The Telegraph
By Peta Thornycroft in Harare and David Blair
Last Updated:
11:50PM BST 23/05/2008
President Robert Mugabe's regime has shut down
Zimbabwe's Anglican Church,
turning baton-wielding riot police on
congregations and rendering it
impossible for priests to conduct
services.
When Anglicans go to worship tomorrow, they will not venture inside
their
own churches, almost all of which have been closed by
police.
Instead, for the first time, they will join Catholics, Methodists
and
Presbyterians, who will open their services to embattled
Anglicans.
The prime cause of the Church's collapse is Nolbert Kunonga,
the renegade
Anglican Bishop of Harare and a staunch supporter of Mr Mugabe
who once
called his leader a "prophet of God".
Last year, Mr Kunonga
withdrew from the Anglican Communion, supposedly to
protest against
homosexuality. But the Church says he was sacked and a new
Bishop of Harare,
Sebastian Bakare, appointed in his place.
Mr Kunonga, 58, refused to leave
office. Instead, he occupied Harare's
Anglican cathedral of St Mary's and
All Saints, seized the Church's bank
accounts and made dozens of his friends
priests or bishops.
Despite being officially excommunicated on Monday, he
still conducts
services for a handful of followers inside the cathedral.
Most importantly,
he has accused Bishop Bakare of supporting the opposition
Movement for
Democratic Change and plotting with Gordon Brown to overthrow
Mr Mugabe.
Consequently, the state has intervened on Mr Kunonga's
side.
When Anglicans gather for services, the regime believes they are
backing
Bishop Bakare – and therefore the MDC. Riot police have duly been
turned on
congregations.
Tsitsi Guramatunhu was among 400 worshippers
when police raided St Francis
church two weeks ago. First they beat the
choir with batons. Then they
assaulted people kneeling before the
altar.
"They stormed into the church and beat people as they went. They
told us we
must either worship at the Kunonga service or not at all," said
Mrs
Guramatunhu, 44. "I tried to take a picture of them with my cell phone
so
they beat me."
Last Sunday, riot police deployed again and
surrounded St Francis church.
"We will worship at another church on Sunday.
We will not give up," said Mrs
Guramatunhu.
Bishop Bakare, 66, told
The Daily Telegraph that riot police had attacked
"nearly all" of Harare's
58 Anglican churches last Sunday. "People are too
scared to try to worship
in their churches in case they are beaten," he
said. "Other faiths have
offered us their churches and their halls. So the
police may want to follow
the Anglicans to beat them up in those places. But
then they will also have
to beat up Catholics, Methodists and
Presbyterians."
Mr Kunonga has
been rewarded for backing Mr Mugabe with a formerly
white-owned farm.
New York Times
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: May 24, 2008
JOHANNESBURG —
Morgan Tsvangirai, the chief rival of Zimbabwe’s
authoritarian president,
Robert Mugabe, drove up to a Harare police station
last year to check on
dozens of his supporters inside on their bellies,
being kicked, clobbered
and stomped.
The policemen quickly stopped and grabbed the moon-faced
opposition leader.
Witnesses said the station reverberated with the
sickening thwack of blows
to his buttocks, back and head. “They were
fighting with each other to beat
him,” said Tendai Biti, his deputy in the
opposition party.
Mr. Tsvangirai, whose thrashing made him an international
symbol of
resistance to Mr. Mugabe’s repressive rule, now plans to return to
Zimbabwe
on Saturday for a showdown with his nemesis in a June 27 runoff
after six
weeks of self-imposed exile. He bested Mr. Mugabe in a Mar. 29
election,
then fled the country in the middle of the night on April 8 after
his staff
said it got word of a plot to kill him.
Mr. Tsvangirai is a
flawed leader who has sometimes been naive and too
conciliatory, according
to critics and allies alike. And yet, they agree, he
has always managed to
endure.
Over the years, both sides say, he has credulously fallen into
traps laid by
Mr. Mugabe, too often avoided aggressively confronting the
country’s
strongman and lacked the finesse to heal a bitter rift in his own
party
before the March election.
In recent weeks, he has come under
increasing criticism for staying out of
the country while his supporters
have been attacked, tortured and even
killed in a sweeping state-sponsored
campaign to intimidate all who dare
challenge Mr. Mugabe’s reelection.
William McGee, the American ambassador in
Harare, said there is evidence an
assassination plot was threatened, but he
believes it was disinformation
meant to keep Mr. Tsvangirai from coming
home.
Still, Mr.
Tsvangirai’s allies and many of his detractors credit him with
withstanding
excruciating physical and psychic pressure from ZANU-PF, the
governing
party, and persisting stoically over years of arrests, beatings,
assassination attempts, a treason trial, fraud-ridden elections and his own
tactical blunders.
In the election itself, he vanquished a breakaway
faction of his own party
and an independent candidate, earning his own
scarred claim to leadership.
“He’s been imprisoned, humiliated and
accused of being a puppet of the
West,” said George Bizos, a South African
lawyer who represented Nelson
Mandela in the apartheid era and was Mr.
Tsvangirai’s advocate during his
treason trial in 2004. “But I believe he is
a Zimbabwean patriot in touch
with the vast majority of his people. He has
shown he has stamina.”
The son of a bricklayer and the eldest of nine
children, Mr. Tsvangirai, 56,
never went to college and labored in the
nickel mines before rising through
the ranks of the union movement. He faces
a very different opponent in Mr.
Mugabe, 84, a university-educated teacher
who became the hero of his country’s
liberation from white rule and its
first and only president since
independence in 1980.
Mr. Mugabe
contemptuously mocks Mr. Tsvangirai for not having joined the
guerrilla
struggle in his youth, and the state-owned paper — a mouthpiece
for the
governing party — recently belittled him as a coward and Western
stooge with
“a big black nose” and “chubby and pimply cheeks.”
But Mr. Tsvangirai can
rightfully claim to be the first politician to win
more votes than Mr.
Mugabe at the polls — and have it officially recognized.
On Thursday, he
toured refugee camps here in southern Africa’s economic
capital where his
countrymen — some of the millions who have fled their
nation’s imploding
economy — have been subjected to xenophobic attacks in
Johannesburg’s
impoverished townships.
“We have to finish off this work and the only way
to finish is for us to go
back and vote the man out,” Mr. Tsvangirai told a
cheering crowd through a
bullhorn, encouraging listeners to go home and
exercise their franchise.
Mr. Tsvangirai was born into what he called “a
very humble peasant family”
that survived on his father’s earnings as a
bricklayer and what they grew on
their small farm. He quit school before
college and went to work in a
textile factory and later in the mines to help
pay school fees for his eight
siblings. As young men were joining the armed
resistance in the 1970s, Mr.
Tsvangirai stayed on the job “to look after
that brood of Tsvangirai kids,”
he said.
He rose through the ranks of
the mine workers union and in 1988 became
secretary-general of the Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Unions. Stephen Chan, a
professor of international
relations at the University of London, describes
in his book, “Citizen of
Africa: Conversations with Morgan Tsvangirai”
(Fingerprint Cooperative,
2005), how Mr. Tsvangirai, a pragmatic social
democrat, turned the congress
into voice for workers at a time when the
World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund were pushing “structural
adjustment programs” that required
African governments to keep a lid on
spending, including wages.
Mr.
Tsvangirai’s record, Mr. Chan wrote, was “nothing short of
remarkable.”
In 1999, Mr. Tsvangirai helped organize and found the
opposition party,
Movement for Democratic Change, which attracted support
from trade
unionists, students, intellectuals and white commercial farmers.
A year
later, the party handed Mr. Mugabe his first electoral defeat when it
convinced voters to reject a referendum that would have expanded his
presidential powers.
The opposition posed the first serious challenge
to Mr. Mugabe, but the
wily, ruthless president wasn’t ready to go. In 2002,
Mr. Tsvangirai ran for
president, and many believe victory was stolen from
him through fraud,
intimidation and violence.
But Mr. Tsvangirai and his
party had already made a costly misstep. Just two
weeks before the 2002
election, he was charged with treason in an alleged
plot to assassinate Mr.
Mugabe. It turned out the opposition party had
unwittingly hired a lobbying
firm led by an accused swindler and a former
Israeli intelligence agent. Mr.
Bizos, the lawyer, said later in court that
the man had been hired by
Zimbabwe’s intelligence service and paid $650,000
to discredit and entrap
Mr. Mugabe’s opponents, including Mr. Tsvangirai.
Ultimately, in 2004,
Mr. Tsvangirai was cleared, but for nearly two years,
the task of combating
the capital charges consumed much of his time and kept
him under virtual
house arrest. Mr. Bizos said Mr. Tsvangirai had been too
trusting, giving
Mr. Mugabe “an opportunity to spring a trap.”
In 2005, the party, already
damaged by internal discord, fractured, with
some accusing Mr. Tsvangirai of
having authoritarian tendencies and
tolerating violence against those who
challenged him – allegations he
strongly denies.
But the opposition
was divided, and at a critical time. Zimbabwe’s economy
spiraled downward
and Mr. Mugabe’s government carried out a brutal strategy
to damage the
opposition’s political base in 2005, destroying the homes of
hundreds of
thousands of poor people in urban settlements.
Mr. Tsvangirai needed then
to unite the opposition to counter the raw power
of the state, but “he
didn’t find the statesmanlike leadership required at
the time,” said Brian
Raftopoulos, research director for Solidarity Peace
Trust, a nongovernmental
organization.
Had the breach in the opposition been mended before the
March election, it
might have managed a decisive victory. Since then,
leaders of the faction
that broke away have rallied behind Mr. Tsvangirai,
improving his odds of
prevailing in a fair runoff, though one is unlikely
under the current
conditions.
Now, Mr. Tsvangirai says he is heading
back to Zimbabwe with a sense of
foreboding about his own safety and the
prospects for democracy. Some
analysts believe a military coup would be
likely if he won. Mr. Tsvangirai
warned that if Mr. Mugabe’s regime shuts
down dissent “some of us who are
advocates of a nonviolent democracy will
become irrelevant.”
As this pivotal moment approaches for Zimbabwe, a
country reduced from the
days when it was once one of Africa’s most literate
and successful, much
will depend on whether Mr. Tsvangirai can inspire
people to go to the polls.
His wife of 30 years, Susan, and the youngest of
their six children, the 13
year-old twins, Millicent and Vincent, are now
living in Johannesburg, safe
from the dangers he will soon be
facing.
On Thursday, Mr. Tsvangirai, dressed nattily in a pinstripe suit,
hardly
seemed like a man in the mood to rouse his people as he sped from
township
to township in a silver Mercedes Benz, distractedly answering
questions and
glancing at his talking points. He yawned in exhaustion and
remarked
nervously, “What’s happening?” when his driver got turned around in
the
narrow lanes of Alexandra, hemmed in by shanties, where the anti-foreign
riots started.
But when he mounted rickety chairs and tables to
address woebegone
Zimbabwean refugees, some of them shoeless and carrying
squalling babies,
his fatigue seemed to fall away. He spoke to them in Shona
and in a
call-and-response like that of a preacher and his congregation,
they
answered him.
They told him about seeing their houses destroyed
in Zimbabwe, only to come
to South Africa for sanctuary and meet the same
fate.
“We’ve been fighting for you,” said one man “Should we go back now
and be
killed?”
“No one must be killed fighting for me,” Mr.
Tsvangirai replied. “We all are
in the line of danger fighting for our
country.” But he reminded the
murmuring crowd, “This is the opportunity to
go and vote Mugabe out.”
As he climbed into the Mercedes to depart his
final stop, the refugees
pressed in on the car, chanting “Morgan Tsvangirai
is number 1, Zanu is
rotten.” They swayed in time to the chant, their arms
waving over their
heads and their fingers splayed in the open-handed symbol
of the opposition
party, a wordless reply to the ruling party’s closed
fist.
02:14 GMT, Saturday, 24 May 2008 03:14 UK
|
During recent weeks Mr Tsvangirai has been jetting around Africa and beyond, drumming up support. But back in Zimbabwe he has been criticised from some quarters for abandoning his supporters in their hour of need. Since the inconclusive election of 29 March, which resulted in a humiliating defeat for the governing Zanu-PF party and for President Robert Mugabe, opposition supporters have been the target of a systematic campaign of violence. "People are asking 'Where is he? Where are our leaders?' They are missing in action", political analyst John Makumbe says. Mr Tsvangirai, nicknamed "chamatama" because of his chubby cheeks, had been due to return last weekend but at the final minute cancelled the trip for security reasons. The opposition Movement For Democratic Change, MDC, said it had learnt that the party's leader was the target of a military plot.
Although some suggest this excuse was perhaps a little far fetched and a convenient excuse for a change of plan, Mr Makumbe says that on the back of the ongoing violence, opposition supporters are all too aware of the need to put safety first. "People understand that there are murderers throughout the country and the crown of all their work would be to put a bullet through Morgan Tsvangirai and if they did that they would not mind anybody in the MDC taking over but not Tsvangirai - the man who humiliated Robert Mugabe so much." Shoring up credentials As the run off election approaches, the playing field is far from level and there are plenty of people keen to cling on to their positions in Zimbabwe at all costs. So levering Mr Mugabe out of office will still be a mountainous task. Key to Mr Tsvangirai's future is backing from African leaders especially amongst the regional grouping, SADC, from whom Mr Mugabe has traditionally received strong support. But that support is eroding as Zimbabwe's economic and political crisis deepens.
"In the past Morgan Tsvangirai has been treated with a degree of scepticism by the nationalist political elite on the continent, including South Africa," Professor Adam Habib, deputy vice chancellor at the University of Johannesburg, says. "This is in part because of the white farmer's support for the opposition and in part because of the support it has in London and New York," Prof Habib adds. Over the past few weeks the Zimbabwean opposition leader has made inroads shoring up his credentials and gaining the support of at least some of the regional leaders. Mr Tsvangirai has been praised in the past for showing courage and his popularity was boosted after he was badly beaten whilst in police custody in March 2007. But there are plenty who suggest his leadership style needs a makeover. "He over listens and ends up failing to take the difficult decisions," says Sydney Masamvu of the International Crisis Group. "Morgan over consults and sometimes he becomes as good as the last person who has talked to him which derails the decision making process," Mr Masamvu suggests. This indecision was recently shown up when the MDC leader was asked about the future of Mr Mugabe.
"Judging from what is taking place now I think it would be very difficult to convince even the most forgiving to let him go scot free," Mr Tsvangirai told a news conference in Johannesburg last month. He suggested a UN court should be set up for crimes committed in Zimbabwe. But three weeks later there appeared to be a change of heart. "He is the founding president of Zimbabwe and you can't take that away from him. The nation must move forward and I think any attempt at retribution may actually cause further destabilisation," Mr Tsvangirai told the BBC. Some suggest he still needs to complete the transformation from being a trade union leader to political leader. Obvious candidate There is no guarantee that the run off election will take place at all - few rules have been adhered to during this drawn out election. There are growing calls for a negotiated settlement to the crisis at a time when Mr Tsvangirai has built up close links with the new ANC leadership in South Africa which is highly influential in the region. Whatever the outcome, few doubt that the opposition leader is still on the rise. "Morgan Tsvangirai is the obvious candidate to succeed Mugabe and the South African government is coming to terms with that," Prof Habib says. "But the big question is, will he do it in partnership with someone else like (former Zanu-PF minister) Simba Makoni or with someone else or alone? What is clear is Tsvangirai will be a major figure in post Mugabe Zimbabwe," he adds. But nobody needs reminding that false dawns in Zimbabwe have been about as common as presidential birthdays and Mr Mugabe's downfall has been falsely predicted for many years. |
Los Angeles Times
Mugabe's party intimates it will hang on to power even if it takes a
military coup. But the military is in danger of splitting. Meanwhile,
violence and poverty rack the country.
By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times
Staff Writer
7:30 PM PDT, May 23, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA --
Zimbabwe hangs in a dangerous political limbo:
A ruling party clique clings
to power amid rumors of a coup if President
Robert Mugabe loses the upcoming
presidential runoff. His opponent, Morgan
Tsvangirai, far from facing down
military hard-liners, has been out of the
country for weeks, fearing
assassination.
As regional leaders dither, a new wave of systematic
abductions and killings
of top opposition activists suggests a regime that
is unwilling to leave
office, even if it loses the second round of voting,
scheduled for the end
of next month.
"There's no way we
are going to lose the runoff," one senior ruling party
figure said. "We are
going to make sure of that. If we lose the runoff, then
the army will take
over.
"Never be fooled that Tsvangirai will rule this country. Never,"
the
official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in an interview in
Harare, the Zimbabwean capital.
Rights organizations, such as
Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights, say the
level and intensity of the
violence far surpasses that surrounding elections
in 2000 and 2002.
Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change says 43
activists are known to
have been killed since the March 29 vote.
The opposition says the
government is targeting its top activists and
officials and that at least
six have been abducted in the last 10 days by
heavily armed security
officials. Four have been found dead, it says, their
bodies showing signs of
severe beating and torture. Ten others are missing
and feared
dead.
MDC activist Tonderai Ndira was dragged from his bed last week by
eight
security operatives. His body was found Wednesday, dumped in the bush.
His
brother Barnabas said Ndira's face had been beaten so badly it was
unrecognizable.
Some analysts see the threat of a coup growing,
convinced that the punitive
violence in Zimbabwe has only increased Mugabe's
unpopularity since he was
shocked to find himself in second place behind
Tsvangirai in the March vote.
But others predict the regime, wary of
regional isolation, will opt for at
least the pretense of legitimacy,
rigging the elections rather than using
military force to overturn a
Tsvangirai runoff victory.
Mugabe is backed by a group of cronies that
includes Rural Housing Minister
Emmerson Mnangagwa, Defense Forces Commander
Gen. Constantine Chiwenga and
Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri. Several
elite units, including the
Presidential Guard, the Fifth Brigade and the
National Rapid Reaction Force,
are loyal to his regime.
But with the
military rank and file deeply disgruntled over their working
conditions and
angry about the farms, SUVs and fancy lifestyles of their
commanders, some
predict that a coup would split the army.
"What they also have to worry
about is whether they can keep their troops
with them," said a Harare
diplomat, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
"There's a great risk
they will split the very institution they rely on for
support."
In
fact, the rank and file are so alienated that they have not been called
in
to intimidate and attack opposition members, as they have been in the
past.
"It's the senior officers running the terror campaign in the
rural areas,"
said Morris, 35, an army captain who spoke to The Times by
phone, declining
to allow his second name to be published for fear of
reprisal.
"They're burning houses and beating people. It's being done by
colonels and
lieutenant colonels. The lower ranks don't want what is
happening. If the
Old Man lost, he should just give up. He should respect
the wishes of the
people," said Morris, referring to the 84-year-old Mugabe.
"Soldiers are
very much angry about him. They want him removed from
power.
"Soldiers go about in tattered uniforms," Morris said. "Everything
is
pathetic. Of all the general population, the people hardest hit are the
military. There's no food in the camps. The officers keep giving us empty
promises. At times there are no rations."
He said some senior
officers were also no longer loyal to Mugabe.
"The problem now is they
can't come out, because the higher ranks, the
generals, are loyal to the
ruling party. They can't come out for fear of
their lives."
The
ruling ZANU-PF party lost control of parliament in the March elections,
and,
according to official results, Tsvangirai won about 48% of the
presidential
vote compared with 43% for Mugabe, necessitating the June 27
runoff. The
opposition insists that Tsvangirai won in the first round, with
50.3%, and
the United States and Britain have questioned the credibility of
the
official results.
Mnangagwa, the most powerful figure behind Mugabe, is
the leader of one of
two rival factions in ZANU-PF that have been fighting
over succession since
last year. As the president's heir apparent, Mnangagwa
has the most to lose
from a Mugabe defeat. When Mugabe faced a potential
challenge last year,
Mnangagwa swung his support to him on the understanding
that he would
succeed him six months after the election.
Mnangagwa,
like the so-called securocrats in the security apparatus, fears
prosecution
if Tsvangirai wins. He was security minister during massacres in
Matabeleland in the early 1980s in which thousands of Mugabe's political
opponents were killed. The precedent-setting war-crimes prosecution of
former Liberian leader Charles Taylor has complicated the departure of
Mugabe's regime.
A recent report by the International Crisis Group, a
watchdog organization,
said there was "a growing risk of a coup either
before the runoff, in a
preemptive move to deny Tsvangirai victory, or after
a Tsvangirai win."
Opposition lawmaker David Coltart said he believed
there was a risk of a
coup, but he added, "I think they're intent on trying
to give it some sort
of fig leaf of legitimacy through an
election.
"Their first prize is obviously votes in the ballot box to get
Mugabe to
win. Their Plan B, if they don't feel that will happen, is that
they will
just blatantly rig the election. An openly declared coup would be
very
difficult for the region to stomach."
The ZANU-PF runoff
"campaign," which is under the control of top military
commanders, consists
of ubiquitous newspaper advertising, state media
propaganda and the violence
against the opposition.
Witnesses and victims interviewed by The Times
have named ruling party
officials as helping oversee the violence, with
beatings carried out mainly
by mobs of ruling party youths.
It is
unclear what effect the violence will have on the voter turnout. One
aim
seems to be to send a signal to voters that whatever they do, Tsvangirai
will never rule, making voting for him futile and dangerous.
If the
regime does hold on to power, it would be "catastrophic," according
to the
ICG report. It says the economy's decline would intensify, with more
Zimbabweans fleeing the country, "while inflation, unemployment and the
resultant massive suffering would increase."
Even if it stays in
power through a coup or election fraud, said the
diplomat, "you have to ask
yourself, 'Well, then what do they do?' They have
no options for any
sustainable situation here. They have no resources.
There's not a great deal
left to loot. You can't dig gold out of the ground
without electricity.
They're completely isolated."
robyn.dixon@latimes.com
A
special correspondent in Harare contributed to this report.
New York Times
Editorial
Published: May 24, 2008
Crackpot and dangerous theories on
AIDS. Extreme and widening levels of
income inequality. Enabling Zimbabwe’s
Robert Mugabe and only belatedly
trying to halt mob atrocities against
desperate Zimbabwean and other African
immigrants. This is the legacy of
South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, who
has one more year in his second
term.
It would be hard to imagine a more depressing contrast with the
leadership
of Nelson Mandela, Mr. Mbeki’s predecessor and one of the 20th
century’s
great heroes.
History will laud Mr. Mandela for leading his
country, peacefully, from
hateful apartheid to democratic majority rule,
marvel at his commitment to
honesty and healing and celebrate his promotion
of South Africa as a diverse
and tolerant “rainbow nation.”
If it
remembers Mr. Mbeki at all, it will be for appointing a health
minister who
favored garlic and beet root as treatment for South Africa’s
more than five
million citizens infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes
AIDS, and for
his stubborn refusal to use South Africa’s economic and
political clout to
stop Zimbabwe’s horrors.
Instead, Mr. Mbeki declared that there was “no
crisis,” even as Zimbabwe’s
electoral count was being hijacked, opposition
supporters terrorized and
thousands of its citizens fleeing over the border
to South Africa where they
still have not found safety. The only explanation
is his misplaced loyalty
to Mr. Mugabe, who was once a hero for leading
Zimbabwe to majority rule.
South Africa is the richest, most developed
country south of the Sahara and
the continent’s largest, most exemplary
democracy. Africa badly needs its
enlightened leadership. A decade ago,
under Mr. Mandela, South Africa was
swiftly emerging as the respected leader
of a proud, postcolonial Africa.
Under Mr. Mbeki’s leadership, the fruits
of the nation’s hard-fought victory
over apartheid have gone mainly to
officials and former officials of the
ruling African National Congress, not
to the millions of poor people in the
townships who faced down the dogs, the
bullets and the pass laws and still
must live without adequate jobs,
education, housing or health services.
The resulting frustration and
anger helps explain, though it cannot justify,
this week’s outbreak of
xenophobic violence in the shantytowns. At least 42
victims have been killed
— many beaten, stabbed, hacked or burned to death —
and some 25,000 have
been chased from their homes.
Mr. Mbeki’s most likely successor, Jacob
Zuma, the current leader of the
A.N.C., is no Nelson Mandela either. While
more popular among the poor than
the arrogant and aloof Mr. Mbeki, he has
offered few coherent ideas for
addressing their economic plight. He has been
more willing to criticize Mr.
Mugabe’s electoral manipulations, but overly
cautious in proposing solutions
(though that is Mr. Mbeki’s job, not his).
His ignorance on AIDS and
appalling attitudes toward women — revealed in a
2006 rape trial that ended
in his acquittal — stained his personal
reputation. Serious corruption
charges against him are still
pending.
South Africa can ill afford another five years of failed
leadership and
frustrated hopes. Whoever succeeds Mr. Mbeki must look long
and hard at all
that has gone wrong and vow to do better. South Africans and
all of Africa
need and deserve better.
May 24, 2008
Ian Kay, the recently elected Member of Parliament for Marondera is brought to court in the town in handcuffs on Friday, May, 23. Kay, who represents the MDC, is accused of inciting violence in Mashonaland East Province.
By Our Correspondent
HARARE - The body of a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) activist who was abducted from his home in the capital city last week was found Wednesday in a hospital mortuary.
The mutilated body of Tonderai Ndira, 32, was discovered by MDC members who had gone to Parirenyatwa Hospital to collect the bodies of two other murdered activists Godfrey Kauzani and Cain Nyevhe for burial.
Ndira’s body was naked when found and his lips and tongue had been cut off. A pair of shorts was used to cover the deceased man’s disfigured head.
Family sources attending the funeral in the suburb of Mabvuku on the eastern outskirts of Harare revealed that Ndira’s skull had been smashed while the body had two gunshot wounds under the left armpit and below the rib cage.
A close friend who declined to be identified but described himself as “Tonderai’s right-hand man” said it was difficult to identify Ndira because his face was badly damaged.
He said: “It was impossible to identify Tonde from his face because of the condition of his mutilated skull. We had to phone his wife to ask for peculiar features on his arms or legs”.
The friend said it was only after Ndira’s wife pointed out that her husband had been wearing a bangle on his left wrist that they used it to identify the body. He added: “We looked for the bangle which was supposed to be white in colour but was now soaked in blood. His hairy legs also helped us to positively identify him”.
The MDC says the murder of Ndira by suspected Zanu-PF militants and state security agents brings the official death toll of politically-motivated killings to 45.
Ndira’s brother Banarbus Ndira said the family had been devastated by the brutal murder of Tonderai who was missing for more than a week.
Banarbus said: “We are shocked by the brutal murder of my brother. The whole family is so devastated by the news I don’t know if we will be able to cope with this gruesome reality. We were hoping against hope that he would come back alive”
Sources said Ndira was abducted last week from his Mabvuku home by armed men driving an unmarked truck. They pounced on the family home early in the morning when their target was still in bed.
Ndira who was screaming and kicking was taken away semi-naked while neighbours who tried to rescue him were threatened by one of the assailants who was brandishing an AK-47.
Before his abduction Ndira had been arrested on a total of 35 occasions.
A civic organization which worked with Ndira the Centre for Community Development in Zimbabwe (CCDZ) described him as “a selfless human rights defender who assisted many people and organizations run their advocacy campaigns for a better Zimbabwe.”
“We can’t believe that the youthful, soft-spoken, humble and dreadlocked Movement for Democratic Change activist, Tonderai Ndira is no more. Today we give this eulogy for a courageous man who stood against evil”, said the group in a statement.
The group described Ndira as a community mobilizer, a leader and someone who always stepped in to help people.
A former student leader and a close associate of the slain activist Beloved Chiweshe described the murder as “madness and evil”.
Chiweshe said: “The death of Tonderai Ndira touched me most. It is my hope that we will be able to fulfill his dream of a free Zimbabwe. Those who worked closely with the MDC youth assembly will remember Tonderai as an easy-going but committed and hard-working youth.”
He added: “He will for long be credited with his single-handed repossession of a party truck that had been impounded by Zanu-PF militias. His courage was an inspiration to all of us.”
Chiweshe said he was disturbed by the culture of impunity that was being cultivated by Zanu-PF among its militant supporters who were now killing political opponents without being arrested and even disrupting the funerals of their victims.
Chiweshe said several truckloads of Zanu-PF supporters had disrupted a funeral at a cemetery in Harare on Wednesday.
He said some of the mourners, who were gathered to bury slain activists Kauzani and Nyevhe, were injured in the stampede that followed the attack by Zanu PF militias.
In a horrific scene the Zanu-PF youths reported refilled the two empty graves while threatening to attack mourners with shovels. The two slain MDC activists finally buried in the presence of armed policemen.
The burial of Ndira who is survived by his wife Plaxedes and two children is scheduled for Monday in Harare.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai who is expected to arrive back in the country Saturday is expected to attend the funeral.
www.thezimbabwetimes.com
May 24, 2008
By Raymond
Maingire
HARARE - President Robert Mugabe, who is in the throes of a
rigorous
election campaign quietly left Harare on Wednesday heading for
Beijing,
China, where sources close to him said he was to undergo medical
treatment.
Mugabe, who departed as his rival Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of
the MDC,
prepared to return to Harare after a five-week absence from the
country has
been campaigning rigorously for the crucial presidential
election run-off,
which is scheduled for June 27. Mugabe, whose recent
pictures portray him as
aged and emaciated, is widely regarded as the
underdog in the forthcoming
election.
He won 43, 2 percent of the
national vote in the March 29 elections to
Tsvangirai’s 47, 9 percent. The
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission delayed the
announcement of the presidential
election result by five weeks.
Mugabe is scheduled to officially launch
his presidential campaign at his
party’s headquarters on Sunday amid fears
even within his Zanu-PF party that
he could be heading for another
embarrassing defeat.
Mugabe departed soon after addressing a police
pass-out parade at Morris
Depot, Zimbabwe’s national police training
academy, on Wednesday afternoon.
His motorcade was seen heading for the
airport amid speculation he had gone
to meet South Africa’s ruling ANC party
president, Jacob Zuma who is
expected in Zimbabwe soon on a mission to help
resolve the deepening
political and economic crises.
But sources say
Mugabe, now 84, instead boarded a London-bound Air Zimbabwe
flight. The
flight was, as has become routine, diverted to Beijing where he
is
apparently due to receive unspecified treatment ahead of what is likely
to
be a gruelling election campaign.
“Mugabe is ill and is feared he may not
be able to last the distance when he
starts campaigning for the run-off,” a
source said. “He left for China on
Wednesday to receive some treatment that
will energize him for his
campaign.”
Mugabe’s spokesperson, George
Charamba could neither confirm nor deny his
boss’s absence.
“Who told
you that?” he asked. “Is that person a medical doctor? I believe
only a
medical doctor can confirm the President’s illness.
“But what you will be
shocked to see is that the President will be strong
and raring to go, come
Sunday.”
But Sports and Culture Minister, Aeneas Chigwedere, all but
confirmed Mugabe’s
absence at a function in Harare this week when he
addressed Vice President
Joseph Msika as Acting President.
Mugabe’s
health has been the subject of both speculation and excitement
among both
observers and his rivals over the past 10 years. But, undaunted
by his
humiliating defeat at the hands of Tsvangirai in March, the
battle-weary
Mugabe appears determined to defy both his advanced age and his
waning
popularity to turn the tables on his opponent and win another term.
www.thezimbabwetimes.com
May 24, 2008
SW Radio
Africa/Own Correspondent
HARARE - Harare municipal policeman, Joseph
Chinotimba, who shot to
prominence for the leading role which he played
during the violent farm
invasions, is back in the news again - this time for
overseeing the murder
of an Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
official.
He has been implicated in the murder of Chokuse Mupango, the
MDC chairman
for Ward 26 in the Buhera District of Manicaland Province on
Saturday.
Mupango died allegedly as the result of a vicious assault on him
by a group
led by Chinotimba at Mutiusinazita, close to Chinotimba’s rural
home in the
Buhera District.
Widely regarded as a hatchet man of
President Robert Mugabe Chinotimba, a
Zanu-PF candidate, who suffered defeat
in the recent parliamentary election
in Buhera South constituency, allegedly
led the group of Zanu-PF militias
who attacked and killed Mupango.
It
is alleged that Chinotimba drove the assailants to Mutiusinazita in his
vehicle. After parking the vehicle at Mutero Clinic it is alleged the group
had then hunted for the ward chairman. Mupango was the election strategist
for Naison Nemadziva the MDC MP elect who defeated Chinotimba on March 29.
Mupango had been warned of the impending attack and had sought refuge at a
neighbouring homestead. But they found him.
Pishai Muchauraya, the MP
elect for Makoni South (MDC) and party spokesman
for Manicaland said the
alleged assailants had searched the houses of both
Mupango and his neighbour
but had failed to locate him.
“As the group was about to retreat from the
area, someone suggested they
search the toilets,” Muchauraya said. “After a
while they found him hiding
in his neighbour’s toilet. He was dragged out
and they attacked him using
knives as well as sticks and
knobkerries.
“After they had beaten him badly, the group decided to take
him to
Chinotimba for further interrogation. But because of the nature of
his
injuries Mupango collapsed and was by now gasping for air. Instead of
seeking help, the group fetched a wheelbarrow and took him to Chinotimba,
who was in the company of five policemen at Mutero Clinic.”
Mupango
reportedly failed to respond to Chinotimba’s questions and died
while under
interrogation.
“The sad thing is what they said after they realized he
was dead. Chinotimba
(allegedly) started calling him a pig, raving to the
crowd that the pig had
died before he had even started on him,” Muchauraya
said. “His body was
loaded onto Chinotimba’s vehicle and was dropped off at
the Birchenough
Bridge Hospital mortuary.”
The MDC has since filed a
report with the police. Muchauraya said there were
so many witnesses to this
murder that “one day it would certainly come back
to haunt the self-anointed
leader of the war veterans”.
Chinotimba, the municipal policeman turned
politician, and the late Dr
Chenjerai “Hitler” Hunzvi were in the forefront
of the violent commercial
farm invasions by the war veterans back in 2000.
While both men assumed
positions of leadership within the war veteran
community they were of
dubious war veteran pedigree.
www.cathybuckle.com
24th May 2008
Dear Friends.
During the Middle
Ages in Europe there was an outbreak of an unknown
infection which became
known as the Black Death. It was so called because
the sufferers developed
horrible boils in the armpit and groin. These boils
turned black, hence the
name Black Death. If the patient was lucky he/she
died within twenty-four
hours; if not the sufferer would linger for a week
in dreadful
agony.
The authorities had to find an explanation for this catastrophe
which was
killing thousands of citizens from all classes of society. There
had to be
someone to blame. So the authorities tapped into popular prejudice
and
blamed the Jews even though the Jews themselves were dying in their
thousands. The Pope in Rome, not known for his defence of Jewry, pointed out
this anomaly; why would the Jews kill their own people was the Pope's
question. There was of course no answer; when propaganda enters through the
front door, truth and logic leave by the back.
We had a vivid
reminder of this truth in Zimbabwe this week as Mugabe and
his coterie of
cerebrally challenged ministers sought to provide an
explanation for the
horrendous violence that has gripped the country. They
have to find someone
to blame. They can no longer deny that it is happening
since the First Lady
herself and the Lady Vice-President visit the victims
and distribute
largesse. Such rank hypocrisy defies all belief but it was
left to Nathan
Shamuyarira to follow up on the claim Mugabe himself had
already made that
it was the MDC behind all the violence.
' MDC-T are the ones who have
been unleashing the violence on our members,'
Shamuyarira claimed, 'so it's
not true that Zanu PF is clamping down on
opposition members.' Setting aside
the question of who exactly is the
opposition since Zanu PF lost the
elections, Shamuyarira blithely ignores
the fact that it is MDC members who
are the victims of violence. The
question to ask is why would the MDC punish
its own supporters? The answer
according to Zanu PF's twisted rhetoric would
be 'to make Zanu PF look
bad' - the same reason white farmers wrecked their
own properties, no doubt.
When propaganda enters through the front door,
truth and logic leave by the
back.
The South African Mail and
Guardian carried an interview with a Green Bomber
this week which shed
further light on ZanuPF 'thinking'.The lad had been
through the so-called
Youth Training Programme, designed we are told to
instil patriotism and a
knowledge of history. The reporter asked the young
man if he was willing to
maim and kill to instil patriotism. His answer
illustrates perfectly the
blind allegiance to outdated 'Liberation
credentials' that are driving the
vicious onslaught against the forces of
democracy. ' Do you think we would
have won (the liberation war) if the
comrades were soft with people who
refused to support the struggle?' adding,
'We never kill. I've attacked only
those who attacked me'.
And for this he is paid 1 billion Zim dollars a
day and his mother comments
that she is just happy he has a job…but
unsurprisingly she doesn't want to
know what he does to earn his money. The
total of slaughtered MDC people has
reached 48 and still the regime claims
it is MDC spearheading the violence.
Yesterday the decomposing body of a
young MDC activist was found with his
tongue torn out and his lips cut off.
In a village I know well a six months
pregnant woman was beaten to death, so
badly beaten that she was
unrecognisable and in Murehwa an MDC official was
abducted in broad daylight
by known state agents who inflicted a savage
beating and then threw him into
the back of a truck. He has still not been
found. Witnesses saw the incident
and recorded the vehicle's registration
number. One way or another, these
killers will pay the price for their
inhumanity.
And meanwhile Zimbabweans in South Africa are in the
forefront of horrific
attacks on immigrants. Three million people have fled
across the border from
the economic and political collapse in Mugabe's
Zimbabwe. (Inflation has
this week surpassed1 million percent) The
undeniable truth is that those
three million people would never have been
forced to flee their homeland if
Thabo Mbeki had acted decisively to bring
his influence to bear on Mugabe.
Instead, Mbeki has protected him from all
attempts by the international
community to restore order in Zimbabwe and
prevent the economic collapse
that has driven four million Zimbabweans to
seek refuge all over the world.
In his blind support for Mugabe's Liberation
credentials Thabo Mbeki has
betrayed the people of Zimbabwe; he too has the
blood of innocent Africans
on his hands. His brother, Moeletsi Mbeki,
interviewed on Channel Four this
week spelled it out. The current wave of
violence in South Africa was
inevitable, he said. We have warned him
repeatedly. 'It was bound to
happen'.
It remains to be seen whether
these terrified victims of violence in South
Africa will return to the
motherland to face the Green Bombers and other
merchants of death over the
border. It is an agonising decision. Like Morgan
Tsvangirai himself as he
returns tomorrow, thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans
face a very uncertain
future. No need to look elsewhere for the cause of
Zimbabwe's suffering.
Zimbabweans know exactly where the blame lies. Robert
Mugabe - with more
than a little help from his friend Thabo Mbeki - is the
source of the
infection that is killing our people.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle.
PH
www.thezimbabwetimes.com
May 23, 2008
By Our
Correspondent
BULAWAYO - The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has
said that Zimbabwe’s
land redistribution programme has remained largely
unresolved because of
multiple farm ownership and lack of capacity to
produce by resettled
farmers.
Speaking on Wednesday night during a
television programme, Zimbabwe Today,
MDC spokesman, Nelson Chamisa,
dismissed out of hand Zanu-PF’s oft-stated
claim that his party opposed
equitable land redistribution and ownership.
Chamisa, who shared the
platform with Patrick Chinamasa, Zanu-PF’s chairman
of information and
publicity, said if, as widely- expected, the MDC won the
presidency in the
forthcoming run-off, it would decisively deal with
multiple farm ownership
as well as with the issue of lack of farming inputs.
“The MDC fully
supports equitable land ownership,” said Chamisa, “but we
regard it as
unfinished business. It is unfinished business for us because
there are
many challenges to address especially multiple farm ownership and
lack of
machinery and other inputs. We want our farmers to be well-equipped
but not
to own many farms as is the case with some well-connected people
now.”
Zanu-PF has always claimed that if the MDC formed the next
government, it
will repossess land from resettled black farmers and return
it to the white
commercial farmers, who were violently dispossessed of their
farms during
government’s “land grab” campaign going back to
2000.
Then, so-called war veterans and militant Zanu –PF supporters waged
a reign
of terror on farms countrywide, chasing the commercial farmers from
the
land. Dozens of white farmers and their workers were killed while
valuable
property was destroyed.
Chamisa insisted that the MDC was
mindful of the need for an equitable
redistribution of critical resource as
well as for incapacitating farmers
through the timely provision of inputs
such as fertiliser, seed, equipment
and machinery.
He said the
undertaking to fair land ownership was reflected in the
political manifesto
prepared by the MDC ahead of the March 29 elections. The
MDC MDC desisted
from condemning the land reforms, but rejected the chaotic
manner in which
the Zanu-PF has pursued the land redistribution since 2000.
The manifesto
says, “Mugabe’s land reform scheme has compounded rather than
resolved the
land issue as it destroyed the backbone of the national
economy.
“When the MDC forms the next government in Zimbabwe it will
accept neither
the status quo that existed prior to 2000 nor the position it
will inherit
after eight years of mayhem and destruction by a criminal
elite. The MDC is
fully committed to righting the historical imbalance in
land distribution.
“An MDC government will bring the land crisis to
closure through a
democratic and participatory process that achieves
equitable, transparent,
just, lawful and economically efficient distribution
and use of land, both
for agricultural and other purposes.”
The
manifesto says the party will set up a Land Commission under an Act of
Parliament to oversee its own the land reform process. At the outset, the
commission would audit the land ownership structure and move forward, guided
by its findings.
On the state of affairs in the MDC after the party
contested the March 29
elections split, Chamisa explained that the two
factions of the party had
reunited and were rallying behind Morgan
Tsvangirai in the June 27 run-off.
“I strongly reject your reference to
us as MDC-Tsvangirai,” said Chamisa to
Happison Muchechetere, the new
Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation boss, who
anchored the
discussion.
“The MDC is one. The only political party in Zimbabwe that
has a surname is
Zanu-PF.”
The MDC factions, which went separate ways
after a dispute over whether or
not to participate in the 2005 Senate
elections, have agreed to work
together again both in and out of
Parliament.
Arthur Mutambara, who led the smaller faction, has said his
group will also
support Tsvangirai in the run-off presidential election in
which the MDC
leader faces Mugabe again after defeating him on March.
Tsvangirai did not
win the majority required to form the next
government.
Turning to political violence, which has engulfed the
countryside after the
March elections, Chamisa reiterated that Zanu-PF was
to blame. He said
so-called war veterans, Zanu- PF militia and supporters
were perpetrating
retribution on the people as punishment for having voted
for the MDC.
“Zanu-PF is to blame,” said Chamisa. “Just this afternoon
(Wednesday
afternoon), we buried one of our supporters who was murdered by
Zanu –PF
supporters. We estimate that the death toll is now at 42
people.”
On the other hand, Chinamasa alleged that “a hidden hand” was
fanning the
prevailing inter-party violence. He alleged, without offering
evidence,
that some US embassy officials in Harare, including the ambassador
James
McGee were travelling to some areas in the country, inciting
violence.
“There is evidence of a third force behind the
political-motivated violence
cases.” Chinamasa alleged. We are aware that
the US embassy and their allies
are bussing MDC youths to attack our
supporters.”
Globe and Mail, Canada
STEPHANIE NOLEN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
May
24, 2008 at 12:10 AM EDT
JOHANNESBURG — The first time the Zimbabwe
police arrested Tonderai Ndira
back in 1998, he didn't resist. In fact, he
was smiling when they crammed
him into a tiny prison cell with other
democracy activists, and his comrades
asked him why.
“He said we had
to be strong because we were going to see such things,”
Reuben Tichareva,
who has been one of Mr. Ndira's closest friends since the
age of 5, recalled
yesterday. “He said such arrests will become a routine
thing as the struggle
continues.”
Indeed they did. Mr. Ndira was arrested so often over the
next decade – 35
times in all – that his friends and family started to
believe he was
invincible. No matter how long the police held him, or how
much they beat
him, he emerged alive and gentle and suffused with enthusiasm
to educate
people about the need for political change.
Because Mr.
Ndira led with such dignity and courage, “we called him our
Steve Biko,” Mr.
Tichareva said, in a reference to the legendary South
African anti-apartheid
activist.And now he and Mr. Biko have something else
in common: Mr. Ndira,
too, has been viciously slain in his early 30s.
Tonderai Ndira's death is
believed to be the work of pro-government forces
trying to immobilize the
opposition before a vote in June.
He was dragged from his bed by six
armed men on May 13, beaten savagely in
front of his wife and two children,
and stuffed into an unmarked car.
His body, or most of it, was found
Wednesday on the other side of town.
Mr. Ndira was part of a group of
young people who helped found Zimbabwe's
opposition Movement for Democratic
Change in 1999. But he had been
politically active long before that,
campaigning for the rights of people in
Mabvuku, the slum neighbourhood
where he grew up, then pushing for a
democratic constitution as the regime
of President Robert Mugabe grew
increasingly autocratic.
Mr. Ndira
rose through the ranks of the MDC, and for the past few years had
served as
an irrepressible “advance man” for party leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
His
slaying, and that of four other young MDC leaders in the past 10 days,
is
widely believed to be the work of pro-government forces that have
launched a
ruthless campaign to cripple the opposition as it tries to
prepare for a
runoff presidential vote on June 27.
Mr. Tsvangirai is to return to
Zimbabwe today, despite threats to his
safety, in part because he is
determined to attend Mr. Ndira's funeral.
However, it is not yet clear that
the government will allow the funeral,
scheduled for today, to go
ahead.
From the time he was a child, Mr. Ndira stood up against the abuse
of power.
Girls who went to school with him remember him for intervening
when boys
taunted them. He abhorred violence. “He would say, ‘We are not
fighting
people, but the system,'” Mr. Tichareva said.
Mr. Ndira had
been in hiding since a wave of state-sponsored violence began
after it
became clear that Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party had lost the March 29
election,
for the first time since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980.
His family
at first sought safety in rural areas, but when the violence
moved there,
they came back to Mabvuku. Last Tuesday night, a worn-out Mr.
Ndira sneaked
home to see them.
Shortly after dawn, as he lay sleeping, six men in dark
glasses burst into
the house. One put a pistol to the head of Mr. Ndira's
wife, Plaxedess
Mutariswa, who was in the kitchen, and ordered her to be
quiet and show them
where her husband was.
Mr. Ndira awoke as they
burst into the room, and for once, he did not go
willingly. “One of them
said, ‘Let me hit him' and dragged him out of the
room,” Ms. Mutariswa said,
weeping. “They started hitting him. He started
screaming for help. As they
were busy hitting him I tried to run for the
door to call for help but I
found another man with a gun on the door. He
said, ‘Just let a word out and
I will blow your MDC head off.'” The men,
believed to be agents of the
Central Intelligence Organization, carried Mr.
Ndira out to the car. His
children Raphael, 10, and Linity, 7, watched from
the doorway.
“They
threw Tonderai into the car as he pleaded with the people around him
to help
save his life,” Ms. Mutariswa said. She saw two of the men sit on
her
husband to keep him down inside the car as they drove off, saw another
stuff
a cloth into his mouth and blindfold him.
“When they took him, I could
feel a shiver down my spine,” said Ms.
Mutariswa. “I have seen police coming
to take him 35 times, but this time
something in me told me that there was
something very wrong.”
The family tried without success for a week to get
information from the
authorities about where Mr. Ndira had been
taken.
On Wednesday, a team from the MDC went to Harare's largest
hospital to claim
the bodies of a pair of activists from the mortuary. The
staff person on
duty told them there was another body, found on a farm
outside the city,
which had not been claimed and suggested they try to
identify it.
It fell to Mr. Tichareva to do that job. “It was horrific:
his face had been
crushed and I could see a maggot on the left side. His
left eye had been
removed, his nose was damaged, his tongue was missing. He
had two holes, one
just below the ribcage and the other just near the heart.
His body was black
with bruises. The murderers had used his boxers to cover
his face.”
In fact, Mr. Tichareva, he would have been unable to say this
body was his
friend's, but for the bangle he always wore on his left
hand.
Ms. Mutariswa, who lapsed frequently into racking sobs at the wake,
described how, years ago, she tried to dissuade her husband from
politics.
As she spoke, more than 100 people gathered outside the house,
singing and
drumming in what became one of the largest opposition gatherings
since the
election. Mr. Ndira's brothers emerged defiantly from hiding to
attend;
inside, their mother could only sit and keen.
While those who
gathered in Mabvuku for his wake yesterday vowed to fight on
in his name,
they also said they didn't know how they could carry on without
his
leadership. “We can only say we will try, but I don't think we can match
that level where Tonderai had taken this to,” Mr. Tichareva
said.
With a report from Globe and Mail contributors in Harare
Zim Online
by Simplicious Chirinda Saturday 24 May 2008
HARARE –
President Robert Mugabe this week grabbed an Air Zimbabwe plane to
fly him
to China, leaving management at the national airline scurrying
around for
alternative means to take passengers on a scheduled flight to
Singapore,
sources told ZimOnline.
It was not immediately clear whether Mugabe’s
rushed trip on Wednesday to
China was for personal or state business with
other sources in the
government suggesting the 84-year old leader went to
Beijing for routine
medical check up.
“We were told by management to
fix the Boeing 767 on Wednesday morning for
the VIPs. Usually the fixing
involves shutting down the business class and
removing seats and replacing
them with more comfortable seats and a bed,”
said a source at Air
Zimbabwe.
“The plane which was supposed to go Singapore that evening was
then diverted
to take the President to China on Wednesday afternoon,” added
the source,
who spoke on condition he was not named.
Mugabe’s
spokesman George Charamba was not immediately available for comment
on the
matter.
Air Zimbabwe chief executive officer Peter Chikumba confirmed
that the
airline was this week requested to provide an aircraft to “fly
VIPs” to
China. But he sought to downplay the matter saying it was normal
for VIPs to
make such requests.
Chikumba said: “This is not a new
thing. It is the norm that when VIPs are
traveling they make a request and
in this case their request was granted and
they are paying for that. We have
made alternative arrangements for
passengers who were affected.”
This
is not the first time that Mugabe has diverted Air Zimbabwe planes from
scheduled flights. He often does this whenever he wishes to fly outside the
country and sometimes even when he is travelling on personal business – and
in the process leaving passengers stranded.
Zimbabwe’s national
carrier has since the country’s economic crisis started
in 2000 lost its
position as one of the best airlines in Africa due to
mismanagement and
interference by the government.
Starved of cash for re-equipment, Air
Zimbabwe uses mostly obsolete
technology and equipment while nearly all its
planes are between 16 and 20
years old. – ZimOnline
Refugees huddle in churches and police
stations as mobs threaten to attack
Chris McGreal in Johannesburg
The
Guardian,
Saturday May 24 2008
George Mhanda came to Johannesburg to
feed his family, struggling to eat
under Robert Mugabe's derelict rule. The
Zimbabwean mechanic found a job in
a local garage and a room in a small
house in Tembisa township, and sent
cash home every month.
This week
he fled the house ahead of a baying mob hunting down African
immigrants, and
made for the sanctuary of the Central Methodist Church in
the heart of
Johannesburg. He thinks his job is gone but now his priority is
just to
survive. At night he arms himself with a small pile of bricks for
defence
against the hostile mobs roaming outside, and settles down to sleep
among
hundreds of other unwelcome Africans on a flight of stairs in the
church.
Mhanda cannot quite believe it has come to this. He had heard
of such things
in Rwanda and Kenya, of the killers going door to door in
search of those
who are different. But he never imagined it in Johannesburg,
one of the most
diverse and cosmopolitan cities on the continent and a
beacon for
immigrants.
"There's crime here, we all know that. But
people come from all over to
Johannesburg. It's that kind of city, not just
a South African city but an
African city. I can't understand it," he said.
"Now maybe I will have to go
back to Zimbabwe. I will wait a few days and
see what happens but perhaps it
is worse to be here than
there."
South Africa's bloodletting is a long way from the ethnic
killings of Rwanda
and Kenya. But at least 43 people have been murdered and
tens of thousands
forced from their homes as mobs hunted down African
immigrants in a dozen
Johannesburg suburbs and satellite townships. With it
has come looting and
rape.
Thousands of immigrants are fleeing home.
About 15,000 Mozambicans crossed
the border back to their country on
Thursday alone. Others packed
Johannesburg's bus and train stations looking
for a way out. Many thousands
are crammed into police compounds and
community halls.
More than 2,000 immigrants, mostly Zimbabweans, are
sheltering at the
Central Methodist Church. They fill every space, sleeping
on the pews, in
the corridors, on the stairs. About a third are women and
children.
Makeshift defensive weapons are everywhere - bricks, wood from
broken
chairs, metal bars.
There were skirmishes around the church as
mobs attacked the refugees in
recent days, and plenty of threats and insults
from passersby, before the
police parked a couple of cars outside. In one of
the attacks a deaf-mute
man who did not hear the warnings of an attack was
beaten around the head,
leaving a gash down to his skull.
Now the
violence is spreading across the country to Cape Town, Durban and
the Free
State.
Some of the scenes in the townships and squatter camps were
disturbingly
reminiscent of hatred seen elsewhere.
The mob that drove
Mhanda from his home consisted of hundreds of young men
armed with machetes,
spears, knobkerries [clubs] and metal pipes fashioned
to look like guns.
They danced their way through Tembisa in scenes evocative
of the bloody
township wars when rival black political groups competed for
power with the
twilight of apartheid in the early 1990s.
"There was hatred in their
eyes," said Mhanda. "They were shouting things in
Zulu. I didn't understand
but I knew what they wanted to do, to kill the
foreigners. It was very
frightening. The people in the street told me to
run. They said that if
those boys caught me I would be dead for sure."
Patrols
Two
foreigners were murdered the night that Mhanda fled and scores of shacks
burned or looted. In other places the victims have been burned alive, or
chopped into pieces.
The attacks mostly come at night. Sometimes the
mobs know where the foreign
families live but if they are in doubt they haul
them out of their beds and
ask a simple question in Zulu, the lingua franca
of the townships. Lack of
comprehension is dangerous.
The scenes in
Tembisa have resulted in something else not seen since the end
of apartheid
- South African soldiers patrolling the townships.
A Somali was killed
yesterday when a mob in Du Noon in Cape Town attacked
shacks and looted
shops, and pelted foreigners with rocks and bottles. The
police took about
500 immigrants to the protection of a police station.
Du Noon residents
said they wanted all the foreigners out.
"We want them to leave by
Sunday," Nonkululeko Sarlana told the South
African Press
Association.
Moses Ndabihawenimana and his two brothers fled Burundi two
years ago after
their parents were murdered there. Now he fears a similar
fate in South
Africa. "This is war. They are going to kill us," he
said.
The church's bishop, Paul Verryn, said ordinary South Africans had
grown
hostile to African immigrants as Zimbabweans flooded into the country.
By
some estimates there are 3 million Zimbabweans in South Africa and about
2
million other African immigrants.
"The numbers here created
anxiety," he said. "You can't get away from the
fact that some of them are
very educated with a substantial work ethic - the
Zimbabweans in particular.
This is true of refugees the world over. They
will do whatever work they
need to survive. If they are doctors and they
have to sell newspapers they
will do it. And you watch them advance faster
and they're sitting
ducks."
"Ask my boss why he employs me," said Mhanda. "He is a white
boss. He will
tell you South Africans are lazy. They get up and start
drinking beer. They
don't like to work. They don't do the job properly. They
don't come to work
and still expect to be paid. He says he has had to deal
with that all his
life."
That is not the view in Alexandra, a
township of about 500,000 people living
in difficult conditions in the heart
of Johannesburg where the violence
began two weeks ago. It, like Soweto, has
been one of the beneficiaries of
large government spending to bring decent
housing and schools to the
townships.
But what the uplift has not
brought is jobs. Earning a living remained
difficult, and was not made
easier as Zimbabweans fleeing their country's
economic crisis packed in to
the township.
Many were well educated and found work that Alexandrans
could not. The
bitterness grew until it exploded. Now about 1,000 immigrants
are packed in
to the compound of the township's police station for
protection.
Veronica Khoza, a street trader, has little sympathy. "They
give the jobs to
Zimbabweans because they will work for cheap wages. We are
South Africans.
We know our rights and we demand to be paid properly," she
said.
There is also contempt for their failure to take on Robert
Mugabe.
"They have run away," said Khoza "All they do is complain about
how horrible
Mugabe is to them. Why don't they stay in their country and
fight? We fought
apartheid. Many people were killed. Many people went to
prison, even
children. The white soldiers were here, in Alexandra, and they
shot people.
We didn't just run away."
Perhaps not, but large numbers
of South Africans did leave the country to
join the liberation struggle and
ended up living in Zimbabwe, Angola,
Tanzania and Mozambique. It is a source
of bitterness among immigrants from
those countries that the hospitality
they offered is not reciprocated.
More than 5,000 immigrants have stayed
at Verryn's church since it opened
its doors to them four years ago. Some
have slept there for just a couple of
nights. Others have remained for
years. About one-third are women and
children who sleep in a separate part
of the building although a number of
women have become pregnant and given
birth while living in the church.
This, and allegations of criminal
activity, has led to hostile coverage in
the South African press that Verryn
says has contributed to antagonism
toward immigrants. He is exercised by an
article in the Johannesburg Star
newspaper two years ago under the headline:
"Place of worship now a den of
iniquity".
Appeal
It carried
the story of a Zimbabwean immigrant, Andrew Khumalo, who was
stabbed to
death in the church in a row over clothes. It quoted members of
the
congregation as complaining that people had sex in the church, and there
was
drunkenness and brawling.
"There are problems but look at the other
people who have settled here who
are a credit to the country. Some are
working in their professions. There
are builders, mechanics, accountants,
teachers," said Verryn. "There's a
sense of solidarity, of family, in this
building. People really help each
other."
The police raided the
church in February, arresting hundreds of undocumented
immigrants. Verryn
said the police behaved like criminals.
"They were assaulting people.
They were stealing. Their whole demeanour was
aggressive," he
said.
All those detained were later freed.
Many South Africans are
ashamed of the violence. Desmond Tutu, the former
archbishop of Cape Town
and anti-apartheid leader, appealed for an end to
the attacks. "We human
beings, ever since the Garden of Eden, are looking
for scapegoats," he
wrote.
The bishop receives a call about a church in the wealthy white
Johannesburg
suburb which is less than enthusiastic about taking refugees.
He quotes
Matthew's gospel at the caller - "I was a stranger and you
welcomed me in"
and, after hanging up, smiles and says he might send a few
homeless
immigrants up to the hesitant church.
Zim Online
by Jameson Mombe Saturday 24 May 2008
GENEVA –
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has voiced
concern
at xenophobic violence in South Africa that has killed at least 42
African
immigrants and displaced more than 15 000 others.
The world refugee
agency said it was particularly concerned that the attacks
against
foreigners had also targeted genuine refugees and asylum seekers
such as
Zimbabweans who fled their home country because of political
violence and
persecution.
"UNHCR remains deeply concerned about the xenophobic attacks
against
foreigners in South Africa, including refugees and asylum seekers
who fled
to South Africa seeking protection from persecution in their own
countries,”
Pagonis told journalists in Geneva.
The UNCHR spokeswoman
said reports from the agency's teams on the ground in
South Africa indicated
that a large majority of foreigners displaced by the
xenophobic violence
were Zimbabweans who she said could not return home
because of political
turmoil there.
"While thousands of Mozambicans are reportedly streaming
home, many
Zimbabweans cannot consider returning home due to the well-known
situation
in their country," said Pagonis, who called on South African
authorities to
consider ways to regularise Zimbabweans’ stay in that
country.
The violent attacks on foreigners started last week in
Johannesburg’s
Alexandra township of the poor. The attacks quickly spread to
other
townships in Diepsloot, Hillbrow, Jeppe, Cleveland, Thokoza and
Tembisa
leaving thousands of African immigrants without shelter or food
after their
homes were looted and burnt down.
The violence has also
spread to the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, North West
and Mpumalanga and on
Friday more attacks against foreigners were reported
in South Africa’s
second largest city and tourism capital, Cape Town.
President Thabo Mbeki
earlier this week ordered the military to help the
police curb the
xenophobic violence, a move analysts saw as an admission by
the government
that the attacks on foreigners had become a national crisis
that could
destabilise Africa's largest economy. – ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Own Correspondent Saturday 24 May
2008
JOHANNESBURG – World Cup chief organiser
Danny Jordaan on Friday condemned
xenophobic attacks in South Africa but
said the violence would pass before
the football showpiece takes place in
2010.
Xenophobic violence that broke out last week in Johannesburg’s poor
townships has killed more than 40 African immigrants, some being brunt alive
in scenes that have shocked South Africa’s leadership and unsettled foreign
investors.
At least 25 000 immigrants, most of them from Zimbabwe,
Malawi and
Mozambique, were displaced in the attacks and many were this week
fleeing
South Africa, returning home where economic conditions are tougher
but their
lives are safer.
Jordaan told the media in Beijing that
both China and South Africa were
under the microscope because they were
scheduled to host two of the world’s
biggest sporting events. China is due
to host the 2008 Olympics and was
recently hit by a powerful earthquake that
devastated the city of Sichuan.
"We can see the focus of attention on our
countries, for completely
different reasons, both of them tragic," he told
the International Football
Arena conference.
"Our standpoint is that
this World Cup must be a celebration of Africa's
humanity. Africa has too
often been a continent of division, of wars, of
humiliation. And certainly
we condemn any situation that continues to
inflict on African people
humiliation, suffering, war, disease.
"So our position is crystal clear
and we ask that every action must be taken
to stop inflicting on displaced
people further displacement."
Jordaan said South Africa hoped the
football extravaganza would help
increase the country’s tourism figures from
7.4 million last year to 10
million tourists in 2010 and he was confident
the violence would not be a
problem by then.
The violent attacks on
foreigners started last week in Johannesburg’s
Alexandra township of the
poor before spreading quickly to other townships,
leaving thousands of
African immigrants without shelter or food after their
homes were looted and
burnt down.
"It's something that will pass . . . South Africans are not
xenophobic," he
said.
Jordaan assured the football fraternity that
South Africa was working flat
out to ensure that all the stadiums would be
ready in time for the
tournament, although he conceded that finishing a new
stadium in Port
Elizabeth in time for the Confederations Cup in July next
year was "a
challenge".
He said South Africa hoped to emulate 2006
host Germany in welcoming
visitors without match tickets at "Fan Parks",
where they would be able to
watch games on big screens in a secure
environment.
"Our view is that fan parks should be as important as the
stadiums," he
said. "It must be structured, organised and that includes
security. We see
it as another World Cup site."
Jordaan said he
thought the litmus test of a big sporting event was how well
the local
community embraced it.
"I don't think there are any football fans like
African football fans, with
painted faces, with colourful dress with song
and dance and celebration," he
said – ZimOnline
This Day On Line, Nigeria
05.24.2008
Thousands of people in dozens of cities across
Africa and the rest of the
globe will tomorrow demonstrate their solidarity
with victims of rights
abuses in Zimbabwe.
The “Stand Up For Zimbabwe”
campaign by a coalition of African civil
society organisations including
the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, East
Africa Law Society, Treatment
Action Campaign, the Crisis in Zimbabwe
Coalition and the Congress of South
African Trade Unions, is highlighting
the continuing political crisis in
Zimbabwe and calling on people across the
globe to press the Southern
African Development Community, African Union
and the United Nations to act
decisively to end systematic political
violence in the country and resolve
the country’s long-standing political
crisis.
“The situation in
Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate because world leaders
have let Zimbabwe’s
rulers to persecute opposition activists and subvert
democratic principles
with impunity,” he said.
This makes people lose faith in democratic
processes,’ said Regis Mtutu,
spokesperson for the Treatment Action Campaign
of South Africa.
“Zimbabweans opposed to ZANU-PF face horrific violence every
day. As African
civil society groups, we are saying there has been enough
hand-wringing,
division and ineptitude in dealing with the crisis in
Zimbabwe.”
The consequences of the crisis reverberate across the region and
we cannot
sit idly while our Zimbabwean brothers and sisters are beaten,
raped and
driven away from their homes because they dare to exercise their
democratic
rights. African political and civil society leaders and other
world leaders
must act to stop the violence and other human rights
violations.”
May 25, a day traditionally marked to celebrate the
establishment of the
African Union (formerly the Organisation of African
Unity), is the start of
a series of campaign calling all to “Stand up for
Zimbabwe.”
Events are scheduled for: South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya,
Zambia,
Namibia, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Lesotho, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire,
Gambia,
Ghana, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Togo, Cameroon and Senegal, to
name a
few.
Institute for War
& Peace Reporting (London)
23 May 2008
Posted to the web 23 May
2008
Jabu Shoko
London
As Zimbabwe braces for what many fear
will be a bloody run-off election next
month, ZANU-PF’s powerful central
committee has shifted into top gear to
make sure President Robert Mugabe
reverses the electoral defeat he suffered
on March 29.
In addition to
widespread intimidation spearheaded by militias in areas
where voters backed
Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic
Change, MDC, the
authorities are tightening up control over the state media.
On May
14, the government dismissed Henry Muradzikwa, chief executive at the
Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, ZBC, apparently for failing to slant
coverage towards President Mugabe and ZANU-PF ahead of the first round of
elections, held on March 29.
Insider sources say the ZBC got the
blame for carrying MDC political adverts
that were better than the ones
produced by ZANU-PF.
Muradzikwa’s replacement was named as Happison
Muchechetere, a senior
broadcast journalist at the station and a staunch
ZANU-PF loyalist.
Within days of taking over at ZBC, Muchechetere
rejigged its programming,
replacing popular soap operas at prime viewing
time with documentaries from
the archives, mostly glorifying Mugabe’s role
in the 1970s war of
liberation, but some of them demonising Tsvangirai and
his alleged western
backers.
ZANU-PF has beefed up its own PR and
media arm ahead of the second-round
presidential election, scheduled for
June 27. A revamped sub-committee on
information and publicity will be led
by Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa,
a hardline Mugabe
ally.
According to ZBC insiders, the committee has effectively taken over
the
running of the state media including the broadcaster, and has a brief to
run
a sustained propaganda campaign in support of Mugabe.
Other
members of the media committee include Webster Shamu, Mugabe’s
minister of
policy implementation, Chris Mutsvangwa, a former chief
executive of ZBC,
and George Charamba, the permanent secretary for
information and publicity,
who writes a vitriolic weekly column in the
government mouthpiece, The
Herald.
Journalists say Charamba recently read the riot act to the
editors of all
the government-run newspapers, telling them in no uncertain
terms they
should not publish stories which “put Tsvangirai and the MDC in a
good
light”.
Useni Sibanda, a political analyst who works as a
coordinator for the
Christian Alliance, said the government had moved to
close off the small
amount of media space afforded to Tsvangirai and the MDC
prior to the March
29 polls. He said the sacking of Muradzikwa showed that
ZANU-PF would not
tolerate any view other than its own.
As well as
its new media body, ZANU-PF has also established special
committees to
improve the availability of food and public transport – seen
as key election
issues.
These committees are clearly intended to push through quick-fix
economic
measures in the hope that this will encourage wavering voters to
support
Mugabe.
ZANU-PF’s food committee is already distributing
maize meal, the staple
diet, and is setting up “People’s Shops” where scarce
basic commodities are
being sold at controlled prices.
"We have
realised that people were hungry when they went to the polls,”
party
spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira told The Herald, according to AFP news
agency.
The distribution of basic foodstuffs follows last week’s
scrapping of import
duty on groceries, and the May 2 decision to float the
Zimbabwean dollar
which succeeded in persuading many people to change their
foreign currency
at the banks at the attractive new rate, rather than on the
black market.
This ensured an influx of much-needed foreign currency into
the banks, where
the authorities can access it to fund their pre-election
strategy.
Finally, the party has instructed the monopoly Grain Marketing
Board to
regularly review the price it pays farmers for maize. With effect
from this
week, farmers are now being paid cash for consignments of up to
five tonnes,
with transport laid on for no cost.
Meanwhile, the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, RBZ, has reportedly been ordered to
print money to
underwrite the regime’s new-found largesse and finance
procurements of fuel,
maize and farm machinery, as well as wages for the
security services and
paramilitaries who are carrying out a campaign of
intimidation on the
ground.
A new unrestrained emission of money is unlikely to help the
Zimbabwean
dollar, which has plunged from 30,000 to the US dollar, at which
it was
artificially held from September 2007 to May 2, to reach 255 million
to one
on May 16, the last day for which the RBZ website published rates.
(See
Pre-Election Sweeteners for Zimbabwe Voters, ZCR No. 146,
16-May-08.)
Mugabe made clear his intention to galvanise his party in a
speech to its
central committee on May 16.
In the March 29 joint
elections, which the MDC won more seats in parliament
than ZANU-PF and
Mugabe performed worse than Tsvangirai, although election
officials ruled
that a run-off was necessary because neither candidate got
over 50 per cent
of the vote. It was, Mugabe told central committee members,
“a dismal
result”.
"As [party] leaders, we all share the blame, from the national
level to that
of the branch chairman. We played truant; we did not lead, we
misled; we did
not encourage, rather we discouraged; we did not unite, we
divided; we did
not inspire, we dispirited; we did not mobilise, we
demobilised,” he said,
arguing that ZANU-PF went into the elections a
"bickering and divided party"
and failed to mobilise a “sleeping vote” that
rightfully belonged to it.
"We have a crucial run-off ahead of us. We
must use it to repair the damage
and shortcomings which we suffered in the
harmonised polls,” he said.
Mugabe’s call appears to have been heeded.
Sources in ZANU-PF have told IWPR
that key personnel both in the party and
in government are being replaced in
a bid to deliver an election
victory.
“Money is not a problem,” said a senior ZANU-PF insider,
speaking on
condition of anonymity.
The formula of tighter control
over ZANU-PF and government agencies like the
media and economic sweeteners
for the population augment the authorities’
strategy of intimidating its
opponents, especially in constituencies once
seen as ZANU-PF strongholds but
captured by the MDC in the parliamentary
polls.
Analysts say the
violence has created no-go areas for the opposition in much
of rural
Mashonaland, Manicaland and Masvingo.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa says
the death toll of opposition supporters
and sympathisers is rising day by
day, reaching 42 as of May 20. He has also
alleged that injured opposition
supporters have been denied medical
treatment at government hospitals, at
the same time as thousands of others
are displaced by the violence, thus
ensuring that they cannot vote.
“We have cases where people perceived to
be opposition supporters have their
identity documents confiscated or
burnt,” added Chamisa.
Eldred Masunungure, a professor of political
science at the University of
Zimbabwe, said the range of strategies deployed
by ZANU-PF showed how
determined it was to get Mugabe
re-elected.
Masunungure said that if the outcome of the June 27 election
was to be
accepted as legitimate, it was essential for the Southern African
Development Community, SADC, the African Union, AU, and other international
observers to be allowed to supervise and monitor the polls,
“But
every fair-minded person realises that the current volatile political
climate is not conducive for free and fair elections,” he added. “ZANU and
Mugabe are determined to win at all costs. They are leaving nothing to
chance to bag this election.”
Masunungure believes the mood of
optimism that preceded the first round has
now changed, and argued, “The
psychological make-up emanating from the
violence is that prospective voters
are not likely to vote. They are already
being guided by fear of
retribution.”
Sibanda agreed, noting, “There is so much violence that it
is impossible to
talk of free and fair elections. ZANU-PF is using all
manner of tricks to
win the polls.”
Chinamasa has ruled out inviting
western observers or anyone else perceived
to be sympathetic to the
opposition. He has also said the election observers
invited to the first
round will have to be re-accredited.
There are concerns that
non-governmental organisations like the Zimbabwe
Electoral Support Network,
ZESN, will not be allowed to do their work this
time around. ZESN organised
a vote tabulation in parallel with the official
count.
Jabu Shoko is
a pseudonym for a journalist in Zimbabwe.
For the past two weeks, Zimbabweans in South Africa have cowered in fear as xenophobic mobs have rampaged through townships splitting heads and burning flesh to send them a simple, ugly message: Go home. On Thursday, they heard the same message echoed from an unlikely quarter. Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai made a surprise visit to a police station in Alexandra township, where hundreds of his compatriots have sought refuge from the mobs, and urged them to follow him home. Tsvangirai is facing an increasingly violent political challenge at home, with supporters of President Robert Mugabe unleashing a campaign of intimidation against opposition supporters ahead of a runoff presidential election scheduled for June. Tsvangirai told the crowd he would return to Zimbabwe in the next few days, despite fears that he could be assassinated, and he invited the refugees of Alexandra to join him. "Let's go back home, let's solve the Zimbabwean problem," he told a jubilant crowd.
Already about 10,000 people have opted to return home to Mozambique, an official from that government — which has laid on buses for would-be returnees — told Reuters. At the police station in Primrose east of Johannesburg, where about 5,000 people are camping in tents in an adjacent field, cheers erupted Wednesday as five buses arrived to take people back to Mozambique. On the opposite side of the field, 26-year old Mozambican Domingos Ubsse was sitting inside a minibus taxi, waiting to leave for Maputo. After 20 armed men barged into the room he shares with four others, breaking everything, he decided to leave: "My work is here, but I am going home because I don't feel safe here," he says.
Even Zimbabweans, who face not only poverty but also hunger and persecution in a country in economic and political free-fall, are choosing to return home rather than face more anti-immigrant violence in South Africa. In central Johannesburg on Thursday, a bus depot buzzed with scores of Zimbabweans desperate to get on buses bound for home. While these buses typically depart for Zimbabwe only half full, the past few days have seen them filled beyond capacity, says Victor Ramaphosa, an inspector with the Revival Bus Company.
Tinei Murimbechi managed to escape from the small convenience store he owned in Tembisa with just 250 rand ($35) — just enough to afford the bus fare back to his home near Bulawayo — before a crowd of South Africans brandishing fighting sticks and spears looted it, singing "Out with foreigners." Before he fled, he says he watched the mob kill three men: one of them was shot and the other two bludgeoned.
Running his small store in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg, had enabled Murimbechi to support three younger siblings back in Zimbabwe, he says. "Maybe I will come back here," he adds desolately. "Or maybe Morgan Tsvangirai will win the election, and maybe the economic situation will improve." About a dozen other Zimbabweans at the bus depot shared similar stories with TIME, while others seeking shelter in the Central Methodist Church in downtown Johannesburg — where around 3,000 mainly Zimbabweans are have found a makeshift refuge — said that they would return home if they could afford to.
Meanwhile, in the squatter camp of Ramaphosa east of Johannesburg, scavengers sifted through the charred wreckage where foreigners' shacks once stood, carting away sheets of twisted and blackened metal. One neighbor stepped out of his shack to claim that the Mozambicans chased out two days ago had provoked the attacks by planning revenge attacks on South Africans after hearing of the violence in Alexandra. "They want to rule here in South Africa," said the man, who declined to give his name.
A few meters away, two South African men sit guarding their own shacks from looting by their countrymen. One says he has stayed away from his job as a mechanic for two days in order to protect his property. "I'm afraid to sleep here," says one of the men who only gives his first name, Alpheu. "These foreigners can come in the night to kill us." When the anti-immigrant mobs began their rampage, he says, they pounded on his door, saying, "Why are you sleeping?" and demanding that he join them. But he refused. "They are still our brothers," he says.
As the men talk, the retreating form of an older man in a gray coat walking hastily down the road in the direction of the police station catches their eye. "He's a Shangaan," explains the other man, who gives his name as Sidney. (Shangaans are a South African ethnic group also found in Mozambique, and a number of them have been victimized during the anti-immigrant violence.) "Maybe he was going to see if he could rescue some of his stuff. If they see him here, they can kill him now. You can see he's afraid."
By Anthony C. LoBaido
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
Editor's Note: Journalist Anthony C. LoBaido has published scores of stories about South Africa and Zimbabwe, the former Rhodesia. LoBaido has spent several years living, working and traveling in southern Africa over the past two decades. In his latest segment, LoBaido brings to light the story of J. Columbus Smith, an American Special Forces veteran who fought in the Rhodesian Bush War.
"They can't change the name of a country, can
they?"
– Cecil John Rhodes
Chobe sunset (Photo: Anthony LoBaido) |
The very name "Rhodesia" conjures images of Edwardian England and the spirit and might of the British Empire. Once the peaceful, thriving breadbasket of southern Africa, Rhodesia experienced a bloody fight to the death in the 1960s and 1970s that pitted black vs. white, capitalist vs. communist and globalist vs. nationalist.
Known today as Zimbabwe, few in the Western world are aware of Rhodesia's maverick history. Rhodesia's founder, Cecil Rhodes, carries a moniker akin to the anonymity of the Serbian superinventor Nicola Tesla. How could such truly great men of unfathomable accomplishments remain so unknown? Yet while scarcely remembered or seriously studied in postmodern times, Rhodes' achievements continue to resonate through the internationalist ideals of the Rhodes Scholar program and the development of English as a Second Language to assist cultural colonization and Anglo-American influence around the globe.
Rhodes rivals Lawrence of Arabia and Winston Churchill as the leading figures of the erstwhile British Empire. Having mutated, the British Empire continues today through venues such as the Rhodes Trust, British Commonwealth, overseas military bases and the London-based finance and arms profiteering industries. The British SAS might be the most elite special unit on Earth. Prince Charles towers over the Wales Business Council while huge offshore oil deposits off of the Falkland Islands project wild profits for the future of British Petroleum.
The dream of Cecil Rhodes was at once simple, audacious and outlandish: a single, unified Africa from Cape Town to Cairo under the British Crown. Victoria Falls and Lake Victoria were to be only the beginning. The mineral and agricultural wealth of a United States of Africa – harnessed by British law, Anglo-Saxon culture, medicine education, history and, of course, the English language – would rival that of the United States. Thus, the 1776 revolution and the "shot heard round the world" would become irrelevant for the British Empire.
Victoria Falls (Photo: Anthony LoBaido) |
With the diamond and gold fields of South Africa under British control after the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, Rhodes looked north. For there lay the path to Cairo. (Tragically, some 26,000 Afrikaner women and children died in British concentration camps, as a handful of Boer farmers fought the greatest military power then on Earth to a standstill.)
Of course, there were native African tribes to contend with in what was to be come known as his personal Rhodesia. (Rhodes ironically wondered about his place in posterity shortly before his death by musing, "They can't change the name of a country, can they?") A separate entity called "Northern Rhodesia" also was established.
In a strange footnote of history, Northern Rhodesia was invaded by Germany during World War I, the only British-affiliated country to have been invaded. German Gen. Paul Emil Von Letow-Vorbek salvaged naval guns and used them as artillery, home brewed his own brand of quinine and carried a steamer in crates across Lake Tanganyika. A Zeppelin loaded with supplies was even launched to help the German East African forces and floated as far south as the Sudan.
Rise of primal man
Truly visionary in a manner not unlike Tesla or Jules Verne, Rhodes was smart enough to arm the Matabele Tribe against the Mashona. A century later, Rhodes' worst instincts and fears about primal man came to pass as Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, and the brutal dictator Robert Mugabe brought in mercenaries from North Korea's Fifth Brigade to engage in the Matabele Massacre. Mugabe's Mashona, or "Shona" for short, had been long-standing rivals of the Matabele. The operation launched against the Matabele was called "Gukurahundi" or the Shona term for the "first rain that washes away the chaff of the last harvest before the advent of spring rains proper."
Official figures vary, but it is estimated that around 30,000 Matabele were killed. The Catholic archbishop puts the figure at 20,000. It was an ominous warning of what would become a fascist, archetype Maoist revolution in Rhodesia, a country roughly the size of Montana. Mugabe, with the help of his own Hitler Youth-style corps, called the "Green Bombers," would go on to slaughter Zimbabwe's white farmers, take away their land and plunge the nation into a hell hole of debt, hyperinflation, murder, AIDS and hopelessness.
Today over 82 percent of Zimbabweans are Shona. Gukurahundi continues in a mutated form. With the Matabele subdued and the "white race card played," Mugabe now must turn on the black African opposition Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, as his new legion.
The Bush War
J. Columbus Smith in a 1979 New York Times photo |
How did Rhodesia, once a source of agricultural bounty for Africa, turn into a living nightmare of despair? Perhaps the answer can be found in the combat experience of J. Columbus Smith – an elite U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who joined the Rhodesian Army in a quest to save the beautiful nation from Mugabe. Smith has lived a life few men will ever know. Moreover, he is part of a remnant that personally fought for what was left of Western civilization in the mid 1970s – before the fall of the Berlin Wall, globalization, political correctness and massive Third World immigration.
Back in the days of the Rhodesian Bush War, as it was known, Mugabe was a Spartan-like rebel. He was raised by Jesuits and sent his own son to a Catholic school. Such was his determination that Mugabe would go on to stare down the entire Western world over issues ranging from his anti-white ethnic cleansing and opposition to genetically modified foods.
Battling Mugabe and his Marxist-Maoist cadres was the job of elite Rhodesian Special Forces soldiers such as Willem Ratte and Bert Sachse. Yet Rhodesia, while abandoned by the West to face Mugabe's terrorists – who in turn were backed by North Korea, China, the old USSR and its communist bloc satellites – was augmented by a team of well-trained, highly motivated American volunteers.
Among these "Amerikaners" were J. Columbus Smith. The son of an Air Force pilot and a first class military brat, Smith earned a journalism degree from Sam Houston State in Texas. He served in the U.S. Army and qualified for the Special Forces. Because of his journalism background, he was appointed public information officer for all the Green Berets in Vietnam.
"My grandfather, William Robert 'Bob' Smith, was a Texas Ranger, and my dad a decorated air hero in World War II," Smith told WND. "My heritage is a long, unbroken military line, including a drummer boy in the American Revolutionary War. My serving in Vietnam was a continuation of my family's service to this great nation of ours."
J. Columbus Smith in a 1977 news photo |
In Vietnam, he said, "all of the reporters came my way, and I escorted some famous combat photographers around the country to various Special Forces camps," mostly in the Central Highlands.
Smith said among the people he met were Horst Faas; Errol Flynn's son Sean; Peter Arnett, then with the Associated Press; and Helen Gibson of United Press International. Asked why he joined the Special Forces, Smith said, "I'm an excitement addict. I like the buzz of a war zone. I volunteered for airborne school and Special Forces training because I sensed there would be excitement. I'm also an anti-communist. I saw Sputnik fly over New England when I was 12 or 13 years of age and I felt an icicle of fear. ... The race (for the world) was on, and I wanted to be a part of it.
The story of how Smith came to fight in Rhodesia started out innocuously enough.
"A friend of mine had been to Rhodesia and sensed I would enjoy the challenge. He visited me in San Antonio and asked if I would like to give it a go and I said yes. I went in the autumn of 1976 to Salisbury as a freelance journalist," he told WND.
"Upon my arrival in Salisbury, I was sent before a panel of colonels who asked me many questions about combat tactics. What would I do if ... X,Y, Z. This lasted for more than an hour, after which I was offered a 'short service commission' of three years. I accepted. I was sent to Llewellyn Barracks near Bulawayo as a training officer. We trained mostly ethnic-Europeans but also some African intakes. They were conscripts all. Next door was Methuen Barracks, the home of The Rhodesian African Rifles or 'RAR.' After holding the staff position in Vietnam, which I could not evade, I was keen to command troops in the field, albeit I was 33 years old."
J. Columbus Smith (Courtesy J. Columbus Smith) |
Smith said that at first he was "received with suspicion."
"People wondered if I was a spy? … Of the foreign nationals, we Yanks had the worst reputation. I suspect I am one of just 20 Yanks who actually completed his three-year contract."
Nevertheless, he said, the RAR accepted me, and I became a platoon commander of 40 African soldiers. We patrolled the Tribal Trust Lands. A year or so later I was promoted to captain and had the privilege of commanding a company of 200-plus men from time to time. We patrolled the bush looking for terrorists."
Continued Smith: "Rhodesia was then struggling for survival already under communist onslaught for about a dozen years. There were 250,000 whites and 6 million blacks. Small groups of communists, trained in the USSR, Cuba, Libya, Zambia and Mozambique infiltrated into Rhodesia from the latter two nations. Since the first incursion in 1965, terrorists were now all over the country. The 'front' was everywhere when I arrived in late November 1976.
"Small terror groups – led by a political commissar – and armed with AK-47s, SKSs, RPG-7s would drop into a remote 'kraal' after dark and chop off a few limbs with a dull axe just to get everybody's attention and then request loyalty and information about Rhodesian security forces. This actually worked. It was standard tactics and that's why we called them communist terrorists or 'CTs' for short."
Smith told WND that blacks did have legitimate grievances.
"Yes, of course they did. Was Rhodesia addressing them? Yes. By 1977, after years of paralyzing sanctions and a threat of a Western invasion, Ian Smith had accepted the principal of majority rule, promised majority rule elections, but not communist domination.
Smith explained that the Rhodesians fought with a minimum number of troops.
"Despite claims of having a total force strength of 10,000, I doubt we ever had more than 1,000 troops on the ground at one time. But, oh my, what a force! Man for man perhaps the toughest army in the world at that time. The idea of losing any battle or 'contact with the enemy simply didn't occur to anyone. I never saw or heard about any defeat on our side while I was there. I don't say this to be immodest. One must always be humble.
Elephants in southern Africa (Photo: Anthony LoBaido) |
"Small unit commanders were given a lot of freedom to tailor their patrols to the situation," Smith said. "It was both a relaxed army and a highly efficient one. My unit, the RAR, was the oldest unit in country. My soldiers were Africans from two tribes, the Shona and Ndebele. Until the last two years of the war – when African officers came on line – the officers were white."
So effective was the Rhodesian counterinsurgency campaign that years later, the Rand corporation published a study on its effectiveness.
"We had great esprit de corps and unity. The blacks and whites sweated shoulder to shoulder in a hunt for communists in the bush. We spent 42 days in the bush, looking for and engaging groups of CTs. We never lost. Then we had 10 days of R & R."
This meant simply drinking beer and chasing women in either of the two major cities, Bulawayo and Salisbury, now Harare. Or maybe both. Yes, life was that simple at the troop level, but it was taut cable at the top.
Smith told WND the government in Rhodesia was desperate for world recognition and were frankly puzzled it was not forthcoming in light of embracement of the principal of majority rule by Ian Smith, the ruling Rhodesian Front and plans for a majority rule election to select a black prime minister.
While serving in the Rhodesian Armed Forces, J. Columbus Smith had the opportunity to meet the leader of Rhodesia, Ian Smith.
"I met Ian Smith and immediately liked him. Half of his face seemed frozen and didn't move. This was from a terrible World War II plane crash. I felt racism in apartheid South Africa immediately. It hit me in the face when I visited Johannesburg. It radiated off the faces in the street. But I didn't see it or feel it in Rhodesia. Was I blind?
"I did see a lot of protection of blacks by the white district commissioners. They were protective mother hens over their black charges," the soldier said. "I didn't see starvation or slums. I know that the blacks in Rhodesia couldn't vote until the 1979 election. Yet I treated my soldiers very fairly and they treated me the same way. I led from the front and they respected that. There was this balance of respect. Surely I am blinded somewhat by the wonderful camaraderie that existed between black and white soldiers. Perhaps the black soldiers were too.
"In the middle of nowhere I would stumble across people so primitive they seemed like Adam. The gap between us was a thousand years. These were a pre-wheel Stone Age people with terrible fear of evil spirits and of the witch-doctor riding from kraal to kraal each night on the back of a hyena. Also they were afraid of a certain tribe just across the river. Obviously, we all know there are good and bad people in every culture on Earth and better technology doesn't make one a better person. I don't mean to be critical.
Victoria Falls (Photo: Anthony LoBaido) |
"We offered things like 'universal jurisprudence,' 'freedom from starvation,' 'protection from the hostile tribe,' 'freedom from contagious disease, 'curing of ancient diseases,' 'straight roads instead of crooked paths,' contour plowing, fertilizer and cattle dipping against tsetse fly and standardized education. But, of course, that made the ethno-Europeans out to be the 'bad guy' for some odd reason. Clearly there are those who enjoy the lack of progress in Africa. Africa is easier to control when it is weak, backward, corrupt and divided."
Concerning Rhodesia's betrayal by the West, Smith said, "In his UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) Speech of 1965, Ian Smith stated that he didn't believe Mugabe and his ilk were up to governing the nation. Looking back over 40 years later, was he wrong?"
Indeed, the UDI saw Rhodesia pull away from the mother crown. Rather than negotiate with Mugabe's terrorists, Rhodesian leader Ian Smith, a fighter pilot who was shot down over Italy during World War II while fighting for the allies, stood up to Maoism, Marxism and communism while the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world, wounded from Vietnam and menaced by the old Soviet Union, sat idly by.
In his meeting with Henry Kissinger, Ian Smith asked about the concepts of loyalty, honor and Western civilization.
Kissinger, while polite, firmly told Smith, "I am afraid those things have no place in the modern world."
"White regimes would not survive in southern Africa," the former U.S. secretary of state said.
The new world order and seeds of the African Union were being firmly planted by the globalists at the Council on Foreign Relations and Britain's Royal Institute for International Affairs.
South Africa, which long has fought for Rhodesia, cut off aid, hoping apartheid would be spared by the West for doing so. The sellout was on. Many Rhodesians, including elite soldiers such as Willem Ratte, Bert Sachse and Luther Eeben Barlow, who would become the backbone of South Africa's elite special forces in the war against Cuba and the USSR in Angola, fled to South Africa. (Barlow went on to found Executive Outcomes, the world's foremost mercenary outfit in the 1990s.)
Says J. Columbus Smith, "We were a thorn in Margaret Thatcher's side. Rhodesia was betrayed before Ronald Reagan became president, so it wasn't his fault. Under Jimmy Carter, the Yanks blackmailed Iran to cut off oil to South Africa. All South Africa had to do to get the oil back was to stop the fuel transport trucks from traveling north across Beitbridge into Rhodesia. Rhodesia's purpose, ultimately, was to buy a little more time for South Africa.
Smith pointed out that in the U.S., Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador, delivered Carter the black vote that helped to put the Georgia governor in the White House. After that, he said,Young could have anything he wanted.
"One of the things Young wanted was Mugabe at the helm in Zimbabwe," Smith said.
"Carter bullied the world into ignoring Zimbabwe-Rhodesia's first majority rule election in April of 1979 and pushed that same world to endorse a second election a year later in which Maoist-Marxist Mugabe was bullied into running," Smith continued.
"Since when do Marxists volunteer to stand elections?" he asked. Mugabe boycotted our first election (in which I voted) and infamously said 'I'll take (this country) through the barrel of a gun.' The guns of course, were all communist bloc weaponry, identical to that seen in today's Iraq and Afghanistan. Mugabe 'won' the second election amid reports of voter murder and intimidation. That was 27 years ago, and Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party have curiously 'won' all elections since. 'One party rule' was always Mugabe's stated goal."
Smith noted that in 1977, Winston Churchill III said, "The West is holding Rhodesia down while the Soviet Union cuts her throat."
Added Smith; "I have written to President Carter twice asking his to use his ex-president and Nobel laureate pulpits to condemn his old protégé publicly. Thus far he has not.
"Only a few caught the irony of the moment when President Carter picked up his 'Peace Prize' in Oslo in 2002 when farm seizures and killing were at their highest in Zimbabwe. Carter – a just-minted peace prize winner – didn't mention Zimbabwe in his acceptance speech. What a surprise!"
Such was J. Columbus' fame as a soldier in Rhodesia that he was quoted in the New York Times Sept, 2, 1979.
An article on that date stated: "The way I see it, this is the only real experiment in democracy on the African continent and the way the rest of the word demurs brings tears of rage and frustration to my eyes. … [T]o help this country go to majority rule was one of the big thrills of my lifetime."
Asked what his family thought of his experiences, Smith, who eventually became a policeman, told WND, "My family considers me an oddball for having anything to do with Vietnam or Rhodesia. They hate me for both. I am suspect. No one has shown the slightest interest in the adventure of it all. But that's what drew me to Rhodesia – adventure. It was the best three years of my life. For me back then, Rhodesia was simply Shangri-la. It was the first day of creation every day."
A nation that can work
Clearly Zimbabwe can work. There should be an agricultural bounty, beyond tobacco. There's also coal, chromium ore, gold, nickel, copper, iron ore, vanadium, lithium, tin and platinum ready to be mined. The 2002 census claimed there were a little over 11 million people living in Zimbabwe. Due to AIDS and emigration, that figure will need to be reassessed.
Crunching the numbers on Zimbabwe in terms of human health is depressing at best. Infant morality stands at just under 63 deaths per 1,000 births. Women in Zimbabwe are expected to live to be about 35 years of age, men to almost 38, according to the CIA World Fact Book. Over 25 percent of the population is HIV/AIDS positive, which approaches the rate of neighboring Botswana, an otherwise thriving country with 54,000 elephants at the Chobe Reserve, abundant diamonds, natural plants that can be used as diet suppressants and the British Army desert warfare training center.
Tracey Anne Peach is another ex "Rhodie." A mixed race woman of black, white and Greek blood now living in the U.K., and married with a little girl of her own, she recently reflected on her old life in "Zim."
"I left Rhodesia-Zimbabwe in 2000," she told WND. "We could see the economic situation getting worse. Things slowly started getting more and more expensive. The Zimbabwean dollar was devaluing at a very quick rate. Luckily, our family home was paid off, so it was just bills. It was becoming a struggle to survive. Just after I left, the petrol (lines) started."
As for race relations in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, Peach said, "They were good. Then and now. Things were good. The different races were getting on quite well. Most Zimbabweans are warm, caring, respectful people.
"What Mugabe did to the white farmers was despicable," she said. "Innocent people suffered for nothing. People lost their lives, their homes and families. What amazes me is how other countries did nothing."
Peach turned melancholy when asked if she misses Africa.
"Yes, it's in my blood. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think of Zimbabwe," she said. "We were in paradise – beautiful climate, big houses, maids, gardeners. What more could you ask for?"
The future of Rhodesia
As for the future, Mugabe is 83. It is rumored he has throat cancer. He is shunned by all on planet Earth, save for allies such as Chavez, Kim Jong Il and the Chinese Politburo. Zimbabwe's constitution will allow Mugabe to stay in power until he is 90. Mugabe continues to practice yoga and vacillates between his Spartan upbringing and new-found tastes for the good life. He has been known to use the state airline to assist first lady Grace Marufu on her shopping jaunts. He showed up at Thabo Mbeki's last inauguration and was greeted as though he were a rock star.
Strangely, the American media cheered on the farm debacle. In fact, the farm invasions were lionized by the late Peter Jennings of ABC News, who made the murders and rapists killing the ethno-European farmers out to be the heroes. Over 400,000 agricultural jobs have been lost as the economy collapses.
Tobacco had accounted for 30 percent of exports, with gold second at 11 percent. But now heroin, mandrax, methamphetamines and other drugs are emerging in a narco-economy not unlike the dynamic seen in Burma. Infrastructure is decaying. The military has turned its back on all acceptable standards of humanity and soldiering. Only 100,000 Zimbabweans use the Internet. Those who write the truth about what's going on in the country and use the Internet to reach the outside world are often hounded by the government.
Loyal Gould, who built the journalism schools at Baylor and Wichita State universities, is the only English-speaking journalist in the world to have covered the Auschwitz trials from start to finish. Gould was Richard Nixon's interpreter during the infamous trip to East Berlin. He also served as a journalist with Jennings in Vietnam.
"They called him 'Pretty Peter' because he was handsome and others were jealous," Gould, a devout Quaker, told this writer.
"Once people have passed away, it is improper, of course, to attack them when they are no longer around to speak for themselves. Regardless, Mugabe is a wretch, but there doesn't seem much the rest of the world is willing to do about him except hope that with time he will either die or fade away."
Today, Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party terrorizes the opposition Movement for Democratic Change with impunity. There are no free elections. The currency has been debased. The tobacco crop – long a cash cow – has been decimated. Rare rhino are poached while their horns – believed by certain Asian nations to contain magical powers – are sold overseas at a great price. Basic services are all but unattainable. Shelves are empty. The very best Zimbabweans have fled for the U.K. and beyond. ANC leader Thabo Mbeki cannot challenge Mugabe, because of the African "Big Man" rule, which respects longevity.
Sachse, who served 34 years on Rhodesia's and South Africa's special forces, led Sandline's successful mercenary war against Charles Taylor and the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone in the mid-1990s. He told The New American, "You see the order here in Cape Town? This is what we fought for. For civilization. Without us Cape Town would be just like the rest of Africa … a bloody mess."
Mugabe has also sent his own gang of mercenaries to gain a stake in the troubled Congo's mineral resources. Formerly known as Zaire, over 2.4 million have perished since 1994 in the biggest conflict since World War II.
Smith lamented, "Make no mistake, Africa can theoretically work. It can be saved from its own wicked leaders and transnational colonization if and only if Africa's leaders learn the meaning of the world 'empathy.' But to be perfect honest, I couldn't go back there now … to see what's happened to Rhodesia, it's simply too sad. The MDC is little more than Swiss cheese since it's riddled with CIO [Mugabe's version of the CIA] operatives and has been compromised as a resistance and opposition movement.
"For now I'm content to watch Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Blood Diamond.' People ask me about the spirit of the Rhodesian soldier – well, that's what Leo brought to the screen. Humbly, I can say I was the real thing."
What can the U.S. do? Asset freezes and travel bans on Zimbabwe's top 200 officials have had little effect on the ruling elite. The International Crisis Group has asked for the Southern African Development Community group of nations, the SADC, to get Mugabe to voluntarily step down. But the SADC is divided, as some of its members are still aligned with the old school ways of the USSR and Mainland China.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has noted "outposts of tyranny" from Burma to Venezuela to North Korea to Zimbabwe to Iran. (Outposts must have main garrison homes, and those homes are Russia and China.) President Bush signed an executive order against Zimbabwe.
For his part, Mugabe, speaking of whites has gone on record saying, "Yes, some of them are decent people." Yet Willem Ratte noted, "This is the real face of Africa beyond the smiling goody-goody face of Nelson Mandela. Brutal, corrupt, racist and totally efficient at wiping out all opposition."
Yet Mugabe has long had his "white angels" running interference for him in the U.K. The most notable of whom is the ethereal Jan Bradenkamp. Mugabe's intelligence service has even gone so far as to take down legendary mercenary Simon Mann in a plot to install a rightist ruler in oil rich Equatorial Guinea. Mann and his group were detained in Zimbabwe, where they had foolishly sought a transit point and weapons.
Luther Eeben Barlow – a character not unlike the role played by DiCaprio in "Blood Diamond" – fled Rhodesia only to deliver Angola to leftist control via his mercenary group Executive Outcomes. Kevin Woods, recently release from barbaric jail conditions in Zimbabwe after a long incarceration, was a South African agent who had penetrated Mugabe's inner circle.
In a page out of "The King of Scotland," it is said Mugabe became infuriated when he learned of Woods' true status. Even Mandela had pleaded for Woods' release.
Massive detention of MDC supporters continues. MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa recently said over 200 MDC members were arrested by Mugabe's forces. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has replaced Ian Smith, the white farmers and the Matabele as the ZANU-PF's boogeyman de jour.
Will the truth about Zimbabwe become fully known and acted upon by all decent people in Africa, the West and the rest of the world?
As noted by actress Nicole Kidman in the film "The Interpreter," which many believed to have been made as a psycho-social operation against Mugabe, "Even the faintest whisper can be heard above the sound of armies when it speaks the truth."