Bad To Worse

HOWARD BURDITT / REUTERS A Zimbabwean stacks the equivalent of U.S. $1,000

From the Magazine

Zimbabwe's Central Statistics Office delays publishing April inflation figures "indefinitely" — most likely because they've gone over 1000%

By MEGAN LINDOW

 

Sunday, May. 14, 2006

President Robert Mugabe's policies to stem Zimbabwe's economic meltdown are once more attracting attention of all the wrong kind. Last year, in an operation called Murambatsvina (or "drive out trash"), soldiers destroyed the homes and market stalls of thousands of small traders and opposition supporters and forced many of them to resettle in grim camps or return to their rural homes. Recently, troops have swept rural areas, ostensibly to help boost agricultural productivity by growing food on idle farms. In reality, though, human-rights advocates say the army has begun seizing food from peasant farmers, raising fears that this year's harvest will be confiscated to feed soldiers and tighten control over rural opposition strongholds. "All basic foods are now under direct military control," says Eddie Cross, an economist and adviser to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

The latest exercise — dubbed Operation Taguta/ Sisuthi or "eat well" — has been disastrous, according to a report released last month by the Solidarity Peace Trust, a South African human-rights group. The group says the army has left communities without enough grain to feed themselves, despite a year of bumper harvests. The food grab and increasing militarization of the government comes as annual inflation passed 1,000% on Friday.

The World Health Organization says Zimbabweans now have the world's lowest life expectancy, due to poverty, hiv/aids and the collapse of the country's health-care system. Says Cross: "The mood in Zimbabwe is one of resignation and misery." Without change, "we will end up as a small country with 6 million poor peasants who do what they are told."

From the May. 22, 2006 issue of TIME Europe magazine

Harare says will not repeal tough media law

Zim Online

Mon 15 May 2006

      BULAWAYO - Zimbabwe will not repeal a tough media law which it has
used over the last three years to arrest more than a hundred journalists and
close down four newspapers, Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga has
said.

      Matonga said the government sees "nothing wrong" with the Access to
Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) under which journalists
must register with the state's Media and Information Commission (MIC) with
those caught practising without being registered facing up to two years in
jail.

      Newspapers must also register with the MIC or face closure and seizure
of their equipment if convicted of publishing without a registration
certificate.

      "There is nothing wrong with AIPPA and we are happy with the law. Some
of the journalists who are clamouring for the repeal of the Act have never
even read it," said Matonga, who was addressing journalists in Bulawayo city
on Friday night during a belated celebration of the World Press Freedom Day.

      Matonga said although his department has welcomed efforts by
journalists to set up a voluntary self-regulating body for the Press, this
did not mean the government would withdraw AIPPA or suspend the tough rules
and regulations prescribed by the Act, considered one of the harshest Press
laws in the world.

      Defending government Press laws, Matonga said the AIPPA actually
empowered journalists to access public information but said reporters were
not aware of the rights and privileges given them by the Act.

      "The problem is that some journalists have never read AIPPA and they
do not know for instance that there are clauses in the Act which empower
them to access public information," said Matonga.

      Zimbabwe, which also has a law imposing a maximum 20-year jail term on
journalists for denigrating President Robert Mugabe in their stories, is
classified by the World Association of Newspapers as one of the most
dangerous places for the media in the world. The African Commission on Human
and People's Rights, which last year condemned violation of human and media
rights in Zimbabwe, has called on Harare to repeal AIPPA among a raft of
other repressive laws.

      But the government, which has heavily relied on tough security and
Press laws to suppress dissension in a country grappling its seventh year of
acute economic recession, is moving to enact more repressive legislation
with a new Interception of Communications Bill set to be passed this year.
The new law will empower the state to spy on private telephone and internet
communication.

      The government has since 2003 used the AIPPA to close down four
newspapers including Zimbabwe's largest circulating and only non-government
owned daily paper, the Daily News, which was shut down because it was not
registered with the state media commission. - ZimOnline

Inflation time bomb could shatter Mugabe's rule

Zim Online

Mon 15 May 2006

      HARARE - Zimbabwe' annual inflation surged beyond 1 000 percent last
week, in what analysts said could prove to be the turning point in President
Robert Mugabe's decades-long political career as public anger swells over
the rising cost of living.

      At 1 042.9 percent, the country's inflation is unparalleled in recent
times and the World Bank says the southern African nation has the fastest
shrinking economy in the world outside a war zone.

      But analysts say it is the political ramifications of the ever
increasing cost of living that poses a threat to Mugabe, whom critics accuse
of ruining Zimbabwe's once promising economy since taking over power from
Britain at independence in 1980.

      The analysts said there is a groundswell of anger among Zimbabweans
who have to battle with rising unemployment, shortages ranging from hard
cash to food, a currency that loses its value daily, collapsing
infrastructure and shrinking democratic space.

      "I see a spontaneous explosion of anger driven by discontent over the
economy," said Eldred Masunungure, chairman of the political science
department at the University of Zimbabwe.

      "This trigger will ignite a conflagration which will start off in
urban areas and there could be a situation where the security forces will be
overwhelmed by this explosion because of both its geographic and spontaneous
nature," Masunungure told ZimOnline.

      Zimbabwe's economy last recorded a positive gross domestic product
growth in 1998 and has been in freefall since.

      Once a breadbasket of southern Africa, the country now survives on
food aid after a bloody land seizure drive by Mugabe's government, which saw
commercial agriculture plunging by more than 60 percent, hitting exports and
stoking food shortages.

      Hitherto hailed and extolled as a revolutionary democrat, Mugabe's
ratings have plummeted with the West, while the opposition brands him a
dictator. Analysts said raging inflation, dubbed by Harare as its number one
foe, could feed into opposition threats to stage peaceful mass protests to
end Mugabe's 26-year rule.

      Main opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan
Tsvangirai has said his party will engage in mass action to force Mugabe
from power, pen a new constitution and hold fresh elections under the glare
of international supervision.

      Mugabe has warned the former trade union leader against "dicing with
death" and "playing with fire" saying any protests would be ruthlessly
crushed by security forces, still seen loyal to the veteran 82-year-old
leader.

      But Tsvangirai has dramatically raised the political stakes saying he
was venturing into the ruling ZANU PF rural heartlands to mobilise its
supporters for the anti-government protests.

      "Certainly the state of the economy has added impetus to the MDC's
call for mass action. There is rising discontent over the way Mugabe has
mismanaged the economy," said Lovemore Madhuku, National Constitutional
Assembly chairman.

      Analysts say rising inflation, which the central bank has forecast to
end at between 280-300 percent at the end of the year is a stark reminder of
the failure of government's economic policies.

      The government last month launched yet another economic blueprint it
said will see foreign currency inflows of US$2.5 billion in 90 days and
change the economy's fortunes within nine months.

      But the International Monetary Fund chief Rodrigo Rato said afterwards
only radical political and economic reforms would put Zimbabwe's economy
back on the rails, a view shared by most analysts.

      Analysts said precedence shows that only serious monetary and currency
reforms such as those seen in Argentina and Brazil in the 1990s at the
height of the South American economic crisis, will bring down hyperinflation
or alternatively the collapse of a government.

      "The government has clearly showed its shortcomings in tackling the
economic crisis," Harare-based economist James Jowa said. "What is required
are tough decisions that include the restoration of property rights, being
on good terms with the international community and unpopular fiscal and
monetary reforms or otherwise inflation will continue to gallop," Jowa said.

      Mugabe's government has continued to implement populist economic
policies meant to keep a lid on discontent. The government last month
announced 300 percent salary rises for civil servants and soldiers and on
Friday hiked allowances for chiefs by 600 percent in a move meant to head
off the planned opposition protests.

      Economic analysts say the government would be forced to borrow from
the domestic market or print money to meet its excessive spending, which
would drive up broad money supply and create a vicious inflation spiral. -
ZimOnline

Clean-up victims face death as they fail to access AIDS drugs: report

Zim Online

Mon 15 May 2006

      HARARE - An international medical aid organisation, Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF), says several victims of last year's controversial
government clean-up exercise in Epworth suburb in Harare could be facing
imminent death as they are failing to access life-prolonging drugs.

      In its latest report covering the period January to March this year,
the MSF said at least 10 percent of the 371 patients they had attended to at
Bellapaise Farm in Epworth, were in desperate need of anti-retroviral drugs
(ARVs).

      "Unfortunately there are no referral options anymore for these
patients who require ARVs because the waiting lists are full until the end
of the year. This is a serious concern; how many patients will survive until
the end of the year?"

      "The high cost to patients of CD4 counts (needed before starting ARV
treatment) is also a barrier to many; patients are currently being charged
between Z$3.6 million and 10 million for laboratory tests," says the report.

      The report says most of the patients who are living in squalid
conditions at the farm will not survive until the end of the year. At least
600 people are living on the farm after their houses and backyard shacks
were destroyed in a clean-up exercise defended by President Robert Mugabe as
necessary to rid cities and towns of squalor.

      United Nations special envoy Anna Tibaijuka said the clean-up exercise
left at 700 000 people homeless and directly affected another 2.4 million
people in Zimbabwe.

      Thousands of HIV patients were also displaced during the clean-up
exercise resulting in most of them failing to access their life-prolonging
AIDS drugs. - ZimOnline

Zim demolition victims still roughing it

IOL

          May 14 2006 at 10:08AM

      By Fanuel Jongwe

      Harare - Winnie Gondo has to crouch to get in and out of her "house",
a dome-like structure the height of an average primary schoolboy as she and
thousands of Zimbabweans still reel in the aftermath of the country's
infamous clean-up operation, one year on.

      The 43-year-old widow, whose home was destroyed during Zimbabwe's
blitz to "rid the cities of slums and grime and build people decent homes"
in May 2005 now lives in a shack fashioned from the base of a broken bed,
doors taken from a car wreck and pieces of asbestos and plastic sheets.

      "It's been a year since Murambatsvina ("Drive out filth") and where
are the decent houses they said they would build us?" Gondo asked in the
slum sprouting along Mukuvisi River on the outskirts of the capital Harare.

      "We are now like refugees in our own country. My home which they
destroyed was by far, far better than this," she added, pointing at her
shack.

      Gondo's makeshift home leaks when it rained and does not provide
enough cover from the cold, she told AFP.

      One of her twin sons died at three months in January of a respiratory
ailment and she feared her remaining child will suffer a similar fate.

      Zimbabwean authorities launched Operation Murambatsvina on May 18 last
year, calling it an attempt to clean up the capital and other towns of
hawkers and knock down illegal buildings.

      But a United Nations report afterwards said it left 700 000 homeless
and destitute - mainly the country's poorest - when shacks, houses, market
stalls and shops were razed.

      The operation also deprived at least a million people of their means
of livelihood and has since became known as the "tsunami".

      Despite a much-vaunted follow-up operation called "Garikai/Hlalani
Kuhle" or "Live Well", meant to provide a better life to those whose homes
or shops were destroyed, tens of thousands were still living in makeshift
homes at various locations across the country.

      At Hopley Farm, on the southern fringes of Harare, at least 1 600
families were "living in crowded conditions and in many cases makeshift
shelters with plastic sheeting, thereby increasing their vulnerability to
health problems such as scabies and pneumonia," a Medecins Sans Frontiers'
(MSF) team reported in Harare.

      "There has been no improvement in the lives of the people at Hopley,"
added Forbes Matonga, director of Christian Care, whose organisation has
been providing poor families at the settlement with monthly rations of corn,
beans and cooking oil since June last year.

      "These people have no jobs or any other means of livelihood so this is
going to be a case of timeless humanitarian intervention. We have no idea
when we are going to stop this feeding programme."

      In Hatcliffe Extension, near the city's posh Borrowdale suburb,
between 10 000 and 15 000 people live in makeshift shacks on plots where
their former homes were razed to the ground.

      For Zione Chibwenzi, a 29-year-old woman who calls a one-metre plastic
and brick shack home, hope for a better life is slowly fading.

      "We believed the government officials when they claimed that they had
destroyed our homes to build us better ones," Chibwenzi told AFP.

      "We don't expect anything anymore."

      Housing Minister Ignatius Chombo said in aftermath of the demolition
that the government would build 150 000 new houses on plots by mid-October.

      At Hatcliffe Extension, residents said no more than 150 houses had
been allocated to displaced families when construction stopped in October.

      The new houses have no windows, electricity or functioning toilets.

      President Robert Mugabe said at the country's 26th independence
celebrations last month that 3 325 houses were completed and allocated to
beneficiaries last year under the first phase of Operation Garikai.

      He said the rebuilding project would continue with local authorities
providing plots for people to build their own houses.

      But the majority of the victims of the demolitions lack the means and
materials to build their own houses.

      Civic groups say the reconstruction effort launched the day a UN envoy
arrived in Zimbabwe to assess the humanitarian impact of the crackdown, was
"piecemeal" and hastily embarked on.

      "Operation Garikai, supposedly the reconstruction programme, has
failed to provide decent alternative accommodation structures to the real
victims," Housing the People of Zimbabwe, a humanitarian group, said in a
statement.

      "The effects of Operation Murambatsvina are still visible in both
urban and rural settings and are a permanent reminder of the insensitivity
of the perpetrators." - Sapa-AFP

Five arrested in Zimbabwe for issuing fake leases to white farmers

May 14, 2006, 16:04 GMT

Harare - Five people have been arrested in Zimbabwe for issuing fake papers
to white farmers telling them they could stay on their farms, an official
newspaper reported Sunday.

The five were arrested in the wheat and maize farming district of Chegutu
last week, a senior police officer in Chegutu told the Sunday Mail.

'We arrested five people over fake offer letters issued to some white
commercial farmers in the area and investigations are under way,' a police
spokesman said. One of the arrested was the secretary to the local district
administrator, the paper said.

White farmers who want to stay on their farms in the wake of President
Robert Mugabe's controversial land reform programme have been told to apply
for leases from the government. There are only a few hundred white farmers
still on the land, out of more than 4,000 six years ago.

Farmers are no longer allowed to own land in Zimbabwe following amendments
to the constitution last year that made all agricultural land state
property.

According to the Sunday Mail, the scam was discovered when one white farmer
told the accused he could not raise the 300 million Zimbabwe dollars (3,000
US) they had asked for in exchange for the documents. Instead he gave the
men seven cattle.

The men then sold the cattle. They were arrested by undercover detectives
while 'counting their loot' from the cattle sale, said the Sunday Mail.

After this week's arrests in Chegutu more white commercial farmers came
forward revealing the fake offer letters they too had received, the report
said.

© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

The Beginning of Winter

The 15th of May is generally regarded as the start of winter here in
Zimbabwe. In Matabeleland we can expect frost any time from this date and
right now the weather is just out of this world - clear blue skies, crisp
mornings and brilliant moonlit nights. Most people do not appreciate that we
on the highveld of Africa often have days when the temperature will drop to
well below zero - frozen bird baths and garden hoses. But apart from that it
bears little resemblance to winter in the north.

For Zanu PF this past week has shown many signs that this is going to be a
long winter for them. Perhaps their last winter?

First they suddenly postponed the publication of the inflation data for
April. We all knew why - as expected, it went over the barrier of 1000 per
cent per annum. In fact in April the month on month inflation was 21 per
cent. Most of us think that the real inflation rate is much higher, I wonder
if they are still using the controlled prices for goods that are supposed to
be under price control for example?

Then suddenly interest rates fell dramatically in the markets - on Monday
they were over 300 per cent per annum, Friday it was difficult to place
money at any interest - the overnight rate was a paltry 5 per cent. This is
a sure indication that government is not borrowing money to meet its
obligations - it is just printing it. If that is true, then we have only
seen the start of the inflation storm - very rough weather ahead.

We then heard from the SADC Secretariat in Gaborone. The "melt down in
Zimbabwe" was "damaging the prospects" of a whole raft of SADC initiatives -
a Customs Union, a standardized currency for the region, harmonized
inflation and macro economic policies among others. Where have these guys
been all these years - I would have thought that these were prima facie
implications of Mugabe's policies and that the region should have recognized
that a long time ago.

Botswana has a foot and mouth outbreak in the border area next to Zimbabwe
and is vaccinating 100 000 head of cattle and closing of a significant part
of the country for the delivery of cattle for slaughter at its export
factory in Lobatse in the south west of the country. The problem came from
Zimbabwe where discipline and control in the cattle industry has been eroded
by lawlessness and theft. Can anyone imagine any other sort of outcome of
such a situation?

Just 6 weeks ago I was told a story by a businessman who operates in
Beitbridge. He said that a group of about 60 adults and a few children tried
to cross the Limpopo below the bridge. During the crossing a woman with a
baby was washed downstream and lost - her baby was snatched from her as she
was washed away and carried to safety on the South African side. There a
debate ensured - what to do? The mother was no doubt dead - drowned in the
river, which was in flood. They were on their way to an uncertain future in
South African slums and shanties, they still faced the threat of being found
and deported by the South African army or police. Eventually it was
decided - the baby was thrown back into the river to meet the same fate as
its mother. I have no reason to doubt this story - its source was a mature
man who has lived in the area all his life. What it reveals is the growing
desperation of people in Zimbabwe as they seek to flee the hardships of a
collapsing economy and a repressive regime.

With hundreds of thousands of people fleeing south, the South African
authorities are just starting to appreciate what the implications are for
their own country. Zimbabweans and other foreign nationals who are in the
country illegally have become the backbone of a criminal element that saw 18
700 murders in South Africa last year. Armed robberies and hijackings are
endemic. Men with families displaced and starving in Zimbabwe will kill you
for your cell phone if this is what it takes to make a few Rand to send
home. Men who will callously throw a baby into the Limpopo and then walk on
into South Africa are capable of anything.

The current Secretary General of the UN also gave Zanu PF no comfort. In a
major interview with the Observer in the UK he said that he was ashamed of
much of the leadership in Africa. He also said that there was no longer any
safe hiding place for leaders who commit atrocities and genocide anywhere in
the world. He called on Africans to put their house in order and give the
continent some hope for the future.

This past week we were ranked as number 5 in the list of least free
countries in the world. Every week we seem to break new ground - the lowest
life expectancy in Africa among other accolades for Zanu PF rule.

Finally, the worst nightmare of Zanu PF is starting to happen. The people
are just beginning to make their demands known. Every day there are
demonstrations - students, women from WOZA, the members of the NCA. Many are
arrested and they promptly go back onto the street. Next Saturday the
Churches across the whole country are going to march in a series of parades
to remembers and stand in unity with those displaced by Murambatsvina in
2005. You will recall that Zanu PF launched this campaign on the 18th May
2005 - just in time to catch the coldest time of the year. Hundreds of
thousands have died in the past year - victims of a calculated political act
designed purely to protect the regime from the consequences of their own
misgovernance.

Civil rights leaders are now calling for a massive combined effort to get
our people out on the streets to demand that those in power step aside and
allow others to take over and get the country back on its feet. Again the SG
of the UN stepped in - he is engaged in an urgent exercise the media
claimed, to persuade Mr. Mugabe that it is time to go - and then to arrange
a transition back to sanity very similar to the one being demanded by the
MDC.

The regime is still brash and arrogant on the surface. Underneath they are
simply terrified. It was fascinating to read Jonathan Moyo's disclosures the
other day that in every election since 2000, the Zanu PF leadership has been
terrified of a defeat. I can well recall the discussions at the airport in
Harare with the late President Kabila in 2002, when we were right in the
middle of the presidential elections. They were talking about what to do if
Zanu was defeated. Well this time its for real - no rigging this time round,
just a straight fight - a small frightened band of aging ogres against the
rest of us. I once said to Ian Smith in 1973 that he couldn't win a war
against his own people and the rest of the world. This is still true.

Eddie Cross
14th May 2006

Caf names 2010 shortlist

BBC

      The Confederation of African Football (Caf) has named Libya, Angola,
Nigeria and a joint bid from Gabon and Equatorial Guinea on its shortlist to
host the 2010 Nations Cup.
      Caf heard a total of eight bids at its headquarters in Egypt on Sunday
and eventually rejected those from Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe and
Senegal.

Apollo formally acquires Dunlop, but problems likely to persist

      May 14, 2006

      By Andnetwork .com

      Indian tyre giant Apollo Tyres this week formally acquired Dunlop
Tyres International, the parent company of Dunlop Zimbabwe, but there is
likely to be no immediate relief for the beleaguered local manufacturer
because its problems are largely internal.

      The deal, worth about US$200 million, saw Apollo acquire Dunlop's
operations in South Africa, the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe. Dunlop South
Africa has manufacturing units in Durban and Ladysmith while Dunlop Zimbabwe
has plants in Bulawayo and Harare.

      Onkar Kanwar, chairman and managing director of Apollo Tyres, said the
acquisition of Dunlop marked the company's global expansion which would see
the widening of its customer base and an increase in exports.

      "This is our springboard into the global arena," he said in a press
release. "We will use the Dunlop distribution channels for our exports and
to take the Apollo brand into Africa, even as we bring in brands made by
Dunlop for our Indian customers."

      Apollo has 4 500 dealerships in India while Dunlop has over 230.

      The acquisition will also give Apollo a shareholding in National Tyre
Services, a major tyre distributor and re-treading company in Zimbabwe.

      While confirming the conclusion of the deal, Dunlop Zimbabwe chairman,
Boyman Mancama whose board met in Bulawayo on Tuesday, said it was not
likely to change the company's operations because the local tyre
manufacturer's problems were internal.

      He said the company was being hampered by a shortage of foreign
currency to buy raw materials and until there was a change in the
availability of foreign currency it would continue to operate below
capacity.

      Dunlop is currently operating for two, three or five days a week,
depending on the availability of raw materials.

      Source: The Insider

NEDPP likely to fail again, says US ambassador

      May 14, 2006

      By Andnetwork .com

      The United States ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell, who irked
the government last year when he blamed it for the current economic
problems, yesterday said the country's economic woes were likely to persist
despite the introduction of a new economic recovery plan because there had
been no policy shift by the government.

      Addressing journalism students at the National University of Science
and Technology in Bulawayo to mark World Press Freedom Day, Dell said the
National Economic Development Priority Programme (NEDPP) launched two weeks
ago with a lot of fanfare was likely to fail because there was no evidence
that there would be policy shifts that would address the fundamental
problems of the economy and restore domestic and international faith in the
economy.

      "So far, I see structure, but no real debate. I see form, but no
reform. I see committees, but no commitment to change policies that have
shown they do not work," he said.

      "One can't help recall the series of economic plans announced
periodically since the country's economic crises got underway at the
beginning of this decade," he went on. "We have the MERP- Millennium
Economic Recovery Plan; the NERP- New Economic Recovery Plan; a Ten-point
Plan; NERP 2, a TNF- Tripartite Negotiating Forum; and now a NERC (National
Economic Recovery Council). All announced with great fanfare, unfortunately,
none yielding effective policy to arrest economic decline. We certainly hope
the NERC enjoys a different and happier fate, but historical experience
suggests some cause for healthy skepticism."

      NEDPP was launched a fortnight ago to turn around the country's
fortunes in six to nine months. It was expected to generate US$2.5 billion
in cash or investments in the first 90 days.

      The American ambassador said there was a close relationship between
freedom of expression and economic development. When governments attempted
to control information throughout society, economic strategies tended to be
top-down, prescriptive exercises that produced little because those most
affected had little real input.

      He said when prices were set by cumbersome bureaucracies with
imperfect information and political agendas this resulted in disinvestment,
shortages and the emergency of the black market.

      "And with distorting artificial scarcities of knowledge, everyone
cheats - from the farmer who buys scarce inputs from the black market and
sells outside the unremunerative government channels to survive, to the
elites who access scarce inputs at subsidised prices and exploit the black
market to resell those cheap goods for a huge, quick profit.

      "In short, look behind nearly every economic dysfunction and shortage
in this country-unavailability of fertilizer and fuel, underutilising of
land, burgeoning corruption - and you will likely find some impediment to a
free flow of information or the freedom to act on that information."

      He said the region was growing faster economically because of growing
freedom of the press and the advance of civil liberties. Zimbabwe was the
only exception.

      Mozambique grew by 5.2 percent last year, Botswana by 4.2 percent,
South Africa by 4 percent and Zambia by 2.6 percent while Zimbabwe shrunk by
6.5 percent, the sixth year in a row that it has recorded negative growth.

      Dell said another important lesson the country should learn from the
"Looking East" policy was that statist systems with their obsession to
control political and economic information did not work.

      He quoted former Chinese leader, Chairman Mao, as saying by
restricting information the government would be unable to collect sufficient
opinion from all sides. Top levels of leadership therefore depended on
one-sided information and incorrect material to decide issues.

      He once again brushed off the argument that sanctions on Zimbabwe were
responsible for the present crisis arguing that poor policies by the
government were to blame since the sanctions were targeted at just over a
100 people.

      Dell said his government was prepared to talk with the Zimbabwean
government, that was why he was in Zimbabwe as the US ambassador, but the
Zimbabwean government was not willing to talk to him.

      "It takes two to tango," he added.

      Source: The Insider

Activists denied food in Zimbabwe prisons

Great Reporter

Written by Frank Chikowore
Sunday, 14 May 2006

Zimbabwean student leaders are being denied food in police cells, further
proving President Mugabe's administration is not prepared to stop violating
human rights there...

Zimbabwe is viewed by Western governments such as Britain and the United
States as a country that has a base level human rights record.

In Britain, premier Tony Blair recently told parliament that Mugabe's
administration is a "disgrace".

His statement seems to have been confirmed by Zimbabwe's students´ umbrella
body, the Zimbabwe National Students Union (Zinasu).

"The situation in the students' movement continues to expose the pain which
the ZANU PF government is prepared to cause in the quest to entrench and
perpetuate its evil rule," said Promise Mkwananzi, Zinasu´s newly elected
president.

Mkwananzi alleged that some ruling ZANU PF party members singing and
chanting party slogans were loitering at police stations and courts in
Bindura threatening lawyers who have since fled to Harare to make an urgent
High Court application seeking an order guaranteeing their protection in
Mashonaland Central Province, believed to be one of the strongholds of Zanu
PF and a very unfavourable area for opposition politics.

The number of student detainees has risen from 39 to 56 and the arrested
students have been remanded to the 25 May. The Zinasu president described
this as "a feat which has never happened in the history of the students
movement in Zimbabwe".

Zinasu has written an urgent letter to President Mugabe urging him to
personally intervene and stop a named high ranking official from giving
directives to the police.

The students' body asked Mugabe where Elliot Manyika, a minister without
portfolio, draws his mandate from as he is neither the Home Affairs
minister, the Commissioner of Police nor the Attorney General. Manyika could
not be reached on his mobile phone for comment.

Apart from food, Mkwananzi said the detained students are being denied water
and medication for those who sustained injuries like Beloved Chiweshe, the
union's secretary general.

In the letter to Mugabe the union complained that students would be writing
examinations and their state of preparedness would be jeopardised should
they remain in prison at the height of their examinations grace period.
Mugabe is also the chancellor of all state universities in Zimbabwe.

The communication was also copied to South African leader Thabo Mbeki, the
African Union, the Southern African Development Community, United Nations
and the United Nations Children's Fund.

Zimbabwean students have been engaging in demonstrations countrywide to
protest new fee increases of over 1,000 per cent recently.

The students have called on Higher and Tertiary Education minister Stanslius
Gorerazvo Mudenge, to recant the new fees' structure, as it is "clearly
unsustainable and an unnecessary assault on the right to education".

The learners, their parents and guardians are complaining that the new fee
structures are unaffordable considering the inflation-eroded salaries that
Zimbabweans are earning today. They also say the new fee exceed student
grants being offered by the government.

The consumer bread basket now costs an average family about Z$40 million per
month yet the country's majority workforce is taking home far less than
that.

Zimbabwe's inflation rate has surged past the 1,000 per cent mark signalling
it is struggling to keep its economy functioning normally.

The annual rate of price growth was 1,042.9 per cent in April, the Central
Statistics Office said, having risen 129 percentage points from March.

It means average goods are about 11 times as expensive in April 2006 as they
were 12 months earlier.

Zim maize 'to help inflation'

News24

14/05/2006 11:51  - (SA)

Harare - Zimbabwe will harvest 1.8 million tonnes of maize after above
normal rains in the 2005/6 growing season, which will drive down inflation
that raced to more than 1 000% last week, the government-owned Sunday Mail
newspaper said in its latest edition.

President Robert Mugabe's government has not given a crop forecast for 2006,
and although officials say the southern African country expects a better
harvest than the previous year this would be the first time in years that
Zimbabwe has produced enough to meet its total needs, also estimated at 1.8
million tonnes.

Food deficit

Aid agencies have warned of another food deficit in the country, which has
suffered shortages in the past five years, saying the lack of inputs such as
seed and fertiliser has undermined production in the just-ended summer
cropping season.

The government last month warned aid agencies against conducting so-called
back-door crop assessments saying only the Central Statistical Office (CSO)
had the sole mandate to do so.

"Maize output is expected to be 1.8 million tonnes. Half will be left in
homes," the Sunday Mail said quoting an unnamed government source.

"About 900 000 tonnes are expected to be delivered to the GMB (state owned
Grain Marketing Board). And of that, half will go to national strategic
reserves," the paper said.

The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Foreign Agricultural
Service sees a harvest of 900 000 tonnes of the staple maize crop, up from
550 000 last year.

Worsening supplies

In January the government branded the US-based Famine Early Warning System
Network, which releases regular reports on Zimbabwe's food balance, as
hostile after the group said the country faced worsening supply problems.

The CSO said last Friday annual inflation in April had risen to 1042.9% from
913.6% the previous month, with food prices accounting for a greater part of
the jump.

Inflation has emerged as the major enemy of Mugabe's government, dramatising
the severity of an economic crisis which analysts say could trigger
anti-government protests.

But the Sunday Mail sought to calm a nation in the throes of a deep
eight-year recession saying inflation would tumble.

"Zimbabweans should not be alarmed by the 1 000% inflation rate ... as the
economy is set to be revived because of a combination of natural factors and
Government-initiated policies unveiled in the past few weeks," it said.

"...Food inflation, which accounted for a third of the figures, will be
reversed by the good summer cropping harvest."

Zimbabwe's annual maize output has fallen sharply in the past five years
because of drought and Aids, which is killing off peasant farmers in the
prime of life.

Critics also point to Mugabe's controversial seizures of white-owned farms
for blacks, which analysts say has seen commercial agricultural output
plunge more than 60%.