Alexander Legault
and Ari Ben-Menashe
CBC News: Disclosure
Broadcast March 5,
2002
Watch the
update GO
|
Zimbabwe's
president, Robert Mugabe, is seeking re-election.
|
There's an historic
election in Zimbabwe later this week. President Robert Mugabe -a controversial
figure worldwide- is seeking re-election.
Now, his main
opponent has been accused of trying to have him killed. At the centre of that
explosive charge are two shadowy Montreal businessmen who we first told you
about on Disclosure earlier this season.
The men in the
spotlight are Ari Ben-Menashe, a one-time Isreali spy and arms dealer, and his
partner Alexander Legault. Last fall, Disclosure revealed Legault is a
U.S. fugitive, wanted in Florida, Texas and Louisiana for fraud.
|
Ari
Ben-Menashe (left) and Alexander Legault
|
Our story showed
that Legault and Ben-Menashe were busy brokering deals around the world for
commodities like grain and rice. But there were allegations of fraud.
Olivier Damiron, a
former employee, says customers would pay a deposit, but the goods would never
be shipped.
"It's just a scam,
basically," says Damiron. "[They] take the ten percent and run."
Now a grainy
videotape has shown up. It was recently broadcast on Australian television,
causing an international storm of controversy.
It shows a meeting
secretly taped in Montreal last December by Ben-Menashe.
The video purports
to show him being approached by Zimbabwe's opposition leader to arrange the
assassination of the country's president, Robert Mugabe.
Ben-Menashe later
told CBC News that he was only playing along to expose the plot:
"They wanted to
hire us straight forward to eliminate the president and help them organize a
coup d'etat in Zimbabwe against the president."
|
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai says he was framed.
|
But the man who's
fingered for the plan, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, says he was framed.
He says Ben-Menashe approached him, offering himself and Legault as lobbyists,
and then suggesting the assassination.
"It's of course
intended to divert people," says Tsvangirai of the video. "To confuse people.
But people aren't confused. They see through this whole ploy. It's a conspiracy
they've concocted."
But, the heavily edited tape is enough for President
Mugabe. He's had Tsvangirai charged with treason because of the tape. He faces
life in prison.
Canada's minister
of Foreign Affairs has asked the RCMP to investigate the supposed plot. But his
department can hardly claim to know little about Ben-Menashe or his dealings
with controversial African regimes.
|
Note: You'll need Adobe Acrobat
Reader to view the documents linked to below (they're in Adobe PDF file format).
If you don't have it installed on your computer, you can download it at www.adobe.com.
|
In fact, government
documents obtained by Disclosure show the department has a long and
curious history with Ben-Menashe.
Through an Access
to Information request, we received over 400 pages showing Ben-Menashe was
regularly de-briefed by Canadian intelligence officers, plumbed about what he
knew of the inner workings of the governments he was involved with.
|
Document:
Ben-Menashe's offer to set up a meeting between (then) Foreign Affairs
Minister Lloyd Axworthy and "Secretary One" of Burma:
page one
page two
page three
page four
page five
Note: The hand-written numbers at the side of the documents refer
to the exemption sections of the Access to Information Act under which the
documents were censored.
For more information about the exemptions, see the
Act's official website.
|
The documents are
heavily censored, but what's left reveals that Ottawa has known for years about
Ben-Menashe's trips to Zimbabwe's capital and his association with Robert
Mugabe.
But, even as they
were using him a resource, Ben-Menashe was pitching Ottawa on his clients
-offering to arrange meetings between Canada and the regimes he
represented.
Such as: a military
leader in Burma -a country which Canada has shunned for its human rights abuses;
and a government minister in Sudan -a man Canada has investigated for war
crimes.
The documents show
Ottawa seriously considered both requests, taking them to the minister's office
for consideration before taking a pass.
Keith Martin is
Foreign Affairs critic for the Alliance. "You have a company who with highly
questionable activities abroad," he says, "that is working with the Department
of Foreign Affairs, that has been asked for the Department of Foreign Affairs
for information and the relationship is highly suspect and it just, quite
frankly -it stinks."
|
Document:
The
Department of Foreign Affairs takes a pass on Ben-Menashe's offer regarding
Burma:
page one
page two
|
But, even as
Foreign Affairs was relying on Ben-Menashe to help build Canada's intelligence
files, trade officials in the same department were issuing strong warnings he
couldn't be trusted.
The commercial
disputes from soured business deals were stacking up -from Hungary to Zambia-
prompting a senior trade commissioner to the Baltics to warn that Ben-Menashe
and Legault's company, Carlington Sales, had done:
|
Document:
Ben-Menashe offers to set up a meeting with Qutbi Al-Mahdi, then Sudanese
Minister for Foreign Intelligence:
page one
page two
page three
|
"Very serious
damage to the commercial relationship between Canada and Estonia, by what could
only be termed unethical conduct."
And a warning
issued back in 1996:
"…That any Canadian
government official deal with extreme caution with Carlington."
But, there's no
indication Canada passed that warning on to foreign companies inquiring about
Carlington.
|
Document:
Senior
Trade Commissioner H. Jacob Kunzer's memo warning about Carlington
Sales:
version one
version two
(the two are versions
of the same document, but they have been censored differently by
DFAIT)
|
Zambian banker Raj
Mahtani, burned in a multi-million dollar deal for maize, says Canada let him
down:
"I am totally
disappointed and disillusioned," he says. "For me, to be honest with you, I
would not enter into any contract with Canadians."
Last fall, a
British arbitration court ordered Carlington to pay $10-million on the Zambian
deal. But Carlington filed bankruptcy saying there's no money left.
The lawyer in the
Zambian case is Neil Sampson.
"The most important
thing we have to do is find the money," says the lawyer in the Zambian case,
Neil Sampson. "I would ask anybody who knows anything, the affairs of Carlington
Sales, of Alexander Legault or Ari Ben-Menashe, to contact us and hopefully help
us find the money."
Foreign Affairs
officials refused to talk on camera about Ben-Menashe or Carlington. Nor would
they talk about why the intelligence officer who conducted many of those
briefings, retired in 1999 to work for Carlington.
With the company
now bankrupt, Ben-Menashe and Legault are working under a different name,
Dickens and Madson. Their new lobbying firm is now at the centre of the Zimbabwe
assassination plot.
"The company has a
long, storied and questionable history," says Alliance MP Keith Martin. "Not
only within Canada, but in other parts of the world. I think it's up to the RCMP
to investigate that because I'm sure that the Canadian public has absolutely no
interest whatsoever in having companies in Canada engaging in destabilizing
activity abroad."
Links:
CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external
sites. Links will open in a new window.
Reuters
Focus-Mugabe could win but will it be fair?
07 March,
2002 16:24 GMT
By Nicholas Kotch
HARARE (Reuters) - Robert
Mugabe may well be declared the winner of
Zimbabwe's presidential election
but such a victory will be met with
widespread suspicion both at home and
abroad.
"Mugabe is likely to be declared the winner. Not because of a
fair election
but because of violence and intimidation," said Lovemore
Madhuku, chairman
of Zimbabwe's National Constitutional Assembly, a coalition
of civic groups.
Mugabe accuses the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) of
stoking the violence and says the campaign has been free and
fair, telling
foreign critics to mind their own business.
But the
recent catalogue of events, including intimidation and laws aimed at
boosting
the government's chances, hardly reinforce its claim that this is a
fair
fight.
The MDC says more than 100 of its members have been murdered by
militants
from the ruling ZANU-PF in the last two years.
Army and
security chiefs say they will have a major problem working with the
MDC
candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, if he manages to win.
Even if he does,
despite the odds, he could be arrested at once since a
treason charge hangs
over him.
Zimbabwe has banished foreign electoral observers from
countries like
Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, not just from former
colonial ruler
Britain.
At the 11th hour on Wednesday, the
Mugabe-appointed Electoral Supervisory
Commission was still unable to say how
many ballot papers had been printed,
how many soldiers and police had voted
by post, and why only a few score
local observers are accredited to keep an
eye on 4,000 polling stations.
LACK OF OBSERVERS CAUSES
CONCERN
"The issue about local observers is a particular cause of
concern," said
Kare Vollan, head of the 25-strong Norwegian observer
mission.
"I think the MDC would win 60-40 in a truly free and fair
election. But what
has been the impact of all the confusion, last-minute
registration of voters
and intimidation?" asked one Western
diplomat.
Mugabe has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980 when
negotiations
ended a bitter bush war with white settlers.
Now, at 78,
he wants another six-year term.
But some commentators believe Tsvangirai
can win despite all the banana
skins strewn in his path.
"Mugabe is
going to be assessed over his 22-year record and people will ask
what can he
do now that he didn't do in those 22 years?" said Masipula
Sithole, a leading
political scientist.
Tsvangirai's campaign suffered a damaging setback
when he was secretly
filmed allegedly discussing the president's
assassination. He denies any
guilt and said the film was a set-up, but the
episode left him looking
accident-prone.
The government says the West,
and major media, are simply biased against
Mugabe.
"An African ruling
party is not allowed to win an election. Unless the
opposition wins it means
the vote was rigged," Information Minister Jonathan
Moyo said on
Wednesday.
RESULTS EXPECTED ON MONDAY NIGHT
Officials say they
expect to begin announcing the results late on Monday,
March 11, after
counting in 120 centres. There are 5.6 million registered
voters out of a
population of 13 million.
Mugabe's mantra during nearly 50 campaign
rallies is that Tsvangirai is a
puppet of Britain and the white community,
whose number has shrunk to 70,000
or a quarter of the number in
1980.
He has told Prime Minister Tony Blair and the whites to "keep their
pink
noses" out of Zimbabwe's business, specifically concerning the
violent
campaign to seize white-owned land and restore it to landless
blacks.
But the reality is that Mugabe is now badly isolated in the
corridors of
world power. He and his inner circle are already under sanctions
by the
United States and the European Union.
Zimbabwe does have
friends, in Africa and the developing world, as was shown
when it avoided
suspension from the Commonwealth at this week's summit
in
Australia.
But Mugabe has run out of friends at the top
table.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called Mugabe an
"anachronism" on
Wednesday.
The Bush administration says it will
tighten sanctions if Mugabe is deemed
to have stolen the election or refuses
to leave office after a Tsvangirai
victory.
BBC
Thursday, 7 March, 2002, 16:34 GMT
Commonwealth: the Zimbabwe
dilemma
Britain, backed by Australia and New Zealand, is pushing
for tough action against Zimbabwe if Robert Mugabe is found to have used
intimidation and violence to win the presidential elections. Commonwealth
leaders have set up a body to consider suspending Zimbabwe, but it will not act
before the elections. BBC News Online looks back at recent events.
4 March 2002
The government claims the elections will be
fair
|
Commonwealth leaders agree not to take immediate punitive action against
Zimbabwe - leaving some members disappointed. Under a deal reached at talks in
Australia, the leaders will set up a three-member committee to decide possible
action, based on the findings of the group's election observers deployed in the
country.
The BBC's Michael Peschardt reports
3 March 2002
Commonwealth leaders reached a
compromise
|
Zimbabwe accuses Tony Blair of "disgraceful colonialism" for trying to have
the country suspended from the Commonwealth. The attack by Zimbabwe's
Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, came after Mr Blair warned the
Commonwealth's reputation could be damaged if it did not take tough action
against President Robert Mugabe.
The BBC's James Robbins reports
18 February 2002
Observers were prevented from doing their
job
|
After a meeting in Brussels the European Union imposes sanctions on
Zimbabwe's ruling elite and pulls its election observers out of the country. The
measures come just weeks ahead of hotly contested presidential elections and
rising political violence.
The BBC's Rob Smith reports
17 February 2002
Mugabe faces a tough challenge from the
MDC
|
The Zimbabwean Government forces the head of the European Union's election
observer mission, Pierre Schori, to leave the country, raising the prospect of
EU sanctions against President Mugabe's regime.
The BBC's Claire Marshall reports
14 February 2002
The opposition says intimidation will stop them
winning
|
Thirty observers from the European Union are accredited
to observe next month's presidential elections in Zimbabwe. But they only come
from countries which Zimbabwe says are not biased and hostile to them -
suggesting the row with the EU is not yet resolved.
The BBC's Rachel Harvey reports
11 February 2002
The EU threatens sanctions if its monitors are not
granted full
access
|
The leader of a team of European Union election monitors
arrives in Zimbabwe to observe the Presidential election due in March. Pierre
Schori, a former Swedish Government minister, says he is confident of being
accredited despite warnings from Zimbabwe that officials from some EU countries,
including Sweden, would not be welcome.
The BBC's Christen Thomson reports
31 January 2002
The UK pushed for Zimbabwe to be
suspended
|
Commonwealth foreign ministers decide not to recommend
that Zimbabwe be suspended from the organisation, but urge President Mugabe to
end the political violence ravaging the country. The ministers also call on
Zimbabwe to allow the immediate deployment of international observers ahead of
presidential elections in March.
The BBC's Bridget Kendall reports
EUBusiness
Zimbabwe's ties with EU: from bad to worse
by Stephane
Barbier
HARARE, March 6 (AFP) - Relations between Zimbabwe and the
European Union
have gone from bad to worse, hitting rock bottom last month
when the EU
slapped sanctions against President Robert Mugabe following the
withdrawal
of their electoral observer mission.
In late January when
the row began in earnest, the EU pushed for
unconditional access for its
observers to the presidential election set for
this coming
weekend.
The EU has accused Zimbabwe for the past two years of human
rights abuses,
both on white-owned farms occupied by supporters of Mugabe and
during
campaigning ahead of legislative elections in June 2000 as well as
this
year's presidential vote.
Mugabe faces the first real challenge
to his 22-year grip on power in the
Saturday-Sunday vote, against opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai following
a violence-wracked campaign
period.
By deciding on February 18 to impose "targetted sanctions"
against Mugabe
and 19 of his aides -- who cannot travel to any of the EU
states, where
their assets have been frozen -- the EU considered that the
government had
gone too far by expelling Swedish diplomat Pierre Schori, the
head of the EU
observer mission to Zimbabwe.
Schori, Sweden's
ambassador to the United Nations, had arrived here on
February 10 knowing
that he was unwelcome in the country, at least as the
head of the EU observer
mission.
Schori had also headed the EU team for the 2000 parliamentary
elections,
which he deemed had not been free and fair on the basis of
widespread
violence against the opposition, a scenario similar to the one
unfolding
today.
Sweden is one of the six EU countries Mugabe had
accused of supporting the
main opposition party here. The other five are
Britain, Germany, the
Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
By
sending Schori, the EU tried to call Mugabe's bluff, but unsurprisingly
he
was not fazed.
So the EU pulled out all 30 of its observers, including
those from the nine
member states that Harare had specifically
invited.
The EU and Zimbabwe are linked by the June 2000 Cotonou
Agreement governing
relations between the EU and former colonies in the
African, Caribbean and
Pacific (ACP) countries.
The accord was
designed as a partnership to help ACP countries compete in
the global
marketplace.
Through the Cotonou Agreement, the EU is a top trading
partner with
Zimbabwe, and is the source of two-thirds of the international
aid that
comes into the country.
EU member states import an average of
750 million euros of goods each year
from Zimbabwe.
But the Cotonou
accord also has a fundamental political underpinning, from
the European point
of view, in terms of respect for democracy, human rights,
the rule of law and
good governance.
Failure to respect these principles can lead to
sanctions if consultations
fail.
Norway, which does not belong to the
EU, will be the only European country
with observers here; most others are
from African countries considered
sympathetic to Mugabe.
The decision
by the EU to impose sanctions, followed a few days later by a
similar US
move, was criticized by African countries, as well as a few EU
diplomats in
Harare, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.
Accusing Brussels of
having been unduly influenced by Britain, the former
colonial power with more
interests in Zimbabwe than any other EU state, one
of the diplomats said the
total pullout had been a mistake.
He said that given repeated reports of
government-sanctioned violence and
electoral fraud the vote need as many
observers as possible
US Donates Maize for Starving Masses
Financial Gazette
(Harare)
March 7, 2002
Posted to the web March 7, 2002
Staff
Reporter
THE United States of America has announced a contribution of
34 430 tonnes
of maize worth over $1 billion to a World Food Programme (WFP)
campaign to
feed more than 500 000 Zimbabweans facing
starvation.
World Vision International, a partner in the WFP's food aid
scheme in
Zimbabwe, has been allocated 14 310 tonnes of maize to feed the
vulnerable
provinces of Matabeleland South and the Midlands.
The WFP
will receive an initial 8 470 tonnes, worth $253 million, which will
arrive
in Zimbabwe from Tanzania between this week and next week and will
assist the
United Nations organisation to feed 558 000 people in 19
districts who are
facing a severe food crisis.
It will receive a further 11 650 between
this year and early 2003.
WFP country office director Pierre Saillez said
distribution of food had
begun in Matabeleland North and South, although the
pace of disbursement was
slow because of the number of recipients involved
and because of a check
system established to ensure that the most vulnerable
groups received aid.
"We have so far distributed about 400 tonnes of food
to the Matabeleland
region," he said. "We hope that as the Afghanistan
situation improves, more
donor organisations will help the thousands of
Zimbabweans in desperate need
of food over the next year.
"In total,
WFP needs 116 000 tonnes of food worth US$60 million to feed
Zimbabweans
until early next year."
However, only 30 percent of this has been raised
so far.
Meanwhile, United States ambassador to Harare Joseph Sullivan
said despite
the tension between Zimbabwe and his government, which two weeks
ago slapped
targeted sanctions against ruling ZANU PF officials, his country
would not
abandon the people of Zimbabwe.
He said: "We will not
abandon the people of Zimbabwe who are going hungry.
WFP have assured us this
food will be distributed in a non-partisan way and
will reach the intended
recipients. This is to ensure that the food is not
hijacked for political
mileage."
Mugabe offers the earth if he is re-elected
Robert Mugabe is belittling
his presidential opponent by promising new
government aid to Zimbabwe's
impoverished people.
It is one of his final campaign appearances before
this weekend's elections.
Mr Mugabe's popularity has crashed amid
economic chaos and political
violence mainly blamed on his ruling
party.
He says the government will reopen the hundreds of businesses
closed during
the country's economic crisis and give them to the
workers.
"We will take them over if the owners don't want to open them
up," he told a
rally of about 10,000 people in the town of Chinhoyi, "We have
the money to
run them."
He also promises to build a dam in every
district to provide farmers with
water during droughts, a pledge he has made
in previous elections.
Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change
said he would be willing to consider forming a
government of national unity
with the ruling party if he won the
election.
"In the interest of fostering national healing and taking the
country
forward the MDC will keep on open mind on the issue," he told a
news
conference.
MDC officials said the voter rolls remained badly
tainted just two days
before the election. More than 80% of the people who
had died in the last
two years remained on the rolls in some areas. In other
places more than a
third of the people who voted in the last election have
been dropped from
the registrar.
ZIMBABWE: Human Rights Watch slams land grab
JOHANNESBURG, 7 March (IRIN)
- Human Rights Watch (HRW) has placed the blame for Zimbabwe's ongoing political
and social instability squarely on President Robert Mugabe's "fast track" land
reform programme, claiming it has harmed the very people it was designed to
assist.
In a statement released on Thursday Human Rights Watch slammed
Mugabe's handling of the land question and the violence and human rights abuses
that have accompanied it. A report on its findings was to be released Friday,
on the eve of Zimbabwe's critical presidential elections on 9-10
March.
"Militia groups affiliated with the party of President Robert
Mugabe have carried out serious acts of violence against rural dwellers and
landless workers on commercial farms," the organisation said. It also said it
received reports of discrimination, on political grounds, in the distribution of
land.
"Many of the people who were supposed to benefit from this reform
have actually been targets of the violence," Peter Takirambudde, executive
director of the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, was quoted as
saying.
While the organisation acknowledged the "unjust situation which
saw colonial policies of expropriation giving white farmers huge, free tracts of
fertile land in what is now Zimbabwe, while rural black people were restricted
to crowded tribal reserves of little agricultural value". It said little had
been done to change the situation from independence in 1980 up to
2000.
In 2000, President Mugabe's government passed new laws allowing
expropriation of land without compensation, and encouraging landless peasants to
occupy commercial farmland.
In the 40-page report, "Fast Track Land
Reform in Zimbabwe", HRW provides testimonies from people who said that many of
those who wanted land under the government programme had to show support for the
ruling ZANU-PF party and that those who supported the opposition were denied
land.
"The landless labourers who live and work on the commercial farms
have been largely excluded from land redistribution. Among the most
disadvantaged Zimbabweans, they have also been particular targets of
state-sponsored violence.
"The government also failed to ensure that
women, particularly married women, benefited from the land reform, despite its
stated commitment to gender balance," said the HRW report.
It called for
the post-election government in Zimbabwe to bring to justice those responsible
for abuses, and to take steps to ensure that the violence does not recur.
Additionally, any
government-sponsored land reform must respect the rule of
law.
ZIMBABWE: Independent radio shows its mettle
JOHANNESBURG, 7 March (IRIN)
- When the Zimbabwe government refused to grant them a broadcasting licence,
Radio Dialogue moved out of the studio and into the community in an innovative
bid to reach the people.
Each weekend Radio Dialogue "road shows" perform
live at shopping
centres in Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo, mixing music,
drama and poetry with messages on human rights and community empowerment. The
station also hands out tapes of its programmes to taxi drivers to play to their
passengers.
"We are taking the station to the people," Jethro Mpofu,
head of
Radio Dialogue, told IRIN. "We want to play a developmental
and
democratisation role. We want to be a platform for the community where
ideas around democracy can circulate freely."
There is not one licensed
independent radio station in Zimbabwe. After the Supreme Court ruled against the
legal monopoly of the state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) in
2000, the government introduced new regulations that have effectively barred
private and community radio.
"It's clearly undemocratic. Licences are
subject to approval by the minister [of state for information] and ZBC's
monopoly has remained as a result of that," explained Takura Zhangazha of the
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). "Basically they are using it to stall
any liberalisation of the air waves."
The regulations do not allow
foreign funding for private broadcasters. Without that, "community radio is not
able to exist", said Mpofu. "Bulawayo is economically and politically
marginalised and we cannot afford to buy the equipment."
Zhangazha
suggested that Radio Dialogue, which was set up last year, would not escape the
government's attention for much longer. "Inevitably the government will clamp
down on them," he told IRIN.
Another radio initiative in Zimbabwe is
Voice of the People, aimed at a rural audience. The programmes are produced in
Zimbabwe, but broadcast by Radio Netherlands on short wave back into the
country.
Programme editor Ish Mafundikwa said the role of the station
was: "An exercise in empowerment, especially for rural people as they don't have
access to information. We are giving a voice to people who would never have a
platform on ZBC."
Voice of the People broadcasts two-and-a-half hours
each day in English and in Zimbabwe's two main vernacular languages, Shona and
Ndebele. The key to reaching its rural constituency is the use of short wave. FM
signals do not extend beyond the cities.
Minister of State for
Information Jonathan Moyo has accused Voice of the People of being a "pirate"
station. However, some officials from the ruling ZANU-PF party have agreed to be
interviewed.
"In a democratic country we would be a community radio
station," said Mafundikwa. "We are doing social issues, some political stuff,
voter education, the environment, consumer rights."
Instead, the station
has been denied accreditation to cover this weekend's presidential election, and
has felt the "psychological"
pressure of Moyo's disapproval, Mafundikwa
said.
ZIMBABWE: Independent radio shows its mettle
JOHANNESBURG, 7 March (IRIN)
- When the Zimbabwe government refused to grant them a broadcasting licence,
Radio Dialogue moved out of the studio and into the community in an innovative
bid to reach the people.
Each weekend Radio Dialogue "road shows" perform
live at shopping
centres in Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo, mixing music,
drama and poetry with messages on human rights and community empowerment. The
station also hands out tapes of its programmes to taxi drivers to play to their
passengers.
"We are taking the station to the people," Jethro Mpofu,
head of
Radio Dialogue, told IRIN. "We want to play a developmental
and
democratisation role. We want to be a platform for the community where
ideas around democracy can circulate freely."
There is not one licensed
independent radio station in Zimbabwe. After the Supreme Court ruled against the
legal monopoly of the state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) in
2000, the government introduced new regulations that have effectively barred
private and community radio.
"It's clearly undemocratic. Licences are
subject to approval by the minister [of state for information] and ZBC's
monopoly has remained as a result of that," explained Takura Zhangazha of the
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). "Basically they are using it to stall
any liberalisation of the air waves."
The regulations do not allow
foreign funding for private broadcasters. Without that, "community radio is not
able to exist", said Mpofu. "Bulawayo is economically and politically
marginalised and we cannot afford to buy the equipment."
Zhangazha
suggested that Radio Dialogue, which was set up last year, would not escape the
government's attention for much longer. "Inevitably the government will clamp
down on them," he told IRIN.
Another radio initiative in Zimbabwe is
Voice of the People, aimed at a rural audience. The programmes are produced in
Zimbabwe, but broadcast by Radio Netherlands on short wave back into the
country.
Programme editor Ish Mafundikwa said the role of the station
was: "An exercise in empowerment, especially for rural people as they don't have
access to information. We are giving a voice to people who would never have a
platform on ZBC."
Voice of the People broadcasts two-and-a-half hours
each day in English and in Zimbabwe's two main vernacular languages, Shona and
Ndebele. The key to reaching its rural constituency is the use of short wave. FM
signals do not extend beyond the cities.
Minister of State for
Information Jonathan Moyo has accused Voice of the People of being a "pirate"
station. However, some officials from the ruling ZANU-PF party have agreed to be
interviewed.
"In a democratic country we would be a community radio
station," said Mafundikwa. "We are doing social issues, some political stuff,
voter education, the environment, consumer rights."
Instead, the station
has been denied accreditation to cover this weekend's presidential election, and
has felt the "psychological"
pressure of Moyo's disapproval, Mafundikwa
said.
CNN
Mugabe vows to pursue challenger
March 7, 2002 Posted: 2:54 AM EST
(0754 GMT)
Challenger Tsvangirai is facing trial for treason
after the voting
HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Just over two days before Zimbabwe's
controversial
presidential election, Robert Mugabe warned he would pursue his
challenger
once the voting was over.
Opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai has been charged with treason over a
secretly recorded video
showing him discussing Mugabe's "elimination" with
Canadian lobbyists who
turned out to be working for Mugabe.
This was alleged by Zimbabwean
government officials to be evidence of an
assassination plot.
"No
murderer will go unpunished. No one we know to have planned such deeds
will
escape," said Mugabe, promising post-election retribution against those
he
said had committed crimes against Zimbabwe, though he mentioned no
names.
FinGaz
African sanctions will hit Mugabe hardest
By George BN
Ayittey
3/7/02 3:34:41 AM (GMT +2)
IN 1996, President Robert Mugabe of
Zimbabwe followed Nelson Mandela, the
then President of South Africa, who led
the effort to expel Nigeria from the
Common-wealth at the Auckland summit,
and to condemn Nigeria’s brutal
military regime of General Sani
Abacha.
Mugabe then said "Nigeria is a disgrace" and called for punitive
sanctions
against the country. The call came after the brutal hanging of
Ogoni human
rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others on November 10
1995, despite
a chorus of international pleas for clemency.
Barely six
years later, it is now Mugabe who, impervious to reason and
common sense, is
resorting to Abacha-like tactics in a desperate bid to
cling to power as the
economy collapses around him.
In its 22 years of existence, Zimbabwe has
had only one president, Mugabe.
After a successful guerrilla campaign against
British colonialists and a
white minority regime in the 1970s, Mugabe was
hailed as a hero and swept
into office as the country’s first president in
1980. He vowed to make
Zimbabwe a one-party nation and his Zimbabwe African
National Union
Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) party "a truly Marxist-Leninist
party to ensure
the charting of an irreversible social course and create a
socialist
ideology".
In the beginning, his expansion of education,
policy of reconciliation
toward the white minority and willingness to resolve
inequitable
distribution of land between whites and blacks through peaceful
negotiation
won him plaudits and Zimbabwe was regarded as "a role model for
Africa." But
there was a darker, sinister political side: his megalomaniac
lust for
power.
He successfully "re-elected" himself in what angry
Africans deride as
"coconut elections" in 1985, 1990 and 1996. Essentially,
"coconut elections"
are farcical elections in which the incumbent writes the
rules and then
serves both as a player and the referee.
The deck is
hideously stacked against the opposition candidates, who are
starved of
funds, denied access to the state-controlled media and brutalised
by
government-hired thugs while the police watch. By contrast, the
incumbent
enjoys access to enormous state resources: state media, vehicles,
the
police, the military and civil servants are all commandeered to ensure
his
re-election.
Further, the entire electoral process itself is
rigged: voters’ rolls are
padded with ruling party supporters and phantom
voters, while opposition
supporters are purged.
The electoral
commissioner is in the pocket of the ruling party, as are the
judges who
might settle any election disputes.
In the July 1985 elections, for
example, thugs from Mugabe’s youth brigade
rampaged through the suburbs of
Harare, brutalising supporters of the
opposition. Homes were raided and
furniture and household possessions were
thrown out into the
streets.
Victims were beaten and pummelled to the point of
unconsciousness, their
belongings were stolen and houses set on
fire.
A defeated opposition candidate, Simon Chauruka, was gruesomely
hacked to
death with axes when a mob of ZANU PF supporters attacked his home
in
Dzivaresekwa suburb. Another opposition candidate, Kenneth Mano, who
had
just been released from detention, was stabbed three times. And
five
officials of another opposition party were shot to death in the
western
coal-mining town of Hwange by members of Mugabe’s youth
brigade.
The 1990 elections were also marred by intimidation, violence
and
assassination. In Gweru, Patrick Kombayi and five other opposition
members
were shot.
After similarly blood-drenched elections in March
1996, Mugabe promised he
would transfer land to landless peasants, even if it
meant confiscating
white-owned farms. He also promised to force through black
economic
empowerment (indigenisation).
On March 9 2002, the
78-year-old Mugabe is running again for re-election.
Morgan Tsvangirai,
the leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), is
popular and can unseat Mugabe in a free and fair election.
An opinion poll by
the independent research agency Target Research in
November showed Tsvangirai
winning at least 52.9 percent of the vote against
Mugabe’s 47.1
percent.
Another poll, conducted in January by the Harare-based Mass
Public Opinion
Institute led by political scientist Masipula Sithole, showed
Tsvangirai
running away with the vote in most provinces and especially in
urban areas.
Mugabe is running scared — afraid of his own record of
broken promises,
brutal repression, economic mismanagement and venal
cronyism.
Contracts for public works went to cronies. The state
bureaucracy swelled as
the system of patronage spiralled out of control.
Ministers amassed great
wealth and even the military became tainted with
corruption. After Captain
Edwin Nleya alleged in March 1989 that corruption
was serious in the army’s
signals directorate in Harare and in the elite
Sixth Brigade, he "was
brutally killed and his decomposed body later found on
a mountain near the
coal-mining town of Hwange" (New African, July 1989; page
16).
By the late 1990s, the economy was on the verge of collapse and the
country
rocked by a wave of strikes by workers, nurses, teachers to protest
rising
food and fuel price hikes. In 1998, even doctors went on strike to
protest
shortages of such basic supplies as soap and painkillers.
And
while the urban poor were rioting about food prices, the Mugabe
government
ordered a fleet of new Mercedes cars for the 50-odd Cabinet
ministers while
77-year-old Mugabe himself and his 36-year-old wife, Grace,
attended lavish
parties and conferences abroad. In 1999, Mugabe further
angered voters by
tripling and quadrupling the salaries of his ministers.
Rampant shortages
of basic commodities — such as mealie-meal, which is the
national staple
diet, bread, rice, potatoes, cooking oil and even soap — now
keep inflation
raging at more than 116 percent. With the flight of investors
and closure of
businesses due to attacks by militants — more than 30
businesses were
attacked in May 2001 alone — jobs are scarce, pushing
Zimbabwe’s unemployment
to nearly 60 percent.
At independence in 1980, per capita income was
US$950 and had fallen to $530
at the time of writing — a 44 percent drop —
and more than 70 percent of the
population now lives below the poverty line.
The Zimbabwean dollar, worth
US$2 at independence in 1980, crashed in 1999
and is now worth only three US
cents.
A quarter of the population is
infected with HIV, the virus which causes
AIDS. The United Nations says more
than half a million of Zimbabwe’s 11
million people need emergency food
aid.
The state treasury is empty, pillaged by kamikaze kleptocrats and
drained at
the rate of $3 million a month by a mercenary involvement in a war
in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cabinet ministers, army
generals,
relatives of Mugabe, prominent figures in the ruling party and
scores of the
well-connected have allegedly launched lucrative business
ventures to
plunder Congo’s rich resources: diamonds, cobalt and
gold.
Plunder of the Congo’s mineral riches and lucrative deals keep
Zimbabwe’s
army generals fat and happy. Accordingly, the commander of the
defence
forces, General Vitalis Zvinavashe, warned last month that the
country’s
military, police and intelligence chiefs would not accept a
"Morgan
Tsvangirai" as a national leader if he wins the March 9 election
since he
was not a veteran of Zimbabwe’s independence struggle.
Mugabe
angrily rejects criticism of his government for the economic crisis.
He
blames British colonialists, greedy Western powers, the racist white
minority
and the International Monetary Fund, which he denounced as that
"monstrous
creature".
But Zimbabwean voters know better. When Mugabe asked them in a
February 15
2000 referendum for draconian emergency powers to seize white
farms for
distribution to landless peasants, they resoundingly rejected
the
constitutional revisions by 55 percent to 45 percent.
Paranoid and
desperate, Mugabe played his trump card. He sent his "war
veterans" to seize
white commercial farmland anyway.
To be sure, there is basic inequity in
the distribution of land in Zimbabwe.
Whites account for only about one
percent of Zimbabwe’s population of 12.5
million, yet 4 500 white farmers
continue to own nearly a third of the
country’s most fertile farmland. But
the land issue has become a political
tool, ruthlessly exploited by Mugabe at
election time to fan racial hatred,
solidify his vote among landless rural
voters, maintain his grip on power
and divert attention from his disastrous
Marxist-Leninist policies and
ill-fated misadventures in the Congo.
As
part of the deal negotiated at Lancaster House in London in 1979, a
land
reform programme was established under which land was to be purchased
from
white farmers for redistribution to landless peasants on a
"willing-buyer
willing-seller" basis. Australia, Britain, France, the
Netherlands, Norway,
Sweden, the United States of America and the World Bank
signed on to provide
funds for this programme.
But the programme was
so grotesquely mismanaged that Britain withdrew
financial support in 1992,
after contributing more than US$64 million. The
current crisis has prompted
the donors to suspend about US$10 million in
land reform aid.
On March
28 2000, Mugabe’s own parliament, in a written answer on the land
issue to
Margaret Dongo, leader of the opposition Zimbabwe Union of
Democrats,
acknowledged that the government had distributed more than one
million acres
bought from white farmers under legal compulsion to 400
wealthy Zimbabweans,
most of whom were Mugabe cronies. In fact, back in
1994, 20 such farms seized
from white farmers were immediately grabbed by
high-ranking government
officials.
According to New African (September 1994): "The local Press
revealed that
the Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Charles Utete,
the Deputy
Secretary for Commerce and Industry, James Chininga, and Harare’s
first
black mayor, Dr Tizirai Gwata, are among those involved" (page
32).
Again in 1998, 24 additional farms of the Marula Estate in
Matabeleland were
acquired, ostensibly for resettlement. But the land,
totalling 300 square
miles, was divided among 47 government officials while
40 000 impoverished
Zimbabweans remained crammed in the neighbouring Semukwe
communal area. Army
chief General Solomon Majuru is allegedly now known as
the country’s largest
landholder.
Government minister Elliot Manyika
has vowed that if Mugabe is re-elected at
the weekend, the government would
expropriate businesses not owned by
blacks — reminiscent of Idi Amin’s
seizure of Asian businesses in Uganda in
the late 1970s.
Some 20 000
people of Indian subcontinent descent live in Zimbabwe along
with about 40
000 whites in the country. Together they make up less than one
percent of the
population.
Mugabe’s newly formed militia rampages through the
countryside, terrorising
and murdering perceived opposition supporters. At
least 26 Mugabe opponents
have been killed and more than 70 000 others have
been displaced since
January 1, according to the Zimbabwe Human Rights
Forum.
The activities of this militia is eerily reminiscent of the Hutu
Interahamwe
of Rwanda that slaughtered more than 800 000 Tutsis in 1994 to
avoid sharing
political power with them.
Draconian new Press and
security laws ensure that criticism of Mugabe, the
police and the army is
illegal. The office of The Daily News, which has been
critical of Mugabe’s
handling of the economy, has repeatedly been
fire-bombed and its black
editor, William Saidi, has received numerous death
threats, warning him to
stop criticising the government.
Distribution of election pamphlets is
banned and even non-governmental
organisations cannot teach voters that their
ballots are secret.
The opposition MDC must give police four days’
advance notice of a political
rally — sufficient time for Mugabe’s thugs to
be dispatched to disrupt it.
Over 65 of Tsvangirai’s rallies have been banned
or disrupted. On February
22 2002, a police surveillance team trailing the
convoy of Tsvangirai on his
way to a campaign rally in Masvingo, a rural
district in the south of the
country, opened fire. Tsvangirai escaped
unhurt.
On the same day, two South African election observers were
injured, along
with five opposition supporters, during an attack on MDC
offices in the town
of Kwekwe, 200 km west of Harare, by ZANU thugs armed
with stones and iron
bars.
Mugabe has barred foreign election
observers from the country; only those
approved by the government have been
allowed in. After Mugabe’s government
expelled the Swedish head of the
European election observer mission, Pierre
Schori, the European Union voted
on February 18 to impose tough sanctions
Mugabe and more than a dozen of his
top aides. The sanctions will bar Mugabe
and 19 others from travelling to
European Union nations. They will also
freeze any European assets held by
Mugabe and about 20 advisers, including
the commander of the armed forces and
the ministers of security, justice,
land and information.
Washington
followed suit on February 22 by barring Mugabe and his inner
circle from
travelling to the US, to protest an election campaign that the
administration
of President George W Bush has said has been "marred by
political violence
and intimidation".
Zimbabwe lambasted the sanctions as "economic
terrorism." But Representative
Ed Royce, chairman of the House International
Relations Subcommittee on
Africa, had revealed on January 16 that Zimbabwean
officials were
transferring money, thought to be millions of dollars, to safe
havens in
Europe and the United States ahead of the country’s presidential
elections.
While these measures might help put pressure on Mugabe and his
cronies, what
Zimbabwe needs first and foremost are African sanctions. They
would be far
more potent and they hit Abacha the hardest.
lTo be
continued next week.
lGeorge Ayittey, a native of Ghana, is a
distinguished economist at American
University and president of the Free
Africa Foundation, both in Washington
DC. He is the author of a forthcoming
book, The African Predicament (St
Martin’s Press).
FinGaz
Fears of retribution have poisoned poll
3/7/02
3:47:32 AM (GMT +2)
AS many readers would have gathered by now, a big
anti-Mugabe demonstration
was held outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London
last Saturday. As government
authorities would also have gathered by now
through "intelligence sour-ces",
yours truly was there — no big
deal.
I learnt about the planned demonstration on the Internet but
somehow got the
times wrong. As a result I was the first man on the scene of
this planned
legal gathering (the Metropolitan Police even seconded a couple
of Bobbies
to make sure everyone was safe!) The man setting up the public
address
system was quite impressed with my enthusiasm and cheerfully told me
I was
an hour early.
Big crowd
I decided to
while up time checking out new publications at the nearby
Africa Centre
bookshop. I got so engrossed and so lost in the shelves that
when I
eventually checked my watch the demonstration had been underway for
some 15
or so minutes. I rushed back to Zimbabwe House (not to be confused
with an
old people’s home of the same name somewhere in Africa).
Some 50 yards
from the scene I could already hear Oliver Mtukudzi belting
out Bvuma
Wasakara — and for whatever reason, my adrenaline started pumping!
There was
a big but very good-natured crowd.
I was handed a flyer which read:
"Citizens of Zimbabwe living abroad, even
though you cannot vote, all is not
lost. You can influence the outcome of
the result by contacting friends and
relatives to exercise their right.
"Urge them to encourage everyone to
please, please go and vote. Please
reassure them that their vote matters and
is secret. A big turnout is
essential to
democracy."
Uncomfortable
I mingled and chatted
with a number of strangers — fellow Zimbabweans. I
could not help but notice
that the majority of demonstrators where whites.
Many of the blacks who came
to participate where clearly uncomfortable,
especially with the presence of
television cameras.
Two students I spoke to said they had agonised before
deciding to come to
the demo because they feared that there might be
intelligence officers
lurking in the background. In fact, until they
established that I was a
journalist, they were uncomfortable with me
too!
I noticed that when a diplomat parked his four-wheeler at the front
door of
the embassy, just yards from the demonstrating gathering, a number of
blacks
immediately left the scene.
The demonstration was organised by
Washing Ali, who described himself as a
human rights activist and also a
member of the Movement for Democratic
Change
(MDC).
Intelligence officers
Ali told me that it
was difficult to organise political gatherings in
London, as most people
feared alleged recent deployment of Zimbabwean
intelligence officers to check
on the activities of MDC members. He added,
however, that the situation was
improving all the time.
Asked by a Reuters reporter if he was not worried
that the visual image that
would be seen would be that of mostly whites, Ali
said as most of those
targeted by the Zimbabwean authorities were mostly
blacks, their fear was
therefore understandable. In any case, he added, those
whites present were
Zimbabweans and also had a right to have their views
heard.
If there is one word that defines and characterises politics in
Africa in
general and Zimbabwe in particular, it is "retribution". The threat
and
fear — whether real or implied — of retribution is driving the momentum
and
direction of the current political campaign. It is not unrealistic
to
suggest that should the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai lose the
presidential
election he will remain fairly safe from
retribution.
However, the same cannot be said for all the ordinary men
and women who have
supported or campaigned for him. They know there will be
hell to pay. Their
fear of retribution at the hands of a victorious and
rampant ZANU PF is
real, perhaps judging by what has already
transpired.
Bloody hands
On the other side of the
coin are those aligned to the ruling party — those
with cushy jobs in the
government, those who have been given farms that they
do not deserve, those
who have terrorised other Zimbabweans, raped and even
killed.
There
must be many whose hands are so bloodied that even deep down within
their
troubled souls, they know that should there be a change of guard, they
will
certainly be called to account for their sins of commission
or
omission.
It is this fear of retribution that has made Zimbabwe’s
presidential
election such a deadly event. On the one hand you have some
whose only hope
of survival and a better tomorrow are through "change". On
the other hand
there are those who see any change of the status quo as
nothing short of a
death sentence.
No middle
ground
It looks like in all this politicking there is no middle
ground, nothing to
bind us as a nation. So much hatred has been allowed to
flow and so many
crimes against humanity have been allowed to go unpunished
that come March
11 if the winner of the election should call for
reconciliation, it will
sound so hollow and unconvincing. The public can
rightly ask: "Haven’t we
heard it all before?"
Elections do not always
have to be a matter of life and death, an excuse for
rabid youths to go on a
spree of looting, destruction of property and raping
women.
Elections
should not mean that it is time for elderly villagers to go and
hide in caves
and hills. Surely it should be a crime to force anyone to
attend a political
meeting regardless of whether one uses direct or implied
threats of
retribution.
Last Saturday I took time to read all the 104 names of
Zimbabweans who have
died in the run-up to the presidential election.
Together with others I
bowed my head in memory of those whose lives have been
cruelly taken away.
Of course these listed 104 are not the only ones who
have died — but how
many more have to die before we can learn to accept and
regard an election
to public office as a peaceful and necessary routine in
the life of a
nation?
Andrew Mutandwa is a Zimbabwean journalist based
in the United Kingdom.
FinGaz
What it means if it is Tsvangirai or Mugabe
By Nqobile
Nyathi Assistant Editor
3/7/02 3:32:11 AM (GMT +2)
ZIMBABWEANS have
arrived at the crossroads as they prepare to cast their
votes this weekend in
a presidential election whose outcome will either
plunge the country deeper
into turmoil or set it on the path to
international acceptance and economic
recovery.
Five candidates are contesting this weekend’s presidential
poll, the most
crucial since Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980.
But the battle
is primarily between the incumbent, President Robert Mugabe of
the governing
ZANU PF party and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition
Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC).
Analysts this week said Mugabe,
in power for the past 22 years, was very
much the "devil voters know" and,
with his control over the top ranks of the
Zimbabwean army, could ensure
stability in the potentially volatile
post-election period.
But these
are his only advantages, they said.
Mugabe, who has flirted with both
socialism and Western-backed economic
reforms, is widely blamed for
Zimbabwe’s worst economic crisis since
independence.
The economy is
plagued by severe foreign currency shortages, soaring
inflation that reached
a record 116.7 percent in January, dwindling
investment, company closures,
record high unemployment of 60-plus percent
and poverty of 80 percent of the
population.
Government-sanctioned seizures of commercial farms by ruling
party
supporters have created widespread instability in the key
agricultural
sector. This has combined with a severe drought to leave the
country
desperately short of food and millions of people facing
starvation.
Political violence and human rights abuses, mainly blamed on
government
supporters, especially its so-called war veterans who occupy farms
and youth
militia being trained by the government under the guise of national
service,
have left Zimbabwe agonisingly isolated by the international
community.
"The isolation and pariah status that the country has achieved
will worsen
(if Mugabe retains power)," University of Zimbabwe political
scientist
Eliphas Mukonoweshuro told the Financial
Gazette.
"Out of that isolation will come total economic
collapse."
A victory for Mugabe is likely to kill international food aid
for Zimbabwe,
which needs at least US$450 million to import basic food in the
next 16
months to avert starvation.
It is also likely to keep the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World
Bank away from the country, which
lost their assistance in 1999 because of
the government’s refusal to
implement economic reforms.
This will deny Zimbabwe crucial balance of
payments support and the vote of
confidence from the Bretton Woods
institutions that is necessary to trigger
foreign capital inflows into the
country.
"This government doesn’t have the capacity to revive the
economy,"
Mukonoweshuro said. "It’s not a government that can meaningfully
engage the
international community to attract investment and expand
employment.
"So there would be an increase in the rate of company
closures and there
would be unprecedented levels of
unemployment."
Independent consultant economist John Roberson said: "If
Mugabe was to win,
a great many people would feel that there is no way they
can carry on and
they would leave.
"This includes people whose
businesses are being threatened directly (by
ZANU PF’s publicly stated
intentions to take over foreign-owned companies)."
Mass starvation and
rising unemployment would trigger social unrest.
Commentators say the war
veterans and youth brigades who have been promised
employment and a better
life by ZANU PF are likely to be behind some of the
unrest when Mugabe fails
to live up to his promises.
Although the scenario is more positive if
Tsvangirai comes into power, the
future does not look completely rosy under
an MDC government.
A former trade union leader, Tsvangirai is not the
seasoned politician that
his main rival is. But analysts say this is unlikely
to hamper his chances
of successfully tackling Zimbabwe’s crisis.
"The
idea that one has to have experience is just nonsense. It’s not an
indication
of anyone’s capabilities," Mukonoweshuro said.
"What one needs is a clear
and implementable package of policies that is
designed to deal with
problems.
"One has to be a good manager. Morgan Tsvangirai seems to have
all this. His
package of policies is quite comprehensive and he has men and
women who can
steer through the murky waters that will be inherited from ZANU
PF."
Tsvangirai also has international goodwill on his side, which is
expected to
attract financial assistance for food aid and Zimbabwe’s economic
recovery.
Assistance is expected to come not just from multilateral
agencies such as
the IMF and the World Bank but Western countries and foreign
investors.
But an MDC government would inherit a troubled economy that
will require
unpopular decisions to put it on the path to
recovery.
Analysts said this would prevent a "honeymoon period" between
the new
government and the electorate, which would expect to see signs that
its
problems were being tackled.
Decisions to be taken would include
those on the exchange rate, which would
have to be depreciated significantly
from its present fixed rate of $55
against the United States dollar, which
does not reflect market shortages.
Action would also have to be taken on
soft, unsustainable interest rates and
to end chaos on the commercial farms,
where output will plunge by at least
40 percent this year.
"Most of
these decisions will hurt one group or another," an economist with
a Harare
commercial bank said.
"Dealing with the situation on the commercial farms
will anger war veterans,
depreciating the exchange rate will hurt importers
and consumers and
increasing interest rates will do little good to many
companies.
"But these decisions will have to be made or else the
international
community will doubt the government’s seriousness and this will
hurt our
chances of recovery."
Robertson added: "We are on the brink
of what might become a complete
disaster or a slow recovery. This is a vastly
difficult situation, with one
road leading to disaster and another to
recovery.
"But this is only if there is a clear victory for either side.
What is
really frightening is what will happen if we have a messy win that
is
disputed by either side. A messy win would most destabilise the
whole
country."
Commentators said a disputed win, one in which ZANU PF
attained victory by
rigging the election or in which an MDC victory was
rejected by the ruling
party, would see Zimbabwe engulfed by mass uprisings
that would compound its
deepening problems.
"We would have what is
tantamount to a civil war and we won’t see the IMF
within a mile of Zimbabwe
for a very long time," the commercial bank analyst
said.
"Companies
will close, those people who can will leave the country, many
others will
become refugees.
"It would take years to reverse the damage and we could
become just another
Third World basket case that no investor wants to hear
about."
FinGaz
State media ups propaganda
Staff Reporter
3/7/02 3:38:49
AM (GMT +2)
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s government has intensified a
propaganda blitz
against chief opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai ahead of a
tricky
presidential election at the weekend.
Breaking commitments
given by Mugabe to Southern Africa Development
Community leaders to allow
Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) equal access on all
public media, the government has turned its
massive media empire into a
ferocious propaganda tool against the opposition
leader.
The
television arm of state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) has
been
devoting more than half of airtime on its daily one-hour news bulletins
to
covering Mugabe’s long speeches, all of which are a vitriolic attack
on
Tsvangirai and his MDC.
Mugabe variously calls Tsvangirai a
sell-out, a stooge of Britain and the
whites, a tea boy and a thoroughly evil
man.
In a well-orchestrated campaign, ZBC reporters repeatedly distort
Tsvangirai
’s speeches on the few occasions they cover his meetings, saying
he is
making a U-turn on key policies such as the yet-to-be-resolved
land
question.
Zimbabwe’s sole broadcaster repeatedly plays down
Tsvangirai’s well-attended
rallies, often showing only close-up pictures of a
handful supporters
instead of the large crowds at the rallies.
The
worst example was last Sunday when Tsvangirai addressed the largest
rally in
the country at Harare’s Zimbabwe Grounds, which was attended by
about 40 000
people.
Instead, ZBC’s cameras only showed Tsvangirai delivering his
speech and a
few faces, most of them white, to reinforce Mugabe’s campaign
charge that
the opposition leader is a front for whites.
In contrast,
the corporation’s cameras always seek to give a false
impression that large
crowds attend Mugabe’s rallies by taking long-distance
pictures of a small
crowd deliberately spread over a large area.
In other instances, ZBC’s
news items lead with the government’s response to
MDC-linked events which the
broadcaster would not have previously reported
on.
Among the pledges
made by Mugabe to fellow SADC leaders at a January summit
in Malawi was that
he would allow the ZBC and the government-owned
newspapers to give equal
coverage to his ZANU PF party and the MDC.
Bakili Muluzi, the SADC
chairman and Malawi’s President, at that time told
doubting journalists he
was confident Mugabe would make good his promises
because of the assurance he
had given.
The state-owned newspapers, led by the Herald daily, have
instead maintained
a steady campaign to deliberately tarnish the image of the
MDC and its
leader, often accusing Tsvangirai and his followers of
involvement in crime
and terrorism.
For example, the newspapers have
accused the opposition of recruiting youths
for military training and of
sending anthrax-laced letters to senior
government officials. All these
charges have been found to be false.
The papers have also sought to
convict Tsvangirai before trial on
allegations that he plotted to kill
Mugabe, as alleged by disgraced former
Israeli spy Ari
Ben-Menashe.
Meanwhile ZANU PF’s militia has taken the propaganda
campaign further by
forcing public commuter bus operators to pin up posters
of Mugabe on
virtually all vehicles or risk being assaulted or
worse.
Some bus operators have had to withdraw their buses from rural
routes
because they refused to display Mugabe’s portrait, which ZANU
PF’s
supporters mounting illegal roadblocks in the countryside always
demand
before allowing a bus to go through.
FinGaz
Militias force re-deployment of MDC pollsters
Staff
Reporter
3/7/02 3:36:29 AM (GMT +2)
THE opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) this week said it has
been forced to transfer 5 000
of its polling agents from rural areas, where
they have been undergoing
training, to urban areas because of constant
harassment and attacks by ruling
ZANU PF militias.
MDC’s elections director Paul Themba Nyathi said the 5
000 were part of a
huge group of 17 000 agents which the opposition party had
been training to
monitor the presidential election this weekend.
He
said police had also used the draconian Public Order and Security Act
(POSA)
to break up training sessions of the MDC’s pollsters, saying their
gatherings
were illegal.
"In all three Masho-naland provinces, all our training
events have been
moved to Harare because of disruptions by war veterans and
ZANU PF
supporters," Nyathi told the Financial Gazette.
"Also in
Lupane, Binga, Nkayi and Plumtree most of our training programmes
have been
suspended and we have had to move to more secure areas in the
urban
areas."
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said he was not aware that the
MDC’s
training programmes for polling agents had been disrupted by the
police.
But he said if such training had turned out to be political
meetings, then
the police could have intervened if prior permission to stage
the meetings
had not been obtained from the police.
"I can’t say
whether they were disrupted or not because these meetings could
have been
held as training meetings but what happened there could have been
something
totally different," Bvudzijena said.
"Maybe the behaviour of the
participants was not consistent with the agenda
of the meeting, which would
have posed a problem," he added.
Under POSA any gathering of a political
nature of more than three people
needs police clearance before it can go
ahead.
Nyathi said the police had on several occasions refused to
sanction the
training sessions because the police claimed the meetings were a
threat to
public order.
The forced switching of venues for the
training programmes has put a huge
financial burden on the MDC, which has to
fork out more money for the upkeep
of the agents and to dispatch them to
their polling stations, Nyathi said.
The MDC officials said they were
even more concerned about the safety and
security of the polling agents
during the two-day poll.
"We have the numbers (of polling agents) but
what we don’t have is the
security of the polling agents, which is the
state’s responsibility. The
state is playing truant on the issue of security
for these guys," Nyathi
said.
lOur Bulawayo Correspondent
reports that about 20 MDC election agents in
Lupane in Matabeleland North
were this week forced to flee their villages
for Bulawayo following death
threats from war veterans and ZANU PF
supporters there.
The flight of
the agents coincided with an upsurge in political violence in
and around
Bulawayo, blamed by most residents on ZANU PF’s militia who on
Sunday burnt
26 homesteads at St Peter’s Village, a peri-urban settlement
for the
elderly.
In most high-density suburbs of Bulawayo, the militia are going
around the
townships harassing residents and threatening them to vote for
President
Mugabe.
The MDC’s Nyathi said yesterday that political
violence in Lupane and Nkayi
districts had reached alarming proportions, with
several international
observers understood to have expressed concern over the
deteriorating
situation there.
"Our polling agents are being hunted
down," said Nyathi, as he showed this
reporter party members who have sought
refuge at the MDC regional offices in
Bulawayo.
"We have about 20 who
arrived here on Monday after being chased out of their
villages by the war
veterans and the youth brigades. But we will not be
deterred because victory
is within sight," he said.
Nkosinesisa Mkhwananzi, one of the polling
agents who fled her home in fear
of ZANU PF’s storm troopers, said she would
be returning to her area to take
up her post as an election agent despite the
violence.
"I will be betraying the people if I don’t go back. We need to
finish off
ZANU PF once and for all. The hour is now," she said, barely
concealing her
anger
FinGaz
Zimbabwe expels SA union boss
3/7/02 3:27:08 AM
(GMT +2)
ZIMBABWEAN immigration officials on Monday refused entry into
the country of
the coordinator of the Southern African Journalists’
Association, Tuwani
Gumani, whose organisation wants to challenge in court a
Bill that hampers
the operations of Zimbabwe’s independent
media.
Gumani told the Financial Gazette that immigration officials
turned him away
at Harare International Airport on Monday evening and
declared him a
prohibited person, although they did not indicate
why.
"I wasn’t there to monitor the presidential elections because I’m no
longer
a practising journalist, but when I got to the airport I was told
that
anything to do with journalists had to be accredited," he
said.
"I was told I was a prohibited person in Zimbabwe but I was not
given the
reasons why. I did make a statement on the 11th of February
pertaining to
two Bills that had been passed, particularly the media Bill.
I’m not sure if
that forms the basis of my being declared a prohibited person
in Zimbabwe."
He said he was not sure if the prohibition banned him from
entering Zimbabwe
for life or if it would extend only until after this
weekend’s presidential
election.
Gumani, whose organisation last month
said it was considering challenging
the Access to Information and Protection
of Privacy Bill passed by
Parliament, said he had travelled to Zimbabwe to
meet officials of the
Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ).
He said his
discussions with ZUJ would have centred on the suspension from
the union of
former Financial Gazette Special Projects Editor Basildon Peta,
who resigned
last month after controversy following a story he wrote for a
British
publication.
"I was supposed to do an investigation to get the facts,"
Gumani said,
adding that progress on his organisation’s plans to challenge
Zimbabwe’s
information Bill could only be made after face-to-face meetings
with local
stakeholders.
"Part of my discussions with ZUJ and with
other stakeholders were to look at
the implications of this Bill. There will
be progress once we are able to
interact with all the interested parties," he
said.
"This has nothing to do with electioneering. The Bill will outlive
the
elections and whoever wins the elections will have to live with
the
implications of the Bill. That’s why we feel we have to look into
its
implications on the operations of journalists."
The Immigration
Department had by yesterday not responded to questions from
this newspaper on
Gumani’s deportation sent to it earlier.
— Staff Reporter
FinGaz
Army on high alert
By David Masunda Deputy
Editor-in-Chief
3/7/02 3:28:20 AM (GMT +2)
ALL armed forces have been
placed on alert, their leave cancelled and those
living outside the barracks
ordered to stay at home as Zimbabwean
authorities prepare for trouble after
this weekend’s explosive vote, it was
learnt this week.
President
Robert Mugabe, the supreme commander of the armed forces, has also
recalled
some soldiers from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to
beef up
security as the country gears up for the most fiercely contested
presidential
election since independence from Britain in 1980, official
sources
said.
Mugabe squares up against Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the
opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), in a tricky two-day election
over the
weekend.
Unprecedented levels of violence, intimidation and
vitriol — largely blamed
on Mugabe and his supporters — have raised the
country’s political
temperature ahead of the ballot.
The MDC this week
said 34 of its supporters had been killed in
state-sanctioned violence since
electioneering began in earnest in January.
Sources in the army said the
majority of the soldiers had been ordered to
remain in the barracks as from
last month while those who live in towns have
been told to be on alert at
home and warned not to travel out of town.
The sources said many serving
former black members of the Rhodesian army,
suspected by the army’s ZANU
PF-dominated high command of supporting the
MDC, were transferred from the
restive Matabeleland provinces during the
last few months.
Residents
of the two provinces and the nearby Midlands have already
complained that
thousands of soldiers deployed in the areas as replacements
are harassing
them.
Among the soldiers hastily withdrawn from the DRC under the pretext
of
adhering to the Lusaka peace plan signed between the belligerent forces
in
July 1999 is a battalion from the Mutare-based 3 Brigade, the sources
said.
Brian Raftopoulos, an independent analyst, said there was real
concern that
Zimbabwe could slide into anarchy after the highly contested
weekend vote.
"Whoever wins, there is going to be problems after this
election. It is
going to be very dangerous," Raftopoulos, a lecturer at the
University of
Zimbabwe, told the Financial Gazette.
"If Mugabe loses,
people in his party are going to make trouble and he will
certainly encourage
that," Raftopoulos noted.
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist for
22 years and has repeatedly
warned that he will never allow Tsvangirai to
take over power.
"I hope that for once the Southern Africa Development
Community (SADC) will
take a firm position to get some calm in the country if
Tsvangirai wins,"
Raftopoulos said.
Defence Minister Sydney Sekeremayi
this week however denied that the
withdrawal of the troops from the DRC was
linked to the weekend poll.
FinGaz
Vote scam exposed
By Abel Mutsakani News
Editor
3/7/02 3:24:27 AM (GMT +2)
THE government has quietly — some
say illegally — been registering voters
well after the publicly announced
official closure of the voters’ roll, a
development that has cast serious
doubt on the validity of the weekend
presidential election.
The
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) yesterday said it will
today
seek nullification by the High Court of a supplementary voters’roll
prepared
after the January 27 deadline for voter registration, adding high
drama to an
election already marred by violence and countless accusations
of
rigging.
Several lawyers told the Financial Gazette yesterday the
MDC had a strong
case against the government.
After several extensions
from the initial December 9 2001 deadline, the
final date for voters to
register for the weekend ballot was set for January
27 2002.
But
government loyalist Tobaiwa Mudede, the registrar-general in charge of
the
voters’ registration and conduct of the poll, continued registering
voters ¾
only closing the rolls on March 3 2002.
Mudede and the government did not
advertise the extension of the voter
registration nor did they enact a law
legalising the exercise.
Mugabe, using his sweeping presidential powers,
only decreed Statutory
Instrument 41D on March 5 2002 to allow for the
extension of the
registration after this newspaper had received numerous
calls from members
of the public that thousands of voters in mostly
Mashonaland, Mugabe’s
stronghold, were still registering.
Both Mudede
and Home Affairs Minister John Nkomo, who controls the
registrar-general’s
office, could not be reached for comment up to the time
of going to print
last night. Their offices said they were engaged in
meetings.
The
Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC), the body which under the
constitution
is supposed to supervise the registration of voters and the
conduct of
elections, could only admit yesterday that voter registration had
been
extended to March 3.
The ESC, whose admission came only after inquiries
checking on why the
voters’ roll had been kept open, said in a
statement:
"The registrar-general had to extend the closure of the
voters’ roll to the
3rd of March to accommodate voters who registered after
the 27th January
2002 in terms of Section 5 of statutory Instrument 41 D of
2002."
The ESC, decried by its critics as a toothless bulldog, could not
say how
many voters were on the controversial supplementary roll prepared by
Mudede
after January 27.
Nor could it explain why the extension of
voter registration was never
advertised and why enabling legislation was only
enacted after the extension
had been made.
The ESC yesterday referred
all questions to Mudede.
Many Zimbabweans, especially in the opposition’s
urban strongholds, did not
know that the registration was still open up to
March 3.
Many who could have benefited were left out in the extended
exercise which
sources say was carried out mainly in rural areas, where
Mugabe believes he
still has strong support.
Reginald Matchaba-Hove,
the chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support
Network, a coalition of local
non-governmental organisations involved in
voter education, said: "To be
honest, we did not know that the voters’ roll
was still open."
Paul
Themba Nyathi, the elections director of the MDC, said the opposition
party
was never told that the government had extended voter registration.
At a
later stage when the MDC became aware that Mudede had continued
registering
voters, the party wrote to Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri
urging him
to intervene and stop the illegal exercise, Nyathi said. But
Chihuri did not
act.
"This thing was not gazetted. We were never told about it and we
are
challenging it in the courts. We want the courts to declare
that
supplementary roll null and void," Nyathi said.
Constitutional
law expert Lovemore Madhuku said: "What the government did is
not legal and
it could be challenged in court."
Leading advocate Adrian de Bourbon
concurred, saying: "No one knew the
voters’ roll was still open. There is a
strong case there for (the MDC)."
FinGaz
Mugabe gives himself pay rise
Staff Reporter
3/7/02
3:23:43 AM (GMT +2)
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe, who faces the toughest
election of his presidency
at the weekend, has awarded himself a salary
increment, it has been
established.
Although a notice in last week’s
Government Gazette did not mention Mugabe’s
previous pay, it says he will now
take home an untaxed $1.3 million a year,
far more than what he earns
now.
The salary and allowance increases are backdated to January and
include a
Cabinet allowance of $537 600, a general allowance of $336 000 and
a housing
allowance of $470 268.
Many analysts however say opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who is
expected to trounce Mugabe if the weekend
poll is free and fair, could be
the one to enjoy the new pay
increase.
Independent polls have shown Tsvangirai leading the veteran
ZANU PF leader,
in power for 22 years, if a free and fair ballot is
conducted. — Staff
Reporter
FinGaz
Shock Mugabe
3/7/02 3:35:20 AM (GMT +2)
MARTIN
Luther King Junior, the slain American civil rights icon, had this to
say in
1963, the height of the struggle for freedom by United States civil
rights
groups:
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily
given
by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the
oppressed."
Zimbabwe’s long-promised moment of reckoning has finally
come.
It beckons all patriotic and valiant citizens to stand up with one
voice to
tell one Robert Mugabe: Mr President, please go and go
now.
The presidential vote on Saturday and Sunday gives all of you,
victims of
tyranny and madness of two decades, an historic and very last
chance to free
yourselves from modern history’s worst dictatorship and to
reclaim your lost
sovereignty.
Please show Mugabe and his cronies that
your long suffering, coupled with
the murder of 20 000 other Zimbabweans who
dared to challenge him, has been
your best teacher and no one will ever
forget.
Show the mandarins of Mugabe’s governing ZANU PF that you know
better. That
all the naked lies and half-truths they have thrown at you every
day and at
every hour cannot and will never break the free human
spirit.
Shock the Old Man of Zimbabwean politics into his long-delayed
retirement.
Whether he retires to his home village of Zvimba or Malaysia or
Thailand is
not an issue.
Shock him by voting overwhelmingly for a new
era that is firmly anchored in
palpable peace, justice and prosperity — and
not in the murder, rape,
torture and starvation of so many innocents in the
land.
Shock him by massively rejecting the poverty and squalor that have
become
your daily lives in this brave 21st century and in a country so rich
with
both man-made and God’s resources.
Shock him by demonstrating
that ZANU PF’s death threats to force you to
attend his many rallies in the
past month cannot and will not alter your
vote.
In short, reclaim your
fundamental right to choose and all the other
freedoms that you have lost
under Mugabe’s iron-fisted regime.
Vote in a resounding way so that
Mugabe does not only learn the hard lessons
of history but that no other
Zimbabwean will ever again subject his or her
countrymen to such intolerable
arrogance and madness.
Your destiny is entirely in your hands. No one
else — no matter what ZANU PF
and its war veterans and militia tell you —
will ever know how you voted.
Your vote is totally secret and is your
biggest weapon to usher in a new and
peaceful revolution in the motherland,
which has yearned for years to join
the rest of the world in humanity’s
hurried march towards a better life for
all.
The ballot gives you the
very last opportunity to banish Mugabe to the
political wilderness, where he
should be, and to deprive him of a political
office which he has sadly turned
into a professional job.
Don’t be afraid, don’t be intimidated and don’t
lose heart. Your vote, all
of you Zimbabweans, will sink Mugabe forever and
there is nothing he can do
about this.
Don’t let your children and
Zimbabwe’s future generations condemn you for
gross cowardice and dereliction
of duty by failing to do the right thing
just because the going was too hard
at the time.
Reject ZANU PF’s cheap propaganda which treats you like
children by telling
you that Morgan Tsvangirai, who represents a new
beginning and hope for the
nation, wants Britain and its leader Tony Blair to
re-colonise Zimbabwe.
This absolute nonsense is being peddled by
desperate men and women who have
willy-nilly abused you over the years but
are now too terrified of being
thrown out of power — power which only you can
give and take away from them.
These are the same people who have abused
your hard-earned taxes — record
high taxes you have willingly paid every year
while foregoing a normal life
that you are entitled to — to fan mindless
violence against you, your
children and your families.
Because the
authors of violence and intimidation now want your vote, they
are predictably
promising you heaven on earth so late in the day. Tell them
thanks but
no.
These are the same bullies who have threatened to seize power
should
Tsvangirai win the vote. But be assured that they will not do that
because
they will be crushed by people power, no doubt aided by a world
horrified by
this Taliban-style regime.
These are the same people who
have taken extraordinary measures to try to
rig the ballot, but you can bury
the plot by voting overwhelmingly for
change.
Please show them that
you have been taken for granted and lied to for too
long. Show them that
Zimbabwe is bigger than Mugabe or Tsvangirai or anyone
else.
May God
bless Zimbabwe.
-->
FinGaz
ZANU PF threatens coup
By Nqobile Nyathi Assistant
Editor
3/7/02 3:22:53 AM (GMT +2)
ZIMBABWE’S ruling ZANU PF party this
week said it will support a seizure of
power by the army if President Robert
Mugabe loses this weekend’s landmark
presidential election to his main rival,
Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC).
In an
interview televised by the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s
Special
Assignment programme on Tuesday night, ZANU PF’s external affairs
chief
Didymus Mutasa warned that there would be mayhem in the entire
southern
Africa region if Zimbabweans voted Tsvangirai into power.
Tsvangirai
poses the deadliest challenge to Mugabe’s 22-year rule, which has
been marked
by a deepening economic and political crisis which threatens to
trigger
social upheaval in the country.
Mutasa told SABC that for many
Zimbabweans, an MDC government would be
anathema — the same as that of Ian
Smith, the last premier of Rhodesia, the
British colony that became
independent Zimbabwe in 1980.
Mutasa, who last July also warned that his
party would take up arms if his
party lost the weekend ballot, said: "I do
not think that the majority of
our people want to live under an MDC
government. People have said being
ruled by the MDC is being ruled by Ian
Smith.
"Many, many of us did not go to fight the settler regime in order
to install
a British puppet like Tsvangirai. Under these circumstances, if
there were
to be a coup, we would support it very definitely."
Mutsa’s
comments immediately drew condemnation from the MDC and raised the
political
temperature in the country, already buffeted by a series of crises
which
include shortages of the staple food and surging political
violence.
Analysts and civil society groups attacked Mutasa’s statements
as
"irresponsible" and said they indicated the ruling party’s contempt
for
democratic processes and were aimed at intimidating voters on the eve of
the
country’s most crucial ballot in two decades.
MDC spokesman
Learnmore Jongwe said: "Mutasa’s statement stands in sharp
contrast and
appears to override the undertaking given to foreign observers
by ZANU PF’s
secretary for administration, Emmerson Mnangagwa, last week
that ZANU PF will
respect the people’s will and accept the party’s impending
defeat at the
hands of the people in the forthcoming poll."
Andrew Nongogo, a spokesman
for Crisis in Zimbabwe civic rights group, said:
"That (statement) is
supposed to be an intimidatory tactic. We, as the
people of Zimbabwe, will
not support a coup and ZANU PF must accept the will
of the
people.
"ZANU PF doesn’t have the right to rule in Zimbabwe if the people
say they
want someone else to form the next government."
Mutasa’s
comments follows a stunning intervention in Zimbabwean politics by
the
country’s generals, who in January issued a rare statement saying they
would
not support any president who had not fought in Zimbabwe’s 1970s
independence
war.
This was interpreted as meaning that they would not support
Tsvangirai’s
poll win.
Commentators yesterday said ZANU PF’s repeated
threats of war and coups were
aimed at instilling fear into voters, already
troubled by runway political
violence and intimidation blamed on ZANU PF’s
supporters, the so-called war
veterans.
The violence, which has killed
more than 31 people since January and
displaced at least 70 000 from their
homes, has contributed to widespread
tension and trepidation among
Zimbabweans as they wait to cast their votes
at the weekend.
Analysts
said the violence and instability following a coup would not only
force
thousands more Zimbabweans from their homes and out of the country
as
refugees, but would also worsen the country’s already dire economic
woes.
Zimbabwe is battling its worst economic crisis since independence
and is
facing severe hunger which can only be alleviated by significant
foreign
funding. A military coup would only discourage any foreign assistance
for
Zimbabwe, the analysts said.
The Catholic Commission for Justice
and Peace in Zimbabwe said: "The
commission wishes to appeal to the winner to
celebrate peacefully and the
loser to accept the news gracefully and to
remember that there is always a
next time."
