Mail and Guardian
Harare, Zimbabwe
02 July 2006
08:33
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has held talks with
United
Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on the sidelines of an African
Union
summit in Gambia, and Annan will definitely not be going to Harare
later
this year, Zimbabwe state television reported late on
Saturday.
The announcement ends days of speculation over
whether Mugabe
would agree to meet Annan this weekend for private talks on
the crisis in
Zimbabwe and whether the Zimbabwean leader would reissue last
year's
invitation to the UN boss.
The meeting went on for
less than an hour, the television said.
The report said
Mugabe and Annan discussed Zimbabwe's relations
with former colonial power
Britain. Mugabe blames Britain for Zimbabwe's
searing political and economic
problems, accusing British Prime Minister
Tony Blair of internationalising a
dispute between the two countries.
Earlier this week, Mugabe
made it clear he would accept no
intervention in the Zimbabwean crisis,
telling thousands of ruling party
supporters at a state funeral that
Zimbabwe did not need rescuing.
Stung by criticism of his
controversial campaign of slum
demolitions last year, Mugabe invited Annan
to come to Zimbabwe to see the
situation for himself. But the invitation
appeared to have been withdrawn
earlier this year. -- Sapa-dpa
Los Angeles Times
Farmer's
opposition to Zimbabwe leader landed him in prison, where he found
brotherhood.
By Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writer
July 2,
2006
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Hard labor in a Zimbabwean prison
might have
broken Roy Bennett if not for the other prisoners, who took over
his work
hauling jugs the size of water coolers from a sewage-infested river
and
muttered quiet words of encouragement.
For a white farmer, the
generosity of the black prisoners jailed for crimes
of survival was
humbling: Before his release in June 2005, he often found
scraps of
impossible-to-come-by meat filched from the prison's kitchen and
stuffed
into his bedroll.
ADVERTISEMENT
Since 2000, the opposition
politician's belongings have been looted, his
land occupied by invaders, his
workers beaten, raped and in one case killed,
his house taken, his coffee
farm seized by the Zimbabwean government and his
freedom lost for eight
months in a case condemned by Amnesty International.
He believes all of
it was politically motivated and carried out by the
regime of longtime
President Robert Mugabe, which has redistributed
white-owned farms to blacks
and ruthlessly suppressed dissent.
Four times he has been left with
nothing but the contents of his suitcase -
thrice when his farm was invaded
and looted and once when he fled to South
Africa in March after police
discovered an arms cache and sought him for
questioning on treason charges,
an offense that carries the death penalty.
The South African government
in late May denied Bennett's asylum
application, concluding that there was
no reason to believe he would not be
treated fairly. He plans to
appeal.
The rejection by South Africa's Department of Home Affairs has
been
criticized by the opposition and human rights activists. Nicole Fritz,
director of the South African Litigation Center, writing in the Star
newspaper, said that at best the decision reflects incompetence; at worst an
unwillingness to help those in need.
Bennett, rosy-skinned and
round-faced, has the complexion and physique of a
prosperous farmer. He
seems almost an accidental hero who could have
trundled through life without
a care if not for the circumstances in his
country.
"I feel very
heartsore, because what has happened in Zimbabwe is not even
political. It's
a result of tyranny and greed," said Bennett, a
third-generation
Zimbabwean.
Mugabe's policies have triggered the collapse of agriculture.
Inflation is
above 1,000%, there is a severe hard-currency shortage,
hospitals lack
medicines and the population is hungry.
Growing up on
his father's remote farm, Bennett's only friends were the
children of the
black workers, about eight of whom he says remain close
friends.
As a
coffee farmer, he honored the rituals demanded by local tribal
tradition,
setting aside produce for two chiefs and making sacrifices to
keep the river
mermaid of legend happy. He made certain the rain-making
rituals were never
neglected.
Bennett says he went into politics at the request of local
chiefs and others
in his area.
In prison, Bennett said, fellow
inmates and guards helped him not only for
humane reasons but in support of
his status as a member of the opposition
fighting the regime. Prisoners
constantly talked of their suffering and
their yearning for political
change, he said.
Most days in prison, Bennett's labor consisted of
walking waist-deep into
the filthy river, filling two 5-gallon cans and
carrying them 200 yards to
water a vegetable garden. He had to haul water
all day long.
"I battled at the beginning. I battled with the whole
process. I was
determined to see it through and not to break under the
conditions. I didn't
want the authorities to break me," Bennett said in an
interview in
Johannesburg.
When he arrived, he was forced to strip in
front of senior prison officials
loyal to Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and was
given a soiled uniform torn around
the crotch, affording no
decency.
Only when the prison bosses or ZANU-PF guards approached would
the
lower-level guards harass him, he said. Later they would tell him they
were
sorry.
"It was a very humbling experience because the prisoners
and the guards did
everything to make my life better," he said. "They could
see I was battling.
They'd come and encourage me and give me a hand and say:
'Just keep going.
It's not that bad, you'll get used to it just now.'
"
Bennett says that as a politician he wanted to represent the local
people
and improve their lives. He tried to join ZANU-PF before the
parliamentary
elections of 2000, hoping to change the culture of corruption
and impunity
from within.
"I thought naively that it would be
possible to bring about proper
representation for the people," he recalled.
The ruling party eschewed his
candidacy. At that time, the opposition was
embryonic, but Bennett switched
to the Movement for Democratic
Change.
In May 2000, after his switch, his farm was invaded by Mugabe
loyalists.
Bennett was in the capital, Harare, but they rounded up and beat
his
workers, and when Bennett's wife, Heather, tried to intervene, one of
the
invaders held a machete to her throat and forced her to sing ZANU-PF
political songs. Pregnant at the time, she miscarried soon after.
The
invaders occupied the farm for three weeks, looting everything from the
house. In the next four years, ZANU-PF officials, the military and police
repeatedly looted the farm, harassed, beat and intimidated the staff,
killing a worker in 2003. The next year, the army and police seized the
farm.
Despite Zimbabwe's economic crisis, widespread hunger and human
rights
abuses - including the government's nationwide razing of shacks last
year
that left at least 700,000 people homeless - African leaders have been
reluctant to criticize Mugabe. Some accuse foreign journalists of bias
against Mugabe, but others admire him as a liberator who freed his country
from white minority rule.
Bennett tries to avoid upsetting the South
African government and doesn't
criticize its decision to deny him asylum.
Instead, he says he is sure he
will get a fair hearing in the appeal
process.
But he called on African leaders to recognize the abuses and
"tyranny" in
Zimbabwe and the suffering of ordinary people.
"In
Zimbabwe, you now have totalitarian rule where there's been
institutionalized violence. Total thug rule is what exists in Zimbabwe
today," he said.
"There's got to be a bursting point for everyone, no
matter how passive you
are," he said. "I believe people in Zimbabwe are
moving to that point. I do
believe it's going to happen. It could happen
this year."
News24
02/07/2006 16:36 -
(SA)
Harare - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's deputy on Saturday
issued
unusually strong criticism of the government's land reform programme,
saying
farms had been seized from whites for political gains rather than for
proper
agricultural use.
Speaking in the absence of Mugabe, who is
attending an African Union summit
in Gambia, vice-president Joseph Msika
condemned the way land had been taken
and given to anybody who wanted
land.
"We have not sat down to say, really, 'Is this person whom we're
giving
land, is he having an aptitude for farming, is he a farmer? Is he
going to
develop the land?'" Msika said in televised comments.
Mugabe
launched his land reforms to local fanfare in 2000.
Politically
well-connected
He said the programme, which has so far seen the seizure
of more than 4 000
white-owned farms, was meant to take back farms stolen by
whites during
colonial rule.
Those farms would be given to the
landless, Mugabe said.
But there was criticism when it appeared that the
politically well-connected
were taking some of the best
properties.
Although agricultural production has plummeted in the last
six years,
robbing Zimbabwe of its breadbasket status and necessitating
massive food
imports, very few government officials have ventured any real
criticism of
the programme.
Msika, who is acting president in
Mugabe's absence, criticised blacks who
had merely taken houses belonging to
white farmers.
"What they are doing is to go into the houses where whites
were living and
they want land, they just plough a small hectarage, and they
are saying
that's enough," he said.
"We have taken this land, and
(are) using it for political gains other than
the development of the
agricultural industry." - Sapa-dpa
From The Sunday Independent (SA), 2 July
Harare - David Drury's city-centre desk
is so cluttered with eviction orders
for Zimbabwe's remaining productive
farmers that he cannot immediately lay
his hands on the one he needs. A
clutch of 90-day eviction orders
pre-printed on flimsy paper has been
dropped off at the lawyer's office
during the past few days; probably the
largest number in three years - and
they are still coming in. The last time
eviction notices were flowing like
this was when white farmers were being
killed or beaten up for trying to
stay in their homes and run their
businesses. Now only a few hundred of the
4 500 commercial farmers who
prospered here in early 2000 - before President
Robert Mugabe's land putsch
- remain, clinging tenuously to their land. They
have had to cede ownership
of most of the soil and their equipment to the
state. After a sudden surge
of violence against white farmers last November,
the government appeared to
change tack. In February Vice-President Joyce
Mujuru, backed by some senior
ministers, made it known that farmers who had
survived the purge - and those
who had previously been evicted and wanted to
return home - could apply for
99-year leases on their farms. "Productivity
must return to the land," the
reserve bank's governor, Gideon Gono, said at
the time.
It was a
dramatic, although implicit, admission that Mugabe's land grab had
failed.
Zimbabwe could no longer feed itself and its economy had imploded
because
the white farmers who grew the export crops that earned 40 percent
of the
country's annual foreign exchange income were gone. Trevor Gifford,
an
official with the Commercial Farmers' Union, said about 900 current and
former farmers had applied for the leases since February. To date, however,
not a single lease or official letter from the government has been issued
giving tenure to those still there. A handful have been given letters from
their local authority saying that they can stay, and three or four former
farmers believe they have been given the green light to return home. But
last week Didymus Mutasa, the lands minister, told a group of diplomats he
wanted all white farmers gone: "It does not matter if the land is not
productive, as long as we have that land," he said. Drury successfully
persuaded the Harare high court recently that three farmers who had been
forced by threats of violence to leave their farms - which he conceded was
now state land - should be allowed to return as they had not been legally
evicted. The Zimbabwean government immediately proposed another amendment to
the frequently mutilated Land Acquisition Act, and Mutasa - perhaps without
the support of all in government - got busy with a slew of new eviction
notices.
"We saw a whole pile of notices at the lands office,"
said one farmer from
central Zimbabwe who asked not to be identified. "I
suppose this is the
final push." No one is sure exactly how many white
farmers are still
involved in some aspect of agriculture on their land, even
if indirectly or
through a third party. "I have to plough for new farmers on
land I gave them
as they don't know how and don't have the equipment. It is
in my interest
for them to be successful," one grain farmer said this week.
Fewer than 10
percent of white farmers evicted since 2000 have been
compensated by the
government with an average of about 3 percent of the
value of their assets.
Two weeks ago the government printed a list of 700
more it intends to
"compensate" at ridiculously low prices. Some, especially
the old, frail and
homeless, will probably accept it. John Worsley-Worswick,
a former farmer
and spokesperson for the pressure group Justice for
Agriculture, said last
week: "We don't know who is in control, as there is
chaos and looting out
there and the last batch of productive farmers will be
forced off while tens
of thousands of their skilled workers will become
destitute. It is a cruel
torture for those still out there." Part of that
torture is the cycle of
hope and despair caused by contradictory signals and
actions from the
government. Whether this is a symptom of the jostling for
power amid the
succession struggle within Zanu PF, or a deliberate
cat-and-mouse game being
played with the farmers, nobody knows. Drury is,
albeit wearily, going to
fight the latest land law devised by Mugabe's
henchmen to rid Zimbabwe of
the last of its productive white farmers. "This
is demonstrably an abuse of
process from a policy point of view and a legal
point of view," he says with
a wry smile that acknowledges how incongruous
those fine legal phrases sound
in a land that is now lawless. I am laughing
in despair; you have to have a
sense of humour in Zimbabwe. It is a
farcical, cloud-cuckoo land."
From The Sunday Times (SA), 2 July
Buddy Naidu and Dominic Mahlangu
As economy
collapses, deserters turn to violent crime; SA intelligence looks
north for
links to Jeppe bloodbath
Police intelligence operatives visited
Zimbabwe this week to investigate
links between five of the suspects in last
Sunday's ambush killing of four
policemen and that country's military.
Sixteen men were arrested in the
aftermath of the shoot-out in Jeppestown,
Johannesburg - three Mozambicans,
five Zimbabweans and eight South Africans.
Eight suspected robbers were
killed at the scene. Earlier that morning they
had robbed a supermarket in
Honeydew, Johannesburg. The Zimbabwe visit came
as an emotional Safety and
Security Minister, Charles Nqakula, told the
Sunday Times he was calling a
meeting of top police officers tomorrow to
discuss a comprehensive response
to violent crime. He spoke of his distress
after entering the bloodied,
bullet-riddled house hours after the standoff
last Sunday. "The most
poignant moment for me was when I saw inspectors Van
Heerden and Schoeman in
an embrace lying down there. Obviously ... they
sensed that they were
nearing their end [and] went into an embrace," he
said. Nqakula was
referring to inspectors Frikkie van Heerden and Gert
Schoeman, who died with
Inspector Nzama Victor Mathye and Constable Peter
Seaward.
Speaking at the funeral of Mathye yesterday, Nqakula urged
the police to
wear their bulletproof vests because criminals had now
declared war on them.
He added: "I urge you to use [your] firearms to defend
yourself and the
lives of all peace-loving South Africans." Intelligence
operatives say
numerous robberies since 2002 could be traced to former
Zimbabwean soldiers,
but that they have received no help from the
authorities in that country.
They further accuse the South African
government of dragging its feet and
not acting on intelligence in an effort
"to maintain diplomatic relations".
On Friday, Nqakula told the Sunday Times
the police were under-resourced and
lacked intelligence-gathering skills.
Tomorrow's emergency meeting with the
police's top brass will include the
National Commissioner and all the
provincial commissioners.The meeting comes
in the wake of a series of
violent crimes in the past fortnight. In a frank
interview, Nqakula admitted
there were "serious weaknesses" and that the
police lacked basic
investigative and intelligence-gathering skills. He said
it was clear that
criminals were out "to kill as many police officers as is
possible". The
meeting tomorrow would focus on a "short-term solution" to
bring about "a
sense of confidence in our people regarding policing in this
country".
Nqakula said last Sunday's shootout could have been prevented if
the police
had had better intelligence.
Intelligence officers,
meanwhile, said there was an increase in the number
of soldiers deserting
the Zimbabwean army because of that country's economic
meltdown. Zimbabwe
has in recent years struggled to pay the salaries of its
soldiers. In the
past five years South Africa has recorded a number of
highprofile cases with
links to Zimbabwe. These include: In January, Themba
Charles Mahlangu from
Zimbabwe was arrested at The Glen shopping mall. Two
months earlier he had
allegedly killed Johannesburg police officer Enver
Enoch, and the same day
had allegedly robbed an American Express outlet in
Fourways. He was also
sought in connection with a robbery at Gold Reef City
in 2005; In March,
gunmen stole more than R70-million in cash from an SAA
flight. Suspects were
arrested en route to Zimbabwe; .In 2004 Durban police
nabbed six members of
the infamous Hammer Gang, responsible for robbing
several banks and
foreign-exchange agencies. Four of the men were Zimbabwean
and it was
alleged at the time that they had stolen US dollars and taken the
money to
Zimbabwe; and, after an airport heist in 2002, in which more than
R115-million was stolen, four of those responsible were arrested at a
Bulawayo hotel.
An intelligence officer confirmed that former
Zimbabwean military men were
using their skills to good effect in South
Africa - employing South Africans
as runners to help them get accommodation,
hideout spots and vehicles. "A
number of soldiers are leaving the Zimbabwean
army and coming [here]. The
group that was involved in last Sunday's
shooting involved people with
serious military training," he said. Police
suspect that the weapons
recovered, which include AK-47s and other powerful
guns, were supplied by
Mozambicans, while the Zimbabweans oversaw the
operation in cahoots with
several locals. "Unfortunately our hands are tied
... Anything involving
Zimbabwe or our [other] neighbours is handled via
Pretoria," said an
official. Kenny Fihla, head of Business Against Crime,
said the involvement
of foreigners in crime was becoming a serious problem.
"We should not be
apologetic. We do have a sense that illegal foreigners are
involved in these
armed heists and robberies," he said.
I hit a pothole in Harare last Wednesday and it smashed
my front wheel
assembly. In an effort to find the spares needed I went out to
a dealer and
when I walked into the Managers office I was astonished to find
a close
friend behind the desk. It had been five years since I had seen him
last and
he told me what had happened to him.
He had been working in
the Karoi area the last time I had seen him and when
the farmers in the
district had been dispossessed he had found himself also
out of a job and
also dispossessed. After 30 years of work he and his wife
found themselves
without a home, just a few old pieces of furniture and some
clothes and a
small car.
To compound his problems, his wife of over 30 years, was
battling with
cancer - a struggle she lost after two and half years and he
had found
himself without his wife and companion as well as his assets and
means of
making a living.
He rented a small house in a medium density
area in Harare and with the help
of a younger businessperson, set up a car
dealership in one room with a
laptop computer. When I walked into his office
three years later, he was the
General Manger of a substantial business, was
expanding rapidly and looked
set for real success. Where others were
struggling, he was making good money
and doing well.
Not only in that
sphere had he done well, but two years before he had met
and subsequently
married a lovely woman in Harare and they were starting all
over again with a
new house in Borrowdale. Soon, he said, he would move to a
new site in
Chisipite where they were starting another dealership.
He and I are both
active Christians and he said to me that morning that his
faith had been
sorely tested by these events. What was God doing? How could
such a calamity
happen to me? What was the purpose of it all? All valid
questions for
someone, like Job in the Old Testament, who also lost
everything - family,
children, livelihood, wealth. So tested that he was
still not back in an
active fellowship even though his wife is a firm and
committed
Christian.
This story is a common one here in Zimbabwe. We talk about the
farm
invasions and somehow the true horror of what went on in those days
fails to
register. We forget that the men and women who owned those farms, in
many
cases, had moved onto them when they were just empty bush. They had
worked
together to carve them out of the bush living in pole and mud huts
and
cooking over wood fires before gradually getting onto their feet
and
building beautiful homes and raising families.
The stories are
legion - gaining experience by working for other farmers,
then buying your
own place with borrowed money and the struggle - over many
years, even
decades to get out of debt and to build up what was eventually a
productive
farm in a remote area with dams, irrigation and all the other
things that are
needed to make a real go of modern farming today. To then go
through UDI with
14 years of mandatory UN sanctions and then 8 years of
civil war when you
were always on the alert and faced danger and violence
every day.
Then
after Independence in 1980, thinking that this was a new day - no
more
ambushes or land mines on the farm road, no more agric alerts and call
outs.
Put the guns away and get back to real farming. Accepting the new
realities
and national leadership. Growing your enterprise to the point where
you were
making an impact across the world. Then out of the blue, the
systematic,
wholesale and brutal theft of your assets and livelihood and way
of life -
on a purely racist and corrupt basis.
Some 4 000 farmers and
their direct employees were affected by this act
together with 350 000 farm
workers, managers and skilled employees. At the
time there were 10 000 white
men on those farms - all armed, all trained and
experienced and all
determined people. But not a shot was fired, they
accepted what was being
done to them without violence and resorted to the
law as a defence, only to
finds that this line of defence had also been torn
away from them by the
State.
What we do not appreciate is the trauma that this process involved
- for the
men and their families. The loss of everything they had worked for
-
sometimes for three or four generations, the loss of homes and all
security.
The loss of community and sense of belonging; these are the real
losses. The
rest we can replace - if not here then elsewhere, but the
intangibles are
lost forever.
How does anyone get over such trauma?
What do you do when confronted with
such circumstances? Nobody ever said that
the world was a fair place - Jesus
himself said that "in the world you will
face tribulation", not maybe, will.
So this is not an uncommon experience. We
are not the first community to go
through such circumstance; how we handle
these situations is what sets us
apart.
In my friends case, he did not
quit, did not leave the country, he did not
commit suicide - all legitimate
and understandable reactions to overwhelming
loss. No, he picked up the
pieces of his life and started afresh. I looked
at him after he had told me
his story and I said to him "what you are doing
is walking on the
water".
My mind was on that story in the New Testament where the
disciples were
crossing a lake in a small boat and a storm came up - ever
been on Kariba
when that happens - it is fast and nasty. Jesus came to them
walking on the
water. Peter saw him and asked, "If that is you, can I come
and walk on the
water with you?" Jesus said yes and Peter got out of the boat
in the storm
and walked towards Jesus. Then his mind told him this could not
be
happening - he looked at the stormy waters and began to sink.
When
life deals us a bad hand and we are faced with stormy, angry, water we
can do
a number of things - we can stay in the boat and hope we survive, we
can get
out of the boat and walk on the water. When done by faith we then
find that
we can indeed walk on the water, there is life after all that has
happened.
That was the experience of Job - it can be our experience as well.
Jesus
finished that earlier saying about tribulation by saying, "but be of
good
cheer, I have overcome the world." When we step over the gunwale we can
find
that this is also true. We do not forget the past, it still hurts, but
we
find comfort and new pleasure in the experience of walking on the
stormy
waters of life.
Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, July 2 2006
Mail and Guardian
Percy Zvomuya
30 June 2006
07:59
Nothing could have conjured the images of a riven
country
more eloquently than the Zimbabwe national day of prayer. An event
meant to
unite a country was marked by a slanging match that would not have
looked
out of place before a heavyweight boxing
match.
At the event staged at the Glamis Arena in
Harare, the
country's President, Robert Mugabe, was initially conciliatory,
urging the
church to point out his government's "shortcomings, sins of
commission or
omission".
But later he turned to lay
into the outspoken Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube: "When
the church leaders start
being political, we regard them as political
creatures - and we are vicious
in that area," he
said.
This tone was not out of place in a week in which
Bishop
Levy Kadenge of the Methodist Church, who is the convener of the
anti-government Christian Alliance that boycotted the event, had not been to
his house since Thursday last week. Reports say that a Central Intelligence
Organisation (CIO) officer told him "we want to wipe you
out".
His secretary general, Jonah Gokova, recently
said that
the bishop was not in hiding and was "at his office". However,
Kadenge had
been "advised not to speak to the
press".
Gokova said the Christian Alliance was formed
in response
to concern from church members after last year's urban clean-up
operation
that left up to 700 000 people destitute.
Ncube told Irin News that church leaders who have aligned
themselves with
the government had compromised themselves. Last month he
claimed that some
leaders had been bribed to support the government. "The
church should be a
safe haven for the tortured. This government continues to
abuse people's
rights and church leaders should be warned that their
solidarity with those
who have caused so much suffering leaves the victims
feeling betrayed," he
said.
Head of the organisation behind the national day
of
prayer, Christian Denominations and Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe,
Bishop Trevor Manhanga, however, insisted that working with the government
was the best way in finding a solution to Zimbabwe's problems. "We refuse to
join our detractors and short-sighted citizens who do not see anything good
about the country," he told Irin News.
Analysts
argue that in a country where people have lost
faith in opposition politics
and the ability of Mugabe's government to find
a solution to the country's
problems, many people have turned to
Christianity.
They point out that the church has, consequently, become
the new arena for
the control of the minds and hearts of the people.
Analysts say that the
church is no longer reading from the same gospel at a
time when people,
despairing of the divided opposition, are looking to it
for
leadership.
Angola Press
Banjul, The Gambia, 07/02 - Leader Moammar Kadhafi participated
in the
meeting of the "seven-member" commission set by the African ordinary
summit
in Sirte (Libya) in order to take actrions toward implementation of
Libya`s
proposals for the formation of the United States of
Africa.
The Libyan proposals cover the creation of ministries of foreign
affairs,
defence, foreign trade, transport and communication at the
continental
level.
In addition, Libya is proposing the removal of
customs barriers between
member countries of the AU, the unification of
transport and communication
means and the launching of an African
satellite.
The secretary of the Libyan general people`s Committee for
External
Relations and International Co-operation, Abderrahman Chalgham,
said in
Banjul that Kadhafi alerted participants at the meeting that time
was of
paramount importance to complete the missions of the
commission.
Chalgham said the Libyan leader also emphasised the
importance of holding
the commission meeting before the AU`s next summit
slated for next January
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in order to define
practical points to be
implemented.
At the end of the "seven-member"
Commission meeting, Leader Moammar Kadhafi
met with leaders and heads of
delegations from African countries and
regional and international
organisations.
They were Presidents Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, Olesugun
Obasango of
Nigeria, Amadou Toumani Touré of Mali, Omar Hassan El Beshir of
Sudan,
Idriss Deby of Chad, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, John Kofuor of
Ghana,
Mamadou Tandja of Niger, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Ahmed Abdallah
Sambi of
the Comoros and Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d`Ivoire.