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Peter Tatchell has urged French and Belgian human rights groups to arrest the Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe when he visits those countries next week.

President Mugabe is due to visit the European Commission in Brussels on Monday before travelling to Paris for a meeting with President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday.

Mr Tatchell, from the pressure group OutRage!, made a highly-publicised attempt to make a citizen's arrest on Mr Mugabe in London last year.

The veteran campaigner said: "President Mugabe should be arrested and charged under the 1984 UN Convention against Torture.

"Given the evidence implicating Mugabe in acts of torture, it would be a dereliction of the legal responsibility if he was allowed to visit the countries."

Mr Tatchell, 49, added that he was trying to contact Amnesty International and the French equivalent of the civil rights group Liberty about the matter.

The incident involving Mr Tatchell and members of OutRage! happened on October 30 1999 as the African leader's motorcade left his hotel in Buckingham Gate.

Running out into the road during a protest over the alleged torture of two Zimbabwean journalists, the campaigners forced Mugabe's car to stop.

The campaigner opened the car door and told the African leader, who has referred to homosexuals as worse than pigs or dogs: "President Mugabe, you are under arrest for torture. Torture is a crime under international law."

Mr Tatchell said of the incident: "I grabbed him and put him under citizen's arrest. I think he thought his days were numbered. My only regret is that we did not succeed in arresting Mugabe."

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~The Washington Post (Washington, DC) ran this story on the front
page today - 3 Mar 2001~


The 'Endgame' in Zimbabwe?


HARARE, Zimbabwe, March 2 -- The death threats came from militants who have
not been known to bluff, so Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay called for a meeting
with President Robert Mugabe's vice president. Would the government, Gubbay
asked, provide the highest court in the land with additional security?

 No, the vice president responded. Furthermore, Mugabe was not at all happy
with the court's recent ruling that the government's land reform efforts were
unlawful, nor did he appreciate another verdict in which the court upheld an
opposition party's challenge of last year's election results in some
precincts.

 That exchange nearly a month ago set in motion a chain of events that
culminated today in Gubbay's retirement from the bench, one of the few
government institutions here that has remained free of political interference
since this former British colony won its independence 21 years ago.

 While South Africa and many of Zimbabwe's other neighbors are busy building
the democr!
atic institutions that were neglected or suppressed during decades of white
minority rule, this country of 12 million -- once considered a model of what
Africans could achieve when freed from colonial intrusion -- is
deconstructing a democratic infrastructure assembled in the years since its
first all-races election in 1980.

 "We're in the endgame now," said a Western diplomat here. "These are the
last desperate measures of an imploding regime. It's Mugabe's last stand."

 Crippled by skyrocketing inflation, unemployment and interest rates, shaken
by political violence and harassment directed at the opposition supporters,
"Zimbabwe has become the incredible shrinking African nation," said Welshman
Ncube, an attorney and director general of Zimbabwe's main opposition party,
the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

 "They do not want democracy to take its place, so they shrink it, and the
only question is who is next?" Ncube said. "It was the MDC last month, the
independent p!
ress last week, it is the judges today. They are willing to destroy all the
forces of democracy because all these democratic forms are pointing to one
thing: It's time for them to go."

 Diplomats, political scientists and critics here say Gubbay's effective
ouster is just the latest sign that Mugabe, 77, the only ruler this country
has known, is removing all obstacles to being reelected next year.

 Last month, Mugabe's government deported two foreign journalists whose
reportage had been openly critical of his rule, and starting next week,
Zimbabwe will begin to toughen requirements for reporters to enter the
country.

 Next month, the government will try Mugabe's principal opponent, Morgan
Tsvangirai of the MDC, on charges that he tried to incite political violence
at a campaign rally last year.

 And, claiming that the judiciary is a racially biased relic from Zimbabwe's
colonial past, Mugabe's spokesman and justice minister have said that Gubbay,
who is white, is only the !
first jurist to go: The government plans to replace all five members of the
Supreme Court and nearly a third of the judges sitting on the nation's
next-highest bench, the High Court.

 "They want to create a puppet judiciary," said the MDC's Ncube. "They are
desperate to stay in power, and they don't care how much damage they do to
this country."

 After parliamentary elections last June in which the MDC won nearly half of
120 contested seats despite attacks by supporters of Mugabe's ruling party --
the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) -- in which
more than 30 white farmers and MDC supporters were killed, many Zimbabweans
and the international community had hoped that things would return to normal.

 Instead, political violence -- particularly in the urban townships, which
heavily favored the opposition -- has seemingly escalated.

 "Oh, it is bad now," said one young man who asked to remain anonymous
because he feared retribution. "They come into the !
bars and the [night] clubs and at gunpoint they make everyone lie on the
floor, kicking us and beating us and making us sing ZANU-PF fight songs. I
got kicked in the ribs about a month ago, and I don't go out at night
anymore."

 Mugabe, a Marxist rebel leader who was elected prime minister in Zimbabwe's
first democratic election and became president seven years later, has seen
his popularity both at home and abroad shrivel in recent years, particularly
since he deployed nearly 11,000 troops to neighboring Congo in 1998 to help
defend that country's government from rebel militias financed by Rwanda and
Uganda.

 Mugabe estimates that the war costs roughly $3 million per month, but
diplomatic officials say the price tag is at least triple that amount. The
strain on Zimbabwe's finances, coupled with soaring interest rates, an
unemployment rate approaching 60 percent and a 60 percent annual rate of
inflation, has created the worst economic crisis since independence, said
John Rob!
ertson, an economist here.

 Moreover, the unabated, illegal occupations of white-owned farms last year
by veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war and the ensuing political violence
have hurt two of the country's strongest industries: Farmers expect the size
of their corn harvest this year to be a third smaller than last year, and
tourism last year declined by 60 percent from the previous year.

 "Mugabe has so badly mismanaged the economy that it is incapable of
delivering anything of value," Ncube said.

 Mugabe has blamed the country's economic woes on its white citizens, who
account for less than 1 percent of the population but own 70 percent of the
arable land, which has made land reform Zimbabwe's hot-button political issue
for decades. And he has repeatedly characterized anyone who criticizes his
government as either white racists or their black pawns.

 Gubbay was appointed to the bench in 1977 by Ian Smith, the last
white-minority leader of what was then known as Rhod!
esia. But he made a name for himself during the liberation movement defending
black militia leaders -- including Mugabe's assassinated mentor -- in court.

 But ruling party officials have cast him as a racist whose prejudices led to
the court's finding that government efforts to redistribute white-owned farms
was unconstitutional. Lawmakers last week publicly ridiculed the 69-year-old
judge as a man "who thinks and behaves as if he is the last British governor
in Zimbabwe.

 And one ruling party official, Christopher Mushowe, even accused the judge
of being "infiltrated into Zimbabwe by British intelligence to overthrow the
government." Gubbay arrived in Rhodesia from Britain in 1958.

 In the face of such pressure from Mugabe's party -- and of threats of
violence by the war veterans, the party's most militant allies -- Gubbay told
Vice President Simon Muzenda last month that if the government was unwilling
to protect him and his colleagues on the bench, perhaps he should ret!
ire early.

 At a subsequent meeting, Muzenda told Gubbay again that the government could
not guarantee his safety and reminded him of his threat to quit. The chief
justice agreed to retire in June, but the government insisted that he agreed
to quit immediately and announced that a successor was prepared to replace
him this week.

 Under Zimbabwe's constitution, a Supreme Court judge can only be replaced by
a tribunal appointed by the president at the request of the chief judge, said
Greg Linington, a professor of constitutional law at the University of
Zimbabwe.

 "The government clearly acted without regard to the constitution," Linington
said. "Under the law, a Supreme Court judge can only be removed from the
bench for mental or physical incapacity or misbehavior. Judge Gubbay has been
an excellent judge. There were no legal grounds to remove him."

 But threats against Gubbay have continued. Joseph Chinotimba, one of
Mugabe's militant supporters, last month led a mob of li!
beration war veterans into the Supreme Court in a protest, and today,
Chinotimba again barged into the courthouse unannounced.

 "I told him to vacate the office today," Chinotimba said of his conversation
with Gubbay, whom he reached with a cellular phone after failing to find him
in the courthouse. "If he wants to appeal, he can appeal while he is at home."
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Shadow foreign secretary Francis Maude will brand Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe evil and demand British sanctions on him and his inner circle of supporters.

Mr Maude will accuse Foreign Secretary Robin Cook of a shameful silence over Mr Mugabe's abuses of democracy and the law.

And he will stake a claim for the Conservatives, and not Labour, to be considered the party with an ethical foreign policy.

Speaking at the Conservative Spring Conference in Harrogate, Mr Maude will accuse Labour of failing to fight tyranny abroad because of its embarrassment over Britain's imperial heritage.

He was expected to say: "We will stand up for Britain, in Europe and the world. We will promote those values, of the rule of law, of free speech and of democracy across the globe.

"Labour is uncomfortable speaking up for Britain, her values and her people. We will be proud to be British.

"We believe that an ethical foreign policy means a strong voice in condemning evil - especially when that evil is waged against both Commonwealth citizens and British passport holders.

"All we hear from Blair and Cook on this, as on other thorny issues around the world, is the sound of silence. "Mr Mugabe has drawn strength from Labour's silence. Their silence is Britain's shame."

He is due to call for a travel ban on Mugabe and his closest associates and a freeze on their international bank accounts.

Mr Maude is also due to outline plans to modernise the Commonwealth and to change Britain's international aid giving, so that more money goes directly to needy countries and less through corrupt European Union channels.

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From LRB Vol 23, No 4 | cover date 22 February 2001

How Mugabe came to power.

R.W. Johnson talks to a war veteran.

It's not an easy thing to have on your conscience that you were personally
responsible for putting Robert Mugabe in power but Wilfred Mhanda has had to
live with that knowledge for the last 24 years. You might think the last
year, which has seen 32 murders, countless cases of rape, torture, arson and
beating, all to help Mugabe steal an election, would have made it even
harder, but the reverse is true. 'It's a relief now that Zimbabweans realise
at last what sort of man he is,' Mhanda told me recently. 'It became obvious
very quickly that we'd made a terrible mistake: that he was paranoid,
authoritarian and ruthless, a man believing only in power. He hasn't
changed. What's changed is that other people have his measure at last.'
You look at Wilfred, roly-poly, 50 and a quality control manager, and you
don't find it hard to believe that he lives a blameless suburban life with a
wife, a house and a Mazda 323. Even now the suburbs of Harare - still one of
the pleasantest places in the world to live - include a quota of
golf-playing Telegraph-readers who would not be out of place in Chiswick or
Cheltenham. But they are also home to many, white and black, who have, in
their time, been involved in a lot of bloodshed. Now, with Harare, like the
rest of the country, crumbling before your eyes, some of these men are
willing to say what they know. It's part of the general atmosphere of fin de
règne.
Mhanda was the sort of young boy in Ian Smith's Rhodesia who was bound to
grow up to become a guerrilla. His father was a keen African nationalist and
his childhood heroes were not singers or soccer stars but Nkrumah, Sekou
Touré and Kenyatta. He went to the primary school at Zvishavane which the
former liberal Prime Minister Garfield Todd had founded and often visited
even though he was living under a form of house arrest imposed by Ian Smith.
By the time Mhanda left school he was in such regular trouble with the
police that 'I would spend all day from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the police
station, sitting there working at my school books for A-levels.' The first
thing he did at university in Salisbury, as it was then called, was to join
the Zanu - Zimbabwe African National Union - underground.
Young activists like Mhanda took it for granted that armed struggle was the
only way to change Smith's mind about majority rule: 'We used the Student
Christian Movement as cover. People would go on SCM "holidays" when actually
they were going for basic military training for Zanu's military wing,
Zanla.' But Mhanda's cell was also organising demonstrations against
discrimination in education and he had to walk 25 miles each way to
Goromonzi to organise protests at the secondary school he'd attended.
Eventually there were demonstrations on the university campus itself and the
whole thing came to a head with the discovery that one of the members of
Mhanda's cell was a police agent: 'My handler was furious. Now you're going
to have to run for it because of these stupid student demos, he said, when
we wanted you here organising the military underground.' Together with four
others, Mhanda skipped the country and, via Botswana and Zambia, made his
way to Tanzania. At this time, Rhodesia's neighbours - Tanzania and Zambia
in particular, and after Independence in 1975, Mozambique - provided bases
for the Zimbabwean liberation fighters as well as the African National
Congress.
In Tanzania Mhanda showed great aptitude for all things military and rapidly
rose to become a military instructor, a party commissar and a Zanla
commander. Eventually Zanla's Chinese trainers took him off to China for
advanced instruction. 'China was a strange, closed society and the Chinese
themselves were essentially racist,' he recalls. 'If people like me appeared
in the street there'd be an immediate traffic jam as people queued up to
look at blacks like you'd look at monkeys. But I didn't care. The training
itself was excellent and that was what I'd gone there for.' The Chinese
insisted that Mhanda was too great an asset to risk his life at the front,
but he saw plenty of action, on one occasion living off the land for three
months in a protracted operation in north-eastern Rhodesia.
The main problem for Zanu was that its leader, Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, had
been in detention in Salisbury for ten years so that none of the younger
fighters like Mhanda knew him. Herbert Chitepo had been chosen as interim
leader but in March 1975 he was murdered in the Zambian capital, Lusaka. To
this day no one knows who did it: Mhanda's best guess is that Smith had him
killed with help from agents infiltrated into Zanu. At any rate, President
Kaunda of Zambia took Chitepo's death as his cue to crack down on Zanla. He
had all the Zanla camps closed and imprisoned the fighters in a remote part
of the country.
Mhanda, who'd been travelling to the front in Rhodesia when he heard that
his own camp had been raided by Zambian troops, fled to Mozambique to confer
with the Zanla commander-in-chief, Josiah Tongogara. It was essential, he
argued, that the fighters not be left on their own because Kaunda was trying
to strongarm them into accepting the leadership of his client, Joshua Nkomo,
the head of the rival liberation movement in Rhodesia, Zapu - the Zimbabwe
African People's Union. The differences between the two were largely that
Zanu drew its support from Beijing and consisted mostly of Shona members,
while Zapu was backed by Moscow (and close to the ANC); its members were, on
the whole, drawn from the Ndebele, the smaller of Rhodesia's two largest
ethnic groups. Kaunda's long-term aim was to subsume Zanu within Zapu,
calculating that one day, using Nkomo as his mouthpiece, he would be in a
position to call the shots in Zimbabwe.
In Mozambique, after due consideration, Tongogara agreed that Mhanda should
go back to Rhodesia disguised as an ordinary recruit. For eight months he
acted as secretary and assistant to the man the Zambians thought commanded
the Zanla forces, though it was Mhanda, who now ranked second only to
Tongogara, who gave all the orders.
'Kaunda was pretty ruthless,' Mhanda remembers. 'The big watchword for the
leaders of the Front Line States' - i.e. all the independent countries
bordering the white minority regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa - 'was
unity, but usually when they said we must accept unity it meant we must do
what they said. In this case, Kaunda had decided we must all join Zapu's
armed wing, Zipra, and intended to starve us into submission.' Some 1200
Zanla people were under arrest in Zambia but of these only 400 were seasoned
fighters: the rest were raw recruits plus women and children. The Zambian
Army didn't let any supplies get through to the camp and 105 hungry fighters
defected to Zipra, but Kaunda was wary of taking his starvation tactics too
far and eventually the Zambian Army was sent in to bully the camp inmates
into line.
Mhanda and his colleagues wanted to consult Sithole before making any deal
about uniting the two movements. When their demand was rejected they
engineered a mass escape, effectively daring the Zambian soldiers to shoot
the women and children - which they didn't. A new camp was established and
again the Zambian troops surrounded it. This time Mhanda led a phoney hunger
strike ('we had hidden rations and ate in the dark - but the Zambians
thought we were starving') until it was finally agreed that they could
consult Sithole.
Robert Mugabe, another of Smith's nationalist prisoners, had already led a
bid to topple Sithole in August 1974. No one outside Que Que Prison knew
Mugabe. As a militant youth-wing leader he'd been in jail in Rhodesia ever
since 1964. Before that, he'd spent three years in Ghana. At the end of the
year Smith let out all the prominent black nationalists and Mugabe led a
Zanu delegation to the Front Line leaders, Kaunda, Julius Nyerere
(Tanzania), Agostinho Neto (Angola) and Samora Machel (Mozambique). But
Nyerere especially was so angry at the idea of a leader being so obviously
sent to them with Smith's connivance that he refused to talk to Mugabe and
demanded that he and his followers go back to Rhodesia and return with
Sithole. Nyerere got his way; Sithole was quick to understand the situation
and agreed to a unity pact with Zapu.
'Are you saying that Mugabe was really Smith's man?' I asked. Mhanda grinned
and later when I tried the question on a number of his old guerrilla
comrades they all grinned together. 'We've thought about it a lot,' they
said. 'Nothing can be proved, but if you look back you see that over and
over again Smith acted so as to create openings for Mugabe. Maybe he thought
Mugabe was so extreme that he would destroy African nationalism in Zimbabwe.
If so, he was right in the end.'
Sithole, they explained to me, was still in charge but his power was
diminished; and Mugabe refused his instruction to attend Chitepo's funeral.
Instead he went off to the Mozambique border, where he sat for three months.
Machel said he was a Smith agent and wouldn't let him into the country.
(Machel had emerged from the Frelimo guerrilla movement and believed that a
future Zimbabwean leader should also have fought in the bush.) In the end
Mugabe crossed the border disguised as a refugee. He had wanted to build a
following in the refugee camps in Mozambique, but Machel was furious when he
discovered his whereabouts and put him under house arrest to keep him out of
trouble. What we suspect now, Mhanda said to me with a sad smile, is that he
had help getting into Mozambique: maybe Smith was still behind him.
Meanwhile Mhanda and his fellow Zanla fighters were discovering how wrong
they'd been about Sithole. Above all he had revealed himself as an out and
out Shona tribalist. 'Maybe we all started that way,' Mhanda said, digging
the ground unhappily with a stick. 'Once you became a fighter all you cared
about was that your comrades would literally lay down their lives for you
and you for them: tribe had nothing to say to you after that. The problem
was that our leaders had never been fighters themselves, so they remained
tribalists.' By now he'd dug quite a pile of soil and as he spoke I became
very aware of the terrible unhappiness of the thing, the devotion of the
fighters to their cause, the depth of their betrayal. Maybe they're wrong
about Mugabe being Smith's man, maybe that's all post factum suspicion and
nonsense, who knows? But what no one can gainsay are the extraordinary
sacrifices these fighters made and how little they got out of it.
With Sithole still in place, things went from bad to worse. The Zambians
shot and killed ten Zanla fighters. Sithole didn't protest, didn't want to
know, didn't even want Mhanda and his comrades to attend the funerals or
visit the wounded in hospital. Sithole believed that he was close to a deal
with Smith and the fighters were, at best, an irrelevance. 'I will never
forget the way he turned to us and said: "I can certainly talk to Ian Smith
but as for you, my children, I don't know what's to become of you." Our
blood ran cold. He saw us as mere cannon fodder. The final straw was that he
wouldn't attend the memorial services for our dead comrades but then said he
had to go to the US to see his daughter because she was suffering from
headaches.'
Mhanda and his friends realised they were now in danger. It was rumoured
that Sithole, seeing them as potential mutineers, had arranged with the
Zambians to have them arrested. They melted away into Tanzania. When Sithole
returned from the US, he asked Nyerere to arrest all 42 Zanla commanders.
Nyerere refused. The 42 met, voted to depose Sithole and decided, in
desperation, to put Mugabe forward as a mediator. Though they didn't know
him they realised they needed a politician of some sort - that a simple
fighter wouldn't do. But the Front Line States continued to insist on unity
so the fighters united the two military wings of Zanu and Zapu - Zanla and
Zipra respectively - forming Zipa, the Zimbabwe People's Army, under the
leadership of Rex Nhongo. 'The number two position had to go to a Zapu man,
so I was number three in the command structure,' Mhanda explains, still
steadily digging the soil with his stick. Together they sat down and worked
out a new war strategy and in January 1976 resumed military operations as a
united force.
Machel was very unhappy with this outcome: he had always supported Zanu, and
now he had no one to sponsor. He demanded that Mhanda and his friends find
new Zanu leaders, so they came up with Mugabe and Tongogara, the guerrilla
leader. Machel was furious: he didn't trust Mugabe and he knew the fighters
didn't trust Tongogara. ('He was quite right,' Mhanda says sadly. 'We knew
Tongogara would be an absolute disaster.') They settled for Mugabe, not
really knowing him, and with the greatest reluctance Machel accepted him.
Scared that a single united movement might end up under the leadership of
Nkomo, the senior African nationalist, Mugabe closed down all organisations
such as Zipa which united the two movements. He led the Zanu delegation to
the Geneva talks later that year - 1976. But by then Mhanda was so
disillusioned he refused to be a delegate. What he failed to take into
account was that Mugabe was bound to see this as a threat.
The real irony - and the stroke which sealed Mhanda's fate - was that just
as the guerrillas were losing confidence in Mugabe, Machel threw his weight
behind him. Mugabe got enormous international exposure as a result of the
Geneva talks and even though they failed Machel was now convinced that
Zimbabwean independence was just around the corner. In the circumstances the
best thing he could do was to make sure he was backing Zimbabwe's first
President. This was clear enough to Mugabe and when he returned from Geneva,
where he had been furiously brooding over Mhanda's refusal to join the
delegation, he told Machel that he must act swiftly to prevent Mhanda and
his friends leading a military rebellion. Machel swooped and arrested 600
Zanla guerrillas, including Mhanda and the rest of the high command. The 64
top commanders were kept in jail for three years.
The prisoners were packed into the cells like sardines, they slept on cement
floors and weren't allowed to wear clothes. There were no toilets, so they
had to defecate on the floor and eat and sleep in their own filth - the
cells were cleaned once a month. They were infested with lice, had so little
food they would put sand in their rice to bulk it out, had malaria and other
fevers and froze in winter. Luckily, someone told Nyerere about the
conditions under which they were being held and he prevailed on Machel to
relocate them to another camp where life was hard but bearable. They were
freed when Lord Carrington insisted that all political prisoners be released
at Independence.
Mhanda went back to Zimbabwe and found Mugabe being treated on all sides as
a great and magnanimous hero. Machel had tried to make the prisoners' return
conditional on their joining Zanu-PF. Mhanda and 26 others refused - which
meant that in the first week after Independence they were arrested again and
spent ten days on hunger strike before Nkomo intervened. Even so all doors
were barred to them and getting a job was impossible. After a year Mhanda
met the man in charge of the President's security, who told him that he was
'mad' to hang around, that he must be looking for trouble and that he would
certainly get it if he didn't leave the country very soon.
He went to Germany on a scholarship, studied biotechnology, acquired a
German girlfriend, was offered a university lectureship in West Berlin: as
far as he was concerned he'd emigrated and would never see Zimbabwe again.
But the Zimbabwean authorities told the Germans he was a Communist and the
lectureship was withdrawn. He shuttled around Europe, wasn't allowed to stay
anywhere and in 1988 crept back into Zimbabwe, where eventually a deal was
struck allowing him to work provided he stayed out of politics. This deal he
has now broken by coming out openly against Mugabe. 'I've got to,' he says.
'Most Zimbabweans agree with me now - and it's important that we stand up
and say we are the real war vets, not these criminals who are occupying
farms and terrorising the farmers and their workers.' Today he is a
passionate believer in all the liberal verities: the importance of the rule
of law, of a strong opposition, of free speech and all the rest. He
sympathises with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change but is quick
to say that if they win power he wants to see a strong opposition to them,
too - 'as long as it's not Zanu-PF.'
It's difficult to know what to make of his story. Mhanda doesn't regret
being a guerrilla or fighting for independence but it's hard, as you listen
to him, not to wonder at the sheer frenzy of it all. Smith and his
supporters fought for a white supremacy which was both morally and
practically mad. (I talked to Smith a year ago and it's obvious that he now
considers universal suffrage perfectly normal: so what was all that
murderous lunacy about?) Mugabe and his like fought for a 'scientific
socialism' which turned out to be a cover for self-enrichment and
authoritarianism. The one thing both sides had in common was their contempt
for democracy. Ignorant armies clashed by night and Mhanda - bravely,
naively - led one of those armies until his usefulness was over because he
hadn't understood the rules.
In the 1970s the battle between the white elite and an army of African
nationalists was fought on the lands of the rural peasantry, who paid a
heavy price as both sides bullied, tortured and killed in their attempt to
get the upper hand. A generation later, the nationalists have turned into
fat cats: they have had the cream and nationalised the cream factory. Their
control is contested by a new black elite, the trade-union and middle-class
'outs' (those who have no share of the spoils or the patronage) supported by
the few whites who have remained in the country and by the mass of the poor
who have derived no benefit from independence. Once again the battlefield is
in the countryside and once again the people who are getting beaten,
tortured and killed are primarily the rural poor.
I've been thinking about what might have happened to Mhanda had he not stuck
to his guns and fallen out with Mugabe. His comrade in the Zanla high
command, Rex Nhongo, went on to become head of the Army and the biggest
landowner in Zimbabwe. Mhanda trained the men who are today the heads of the
Air Force and the police: he could have had their jobs, been a cabinet
minister or run one of the big state corporations. But he says he has never
had the slightest wish to go into politics: he simply grew up surrounded by
the mystique of the African freedom fighter and never considered being
anything else.
In the end neither Kaunda nor Machel succeeded in making Zimbabwe a client
state. If Ian Smith's dream of a white Rhodesia came crashing down, so did
the dream of socialism in the neighbouring states. Nkomo became immensely
fat and rich but is now seen as having betrayed his Ndebele people. Rex
Nhongo was so embarrassed by the whispering about his ill-gotten gains that
he changed his name. Tongogara died in mysterious circumstances and some
point the finger at Mugabe. As for Mugabe, he has reduced his country to
near-ruin and is widely hated. Mhanda still dreams of a peaceful, democratic
Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe he fought for. Of the four friends with whom he
skipped the country to start his military training, one was killed by
Smith's forces, two were killed by Zanla itself; the fourth was killed in a
way Mhanda still doesn't understand. 'I have had such a lucky life,' he
says: 'I'm the only survivor.'

R.W. Johnson's books include Launching Democracy in South Africa, edited
with Lawrence Schlemmer, and Ironic Victory: Liberalism in Post-Liberation
South Africa, edited with David Welsh.
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From The Financial Times (UK), 3 March

Mugabe gets his way over judge

Harare - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe appeared on Friday night to have won the latest round in his campaign to eliminate any opposition to his regime when the country's chief justice agreed to step down early. Anthony Gubbay, whose repeated refusal to leave office had brought Zimbabwe to the brink of a constitutional crisis, on Friday in effect agreed to go immediately. In a joint statement with Patrick Chinamasa, the justice minister, the judge, who had earlier insisted he would not take early retirement under duress from the government, said he had now agreed to leave office on July 1. That is 10 months ahead of his planned retirement date.

Legal analysts said Mr Gubbay, who had been ordered to leave office on Wednesday, had caved in to government pressure, as he will be on leave for the next four months and will not sit as a member of the supreme court during this period. A militant supporter of Mr Mugabe had confronted Mr Gubbay and warned him to obey the government or face "war". Joseph Chinotimba, who this year led a mob of war veterans into the supreme court in a protest against judges, said he had arrived unannounced and persuaded police guards to let him into Mr Gubbay's chambers. "The police let me in because I am big. I told him [Mr Gubbay] to vacate the office today. If he wants to appeal he can appeal while he is at home," Mr Chinotimba said after his meeting with Mr Gubbay, which lasted about an hour.

The government has agreed that Mr Gubbay can remain in his official residence until the end of the year and that during his leave he will be entitled to use his office and enjoy his salary and all other benefits. His pension, too, will be honoured by the Zimbabwe government. Mr Gubbay has agreed to the appointment of an acting chief justice during his leave, while Mr Chinamasa says no steps will be taken to "unlawfully" remove any members of the bench. Analysts said the latter statement was intended as a fig leaf to demonstrate that the judiciary has saved some face by securing a verbal guarantee that there will be no further persecution of supreme court judges or the half dozen white members of the high court bench. One analyst said: "In any negotiations you don't get everything you want; there is always a compromise."

But while there is some relief that an ugly confrontation between the courts and the government's supporters has been averted, there is no disguising the fact that Mr Mugabe appears the victor. The next crunch will come when the government nominates a successor to Mr Gubbay, likely to be Mr Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, a party loyalist and former government minister.

Note : we believe that Joseph Chinotimba was not allowed to meet Justice Gubbay face-to-face, but had to settle for a phone call from the court building.

From The Guardian (UK), 3 March

'They say the law can burn in hell...'

Agrippa Mukando was walking near Robert Mugabe's official residence on Monday when soldiers guarding the grounds leapt on the 63-year-old gardener and accused him of being an opposition supporter. They beat him as they beat several others that day. In many African countries the all-too-common victims of assaults by soldiers consider themselves lucky to escape with their lives. They would laugh off any suggestion that they go to the police; that would just invite more trouble. But in a telling act of faith in what remains of the rule of law in Zimbabwe, Mr Mukando headed for Harare central police station and laid charges. Other victims did the same. The complaints are not likely to come to anything; the police are now too deeply compromised by their failure to stop the violence unleashed by Mr Mugabe's "war veterans" and other thugs.

In much of Africa, the rule of law long ago ceased to be more than a meaningless phrase. Due process was sacrificed to the arbitrary decisions of the powerful. Zimbabwe stands on the edge of that abyss. As Mr Mukando demonstrated, some Zimbabweans still have faith in the judicial process, although the courts are more trusted than the police, but it is being eroded by the week. The Harare township of Chitungwiza is living in terror of armed thugs unleashed by the government. Sometimes it is the army on the rampage, sometimes it is men too young to have fought Ian Smith's regime but who still call themselves veterans. Their tactics are not always the same but their intent is.

The gangs burst into bars and night clubs, forcing revellers to lie on the floor. Anyone giving a hint of supporting the opposition is singled out for a severe beating. The rest are forced to sing songs in praise of Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF, and the liberation war. Charity Gwanzura did not even have to leave her home to become a target. "I was sitting in my house and I looked up and there was a soldier standing there," she said. "I didn't understand at first. I thought maybe he was looking for someone or wanted some water. I was about to speak when he smashed his foot down on my table. I couldn't run because he was between me and the door, and then he started hitting me. He never said a word."

It did not take long for the soldier to get bored with beating Mrs Gwanzura. All along the street, doors were kicked in and furniture smashed. When the sound of breaking wood stopped, the screams began. Men were hauled into the streets and forced to pledge support to Robert Mugabe and to sing songs praising him. Then the army left as fast as it arrived. The army and war veterans are intent on breaking the opposition's spirit. It is working to some extent. Many are disillusioned at the opposition's apparent powerlessness and inactivity. Its MPs make a lot of noise in parliament, Chitungwiza's residents say, but that does not stop the terror.

Mrs Gwanzura says the attacks are also having another effect. "I'll tell you what has changed. A year ago you could have been a Mugabe supporter living in this street and no one would have touched you. They would have said you are a fool or asked how much Mugabe is paying you, but you would have been safe. That is not true now. People are angry. "They tried to get the police to protect us but now they say the police won't help. It has been made a crime to read a newspaper. They say the law can burn in hell with Mugabe, we are going to look after our own interests. They will make criminals of all of us. They have unleashed something."

The "war veterans" in particular are above the law. One of their more notorious leaders, Joseph Chinotimba, is on bail for the attempted murder of a neighbour he is alleged to have shot because she is an opposition supporter. It is unlikely he will ever be brought to trial, but yesterday he turned up at the supreme court anyway with a handful of thugs to threaten Zimbabwe's white chief justice, Anthony Gubbay. The trampling of the law by the government has been widespread and systematic. White farmers and black workers are murdered with impunity. The killers identities' are frequently known. Similarly, the killers of opposition activists are free from the threat of arrest. Reporters have been illegally detained and tortured.

If anyone is in any doubt about the government's view of this they only have to listen to Mr Mugabe's ministers. The information minister, Jonathan Moyo, told new police officers this week that maintaining the "rule of law" does not mean obeying the courts but rather "upholding the gains of the liberation struggle". Any court judgments which "might result in moving away from Zimbabwe, back to Rhodesia, cannot be considered the rule of law", he said. He means court rulings that have declared the land seizure programme illegal. Questioned about the use of repressive colonial-era security laws to detain opponents, the defence minister, Moven Mahachi, said that if the internal security act was used to convict innocent blacks under Ian Smith then there was no reason why the present government cannot do the same.

And for all the independence of many judges, the courts are increasingly used not only as political weapons but to settle scores. Last week a bus driver was jailed for three years after being convicted of attempting to murder Mr Chinotimba. The inappropriately named Luckmore Chakanyuka was set upon by war veterans at a roadblock after an argument about driving standards. In his terror, Mr Chakanyuka jerked his bus forward. He was promptly arrested for trying to "kill" Mr Chinotimba. The court despatched the bus driver to prison. Mr Chinotimba still walks free.

Editorial from The Guardian (UK), 3 March

Arrest Mugabe

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is due to visit the European commission in Brussels on Monday before travelling to Paris the following day for a meeting with President Jacques Chirac. This is a good opportunity to arrest him. Mr Mugabe has a strong prima facie case to answer; and there is justification for such action in terms of law and current international treaties.

When Poul Nielson, the Danish development commissioner, sits down to lunch with his guest, he should ask for starters what Mr Mugabe makes of this week's US state department condemnation of his egregious, systematic abuse of human rights. "Significant intimidation by the ruling party and security forces", "a government-sanctioned campaign of violence", "frequent refusal to abide by court decisions", and "serious human rights abuses" including "killings, torture and beatings" are some of the phrases that jump out.

For main course, Mr Nielson should demand to know why Mr Mugabe is still blocking publication of the findings of two commissions of inquiry into the 1982-87 Matabeleland massacres which occurred when he was in charge and in which up to 20,000 people died. A Zimbabwe supreme court ruling last July that Mr Mugabe should come clean has been ignored. For afters, Mr Nielson might ask whether Mr Mugabe would agree that his frequent inflammatory statements, his incitement of racial hatred, and the consequential deaths last year of over 31 people amount to personal criminal culpability on his part.

Although the EU is committed to a "critical dialogue" with the Zanu-PF regime, the commission would have been better advised to deny Mr Mugabe this status-enhancing personal visit. It says that since Zimbabwe is not under UN or EU sanctions, there is nothing abnormal about the get-together. On the contrary, there is nothing normal about this man or his recent and past actions. Rather than being given the red carpet, he should be helping the Belgian police with some of the above inquiries.

Mr Chirac, too, has good reason to be ashamed of himself. This is one smartypants Parisian demarche too far. But if he insists on going ahead with Tuesday's meeting, he should ask how Mr Mugabe squares his repressive policies with key UN covenants on political, civil, social and cultural rights which his regime signed in May, 1991. What about the UN's basic principles protecting judicial independence? What about the UN convention on racial discrimination (which Mr Mugabe also signed)? Since Zimbabwe's own constitution is now as degraded as his reputation, Mr Mugabe should be asked to explain why his flagrant disregard for common standards and binding treaties should not now be the subject of judicial inquiry, perhaps both civil and criminal, here in Europe.

Sadly, neither Mr Chirac nor Mr Nielson are likely to call for the cops. And in response to a civil suit filed by four of his victims in New York, Mr Mugabe applied this week for US immunity. As a serving head of state, he no doubt believes that immunity will apply elsewhere, too, and that he can thus escape Pinochet's fate. But legal experts say that is no bar, for example, to concerned French or Belgian citizens asking an examining magistrate to detain Mr Mugabe when he arrives in their countries pending inquiries into his alleged complicity in crimes against humanity in Matabeleland and the ongoing flouting of international law by the regime he heads. It may not work. But given the stakes, it is surely worth a try.

From The Times (UK), 3 March

Mugabe rival urges Blair to back off

Our correspondent in Harare interviews a thorn in the President's side

THE opposition leader fighting Robert Mugabe for the presidency is urging Tony Blair and his Cabinet not to launch a new war of words with Zimbabwe's ageing leader. He fears that it will only provoke a rush of violent attacks on his own supporters. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition MDC party, said: "Of course Mr Blair is appalled at what Mugabe is doing, we all are. But I'm afraid the more Mr Blair condemns him, the more it plays into Mugabe's hands." He is also pleading with the Prime Minister to reconsider the decision to pull out the British Army training team from Harare as he predicts that the Mugabe Government could retaliate with more expulsions of churchmen, journalists and any other critics the President seeks to remove.

Squeezing his fists together to emphasise the threat, the 47-year-old politician beats the table and says: "Mugabe is cornered and has nothing else to use in his election campaign except intimidation. But believe me, if Tony Blair or any of his ministers lay into him then sadly Mugabe benefits." The 77-year-old President makes no secret of his personal hatred of the entire Labour Cabinet and delights in playing what Mr Tsvangirai calls the "emotional race card". "People will forget the many things Mugabe has done to them compared to the wrongs of colonialism." There is a barely a day when the state-controlled press does not feature a scathing assault by one of Zanu PF's ministers about the evils of Britain, and in particular Mr Blair, which prompts Mr Tsvangirai to burst into laughter, saying: "He should feel good that he can upset our President so easily."

What he wants is for Britain to use its diplomatic influence in Europe and America to turn Mr Mugabe into an international pariah and cut off funding to his Government, as painful as it will be for his people. The President in waiting, as his staff call him, is reluctant to say whether he will jail Mr Mugabe if he wins the election, which is expected by the summer. "We know he has committed many crimes. Thirty-two of my people were killed in the last election and it is hard to control the anger and the desire to see him pay." But, like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, this former trade union leader wants his ravaged country to move forward. "Criminal trials of Mugabe and his cronies would just reopen wounds and we have to mobilise our people to rebuild," he said.

Whether that constitutes some sort of amnesty, he won't say but the smile returns to his wide, handsome face as he says: "Personally he can sit in retirement under a bush somewhere, a senile old man brooding on his loss of power for all I care." He refuses to resort to personal insults, despite ample provocation from Mr Mugabe who boastfully claims that he was born to lead while Mr Tsvangirai is only fit to be a train driver. The pair were once allies until some of Mr Mugabe's cronies tried to throw him out of his 10th floor office window one night in December 1997. He was beaten unconscious and only saved by the unexpected return of his secretary. As a reminder of what his opponent is capable of, he has kept the bloodstained carpet.

"I used to be able to talk to him but not now. It's very sad. He is not the same man. There has been a shocking transformation in him in the last three years. All the honour he had as father of our new nation is washed away in blood now." He has lost count of the number of hospital visits he has made these past months to see colleagues beaten senseless by men in army uniforms. One of his fellow MDC MPs was attacked in his house earlier this week and he and his pregnant wife had to run and hide for the night in a maize field. The previous evening the same gang had tried to shoot him.

"You do not have to have a crystal ball to see this election coming will be the most violent in our history. God knows how many MDC people will die just for supporting our cause," he says. Despite the many death threats he has received, Mr Tsvangirai refuses to cocoon himself with bodyguards. He is sitting in the garden of his modest villa in the northern outskirts of the capital Harare, and the only member of staff is a teenage boy answering the front gate. Some of his seven children wander back and forth and, pointing in their direction, he says: "It's them I worry about, not me. I have to stand up but I really fear this Zanu PF lot are capable of anything."

Stretched out in a sun lounger, there are no spin doctors or minders and he insists on answering his own mobile telephone. Some, even within his own party, accuse him of being too relaxed, but he says: "I can't win. If I was to crack down on some of my MPs' remarks and surround myself with staff, I would be accused of being another Mugabe." To ensure that he never will be, Mr Tsvangirai vows to promote a change in the Constitution to limit himself, and everyone else, to two terms of office. He is scathing at Mr Mugabe's conspicuous extravagance and, roaring with laughter, pledges that his wife Susan will not have a credit account at Harrods as Grace Mugabe does. His idea of indulgence is a glass of white wine with friends as they plot tactics. He pats his generous stomach and says that he has too much of a fondness for food which he contrasts to the bizarre diet that the President attributes to his health and longevity.

Mr Tsvangirai mimics the President's birthday address that revealed he has seven different porridges for every day of the week and an egg boiled for precisely a minute. He admits to feeling uncomfortable at the prospect of moving into State House, the old colonial Governor's home and now Mr Mugabe's official residence. He admits that three years ago few Zimbabweans knew who he was, but he is now favourite to beat President Mugabe - in a fair fight. "Three years ago very few Zimbabweans knew who I was, and I liked that." His broad shoulders flex at his critics' attack that his only political virtue is that he is not Mugabe. "We have a very clear economic programme which relies on us getting out of debt. But if you are asking me if I want to see Mugabe go right away and let another Zanu PF figure stand, then the answer is no. I want to take on Mugabe so please Tony Blair, don't insult our Comrade President until after I win and then you will be our first honoured guest in the free Zimbabwe."

From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 1 March

Mass action is the way to rid Zim of Mugabe

For a man who might soon find himself facing the life-threatening wrath of a former comrade turned despotic head of state, Dzinashe Machingura shows amazingly little concern. Maybe that's because he is better placed than most to know exactly who and what he is dealing with. Machingura (aka Wilfred Mhanda) goes a long way back with Robert Mugabe. One of the second generation of liberation movement leaders, Machingura was arrested and put on trial by Ian Smith's regime in 1971, jumped bail and escaped the country to join the exiled structures of the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu). While Mugabe (one of Zanu's political leaders at the time) was still languishing in Smith's jails, Machingura had risen through the ranks of Zanu's military wing, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (Zanla), and by 1975 had taken up a position on the Zanla high command in charge of political and military training. Soon after, he joined other leaders from Zanla and the rival Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (Zipra) in forming a unified but shortlived Zimbabwe People's Army (Zipa).

It was as a leader of Zipa that Machingura first experienced Mugabe's political opportunism and dictatorial approach. Despite making major strides towards unifying the two camps of the liberation movement, resurrecting what had been a dormant armed struggle, assisting in Mugabe's escape from Smith's grip and securing his subsequent release from house arrest in Mozambique, Machingura and the majority of the Zipa high command soon found themselves victims of Mugabe's machinations. Having failed to sideline Zipa during the aborted negotiations in Geneva (where Mugabe tried to sell the British a plan for getting rid of more "radical" elements of the liberation movement), Mugabe resorted to outright thuggery. In what has continued to be a "forgotten" part of Zimbabwean liberation history, Mugabe had succeeded, by early 1977, in having Machingura and hundreds of "troublesome" Zipa field commanders and cadres either incarcerated or killed.

Besides destroying the nascent political, ethnic and military unity of Zimbabwe's liberation movement, Mugabe merged his personal authority with that of the entire "movement" and then proceeded to present himself as the saviour of the Zimbabwean people. The rest is history - but it is a history that is only now beginning to reveal itself fully. Machingura and many other liberation war veterans who managed to survive Mugabe's unrelenting campaign for unquestioned personal power were eventually released after independence in 1980. Consistent with past principle and practice, most made public calls for political unity, a "crime" that was punished by another stint in jail. Released after the intervention of the late Joshua Nkomo, Machingura and other "survivors" slid into the relative safety of political and social obscurity, where they stayed until very recently.

While a long time in the making, the majority of Zimbabweans have, over the past two to three years, had the unenviable experience of being "victims" of Mugabe's (and his Zanu-PF cronies) insidious love affair with the accumulation of both narrow personal and class political and economic power. The full-scale "outing" of this love affair during last year's elections, especially the manipulative use of so-called "war veterans" and the land issue, led Machingura and other (real) war veterans, to feel confident enough in launching a new organisation, the Zimbabwe Liberators Platform (ZLP), to publicly oppose, expose and eventually remove Mugabe. According to ZLP chair Machingura, the party now represents the majority of (real) liberation war veterans, including a substantial number who hold middle and high-level ranks in the army and the CIO. Accordingly, the ZLP seeks to expose the lies behind the role of so-called "war veterans" (being used as Mugabe's personal storm troopers) and to "rescue the ideals and freedoms that informed the liberation struggle".

Machingura pulls no punches about the extent of the challenges. "The Zimbabwean people are not yet free," he says. "We do not have meaningful self-determination and independence. Mugabe has been putting on a mask all along and Zanu-PF has become his personal tool, which he is using as a 'liberation smokescreen'." The "facts", says Machingura, are that Mugabe and his Zanu-PF club of elites have a dominant stake in almost every major industry and sector of the economy, including land, and that "indigenous empowerment" is another "smokescreen for personal and particular class enrichment and gain". Workers have been "left to fend for themselves" and the present "economic meltdown hurts the very urban working class and rural peasantry, that Zanu-PF claims to represent, the most". For Machingura and the ZLP, Mugabe's increasingly shrill white bashing is completely hypocritical since "a majority of government-controlled companies and other enterprises are managed by whites with his blessing".

In light of the above it is not surprising that the ZLP views the approach of the ANC-led government in South Africa as completely misguided. "We have been disappointed with the South African comrades," says Machingura. "They need to understand that Mugabe hijacked the revolution and that he is not serious about any of his supposed 'revolutionary' activities - we are not counting on the South Africans as allies." On the home front, Machingura refers to the "inexperience and naivety" of the opposition MDC, but says the ZLP is "not hostile" and acknowledges that the party has managed to create "an alternative power base" with which tactical alliances can be made to "remove Mugabe". While the longer-term political aims and economic objectives of the ZLP remain hazy, Machingura makes clear that its immediate task is to mobilise people to get rid of Mugabe. "Mass action is the route to go and the people are ready," says Machingura. "Anything short of a 'new' revolution will be inadequate to dislodge Mugabe."

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'We Won't Make The Same Mistake With Zimbabwe'



Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg)

March 2, 2001
Posted to the web March 1, 2001

Jaspreet Kindra
Johannesburg

South Africa when led by Nelson Mandela acted as a "bully" against the
military dictatorship in Nigeria, making a "terrible mistake", says the
African National Congress's head of international affairs and policy, Mavivi
Myokayaka-Manzini.

But the country is not going repeat that mistake with Zimbabwe, she said in
an interview with the Mail & Guardian. Myokayaka-Manzini also dismissed
reports that an "urgent" meeting will be called between President Thabo
Mbeki and Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe.

Following a gathering of Mbeki's international investment council last
weekend, it was announced that the two leaders were to meet, possibly in
Harare, to discuss recent developments in Zimbabwe. Mbeki said members of
the council had indicated there should be some "forward movement" on the
issue.

Myokayaka-Manzini said a meeting had already been scheduled to take place in
Mozambique between the two leaders as a follow-up meeting between liberation
movements in the region. The ANC is awaiting word from Frelimo, the ruling
party in Mozambique, to confirm dates.

"There is no way in which South Africa and the ANC can stand alone and
outrightly condemn, knowing that their condemnation will not have an impact
but will actually worsen the situation.

"We did that with Nigeria, by the way, when Madiba took a position without
consulting the Commonwealth, without consulting the Southern African
Development Community, without consulting the Organisation of African Unity,
and what happened? Everyone stood aside and we were isolated because it was
a terrible mistake we made.

"We were interested in resolving the issue and I think everyone else was
interested in resolving the problem of Nigeria but we acted as this bully
... people resent being bullied," she said.

The Commonwealth suspended Nigeria's membership in 1995 following the
execution Ken Saro-Wiwa and other critics of General Sani Abacha's regime.

Mandela made an emotional appeal to spare their lives when the death
sentence was announced.

Myokayaka-Manzini denied the ANC or Mbeki is about to adopt a "harder line"
on Zimbabwe. She said the ANC is to continue its policy of quiet diplomacy
and constructive engagement with Zanu-PF.

"It has always been his [Mbeki's] approach ... Actually I think it is
deliberate. Mbeki's approach is not new. During the time we were trying to
find a settlement in this country, Mbeki led most of the discussions with
very hostile South Africans, from business to people in the opposition to
the ruling parties.

"His approach has always been that of trying to find an amicable solution
and that time the media used to praise him. And this time they want to
change his approach.

"There is no way we are going to change our approach because we believe it
is the correct one ... We won't be dictated to because we know what we are
doing and we have always known what we are doing."

Myokayaka-Manzini accused the media and the opposition of dictating to the
ANC "... that we should take a position that will outrightly just condemn,
condemn. We can't do that at the ANC. Firstly, we have historical ties with
Zanu-PF " especially with Zapu [Zimbabwe African People's Union], which is
part and parcel of Zanu-PF now. These are our comrades we fought with in the
struggle ... Our relations have been sealed in blood."

But Myokayaka-Manzini contradicted herself when asked about Mugabe's
dismissal of the country's chief justice this week: "The situation has
become so urgent it has to be resolved."

She said: "People have lost confidence in the judiciary and what is the
cause? Deprivation of land and people not seeing what they fought for "
transformation " that is the feeling in Zimbabwe and even in South Africa."

Asked if she was condoning the dismissal of the chief justice, she said:
"Obviously it is not correct. That is why we are saying we are condemning it
. That is why we are saying we should find a solution to resolve the problem
of Zimbabwe as soon as possible because we are playing with fire " it is now
spilling over to this."

Mbeki's representative, Bheki Khumalo, said the president will be leading an
inter-ministerial team to Zimbabwe soon.


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