Reuters
Sat 8 Mar
2008, 17:13 GMT
By Cris Chinaka
HARARE, March 8 (Reuters) -
Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe handed out tractors and
fuel on Saturday as he
courted votes ahead of elections this month, and a
leading opponent urged
the veteran president to end decades of misrule and
retire.
Mugabe
handed out the farm equipment to blacks given land seized from
whites, a
reform his critics say has helped plunge Zimbabwe into economic
crisis, and
predicted an overwhelming victory that would confound Britain
and other
critics.
The 84-year-old Mugabe is seeking to extend his 28-year hold on
power in
presidential, parliamentary and local council polls set for March
29, and
has blamed the West for Zimbabwe's economic crisis.
At a
ceremony in the capital Harare, Mugabe provided farm equipment worth
millions of dollars to thousands of new black farmers, machinery for women
and youths to establish small businesses and buses to try to ease public
transport problems.
He also gave traditional chiefs at the same
ceremony thousands of litres of
fuel, also in short supply.
"When the
government embarked on the land reform programme, the dark forces
of
imperialism sought to strangle our agro-based economy through the
spiteful
closure of financial loans and grants to us," he told thousands at
the
equipment distribution.
"This hate programme by Britain and her fellow
racists imposed unjustified
sanctions on Zimbabwe in futile attempts to
frighten us off our land. But we
shall never retreat, never, never," he said
in what has become a ritual
attack on Zimbabwe's former colonial
master.
PENSION TIME
Mugabe faces a tough challenge from rebel
former finance minister, Simba
Makoni, and long time opposition rival Morgan
Tsvangirai, who narrowly lost
the disputed 2002 election to
Mugabe.
"It's time Mugabe went for a retirement package...Mugabe should
be ashamed
to be seeking re-election after almost 30 years of misrule,"
Tsvangirai told
a cheering crowd in a packed stadium in the southern city of
Bulawayo.
Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would
speed up
economic development in the region and compensate victims of a
military
crackdown on a five-year Matabeleland insurgency in the 1980s that
left
thousands dead.
The region has long been an opposition
stronghold.
"We're going to set up a Matabeleland Reparations Fund to
respond to those
who were unfortunate to lose their dear ones, to make sure
they are able to
restore their lives again and be part of this society,"
Tsvangirai said.
The opposition leader, who says his government would
make constitutional
reforms a top priority, also promised greater autonomy
for the country's
provinces, but said this would not take the form of a
federal
administration. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your
say on
the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/
)
(Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Jon Boyle)
The Times
March 8, 2008
Jan Raath in Harare
Britain, continental
countries and others critical of Mr Mugabe will be
banned from sending
monitors to oversee the freedom and fairness of the
poll. Sudan and Libya
have been chosen "on the basis of objectivity and
impartiality in their
relationship with Zimbabwe", Simbarashe Mumbengegwi,
the Foreign Minister,
said.
"Clearly, those who believe that the only free and fair election is
where
the Opposition wins, have been excluded since the ruling party is
poised to
score yet another triumph," he said.
Among the observer
nations are Ethiopia, Nigeria, China, Iran, Venezuela and
Kenya, where
allegations of vote rigging sparked deadly ethnic violence in
December.
Mr Mumbengegwi said that there was "one European nation"
among the list of
invited countries, and named Russia, where there are
concerns over the
election of Dmitri Medvedev, President Putin's successor,
as president last
month.
The presidential, parliamentary and local
government elections on March 29
present Mr Mugabe, 84, with his most severe
test as he stands for another
term against Simba Makoni, the former Finance
Minister, and Morgan
Tsvangirai, the veteran pro-democracy opposition
leader.
The campaign is taking place amid economic chaos, with inflation at
100,000
per cent, famine and the collapse of a once-sophisticated government
structure.
Mr Mumbengegwi advised Western ambassadors in Harare on
Thursday that they
would be allowed to deploy accredited members of staff
already based here as
observers. Yesterday a note dispatched from the
Foreign Ministry added that
only ten officials would be allowed per embassy.
"It's the coalition of the
compliant," said an envoy, who asked not to be
named.
SETTING AN EXAMPLE
Sudan
President Bashir of Sudan,
who came to power after a coup in 1989, was
re-elected in deeply flawed
elections in 2000. Abuses included torture,
beatings, rape, infringement on
citizens' freedoms of speech, press,
assembly, association, religion and
movement
Libya
Colonel Gaddafi heads the Great Socialist People's
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya -
a "state of the masses". Reported torture,
arbitrary arrest and detention
remain problems. The Government restricts
freedoms of speech, press,
assembly and association
Source: US State
Department human rights reports
Independent, UK
Takavafira Zhou is a teacher who was tortured in
Zimbabwe. Now he is in
London for a rally demanding change. By Emily
Dugan
Saturday, 8 March 2008
One of Zimbabwe's leading human
rights campaigners has issued the world with
a startling reminder of the
horrific abuse and torture being suffered under
Robert Mugabe's regime ahead
of the country's elections in three weeks'
time.
Takavafira Zhou, a
trade union activist, was seized by government police two
weeks ago and,
while imprisoned, did not know if he would make it out of the
torture
chamber alive. Beaten to within an inch of his life, Mr Zhou was
told to
repeat the slogan "Robert Mugabe is always right", and now he has
come to
Britain to preach the reverse.
Still bearing the scars that are a
testament to President Mugabe's brutal
rule, Mr Zhou is to defy his
oppressors by telling protesters today at the
Action for Southern Africa
(Actsa) pro-democracy rally in Trafalgar Square
of the human rights
violations taking place in his country. From there he
and his trade union
colleagues will go to Brussels to lobby the EU
commissioner for Human Rights
to take action against the dictator.
Mr Zhou says the time to act is now.
"The suffering in Zimbabwe cannot
continue for another day," he said, on
arrival in London yesterday.
"International leaders are complicit in human
rights abuses in Zimbabwe by
their failure to provide a solution or to
induce a solution in Zimbabwe. We
really wonder why Zimbabwe has taken so
long to get international help. In
Kenya it did not take so long.
Why?"
Three weeks from today, Zimbabweans will be going to the polls, but
Mr Zhou
is not hopeful that the elections on 29 March will be democratic.
"There
will be no free and fair elections in Zimbabwe", he said. "And anyone
who
says there can be is daydreaming."
At the end of the month, the
84-year-old President will face two of his
strongest opponents yet: his
former finance minister Simba Makoni, 57,
backed by ruling party rebels, and
Morgan Tsvangirai, 55, the leader of the
Movement for Democratic
Change.
But many believe that even these strong candidates do not stand a
chance
against the closely guarded regime of Mr Mugabe and Zanu-PF. Outside
electoral observers are being brought in, but opposition party members say
that these will be taken entirely from countries that Mr Mugabe perceives as
"friendly" to the regime.
Russia is the only European country to have
been invited to monitor the
elections while the majority of remaining
observers will be from the
Southern African Development Community (SADC) - a
body which has already
been criticised for dealing too leniently with Mr
Mugabe.
Zimbabwe's Foreign Minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, openly
admitted
yesterday that countries which had opposed Mr Mugabe would not be
invited to
monitor elections. "Clearly, those who believe that the only free
and fair
election is where the opposition wins, have been excluded since the
ruling
party, Zanu-PF, is poised to score yet another triumph," Mr
Mumbengegwi
said. But another Mugabe win would be far from a triumph for the
Zimbabwean
people, according to Lucia Matibenga, the vice-president of the
Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Unions, and an electoral candidate for the MDC in
Harare.
She has also seen the catastrophic effects of Mr Mugabe's tight grip
of
power, and will stand alongside Mr Zhou in Trafalgar Square
today.
"I don't see that we are preparing for free and fair elections
given that
violence is now institutionalised," said Ms Matibenga. "I think
particularly
in the rural areas people will find it very difficult to vote
against
Zanu-PF because of the threats made against them. Chiefs are paid by
Robert
Mugabe to use any means possible to ensure that their people vote for
him."
For Mr Zhou, the reasons for a democratic challenge to Mr Mugabe
are
compelling. The 40-year-old university lecturer and president of the
Progressive Teachers Union has witnessed first-hand how the President's
clampdown on free speech has penalised innocent protesters.
Two weeks
ago the human rights activist was leading a group of teachers
handing out
leaflets in Harare to campaign against the country's crippled
education
system when he was taken by Zanu-PF militia. The leafleting had
taken place
dangerously close to the party's headquarters, and within
minutes of being
discovered all the teachers were dragged into an
underground cellar. Teams
of 15 men used logs and iron bars to beat them. Mr
Zhou and his fellow
campaigners were battered - and some of the women
sexually abused - with the
iron rods, until they were left motionless on the
blood-stained
floor.
"It was so terrible. I've never seen such thuggery; I've never
seen such
brutality," said Mr Zhou. When the beatings became so bad that
three of his
fellow-protesters passed out, the police became afraid and took
them to
hospital, where they remained under police guard for four
days.
Now the police are trying to charge them with criminal nuisance,
but Mr Zhou
says such a charge would be a gross injustice. "I don't see what
is criminal
or what is a nuisance about trying to save the collapsing
education system",
he said. Last month, he lost his job as a history
lecturer at Great Zimbabwe
University after submitting an anti-government
paper. But Zimbabwe's
universities have been closed anyway for several weeks
now, as a jittery Mr
Mugabe tightens his control on anti-government
sentiment ahead of the
elections.
When Mr Mugabe - a former school
teacher himself - first became leader,
there was hope that he would usher in
a new era for education in Zimbabwe.
But now, amid crippling inflation and
government control, the schools lie
empty and dilapidated; 25,000 teachers
abandoned their posts last year, and
a further 8,000 have left in this year
already.
The few teachers who remain have been on strike since January
over poor pay
and the introduction of untrained militia as teaching staff.
"This
militarisation is what happened in Nazi Germany or with Mussolini's
youth
militia", warned Mr Zhou, who says that the teacher Mugabe of the
1960s
would not have let such atrocities occur.
"The old Mugabe only
wants his voice to be heard, but the young Mugabe
wanted to hear the voices
of the oppressed," he said. Teachers now have a
salary of just four million
Zimbabwean dollars, enough for little more than
eight bottles of cooking
oil. Mr Mugabe's soldiers, meanwhile are paid 2.3bn
Zimbabwean dollars.
"When Mugabe was 28, he said: 'If the government touch a
cent of my salary
I'll box them,'" said Mr Zhou. "We don't want to box
Robert Mugabe; we're
saying teachers have legitimate demands that should be
met by the
government."
It is unclear what horrors will await Mr Zhou on his return
to Zimbabwe next
week but he says he will not be gagged in his attempts to
hold back the
dictator's lust for power. "I am not afraid of going back," he
said. "I take
casualties as part of the struggle and part of leadership.
Zimbabweans must
note that they can't afford to stand on the touchline to
watch a game they
should be playing. Dictators do not willingly give up
power, they need to be
pushed."
zimbabwejournalists.com
8th Mar 2008 00:31 GMT
By Rhoda
Mashavave
WITH only three weeks left before the long-awaited
elections are held,
Zimbabwean women mark the international women's day with
no illusion of what
their future holds.
International women's day is
commemorated by women worldwide. It is a day
women celebrate their
womanhood, emancipation, achievements and agonies.
For most women in
Zimbabwe this day is just going to be like another
ordinary day with many in
queues for food, water, money and many other basic
necessities.
"The
day is no longer celebrated as before because of police brutality, if
we
demonstrate against shortages of food, sanitary pads or high cost of
living.
We are called MDC sympathisers or politicians.
It is difficult to ignore the
economy pressures women face daily in
Zimbabwe ," said Memory Bure, a
struggling Harare mother.
Another woman concurred with Bure's
views.
"I am not going to celebrate the day or vote in the coming
elections. I
have not been impressed by the candidates. Even if I vote there
won't be
much differences. In 2002 I braved the long queue and sweltering
heat to
vote for my favourite candidate. I never made it because of the
harassment I
received from the policemen manning the queue. We were accused
of voting
twice and many people were beaten. I would rather stay home and
watch people
voting," lamented the woman who refused to be named.
She
added: "Even if I decide to vote will it make a difference? We have a
winner before the actual elections. I would rather join a food queue and
stock up cooking oil, mealie meal and sugar in my home. I am sure the
prices will rise sharply soon after the elections. Plus there are few women
candidates who care about our problems."
Male candidates continue to
dominate the Zimbabwean political landscape even
though women constitute 52
percent of the population.
Organisations like Women in Politics Support
Unit have been on the
fore-front fighting for the participation of women in
politics and decision
making positions.
Another woman interviewed had
a different opinion on the upcoming
elections.
"I am going to
exercise my right to vote even though I am not optimistic
about the future
after the elections. My vote will make a difference
somehow. My choice is my
secret. There is no need to talk about the person I
am going to vote for,"
said Muchaneta Dube.
"Women suffer most during elections because they are
subjected to all forms
of violence from the police, ruling and opposition
parties. Its better to
just not talk about the candidate you are going to
vote for," said Dube.
In the past people perceived to be supporting the
opposition have been
harassed, beaten up and even killed by the ruling party
supporters. Some
women have been even been raped because of their political
beliefs.
It is yet to be seen if the upcoming elections are going to ease
the lives
of many women who continue to suffer under the current
government. Many
hope somehow for a miracle to end the woes blighting the
lives of many an
ordinary woman and the girl child in Zimbabwe.
And
as they commemorate international women's day, many would be thinking of
the
good old days that they yearn to return to. Their current situation is
so
bad and continues to get worse by the day.
VOA
By Blessing Zulu
Washington
07 March
2008
Zimbabweans were set to observe International Women's
Day on Saturday amidst
a deepening national crisis that has increased the
burden on mothers of
families ahead of national elections that under the
best of circumstances
will only mark the start of a difficult process of
recovery from severe
economic and social dislocations.
Organizers of
the international event noted that this year's observations
will fall on the
100th anniversary of a march by 15,000 women in New York
City demanding a
cut in working hours, higher pay and the right to vote.
International
Women's Day as such was launched March 8, 1911, by Clara
Zetkin, a German
social democrat.
Marking the event in Zimbabwe this year has not been
easy - police in Gweru,
capital of Midlands Province, initially refused to
give the Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Unions permission to hold a gathering
but the ZCTU
successfully sought court relief.
With presidential,
parliamentary and local elections set for March 29,
political parties of
every stripe are claiming to have made progress in
empowering
women.
For a look at whether such claims are justified, reporter Blessing
Zulu of
VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe turned to political analysts Theresa
Mugadza and
Grace Kwinje, who said not much has been done for women in the
country
despite many promises.
Published: March 7, 2008 at
5:12 PM
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, March 7 (UPI) -- The two factions of
Zimbabwe's main
opposition party claim the country's police have been
harassing their
candidates for the March 29 elections.
Both factions
of the split Movement for Democratic Change party said police
have arrested,
abducted or beaten their candidates while the ruling ZANU-PF
party allegedly
masterminded acts of violence against opposition supporters,
Nehanda Radio
reported Friday.
"The police are acting in a partisan manner, banning our
candidates and
their supporters from conducting door-to-door campaigns,
especially in the
city," said Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the MDC faction
led by Morgan
Tsvangirai.
Marvelous Khumalo, an MDC candidate for the
parliament, was arrested Feb. 29
along with 11 supporters during a campaign
stop in the township of
Chitungiza. The candidate remained in custody
Friday.
Police Commissioner Gen. Augustine Chihuri denied the arrests
were partisan.
He said Khumalo and his supporters were arrested for violent
behavior.
"Those people were arrested for a crime they know -- they were
carrying
weapons and campaigning aggressively. The police are simply doing
their job
of maintaining law and order," he said.
© 2008 United
Press International. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be
reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any
form.
VOA
By Irwin Chifera and Carole Gombakomba
Washington
07 March 2008
Politically
motivated violence and police arrests of Zimbabwean opposition
candidates
and supporters have been rising as the country's March 29
election
approaches.
In the eastern province of Manicaland, sources said the home
of a local
leader of war veterans, Misheck Masukume, was burned Wednesday by
unknown
assailants.
A Mutare police officer told VOA said the blaze
was under investigation.
Masukume, a staunch supporter of the ruling
ZANU-PF party, had been
implicated in an assault on opposition activist
Pishai Muchauraya by alleged
ZANU-PF supporters who were said to have been
riding in Masukume's truck at
the time.
In the Mashonaland West town
of Karoi, 18 opposition members including
Timothy Mutsunge, a candidate for
parliament for the Magunje constituency,
were arrested on Monday and charged
with violating the Public Order and
Security Act.
Mutsunge and two
others were released Thursday on bail of Z$100 million
apiece. An MDC source
said 15 others remained in custody on Friday because
it had not been
possible to raise the Z$100 million (US$3) bail for all of
them.
An
MDC circular on the incident alleged that the police officer in charge
for
Magunje, a certain Ruzungunde, was working with ZANU-PF candidate Franco
Ndambakuwa to block the opposition challenge for the parliamentary
seat.
The much criticized law underwent amendment early this year in the
context
of the now-defunct crisis resolution talks between the ruling party
and
opposition, but that has not stopped police around the country from
citing
it in making such arrests.
Opposition sources said Mutsunge
and the others were putting up campaign
posters for Morgan Tsvangirai,
presidential candidate for his grouping of
the Movement for Democratic
Change. Police said they were gathering without
police
clearance.
Elsewhere, members of Tsvangirai's opposition formation were
said to be
fearing the worst following the abduction of a local council
candidate late
last month.
The party's parliamentary candidate for
the Rushinga constituency of
Mashonaland Central, Samuel Ndaradzi, said he
and other MDC activists fear
Edson Mumwengwa was abducted by ZANU-PF
militants as he previously had
received death threats.
Ndaradzi said
the man's whereabouts were unknown and police did not seem
keen to
investigate the matter despite three reports on the disappearance to
local
posts.
Correspondent Irwin Chifera for VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe
reported.
Senior Political Analyst Sydney Masamvu of the International
Crisis Group's
Southern African office told reporter Carole Gombakomba of
that the rise in
violence and arrests of opposition members reflect a
buildup in momentum
towards the elections.
Zimbabwe Today
As the election
tension increases, so do the threats from Mugabe's thugs.
This is one man's
story of what is happening to his loved ones.
I met up with my friend
Benjamin in Bulawayo this week, and asked after his
family. His mother and
three sisters live in the Umguza district, where his
mother grows fields of
crops and the three girls go to school.
"You can ask them yourself," he
replied. "They're all here in Bulawayo with
me. They've had to abandon their
life in Umguza, leave everything. It was a
case of run - or be
slaughtered."
He then told me the details of what had happened. This is
his story:
"My mother knew she had to do something. For some weeks she
has realised it
is not safe for her even to move around the locality. She is
known to be a
supporter of the MDC (Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic
Change, the
opposition party), and she realised that fingers had been
pointed at her.
There was a definite threat in the air.
"Things came
to a head last Friday. My two little sisters are in primary
school. They're
only 11 and 13. But outside school they were confronted by a
gang of men
armed with axes and clubs. The men told them that they would be
killed, and
their bodies burned to ashes.
"Terrified, they ran home. My mother was
trying to calm them down when my
older sister, who is in Form Four, came in,
just as upset. The same men had
confronted her, waving their axes in her
face and threatening to kill her on
the spot.
"They told her that
anyone who belonged to the MDC faced death if they
didn't run
away.
"Next morning a group of men confronted my mother herself. She knew
them.
They are her neighbours. She trusted them. But they told her that if
she
stayed they would burn her home down during the night, and kill everyone
in
it.
"I myself went home. While I was there I listened to our local
MP, Obert
Mpofu, addressing his supporters. He told them, in my hearing,
that
'sell-outs', as he called MDC supporters, must be driven out before the
election, to stop them voting.
"So it's clear the threats of violence
have official backing. And I don't
need reminding that this is where Gloria
Olds and her son were slain in cold
blood by war veterans at the heigh of
the land seizures in 2000.
"So I made my decision. I brought my mother
and sisters into town, to be
with me. Okay, it's not safe here, either. But
if we are to die, then we die
together."
That's Benjamin's story. His
family's experience is being repeated, in one
form or another, all over
Zimbabwe today.
Posted on Thursday, 06 March 2008
Globe and Mail, Canada
Michael Valpy
does not recognize Zimbabwe today. The country he once called
home is a
place of derelict shops, 80-per-cent unemployment, defunct
hospitals,
stench-filled streets. This month's election shows no hope for
change
MICHAEL VALPY
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
March
7, 2008 at 11:06 PM EST
HARARE - It's a shock, entering Robert Mugabe's
decaying, crumbling capital.
The former urban gem of Africa, once prissy in
its orderly efficiency, now
sinking into a rank detritus of uncollected
garbage, potholes, broken
traffic lights, collapsing public services,
paint-flaked, gloomy, empty
stores and abandoned factories.
Harare,
the Sunshine City of the tourist brochures, sparkled as recently as
a decade
ago. A bracing, healthy 1,500 metres above sea level on the
stunning
highveld, it was an intentional, sturdy metropolis of commerce and
finance,
trade, manufacturing, government, upmarket shops and professional
services.
The sun remains but the shine is gone. Harare
stinks.
Sunshine City turned sewage farm, as Zimbabwe's Financial Times,
one of the
country's very few independent news media voices, put it.
Although sewage
farming is just not the right wording.
There's a theft
pandemic of sewer, telephone, electrical and water-supply
equipment. The
public nuts and bolts, the cables and pipes, of this city of
nearly three
million people are literally vanishing alongside the flawed
management of
what infrastructure remains. Think about this: People selling
phone wires
for food.
Electrical and water supply is erratic (although the reservoirs
are full).
Elevators in downtown buildings and gas stations are becoming
artifacts of a
past existence. Public servants in the city parked their cars
years ago: no
fuel affordable; no fuel to be found.
Officially
inflation is 100,580 per cent. Unofficially (and probably more
accurately)
it is more than 150,000 per cent. In any event, there are too
few retail
commodities to make any kind of measurement accurate.
All surgery at
Harare's Parirenyatwa Hospital, the biggest in the country,
has ceased
because of a shortage of anesthetic, functioning equipment and
medical
specialists. Nurses and other workers refuse to come to work because
their
bus transportation costs are greater than their salaries. With the
Zimbabwean currency this week falling to a record low of $25-million for a
single U.S. dollar, bus fares can change on a single trip.
The
University of Zimbabwe's faculty is melting away across the country's
borders, joining an estimated 3.5 million of their fellow citizens who have
emigrated or fled. Industry - what industry that still exists - is operating
at 20 per cent capacity.
The orderly market has simply
dematerialized. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
borrows hard currency from
shadowy traders in the black market to pay for
food and drug imports,
essential vehicle fuel and electricity from
Zimbabwe's neighbours, further
contributing to inflation.
Two professionals, a husband and wife, tell me
their combined monthly income
is $57-million. "That buys four loaves of
bread," says the wife. When bread
can be found.
Life in Harare has
been described as an existential struggle.
I lived here two decades ago
as The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent. I
have come back for a look at
the country as its March 29 election campaign
gets under way. Because
foreign journalists at the moment are unwelcome -
it's been four years since
the government last gave The Globe permission to
report in the country - I
have entered as a teacher of religion.
My driver, John, who meets me at
the airport, says he needs to buy cooking
oil. (I have omitted his last name
to protect him from any repercussions for
ferrying me around.)
When
we get into the city, he passes a shop I remember as a fashionable
outlet
for women's clothes. One rack with three dated and ugly dresses sits
in the
window. The rest of the store is bare and dark. Its neighbours are
barred
and padlocked, as are many shops on adjacent streets.
Only in Harare's
opulent suburb of Borrowdale - home to diplomats, business
and political
elites, staff of international NGOs paid in foreign currency -
are the Van
Heusen dress shirts surreally advertised along the road from the
airport
likely to be found in Chinese- and South African-owned private shops
located
alongside new-car dealerships, nightclubs, international fast-food
outlets
and grocery stores filled with goods deliberately displayed without
price
tags in testament to Zimbabwe's inflation.
"Borrowdale," says the wife
with the $57-million family income, as if she's
mentioning a dirty word.
"Two different countries inside one country."
A few kilometres but an
economic light year from Borrowdale, John drives
into a derelict, rusted-out
factory yard and stops the car. He immediately
is surrounded by black-market
hawkers selling goods from bakkies - pick-up
trucks - parked just out of
sight in alleyways.
He negotiates a price of $61-million for a litre of
cooking oil, paying for
it with the country's newly issued $10-million
notes.
"It's the sanctions," John says.
When he refuses to pay
$70-million for a three-kilo bag of potatoes, he says
again: "It's the
sanctions." And when his new, four-wheel drive Isuzu
repeatedly stalls
because of water in the fuel line, and he says he can't
get filters to
remedy the problem, he repeats: "It's the sanctions." The
sanctions.
Eighty-four-year-old President Mugabe and his Zimbabwe
African National
Union-Patriotic Front government, the country's rulers
since independence in
1980, say it is sanctions imposed by Western countries
that are to blame for
Zimbabwe's economic chaos. Sanctions, and not the
destruction of the
agriculture industry - the country's economic backbone -
brought about by
the government's decision to seize commercial (mostly
white) farmers'
properties beginning in 2000 and redistribute them to black
farmers lacking
the technical knowledge to operate them.
Economic
mismanagement along with flagrant human-rights abuses and past
election
fraud are the issues in the election manifestos of Mr. Mugabe's
presidential
opponents - former finance minister Simba Makoni and Morgan
Tsvangirai,
leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
"Does she feel
sad?" I asked the young man acting as my interpreter. He
smiled, and put my
question in ChiShona to Ms. Muzhira, who also smiled
before speaking a
single sentence to a silly question from an alien murungu
(white person).
What is the notion of sad when there is only living? And
dying. Average life
expectancy in Zimbabwe in the past 30 years has dropped
from 56 to 37. A
Zimbabwean woman's life expectancy is the lowest in the
world.
"She
says she feels okay," said the young man.
I met the three Nyakudya
sisters, Kezai, 46, Sekai, 39, and Harugumi, 37.
Sekai has AIDS, Harugumi
has advanced cerebral palsy and cannot talk or move
beyond lifting a claw of
a hand to take a visitor's. The men in the family,
the brothers and
husbands, are all dead of AIDS-related illness. A nearby
hospital some
months back gave the women a few chickens so they could sell
eggs to earn
cash. There is no sign of the chickens.
Child malnutrition in the village
is rife.
I met a British NGO nurse running an AIDS orphanage who said all
the workers
in her local government child welfare office had quit that day
because their
salaries hadn't been paid.
I met an AIDS orphan who was a
nuisance at a rural medical clinic, a girl
eight or nine years old,
following the staff around, pestering them for
clothes, food, attention. No
one knew where she slept at night, somewhere in
the clinic compound. There
were shiny new cars in the clinic's parking lot,
owned by people from Harare
who had come for AIDS and TB drugs and
ambulatory surgery they couldn't get
in city hospitals.
In conversations with Zimbabweans in both rural and
urban parts of the
country, I was told repeatedly how much people want Mr.
Mugabe to go, how
corrupt, oppressive and incompetent his government is. At
a big birthday
party thrown for him last month in the town of Beitbridge
near the South
African border, protesters daringly hoisted a helium balloon
bearing the
message, "You've had your cake. Now beat it." But I found no
optimism that
the election would result in Mr. Mugabe's defeat.
The
nursing student whose studies have been halted by the exodus of his
instructors lamented that Mr. Makoni's 11th-hour entry into the campaign
would only split the opposition vote.
A recently retired air force
officer said he had no doubt the election
outcome would be rigged (as the
last outcome is widely believed to have
been), citing the army generals who
are close to Mr. Mugabe and sit on the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, and
the opportunities to tamper with ballot
boxes that will be flown by armed
forces helicopters to central locations
for counting.
And the reality
is, whether fraudulently holding office or not, Mr. Mugabe
maintains a
genuine popularity.
His re-election posters - he is running for a sixth
term - say, "Vote
Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Defending our land and
sovereignty." A clever
slogan, pushing hot buttons. Mr. Mugabe has branded
his political opponents
as Western agents who would reduce Zimbabwe to
colonial status and return it
to a fief of white-settler farmers who treated
their black workers worse
than animals and committed unspeakable atrocities
during the liberation war
in what was then Rhodesia.
A health-care
professional in her 40s, buying three onions for $10-million
at a roadside
market and two pints of oil for her car from a man who
magically appeared
from behind a butcher shop, explained it like this: "I
saw my grandfather
shot dead in front of me [by Rhodesian troops]. I saw
seven men in my
village ordered to put on poisoned clothes and run around a
house until they
worked up a sweat that triggered the poison which entered
their pores. I saw
all the pregnant women in my village gagged and told to
lie on the ground
while water was forced up their nostrils to make them talk
about where the
guerrillas were.
"Most whites were very cruel. People know Mugabe rescued
them from this.
Every adult Zimbabwean knows he rescued them from this, and
many, many
believe that to vote for the opposition is to vote to go back to
what Mugabe
rescued them from." On the road from the village back to Harare,
I passed
broken-down trucks and a magnificent gleaming-white mansion on a
hill
overlooking a posh roadhouse called the Sweet Valley
Restaurant.
The mansion, said my driver, had been built for a Rhodesian
general. The
restaurant, now closed, had been owned by a businessman
rumoured to have
wisely fled after he was discovered being too chummy with
President Mugabe's
young wife.
On my South African Airways flight
back to Johannesburg, the captain began
his chat with the passengers by
saying, "As we taxi toward takeoff, trying
to avoid the worst of the
potholes ..."
But the prime victims here are truth and this ruined
country's 12 million
ordinary people.
Sanctions, such as they are,
target arms imports and the international
travels of Zimbabwe's rulers, not
its economy. And the commercial farmers
lost their land largely as a result
of their own doing, their refusal to
share holdings - 70 per cent of arable
land held by 1 per cent of the
population - conferred on them by Zimbabwe's
before-independence, racist
colonial legislators.
How people are
surviving in this city, in this country, is simply baffling.
The
inflation. The 80 per cent unemployment. The 21 per cent HIV infection
rate
(with the country now virtually bereft of anti-retroviral drugs). The
exodus
of Zimbabwe's best and brightest (I had a long conversation with a
student
trying to figure out how to complete his bachelor of science degree
in
nursing with all his instructors suddenly having emigrated). And now a
cataclysmic looming food shortage as a result of horrendous rains that
devastated the planting of maize, Zimbabwe's staple food crop.
A
health-care official told me that, without massive food aid, there will be
an explosion in the coming months of young women working as prostitutes,
leading to more HIV infections and more AIDS orphans, and more children
dying of malnutrition - already a commonplace diagnosis in the country's
hospitals and clinics along with widespread diarrhea and typhoid from
contaminated urban water supplies.
The news is not all
bad.
Some commercial farmers have been invited to reapply to the
government for
land. Others are working as behind-the-scenes managers of
farms
redistributed to blacks. I saw a number of productive, well-run farms
and
drove past an agricultural estate owned by a Zimbabwean cabinet minister
with a sign at the gate advertising eggs for sale.
A substantial
portion of the population is being supported by remittances
from about one
million Zimbabweans abroad - estimated to be as much as
$1-billion (U.S.) a
year, by far the largest inflow of cash into the
country. And the rains that
ruined maize planting created lush grazing
pastures: In a few months there
will be meat from now-skinny cows and goats
(if anyone can afford
it).
But in a village two hours north of Harare one sunny afternoon, I
watched
laughing, joy-filled children race each other home from school along
a
dirt-track road.
I wondered how many short years were left to them
before their joy was lost
forever in the face of the realities of Zimbabwean
life.
That afternoon, I sat with women with AIDS and HIV-related
tuberculosis in
thatched-roof rondavels. They were too ill to walk, and too
poor to afford
bus fare - $5-million - to the nearest clinic to get what
drugs and
treatment remain available.
I met Shelly Muzhira, 43, lying
on the floor. Her husband died two years ago
of TB. All but one of her
brothers and all the husbands of her sisters died
of AIDS or TB. She was
diagnosed with AIDS and congestive heart disease. She
barely has breath to
talk. She's too ill to work. Her two children, Perpetua
and Elvis, tend a
tiny vegetable garden, the family's only source of food.
She could go live
with her surviving brother but would not be welcomed by
her sister-in-law
because she is unproductive. The family's sole source of
income is through
the generosity of an aunt who raises chickens for sale.
Zim Independent
Friday, 07
March 2008 15:02
INDEPENDENT presidential election candidate Simba
Makoni's camp is
expecting more phased resignations of Zanu PF "big hitters"
in the next two
weeks in a bid to destabilise President Robert Mugabe,
already unnerved by
the defection of senior party members.
The
hidden strategy to win the forthcoming election was laid open to
the
elements this week as political campaigns intensify.
Informed
sources said Makoni's strategy included well-timed
resignations by senior
Zanu PF members who are part of an internal bid to
dislodge Mugabe from
power. The surge in resignations was calculated to
shake Zanu PF to its
foundations.
Mugabe was quoted yesterday in the state media as
saying he did not
know where defections from his party would lead to,
showing he feared more
politburo members would quit.
The Makoni
strategy also includes roping in state security agents -
especially army
officers known as the "Boys on Leave" - who are currently
deployed in
districts, constituencies and wards around the country to
mobilise support
for Zanu PF.
"Boys on Leave", accused of rigging, are usually
deployed six months
before elections on behalf of Zanu PF. They were key in
Mugabe's 2002
controversial victory, which was basically run by the
military. Brigadier
Douglas Nyikayaramba played a leading role, while other
senior army officers
also helped.
The sources said the state
security agents are all over the country to
do dirty work for Zanu PF. This,
coupled with grave flaws in the electoral
process and technical
shortcomings, would almost certainly ensure that the
elections are not free
and fair. For instance, the voters' roll remains a
shambles while
gerrymandering through new constituency boundaries is said to
be prevalent.
A non-existent constituency, Tsholotsho East, is referred to
in the
delimitation report.
Procedures were also not followed in
announcing the dates of
nomination of candidates. Problems over polling
stations and supply of
ballot papers, especially in towns, remain. The
supervising and monitoring
of the elections is still a contentious issue.
Opposition parties are still
not getting access to the public media. All
these problems violate the Sadc
electoral guidelines.
Makoni's
camp says it is mobilising voters through a "military
strategy" and this
should deliver to them 70% of the vote. It is said Makoni's
group was using
the "Boys on Leave" taskforces on the ground to coordinate
its
campaign.
The "whispering campaign" by soldiers involves telling
voters to cast
their ballots for Zanu PF candidates in council, national
assembly and
senate elections, but not for Mugabe. People are told to vote
for Makoni as
president. This has been confirmed privately by Makoni's
strategists.
The architects of the plan - basically a Zanu PF
succession fight to
get rid of Mugabe - include top members of the ruling
party faction led by
retired army commander General Solomon Mujuru. Makoni
is not only supported
by the Mujuru faction, but also by other party members
who are anti-Mugabe
in the battle for the heart and soul of Zanu
PF.
Makoni and his allies, it is said, want to seize the Zanu PF
leadership through an external process after they failed to achieve it
internally, mainly at the party's extraordinary congress in December last
year.
Sources said the plan was for Makoni to leave Zanu PF
just before the
nomination deadline to file papers to stand as an
independent candidate
rooted in the Zanu PF structures. Makoni and others
would insist that they
remain Zanu PF to ensure they did not alienate the
ruling party's support
base. Makoni's camp is currently using Zanu PF
structures informally and
newly-created committees to drum up support for
him.
Makoni's move would be followed by politburo member Dumiso
Dabengwa,
it was planned. It is understood the next politburo member to
follow was
expected to be retired army commander General Vitalis Zvinavashe.
Mujuru
would follow just a few days before the elections.
His
wife Vice-President Joice Mujuru - who since last week has been
speaking in
support of Zanu PF and Mugabe - would remain inside to sell
Mugabe a dummy.
She would however leave after the polls if
Makoni won to become
Makoni's co-vice president with Dabengwa. In
between there would be other
critical resignations.
Mujuru, Dabengwa and Zvinavashe - veterans
of the liberation
struggle - were reportedly the brains behind the Makoni
initiative. The plan
was hatched after Mugabe manipulated his way back to
the helm of the party
in December through unprocedural means.
Dabengwa, who has now publicly confirmed the issue first reported in
the
Zimbabwe Independent last December, tried to raise the matter at a
politburo
meeting in November but did not get backing from his timid
colleagues.
Mujuru's camp wanted Joice Mujuru or Dabengwa to take over from
Mugabe, but
the plan was countered by their rival Emmerson Mnangagwa and war
veterans'
leader Jabulani Sibanda. After December Makoni became the
preferred
candidate.
The involvement of Sibanda fuelled tensions between
Mugabe and his
opponents, particularly former PF Zapu leaders.
Vice-President Joseph Msika
and chairman John Nkomo almost walked out of the
December congress due to
the Sibanda incident. After congress, Dabengwa
confronted Mugabe at the
first politburo meeting of the year in January over
the Sibanda issue.
Makoni has said there was huge disappointment
when Mugabe retained his
position as party leader last year.
Dabengwa said last week widespread consultations were made before the
Makoni
project was launched on February 5. He revealed Justice minister
Patrick
Chinamasa was also involved. It is said a large number of Zanu PF
officials,
including Msika, Joice Mujuru and Nkomo, are sympathetic to
Makoni. Although
senior Zanu PF officials have been making loud public
protestations of
loyalty to Mugabe, it is said behind-the-scenes the same
officials are
backing Makoni. --Dumisani Muleya
Zim Independent
Friday, 07 March
2008 14:18
ZIMBABAWE'S education system was paralysed this week as a
teachers'
strike for better working conditions and remuneration intensified
with no
immediate solution in sight.
The teachers embarked on
industrial action last week to press for a
monthly salary of $1,7 billion
and improved working conditions.
According to information at hand,
only headmasters and their deputies
reported for duty.
The
country's largest teachers' union, Zimbabwe Teachers Association
(Zimta),
told the Zimbabwe Independent that the strike would continue until
the
government meets their demands.
Peter Mabhande, the chief executive
officer of Zimta, ruled out an
immediate engagement with the government to
end the strike.
"The nation must know the truth, the strike is
going to continue until
our demands are met as teachers are finding it
difficult to go to work
because of the poor salaries they are getting,"
Mabhande said. "We are not
negotiating with the government. They will have
to consult among themselves
as our employers and come up with a solution to
this crisis."
The Zimta boss said it was "unfortunate and
regrettable" that pupils
and parents were being made to suffer as a result
of the industrial action.
"Students and parents are suffering as a
result of this strike, but as
teachers we cannot continue to subsidise
government. We can't afford to send
our children to school," Mabhande
said.
The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe's international
affairs
secretary, Themba Sithole, said the strike was
justified as
teachers could no longer make ends meet on a monthly
salary of $400
million.
"A teacher's salary of $400 million is not enough to make
ends meet
considering that one needs to buy food, clothes, pay school fees
and commute
to work from that salary," Sithole said.
Sithole
said teachers were also not happy because they were not
benefiting from the
Aids levy they contribute to monthly.
"Most of our members have no
access to antiretroviral drugs yet month
after month they contribute to the
fund," he said.
The strike by teachers is the worst since
Independence as students
have not had normal classes since the term started
seven weeks ago.
Schools are scheduled to close on March 19 to make
way for the Easter
holiday and the historic polls on March 29.
The strike is also expected to affect the smooth running of the
election as
in the past the government has recruited teachers as polling
officers.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, sources said,
would be forced to
recruit polling officers from other departments of the
civil service.
Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere could not be
reached for comment
at the time of going to press, but President Mugabe on
Wednesday said his
government would address the teachers' concerns.--Lucia
Makamure
Zim Independent
Friday, 07 March
2008 14:16
THE Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC has accused the country's
national
broadcaster, the ZBC, of biased coverage of the March 29 election
campaign.
In a letter dated February 28 to ZBC chief
executive officer Henry
Muradzikwa, MDC information director Luke
Tamborinyoka told the broadcaster
that as a publicly-funded corporation it
must be impartial in its coverage
of the election process.
He
accused the ZBC of not adhering to Sadc guidelines on the conduct
of free
and fair polls.
"As MDC, we are dissatisfied with the blackout of
our activities,
especially the launch of our campaign at Sakubva Stadium in
Mutare on
Saturday 23 February 2008," wrote Tamborinyoka. "Despite being
invited, your
corporation snubbed the event and instead spent hours covering
President
Robert Mugabe's birthday in Beitbridge."
The MDC
complained that the ZBC recently granted Mugabe an exclusive
interview to
mark his 84th birthday and used the opportunity to malign the
reputation of
his opponents in the March polls.
"Mugabe also used an exclusive
birthday interview that you granted him
to attack other candidates in the
presidential elections who are never given
a chance to respond through the
same medium," Tamborinyoka said. "It is our
view that the ZBC has abused its
privilege to give unfair advantage to Zanu
PF and its candidate even though
as a publicly-funded broadcaster you are
expected to give equal coverage to
all political players."
Mugabe attacked Tsvangirai for allegedly
being backed by the West to
reverse the gains of the liberation struggle and
described the leader of the
other faction of the MDC, Arthur Mutambara, as a
coward for chickening out
of the presidential race.
Apart from
granting Mugabe several hours of broadcast time on his
birthday celebrations
in February, last Friday ZBC devoted more than four
hours of live radio and
television coverage to Zanu PF's election campaign
launch where the
octogenarian leader taunted his opponents. The MDC told
Muradzikwa that Sadc
guidelines on the conduct of free and fair elections
demand that all
political parties should receive equal coverage in the
public
media.
"At that historic (Sadc) meeting in Mauritius in August
2004,
President Mugabe committed himself to these guidelines," Tamborinyoka
said.
"You have a part to play in making sure that Zimbabweans truly express
their
legitimate will in this watershed election."
The
opposition said its candidates were not being accorded an
opportunity to
"tell their stories" through the ZBC, while the ruling Zanu
PF election
campaign continued to receive "prime-time" coverage.
"The media
plays an important role in either building or destroying a
nation through
the promotion of hate speech against other political players
who are never
given the chance to respond," Tamborinyoka said. "It is our
hope that in
future the ZBC will change this unfortunate behaviour which
deprives voters
of critical information that enables them to make informed
choices."
At the time of going to press yesterday, Muradzikwa
was yet to reply
to the MDC letter.
The Media Monitoring
Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) last week described
programming by the ZBC as
propagandist and against the Sadc principles.
"This week the public
media continued to violate domestic and regional
guidelines on fair and
equitable election reporting by giving massive
publicity to Zanu PF than all
its opponents combined," said the MMPZ in its
weekly report. "The extent to
which programming has virtually collapsed at
the ZBC was aptly demonstrated
by the saturation of the airwaves with Zanu
PF propaganda during President
Mugabe 84th birthday celebrations."--Bernard
Mpofu
Zim Independent
Friday, 07 March 2008 14:08
FORMER Information and
Publicity minister Jonathan Moyo this week
claimed that Simba Makoni's
presidential bid was part of a protracted Zanu
PF succession battle that has
been nationalised.
Speaking to journalists in the capital on
Wednesday, Moyo said both
President Robert Mugabe and Makoni wanted to
resolve the Zanu PF succession
debate through the March 29 synchronised
elections.
He alleged that Mugabe pushed for harmonised polls
through
Constitutional Amendment No18 to ensure that Zanu PF parliamentary
hopefuls
would campaign on his behalf, while Makoni opted to contest as an
independent after his faction, reportedly led by retired army general
Solomon Mujuru, failed to dislodge the 84-year-old leader through internal
party processes.
Moyo claimed that Makoni and his faction
wanted Zimbabweans to resolve
an internal Zanu PF issue.
"It is
now our business to deal with the Zanu PF succession issue," he
said. "We
are now faced with an amazing succession drama which we have not
witnessed
anywhere else in Africa."
Moyo, the independent lawmaker for
Tsholotsho, said after the November
2004 Tsholotsho Declaration to
re-arrange the party's presidium, Mugabe gave
the impression that he had
anointed his deputy, Joice Mujuru, as his
successor.
The
Tsholotsho debacle, of which Moyo and Rural Housing and Social
Amenities
minister Emmerson Mnangagwa were the architects, resulted in the
suspension
of six provincial chairpersons.
Moyo said after the elevation of
Mujuru to the party's vice-presidency
at the 2004 congress, she started
behaving like a successor and went around
the country donating pigs,
chickens and eggs.
He said it came as a surprise in Zanu PF last
January when Mugabe
announced while in Namibia that he would accept the
ruling party's
nomination to contest the 2008 presidential
poll.
Moyo said Mugabe took that route after he failed to put in
place a
proper succession plan.
This, Moyo said, angered the
Mujuru faction that started strategising
on how to get rid of Mugabe through
the formal process, but they failed.
The legislator said there were
two responses to Mugabe's decision, the
formal and the informal
one.
Under the formal process, Moyo said the Mujuru faction at the
Goromonzi conference in December 2006 blocked Mugabe's bid to have
harmonised elections in 2010 and also managed to push for an extraordinary
congress a year later in the hope they could use it to oust
Mugabe.
Mugabe's strategists, Moyo said, hit back and tried to
mislead the
country that he had been endorsed as the party's presidential
candidate by
the Zanu PF central committee on March 31.
"The
faction opposed to Mugabe pushed for an extraordinary congress in
the hope
that the congress would deal with the succession issue," Moyo said.
"Through
manipulation, the congress was hijacked to endorse Mugabe when it
had no
mandate to do so. It is the annual people's conference (which has) a
mandate
to endorse the party's president as the state's presidential
candidate."
Moyo said the endorsement of Mugabe forced the
other faction in the
party to come up with the informal response - the
Makoni strategy.
"Zanu PF has practically two presidential
candidates, one formally
endorsed and the other informally.They (the Makoni
faction) are not
presenting themselves as a real alternative, but an
alternative to replace
Mugabe," the lawmaker said.
He added:
"From February 5 when he announced his presidential bid,
Makoni said he was
standing as an independent although he wanted to stand on
behalf of Zanu PF.
Makoni is Zanu PF B and Mugabe Zanu PF A."
Moyo said Makoni had
rejected efforts to work with other democratic
forces as a united front to
dislodge Mugabe from power. He said the refusal
deepened political
polarisation in the country.
"If Makoni had agreed to a united
front we would have witnessed a
similar wave to that when the MDC was formed
in 1999," the political science
professor said. "Given Makoni's reputation,
calibre and abilities we would
have had a fantastic candidate, but it is
unfortunate that this opportunity
is being squandered."
Moyo
described the Makoni strategy as "fanciful medicine" that would
kill the
patient.
"The right way to go is a third way, not a third force. A
third force
is shadowy," the former Zanu PF politburo member said. "I am
glad that
Makoni in an interview with the Standard admitted that he was a
third force.
A third force is more interested in grabbing
power."
Moyo wondered how Makoni would win an election when he did
not have
either a party or structures to drum up support for
him.
He said he had heard that Makoni was using a "military"
strategy to
surprise all.
Moyo said the Makoni campaign lacked
deep ideological roots and was
not associational.
"Makoni's
group is shadowy. Some of its members are in the open, some
are not. Its
programmes are not clear and you would not be able to define
them," he
claimed. "If this succeeds, it will make history because it will
be
succeeding for the first time."
Moyo dismissed as nonsense claims
by Makoni that he was in alliance
with the people of Zimbabwe
"Political history shows that it is the language of dictators so as to
run
way from accountability when they fail. That is very dangerous," he
said.
"What Makoni is proposing is equal to asking the people to sign a pact
with
the devil - a Faustian bargain."
On the likely outcome of the
elections, Moyo said they might be a
cliffhanger. He said it might not
produce a conclusive result, leading to a
run-off.
Moyo said
the run-off was likely to be between Mugabe and either MDC
leader Morgan
Tsvangirai or Makoni.
He said in the run-off he expected Mugabe to
lose either to Makoni or
Tsvangirai, as he fights the election
alone.
If Makoni wins, he argued, the former Finance minister would
go back
to Zanu PF and assume its leadership.
Moyo predicted
the elections would be chaotic as a result of what he
termed administrative
shortcomings. He said the government should have
postponed the polls for at
least six months to allow for adequate
preparations as it was a very costly
exercise.--Constantine Chimakure
Zim Independent
Friday,
07 March 2008 14:04
WHEN Zimbabwe attained Independence in 1980 Prime
Minister Robert
Mugabe promised people universal access to
healthcare.
Twenty-eight years later millions of Zimbabweans have
been reduced to
paupers and can no longer afford basic healthcare, even at
public
institutions because of the high cost of treatment.
Foreign currency shortages have resulted in the Ministry of Health and
Child
Welfare not being able to provide essential drugs to clinics and
public
hospitals, which in the past used to cater for people in the
low-income
group.
More than a dozen babies are born in each district of the
country on a
daily basis, but maternity care is no longer easily accessible
as a result
of the spiralling cost of living that has pushed clinic and
hospital fees
beyond the reach of many.
Consultation fees at
public hospitals are $10 million while for
maternity, a normal delivery now
costs between $200 million and $300
million.
A caesarian
section, which is birth by surgery, costs between $2
billion and $3 billion
depending on the time you spend in the hospital after
the
operation.
Private hospitals are charging $3 billion for a
caesarian, $1,2
billion for a normal delivery after paying a registration
fee of $400
million and these are "top-up" fees for those on medical
aid.
Many women of childbearing age are finding themselves in the
same
predicament as Juliet Nhamo, a young expecting mother who had
registered to
deliver at a clinic in Highfield.
Nhamo thought
she was going to have a normal birth, but things did not
go according to her
plan as she went into labour two days before the due
date.
Upon
arrival at the clinic, she was told there were complications with
her
pregnancy and she had to be rushed to Harare hospital.
The staff at
the clinic informed Nhamo that there was no ambulance to
take her to the
hospital and since there was no time to waste it would be
wise for her
husband to hire a cab.
To her horror, upon arrival at Harare
hospital she was told that the
only doctor qualified to operate on her only
does caesarians on Thursdays.
She was admitted but told that some
of the medication she required was
not available and she would have to buy
it from a private pharmacy.
Her husband did not have the money
after paying $150 million for the
car he hired to ferry his wife to the
hospital.
While she lay in hospital waiting for the doctor her
husband would
have to raise the hospital bill which would probably be above
$2 billion.
Such is the ugly picture of what many Zimbabweans are
being forced to
go through every time they have to seek
healthcare.
To buy a drip from a private pharmacy one has to fork
out $60 million
while a packet of 10 painkillers costs between $15 million
and $30 million
depending on the brand.
For those on HIV
treatment the cheapest brand of anti- retroviral
drugs, Stalanev, which is
locally manufactured, is now $300 million per
course and only covers 30
days.
A local surgeon who specialises in male reproductive health
who was
contacted by the Zimbabwe Independent last week said he was charging
more
than $20 billion to perform corrective surgery.
It is not
only the cost of healthcare which is a cause of concern but
also the
shortage of equipment and human resources.
Stacks of unserviceable
beds, electronic equipment, leaking pipes,
crumbling walls and bare
dispensary shelves are a common sight at government
hospitals across the
country.
Year after year, bids by the Ministry of Health for more
funding have
been cut to basics.
This has resulted in staff
from public health institutions leaving the
country for greener
pastures.
Recent statistics from the parliamentary portfolio show
that the
public health sector has a vacancy level of more than 40%. The
current
doctor to patient ratio is 1:12 000 while the ideal ratio should be
around
1:200.
In rural areas most district and mission
hospitals are being run by
nurse aids without doctors.
Only 738
doctors are still practising in the country out of an
establishment of 1 590
and less than 50 of them offer specialised care at
public
institutions.
There are only 37 registered obstetricians and
gynaecologists in
Zimbabwe yet there are more than four million women of
childbearing age.
Harare and Bulawayo account for 60% and 30%
respectively of all
public-sector doctors and nurses. The rest of the
smaller cities and towns
share the remainder but serve larger populations as
general hospitals and
provincial referral centres.
The
president of the Hospital Doctors Association, Amon Severegi, told
the
Independent this week that government should prioritise the health
sector in
its budget as many lives are being lost due to lack of resources
at public
hospitals.
"We feel as doctors working in the public sector that it
is important
that our health delivery systems are well resourced in terms of
drugs, human
resources and consumables," said Severegi.
"These
are our expectations as professionals as well as the general
public," he
added.
"We hope the responsible authorities will be able to come in
and
assist hospitals to get drugs as it's costing patients more to buy drugs
from private pharmacies than it would cost them if they got them at
hospitals," said Severegi.
Efforts to get comment from the
Ministry of Health were fruitless.
The chief executive of
Parirenyatwa Hospital, the county's largest
referral centre, Thomas Zigora,
said he could not comment on the condition
of the hospital in terms of
services.
"At the moment I cannot comment as we are still working
on a statement
addressing the issues that have been in the media concerning
our operations
that will be issued early next week," Zigora
said.
Zigora said that there had been many falsehoods about
Parirenyatwa
Hospital that have been peddled by people who have not made an
effort to
seek his office's comment.
A state weekly newspaper
two weeks ago reported that Parirenyatwa
Hospital had suspended all surgical
operations as a result of lack of
anaesthetic, general equipment breakdowns
and a shortage of painkillers used
to ease pain after surgery.
An orderly at one of the hospitals said: "The situation at our public
hospitals is scary, there are no drugs, some of the machines are not working
and doctors are not always there. It is becoming difficult for us to bring
our relatives to such hospitals which have very little to offer," she
said.--Lucia Makamure
Zim Independent
Friday, 07 March 2008 14:06
VETERAN nationalist and
former Zipra commander Dumiso Dabengwa's
defection over the weekend to
support former Zanu PF politburo member Simba
Makoni's presidential bid
could put a strain on the shaky 21-year-old Unity
Accord between Zanu PF and
PF-Zapu.
Dabengwa's defection, which Zanu PF has been trying to
dismiss as a
non-event, is in fact a grand parade of the discontent inherent
in the party
and a signal demonstration against President Robert Mugabe's
continued stay
in office.
Dabengwa on Tuesday revealed in an
interview his disappointment with
the implementation of the Unity Accord and
the growing rift between him and
Mugabe over fundamental political
issues.
Dabengwa has differed with the president on the execution
of the land
reform programme, the composition and functions of the
politburo, and the
exploitation of natural resources - especially diamonds
in Manicaland.
He has crossed swords with Mugabe over the role of
Jabulani Sibanda
last year as campaign co-ordinator for the president's
endorsement by Zanu
PF to stand for another term. Dabengwa does not believe
that Mugabe should
stand for another term as president.
Dabengwa on Tuesday tried to downplay the differences, saying he had
"no
problems with President Mugabe" but only his continued stay in
office.
His illustrious career as a liberator was this week put on
the coals
by opponents in Zanu PF who have branded him a traitor and a
sellout. But
Vice-president Joseph Msika just a day before Dabengwa's
defection had tried
to give the impression that the former Home Affairs
minister was not part of
the Makoni project. Msika, purportedly speaking on
behalf of Dabengwa and
other former PF-Zapu cadres, denied links with
Makoni, but he was made to
eat humble pie the next day.
Party
chairman John Nkomo was on Tuesday quoted in the press
denouncing Dabengwa
and calling his defection "good riddance". Other
lightweights like Bulawayo
metropolitan governor Cain Mathema denounced
Dabengwa as a tribalist and
traitor.
"How does Mathema attack me and call me a traitor," said
Dabengwa.
"You are called a traitor simply because you want the leadership
to retire?"
Dabengwa revealed in the interview that former senior
Zapu leaders
were aware of the undercurrents of discontent stemming from the
half-hearted
implementation of the Unity Accord.
Does this then
mean that they share his grief and are party to the
Makoni project? "We have
support from the cell level (in Zanu PF) right up
to the top," said
Dabengwa. Asked how high the support for Makoni went in
the party, he said:
"Look at me, I am an example", suggesting that the
support went as far as
the politburo.
Makoni has since been axed from the party and until
Wednesday this
week there had not been any formal communication from the
party on Dabengwa's
involvement. But he knows what is coming his
way.
Asked if he would attend politburo meetings, he said he would
if
invited.
"I am normally invited when there is a politburo
meeting. If I am in
Bulawayo, I am sent a ticket. I do not expect one," he
said.
Dabengwa said he is exiting the party not only to support
Makoni, but
also to register protest with what he feels is Mugabe's
subjugation of
PF-Zapu through the Unity Accord. He however believes the
need for
leadership renewal in the party is a more compelling reason to
break the
mould and support Makoni.
"This is not about any
individual or political party. This is about
the country. This is about
leadership renewal," he said.
Dabengwa's opponents in Zanu PF are
likely to use his assault on the
Unity Accord as a platform to attack him as
a tribalist. Tension between him
and his Zapu colleagues heightened last
year when he publicly denounced the
accord while addressing the Bulawayo
Press Club.
"To a larger extent, unity was achieved in an
unbalanced and forced
manner, given that the government had failed to crush
the dissident
activities that were spreading all over the Matabeleland
region."
On Tuesday Dabengwa said the accord was fundamentally
flawed.
"It was discussed under pressure and people were being
killed," he
said. "Very unfortunate compromises were made (by PF-Zapu) to
avoid further
suffering of our people."
He said the two parties
(PF-Zapu and Zanu PF) should put into force
the accord agreed just before
the Lancaster House Conference.
"We need to go back to the real
unity accord signed in blood in
Mozambique," he said.
Zanla and
Zipra commanders at the time went around guerilla camps in
Mozambique,
Zambia and Tanzania seeking a mandate to form the Patriotic
Front. He said
the two forces should have gone into the 1980 poll as a
united Patriotic
Front, but this was not to be.
Dabengwa said although he was party
to the 1987 agreement; there were
still areas that the PF-Zapu leaders were
not happy about. Areas of
contention included the names that were to be
retained by both parties after
the signing of the unity accord. For
instance, Zanu-PF was to retain its
name, Zanu-PF, while Zapu was to be
rechristened PF only, describing this as
a "senseless arrangement that
smacked of belittlement".
"The Zanu PF headquarters still bears the
cockerel, but this should
have been removed. The agreement was that we use
the Great Zimbabwe motif
instead."
He also believes that the
appointment of officials to key government
positions still favours Zanu PF
members and not former PF Zapu cadres.
Dabengwa sees the
involvement of Sibanda in campaigning for Mugabe as
an attempt to sanitise
the Unity Accord. At the Bulawayo Press Club last
year he opined: "The
recent efforts by some elements to bring back Jabulani
Sibanda into the
picture are nothing but efforts to try and paint a picture
to the claim that
there is still unity within Zanu PF. These are not really
serious efforts
because some of us do not recognise Jabulani."
Dabengwa this week
said he together with retired army general Solomon
Mujuru had in January
confronted Msika on the Sibanda issue and the
re-organisation of the war
veterans. He said after Mugabe mandated him and
Mujuru to head a board to
re-organise the war veterans, recommendations were
then sent to the
politburo detailing the envisaged new leadership structure.
"We
asked Vice-President Msika when he was acting president in January
what had
happened to the recommendations that we sent to the party and the
Ministry
of Defence in August last year. We said we now looked like
untrustworthy
people. He (Msika) said 'can we arrange a meeting with the
president'. Until
now there has been no feedback," he said.
There have also been
sharp differences between him and Mugabe on the
size and composition of the
politburo that he felt was too large. He said
just before the party's
Chinhoyi conference he and Mujuru had raised concern
at the rapid expansion
of the politburo.
He said the expansion of the politburo stemmed
from Mugabe's fear of
criticism. The expansion of the politburo was an
attempt to stifle debate at
the highest level by bringing in
cheerleaders.
Dabengwa said after he had raised concern over the
size of the
politburo which had been expanded from about 15 members to 45, a
committee
led by Nkomo was set up to deal with the issue. He said
recommendations of
the committee to reduce the size of the politburo were
never taken on board
"and the politburo has remained what it is
today".
As early as 2000, he had already started to take Mugabe
head-on. When
war veterans invaded farms in 2000, Dabengwa, supported by
Msika, ordered
the former combatants off the farms with "immediate effect".
He ordered
police to take action within 24 hours. But the war veterans
stayed put
saying they "don't take instructions from police".
Dabengwa refused to discuss his clash with Mugabe over the
exploitation of
diamonds in Marange. Last year Mugabe in a televised
interview to mark his
birthday, attacked party officials whom he accused of
corruption and
amassing wealth illegally. He denounced party officials who
had joined hands
with whites to try and exploit diamonds in Marange.
This was in
reference to Dabengwa who is a shareholder in ACR, the
company that
eventually lost its rights to mine diamonds in Marange.
Dabengwa does not
deny his shareholding in ACR. The issue however came up
for discussion in
the politburo with members from Manicaland questioning why
"Dabengwa from
Matabeleland" was interested in a mining venture in Marange.
Dabengwa is
said to have defended himself saying there was nothing amiss in
him owning
shares in ACR.
The Marange claim is currently being exploited by
government through
the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation despite
strong objections from
central bank governor Gideon Gono who has described
the mining as
"mechanised panning".--Vincent Kahiya
Zim Independent
Friday, 07
March 2008 14:00
INDEPENDENT presidential candidate Simba Makoni on
Saturday launched
his election campaign in Bulawayo as cracks in Zanu PF
widened with the
defection of politburo member Dumiso Dabengwa to back the
former Finance
minister.
Apart from Dabengwa, former
parliamentary speaker Cyril Ndebele joined
Makoni at White City Stadium to
announce his support for the expelled former
Finance minister.
Earlier on Dabengwa and Ndebele had flanked Makoni when he met the
business
community at Large City Hall and outlined his election manifesto
and
programme.
Makoni's convoy entered the stadium to a n enthusiastic
reception with
supporters chanting his slogan - "Simba Kuvanhu", "Amandla
Ebantwini" and
"Simba to the People".
Accompanied by his wife
Chipo, Makoni returned the gesture of the
clasped hands raised above the
head to the cheering crowd.
But the focus of the crowd later turned
to Dabengwa.
He told the 6 000-plus crowd that he chose to dump
Zanu PF after
President Robert Mugabe resisted leadership renewal and a
smooth transition
of power in the party.
"For a very long time
we had tried to work with fellow politburo
members to facilitate a smooth
transition of power after realising that the
Zanu PF leadership was getting
old but Mugabe betrayed us and made a u-turn
on his pledges to retire,"
Dabengwa told the crowd.
He said their intention was not regime
change, but leadership renewal.
Dabengwa said party faithfuls had
hoped Mugabe would open up the
presidential selection process at last
December's special congress, but that
did not happen.
"We were
defeated and ended up with a presidential candidate we felt
should be
replaced," Dabengwa said.
"We came up with this rescue operation
(of bringing in Makoni) to say
we could not have our leadership failing to
the likes of (the MDC's Morgan)
Tsvangirai, which will see us going back to
the Zambian situation where out
of desperation they replaced Kenneth Kaunda
with Frederick Chiluba."
In his address, Makoni said his movement
would pursue a national
re-engagement and create an enabling environment for
Zimbabwe to begin its
road to recovery.
"This is a response to
the failure of national leadership. We want
renewal and re-engagement," he
said.
The former Finance minister said he appreciated the backing
he
received from the MDC's Arthur Mutambara faction in his presidential
bid.
"We have welcomed and appreciated the Professor Arthur
Mutambara MDC's
endorsement of our candidature and we are appealing to those
in Zanu PF and
Tsvangirai's MDC who have not done so to support the
independent candidate,"
Makoni said.
He added that he enjoyed
support from many people in Zanu PF and the
Tsvangirai MDC.
"All these people have realised the need for concerted effort in
achieving
the goal of national reintegration that I have been talking
about," Makoni
said.
He denied being used by Zanu PF to split the opposition
vote.
"There are those that believe that I am being used by so and
so to
further certain agendas. I again state that I am Simba Makoni and
shall
always remain Simba Makoni," he said. "I will not be used by someone
to
further their political agendas because I believe that I have a role to
play
in determining the destiny of this country."
The following
day, Makoni took his campaign to Harare where he told
over 7 000 people who
gathered at Zimbabwe Grounds, Highfield, that the time
was nigh to remove
Mugabe from power.
"The status quo has abandoned the policy of
working for the people.
They are now following corrupt and self-centered
policies," Makoni told the
cheering crowd.
"Our country is in a
serious crisis. We live in fear. Fear has been
instilled in our people and
those who differ from Mugabe's point of view are
labelled enemies and
sellouts. We need to reclaim our power and have a new
dawn."
Speaking in the vernacular, the former Sadc secretary-general said
Zimbabwe
was now a basket case despite that in the late 1980s the country
could feed
its people and export surplus food to the region.
He said poor
policies and lack of zeal to implement robust programmes
resulted in the
collapse of the country's agricultural sector.
"What we now see on
the farms is sora (grass) beans," Makoni said. "It
is difficult to imagine
because by 1986 we were able to feed ourselves and
export excess
food."
Makoni said if he is elected he would implement prudent land
reforms
that would see multiple farm owners and lazy farmers removed from
farms.
He decried the general deterioration of the country's
infrastructure
and also bemoaned the slump in the health and education
systems.
"We want to reclaim the people's power. Zimbabwe must work
again and
that is why we appeal to you to vote for me," Makoni
said.
"We are going to be servants of the people, not the other way
round.
You should elect leaders who work for you, not suppress
you."
He said he decided to challenge Mugabe after it became
apparent that
he had lost the spirit and the principles of the liberation
struggle.
"In 1980, Mugabe made a great statement of
reconciliation, but is he
adhering to that principle? Are we still following
our liberation struggle
principles?" Makoni questioned amid cheers and
ululation from the crowd.
Makoni was stopped from continuing with
his address after police
officer commanding Harare South District, Chief
Superintendent Thomsen
Jangara, went up to the podium and told him that his
time was up.
The police ordered Makoni to hold his rally between
9am and
mid-afternoon as they intended to deploy their officers to monitor
the
international soccer match between Dynamos and Royal Leopards of
Swaziland.
He told supporters to disperse in an orderly
fashion.
Speaking at the same rally, former Zanu PF secretary
general Edgar
Tekere said he had been appointed Makoni's principal
campaigner to remove
Mugabe because "we do not want leaders who want to die
in power".
Meanwhile, the Mutambara faction launched its election
campaign and
manifesto at a rally held at White City Stadium the same
day.
About 3 000 people attended the rally that was addressed by
Mutambara
and vice-president Gibson Sibanda, among others.
Mutambara in his address spoke on the land issue in the country and
his
party's association with Makoni.
"Because we want to give an
opportunity to deliver change, we agreed
to work with Makoni, that is why we
tried to reunite with the Tsvangirai
side, but he made it impossible for
that to happen," Mutambara said.
On the land issue, Mutambara said
there would be no land that will be
repossessed from blacks to whites if his
party wins the elections.--Loughty
Dube/Constantine Chimakure
Zim Independent
Friday, 07 March 2008 14:22
JUSTICE minister Patrick Chinamasa was
part of the Simba Makoni plot
to wrestle power from President Robert Mugabe,
ruling party politburo member
Dumiso Dabengwa confirmed at the
weekend.
Dabengwa, who on Saturday joined Makoni's presidential bid,
said
Chinamasa attended meetings in Cape Town and Pretoria late last year
where
it was agreed that there was need for leadership renewal in Zanu
PF.
President Thabo Mbeki first used the expression "leadership
renewal"
five years ago.
Apart from Chinamasa and Dabengwa,
Makoni also attended the meetings.
Addressing a star rally for
Makoni at White City Stadium where he
announced his decision to dump Zanu
PF, Dabengwa revealed that there were
many senior ruling party cadres who
were involved in the breakaway of the
former deputy secretary of
finance.
"We held very wide consultations on this issue with a
number of
people," Dabengwa said. "A number of people whom we consulted
agreed to the
(breakaway) idea and that is when we reached the agreement
that Makoni be
supported through and through," he said. "Chinamasa and
Makoni would come to
my hotel room in Pretoria and we would discuss the
groundwork that had been
covered and we agreed on what was supposed to be
done next. This happened
for quite some time, up until we ended up with
Makoni submitting his papers
as the presidential candidate."
Dabengwa claimed that Chinamasa embraced the idea of Makoni
challenging
Mugabe when they met in separate meetings in Cape Town and
Pretoria where
the strategy was drawn up.
Chinamasa, Dabengwa claimed, had agreed
to be part of a think-tank to
help Makoni strategise on how to dislodge
Mugabe.
Repeated efforts yesterday to obtain comment from Chinamasa
and
national party chairperson John Nkomo were in vain.
However, Chinamasa has been executing his party duties since Makoni
announced his presidential ambitions on February 5.
This is not
the first time that Chinamasa has been implicated in
manoeuvres in Zanu PF
to unseat Mugabe. In November 2004 Chinamasa was part
of the famous
Tsholotsho Declaration that wanted to re-arrange the ruling
party's
presidium and lay the ground for Mugabe's smooth succession.
Vice-President Joseph Msika at the launch of Zanu PF's election
campaign
last Friday vehemently denied any links to Makoni and went further
to
exonerate Nkomo, Vice-President Joice Mujuru and Dabengwa.
But 24
hours later, Msika was forced to eat humble pie after Dabengwa
confirmed
that he was backing Makoni. --Loughty Dube
Zim Independent
Saturday, 08 March 2008 13:34
ZEC. Bars Journalits From
The Private Media
BULAWAYO
The impartiality of the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) was in
doubt on Tuesday, when officials
from the body barred journalists from the
private media from attending an
election-reporting workshop.
The one-day training workshop, held at
the Bulawayo Rainbow Hotel, was
titled The Role of the Media during
Elections and was led by Kenya-born
Ngugi wa Mirii.
It was
attended by 15 journalists from the State media, including
reporters from
The Chronicle, Sunday News, New Ziana and the Zimbabwe
Broadcasting
Corporation (ZBC).
However, when journalists from The Zimbabwean
and The Standard
attempted to attend, ZEC officials said they were not
welcome because the
publications had been writing negative stories about the
Commission's
preparations for the March 29 elections.
State
journalists who attended the workshop said wa Mirii had urged
attendees to
be patriotic towards the Robert Mugabe-led Government.
"He also
said the Zimbabwean private media falsely claim that there is
no press
freedom to seek foreign funding, among other incentives, from the
western
world," said one journalist.
The ZEC was instrumental in shutting
down five independent newspapers
over the past three years, including the
Daily News and the Daily News on
Sunday.
Last week, The
Zimbawean reported that ZEC voter educators, wearing
Commission jackets,
were touring the Queenspark Suburb of Bulawayo telling
to vote wisely by
voting for President Mugabe.
No comment could be obtained from ZEC
spokesperson Shupikai Mashereni.
The Zimbabwean
Saturday, 08 March 2008 13:12
No Passports Until After
Elections
BULAWAYO
Passport-processing has stopped
until after the election because of a
lack of funds, The Zimbabwean on
Sunday learnt this week.
Staff at the Bulawayo passport office
revealed that the office, which
stopped the processing of new ordinary
passports last year, has now extended
that measure to even urgent passports,
due to a shortage of funds for buying
materials.
"We used to
process urgent passports only, but we have since been told
that even
applications for those should not be accepted until after the
elections. We
also no longer accept top-up fees from those people that are
on the passport
waiting list," said an official on Wednesday.
The staff said that,
for around four weeks, they have been allowed to
accept only applications
for Emergency Travel Documents (ETDs), which are
printed on bond paper and
signed at provincial passport offices. But, only
those who have applied for
passports can easily apply for the ETDs, as they
need to satisfy the
authorities about why an ETD is needed.
An ETD, which can be
obtained in 48 hours, is valid for a maximum
period of six months and can
only be used when travelling to selected
countries in the Southern African
region.
Meanwhile, the Registrar-General's office has failed to
catch up with
a serious backlog of people awaiting new passports, despite
the
Registrar-General, Tobaiwa Mudede, promising speedy processing of the
documents last year.
When announcing the "temporary" suspension
of new applications, Mudede
said his office would first deal with
outstanding applications. At the
Bulawayo office, however, only passports
applied for in January 2006 are now
ready for collection.
Normally,
a Zimbabwean passport should take six months from the
receipt of the
application.
Some workers at the passport collection counter have
used this as an
opportunity to make money by charging foreign currency for
delivering
documents to those waiting for them.
"I was charged
R200 for my document to come through, by a member of
staff who claimed to be
bringing it from Harare, but it later turned out
that the document was
already here and the member just wanted my money, as
they are reluctant to
release the passports for free," said Thulani Moyo.
Demand for
passports and ETDs has been growing as more Zimbabweans
leave their country
to seek better conditions elsewhere.
Some have even abandoned the
length and bureaucratic process and cross
the border into South Africa and
Botswana illegally. Others simply overstay
their permitted time rather than
apply for documents.
The Zimbabwean
Saturday, 08 March 2008 13:05
HARARE - The Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) is
pumping into the
system for Harare and its metropolitan centres water that
is 50% below ideal
standards of cleanliness and purity due to lack of
adequate chemicals, an
expert has said.
Engineer Lovemore Makada used to
work in the then Harare City Council water
treatment department but resigned
and is now in private practice. He told
The Zimbabwean on Sunday about his
findings after doing laboratory tests on
many samples of water being
consumed in homes and industries around Harare,
Chitungwiza, Ruwa and
Norton.
The beleaguered water utility has even resorted to doing without some
vital
chemicals in the water treatment.
"The tests have shown that the
quality and standard of water is below 50% of
the levels safe for human
consumption, meaning exposing the consumers to
serious health risks," Makada
said. "The assessments done at various stages
show that almost all the vital
chemicals are lacking from time to time and
probably place to
place."
Makada did the tests and assessment as part of a private project on
behalf
of some organization but agreed to disclose the findings to this
paper.
Among the vital chemicals required for water treatment are algicides,
chlorine, clarifiers, filter cleansers, muriatric acids and sodium
bicarbonate, most of which ZINWA has to import.
"Some of the chemicals
used to be produced locally, but the manufacturers
have either closed down
or are not managing due to their own problems," a
senior ZINWA official said
on condition of anonymity. "The major problem is
lack of foreign currency
for importing these chemicals and indeed at most
times the treatment process
is done with little quantities and at times
without others."
Makada said
his test showed that algicides seem to be the most problematic
chemicals
because of the green, smelly qualities that the water from ZINWA
usually
has. "An algicide is a chemical which when added to water kills
algae and
blue-green algae," he said.
He added that the water being consumed contained
"serious levels of sewage
products that escape the treatment process most
obviously due to lack or
inadequacy of chemicals".
Added to that, aged
equipment at water treatment plants is often breaking
down, worsening the
situation as ZINWA would have to use what an insider
described as "makeshift
processes just to ensure there is some water to pump
into the
system.
Harare residents from places such as Mabvuku and Tafara have on
several
occasions suffered outbreaks of diarrhea and dysentery owing to the
consumption of water from ZINWA coupled with the fact that these places
experience persistent water shortages forcing them to fetch from unhealthy
sources.
Minister of Water and Infrastructure Development Munacho Mutezo
admitted
that "shortages of foreign currency are affecting the processes of
water
treatment because of the shortage of chemicals".
Former Harare
mayor, MDC executive member Elias Mudzuri said the quality of
water being
processed by ZINWA has reached "scandalous levels" and is now a
"sure
way
Zim Online
by Chenai Maramba Saturday 08 March
2008
KAROI - A Zimbabwe opposition candidate, Timothy
Mutsunge, who was arrested
on Tuesday for holding an illegal political
meeting in Karoi town, about
200km north of Harare, was yesterday set free
after paying Z$100 million
bail.
Seventeen other Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) party supporters who
were arrested with Mutsunge in
the small farming town were also released
yesterday after they paid Z$100
million bail each.
State prosecutor, Edison Machinjike, told the court
that Mutsunge and the
MDC supporters, all loyal to Morgan Tsvangirai, had
violated a section of
the tough Public Order and Security Act (POSA) after
they held an
unsanctioned political meeting at Magunjue rural service centre
on Monday.
"The accused persons violated a section of the POSA when they
were hooting,
whistling and chanting party slogans, breaching the peace at
Magunje on 4
March.
"Furthermore, they had not notified the
regulating authority that they were
to hold a political gathering," said
Machinjike.
Under the amended POSA, Zimbabweans are required to first
notify the police
before gathering in groups of more than three people to
discuss politics.
The MDC has in the past complained that President
Robert Mugabe's government
was using the law to stifle legitimate political
activity and that the
police were applying the law selectively to cripple
the opposition.
Karoi magistrate, Elisha Singano, yesterday granted bail
to the MDC
activists after their lawyer, Abel Murisi, argued that the
accused would not
interfere with investigations by the state.
"Bail
is granted on condition that you deposit $100 million each for the
accused
and that you appear in court on 26 March 2008," ruled Singano.
Two weeks
ago, two other MDC candidates loyal to academic Arthur Mutambara
were also
arrested while campaigning in Karoi. The police accused the two of
conducting an illegal political meeting in Chikangwe
suburb.
Zimbabweans go to the polls on 29 March amid concerns from human
rights
groups and the opposition that the electoral playing field was
heavily
titled in President Robert Mugabe's favour.
Mugabe is facing
his biggest electoral test from his former finance minister
Simba Makoni and
Tsvangirai a popular opposition leader. - ZimOnline
My greatest fear for the past 18 months has been
that we would not get to an
election. I have been afraid that Zanu PF would
realize that they were in
all sorts of difficulty and would simply back away
from the electoral
process and declare that they would rule by decree. In
effect we have been
under some sort of military rule for some time now such
an action would
simply have made the fact public.
But we have got
there at last and not a minute too soon! We, as a country,
cannot take much
more of the battering we are getting from the markets. The
economy is still
intact but reeling from inflation at 150 000 percent per
annum and collapsing
infrastructure and services. Food stores are empty.
Zanu PF is confident
that they have done enough to yield a result in their
favor they have
gerrymandered the constituencies weighting the rural
vote at two to one
urban vote, they have maintained tight control of the
electoral process and
given the opposition no room to maneuver we are
getting no exposure on any
of the news services here and are being subjected
to a daily barrage of
propaganda and harassment.
The campaign is now truly underway Mugabe
launched his campaign in
Beitbridge with a birthday party that cost the
country Z$3 trillion, MDC
launched in Mutare on the same day and this past
weekend the Makoni and
Mutambara groups launched their campaigns in
Bulawayo.
We did not see much of the birthday bash the theme seemed to
be ³have your
cake and eat it² with about 10 000 guests transported into the
tiny enclave
of Beitbridge. Our people in South Africa held a competing rally
at the same
time and had a blip that said it all ³You have had your cake,
now beat
it!²
The Makoni group began their campaign in White City
Stadium in Bulawayo on
Saturday and I estimated the crowd as a maximum of 5
000 people. They then
went on to Harare and in the Zimbabwe grounds managed a
crowd that was a lot
smaller that, in my view, was a disaster for
them.
The Mutambara group kicked off their campaign with a rally at White
City
using the same facilities as Makoni, but drew an even smaller crowd. I
saw
no one on the stands and there were few people hanging around the
outside.
This is not encouraging for these two groups. MDC will hold a Star
rally at
White City this coming Saturday and it will be instructive to see
what sort
of a crowd comes to the event. So far the MDC rural rallies have
been very
encouraging.
The towns are slowly waking up to the fact that
there is an election on
the poster war is in full swing and meetings are
taking place in all sorts
of places. Flyers are being distributed and we even
had reports of the Army
distributing Makoni flyers in Bulawayo at the weekend
and during the week.
That is a most interesting development!
An
election here is a bit like a medieval battle thousands of men and
women
line up behind their leaders and then at a given signal, rush onto
the
battlefields and do hand to hand combat. For a long time it is impossible
to
see what is happening as the struggle for ascendancy washes back and
forth,
but gradually a sense of the way things are going to go becomes
apparent
perhaps in one section of the battlefield and then it widens until
one side
breaks and runs.
We are in the early stages and it is
impossible to see what is happening.
MDC is good at this sort of thing and I
must say I am amazed at the energy
people are throwing into this scrap. My
own crew is just about working me to
the bone! We cannot see how people will
finally vote at this stage but it is
very exciting to see that democracy is
alive and well on the streets if not
in our State House! It gives me real
faith in the future to see and
experience how ordinary people are doing
extraordinary things all so that
they can finally vote and perhaps make a
change.
We are doing all we can to prevent the blatant vote rigging
and
falsification of vote tabulations that took place in the past but if
we
are not successful and Mugabe is again able to deliver a victory for
himself
and perhaps his Party and if Africa does not stand up for the
ordinary
people here; I for one will call for international condemnation and
a
withdrawal of all forms of assistance to Africa.
Quite frankly, the
attitude of the majority of African leaders to the antics
of people like
Kibaki and Mugabe who have flagrantly abused the rights of
people to vote for
the leaders of their choice is disgraceful. I said to a
number of others that
Kibaki was not going to get away with his antics, but
apart from a minority
of leaders and even fewer countries in Africa, he
would be allowed to get
away with the fraudulent election results he is
claiming. Again it was left
to outsiders Koffie Annan and Ms. Rice to
eventually force the Parties to
the table my sympathies lie with the guys
who won the election and are now
forced to share power with Kibaki. The role
of the new President of Tanzania
and Chairman of the AU was however a breath
of fresh air.
Can you
believe its three weeks to go! My own feeling is let¹s get this
thing over
with and see what is left standing when the dust and smoke
clears. At least
then we will know what we face in the remainder of the
year. We simply cannot
go on as we are.
On Tuesday next week the MDC will launch its policies
for a new Zimbabwe. I
think it is the most complete review of national policy
that we have seen
since 1980. It constitutes a vision for a new Zimbabwe that
is just and
inclusive and will respect our rights. When we win, this document
will give
all Zimbabweans a vision for the future. It is slowly dawning on
many
observers here that this might just happen!
Eddie
Cross
Bulawayo, 8th March 2008
www.cathybuckle.com
8th March 2008
Dear Friends.
I was
teaching teachers at a remote training college a few years ago when I
first
came across Zvido Zvevanhu, a small primary school right out in the
rural
areas. The school was built shortly after Independence and its name
perfectly summed up all the hopes and dreams Zimbabweans had at the time:
zvido zvevanhu, the will of the people. I think of that little rural school
often and its name which had such profound resonance in the eighties and has
even more now in 2008 as we approach elections which are after all supposed
to reflect the true will of the people.
Zimbabweans are no different
from people anywhere; wherever they live,
whatever their race or culture,
what they all want from a government is a
better life with stability and
economic security for themselves and hope for
their children's futures.
People want to live in an ordered society which
respects their rights as
individuals; they want to know that they have
equality before the law, that
the police and the courts will treat them
fairly and accord them their
rights and freedoms as enshrined in the
constitution. In return, the citizen
will fulfil his/her obligations to the
state and obey the law. This is the
deal citizens make with their government
in a democratic state. Robert
Mugabe and his ministers frequently tell us
that Zimbabwe is a democracy so
we are entitled to ask: is this what the
people want, is this the will of
the people? Inflation at 100.000%,
unemployment at 85%, widespread poverty
and hunger, raw sewage running
through the streets and into people's homes;
endless power cuts, hospitals
without medication or anaesthetics, schools
dilapidated and deserted as
teachers leave and pupils are too poor or too
hungry to attend class. Is
this what the people want? It is certainly what
they've got under Robert
Mugabe's leadership. The evidence is there for all
to see - but not for all
to acknowledge apparently.
Simba Makoni,
like his former master, wants us to draw a veil over the
disastrous failures
of Zimbabwe 2008 and look back instead to the glories of
the past and
Mugabe's role in the Liberation Struggle. Makoni is quoted in
the Mail and
Guardian this week as saying that if he wins the presidential
election he
will not seek retribution over Mugabe's deplorable human rights
record.
'President Mugabe is someone who has a very special place in our
history. We
will accord them ( Mugabe and the late Joshua Nkomo) the due
respect of our
African culture. We want President Mugabe to know that under
our New Dawn
government they have the same rights as other citizens.'
It is the
dreadful irony of the last eight words that immediately strike the
reader,
'they have the same rights as other citizens' One has to wonder
where Simba
Makoni has been for the past ten years while those rights have
been steadily
eroded by the government of which he was an integral part.
What citizens'
rights is Mr Makoni referring to? The right to be beaten to a
pulp by Green
Bombers or CIO operatives and thrown into a stinking gaol cell
by a corrupt
and partial police force, the right to have one's home and
livelihood
destroyed in a government sponsored operation designed to 'clear
away filth'
or the right to be arrested for nothing more dangerous than
daring to hand
out election literature in legitimate door-to-door
campaigning? Are those
the 'rights' that will be accorded to President
Mugabe, his ministers and
other assorted thugs when Makoni's bright 'New
Dawn' government comes to
power?
The question of what will happen to President Mugabe when he
finally leaves
office - by whatever means - is hardly an election issue. It
is hardly a
question that is dominating people's minds as they stand in
endless queues
at the bank or trudge home in the dark after a day spent in a
fruitless
search for food or cash or petrol. It is surprising then that
Simba Makoni
should find it necessary to reassure the President he hopes to
topple that
his safety will be guaranteed should Makoni take his place in
State House.
I believe it is for the Zimbabwean people themselves to
decide what should
happen to the man who destroyed the country's economy and
drove millions
into exile, the man who unleashed his violent war veterans
onto the farms
and destroyed the lives of thousands of his own people, black
and white; the
man who gave the orders for Gukurahundi which massacred
twenty thousand
innocent Ndebele people and in an act of politically
motivated destruction
set in motion Murambatsvina which left 700.000 people
homeless, their rights
as citizens totally set aside by a President and
government determined to
hang onto power at all cost. Ultimately, it will be
for them, the victims of
Mugabe's brutality to decide on his fate - and the
first step in that
process is to vote him out of power on March
29th.
Yours in the struggle. PH.
Nehanda Radio
08
March 2008
Harare- MICHAEL Jeffrey Davies, the Chairman of the Combined
Harare
Residents' Association (CHRA) has come under fire from disgruntled
members
of the residents'organisation.
This happened after Davies
wrote letters to individual leaders of the ward
structures, advising them of
their suspension from the association because
of their alleged role in the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC).
This comes in the
wake of renewed fears that the CHRA management has set its
sights on
changing the CHRA constitution in order to retain the leadership
of the
association.
The residents' body is scheduled to hold its crucial Annual
General Meeting
(AGM) set for anytime in March.
The ward leaders
immediately announced the formation of a parallel residents
group that will
break the monopoly of the once powerful CHRA in representing
the residents
of Harare, under the curse of long spells of water shortages,
mounts of
uncollected garbage, lack of cooperation by the City of Harare and
deterioration of municipal and other services in the capital.
"The
battle lines have been drawn," declared the former CHRA members at a
meeting
held at a community hall in Glen View to mark the beginning of their
work in
the high density suburbs, long thought to be neglected under a CHRA
leadership.
"We have put in place mechanisms to reclaim our
independence from a white
supremacist who still believes in the supremacy of
another race over the
other," their spokesperson said to a deafening
applause from the 40 plus
members in attendance.
The grouping denied
being influential in the opposition but acknowledged
their desire to see the
end of dictatorship in Zimbabwe, and suffering for
the citizens of
Harare.
"We are first and foremost Zimbabweans and we have a right to
participate in
the politics of Zimbabwe," one of them said. "CHRA is a
voluntary
organisation that brings together people of different political
beliefs
which must not be allowed to be dominant over others'
beliefs.
Even if one supports the MDC, it does not stop them from being
resident of
Harare."
Davies is mainly accused of using CHRA resources and
a vulnerable Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) to selectively apply rules and
regulations governing
CHRA procedures manuals. For example, they cited the
issue of the CHRA
vice-chairman Israel Mabhoo, a founding member of the MDC,
and now an active
member of the Arthur-Mutambara-led MDC formation, as being
protected by
Davies.
When contacted for comment, Davies said that
CHRA would continue with its
work without being influenced by anyone. He
refused further discussion of
the matter. But CHRA members accused Davies of
abusive management style,
mismanagement of CHRA resources, mainly sourced
from named donors, biased
selection of members who travel to foreign trips,
lack of concern for the
collapsed service provision by the City of Harare
and CHRA's alleged failure
to positively respond to the crisis bedevilling
Harare residents.
The Zimbabwean
Saturday, 08 March 2008 12:52
Mugabe Gets New UZ$5 Million
Chopper.
RARE - President Robert Mugabe has purchased another
helicopter for
US$3 million after the crash of his previous chopper last
year,
investigations by The Zimbabwean on Sunday have
revealed.
Sources confirmed that the geriatric leader has taken
delivery of the
new chopper from China, said to be model HM 036 manufactured
by Shenzhen
Zhangyang Technology.
We have established through
leaked information from top government and
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)
officials that after the crash last year
Mugabe's chopper was pronounced
beyond repair. He then ordered his personal
banker and central back chief,
Gideon Gono to make available US$3 million
for the purchase of a new
one.
The country is suffering a critical shortage of foreign currency,
and
economists say US$3 million could purchase food and drugs enough to meet
the
needs of the whole country for three months.
Mugabe purchased a
Chinese-manufactured chopper, white in colour and
took delivery of it early
this year in time for the start of his election
campaign. He is already
using the chopper, sources say, as he moves around
the country seeking
re-election.
Our sources said he negotiated with the Chinese to make a
down payment
of US$3 million for the chopper, whose price was US$5
million.
"He purchased the new helicopter from China, and the money was
made
available by the RBZ late last year," a senior RBZ official said on
condition of anonymity.
"He was given a special condition and
allowed to pay US$3 and will
have to pay the other US$2 million
later."
Another source working in Mugabe's office confirmed that the
new
helicopter, "arrived at the beginning of the year when Mugabe was away
on
holiday and Gono visited China, most probably to settle the deal and
arrange
for the delivery".
Questions sent to Gono's office two
weeks ago were not responded to by
the time of going to press and emailed
questions to Shenzhen Zhangyang
Technology were also not responded to. The
secretary in Mugabe's spokesman,
George Charamba's office on Thursday said,
"you people will not get any
comment from him on such things" before hanging
up the phone.
Last April The Zimbabwean reported that Mugabe's
European-made Cougar
helicopter crashed towards the end of February and was
said by technicians
to have been damaged beyond repair.
The Zimbabwean
Saturday, 08 March 2008 11:24
On The Homefront .Taona Moto
March 29 is
not very far now. The day for the harmonised elections. Anything
could
happen on this day. Anything. I am one of those who have been debating
with
myself as to what would really happen in the event that a little
earthquake
takes place on this small part of the world.and President Mugabe
is
defeated.
Well, with the opposition fragmented as it is, the real
chance of Mugabe
going would most likely come in the event of a poll
run-off. In this case,
it will be a matter of people either going to vote
for him or against him.
Simple.
Like the historic 2000 referendum which
was more or less a vote for or
against him, his chances of winning the poll
would be slim.especially if he
would be squaring off against Morgan.
(Because Morgan has proved in the past
that he has sympathisers at the
grassroots throughout the country). Here you
would have a situation where
more people would turn out to vote in the
droves.including those who would
not have voted in the harmonized March 29
elections.
If Mugabe's future
is at stake, it would be an election in which more
Zimbabweans would
naturally want to have a say. Right now Zimbabweans don't
care who their
Member of the House of Assembly is, or who their Senator
is.let alone who
their ward councillor is. The only person who matter to
them is