HARARE, Zimbabwe - Opposition leaders in Zimbabwe are urging
the nation's soldiers and police to disobey orders to crush any show of
dissent against the government.
"The time has now come for the
security forces to make that historic choice of either being with the people
or against them," the Movement for Democratic Change said in a
statement.
The opposition call follows a wave of intense violence
against its officials and supporters who took part in a two-day strike
against President Robert Mugabe's government last
week.
Independent human rights monitors said at least 250 people were
treated for injuries from sexual assaults and beatings following a brutal
post-strike crackdown against the opposition headed by Morgan
Tsvangirai.
Hundreds of others were arrested or driven from their
homes, they said.
Witnesses and victims said much of the violence was
carried out by ruling party militias wearing police or military uniforms and
transported in military trucks.
Soldiers have been ordered to
patrol opposition strongholds and in some areas have imposed curfews,
shutting down bars and shops.
Last week's strike was the largest
protest since Mugabe - brought to power at independence in 1980 - was
re-elected for another six-year term in presidential elections contested by
Tsvangirai last year.
Observers said the elections were marred by
intimidation and vote-rigging.
The opposition said nonpartisan troops
had nothing to fear under any new government, but warned that those who had
been perpetrators of violence against ordinary Zimbabweans for expressing
their democratic rights would be arrested, tried and jailed.
U.S.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher on Monday condemned
the retribution campaign and what he called unprecedented violence sponsored
by the government's security forces following the strike.
The
Herald, a main government mouthpiece, reported Wednesday that the
police confirmed the arrests of about 200 people. Police and army officials
denied the allegations of assault and torture.
The opposition has
meanwhile threatened further protests.
THE Mozambican government says
commercial farmers who fled from Zimbabwe are contributing immensely to the
development of agriculture in that
country.
Soares Nhaca, governor of the
central province of Manica, was quoted by the Mozambican news agency saying
the displaced commercial farmers have helped restore agricultural
production.
Agriculture in Mozambique had
been devastated by civil war, which ended in
1992.
Peasant farming had become the
mainstay of Mozambique's economy, hence current efforts to develop commercial
agriculture. "Zimbabwe's loss is Mozambique's gain," Nhaca was quoted as
saying by AIM, the Mozambican
news agency.
Nhaca was speaking after
visiting seven farms run by Zimbabwean commercial farmers, who left the
country because of the chaotic land
reform.
Several farmers were killed, while
thousands of their workers were rendered homeless during Zimbabwe's widely
condemned land reform programme. Most of the affected farmers fled to
Mozambique, Zambia, England, Australia, Canada and New
Zealand.
Manica province is now home to
about 50 farmers, who were allocated land in the districts of Mossurize,
Sussundenga, Gondola and Manica where they are producing tea, tobacco and
other cash crops.
Killian Mupingo, the
Manicaland provincial administrator said he was not aware of the number of
farmers who fled to Mozambique.
It is no
secret that Zimbabweans are extremely angry with the kid-gloves treatment of
President Mugabe by South African President Thabo Mbeki. It is, therefore,
not altogether surprising that some people in this country are saying
extremely unkind things about him, with the harshest judgment perhaps coming
from a reader in a letter to this
newspaper.
The reader says Mbeki has on
his hands more blood of Zimbabweans being killed for their political beliefs
in government-sponsored violence than Mugabe
himself.
That view is obviously over the
top, but it just goes to show how utterly disillusioned with the South
African leader the people of this country have become. It is, indeed, a fact
that they now seriously regard Mbeki as an active collaborator in the Mugabe
regime's campaign of violence.
The more
charitable among his critics will probably say that his recent utterances are
a clear sign that Mbeki is now taking a tougher stance against his wayward
northern neighbour and must, therefore, be
applauded.
They will, of course, be
referring to his remarks in Botswana during his state visit to that country a
few weeks ago when he publicly condemned Mugabe's land grab programme, and
his statement in the South African Parliament on Wednesday this week when he
said he had told the government of Zimbabwe that "we do not agree with
actions that deny Zimbabweans their right to protest
peacefully".
But the generality of
Zimbabweans are not likely to applaud Mbeki. To them, it is a matter of too
little too late. At any rate, those statements sound so half-hearted they are
only a little better than the fruitless "quiet diplomacy" which was so quiet
hardly anybody, Mugabe included, noticed
it.
In fact, the total failure of his
quiet diplomacy to persuade Mugabe to behave in a more civilised manner,
makes Zimbabweans doubt that Mbeki's g overnment ever remonstrated against
the Mugabe regime's violation of the people's right to protest peacefully at
all in the first place.
For all we know,
Mbeki might merely have made that statement in order to mollify and silence
his domestic critics in Parliament who, understandably, are getting impatient
with his perplexing mollycoddling of a tyrannical neighbour whose country's
problems are spilling over the border and beginning to adversely affect their
own country both socially
and economically.
Such doubts arise
because there is one big question that begs to be asked: If Mbeki were
sincere in assuring Parliament that he had communicated to the Zimbabwean
authorities his concerns over the regime's actions in "denying people their
right to protest peacefully", why then would his Foreign Minister tell a
breakfast meeting that Pretoria was "not aware of any systematic violation of
human rights on a massive scale in
Zimbabwe"?
Clearly, there is a
contradiction here. One of the two, between Mbeki and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma,
is not telling the truth. In any case, it is amazing that, of all
governments, South Africa should plead ignorance of the shocking atrocities
the government in Zimbabwe is committing against its citizens. Political
repression and State-sponsored violence have become so commonplace even the
blind can see them. What more of sighted government leaders who can read for
themselves all the chilling accounts of the harassment, savage beatings,
arrests, torture and even killings of Mugabe's
political opponents?
What other evidence
of "systematic violation of human rights" does the South African government
want besides such incidents as the constant arrests of MDC legislators; the
midnight raids on their homes by armed State agents which led to Tafadzwa
Musekiwa's flight to Britain; the torture of Job Sikhala or the assault of
MPs Abednico Bhebhe and Evelyn Masaiti, the latter forced to flee her home
and children - to cite just a few
examples?
It is this hypocrisy, typified
by Mbeki's untruthful declaration to the Commonwealth that things were now
normal in Zimbabwe, which has encouraged this government to become even more
brutal.
The time has come for Mbeki to
bite the bullet. He must tell Mugabe to either behave himself or lose his
support.
Until he does that, Zimbabweans
will be excused if they continue to hold him jointly accountable for their
suffering.
Some
straight-shooting Western leaders have referred to the Robert Mugabe-led
government in this country as a "bandit
regime".
The more charitable simply refer
to it as a "rogue regime". Whatever one chooses to call it, the essence of it
remains the same: this regime is shockingly barbaric, ruthlessly cruel,
shamelessly self-serving and thoroughly
corrupt.
Righteousness is totally alien to
this government because it is evil through and through. In the working
vocabulary of its leaders, the words "love" and "peace" do not
exist.
If they ever did exist at some time
in Zanu PF's less evil past, they now clearly have long been expunged from
the party's lexicon. Whenever the leaders open their mouths, all they preach
to their followers is hate
and violence.
Zimbabweans might find it
difficult to resist concluding that the evil inclinations that so
effortlessly manifest themselves in Zanu PF leaders come as no surprise,
really, given the party leader's boast that he is Hitler multiplied
"tenfold".
Birds of a feather flock
together!
At the burial of the late
Swithun Mombeshora, a mild-mannered gentleman that one was, Mugabe saw
nothing untoward in using that sad occasion to make an announcement which
should have been best kept secret. Astonishingly displaying no sign of guilt
whatsoever, he gloated that all the violence the people of this country are
being relentlessly subjected to is not just with his
blessing.
His government has, as a matter
of fact, expressly directed State security agents and party militia (the line
dividing the two is now so thin as to be invisible) to violently crush all
opposition to his ruinous rule and brutally silence any voices of
protest.
It was, for all intents and
purposes, a call to war - a war pitting Zimbabweans against Zimbabweans - by
a head of State who seems not to care at all about the need to say or do
nothing that disgraces or lowers the dignity of his
office.
For, no sooner had he finished his
hate-filled speech, in which he accused the MDC of having paid the youth to
force people to heed the party's call for a stay-away, than his own party's
paid youths menacingly advanced on Elias Mudzuri, the Executive Mayor of
Harare who was at the Heroes' Acre to attend Mombeshora's
burial.
The mob, which had earlier
confiscated Mudzuri's official car keys from his aides, intimidated the mayor
in full view of senior government officials, Home Affairs Minister Kembo
Mohadi included, and in front of the police. Predictably the officials and
police, who are presumably all either Zanu PF supporters of sympathisers, or
are at least expected to be and act accordingly, did nothing to stop the
hired thugs from harassing and embarrassing
Mudzuri.
And The Mole finds their decision
not to act in defence of Mudzuri not surprising at all. You will obviously
want to know why. The answer is to be found in one revealing paragraph in
Gugu Moyo's heart-rending account of her experience at the hands of the
police.
And this is the paragraph: "On
Thursday evening I was finally released. A policeman who had allowed me to
use his mobile phone to call for help earlier that day said to me as I left:
'Sister, I have nothing against you. We knew you were being held here for
nothing. We even knew there was a court order to release you. But with these
political cases, even the most senior guy in the police station makes no
decision. We are instructed right from the
top.'"
Now we know why they can't lift a
finger even against scapegraces of the ilk of Jocelyn Chiwenga "the general's
wife" but instead take orders from them. The police have instructions from
the top. And that means from the President's
Office.
As he made his famous
"reconciliation" speech in 1980 - we, of course, now know he never meant a
word of what he said - I never for once thought Mugabe would one day be as
devoid of shame, honour and dignity as he is today. Today, you either sing
praises to him or you are automatically an "enemy of the
State".
Are we to take it that Mugabe now
seriously believes he is Zimbabwe?
n
Talking about Mudzuri, the man has got every reason to fear for his life.
Ever since Mudzuri's overwhelming victory which swept him into Town House in
March last year, the shameless Zanu PF leadership has made no secret their
determination to get rid of him by any means, fair or
foul.
We all know how the partisan police
assaulted and humiliated him in Mabvuku as he held a consultative meeting
with residents. After breaking up the meeting they then arrested him, putting
him into custody for the whole weekend just to punish him for having defeated
the party's candidate in last year's mayoral
election.
Last Friday at Heroes' Acre a
mob of the party's supporters threatened to kill him right in front of the
police and the party's top leaders, including Mugabe himself. And nobody did
anything to restrain them. And this was during the burial of a supposedly
well loved party member.
What kind of
people are these who show no respect for the dead, especially those they
claim to have held in such high regard as the bestowal of hero's status on
Mombeshora surely suggests? What that action said about the Zanu PF people
gathered there was that they were not in sorrowful mourning at all but merely
going through the motions of pretending to
be grieving.
To show the party was
serious about wanting to get rid of him, on Monday its war-mongering
activists, most probably organised by the men in dark glasses, forced
unwilling Mbare residents, beefed up by imports bussed from Mutare, into a
stage-managed demonstration against Mudzuri at Town House. Their battle cry
was the same as at Heroes' Acre: "Mudzuri must
be killed."
The irony of it all is that
the thugs who were behind that faked demonstration, allegedly for "neglecting
Mbare" are from Matapi and Shawasha hostels - the very same people who
attacked a bus carrying councillors on an inspection tour of the area soon
after council elections last year.
The
purpose of the tour was to assess the plight of residents there in order to
see what could be done to improve their living conditions. But the Zanu PF
thugs assaulted the councillors and chased them away claiming the hostels
were a Zanu PF stronghold and a no-go area for MDC
councillors.
If that is really how they
see things, then The Mole thinks the "demonstration was
misdirected".
They ought to have gone to
Shake-Shake building to stage that demonstration since it is to Zanu PF that
they look up to if they want anything done about their
welfare.
It should, of course, be
understood that the wrath and mindless violence being directed at Mudzuri by
Zanu PF through the police and hired mobs is not, strictly speaking,
personal. What they don't want is an MDC mayor running Harare. That he was
elected democratically is immaterial to them since democracy to them is
anathema.
They would be doing the same if
Samudzimu were the mayor.
ABOUT 1 000 farm workers,
including women and children, at opposition Member of Parliament Roy Bennet's
Charleswood Estate in Chimanimani sustained serious injuries in beatings
before being forced off the property by the
police.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the
workers were bundled into police trucks and dumped by the roadside, 11km from
the farm.
The attack comes about a week
after State security agents allegedly assaulted Bennet's workers on a farm he
is leasing in Ruwa on suspicion they had participated in the two-day mass
stayaway called for by the MDC
last week.
Bennet said: "The people
were dumped at Pombo Supermarket about 11km from the farm. The police, led by
an Inspector Chogugudza of Chimanimani, went to my farm and beat up all the
workers indiscriminately.
"They sustained
various injuries and have nowhere to go. Their belongings were thrown into
trucks and dumped at the supermarket.
The
situation is awful. It's just terrible what is happening there. All farming
activities have effectively ceased."
The
legislator grows coffee on the estate.
Yesterday, the Chimanimani MP said soldiers and the police returned to his
farm to make sure that everyone had left the property. Those found there were
assaulted and forced to flee, he said.
Last week, a man was beaten to death in Harare and several others, including
MPs and the MDC's provincial leaderships, were either arrested or beaten up
by State security agents in a suspected retribution campaign following the
mass stayaway.
Bennet identified the
deceased as Steven Tonera, his former worker, who was living on his Ruwa
farm.
Isobel Gardiner, the wife of
Bennet's farm manager, Norman, was severely assaulted on the buttocks and
back.
Meanwhile, hundreds of residents in
Harare have either been beaten up or arrested by State security agents.
Reports of assaults are also coming in from other towns and
cities.
Since last week's mass action, The
Daily News offices have been inundated by people who were beaten up by the
State agents.
THE Zimbabwe Electricity
Supply Authority (Zesa) has introduced load-shedding in some industrial and
residential areas in Harare.
This follows
its failure to raise foreign currency to service the US$16 million (Z$880
million) debt it owes its South African
counterpart, Eskom.
Captains of
industry and commerce in Harare yesterday expressed anger over the
load-shedding introduced on Wednesday, saying it was adversely affecting
their operations.
Graniteside, Msasa,
Willowvale, Waterfalls, Chitungwiza and Southerton are some of the areas
affected.
At a meeting yesterday at the
Zesa headquarters, industrialists were told that Zesa was battling to pay
Eskom owing to the dire scarcity of foreign currency in the
country.
According to minutes of the
meeting, the South African government has given Zesa until 30 April to settle
its arrears or face an indefinite
power cut.
"Zimbabwe will be on
interruptible status until then. The last time Zesa received forex from the
Reserve Bank was in December 2002," it was noted in the
minutes.
Contacted for comment, Zintle
Filtane, the Eskom spokesperson, was not forthcoming on the actual amount
Zesa owed South Africa.
He said Zesa had
sent a delegation this week to Pretoria to explore a new repayment schedule
that would enable it to settle its
obligations.
He said since 1996 when Eskom
started supplying power to Zimbabwe, Zesa had been fulfilling its financial
obligations.
But, he said, the situation
changed in 1999 when the country started to experience foreign currency
shortages.
About this week's meeting,
Filtane said: "Zesa demonstrated their commitment to settle the outstanding
account and arrears as soon
as possible.
"Eskom has accepted Zesa's
bona fides and renewed commitment, and is confident that this debt will be
liquidated and cleared shortly."
But given
that Zesa is cash-strapped, it is doubtful that it will be able to settle its
debt, according to insiders.
At the
yesterday's meeting, Zesa encouraged exporters to settle their bills in
foreign currency.
Company executives said
the proposed eight-hour daily load-shedding would further strain their
already struggling establishments.
Anthony
Mandiwanza, the president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, said
the power cuts had further worsened the plight of most businesses already
facing severe operational problems.
"The
limited power supplies have exacerbated the situation and will have an impact
involved in export as they will be viewed as unreliable suppliers," he
said.
Mandiwanza said Zesa should find a
permanent solution on the availability of
electricity.
Zesa owes a combined debt of
US$150 million (Z$8,25 billion) to Eskom and Mozambique's Cahora Bassa. The
two companies gave last Saturday as the deadline for Zesa to pay part of the
debt.
Cahora Bassa is demanding US$5
million, while Eskom wants R11,2 million (Z$67,2 million), which adds to
US$6,4 million.
One company executive in
Chitungwiza said: "The situation must be looked into deeper. It is worse than
it appears. My plants need about four hours to warm before we start to
manufacture anything.
"So if we are going
to have this shedding that will be the end of my company. We will have 16
hours a day of doing nothing."
Zesa plans
to have a four-hour loading-shedding in the morning and another one in the
evening.
According to a proposed
load-shedding programme leaked to The Daily News last night, each will be
affected between 0600 and 1000 hours and between 1700 and 2000 twice a week.
The programme, said a Zesa official, is supposed to be to kept a secret until
next week.
"The whole idea is to have the
MDC ultimatum and the by-elections done with. After that, the programme will
be made public.
"But Zimbabweans will have
to brace for more than this as South Africa is likely to cut supplies
drastically as well," said the source last night.
SO the two-day
strike, popularly known as a stayaway, has come
and gone.
Zimbabweans have resumed
their normal duties. Nothing has changed in their working or living
conditions, so far at least. There is still no
bread on the table, the fuel situation is getting worse and food queues still
persist.
So has the job boycott produced
any result or was it just one of those free rest days for the embattled
Zimbabwean worker at the generosity of the Movement for Democratic Change?
Was it a total flop or a white elephant as some quarters of the media
propagated?
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition,
a grouping of over 350 civil society organisations whose vision is a
democratic Zimbabwe, says the stayaway was successful despite repression from
the Mugabe government.
It says numerous
attacks have been unleashed on the MDC, its supporters and those advocating
for good governance, legitimacy and the restoration of the rule of
law.
The government is retaliating for the
growing popular sentiment against Zanu
PF.
Mugabe has labelled the two-day
stayaway as part of "a violent campaign by traitors and enemies of our
country who claim they are fighting for a democratic
order."
Crisis in Zimbabwe says attacks on
pro-democracy actors are a concerted effort by the ruling party to intimidate
Zimbabweans to prevent them from exercising their constitutional rights to
freedom of expression and assembly.
Says its co-ordinator Brian Kagoro: "Social transformation does not occur in
a day. It's a process based on protest against injustices and repression and
it is made of innovation towards creating a new order that is peaceful, just
and equitable. People should see the event as the first step towards a
process of social transformation".
"A
stayaway is part of a script of transformation," Kagoro
says.
People are frustrated because they
want "instant change, instant coffee, instant money out of the ATM, but the
reality is that we have over 90 years of colonialism and 22 years of
dictatorship."
"In fact, allowing over a
century of undemocratic rule to overload an event like the stayaway with the
capacity to redress 112 years of oppression, doesn't speak well of our
political acumen."
If Mugabe had left
office, it wouldn't have changed anything - the fuel queues, the bread queues
would still remain and jobs would still not
be there.
"What we want to celebrate is
the courage to say 'NO' to injustice and also cherish the new form of
togetherness to fight for freedom without using guns or violence but the will
power to say 'NO'," he says.
People
participating in stayaways are doing this at great risk to their lives, so
the sacrifice is very high.
"It will pay
off if people are consistent, focused and clear about what they want the
Zimbabwe they want to look like. They visualise it and work to achieve it.
Withdrawing their labour amounts to saying we don't accept what is happening
in Zimbabwe now and it is not what we
want.
"We don't want violence,
discrimination, corruption and abuse of the masses under the guise of dealing
with historical socio-economic inequities,"
says Kagoro.
Clever Mbengegwi, the Dean of
the Faculty of Social Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, says much of
what the MDC claims about the state of the economy, cannot be rectified
through these stayaways as they only serve to worsen the already bad economic
environment.
"I cannot see in any way what
they contribute to the economic recovery of the country. There's nothing at
all to be served by these stayaways, it's just like rubbing salt into a
wound."
Mbengegwi says the MDC talks of
lack of democracy, human rights violations and the absence of the rule of
law, "but in their own conduct, I don't see any observance of the very same
principles they say they're fighting
for".
"For instance, if they burn buses
with passengers inside, and engage in other acts of violence, then there can
be no worse flagrant violation of the rule of law than
that.
"They (the MDC) made threatening
phone calls to businesses that were open on the day of the stayaway, so do
they really believe in any freedom of association and so on, so that we can
emulate? Mbengegwi says.
However, for the
MDC, the people demonstrated that in the face of severe intimidation and
threats, they are still determined to put their destiny into their own hands,
says Paul Themba Nyathi, the party's secretary for information and
publicity.
He says through mass action,
people show that if they come together, they can make a difference through
concerted popular resistance to tyranny and dictatorship which must
crumble.
"The people have rediscovered the
power to move mountains and that is the beginning of better things to come.
It is taking serious effect as shown by the reaction of the government in
victimising perceived MDC supporters," Nyathi
says.
The Mugabe regime has got to know
that actual power does not lie in the baton sticks, or tear-gas, but in the
hearts of individual Zimbabweans who show displeasure to dictatorship and
tyranny, he says.
Chairman of the
Department of Mathematics at the University of Zimbabwe, Dr Temba Shonhiwa
says for stayaways to be effective, they have to be peaceful and exercise
extreme discipline, otherwise they lose
direction.
"Given that we live under a
repressive regime where all other avenues of communication have been closed
for the opposition, this is one way left for the opposition to express
itself.
" Violence as witnessed in the
recent mass action will not help the cause at all and only gives the
government an excuse to ruthlessly crack down on the opposition as it is
doing now," Dr Shonhiwa says.
He says that
job boycotts are a useful and legitimate form of political struggle that
serves as a way of raising people's
political consciousness.
George
Charamba, the permanent secretary in the Department of Information and
Publicity in the President's Office, declined to comment on the MDC-called
stayaway saying: "We will talk to you the day you become a national paper. We
didn't call for the stayaway. Ask the
MDC."
But can wilful intimidation and
wanton arrest dampen the spirit of people determined to see good governance
and a just society? If they can, then Zimbabwe would not be free from
colonial rule today
AUSTIN Mupandawana, the Member of
Parliament for Kadoma Central (MDC) and 27 party supporters accused of
destroying property worth nearly $12 million during last week's MDC organised
two-day mass action, were denied bail when they appeared in court on
Tuesday.
Kadoma magistrate Claudius
Chimanga remanded them in custody to 9 April. They were arrested on Tuesday
last week.
Their lawyer, Christian
Mafirakureva, told the court that four of his clients, including the MP, had
been severely tortured during interrogation by the
police.
The other three are Callisto
Tsvangirai, Francis Musiniwa and Tongai Ndemberembe, who sustained a dog bite
wound on the arm.
The opposition MDC says it has
unearthed elaborate plans by Zanu PF for massive rigging of the weekend
by-elections in Highfield and Kuwadzana.
Remus Makuwaza, the MDC director of elections, told a Press conference in
Harare yesterday that the rigging plans were with the connivance of
the Registrar-General, Tobaiwa Mudede, and other State
agents.
Makuwaza said more than 19 000
suspected "ghost" voters not resident in the two constituencies had been
added to the voters' roll. He showed journalists the list of the dubious
voters.
The High Court ordered Mudede to
release the voters' roll to the MDC within 48 hours last Friday after a
protracted wrangle.
"We knew that was the
reason for his delay in giving us the voters' roll. We are not sure whether
what we got was the final roll or that there could be another supplementary
voters' roll to facilitate rigging which we were not given," Makuwaza
said.
"According to a basic analysis of
the voters' roll, there are more than 8 000 voters in Kuwadzana and 11 000
others registered in Highfield who are not necessarily resident in these
constituencies. The samples are not exhaustive. We have discovered that on
the voters' roll there are a number of instances where two different names
share the same national ID number."
The
MDC candidate for Highfield, Tachiveyi Mungofa, said Zanu PF had started
bussing in people to within the confines of the
constituency.
"More than 4 000 people are
being fed at an open space in the constituency, ready for the weekend poll,"
he claimed. A sample extracted from the
voters' roll for Kuwadzana by this newspaper shows a majority of newly
registered voters with alien surnames, raising suspicion that these could be
ghost voters from grabbed commercial farms, the majority of whose labour was
from Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia.
There are names and surnames such as Akulukaya, Arimoso, Bilimonti, Bollie,
Abinal, Asavetwa, Ajala, Bitoni and others who form the bulk of the suspect
voters on the roll.
The MDC did its own
audit of the voters' roll and visited residences where they discovered some
of the people listed under addresses in Kuwadzana were either unknown to the
occupants or had never been at those
addresses.
Makuwaza said his party was
aware Zanu PF would flood the constituencies with scarce basic commodities
such as sugar, maize-meal and cooking oil packaged in containers soaked in
indelible ink to disqualify genuine
voters.
"We are aware that State agents
plan to taint doors and water taps with the indelible ink in those areas
which are known MDC strongholds in order to disqualify our voters," he
said.
Makuwaza said Zanu PF would
deliberately slow down the voting process in known MDC strongholds to give
itself unfair advantage.
The MDC
spokesman, Paul Themba-Nyathi, said his party would continue to take part in
elections even in the face of such evidence because the alternative would be
"ghastly to contemplate".
"We contest
because the people have vested their trust in democracy. We want to teach
them that change comes through democratic means
and processes."
Seven candidates are
contesting for the Highfield seat with four battling for
Kuwadzana.
JUDGE president Paddington Garwe
yesterday adjourned to 12 May, the treason trial of MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai and two senior party officials which is expected to complete its
seventh-week today.
Meanwhile, Garwe is
expected to deliver a ruling on Monday on an application to have the
suspects' bail conditions wavered during
the adjournment.
In addition, defence
lawyers want the judge to order the release of Welshman Ncube's passport.
Ncube, one of three accused persons, wants to travel to Canada to brief an
attorney in preparation for the defence
case.
The Canadian attorney is supposed to
witness test runs for the equipment used to film a meeting between Tsvangirai
and officials from Dickens and Madson, a Canadian-based political
consultancy.
Advocate George Bizos
submitted that it was unlikely that Tsvangirai and his co-accused would
abscond, given their standing in Zimbabwe as "leaders of a political party
which represents a considerable part of the Zimbabwe
population."
Joseph Musakwa, the Deputy
Director of Public Prosecution in the Attorney-General's Office, opposed the
applications arguing that the accused persons were suspected to have
committed "a very serious crime'' and that their bail conditions were
mutually agreed on.
Defence lawyers
charged during cross-examination that, a pair sent to collect evidence of an
alleged plot to assassinate President Mugabe, may have sneaked into Canada
without informing their counterparts in that country as required by
international regulations.
Chief
Superintendent Moses Mugadza, of the police operations section, refused to
say whether he and Retired Brigadier Happyton Bonyongwe, the then deputy
director-general of the CIO, paid a courtesy call on their counterparts in
Montreal when they went to collect what Mugadza described as "information
which could lead to police investigation."
He admitted Ari Ben-Menashe bungled by facilitating the airing of
a video-tape on which the State is basing its case. The video showing
alleged details of a plot to assassinate President Mugabe and overthrow the
Zanu PF government was aired on ZBC television and on Australia's SBS
television network ahead of last year's presidential
election.
THE Zimbabwe Union of Journalists
(ZUJ) has requested Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Speaker of Parliament, to allow
journalists not accredited under the draconian Access to Information and
Protection of Prvacy Act (AIPPA) to cover debate in the
House.
Luke Tamborinyoka, the ZUJ
secretary-general, said his union was worried about the refusal by Parliament
to allow journalists to cover Parliamentary debate unless they have been
accredited.
In a letter to Mnangagwa, he
said: "We believe you are aware that journalists have challenged the
requirement for compulsory registration by a hand-picked Media and
Information Commission (MIC) appointed by a hand-picked junior minister, and
until judgement on the matter is handed down, it is our humble submission
that no one must be barred from covering Parliament
proceedings."
Jonathan Moyo is the
Minister of Information and Publicity in the Office of the President. The
letter was copied to Zanu PF and MDC chief whips Joram Gumbo and Innocent
Gonese respectively. Journalists last year challenged the constitutionality
of registering under the Dr Tafataona Mahoso-led MIC. The Supreme Court is
still to deliver judgement on
the matter.
Tamborinyoka said to
register would render the challenge useless especially when the judgement has
not been passed.
"We believe that the
Parliament complex is a public building and we would appreciate it if you
could allow unaccredited journalists the right to cover proceedings in the
House until the judgement is delivered on our Supreme Court challenge," he
said.
"Otherwise the challenge would be of
no use if journalists are to undergo the very same strenuous process of
registration, which they regard as unconstitutional, simply because they want
to be allowed into Parliament."
He said since the right to receive and impart information is constitutional,
journalists must be allowed to the Parliament's
Press Gallery.
"After all, access to
information is the very essence of the AIPPA," said
Tamborinyoka. Mnangagwa, could not be reached
for comment yesterday as he was in the House. His personal assistant
confirmed that the Speaker had received Tamborinyoka's
letter.