Grim tales from Zimbabwe

Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi / For The Times

BARE SHELVES: Basic necessities like salt are in short supply, even in the capital Harare. Inflation is estimated to run between 40,000% and 90,000%. Everyone from laborers to professionals must hustle to try and make ends meet and about the only thing that seems to function properly is the government’s secret police.

Everywhere you travel in the country there is evidence of decline and absurdities that would be comical if they weren't so tragic.

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
7:43 PM PST, December 21, 2007

NKAYI, ZIMBABWE -- We are puttering along in an ancient pickup with no brakes to speak of, dodging the potholes. Every bolt seems to groan with effort, but Max Mkandla says the car is doing well. He speaks rather like a proud father discussing his brightest child.

"I'm trying to protect these tires," Max says. There's a pause. "Because I haven't got a spare."

 

I'm taking a turn at the wheel. The seat won't roll forward -- not good for someone just over 5 feet tall, so I've wedged lumpy bags and books behind me to reach the foot controls.

Suddenly a calf lollops across the road and I floor the brakes, or try to. There seems to be no stopping our rattling, chaotic momentum, but eventually we slow down. The calf trots to safety.

But in protest, the brakes get even worse. A line of warning lights blinks angrily on the dash. When I point this out, Max takes the wheel, but within an hour, the car has had enough.

"Everything's gone, brake lights, everything," he says, pulling over in thick bushland. We're stranded in outback Zimbabwe with no cellphone reception on a track with few cars.

I give up hope of getting any work done. I'm supposed to be on my way to research a story about hunger with Max, a stringy war veteran turned activist. But nothing is simple in Zimbabwe. I'd planned to leave by 8. Problems getting diesel (and Max's elastic idea of punctuality) meant it was lunchtime before we got on the road.

But once the car has rested awhile, Max starts it up and decides we can limp along after all.

The music of the cicadas almost drowns out the tinny vibrations of the tape player. Zimbabwean artist Oliver Mtukudzi is singing a ballad in Shona called "Bvuma": "Accept that you are old. Accept that you are worn out. . . . Don't deny it, you are finished." It could have been written for Max's car. Or is it about the country's all-powerful, 83-year-old president, Robert Mugabe?

The roads of Zimbabwe sing their own haunting lament for a people and their suffering.

Junica Dube felt the birth pangs of her first child. She was hoping for a boy. In the hospital, Dube struggled and labored, alone. There was no painkiller, nor any comfort, in a medical system racked by shortages of even basic items. She asked for help, but the nurses said to call them when she was really in pain.

"The nurses told me to keep quiet, I'm making too much noise," the 28-year-old says. "I tried by all means to keep quiet, but it was too painful."

She felt small, frightened and terribly alone. Outside the maternity ward, her husband, Luke, waited anxiously with his sister, Daisy.

Two days passed, but still no child came.

Despite the car and the roads, Max and I have made it to a village named Nkayi in western Zimbabwe. A mechanic has been found. It turns out we've been driving for quite some time with no fan belt.

Max says he always carries a spare fan belt, just not today.

We are sitting in the dusty main square, hood up and windows open in the late afternoon heat with Mtukudzi blaring out of the speakers. A small boy with a stick ambles by and seeing an old tick-bitten donkey with a floppy ear, gives it a random whack.

When I first traveled to Zimbabwe in 2005, locals waxed about the country's beauty, but I could see why so many people were leaving. Later, things got even worse, yet its pull on me grew -- it's the kind of sleepy yet menacing backwater that would have made a great setting for a Graham Greene novel.

Life here is full of Catch-22 dilemmas that would strain credulity if they were fiction: It costs more to go to work than you can possibly earn, for example. There is no economy to speak of, either, just the black market, where even the government gets its dollars. And hospitals, like the one where Junica Dube was giving birth, with no medicines and little staff, are places of death, not life.

Every time I've come to Zimbabwe, I've met someone new, dipping in and living their story for a while. You end up with a collection of stories scattered like photographs on a table, some about survival, some about grief. One of those pictures is Junica Dube telling her story as she sits in her house, lighted by a single candle during one of the daily power blackouts.

But many stories don't get told. Reporting is difficult here. Because the government rarely issues journalist visas to foreigners, most of us work undercover, risking jail.

So when I had asked some church activists who knew where people were most hungry to take me to Nkayi, they told me, horrified, that it would be impossible. Everyone would ask who the white woman was. I'd be watched. The authorities would be summoned.

But Max had brushed aside such fears. Now, sitting in the car, watching villagers dawdling around the dusty square enjoying the last peaceful hours of their Sunday, the warnings tumble through my brain.

I stiffen as a police vehicle stops nearby and three men get out.

Are they coming my way? No.

As the sun sinks lower, Mtukudzi's voice is distorted by the buzzing speakers. He is singing a tribute to farmers who produce the food.

The area around Nkayi, Max says, was owned by white farmers but taken over by black settlers starting in 2000 under Mugabe's land redistribution policy. Commercial farming collapsed and harvests plummeted. Now the country can't even feed itself.

It is well after 4 when a fan belt is found and the car repaired. But it is not too late for my story. I have time for some interviews before it gets dark. As we get ready to head out of town at dusk, I offer to take a turn driving and detect a whisper of alarm in Max's refusal. He thinks I'm bad for his car.

By the third day, Junica Dube was exhausted and frightened. The doctors and nurses were arguing in front of her, blaming one another for errors when her labor was induced. They told her she had to be induced again.

"I asked the nurses, 'Wasn't there any other way to make me give birth?' They said, 'That's all we have for you.' "

Her sister-in-law urged her to request a cesarean but "the way things were, it was too hard to ask," Dube says.

On the fourth day, doctors decided Dube did need a cesarean after all.

Her spirits lifted. Her child would be born at last.

Everywhere you go in Zimbabwe, there are snapshots of decline.

On the dusty roadsides, elderly women struggle along with huge branches on their heads, hewn from the bush.

A pickup heads out of town, hazard lights blinking, a makeshift coffin in the back and mourning, threadbare relatives cramped around it in the cold wind.

Along the road from South Africa, SUVs tow trailers swollen with loads as large as elephants: consumer goods unavailable in Zimbabwe's bare shops.

The stores are so empty that the government statistician says it's impossible to work out the inflation rate. (Independent economists estimate that it is between 40,000% and 90,000%.) Given the depth of the economic crisis, it's difficult to see how anything works.

The answer is in a Zimbabwean turn of phrase, "We'll make a plan," which can mean growing your own vegetables, going to the black market, bartering, bribing an official, stealing from your workplace and selling the goods, buying what you need in South Africa or Botswana, or holding down several jobs to make ends meet.

A journalist more than doubles his salary by making candles on weekends. A Reserve Bank employee buys and slaughters cows on the side. A sign writer sells sandwiches cobbled out of difficult-to-come-by bread. Teachers, who can go to South Africa with no visa, bring back cooking oil, the staple called maize meal, flour and sugar to sell.

In Harare, the capital's thin veneer of normality and air of placid self-satisfaction have been scraped away over the last few years. Often the elevators in its few modest skyscrapers don't work. I wait in the rain in a gasoline queue with Mtukudzi singing a song about a fractious old man who has lost everyone's respect. A little girl with an orange umbrella dances in the downpour.

Driving the streets of Harare is a hazardous business. It's not so much the warnings you hear from locals about Mugabe's secret police swarming like wasps in every crowd. It's the pedestrians.

They pour across the roads, surging around the car like waves on a rock. They pause at the sight of a thief, dashing grimly through the crowd, with a kite tail of sweating pursuers fluttering behind.

In the crowded Mupedzanhamo market in Harare, I meet a Rasta trader surrounded by desiccated baboon hides and fleshy things in jars who is banking on the shortage of Western medicines -- when you are desperate, any cure looks attractive.

He offers me a tiny piece of wood half the size of my smallest fingernail. I hesitate. It's a cure called "Today and Tomorrow" that he claims will destroy any infection or impurity in the body. Its unpleasant sour-bitter taste quickly burns so hot that it's impossible to chew. I swallow hastily, feeling the burning sensation creep into the gullet and the stomach, inducing a dizzying nausea that lasts hours.

On the road from Harare to Bulawayo, there's a hill named Heroes' Acre where famous veterans from Mugabe's triumphant uprising against Ian Smith's white minority regime in the 1970s are buried. Driving by, I feel a twinge of curiosity to see the soaring North Korean- designed obelisk within, but entry requires a special government permit. Locals shrug at my interest and say the place usually is deserted. But occasionally there are jealous fights in the ruling party over who deserves to be buried there.

The many roadblocks on the way are mostly a means for underpaid police to extract bribes. Lately most can't even find cars or fuel to man the barriers.

But roadblocks do get more serious if the government has a big campaign on, like Operation Murambatsvina (Clean Out the Filth) two years ago, when the military invaded townships and razed nearly every shack. The Mugabe government said that it cut crime and made everything clean and tidy. But it targeted areas that had voted for the opposition.

In the townships then, the air was full of the dust of demolitions. The route from Harare to Bulawayo looked like a road out of a war zone, with desperate people pushing carts piled with belongings.

One evening during the operation, I was stopped at a roadblock as I was leaving one of the affected areas. I'd carelessly slipped notes of interviews into the pages of a guidebook, in between brochures and maps.

The police ordered us out of the car and began to search the vehicle. They carefully searched the pockets, the trunk, my rucksack. They lifted up the seats. One officer picked up the book with my notes and began flipping through it. I had to look away.

For a moment I felt a tiny whisper of the fear that Zimbabweans live with, like a fine invisible web that sticks to everyone.

But when I glanced back, he had placed the book back in the car.

On the fourth day of Junica Dube's labor, "the nurses were saying, 'We're trying to save the baby's life, not yours,' " she remembers. "I thought, what happens, happens. If I die or my baby dies, I'll take it."

Her son was delivered by cesarean alive. But weak. The mother lay insensible.

The doctor hurried away to get to a soccer match. But suddenly a nurse ran after him, calling him back. Luke Dube and his sister could hear the nurses whispering outside the waiting room. Then a long silence.

The hitchhiker's name is Efficient. It's another journey, another day, heading south as he offers a heartfelt diagnosis of the country's ills. People can't even find soap, a basic of life that once was always cheap and readily available, in the shops, and when they do, it's unaffordable.

He says no one in Zimbabwe is completely aboveboard. Just to take a government bus you have to grease the driver's palm, so he hitchhikes or rides on top of trains.

Efficient is a born entertainer, offering hilarious anecdotes as the price of a lift, until I drop him off at a rain-washed town along a track so pocked with holes it is almost impassable.

Roads all over the country are crowded with hitchers. They swarm onto pickups; they roost like large, dignified birds on top of large trucks. Some carry babies on their backs; others wait with enormous lumpy sacks. Even soldiers hitchhike to get around, standing prominently at the front of the crowd, eyeballing the drivers, daring them to pick up someone else.

Efficient isn't the only hitchhiker to tell me his story as I travel around the country. On another journey, driving with a church activist in a big red pickup truck in western Zimbabwe, we stop for two teenagers, Patrick and Sarah, boarding-school students going home to try to find food. Every time I ask a question, Sarah covers her mouth shyly and giggles.

The two are excited because they have never sat in the cabin of a car before. They come from a place called Danger, named by their forefathers for a high place with a river. I picture precipitous cliffs above roaring water. An hour later, we cross a small concrete bridge a few feet above a trickle of a creek.

"There it is, that's Danger," Sarah says.

In a nearby village, two policemen ask for a ride. My activist friend agrees with obvious reluctance. On the road he berates them for arresting and beating people for no reason, brushing aside their ineffectual protestations of innocence.

The activist asked not to be identified, fearing repercussions that might make it difficult for him to work. Like everyone, it seems he has something to fear.

The elite fear losing their privileges and wealth, or being arrested as traitors should they fall out of favor. Dealers and retailers fear jail for black market profiteering, or for violations of strict foreign exchange laws and price controls. Opposition and human rights activists fear being arrested, beaten, tortured or "disappeared."

People believe the secret police are everywhere, eavesdropping on every phone call, inspecting every e-mail. As vast as Mugabe's security apparatus is, the fear of it is even larger.

People walk on a knife-edge. Even giving birth is something to fear.

Luke Dube waited for what seemed a long time, and then the doctor told him that his baby had died. It was a son. The doctor seemed annoyed as he fended off questions about what went wrong. The next morning, a nurse broke the news to the mother.

"When I saw his body, I just felt as if he was alive," Junica Dube says.

She was still in the hospital when the funeral was held, on the cheap. She didn't even get to see the tiny coffin go into the ground.

I first stumble across Junica Dube's story while writing an article about hospitals, which turns out to mean writing about death. It's just a few days after the baby died; Junica is still in the hospital, too traumatized to speak. The baby's aunt, Daisy, is the first to lay out the shards of the story.

Daisy speaks of a different kind of heroism than that celebrated so grandiosely in Heroes' Acre: the struggle, in a country where nothing works, just to give birth and to be born.

"To me, they are the real heroes," she says proudly, and suddenly my notebook is swimming in a blur of tears. I want to ask another question, but no words come.

In Zimbabwe, roads peter out. People die too young.

One evening I'm driving with my favorite Mtukudzi ballad playing: "Akoromoka Awa," an elegy for those who have died.

I pull off the road beside a graveyard. Thistles and weeds grow on the graves. Most are just heaps of earth, decorated with plastic blue and yellow flowers, and a hand-painted metal sign for a tombstone. Row after row, grave after grave, the dates commemorate the young.

This is where Junica Dube's baby is buried, marked by a tin tombstone with only one date.

robyn.dixon@latimes.com

Dixon, The Times' Johannesburg, South Africa, bureau chief was recently on assignment in Zimbabwe.

Standing up to Mugabe

Boston Globe


 By Robert I. Rotberg
December 22, 2007
GOOD FOR Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Gordon Brown
of Great Britain. Brown (and six other heads of government in Europe)
refused to attend this month's European Union-Africa Summit in Lisbon
because President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was scheduled to be there.
Merkel (along with the leaders of Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands)
condemned the extent to which Mugabe had despoiled his country and preyed
upon its people. What he had done, Merkel told Mugabe, was "completely
unacceptable."

At last - after at least a decade of mayhem and impoverishment - Mugabe's
tyranny is being criticized openly and the tyrant himself is being shunned
by key Europeans. Recently the United States added relatives, children, and
grandchildren of Mugabe and his key associates to a tightened visa and
travel ban. Britain and the United States have added controls over money
transfers by the same group of corrupt Zimbabweans.
Alas, none of this welcome shaming and sanctioning of Mugabe is bringing his
27-year destruction of Zimbabwe to a close. Mugabe will be 84 in February,
but increasing age seems unlikely to moderate his unquestioned hold on total
power or his contempt for democracy. Nor is it probable that next year's
presidential and parliamentary elections, now scheduled for March but
possibly for June, will be free or fair. This month a Zimbabwean election
commission led by generals appointed by Mugabe began delimiting
constituencies without (as previously promised) consulting the country's
beleaguered opposition parties. Registering of voters has also begun, with
no promise of an accurate voters' roll.

Mugabe lords it over his countrymen, and Africans more generally, as he
tried to do in Lisbon. But Rome is burning all the while. Inflation roars
along at least at 8,000 percent per annum. About 80 percent of all
Zimbabweans are unemployed and destitute. National incomes have fallen to
1953 levels. Not only are stores short of staples like corn meal, wheat
flour, sugar, and cooking oil, but almost all shelves are bare, gasoline is
unavailable, and few crops are being grown in the fields. The World Food
Program estimates that at least a third of all Zimbabweans are hungry, with
many seriously malnourished. There are no bandages or medicines in the
hospitals and no textbooks and few teachers in the schools.

But the security forces of the country continue strong. There are daily
reports of opposition figures and university students being assaulted,
sometimes fatally. There are innumerable political prisoners, and an absence
of a free daily press and free broadcast media. The farming sector is in
shambles, and Mugabe and his cronies have recently begun taking over small
and large corporations, even in the mining sector. About 3 million
Zimbabweans, a full fourth of the population, have fled their homeland for
South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, and destinations overseas.

Only Africans, especially President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, can bring
Mugabe to account. Merkel said as much, but the African representatives in
Lisbon both articulated their continuing support of Mugabe and asserted that
Mbeki was dealing with the problem effectively.

With electoral preparations being made by the government, regulations
enacted, and constituencies delimited - all actions that were supposed to be
agreed to by the parties to the South African talks - the MDC is crying
foul. But no one, least of all Mbeki, is paying attention.

Mugabe clearly intends to remain in power through the next election, however
cosmetic that poll. Mbeki may wish Mugabe to remove himself and to spend his
ill-gotten gains somewhere outside of Zimbabwe, but he refuses publicly to
criticize Mugabe or to ease him out through jawboning, effective diplomacy,
or the exercise of persuasive force.

African leaders aside from Presidents Festus Mogae of Botswana and John
Kufuor of Ghana have been unwilling to criticize Mbeki or Mugabe, closing
ranks as they did so loudly in Lisbon. Although Merkel tossed the problem
back to Africa, Mbeki and his colleagues have denied that there is a serious
problem. Mbeki also refuses to prevent Mugabe and his ilk from laundering
their corrupt gains in South Africa or from traveling through South Africa.

Zimbabwe's long, dark night of despair will not soon end unless Washington,
London, and Brussels join forces to put massive private pressure on Mbeki.
He and Jacob Zuma, his likely successor as South African president, hold the
future of the remaining hungry, dispossessed, and afflicted of Zimbabwe in
their so far temporizing hands.

Robert I. Rotberg is director of Harvard's Kennedy School Program on
Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution and World Peace Foundation
president.

RBZ Launches Crackdown Against Cash Barons

The Herald (Harare)  Published by the government of Zimbabwe

22 December 2007
Posted to the web 22 December 2007

Harare

THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has launched a massive crackdown on cash barons
and placed under strict surveillance identified bank branches, border posts
and "hotspots" countrywide known to harbour big cash movers.

This comes as RBZ Governor Dr Gideon Gono has expressed dismay at the
response by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget and Finance to
his calls to appear before it.


"In other jurisdictions a governor prepared to speak out would have been
welcomed by the responsible parliamentary committee.

"Why are they shying away from their responsibility? What have they got to
hide?" he said.

On Thursday, banks started recording high deposits of the $200 000 bearer
cheque which ceases to be legal tender on December 31 as holders sought to
beat the deadline.

Dr Gono said following the launch of Sunrise II on Thursday, the central
bank has had to put in place more measures to bring cash convenience to the
public while also dealing decisively with cash barons.

Investigations had shown that bulk cash comprising the expiring $200 000
bearer cheque, way above the exchange control limits on currency exports,
were coming through the borders "scot-free", before being split into smaller
amounts to avoid detection.

Therefore, with immediate effect, RBZ, the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the
Zimbabwe Revenue Authority would be conducting intensive checks of all
traffic at all points of entry and exit.

"These targeted searches will also be extended to other inland pockets
deemed to be hotspots for illicit trading. Areas such as Victoria Falls,
Plumtree, Beitbridge, "the World Bank" in Bulawayo and Roadport in Harare,
among other places, shall be prime targets for this crackdown," said Dr
Gono.

In Harare, the Belgravia area, Borrowdale and other high net branches were
under the central bank's microscope while in Bulawayo all bank branches
along Jason Moyo/Bambanani Centre, Leopold Takawira and Main Street were
under surveillance.

Firms breaching Section 2 of the Bank Use Promotion and Suppression of Money
Laundering Act of 2004 which obliges all trading corporates to deposit their
cash from takings, into the formal system the next business day were also
under the watchful eye of the central bank and its partners in the
clampdown.

Investigations had revealed that some retailers and wholesalers continued to
trade local currency at commissions, thus perpetuating the circulation of
local currency outside the formal financial system.

RBZ and police were tracking down a Marondera farmer suspected to have been
trying to dispose of $3 trillion following Dr Gono's announcement on
Wednesday.

The central bank has also launched a reward for information on cash barons
under which it has undertaken to refund "innocent victims" the premium
charged for buying cash. This would be done upon submission of acceptable
evidence and the successful conviction of the offender.

"The central bank, which maintains a database on such offenders, is
committed to ridding our society of these economic saboteurs who have
converted themselves into mini-banks and whose manipulation of cash
movements has brought tremendous suffering to the innocent banking public,"
said Dr Gono.

He emphasised that charges would not be pressed against providers of
information.

Statistics collected on day one of Sunrise II (Thursday December 20) showed
unusually huge deposits of the soon-to-expire bearer cheque with one bank,
CFX, having recorded $1,2 trillion worth of the $200 000 bearer cheques, of
which 54 percent was accounted for by its private branch in Harare.

On the day Standard Chartered Bank had received deposits of the same bearer
cheques totalling $174 billion by midday.

NMB had by then recorded $25,5 billion worth of the same while FBC took in
$18,6 billion deposits, of which 44 percent was from its Zvishavane branch.

Information from other banks was still being collated at the time of going
to press, with indications that those holding cash were making frantic
efforts to dispose of it through various means.

However, the surveillance teams dispatched by the central bank, in
conjunction with the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, anti-money laundering and
the Anti-Corruption teams were expected to pick out any unusual
transactions.

Yesterday Dr Gono implored Zimbabweans to exercise patience as the central
bank was making frantic efforts to ensure cash was available in banks.

He said the situation would not be expected to normalise in three days but
significant improvements were expected as the days progress.

"Because of the festive season and pent-up pressure it would be unrealistic
for anyone to expect that the situation would have normalised in 72 hours,
so our appeal is for patience.

"New cash is being spread in a manner that ensures that the cake gets as far
as possible. We therefore appeal to depositors to avoid riotous behaviour
but to turn their anger towards those that are now depositing billions and
billions of dollars and yet yesterday they did not want to deposit even a
penny," he said.

Asked about the suffering being experienced by the ordinary people Dr Gono
said: "One can understand that people have been in queues for a long time
but we cannot be blamed for these sort of things.

"That is why we have been saying that those charged with the responsibility
of dealing with economic saboteurs must rise to the challenges and do the
needful.

"In situations like these there ought not be sacred cows because everybody
is pointing a finger at the Governor when day-in-day out I am screaming that
there are people deliberately sabotaging Government's programmes but nothing
is happening to them.

"Now you see huge deposits coming from corporates and individuals who only
yesterday were crying the loudest about the RBZ's inability to provide
cash."

Zimbabwe parliament committee irresponsible - central bank chief

Monsters and Critics



Dec 22, 2007, 10:16 GMT


Harare/Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's central bank chief has expressed dismay at
a parliamentary committee's apparent reluctance to have him name top
government officials who are hoarding cash.

'Why are they shying away from their responsibility? What have they got to
hide?' Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor Gideon Gono asked.

Announcing the scrapping of a top-denomination banknote in a bid to outwit
cash hoarders, Gono said Wednesday he would be happy to name so-called cash
barons before a parliamentary portfolio committee on budget and finance.

Gono blamed the cash barons for the biting shortages of cash that are making
life hard for millions of Zimbabweans. For the past month, long queues
outside banks have been seen across Zimbabwe as customers wait to withdraw
often only paltry sums.

The central bank chief said he was withdrawing the 200,000 Zimbabwe dollar
note (officially worth 6 US dollars but worth only a few cents on the
widely-used parallel market) because it was the banknote most favoured by
businesspeople and government officials involved in hoarding.

'If (the parliamentary committee) have got the guts, I will give them the
full house,' Gono said in a statement broadcast live on state television.

But the head of the committee, ruling party MP David Butau said later that
the body was not in a hurry to speak to Gono on the issue.

'The committee is going to look at the statement clause by clause. Once we
come with a list of queries, we will then decide whether to invite the
governor,' Butau said. 'We will also follow the Parliamentary Standing
Orders and Guidelines to decide whether it warrants invitation,' he added.

Gono has clearly been irked by Butau's response.

In other jurisdictions a governor prepared to speak out would have been
welcomed by the responsible parliamentary committee, Gono said in comments
carried by Saturday's official Herald newspaper.

A set of three new banknotes unveiled by the bank chief on Wednesday is
slowly trickling into the market. The new notes are worth 250,000, 500,000
and 750,000 Zimbabwe dollars, not one of them enough to buy a single loaf of
bread.

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

A letter from the diaspora

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN



Dear Friends.



My phone rang at 8.0’clock this morning and I guessed straight away that it
was Zimbabwe calling because the Brits rarely call at that time in the
morning! I was right. My friend in Murehwa wanted to tell me that a certain
parcel had arrived but more than that he wanted to talk about what has just
happened in South Africa and what it means for the negotiations going on
between Zanu PF and the MDC. Knowing how passionately I’m concerned about
everything Zimbabwean my caller wanted to describe to me the feeling on the
ground in my old home area when they heard that Jacob Zuma had beaten Thabo
Mbeki in the election for leadership of the ANC. Naturally enough after
seven long nightmare years, Zimbabweans are principally concerned for what
this result might mean in terms of their future.

Will events in South Africa make any difference at all? My caller assured me
that’s the question everyone’s asking even in the smaller centres of the
country. I admit my own first reaction to the news had been excitement but
on reflection I think it is really only significant in that it puts
additional pressure on Mbeki to solve the problem. Change in the leadership
at the top of the ANC might possibly mean that there will be a  firmer line
on the Zimbabwe question and that might filter through to Thabo Mbeki
himself. There is no doubt that Mbeki ‘s position is seriously weakened
inside his own country and presumably in SADC and the international
community. With the end of Mbeki’s presidency in sight, he will surely want
to score a breakthrough with this thorny and seemingly intractable problem?
But Zimbabweans would do well to remember that the South African President
will still be the one facilitating the negotiations. Perhaps even more
significant is that Zanu PF’s endorsement of Robert Mugabe as their
candidate in the forthcoming elections means that the one intransigent
element preventing genuine negotiations will also still be in place, ie.
Mugabe himself.

What has become very clear to me is that Mbeki shares at least one
characteristic with his friend Robert Mugabe. Both men are in denial about
the realities on the ground in their countries and yet both leaders seem to
think they reflect grass-root feelings when in fact they have become totally
divorced from their own people. Mugabe denies his own responsibility for
what has happened in Zimbabwe and Mbeki’s denies the terrible reality of the
Aids pandemic decimating his country. But, despite the blow to his pride and
to his own standing, I can’t believe Mbeki is suddenly going to change his
stance of support for the man he regards as a Liberation comrade. It would,
I believe, be a mistake to assume that Zuma’s victory is going to make any
immediate difference to the Zimbabwean situation. The suffering and near
starvation continues as do the daily arrests and beatings of opposition
supporters and the response from the South African government is a deafening
silence. It is hard to understand how South Africa can conduct its own
affairs in an apparently fair and democratic way and yet remain silent when
its close neighbour is putting in place the mechanisms that will ensure the
2008 elections are already rigged.

My early morning telephone caller wanted to tell me also how people on the
ground are feeling about the forthcoming elections in Zimbabwe. Looking at
the situation from the diaspora, I had been of the opinion that the MDC
should boycott the whole exercise for the farce that it is but it seems that
the people on the ground do not share that view. Despite Zanu PF’s tinkering
with the oppressive legislation and amending the constitution – again –
ordinary people appear to have understood very well that the only way open
to them to bring about change is through the ballot box. The MDC are yet to
decide whether to participate or not but judging from my contact’s comments
the people on the ground are anxious to exercise their democratic right. It’s
a tough choice for the opposition but I hope they will listen to the people’s
voice.



Chaos in the banking sector was further exacerbated yesterday with the issue
of new notes and pictures of desperate people being turned away from banks
illustrated very clearly how frantic ordinary people are with Christmas just
around the corner and the dreaded school fees due in January. It’s hard to
see how issuing larger denomination notes will help the economic collapse in
the country, as I said last week the truth is that Zanu PF have no clue how
to solve the problems besetting Zimbabwe. And they seem to care even less;
even RBZ governor Gideon Gono admitted to the Congress that it was top
people in the country who were milking the system. One little story this
week proved to me how callous and indifferent the ruling party is to the
interests of the people. They respect nothing and no one but their own
selfish and corrupt interests. Teachers marking national examination papers
at Belvedere Teachers College and Harare Polytechnic were ordered to vacate
their living quarters so that delegates attending the Congress could be
accommodated. As always politics in the form of Robert Mugabe and his
interests takes precedence over every other consideration, even children and
the nation’s future.

The next generation deserves better from their leaders; it really is time
for change.

Yours in the struggle. PH

Special Report: the Zim Mafia

Diseases hit Harare suburbs

IOL



    December 22 2007 at 04:16PM

Harare/Johannesburg - At least 10 people are reported to have died of
dysentery and diarrhoea in two densely populated suburbs of the Zimbabwean
capital.

The diseases have hit the dilapidated Harare suburbs of Tafara and
Mabvuku, said the official Herald newspaper on Saturday. In February, the
suburbs were hit by cholera.

"It is very difficult to bring the situation under control because the
provision of adequate sanitation and water should be attained first," Health
Minister David Parirenyatwa said.

"We are however very concerned about the families who lost their
members," he said. The exact number of deaths has not been officially
confirmed.

Like many of Harare's suburbs, Mabvuku and Tafara have been hard hit
by prolonged water cuts. Acute fuel shortages also mean that refuse
collection is erratic, aiding the spread of fly-borne diseases.







One resident interviewed by the paper said her 11-month-old nephew
died before he could receive treatment for dysentery because of long queues
of patients waiting for treatment at a clinic in Mabvuku.

"When we finally got assistance on the third day, they only prescribed
some drugs, but before we even bought the prescribed drugs, he passed away,"
said Durai Zimuto.

The simple solution of salt and sugar prescribed for dysentery
patients to replenish their lost body fluids presents a major challenge in
this southern African country, where there are acute shortages of most basic
household commodities. - Sapa-dpa

Zimbabwe bank secures US$ 30 million off-shore loan

Afrique en ligne


A Zimbabwean bank said Friday it had secured a US$ 30 million offshore
loan to finance exporters, and another US$ 1.2 million specific a lly for
small-scale horticulture farmers.

Infrastructural Development Bank of Zimbabwe chief executive Charles
Chikaura sa id the funds had been secured from an unnamed Asian bank, and
would finance expo r ters in the agriculture, mining and tourism industries.

He said subject to satisfactory performance, the bank had been assured
of more f unding from the same Asian source.

"The facility is set to grow over time and foreign currency generated
from funde d projects will be pooled at the bank to further developmental
projects," he sai d .

Chikaura said the smaller US$ 1.2 million loan was secured from the
Common Fund for Commodities and was targeted at small horticulture growers.

The facilities are the latest in a series Zimbabwe has secured
off-shore, to try and resolve its long running foreign currency crisis.

Sanctions and poor export performance have led to a foreign currency
crisis in Z imbabwe, resulting in widespread shortages, especially of
imported commodities.

Harare - 22/12/2007

Panapress

Prison Services Hit By Desertions, Resignations

The Herald (Harare)  Published by the government of Zimbabwe

22 December 2007
Posted to the web 22 December 2007

Harare

THE Zimbabwe Prison Services has been hit by desertions and resignations
especially from the junior ranks leaving the establishment with 25 percent
vacant posts, the Commissioner of Prisons, Retired Major-General Paradzayi
Zimondi, said yesterday.

Speaking in an interview at the ZPS Training Depot in Ntabazinduna, Rtd
Maj-Gen Zimondi said three quarters of the prison establishment was
presently adequately staffed.


"The full staff complement is 10 000 officers but as of now we only have
three-quarters of the staff complement. The exodus of our teachers, nurses,
doctors and other specialised personnel has also hit us hard," he said.

"We are all aware of the prevailing economic climate in the country and we
will continue to recruit and although the staff turnover is high we are
still managing."

Rtd Maj-Gen Zimondi said he believed that some people were leaving out of
frustration and lack of proper guidance and advice.

He said there was need for those in authority to assist officers that are
under their command in whatever endeavours they may want to undertake to do
so wisely.

Rtd Maj-Gen Zimondi noted with great concern that prison inmates were
literally staying naked due to a shortage of material to manufacture their
clothes.

He said David Whitehead the sole provider of the material to make prison
garb was unable to meet the demand resulting in the prisoners' right to
decent dressing being infringed upon.

Rtd Maj-Gen Zimondi said there was also a serious shortage of rations for
both inmates and officers.

"The shortage of food leads to malnutrition and this makes the prison
population vulnerable to diseases some of which lead to deaths. What is
happening in society is also happening in the prison population and as such
it is not spared from the HIV/Aids pandemic," he said.

Rtd Maj Gen Zimondi could not be drawn to give figures of deaths in prisons
saying people in a better position to do so were prison doctors and none of
them were present. He said the most common ailment in prisons was pellagra,
a vitamin deficiency disease caused by dietary lack of Vitamin B3 and
protein.

He acknowledged that the ZPS was failing to take remand prisoners to court
and attributed this fact to a shortage of trucks.

Rtd Maj-Gen Zimondi said as a stop-gap measure they at times invited court
officials to visit prison establishments and remand the inmates there.

"Resources are the major handicap on our part because we do not have
adequate transport throughout the country. We have made representations to
the parent ministry and we hope they will look at our shortcomings and look
for solutions to our transport problems," he said.

Rtd Maj-Gen Zimondi noted that the ZPS did not buy a single motor vehicle
this year but was optimistic that the Ministry of Justice, Legal and
Parliamentary Affairs would make all efforts to buy some cars this coming
year.

The country's prisons have capacity to hold 17 000 inmates and the
population is about 16 000, he said.

Rtd Maj-Gen Zimondi said when one prison complex becomes overcrowded, some
inmates are moved to other complexes where there would be space.

Tsvangirai's Xmas and New Year message to the people of Zimbabwe

As we record the eighth Christmas after the formation of the Movement for
Democratic Change in 1999, I wish to recognise our collective determination
and resolve to transform the political face of our motherland against heavy
odds.

We are pioneers among Africans: the first nation to confront an African
dictator through democratic means, and the first post-colonial formation
arising from the social movement to claim an extension of freedom and the
realisation of the noble ideals of the liberation struggle. Unlike the
situation in the rest of Africa, we remained steadfast in our refrain to
resort to armed violence in order to be heard.

I am happy to note that we pinned our colours to a set of ideals that bind
our nation and continued to address seemingly intractable political and
democratic deficits perpetuated by Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF. We stretched
ourselves, set the national agenda and celebrated the possible in a negative
African political climate that initially scorned at our peaceful efforts and
wrote us off as vassals of external hate and foreign manipulation.

Today Africa is with us: our SADC neighbours understand us and they are
helping us to manage a messy political transition at the successful
conclusion of our national project, our democratic struggle. We have won
this struggle.

We now face a delicate process of transferring power to the people,
rekindling hope and setting up institutions and a government over which the
people have control and input.

For 27 years, Zimbabweans believed government was something that happens to
them. The people ceded decisions and the essence of life to a criminal
cabal, a criminal state. Trust, confidence and faith in an orderly system
tumbled along, giving way to the emergence of a plethora of single issue
protest groups within the broader democratic movement.

As we enter the New Year the people are poised to eject the status quo and
to re-engage with the democratic process to complete the change into a New
Zimbabwe. But given the delicacy of the transition, we need all voices on
the table. Let us unite for the purposes of crossing this sensitive
footbridge to a genuinely free and fair election whose outcome shall
discourage further political disputes.

We have limited options. With millions away from home and a deepening
humanitarian crisis and a debilitating national food shortage, Zimbabwe can
ill-afford to delay the resolution of the national crisis, a day longer. We
are at a crucial stage of our nation's development.

Christmas offers us a superb occasion to put our differences aside, meet
family and friends and to share our thoughts and scarce resources freely as
a people. Christmas creates a period of giving, a period of empathy and a
period of solidarity.

Christmas unites all. I wish to take this opportunity to appeal to the
Church to pray for our nation at this time of greatest need; to pray for an
orderly transition; and to pray for a Zimbabwe that emerges out of this
dirty political envelop without life-threatening bruises. Across the
political divide, we have a duty and a responsibility to guide ourselves and
cross over into a new dispensation.

We have an enormous task ahead: we must rebuild the family; we must bequeath
a normal birthright to our children; we must embark on a mammoth
reconciliation and reconstruction programme to put our country back on the
rails; and we must exercise extreme care and caution in order to rejoin the
international community.

Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF rely on force and coercion to achieve their
objectives. We have been through all that. Mugabe and Zanu PF believe in
violence as a means to an end. We have sufficient experience to deal with
that. Mugabe and Zanu PF understand deceit and insincerity. We must stop
them in order to move forward as a nation.

The New Zimbabwe in our dreams requires a concerted national effort to
effect a generational change-over of our national political leadership. The
New Zimbabwe in our vision is premised on honesty and tolerance in our
diversity. The respect we expect from the international community should be
a mirror image of the accolades and acceptance we enjoy at home. Any attempt
to derail the current transition shall drive us to the edge of a precipice
and delay an evolutionary process into a new era.

I call upon SADC, as underwriters to the current negotiations between Zanu
PF and the MDC, to invest further political capital into our transition. It
is important that SADC sees the process right to the end. SADC institutions
must move into Zimbabwe quickly to oversee the transition, help us raise
hope and assist ordinary people to restrain our rogue regime from an
impulsive, negative reaction at a time when Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF are
certainly losing power and control.

Our main focus rests on a free and fair election. The conditions for such a
plebiscite must satisfy all stakeholders. The conditions must pass a SADC
and a universal test. There is no need for us to rush through a transition
and end up with a flawed process, a flawed outcome and a future doubted at
home and abroad. Arrogance is negative. Arrogance dampens confidence.
Zimbabwe deserves better.

Our elections in 2000 resulted in 37 legal challenges. Mugabe and Zanu PF
usurped the judiciary and the bulk of these challenges were never heard. The
few that came under judicial scrutiny proved that the Movement for
Democratic Change won that election. But we were, nevertheless, denied
access to power.

The Presidential election in 2002 suffered the same fate. To this day, and a
few months to another major election, the legal challenge to the process and
the result in the 2002 election is still locked up in the courts, partly
heard. A repeat of this backward way of life would finish us off all as a
nation. Let us avoid falling into the same trap.

For participants in a national plane to derive meaning from their routine
interaction, from their conversations and from democracy, there is a need
for an environment secured by our diversity, the rule of law, a solid human
rights culture, respect for private property rights and an embrace of
universal norms and standards of behaviour. None of that obtains in the
Zimbabwe we live in today. This transition is designed to lead to a complete
reversal of the status quo. Let us all work hard to achieve that.

Together we can get out of the complicated political stalemate whose weight
is evident everywhere. The stalemate has cost us our basic sustenance, our
food reserves and our friends. The stalemate affects our relations with the
international community.

Our neighbours are as concerned as ourselves with the absence of a political
will, on the part of the Mugabe dictatorship, to accept a smooth transition
to a new Zimbabwe. Without sufficient safeguards, insured by an amicable
agreement and sound political will, we risk driving the nation - once
again -- into a cul-de-sac. We remain concerned about the insincerity of
Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF in this transitional process. Zanu PF's
insincerity and behaviour on the ground are causing immense anxiety and, in
some cases, total uncertainty.

As individuals, as families, as communities and in our different capacities,
we shall meet, pray, dialogue and dine with Zanu PF functionaries during
this Christmas and New Year period. Let us implore on them to see the bigger
picture, the national imperative and the national interest. Let us reason
with them as kith and kin to accept that Zimbabwe is the subject, not their
personal fears and trappings. Let us all put our heads together and ensure
that Zimbabwe experiences a free and fair election next year.

May I wish you a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. It is my sincere
hope and conviction that Zimbabwe shall be a different place in 2008.

Morgan Tsvangirai
President.

Harare, Zimbabwe.