http://avherald.com/h?article=413fa2f4
By Simon Hradecky, created Sunday, Jan 25th 2009
19:13Z, last updated
Sunday, Jan 25th 2009 19:33Z
An Air Zimbabwe
Boeing 737-200, scheduled passenger flight from
Lubumbashi to Kinshasa
(Democratic Republic of Congo) with 50 passengers,
returned to Lubumbashi
after the right engine caught fire about 15 minutes
into the flight. The
crew managed a safe landing still on fire 30 minutes
after departure, all
passengers and crew could be evacuated without
injuries. Emergency services
extinguished the fire, the airplane however is
reported substantially
damaged.
http://www.afriquejet.com/
African
leaders will try to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe once and for all
during
their Summit in Addis Ababa later this week after a series of failed
attempts at the regional level, African Union Commission chief Jean Ping
said.
In an exclusive interview with PANA, the AU Commission
Chairperson said
African leaders were committed to finding a solution to the
continuous
political crisis in Zimbabwe and would take definite steps during
their
meeting on 1-3 February, to conclusively end the crisis.
"The
issue of Zimbabwe would be raised during the Summit. We are committed
to
finding a solution. There is an urgent need to get out of the crisis,"
Ping
told PANA.
African leaders meeting six months ago in the Egyptian resort
city of Sharm
El Sheikh recommended the formation of a unity government in
Zimbabwe to end
a political crisis after the country's troubled presidential
elections,
which the opposi t ion one in the first round.
The
opposition withdrew from the second round following acts of violence and
intimidation against its supporters.
The Summit directed the
Zimbabwean leaders to urgently negotiate modalities
of finding a solution to
the political crisis through the formation of a
unity government, bringing
on board members of the Movement for Democratic
Change
(MDC).
Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe has been reported to contemplate
the
formation of a unilateral government, made up of his allies in the
ruling
ZANU-PF party, against the popular wish to bring on board the MDC
leadership
led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
"There are a under of meetings
that have taken place in South Africa,
unfortunately, they were not
conclusive," Ping said.
The AU chief spoke a day before Southern African
leaders were due to hold
another round of talks in another last ditch effort
to save a faltering
peace process in Zimbabwe.
Ping, who spoke on the
sidelines of a pre-Summit meeting to discuss gender
issues convened by a
coalition of African Women Solidarity Network, said
finding a solution to
the Zimbabwean crisis was among the top issues to be
debated at the AU
Summit.
He noted that the Southern African leaders were due to begin a
new round of
deliberations on the Zimbabwean crisis.
Senior officials
at the AU Commission hope the Summit, due in Addis Ababa,
next Sunday, could
authorize a more intensive involvement of the AU on
finding a
solution.
The AU delegated the South African Development Community (SADC)
the task of
crafting a solution to the crisis in Zimbabwe, but after six
months of
little progress, signs of impatience with the SADC-mediated talks
are
growing across the African landscape.
Addis Ababa -
25/01/2009
Pana
http://www.apanews.net
APA-Harare
(Zimbabwe) Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe left Harare
on Sunday for
South Africa where he would attend an emergency regional
summit to discuss a
four-month deadlock over the formation of a unity
government, APA learns
here.
Mugabe would be joined by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai
of the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Arthur Mutambara of a
breakaway MDC
faction for the extraordinary summit called by the Southern
African
Development Community (SADC).
Efforts by SADC to revive
Zimbabwe's stalled power-sharing agreement
ended in deadlock on January 19
after Mugabe and Tsvangirai failed to agree
on the composition of a
power-sharing government.
More than 12 hours of SADC-brokered talks
in Harare failed to
reconcile the positions of Mugabe's ZANU PF and the MDC,
forcing the SADC
mediators to call for a full summit of the 14-member group
in Pretoria on
Monday.
The SADC mediation team was headed by
the organization's chairperson,
South Africa's President Kgalema Motlanthe,
and included Mozambican
President Armando Emilio Guebuza and former South
African president Thabo
Mbeki.
This will be the fourth summit
SADC has held since Mugabe and
Tsvangirai signed a power-sharing agreement
in September last year.
Implementation of the agreement has stalled
as the Zimbabwean
politicians haggle over control of key cabinet portfolios
in the proposed
unity government.
JN/daj/APA
2009-01-25
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
The
green streets of Harare look lovely from the Zambezi suite on the 17th
floor
of the Rainbow Towers hotel, where Zimbabwe's power sharing talks
reached a
deadlock.
By Peta Thornycroft in Harare
Last Updated: 5:43PM GMT 25
Jan 2009
As President Robert Mugabe looked down from its expensive
rooms last week,
he could see the squat buildings of colonial times dwarfed
by gleaming
office blocks erected during the 29 years of his
rule.
From that great height he and the room's other occupants - the
country's
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, and the presidents of two
neighbouring
countries - were unable to see the city's wheel-crunching
potholes fill up
with a summer downpour and mingle with untreated sewage
rising from broken
pipes.
Given their separation from the city's
misery, it was perhaps no surprise
that they emerged after 12 hours of talks
without agreement.
In a series of off-record interviews with government
and opposition
insiders, The Sunday Telegraph has unlocked the painful story
of the
negotiations, as Mr Tsvangirai debates signing a flawed agreement to
enter a
government of national unity in Pretoria, the South African capital,
on
Monday.
The leaders of neighbouring countries are urging him to
join an interim
government with President Mugabe, a man who has proven
completely
untrustworthy, and prepare for new elections in two years
time.
Some of his closest advisers, however, are counselling Mr
Tsvangirai, 56, to
stall the negotiations in the hope that economic
catastrophe will lead to
the collapse of the Mugabe regime.
On paper,
the argument for joining the interim government appears strong: as
prime
minister he would be in charge of the daily running of government and
retain
control of ministries that deliver services to the people - a key
electoral
asset.
But Mr Mugabe has refused to give up control of the security
forces and some
key ministries, and has undermined the talks process by
subjecting
opposition supporters to harassment, arrest and even
abduction.
The Southern African leaders who have cajoled, wheedled and
bullied the two
sides into concessions are running out of patience: they
have warned
privately that they have other, equally pressing matters that
demand their
attention.
If no agreement is reached on Monday, they
might end their efforts.
Mr Tsvangirai, 56, the leader of the Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC),
has now described Monday's meeting as "a last
chance" to resolve the
outstanding areas of dispute.
Since he won the
first round of a presidential election last year, but
pulled out of a
run-off vote because of Mr Mugabe's violence, the MDC leader
has struggled
to translate his success at the ballot into political power.
Yet although
the former trade union leader is presented as the champion of
Zimbabwe's
downtrodden voters, there is a growing sense that his own
weaknesses have
sabotaged any chance of a peaceful resolution.
In one crucial meeting
last week, according to one insider, he appeared to
be "less than coherent",
seemed unsure what was in documents prepared by his
aides and oscillated in
private over whether to offer concessions.
Convinced of the righteousness
of his own leadership, and contemptuous of
rivals who played lesser parts in
the independence struggle, Mr Mugabe, 84,
has few reservations about
dismissing the challenge of his opponents.
In contrast, the less educated
Mr Tsvangirai is said to feel insecure even
in the presence of his own aides
and party loyalists.
To make matters worse for Mr Tsvangirai, his
relations with the southern
African leaders mediating the talks - President
Kgalema Motlanthe of South
Africa, President Armando Guebuza of Mozambique
and the former South African
president Thabo Mbeki - have deteriorated to
near dysfunction.
Their role is critical: the three men represent the
only countries that
still hold sway over Mr Mugabe and his
regime.
They are now pressing an "emerging consensus" document, that
supposedly
addressed Mr Tsvangirai's concerns about ministry positions and
the release
of opposition supporters from prison.
After meeting the
mediators, Mr Tsvangirai suddenly demanded a face-to-face
meeting with Mr
Mugabe - apparently in an attempt to stamp his authority on
proceedings by
reminding the president who had won last year's election.
It was duly
arranged, but such was Mr Mugabe's contempt for the opposition
leader that
it lasted for less than five minutes, humiliating an infuriated
Mr
Tsvangirai.
As tempers cooled, the mediators asked Arthur Mutambara, the
leader of a
smaller opposition party, to talk to the president
himself.
Nobody can be sure what was said in this meeting, but the
opinions of Zanu
PF lackeys, lounging in the hotel bar, give a tantalising
glimpse.
"You came second in the election", is what they believe Mr
Mutambara told an
incandescent President Mugabe, who replied: "I promise you
that will never
happen again".
As the politicians ordered meals of
fish and chips, T-bone steaks and
chicken to fuel the 12-hour session of
talks, Mr Tsvangirai's advisers
appeared bogged down in tangential issues
that would yield little in terms
of actual power.
Suited delegates
slipped the leftover food to policemen standing guard
outside - men who had
not been paid for months because of the political
crisis.
Half way
through his discussions with the southern African mediators, Mr
Tsvangirai
asked to be excused for a few minutes, only to return two hours
later with a
document prepared by his advisers three floors below containing
a new list
of demands. He then seemed unsure what was in it.
An irritated Mr
Motlanthe, the South African president, chastised Mr
Tsvangirai, saying:
"You speak to yourself but you don't even listen."
Mr Tsvangirai's
instinct has always been to try to make the power sharing
agreement work -
in the face of all evidence of Mr Mugabe's bad faith.
He appears to
understand that no amount of political pressure will force the
veteran
president to give up his position.
In his view, the MDC must join the
interim government and use its
parliamentary majority to play for time and
hope that a new opportunity to
unseat Zimbabwe's brutal leader emerges in
elections in 2011.
But his aides disagree, and so far Mr Tsvangirai has
been unwilling to
overrule them.
On a commuter bus, far below the
plush suites of the Rainbow Towers, a
lively argument showed that the debate
was not limited to the higher
echelons of power.
"If Tsvangirai cared
about people he would have gone into this government
before Christmas," said
a middle-aged lady angry about the collapse in
government
services.
"He has shown he is only interested in himself," another woman
said, in
disappointed agreement.
http://af.reuters.com
Sun Jan 25, 2009 4:58pm
GMT
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Botswana's President Seretse
Khama Ian
Khama, one of Robert Mugabe's toughest critics, will attend a
regional
summit in South Africa to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe, a
spokesman said
on Sunday.
Botswana government spokesman Jeff Ramsay
confirmed Khama would be at the
Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)
summit, but declined to give
further details.
"Yes, he is
(attending)," Ramsay told Reuters. "He may be leaving tomorrow
morning."
Khama, one of the few African leaders to publicly criticise
the Zimbabwean
president, did not attend an SADC summit in August in South
Africa because
Botswana does not recognise Mugabe's
re-election.
Regional leaders have so far failed to break a deadlock in
negotiations to
form a unity government between Mugabe and leader of the
opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) Morgan Tsvangirai.
http://cnews.canoe.ca
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 25, 2009
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwean police have slapped a last-minute ban on
a
opposition a rally in the capital of Harare.
The ban - and its
timing - prompted allegations that security forces
are acting on the orders
of President Robert Mugabe's party.
It came as members of the
Movement Democratic Change, the country's
largest opposition group, were
already gathering for the rally on the eve of
a regional summit on
Zimbabwe's political crisis.
Human rights activists say Mugabe's
government has intensified its
crackdown on free speech and dissent in
recent weeks.
But police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena says Sunday's
rally was banned
because of the danger of violence among opposition
factions.
Opposition spokesman Nelson Chamisa dismissed that as
"ridiculous,"
accusing police of acting on the orders of Mugabe's
party.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=10378
January 24, 2009
By Raymond
Maingire
HARARE - The police have barred a rally which the Movement for
Democratic
Change (MDC) had organized for this Sunday in the town of
Chitungwiza,
south of Harare.
In a letter written to the MDC on
Saturday, the Officer Commanding
Chitungwiza police district, a Chief
Superintendent Ngulube, claimed the
rally was a risk to ordinary
Zimbabweans.
Under Zimbabwe's stringent security laws, political parties
are required to
clear with their local police before organising their
rallies.
"The authority to hold such rally has been cancelled," Chief
Superintendent
Ngulube said.
"Political tension in the country as of
now is not conducive for any rally
to take place.
"The gathering will
attract a large crowd such that police will be unable to
control the venue
since it is in an open space and that police officers are
committed to other
pressing duties.
"Basing on the above, it is our constitutional
responsibility to maintain
law and order in the territory of Zimbabwe and we
are not prepared to risk
our Zimbabwe citizens' lives."
He said the
rally had initially been sanctioned on the basis that MDC
President Morgan
Tsvangirai, party secretary general Tendai Biti and
organizing secretary,
Elias Mudzuri would be the speakers.
The three were now reported to be in
South Africa where another SADC
Extra-Ordinary summit has been convened for
Monday to unravel the political
impasse between Zanu PF and MDC.
The
MDC had intended to use to update its supporters on the state of the
ongoing
talks as well as focus on other challenges facing Zimbabweans such
as
massive starvation, the cholera outbreak and the collapse of basic social
services such as education and health.
MDC spokesperson, Nelson
Chamisa criticized the ban on his party's rally.
"This confirms the fact
that Zanu-PF is not yet ready for democracy," said
Chamisa.
"It shows
Zanu-PF Is not yet ready to embrace the freedoms of the people. It
shows
Zanu-PF is still locked in obscurantism.
"It shows we are still stuck
with Zanu-PF the dictatorship being dominant
over matters of
democracy."
The MDC, which accuses President Robert Mugabe's government
of using the
police to block its activities, is fighting for control of the
Home Affairs
ministry, which controls the police as well as the running of
the country's
elections.
Under the September 15, 2008 unity deal,
Zanu-PF shall control 15 ministries
with the MDC taking up 13.
The
smaller faction of the MDC led by Professor Arthur Mutambara will be
allocated three.
Source: World Health Organization (WHO) Date: 24 Jan 2009 ** Daily information on new deaths should not imply that these deaths
occurred in cases reported that day. Therefore daily CFRs >100% may
occasionally result A. Highlights of the day: - 1906 cases and 21 deaths added today (in comparison 1368cases and 59 deaths
yesterday) - 36.2% of the districts affected have reported today (21 out of 58 affected
districts) - 88.7 % of districts reported to be affected (55 districts/62) - Chitungwiza City was reporting admitted patients only (Plan C) and they
have updated their database with Outpatients cases (1001) which were not
previously reported. - Revised figures for Centenary (178 to 166), Mbire (112 to 106), Binga (1037
to 819), Chikomba (122 to 104), UMP (255 to 253), Kariba Rural (370 to 369) - Cumulative Institutional Case Fatality Rate 2.1% - Daily Institutional Case Fatality Rate 0.3%
* Please note that
daily information collection is a challenge due to communication and staff
constraints. On-going data cleaning may result in an increase or decrease in the
numbers. Any change will then be explained.
http://www.apanews.net
APA-Harare
(Zimbabwe) The Zimbabwe government has formally agreed to pay
civil servants
foreign currency-denominated salaries with effect from this
month, the
state-run The Sunday Mail reports here, officially putting to
rest
speculation that the authorities were contemplating a full
dollarisation of
the economy.
The paper said the move to award civil servants foreign
currency salaries
was agreed during last Friday's meeting between government
and civil service
worker representatives.
The chairperson of the
umbrella body of the civil service staff associations
Tendai Chikowore told
The Sunday Mail that details of the new packages would
now be worked out
between the government and workers' representatives.
"Nothing concrete
has been offered by the employer, except the acceptance in
principle of
paying civil servants in foreign currency," Chikowore said.
The
government would meet this week to discuss the proposal, after
which
modalities of the new grading structure would be agreed.
The
move to award civil servants hard currency salaries comes barely a week
after
the country's largest trade union body said its members would not
accept
salaries in the free-falling Zimbabwe dollars.
The Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions last Monday said most workers were
failing to access basic
services because of the dollarisation of the
economy. Dollarisation is a
situation when the currency of a country is
replaced by or used in parallel
to the currency of a more stable economy.
The term is not only applied to
usage of the United States dollar but also
generally to the use of any
foreign currency as the national currency.
Most traders and service
providers have stopped accepting the Zimdollar as a
means of payment, citing
the country's runaway inflation last estimated at
231 million percent in July
2008.
The central bank has since last September licensed foreign currency
shops in
a move meant to improve the availability of products and cut the
number of
Zimbabweans making monthly trips to neighbouring South Africa,
Botswana and
Mozambique for groceries.
JN/daj/APA 2009-01-25
The head of Zimbabwe's reserve bank explains the policies that have led to hyperinflation.
Alternatively heralded as an incompetent fool and a tragic hero, Gideon Gono has been at the center of Zimbabwe's economic decline since he was appointed governor of the country's Reserve Bank in 2003. A ZANU-PF insider and by many accounts president Robert Mugabe's right-hand man, Gono generally keeps himself shielded from the foreign press, fortifying himself in luxury hotels or his 47-bedroom mansion in Harare. Gono is known in some circles as "Mr. Inflation" because he has overseen the printing of billions of dollars in worthless notes, most recently Zimbabwe's trillion-dollar bill, to be launched later this year. But he is more than a central banker. He is thought to have had a hand in many of Zimbabwe's controversial government ventures, from rewarding party loyalists with land to downplaying the magnitude of the cholera epidemic. In an exclusive interview with NEWSWEEK's Alaina Varvaloucas and Jerry Guo in Johannesburg, Gono addresses his critics in the international community. He blames most of his country's woes on Western economic sanctions, though Western officials maintain that the travel and business bans directed at top members of the Mugabe regime cannot undermine an the economy. Gono sees himself as a rags to riches success story with a Puritan work ethic: he says he doesn't drink, only sleeps 4 hours a night, runs daily and has a blood pressure of 120/60. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: A lot of people have blamed you for Zimbabwe's economic
collapse.
GONO: The West wants you to think it's because of
mismanagement. But sanctions have had quite a devastating effect on the country.
I cannot think of any genocide that is worse that that. By their very nature,
sanctions are supposed to induce fear. It's like terrorism. It's callous.
But the United States maintains that the sanctions are targeted
toward top members of Mugabe's regime, like
yourself.
They do have an impact [on me] but it is the degree of
suffering that the world is missing. It's not like I'm an international persona
non grata; I often travel. Quite contrary to what the world has been made to
believe, the sanctions are not really hitting the middle to high-income bracket.
The impact of sanctions is to deny the country access to credit facilities, and
then we are unable to import fuel. Then the poor suffer.
Now the global economy is also going through a credit crunch. What do
you make of that?
I sit back and see the world today crying over
the recent credit crunch, becoming hysterical about something which has not even
lasted for a year, and I have been living with it for 10 years. My country has
had to go for the past decade without credit.
Your critics blame your monetary policies for Zimbabwe's economic problems. I've been condemned by traditional economists who said that printing money is responsible for inflation. Out of the necessity to exist, to ensure my people survive, I had to find myself printing money. I found myself doing extraordinary things that aren't in the textbooks. Then the IMF asked the U.S. to please print money. I began to see the whole world now in a mode of practicing what they have been saying I should not. I decided that God had been on my side and had come to vindicate me.
Do you feel optimistic about Barack Obama's incoming administration? I don't want anyone to put unnecessary pressure on Obama and hold him to supernatural powers. He's coming into a situation that is untenable already. By the very same standards, I don't like anybody saying if President Mugabe was to go tomorrow, the fortunes of Zimbabweans will change for the better, as if he is personally liable for our situation.
A lot of people do hold Mugabe personally liable. Wouldn't sanctions
be lifted, at the very least, if Mugabe lets go of power?
[Laughs]. The sanctions will not be lifted because Mugabe leaves
office. It is not about Mugabe.
How so?
Unless they are engaging in some colossal
intellectual honesty, they will not admit the sanctions are political. There are
other countries with serious human rights shortfalls, even war, but you find
[Western] investors going there.
Would you do anything differently if you had the last five years to
do over again?
There are certain things, policies with the benefit
of hindsight, where we could've managed our affairs better. I don't want to
leave you with an impression that Gono or Mugabe are direct descendants of St.
John or St. Paul. We are human.
What would you have changed?
There is a very high level
of indiscipline and corruption in the Zimbabwean economy. I would enact tougher
legislation that would ensure offenders would never do it again. I would also
deal differently with the critics of our land-reform programs, and invest more
in educating them. We were outwitted in the propaganda war. We didn't go out
there to explain to the world how our war of liberation came about in the first
place.
Is it time to change course then?
Only a fool does not
change course when it is necessary. Because economics is not an exact science,
you want to be able to be relevant. The only constant is change and
adaptation.
In November you shut down Zimbabwe's stock exchange. Will you open it
again?
The stockbrokers were creating a money supply that wasn't
there. I printed Z$1.5 quadrillion, but the exchange was operating with Z$100
sextillion. So I said, "Who is doing my job?" Unless there is more discipline
and honor, the exchange will stay closed. I can't be bothered. I don't know when
it'll open. It's a free market, a business which must be allowed to succeed or
fail.
So will 2009 be a year of improvement or disaster?
It's
got to be a good year. What keeps me bright and looking forward to every day is
that it can't be any worse. And those who have studied the history of economies
know that we are down, but that the only thing that can happen is we will move
up. That is a certainty.
What about the cholera epidemic? Many have called the government's
handling of the health crisis a crime.
The cholera is under
control. I've been personally involved in ensuring that we minimize and finally
eliminate the disease. Every year there is a cholera outbreak in southern
Africa; the epicenter of the disease just happened to be in Zimbabwe this
year.
Do you view your term as a success?
It's a mystery to
many how I have survived. I am modestly credited with the survival strategy of
my country. The issue is if you want to break Zimbabwe and want it to fall, just
deal with one man. You deal with Gideon Gono.
That sounds a bit egotistical.
I owe a lot of my
character and who I am today from a humble background. I was poor. I got my
start making tea and keeping house. That is when I developed my own philosophy
of life. Don't look down on anybody. I still lay claim that I am the best tea
maker in the world. Of cleaning floors and toilets I take pride. I'm a normal
guy: I miss going to the supermarket. One would like more freedom.
Do you have constant security?
It's elaborate. It's an
occupational hazard. If you ask Bernanke or Greenspan, it's the same, but it
just differs in intensity. If you raise the interest rate you'll be friends of
people who have access to money. If you lower the interest rate, you'll be the
darling of borrowers, but pensioners will curse you to hell. It's never about
popularity. At all times you are definitely hurting some people in the
economy.
Many say you profit off the poverty of others.
That is
simply not true.
What do you think of your many critics?
I have been in
the trenches during every moment of survival for my country. Any central bank
governor is of necessity. When things go bad, we governors are the fall guys. No
other governor in the world has had to deal with the kind of inflation levels
that I deal with, no other governor has to come up with the gymnastics and
strategy for the survival of his country. But let me say that in my bank resides
the cutting edge of the country. I'm privileged to be the leader of that
team.
You've been called Mugabe's right-hand man. How closely involved in politics are you ? It's impossible to be directing the course of an entire economy and divorce yourself from politics. Politics are important because the turnaround of the economy hinges on political stability, but I can't tell when that will happen.
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Saturday, 24
January 2009
BY JOHN MARIMO
HARARE - The government
has established a cemetery at one of its
biggest jails to bury hundreds of
prisoners dying from disease and hunger,
according to a confidential report
shown to The Zimbabwean on Sunday. The
report prepared by prison officials
for Commissioner of Prisons Paradzai
Zimondi paints a horrifying picture of
conditions in Zimbabwe's overcrowded
jails, long neglected by a government
hard pressed for cash and resources
after nearly a decade of acute
recession.
At one time, last month, prison officials had to contact
a mass burial
of decomposing bodies of prisoners that had been kept in a
room at Chikurubi
Maximum Security Prison for six moths because a mortuary
at Harare Central
Prison was full, the report said in horrifying
illustration of grim
conditions in jails.
Last year saw the
highest number of deaths of inmates ever recorded
since Zimbabwe's 1980
independence from Britain, said the report titled "End
of year 2008 brief to
the Commissioner of Prisons".
The report was handed to Zimondi on
Monday this week, according to our
sources in the prison
service.
Efforts to get comment on the report from either Zimondi
or Justice
Minister Patrick Chinamasa were fruitless.
According
to the report, 2008 was "the most horrific and traumatic
year" for both
inmates and prison wardens.
Prisoners went for days without a meal
and were occasionally supplied
with food "only meant to keep a person alive"
such as the staple sadza (a
thick porridge made from maize meal) and salted,
unclean water, according to
the eight-page report.
"The death
impact of prisoners saw the opening of a cemetery at
Chikurubi Prison Farm.
The main causes of prisoners' deaths included reduced
meals, shortage of
drugs and poor health environment in our prisons," it
said.
"Sir, we want to believe that 2008 had the highest number of
prisoners'
deaths in the history of the ZPS (Zimbabwe Prisons Service). In
Mashonaland
Region alone in 2008 we witnessed a total number of 900
prisoners deaths,"
according to the report.
A cholera epidemic that has killed close
to 3 000 Zimbabweans since
August has apparently also spread to jails,
killing 234 prisoners between 23
December 2008 and 10 January 2009,
according to the report.
"The most challenge we faced was living
with dead bodies outside
mortuaries," the grim document said. "The situation
was even very bad at
Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison where bodies have
been kept in a room
since July 2008 up to 31 December 2008 mainly because
the mortuary at Harare
Central Prison could not accommodate
them."
With Mugabe's government preoccupied with trying to find
money to buy
food, essential medicines, fuel, electricity and for salaries
for hundreds
of thousands of its workers, prisoners are a forgotten
lot.
More often than not, inmates in many of the country's jails
have to
survive on a single meal per day of sadza and cabbage boiled in
salted water
because there is no money to buy adequate
supplies.
An outbreak of pellagra disease in 2007 killed at least
23 inmates at
the notorious Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. Pellagra is a
vitamin
deficiency disease caused by shortage of vitamin B3 and
protein.
Overcrowding has only helped worsen the situation with the
country's
55 jails said to be holding anything above 35 000 inmates at any
given time
which is more than double their designed carrying capacity of 17
000
inmates.
A parliamentary committee that toured Chikurubi
and other prisons in
2006 was shocked to find inmates clad in torn, dirty
uniforms and crammed
into overcrowded cells with filthy; overflowing toilets
that had not been
flushed for weeks as water had been cut off due to unpaid
bills.
The committee said in a report that the conditions in
prisons were
inhuman. However, nothing much has been done to date to improve
conditions
due to a lack of resources.
http://news-en.trend.az
25.01.09
09:28
A
journalists' organization said Sunday it protested to Zimbabwe's
ambassador
to China over an alleged assault by the wife of president Robert
Mugabe on a
Hong Kong photographer, dpa reported.
Richard Jones, 42, chief
photographer of the Sinopix photo agency,
suffered cuts and bruises in the
alleged attack 10 days ago in which he
claimed he was repeatedly punched by
Zimbabwe's First Lady.
Jones had been photographing Grace Mugabe, 43,
while she was on a
shopping trip to the former British colony where her
daughter Bona is a
student.
Police are investigating the alleged
assault which reportedly took place
outside a shopping centre in a prime
tourist district and was recorded on
CCTV cameras.
Welshman Jones
was taking photographs on commission for the Sunday Times
newspaper in
London when he claims he was confronted first by a bodyguard
and then by
Mugabe herself after taking photographs of her in the street.
In a
letter to Zimbabwe Ambassador Frederick Shava, the president of the
Foreign
Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong conveyed his "deep dismay over the
disgraceful incident."
"The Hong Kong police have opened a formal
investigation into this
incident and we look forward to the widespread
publication of its results,
regardless of whether any of the parties
involved are protected by
diplomatic immunity," Ernst Herb wrote to
Shava.
"In a city where the rule of law prevails and media freedom is
respected,
no person - no matter his or her rank or status - can expect such
a matter
to be swept under the carpet."
Mugabe returned to
Zimbabwe shortly after the alleged assault and before
it was reported to
police. She may be able to claim diplomatic immunity if
she returns to the
city of 6.9 million.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, is seeking cash to
beat sanctions from
Libya, Iran, Russia and China - all of which share his
poor record on
democracy and human rights.
By Itai Mushekwe
Last
Updated: 5:41PM GMT 25 Jan 2009
As Zimbabwe issued a new 100 trillion
dollar note this month, Mr Mugabe
tried to avert economic catastrophe by
making contact with Libya and Iran -
two countries with large oil reserves
and a history of bad relations with
the West.
Mr Mugabe has long shown
himself impervious to the suffering caused by his
country's almost total
economic collapse, which was precipitated by the
seizure of white-owned farms
in the late 1990s.
Yet the additional hardship caused by sanctions has
struck directly at
Zimbabwe's political elite - and threatened to undermine
the veteran
president.
Now the collapse of power sharing talks between
Mr Mugabe and Zimbabwe's
opposition has made his need for money all the more
urgent lest Western
countries redouble their efforts to put pressure on the
dictator.
In response, Mr Mugabe is courting rich countries that might
prove less
amenable to Western scruples about human rights.
Earlier
this month, he dispatched his foreign minister, Simbarashe
Mbengegwi, to
Tripoli to deliver a begging letter to the Libyan leader
Colonel Muammar
Gaddafi.
"Mbengegwi was sent to Tripoli on Jan 11 to canvas for an
economic package
from Gaddafi," said a central committee member of the ruling
Zanu PF party.
"The economy needs billions of dollars in foreign capital to
halt our
economic woes.gn
"Mugabe is trying everything possible, and
if we are lucky the Chinese are
soon going to chip in. Already diplomatic
engagement has been made with
Beijing, and with Iran."
China's
unwavering support for the dictator - despite his wanton destruction
of
Zimbabwe's economy and disregard for its voters - has long irritated
Western
diplomats.
Even at the height of election violence last year, when Zanu
PF thugs were
roaming the countryside attacking opposition voters, China
dispatched a
cargo ship, laden with weapons, to the African state.
An
Asian diplomat in Harare confirmed that China was considering helping
Mr
Mugabe again to protect its economic interests in the
country.
"China is considering making an economic loan to Mugabe," the
diplomat said.
"But this has yet to be finalised."
Iran, locked in its
own acrimonious dispute with Zimbabwe's enemies, signed
a memorandum of
understanding to renovate the African country's defunct oil
refinery in
2007.
Sitting on the world's second largest reserves of crude oil, the
Islamic
republic is now said by Zimbabwean officials to be offering long-term
fuel
supplies in return for exclusive rights to mine some "strategic"
minerals in
Zimbabwe.
The agreement appears to be part of a broader
Zimbabwean effort to use its
natural resources as an incentive to potential
patrons.
The central bank, under one of Mr Mugabe's closest lieutenants,
Gideon Gono,
has reportedly made fresh overtures to Russian businessmen who
have in the
past shown an interest in buying Zimbabwe's biggest coal
mine.
According to Zimbabwe cabinet sources, Russian businesses would be
exempt
from tough new investment rules that compel foreign companies to cede
more
than half their shares to the government.
The acting information
minister, Paul Mangwana, confirmed that Harare was
seeking an economic
package from its would-be allies, but could not say how
much money was
involved.
"Zimbabwe has friends in Southern Africa and other parts of the
world who
are sympathetic with us, but we not at liberty to discuss the full
details
about it," he said.
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Saturday, 24
January 2009
Loopholes in international law likely to save
his day
CAPE TOWN - President Robert Mugabe has survived Western
sanctions,
defied a depressing economic crisis that anywhere else would
bring down the
government and legal experts say the Zimbabwean leader is
certain to escape
justice -- thanks to loopholes in international
law.
Mugabe, turning 85 next month and the only ruler Zimbabweans
have ever
known, took office at his country's 1980 independence from
Britain. During
his nearly three decades in power he is accused of
sanctioning the massacre
of about 20 000 people from the Ndebele ethnic
group who mostly opposed his
rule.
After wining a
violence-marred election in 2005, Mugabe ordered the
infamous Operation
Murambatsvina, a dubious slum demolition exercise that
left 700 000
Zimbabweans without shelter or food.
The United Nations labeled the
slum demolition campaign a violation of
poor people's rights and possibly
international law, while it later surfaced
Mugabe ordered the exercise to
pre-empt possible mass revolt against his
rule by depopulating
opposition-supporting urban areas.
Mugabe -- one of the last of a dying
breed of African "Big Man" rulers
from the one-party state era -- has
ruthlessly clamped down on civil
society, opposition parties, the press and
any other voice of dissension.
His government has also overseen the
systematic denial of critical food
supplies to hungry opposition
supporters.
However, legal experts insist that the Zimbabwean ruler
will most
likely escape indictment at the International Criminal Court (ICC)
despite
the detailed recording by the both media and human rights
organizations of
human rights abuses during his long reign.
University of Cape Town (UCT) human rights lawyer Tendai
Nhenga-Chakarisa
said there were inherent weaknesses in international law
that invariably
make the activities of some world leaders fall beyond the
reach of
international criminal law.
"If a country has not ratified, for
instance, the Rome Statute (which
creates the ICC), its citizens cannot be
hauled before the international
criminal court for any of the international
crimes set out in the
instrument: Genocide, Crimes against Humanity, the
Crime of Aggression and
War Crimes," she said.
Criminologist
Emmanuel Maravanyika also of the UCT says the "first
hurdle would be to get
the UN Security Council to approve of such a
prosecution. But events at the
UN recently reveal that Mugabe has friends
there who can veto any suggestion
or resolution."
South African Bishop Desmond Tutu in December called on
the
international community to intervene militarily in Zimbabwe and indict
Mugabe for refusing to step down. He told Dutch current affairs programme
NOVA that Mugabe must be forced out of power as soon as possible.
"The point is that we should stop the suffering of so many people,"
said the
77 year old 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
United States Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice also urged Mugabe to
step down, citing a cholera
epidemic that has killed more than 2 000
Zimbabweans since August as an
example of failed government in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe nonchalantly dismissed
these calls.
Although Mugabe has signed the Rome Statute, he has
refused to ratify
it to insulate himself and his cronies from possible
prosecution before the
international tribunal for alleged crimes against
humanity.
Nhenga-Chakarisa, however, says members of Mugabe's
government in
Harare can still be hauled to The Hague if the permanent
members of the
Security Council, particularly China and Russia, acted with a
common purpose
like they did in the Sudanese case.
Last year,
the Security Council asked ICC Prosecutor Luis
Moreno-Ocampo to investigate
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's for
allegedly masterminding a
campaign of genocide in Darfur in which 35 000
people were killed and 2.5
million refugees were persecuted.
Al-Bashir is the most senior
figure pursued by the court since it was
set up in 2002. The ICC is also
investigating situations in Uganda, the
Central African Republic and the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
Nhenga-Chakarisa said that Mugabe could
also be indicted if a new
government came to power in Harare and immediately
ratified the Rome Statute
and hands him over to the ICC, thereby giving the
institution jurisdiction
to prosecute him.
Richard Dicker, director
of the International Justice program at Human
Rights Watch, recently said
that in order to pursue a case against Mugabe in
any court, "one would need
to put together a legally persuasive memo that
crimes against humanity have
occurred in Zimbabwe and that the President of
Zimbabwe is very much linked
to the commission of those crimes".
Maravanyika concurred with this
argument, adding that the Zimbabwean
government can argue that it only
detained people whom it suspected of
engineering subversive acts against the
government.
"There was prima facie evidence to link these events to
the arrested
suspects, despite no convictions following the trials. How then
can the
alleged acts of torture by state agents be addressed? Prosecuting
Mugabe
under the ICC Statute will most likely not address the issue. A more
domestic (regional) solution may be required for that," said
Maravanyika.
According to Rome Statute, crimes against humanity are
odious offences
that constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave
humiliation or a
degradation of one or more human beings.
The
crimes should not be isolated or sporadic events, but should be
part of
either a government policy (although the perpetrators need not
identify
themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities
tolerated
or condoned by a government or a de facto authority.
However, murder,
extermination, torture, rape, political, racial, or
religious persecution
and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes
against humanity only
if they are part of a "widespread or systematic
practice".
Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave
infringements of
human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war
crimes, but may fall
short of falling into the category of crimes against
humanity.
Maravanyika adds that a number of government policies in Zimbabwe have
been
more "ad hoc than consistent" in their nature thereby removing an
element of
planned and systematic practice. Operation Murambatsvina is one
such ad hoc
exercise by the Harare administration.
"However, looking at it from
another perspective, a genuine government
objective was at the heart of the
policy, one may argue. The operation was
conducted to address the issue of
illegal or unauthorised dwellings that had
mushroomed around the city," said
Maravanyika.
He added: "Many houses had not met standard
engineering criteria, and
were a ticking time bomb in terms of health and
safety regulations.
"One would argue .. the operation was a cleanup
operation of certain
suburbs long renowned for harbouring criminals and
proceeds of crime.
Unregulated and illegitimate trades often occurred in
these areas, and
therefore they may be seen as another legitimate
aim."
However, Nhenga-Chakarisa says dictators, even those who had
not
ratified international treaties, could be prosecuted in the ICC if the
Rome
Statute is now deemed to have acquired customary international law
status
thus making it binding on all states regardless of their membership
or
otherwise of the instrument.
Some 101 states have ratified
the Rome Statute reflecting a generality
of practice and acceptance of the
instrument as opinio juris - states
recognising the instrument as binding.
If the statute crystallises into
customary international law, like the
Genocide, Slavery and Torture
Conventions, nobody will be exempt from
prosecution.
However, the Rome Statute does not provide for
retroactive
investigations or trials for incidents that occurred before its
inception in
July 2002, placing the Ndebele massacres beyond the ICC's
jurisdiction.
http://www.nehandaradio.com
26 January 2009
SW Radio Africa
Transcript
HOT SEAT interview: Journalist Violet Gonda interviews
Physicians for Human
Rights CEO Frank Donaghue who says Mugabe is now a
global threat.
Broadcast 16 January 2009
Violet Gonda:
International medical rights organisation, Physicians for
Human Rights
recently released a report on how the collapse of Zimbabwe's
public health
system has caused the devastating cholera epidemic. The
organisation also
labelled Zimbabwe's health crisis a crime that should be
the subject of an
investigation by the International Criminal Court. The
group CEO, Frank
Donaghue is my guest on the programme Hot Seat. Welcome on
the programme
Frank.
Frank Donaghue: Thanks a lot, it's great to be here
Violet.
VG: You were part of the emergency delegation that went to
investigate the
collapse of health care in Zimbabwe in December and you said,
this week,
that this is the first Human Rights evaluation on Zimbabwe by
international
health professions, can you start by telling us your
findings?
FD: Sure. This is my third or fourth trip to Zimbabwe in the
last year and
on November 18 when hospitals were basically shut down and
after Mr Mugabe
attacked health care workers that were protesting in order to
get medicine
and water for their patients; I spoke to one of the medical
students. I told
him that I was so sorry and I wished we could do more and he
said "Frank you
are doing all you can by being our voice and telling our
story." And I said
"How are you doing?" and he said "We have no water. We are
just waiting to
die."
And I think this is was what prompted us within
two months to be in Zimbabwe
and do this research and to have this report
issued, both in Johannesburg
and in the United Nations. What we found was
absolutely startling. You know
people talk about the cholera epidemic and I
think the statistics of cholera
speak for themselves, in most countries in
war-torn countries, about 1% of
people who contract cholera die. In Zimbabwe
it is over 5% and in some
regions in Zimbabwe it has been as high as 34,
35%.
So 35% of the people that are getting cholera in some places in
Zimbabwe are
dying. Coincidentally they are of course in regions where the
MDC is more
popular than Mr Mugabe's regime.
So that was the first
thing and then we visited regions in rural areas.
There is no public health
system. We all know that, it is gone. Mr Mugabe
has completely destroyed that
basically because of his incredibly poor bad
economic policies and the
collapse of the economy. There is no water and
sanitation. I mean we saw kids
drinking out of the sewer. Turn on someone's
spigot for those people who do
have water and see what comes out - and so
you have the water collapse which
is obviously part of the cholera epidemic.
But even more enlightening to
me, I spent half a day meeting with some women
who had the HIV disease. They
basically have no food, they are getting any
retro viral drugs sporadically
and they're changing their drugs on a regular
basis. So they might get for
about one month, they might only get a two
weeks supply. So we're creating
drug resistant HIV disease. There is no TB
monitoring so we're creating drug
resistant TB. We know that there's no
obstetric care. If a woman wants or
needs a C section in Zimbabwe, and
obviously there are private hospitals, a C
section in the Avenues Hospital
costs $3000. Who can afford that? And so the
solution, I asked a doctor what
happens if you don't have the $3000 and she
said "You die".
VG: And this $3000, this is $3000 US dollars?
FD:
US dollars in a private hospital. And so we went out to some of the
mission
hospitals, and thank God there are mission hospitals, but as you
know they
are primarily out in rural regions. And now people that have some
money can
afford to get to a rural hospital like Howard and get treatment. A
C-section
there costs US $15 but there are very few people that have the
US$15 or the
money to transport themselves out to the hospital to get there.
And yet the
hospital is overflowing with people.
And so the poorest of the poor of
the poor have no healthcare in Zimbabwe.
Mr Mugabe and his regime have signed
onto a number of international
covenants and commitments with the United
Nations and other civil societies
to protect the life of his citizens. He is
in gross violation of those
covenants and therefore we're saying the United
Nations has the
responsibility to step in and we're suggesting the United
Nations through
its power, and they have that power, to take over the health
system, the
sanitation system and anything that relates to the health of the
people -
put together a consortium of non-profit organisations and
non-government
organisations to take care of those until the rightful
government is put in
place in Zimbabwe. And we know the rightful government
was elected in March.
VG: We'll talk a bit more about that, but I just
wanted to go back to the
statistics that were in your report and you say that
at least 400 people are
dying daily from HIV Aids, now are these people who
have been diagnosed HIV
positive or is this just based on clinical
assessments because as you said
earlier on, there are no facilities to test
people because of the breakdown
of the health system?
FD: There are
about 200 000 people on anti-retrovirals in Zimbabwe -
primarily thanks to
governments like Britain and the United States by the
way, who Mr Mugabe
calls the enemies. And those people are getting
treatment. However we know of
about 800 000 people who should be on
anti-retrovirals in Zimbabwe but
there's no way, the health system has
totally collapsed so there's no way to
put new people on these rolls. So
increasingly people are dying because
they're not getting treatment.
So these are people we know who have HIV,
but as the women told me that
afternoon, they know other women - obviously
sex workers have increased
because people are just hoping to survive, feed
their families - who think
they might have HIV and need to get tested and
they can't get tested because
there's no hospital to test them. So HIV will
continue to spread as will the
other diseases because there's no way for
prevention even.
VG: So how many people would you say from your
investigations are dying
daily because you said 400 are dying daily from
Aids, now have you factored
in all those people who are dying from cholera
and of course those people
who are not accessing health services and who are
dying in their homes and
remote areas?
FD: Well what is also so sad is
the collapse of any surveillance or data
collection so you really don't know
how many are dying. Let's take cholera
itself - they say that there are 2000
people who have died of cholera. Now
you know in five days that many people
die of Aids - but there are 2000
people who have died of cholera, presumably.
But since there's no health
system how many people are dying at home because
there's nowhere to go to
die of cholera? Noone knows. Everyone believes that
the 2000 is far
under-estimate of what is really happening. That there's no
data collection.
There's one person now working in TB surveillance in all of
Zimbabwe. You
can imagine. So no one knows how many people are dying or even
contracting
TB and there are no places for them to go for
treatment.
One of the most startling things we saw was utter starvation.
In some of the
regions we visited, we actually went down roads and stopped at
peoples'
homes and asked if we could see the food supply which they had. And
people
would readily open their food storage areas of which they might have
had a
week or two of grain left to eat for weeks. You know it is the rainy
season
so the chances of getting more, people are dying. Now more than half
the
population in Zimbabwe need food subsistence in order to sustain their
life.
This is a country that was once one of the world's bread baskets and
now
half the people don't have enough food to eat. That's sort of telling. So
to
answer your question directly there really aren't adequate
statistics.
VG: So you wouldn't have independent estimates?
FD:
Well we don't. Let's take childbirth, the maternal mortality. Ten years
ago,
twelve years ago the maternal mortality rate in Zimbabwe was about 138
to 100
000 births. In 2005 that number had risen to 1100 out of 100 000
births. If
you can imagine, 1100. Who knows what has happened in the last
three or four
years since that statistic has been developed by the World
Health
Organisation.
So the problem is, based on the regime, so many things have
collapsed, there
is no real adequate data collection and of course there is
total denial by
the government that any of these issues exist. I mean the
life expectancy of
an individual in Zimbabwe today is about 34 years old,
where 15 years ago it
was mid-60s. And Mr Mugabe would not admit that people
are dying of
starvation, he told regional health ministers not to report
cholera. We
interviewed 92 people by the way - patients, doctors, people in
government,
NGOs, water and sanitation people, students, people on the street
- we had
92 intensive interviews and the facts we gathered are unquestionably
true
because they were collaborated in all our interviews.
VG: Now
some have said that the death toll is way more than anywhere else in
the
world, especially as people in Zimbabwe are dying of preventable
diseases,
now has the group Physicians for Human Rights, have you seen
anything like
this anywhere else in the world?
FD: Well I think when people say 'there
are people dying in Sudan, there's
people dying in northern Uganda and why
are we worried about Zimbabwe?' I
think first of all, you should not compare
one country to another. People
are dying in Zimbabwe and that is the issue
and people all round the world
should care about Zimbabwe as we care about
other areas. But number two,
other countries that we are pointing to - like
Sudan and northern Uganda -
never had the health system that Zimbabwe has
lost. And that's the most
tragic point is that compared to what this country
was before Mr Mugabe
ruined it, it had the best health system in southern
Africa, it now has the
worst.
VG: You mentioned that you actually
interviewed people in government, how
were you received by the Mugabe
regime?
FD: Well obviously everybody we interviewed was anonymous and did
not want
to be identified - except one man interestingly, one man who was
a
councillor for the MDC. We visited him as we visited some other people
that
had been tortured and beaten up by the government in a hospital, and we
went
and saw his wife and him - who had been badly, badly beaten up the
weekend
before we arrived. Their bodies were beaten with clubs for four or
five
hours, simply because they went to the funeral of a family member who
had
died of cholera coincidentally, and they realised he was a councillor of
the
MDC and they beat him and his wife brutally. And he said please
tell
everybody my name because it must be stopped. I said we won't do
that.
So the people that we interviewed, it was all done, all our
informants were
done anonymously, so I can't say of the official people we
met with how they
treated us. I have to say this however - on our exit to
Zimbabwe, we were
tipped off at the airport that the CIO were waiting for us
behind Security.
They had our full itinerary including every place we ate and
that the CIO
and the police were there to arrest us. Within hours, moments
later we were
surrounded by Zim television and sticking a camera in my
colleague's face
saying "is it true you are a spy for Britain and the United
States? You are
here to overthrow the government." We were immediately picked
up and taken
into safe houses by very brave people who put their lives at
risk to protect
us.
Within another hour, Mr Mugabe reported that we
were already detained and
arrested for being spies from Britain and the
United States. Coincidentally,
there were four of us, three were from the
United States and one was from
South Africa, there were no Brits in the
group. And we, thank God, through
again some really brave people, got out of
the country by land into another
country and finally out after a pretty
harrowing drive, hoping to get out
because the Embassy said to us, since he
has already said you were arrested
they're going to be very embarrassed if
they don't arrest you so you need
get out quickly.
VG: So you were
forced to leave before you had actually concluded
your
investigations?
FD: No, we were on our way to the airport so we
had finished our work, but
the sad thing is, when you have doctors coming in
to do a health assessment
to see how the government and how health workers
can provide better health
to your people and the government calls you a spy
because they don't want
people to really know the truth, that sort of says it
all doesn't it?
VG: Some observers have said that this is a great report
but the question
is; how are you going to take this further, do you have some
sort of
pressure point?
FD: Well I think the fact that Mary Robinson,
the former High Commissioner
of Human Rights for the United Nations,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the
chief prosecutor for the Bosnian war crimes,
Richard Goldstone a South
African, have all signed on to this. Mary Robinson
actually released this
report in New York, the day that I released it in
Zimbabwe.
The United Nations has already called on us to come and discuss
our five
recommendations including a receivership taking over the health
system,
including putting pressure on the International Criminal Court to
continue
to gather evidence against Mr Mugabe for crimes against humanity.
And so
yes, we are getting lots, we had over one hundred worldwide
interviews. You
know one of the arguments is that governments should stay out
of this, this
is Zimbabwe's problem and sovereignty and we have no right. The
truth is
this is no longer a Zimbabwe problem. Cholera drug resistant, HIV
drug
resistant, TB, all these diseases are now spreading beyond Zimbabwe and
Mr
Mugabe is responsible for that. It is no longer an issue of sovereignty;
it
is an issue of security to the health and well being of all of
Southern
Africa and in fact beyond. People who travel into Zimbabwe and leave
and
take an aeroplane to Chicago or to London, could be carrying the very
drug
resistant diseases that Mr Mugabe has allowed to continue. He is
actually a
global threat and he should be stopped.
VG: The fact that
you are pushing for the ICC to get involved, is this
something that your
group has ever recommended and also can the ICC actually
intervene in this
crisis if Zimbabwe is not a member or a signatory to the
ICC
statutes.
FD: Absolutely and to answer both of your questions, first of
all the United
Nations does have the authority through Article 41.
VG:
No, the ICC, the International Criminal Court.
FD: Yes, but the United
Nations has the authority to call on the ICC even
though Mr Mugabe may not
have signed on to the Rome Treaty because of the
threat to the regional
security, because of the regional threat. What we're
suggesting is that the
UN must call on the ICC to investigate and continue
to gather evidence
against Mr Mugabe.
Has our organisation done this before? Let me say
this, and Mr Mugabe should
take careful recognition of this; Physicians for
Human Rights, although we
are small, are very well respected in our
recommendations. We are the first
organisation, human rights organisation,
which called Sudan - genocide, and
look what is happening to the President of
Sudan today. We are one of the
first organisations that talked about what
happened in Srebrenica and that
crimes against humanity should be levelled
against its leaders in Bosnia -
and look what's happened to them.
It's
that kind of work that won us the Nobel Peace Prize. And I personally
and my
colleagues will not stop till justice is done to Mr Mugabe and that
the
people of Zimbabwe are allowed the access they have to the very human
right
to health.
VG: You said earlier on that the United Nations has the
responsibility to
protect and should actually step in. Now it's reported that
the UN has
agreed to bail out Zimbabwe's failed health ministry by funding
the payment
of health workers in foreign currency. Now do you know how this
will
actually work?
FD: Well I understand that governments have
offered to top up salaries but
Mr Mugabe, as I understand it and the Health
Minister there, who I guess is
so busy building his huge home along with the
head of the Reserve Bank, I
understand he's building a 42 room suite. He is
too busy and Mr Mugabe is on
vacation, so they are too busy to deal with the
reality of the situation.
But Mr Mugabe and his regime have said they're
not going to allow outsiders
to top off salaries to the level they want to
because they will not be able
to sustain that long term. Let's hope that Mr
Mugabe and his regime are not
there long term to have to sustain it. But the
truth is you can't have a
doctor in any country in the world making 32 cents
a month - and I saw pay
stubs for doctors - 32 cents a month and expect them
and their family to
survive.
So I believe the United Nations will do
more and I think has the power and
authority to do more than just to get
donor governments to top off salaries.
They do have the authority to set up
some type of receivership over the very
health system and make Mr Mugabe
yield control of his health system.
VG: On the other hand, some have said
that the flow of humanitarian aid
actually keeps dictators in power and that
in Zimbabwe's case the Mugabe
regime has completely failed and that the
humanitarian organisations are now
picking up the pieces. What are your views
on this?
FD: Well our fifth recommendation in our report and your
listeners can get
it on our website, completely the whole report on
www.physiciansforhumanrights.org
. Our fifth recommendation is that donor
countries must continue to provide
and live up to their commitment to
provide adequate food to the people of
Zimbabwe. But, but, we cannot allow
the Mugabe regime to do what he has done
to politicise food and make sure
that the supporters of Zanu-PF get food and
the people that support the MDC
starve. And so there needs to be some
monitoring that he's not allowed to
obstruct food supply and medical supply
just to the people he wants to get
it. And so donor countries not only need
to give money but they need to
demand accountability of how that food is
used. And it's a very difficult
thing for the United Nations and other
organisations because they somewhat
work at the will of the government, they
can't go in and say to the
government we want to go to Bulawayo and deliver
this because they just
can't,
the government won't let them do that, the
government has to authorise it.
But we need to put restraints on it and say
there will be no delivery of
food until we have access to deliver to all the
people that need it, not
controlled by the Zanu-PF
VG: Now power
sharing negotiations have actually stalled although the MDC
leader Mr Morgan
Tsvangirai has said he is still committed to forming a new
inclusive
government with Robert Mugabe. From what you observed on the
ground, is it a
realistic assumption that if the political crisis is
unlocked then all else
will fall in to place?
FD: I think that as Mr Tsvangirai has said - no
deal is better than a bad
deal, and to trust that Mr Mugabe is going to share
power. I mean on
December 19th, the day when we were almost forced out of the
country, Mr
Mugabe said Zimbabwe, quote "Zimbabwe is mine and I will never,
never, never
surrender." Zimbabwe is not his, it belongs to the people, the
people who
voted in March and any deal, a bad deal is not going to cut it and
Mr
Tsvangirai and everyone else should stick to their commitment that
unless
there is a fair resolution of the political impasse then they cannot
deal at
all with Mr Mugabe. And I think Mr Mugabe has proven that he is
both
incapable and too cruel to run a government and it is time for the world
to
step in and there should be no deal with a man, with a
criminal.
VG: The Mugabe regime accuses your organisation of being biased
and merely
following part of the West's regime change agenda. How do you
respond to
that?
FD: The largest donors, the biggest infusion of money
into Zimbabwe, is from
(1) the United States government, number two the
British government. The
biggest donors to food aid to HIV drugs to a variety
of support in
humanitarian relief, so if we're the biggest obstacle in
Zimbabwe, he should
stop taking the money that he freely takes. It's
absolutely a farce that Mr
Mugabe would say that.
No-one is trying to
step in and take over the legitimacy of a country or the
sovereignty of a
nation. The blatant mismanagement and disregard for his
people and now the
spread of disease because of him, is no threat of
countries outside of
Zimbabwe, the biggest threat to Zimbabwe is Mr Mugabe.
VG: And finally,
what do you see happening in Zimbabwe?
FD: Well first of all I want to
let listeners from Zimbabwe let them know
that Physicians for Human Rights
will continue to tell their story and their
struggle until others listen and
intercede, so they can count on us. Number
two I think ultimately I do think
that the response we've got from the world
media and governments, we've met
with government officials from South
Africa, there is great interest, much
greater interest in the threat that
Mugabe is now playing to the region. And
I think that the world will not
tolerate this much longer.
VG: Frank
Donaghue, thank you very much for participating on the programme
Hot
Seat.
FD: Violet, thank you so much.
Feedback can be emailed to violet@swradioafrica.com
http://www.asianage.com
By MIN LEE
HONG
KONG
Jan. 25: A human rights activist on Sunday urged Hong Kong to deport
the
daughter of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe if it is confirmed she
is
studying at a local university and the Zimbabwean President is funding
her
education.
Hong Kong Human Rights monitor director Law Yuk-kai
said the government
should confirm a newspaper report that Ms Bona Mugabe is
studying at the
University of Hong Kong, and if it is accurate, examine her
finances.
"If the money she is spending was siphoned off the ordinary
people, there is
a problem," Ms Law said. "Just like other members of the
international
community, Hong Kong should do its part in imposing
sanctions."
The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions
on Mr Mugabe's
ruling clique, including asset freezes and travel bans.
Australia has also
banned the children of members of Mr Mugabe's
administration from studying
there.
The South China Morning Post
reported on Sunday the 20-year-old daughter of
the Zimbabwean President is
enrolled under an alias, but gave no more
details.
The University of
Hong Kong's media manager didn't immediately respond to a
reporter's email
seeking comment. Ms Bona didn't immediately respond to a
message sent to her
on the social networking website Facebook.
Mr Mugabe, 84, has ruled
Zimbabwe since its independence from Britain in
1980. He has been accused of
overseeing the country's economic collapse,
which has led to a cholera
outbreak that has killed at least 2,773 and left
millions of Zimbabweans
dependent on international food aid.
The Hong Kong government said in a
statement Sunday it had no comment.
A freelance photographer for the
British newspaper the Sunday Times said
last week that Mr Mugabe's wife,
Grace, repeatedly hit him in the face when
he tried to take pictures of her
outside a luxury hotel in Hong Kong on
January 15.
-AP
The prospect of yet another SADC meeting on Zimbabwe did nothing to keep us warm. It was impossible to find anyone at another crowded Vigil who had any faith in the pompous, hypocritical, self-serving, blustering, craven half-wits at the SADC Summit. It was felt that if SADC was serious about saving the region from a contagious failed state it would hand back its mandate to the AU with a recommendation that new elections be held under UN supervision.
We at the Vigil are resigned to SADC admiring the new 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar notes, blaming the donor nations for Zimbabwe’s inflation rate of 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent . . . . and recognizing Mugabe as President despite the conclusion of SADC’s own observers that last year’s elections were not free and fair. Many passers-by stopped to sign our petitions, particularly the one demanding action against SADC countries because of their failure to uphold their obligations to Zimbabweans. The Vigil wants the European Union to stop handing over billions of Euros in aid to SADC countries who support Mugabe. We want this money to be used instead to finance refugee camps for Zimbabweans in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique where our people can seek refuge and find things no longer available in Zimbabwe such as food, shelter, health care and education.
Given the global economic recession we expect growing support for any moves to cut aid to Mugabe’s regional cronies.
A few points:
· Apologies that Patson Muzuwa and his Umbane troupe did not appear today. There was a misunderstanding and they say they will be coming next week. Some people apparently came specifically to hear them (we know of someone who was emailed by a contact in Australia about it). Despite Patson’s absence we had some wonderful singing and dancing led by Jenatry Muranganwa and Dumi Tutani which made up for the absence of Umbane.
· Highlight of the day was the ‘Tweed Bicycle Ride’. To our astonishment hundreds of cyclists rode past wearing tweed clothes.
· We phoned Luka of the Vigil management team who is still in detention in Dover. The phone was passed to Jenatry at the centre of the Vigil who led a song for him. The phone was then passed around to many of his friends so he could talk to them all. Apparently the Archbishop of York’s Office contacted the Zimbabwe Association and wrote to Phil Woolas, MP, Minister of State (Borders & Immigration) Home Office on behalf of Luka. Luka’s bail hearing is on Wednesday and we hope he will be released then.
· It was good to hear from Patrick Dzimba, Co-ordinator of the Glasgow Zimbabwe Vigil. He reports that the first Glasgow Vigil of 2009 on 17th January was well-attended and was followed by their AGM.
· WOZA Solidarity have been in touch with us. They plan to hold a demonstration ahead of the Vigil from 12 to 2 pm on Saturday, 14th February. They are awaiting the outcome of the trial of Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu before deciding the theme of their protest. We will keep you informed.
· We have been contacted by the Reverend Bill Crews of the Exodus Foundation (www.exodusfoundation.net). He is a friend of Sekai Holland and his organisation helped her to escape from Zimbabwe after her appalling treatment in March 2007. He is looking for ways to help Zimbabwe post-Mugabe and asked us for contacts to work with.
For latest Vigil pictures check: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/
FOR THE RECORD: 235 signed the register.
FOR YOUR DIARY:
· ROHR Manchester General Meeting. Saturday 31 January 2009 at Salvation Army Citadel, 71 Grosvenor Street, Manchester M13 9UB from 1330 – 1730hrs. Contact Moses Nyagodzi 07778547971, Mike Kanyepi 07500696527 or Mr Madzonganyika 07747141835.
· ROHR Wakefield Members Meeting. Saturday 31 January 2009 at 4 Celandine Close, Carlton Glen, Pontefract, Wakefield, WF8 2SL. Contact Mugoni 07748828913, B Sikosana 07940181761, P Karuwa 07908075149.
· ROHR Brighton General Meeting. Saturday, 31 January 2009. Venue and time to be announced. Contact Siniki Dube 07824668763 or Phyllis Chibanguza 07908406069
· Next Glasgow Vigil. Saturday 24th January, 2 – 6 pm. Venue: Argyle Street Precinct. For more information contact: Patrick Dzimba, 07990 724 137, Tafadzwa Musemwa 07954 344 123 and Roggers Fatiya 07769 632 687
· ‘The Agony of Zimbabwe, What Chance for Change?’ Monday 9th February, 6.45 – 8.45 pm. Talk by Christina Lamb Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Sunday Times. Hosted by Friends of Le Monde diplomatique. Venue: the Gallery, 70/77 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6EJ (near Farringdon Tube station). For more information check: http://monde-diplo-friends.org.uk/calendar.htm.
· WOZA Solidarity Protest. Saturday, 14th February, 12 – 2 pm, outside the Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand, London WC2R 0JR.
· Zimbabwe Association’s Women’s Weekly Drop-in Centre. Fridays 10.30 am – 4 pm. Venue: The Fire Station Community and ICT Centre, 84 Mayton Street, London N7 6QT, Tel: 020 7607 9764. Nearest underground: Finsbury Park. For more information contact the Zimbabwe Association 020 7549 0355 (open Tuesdays and Thursdays).
Vigil Co-ordinators
The Vigil, outside the Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand, London, takes place every Saturday from 14.00 to 18.00 to protest against gross violations of human rights by the current regime in Zimbabwe. The Vigil which started in October 2002 will continue until internationally-monitored, free and fair elections are held in Zimbabwe. http://www.zimvigil.co.uk.
http://www.sokwanele.com/thisiszimbabwe/archives/3105#more-3105
Reports from people in the Rushinga area in Mt Darwin are
that the
starvation is taking a deadly grip on the area. Mealie meal can be
purchased
in limited amounts for US$15 for 10 kgs.
People in urban
areas struggle to withdraw Zimbabwean dollars from the
banks, so you can
imagine how hard it is to get cash in the rural areas!
Nobody in the rural
areas has access to our redundant Zimbabwe dollars;
foreign currency is even
rarer. The result is many are trying to live off
vegetables they are
struggling to grow . One resident from that area said
that his family had not
eaten sadza for over five weeks.
The salaries paid to many who are lucky
enough to have jobs don't begin to
remotely meet the cost of living. It's
especially bad for those paid by the
government; for example, a
middle-ranking prison officer's January salary,
on the day it was paid in in
Zimbabwe dollars, translated in forex to the
equivalent of US$3, or one fifth
of the price of a 10kg bag of maize meal.
In the meanwhile, heavy rains
have been falling on Harare and its surrounds.
This is wonderful for the
urban maize crops and wonderful for the people who
have managed to find
vegetable seed to grow a little food in the rural
areas. It is also very good
news for the millions of people who rely on
rainwater run-off from their
roofs for drinking, cooking and washing water.
It is wonderful for Harare
Central and Remand prisons who sometimes go
without water for weeks at a
time.
Sadly, the very bad news is that that demon called cholera ,
carving a
swathe of illness in Zimbabwe, is reliant on downpours just like
this to
spread its deadly network.
This entry was written by Harare
activists on Sunday, January 25th, 2009 at
11:48 am.
PEACE
WATCH
[
Peace
and Justice and the Rule of Law
Peace Watch has been
chronicling the story of the enforced disappearances and subsequent developments
for several weeks now. We have done this not only because the victims include
three workers for peace in Zimbabwe, but also because it is axiomatic that
without justice and due observance of the rule of law there can be no true and
lasting peace in our country.
Jestina
Mukoko – taken to hospital in leg irons
Last week the Chief
Justice, after he had seen a doctor’s affidavit stressing the inadequacy of the
prison hospital and the necessity for getting Jestina medical attention in a
hospital with proper facilities, directed that she should receive “appropriate
medical attention as a matter of urgency”. Over a week later Jestina was taken
in leg irons and under armed escort to the Avenues Clinic. There she was
examined by doctors and, still in leg irons, was sent for X-rays and an
ultra-sound scan to assess her injuries. [Jestina has testified that she had
been subjected to torture]. She was put on a drip and admitted for treatment.
But the escorting prison warders refused to allow her to remain and against her
will, still on the drip, took her back to Chikurubi. The doctors refused to
sign her discharge papers as she was removed against their professional medical
advice. In Chikurubi Jestina is being attended to by a doctor brought in by the
prison service. She was at least moved to a makeshift side-ward [a matron’s
office] in the males-only prison hospital. Initially, she was kept in leg-irons
and even expected to sleep with them in place.
News
of the other
Pascal
Gonzo: Although both a
High Court Judge and a magistrate ordered Pascal’s release before the end of
last year, the State blocked his release and he continued in solitary
confinement in Chikurubi Maximum Security prison. Another application for his
release will be heard by a High Court judge early next week.
One
abductee released
On 23 January Tawanda
Bvumo was released from Chikurubi two days after a Judge ordered his release,
saying that if the State wish to press charges against him they should do so by
way of summons. He had been in State custody for 84 days, since the end of
October.
No
date yet for Supreme Court hearing for Jestina Mukoko
Jestina Mukoko’s case
has been referred to the Supreme Court by the magistrate’s court at her lawyers’
request, as they are arguing that the State cannot prosecute her until the
numerous infringements of her constitutional rights have been properly redressed
– unlawful deprivation of liberty, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment
while detained, denial of pre-trial rights [no reason given for arrest, no
access to lawyers or relatives], denial of protection of the law [the report of
her abduction not investigated by police, and her abductors not prosecuted]. As
this is a constitutional case, it will be heard by five Supreme Court judges.
The hearing will be open to the public, but the date has still not been fixed
although the Chief Justice has already ruled the case is urgent.
Other
forthcoming court hearings
Monday 26
January: Chris Dhlamini, Gandi
Mudzingwa, Mapfumo Garutsa, Andrison Manyere, Regis Mujeyi, Zacharia Nkomo and
Chinoto Zulu [the
"Dhlamini group"], who have been remanded in custody on charges of insurgency,
banditry, sabotage or terrorism [bombing of police station and railway line],
will appear at the magistrates court for further remand. [They were remanded on
the 9th, and because an accused person cannot be remanded for more than 14 days
at a time, their remand hearing should have occurred on Friday 23rd January; but
they were not brought to court by the prison authorities, so the proceedings
were postponed.]
The Attorney-General’s
office is also due to report back to the court on its investigation into the
group’s complaints of torture while in State custody [this report back is
already overdue]. There is also an application pending in the High Court to set
aside the charges and release them, but no date has yet been set for
this.
Wednesday 28
January:
Concillia
Chinanzvavana, Emmanuel Chinanzvavana, Fidelis Chiramba, Pieta Kaseke, Violet
Mupfuranhehwe and Collen Mutemagau [their little boy Nigel was eventually
released] will appear in the magistrates court for further remand
proceedings.
Friday 30
January: Jestina Mukoko will
appear at the magistrates court for continuation of her postponed remand
proceedings. Further postponement is likely, depending on developments in the
Supreme Court on her complaint of violations of her constitutional rights
[see
above].
Background
to these Events
It was only a few
months ago that the horrendous phenomenon of enforced disappearance became
widespread, starting with the abduction and disappearance of 14 MDC-T
office-bearers and members in Mashonaland West at the beginning of November and
continuing until well into December with the abduction of Zimbabwe Peace
Project [ZPP] director Jestina Mukoko and Broderick Takawira and Pascal Gonzo
[ZPP staff members] and several others [see
Peace Watch of 28th December for lists of names and Peace Watch of 9th December
for commentary on enforced disappearance]. Because of the number
of cases [32] and the high profile of the ZPP staff these disappearances have
raised huge concern in
In other countries,
notably Latin American countries, where enforced disappearances have taken place
they have been a tool of a repressive government fighting against activists
promoting more freedom of political choice and working against state violence.
In
On 23rd
December some of the 32 persons
listed by
Key
Developments Since 24 December
Note:
for full day by day details of events please see
On Christmas Day: The High Court judge’s order
to take Jestina Mukoko and others alleging torture to the Avenues Clinic for
medical treatment was defied and all were removed to Chikurubi Maximum Security
Prison. Also flouted was the
judge's order for the release of the other 23 persons listed as
disappeared.
On 29 December: A further 9 of the
disappeared were produced and brought to the magistrates court to be placed on
remand [the Dhlamini group plus Pascal Gonzo and Tawanda
Bvumo].
[This still left 14 on
the
On 30 December: Lawyers again asked for the
abductees who had made affidavits of torture to be transferred to the Avenues
Clinic. In spite of the public prosecutor’s resistance, the magistrate
eventually ordered medical examination by doctors of their own choice, but that
these were to be done in prison. The abductees were examined by doctors of
their own choice at
On 31 December: Lawyers lodged an urgent High
Court application on behalf of Jestina Mukoko for an order compelling the police
to disclose the identities of those responsible for her abduction and
detention. Minister of State Security Didymus Mutasa filed an affidavit
confirming State security involvement in her seizure and detention, but claimed
that divulging the information sought would prejudice national security.
On 2 January: A High Court judge upheld the
Minister’s objection to disclosure of information about responsibility for
Jestina Mukoko’s abduction and detention, but ordered that she be taken to
Avenues Clinic for examination.
On 15 January: It was discovered that the
State is holding three of the original abductees in “police protective custody”
as State witnesses.
On 20 January: Lawyers succeeded in getting
Jestina’s case referred to the Supreme Court for an order to grant redress for
numerous breaches of her constitutional rights by the
State.
The cases are still
continuing: Basically, the State has continued to press for all 18
abductees so far brought to court to be placed on remand on various criminal
charges related to insurgency, banditry, sabotage or terrorism
[see Peace Watch of 16
January]. The defence lawyers have strenuously resisted these
applications, arguing that the grave infringements of the abductees’
constitutional rights [abduction, secret detention, torture, refusal to
investigate and prosecute the abductors, etc.] mean they are not properly
brought before the court [the State has “dirty hands”] and they should be
released. In addition they have argued that the State’s allegations do not
establish a reasonable suspicion of commission of the offences charged.
For dates of forthcoming hearings see
above.
Issues
of Great Concern to the Public
· Constant delays have
thwarted the delivery of justice – Judges and magistrates not making themselves
available or turning up hours late, police or prison officials not producing
detainees in court, court orders being ignored,and delays in typing up of court
records needed for cases to be taken to a higher court, have resulted in months
of delays since the “disappearances”.
· The State’s resistance
to divulging of information about abductees' detention has hampered proper
investigation, could be a cover up for illegalities and torture on the part of
State agents, and will foster an ongoing culture of
impunity.
· The frustration of
lawyers' attempts to get abductees proper medical treatment is a gross denial of
prisoners rights and a violation of our Constitution and international
conventions and could be a cover up when there are allegations of
torture.
Veritas makes
every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot take legal
responsibility for information supplied.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com
Africa News
Jan
25, 2009, 14:05 GMT
Harare/Johannesburg - Southern African heads
of state are to meet on Monday
in Pretoria, the South African capital, in
yet another attempt to eke
compromise out of Zimbabwe's two key political
rivals, in the fast dimming
hope that a power sharing agreement between the
two can be set in motion.
But with President Robert Mugabe, ruler for the
last 28 years who is
determined to stay there indefinitely, and
pro-democracy leader Morgan
Tsvangirai, regarded as the winner of national
elections last March, both
entrenched in their positions, analysts are
forecasting that this fourth
summit of the 14-nation Southern African
Development Community (SADC) will
again end in failure.
But they say
impetus for progress may come from South Africa, the
continent's most
powerful nation which currently holds the chairmanship of
the SADC. Pressure
is growing for President Kgalema Motlanthe to get tough
with 84-year-old
Mugabe, as leading voices in South Africa accuse the
regional body of being
responsible for the stalemate, and all the problems
that it
holds.
Once Africa's second most prosperous and developed country after
South
Africa, Zimbabwe is in the closing stages of economic collapse, with
millions of migrants pouring into neighbouring states, and in the midst of a
cholera epidemic that has also crossed the border with the
migrants.
On Monday last week, the presidents of South Africa and of
Mozambique tried
to mediate between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, but the 12-hour
meeting ended
'inconclusively.'
The two men signed an agreement to
share power in a government of national
unity on September 15 after three
months of negotiations, but there has been
no progress to toward
implementing the agreement since then.
Mugabe's first step after the
signing was to allocate portfolios, taking the
most important ones,
including defence, home affairs which includes police
and state security,
and justice, which has control over the country's
courts.
Later he
went on to appoint provincial governors and a new attorney-general
from the
ranks of his ZANU(PF) party and since October his secret police
have
arrested nearly 30 activists from the Tsvangirai's Movement for
Democratic
Change (MDC) party and civil society groups, holding them
illegally for
weeks and torturing many of them.
All the steps were in violation of the
treaty, the MDC said.
Tsvangirai, who secured the most votes in the
presidential elections and is
head of the MDC which in March won
parliamentary elections, has refused to
take up his agreed position as prime
minister under Mugabe as president
until cabinet posts are equitably
distributed, the gubernatorial and
attorney-general posts are reversed and
the detained activists are released.
Mugabe has turned an implacable deaf
ear to the demands. And so Monday's
meeting will begin after a statement by
Patrick Chinamasa, Mugabe's
spokesman on the negotiations, saying at the
weekend that 'our position is
that we will not meet any new demands made by
the MDC.'
MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti said in a statement on
Saturday that the
party was 'committed to the ... agreement, subject to the
resolution of our
demands.' These, he said, were 'a logical platform for any
government of
national unity,' and the MDC would 'not allow ZANU(PF) to trap
us in the cul
de sac of their sterile process.'
SADC appears to be
equally locked into a position, made late last year, that
the agreement
should be implemented 'forthwith' and that the MDC should
settle its
grievances afterwards. Mugabe is anxious that Monday's meeting
endorses
this, and is reported to be pressing for SADC to give him the go
ahead to
implement the power-sharing agreement without the MDC.
But a growing
number of powerful voices in South Africa are now raised for
its government
to force Mugabe to incorporate the MDC's demands or face
recriminations,
such as the shutting its borders.
One of these voices is Graca Machel,
wife of South Africa's revered
ex-president Nelson Mandela and a member of
the Elders, the informal group
of globally respected figures, who late last
week declared that Mugabe had
'lost completely any kind of legitimacy' after
the last nine years of
violent repression.
Thousands of lives could
have been saved if SADC had not allowed itself to
be bullied by Mugabe, she
said. 'We trusted too long,' she said.
'It's time to tell our leaders we
lay the lives of all those who passed on
... in the hands of the SADC
leaders because they took responsibility to
stop the mess there.'
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=10394
January 25, 2009
Tanonoka Whande
IT
IS now quite clear to all and sundry that Zimbabwe needs not only help
but
action. Real action.
The tragedy in Zimbabwe long ceased to be a
Zimbabwean problem.
I am no longer clear as to what exactly the world
wants to see happening
before they can come to the assistance of the
long-suffering innocents in
Zimbabwe.
I wish we had oil
too!
Reports and pictures of dying mothers are always being circulated on
the
Internet and in newspapers; pictures of incarcerated toddlers are
available
accompanied by reports on how a two-year old tot spent weeks in
jail, with
its mother in a different cell, in a notorious maximum security
prison in
Harare.
Countless non-governmental organisations have
chronicled the suffering of
people, deliberately caused by an illegitimate
government bent on meting out
revenge for its rejection at the
polls.
Indeed, the world has been provided with ample evidence that
genocide is
silently being perpetrated in Zimbabwe.
Early this week,
Phandu Skelemani, Botswana's Minister of Foreign Affairs,
did admit that,
indeed, what is happening in Zimbabwe is genocide.
A few days earlier
Graca Machel had complained that the Southern African
Development Community
(SADC) had been dragging its feet for too long in
solving the crisis in
Zimbabwe.
"I have been part of those who trusted and waited that our
leaders knew what
they were doing, that they would find a solution," she
said. "Somehow one
has to accept we stood and waited for too
long."
But still, we see no solution in sight. No movement from anywhere
except
press releases condemning Robert Mugabe.
Having read SADC's
impotence well, Mugabe continues to thumb his nose at the
embattled
organisation.
I still have to come across a country in the region that
benefited from
SADC's
existence or a regional country that took orders
from SADC and applied them
with the urgency of respect.
Amid criticism
from its member states and from prominent citizens who are
fed up with its
ineptitude and who should be praising it, SADC's beleaguered
Secretary
General, Tomaz Salomão, has hastily arranged yet another
extra-ordinary
summit in South Africa this coming week to deal with the
Zimbabwean issue but
unashamedly threatened the region by saying if the
talks failed once more,
SADC would drop the Zimbabwean issue and hand it
over to the African
Union.
Apparently, the Secretary General has his muzzle so deep in the
feeding
trough that he can't see that the so-called African union is a
more
embarrassing failure than SADC. At least SADC achieved disaster, what
has
the AU ever achieved?
Another last chance for SADC to redeem
itself? Don't count on it. How many
chances were presented to them and how
many were used? How many chances did
SADC itself create only to sit back and
enjoy tea and biscuits without
dealing effectively with the issues that had
brought them on the junkets?
Are they going to spend thousands they do
not have so that they gather and
instruct adversaries to run a ministry
together simultaneously?
Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for
Democratic Change gave SADC a lot of
room.
The MDC was very patient
with Dictator Mugabe and, indeed, with SADC.
I recall the assault on
Tsvangirai by Mugabe's goons, when he was shown on
international television
with his face grotesquely disfigured. Among other
excuses, that sad battered
figure of Tsvangirai should have given the likes
of Salomao a little fuel to,
at least, say something.
Apparently, SADC pays its people to keep quiet
and Salomao excels on this.
How and why did SADC fail to see to it that a
settlement "negotiated" under
its auspices is implemented?
As the
MDC's position paper correctly points out, the key challenge to the
agreement
has been its implementation.
"The implementation of the Memorandum of
Understanding and the Global
Political Agreement required honesty, good faith
and goodwill to be
displayed by the parties to the agreement."
And
SADC could not enforce that.just that.
As everybody, including SADC could
see, after the signing of the agreement,
that Zanu-PF "acted in a manner that
is contrary to the spirit of the
agreement and displayed duplicity and bad
faith in regard to the
implementation of various aspects of the
agreement".
SADC knew about it and saw it but did nothing. These are the
same people who
wasted millions as they attended a "summit" at which they
came up with the
so-called "SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing
Democratic Elections" in
2004, a few months before Zimbabwe's 2005 elections
at which mayhem reigned.
I do not think Prega Ramsamy, Salomao's
predecessor (2001-2005), let alone
Salomao even knew, saw or bothered with
that document after they all left
Mauritius.
I don't think they knew
or cared how many people ended up being killed by
Mugabe during that voting
exercise. I can almost guarantee that Salomao and
his SADC never said
anything to Mugabe about it.
For years, SADC has insisted that in
Zimbabwe, the will of the people should
be ignored to please a murderous
dictator.
SADC did not succeed in Zimbabwe because it was insisting on
reversing an
electoral process.
They were trying, and, surprisingly,
are still trying to lay the foundation
of democracy on deceit. Like Tony Leon
said, you cannot use flawed electoral
outcomes as the basis for a
post-settlement government of national unity.
But SADC says they
can.
I applaud SADC's intention to drop the Zimbabwean issue from their
agenda.
Had they done that a long time ago, we might have been freed then.
But they
should also drop their salaries.
We cannot have these
over-paid non-performers choosing what crisis to deal
with and which one not
to.
We could respect them more if they just disbanded because they are of
no use
and my heart bleeds to see the big beautiful, expensive building
nearing
completion in Gaborone and being prepared to be occupied by such a
troop of
failures.
SADC, after contributing to the deaths and
humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe
through its inaction and blindness, now wants
to wash its hands of the
Zimbabwe problem. They might as well; they
accomplished their mission:
thousands were killed and many more died because
SADC did not do anything
and even prevented assistance from reaching the
needy in Zimbabwe.
We could never have been more unfortunate than being
put in the hands of
SADC and Thabo Mbeki. It was a double catastrophe; we
could not have
survived and, indeed, we lost thousands because of these two.
Their synergy
in partiality, indecisiveness, bias and unfairness is
unequalled. Their mere
existence nurtures dictatorships.
If anyone is
serious about solving the Zimbabwean quagmire, they must start
by removing
Mbeki. He never mediated anything but always tried to cheat the
Zimbabwean
rank and file to protect his master. Those nascent dictatorial
tendencies and
political chicanery inadvertently backed up into his daily
presidential
routine in South Africa and it cost him his job.
Isn't he ashamed that
South Africans can do to him what Zimbabweans can't do
to his mentor, Mugabe?
Now he has become an instant has-been and he will not
rise from that dump of
history where he threw himself because of his
admiration for a murderous
tyrant.
Good riddance!
From the very beginning, SADC failed to
enforce its own guidelines on its
own members in the whole region.
The
fact that member states can indulge in the murder and abuse of SADC
citizens
while SADC watches and does nothing about it is a terrible
indictment against
SADC's continued existence.
SADC must, therefore, carry out their threat
of removing Zimbabwe from their
agenda. That could open the doors to the
eventual emancipation of Zimbabwe
and it would be good riddance,
too!
Otherwise, much as we might fear and dislike the idea, it really is
time to
think and talk about other options.
Too much frustration is
building up.
From The Sunday Independent (SA), 25 January
Daniel Howden
It is the visit all
Zimbabweans dread. For Jestina Mukoko, it came at 5
o'clock on the morning
of December 3. Six men and a woman appeared at her
house in Norton, a short
drive from the capital, Harare. They told her to
come with them immediately
but refused to say who they were or where she was
being taken. The director
of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) and a
forthright campaigner for human
rights, she realised she was being abducted
and that this was no ordinary
arrest. "I was not wearing anything other than
a nightdress," she says in a
sworn affidavit, the contents of which The
Sunday Independent can reveal. "I
had no undergarments and other personal
and medical requirements." When she
asked for time to dress and fetch her
glasses, two of the men grabbed her
and pushed her out of the front door and
into the back of an unmarked car
where she was made to lie on the back seat.
"Immediately, a woollen jersey
was put across my face, covering my eyes,
nose and mouth, as a result I had
problems breathing and almost suffocated."
It was the beginning of an
ordeal that has become commonplace for anyone who
dares to criticise the
leadership in Zimbabwe. Scores of opposition members
and rights activists
have been abducted, tortured and in many cases
murdered. The difference in
this case was Mukoko's high international
profile and the volume of the
response to her brazen abduction and
disappearance. The Mugabe regime had
diverted from its usual tactic of
targeting low-profile, mid-ranking
opponents and provided a human focal
point for outrage at the epidemic of
disappearances. World leaders from
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to
Condoleezza Rice, the United States
secretary of state, duly demanded
Mukoko's release.
She was driven for a little over half an hour in
what she thinks was the
direction of Harare, then arrived at a building.
Inside she was taken to a
side room and given plastic sandals. She could not
see anything through the
windows and was forced to wear a blindfold while
going to the toilet. Soon,
she was taken to what she took to be an
interrogation room. She was
questioned by six people, who again did not give
their names. They asked her
a barrage of questions about the ZPP. Then the
questions switched to
allegations that she was recruiting youths for
military training with the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change. And
the torture began. "First, I
was assaulted underneath my feet with a
rubber-like object which was at
least one metre long . Later, I was informed
to raise my feet on to a table,
and the other people in the room started to
assault me underneath my feet.
This assault lasted for at least five to six
minutes. They took a break and
then continued again with the
beatings."
The interrogation continued into the night with a break of
a few hours after
which her questioners returned drunk and started the
beatings again.
Beatings with rubber truncheons have been a favourite
torture tactic for the
regime in Zimbabwe because they leave no marks likely
to be visible at later
court appearances. After three days of this, during
which she was questioned
in detail over dates of meetings and individuals,
she was blindfolded again.
"We drove for about two hours. I do not know
where we went but I had been
warned that since I refused to co-operate they
were going to hand me over to
some people and they could not protect me."
Her new interrogators, all 10 of
them, claimed they were "law and order"
officials but gave no further
explanation. "One of the interrogators said I
was going to suffer, and I
will have to make a choice of either becoming a
witness to these alleged
cases of military training or I become extinct as
no prosecutions were to be
held."
As the days passed, she became
aware that Broderick Takawira and Pascal
Gonzo, two of her ZPP colleagues,
were being held in cells near hers. She
was also inadvertently made aware of
the clamour for her release in the
outside world, with her torturers
complaining that "I seem to drive a huge
organisation and carried so much
influence as there had been so much noise
about my whereabouts". The
government in Harare denied any knowledge of her
whereabouts and an order
from Zimbabwe's High Court for her to be found and
released was ignored by
the police who insisted they did not know where she
was. Mukoko, back in her
clandestine detention centre on December 13, was
pushed to sign a statement
that she had recruited an ex-policeman into the
military plot. When she
refused to "confess", gravel was spread over the
floor of the room and she
was made to kneel on it. The interrogations
continued for hours with her in
this position.
By the next day her medical condition had deteriorated
dramatically. She
demanded the right to see a doctor and was given a brief
visit from a man
who identified himself as Dr Chigumira. "Upon seeing me, he
expressed shock
on his face," she says. She was finally given medicine to
treat serious
allergies. The next day she was made to read her earlier
statements to
camera, and repeatedly pushed to admit links to an
ex-policemen called
Fidelis Mudimu. Three days before Christmas, the
blindfold came on again and
she was again bundled into a vehicle. After a
few minutes of driving,
turning, reversing and parking she was told that she
and another abductee,
whom she later identified as a colleague, Broderick
Takawira, were in police
custody. They were not allowed to remove their
blindfolds. For two days she
was shuffled from one police station to
another. She accompanied police on
searches of her home and office, where
items were seized with no inventory
made.
Finally, after 21 days,
she was able briefly, in the presence of police, to
see her family. On
Christmas Eve, and without legal consultation, she was
made to appear in
court. Alongside her in the dock were seven others who had
been abducted,
some held for up to 76 days, including a 72-year-old man and
a two-year-old
boy. The boy, who his mother claims was held in a separate
cell and beaten
with a fan belt when he cried out for her, was released last
week. He has
been handed over to strangers because his mother, Violet
Mupfuranhehwe, and
father, Collen Mutemagawo, remain in detention. Mukoko,
along with a dozen
other activists, is still being held, accused of a plot
to overthrow the
Mugabe government. In a court appearance last week, she
wept on the stand as
she recounted her ordeal. The authorities, who denied
abducting and
detaining her, now deny torturing her.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=10389
January 24, 2009
By Allen
Masomere
Much has been made of Barack Obama's inaugural speech reference
to
clench-fisted, corrupt despots who stifle dissent and blame their
failures
on the West. It was suggested, by some in the media, that these
words were
intended for Robert Mugabe's ears. I doubt it, but even if that
was the
case, one should not attempt to overstate the intensity with which
President
Obama will pay attention to the Zimbabwean problem.
For one
thing, Obama assumes the presidency at a critical phase in the
history of
the world: his hands, plate and mouth are full. America faces an
unprecedented economic melt down driven by loss of confidence in the US
government itself and in the financial institutions that are the bedrock of
the world economy. Job losses across the country are approaching pre-World
War 2 levels. One of every ten mortgaged houses in the US is facing
foreclosure.
Abroad, the US is engaged in two costly wars and a
seemingly endless
campaign against an increasingly amorphous Al Qaeda
network. The beat goes
on..
The way I see it, if Obama had a thousand
things to accomplish over the next
four or eight years, Zimbabwe might not
show up on his list. I hope I am
wrong about this of course, but I would be
thoroughly surprised if US policy
towards Robert Mugabe were to radically
shift under Obama.
Now, let's indulge in a bit of wishful thinking and
imagine Obama as our
knight in shining armour. What could he possibly do?
Invading Zimbabwe is
neither desirable nor feasible and out of the question,
for reasons too many
to enumerate here.
Full-scale economic sanctions
are unlikely, given the entrenched interests
of the business community in
the West and in Zimbabwe itself. For how else
can we make sense of claims
that sanctions hurt only the poor as if the
Zimbabwean poor could be any
worse off than they already are? Besides, the
only sanctions likely to bite
would have to be coordinated with the regional
powerhouse, South Africa, and
receive the support of Mozambique and perhaps,
Namibia. At this stage, the
threat of comprehensive US unilateral sanctions
does not look like a
probability.
George Bush made a lot of noise about Mugabe's misrule but
he failed to take
even the slightest step to demonstrate his sincerity.
Victims of Mugabe's
policies who sought American help were shipped across
the border to Canada.
Obama may not be able to do much about the Zimbabwean
situation beyond
continuing Bush's so-called targeted sanctions and use of
the bully pulpit.
But Obama can, at the very least, show US sincerity by
putting US law where
his mouth is and provide some form of protection for
victims of the
unfolding tragedy in Zimbabwe who happen to be on US
territory. To its
credit, the Labour government in the UK appears to be
seeing the light in
the way it treats Zimbabwean victims of Mugabe's
policies.
Obama can also apply real pressure on African countries
neighbouring
Zimbabwe, particularly the South Africans, who can end the
Zimbabwean
problem at the stroke of a pen. It will not be enough to simply
beg them to
do something, which is pretty much all that Bush did in eight
years. His
options will probably be few, but he will have more goodwill than
Bush. And
he will have plenty of allies in a post-Thabo Mbeki South
Africa.
Assuming that Obama was sending a message to Mugabe in his
inaugural speech,
one would have to say that Obama was actually offering
Mugabe an olive
branch. That would be a radical departure from Bush's
policies; an "about
turn" of sorts under which Mugabe could expect a
US-backed resolution of the
Zimbabwean problem which may not require Mugabe
to be punished for his
crimes against the people of Zimbabwe. That might be
the stuff around which
great political dramas are constructed, but it would
be a new Zimbabwean and
African tragedy co-authored by Barack Obama himself.
Better far for the US
government to look the other way and let the people of
Zimbabwe take care of
Mugabe any which way they can.
To conclude,
even if there is a special place in Barack Obama's heart for
the people of
Zimbabwe (and that may well be the case), he does not have a
whole range of
tools in his box that he can use to unlock the puzzle.
Indeed, it would be
unfair to expect any more from Obama than one would
expect from Mugabe's
fellow African leaders like Kgalema Motlanthe and Thabo
Mbeki, unless one
actually buys the Republican line that Obama is "the magic
negro"!
http://www.zimbabwetoday.co.uk/
How the economy is wrecking the marriage market
The
great institutions of Zimbabwe continue to crumble into dust. The latest
is
education, as the government fails to open the schools for a new term.
But
despite this and everything else, I am continually surprised by the
way
normal life struggles on. A particular struggle is one in which my
friend
Gumbo finds himself embroiled this week.
Gumbo is a man in
love. His fiancee is Judith, 25. Judith is quite a catch -
good looking and
kind, with a degree in economics, a science much neglected
in our
impoverished state. She'd make any young man an excellent wife.
With that
in view, last Friday Gumbo travelled to Plumtree, in Matabeleland
south
province, to visit Judith's parents. The object of the visit was to
settle
the matter of Lobolo - the bride price.
Lobolo, for western readers, is a
traditional Zimbabwean custom. The Bride
Price is exactly what it says. The
intention behind it is to cement
relations between the two families. In
normal times it is not exorbitant.
But these are not normal times. Gumbo
arrived at Judith's home. Ten minutes
later he was leaving, in a state of
humiliation, bewilderment and despair.
Through saving and scrimping he had
accumulated a sum of 2000 South African
rand. About US$200. He thought it
would be sufficient. He thought wrong.
Judith's parents demanded the
equivalent of US$3,200.
Thoughtfully they had itemised the total for poor
Gumbo. It went something
like this:
Fee for entry to in-laws'
house US$100
Introduction
fee US$150
Fee for status as
son-in-law US$550
Six head of
cattle US$1,200
Education compensation
fee US$200
Added to these amounts was a fee for "damage".
Yes, as many readers will
know, this term refers to the undeniable fact that
Judith is four months
pregnant. The fee - US$900.
And the additional
US$100 still not accounted for? Judith's parents request
a designer suit for
the father and a designer dress for the mother. Oh
yes - and three
blankets.
Normally lobolo payment is staggered over the years. Judith's
parents want
the lot now. And they want money for Judith's upkeep, for her
maternity
bills, for...
Gumbo is a defeated man. He has no hope of
finding the money. Is he a victim
of the economic breakdown in Zimbabwe?
Perhaps, yes. But then again, ask
yourself this: would you sell your daughter
for a designer suit, a designer
dress, and three
blankets?
Posted on Sunday, 25 January 2009 at 12:01
It’s one of the most astonishing natural wonders of the world which rates
highly on any traveller’s must- see destinations. And with more than 50 activities crammed into the small surrounding Vic Falls
town, it’s easily the adventure capital of Africa — an oasis of fun completely
removed from the problems facing the rest of Zimbabwe. Having just arrived from a week-long safari I thought I would ease into the
country slowly before tackling the daredevil sports on offer. The Victoria Falls
or Mosi-oa-Tunya (the Smoke That Thunders) may not be the highest or widest
falls in the world, but based on its width of 1.7 kilometers and height of 108
meters it forms the largest sheet of falling water. The spray rises to more than 400 metres and, amazingly, is visible from up to
40 kilometers away. To get close to the magnificent sight, you need to buy a ticket into the
national park. But you should also go on the guided tour for $30 (£20). Many of Africa’s animals and birds are to be found in the area and the range
of river fish is plentiful in the Zambezi, so you can combine wildlife viewing
and sport fishing with sightseeing. After the tranquil tour of the Falls, it was time for some hardcore action,
so I signed up for some white-water rafting — aka a Dance With The Mighty
Zambezi. After a trek to the riverside we boarded the boats and were given the
all-important safety talk. No problems, so far. But what comes next didn’t feel so much like a dance with the Zambezi as a
12-round battering from Joe Calzaghe. Rapid One is only a Grade Three we’re told (they go from One to Six, One
being easy and Six, well, avoid if you can). So this one should be no problem, I
kid myself as I watch huge waves crashing into each other. As we tear down the
river the adrenalin kicks in and we’re paddling like fury . . . until, that is,
the first big wave we reach smacks into us full-on like a steam train. That’s it for me — I’m overboard, hitting my head on a paddle and taking in
gallons of river water in the process. As I swirl around waiting to surface, I wonder if the raft was completely
toppled by that almighty wall of water. Surely everyone else would — like me —
be floating powerlessly downstream. But to my surprise, and complete embarrassment, I’m the only one who thinks
it’s a better idea to swim the rapids rather than stay afloat. I learn my lesson
after that — the guide warned that clinging to the ropes, closing your eyes and
hoping for the best is the only way down. The following morning, having survived that trip with only a few minor
scrapes and bruises, it was time for the ultimate challenge. We walked out to the middle of a bridge which joins Zimbabwe with Zambia.
Standing 111 metres above the unforgiving Zambezi, I’m faced with what will
either be the most exciting thing I’ll ever do, or the last thing I’ll ever do.
Adrenalin junkies were queuing by the dozen to leap into the vast gorge,
their only lifeline a bungie cord tied around their ankles. Before I knew it,
the countdown had begun and it was too late to change my mind. 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . BUNGEE! Defying every instinct of my mind and body I jumped out, arms stretched, and
prayed the cord would hold. It takes just four seconds to reach the bottom before you’re flung back up on
what is essentially a huge elastic band, but that fall seems to take a lifetime.
What surprised me is the sudden silence that fills the air. There’s fear,
excitement, and a thousand thoughts that rush through your mind — but bizarrely,
it all seems so quiet. The bounce back up and the following climb onto the
bridge are all a blur now — all that remains is the memory of the fall. During my visit to the area, I stayed at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge
which opened in 1994 and has been voted the best safari lodge in Zimbabwe by the
local tourism industry every year since. It’s easy to see why. It fits in perfectly with the surroundings and
overlooks a watering hole visited every day by elephant, buffalo, giraffe and
antelope. There are loads of eating places in Victoria Falls town but the best by far
is the Boma Place of Eating. For $40 (£26) each you can eat as much as you want
and there’s so much to choose from. The Boma serves up a unique cultural experience that bombards diners with the
tastes, sounds and smells of Africa. I tried all their speciality Zimbabwean dishes including warthog, ostrich and
buffalo. But I had to draw the line at one local delicacy, mopani worms. Rafting the most feared river in the world? No probs. Jumping off a bridge
with a rope tied to my ankles? Easy. But munching on some worms . . . I’m afraid
I had to wriggle out of that one.