VOA
By Peta Thornycroft
Harare
12 March
2006
In Zimbabwe, eight men, including an opposition legislator,
have been
charged with plotting to assassinate President Robert Mugabe. Peta
Thornycroft, in this VOA report from Harare, has more on the court
proceedings in the eastern city of Mutare.
Prosecutor Levson Chikafu
said the eight men held several meetings in the
last five years, allegedly
to discuss a number of plots against President
Mugabe and the
government.
He said the police found an arms cache at the Mutare home of
one of the
accused, Michael Hitschmann, who the court heard had implicated
others in a
statement he made shortly after his arrest.
Trust Manda,
Hitschmann's lawyer, said his client made a statement under
duress, after
being held incommunicado for 48 hours.
He said Hitschmann was a licensed
firearms dealer, but that his client had
not had an opportunity to check
whether the weapons confiscated by the
police belonged to him.
Giles
Mutsekwa, a member of parliament for the opposition Movement for
Democratic
Change, was also arrested, along with two opposition provincial
leaders.
Lawyers claimed that four of those arrested last week were
tortured, when
they were being held initially at army
barracks.
Police claim the suspects were linked to a shadowy
organization, allegedly
based in London, called the Zimbabwe Freedom
Movement.
The state has linked this organization to the opposition
Movement for
Democratic Change.
The MDC has denied it has links with
any violent group or plot against
President Mugabe. It says the arrests are
an attempt to destabilize an
opposition congress it plans to hold next
week.
Lawyers for the eight have applied to court for their release, on
the
grounds there is no reasonable case against them. A decision will be
handed
down Wednesday.
There have been several cases over the last
quarter century when scores of
people have been arrested and charged with
treason and of plotting to
assassinate Mr. Mugabe. None of the cases has
ever been proven.
Zim Online
Mon 13 March
2006
MUTARE - State security agents beat up and tortured four
opposition
activists arrested last week for allegedly possessing arms of war
and tried
to force them to confess plotting to assassinate President Robert
Mugabe and
overthrow his government, the activists' lawyers said at the
weekend.
One of the defence lawyers, Chris Ndlovu, told Mutare
magistrate
Fabian Feshete that a team of secret service agents and soldiers
took the
four Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) activists to a military
camp
called Adams Barracks, about six kilometers east of the
city.
At the camp, the four were severely beaten up and tortured
including
on their private organs and at one time some of the MDC activists
were
forced to drink human urine as the security agents attempted to force
them
to admit plotting to murder Mugabe last month and illegally remove the
ruling ZANU PF party from power, Ndlovu said.
"They were abused
by police and military personnel who are
investigating the case," Ndlovu
told the court that sat on Saturday after
defence lawyers pressed for their
clients to be brought to court in line
with detention regulations that
require suspects to be arraigned in court
within 48 hours of being detained
by the police.
"They wanted to force them to
confess to the alleged crimes," said
Ndlovu.
The magistrate
however did not order an investigation into the
allegations of torture and
did not even appear to have taken official note
of Ndlovu's complaints about
the ill-treatment of his clients.
Torture is outlawed in Zimbabwe.
However, state security agents
especially the dreaded spy Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO) has been
routinely accused by the MDC and
human rights groups of torturing perceived
political opponents of the
government. The government denies its agents use
torture.
The
MDC members that appeared in court on Saturday are the opposition
party's
defence secretary Giles Mutsekwa, youth chairman in Manicaland
province
Knowledge Nyamhuka and activists Thando Sibanda, Wellington Tsuro
and Edwin
Chekutya.
Former soldier in the white army before Zimbabwe's
independence, Peter
Hitschmann, and at whose Mutare home security say they
discovered an illegal
cache of weapons that were to be used by the MDC
activists also appeared in
court with the five.
Hitschmann and
Mutsekwa said they had not been tortured.
The group was charged
with contravening section 10 (1) of the Public
Order and Security Act (POSA)
by conspiring to possess weaponry for
insurgency, banditry, sabotage or
terrorism.
The MDC activists, who were remanded in custody to March
28 this year
and face life imprisonment if found guilty, deny the charges
against them.
About 10 other MDC activists including the opposition
party's
treasurer for Manicaland province Brian James are also being held by
police
over the same allegations of wanting to murder Mugabe and overthrow
his
government.
And state media at the weekend reported that
more MDC members will be
arrested in what the MDC and outside observers have
dismissed as a well
orchestrated plan by Mugabe's government to conjure up a
failed coup and in
the process distract public attention from worsening
economic hardships.
Political analysts also say the government also
hopes to use the coup
allegations to weaken the faction of the fractured MDC
that is loyal to
Morgan Tsvangirai and is seen as more radical in its
opposition to Mugabe
and ZANU PF.
The MDC split into two camps
after Tsvangirai disagreed with other top
leaders over whether to contest
last November's controversial senate
election that was won by ZANU
PF.
Tsvangirai's faction of the MDC opposed participation in the
poll
saying it would be stolen by Mugabe while his deputy Gibson Sibanda and
secretary general Welshman Ncube wanted to contest the poll saying
boycotting would be to surrender political space to the government. Ncube
and Sibanda's faction is now led by former student leader and top scientist,
Arthur Mutambara. All the MDC members arrested by the police last week
belong to Tsvangirai's faction of the opposition party.
Although Tsvangirai says he has lost faith in elections and says he
will
lead his supporters in what he calls "popular resistance" against
Mugabe's
government, he however says this does not include an armed
insurrection
against the Harare government. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 13
March 2006
HARARE - Last May, 70-year old pensioner, Yotamu Mwale
watched
helplessly as bulldozers razed his three backyard shacks in
Majubeki Lines,
in the poor suburb of Mbare in Harare.
For
Mwale - and many other retirees in this old suburb - the shacks
were a
source of critically needed additional income to augment a small
pension
that has virtually lost all value due to rising inflation.
But
barely a year after President Robert Mugabe sanctioned a
military-style home
demolition campaign in urban areas that displaced at
least 700 000 people
and directly affected another 2.4 million people,
according to a United
Nations report, his government is at it again - this
time sanctioning an
astronomical hike in rates that has hit hard defenceless
pensioners.
Zimbabweans wryly described the controversial
housing demolition
campaign as "Mugabe's tsunami".
With no
steady income after the demolition of his backyard shacks,
Mwale who is of
Malawian ancestry, says his life is miserable as he battles
to eke a living
in what has turned out to be an inhospitable city.
"I can now
hardly afford to pay my monthly rates let alone buy enough
food for myself,"
he says dejectedly.
A government appointed commission running
Harare last month
arbitrarily hiked rates by more than 1 000 percent, to
levels well beyond
the reach of most pensioners here.
Mwale,
who retired some five years ago, says he gets a pension of Z$3
000 a month,
hardly enough to buy a loaf of bread. Bread now costs about
Z$65 000 a
loaf.
But under the new rates announced by the council last week,
residents
must now fork out Z$5 million for water and services, up from an
average of
Z$700 000 that they used to pay last year.
"When the
postman delivered my water bill for the month, I could not
believe it. I
thought he had delivered it to the wrong address. I also
thought it could
have been a computer error.
"But when I heard a widow down the
street wailing in protest over her
bills, I knew I was not the only one with
such a huge bill," says Mwale.
Zimbabwe is in its sixth year of a
bitter economic recession which has
seen inflation shooting beyond 700
percent. Food, fuel and essential
medicines are also in critical short
supply because there is no hard cash to
pay foreign suppliers.
The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party and major
Western
governments blame the country's economic crisis on Mugabe's policies
especially his seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless
blacks six years ago.
But it is not just the pensioners who are
in trouble over the
ballooning rates in Harare.
Mwale's
neighbours some of whom are still gainfully employed in the
few remaining
industries in Harare, are also bitter over the new rates.
Rudo
Tsikira, a ward co-ordinator in Mbare, said the council must
rethink as the
new rates are way beyond the reach of residents, groaning
under a six year
old economic crisis described by the World Bank as
unprecedented for a
country not at war.
"We hope the commission will rethink this whole
thing and stop their
diabolic schemes as this is affecting the poor and aged
in Mbare who have no
source of income," she said.
Mairos
Gawura, also a pensioner in the suburb, says the commission
must revise
their rates as residents cannot afford to pay such astronomical
amounts.
"When the government demolished the shacks, I was
saddled with a $4
million bill after my lodgers were dispersed in the middle
of the month
before they could settle the bill.
"There is no
way I can pay the amount with the $3 000 pension I
receive every month,"
added Gawura.
A spokesman for the Combined Harare Residents
Association (CHRA),
Precious Shumba, said residents must take collective
action against the
commission running Harare over its arrogance and
insensitivity to the plight
of the poor.
"We have maintained
that the 2006 budget was implemented without
following the proper procedures
according to the Urban Councils Act," said
Shumba whose association has been
highly critical of the commission.
CHRA says it is still gauging
the mood on the ground with a view to
calling for a rates boycott or
demonstrations against the rates increases.
Harare, once a model city in
Africa, is in an advanced state of decay due to
years of
mismanagement.
Burst sewer pipes spewing raw sewage, uncollected
garbage and erratic
water supplies are a common occurrence in Harare
suburbs.
And for Mwale and other old timers here in Mbare, the
recent rate hike
could be the last act by, as he puts it, "an arrogant
government determined
to turn into nightmare what for us should be a time of
happy retirement and
rest." - ZimOnline
Mail and Guardian
Fanuel Jongwe | Nyanga, Zimbabwe
12
March 2006 07:50
Chipo Mapako, a village head in the eastern
Zimbabwean district
of Nyanga, does not remember when he last had a square
meal.
The 56-year-old father of seven squints up at the sky,
then
holds his chin and shakes his head when asked when he last had a proper
repast.
"The daily struggle for us is to find enough food
to stave off
hunger," says Mapako, who heads a village of at least 300
people in the
district renowned as much for its picturesque mountain ranges
as for its
dry, stony fields. "Getting sufficient food is hard enough and
who would
think about nutrients?"
Nine-year-old Takudzwa
Tazvitya, a fourth-grade pupil, eats a
handful of roasted peanuts and a cup
of milkless tea for breakfast before
starting off barefoot on a 7km trek to
school.
After class the boy, who wants to become a police
officer, joins
a queue in a makeshift soup kitchen at Tamunesa Primary
School where hungry
pupils carrying battered bowls and greasy plastic plates
receive fortified
porridge.
The gruel contains "all the
nutrients they miss in the meals at
home", according to an official from the
United Nations World Food Programme
(WFP).
Starvation
Mapako and Takudzwa are among thousands of villagers
in the
Nyanga district near Zimbabwe's border with Mozambique, living on the
verge
of starvation and relying on monthly food rations from the
WFP.
"We usually have two small meals -- one during the day
and one
before we go to bed -- but the situation is so bad we go to bed on a
meal of
boiled vegetables," says Venenzia Mwendazviya, a 26-year-old mother
of
three. "We crush peanuts to squeeze out cooking oil, but we often run out
of
the peanuts and just eat boiled vegetables."
Goodson
Murinye, head of the WFP office in the eastern city of
Mutare, says the
district is in the red category -- the most vulnerable --
according to a
study done late last year by a committee of state welfare
officers and aid
agencies.
"At least 42% of the population is food insecure
with the
highest malnutrition rate in the province," Murinye said at a
food-distribution centre where villagers lined up to receive their monthly
handouts of 10kg of corn-meal.
The district also ranks
third in the country in HIV/Aids
prevalence, according to the
WFP.
The UN food agency and partners, such as the Irish food
aid
agencies Concern and Goal, are feeding 1 700 people, with the number of
beneficiaries expected to swell to 74 956 by month-end, Murinye
said.
School head Clifford Kanengoni said the food hand-outs
help
reduce absenteeism among pupils at his school. "The pupils are more
alert
and look healthier," he said. "Teaching them is more
fun."
Food shortages
Zimbabwe is reeling under
severe food shortages with at least
4,3-million in need of food aid until
the next harvests in May.
Michael Huggins, WFP spokesperson
for Southern Africa, says the
UN agency is feeding 4,3-million people in
Zimbabwe and that the situation
is so "critical" that thousands will
continue to require food aid for the
coming year.
Beneficiaries of the WFP's food aid include three million on
food-distribution programmes, people with HIV/Aids, schoolchildren, and
pregnant and lactating mothers, Huggins says.
The
government blames the food deficit on a drought that ravaged
the bulk of
southern Africa two years ago.
But Huggins says the shortages
are a result of a battery of
factors, including the failure by the economy
to attract investment in
infrastructure, chronic poverty and the country's
controversial reforms.
Zimbabwe's land reforms, which began
often violently in 2000
after the rejection in a referendum on a
government-sponsored draft
Constitution, have seen about 4 000 white farmers
lose their properties.
Critics say the majority of the
beneficiaries of the land
reforms lack farming skills and rely on government
handouts. They also blame
the land reforms for the chronic food shortages in
what was once Southern
Africa's bread basket.
"And you
can't discount the fact that 20% of the population is
HIV-positive," Huggins
says. "That means that nearly 20% of the population
is not able to
work."
Huggins says although President Robert Mugabe declared
last year
that his country would not need food aid from foreign donors, "we
were still
feeding more than a million of people for most of last year". --
Sapa-AFP
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 6:52 AM
Subject: Scrappy little thorn
bush
Dear Family and Friends, In my garden a scrappy little thorn
bush appeared
from nowhere a few years ago. Its a weed really and is very
common in the
bush, on road sides and river banks and often in disturbed
land. Almost
all year round the bush has clusters of berries which are hard
green, then
red and at last dark purple, almost black when they are ripe. The
berries
are a nightmare to get at as the thorns are viscous and prolific and
are
on all stems and branches and even the undersides of the leaves. Its
not
really the sort of bush that proper gardeners would encourage or
cultivate
and is more the kind of bush school kids stop and raid on their way
to and
from school. At first, when the bush appeared in my garden I left
it
because the berries were attracting a lot of birds. Then, I noticed my
son
and his friends picking the berries when they were playing football in
the
garden and I too began picking the odd berry here and there. Then,
as
prices began to rise and foodstuffs as simple as a jar of jam
became
something I couldn't afford anymore, I began really tending the
scrappy
little thorn bush in my garden. Every day I carefully picked the
berries
as they ripened and put them in a container in the freezer. There
were
never more than three or four berries a day but they soon added up
to
quite a substantial amount. Making up my own recipe, adding a couple
of
lemons and a few chunks of chou chou I ended up with a great bounty of
jam
from nothing more than a scrappy little thorn bush.
I know that
little stories like this are a bit silly coming from a country
in
such
dire trouble but they show what incredibly resourceful people we are
in
Zimbabwe. In the last six years we have learned so many things across
races,
cultures and classes. Despite, or perhaps because of the political
horrors,
we
Zimbabweans are perhaps now more united than ever before. We
are all
affected by
food, fuel and electricity shortages. We all have to
drive on the same
collapsing roads, drink the same filthy brown water and pay
the same
outrageous
prices for the most basic groceries. Inflation
reached 782% in February; the
IMF
says we now have the highest inflation
in the world. The ordinary people of
Zimbabwe are desperate, utterly
desperate for this to end, all that is
needed
now is the political will -
from both the ruling and opposition parties. We
hope
and pray it is near
as our summer days are shortening and winter will indeed
be
bleak. Until
next week, love cathy Copyright cathy buckle 11th March 2006
http://africantears.netfirms.com
WITHHELD PENSION ARREARS TO NOT
DIE WITH THE PENSIONER. They remain a debt
which can be claimed by his or
her estate.
I am an 83 year old Zimbabwe pensioner, now living in
Australia, and I urge
you to sign this petition, which I have created for
the benefit of my family
and the families of Zimbabwe pensioners
worldwide.
Most of us are British and we are enraged by the silent
acceptance of our
stolen pensions.
Many of us served with the British
Forces in the second world war - our
fathers fought in the first
one.
Many of us were encouraged by the British Government to go to
Rhodesia and
help in it's post-war development. We then became victims of
'The Winds of
Change' and the blunders of inept or deceitful politicians.
Now we are
dying, Britain; dying, forsaken and forgotten.
Last Year,
the G8 countries cancelled 3.5 billion dollars of African debt:
now they are
discussing more billions to be given for reconstruction. A
fraction of this
money would settle all Zimbabwe pension entitlements.
With your support -
A CLICK OF THE MOUSE ON THE PETITION - we can let the
world know that if
pensions are not honoured, we are all dishonoured and
Human Rights are in
the dustbin.
Mugabe is my age, he will soon be out. G8 and U.N. will be
in, currency
stabilised and pension entitlements paid in real money, if this
petition
succeeds.
Rights are never won unless people are willing to
fight for them, So,
please, CLICK ON THE WEBSITE shown below, READ THE
PETITION, CLICK ON - SIGN
THE PETITION, add comments if you wish and then
pass it on.
http://www.gopetition.com/online/7681.html
I
am open to helpful suggestions, or, make your comments on the petition at
the bottom of the web page (and sign by clicking on CLICK HERE).
R.
B. BILLINGTON
Zim Daily
Saturday, March 11 2006 @ 11:05 PM GMT
Contributed by: correspondent
By Denford
Magora
ON the face of it, Arthur Mutambara carries the
credentials to
be a viable alternative to Zanu PF and President Robert
Mugabe. His
international experiences as well as his proven leadership
qualities are on
the right side of history. He has also made his own money
through business
and is quite unlikely to want to put his hand into the
state cookie jar.
That said, Mutambara must be warned that academic and
professional
achievements alone will not make him top dog in Zimbabwe. He
needs a
strategy that connects with the people and I am concerned at his
confrontational tone, which would make it easier for the government to
unleash terror on his supporters.
Mutambara should have
learnt a few things from anti-senate camp
leader Morgan Tsvangirai's
failures. People in Zimbabwe today are easily
cowed. Street protests will
see the army and the police pouring into the
streets and the response of
Zimbabweans will be to withdraw into their
homes. This avenue - including
mass stayaways - has failed before and it
will fail again because of the
nature of our people. Just look at the
tireless National Constitutional
Assembly (NCA) which continues to protest
in the streets in small numbers.
Repeatedly, they are arrested while fellow
Zimbabweans stand on the
pavements and look on.
It has got to a point where the people
on whose behalf the NCA
wants a constitution are deriding the organisation.
Talk in commuter
omnibuses is dismissive of its chairman Lovemore Madhuku.
With my own ears,
I have heard people repeatedly mock the NCA leader and his
followers.
Perhaps it is because hunger and poverty cannot immediately be
connected to
a new constitution by the people. They do not see how a new
constitution
would get rid of their very real problems, like transport, food
shortages, a
crumbling infrastructure and rubbish-strewn,
stinking-to-high-heaven
neighbourhoods. Mutambara must, therefore, not make
the same mistake as
Tsvangirai and attempt to make this fight
physical.
The government has got arms and he has none, unless
there is
something he is not telling us. Further, engaging in a battle of
wits with
Zanu PF alone will not yield results. Ideology is very important,
yes, but
it is not the be-all and end-all of our politics. Solutions, then:
The
professor and his friends in the MDC must connect with the people. This
means a lot of walkabouts. It means physically engaging the masses where
they wait for transport, at rallies, at their homes and anywhere else people
congregate.
In this respect, Mutambara may want to take a
leaf from the
pages of evangelical Christians and the so-called
"Watchtowers". It is this
sort of engagement that will show people that the
new leader is tireless and
concerned. He should not make Tsvangirai's
mistake of sitting in an ivory
tower and remaining silent as prices rise
every day and people wait for
hours in the rain for transport that is
basically non-existent.
This would only be the beginning.
Being physically connected
with the masses, what I call live-wire contact
with the masses, is not
enough unless the message is clear. The message has
to be localised. People
don't eat anti-imperialism. If Mutambara's group has
supporters in every
constituency, it must understand what each of those
constituencies want the
most. Is it the collection of stinking rubbish from
their doorstep, as is
the case along Zvimba road in Glen Norah? Or the
rehabilitation of roads,
like the massively potholed growth point of Juru,
which is leading transport
operators to avoid stopping at the centre and
inconveniencing travellers.
Then put forward a cohesive and credible
alternative plan for eradicating
that problem.
Look, it
is not going to be easy, but if you have dedicated
yourself to working for
the people, there is no rest. Your family will not
see you in broad daylight
unless they come to your rallies or walkabouts.
You will probably go
prematurely grey in the head and never develop a
pot-belly. But your
objective will be met. Never must Mutambara make the
mistake of wanting to
simply ride on the coat tails of people's discontent
with Zanu PF. Yes, the
discontent is there, but that does not mean that any
Tom, Dick and Arthur
can simply walk in and enjoy easy pickings.
Zanu PF will make
it very difficult for them. Getting into power
for anyone other than Zanu PF
will be like extracting blood from a stone. It
will require hard work, very
hard work and tireless campaigning. The message
must be correct. While not
necessarily pandering to the lowest common
denominator, it should at the
same time be firmly grounded in the struggles
that the people of Zimbabwe
can see, not abstract concepts of
self-determination and
anti-unilateralism.
I do recognise that Mutambara had to
bring these two subjects up
so that he is not branded a stooge of America
and Britain by Zanu PF which,
as it happens, was what killed Tsvangirai in
the rural areas. But that is no
reason to harp on about this while ignoring
the bread and butter issues that
actually bring in the votes. There is no
doubt about it, Mutambara's
entrance into national politics has caused a
ripple but that ripple must now
become a tidal wave. For that to happen,
people must be made to realise that
things need not continue the way they
are. They can be made better. There is
no better way to achieve this than
talking to people's pockets and stomachs.
If Mutambara appears too elitist
and unconnected to the daily grind of
Zimbabweans, then his battle is
lost.
* Denford Magora is a Harare-based marketing
executive.
Zim Daily
Saturday, March 11 2006 @ 11:06 PM GMT
Contributed by: correspondent
The recently launched
Patriotic Union of Matabeleland (PUMA)
says it will push government into
establishing what it called a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC) over
the 1987 Matabeleland and Midlands
atrocities committed by the Fifth
Brigade. According to documents seen by
Zimdaily, the political party said
that there was need for the establishment
of the TRC as this would help come
up with a real picture of what transpired
then as a move to bring peace
between the victims and the perpetrators.
In the documents,
the party said there were conflicting figures
of the numbers of the people
who died, hence the establishment of the TRC
would assist government in
determining the extent of the atrocities. "We
believe that there is need to
set up the commission where the perpetrators
and the victims would come
together and seek to pave the way forward.
"We believe that
this is a platform where the healing process
would actually start and there
would be peace in the region," read part of
the document. PUMA added that it
believed thousands of people, especially
children born at independence in
1980 were failing to access identity cards
and other important particulars
as these required full information about
both parents to the child. We have
hundreds of thousands of students roaming
the streets because they do not
have birth certificates and other important
documents. We believe that the
commission would then have the task of
establishing the whereabouts of some
of these children's parents so that
they are able to get these requisite
documents," added the documents.
PUBLIC NOTICE
ZNSPCA HQ: 497885 or 497574
156 Enterprise Rd.
P.O.Box CH55 Chisipite. Harare
IT HAS BEEN BOUGHT TO OUR ATTENTION
THAT AN ADVERT HAS BEEN RELEASED
OFFERING CASH FOR BOERBULS OR ANY PURE BRED
DOGS.THIS IS CURRENTLY BEING
INVESTIGATED. THIS IS OF GREAT CONCERN TO THE
ZNSPCA, AS WE FEEL IT MAY LEAD
TO THE THEFT OF PETS TO SELL TO THIS PERSON.
PLEASE ENSURE YOUR DOGS ARE
SECURELY ENCLOSED WITHIN YOUR PROPERTY AND WARN
YOUR STAFF NOT TO LET ANYONE
TAKE YOUR DOGS FOR ANY REASON. IN LINE WITH OUR
POLICY AND MUNICIPAL LAWS WE
ADVICE THAT DOGS SHOULD BE
STERILISED.
ZNSPCA HQ: 497885 or 497574
156
Enterprise Rd Chisipite
Harare SPCA 572152 or 576356
-7
ZNSPCA Inspectors Cell no:
Byo:
Glynis: 091 367 260
Hre: Simon: 011 630
430
Jimmy: 011 528
449
Justine: 023 306
456
Masvingo: John: 011 867 099
From The Church Times (UK), 10 March
By Pat Ashworth
There has been a travesty of justice
in Harare over the trial of Bishop
Kunonga, says the Chancellor of the
diocese, Bob Stumbles. Mr Stumbles, who
is also Deputy Chancellor of the
province of Central Africa, broke a
self-imposed silence on Tuesday,
declaring he had a "moral obligation" to
speak. He charges the Archbishop of
Central Africa, the Most Revd Bernard
Malango, with usurping the authority
of the court by abruptly adjourning the
Bishop's trial on 38 charges in
August 2005. No charges were read, no plea
entered, and no witnesses heard.
The Archbishop acted when the judge
withdrew from the case. Nothing has
officially been heard from the
Archbishop, says Mr Stumbles. "Six months of
perceived prevarication have
dragged by with no official answer to letters
asking the Archbishop when the
trial would continue." Reports in two
newspapers on 23 December 2005 - the
Herald in Harare, and Pravda, in Russia
- said that Archbishop Malalango had
apparently decided to rule on the
matter himself, and had said there was no
case to answer. Mr Stumbles
charges Archbishop Malango with exceeding his
authority, violating the
canons, and issuing a "veiled threat" to anyone
bringing charges against a
bishop of the province.
From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 11 March
By Christopher Howse
Sexual politics at Lake
Malawi
A strange tale of homosexuality, racialism and rival "fêting"
has been told,
in a strange way, in the news pages of the Church Times over
the past few
months. Lay people, according to a report in last week's issue,
have
declared the diocese of Lake Malawi "closed" until they have their
"duly
elected" bishop. The man in question is the Rev Nicholas Henderson,
the
vicar of All Saints Ealing, west London. The clergy of Lake Malawi,
hundreds
of miles south of Ealing, had petitioned for him to be their
bishop, and the
retiring bishop had concurred. In July last year Mr
Henderson was elected,
but five Anglicans objected, and the case went to a
Court of Confirmation.
An accusation was apparently made that the
bishop-elect was given to
"advocacy of the gay and lesbian
movement".
This allegation exemplifies a great divide between many
African bishops and
their episcopal brothers in Anglican dioceses in North
America and other
white-dominated regions. It is this bigger row that led
the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to speak this week of a
"rupture" in the
Anglican Communion. "If there is a rupture, it's going to
be a more visible
rupture," he said. "I suppose my anxiety about it is that
if the Communion
is broken we may be left with even less than a federation."
Nicholas
Henderson's own bishop, Dr Peter Broadbent of Willesden, in London,
has been
quoted as saying, "Nick has become a victim of the warfare between
African
traditionalism and Western liberalism." Dr Broadbent has noted the
role of
the internet in the affair, for it made possible the lazy
dissemination of
allegations round the world. These could "all be sourced
back to one
particular American website" (opposed to the liberal consensus).
Those
responsible for passing the allegations on, he said, "despite their
lack of
any personal knowledge of the priest they were defaming, were quite
prepared
to condemn him out of hand".
In any event, the bishops
of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Malawi, by
majority vote at the Court of
Confirmation, rejected Mr Henderson as the
next bishop of Lake Malawi on the
grounds that he was "not of sound faith".
The retired bishop of Lusaka was
chosen instead. The key figure in this
scandal, according to Church Times
reports, is the Archbishop of Central
Africa, Dr Bernard Malango. He "is
seen as being fêted by the conservatives
of the Episcopal Church of the
United States," the paper says. Ordinary
Malawians, by contrast, "bar
Malango and fête Henderson". This choice of
terminology gives a new sense to
the idea of a church fête. Mr Henderson's
own fêting occurred during a
"private" visit to Lake Malawi last month. "I
was carried aloft," he
admitted. The "barring" of Dr Malango took place
following an incident
during which layfolk, requesting a meeting with him at
diocesan
headquarters, "were made to stand outside for two hours".
Eventually they
realised the archbishop had left by the back door. The lay
people then
"seized the property, changed the locks and declared the
archbishop
barred".
Mr Henderson was impressed. "We can only be humbled by their
resolve," he
said. Meanwhile, "parishioners from the diocese have coined a
new word
'Malangoism'," the Church Times reported. The characteristics of
this -ism
are not defined, but people accuse Dr Malango of "dictatorial
tendencies"
and of hoping "after retirement to 'secure a job abroad'." Last
August,
according to the Church Times, Dr Malango had dismissed 38 charges
brought
against Bishop Nolbert Kunonga of Harare in an ecclesiastical court,
including "incitement to murder". The paper reported that Bishop Kunonga
left the court "crowing" and later "boasting of his friendship" with Dr
Malango and "of having carte blanche to do what he liked", whatever that may
be. In Dr Malango's own diocese, the paper says, "turmoil reigns".
Meanwhile, Dr Malango "is a frequent guest at conservative gatherings in the
United States". The Church Times noted it had failed to reach Dr Malango for
comment. So there it is.