Washington Post
By CELEAN
JACOBSON
The Associated Press
Friday, March 23, 2007; 1:51
PM
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The government warned foreign and
local
correspondents on Friday about their coverage of unrest in the
country,
threatening action against Zimbabwean journalists and singling out
CNN for
what it called biased reporting.
The government said foreign
reporters should beware of authorities and "stay
away from the security
forces," according to reports on state radio and
television and in the
Herald newspaper, a government mouthpiece.
The Information Ministry told
Zimbabwean reporters working for foreign
organizations to do the same, and
to also avoid opposition politicians.
"Should this not stop, government
may be forced to act against them," and
whichever politician they speak to,
the ministry said.
The Zimbabwean media criticized CNN _ which is already
banned from the
country _ for its reporting on the alleged assault and
torture this month of
opposition leaders including Morgan Tsvangirai, leader
of the main Movement
for Democratic Change.
Washington has frequently
criticized President Robert Mugabe's crackdown on
the opposition, and the
government called CNN a tool of American foreign
policy.
"Sadly CNN
has embedded itself within such a treacherous imperialist policy
... it can
no longer validate its claim to be a trusted source of accurate
and balanced
news opinion," the Information Ministry said in a statement.
"We stand by
our reporting of the situation in Zimbabwe and look forward to
being given
the opportunity to report from inside the country," CNN
spokeswoman Megan
Mahoney said.
Four foreign journalists have been expelled under sweeping
media laws that
began to be strictly enforced in 2003. The British
Broadcasting Corp. is
officially banned. Scores of independent local
journalists have been
assaulted or arrested and jailed under the media
laws.
Both state television and radio have harshly criticized CNN's
Africa
correspondent, Jeff Koinange, now doing most of his reporting on
Zimbabwe
from outside the country.
Zimbabwe's ambassador to the
United States, Machivenyika Mapuranga, said on
CNN this week that a ban on
the Atlanta-based network's reporters would
continue because it and the BBC
"champion the imperialist interests of the
British and the
Americans."
CNN anchor Michael Holmes responded that, "Reporting the
comments of other
governments is not acting on their behalf; it's
reporting."
According to official figures from the state Central Bank, at
least 3.5
million Zimbabweans have left the country in seven years of
political and
economic turmoil since often-violent seizures of thousands of
white-owned
commercial farms began in 2000, disrupting the agriculture-based
economy in
the former regional breadbasket.
The bank said its
calculations were based on inflows of currency from exiles
to their
families, now the nation's biggest source of hard currency.
Arthur
Mutambara, leader of a Zimbabwean opposition faction, told a trade
union
meeting in Johannesburg that events of the last few weeks had unified
the
opposition.
"We are going to drive Mugabe out of power through
collaboration and working
together." Mutambara said.
VOA
By Joe De Capua
Washington
23 March
2007
A press freedom group is reacting to a warning to western
media by Zimbabwe's
government. The government says it may take action
against journalists,
including VOA reporter Peta Thornycroft, for allegedly
supporting US
government policy and regime change in Zimbabwe.
Robert
Mahoney is the deputy director of the Committee to Protect
Journalists
(CPJ). From New York, he spoke to VOA English to Africa Service
reporter Joe
De Capua.
"We're very concerned by this. It's yet another form of
intimidation on the
part of the Zimbabwean government to keep reporters out
of the country.
There's a huge gap in the reporting in Zimbabwe, Events are
taking place in
the country which are not properly covered. This may suit
the government,
but we as a press freedom organization call on the
government in Zimbabwe to
be completely open and honest about this and to
allow foreign journalists
into the country and allow them to work
unimpeded," he says.
The CPJ has complained before about attacks on the
media in Zimbabwe. "We
publicized violations of journalists' rights and
press freedom abuses in
Zimbabwe. And we constantly monitor the situation
because it's extremely
difficult for journalists not only to get into the
country, but once they're
in the country to move around. And I must add it's
also very difficult for
Zimbabwean journalists, who reside in the country,
to do their job, too," he
says.
Yahoo News
by
Fanuel Jongwe Fri Mar 23, 12:31 PM ET
HARARE (AFP) - Long-ruling
Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe denounced
opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai as a stooge of the West on Friday in the
face of mounting
international condemnation of his rule.
Tsvangirai would never rule the
country as long as he was alive, said
83-year-old Mugabe, shrugging off
criticism over his government's recent
violent crackdown on the opposition
which saw Tsvangirai, among others,
detained and assaulted.
"Tsvangirai,
you want to rule this country on behalf of (British Prime
Minister Tony)
Blair," Mugabe told hundreds of supporters at his party
headquarters.
"As long as I am alive that will never
happen."
He charged Britain with using Tsvangirai's Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC) as a front to re-colonise Zimbabwe in order to
plunder the country's
minerals.
"You (Tsvangirai) thought when I say
I am 83, you could push me. It's a
solid 83 years of experience and
resilience and I know the tactics.
"We went to jail, we are hardened.
Nothing frightens me. Someone wrote that
I am a frightened man. Frightened
by who? Little men like Blair? I have seen
it all. I make a stand on
principle, here I was born, here I stand and here
I shall
die."
Neighbouring South Africa, warning that a "total meltdown" was
facing
Zimbabwe, also lashed out at foreign countries that question its
policy of
quiet diplomacy towards Harare.
"If outside governments
played a more constructive role from the outset we
would not have had this
crisis in Zimbabwe," deputy foreign affairs minister
Aziz Pahad told
reporters in Pretoria.
South Africa and the Southern African Development
Community "remained seized
with the matter", Pahad said, but did not
elaborate.
The United States and Britain have threatened to broaden
sanctions against
Mugabe and his inner circle, but Mugabe has told them to
"go hang".
Australia added its voice to the protest on Friday, calling on
South Africa
to pressure Mugabe into quitting.
"We pussyfoot around
far too much using diplomatic language," Prime Minister
John Howard told
commercial radio. "This man is a disaster, his country is
just a total heap
of misery.
Mugabe's anti-Western sentiments were echoed in an unlikely
quarter when
Arthur Mutambara, who leads a faction of the MDC, said only
Africans had the
moral authority to speak out against the situation in his
country.
"The only people who have a legitimate role to talk about
Zimbabwe are
Africans ... Mugabe is a despot, a dictator, brutalising
blacks, brutalising
whites, brutalising Africans," the SAPA news agency
quoted Mutambara as
telling a seminar on Zimbabwe in
Johannesburg.
But Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in
1980, urged members
of his ruling ZANU-PF to stand up against their
opponents saying there was
no room in the party for
cowards.
Traditionally loathe to interfere in Zimbabwean affairs, African
leaders
have started adding their voices to the growing international
discontent
over the country's political and economic
downspiral.
Zimbabwe is facing inflation in excess of 1,700 percent, 80
percent
unemployment and shortages of consumer goods and
fuel.
Meanwhile, MDC youth members vowed on Friday to stand up against
Mugabe's
rule, announcing plans to continue holding rallies banned by the
government.
And authorities said a police station in the eastern border
town of Mutare
in Zimbabwe has been petrol bombed, allegedly by MDC
youths.
Nobody was injured in the attack which occurred around 0100 GMT.
Monsters and Critics
Mar 23, 2007, 19:23 GMT
Johannesburg -
Zimbabwean Vice President Joyce Mujuru held secret talks with
South Africa's
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo- Ngcuka in Johannesburg
Friday, South
African news channel Etv and Britain's Channel Four News
reported.
Etv showed footage of Mujuru at the luxurious Westcliff
Hotel in
Johannesburg. Mujuru, the wife of influential former army commander
Solomon
Mujuru and herself a former liberation struggle fighter is tipped as
a
possible successor to 83-year-old President Robert Mugabe.
South
African Foreign Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said the visit was a
private one and refused to give details of the women's talks, SAPA news
agency reported.
'The vice president of Zimbabwe is on a private
visit to South Africa and
therefore it is not on an official diary,' Mamoepa
was quoted as saying.
Joyce Mujuru, once seen as Mugabe's favourite to
succeed him, has reportedly
fallen out of favour with the 83-year-old
leader, who has indirectly accused
the Mujurus of trying to oust
him.
The two deputy presidents' meeting was likely to fuel speculation
over
whether South Africa is working with elements within ZANU-PF on a
post-Mugabe scenario.
South Africa has repeatedly insisted Zimbabwe's
problems must be resolved
internally.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche
Presse-Agentur
BBC
23 March 2007, 17:53 GMT
South Africa's deputy foreign minister has made the
country's
strongest comments on neighbouring Zimbabwe, saying it was on the
brink of
meltdown.
Aziz Pahad said it was now difficult to see how
the country could
avoid a complete collapse.
South Africa has
come under pressure from the West over its reluctance
to voice criticism of
Zimbabwe.
But the authorities have insisted there is no alternative
to its
approach of quiet diplomacy towards Robert Mugabe.
Spiralling inflation
International outrage at the situation in
Zimbabwe was heightened this
month after a violent crackdown on opposition
politicians left party leader
Morgan Tsvangirai in
hospital.
The UK and US have threatened to broaden targeted
sanctions on
Zimbabwe's leaders.
But so far Zimbabwe's powerful
neighbour South Africa has been muted
in its response.
The
BBC's Grant Ferret in Johannesburg said Zimbabwean activists in
the county
will be pleased with the comments, which they hope indicate a
more
interventionist policy towards Zimbabwe.
On Friday, a Roman
Catholic Archbishop repeated his calls for
Zimbabwean citizens to take to
the streets in protest at conditions in their
country.
"This
dictator must be brought down right now," said Pius Ncube,
Archbishop of
Bulawayo.
"Brought down by people power, not by a violent manner
but let people
fill the streets and demand that he comes down."
But during a rally of Zanu-PF supporters in Harare, the 83-year-old Mr
Mugabe remained defiant.
"Nothing frightens me, not even little
fellows like Bush and Blair. I
have seen it all, I don't fear any suffering
or a struggle of any kind," Mr
Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe for 27 years,
told cheering crowds.
Zimbabweans are grappling with spiralling
annual inflation of 1,700%
and widespread unemployment and
poverty.
UN Integrated Regional
Information Networks
March 23, 2007
Posted to the web March 23,
2007
Harare
Southern Africa is "finally" assuming leadership in
trying to resolve the
burning Zimbabwean crisis on their doorstep, but it
has been a long time
coming, said analysts, as three members from a regional
powerhouse met in
Lesotho to chalk a way forward. The Southern African
Development Community
(SADC), which has pushed for an approach of "quiet
diplomacy" to the
Zimbabwean crisis, has increasingly come under fire for
failing to wield any
influence.
"But the brutal public attack on
civic and leaders of the opposition leaders
[last week] has forced the
private rumblings of discontent over Zimbabwe to
become public and break
away from their traditional solidarity response,"
said Brian Raftopoulos, a
Zimbabwean academic and African affairs specialist
at the South
African-based Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.
A Zimbabwean
opposition supporter was killed last week, and Morgan
Tsvangirai, who leads
a faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), was among
the pro-democracy leaders arrested and beaten by the
police, allegedly for
inciting violence.
This week, Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa,
currently deputy chair of the
SADC, broke ranks with the regional body to
admit that "quiet diplomacy has
failed to help solve the political chaos and
economic meltdown in Zimbabwe,"
and even likened the country to "a sinking
Titanic whose passengers are
jumping out in a bid to save their
lives."
Acknowledging the gravity of the recent outbreak of violence in
Zimbabwe, he
said Zambia had been forced to re-think its position after "the
twist of
events in the troubled country", which "necessitates the adoption
of a new
approach".
Mwanawasa's comments came ahead of a meeting
under the auspices of SADC in
the Lesotho capital, Maseru, on Thursday and
Friday, at which Zambia,
Lesotho and Tanzania discussed "how best" the
regional organisation could
respond, "with a view to helping Zimbabwe in its
current difficulties", said
Vernon Mwaanga, Zambia's acting foreign
minister. Zambia will assume
leadership of the SADC in August.
"The
meeting, attended by Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, who heads the
regional security arm, and Lesotho's Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili, who
is currently the chair of SADC, and Zambia, looked at several options,"
added Mwaanga.
These will be put forward at an SADC meeting in
Tanzania next week. Kikwete,
whose country is one of an SADC 'troika' on
Zimbabwe, along with Namibia and
Lesotho, met Mugabe a few days
ago.
SADC has been in existence since 1980, when it was formed as a loose
alliance of nine majority-ruled states in Southern Africa, known as the
Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) to coordinate
development projects to lessen its economic dependence on then apartheid
South Africa. Since then the organisation's objectives have evolved into
maintaining common political values and promoting peace and security, with a
view to boosting development.
Raftopoulos said the SADC should have
stamped the "human rights debate" on
Zimbabwe as "African" at least seven
years ago, when the 2000 general
elections had been marred by violence but
were endorsed by the SADC as "free
and fair".
In 2005 more than
700,000 people were internally displaced by Operation
Murambatsvina (Drive
Out Trash), a three-month campaign to rid the country
of slums and illegal
informal businesses. Again, the SADC maintained its
silence. "Instead, it
[SADC] allowed itself to be corned by the Zimbabwean
regime into branding
the human rights debate as 'Western'," said
Raftopoulos.
Chris
Maroleng, an analyst with the think-tank, Institute for Security
Studies,
commented, "SADC has been hamstrung on Zimbabwe, as it has failed
to adopt a
common position. SADC, as a multilateral forum, failed to engage
with
Zimbabwe, as members found themselves polarised. Except for smaller
countries in the region, such as Botswana and Lesotho, regional powers like
South Africa have failed to criticise Zimbabwe. But the gap between the
countries has begun to narrow."
Quiet diplomacy has failed to help
solve the political chaos and economic
meltdown in Zimbabwe
Africa's
efforts to mediate between Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF and opposition
parties
have been fruitless: in 2005, the African Union appointed former
Mozambique
President Joaquim Chissano to help solve Zimbabwe's problems;
last year the
SADC appointed former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa to
mediate in the
strained relations between Harare and Britain.
Maroleng said the region
should now try to create "an enabling environment"
in Zimbabwe to create the
"political space" for dialogue between the ruling
party and civil
society.
ZIMBABWEANS TAKE INITIATIVE
Meanwhile, Zimbabwean
pro-democracy activists have become more vocal.
Tension has been mounting in
Zimbabwe for the past two months, marked by
protests and running battles
with the police over a worsening economic
crisis compounded by shortages of
foreign currency, food, fuel, electricity
and medicines. Last month,
political meetings were banned in the capital,
Harare.
On Thursday,
Pius Ncube, the Archbishop of Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo,
called for
mass street protests to force Mugabe to "step down" from
power.
Zimbabwean nongovernmental organisations and a coalition of
churches have
condemned the political violence that has erupted in Zimbabwe
in recent
weeks, and urged dialogue to restore peace.
The
National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO),
representing
more than 1,000 civil groups throughout the country, said it
was concerned
by police heavy-handedness when dealing with critics.
NANGO warned that
the current political tension could lead to civil unrest,
adding that recent
violent incidents "have occurred against the backdrop of
a politically,
socially and economically volatile situation, characterised
by high levels
of poverty and inequality, militarisation of state functions
and
de-legitimisation of civil society initiatives."
The association called
for the establishment of a national human rights
commission, which has been
on the cards, in addition to lifting the ban on
political gatherings,
constitutional reform and the "repeal of repressive
legislation", while the
Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) attributed the
outbreak of violence on
the ban on political meetings.
In a statement on Wednesday the ZCC said,
"This orgy of violence, which is
attributed to the ban on political
gatherings in Harare for three months, is
provoking the opposition,
especially at this strategic moment when political
parties are preparing for
the 2008 presidential election."
[ This report does not necessarily
reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Ecumenical News International
3 March 2007 | 07-0238 |
Harare (ENI).
Zimbabwe Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube has called for
"peaceful"
street protests against the 27-year rule of President Robert
Mugabe who has
cracked down on opposition protests with ferocity as his
country faces
economic meltdown.
"It's time for a radical stance and not soft speeches
and cowardice and the
time is now," Ncube told a 22 March meeting organized
by the Christian
Alliance, which brings together church groups, campaigning
for political
change in Zimbabwe under the umbrella of the Save Zimbabwe
Campaign.
"As Zimbabweans we need courage to stand for our rights now.
Now we must
just stand up to this government," said Ncube, a long-standing
critic of
excesses committed by Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party. "We must
stand up and
fill the streets and demand that this man [Mugabe] stand down
right now."
The archbishop castigated Mugabe's government for unleashing
security forces
who beat up scores of opposition, church and rights
activists including
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement
for Democratic
Change. Tsvangirai went to hospital last week with head and
facial injuries
suffered at the hands of security forces who had blocked a
prayer rally "to
pray for an end to tyranny". An MDC activist, Gift Tandare,
was fatally shot
as the meeting was dispersed.
"God made human beings
in his own image," Ncube told the meeting attended by
church leaders, rights
activists and foreign diplomats attached to Harare.
"Human beings,
therefore, are special creatures and human rights are
God-given. There is no
one who has the right to ride over us and bash our
heads like what happened
[last week].
"Courage is what is needed. Let's stand for our rights now.
My biggest worry
is [that] Zimbabweans are cowards," said Ncube. "If we were
courageous and
get around 20 000 of us into the streets, the government of
Zimbabwe would
not do anything to us."
He added, "The pastors must be
the ones in front. I urge that pastors get
off the comfort of their seats
and lead and suffer with the people.
"We pastors are too fond of the
comfort we enjoy. We like nice breakfast
with eggs and bacon every morning.
That must stop. We like to drive nice
cars. As long as we are in for comfort
we are not going to get rid of the
oppressors."
The Zimbabwe Council
of Churches deplored the worsening political crisis in
the country and
called for dialogue to end the tensions.
"As the ZCC we do not condone
violence by whoever, and we strongly condemn
the shooting to death of MDC
activist Gift Tandare and the brutal treatment
of the opposition leaders and
their supporters while in the hands of the
police," read part of the church
council statement.
It also deplored attacks against police officers, some
of whom were injured,
by activists reacting to the death of their
colleague.
"If this state of affairs continues, we foresee a situation
that will
degenerate into civil unrest where there will be a lot of
bloodshed," the
churches said. "We therefore recommend that all stakeholders
engage in
dialogue. Police should restrict themselves to their duties of
arresting
suspects and investigating all criminal activities and not to use
torture
and ill-treatment as a means of interrogation."
Efforts by
leaders to broker talks between the ruling party and the MDC
floundered
nearly four years ago after a government minister described
church leaders
as opposition activists wearing clerical collars.
www.eni.ch
By Tererai
Karimakwenda
23 March, 2007
The government has intensified its
oppressive campaign against the
opposition in recent weeks fearing major
uprisings in the face of a rapidly
deteriorating economy and public protests
by Zimbabweans. Observers say the
ruling party is using violence to
intimidate people in order to avoid any
serious public action by the MDC.
But so far the plan seems to have
backfired. Zimbabweans say they are more
determined than ever to remove
Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF. And the opposition
has said rallies planned for
this weekend will go ahead with or without
permission from the police.
In Kwekwe, MDC MP Blessing Chebundo said the
district leadership has
organised a rally for Saturday afternoon at the
Globe and Phoenix Grounds in
Kwekwe Central. He added that hundreds will
show up to hear their local,
provincial and national officials map out the
way forward. Explaining why he
believes this Chebundo said: "People have
seen the way. If we don't go
forward with the struggle to really free
ourselves in a country that was won
through armed struggle, but where people
are not free, and if we don't free
ourselves, then no-one
will."
Another rally, scheduled for Sunday in Chitungwiza, will be
addressed by MDC
president Arthur Mutambara and other MDC leaders. Police
raided the home of
MDC MP Job Sikhala on Thursday and arrested several MDC
supporters suspected
of distributing fliers for the rally. It is not clear
how many are in
custody at St Mary's police station.
The police have
used extremely violent means to block opposition rallies
this year, and
arrested officials and supporters have been beaten severely
and tortured
while in police custody. At a press conference in Harare on
Friday, leaders
from the Christian Alliance urged the police to protect
innocent Zimbabweans
as it is their duty to do so. They also denied
government allegations that
the rally that was violently blocked by police
two Sundays ago was a
political meeting.
A statement released to the press by he Alliance said
in part:
"A major concern for us is the rapid shrinking of religious space
where the
state has taken upon itself to re-define who should be allowed to
hold
prayer meetings and who can attend it. We call upon the government to
stop
interfering with freedom of worship and association within the church
in
Zimbabwe."
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
By Lance
Guma
23 March 2007
A member of the Combined Harare Residents
Association based in Mbare has
confirmed to Newsreel that bus rank marshals
from the suburbs are being
picked up by Zanu PF officials every Wednesday
for militia training in the
city centre. Zanu PF has an office in Harare's
4th street, with a notorious
reputation for being used as a torture base.
The training is allegedly
taking place there. This new militia is being
dressed in navy blue trousers
and grey shirts while some of them are being
issued with the standard police
uniform. They are also said to be receiving
a special daily allowance of
Z$100 000 per day.
The woman who refused
to be named says this same squad was behind the brutal
assault of mourners
returning from a funeral on the 11th of March, the same
day Save Zimbabwe
tried to hold a prayer rally. The incident took place
alongside Kelvin
Shopping Centre in Waterfalls where a Zupco bus was stopped
by five 'special
constabularies' attached to Stodart Hall police station.
Only one was in
uniform while the others wore casual clothing. Three of them
were identified
as Rera, Maromo and Mabhena. They allegedly got into the bus
carrying baton
sticks and demanded to know why the mourners had not attended
the Save
Zimbabwe Campaign rally.
When the women in the bus asked why this was
being done, Rera allegedly
threw a tear gas canister into the bus, which
fortunately failed to burst.
The women were then ordered to get out of the
bus one by one leaving their
cell phones and money to the gang. It's alleged
a Glen View woman who was
part of the mourners had a miscarriage following
the assaults. Stodart Hall
police refused to deal with the matter telling
the complainants to go to
Mbare Police Station. Although the police say they
are investigating, those
responsible are still walking the
streets.
Later in the day, a ZANU-PF member Tendai Savanhu donated 10
kg's of mealie
meal to each of the victims and urged them not to receive any
donations that
came from the MDC. A ZBC TV crew also visited some of the
mourners to get
interviews and despite getting the true picture broadcast an
interview
claiming MDC youths carried out the attack in an effort to force
people to
attend the Save Zimbabwe Campaign rally. Meanwhile, despite a
police ban on
demonstrations, political gatherings and meetings its reported
that the Zanu
PF's women's league held a demonstration in Harare against
what they called
interference from the West in Zimbabwe's internal
affairs.
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
Sydney Morning Herald
March 24,
2007
Almost everyone who can get out of Zimbabwe has fled, writes Ed
O'Loughlin
in Bulawayo.
YOU don't see corpses lying by the
roadside in Zimbabwe. A terrible
affliction is laying waste to this once
fertile country, but - at least
until now - its victims have not died
dramatically. Instead, they just fade
away.
Since the President, Robert
Mugabe, nosed his country into an economic
kamikaze dive 10 years ago,
almost a quarter of his 13 million subjects have
vanished.
An
estimated 3 million went to neighbouring South Africa in search of work.
Many more have fled to Europe and Australia, or to other southern African
countries which, seven years ago, Zimbabwe dwarfed socially and
economically.
Hundreds of thousands have disappeared from the main
towns and cities to the
countryside, some driven out of their shantytowns -
strongholds of support
for the opposition Movement of Democratic Change - by
government thugs.
Many more hope to reinvent themselves as Iron Age
peasants, surviving off
communal plots of corn and vegetables, out of sight
and out of mind.
If inflation is a rough indicator of human misery, life
for the remaining
Zimbabweans is growing 1750 per cent less pleasant every
year -
hyperinflation not witnessed anywhere since Germany between the wars.
Since
2000, gross domestic product has halved to $US4 billion ($5 billion),
the
biggest modern collapse of a peacetime economy. Unemployment is at least
60
per cent.
As the Central Reserve Bank continues to print tonnes of
new banknotes to
pay for the state salaries, subsidies and corruption that
keep Mugabe and
his cronies in power, ordinary wage-earning Zimbabweans are
watching their
earnings and savings dwindle to vanishing point.
For
many, the point of desperation has finally been reached. Prices are now
such
that even educated, middle-class people with jobs - nurses, teachers,
even
the state's hitherto loyal policemen - have to spend almost all their
salaries just to get to and from work.
You do not have to be an
economist to work out what will happen when the
cost of going to work
exceeds what people earn from it. That, as they say,
is when the wheels come
off.
This week the head nurse at a government health clinic in Bulawayo
said 10
of her 22 nurses had already left the country. Like most people
interviewed
for this article, she did not want to be named for fear of
government
reprisals.
"People go because Zimbabwean doctors and
nurses are well trained and can
get better jobs elsewhere," she said. "Here
nurses only earn 600,000 to
900,000 [Zimbabwe dollars, $US43 to $US64] a
month before deductions. Most
of that now goes just on on transport, which
costs up to 20,000 [$US1.42] a
day."
The staff who remain are
fighting a losing battle to maintain basic
services. Specialist drugs and
medical supplies to treat common illnesses
and injuries can no longer be
provided free and few patients can afford
them.
An increasing number
of the children presenting at the clinic appear
malnourished but there is no
provision for supplemental feeding. The state
ambulance seldom operates
because of the cost of fuel, and has been replaced
by a local service based
on boys pushing handcarts lined with blankets.
Few patients can afford
the $Z8500 minimum payment - half a day's net
survival costs for the average
Zimbabwean - set by the authorities for the
formerly free
treatment.
Coupled with the regional HIV epidemic, the collapse in the
once-admired
health service has seen average life expectancy plunge from 60
in 1990 to 37
today.
Medical staff themselves are struggling to
survive.
"For tea break every day we just eat bread, no margarine or jam
or anything
any more, just bread," said the head nurse. "We don't eat lunch
any more,
nothing until we get home in the evening."
A visit to a
Bulawayo supermarket shows shelves well stocked with goods,
including
staples such as maize meal, potatoes, bread and sugar, but few can
afford
them. Ten kilograms of maize meal may be only $US1.25 at world
prices, but
56 per cent of Zimbabweans now live on less than $US1 a day.
Then there are
soaring costs for transport, clothing, school fees and all
the other
necessities of life.
The Government claims to provide staples at much
lower, subsidised prices,
but in practice they are seldom available. Shops
in Bulawayo were this week
selling Government-standard loaves of bread that
were hollow in the middle,
and people complain of flour weighted with
sand.
Paradoxically, the crisis would be even worse were it not for the
crisis in
the public service. Due to incompetence, staff shortages and a
lack of
foreign currency to pay for new equipment, the registrar-general's
office
has amassed a two-year backlog in passport applications.
If
her own passport had not expired two years ago, the clinic's head nurse
said, she would long ago have left for Australia or New Zealand, where many
of her friends have already had no difficulty in finding well-paid and
secure jobs.
Many undocumented Zimbabweans have given up waiting and
walked illegally
into neighbouring states such as Botswana, where nurses can
earn seven times
as much as at home.
The malaise has even stretched
to the police and army, whose rank and file
were until recently kept loyal
by generous wages, now also almost worthless.
One former policeman in
Bulawayo said that about half the young men who
joined the police with him
in 1985 have quit in recent years, while
desertion from the army is said to
be soaring.
"Recently I was with some of my former colleagues," he said.
"They were
telling me that they wanted to go to Namibia or South Africa to
look for
jobs so they could leave the police. All of the uniformed forces -
the
prison service, the army, the police - are quitting in masses because of
the
low remuneration."
For the time being Mugabe is still able to
fill up the dwindling ranks by
recruiting members of the so-called national
service brigades - youth
militias set up by the ruling ZANU-PF party to act
as auxiliary muscle in
its battle to suppress opposition.
Many of
these new recruits are poorly educated youngsters with no other
prospects of
employment and nothing better to do, but even they will soon
tire of working
for almost nothing.
Another key Mugabe constituency, the settlers and war
veterans who were
granted shares of confiscated white-owned farms, is also
growing restive.
Without full title to their new plots, unable to raise
loans in a state
where even legal title is now meaningless as collateral,
the new occupants
lack the capital or expertise to maintain the intensive
agriculture that was
previously Zimbabwe's principal source of foreign
earnings.
The new class of small farmers is now mired in poverty and
dependent on
dwindling government subsidies and handouts.
One former
salesman said he applied for a share of seized white farmland and
found
himself granted 200 hectares of rocks and scrub in what had been a
highly
profitable hunting farm. Wealthy foreigners had previously paid up to
$US1000 a night, plus trophy costs, for the privilege of shooting big game
there. However, for agriculture it was useless.
"There are a few
people there still but they are doing nothing but
poaching," he said. "There
is nothing they can do with the land, especially
with this drought we now
have. There is no water there because they took all
the water pumps and
pipes and sold them."
The former salesman was also one of the new class
of black goldminers
granted government licences for small-scale prospecting
in the mining area
north of Bulawayo.
As with the big commercial
mines, they were required to sell their gold to
the Reserve Bank at a big
discount to world prices. But being much more
difficult to regulate than the
big mines, many small prospectors sold their
gold at full value on the
blackmarket, sparking a government crackdown last
year that shut down most
of the smaller operations, whether compliant or
not.
"It doesn't make
sense," the former salesman said. "Before that they were at
least getting
something. If you went to the ore mills and got 30 grams from
your ore and
took 15 to the bank and 15 to the parallel market, they were
still getting
some gold from us. Now they are getting nothing at all."
Mugabe's efforts
to dictate unrealistic prices in the markets for currency,
minerals, energy,
tobacco [the main export crop] and food have turned even
the most upright
citizens into expert blackmarketeers.
Every day, police Land Rovers -
previously donated to Zimbabwe by the
now-detested British Government -
cruise the streets of Bulawayo to pick up
the women who deal in foreign
currency on every other street corner.
The women are either shaken down
for bribes or taken to the police station,
where they are fined, have their
currency confiscated and are then released
to start the game all over
again.
Yet the biggest customer on the blackmarket is now the Government
itself,
which is reported to be paying up to $Z25,000 to the US dollar, way
above
even this week's street rate of $Z14,000.
The Government needs
the foreign money to pay for imports of maize to
distribute to the swelling
numbers of the hungry - in a country that until
Mugabe's land reforms
exported maize and other food crops.
Still, critics charge that key
figures in, and close to, the Government are
still being permitted to buy US
dollars from the Government at the official
rate of $Z250, bleeding the
foreign reserves at great profit to themselves.
Famine is now a serious
threat to millions of ordinary people. Forced out of
the cash economy, many
rural folk or displaced urbanites had hoped to at
least survive by growing
their own subsistence crops of maize, vegetables
and sorghum in tribal areas
or seized white farms.
But this year Zimbabwe is afflicted by drought.
Ninety-year-old Khayisa
Ndiweni, chief of the Ntabazinduna district of
Matabeleland since 1944, said
it is the worst he had seen since
1946.
"Rain is very scarce and there are no crops this year," he said.
"There is
no employment, so the people go to South Africa and to other
countries. All
the boys and girls are leaving. Some send money back, but if
they can't,
what will happen to us who remain here?"
By Tichaona Sibanda
23 March
2007
The MDC has urged the international community to commit critically
needed
food aid to Zimbabwe to avert a large scale humanitarian crisis amid
reports
that people are starving and dying in rural areas.
A report
on BBC radio 4 on Friday said the situation in rural areas is far
worse than
most people know, as children and the elderly are succumbing to
hunger. The
deputy national chairman of the MDC Lovemore Moyo, who is also
the MP for
Matobo in Matebeleland South, said the situation in the country
is
grave.
The government last week declared 2007 a drought year but insisted
it would
not ask for food assistance because it has the capacity to feed its
own
people. Moyo said government is making things worse by refusing outside
help.
'By not asking for assistance the government is simply afraid that
food
distribution by any other organisation will neutralise its support base
in
rural areas. So we are saying to the government, if they have the
capacity
to feed the nation do so now. Where is the food, give it to the
people now,'
Moyo said.
He feared the regime might be holding on to the
last stocks of maize for use
during campaigns for Presidential and
Parliamentary elections that might be
held next year. In his Matobo
constituency, Moyo said many villagers have
been surviving on nothing for
days and he's received reports that many are
forced to resort to eating
leaves. His party was therefore appealing to
donor countries, private
companies and non-governmental organisations for
urgent assistance as food
has run out in the country.
Reports say stocks of the staple food crop
maize are 'very low' countrywide
and market prices have risen beyond the
reach of most Zimbabweans. 'People
in the rural areas are on the brink of
starvation. The strongest may survive
this the others won't, as long as Zanu
(PF) uses food as an electioneering
tool,' Moyo said.
Analysts insist
Mugabe's regime should take the blame for the food crisis.
4,000 commercial
farmers have been violently driven off their land in the
last seven year,
and evictions continue. This has created a total
agricultural
collapse.
The initial invaders, mostly war veterans were themselves
pushed from the
farms, which were redistributed to Mugabe's cronies, top
Zanu (PF) party
officials, senior army, air force and police officials and
compliant judges
and journalists.
Few of the 'new farmers' are
producing crops but the rest lack the skills to
produce even on subsistence
level, according deputy Agriculture Minister
Sylvester
Nguni.
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
RedBolivia
VOA
Marzo 23, 2007, 13:36 EST
Johannesburg --
Mike Davies, chairman of the Combined Harare Residents' Association, who was
himself detained two weeks ago, told reporters the wave of violence is more
systematic and comprehensive than that meted out to political leaders last
week.
Mr. Davies says the police attacks, which usually take
the form of beatings
on the feet and legs, is designed to instill fear and
keep Zimbabweans
cowed.
He added that President Robert Mugabe
is using the violence to promote his
agenda.
Earlier this
week, Mr. Mugabe told his critics "to go hang" and promised to,
in his words
"bash" his opponents again.
Doctors have told VOA that it is
difficult to know how many people have been
injured as many cannot afford
bus fares to reach medical help. One doctor
said the injuries are more
pervasive than those he saw during the 2002
presidential election and that
many patients are able only to hobble out of
his
clinic.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwean Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube told
a Johannesburg
media conference that leaders of the Southern Africa
Development
Community -- SADC -- should come up with specific proposals to
deal with the
Zimbabwe crisis when they meet in Tanzania in the next week or
two.
"On the forthcoming SADC meeting, heads of state need to
place Zimbabwe high
on the agenda and to develop a concrete proposal on how
to promote dialogue
between all parties in Zimbabwe; the purpose of this
dialogue would be to
develop a SADC road map for Zimbabwe," he
said.
Tendai Biti, a member of parliament who belongs to the
opposition group
Movement for Democratic Change, also addressed the
Johannesburg conference.
He was among those activists who were beaten in
police custody last week.
Speaking to reporters, he said that any dialogue
in Zimbabwe must lead to a
new constitution.
"A dialogue that
will ensure that we have a transitional constitution, and a
transitional
authority that will run our country until we Zimbabweans write
a
constitution for ourselves, by ourselves," said Biti.
"And after
that, we hope that we will have free and fair elections in our
country under
international supervision, and then hopefully after those free
and fair
elections we can begin the process of reconstructing our country,"
he
added.
In a related development, there are reports of a
three-page police watch
list of individuals Zimbawe authorities want to
prevent from leaving
Zimbabwe. Last weekend, several opposition leaders were
stopped at Harare
International Airport and were not allowed to leave the
country.
The Namibian
(Windhoek)
COLUMN
March 23, 2007
Posted to the web March 23,
2007
KUDOS must go to the only two prominent, brave and outspoken
voices on the
deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe, including a violent
crackdown on
opposition and human rights workers, namely Archbishop Desmond
Tutu of South
Africa and President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia.
Not only
have the two leaders spoken out where others wavered, they will
have done so
knowing that there would be those who would be quick to try and
shoot them
down with tired, outworn and reactionary slogans.
Tutu lambasted the
South African government for its silence about the brutal
treatment of
democracy activists in Zimbabwe, adding "we Africans should
hang our heads
in shame" because there was hardly concern, let alone
condemnation, from
leaders in Africa about the situation there.
Tutu, undoubtedly always a
voice of conscience, said: "What more has to
happen before we who are
leaders, religious and political, of our mother
Africa, are moved enough to
cry out 'enough is enough'".
He was followed, this week, by President
Mwanawasa of Zambia, who bravely
called for a 'new approach' on Zimbabwe
when he spoke at a state banquet in
his honour in Windhoek.
Comparing
Zimbabwe to a "sinking Titanic", Mwanawasa said: "If all SADC
member states
have a common destiny, they must all surely rise and lend a
helping hand
when one of them should run into serious difficulties".
While the Zambian
head of state's statement was not as strongly worded as
that of the
Archbishop, he nevertheless went a lot further than most of his
fellow
southern African heads of state, whose silence has not only been
deafening,
but embarrassing as well.
Namibia's Information Minister, Netumbo
Nandi-Ndaitwah, this week said that
while "Namibia has never and will never
condone violence", the Government
believed that "President Robert Mugabe and
the people of that country have
the capacity and the will to solve its own
domestic problems without the
interference of other countries".
She
was also "encouraged" to hear that the Zimbabwean Ambassador to Namibia
was
"investigating" the "cause" of the violence.
Surely it stands to reason
that if Namibia does not condone violence, as the
Minister alleged, then it
would condemn it? Yet this has not happened.
It is obvious that the
latest crackdown on opposition and democracy
activists in Zimbabwe is more
than ample proof that that country cannot in
fact solve its own
problems.
Mugabe clearly will not be influenced by the opinions and
condemnation by
foreign, particularly Western nations.
He has already
told critics to "go hang" and has threatened to evict several
European
ambassadors from his country.
Other SADC countries, in particular, have
not only an obligation, but a duty
to speak out, even if Mugabe does not
heed their words either.
Those who have spoken on the issue, apart from
Tutu and Mwanawasa, have been
obvious apologists for the Zimbabwe
regime.
So-called "quiet diplomatists" include the Chairman of the
African Union,
Ghanaian President John Kufuor, who could only say he found
the situation in
Zimbabwe "embarrassing", which is simply unacceptable
coming from the head
of this continental body.
Whatever the stance
Africans may take on the Zimbabwe crisis, and even if
they erroneously
believe that sanctions, and not Mugabe himself, are to
blame for the
deteriorating economic decline in that country, it is
absolutely clear that
the rampant human rights violations have absolutely
nothing to do with the
West, imperialists, or sanctions for that matter.
The Zimbabwean head of
state is most clearly responsible and must be held
accountable for the
violation of the rights and dignity of his own people.
If the appeals of
much of civil society in many SADC countries fall on deaf
ears as far as
their governments and heads of state are concerned, then one
wonders at
their commitment to upholding and maintenance of human rights in
general,
but in their respective countries as well.
The Tutus and the Mwanawasas
deserve to be commended for at least having the
courage to swim against the
current and raise their voices in protest.
We can only hope that SADC
heads of state see fit to follow suit and end
their current practice of
appeasing an ageing dictator because of old
liberation ties.
International Herald Tribune
By Michael Wines Published: March 23,
2007
JOHANNESBURG: Modern South Africa came about, historians
agree, in part
because of the United Nations' unrelenting stance against
apartheid. The UN
affirmed that South African racism was not merely an
internal political
problem, but a threat to southern Africa. The UN banned
arms shipments to
South Africa. The UN demanded fair treatment of black
dissidents there.
It worked. This month, a democratic South Africa sits
as president of the UN
Security Council. It was a remarkable, even poignant
affirmation of the
power of morality in global diplomacy.
Or so it
might seem. After just three months as one of the Security
Council's
nonpermanent members, South Africa is mired in controversy over
what could
be its great strength: the moral weight it can bring to
diplomatic
deliberations.
In January, South Africa surprised many, and outraged
some, when it voted
against allowing the Security Council to consider a
relatively mild
resolution on human rights issues in Myanmar, whose
government is widely
seen as one of the most repressive on
earth.
Last week, the government again angered human rights advocates
when it said
it would oppose a request to brief the Security Council on the
deteriorating
situation in Zimbabwe, where the government is pursuing a
violent crackdown
on its only political opposition. South Africa later
changed its stance, but
only after dismissing the briefing as a minor event
that did not belong on
the Security Council's agenda.
This week,
South Africa threatened a delicate compromise among nations often
at odds -
the United States, China, Russia and the European powers France,
Britain and
Germany - to rein in Iran's nuclear program. The major powers
had agreed on
an arms embargo, asset-freezing and other sanctions against
Iran, but South
Africa proposed dropping the arms and financial sanctions
and placing a
90-day "time out" on other punishments - which would have
rendered the
sanctions toothless, critics said.
"I'm not gutting the resolution; I'm
improving it," Dumisani Khumalo, South
Africa's ambassador to the United
Nations, told reporters from news agencies
this week.
Granted, none
of these positions by themselves have been fatal to the
efforts at hand. The
resolution on Myanmar was dead on arrival anyway,
condemned by vetoes from
China, which backs that nation's dictatorship, and
Russia. Nor could South
Africa have singlehandedly blocked a Zimbabwe
briefing.
South
Africa's wrench in the Iran sanctions effort has complicated things,
but
mostly because the great powers would like Iran's defiance to be met
with
unanimous disapproval.
Rather, what has left some of South Africa's
admirers slack- jawed is the
apparent incongruity of its positions. It is
not merely that South Africa's
current leaders are withholding the same
sorts of international
condemnations that sustained them when they were
battling oppression.
When apartheid's evils came to the fore in the
Security Council in the early
1980s, it was newly independent Zimbabwe that
occupied one of the council's
nonpermanent seats and voted to condemn South
African racism. Myanmar, then
known as Burma, joined in denouncing apartheid
from its seat in the General
Assembly.
The same South Africa that now
opposes sanctions against Iran's rogue
nuclear program voluntarily renounced
its own atomic bomb in the early
1990s, as apartheid came to an end. South
Africa remains the only nation in
history to have given up its nuclear
program of its own accord.
Given this backdrop, a columnist in the
Johannesburg-based Star newspaper
fretted last week over what he called a
"fundamental misunderstanding" of
the role of human rights in a nation's
development. The nation's
second-largest political party, the Democratic
Alliance, was more brutal:
"Instead of furthering an agenda based on the
protection and promotion of
human rights," the party stated, "we are more
concerned with using
bureaucratic excuses to shield tyrants and despots from
international
scrutiny."
South African officials have offered their
own defense. On Friday, Deputy
Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said the
government was committed to resolving
the crisis in Zimbabwe through
dialogue, but added that "it is not our
intention to make militant
statements to make us feel good, or to satisfy
governments outside the
African continent," Reuters reported.
Beyond that, Khumalo, the UN
ambassador, has justified his government's
actions in the rarefied argot of
international diplomacy. Myanmar and
Zimbabwe, he has argued, do not meet
the legal standards for Security
Council action.
Seasoned scholars
might and do differ, but to many analysts here the real
question is why,
given its standing as a beacon of human rights, South
Africa has taken
theses positions at all. Perhaps nobody outside of Pretoria
knows, but there
are plenty of theories.
One, advanced by a committed advocate of
Myanmar's freedom, is that South
Africa is feathering its strategic
relationship with China, which largely
controls Myanmar, supports Zimbabwe's
authoritarian regime and has
assiduously courted President Thabo Mbeki.
China has big investments, a
decent-sized immigrant population and great
ambitions in South Africa.
Another is that South Africa is playing the
role of bad boy on the Security
Council to underscore its demand that the
council be overhauled to reflect
new global realities. South Africa and many
other developing nations deeply
resent the great powers' veto over major UN
actions, often against rogue
developing states like Zimbabwe and North
Korea. They want the emerging
southern hemisphere to have more sway in the
body's policies and actions.
"South Africa wants reform of the Security
Council, come hell or high
water," said Thomas Wheeler, a four-decade
diplomat for South Africa who is
now chief executive at the South Africa
Institute of International Affairs,
a research group. "And they're using
practically any means to do it. They've
got almost a bee in their bonnet -
that this is the way to go; to force the
issue in this way."
A third
theory, a hybrid of those two, is that South Africa's leaders have
yet to
decide whether they are democrats or the revolutionaries of two
decades ago,
railing against seemingly immovable establishments on behalf of
seemingly
lost causes. The establishments in those days were the United
States and
Britain, powers inimical to the communists who were the
financiers of black
liberation movements in the 1980s.
"What you have here is the continuing,
ongoing tussle over whether the
ANC" - the governing African National
Congress - "is still a protest
movement or the governing party of a
responsible member of the international
community," said a retired American
diplomat with decades of Africa
experience.
"They're reflexively
against anything we're for - we in the States; we and
the British; we in the
North. It's more Chinese than the Chinese."
In the past two weeks, the nation
has been under serious tension due to the brutal violent response by the state
machinery to stop peaceful Zimbabwean citizens from attending a prayer meeting
organized under the auspices of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. That extreme and
disproportionate response resulted in the death of two innocent citizens, Gift
Tandare and Itai Manyeruke both of Highfields. We have just learnt about the
death of Itai Manyeruke on Wednesday. We are sending our condolences to their
families. It also resulted in the arrest and brutal assault on leaders of the
Save Zimbabwe Campaign who were on their way to attend the prayer
meeting.
We wish to put it on record that the meeting organized on March 11 2007 at Zimbabwe Grounds was intended to be a prayer meeting coordinated by the Christian Alliance as chair of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. The Christian Alliance has taken lead to ensure that the Save Zimbabwe Campaign becomes a platform where prayer is encouraged. As Christians it is our obligation to minister to people in ways that reduce anger and frustration and building hope. Prayer is one of the tools that we believe will bring healing and transformation in a peaceful manner in our nation.
As the Christian Alliance, we are non-partisan. And we therefore value and respect the Save Zimbabwe Campaign as a non-partisan platform seeking to bring together various religious and civic groupings and political formations within our country, so that we can all engage each other in finding a lasting solution to our ongoing national crisis.
We call upon the ministers of Home Affairs and of Defense to ensure that the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Zimbabwe National Army are there to protect all Zimbabwean citizens and to remain apolitical. The assault and torture of arrested citizens by the state agents without due process of the courts is a serious human rights offence by the state.
A major concern for us is the rapid shrinking of religious space where the state has taken upon itself to re-define who should be allowed to hold prayer meetings and who can attend it. We call upon the government to stop interfering with freedom of worship and association within the church in Zimbabwe. It is sad to note that on March 11, many church services in Highfield, Glen Norah and Glen View could not take place due to the excessive use of force by the police and the CIO who went about interfering and infringing on people’s God-given rights of movement, assembly and association. This development has resulted in the State creating a very hostile and threatening situation of anguish and hopelessness.
It is the duty of the state to ensure that people live in an environment where socio- economic and personal security is guaranteed for all citizens.
We have been encouraged by the response of church bodies in the SADC region like the South African Council of Churches, who have called upon SADC to ensure that freedom of association and worship in Zimbabwe is respected. We also applaud the response of the African Union that has expressed concern over the deteriorating conditions in our country.
We the people of Zimbabwe want peace, prosperity, human dignity which are our God given rights. We are also looking forward in the near future to reconcile with all our relatives and friends who are scattered in the diaspora due to harsh economic and political conditions prevailing in Zimbabwe.
As we enter into the period of Easter we call upon all Zimbabweans to get
into prayer for the nation, only God can save Zimbabwe. As the Christian
Alliance we sense a renewed urgency for the speedy and peaceful resolution of
our national crisis to avert looming disaster. We believe the time has come to
engage in meaningful and productive dialogue with all stakeholders for the sake
of this nation. May God save us from these trials and tribulations that we are
facing for this short time.
The Scotsman
By
Sarah McGregor
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - African leaders must lead on the
crisis in Zimbabwe
because Western governments have lost their credibility
in the region, a
leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) said on
Friday.
Arthur Mutambara, who leads one of two major
factions in the MDC, said
Western mixed signals on democracy and governance
were not helping
"We appreciate the support from Western powers but the
double standards of
the West undermine our struggle," Arthur Mutambara was
quoted by South
Africa's SAPA news agency as saying in
Johannesburg.
"The only ones who have the moral authority to speak out on
Zimbabwe are
Africans," Mutambara told a seminar organised by South Africa's
powerful
trade union, COSATU.
Mutambara said Western powers had shown
double standards on former Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden, both of which
he said were "created" and then
discarded by the West.
The MDC says a number of activists, including the
leader of the party's main
faction Morgan Tsvangirai, were arrested and
beaten this month for holding a
prayer rally in Harare in defiance of a
government ban on political
demonstrations.
Western critics including
Britain and the United States have slammed the
crackdown on the opposition
and threatened to level more economic sanctions
on 83-year-old President
Robert Mugabe and his government.
WORLD OUTCRY
International
outcry to the images of battered opposition activists appears
to have
further emboldened Mugabe, who blames the country's economic
meltdown on the
legacy of British colonialism and ongoing Western
interference.
Mugabe has frequently accused the MDC of being
"stooges" of his Western
critics.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's Roman
Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube on Friday
repeated his call for non-violent
street rallies, even if it threatened his
own safety, to force Mugabe to
resign.
"This dictator must be brought down right now by the people's
power but not
in a violent manner. If we can get 30,000 people together
Mugabe will just
come down," Ncube, a top cleric of Zimbabwe's second city
of Bulawayo, told
a news conference.
"I would put myself on the
line."
Ncube said "quiet diplomacy" on the continent had so far failed to
solve an
economic crisis in Zimbabwe where official inflation tops 1,700
percent --
and petrol, food and foreign currency are
scarce.
However, Ncube expressed cautious optimism the Southern African
Development
Community (SADC) may adopt a tougher stance on Zimbabwe at its
meeting
expected in the coming weeks.
Reuters
Fri 23 Mar 2007,
15:32 GMT
By MacDonald Dizrutwe
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe vowed on Friday to
survive any Western attempt to
dislodge him from power as regional
heavyweight South Africa defended its
"quiet" approach to the gathering
crisis.
Mugabe said Britain and the
United States would never overcome the support
he enjoys in his ruling
ZANU-PF party, which led the former Rhodesia to
black majority rule in
1980.
"Nothing frightens me, not even little fellows like Bush and
Blair. I have
seen it all, I don't fear any suffering or a struggle of any
kind," Mugabe,
83, said to cheers from ZANU-PF supporters at a meeting in
Harare.
"I make a stand and stand on principle here where I was born, here
where I
grew up, here where I fought and here where I shall die," Mugabe
said,
accusing the West of sponsoring the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) to overthrow his government.
One of Zimbabwe's top Roman
Catholic clerics, Archbishop Pius Ncube of
Bulawayo, on Friday repeated his
call for mass peaceful protests to end
Mugabe's 27-year rule.
Police,
meanwhile, accused MDC supporters of petrol bombing a police station
in
Mutare city, the latest in a series of violent acts which officials have
attributed to opposition activists.
International criticism of Mugabe
has sharpened this month after police
cracked down on opposition supporters
attempting to attend a banned prayer
rally, arresting several MDC activists
including party leader Morgan
Tsvangirai.
MDC officials say
Tsvangirai and a number of other detainees were badly
beaten while in
detention.
Western critics including Britain and the United States have
threatened more
economic sanctions on Mugabe and his government, which is
already battling
Zimbabwe's worst economic crisis in decades with inflation
now topping 1,700
percent.
'TOTAL HEAP OF MISERY'
Western
countries have also increased calls for a tougher African stand,
with
Australian Prime Minister John Howard saying the world was being too
soft on
the ageing Zimbabwean ruler.
"We pussyfoot around far too much using
diplomatic language. This man is a
disaster. His country is just a total
heap of misery," Howard told
Australian radio.
But South Africa, the
regional power, on Friday defended its "quiet"
approach to Zimbabwe, saying
it was the only way to keep lines of dialogue
open with Mugabe's
government.
"It is not our intention to make militant statements to make
us feel good,
or to satisfy governments outside the African continent,"
Deputy Foreign
Minister Aziz Pahad told a regular news
briefing.
Pahad said a Southern African Development Community (SADC)
meeting on
Zimbabwe tentatively set for Tanzania next week had been pushed
back to
allow more time to prepare, adding that the meeting could end up as
a
presidential summit.
Western denunciations of Mugabe also drew
criticism from one of the MDC's
two main factions, with factional leader
Arthur Mutambara saying Africa must
lead the drive for change.
"We
appreciate the support from Western powers but the double standards of
the
West undermine our struggle," Arthur Mutambara was quoted by South
Africa's
SAPA news agency as saying in Johannesburg.
"The only ones who have the
moral authority to speak out on Zimbabwe are
Africans," Mutambara
said.
Ncube, who has used his archbishop's pulpit to become one of
Mugabe's most
vocal and fearless domestic critics, on Friday said again he
was ready to
lead mass peaceful protests.
"This dictator must be
brought down right now by the peoples' power but not
in a violent manner. If
we can get 30,000 people together Mugabe will just
come down," Ncube told a
news conference. "I would put myself on the line."
Sydney Morning Herald
Sahm Venter in Johannesburg
March 24,
2007
THE Australian husband of a tortured Zimbabwean activist said she
refused to
cry despite enduring hours of attacks that resulted in 80
injuries,
including broken bones.
An exhausted Jim Holland was speaking
just hours after Sekai Holland, a
64-year-old grandmother, and a fellow
activist, Grace Kwinje, were admitted
to hospital in Johannesburg after
their dramatic escape from Zimbabwe on
Thursday.
"Sekai has just been
incredible. She has been through the most brutal
torture you can imagine and
yet her spirits have been so wonderfully high,"
Mr Holland said. "The regime
tried to beat her into submission and has
totally failed, and she knows that
she's won."
Mr Holland thanked the South African Government for providing
police
protection at Lanseria Airport outside Johannesburg and an armed
escort to
the hospital. "It was such a relief," he said.
Mrs Holland and
Ms Kwinje had been arrested at the steps of a plane on their
first attempt
to flee to South Africa on Saturday. On Wednesday a Zimbabwean
court ordered
they be allowed to leave the country and the pair were
escorted to Harare's
airport by the Australian consul, Mark Lynch, amid
fears the military would
ignore the court order.
Mrs Holland sustained her injuries after she was
arrested and beaten on
March 11. She had gone to a police station to enquire
about colleagues who
had been arrested during a public prayer meeting. She
was set upon by 16 men
and one woman who "hit her with every sort of weapon
you can think of", Mr
Holland said. The female, the youngest of the group,
jumped on Mrs Holland,
breaking three of her ribs. Her other injuries
include a broken arm, a
broken leg, a fractured knee and multiple bruises
and lacerations.
"They hit and bruised her in over 80 different places,
according to the
doctors," Mr Holland said at a news conference at the
Netcare Milpark
Hospital in Johannesburg.
Mrs Holland and Ms Kwinje were
resting after the hospital had cautiously
described their condition as
"stable". A spokeswoman said it would take 48
hours before doctors would be
sure of the women's prognosis.
They were among the most badly beaten of a
group of activists that included
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the
opposition Movement for Democratic
Change.
"How she withstood that, I
have no idea," Mr Holland said of his wife. "She
passed out several times, I
am told. But she refused to be cowed, she
refused to cry. When they asked
her who was her president, she said
President Tsvangirai."
Mrs Holland
was then taken to another police station where she was kicked
out of a
police truck and landed heavily on the ground, injuring her head.
The couple
met in the 1960s while studying political science at the
Australian National
University in Canberra. Mrs Holland joined the
liberation movement of the
now President, Robert Mugabe. But she fell out
with the leadership of the
now-ruling ZANU-PF party after she witnessed
brutality in a Zambian training
camp. She returned to Zimbabwe when it
gained independence in 1980. Mr
Holland, an engineer, worked for the
Government for 12 years.
"Sekai
knows him well . As far as we are concerned he has betrayed all the
ideas of
the liberation struggle and he's created a nation of misery," Mr
Holland
said. "It's time for a new Zimbabwe."
? John Howard has called for an end to
the Mugabe regime. "We pussyfoot
around far too much using diplomatic
language," the Prime Minister said
yesterday. "This man is a disaster; his
country is just a total heap of
misery."
Mr Howard cited Zimbabwe's
economic crisis as well as police brutality
towards critics of the regime.
"I think it's time that the neighbouring
African countries, particularly
South Africa, exerted political pressure on
Mugabe to go," he said.
UPI
HARARE, Zimbabwe, March 23 (UPI) --
Zimbabwe and Angola have signed a
security deal but Angola denied reports it
was sending troops to Zimbabwe to
back the regime of President Robert
Mugabe.
"It is not the custom of the Angolan government to interfere in
the internal
matters of other governments," the Angolan Embassy in Harare
said in a
statement responding to reports that 1,000 paramilitary police
would arrive
in Zimbabwe in April, the Financial Times
reported.
A top Angolan official, Interior Minister Gen. Roberto Leal
Ramos said on
Zimbabwean state radio that that south African nation would
not welcome
western interference.
"Angola will do everything in
its power to help the Zimbabwe police force
and will not allow western
imperialism to take over Zimbabwe," he said, the
Financial Times reported.
"President Robert Mugabe and I have agreed on a
law and order maintenance
agreement that will see Angolan police helping
with the situation in the
country."
The Zimbabwean
23-03-07
HARARE
BY
GIFT PHIRI
HARARE - Solomon Madzore, the National Youth Assembly
secretary general of
the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
and Promise Mkwananzi,
the president of the Zimbabwe National Students
Union, an umbrella body
representing tertiary levels students in Zimbabwe ,
today said they planned
to lead nationwide street protests against the
continued senseless killing
of innocent civilians.
Madzore appeared to
break ranks with his party's national executive, which
last week decided to
shelve planned demonstrations following advice from
lawyers that such action
would lead to unnecessary deaths of innocent
civilians by a regime bent of
using all tactics at its disposal to cow a
restive nation.
As Madzore
told a joint press briefing today that he would lead his youth
wing in
demonstrations to protest against the murder of Gift Tandare, Itai
Manyeruke
and the gruesome assault on spokesman Nelson Chamisa, ZINASU's
Mkwnanzi said
his organisation had also resolved at the weekend to
demonstrate against the
escalating lawlessness in Zimbabwe.
Madzore said demonstrations by the
party's youth wing would go ahead despite
a resolution by the national
executive, the MDC's supreme decision-making
body to shelve planned
demos.
"Our patience has run out. We are being killed everyday. We are left
with no
option but to resort to popular action," he said.
"We are under
pressure from our constituency to do something about this and
there is no
way that the youth wing will remain mum while we are being
killed by a
partisan police force."
Mkwananzi said recent events in Zimbabwe have been
extremely disturbing.
"The government of Zanu (PF) continues to perpetrate
the degeneration of law
and order," Mkwananzi said. "This is a deliberate
move to create a conducive
environment to unleash a reign of terror under
the guise of maintaining law
and order"
He said Mugabe held a prayer
meeting with church leaders aligned to his
party and no
one stopped him
but the regime went out of its way to thwart a similar
meeting going to the
extent of brutally beating opposition leaders including
Morgan Tsvangirai
the leader of the opposition and later his Spokesperson,
Chamisa.
"The
beating of innocent civilians is unacceptable," said Mkwananzi. "We
call
upon Mugabe and his spent party to uphold the principles of a
democratic
society accede to the demands of the people and allow people the
right to
freely gather and deliberate on issues critical to their well
being. We call
upon the government to desist from preaching the gospel of
violence and
begin to work towards a framework that will enable dialogue to
flow in
earnest."
Madzore said MDC youths were aggrieved by the aloofness of the
South African
government in the face of such barbaric acts across its
border.
"We challenge Thabo Mbeki to take an active role in the resolution of
the
Zimbabwean crisis," Madzore said. "The World Cup is around the corner
and
South Africa cannot afford to have it in the thick of such upheavals in
Zimbabwe ."
Mkwananzi said ZINASU understood that the Zimbabwean
government has hired
mercenaries from Angola to help augment the
Government's efforts to thwart
the
aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe
.
"We wish to warn these invaders that we brook no interference in our
internal affairs," said Mkwananzi. "We believe in the sanctity of our
sovereignty."
The youths said they were one hundred percent behind the
ZCTU`s proposed
strike for review of wages and salaries.
"We will support
all peaceful protests that will ensue," he said. "We
believe the problems
currently bedeviling the students are premised on bad
governance, and
dictatorship. There is no money to pay lecturers, no
textbooks, no lessons,
and unaffordable tuition and accommodation fees. The
students are starving.
Efforts to meet and deliberate on students issue have
been met with brute
force."
He proceeded: "Such madness can not be tolerated. We urge the youths
and the
students of Zimbabwe to remain vigilant as the vanguard of
democracy. The
youths must
rise and defend their parents and their
country. We must rise now and say
enough is enough."
Madzore said the MDC
youths were demanding elections under a new
constitution in 2008.
"The
youth and the students of Zimbabwe are urged to go out and mobilize
intensively for the 2008 elections," he said. "We must mobilize ourselves,
register to vote and stand ready to defend the ballot."
ITN, UK
13.59 Fri Mar 23
2007
A Zimbabwe court has adjourned an extradition case against a British
man
after his defence lawyer said he had been tortured by
police.
"But it has become clear from this testimony today that CID
misled us ...
they did actually torture my client" - defence lawyer Jonathan
Samukange
The case involves Simon Mann, a former special forces officer
accused of
masterminding a thwarted coup against Equatorial Guinea President
Teodoro
Obiang Nguema Mbasogo in 2004.
Harare Magistrate's Court will
resume extradition hearings on April 13.
Mann's lawyer Jonathan Samukange
has urged the court to turn down an
extradition request from Equatorial
Guinea on the grounds it had a record of
torturing political prisoners and
conducting unfair trials.
Mr Samukange, who had previously accused
Zimbabwean military and
intelligence officers of torturing his client, said
the nation's Criminal
Investigations Department (CID) had also assaulted his
client in custody.
He made the allegation after questioning the CID
detective who had led the
police interrogation of Mann.
"But it has
become clear from this testimony today that CID misled us ...
they did
actually torture my client," Mr Samukange said.
A senior prosecutor in
Zimbabwe's Attorney General's office, asked the court
to look into the fresh
torture allegations and requested Mann be brought to
testify when the court
reconvenes.
Mann is serving a four-year prison sentence in Zimbabwe after
being
convicted in 2004 for trying to buy weapons without a licence in
connection
with the coup plan.
He is due for release in
May.
Equatorial Guinea Attorney General Jose Olo Obono, who is leading
the
extradition bid, described the human rights groups' investigations as
"false
political reports" and pledged that Mann would get a fair trial if
extradited.
Eleven men, including foreigners, are serving sentences
ranging from 13 to
34 years in jail in Equatorial Guinea for their
involvement in the coup
plot.
New Zimbabwe
By Lebo
Nkatazo
Last updated: 03/24/2007 00:06:11
A PETROL bomb ravaged a police
station in Zimbabwe's eastern border town of
Mutare on Friday as political
temperatures continue to rise in the
crisis-hit country.
A timber
cabin, dockets, police bicycles and other police property were
destroyed as
a fire consumed Sakubva police station, police confirmed.
Chief police
spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said there were no injuries, adding
that police
were investigating.
"We are still carrying out investigations in
connection with that incident.
We are following some leads," Bvudzijena
said.
The attack on the police station follows a spate of similar attacks
which
the police have previously blamed on opposition
supporters.
Three female police officers suffered serious burns when
petrol bombs and
teargas canisters were hurled into their house inside the
Marimba Park
police station yard in Harare, and days later the Mkoba police
station was
in flames following another attack.
Police said they had
identified the Marimba Park bombers, but no arrests
have been made so far.
The police are keen to find the source of the teargas
canisters used in the
attacks amid fears they may have been smuggled into
the country.
The
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) denies any involvement
in
the violence which follows the arrest of its senior leaders in a police
crackdown. The party's two faction leaders, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur
Mutambara, were detained with 48 others after police crushed a planned rally
two weeks ago.
Tsvangirai and several other officials were severely
beaten in police
custody and sustained serious injuries.
Police
sources told New Zimbabwe.com that a false report of political
violence was
lodged with the Sakubva police station resulting in all the
officers except
two leaving the station.
A bomb was then planted in the station with a
string, several meters long,
attached to it, said the source.
"The
string was dipped in paraffin and what the culprits did was to set that
string on fire. The fire traveled all the way to the petrol bomb leading to
its explosion," a police source said.
ABC radio, Australia
This is a transcript from PM. The program is
broadcast around Australia at
5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on ABC
Local Radio.
PM -
Friday, 23 March , 2007 18:46:00
Reporter: Nance Haxton
MARK
COLVIN: The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has called on
Zimbabwe's
president Robert Mugabe to resign immediately.
Last night the
Australian embassy in Harare helped former Australian
citizen and opposition
activist, Sekai Holland, reach South Africa.
She needed urgent
medical treatment after she was savagely beaten by
police at a rally almost
two weeks ago.
Unemployment in Zimbabwe is already over 80 per
cent, there's
hyper-inflation and ordinary people can't even afford to buy
staples.
Mr Downer is also calling on the Australian cricket team
to cancel its
tour to Zimbabwe later this year.
He says the
government would consider helping financially if the
International Cricket
Council were to fine the team for cancelling its
commitments.
As Nance Haxton reports.
NANCE HAXTON: Prime Minister, John Howard,
today described Zimbabwe as
a heap of misery, urging neighbouring African
countries to put pressure on
the country's president Robert Mugabe to
resign.
Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, backed up
that call
this afternoon.
ALEAXNDER DOWNER: I think he should
resign.
I think anybody who has presided over a country not only
abusing the
human rights of that country, but who's policies have led to a
decline in
the life expectancy from 61 in 1990 to about 33 or 34 today, who
has
presided over 1800 per cent inflation in the last year and has 80 per
cent
of the population out of work, no that's somebody who would be best off
resigning.
NANCE HAXTON: When former Australian resident and
opposition activist,
Sekai Holland, tried to fly out of Harare earlier this
week after being
beaten by police, she was stopped by security forces and
held under armed
guard.
Mr Downer says the Australian
Government intervened in helping Sekai
Holland to South Africa for medical
treatment.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: I'm glad our diplomats have been able
to help people
who are good people, who stand up for human rights and for
freedom in
Zimbabwe.
NANCE HAXTON: Mrs Holland is now in a
Johannesburg hospital being
treated for multiple bone
fractures.
The Australian government has given Australia's
international aid
agency AusAid $82 000 to assist with the costs of medical
care and
counselling for victims of political violence in
Zimbabwe.
University of South Australia crisis management expert
Associate
Professor, Robert Heath, says the situation in Zimbabwe has
deteriorated
further in recent days because of infighting amongst the ruling
party.
ROBERT HEATH: One of the big problems we've got, unless
South Africa
or nations within Africa take some strong effort over this, the
people
pointing most of the fingers and who are trying to do most of the
work, tend
to be what are seen as the white or colonial
governments.
NACE HAXTON: Oxfam Australia Policy Director, James
Ensor, says its
clear that the economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe is
deepening, and
the victims of the crisis are the country's ordinary
citizens.
JAMES ENSOR: The unemployment rate in now in excess of 80
per cent and
what we're seeing is a period of hyper-inflation, so inflation
in Zimbabwe
is going up at a rate of 300 per cent per month, and what that
means is that
the basic necessities of life are now becoming unaffordable
for ordinary
people.
In fact in our experience ordinary people
in many situations are lucky
to be able to afford one meal a
day.
NANCE HAXTON: Alexander Downer says the worsening situation in
Zimbabwe means the Australian cricket team must cancel its plans to tour
there later this year.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: My personal view is
that it would be, I would prefer
the Australian cricket tour of Zimbabwe was
cancelled but to cancel it
involves financial penalties and so we will have
to sit down with the
Cricket Australia when they return from the Caribbean
hopefully
victoriously, but when they return from the Caribbean and talk to
them about
it.
MARK COLVIN: Alexander Downer the Foreign
Minister ending Nance
Haxton's report.
The Herald
(Harare)
March 23, 2007
Posted to the web March 23,
2007
Victoria Ruzvidzo
Vumba
RESERVE Bank of Zimbabwe Governor
Dr Gideon Gono has warned of the existence
of "stronger forces" on the
parallel market that are fuelling the slide of
the Zimbabwe dollar against
major currencies.
Investigations and consultations with the academia, the
financial sector and
the business community among others, had revealed that
the
inflation-consistent exchange rate for the country was well below a
tenth of
prevailing "wild" rates of up to $20 000 to the US dollar obtaining
on the
parallel market.
This reflected that other mysterious
forces calculated to cause dislocations
in the Zimbabwean economy had
overtaken economic fundamentals.
"What economic justification is there
for us as a nation to propel ourselves
down the cliff through wild parallel
market exchange rates that are over 10
times higher than what is rationally
justified from economic fundamentals
like inflation
differentials?
"Even if today the central bank was to devalue the
exchange rate to Z$30
000/US$, in the face of the speculative phantom aiming
at non-economic
objectives, tomorrow the parallel market rate would
stubbornly persist, and
with it, deepening of the economic crisis," said Dr
Gono.
He implored stakeholders to carefully calibrate their expectations
in a
manner that saw costs and benefits from a broader, economy-wide point
of
view, as opposed to sectoral purviews.
The central bank Governor
was, however, quick to point out that within the
context of progress on the
social contract formulation, mechanisms should
continue to be sought to
address genuine business viability concerns but
this in a manner free of
undue profiteering.
Furthermore, the infiltration of politics into every
aspect of social and
business existence was of great concern as it affected
honest and sincere
social dialogue.
"In order to ensure that this
process of social dialogue succeeds, it is
imperative that as a principle,
stakeholders negotiate and engage in good
faith, free from political
inclinations that seek to work at undermining the
ultimate objective of
resolving the prevailing economic hardships in the
economy."
Press Association
Friday March 23,
2007
Guardian Unlimited
Extract:
Zimbabwe
Foreign Office
ministers have found space in their diaries to make a
statement on Zimbabwe
to MPs, Mr Straw announced.
He said that the oral statement next Monday
was "the least" that the
government could do given persistent, cross-party
demands for an urgent
debate on the deepening crisis in the
country.
The move comes after he told the Commons last week that the
diaries of
Foreign Office ministers were too full to accommodate one.