Zim Independent
Constantine Chimakure
NEGOTIATIONS between the
National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (Noczim) and
two international petroleum
companies to supply fuel to the country have
collapsed after disagreement on
pricing.
Sources in the oil industry told the Zimbabwe Independent
that Noczim
was about to clinch a fuel deal with Independent Petroleum Group
of Kuwait
and BP Shell of South Africa, but it fell through after Noczim
insisted that
the landing rate be set at US$0,60 a litre.
"Negotiations collapsed. The two international companies said the cost
of
landing must be between US$0,70 and US$0,90 a litre if they were to make
a
profit, but government was adamant that it should be US$0,60," one of the
sources said.
As a result, the source added, the two companies
opted out of the
deal, forcing Noczim to look for alternative sources of
fuel, including
Equatorial Guinea.
The industry sources said
this week's state visit by Equatorial Guinea
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema
Mbasogo would see the Zimbabwe government
intensifying negotiations with the
West African country to supply fuel.
"We expect the government and
that of Obiang to reach a fuel
agreement. Negotiations have been ongoing and
something must have been
reached this week," another source
said.
Obiang is scheduled to open the Harare Agricultural Show
today as part
of his state visit.
About three weeks ago, a
high-powered government delegation was in
Equatorial Guinea to hunt for
fuel.
The trip was also necessitated by the recent freeze on the
price of
fuel, which virtually dried up the country, deepening acute
shortages in the
formal market.
The team was headed by Energy
and Power Development minister, Mike
Nyambuya, and included Reserve Bank
governor, Gideon Gono.
Government has been on the hunt for fuel in
Equatorial Guinea and
Libya in recent months.
In the past,
government obtained but failed to pay for fuel from
Kuwait, Libya and other
countries.
Efforts to secure fuel from Iran, Sudan, and Angola also
failed.
The country has been without adequate fuel since 1999 due
to lack of
foreign currency and the severing of lines of credit by foreign
banks and
money-lenders.
Zimbabwe cannot get lines of credit
due to its poor credit rating and
high political risk.
Zimbabwe
consumes 3,5 million litres of diesel, three million litres
of petrol and
five million litres of Jet A1 daily. It needs about US$130
million a month
to import fuel.
In March, government came up with a plan to trade
diamonds illicitly
mined from Marange in Manicaland in exchange for fuel
from Equatorial
Guinea.
The two countries developed strong
diplomatic and trade relations
after the arrest in 2004 in Harare of alleged
mercenaries led by Simon Mann,
who were allegedly en route to Equatorial
Guinea to overthrow Obiang.
Mann, a security expert and former
British Special Air Services
officer, is presently facing extradition to
Equatorial Guinea where he is
accused of being the ringleader of a foiled
coup.
Zimbabwe received fuel worth US$24 million from Equatorial
Guinea
which it was unable to pay for, resulting in the government coming up
with
three options to settle the debt.
The options were:
sourcing the fuel through the purchase and sale of
diamonds; Noczim
supporting the Minerals and Marketing Corporation of
Zimbabwe with financial
resources to mop up diamonds for resale; and the
state-run oil procurement
company going into diamond mining.
While the Energy ministry was in
support of the first option, the
central bank opposed it saying the process
was flawed.
In turn, the RBZ said it could come up with a debt
settlement
agreement with the West African nation "rather than be part of an
illegal
process".
It was reported in June that government was
negotiating with a Libyan
bank for a fuel line of credit, but the deal was
said to be far from being
sealed after the financial institution demanded
guarantees for loan
repayments.
The National Economic Recovery
Council reportedly recommended the use
of diamonds, beef or tobacco to back
up the line of credit.
Efforts to get a comment from Noczim chief
executive officer,
Zvinechimwe Churu, were in vain yesterday as he was
reportedly out of his
office.
Zim Independent
Orirando
Manwere
OVER 3 000 orphans, other vulnerable children and
elderly people in
Harare who were benefiting from a food voucher scheme run
by a
non-governmental organisation, face starvation after the supermarket
that
supplied the food is unable to do so anymore, the Zimbabwe Independent
has
learnt.
Sources said the supermarket was emptied of basic
commodities
following a government blitz on businesses for overcharging last
month.
A recent report presented by Brett Davidson, a media
consultant for
the Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme at a two-week
course on
Poverty and Rural Reporting for Sadc journalists in Swaziland,
says Action
Aid has since 2004 been providing food to over 3 000 vulnerable
persons in
Harare through a food voucher scheme.
The scheme
involves the distribution of vouchers, which beneficiaries
can exchange for
pre-determined quantities of food commodities which traders
can redeem with
implementing agencies within a set timeframe.
Action Aid contracted
leading supermarket chains OK and TM to supply
beneficiaries with the food
items.
However, following recent price controls, basic commodities
have
disappeared from supermarket shelves, leaving beneficiaries facing
starvation.
"Implementing such a social transfer programme in a
context of food
scarcity and when the country is depending on importing its
own staple food
crop is a major challenge," said an official who refused to
be named.
"This puts the lives of those dependent on charity more
at risk
because there is just no source of food locally," he
said.
Non-governmental organisations such as Care International and
World
Vision are also providing food packs to vulnerable people in urban and
rural
areas.
The UN World Food Programme says due to crop
failure and escalating
poverty in both rural and urban areas, around 2,1
million people will face
serious food shortages by the third quarter of this
year.
Food scarcity has reached alarming levels amid reports that
some
families are going for weeks without the staple food.
In
Harare and Bulawayo, the poverty situation is being worsened by the
unavailability of water, with some suburbs going for over two weeks without
a drop.
The increasing poverty in the country was also
highlighted in
Parliament this week where legislators called upon government
to act
urgently to avert disaster.
Speaking during a
question-and-answer session in Parliament last
Wednesday, Nkayi legislator
Abednico Bhebhe and Pumula-Magwegwe legislator
Esaph Mdlongwa said people in
their constituencies were facing starvation
and called on the Social Welfare
ministry to immediately intervene.
"Some families in my
constituency have gone for over a week without
anything to eat. There are no
government food relief programmes at the
moment. What is government doing
about this?" asked Bhebhe.
Mdlongwa said some families in his
constituency - especially the
sick - were starving and the situation was
worsened by the unavailability of
water in the suburb.
"This is
affecting home-based cares givers, mostly women who have
dedicated their
lives to assisting the sick. What is the Ministry of Health
doing to solve
this problem?"said Mdlongwa.
Zim Independent
Pindai Dube
ESIGODINI in Matabeleland South resembled a war
zone on Tuesday when
soldiers went on a rampage, breaking into shops,
looting goods worth more
than $60 million before severely assaulting newly
resettled farmers.
More than 70 uniformed soldiers based at Bomb
Range Training Camp in
Esigodini caused terror at Ntabende Shopping Centre
in revenge after
colleagues were beaten during a brawl with villagers at a
beer drinking spot
in the area.
The place is about 50 km south
of Bulawayo. According to the
villagers, the beatings were in retaliation
for what happened last Saturday
when two of their colleagues were thoroughly
beaten during a fist-fight with
some villagers.
Five villagers
with broken arms and legs, including a pregnant woman,
Tracy Ncube (23),
were admitted at United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) while
scores have sought
treatment at Mpilo and Esigodini Hospitals.
Relating the incident
from his hospital bed at Mater Dei Hospital,
village headman and owner of
one of the shops which were looted, Joel Ncube
(68), said he lost goods
worth more than $60 million to the soldiers in the
chaos.
"I
was shocked to see two army trucks full of soldiers in uniforms
arriving at
the shopping centre. They jumped out and started beating up
everybody
randomly at the centre before they broke into my shop looting
everything.
"The soldiers also went into the village beating up
anybody they met
and destroying people's property," said Ncube
The case was reported at Esigodoni Police Station. When the Zimbabwe
Independent crew visited the police station, police officers were busy
taking statements from 15 victims, who were visibly in pain as they had
lacerations all over their bodies, swollen heads and faces and had
difficulties in walking.
Police spokesperson, Oliver Mandipaka,
when contacted for comment
yesterday said: "I am out of office at the moment
but I will check the
details when I get back to the office."
Contacted for comment, army spokesman, Simon Tsatsi, said: "I am yet
to get
details from our Matabeleland regional public relations office at
Brady
Barracks in Bulawayo otherwise can you put all your questions in
writing."
Zim Independent
Pindai Dube
AS the water crisis in Bulawayo
deepens, a Zanu PF councillor last
week commandeered a Bulawayo City Council
(BCC) water bowser to deliver
water from near her house.
Cowdray Park councillor, Stars Mathe, on Thursday last week ordered a
driver
of a BCC water bowser to abandon scores of water-seeking residents at
Mahlathini Primary School in the suburb and relocate it near her house for
easy access.
A visit by Zimbabwe Independent to Cowdray Park
confirmed that the
water bowser is stationed at a terminus, 100 metres from
the Zanu PF
councillor's house while residents walk long distances to access
the water.
The MDC-led council has allocated Cowdray Park only one
bowser to
deliver water to residents.
"The driver of the BCC
water bowser was hapless as Mathe, in the
company of her supporters, told
him that the council bowser should only
deliver water from near her house,"
said one of the witnesses, a Cowdray
Park resident, Violet
Ncube.
Mathe won the councillor's seat on a MDC ticket in 2005. She
later
defected to the ruling Zanu PF last year.
Mathe, when
contacted for comment, said: "No one is being denied
water. It's only a
coincidence that the terminus is near my house. It is
also the only central
place for residents to access water."
But BCC spokesperson, Pathisa
Nyathi, noted: "Politics should not be
at play in the distribution of water
when we are facing a critical
situation."
Residents in most of
Bulawayo's high density suburbs are going for
more than two weeks without
water as the crisis, that has seen council
decommission three dams inside
six months, continues to worsen.
The remaining two dams - Insiza
and Inyankuni - are supplying a mere
67 000 cubic metres a day against
normal requirements of about 145 000 cubic
metres.
Zim Independent
Augustine Mukaro
THE Harare Agricultural Show is increasingly
becoming irrelevant as it
is shunned by both local and international
exhibitors as the country's
economy disintegrates.
The annual
agricultural event, which will be formally opened by
Equatorial Guinea
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema today, is now a shadow of
what it used to be
when the agricultural sector formed the backbone of the
economy.
Since the launch of the controversial land reform
programme in 2000,
the sector has been in free-fall.
The
relevance of the exhibition has come under the spotlight as
agricultural
production continues to shrink due to government's failure to
provide inputs
to newly resettled farmers.
A tour of the Exhibition Park this week
showed that a number of
companies have snubbed this year's event, leaving
the exhibition halls
almost empty and a number of stands
unoccupied.
Exhibition halls such as Home Industries and Rajiv
Gandhi Hall, which
used to be packed with indigenous entrepreneurs and
farmers displaying their
produce, were virtually empty. Even new farmers had
nothing to showcase.
Most of the space in Rajiv Gandhi Hall was
taken up by government
ministries such as Energy, displaying jatropha
plants, Rural Housing and
Agriculture displaying model rural houses and a
resettled farmer. In the
Home Industries Hall, a hair saloon occupied most
of the space. Various
stands on the grounds had very little to
showcase.
However, government has tried to make the event relevant
by
reintroducing the cattle section, which had stopped in 2001. It even
tried
to lure people into attending by allowing an auction to be conducted
at the
show. But the price-monitoring team ordered the sale to be
cancelled.
Cattle from President Robert Mugabe's Gushungo
Investments farm in
Mazowe dominated the section, bringing in dairy cows,
fattened slaughter
cattle and breeding heifers. Gushungo Farm, formerly
Foyle Estates, is one
of the farms that Mugabe seized during the land reform
programme.
Cattle farmers said they were hoping to sell their
animals at
reasonable prices.
Farmers had come to the show
anticipating buying fertiliser and
chemicals in preparation for the next
cropping season but they could not get
anything.
Observers said
the recent closure of three quasi-governmental
fertiliser firms revealed
that there is nothing to showcase since the sector
is in a state of
collapse.
Dorowa Mine, Iron Duke mine and Zimphos were closed last
month due to
power cuts and non-availability of various raw materials, which
spells
disaster for food production next season. The closures mean that
there will
be no compound C fertiliser needed for planting tobacco.
Irrigated tobacco
planting is expected to start next week.
The
closures are also likely to affect Sable Chemical since phosphate
is one of
the raw materials in the production of ammonium nitrate.
Zimbabwe's
power utility company, Zesa Holdings, was at pains
explaining to customers
at the show the problems it faced in generating
electricity.
Zesa spokesman Fulland Gwasira said Zimbabwe was only generating hydro
power
since its two coal-fired plants were not functioning due to coal
shortages.
Before the land reform, Zimbabwe was a net exporter
of maize to
neighbouring Zambia and Malawi but is now importing food from
these
countries to bridge local shortfalls.
Zim Independent
Constantine Chimakure
A FACTION in Zanu PF backing President
Robert Mugabe's continued stay
in power last weekend failed to secure the
suspension of Bindura executive
mayor, Martin Dinha, on allegations that,
among others, he is leaking party
secrets in Mashonaland Central to the
media.
The camp led by Youth Development deputy minister Saviour
Kasukuwere
and minister without portfolio Elliot Manyika tried to have Dinha
suspended
during the ruling party's provincial coordinating committee
meeting held on
Saturday at Bindura municipality offices.
Sources told the Zimbabwe Independent that a motion to suspend Dinha
pending
a disciplinary hearing was moved by John Muchavezi, the province's
youth
secretary for security.
Muchavezi - who reportedly belongs to the
Kasukuwere camp - accused
the mayor of granting an interview to Zanu PF's
official mouthpiece, The
Voice, last July in which he claimed that tractors
allocated under the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe agricultural mechanisation
programme in the
province were being misused.
Dinha was also
accused of furnishing the Independent with information
regarding the
contentious succession debate in Zanu PF, especially in
Mashonaland Central,
where the Kasukuwere faction was reportedly weakening
the grip of
Vice-President Joice Mujuru.
Dinha is perceived to be a Mujuru
loyalist.
However, Muchavezi's motion was shot down for lack of
evidence.
"They (Kasukuwere camp) failed dismally to have the mayor
suspended,"
a senior Zanu PF official in the province told the Independent
yesterday.
"Their case lacked merit and evidence. They wanted Dinha
suspended so
as to prevent him from seeking re-election as mayor next
January."
Zimbabwe is expected to hold council elections in
January.
The fight to have Dinha suspended from the party started
over a month
ago.
The sources said despite the failure to have
the mayor suspended,
Kasukuwere and his faction were reportedly working on a
petition to oust
Dinha.
Zanu PF Mashonaland Central provincial
chairman, Chen Chimutengwende,
this week professed ignorance of the Dinha
case.
"No communication to that effect has come to my attention,"
Chimutengwende said. "Ask Kasukuwere or Dinha on that issue."
When told that he was also accused by the Kasukuwere camp of rooting
for
Mujuru, Chimutengwende said: "It is futile imagination to say I belong
to a
faction."
Chimutengwende is also Interactive minister in the office
of the
president.
This week, Dinha was unreachable, while
efforts to get a comment from
Kasukuwere were in vain.
Zim Independent
Paul
Nyakazeya
THE minister of Finance Samuel Mumbengegwi will
present the mid-term
fiscal policy review statement and supplementary budget
next week on
Thursday.
In a statement yesterday the ministry of
finance said the mid-term
fiscal policy which was postponed indefinitely
last month would be presented
on September 6.
"The secretary
for finance advises that the minister of finance, Dr
Samuel Mumbengegwi will
present to parliament the 2007 Mid Term Fiscal
Policy Review Statement and
the 2007 supplementary budget on Thursday
September 6," the ministry
said.
There are only two months remaining before Mumbengegwi
presents the
2008 national budget. The actual budget will be presented in
November.
Parliament is currently on recess but will reconvene on
September 4
two days before the minister's presentation. The Senate will
resume seating
on September 11.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
governor Gideon Gono is expected present
his mid-year monetary policy before
the end of September.
Gono postponed his mid-year monetary policy
review in July saying he
would get a cue from the supplementary budget in
order to recalibrate the
monetary policy in line with the fiscal
policy.
Mumbengegwi faces a daunting task to come up with a policy
and
supplementary budget that would revive the country's economy which has
been
cruising in reverse gear at an alarming rate over the past two
years.
The economy has been characterised by rising expenditure
pressures
emanating mainly from escalating inflation currently at 7 6634,8%
for in
July.
Shortage of basic commodities and water supplies,
fuel, power cuts and
the dollars continuous loss of its value against major
currencies has been
the order of the day.
Expenditure targets
outlined in the 2007 budget presented last
November stood at $4,6 trillion,
of which $1,5 trillion had been allocated
to capital expenditure, which was
24,4% of total expenditure for the year.
The remainder of $3,1
trillion or 75,6% of total government
expenditure for the year had been
allocated for recurrent expenditure
consisting largely of salaries and
wages.
The $6,2 trillion is said to have included provisions for
over-spending government agencies.
Analysts say the
supplementary budget will be funded mainly from
borrowings on the local
market. They say this would stoke inflation. The
situation is worsened by
the fact that the government has lost more than 90%
of its revenues because
of the price blitz which has led to less taxes. Most
companies are likely to
report losses because of the blitz and will
therefore not be liable to pay
corporate taxes.
Reduced sales volumes especially on basic
commodities will result in
less VAT revenue for the government.
The supplementary budget will increase the budget deficit which is
currently
more than 70% of the GDP. The International Monetary Fund (IMF)
recently
said Zimbabwe's inflation could close the year at a massive 100
000% unless
something is done urgently to address the crisis.
Zim Independent
By Mutumwa
Mawere
A BILL is before the Parliament of Zimbabwe that will
allow the
government of Zimbabwe to compulsorily acquire a controlling
interest in
foreign-owned firms.
There has been much debate
about the real agenda underpinning the
legislation in as much as there was
and continues to be debate about the
land reform programme.
The
question that needs to be addressed is whether in fact the
proposed
indigenisation law is a case of hypocritical manipulation by a
government
that has run out of enemies to divert attention from the
unprecedented
political and economic crisis or is a genuine attempt to
prosecute and
complete a national revolution.
Independence in 1980 was expected
to bring with it a comprehensive
national democratic revolution encompassing
civil and economic rights.
At face value, indigenisation represents
nothing but an attempt to
democratise the economic space in as much as the
liberation struggle sought
to assert the rights of black and white citizens
of Zimbabwe to determine
their own destiny.
Even the fiercest
critics of Mugabe would concede that the economic
empowerment of the
majority is a necessary ingredient to ensure the
stability of the
country.
No one can deny that the Rhodesian economy was race-based
and the
asset ownership architecture was racially defined.
Blacks were alienated from their natural resources and some may argue
that
poverty of the African majority was racially induced and was not a
product
of market forces.
In attempting to enact a law that seeks to
indigenise the economy in
terms of enterprise ownership, the government is
making a significant
concession that it has failed to address this enduring
colonial question.
The critics of indigenisation are many and the
arguments advanced play
very well in the hands of any populist who can
easily take advantage of the
confused messages for political
expediency.
Some of the arguments advanced in 2007 are no different
from the
arguments that were advanced against the liberation
movements.
In fact, even Mandela was considered a terrorist for
participating in
a struggle for economic and political justice and yet today
his statue
shares the same space in London as Churchill and
Lincoln.
On the issue of land, it was argued that democratisation
of ownership
will necessarily lead to starvation and poverty.
Equally, it is argued by many that indigenisation for a country that
is in
the intensive care unit is hardly the medicine required.
In this
argument is an allegation that black Africans cannot be
trusted custodians
of economic assets and, therefore, any policy that seeks
to empower them is
not in the national interest.
The argument in its naked form is
canon fodder for any politician
under siege who depends for political
survival on the ignorance of the poor.
The notion that the rich are
in some way responsible for creating
poverty is widely held not only among
the poor but among the intellectuals.
There are many who also hold that view
that workers should be in control of
enterprises and entrepreneurship is
necessarily a sin against the national
interest.
The poor are
made to believe that an exercise of transferring share
certificates from the
haves to the have-nots will advance the national
democratic
revolution.
In 2007, Africa is much wiser and the world has
fundamentally changed
for anyone sensible to ask why the government thinks
that indigenisation
will cure the economic and political injury that
confronts Zimbabwe.
In addressing this key question I can only draw
on my personal
experience as the pioneer black entrepreneur in large-scale
mining in
Zimbabwe.
In 1996, I successfully negotiated the
acquisition of the entire
shareholding of Shabanie Mashaba Mines (Private)
Ltd (SMM) from a British
controlled company, T&N Plc.
The
assets were owned by a foreign private company and the transfer of
ownership
to a black African would be a welcome development by any
government that is
committed to a national democratic revolution.
I was the first to
dare to intervene in the economy not as a micro,
small or medium-scale
business owner but as a principal in the mainstream
economy.
It
took 16 years for me to become a pioneer and the government had no
involvement in the negotiation with T & N Plc.
Some will
recall that the indigenisation movement only gathered
momentum 14 years
after independence when many aspiring entrepreneurs came
to the conclusion
that the government was not committed to the
democratisation of the economic
space.
No visible programme was evident from the government
regarding
indigenisation. The government had in its wisdom accepted the
notion that
blacks could only play in the SME space through loans and equity
advances
from state institutions such as Sedco and Industrial Development
Corporation.
In some sense my acquisition of SMM was
revolutionary in that it
opened the floodgates for other people to think
bigger.
As Zimbabweans debate the need for or against
indigenisation in 2007,
it is important that they reflect on the actual
experiences that some of us
have gone through.
Firstly,
President Robert Mugabe has never been convinced that the
black bourgeoisie
can be trusted to prosecute the national democratic
revolution.
His views are no different from many former liberation heroes who
believe
that the state is a better custodian of the national wealth.
Based
on this observation, it must be noted that the GOZ had no
programme for
empowering private black individuals and there is no evidence
to demonstrate
the government's commitment to this cause in respect of its
own
assets.
With the exception of Anthony Mandiwanza and Silvester
Nguni who
inherited state-owned institutions when they were privatised, and
Telecel I
am not aware of any government initiative that resulted in blacks
acquiring
a significant stake in the enterprises on the back of a conscious
effort to
empower previously disadvantaged groups.
Secondly,
Zanu PF has been involved in many private sector initiatives
with
partnerships. I am not aware of any serious attempt by the party to
partner
with blacks in economic activities.
I am aware of President
Mugabe's close relationship to messrs O'Reilly,
Cluff and other investors
who were allowed to take advantage of
opportunities in Zimbabwe as foreign
players.
The party managed over the years to conclude deals with
the likes of
Lonrho, Tregers, Fribrolite and others. If the party had a
commitment to
black economic empowerment, I am sure that it would have used
its poor
cadres as instruments but regrettably this has not
happened.
Thirdly, in the context of mining, the government in 1983
enacted the
Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe Act (Chapter 21:04)
that
effectively nationalised the output of all mining companies in respect
of
exports.
All mining companies were not allowed to export
their minerals but
were forced to sell such minerals through the
MMCZ.
The rationale behind the establishment of MMCZ was that the
government
did not trust the mining companies.
The MMCZ is now
24 years old and yet no one is asking what has been
achieved by this
institution.
If the government is already in control of all mineral
exports then
how on earth can it justify the enactment of the indigenisation
law on the
basis that mining companies are externalising.
When
I acquired SMM, the government had given a dispensation to the
platinum
industry to be exempt from marketing through the MMCZ. SMM's
exports were
marketed through MMCZ.
However, in reality the MMCZ had delegated
the entire marketing to
three foreign agents who had a free
reign.
On the day I took control of the company, SMM was sitting
with stocks
valued at US$30 million and debtors of an equivalent amount.
MMCZ was the
sole debtor of the company.
The average collection
period was over 120 days and yet SMM had to pay
its creditors in 30 days.
SMM had no direct access to the market.
SMM had no clue about the
actual prices paid to the agents. MMCZ's
interest was only in respect of
commissions.
The staff of the MMCZ was closely aligned to the
agents who
occasionally facilitated payments to them. The biggest opposition
to my
acquisition came from the MMCZ who enjoyed the benefits of a system
under
which they were not accountable.
My first assignment as
chairman of SMM was to change the debtors'
collection period to 30 days. Two
of the agents agreed to the change but the
third one who was more
politically connected decided to fight. He had the
full support of the RBZ
and ministry of Mines and I was threatened not to
change the contract
terms.
At the time, a Tom Shitto was the deputy general manager of
MMCZ. He
also was close to the agents and was not supportive of the
acquisition.
In the end, I was forced to terminate the marketing
arrangement and
the agent owed about US$5 million that has not been paid
till today.
MMCZ refused to take legal action against the agent and
SMM was forced
to institute legal action to recover the money. Needless to
say that Tom
Shitto resigned from the MMCZ and joined one of the asbestos
agents based in
South Africa.
When SMM put pressure on MMCZ to
pay on time and reduce stocks, the
institution was not capable of
responding.
The imposition of MMCZ in the value chain was just an
extra cost but
also presented funding challenges for SMM. With a thinly
capitalized
marketing agent, banks were reluctant to take a view of the
debtors' book of
SMM and yet MMCZ could not come to the party to finance the
book. The
problems are more acute for non-tradable commodities like asbestos
fibre
because there is no reference price of the commodity on any exchange.
Accordingly, one cannot take an informed view on the debtors'
book.
When confronted the government could not defend the role of
the MMCZ
and finally in 1997, SMM was allowed to market its own asbestos
like the
platinum mines.
SMM managed to takeover the staff of
MMCZ who was responsible for
asbestos marketing with the exception of Tom
Shitto.
Shitto subsequently left the MMCZ and joined one of the
agents of MMCZ
where he is still working until today. The irony is that when
the government
decided to terminate the marketing dispensation in April
2004, Shitto's
Jewish controlled company was appointed as the sole agent to
takeover the
markets previously handled by SAS.
The government
has no problem trusting foreign investors or agents but
has serious problems
trusting black entrepreneurs.
If one believes that the government
is serious on the indigenisation
front, it is important to ask the question
whether its attitude to black
entrepreneurs has changed.
The
victims of externalisation allegations have been largely black
confirming
the widely held view that the proposed legislation has nothing to
do with
advancing any national interest.
Although established with the
purpose of protecting national
interests, my experience with the MMCZ's
operations suggests otherwise.
I am not even sure that the
government is convinced that MMCZ has
discharged its mandate efficiently and
effectively. The broader question
remains regarding the need of a monster
like MMCZ in the value chain. Can
the existence of the MMCZ co-exist with
the indigenisation of the mining
industry? What are the implications on the
future of MMCZ if the industry is
indigenised?
Fourthly, Mugabe
has never trusted the market system in so far as
determining the exchange
rate. When one combines the MMCZ and the RBZ in the
value chain of mining,
it is apparent that the government is already in
control of all the affairs
of mining companies.
How can indigenisation co-exist with market
unfriendly policies? How
would black entrepreneurs relate to an environment
where their sales
revenues are determined by the state? Can an arbitrarily
determined exchange
rate be facilitator for indigenisation? If all blacks
with access to foreign
currency are accused of externalization, where would
foreign investors find
partners?
I acquired SMM in 1996, and,
barely ten years later, it was
nationalised using draconian measures
including state of emergency powers.
There is no guarantee that the
government will not use the same
tactics against future entrepreneurs
especially when there is a legal
framework for the state to play a role in
the asset transfer process.
Will the attitude of the government to
black wealth accumulation
change with the passing of the indigenisation
laws? If the government has
not managed to come up with an empowerment
framework in respect of
procurement over the last 27 years, what confidence
do citizens have that it
is serious about advancing the national interest?
Would the localization of
foreign-owned companies result in an economic
turnaround? How is such a
turnaround going to be financed? Who is going to
finance the beneficiaries
of such empowerment?
The handling of
the land issue has demonstrated the inherent problem
that the government
faces and the inability to make choices that advance the
national
interest.
In advancing arguments against the proposed
indigenization laws, one
has to be extremely careful to avoid using a
language that plays into the
hands of populists who are anxiously waiting
for racially insensitive
arguments.
Mugabe has taken the role
that many Africans are afraid to assume i.e.
of challenging the hegemony of
imperialism and its instruments in form of
transnational corporations.
However, some of these corporations were invited
by the government and
offered incentives only to find out that when the
political heat intensifies
their host has no loyalty.
Zim Independent
By
Renson Gasela
REPORTS in the state media that Dorowa Mine, Iron
Duke mine and
Zimphos were closed last month due to power cuts and non-
availability of
various raw materials spells disaster for the production of
food this coming
season.
What has happened at these companies
is nothing other than total
failure by the government. It should not be
called "challenges".
If this problem had been highlighted at the
beginning of the year,
there would have been time to try and do something.
People will remember
that when the power cuts started getting worse, we were
told that the power
was going to wheat producers. Ask wheat producers how
much power they have
been getting. I happen to be one of them. I am sure
that the management of
these companies have loads of correspondence to
government about the
impending disaster.
Closing shop was a
last resort for these fertiliser companies. What
should have been done is to
use the little foreign currency available to
import maximum power from Snel,
Eskom and Mozambique. Instead fleets of the
latest vehicles have been
imported to please a few powerful people in Zanu
PF.
Those
farmers who got tractors are raring to go, so we are told. Only
160 000
tonnes against 600 000 tonnes of fertiliser, have been produced.
There is no
more production. Even if something was done now there would
still be a
shortfall of more than 50%. It is common knowledge that compounds
are
required at planting. Planting should really be over by the end of each
year.
In all crops, the best planting time is extremely
limited. You miss
that, you are finished. Every day counts and lost
opportunity can only be
remedied the following year.
Tobacco
planting starts next week. Please don't blame shortage of
tobacco and
foreign currency in April next year. The consequences of
omissions done now
will visit the nation next year. I can see these closures
spilling to Sable
Chemical as their product AN contains phosphate. The
problem will also spill
to Windmill and Zimbabwe Fertiliser Company.
It appears to me that
one of the greatest things lacking in this
government is the ability to sit
down and plan ahead.
* Gasela is the MDC secretary for lands and
agriculture.
Zim Independent
Paul Nyakazeya
THE business community was last
week surprised when government allowed
price reviews, but the big question
that every industrialist and
entrepreneur was asking was whether they would
ever recover from the
two-and-a-half-month price blitz.
The
devastating effects of the price freeze exercise have been felt
across all
sectors of the economy, with government being the latest to
realise the
blitz had hit its sources of revenue.
Business lost over $40
trillion since government declared war on big
business. As a result
government lost $13,1 trillion in revenue and that is
when the warning bells
sounded, prompting a rapid policy shift on the
matter.
However,
the decision to review prices has been received with mixed
feelings by
manufacturers, consumers and government officials alike.
Economist
Eric Bloch lamented the appalling consequences of government's
price
controls over the past nine weeks.
"The magnitude of the damage
that has been done, and which is
continuing to be suffered, is as immense,
if not greater, than the abysmal
harm caused by the most pronounced
tsunamis," said Bloch.
Shelves in stores throughout Zimbabwe have
been emptied of basic goods
after producers reacted to the government's
order to freeze prices by simply
ceasing production.
President
Robert Mugabe, although he has not commented on the latest
reviews, was
confident that the situation would remain normal.
In a speech last
month, Mugabe denied that the price freeze would
prove a flop and accused
manufacturers who claimed that production was no
longer viable of being part
of a Western plot to topple his government.
"We are saying to all
factory owners you must produce," Mugabe said.
"If you do not
produce, we certainly will seize and nationalise firms
which were
profiteering excessively in a bid to incite Zimbabweans to revolt
against
the state," he said.
A director who was arrested during the price
blitz said business was
not going to recover overnight in a "non-performing
economy".
"If the prices were pegged in line with their cost
build-up it would
have benefited the consumer, manufacturer, business and
the economy," said
the director who spoke on condition of
anonymity.
"Manufacturers had to discontinue, or reduce, production
in order to
minimise losses. As a result, almost all businesses have
sustained immense
losses and consumers are still struggling to survive in
view of the
near-total non-availability of essentials."
He said
there was now a more vigorous and virile black market than
previously
existed due to the intensity of demand in the absence of goods in
the formal
market, which could take months to reverse.
"With demand massively
exceeding supply, black market merchants are
able to command prices very
considerably greater than those which were being
charged by retailers prior
to the controls being introduced," he said.
"Thus, instead of
reducing inflation, government has caused real
inflation to soar as business
will struggle to improve until December."
Economic analysts said
the failure by the cabinet taskforce to come up
with a pricing structure
will result in a sharp decrease in revenues for
government, with markedly
lesser value-added tax (VAT) in view of lower
sales by
businesses.
It would also result in decreased Pay As You Earn
(PAYE) inflows as
businesses progressively reduce numbers of employees, and
reduced Customs
Duty as values of imports decrease.
In a major
policy u-turn after realising that it had shot itself in
the foot,
government approved increases in the prices of goods ranging from
foodstuffs, soap, farming inputs and tyres to improve supplies on the
market.
Adjustments for train and airfares, telecommunications
and freight
tariffs were also approved.
Foodstuffs whose prices
were increased include sugar, tea leaves,
chicken and bicarbonate of soda.
The prices of Geisha bath soap, Cobra floor
polish, Key bar laundry soap,
Omo washing powder and blankets were reviewed
upwards.
Farming
inputs whose prices were reviewed include maize seed. Prices
of motor
vehicle tyres and Bata shoes were also increased.
Government said
the benchmark for all other prices of commodities not
covered by the review
remain at June 18 levels until further notice.
Chairman of the
Cabinet Taskforce on Price Monitoring and
Stabilisation, Obert Mpofu, said
retailers would be allowed to put a maximum
mark up of 20% and charge VAT of
15% on a commodity.
For example, a retailer who gets a product from
a supplier at $100 000
will sell the product at a maximum price of $138 000
per item.
Zim Independent
By Mutumwa Mawere
IN raising this question, I
am acutely aware that even among Africans,
we seem to have lost some compass
in terms of what, if any, we stand for as
part of the human
race.
We were once colonised in the majority and yes, we were once
slaves,
but we have come of age. The modern Africa began a journey that we
are still
traversing even today in 1956 with the independence of
Sudan.
As we continue to interrogate the post-colonial African
experience, we
should critically address the question of why the African
brand seems to
have no African ambassadors as if to suggest that no
investment has been
made by Africa to create a new and confident African
that can operate in any
mind and market-space.
The absence of
African ambassadors is striking and unmistakable. The
space is so open that
people like Bono, Bill Clinton, Madonna, Tony Blair
etc have stepped in and
are now the global ambassadors for Africa's pain,
replacing the Mandelas of
yesterday. The struggle for Africa's political
emancipation was led by
Africans and yet the struggle for economic
emancipation in the post-colonial
Africa seems to have no African champions.
India, China, and other
newly industrialising countries have their own
indigenous ambassadors.
Colonial Africa invested in its own demise through
the missionaries who
armed future revolutionaries with toxic knowledge and
the end of colonialism
was, therefore, predictable once the natives had been
given the opportunity
to read and write without being given an environment
to practice their
trades.
Evidence available suggests that post-colonial Africa has
invested
substantially in building the continent's human capacity that is
well
recognised in developed states that have been able to assimilate such
skills
to advantage.
The brain drain is nothing more than the
externalisation of Africa's
expensive investment in human capacity. The role
of the African
intellectuals often created at a great cost to the continent
in addressing
the political and economic challenges of the continent is an
issue that
requires sober analysis. Where the hell are these people? Is it
the case
that Africa is a hopeless patient who when she invests the last
dollar is
not able to salvage her position in the global
marketplace?
If one were to undertake an exercise to identify all
the professional
and business people who share an African heritage but are
now calling
Europe, America and other developed states as home, I have no
doubt that the
number would be staggering.
What would be of
more interest is to aggregate their earnings and
wealth and compare it with
Africa's gross income. I have no doubt that the
African economy represented
by the diaspora may be one of the largest
economies of the world and yet
there appears to be no evidence of its
existence or organisation to help
challenge the widely held view that
Africans can never get it
right.
Why would Africans in the diaspora do well and yet their
comrades in
the continent are suffering often at the mercy of tyrannical
African
regimes? It is instructive that Jewish, Irish, Indian; Polish etc
people in
the diaspora are the ambassadors of their own brands and yet
Africans in the
diaspora have collectively failed to take ownership of their
brand.
We lack organisation and maturity to define the African
agenda when we
are so privileged to do more. What is amazing is that
Africans in the
diaspora are the biggest source of vocal diarrhea about why
people should
not take the continent seriously without ever taking a minute
to locate
their own actions in the value chain of the continent's
problems.
It takes Oprah to invest in a girls' school in South
Africa and no
similar initiative seems to be coming from Africa's own
nameless and
faceless icons. Where is Africa's Oprah? Can Oprah still be
considered as an
indigenous African when history has eroded the memory of
what it means to be
African? But Oprah has seen what many Africans who
emigrated as free people
have not been able to see.
Even when
you look at Africa's institutional players, it is evident
that there are
very few such institutions that are owned and controlled by
Africans in the
diaspora.
To what extent are Africans in the diaspora responsible
for
contaminating the African brand? What should Africa's expectations be on
its
most costly investment? How can Africa be universally credited for being
mismanaged when its most expensive investment appears to be alive and well
in the sanctuary of imperialism?
Incidentally, I have yet to
see African clamoring to immigrate to
socialist and failing nations. We all
seem to want the good life.
Africa's mines, industries, financial
institutions and other key
drivers of transformation are owned and
controlled by non-Africans and as
such the ambassadors of economic change
cannot reflect anyone other than the
source of capital. Africa's
supermarkets remain dominated by products
produced by institutions
controlled from without.
What role if any have the Africans in the
diaspora played in
democratizing the African shelf space?
Africans, like Jews, may be resident in foreign areas but surely
should have
a memory about their origins. Jews in the US for instance are
relevant in
shaping Israel's political economy in as much as Irish Americans
are
relevant to Dublin. Apart from the fragmented remittances of cash to
Africa,
Africans in the diaspora have failed to provide the kind of
leadership that
Africa needs.
In the main we do not have interests in the continent
for us to be
relevant in the discourse. The few that have economic interests
in the
continent and choose to reside outside the continent are often viewed
with
suspicion.
The lack of organisation by Africans in the
diaspora is no different
from the state of play in the continent and yet the
Africans in the diaspora
seem to think that they have some superior
advantage and are often critical
of their peers who remain misgoverning the
continent.
What is striking is that for example, a professor who
elects to teach
in England and another who elects to be a government
minister would
invariably regard the one that remains in Africa as corrupt
and useless even
though they may have gone to the same university and
qualified with the same
grades. Why is it that there is a discount that is
placed on service to the
continent and a premium on service to former
colonial masters? Only the
people in the diaspora must start to think about
this.
Brand ambassadors are similar to brand evangelists in that
they also
have a vested interest in seeing their favorite brand succeed. It
should not
be so much that they should attempt to influence other customers
to buy a
product but they should share their passion for a brand with their
fellow
customers.
Whereas a company markets to customers in
order to sell more products,
brand ambassadors must attempt to relay their
passion for a brand (Africa)
to non-Africans. If Africa has to succeed, it
needs its own brand icons and
brand ambassadors in as much as people like
Mandela and others provided for
the success of the civil rights
movement.
A way to get any brand noticed amidst all the brands in
the human
marketplace is to get brand endorsement.
Who is there
to endorse and affirm the African brand? What are we
doing as Africans to
get the brand visible and projected in a positive
manner or are we through
our actions and in many cases our inaction adding
to the undermining of the
brand that we all love?
The investment in Africa's rich mineral
resources is a testament that
non-Africans are more passionate about the
continent's possibilities than
people who call themselves Africans and
choose to be armchair
revolutionaries while the continent's future is being
mortgaged by the day
by its unaccountable political brand
ambassadors.
The key question to pose is whether brands are built
by brand
ambassadors. The answer is a yes and no. It is a big Yes if the
brand
ambassador you choose and nurture is one that is solus not promiscuous
for
your category. And a big and vehement No if the ambassador you choose is
a
promiscuous one, focusing not only on your brand but also on
others!
Brand ambassadors must not moonshine! Brand ambassadors who
focus on
one brand can achieve great results. How many of us want Africa to
be a
little Europe and are promiscuous brand endorsers.
In
order for Africa to build a continent that is safer, secure, more
comfortable, dynamic, innovative and productive, it is incumbent upon all of
us to play our part without expecting others to do what we are not willing
to do ourselves.
For more than half-a-century, the African
brand has been synonymous
with poverty and insecurity and yet the quest for
civil rights was premised
on a brand promise of advantage for the majority
and not the new
classification of disadvantaged citizens.
In
these complicated times, more than ever before in Africa's history,
citizens
have no choice but to turn to the Africans in the diaspora to help
solve
many of the most complex problems confronting the continent. The
diaspora
African brand is well known in the global labour market and is a
valuable
asset that must be harnessed and deployed to the advantage of the
continent.
Brands that are recognised and respected should help the African
cause.
One of the ways Africa can build and protect its image
is by using the
diaspora African and resources to leverage its position in a
globally
competitive world. The sustainable development of the continent can
only be
guaranteed and inspired by its own people otherwise the risk of
non-Africans
playing football with the continent's vast untapped resources
is high.
In conclusion, it is the responsibility of all Africans to
stand up
and be counted. We must be the change that we want to see. The only
power we
have is the power to organise.
Are we organised? Who
is going to organise us? How can we make our
money speak for
us?
Don't assume that anyone will work in your interest and bring
the
change that you want to see. Only you can make the
difference.
* Mutumwa Mawere's weekly column appears on New
Zimbabwe.com.
Zim Independent
By
Tanonoka Joseph Whande
IF there is one thing that has always
irked me, it is the Zimbabwean
people's penchant to inflict political wounds
and paralysing handicaps on
ourselves.
From soccer
administration to running trade union affiliates, we have
this propensity to
regurgitate and recycle proven failures from days gone
by.
In
politics, we, Zimbabweans, are unintelligently too tolerant to a
fault. Our
tolerance borders on masochism, as successive white regimes in
the land may
care to confirm, even from beyond their graves.
Today, it is Robert
Mugabe's turn.
"Leadership qualities" is something that
distinguishes exceptional
citizens from others yet Zimbabweans do not react
when a "leader" imposes or
is imposed on them.
Zanu PF, the
ruling party since Independence in 1980, has always
stunted emerging
brilliant young leaders while promoting tired old goats and
praise-singers
into the forefront.
Today, the nation of Zimbabwe continues to
frolic in a pool filled
with an endless string of tried, tired and useless
leaders who are no longer
relevant to our situation today.
Today, whenever we talk about Mugabe's successor, four names make
themselves
prominent but for different reasons. None impresses me.
Edgar
Tekere is a respectable man. I think he owes his respect to
having been the
first to openly "challenge" Mugabe for the presidency.
But Tekere
waited too long and supported Mugabe just a little bit too
much. Even today,
I am not sure whether his departure from Zanu PF was
caused by meaningful
differences of principle or was necessitated by other
circumstances.
Tekere seems to have been spared the expected
Zanu PF backlash and
abuse and actually appears to have been left well
alone, a curiosity for
someone who put up such a spirited effort to
humiliate Mugabe at the polls.
Others who did less against Mugabe found
themselves dead, arrested on
frivolous treason charges or were "dealt with"
into silence and a pauper's
life.
However, I applaud Tekere's
statements several years ago that he was
retiring from politics and was just
going to be a commentator. I urge him to
stay on that course. He should not
bother recommending to us Mugabe's
successor. Zimbabweans do not need
endorsements of potential leaders from
former Zanu PF
stalwarts.
Tekere did his undisputed part for Zimbabwe and that is
as far as it
goes. Finito!
Enter one Enos Mzombi
Nkala.
Like Tekere, Nkala was one of those closest to Mugabe, a
member of the
original inner circle. And, like Tekere, the party took good
care of him.
When people in his Matabeleland constituency rejected
him at the
polls, Zanu PF rammed him down the throats of the people of
faraway Kariba.
Mugabe continued to give Nkala several high-profile
cabinet posts
among which were Finance, Defence and Home Affairs. But
typical Zanu PF
greed saw him being the first to be ensnared in the widely
publicised
Willowvale scandal. So through fault of his own greed, he
stumbled and fell.
But recently Nkala told reporters that he was
getting back into active
politics so as "to frustrate Robert Mugabe's bid to
stand for re-election
next year".
And to achieve that, Nkala
chose, as his vehicle, the Patriotic Union
of Matabeleland, a regional
nonsense that advocates the autonomy of
Matabeleland.
Desperation and oblivion can cloud people's minds. Nkala, founder
member of
Zanu PF, but with hardly any constituency at all, now believes
because
Mugabe has turned into a fiend, people will listen to him. It is
sad. It is
truly pathetic.
Nkala justifiably benefited from Zanu PF as
ministerial portfolios
given him testify. He was instrumental in the
horrific massacres in
Matabeleland and the Midlands. To his credit, he
admitted his complicity and
apologised. But now, left with no choice, he is
denouncing Mugabe and Zanu
PF.
On my part, I say to Nkala:
Zimbabwe gave you support and a chance but
you abused it. You now threaten
to "spill the beans" on Mugabe but
conveniently ignore that you are just as
much to blame. Spill the beans and
give us the evidence to incarcerate you
too because you were party to all
that went on.
Secondly, you
are a damn coward since you want your "book" to be
published after you are
dead. Let it be published now so we can all flock to
you for clarification
and authenticating. You want to throw Zimbabwe into
perpetual chaos with
unproven announcements.
When politically dead people start
publishing after they are
physically dead, I get mighty suspicious because
our country has gone
through hell because of Zanu PF political
dinosaurs.
If it's true, why wait till you are dead? Zimbabwe needs
your help
now, Nkala.
However, I hear that you are fronting
some obscure "party" that
champions the autonomy of
Matabeleland.
Please understand that not an inch of Zimbabwean land
is ever going to
be parcelled out to any tribe for any reason. Zimbabwe took
care of you and
you failed on your own; now you want to cause unnecessary
chaos because you,
like your benefactor Mugabe, have proved to be
liabilities to the nation and
are out of time.
Zimbabwe is
Zimbabwe. There was never any Mashonaland or Matabeleland
or Manicaland,
just Zimbabwe.
Do not fool anyone in your part of the country into
believing that
there is ever going to be a separate state or a federal
nation or something
so atrocious. Zimbabwe does not belong to a tribe and no
part of it ever
will.
I have heard about Joice Mujuru. She is
not a contender for the
presidency. Mugabe used her just to cause confusion
and almost succeeded.
Then there is the third twin, Simba Makoni.
So much is being said
about him and his potential to be president of
Zimbabwe. He is the real "Mr
Teflon", squeaky clean as Mr Min might
say.
Sadly, no one in Zanu PF is clean.
I concede
that, outwardly, Makoni entices me with his mind, demeanour
and "a seeming
appearance" of political cleanliness. But clarifications
first,
okay?
Who is trumpeting Makoni's presidency?
Makoni is
a member of Zanu PF. That alone is a fault that even the
heavens can hardly
correct. He was Mugabe's blue-eyed boy who, like all the
others before and
after him, was discarded when he had performed for the
master. When he ran
out of luck, like Kamuzu Banda's Aleke Banda, he started
mutedly mumbling
negatives about his benefactor.
And Makoni has no constituency. I
cannot recall an election he won in
his own name. He also appears to have
been fired from all the public jobs he
was appointed to. So why is his name
always being pushed forward?
The two camps vying for Mugabe's
throne are courting him.
"Makoni," says zimbabwejournalists.com,
"is likely to align himself
with the small Manyika sub-clan, most of whose
important officials -
including Security minister Didymus Mutasa, Justice
minister Patrick
Chinamasa and Agriculture minister Joseph Made - are
supporting Emmerson
Mnangagwa's bid for the presidency".
Apart
from the revolting tribal card, how can Zimbabweans feel they
have a new
decent president when he is known to be "in the pocket" of people
like
Mutasa and Chinamasa? Will Makoni be ours or theirs?
The same site
also reported that "powerful retired army commander
General Solomon Mujuru
has ditched his wife, Vice-President Joice Mujuru, as
his ideal successor
and is now opting for former finance minister Simba
Makoni". He is said to
have no presidential ambitions of his own but would
like to be "the power
behind the throne". In other words, he wants to be a
puppet
master.
Forgive me, but just why are all the Zanu PF malcontents,
who have
something to answer for, vying for Makoni? Will he be our president
or
theirs? Will he be, as former Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi said of
Uhuru
Kenyatta, "(easily) guided"?
I am afraid Makoni will not
be ours and his deep roots in Zanu PF make
him very suspect.
Meanwhile, there are thousands of young men and women, in and outside
Zanu
PF, who are more deserving than "compromise candidates".
There is
nothing more dangerous than a "compromise candidate" who
might not execute
his responsibilities fully as he attempts to pay old
debts.
Anyone with IOUs to Zanu PF stalwarts is worse than Mugabe. What will
he
give them as quid pro quo? Immunity from prosecution?
Don't say I
didn't warn you.
* Tanonoka Joseph Whande is a Botswana-based
Zimbabwean writer.
Zim Independent
Orirando Manwere
THE House of Assembly and the Senate last
Tuesday resumed sitting for
the Third Session of the Sixth Parliament of
Zimbabwe, with the
reinstatement of motions from the last session, debate on
the presidential
address, tabling of seven portfolio committee reports and
the initial
reading of four Bills, before adjourning to September
4.
The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill, Warehouse
Receipt
Bill, Precious Stones Trade Amendment Bill and the Electricity
Amendment
Bill were read for the first time on Thursday and referred to the
Parliamentary Legal Committee for scrutiny on their
constitutionality.
Gutu South legislator Shuvai Mahofa (Zanu PF),
who chairs the
Portfolio Committee on Youth, Gender and Women's Affairs,
presented her
committee's first report on youth service and vocational
training centres
which highlighted appalling living conditions endured by
trainees at the
institutions.
The committee recommended the
temporary closure of the centres until
the economic situation
improved.
Education
Fidelis Mhashu (MDC), the
chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on
Education, Sport and Culture,
presented the fourth report on operations of
state
universities.
The report noted that there was gross under-funding
of state
universities by central government since the 1990s and this was
negatively
affecting the quality of education.
It said
"university education is crumbling at a rate that has never
been experienced
in the history of the country" and that government should
adequately
remunerate lecturers and improve infrastructure at the
universities.
Higher and Tertiary Education minister Stan
Mudenge acknowledged the
committee's findings and recommendations, adding
that he had personally
written a letter of appeal to the Finance ministry in
February for urgent
funding of various projects at universities which was
never responded to.
Mudenge said state universities had submitted a
combined bid of $2,5
trillion for various projects under the 2007 Public
Sector Investment
Programme (PSIP) but only about $39, 4 billion was availed
by Treasury.
He appealed to the House to approve a realistic
budgetary allocation
for state universities.
The committee
recommended that government should provide funds for one
project at a time
to ensure completion; timely release of funds to hedge
against inflation and
the need for universities to be innovative and embark
on income generating
projects to augment fiscal allocations.
Water
Water
Resources and Infrastructural Development minister, Munacho
Mutezo,
presented his ministry's response to the second report of the
Portfolio
Committee on Local Government on the takeover of water and sewer
reticulation in urban centres by the Zimbabwe National Water Authority
(Zinwa).
Mutezo told the House that there was no going back on
the takeover and
Zinwa had since taken over 70% of the urban
centres.
He pointed out that Zinwa needed massive financial
assistance either
through low cost loans or the PSIP.
Despite
concerns from residents and other stakeholders, Mutezo
maintained that there
was prior consultation before the cabinet decision on
the Zinwa take
over.
Courts
Shadreck Chipanga, the chairperson of the
Portfolio Committee on
Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, presented
his committee's third
report on the operations of the Civil, Labour,
Administrative, High,
Community and Primary Courts.
The report
said the courts were not running smoothly due to inadequate
resources.
Committee member Tongai Matutu (Masvingo Central
MDC) said: "Honestly
we cannot have an important ministry like the Ministry
of Justice running
like an orphanage or an old people's home where you find
that conditions of
service, for example, for prosecutors and magistrates,
are not enough.
"The conditions are appalling. Most of these people
are taking home
less than $3 million per month.
"How do you
expect a prosecutor who takes high-profile cases to
prosecute a very senior
official who has a lot of money?"
The report said apart from poor
remuneration, courts were operating
from dilapidated buildings with
inadequate furniture, defunct type writers,
inadequate stationery and
malfunctioning toilets, among other negative
factors.
In some
cases issuing of judgements was delayed due to lack of
stationery and
defunct typewriters.
There were disparities in the remuneration of
Labour and
Administrative Court judges and those from the High
Court.
The committee recommended that courts should be allowed to
retain 80%
of the revenue collected instead of the current 5%.
It also recommended the provision of adequate funds to the ministry,
review
of salaries and allowances of staff, equipping of law libraries and
rehabilitation of buildings as well as construction of new
ones.
Citizenship
A report on the Citizenship of
Zimbabwe Act and the fourth report of
the Portfolio Committee on Defence and
Home Affairs were also tabled. The
latter was on the first quarter budget
review of the Ministry of Defence. A
joint report of the portfolio
committees on Health and Child Welfare and
Public Service, Labour and Social
Welfare on the proposed National Health
Insurance Scheme, was also presented
in the Senate.
On the Citizenship of Zimbabwe Act, an analysis of
court cases
presented to the committee by Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights
and the
Registrar General (RG)'s response showed that the RG regarded all
Zimbabwean
citizens with a claim or entitlement to foreign citizenship by
descent as
dual citizenship holders.
Zimbabwean law requires
one to renounce their citizenship by descent
to acquire local
citizenship.
However, the provisions of this law under Section 9 of
the Citizenship
Act, has created several difficulties of interpretation and
application,
resulting in many claimants being denied Zimbabwean
citizenship.
The committee recommended that the RG's office should
embark on a
massive awareness campaign on the provisions of the Citizenship
Act to guard
against unnecessary litigation between the claimants and the
RG's office.
Health
On the proposed National Health
Insurance Scheme, senators argued that
the National Social Security
Authority (NSSA) lacked the capacity to
administer the scheme as it had
failed to run pension schemes.
They argued that NSSA officials were
abusing existing schemes by
buying posh cars at the expense of pensioners
and other retirees who were
getting unrealistic pension payouts or
compensation for injuries.
Following three days of business, both
houses adjourned to September 4
to allow female legislators to attend a
workshop in Masvingo and others to
participate at the parliament pavilion at
the Harare Agricultural Show where
portfolio committee public hearings were
conducted.
Zim Independent
Comment
IT is difficult to imagine how the tug-of-war over water
supply and
distribution between the Bulawayo city council and the Zimbabwe
National
Water Authority (Zinwa) will end. This is a matter of both revenue
and
politics. Who eventually wins the purse wins the politics,
too.
So far the prospects are not salutary for the MDC-led council,
except
that it occupies the moral high ground against a predatory monster
state,
for Zinwa is, in material terms, no more than government's grasping
paw to
oust the MDC from urban local authorities.
Since
government decided last year that Zinwa should take over from
local
authorities the supply and distribution of water to residents, the
agency
has taken over these functions in Harare, Chitungwiza, Mutare,
Bindura and
Masvingo. This process has unfortunately not been matched by any
improvement
in service delivery. In many instances, residents assert, the
situation has
deteriorated.
For the first time since the hostile takeover, many
suburbs are going
without water, never mind the quality, any water at all,
for up to two
weeks. The explanation from the agency is not anything to lift
anyone's
spirit: lack of pumping capacity at water purification plants,
ancient pipes
leading to leakages, and lack of financial
resources.
Residents have heard all these excuses before when Zinwa
rushed to
take over these functions from opposition councils. The impression
given by
Local Government minister Ignatious Chombo when he announced the
decision
for Zinwa to take over was that finally he had found a solution to
our
perennial water crisis: people who could do the job, with or without
money
or equipment.
The situation has taken a more sinister
twist in Bulawayo where
government has resorted to outright blackmail to
force the city authorities
to surrender water supplies, hence revenue, to
Zinwa. Bulawayo metropolitan
governor Cain Mathema was recently reported in
the media asserting that
government would not "intervene" to resolve the
city's crippling water
crisis until Zinwa was allowed to take
over.
This was later polished by Water and Infrastructure
Development
minister Munacho Mutezo, who said government would help all the
people of
Zimbabwe regardless of their geographical location. Given
government's
lethargy in dealing with Bulawayo's water woes, perhaps Mathema
had put it
too crudely. But anybody who believes that government is now
determined to
do anything significant without seizing the purse from the
Bulawayo council
will believe that the pipeline from the Zambezi River to
Bulawayo can be
completed before next year's elections.
The
residents of Bulawayo are reportedly getting water for a few
hours, once in
three days. Many buy it from those who have private boreholes
for $25 000
for a 20-litre container. Those who can't afford to buy it,
queue at council
boreholes for days on end or fetch it from unprotected
sources, with the
attendant hazards of water-borne diseases.
Lately industry, which
previously had been spared the gruelling water
rationing regime, has been
dragged in. That means a potent threat to their
survival, employment for
many residents due to reduced output or outright
closure, or a relocation
for some companies.
A question that begs an answer is whether this
is a deliberate
strategy by government to suffocate Bulawayo through
deindustrialisation or
a genuine lack of resources?
Calls for
lasting water solutions are not new. What is new are
requirements that water
can only be made available once Zinwa takes over,
whether the residents want
it or not.
But Zinwa has not shown itself to be a model of
administrative
competence that residents would like to stake their fate on.
Its failures in
Harare and other cities are not a good advertisement for
other towns, moreso
when it is failing in cities that have sufficient raw
water already. What
difference can it make for Bulawayo where most water
sources have dried up?
The only face saver for the government is a
cynical one: that its
failure to provide water to Bulawayo is more to do
with its congenital
inability to deliver service to citizens in general than
any political
design. Its policy blunders, from the disastrous land reform
to the latest
assault on business, are the reasons the country is in this
mess.
Unfortunately it will not allow the people of Zimbabwe to look for
other
alternative leaders.
In this regard, the residents of
Bulawayo will have to decide whether
they succumb to political blackmail
before next year's crucial presidential
and parliamentary elections or stand
up to the likes of Mathema. Which is
where the opposition will need to
demonstrate in its election programmes
that it can go beyond the promises
that the Zanu PF government has made
about the Matabeleland Zambezi Water
Project before every national election
since Independence, just to win
votes. It is indeed, an unenviable task.
Zim Independent
Candid Comment
By Joram Nyathi
AS he surveyed the
mortal danger Britain faced from Nazi Germany more
than a year into World
War II in November 1940, when the rest of Europe lay
prostrate, Winston
Churchill observed: "It is lucky that we did not make any
extravagant
optimistic promises or predictions (about the pain or duration
of the war)
because a succession of melancholy disasters and terrible
assaults and
perils have fallen upon us. We have had to face these
calamities; we have
come through the disasters; we have surmounted the
perils so far; but the
fact remains that at the present time all we have got
to show is survival
and increasing strength and an inflexible will to win."
Even this
was a gross understatement of what he had promised the
British people when
he took over as prime minister after Neville Chamberlain's
resignation
earlier in May, whereupon he warned: "I have nothing to offer
but blood,
toil, tears and sweat."
Britain won the war. Some say it was
because of Hitler's invasion of
Russia, others say it was because of Japan's
foolish bombing of Pearl
Harbour which forced the US's entry into the war at
the time it did. To me,
Churchill won the war for Britain.
I
was reminded of Churchill's words as I read the "extravagant
optimistic
predictions" in the state media at the weekend about the next
agricultural
season. It was all about how Operation Maguta, massive new
irrigation
projects and mechanisation would boost agricultural production.
Before I could even digest this deluge of euphoria, reality reared its
disconcerting head: there wasn't enough electricity for tobacco and winter
wheat cropping, and three fertiliser companies had shut down, the same media
reported. Whereas the country required 600 000 tonnes of fertiliser, there
was a mere 160 000 tonnes available. We are talking less than two months
before the onset of the rainy season.
The similarity between
Churchill's Britain in 1940 and the launch of
government's land reform in
2000 is the lack of preparedness. The big
difference is: for Zanu PF the
timing was politically expedient; for Britain
it was survival or death.
Churchill maintained an unfailing sense of
perspective on the enormity of
the task ahead. While he extolled Britain's
victories in different theatres
of the war, he knew the war still needed to
be won.
This, I
think, is where we got the land reform propaganda entirely
wrong. We mistook
a few victories in skirmishes with white farmers for
agrarian victory.
People who invaded commercial farms were given the
impression that farming
was easy; that there was no need for skill or
investment; that it could be
done on a part-time basis, even by cellphone.
There was no need for
discipline; cattle of every pedigree were slaughtered
for beef while
agricultural machinery and irrigation equipment were
vandalised with
impunity.
We were told Africans were natural farmers.
In two years Britain had proved itself equal to Hitler's brutal war
machine.
Germany's threatened land invasion was virtually impossible after
the
Luftwaffe failed to overcome the RAF.
We are in our seventh year of
glossy propaganda about the success of
the land reform; we are still making
fancy predictions about food
production, yet figures for tobacco, cotton,
soya beans and maize show a
precipitous decline since 2000. We have even
breached our treaty obligations
with Sadc which entrusted Zimbabwe with the
food security portfolio.
I shall be happy to listen to anyone who
can demonstrate that Zimbabwe
has in the past seven years faced greater odds
than England did in 1940
other than a failure of leadership.
Let's accept the truth: that we failed to plan and execution was bad.
The
consequences have been catastrophic for the whole enterprise. Noone is
accountable. Senior Zanu PF officials have been hopping from one farm to
another, hoping one day to hit a rich vein leading to fabulous wealth. As I
write there are people in Mashonaland West shooting each other over disputed
land ownership - seven years on and seven land audits!
Because
there is no planning, every cropping season comes upon us as
an emergency:
no seed, no fertiliser, no draught power, yet there is a
minister employed
full-time. Many melancholy disasters have befallen us
since 2000. We are
barely surviving on what we produce.
We have resorted to food
imports. We don't have the foreign currency
we should be earning since the
start of the land reform. This has had a
terrible impact on other
necessities such as drugs, fuel, power,
infrastructural development,
education and general healthcare.
These symptoms of our failure to
execute the land reform, instead of
making us face up to the reality, have
led to more propaganda. It sounds
more revolutionary to exaggerate the
effects of Western "targeted sanctions"
than to own up to our
shortcomings.
While Churchill declared Britain would never
surrender, he did not
pretend that external help was not vital. Those who
sympathised with its
cause fought with it. There are many who "back" our
land reform in the
region but have not taken up the cudgels with us. Could
it be that
government is too arrogant to admit its mistakes and that we need
help or is
it content to live with its propaganda of success?
One cannot escape the conclusion that self-serving propaganda at the
expense
of national wellbeing is no better than outright treachery. The
lesson from
Churchill? When faced with a national crisis, don't
over-simplify it lest
you induce sloth and complacency; don't exaggerate it
because you induce
despondency.
There are limits to what propaganda can
achieve.
Zim Independent
MuckRaker
SENATOR Aguy Georgias has announced he is suing the
British government
for refusing him leave to enter or transit through
Britain while en route to
New York. His name appears on a list of people
banned by the European Union
from travelling to EU states. Georgias claims
he suffered inhuman treatment
at the hands of British immigration
officers.
Let us remind ourselves here that EU sanctions were
imposed after the
expulsion of EU elections monitoring team head Pierre
Schori in 2002. It was
made clear to Zimbabwe that political violence and
electoral manipulation
could not be tolerated and that position has not
changed.
Abductions, beatings, and torture persist. The leader of
the
opposition was savagely assaulted while in detention. The recent voter
registration exercise has revealed extensive anomolies.
Georgias wasn't asked about any of this in his cosy interview with
Caesar
Zvayi who, by the way, repeated the official lie that Kofi Annan had
called
for the lifting of sanctions.
Why wasn't Georgias asked about
journalists and trade unionists booted
out of Zimbabwe? Did they not feel
"grossly violated"? Guardian
correspondent Andrew Meldrum was deported in
defiance of a court order after
living in the country for 23 years. Georgias
was merely inconvenienced for a
few hours.
As for balance of
payments support and access to lines of credit,
those will only come when
Zimbabwe has settled its arrears with the IMF and
put in place
macro-economic measures that promote stability.
There is no sign of
that at present. No bank will lend to a country
where the government is
actually sabotaging the economy and seizing people's
property. Georgias
should as a businessman understand that.
But he is a Zanu PF
legislator and as such he will remain blind as to
what needs to be done.
Sanctions will go of their own accord once Zimbabwe
is restored to
democratic normality. And by the way, if sanctions are
hurting the regime so
badly, why has its spokesmen always said they are of
no
consequence?
We had a couple of useful revelations in the
Nathaniel Manheru column
last week. The well-connected waspish commentator
was able to confirm that
President Mwanawasa had sacrificed his foreign
minister for Zimbabwe's sake.
This reveals the extent to which the
Zambian leadership can be bullied
by Harare. Ever since his "sinking
Titanic" remarks, Mwanawasa has been
under sustained pressure to
recant.
The dispatch of a fawning vice-president to Harare didn't
quite do the
trick, it would appear. Nor did the insertion of a wanted
criminal at the
Zimbabwean embassy in Lusaka to keep the Zambians steady. So
outspoken
foreign minister Mundia Sikatana had to go.
Mwanawasa
himself was obliged to say Zimbabwe's crisis had been
"exaggerated". It is
difficult to know how 7 600% inflation can be
"exaggerated". If anything it
is an understatement.
And what about the tens of thousands
streaming into South Africa every
month? Have their numbers been
"exaggerated"?
You have to be completely delusional to suggest that
Zimbabwe's
advanced state of decline is "exaggerated". But it would be fair
comment to
say that several Sadc heads are showing signs of the same
cognitive
dissonance our own dear leader has been experiencing.
The University of Namibia's last-minute decision to cancel John
Makumbe's
public lecture, "Landscapes of Poverty - Daily Life and Social
Crisis in
Zimbabwe" sponsored by Unam's sociology department and the Namibia
Institute
for Democracy, exposed the same craven cowardice in the face of
political
pressure. An alternative venue was found at a local hotel.
The
Zimbabwe embassy in Windhoek issued a vitriolic statement that
told us more
about the insecurity of the Zanu PF regime than it did about
Makumbe who
they described as a "discredited" academic.
"There was no need for
Mr Makumbe to pander to the nauseating,
nonsensical whims of the largely
racist and anti-Zimbabwe audience," the
embassy said.
The
Namibian authorities thus not only tried to prevent public
discourse on
Zimbabwe, they permitted the Zimbabwean embassy to insult
Namibians
exercising their right to attend the lecture. While we expect no
less from
our rogue regime, we are surprised the Namibians allowed
themselves to be so
easily manipulated.
It all goes to show how poorly rooted democracy
is in the region and
how far Sadc states will go to appease the predatory
regime in Harare.
When Sadc approaches the EU with its begging bowl
later this year we
hope this and other episodes, such as remarks made by the
Zambian
authorities in preventing democracy advocates from entering that
country,
will be borne in mind.
Manheru also told us last
week that he is a beneficiary of the
government's land
seizures.
Comforting writer Alexander Kanengoni who, in a recent
revealing
article, had waxed despondent about the state of land reform,
Manheru told
him not to worry.
"This year Alexander, with you
and me atop the new tractors, breaking
the clod, inseminating the bounteous
earth. Then the earth will swell and
explode green, all creepy crowlies
(sic) in wild flutter, in hymnal tribute
to a fecund territory. And the
children shall eat and eat until their cheeks
bulge, their stomachs
shine."
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe has once again applied to the UN for
food aid. It
is estimated that 2,1 million Zimbabweans are in need of
support.
The Sunday News featured Andrew Ndlovu in its
hagiographical
"Luminaries" column last weekend. His claim to fame, it would
seem, is
linked to the farm invasions.
"Cde Ndlovu is a hero of
the third chimurenga," the newspaper
declared, "as he used 14 of Sankorp's
vehicles together with the late Cde
Hunzvi to occupy farms in 1999 and also
assisted them to get war veterans
the $50 000 gratuities."
So
that is the stuff of which heroes are now made? And don't we recall
some
word of impropriety regarding Sankorp? Something to do with
book-keeping!
Muckraker is ambivalent over the Pius Ncube
affair. Clearly the man
showed remarkably poor judgement in some of the
choices he made. The same
can be said for his public pronouncements. But
once we see prelates like
Trevor Manhanga joining the fray (Herald, July
24), then it is obvious there
is more to this than meets the
eye.
Last week the Zimbabwe Independent exposed the role of the
state
security service in the setting up of a media sting to nail the
archbishop.
More is expected on that front.
But what made
Manhanga think we would benefit from his predictably
censorial view on
Ncube's behaviour? The church should never personalise
issues or demonise
people, he ventured.
Indeed, but couldn't he see that Ncube had
been set up and that
neither the state nor its media had clean hands in the
way this matter came
to light? If so, he didn't say.
Manhanga
should understand that he is steadily eroding public
confidence in his "the
Zimbabwe we want" project by acting as an apologist
for a regime nobody
wants.
Why when the president slammed church leaders who sleep with
other
people's wives, did Manhanga not ask Mugabe why he confined his
criticism to
church leaders?
As Caesar Zvayi helpfully reminded
us, what was egregious about this
case was that one of the victims of
Ncube's advances was his married
secretary.
Didn't that ring a
bell, good bishop? Or is any amount of hypocrisy
and double standards OK
with you judgemental Pentecostals?
The impact of air pollution
is one of the major environmental and
social issues facing the country, the
secretary for Environment and Tourism
Margaret Sangarwe told a workshop in
Harare last week.
"Air pollution continues to have a negative
impact on our health,
ecosystems, biodiversity, crops, infrastructural
materials and our cultural
heritage," she said.
So why doesn't
government do something about it?
Government was committed to
ensuring environmentally sustainable
social and economic development,
Sangarwe claimed.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Every
day trucks and cars
pump dangerous quantities of lead and other toxic
materials into the
atmosphere. The state has the legal apparatus to test and
punish offenders.
But for some strange reason no attempt is made to control
these emissions.
Again, motorists are charged with a carbon tax.
But that goes straight
to the fiscus instead of the purpose parliament
intended for it.
Sangarwe's speech was typical of speeches heard at
conference where
government spokesmen are full of good intentions, citing
all sorts of
"challenges", but do nothing.
Next time you see a
taxi imported from the Far East belching black
smoke, take down the number
and ask Sangarwe what she is doing about it.
There was an
interesting Comment in the Herald this week, calling on
Zimbabwe to sever
diplomatic ties with Australia. The writer complained that
Zimbabwe was not
benefiting from maintaining relations with Australia except
to boost its GDP
by sending school children there.
"Isn't it better to send them
(children) to friendly countries in line
with our Look East policy.?" asked
the writer.
Indeed, why are Zanu PF officials still keen to send
their children to
Australia where they get "tainted" by associating with
"descendants of
criminals" as George Charamba put it? Let them go to China
if they cannot
endure inferior education in their motherland. This should be
the logical
thing.
Isn't it a big irony that four years after
Zimbabwe quit the
Commonwealth in a huff, senior party and government
officials still cherish
the skills and values of that "useless" club?
Meanwhile, the Herald
editorial writer should know that Zimbabwe's embassy
is not located in
Sydney!
One explanation for the anger
shown towards Morgan Tsvangirai in the
official press this week, with
fatuous headings like "Tsvangirai thanks
paymasters for sanctions", could be
a sense of pique that the MDC leader's
visit to Australia is attracting more
interest than the visit here of
Equatorial Guinea's president, Teodoro
Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. As noted
above, chefs are bitter as well that their
kids are getting kicked out of
Australia and sent home to experience the
paradise that Aeneas Chigwedere
has created for them.
Then
there is Nelson Mandela's visit to London for the unveiling of
his statue
which has taken some of the gloss off events in Harare.
Just
contrast the two visits. Mandela, imprisoned by a repressive
regime, gets a
hero's welcome from Gordon Brown and the citizens of the
British capital.
Here is a true son of Africa. But in Harare two rulers
representing
repressive regimes provide a different view of Africa, one
rooted in the
past and meting out arbitrary cruelty to their citizens.
Anybody
sentenced to an Equatorial Guinean jail is unlikely to come
out alive. In
Zimbabwe the regime's critics are savagely beaten while in
detention.
Mandela and Brown have presided over successful
economies that have
seen their citizens prosper. But Mugabe claims "we have
governed this
country better than Blair has done to his
Britain".
Three million Zimbabweans disagree.
Zim Independent
By Eric Bloch
LAST week, the
state-controlled media reported that the Minister of
Water Resources and
Infrastructural Development had said that government
would not intervene to
address Bulawayo's water problems until the city had
ceased its resistance
to the intended take over of water distribution by the
Zimbabwe National
Water Authority (Zinwa).
As the state media is allegedly
stringently factual and correct, that
report must be presumed to have been
factually accurate.
However, only one day later, the same media
published a statement by
the same minister that government had no intent to
hold the residents of
Bulawayo to ransom, that it was concerned for the
wellbeing of all,
irrespective of political affiliations or inclinations,
and that therefore
government would vigorously address Bulawayo's critical
water needs.
Those needs have reached crisis proportions. Most of
the city's supply
dams are empty, or near-empty, primarily due to the
grossly inadequate
rainfalls in the last season, exacerbated by diminished
inflows from the
feeder-rivers, which have suffered immense siltation in
consequence of
excessive, uncontrolled, gold-panning, and in consequence of
pronounced,
destructive, river-bank cultivation.
The city's
adverse water-supply circumstances have been compounded by
the miniscule
inflows from the Nyamandlovu acquifer, and by ageing
distribution
infrastructure that could not be fully rehabilitated and
maintained by the
city's local authority, due to the magnitude of amounts
owing to it by
government and residents (exceeding $47 billion) and due to
inadequate
availability of requisite foreign exchange.
The result of the
intense insufficiency of water is catastrophic. Some
residential areas have
had no water supplies for over a week, whilst all
areas other than
industrial, commercial and the city centre are subject to a
minimum of seven
and a half hours of water cuts per day.
The business and city
centre are now subject to 12 hours of water
cuts, three days per week and in
some instances are subjected to even more
pronounced discontinuances of
supplies.
Not only are the residents subject to extreme discomfort,
but the
potential health hazards are appalling in the extreme. At the same
time, the
city's economy (already severely battered by Zimbabwe's distressed
economic
circumstances) is being subjected to yet further operating
constraints.
The tragedy is that, notwithstanding that climatic
conditions have
contributed to the city's devastating ills, those conditions
could readily
have been compensated for, and surmounted by available
measures to
distribute sufficient water to all in Bulawayo.
To
an overwhelming extent, recourse to those measures has been
prevented by
past and present governments, with the predominance of
culpability being
attributable to the present one.
Fault lies with both the past, and
the current, governments, for
Bulawayo not having assured water supplies
from the Zambezi River, and from
the dams that could have been developed in
Matabeleland North which, in the
past 25 years, has been proven to be a more
fertile water catchment area
than Bulawayo's existing one to the
South-East.
It was 95 years ago that the concept of pumping water
from the Zambezi
to Bulawayo was first developed, and yet after almost a
century there has
been little done to turn that concept into a
reality.
The magnitude of the Zambezi's water flow is such that, as
evidenced
by authoritative studies, the offtake required to sustain
Bulawayo, and
substantially to enhance agriculture and agro-industry in
Matabeleland
North, would have no negative environmental or downstream
negative
consequences.
But government after government has done
nothing to bring the
Matabeleland-Zambezi Water Project into being, except
that, very belatedly
and half-heartedly, some work on the construction of
the Gwayi-Shangani dam
was commenced last year, and is progressing
intermittently.
But the greatest blameworthiness must
incontrovertibly be attributed
to the post-Independence Zanu PF government
for, save for its limited
support of the Gwayi-Shangani dam construction, it
has not only done nothing
to address Bulawayo's needs, but it has actually
frustrated pursuit of
remedial actions, and thereby has severely worsened
the situation.
Fourteen years ago the Mtshabezi dam construction
was identified as a
potential major water source for Bulawayo.
But, despite recognising the contribution the Mtshabezi dam could make
to
the wellbeing of Bulawayo, a pipeline from the dam to Bulawayo has yet to
be
completed.
For years government persisted in its demands that
Bulawayo fund that
pipeline, thereby striving to evade its own
responsibilities. This year, at
last, contracts for its construction were
awarded, but six months later the
progress is limited.
But
government's inattention to Bulawayo's water needs did not end
there.
Through Zinwa it has allowed boreholes and their pumps at the
Nyamandlovu
acquifer to fall into abysmal disrepair, in some instances, and
to be
vandalised and cannibalised and that despite the considerable extent
of
voluntary funding support given by the City of Bulawayo to the
rehabilitation of the boreholes and pumps.
Also contemptible is
that five months after the city's municipal
authorities sought government's
declaration of the city as a water shortage
area, government has failed to
effect such declaration.
Were it to have done so, government would
have enabled the city to
resort to some constructive, palliative measures,
such as commandeering
private boreholes.
Other positive actions
that have been recurrently proposed, but as yet
have been devoid of action
or implementation, include the transportation of
water from the Zambezi
river in tanker trains, if necessary reinforced by
the rental of requisite
rolling stock from South Africa's Spoornet.
Admittedly, the cost thereof
would be great, encompassing not only rental
and labour charges, but also
higher consumption of costly scarce coal and
diesel.
But the
cost of economic decline occasioned by water scarcity, and
loss of future
economic benefit which would flow from investment, if not
deterred by
non-availability of water, is markedly greater.
Recurrently, until
last week's retractive statement by the minister,
government has intimated
that no consideration to Bulawayo's water needs
would be given until
Bulawayo ceased to resist the take over of Bulawayo
water delivery and
supply by Zinwa.
And yet, that resistance was fully justified, and
strongly supported
by commerce, industry and most of Bulawayo
residents.
There is a great awareness that, despite fiscal and
political
constraints, the city's local authority remains the most efficient
and
attentive of all those in Zimbabwe, and possibly within the entirety of
the
southern African region.
In contradistinction, with a few
notable exceptions, government's
parastatals are incompetent and ineffectual
in the extreme. Foremost amongst
the incapable is believed by most to be
Zinwa.
Its track record of not only having failed in its
obligations to
effect requisite supplies of water to the City of Bulawayo
for onward
distribution to the city's residents, but of vast other failures,
is
pronounced and renowned.
It is not only in recurrent default
in supplying regular water
delivery throughout Harare, but there have been
frequent reports of such
water being unsafe for human consumption, and it is
significant that those
reports have generally not been refuted. It also has
a poor track record of
delivery performance in Victoria Falls, Kariba and
elsewhere. But government
dogmatically and obdurately demands that the City
of Bulawayo desist in
opposing a Zinwa takeover.
Government is
dismayed that the city does not masochistically submit
to probable greater
destruction, and the reports in the state media, albeit
thereafter countered
by a follow-up ministerial statement, are very highly
suggestive that
government's tardiness in addressing Bulawayo's needs was
founded almost
wholly upon political considerations.
Allegedly, the leopard does
not change its spots, but if the minister
and his government have the
genuine concern for the wellbeing of the people
of Bulawayo, as he now
contends, then there should be no further delay in
declaring Bulawayo a
water shortage area and should desist in its attempted
expropriation of
Bulawayo's water delivery operations.
Zim Independent
Editor's Memo
By Dumisani Muleya
IT was to be
expected. After every major meeting where Zimbabwe is an
issue, South
African President Thabo Mbeki often comes out with guns
blazing. His record,
dating back to 2000, was evident last week in his ANC
Today column, his
platform for spinning yarns and spewing spleen.
Like him or not,
Mbeki has his own strategy of managing the media and
ways of trying to
advance his diplomacy even if this may be a hard sell.
Last week
Mbeki wrote in his column, titled Sadc Returns to Lusaka,
that the regional
bloc had not turned its back on Zimbabwe; Sadc expressed
unqualified respect
for Zimbabwe's sovereignty and its people's right to
determine their destiny
and that it will help Zimbabwe out of its crisis.
While Mbeki was
waxing lyrical about this, President Robert Mugabe's
spokesman George
Charamba, in his anonymous column, The Other Side with
Nathaniel Manheru,
was saying "no aid cent will come from Sadc countries".
Although Mbeki
thinks Zimbabwe needs Sadc help, Charamba, whose views
observers say often
reflect those of Mugabe, says not at all. Mugabe himself
said after the
summit that Zimbabwe would continue with its own economic
programmes
whatever Sadc is doing. If this is not a clash of views and
division, what
is it then?
Mbeki also said it's a media fabrication that Sadc
leaders were
divided in Lusaka over Zimbabwe's economic report.
Typically, Mbeki lambasted the media for saying there were divisions
among
the Sadc leaders over the report on the Zimbabwe economic crisis, but
did
not provide evidence to the contrary.
There is nothing new or
surprising about Mbeki's views. We have heard
this line from him more than a
hundred times before! What is, however, new
and rather astonishing is
Mbeki's simplistic rhetoric about Zimbabwe having
scaled new
heights.
For the past seven years - including yesterday - Mbeki's
prognosis on
the prevailing Zimbabwe crisis has been the same.
Even though events on the ground have changed dramatically, Mbeki
still
offers no dynamic analysis of the situation, but a frozen view which
in the
process simply portrays him as a Harare envoy.
Perhaps this
explains why President Mugabe and Zanu PF think Mbeki is
there to defend
them. Evidence of this is contained in Zanu PF's central
committee minutes
of March 30.
Briefing the party on the extraordinary Sadc summit in
Tanzania,
Foreign Affairs minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi revealed:
"President Mbeki
was also mandated to carry out diplomatic work in support
of Zimbabwe,
including with the (UN) Security Council." South Africa is
currently a
member of the UN Security Council.
Mumbengegwi said
Mbeki was "tasked to communicate the Sadc position to
the opposition and
demand the renunciation of violence and the MDC
dissociation with Western
powers". This also probably explains why after the
Dar es Salaam summit,
Sadc issued a hopeless communiqué replete with
pro-Mugabe propaganda on land
and sanctions.
Mugabe himself said Mbeki defended his regime at the
summit. Mbeki did
not deny this in public and left many wondering if he was
fighting from
Mugabe's corner. Charamba says Mbeki has been supportive of
Mugabe, although
Harare is hostile to his interventionist
policy.
The thrust and purpose of Mbeki's column last week was to
say Sadc is
behind Mugabe's regime regardless of the tragedy unfolding in
the country
simply because "their problems are our problems".
Mbeki's diplomacy on Zimbabwe raises more questions than answers. What
is
his grand design and main objective? What does he want to achieve through
his mundane "quiet diplomacy" and talks and how? Why is he always claiming
progress in his talks but fails to deliver in the end? If Sadc is prepared
to haul Zimbabwe out of this crisis, why have they not done so to date?
Where will the resources to support Zimbabwe come from? Sadc or South Africa
simply don't have such resources.
Why does Mbeki say Sadc has
not attached any conditions to aid for
Zimbabwe but then goes on to quote
the preconditions on exchange rate
adjustment and budget deficit reduction,
among others, in his article? Doesn't
he see the contradiction?
If South Africa and Zimbabwe, as Mbeki has said in one of his ANC
Today
columns, are sister countries linked by history, geography, culture
and
language, why is it that Zimbabweans are the only ones in the region who
need visas to visit South Africa?
The economic crisis is not
the reason because visas have been there
before. Zimbabweans are constantly
harassed during travel to South Africa,
detained in squalid conditions at
Lindela and brutalised during deportation.
What has he done about
this?
If Mbeki respects Zimbabwe's sovereignty and the people's
right to
determine their destiny, as he says, why is he deeply involved in
local
affairs to the extent of holding secret talks that exclude some key
Zimbabwean interest groups about the country's future in his own
backyard?
Why is he involved in local politics to the point of
trying to resolve
internal differences within the opposition?
Is there any greater assault on a country's sovereignty than this
besides
naked invasion?
While it is clear that Mbeki wants to curry
Mugabe's favour to secure
his support for his faltering talks, his remarks
unfortunately give a
hostage to fortune to Mugabe.
His
appeasement strategy and buttressing of dictatorship to wring a
solution
will not work.
Mbeki's revisionism on Zimbabwe and combative
attacks on the media are
very unhelpful. The sooner he realises this, the
better for himself and
everybody.
Zim Independent
THE article
headlined "Zanu PF plans cyber warfare against online
publications"
(Zimbabwe Independent, August 10) caught my eye. Particularly
in light of
the Interception of Communications Act. Reading that "Zanu PF
plans cyber
warfare against online publications" gave me the visceral chill
of dread
which doubtlessly the paper intended with the headline.
But the
body of the article told a slightly different story.
Apparently, a
"blacklist" of 41 online publications was tabled at a recent
politburo
meeting and "is said to have caused alarm among party members
during a
heated debate on the media", unnamed sources said.
The purported
politburo discussion sounds like sheer paranoia, and the
Independent's
uncritical reporting of the meeting feels like simply more
fear mongering.
The most important point of the article is the second
paragraph: "It was not
immediately apparent what measures, if any, the party
can take against
offending websites."
The regime's mistrust of independent news and
differences of opinion
is as unsurprising as it is
un-newsworthy.
Supposedly the blacklist is connected to comments
made by Zanu PF
secretary for science and technology, Olivia Muchena, in a
report on the
role and importance of information and communication
technologies
on July 26. According to the Independent, the report
says: "Comrades,
we are all aware that Zanu PF is at war from within and
outside our borders.
Contrary to the gun battles we are accustomed to, we
now have cyber-warfare
fought from one's comfort zone, be it bedroom,
office, swimming pool, etc
but with deadly effects."
Muchena
reportedly said "Zanu PF must pause and think who is behind
the creation of
these websites, the target market of the websites, the
influence and impact
they have on Zimbabweans and what the image of Zanu PF
and its leadership
looks like out there as portrayed".
So the "cyber warfare" is the
one which Muchena claims is being fought
against Zanu PF. And if that is the
case, a more interesting,
thought-provoking article would have been the one
that asked a few questions
about some of the websites on the "blacklist",
which was published at the
end of the Independent article.
Like
of all the news sites on it, why are neither SW Radio Africa nor
VOA Studio
7 featured, when they're the ones the regime is busy jamming? Why
CNN and
PBS but not the BBC? Why global voices but hardly any of the
Zimbabwean
bloggers they draw on for their coverage of the country? What is
the bias of
ABYZ News, which acts as a portal to all kinds of news sources,
local and
foreign, for practically every country imaginable? Why the
Australian
Department of Foreign Affairs, and the US Embassy in Harare, but
not those
blasted Brits at all? And what kind of anti-Mugabe agenda does
Technorati,
the blog-tagging website, have? Who knows, but they're on the
list. It
doesn't look much like a cunning list of strategic targets in an
orchestrated campaign to smash cyber-dissent and proclaim Zanu PF hegemony
forever more.
The Independent would have done well to leave the
fear mongering to
the ruling party, and expose the list for what it really
is - a list of
websites a handful of petulant politicians don't like because
they said a
few nasty things about them here and there.
We all
keep lists - grocery lists, book lists, wish lists, favourite
song lists.
Most of mine stay where they belong - in my diary. They
certainly don't rate
as national news.
Amanda Atwood,
Harare.
Zim Independent
THE
recent endorsement of the Zimbabwe regime by the Sadc heads of
states in
Lusaka is indicative of the whole problem in Africa today: the
reason,
surely, why the African continent is the poorest continent (and
getting
poorer) is because African leaders do not appear to be willing to
face the
real problems.
The complete lack of a forthright response by Sadc
sends a ringing
message loud and clear throughout the world: African leaders
would rather
not have good governance, democracy, the rule of law,
individual freedoms,
human rights and economic prosperity for the
masses.
Rather they want the old system, like in Zimbabwe, where
the chief is
the prime minister, the president, the law maker, the judge,
the spiritual
leader, the land owner and the one who decides all things for
the nation.
Those ecstatic drum beats of applause by the heads of
state for Robert
Mugabe in Lusaka echo out to the world as if they were
beaten on the hollow
bellies of Zimbabwe's suffering people. If African
independence wars were
fought so that African people could really become
independent, why that sick
and hollow applause for a man who has put his
people into a bondage of
complete dependence?
If these leaders
really care about the African people why not censure
a man that has brought
his country to poverty, hunger, economic collapse and
despair?
In Zimbabwe, life expectancy is the lowest in the world; Zimbabwean
laws are
amongst the most draconian in the world; hundreds of thousands have
had
their homes bulldozed by the police; more than a million people have
lost
their livelihood as farm worker families to make room mostly for the
chefs;
most of the time Zimbabweans cannot buy mealie meal, bread, fuel,
sugar,
cooking oil; the inflation rate is the highest in the world; much of
the
time there are power blackouts; most people do not have piped water any
more; and a huge number of Zimbabweans have now fled their
country.
What more needs to happen for the problem not to be passed
off by Sadc
as "exaggerated"?
Ben Freeth,
By
e-mail.
Where are the audit reports?
FOLLOWING the meeting in Lusaka and the
statements that the reports on
Zimbabwe are exaggerated, one can therefore
assume that a concerned
Zimbabwean taxpayer would have the right to ask
questions of this
transparent and well-run administration.
The
question most taxpayers I am sure would like to know is: is the
Reserve Bank
of Zimbabwe still audited? One must assume it is. Therefore why
is the
auditors report not available for public consumption?
With the
country having so many exchange rates, I want to know who are
the
beneficiaries of the foreign exchange sold by the RBZ at the US$1:$250
rate?
Taxpayers want to know the criteria used to selecet these
beneficiaries.
Because of lack of transparency of this
administration, I don't expect
to get a straight answer. With the
auditor-general also under government,
how believable would his anwer
be?
Concerned taxpayer,
Eastlea,
Harare.
----------
Water
please
I HAVE a few questions for Zinwa bosses and I
would like them
answered as would a lot of other readers. These questions
have been building
up over the past few weeks, and quite frankly, we are
sick.
Why is it that in Greendale we have had only one day of
water
this whole month?
Why is it nearly every time we
phone the Zinwa call centre, we
are given a different excuse? Examples of
these are:
"Sorry our pumps are not working at all." "Sorry the
pumps are
pumping very slowly." But the most recent one is: "Sorry, it is
because of a
lake turn at Chivero."
When I asked what a
lake turn is, I was given a rather
ridiculous explanation, and to be quite
honest, I'm sick and tired having to
travel to the other end of town just to
take a shower.
Why can't Zinwa manage the water supply
properly?
Run Dry,
Harare.
-------------
Respect small
shareholders
OVER the past decade or so I have noted a
distinct decline in
the quality of the new breed of senior staff of listed
companies and other
organisations as compared with the previous generations.
There seems to be a
serious lack of business etiquette and concern shown for
customers and small
shareholdes.
Perhaps they are more
concerned with amassing greater wealth and
other selfish interests than the
wellbeing of others. As an example I
outline a couple of incidents that
arose with OK.
Recently OK held its AGM but failed to notify
its shareholders
in time. The annual report and notification was posted on
August 8
(according to the envelope frank) and delivered by Zimpost on the
10th, too
late for me to arrange attendence. I expressed these sentiments in
an e-mail
to the company secretary (one C Boriwondo) who to date has failed
to
respond!
Shopping at one branch of the OK a while ago
I slipped on some
cooking oil on the floor, and was fortunately very lucky
not to be seriously
injured. Seeing the potential danger to other shoppers,
the thoughts of some
elderly person slipping and breaking a hip or cracking
a skull, I
immediately sought the attention of staff.
The
individual that I did manage to approach did not understand
the potential
hazard, being quite unresponsive, so I demanded to see the
manager, with
little initial success. Eventually, after involving other
staff members, she
appeared and offered the usual "sorry". I was so incensed
at the sluggish
actions and obvious lack of concern I decided to e-mail the
CEO, Willard
Zireva. I never received a reply from him. Apparently he was on
leave at the
time yet on his return obviously decided not to bother to
respond.
I then sent a copy to another senior executive,
who did respond
but to my mind was more concerned with defending the company
more than any
thing else.
I would like to see
incorporated in the annual best companies
selection an element that gives an
indication on how a company treats their
customers and small shareholders,
the latter held in distain and contempt by
most listed
companies!
M Leppard,
Harare.
-----------------
Shut him
out
WHY are you giving evil Jonathan Moyo a column in our
newsaper?
After all he contributed towards the collapse of the media and
nation at
large. It seems you people at the Independent play double
standards and are
hypocrites, why not be in solidarity with all those
affected during his
tenure and Zimbabweans at large?
These culprits like him deserve to be brought to book for their
evil works.
Look at western countries and USA and Australia who are not
going back on
targeted sanctions and deportations.
You are destroying the
newspaper please.
CN,
By
e-mail.
-------------
Politics is the
name of the game!
IN the Zimbabwe Independent of August 17 you
published an
article by Mutumwa Mawere. The opinion was incisive and the
language
temperate. I enjoyed reading the article although without
necessarily
sharing his sentiments.
Mawere highlighted a
very interesting aspect of Zimbabwe's
political landscape. Morgan
Tsvangirai, a not-so-schooled trade
unionist-cum-politician, derives support
from the urban intellectuals while
Robert Mugabe has support of the rural
folk yet he is an intellectual even
by world standards. This is a paradox,
infers Mutumwa Mawere in his article
and rightly so. And yet upon further
analysis, it ceases to be a paradox:
the name of the game is
politics!
It feeds and thrives on the gullible. Either urban
intellectuals
and business, who support Tsvangirai's MDC, do so because they
find him
gullible and malleable as to serve their class interests or they
sincerely
believe the politician genuinely represents their
interests.
The same can be said about Mugabe: either the
rural population
supports him for what his government does or the peasants
are simply
gullible and malleable.
Whatever the case, the
name of the game is politics.
Martin
Stobart,
Lupane.