International Herald Tribune
The Associated PressPublished: January
30, 2008
WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday imposed
financial sanctions on
Zimbabwe's intelligence chief, President Robert
Mugabe's nephew as well as
two companies accused of undermining democracy in
the southern African
country.
The Treasury Department's action means
that any bank accounts or other
financial assets found in the United States
that belong to those designated
must be frozen. Americans also are forbidden
from doing business with them.
It marks the government's latest move to
apply more financial pressure on
Mugabe, who over the years has become
increasingly authoritarian,
spearheading media controls and takeovers of
white-owned farms.
The United States recently criticized Mugabe for
abruptly setting
presidential and parliamentary elections for March 29,
earlier than
expected. That was viewed as a way to avert political
conciliation. The
opposition Movement for Democratic Change had demanded
constitutional and
electoral reforms before the election and said polling
should be delayed
until June to allow for its demands to be met.
"The
U.S. financial system is closed to Robert Mugabe, his cohorts and their
businesses," said Adam Szubin, director of Treasury's Office of Foreign
Assets Control, the agency that administers and enforces financial
sanctions. "Today's designations are part of an increased effort to pressure
those who are aiding Mugabe's efforts to cripple Zimbabwe, including through
violence and intimidation."
The U.S. order on Wednesday covers
two people — Happyton Bonyongwe, director
of Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence
Organization, considered the country's
spy chief, and Leo Mugabe, the
president's nephew and a member of the
Zimbabwe Parliament.
Also covered
are two businesses — ZIDCO Holdings and Jongwe Printing and
Publishing Co.
The department alleges that both entities are owned or
controlled by "key
components of the Mugabe regime" that have previously
been put on the United
States financial sanctions list. The department
provided no further
details.
In economic meltdown, Zimbabwe has the world's highest official
inflation at
an estimated 24,000 per cent. But the International Monetary
Fund and
independent financial institutions say real inflation is closer to
150,000
percent.
VOA
By Peta
Thornycroft
30 January 2008
South African President
Thabo Mbeki is expected to tell southern Africa
leaders at the AU summit in
Ethiopia this week that his attempt to resolve
the Zimbabwe crisis has
failed. Peta Thornycroft reports for VOA that
President Mbeki has been
trying to continue negotiations for free and fair
elections this week, even
after President Robert Mugabe had issued a
proclamation that polls would
take place on March 29.
President Mbeki had informed colleagues in the
region that he was hopeful a
meeting would take place between President
Mugabe and the two leaders of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change,
Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur
Mutambara.
The South African leader was
hoping that a face-to-face meeting between the
political opponents would
lead to a breakthrough after he failed in four
hours of talks with President
Mugabe on January 16. He tried to persuade
the 84-year-old Zimbabwe leader
to stick to an earlier agreement for a new
constitution and other changes
before elections next month.
Since then, senior South African negotiators
have been working tirelessly in
Harare in an attempt to arrange talks
between President Mugabe and his
opponents. But, diplomats in Harare say
President Mugabe kept President
Mbeki and his negotiators on the run until
it became clear, earlier this
week, that he would not agree to the talks
under any circumstances.
President Mbeki is now at the African Union
summit without the deal that the
Southern African Development Community
(SADC) asked him to facilitate,free
and fair elections in
Zimbabwe.
MDC insiders say they warned the South Africans that President
Mugabe would
not play straight and would, as one said, "play games with
Mbeki" and
"double cross him all the time."
One African diplomat told
VOA that for some reason, which few close to the
talks understood, Mbeki
seems "frightened of Mugabe."
One of the two MDC negotiators, founding
MDC secretary-general Welshman
Ncube, told VOA "the dialogue is as dead as a
dodo." He added that all that
remains is for Mr. Mbeki to decide where to
bury it.
He said some might want to pretend that the talks were
indefinite. He said
the MDC's position had been clear from the start, that
the purpose of the
talks was to find common ground so that the next
elections would be free,
fair and undisputed.
Ncube and his colleague
in the negotiations, the MDC's Tendai Biti, are on
record that only free and
fair elections could solve the present political
and economic crisis in
Zimbabwe.
Ncube said Zimbabweans now face the same kind of elections on
March 29 as
all those since 2000, which many observers found neither free
nor fair, and
which have all been disputed.
This weekend the two MDC
factions, still struggling to come to a unity
agreement before nomination
court day on February 8, will hold meetings of
their national executive
councils.
Top of the agenda will be whether to boycott the polls and
allow Mr. Mugabe
and ZANU-PF into power for a further five years without
having to fight any
elections. They say their other option is to give it
another go, knowing
that the political playing fields are as unequal now as
they ever were.
SW
Radio Africa (London)
30 January 2008
Posted to the web 30 January
2008
Tichaona Sibanda
A face-to-face meeting between Mugabe
and Tsvangirai to try to resolve the
talks has been scuttled - by Angola and
Mozambique. The meeting was due to
take place on Friday but the two
countries blocked South African President
Thabo Mbeki's initiative that was
to see the two protagonists under the same
roof in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia.
A highly placed source told us Mbeki had suggested to the SADC
Heads of
State that Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai come together under
one roof
to attempt to thrash out a workable solution to the deadlocked
crisis talks.
Since all SADC leaders would be assembling in Ethiopia for the
annual
African Union summit that starts on Thursday, Mbeki had wanted to use
the
opportunity to brief SADC leaders on the progress of the talks. The SADC
talks are expected to be held on the sidelines of the AU
summit.
'This was going to be the first ever meeting between Mugabe
and Tsvangirai
and Mbeki had sought to have both in his Troika briefing, so
that they could
present their case to the regional grouping that initiated
the
negotiations,' said the source.
The rest of the SADC Heads of
State felt comfortable with the idea but
Angola and Mozambique, the two
countries whose leaders stand firmly behind
Mugabe, vetoed the
idea.
'Mugabe did his homework and realised his party would almost
certainly be
blamed for the impasse. By calling on his friends to block
Mbeki's
initiative was a drawback for the South African leader,' the source
added.
The SADC briefing will go ahead as scheduled with Mugabe in
attendance, but
with no-one presenting facts from the opposition. Tsvangirai
has been in
Johannesburg waiting for the call to fly to Ethiopia for the
crunch talks,
but has now shelved the plans following the veto by Angola and
Mozambique.
A political analyst in Johannesburg who asked not to be named
said it was
high time people wrote an obituary of the crisis talks because
they were
'dead'.
'Lets not pretend about who is to blame for the
crisis, the SADC leaders
know the source of the problems, the international
community is well updated
and no one seems to have an idea how to deal with
it. I think its time
Zimbabweans reflected on this and not rely on other
people to sort out their
problems,' said the analyst.
Zim Online
by Prince Nyathi Thursday 31 January
2008
HARARE – Zimbabwe’s opposition on Wednesday said
government officials were
refusing aid to hundreds of its supporters
affected by floods as punishment
for not backing President Robert Mugabe’s
ruling ZANU PF party.
Floods have since late last year hit parts of
southern Africa, killing at
least 21 people in Zimbabwe where the ravaging
waters have also swept away
homes, crops and livestock in low-lying
areas.
The government has declared the floods a national
disaster.
The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party
and the
smaller ZANU Ndonga parties said a top official of the governing
party,
Enock Porunsingazi, had instructed pro-Mugabe youth militia in the
eastern
Chipinge rural district and one of the areas worst affected by the
floods to
block all known opposition supporters from receiving
aid.
“We are shocked that Porusingazi is taking advantage of a disaster
of such a
magnitude to gain political mileage,” said Pishai Muchauraya, the
MDC
spokesman in Manicaland province under which Chipinge falls.
The
aid that includes clothing, tents and food was donated by the government
and
charitable organizations but is being distributed to beneficiaries by
officials from the state Civil Protection Unit (CPU), district
administrator’s
office while traditional leaders are also involved in
drawing up lists of
beneficiaries.
Civil servants such as those from
the CPU and district administration
officials are susceptible to
manipulation by powerful ZANU PF and government
officials while traditional
chiefs are largely sympathetic to Mugabe’s party
which has rewarded them
with vehicles, salaries and other perks.
Zanu Ndonga national organising
secretary Gondai Vutuza said the party had
received several reports from
their supporters that ZANU PF youths were
inspecting lists of beneficiaries
and erasing names of people perceived as
sympathetic to the
opposition.
He said: “There are some overzealous youths who were denying
our supporters
assistance . . . our supporters are saying ZANU PF youths
were refusing to
write their names down so that they would also
benefit.”
Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche, who oversees
distribution of aid,
was not immediately available for comment on the
matter. But Porusingazi
dismissed charges that opposition supporters were
being denied aid as
baseless and mere politicking by the opposition ahead of
elections.
“No one was left out. This is election time and they are out
to tarnish my
name,” said Porusingazi.
Zimbabwe holds presidential,
parliamentary and local government elections in
March, which are expected to
be a close contest between the MDC and Mugabe’s
ZANU PF.
Floods have
been a double-edged sword for long-suffering Zimbabweans,
destroying crops
and life in their wake, while agricultural experts say too
much rain will
mean reduced crop yields and more food shortages for the
southern African
country. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Cuthbert Nzou Thursday 31 January
2008
HARARE – Zimbabwean authorities on Wednesday
said inspection of the
voters’ roll for the March presidential and general
elections begins
tomorrow as the government forges ahead with preparations
for polls that the
opposition had wanted postponed.
Registrar
General Tobaiwa Mudede, an ally of President Robert Mugabe
the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party says should be
stopped from
managing the voters’ roll, said the inspection exercise will
run until
February 7.
"Location and information on inspection centres will be
published in
the newspapers and will also be obtainable at the offices of
the district
registrar, provincial registrar or the registrar general of
voters in
Harare," said Mudede, who the MDC accuses of manipulating the
voters’ roll
to ensure victory for Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF
party.
The MDC, which is still to formally announce its
participation in the
polls, had wanted the elections postponed to allow
implementation of a new
constitution agreed with ZANU PF during negotiations
brokered by South
African President Thabo Mbeki.
The opposition
party also wanted the elections postponed to allow time
for re-demarcation
of voting constituencies and for a fresh voter
registration exercise to be
conducted in order to clean up the current
voters’ register that is said to
contain massive distortions, including
hundreds of thousands of names of
voters who died or left the country years
ago.
The government
has said it is prepared to consider a new constitution
for the country only
after the elections and insists the voters’ roll is in
good
order.
Mudede said his department had deployed teams of officials
throughout
the country to receive complaints from voters who find their
names missing
or wrongly entered on the roll.
"People who have
changed residence (since the 2005 senate elections)
must complete transfer
forms at the nearest inspection centre," said Mudede.
More than 5.6
million Zimbabweans registered to vote this year.
Meanwhile, the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Tuesday said
voters would be issued
with four ballot papers with distinct colours when
entering the polling
booth to vote for the president, members of the house
of assembly, senators
and councillors.
ZEC spokesperson Shupikai Mashereni said the
commission would launch a
voter education programme before the end of the
week to enlighten
Zimbabweans on the voting process.
He said:
"There will be four ballot papers with distinct colours that
will be issued
on polling day and this will be part of the voter education
programme which
will be starting this week. Voter education will, however,
continue even
after the close of inspection of the voters’ roll.
Political
analysts predict that the election would be a close contest
between ZANU PF
and the opposition MDC whose two factions reportedly formed
a loose
coalition to fight the ruling party as a united front.
The MDC,
according to sources, will contest the elections under
protest after the
government threw out its demands for a fresh
constitution. - ZimOnline
The Zimbabwean
Wednesday, 30 January 2008 11:27
HARARE
BY STAFF
REPORTERS
The two wings of the MDC have agreed to form an alliance to fight
the
upcoming general elections in a bid to unseat President Robert Mugabe
and
his ruling Zanu (PF) party.
The Zimbabwean understands that the unity
deal between Morgan Tsvangirai and
Arthur Mutambara was hammered out in
Pretoria on Saturday.
The two parties have agreed that Tsvangirai will
contest the presidential
election as the sole MDC candidate while a "safe
parliamentary seat" has
been reserved for Mutambara.
The unity pact was
reportedly facilitated by leading academic, Professor
Brian Raftopolous, a
programme manager with policy think-tank, the Institute
for Justice and
Reconciliation based in South Africa.
The unity pact was finally sealed by
the Standing Committees of both MDC
factions on Saturday. While senior
officials in both MDCs confirmed the
unity deal this week, they are keeping
the details private.
"We have united to put an end to the uncontrolled and
irresponsible rule of
the current regime," said one of the leaders of the
new alliance.
Under the pact, sitting MPs cannot be challenged by candidates
from the
rival MDC. However, every candidate will have to be confirmed
through
primary elections, set to be held before the Nomination Court sits
on
February 8.
The two MDCs will address joint rallies, starting with the
election campaign
launch at Ascot Stadium in Gweru this Saturday.
The
breakthrough comes more than two years after the MDC splintered over the
issue of participation in elections for the Senate. Following this initial
split, the two were polarised by differences in policy and strategy.
Some
senior officials in the Tsvangirai group in Bulawayo feel betrayed by
the
unity pact and will have to be persuaded to embrace it in the national
interest. They say the Mutambara faction has realised its electoral
weakness, plans to use the unity to get elected and will then dump
Tsvangirai afterwards.
A final decision on whether to participate or
boycott the elections is yet
to be announced.
But a senior MDC official
who attended the meeting in SA said, "There is a
position we can never
compromise on, and it is that we will not contest an
election without a new
constitution and electoral reforms. However, as part
of our political
strategy, we shall continue pushing for this through
various means and Mbeki
says he is not giving up on his efforts to pressure
Mugabe and Zanu (PF).
Therefore we shall register for the elections and
move countrywide telling
the electorate our clear position. An announcement
will be made on the eve
of elections depending on what will be prevailing
regarding our
demands."
SW Radio Africa
(London)
29 January 2008
Posted to the web 29 January
2008
Tichaona Sibanda
South African President Thabo Mbeki has
sent his chief negotiator Sydney
Mufamadi to Harare in last-ditch attempts
to rescue the stalled talks before
he declares a deadlock to SADC and the
African Union.
It is believed Mbeki has confided to close aides he is
ready to call 'a
spade a spade' and brief SADC on who is reneging on the
agreed concessions.
He's facing intense pressure from within his country and
the international
community to officially declare the talks deadlocked and
inform the SADC
troika of the difficulties he is facing to get Zanu-PF to
honour its
commitments made during the negotiations.
A source
told us Mufamadi met MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in South Africa
on Monday
before flying to Harare where he was expected to meet the
negotiating teams
from both the MDC and Zanu-PF. The Zimbabwean government
on Monday
heightened the crisis by refusing opposition demands for a new
constitution
to be adopted before the March general election. The government
said it
would put the issue to a referendum after the polls.
Speaking to Newsreel
from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia the MDC secretary for
International Affairs
Professor Elphas Mukonoweshuro agreed Mbeki had no
other choice but brief
the SADC troika on the impasse.
Mukonoweshuro said, "There is a deadlock
after several months of
negotiations where Zanu-PF and the MDC agreed to
work around five key issues
identified as a way of promoting an enabling an
environment for the holding
of free and fair elections. It is clear Zanu-PF
has failed to honour its
commitment and this should be easy work for Mbeki
when he reports to the
Troika."
There is growing pressure from the
international community for the SADC
Troika to take the Zimbabwean issue to
the African Summit that begins in
Ethiopia this week.
The crisis
talks in the country are centred on five key issues, including
demands by
the MDC for amendments to security, media and electoral laws, a
new
constitution and cessation of political violence.
Zanu PF has made
concessions on media and security laws, but has ruled out a
new constitution
before elections in March.
Business Day
30 January 2008
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki was to brief southern African leaders on
his
facilitation of the political talks in Zimbabwe, the foreign affairs
department said yesterday.
Mbeki would brief the heads of the
Southern African Development Community
(SADC) countries on the fringes of
the African Union (AU) summit taking
place in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia.
At a media briefing yesterday at the Union Buildings, Deputy
Foreign Affairs
Minister Aziz Pahad did not want to be drawn on SA’s view of
the Zimbabwean
situation: “The facilitation is of such a sensitive nature
that I would
prefer the president talk about it.”
President Robert
Mugabe has called an election on March 29, a move that has
angered the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
“Mugabe has dealt a slap
to the SADC’s commitment and President Thabo Mbeki’s
efforts to try to
amicably solve the crisis. Mugabe has jumped the gun,”
said MDC main faction
spokesman Nelson Chamisa.
Mbeki was tasked by his fellow southern
African leaders last year with
mediating between Mugabe’s ruling Zanu (PF)
party and the main opposition
MDC.
Pahad also said the mandate of
about 1000 South African soldiers deployed in
Burundi under an AU mandate
was to be extended as efforts to get the last
rebel group to rejoin the
peace process gained momentum .
He said Safety and Security Minister
Charles Nqakula, who is the facilitator
of the Burundi peace process, was to
meet regional leaders on the fringes of
the AU summit .
“The
discussion will focus on the renewal of the South African mandate as
the
facilitating country, as well as a renewal of the mandate of minister
Nqakula as facilitator,” Pahad said.
He said the mandate of the AU
special task force, manned solely by SA, would
also be on the agenda of the
regional leaders.
“We are concerned that it has taken so long but hope
these discussions will
move the process forward,” Pahad said.
The
Palipehutu-FNL is the last remaining rebel group in the central African
country. It signed a cease-fire agreement with the government in September
2006 but implementation was halted when the FNL pulled out of talks in July
last year.
It had rejected Nqakula as facilitator in Burundi’s peace
process, accusing
him of bias in favour of Burundi’s
government.
The first South African National Defence Force deployment
of troops to
Burundi was in November 2001, to provide a small VIP protection
force for
parliamentarians, while the rest of the battalion served as
support in case
of fresh hostilities. Sapa
IOL
January 30 2008
at 12:23PM
By Peta Thornycroft
President Thabo Mbeki
was still trying to save the Zimbabwe dialogue
this week even after
President Robert Mugabe deceived him by proclaiming the
elections will place
on March 29.
Mbeki believed he had been given assurances by Mugabe
that he would
meet the two leaders of the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change,
Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara.
Instead, Mugabe
kept Mbeki and his negotiators on the run for the past
two weeks and he now
has to go to the African Union summit without the deal
that the SADC asked
him to facilitate - free and fair elections in
Zimbabwe.
In Pretoria this week, details
leaked out of Mbeki's desperate
attempts to save the
negotiations.
Mbeki believed that he had succeeded in getting
Mugabe's agreement for
a meeting between Tsvangirai and
Mutambara.
Mbeki hoped the face-to-face meeting would unblock the
deadlock in the
talks which arose in early December.
The MDC
was told that a new constitution, already negotiated between
themselves and
the ruling Zanu-PF, would be in place ahead of the elections.
Then
Mugabe refused to honour his word to Mbeki and said any new
constitution had
to come after the elections.
He also refused to delay the elections
beyond March.
Mbeki then went to see Mugabe on January 16 and,
after more than four
hours, emerged from his meeting without any concession
from Mugabe.
He then began playing his last card, which he hoped
would buy him time
at least, ahead of his report-back to SADC on the fringes
the AU summit.
He suggested to Mugabe that it might be helpful, to
resolve the
deadlock, for the Zimbabwean leader to meet Tsvangirai and
Mutambara.
Mugabe did not turn the suggestion down, but said he
would arrange the
meeting himself.
The MDC warned Mbeki that
Mugabe would never do that and they were
proved right.
Mugabe
kept Mbeki and his aides on the run for days on end, as he
danced around the
South Africans, placing obstacles in their way and asking
for certain
conditions to be met first.
He said the MDC had to recognise him as
president before he could
agree to meet Tsvangirai and
Mutambara.
Negotiators from the MDC said that was not a problem as
they had
already recognised him by negotiating for eight months with members
of
Mugabe's cabinet.
Mugabe then stepped in - as the MDC had
warned the South Africans he
would - and proclaimed the elections, killing
off any hope of the SADC
mediation effort being concluded.
Even
after that, Provincial and Local Government Minister Sidney
Mufamadi
delivered a letter from Mbeki to Mugabe via labour minister
Nicholas Goche
last week, pleading for the meeting and claiming that the
"content" of the
dialogue, such as amendments to election, media and
sec-urity laws and even
a new constitution, had been agreed upon.
An African diplomat in
Pretoria who has been monitoring the
negotiations says: "(Mbeki) has to go
to see SADC now, empty handed, he has
got nothing."
The MDC's
Welshman Ncube, one of two negotiators to the dialogue, said
on Tuesday:
"The dialogue is as dead as a dodo. The only thing is that this
dodo is not
yet buried and President Mbeki is only involved now in so far as
where to
bury this dodo."
This article was originally published on page
12 of Cape Argus on
January 30, 2008
Business Day (Johannesburg)
COLUMN
30 January
2008
Posted to the web 30 January 2008
Johannesburg
THE Sunday
Times captured the government's mishandling of the energy
challenge aptly in
its recent front-page headline: "Guilty: The bright
sparks behind our plunge
into darkness."
President Thabo Mbeki's wilful disregard for expert
knowledge is now
legendary. His legacy is now of gargantuan failure, abuse
of office and
betrayal; be it HIV/AIDS, Zimbabwe, crime or misleading the
nation with
regard to national police commissioner Jackie
Selebi.
Having ignored expert advice, Mbeki's sudden search for
wisdom from
Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille is opportunistic and
smacks of
desperation. After all, this is a man who has routinely castigated
members
of the tripartite alliance every time they found common cause with
the
opposition.
Mbeki's belated acknowledgement is a pre-emptive
strategy. The effects of
power shortages and the disastrous effect on the
economy cannot be wished or
explained away.
However, Mbeki's
confession should not replace the need to account. The
decision by Patricia
de Lille, the leader of the Independent Democrats, to
call for a motion of
no confidence in Mbeki's government should be seen in
this light.
De
Lille's call for Mbeki's head follows Mbeki's humiliating drubbing by
Jacob
Zuma at the African National Congress (ANC) conference in December.
The
repudiation of Mbeki and some of his cabinet members was nothing short
of a
motion of no confidence. Faced with such a defeat, many a democrat
would
have resigned as a show of respect for the people. Unfortunately,
Mbeki
continually fails to appreciate that leadership is a privilege, not a
right.
We now have a situation where those who lead are rejects from
their party.
When Mbeki declared that the people had spoken following the
outcome of
national elections, he was affirming the democratic principle
that those who
govern must enjoy the confidence of their party. He seems to
have forgotten
his own words.
In the same way as Mbeki refuses to
understand the notion of political
legitimacy, we are confronted with a
strange phenomenon, in which the leader
gets rejected by his party, but the
very same leader gets embraced
enthusiastically by the opposition which he
has held no regard for in the
past. The accumulative effect of this is the
bastardisation and denigration
of the concept of democracy.
Following
the outcome of the ANC conference, the opposition parties and the
beneficiaries of the Mbeki regime have launched a concerted campaign to
discredit the new ANC leadership. For these people, democracy is only useful
if it delivers who they want. This crass opportunism by the opposition and
Mbeki's hangers-on is a threat to democracy.
Polokwane marked a
turning point in post-1994 political history. It
represents new confidence
among the masses to elect leaders of their choice.
It was a show of force
and a showcase of democracy in action. Delegates
sought to remind all and
sundry that all ANC members have a role to play.
The fact that the
chairman and secretary-general of the South African
Communist Party (SACP)
serve on the national working committee of the ANC is
unprecedented. It
underscores the centrality of the SACP and the Congress of
South African
Trade Unions in the tripartite alliance. It is a rejection of
efforts of
those who have sought to divide the alliance. The lesson of
history is that
leadership cannot be imposed. The new leadership is rooted
in community
struggles and historical battles.
Yet the new ANC leadership needs to
take greater cognisance of the
implications of the return to democracy. The
retention of those in the
government who were resoundingly rejected in
Polokwane goes against the
time-tested notion of political legitimacy. They
are not mandated to rule
and are a spent force .
The new leadership
cannot afford to fail the delegates to Polokwane, who
went there to deliver
a message of change. They refused to be hoodwinked by
those who spread the
message of doom. They sought to disabuse the conference
of the
fear-mongering that was opportunistically perpetuated by some among
the
so-called leaders of the revolution. The international community and
business leaders have expressed confidence in our democracy. We have a
historic opportunity to deepen it. We dare not fail.
Prof Seepe is
president of the South African Institute of Race Relations.
Resource Investor
By Jane Louis
30 Jan 2008 at 11:25 AM
Zimbabwe’s total gold
output fell by 37% last year due to power outages and
foreign currency
problems.
The country produced 7 tonnes of gold in 2007, down by more
than a third
from its production of 11 tonnes in 2006. Chamber of Mines
President Jack
Murehwa said the drop in output was the result of widespread
power
shortages.
In addition, mining operations were hampered by a
lack of foreign currency
in Zimbabwe. The country’s central bank cannot
afford to pay miners in 65%
U.S. dollars as had been agreed.
The
Chamber, however, noted that platinum production gained 13% to 5,665.32
kilograms in 2007.
Zim Online
by Cuthbert Nzou Wednesday 30 January
2008
HARARE – A draft government Bill forcing mining firms to
transfer majority
stake to local blacks will no longer become law after
Parliament adjourned
without passing the proposed legislation.
Clerk
of Parliament Austin Zvoma told ZimOnline on Tuesday that under
parliamentary procedures and regulations, the controversial Bill that was
tabled in Parliament last December naturally lapsed after the House stopped
sitting a fortnight ago.
Parliament will resume sitting after the
presidential, parliamentary and
local government elections on March 29 and
the new government will have an
option to reintroduce the Mines and Minerals
Act Amendment Bill.
"The Bill is no longer of any effect at all," Zvoma
said. "Parliament will
start sitting after the polls and this means the Bill
has lapsed. It will be
up to the new government whether or not to
reintroduce it into a new
Parliament."
The controversial mining law
that analysts have warned could deliver a
killer-punch to an economy on the
verge of total collapse proposes to force
foreign-owned mining firms to
transfer majority shareholding to indigenous
Zimbabweans. This includes
giving the government a free 25 percent stake.
President Robert Mugabe,
whose ruling ZANU PF party is widely expected to
retain absolute majority in
Parliament, has defended the draft Bill as
necessary to ensure blacks also
have a share of the country’s lucrative
mineral wealth.
Mines
Minister Amos Midzi was not immediately available to shed light on
whether
the government would resume attempts to pass the law if it is
re-elected in
March.
Under the proposed law, the government will take over 51 percent
of firms
mining strategic minerals such as coal and coal-bed methane, with
the state
taking 25 percent of that stake free.
The government will
also take 25 percent shareholding in precious minerals
such as gold, diamond
and platinum while another 26 percent will go to local
blacks.
Some
foreign-controlled mining firms have threatened to scale down
operations or
withdraw from the country altogether if Harare goes ahead with
plans to
force them to transfer shareholding to locals.
Zimbabwe is grappling with
a severe economic crisis blamed on Mugabe's
controversial policies, such as
the seizure of white-owned farms to resettle
landless blacks.
The
veteran ruler, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, denies
mismanaging the economy and says it has been sabotaged by foreign firms and
western nations plotting to undermine his rule. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Cuthbert Nzou Wednesday 30 January
2008
HARARE – ZANU PF’s ruling politburo has tasked the
party’s presidium to
decide the fate of controversial war veterans’ leader
Jabulani Sibanda who
was fired but later surreptitiously re-admitted into
the party, ZimOnline
has learnt.
Sources within ZANU PF said the
politburo, the party’s highest decision
making body outside congress, met
last Wednesday in Harare where a decision
to deal once and for all with the
Sibanda issue was adopted.
The sources said President Robert Mugabe, his
two deputies, Joice Mujuru and
Joseph Msika and ZANU PF national chairman,
John Nkomo, who make up the
party’s presidium, had been asked to come up
with a decision on Sibanda’s
fate in the party before the next meeting next
month.
“The decision for the presidium to decide Sibanda’s fate was
proposed by
Msika after he said the case to him was personal and could not
be discussed
openly in the politburo," a senior member of the body told
ZimOnline.
“Msika’s remarks came after Dumiso Dabengwa (a politburo
member) had accused
Sibanda of fanning divisions in the party, especially
against former senior
ZIPRA (Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army, the
military wing of ZAPU
during Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation war)
cadres."
Sibanda, who is the chairman of the powerful and influential
Zimbabwe
National War Veterans Association, was expelled from ZANU PF in
2004
together with six other top officials for attempting to block the rise
of
Mujuru to the party’s vice-presidency.
The war veterans’ chief
last year made a spectacular comeback onto the
political scene amid reports
that he had been personally invited by Mugabe
to drum up support for the
Zimbabwean leader who was facing resistance from
his own party to stand for
another presidential term next March.
Sibanda last year organized several
marches around the country to drum up
support for Mugabe. The war veterans’
chief also attacked former ZIPRA and
ZAPU leaders like Msika, Nkomo and
Dabengwa accusing them of being opposed
to Mugabe’s continued
rule.
ZANU PF spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira yesterday confirmed that the
politburo
had discussed Sibanda’s issue at length but declined to give
further
details.
“The position of the party will only be announced
when the issue has been
exhausted. We will see what action will be taken
against him, if any," said
Shamuyarira.
Sibanda caused a stir at the
ZANU PF extra-ordinary congress in Harare last
December when he attempted to
address delegates without first seeking
permission from senior party
officials.
Msika and Nkomo almost walked out of the congress prompting
Mugabe to spring
to his feet and grabbing the microphone to restore order
adding that Sibanda
had no mandate to address the congress until the party
had conclusively
dealt with his case. - ZimOnline
VOA
By Ntungamili Nkomo
Washington DC
29
January 2008
Zimbabwean human rights activists working on
the sidelines of an African
Union summit set to open Thursday have submitted
a petition urging the
African leadership to prevail upon President Robert
Mugabe to implement
broad political reforms before pressing forward with the
elections he has
called for March 29.
The activists want the AU to
complement efforts by the Southern African
Development Community to bring
about a resolution of Zimbabwe's longrunning
political
crisis.
Opposition officials said Mr. Mugabe’s setting of the election
date late
last week dealt a blow to the so-called SADC process launched by
the
regional organization in March 2007 following an upsurge of political
violence in Zimbabwe. Opposition officials noted there has been no final
accord in the talks, let alone implementation of terms.
Free Zimbabwe
Youth Coordinator Aluis Mbawaro told reporter Ntungamili Nkomo
of VOA's
Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that his group hope the AU will convince Mr.
Mugabe to
postpone the elections and embrace reforms agreed by both parties
in the
talks.
Reuters
Wed 30 Jan 2008,
19:24 GMT
By MacDonald Dzirutwe
HARARE, Jan 30 (Reuters) -
Zimbabwe's High Court ruled on Wednesday that a
former British special
forces officer could be extradited to Equatorial
Guinea to face coup plot
charges, rejecting arguments that he might be
tortured.
Simon Mann
was jailed in 2004 and was briefly released after serving his
sentence in
May last year. However, he was again arrested on an immigration
warrant
while awaiting deportation.
Mann, 55, was convicted of trying to buy
weapons without a licence as part
of a plot against Equatorial Guinea
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
His lawyer, Jonathan Samkange,
told Reuters on Wednesday he would appeal
against Wednesday's
ruling.
"We are appealing the first thing tomorrow (Thursday) but we have
not had
full sight of the whole judgment as it was only delivered this
evening,"
Samkange said.
Mann was alleged to be at the centre of a
plot against oil producer
Equatorial Guinea, one of the continent's richest
countries and one of its
most repressive.
On Wednesday, the High
Court dismissed Mann's argument that he would not
receive a fair trial and
would be tortured if he were deported to Equatorial
Guinea.
Authorities in Equatorial Guinea authorities have assured
Zimbabwe that
Mann -- believed by his government to be the "intellectual
head" of the coup
plot -- would receive justice.
He was arrested in
March 2004 when he met a plane carrying dozens of men and
military equipment
which landed in Harare on what officials said was the
first stop on their
way to launching a coup against Obiang.
Eleven other men, including
several foreigners, are serving sentences of
between 13 and 34 years in
Equatorial Guinea in connection with the alleged
plot.
Mark Thatcher,
the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,
was accused of
helping to finance the coup attempt and admitted taking part.
He avoided
jail in a deal with prosecutors in South Africa, where he lived.
(Editing by
Michael Georgy and Andrew Dobbie)
SW Radio Africa (London)
30 January
2008
Posted to the web 30 January 2008
Tererai
Karimakwenda
In a move described by students as a sign of increased
paranoia, the
government has ordered all state run universities and colleges
to stay
closed until after elections on March 29th. Our Harare correspondent
Simon
Muchemwa spoke to several lecturers and student leaders in Harare and
Bulawayo who confirmed that the order had come from the Ministry of Higher
and Tertiary Education. He said the authorities had not provided any
alternative date for opening.
This means the University of Zimbabwe,
the Midlands State University, the
National University of Science and
Technology and all state run colleges
will not be starting lectures in
February as usual.
Muchemwa said students from the Zimbabwe National
Students Union (Zinasu)
immediately criticised the authorities for
continually disrupting their
education. They believe the government fears
that if the schools open before
elections, students will gather on campuses
and mobilise support for the
opposition.
Meanwhile police disrupted a
Student Representative Council meeting at the
Bulawayo Polytech Institute on
Wednesday and briefly detained 2 student
leaders. Zinasu secretary for
information and publicity Blessing Vava, and
treasurer Blessing Mapenduka,
were taken by police who had burst into the
general meeting as it was about
to start.
Zinasu representative Maureen Mapenzauka said police claimed
the meeting was
illegal because the students had not sought permission from
them. But she
explained that University and College campuses are exempt from
the Public
Order and Security Act, which requires police notification before
any public
gatherings.
Mapenzauka said it is worrisome that
government has continued to show
intolerance over basic individual rights,
such as freedom of association and
freedom of assembly, just before an
election that is supposed to be free and
fair.
SW Radio
Africa (London)
30 January 2008
Posted to the web 30 January
2008
Tichaona Sibanda
Voters in most rural areas in the
country still don't know were to go and
cast their votes after the redrawing
of new constituency boundaries.
Prosper Mutseyami, a senior official of
the MDC in Manicaland said there
will be a lot confusion on election day as
thousands of people have
criss-crossed wards and constituencies. He said
people badly affected by
this are those mainly in rural
areas.
The Zimbabwe Election Commission completed the delimitation of
new
boundaries in December but new maps and information on the new
constituencies have not been made available to the public.
'We have a
general election in less than eight weeks time but the ZEC is so
under
financed they can't print new boundaries or leaflets. All our aspiring
MPs,
senators and councillors have failed to get all that information,'
Mutseyami
said. The MDC head of elections, Ian Makone, has described the
delimitation
exercise as a farce because it is seriously flawed.
The number of
parliamentary seats has been increased from 120 to 210. The
government
claims that over 5,6 million people have been registered to vote
and the 210
parliamentary seats will get an average of over 26 000 voters a
constituency.
Following the new demarcations, the ZEC announced that
Bulawayo province now
has 12 constituencies, up from 7. Matabeleland North
Province now has 13
constituencies also up from 7, the same as Matabeleland
South.
Mashonaland West constituencies jumped from 9 to 22, Midlands from
19 to 28,
Manicaland 15 to 26, Mashonaland East 11 to 26, Mashonaland
Central 10 to
18, Masvingo 14 to 26 and Harare and Chitungwiza 18 to
29.
On Monday government announced Friday February 8th as the deadline
for voter
registration and for altering details such as addresses or names.
This is
also the closing date for the nomination court for all candidates
seeking to
run in the elections. Centres will be open this
weekend.
Those who have already registered should go and inspect the
voters' roll to
make sure their details are correct. Any discrepancies
discovered on the day
of the poll will mean they will not be allowed to
vote.
Nehanda Radio
30
January 2008
TO: DR. GIDEON GONO
GOVERNOR OF THE
RESERVE BANK OF THE REPUBLIC OF ZIMBABWE
If you get hold of this letter,
please distribute it as wildly and widely as
possible.
In pursuit of
the truth, reality check, intelligent application of
knowledge, systems
thinking/approach, respect of God, and mathematics-His
language. Ask
Noah.
It is fortunate enough you can not separate those ideas/concepts.
You can
not run away from the truth and you can not take cover from
God.
Systems thinking/approach-the Creator’s approach dictates that
systems that
do not merely survive but triumph are those that always sample
their
outputs, compare with set references, and use the error produced to
adjust
inputs, modify processing techniques or re-examine objectives and
standards.
Systems that make it in the naturally hostile and chaotic
environment learn,
face the truth, respect God and his language-mathematics,
honestly asses the
variable and non-variable parameters of the environment,
do not waste time
and resources wrestling non-variables, manipulate
variables to the best
advantage, and evaluate output not after fifty years,
twenty seven years,
five years, one month or day but always and make
adjustments/corrections
instantaneously.
I apologize to you, the
nation and humankind for not coming up with this
idea in time. I’m very
sorry. I was busy assembling the facts and summoning
up enough courage.
Anyway, it is never too late or too dangerous for the
truth.
The
truth touches every creation. Whether you belong to this or that party,
church, gang or club you can never shine if you do not face the truth,
believe in logic, and shun magic.
You may wonder why I am targeting
you. You have got the key to our
lifeline-the economy and its blood-money.
The buck stops with you.
Forget about politics and all the –isms.
Politics sucks from and licks the
economy. Theirs is a symbiotic
relationship but politics needs economics to
the point of total and complete
dependence. It is not possible to forever
suck from an ailing economy. Let
us stop the blame game. To hell with
breakfast meetings and expensive talk
shows. Taneta kurova imbwa takaviga
mupinyi.
Some four years ago you
said that if a turnaround strategist fails to cause
a noticeable change in
ninety days he/she will become part of the problem.
Now, almost five years
down the line you have dragged the economy,
everything that, and everyone
who depends on it through the mud to the
doldrums, courtesy of the absence
of truth.
I challenge you and your advisers, on behalf of prosperity and
posterity to
resign forthwith. If you do not face the truth within seven
days from today
I will take you to the highest court in the country. If it
refuses to face
the truth I will try SADC then AU, UN, and all Human rights
groups. If all
that fails, the HAGUE.
You lied to the nation and your
appointer, His Excellency.
You should have told everyone that sanctions
cause poverty and not
inflation. Balance of payments support is a soft loan
from friendly
entities. Diplomatic isolation and withholding of love(ly)
offerings does
not cause inflation. Low production levels cause poverty and
not inflation.
High consumption in excess of production causes wealth
deprivation and not
inflation. Increased production does not reduce
inflation but simply
mitigates its effects. Inflation can be reduced to
0%.
Subsidies and fixed exchange rates/price controls do not fix
inflation but
create loopholes for those bent on siphoning.
Baccossi,
Aspef, and related projects. Who takes stock?
Sometimes I even shudder to
imagine why you fellas at the conical tower
deserve salaries.
If the
truth fails to touch you we are all doomed, from Zim 1 to Zim
nothing.
Textbooks and borrowed notes aside, the truth
is:-
For you to understand the causes of inflation and its effects you
must first
of all understand the origins of paper money and its relationship
to value
and/or wealth.
By the way, when you mobilize resources and
knowledge and convert them into
something that satisfies other people’s
needs you would have created value.
Wealth is the accumulation of such
value. You can exchange your value for
other people’s value which they would
have created elsewhere. That is the
basis of fair trade and commerce
anyway.
By the way there was no inflation before the advent of paper
money. Trade
was by barter. With the advancement of civilization and
expansion of
markets, spatially and temporally, it became increasingly
difficult to trade
by barter. People, being innovative as they have always
been, began to look
for something portable, durable, divisible, and with all
the other
attributes of a good media of exchange that you can think
of.
History is replete with all sorts of things which were tried, from
coffee
beans, beads, precious stones, sea shells, and finally to silver and
gold.
Silver was finally beaten by gold.
Those who could amass and/or
produce- create value in large quantities soon
found it difficult to
securely keep their large amounts of gold. This
created a new breed of
business people called gold keepers who would charge
some scrapings or few
ounces of gold as a return on their investments in the
form of vaults,
safes, and strong rooms.
The gold keepers would issue the gold owners
certificates stating the
amounts of gold deposited with them. With time,
people began to accept the
certificates from trusted keepers as legal tender
confident that the
certificates were redeemable whenever real solid gold was
required. In time
such certificates were issued without names and their
authenticity was based
on the goodwill of the issuers.
When it became
fashionable to break down the certificates into various sizes
of
denominations for convenience of trade, paper money was born. Of course,
fake papers were tried here and there with limited success and, in some
cases, dire consequences.
Only an insane keeper would issue a
certificate not backed by real gold
because it would sooner or later
backfire when the certificate comes back
for redemption and the gold is not
there.
Then baby monsters called governments were born out of need when
it was
realized that there was need to poll resources and appoint a group of
people
to oversee welfare and development.
Grown-up governments soon
realized that in a big economy, if they owned and
controlled a central
reserve bank which controls the issuance of the above
mentioned certificates
which we now call money, they can possibly issue
themselves “money” when
they do not have gold-value-wealth deposited with
that bank. This is plain
theft, made possible by the fact that the crime can
be obliterated by other
variable economic parameters which cause very
difficult to measure
fluctuations.
The best way to illustrate or examine inflation is to
freeze all the other
variables that cause the red mist and deal with it bare
bones. To simplify
the discussion, let’s assume the government is an
individual like you and
me. If the government has got 10 units of wealth and
the citizens of the
country 90 units the total wealth or GDP of the nation
is 100 units. If
these units of wealth are represented by a certain currency
for illustration
purposes, 10 000 zudas per unit of wealth. Then, our
national wealth in
monetary terms becomes 100 multiply by 10 000 zudas which
equals 1 000 000
zudas.
If nobody injects fake money into the system,
and we do not create/produce
or consume some then, our wealth remains at 100
units valued at 1 000 000
zudas. If we allow exchange and transfer within
borders the wealth remains
constant.
If the government uses up its
share as it should and, within borders, at the
end it will have zero units
and the people 100 units – wealth gone back to
the people. If the government
now decides to impress a certain constituency
for reasons best known to the
policy makers and its coffers are empty, it
goes to the printing press
colluding with the reserve bank to lie that it
has wealth deposited with
it.
For argument’s sake let’s say it chooses to steal 20 units to the
value of
200 000 zudas. That is 20% of total national wealth.
If 1
000 000 zudas are circulating in the country representing 100 units
of
wealth and as a result of printing, 200 000 zudas are injected into the
system, 1 200 000 zudas now represent 100 units of wealth.
The effect
of this rather stupid action now causes each unit of wealth to be
represented by 12 000 zudas which means in other words that 1 unit now costs
or is valued at 20% more than before the printing. Because of the government
folly we say the currency has been inflated by 20%.
All the prices go
up by 20%. The currency loses against other stable
currencies by 20%. All
those who have their wealth stored in the form of
cash or bank balance
denominated in the unfortunate currency loose 20% of
their wealth. In other
words the government has 20% from each and every
innocent and unfortunate
soul who happened to have his/her wealth in liquid
form or tried to trade
using and keeping for a while the damaged currency.
I hope that the long
and winding illustration has enlightened you and
realize that a bottle of
Mazoe is nothing but just a part of the total
wealth we been
discussing.
For example if, for argument’s sake the bottle of Mazoe was
costing X zudas
before the theft, it will now cost X+0,2X zudas after the
inflation caused
by the theft. It is not the price of Mazoe that has gone up
by 20% but the
national currency that has lost 20% of its value. We now
have 20% more
money representing the same national wealth.
The
government now has got 20 units of wealth equal to 200 000 un-inflated
zudas
or 240 000 inflated zudas. Because the government has stolen from the
people, they now have 80 units of wealth equal to 800 000 un-inflated zudas
or 960 000 inflated zudas. The total wealth of the nation is still 100 units
at 1 000 000 un-inflated zudas or 1 200 000 inflated zudas.
However,
in reality things do not seem to operate
systemically/systematically. In our
example above, if all the variable
economic parameters/factors that we froze
to simplify analysis are let
loose, figures are altered but fundamentals
stand firm. For example
production mitigates and consumption aggravates the
outlook.
I hope you can now look around and see where you and the bottle
of Mazoe
stand. If the smallest denomination was 1 un-inflated zuda it
should now
become 1,2 inflated zudas and the biggest of say 100 un-inflated
becomes 120
inflated zudas. Interest – the cost of using other peoples
wealth, fares,
fees, prices, cost of living and even the cost of dying will
reflect what
would have been caused.
Trying to undervalue or
overvalue a currency is the most stupid human
endeavor one can ever
undertake worse than experimenting with your own life
and trying to defy
creation, resulting in a seething cauldron of, hot ice
and cold
fire.
Vagaries of nature such as famine, earthquakes, floods, sanctions,
war, or
even sabotage can only devastate or diminish a nation’s wealth but,
can
never be able to devalue/inflate it’s currency. Only a sovereign
government
in full participation with a willing reserve bank governor can do
it.
The fact that almost everyone, revolutionaries, liberators,
academics,
intellectuals, technocrats, human rights activists, trade
unionists, civic
leaders, clerics, scribes, and world leaders seem to
condone, tolerate, and
accept such a heinous crime that should be more
severely be punishable than
genocide demonstrates how money matters are
least understood.
It is ghastly to contemplate for how long this subtle
crime is going to be
tolerated in world affairs.
Although the formula
for calculating inflation should be MONEY PRINTED OVER
MONEY IN CIRCULATION
for political reasons or lack of economic expertise
governments and crooked
economic advisers prefer Consumer Price Index which
is de-facto very easy to
doctor.
I have tried in this presentation to show that nothing or not a
soul except
government in collusion with the Central Bank can cause
inflation.
Inflation causes price increases, poverty, and devaluation of
currency and
not vice versa.
I have tried rigorously to avoid the
discussion of personalities and the
reasons that may cause governments to
“print” and cause inflation because of
the controversy associated with such
topics.
When inflation, or the long arm of government reaches out it
devastates all
and sundry. It squeezes value out of every creature in
Zimbabwe that
transacts in the devalued/overvalued currency.
The grip
is class insensitive. From those who drive the so-called mapango,
Hammers,
and Lexuses to those physiologically and socially incapacitated who
crawl on
their palms and eke out a living from eating or selling junk. This
is even
made worse by the stubborn fact that, the government, as a consumer
and
investor, its corrupt offshoots and all the innocent souls, and even the
intended beneficiaries of the subsidies or the printing process are crushed
under the created load.
As long as you do not appreciate or
understand how printing causes
inflation, printing forces you to print more,
and more printing compels you
to print big time causing hyperinflation.
Those chosen few who are blessed
with the revelation know that the only way
out of the spiraling vicious
circle/cycle is through sacrifice. You have to
stop printing gradually or
abruptly and strategically.
What has made
me strongly believe that many people do not understand
politics and
economics, and the fruits from their relationships, is the
apparent absence
of agitation that should come from the instinct of self
preservation in the
prevalent hyperinflationary environment.
Devaluation, overvaluation, for
convenience issuance of bigger
denominations-very soon we will be using the
1 million or 10 million bearer,
is a de-facto and subtle way of admitting
that the monetary value of our
currency has gone somewhere. The largest
denomination of $200 000 is now
not enough to buy a freez-it that we used
to call penny or centicooler.
Are all the people not supposed to know?
Is it a crime if they know?
Shouldn’t they be empowered with this knowledge?
Isn’t it nice to all share
this liberating knowledge?
I think the
determination we have demonstrated over the years fighting other
enemies of
the state and adversaries of our nation should now come handy in
tackling
this muddling.
If you or anyone knows better truth than this, please
respond publicly
and/or privately.
Sincerely
BOAS PONDAYI
MAGORONGA, MARONDERA, ZIMBABWE
E-mail boasmagoronga@yahoo.com
Nehanda Radio
30
January 2008
Harare: Political commentator John Makumbe says the
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) might have shot itself in
the foot by agreeing to
sign amendments to the country’s constitution acting
in concert with
President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.
Makumbe, a
political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe who is
the former
chairman of Transparency International-Zimbabwe, said yesterday
that there
was no way the MDC could now rescue itself from the effects of
negotiation
with Zanu-PF which all but collapsed last week.
South African president,
Thabo Mbeki, was mandated by SADC to oversee the
negotiations.
Speaking at a Zimbabwe Lecture Series public meeting in
the capital, Makumbe
said the MDC had been naive to think that the SADC
mediation talks would
bring about a solution to the stand-off between
Zanu-PF and the MDC. He said
the opposition party had fooled itself into
taking part in the talks.
Makumbe said it was rather late now for the MDC
to withdraw from the talks,
cry foul, or call for a postponement of the
forthcoming elections, given
that civic society had warned the MDC to guard
against being led down the
garden path by Zanu-PF.
In the middle of
calls for the postponement of the polls, President Robert
Mugabe last week
went ahead and officially proclaimed March 29 as the date
for the landmark
elections. Presidential, parliamentary and local government
elections were
harmonised through Constitutional Amendment Number18 to take
place
simultaneously for the first time.
“The collapse of the SADC mediated
talks was a foregone conclusion to those
who analysed the whole process,”
Makumbe said. “The deception of Mugabe in
painting a picture that he was
negotiating with the MDC in good faith was
clear enough for everyone to
see.
“It is only the naivety of the MDC that led them to sit down to
negotiate
with Zanu-PF in the hope that there would be an outcome from a
process that
was flawed from the onset.”
He said that he was
astounded that the MDC hoped that Mugabe would, in the
process of the
negotiation allow his foot-soldiers at the talks, Justice,
Legal and
Parliamentary Affairs minister, Patrick Chinamasa and Public
Service,
Labour, and Social Welfare, Nicholas Goche, to negotiate his own
exit from
power.
“It is astounding to say the least that learned people like
Welshman Ncube
(secretary general of Arthur Mutambara’s break-away faction)
and Tendai Biti
(secretary general of the mainstream MDC led by Morgan
Tsvangirai) would sit
down and hope that through a mere negotiation process
Mugabe would negotiate
his way out of the office.
“It was clear from
the onset that the MDC was going on a nasty ride through
Harare’s potholed
roads and that it was leading itself to a disastrous
ending of the ride,”
Makumbe declared.
Clearly showing anger Makumbe said that it was very
likely that the MDC had
written “the final piece of its political epitaph
that would be stuck to its
deathbed come March 29, 2008”. He predicted that
the MDC was in for a
deafening loss that would render it irrelevant to
Zimbabwe’s political
landscape as a result of a lack of proper
decision-making structures in the
party.
“The MDC is stuck between a
rock and a hard place,” Makumbe said. “This is
to say they are in a dilemma
whether to participate in the March elections
or not. Participating in the
elections places them at the risk of a
resounding defeat in the elections
while boycotting the elections altogether
puts them in a precarious position
that could easily make them irrelevant to
the country’s political
landscape.”
He said it was necessary for the MDC to mobilize the
electorate to boycott
the elections altogether, “leaving the 50 000 hoodlums
who marched in Harare
in support of Mugabe to cast their votes in the
elections”.-The Zimbabwe
Times.
The Zimbabwean
Wednesday, 30 January 2008 15:33
HONDE VALLEY, (Zimbabwe)-
VILLAGERS of Chief Mparutsa in Mutasa North are up
in arms with their chief
over fines they are made to pay for failing to
attend Zanu PF political
meeting she calls.
Chief Eunice Mparutsa is allegedly calling for
political meetings in the
area on behalf of the ruling Zanu PF officials and
fines people who fail to
attend the meetings.
A villager in the area Paul
Mareyangepo of Ward 8 in Honde Valleys said the
chief asked him to pay a
goat as a fine for failing to attend one of the
Zanu (PF) political meetings
she had called for that was to be addressed by
retired army Lieutenant
Colonel, Mike Nyambuya.
"I did not attend another rally the chief had called
where Energy Minister
Mike Nyambuya addressed and was asked to pay a fine of
a goat. I refused to
pay the fine," Mareyangepo said.
Chief Mparutsa
allegedly threatened Mareyangepo that he would never benefit
from cheap
grain that is sourced from the Grain Marketing Board, (GMB) by
the
government.
"She said I was not going to access the grain since I had refused
to pay the
fine."
Mareyangepo claimed that since he was a member of the
opposition MDC led by
Morgan Tsvangirai it was of no use to attend ruling
Zanu (PF) functions."I
cannot be forced to attend a meeting of party that I
don't
support."Constance Chikanya another resident of Honde Valley says she
was
forced to pay a fine of a chicken after failing to attend one of the
meetings chief Mparutsa had called for. "I
was summoned to her court and was tried and found guilty of not attending
the meeting and was fined a chicken. I have not paid the fine to date," she
said.
She said local headmen write names of people who do not attend the
Zanu (PF)
functions and hand them over to the chief who then fines the
culprits.
She said "offenders' are also fined in cash varying amounts
depending on the
gravity of the "offence". Ward 8 councillor Aaron
Kavhungira of the MDC
grouping led by Tsvangirai confirmed opposition
members were being
victimized for not attending political meetings organized
by Zanu (PF).
He said most of them were being denied a chance to buy maize
grain from the
GMB sold at an affordable price of Z$1 750 000 (about R5) for
a 50kg bag. On
the parallel market the same cost over Z$7million (about
R12).Kavhungira
said he had approached the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human
Rights, ZLHR for
advise over the fines."The lawyers have advised us not to
pay the fines to
the chief as what she is doing is illegal. We were told to
wait until the
chief writes to us a letter of demand and we take it up from
there," the
councilor said.Chief Mparutsa was unavailable for a comment when
CAJ News
visited her homestead on Wednesday morning.
Monsters and Critics
Jan 29, 2008, 20:01 GMT
Harare(dpa) Prosecutors
Tuesday implicated British rack-renting tycoon
Nicholas van Hoogstraaten in
pornography charges involving scores of young
Zimbabwean women and gave
evidence of how he had been trapped in illegal
black-market currency
dealing.
Papers in the Harare magistrate's court said a police raid on
his home in an
exclusive Harare suburb had uncovered 150 photographs 'of
young local
Zimbabwean women photographed in nude and semi-nude states in
the accused's
bedroom' and some in compromising sexy
positions.
Attempts to keep the convicted gangster in custody without
bail failed
because fraud police in Harare had detained him illegally for
four of the
six days after his arrest on Thursday.
He and three
co-accused were allowed to go free late Tuesday on his lawyers
won an order
from the Harare high court for his immediate release.
Van Hoogstraaten,
63, made his first millions renting slum tenements in
London and Brighton in
the 60s, was jailed for four years for ordering a
firebomb attack on a rabbi
who owed him money and in 1999 was convicted of
manslaughter after two of
his henchmen murdered Mahommed Raja, a London
business opponent.
The
murder conviction was quashed on appeal. The property magnate moved his
money offshore in the 1990s after British tax officials began invetigating
his earnings. His holdings include major investments in Zimbabwe in banking,
property, agriculture, tourism and mining.
Van Hoogstraaten professes
to be a friend of President Robert Mugabe whome
he describes as '100 percent
decent and incorruptible.'
Court papers the fraud detectives had lured
him into a trap last week where
he demanded and accepted 4,600 US dollars
from a state agent agent for rent.
He was also trapped into buying 2,000
dollars from a state agent around the
same time in an illegal black-market
currency deal.
Zimbabwean law forbids payment for goods and services
inside the country in
any currency but the Zimbabwe dollar.
Van
Hoogstraaten said in a statement on Monday that he was the victim of 'a
deliberate and malicious entrapment' and denied the charges. Police said
they also found large sums of hard currency at his home and 600 South
African rands in fake notes.
Nude photographs of his secretary,
Nyasha Gora, 22, in the dock with him
were found at his home, the court
papers said, and she was to face
pornography charges because she had 'posed
in a nude position.'
Two other employees faced charges of illegal
possession of 'unauthorized'
large sums of Zimbabwe dollars found in their
car parked at van
Hoogstraaten's home.
Prosecutors were appealing to
the magistrate to have him detained without
bail because he was 'a foreigner
with big investments' in Britain, the
Bahamas, South Africa, Zambia and
Kenya, and could flee.
But magistrate Mirshrod Guvamombe overruled
detention without bail because
police were hours late in releasing the four,
in violation of the high
court's order for 'immediate' release.
'They
had all the time to bring the accused to court. They chose not to
bring them
to court,' he said. 'I have no jurisdiction. All the four accused
are not
properly before the court.'
Van Hoogstraaten emerged soon after from the
cells in the basement of the
building with a jacket over his head, pushed
past a crowd of waiting
photographers, was bundled into a silver Mercedes
Benz convertible coupe and
sped away.
His lawyer, George
Chikumuburike, said police now would only be able to
summons him to court to
face the charges.
© 2008 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Zim Online
by Sebastian Nyamhangambiri Wednesday 30
January 2008
HARARE – The Zimbabwe government on
Tuesday rejected as misplaced
criticism by United States (US) President
George W Bush that there was no
freedom in the country.
In his
state of the nation address on Monday, Bush said Washington was
concerned
with the state of affairs in Zimbabwe, Cuba, Burma, Belarus and
the
Sudan.
“Our foreign policy is based on a clear premise: we trust
that people,
when given the chance will choose a future of freedom and
peace.
“America opposes genocide in Sudan. We support freedom in
countries
from Cuba and Zimbabwe to Belarus and Burma,” said
Bush.
Ruling ZANU PF party spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira said Bush’s
comments
were out of touch with the reality in Zimbabwe.
”I am
not sure how many times we have to tell the US and Britain that
they have no
role to play in Zimbabwe’s politics. Zimbabweans know what is
right and
wrong and what is freedom and what is not freedom,” said
Shamuyarira.
Relations between Harare and Washington have been
strained over the
past eight years after the US imposed targeted sanctions
on President Robert
Mugabe and his senior officials in protest over Harare’s
human rights
record.
Washington also accuses Mugabe of
repression against his political
opponents, a charge the veteran Zimbabwean
leader denies.
Mugabe in turn accuses the US of vigorously seeking
to oust his
government as punishment for seizing white farms for
redistribution to
landless blacks.
Civil rights activist,
Lovemore Madhuku, who has been arrested and
beaten up by Mugabe’s state
security agents for demanding political reforms,
said he was not surprised
that Zimbabwe had been lumped together with
repressive regimes such as
Burma.
”I am not surprised at all by the classification of Zimbabwe
together
with a military junta like Burma, because Mugabe behaves just like
the junta
in Burma,” said Madhuku. -
ZimOnline
VOA
By Jonga Kandemiiri
Washington
30 January
2008
A leading Zimbabwean nongovernmental organization
has voiced concern over
what it says is a rising level of violence by police
officers and members of
the army against the population with national
elections coming up in just
nine weeks.
The National Constitutional
Assembly issued a statement charging that the
Zimbabwe Republic Police and
the army are increasingly resorting to violence
when dealing with unarmed
demonstrators. It said even court-approved
protests are being
crushed.
The group noted, however, that policemen brutalising civilians
face the same
problems as their victims, including widespread shortages of
water,
electricity and cash.
NCA spokesman Maddock Chivasa told
reporter Jonga Kandemiiri of VOA's Studio
7 for Zimbabwe that the NCA is
urging people to resist unlawful police
arrests.
The group's warning
of rising official violence comes despite a recent
amendment of the Public
Order and Security Act which on the face of it eased
the bill's draconian
restrictions on public gatherings and demonstrations
VOA
By Patience Rusere
Washington
30 January
2008
Representatives of the Zimbabwean opposition have been
engaging
representatives of a number of African countries ahead of the
African Union
summit opening Thursday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, urging the
continental
body to exert its influence to break a deadlock in crisis
resolution talks
between the opposition and ruling
party.
International Affairs Secretary Eliphias Mukonoweshuro of the
Movement for
Democratic Change grouping led by Morgan Tsvangirai said he and
others have
engaged African delegations to explain the MDC position on the
deadlock.
Mukonweshuro declined to name the countries, but said he is
satisfied that
he and his colleagues have informed AU member states on the
“real” situation
in Zimbabwe.
Sources in the Ethiopian capital said
that the Tsvangirai delegation were
expecting to meet shortly with senior
political figures in the African
Union.
Mukonoweshuro told reporter
Patience Rusere of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe
that his delegation has
generated strong interest in the Zimbabwean
situation.
The Zimbabwean
Wednesday, 30 January 2008 15:26
Students at Bulawayo Polytechnic today demonstrated over the
continued
decline of educational standards in the country, lack of the
rule of law
and demand for a free and a fair election. Students from other
tertiary
institutions in Bulawayo were part of the demonstrators under the
banner of
Zimbabwe National Students Union.The general meeting which had
been
scheduled for 10 a.m failed to take place because of heavy armed riot
police
officers who intimidated students and forced everyone to
disperse.This also
resulted in the CID Law and Order officers briefly
arresting the treasurer
of ZINASU Themba Maphenduka and the Information and
publicity secretary
Blessing Vava who were however released on condition
that they should leave
Bulawayo as a matter of urgency. The two were
labeled terrorists who want to
cause mayhem in colleges in the city.The
general meeting was the scheduled
for 1330hours at the college dining hall
were the two Vava and Maphenduka
addressed about 1500 students who later on
boycotted the food being served
in the dining hall referring to it as ‘dog
menu.’Students chanted
revolutionary songs and proceeded to converge at the
administration block
demanding an urgent address by the college Principal
Petros Themba
Ndlovu.The principal locked himself in his office and this
prompted the
riot police to disperse the crowd.Several students were
injured during the
process.
Maphenduka was then dramatically re-arrested
and accused of inciting
students.Maphenduka was arrested together with the
secretary general of the
National University of Science and Technology and
four other students from
the Bulawayo polytechnic. Police have since
launched a manhunt for the
ZINASU spokesperson Blessing Vava,whom, they are
keen to interview. Students
at Bulawayo polytechnic accused the government
of neglecting its socio
economic and political responsibility.Victimization
has reached alarming
levels at the institution as the principal addressed
students yesterday
forcing them not to attend todays meeting.The SRC
President Emmanuel Mabuda
was forced to sign a resignation letter in the
presence of 5 CID Law and
Order officers who were wielding guns and
threatened him with death..In
another related issue which Zinasu view as a
demobilizing strategy the
college is accommodating about a hundred soldiers
and police officers in
Visser halls of residence at the expense of hundreds
of students who have
no accommodation and are currently living in squalid
conditions.The college
also recruited about 400 graduates from the notorious
Border Gezi camp.The
police still maintain a heavy presence on campus with
dogs, guns and teargas
canisters.The students have vowed to continue with
such peaceful protests
until their demands are met.Zinasu condemns the
continued arrests of our
academic freedoms by the government of the day
Education for all and not for
the elite,we demand free and fair election not
flee and fear election.
Zim Online
by Cuthbert Nzou Thursday 31 January
2008
HARARE – Zimbabwe Anglican church authorities have filed
contempt of court
charges against ousted bishop Nolbert Kunonga for defying
a High Court
ruling ordering him not to interfere with church
services.
The application comes two weeks after High Court Judge Rita
Makarau ordered
Kunonga not to interfere with church services conducted by
acting bishop
Sebastian Bakare at the church’s Cathedral of Saint Mary and
All Saints in
Harare.
In an affidavit filed at the High Court,
Reverend Christopher Tapera, the
secretary of Harare diocese, alleged that
on January 20 Kunonga, who was in
the company of one Reverend Munyanyi,
disrupted services at the cathedral in
flagrant violation of Makarau’s
order.
In a supporting affidavit, cathedral sub-deacon Stanislaus Tsingo,
said
Kunonga barred Bakare from celebrating mass with parishioners and
openly
boasted that he did not care about the court order prohibiting him
from
interfering with services conducted by Bakare.
“As we entered
the church in the traditional ceremony with Bishop Bakare, I
noticed the 1st
respondent (Kunonga) had now removed all the altar coverings
leaving the
altar bare," Tsingo said in the affidavit.
Kunonga, leader of Harare
diocese until he was removed by the Church of the
Province of Central Africa
(CPCA) to which the diocese belongs, allegedly
told Bakare that he (Kunonga)
was still legitimate leader of the church and
that he was not going to let a
situation where there were two leaders in the
troubled
diocese.
Tsingo said at one point he feared that Kunonga was going to
assault Bakare
after he grabbed the altar missal from the later and
violently threw it to
the ground in full view of parishioners.
The
High Court is set to hear the matter tomorrow.
Zimbabwean police have in
the past been called to quell violent skirmishes
blamed on Kunonga’s
supporters.
The clergyman, a strong supporter of President Robert
Mugabe’s controversial
policies particularly his seizure of white farms for
redistribution to
landless blacks, has tried to defend the Zimbabwean
leader’s policies from
the pulpit.
The CPCA says Kunonga, a recipient
of land seized from a white farmer, was
deemed to have resigned last
September after he unilaterally attempted to
withdraw Harare diocese from
the CPCA ostensibly because the regional church
authority was too soft
towards gays. – ZimOnline
VOA
By Carole Gombakomba and Jonga Kandemiiri
Washington
30 January 2008
Zimbabwe's Christian
Alliance of religious leaders has expressed concern
about the timetable for
national elections set for March and resolved to
draft a pastoral letter to
the country suggesting among other points the
voters cast protest
ballots.
The group, which emerged in Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo
in 2005 to
provide humanitarian relief to the many thousands of people
dislocated by
the government's forced eviction and demolition program that
year, said
conditions in the country are "adverse" for elections to be held
on that
relatively tight schedule.
The church group has been accused
in the past by President Robert Mugabe and
the ruling ZANU-PF party of
plotting with the opposition to overthrow the
government.
But members
said this week that it is crucial for them to highlight their
concerns
before the elections as the government has decided to proceed with
presidential, general and local ballots before reaching agreement with the
opposition on key issues. Crisis talks mediated by South Africa are
generally considered to have hit a dead end.
Christian Alliance
spokesman Reverend Ray Motsi told reporter Carole
Gombakomba of VOA's Studio
7 for Zimbabwe that the organization wants to
tell Zimbabweans they can cast
a protest vote to tell political parties that
they "should have done
better."
Another group of clerics which published a document titled “The
Zimbabwe We
Want” in 2006 and met then with President Mugabe, gathered
Wednesday at a
Harare hotel to relaunch their efforts to engage the
president an his
government in the wake of failed crisis resolution talks
between the ruling
party and opposition.
The church leaders,
considered by many to be overly accommodating to Mr.
Mugabe and the
government, say they have canvassed most of the country’s 10
provinces to
solicit the views of political parties, business groups and
ordinary
citizens.
Bishop Trevor Manhanga of the Evangelical Fellowship of
Zimbabwe, a leader
of the group, said it seeks a solution to the country’s
eight-year political
stalemate.
Political analyst Pedzisayi Ruhanya
of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition told
reporter Jonga Kandemiiri of VOA's
Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that he believes
the church leaders will again fail
because the ruling party is not ready to
lend them an ear.
International Federation of Red Cross And Red Crescent Societies
Date: 30
Jan 2008
By Mark South
Unprecedented floods in Zimbabwe are set to
worsen with flood waters now
unable to drain into reservoirs and dams that
are already at capacity.
Agricultural communities in the north west of
the country, at the confluence
of the Musengezi, Hoya and Mukumbura rivers,
have already been ravaged by
the worst floods in two decades, fuelled by
torrential rains in the
up-stream highlands. Now flood waters have begun
flowing back into the
region from the already overflowing Cahora Bassa
reservoir down-stream in
Mozambique, and are not expected to subside until
mid-March at the earliest.
Ejina Chirindo, vice chair of the Muzarabani
rural district council, was
part of a team ferrying people to safety from
the flooded village of
Chaderika in Muzarabani district. "We had made
several trips to pick people
up and every time we went back we could see the
flooding was getting worse
coming from downstream," she said. "The bridge
across the river is now
flooded, we can't get to the village by road anymore
and the people there
are marooned.
"When we saw it the water had
already reached waist deep in places but if
the rains and back flow continue
it will get even deeper."
Back flow from the Capora Bassa reservoir is
not unusual in itself with the
lowland Muzarabani district often
experiencing mild floods around
mid-February. But flooding this early in the
year is virtually unheard of,
and authorities now fear the combination of
floods from both up stream and
down will exacerbate an already disastrous
situation. According to the
district council, the rains which began in
mid-December – three months
earlier than usual – have already left almost
10,000 people without food and
washed away around 500 homes.
Leon
Cheuseni, 43, lost his home when floods poured through his village,
demolishing huts and sweeping away possessions and precious food stores. He
is now sheltering in a government run Agricultural Rural Development
Authority farm along with approximately 85 other families.
"At around
six in the morning I was helping friends who had been affected by
the
floods. When I returned home to check on my own property the water was
almost a metre deep in both my huts," he said. "To begin with the water came
very slowly so we didn't realize how serious the situation was, and then
very suddenly the water was overwhelming. We managed to retrieve a few items
but the flood has left me and my family with basically nothing."
One
of the first humanitarian agencies on the ground, the Zimbabwe Red Cross
Society, was able to issue Cheuseni and his family with a tent as well as a
jerry can for water, a kitchen set of pots, plates, cups and spoons, and a
mosquito net. "Without that help I really don't now what we would have
done – the Red Cross put a roof over our heads and made sure we were safe,
without them I don't want to think about what could have happened," he
added.
As the waters continue to rise, as well as coordinating
ongoing evacuation
and emergency aid efforts, agencies are growing
increasingly concerned about
the longer-term impacts of the disaster. "We
haven't seen floods like this
for 20 years and from what we can tell it's
going to get worse before it
gets better, both in terms of the rising flood
waters and the humanitarian
crisis," said Calvine Matsinde, Zimbabwe Red
Cross' national programme
coordinator.
"The volume of water is likely
to become greater and we are also going to
see an increasing secondary
threat of disease. The sanitation systems have
been completely washed out,
which means dirty water has contaminated clean
water supplies, affecting
drinking water and increasing the threat of water
borne diseases like
cholera.
"At the same time the stagnant pools of water in this warm area
provide an
ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes, which increases the threat
of
malaria…we have already seen a spike in cases of malaria and diarrhea
related to the floods."
Food supplies could also become a major
issue, said Matsinde, with farmers
having lost their entire summer crop and
unlikely to be able to grow enough
food for themselves for another six
months.
"We were prepared for this disaster, which is why we were able to
get vital
aid to people so quickly," said Matsinde. "With the support of the
government, other aid agencies and our partner Red Cross societies we need
to make sure we can continue to deliver the lifesaving supplies and
education which are desperately needed."
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
As the opposition agonises over tactics, the Zimbabwean president
pre-empts
any compromise by setting an election date.
By Marvelous
Chigora in Harare (AR No. 153, 30-Jan-08)
The Zimbabwean opposition seems
to have been caught off balance by the
announcement that joint presidential
and parliamentary elections will go
ahead on March 29.
When President
Robert Mugabe announced the poll date on January 25, he
demolished all hope
that the election might be delayed until a new
constitution was
agreed.
The postponement was a key demand that the opposition had been
pressing for
in the negotiating process mediated by the South African
Development
Community, SADC, aimed at ending the country’s political and
economic
crisis. The mediation effort is being led by South African
president Thabo
Mbeki.
The decision came as the divided opposition
Movement for Democratic Change.
MDC, already appeared to be struggling to
find a clear strategy.
Shortly before the election date was announced,
the party had decided to
devote its energies to organising mass action to
push for a new
constitution. It announced a “freedom march” through the
streets of Harare
to press for a constitution that would guarantee free and
fair elections,
and for a postponement of the election.
Police
refused permission for the march, and waded in with riot gear to
break it up
when supporters assembled on January 23. Morgan Tsvangirai, who
leads the
bigger of two MDC factions, was detained briefly to stop him
taking part,
but he and others were able to attend a large rally in a Harare
stadium
later the same day.
The MDC decided to resort to mass mobilisation
because it felt the ruling
ZANU-PF was backtracking on agreements reached
during the SADC-brokered
talks.
Since this new approach came only two
months before what was already
anticipated as a likely poll date, some
observers asked why the MDC had
waited so long before identifying this as
their strategy.
After Mugabe’s announcement, everything changed again.
The MDC said it would
make a formal decision later this week on whether to
take part in the ballot
or stage a boycott. Earlier this month, Tsvangirai
said his faction would
not run in the election if ZANU-PF refused to accede
to its demands at the
talk.
The two factions have also indicated that
they are getting closer to a
position where they might reunite. The groups
led by Tsvangirai and Arthur
Mutambara divided in late 2005 over the issue
of participating in an
election to a newly-reconstituted upper house of
parliament.
Watching the opposition parties, it has been hard to discern
a sense of
urgency ahead of these crucial elections.
Lovemore
Madhuku, who chairs the National Constitutional Assembly, a
non-government
group that has consistently pressed for an all-new
constitution, has accused
the MDC of opportunism, arguing that the document
it had drafted had been
seen only by the two MDC leaders, the SADC
negotiators and a few others –
but not by members of the public who were
being asked to go on
marches.
In any case, he said, the MDC had undercut its own position by
tactically
aligning itself with ZANU-PF on some issues, notably when its
members of
parliaments supported a controversial constitutional amendment in
September,
and subsequent changes to repressive security
legislation.
“They are not serious on these issues. They are not even
targeting ZANU-PF
but civil society, whose support they lost after they
endorsed
Constitutional Amendment No. 18 and agreed to cosmetic changes to
the Access
to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and Public Order and
Security
Act,” said Madhuku.
“They are just opportunists. What they
are calling for is a new constitution
that is not people-driven. How can
they ask people to press for a document
that they have not seen? This shows
they are not serious. What would people
be supporting? Even civic society
has not seen that document.”
Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the Tsvangirai
faction, has said the
“transitional constitution” agreed with ZANU-PF during
the talks was drafted
is only intended to ensure fair elections, after which
a genuinely
“people-driven constitution” will become
possible.
Non-partisan observers have accused the MDC of vacillating
between reaching
an accommodation with the Mugabe government over the
constitution, and
calling for mass protests and possibly boycotting the
election altogether.
According to these critics, the MDC’s position is
neither focused nor
transparent.
“The reason the MDC wants the
elections postponed, we are told, is because
they want the transitional
constitution to take root. In other words this is
not about a referendum to
give the people of Zimbabwe a chance to craft
their constitution. It is all
about swapping horses to State House,” said a
recent editorial in the
Zimbabwe Independent.
“How can a make-or-break document about the future
of Zimbabwe be drawn in
secrecy and we are expected to merely endorse
it?”
A journalist who writes for an international media outlet added that
the MDC
should tell people what it really stands for and focus on those
issues. As
the journalist, who did not want to be named, told IWPR, “victory
will not
be given on a silver platter”.
“The MDC needs to accept that
there is no way that ZANU-PF will level the
playing field so that the MDC
can take over. It has to come up with
strategies that can work in this
environment,” he said. “Opposition parties
have won in worse environments,
even in a war situation, and boycotts are
not the solution.”
As the
Zimbabwe Independent put it, “Given the dithering and prevarication
in
opposition ranks, one gets the impression that it is the Americans who
are
voting in March and Zimbabweans in November.”
Marvelous Chigora is the
pseudonym of a journalist in Zimbabwe.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Zimbabwean leaders still refuse to talk about the mass killings
designed to
destroy support for President Robert Mugabe’s political
opponents.
By Yamikani Mwando in Bulawayo (AR No. 153,
30-Jan-08)
Almost a quarter of a century on, the ghost of Gukurahundi
continues to
stalk Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland region.
Gukurahundi – a
Shona term meaning “the rain that washes away the chaff” –
was a military
crackdown in rural Matabeleland and the Midlands in the early
Eighties in
which an estimated 20,000 people were killed, most of them
civilians.
Pressure groups in Zimbabwe continue to campaign to
persuade President
Robert Mugabe’s administration to finally make public
what happened during
the offensive, which they say amounted to a
government-sponsored genocide.
They are calling for a truth and
reconciliation commission to be
established, similar to the one set up to
help South Africans come to terms
with the human rights abuses perpetrated
under apartheid.
However, the Zimbabwean authorities are resisting
pressure both from
activists and from families of victims, who have demanded
compensation for
relatives who were killed or disappeared without
trace.
Mugabe, who is on record as saying the massacres were a “moment of
madness”,
has refused to offer a public apology for what many regard as a
policy of
ethnic cleansing that targeted the Ndebele people .
In
1983-84, Mugabe, then prime minister of the newly-independent Zimbabwe,
dispatched the Fifth Brigade - an elite unit trained by the North Koreans -
to the Midlands and Matabeleland to quash what he said were insurgents bent
on overthrowing him. He accused Joshua Nkomo, his main political rival at
the time and leader of the ZAPU party, of supporting the insurgents and
vowed to crush those he termed “dissidents”.
The ensuing offensive
left unarmed villagers at the mercy of the military.
Survivors said the
killings were systematic and targeted ZAPU officials and
also leading
community figures such as teachers, nurses and village headmen.
Many of the
dead were buried in unmarked graves or thrown down disused
mines.
ZAPU leaders were expelled from government and
incarcerated.
Nkomo accepted a deal with Mugabe in 1987 in an effort to
end the
hostilities. He became one of the country’s two vice-presidents, and
his
party was subsumed into the ruling ZANU party, which was renamed ZANU-PF
with the added letters standing for “Patriotic Front”.
Ibhetshu
Likazulu, a human rights group based in Matabeleland, commemorates
the
Gukurahundi killings on January 20 each year. Its leader Qhubekani Dube
is
demanding that Mugabe be brought to account for the campaign.
“Nothing
has ever been officially made public, despite Mugabe himself having
set up
commissions of inquiry in the 1980s to investigate the Gukurahundi
massacres,” Dube told IWPR.
“What we only have are eyewitness
accounts, and many of the people who
suffered are now dead. What is Robert
Mugabe hiding? We will never rest as
long as the truth is not told about why
this terrible thing happened.”
The only comprehensive report on the
Gukurahundi campaign was published in
1989 by the Legal Resources Foundation
and the Catholic Commission for
Justice and Peace. The latter group tried to
present the report to the
authorities when it came out, but the government
has refused to accept its
findings.
A documentary about Gukurahundi
made by a Bulawayo-based filmmaker was
launched in South Africa last year,
but has yet to be shown inside Zimbabwe.
The producers say plans are afoot
to showcase it this year despite concerns
that authorities will not allow a
public viewing.
“It is time the nation was told about Gukurahundi. This
cannot be allowed
die a natural death just like that,” Zenzele Ndebele, who
produced the
documentary, told IWPR.
“We had to be extremely careful
when we were making this documentary, for
fear of reprisals from the
authorities.”
“A lot of mystery surrounds the Gukurahundi era, and the
resistance by the
government to discuss the issue is probably because the
people who committed
the crimes are still alive. Therefore… trying to make
something which would
expose them was obviously going to be
resisted.”
One source of resistance to attempts to shed more light on the
atrocities
comes from former ZAPU leaders who were persecuted by Mugabe
during the
Gukurahundi campaign but who have since become senior figures in
government
and ZANU-PF.
Some activists in Matabeleland say the
province should declare itself a
federal state, accusing Mugabe of
deliberately failing to invest there in
the years since Gukurahundi. But
such calls have failed to win significant
support in the region, and
political parties that placed devolution on their
agendas have fallen by the
wayside in past elections.
Ibhetshu Likazulu remains committed to talking
about the ghost of
Gukurahundi, whatever happens in the joint presidential
and parliamentary
elections scheduled for March 29.
“Even if Mugabe
loses in the coming polls, that will not stop the push to
have those who
committed the crimes against humanity prosecuted,” said Dube.
Yamikani
Mwando is the pseudonym of a journalist in Zimbabwe
The Zimbabwean
Wednesday, 30 January 2008 14:54
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions is
concerned about business and
government’s lack of interest and reluctance in
addressing salary concerns
of workers.
Currently teachers under the
auspices of the Progressive Teachers’ Union of
Zimbabwe (PTUZ) have downed
tools to force government to award meaningful
salaries to teachers. Salary
adjustments that have been made by government
for teachers and all civil
servants, including the army and police fall far
below the Poverty Datum
Line. The lowest paid teacher is earning $141
million, which in our view as
labour, is a mockery to the teaching
profession. The education system has
been hard hit by teacher exodus.
Government has failed to put in place
better incentives to retain these
necessary skills and this has left our
children to suffer. The exodus of
teachers spells more disaster for the
education system whose standards have
already deteriorated. We demand that
government puts in place better
packages for all civil servants to avert
industrial unrests. If press
reports that National Railways of Zimbabwe
workers are on a go-slow are
anything to go by, it certainly is clear that
we are headed for tough times.
All workers across all sectors need a living
wage and if this contentious
issue is not addressed, the country will be
rocked by more strikes as the
year progresses. Business and government
continue to exploit workers for
their own gains.The ZCTU, therefore, as a
matter of urgency, urges
government and employers to address the issue of
salaries for all workers,
civil servants, teachers included, by awarding
them PDL linked salaries. If
government and employers do not move swiftly to
address this matter, the
workers are left with no option but to pursue other
means of forcing them to
address their demands. We demand a living wage for
all workers.
G. Shoko
ACTING SECRETARY GENERAL