The American Enterprise online
A Tyrant Ignored
By Blake
Hurst
Bob Ballantyne was a Caucasian tobacco farmer in Zimbabwe. Now
there's a
politically incorrect trifecta. A white male in postcolonial
Africa growing
a crop responsible for causing cancer is not the easiest
character to
generate sympathy for on the world stage.
Yet
Ballantyne's story deserves to be heard. For he, like thousands of other
farmers in Zimbabwe, has lost his home, his livelihood, his land, and his
connection to loyal African employees, friends, and neighbors, all thanks to
the thuggish "farm invasions" orchestrated by president Robert Mugabe in the
increasingly tortured country of Zimbabwe. Ballantyne (not his real
name--all the farmers quoted here have requested for their own safety that I
not use their names) is just one emblematic victim of political abuses that
are endangering millions of lives.
Before the "land reform"
that sparked forcible seizures of farmland from
longtime owners, Zimbabwe
was the breadbasket of Africa, exporting surpluses
of wheat, corn, and
soybeans, plus fully 25 percent of the world's supply of
flue-cured tobacco,
and 8 percent of Europe's horticultural imports. Today
the country is
suffering a serious famine. According to recent reports,
nearly half of the
country's 13 million people will need emergency food aid
to avoid starvation
this year.
The Zimbabwean government denies that a food shortage
exists, and blames
reports of famine on a U.S.-inspired plot to "vilify land
reform." According
to Mugabe, last year's bumper crop is being hoarded by
white farmers. This
is exceedingly difficult to believe, since most of
Zimbabwe's white farmers
are now plying their trade in Zambia, or Australia,
or Canada. There are
only around 300 white commercial farmers left in a
country that once had
5,000. These 5,000 used to employ a million Zimbabwean
farm workers, who in
turn supported another million or so family
members.
The suffering of the millions of blacks who used to work
on white-owned
farms dwarfs the misfortune visited on their employers. Most
farm workers
descend from Africans who immigrated to Zimbabwe specifically
to work on
these farms. They have no passports and aren't members of the
indigenous
tribes--a combination which now ensures a sort of stateless
misery.
As a result of Mugabe's land confiscations, an estimated
70 percent of
Zimbabwe's economically productive adults have left the
country. Millions of
refugees now crowd neighboring countries. And food is
being used as a
political weapon. Last November, AEI fellow Roger Bate
witnessed food aid
being withheld from areas of Zimbabwe where opposition to
Mugabe is
concentrated. When the food shortage is coupled with rampaging
AIDS,
Zimbabwe's demographic statistics are almost beyond belief. According
to
Bate, life expectancy has dropped from 60 to 33 in a decade. Infant
mortality has doubled.
A man-made famine
The
food shortage, blamed on drought when hoarding farmers aren't the
scapegoats, is a direct result of the "land reform" that Mugabe rammed
through after he lost a constitutional referendum on this subject in 2000.
Mugabe unleashed a group of violent "war vets" (many of them teenagers) who
systematically drove whites from their farms. The loss of agricultural
experience and capital has caused production on those farms to
plummet.
Former Zimbabwe farmer Ralph Smith, who now works on a
dairy farm in
Georgia, describes how large groups of urban dwellers were
brought to his
farm shortly after the 1999 harvest, backed by an armed group
he called
"pseudo military." They drove pegs into his land to stake out
claims, and
prevented him from entering his fields. Most of the contingent
soon left,
but sentries were posted to prevent him from resuming farming. He
left for
the U.S. when a neighboring farmer was killed.
Smith
says the invaders used "whatever means were necessary" to force the
farmers
from their land. As recently as two months before this was written,
one
farmer in a similar situation was beaten to death. Smith's voice breaks
as
he describes his family's flight: "I can't describe the feeling when you
get
in your car and leave home for the last time." Smith's family was able
to
escape with a few boxes of pictures and other mementos, but arrived in
the
U.S. penniless, a lifetime of work sacrificed to
heartbreak.
Ballantyne is aware that few people have concern for
the plight of
Zimbabwe's dispossessed farmers. "A large proportion of those
who even know
Zimbabwe exists say we got our just desserts," he says. He has
immigrated to
Australia, where he lives in an area with several hundred
other dispossessed
Zimbabwe farmers.
Ballantyne's mother was
a farmer, and he expanded her farm using equal
portions of borrowed capital
and grit. During the 1980s, as his family grew,
he concentrated on raising
tobacco and greenhouse crops for export. By the
time he was driven out, he
had built a substantial operation employing over
300 people. Nearly a
thousand people lived on his farm.
The farm invasions in his area
began in earnest in early 2000. Initially,
local farmers would rush to the
aid of their besieged neighbors. Then the
invaders made clear that this
would be punished, and the farmers were
relegated to listening to their
neighbor's traumas on the private band
radios owned by each farmer.
Ballantyne relates all this with the sort of
dry understatement that can
only hint at the emotions felt at the time:
isolated in wild areas, without
telephones, listening to their neighbors
fighting for their lives on the
crackle of a private radio.
Then one day Ballantyne's farm was
invaded:
Bill had moved from his farm to a house up the road not
far from me for
safety after being invaded. One Sunday in April 2000 he
contacted me on the
radio to warn that there were two busloads (over 100
people) of chanting
'war vets' headed my way. I was summoned to the main
security gate. By this
time farmers had devised a plan to be
non-confrontational. One had to take
the heat and accept the humiliation of
being abused and pushed around. Wives
and children were also at risk--we
attempted to shelter them from all this,
but standing your ground could
result in them being dragged into this
nightmare.
The
ringleaders were invariably drunk or high on marijuana, standard issue
to
achieve the desired aggressive behavior. I ignored the taunts. My
workforce
was summoned to witness the instructions, to show that I was
powerless. This
group consisted of about a dozen hard-core war vets, with
the balance being
women, children, and older men persuaded to participate.
They were from
high-density suburbs in Harare where poverty and overcrowding
were a
problem.
I was informed that for now I was to continue farming
because the workers
needed employment, but that gradually the interlopers
would take over my
farm. They would spend the next few days pegging out the
farms and I would
have to negotiate with the new owners if I required the
use of these fields.
They departed, and for the next few days there was
frantic activity
involving the placing of branches and sticks (supposed to
be pegs) in areas
meant to represent someone's 'plot'. Head honchos
obviously took prime land
and the emergence of a 'base camp' on the main
road out of the farm signaled
problems. Ramshackle huts sprung up
everywhere, but only the base camp was
occupied permanently, the others went
back to their jobs and families in the
cities. Many used to visit on the
weekends and there were many abusive
threatening meetings with us regarding
the removal of 'pegs' or knocking
down of so-called huts. They recorded my
every move.
My farm workers were forced to attend all night
'pungwes'--drunken
indoctrination sessions where whites and the new
opposition party were run
down, and Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party glorified.
Not attending resulted in
severe beatings, and the workers had a terrible
time while trying to keep up
a full-time job. Many left and productivity
suffered drastically. Those few
who previously had been leaning toward
Mugabe and his party rose to the top
of the pile and became
impossible.
Ballantyne, in his late 40s, spent 20 months under
attack. There were many
close calls. On one occasion he was surrounded by 20
militants, armed with
machetes, who circled him as they poked and prodded
with the sharp blades.
His family lived behind a security fence, kept awake
each night by the
pungwes just outside. In late 2002, he and his family
decided to leave
Zimbabwe.
Where is the international
outrage?
All of the farmers whose stories appear here purchased
their farms under the
present regime, free of any taint of colonialism. Paul
Jones, who now lives
in Canada, tells a typical story. The government
claimed first right of
refusal for all land, so before any plot could change
hands it had to be
offered to Mugabe and his henchmen. If they declined the
land, a
"certificate of no interest" was issued, and the farm could be sold.
Jones
received such a certificate, and according to him the large majority
of land
farmed in modern Zimbabwe was similarly
purchased.
Still, Jones' farm was invaded by a group of war vets.
They arrived in a
blue pickup truck still prominently displaying a sign
informing all that it
had been donated to Zimbabwe by the international
charity World Vision, "to
help in the fight against the HIV virus." Jones is
bitter that
well-intentioned aid has often been misused in this way.
International
organizations have not come to the aid of farmers, nor have
they protested
as productive farmland is commandeered. The main interest the
U.N. has taken
in Zimbabwe recently has been to name the country to a panel
deciding the
agenda for a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights
Commission.
Paul Jones' farm does not currently produce anything,
because land in his
area can't be farmed without irrigation, and all his
pumps and watering
equipment have been stolen. Thievery on a grand scale has
become the major
"economic activity" on many of Zimbabwe's farms these days.
Even Mugabe has
admitted that most of the invaded farms now lie idle, and
are returning to
bush.
Those seizing land from white farmers
are riding a tiger they can't control.
The high-value plots and greenhouses
are generally claimed by party
functionaries, but the new "owners" lack the
expertise or capital to
maintain production. Even the small-scale farmers
who have been given the
use of plots have found it impossible to plant the
commercial crops that
used to thrive. Mugabe prohibits private ownership, so
these tillers are
unable to use the land as collateral, and thus unable to
borrow for
planting.
Agriculture is a long-term proposition.
Like farmers everywhere, the growers
I talked to mentioned the many
improvements they had made to their farms.
They'd invested in erosion
control and irrigation, built greenhouses and
barns. But investments like
those don't get made without security of tenure.
Paul Jones grew passion
fruit for export--a crop that takes years to come to
market. The squatters
on his farm now, with their pegs and pungwes, can't be
sure that the next
political upheaval won't displace them, so they are
unlikely to pay
attention to soil erosion, replace and maintain the existing
infrastructure,
or plant a crop that takes many seasons to mature.
What has been
taken once can easily be taken again. Recent reports from
Zimbabwe state
that with parliamentary speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa now
engaged in a power
struggle within the ruling ZANU-PF party, his followers'
farms are being
repossessed. Other contestants in the struggle to succeed
the octogenarian
Mugabe likewise find themselves treated in a manner
strikingly similar to
how they treated the farmers described here.
The bill for
bullying
Thousands of Zimbabweans once productively employed on
farms are now in
camps, dependent upon food aid to survive. The insanity
gripping Mugabe's
country will cut most deeply on poorer citizens. The
previously successful
farmers, though often heartbroken and in a few cases
dead, are mostly
rebounding. John Courtney, who used to farm in Zimbabwe,
has immigrated to
Zambia, where he is pioneering another farm, clearing
virgin bush. Many
other expatriates have joined him, and similar outposts
exist in Nigeria and
Mozambique.
Zimbabwe's elections this
spring have been widely derided as illegitimate.
Although the election was
endorsed by South Africa, the leading power in the
region, abuses,
intimidation and outright fraud were widespread. There seems
to be no chance
for democracy and the rule of law in this country until the
passing of
Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF gang. The U.S. Congress has
instituted
sanctions targeted on the leaders of the regime. Personal assets
of the top
regime members have been frozen, and their travel to the U.S.
prohibited.
Mugabe has shown little response to international
pressure, but one of the
farmers I interviewed was spared a beating by
threatening to tell his story
to CNN. Even Africa is afraid of 24-hour cable
news. Annabel Hughes, once a
farmer in Zimbabwe and now an activist for
reform, urges the Bush
Administration to "apply its Jeffersonian dream of
exporting liberty and
freedom to the oppressed and helpless nation of
Zimbabwe."
Democracy doesn't solve all problems, but no democracy
has ever undergone
famine like Zimbabwe's. Secure property rights are easy
for those of us in
the West to take for granted, but without them no
country's food supply is
safe (never mind the economy). If Zimbabwe had laws
that protected
ownership, and democratically accountable leaders, Zimbabwe
would not be a
country without farmers or food.
Until those
central elements of decency and prosperity exist, America should
help
shelter political refugees from this benighted place. Because of the
complexity and expense of our immigration system, hardly any of Zimbabwe's
dispossessed farmers have immigrated to America. Paul Jones' son had
preceded him to Canada and explained to Canadian authorities his father's
situation. The Canadians told him to bring his parent to Canada and worry
about the paperwork later. We should do no less.
Zim Online
Zimbabwe to pay white farmers, lure others back.
Tue 03 May
2005
HARARE - The Zimbabwe government has secretly approached
former owners
of Kondozi farm to return and resuscitate the giant
export-earning
horticultural concern in what insiders said was part of a
wider plan to
recall expelled white farmers to revive the country's
collapsed agricultural
sector.
Impeccable sources said under
the plan the Ministry of Agriculture
will in coming months approach selected
farmers, especially those with
expertise in horticulture, tobacco and dairy
production to ask them to
return to Zimbabwe to farm.
The
farmers will be compensated for property and equipment destroyed
during the
government's chaotic and often violent land reform exercise and
not for loss
of revenue. But the farmers will receive immense support and
preferential
treatment from the state to reestablish themselves on the land,
according to
the sources.
As well as luring white farmers back
to the land the government shall
also select another group of farmers whom
it will compensate at market value
both for loss of land and equipment
during the farm seizures.
The sources said the two-pronged strategy
was meant to portray the
government as committed to reviving the mainstay
agriculture sector as well
as to paying fair compensation to white farmers
in a bid to pave way for
reengagement with the international
community.
"Kondozi is only the beginning," said a senior
Agricultural Ministry
official, who did not want to be named. He added: "we
will target two groups
of farmers, the first will be lured back to resume
farming while the second
will be paid real market level compensation to
demonstrate to all that the
government is willing to compensate white
farmers, resources permitting."
Agriculture Minister Joseph Made
refused to discuss the matter when
contacted only saying "I do not know
about that," before slamming the phone
down. Neither Moyo nor the De Klerks
could be reached for comment on the
matter.
But sources said
the government's overtures had so far yielded little
with for example the
former owners of Kondozi refusing to return to Zimbabwe
because they have
already established a similar venture in neighbouring
Zambia.
Dozens of white farmers chased from Zimbabwe settled in Zambia,
Malawi,
Mozambique, Tanzania, with some as far afield as Australia and
Nigeria and
are unlikely to easily give up their new homes to return to
Zimbabwe.
Agriculture has plummeted since the farm seizure with
production of
tobacco, the country's biggest single foreign currency earner,
falling from
more than 200 million kg in the 1999/2000 season to a merger 60
million kg
this year.
Food production fell by more than 60
percent with Zimbabwe, which once
exported food surplus to neighboring
countries, now surviving on handouts
from international food agencies. About
four million or a quarter of the
country's 12 million people could starve
this year unless donor groups chip
in with food aid. ZimOnline.
Zim Online
International food security group calls on Zimbabwe to open
up
Tues 3 May 2005
JOHANNESBURG - An international hunger monitoring
organisation has called
on the Zimbabwe government to open up on food
shortages and allow food
relief agencies to carry out an objective
assessment of hunger in the
country.
In its latest report on
Zimbabwe the United States-based Famine Early
Warning Systems Network
(FEWSNET) said there were strong indications that
the 2004/2005 harvest will
not be sufficient to carry the southern African
nation through to the next
harvest in 2006.
But the FEWSNET bemoaned the secrecy shrouding
Zimbabwe's food
situation and called on Harare to open up and seek
assistance from
international food relief agencies in carrying out a survey
of the country's
food aid needs.
The group's report released
this week reads in part: "Consensus is
building around the view that food
production in the 2004/05 farming season
would be poor and not sufficient
enough to satisfy the consumption needs for
the April 2005-March 2006
period. Food access will once again become very
difficult for poor
families."
FEWSNET also lamented inefficiency at the government's
Grain Marketing
Board (GMB), tasked with importing food supplements for
worsening hunger in
Zimbabwe.
"GMB inefficiency exacerbates the
food availability situation.
Families survive on borrowing to feed
themselves, reducing the number and
size of meals and skipping some,"
FEWSNET said.
After denying since last that Zimbabwe was a facing
severe food
shortages President Robert Mugabe only admitted a few weeks
before the March
31 parliamentary election that the country was a serious
food crisis.
But Mugabe, who last August told international food
agencies to take
their help elsewhere because Zimbabwe did not need their
food, insisted he
would not go begging for food saying his hard
cash-strapped government had
enough to ensure no one starved.
The Zimbabwean leader has since tasked his state intelligence minister
Didymus Mutasa to oversee food imports and distribution in a move the main
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party said will lead to more
secrecy in the handling of food aid and denial of food to its supporters.
The government denies opposition supporters will be denied
food.
The MDC last week also called on the government to swallow
its pride
and ask for help from international food agencies to avert
starvation in the
country.
Critics say poor rains aside
Mugabe's chaotic and often violent land
reforms are to blame for causing
hunger in once food exporting Zimbabwe.
ZimOnline.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Police eject farm workers
Clemence
Manyukwe
issue date :2005-May-03
JURU police on Sunday allegedly
ejected some families from their homes at
Chabwino Farm in the Enterprise
area of Goromonzi, saying they wanted to
occupy the houses built for the
former farm workers by their former boss,
Peter Howson.
At least five
families of former farm foremen and drivers had by yesterday
been ordered
out of their electrified brick-under-iron-zinc houses, in an
operation
allegedly led by the officer-in-charge of Juru police, an
Inspector
Masamba.
Howson built brick-under-zinc houses for his foremen and drivers,
while
general labourers stayed in thatched huts in a nearby compound.
A
police base has since been established in one of the rooms where a former
"top employee" was forced out on Sunday.
One of the officers manning the
station, a Constable Mazarura, referred all
questions to the Juru police
officer-in-charge, who, however, could not be
contacted over the phone later
during the day.
"You must talk to officer-in-charge
Masamba at Juru. He
was here yesterday
giving instructions during the operation," he said, before
taking down the
name of one of our reporters and the registration number of
our motor
vehicle.
Police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Wayne
Bvudzijena yesterday
expressed doubt the people who ejected the former farm
workers were law
enforcement agents.
The former farm workers also said
the officers had refused to produce the
eviction papers as requested, or
their official identity particulars.
Goromonzi Member of Parliament and
Minister of Finance Herbert Murerwa
yesterday acknowledged receiving reports
about the ejections, which he said
were unjustified.
The minister said he
had tried to block the ejections well before the
parliamentary polls but his
efforts were in vain.
"The problem came out of the land reform programme.
There are more people
than houses. We tried to stop the evictions. We did
everything possible,"
said Murerwa.
He added that the Goromonzi Lands
Committee would meet tomorrow to try and
find a lasting solution to the
former farm labourers' plight.
"I do not like the manner in which it is being
done, it's not justified,"
the minister added.
Mashonaland East governor
Ray Kaukonde said his office had not yet been
notified of the
incident.
Bvudzijena challenged The Daily Mirror to prove that the people who
carried
out the ejection were police officers.
"How do you know that they
are members of the police force? We stay in
police camps, we do not acquire
farms. Government buys houses for us, and
the Police Commissioner allocates
them to force members," Bvudzijena said.
When The Daily Mirror visited the
farm yesterday, the affected people said
police had so far ejected five
families, amid concerns that more former farm
labourers in the general
workers' compound would also be forced out in due
course.
They also
alleged that a number of people had been assaulted during the
operation.
One of the affected former farm workers, Agnes Nyamukarakara
(24) - a
married woman with one child and was born at the farm where she
shared the
house with five relatives - said the police had forcibly removed
her from
the house.
She said Howson had built the house for her husband,
who was a driver at the
farm before it was taken away from him at the height
of farm occupations in
2001.
The family's belongings were thrown out of
the house, and the police
allegedly warned them against re-occupying the
house.
The police, together with members of the neighbourhood watch, were
driving
in a police vehicle, whose registration number was given.
"People
were beaten up. A grown up man screamed like a small boy. He was
beaten up
while in handcuffs," Nyamukarakara said.
Another victim, Anderson Willard
(18), whose
yard was a scene of utter desolation, said they were
evicted
when his ailing elder brother, who was
allocated the house, was in Chinhoyi
seeking medication.
"The house was given to my brother by the white man as
part of his pension.
We were beaten up by the police and my brother was
injured," charged
Willard.
Another former farm worker, Edward Bhakiri
(45), who escaped Sunday's
ejections, said he was at a dead end as the
police had promised to come back
and "deal" with him.
"I have worked here
for 32 years and have nowhere else to go. I live with 15
others - children,
grandchildren - where will sI take them?"
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Agric experts call for objective assessment of
crop production
The Daily Mirror Reporter
issue date
:2005-May-03
AGRICULTURAL experts have called for an "objective"
assessment of crop
production in the country, as preliminary forecasts point
to yet another
year of widespread food shortages.
Famine Early Warning
Systems Network (FEWS NET) in its latest food security
update, said it was
consensual that food production in Zimbabwe's 2004/05
agricultural season
would be poor, and not nearly enough to satisfy the
needs of the country in
the next consumption year.
"However, objective and transparent, assessments
need to be undertaken in
order to determine the magnitude and geographic
spread of the production
shortfall," the organisation said.
Zimbabwe had
since turned to Zambia, Uganda and Tanzania for grain imports
as the Grain
Marketing Board (GMB) sought to restock dwindling maize and
wheat
holdings.
Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Nicholas
Goche,
confirmed that over the past month about 150 000 metric tonnes of
grain had
been received from South Africa, the major supplier.
Since last
year Zimbabwe has been involved in a war of figures with
international donor
agencies on the country's projected harvest for 2004/05.
The main growing
season usually runs from October to March.Only last week,
the GMB reported
to the National Taskforce on Food Security that, rather
than government's
harvest estimate of 2.4 million metric tonnes, only
600,000 metric tonnes of
grain had been delivered to its silos after the
2004/05 harvest.
The
country needs 1,8 million metric tonnes of grain annually to meet
domestic
consumption requirements.
FEWS NET warned in March 2005 that up to 4.5
million people were in need of
immediate food aid, compared to government
estimates that 1.5 million would
require some kind of assistance.
The
early warning system stressed that assessments were critical to
establish
"the 2004/05 food crop production prospects, current levels of
national food
stocks, the government's import capacity and, ultimately, the
national
2005/06 consumption year food deficit".
"Such assessments will help the
government of Zimbabwe to determine whether
they will need outside
assistance to close the food gap, and how much
assistance may be required,"
FEWS NET pointed out.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Upgrading of Joshua Nkomo Airport
delayed
Pamenus Tuso
issue date :2005-May-03
THE upgrading and
refurbishing of Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International
Airport, initially
scheduled to take 18 months, has been delayed due to a
shortage of building
material.
According to impeccable sources at JMN Airport, the renovations of
the
terminal building and airfield had been delayed by the acute lack of
construction materials .
Although the costs of improvements to the
structure could not be established
immediately, they are expected to run
into billions considering inflation
and the fact that some of the material
has to be imported.
The scarcity of building material has put the project on
crawl.
"We are way behind schedule," said one of the constructors on
site.
The project, started in March 2002, will also include the development
of an
airport city. The refurbishments, which are in four categories,
include
foundation filling, extension works and the refurbishment of the
existing
terminal.
When completed, the airport currently with a handling
capacity of 180
passengers, will handle more traffic and
passengers.
According to recommended international standards, the current
size renders
it below the stipulated standards.
International norms bar
the mixing of domestic and international passengers,
as this pose a very
serious security threat.
The then Bulawayo Airport was renamed the JMN
Airport in 2000 after the late
veteran nationalist Vice-President Joshua
Nkomo who died in 1999. Reached
for comment, the airport manager referred
The Daily Mirror to the Civil
Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe acting chief
executive Ezra Mazambara whose
mobile number was not reachable.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Air Zim leases jet to Ghana
Business
Reporter
issue date :2005-May-03
GOVERNMENT last week defended its
decision to instruct Air Zimbabwe to lease
one of its Boeing 767s to fellow
African airline, Ghana Airways, although
the company has been battling to
service some of the key routes in the
region.
The routes include the
Mozambican city of Beira and the South African resort
city of Cape
Town.
Transport and Communications Secretary Karikoga Kaseke on Wednesday
last
week blocked attempts by Air Zimbabwe managing director Tendai Mahachi
to
explain to journalists the logic behind the deal with the West African
airline.
He preferred that Transport Minister Chris Mushohwe take care of
the press,
but the minister went on to issue a more confusing
response.
"You will not comment," Kaseke barked, as Mahachi tried to stress a
point,
signalling the Transport and Communications Minister to make the
clarification.
The minister then said; "We are not aware of the deal. We
only heard about
it in the press but if it is a system where an airline asks
another airline
to use its planes during those days when they are not in
use, that is
happening everyday and it's a normal practice.
"The life of
an aircraft is in the air and it should be utilised to maximum
capacity so
that it generates revenue for the company," Mushohwe told
reporters.
Sources at Air Zimbabwe recently told The Business Mirror that
the lease
agreement had been precipitated by an upsurge in tourist arrivals
in the
West African country that had rendered its fleet complement severely
inadequate.
Part of the deal involved Air Zimbabwe making available the
Boeing 767, the
crew, including flight attendants, flight engineers and
pilots to Ghana.
Mushohwe could not say whether the deal generated more
revenue than allowing
Air Zimbabwe to fly the aircraft.
Sources, however,
said the airline has been struggling to maintain its small
fleet and could
be taking advantage of the deal to reduce its burden.
However, government has
undertaken to revive the fortunes of the company
through constant capital
injections, the last being the $1.1 trillion
extended by the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe (RBZ) through the Productive Sector
Facility (PSF).
Another
US$22 million was also made available for the acquisition of two MA
60
aircraft from China to bolster the fleet and expand its coverage to most
of
the destinations that the company had aborted.
Meanwhile, the two planes from
China arrived in the country on Sunday and
are expected to
be
commissioned tomorrow, with a maiden flight to the resort town of
Victoria
Falls.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Workers hard hit by mine closures
The Daily
Mirror Reporter
issue date :2005-May-03
THE sudden closure of mines in
the country five years ago is still having a
negative impact on the
livelihoods of thousands of former employees.
Forty-four-year-old Sara Muwati
was among the 1 300 workers who lost their
jobs when the Mhangura copper
mine in Mashonaland West province shut down in
2000.
"Ever since we were
retrenched, after the mine closed, life has been
miserable for me and my
family - not to mention many other people who were
employed by Mhangura,"
she said.
A mother of five, Muwati worked as a clerk at the mine offices in
the small
town of Mhangura, some 150 km northwest of the capital, for 15
years.
Her husband, Tom, had been an underground miner since 1979. When the
operation shut its doors, they
received retrenchment packages totalling
$82 000.
The Muwatis used the money to rent a bottle store in the city
centre, but
poor patronage forced them to abandon the venture, setting off a
string of
financial problems.
The year 2000 was a difficult one for
Zimbabwe's mining sector - a second
straight year of negative
economic
growth, high unemployment, a 60 percent inflation rate and a
crippling
shortage of fuels and spare parts had started to damage the
operations and
viability of the manufacturing and mining sectors
severely.
All gold had to be sold to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, with
payment in
local currency at a fixed rate, which was lower than the rate at
which
companies could buy foreign exchange.
Three major mines and several
small operations, including the Connemara,
Eureka and Venice mines, closed
down..
Worker unions said the loss
of the mines had been a disaster
for
former employees and their families.
"The sudden and swift closure of mines
that took place in the late 1990s,
particularly from 2000, present
well-documented cases of suffering and
misery for the majority of those who
were employed in the mining industry,"
said Collin Gwiyo, the Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade
Unions (ZCTU) deputy secretary-general.
ZCTU attributed
the spate of closures mainly to the reaction of donors and
investors to the
government's controversial fast-track programme of violent
farm seizures in
2000.
"The land redistribution programme, which entailed the forced removal
of
white farmers from their properties, gave rise to the perception that the
country is a risky, unfriendly destination for investors," said
Gwiyo.
Research carried out in July 2004 by the Labour and Economic
Development
Research Institute of Zimbabwe, in conjunction with the
Friedrich Ebert
Stiftung, a German-based foundation, revealed that the
mining sector had
also been dealt a body blow by declining global mineral
prices.
"The fluctuating international commodity prices have hit the (mining)
sector
hard, resulting in erratic variations in production and foreign
currency
earnings," the report noted.
It also pointed out that domestic
economic trends had contributed to the
slump in mining activities.
"The
massive depreciation of the
local currency in the 1990s resulted in soaring
input costs, thereby
undermining the viability of most mineral producers,"
the report observed.
While the capital-intensive mining industry provided six
percent of total
employment in 1980, data from the Central Statistical
Office showed that
this figure had fallen to a paltry 0,8 percent by
2002.
Although Muwati was among the fortunate few who were given houses as
part of
their retrenchment packages, everyday life remains an uphill
battle.
When their liquor business collapsed, she and her husband decided to
look
for employment elsewhere.
"Tom moved from one mine to another doing
piece jobs [contract labour]. His
visits back to Mhangura became less and
less frequent and, after a year, he
stopped coming home. I then heard that
he had taken another wife," said
Muwati.
Confronted with the task of
fending
for the children alone, she sold second-hand clothes from a stall set
up
outside her home.
However, clients were few and far between, because
the other town residents
had been equally adversely affected by the closure
of the mine.
Then she tried smuggling foreign currency from Mozambique to
Zimbabwe and
selling it on the parallel market.
Two of her sons took to
illegal gold panning and one of them was maimed in a
brawl stemming from a
quarrel over the ownership of a gold claim at an
abandoned mine, while her
daughter took to prostitution in the tourist town
of Kariba.
A visit to
Mhangura revealed that the town is now left only with mounds of
slag from
the copper operation.
The neglected water and sewerage
systems suffer
constant breakdowns, causing a health hazard to the
residents.
"The mine
used to subsidise the education of our children, and when it
closed there
were massive dropouts. There have been many deaths because the
mine hospital
was closed and the nurses were also retrenched," said Muwati.
Two leading
banks, Standard Chartered and Barclays, moved out when the mine
shut down
and the few remaining shops took advantage of reduced competition
to hike
their prices.
Similarly, former employees of the Venice gold mine, about 50
km northwest
of Kadoma in Mashonaland West, complained of the hardships they
had endured
since the mine closed.
"Most of the people here
are
unemployed and survive by doing odd jobs and selling second-hand clothes.
But most of the youths have been kept going by
gold panning in the
disused shafts," said Goodman Marufu, a shop assistant
in the small business
centre of Venice
town.
Over the past three years, Marufu
said, former
employees of Venice who could not make ends meet had trekked
back to their
rural homes. -Mirror Reporter and IRIN
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
Fuel woes persist
The Daily Mirror
Reporter
issue date :2005-May-03
FUEL woes persisted in Harare over
the weekend. Most service stations
visited by The Daily Mirror yesterday
said they had been dry for the past
five days while service stations on the
capital's periphery reportedly made
a killing selling fuel at a black market
rate of $12 000 a litre.
The pump price for diesel and petrol is $3 600 and
$3 650 a litre.
Said one British Petroleum (BP) petrol attendant along Samora
Machael
Avenue: "We last received fuel on Friday last week and we do not
know when
it would be delivered again. We are just seated here."
The
Shell gas station along Leopold Takawira was also without fuel. A "No
Fuel"
sing in bold told the whole story to desperate motorists.
The story was
similar at one of the Mobil service stations along Kwame
Nkrumah Avenue.
Attendants said fuel was last delivered there last Thursday,
but added they
were expecting delivery tomorrow morning.
At the Total garage, Samora Machel
Avenue, fuel ran out on Sunday morning
and it could not be ascertained when
the next delivery would be.
"It ran out yesterday morning (Sunday), we do not
know when it will be
delivered," a worker at the service station
said.
Only Wedzera service stations dotted around the capital were reportedly
selling the essential but currently scarce commodity. Fuel queues in places
like Msasa and Waterfalls were most pronounced at Wedzera's.
Commuter
omnibus crews charged Comoil had fuel but was giving preference to
established customers.
The resurfacing of fuel shortages, reminiscent of
the 2003 scenario, has
resulted in unscrupulous transport operators
unilaterally hiking fares by 50
percent.
It now costs $3 000 from city to
Glen View and Budiriro, up from $2000.
The fuel headaches, compounded by
shortages of basic commodities, has
resulted in panic and bulk buying by
consumers.
The fuel crisis has also forced Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono
to allay
fears the economy was getting back on its knees again, saying the
fuel
situation would normalise soon. He was quoted in the State media as
saying
the current shortage was because the country's resources were "a bit
overstretched" during the March 31 polls.
National fuel procurer,
National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (Noczim) could not
be reached for
comment.
Modern Tribalist
Monday, May 02, 2005
Robert Mugabe's version of the
Atkins diet
Basildon Peta:
Fresh from his disputed victory
in Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections,
President Robert Mugabe has turned
his sights on the country's wildlife
reserves in a bid to feed thousands of
malnourished villagers.
Zimbabwe's national parks have been ordered to
work with rural district
councils to begin the wholesale slaughter of big
game. National park rangers
said they had already shot 10 elephants in the
past week. The meat was
barbecued at festivities to mark 25 years of
independence. Four of the
animals were reportedly shot in view of tourists
near Lake Kariba, the
largest man-made lake in Africa and a major wildlife
haven.
Five years after ordering white-owned farms to be confiscated,
the Mugabe
regime has turned a country once known as the breadbasket of
Africa into a
famished land. An estimated 4 million rural poor suffer from
food shortages.
The wildlife directive is a major blow to efforts by
conservationists to
rehabilitate a wildlife sector devastated by Mr Mugabe's
confiscation
policy. The chaotic farm invasions saw party militants storming
into
conservation areas - private and state-owned - to slaughter animals.
Unscrupulous South African hunters also joined in the looting, paying hefty
kickbacks to politicians to go into conservation areas and shoot lions,
leopards and cheetahs for trophies.
There had been high hopes among
conservationists that Zimbabwe's wildlife
sector could be restored to its
former glory. Certain species of wildlife in
southern Zimbabwe are still
abundant, and a trans-frontier park, allowing
animals from Mozambique and
the Kruger Park in South Africa to move freely
in and out of Zimbabwe's
Gonarezhou National Park (home of the slaughtered
elephants), had been set
up.
Those conservationists have criticised the new measures and have
been
scathing about the killings of the elephants for the independence
celebrations. A giraffe was also killed to feed peasants in the Binga area
during the festivities, but the meat disappeared. It is believed that police
and army officials appropriated the meat for themselves and it never reached
the intended beneficiaries.
Farmers have relied on their own
livestock in the past three years of
famine, induced by the land seizures.
Their plight has worsened since the
government stopped international donors
from distributing food aid in a move
by Mr Mugabe to take charge of the
process himself and punish those who did
not support him.
Parks
officials say many of the peasants living close to the reserves have
already
been venturing inside to hunt and kill animals with snares. But they
said
the impact of snare hunting by the villagers was limited compared to
what
would happen if armed national park rangers were allowed to enter
conservation areas to secure meat to feed millions of hungry
farmers.
"Killing of animals for any reasons other than conservation
can be very
disastrous," said a parks official, speaking on condition of
anonymity. "The
politicians think we have enough animals to feed people
without wiping out
different species. We as professionals don't think so. We
are talking to
them [the politicians] and we hope we will reach consensus on
protecting our
wildlife heritage."
Other government officials said
that Mr Mugabe was so happy about his
rural constituency - which ensured he
achieved a majority of seats in last
month's parliamentary elections - that
he wanted to do everything to please
the voters. His party lost nearly all
seats in urban areas, traditional
strongholds of the opposition, and won in
rural areas where it had created
more constituencies. Mr Mugabe has also
created a new ministry to look after
the rural electorate.
Food ran
out in Zimbabwe soon after the election and the country has
experienced
acute power and fuel shortages over the past two weeks. Basic
commodities
have disappeared from shops. Mr Mugabe has said he will jail
manufacturers
whom he accuses of creating shortages to encourage people to
revolt.
Govt confirms probe into NGO activities, funding
[ This report does not
necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
JOHANNESBURG, 2
May 2005 (IRIN) - The Zimbabwean government has confirmed
that an
inter-ministerial team that includes members of the Central
Intelligence
Organisation, the state security organ, are probing the
activities of local
and foreign NGOs operating in the country.
The government's admission
came as reports emerged that the teams had
visited over 15 NGOs since the
beginning of last month.
According to an alert issued by the National
Association of Non-Governmental
Organisations (NANGO) the teams were
"examining all documents relating to
financial affairs, expenditure, sources
of funding and a verification of the
activities implemented on the
ground."
Public Service Labour and Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche
told IRIN
that the teams, which include state security operatives and
officials from
other line ministries, began their investigation last
month.
He said they were appointed in terms of the Private Voluntary
Organisations
(PVO) Act and were charged with carrying out a "routine audit"
of NGO
activities and accounts, including checking on their compliance to
their
stated objectives and activities.
NANGO, itself a target of the
probe, alleged that the government could be
looking for excuses to close
down some NGOs as soon as President Robert
Mugabe signs a controversial NGO
Bill into law.
The bill, which will ban the activities of organisations
involved in human
rights and civic education campaign, also outlaws foreign
funding of NGOs.
It would also subject NGOs to strict vetting by a committee
appointed by the
government, with minimal NGO representation.
The
audit teams are also reported to be examining the constitution of the
boards
of NGOs, reviewing documents relating to the registration of NGOs and
the
implementation of their stated objectives. According to NANGO, they are
also
interested in the source of funding, how the money was changed into
local
currency and whether it was used for purposes indicated on the
organisations
schedule of activities.
"The raids could be a vindictive and punitive
response to what has been
termed as subversive activities of NGOs," NANGO
said in a statement.
Since 2001, the government has repeatedly accused
local and international
NGOs in the country of being conduits for western
funds aimed at supporting
opposition groups and other 'anti-government
elements'.
State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa said although he was
not aware of the
ongoing probe, it would be incorrect to say the raids were
politically
motivated.
"I don't know about the involvement of my
ministry. If we are, then it could
be a routine investigation. It is true
that some NGOs in this country have
been used as fronts to fund pro-Western
subversive activities. Some have
been peddling foreign currency on the black
market, thereby grossly
undermining national recovery programmes," Mutasa
said.
"Besides, is it not normal for any law-governed country to check
that
everyone, including foreign organisations, abide by the laws? Those
organisations that know they are clean need not worry when the law comes
around," Mutasa added.
Some of the 15 organisations that have so far
been visited by audit teams
include NANGO, World Vision, Zimrights and the
Farm Orphan Support Trust.
Representatives of various other organisations in
Bulawayo and Harare
confirmed being visited by the audit teams but refused
to give details.
Mail and Guardian
Zim to force professionals into govt
service
Harare
02 May 2005
11:17
advertisementThe Zimbabwe government, keen to stem the
flight of
professionals from the economically-ravaged country, will force
some
graduates to work in government service, it was reported on
Sunday.
Many professionals will be bonded to government
institutions
after they graduate in a bid to stop them leaving for
better-paid jobs
outside Zimbabwe, the state-controlled Sunday Mail
reported.
"The government will soon compel professionals
trained using
state resources in universities, polytechnics and colleges to
work in the
civil service for some time before they can be allowed to join
the private
sector or legally work in other countries," the paper
said.
Likely to be affected are workers in the health sector,
lawyers,
engineers and technicians, where labour shortages are
highest.
Washington Mbizvo, an official in the country's
ministry of
higher education, said the recommendations have been forwarded
to President
Robert Mugabe, the Sunday Mail reported.
"The whole exercise involved nine ministries which came up with
the
recommendations and the document has already been submitted to the Chief
Secretary to the President and Cabinet," he said.
So many
doctors have left Zimbabwe in recent years that now one
doctor has to do the
work of seven, the local Daily Mirror recently
reported.
Zimbabwe has had to resort to hiring expatriate doctors from
Cuba and the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The once-prosperous
southern African country has been in the
grip of a severe economic crisis
for the past five years. - Sapa-dpa
Mail and Guardian
Zimbabwe starves
Harare
02 May 2005 08:45
Union leaders
urged Zimbabweans on Sunday to take action to
stave off famine and collapse,
warning that they may not make it to next
year's May Day due to worsening
food shortages.
Zimbabwe has over the past two weeks faced
crippling shortages
of fuel and power and water outages, while basic
foodstuffs such as maize
grain are in short supply.
"Let's take action whilst we still can, otherwise we will not
even make it
for next year's May Day celebrations due to hunger," said
Lovemore Matombo,
president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU,)
at a May Day
rally in the capital.
About 3 000 people turned out at the
rally held under the theme
"Protect our rights, save our economy and our
jobs" that the unions said was
a call to action to halt the deterioration in
living standards of workers.
President Robert Mugabe's
government blames the shortages, which
have worsened in the aftermath of the
March 30 parliamentary elections, on a
drought but critics say bad policies
are also at fault.
"Last year government announced that there
was enough food
and... right now the strategic grain reserves are empty and
Zimbabweans are
hungry with no food in sight," said
Matombo.
The government announced last week that it will take
delivery of
1,2-tonnes of imported staple corn to augment its stocks but it
has not
approached international agencies such as the UN World
Food
Programme for assistance.
In Harare
shops, the national staple cornmeal is snapped up
within hours if available,
while margarine and even toothpaste have run out.
Milk and butter supplies
are erratic.
Fuel shortages have paralysed the transport
industry with
workers spending up to five hours waiting for buses to get to
or from work,
while motorists spend nights in queues at fuel pumps to fill
up.
Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank said that the fuel crisis was
caused by
a foreign currency crunch and that the situation would improve in
the coming
weeks.
"It's not a secret that our resources
got a little bit
over-stretched during the just-ended election, especially
in the area of
foreign currency," Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono told the
state-owned
Sunday Mail.
"With respect to fuel, the
situation should normalise over the
next one-and-half to two weeks," he
said. Electricity supply has also been
erratic and officials say the power
cuts are set to persist as one of the
country's main power generators broke
down last week and parts needed to
repair it must be
imported.
Water cuts have been so severe in some parts of the
country that
schools in one Harare suburb were reportedly sending children
home after
only three hours of classes due to fear of disease
outbreak.
"From here, let us take time to start thinking
seriously about
what to do to improve the situation in the country. Our
problems are just
too many," said Matombo. "Last year we vowed that if
prices rose further, we
would take to the streets. What streets are you
still waiting for?" asked
ZCTU secretary general Wellington
Chibebe.
ZCTU also called for a sharp increase of the minimum
wage from
the current equivalent of US$96 to US$387, a cut in personal
income tax and
free anti-Aids drugs to help the 2,3-million Zimbabweans
living with HIV and
Aids.
The European Union announced in
March that it would give
15-million euros in humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe. -
Sapa-AFP
Water Trickles Into Mabvuku, Tafara
The Herald
(Harare)
April 30, 2005
Posted to the web May 2,
2005
Harare
WATER started trickling into Mabvuku and Tafara
suburbs in Harare yesterday
morning, after going dry for almost three
weeks.
This came hardly 24 hours after Thursday's instruction by the
Deputy
Minister of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development Cde
Morris
Sakabuya to divert water from other suburbs to Mabvuku and
Tafara.
City engineers undertook to provide the water to the two suburbs
by
rationing water supplies to other areas to allow the Donnybrook Water
Reservoir that feeds Mabvuku and Tafara to fill up.
Geographically,
Mabvuku and Tafara suburbs are the furthest and are
therefore, the last to
receive water.
However, there seems to be no permanent solution to the
perennial water
problems that have haunted Harare.
The construction
of Kunzvi Dam has been cited as a possible solution but
there is nothing on
the ground to suggest that Kunzvi Dam would be on line
any time
soon.
It is envisaged that water from Kunzvi would augment the city's
water
supplies because water from the dam is free from serious
pollution.
The city's current water sources, Manyame River, Seke Dam,
Darwendale Dam
and Lake Chivero are heavily polluted.
Purification of
the water is very costly as at least nine chemicals are used
to treat the
water.
The Herald yesterday visited Mabvuku and Tafara where residents
confirmed
that the situation had slightly improved but complained that the
water had
low pressure.
"Yes we are now getting some water but there
is no guarantee that when you
open your tap next time water will still be
coming out. The City of Harare
should come up with solutions so that they
provide effective services to the
residents.
"Even if it means they
have to hike rates it would be justified," said Mr
John Gondo of New
Mabvuku.
Residents in the most affected area near Hunters Bar in Old
Mabvuku said
they were not amused with the water shortages and urged the
council to
speedily address the crisis.
"The commission running the
city should have the people at heart. We do not
believe that this crisis is
politically motivated but is genuine and the
commission should at least hold
meetings with residents and we can suggest
ideas on how this problem can be
solved," said another resident who declined
to be named.
During an
impromptu visit to the area on Thursday Cde Sakabuya, expressed
displeasure
with the city's public relations department, which has failed to
regularly
update residents on the situation.
"Your public relations unit should
tell the people what is happening. It
should have explained the problem. If
the residents are told the truth, they
will appreciate it," he
said.
Cde Sakabuya said it was worrying that Government only got to know
of the
extent of the problem through the Press.
Chamber Secretary Mrs
Josephine Ncube said plans to sink boreholes had
reached an advanced
stage.
The boreholes are envisaged as the most immediate solution to
augmenting
supplies in the absence of a new source of water.
"We
should not close schools because there is no water," he said.
Daily News (SA)
Stop turning a blind eye to Zimbabwe
May
2, 2005
Outrage, disbelief, anger and distress must be the
emotional response
to your article by Basildon Peta about Zimbabwe's
President Robert Mugabe's
latest directive to slaughter the wildlife in
Zimbabwe's National Park, to
provide food for the starving. No questions
asked as to why they are
starving.
"Pleasing the peasants" as a
favour for returning this (here words
fail me) to power, and at what cost?
We, the neighbours, have stood by
mutely and watched the atrocities heaped
on that magnificent country for
long enough.
We have turned our
heads and done nothing. Our leaders have done
nothing, and by the very
nature of our silence are we not sending out a
message?
Perhaps this devastating news will finally catapult our leaders out of
their
apathy and something constructive will be done to bring pressure to
bear on
this man before he succeeds in wiping out what little is left of the
soul of
that country.
Our wildlife must be preserved at all cost and now
that Mugabe will
bring the wrath of the environmentalists worldwide onto his
back, let us
hope that our government speaks out and acts to stop this man
in his tracks.
If not, South Africans should hang their heads in
shame as well.
SA Roux
Pennington
New Zimbabwe
Msika said taken ill with heart attack
By Staff
Reporter
Last updated: 05/03/2005 04:53:29
VICE President Joseph Msika has
been taken into hospital after collapsing at
home with a feared heart
attack.
Msika, one of President Robert Mugabe's most loyal foot soldiers
and a
former PF-Zapu stalwart has been unwell for some time, family friends
said.
Calls to Msika's home and mopbile phone were unanswered last night,
while
his colleagues refused to confirm the 80-year-old nationalist leader
had
been taken ill.
"I am not the right person to confirm or deny
that," Dr Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, a
close friend of the VP said by telephone from
Bulawayo last night.
Efforts to get comment from the Zanu PF national
chairman John Nkomo were
fruitless last night.
However, a senior Zanu
PF official confirmed to New Zimbabwe.com that Msika
had been taken ill,
with a suspected heart attack and his condition was
"grave".
Msika
has not been seen in public for a long time. Two months ago, Msika
cancelled
an interview with Afro Sounds FM, which was followed by a security
etiquette
clanger by a bodyguard who -- unaware he was live on air -- said
Msika had
taken sleeping pills and could not talk.
The station rang Msika and he
agreed to do an interview for the Zimbabwe
Today programme hosted by Ezra
Sibanda.
However, when Sibanda rang Msika's house, a bodyguard said the
Vice
President was unable to come to the phone "because he has taken some
sleeping pills".
The stunning disclosure by the body guard was heard
live by the station's
world-wide audience.
IPS
WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY-ZIMBABWE:
Less Press, Little
Freedom
Sekai Ngara
HARARE, May 2 (IPS) - Last year, Zimbabwe
earned itself a place on a list of
the 'World's Worst Places to Be a
Journalist', published by the New
York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists. Twelve months on, little has
changed.
Another of the
country's few independent publications - 'The Weekly Times' -
was forced to
close shop earlier this year, after having its licence
withdrawn by the
state-controlled Media and Information Commission (MIC).
Under Zimbabwe's
2002 Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act
(Aippa),
journalists and publishing houses must apply to the MIC for a
licence to
operate.
News organisations are not allowed to employ journalists who
have failed to
register with the commission. Those reporters who are caught
practicing
without the blessing of the MIC face imprisonment of up to two
years.
'The Weekly Times' followed in the footsteps of Zimbabwe's sole
privately-owned daily, 'The Daily News', which was banned in 2003 along with
its sister paper, 'The Daily News on Sunday'. Another independent weekly,
'The Tribune', also had its licence withdrawn, in 2004.
Licences for
journalists are renewable every twelve months while those for
publishing
houses are good for two years.
"The fear that one's licence may not be
renewed if he or she writes
something the government may not like has
introduced a certain element of
self-censorship," says Foster Dongozi,
secretary-general of the Zimbabwe
Union of Journalists and a senior reporter
for 'The Standard' - an
independent weekly. "One always has to be cautious
when reporting issues
considered sensitive by the
government."
Dongozi describes the requests for information put forward
by the MIC as
intrusive.
"Beside...your educational qualifications,
you also need to give details
such as your place of residence, your private
phone numbers, e-mail address,
passport details and the details of your
spouse, where she works etc."
This has fuelled fears, he adds, that the
MIC is little more than an
intelligence-gathering body set up by a state
which is sensitive to the
numerous allegations of poor governance and human
rights abuse that have
been made against it.
Unease about the
intentions of the MIC prompts journalists to give the
commission false
information, says Dongozi, while certain free-lancers have
opted to ignore
the Aippa directive and work under pseudonyms.
But, the perils of
registration constitute just a few of the challenges that
Zimbabwean
journalists face.
Even those who have the appropriate documents in hand
are said to face
hostility from government officials and members of the
ruling Zimbabwe
African National Union-Patriotic Front - with certain
ZANU-PF officials
accusing reporters of gathering information for the
opposition.
As a result, independent journalists cover ruling party
functions at their
own risk.
"Reporters have been harassed (at)
ruling party events," says Dongozi, who
claims that the main opposition
group - the Movement for Democratic Change -
has also been known to look
askance at journalists from the state-owned
media: "The ruling party is,
however, guilty in the majority of cases."
Journalists also face an
additional legislative hurdle in the form of the
Criminal Law (Codification
and Reform) Bill, which makes it an offence to
communicate information that
proves to be false, and which may promote
"public disorder or public
violence" in Zimbabwe.
The law places reporters who are unable to
substantiate facts with
recalcitrant government officials in the position of
having to hold off on
publishing important stories indefinitely - lest the
items prove inaccurate.
Anyone falling foul of the Criminal Law Bill is
liable for a heavy fine or
imprisonment of up to twenty years - or both. In
addition, another clause in
the bill criminalizes "abusive" and "indecent"
statements about the
presidency. What future, then, for the political
cartoonist in Zimbabwe?
The country's new minister of information,
Tichaona Jokonya, has voiced a
desire to improve relations between
government and the independent media.
Jokonya replaced Jonathan Moyo, widely
believed to have been the architect
of Aippa, after the latter was booted
out of ZANU-PF for defying a party
directive and standing as an independent
in parliamentary elections held
Mar. 31.
At a recent meeting of
editors from the private and state media, Jokonya
invited journalists to
come up with ways in which Aippa could be amended to
make the act more
palatable.
This prompted some to sound a note of cautious
optimism.
Vincent Kahiya, editor of the weekly 'The Independent', who
attended the
meeting, said the new minister sounded very enthusiastic. "What
remains to
be seen is whether the system will allow him to carry out his
agenda," he
added.
Dongozi, however, is sceptical. "It can very well
be diplomatic posturing,"
he noted, but added that the media should make use
of what he described as a
"window of uncertainty" to engage the new
information minister.
The current atmosphere of détente that Dongozi has
remarked on may stem from
the fact that ZANU-PF swept to victory in the
March poll, in the midst of
allegations that the electoral playing field was
heavily tilted in its
favour. The previous parliamentary election, held in
2000, and the
presidential poll of 2002 were marred by allegations of
irregularities.
In 2000, Zimbabwe also became the site of controversial
farm occupations by
supposed veterans of the country's 1970s war of
independence. These dealt a
blow to the Zimbabwe's beleaguered economy,
which has also suffered from
other forms of mismanagement.
Crucially,
Jokonya has said he believes Aippa should stay on the books,
albeit with
possible amendments.
And, the ultimate arbiter of any possible change to
the act, President
Robert Mugabe, still appears supportive of the
law.
In an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation soon
after
his party won the parliamentary election, Mugabe described Aippa as "a
good
law", and said it was here to stay.
As the international
community marks World Press Freedom Day this week (May
3), such words are
unlikely to inspire confidence amongst reporters in
Zimbabwe. (END/2005)
GENERAL INTRODUCTION AFRICA
Continent of hope and death
Press freedom too
often remains just a frustrated hope in Africa. Journalists pay with their blood
or their freedom for the despotism that continues in some countries. Censorship
and intimidation are weapons still widely used by governments. Death threats are
common. Self-censorship is widespread and taken for granted. And hate media have
even resurfaced.
It was a year of mourning for Reporters Without
Borders. Its correspondent in Gambia, Deyda Hydara, was shot dead by
gunmen on the night of 16 December. It was the first time one of the
organization's correspondents has been murdered. He was the co-editor of The
Point and the local correspondent of Agence France-Presse (AFP). He
was also one of the most widely-read government critics and was read within the
government, whose young president has never hidden his contempt for independent
newspapers.
Free expression's grey zones
A third year of
silence and fear came and went in Eritrea. The last foreign correspondent
left the country and the 14 journalists who were imprisoned in 2001 continued to
be held in a secret location, without trial. But the international community did
not seem too concerned.
In Zimbabwe, the Daily
News tried everything to reappear. In vain. President Robert Mugabe's regime
again found a way to get new, draconian laws passed by a submissive
parliament.
In Côte d'Ivoire, journalists often
doubled as combatants or ended up prison or had to go underground. In a country
torn by hate, they became enmeshed in political violence. Guy-André Kieffer, a
French-Canadian journalist who was investigating corruption in the cocoa trade,
disappeared in April. A correspondent for the progovernment daily Le Courrier
d'Abidjan was fatally injured during violent clashes between French
peacekeepers and Ivorian troops and civilians in November. In a media world
aswirl with public condemnation and calumny, a few journalists tried with
difficulty to keep their heads. A year after the International Criminal Tribunal
of Rwanda (ICTR) convicted some of those who had been running RadioTélévision
Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM) at the time of the genocide, part of the
Ivorian press was playing a dangerous game, prompting the UN to voice concern
about a reappearance of "hate media."
The large number of
privately-owned media in the Democratic Republic of Congo did not suffice
to mask the often dangerous amateurism with which some of them worked. Congolese
journalists are still too often the victims of a culture of despotism and
violence even in times of peace. When the war resumed the press suffered like
other civilians.
The repressive reflexes of aging regimes
The
plight of press freedom may be less dramatic but just as worrying under aging
regimes. In Omar Bongo's Gabon, Paul Biya's Cameroon, in
Lesotho and in Mauritania, the authorities used their police, their
army and their easily swayed judiciary to express their irritation with the
media.
In Paul Kagame's Rwanda, the state did
not stop prosecuting the only really critical newspaper and its journalists were
followed by government agents. In this country that was so tragically scarred by
hate media in the past, press freedom is virtually
inexistent.
Opposition journalists were often thrown into jail
in Sudan under repressive laws that permit inordinately long periods of
preventive custody.
Even if the independent press including
the satirical press was allowed a little leeway, Lansana Conté's Guinea
still harassed some independent journalists and often censored newspapers that
irked a strict and inflexible National Council of
Communication.
In Equatorial Guinea, the powerful
pro-government press constantly attacked the weak opposition, if need be,
exploiting racial prejudices.
In Swaziland, a
poor little kingdom ruled by an eccentric young king, the staff of the state
media had to sing the regime's praises on pain of dismissal.
The situation was paradoxical in Tanzania, where a reasonable
degree of respect for press freedom on the mainland contrasted with the
behaviour of the authoritarian government running the semi-autonomous island of
Zanzibar, which never stopped trying to throttle the weekly Dira, the
island's only independent newspaper, until it was finally forced to
close.
Zanzibar has parallels with
Seychelles where the opposition weekly Regar was often assailed by
the judiciary, and with Djibouti where the weekly Le Renouveau was
constantly harassed by the government. In Madagascar, the overlapping of
politics and news media is a source of problems and court actions against
certain opposition radio stations continued to cast a shadow over an otherwise
relatively free climate.
Four years in prison under the UN's
eyes
In countries such as Niger, Chad, Ethiopia,
Uganda, Congo-Brazzaville, Zambia and Lesotho,
incidents involving the media are often the repressive outbursts of fragile
regimes that cannot stand criticism. Or a feature of societies subject to social
violence such as Kenya. One of the worst press freedom violations took
place in a country in full democratic transition, under the eyes of a local UN
mission that was supposed to be promoting human rights. This was in Sierra
Leone in October, when a leading journalist, Paul Kamara was sentenced to
four years in prison for libel after being sued by the
president.
All this chaos should not obscure the fact
that Africa also has democracies that are relatively stable despite their
poverty. In South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, for
example, press freedom is comparable to what prevails in European countries.
In Benin, Cape Verde and Mali, the governments show their
journalists some respect and no significant violation was registered in 2004. An
end to fighting between rebels and government and a transition process brought a
marked improvement in the situation of journalists in both Burundi and
Liberia, although tension endured. And the situation continued to improve
steadily in Angola after years of devastating civil war.
There has been a clear trend in recent years for African countries to
fall into line with modern democracies and decriminalize press offences. The
Central African Republic did it under strong pressure from its journalists,
a few months after Togo did it under strong European Union pressure at a
time when independent journalists who criticised Gen. Eyadema's government were
subject to repeated death threats. Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade
promised it for 2004 after a leading journalist was imprisoned during the
summer, sparking outcry in the press.
Impunity for Norbert Zongo's
killers
Ending impunity for the killers of journalists is fundamental,
and countries that bring those responsible for political crimes to justice
derive obvious benefits in terms of stability and confidence in their
governments. The trial of Carlos Cardoso's killers in Mozambique have
begun to heal the wounds of a badly-scarred society.
Unfortunately this was not the case in Burkina Faso where, six
years after Norbert Zongo's murder, the judicial system's inexplicable paralysis
keeps suspicion hanging over President Blaise Compaoré and his
associates.
Despite police violence, political
instability and judicial excesses, some African journalists continue to do
honour to their profession. In dismembered Somalia, for example, where
businessmen, militias and Islamic courts have constituted the sole authority for
13 years, several privately-owned radio stations and newspapers continue to
inform the public and maintain the links of common language and social life that
unite a population otherwise abandoned to itself and anarchy. In Nigeria,
a vigorous, insolent and courageous independent press confronts the feared
federal police, clan battles and extreme violence that corrupt its
society.
It is a challenge to be a
journalist in Africa. The profession has risks, including the risk of sinking
into irresponsibility. Those who have not yielded are all the more commendable
and courageous.
______________________________________
Zimbabwe
Area: 390,760
sq.km.
Population: 12,891,000
Languages: English, Shona, Ndebele
Head
of state: Robert Mugabe
Freedom of the press simply does not exist in
Zimbabwe. Everything is under government control, from the licensing of the
media and journalists down to the content of articles. Television and radio are
a state monopoly. Police and the judiciary ensure that dissenters live in terror
or endure the constant battering of a relentless harassment.
Over the years, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe has
increasingly cut itself off from the outside world. In the run-up to general
elections in March 2005, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, the president's
right hand man, redoubled his attacks on the opposition press. Although it is
arguable whether one can still talk about an opposition press when the
expression of the slightest difference of opinion is seen as a coup attempt. The
least criticism of the government reawakens the permanent suspicion that the
West is plotting against the regime. Dissenting voices as exemplified by the
Daily News, which has become mired in constant judicial battles, find
themselves harassed everywhere, even in the street or on a bus.
Zimbabwe's
top circulation daily, along with its Sunday edition The Daily News of
Sunday, have both been targeted by the government since the end of 2003. On
11 September of that year, after a series of clashes between the newspaper and
the authorities, the Supreme Court declared The Daily News illegal
because it had not registered with the Media and Information Commission (MIC) as
required by the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). The
management team refused to comply, challenging the constitutionality of the law
before the courts. The High Court on 21 January 2004 finally allowed the
newspaper to reappear after a ban of more than four months.
The following day
an eight-page edition went back on sale in Harare's news-stands but on 6
February, the Supreme Court confirmed that the information law was
constitutional. Resolving to fight its legal battle before the courts to the
bitter end, the Daily News decided to temporarily suspend publication and
its journalists put in applications for accreditation to the MIC. These were
immediately refused. On 20 September, the court acknowledged that the newspaper
had not appeared illegally, contrary to government claims. The newspaper's
journalists and its management team - or those with the courage and resources to
continue the fight - are now awaiting the Supreme Court ruling on the AIPPA. In
the meantime, its coffers emptied by some 40 legal actions, the daily is broke.
Its publishers, Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), stopped paying salaries
in July. Out of the original 167 Daily News staff, some 20 continue to
fight alongside its editor Samuel Nkomo and his colleagues. They have had
to give up the newspaper's headquarters because they could no longer pay the
rent. What was once the country's leading newspaper is now reduced to occupying
one room in the ANZ offices.
Refinements in the art of
persecution
The state holds a monopoly of both television and radio.
Zimbabweans who do not own a short wave radio or satellite television, both
extremely expensive in a country of ever worsening poverty, have no chance to
access media other than those under state control, in which pro-government
propaganda and fabricated journalism are the norm. In one instance, during the
last presidential elections in 2002, journalists working for publicly-owned
media spread the rumour that anthrax attacks had been launched against officials
of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF).
Year
on year, Zimbabwe has thus become a no go area for free expression. Everything
is under government control. The all-powerful MIC, set up in 2002, holds the
small world of the press in its grip. It alone decides who shall get the
accreditation without which journalists are denied the right to inform. Since
November a two-year prison sentence awaits any journalist who works without the
approval of this government-run censorship office. A new amendment, tabled by
the government in November, provides for sentences from 20 years to the death
penalty for a Zimbabwean or a foreigner making a false statement to a third
party with the intention of incitement to public disorder, negatively effecting
the Zimbabwe economy or undermining the authority of the security
forces.
As in all totalitarian countries, persecution for
offences of opinion can reach the height of absurdity. In one example on 10
November, an unemployed man in Harare was arrested and sentenced to eight months
in prison or 140 hours of school cleaning for making remarks "undermining the
authority of the president". Reason Tafirei had the bad luck to be overheard by
a Zanu-PF official when he told fellow bus passengers that Mugabe was a dictator
and Tony Blair a liberator. The party official immediately ordered the bus
driver to head for the nearest police post where the insolent citizen was
immediately arrested and imprisoned. In the same vein the authorities demanded
whatever the cost that a photographer hand over the negatives of a shots he had
taken while covering a Mugabe tour, even though he had used a digital
camera.
The government's nationalist and anti-Western obsession
was again in evidence in the autumn with a new draft law designed to further
crack down on civil society. The "Non-governmental Organisations Bill 2004"
brings local and foreign NGOs under the control of a government-appointed
regulatory body. The law, adopted by parliament on 9 December, forces NGOs to
make a yearly declaration of their accounts, their organisational structure and
their sources of funding. No political organisation, in particular those
focusing on human rights issues or governance, is allowed to operate if one of
its members is a foreigner or if all or part of its funding comes from abroad.
The rules apply equally to democratic organisations and to those set up to fight
malnutrition or Aids. Social affairs minister Paul Mangwana boasted, "This bill
is the best law to be enacted by this parliament".
Behind a
nationalist barricade
Foreign journalists have all left the country.
Those who were not actually expelled left of their own accord, sickened by the
constant obstacles thrown up to prevent them from working. Their media continue
to operate as best they can with the help of local journalists who have to work
in extreme secrecy. Robson Sharuko, Tendai Ndemera and Rex
Mphisa, respectively head of sport and sports journalists on the government
daily The Herald, were dismissed at the beginning of February for
contributing to US public radio Voice of America
(VOA).
Zimbabwe's obstructive practices even caused a diplomatic
incident at the end of November. Around a dozen British journalists only
obtained visas to cover an England cricket tour after a 24-hour trial of
strength between London and Harare. The Zimbabwean authorities initially refused
to allow entry to sports journalists from the BBC, The Times,
The Sunday Times, The News of the World, The Sun and the
Daily Mirror, coming up with a range of objections from "lack of
information" to accusations of "systematic hostility".
Robert Mugabe and
his government appear to think Zimbabwe's signature is worth little on the
international scene. A member of the African Union (AU), Harare publicly
undertook in July 2004 to reform its electoral law after ratifying the protocol
on principles and rules governing democratic elections drawn up by the South
African Development Community (SADC). Only two months later, Zimbabwe's
information minister announced his decision to ban access to public media for
the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). This was a
flagrant violation of Article 2.1.5 of the protocol that guarantees equal
opportunity of access for all political parties to the public media. Protests
from SADC member states had very little chance of working. In any event none
were made.
In 2004Š
- 7 journalists were convicted by a
court
- 16 journalists were arrested
- 4 journalists were physically
attacked
- 4 journalists were threatened
- 4 journalists were unfairly
dismissed
- 3 journalists were expelled
- 1 media premises was
searched
- and 2 media were censored
Personal account
"A
news giant reduced to a shadow"
Guthrie Munyuki worked for The Daily
News, a newspaper that Robert Mugabe's government forced into closure. She
talks about the endless struggles and dashed hopes of a team of journalists
proud of their independence.
The day I joined the editorial team of
the Daily News, I knew that my life was going to change. And the change
was radical in the best sense of the word. I joined the team of the big
independent daily on 1st August 2001, as a journalist specialised in the arts
and human-interest stories. I came from a weekly that had been launched in
December 1997, but which had lost all credibility because of the political
pressure that influenced its content. But on the Daily News there were no
taboo subjects. There was only room in the paper's young team for journalists
genuinely devoted to the service of Zimbabwe's millions and who produced
complete and balanced reports. The daily's success was both the fruit of hard
work in a hostile environment and its own reward in a solid team
spirit.
Despite the intimidation it suffered - physical
assaults and arrests of its journalists and bomb attacks on its offices - The
Daily News continued to appear without any change in line. The editor,
Geoffrey Nyarota, survived two murder attempts, including a bomb attack on his
Harare office on 22 April 2000. Months later, he actually met the bomber,
Bernard Masara, who told him that he had been sent by State Security agents. We
were stunned by this revelation.
We had made ourselves the ambassadors of
truth and we believed that failure was not an option. But after the Access to
Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) was passed in 2002, the
government managed to silence us. After starting a legal battle with the
state, The Daily News had to close. On the evening of Friday, 12
September 2003, police came to shut the offices and ordered all the staff to
leave the building. In those moments, three years of work, three years of hopes
and effort, were swept away. I cried when I saw the police take away our
computers. Admittedly, I had already had trouble with the police, on 16 June
2002, when uniformed officers broke my arm. But the pain I felt that day was
different: I saw all the years of hard work blown away just by the determination
of my country's government.
The newspaper's staff has fought appeal after
appeal through the courts for more than a year in a bid to resurrect The
Daily News. Once a giant of independent news it has been reduced to a
shadow. It is now no more than a forgotten name and even our readers seem to
have abandoned us. We have become irrelevant. Some journalists were lucky enough
to leave the country to further their education or pursue careers elsewhere. But
most of the newspaper's staff were dismissed or laid off. It is very painful.
Most of us have been forced to take jobs with semi-official newspapers,
something that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
By November 2004,
there were only eight journalists, two technicians, the management and the
secretaries left at the Daily News. They were evicted from their former
offices for non-payment of rent. All the provincial offices have been closed. As
for me, I don't have a job. It's very hard to leave The Daily News behind
me and get myself hired by another newspaper. It is very difficult to have a
decent life without stable employment but I am ready to put up with it because I
am convinced that this nightmare will come to an end one day. All I am waiting
for now is the Supreme Court decision on whether the Daily News will live
again or is finally buried.
December 2004
--
Leonard VINCENT
Bureau Afrique / Africa desk
Reporters sans
frontières / Reporters Without Borders
5, rue Geoffroy-Marie
75009 Paris,
France
Tel : (33) 1 44 83 84 84
Fax : (33) 1 45 23 11 51
Email :
afrique@rsf.org / africa@rsf.org
Web : www.rsf.org
From The Sunday Times (SA), 1 May
Pop goes the
easel
Zimbabean artist Kudzi Chiurai is about to explode onto the
local scene.
Bongani Madondo talks to a young man taking up arms against
history
The omnipresent eye of President Robert Mugabe keeps watch on
every brush
stroke and aerosol spray Kudzanai Chiurai puts on his canvasses
- or so he
thinks. The artist known by his trademark, Kudzi, is a deeply
troubled man
and a brilliant talent. The 24-year-old who arrived in South
Africa five
years ago to study fine arts at Pretoria University, says art is
his life.
Kudzi is a paint-bespattered fugitive, ducking and diving the
claws of his
country's president ... Is that it? "No," he says when we meet
in his
jumbled studio in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. "I don't necessarily
think I'm
on Zimbabwe's most-wanted list, but who knows? I can't stop
feeling troubled
by how my work might be interpreted." Kudzi's
larger-than-life, mixed-media
works combine political satire, hard-edged
hip-hop graffiti, poetry,
architectural design and commentary on big cities
to produce pop art. His is
a political pop deeply embedded in the
impressionist tradition - and not in
the advertising industry's variation of
pop art.
His large-scale (3.66m x 2.44m) combinations of graffiti,
etchings, ink
drawing, poetry and watercolours give a sense of a film in
progress - the
only difference being that the images are frozen on the
hardboard on which
he chooses to work. In an age where young artists seem to
be absorbed by
graffiti, self-righteousness, or film and advertising jobs -
while older
artists are commemorated in one retrospective after another -
Kudzi's
arrival and innovative use of street aesthetics to illuminate his
conceptual
art promises to add zing to the local scene. His brooding,
paranoid,
funereal and sometimes colourful mixed-media works have thrust him
forward
as one of the possible heirs to the legacy of US artist Jean Michel
Basquiat. As a painter, Kudzi deals with urban African issues with the same
subversive and, at times, mad humour as the Zimbabwean novelist Dambudzo
Marechera (The House of Hunger). His work charms and chokes. Humour is an
integral part of his work and the joke is not on the subjects he tackles
with rib-cracking style, but on us, the viewers.
And while Mugabe
- his hair flaming orange and spiked to suggest the ageing
politician is a
devil - seems to pop in and out of Kudzi's work with ease,
the Zimbabwean
president is not a subject he discusses easily. "My work
narrates a variety
of stories, well beyond Mugabe. Uncle Bob is just one of
them. I'm keen on
themes such as censorship, fear, paranoia, popular culture
and inner-city
movements ... the individual's place within the jungle that a
big city like
Johannesburg is. He [Mugabe] does not define my work, though
as a Zimbabwean
he is this omnipresent, heroic, self-centred, funny, brutal,
visionary,
regressive, oppressive figure - the embodiment of what is great
and messed
with Zimbabwe," says Kudzi. "Whether you are an artist, an
accountant, a man
of the cloth or a sports player, in or outside Zimbabwe,
Mugabe is somebody
you cannot not deal with. He lives in our lives. It is
quite a stressful
undertaking. A yoke many are reluctant to bear. Some carry
it inside
themselves, hidden, afraid to speak about it in public, but
privately
deranged. I guess I wear mine on my sleeve. I lay it out for all
of us to
deal with. It is terribly risky - that I am aware of - but I have
to do
it."
"Why?" I ask. "I'm an artist and besides, it is what I know,
what I
understand," says Kudzi. "So you still believe there's glamour in an
artist
dying a heroic death?" "Rather the opposite. I think the artist
should live
longer to record atrocities and beauty. But I am not about to
paint flowers,
not now anyway. Still, you can neither practise nor dream if
fear is a
constant factor in your life. In any case, life is about that:
everything,
every action is political. It can be documented and reviewed
according to
the viewer's taste." Though he has created only three works
which deal
directly with the spectre of Mugabe - The Presidential Wall
Paper, The True
Believer and The End of Silence - the artist often finds
discussing Zimbabwe's
bespectacled kingpin harrowing. "I might sound brave,
but I am very
disturbed. I am concerned about my family. I am torn apart...
you see, my
mother still lives in Zimbabwe. I also love the country. I still
want to go
back. It's been three years since I last went back. The country
is in my
bloodstream." The third time I meet Kudzi, our talk is all about
the
identity he is creating and about living in a country that is, like its
President, torn between pro- and anti-Mugabe camps. He is acutely aware of
the battle lines - between those who passionately feel that quiet diplomacy
is a game for wild birds, and that Mugabe should be pressured to step down;
and those who are motivated by a different set of racial and economic
considerations.
"I have been called a traitor several times. Once
when I was doing an
interview on [Gauteng radio station] Kaya Fm, a caller
remarked that I am
not patriotic about my country. "The underlying message
is: 'You are living
large in this country, a liberated African country,
getting media attention,
yet you are not grateful for the contribution
Zimbabwe has made. Sell-out!'
If Zim was not wobbling by, soaking in pain, I
would've dismissed the caller
for being quite funny on a serious talk show.
There's pressure on
commentators - artists are commentators - to take sides.
There's pressure,
mostly from black South Africans, to overlook the
atrocities in Zimbabwe.
For them, Mugabe is the ultimate liberator." He
shrugs, lights up a fag and
sighs. "The untouchable. Sad." "Do you smoke
when you are frustrated?" I
wonder out loud. "Yes. Like now. This is a
stressful discussion." As if
propelled by a similar force, we break beat and
change the topic, although
it will resurface. It seems Kudzi is unable to
shelve Uncle Bob for good -
until ... unless ...
Besides Uncle
Bob, Kudzi is also passionate about the commercial imperatives
that define
what is and what is not mainstream. He's also maddened by the
bling dictates
of corporatised hip-hop that define "the hip-hop generation".
But, like his
heroes, the late artistic genius Jean Michel Basquiat and the
invisible
"graff" icon Banksy (both hip-hop artists who succeeded in taking
graffiti
from the streets to the high-street art galleries), Kudzi is
trapped in a
hot capsule - a revolutionary who can't escape the lure of
glamour the
mainstream art world inevitably holds for the radicals.
"Primarily my art is
about communicating with the hip-hop generation. It
might not be expressing
an entirely hip-hop aesthetic, but it sets out to
talk to my peers, and they
are mostly in hip-hop, be they the music
consumers, poets or fashion crowd -
the glue that binds us is hip-hop." As
with his Zimbabwean demons, hip-hop
culture does not sit entirely
comfortably within the Kudzi philosophy. There
is a sense that he is the
sort of adherent who has burst beyond the
culture's stasis and yet, like
Erykah Badu sang: "Hip-hop you are the love
of my life". The subtext reads:
"F**cked up as you are, I will come pray on
your tombstone."
"Am I a hip-hop artist? No. But I pencil in hip-hop
culture, use it for what
I seek to achieve. It's agitative and also a common
language through which
youth, across the universe, communicate. It does not
define me but is part
of my expression, especially the graffiti aspect."
Back at his Braamfontein
studio, we venture into an area often dismissed as
hip-hop intellectual
gymnastics. "Hip-hop? Yep! I can relate to it. It
samples varying bits and
pieces of other musical styles, references
different personalities and
recreates itself as it goes. Its single identity
is made of varying stories.
You see, hip-hop is very post-modernist, mah
man." I see. But Kudzi is not
the first mind gymnast. Since the 1980s to
this day, exponents such as
Public Enemy, Dondi, Lesego Rampolokeng and Mos
Def have sought to elevate
hip-hop culture to the status of a political tool
against the status quo.
"But it can bottle you in. A situation I'm uneasy
about. All my life, I've
wanted to be free." For such a young man who uses
the profits from his work
to fund his siblings' tertiary education, the idea
of freedom remains just
that: an ideal. "At least it is an ideal worth
fighting for. What should I
do? Curl up and die?" Doesn't it sound like
Nelson Mandela circa the Rivonia
Trial?
By the time the interview
ends it is too late for Kudzi to go back to
Pretoria. On the way to a
friend's place in Melville, where he will crash
for the night, it emerges
that all his friends are white. "So what?" I
think. But race will not be
easily tucked away here. Asked if there's
anybody who can give a critical
appreciation of his work, he offers as
referees two white professors at
Tukkies. Again, "So what?" Another person
in the car asks him about the
gallery that is hosting his exhibition. Kudzi
says the gallery is in Melrose
Arch and is owned by Mike Obert. Oh, by the
way, Obert is a young, white
American who has lived in Zimbabwe and who has
major issues with Mugabe.
Outside, early winter bares its fangs. Inside the
jalopy the mood yo-yos
between unease and relief. The driver puts in an Ali
Farka Toure CD as a
calm-downer. If one were given to careless, racist
conclusions it would be
easy to shrug Kudzi off as an example of "black
talent for a white tool".
But sensing he will be crushed by this, I throw in
some banter: "Oh, but a
man has to live. What's so bad about being
surrounded by a sea of helping
hands, black or white?" It doesn't help.
People are people.
Kudzi
prefers a cut-to-the-chase approach: "Look," he sighs, "these people
just
happen to be my friends. I never sat down to create a line of white
donors.
Nobody pays me to do what I do. I don't care whether these are the
same
people seen to be waging a battle against Mugabe. I am doing my bit for
my
people. Do people realise how stressful that is?" Kudzi's comment reminds
me
that in the 1950s writers such as Nat Nakasa in South Africa, and James
Baldwin - the toast of the Left Bank in Paris - were criticised for being
"the beneficiaries of European benevolence". Can no one do their thing
without being judged for the people they socialise with? Or do "those
strutting with the cats, waiting to pounce, have no right to call themselves
mice?" A sense of paranoia creeps up again. Kudzi pounces on it: "That's the
story of my life.I have to look over my shoulder all the time. Wherever.
Travelling on trains or walking the streets. Painting or thinking of my
family. I live in permanent fear." I feel for him, but I am also familiar
with the plight of thousands of Zimbabweans forced to scrape by, doing the
worst jobs imaginable. By comparison, Kudzi looks like an intelligent
fun-seeker, performing, as he plods along, one helluva revolutionary trapeze
act. Still, Kudzi's fear is not entirely unfounded. See, just because you're
paranoid it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.