Southern Africa Development Community, who handed
him his mandate in March.
The official line from Pretoria is that there
has been progress - but
analysts remain skeptical, noting that while the
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change is clearly committed to the talks,
the Zimbabwe African
National Union-Patriotic Front party of President
Robert Mugabe has seemed a
half-hearted participant at best.
Analysts
said ZANU-PF has more to lose, and is therefore reluctant to
proceed. They
predicted that it will continue to delay the process as much
as possible, a
strategy the analysts have attributed to President Robert
Mugabe from the
very beginning.
While lauding efforts by SADC and the African Union to
pressure Mr. Mugabe
and his government to reform, analysts say true change
can only come from
within.
Reporter Ndimyake Mwakalyelye sought the
views of Farai Maguwu, coordinator
of the Civic Alliance for Democracy and
Governance, and Glenn Mpani, a
student of democratic governance at the
University of Capetown, South
Africa.
Mpani said SADC and other
bodies are under pressure from Western countries
to take action, but can
only apply so much pressure to President Mugabe.
Afrique en ligne
Cape Town (South Africa) South African President Thabo
Mbeki must
convince his Southern African Development Community counterparts
that time
has arrived to impose limited sanctions against
Zimbabwe.
This is the view of acting opposition Democratic Alliance
leader Joe
Seremane in a media briefing in Cape Town on Friday.
Seremane said Mbeki should admit that the talks he is brokering
between
Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change
have "gone nowhere."
His call comes ahead of the 27th SADC heads of
state summit in the
Zambian capital, Lusaka, next week.
"Today
President Thabo Mbeki is scheduled to report on the progress of
his
mediation with Harare to SADC.
"This presents South Africa with an
excellent opportunity to intervene
decisively and positively in the affairs
of that unhappy country.
"If the president is honest, he will have
to admit that the talks he
has brokered have gone nowhere, for the self-same
reason that his
interventions have failed in the past.
"President Robert Mugabe has as usual refused to show any sign that he
is
committed to resolving the crisis in his country. It is time to change
gears.
"If this regional organisation, and our government in
particular, is
serious about avoiding a human catastrophe, they must act at
once, and with
resolution in Zimbabwe," Seremane said.
MM/nm/APA
2007-08-10
African Press Agency
Mail and Guardian
Percy Zvomuya
10 August 2007 11:59
As
more and more people flee Zimbabwe and pour into South Africa's
cities, the
social networks that have developed over the years to
accommodate
Zimbabweans are growing overburdened and, as a result, recent
arrivals are
increasingly having to brave life on the streets.
Lloyd, in
his late twenties, left his job, wife and child in
Chinhoyi, a town in
north-west Zimbabwe in May. He earned a monthly salary
of around Z$300 000
(about R10), and said there was simply no point in going
to work anymore. "I
thought because of the 2010 World Cup there would be
openings
here."
There haven't been many openings. "Since I arrived, I
have
worked once. The people we worked for a month ago keep postponing
paying
us," he explains as he exchanges a cigarette with two friends on an
icy
Tuesday night at the Methodist Church sanctuary in Johannesburg's
CBD.
He says he misses his family, whom he has not spoken to
in a
month. "She [my wife] is waiting for me to come home. I just don't know
when
I will get money to send to her."
"I was not
involved in politics," he says when asked whether he
fled because of
political persecution. "I just came here because things were
bad. And
although things are bad for me here, they are even worse for my
family."
"The winter here is bad. One time it snowed and
all I had for
cover was cardboard paper. My feet were numb for hours," he
says, describing
the days when he lived on the street.
Lloyd says he has not eaten a hot meal for weeks. "We have
forgotten how pap
tastes," he says, adding "that's why some of our people
end up getting
involved in crime".
This is a point echoed by Theko Pharasi,
the station
commissioner at a police station in Alexandra. "Yes, Zimbabweans
are
involved in crime, especially breaking into business premises and street
robberies."
Pharasi could not provide figures for how
many Zimbabweans his
officers have arrested. "Of course, they don't work
independently. They work
with our local people here." Pharasi insists that
the bulk of those involved
in criminal activities cannot be the recent
arrivals. "It's people who have
been around. There is no way you can come
today, befriend local criminals
and commit crime the following
day."
Now living in the relative comfort of a shack in
Alexandra,
Nkosinathi, who is in his thirties, comes from Bulawayo, the
Zimbabwean city
closest to South Africa and whose majority Ndebele speakers
share an Nguni
heritage with the Zulus. "I came last year," he
says.
"We live on the occasional job that comes our way," he
says when
asked how he survives. One of his friends explains that there are
many
Zimbabweans in the area. "There is everyone here: Ndebeles, Tongas and
Shonas, all of them."
There is no way of knowing how many
Zimbabweans live in Alex. At
the local clinic, CEO Abel Mangolele says he is
not in a position to say
whether there is an influx of Zimbabweans who come
for medical attention, as
they don't ask people for their identity
documents. "We just ask for local
addresses and people just give out
addresses. But it becomes difficult when
our social workers do follow-up
visits as the addresses they sometimes give
are
incorrect."
National numbers on how many people are arriving
are also hard
to come by, but those who work with Zimbabweans in South
Africa say that the
numbers are definitely on the
increase.
Toendepi Shonhe, a representative of the Movement
for Democratic
Change in Johannesburg, says, "Everyday I serve around 10
genuine cases of
people who have fled political persecution in
Zimbabwe."
Shonhe says he writes letters for these people as
supporting
documents for their asylum status applications. He refers some of
them to
Zimbabwe Political Victims Association whose coordinator, Oliver
Kubikwa,
confirmed an increase in the number of people coming to their
offices for
assistance.
Analysts say that, with the
campaign for next year's elections
set to begin soon and economic conditions
continuing to deteriorate, the
southward trek will
continue.
Doubt over refugee numbers
Despite the avalanche of information that South Africans know
about Zimbabwe
and its people, no one quite seems to know precisely how many
Zimbabweans
are on South African soil.
Recently, Patrick Chauke, home
affairs portfolio committee
chairperson and ANC MP, suggested that there are
up to 10-million foreigners
in South Africa -- the majority of them
Zimbabweans. Local media has used
the three-million figure since 2002,
butsome analysts argue that two-million
more Zimbabweans have arrived since
the contentious presidential elections
of 2002 and the subsequent worsening
of conditions in the country.
Sally Peberdy of the Southern
African Migration Project (Samp)
argues that the three-million figure
suggests that there are 1,5 Zimbabwean
adults for every 10 South African
adults, a scenario that she describes as
highly unlikely.
"I don't know who came up with that figure and how they came up
with it,"
Peberdy says.
Loren Landau of the Forced Migration Studies
programme at Wits
University concurs that "there are no good numbers
available".
He said people have been streaming in and no one
has been
counting. But he said the last census in South Africa indicated
that there
were about 800 000 foreigners in the country. He said that the
figure of
three-million lends the impression that "people have been marching
in a line
into the country", adding "that it doesn't seem likely that
three-million
have come in".
The question we should be
asking, Landau suggests, is who is
inflating this figure and to what end? Is
the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change trying to delegitimise the
Robert Mugabe government, or
the white farmers who lost out, the media, the
NGOs or other interested
parties? The answer to that is as imprecise as the
figures bandied about. --
Percy Zvomuya
Mail and Guardian
Surika van Schalkwyk
10 August 2007
11:59
It's hard to imagine what Freeman* must be feeling. He
hasn't
been able to move more than 100m for the last two months at the risk
of
being arrested. He's gone all that time without a bath or a change of
clothes and he complains about being covered in lice.
Freeman is just one of the more than 500 Zimbabwean asylum-
seekers who live
in the queue outside the home affairs office in Marabastad,
Pretoria. Apart
from the fear of losing their places in the queue -- only
200 people are
issued with Section 22 asylum-seeker permits each week --
they have been
warned that if they leave the vicinity of the home affairs
office, they will
be arrested as illegal immigrants.
"I have been sleeping in
cardboard boxes outside home affairs
for weeks. We don't have access to
toilets or running water. If we go as far
as the nearby river to take a bath
or to the market to buy food, we get
arrested and deported," Freeman told
the Mail & Guardian.
"If we are lucky, we eat once a day.
I regularly see people
faint of hunger," said Johannes*.
The asylum-seekers also say that the dreaded Gumba-Gumba gangs,
which
control illegal border crossings from Zimbabwe, work in collusion with
the
department of home affairs.
"If you pay the Gumba-Gumba R500,
you are taken to the front of
the queue. If any of us resist, we get beaten
up or threatened with knives,"
said Jonathan*. The asylum-seekers claim home
affairs officers and the gangs
then share the bribe money paid by queue
jumpers. They add that the gang
also steals their cellphones, money and
blankets. Jonathan added that the
South African police are not doing
anything about the current situation.
But those waiting in
the queue have also experienced some
kindness. Gilbert* expressed gratitude
to the South Africans who donate
supplies to the hundreds of exiles living
in the queue at Marabastad. "Even
though there are not a lot of donors, we
are very grateful to those who give
us food and
firewood."
* To protect the interviewees, only their first
names have been
used.
cathybuckle.com
Friday 10th August
2007
I don't know who it was who said 'All publicity is good publicity' -
probably a newspaper magnate - but in Zimbabwe's case I'm not at all sure
it's true. Sky TV's footage this week of burly white farmers manhandling
desperate black Zimbabweans fleeing the chaos over the border was certainly
publicity but it did no one any good. What it did was to reinforce the
stereotypes of the past; memories of white men armed with whips and assisted
by vicious dogs in apartheid South Africa and Smith's Rhodesia only appeared
to emphasise the point that what is happening on the Zim/South African
border in 2007 is simply a continuation of the racial divisions and hatred
that tore the two countries apart in the past. The Sky footage may have
intended to highlight the desperate plight of the Zimbabwean refugees but
the over-whelming feeling left in the viewer's mind was antipathy towards
those South African white farmers. Geoff Hill's earlier report on SW Radio
Africa of what's really happening on the South African border had tried to
put the record straight; Geoff pointed out that the white farmers also
deserved our sympathy as they suffer daily incursions, theft and damage
caused by the fleeing Zimbabweans but no words could erase the image of the
farmers handcuffing terrified black people.
What the Sky report failed to
do was to point out that the white farmers
would not have had to resort to
vigilante tactics if the South African
police and immigration authorities
had been doing their job properly. The
truth is that South Africa is totally
unable or unwilling to address the
problem of Zimbabwean refugees , even
refusing to call them what they are:
refugees fleeing a country where every
aspect of life has become
unsustainable; a country which South Africa has
consistently failed to
criticise for its gross abuse of human and property
rights over the last ten
years, a country which has been brought to its
knees, in part because of
South Africa's moral cowardice and failure to
confront Robert Mugabe. Even
now, at the eleventh hour when Mbeki is
mandated by SADC to facilitate
crucial talks between the Zimbabwean
government and the opposition, he
continues to allow Mugabe and Zanu PF to
dominate the proceedings with their
lies and deceit about the true situation
in the country. You would think
that the presence of thousands of refugees
on South African soil should
alert Mbeki to the collapse of the neighbouring
state. But, when it comes to
Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, Mbeki
remains silent, apparently
tongue-tied by his fear of Mugabe's maniacal
response to anyone who dares
criticise the actions of the 'Hero of the
Liberation Struggle' and the
Pan-Africanist cause.
Speaking of
maniacal responses, SW Radio Africa's interview with Florence
Chiwenga this
week demonstrated perfectly that not all publicity is good
publicity! Anyone
with a modicum of sense, even within the ruling party, who
listenined to
Chiwenga's crazy ranting would have to be as convinced as I am
that when it
comes to Zimbabwe the lunatics have taken over the running of
the
asylum.
The inimitable SW reporter, Violet Gonda, never one to resist a
challenge,
picked up her phone in London last week and rang the Commander in
Chief's
wife to ask her about her attack, verbal and physical, on the
members of
Morgan Tsvangirai's party as they toured the Makro wholesale
outlet in
Harare. Tsvangirai had gone there to see the effects of the
government's
price blitz on the availability of goods. Accompanied by
journalists he
toured the huge store only to come face-to face with Florence
Chiwenga, a
fire-eater if ever there was one. Quite what the lady was doing
there was
not entirely clear but I suspect she was after a bargain or two
that she
could resell on the black market. After all what's the point of
backing the
government's crazy price reductions if one can't take advantage
of them!
What followed was pure lunacy as la Florence screamed abuse and
unprintable
insults at all and sundry and physically assaulted a
journalist.
Violet, like the good journalist she is, followed up on the story
and simply
wanted to ask Mme Chiwenga what it was all about; why had the
sight of the
opposition leader provoked such a rage? Whether Violet really
expected a
sensible answer, I somehow doubt. Chiwenga is after all the woman
who told a
white farmer whose farm she wanted that she hadn't tasted white
blood for a
long time. It's hard to believe that one would get a sane
response from such
a person. What Violet got in answer to her always
courteous questioning was
a positive barrage of nonsense about a lying
foreign media, enemies of
Zimbabwe etc etc. We have all heard it so often
that it's not even worth
getting angry about; all you can do is laugh and
that's exactly what Violet
did when Chiwenga threatened to sue her for one
billion US dollars for
daring to phone her private number! With that, the
phone was slammed down
and when the intrepid Violet tried to phone again the
amount had gone up to
two billion.
It's all utterly insane but there's a
chilling side to it; my mind went back
to when my daughter's farm was first
invaded and there was a gang of rabid
war vets at the gate on a daily basis
ranting and raving a la Chiwenga. The
scary thing about them was there was
just no way one could actually
communicate; there was simply no talking to
them as fellow human beings, no
common sense or reason in what they said.
Any kind of normal human exchange
becomes impossible with people so
brain-washed that they no longer know
right from wrong.
As more and more
'dissident' thinkers leave the country or are arrested and
imprisoned
there's a terrifying prospect that only the madmen, the ranters
and ravers
will be left to negotiate Zimbabwe's future. And that is a very
frightening
prospect.
Ndini shamwari yenyu. PH.
VOA
By Patience Rusere
Washington
10 August
2007
A Harare magistrate on Friday remanded until October the
cases of 33
activists of the Movement for Democratic Change faction of
Morgan Tsvangiray
who stand accused of carrying out firebombing attacks and
plotting other
violence against the state.
The defendants were told
prosecutors needed more time to gather evidence
against them - this after a
high court judge recently slammed police for
fabricating witnesses and other
evidence to support the cases against the
opposition members.
The
charges against the activists, who include Glen View lawmaker Paul
Madzore
and Tsvangirai faction Deputy Organizing Secretary Morgan Komichi,
include
malicious damage to property, recruiting and training for sabotage,
and
banditry.
Following their arrests in March their bail applications were
postponed 50
times. The last two of the 33 were freed on bail this week
after four months
in jail.
Defense attorney Alec Muchadehama told
reporter Patience Rusere of VOA's
Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that despite the
high court bail decision, which
suggested the cases had been trumped up, his
clients must nonetheless prove
their innocence in a trial.
Mail and Guardian
Yolandi Groenewald and Nosimilo Ndlovu
10 August 2007
11:59
Zimbabweans who want to sneak into South Africa
illegally have
to be resourceful, brave and cunning.
First, their journey takes them to the South African border. One
option for
crossing is to use syndicates operating from Beit Bridge, which
use South
African-registered vehicles to transport people from Bulawayo to
Johannesburg for a fee ranging between R800 and R1 000, the Mail &
Guardian
learned on a trip to Limpopo this week.
"Some
bribe the police to come in or show them any documentation
and they let them
through," says a fruit seller at the border.
A taxi operator,
who drives taxis between the Zimbabwean and
South African border, says he
works from 6am in the morning till 8pm. He
drives about 18 loads of people a
day across the border and back, but takes
them only as far as the Beit
Bridge taxi rank.
"Many Zimbabweans take buses straight from
Zimbabwe to
Johannesburg and other areas as it is easier that way. They
stand less of a
chance of getting into trouble with the law as they are
vulnerable coming
from Zimbabwe," he says.
He estimates
that 20 buses carrying no fewer than 70 people each
enter South Africa from
Zimbabwe every day.
But the majority of cash-strapped
Zimbabweans are seeping in
through the perforated border fence. Driving
along the border, there are cut
fences and crossing points
everywhere.
Once the border has been crossed, it is not as
easy as hopping
on to a taxi to Johannesburg -- which seems to be the
imagined utopia that
many immigrants aim for. Most taxis are afraid of the
roadblocks dotting the
highway along the first 40km south of the border,
says Samuel Netsune, a
Musina farmer on whose land many of the Zimbabweans
sleep at night. Many of
them hike the 40km to get past the first tollgate on
the N1, then catch a
taxi or a truck.
"Trucks are better.
They are much cheaper than taxis and don't
get stopped that often," says
Thomas Chingwere, a Zimbabwean waiting for a
lift in front of the tollgate
at the Bokmakierie garage. Popular routes to
the tollgate include the
railway line and the Eskom line," says Netsune. His
neighbours also tell
stories of finding discarded photocopied maps of farm
roads on their
patrols.
"The last roadblock is normally at Bokmakierie,"
says Gert
Klopper, whose farm borders Netsune's. "After that, it is home
free."
Klopper participates in the farm patrols that round up
illegal
immigrants. Another patroller, Benji Sutherland, talks about finding
illegal
immigrants who had not eaten for 14 days. "They don't even have the
energy
to run away, even if they wanted to."
Sutherland
says the farm patrols are far more effective than
police operations. The
farm patrols, structured along the same lines as the
now defunct commando
system, patrol farms with flashing green lights,
looking for Zimbabwean
immigrants, whom they perceive as a huge security
risk.
A
local paper in Louis Trichardt estimates that, on an average,
more than 2
000 refugees a week are entering through the border. After the
publicity of
the last few weeks, Limpopo police are more reluctant to give
new statistics
about Zimbabweans crossing the border but, says police
spokesperson Ronel
Otto, in the first two weeks of July more than 6 000
illegal immigrants were
arrested.
The South African Police Service says that, between
January 5
and January 12, 753 illegal immigrants were arrested. But, this
was during
the wet season, when the river was flowing and crossing is more
difficult.
Despite a warning from the provincial
commissioner, Calvin
Sengani, that the farmers are acting outside the law,
Gideon Meiring, the
chair of the Soutpansberg District Farmers' Union, says
the farmers will
continue their patrols.
"We are
protecting our property," he says. "And the flood of
immigrants has dire
implications for South Africa. This is the community
policing that [Safety
and Security Minister] Charles Nqakula has spoken
about."
Other landowners in the Musina area believe the publicity given
to farm
patrols has prompted increased police action against illegal
immigrants.
"It is definitely better now than a few weeks
ago," says a
guest-farm owner. "But, ultimately, increased patrolling will
not be the
solution. The true solution can only come from within
Zimbabwe."