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From The Times (UK), 9 March
Mugabe rules out a snap election
Robert Mugabe has stunned his political opponents by ruling out a snap presidential election, which had been expected in July. After a week when the Zimbabwean leader believes he has scored a diplomatic triumph on his incident-filled trip to Europe, he suddenly announced that he intends to wait a further year before holding elections. His rivals had become convinced that the new wave of violence sweeping the country signalled the President's desperation to intimidate the opposition before going to the polls in a few months' time.
Beyond that point Zimbabwe is expected to face fuel and food shortages and possibly riots. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition party MDC, had also predicted that Mr Mugabe, 77, would retire to let a younger figure in Zanu (PF) contest the presidency. A confident-sounding Mr Mugabe dismissed that idea yesterday as wishful thinking. He said that there were no compelling reasons to bring forward the election which under Zimbabwe's Constitution has to be held between January and April next year. He said it would take place as scheduled.
Gloria Olds, 72, who was murdered this week, will be buried today beside her son, Martin, who was shot dead last March when independence war "veterans" invaded his farm. Martin Olds's widow, Cathy, who sought political asylum and plans to remain in Britain, is too distressed to return for the funeral. David Olds, who has lost both parents and his brother in the past 18 months, has asked that after the funeral service the church should be cleared and that he should be left alone with his mother's coffin. It was David who discovered his mother's body after she was ambushed as she opened her farm gate.
From The Daily News, 8 March
War vets shoot two Epworth residents
A group of armed men, claiming to be war veterans, yesterday shot and seriously wounded two people in Epworth, Harare. Trust Moyo and David Mota sustained serious injuries in their legs and were rushed to Parirenyatwa hospital. An official at the hospital said last night that the two were in a critical condition.
An eyewitness, Sam Magwenzi, told The Daily News that Moyo and Mota were part of a group of workers who were collecting sand along Delport Road. The armed men arrived at around 11am and ordered the people to stop whatever they were doing until they agreed to pay them a levy of $300 for each load while the sand-diggers would take the difference of only $100. "We disagreed with them and told them that the arrangement was not acceptable to us," said Magwenzi. A scuffle then ensued and the suspected war veterans pulled out pistols and an AK rifle. "They fired shots into the air before shooting Moyo and Mota as we were fleeing from the scene," Magwenzi said.
He said the wrangle with the armed men started nearly a month ago when they introduced the system of collecting a levy of $50 for each load of sand. The so-called war veterans told the sand-diggers that they had to pay them $300 or leave the place. The group resisted the move and trouble started. "We are unemployed and this is a form of employment to us. We feed our families from the proceeds and it is a surprise that the war veterans are now forcing us out for no apparent reason," said Magwenzi. The youths, numbering up to about 40 vowed to take the law into their own hands if the suspected war veterans continued to harass them. "Our country can't be ruled by these violent people who claim to have fought for our liberation. We are just like their own children. So why should they fight us?" said one of the youths.
From The Zimbabwe Independent, 9 MarchColtart not in hiding
Member of parliament for Bulawayo South David Coltart has confirmed receiving death threats but denied being in hiding as reported by a weekly paper yesterday. It had been reported that Coltart had gone underground after receiving the death threats from suspected Zanu PF supporters on his mobile cellphone. The death threats came after reports that he had filed a civil action against war veterans accused of kidnapping his election agent Patrick Nabanyama who went missing at the height of last year's parliamentary election campaign. "Whilst it is correct that I have received a serious death threat, I am not in hiding and have no intention of going into hiding and have not been at any time in hiding since receiving the threat," Coltart said.
It was also reported that Coltart gave the interview to the weekly from a secret location. "It follows that when I spoke with the reporter, I was not speaking from a secret location. In fact at the time I received the call I was in parliament," Coltart said. He said that he had taken additional security measures and that he would not be intimidated by the threats and would continue to vigorously work on behalf of those that elected him to parliament.
From The Zimbabwe Independent, 9 March
From the Muckraker column
Mugabe's gangsters 0, gay gangster 1
While the Herald's Stephen Ndlovu exulted over the attack on Peter Tatchell in Brussels on Monday ("Gay gangster Tatchell thumped"), other newspapers were providing the world with details that Ndlovu chose to omit from his partisan account. The bit for instance about President Mugabe and his bodyguards getting stuck in the revolving doors of the hotel as they tried to make good their escape. Nor did we hear from Ndlovu about the threat made to Tatchell by Mugabe's bodyguard: "We will find you and kill you."
That was after the bodyguard had punched Tatchell and knocked his head against a shop window outside the hotel. Tatchell, needless to say, took advantage of this photo opportunity to advertise his "war wounds" and parade as the hero of the hour. He was able to draw attention to human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and show from personal experience how Mugabe's thugs operate. This was all free publicity of a sort Mugabe could have done without. Film footage revealed the president being unceremoniously hustled into his BMW by his minders with his head forced down.
In addition to Ndlovu's creative journalism (there was no "horde of journalists running for dear life") we had Stan Mudenge pretending that "the British" had organised the whole thing. Does he seriously believe this nonsense? Or is it just for local consumption? Whatever the case, the threats and brutality exhibited by Mugabe's close security unit will have given the European public some idea of how Zimbabweans are treated every day.
From The Cape Argus, 8 March
SA's top military brass arrive in DRC
Kinshasa - A delegation of high ranking South African military personnel has arrived in Kinshasa, seeking an audience with President Joseph Kabila, as tensions rose in the capital in the wake of arrests. Kabila had indicated he wanted to talk to the South Africans, sources said, but they weren't sure what the president wanted to discuss. The deployment of South African troops could be one item but it appears that political issues will be higher on the agenda. A diplomatic source said: "The president appears to feel more comfortable discussing policy with fellow military men."
The president may be preoccupied by tensions in his army and the pressure being exerted by Zimbabwean forces, which have mounted checkpoints on main roads in Kinshasa and are rumoured to have rearmed elements of the Congolese police who had been disarmed by the Angolans. There are now three commissions probing the assassination of former president Laurent-Desire Kabila. The latest body to have become involved is dominated by Zimbabwean interrogators. It is rumoured that the chairmanship of this commission is in dispute.
Tension has been rising in Kinshasa. On Monday the army chief of staff ordered that no troops should carry weapons after working hours, a virtual admission that many troops who were disarmed after the killing in January of Kabila had found weapons elsewhere. Angolan and Zimbabwean troops were manning checkpoints at the weekend on the lookout for Congolese officials and ministers wanted for questioning. In the past two weeks the president's military aide and the commander of the Kinshasa garrison have been arrested and are being held at Makala prison, guarded by Zimbabweans.
A wave of other arrests followed, and on Tuesday the human rights group Voice of the Voiceless reported that imprisoned officers had been tortured. The president's military aide Colonel Eddy Kapend and the garrison commander General Nawej Yav have been interrogated by an international commission. Kapend was asked why he had reportedly ordered the execution of the president's alleged assassin, according to local media. Numerous security services personnel, ministers and officers have also been questioned.
Supporters of rival factions in Congolese political life have been helping the commission with its inquiries. Zimbabwean sources said some of their top military investigators were taking part, as well as Angolan, Namibian and Congolese investigators. The Harare government is reported to be sending its army chief of staff as its new ambassador to the DRC. Zimbabwean sources said on Tuesday Harare was recommending a sweeping reshuffle of the DRC government, and had proposed incorporating "experienced professionals" from the previous Mobutu regime as new ministers, and perhaps as prime minister.
From The National Post (US), 8 March
Mugabe and friends play a little realpolitik
Johannesburg - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's visit to Belgium and France this week - and his reception by Poul Nielson, the commissioner for development for the European Union; by Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian Prime Minister; and, above all, by President Jacques Chirac of France - has stirred considerable controversy, coming as it does amidst a plethora of human rights atrocities committed by the Mugabe regime. It has also focused attention sharply on the international realpolitik of the situation.
At independence in 1980, Britain and most other Western nations were eager to show goodwill to a black liberation movement which, having come to power, showed a commendable spirit of racial reconciliation and brought the hope of peace and progress to one of Africa's most developed countries. Zimbabwe became the front-line state in the confrontation with apartheid South Africa, and when Namibia acceded to independence in 1990, President Sam Nujoma made it clear he saw Mr. Mugabe as his key mentor and friend.
While Mr. Nujoma's ruling party, SWAPO, and South Africa's ANC had enjoyed strong support from the Soviet bloc, the USSR. and its allies had supported Mr. Mugabe's rival, Joshua Nkomo - which led Mr. Mugabe to cultivate stronger relations with China and less orthodox Communist states such as North Korea and Romania. Crucially, Mr. Mugabe accepted North Korean military trainers, whose ruthlessness and brutal techniques of brainwashing were clearly reflected in the Zimbabwean army's repression of dissent in Matabeleland in the mid-1980s.
Whole Ndebele villages would be dragooned into all-night sessions in which they would be beaten mercilessly even as they sang party songs (and had, at all costs, to keep singing), the session climaxing with the public execution of selected dissidents. Fatally, the world looked hard the other way, preferring to see these as tribal troubles, encouraging Mr. Mugabe to believe he could get away with human rights atrocities if he put the right rhetorical gloss on them.
With South Africa's liberation in 1994, Mr. Mugabe was discomfited to find his significance greatly reduced, as the giant figure of Nelson Mandela eclipsed him on the world stage. Feelings between the two men cooled as Mr. Mugabe sought every occasion to upstage Mr. Mandela. For example, Mr. Mugabe, crucially, hung on to his chairmanship of SADC's security section, from which position he rammed through the notion of SADC intervention in the DRC on the side of Laurent Kabila - and got his loyal henchman, Mr. Nujoma, to send Namibian troops alongside an Angolan contingent and Zimbabwe's own 12,000 troops. Mr. Mandela strongly dissented, made it clear South Africa would not intervene and did not hide his distaste for Mr. Kabila, whom he felt was hardly better than Mobutu Sese Seko, the country's other infamous despot.
Mr. Mugabe's military intervention stemmed in part from his annoyance at what had happened after he had sent troops to shore up the Frelimo regime in Mozambique. As peace was restored there, South African business interests swarmed in and cherry-picked most of the most promising commercial opportunities there, leaving Zimbabwe with little for its pains. Mr. Mugabe determined his intervention in the DRC would be different and quickly secured significant transport, arms trading and diamond mining interests there. The Zimbabwean army, well trained by the British in recent years, is the best equipped and most formidable of the intervention forces and despite Zimbabwe's economic collapse, Mr. Mugabe has upped his troop presence to 17,000 men. The result is to make him the key arbiter of the troubled future of the wartorn but mineral-rich DRC.
This, in turn, explains the interest the French and Belgians are showing in befriending Mr. Mugabe at a time when he is shunned by almost all others - indeed, demands are increasing for his arrest for gross human rights crimes. The French ambassador in Harare, Didier Ferrand, is the last Western envoy to maintain a warm relationship with Mr. Mugabe and Paris clearly hopes, in time-honoured fashion, to take advantage of Britain's difficulties in a country long considered the jewel of Africa. US policy toward Zimbabwe was constrained by a similar concern to exercise influence over the DRC - but Washington has switched its focus to Angola and is seeking to play its cards from Luanda, opening the way for possible sanctions against Mr. Mugabe as envisaged by the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill, now again before Congress.
To understand what is at stake, one must look at the map. Ever since major oil reserves were discovered in Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea, exploration has rippled down the West African coast. Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and Angola have become major oil producers and it is expected the exploration in progress off the Namibian and South African west coast will reveal the whole continental shelf is oil- and gas-bearing. Total reserves may be as much as half those of the Middle East, making this an area of strategic concern and economic interest to all the major powers.
The DRC is already a significant oil producer but, more important, it is the potential giant of the region, casting a large shadow over the tiny states of Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville as well as Angola's key oil enclave of Cabinda. The region is torn by seemingly endless conflicts in Angola and the Congo - though since the oil is almost all in shallow offshore waters, exploration and production have gone ahead. These conflicts have not even prevented the onshore exploitation of the region's rich copper, uranium and diamond resources. But strategists cannot ignore the possibility that they may have merely scratched the surface of this region's mineral and energy riches; that relatively small military forces are able to play a pivotal role amidst the region's chaos; and that one day, peace could transform the prospects of all these countries.
That is, however, a distant prospect. What is doubtless more in Mr. Chirac's mind is that French oil companies are already major players off the West African coast - and these companies and countries have been key contributors to Gaullist party funds in the past, something Chirac, facing an election next year, is unlikely to forget. Accordingly, what happens in the DRC remains of keen interest to France - and Mr. Mugabe is not only the biggest military player there but is in such dire straits he will have to look at any deal he's offered.
WINDHOEK, March 8 (Reuters) - Southern African leaders gathered in Namibia on Thursday for a summit likely to be dominated by discussion on Zimbabwe's role as head of a regional defence and security group.
Zimbabwe has annoyed some members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) by rallying support from fellow SADC members Angola and Namibia to intervene militarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo against Ugandan-and Rwandan-backed rebels.
The multi-national war in the Congo, Angola's civil war and South Africa's relations with Zimbabwe could feature on the sidelines of the one-day SADC summit on Friday.
Officials said the summit could provide an opportunity for Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and South Africa's Thabo Mbeki to talk.
Mbeki, who has resisted international pressure to publicly denounce Mugabe's campaign against white farmers and the judiciary, said recently he was concerned about developments in Zimbabwe and would discuss his concerns with Mugabe.
The summit will also finalise plans adopted by ministers in South Africa two weeks ago to reform the defence and security organ currently led by Mugabe.
ZIMBABWE'S ABUSE
SADC members rarely criticise each other in public, but several including South Africa have charged privately that Zimbabwe has abused its position by taking unilateral decisions.
They want the defence and security organ to surrender its independence from the SADC leadership and come under collective control, a step Mugabe has so far opposed.
Diplomats in Windhoek said Mugabe, Dos Santos and Nujoma might hold separate talks to address rising tension in the Congo, triggered by a crackdown on soldiers, officials and businessmen suspected of involvement in the January assassination of former Congo President Laurent Kabila.
The SADC leaders from Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, the Congo, Mozambique, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles, Swaziland, South Africa and Zimbabwe will also hear a report from Congo mediator and Zambian President Frederick Chiluba.
Momentum towards peace in the former Belgian colony has risen since Kabila's death and officials expect the region's leaders to hear a report on prospects for a lasting truce.
The leaders of Angola, Namibia and Zambia will hold separate talks on the civil war in Angola, looking at measures to prevent fighting from spreading across borders.
The use of Congo territory by rebels was a key factor in the involvement by Namibia and Angola in the west and of Rwanda and Uganda in the east in the Congo's civil conflict.
Angola wants active support from its neighbours in reining in the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) led by guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi.
The 14-nation SADC called the extraordinary summit to discuss the appointment of a new chief executive and the overhaul of its Botswana-based headquarters, a South African government statement said.
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Robert Mugabe's European tour has sparked a continental squabble and brought criticism that the warm reception the Zimbabwean leader received gave undeserved respectability to his authoritarian rule.
Greeted by President Jacques Chirac in at the Elysee Palace in Paris, offered lunch by the official in charge of the European Union's aid budget and engaged for a diplomatic parlay with Belgium's prime minister, Mugabe has defied international efforts to isolate him.
The French and Belgian leaders encountered a hail of criticism _ mostly from Britain -- for receiving Mugabe, who has been denounced for his country's crackdown on opposition parties, independent journalists, judges and white landowners.
As Mugabe left Europe Wednesday and headed for a regional conference set for Thursday in Namibia, Zimbabwe's main opposition group complained that the tour had given "a veneer of respectability" to his regime. Mugabe, 77, has been in power since Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980.
"Would we have discussed matters with Stalin and Hitler too?" fumed Nirj Deva, a British Conservative member of the European Parliament.
French and Belgian officials insisted they had raised human rights with Mugabe. But Zimbabwe's domestic problems were secondary to the real reason for the meetings -- the 11,000 troops Mugabe has posted in Congo.
Zimbabwe and Angola are backing the government of Congolese President Joseph Kabila in its fight against rebels supported by Rwanda and Uganda in a three-year war that has ripped apart the vast central African nation -- a former Belgian colony and the largest French-speaking country in sub-Saharan Africa.
"What is important is the role played by the president of Zimbabwe in the Congo (where) the situation remains uncertain," said Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, brushing aside criticism of the meeting Monday.
Belgium has been playing an increasingly visible role in efforts to bring peace to Congo, which have intensified since Joseph Kabila succeed his late father Laurent, gunned down in the presidential palace in January.
Michel met Mugabe on a tour of regional capitals after Kablia's funeral. The Zimbabwean strongman was the latest of a string of African leaders to discuss Congo with Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt in Brussels -- including the younger Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Paris also seeks a role in the Congolese peace process, eager to maintain a foothold in a region where French influence has waned in recent years.
"If we want to make any progress, we have to talk to all those who have a say in this situation in Congo," said Daniel Bernard, France's ambassador in London, on Britain's Channel 4 News.
Such words did little to calm critics in Britain, many of whom remain outraged at the killings of white Zimbabwean farmers.
Zimbabwe is suffering it worst economic crisis since independence. Political violence and lawlessness linked to the illegal occupation of white-owned farms by ruling party militants has scared off donors and foreign investors.
HARARE, March 8 (Reuters) - The campaign for Zimbabwe's presidential election is gathering pace and political analysts fear that guns and clubs will be the instruments of persuasion following the weekend killing of a white woman farmer.
Self-proclaimed veterans of the former Rhodesia's 1980s liberation war secured President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF a narrow victory in parliamentary elections last June.
Now they appear to be gearing up for a new campaign of terror to ensure that Mugabe, 77, will extend his 21-year rule for a further six years in a poll due within 14 months.
In the past week the war veterans, many too young to have fought for the independence Zimbabwe won in 1980, have attacked and stopped opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) rallies and have stepped up assaults on its officials.
The small white farming community fears also that the veterans might have had a role in the murder of solo farmer Gloria Olds at the weekend.
Community sources too afraid to speak on the record say the veterans are now offering their "intimidation services" to individuals to settle private disputes.
"What is happening is not surprising. It is in line with the general expectation that the government will fight dirty towards the elections," said political commentator Chenjerai Hove, a newspaper columnist and award-winning writer.
"We expect that some of its supporters will really get vicious as we get close," he told Reuters.
VIOLENT PERSUASION
Solomon Nkiwane, a political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, said Mugabe was relying increasingly on the war veterans for his political campaign.
"I think because many of them have no political campaign skills they rely on intimidation rather than persuasion and they think it's going to work," he told Reuters.
There is speculation -- which the government has dismissed -- of an election before the deadline in April next year.
Most independent political analysts believe that Mugabe or a chosen ZANU-PF successor would lose a free and fair presidential election to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Analysts say people are tired of Mugabe's increasingly eccentric rule, which has ground the country into an economic and political crisis.
ZANU-PF's overwhelming parliamentary majority was slashed in elections last June after a violent campaign that left at least 31 people dead.
Mugabe tried to bar the courts from hearing challenges by the MDC who wanted to contest constitutencies where ZANU-PF's victory was in doubt. He was overruled by the Supreme Court.
The former guerrilla leader has also increased pressure on the media and the judiciary ahead of the presidential elections.
The government has expelled two foreign correspondents and there are rumours others will go soon. It has forced the country's chief justice into early retirement and charged MDC leaders, including Tsvangirai, with inciting violence.
No one has been arrested or charged in connection with the murder of Gloria Olds or last year's killing of seven white farmers and more than 20 opposition candidates and officials.
Olds, whose son Martin was one of the farmers killed last year, was found shot dead at her farm near Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo.
HARARE, Mar 8, 2001 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Robbers shot and killed a policeman and seriously wounded another at a roadblock near Mabelreign Shopping Centre in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, on Wednesday night, the official Herald newspaper reported here on Thursday.
The injured was rushed to the Centre Hospital, where his condition could not be ascertained by the time of going to print Wednesday night, the newspaper said.
The shooting occurred around 8 p.m. local time when the gunmen pumped in five bullets in the dead.
They fired at close range as the officer was beginning to search their car, killing him instantly.
Crime Prevention Officer for Harare Police Province Superintendent Crowd Chirenje was quoted as saying that the policemen were on a mission targeted to clamp down on carjackers and robbers.
He appealed to members of the public with information, particularly motorists who were at the roadblock, to contact the nearest police station or any policeman.
Police have recently intensified their operations against armed robbers, particularly carjackers, and have scored several major successes.
More than 1,600 vehicles were reportedly stolen in Zimbabwe last year, several hundred of them at gunpoint.
NOT so long ago urban Zimbabweans, with just a hint of hypocrisy, were accusing farmers of timidity in the face of intimidation. Of course, urban Zimbabweans weren't being threatened. Now they are, but even that requires qualification. Working class people in the townships are being punished for voting for the MDC. Judges and journalists are also being threatened by the CIO and even, crassly, by ministers in Mr Mugabe's government. And Mr Mugabe himself has made threats against whites and the opposition.
Despite all this, middle class Zimbabwe has had it comparatively easy. Fuel queues and diminishing incomes aside, few middle class urban Zimbabweans have anything more threatening to deal with than the occasional verbal skirmish with persistently unpleasant policemen.
Nonetheless, we're told than many have left the country. Some, and in fairness a very few of their rural counterparts, have sought allegedly greener pastures in the antipodes or Europe - and some, we know, dine out on horrific war stories, claiming spurious refugee status because their lives were somehow threatened.
Sadly there are people who've been and are threatened - but almost all of them remain in Zimbabwe.
As always, there are voices that need to be heard - and voices that we hear, but should pay little attention to. Last week, Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay made a brave stand against the bullying tactics of the government.
And also last week, we're told, Mr David Coltart, MP, went into hiding with his entire family - but he hid, he did not flee. These are people, among tens of thousands of black and white Zimbabweans who are helping the nation find its voice. They are standing up to the common foe of anarchy and lawlessness, and they're doing it from home. Puerile exhortations to "fight the good fight" from the safety of Manchester or Melbourne aren't really worth the bandwidth all their silly e-mails take up.
Farmers, of course, have shown both courage and tenacity. Together with hundreds of thousands of farm workers, they've held together with more integrity and strength than many people thought possible. A handful of farmers have left, some because they faced economic ruination, a very few for risible reasons, but the overwhelming majority have stood their ground. The same holds true for farm labour, undoubtedly the most threatened group of people in Zimbabwe today.
Death threats, now almost a daily occurrence, have been a fact of life for farmers for over a year. This magazine has spoken with farmers, men and women still resident on their farms, who receive chilling reminders of their defenselessness on a regular basis. But they will not budge. Their quiet bravery stands in stark contrast to those egging them on from comfortable sanctuaries abroad.
And the Chief Justice's stand last week, whether it proves short lived or not, showed more guts and honesty than the country could have hoped for - and, being honest, more than the country expected. Just days before Gubbay's announcement the picture painted of him was of an elderly and (understandably) querulous jurist ready to take the fall. Well, take the fall he might (and perhaps even while this paper goes to Press), but he's said to all 12 million Zimbabweans that if he's to be laid flat on his back then he must be pushed, because he's not going to roll over and submit to bullying.
All this tells a story of its own. Despite gossip to the contrary, the judiciary is strong in the face of meddling by the ruling party. And notwithstanding government meddling in the affairs of the trade union movement, it has resisted efforts to get the ZCTU to kowtow fawningly before ZANU-PF.
And while no one denies that the State-sponsored Press has shown sickening disregard for the truth - and for the ethics of its craft - the independent Press has stood firm in the face of intimidation, brutality and even bombing. Meanwhile farmers, who've dealt with this for longer than anyone else, remain determined to end the crisis and begin talking about a return to the 1998 Agreement.
In the face of all this strength and determination, ZANU-PF will be hard pushed to succeed. Add to all the internal strengths, and the ruling party's critically precarious finances, the fact that the international community is convinced that Zimbabwe warrants pariah status, then we must believe that there's light at the end of the tunnel. It'll take a little time and a little more tenacity, but winning through will reap serious rewards for those who've stuck by their principles - and their roots.
Zimbabwe meets EU beef export quota
ZIMBABWE, in 2000, succeeded in meeting its European Union (EU) beef export quota of 9100 tonnes for the first time in four years and the Cold Storage Company of Zimbabwe (CSC), responsible for the export slaughter to the EU, is confident of supplying the same tonnage again this year.
According to CSC, Zimbabwe exported 9184 tonnes to the EU market, 84 tonnes above the EU annual quota of 9100.
However only 7452 tonnes qualified for the 2000 licence as the balance of 1732 tonnes was shipped after the new cut off date of 4 December 2000.
CSC public relations manager, Ms Joyce Sibanda, said the 1732 tonnes would, according to the EU, not be included under the 2000 quota but under the 2001 quota.
Towards the end of last year the CSC experienced a huge backlog of slaughter due to the breakdown of one of their packaging machines at the Bulawayo abattoir, which is their biggest slaughtering facility. The huge backlog was also compounded by the increased supply of slaughter cattle due disturbances on the farms.
After the equipment was repaired, Ms Sibanda said the CSC was able to clear backlog within four months. This was part of the reason why the 1732 were shipped after the cut-off date.
Zimbabwe has, for the past fours, not been able to meet the EU export quota. This was attributed to the droughts experienced in the early 1990s after which the country embarked on a massive restocking exercise.
Meanwhile, there is scepticism about the country surpassing the EU 9100 quota with some market analysts attributing this to farmers sending their cattle for slaughter due to uncertainties about the future caused by farm invasions by the so-called war veterans and government's controversial land reform programme. Reservations have also been expressed on whether the country would meet this year's target.
Some farmers were forced to sell their cattle, including breeding stock, due to viability problems and to raise money for their farming operations as banks were reluctant to lend money to listed farmers.
Ms Sibanda was however confident that this years' quota would be met. Given this year's performance we are confident that we will meet the EU quota of 9100 tonnes in the year 2001," she said.
The Farmer could not immediately establish the exact amount of foreign currency earned from beef exports to the EU in 2000.
In the meantime, the CSC said it was rationalising its domestic distribution network and this exercise had already been affected in Kadoma, Gweru and Marondera.
Ms Sibanda said the company was reorganising its operations in Mutare and Harare. "We are reducing double handling of products in the distribution of domestic product to enhance the company's profitability in the domestic market, " she said.
She said the domestic market's distribution system had been recording undesirable margins adding that products destined for local customers would now be delivered directly from the slaughtering branches in Bulawayo, Chinhoyi and Masvingo. She said transport arrangements for the reorganised system were in place and that all affected staff would be redeployed to the operating branches.
Rio Tinto to build a US$35m diamond mine
EVEN as Zimbabwe's economy continues to nose dive the country appears set to undergo a mining boom in coming years.
The UK's Rio Tinto, together with its Harare-based affiliate Rio Tinto Zimbabwe, has said it intends to spend US$35 million building a new diamond mine by 2003 that will be the country's only gem producer following the closure of the River Ranch mine.
Construction of the mine, based on the Murowa deposit, will begin within six months should the companies succeed in resettling 1,000 people living in the area. US$25 million has already been spent finding the 16.5 million ton deposit, which contains 15 million carats of gems.
Rio Tinto, which vies with Anglo American for the rank of the world's biggest mining company, owns 50% of the deposit and will carry half the cost with the rest to be met by Rio Tinto Zimbabwe.
Plans for the mine, which will extract 500,000 tonnes of ore a year, comes as another company, Australia's Zimbabwe Platinum Mines, plans a series of platinum mines along Zimbabwe's long-neglected Great Dyke geological complex.
While the company has been short of finance to go ahead with the projects speculation is growing that one of South Africa's giant platinum producers could step in in the wake of changes to South Africa's foreign exchange laws that would ease investment.
In his 2001 budget South African finance minister, Trevor Manuel, raised the amount of money South African companies can directly invest in Africa to 750 million rand from 50 million rand. That's more than enough to buy Zimplats outright as the company's market value of less than 500 million rand.
Zimplats has confirmed that it has held talks with South African companies Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Anglovaal Mining amongst others.
For Rio however, the Murowa diamond mine is a poor second prize after Zimbabwe's struggling economy and the government's plans to expand the Hwange power station with Malaysian investors put paid to a US$1 billion plan to build a coal mine and associated power station, Gokwe North, together with the state's Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority and the UK's National Power.
Experimental work at Tanganda Tea Company estates in Chipinge has indicated that a combination of new tea production techniques could significantly speed up the current system of producing tea plants and also improve production logistics while at the same time reducing the costs involved.
Tea production is a long-term venture. It usually takes two to three years before tea bushes produce their first crop and seven to eight years before they reach maturity and good yields.
Tanganda's director of estates, Mr Chris Lightfoot, said that speeding up the current system of producing tea plants could in turn reduce the time required to reach maturity by some two years. "This, together with the savings on logistics and costs, could have wide-ranging resultant benefits and, in particular, it would add further to the already increased interest in tea production by small-scale growers, which we are trying to encourage", he said.
The new techniques centre around a combination of improved clonal teas, 'top-working' which is a method of grafting, and 'speedling' trays, which reduce the handling, time and costs involved in nurseries, transport and field planting.
Mr Lightfoot said tea growers had for many years been steadily planting out clonal teas instead of seedling teas, as clonal teas produced much higher yields and quality of leaf. Clonal teas are propagated cuttings by natural processes from parent plants with the required characteristics such as rooting capabilities, vigorous growth, drought resistance, quality of leaf and good tea making properties.
Under current procedures, these cuttings are grown in plastic pots in nurseries where they are nurtured for up to two years until ready for planting out into the fields.
Research
"While the Tea Research Foundation (TRF) in Malawi is developing technologies for rapid multiplication of these clonal teas, in September 1999 we started experimenting with 'top-working'. Using this process four new clonal teas from the TRF were initially grafted onto a small number of well-established seedling tea bushes to produce a sufficient stock of cuttings for subsequent use," said Mr Lightfoot.
"The grafts grew vigorously. A number of plucking shoots were taken and the thicker wood was used to graft onto more seedling bushes, with the process being repeated many more times thereafter.
"The resultant exponential multiplication has already enabled us to take and plant 100 000 plucking shoot cuttings of these four new clones in the nurseries. Such cuttings develop much faster and it is estimated this will save a year of nursery time. We expect to plant out some 30 to 35 hectares of these new clonal teas in November this year.
"Further in this regard, the use of 'speedling' trays, instead of the conventional plastic pots, for the growth of the cuttings in the nurseries and their subsequent transfer to the fields has many advantages. These include optimum use of space, less weight, easier handling and transport and, therefore, lower costs. The trays encourage strong root growth and, once the plants are established in the field, they grow well."
Mr Lightfoot said that, at the same time, Tanganda was experimenting with converting a seedling tea field to clonal tea by continuing with the process of 'top-working' across the entire field, producing scions for the further 'top-working' in that field. If proved successful, this would represent a major advancement on conventional replanting.
ZGPA donates Grain Handbooks to UZ
ZIMBABWE will likely face a chronic maize deficit this year because commercial farmers have reduced their hectarage by around 50%, according to the Zimbabwe Grain Producers' Association (ZGPA) economist, Mr Simba Zengeni. The reduction is due largely to the state of lawlessness that has plunged Zimbabwe into anarchy over the last 12 months. Meanwhile the ensuing economic crisis that has made Zimbabwe the fastest shrinking economy in the world has seen the communal sector crop also shrink alarmingly. Many communal and small-scale farmers have not been able to afford to plant maize, while erratic weather, first a dry spell followed by torrential rain, has destroyed much of the crop.
Speaking at a ceremony where the ZGPA handed over grain handbooks to the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) Mr Zengeni also said that many farmers had experienced very late payments for their previous crop from the Grain Marketing Board (GMB). The corruption plagued parastatal was unable to pay farmers who needed the money to plant their next crop.
The ZGPA donated 100 grain production handbooks that will be used by both lecturers and students at the country's foremost university. The books, described by Zengeni as "a grain farmer's bible", cover topics ranging from tillage practises to weed and pest control.
pretoria
The South African government's Crop Estimates Committee has forecast this season's maize harvest from the world's fourth-biggest exporter of the crop at just 6.53 million tonnes, with the unusually dry and hot weather so far this year slashing what was initially expected to be a 10.2 million tonne crop.
The reduced forecast comes even as heavy rains in mid-February brought some relief to farmers in South Africa's main maize growing areas, bringing to an end a rally in maize prices on the South African Futures Exchange that threatened to see white maize prices crest the 1000 rand per tonne mark.
Domestic consumption
The harvest, which will likely consist of 3.72 million tons of white maize and 2.82 million tonnes of yellow maize, will fall short of South Africa's domestic consumption of about 7.9 million tons a year. In South Africa white maize is used principally for human consumption while yellow maize is mainly used as animal feed.
Prime candidates
Still, the shortfall will be met by the 1.6 million tonnes surplus left over from last season's harvest. But it could well mean that there is little maize left to meet the needs of neighbouring countries that will probably need to import later this year.
Prime candidates are Mozambique, where floods have devastated thousands of hectares of crops, and Zimbabwe where an early dry spell ruined the early planted maize crop and a wave of farm occupations by armed squatters has deterred commercial farmers from planting their usual hectarages.
Other summer crops expected to yield less than last year are sorghum with a harvest of 186,000 tonnes compared with 352,000 in 2000 and sunflower seeds with a crop of 527,000 tonnes compared with 531,000 tonnes last year.
South Africa's ground nut harvest is expected to rise to 179,000 tonnes from 114,000 last year while growers are expected to yield 193,000 tonnes of soya beans, up from the 2000 crop of 149,000 tonnes. The dry bean harvest is forecast at 91,000 tonnes, compared with just 72,000 tonnes.
The next estimate for the summer crop harvests is expected from the Crop Estimates Committee on 19 March.
The final estimate for the wheat harvest, a winter crop, is 2.12 million tonnes, compared with 1.73 million tonnes last year. Other winter harvests are expected to come in at 142,000 tonnes of barley, compared with 91,000 tons last year, 27,000 tonnes of canola, a slight increase on last year's 23,000 tonnes and 17,000 tonnes of sweet lupines, up from 13,000 tonnes.
Bank profits soar in Zimbabwe chaos
"THE world's fastest shrinking economy" is how Zimbabwe is described by international economists, which means that making a profit is very difficult for everyone from farmers to manufacturers. Banking, however, has remained profitable, as shown by recent annual reports for Barclays and National Merchant Bank.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that if there are no major reforms Zimbabwe's economy will contract by 10% in 2001 and that inflation will soar from 56% to 155%. The economic situation is unquestionably disastrous, but the banks have been able to make tidy profits, at least so far.
How do the banks make their money? A big earner last year was lending to the government. After years of overspending and amassing a huge domestic debt, the government is desperate for cash. The IMF estimates the government took in 27% of GDP in taxes last year and spent 50% of GDP. To make up the shortfall the government has issued Treasury bills yielding up to 70%. The difference was vast between what banks paid their depositors and what they could make putting depositors' money into the Treasury bills. Savings accounts paid between 10% and 40% last year, and they are down to 10% to 20% this year. Current accounts pay next to nothing.
Currency swaps
Zimbabwean banks also prosper in other ways. Barclays, for instance, will sometimes buy preference shares in corporate clients, instead of lending to them. Instead of interest, the bank gets dividends, which are less heavily taxed. Stanbic offers "zero-cost" currency swaps, which are not exactly that. A firm that needs foreign currency can get it by swapping Zimbabwe dollars at the prevailing rate. After an agreed period, the bank buys back the American dollars for Zimbabwe dollars, at the earlier exchange rate. The bank has been earning local interest rates on the local dollars, on which the client has borne the currency risk. With the value of the local currency shrinking rapidly, this is a one-way bet for the bank. Local manufacturers who are desperate for forex must take it any way they can get it.
Highly unorthodox
This year will be more difficult for the banks. The yield on Treasury bills has fallen to 14% and the government plans to raise money in other ways. One plan is to force pension funds to buy ten-year bonds paying just 15%. That means pensioners will be mugged to pay for Mr Mugabe's war in Congo. Another plan, announced in mid-January, is to make the banks take some of the reserves they must lodge, at zero interest rate, with the Reserve Bank and instead lend it to "productive" enterprises, meaning exporters, miners, farmers, tourism companies and manufacturers. Exporters will be able to borrow those funds at 15% and others at 30%.
It is highly unorthodox and it is unlikely to solve Zimbabwe's pressing economic problems, but the banks think it is fine. The new rates are well below the rate of inflation, but given that they were not earning any interest on those reserve funds before, even 15% is better than nothing. The trouble is that while firms may borrow, they may not produce much more because of erratic fuel supplies, continuing farm occupations and tourists who are too frightened to even go to Victoria Falls. The main effect of the plan will be to increase inflation.
As Zimbabwe's economy continues to come apart at the seams, some of the country's weaker banks may fail. The IMF estimates that 20% of the loans on commercial banks' books last September were bad, and given that some banks lend to cronies of the ruling party, the proportion is rising fast. Zimbabwean depositors face an increasingly sorry choice. They can put their money into safe banks at derisory interest rates and watch inflation eat it up. Or they can put it into dodgy banks, where they will get higher rates of interest, and maybe lose the lot.
Chirac trims pomp and fanfare for Mugabe visit
