Zim Online
Tue
14 February 2006
HARARE - Foreign and local investors in Zimbabwe's
troubled mining
industry have put on hold all exploration, expansion or
Greenfields projects
because of uncertainty over proposed new legislation
that could see mining
firms either losing control or huge portions of their
investments, ZimOnline
has learnt.
In a confidential document
prepared for Mines Minister Amos Midzi,
Zimbabwe's Chamber of Mines warned
that investors could totally abandon the
country if the government went
ahead and forced mining firms to surrender
stake to either the state or
black Zimbabweans.
The Harare administration is working on new
legislation that will see
foreign-owned mining firms forced to cede
significant portions of their
investments to historically disadvantaged
persons (HDPs), a reference to
Zimbabwe's majority blacks long excluded from
the rich mining sector by the
country's previous white
rulers.
It is not yet clear how much stake the
government would want to see
transferred to blacks but President Robert
Mugabe last year publicly
declared that he wanted to see foreign firms
giving up 50 percent of
shareholding to blacks.
The Chamber
said perception among investors was that the government
wanted to
expropriate stake in private mines much as it has seized
white-owned farms
without paying for them for the simple reason that neither
the state nor
black Zimbabweans had the resources to pay for 50 percent of
the country's
mines, estimated to be worth more than US$20 billion.
"With the
value of the mining industry business at more than US$20
billion, it is also
the perception that neither the government nor the HDPs
can raise this
amount of money to purchase 50 percent shareholding in
existing mining
companies," the Chamber said in the document dated January
20,
2006.
The Chamber, regarded as the voice of mining in the country,
added:
"It follows that if government is to meet this stated objective of
participating in every mining company in Zimbabwe, it can only do so through
expropriation, cession or legislated nationalisation.
"With
this perception, both potential foreign and local investors have
stopped
committing both borrowed and equity funds towards exploration,
expansion or
Greenfield projects for fear of losing both control of the
business and a
big portion of their investment."
It was not possible to
immediately get comment on the matter from both
the Ministry of Mines and
the Chamber.
Zimbabwe boasts some of the world's biggest deposits
of platinum,
chrome, palladium and significant reserves of gold and diamonds
but has seen
its mining sector stagnate because of an economic recession
that has stifled
progress in all sectors and also because of demands by
Mugabe that he wants
foreign firms that operate the country's biggest mines
to cede stake to
blacks.
Mugabe, whose farm seizures have
plunged once food exporting Zimbabwe
into hunger, says he wants the firms to
give part of their stake because no
one can have "absolute ownership" of the
country's natural resources.
Platinum giant Zimplats has because of
the uncertainty about future
mining legislation put on hold a US$2 billion
expansion project at its
platinum mines in the country.
Zimplats, which last year produced 494 tonnes of platinum, is 86.9
percent
owned by South Africa's Implats. Local investors are entitled to 15
percent
of Zimplats under existing law but a consortium of black Zimbabwean
businessmen has struggled since 2004 to raise cash to pay for the
stake.
A flight of investors could deliver the knock-out punch to
Zimbabwe's
mining industry, already weighed down by a plethora of viability
problems
that have seen at least 13 mines closing down over the last six
years.
Mining last year earned US$626 million or about 44 percent
of the
country's total hard cash earnings. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Tue 14
February 2006
BULAWAYO - Police brandishing whips and some carrying
guns broke up
demonstrations by women and students in Bulawayo city and
arrested 159 of
the protesters who were marching across the city calling on
President Robert
Mugabe to resign.
The students from the
National University of Science and Technology
and members of the Women of
Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) were by late last night
still being detained at
Bulawayo central police station. A one-year old baby
taken along with its
mother who was part of the demonstrators was also in
police
cells.
WOZA leader Jennifer Williams, who was among those arrested,
told
ZimOnline that the protest was part of a Valentine message to Mugabe
and his
ruling ZANU PF party to address Zimbabwe's fast-deteriorating
economic
crisis and ensure availability of basic commodities.
Williams said: "We were marching for bread and roses. We deserve roses
and
the dignity they stand for. Our message to the regime, Mugabe in
particular, is that he has failed and should just leave office. We are tired
of starvation."
Zimbabwe is in its sixth year of a severe
economic recession described
by the World Bank as unseen in a country not at
war. The economic crisis has
manifested itself in high inflation which
according to figures released by
the government's Central Statistical Office
yesterday shot up to 613.2
percent in January, up from the 585.5 percent
recorded the previous month.
In addition, the economic crisis has
also spawned acute shortages of
food, fuel, electricity, bread, essential
medical drugs and just about every
basic survival commodity.
The women and student marchers, who numbered more than 500, were
carrying
red roses and waving placards some of which read: "We are dying of
starvation and all we need is food on the table. Not cheap
politics."
Mugabe, blamed by critics of ruining Zimbabwe's once
vibrant economy,
routinely pleads innocent of the charge of wrecking the
economy and instead
blames Western countries he says are sabotaging the
southern African
nation's economy to fix Harare for seizing white-owned land
for
redistribution to landless blacks.
Police spokesman Wayne
Bvudzijena confirmed the arrest of the Bulawayo
protesters but said no
charges had been laid against them yet because police
were still carrying
out investigations.
The police sometimes with the help of Zimbabwe
army soldiers regularly
use force to break up demonstrations by opposition
supporters and other
government opponents.
Meanwhile, the
police on Sunday night heavily assaulted informal
traders near Harare's
Market Square bus termini. Baton wielding police
officers descended on the
traders as they checked their goods after arriving
by bus from
Botswana.
One of the traders told ZimOnline: "It was hardly 15
minutes after we
had disembarked from the bus and we were checking our goods
to see whether
everything had been offloaded from the bus when a police
truck suddenly
appeared from around a corner.
"The policemen
jumped off the truck and just started beating us
without saying why they
were beating us. We just had to run away."
A police spokesman,
Oliver Mandipaka, said that he was not aware of
the incident but said people
were free to make formal complaints to police
authorities if they felt they
were treated unfairly by members of the law
enforcement agency.
"I am not aware that anybody was beaten up by the police. Anyone who
thinks
he has been unfairly treated by the police should make a formal
complaint
and we will look at that," Mandipaka said. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Tue 14 February 2006
MASVINGO - A top Zimbabwean judge has
said it is not the duty of the
judiciary to spring anyone into political
office, in what virtually amounts
to a rebuke against opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai who has petitioned
the courts to nullify President Robert
Mugabe's 2002 re-election victory.
Tsvangirai, who lost by about 400 000
votes to Mugabe, wants the courts to
overturn the election result and order
a fresh ballot, arguing that the
veteran President used violence and
outright fraud to cheat him of victory.
But Justice Chinembiri Bhunu, a
senior judge of Zimbabwe's High Court, said
politicians should not relocate
political battles into the courts but should
go to the people to canvass
their support in order to win or retain
political office.
"Let me
warn those who want to use the courts to gain political power that
it is not
the duty of the courts to spring anyone into power or to maintain
anyone in
power," said Justice Bhunu on Monday marking the opening of the
High Court
circuit in Masvingo.
He added: "Those wishing to do so should go to the
people to garner support
because it is the people who can give them such
power and not the courts".
The judge said Zimbabwe's courts had acted
with professionalism and
independence in dealing with political disputes
between Tsvangirai's
opposition Movement for Democratic Change party and
Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF
party. He said those criticising the bench were
doing so to demonise
Zimbabwe as punishment for Mugabe's seizure of
white-owned land.
Zimbabwe's bench, reconstituted after Mugabe purged
independent judges, has
been criticised by among others the African
Commission on Human and People's
Rights for failure to defend the rights of
ordinary citizens and political
opponents of the government.
The
courts' failure to expeditiously resolve Tsvangirai's petition against
Mugabe's re-election three years ago as well as various other poll petitions
by the opposition has often been cited as an example of the bench's
unwillingness to rise up to its role as a neutral arbiter in cases seen as
politically sensitive.
The refusal of the courts to grant orders
sought by human rights lawyers to
bar the government from evicting thousands
of families during its
controversial urban clean-up campaign last year has
also been mentioned as
proof that the bench would rather avoid confrontation
with the Executive
than stand up for the rights of defenceless
citizens.
Tsvangirai's petition is now before the Supreme Court, the
highest court in
the country, after the opposition leader sought relief from
the court saying
the High Court had inordinately delayed in finalising the
matter three years
after it was lodged. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 13 February
2006
HARARE - Zimbabwe's year-on-year inflation surged to 613.2
percent in
January, up from the 585.5 percent which was recorded the
previous month,
according to figures released by the government's Central
Statistical Office
(CSO) on Monday.
The CSO said the new
inflation figures were pushed up because of
rising housing, school and food
costs. At 613.2 percent, Zimbabwe's
inflation remains one of the highest in
the world.
Zimbabwe, in its sixth year of a bitter economic
recession blamed on
President Robert Mugabe's policies, has seen inflation
spiraling out of
control.
Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono last year predicted that
inflation, described
by Mugabe as Zimbabwe's "enemy number one," would soon
hit the 800 percent
mark in March before it starts falling down.
But independent
economists fear inflation will continue to rise given
Harare's lethargy in
addressing the six-year old crisis. - ZimOnline
[ This report
does not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations]
JOHANNESBURG, 13 Feb 2006 (IRIN) - Long queues are once
again forming
outside petrol stations in Zimbabwe as the government moves to
scrap its
programme allowing people to buy fuel with foreign
currency.
Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono told the official Sunday Mail
that he had
cancelled, with immediate effect, the programme allowing
motorists to
purchase fuel with foreign currency coupons at designated
service stations.
Gono said members of the public were abusing the system
and engaging in
speculative and parallel market activities.
"The
foreign currency fuel coupons framework was introduced in August 2005
as a
vehicle to mobilise free funds and increase the availability of fuel
for the
motoring public as a contribution towards the turnaround of the
economy.
However, though the facility performed well during its early days
of
inception, some members of the public started to abuse the facility and
used
it for speculative and parallel market activities, thus militating
against
its main objective," Gono was quoted as saying.
Fuel coupons had to be
redeemed at various foreign currency purchasing
centres to reimburse
authorised dealers and coupon holders in local
currency. The central bank
said the deadline for redeeming coupons was 28
February.
Economist
Dennis Nikisi told IRIN that the announcement would not affect
direct fuel
imports by service stations, and Gono was "hoping to end
parallel market
trade in fuel - the danger was that fuel was selling at a
premium on the
black market, as people were engaging in arbitrage".
Motorists now had to
pay for fuel in local currency, so there was "no
opportunity to sell it on
the black market", and exploit differences between
official and parallel
market rates for fuel and foreign currency.
"I've been in touch with a
number of service stations myself, and the ban on
foreign currency coupons
has not affected their ability to import fuel [as
it affects only
consumers]," Nikisi said. "But what I have discovered is
queues again
forming at petrol stations. This is simply because the
commodity is not
available at several fuel stations."
SABC
February
13, 2006, 13:45
A cholera outbreak that has hit several parts of Zimbabwe
has claimed five
more lives in the capital Harare, taking the death toll
countrywide to
almost 30, the official Herald newspaper said
today.
Zimbabwe has suffered periodic outbreaks of cholera and other
diseases in
the last few years, straining a health system struggling amid a
severe
economic crisis many blame on President Robert Mugabe's government.
The
Herald said a new cholera outbreak in Harare's Epworth township had
killed
five and left 20 others ill. It said health authorities had set up a
treatment camp in the township.
Cholera killed three people in
another Harare township last month, and state
media reports indicate the
disease has killed over two dozen others in the
rural districts of Buhera,
Chikomba, Chivhu, Gokwe and in the midlands city
of Kwekwe. Health officials
were not immediately available for comment.
Analysts say the outbreak of
cholera in Zimbabwe's cities is particularly
worrying as urban centres are
grappling with broken-down sewer systems,
water cuts and failure by
municipal authorities to collect refuse from
residential areas due to
chronic shortages of fuel. - Reuters
Zim Daily
Monday, February 13 2006 @ 12:45 AM GMT
Contributed by: Zimdaily
The bitter infighting that has been
going on within the Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) since the fateful
meeting on October 12 last
year has spawned any number of conspiracy
theories. On the one side Gibson
Sibanda, vice president of the MDC and
Professor Welshman Ncube,
secretary-general, stand accused of secretly
conniving with South African
President Thabo Mbeki to undermine MDC
president Morgan Tsvangirai, needless
to say to their own political and
material advantage.
On the other side Morgan Tsvangirai has
been accused of
colluding with ZANU PF in a plot executed by former army
general Solomon
Mujuru, whereby Tsvangirai betrayed his party by pulling it
out of the
senate elections in exchange for certain undisclosed "political
rewards".
Conspiracy theories abound; these are only two of the many that
circulate.
As they move along the gossip chain they are inevitably
elaborated and the
details become more picturesque. Sadly it seems that all
too many
Zimbabweans feel bound to accept one or another of the prevailing
theories -
depending on where their political sympathies happen to lie -
without
beginning to engage their own critical faculties.
The view we put forward here is that both sides in the intense
leadership
struggle are thereby playing right into the hands of the Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO) which not only benefits from the resulting
division and confusion but actually planned it that way. And the meticulous
planning began many years ago.
Zimbabweans should never
forget that for the past quarter
century one of the foremost functions of
the CIO, which operates as the
intelligence and security arm of ZANU PF, has
been to undermine and destroy
any credible opposition offering even the
slightest threat to the party's
hold on power. Moreover they have always
assumed the right - which the
Mugabe-led government has never challenged -
to achieve this objective by
whatever means are deemed necessary, including
unlawful and extreme
violence. Consider for example the chilling words of
Emmerson Mnangagwa,
then Minister of State Security and responsible for the
CIO in March 1983, a
matter of weeks after the deployment of the infamous 5
Brigade in
Matabeleland North.
He told a rally at the
Victoria Falls that the government was
considering as one option the burning
down of "all villages infested with
dissidents". The dissidents were, in his
words, "*censored*roaches" and 5
Brigade was the "DDT" brought in to
eradicate them. A few weeks later in a
parody of the Scriptures he said:
"Blessed are they who will follow the path
of the Government laws, for their
days on earth shall be increased. But woe
to those who will chose the path
of collaboration with dissidents for we
will certainly shorten their stay on
earth". Mnangagwa was speaking as the
Gukurahundi reign of terror was just
getting under way - an act of genocide
that was to claim the lives of
between 20,000 and 30,000 victims in
Matabeleland and the
Midlands.
The ostensible aim of Gukurahundi was to deal with
a dissident
problem in Matabeleland and for this purpose Mugabe assembled a
massive
force, including the notorious 5 Brigade, thought to number between
2,500
and 3,500 combat troops. But the threat posed by dissident activity
was far
smaller than the government contended. According to the 1997 report
of the
Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and Legal Resources
Foundation,
entitled "Breaking the Silence: Building True Peace" at the peak
of
dissident activity their numbers did not exceed 400. In short Mugabe was
taking a sledge hammer to crack a nut. The wider purpose of the exercise
however, which soon became apparent, was to eliminate ZAPU as a party with a
significant power base beyond the control of ZANU PF with the aim of
establishing a de facto one party state. Hence the deliberate blurring of
the distinction between the dissidents and "collaborators" - their supposed
ZAPU supporters - and the use of equal violence against
both.
In the ensuing reign of terror the CIO worked
hand-in-hand with
5 Brigade. Mugabe's intelligence network played a major
role for example in
the enforcement of the food embargo in Matabeleland
South in 1984, in
rounding up thousands for interrogation at army camps such
as Bhalagwe, and
in the associated acts of torture and brutality best
chronicled in the
report "Breaking the Silence".
When
considering the pivotal role of the CIO in keeping Mugabe
in power for over
25 years we do not need to resort to speculation or
conspiracy theories of
our own. Rather can we rely on the facts which
largely speak for themselves.
It is well known that during the liberation
war Robert Mugabe and those
close to him forged strong links with a number
of authoritarian regimes,
including China, North Korea and Romania. ZANLA
cadres were sent to China
for military training. (At the same time the ZAPU
leadership under Joshua
Nkomo was cultivating links with the Soviet Union,
where for example Dumiso
Dabengwa received training under the KGB and the
East German Stazi) The
significance of Mugabe's close relationship with the
political leadership of
countries which were in effect under one-party,
militaristic rule should
never be under-estimated. Not only was he exposed
to the rhetoric of
communist ideology; he was also provided with a unique
opportunity to study
closely how authoritarian regimes maintained their hold
on power. He and
those who later rose to the top leadership of ZANU PF - and
particularly
those who were to assume political control of the CIO - were
able to
understudy the masters of state repression and learn from them some
valuable
lessons on dealing with any popular opposition.
Evidence that
Mugabe was a good student of authoritarian rule
was provided as early as
1977 when he used his dominance of the ZANU faction
in Mozambique to
introduce a programme of "political re-education" for those
colleagues who
were suspected of having any leanings towards unorthodox
ideologies or
harbouring any personal ambitions which threatened the
established
leadership. Those who were forced to undergo this form of
indoctrination
included none other than Augustine Chihuri, now Mugabe's
trusted
Commissioner of Police and the journalist Justin Nyoka who was later
to take
on the role of his information chief. The experience was evidently
traumatic. None of those who underwent the re-education programme would ever
talk it about it subsequently. (In passing we note the similarity of purpose
between this programme and the re-education of the country's youth under the
youth militia programme some 25 years later).
It was
significant also that within six months of independence
Mugabe led a
delegation of ministers to North Korea. Accompanied by Joyce
Mujuru and
education minister Mutumbuka, Mugabe returned to his old mentors
to sign a
pact of friendship. At the same time (though Zimbabweans were only
to learn
of it much later) he entered into an agreement for a team of North
Korean
instructors to train a new military force which would be independent
of the
normal command structures and answerable only to Mugabe - what was to
become
the infamous 5 Brigade. The mandate of the new brigade was to quell
internal
dissent, a euphemism for crushing any political opposition.
When General Halle Miriam Menghistu, who had imposed a brutal
form of
dictatorship on Ethiopia and been directly responsible for starving
many of
his citizens to death, needed a place of asylum to escape justice in
his own
country Mugabe was quick to provide it. What is less well known is
that he
arranged for Menghistu to become a consultant to the CIO. No doubt
the
former dictator found the income useful and the CIO could benefit from
his
wide experience in suppressing dissent.
This article is in
three parts. Part 2 will feature in our
tomorrow's edition
Innovations Research
Vetenskapsrådet (The Swedish Research
Council) 13.02.2006
Rainmakers and civil servants, specialists and
farmers understand
water policies in markedly different ways. This is why
international policy
instruments for managing water resources do not
succeed, and the consequence
is water shortage. This is shown in a
dissertation in political science from
Göteborg University in
Sweden.
Every year five million people die because of the lack of
clean water.
This is not because we lack the knowledge to manage water or
even because
there is not enough water, but because of how we regulate and
organize water
resources. Therefore, international experts have developed a
coordinated
policy for water management, combining ecological, market, and
democratic
principles. More and more countries and international
organizations are
subscribing to this so-called 'Integrated Water Resource
Management,'
(IWRM).
Is IWRM thus the solution to the extensive
misuse of water?
Political scientist Patrik Stålgren's dissertation
examines what
happened with IWRM when the policy was implemented in
Zimbabwe. He points
out how various water users have different conceptions
of water. They
inhabit different worlds of water.
"If various
players have different interpretations of IWRM, their
cooperation is
hampered. For an international policy instrument like IWRM to
be able to
support national decisions, we must first understand how it is
interpreted
by national and local water users," says Patrik Stålgren.
When IWRM
is implemented, it is reinterpreted by water users from the
perspective of
their respective water worlds. IWRM will therefore mean
different things to
different players. Patrik Stålgren develops an
analytical model for
understanding how these reinterpretations occur and how
this impacts the
outcome of IWRM. The model is based on international
political theory and is
elaborated with the help of number of interviews
from Zimbabwe, one of the
first countries in the world to reform its water
policy in keeping with
IWRM. Today the policy is advocated by the UN, and
all international
assistance donors use IWRM as a basis for supporting water
management in
developing countries.
Stålgren's analysis shows that there are four
worlds of water in
Zimbabwe. Each one interprets IWRM differently. "Water as
Zimbabwe" is
embraced by the government and is based on a striving to build
a unified
nation-state, but at the same time it includes powerful racial
categories
that fuel the interpretation of IWRM. "Water as Gold"
characterizes the
commercial farmers' reinterpretation, based on a
historical notion of how
the white man brought the fruits of civilization to
the black Africans.
The third perspective, "Water as Science," is
typical of the engineers
that administrate water in Zimbabwe. Patrik
Stålgren shows how IWRM caused a
series of conflicts among various groups of
engineers, which led to this
reinterpretation.
He interviewed
several so-called 'rainmakers' and spiritual mediums
about their views on
IWRM. Their world, "Water as a Gift from the Gods," is
based on the idea
that the spirits of their ancestors govern the
distribution of water. They
reinterpret IWRM so as not to let it threaten
their world view and social
positions.
"If rainmakers, civil servants, and international
assistance workers
understood each other's world views better, then water
management would
function better. We have to factor this into Swedish and
international
assistance policies if we are to be in a position to help save
those who are
dying today because of a lack of water," concludes Patrik
Stålgren.
Title of dissertation: Worlds of Water: Worlds
Apart
More information: www.gu.se
www.vr.se
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
The Daily Mirror Reporter
issue date :2006-Feb-13
THE
government has mandated the Ministry of State responsible for Water
Resources and Infrastructural Development to take over all irrigation
equipment on newly resettled farms, The Daily Mirror has learnt.
Minister
Munacho Mutezo did not elaborate on the dynamics involved in doing
that, but
he confirmed that the exercise was underway.
"Yes, we have embarked on the
programme, but talk to me a few weeks down the
line and I will advise you of
the progress on the ground," he said.
The development comes in the wake of
disputes on farms where farmers are
reportedly fighting over irrigation
equipment left by commercial farmers
after their properties were specified
for resettlement.
Some farmers have not been fully utilising the irrigation
facilities, as
they are small-scale, while thieves have also wreaked havoc,
causing reduced
production on farms.
Eben Makonese, chief executive of
fertiliser giant, Chemplex, recently
called for the rehabilitation and
expansion of the country's irrigation
networks to enhance improved
agricultural production.
He said: "Rehabilitation and expansion of the
country's irrigation network
is required. This will reduce risks brought
about due to droughts.
Rehabilitation and extension of the irrigation
infrastructure will also help
restore and increase hectarage of winter wheat
and barley."
The government has stressed that all equipment on farms is state
property.
The issue of irrigation equipment and other farming implements that
existed
on farms taken over by the government during the accelerated land
redistribution programme that commenced in 2000 have been a source of
contention.
A significant number of the affected white farmers insisted
that the
equipment was theirs and they should be entitled to dispose of them
the way
they liked.
Some of them are reported to have managed to smuggle
the equipment out of
the country, while others sold them off through
auctions.
The government has always wanted the equipment to remain on the
farms in
order to avert decline in production on the farms. Irrigation is
considered
vital to agrarian reform, particularly in the wake of successive
droughts
that have drastically reduced food production in the
country.
Some unscrupulous new farmers, in addition to the thieves, have also
vandalised the implements and even taken it upon themselves to sell it for
personal gain.
The equipment has also caused acrimony among farmers
settled adjacent to
each other, due to misunderstandings over who should be
in control of
it.There have been outcries that powerful people muscled their
way onto
farms that enjoyed good infrastructure, at the expense of those who
would
have been given offer letters to settle on those properties.
So far almost a dozen African countries including Burkina Faso, Mali and South Africa allow their citizens living abroad to cast their votes. And Ghana and Morocco are in the process of giving their expats the same rights. But in 2000, Zimbabwe stripped its nationals living abroad of their right to vote. With millions of Africans living outside the continent, should more countries give their expats the vote? Or when you leave your country, do you also leave behind your right to have a say in how the country is run? What impact would the diaspora have in your country's politics? Send us your views and experiences using the form on the right. Or you can send us an SMS text message to +44 77 86 20 20 08. If you would like to take part in the Africa Have Your Say radio programme on Wednesday 15 February at 1600 GMT, please include a telephone number. It will not be published.
Your comments:
Working and living abroad does not strip one of their
citizenship and the right to participate in national governance. In any case
Africans living abroad remit a lot of money back to their countries to support
their economies. It is therefore unreasonable to deny them the right to decide
who should be entrusted with the governance of their countries. As a Ugandan I
feel cheated that I won't be going to the polls on February 23.
Definitely, expats can vote wherever they live even
though they do not reside in their countries of origin. According to a reliable
source from the government of Sudan, many southern Sudanese who fled the civil
war many years ago, would have a chance to cast their votes during a referendum
in 2011. By that time the southern Sudanese will determine their future whether
the country will remain one nation or two. Contributions in whatever way have
huge impacts in the countries of origin.
Most people living in diaspora do not understand
fully what's on ground in their countries hence giving them a right to vote
might not be a good idea. The man on the ground should call all the
shots!
Africans living outside the continent should be
allowed to participate in the electioneering process. Because home is home, it
is their right, and most of them intend to return to Africa. However, some
people would argue that it's needless for Africans in diaspora to cast their
votes, since their votes will not count, considering the degree of electoral
malpractices in most parts of the continent. My personal opinion is that they
should satisfy their consciences by participating, whether their votes count or
not.
I do not know the position in other African
countries, but I would say a definite no in Nigeria. First of all, elections in
Nigeria are usually massively rigged so that the outcome do not reflect the true
expression of the people's will. Secondly, due to a dearth of reliable
statistics, nobody knows exactly how many Nigerians are out there in diaspora.
If only we are able to organize a fair poll in Nigeria, I believe the verdict of
Nigerians living in the country would be a fair reflection of the wishes of the
electorate, including those living outside.
The right of a citizen to vote is inalienable -
whether the person is in the country or not. To interfere with that right is an
unjustifiable breach of a person's Fundamental freedoms.
Joyce, the right to vote does not depend on whether
one is rich or poor; it depends on citizenship. And all citizens have equal
rights - check the constitution.
Absolutely not. They have abandoned us to live in the
lap of luxury in the West while we must starve at home. |
Washington Times
By Nat
Hentoff
February 13, 2006
Pakistan's Mukhtar Mai
became an inspiration to human rights defenders
throughout the world when --
after being publicly gang-raped by order of a
village council for an alleged
act by her brother, which she was not
involved -- she bravely defied the
council and got a higher court to
overturn the verdict. On Jan. 20, she was
scheduled to be interviewed at the
United Nations, but, as the New York
Times reported, the United Nations
canceled her appearance.
At the
U.N. television studios, she was to appear in "An Interview with
Mukhtar
Mai, The Bravest Woman on Earth." But Pakistan protested because
Prime
Minister Shaukat Aziz would be at the United Nations that very day,
and
accordingly, the U.N. officials didn't want to embarrass this dignitary.
Said U.N. undersecretary-general for communications, Shashi Tharoor: "We are
obliged to take into account the views formally expressed by member states."
But it was only after news accounts of what happened that
Secretary-GeneralKofi Annan, very embarrassed, offered to reschedule Mai, to
be cosponsored by Pakistan.
Then, recently, for only the second time
in U.N. history, a movie,
"Che," glorifying the ruthless presiding
executioner in Castro's Cabana
prison from 1957 to 1959 was permitted to be
filmed in the U.N.'s General
Assembly, with Mr. Annan's
authorization.
While he was commander of that notorious Havana prison,
Che Guevara
ordered and often personally executed (according to the Free
Society
Project's Truth Recovery Archive) more than 200 Cubans. As the
archival
project's director, Maria Werlau, said to the Jan. 30 New York Sun,
"Che
stood for the opposite of what the U.N. charter upholds." The glowing
promises of the U.N. charter, however, have often been betrayed. Steadily
increasing numbers of black Africans in Darfur, for example, have been
murdered, gang-raped and torn from their villages by the government of
Sudan, while the veto power of China on the SecurityCouncil, where this
celebration of Guevara was filmed, precludes any meaningful intervention by
the United Nations.
Not only the United Nations honored the murderous
Che Guevara. In the
Dec. 25 New York Sun, William Meyers reported on the
continuing exhibition
at the International Center of Photography in New York
of "Che! Revolution
and Commerce."The wall text speaks reverently of the
"classical, even
Christ-likedemeanor"ofthis"youngand charismatic idealist
who gave up the
security of his middle-class world for his
convictions."
The one time I met Guevara,atthe Cuban mission to the
United Nations, he
expressed one of his convictions. Guevara professed not
to understand
English. So, looking at him and his interpreter, I asked this
idealist: "Can
you conceive however far into the future a time when there
will be free
elections in Cuba?" Not waiting for his interpreter, Guevara
broke into
laughter at my naively ignorant question. He made it clear that I
had no
understanding of a true people's revolution, firmly guided by Maximum
Leader
Castro.
While being hospitable to the further mythicizing of
Guevara in a movie
though initially turning away Mai, "The Bravest Woman on
Earth," the United
Nations continues to undermine its potential to live up
to its charter by
its failure so far to change the repellent composition of
its ludicrously
named Human Rights Commission.
To his credit, Mr.
Annan is trying to get the support of enough U.N.
members to create a
smaller human rights commission,whichthe
world'smostbarbarous human-rights
abusers would not to be qualified to join.
But, as a Jan. 20 Washington Post
editorial, "Impasse on Human Rights,"
points out, among the so-far effective
resisters to this vital change are
Egypt and Pakistan, along with "several
Caribbean countries." Unless Mr.
Annan's changes go through, when this
grotesque parody of a human rights
commission meets again in Geneva next
month, its decisions will still be
made by such chronic crushers of human
rights as Sudan, Cuba, China, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Russia and Robert
Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
In its newly published World Report 2006, Human Rights
Watch ends its
grim report on Zimbabwe with this telling paragraph: "Western
governments,
in particular the United Kingdom and United States, have failed
to convince
other (African) influential governments (especially those in the
South) to
take a stronger stand on Zimbabwe...China, Russia and other
African
countries state that Zimbabwe does not warrant discussions at the
Security
Council because they claim it is not a threat to international
peace or
security."
Zimbabwe is only a monstrous daily threat to its
own people, but the
United Nations is indifferent to the brutally repressed
people of Zimbabwe.
TCS daily
By Peter F. Schaefer :
Recently the front
page of the Washington Post had a headline which said:
"The Realities of
Exporting Democracy, A Year after Bush Recast His Foreign
Policy, Progress
Remains Mixed."
A week later in his State of the Union speech, the President
said:
"So the US supports democratic reform across the broader Middle East.
Elections are vital, but they are only the beginning. Raising up a democracy
requires the rule of law, and protection of minorities, and strong,
accountable institutions that last longer than a single vote."
Mr. Bush
obviously understands the essential elements of a real democracy,
so our
problem must be in the execution -- because Muslim terrorists have
just been
elected in Palestine in a landslide. As a result alarmists all
over the
world are intoning that democracy has failed. But democracy didn't
fail in
Palestine. As with capitalism in Latin America, real democracy
wasn't tried.
Our models failed, our analyses failed, and our assistance
programs failed.
But democracy didn't fail.
Recent "elections" in the Middle East have given
us a mullah who is truly
mad, an autocrat getting another term (his fifth or
sixth, but who's
counting?) and, sadly, in Iraq another government where the
Shi'ite clerics
will hold the real power.
But our disquiet should not
send us back down the road to paternalism or
pragmatism -- especially since
those tendencies are what got us in trouble
in the first place. In October
2003, Newsweek's cover article said:
"[T]he main source of rising
unemployment and stagnant economies in the Arab
world.is chronic
illiquidity.a lack of modern . financial tools to lure cash
out of
burgeoning black markets. . . The challenge today is how to
revitalize those
dormant financial systems and harness the Arab world's huge
reservoir of
unreported capital."
Today's political problems in the Middle East have their
root in economics.
Removing these twin roadblocks is a huge
challenge.
Should we then return to realpolitik and the notion that nations
have
interests, not friends? Or should we just let Mr. Carter carry on
counting
votes and hope things will sort themselves out in time?
Unfortunately,
voting alone can lead to what Fareed Zakaria calls an
"illiberal
democracy" - one that fetishizes voting without ensuring true
representation.
Mr. Bush must insist that his vision of true democracy be
reflected in our
aid programs, because having the right idea is not enough.
Our strategies to
help poor countries become democratic and capitalist have
not yet been
translated into effective programs. We know this because our
tactics have
not produced many stable, liberal democracies or capitalist
market
economies.
Any complex process -- promoting democracy or economic
growth for
instance -- tends to be chopped up into discrete parts for
purposes of
management. What then happens is that experts in, say, the
process of voting
tend to work independently of experts in political party
building. Even if
someone has the big picture, no one can implement it. So
even on a strategic
level, vital political and economic components are
stove-piped into their
distinct bureaucracies.
To draw these parts back
together in our planning and implementation, we
need to return to first
principles. The purpose of government, according to
Locke and the Founders,
is to "protect life, liberty and property." In fact
Locke says, "The great
chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into
commonwealths, and putting
themselves under government, is the preservation
of their property." A
century later Alexander Hamilton said, "The
preservation of property is the
primary object of the social compact." The
rule of law is the foundation for
all modern political economies and
essential to the protection of even the
most basic rights.
In poor countries the people have already saved trillions
of dollars. But
they keep every penny of it frozen in property, mainly their
homes and
businesses. Now, even the World Bank acknowledges the fundamental
nature of
defending property through law -- because, if there is no
supporting web of
property and contract laws, titles are meaningless. And if
there is no
meaningful connection between the people and their elected
leaders, a modern
nation cannot emerge because elected officials, no matter
how
well-intentioned, cannot touch the lives of the overwhelming majority of
the
poor without good law. By itself, voting just ends up swapping one
crooked
autocrat for another.
This undertaking is crucial to our
long-term survival since the so-called
"South" has nearly five billion poor
people none of whom lives in capitalist
democracies. So they are unlikely
ever to develop. The history of the last
half century of Western "help" is
not comforting. There isn't enough money
in the West to buy economic
development, nor can elections alone sustain a
democracy. The North has
transferred over $2 trillion dollars to the South
and none of the countries
at the end of the aid spigot have developed
democratic capitalism.
It is
true that a few have progressed a bit, but most countries in Africa,
for
example, have actually experienced declining living standards since
independence. A recent UN FAO report says that there are more deaths in
Africa from malnutrition now than in the 1990s and one need go no further
than looking at elected President Mugabe in Zimbabwe to see why.
If we
measure success by equating democracy with voting, and prosperity with
money, the logic of our actions compels us to arrange elections and to give
poor people those things which mark a modern society; roads and bridges,
schools and clinics. But a modern society is not simply the GDP -- it is the
institutions of capitalism and democracy. And only good laws can create
these institutions. If we want to poor countries to modernize, we have to
help them establish the underlying legal structures of modernity.
Of
course electoral commissions, safe polling places and other election
machinery are critical, but for a true democracy to be "raised up" such
isn't nearly enough. What one votes for must be connected to the person's
daily life. For aid officials worried about "optics," good legal systems are
less visible than the things associated with modernity. Officials can cut a
ribbon at a clinic, for example. Elections are normally quite dramatic. Both
make good press (especially when President Carter flies in to bless the
outcome, as he did in Palestine). But most voters don't care. If voting were
all that mattered, Haiti would be a thriving democracy not the hemisphere's
perennial basket-case.
This is not to suggest that democracy be put on
hold while the country
becomes prosperous. Capitalism and democracy can run
in parallel. But timing
matters. One cannot rush democracy and slow-walk
economic reform. Since
electoral politics tends to be a game of preserving
the status quo, it is
important to establish the basic legal and economic
system before the
political system solidifies. I would even argue,
reluctantly, that in Iraq
had we rushed real, meaningful economic reforms
based on law, and then
slow-walked democracy, the country would be a calmer
place that was well on
the road to real nationhood. People with jobs don't
become insurgents, and
people with homes and businesses -- protected by
government -- don't turn
around and attack those self-same interests. A
direct connection between
voting and economic security, should result in
representatives with a
mandate to protect individuals' interests, not to
provide handouts or
accrete power around a faction.
Last summer the
Washington Post ran a piece explaining that the current
problems of the
political leadership in the Philippines were not important
to the lives of
the poor. But in fact, the entire political process has
never been of much
concern to poor Filipinos. This is so because a large
majority of them don't
live or work under the rule of law and so political
leaders have no
legitimate means to connect to them. The country is, quite
literally,
ungovernable.
If a poor person in Manila wanted his neighbor's house and
killed him to get
it, he would face jail because most countries --
democracies and
dictatorships -- do a pretty good job of keeping the streets
safe. But if he
just threw his neighbor out on the street, there is really
little that the
law could do because most poor Filipinos have no title that
proves to
authorities that the house is theirs. So many of them hold their
property
and businesses informally. Thus Filipinos have few options for
justice.
After former grade-B actor Josef Estrada was elected president in
1998, the
international press was shocked. "Why," they all asked, "would
Filipinos
elect a crooked, drunken, philandering buffoon as president?" But
the honest
answer was, "Why not?" If you can't have bread, at least have a
circus. The
sad truth is that Philippine presidents can do little but
entertain, so in
1998 they elected an entertainer. Elections in the
Philippines are little
more than a chance for poor people to sell their vote
for a few bucks.
But when the law protects a person's home and his life, the
political
equation changes dramatically. Then, those who make and administer
the law
directly affect the lives of the poorest voters. Elections will
actually
matter to the people. Only at that point will they tend to select
leaders
rather than entertainers. Economic opportunity fertilizes the growth
of a
civil society, which is the only real support for an electoral
democracy.
Votes alone are bricks along the Yellow Brick Road. Behind the
curtain of
electoral democracy, we'll find no wizards, only men.
Peter
Schaefer was a senior official at the U.S. Agency for International
Development during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
People's Daily
Hwange Colliery Company Limited ( HCCL), the
Zimbabwe's sole coal
producer, will before the end of this month open a
50-million-U.S.-dollar
opencast mine as part of its response to the
anticipated power deficit that
will affect Southern Africa next
year.
HCCL managing director Godfrey Dzinomwa was quoted by the
Sunday Mail
as saying that HCCL has taken the lead to help power utility
Zesa Holdings
secure power requirements ahead of the 2007 regional deficit,
ushering in a
ray of hope in energy self- sufficiency.
Dzinomwa
said the new mine will see the coal-mining giant increase its
production
output by at least 30 percent before the end of the year.
He said
the first phase of the capital-intensive project would include
the deploying
of some of the company's mining machinery and the hiring of
more equipment
from earthmoving companies to complement its equipment,
including the
resumption of operations.
The first phase of the project will also
see the new mine produce an
initial output of about 50,000 tons a
month.
The second phase of the project will be implemented between
May and
June, the HCCL boss said, adding that this would include the
purchase and
delivery of loading, haulage and drilling machinery, thus
raising production
output to anything between 100,000 tons and 120,000 tons
monthly.
"Much ground work has already started towards the opening
of the new
opencast mine and our initial output target is at 50,000 tons a
month," he
said..
"This development marks our first response to
the anticipated power
deficit that will hit the region as we also want to be
self- sustainable in
terms of power generation as a country," explained
Dzinomwa.
Dzinomwa added that the quality of coal from the new mine
has a high
grade of phosphate and sulfur content, making it of exceptional
quality.
He said, however, to produce coke, the coal from the
opencast mine
will be mixed with that from the underground
mine.
The HCCL operates an underground and opencast mine that
produces five
million tons of coal annually, with the present opencast mine
constituting
85 percent of production output.
The company is
aiming at increasing its coal production output by
50,000 tons, up from
400,000 tons, to 450,000 tons by March this year.
Source:
Xinhua
The Herald (Harare)
February
13, 2006
Posted to the web February 13, 2006
Harare
AS the
costs of conventional medicine continue escalating beyond the reach
of many,
more patients are turning to faith healing to beat the crunch.
Surveys
conducted by The Herald this week revealed that many people now
first seek
the services of faith healers and traditional medicine and only
consult
conventional doctors or clinics when they have no other option.
Unlike in
past years when one would seek medical attention for common
ailments like
headaches, only serious conditions are taken to the doctors
now.
People interviewed by The Herald said they now took ailments
like headaches,
stomachaches, pregnancy check-ups and chronic conditions to
traditional and
faith healers where the services were mostly
free.
The decision to go to the clinics, hospitals or doctors is only
taken when
one feels that faith healing and traditional medicine have
failed.
Mr Patrick Matuka of Glen Norah said he was asthmatic but had not
visited a
medical doctor for the past two years.
"Instead, I consult
faith healers and get prayed for.
"Sometimes when I feel congested and
experience breathing difficulties, I
just make a quick trip to my faith
healer and I will feel better thereafter.
"Some people used to scoff but
now they understand that besides dealing
effectively with spiritual
problems, faith healers are very competent at
curing ailments and they do it
for free, all you have to do is believe it
works," he said.
Mrs
Angeline Mamvura of Highfield, who had suffered from persistent chest
problems for three years, echoed these sentiments saying she was cured after
visiting a local faith healer.
Except for the occasional "thank you"
gift, she had never paid the faith
healer for the services.
Madzibaba
Henry of the Johane Masowe sect said prophets within his sect were
able to
assist people with ailments.
"Just like a doctor can prescribe that one
take an antibiotic, we prescribe
the injection of the Holy Spirit to
heal.
We can even advice one to drink lemons or honey and water, after
praying for
them and they will be healed.
"The healing that we
administer is a healing we ask for from God and while I
am not going to
boast, we have seen miraculous recoveries taking place," he
said.
Another faith healer Madzimai Spiwe, who operates from Glen
View, said by
consulting faith healers, people could be advised in advance
of an impending
illness and get relevant remedies.
"Just like a
check-up where a doctor can find that there is something wrong
with one's
chest, we can do the same through faith and vision and therefore
ask for
guidance from the one above, over the best course of action," she
said.
Madzimai Spiwe attends to people from as far away as Bulawayo
who bring
their sick relatives to her.
Last week, several latest cars
were parked at her residence while more could
be seen arriving and she said
the majority were sick while some were coming
because of social
problems.
It costs as much as $1 million and $1,5 million to consult a
medical
practitioner these days.
After one is given a prescription
for drugs they can expect to spend at
least $4 million, which for most
people is astronomical.
The problem is even worse for people who suffer
from chronic illnesses like
asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes, as they
need constant medical
attention and drug supplies.
A simple cough
mixture now costs more than $300 000 while some antibiotics
can sell for
over $1 million.
By Tererai Karimakwenda
13 February 2006
After the
government demolished homes and businesses in the so-called
"cleanup"
Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, promises were made to provide
housing for
the nearly one million families that had been left homeless.
Critics
questioned the practicality of embarking on such a programme, when
resources
were already scarce and the country was struggling to acquire
basic
commodities such as food and fuel. But as usual, government ignored
advice
from experts and other stakeholders, and began making plans to build
houses
around the country. But now this housing scheme, known as Operation
Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle, is reported to have stalled. A lack of funds and
resources have foiled the construction phase, and corruption in the
selection of beneficiaries has been reported countrywide.
Journalist Warren Moroka travelled to Gwanda this week and visited the
sites
where construction of houses for the demolition victims is supposed to
be
taking place. Moroka said there was no activity in progress and most of
the
houses there are not complete. Some structures have no doors or roofing
and
there is no electricity, water or a reticulation system. In short,
Moroka
said the houses are inhabitable. As for the selection of
beneficiaries,
Moroka said there are allegations that civil servants, police
and military
personnel, and relatives of government officials were being
given houses
under Garikai. In Gwanda, MP Abednigo Ncube's 2 children are
alleged to have
received houses, and it is believed the intended recipients
are largely
still living in squatter camps without running water or
sanitation.
Moroka said this is the same problem plaguing
Garikai in Beitbridge.
Home Affairs minister Kembo Mohade, who represents
Beitbridge in parliament,
even called for the total revision of the
selection process, arguing that it
was mired in corruption. Moroka visited
the mayor of Gwanda on Monday, and
reports that the mayor also agrees there
needs to be a change in the way
beneficiaries are chosen. As for
construction, Moroka said it will take 15
billion Zimbabwe dollars to build
a sewage system, and 12 billion Zimbabwe
dollars for the water and
reticulation system. Doctors have expressed
concern that water borne
diseases like cholera and dysentery will continue
to take lives and spread
if clean water and sewage are not made a priority
by government. No plan to
resolve this problem has been revealed by
officials, and residents'
organisations have not been consulted.
SW Radio Africa
Zimbabwe news
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Oswelled
Ureke
issue date :2006-Feb-13
MANY indigenous businesses continue to
flout the law by operating outside
the legal provisions governing their
existence - a situation which abets
graft and makes it very difficult to
stamp out corruption.
Despite a clean-up exercise last year that targeted
unlicensed and
unregistered businesses in Harare's central business district
(CBD), many
companies have continued with underground operations.
A
survey by this newspaper showed that a number of bottle stores in the
downtown Kopje area, in residential suburbs and shopping centres such as
Chikwanha business centre in Chitungwiza were operating as bars and
nightclubs yet they were only licensed to sell liquor.
On many occasions
the police raid such areas, only the patrons are arrested
and the business
owners are let off the hook, with some residents claiming
that the local
police are bribed through beer and money to turn a blind eye.
Investigations
by this newspaper revealed that there were some companies
registered for
specific lines of business but were diverged into other
trades, while in
some cases companies operated on expired licences. The
Daily Mirror also
discovered that a number of fast food outlets in the city
centre did not
meet basic health standards yet continued operating. In one
such place, a
toilet directly connects with the main dining area.
There is also a
proliferation of businesses that specialise in compact disc
(CD) writing,
flouting copyright laws which prohibit the external
reproduction of recorded
works.
Sources revealed that in the Midlands province, panners sold gold to
some
licensed companies who instead of remitting it to the RBZ through
Fidelity
Printers sell the precious mineral in neighbouring countries such
as
Botswana and South Africa.
There have also been revelations that some
companies are paying their
employees way below the gazetted $6 million
monthly wage, with some commuter
transport operators reportedly paying their
workers as little as $4.5
million.
This is in spite of the fact that the
proprietors will be pocketing huge
profits in some cases. The Consumer
Council of Zimbabwe recently revealed
that an average family requires $21
million to scrap through the month, even
though observers say that figure is
too low.
A number of nightclub, shop and hair salon workers interviewed at
shopping
centres in Warren Park I, Kambuzuma and Glen View 3 over the
weekend charged
that their bosses were in the habit of fabricating
allegations of theft and
firing them at month end just in order to avoid
paying employees.
Female workers said they were being forced to have sex with
the bosses in
order to get jobs or continue in employment. In some of the
cases, they are
forced to work long hours but are not given overtime
payment.
At Glen Norah B shopping centre, one female nightclub employee said
she
worked on all days of the week and had gone for eight months without a
break, yet she was getting only $3 million per month.
Harare police
spokesperson Inspector Loveless Rupere said business people
who flouted the
law should be brought to book.
"We appeal to members of the public who see
those crimes being committed to
contact so that we arrest the culprits. It
is illegal to operate a bottle
store like a bar without a bar licence and
people should differentiate
between a bar and bottle store licence," he
said.
The police spokesperson urged employees who were being ill-treated by
their
employers to report such cases to their national employment councils
so that
the issues could be dealt with in accordance with labour laws. Luxon
Zembe,
the president of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC)
said while
the organisation was aware of companies that flouted laws in
their
operations, it did not have specific details about such
activities.
He said: "Illegal activities are happening on the ground but we
do not have
specific details. Contact me on Monday so that we can have a
thorough
discussion over the issue."
The Daily Mirror recently unearthed
a scam in which a Harare woman,
Sibongile Maonde, ran an establishment
called Savvycare Training Institute,
purporting to be a nurse trainer when
she was reportedly not licensed to do
so.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade
Unions (ZCTU) president, Lovemore Matombo,
said a number of cases had been
brought before his union, in which employees
were either poorly remunerated
or had been unprocedurally retrenched by
their employers.
"We have been
called upon to arbitrate in a number of cases in which workers
were being
paid way below the minimum wage, a trend that can still be found
in many
companies
"We need a demarcation on the aspect of indigenisation because it
is being
abused and misused. It is an ideological position and should not be
about
colour. During the liberation struggle, Hebert Chitepo and Josiah
Tongogara
said we were fighting against the system of exploitation, yet we
still find
that system. It is not different to the Smith times," said
Matombo. Critics
have pointed out that the country's indigenisation
programme has many
loopholes.
The government embarked on an exercise to
empower hitherto marginalised
blacks at independence, but the programme, say
the critics, has benefited a
few individuals who have succeeded by
exploiting their hapless employees.
Late last year, footwear manufacturing
company, RK Footwear owned by Indian
national Nagin Ratanje closed shop and
laid off 51 workers without benefits.
A crackdown on financial institutions
in 2004 by Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
(RBZ) governor Gideon Gono unearthed a
lot of illicit dealings, which
resulted in the arrest of a number of the
country's business chiefs. The
crusade found on the wrong side of the law
business leaders who included
Barbican Bank's Mthuli Ncube, Royal Bank,
Intermarket's Nicholas Vingirai,
National Merchant Bank's (NMB) directors
Julius Makoni, Otto Chekeche and
Francis Zimuto, ENG Asset management Nyasha
Watyoka and Gilbert Muponda,
among many other hitherto respected business
executives.
Former Finance Minister Chris Kuruneri who is understood to
own
Plastic manufacturing company, Quality Package Products, and Telecel boss
James Makamba were also arrested for allegedly externalising foreign
currency.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Patience Nyangove
in Marondera
issue date :2006-Feb-13
POLICE have arrested the
assistant depot manager of the Grain Marketing
Board (GMB) based in
Marondera, on allegations of contravening the
Anti-Corruption
Act.
Mashonaland East police spokesperson Inspector Darlington Mathuthu last
week
identified the suspect as Francis Badzarigere, who he said was still in
custody pending appearance in court.
"We arrested Badzarigere on
allegations of contravening a section of the
Anti-Corruption Act. He is
still in custody as investigations continue," he
said.
Allegations are
that on January 26 this year, Badzarigere received four
tonnes of ammonium
nitrate fertiliser meant for beneficiaries of 'Operation
Maguta'.
He
reportedly notified the parastatal's operations marketing directorate in
the
province that the fertiliser consignment had been damaged by
rain.
Badzarigere was instructed to wait for an assessment team to inspect
the
spoilt fertiliser.
But he allegedly connived with another official
and diverted 80 bags of the
white fertiliser to a colleague without the
consent of the directorate.
When the assessors visited the depot, Badzarigere
reportedly lied that the
top dressing granules had already been disbursed to
intended beneficiaries,
yet he is said to have hired a truck to ferry the
fertiliser to Numbers 9
and 10, Mandley Farm, in Ruwa.
Further
investigations showed that 45 bags of the fertiliser had been used
while the
remainder are yet to be accounted for amid suspicion they
might have sold on
the black market.
There have been many cases of GMB officials abusing their
positions to
divert the grain utility's products for personal
gain.
High-ranking officials have also been fingered in illegal deals
involving
the products, with some of them being accused of buying such items
like
grain and wheat them at cheap prices and then selling them at
exorbitant
prices elsewhere.
The utility is considered a sensitive
facility by the government in a move
that is meant to ensure food security
to the nation.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Patson
Ndhlovu
issue date :2006-Feb-13
IN an effort to promote the country's
tourist destinations, national airline
Air Zimbabwe has disclosed plans to
relaunch the Kariba route in June this
year.
Tourism has the potential of
bailing out the country from the foreign
currency doldrums it is currently
going through, if properly marketed.
The flight was suspended last year due
to viability concerns as it was
attracting a few passengers.
"Air
Zimbabwe will be relaunching the Kariba route around June this year.
"Kariba
is one of the tourist destinations that is essential and it is just
appropriate to offer flights to these areas", said Stephen Nhuta, Air
Zimbabwe's marketing director.
Nhuta said the national airline is making
sure that they link the route with
the majestic Victoria Falls and
Johannesburg.
Plans to reopen the Kariba route were rejuvenated after wide
consultations
with hoteliers, tour operators, ground transporters and other
stakeholders
in the tourism industry on the feasibility of the route. He
added that the
new flight would be operating between three and four times
per week in its
first months of establishment. The flight schedule would
then be reviewed in
relation to demand and its attractiveness to the
market.
The route will be plied by the newly acquired MA60 aircrafts from
China.
Unlike the Boeing aircrafts, the MA60s have a low fuel consumption
rate and
they can land on the small airports in the country's resort
areas.
The national airline is currently going through a turnaround programme
being
executed by a strong board led by human resource specialist Mike
Bimha.
Meanwhile, the national airline said it would this week launch its
summer
schedule in the capital. The schedule will see Air Zimbabwe servicing
routes
that include Bulawayo- Johannesburg, Victoria Falls- Johannesburg and
Harare- Nairobi via Dar-es-Salaam among others.
As a passenger and cargo
carrier, the airline currently services the
domestic destinations of Harare,
Victoria Falls and Bulawayo, regional
destinations of Nairobi,
Dar-es-Salaam, Gaborone (with Air Botswana),
Johannesburg, Lilongwe, Lusaka,
Entebbe, Lubumbashi and Mauritius.
International destinations include London,
Singapore, Beijing and Dubai.
Air Zimbabwe, which boasts of a clean safety
record since independence, said
it is always on the lookout for
opportunities to expand its markets through
entering into partnerships and
alliances with other airlines. Currently, the
airline has a code sharing
agreement with Air Botswana, seat purchase
agreements with Air Malawi and
East African Airlines, and pro-rate
agreements with other international
partners.
The airline also operates commercial charter services to cater for
groups of
between 100 and 200 people to domestic, regional and international
destinations.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Paidamoyo Chipunza
issue date :2006-Feb-13
THE
number of community home-based caregivers quitting voluntary work
continues
to rise amid grinding poverty worsened by souring economic
hardships and
social instabilities.
Interviews recently conducted by The Daily Mirror with
caregivers from Glen
View, Budiriro and Mufakose suburbs in Harare revealed
that volunteerism was
being ditched as people now searched for employment
which gave them a
monthly remuneration to help make ends meet.
Christine
Kambarami of New Dawn of Hope said most caregivers dropped out
within three
months of joining care work for economic reasons.
"Because of the harsh
economic situation prevailing in the country, most
people caregivers drop
out in search of employment or better rewarding
initiatives," she
said.
Kambarami said her organisation currently boasts of 60 volunteers, but
the
number had since drastically been reduced to below 40 owing to lack of
motivation to do the noble work.
She said lack of resources during care
work also affected the operations of
caregivers.
"Most caregivers lose
hope when they visit patients and have nothing to
assist them with.
Customarily, we know that when you are visiting patients
you bring them food
or medication for them to feel better, but in this case
our resources are
very limited," Kambarami said.
Sipiwe Ngwerume of Chiedza Home of Hope called
for the District Aids Action
Committee (DAAC) to train more secondary
care-givers as the number of drop
outs vis-ā-vis patients continued
rising.
At least 95 Chiedza caregivers are looking after more than 500
patients in
Glen View alone.
"The number of people in need of our
services is continuing to rise in Glen
View versus the number of caregivers
we have. In fact more are dropping out
due to rising pressure," she
said.
She also lamented the scarcity of resources saying the DAAC was only
giving
a fraction of what the affected community needed.
"In most cases
we do not get enough resources. Care-givers need protective
clothing,
disposables, and even washing soap, but sometimes they go for
months without
these necessities," she explained.
Ngwerume said they were only getting food
packs comprising a packet of
kapenta, cooking oil, peanut butter and mealie
meal, which however, was not
enough.
The National Aids Council's Orphans
and other Vulnerable Children (OVC)
co-ordinator Sibusisiwe Marunda, said
NAC would always try to do its best to
help the needy, but budget constrains
limited their handouts.
An estimated 600 people receive home-based treatment
in Zimbabwe.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
The Daily Mirror Reporter
issue date
:2006-Feb-13
BARELY a fortnight after seven employees of the Registrar
General's Office
were arrested on corruption charges, police on Thursday
arrested another
passport officer on similar allegations.
Mary Jane
Chapfika (45) allegedly received $33 million from Jowett Zinyemba
as
kick-back for facilitating processing of three passports.
Chapfika allegedly
connived with Gerald Makusha (36), Rose Mashava (25),
Peter Machekera (27),
Brian Kaswaurere (22), Slyvia Makombe (28) and
siblings Lydia and
Samuel
Chiodze, 22 and 20,
respectively.
They were all denied bail by
Harare magistrate Rebecca Takavadiyi. Chapfika
was on Friday also thrown
behind bars with the magistrate ruling that she
was not a good candidate for
bail.
The other seven were arrested on allegations of conniving to issue out
nine
passports without authority. This comes at a time when the government
is
making frantic efforts to weed out corruption in all sectors of the
economy.
Mukusha, Mashava, Machekera, Kaswaurere, Makombe, and the Chiodze
were
arrested after the principal processing officer at the RG's Makombe
Building
offices, Jemina Mildred Mudyiwa, became suspicious of people
following up on
passports.
The State alleged that about three weeks ago,
the seven hatched a plan,
processed, produced and issued out nine passports
to unidentified people in
one day against the
Ministry of Home Affairs'
procedures.
Giving evidence, in opposing bail at the Harare Magistrates'
Court, the
investigating officer, Detective Assistant Inspector David
Musingwani, said
each passport was produced within two hours.
They
allegedly receipted $100 000 for each passport instead of the $1,5
million,
thereby prejudicing the government of $12,6 million.
In a statement to the
police, Mudyiwa said on verification with the Harare
passport office where
the application forms originated, it was discovered
that the receipts and the
batch numbers appearing in
the computer system did not exist.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Paidamoyo Muzulu in Chinhoyi
issue date
:2006-Feb-13
The Chinhoyi provincial hospital is battling to procure coal
from Hwange for
use at its boilers, resulting in patients being asked to
bring their own
blankets and bed linen, the health centre's medical
superintendent has said.
Collete Mawire, the medical superintendent, told
The Daily Mirror last week:
"Patients are being asked to bring their own
blankets and bed linen when
admitted. This is not the ideal situation and
we recently placed an order
for blankets so that we do not burden patients
by directing them to bring
their own." The boiler is failing to provide
adequate hot water due to the
shortage of coal that the hospital has been
failing to procure. Mawire said
suppliers are charging exorbitant prices in
order to supply the coal.
"Coal has been in short supply at the hospital due
to lack of funds.
Operations at the boiler have been at a bare minimum (for
some time now). We
could not procure coal from merchants as they charge
inflated prices," the
medical superintendent said.
He, however, indicated
that the situation would improve after the hospital
received money from
government."Funds from the central government were
finally received at the
end of January and we have now placed orders for the
resources that were in
short supply. We hope our situation would improve
until the end of the
first half of the year," added Mawire.
Meanwhile, the provincial governor's
office has intervened in the fuel
crisis that had paralysed operations at
the provincial referral centre, with
National Oil Company of Zimbabwe
(Noczim) supplying 5 000 litres of diesel.
The situation, Mawire said, has
been made no better by intermittent power
supplies in Chinhoyi town, with
theatre operations being among the most
affected services. Because the
generators at the hospital are powered by
diesel which is scarce, the centre
has been plunged into darkness on many
occasions.
From The Herald, 13 February
By Michael Padera
Plans by the cash-strapped
Harare City Council to spend $35 billion to
procure furniture and curtains
for the mayoral mansion in Harare's posh
Gunhill suburb have brewed another
wrangle, this time pitting Harare City
Commission chairperson Ms Sekesayi
Makwavarara against town clerk Mr Nomutsa
Chideya over expenditure and
tender procedures. According to the Urban
Councils Act, local authorities
can buy goods and services of up to $300
million without going to tender. At
least $10 billion was needed for
curtains and a further $8 billion for the
furniture, bringing to $18 billion
the cost of furnishing the mansion.
However, the total cost is expected to
balloon to $35 billion since the
money was to be borrowed from other
departments over a five-year period at
an interest rate of 70 percent per
annum. Sources from City Treasury
yesterday told The Herald that only $3,9
billion had been budgeted for
curtains and furniture while the remainder
would have to be borrowed since
Ms Makwavarara was keen to move immediately
into the multi-billion dollar
mansion. The sources said Mr Chideya wanted
the purchases to be done through
a tender system to reduce costs. The
matter, which has been on the
backburner for sometime now, came to the boil
following recent power
struggles at Town House pitting Mr Chideya and city
strategist Mr Chester
Mhende.
Ms Makwavarara, who has until now been living in the
mansion's guesthouse,
began moving her property into the mansion at the
weekend. When The Herald
visited the mansion last Friday Ms Makwavarara
denied the news crew access
claiming she was "too busy". She later phoned to
pour scorn on the news
crew. "Get out of the fights at Town House. I know
who is giving you all
that information. That person has failed to do his
job. You have to respect
me. I do not want that attitude (visiting the
mansion)," she said. Ms
Makwavarara said she was supposed to move into the
mansion two years ago but
had been unable to do so, accusing Mr Chideya of
putting spanners in the
works. "I am moving into the mansion with or without
the curtains and
furniture. The mansion was built for the mayor. (Mr)
Chideya has failed to
buy the curtains and furniture, so I am moving in,"
she said. She also
confirmed having moved some of her property into the
mansion. Asked whether
as someone holding such a high office she was not
tarnishing her image by
her actions, Ms Makwavarara said she would use her
own curtains and
furniture in the mansion. "I am tired of people failing to
do council work
who only resort to fighting. If they have no money I will
use my own
furniture," she fumed.
Sources allege that some of the
suppliers and providers of interior décor
for the mayoral mansion are Ms
Makwavarara's friends. Ms Makwavarara could
neither confirm nor deny the
allegations, saying: "Everybody was invited. I
do not care whether it is my
sister or friend. All I want is to see the
house furnished." Mr Chideya, who
has just come out of a bitter power
struggle with city strategist Mr Chester
Mhende, refused to comment on the
latest saga. "I do not have any
information in that regard. Talk to your
sources properly," he said.
Ironically, the feud between Mr Chideya and Mr
Mhende took a turn for the
worse when Ms Makwavarara, who normally consults
Mr Chideya over meetings,
last week addressed heads of departments
accompanied by Mr Mhende. The town
clerk was conspicuous by his absence. Mr
Chideya, however, won the battle to
control Town House following Government
recommendations that the city
strategist submit his curriculum vitae to him
as required by council
employment regulations. The city council is failing
to collect refuse,
service roads, repair street and traffic lights, among
other functions,
citing financial constraints.
Zim Daily
Monday, February 13 2006 @ 12:45 AM GMT
Contributed by:
correspondent
The Zimbabwe government has taken over seven farms
belonging to
three prominent bankers who fled the country after being
accused of
funneling huge sums of money abroad. The properties include
Zimbabwe's
second biggest tea estate, the Eastern Highlands Plantation in
the Honde
Valley district which has both British and local shareholders. The
three
bankers are Julius Makoni and Francis Zimuto, who were directors of
National
Merchant Bank (NMB) and Nicholas Vingirai of Intermarket Holdings.
All three
are currently believed to be living in Britain.
Makoni is a major local shareholder in the tea plantation, while
Zimuto
owned three farms and Vingirai had two. The trio slipped out of
Zimbabwe in
March, shortly after the government launched an ambitious
programme to fight
corruption and repair Zimbabwe's battered economy. Police
had said they
wanted to question the men in relation to the alleged transfer
of billions
of Zimbabwe dollars' worth of foreign currency overseas.
The
three have said they would not get a fair hearing if they
returned home.
Their property and bank accounts in Zimbabwe have been
frozen. The
government has now moved in to take that property. An official
with the
Eastern Highlands Plantation - which employs about 1 000 workers -
confirmed
that the estate had received notice of government's intention to
take over
the property but would not speculate on the reasons.
Zim Daily
Monday, February 13 2006 @ 12:42 AM GMT
Contributed by:
correspondent
The ruling Zanu PF party has won seven rural and
urban council
seats after the opposition failed to field candidates at the
close of the
nomination court last week. The seven candidates were declared
duly elected
at the end of the nomination court and will assusme office as
councillors
with effect from March 4, the date set aside for the elections
in other
areas, including the Chegutu Mayoral election.
Elections will take place in seven wards where more than one
candidate filed
nomination papers. The winning Zanu PF councillors were
Patrick Chimbiri
(Buhera Ward 16), Kurauzvione Dandira (Gutu Ward 35),
Jeffrey Muruzi (Kadoma
Ward 3), Rumbidzai Nyabote (Mutoko Ward 7), Walter
Chidakwa (Zvimba Ward
21), Titus Sithole (Zvishavana Ward 15) and Everisto
Manyengawana (Rusape
Ward 7).
For the Chegutu mayoral election, Zanu PF managed to
field
Martin Zimani who will do battle with MDC incumbent mayor Francis
Dhlakama.
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission spokesperson Utloile Silaigwana told
zimdaily
that the commission was now training presiding officers for the
elections
that will be held in Bulawayo Ward 3 and 12, Chegutu Ward 7,
Kadoma Ward 7,
Binga Ward 3, Bubi Ward 20 and Zvishavane Ward
2.
"Election officers have already been trained and we are
now
training presiding officers. We are going to embark on voter education
programmes soon to educate voters on the documents to take to the polling
stations, the ward boundaries and generally how to vote.We urge people to go
and vote," Silaigwana said.
Zim Daily
Monday, February 13 2006 @ 12:41 AM GMT
Contributed by:
correspondent
A Harare magistrate relaxed the reporting
conditions against
Voice of the People (VOP) radio board members Friday when
they appeared in
court for a remand hearing. David Masunda, VOP chairman,
his deputy Arnold
Tsunga, and board members Lawrence Chibwe, Nhlanhla
Ngwenya, and Millie
Phiri, all of whom are accused of operating a radio
station without a
licence in terms of the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA),
are on Z$4 million
bail each.
The bail conditions for the
accused were relaxed after their
lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, successfully
applied for a reconsideration of the
bail conditions. The VOP executives
will no longer be required to report to
the police every Friday. An
application for refusal of further remand is
expected to be made at the next
hearing on 28 February.
However, Isabella Matambanadzo, the
sixth accused, is not
subject to the same remand conditions because she is
currently residing in
South Africa. She will only appear in court when the
trial commences on a
date still to be fixed. The VOP executives are accused
of contravening
Section 7 (1), as read with paragraph 4 and 5 of the BSA
Chapter 12:06,
which deal with broadcasting and signal carrier licenses. It
is alleged that
the accused illegally established an office in Harare, which
they equipped
with computers, and that they produced unauthorized programmes
which were
transmitted through the Internet to Radio
Netherlands.
The broadcasts were then beamed into Zimbabwe
through a relay
station in Madagascar, without an operating licence. VOP
director John
Masuku, who is appearing before the court separately, is also
on bail on
charges of breaching the country's broadcasting laws. Masuku was
arrested
after the police raided the VOP radio station's offices in Harare
on 15
December 2005, at which time the police also confiscated computers,
equipment and administration files.
Three VOP employees -
Nyasha Bhosha, Maria Nyanyiwa and Kundai
Mugwanda - spent four nights in
police custody following the raid. The three
were subsequently released
without being charged. These developments have
taken place against the
backdrop of the bombing of the VOP offices on 29
August 2002 .