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GRIEVING GRANDMA KILLED IN ZIMBABWE VIOLENCE

Sky News

The mother of a white farmer killed by a mob at his farm in Zimbabwe a year ago has herself been shot dead.

Grandmother Gloria Olds (pictured at the funeral of her son) was shot twice as the tried to flee an armed gang who stormed her farm outside Bulawayo.

Reports say the Liberation War Veterans’ Association is being blamed for the killing. Mrs Olds’ three dogs were also shot.

Ambush

Family friends said 65-year-old Mrs Olds was ambushed by the gang as she went to open the gates at her farm.

Ted Kirby, who lived on a neighbouring farm until last year, said: “She was shot and wounded but managed to start going back towards the house.

“But they shot the lock off, then came and shot her and her three dogs,” he added.

’Politically motivated’

Mrs Olds’ son Martin, a known activist with the opposition battling to oust President Robert Mugabe’s government in democratic elections, was beaten and shot by a mob at his farm last April.

David Coltart, another friend of the family and a legislator with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, claimed Mrs Olds’ death was political.

“I have no doubt it’s politically motivated and is designed to provoke the farmers into reacting, to give the government grounds to clamp down further and intimidate the farming community,” he said.

’Devastated’

Mrs Olds’ daughter-in-law Kathy, who fled to Britain with her two children after the murder of her husband, was said to be devastated by the latest tragedy.

She was being comforted by friends who said she was ‘extremely distressed’.

Mrs Olds is the eighth member of Zimbabwe’s white farming community to die since veterans of the country’s war of independence began violently seizing white owned farms in a campaign backed by President Mugabe.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20010304_346.html

HARARE, March 4 (Reuters) -
Gunmen on Sunday shot and killed the mother of a farmer slain last year
at the start of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's campaign to seize
white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks, a relative said.  The
relative, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that 68-year-old
Gloria Olds was found shot to death on her farm near Zimbabwe's second
city, Bulawayo, where she lived alone.  "It appears a group broke into
the house and shot her several times.  We understand this happened just
before daybreak.  We don't believe it was a burglary -- I think they
just used the car to get away because nothing else was stolen," the
relative said.  Olds' son, Martin, was the second of five white farmers
killed last year in a land-grab sanctioned by Mugabe and headed by
veterans of the former Rhodesia's 1970s liberation war.  Two more white
farmers were killed in apparent robberies.  Martin Olds was killed when
more than 100 war veterans surrounded his home and opened fire.

His wife and two children later sought political asylum in Britain.
Sunday's shooting came two days after a war veteran threatened white
Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay with "war" if he refused to obey a
government order to take early retirement.  Gubbay agreed a day after
the threat to go on leave immediately and to retire 10 months early on
July 1, clearing the way for Mugabe to appoint a new head of the
judiciary.  SOME FARMERS ABANDON LANDS Mugabe, ministers in his cabinet
and war veterans had criticised Gubbay and other white judges for
decisions favouring white farmers trying to hang on to their land and
opposition politicians seeking to challenge the results of last year's
election.  Self-styled war veterans, many too young to have served in
the liberation war which led to Rhodesia's independence from Britain in
1980, have occupied hundreds of white-owned commercial farms.  Some
farmers have abandoned their lands near the capital, Harare, and near
Bulawayo in the face of threats and violence from war veterans.  Others,
like Gloria Olds, have continued to farm in an uneasy cooperation with
war veterans who have maintained at least a token presence on many farms
earmarked for redistribution to landless black peasants.  Mugabe said in
an address marking his 77th birthday in February he would continue to
seize white land without compensation.  Asked when he would retire, he
said: "I would like to do that, sure.  As long as I am assured that
those we fought yesterday are thoroughly beaten and that the carpet they
now stand on, the economic carpet, has been removed from their feet and
it has become our carpet."
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From the Guardian


Mugabe bullies his way to international approval

Zimbabwe's ruler was close to defeat last year. Now tactics of terror and
violence appear to have won, reports Andrew Meldrum in Harare

Special report: Zimbabwe

Sunday March 4, 2001
The Observer

Robert Mugabe will arrive in Brussels and Paris this week a satisfied man.
Even as he is received into the heart of Europe, at home his government is
succeeding in his strategy of eradicating significant opposition in all
quarters.
Just a few months ago Mugabe was widely written off. Now he is entrenching
his rule and neutralising any independent forces. On Friday his government
finessed the exit of the Chief Justice, Anthony Gubbay. It is also
continuing its attacks on the local and foreign press, white farmers and the
main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Known MDC supporters in Harare's townships are harassed and beaten by a
motley collection of army, police, war veterans and young thugs.

The icing on the cake for Mugabe is being welcomed in Paris this week by
French President Jacques Chirac and in Brussels by Belgium and the European
Union. On the agenda in his talks will be the war in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, in which Zimbabwe is a key player, rather than internal affairs.
Calls being made in Britain for Mugabe to be arrested and charged for gross
human rights abuses will be ignored.

Mugabe has triumphed in getting Chief Justice Gubbay to go on leave
immediately and to take early retirement from 1 July. His removal clears
away one of the most substantial obstacles to the government's policies,
particularly its 'fast track' land seizures.

Soft-spoken and even timid, Gubbay, 68, led the Supreme Court bench to make
carefully reasoned, logical judgments which rejected Mugabe's land policy as
violent, lawless and unlikely to improve the lives of those being resettled.

The Supreme Court decisions, delivered in December and January, acknowledged
the need to redistribute land to poor blacks to redress the historical
injustice of the seizure of their land by white colonialists from 1890 to
1970. But it insisted the reforms must follow the law. This infuriated the
Mugabe government which responded by calling the judges 'relics of Rhodesia'
and racists.

Mugabe's war veterans invaded the Supreme Court and chased the five justices
away. The judges received death threats and were vilified in speeches by
Mugabe and others.

One of the most notorious of Mugabe's war veterans, Joseph Chinotimba, went
to Gubbay's offices on Friday morning. Chinotimba has been identified at the
centre of several violent incidents and has been charged with shooting his
neighbour because she supports the MDC. After his visit to the Supreme Court
chambers, Chinotimba announced that if Gubbay did not vacate his office, his
war veterans would declare war upon him.

Gubbay agreed to leave his office, but he wrested guarantees from the
government that it would respect the independence of the courts and would
not take unlawful steps to remove any other judges. 'Gubbay sacrificed
himself so the other judges could stay,' said one legal expert.

'Everyone knows that the only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to
him,' said lawyer and MDC member of parliament Tendai Biti. 'This has
empowered the other judges to stand firm.'

Other lawyers, however, are more sceptical of the guarantees, saying that if
the government does not honour Supreme Court judgments, why should it honour
agreements with Gubbay? They say once the government installs Godfrey
Chidyausiku as Chief Justice, it will pursue its stated plan to clear the
Supreme Court and the High Court of independent judges.

The government, through the increasingly powerful Information Minister
Jonathan Moyo, has already announced its intention to rid the Supreme Court
of the four remaining justices and to clear out four judges from the high
court.

'The government expresses its lack of confidence in judges on the Supreme
Court and the High Court,' said Moyo last week. 'We find those judges to be
partial to white farming interests. We cannot have judges colluding with
forces opposed to Zimbabwe. We must have judges who are part and parcel of
our experience of the liberation struggle and who side with the majority of
our people, especially the landless.'

Moyo has also spearheaded the government's attacks on the independent press,
both local and foreign. The expulsion last month of two foreign journalists
gained a great deal of attention, but it is the Zimbabwean journalists who
write for privately-owned newspapers critical of the Mugabe government who
are most at risk. They are persevering under enormous pressure to expose
human rights abuses and corruption.




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BA might pull out

Michael Kariati
Zimbabwe Standard, 4 March 2001

BRITISH Airways is contemplating pulling out of Zimbabwe following the
government's refusal to allow the airline to remit its earnings to the
United Kingdom.

British Airways general manager, Peter Best, told The Standard last week
that an amicable solution had to be found soon.

We are making a loss because the government is not allowing us to remit our
money. The sooner we resolve this issue the better, as we cannot continue
operating in the country under these conditions.

He added: The company will operate routes only if they are profitable. We
will shortly be making a decision on our operations in Zimbabwe.

Best told The Standard that British Airways had held several meetings with
government ministers but to no avail. We only hope the government will
adjust, otherwise this is the end of British Airways in Zimbabwe.

Last November, in London, the company's regional general manager for Africa
and the Indian Ocean Islands, Alan Burnett, told The Standard that the twin
problems of political uncertainty and the continued slide of the Zimbabwean
dollar against major currencies had seen business drop dramatically.

Business to Harare has dropped dramatically. The economy has worked very
much against those in Harare, while the political climate has also affected
those who want to travel there. We want to make our service to Harare
profitable, but this is not the case at the moment, said Burnett.

Information at hand is that a significant number of tourists now regard
Harare as an unsafe destination and prefer to travel through Johannesburg,
then by road to Victoria Falls.

Burnett said if the situation did not improve, British Airways would cut off
services to and from Harare.

Several other international airlines, including Australia's Quantas, and
Germany's Lufthansa have withdrawn their services. The airlines argued that
it was no longer profitable to service Zimbabwe. According to them, there
had been a gradual decline in terms of profit for the past three years.

At one time, British Airways had to temporarily cut off service to Harare
and to relocate to Lusaka following political clashes in the run up to the
June parliamentary elections. British Airways' major profit making
destinations in Africa are Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi.

--
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MDC London holds its weekly Open Forums on Monday evenings in the upstairs function room of The George, located in The Strand opposite The Royal Courts of Justice. 7 to 7.30pm start. All welcome.
 
In this issue :

From The Zimbabwe Standard, 4 March

War vet's dismiss Chinamasa's truce

Barely 24 hours after government reached an understanding with the judiciary, war veterans have vowed to force the judges off the bench. Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans Association chairman, Hitler Hunzvi, told The Standard yesterday that his association would not recognise the agreement between government and judges. Justice, legal and parliamentary affairs minister, Patrick Chinamasa, on Friday signed an undertaking which allows Chief Justice Gubbay to remain in office until July. Chinamasa's truce was backed by the minister of state for information and publicity, Jonathan Moyo, who had been at the forefront of attacking the judiciary.

But yesterday war veterans vowed they would intensify their efforts to kick out the whole Supreme Court bench and white High Court judges. Hunzvi said the war veterans were even considering using violence to achieve this end. "We will continue fighting them. Kana vachida jambanja ndozvatavakutoita (If they want us to use violence then we are going to do that). We have no confidence in the judges and we still stand by that. We told them to go and we are still saying that. We will not rest until they leave the bench and go back to Britain," said an emotionally charged Hunzvi.

After weeks of acrimony between government and the judiciary, the government finally gave in and announced that it would follow the rule of law in all matters regarding the judiciary. In a joint statement by Chinamasa and Gubbay, government finally agreed to give into Gubbay's demands that he remain in office until July 1. In a drastic about turn, Chinamasa agreed not to interfere with the judiciary or to make further attempts to unlawfully remove any of the remaining judges. Government also withdrew all demeaning statements previously made by officials, and not to repeat such statements. Gubbay, on the other hand, agreed that he would not object to the appointment of an acting Chief Justice.

However, Hunzvi said members of his association would not recognise the agreement between Chinamasa and Gubbay. "Chinamasa and (Jonathan) Moyo are government ministers who are doing government work. We are war veterans who are carrying forward with the work that we started when we joined the liberation war. I am telling you now, we will win that war. If it means fast-tracking them (judges) out then we will do so, and the faster we do it the better. No one can stop us from denouncing those judges because we are the ones who started this whole issue and we will continue saying so until they go, irrespective of whatever agreements have been reached," said Hunzvi.

He continued with his verbal attacks on the judiciary saying war veterans were not satisfied by Gubbay's stay as he had, in the process, assured the safety of his colleagues "who will continue to make damaging judgments against the majority". Hunzvi also repeated accusations that the judges were remnants of the Rhodesian era who were bent on protecting whites at the expense the blacks. "The remaining judges will continue passing judgments against President Mugabe and war veterans. Who are they to make judgments against the liberators of this country? They have no right to be telling us how we should give our people land. There are still a lot of Rhodesian elements in the judiciary and they will go. There is no compromise on this issue. We have said it from the onset kuti vanofanira kuenda. Hapana chachinja, vari kuenda chete," said the controversial war veterans leader. Meanwhile, war veterans held a meeting yesterday at Zanu PF headquarters where they passed yet another vote of no confidence in the judiciary.

From The Financial Times (UK), 3 March

Zimbabwe's resolute defender of due process

Forty-odd years ago, when Anthony Gubbay was earning three guineas an afternoon taking testimony from black activists in Bulawayo's high-security Khami prison, he could scarcely have imagined that he would one day be hounded from office as the epitome of neo-colonial evil. Back in 1959, Mr Gubbay was part of a team defending members of Zimbabwe's African National Congress, a forerunner of the movements that ended white majority rule in Rhodesia in 1980. And throughout a career that brought him to the pinnacle of Zimbabwe's legal system, his belief in justice has never wavered.

Until Friday. Under intolerable intimidation from Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party, Mr Gubbay realised that the personal burden of upholding an independent judiciary was too great. His resignation as chief justice, a year before his official retirement at the age of 70, takes the political crisis in Zimbabwe to new depths. Mr Gubbay's lawyers presented the decision - which reversed an announcement earlier this week that he would not stand down - as a compromise, saying the government had retracted threats to throw him out of his chambers. The two sides also agreed that "any action by any party to undermine or interfere with the [judiciary's] independence is contrary to the interests of the people of Zimbabwe".

But to the outside world, Mr Gubbay's departure looks like a severe blow to an independent judiciary in Zimbabwe. For the past month, Mr Mugabe has made clear he will no longer tolerate judges applying the law when it stands in the way of his programme of forced appropriations of white-owned farms and harassment of political opponents. Mr Gubbay, a Cambridge-educated man who shies away from publicity, had been a thorn in the government's side for some time. He enraged Mr Mugabe by quashing an edict for electoral petitions to be annulled. He infuriated the justice minister in a case against three Americans accused of plotting to assassinate the president. And in a landmark ruling, he condemned the countrywide, state-sanctioned farm invasions and violence. "Wicked things have been done, and continue to be done," he wrote. "The activities of the past nine months must be condemned."

But what most incensed the government was his decision earlier this week not to retire early, as previously agreed, in protest at the government's decision to appoint an acting chief justice to sit alongside him. "They pushed him too far," says Adrian de Bourbon, head of Zimbabwe's Bar Association. The government's response was to increase its vitriol. "The Chief Justice thinks and behaves as if he is the last British governor of Zimbabwe," said Christopher Mushohwe, a Zanu-PF MP, in a blistering attack in parliament. "He was deliberately planted in the Zimbabwean body politic by Lord Carrington [the British foreign secretary who negotiated the end of white rule] to defeat Zimbabwe's independence. The chief justice has links to very powerful Jewish financial interests. He sent more blacks to the gallows than those killed by any single Selous Scout [an elite military unit] in the Rhodesian army."

Mr Gubbay's friends and supporters have been appalled by the criticism. "The chap hasn't a racist bone in his body," says Charles Lazarus, the Bulawayo-based lawyer who gave Mr Gubbay his first brief. "He is the last person who expected himself to be in this position. For it to end on this note is tragic." Colleagues, black and white, have lined up to defend a man whose only fault, they say, was to stick too rigidly to the letter of the law. Although not a social campaigner in any political sense, Mr Gubbay was a judge who went out of his way to be diligent, polite and unshakeable in his defence of due process. As an advocate, Mr Gubbay once defended Enock Mahachi, the current minister of defence. He led the appeal for Bishop Donal Lamont, an Irish critic of Ian Smith's regime before 1980. As a High Court judge, from 1976, he was even accused of being a "white kaffir" during a case against Dr Bertrand, an extreme rightwing dentist. As a Supreme Court judge, an appointment made by Mr Mugabe in 1983, and as chief justice, since 1990, nothing changed.

A loner rather than a team player, Mr Gubbay is a conservative man who has been at the front of international human rights standards. On one occasion, he quashed a decision to bar Munyaradzi Gwisai, a Rastafarian lawyer, from sporting his dreadlocks in court. "He found he was free to practice his religion," says Sternford Moyo, president of the law society. Mr Gubbay found that keeping prisoners on death row for long periods was "inhumane and degrading". Internationally, he helped draft the Commonwealth's 'Latimer House Guidelines' on judicial standards; his judgments are often cited by South Africa's constitutional court. "He's a man of exceptional integrity," says Mr Moyo. "We are privileged to have worked under him."

In a judgment last November, Mr Gubbay's unshakeable - perhaps naive - belief in the law was beautifully articulated. "I am confident our courts are strong enough to withstand criticism after a case has been decided, no matter how scurrilous that criticism may be," he wrote. "The courts are looked upon as the ultimate refuge from injustice." On Friday, however, at his home in the wealthy Harare suburb of Ballantyne Park, workmen were installing a new security alarm system. But it is not just Mr Gubbay's personal safety that may be at risk: the rule of law itself in Zimbabwe is threatened.

From The Zimbabwe Standard, 4 March

Mugabe not off the hook

President Mugabe is not yet off the hook in the case in which he is being sued for over US$68 million by four Zimbabweans following last year's election violence. Contrary to the impression created by government last week that Mugabe had been granted immunity from prosecution in the civil lawsuit being filed in a US district court, it emerged this week that the court had not yet ruled on the issue.

Although the US State Department suggested in a letter to the court handling the case that Mugabe should be given immunity, the court had not yet ruled on the suggestion and will only do so at the end of this month or next month. In fact, the court has given the plaintiffs - Evelyn Masaiti, MP for Mutasa; Adella Chiminya, wife of MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai's election agent, Tichaona; Maria Stevens, widow of farmer, David shot by war veterans; and Efridah and Elliot Pvebve, whose brother was killed during the election campaign, until 23 March to oppose the US department's suggestion of immunity. The four are alleging state-sanctioned violence and are demanding over US$68 million from Mugabe.

The Standard last week reported that Mugabe had appealed to the US government for immunity from the lawsuit. After the report, government officials immediately went on the defensive. While welcoming the US State Department's letter with its suggestion for immunity, information minister, Professor Jonathan Moyo denied that the Zimbabwean government had appealed for immunity. However, according to the suggestion of immunity letter filed in the court by the US State Department and now in the possession of this newspaper, Mugabe did indeed appeal for immunity.

Reads part of the letter dated 23 February 2001: "The Acting Legal Adviser of the Unites States Department of State has informed the Department of Justice that the Government of Zimbabwe on November 1, 2000 formally requested the Government of the United States to suggest the immunity of the President and the minister from this lawsuit. The Acting Legal Adviser has further informed the Department of Justice that the Department of State recognises and allows the immunity of President Mugabe and Foreign Minister Mudenge from this suit."

Government has been in denial since the onset of the case. When the story first broke last year, the government denied that Mugabe had at any time been served with papers and even threatened to sue The Standard for publishing the story. When it turned out that the papers had indeed been served, the government went on to dismiss subsequent reports about the court hearing. When it came to light that the case had been brought before Judge Marrero, government refuted reports that a ruling had been made on the case. And now that the US State Department has filed the suggestion of immunity letter, government is at it again disputing that it has applied for immunity and trying to create the impression that the US government had acted without the advice of Harare.

Spokesman for the plaintiffs, Topper Whitehead, yesterday told The Standard that their lawyers were already finalising an opposing argument on the granting of immunity to President Mugabe. He accused government of misleading the nation and giving the impression that Mugabe had already been granted immunity. "He (Mugabe) hasn't been granted immunity yet. The defendant's lawyers have until 23 March to file an argument and our lawyers have it all ready. They have been putting the case together. Mugabe thinks he is immune. It is like a case of being innocent until proven guilty so he is declaring that he is immune until proven otherwise but he's just twisting the words. The case is sub-judice as of now," said Whitehead. Whitehead said the plaintiffs were optimistic that they would win the case: "Despite the State Department's immunity letter, we are optimistic that once the US Court has reviewed all the legal briefings on the issue, it will not bestow immunity from this lawsuit on the perpetrators of some of the more egregious episodes of human rights violations carried out in recent times. Mugabe will then be found guilty."

From The Sunday Telegraph (UK), 4 March

Fear and hunger stalk this land of promise

Harare - Phillip Chitamgwa is keen to take me for a spin in his shiny new Mercedes S600. "The only one in Africa," he brags. "It's got television sets in the front and back and a fridge. You'll love it." Mr Chiyangwa is a brash multi-millionaire Zimbabwean property developer who was elected to parliament last year as an MP for the ruling Zanu-PF party of President Robert Mugabe. Our original meeting had to be delayed as he was held up in court in Harare by a little local difficulty: the opposition claims that he bribed voters and is challenging his election victory.

Although he ran on the slogan "Vote Chiyangwa for money and development", he is confident that the case will be thrown out after assuring the court that the food handouts and cheap loans he provided to his future constituents were a "humanitarian gesture". He's right about the Mercedes. I love my brief trip, enveloped in its luxurious black leather seats, a pop video playing on the television screen. When we crunch to a halt outside my hotel, his jobless countrymen, hanging around trying to hawk curios to the rapidly diminishing tourist trade, stare incredulously. He's vague on how much the car cost, although he admits that his parliamentary status saved him a healthy amount in taxes.

Mr Chiyangwa is one of the wealthy black elite fuelling a mini-construction boom in Harare's affluent northern suburbs. Take a drive through Borrowdale, Belgravia and Gun Hill and you could be forgiven for thinking that all is well in Comrade Bob's Zimbabwe. Through the security gates, behind the high walls draped in bougainvillaea, you catch glimpses of manicured lawns and spacious homes. Yet even here, the economic crisis wrought by Mr Mugabe's disastrous stewardship of a country once regarded as an African success story is encroaching.

For a start, finding your way around becomes more difficult by the day as street signs disappear with increasing regularity, removed by impoverished Zimbabweans to be sold for scrap. More alarmingly for residents of this once largely crime-free city, the phenomenon of car-jackings - relieving drivers of their vehicles at gunpoint - has arrived from South Africa. Admittedly, the rate is only one a day, compared to eight in Johannesburg, but it is still a sign of Harare's decline.

For the true picture of how the average Zimbabwean is doing after 21 years of Mugabe rule, it is only necessary to take the short trip to the dismal township of Mbare. The lives of the tens of thousands of people crammed into its shanties could not be more alien from that of Mr Chiyangwa. A spate of factory closures has sent unemployment soaring and prices for basic foodstuffs have gone up 50 per cent in recent months following Mr Mugabe's inept land redistribution policy. Hunger will soon strike one of Africa's most fertile countries.

A mood of fear has engulfed the country since Zanu-PF's violent election campaign secured a narrow victory last year. Life in Zimbabwe has developed a chilling Orwellian air. Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition MDC, who was once beaten up and almost thrown from a 10th floor window by unidentified thugs, is being prosecuted for inciting violence after an ill-advised warning to Mr Mugabe during a recent speech that he might be removed "violently" if he did not quit peacefully. In contrast, "Hitler" Hunzvi, the leader of the so-called war veterans who have occupied hundreds of farms, routinely calls for opponents of the government to be killed, without facing any sanction.

More than 40 MDC activists were killed or went missing during last year's election campaign. No Zanu-PF members suffered the same fate, yet Mr Mugabe made the remarkable claim recently that the opposition wants to seize power through violence. His government has, however, had a brainwave for dealing with MDC leaders who seek foreign support for their criticism of the regime: it plans to deprive "unpatriotic" Zimbabweans of their passports and citizenship. That's an idea for dealing with domestic critics that even eluded his Marxist role models in the old communist bloc.

From IRIN (UN), 3 March

Government Silent On Congo Diamonds

Nairobi - The Namibian government has refused to name the shareholders and directors of the company responsible for running Namibia's controversial diamond mine in the DRC, the 'Namibian' newspaper reported. Defence Minister Erkki Nghimtina took cover behind "military confidentiality" when pressed in the National Assembly on Thursday to answer particular questions about the government's diamond dealings at Tshikapa, in the Congo. "This business is like military combat ... because August 26-Congo Holding is linked to militaristic business. Those issues cannot be discussed," he said. However, Nghimitina said opposition members of parliament were free to visit Kinshasa to inspect the books of the company.

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