The Sunday Times
July 27, 2008
The president and his cronies face a humiliating end
R W
Johnson in Johannesburg
THE president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has been
warned by Thabo Mbeki,
the South African president, that he faces
prosecution for the crimes he has
committed during his 28 years in office
unless he signs a deal to give up
all effective power.
Mbeki, who has
done all he can to shield and support Mugabe for the past
eight years, has
come under overwhelming western pressure and has had to
tell Mugabe that he
could no longer protect him and his key cronies from
being charged by the
International Criminal Court (ICC).
The power-sharing talks between
Mugabe's Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai's
Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) are shrouded in secrecy. But The Sunday
Times has learnt that Mugabe,
who has vowed that Tsvangirai will never be in
government and that "only God
can remove me from power", faces humiliation
over the terms of the deal that
he will be forced to sign next month.
He will remain as president in name
only and all real power will be held by
a 20-member cabinet under Tsvangirai
as prime minister. The opposition MDC
will have 11 cabinet posts to nine for
Mugabe's Zanu-PF.
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All Mugabe's
senior officials in the army, police and intelligence services,
who have
unleashed a campaign of terror since the MDC won a disputed victory
in the
elections held in March, will be dismissed.
Observers caution, however,
that bringing Mugabe to justice could be
protracted since Zimbabwe does not
recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Any investigation would require a
referral from the United Nations security
council, which would probably be
blocked by China or Russia.
The transitional government will have close
ties to a group of western donor
nations known as the Fishmongers Group, set
up a year ago on Britain's
initiative. It includes the United States, Japan,
Germany, France, Sweden,
Holland, Norway, Canada and Australia. China
declined an invitation to join.
The decisive showdown came last week when
Mugabe realised that his power was
broken. On Monday Mbeki's emissary,
Sidney Mufamadi, a South African cabinet
minister, arrived in Harare to read
the riot act to Zanu-PF officials.
According to the officials who were
present, he told them bluntly: "You don't
have a government. You can't
summon your parliament. You have no legitimate
president and thus you can
have no cabinet. You cannot behave as you have
been doing. Real talks have
to start right away."
The Zanu-PF negotiators, still congratulating
themselves on Mugabe's
spurious "victory" in last month's stolen election,
were taken aback.
Worse was to follow. Mbeki flew to Harare and said that
Mugabe and
Tsvangirai must meet to sign a memorandum of understanding
committing
themselves to serious negotiations and to share power.
The
talks, he insisted, must be concluded within two weeks and the two men
must
meet, shake hands and sign the memorandum.
Mugabe had never been willing
to meet Tsvangirai, let alone shake his hand.
According to leading Zanu-PF
sources, he is frightened of going on trial for
human rights crimes,
particularly since an arrest warrant was issued against
Omar Bashir, Sudan's
president, earlier this month. Under Mbeki's pressure
Mugabe gave
in.
He agreed that Tsvangirai should come to State House, the president's
official residence. Tsvangirai refused to attend, saying that to do so would
be to acknowledge Mugabe as the legitimate president of Zimbabwe: he would
sign only on neutral ground.
Mugabe had to be persuaded to leave
State House and was driven to Rainbow
Towers, the former Sheraton hotel in
central Harare, to sign the document
and glumly shake hands with a
triumphant Tsvangirai.
The power of the western donor nations has grown
as the Zimbabwean economy
has catapulted towards meltdown. Hyperinflation
means that a newly
introduced Z$100 billion note is not enough to buy a loaf
of bread.
The latest harvest has been dismal, bread may soon run out and
widespread
famine is a threat. The World Food Programme estimates that by
early next
year 5.1m people could be facing starvation.
The
Fishmongers Group, which is based in Holland, stands powerfully in the
wings
and in effect has a veto over the negotiations. Planning is already
far
advanced for a post-Mugabe future, with individual countries agreeing to
focus their efforts on education, health and other sectors. A total of £2
billion has been pledged to date.
The transitional government will be
obliged to follow edicts laid down by
the group. They will insist that the
new government gives full and equal
access to food aid, plans a return to
financial stability, restores the rule
of law with an independent judiciary
and respects property rights. This will
mean that the farms stolen by Mugabe
and his cronies will either have to be
restored to their owners or
compensation will be paid.
The group will also insist that the government
be committed to freedom of
the press and hold fair elections within 18
months. The group will not
release even a dollar to a government that
includes anyone guilty either of
gross corruption or human rights
violations. Zanu-PF will be hard pushed to
find nine ministers who
qualify.
The new dispensation will bring to a halt the campaign of terror
unleashed
by Mugabe since he was defeated in the first round of the
presidential
elections in March.
A diplomatic source said: "The
toughest part of the negotiations is going to
be the question of immunity
from prosecution for Mugabe and, say, the top 20
members of the
junta."
Another diplomat said: "It's ironic. Mbeki could and should have
brought
Mugabe to heel eight years ago. It would have saved a lot of
lives."
Professor Lawrence Schlemmer, South Africa's leading social
scientist, said
that the deal would be of "epochal importance" to the whole
southern African
region: "The West could have just walked away from another
African disaster.
Instead, they are showing a huge commitment to democracy
in this region."
The Telegraph
A demand by China that the Zimbabwean government
"behave" in the run-up to
the Olympics lies behind Robert Mugabe's surprise
decision to open
negotiations with the opposition.
By Ian Evans in
Capetown and Special Correspondent
Last Updated: 4:02PM BST 26 Jul
2008
Beijing put pressure on Mr Mugabe to begin talks because of
fears that the
continuing crisis in Zimbabwe risked overshadowing the
Olympics, according
to government and diplomatic sources.
China's
leaders, who have have long enjoyed a close relationship with
Zimbabwe's
beleagured president, feared growing protests in the run-up to
the Games and
so leaned on Mr Mugabe to agree to the historic talks which
began on
Thursday.
Their move came after Russia and China together infuriated the
West by
blocking a United Nations Security Council attempt to impose
sanctions on
members of the Zimbabwean regime.
Mr Mugabe and Morgan
Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change, met for
the first time in 10 years last week after
signing a memorandum of
understanding mediated by South Africa's president,
Thabo Mbeki, to form a
government of national unity.
But while Mr Mbeki basked in the glow of
the diplomatic coup, winning high
praise from the French president, Nicolas
Sarkozy - currently in charge of
the EU presidency - Zimbabwean government
sources said he had little to do
with it.
One government insider
said: "The signing of the memorandum of understanding
between Mugabe and
Tsvangirai may appear to be a triumph for South African
diplomacy under Mr
Mbeki, but the power behind the curtain is China.
"China exerted
diplomatic pressure on Harare for the protection of their own
interests in
this country, given the threat and risks of their economic
investments under
a new government. This explains the sudden change of heart
by Mugabe. This
is all choreographed."
The Chinese ambassador to Zimbabwe is understood
to have told Zimbabwean
foreign affairs officials in Harare that his
government expects Mr Mugabe's
administration to "behave" and help dampen
international outrage over the
recent elections.
One diplomatic
source said: "Mugabe was told in clear terms by his Chinese
friends that he
has to behave and act in a way that will silence the
international
community.
China does not want a situation in which the Olympics will be
snubbed.
"They also warned him (Mugabe) that if British Prime Minister,
Gordon Brown
and the US managed to force the tabling of UN Security Council
sanctions
against Zimbabwe again, they will be in no position to support
Harare. China
has demanded that loyalty back in equal terms."
China
has invested billions of dollars not just in Zimbabwe, but across
Africa in
its attempts to secure mineral rights to fuel its burgeoning
economy. Its
trade with the continent is expected to rise to $100bn by 2010,
a signficant
amount of which involves |Zimbabwe's platinum mines.
Beijing has many
different sources of leverage on Harare - a fact which has
led to criticism
from the West that it could have forced change on the
Mugabe regime long
ago.
Chinese soldiers have helped to train the Zimbabwean military for
more than
two decades, and many senior members of the ZanuPF ruling party
have forged
personal business relationships.
Among them, the vice
president Joyce Mujuru, whose husband Simon is a former
head of the armed
forces, runs a company thought to export chickens to
China.
Under the
deal agreed last week ZanuPF and the opposition MDC have a two
week deadline
to agree on forming a government of national unity during
talks in
Pretoria.
The sticking point will be the positions of Mr Mugabe and Mr
Tsvangirai:
hardliners inside ZanuPF want Mr Mugabe, who has been president
for 28
years, to continue in that poisiton with Mr Tsvangirai consigned to a
more
junior role as prime minister.
A Zimbabwean government source at
the talks said: "Information is going
about that the MDC will be offered the
post of prime minister or vice
president as a stop-gap measure to ease
Zimbabwe's collapsing economy.
"However this must not be misconstrued as
a weakness on the part of Zanu PF
but as a strategy to keep the opposition
out of full power. They will
certainly find themselves on the drawing board
again after a future
election, because Zanu PF is not willing to relinquish
power."
Zimbabwean officials know that aid from the US, Britain and the
EU depends
on the outcome of the talks. On Friday President George W.Bush
stepped up US
pressure on Mr Mugabe by introducing new sanctions against the
"illegitimate" president.
The US Treasury Department was ordered to
freeze the assets of 17 business
enterprises controlled by the Zimbabwean
government, banned Americans from
doing business with them.
Mr Mugabe
won a landslide victory last month in a vote condemned by Western
nations
and boycotted by Mr Tsvangirai, who cited government-sponsored
violence and
intimidation.
The MDC says 120 of its supporters have been killed by
pro-Mugabe thugs and
thousands injured since the first presidential vote,
which it won but
without a majority of all votes, on March 29.
Yahoo News
1 hour,
45 minutes ago
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Negotiations in South Africa between
Zimbabwe's ruling
party and the opposition were making progress Saturday,
mediators said.
"The talks are proceeding well. They'll aim to be
concluded in two weeks
time," said Mukoni Ratshitanga, spokesman for South
African President Thabo
Mbeki.
Ratshitanga did not reveal any details
regarding the contents or tone of the
negotiations, which began
Thursday.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party has
said its
leader's re-election in a June 27 presidential run-off has to be
recognised
for the talks, teed up by an agreement signed with Movement for
Democratic
Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Monday, to
succeed.
Tsvangirai's camp has been advocating a transitional government,
with a view
to fresh elections, rather than a unity government solution
along the lines
of that negotiated in Kenya.
There, the main
opposition figure, Raila Odinga, was appointed prime
minister by President
Mwai Kibaki earlier this year following a wave of
political and ethnic
violence that killed some 1,500 people.
Tsvangirai pushed Mugabe into
second place in the first round of voting on
March 29 but the MDC leader
pulled out of the run-off after a wave of deadly
attacks against his
supporters.
Tsvangirai believes the outcome of the March ballot should be
the starting
point for any negotiations on power-sharing.
The
Zimbabwean government, meanwhile, refused to comment on increased
sanctions
applied by the United States Friday.
US President George W. Bush said he
had "signed a new Executive Order that
expands our sanctions against the
illegitimate Government of Zimbabwe,"
targeting entities and individuals
linked to repression and corruption
carried out by Mugabe's
government.
But a ZANU-PF official, who requested anonymity, said: "We
don't want to
comment on the sanctions (while) the talks are still
ongoing."
The European Union also stepped up sanctions last week,
although French
President Nicolas Sarkozy -- representing the EU presidency
at a landmark
EU-South Africa summit -- on Friday showered Mbeki with praise
for his
mediating efforts.
Sarkozy stressed that the talks on Mbeki's
turf -- understood to be taking
place in Pretoria -- were the only viable
forum for a solution to the
Zimbabwe political crisis.
New York Times
By
CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: July 27, 2008
JOHANNESBURG - As negotiators for
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and
the opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai began power-sharing talks on
Thursday in South Africa, they
confronted one seemingly unbridgeable divide:
which man would have the real
executive power in a unity government?
Mr. Mugabe's governing party,
ZANU-PF, insisted that Mr. Mugabe, as the
victor in a runoff that has been
denounced internationally as a sham, would
name any new government, The
Herald, a state-owned newspaper, reported
Friday.
But the opposition says
Mr. Tsvangirai, who outpolled Mr. Mugabe in March
elections and dropped out
of the runoff, citing murderous violence against
supporters, must be in
charge. "Whatever transition we come up with, it must
be led by Morgan
Tsvangirai," Thokozani Khupe, vice president of the
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change, said in an interview on Saturday.
A collapse of the
talks could lead to an accelerating implosion of Zimbabwe's
economy and the
flight of millions more people from Mr. Mugabe's
increasingly repressive
rule into neighboring countries, potentially
destabilizing the region. The
Mugabe government's economic isolation
intensified last week as the United
States and the European Union tightened
sanctions.
But a settlement
that left Mr. Mugabe or his allies in power would be a blow
to democratic
aspirations on the continent after an election that
independent observers
from across Africa unanimously concluded was neither
free nor
fair.
One of the most remarkable changes to emerge from Zimbabwe's
violent
election season is that leaders in Zambia and Botswana have
resoundingly
broken the silence of Mr. Mugabe's peers in the region about
the human
rights abuses committed by his governing party.
Phandu
Skelemani, the foreign minister of neighboring Botswana, which has
refused
to recognize Mr. Mugabe's legitimacy, said in an interview on
Wednesday that
his country would not be party to what he called "the raping
of democracy"
in Zimbabwe.
With rumors swirling that Mr. Mugabe, 84, and Mr.
Tsvangirai, 56, are close
to a deal in talks that are supposed to last only
two weeks, Ms. Khupe, a
member of Parliament from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's
second city, said she had not
been informed yet about the progress of the
negotiations. But she noted that
any agreement from the talks, which are
being held at a secret location in
Pretoria, would have to be approved by
the party's leadership.
Some African and Western officials worry the
opposition may yet get outfoxed
by Mr. Mugabe, who has kept a tight grip on
power for 28 years.
Shadowing the current talks is the memory of an
earlier set of unity
negotiations. In 1987, after years in which historians
estimated that Mr.
Mugabe's military forces killed at least 10,000 civilians
in the stronghold
of his rival Joshua Nkomo, Mr. Nkomo joined the
government, allowing Mr.
Mugabe to further solidify his hold on
power.
The current talks, too, were preceded by a violent onslaught.
Since April,
according to doctors who treated the wounded and tallied the
dead, thousands
of Mr. Tsvangirai's supporters have been assaulted by Mr.
Mugabe's enforcers
and more than 100 have been killed, decimating the
opposition's grass-roots
leadership.
"Tsvangirai may be lured into
accepting a power-sharing arrangement which
would lead to Mugabe succeeding
himself through puppets from ZANU-PF," Raila
Odinga, the Kenyan prime
minister, said in an interview on Thursday. "The
best option for Tsvangirai
is to insist that Mugabe becomes a ceremonial
president with executive
powers vested in the prime minister" - a position
that would be held by Mr.
Tsvangirai.
Mr. Odinga speaks from his own experience with unity talks.
The Kenyan
opposition leader became prime minister of the east African
country in
February after a deal brokered by Kofi Annan, the former United
Nations
secretary general, following a deeply flawed election that some
observers
believe was stolen from Mr. Odinga. Mr. Odinga, who has met with
Zimbabwean
opposition leaders including Mr. Tsvangirai in recent months,
said he had
sent a senior official from his own party to Johannesburg to
advise the
opposition during the talks.
Mr. Skelemani, the Botswana
foreign minister, said the fundamental issue for
Zimbabwe was who controlled
the executive powers held by the president under
the country's Constitution.
Referring to the possibility that Mr. Mugabe's
negotiators would try "to do
a Nkomo" on Mr. Tsvangirai, Mr. Skelemani
warned that the opposition would
"risk emasculation" if it allowed Mr.
Mugabe to retain the presidency. Asked
about Mr. Mugabe's stated desire to
hold on to power, Mr. Skelemani replied,
"What power? Power to run the
country into the ground?"
Botswana's
increasingly urgent criticism of Mr. Mugabe, along with similar
concerns
voiced by Zambia's president, Levy Mwanawasa, highlight what Martin
Meredith, author of "The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of
Independence," (PublicAffairs, 2005) called an unprecedented development in
the 14-nation bloc of the Southern African Development Community. "This
group of S.A.D.C. countries has always tried to hold on to the image of
unity," he said. "This is shattering it."
Since Mr. Mwanawasa
suffered a stroke last month, Botswana has become the
leading critic in
detailed public statements about the recent election
violence and rigging.
"The atrocities have been corroborated and constitute
the necessary evidence
to conclude that the credibility and integrity of the
election process was
compromised," according to the report of Botswana's
election observer
team.
Botswana's statements carry moral authority: Its democratic
traditions
stretch back decades, as does its reputation for spending its
wealth from
diamonds to improve the public welfare rather than enrich the
governing
elite.
Botswana's and Zambia's public statements pose a
serious challenge to the
"quiet diplomacy" pursued by the region's most
powerful player, President
Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, who is mediating the
current talks. He has
resisted domestic pressure here in South Africa to
criticize Mr. Mugabe,
repeatedly greeting him in recent months with a
handshake and a smile.
Mr. Mbeki held on to control of the Zimbabwe
mediation with the endorsement
of the African Union on July 1. But in a
meeting of African heads of state
in Egypt, Mr. Mugabe listened with
consternation as officials representing
Liberia, Nigeria and Botswana, among
others, delivered humiliating critiques
of the political violence that
marred the election, according to several
officials who were present. He
counterattacked, accusing his critics of
failings of their
own.
"You're talking about somebody who's been in power 30 years,"
Liberia's
president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, said in a recent interview.
"Support wears
thin." Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated economist who
became Africa's
first female elected head of state in 2005, added, "There's
a lot going on
in S.A.D.C. and the A.U. behind the scenes, much more than
was reflected in
the open statements."
Botswana's vice president,
Mompati S. Merafhe, sitting just two seats from
Mr. Mugabe, said the
Zimbabwean leader should be suspended from the African
Union, Mr. Skelemani
said.
Botswana seems to have been greatly affected by its ringside view
of the
Zimbabwe crisis. When Mr. Tsvangirai fled Zimbabwe in the middle of
the
night on April 8, just 10 days after the general election, citing death
threats, he crossed into Botswana and was granted refuge.
That same
month, Botswana's new president, Seretse Khama Ian Khama, asked
Mr.
Mwanawasa, president of Zambia and the leader of the Southern African
Development Community, to convene an emergency summit meeting of regional
heads of state on Zimbabwe, Mr. Skelemani said. Subsequently, victims of the
political violence began streaming into Botswana.
The accounts its
election observers brought back from Zimbabwe deepened
Botswana's official
revulsion. Ruth Seretse, the deputy director of Botswana's
directorate on
corruption and economic crime, led the 50-person observer
team. She said in
an interview that she saw ZANU-PF youth militia beating
people at a rally
for Mr. Tsvangirai in Harare.
"People ran for their lives," she said.
"The riot police just stood there."
For two weeks, she monitored faxes
and text messages from Botswanan
observers deployed across the country. Some
of the most disturbing reports
came from Bakwena Oitsile, a retired major
general in Botswana's army. He
said in an interview that in one village in
Zimbabwe's Mashonaland West
Province, he found 14 houses, as well as grain
stores, burned and reduced to
ashes. Pregnant women and children there had
nothing left but the clothes on
their backs.
In another village in
the province, he arrived just hours after an attack on
June 17. In one hut,
he discovered the body of a man just beaten to death
and his wife, still
alive, with a deep cut on her head. Another woman's
index finger had been
cut off. Her hand was still raw and untreated.
"She was in great pain
when we were there," he said. "She was screaming."
He said of what he
witnessed in Zimbabwe: "I will never forget it. It's all
in my heart and
head."
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=1470
July 26, 2008
By Levi
Mhaka
Following Amendment No. 18 of Zimbabwe's Constitution, the
President is only
able to appoint five Senators and no person can become a
minister without
being elected as a Member of Parliament.
The
Zimbabwe Independent newspaper of July 25 reported that the current
constitution would soon be amended to facilitate the envisaged power-sharing
agreement through Amendment No. 19 as a transitional mechanism. The
newspaper claimed that the amendment was largely designed to accommodate
Morgan Tsvangirai and other MDC officials in the new government.
"It
is said the number of appointed senators would be increased by six from
five
to 11 to create space for appointees who would include Tsvangirai and
Arthur
Mutambara as leaders of the two MDC factions. Currently Mugabe can
only
appoint five senators and this room is not enough to accommodate losing
Zanu
PF candidates and unelected MDC officials", the newspaper said.
Out of so
many Zanu-PF representatives in both the House of Assembly and the
Senate,
why should President Mugabe fail to find ministerial material? If
those from
the MDC parties are deemed to be too new to be ministers, why
should he not
work with those of his party who are new? What is so special
about any of
the Zanu-PF candidates who lost in the party's primaries or
March 29
election?
What is most surprising is that the public media, economists,
political
analysts and civic organisations have not taken a position against
the
looming BIG government and potential for profligacy through recklessly
wasteful and wildly extravagant spending. A big government is economically
harmful. When politicians give each other jobs and create new positions,
ministries and department, they are hardly doing so by a cost-benefit
analysis to determine if the money is being well-spent. Governments spend
funds which they get from taxes or through borrowing or from printing
money.
Unfortunately, politicians create positions and allocate public
funds on the
basis of political and personal rather than economic
considerations. This
inevitably weakens economic performance. If we care so
much for the least
advantaged part of the citizenry, we must leave enough
money for government
social programmes not structures and personnel. The
first measure is to
re-examine government structure, ministries,
departments, bureaucracy and
state-owned enterprises. We must deal with
duplication, overlapping,
abrogating the role of the private sector and
dealing with every issue by
creating a ministry or department. Sometimes a
task-based office or 'desk'
would be sufficient. We must now interrogate the
role of deputy ministers in
an economy that is in serious trouble like ours
instead of being
pre-occupied with accommodating the various political
partisan formations.
One wonders why the President must reward persons
using public funds through
ministerial appointments when that person lost
electoral mandate to become a
member of parliament. Is the government a
charitable home for those who have
become idle after losing an election?
Both Zanu-PF and the MDC formations
must guard against paternalism. The
smaller MDC formation led by Arthur
Mutambara should be an exception since
the leadership of the party lost the
election.
Unconfirmed reports
circulating in Harare are saying that the Reserve Bank
of Zimbabwe (RBZ)
governor, Gideon Gono is alleged to be trying to secure
for himself the
position of Minister of Finance, to protect his cronies who
will be running
the RBZ and his vast array of business interests through
ill-gotten wealth.
He is alleged to be presenting himself as the neutral
person for that
position while he is alleged to be manipulating President
Mugabe by
presenting himself as the guarantor of his financial interests.
He is
also alleged to be endearing himself with the Tsvangirai-led MDC so
that
they do not find him objectionable either as the Governor or as
Minister.
According to the MDC, the central bank has malfunctioned
because of lack of
independence from political and partisan interests and
impartiality as a
national institution. Gono's survival tactics follow the
realisation that in
the new political dispensation, there is likely to be an
end to his role as
the de facto Prime Minister, Minister of Finance,
Industry and Commerce, as
well as special advisor and banker to the
President.
No amount of posturing can rehabilitate Gono from the state of
'drunkenness''
with political and financial power and influence he has
amassed during his
five-year tenure.
Gono was accountable to no one
except minimally to the President whom he
overwhelmed for personal benefits.
Only his actions and policies have been
so poisonous that they caused more
damage that the action or non-action of
the government since independence in
1980. His term of office that comes to
an end in December 2008 must not be
renewed. As is the practice, when the
incumbent governor's term is ending,
he should go on leave pending
retirement.
While he has deputy
governors, he has been running the RBZ with people who
are not career
bankers and have become so powerful to become de facto deputy
governors.
These are:
. Munyaradzi Kereke (Advisor and
Executive Assistant to the Governor)
. Mirirai Chiremba (Divisional Head -
Financial Intelligence Inspectorate
and Evaluation)
. Millicent
Mombeshora (Divisional Head - Special Projects and Strategic
Planning)
.
Mrs. W Mushipe (Division Chief National Development and Productive Sector
Support).
The first two were named on the new EU sanctions list as a
diplomat and
foreign affairs ministry official, respectively. While the
immediate
reaction is that the EU got it wrong, it has been said that the
two actually
have diplomatic passports and travel and pose not as RBZ
employees for
alleged nefarious activities on behalf of the Governor to do
with the
foreign currency movements that is bought from the street and
unaccounted
for.
While we are not privy to what is going on South
Africa, we must still add
value to the talks by raising pertinent issues
requiring attention by the
negotiators.
SABC
July 26, 2008,
16:15
The Botswana government has openly refused to recognise President
Robert
Mugabe as the true leader of Zimbabwe.
The country has been
vociferous in its criticism of Mugabe's one-man
election on June 27, which
was boycotted by the opposition Movement of
Democratic Change. Botswana's
Minister of Foreign affairs, Phandu Skelemani,
says there is currently no
legal government in Zimbabwe but only leaders of
different political parties
seeking a political solution.
He says, however, that Botswana supports
meditation efforts by the South
African government. Responding to bilateral
agreements between Botswana and
Zimbabwe, Skelemani said the deals will
stand.
Meanwhile, talks to resolve Zimbabwe's problems are continuing in
South
Africa. Presidential spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga says the MDC and
the
ruling Zanu-PF are meeting behind closed doors at an undisclosed
venue.
Ratshitanga says he is optimistic that the parties will have
reached an
agreement after two weeks. Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai signed an
agreement earlier this week, committing themselves to
finding a viable
solution to the political crisis in Zimbabwe.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=1461
July 26, 2008
Geoffrey
Nyarota
THE current talks between the two Movement for Democratic Change
parties
(How I loathe the word "formations") and the almost ruling Zanu-PF
are to me
a vivid reminder of the Lancaster House Conference, which heralded
the
declaration of Zimbabwe's independence from the stranglehold of a rebel
minority white regime in 1980.
While the major objective of the two
initiatives is virtually the same -
that is to bring "warring" political
movements to a round table to negotiate
a peace deal - there is so much that
is different between that landmark
conference and the current Pretoria
talks.
The Lancaster House Conference brought the recalcitrant rebel
leader, Ian
Smith, face to face for the first time with the leadership of
the two
guerilla armies that had waged a relentless campaign against the
last
vestige of colonial rule in Rhodesia, his Rhodesia Front government.
The
signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding on Monday, July 21,
brought the equally intransigent President Robert Mugabe face to face for
the first time with the leadership of the forces of democracy that have been
campaigning for long-overdue change and salvation from the ravages of the
dictatorship of the Mugabe regime.
There the similarity essentially
ends.
Lord Soames, representing great Britain, the former colonial power
of
Zimbabwe, presided over the Lancaster House Conference, while the
Pretoria
talks are being held under the watchful eye of South Africa's
President
Thabo Mbeki. He is an eminent pan-Africanist and portrays himself
as an icon
of Africa's post-colonial battle against neo-colonialism, of
which President
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe similarly casts himself as one of
the most ardent
protagonists.
While the many sessions of the
Lancaster House Conference were not exactly
held under the glare of
television cameras the whole process was held in an
atmosphere of exceeding
transparency. At the end of each day the main
participants, the internal
Zimbabwe-Rhodesian delegation led by Smith and
Bishop Abel Muzorewa of the
UANC, as well as the foreign-based Patriotic
Front delegation representing
Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF and PF-Zapu of Joshua
Nkomo each called a press
conference where the attendant army of journalists
was brought to speed on
the proceedings of the day.
It was at the Lancaster House press briefings
that the landslide defeat of
the internal parties, including Rev Ndabaningi
Sithole's ZANU and Chief
Jeremiah Chirau's ZUPO, at the forthcoming landmark
general elections was
essentially set in motion. For example, David Mukome,
the affable but
ineffectual spokesman of Muzorewa's UANC, was quite clearly
no match for the
fiery eloquence of the oratory of the spokesmen from Maputo
and Lusaka,
Eddison Mudadirwa Zvobgo and Willie Dzawanda
Musarurwa.
Representing Zanu-PF and PF-Zapu, respectively, Zvobgo and
Musarurwa became
the darlings of the press corps covering the
conference.
Zvobgo, in particular, was on a daily basis relied upon to
articulate either
a quotable quote or issue a headline-grabbing statement.
The Lancaster House
conference was conducted in such an atmosphere of
transparency that even The
Herald dispatched a representative to London from
September to December
1979 - the duration of the conference. The newspaper's
man at the conference
was its then political editor, the late Tonic Douglas
Sakaike, who became
one of the earliest victims of Zanu-PF's
intolerance.
Zvobgo and Musarurwa, both heroic and patriotic sons of
Zimbabwe, also
became victims of Mugabe's relentless wrath. Musarurwa,
Zimbabwe's finest
journalist in his time, was nearly destitute by the time
he died in 1990.
Mugabe still had the temerity to inter his remains and
those of Zvobgo at
the national Heroes Acre in Harare. Mugabe and his
cohorts will one day
suffer the consequences of supernatural activity at
that shrine, unless they
atone for their sins against the people of Zimbabwe
and immediately release
them from ongoing bondage and torture of black man
by black man.
The much-touted Memorandum of Agreement cast a shroud of
secrecy over the
current Pretoria talks which are being conducted at a
secret venue,
somewhere around Pretoria, to the frustration of the hordes of
journalists
anxious to be the first to break the big story.
Much to
the chagrin of the press corps, it is a condition of the MoU that
none of
the negotiating parties shall communicate the substance of the
discussions
to the media.
"The parties shall refrain from negotiating through the
media, whether
through their representatives to the dialogue or any of their
party
officials," the document stipulates.
This stipulation is not
surprising given the obsession of negotiation
facilitator, President Thabo
Mbeki of South Africa with secrecy. But this is
clearly undemocratic. The
people of Zimbabwe will have no recourse, in terms
of the MoU, should the
negotiating teams reach an agreement that is totally
unacceptable to
them.
The Pretoria talks are being conducted against a backdrop of the
protests of
civil society organisations that they have been excluded from
the process of
negotiation. Dr Lovemore Madhuku the chairman of the National
Constitutional
Assembly (NCA) has protested that Zanu-PF and the MDC have
excluded civic
society from the talks. ZCTU secretary-general, Wellington
Chibhebhe,
immediately echoed Madhuku's sentiments.
"Zimbabwe is not
made up of supporters of Zanu-PF and MDC alone," Chibhebhe
said, "We call
upon the facilitators of the dialogue process to include
civic groupings,
churches, labour and political parties in the negotiation
process."
Many supporters of the MDC that I know are God-fearing
people who are
regular worshippers. Why they would want their pastor to
represent them at
the talks as well is something that eludes my
comprehension.
In any case, by way of comparison the relative success of
the Lancaster
House conference was achieved by the political parties in the
absence of the
participation or the intervention of civic society. In fact
the flourishing
civil society organisations of today were largely
non-existent in Ian Smith's
Rhodesia.
Apart from the daunting cost,
the sheer logistics of bringing all civic
groupings, churches, the labour
movement and all political parties under one
roof in Pretoria would be
prohibitive.
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
From a different
prospective the politicians participating in the current
talks received the
mandate of the people in recent elections. That, of
course, is with the
notable exception of the delegates representing the
breakaway faction of the
MDC led by Professor Arthur Mutambara. Professor
Welshman Ncube and
Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, as well as Justice
Minister, Patrick
Chinamasa, representing Zanu-PF, who were totally rejected
by voters in
their constituencies on March 29.
By some coincidence, only 50 percent of
the delegates enjoy the mandate of
the people to represent them. These are
Tendai Biti and Lovemore Mangoma of
the mainstream MDC led by Tsvangirai, as
well as Nicholas Goche of Zanu-PF.
The other 50 percent are not mandated
representatives of the people.
Neither are Madhuku and
Chibhebhe.
As if not to be outdone, Ncube and Misihairabwi's leader,
Mutambara, quickly
crafted and volunteered what became the first, if
unofficial, and so far
only concept paper for the Pretoria talks. Clearly
carried away by the
euphoria generated by the surprise appendage of his own
signature to the
MoU, Mutambara proposed that Mugabe and Tsvangirai should
travel hand in
hand to every corner of Zimbabwe and address joint rallies to
demonstrate
their commitment to a peaceful and prosperous future
Zimbabwe.
One difference between Lancaster and Pretoria is dramatic.
Muzorewa, Chief
Chirau and Sithole returned from the Lancaster House
Conference to endure
humiliating defeat in the 1980 elections. Twenty-eight
years later,
Chinamasa, Ncube and Misihairambwi endured equally humiliating
defeat in the
2008 parliamentary elections and then skillfully maneuvered
their way to
sitting around the negotiating table in Pretoria.
There
are one or two other areas of similarity between the Lancaster House
Conference and the ongoing Pretoria talks, though.
Smith accused
Mugabe of being totally incapable of thinking for himself and
suggested that
he was totally under the control of the communist East.
Mugabe suggests that
his rival, Tsvangirai, is quite similarly incapable of
any original thought.
He accuses the West of casting a spell over
Tsvangirai.
Smith
declared, "Not in a thousand years,"" and then proceeded to shake
Mugabe's
hand at Lancaster. Mugabe vowed, "Never, ever, ever," and then
proceeded not
only to shake Tsvangirai's hand, but also to wine and dine
with him at the
Rainbow Towers in Harare just before Pretoria.
Lancaster House heralded
Zimbabwe's independence from colonialism on April
18, 1980. Hopefully the
current negotiations in Pretoria will be the
harbinger of Zimbabwe's
independence from post-independence dictatorship.
Failure is clearly not
an option as the consequences would be too ghastly to
contemplate. As
Mutambara stated, all delegates, especially, in my view,
those without a
mandate, must place nation before self.
Extended sanctions
A
question that I hear being asked repeatedly since the announcement on
Wednesday of the extension of the list of Zimbabweans targeted for sanctions
by the EU is: "How does the applying of sanctions on Joseph Chinotimba and
other minions of Zanu-PF, who in all probability do not even hold a valid
passport bring pressure to bear on President Robert Mugabe to place nation
before self?"
It is to be hoped that some of these measures are not
calculated more to
assuage the conscience of the West, than to alleviate the
plight of Zimbabwe's
long suffering
citizens.
Abbreviations:
EU - European Union
UANC - United
African National Congress (Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa)
ZANU - Zimbabwe
African People Movement from which ZANU-PF broke away in
1963 (Rev
Ndabaningi Sithole)
Zanu-PF - Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic
Front (Robert Gabriel
Mugabe)
PF-Zapu - Zimbabwe African Peoples' Union -
Patriotic Front (Dr Joshua
Mqabuko Nkomo)
ZUPO - Zimbabwe United Peoples'
Organisation (Chief Jeremiah Chirau)
Mail and Guardian
CHRIS
MCGREAL - Jul 28 2008 06:00
Millions of Zimbabweans face
starvation after the widespread failure of the
latest harvest brought on by
the government's disastrous mishandling of land
redistribution and food
shortages in shops caused by hyperinflation.
The United Nations says
hundreds of thousands of people require food aid
immediately because they
have harvested little or nothing in recent weeks.
It has warned that up
to five million will need assistance in the coming
months. A third of the
population is chronically malnourished.
But attempts to assist them are
blocked by a ban on foreign aid agencies
working in rural areas after Robert
Mugabe said they were fronts for "regime
change" by Britain and the United
States.
Aid workers pointed to significant population movements and
children
arriving at hospitals suffering from kwashiorkor. Many families are
reduced
to one meal a day, with some living on wild berries.
The UN
says that it has seen a significant rise in the number of entire
families
fleeing to South Africa.
Food availability has also been hit by
hyperinflation, which economists say
is running at above 10-million percent.
The central bank issued a
Z$100-billion note this week, worth less than
R100.
Mugabe defiantly continues to blame the shortages on an
anti-government
conspiracy, accusing companies of deliberately withholding
fertiliser and
other agricultural necessities. He has threatened to jail
those he says are
responsible.
A medical worker in Matabeleland,
where the maize crop failure was almost
total, said that there were
widespread food shortages. What arrived was
mostly given to Zanu-PF
members.
"The situation is extremely severe in Matabeleland. Hunger is
extreme. The
odd maize deliveries only go to people with Zanu cards. Where
there is food
people can't afford it," she said.
"In St Luke's
hospital in Lupane, 16 children aged five to 12 have
kwashiorkor. That's
significant because in children of that age it's usually
not related to HIV.
It's almost certainly because of malnutrition. These are
the ones who made
it to hospital. Most wouldn't."
In the Masvingo area in the east,
witnesses say newly settled farmers are
abandoning their land after the crop
failures and are heading for the towns.
A Zimbabwean official said many
people were now resorting to desperate
measures to survive, including
selling off precious livestock that often
represented most of a family's
wealth.
"They get five kilos of maize for two goats; for a cow it's 300
kilos," the
official said. "People are no longer interested in politics.
They are
talking about how to survive, how to get money or food."
A
report last month by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation and World
Food Programme estimated that the recent maize harvest was down 28% on last
year, which itself fell 44% from 2006.
The former white-owned farms
are producing just 10% of the food they did a
decade ago and
long-established communal farmers, who used to grow the bulk
of Zimbabwe's
maize supply, are now growing about 25% of former production
quantities.
The UN report blames the crop failure on a combination of
poor weather, a
collapse in productivity on redistributed white-owned farms
and government
policies that have helped created shortages of seeds and
fertiliser and have
led to the collapse of the power supply and irrigation.
State rice controls
have also undermined the market.
The Food and
Agriculture Organisation/World Food Programme (FAO/WFP) report
said two
million people will need assistance in the coming weeks as what
remains of
their food stocks runs out. That number will rise to five million
early next
year.
A WFP spokesperson, Richard Lee, said the principal obstacle to
food
delivery was the ban on foreign aid organisations that handle
distribution
on the ground. "The issue is the continuing ban on NGO
activity. We were
rounding up 300 000 of the most vulnerable people, but
because of the
restrictions we're only able to reach about 135 000. NGOs are
crucial to our
ability to deliver," he said.
The UN is pressing the
government to lift the ban, although some foreign aid
agencies feel it is
not pushing hard enough. Lee said that the WFP was
hearing anecdotal
evidence "that the situation is worrying in many areas".
"We're hearing ...
stories about reduction in meals earlier than usual. It
is worrying that it
is happening so close to the harvest," he said.
Agriculturalists warn
that the situation is not likely to improve with the
next harvest. Zimbabwe
requires 27 000 tons of maize seed for a season's
planting. This year's
yield looks likely to fall to 2 500 tons, leaving
farmers little to plant.
-- © Guardian News & Media Ltd 2008
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/7588
By staff
writers
26 Jul 2008
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has led pleas for
repentance,
reconciliation and forgiveness following outbreaks of xenophobic
attacks by
some South Africans on refugees coming from Zimbabwe and
elsewhere in
Africa.
At a Christian service with multi-faith
participation at St John's College
in Johannesburg earlier this week, the
Nobel Peace Laureate asked for
forgiveness and repentance among those
involved in violence, and stressed
the practical commitment of the churches,
notably his own Anglican one, to
repair the fractured relationships and
lives.
"The diocese of Johannesburg called together its people and said
we need to
repent and so that was a service to repent in which we confessed
our sin of
Xenophobia and they are saying we won't tolerate this and we want
to tell
those who have been victims that we are sorry and we pray that we
will not
repeat what we did," said Archbishop Tutu.
Dr Tutu also
mentioned that South Africans were welcomed as exiles, refugees
and as
freedom fighters in African lands and wondered if people could have
forgotten so soon. He reminded South Africans that they were once held in
high esteem, particularly for their forgiving and reconciling behaviour
post-Apartheid.
He questioned the direction of the nation in relation
to the level of crime
and an accepted trend of leadership without
responsibility, referring to
recent controversial utterances by some
leaders.
Archbishop Tutu stressed it was important that South Africans
roll out the
welcome mat for their African neighbours.
He said this
was a human duty, but also a Christian one.
1 hour
ago
MBABANE (AFP) - Swaziland has invited Robert Mugabe to attend a royal
day of
celebration marking 40 years of independence from Britain and King
Mswati
III's 40th birthday, media reported.
While world leaders have
condemned as a sham Mugabe's victory in a
Zimbabwean presidential run-off,
Africa's last absolute monarch is "looking
forward" to hosting its
neighbour's president on September 6.
Swazi News, a weekly paper
published on Saturday reported that Mugabe was
one of 13 Southern African
Development Community leaders invited to attend
the day of royal
festivities.
"The invitations were sent before the Zimbabwean
presidential run-off. We
are looking forward to hosting the one who is
president of that country if
he accepts our invitation," Foreign Ministry
Principal Secretary Clifford
Mamba told the weekly.
The cost of the
festivities would cost close to 50 million emalangeni (4.2
million euros or
6.5 million dollars).
An official speaking on condition of anonymity told
AFP that a fleet of new
German-made cars were on their way to Swaziland and
would be unveiled during
the double celebrations popularly known as
40/40.
"New cars for the King, the Queen Mother, his wives and other
senior royal
family members have already been ordered and they should be
arriving
mid-August," the source said.
King Mswati III offended
Mugabe when he chaired a meeting of regional
leaders which called for the
run-off election to be postponed.
Addressing a rally just before the
run-off, Mugabe told thousands of his
supporters that leaders like King
Mswati III cannot teach him anything on
multi-party elections.