Zim Online
Sat 14
January 2006
HARARE - Zimbabwe Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa on
Friday said the
government had not yet decided whether to pay part or all of
the US$150
million owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), suggesting
Harare
might fail to clear IMF arrears by March as promised.
Hard cash-strapped Zimbabwe avoided being the only other country to be
thrown out from the IMF since the 1954 expulsion of Czechoslovakia, when it
made a surprise US$120 million payment to the IMF last October, days before
the Fund's board was due to meet to decide whether to recommend the African
nation's expulsion.
The Harare government followed up with two
other payments of 15 and 10
million dollars to leave its outstanding debt to
the IMF at US$150 million
out of an initial US$295 million. Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe governor Gideon
Gono last November said Harare would clear the
outstanding debt by March.
But Murerwa, who
insisted that Harare was working hard to rationalise
relations with the IMF,
told ZimOnline: "We have paid a greater part of the
arrears. We have not yet
decided on how much we will pay this month (to the
IMF)."
Asked
specifically if Zimbabwe would meet the March deadline to clear
IMF arrears,
Murerwa would only say: "We are looking at that problem now."
Zimbabwe is grappling its worst ever economic crisis that set in after
the
IMF's withdrawal in 1999 of balance-of-payments support to Harare
following
differences with President Robert Mugabe over fiscal policy and
other
governance issues.
The economic crisis quickened after Mugabe began
his controversial
farm seizure programme, spawning galloping inflation,
acute shortages of
foreign currency, food and other basic
commodities.
With little or basically no foreign currency reserves
at all,
Zimbabwe's series of debt repayments to the IMF late last year
raised
suspicion as to the source of the hard cash used to pay the
Fund.
The IMF said it would investigate the source of the funding
and report
back to its executive board in March. But authorities in Harare
insist that
all monies paid to the Fund came from export earnings, inflows
from
expatriate Zimbabweans and locals working for foreign-owned
organisations
who are paid in foreign currency.
Going by its
performance last year, Harare could still raise the
outstanding US$150
million virtually from the hat and clear arrears with the
IMF. But economic
analysts say shortages of foreign currency have worsened
in Zimbabwe in
recent months that the southern African nation could hardly
afford to spare
hard cash for the IMF.
Failure to pay up could see the IMF reviving
moves to expel Zimbabwe.
Expulsion from the IMF would see the few donors
still giving aid to Zimbabwe
cease doing so while creditors will rush in to
attach the country's assets.
Meanwhile, Murerwa said an IMF
delegation was scheduled to arrive in
Zimbabwe during the last week of this
month for routine consultations with
Harare monetary authorities. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
Sat 14 January 2006
HARARE - Fifty-five year old
widow Buhle Ngwenya is in a pensive mood
as she sits on the well-polished
veranda of her four-bedroom rural home,
deep in Matobo district in western
Zimbabwe.
Ngwenya occasionally takes a sip from the huge mug of a
home-made
beverage called mahewu as she watches the sun disappear into the
western
horizon.
"I wish his father was still alive to witness
this," she says throwing
her hands in the direction of the mansion that has
changed the face of this
rural landscape.
Ngwenya's husband
died 10 years ago leaving her to take care of the
four
children.
"I am sure he would have been proud to witness this
development in the
family's fortunes," she says in an
undertone.
The home comprises a four-bedroom unit of brick under
tile and a lock
up garage. The family also has the added luxury of watching
digital
television powered by several solar panels in the comfort of their
home.
Ngwenya is one of the many mothers who pride themselves with
having
valiant sons and daughters who skipped the border, with or without
travel
documents, in search of better opportunities in South
Africa.
Five years ago, Ngwenya's 31-year old son Simangaliso,
joined the
"great trek" down south after realising there was no future in
Zimbabwe
which is grappling a severe economic crisis.
A few
years later, Simangaliso and his fellow immigrant workers mostly
based in
South Africa, have virtually changed the face of rural Matabeleland
after
they financed the building of massive houses through the earnings they
remit
back home.
The changed rural landscape in Matobo is being
replicated elsewhere
after years of neglect by President Robert Mugabe's
government.
An ambitious housing programme set up in the 1980s
under the populist
slogan, "Housing for All by Year 2000," got lost in the
bureaucracy as the
government weaned itself of its "socialist"
fatigues.
"It takes real determination to make it in South Africa,"
says
Simangaliso, who was home for Christmas as he cleaned his South African
registered pick-up truck.
"My uncle who works in South Africa
helped me secure a job in a
construction company. He also normalised my work
permit," he says.
The relative success achieved by Zimbabweans who
trekked down south
has in turn triggered a stampede among thousands of young
Zimbabweans who
see going to South Africa as their only hope for
survival.
At least 70 percent of Zimbabwe's labour force is jobless
after most
industries shut down due to the tough economic situation.
Inflation,
described by Mugabe as the country's "enemy number one" is at
585.8 percent,
one of the highest in the world.
Basic
foodstuffs and medicines are also in critical short supply
because there is
no hard cash to import the commodities after Mugabe's
controversial farm
seizure programme disrupted the key agriculture sector,
the country's
biggest foreign currency earner.
But not all who cross the border
to South Africa have the relevant
documentation.
A total of 97
433 Zimbabweans were deported from South Africa last
year for flouting the
country's immigration laws.
South Africa's Department of Home
Affairs' spokesman, Nkosana Sibuya
said while it was not possible to
pinpoint the real reasons why most
foreigners were coming to South Africa,
most were seeking to reap the fruits
of a new and democratic South
Africa.
Sibuya warned: "But just as I cannot wake up one morning
and decide
that I want to go to China that day without having organised the
correct
documentation and passports, so too people cannot come to South
Africa
without the right documentation."
But the Pretoria
government official might as well reserve his advice
for, for these young
Zimbabweans fleeing home because of hunger and
worsening economic hardships,
it matters little whether they have correct
documentation or not to stay or
work in South Africa. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Sat 14
January 2006
HARARE - The executive director of Zimbabwe's Voice of
the People
broadcasting firm, John Masuku, arrested late last year for
allegedly
breaching the country's tough broadcasting laws was on Friday
further
remanded to March.
Masuku, who last year spent four
days in jail without appearing in
court, is out on a Z$4 million
bail.
It was not immediately clear whether Masuku, who must report
to the
police every Friday as part of his bail conditions, will be given a
trial
date when he next appears in court on the 30th of March.
His lawyer, Hope Ngara, of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights,
said:
"Masuku still has to report to the police every Friday as part of his
bail
conditions. He will appear in court on March 30.
"We have not
strategised on the way forward yet. We hope to be able to
do that after we
get a trial date."
The police raided the VOP offices last December
in a fresh crackdown
against the media and arrested three of the
broadcaster's journalists. They
also confiscated equipment and documents
while the three VOP journalists
were locked up in police cells without
charge for four days.
The journalists, Maria Nyanyiwa, Nyasha Bosha
and Kundai Mugwanda,
were only released after Masuku surrendered himself to
the police.
VOP Radio broadcasts into Zimbabwe from a transmitter
in Madagascar,
which is operated by Radio Netherlands. VOP has been
broadcasting from
Madagascar since its Zimbabwe studios were destroyed in
August 2002.
The radio station is one of several such stations
operated by
Zimbabweans and forced to broadcast into the country from
outside its
boarders because Harare's Broadcasting Services Act virtually
makes it
impossible for privately-run radio and television companies to set
up
studios in the country. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Fri 13
January 2006
HARARE - The Zimbabwe High Court on Friday ordered the
arrest of one
of the country's senior judges after he failed to turn up at
court for
sentencing following his conviction earlier in the week on two
counts of
attempting to defeat the course of justice.
Justice
Simpson Mutambanengwe issued a warrant of arrest against the
fugitive
Justice Benjamin Paradza when it became clear he was not at court
after his
name was called out three times and he did not respond.
Mutambanegwe, a former judge in Zimbabwe now serving on the Namibian
Supreme
Court bench and who was requested to hear Paradza's case,
immediately
ordered that the warrant of arrest be faxed to all exit points.
"A
warrant of arrest is hereby immediately issued against Judge
Benjamin
Paradza. His bail amount is restricted or forfeited to the state
provisionally in case he shows up and convinces this court on why he was not
present today," said Mutambanengwe.
.
"I
also order that this warrant of arrest be immediately faxed to all
immigration offices at every border post between Zimbabwe and its
neighbouring countries and at all airports saving the republic of Zimbabwe,"
he ordered.
Paradza's lawyer, Eric Matinenga, who convinced the
court when his
client was convicted last Monday, to delay sentencing to
today to allow him
to prepare arguments in mitigation said he was unaware of
the judge's
whereabouts.
Matinenga said: "Paradza is not
available. I don't know where he is.
There is no information as to what may
have happened to him. I am not able
to assist the court. I can only say that
as soon as information is made
available as to his status I will inform the
court. As things stand, I can't
proceed."
Paradza, the first
serving Zimbabwean judge to be convicted of a
criminal offence faced a
maximum of 10 years in jail after he was found
guilty of contravening
Section 4 (a) of the Corruption Act chapter 9:16 as
read with section 360
(2) (b) of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act
chapter 9 when he
attempted to entice two fellow judges to release a
passport belonging to his
partner in a safari business.
The judge's business partner, Russell
Labuschagne, was at the time on
bail after his arrest for murdering an
alleged fish-poacher at his fish farm
in Zimbabwe's northern Binga district.
Labuschagne, whose passport had been
seized by the state as part of his bail
conditions, was subsequently jailed
for 15 years for the
murder.
In his evidence-in-chief during trial, Paradza claimed that
the
charges against him were part of a covert plot by some judiciary
officials
to entrap and damage his reputation to fix him for his previous
judgments
that were perceived as unfavourable to the
government.
Paradza was arrested weeks after he had delivered a
judgment in favour
of former opposition executive mayor of Harare Elias
Mudzuri in a case
against the state.
But Mutambanegwe ruled
that Paradza had illegally attempted to use his
influence as a judge of the
High Court of Zimbabwe to entice Bulawayo-based
Judges Maphios Cheda and
George Chiweshe to release Labuschagne's passport
in order to enable the
businessman to travel overseas to scout for hunting
clients at an
international wildlife and safari trade fair.
Mutambanengwe
particularly noted that Paradza had himself openly
admitted in court that he
stood to gain U$60 000 had his business partner
been allowed to travel
overseas to scout for hunting business.
The state had to engage
Mutambanengwe after Zimbabwean judges declined
to take up the matter.
ZimOnline.
Zim Online
Fri 13 January
2006
ZVISHAVANE - Zimbabwe police have banned a planned campaign
meeting of
the country's newest opposition party, the United People's
Movement (UMP),
giving its leaders a taste of the repressive security laws
they helped enact
while they were members of President Robert Mugabe's
government.
One of the fledgling UPM's top executives, Pearson
Mbalekwa, said his
party had notified the police of a planned meeting on
Tuesday this week at a
community hall in the Nil section of Zvishavane, a
mining town more than
400km south-west of Harare.
Mbalekwa said
the police had verbally responded, telling UPM officials
that the party's
meeting could not be allowed to proceed because the
proposed venue for the
meeting had been booked "by other people for a week."
"We
re-scheduled our meeting for the 13th (today) but permission was
denied,"
Mbalekwa told ZimOnline yesterday.
Mbalekwa is a
former Member of Parliament (MP) for Mugabe's ruling
ZANU PF party while one
of UPM's chief architects, Jonathan Moyo, was
government minister of
information and also a non-constituency MP.
Mbalekwa left ZANU PF
in protest against Mugabe's controversial urban
clean-up campaign that left
at least 700 000 Zimbabweans without shelter and
means of livelihood after
the government demolished shantytowns and informal
business
kiosks.
Moyo was fired from the government and ZANU PF after he
successfully
stood in last year's parliamentary election as an
independent.
Both politicians had however strongly supported the
enactment of the
Public Order and Security Act that bans Zimbabweans from
gathering to
discuss politics in groups of three or more without first
seeking approval
from the police.
Although police verbally told
UPM officials that the party's meeting
could not go ahead because the
proposed venue was already booked, a letter
written to the opposition party
by a police superintendent P Madondo, states
that the reason the meeting was
being banned was because the party was "not
yet officially
registered."
"This is a clear case of political interference by the
police who
misinterpret the law on behalf of the government," Mbalekwa
said.
UPM is campaigning for an independent candidate, Tawanda
Musavengana,
in the forthcoming local government elections.
Musavengana had registered as an independent for the local government
polls
before joining the UPM. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Fri 13
January 2006
HARARE - Runaway inflation could prove key to
unhinging President
Robert Mugabe's decades-long grip on power as
disaffection swells among
lower-ranking soldiers and police, increasingly
finding it hard to survive
on a rapidly depreciating Zimbabwe dollar,
analysts said on Thursday.
Mugabe - in power since founding
independent Zimbabwe from the ashes
of the British colony of Rhodesia in
1980 - has commanded unquestioned
loyalty from the security forces which he
has over the years regularly used
to crush dissent and challenge to his
rule.
But the analysts said deepening poverty among
junior-to-medium ranking
soldiers and police chiefly because of
hyperinflation and food shortages -
themselves the result of an acute
six-year economic crisis - was steadily
eroding Mugabe's powerbase in the
armed forces.
University of Zimbabwe political scientist, Eldred
Masunungure, said
discord between poorly paid foot soldiers and police on
one hand and their
well-fed commanders on the other would threaten social
stability and if
unchecked could lead to the unthinkable happening - a
mutiny by the security
forces against Mugabe's command!
"The
relations of the politicians and those in the military become
strained when
the pact of reciprocity is broken," said Masunungure, who is
head of the
UZ's political science department.
He added: "If that happens, in a
case like Zimbabwe where the ruling
party's power bases lies in the
uniformed forces, then there is a risk of
mutiny."
While senior
police and army commanders earn huge salaries and are
feted with a wide
range of perks including the latest Sport Utility
Vehicles, their men and
women in the camps are battling to feed their
families as rising inflation
continues to whittle down their small salaries.
For example, after
the government this month awarded all its workers
including the security
services a 231 percent salary increment, a junior
soldier or police officer
will now earn about Z$7 million per month
But with year-on-year
inflation rising to 585.8 percent in December
up from 502.4 percent in
November, the new pay for soldiers and police
officers falls far below the
poverty datum line (PDL) - the minimum amount
of money an average family of
a mother, father and three children requires
for basic goods and services
per month.
According to the government's Central Statistical Office
the cost of
living had shot up in tandem with galloping inflation to leave
the PDL at
$17.2 million or more than twice what junior police officers and
soldiers
earn.
And worse still, economists predict inflation to
shoot beyond 600
percent in a matter of months, a development that will push
Zimbabwe's
soldiers further below the poverty line.
In a vivid
illustration of growing disaffection, military and police
commanders told
ZimOnline this week that more than 3 000 junior soldiers and
police officers
had applied for discharge from government service chiefly
because of poor
remuneration.
If all those that have applied for discharge were to
be allowed to
leave this would be the first time in almost a decade that so
many soldiers
and police officers would be leaving the security forces in
such large
numbers.
Military experts say Mugabe's problem began
when he transformed the
security forces into an extension of his ruling ZANU
PF party, undermining
professionalism and ethics, all in a bid to
consolidate his hold on power.
It worked then because at the time
the bulk of those serving in the
police and army were former fighters in the
1970s independence war who were
accustomed to taking orders from political
leaders of the liberation
struggle.
Former soldier and now main
opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) party defence spokesman
Giles Mutsekwa said the situation was now
different with the younger crop of
men and women recruited after
independence now forming a considerable
fraction of the security services.
Mugabe cannot expect loyalty
from this new generation of soldiers and
police officers on the basis that
he led the liberation struggle alone,
Mutsekwa said.
He said:
"For the younger non-commissioned officers who joined the
army after
independence the politics of liberation that Mugabe harps on
daily no
longer appeals to them."
Both Masunugure and Mutsekwa were however
quick to point out that it
was still very well within Mugabe's government to
mobilise whatever
financial resources that are required to appease all ranks
of the uniformed
forces and keep them firmly on his side.
Masunungure said: "It is highly likely that the government will give
the
people in the army and police higher salaries to ensure that they are
happy
and are not receptive to incentives by opposition parties."
Mugabe's government has baffled both its critics and supporters, by
defiantly hanging on to power despite international sanctions against the
veteran President and his top officials, a deepening food and economic
crisis. - ZimOnline.
Zim Online
Fri 13 January 2006
HARARE - Zimbabwe's long-running
fuel crisis plus a shortage of
pesticides have crippled efforts to control
an outbreak of the crop-eating
armyworm that is threatening to wipe out this
year's harvests, in the latest
crisis to hit the country.
Harvests in food-short Zimbabwe had looked promising after the country
received more rains in the past few weeks. But the situation now looks
doubtful as the voracious armyworm spreads across the southern African
country devouring more than 4 000 tonnes of maize, sorghum and millet, in
just a few days.
The director of the government's Agricultural
Research and Extension
Services (AREX), Shadreck Mlambo, said his
department that oversees farm
research and plant protection was battling
hard to control the worms but its
efforts were being hampered by a shortage
of fuel and pesticides.
"There is a shortage of fuel and
pesticides. I am appealing to the
corporate sector to chip in with whatever
assistance. What we need is fuel
and pesticides to eliminate the threat
posed by the armyworm but our staff
are just managing with whatever few
resources we have," said Mlambo.
The shortage of Carbayl 85, the
chemical used to kill armyworms, and
fuel for AREX officers to travel to
areas of outbreak is because there is no
hard cash to pay foreign
suppliers.
Harare has grappled an acute foreign currency shortage
since the
International Monetary Fund withdrew balance-of-payments support
in 1999.
The hard cash crisis worsened a year later after President Robert
Mugabe
began his farm seizure programme that destabilised the agricultural
sector -
the economy's mainstay and biggest foreign currency
earner.
Essential medical drugs, electricity and nearly every other
basic
commodity is in short supply also because there is no hard cash to pay
foreign suppliers.
The armyworm attack is expected to reduce
yields that were already
expected to be lower because farmers were not able
to plant on time because
of a shortage of fertilizer and crop
seeds.
The fast-spreading armyworm has so far been cited in the
provinces of
Manicaland, Mashonaland East, West and Central - the country's
top four
food producing regions. The worms have also been cited in the drier
Midlands
and Matabeleland North provinces.
An estimated three
million people or a quarter of the 12 million
Zimbabweans require food aid
between now and the next harvest beginning
around March/April after poor
harvest in the 2004/05 farming season.
Food production has fallen
by about 60 percent since Mugabe seized
productive farms from whites and
gave them over to landless black villagers
but did not give the resettled
villagers financial resources and skills
training to maintain production. -
ZimOnline.
Zim Online
Fri 13 January 2006
JOHANNESBURG - Leaders of a faction
of Zimbabwe's main opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party
are in South Africa to brief the
media and diplomats on the crisis rocking
the six-year old party.
The four-member delegation made up of
Gibson Sibanda, Welshman Ncube,
Gift Chimanikire and legislator Priscilla
Misihairabwi-Mushonga arrived in
Johannesburg on Thursday.
Talking to ZimOnline in Johannesburg yesterday, Ncube said they had
come to
South Africa to put across their own side of the story on the
conflict in
the MDC.
"We thought it was necessary to talk to the South African
media to put
across our own side of the story and deal with claims that
this split in
the MDC is an ethnic split," said Ncube.
The MDC,
which offered Zimbabweans the only real chance of unseating
President Robert
Mugabe from power, has been split into two warring
factions after its
president Morgan Tsvangirai differed with Ncube and other
leaders over
whether to contest last November's senate election.
The two
factions have played out their differences in the media
trading insults and
suspending each other from the party. Several attempts
at mediation have
however failed with the two factions digging in their
heels.
Ncube also said his delegation had no plans to meet South African
President
Thabo Mbeki who has in the past sought to resolve the six-year
old
political crisis in Zimbabwe.
"Our mission is to engage the media.
We have no intention of meeting
the South African government after
speculative accusations that that they
are involved in our dispute," said
Ncube.
Ncube claimed that the crisis in the MDC was due to a series
of
decisions made by Tsvangirai over the past few years that undermined the
"principle of collective democratic decision making" in the
MDC.
He said Tsvangirai had "no natural instincts for dictatorial
tendencies" but was captive to his "kitchen cabinet", a group of unelected
individuals whom he blamed for misleading the MDC leader.
Asked
if there were still any prospects to bring the two warring
factions
together, Ncube said they were willing to work with Tsvangirai
only if
there is a "reconfirmation of the founding values" of the MDC.
The
spokesman for a faction alligned to Tsvangirai, Nelson Chamisa,
could not be
reached for comment on the issues last night.
Meanwhile Ncube and
his colleagues, who were suing leader Tsvangirai
for defamation have revised
their claims from $50 billion to $100 billion,
arguing they have unearthed
more evidence showing the extent to which they
suffered
damages.
Ncube and leaders of his faction accuse Tsvangirai of
telling foreign
diplomats that they were working with Mugabe's ruling ZANU
PF party to
destroy the MDC and to assassinate its president and other
leaders
considered radicals.
Tsvangirai's laywers could not be
reached last night but ZimOnline
understands that the MDC leader has filed
papers with the court indicating
he was prepared to defend himself. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
Fri 13 January 2006
HARARE - The Zimbabwe government's
Media and Information Commission
(MIC) has hiked registration fees for
journalists wishing to practice in the
country by more than 4 000 percent,
ZimOnline has learnt.
Under the government's Access to Information
and Protection of Privacy
Act (AIPPA), journalists face two years in jail
for practising in Zimbabwe
with being registered with the MIC.
The Act, regarded as one of the harshest Press laws in the world, also
requires newspaper companies to register with the commission or they will be
forced to close down and their equipment seized for publishing newspapers
without being registered.
The new registration fees are Z$250
000 for journalists registering
for the first time. Previously such
journalists were required to pay $6 000.
Journalists will now pay $200 000
for renewal of registration up from $5 000
they paid last year.
Freelance reporters will pay $150 000 to renew their registration, up
from
$3 000 last year, while freelancers wishing to register for the first
time
will fork out $100 000, up from $2 500 payable in 2004.
Registration fees for foreign journalists wishing to visit Zimbabwe to
cover
stories however remain unchanged at US$600 per applicant.
Zimbabwean journalists must renew their registration after every 12
months.
The MIC can refuse to register journalists it perceives as not
toeing the
line.
Registration fees for media houses, which according to AIPPA
must
apply for registration every 24 months, have not yet been gazetted,
according to MIC officials.
The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists,
which is opposed to the requirement
that journalists register with the MIC,
said: "Although they (new fees) are
not much when you take into
consideration the galloping inflation, we are
totally against the
requirement that journalists should register . . . the
whole thing is
ridiculous."
The World Association of Newspapers ranks crisis-torn
Zimbabwe among
three countries with the worst media laws in the world. The
other two are
the Islamic Republic of Iran and the former Soviet Union
republic of
Uzbekistan.
Apart from facing jail for practising
without being registered,
Zimbabwean journalists also face two years
imprisonment for criticising or
ridiculing President Robert Mugabe in their
articles.
At least four newspapers, including the country's biggest
circulating
and only non-government controlled daily, the Daily News, were
shut down by
the government in the last three years for breaching its tough
Press laws. -
ZimOnline
Augustine Mukaro
The zimbabwe
independent
Friday, 13 January 2006
POLICE officers have reportedly
expropriated Gletwyn Farm, a private
property worth US$ 10 million in the
Greater Harare area, and are currently
subdividing it into residential
stands for high-rankings officers.
Gletwyn Farm's owner, Alexander Ross, said
the police descended on the
225-hectare property situated 14 kilometres east
of Harare on December 13,
claiming it had been acquired for Police Heights
Housing Co-operative to
develop residential stands for the force's senior
officers.
No compensation has been discussed between the police and the farm
owners.
Ross said the farm has been subdivided into 600 stands ranging from 1
900 to
2 000 square-metres, displacing more than 200 people initially
renting
houses or working at the farm.
This week police trucks were
moving people from the farm to unspecified
locations. A contractor has
already started opening roads as a way of
servicing residential stands. The
farm sits in a prime residential area
between Mandara and Glen
Lorne.
Documents to hand say the farm was incorporated into the city of
Harare in
1996 and the owner made preparations to sub-divide it for urban
development.
The work initially done was to prepare a local subject plan for
the whole
area, to be followed by the creation of a subdivision plan for the
land.
The subdivision plan was in the process of being submitted to the
Harare
city council in 2000 which coincided with the start of the land
reform
programme. Local Government minister Ignatious Chombo then made a
statement
that no peri-urban land should be sub-divided, the documents
say.
War veterans moved onto the farm in late 2000 and numerous disruptions
to
farming activities occurred although for the most part the Ross family
maintained control of the property.
The documents show that last April,
an instruction was given by the Ministry
of Local Government that no crops
should be planted on the farm as the land
was required for a housing
project.
On October 17 heavy earthmoving machinery was moved onto the
property to
open up primitive roads on all arable areas of the farm, ruining
much of the
potato crop in the ground.
The invasion has forced the
multi-billion dollar farming project to close
down. Gletwyn Farm was
producing seed maize, potatoes, soya beans and a
range of fresh
vegetables.
Members of the Police Heights Housing Cooperative are expected to
meet at
the farm today (Friday).
The documents say on December 13 Harare
governor David Karimanzira and high
ranking police officials told the Ross
family to leave the property
immediately because it was being taken over by
the police.
Ross said later that day more police officers arrived at the
property,
pitched tents and took over the main property's security control
gate.
"The police also located themselves on the property's operational
centre,
and even in the garden of my brother's house," Ross said, adding:
"The
following day (December 14) many more police cadres arrived on the
property
and effectively shut it down. Thereafter many people residing on
the farm
were denied entry or the right to leave the property to go to work
or to do
their normal business."
VOA
By Ndimyake Mwakalyelye
Washington
13
January 2006
Any lingering hopes for reconciliation of the
opposing factions of Zimbabwe's
Movement for Democratic Change were brushed
away this week as Secretary
General Welshman Ncube, in South Africa drumming
up support for his
grouping, told the Financial Times that "it is evident
that we have parallel
parties now."
Ncube is considered the leader of
a Bulawayo-centered MDC faction that broke
with the Harare-based grouping
behind the party's president, Morgan
Tsvangirai, over whether to contest the
senate elections held in November.
Ncube's "pro-senate" faction gained seven
seats in the upper house, but
since then the dispute has become personalized
with each side launching
launching accusations and
recriminations.
More recently the wrangling has focused on the allocation
of public party
finance funding earmarked for the formerly unified
opposition party, on
conflicting claims to the position of party president
(among other executive
and administrative positions) and on alleged
defamation by the Tsvangirai
camp resulting in a Ncube-faction
suit.
Both factions are getting ready for separate party congresses in
the months
to come, pointing to a more formal political divorce. One
question still to
be answered concerns which faction will ultimately control
the MDC name and
political brand.
Opposition supporters express
disappointment and disillusionment with both
factions. The MDC once seemed
Zimbabwe's best hope for a democratic
transition, but political observers
now say MDC officials are so focused on
the intra-party struggle that the
ruling ZANU-PF party of President Robert
Mugabe now faces little
challenge.
Reporter Ndimyake Mwakalyele spoke with two seasoned observers
of Zimbabwean
affairs: International Crisis Group Southern African analyst
Sydney Masamvu,
and Iden Witherell, project editor for the Zimbabwe
Independent and Standard
news group, seeking their views on the long-range
fallout from the MDC
family feud.
[ This report does not
necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
BULAWAYO, 13 Jan
2006 (IRIN) - The city hall parking area in Bulawayo,
Zimbabwe's second
largest urban centre, is usually bustling when schools
reopen as boarders
wait to be picked up by school shuttles - now it looks
deserted, the direct
result of a 150 to 500 percent hike in fees in
missionary and private
schools.
"My parents say they still have to raise the school fees," said
Fanyana
Ngwenya, 17, high a school student at a missionary boarding school,
120
kilometres north of Bulawayo, who was unable to join his classmates when
his
school reopened on Tuesday. "Times are hard - I just have to
wait."
Fanyana's father, Ngwenya, told IRIN that when schools closed for
the
holidays, he had expected that the fees, which were Zim $3 million (US
$37)
in 2005, would not exceed Zim $6 million ($74) in the new
year.
Zimbabwe has been experiencing runaway price increases since 2000,
causing
living standards to plummet as salaries failed to match the rate of
inflation.
"I was shocked a week before schools reopened to receive a
notice from the
school, saying the fees had been increased to Zim $15
million ($189)," said
Ngwenya, a school teacher who earns a little more than
US $40 a month.
"He [Fanyana] also needs groceries, transport and pocket
money. If I can't
raise anything this week, we will have to transfer him to
a local day
school."
The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ), a
watchdog body, expressed concern
at the increases, saying they were
unaffordable and would negatively impact
on education delivery.
"We
are now faced with a situation where parents are forced to either
transfer
their children from some schools, opting for those that are
cheaper, or
completely withdrawing them from school," said the CCZ
Information and
Research Centre administrator, Trust Masarirambi.
"At the end of the day,
it is our education system that is suffering because
we will have many
dropouts," he predicted.
Munetsi Wakatama, principal of a local
government school, said his school
had been flooded by parents wanting to
enroll their children since Tuesday.
"Most of them are transferring from
boarding schools," he said. "I have had
to turn many away - I have no
vacancies." Another said he had stuck a notice
on the gate to advise parents
that his school was full.
The public education system stumbled after
government stopped subsidising
students in 1990s and many parents shunned
government-owned schools because
of their low pass rates.
In the face
of an inflation rate that topped 585 percent in December 2005,
most
missionary and private schools have asserted that the fee increases
were
justified, but the government has accused them of defying its directive
on 7
January 2006 of a maximum 150 percent rise.
Stephen Mahere, permanent
secretary in the ministry of education, sport and
culture, urged schools
seeking to raise fees to obtain permission from the
ministry.
That
was not a viable option, according to Mehluli Mpofu, principal of a
local
private school. "There is too much bureaucracy in the government, and
that
would mean prices of basic commodities increase and students starve
while we
wait for the government to approve an application."
"Education in the
country is quickly becoming a preserve of the elite, much
to the detriment
of the majority," said a disgruntled parent, Marvis
Saruchera, who has had
to withdraw her daughter from the privately owned
Girls College in Bulawayo
after the fees went up from US $189 to $510 per
term.
Social
commentators have warned that all the gains made in education since
independence from Britain in 1980 risked being lost.
"Most parents
will end up choosing not to send the girl child to school and
concentrate on
educating the boy child," said Gordon Moyo, the leader of
Bulawayo Dialogue,
a pressure group involved in the public debate of
national
issues.
The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe has called on the
government to
convene an urgent meeting to resolve the crisis.
[ This report does
not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations]
JOHANNESBURG, 13 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - An outbreak of armyworm
threatens
Zimbabwe's already fragile agricultural sector and experts warn
that a
shortage of foreign currency may hamper importation of much-needed
pesticides.
Zimbabwe's Agricultural Research and Extension Services
(AREX) director
Shadreck Mlambo told IRIN, "We do have an armyworm situation
here, and we're
still trying to consolidate all the reports that are coming
in from
different parts of the country to be able to judge the extent of it.
For
now, all I can say is that all provinces except Matabeleland South have
been
affected."
Dzarira Kwenda, executive director of the Zimbabwe
Farmers Union, said the
situation was potentially devastating for both
small- and large-scale
farmers, "because the foreign currency needed to
import chemicals is in
short supply".
He said the Mashonaland Central
and Mashonaland East provinces were most
affected and farmers there could
possibly lose "thousands of hectares" of
crops to the voracious
pest.
The outbreak comes as young maize crops are beginning to sprout, a
time when
they are particularly vulnerable to the armyworm caterpillar, Dr
Clive Levy
of the Commercial Farmers Union.
[ENDS]
SABC
January 13, 2006,
17:15
Zimbabwe issued an arrest warrant today for a high court judge who
failed to
appear at his own trial to face corruption charges. Judge Benjamin
Paradza,
who was arrested in 2003 over accusations that he tried to
influence two
colleagues to release the confiscated passport of his business
partner, did
not turn up for his hearing today.
Simpson
Mutambanengwe, the High Court judge, immediately issued an arrest
warrant.
Paradza's lawyers said they did not know where their client was and
have
argued that the charges against him were designed to punish him for
embarrassing the government.
Paradza freed an opposition mayor in
2003 who had been arrested for holding
an illegal political meeting. The
government denies the corruption case
against Paradza is politically
motivated.
Mutambanengwe was supposed to hear mitigating arguments today
and lawyers
had expected him to also hand down sentencing the same day. The
Supreme
Court in September ruled that Paradza's initial detention was
unconstitutional and overruled corruption charges against him. But the court
added that the state could pursue the case after first subjecting him to a
judicial inquiry. - Reuters
The Tablet
Archbishop
Pius Ncube of Bulawayo has admitted reprimanding the Pope last
June about
positive remarks Benedict XVI made to Zimbabwe's new ambassador
to the Holy
See. Although the incident occurred when Zimbabwe's bishops
visited the
Vatican at the end of that month, it only came to light in a
late December
interview with the outspoken archbishop.
Pope Benedict's remarks were made
during an official welcome address on 16
June to David Douglas Hamadziripi.
Although he suggested to the ambassador
that "particular concern must be
shown for the poor, the disenfranchised and
the young," he also told him
that "with the elections of 31 March, Zimbabwe
made a new beginning in
confronting the grave social problems which have
affected the nation in
recent years". In fact, the elections, which gave
Mugabe's Zanu-PF party
sufficient majority to amend the constitution, were
widely regarded as being
rigged. In addition, the Government had begun
demolishing the homes of the
poor around the country. Archbishop Ncube told
the Pope on 27 June: "Seeing
that you were so optimistic in your speech, it
may be that you don't know
what's happening: when I left, they were smashing
houses," the Los Angeles
Times reported on 31 December.
Speaking to The Tablet on Monday,
Archbishop Ncube said that on that first
ad limina meeting on 27 June he had
also personally given the Pope an A4
double-sided sheet of paper providing
details of the Zimbabwe situation from
the perspective of the majority of
the population. It referred to
demolitions, the stealing of traders' goods,
political repression, galloping
inflation and a worsening food
crisis.
When the bishops met the Pope again on 2 July, the Pope told them
that he
felt better informed and supported both the bishops' pre-election
statement,
calling for a fair process, and their recent pastoral letter "The
Cry of the
Poor", which condemned "the gross injustice done to the poor"
through the
government campaign "Operation Drive Out Trash". But the Pope
also commented
that "the recent elections in Zimbabwe have laid the basis
for what I trust
will be a new beginning in the process of national
reconciliation and the
moral rebuilding of society". Many observers at the
time were surprised that
Pope Benedict appeared to endorse again the
legitimacy of Zimbabwe's March
elections. He also steered clear of issuing
his own criticism of the
Government's campaign, which was known to have left
hundreds of thousands of
people homeless. That same week the US bishops'
conference condemned the
Zimbabwe demolitions and suggested that the
international community should
pressurise Zimbabwe's government to stop
them.
Archbishop Ncube was concerned that Pope Benedict, who in June had
been in
office for only two months, had been badly briefed by his
Secretariat of
State. Archbishop Ncube acknowledged that there was a
positive side to
maintaining good diplomatic relations between the Church
and the Mugabe
Government, but, "for me, every tacit approval is driving one
more nail into
the coffin of many Zimbabweans".
Ellen Teague
Mail and Guardian
Harare, Zimbabwe
13 January 2006 11:36
The Zimbabwe government has dismissed press reports that British
property
tycoon Nicholas van Hoogstraten lent President Robert Mugabe
$10-million
last year, the state-controlled Herald reported on Friday.
Van Hoogstraten was quoted in the Sunday Times of London last
week as saying
he lent Mugabe the money in November, when Zimbabwe was
facing a severe cash
crunch. Security for the credit was in assets worth
trillions of Zimbabwean
dollars, the paper reported.
But Mugabe's spokesperson George
Charamba said the claim was
"cheap propaganda and a vain attempt to
besmirch" the president, the Herald
said.
Zimbabwe's
president is "neither a borrower nor a lender",
Charamba told the
paper.
"Robert Mugabe has no relationship with any tycoon,
let alone of
British stock," he added.
The spokesperson
was scornful of Van Hoogstraten's claims that
Mugabe was "a true English
gentleman".
"That's a creation of the British and their crazy
media and they
are free to attach any character to their creation. I speak
for Robert
Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe whom the British can never
consider their
mirror image," the president's spokesperson
said.
Charamba challenged the Sunday Times to produce details
of the
transaction.
Van Hoogstraten, who is believed to
own property in Zimbabwe, is
one of Britain's most notorious businessmen. He
was given a 10-year jail
sentence in 2002 for being behind the murder of a
business rival, Mohammed
Raja, but got off on appeal. Britain's civil courts
have since declared him
a murderer.
The British tycoon
told the Sunday Times the $10-million --
enough to meet Zimbabwe's power
imports for at least two weeks -- had been
loaned to Mugabe through Messina
Investments, a company Van Hoogstraten says
is owned by his children. He
said the interest on Mugabe's loan was due in
June. -- Sapa-dpa
IOL
January 13 2006 at
08:47PM
Harare - Five top officials in Zimbabwe's bitterly divided
main
opposition party filed a multi-million rand defamation suit against
Movement
for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai, their lawyer said
on Friday.
The officials allege Tsvangirai accused them of plotting
his
assassination, attorney Nicholas Mathonsi said. The suit, demanding
Z$100-billion (R602-billion) in damages, was filed on Thursday in the second
city of Bulawayo.
Tsvangirai gave notice he would defend the
action, and has 10 days to
submit a summary of his rebuttal before a date
can be set for a hearing,
Mathonsi said.
Fixing a date could
take several months, he said.
Mathonsi said the suit arose from a
December 21 address Tsvangirai had
made to foreign diplomats in Harare, in
which he alleged main rivals in the
opposition were planning his
"elimination."
The rivals - including the party's vice president,
Gibson Sibanda, and
secretary general, Welshman Ncube - had opposed an order
by Tsvangirai in
October to boycott November 26 national elections for a new
66-seat upper
house, or Senate.
Defying
Tsvangirai, the rivals fielded 26 candidates in the Senate
race, but won
only seven seats.
The defamation suit filed on Thursday threatened
to further
disintegrate the labor-backed party, formed in 1999 as the first
significant
challenge to the autocratic rule of President Robert Mugabe, who
lead the
nation to independence from Britain in 1980.
The two
rival party factions were scheduled to hold their own
conventions in
February, which were expected to result in the formation of
two opposition
parties, both claiming the name of the MDC.
Both Tsvangirai's and
Sibanda's supporters have voted to strip their
opponents of positions in the
party, but both sides have ignored those
votes.
Last month,
Sibanda's faction demanded Tsvangirai relinquish the party
presidency and
the right to use the opposition symbol of an open-hand salute
and turn in
party property.
Just 19 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in
the senate poll,
the lowest turnout for a national election since
independence in 1980.
Tsvangirai claimed voters heeded his boycott
call. Independent
election monitors said voting was affected by apathy and
voter fatigue,
after three bruising national elections since 2000 lost by
the opposition
amid allegations of political intimidation and vote rigging
by the
government.
Tsvangirai argued that participation in the
Senate vote would lend
credibility to a poll that was certain to be flawed.
Others in the party
said the opposition needed to try to maintain a voice in
the legislature. -
Sapa-AP
By Tichaona Sibanda
13 January
2006
Analysts have warned that runaway inflation could prove the
key to
unlocking Robert Mugabe's decades-long grip on power. Lower-ranking
soldiers
and police are finding it hard to survive on a rapidly depreciating
Zimbabwe
dollar and are becoming increasingly unhappy with the
situation.
ZimOnline reported on Friday that Mugabe, in power since
founding
independent Zimbabwe from a British colony in 1980, has commanded
unquestioned loyalty from the security forces. This has enabled him to use
them to regularly crush dissent and any challenge to his rule.
University of Zimbabwe political scientist Eldred Masunungure is
quoted by
Zimonline as saying discord between poorly paid foot soldiers and
police on
one hand and their well-fed commanders on the other would threaten
social
stability and if unchecked could lead to the unthinkable happening, a
mutiny
by the security forces against Mugabe's command.
After the
government this month awarded all its workers, including the
security
services, a 231 percent salary increase, a junior soldier or police
officer
will now earn about Z$7 million per month.
The new pay for soldiers and
police officers falls far below the
poverty datum line (PDL) - the minimum
amount of money an average family of
a mother, father and three children
requires for basic goods and services
per month. According to the
government's Central Statistical Office the PDL
is now $17.2 million or more
than twice what junior police officers and
soldiers earn.
In
December inflation rose to 585.8 percent, one of the highest rates
in the
world, and it's expected to rise even higher in
2006.
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
The Herald
(Harare)
COLUMN
January 13, 2006
Posted to the web January 13,
2006
Jeffrey Gogo
Harare
Today is Friday the 13th. And
according to folklore and the superstitious it
is an unlucky day. However,
for me and others Friday the 13th this time
arrived three days early -- on
Tuesday January 10, to be precise. It was the
day the Central Statistical
Office announced the inflation figures for the
month of December.
But
for the majority this was a non-event. They just shrugged their
shoulders in
resignation. "Oh that, we had expected inflation to rise by an
even bigger
margin," some were heard to say.
Others refused to be intimidated: "I
think there has always been a way to
get round this problem, and as a
country, there is no way we can fail in our
fight against monster
inflation."
The CSO reported on Tuesday that Zimbabwe's annualised
inflation as at
December had climbed to 585,8 percent, up 83 percentage
points on the
November rate.
Monthly inflation, however, had declined
to 18,3 percent from 27 percent in
November, as prices of goods and services
slowed down or stabilised
altogether.
Simply defined, inflation
refers to the overall general upward price
movement of goods and services in
an economy, usually as measured by the
consumer price index and the producer
price index.
Over time, as the cost of goods and services increase, the
value of a dollar
is going to fall because a person cannot afford to
purchase as much with
that dollar as he or she previously did.
This
is exactly what has been happening in Zimbabwe over the last few years,
and
in particular 2003 and 2005.
The burning question is why Zimbabwe's rate
of inflation has continued on
the upside during the last nine months after
subduing in the greater part of
2004, and what must be done to control
runaway inflation now and in future?
Economic experts, who project
inflation to continue running northwards
during 2006's first quarter, have
proffered various suggestions on how
Zimbabwe can win the war against
inflation.
Fundamentally, the key to reining in CPI inflation lies in
prudent exchange
rate management and putting a lid on speculative demand,
economists say.
There is also need to attract foreign direct investments
while at the same
time revitalising the critical sectors of the economy such
as agriculture,
otherwise the productive sector was likely to continue
shrinking.
It is also worthwhile to invest attention in seriously
addressing the issue
of controlling money supply growth, reduce the extent
of Government deficit
and improve foreign currency inflows by stimulating
exports.
But the spate of massive price hikes, salary adjustments, tariff
increases
coupled with critical foreign currency shortages in recent months
have been
fuelling the raging fire of inflation, and appear set to persist
this year.
The money supply is considered an important instrument for
controlling
inflation by those economists who say that growth in money
supply will only
lead to inflation if demand for money is kept stable. In
order to control
the money supply, the regulatory authorities must decide
which particular
measure of the money supply to target. The broader the
targeted measure, the
more difficult it is to control that particular
target.
However, analysts say targeting an unsuitable narrow money supply
measure
could lead to a situation where the total money supply in the
country is
loosely controlled.
Commented a Harare economist: "The new
inflation figure was completely
expected. Already signs are there for big
increases in the first three
months of the year. "The present situation is
extremely worrying and can
only be addressed by reducing Government
expenditure and the generation of
adequate foreign currency through
encouraging foreign investment.
"It is also likely that more inflation
will come and this could get worse as
the year progresses."
There are
multitudinous factors militating against an early victory in
Zimbabwe's
battle against its number one enemy, inflation.
Annual inflation has been
progressively coming off from a record 623 percent
in January 2004 to 124
percent by March last year.
However, mounting negative economic
fundamentals have forced the rate to
creep up ever since.
The central
bank, however, has expressed optimism that the battle against
inflation
remains a mammoth task, but with the right policies it is
surmountable.
There has been inevitable pressure on inflation,
principally from foreign
currency costs, due to the widening gap between the
fair exchange rate and
auction rate.
However, the central bank has
been making frequent adjustments in the
exchange rate in line with inflation
developments.
Financial Times
By John
Reed
Published: January 13 2006 16:31 | Last updated: January 13 2006
16:31
I meet Helen Suzman for lunch at the Inanda Club, an old-money
haunt of
manicured gardens and attentive service.
The woman who
was for years one of South Africa's best-known critics of
apartheid has
chosen to eat at the club's Varandas restaurant, a
thatched-roof cottage
reminiscent of both Olde England and the African veldt
that could only exist
in Johannesburg. The food, as so often in Jo'burg, is
Portuguese.
Suzman, now 88, called ahead to warn me she would be
late, as she would be
arriving from a reunion at her alma mater, the
University of the
Witswatersrand. "It's Helen!" she shouted into her
cellphone above the sound
of her three barking dogs. The traffic might be
bad, she said, as a swathe
of suburban Johannesburg had been shut off for a
racecar demonstration. I
sit waiting, gazing out at the rolling lawn and
listening to the incongruous
sound of revving engines in the
distance.
Suzman arrives on time, well-coiffed and chic in black-framed
sunglasses and
a white trouser-suit, but leaning on a cane. She orders a
starter, chicken
livers ("I just had a big tea"), but declines to join me in
a drink. "It
puts me to sleep immediately at lunchtime, but I never fail to
have a Scotch
every night." She says she acquired the habit in childhood
from her father,
a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania.
Suzman tells me
about the reunion, which was for people who graduated 40
years ago or more.
I ask her whether she met any old classmates. "Not one,"
she exclaims, her
voice rising plaintively. "Either all dead or emigrated."
Apart from the
routine disappointments of old age, Suzman is coping with the
unique
indignities of historical revisionism. As an MP for the tiny liberal
opposition in the apartheid-era parliament, she harried the ruling National
party for three and a half decades on issues ranging from the behaviour of
the security services to the treatment of political prisoners.
She
endured insults from her opponents (President P.W. Botha once called her
"a
vicious little cat"), but managed to put on the record official crimes
and
excesses that the press, under the government's powers, could not
report.
In 1997 then-president Nelson Mandela awarded Suzman the
Order of
Meritorious Service, South Africa's highest honour. But his
successor, Thabo
Mbeki, has been less kind. In one of his characteristically
acid weekly
online letters last March, he attacked Suzman and other liberals
by quoting
the late African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo, who once
disparaged
Suzman's middle class liberalism after she visited him when he
was in exile
in 1971.
"This sweet bird from the blood-stained south
flew into Zambia," Tambo said,
"and sang a singularly sweet song: 'I am
opposed to apartheid; I am opposed
to the isolation of South Africa; I am
opposed to violence; I am opposed to
guerrillas... '" Tambo later praised
her and the record was corrected in a
later edition of Mbeki's weekly online
letters, though not by the president
himself.
Under Mbeki's
leadership the ANC have embraced their old Afrikaner
oppressors, but tend to
demonise the English-speaking moderates who worked
for change within the
apartheid system. Tony Leon, leader of the liberal
opposition Democratic
Alliance party, is routinely jeered in parliament.
Mbeki shuns meetings with
him.
After inquiring politely about me, Suzman asks why I wanted to meet
her. I
tell her that I want to hear why she thinks the English liberals have
been
seemingly squeezed out in the post-apartheid order.
"Airbrushed
would be a better expression," Suzman says sharply. After
Johannesburg's
Apartheid Museum opened in 2001, she castigated its
organisers for ignoring
the contribution of liberal writers such as Alan
Paton and English-language
newspapers such as the Rand Daily Mail. The
exhibit contained a single photo
of Suzman, "sort of down on the ground",
she says archly. "It's now a bit
better since I wrote my nasty letter, as is
my wont."
Outside South
Africa, Suzman has been honoured for speaking out while most
whites did
nothing. She was made a honorary Dame of the British Empire in
1989 and was
twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
But while Suzman was
travelling the world collecting honorary degrees, her
South African critics
point out, thousands of black anti-apartheid activists
died violently, and
often anonymously. Suzman opposed the imposition of
economic sanctions and
the ANC's tactical use of violence, arguably two of
the main factors that
toppled apartheid. One recent letter-writer to
Johannesburg's Star newspaper
attacked her as a hypocrite, saying she stank
of "Chanel and manure". When I
ask her about the insult, she says wearily:
"There was a Hate Helen week. I
had written one of my letters criticising
something of the ANC, which they
can't stand, you see."
Warming to the topic, she defends the role liberal
politics played in ending
apartheid: "I think it sort of prepared a big
section of the population for
the changes that finally came."
I tell
her about a thought experiment that has preoccupied me since I moved
to
South Africa in 2003. Had I been a white South African, I say, I probably
would have been a liberal rather than an ANC supporter. As an undergraduate
at my US university in the 1980s, like thousands of other students I signed
petitions urging my university to divest from South Africa. But I was
uncomfortable with the ANC's tactical support of violence and alliance with
the Soviet Union.
And yet it was precisely sanctions and rising
violence that forced the
National Party to the negotiating table. Hasn't
history proved her, and me,
wrong?
Suzman seems unperturbed: "There's
no doubt that sanctions were important,"
she says, but she opposed them
because the majority of people who lost their
jobs as a result were black.
President F.W. de Klerk, she claims, "could
have stayed in power for another
five to 10 years" at most. He would have
shrunk from ordering the army to
shoot his own people, she says. I feel
Suzman has not answered my question:
wasn't it precisely violent rebellion
in the black townships that pushed de
Klerk toward compromise?
Suddenly a waiter appears at our table.
Unprompted by either of us, he says:
"It's a blessing to me to see this
woman in the shop." We both fall silent.
He goes on: "She has got a very
good history, special to us as black
people." I wonder if he is angling for
a bigger tip, but when I study his
face for insincerity, I find none. He
continues: "When you go back in
history and try to watch these movies and TV
to understand what is
happening, you can see she is someone who played a
very good role in our
society."
Suzman inquires after his age: 39.
She looks uplifted by the encounter, but
after he leaves she is dismissive.
"He's very unusual among young people,"
she says, though older people whom
she helped often stop her in public to
thank her.
Suzman regrets
having retired in 1989, one year before Mandela was released
from jail. She
later wrote an autobiography and played a minor role in the
talks that
prepared 1994's election. A private citizen, she still makes
occasional
interventions in current affairs in what she calls her "nasty
letters".
She laments the quality of current parliamentary culture:
"What I hate about
the present parliament is the seats - there are so many
absent - and the way
they read speeches which have obviously been written by
somebody else, and
which they don't feel strongly about," she says. She also
talks
disapprovingly about the "roar of hatred" that ANC MPs emit when Leon
speaks - worse, she claims, than the occasional anti-Semitic or anti-female
heckling she faced.
I ask her what she makes of the scandal
surrounding Jacob Zuma, Mbeki's
former deputy, whose arraignment on
corruption and rape charges has bitterly
divided the ruling alliance. "I
make of it only one thing - that Mbeki is
unpopular," she says. She is
dismissive of his series of public meetings
held recently to quell
discontent in some poor constituencies over the
quality of public services.
"I don't think that fools anybody," she
exclaims. "I personally never kissed
a baby."
So does she feel as if her life's work has been worth it?
"Absolutely," she
says without hesitation. "There's no doubt that South
Africa is a much
better place today than it was. There is no detention
without trial, the
pass laws are gone and South Africa is no longer a pariah
nation. We're back
in international sport and the children in South Africa
are getting to know
each other thanks to a new education system."
We
talk briefly about Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, and South Africa's seeming
diplomatic support for it. "I think the man is nuts," Suzman says. She found
the uproarious applause he received at Mbeki's inauguration to a second term
last year "terrifying".
Our conversation turns to the state of the
world beyond South Africa. Suzman
criticises Tony Blair's failed push for
broader detention powers for
terrorist suspects, which remind her of similar
measures South Africa took
in 1963. She quotes William Pitt: "Necessity is
the excuse of every
infringement of freedom," she says. She is bleak about
the future. "I think
the next century's going to be worse," she
says.
As sharp as Suzman is, we seem to have fallen into the kind of
general-interest conversation I might have with any educated South
African.
We finish our lunch, and she instructs me to keep an eye on my
editors: She
has been the victim of some bad headlines in the foreign press
(one read
"She Used to Fight the Whites, Now She Fights the Blacks"). Only
when she
stands do I remember I have been lunching with a frail old woman
born in
1917. I help her up the dining-room steps; in turn she gamely offers
me a
lift to my car, which I decline.
Varandas, Inanda Club,
Johannesburg
From AFP, 13 January
Harare - A
five-member delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
is to
arrive in Zimbabwe later this month as the southern African country
struggles to pay back about US$146m owed to the lending club, the finance
minister said on Thursday. The IMF has threatened to expel Zimbabwe from its
ranks for failing to pay back loans since 2001 and has given the southern
African country until February to settle its accounts. "They will be coming
but I cannot comment on our target month of settling our dues," Finance
Minister Herbert Murerwa told AFP. The IMF mission is scheduled to arrive
January 24 and depart on February 1, he said. According to figures from the
Reserve Bank from December, Harare owed the IMF $146.8m (?122.1m). The
central bank pledged to the IMF three months ago that the remainder of the
payment would be paid in Febuary. "I will only be in a position to talk
about our outstanding debt after their visit," Murerwa said.
In
September, the country paid $120m, which represented more than a third of
its outstanding debt to the IMF. That payment earned it a six-month
reprieve. An additional $15m was paid a month later and a further 10 million
was handed over in November. Without the payment, Zimbabwe was at risk of
becoming only the second country to be kicked out of the IMF since the
former Czechoslovakia in 1954. But Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono
cautioned following the last payment that more had to be done, saying in the
state-run The Herald newspaper: "We are not out of the woods (yet)."
Zimbabwe is in the throes of a severe economic crisis with foreign currency
shortages and galloping triple-digit inflation. Given the country's dire
economic straits, last year's payments prompted speculation and suspicion as
to its source, with economists noting that Zimbabwe could not afford to
spare hard currency given its current shortage. The IMF said in October that
it would investigate the source of the loan payback and would report on its
findings to the executive board in March. An IMF mission traveled to
Zimbabwe in June and returned in August of last year.
Comment from ZWNEWS, 13 January
Citizen: Are you the Judean People's Front?
Leader:
What do you mean, Judean People's Front? We're the People's
Front of Judea!
Get lost!
Citizen: Can I join your group?
Leader: No. Get
lost!
Citizen: Look, I hate the Romans as much as anybody.
Leader:
Are you sure?
Citizen: Dead sure. I hate the Romans.
Leader:
Listen. If you really wanted to join the People's Front of
Judea, you'd have
to really hate the Romans.
Citizen: I do!
Follower: Oh yeah? How
much?
Citizen: A lot!
Leader: Right. You're in. Listen. The only
people we hate more than the
Romans are the Judean People's
Front.
Follower: Yeah. Splitters!
Second Follower: And the Judean
Popular People's Front.
Leader: Oh yeah. Splitters!
Follower: And
the People's Front of Judea.
Second Follower: Splitters!
Leader:
What?
Follower: The People's Front of Judea. Splitters!
Leader:
We're the People's Front of Judea!
Follower: Oh. I thought we were the
Popular Front?
Leader: People's Front!
Second Follower: Whatever
happened to the Popular Front?
Leader: He's over there.
(With
apologies to Monty Python)
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
The Daily Mirror Reporter
issue date
:2006-Jan-13
THE government will ban anti-malarials - chloroquine and
fancida - citing
patients resistance to the drugs, Minister of Health and
Child Welfare David
Parirenyatwa has said.
In an interview, Parirenyatwa
said his ministry intended to introduce
coartin, which is very effective in
fighting mosquito-borne diseases.
The minister said, malaria parasites have
developed growing resistance to
chloroquine and fancida, hence the
introduction of coartin.
With coartin, patients would take it twice a day -
other regimes require as
many as eight pills a day.
"This is because
current treatments require patients to take a large number
of tablets often,
hence many people do
not complete their course properly.
"This leaves them
vulnerable to recurrences of the disease. The malaria
parasite later modify
and develop resistance," said Parirenyatwa.
The new drug is an
artemisian-based combination (ATC) made from a Chinese
plant.
Parirenyatwa said part of the Global Fund to fight Aids
Tuberculosis and
Malaria (GFATM) would go towards the introduction of the
drug.
"Funding for the drug was part of our application to the Global Fund,"
said
Parirenyatwa.
Zimbabwe received about US$21 million from the Global
Fund for malaria
programmes.
Malaria is the third largest killer in
Zimbabwe after HIV and Aids and
Tuberculosis (TB).
It accounts for at
least 400 admissions at each central hospital per month
during
peak
season and claims around 2 000 deaths annually.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
From
Roderick Mukumbira in Bulawayo
issue date :2006-Jan-13
OVER 700
families in southern Chiredzi district are set to be relocated to
make way
for the proposed Gaza-Kruger-Gonarezhou Transfrontier mega Park, a
Parks
official has said.
Spokesperson for the department of National Parks and
Wildlife Management,
Retired Major Edward Mbewe, said of the 750 Chitsa
families: "These families
are residing in the natural corridor of the wild
animals. We would want
these animals to move freely from Gomana through
Marirangwe right up to
Bikita following their natural
corridor."
Gonarenzou National Park will merge with South Africa's Kruger
National Park
and Gaza in Mozambique to create one of the biggest animal
sanctuaries in
the world.
The proposed vast game reserve will be
situated where the three countries
share the same border.
Mbewe said the
department plans to declare the area an intensive protected
zone reserved
for the breeding of the endangered rhinoceros species, but
this could only
be done after relocating the villagers.
He said Parks had deployed technical
teams in the area to identify land
where the affected families would be
settled.
Their aim, Mbewe said, would be to give the relocation programme "a
human
face", adding the issue was his department's top priority for the
year."We
will not move the villagers unless land is identified," he said.
He,
however, could not state how much has been set aside for the relocation
exercise.
Depending on identified resettlement areas, Mbewe said the
department aimed
to ensure that villagers benefit from the revenue and jobs
created by the
Transfrontier Park.
"We also want the villagers to benefit
through CAMPFIRE programmes and
conservation zones so that they can live in
harmony side-by-side with
wildlife,"he said.
Meanwhile, work on the
refurbishment of structures in Gonarezhou is nearing
completion in time for
the proposed merger.
Mbewe said they refurbished the park's lodges and roads.
Five campsites,
currently being set up, had already been identified, he
added."The area has
also been electrified and what is left is the cabling of
the structures,"
said Mbewe.