• It's not just cricket
• Mugabe's bizarre cricket threat blocked
• Solidarity at Court Hearing
• Aussie tourist slain
• Airzim plane grounded in Mauritius
• War vets behind food riots
• Five die in train-bus smash in Zimbabwe
• Zimbabwe begs England not to boycott World Cup
• Don't shake hands with Mugabe: Ministers to England cricketers
• England must pull out of Cup matches, says Zimbabwe cricketer
  Zimbabwe cricket team prepares for World Cup
• Pianist rejected by Britain fears Mugabe's police
• Players hit out over Zimbabwe
• Hain urges cricket boycott
• ACP states in bid to break Zim/EU stand-off
• England should not play into the hands of Mugabe's odious regime
• Zimbabwe to spy on cricketers: report
• Tsvangirai, beware of Zanu PF’s Trojan horse Dyke
• Can 2003 be a better year for Zimbabwe?
• Zanu PF squabbles over governor
• Mugabe’s hate speeches

DFAT confirms Aust tourist killed in Zimbabwe

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) has confirmed an Australian tourist, reportedly murdered in Zimbabwe, was from Adelaide.

Local reports suggest the man was attacked as he walked out of a rainforest near Victoria Falls.

It is understood the victim was stabbed several times and died at the scene.

The department has not released the man's age or name at this stage.

By Edison Chikamhi THE 15-member Zimbabwe cricket team goes into camp tomorrow to step up preparations for the forthcoming limited overs World Cup tournament starting next month. Babu Menan, the Zimbabwe team manager, yesterday said the team would assemble in Harare. He said their arrangements would not be affected by the national league which is due to resume this weekend after a two-month break, and the provincial Logan Cup tournament. Menan said players would be allowed to represent their clubs over the weekends. Zimbabwe, who have had a poor build-up to the World Cup which they will co-host with South Africa and Kenya, last week named the final squad for the tournament. The injured captain Heath Streak was also included. Streak, who dislocated his shoulder when he was involved in a road accident during the International Cricket Council Championships in Sri Lanka last September, is expected to be fit in time for the tournament. He has been undergoing rehabilitation in South Africa. The Zimbabwe Cricket Union is confident Streak would have fully recovered by 9 February, when the World Cup gets under way. Zimbabwe are also scheduled to host South Africa A later this month to fine-tune after putting up one of their worst performances against Pakistan. They suffered a humiliating 5-0 defeat at the hands of visiting Pakistan but recovered to beat lowly ranked Kenya in their final one-day internationals Zimbabwe are expected to kick off their World Cup campaign against another lightweight, Namibia, on 10 February before they engage England three days later. Other teams they are expected to face in their group are Australia, Pakistan, Holland and India. Harare Sports Club will host three games while the same number of games will be played at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo. A record 14 countries will take part in the world’s premier cricket tournament which will be played in Africa for the first time since its inception in 1975. Out of the 54 matches, Kenya will host two while the remaining 46 will be played in South Africa. The final will be on 23 March at The Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg. Zimbabwe squad H Streak (captain), G Flower, T Taibu, A Blignaut, D Ebrahim, M Vermeulen, S Ervine, D Hondo, A Flower, C Wishart, H Olonga, B Murphy, G Whittall, D Marillier. G Marsh (coach), B Menan (team manager), B Robinson (physiotherapist).

BBC

 

Sunday, 5 January, 2003, 00:35 GMT

Hain urges cricket boycott

President Mugabe denied rigging his election win

England's cricketers have been urged to boycott their World Cup match in Zimbabwe by a British minister who made a name for himself agitating against sporting links with apartheid-era South Africa.

Peter Hain, who is Welsh Secretary, said this year's tournament should be moved to South Africa, the co-hosts.

Mr Hain asked the players to "show some moral backbone" by refusing to play in Zimbabwe if the event goes ahead.

The government has said it wants England to pull out of February's game against Zimbabwe because of the human rights record of President Robert Mugabe's regime.

If Mugabe gets his way and the event proceeds, England should not go Peter Hain

Click here to read Peter Hain profile

But it cannot force such a move and the cricketing authorities in England have said the decision is a political one and not for them to make.

England cricket captain Nasser Hussain has echoed this stance and asked the government to make the decision on behalf of English cricket.

Mr Hain said the credibility of the International Cricket Council and the Commonwealth depended on the whole event being switched to South Africa.

He wrote in the Independent on Sunday: "If Mugabe gets his way and the event proceeds, England should not go.

"But if their international sister organisations will not stand up for morality against oppression, if other governments will not back our own government's stand, then it is still important for English cricket to show some moral backbone.

"What will they do if ordinary Zimbabweans protest against the matches - as they well might - and are clubbed away mercilessly, maybe to death?"

Ministers' warning

The Independent on Sunday claims Mr Mugabe had been considering banning both the Australian and England cricket teams when the controversy first blew up, but decided against it.

Meanwhile the Sunday Telegraph reports that ministers will tell the England players not to shake hands with the president if they insist on going to Zimbabwe.

The warning, to be delivered by Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell and Foreign Office minister Baroness Amos at a meeting with the England and Wales Cricket Board on Thursday, is because they fear handing the Zimbabwean leader a propaganda coup.

The International Cricket Council last week said it stood by its decision to go ahead with matches in Zimbabwe.

The radical: Mr Hain campaigning against apartheid

There has been an international outcry about Mr Mugabe's treatment of white farmers and opposition politicians, while millions face starvation in a humanitarian crisis.

Mr Hain said Mr Mugabe would exploit the World Cup to convey a sense of normality.

He accused the president of destroying the country for his own gain.

The minister first attracted widespread public attention for his efforts to disrupt the Springboks' 1970 rugby tour by staging pitch invasions and even gluing the locks on the players' hotel rooms.

From The Zimbabwe Independent, 3 January

ACP states in bid to break Zim/EU stand-off

Mthulisi Mathuthu

The African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) states, who have been feeling the pinch in the fall-out between Zimbabwe and the European Union, are working at pressing President Mugabe to relax his offensive against Brussels. Anxious to restore normal ties, the ACP states are reportedly hoping to see Mugabe ahead of the EU/Africa summit scheduled for Lisbon in April and the next plenary session of the EU/ACP joint parliamentary assembly to be held in Congo-Brazzaville later the same month. The Zimbabwe Independent heard this week that ACP secretary-general Jean-Robert Goulongana of Benin and other officials were due in the country later this month for talks with Mugabe as part of an effort to break the stalemate between Zimbabwe and the EU. "Goulongana is a reformist and so is willing to see this resolved," a source said. "He will try to convince Mugabe not to send people barred from visiting Europe for these meetings in future." The source said Goulongana had realised that the EU was firm in its decision not to further entertain any of Mugabe's banned emissaries.

While it was not clear who would accompany Goulongana, sources told the Independent that ACP countries like Botswana, Senegal and Mozambique were worried that the continued stand-off between Harare and the EU would sabotage prospects of further aid. Sources said details of Goulongana's visit would be finalised "anytime after January 6". The Independent heard that Portugal and France have been mobilising ACP countries to support their idea of talks between Harare and the EU. Portugal is labouring to restore relations between Zimbabwe and the EU to save the summit to be held in Lisbon. France is also sensitive about the Francophone summit to be held in February. France is seen as having a soft spot for the Harare administration and may campaign among French-speaking African countries who are also members of the ACP to support Zimbabwe's attendance at the Lisbon summit. Portugal, which has interests in its former African colonies, is reportedly anxious to save the summit which African countries have threatened to boycott if Zimbabwe is barred for its failure to end political repression and human rights violations.

In November the ACP member states boycotted the EU/ACP joint parliamentary assembly in Brussels after the EU insisted on barring Mugabe's two ministers, Chris Kuruneri and Paul Mangwana, leading to the meeting being aborted. The ACP is reportedly favouring dispatching Goulongana as opposed to a fact-finding mission proposed by the European Socialists in the EU. Both the ACP states and Portugal are worried that Mugabe could refuse to allow a fact-finding mission into the country on the EU's terms, further spoiling relations and ultimately sabotaging the Lisbon summit. The European Socialists have already set terms demanding that Mugabe should relax his sanctions regime and allow banned British MEPs like Glenys Kinnock into the country as part of the mission to investigate the abuse of human rights in Zimbabwe. The EU slapped Mugabe and his associates with smart sanctions last year following failure to combat lawlessness in the run-up to the March presidential election. Since then, relations have continued to deteriorate with the EU accusing Mugabe of fomenting famine and steering terror campaigns in the hinterland to emasculate the opposition's support base.

Peter Hain, Secretary of State for Wales, was minister for Africa, and before that a leading anti-apartheid campaigner

Monday, January  6, 2003. Posted: 09:40:43 (AEDT)

Zimbabwe to spy on cricketers: report

Zimbabwe will reportedly spy on British and Australian cricketers playing in World Cup matches because President Robert Mugabe believes British agents are planning to assassinate him.

South African newspaper the Sunday Independent reports Mr Mugabe wanted to ban the Australian and English cricketers because he feared British MI6 agents, working in cahoots with the Zimbabwean opposition, would use the occasion to kill him.

The paper said Cabinet persuaded Mr Mugabe last week that hosting the matches in February and March would be a diplomatic coup for Zimbabwe after pressure from the British and Australian governments for a boycott of the matches in the southern African nation.

The newspaper, citing unidentified Zimbabwean Government sources, said the Cabinet agreed that the Zimabwean spy agency, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), would assign at least three agents to each British and Australian cricketer or official.

The CIO will also bug the visitors' accommodation and telephone lines, and closely monitor their movements, it said.

"The fact is that Mugabe would rather not have these people here ... he thinks after humiliating (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair at the Earth Summit (in Johannesburg last year, when Mugabe blamed Blair for Zimbabwe's problems) and after the failure of the west to remove him from power, the focus is now on killing him," an official, who declined to be named, told the newspaper.

"He thinks British intelligence are working full-time on that."

The British and Australian governments argue that playing matches in Zimbabwe would be tantamount to endorsing Mugabe's regime, which stands accused of human rights abuses and rigging presidential elections in March.

The cricket showpiece begins on February 8 with an opening ceremony in Cape Town. Most of the matches will be played in South Africa, but Zimbabwe will play its group matches at home, and two matches will be played in Kenya.

Members of the English and Wales Cricket Board are due to meet British government ministers this week to discuss the current situation.

Australia has meanwhile said it will seek to organise a collective ban on staging World Cup matches in Zimbabwe with Prime Minister John Howard saying Australia would be willing to pay for the re-scheduling of games.

By Paul Taylor The remarks in this article are directed specifically towards the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. My cynical father once told me always to remember Cicero’s statement that politicians are not born but excreted. I don’t want you to take the line personally. I am sure you will admit, looking at the situation in which Zimbabwe finds itself, that Cicero had a point. But, for two reasons, I am prepared to believe that you are a better man than the average politician. The first reason is that people who know you well believe you are genuinely committed to the creation of an intensive human rights culture and a fully participatory democracy. Of course, we shall have to see. The second reason is that it would be arrogant in the extreme of me not to support the verdict of the majority of voters, who did you the honour of electing you President of Zimbabwe. There is no getting away from this fundamental fact: You were elected. That the election was comprehensively rigged by Zanu PF to cheat you of office and to cheat our people of their sovereignty is neither here nor there. You know it; I know it; the voters know it; the people who rigged the proceedings know it; and President Mugabe knows it better than anyone else. And because he pretends otherwise, there is a terrifying void at the heart of our constitutional life. Each and every citizen is aware of the gaping wound that has been inflicted on the legitimacy of the State. The people who have to defend the indefensible can no longer rely on propaganda and pantomime to maintain the lie that Robert Mugabe is our elected President. They have to use harsher and cruder laws and greater levels of violence aimed at ordinary citizens to force them to accept it. Until the crisis of legitimacy ends, the trend will continue. Mugabe is prepared to go to his grave – and take Zimbabwe with him – clinging to the fiction of legitimacy. His younger, smarter supporters realise that the game is up. When he goes they will have to face the nation, and the international community. These people are understandably nervous about that. Slobodan Milosevic is at The Hague. They intend to neutralise you, Tsvangirai. They might yet use violence, but as a last resort. Should anything happen to you the country will go into a meltdown. Nonetheless, please check your cars’ brakes and tyres regularly. You are all the more dangerous in the eyes of dangerous men now that the treason trial gambit has backfired so spectacularly. You have shown you will not be intimidated. The machinations of Zanu PF propagandists and State security agents have transformed you into a symbol of Zimbabwean democracy. A Zimbabwean stand-off has developed. In one part of Harare the democratically elected president awaits trial, and across town, behind barbed wire and guards with automatic weapons, an unelected president rules. Zanu PF ministers may be stupidly selfish, but they are cunning. They are coming under increasing pressure, due to the rapid implosion of the country, to do something to break the logjam. Something had to give. Someone had to come knocking at your door. So the security establishment looked for a soldier they could trust, whom you might think you could trust too. It was Lionel Dyke. To which one well-informed observer of our politics asked me: “Lionel Who?” This ex-soldier and clearer of minefields features in the Catholic Church report on Gukurahundi, Breaking the Silence, Building True Peace from time to time. I am sure that by his lights he is an honourable man. But is he a heavyweight figure, a credible mediator in crucial negotiations where the entire future of the nation is at stake? I would have to say not on your Nellie, Mr President. I say this on the basis of reports of things Dyke has said himself about Gukurahundi. A sample of his remarks: “You often have to be cruel to be kind. Had an operation like (the 5 Brigade’s) not taken place, that battle could have gone on for years and years as a festering sore. And I believe the Matabele understand that sort of harsh treatment far better than the treatment I myself was giving them, when we would just hunt and kill a man if he was armed. The fact is that when 5 Brigade went in, they did brutally deal with the problem. If you were a dissident sympathiser, you died. And it brought peace very, very quickly.” Really? He was talking about 20 000 dead people and a type of violence which has now become the ruination of the entire country. Whatever his strengths, Dyke cannot be accused of having a sophisticated understanding of civil society or the complex crucible in which our country’s future is being forged. He may enjoy the confidence of Emmerson Mnangagwa, but this does not mean he enjoys the confidence of many other stakeholders. He has wandered into a minefield that he cannot clear. But peace cannot come at just any price. If you were to allow Mugabe to step down and Zanu PF to hold on to power for another two years, while the international community relaxed its pressure, what guarantee is there that we will ever see the tenacious and resilient opportunists in Zanu PF and the soldiers marching out of civilian affairs? Tsvangirai, you have the people’s mandate to take the initiative and clear up this mess. It is time to set out the basis on which you are prepared to allow the orderly withdrawal from power of Robert Mugabe and his cohorts. This should be done publicly and clearly and it should stipulate the mediators you are prepared to accept, a timetable for negotiation, and the mechanisms you wish to implement towards a peaceful transition. It is time for Zanu PF to realise its day is done and no amount of wriggling, squirming or dirty tricks will prolong it any further. The country is falling apart. The country and indeed the world are ready to listen. And please, don’t talk to men like Dyke behind closed doors again.

VERY few Zimbabweans would predict with any earnestness that the year 2003 could be a better year for their country than 2002. There would be no basis for such a prediction. The government, whose economic policies have crippled the country, particularly since the disastrous land invasions of 2000, made promises to turn around the economy in the National Budget presented to Parliament in November. In all fairness, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Herbert Murerwa, did concede that the country needed God Almighty to rescue it from its impending catastrophe. The basis on which he would make such an appeal is tenuous, to say the least. His government’s catalogue of brutality against God’s innocent people is so well-documented most people would doubt very much that He would take Murerwa’s plea seriously. The government’s credibility has been so eroded that very few people can take their word at its face value. The fuel crisis provides a poignant example of the impunity with which they have peddled falsehoods to desperate users. The Minister of Energy and Power Development has appeared on television many times in the last few days, assuring the nation that there would be more fuel supplies being delivered to the service stations. Each time he makes such declarations in public – and there is no significant reduction in the length of queues at the service stations – his and his government’s credibility take another knock. In other countries, Amos Midzi would have resigned, conceding defeat and giving the President the freedom to choose someone else, perhaps more energetic and qualified. The truth, unhappily, is that most of the Cabinet posts are now held by people more enthusiastic about promoting their personal political and financial fortunes than in developing the country. Most of them have found refuge in the Hondo yeMinda land reform programme: as far as they are concerned, this haphazard redistribution of land to the landless has provided their party with the perfect solution to the people’s discontent with their performance since independence. They have added to the propaganda an element of racism which is nauseating in its content. To the gullible citizen, they are saying repeatedly, the problems of this country can be blamed entirely on the machinations of the former colonial masters and their allies. They are saying the shortage of foreign currency, which is one of the major reasons why the economy is in a tailspin, can be traced to the tomfoolery of the British, the Americans, the Germans and the French. There is little mention of the fact that once the government abandoned the rule of law, persecuted the judiciary, the clergy, the media and all other critics of its high-handed, ham-fisted style of governance, it lost many friends. The only way it can bring them back, and with them the respect the country requires to forge ahead politically and economically as a respected member of the Global Village, is to abandon immediately the arrogant practices for which it has been isolated. For instance, it must ensure there is true freedom and fairness in the conduct of crucial by-elections in Kuwadzana and Highfield this year. It must abandon the use of the so-called war veterans and the “green bombers” to bash the heads of the voters into submitting to the will of their candidates. The two urban seats are held by the opposition and there is no doubt Zanu PF would love to win them back. If the campaigning is as violent as it has been since the 2000 election, then we will know that 2003 will be no different from 2002. It will be another bloody year for a country now regarded as The Sick Man of Africa.

From Chris Gande in Bulawayo THE selection of a provincial governor for Bulawayo province is threatening to split Zanu PF in Matabeleland. Party insiders said one faction wants the post to be taken by George Mlilo, the former Bulawayo City Council director of engineering services, while the other faction, consisting mainly of the party’s old guard, feels that Mlilo’s political record is not impressive and would prefer either party veterans Sikhanyiso Ndlovu or Dumiso Dabengwa. Mlilo lost his job with the council after he stood as a Zanu PF mayoral candidate last year and was defeated by Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube of the MDC. Ndlovu, the former Deputy Minister of Higher Education, and Dabengwa, the former Home Affairs Minister, both lost their parliamentary seats to the MDC in the 2000 election. Ignatius Chombo, the Minister of Local Government and National Housing, announced last week that governors for Bulawayo and Harare would be nominated soon. The two cities are classified as provinces but have not had governors. Both Dabengwa and Ndlovu, however, yesterday said they had not been approached over the matter. Ndlovu said: “That is mere speculation because I don’t even know that there is a position of governor. Just leave speculation to speculators. I don’t comment on hypothetical questions because I am a practical person.” Sources within Zanu PF said Ndlovu’s candidature was being advanced by people from the former MP’s Mpopoma constituency who still benefit from his efforts to source maize-meal and initiate other developmental projects. Dabengwa said he could not comment because all that he had heard was what had appeared in the newspapers. The MDC has said the new post of governor has been created to frustrate the work of the MDC mayors in the country’s two major cities. Currently, the country has eight provincial governors. Dr Lovemore Madhuku, a lecturer and chairman of the Department of Public Law at the University of Zimbabwe, said yesterday that President Mugabe was empowered by the Provincial Councils Act to appoint more than eight governors. “However, under the Constitution, only eight governors are allowed to be Members of Parliament. It should be noted that Harare and Bulawayo are provinces under the Act. “They are not political provinces as people mistakenly say,” Madhuku said.

For some time I thought that President Mugabe was well aware of the economic state of the country. I also thought that it was for this reason that he chose to put together a “war cabinet”. I had thought that the war was an economic war since the main opposition party the MDC is so peaceful, civil war is not its option Strangely, he told the nation during the Chinhoyi feast that he would start looking into the problems bedevilling the country. He may not have been informed about food scavenging and fuel queues. Someone had to inform him. Somehow this ruining party does the opposite of what ordinary people expect from a ruling party. When Kenneth Manyonda had his election win nullified, Mugabe made him minister. When Mnangagwa lost in his constituency, he was given a top job and now earns much more than he would have earned as an MP. When Amos Midzi lost the mayoral elections, Mugabe decided to award him with a top job, far more than Midzi ever aspired to hold. When Andrew Langa shot an MDC supporter in front of the police, Mugabe went ahead to make him MP of the disputed constituency. When Mnangagwa and top army men were implicated in diamond looting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mugabe chose to ignore the call to investigate these people despite their counterparts in the DRC being investigated over the same allegations. There is much more that Mugabe has done in time to go against the people. Instead of disarming the large army and make them work for food in the newly acquired farms, Mugabe will dish out the scarce land to a few top men in the army and keep the rest guarding his misguided principles. Instead of buying simple cars like Mazda 323s for policemen, Mugabe and Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri think Zimbabwe manufactures Mercs and would rather buy these expensive vehicles instead of procuring fuel for the country or sourcing food for most starving Zimbabweans. They think the country is under threat. One wonders which western country is interested in colonising Zimbabwe at this age. They buy top armoury to crush riots and strikes because they made themselves enemies of the people. Instead of buying seed, farming equipment and invest more in agriculture since they destroyed the backbone of the country’s economy, they resort to financing the Border Gezi camps. Instead of sending out a message of safety and peace to Zimbabweans, Mugabe chose to make it known that the British and the West were his enemies. He took the platform to declare that he would make life more difficult to “their kith and kin” here in Zimbabwe. I would love to ask Charles Barron, a New York councillor who is very supportive of Mugabe, to tell us what form of logic there is in Mugabe’s utterances. Later Barron and his Harlem people would think journalists are bent on saying bad things against his friend Mugabe, but he is the one who broadcasts his ill-gotten policies of hate, destruction and shame. To clarify exactly what Mugabe meant, the more the US government’s policies are against him, the more he will kill whites in Zimbabwe. I am a Zimbabwean and Mugabe’s speech is his and will never represent the spirit of right thinking Zimbabweans. Finally, Mugabe is fast creating himself enemies in the world and in his country. His policies are so old he should have said what he says in the bush when they were fighting for liberation. This is not the language of someone who has stayed at State House for 22 years. Rudo Masvingo