Zimbabwe Police Defy High Court Order

Lawyer: Zimbabwe activist held in notorious prison

Associated Press

Dec 26, 9:07 AM EST

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- A Zimbabwean peace activist has been traced to a
notorious maximum security prison despite a court order that she be taken to
hospital, a leading human rights lawyer said Friday.

Jestina Mukoko and nine opposition members are being held accused of
plotting to overthrow President Robert Mugabe. The plot has been widely
dismissed as fabricated, and is possibly an attempt by Mugabe's regime to
find an excuse to declare a state of emergency.

Zimbabwean lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said police told her Mukoko had been taken
to Chikurubi prison outside of the capital. Another lawyer went to the
prison and confirmed she was there but had not been allowed access to her,
Mtetwa said.

Mukoko had been missing for three weeks before appearing in court Wednesday.
A judge ordered that she receive medical attention for torture allegations
to be investigated. Police refused to comply with the order and she went
missing again on Thursday.

Mtetwa said the female activists were being held with Mukoko in the harsh
conditions at the prison which has no running water. The men were being held
at various police stations around Harare.

Mtetwa said the women were expected to be brought to court Monday, but it
was unclear what would happen next.

International observers and human rights groups have raised concerns about
the disappearance of many opposition activists as Mugabe clamps down on
growing dissent. The New York-based Human Rights Watch called Thursday for
Mukoko's release.

Mugabe has faced growing pressure to step down. Charging Mukoko, the
respected head of a group known as the Zimbabwe Peace Project, is a sign he
is not prepared to yield after nearly three decades in power.

A power-sharing deal, signed in September, calls for Mugabe to remain
president and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to take the new post of
prime minister. The agreement has stalled over a dispute about who would
control key Cabinet posts - and over charges Mugabe has stepped up
harassment of dissidents.

Mugabe, 84, has ruled the country since its 1980 independence from Britain
and refused to leave office following disputed elections in March.

Food, medicine, fuel and cash are scarce in Zimbabwe, and critics blame
Mugabe's policies for the ruin of what had been the region's breadbasket. A
cholera epidemic has killed more than 1,100 people.

Zimbabwe has 'no intention' of releasing activists: lawyer

http://news.yahoo.com

Fri Dec 26, 5:59 am ET

HARARE (AFP) - The Zimbabwean regime of Robert Mugabe has "no intention" of
releasing a rights activist and several opposition figures accused of
recruiting anti-government plotters, a lawyer said Friday.

"Nothing has changed. The police have not moved an inch and our clients are
still detained at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison including the
two-year-old child," Alec Muchadehama, one of the lawyers for the detainees,
told AFP.

"The state is in contempt of court. The reason they brought some of them to
court is for public relations purposes to save their image but the truth is
that they have no intention of releasing them," he said.

Jestina Mukoko, director of Zimbabwe Peace Project -- a rights group which
has been compiling cases of election violence -- was seized from her home on
December 3 by armed men who identified themselves as police.

Two members of her staff were taken away from their office days later. They
are being accused together with 28 members from the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) opposition party of recruiting anti-government plotters.

A two-year-old child is also among those being held.

Mukoko's location was unknown for several weeks and a High Court order for
her release went unheeded, sparking protests from international rights
bodies. She appeared in court on Wednesday along with eight detainees.

The MDC signed a power-sharing deal in September with President Mugabe's
ruling ZANU-PF and a splinter from the MDC after disputed elections earlier
in the year.

But MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai warned his party could pull out of the
negotiations if its members continued to be abducted and those detained were
not released.

Further Developments Relating to Individuals Subjected to Enforced Disappearances

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (Harare)

26 December 2008

State challenges release of alleged plotters

http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=9209

December 26, 2008

By Raymond Maingire

HARARE - The state on Friday filed an appeal to challenge the release of 32
human rights defenders and MDC activists who are being accused of plotting
to dethrone President Robert Mugabe's government through acts of banditry.

The prisoners are still being held in police custody despite Wednesday's
order to have them released forthwith by High Court Judge, Yunus Omerjee.

Justice Omerjee's ruling concurred with last month's ruling by Justice
Charles Hungwe who declared both the arrest and the detention of the accused
persons illegal.

But in their appeal the police deny any hand in both the arrest and the
detention of the group.

The 32 were abducted from their homes and workplaces in Harare, Chinhoyi and
Banket on different occasions since October 2008.

Their whereabouts were kept a secret until last Monday when police
apparently took custody of them straight from the hands of state security
agents last Monday.

According to the notice of appeal, the state says Justice Omerjee erred in
endorsing the release of all the accused persons.

Police say the High Court erred in declaring their detention illegal as it
(court) had no evidence police were responsible for the accused persons'
continued detention.

After a protracted effort by their lawyers to establish their whereabouts,
the High Court in November declared the accused person's continued
"detention by whosoever" illegal.

Police insist they acted in accordance with the law which stipulates that
accused persons must be taken to court within 48 hours of their arrest.

The state has further challenged the release of former broadcaster, Jestina
Mukoko and eight others who were to undergo medical treatment at Harare's
Avenues Clinic under police guard.

The group, which claims to have been tortured by state security agents
during weeks of detention, is due to be taken for a remand hearing on Monday
next week.

The state further says in any event, there are no grounds for the accused
persons to be kept in hospital until December 29.

In respect of Mukoko and eight others, the state says Justice Omerjee erred
in ordering their release to the Avenues Clinic as it had no evidence to
prove the accused persons needed any treatment.

Police further say they do not have any manpower to guard the accused
persons while they receive medical attention at the Avenues Clinic.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights executive director, Irene Petras,
confirmed Friday the defence was served with a notice of appeal against the
ruling by Justice Omerjee.

"We received the notice of appeal by the state," said Petras.

"The appeal notice is fraught with inconsistencies as police filed it with
the High Court instead of the Supreme Court.

"To us, the notice is defective. As far as we are concerned, and in spite of
its intentions to appeal against the order, the state is still acting in
contempt of court by continuously holding our clients."

Petras says they are going to challenge the appeal as it was not filed
procedurally.

Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri and Chief Superintendent
Magwenzi, the investigating officer are listed as appellants in Friday's
appeal notice.

Zimbabwe's MDC Urges Police Chief to Quit for Defying Top Court

http://www.bloomberg.com

By Brian Latham

Dec. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change
party called for the resignation of police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri,
citing his failure to obey a High Court order to release nine detained
activists.

Armed police took Jestina Mukoko, director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project,
and eight other people to an unknown location on Dec. 24 immediately after
the court ordered they be released and taken to a hospital, lawyers for the
detainees said yesterday.

"It was obvious from their condition that they needed medical treatment,"
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said in a telephone interview from Harare
today. "Chihuri has wantonly abused the rule of law in Zimbabwe by
continuing to detain them. If he cannot control the justice system in
Zimbabwe and cannot respect Zimbabwe's constitution or citizens' rights,
then he must consider vacating his position as head of the police."

Neither Chihuri nor police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena answered calls to
their offices or mobile phones when Bloomberg News attempted to contact them
today.

The government accuses the detainees of recruiting young men to undergo
military training in neighboring Botswana. President Robert Mugabe, who
leads the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party, has accused
the MDC of planning to overthrow the government using force, following a
disputed election.

"That's absurd, a manifestation of the madness that has gripped Zanu-PF,"
Chamisa said. "It is preposterous because we in the MDC won the elections
and winners don't wage war. It is all in Zanu-PF's fevered imagination. Why
would we want to overthrow ourselves? We are the government, we control
parliament and the local councils and municipalities."

The MDC won parliamentary elections and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai
outpolled Mugabe in the first round of presidential elections in March.
Tsvangirai failed to win the majority needed to avoid a runoff, which he
then boycotted because of alleged attacks on his supporters.

Abducted journalist and rights activist now faces possible death penalty on terrorist plot charge

http://www.rsf.org

Zimbabwe 26 December 2008

Reporters Without Borders condemns the "unacceptable behaviour" of the
Zimbabwean authorities in kidnapping journalist and human rights activist
Jestina Mukoko three weeks ago, holding her incommunicado and now accusing
her and several other members of the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) of a terrorist plot to overthrow President Robert Mugabe. She
faces a possible death sentence.

"The accusations brought against Mukoko are absurd and baseless," Reporters
Without Borders said. "We call on the Zimbabwean authorities to free her and
withdraw all the charges at once. Coming after a series of kidnappings, the
prosecution of these opposition activists has all the hallmarks of a
government conspiracy to sabotage the power-sharing agreement."

The Zimbabwean police brought Mukoko and nine other human rights activists
before a Harare court on 24 December on charges of organising a Zimbabwean
police officer's trip to Botswana to receive military training there with a
view to overthrowing Mugabe. Their lawyers, who have not been allowed to see
them, said they risked being sentenced to death.

The ten activists are now being held in Chikurubi high security prison
although a high court judge ordered on 24 December that they be taken to
hospital. They are now being held under a pre-trial detention order that
will require renewal on 29 December.

A former presenter for the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) and then
the privately-owned Voice of The People (VOP), Mukoko was kidnapped from her
home in Norton (40 km west of Harare) at around 5 a.m. on 3 December by some
15 men in plain clothes. Thereafter, there had been no word of Mukoko until
her court appearance. The police had said nothing, aside from denying any
knowledge of her whereabouts.

Mukoko heads the Zimbabwe Peace Project, a human rights organisation that
has provided constant information about this year's political violence in
Zimbabwe, where some 200 supporters of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's
MDC have been killed since the party's successful challenge to the ruling
ZANU-PF in last March's general elections.

Refusing to recognise its defeat, the ruling party signed a power-sharing
deal with the opposition in September but the two sides have failed to agree
on its implementation, in particular, the allocation of key ministries.
Tsvangirai threatened to pull out of the deal earlier this month after a
series of kidnappings of opposition activists.

Harare Delivers Passport To Opposition Chief Tsvangirai, But Deal Still Distant

http://www.voanews.com

By Blessing Zulu
Washington
26 December 2008

After months of withholding a new passport from opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean government has delivered the controversial travel
document to the head of the dominant formation of the Movement for
Democratic Change with a letter from President Robert Mugabe inviting him to
join a unity government, MDC sources said Friday.

Despite the delivery of the passport and letter to Tsvangirai on Christmas
Day in what looked like a concession from the Harare government under
intense international pressure, MDC officials said there remain many
obstacles to the formation of a unity government.

The United States and Britain have called for Mr. Mugabe to step down over
the meltdown in the country where a cholera epidemic has claimed more than
1,500 lives in recent months and millions of Zimbabweans are counting on
food assistance to keep themselves alive.

But neighboring South Africa has also come under pressure to lean on Mr.
Mugabe to make concessions to the MDC on the composition of the proposed
unity government if not subscribe to the Western position that Mr. Mugabe
must resign his office.

Diplomatic sources said Pretoria strongly urged Harare to issue the
passport, which became a highly contentious issue at an earlier stage of the
current phase of the crisis, as Tsvangirai's lack of a passport was said to
have prevented him attending a regional summit.

The issuance of the passport closely followed the appearance in a Harare
court Wednesday of activists including Zimbabwe Peace Project Director
Jestina Mukoko who had been abducted by suspected state security agents, in
Mukoko's case from her home on Dec. 3.

Tsvangirai one week ago issued an ultimatum demanding the release by Jan. 1
of more than 40 MDC and civic activists abducted since October, failing
which he would ask the formation's ruling national council to vote to sever
negotiations with Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party on forming a government under a
power-sharing agreement signed Sept. 15.

Sources in Harare and Pretoria told VOA that Mr. Mugabe's letter to
Tsvangirai was hand-delivered by South African High Commissioner to Botswana
Milo Moopeloa. Tsvangirai, who has been based in Botswana recently, was
expected to respond in detail on Monday.

But South African government sources said they expected Tsvangirai to
refuse, adding that the Southern African Development Community is already
planning another summit in January at which the regional organization would
again attempt to broker a political deal.

Tsvangirai spokesman George Sibotshiwe told reporter Blessing Zulu of VOA's
Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that the issuance of the passport should not be given
too much weight as there remain many hurdles to the formation of a viable
unity government.

UN medical supplies arrive in Zimbabwe as cholera deaths top 1,500

Source: United Nations News Service

Date: 27 Dec 2008

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is providing local hospitals in
Zimbabwe with critical medical supplies and money to treat pregnant women,
amid a collapsing health system and the worst cholera outbreak in the
sub-Saharan African country's history which has now claimed over 1,500
lives.

Over the past week, UNFPA, in partnership with the Zimbabwe Ministry of
Health and Child Welfare, has delivered emergency reproductive health kits,
medicine and surgical supplies to the maternity care units of Zimbabwe's
central hospitals - many of which are on the verge of collapse.

"The total consignment can meet the needs of a population of about 900,000
for at least three months," UNFPA announced in a statement.

The agency has also handed out enough drugs to prevent pregnancy-related
complications such as haemorrhaging and eclampsia throughout the country for
the next six months, as well as pay incentives to maternity care medics,
many of whom have gone without salaries and cannot report to work.

The moves are intended to throw a life-line to maternity units suffering
from severe shortages of staff and supplies that have put the lives of
thousands of pregnant women at risk.

The Government has declared the cholera outbreak a national emergency, but
the healthcare situation remains dire - with many families unable to afford
treatment - and may worsen during the current rainy season.

As of 25 December, 1,518 people have died from cholera and another 26,497
cases are suspected, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

Large numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs), ex-farm workers and
the poor have lost their livelihoods, leaving them cut off from basic social
and healthcare services and dependent on humanitarian aid.

The HIV and AIDS pandemics are compounding the problem. UNFPA said that more
than one million Zimbabweans - an estimated 15.6 per cent of the
population - are living with those killer diseases. HIV prevention and
access to safe delivery, including emergency obstetric care services, are
critical to their survival.

During a ceremony to hand over emergency kits at Harare-based Parirenyatwa
General Hospital, Zimbabwe's largest hospital, Gift Malunga, UNFPA's
Assistant Representative there, urged the Government, donors,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and others to urgently support medical
staff.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has already flow in intravenous fluids, drip
equipment, essential drugs, midwifery and obstetrics kits to boost the
Government's cholera response.

On 22 December, four independent UN human rights experts called on
Zimbabwe's Government and the international community to do more to rebuild
the country's health system, end the cholera epidemic and ensure adequate
food for all people.

Cholera Epidemic Abates In Parts Of Zimbabwe, But Spreads Elsewhere

http://www.voanews.com

By Patience Rusere
Washington
25 December 2008

Health conditions on Zimbabwe are "slightly" improving in some areas
stricken by cholera as international humanitarian relief efforts have an
impact, a health activists said Thursday.

Executive Director Itayi Rusike of the Community Working Group on Health
said, however, that the disease is cropping up in rural areas around the
town of Chegutu in Mashonaland West province, after devastating the Chegutu
Urban constituency. He said about three people a day in such rural areas
were succumbing to the disease each day.

New cases were also being reported in Nyamhunga, a high-density suburb of
Kariba, also in Mashonaland West on the country's northern border with
Zambia.

But cases have tapered off in Budiriro, a high-density suburb of Harare,
which was one of the areas hit first and hardest by the disease, following
the mobilization of relief by the Red Cross and the United Nations
Children's Fund, or UNICEF, among other organizations.

As of Wednesday the death toll from cholera had reached1,400 from some
21,000 cases, according to the World Health Organization, a key player in
the relief effort.

Health activist Rusike told reporter Patience Rusere that gains against the
disease must be consolidated by putting more permanent preventive measures
in place.

Dr. Douglas Gwatidzo, chairman of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for
human Rights, corroborated Rusike's assessment, saying cholera continues to
spread because authorities have been more concerned with treating it than in
preventing new cases.

Caught between hope and fear in Zimbabwe

http://www.latimes.com

Two women, each expecting a baby, find it difficult to smile as conditions
in their country collapse around them. The joy that marked early 2008 has
been snuffed out by Mugabe.
By Robyn Dixon
December 26, 2008
Reporting from Harare, Zimbabwe -- When Asiatu thinks about having her first
child, she wipes her hands over her face, as if washing away bad memories.

When Junica Dube thinks about giving birth again, she rests her hands on her
belly, as still and silent as a statue.

The story of two babies, to be born in the new year, should be a joyful one.
But their mothers do not smile.

Dube's baby will be the first to arrive, in January. Last year, she spent
four days in labor, in a hospital where nothing worked and the nurses
scolded her for crying out in pain. Her firstborn son lived just a few
minutes. He died with no name.

Asiatu's baby is expected in May. Pretty and slender, with the same thin
wrists and sad eyes as Dube, she doesn't know who the father is. All she
knows is that he isn't the man she loved, the man she lost.

Haunted by their fears, the only thing that keeps these two going is a
luminous thread of hope, looping forward against all odds into the darkness
that is Zimbabwe, like a firefly fluttering out of reach.

The story of the two women, and the two babies yet to be born, is the story
of Zimbabwe's violent journey between hope and fear this last year.

::

It's September. I'm running down a dusty Harare street. The frightened
slap-slap of my feet joins an orchestra of thumping shoes, a crowd running
away. Everyone is scared.

Part of it is pounding herd fear. But not far behind come our pursuers, a
mob of young thugs for the ruling ZANU-PF party, hurling rocks.

As I run across a road called Rotten Row and pull around a corner out of the
danger zone, a couple of old men laugh at me, and the idea that this
5-foot-tall white woman would come to their country in the state it's in.

"Look at the murungu!" they say, using the Shona word for a white. "Hey,
white lady! Don't you know? This is Zimbabwe!"

I slap-slap for another half a block before slowing down, feeling slightly
foolish.

When this day began, the sun was warm; people danced and sang. They believed
that President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years, was
finally going to agree to share power six months after voters handed him a
stunning defeat. I perched on a precarious rock to see the singing crowd, a
forest of red-and-white opposition T-shirts, swaying in hypnotic rhythm.

Everyone was smiling.

Then she appeared at the foot of my perch, a sunny girl of 21 with a smile
so wide I didn't recognize her at first. The last time I had seen her, she
was crying.

Asiatu.

I jumped down and she introduced me to her mother. And then I watched her
dive back into the choppy, joyful sea of people.

It was the only time I saw Asiatu really smile.

But then fights erupted between opposition supporters and a load of ZANU-PF
reinforcements who had arrived after the power-sharing deal was signed.
Rocks were hurled; T-shirts were torn. Hope evaporated.

Asiatu saw the crowds of people running away, and ran too.

When I first meet Asiatu, an opposition activist, in July, she's been
imprisoned for nearly two months in a ZANU-PF militia base, a rambling old
farmhouse with a thatched roof outside Harare. She has to call her captors
"comrades."

It's just after the second round of the presidential vote, and Mugabe's
campaign of violence, designed to reverse his poor first-round result in
March, is still at full throttle.

Asiatu has seen his supporters kill people at the base, stoning them with
bricks. She fears she could be killed too, if her full name is published.

When she's not cleaning or cooking, she's forced to sing ZANU-PF songs for
hours on end. By turns bored and terrified, she is allowed out of the base
for only a couple of hours each day to do family chores.

I meet her during one of her brief stints of freedom.

When I ask about her story, her face crumples and she starts to weep. She
whispers that she's raped daily by five men.

I hug her as her body shakes with sobs.

The year in Zimbabwe began with soaring expectations, like a kite on a wind:
People were sure of a change. Then it plunged into despair, as if someone
had shot the fragile paper-and-wood construction from the sky. Most of the
time, though, people are so preoccupied with the grind of just surviving
that change seems a quixotic dream.

As I've traveled across Zimbabwe over the last two years, I've met people in
moments of tragic upheaval. I tell their stories and go my way. Finding them
later is often difficult. But if and when I do, things have usually gone
downhill.

People don't fit their trousers anymore. Skinny limbs swim in their clothes
like twigs tossed into a sack. In Harare, ragged beggar girls dash between
the cars, palms open in supplication, dwarfed by the babies they carry on
their backs. A mother sits on a dusty curb, her toddler's belly distended.
Dilapidated pickup trucks plow between the potholes, with people crammed in
the back like sheep going to slaughter.

On a November day, an old man's rattling 1962 bicycle tells its own story:
Its tires no longer exist. Instead, he's tied on bits of scrap rubber with
any rubber strap, string or wire he can find.

Along the highways you see people trudging steadily, their plastic sandals
worn paper thin, their ancient T-shirts reduced to a net of holes. They
scavenge whatever they can find. The grains of corn that scatter from
passing trucks are carefully collected for the day's one meal.

I often think about Jane Sibanda, a 70-year-old woman I met last year near
Lupane village in southern Zimbabwe. She was embarrassed to have to beg food
from her neighbors, so she'd wait until hunger clawed at her insides like an
insatiable beast. The food situation was terrible then.

But this year's hunger is much worse. People are dying in villages and being
buried there, with no count of the dead ever made. Perhaps she died too. I
try to trace her, but fail.

Last month, on a deserted track in a dry, forgotten corner of western
Zimbabwe, two old women and a man plod along carrying heavy bags. Heads
bowed, they don't even hope for a lift, for drivers usually ask for money. I
tell my friend, who's driving, to stop. The women's faces are streaming with
sweat. One carries a panting red hen. They say they have about 25 miles more
to walk. Perhaps they're exaggerating?

But it turns out to be 36 miles -- what would have been a three-day march on
a stony track.

When they get out, they lightly clap their palms together, in Zimbabwe's
gentle thank-you gesture. I meet the older woman's gaze for a long moment.
She has tears in her eyes.

Driving through the crowded township of Mufakose one warm evening after
ZANU-PF's loss in the first-round elections, I pause to drop someone off. A
crowd of young men catches sight of me, and the shout goes up, "Murungu!
Murungu!"Murungu! Murungu!" They throng around the car, reaching, shaking
hands and laughing.

"This is the new Zimbabwe! The new Zimbabwe!" they yell. And it almost seems
true.

But by nightfall, I hear that intelligence agents are raiding hotels and
arresting journalists for working without accreditation. It's started.

A few days later, I meet some opposition activists in a dark car. Their fear
is so strong you can almost smell it. They describe being hunted down in
their villages by ZANU-PF militias with AK-47 assault rifles. On their
foreheads, beads of sweat glisten in the soft green light of the cellphone
I'm using as a flashlight to take notes.

Week by week, the violence escalates. One late July night, I get a text
message from an opposition man I've met only once: "Pliz help me, my life is
in danger." I call, but can't get through. I hit redial again and again.

Every day in a well-to-do Harare neighborhood, I see a group of
exhausted-looking gardeners landscaping a garden. When I talk to them in the
lush, serene surroundings, their tale is surreal.

In the evenings, they're rounded up in their township by ruling party youth
militias, forced to dance, sing liberation songs and beat people all night
long.

Sometimes they beat their victims to death.

Then the next day, it's off to work by 8, laying tiles in neat circles,
placing elegant statues in pretty corners, building ponds and water features
in someone else's garden.

There are luxurious islands in the violence. One day in June, I walk past a
long, black Mercedes and into a Harare restaurant where I have a lunch
meeting with one of the ZANU-PF militia base commanders. It's warm in the
restaurant garden; a flutter of tiny, colorful honeyeaters sips nectar from
the flowers.

He's dressed in a casual fawn-colored outfit with a cap and orders a T-bone
steak, well done. He's polite and refined and speaks so softly that at times
he's inaudible. He holds his teacup in long, fine fingers, sipping
delicately.

Even more delicate: the subject of the election violence. We wend in wary
circles toward a subject he seems keen to avoid. He calls it "re-education"
and says it's necessary.

He speaks in a singsong tone, sawing methodically at his meat.

"Now, what the government is doing, because of the utterances of the West,
the government is saying: 'You see, you're forgetting that we got this
country by shedding blood. You think it can be returned with a ballpoint
pen. This is not going to happen.' "

More than a year after Junica Dube lost her son, she is almost ready to give
birth again. A new life seems a happy event in a country full of pain.

But here, things keep on getting worse. It's not just the decaying roads and
the crazy inflation. Earlier this year, most schools and hospitals worked.
Now most don't.

Thinking of the birth, Dube, 29, stares blankly ahead.

"I can't even say how I feel. I'm worried because there are no doctors.
There are no nurses. I have to buy everything that is needed for me to give
birth. And you can't afford to buy anything."

"I feel very fearful," adds her husband, Luke Dube, 34, recalling the death
of his newborn last year. "What I saw last time, if it can happen again, I'd
rather die. We try to forget about it, but it comes back at any time and you
think about it."

Once, Asiatu dared to fall in love, with a fellow MDC activist named
Phainos. But he fled in May during the election violence and hasn't been
heard of since.

"We were on the verge of getting married," she says. "I'm afraid for his
life, because the silence is too long."

In her township, she often has to pass the "comrades" who raped her.

"I just look away and walk past. I feel so much hate and anger, sometimes I
begin trembling."

When I visit her at home in December, Asiatu wants an HIV test. So I drive
her to a clinic in town. When I come by the clinic later, she's sitting
slumped on the curb, head bowed.

"I feel sorry for myself. They told me that I am pregnant," she says later.

Despite being four months pregnant, she says she hadn't realized her
situation. "It hurts. It hurts a lot." The HIV result will come later.

She feels no joy over the thought of a child born of rape. The father "is
one of those guys, but I don't know which one."

I try to tell her that a baby's always good news, but choke on my words.
Sometimes, in Zimbabwe, it's not. I brush away a sudden stream of tears.
Where to start?

I take out my cellphone and pull up pictures of my daughter. My voice shakes
as I tell her that I never wanted to be a single mother, either. But as
difficult as it is to believe, it will be all right.

Asiatu considers the photographs carefully as I scroll one by one through my
pictures.

"She's beautiful," Asiatu says softly. She tells me her child will be a girl
too.

I ask whether she feels happy about that. Finally, the ghost of a smile
flickers.

"A little bit," she whispers.

robyn.dixon@latimes.com

Southern Africa Group Moots Summit As Zimbabwe Stalemate Continues

http://www.voanews.com



By Blessing Zulu
Washington
25 December 2008

Under heavy pressure to resolve the deepening political and humanitarian
crisis in Zimbabwe, the Southern African Development Community is
contemplating another summit seeking a solution, a spokesman for SADC's
current chairman said on Thursday.

SADC Chairman and South African President Kgalema Motlanthe has tried to
bring Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and prime minister designate Morgan
Tsvangirai together in a government of national unity, but without results
so far.

Motlanthe spokesman Thabo Masebe told reporter Blessing Zulu of VOA's Studio
7 for Zimbabwe that SADC officials remain confident a unity government can
work.

Top U.S. and British officials have demanded Mr. Mugabe step down, but
failed to bring the South African government around to this position despite
heavy lobbying.

Amnesty international said in a new report, meanwhile, that Zimbabweans face
another tough year in 2009 unless a political settlement is reached.It said
about 1,000 children are roaming the streets of Musina, South Africa, alone,
having fled dire conditions inside Zimbabwe.

Child malnutrition in Zimbabwe increasing as emergency aid pipeline falters

http://www.savethechildren.org.uk

Acute child malnutrition in parts of Zimbabwe has increased by almost two
thirds compared with last year, according to Save the Children.

Saturday 27 December 2008

New figures from Binga district indicate that 7.6% of children aged between
six months and five years are suffering from acute malnutrition, up from
4.5% in October last year. Save the Children said the new statistics reflect
growing concern that emergency supplies into Zimbabwe are faltering because
not enough food is being donated by the international community.

Chronic, long-term malnutrition in Binga district is also up by around 50%.
31.2% of children under five are underweight from chronic malnutrition
compared with 20.9% in October 2007.

Save the Children is distributing food to more than 200,000 people, using
food brought into the country by the World Food Programme (WFP). But a lack
of supplies means that the WFP is 18,000 tonnes short of the food needed for
January, leaving it with only around half the amount it needs for the month.
Supplies for February and March are even less certain.

Lynn Walker, Programmes Director for Save the Children in Zimbabwe, said:
"In areas where we work some children are wasting away from lack of food.
Compared with last year the indications are that things are significantly
worse.

"We have already been forced to reduce the rations of emergency food we are
delivering because there isn't enough to go around. If, as we fear, the food
aid pipeline into Zimbabwe begins to fail in the new year the millions of
people who rely on emergency food aid will suffer."

Save the Children called on world leaders to increase urgently the amount of
food aid they are donating to Zimbabwe.

"Food aid for Zimbabwe goes through the World Food Programme and agencies
like Save the Children, straight to the people who desperately need it,"
said Lynn Walker. "There is no excuse for failing to provide this food. The
innocent people of Zimbabwe should not be made to suffer for a political
situation that is out of their control."

Around five million people are in need of food aid in Zimbabwe, about half
the country's entire population.

Zimbabwe cricket chiefs on Australia sanctions list

http://news.yahoo.com

Fri Dec 26, 7:50 pm ET

SYDNEY (AFP) - Zimbabwe's top cricket administrators have been included in
an expanded list of officials of President Robert Mugabe's regime targeted
by Australian sanctions, a report said Saturday.

The president of Zimbabwe Cricket, Peter Chingoka, and chief executive Ozias
Bvute, have been banned from visiting Australia or having any financial
dealings with the country, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Chingoka is a full voting member of the International Cricket Council (ICC)
executive board and the visa ban may force the ICC to change its plans to
hold an executive board meeting in Perth next year, it said.

Australia announced earlier this month that it had added 75 individuals and
four companies to a list of Mugabe regime members and supporters facing
sanctions, but details were only made public this week.

The additions bring the total number of individuals on the list to 254 as
Australia presses Mugabe to stand down, accusing his regime of brutal human
rights offences.

Zimbabwe has been in political limbo since elections in March and the
failure to implement a power-sharing deal signed on September 15, while the
economy reels under inflation last estimated at 231 million percent.

Efforts by some countries to have Zimbabwe suspended from world cricket
earlier this year failed, but a compromise was reached that saw the southern
African nation pull out of next year's World Twenty20 in England.

That move came after the British government had made it clear it would not
issue visas to Zimbabwean cricketers, effectively cancelling their scheduled
tour of England in 2009.

While some member countries within the ICC say that politics should be kept
out of cricket, others argue that Chingoka and Bvute have close links with
Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party.

Worst Christmas Ever

http://www.radiovop.com

Masvingo- Residents from all walks of life in the province said they
experienced the worst Christmas in the history of their lives.

Lack of cash to buy basic commodities and transport problems topped
the factors which brewed this year's unpleasant Christmas.

Most people did not have sufficient funds to enable them to travel to
different places where they could gather with their families and loved ones.
The festive spirit which is usually characterized by parties and
celebrations remained a pipe dream in Masvingo.

A tour to several places around Masvingo City revealed that most
families ignored the internationally celebrated Christmas holiday and
dedicated the day to their normal operations at their homes.

At Nemanwa Growth Point, about five kilometers away from Great
Zimbabwe Monuments, shop owners said business was low compared to previous
years.

"This is a different Christmas, no one has bought anything from my
shop since morning. There is no difference from any other day. People don't
have money. It is very unfortunate that these people here can not afford to
buy even two kilogrammes of sugar. There is no business here so I am
thinking of relocating to town," said a business man.

Most youths spent the day playing traditional games such as Tsoro.

Although some people had a few Zimbabwean dollars enough to buy a pint
of beer, they could not manage to pursue their interest because shop owners
were demanding foreign currency.

"There is nothing we can do besides playing some games and go home. We
have some money in our pockets but shop owners want forex which we don't
have. We have never experienced the worst Christmas like this one ever,"
said Misheck Mandebvu.

Timothy Mapaike put all the blame to both ZANU PF party and Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) for failing to enter into a political marriage
which could have addressed the ruined economy.

"The leaders of both ZANU PF and MDC are to blame for our suffering.
They (Leaders) are too arrogant. They should have agreed and by now our
problems could have been solved.

"We are not happy because we could not manage to go and see our
parents in rural areas, we can not please our families, and we have been
reduced to beggars. We are very angry," explained Mapaike.

Union takes Rautenbach's firm to court

http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=9214

December 26, 2008

By Our Correspondent

BULAWAYO - The Zimbabwe Transport and Allied workers Union (ZITAWU) has
taken Cargo Carriers International owned by controversial business tycoon,
Billy Conrad Rautenbach, to court over a labour dispute following the arrest
of five company employees and a trade union official.

They were alleged to have disrupted the delivery of maize from Zambia for
distribution to starving Zimbabweans.
Four members of the workers committee and the union president, Charles John
Gusinyu were arrested in May and early June this year.

They were accused of engaging in an illegal strike and of allegedly refusing
to carry grain imported by the Zimbabwe government from Zambia before the
June 27 presidential election re-run.

But they were acquitted by a Harare magistrate on September 23 for lack of
evidence.

The workers were released on bail by the High Court after spending two weeks
in remand prison while a magistrate's court removed Gusinyu from further
remand, saying it would proceed by way of summons in early October.

ZITAWU acting general secretary Noah Gwande said it turned out that the
trucks cited had stopped at Chirundu and Messina and were carrying, not
maize, but imported steel billets.

According to company waybills, the last maize cargo from Zambia had been
transported on April 23.

"Our president was arrested and remanded before the strike case was heard by
a Labour Court in accordance with the Labour Act," said Gwande. "The
arrested members of the worker's committee were not asked to respond to
allegations of inciting others to join the strike."

He said Cargo Carriers summoned the workers while they were out on bail for
a disciplinary hearing despite that their bail conditions prohibited them
from entering the company premises in case they interfered with state
witnesses.

Investigations by the union, based on Cargo Carriers daily tracking records,
also revealed that trucks numbered AAF 8923; AAZ 5394, AAF 8940 and AAZ
58902 that formed the basis of the allegations were, in fact, empty.

The trucks were pulling empty trailers numbered AAZ 2068, AAZ 1996, AAZ
1044, AAF 6754 and AAF 6755.

The labour dispute took a new dimension, when the union filed papers with
the Labour Court listing a raft of workers grievances it alleges Cargo
Carriers was trying to mask by falsely accusing them of sabotaging
government food programme.

Four of the workers' committee members have since been dismissed, while the
fifth has been "put in a circle of despair" to frustrate him into resigning.

A hearing set for October 14 before a Ms Macharavanda (Case number 797/08)
after the union filed a "notice of party to attend" which was served on the
company's lawyers, Ahmed and Ziyambi Legal Practitioners, was postponed
indefinitely.

ZITAWU says the company is trying to cover up the "unsustainable and life
limiting working conditions" the workers are still operating under.

These include being forced to work continuously for 24 hours without proper
rest; imposition of unrealistic transit times that force drivers to breach
statutory speed limits on national highways; repeated arrest of trade union
leadership at the instigation of the company; arrest of workers' committee
members on unfounded allegations and violation of past collective agreements
by the company.

Workers are also irked by apparent connivance between Cargo Carriers
management and two senior Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Union (ZFTU)
officials.

The ZFTU was formed by pro-Zanu-PF functionaries to counter the Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which is viewed in official circles as
being opposed to government.

The workers are chagrined by what they say is unwarranted intervention by
top Zanu-PF officials with business interests in the Democratic Republic of
Congo, to intimidate them.

Rautenbach, who enjoys close links with the top leadership of Zanu-PF, is
reportedly involved in Osleg, a company that is involved in timber and
diamond mining that was formed by top Zanu-PF officials after Zimbabwe's
four year military adventure in the DRC starting in 1997.

When The Zimbabwe Times sought comment from Cargo Carriers' operations
manager, Berti Morera who had requested that issues raised by the workers be
faxed to him, a ZFTU official Kenny Shamuyarira called the paper instead,
seeking to intervene on the company's behalf.

"You cannot publish the article without our comment as we are the umbrella
body of the concerned union," Shamuyarira said.

Asked how he became privy to confidential correspondence between Cargo
Carriers and the Zimbabwe Times Shamuyarira, one of the two ZFTU officials
accused by the workers of colluding with management, said: "Whatever the
union says is immaterial. The ZITAWU executive is responsible for souring
relations between the workers and the employers at Cargo Carriers.

"Taking their grievances to newspapers won't help their case one bit."

The long wait for help

http://www.mg.co.za

THEMBELIHLE TSHABALALA | JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - Dec 27 2008 06:00

Arriving at the show-grounds in Musina, Limpopo, near the Zimbabwean border,
we were greeted by the sight of desperate men, women and children sleeping
on nothing but cardboard. About 500 people, mostly Zimbabweans, have made
this place a temporary home until they get asylum papers.

Each day about 50 new people come into the showgrounds hoping for the kind
of life they no longer believe they will get from their cholera-stricken,
inflation-hit country. The showgrounds are not a sustainable place for
humans to live. The open field surrounded by barbed wire has no proper
shelter, not even a tent.

"They're left to sleep in the dirt. Even our dogs sleep in the house," said
Paul Malan, who has lived in Musina for 22 years. Men sit in the sun and
tell jokes all day to forget about their misery and the only movement anyone
makes is at the sight of food.

"We try to take food to the show-grounds but it is sometimes only enough to
feed the women and the children," said Reverend Paul Richardson of the
Musina Baptist church.

I was standing in the scorching Musina sun for 45 minutes talking to a group
of about 12 men when I realised that the main topic of discussion was the
number of days each one had gone without food. Heartbroken by their tales, I
decided to buy my newfound friends two loaves of bread from the capitalist
vendors who have set up tables of all kinds of goods to sell to the
refugees.

"I have been here for three weeks now. I came here because I heard that we
get refugee status in South Africa when we come here. The last time I ate
was three days ago. I survive only on water," said Tafaira Mabruku, a
carpenter from Bulawayo, who left his family in Zimbabwe in the hope of
starting a new life in South Africa.

It broke my heart even further when I realised that the two loaves of bread
I bought would not be enough. People started following any group that
featured a stranger who looks potentially helpful. By the time we got to the
bread vendor there were 25 more men added to the crew I had interviewed.
Pushing and shoving seemed to be the only way to get fed at that time.

Although neighbouring churches and welfare projects give food to the
refugees at the showgrounds, men struggle to get fed.

The Musina community believes that petty crime has increased in recent
months. Malan told me that his house has been broken into three times since
October. "There have been three break-ins into my house since then and
nothing heavy was taken, so I believe that it is the Zimbabweans who are
hungry and want something to eat," he said.

Malan said that the second break-in occurred while he was in the house.
"When I walked towards the room that the guy was in, he just ran away and
came back after a few minutes to take some money. I am sure he meant no
harm, he was just desperate."

Some of the refugees agree that their desperation might lead them to commit
crimes. "If we have no asylum papers we cannot go out and look for jobs.
What other way is there to make money for food? I am not saying it's right
to break into other people's homes but we need help. We are dying here,"
said Wisdom Mangadza.

The wait for asylum papers tends to be longer than the refugees expect and
they need shelter and blankets to make the wait easier. "I am not going
anywhere until I get these papers. Besides, if I go anywhere close to the
town I will be arrested. I think I have suffered enough as it is," said one
of the men.

There are a number of women with crying babies on their backs. Mothers put
water in their bottles instead of milk. "My baby has been crying all morning
and I don't know what to do because my husband got asylum and left for
Johannesburg last week," said a 30-year-old woman who didn't want to be
named.

How to donate
As the situation in Zimbabwe worsens an increasing number of people on both
sides of the South African border need basic necessities. On Wednesday
President Kgalema Motlanthe announced that Zimbabwe's neighbours will launch
an urgent humanitarian campaign in the hope of saving the country from
economic collapse and a cholera epidemic.

Governments around the world are not the only ones that can lend a helping
hand to our neighbours in despair -- we, as ordinary citizens, can make a
difference. Through the Change4ever campaign we will not only help Zimbabwe
and its people in this agonising time, but will contribute to sustainable
anti-poverty measures in Southern Africa.

The Mail & Guardian, with the Southern Africa Trust, is part of the
Change4ever campaign. We challenge you, the reader, to help us.

There are four different ways you can assist:

To donate R5 to the Change4ever campaign SMS the word "change" to 36545;

Log on to www.change4ever.org to donate online;

Make a donation directly to the Change4ever campaign account;

The M&G is collecting non-perishable foodstuffs, clothes and blankets at
its Rosebank office from January 5. For details call the M&G offices on 011
250 7300.

Catholic Welfare & Development also launched a campaign to fight cholera in
Zimbabwe. Jik for Zim is collecting money to buy bleach to purify water in
Zimbabwe. One capful of Jik will purify 25 litres of drinking water if left
overnight. For donations to the Jik for Zim campaign call Catholic Welfare &
Development on 021 425 2095. A donation of R50 will purify 24 000 glasses of
water. A donation of R500 will purify 240 000 glasses of water.

Anyone who wishes to donate items or money to refugees in Musina can call
Reverend Paul Richardson, who works in the town, on 015 534 0479 or 082 446
1728.

Account details
To donate to the Change4ever campaign:
Name: Southern Africa Trust
Bank: Standard Bank
Type: Current
Branch:Midrand / 001155
Account: 411 39 11 00
Reference:Cholera appeal

To donate to the Jik for Zim campaign:
Name: CWD Zim Crisis Relief
Bank: Standard Bank
Type: Current
Branch:Thibault Square, Cape Town /020909
Account:07 115 5090

Thy Kingdom come

http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=9165

December 25, 2008

By Eddie Cross

THE Bible is probably the most influential book ever written but certain
sections stand out - they stand out because they are stunning in their
breadth, simplicity and power.

The Lord's prayer is one of those passages.In a few sentences, Jesus Christ
covers virtually the whole gamut of human experience and need.

The teachings of the Bible embrace virtually all spheres of human endeavor.
In Genesis we see the origins of matter, man and life. We have described for
us what the limits of our universe are and the constrictions of time, we
understand the uniqueness of mankind and its capacity and potential and the
reasons for its frequent failure to achieve its potential.

In the first five Books of the Old Testament you have laid out rules as to
how we should live and govern ourselves. Virtually every aspect of life is
covered as Moses seeks to discover what God intends for the people he has
placed on this tiny planet in a time constrained Universe.  In the rest of
the Old Testament you experience the roller coaster that is life in real
terms, obey the rules and prosper, disobey and experience collapse and
dispersion.

The circle is completed in the New Testament and we understand the Alpha and
the Omega - the beginning and the end. Where it started and where it will
finish. I know of no other book in history that contains such a
comprehensive guide to life and society.

So when Christ told us to pray "thy Kingdom come" what did he mean? Did he
refer to some sort of new earth that would replace the old? Or was he
referring to a new dispensation on earth, in the here and now. I think the
latter and for me this is very exciting. It means we - all of us, can
actually do something about our condition.

In Genesis, once mankind is created and set up on planet earth, he is given
a vision and a mandate. The mandate was to manage the world on our own. As
an aside, this mandate was given to mankind - male and female and therefore
we share joint accountability for what we have done with our mandate.

Clearly when it comes to the natural world we are not doing so well, we are
tearing through our natural resources at a pace that means we will soon (in
geological time - very soon) run out of everything except garbage.

In the field of financial management we are also not doing so well. Given
the capacity to borrow we have done what we do best - everything in excess.

We are hocked to our eyebrows and have no way out but to tighten our belts
and work our way back to the beach. In the field of relationships we are no
better - the past century has been fraught by wars and conflict on a scale
never seen before in history. Even today, every relationship that is
important to us is under threat - family, friends, countrymen and
countries - all in conflict with one another.

I was born into a country that has been at both the centre and the side of
those developments - a country that has known nothing but conflict for over
a century. Now we are going through a societal collapse - economic, social
and political that has killed millions and destroyed lives and the
enterprise of generations.

To those of us who follow Christ what does the prayer "thy Kingdom come"
mean for us? God's kingdom in Zimbabwe? Clearly we are in a state of
collapse and dispersion similar to that experienced a number of times in the
Old Testament by the people of Israel. The reasons are also the same - we
have failed as a country, to put the Mosaic principles of governance into
practice.

Putting our country back on track means reversing that process in all
spheres. It means new rules for government, local authorities and the
judicial system. It means recognizing what has gone wrong and what must be
done to put things right. That is not the responsibility of God - it's our
responsibility, it's our mandate.

It means many things - starting right now. It involves justice, justice for
the perpetrators and the victims; it calls for forgiveness at the same time
so that we are not consumed by bitterness or hatred. It involves fiscal and
financial prudence, hard work and integrity. It involves consensual decision
making at all levels - from the constitution making process we are about to
begin to the structures that will administer our schools and clinics. It
involves respecting the rights of everyone and protecting those rights so
that there is security for investment and savings.

It can only happen if we are all committed to His Kingdom in our collective
and individual lives. This is the very real challenge that confronts us in
the New Year.

I am convinced that South Africa will force through the formation of the
transitional government in January. They have called for an emergency SADC
summit in the second week of January. Today Jestina Mukoko and others were
brought from police cells in Harare to Court - I am sure that is another
sign of growing South African pressure on this rogue regime. Now watch
Morgan Tsvangirai's passport appear like magic from the desk drawer of the
Registrar General.

I think we will see the regime forced by SADC leaders to backtrack on itself
and agree to the demands of the MDC and then the formation of a transitional
government with MDC clearly in charge. By the end of January we should have
a new government and this should start work in early February. Then the
responsibility for the "Kingdom" changes hands. Let us all pray this
Christmas that the new team will not fail us.

Jestina and the others are being charged with recruiting people to go for
training in camps in Botswana. It has been clear for weeks that the regime
was trying to justify the declaration of a state of emergency under which
they could withdraw from the SADC transitional government agreement, perhaps
ban the MDC arrest its leadership and rule by decree. Hence the phony bomb
blasts at police stations and bridges and on railways, hence the dossier
sent to the SADC States with three forced confessions on CD's.

But they are not getting away with this - attempts to foster street violence
have come to nothing. The region has poured scorn on the allegations about
Botswana and I am sure that when Jestina comes to Court it will be very
embarrassing for the regime.

Tandare’s family lives in destitution

Deserving pensioners

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

We must help the former Crown servants in Zimbabwe retire gracefully.

Telegraph View
Last Updated: 12:57PM GMT 25 Dec 2008

The victims of Robert Mugabe's wanton cruelty grow more numerous by the day.
Yet in a country suffering cholera and mass starvation, the voices of one
singularly dignified group have not been heard. About 2,000 elderly people,
many of them Britons, have been reduced to penury either because Zimbabwe's
bankrupt regime has stopped paying their pensions or hyperinflation has
wiped out their meagre entitlement.

These destitute pensioners are retired officials who served the Rhodesian
authorities before independence in 1980. Many stayed on to work for
Zimbabwe. Legally, the responsibility for paying their pensions rests with
Mr Mugabe. As we reported on Christmas Eve, he has left them penniless. Our
Government now faces the choice of watching these former Crown servants
endure misery and deprivation or stepping in to help. It is a measure of
their dignity and restraint that no siren voices have been raised in their
favour. A debate in the House of Lords and the odd parliamentary question
have been among the few occasions when the fate of these former public
servants has been raised.

In an era when hundreds of billions are spent on rescuing banks, the sum
needed to save 2,000 retired colonial officials from dependence on the mercy
of charity is a relatively modest £25 million. Lord Malloch-Brown, the
Foreign Office minister responsible for Africa, has described the service of
these dedicated people as "honourable" and accepted that Britain had a duty
to act. In familiar fashion, the minister later retreated from his wise
words, perhaps on the advice of his officials. Lord Malloch-Brown should
recover his courage. We may have no legal obligation to these former Crown
servants, but we surely have a moral one.

Comments: 7
  Over the last few weeks we have papers like the DT launch a sustained
attack on public sector workers for daring to think they are entitled to a
half-way decent pension despite paying into one for 40 years. They were all
supposed to have their pensions scrapped and be given the means test to drag
them down the level of the private pensions that were systematically
destroyed throughout the 80s and 90s by city bosses and their firms taking
"pension holidays" to artificially inflate shareholder dividends.

  Now all of sudden you want the Government to find fistfuls of money to
compensate Civil Servants of another country for whom we have NO
responsibility.

  Philip
  on December 26, 2008
  at 08:32 AM

  What about he victims of Brown, you twats?

  alex
  on December 26, 2008
  at 08:23 AM

  In 1980, Rhodesian civil servants were encouraged by the British
Government to stay on and support the new Robert Mugabe government so that
there would not be a break-down of government services. Having said this we
naturally believed that the British Government would support us if something
did go wrong. It sure did!

  Hugh Waters
  on December 26, 2008
  at 08:02 AM

  Hold on, they chose to stay and serve a different master. Why should
we be responsible for their errors of judgment?
  What we could do the next time Mugabe is invited to Paris with his wife
for a shopping trip is to plead with him for help.
  What the British government should be doing is helping the pensioners that
Britain is responsible for!

  Neil Regan
  on December 26, 2008
  at 07:59 AM

  My late father was one of these Colonial Administrators, my late
father-in-law was another. Both were decent, honest men who'd served their
country (Great Britain) in WWII and who then went to serve to the best of
their extensive abilities in the governance of Northern Rhodesia, a country
less than 200 years from the Stone Age, and which had been decimated by the
slave trade. In 1964 they handed over a country with an infrastructure
which, although not yet complete (the Administration had had only 60-70
years) was considered to be a model for other countries to follow.
  Neither my father nor my father-in-law ever received their pension;
neither of them ever moaned; both of them continued to work into ther 70s to
provide for their families.
  The Rhodesian Civil Servants deserve to be rescued. They ran a damned fine
country for all races. They were not politicians, they were incorruptible,
excellent Civil Servants. Zimbabwe could do a lot worse that to employ their
ilk again.

  Stephen Brown
  on December 26, 2008
  at 07:50 AM

  This is the price for socialism / communism.

  Strix
  on December 26, 2008
  at 07:49 AM

  I could understand it more if teh UK govt hadn't welcomed the ogre
Mugabe in the first instance - but having seen the devastation he has caused
to his own people why on earth didn't the UK Govt set up a fund for one of
the USA drone missiles to take him out- as reason is now and has been for a
long time beyond his comprehension- to see his country starving when it used
to be a food exporting nation before he gave his friends farms stolen off
white owners who accepted their responsibility to their Staff just makes me
sick!

Straight talk on Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe

http://www.chron.com

Chicago Tribune
Dec. 25, 2008, 8:55PM

Finally, a prominent African leader has cut through all the diplomatic
niceties and spoken the blunt truth about Zimbabwe's longtime leader, Robert
Mugabe.
"It's time for African governments ... to push him out of power," Kenyan
Prime Minister Raila Odinga recently told the BBC. "Power-sharing is dead in
Zimbabwe and will not work with a dictator who does not really believe in
power-sharing."

Odinga and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf have been the
continent's most forthright leaders about the tragedy of Zimbabwe.

Odinga said in June that his nation did not recognize Mugabe as the
legitimate leader of Zim-babwe, after Mugabe had rigged a March election and
unleashed violence against his political opponents.

Odinga called on South Africa, a regional powerhouse, to act. "I do believe
strongly that if the leadership in South Africa took a firm stand and told
Mugabe to quit he will have no choice but to do so," Odinga said.

South African leaders have not been willing to do that. [On Wednesday,
Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Prize-winning archbishop of Cape Town, echoed
Odinga's criticism and expressed his shame at the way South Africa is
handling the crisis.] Meanwhile, life in Zimbabwe grows more dire by the
day.

At least 775 people have succumbed to cholera since August. Nearly 16,000
have been diagnosed with the disease. Millions more are in danger. Fleeing
refugees are transporting the epidemic to neighboring South Africa,
Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana.

No one who has influence on Mugabe can in good conscience let this go on.

Our view on Zimbabwe's misery: South Africa enables tyranny

http://blogs.usatoday.com/

 It's time for Mugabe to go, but neighbor assists his misrule.
There are moments when leaders of countries can do enormous good - or harm -
depending on whether they act or do nothing. The president of South Africa,
Kgalema Motlanthe, faces such a moment right now.

He is blowing it.

His crucible is neighboring Zimbabwe. The misrule of its leader of almost
three decades, Robert Mugabe, is breathtaking even by the standards of
notorious former African dictators such as Uganda's Idi Amin. Mugabe has run
Zimbabwe, formerly the region's lush breadbasket, into poverty,
hyperinflation and starvation. Opposition members fear for their lives;
several have been abducted in recent weeks.

The currency is so useless, kids picking through garbage don't even bother
to snatch up banknotes with ever-multiplying zeroes on them. And now,
because of broken down water and sewage systems, a cholera epidemic is
sickening and killing thousands.

Mugabe, as usual, blames British colonial rule, which formally ended in
1980. Mugabe proclaims the cholera outbreak is a Western experiment in germ
warfare. Clearly, he has entered such a state of criminal delusion that the
only sane option is to force him to step down.

Motlanthe has unique regional clout to achieve this and to invoke credible
threats of intervention as a last resort. Mugabe depends on South Africa for
energy, trade and much else. South Africa led regional countries in
negotiating a power-sharing agreement between Mugabe and opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai after disputed elections earlier this year. Since then,
Mugabe has instead cracked down further.

Rather than enabling the tyrant next door, Motlanthe needs to join weighty
voices calling for Mugabe to go. They range from several other African
countries to the United States and, last week, Catholic bishops from South
Africa, Botswana and Swaziland. They have understood what Motlanthe refuses
to: that with his actions Mugabe, 84, has forfeited his revered status as a
legendary anti-colonial fighter. As the Catholic bishops put it, "No true
liberator or statesman clings ruthlessly to power as Mugabe has done while
his people live and die in misery."

The South African leader continues to insist against all evidence that
Mugabe will honor the agreement to create "an inclusive government" in which
Mugabe shares power with Tsvangirai. That, despite the fact that Motlanthe
risks a political backlash at home as cholera and refugees spread to South
Africa's poverty-stricken townships.

What will make Motlanthe come to terms with reality, and when, is unclear.
But his first step needs to be to replace former South African president
Thabo Mbeki, one of Mugabe's most loyal enablers, as peace negotiator. If
Motlanthe can't find a credible South African, he could turn to former
United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan of Ghana.

The U.S. has humanitarian and security interests in preventing a failed
state in Zimbabwe. Unless South Africa's leaders step up, the incoming Obama
administration would do well to begin a frank dialogue with them about their
obligation to act to save thousands from starvation, disease and death.

Posted at 12:21 AM/ET, December 26, 2008