• Mugabe trip set to cause storm
• JAG Open Letters Forum No. 201
• Mugabe mania can be fatal
• Money no longer talks in Mugabe's empire
• Why the Commonwealth is better off without Mugabe
• Isolating Mugabe
• Zimbabweans fear more repression after Abuja summit
• Southern African Leaders Criticize Commonwealth Vote Against Zimbabwe
• South Africa should have taken the lead in condemning Mr Mugabe
• Zimbabwe's economy may do what politicians can't
• Cricket - England to pull plug on Zimbabwe
• Mirror, mirror... Mr Mugabe or Mr Smith
• Adios Zimbabwe
• Mbeki in a 'dangerous game '
• The Commonwealth may never have such an eligible dictator again
• Mugabe heads towards the heart of darkness

ZIMBABWE president Robert Mugabe left Harare yesterday for a United Nations
conference in the Swiss capital Geneva on a sanctions-busting trip likely to
provoke a storm of international protest.

Hours after his defiant announcement he was pulling Zimbabwe from the
Commonwealth, Mr Mugabe and a 27-strong delegation slipped out of the
country to attend the World Summit on the Information Society, according to
state radio.

The team was granted visas by the Swiss embassy in Harare, despite a
European-wide travel ban.

The trip will be greeted by the authorities here as a victory for the ageing
Zimbabwean leader, who now looks increasingly isolated on the international
front.

Switzerland is not part of the European Union, which has imposed a travel
ban on Mr Mugabe and 72 members of his inner circle. But it imposed its own
travel restrictions last year on the Mugabe regime.

Diplomats said yesterday Switzerland had been "under pressure" to grant the
Zimbabwean delegation visas because the meeting was organised by the United
Nations.

Zimbabwe’s decision to pull out of the Commonwealth reopened divisions
between African and rich countries at the close of the leaders’ summit in
Nigeria.

"It’s a catastrophe," said Joachim Chissano, president of Mozambique and of
the African Union, and one of those campaigning at the summit for lifting of
Zimbabwe’s suspension.

Accusing western leaders of forcing Zimbabwe’s continued ban, Mr Chissano
said: "There was no consensus. We cannot accept these undemocratic
procedures."

As accusations fly about who is to blame for Zimbabwe's exit from the
Commonwealth, the most important fact to hang on to is that the decision was
made by Robert Mugabe alone. Nobody forced his hand; who, indeed, but the
Commonwealth would have tolerated such a destructive presence for so long?

Long before last weekend's Abuja summit, Mugabe had sought to divide the
Commonwealth along racial lines. Fortunately, he did not succeed. At Abuja,
the majority sided with Britain in voting for Zimbabwe's continued
suspension. They included several African states: Kenya, Botswana, Ghana,
The Gambia, Malawi and Sierra Leone.

A handful of Zimbabwe's neighbours, led by South Africa, objected. Yet if
Mugabe supposed that by flouncing out he would precipitate an African
exodus, he has badly miscalculated. The other 53 members will stay and the
Commonwealth is well rid of him.

The isolation of the Mugabe regime will be almost complete if, as expected,
the International Monetary Fund decides to expel Zimbabwe tomorrow, because
it has made no repayments on outstanding loans since 2001.

In the three years since Mugabe lost a referendum that would have
legitimised his confiscation of land without compensation, he has laid waste
to Zimbabwe's economic, political and legal systems. His brutal treatment of
the press and opposition disguises the fact that he has lost the support of
most Zimbabweans, 70 per cent of whom have no jobs. The country is bankrupt
and hyperinflation has taken hold. Under Mugabe, Zimbabwe's only future is
famine.

To have lifted Zimbabwe's suspension would have sent a signal that the
Commonwealth was not serious. Emboldened by the example of the Australian
prime minister, John Howard, Mr Blair stood up to President Thabo Mbeki of
South Africa. Mr Mbeki could have forced Mugabe, who is now almost wholly
dependent on his goodwill, to make concessions. Instead, Mr Mbeki tried to
bully the Commonwealth into reinstating Zimbabwe. He failed. If any leader
has sustained a diplomatic defeat at Abuja, it is Mr Mbeki, not Mr Blair.

The Prime Minister is proud of his mission to help Africa. His policies for
the continent can seem over-ambitious, sometimes even naive. By standing
firm at Abuja, however, he and Mr Howard have struck a blow for freedom in
Africa and beyond. For generations, the despot's best ally in the West has
been the post-colonial cringe. An honest relationship between Britain and
its former African colonies must be in the interests of both.

Zimbabweans are predicting a new round of repression after President Robert
Mugabe's decision late on Sunday night to pull his country out of the
Commonwealth.

"There is no end in sight. It means more sanctions and more suffering," said
Charity Charidza, recently laid off from her clerical job at a bank. "I
think Zimbabwe has everything to lose from getting out of the Commonwealth
while the Commonwealth itself has nothing to lose."

Mr Mugabe announced his decision after the organisation extend his country's
suspension over electoral irregularities, despite opposition fromsome
African leaders, including President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. The South
African government is now muttering darkly about quitting the Commonwealth
unless Zimbabwe is re-admitted, after a "robust" exchange that lasted at
least four hours at the Commonwealth summit in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

Mr Mugabe thumbed his nose again at the international community yesterday
when he flew to Geneva for an information technology conference. He is the
target of a travel ban to the European Union and the United States, but
United Nations-sponsored events, which he attends, are exempt from the
sanctions.

Tafadzwa Muchagonei, an employee of Harare city council, said he feared more
repression as Mr Mugabe seeks revenge for his humiliation at the summit.
"The decision to pull out means everything falls apart and we are the
biggest losers in the end," he said. Like many Zimbabweans, he believes Mr
Mugabe is playing to the African gallery, but at great cost to his nation.
"He [Mugabe] wants to showcase himself as a great African who can fight
white people who he blames for his troubles in the Commonwealth. But how is
that going to help us?" asked Mr Muchagonei.

Peter Mundoza, a mechanic, said he was too angry to bother about Mr Mugabe's
decision. "This man [Mr Mugabe] has defecated on this nation for a long
time. It is high time he was stopped ... He has put us in this position
whereby we can't think about anything else except how to survive from day to
day ... How then can I be worried about commenting on his move?" said Mr
Mundoza.

Peter Chitsva, a teacher turned street vendor, who now makes his living by
selling his craft work and stone sculptures in Johannesburg, described Mr
Mugabe's action as a "huge non-event." He said: "The only statement to do
with Mugabe I shall ever pay attention to is one either announcing his death
or departure from power ... That day will be my Christmas day."

Joshua Rusere, a political exile based in Johannesburg, was angry that Mr
Mugabe had left the Commonwealth instead of being expelled over his dismal
human rights record. He said: "It would have sent a strong signal to Mugabe
if he had been expelled. It's unfortunate that Commonwealth leaders are
pleading with him to stay in the club instead of saying good riddance."

There were already suggestions yesterday that Mr Mugabe will target
remaining whites in the country out of revenge. One farmer who refused to be
named said he had been told that all remaining white farmers would now be
forced off their land. About 400 white farmers remain on their farms out of
the 4,500 before land seizures began.

After declaring that he was confident he would be present for the Abuja
summit, Mr Mugabe was clearly upset when the Nigerian President, Olusegun
Obasanjo, refused to invite him. Many Zimbabweans think that humiliation
prompted him to pull out, rather than his claim that he did so acting on
principle.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said that the decision
to withdraw from the organisation was unconstitutional.

But Mr Mugabe's supporters hailed the withdrawal. One self-styled war
veteran, Alwed Matanda, said: "We should pull out from all bodies dominated
by white countries and focus on encouraging the development of black
institutions such as the African Union. We could even encourage the
formation of the equivalent of the United Nations for black countries only."

Britain's Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said he thought that Mr Mugabe's
decision was "entirely in character, sadly. I think it's a decision which he
and the Zimbabwean people will come to regret."

But Mr Mugabe was not the only loser: Tony Blair's relationship with Mr
Mbeki has also been damaged. The British Government made the mistake of
taking African support for granted, only to discover that the continent's
leaders would not speak out strongly against Mr Mugabe as they resented
being seen as British "poodles".

Southern African leaders are expressing outrage at Zimbabwe's exclusion from
the Commonwealth, one day after a vote to extend the country's suspension
prompted President Robert Mugabe to quit the group.
Mozambique's President Joaquim Chissano Monday accused the Commonwealth of
using what he called "undemocratic procedures" to force Zimbabwe's continued
ban on the rest of the bloc.

South African President Thabo Mbeki said angry leaders in his region are
preparing a joint statement of protest. They opposed renewing the
suspension, saying it would further isolate their neighbor.

Human rights advocates and political analysts echoed those concerns Monday,
expressing fear that Zimbabwe, by quitting the Commonwealth, will prolong
its political and economic crisis.

Local experts predicted Harare will and crack down on human rights groups
and opposition parties that supported its continued suspension.

Meanwhile, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said he is determined to do
what he called "everything possible" to facilitate Zimbabwe's return to the
now 53-member grouping of former British colonies.

Mr. Obasanjo spoke after the final session of the four-day Commonwealth
summit in Abuja, Nigeria. He said he will continue to act as mediator
between the Commonwealth and the Zimbabwe government. Zimbabwe was suspended
in 2002 after President Mugabe was re-elected in a vote widely seen as
rigged.

Mr. Mugabe withdrew Zimbabwe's membership Sunday, after the Commonwealth
voted to extend the suspension until Harare makes noticeable democratic
reforms.

Mr. Mugabe says the Commonwealth has been hijacked by an unholy white
alliance opposed to his forced redistribution of white-owned farms to
blacks.

Some information for this report provided by AP and AFP.

So the Commonwealth does matter after all. Or at least it matters to Robert
Mugabe. What other conclusion is there to draw after his decision to
withdraw Zimbabwe from the organisation? Mr Mugabe could have shrugged off
the Commonwealth's decision to continue Zimbabwe's suspension. That he did
not and decided instead to quit the club in a fit of pique shows that the
Commonwealth has the power to inflict some diplomatic pain. Mr Mugabe has,
of course, put the best possible spin on his action, arguing that his
country is not being "treated as an equal", but it is still an
embarrassment. Zimbabweans should draw the necessary conclusions about what
the rest of the world thinks of their leader.

      By Edited by Max Gebhardt

      Despite its myriad and well-reported economic woes, Zimbabwe remains
South Africa's main trading partner on the continent.

      Recent department of trade and industry data show that from January to
September, Zimbabwe imported R4.8 billion of goods from South Africa - more
than Mozambique, which imported R4.3 billion from us.

      Last year, Zimbabwe imported R7.3 billion, up from R5.4 billion in
2001 and R4.9 billion in 2000.

      And even though Zimbabwe's manufacturing base has been through a
torrid time, its exports to South Africa have remained robust. It remains
this country's second-largest source of African imports, contributing 31
percent of the total.

      Imports from Zimbabwe came to R1.9 billion in the first nine months of
this year. They totalled R2.2 billion last year and R1.4 billion and R1.3
billion in 2001 and 2000 respectively.

      How long can this continue, especially given that Zimbabwe's President
Robert Mugabe seems hellbent on worsening the already dire situation with
his continued adherence to insane economic policies?

      A lack of foreign currency inflows will continue putting the
manufacturing sector under immense pressure. Standard Bank says this will
lead to continued declines in output and productive capacity throughout the
economy.

      Inflationary pressures continue to rage, with overall inflation
running at 525.8 percent. Food prices are jumping by more than 20 percent a
month, and large price increases for staples are coming through.

      Standard says it expects annual inflation rates to cross the 700
percent point early in 2004.

      Interest rates are at 70 percent, but because of the inflation rate
they are negative in real terms and thus will not help curb inflation. They
will remain a disincentive to saving and official lending.

      And it seems unlikely that Mugabe will allow the Zimbabwe dollar to be
devalued. The official exchange rate remains fixed at Z$824 to the US
dollar, while the black market rate ranges, Standard says, between Z$5 500
and Z$6 000 to the greenback.

      Maybe the Zimbabwean economy will deliver what President Thabo Mbeki's
quiet diplomacy and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's rantings have failed to
do - a regime change in what was once a jewel in Africa's crown.

      After all, now that the potential pressure the Commonwealth could have
applied is gone - with Zimbabwe's withdrawal from that body - something has
to put pressure on Mugabe's government. QW

      Tuesday, December 09, 2003

MR Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, used to be a hero to many of us
in countries like Jamaica.

These days, though, Mr Mugabe is more than a bit of an embarrassment.

Mr Mugabe's latest antics were played out at the weekend at a conference of
his ZANU-PF at which he engineered a resolution demanding that Zimbabwe
leave the Commonwealth if the group approved the continued suspension of the
southern African country from its councils.

With stunning banality, Mr Mugabe dismissed the Commonwealth, this group of
more than 50 nations, as just another club. There are other clubs which
Zimbabwe could join, he told his supporters.

Significantly, Jamaica's prime minister, Mr P J Patterson, was among a
six-member committee, that included the leaders of Australia, Canada, India,
Mozambique and South Africa, that recommended an extension of Zimbabwe's
one-year suspension from the Commonwealth.

The group felt that in the year since its suspension Mr Mugabe and his
Government had done little, or nothing, to address the problem that caused
its suspension in the first place -- a flawed general election, which
international observers held not to have been free or fair. If anything, the
situation in Zimbabwe for democracy has grown worse, with the introduction
of anti-press laws and the harassment of opposition politicians.

The country's deteriorating political situation has been compounded by a
political and social crisis, to which Mr Mugabe's only response seems to be
to hark back to the issue of race and to attempt to split the Commonwealth
along a black/white divide. The unfortunate fact is that Mr Mugabe's
posturing is a cynical and cynically shameless attempt to confuse and
manipulate an issue for which he suspects there may be latent sympathy among
the majority, and mostly black, countries of the Commonwealth.

Most Jamaicans, like black people around the world, would have held Mr
Mugabe in high esteem when he led the bush war in what was then Rhodesia,
against Ian Smith's white minority government that practiced its own brand
of political and social apartheid.

Indeed, the late Michael Manley played a crucial role at the 1979
Commonwealth summit in bringing home to Margaret Thatcher that she and
Britain were losing the moral right to talk in support of democracy while
broadly accommodating Mr Smith and other kith and kin in Rhodesia.

There is little doubt that Mr Mugabe and the independence leaders inherited
a country with a highly skewed allocation of resources on the basis of race,
not least of the problem being the distribution of land. The majority of the
good, agricultural land was held by majority whites.

Over two decades, Mr Mugabe has done little to redress this imbalance in a
structured and organised fashion and neither has he been able to build a
national consensus around the future of Zimbabwe. He was clearly no Nelson
Mandela.

In the face of growing internal opposition to his policies and economic
stagnation, Mr Mugabe drew the card that was likely to stir support -- the
emotive land issue. He has attempted to muddy the waters by making the
erosion of democratic rule and the diminution of freedoms one and the same
thing as the debate over the land reform.

Confiscating white-owned lands without compensation was, for Mr Mugabe,
redressing old inequities, no matter the breach of the law. And to Mr Mugabe
the stealing of an election was validated by an attempt to rebalance the
past, with all opponents and critics being deemed as anti-black and racist.

Mr Mugabe's Zimbabwe has been turned on its head. For, looking hard at Mr
Mugabe, you may just see Ian Smith. Each looking at himself.

      "The danger is that the United Kingdom, among other countries, and
Canada which has been trumpeting Nepad in terms of G8 (industrialised
nations) and other forums, could very well withdraw that support."

      Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, director of studies at the Johannesburg-based
SA Institute of International Affairs, said it was time for a different
strategy towards Zimbabwe.

      "At some point, the Zimbabwe economy is going to implode, and it's not
good for the SADC; it's not good for what we are trying to achieve in terms
of Nepad.

      "What South Africa will have to realise is, something has to change.
They have to send clear signals to Mugabe, and it does not have to be
public."

      The SA Foreign Ministry has so far remained silent on the decision to
maintain Zimbabwe's suspension, but the Democratic Alliance said Mbeki
"again embarrassed South Africa" at the Commonwealth meeting. - Sapa-AFP

      Nearer home Emperor Jean Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic
and Mobutu Sese Seko of the then-Zaire set new records in repression of
their peoples and theft of state assets, but neither country had ever been
settled by Britain, so the Commonwealth chaps had no reason to invite them
for drinks and study their differing dictatorial techniques.

      Unfortunately Nero, Caligula, Ghengis Khan and Attila the Hun all
massacred millions before the Commonwealth's time, and George W Bush
unilaterally (with a bit of help from Tony Blair) put paid to Saddam Hussein
before any Commonwealth leader could invite the Iraqi dictator to become an
honorary member. The options for tyrannical camaraderie were thus further
reduced.

      But so long as Mugabe continued to run his country into the ground,
starve his people, beat and torture his opposition, undermine the judiciary,
seize land for his political cronies, and turn millions of Zimbabweans into
refugees, there was hope that the Commonwealth might number among its
members a dictator in his own right.

      Alas, the Commonwealth failed the test. At least no one can accuse
President Mbeki of not trying.

He will never admit it but, by deciding to eject his country from the
Commonwealth, President Robert Mugabe has cast Zimbabwe into the darkness.

He follows in the unhappy footsteps of apartheid-era South Africa, which
provides the only precedent for unilateral withdrawal in the Commonwealth's
59-year history. Apart from the United Nations, Zimbabwe is no longer part
of any international organisation that brings links with the Western world.

Mr Mugabe has even contrived to have the International Monetary Fund
institute measures to expel his country.

Most African leaders would be petrified about the loss of aid and investment
caused by this isolation. Mr Mugabe will be oblivious to such concern. He
has already turned Zimbabwe into one of the world's fastest-shrinking
economies where inflation exceeds 500 per cent.

Mr Mugabe believes this is all down to a racist plot against his country. In
any event, he tells Zimbabweans, hardship is the price they must pay for
regaining their land from white farmers.

Yet he knows that his diplomatic options are collapsing. Doubtless he will
ensure that Africa's regional organisations issue strong statements of
support and condemnations of the Commonwealth.

The Southern African Development Community, with 14 member states, and the
African Union, a grouping of all the countries on the continent, can be
relied on to support Zimbabwe.

But Mr Mugabe is acutely aware that African solidarity is an unreliable
commodity. The continent's Commonwealth members have been split down the
middle over Zimbabwe's membership, with heavyweights such as Kenya and Ghana
backing the British line.

Last week, Mr Mugabe vented his fury on leaders who "fear to be Africans"
and "hesitate to express solidarity with us".

But he still has the support of his principal "African brother", President
Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. As long as the continent's foremost power
remains on side, Mr Mugabe will be protected from the diplomatic heat.

Instead, he will feel free to increase pressure on opponents within
Zimbabwe. His response to isolation abroad might be to escalate repression
at home. That appeared to be the message he delivered at the ruling Zanu-PF
party's annual congress last week.

"Anyone wishing to destabilise Zimbabwe, take care," he said. "We can
unleash these forces on him. We can unleash legal force and violence, which
we are permitted to do."

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change and the surviving handful of
white farmers could be on the receiving end of more "force and violence" now
Mr Mugabe has become the sole occupant of Africa's isolation ward.

.. David Blair was Zimbabwe correspondent of The Daily Telegraph until he
was forced to leave the country in 2001.