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Q. and A. with Lydia Polgreen
and Reader Reactions on Land Reform in Zimbabwe
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Thanks, readers, for lots of great (and sometimes tough)
questions. As I expected, this article has
prompted a lot of interesting and lively debate. Land ownership is one of the
bedrocks of any society, and it doesn’t surprise me that this is a deeply
emotional issue. Some readers felt it was a refreshing new take on a news story
that has been out of the headlines lately, and welcomed the end of colonial-era
land ownership patterns, which allocated vast swaths of prime farmland to white
settlers and small barren patches to black Zimbabweans.
Others felt that the article argued that the end
– land redistribution – justified the means – violence and terror. For this
article I interviewed several white farmers who lost their land, many of whom
purchased it legally after independence, the loss of livelihood was devastating.
Hundreds of thousands of farm workers also lost their jobs on commercial farms.
Zimbabwe has been through a lot, and some readers felt any effort to look for a
silver lining was suspect.
Q.
Several people asked about the fate of the
workers on white commercial farms, who were mentioned briefly in the article.
How have they fared?
A.
Before 2000, about 350,000 people worked on
commercial farms in Zimbabwe, 150,000 of them permanent and the rest seasonal or
day laborers. One white farmer whose fruit plantation was seized told me that
1,200 people worked on his farm, and most of them had struggled to find new
work. They were targets of violence amid the farm seizures and punished for any
sign of loyalty to their white employers. Anecdotal evidence suggests they are
underrepresented in the ranks of farmers resettled on former commercial farms.
Many have migrated to neighboring countries, especially South Africa, to find
work. Some workers continue to work for white-owned commercial farms, of which a
relative handful remain.
The wages and working conditions of black
workers on white-owned farms before 2000 varied widely. Ian Scoones, a
development expert at the University of Sussex who has studied land reform in Zimbabwe
closely, wrote that in the late 1990s in
Masvingo Province, where he did much of his research, an unskilled farmworker
made about $10 a month, while a driver or skilled worker earned about $25 per
month. Wages were no doubt higher in other areas where lucrative cash crops were
grown.
Q.
Matthew Kustenbauder, a Ph.D. student in History
at Harvard University, wrote a multipart critique of the article, raising
several interesting questions. Among them was whether the article, by focusing
on tobacco, obscured plummeting yields in other crops.
A.
One of the biggest misconceptions about the
nature of agriculture in Zimbabwe pre-2000 is that white commercial farmers were
feeding Zimbabwe. This was not strictly true, according to experts on farming in
Zimbabwe like Sam Moyo of the African Institute of Agrarian Studies, who has been very closely tracking these
patterns.
The majority of the maize, which is the staple
food crop in Zimbabwe, was grown on so-called communal land, which is owned
collectively by villagers. Commercial farms played a crucial role in both
supporting local production through employment and creating an economic
environment in which inputs for farmers were less expensive. They also grew a
limited amount of maize.
But white farmers were not literally feeding
Zimbabwe. Most focused on high-value cash crops like tobacco, fruit, nuts,
avocados and coffee. Some grew wheat, and wheat production has indeed pretty
much collapsed because it is an irrigation-intensive crop that requires
infrastructure that small-scale farmers cannot afford. As a result, wheat
production has gone from 230,000 metric tons in 1999-2000 to a tenth of that
last year.
But let’s look at maize, which is what most
Zimbabweans eat. Production was 1.6 million metric tons in 1999/2000, the season
before land seizures began. As the crisis grew, production plummeted. It bottomed out in 2007-08 at 575,000 metric tons, a
cataclysmically small harvest. Starvation loomed, and Zimbabwe needed huge
amounts of food aid. It was also the peak of the country’s economic and
political crisis. But by 2010-11, the maize crop had rebounded to nearly 1.5
million metric tons. This year’s harvest is likely to be smaller because of
drought. But there is no question that the capacity of Zimbabwean farmers to
produce maize at pre-2000 levels is getting much stronger.
There have been other bright spots. Cotton,
which was mostly grown on communal land, is already above the 1999-2000
production levels. Barley and small grains production has increased. Zimbabwe is
growing twice as many beans as it did a decade ago. Prices are high in Zimbabwe,
because the general collapse of the economy brought on by the land seizures has
made it a very risky place for anyone to invest. So local production has become
prohibitive. Imports have a built-in premium, since importing to an unstable
country like Zimbabwe is risky.
Make no mistake: There is still a great deal of
economic pain in Zimbabwe. Unemployment remains a huge problem. Many Zimbabweans
have fled to South Africa to look for jobs. Switching to the United States
dollar halted inflation, but economic growth remains sluggish. An uncertain
political future contributes to the malaise. Indeed, one reason why tobacco has
rebounded is that the government simply isn’t involved. Farmers sell their
tobacco at auction to buyers for hard currency. And tobacco companies have been
giving small-scale farmers loans, which are repaid with auction sale proceeds.
This kind of contract farming has helped revive the industry much more quickly.
Having access to seeds, fertilizer and equipment makes all the
difference.
Q.
A.
This is a great question, and one that faces
many post-colonial societies and Zimbabwe’s wealthy neighbor, South Africa, in
particular. Like Zimbabwe, South Africa has serious imbalances in wealth and
land ownership along racial lines. Speaking at the African National Congress policy conference last
month, South Africa’s president, Jacob
Zuma, decried the fact that “the economic power relations of the apartheid era
have in the main remained intact. The ownership of the economy is still
primarily in the hands of white males, as it has always been.”
Much of the conference was taken up with
discussing ways to move wealth more quickly into a broader set of hands. Some
factions with South Africa’s governing party prefer the current, go-slow
approach to issues like affirmative action in business and land reform. Others
are pushing for a more radical approach that would allow for seizures of land
without compensation as well as nationalization of the country’s gold, platinum
and diamond mines.
Beginning in the 1980s, Zimbabwe had a voluntary
land reform program financed by the British government that had notched some
success in integrating more black Zimbabweans into commercial farming. Because
it was voluntary and expensive, it moved slowly. Complaints about corruption and
cronyism in that program were widespread. The so-called “fast track” land
reforms that began in 2000 were as much about shoring up Robert G. Mugabe’s
fading popularity amid a fiscal crisis as they were about promoting
equality.
The ZANU-PF government has been ruthless in its
efforts to cling to power, and has used the land issue to whip up support. But
it hasn’t necessarily been an effective vote getter: Mr. Mugabe won fewer votes
than the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in a bloody election campaign in
2008, and the two ultimately entered an uneasy power-sharing agreement that
hobbles along to this day. Doubtless the wreckage of one of Africa’s strongest
economies played a major role Mr. Mugabe’s defeat.
Tendai Murisa, a Zimbabwean sociologist who has
studied the impact of the land redistribution in tobacco growing areas says that
he found unexpected attitudes toward democracy and accountability among those
allotted land. People in resettled areas on former white-owned farms were more
likely to have elected, rather than hereditary, local leaders. The creation of a
land-holding peasantry with a deep stake in the country’s prosperity is likely
to remake the dynamics of Zimbabwean politics in the years ahead, he argues, in
ways that are likely to demand more, not less, democracy and better governance.
Major changes in the structure of an economy are always hard to achieve by
non-disruptive means. Inequality in developing countries is particularly hard to
overcome. But no one I know of is recommending that any nation follow Zimbabwe’s
painful path.
Q.
A.
The relationship is actually more varied and
complex than you might think. Many white farmers who have remained and grow
tobacco are now contracting with tobacco companies to shed some of the risk
involved with farming. That way if their farms get seized just before it is time
to reap, as happened to one white farmer I met, the loss goes on the tobacco
company’s balance sheet, not the farmer’s. This is the same arrangement many of
the new black farmers use, so it does create a kind of symmetry.
There are also a fair number of white former
tobacco farmers who are now working in the tobacco industry in Zimbabwe, not as
growers but as consultants who work on behalf of tobacco companies with
small-scale farmers. In the interactions between these former farmers and new
farmers I saw a good deal of professionalism and collegiality. White farmers who
are still on their land (usually a small fraction of their original holdings)
have found ways to live with their new neighbors.
There is a perception that white farmers stole
the land from blacks, but in many cases farmers actually purchased their land,
some of them after 1980, when Zimbabwe won its independence. I spent an
afternoon with one such farmer, who was quoted in the article (his name was
withheld because he feared losing more of his land). While his family’s losses
have been devastating, he showed no bitterness, simply a resolve to keep going.
Many white farmers have left to safer havens in Zambia, Mozambique, Nigeria and
South Africa, but those who remain have a dogged determination to hold on in the
nation of their birth.
Q.
A.
In Zimbabwe the small farms are definitely less
efficient. I don’t have a way to control the data for skills or investment, but
the raw numbers tell a stark story. In 2000 76,000 hectares of tobacco fields
produced 2,487 kilograms per hectare. Last year the number of hectares doubled
but the country as a whole produced less tobacco – indeed the yield per hectare
was less than half the 2000 level.
Renewed
focus on ending Zim crisis must be applauded
http://www.timeslive.co.za/
The Times Editorial | 15 June,
2012 00:05
You've got to hand it to Lindiwe Zulu and her team of
mediators on Zimbabwe.
President Jacob Zuma's top foreign affairs adviser
has been publicly
vilified by Zanu-PF heavyweights because of her
determination to ensure that
the opposing parties in the fragile
power-sharing government stick to the
terms of the global political
agreement struck four years ago.
The stakes are high: the
possibility of free and fair elections next year.
If the elections are
credible, and are not accompanied by the levels of
violence that were
witnessed during the last poll in 2008, then surely
billions in foreign
investment will flow into the cash-starved country that
President Robert
Mugabe's Zanu-PF government almost brought to its knees.
Before voting
can take place, key reforms have to be effected to create a
climate that is
conducive to a credible election, including the completion
of the
constitution-making process.
This week, Zulu repeated South Africa's
position: Western nations should
lift economic sanctions and Harare's
power-sharing government should speed
up the reform process.
The jury
is still out on whether the time is right to lift sanctions - some
observers
believe Mugabe's party, which still controls the army and the
police, has
not gone nearly far enough to create the necessary environment
for
voting.
But the SADC team is slowly making progress in Zimbabwe. This
week, key
appointments were made to the regional bloc's joint monitoring
committee,
which will work closely with Zuma's
facilitators.
Negotiators of the three main parties, Zanu-PF, Morgan
Tsvangirai's MDC, and
a breakaway MDC faction, will meet this
weekend.
The SADC mediators will return to Zimbabwe before month end to
monitor
progress, and a planned visit by Zuma has been put on
hold.
Suddenly there is a new sense of urgency in Zimbabwe. As Zulu puts
it: "The
fact that the global political agreement does not have an endless
life span
is pushing them to realise that they don't have the luxury of time
any
more."
Managing
Mugabe
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Sadly, the Foreign Secretary William Hague has chosen to set the bar
dangerously low
President Robert Mugabe has used violence on a horrifying
scale to keep his
stranglehold on power - Managing Mugabe
By
Telegraph View
7:46PM BST 23 Jul 2012
Few products of
the Brussels bureaucracy can be as macabre as the list of
112 Zimbabweans
who are banned from entering Britain and the rest of the
European Union. Run
your finger down this roll of shame and you encounter
the odious figures who
have plundered and despoiled a naturally wealthy
country, starting with
President Robert Mugabe himself.
Yet some of these supremely guilty men
could be shopping at Harrods before
long. William Hague, the Foreign
Secretary, announced a fundamental revision
of Britain’s policy towards
Zimbabwe yesterday by agreeing to take most of
the names off the sanctions
list. The only proviso is that Mr Mugabe and his
principal accomplices will
remain personae non gratae, and Zimbabwe must
first hold a “credible”
referendum on a new constitution.
Britain’s ties with Zimbabwe are so
close that our relations will be
normalised one day; in principle, the
restrictions on the country’s
leadership should be lifted. The vital
question is what conditions should
first be fulfilled. Sadly, Mr Hague has
chosen to set the bar dangerously
low.
Few Zimbabweans care about
their new constitution and the forthcoming
referendum will not be closely
fought. The real test will come next year
when presidential elections must
take place. Every such contest since 2002
has been drenched in blood, with
Mr Mugabe using violence on a horrifying
scale to keep his stranglehold on
power. The danger is that he will now hold
an orderly referendum and pocket
the promised easing of sanctions, before
bludgeoning and rigging his way to
victory in the presidential poll once
more. If so, Mr Hague’s new policy
will look short-sighted and naive.
Instead, Britain should have declared
that sanctions will be lifted if – and
only if – Zimbabwe holds a clean
election.
E Cross: Constitution: A Foundation or a Ferry?
The draft constitution is
out. It is a long document – 168 pages and quite
complex and in my personal
view, a mixed bag. Clearly it is a product of
compromise from the opening
statements to the annexure. The worst parts are
the two chapters devoted to
“agricultural land” which are clearly designed
to protect the disastrous
“fast track land reform process” that has plunged
Zimbabwe into poverty and
hunger.
It now goes to an All Stakeholders Conference where it will be
subjected to
scrutiny by several thousand delegates chosen from our entire
society. In a
discussion with Church leaders some weeks ago I said that they
could have
little input to the drafting process (now complete) but could
make a
significant impact at the All Stakeholders Conference if they came to
the
Conference with an analysis that measured each segment of the draft
against
a plumb line drawn from Scripture and Christian mores and
values.
If they adopted a consensual and considered position on each
section, the
Conference would not only listen but be guided by their views
and they might
be able to improve the draft before it comes out for the
referendum towards
the end of the year.
But flawed or not, it is
clear that we are going to adopt this new
Constitution and the question now
arises “for what purpose?” It is not a
document that, like the American
Constitution of 1767, laid the foundations
for the prosperous and democratic
Federal State that it has become. But I
think it might perform the task for
which we intended it to be – a ferry to
carry Zimbabwe across the river to a
new start after 40 years in the
wilderness.
It is from this
perspective that the new document must be judged. It
perpetuates the
situation where we have a Central Government that is too
cumbersome and
expensive – a President and two vice Presidents, a Cabinet
without limits, a
larger lower House (270 against 210 members) and a Senate
that seems to have
little function but to frustrate the work of the lower
House.
It
proposes a weak Provincial Government structure and only marginally
improves
the legal environment for local authorities. It retains a highly
centralized
State. We had wanted elected Governors. They remain appointed
although
representing the majority in each Province.
But it does give us better
conditions for Citizenship except that you have
to live here for 10 years to
qualify. I am pleased to see that the position
of people born in Zimbabwe
and to Zimbabwean parents is cleared up at last.
The situation regarding
the legal system is much improved – we now have a
Constitutional Court and
an independent prosecuting authority. The powers of
the President have been
significantly curbed and these suborned to
Parliament.
But it
seriously compromises property rights and clearly violates the rights
of the
Commercial Farmers who bought and held their property under
conditions of
freehold tenure guaranteed by the Constitution. The Bill of
Rights is much
stronger and will serve to protect the rights and freedoms of
all
Zimbabweans and this is a good thing.
The provision for a new
delimitation prior to any election based on a new
national population
census, is an interesting one except that it stipulates
that this can only
happen if the census is six months before the election. I
sincerely hope the
delimitation on which the 2013 harmonized elections will
take place will be
based, not on Mudede’s carefully constructed voters roll,
but on the outcome
of the August 2012 census. This will at least correct the
anomalies
introduced by the 2008 delimitation which reduced urban
constituencies to a
third of the total.
This past week, in addition to producing the final
draft for public
scrutiny, Parliament passed three Bills – the new Electoral
Act, the Human
Rights Commission Act and a Bill protecting the rights of the
older persons
in our society. In my view, although they were all the product
of the
process of negotiation and compromise, they represent a significant
step
forward. The Electoral Act and the Human Rights Commission Act will
both
serve to enhance the electoral process that we are now engaged in and
which
should culminate in a general election next year.
We still have
a number of hurdles to get over, but at last we are seeing
real progress.
Conditions in the country are desperate and we need to
resolve the political
crisis as soon as possible so that we can begin
rebuilding our lives and
this broken nation.
Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 23rd July 2012
Geoffrey Van Orden MEP Press Release on Zimbabwe and EU Restrictive Measures
Change in Zimbabwe is recognised
Brussels, 23 July 2012 — The EU has
today agreed to consider partial
suspension of its Restrictive Measures on
Zimbabwe, should the upcoming
Zimbabwean Constitutional Referendum
(September 2012) be recognised as free
and fair by the international
community.
Geoffrey Van Orden MBE MEP, who has spearheaded the European
Parliament’s
campaign for freedom and democratic change in Zimbabwe, was
cautiously
optimistic about developments.
Mr Van Orden
commented:
“Just as in Burma we have responded to a change of heart and
real progress
towards democratic change, so we must now recognise the
possibility of
positive developments in Zimbabwe. We have always said that
restrictive
measures, aimed solely at a governing elite that has trampled on
the people
of Zimbabwe, could be eased once there was serious change. There
are
indications that this will now happen and we need to be prepared to move
accordingly. If there is any backward step then restrictive measures can be
re-imposed and intensified.
“The adoption of a new constitution is a
first step. The real test will be
the elections that follow. The
international community will expect the
electoral preparations and the
elections themselves to be carried out with
scrupulous fairness, properly
supervised to give international assurance. I
remain concerned that those
with a vested interest in the Mugabe regime and
exploitation of Zimbabwe’s
resources for their own benefit will try and
ensure their continued grasp on
power. There is no reason why all those
genuinely committed to the future
freedom and prosperity of the people of
Zimbabwe, regardless of past
political links, should not now seize the
opportunity to begin to bring
Zimbabwe back into the international community
of democratic
nations.”
Geoffrey Van Orden MBE MEP is Conservative Defence and Security
Spokesman.
Over many years he has initiated the European Parliament’s tough
resolutions
on Zimbabwe. He has been personally banned by Mugabe from
entering Zimbabwe.
Perspective of the Human Rights Commission Bill within the context of the GPA
By Sanderson N Makombe
The passing of the Human Rights Commission Bill by
parliament brought seismic condemnation from Zimbabweans all over. Not only is
the quintessence of the Commission being questioned but also whether the two MDC
formations capitulated to ZANU PF and sold out those courageous souls who have
been maimed and killed by the despotic regime.
It is imperative that any discussion on the Human Rights
Commission must be understood in the context of the reform agenda and perceived
through the Global Political Agreement agenda. It is apparent, both in world
trend and practice to have Human Rights Commissions whose mandate is not bending
backwards to redress past human rights abuses, but to create a platform for the
investigation and redress of present and future violations. As such, the
overarching principle is to effectively deal with arising violations and being
proactive in limiting future prevalence. In contrast, most countries that have
travelled through a difficult past have sought to institute mechanism of
justice,unity, closure and reconciliation by utilising Truth and or
Reconciliation Commissions which are Ad Hoc and backward reaching for the
purpose of dealing with those specific periods of abuses. South Africa, Sierra
Leone, Cambodia and Rwanda are examples. Such commissions have enabling
legislation and are not limited on what crimes or violations fall under their
jurisdictions, as long as the crimes were committed during the periods under
investigation; a feature not common with present day Human Rights
Commissions.
Zimbabwe has travelled through a rough terrain both pre
and post independence, littered with broken bones, souls, lost lives and untold
wanton destruction of property, with impunity. Unfortunately ZANU PF has lacked
the political will to effectively implement transitional justice mechanisms,
largely because they are the chief perpetrator of gross human rights violations
in post independence Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe does not have a GNU because it desired
so, but is a by product of a brazen barbaric onslaught of ordinary citizens
through state sanctioned violence that forced the presidential election runoff
to be a sham as Mugabe won a race he ran against himself. The MDC formations have
always campaigned for criminal liability and accountability, and restoration of
the rule of law. As such, the two MDC formations insisted that the GNU must
establish a mechanism of dealing with past atrocities. Hence Article V11 of the
GPA on 7.1(C) provides that the new government “Shall give consideration to
the setting up of a mechanism to properly advise on what measures might be
necessary and practicable to achieve national healing, cohesion and unity in
respect of victims of pre and post independence political conflicts”
The controversy caused by the jurisdictional cut off date
of the HRC bill thus must be explained in terms of the total packages of reform
as intended in the GPA. As such, it is apparent that the parties agreed that
past atrocities, including Gukurahundi, Murambatsvina (not exhaustive) must be
addressed under Article 7.The intended mechanism was the National Organ for
Peace and Reconciliation, which unfortunately has been operating without
enabling legislation for the past 4 years and is highly unlikely to make effect
as already we are in the last wee of the tenure of the GPA. The delay is
deliberate on the part of ZANU PF as they will not sanction a process that will
expose their intransigence openly in a quasi judicial way. Thus the fact that
the HRC bill has a jurisdictional date does not mean at all that (in theory)
those that unleashed the June 2008 election blood bath are scot free, neither
those that orchestrated Murambatsvina, Gukurahundi and the likes of Joseph Mwale
who burnt to death Chiminya and Mabika.
If there is any need for damning evidence that ZANU PF
orchestrated the blood bath that led to the abandonment of the presidential run
off in 2008, and other significant periods of gross violations of persons since
Free Zimbabwe was born in 1980, it is the strenuous effort they exerted to make
sure the HRC will not have jurisdiction on violations that took place before 13
February 2009.This is hardly surprising as the act backs up a trend long
established of having commissions of enquiries whose contains are never
published but only designed to hoodwink the public into believing that due
process in being undertaken. The trend has also been evidenced in numerous
presidential pardons and amnesties for those who perpetrated egregious
violations with the objective of securing election theft for ZANU PF. It is
through this culture of impunity that ZANU PF needs to deliver another stolen
election in the next few months; therefore they needed to send a message to
their shock troopers and agents of death, that as long as ZANU PF yields power,
they are protected.
There has been deliberate misrepresentation as well of
the effect of the enactment of the new act. The fact that the HRC will not have
jurisdiction to investigate incidents before 13 February 2009 does not mean
those who perpetrated criminal before that date will not face justice. The new
act (when enacted) does not repeal, supersede or suspend the constitutional
mandate of the police to investigate and arrest for the purpose of prosecution
anyone who committed an offence before, unless otherwise the criminal act has
passed its prescription period. In a normal democracy the Police would have
carried its mandate impartially and continue to investigate and arrest those
responsible of such criminal acts on ordinary citizens. Current evidence though
suggest this is hardly going to happen as long as ZANU PF is in power and there
is no major reform and overhaul of the Police force and other security
institutions in Zimbabwe.
For those of us who seek justice and criminal
accountability, we must accept that the agenda of justice will not be met during
the tenure of this inclusive government. This realisation must serve as impetus
for the MDC formations to raise their game as far as publicising how they wish
to deal with past violations if they win power in the next election. Indeed it
was welcome that PM Tsvangirai immediately stated that those who committed the
massacre during Gukurahundi and alike with face justice if MDC-T ascends to the
throne. Furthermore, the pressure to reform the security forces must be
increased as they are crucial to holding a peaceful and credible election. The
HRC will rely on the support of the police and the judicial system to be
effective as in itself it does not have arresting powers. Therefore, these institutions must
buy into the new reform agenda and embrace the new culture as intended if the
reforms are to make a difference.
The writer can be contacted at
smakombe@btinternet.com
Bill Watch 33/2012 of 22nd July [HRC and Electoral Amendment Bills Passed: By-Elections Discussed]
BILL WATCH 33/2012
[22nd July 2012]
Both
Houses of Parliament will continue sitting on Tuesday 24th July
In
Parliament Last Week
Key
Bills Passed – Awaiting President’s Signature
Zimbabwe
Human Rights Commission Bill
This
Bill, passed by the House of Assembly with amendments on 12th July,
went
through all its stages in the Senate on 19th July and was passed without further
amendment. It now needs to be assented
to by the President and then gazetted as an Act before it can become law.
Electoral
Amendment
Bill
This
Bill was passed by the House of Assembly with amendments on 17th July.
It also went
through all its stages in the Senate on 19th July and was passed without further
amendment. As with the Zimbabwe
Human
Rights Commission
Bill, this Bill, too, needs to be assented to by the President and then gazetted
before it becomes law.
Note: There will be need for further amendments to
the Electoral Act to bring it in line with the new constitution, for example, to
give effect to new constitutional provisions
on matters such as proportional representation in the election of
Senators.
Implications
of Supreme Court By-Elections Decision
In the Senate on 19th
July, Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who is the Minister
responsible for electoral matters, was questioned about the Supreme Court’s
decision of 12th July ordering the President to call three long-delayed
by-elections in Matabeleland. He made
the following points:
·
the rule of law
requires the Government to respect the decisions of the courts and to abide by
the judgment
·
one implication of
the decision is that there should not be by-elections in these three
constituencies only, because the Government also has to face the prospect of
holding by-elections to fill the other Parliamentary vacancies. He said “in total we have about 38
“vacancies”. But he also said “I will need to verify the exact
figure”. In addition,
referring to the numerous vacancies on local authority councils, he said
Zimbabwe’s harmonised election system means that it will be necessary to also “fill the vacancies in the local
authorities”.
·
he was still
exploring the full implications of
the decision and what it means for a
“cash-strapped Government”.
Comment:
This falls short of an undertaking or promise that by-elections will be held in
all the vacant constituencies, or even in the three constituencies directly
affected by the Supreme Court’s order.
Minister
Overestimated Number of Constituency Vacancies
Minister Chinamasa
will find when he checks with Parliament that that his figure of about 38
constituency vacancies is an overestimate.
A recent figure Veritas obtained from Parliament was 28. Parliamentary officials are checking the
record and Veritas will shortly issue a bulletin which will contain full
details, verified with Parliament, of all the vacant seats and which party won
them in the last election.
In
Parliament Last Week
House
of Assembly
The
House sat on Tuesday 17th and Wednesday 18th July only.
Electoral
Amendment
Bill This was passed on 17th July and transmitted
to the Senate [see note at the beginning
of this bulletin].
Mid-Year
Fiscal Policy Review Statement Minister of Finance Tendai Biti presented
this statement on Wednesday 18th July.
In terms of Parliamentary procedure, the statement is delivered in
support of the Minister’s motion seeking the leave of the House to bring in a
Bill “to make further provision for the
revenues and public funds of Zimbabwe”.
In
a
presentation lasting almost two hours, which included use of
video equipment to screen charts and tables, the Minister said that:
·
the
austerity measures he would be outlining were agreed to at a special Cabinet
meeting on 14th June
·
revenue
so far this year had fallen well below targets, meaning that the 2012 Budget
would have to be revised downwards from
$4 billion to $3.640 billion, which would affect all
Ministries
·
local
production and industry would be encouraged by changes to customs duties on such
items as wheat flour, effective 1st August
·
zero-rating
of products for VAT purposes would be rationalised
·
excise
duty on diesel and petrol would go up, but was not expected to lead to an
increase in retail prices for the products oil producer prices had come
down
·
new
mining fees would be announced in an attempt to encourage new entrants into the
mining sector
·
revenue
retention by Ministries and departments would be reviewed
·
expenditure
on official foreign travel was disproportionately high and needs to be “managed downwards”.
On
the legislative side the Minister referred to the forthcoming new Income Tax
Act, the Bill for which had already been approved by the Cabinet Committee on
Legislation and could now be printed and gazetted ahead of its introduction in
the House of Assembly. He also said that
Public Finance Management Regulations would soon be gazetted.
At
the end of his speech
the
Minister tabled the 2012 Amended Estimates of Expenditure [the “Blue Book”]
reflecting the proposed downward revision of the 2012 Budget. The House then adjourned until Tuesday 24th
July, when it will debate the Minister’s statement and consider the Amended
Estimates of Expenditure, and then move on to pass the two associated Bills
needed to give effect to his proposals – the Finance Bill and the Appropriation
(2012) Amendment Bill [both
Bills available from veritas@mango.zw]. [See
outline of Finance Bill below.]
Motions The chairpersons of the respective Portfolio
Committees presented committee reports on the State of Tertiary Institutions in
Zimbabwe; on challenges in the Education Sector; and on a visit to China by the
Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International
Trade [copies
available from veritas@mango.zw].
Question
Time was
replaced by the Minister of Finance’s Fiscal Policy Review Statement.
Senate
Bills
passed On Thursday 19th July the Senate passed,
without amendment, the three Bills received from the House of Assembly at the
beginning of the week:
·
Zimbabwe
Human Rights Commission Bill [see note at
the beginning of this bulletin].
·
Older
Persons Bill [passed by the House without amendments on 12th
July]
·
Electoral
Amendment Bill [see note at the beginning
of this bulletin].
The
Bills now need to be assented to by the President and then gazetted as Acts
before they can become law. [copies
available from veritas@mango.zw]
Parliamentary
Legal Committee Adverse Reports on statutory instruments The Senate did not continue with its
discussion on these seventeen reports, so these agenda items have been carried
forward to the 24th July.
Motions The Senate approved Senator Makore’s motion calling on the Government to clear the
Public Service payroll of ghost workers.
Question
Time The Minister of Labour and Social Welfare
answered several questions about food relief, the grain loan scheme, and beggars
in cities. The Minister of Justice and
Legal Affairs was asked about the way the police deal with spot fines and
gave an impromptu reply outlining in some detail what the law says on the
subject. Points he made included the
following:
·
spot
fines are legal and constitutional
·
the
maximum spot fine per offence is $20 [a
level 3 fine]
·
spot
fines are for use only for petty crimes where guilt is admitted by the offender
– a crime warranting a fine of more than $20 should be taken to
court
·
if
the offender cannot pay on the spot, he or she can insist on paying at the
nearest police station
·
records
of all spot fines imposed are submitted to a magistrate to be reviewed, as a
check to ensure police are acting within the law
·
the
Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs supports the proper use of the spot fine
system because it helps to counter congestion of the court system by large
numbers of petty cases in which guilt is admitted.
[Note: What is often not realised by members of the
public is that the signing of an admission of guilt form, and payment of the
spot fine requested, results in the offender being convicted of the offence
concerned by the magistrate who reviews the form – section 356 of the Criminal
Procedure and Evidence Act.]
Veritas makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot
take legal responsibility for information
supplied
Bill Watch 34/2012 of 23rd July [Urgent Budget Bills in Parliament This Week]
BILL WATCH 34/2012
[23rd July 2012]
Both
Houses of Parliament will continue sitting on Tuesday 24th July
Ceremonial
opening of Fifth Session of Parliament Postponed
The
present Fourth Parliamentary Session has had to be extended to allow both Houses
to sit this week to deal with the follow-up to last Wednesday’s Mid-Year Fiscal
Policy Review Statement by the Minister of Finance [see below]. Accordingly, the ceremony to open the Fifth
Session, which had been scheduled for tomorrow, 24th July, has been postponed to
a date still to be announced.
Coming
up in Parliament This Week
House
of Assembly
Urgent
Budget Matters
On
Tuesday 24th July the House will deal with the follow-up to the Fiscal Policy
Review Statement, as follows:
·
debate
on the Statement
·
approval
of the Amended Estimates of Expenditure
·
passing
of the Appropriation (2012) Amendment Bill to give effect to the amended
Estimates of Expenditure
·
passing
of the Finance Bill to give effect to taxation law changes proposed by the
Minister of Finance.
As
the House has already approved a motion allowing fast-tracking of the Bills and
a late evening sitting, completion on Tuesday may be feasible. Once
passed, the two Bills will be transmitted to the Senate. [Copies
of both Bills are available from veritas@mango.zw]
The
Amended Estimates of Expenditure do not require Senate approval, so they will
not be transmitted to the Senate.
Summary
of Finance Bill The Bill amends the Income Tax Act, the VAT
Act, the Customs and Excise Act, the Revenue Authority Act and the Grain
Marketing Board Act. Its provisions
cover enforcement and administration of tax laws, but do not change tax or duty
rates; they are designed to tighten up on collection of taxes, mining royalties,
etc. by providing for:
·
increased
powers for ZIMRA to enter premises, question individuals and demand production
of documents
·
a
ZIMRA presence on mining locations
·
an
increase in the size of the ZIMRA Board to enhance its expertise
·
extension
of the use of fiscalised cash registers for VAT purposes
Changes
affecting rates, rebates and suspensions of taxes, royalties and duties will be
enacted by statutory instruments not yet gazetted. The Minister said in his Statement last week
that these will be gazetted soon and come into effect from 1st August.
The
amendment to the Grain Marketing Act is to protect the Grain Marketing Board
[GMB] from attachment and sale in execution of GMB property to satisfy court
judgments obtained by GMB creditors for unpaid debts. This is to be done by applying the State
Liabilities Act to legal proceedings against the GMB, as was done in 2010 to
protect Reserve Bank property. [See further under Government Gazette,
below.]
Senate
Bills The Senate will be waiting to receive the
Finance Bill and the Appropriation (2012) Amendment Bill as soon
as they are passed by the House of Assembly.
Whether it will be able to deal with them on Tuesday – or will have to
wait until Wednesday – depends on how quickly the House disposes of the
Bills.
As
the Appropriation (2012) Amendment Bill is a “money bill” the Senate has no
power to amend it, but is permitted to make recommendations for amendments for
the consideration of the House of Assembly.
Any such recommendations must be considered by the House, and either
accepted or rejected; and recommendations accepted by the House will be
incorporated in the Bill, which will then be submitted to the President for his
assent without having to be referred back to the Senate.
Motions The main unfinished business is discussion
and adoption or otherwise of the PLC’s seventeen adverse reports on statutory
instruments.
AU
Summit: SA’s Dlamini-Zuma New AU Commission Chair
AU
Heads of State and Government meeting in Addis Ababa on 19th July elected South
Africa’s Minister of Home Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, as the Chairperson of
the AU Commission, which is the Secretariat of the AU. Erastus Mwencha from Kenya was re-elected as
Deputy Chairperson.
Six of
eight other vacant positions on the ten-member Commission were also filled; the
successful candidates were Mr Ramtane Lamamra from Algeria (Peace and Security),
Ms Aisha Abdullah from Nigeria (Political Affairs), Ms Elham Mahmoud from Egypt
(Infrastructure and Economy), Mr Mustapha Kaloko from Sierra Leone (Social
Affairs), Ms Fatima Acyl from Chad (Trade and Industry) and Ms Rhoda Tumusiime
from Uganda (Rural Economy and Agriculture).
This left two positions unfilled: Commissioner for Human Resources,
Science and Technology and Commissioner for Economic Affairs. The Summit decided that the elections for
these positions would be carried over to its next meeting in January 2013.
The
Summit spent much time on and was more successful in dealing with the election of office holders than in coming
up with answers to the imminent war between Sudan and South Sudan, the eruptions
in the Eastern DRC, the takeover of a large portion of Mali by non-government
forces and the resulting displacements of
hundreds of thousands of people, the threat to peace and security posed by the
fundamentalist Islamic terror groups in northern west Africa.
Status
of Bills
[available
from veritas@mango.zw
unless otherwise stated]
Bills
passed and awaiting Presidential assent and gazetting as
Acts
Zimbabwe
Human Rights Commission Bill
Older
Persons Bill
Electoral
Amendment Bill
Bills
gazetted and awaiting presentation in House of Assembly
Appropriation
(2012) Amendment Bill
Finance
Bill
Bill
being printed for presentation [not
yet available]
Securities
Amendment Bill [the page proofs of this
important Bill were delivered to the drafter for checking on 20th
July]
Government
Gazette of 20th July
Statutory
Instruments
Presidential
Powers regulations – legal actions against Grain Marketing Board
SI
125/2012 contains regulations, effective from today, 20th July, made by the
President under the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act which are
essential reading for creditors of the Grain Marketing Board [GMB] and their
legal practitioners. The object of this
temporary measure is to protect the GMB’s assets from attachment and sale in
execution by creditors pending the enactment into law of the Finance Bill [see above]. The regulations seek to do this by making the
State Liabilities Act
applicable to legal proceedings against the GMB, including proceedings that were
determined on 8th June 2012. Clause 11
of the Finance Bill contains a similar, but permanent and more comprehensive,
provision.
Listeners’
licences SI 121/2012 contains the Broadcasting
Services (Notice to Appear in Court) Regulations. The regulations set out a Notice to Appear in
Court form [Form BS1], to be served by a ZBC licence inspector on an unlicensed
listener. The form – which is not a
model of clarity – requires the accused listener to appear in court to face a
charge of unlicensed possession of a receiver/s, but allows for payment of an
admission of guilt deposit fine as a means of avoiding a court appearance.
Local
authority by-laws There are three sets of by-laws for Bindura
Municipal Council: refuse removal [SI 122/2012], cemeteries [SI 123/2012] and
anti-litter [SI 124/2012].
General
Notices
GN
307/2012 notifies the appointment by the Minister of Labour and Social Services,
under the Disabled Persons Act, of fourteen persons to serve as members of the
National Disability Board for a 5-year term of office until 21st February
2017.
Veritas makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot
take legal responsibility for information
supplied