An update.
We are now nearly down to the wire in this election
process - just 18 days
to go! The past few weeks have simply flown by as we
have frantically tried
to get the campaign under way and tried to deal with
the hundreds of things
that come up at a time like this.
A few
things stand out - the Zanu led regime has not allowed us space in the
media,
our press ads are still being rejected and we have had just two short
TV
opportunities - one lasting 10 minutes and the other a short
hostile
interview with Tendai Biti and two ZTV sycophants. I understand we
have 70
minutes of TV time left! In the meantime the propaganda pours out
from every
orifice.
Just as serious - because it impacts in
the rural areas, the radio signals
from SW Radio have been jammed for the
past 10 days by a radio transmitter
operating from the Gweru facilities of
the national broadcaster. The source
of this new equipment is thought to be
Iran - that pillar of democracy and
freedom in the Middle East. So far we
have not heard if the VOA broadcasts
are affected but they run for only a
couple of hours a day - unlike SW which
now has a 5 hour broadcast each
day.
Money has been very tight throughout - but thank you for all
those who have
sent money to us by whatever means - it has kept us going. Do
not ease up -
we will need the funds right through and the big effort on
polling day is
still not funded. Thank you also to all the thousands of
volunteers who are
running around, doing odd jobs and making things happen.
They are a
wonderful crowd to work with.
One new development
is the Zimbabwean, a new weekly which is published in
London and printed in
South Africa and the UK and is finding its way to
Zimbabwe in small numbers.
The Daily News - once the leading daily in
Zimbabwe and a major influence for
the forces of democracy is still closed
down. We understand from sources that
a High Court Judge has ruled in their
favor but the judgment is simply being
held up by the government to stop it
being allowed to come back onto the
streets. The State is watching the
Zimbabwean very closely - when my wife
bought a copy the other day she saw a
CIO operative standing there taking
note of who was buying the paper.
The jamming of SW and the
failure to allow the Daily News back are both
interesting developments as is
the refusal to accept adverts in the State
controlled press. It points to a
very nervous and insecure government who is
much less confident of itself and
a victory than they were a few months ago.
We have had one report
of a meeting at provincial level where Zanu PF
leadership argued over the use
of force against the MDC. One member of the
Zanu PF politburo arguing that if
the Party does not resume an all out
attack on the opposition using
traditional means - violence - they would be
in trouble. Others argued that
the widespread use of violence against the
opposition would be counter
productive and would undermine the effort to
secure regional recognition for
the outcome. International recognition is a
lost cause as far as they are
concerned.
This week we also saw the first Zanu PF press adverts
in the State
controlled press - two full-page ads which drew quite a bit of
attention and
amusement. Apart from the nonsense about the Prime Minister in
the UK, Tony
Blair, the adverts said that a vote for Zanu PF would mean an
end to fuel
shortages (we have long lines of vehicles at filling stations in
the south
at present) and "racially inspired" shortages of commodities.
Yesterday we
could not find fresh milk, soap powder, sugar, soft drinks and
beef was
double the price in South Africa. The advert also promised more
"corporate
takeovers". I am sure that will help their fund raising
campaign.
Another thing that is very clear is that they are
missing Jonathan Moyo. He
may have been a pain in the butt for the past four
years - but he was an
effective Minister and Zanu PF is very short on those.
In fact you cannot
identify a current Minister who is effective in his job.
We have a Minister
of Finance who is in jail, an acting Minister who is
totally ineffective, a
Minister of Agriculture who frankly, is a buffoon and
the rest you never
hear from. The edge has gone from the Zanu PF propaganda
campaign and what
they are currently putting out is weak and
ineffective.
We now have Moyo - in his bunker at Tsholotsho,
firing salvoes at Zanu PF.
He has suddenly discovered that Zanu does not play
be the rules. His claim
this week that Zanu spokesmen are threatening the
people in Tsholotsho with
a resumption of Gukurahundi (genocide) is nothing
new to the MDC - they have
been saying this for the past five years in
Matabeleland.
While all this has been going on the MDC campaign
has been in full swing. I
am sure everyone has seen the physical evidence of
this. We must apologize
for the graffiti - we promise we will clean it up if
we win or Zanu PF will
paint over it if they steal the election again. Our
rallies are all well
attended - the leadership is holding 20 rallies a day
throughout the
country. Reports coming in from every corner are very
optimistic and
encouraging. As I said last time, Zanu does not have a safe
seat in the
country.
The big issue remains the polling day.
Remember what Stalin said, "It is not
who votes that counts, but who counts
the vote." He said that a long time
ago - it remains true and this time in
Zimbabwe we know who will do that
because the military or the CIO is running
the entire election system.
The situation is more complex for
Zanu PF - they have only one day, there
are no mobile stations and they must
"fix" the poll at many constituencies
to win. So the rigging with false
ballots must be organized well in advance
and the introduction of the false
votes to the count must not be seen or
reported. As there will be few
international observers and 8200 polling
stations this then only leaves the
threat of the MDC as the only
organisation with the national coverage and
capacity to field polling agents
at every polling station.
You
do not have to be a voter to be a polling agent - just get yourself onto
an
MDC list and the list will then be published and you are in! Then you
are
allocated to a polling station, receive some training and some materials
and
then go in and watch what happens at your polling station -
reporting
anything out of the ordinary and ensuring full compliance with the
Electoral
Act. At the end of a busy day you report the result for your
polling station
to a constituency control center.
We also need
vehicles - some 4x4 vehicles with tough drivers for remote
areas - vehicles
and drivers who can handle the Gusu sand or rough terrain
in places like the
Zambezi valley. In towns we can use any sort of vehicle
to help with food,
support to polling stations and coordination in general.
The
control of the polling stations is the key to this election - MDC has
the
vote, our people are going to turn out in numbers but we must ensure
that
their vote is not tampered with in any way and that only valid,
legitimate
ballots are cast and counted. If we can achieve this - then we
can break out
the champagne.
Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 14th March
2005
Daily News online edition
Daily News wins right to
register
Date: 14-Mar, 2005
HARARE - Zimbabwe's
largest selling newspapers, The Daily News and The
Daily News on Sunday,
might soon resurface on the streets following a
Supreme Court ruling today
that compelled the media governing body to have a
re-look at the
application.
Sitting as a constitutional court, the Supreme
Court set aside the
refusal by the media body, the Media and Information
Commission (MIC) to
register the two titles and remitted the registration
application for
consideration afresh by the media body.
It,
however, dismissed in its entirety the constitutional challenge of
the
Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (Pvt) Ltd (ANZ), which had argued that
the
Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) was
unconstitutional.
The ruling came ahead of March 31
parliamentary polls which analysts
say look likely to deliver victory for
Mugabe's Zanu PF, amid charges by the
opposition Movement for Democratic
Change that dominant state media outlets
favour the ruling
party.
The court upheld the ANZ's arguments in respect of three
sections of
the Act, which ironically have already been repealed by
Parliament.
The court granted the appeals by the Media and
Information Commission
against the judgments of the Administrative Court,
which had said the MIC
should grant the ANZ an operating licence within 30
days, after which it
would be deemed to be registered.
ANZ
chief executive officer Sam Sipepa Nkomo said at a press
conference Monday
that while he was "disappointed" that the Supreme Court
had been unable to
accept the publisher's challenge, "our greater concern is
that it took over
two years for this ruling to be handed down".
The Daily News
was closed by police in September 2003 for failing to
register with the
government-appointed media commission under laws used to
shut down several
other independent media companies.
The MIC last July closed a
private weekly newspaper company, Africa
Tribune Newspapers, saying it had
failed to advise it of a change in the
company's name as required under
law.
The commission last month also cancelled the licence for
another
weekly paper - The Weekly Times - saying it had lied in its
application
about being a paper that was going to report on developmental
issues rather
than political ones.
Nkomo said he could not
give a definite date on when the two ANZ
titles would come back on the
streets, saying: "One has to remember that the
closure of the papers has
financially crippled the organisation. Our
computers are still being held by
the police at Chikurubi Maximum Prison,
and therefore we can only start
thinking of publishing once we settle those
outstanding
issues."
Asked if the judgement was not just part of government
trying to be
compliant with the Sadc principles on democratic elections and
a free press,
Nkomo said with only 16 days to go before the March 31
election, one could
not say government was trying to be compliant with the
protocols at such a
late stage.
Lawyers representing
government in the consolidated cases said the
Supreme Court had, by turning
down ANZ's request to strike down provisions
such as the stipulation that
only Zimbabwean citizens may work permanently
as journalists in the country,
effectively upheld some tough elements of
Zimbabwe's media
laws.
"By referring back the application to the commission,
what the Supreme
Court has simply done is to say the sections of the law
challenged (by ANZ)
are constitutional," said lawyer Johannes
Tomana.
VOA
Zimbabwe Newspaper Refused Permission to Publish By Peta
Thornycroft
Harare
14 March 2005
Zimbabwe's
Supreme Court is refusing to allow the country's only independent
daily to
resume publishing before elections on March 31. The paper was
effectively
banned 18 months ago. Zimbabwe's highest court also overturned
lower court
rulings that the government-appointed Media and Information
Commission is
incompetent.
The Daily News asked the Supreme Court to declare key
sections of Zimbabwe's
media laws unconstitutional. Its application was
refused. The judgment means
The Daily News cannot resume publication,
because it does not have a
license.
The Supreme Court decision allows
the paper to re-apply for a license to
publish, should it so choose, and the
Media and Information Commission has
60 days to reverse its decision of
September 2003 denying the paper a
license.
Former Information
Minister Jonathan Moyo, who crafted Zimbabwe's tough
media laws, described
The Daily News as a threat to national security. The
newspaper's printing
press was later bombed.
Since he was expelled from the ruling ZANU-PF
party, Mr. Moyo has defended
his media laws as necessary, because of what he
called an international
conspiracy against Zimbabwe.
All The Daily
News' computers, advertising files and materials were
confiscated by the
Zimbabwe Republic Police and many of its journalists were
detained before it
finally stopped publishing.
The newspaper was critical of President
Robert Mugabe and his
administration, and within months of its launch, was
selling more copies
than long-established government-controlled
dailies.
Human-rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said the Supreme Court
decision was
expected, and the effect would be that Zimbabwe would not have
an
independent daily newspaper before the March 31 elections. She said any
doubts about the legal standing of Zimbabwe's media commission were swept
away by the Supreme Court judgment.
If journalists are caught working
without accreditation from the media
commission they can be sentenced to
imprisonment for up to two years.
Newspapers can be, and are, closed by
police, if they attempt to publish
without a license. A new weekly paper was
closed weeks ago.
Sam Nkomo, chief executive of Associated Newspapers of
Zimbabwe, which owns
The Daily News and its sister Sunday publication, says
he is disappointed by
the Supreme Court judgment. He said the Daily News
would reapply for a
license and for accreditation for its reporters,
although most have left
Zimbabwe.
Yahoo News
Monday March 14, 03:10 PM
Rival Zimbabwe
parties pump up the volume
HARARE (Reuters) - Rival parties in
Zimbabwe are pumping up the volume
with political hits blaring from sound
trucks, radios and loudspeakers in an
attempt to drown out their opponents
ahead of an election on March 31.
President Robert Mugabe's ruling
ZANU-PF is serenading voters with
songs such as "Sheyera Mabhuzu Mana",
("Firing Rocket-propelled Grenades"),
a celebration of the country's 1970s
independence war.
It's now in the top five popular songs on
Zimbabwe state radio.
A legislator for the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC)
has also written songs featuring lyrics critical of
Mugabe's rule --
although these are not getting air play in broadcast media
that remains
firmly in government hands.
But the party is still
getting its songs to the masses, using sound
trucks to promote political
anthems in urban townships where the party draws
much of its
support.
Zimbabwe's battle of the bands comes as both sides gear up
for
parliamentary polls analysts say are almost certain to hand victory to
Mugabe's ZANU-PF, prolonging a political and economic crisis in the once
prosperous southern African country.
Critics say Mugabe has
failed to deliver on international demands for
wide-ranging democratic
electoral reforms and has instead doled out a set of
cosmetic measures
designed to keep ZANU-PF in power.
SOMETHING TO SING
ABOUT
Mugabe's party has tapped the musical talents of national
commissar
and elections director Elliott Manyika, who has churned out dozens
of catchy
traditional songs celebrating ZANU-PF's role in Zimbabwe's
liberation from
colonial rule.
Manyika's eight-track album
"Zimbabwe 2005" includes upbeat offerings
accusing MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai of selling out to former colonial
power to Britain.
MDC legislator Paul Madzore has produced songs including a
reggae-inspired
number charging "they have ruined the country" -- a clear
reference to
Mugabe and his allies.
MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi said the
party had tried to get its
songs on state radio but disc jockeys were
unreceptive.
"We have been denied an official outlet for our music
but that doesn't
stop us from pushing our message," Nyathi
said.
"We have been playing the music for months while ZANU-PF has
continued
to demonstrate their control of the state media by bombarding us
with
Manyika's music," he added.
The MDC, the biggest threat to
Mugabe's 25-year rule, took most urban
seats in the 2000 parliamentary vote
but lost in ZANU-PF's traditional rural
strongholds -- where media such as
radio can be particularly influential.
Tsvangirai's campaign convoy
has taken the MDC's music into rural
areas where the opposition leader has
managed to campaign relatively freely
for the first time in five years in
the last three years.
BBC
Zimbabwe private radio 'jammed'
SW Radio Africa, a
private radio station broadcasting to Zimbabwe,
said its broadcasts from the
UK were being jammed by the government.
Listeners in Zimbabwe have not
been able to receive the station for a
week, station founder Gerry Jackson
said.
"Our communications provider said they have rarely
experienced such
efficient jamming," she added.
The government
denies the accusations, a state run newspaper reports.
Only
state-controlled media are allowed to broadcast in Zimbabwe.
Ms
Jackson set up a radio station in Harare in 2000 but it was
immediately
closed down by the police.
Back on sale?
Meanwhile,
the Supreme Court has given a mixed ruling on an appeal by
the Daily News
against its ban.
Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku ordered the
authorities to consider
an application by the country's former best-selling
newspaper to start
publishing again.
The Daily News, which was
a persistent critic of President Robert
Mugabe's government, was shut down
by police 18 months ago.
A spokesman for the paper, Bill Saidi,
said it intended to apply for a
licence immediately which it hoped would be
granted before parliamentary
elections due at the end of the
month.
But the judge rejected calls by the newspaper to declare
unlawful the
government-appointed media commission which licenses media
outlets.
'Frightened'
The BBC said it had not received
reports that World Service broadcasts
were being affected by the alleged
jamming.
The station has been broadcasting over three frequencies
to circumvent
the jamming.
"It takes them just 60 seconds to
jam us," Ms Jackson said.
"There's someone out there who is
frightened of our broadcasts."
SW Radio Africa started up in London
in 2002, to avoid President
Robert Mugabe's media crackdown.
Daily News online edition
Human rights abusers face UN
chop
Date: 14-Mar, 2005
JOHANNESBURG - In a move
that may affect Zimbabwe, United Nations
secretary general Koffi Annan will
soon proposethe exclusion of nations
which do not have a clean human rights
record from the United Nations Human
Rights Commission.
According to UN chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown, Annan has
indicated that
he would propose for a new criteria in electing members into
the powerful UN
body, which is headquartered in Geneva.
"The secretary general
will issue a plan in the coming weeks for a
complete revamping of the human
rights machinery at the United Nations. The
goal of the plan would be to try
and restore the credibility and have people
on that commission who really
are people of stature and reputation and
record and come from countries of
the same thing, with real human rights
standing in the world," said Malloch
Brown.
Human rights groups the world over had complained that
the Commission,
which opens its annual session in Geneva, Switzerland, as
from today was
increasingly dominated by rights violators that stuck
together as a bloc to
prevent criticism of one another.
Among the countries which have been members of the commission are
whipping
boys such as Zimbabwe, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Cuba, countries
which have
been identified as prime violators of human and peoples'
rights.
A high-level UN panel of experts advising Annan on U.N.
reform
concluded that the credibility of the 53-nation commission had been
eroded
in recent years because members were more concerned with protecting
themselves and their allies than in exposing rights
violations.
All the 191 U.N. member-nations are due to consider
wide-reaching U.N.
changes at a world summit in New York in September. The
issue of UNHRC is
set to top the agenda at the summit, which will be
attended by world
leaders.
UNHCR was launched in 1946, with
the mandate to examine nations'
adherence to treaties and conventions on
issues ranging from illegal
killings and arbitrary detention to women's
rights, child pornography and
the right to food and health.
Members are elected by the 54-nation U.N. Economic and Social Council.
But
seats are allotted to the various U.N. regional groupings, and most
candidates are put forward by these groupings without opposition, depriving
the council as a whole of any say in these choices.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
The Battle for
Matabeleland
Mugabe and Tsvangirai take their election campaigns to an
area where tens of
thousands of people were killed by the president's
troops.
By Tafi Murinzi in Bulawayo (Africa Reports: Zimbabwe Elections
No 14,
14-Mar-05)
President Robert Mugabe and his key opponent,
Morgan Tsvangirai, both take
their election battles this weekend into a
province where a crack army unit
directly answerable to Mugabe slaughtered
an estimated 30,000 men, women and
children 20 years ago.
Mugabe and
his ruling ZANU PF party have only ever been able to control
Matabeleland,
heartland of the minority Ndebele tribe, by force. It was once
the
stronghold of the old Zimbabwe African People's Union, ZAPU, led by the
late
Joshua Nkomo.
Two decades ago, growing lawlessness in Matabeleland by a
group of around
400 disillusioned ZAPU dissidents - who killed six
Australian, American and
British tourists - gave Mugabe the opportunity to
crush Nkomo, ZAPU and the
Ndebeles.
Capitalising on his friendship
with the then North Korean dictator Kim
Il-Sung, Mugabe used around a
hundred North Korean military instructors to
train a special unit, the Fifth
Brigade, made up entirely of the majority
Shona ethnic group, to crack down
on Matabeleland in a campaign that became
known as the "Gukurahundi",
meaning literally "the wind that blows away the
chaff before the spring
rains".
From the moment it was deployed in Matabeleland in 1983 under
General
Perence Shiri, the Fifth Brigade waged a campaign of mass murder,
beatings
and arson deliberately targeted at the civilian
population.
"Villagers were forced to sing songs in the Shona language
praising ZANU PF
while dancing on the mass graves of their families and
fellow villagers who
had been killed and buried minutes earlier," wrote
Martin Meredith in
"Robert Mugabe", a biography of the Zimbabwean president.
"The scale of
violence was far worse than anything that had occurred during
the Rhodesian
war."
To this day the Mugabe government has not
acknowledged the tens of thousands
of murders the Fifth Brigade committed in
Matabeleland, nor have those
responsible been called to justice. General
Shiri, who was known as "Black
Jesus", was promoted to head of the air force
and remains one of Mugabe's
closest supporters.
The impact of the
Gukurahundi on Matabeleland has proved ineradicable. It
has left a huge,
raw, unhealed wound among the people of the region who
remember the many
massacres.
Mugabe subsequently established a one party state, but since
the return of
Zimbabwe to a multi-party system, it is the MDC that has
commanded the
loyalty of the people of Matabeleland.
Mugabe's trip to
Matabeleland is a clear attempt to woo reluctant voters.
"He would like to
win something in Matabeleland in order to legitimise his
rule," said Gordon
Moyo, who heads a civic education lobby group called
Bulawayo Agenda. "He
feels he has been ostracised in Matabeleland and wants
his government to be
seen as a truly national government."
Matabeleland returns 21 of the 120
directly elected members of the national
parliament. But eyes will be most
firmly fixed on the constituency of
Tsholotsho, an unremarkable, very dry
district around a small town some 120
kilometres northwest of
Bulawayo.
It was in Tsholotsho that Mugabe's aggressive and hyperactive
information
minister Jonathan Moyo, architect of the country's repressive
media laws,
set off a Zimbabwean political earthquake three months
ago.
Tsholotsho is Moyo's home village and at a secret meeting there he
plotted
with a dozen other senior ZANU PF officials to oust Mugabe's choice
as his
new vice president, Joyce Mujuru - a fellow member of the president's
Zezuru
sub-clan of the Shona, who in her days as a resistance fighter bore
the nom
de guerre "Mrs Spillblood".
But Mugabe discovered the
Tsholotsho plot and Moyo was sacked from the
government, ending his hopes of
being elected as the constituency's ZANU PF
member. The truculent Moyo
reacted by deciding to stand as an independent
against the sitting MDC
member, a woman who was Mugabe's chosen ZANU PF
candidate.
Moyo, who
had exercised widespread patronage, courtesy of the huge
government funds at
his disposal when he was Mugabe's favourite cabinet
minister, believes he
can win the seat.
"He is seen as someone who has brought development to
the community," said a
local schoolteacher. Moyo has been given credit for
constructing a local
grain depot, tarring dirt roads and providing
electricity to a local
business centre and several schools. He has handed
out blankets to local
hospitals in winter and given computers to schools, in
an area from which
more people have fled to South Africa to escape economic
misery than any
other part of Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai, who will be
desperately trying to defend the lacklustre sitting
MDC member of
parliament, Mtoliki Sibanda, must have Moyo firmly in his
sights.
Meanwhile, Mugabe has a number of reasons for wanting to
succeed in this
area. As well as gaining a foothold in Matabeleland, the
president wants to
destroy the ultra-powerful minister who masterminded the
mass invasions of
white farms as well as crafting the draconian Access to
Information and
Protection of Privacy.
The president is willing to
take the risk of venturing into Tsholotsho and
the neighbouring constituency
of Lupane, where some of the worst Gukurahundi
massacres occurred, because
Moyo is trying to establish a new network of
independents and disillusioned
ZANU PF supporters to challenge the power of
his former mentor.
If
Moyo loses in Tsholotsho he will be cast into the political wilderness
and
Mugabe, who has now been in power for 25 years, will have crushed yet
another potentially dangerous political challenger.
Tafi Murinzi is
the pseudonym for an IWPR journalist in Bulawayo.
March 14 , 2005
~~~ Newsletter 056
~~~
Love changes everything
Remember - you must be connected to the
internet to view the images in this newsletter.
You've
got to rattle your cage door. You've got to let them know that you're in there,
and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away,
but you'll sure have a lot more fun.
~ Florynce Kenndey
In this newsletter:
zanu pf cards
The cock has
crash-landed
Diasporans: we want YOU!
Virginity and voting
News from
the ground
Vendors are Getting UP for themselves
Don’t stay home: Spoil
your ballot
Where’s the leadership MDC?
An election built on
posterz
And . . . hundredz of
Zimbabweans are Speaking OUT with Z phone cards. Keep
it going, don’t keep yo lipz zipped – shout OUT!
Harassment of Zimbabweans by the ruling
party
Zvakwana has been noting that the Iranian backed ruling
party is making life unbearable for many Zimbabweans through intimidation and
assault if they cannot produce a zanu pf party card. To help you overcome this
Zvakwana can post some zanu pf cards to you and your families kumusha to make
these next few weeks a bit easier. Especially for those who have a few burial
orders in their pockets to catch transport away from the cities over Easter when
we know that there will be so many roadblocks to get through. So send us your
addresses and we will send you some zanu pf party cards. This is not to say that
we are satisfied with the mis-ruling party, it is just that life is hard and we
all know that having a zanu pf card doesn’t always mean you will vote for them.
Email news@zvakwana.org
“Been on a tour to my home
constituency and there are a lot of things that generated interest to me. As of
today MDC posters are all over the show but alas none of the zanu pfs, but these
guys are busy pulling down the MDC posters and they are not putting up their own
to join the game.”
~ MC, Zvakwana subscriber
Zvinondipedza mafuta kuona
vanhu vemuno vachibvisa maposters emamwe
mapato avanenge vasingade. It is sad
to see Zimbabweans pulling down election posters belonging to various parties.
What we should be working towards in our country is respect for different
opinions and political persuasions. It does not look good for grassroots
democracy if we cannot let others express themselves. Next time you are tempted
to pull down a poster, think twice! Saka kana wanga uchifunga zvekubvisa poster
rebato rausingade, zvidzore!
Tony Blair is not an aspiring candidate
We are
urging all Zvakwana subscribers to write to the ministry of mis-information and
publicity, and to the zanu pf campaign team to let them know - “Blair’s not
running in this election! Tell us how you are going to fix Zimbabwe, not how you
plan to fix maBhuritish.” What is all this pre-election hype from the mis-ruling
party saying that the 2005 General Election will be an anti-Blair election? zanu
pf continues to decampaign Tony Blair, instead of addressing the real needs of
the people. Vanashamuyarira nacharamba really need to get their facts straight.
Maybe they are struggling to know how to build a campaign without the likes of
junior minister jono. To express yourself you can email zanupf@africaonline.co.zw
FREEZE!
I’m zanu pf. Put your hands in the air.
And gimme all your
money.
Whatcha reckon the carbon tax profits go to? Mansions? Shoes
for DisGrace? Longlife Chinese Herbs for the small man?
Stop funding
bad governance!
Where is the
leadership?
All the time Zimbabweans and opposition
politicians are criticising this “quiet diplomacy” from regional leaders who are
failing to be more active on our crisis. But we are the ones who should be
Getting UP and Standing UP for ourselves. Last month 120 MDC election candidates
met in the posh Harare Sheraton Hotel. Some three zanu pf policemen came along
and said, “hey under POSA you are illegal, so disband or we will arrest you”.
Now if you were a potential new honourable member of the house, with 119 of your
colleagues, would you have willingly let three people tell you to stop meeting
and go home? Instead of making a media spectacle of such magnitude that mbeki,
zuma and the like cannot ignore, they meekly picked up their feet and left
whilst their coordinator was taken to Central for questioning. And we see the
very same thing happened with MDC MPs in Matabeleland recently. Is this
leadership? The fact of the matter is that the opposition cannot rely on some
small isolated incidents here and there if they hope to draw adequate attention
to the breach of SADC protocols. mbeki would not be able to ignore the arrest
and detention of 120 MPs who were simply having a private meeting in a hotel.
The MDC needs to develop a strategy to make the regime’s ruthlessness even more
apparent to those who would prefer to ignore it. From our point of view
something is misfiring in the MDCs brain centre. How can we criticise regional
quiet diplomacy when our pro-democracy activists and politicians engage in it
almost exclusively as their prime strategy?
Democracy
invites us to take risks. It asks that we vacate the comfortable seat of
certitude. We are nothing but whiners if we are not willing to put our concerns
and convictions on the line with a willingness to honestly listen and learn
something beyond our own assumptions.
~ Terry Tempest
Williams
News from the ground
Thank you for sending us so many
emails about what you will be doing come Election Day 31st March. Most of the
people who wrote in said that they are going to spoil their ballot papers. Then
the next group were complaining a very great deal about the poor performance of
MPs in their respective areas. Overall we were pleased to read that Zimbabweans
are not thinking of staying at home and just sitting having a few cold ones. We
must beat APATHY. Knock it out flat: one time. It is true to say that the last
two elections were stolen and thereby some are saying, “What is the point”. But
it is important to be a participant rather than to just sit on the sidelines,
always complaining. Here are some of the responses we received:
To tell the truth there is
nothing to write home about my MP I hardly know him. I am definitely going to be
involved in the process but I will spoil my paper to drive home the point
ZVAKWANA, SOKWANELE.
~MM, Glen View
I had a chance to witness the
rallies that were there in Bulawayo last weekend. MDC's and ZANU'S. I am going
to SPOIL the paper.
~AM, Makokoba
There is not much activity in
Warren Park and to some extent I’m not happy about the way proceedings are
going. Maybe because I’m new in the area but I don’t get to hear about party
meetings or campaign strategies to an extent that I feel the MDC is relaxing.
Personally I’m of the opinion that we should not let anything slip and hold on
to all we have but if we relax we might be caught sleeping. I’ve came to know
some members but and told them of my willingness and desire to put in a hand in
the struggle for a change of governance. To date all I’ve received is a party
card, restart and policies.
~MB, Warren Park
What I and the people want in
Mutare is change - change of the sitting MPS akaora nabhobho wacho futi. Vanhu
vari kuda kuchinja, havasi kuda kunzwa nezveZanu yaora. Vanhu varikumirira
kuvhotera chinja musi wa31. Actually 31 March is very far away.
~TS,
Mutare
Spoiled ballot = rejection of a flawed and unfair
election
At Zvakwana we believe that spoiling your ballot is
the best action on Election Day. Why? Because there is no question that many
things with this election are unacceptable. The opposition party is saying this
all the time. The only news we get from them is information about assault,
abandoned meetings, intimidation and such like. On Election Day when you spoil
your ballot you will be clearly stating that you do not legitimise the sham that
all these politicians are calling an election. Spoiling your ballot is ACTIVE,
and it is a valid form of expression when faced with a flawed election. For all
those who have been saying we do not support this election in any way -
go and spoil your ballot instead of sitting at home on Election
Day. This action is not a rejection of any independent candidate or political
party it is a rejection of the process.
Losing my virginity – apathy affects everyone from west to
east
Three weeks ago was my first time. It didn’t last long.
I was in and out in a few minutes. When it was over, I felt a satisfaction
that’s hard to describe. Anyone who’s done it would understand. No. This isn’t a
sex scene. I’m talking about voting. I’ve never been politically active before
but recently I began exploring new sides of myself. Young Americans generally
give more thought to whom they want to have sex with than to whether or not
their political leaders are screwing them in a different way. Voting, however,
is just the beginning of an active political life – like foreplay. You should
pay attention to what politicians are doing throughout their terms in office. If
you don’t like their performance, don’t just roll over and fall asleep. Take the
initiative with phone calls, petitions, protests, and electoral campaigns. Good
democracy, like good sex requires energy and passionate participation. Many
people argue that they don’t have time to get involved. I don’t buy it. People
make time for what matters to them. Maintaining a healthy democracy isn’t easy.
It takes engagement and energy. If you’ve been a political prude up to now, it’s
time to lose your virginity.
Message from Daniel, a young American
voter
Sokwanele! Zvakwana! Enough . . .
These
tireless activists are getting UP all over the countryside especially in rural
outreaches. Zvakwana is hearing that their printed sheets are infiltrating all
the nooks and crannies in a bid to give some alternative views to that of the
mis-ruling party. And we were very pleased to see their new look web site hit
the cyber waves. Log onto www.sokwanele.com and if you are a Zvakwana Sokwanele
supporter in the South email sokwanele_zim@yahoo.com to join the
movement.
Hey hey diaspora freedom fighters
It is interesting to view a
picture like this. Zimbabweans in Blairs land jumping and singing and waving
some banners. At Zvakwana we wonder how many Zimbabweans in the Diaspora will
come back to their homeland to exercise their right to vote, or maybe make noise
like in this picture to protest a stolen election? Have you been saving up for
the fare to come home to help make our election free and fair? Our struggle for
freedom and justice cannot be externalised. Here at home we need you. Come give
solidarity during this important election. It might be an expensive trip to make
but the longer this struggle lasts it will be even more expensive if we don’t
all put our money where our Get UP! boots are. Instead of using Homelink to
build Durawalls and putting up placards outside foreign high commissions, come
home and link arms for peace with your brotherz and sisterz.
Vakuru vakataura
kuti “Mwana asingachemi anofira mumbereko”! Chokwadi tikaramba takanyarara
tichafira muZimbabwe isina rusunguko ruzere. Iti kwaranu, simuka iwe mwana
weZimbabwe usunungure ngetani dzakatisunga kuti ramangwana redu
rinake.
What will you do?
Already we know that the 31
March election will not be free or fair. The intimidation is rife, the police
are in the pocket of the small dictator and media coverage is heavily going in
favour of the ruining party. But of course, zpf is planning on declaring the
rigged election free and fair. Our neighbours in South Africa - especially thabo
mbeki - are already giving the elections their approval. On 18 April we will
celebrate “25 years of independence and democracy.” We fought a bloody struggle
for our vote. And this vote is the most important tool we have in resisting
dictatorship. We cannot sit back and allow them to steal it from us as they did
in 2000 and 2002. Are you prepared to defend your vote non-violently? Write to
news@zvakwana.org and share your ideas on
how to stop yet another election theft.
Local vendors facing the wrath of border gezi youth putting on
police uniforms
As I was going about my own business in
Fourth Street/Selous Avenue, I came across a young vendor selling tomatoes. He
encouraged me to buy the tomatoes he had. His eyes were very sad and he said to
me: “Mama, if you don’t buy these tomatoes, one of those young police will grab
them from me and what will my family have tonight for supper? So I asked why the
police take the products from them and he answered that it was because they do
not have permits to sell and even if they do, municipal police also come and
take away the products! Can someone please tell me why chihuri’s guys are
concentrating on harassing people trying to earn an honest living instead of
looking for thieves who are now rampant in the streets? I was mad, really mad
with mugabe’s government. There are no jobs so the informal sector is
encouraged, and when one tries to earn an honest living, they are harassed by
those kids who still smell of pee in their pants! So I have decided Zvakwana, to
Get Up, Stand Up and fight for the cause of the street vendor. I am also
becoming a street vendor: we are going to stand our ground. From now on, we will
not be harassed by those youngsters on bicycles. What do you think? Chido
waMlambo!
Respectful dialogue
Just how serious are our
politicians at local level about listening to the concerns of the people in
their constituency? Zvakwana is doubtful about their commitment in this area.
Yes, it is good to see some vibrant election posters out there. But it would be
more helpful to have some fliers or adverts giving the contact details of our
respective MPS. Otherwise how do we find the candidates to speak to them?
Zvakwana is asking all parties and independents to publish the telephone numbers
and office addresses of where we can see and speak to election candidates. Also,
we challenge all aspiring MPs from all parties to hold cross-party public
meetings and debates, so that people can get to know them better and to compare
the candidates characters and platforms. This is common practice in many
democracies and helps people to make informed, responsible choices about where
to put their X. A big pom pom to Dongo who we see as the only one to do this so
wonderful so far. Have you seen your MP campaigning in your area? Please write
to us with your information to news@zvakwana.org
A
reminder to politicians who claim that they are fighting for tolerance and
appreciation of diversity:
“I’ve modelled my
characters after women like my mother, who was strong. I am happily married to a
strong woman. I love it when my wife holds her ground and says, ‘You are out of
line.’ One must be able to say that to one’s parents, one’s spouse, the
president of one’s country. That is democracy.”
~ Nuruddin Farah,
Somali novelist
Do you want to get some
election nyayas? Join the Z movement. Email news@zvakwana.org
|
Watch out for Zvakwana papers on the
streets! |
Zvakwana, Sokwanele, Enough!!
Make sure you SPEAK OUT - keep discussion alive, keep information
flowing.
Please remember Zvakwana
welcomes feedback, ideas and support for actions.
Please help us to grow
this mailing list by recommending it to your friends and colleagues.
Join our mailing
list
Enough is enough,
Zvakwana, Sokwanele.
Zim Online
SA opposition party calls for sanctions against Harare
Mon
14 March 2005
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance
(DA) party
has called for the imposition of sanctions on Harare for barring
a regional
parliamentary group from observing the March 31
election.
DA spokesman Joe Seremane, in a statement released
yesterday, said the
ban on the observers was a clear violation of a Southern
African Development
Community (SADC) protocol agreed by regional leaders in
Mauritius last
August.
He said: "Zimbabwe cannot get away with
a lie. It has misrepresented
the SADC Parliamentary Forum as some sort of
unofficial body merely falling
under SADC."
Last week, Zimbabwe
barred the SADC Parliamentary Forum from observing
the March 31 election
saying the forum should not expect preferential
treatment as it was not a
separate entity.
Seremane said it was incorrect to pretend that the
forum, which is
made up of parliamentarians from all SADC states, was of no
account. The
main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party
accuses President
Mugabe of "inviting only his friends", shutting out
critical voices from the
election process.
South Africa, which
has already said the election will be free and
fair, has backed Harare's
stance on the banning of the forum raising the ire
of the MDC.
The SADC Parliamentary Forum was the only African observer mission to
condemn President Robert Mugabe's re-election in 2002 which was heavily
marred by violence and voter intimidation.
Meanwhile, the MDC
has said South African election observers came too
late to "observe the
perversions" that have been taking place ahead of the
March 31
election.
MDC secretary general Welshman Ncube said the South
African observers
mission was futile as Mugabe's government had already put
in place machinery
to subvert the people's will during the
election.
He said: "This is an exercise in futility because they
arrive to
observe a very contested election only two weeks before it
happens, and they
will not get the full opportunity to observe the
perversions which have been
taking place." - ZimOnline
Zim Online
JOHANNESBURG - Mozambique last Saturday night barred human
rights groups
from demonstrating against repression and human rights
violations in
Zimbabwe for fear the protest could upset Harare. Maputo had
initially
allowed the protest but backtracked on the last minute, according
to David
Kalete, an official with Civicus group which was helping organise
the
aborted demonstration. "It was cancelled at the last minute. The
Mozambican
government felt that it would send the wrong signal to the
government of
Zimbabwe . . . It could have been construed to be (Mozambican)
support for
the opposition," Kalete told the Press. He added: "It was
unfortunate
because the permission had been granted earlier and it was
revoked."
Mozambique Foreign Affairs officials however said they were not
aware of the
banning of the demonstration that was to take place on near the
border with
Zimbabwe. Similar protests took place in South Africa and Zambia
to
highlight the plight of Zimbabweans as the country's key parliamentary
election draws nearer on March 31. Amnesty International, Civicus and the
South African Non-governmental Organisation Coalition helped organise the
protests in Musina near South Africa's border with Zimbabwe and Livingstone
town on the Zambia/Zimbabwe frontier. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mugabe takes election battle to urban areas
Mon 14 March
2005
CHITUNGWIZA - President Robert Mugabe took his election campaign to
urban
areas at the weekend in a bid to reclaim the urban seats his ruling
ZANU PF
party lost to the main opposition in the last election.
Mugabe, 81, who faces a tough challenge from the main opposition
Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) party in the March 31 election,
promised to
revive Chitungwiza town's collapsed infrastructure.
Chitungwiza, 30
kilometres south of Harare, is a bastion of the MDC
which has not been
spared from the general deteriorating social services
across the country.
Analysts say Mugabe is keen to snatch the urban seats to
nurse his wounded
pride.
At a rally at Zengeza 4 High School, ZANU PF officials
presented
Mugabe with a list of grievances voters say the ruling party must
address if
it is to reclaim its dominance in the cities. ZANU PF's Harare
provincial
chairman Amos Midzi, told Mugabe that the government must solve
the sewerage
and transport crisis in the town which had virtually
collapsed.
The MDC says burst sewer pipes, water shortages and
unrepaired roads
in the town, are a microcosm of Zimbabwe's collapsed
economy under Mugabe's
leadership. Mugabe denies the charge blaming the
MDC-led council for the
problems.
ZANU PF lost all urban seats
to the MDC in the last parliamentary
election in 2000. Mugabe has however
vowed to reclaim the seats from the
MDC, which he dismisses as a front for
the West out to reverse his land
reform programmes.
Mugabe
promised to address the problems in Chitungwiza but repeated
his plea for
the voters to dump the MDC.
"I pledge that we are going to attend
to these problems, but you must
also pledge that you are going to vote for
us," he said. - ZimOnline
Business Report
Zimbabwe's banks say they are over the worst
March 14,
2005
Zimbabwe's banking sector could be over the worst after a crisis
that
claimed eight institutions last year, but it would take time to regain
investor confidence, top banking executives said last week.
After
weathering six years of recession, Zimbabwe's banks were plagued last
year
by a deepening cash crunch, a central bank crackdown on speculative
activities and managerial misdeeds.
Some top executives have been
hauled before the courts on charges of
defrauding investors, while others
have fled.
But bankers say the economy is set to expand this year, albeit
modestly, and
the central bank's measures to stamp out illegal currency
trading, improve
capital ratios and beef up corporate governance are
starting to bear fruit.
Richard Wilde, the chairman of the Commercial
Bank of Zimbabwe, in which
Absa holds 25 percent, is relatively
optimistic.
"The banking sector is in a period of consolidation and I
believe the worst
is behind us," he said. "When people cannot access their
funds and you have
banks closing regularly, confidence is bound to be low.
But once the
situation stabilises I am confident that it will
return."
Joseph Muzulu, the director of retail banking at the Zimbabwe
Banking
Corporation, blamed the woes of the sector on lax corporate
management,
which he said had now been addressed.
"Now that the bad
apples have been removed, the sector can move forward," he
said.
The
collapsed banks have been placed under independent regulators. The
Reserve
Bank merged Royal Bank, Barbican Bank and Trust Bank into a single
group.
The central bank also introduced new corporate governance
rules that banned
shareholders from holding executive posts in banks, and
limited individual
stakes to a maximum of 10 percent.
All executive
appointments now have to be vetted by the central bank before
approval.
Pretoria News
SA's rosy view of Zimbabwe poll 'dangerous and
premature'
March 14, 2005
South Africa's policy of
expressing public confidence in fair upcoming
Zimbabwean elections is
"misinformed" and "dangerously premature,"
Zimbabwe's main opposition party
said yesterday.
President Mbeki said last week he saw no reason to
expect fraud in the
March 31 poll, which critics say is skewed in favour of
Zimbabwe's ruling
Zanu-PF party.
The Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) said there was a growing
suspicion in Zimbabwe that optimism
over the poll expressed by the South
African Government would help
legitimise a Zanu-PF victory in spite of any
voting
irregularities.
"The MDC urges the South African Government to
rethink the wisdom of
publicly expressing its confidence in the capacity of
(President Robert)
Mugabe and Zanu-PF to host free and fair elections when
there is a dearth of
evidence on the ground to support such an optimistic
outlook," the MDC said
in a statement.
"Positive signals from
regional neighbours provide unnecessary succour
to the authorities in
Zimbabwe and often serve to galvanise those bent on
engaging in
anti-democratic activities," it said.
Political analysts say the
elections are almost certain to return
Mugabe's Zanu-PF, blamed by opponents
and Western countries for the
country's worst political and economic crisis
since independence in 1980.
This year's campaign has so far
been free of the violence that
accompanied presidential elections in 2002
and the last parliamentary poll
five years ago, but the MDC maintains laws
governing the vote favour the
ruling party.
It also charges
that Zanu-PF rigged the last elections to steal
victory, a view supported by
many Western observers.
South African foreign ministry spokesman
Ronnie Mamoepa told Reuters
that South Africa was not prejudging the
election outcome, which was the
task of an observer mission from the
13-member Southern African Development
Community (SADC).
"We do
not believe that there is anyone out there who wants to
infringe on the
rights of the people of Zimbabwe to express their will
freely ... we would
hope that anyone who does will face the full might of
the law," he
said.
"We believe the role of SADC is to assist the people of
Zimbabwe in
their endeavour to create the climate for a free and fair
election," he
added.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Health Crisis Threatens Zimbabwe's
Neighbours
The collapse of medical services coupled with political and
economic
instability means Zimbabwe is starting to export its health
problems.
By Fred Bridgland in Johannesburg (Africa Reports: Zimbabwe
Elections No 14,
14-Mar-05)
The collapse of health care services in
Zimbabwe poses a serious threat to
its neighbours and may worsen the
HIV/AIDS crisis in the region, according
to a new report by a southern
African anti-malaria organisation.
The Johannesburg-based group Africa
Fighting Malaria says the country's
serious health problems are spilling
across its borders as Zimbabweans flee
political violence, economic turmoil
and poverty. More than three million
Zimbabwean refugees are in neighbouring
countries. More than two million of
them are in South Africa and another
400,000 have reached Botswana.
With HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis
now out of control in Zimbabwe,
refugees bring with them these rampant
diseases from their home country,
said the report, entitled "Despotism and
Disease: A report into the health
situation of Zimbabwe and its probable
impact on the region's health".
The report, published last week, says
that at independence in 1980, Zimbabwe
had an admirable healthcare system.
One of the first acts of the new
government, of which Robert Mugabe was then
prime minister, was to increase
spending on health by 80 per cent, spending
almost three times as much per
capita than other sub-Saharan countries.
Zimbabwe had one of the highest
rates of immunisation in Africa, and life
expectancy rose from 55 years at
independence to 65 by 1987.
But as a
result of the subsequent collapse in healthcare and good
governance, since
1987, life expectancy has fallen by 50 per cent to barely
33 now, said the
report's main author, Richard Tren, the director of Africa
Fighting Malaria.
"Lives that ordinary Zimbabweans now lead are not only
shorter, but more
brutish and nasty," said Tren. "Their lives are also in
peril because of
inadequate nutrition. For the first time in decades,
children with
kwashiorkor [protein malnutrition] are streaming into clinics
and
hospitals."
Malaria, which had been a minor health problem for decades,
has exploded in
recent years because of the collapse of health services. The
once highly
efficient malaria control teams "not only lack insecticides, but
also cannot
obtain the fuel they require to drive into the malarial areas",
said the
report. "The result of this lack of control has been a sharp rise
in malaria
cases, possibly in excess of two million cases [in a population
of 11.5
million] in 2004, five times higher than the low of 400,000 cases in
1992."
HIV/AIDS infection levels have reached catastrophic levels and
because of
the collapse of health services, effective treatment - which can
prolong the
lives of people living with AIDS - is virtually unavailable. The
United
Nations estimated that by 2003 every fourth adult was HIV-positive,
but this
is likely to be an underestimate. Some 3,300 people die from
AIDS-related
diseases every week, and the population of AIDS orphans has
probably topped
one million.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the
scale of the disease is substantially
worse than is reported in the
country's increasingly unreliable statistical
analyses. Dr Mark Dixon of
Mpilo Hospital in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second
city, estimates that seven out
of every ten patients he sees are
HIV-positive.
Incredibly, the
International Monetary Fund believes that on current trends,
83 per cent of
all teachers alive in 2003 will have died from AIDS-related
infections by
2010. Despite the scale of this disaster, the Global Fund for
AIDS, TB and
Malaria last year rejected the Zimbabwean government's
application for
funding because it could not be trusted to use the money
effectively.
Poor funding and administration is exacerbated by the
flight abroad of
doctors and nurses. Some 2000 nurses are estimated to leave
Zimbabwe each
month. Bulawayo surgeon Mike Cotton says he can no longer
carry out some of
the most basic procedures because of the flight of skilled
assistants and
the deterioration of equipment. He says that a mere three
general surgeons
and just one gynaecologist now serve Bulawayo's one million
people. A decade
ago there were seven general surgeons, four orthopaedic
surgeons, one
neurosurgeon and four gynaecologists.
The report says
Zimbabwe's health-care disaster has ceased to be purely a
domestic
issue.
"The exodus of Zimbabweans means that their poor health status
threatens the
country's neighbouring states," it said, asserting that
refugees are
transporting HIV at an alarming rate.
The report
concludes, "The failure of Zimbabwe's neighbours to respond
adequately to
the political crisis and deal with the refugee problem has
probably worsened
the health status of their own countries.
"It is therefore incumbent on
the SADC [Southern African Development
Community] states, but particularly
South Africa, given its political and
economic power, to recognise the
crisis in Zimbabwe and exert pressure on
the Mugabe regime to reform,
restore democracy and reduce political
violence. Anything less will
destabilise the region and imperil the health
status of ordinary citizens in
all neighbouring states."
Fred Bridgland is IWPR's Zimbabwe project
editor based in Johannesburg.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Mugabe Seeks Food
Aid
Once-defiant president secretly tries to avert a looming
famine.
By Alfred Tsotso in Harare (Africa Reports: Zimbabwe Elections No
14,
14-Mar-05)
President Robert Mugabe - who last year told the
international community
that his people did not need food aid - has quietly
established contacts to
secure emergency help from outside to avert a
looming famine.
"We do not want food that is foisted upon us," Mugabe
insisted last
November.
However, with parliamentary elections
scheduled for March 31 and
agricultural analysts warning of a serious
shortfall in maize production, he
appears to have changed his
mind.
The European Community, which has imposed travel and banking bans
on Mugabe
and his ministers, has been the among the first to react to the
new
initiative, quietly allocating 15 million euro to those Zimbabweans most
vulnerable to food shortages, especially orphaned children and people living
with AIDS. Food bought with the European money will be distributed through
such United Nations agencies as UNICEF and the Food and Agricultural
Organisation, FAO.
In a terse statement issued in Brussels, a
spokesman for the community said,
"Unprecedented numbers of people [in
Zimbabwe] are facing food insecurity
and rising rates of HIV/AIDS
infection.
"The majority of the population can barely cover their most
basic needs. The
health, water and sanitation sectors have collapsed. The
country counts more
than one million orphans [in a total population of 11.5
million], mainly as
a result of the AIDS pandemic. Diseases that were once
eradicated from the
country such as cholera and dysentery are again being
reported due to the
absence of basic water, sanitation and health
services."
UN officials in Harare said Mugabe had swallowed his pride and
approached
them for help in formulating a major appeal to be made to the
international
donor community as soon as the election results are declared
in around three
weeks time.
"Food assistance will make up more than
70 per cent of the appeal," a senior
UN official told IWPR.
The
government, however, has not yet gone public yet about the initiative
for
fear of ridicule and a widespread outbreak of anger ahead of polling
day.
Mugabe and his agriculture minister, Joseph Made, have spent recent
months
boasting that a record harvest was expected from April onwards.
The UN
officials say they will establish a food emergency coordinating team
with
the government as soon as it is known which party will form the next
government. Preliminary work has been going on since last December, with the
social welfare ministry spearheading the "talks about talks".
Current
limited supplies of maize meal, the country's staple food, have
created a
booming black market and high retail prices that are beyond the
reach of
most Zimbabweans.
The main famine and weather-monitoring organisation in
southern Africa said
the situation was many times worse than conveyed by the
government to the
UN. The Johannesburg-based Famine Early Warning System
Network, FEWSNET,
said 4.8 million Zimbabweans - nearly half the population
- urgently require
food aid or they could starve.
Council minutes
published in Bulawayo, the country's second city, record at
least 24 people
as having died of starvation since the beginning of the
year.
"There
is a lot of suffering in this city," said the mayor, Japhet
Ndabeni-Ncube,
of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, MDC. "Many
children and
some elderly people are dying as a result of malnutrition."
Hunger is
also stalking the rural people of Chimanimani, in the highlands
450
kilometres east of Harare.
Traditional chiefs, who are normally the
vanguard of Mugabe's ZANU PF, have
this time thrown their weight behind MDC
candidate Heather Bennett, the wife
of the current MDC member of parliament
Roy Bennett, who is currently in
prison. Heather Bennett - who lost a baby
when ZANU PF thugs attacked her in
2000 when they invaded the couple's farm,
murdered workers and raped women -
addressed a rally of around 5,000 people
on March 6.
A local chief stood up and told her, "To hell with a
government that can't
provide its own people with grain."
A drive
into any rural area reveals stunted maize withering in the blazing
sun, and
once-productive farms lie idle everywhere. Mugabe boasted that the
confiscation of white farms and the resettlement on them of landless
peasants would boost agricultural production. But the government has
dismally failed to provide such basic inputs as seeds, fertilisers and
tractor fuel to the "new farmers". Many have been driven to plant what few
seeds they do have on untilled land, with disastrous consequences for
yields.
When the first stories of the impending famine began
surfacing at the end of
last year, agriculture minister Made described them
as an attempt by
"enemies of Zimbabwe" to tarnish the government and to
undermine the
"success" of the land reform programme.
Agricultural
experts have since said it is unlikely that more than 300,000
tonnes of
maize will be gathered in the coming harvest season. Zimbabwe
needs a
minimum of 1.8 million tonnes of maize a year in order to feed its
entire
people.
At the beginning of this month, having already opened clandestine
negotiations with the UN, Mugabe admitted that only 40 per cent of
confiscated white land allocated to new black farmers is actually being
utilised. He threatened to repossess such land. It was his first tentative
admission that his land reform programme had failed.
Alfred Tsotso is
the pseudonym for an IWPR journalist in Harare.
Concern over the absence of SADC and EISA teams at poll
[ This report
does not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations]
JOHANNESBURG, 14 Mar 2005 (IRIN) - Human rights activists
and election
observers are concerned that two of the "most credible"
election observer
groups in Southern African will not be in Zimbabwe for the
31 March
elections.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC)
Parliamentary Forum and
the Johannesburg-based Electoral Institute of
Southern Africa (EISA) have
not been invited to observe the Zimbabwean
general elections.
EISA has been involved in 20 elections, while the SADC
Forum has witnessed
polls in 10 countries in the region since 1999, and was
the only African
observer mission not to declare Zimbabwe's controversial
2002 presidential
ballot free and fair.
The national director of the
Zimbabwe Election Support Network, Rindai
Chipfunde-Vava, told IRIN, "We are
very concerned - if the elections are
open and we have nothing to hide, why
has the invitation not been extended
to the two bodies who have extensive
experience of observing elections in
the region?"
The SADC
Parliamentary Forum said it was not going to observe this month's
ballot as
it had "not been invited in its own right as an autonomous
institution of
SADC, which is a fundamental departure from the established
practice".
Brian Kagoro, chief executive of the Crisis in Zimbabwe
Coalition, a group
of pro-democracy NGOs, remarked that the list of approved
electoral
observers included a large number of government delegations and
few
representatives from independent bodies.
The Zimbabwean
government maintained that it had invited SADC, and "this
implies an
invitation to any arms of SADC", spokesman George Charamba told
IRIN. "We
fail to understand how the forum can call itself an autonomous
body of SADC
- what does that mean?"
The head of EISA, Dennis Kadima, commented, "When
observers are restricted,
one questions whether the government is hiding
something. We at EISA not
only observe elections, we have also been
documenting electoral processes
for the benefit of all the countries in the
region."
In the absence of the SADC and EISA teams, Chipfunde-Vava
suggested that the
government in Harare should increase the representation
of local NGOs as
observers.
"Zimbabwe cannot get away with a lie - it
has misrepresented the SADC
Parliamentary Forum as some sort of unofficial
body merely falling under
SADC," said South African Joe Seremane, a
Democratic Alliance party
parliamentarian and member of the proposed
observer mission.
Two different positions on the SADC forum's proposed
mission to Zimbabwe
emerged from the South African Department of Foreign
Affairs (DFA) last
week.
"The SADC Parliamentary Forum ... has no
locus standi in terms of official
SADC structures," the South African Press
Agency (SAPA) quoted DFA spokesman
Ronnie Mamoepa as saying.
"As far
as the [South African] government is concerned, Zimbabwe has invited
the
national parliaments of SADC member states, which will allow for
report-backs to sovereign national parliaments post the elections. On the
other hand, the SADC Parliamentary Forum would have no fora to report back
on its findings," he said.
However, last Wednesday DFA
director-general Ayanda Ntsaluba described the
Zimbabwean government's
refusal to invite the forum as a "difficult
situation".
Ntsaluba said
he was aware, and so were others, that the parliamentary forum
had not been
complimentary about the outcome of the last election, and he
could see why
Zimbabwe's latest decision would be greeted with "cynicism",
reported
SAPA.
Referring to the comments made by Mamoepa last week, Seremane
claimed the
DFA "was aiding and abetting" the Zimbabwean
government.
The Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) has said it
was "increasingly perplexed" by the South African
government's claims that
the 31 March elections "will be free and
fair".
According to MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube, the electoral
environment
"is actually worse than it was during the March 2002
presidential
elections".
In a statement on Sunday Ncube said, "The
MDC does not understand the South
African government's ignorance about the
situation in Zimbabwe and the basis
for such optimism, and believes that the
position adopted by the government
is not only misinformed, but also
dangerously premature."
The MDC ran the ruling ZANU-PF a close second in
the last legislative
elections in 2000 in a poll marred by violence. The MDC
decided last month
to lift an election boycott following the government's
acceptance of SADC
electoral guidelines.
[ENDS]
Xinhua
Zimbabwe electoral commission establishes multiparty liaison
committees
www.chinaview.cn 2005-03-15
03:14:53
HARARE, March 14 (Xinhuanet) -- The Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission
(ZEC) said on Monday that it has established constituency
multiparty liaison
committees to resolve disputes between parties contesting
national
elections.
Cuthbert Ndarukwa, the ZEC multiparty
liaison committee
officer,said the committees were chaired by constituency
elections
officers,previously known as constituency
registrars.
"They are already in place at constituency level,"
he said. He
said the committees submitted minutes of their meetings as
well as reports
of the situation on the ground to the ZEC. In the past,
Zimbabwean
elections have been characterized by violence, which has left
hundreds of
people dead and property worth millions of dollars
destroyed.
Ndarukwa said the ZEC was encouraged by the
willingness of all the
political parties contesting this month's
parliamentary elections to ensure
that the elections are held in a peaceful
environment.
Five political parties are contesting in the March
31 elections in
which the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic
Front and the
Movement for Democratic Change are the main contenders. At
least 17
candidates will contest the election as independents.
Enditem
VOA
Zimbabwe Facing Another Drought
By Tendai Maphosa
Harare
14 March 2005
With only a few weeks to the end of
this year's rainy season, some Southern
African countries have received only
a fraction of their usual rainfall
which is particularly bad news for
Zimbabwe.
Crops in most parts of Zimbabwe are wilting under extreme heat
as rains have
been erratic. There does not appear to be any respite in sight
as the
Southern African Development Community Drought Monitoring Center
forecasts
below-normal rainfall in the region between March and
May.
In its latest report the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning Systems
Network
says in the main cereal producing areas of Zimbabwe the reproductive
stages
of the crops coincided with a prolonged dry spell earlier this year.
As a
result, the report says, not much is expected from these
areas.
The worst affected crop is the country's staple food, corn. A
Famine Early
Warning Systems Network official, speaking to VOA on condition
of anonymity,
said it is clear parts of the country will need food aid as a
result of the
anticipated poor harvest.
A Zimbabwe Commercial
Farmer's Union spokesperson, also speaking on
condition of anonymity, says
because of the rainfall situation the national
harvest might be less than
half the 1.8 million tons of corn the country
consumes per
year.
Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union President Davison Mugabe told the
independent Sunday newspaper, The Standard, that most of the southern part
of the country was the worst hit. He said crops in other parts of the
country may recover only if it rains "in the next few days." The government
crop assessment teams are still to publish the results of their field
surveys.
Zimbabwe, which has received food aid since 2001 because of
successive
droughts, last year asked donor agencies to stop distributing
food aid
saying it had a 'bumper harvest'. Donor agencies have also blamed
President
Robert Mugabe's chaotic and sometimes violent land-reform exercise
launched
in 2000 for the country's food crisis.
Despite the claims of
food self sufficiency, the government has not denied
it is importing food
from neighboring South Africa and Zambia. But a Zambian
embassy official in
Harare told VOA that Zambia has, since earlier this
month, stopped all
exports of its surplus corn because of the bad rainfall
situation prevailing
in that country as well.
From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 14 March
SA 'ignorant' about situation
in Zim
Johannesburg - The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in
Zimbabwe said on
Sunday it was increasingly perplexed by claims by the South
African
government that the elections in Zimbabwe will be free and fair. MDC
Secretary General Welshman Ncube said in a statement that the MDC did not
understand the South African government's "ignorance" about the situation in
Zimbabwe. "At present it is clear to each and every objective observer that
conditions for a free and fair election do not exist in Zimbabwe. There is
therefore nothing whatsoever to suggest that the elections will be free and
fair, or indeed legitimate," Ncube said. "The electoral environment is
actually worse than it was during the March 2002 presidential elections."
Contrary to the view propagated by the South African government, their
counterparts in Harare are not taking any meaningful steps to ensure the
elections will be free and fair, he said. "The voters' roll is in a
shambles, violence and intimidation remain prevalent, equal access to the
state media is a myth and the elections will be managed and run by the same
biased electoral bodies which have manipulated the electoral process to the
political advantage of the ruling party in previous elections." He said the
much trumpeted new electoral commission had no direct role to play in the
March 31 election. "It was established far too late to have any meaningful
influence on the process. More importantly, anything it does do is subject
to the authority of the Mugabe-appointed Electoral Supervisory Commission.
This compromises its independence."
Meanwhile, South Africa's
Democratic Alliance said on Sunday that Zimbabwe
was in breach of a Southern
African Development Community (SADC) protocol by
failing to invite the SADC
Parliamentary Forum Observer Mission to view its
election later this month.
"Zimbabwe cannot get away with a lie. It has
misrepresented the SADC
Parliamentary Forum as some sort of unofficial body
merely falling under
SADC," said DA spokesperson Joe Seremane. "Mugabe is
punishing the SADC," he
said, adding that the "South African Department of
Foreign Affairs was
aiding and abetting this piece of revenge". Seremane
said ignoring the forum
and pretending that it did not exist was a clear
breach of the protocol. "It
is incorrect to pretend that the forum,
consisting of MPs from all of the
SADC countries was of no account." He said
in a statement the forum was
accepted by all SADC countries, who enjoyed
diplomatic immunity, including
Zimbabwe. He argued that the real reason why
the forum was unwelcome in
Zimbabwe was because it was one of the few
missions which declared that
country's previous election not free and fair.
"The South African Foreign
Affairs Department is well aware of the
provisions of the protocol and
should not connive with Zimbabwe in breaching
it," Seremane said. "South
Africa should be exerting pressure on Zimbabwe to
comply by issuing a
belated invitation and receiving the observer mission,"
he said.
Comment from Business Day (SA), 14 March
Finale or overture for
Mugabe?
Jonathan Katzenellenbogen
Could the parliamentary
elections in Zimbabwe at the end of the month be the
tipping point for the
Mugabe regime? The poll will not be free and fair,
given the intimidation
and shenanigans of the government in the run-up. But
manoeuvrings in the
weeks afterwards could make the election one of the
final acts in the
endgame of President Robert Mugabe's 25-year rule. It is
not going to be a
smooth process. Continued silence and tacit support for
Mugabe from his
neighbours may do him little good in this substantially
changed environment.
He faces a far more unfavourable political landscape
than before the
election in March 2002. Then, he was all-powerful and could
easily steal the
presidential election. The most important contributions to
the changed
environment are the strident opposition from the Congress of
South African
Trade Unions (Cosatu) to SA's "quiet diplomacy", and the
internal power
struggle within the ruling Zanu PF to succeed Mugabe.
But the strong
action of Togo's neighbours in west Africa - threatening
sanctions in
protest against what they said was akin to an illegal seizure
of power - has
also offered leverage for change in Zimbabwe. It has shown up
the
ineffectiveness of the Southern African Development Community's quiet
diplomacy, and shown that there is a precedent for tough measures African
states can take against outlaws. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's
placing of Zimbabwe among six "outposts of tyranny" gives it a new priority
in US foreign policy. But considering Washington's overloaded agenda, the
pressure this puts on Pretoria to resolve the matter is marginal. It should
increase Harare's sense of isolation, however. Cosatu's campaign has
undercut Mugabe's refrain that the opposition to his rule is supported by
western interests because of his seizure of white-owned land. With the South
African Communist Party supporting Cosatu, two members of SA's tripartite
alliance are openly challenging quiet diplomacy.
President Thabo
Mbeki continues to insist that Pretoria and Harare are
friends and that the
election will be free and fair. The commander of the
Zimbabwe Defence Force,
Gen Constantine Chiwenga, was given a 21-gun salute
during his recent visit
to Pretoria. Cosatu and civil society's vow to
mobilise for democracy across
the region must really worry Mugabe as it can
undercut his legitimacy. Until
recently, criticism of him had been loudest
in London and Washington; now
there is a very loud African voice. The
internal struggle within Zanu PF has
reached the extent that it may be
weakening the party's campaign. Mugabe's
firing of Jonathan Moyo, his
propaganda chief who was in effect prime
minister, has damaged the election
campaign. He has had to recall retired
veterans into government to replace
those ousted. In the environment of
uncertainty for those who are not
members of Mugabe's Zezuru faction in the
party, Zanu PF's ability to
intimidate the opposition could be waning. Some
observers now believe the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) could be
surprisingly strong at the
polls. A paper by Chris Maroleng of the Institute
for Security Studies -
titled, Zimbawe's 2005 Elections: Overture or Finale
- gives two
post-election scenarios. Maroleng says the most likely is that
the core
faction for succession, led by former armed forces commander
Solomon Mujuru,
will use the period to strengthen its position in the party.
This faction is
backed by Mugabe and draws its members primarily from his
Zezuru sub-group
of Shonas.
This scenario, says Maroleng, would
allow Zanu PF to hold out an olive
branch to the MDC, but Zanu PF could also
decide to go it alone using its
majority to crush the opposition. In the
second scenario, the MDC gains
two-thirds of parliament and precipitates a
constitutional crisis by pushing
for a no-confidence vote in Mugabe. To gain
two-thirds, the MDC, which is
fielding candidates in all 120 contested
seats, must obtain 100 seats as the
president appoints people to a further
30 seats. Maroleng asks whether this
could precipitate intervention by the
armed forces, as their chiefs have
declared they would not serve under
someone who is not a veteran of the
liberation struggle. Post-election
manoeuvrings could break the stalemate
and bring change - but may also bring
on turmoil.
From SW Radio Africa, 14 March
Jamming
We are still being deliberately
jammed - which obviously means that we're
doing a good job! Please bear with
us while we try to overcome this problem.
We now have a new broadcast
schedule:
Evening broadcasts
For the full three hours of evening
broadcasts (6pm to 9pm Zimbabwe time) we
will be on 3230 kHz in the 90 metre
band.
For the first hour of evening broadcasts we will also be on 6145
kHz in the
49 metre band.
And for the first hour of the evening
broadcasts we will also be on 11845
kHz in the 25m band.
Yes. We're
broadcasting on 3 frequencies for the first hour each evening.
Morning
broadcasts
Don't forget the short-wave and medium-wave broadcasts between
5 am and 7 am
Zimbabwe time each the morning. These are the frequencies to
try:
Medium wave: 1197Khz
Shortwave: 3230Khz in the 90 metre
band
New Zimbabwe
DANIEL FORTUNE MOLOKELE: FACING REALITY
Zimbabwe, I miss you!
Last updated: 03/15/2005 00:33:44
I
MUST start by saying that this past weekend can easily qualify as
one of the
shortest weekends of my life. I spent the entire weekend as an
integral part
of the anti-Zimbabwe elections fraud demonstrations in Musina.
The small
town is located near the Zimbabwean border just outside
Beitbridge.
The weekend saw me drive up north in a very long
and strenuous journey
on Saturday morning. Later in the afternoon, I was
part of the protesting
marchers who converged at the Musina Police station.
I was also asked to
address the excited crowd in the open heat of the day. I
gave a very
inspired and passionate speech about the terrible crisis we have
been forced
to endure at the hands of the Mugabe led regime.
After the march, I never got a chance to catch a rest since I had to
immediately join the hordes of protesters for the all night vigil that
consisted mainly of revolutionary poems, dance and music. Media reports say
that about 3000 people attended the event. It was such a wonderful
night!
Both the street protest and concert were organized by the
South
African civic society groups as led by Amnesty International, Civicus
and
Sangoco. I attended the event as part of the delegation of the Crisis in
Zimbabwe Coalition. I am currently attached to the Crisis Coalition's
offices in Johannesburg as part of its Media and Communications Programme
Office.
And then after a catching a few hours of sleep I had to
endure the
strain of the return journey to Johannesburg by road. As such
before I could
even notice it, my whole week end was over!
As
it is, I have just returned to my Johannesburg office feeling very
exhausted
and totally burnt out. Oh the grueling things I have had to endure
due to
Mugabe's failures and crimes back in Zimbabwe!!!
I initially
thought of not writing an article this week due to the
fatigue I am busy
trying to come to terms with. I really felt that I did not
have the
sufficient mental strength and intellectual capacity to write a
decent
article.
But thank God, I have at last managed to pull my faculties
together.
So here I am! I hope to write yet one more of my interesting
articles on the
dreams I have for a new Zimbabwe.
I must also
say it was such a strange but fantastic feeling I had as I
slept near the
border. Indeed, sleeping at the border opened a flood gate of
most of my
precious memories back in Zimbabwe.
I also remembered the days of
my activism back in Harare at the
University of Zimbabwe and the subsequent
years I spent in Bulawayo working
with such civic society groups as the NCA,
Transparency International and
the Bulawayo Agenda.
It really
made me feel so homesick!
By the way, I do love Zimbabwe! I love my
motherland so much that it
hurts. Even though I have been in South Africa
for more than a year now, I
still have strong bouts of
homesickness.
I feel this nostalgic hangover all over my body. I do
feel it every
morning I wake up, every day I spend and every night I go
through, I just
cannot stop thinking about my beloved home land. I really
miss my beautiful
long suffering country.
In fact leaving
Bulawayo was not so easy for me. I had managed to
develop a very wide
community of friends. I had also managed to get myself
involved in numerous
pro-democracy initiatives. But then as an individual, I
had to accept the
sad reality that I was no longer growing. It was clear
that for me to fully
realize my full potential, I needed to leave the
country and broaden my
scope of challenges and opportunities.
I am sure that even though I
had to leave Zimbabwe, a part of me
remained embedded in the country. As
such, I will never forget my home land.
No matter what happens, Zimbabwe
will always be my home. I shall never
forget my country. It shall always
have a permanent special place in my
heart.
I would like to
believe that it is the same feeling of rabid love that
I have for my
homeland that keeps me going. It is the very axis of my daily
existence. It
is the fountain of my life.
So as I join the current efforts here
in South Africa to highlight the
plight of the long suffering people of
Zimbabwe, I do feel it is for a
worthy cause.
It is my utmost
hope that one day; my people shall wake up to a
morning that will herald the
dawn of a new era. I really am looking forward
to a new Zimbabwe that will
make me easily forget all the pains and
struggles of my life in
exile.
CONTACT DANIEL BY E-MAIL: danielmolokele@yahoo.co.uk
Daniel Molokele is a lawyer and a former student leader. He is
currently
based in Johannesburg, South Africa. His column appears here every
Monday
Reuters
White Zimbabwe farmers find mixed welcome in
Africa
Mon March 14, 2005 4:32 PM GMT+02:00
By Peter
Apps
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - White Zimbabwean farmers whose land
was
seized for blacks are setting up elsewhere in Africa where they are
boosting
output of cash crops and creating new frictions.
In
neighbouring Zambia, the arrival of the Zimbabweans has coincided
with a
turnaround in a country that faced famine two years ago -- although
local
farmers say the link is not that simple.
"The farmers from Zimbabwe
have contributed a lot to the growth of the
agriculture sector because they
are growing high value crops such as
tobacco," Zambia's Deputy Agriculture
Minister James Katoka said.
"They have helped to increase the
hectares under cultivation and this
has resulted in the creation of many
more jobs."
White settlers in what was once Rhodesia owned much of
the country's
fertile agricultural land, and their eviction from farms has
been blamed by
aid workers for food shortages in what was once the region's
breadbasket.
Now, it is Zambia that has the surplus and is
exporting to Zimbabwe.
The white Zimbabweans, some 1,500 to 2,000 of whom
have left since farm
seizures backed by President Robert Mugabe's government
began in 2000, are
not shy to claim credit.
"We are regarded as
some of the best farmers in the world," farmer
Alan Jack, who lost his farm
in 2000 and is now moving to Nigeria, told
Reuters from Zimbabwe. "We
understand the environment and we understand the
Africans in our dealings
with them."
Guy Robinson, head of Zambia's National Farmer's Union,
said the 150
to 200 new arrivals had concentrated on tobacco -- increasing
Zambia's
production by 100 percent in the last couple of years, but had
played little
role in food production.
"Very few of them have
been growing maize," he said, attributing
Zambia's turnaround on food
production -- now threatened by a late season
drought -- to local reform and
distribution of seed and fertiliser to
small-scale farmers.
Robinson said farmers from Britain and Australia had also moved to
Zambia,
taking advantage of government incentives to rent land little used
by
locals. Many Zambians say they welcome the new jobs and increased food
production, but some tensions remain.
"If the land is taken
by...foreigners then the same thing that
happened in Zimbabwe might happen
here," said Gilbert Chona, a teacher in
Livingstone, southern Zambia, where
some Zimbabwean tobacco farmers have set
up on the border with their former
home.
MAKING A CONTRIBUTION
The white farmers would
alienate locals if they set up electric fences
and denied subsistence
farmers and villagers access to the nearby Zambezi
River, he
said.
"They have started doing that already," he said. "There have
been some
small riots."
Most of the departed white Zimbabweans,
despairing of ever getting
their farms back, have quit farming and
re-settled in Australia and New
Zealand.
But others have
remained in Africa, primarily in Zambia, Mozambique,
Malawi as well as
Jack's destination -- sub-Saharan Africa's most populous
country
Nigeria.
He said an advance guard of farmers is opening five dairy
farms and 10
producing maize, soya, rice and other foods, efforts were being
made to
cement good relations with ordinary Nigerians, setting up a training
farm
for local farmers.
Complaints in countries where
Zimbabwean farmers had settled were
mainly motivated by resentment from
locals who had failed to take advantage
of fertile land in the past, he
said.
"It's pure jealousy," he said. "These people have been on the
land for
30 or 40 years since independence and they haven't managed to
achieve
anything."
Tribune de Geneve
UN human rights chief chides international
community
GENEVA, March 14 (AFP)
The United Nations' human rights
chief chided the international community
Monday about its record on
protecting civil liberties, saying it was too
selective in responding to
abuses around the world.
Opening the annual session of the UN Human Rights
Commission, Louise Arbour
said the international community had fallen short
of its human rights goals.
Her remarks came as the world body's 53-member top
rights forum meeting in
Geneva comes under close scrutiny by human rights
groups, who charge that
the assembly represents a "do or die" test of its
credibility.
The gathering, which continues to April 22, is meant to
scrutinise respect
for fundamental freedoms and highlight instances of abuse
such as torture
and disappearances.
But pressure groups Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch estimate
that about half its current
membership are rights abusers, and their
political bargaining undermines the
commission to the extent that it fails
to protect basic rights.
"Our
approach to human rights diplomacy remains unsatisfactory," Arbour, a
Canadian, said in her opening speech.
"It is sporadic and selective. The
commission must take the lead in
developing more effective
approaches.
"So far, we have fallen short in the task of implementing human
rights. We
readily give the impression of viewing declarations as our final
destination
(...) and we readily settle for selective and sporadic
implementation of
rights of convenience."
Arbour said the international
community had failed in particular in Darfur
in western Sudan, where there
are "mass violations of human rights being
perpetrated".
"Our response to
that human rights crisis falls very short (...) of our
responsibility to the
most vulnerable," she added. Sudan was reelected to
the human rights
commission this year.
Rights campaigners also warn that countries like Cuba
and Zimbabwe, where
abuse was frequently reported, are able to claim "double
standards" because
the United States is rarely taken to task for human
rights problems at the
international level.
"Clearly one of the major
problems of the commission has been the fact that
many of its members act
not to promote the purposes of the commission, but
to undermine sincere
efforts to promote human rights," Kenneth Roth,
executive director of Human
Rights Watch, said earlier.
"This is a do or die moment for the commission.
Either it begins to reform
itself or the matter may well be taken out of its
hands."
In a perceived reference to the United States, Arbour said that she
was
"particularly concerned to see that certain long established rights,
such as
the right not be tortured, are now the subject of unprecedented
reinterpretation".
The United States has been accused by human rights
groups of the torture of
prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at a US military
base in Cuba.
The question of torture could be raised in a resolution
supported by the
European Union, according to diplomats.
Some 120
resolutions have listed for this year's commission meeting in which
5,000
delegates will participate including 3,000 non-government
organisations.
The Commission on Human Rights was created in 1946. After
initially
concentrating on standard-setting and reviewing particular themes,
it gained
additional powers to examine alleged abuse in specific countries
in 1970.
The body can vote by a simple majority to place a country under
scrutiny for
a year, or more if the term is renewed. - AFP
Mail and Guardian
Politics of food
Godwin Gandu |
Harare
14 March 2005 07:59
Hunger is stalking the rural folk in Chimanimani, about 450km
east of
Harare, and the political fallout could be significant.
Traditional chiefs are normally the rearguard of President
Robert Mugabe's
ruling Zanu-PF. But this time round, it appears that some
have thrown their
weight behind Heather Bennet, wife of jailed Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC) MP Roy Bennet. At a rally of about 5 000 people she
addressed in
Chimanimani last Sunday, a defiant local chief stood up: "To
hell with a
government that can't provide its own people grain."
His
protest reveals simmering discontent in rural areas where
people have
remained loyal to Mugabe since independence. "Failure to provide
food,"
analysts warn, "could be Mugabe's downfall."
A drive out into
the rural areas reveals stunted maize withering
in the searing sun.
Commercial farmlands along the Harare/Masvingo and
Harare/Bulawayo roads are
lying idle.
The humanitarian disaster confronting Mugabe's
rural vote could
easily turn it against him.
Issack
Matongo, MDC national chairperson, has visited 90
constituencies. "We are
winning this election despite what our detractors
are saying," he told the
Chimanimani rally. "We know hunger is a problem and
the responsibility lies
with the government to help you," he exclaimed,
reminding his audience that
last year Mugabe had told the international
community not to "foist food
upon us".
Mugabe has been importing food in the past year,
which
humanitarian agencies have said is not enough to meet the target of
two
million tonnes to feed the destitute.
A parliamentary
select committee on land and agriculture warned
the executive last year that
Zimbabwe had a shortfall of 900 000 tonnes.
"I don't think
contingency plans were put in place to address
drought," said Alois Masepe
of the University of Zimbabwe. "Instead of
planning how to feed our people,
we are concentrating on how to get
agricultural inputs in the hope that it
results in a bumper harvest."
Instead of dealing with hunger,
Masepe said, Mugabe is targeting
the youth vote by donating computers to
schools. "He should just donate them
quietly, not campaign using computers.
It's an insult. Where there are no
textbooks, furniture, classroom blocks
you don't need computers. It's a
luxury."
But there's a
logic to Mugabe's drive to woo the youth. The
"born frees" do not share
their parents' regard for Mugabe as a war hero,
and largely voted for the
opposition five years ago.
After Mugabe narrowly won the 2002
presidential election, he
went on a campaign to change the education
curriculum to reorient the youth,
whom he accused of falling victim to
Western propaganda and deserting his
government.
National
youth training centres were created where school
dropouts had to go for a
six-month training course that involved military
drills and lectures on the
liberation war. The majority of the graduates
enlisted in Zanu-PF's youth
militia that became notorious for its
intimidation of the
opposition.
IOL
MDC accuses Mbeki of 'aiding' Mugabe's regime Basildon
Peta
March 14 2005 at 09:01AM
Zimbabwe's main
opposition the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
which had hitherto
avoided criticising President Thabo Mbeki because of his
mediation efforts,
has come out with guns blazing over his government's
suggestions that the
coming poll will be free and fair.
In a hard-hitting statement on
Sunday, the MDC accused the South
African government of "aiding and abetting
the Mugabe regime's denial of the
basic rights of the people of Zimbabwe to
freely elect the government of
their choice".
Mbeki has said he
sees nothing that will militate against the
elections being free and
fair.
"To the people of Zimbabwe, the optimism expressed by the
South
African government is increasingly viewed as misplaced solidarity and
a
deliberate attempt to frustrate the new beginning they so desperately
desire," said the MDC's Secretary- General, Welshman
Ncube.
"This perception undermines public confidence in the
objectivity and
impartiality of South African and the Southern African
Development Community
(SADC) observer missions."
Ncube said
there was growing suspicion in Zimbabwe that the sole
objective of these
missions was not to ensure the full expression of the
"one person, one vote"
principle but to legitimise a Zanu-PF victory,
regardless of the manner in
which this "victory" was achieved.
Ncube said his party was
"increasingly perplexed" by the South African
government's claims that the
March 31 elections would be free and fair and
that it did not see any
problems in Zimbabwe's electoral system.
"The MDC does not
understand the South African government's ignorance
about the situation in
Zimbabwe and the basis for such optimism, and
believes that the position
adopted by the South African government is not
only misinformed but also
dangerously premature," said Ncube.
"At present, it is clear to
each and every objective observer that
conditions for a free and fair
election do not exist in Zimbabwe. The
electoral environment is actually
worse than it was during the March 2002
presidential
elections."
'The MDC does not understand the South African
government's
ignorance'
Contrary to the view propagated by the
South African government, "its
counterparts in Harare" were not taking any
meaningful steps to ensure the
elections would be free and fair, added
Ncube.
He said the voters roll was a shambles, violence and
intimidation
remained prevalent, equal access to the state media was a myth
and the
elections would be managed and run by the same "biased electoral
bodies"
that had manipulated the electoral process to the political
advantage of the
ruling party in previous elections, among other
things.
Ncube said that MDC meetings and rallies continued to be
disrupted by
the police under the notorious Public Order and Security Act.
Sixteen MDC
candidates had already been the victims of arbitrary arrest and
police
harassment, and scores of MDC activists had been arrested for such
innocuous
crimes as putting up posters.
"The MDC urges the
South African government to rethink the wisdom of
publicly expressing its
confidence in the capacity of Mugabe and Zanu-PF to
host free and fair
elections when there is a dearth of evidence on the
ground to support such
an optimistic outlook," said the MDC
secretary-general, a trained
lawyer.
.. This article was originally published on page 1
of The Mercury
on March 14, 2005