International Herald Tribune
By Barry Bearak Published: July 11,
2008
JOHANNESBURG: Zimbabwe's governing party began
preliminary discussions with
the opposition on Thursday in an effort to
settle a political crisis in
which both sides have staked a claim to the
nation's presidency.
But in a statement late in the day, Morgan
Tsvangirai, the opposition
leader, said the talks, in Pretoria, South
Africa, could not lead to genuine
negotiations until state-sponsored
violence stopped and 1,500 of his
supporters were freed from
prison.
He denounced efforts by President Robert Mugabe's government to
portray the
meeting as a negotiation imminently leading to a settlement,
saying the
governing party, ZANU-PF, was "being disingenuous and exploiting
the plight
of the Zimbabwean people for political gain."
Tsvangirai
was in an awkward position. For the past two days, his party, the
Movement
for Democratic Change, has issued categorical statements that it
will not
take part in any kind of talks until its conditions are met. The
government's announcement that talks were in the works was a "figment of the
dictator's imagination," read one opposition statement. But Thursday,
Tsvangirai nevertheless sent emissaries to Pretoria.
Both sides have
mentioned the need for some sort of unity government, though
ZANU-PF demands
that President Mugabe remain on top while the opposition
insists on
Tsvangirai.
Tsvangirai outpolled Mugabe in a March election, but withdrew
from a June 27
runoff, citing the continuing violence and leaving Mugabe the
sole
candidate.
Thursday's meetings may indeed prove to be nothing more
than
finger-pointing. But the fact that any discussions are occurring is
something of a victory for the regional mediator, South Africa's president,
Thabo Mbeki, a Mugabe ally of long standing whom the opposition has accused
of bias in the mediation. Mbeki traveled to Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, last
weekend but failed to get Tsvangirai to meet with Mugabe.
Neither
Mugabe nor Tsvangirai has come to Pretoria. The opposition is
represented by
its secretary general, Tendai Biti, recently freed on bail on
treason
charges, and its deputy treasurer general, Elton Mangoma. The
ZANU-PF
negotiators are the justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, and the
labor
minister, Nicholas Goche, according to Zimbabwe's state-run newspaper,
The
Herald.
By most accounts, the bloodletting continues in Zimbabwe. In the
predawn
hours on Monday, hundreds of people displaced by earlier violence
were
attacked at a rehabilitation center near Harare. Victims blamed the
ZANU-PF
militia for the violence.
"Where do I go now?" asked an
opposition campaigner contacted by phone. He
was afraid to have his name
appear in the newspaper. "Someone who escaped
with me was killed. I don't
know what to do or where to go. This city is too
small for me now, and there
is no protection."
Weeks ago, charitable organizations were ordered by
the Mugabe government to
stop helping the country's poor and the hungry.
Church groups and other
volunteers are hastily trying to step into the
breach. The number of
displaced people is estimated in the tens of
thousands.
"We're feeding a thousand people - men, women and children -
and that's just
a small part of the displaced," said a volunteer in Harare
who was afraid to
have her name published. "People - white and black - have
been very generous
with what little they have: money, toothbrushes, oil,
soap, whatever. We can
feed people, but we can't help them if the government
is going to root them
out and attack them."
BBC
Friday, 11 July 2008 06:09 UK
Talks between Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party and the
opposition
Movement for Democratic Change are due to resume in South
Africa.
On the first day of talks, the MDC set a series of
pre-conditions for
the opening of formal negotiations.
They
include the release of more than 1,500 political prisoners and an
expanded
mediation team.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has delayed
voting on a package of
sanctions against Zimbabwe.
In a letter
to the UN, the Zimbabwean government said any new
sanctions risked starting
a civil war in the country.
This is the first meeting between
Zanu-PF and the MDC since June's
run-off poll, which President Robert Mugabe
won unopposed after the MDC
pulled out because of violence.
South Africa President Thabo Mbeki is leading mediation efforts.
But MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has issued a statement saying the
talks do
not amount to formal negotiations.
It is a first step,
correspondents say, but Mr Tsvangirai insisted
that MDC representatives were
merely setting out the conditions under which
talks could take
place.
He added that nothing could happen while Mr Mugabe's ruling
Zanu-PF
party "continued state-sanctioned violence and repressive
legislation",
which he said was "designed to silence the Zimbabwean
people".
Mr Tsvangirai also demanded an expanded mediation team
that included a
permanent African Union (AU) envoy.
Deep
divide
Both the government and opposition in Zimbabwe are under
pressure from
the AU to start a process of dialogue on forming a government
of national
unity.
Last week, Mr Mugabe accepted the need for
negotiations but demanded
that he must first be recognised as president by
the opposition.
The BBC's Peter Greste in Johannesburg says the
fundamental gaps
between the two sides remain as wide as ever, so the talks
appear driven
more by international pressure than any willingness to
compromise.
While Zimbabwe's deputy information minister, Bright
Matonga, has
brushed off talk of UN sanctions as irrelevant, our
correspondent says,
there is considerable pressure from influential African
presidents like
Liberia's Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.
But Mr Mugabe
has a long history of shrugging off such pressure and
maintaining his grip
on power, our correspondent adds, and there is no
evidence he is ready to
change.
Sanctions push
Meanwhile, the US and the UK
are pushing for a travel ban and assets
freeze on President Mugabe and 13 of
his allies, and an arms embargo.
Ahead of an expected UN
Security Council resolution, the European
Parliament has called on European
countries to impose more economic
sanctions against members of Zimbabwe's
government.
The parliament in Strasbourg said travel restrictions
on businessmen
who financed Mr Mugabe's government should be among the new
measures.
It also said the banks that provided loans or invested in
Zimbabwe
should be exposed. The vote is non-binding.
The UN
Security Council is due to meet in New York to discuss a draft
resolution on
Zimbabwe, despite several African leaders saying they oppose
sanctions,
including South Africa.
Mr Mbeki reportedly told G8 leaders earlier
this week that UN
sanctions could lead to civil war.
South
Africa is currently on the UN Security Council but does not have
the power
of veto.
Mr Tsvangirai won the first round of Zimbabwe's
presidential elections
on 29 March, but official results gave him less than
the 50% share needed to
avoid a run-off.
Since March, the
opposition says more than 100 of its supporters have
been killed, some 5,000
are missing and more than 200,000 have been forced
from their homes.
Yahoo News
By JOHN
HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 10, 11:33 PM ET
UNITED NATIONS
- Zimbabwe warned the U.N. Security Council Thursday that the
sanctions it
is considering could push the African nation toward civil
war.
Zimbabwe's U.N. mission also said in a letter to the council
that the
punitive measures proposed by the U.S. and Britain against
President Robert
Mugabe's government could turn Zimbabwe into another
Somalia, a Horn of
Africa nation where warring factions have clashed for the
past 17 years.
The letter, which was released to the media, said the
sanctions would lead
to the removal of Zimbabwe's "effective government and,
most probably, start
a civil war."
The mission blamed Britain and the
U.S., claiming they're obsessed with
regime change and are "determined to
ignore real, entrenched, fundamental
and enduring issues that lie at the
heart of Zimbabwe's internal politics."
Western powers are pushing for a
vote this week on an arms embargo and
financial freeze on Mugabe and top
officials in his government in response
to Mugabe's violence-marred
re-election. The U.S. and France say they have
the nine votes that are
required for the 15-nation council to pass the
resolution.
South
Africa, a council member, has led the opposition to the sanctions,
arguing
it is not a threat to international peace and security, and
therefore not a
proper matter for the council to take up. The U.S., Britain
and France say
it is.
Russia has threatened to veto it, and China also has opposed
sanctions; both
have veto power on the council, like the U.S., Britain and
France. But
Russia and China also could let the sanctions resolution pass by
abstaining
from the vote.
Mugabe pushed ahead with the June 27 runoff
despite the opposition candidate
Morgan Tsvangirai pulling out of the race
because of state-sponsored beating
and killing of his followers.
The
council has repeatedly chastised Mugabe's government, saying the
violence
made it impossible to hold a free and fair election. U.N.
Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon, who has been deeply involved in trying to
resolve the crisis,
also strongly criticized Mugabe's regime.
Ban told reporters Thursday the
issue of sanctions was a matter for the
council to decide, but the election
"has implications beyond Zimbabwe: it
has credibility of democracy in the
region and democracy in Africa as a
whole."
VOA
By Patience Rusere
Washington DC
10 July
2008
A South African research institute said Thursday
that a "low-intensity civil
war" is unfolding in Zimbabwe as members of the
embattled opposition
Movement for Democratic Change fight back against
alleged ruling ZANU-PF
perpetrators of post-election political
violence.
But the Human Sciences Research Council report added that a
full-scale civil
war is unlikely as President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF holds
a "virtual
monopoly over coercive power."
A senior MDC official
dismissed the report, saying the party was committed
to non-violence and was
not organizing retaliation for attacks that have
killed some 112 MDC
members.
Human Sciences Research Council Researcher-Director Peter
Kagwanja, an
author of the report, told reporter Patience Rusere of VOA's
Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that South African-led mediation should be stepped up
to keep
Zimbabwe from sliding into wider conflict.
Deputy Organizing
Secretary Morgan Komichi of the MDC formation of Morgan
Tsvangirai said the
party remains committed to nonviolence whatever the
provocation.
The
report emerged amid news reports and rumors that the ruling party and
military were preparing for an even harsher crackdown on opposition leaders
to pressure the opposition to accept its terms for a government of national
unity led by Mr. Mugabe.
The Los Angeles Times quoted ZANU-PF sources
as saying the violence is
likely to mount as the regime boosts pressure on
the opposition. The
state-controlled Herald newspaper quoted Dixon Mafios,
ZANU-PF youth
chairman for Mashonaland Central province, as urging militants
there to
remain vigilant against Western enemies seeking to control the
country.
Security and Intelligence Secretary Giles Mutsekwa of the
Tsvangirai MDC
formation told reporter Jonga Kandemiiri that the opposition
has obtained
evidence that ZANU-PF has developed what he called "hit squads"
to eliminate
senior opposition figures.
Sources in Mashonaland
Central province reported renewed violence in the
Shamva South and Shamva
North constituencies, saying hundreds of MDC
supporters have fled their
homes.
They said a woman severely burned four weeks ago when ZANU-PF
militia pushed
her into a fire on which she was preparing her supper died in
Harare
yesterday from her injuries
The Scotsman
Published Date: 11 July 2008
By Fred
Bridgland
FRUSTRATED supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
in
Zimbabwe have begun arming themselves to fight back against ruling party
security forces and militias, leading research organisations said
yesterday.
The country has never been as close to civil war as it is now,
following the
controversial one-candidate election of 27 June, in which
Robert Mugabe was
returned to power for another five years, says the report,
entitled Saving
Zimbabwe.
The report is to be published today by
South Africa's publicly funded Human
Sciences Research Council, based in
Johannesburg, and the Africa Policy
Institute, based in Nairobi and
Pretoria.
Kwandiwe Kondlo, the chief of the council's democracy research
programme,
said the failed electoral process was "a recipe for civil war
because there
is no yielding ground. A low-intensity war has begun and the
situation is
getting out of control."
He said violent retaliation was
not MDC policy, but localised "democratic
resistance committees" had been
established to counter the violence of
Mugabe's Zanu-PF party. "Hell is
being let loose," he said. "We do know
almost certainly that some of them
(MDC supporters] have begun
(military-style] training.
"The culture
of violence that comes from Zanu-PF is gradually becoming part
of the
culture in the MDC."
The MDC said that the confirmed death toll of its
supporters since the first
election, on 29 March - in which MDC leader
Morgan Tsvangirai outpolled Mr
Mugabe by 47 per cent of the total vote to 43
per cent - has risen to 110.
The latest person to die was a 70-year-old
woman who was beaten and thrown
on to a fire in the nickel-mining town of
Bindura, the MDC said. She was
attacked by Zanu-PF militiamen in June but
died only yesterday from
"terrible burns."
More than 1,500 people,
including MDC lawmakers, remain in police custody, a
party spokesman
said.
TIME
Thursday, Jul. 10, 2008 By
MEGAN LINDOW
Despite Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic
Change holding its
first talks with representatives of President Robert
Mugabe's government on
Thursday, there's no early end in sight to the
country's political
stalemate. The meeting in the South African capital,
Tshwane (formerly
Pretoria) was aimed at pursuing a power-sharing agreement,
to resolve the
increasingly violent deadlock that has followed the widely
discredited June
27 runoff election through which Mugabe claimed reelection
following the
withdrawal of the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai amid a torrent of
violence against
his supporters. The talks reflect mounting international
pressure on both
sides to achieve a compromise.
Tsvangirai enjoys
widespread international legitimacy for having won the
country's first round
of presidential elections on March 29, and the
European Union has signaled
that it will only recognize a Zimbabwean
government led by the opposition
leader. But despite having finished behind
Tsvangirai in that vote, Mugabe
holds the the key cards - the security
forces and instruments of government
are in his hands, and he has shown no
qualms about using them to bludgeon
his way back into power. There are no
serious prospects for Mugabe being
topped on the streets any time soon. In
recent weeks, the opposition
alleges, the state-sponsored violence that has
gripped the country since
March has escalated, with the regime now
apparently bent on weakening its
rivals to the point where they will be
forced to accept the junior role in
any new unity government.
Mugabe has said that he is willing to form a unity
government, as has been
demanded by the African Union. Without international
recognition, Mugabe has
precious little hope of reversing Zimbabwe's
economic free-fall, and the
international community is insisting that the
opposition's election victory
be recognized. But Mugabe's terms for unity
are that the opposition must
first recognize him as president. And he
appears willing to use his monopoly
on the instruments of violence to press
his case - his supporters are
currently focusing their violence against MDC
parliamentarians, who won a
legislative majority in the March election but
are now hiding in fear of
their lives.
"In the short term,from a
power perspective, the current Zimbabwe elite is
holding the cards," says
Steven Friedman, director of the Center for the
Study of Democracy in
Johannseburg. "It's essentially trying to find a way
to appear to be giving
up some power, while keeping it all." To some, the
fact that the MDC is even
talking to Mugabe, right now, shows the limited
options available to the
opposition. Tsvangirai had last weekend shunned
talks with Mugabe and South
African President Thabo Mbeki, the African Union
mediator the opposition
accuses of being overly indulgent of Mugabe. Still,
on Wednesday, MDC
secretary-general Tendai Biti, who faces charges of
treason, was given back
his passport by a court order so that he could
attend the talks in South
Africa. "The onus is now on Morgan Tsvangirai and
the MDC to do what they
can to be part of the process if they want to, not
the other way around,"
says Norman Mlambo, a chief research specialist at
the Africa Institute of
South Africa.
The MDC's vacillations about whether or not to negotiate
with Mugabe reflect
tensions within the party over whether to seek a quick
end to the political
crisis, or to pursue a longer-term strategy, says
Friedman. "I think they
are participating in the talks because of this
dilemma," he says. An MDC
source told Reuters that the talks were only a
precursor to real
negotiations: "This is where we are going to talk about
issues of violence
and it is from these discussions that the MDC will decide
whether to engage
in full negotiations," the source said. The MDC's key
terms for a unity
government are an end to violence in order to allow fresh,
credible
elections.
Although the international community has
vociferously denounced Mugabe's
regime as illegitimate - and this week the
G-8 agreed on a sanctions package
to present to the UN Security Council
(although Russia appeared later to
backpedal) - only Zimbabwe's neighbours
are in a position to apply direct
pressure on the regime. And while support
for Mugabe is waning within the
Southern African Development Community and
the African Union, the latter
body still insists that the solution to the
crisis is a government of
national unity, rather than a transitional
government to prepare for fresh
elections. And that leaves Mugabe plenty of
wiggle room. Sanctions,
meanwhile, are more likely to hurt ordinary
Zimbabweans than the regime,
analysts say, and make them even more dependent
on the state. The leadership
would, however, feel the pain if their access
to foreign exchange was cut.
As gloomy as the MDC's short-term prospects
appear, some argue that they
will improve rapidly as the isolation of
Mugabe's regime grows - for the
simple reason that without the support of
the opposition, Mugabe will be
unable to avert his country's economic
collapse. With inflation estimated to
at least 2 million percent, there's a
growing prospect that mounting
discontent among the rank and file of the
security forces could destabilize
the regime. At some point, says Friedman,
the rate at which violence damages
the opposition will be eclipsed by the
impact of economic collapse and
political pressure on Mugabe.
"I
think the regime is in more of a fix than the MDC is," says Francis
Kornegay, a senior researcher at the Center for Policy Studies in
Johannesburg. "With time, the upper hand and the advantage tilts more
towards the MDC, and it's a question of how they use that advantage."
New York Sun
By JAMES KIRCHICK | July 11,
2008
As its electoral crisis drags onto an agonizing fourth month of
stalemate,
Zimbabwe has proven to be one of the world's most intractable
political
conflicts. After 28 years of uninterrupted rule, President Mugabe
has
succeeded once again in stealing an election.
Since receiving
less votes than his opponent, the Movement for Democratic
Change's Morgan
Tsvangirai, in the March 29 presidential election, Mr.
Mugabe let loose a
campaign of intimidation, violence, forced relocation,
and murder against
his political opponents. The international community yet
again has proven
ineffective in its protestations; for years they have
imposed sanctions on
top regime officials in an effort to weaken the regime,
but to no
effect.
In the editorials and columns denouncing Mr. Mugabe, the
Zimbabwean tyrant
is often described as the "prototypical African Big Man."
And in many ways,
he is. Mr. Mugabe treats his people with utter impunity.
He defiantly snubs
the West. However, policy makers who want to end his rule
should stop
thinking of him as just another African dictator. In order to
craft a policy
for dealing with him, it may prove best to think of Robert
Mugabe like we do
of Islamists.
Mr. Mugabe, of course, is not an
Islamist. He is a devout Catholic, educated
in Catholic mission schools, and
once considered becoming a priest. Nor does
he threaten anyone other than
his own people. But his twisted political
philosophy - a personalized
variant of extreme African nationalism - is akin
to a fundamentalist
religion.
Mr. Mugabe genuinely believes that he is fighting racism and
colonialism, 28
years after Zimbabwe became independent of white minority
rule. Though there
are hardly any whites left in his country anymore, Mr.
Mugabe continues to
rail against their pernicious influence and he always
attacks the MDC as a
tool of foreign imperialists.
If the MDC takes
over the reigns, Mr. Mugabe alleges, it would be no
different than Ian Smith
rising from the dead to resume his place as Prime
Minister of Rhodesia.
Which is why Mr. Mugabe will never agree to a policy
that allows the MDC to
assume power. The opposition party won the March
parliamentary elections, in
results that Mr. Mugabe did not officially
dispute, but the new parliament
has yet to be seated.
Like Islamists, Mr. Mugabe invokes heavenly backing
for his cause. "Only God
who appointed me will remove me," he said in a
speech last month, "not the
MDC, not the British. The MDC will never be
allowed to rule this country -
never ever," he said, adding, "How can a
ballpoint pen fight with a gun?"
This has been Mr. Mugabe's modus operandi
since he was a revolutionary
leader.
In Zimbabwe's first, supposedly
democratic election in 1980, Mr. Mugabe
threatened to continue his civil war
against the cooperative black-white
government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia unless
his party won. From the genocide of
Ndebeles in the 1980s to the seizure of
white-owned farms in 2000, it has
been the same ever since.
Unlike
many other tyrants, Mr. Mugabe is not in the dictatorship racket for
riches.
True, he recently built himself a $20 million mansion, and he
frequently
takes his wife, Grace, on shopping sprees around the world. Yet
the amassing
of money and other luxuries is not the reason why he sought
power in the
first place, nor is it the reason he keeps it today.
Mr. Mugabe is an
ideological tyrant in the mold of the late leaders of the
Taliban or the
Mullahs in Iran; to label him as an opportunist is to
underestimate what
motivates him as well as his staying power. For most of
his time as
Zimbabwe's president, Mr. Mugabe has led an austere life. It is
for this
reason that it will likely prove impossible for the international
community
to buy him off.
The most crucial sense in which Mr. Mugabe resembles an
Islamist is the way
in which the international community should deal with
him. There is no
accommodation with militant Islamists. When America was
attacked on
September 11, 2001, no one believed that we ought to have
negotiated with
Osama bin Laden. America and its allies sought the
destruction of Al Qaeda
and delivered an ultimatum to states that supported
terrorism: end your
support or pay the consequences.
In dealing with
the Iranian nuclear project, European leaders are united
with America in the
belief that military force should always be on the
table, looming in the
background as the worst possible option.
In the case of Zimbabwe,
military intervention has never been an option. But
if an external actor had
credibly threatened force against Mr. Mugabe
earlier, it's unlikely we would
still be debating how to get rid of him.
It's not too late. The threat need
not come from America or Great Britain;
indeed, it would be most effective
were it to come from neighboring South
Africa, Zimbabwe's economic lifeline.
The Zimbabwean army is small, ill
equipped, and demoralized.
Yet for
reasons that are by now well familiar - sympathy for a former
liberation
hero, aversion to the power of the labor union movement in the
region - the
government of South Africa is unlikely to take such a drastic
step or even
threaten it. That is truly unfortunate. For if history has
taught us
anything about Robert Mugabe, it's that, like Osama bin Laden,
there simply
is no negotiating with him unless it's conducted at the end of
a
gun.
Mr. Kirchick, who has reported from Zimbabwe, is an assistant editor
of the
New Republic.
Business Day
11 July 2008
Aubrey
Matshiqi
THE
day Robert Mugabe ran off against the will of the Zimbabwean people in
the
June 27 one-horse race, I said "elements of the left are mediating the
Zimbabwean crisis through narrow and paranoid conceptions of threats posed
by imperialist agendas".
I added that "the people of Zimbabwe are
faced with a repressive regime
hiding behind the false consciousness of a
pseudo-anti-imperialist
discourse". Zanu (PF) are not the only ones
afflicted by this false
consciousness.
There is a growing queue of
apologists whose intellectual output is in the
service of Zanu (PF), and its
favourite mediator, President Thabo Mbeki.
They argue that the Zimbabwean
political and economic crisis must be blamed
on the imperialist designs of
countries such as Britain and the US.
According to this logic, Zanu (PF)
should be seen as a bulwark against
imperialism and neocolonialism. They
even insinuate that opposition to
Robert Mugabe and Zanu (PF) is
"counter-revolutionary" and the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) has
been co-opted by racists and imperialists.
Were this to be true, it would
still not detract from the fact that the
primary problem facing Zimbabweans
is that of authoritarian rule by a former
liberation movement that has
betrayed the revolution. It is, therefore, Zanu
(PF), Mugabe and the
securocrats who run the country who are actually the
lackeys of
imperialism.
As the South African Communist Party put it: "At the heart
of the crisis in
Zimbabwe has been a degenerating Zanu (PF), characterised
by use of the
state as a means to accumulation by elites located in the
state, the
consequent abuse of state resources, gross mismanagement of the
economy,
thus leading to a growing gulf between the government and the
people."
DURING the liberation struggle, the material circumstances of
the people
impelled them to act in defence of the revolution while the
material
conditions they face today force them to act in defence of
democracy. To
argue that those Zimbabweans who gave the MDC a parliamentary
majority in
the March 29 election did so under the influence of imperialism
is
ideological and racial scavenging of the worst kind. When I write about
the
options facing the MDC, I do so as one committed to democracy. I do this
although I sometimes think of the MDC as a sheep in wolf's clothing because
of what at times appears to be chronic strategic ineptitude.
Instead
of becoming left-wing apologists, we must defend the right of the
MDC to
oppose Zanu (PF) and respect the choice made by Zimbabweans in March.
In the
words of African National Congress national executive committee
member,
Pallo Jordan, we must remember that "Africa waged a century-long
struggle
against colonialism and apartheid precisely to establish the
principle that
governments should derive legitimacy through the consent of
the governed".
No amount of ideological posturing or sycophancy can
undermine this
truth.
There is nothing "leftist" or "revolutionary" about preventing a
democratically elected MDC from taking office. What is revolutionary is
intellectual engagement in the service of freedom despite the existence of
racist and imperialist agendas that will always be with us. Like Jordan, we
must invoke the words of communist Rosa Luxemburg: "Freedom is always and
exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any
fanatical concept of 'justice' but because all that is instructive,
wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential
characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when 'freedom' becomes a
special privilege."
The best defence against imperialism is
freedom for the people of Zimbabwe.
This includes accepting that Mugabe and
Zanu (PF) did not win the March 29
election. Furthermore, western
governments must not be our moral compass or
benchmark. As Africans, we must
set a higher standard.
.. Matshiqi is a senior associate
political analyst at the Centre for
Policy Studies
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com
July 11, 2008
By Raymond
Maingire
HARARE - The opposition MDC has indefinitely shut down its main
headquarters
at Harvest House in Harare's central business district citing
an upsurge in
political intimidation by government.
MDC insiders say
the party was forced to vacate its headquarters a week ago
due to repeated
raids by the police.
"We shut down our headquarters a week ago," an MDC
source told The Zimbabwe
Times Thursday.
"It is because of the
continued raids by police who continue to confiscate
important documents
from us and some of our equipment."
The source said party officials had
been forced to relocate to secret
locations where they could continue
pursuing party business without facing
the risk of arrests by the
police.
Party spokesperson Nelson Chamisa denied his party has closed
down its main
headquarters.
"It is not true. Who is your source?"
that is all he could say.
But The Zimbabwe Times has not been able to
access the MDC headquarters
since then as its doors have been locked for the
past week.
The closure of the six floor structure has also affected
private tenants who
rented other floors for business purposes.
Until
last month, the building was home for more than two months to almost a
thousands victims of political violence who fled the countrywide to seek
refuge.
However, there are unconfirmed rumours the MDC, which had
kept the premise
operational in spite of the raids, was forced to eventually
desert its
headquarters on the advice of sympathetic members of the Central
Intelligence Organisation, who warned of further raids.
"Two CIO
agents visited the headquarters with a list of MDC MPs and
councilors who
have been listed as prime targets," an MDC official said on
condition of
anonymity.
It is reported the two agents later discovered they were in
fact being
trailed by their colleagues and were forced to hide within the
party
headquarters to escape identification.
The MDC says more than 1
500 of its supporters have been arrested and jailed
for alleged political
violence.
More than 100 party activists, as well as their offspring and
relatives are
said to have died at the hands of vindictive militants
sponsored by
President Mugabe's Zanu-Pf party and government since the
84-year old leader's
shock defeat by MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai on March
29.
Tsvangirai, however, failed to secure the 50 percent required to
avoid a
run-off election.
Tsvangirai pulled out of the race five days
before the June 27 election
re-run, citing massive intimidation on his
party's officials and supporters.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com
July 11, 2008
By Our
Correspondent
HARARE, July 10, 2008 - PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has hosted
South African
National Congress (ANC) secretary general Gwede Mentashe
despite being on
the list of trade unionists banned from entering
Zimbabwe.
Mentashe was declared a persona non grata by President Mugabe's
regime in
2005 when he was part of a COSATU fact-finding mission following
the torture
and assault of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)
leadership,
including the labour body's secretary general Wellington
Chibhebhe and
president Lovemore Matombo. Independent medical doctors who
attended to
Chibhebhe, Matombo and thirteen other ZCTU trade unionists
produced medical
report indicating that their injuries were consistent with
torture.
Chibhebhe sustained a crack skull and broken arm as a result of
the brutal
assault by the police and other state security agents while in
custody.
However, local trade unionists were shocked on Wednesday to see
a beaming
President Mugabe feting the ANC secretary general despite his name
appearing
among people listed as persona grata.
While Home Affairs
minister, Kembo Mohadi, declined to comment on the status
of Mentashe when
approached by The Zimbabwe Times, government sources said
the Zanu-PF
officials waived the ban to Mentashe to meet with President
Mugabe and other
members of the presidium.
"They pretended there was no issue," said a
government source privy to the
issue. "It was going to be an embarrassment
if he was turn-away at the
airport. His name is still among the 16 members
of COSATU banned from
entering the country," said the government source,
speaking strictly on
condition he is not named.
Mentashe, previously
a high-ranking member of the powerful ANC ally COSATU,
was elected the ANC's
new secretary general at the Polokwane conference last
December which
ushered in new leadership under the controversial Jacob Zuma
at the expense
of President Thabo Mbeki.
COSATU has been at loggerheads with President
Mugabe's brutal clampdown on
ZCTU.
At the weekend, COSATU blocked the
Beitbridge border post in protest over
President Mugabe's fraudulent
re-election during the controversial
presidential run-off held on June
27.
Mentashe traveled to Zimbabwe with the ANC vice president Kalama
Monlathe.
Other government sources claimed that barring the ANC secretary
general
would have strained further relations between South Africa's ruling
party
and Zanu-PF.
President Mugabe is thought to be desperately
seeking recognition from ANC
president Zuma, who, however, has expressed
concern over his fraudulent
re-election during the presidential run-off in
which President Mugabe was
the sole candidate after Morgan Tsvangirai of the
popular MDC, withdrew.
In Harare the ANC delegation first meet with Vice
President Joice Mujuru,
then Vice President Joseph Msika before meeting
President Mugabe at the
Zanu-PF headquarters.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com
July 11, 2008
By
Raymond Maingire
HARARE - Professor Jonathan Moyo, the controversial
legislator for
Tsholotsho North constituency, has dropped a political
bombshell.He
dismissed Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan
Tsvangirai as lacking
leadership qualities, while fiercely defending the
legitimacy of President
Robert Mugabe's controversial re-election on June
27.
Moyo, who was reported by the Zimbabwe Independent last week to be
earmarked
by Mugabe for the post of Minister of Information and is widely
regarded as
harbouring presidential elections of his own, dropped another
bomb shell. He
charged that MDC treasurer Roy Bennett, now living in exile
in South Africa
and business tycoon, Strive Masiyiwa also based in
Johannesburg in exile had
hijacked the MDC. He described the two men as the
major fund-risers of the
party.
Moyo said he does not rule out the
prospect of rejoining Zanu-PF. He said it
was his democratic right to choose
whom to associate with.
He then launched a broadside at the Western
powers for what he described as
"a display of too much fascination with
Zimbabwe's internal politics".
Moyo, who was sacked from government and
Zanu PF for standing as independent
candidate in the 2005 general elections,
described as scandalous a
suggestion made by Tsvangirai in his letter of
withdrawal. The MDC leader
said that the post-March 29 political violence
was unprecedented in Zimbabwe's
electoral history.
"This statement in
my view is rather scandalous because it seeks to falsify
history," Moyo said
to journalists at the Quill Club, Thursday evening.
"Many of you would
recall that the period leading to the 1985 elections was
and remains the
darkest period in the political history of this country.
"It's a period
in which this country was under a state of emergency. In
three provinces of
Matebeleland plus in the Midlands we had a whole military
brigade deployed
there. And in those provinces there was a six-to-six curfew
but people still
voted in the general elections of 1985."
Moyo said Tsvangirai should have
taken after the then opposition PF-Zapu
leader, Dr Joshua Nkomo, who never
pulled out of the elections because of
violence.
It is estimated that
up to 20 000 of Nkomo's supporters were massacred by
President Mugabe's Fife
Brigade. Nkomo has stated in the past that his own
father was one of the
victims of the Gukurahundi atrocities.
"There is no electoral violence of
the kind that the PF-Zapu was subjected
to which we have seen in this
country," he said.
"There is nothing to be gained in political terms by
counting dead bodies in
order to turn that into a political
manifesto."
He said Tsvangirai should not seek to regain lost political
ground by
calling for the invasion of Zimbabwe. He suggested that the MDC
leader
should, instead, emulate Nkomo who chose to bury the hatchet by
forming a
government of national unity with Zanu-PF. Nkomo was at one stage
forced to
flee from persecution by the Mugabe government. He lived in exile
for a
while in the United Kingdom and on return embarked on long-drawn out
negotiations with Mugabe which resulted in the signing of a unity agreement
in December 2007.
Ironically, Moyo went on the offensive on the very
day talks between Zanu-PF
and the MDC were revived in Pretoria.
Said
Moyo, "Tsvangirai's withdrawal seemed to hold the electorate in
contempt on
the grounds that it is not mature enough to withstand political
violence and
intimidation and, therefore, it cannot be trusted to vote its
conscience."
The former political science lecturer turned politician
said Tsvangirai's
pull-out had, in any case, failed to stop the violence for
which purpose it
was conceived.
Then he went for the jugular. He
accused the MDC leader of subordinating his
party's decision making process
to its "fund raisers", Masiyiwa and Bennett.
"I believe that the
decision-making process in Tsvangirai and the MDC is now
firmly in the hands
of the party's fundraisers, namely Strive Masiyiwa and
Roy Bennett," said
Moyo.
"This is now creating problems for Tsvangirai, creating problems
for the
so-called kitchen cabinet for the MDC which in the past was making
decisions
for the MDC and creating problems for the structures."
Moyo
shocked journalists when he suggested that President Mugabe was the
ideal
candidate to lead the proposed Government of National Unity (GNU)
between
Zanu-PF and MDC.
He argues that the 84 year old leader enjoys "the legal
legitimacy" that was
occasioned by Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the run-off
poll.
"The question of the legal legitimacy of the President is a done
deal and
also the need for a GNU is necessary. President Mugabe has the
legal
legitimacy as Head of State," he said.
"In fact, by withdrawing
from the race at the eleventh hour, Tsvangirai
voted for Mugabe
alone.
"There is an attempt to say that lets use the 29th of March result
of the
presidential election in the discussions of a GNU. That cannot be the
legal
position. Morgan Tsvangirai entered the run-off because no one won the
presidency on the 29th of March.
Perhaps more startling was Moyo's
unquestioning support for President Mugabe's
utterances that power obtained
through the electoral process is inferior to
that obtained through the
liberation struggle.
"The gun was important in our history once," Moyo
said. "It was important to
make the pen permanent. But when the pen risks
reversing the gains of the
liberation struggle at a time when those who
fought for that liberation are
still alive, you risk conflict. You don't
have to be rocket scientist to see
that. These guys spent their time out
there (in the war)."
By now Moyo exuded the countenance of his heyday as
Minister of Information
around 2002, when he virtually single-handedly
rescued Mugabe from the
throes of defeat by Tsvangirai.
"It is
important for the pen to be able to play its permanent role in the
democratic process," he said. "It's important that there be entrenched
mechanisms that will not allow the pen to become an enemy of the history of
the country and the heritage of the country.
"The gun was held by
people who are still in charge of this country. It
makes logical sense the
gun is more important than a pen. It's very
important to note that we are
operating in a country whose background is
still dominated by people who
liberated it.
"Britain is trying to use the pen to stake its political
interests in our
country. If a former colonial power tries to take advantage
of the pen it
certainly invites the gun. Where does Britain get the audacity
to make
Zimbabwe its business?"
He said the UN ironically refrained
from prescribing solutions for the
Kenyan post election situation in
December last year but had chosen to do so
in Zimbabwe.
"There was
violence, worse violence than we have seen and in Zimbabwe they
have taken a
shocking approach.
"When people take decisions, you ask yourself is this
decision the kind of
decision I would support when I am alone taking a
shower or this would shock
my conscience.
"We can't have the EU
saying we won't recognize a government led by so and
so but we will
recognize a government led by so and so; on what basis? One
day they say we
want to use the 29th of March as the basis. Well for
goodness sake, it did
not produce results, it's a non issue.
"Each time the Americans and the
British make noise about our politics, they
definitely annoy nationalist
Zimbabweans."
He said he was grateful that Russia and China had opposed
the proposed
sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Said Moyo in reference to
Tsvangirai, "There is everything wrong with a
Zimbabwean who runs against
the founding father of a country with the
support of its colonial
power."
If the March 29 elections should stand, he argues, Zanu-PF should
also have
a say as it lost the parliamentary seats but won the overall
vote.
"Why would you treat a party that had the popular vote as having
been
walloped in a landslide?" he said.
While he played the part,
Moyo denied rumours that he was preparing to
rejoin Zanu-PF. He however said
he does not rule out that possibility.
"There is no point in pretending
that we are what we have never been," he
said, "I don't think that Zanu-PF
has animals.
"I think that all of us know that one of the guaranteed
fundamental freedoms
in this country is freedom of association. And that
right is not delegated
to anyone. This is one right that we all have and
should enjoy."
"And I have not delegated mine and I reserve the right to
exercise it
accordingly.
"So I don't believe that I really owe anyone
an explanation as to what party
I am joining or rejoining. The only people I
owe such explanation are of
course members of my family."
During the
just ended electoral period government effectively withdrew the
right of
association from a substantial percentage of Zimbabwe's electorate
when it
banned rallies organised by the opposition.
Moyo went on to attack Western
powers for what he said was too much
fascination over Zimbabwe's
politics.
"The fascination and interest that the G8 members in general,
Britain and
America in particular, have in our election is dangerous," he
said.
"The idea of going to the United Nations Security Council to seek
sanctions
against a set of individuals on account of a disputed presidential
election
is deplorable in the extreme.
"The United Nations of all
organizations is the one which has members that
conduct the funniest
elections. They are overdoing it and they are creating
problems for the
MDC."
Moyo said he was now "really impressed" by South African President
Thabo
Mbeki's mediation, saying he had helped avert a higher risk of an
all-out
conflict in Zimbabwe.
"The person who helped calm down these
emotions is Thabo Mbeki," Moyo said.
"He is playing a crucial
role.
"It is not useful or strategic diplomatic engagement to make public
statements denouncing a head of state when you are still in opposition. It's
not good diplomacy.
"We cannot put ourselves in a situation where we
have the luxury of
condemning Mbeki when we are behaving badly ourselves and
say he is
failing."
"The basic issue is that it's for Zimbabweans to
solve the problems. Not for
any foreigner even Mbeki," he said.
In
the early 1990s, before he went to live in exile in Kenya and South
Africa,
Moyo was in the forefront of and shot to prominence through
denouncing
Zimbabwe's head of state, Mugabe. He was appointed Minister of
Information
in 200 and became Mugabe's most ardent defender until the two
parted company
acrimoniously in 2005.
Then he reverted to the role of Mugabe critic;
that was until last night
when he revealed his new political
stand-point.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com
July 11, 2008
By Rose
Maindiseka
The Mugabe regime's on-going widespread massacres may not be
on the same
scale as the wholesale slaughter of Tutsis by Hutu militias in
Rwanda in
1994 but the atrocities are similar in that in both cases, timely
intervention, which could have saved lives and ended human suffering, was
blocked.
In a report issued in 1999, an international panel of
experts led by former
Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson censured the
United Nations and the
world body's leading member countries, particularly
the United States, for
failing to prevent and end the Rwandan genocide in
which almost a million
people were butchered and more than two million
others were displaced.
The report, commissioned by former UN secretary
general Kofi Annan, who at
the time of the atrocities headed the UN
peacekeeping department, was
critical of him and his predecessor, Boutros
Boutros-Ghali for making "weak
and equivocal decisions in the face of
mounting disaster."
The report was equally critical of the United States
government, then headed
by Bill Clinton and represented at the UN by
Madeline Albright, for
persistently playing down the problem, thus sending
the wrong signal to the
Security Council, which as a result failed to
demonstrate the political will
that was called for to avert the catastrophe
that shocked the world. Both
Annan and Clinton acknowledged and apologized
for their roles in setting the
tone for international inertia during one of
the darkest periods in the
history of modern Africa.
"On behalf of
the United Nations I acknowledge this failure and express my
deep remorse",
said Annan, who described events in Rwanda as "genocide in
its purest and
most evil form". He accepted the damning report as thorough
and objective
and was obliged to visit Rwanda to apologize in person in
response to
demands from the Rwandan government. Likewise, Clinton expressed
regret
during a tour of Africa, for the international community's failure to
heed
the Rwandan people's desperate calls for help.
But despite the vows that
were made following this betrayal of the people of
Rwanda that "never again"
would genocide be allowed to take place and
continue because of
foot-dragging on the part of those with the moral
obligation and capacity to
intervene, history has repeated itself in
situations such as the one raging
in the Darfur region of Western Sudan,
mainly because of the Khartoum
regime's intransigence. A similar resort to
one-upmanship for the sake of
self-preservation has been seen over a longer
period in Zimbabwe where the
lives of innocent people have been sacrificed
since the advent of the
state-instigated farm invasions spearheaded by war
veterans in 2000.
Politically motivated violence, perpetrated mainly by
state agents and
ruling party militias, which continued in the run-up to the
parliamentary
elections held the same year and the disputed presidential
poll in 2002 is
now firmly entrenched.
The Mugabe regime's governance has become openly
murderous with unexplained
murders and abductions of innocent Zimbabweans
being regularly perpetrated
with impunity. This insane killing spree
culminated recently in the
retributive massacres that the government
resorted to in the aftermath of
Robert Mugabe's defeat in the March 29
presidential election.
And despite Mugabe's demented claims to have won
in the June 27 debacle when
he contested the election against himself after
the leader of the Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai
withdrew from the race,
state-sponsored violence continues to this day. The
privately owned Sunday
newspaper, The Standard, quotes the MDC in its latest
issue as reporting 12
of its supporters to have been killed since the
roundly condemned run-off,
which Mugabe was reported by state media to have
won by a landslide of 85
percent of the vote. The question that begs an
answer, however, is if Mugabe
won the one-horse race so convincingly, why is
the violence continuing?
The one person from whom Zimbabweans feel most
justified to demand an answer
must be South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki,
who for almost a decade now
has masqueraded as a peace broker with all the
answers when in reality he
has only been effective as a stumbling block.
Through his ineffectual "quiet
diplomacy", his muddled reasoning, denial of
realities and downright
collusion with the Mugabe regime, Mbeki has played
the same role of drowning
the urgent SOS from the people of Zimbabwe that
the UN and the US were
slammed for with respect to Rwanda.
I submit
here that Mbeki's complicity is more inexcusable because his
persistence in
downplaying the tragic situation in Zimbabwe and sending out
the wrong
message about the perpetrators of the atrocities to the rest of
Africa and
the world at large, has allowed a less complex problem that would
have been
resolved a long time ago, to steadily escalate under his watch.
If I were
a prosecutor in the trial of the perpetrators of the mass murders
in
Zimbabwe, I would regard Mbeki as an accessory to the crimes through his
blatant aiding and abetting of the Mugabe regime. A thread running through
the unnecessary loss of lives and the untold suffering of the people of
Zimbabwe over the last eight years is Mbeki's collusion with the government,
which he has displayed each time different stakeholders have been determined
to take the bull by the horns so as to end the crisis. The South African
president's theatrics have included throwing tantrums at the Commonwealth
Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Abuja in 2004 when he fought like a
lioness defending its cubs to oppose Zimbabwe's continued suspension from
the club and at the United Nations, African Union and Southern African
Development Community summits where he has persistently thwarted any
attempts to place the Zimbabwean problem on the agenda.
To enable his
friends in Harare to buy more time, Mbeki has fended off
fellow African and
world leaders with endless claims of "imminent"
breakthroughs resulting from
his mediation efforts, which have never
materialized. The South African
leader has never cared about the human
dimensions of the Mugabe regime's
tyranny and has sought to view the
situation purely at an academic level as
though it were a mathematical
problem or laboratory experiment. He has never
felt outraged by the fact
that opposition supporters, small babies and women
being randomly killed and
maimed are defenceless flesh and blood people
being pitted against the might
of the state.
The more than 100
Zimbabweans killed so far in the retributive violence
unleashed by the
Mugabe regime in the aftermath of the March 29 presidential
election and the
June 27 run -off need not have lost their lives if Mbeki
had not misled the
world with his declaration that there is no crisis in
Zimbabwe. But even now
that the crisis can no longer be concealed following
the AU summit in Egypt,
Mbeki is still doing his utmost to prolong human
suffering in Zimbabwe by
opposing moves by the UN and the G8 to take tougher
measures against the
Mugabe regime, which is openly waging a genocidal war
against the
populace.
http://www.hararetribune.com
By Tawanda Takavarasha
| Harare Tribune News
news@hararetribune.com
Updated:
July 10, 2008 19:01
Zimbabwe, Harare--The ZANU-PF
government plans a renewed, energized
crackdown on MDC leaders,
parliamentarians and activists in the coming days,
sources say.
Despite increasing international pressure, with the Security Council
expected to vote overnight on targeted UN sanctions on President Robert
Mugabe and 13 of his cronies, the sources warned that political violence is
likely to intensify.
The crackdown would be aimed at pressuring
the opposition to accept a
government of national unity led by Mr Mugabe,
said senior ruling party
sources, who asked to remain
anonymous.
The ruling Zanu-PF party wants to take the dominant role
in a unity
government with the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change.
The regime set up 900 command bases where opposition
members were
taken and intimidated into voting for the ruling party. One
base commander
said the new crackdown will be launched from the bases,
targeting key
opposition members.
The MDC has made the
disbanding of ZANU-PF militia from these bases
one of their deamdns before
any negotiations for a GNU take place.
A senior ruling party source
said Zanu-PF youth militias had been
primed to attack opposition figures in
coming days.
Ruling party operatives "will spontaneously respond to
force the MDC
to withdraw some of their conditions for the talks (on a unity
government)",
he said. "It will happen as if the top office doesn't know but
the word has
been sent out that this is how they're expected to
respond."
The opposition says 100 activists have been killed since
March.
Hundreds remain missing, presumed dead or in jail, while thousands
more have
been assaulted or tortured.--Harare Tribune News
http://www.hararetribune.com
By Morgan Tsvangirai |
Harare Tribune News
news@hararetribune.com
Updated:
July 10, 2008 22:41
Zimbabwe, Harare--Over the past ten
days, I and my party have stated
categorically that there are no
negotiations between ourselves and ZANU PF
currently taking
place.
In addition, we have stated that no such negotiations can
take place
while the ZANU PF regime continues to wage war on my party and
the people of
Zimbabwe. This position has not changed.
There is
a meeting currently taking place in Pretoria at which the MDC
is represented
by Secretary-General, Tendai Biti, and Deputy
Treasurer-General, Elton
Mangoma.
Their presence at this meeting is solely to present the
conditions
under which genuine negotiations can take place and the mechanism
under
which these negotiations will be conducted as defined by the AU
resolution.
The lack of these conditions and an agreed framework in
which
negotiations can take place were the reasons for the MDC not attending
the
meeting between President Mbeki and Robert Mugabe last
Saturday.
Those persons portraying this meeting as the beginning of
negotiations
between the MDC and ZANU PF are being disingenuous and
exploiting the plight
of the Zimbabwean people for political
gain.
In addition, portraying these talks as negotiations also
undermines
the resolution of the African Union, the statements made by the
G8 leaders
and the current process underway at the United Nations Security
Council, all
of which are designed to pressure the ZANU PF regime to desist
from its
campaign of violence against the MDC and the people of
Zimbabwe.
At present the state-sanctioned violence and repressive
legislation
employed by the regime is designed to silence the Zimbabwean
people.
We in the MDC are committed to finding a peaceful,
negotiated solution
to the Zimbabwean crisis and we will take every
opportunity to clarify our
position and to allow the voice of the Zimbabwean
people to be heard.
Our conditions for partaking in negotiations
remain:
1) The immediate cessation of violence and the withdrawal and
disbanding of militia groups, paramilitary camps and illegal road
blocks.
All structures and infrastructure of violence
must be disbanded.
Amongst other things, war veterans, youth militia and
others encamped on the
edges of our cities, towns and villages need to be
sent home and be
reintegrated into society.
2) The
normalization of the political environment, including the
release of the
more than 1 500 political prisoners, cessation of political
persecution and
allowing the currently besieged MDC leadership to conduct
business and
travel without hindrance.
3) The reinstatement of
access by humanitarian organizations to the
people of Zimbabwe in order to
provide food, medical and other critical
services through out the
country.
4) Parliament and Senate must be sworn in and
begin working on the
people's business.
5) The
mediation team is expanded to include an AU permanent envoy.
Until the above
conditions are in place no negotiations can take place on
the substantive
issues facing Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwean people. --Harare
Tribune
News
http://zimbabwemetro.com
By Philip Mangena ⋅ © zimbabwemetro.com
⋅ July 10, 2008 ⋅
Zimbabwe’s political polarization has reared its ugly
head in soccer after
speculation that former warriors captain Peter Ndlovu
has been left out of
the national team because he attended an MDC meeting in
Johannesburg,South
Africa.
It has emerged that last month a senior
ZIFA official was overheard vowing
that Ndlovu would never play for the
Warriors because of his “association”
with wrong people in
Johannesburg.
But ZIFA chairman Tendai Madzorera dismissed those
allegations telling state
media,”Sport and politics do not mix. Players are
free to their own
political beliefs as long as they do not bring that to the
national team.
“As ZIFA we are clear and so are FIFA. No politics in
sport and we uphold
that to the word and when the board sits next, we will
talk about it again.
People have different ideologies and as football
administrators we do not
have to interfere,” said Madzorera.
Senior
ZIFA officials have always had strong ties to ZANU PF,its past
chairman Leo
Mugabe was Mugabe’s niece and its CEO Henrietta Rushwaya before
her
appointment worked in the office of Vice President Joseph Msika but with
no
specific job title resulting in speculation that she was a Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO) agent.
She was also the
co-coordinator of the Warriors Fund-Raising Committee which
is chaired by
politburo member Tendai Savanhu.
In February this year she contested ZANU
PF’s primaries in Gutu against
incumbent Shuvai Mahofa.
Ndlovu, who
has 100 caps to his name and the highest scorer for Zimbabwe
with 39 goals,
last featured for the Warriors in a 2008 African Cup of
Nations qualifier
against Morocco last year.
http://www.rbz.co.zw/
FULL
TEXT OF THE GOVERNOR'S INTERVIEW
WITH
MUNYARADZI HUNI
FOR
THE HERALD'S ISSUE OF
11 JULY, 2008
Q. Dr Gono, the June 27
run-off is over and while the political players are
still talking about the
talks on a possible way forward for Zimbabwe, the
general populace has
shifted its focus to the reeling national economy whose
negative impact on
ordinary people is now too severe. As Governor of the
RBZ, what would you
say is the way forward now in terms of reviving the
economy under the
prevailing national, regional and international
conditions? Can you also
give a detailed background to the origins of our
current difficulties and at
the same time commenting on the views proffered
by some analysts who allege
that our problems started with our interventions
in the DRC as well as
payments made to our War Veterans in 1997/1998
A. Our
economy has been under siege for almost 10 years now since the time
we began
the land identification exercise as a precursor to the land
re-distribution
programme in 1997.
That process (land identification) drew adverse
reaction from the West,
especially Britain, who went on to adversely
influence the World Bank, IMF,
ADB, as well as other Paris Club lenders not
to support Zimbabwe financially
and technically.
Although two other
factors are cited by the economic historians as having
been partly
influential to the genesis of our current state of affairs and
the two
factors are the DRC war where, as part of our responsibility and
contribution to regional, continental and international peace and security,
we went into that country as part of a regional coalition of states to
defend its sovereignty and the payment of unbudgeted gratuities to the war
veterans in 1998. To date, the impact of these two events is often
conveniently exaggerated and therefore I will not dwell on these two factors
as they remain peripheral to the main causes of our situation
today.
On the exogenous side are the sanctions that are being applied
against the
country as a result of the factors I have already cited above as
well as,
currently the steep rise in the price of oil and other forms of
energy, the
global warming phenomenon which has produced
unpredictable weather patterns,
which have brought about frequent droughts
and floods detrimental to crop
production, and animal husbandry, especially
in Southern Africa and Zimbabwe
in particular.
These irregular
weather patterns have given rise to the current world as
well as Zimbabwe
food shortages. To this end strategies will have to be
devised in order to
deal with these external factors, and plans are afoot to
do so.
Under
endogenous factors, our economy has remained hostage to the lack of
unity
and lack of one vision among political players in the country, the
diminished presence of economic patriotism showing itself in the form of the
indiscipline and get-rich-quick mentality by most economic players in the
country; in the public and private sectors of our economy.
All these
factors have led to the introduction of a raft of extraordinary
measures on
the part of Government, through its various arms; such as the
Reserve Bank
of Zimbabwe, the Grain Marketing Board and other institutions
under
Government's control in an effort to survive. Some of those
extra-ordinary
interventions have flown in the face of conventional
economics, while others
have, by coincidence, conformed to economic
convention or textbooks
theories.
In dealing with the challenges before us, especially
under a tightened
sanctions regime, it will be necessary that pragmatism and
reality operate
side by side, with technocratic interventions that run side
by side with
political idealism.
Having said this, however, there are
two fundamental background points
arising from your question that must be
understood and underscored.
In the first place, and contrary to the
propaganda that is often repeated
even by some political groups in the
country, that western economic
sanctions have been targeted only at some
individuals in or believed to be
associated with the ruling Zanu PF, it is
now common cause that ordinary
people in the cities and rural areas are in
fact the helpless victims of
these illegal sanctions which are specifically
designed to cause human
suffering by precipitating a humanitarian crisis in
Zimbabwe which could
trigger a generalised conflict to justify international
intervention.
This is being done in the vain hope that economic sanctions
would provoke
Zimbabweans into turning against their
government.
In the second place, the time has come for all of us
to understand that our
national economy does not exist in a vacuum nor does
it exist as another
world separate from our national politics.
The
economy and politics are inextricably intertwined such that it does not
make
sense for anyone to expect the RBZ to somehow fix the national economy
and
turn it around for the better while political players continue to play
bickering games over the way forward.
Therefore, I cannot imagine let
alone proffer any way forward in terms of
reviving the economy given the
current situation that is not based on and
informed by a political economy
of national unity. As such, the only way
forward for our country is for
Zimbabweans to come together and to speak
with one voice to foster a
national consensus that puts the country's
interests first.
For
sometime now my team and I at the RBZ have been calling for a social
contract and a spirit of national healing as the pillars of the way forward
not just in our national economy but also in our national
politics.
Against this backdrop, we have been saddened to see how the
outcome of the
harmonized elections held on March 29 has led to
unprecedented political
disharmony in the country. That cannot be good for
the economy.
And so, the prevailing the disharmony is very
dangerous for our national
survival and we need to confront it with an
audacious commitment to national
unity. For that to happen, the political
players across the political divide
need to stop being players and start
being leaders who do the right thing
for Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans.
I
honestly believe that our political leaders know what is right for
Zimbabwe
and what remains is for them to seek it with urgency or risk being
judged
very harshly by history and posterity.
Q. What do you expect to be the
bottlenecks and the challenges facing the
nation as it seeks to turnaround
the economy?
A. You know, we are in an extraordinary situation requiring
extraordinary
measures. The business-as-usual approach will not do in this
situation.
This is because the core issues are no longer about the
conventional
economic bottlenecks many of which are very well known not
least because
they have been highlighted in virtually all of my monetary
policy statements
since December 2003.
Yes, we have to attend
to conventional bottlenecks such as foreign exchange
reforms, removing
pricing distortions that have adversely affected producer
viability and we
need to revamp the financial position of public utilities
while continuing
the fight against inflation among other urgent measures.
And even more
critically, the current global instability of food prices
dictates that we
treat national food security as our number one priority and
thank God we are
well positioned to deal with this challenge because of the
considerable
success of our ongoing historic and now irreversible land
reform
programme.
But, in my respectful view, the major if not the only
bottleneck in our
efforts to turnaround the economy is the absence of the
required political
will among key national leaders and stakeholders to do
and say the right
thing for Zimbabwe and its people.
As a nation, we
have become too factionalized while some among us have
become too foreign
oriented in their actions and pronouncements. You cannot
have a thriving and
vibrant economy in such a situation even with the best
of efforts and
intentions from the Reserve Bank.
Q. The United States has
drafted a resolution that is now before the United
Nations Security Council
seeking, among other things, to freeze personal
assets and seeking to extend
and internationalize the current limited travel
ban against not only you but
President Mugabe and six other top Government
officials. What do you make of
this move by the US administration that is
supported by the majority members
of the G8 given your pivotal role in
trying to turnaround the
economy?
A. While I respect the fact that sovereign countries have a
right to take
measures in pursuit of their national interests, I have failed
to understand
how the world's most powerful nations have been so blinded by
the British
government which has a hidden agenda in Zimbabwe over the land
reform
programme they wish to reverse and they have found it within their
top
priority to make Zimbabwe's domestic affairs on internally disputed
elections their international business to the point of seeking such
misplaced and ill-conceived sanctions against Zimbabwe.
It is a fact
that many members of the United Nations, including the United
States itself
under its current President, have for one reason or another
held
presidential elections with disputed outcomes that have been judged by
some
observers to be neither free nor fair but which, although internally
controversial, have not posed a threat to international peace and thus have
not
warranted international intervention in terms of chapter
seven of the United
Nations Charter.
As I see them, the ongoing
efforts instigated by the British government and
led by the United States at
the United Nations to impose sanctions on
Zimbabwe on account of a disputed
presidential election would set a very
dangerous precedent which would
itself be a very serious threat to
international peace. Conversely, the fact
that there are some Zimbabwean
political groups or individuals that are
supporting those efforts is a clear
threat to national unity and
stability.
Therefore, while the move you mention at the United Nations is
predictable
given what we have experienced over the last few years from the
same
quarters, it is nevertheless quite sad to see that the countries
seeking
economic and other sanctions against Zimbabwe have abandoned all
diplomatic
pretence to neutrality and have decided to be part of the
so-called
Zimbabwean problem by taking partisan positions in support of
particular
Zimbabwean political players against others instead of bringing
them
together. Instead of preventing conflict, they are fomenting it and
that is
very sad to see.
By the way, it is very instructive to note
that the anti-Zimbabwe sentiment
in the G8 is so full of personal hatred of
our national leadership that
would lead a neutral
observer
from outer space to mistakenly conclude that the Government is
sitting on a
deadly nuclear arsenal that is a threat to world peace when the
matter at
stake is merely a disputed presidential election which has not
provoked any
unrest in the country beyond press statements from some
aggrieved political
quarters.
Indeed, the disproportionate and over the top focus on Zimbabwe
by the G8
and their surrogates at the United Nations and elsewhere has led
some amazed
neutrals to observe that if the G8 were to pursue their 2007
US$25 billion
pledge to fight poverty and promote development in Africa by
2010 with the
same zeal, vigour, enthusiasm and single-minded determination
as they are
pursuing the Zimbabwean leadership on account of a domestic
affair over a
disputed presidential election, there would be tremendous
progress in
realizing the United Nations goals of development across
Africa.
At the end of the day, the gist of the matter though is that any
sanctions
against Zimbabwe and from whatever international forum, and
however
disguised, will only lead to more suffering of the already suffering
ordinary people. It seems to me irresponsible that the United Nations
Security Council should even bring itself to entertaining such moves whose
only impact would be to widen and deepen the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe
at a time when the United Nations should be at the forefront of solving the
very same crisis in a non partisan manner.
Even so, I remain
optimistic that the current wave of irrational excitement
over Zimbabwe
gripping some members of the G8 and their surrogates will
sooner rather than
later give way to reason, especially within the United
Nations Security
Council.
I believe that many rational voices in the United Nations and
indeed within
SADC and the African Union now realize that punitive economic
sanctions and
other measures whether personalized or not can only deepen and
spread
conflict in Zimbabwe at a time when there are now hopes on the
horizon for a
negotiated home-driven settlement to which His Excellency
President Robert
Gabriel Mugabe has committed himself and the government. I
have faith in
SADC mediation led by President Thabo Mbeki and I hope the
international
community will stop sowing divisions and support his
efforts.
Otherwise, it should be clear to anyone who cares about the
tense situation
in the country that Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans do not need
punitive economic
sanctions or other divisive measures from the United
Nations, rather, they
need constructive support to bring about national
unity and to lay the
foundation for national healing and economic
prosperity.
Q. With the support of its British counterpart which
is coordinating and
leading the current propaganda onslaught against
Zimbabwe, the US government
has targeted you alleging that you are
"responsible for funding repressive
state policies." What is your comment on
this allegation?
A. That statement alone is enough to demonstrate that
something else is
going on here beyond what meets the eye. If the laughable
allegation was
that I am using my own personal funds to underwrite the
alleged repressive
State policies, one would pause and reflect for a moment.
But I am the
Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe which is a State
institution and I
have discharged my responsibilities from that perspective
and in accordance
not only with the laws of Zimbabwe as enacted by both ZANU
(PF) and MDC
Legislators, but also international banking practice. Of
course, I do not
expect all leaders to understand banking and economics
especially Central
Banking but I expected a bit more understanding of the
subject matter from
former Chancellors of Exchequer and Harvard MBA
graduates!
If the expectation at play here is that I should somehow work
against the
State or use my office to subvert it or be somehow disloyal to
the State,
then I should make it clear to anyone with an interest in this
matter that
no such a thing will ever happen. Never.
The
reference to "repressive State policies" is a political opinion and not
a
fact. Besides, the Government of Zimbabwe is entitled to formulate and
implement its own policies that it advances during elections and it is only
the electorate in Zimbabwe that can support or reject those policies. It is
not the business of the British or American government to tell the
Government of Zimbabwe what policies to implement or not to
implement.
It is now clear that there are some elements within the
international
community who want to abuse their positions at the United
Nations to induce
a rebellion in Zimbabwe by publicly supporting certain
groups and
individuals who are doing their bidding in the country while
threatening and
demonizing others who are seen as obstacles to that
bidding.
As far as I am concerned, as Governor of the Reserve Bank, I
stand ready to
do what I believe and know is right for my country without
fear or favour
given the public mandate entrusted on me in terms of my
employment contract.
I take my instructions from my principals in Government
and not from anyone
in London, Washington, New York or anywhere else outside
Zimbabwe.
If this earns me any punishment or personal hatred, then so be
it. What I
know and I believe every other fair minded person knows is that
the Reserve
Bank of
Zimbabwe has since 2003 taken
extraordinary measures to help Zimbabweans
across all sectors of the
national economy in a transparent manner to enable
them to survive the
consequences of illegal sanctions. I and the RBZ team
will never shy away
from helping out where we can and that is a matter of
national
responsibility and pride.
Q. Governor, there are strong indications that
now that the run-off is over
and President Mugabe came out the winner, more
sanctions targeting the
economy will be imposed against the country. Can our
economy take any more
battering from more and broader economic
sanctions?
A. I have already made it clear that this whole discourse of
sanctions is
misplaced because sanctions always and everywhere affect the
most vulnerable
people in society than anyone else. This is food for thought
for those bent
on forging ahead with what can only be seen as an evil
sanctions agenda. The
idea that somehow the threatened sanctions would help
ordinary Zimbabweans
is not even a joke. It is shameful and disgraceful and
an act of serious
intellectual dishonesty that screams for debate by all
fair minded persons.
While the difficulties that would result from
further sanctions should not
be underestimated or ignored,
the
fact remains that Zimbabwe will not die because of the
threatened sanctions.
If anything, those who have imposed economic sanctions
on Zimbabwe and are
now threatening more, and those locally who are
supporting the sanctions,
will never ever win the popular favour of
Zimbabweans. About that I'm
certain.
Otherwise, our economy has a
capacity to survive but that capacity can only
be triggered by our
collective willingness as Zimbabweans to put our country
first.
The
sanctions will succeed in the interim if we remain divided as a nation
and
if there are some among us who want to make cheap political capital from
being used by the western countries as their instruments or weapons of
destabilization.
I must say though that in the long run, our economy
and our nation will
prevail and that those who think they can make political
careers out of the
misery of ordinary Zimbabweans shall live to regret their
deeds.
Q. What mechanisms are there in place to fight the sanctions? In
other
words, how can we beat or bust the sanctions?
A. These
sanctions that you are talking about are real and they are not
coming from
angels above or from our earthily friends. They are coming from
enemies of
Zimbabwe who are determined to trigger a humanitarian crisis in
our country
purely for political reasons in pursuit of their hidden agendas.
In that
regard, it would foolhardy to go up Mount Kilimanjaro and shout from
its top
the measures that are in place or will be in place to bust the
sanctions. If
we did that, then we would not know what we are doing let
alone understand
the challenges at hand.
All I can say here is that Zimbabwe is standing
at a historic moment such
that the salvation of our country now lies not
only on the determined will
of all Zimbabweans but also on our collective
ability as a nation to better
organize ourselves to extract value from our
God given natural resources
which may be the reason our country is
attracting hostile attention from
those who want to impose
sanctions.
Swift and radical measures need to be taken to invoke a much
quicker supply
side response in order to avert further deepening and
widening of the
economic crisis. It is for us to know what these measures
are or will be and
to implement them for our enemies to find out after the
fact.
Q. The Government through the RBZ has come up with the idea
of the "People's
Shops." How far have you gone in setting up these shops and
how sustainable
is this initiative?
A. Well, the term "People's
Shops" is a populist one and understandably so.
But there is some very
serious strategic thinking behind it. Among ordinary
people, especially the
vulnerable elements, the availability of basic goods
and commodities at
affordable prices is the key to the revival of our
national
economy.
It is for this reason that as the Reserve Bank, we have found it
necessary
to relieve the strain of the illegal sanctions especially among
the
vulnerable groups in our country in the rural and high density urban
areas
by putting in place a "Basic Goods Accessibility Programme"
(BGAP).
Under this programme, targeted support is being given to the
producers of
basic commodities such as cooking oil, sugar, soap, matemba,
salt, maize
meal among others. These products are then supplied to targeted
groups,
through the so-called People's Shops, at affordable prices. This
programme
has started nationwide on a pilot basis and so far it is going on
very well
and we have no doubt about the sustainability of the programme
because it is
based on good business sense.
Q. Some economists are
saying this idea of the "People's Shops" is
inflationary. What is your
comment?
A. The same economists have said the same thing about any and
every
intervention we have made to alleviate the suffering of ordinary
people in
our country. I guess as economists it is their duty to point out
the obvious
without necessarily looking at the nuances and long term policy
objectives
being pursued.
Helping out suffering people may indeed be
inflationary in the first
instance but that kind of intervention is not
inflationary in the long run
if it is done in structural terms to stimulate
productivity, provide food
security, create employment and generate income
as intended.
The basic point is that we are not living in normal times.
Ours are
extraordinary times requiring extraordinary measures and I cannot
wait for
the day the economists you are talking about will realise this
fact.
Q. Still on inflation, there is general belief that the RBZ has
given up the
fight against inflation. Dr Gono is the fight still on or we
have postponed
that fight to another day in future?
A. That
fight will remain until victory is achieved. That is our policy
objective.
What should be understood though is that fighting inflation in
polarised
political environment and in an economy under growing illegal
sanctions
cannot be a textbook affair.
Therefore, when we scale up our
proactiveness and adopt extraordinary
measures to deal with extraordinary
situations, that does not mean we have
abandoned our main objective to fight
inflation as our number one enemy, it
simply means we need to be strategic
in that fight which I have no doubt we
will win sooner rather than later if
we act together as Zimbabweans with a
common heritage and a common
destiny.
Q. Governor, the people of Zimbabwe are searching for hope. They
have been
living under economic hardships for over five years now. While
their
resilience has been amazing considering the hardships they've faced,
one
wonders whether that resilience will last for any much longer. Is there
light at the end of the tunnel and if so, what is it that should keep
Zimbabweans hoping that better days are coming?
A. Yes, indeed, there
is light at the end of the tunnel and I see it in the
eyes of ordinary
people I meet everyday who tell me that they are relieved
elections are over
and that
the composition of the elected Parliament dictates that
Zimbabweans work
together in a spirit of national unity and for the common
good of the
country. So the hope in the eyes of the people is shining the
light on the
urgent need for national unity and national
healing.
More importantly, I see the light at the end of the tunnel when
in his
inauguration speech President Mugabe' called for national dialogue
and
national unity to find a common ground across the political divide. I
was
really touched by the self-evident sincerity and pragmatism of that
national
call.
I believe that President Mugabe's call will be well
received by everyone,
especially those in opposition politics, with
important roles to play in the
political process and that reception stands
to create tremendous
opportunities for the much needed economic recovery of
our country.
So the key lies in the ongoing dialogue under the SADC
mediation led by
President Mbeki and I have absolute faith in the
nationalism, patriotism and
commitment of those participating in it and I
don't believe for a moment
that they will let Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans down
simply because they cannot
afford to.
Q. In conclusion, what
can you tell the Nation and the world, especially
those championing
sanctions against the country, the President, yourself and
others?
A.
History is awash with actions that have been taken, guns fired, people
going
to war and people killed or injured on the basis mistaken identity,
false
intelligence, rumour, stage-managed events, misrepresentations and
outright
lies on the part of those seeking to achieve sinister agendas which
cannot
or would not be accomplished if the true situation and facts are
presented
for all to see and interpret for themselves.
In the same vein Harare has
been dubbed, the rumour capital city of the
world, particularly when it
comes to smearing individuals and the Government
with falsehoods, and
unfortunately outsiders never take time to verify or
check those
stories.
Only yesterday we had a story in a reputable US newspaper, The
New York
Times, admitting that they had been fed with lies until they tried
to verify
the story and that is when it emerged that they had been taken for
a ride by
a financially stricken lady who was hoping to get financial
sympathy!
We also have cases of scribes who will write anything
in order to be awarded
scholarships or residence permits abroad on account
of faking threats to
their lives from the Zimbabwean so called "system" for
alleged "nasty
revelations" of Government misdemeanours. Others are internet
lie-contributors doing so under pseudo names for the sake of earning US$50
or US$100 a month depending on how juicy their stories are. So, in short my
appeal to the outside world is that they should verify, verify and verify
again stories from Zimbabwe before swallowing hook, line and sinker the
stories they receive and act upon.
Of course, I am not defending
anyone who murders another person; I am not
defending anyone who tortures
another person or anyone who perpetrates
violence on any other person or
property for whatever reason. Such people
must be punished, by and dealt
with through the laws of the land after
establishing the real facts on the
ground, regardless of who the perpetrator
of such murders, violence or
torture is.
Ultimately for me, I would like the whole world and
Zimbabweans in
particular to know that I want to be counted as one of those
patriotic sons
of the soil who was there for my country, stood for and by my
country and
countrymen/women at Zimbabwe's hour of maximum danger, its hour
of maximum
need and not one who hid behind a finger or heap of lies, or
under the desk
when
the country needed men and women to
uphold its laws, preserve and promote
peace and stability through whatever
modest efforts I am able to make, and
contributed to the preservation of the
Nation's legacy as defined by our
present and departed heroes and heroines
of our liberation struggle.
Saka, sanctions or no sanctions, Governor
Gono will stand for, and by
Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans at all times. Never
doubt that!
THE END
News24
11/07/2008 07:11 -
(SA)
Julian Rademeyer, Beeld
Johannesburg - A senior Zanu-PF
politburo official implicated in torture,
kidnapping and a secret plan to
harass and drive out opposition supporters
in Zimbabwe is a South African
citizen.
This is despite the fact that dual citizenship is outlawed by
the Zimbabwean
constitution.
Joshua Teke Malinga, 64, a former
senator and mayor of Bulawayo, is a member
of President Robert Mugabe's
inner circle, and has been accused of
establishing a "torture centre" near
the Bulawayo central police station.
He also is accused of being one of
the authors of a document setting out
"covert operations to decompose (sic)
the opposition" during recent
presidential run-off elections.
'Dirty
tricks' operations
The "action plan" drafted by senior members of Zanu-PF
in Midlands province,
called for supporters of the Movement for Democratic
Change to be harassed
and driven out of Zanu-PF strongholds.
Other
dirty tricks operations included declaring "no-go areas" for the MDC
in
rural parts of the country, and writing threatening letters to
"resettled"
farmers purporting to come from the MDC and "harassing" them in
MDC T-shirts
so that they voted to defend their land.
South Africa, however, would
have no jurisdiction to act against Malinga -
who, like dozens of other
senior Zanu-PF officials, has business ties to
South Africa and owns
property here - for crimes committed in Zimbabwe.
The wheelchair-bound
Malinga, who owns three sectional-title units in
Hillbrow, was until
recently a director of the Secretariat of the African
Decade of Persons with
Disabilities (SADPD), a Cape town-based organisation
that champions the
rights of the disabled in Africa.
After queries from Beeld, however, the
organisation announced that Malinga
had been booted off the
board.
South African by birth
SADPD's chief executive officer
Kudakwashe Dube said the organisation
"dissociated" itself from Malinga's
political activities and condemned "in
the strongest possible manner the
violence that is prevailing in Zimbabwe".
He said the present board was
"in the process of being replaced". Malinga
had served with the secretariat
since 2004.
Dube said: "We condemn the implementation of a discredited
run-off
'election' and the harsh economic and political conditions that
disabled
people are experiencing."
He said the organisation did not
have programmes running in Zimbabwe because
of the "unstable and
unacceptable" political situation there.
The Department of Home Affairs
has confirmed that Malinga, who is on
international sanctions lists in much
of Europe, the United States and
Australia, is a South African citizen by
birth and is listed on the
Population Register.
Detained at
airport
"The department does not require citizens to disclose their
occupations so
the department would have no record that Mr Malinga was a
politician in
Zimbabwe," said spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy.
In 2002,
Malinga and his wife were detained after they tried to board a
flight to New
York at Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom.
They were subsequently
deported for violating European Union sanctions
banning top Zanu-PF
officials from travel abroad.
Malinga claimed the deportation order was a
"violation of my human rights as
a disabled person".
In March this
year, SW Radio Africa - which broadcasts to Zimbabwe from
London - reported
that Malinga "is thought to have sanctioned two separate
abductions of MDC
activists".
'Supplying drugs daily'
Last month, The Zimbabwean
newspaper, reported that Malinga had established
a "torture centre" in
Bulawayo. According to the report, "several MDC
members have been kidnapped
and taken there to be tortured".
"Malinga is understood to be supplying
the youth militias with opaque beer
(masese) and drugs on a daily
basis."
Malinga denied the charges saying the "centre" was merely a
"temporary"
Zanu-PF office.
After last month's one-man election,
Malinga was quoted as saying that
"nobody on this earth" could stop
Mugabe.
Malinga did not respond to e-mail questions sent to him by
Beeld.
The Scotsman
Published Date: 11 July 2008
By ROSS
LYDALL
POLITICAL EDITOR
GORDON Brown yesterday warned that "time is short"
for the international
community to agree tough sanctions on Zimbabwe and
avert a humanitarian
crisis.
The Prime Minister hopes a commitment he
secured from the G8 summit in Japan
will translate into United Nations
sanctions against the country's
discredited president, Robert Mugabe, and 13
of his henchmen.
Two days of negotiations are under way at the UN
security council in New
York but it is feared that Russia or China could use
their veto to block
financial and travel sanctions and a ban on selling
weapons and military
equipment to the African nation.
Mr Brown told
MPs yesterday that he hoped sanctions - and sending a UN envoy
to Zimbabwe -
would lead to Mugabe being deposed or forced to stand down. It
was
"important the whole weight of the international community" supported
efforts to force him out.
"I believe time is short for that, so it is
important that the UN pass its
resolution as soon as possible, and I hope
that all countries and all
continents will get behind it," he said. "This is
an emergency in terms of
humanitarian aid."
David Cameron, the Tory
leader, praised Mr Brown for putting Zimbabwe at the
top of the agenda. "The
key is to translate those words at the G8 into an
effective UN resolution,"
he said.
Business Report
July
4, 2008
By Terry Bell
The bitter reaction yesterday of a
Zimbabwean trade unionist in Harare went
as follows: "[Zanu-PF members] seem
to have won. They claim to have won, but
still the beatings have
continued."
He and several of his fellows bewailed the fact that the
contribution and
suffering of the labour movement tended to be ignored. They
argued that the
issues and the positions of the various parties in the
conflict in Zimbabwe
had become confused in the public mind.
Although
this is not widely publicised, it is certainly true that the trade
unions
have been among the greatest losers in the repression and violence
across
the Limpopo. They have also provided much of the impetus and policy
direction for the opposition, quite apart from playing the key role in
establishing the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The
Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) has been particularly
targeted
in recent months. Union research reveals that nearly 5 000 teachers
have
been assaulted, with 600 hospitalised as a result of beatings. The
homes of
at least 230 teachers have been razed.
The general secretary of the PTUZ,
Raymond Majongwe, who has twice suffered
beatings and electric shock
torture, was reported missing yesterday. On
Wednesday afternoon a group of
men raided his Harare home.
A union official said: "We do not think they
found him, but we do not know
what has happened to him."
PTUZ
treasurer Lad Zunde was also not home when a group of men arrived on
Wednesday evening to say they had called to "take him to a
funeral".
The persecution of the unions is no recent phenomenon. The
Zimbabwe Congress
of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and most of its affiliates have
been prime targets of
the state ever since Morgan Tsvangirai, then the
general secretary of the
ZCTU and now the leader of the opposition MDC, led
the federation on an
independent course from the Zanu-PF
government.
A ZCTU official said: "Yet we were fighting the very
things [President
Robert] Mugabe now claims to be opposing."
The
unions, which were initially linked to the ruling party, opposed the
liberal
economic policies pursued by Mugabe on the advice of the World Bank
and
International Monetary Fund.
In 1996, at the same time that the trade
union federations in South Africa
were drafting their alternative economic
policy proposals, the ZCTU produced
a document titled Beyond Esap (the
economic structural adjustment
programme).
Like the South African
labour movement's Social Equity and Job Creation
document, Beyond Esap
presents more thoroughly considered policy positions
than anything put
forward by the government. The ZCTU also drew on the
experience of South
Africa's reconstruction and development programme which,
at that stage, had
not yet given way to the macroeconomic reform programme
of growth,
employment and redistribution.
Beyond Esap argues for the establishment
of a tripartite - labour, business
and government - forum, such as the
national economic development and labour
council, to consider and confirm
government policies. Its demand that "land
redistribution should be given
the highest priority" came at a time when the
Mugabe government was doing
little about redistributing land.
Among the most battered of all the
Zimbabwe unions - the agricultural
workers- there is demand for the
establishment of farm worker co-operatives.
A co-operative supporter
said: "But first we have to survive before we can
start to talk about that."
Zambia Daily Mail
By ANGELA CHISHIMBA
GOVERNMENT has said the hospitalisation
of President Mwanawasa has not
changed its position on the Zimbabwean
political crisis.
Chief Government spokesperson, Mike Mulongoti, said in
Lusaka that Dr
Mwanawasa could have spoken out on the crisis in Zimbabwe if
he had attended
the African Union (AU) summit.
"We believe that
President Mwanawasa could have raised his voice on these
issues. We can't
just change things now because the man is in hospital," he
said.
Mr
Mulongoti who is also Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services
said
there was no need for Africans to shy away from problems in the
region.
"I challenge you fellow Africans on whether you can proudly talk
about your
countries. Ask yourselves whether you have been able to
contribute to
democracy in the region," he said.
And United States of
America (USA) ambassador to Zambia, Carmen Martinez,
says her Government
will continue providing humanitarian assistance to
Zimbabweans even if it
does not recognise President Robert Mugabe as a
legitimate
leader.
"The United States provides emergency food assistance to more
than one
million people in Zimbabwe and HIV/AIDS treatment to more than
40,000
people.
We will continue to provide this assistance. Our
sanctions have always
targeted at Mr Mugabe and his associates, never at the
Zimbabwean people,"
Mrs Martinez said.
She said this in her response
to a press query on the Zimbabwean political
crisis yesterday in
Lusaka.
Mrs Martinez said the USA does not recognise President Mugabe's
government
as legitimate.
"As a result, the United State of America
is developing sanctions against
the Mugabe regime," she said.
Mrs
Martinez said the Zimbabwean government allegedly ran a "sham" run off
election in which those who would have voted against Mr Mugabe were afraid
to do so because they knew they would be brutalised.
"It is a tragedy
that Mr Mugabe's dark deeds are casting a shadow on the
continent," she
said
Mrs Martinez said there were good democratic African leaders who
were trying
to institute democratic reforms and who understood the threat of
instability
in the Southern African region posed by the escalating violence
and economic
crisis in Zimbabwe.
She said many of those African
leaders had spoken out in strong terms
recently calling for a solution that
would allow for Zimbabweans to be safe
in their own country.
And
out-going British High Commissioner to Zambia, Alistair Harrison, said
the
decision on whether to suspend Mr Mugabe from the Southern Africa
Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) lay with the members
of those organisations.
"We welcome the fact the AU acknowledged the
African observer mission's
reports which were clear that the election was
not free and fair and their
recognition of the violence that marred the
election and the fact the crisis
has wider regional implications as we have
been arguing for some time," he
said.
Mr Harrison said his country
however supported AU calls for further
mediation within the region, but
believed that the AU and United Nations
(UN) had a clear role to play in
supporting the initiatives.
"The UK condemns the actions of the
Zimbabwean authorities in pressing ahead
with a sham election.
We
consider that the systematic use of state-sponsored political violence
and
intimidation, the restriction of democratic space and the clampdown on
free
media resulted in an environment, which was neither free nor fair.
" We
do not accept the legitimacy of any government that has does not
reflect the
will of the Zimbabwean people and strongly urge the Zimbabwean
authorities
to work with the opposition to achieve a prompt, peaceful
resolution of the
crisis," he said.