Zim Online
Monday 18 June 2007
By Brian Ncube
BULAWAYO - Two
Zimbabwe opposition activists abducted from the rural Matobo
district by
suspected state secret agents were found dead last Thursday, in
a
development certain to spread fear across the opposition supporting
southern
half of the country.
The battered bodies of Edward Ndiweni and Albert
Sibanda, who were both
members of the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC party, were
discovered by villagers
dumped at an abandoned former white-owned farm,
about 15 kilometres from the
deceased men's home village.
Police
spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena confirmed the discovery of the bodies of
the
murdered MDC activists and said investigations into the matter were in
progress.
"I can confirm that the two were found dead on Thursday . .
. police are
still investigating the case and we hope we will be able to
account for
those responsible," said Bvudzijena.
However, MDC Member
of Parliament for Matobo Lovemore Moyo immediately
blamed the abduction and
subsequent murder of the two activists on agents of
President Robert
Mugabe's government which he said was out to crush the
opposition and all
dissenting voices ahead of elections next year.
"It is unfortunate that
the government's intolerance of dissenting voices
and its disrespect of the
MDC as an opposition party has led to this (murder
of Ndiweni and Sibanda),"
said Moyo.
Information Minister and government spokesman Sikhanyiso
Ndlovu was not
immediately available for comment on the
matter.
Zimbabwe holds joint presidential and parliamentary elections
next year
which some analysts have warned the government could lose, citing
an acute
economic crisis and food shortages fuelling public discontent
against Mugabe
and his ruling ZANU PF party.
Ndiweni, Sibanda and
three other MDC activists were abducted from their
homes at different times
on May 25 by six armed men who were driving an
unmarked red Toyota Corolla
car that did not have vehicle registration
numbers.
They were taken
to a farm not far from their homes but not the same one were
the bodies of
the two murdered activists were found. For three days, the
opposition
activists were severely assaulted and tortured by their captors
who accused
them of campaigning for the MDC and seeking to topple Mugabe's
government.
The rest of the MDC activists were later released except
for Ndiweni and
Sibanda whose whereabouts remained unknown until their
bodies were found
dumped at a farm.
Ndiweni and Sibanda, aged 39 and
42 respectively at the time of their
deaths, join a growing list of
activists of the opposition murdered by
unknown people - but suspected to be
members of the government's feared
Central Intelligence Organisation - since
the party's formation eight years
ago.
The MDC, which poses the
greatest threat to Mugabe's government in next year's
elections, says state
security agents have abducted scores of its activists
and arrested others on
false charges in a bid to cripple the party ahead of
the polls.
The
Harare administration denies targeting opposition activists for arrest
and
insists anyone suspected of breaking the law is liable to arrest
regardless
of their political affiliation. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Monday 18 June 2007
By
Nqobizitha Khumalo
BULAWAYO - For 35-year Mfundo Dhlamini, the constant
power cuts experienced
by most Zimbabweans around the country over the past
few months have proved
to be a real godsend.
At his modest home in
Bulawayo's working class suburb of Pumula South, a few
customers are milling
outside waiting to buy some gel stoves that he imports
from neighbouring
Botswana and South Africa.
A severe power crisis, that has seen some
homes go for more than 10 hours
without electricity, has seen the gel stove
sell like hot cakes in some
suburbs of Bulawayo.
"The stoves are
popular because they do not emit any smoke. Most households
here are buying
these stoves as they do not have to resort to using firewood
which is now
very expensive," says Dlamini.
At a modest Z$500 000 per unit and Z$75
000 for a satchet of gel that is
used to power the stoves, the gel stove has
proved to be quite convenient
for most households that are too poor to
install generators in their homes.
"The stove is cheaper than using
firewood when cooking because a bundle of
firewood that is used for cooking
a single meal costs $60 000 while with the
gel stove you can cook up to
fifteen times using one satchet of gel," said
Dlamini.
Esnath Moyo, a
33-year old mother of three who is a neighbour to Dlamini,
purchased one of
the gel stoves and had nothing but praise for the gadget.
"Before we
bought the stove, we were relying on firewood to prepare our
meals. But now
even when there is a drizzle outside, one can still cook
comfortably inside
the house without worrying about smoke," said Moyo.
Zimbabwe is in the
grip of a severe economic crisis that has manifested
itself in rampant
inflation of over 4 500 percent and severe power
shortages.
The
cash-strapped Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) has been
switching off power supplies to some suburbs around the country for as long
as 10 hours on end in a bid to ration the little that is
available.
The power crisis is only one among a long list of hardships
that Zimbabweans
have become accustomed to as the southern African country
grapples with a
severe economic crisis described by the World Bank as the
worst in the world
outside a war zone.
It is however in this highly
depressing economic environment that Dhlamini,
who was laid off soon after
Zimbabwe's economic crisis began in earnest
around 2000, has cut his own
niche.
"Business has never been this good because nobody wants to use
firewood and
paraffin anymore," he says with a chuckle.
"There are
lots of opportunities to expand this business and I am actually
overwhelmed
by some business orders. I am now planning to expand the
business to some
areas as far as Victoria Falls and Hwange."
Dlamini says he has over the
past two months generated a profit of about Z$5
billion, money that he never
dreamt he would make when he was still formally
employed some seven years
ago.
A sleek Toyota Corolla parked in his yard seemed to confirm his
new-found
status amid the rubbles of poverty in Pumula.
Respected
economist John Robertson said the gel stove was probably the only
reasonable
energy option for hard-pressed Zimbabweans as the indiscriminate
cutting
down of firewood had a detrimental effect on the environment.
"The gel
stove is a good option in the current circumstances as paraffin is
expensive
and causes pollution. Firewood poachers have also caused great
damage to the
environment particularly in areas around Harare," said
Robertson. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
Monday 18 June 2007
By Wayne Mafaro
HARARE -
Zimbabwean police were on Sunday still detaining a South
Africa-based
opposition official, Nicholas Nqabutho Dube, who was arrested
last Friday
for being in possession of a passport belonging to Movement for
Democratic
Change (MDC) leader Arthur Mutambara.
Gabriel Chaibva, the spokesperson
for the Mutambara-led MDC, said Dube was
still in police custody with the
opposition leader also still stranded in
South Africa as the police had
refused to release his passport.
"Police have refused to release Dube as
well as Mutambara's passport despite
consenting to do so before Justice
Felistas Chitakunye on Saturday. The
Attorney General's office had also
consented to Dube's release," said
Chaibva.
Chaibva said the police
had however refused to execute the consent order
saying only senior police
inspectors Mabunda and Bothwell Mugariri could do
so.
Mabunda and
Mugariri were however said to have claimed to be out of town and
would only
be back in Harare today.
Dube was arrested on Friday after he was found
in possession of Mutambara's
passport.
Mutambara, who was due to
leave for the United Kingdom on Saturday, had sent
Dube with his passport to
the British High Commission in Harare to
facilitate the issuance of a visa
to enable him to travel to Britain.
Sources within the MDC said Mutambara
was due to travel to the UK together
with Morgan Tsvangirai and other
opposition leaders to drum up support for a
negotiated solution to
Zimbabwe's seven-year old political crisis. -
ZimOnline
17 June 2007
By
Fortune Tazvida
Five men have been arrested and charged with treason for
allegedly planning
a military coup to topple President Robert Mugabe.
According to court papers
all 5 deny the charges and appeared before a
Harare Judge on Friday whilst
applying for bail. The court denied them bail
and postponed the case to 22
June.
Military analysts who spoke to
Nehanda Radio however say the entire case
leaks like a sieve and might be
another pre-emptive strike by Mugabe to
flush out perceived political
opponents he does not trust. State prosecutors
said the group wanted to
replace Mugabe with former intelligence supremo
Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is
the current Rural Housing and Social Amenities
Minister. Former soldier and
coup plot leader Albert Matapo would have
become Prime Minister.
The
facts however do not stack up. Mnangagwa has not been arrested despite
being
fingered in the plot. Other reports had claimed former army general
Solomon
Mujuru was under house arrest and was the chief architect of the
coup plot.
That, analysts say is the precise problem. Mujuru and Mnangagwa
lead two
rival Zanu PF factions wrestling for control should Mugabe step
down. It is
highly unlikely they could engineer a joint coup and this leaves
room for
the theory Mugabe does not trust both of them and needed a plot to
flush out
any secret plans either camp might have been harbouring.
Mnangagwa has
meanwhile arrogantly told local newspapers that the coup plot
link to him
was 'stupid'. The state charge sheet says, 'The accused wanted
to use
soldiers to take over the government and all camps, and be in control
of the
nation after which he (Matapo) would announce to the nation that he
was in
control of the government and would invite the Minister Mnangagwa and
the
service chiefs to form a government.' The military coup is said to have
been
planned way back in June 2006.
Defence lawyer Jonathan Samkange however
says all five were arrested early
this month during a meeting that intended
to form a political party. 'They
are denying the charges because as far as
they are concerned they never
plotted a coup but were in the process of
forming a legitimate political
party," Samkange told journalists. The five
arrested face the death penalty
if convicted.
Nehanda Radio:
Zimbabwe's first 24 hour internet radio news channel.
Financial Times
By
Alec Russell in Johannesburg
Published: June 17 2007 18:45 | Last
updated: June 17 2007 18:45
Long-awaited talks between Zimbabwe's ruling
party and the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change were overshadowed on
Sunday by speculation of
an intensification of infighting in President
Robert Mugabe's inner circle.
After two false starts, delegates from the
two factions of the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change and Mr
Mugabe's Zanu-PF met in South Africa
to discuss Zimbabwe's political and
economic crisis.
These were the first substantive talks between the two
parties since an
abortive mediation effort four years ago, and reflected a
new drive by South
Africa to make tangible progress in their mediation
attempts.
But greater drama appeared to be taking place across the
northern border in
Zimbabwe, where the capital, Harare, and the second city,
Bulawayo, were
rife with rumours of fresh turmoil within
Zanu-PF.
Five men including a former army officer, Albert Matapo, were
charged with
treason late last week accused of plotting to overthrow Mr
Mugabe, it
emerged over the weekend. They deny the charges and are due to
appear in
court again on Friday.
During the initial hearing
prosecutors said the plotters planned to install
Emmerson Mnangagwa, a
senior cabinet minister who heads one of two factions
vying to replace Mr
Mugabe, as president and that Mr Matapo would have been
prime
minister.
The allegation, ridiculed by Mr Mnangagwa in a comment to a
local newspaper,
has fuelled a febrile atmosphere in Harare that is rife
with unsubstantiated
rumours that senior Zanu-PF officials are under house
arrest.
Analysts speculated the coup allegation could have been part of
an attempt
by the second Zanu-PF faction, which is led by Joyce Mujuru,
vice-president,
and her husband General Solomon Mujuru, a former army
commander, to
undermine Mr Mnangagwa's position, or indeed a ploy by Mr
Mugabe to
wrong-foot would-be successors.
The accused's lawyer,
Jonathan Samkange, told Reuters news agency that the
five had been detained
two weeks ago while holding a meeting to form a
political party, and were
not plotting to topple the 83-year-old president.
The reports reinforced
the impression in South Africa that the future of
Zimbabwe, which is in
turmoil with inflation widely believed to be far more
than the official rate
of 3,700 per cent, may be decided within Zanu-PF and
not at the mediation
talks.
Arthur Mutambara, the leader of one of the MDC's two wings, last
night
expressed doubt that Mr Mugabe's negotiators were doing more than
going
through the motions. Earlier in the weekend Zimbabwean officials
confiscated
Mr Mutambara's passport, preventing him from going on a tour to
Europe to
raise support for the MDC. "It shows Mr Mugabe is not serious
about
dialogue," he told the Financial Times. "He is negotiating in bad
faith."
A senior South African cabinet minister backed the idea that the
spark for
change would come from within Zanu-PF and not the MDC. But he
cautioned
that, short of a coup, the crisis could continue, with Mr Mugabe
in control
for several more years.
Monsters and Critics
Jun 17, 2007, 13:03 GMT
Harare - Independent
press reports in crisis-hit Zimbabwe Sunday claimed the
annual inflation
rate had hit a record high of 4,530 per cent, but the
authorities still
refuse to make an official announcement.
Leaked figures from the official
Central Statistical Office (CSO) showed the
annual inflation rate jumped to
4,530 per cent in May from 3,713.9 per cent
in April, the privately-owned
Standard newspaper said.
The paper said the CSO would not explain why it
had not yet released the
figures, a week after they were
due.
Zimbabwe's inflation figures are supposed to be announced on the
10th of
each month, give or take a day for weekends.
'I will not
announce when we will announce the figures,' CSO acting director
Moffat
Nyoni told the newspaper.
Zimbabwe's inflation has been on a relentless
upward climb since the turn of
the century, causing President Robert
Mugabe's government intense
embarrassment.
Critics blame the economic
crisis on Mugabe's controversial policies,
including his takeover of
thousands of white-owned farms in the last seven
years.
But Mugabe
insists the crisis is a result of Western sanctions. Britain, the
European
Union, the United States and other Western nations have imposed
travel bans
and asset freezes on Mugabe and more than 100 members of
Zimbabwe's ruling
elite.
This is not the first time the release of inflation data has been
inexplicably delayed, leading to accusations of attempted cover-ups by the
government.
Month-on-month inflation slipped to 55.4 per cent in May,
down from 100.7
per cent in April, the Standard reported.
© 2007 dpa
- Deutsche Presse-Agentur
africasia.com
HARARE, June 17 (AFP)
Zimbabwean schoolteacher Sylvia Ngandu is
unapolegetic about juggling her
responsibilities in the classroom with her
other job selling fruit and
vegetables in order to make ends
meet.
"At first the school head threatened me with suspension for
bringing stuff
to sell during work hours," says Ngandu as she describes her
'remote
control' method of teaching at a primary school near
Harare.
"But he stopped bothering me when I told him I was doing it to
raise my bus
fare to come to work or else I would stop coming to work as
soon as my
salary ran out."
Ngandu says she goes to the marketplace
every morning to buy merchandise for
the day before proceeding to
work.
After leaving their class with work to do for the day or assigning
a
12-year-old prefect to take charge, she then pops out to do a job that
used
to be derided as only fit for semi-literate women and school
dropouts.
"I sell anything from apples to bananas and oranges," she
adds.
With world-record inflation now perched at over 3,000 percent and
wages
perpetually lagging behind spiralling prices of basic foodstuffs,
stories
such as Ngandu's are becoming ever more commonplace.
As the
saying goes, most Zimbabweans are going to work to "steal or
deal."
"Deals are a way of life these days / you don't rely on your
salary alone,"
according to the lyrics of a popular song.
The cost of
basic foodstuffs and services required monthly by a family of
five was
estimated at 1.7 million Zimbabwean dollars in March. The monthly
salary for
an average urban worker ranges from 90,000 dollars -- not enough
to buy a
two-litre bottle of cooking oil -- 500,000 dollars.
The price of a
10-kilogramme packet of the staple maize meal is 114,000
Zimbabwean dollars
and a loaf of bread costs 18,000 dollars.
It's not uncommon therefore to
visit an office where the receptionist pulls
a bag from under his or her
desk to display goods they are selling.
The office workers-cum-small-time
traders sell anything from second hand
clothes or scarce commodities like
sugar and cooking oil, and often have a
credit facility for their
colleagues.
Others double as cross-border traders and street vendors over
weekends and
holidays or, like Tatenda Nyati, an IT specialist with a
construction
hardware firm, work on a freelance basis after office hours and
at weekends.
"I found my salary was no longer enough to cover all my
expenses for things
like food, transport, clothes as well as support my
siblings as required
under our customs so I started my own company," Nyati
said.
"I sell computer hardware and I am hired during weekends to do
maintenance
work for other companies. I find I earn more money on a single
weekend
contract that I earn from my real job."
The Zimbabwe Congress
of Trade Unions (ZCTU) says wages are so low that
employers could be said to
be enjoying slave labour.
"Workers are subsidising their employers
through finding other sources of
income to raise bus fare," ZCTU president
Lovemore Matombo told workers at
last month's May Day celebrations in
Harare.
Independent economist Daniel Ndhlela said that while individuals
appear to
benefit from moonlighting, the practice is hurting an economy
already
saddled with a battery of woes including dwindling investment and
low
production as input costs shoot through the roof.
"At the
national level, there is disaster," Ndlela told AFP.
"We are down 20 to
30 percent in efficiency both in the public and private
sector because
employees are doing other things and the national product is
going down as
well.
"Formal employment is not paying so everyone is dealing outside in
order to
survive. We have become vendors of Chinese products while our
factories and
our factories are suffering as a result."
Zimbabwe's
economy has been on the decline since the turn of the century,
with four out
of five people unemployed and 80 percent of country's 13
million population
classified as poor.
Apart from doing extra jobs most families resort to
skipping meals and many
walk or cycle up to 30 kilometres (19 miles) to work
in order to stretch
their income to the next payday.
For most
families milk for their tea, margarine and jam have become luxuries
and a
square meal is a rare treat.
Langton Bhowa, a security guard in the
upmarket Avenues section of Harare,
says the state of the economy makes it
imperative to earn a bit on the side.
"I make an additional 450,000
dollars a month from selling cigarettes and
mobile phone recharge cards to
passers-by," he says.
"That is more than double my salary of 200,000 a
month and that is how I
manage to come to work everyday."
Zimbabwejournalists.com
17th Jun 2007 18:33 GMT
By Chenjerai Chitsaru
YEARS ago,
before the land reform programme swung into its present format of
performing
with distinction on television and nowhere else, a very senior
politician
acquired a huge swathe of land in Mashonaland Central.
He performed this
feat with the help of a loan from.let us just say.the
government. After what
most people believed to be a decent period, there
were questions of
accounting, not in terms of money, but in terms of
performance.
The
project was a disaster, although nobody lower in rank that the senior
politician, could pronounce this publicly. There is a very high price to be
paid for this sort of iconoclasm in Zanu PF. It was then the politician
asked for more money to continue where he had left off -which was precisely
nowhere.
Someone leaked this vital news to an independent newspaper,
which ran the
story. There followed frantic efforts to deny anything of the
sort had
happened, followed by the almost ritualistic condemnation of a
media in the
pay of the imperialists.
The brief lesson is that
politicians make the worst farmers. There is much
evidence that this vital
lesson has not been taken to heart by the
politicians: they continue to
insist that, particularly at this moment in
our lack of development on the
land, they make the best farmers.
In pursuit of this stubborn ideology,
President Robert Mugabe recently
presided over the colourful unveiling of
the distribution of many, many
tractors and harvesters to .more politicians.
There were a few genuine
farmers, to be sure, but they were far outnumbered
by the politicians.
A brief history: throughout the region, Zimbabweans
are well-known for their
absolute obsession with hard work, particularly on
the land. There may not
be meticulous method to their work on the land, but
they have been known to
put so much labour into it, even the land has
apparently, even grudgingly,
had to acknowledge this by yielding bumper
crops, even if that is mostly
maize.
Most such farmers have not
turned into politicians, chiefly, I believe,
because they are skeptical of
achieving good harvests when all you have
invested are just words and more
words.
There are no statistics readily available, but it would not
surprise me if
we were told that, in Zimbabwe today, there are more
political farmers than
there are farming politicians - if you assume that
there is a vast
difference between the two.
There is no need to point
out that the political farmers are mostly members
of Zanu PF, that the few
MDC farmers were probably conned into it and have
been regretting it ever
since.
Moreover, Mugabe's attempts to sound conciliatory at the
aforementioned
ceremony in Harare fell flat on its face when some of the MDC
members, among
them Arthur Mutambara, snorted back with "what balderdash!"
or words to that
effect.
It did sound as if Mugabe was getting
increasingly desperate to present an
image of the elder statesman in his
relationships with the MDC and its
leadership. From his usual "Go hang!"
reaction he sounded, at the ceremony
in Harare, as if he could actually sup
with the MDC leaders - and not throw
up.
Incidentally, Mugabe
himself, a teacher almost his whole adult life before
turning to politics,
is now a farmer - and a successful one at that, if we
are to believe what he
himself has said.
His wife, the former State House secretary, is also a
farmer. I am not sure
that they deserve to be called farmers: they may
indeed own vast pieces of
land on which crops are grown, but are they real
farmers or just the sort of
Zimbabwean version of "the landed
gentry"?
So, most of the people on whom the country will rely to grow its
food are
politicians, and a selection of bankers, including Gideon Gono.
Most of
these people were not farmers before they became politicians or
bankers or
whatever else they were before the land reform fiasco provided
them with
this golden opportunity to strike it rich as gentleman or lady
farmers.
There could be real farmers out there, people not affiliated to
Zanu PF,
non-politicians and people who can work miracles on the land, with
their
green thumbs. Unfortunately, because of the fixation in Zanu PF with
party
propaganda, such people would not be given publicity on public
television:
what value would they be if there was no opportunity to say they
owed their
success to the party?
The tragedy of Zimbabwe lies in a
group of people in love with their own
propaganda. For some reason, they
believe that their path is right or even
righteous.
So, even when the
European Union refuses Forbes Magadu a visa to travel to
Europe for a
meeting at which other African countries will attend, they
express
consternation: how dare you?
Even when John Howard said he would not
allow the Australian cricket team to
tour Zimbabwe, they were aghast - or
seemingly so. Howard has always been a
hardliner as far as Zimbabwe is
concerned. Mugabe called him a racist a long
time ago; he was determined to
pay him back for that insult.
Two victories - at the United Nations and
at the African Development
Bank-Chinese government conference in Shanghai -
seemed to make the
government believe they had turned a corner.
Yet
they seem to have this great talent for not being able to look beyond
their
noses: if their human rights had been even only slightly more humane
than
they are today, they would have former allies lining up to help them
implement their land reform programme with a chance of success.
They
would not have had to rely on political farmers, top officials of Zanu
PF
with only enough farming know-how to fill a thimble. Even as
resource-endowed beneficiaries they have made little difference to our food
security.
And if that is not what the land reform programme was
intended to achieve,
then what is the fuss about?
A number of critics
of the critics of the land reform programme have
challenged the so-called
detractors to offer any viable alternatives to what
the government has done
or is continuing to do.
Well, here is one: let real farmers farm on the
land. Let people who have
knowledge about the way of the earth till the
land. For once, stop insisting
on introducing a racist element in the
allocation of land. Stop harping on
the need to redress the imbalances of
the past.
Nobody in their right mind disputes this. What has to be looked
at is
Zimbabwe in the new millennium. A few short years ago, Zimbabwe could
feed
itself and sell the surplus for precious foreign currency. Its people
lived
well, the infrastructure in the country worked well, the currency was
robust
and well-respected all over the world.
All that was
eliminated, not by an unavoidable act of war, but by politics
of expediency.
The country has suffered enormously and may take years to
recover.
There
are no statistics on the number of people killed as a direct result of
that
political inebriation; but there must have been deaths attributable to
this
madness.
What Zimbabwe must look forward to is the replacement of the
present crop of
"liberation" leaders by citizens who believe that governance
is about people
and not just politics or political advantage.
In most
African countries today, politics has little to do with the ordinary
people.
It's a game played by politicians, people who are mostly interested
in
scoring points, never mind how many innocent lives are lost in the
process.
For Zimbabwe, it must be particularly painful that, instead
of insisting on
the land being worked by real farmers with little or not
interest in
politics, the government decided to give the advantage to the
political
farmers.
This is a lesson which future generations could
ignore only at their country's
peril.
The Southern
African
Sunday, 17 June 2007
TORONTO - The Save Zimbabwe
Campaign (SZC), an umbrella body under
which opposition forces and civic
organisations in Zimbabwe rally, has
organised rallies to be addressed by
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
leaders in England and Canada.
According to London-based pressure group, Zimbabwe Vigil, both leaders
of
the two factions of MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara are
scheduled to travel together to the two western countries starting in London
on Thursday until Saturday and proceeding to Canada next week.
It is not clear what messages the two leaders will convey to exiled
Zimbabweans, but with preparations for next year's joint presidential and
parliamentary elections already underway, it is safe to assume the two will
be seeking support from the exiles.
In turn exiled Zimbabweans,
whose strength is estimated at between 3
and 4 million scattered all over
the world, want to be allowed to vote and
this would probably be their main
message to the MDC leaders.
Zimbabwe Vigil says Tsvangirai and
Mutambara will be accompanied by
Christian Alliance convenor, Levee Kadenge;
National Constitutional Assembly
chairperson, Lovemore Madhuku; Zapu Party
leader, Paul Siwela and Zimbabwe
National Students' Union president, Promise
Mkwananzi.
The SZC came into prominence in March when it organised
a prayer
meeting that resulted in the police arresting and torturing
Tsvangirai and
other opposition leaders.
The torture was
condemned worldwide and brought more global awareness
of the Zimbabwe
political and economic crisis.
It led to an emergency summit of
Southern Africa Development Community
leaders after which South African
president, Thabo Mbeki was chosen to
mediate between President Robert
Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF and the MDC, in
hope to stave off a civil unrest
that could spill into the region.
The talks have been progressing
slowly against a tight deadline of
March 2008 when a free and fair election
is supposed to be held under terms
agreed by both parties.
President Mugabe has refused efforts by the opposition and other
players to
have the elections moved further into 2008 to allow more time for
the talks,
arguing that his party is ready for elections anytime and the MDC
should
also be ready if it is a serious political force.
OhMyNews
In some
areas of Zimbabwe, gender disparities help fuel misinformation
about
HIV
Fungai Rufaro Machirori
Published 2007-06-17 10:10
(KST)
One thought-provoking saying reads, "Emancipation from the bondage
of the
soil is no freedom for the tree." What this means is that while a tree
might
seem shackled to the ground by its root connections -- and
therefore
imprisoned by the earth -- uprooting it from the soil will not
liberate it,
but rather ironically, kill it.
And as with the tree and
the soil, there are many symbiotic relationships,
at times restrictive, yet
also life giving. The relationship between a
culture and its people is one.
Culture offers life-sustaining and defining
elements -- a sense of identity,
belonging, a common and collective
understanding of values and traditions, a
history, a present, and, of
course, a future. And though there are always
contentious matters to be
dealt with within different cultural groupings,
"uprooting" people from
their cultures often renders them lost, and therefore
dead.
Recently, the Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information
Dissemination
Service, in collaboration with the Seke Rural Home Based Care
Project,
engaged the inhabitants of Seke in a dialogue project to discuss how
culture
and gender relations were helping to perpetuate the spread of HIV and
AIDS
in that area. Seke is a rural Shona community 45 kilometers southeast
of
Zimbabwe's capital city, Harare.
Rather than try to provide
solutions to the rate of HIV spread in the area
to the exclusion of culture
and cultural practices, the project was carried
out as a way of trying to
discover how emancipation from certain
gender-biased cultural norms could
help to make this community's culture
more accommodative and adaptable to all
its people. This, it was hoped,
would provide concrete solutions to curbing
the spread of HIV and AIDS
within the Seke rural community.
The
meetings, held in two phases between November 2006 and March 2007,
were
structured in a way that ensured that both men and women were able to
air
their opinions in a free and conducive environment, by holding
separate
discussions for each of the gender groups. At the end of each phase,
a
report-back meeting was held in order to review the suggestions and
comments
made in the gender-specific discussions.
The results of the
discussions were telling. The men, who were generally
conservative in their
thinking, advocated a complete return to what they
termed "our culture" to
overcome HIV and AIDS, while the women felt strongly
that their marginalized
status would change and HIV infection rates decline
through a departure from
certain cultural practices.
Among the over 60 male participants, there
was a widely held perception that
the law was a Western imposition and an
obstacle to people fully practicing
their culture.
"Laws don't mean
anything because the government doesn't understand our
culture," declared one
of the participants. The culture that the men
referred to incorporates
practices such as wife inheritance, appeasement of
spirits through the
pledging of young girls, female virginity testing and
polygamy -- most of
which are outlawed by Zimbabwe's formal legal system.
And for good
reasons are these practices illegal. Not only do they have a
severe bearing
on the ability of women to enjoy equal status within their
communities and
societies, but they also rob them of the ability to ensure
their security
from abuse -- physical and psychological -- and exposure to
the risk of HIV
infection.
Take, for instance, the practice known in Shona as kuripira
ngozi -
appeasement of angered spirits through the offering of a young virgin
girl
to the aggrieved family as compensation. In the Shona culture, an
angry
spirit is not easily appeased. The "unsettled" spirit of a man or
woman
(murdered or ill-treated in life) may return to claim the lives of
the
transgressor, or the transgressor's family members. Fearing
such
consequences, the wrongdoer might offer a virgin girl as a wife for
the
deceased's family. Girls as young as 10 years old have been used for
this
custom.
The trauma of being permanently removed from her family
and the shock of her
new sexual responsibilities combine to make this
practice insensitive and
completely gender-biased. Not only is it a total
denial of the rights of the
girl child, but it exposes innocent girls to the
risk of HIV infection, for
it is not a common practice for the sexual partner
to whom the young girl is
being pledged to undergo HIV testing prior to
engaging in sexual relations
with her.
The same usually holds true in
the practice of wife inheritance. If a woman
is widowed and offered to her
deceased husband's male relative as a wife,
she is often not afforded the
right to demand to know this relative's HIV
status. In such cases, the role
of lobola -- bride price -- in conveying
ownership of a woman by the male's
family often puts paid to this, as she
cannot make nay decisions contrary to
those that have been made on her
behalf.
One male participant offered
his view of the current status of women pushing
for equal rights with more
than a hint of sarcasm: "At one time, many women
held a global conference in
Beijing to declare their independence from men.
Why can't we have our own
conference as men and declare a return to culture.
Let us stop this
nonsense!"
With such staunch male attitudes on the role that culture
should play, it
was a complete turn of opinion to hear the women speak. While
they
understood the importance of culture, they also showed an understanding
of
its practices that were subordinating women.
"Traditional healers
teach people that if you have sex with a young girl,
you will be cured of
AIDS," said one woman. "Unfortunately, when a girl is
raped, she will in turn
infect her future partner." Implicit in this
observation is that the cultural
practice of having sex with a virgin to
cure HIV does not work, and is
instead helping to fuel the spread of HIV.
In this safe atmosphere where
there was no fear of rebuke, the women aired
their sentiments freely,
advocating more access to HIV testing and freer
channels of communication
between themselves and their men to broach such
subjects. One participant
stated how dangerous it was to negotiate for safer
sex with a husband. "You
can talk about everything else except bedroom
issues," she noted. "You can't
talk sex -- you just have sex as he wishes
every time." To this, the over 80
participants offered a deafening round of
applause.
Further, the women
also noted that culture discourages them from seeking
protective measures
from such abusive subordination. They noted that divorce
was not often a
plausible solution to their problem because as one
participant noted, "Your
husband will tell you that you can't refuse to have
sex because he paid
lobola for you."
This group of women reflected a yearning for equality as
well as an
understanding of a loss of control over their sexual and
reproductive health
rights -- a problem exacerbated by their lack of social
and economic
leverage.
In general, however, these women were not
seeking total abandonment of the
culture that they have been reared in, but
rather a way of incorporating
progressive policies and legislation into
culture in order to make cultural
practices truly reflective and
accommodative of all. With a tree that finds
itself in soils that are too
acidic, the solution is not to pull its roots
out of the earth, but rather to
correct the soil's balance through the
addition of corrective nutrients. The
same principle applied to the Seke
rural community's report-back meeting
where it was finally agreed that
compromises needed to be made in terms of
countering certain inhibitive
cultural practices.
Testing was to be
encouraged prior to wife inheritance and husbands and
wives were encouraged
to be more open with each other on sexual issues.
Also, it was agreed among
the men and women that pledging very young girls
for appeasement should be
avoided.
Condom use in marriages was reluctantly accepted by the
men.
"How can I use condoms on my own wife?" one man admonished. "I will
not use
condoms because we trust each other." At this, a roar of approval
erupted
from a number of men in the audience, while the women remained
silent, but
visibly concerned.
For the residents of Seke, particularly
the women, it seems that a
modification of culture and the emancipation from
the bondage of certain
gender-biased practices is a necessity for building an
AIDS-free
community -- otherwise, they will continue to suffer under the yoke
of
discriminatory views and opinions.
From The Sunday Times (SA), 17 June
Sechaba Ka'Nkosi, Nashira Davids, Bobby Jordan and Biénne
Huisman
South African law enforcers have put hundreds of wealthy
individuals under
surveillance for suspected abalone poaching. An
intelligence report claims
that while several kingpins have been identified,
there are hundreds of
divers, professional people and law-enforcement
officials helping them
smuggle abalone to East Asia. The report, drafted by
the country's leading
anti-crime authorities, says the South Africans
involved in the illegal
trade have raked in as much as R3-billion a year in
dodgy deals with the
Triads. Abalone, known locally as perlemoen, is being
harvested along the
Eastern and Western Cape coastlines and smuggled out of
the country in
exchange for drugs and cash. The report - compiled by
agencies including the
Scorpions, the National Intelligence Agency, the SA
Police Service and the
SA Revenue Service - says most of the suspects live
lavishly and own
smallholdings and properties in affluent suburbs such as
Dainfern, Sandton
and Bedfordview in Gauteng, Bishopscourt and Kleinbos in
Cape Town, and Mill
Park in Port Elizabeth.
They include Chinese
nationals who have permanent residence in South Africa,
Cape Flats gangs and
members of the apartheid-era security forces. Many live
in high-security
housing complexes and use restaurants and import-export
companies to front
their illegal trade. "SAPS and SANDF [Defence Force]
vehicles and SAPS
radios have been used in the Eastern Cape as escorts and
sometimes to load
and transport abalone from the sea to storage facilities,"
the report says.
The criminal gangs have electronic countermeasures
equipment. Bribes have
even been offered to members of the Scorpions, it
says. The National
Prosecuting Authority refused to comment on the report,
but SARS said the
crackdown was part of a campaign to improve tax compliance
in the country.
"SARS involvement is to support other law enforcement
agencies in combating
illicit abalone in the country," said spokesman Adrian
Lackay. "The industry
is closely linked to other syndicated crimes such as
money-laundering and
drug- trafficking."
The report claims the suspects under surveillance
acquired large sums of
money and invested extensively in assets. "The money
is also used to buy
vehicles and property registered in the names of friends
and family members,
boats, scuba-diving supplies, transportation and the
payment of bribes to
corrupt SAPS and MCM [Marine and Coastal Management]
officials," says the
document. Among individuals already facing prosecution
for dealing in
abalone is flamboyant alleged Cape Flats gang boss Quinton
Marinus, arrested
in 2004 with his wife and several others on 108 charges
including murder,
money-laundering and abalone- smuggling. The report claims
he had close ties
with Chinese citizens. An affidavit by police
investigating officer Captain
Christiaan Rossouw pinpoints dates and times
when Marinus met up with
Chinese nationals to discuss abalone deals. On one
occasion, he was given a
box containing "fattening pills", which allegedly
turned out to be 12000
Mandrax tablets. Marinus's trial is set to continue
next year.
MCM spokesman Carol Moses said abalone poaching was
"mostly linked to
organised crime and syndicates". In one of the biggest
busts ever, four
shipping containers packed with 150000 abalone worth more
than R11-million
were repatriated from Malaysia and Singapore in November
last year. The
renewed poaching crackdown comes days after the Wall Street
Journal warned
that Western Cape gangs had become crucial to the expansion
of the
methamphetamine trade internationally. The newspaper said gangs
obtained
drugs or ingredients used to make them from Chinese sources in
exchange for
poached abalone. About 98% of South Africa's methamphetamine
addicts live in
Cape Town, regarded as the "tik capital of South Africa".
The intelligence
report claims that the mushrooming of the abalone industry
has had a direct
impact on other crimes. Charles Goredema, head of the
Organised Crime and
Money Laundering Programme at the Institute of Security
Studies, said the
Triads, well organised and difficult to detect, were
implicated in a broad
range of criminal activities. "This is where
collaborative links, either
with fellow criminal enterprises or with
corrupted bureaucrats, are useful,"
he said. "There is evidence of merchant
shipping that plies the routes
between South Africa, the East African
coastline and East Asia being used in
the case of dried abalone. There are
also indications of air transportation
of abalone through Swaziland and
Zimbabwe."
17 June 2007
By
Staff Reporter
Days after Vice President Joseph Msika gave his backing to
the underfire
national team coach, Charles Mhlauri now finds himself within
the eye of
another storm. He is facing accusations he fitted a number plate
from his
BMW vehicle onto a Mercedes Benz C Class he recently imported, in
order to
avoid paying import duty.
The Mercedes is yet to be
registered in Zimbabwe but the BMW was crashed by
the coach in March as he
travelled to South Africa. Its alleged Mhlauri then
took the number plate
from the crashed car and fitted it on the new
Mercedes. The car was imported
2 months ago and coincided with the
introduction of a new government
directive requiring the payment of import
duty for luxury items in foreign
currency.
Press reports say Mhaluri tried to convince revenue authorities
that because
he was national team coach he was entitiled to import the
vehicle duty free.
Officials at the border gave him the benefit of the doubt
but insisted he
provide evidence within 14 days of the car entering the
country that he was
entitled to the facility. He failed to get a letter from
football
association (ZIFA) proving his claim. The issue has been unresolved
for some
time but this has not stopped the dreadlocked coach from driving
the
unregistered and uninsured vehicle on the streets of
Harare.
Police spokesperson Chief Superintendent Oliver Mandipaka told a
state media
newspaper, "A car should have proper documentation and needs to
be cleared
by both the police and the CVR to have its own number plates," A
high-ranking official from the Central Vehicle Registry said: "A car should
be properly registered with the CVR and a validation sticker has to be
attached on the windscreen." Mhlauri has meanwhile denied the allegations
saying, 'That's news to me. I never did that. It's a serious offence and how
can a person of my status do such a thing? "Of late, people have been
plotting my downfall and that might be one of the ploys. People are doing
all sorts of things to tarnish my reputation," he said.
Nehanda
Radio: Zimbabwe's first 24 hour internet radio news channel.
International Herald Tribune
The Associated PressPublished:
June 17, 2007
BIRMINGHAM, England: Graeme Hick became the 16th
player to pass 40,000 runs
in first-class cricket on Sunday, and the first
since Graham Gooch 13 years
ago.
The Zimbabwe-born batsman, who
played 65 tests for England, hit 49 for
Worcestershire against Warwickshire
at Edgbaston to pass the landmark in his
841st innings.
The
41-year-old Hick has been playing in English cricket for Worcestershire
since 1983 and, despite his failure to make an impact in tests, passed
numerous domestic landmarks throughout his career.
Before his highest
score of 405 against Somerset in 1988, he became the
youngest player to
reach 2,000 runs in a season in '86. He took a record low
179 innings to
reach 10,000 in county cricket.
Hick scored only 3,383 runs in 114 test
innings for a modest average of
31.32 with just six
centuries.
Jack Hobbs has the record number of first-class runs with
61,237 between
1905-34, and is the only player to pass 60,000.
Thunder and lightning after a sunny
"Trooping the Colour", the annual
military parade and march-past for the
Queen's official birthday, which is
held close to the Vigil. So there were
even more visitors about than usual
while the weather over London became
more threatening. But we put up our
tarpaulin and a day of sudden weather
changes ended brightly. Vigil
supporters were buoyed up by a general feeling
drawn from contacts at home
that the situation in Zimbabwe is reaching a
resolution.
We were pleased to be able to display new copies of our
tattered banners "No
to Mugabe, No to Starvation" and "End Murder, Rape and
Torture in Zimbabwe".
We are grateful to Addley for her painstaking work in
making replacements
for the banners that have been worn out in our 5 years
of protest outside
the Embassy.
Apart from these banners, passers-by
would have seen posters with newspaper
headlines "Prison Zimbabwe" and
"There is no Freedom without Sacrifice".
This last is a quotation from
Morgan Tsvangirai who is to speak at a meeting
in Luton next Saturday. Many
Vigil supporters hope to attend but of course
the Vigil will be held as
usual.
Drawn by the thrilling music, we were joined by a Nigerian friend
who said
how much he wished to carry the passion of the Vigil back to his
own country
to show how Africans in the UK can campaign. We were pleased to
have people
from all over the place as usual: six from as far away as
Glasgow, others
from Huddersfield, Sheffield, Liverpool and Devon and big
groups from
Southampton, Crawley and Southend. There were 20 first timers
today.
Towards the end of the Vigil we were joined by people who had
attended a
Zimbabwe Youth Forum elsewhere in London. They reported a
successful
meeting.
After the Vigil, women supporters went on to hold
a meeting to set up a
women's group. There was a feeling that there are a
lot of issues where
women can make a crucial difference, such as raising
funds to help those
back home and destitute refugees in this
country.
For this week's Vigil pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/
FOR
THE RECORD: 92 signed the register.
FOR YOUR DIARY:
- Monday,
18th June 2007, 7.30 pm. Central London Zimbabwe Forum.
The speaker is
Philip Chikwiramakomo, co-ordinator of WEZIMBABWE. Phillip
will address the
forum on the potential role of the diaspora in development
in Zimbabwe.
Upstairs at the Theodore Bullfrog pub, 28 John Adam Street,
London WC2
(cross the Strand from the Zimbabwe Embassy, go down a passageway
to John
Adam Street, turn right and you will see the pub).
- Saturday 23rd
June, 1 - 4 pm. Rally for MDC President Morgan
Tsvangirai. Venue: Lewsey
Community Centre, Landrace Road, Luton LU4 0SW.
For help with directions,
contact Racheal Lupafya 07944 040 482, 07960 087
727.
- Saturday,
23rd June, 7 pm - 2 am (no admission after midnight).
ZIMARTS 2007, a
charity music event organised by WEZIMBABWE featuring: Paul
Lunga, Thabani,
Hohodza, Tha Tha Ensemble, Harare, Henry Olonga and Ryan
Koriya. Venue:
University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY (to
find the
venue, check: http://www.ulu.co.uk/content/index.php?page=1302).
For information on tickets: www.wezimbabwe.org.
- Tuesday,
26th June, 6 - 7 pm. SERVICE OF SOLIDARITY WITH TORTURE
SURVIVORS OF
ZIMBABWE on UN International Day in Support of Victims of
Torture organised
by Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Redress, International
Bar Association,
International Rehabilitation Council for Victims of
Torture, Zimbabwe
Association and of course the Zimbabwe Vigil. Venue: St
Paul's Church,
Bedford Street, Covent Garden WC2E 9ED. Main speakers:
Chenjerai Hove, John
Makumbe. All welcome to join the service and
post-service procession to lay
flowers on the steps of the Zimbabwe Embassy.
The service will mirror
similar services in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Between January and March
this year the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum
documented 254 cases of
torture in Zimbabwe.
Vigil co-ordinator
The Vigil, outside the
Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand, London, takes place
every Saturday from 14.00
to 18.00 to protest against gross violations of
human rights by the current
regime in Zimbabwe. The Vigil which started in
October 2002 will continue
until internationally-monitored, free and fair
elections are held in
Zimbabwe. http://www.zimvigil.co.uk