http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=7168
November 12, 2008
By
Raymond Maingire
HARARE - The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has
called for a
high-profile crisis meeting in Harare on Friday to chart the
way forward
following Sunday's unpopular ruling by regional leaders that the
party
should share the Ministry of Home Affairs with Zanu-PF.
The
MDC, which immediately rejected this ruling, now finds itself at a
crossroads as to whether to take its case further to the African Union (AU)
or to simply abide by the SADC decision.
A power-sharing deal signed
between Zanu-PF and MDC two months ago stalled
after the parties failed to
agree on the allocation of key ministries
between them.
The deal is a
culmination of a heavily disputed poll outcome in which
incumbent President
Robert Mugabe declared himself winner following the last
minute withdrawal
of his challenger Morgan Tsvangirai who cited massive and
brutal
state-sponsored violence on his party.
The bitter wrangle over positions
has since narrowed down to the crucial
Home Affairs Ministry which controls
the police, registers births and
deaths, issues passports and runs
elections.
But a full SADC extraordinary summit convened in Johannesburg,
South Africa,
Sunday to look into political conflicts in the DRC and
Zimbabwe recommended
that the rival parties share the ministry, over which
the MDC is demanding
sole control.
Friday's MDC meeting will bring
together the party's 44-member national
executive and the 128-member
national council, which are the party's supreme
decision-making
bodies.
MDC insiders told The Zimbabwe Times this week that Friday's
meeting is
likely to be tense as there are sharp differences over how to
respond to the
new development.
Hardliners within MDC feel the party
has a compelling case and should
exhaust all options available to win its
case.
"If the MDC proceeds to form a government with Zanu-PF being the
dominant
party," a source said, "it is highly unlikely that its presence
would change
the culture of doing politics in Zimbabwe which has always
favoured
Zanu-PF."
The MDC is also under pressure from its
traditional allies within civic
society to abandon its negotiations with
Zanu-PF, viewed by some of them as
retrogressive, and adopt a
confrontational approach.
Prominent organizations such as the ZCTU and
NCA this week intensified their
calls for a transitional authority that will
usher Zimbabwe into free and
fresh elections as opposed to a unity
government headed by President Mugabe.
Said the source, "There is a
school of thought that says if the MDC
capitulates to Zanu-PF and joins the
unity government in this set up it
risks losing the support of the loyal
constituency that saw it win the March
29 elections. People would then not
differentiate it from Zanu-PF."
Most Zimbabweans are now disillusioned
with Zanu-PF which they blame for the
economic rot that has befallen the
once prosperous nation.
That will then create what had generally been a
very narrow room for the
successful emergence of a strong political party
into the Zimbabwean
political landscape.
Former Finance minister and
one of the losing Presidential candidates in the
March elections Dr Simba
Makoni would thankfully occupy this space, it is
said.
On the other
hand, the option of first exhausting other channels before
joining the unity
government will be strongly opposed by a group within MDC
that feels this
will not yield any positive outcome as the African Union is
perceived as
being full of leaders who are worse off than Mugabe.
This they say is
supported by the failure by the AU to censure the
Zimbabwean leader during
their summit in Egypt in July when evidence of a
stolen election was still
fresh before the eyes of many.
President Mugabe told a campaign rally on
the eve of the disputed June 27
presidential run-off election that his peers
within the AU had no moral
authority to question his legitimacy because most
of them were worse
dictators.
He said this ahead of the summit in
Egypt that went on to prescribe a unity
government between the feuding
parties.
"This group," the source said, "feels the MDC should just take
up the little
that has been offered and hope Zanu-PF would reform during the
course of the
unity government.
"There is too much fatigue within MDC
and the feeling among some is that the
party should now change course and
abandon its confrontational strategy
towards Zanu-PF."
There are
strong fears that if the MDC continues to exist on the periphery
of real
power, Zanu-PF will continue to deploy its cohesive instruments on
it to
further weaken it.
"Zanu-PF no longer has any source of power except the
highly partisan
military," said the source, "Already Zanu-PF hawks may be
preparing the
nation psychologically by spreading claims Tsvangirai is
plotting banditry."
But some political analysts say Zanu-PF and MDC are
mutually dependent.
They say it is now a case of who blinks first.
Zanu-PF is obviously buoyed
by the SADC decision and pressure is now on the
MDC to play ball.
Zanu-PF is, however, aware it cannot achieve any
progress without the
participation of the MDC in government, especially
since the MDC enjoys the
majority in Parliament, and is crucial to pushing
legislation through the
House.
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
06:49
BY STAFF REPORTERS
Harare - The Zimbabwe crisis
has now escalated into a regional
conflict. Octogenarian leader Robert
Mugabe, emboldened by the failure of
SADc leaders to force him to share
power with MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai, has
raised the temperature by sabre
rattling against Botswana.
The situation is rapidly becoming
explosive, with Mugabe accusing
Botswana's President Ian Khama of training
MDC militias to attack Zimbabwe.
He has provided no shred of evidence that
Botswana is doing this, and
Botswana has vigorously denied the accusation
and invited the region to send
a fact-finding mission to
investigate.
Khama has been consistently critical of mugabe's sham
one-man election
in June and his continuing refusal to share power with the
MDC. His
principled stand has been met with a vicious attack in the
government-controlled Zimbabwean media. Observers believe all this could
well be a prelude to an invasion of Botswana to divert attention from
Zimbabwe's internal problems.
It has never been part of the
MDC's strategy to use force because they
know this will lay into mugabe's
hands. The war-mongering Mugabe, on the
other hand, has very limited options
given the will of the people of
Zimbabwe to reject him as their leader. He
can only survive by resorting to
violence - has consistently proven that he
is more than willing to do so.
Just look at the weapons he has been buying
from china lately - anti-tank
bombs and other massive firepower that is not
required for crowd control but
for full scale war. Just last year Mugabe
accused the MDC of training
militias on farms in northern South Africa. A
number of MDC supporters were
arrested amid much fanfare and taken to court.
Relations with South Africa
cooled and Mugabe successfully brought Thabo
mbeki to heel. Eventually a
Zimbabwean judge dismissed the
case.
Recent abductions
In recent weeks a number of MDC
supporters in the Banket area have
been abducted by police and held in
various police stations, denied access
to lawyers and family members. Their
families fear they are being tortured
to extract false confessions which
will then be used as a pretext to invade
Botswana.
"These
allegations are utter rubbish and an invention by Zanu (PF) to
distract
attention from the ruin of Zimbabwe's economy, the collapse of
essential
services and the impoverishment of its people" said Scott.
MDC
spokesman, Nelson Chamisa, said the party was committed to
negotiating
outstanding issues under the agreement rather than resorting to
violence.
"Apart from these outstanding issues is Zanu (PF)'s deliberate and
systematic plot to incriminate the MDC on fictitious charges of banditry and
terrorism," said Chamisa. "We remain committed to peaceful and democratic
change. There is no reason for the MDC to engage in such barbaric acts when
we are the ruling party with majority seats in Parliament."
Meanwhile, the MDC is preparing to face a government crackdown after
it
rejected SADc's lame proposal to share the home affairs ministry, which
commands the country's police force and controls its electoral machinery.
"Zanu (PF) are on the war path," said an MDC spokesman. "Now we have
rejected the carrot, the next thing will be a very, very huge
stick."
SADC washes its hands
Tomaz Salamao, executive
secretary of the 15-nation SADc, said
regional leaders were asked to vote
during the emergency summit in Jozi
Sunday and it emerged that they
unanimously agreed that co-sharing the Home
Affairs ministry between Zanu
(PF)
and the mDc was the only way forward.
"This is
nothing but an abrogation of their responsibilities," said a
seasoned
political observer. "If there is a problem, you cannot expect those
involved
to solve it. Because of the nature of the problem, independent
arbitration
is required. But SADc is obviously not prepared to shoulder
that
responsibility."
He said Salamao's comment: "And within six months,
the parties are
free to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of the
co-sharing - if they
feel that that is not the best way, then they can
decide on the best way to
push it" was a blatant cop out.
Tsvangirai shocked
Tsvangirai has said the issue of sharing the
ministry would not work
and expressed shock at SADc's impotence in handling
Mugabe's intransigence.
He said his dispute with Mugabe was not
only about the ministry of
Home Affairs, but striking a fair balance of
power in the entire gamut of
line ministries in the unity government and
sharing diplomatic appointments
and assigning key government
posts.
"It is about power sharing, it is about equitable power
sharing, it is
about giving the responsibility to the party that won an
election and has
compromised its position to share a government with a party
that lost," he
said. An exasperated Tsvangirai lambasted Motlanthe, who
chaired the
meeting, for allowing Mugabe to participate in a discussion from
which both
MDC factions were excluded.
"For the record, it had
been agreed that all Zimbabwean principals
would recuse themselves to allow
an open and unfettered dialogue to take
place among SADC leaders. However,
Mugabe refused and the chairman of the
SADC [Motlanthe] did not tell him to
leave. Thus Mugabe became a judge in
his own case," Tsvangirai
said.
"The concept of co-ministering cannot work," he declared.
With two
competing ministers Zanu (PF) would be in a position to sideline
the MDC, as
the upper levels of the bureaucracy are its own members, and it
would also
threaten the MDC's one-vote majority in cabinet under the
political
agreement.
"Perversely, pressure was brought to bear
on the MDC, a party that won
an election but has shown compromise and
political maturity in these
negotiations rather than the party that lost an
election and has flouted the
spirit and substance of the agreement, namely
Zanu (PF)," said Tsvangirai.
"Mugabe is not the President of
Zimbabwe without this agreement," he
added, saying that the MDC "hope and
pray that the guarantors of the
agreement, in particular progressive members
of SADC and the African Union,
will now move very quickly to try and salvage
this agreement".
"SADC is made up of a group of leaders that are
friends of Mugabe.
Many of them have been in power for a long time and do
not respect
democratic decisions," said Fernando Macedo, political analyst
and professor
at Luanda's Lusiada University.
"SADC approached
this summit without any concrete strategy and did not
have the courage and
the decency to look Mugabe in the eye and tell him that
his position was
wrong."
Mugabe's strategy
Immediately after the summit,
Mugabe announced he would go ahead and
form his new government with support
from the breakaway MDC led by Arthur
Mutambara. His chief negotiator Patrick
Chinamasa said this week a
Constitutional Amendment bill would be rushed
through Parliament to create
the Prime Ministership for Tsvangirai, deputy
for Mutambara, along with
other posts and changes.
The MDC's
top structures will meet on Friday to decide the party's
response. With its
100 seats in parliament, the MDC could delay the passing
of legislation. The
balance of power is held by MDC Mutambara, which has 10
seats.
"This what Mugabe wanted all along," said the commentator. "He never
intended to rule jointly with Tsvangirai. He has vilified him at every step
of the way. He has never implemented any of the points agreed to in the
memorandum of agreement or the actual power-sharing deal. He can now go
ahead and form a government with Mutambara. He has never stopped abducting,
killing and harassing MDC legislators and supporters.
He has
shown not a shred of goodwill towards Tsvangirai - continuing
to this day to
deny him a passport. For Mugabe, the agreement has always
been dead - in
spirit and in letter."
International outcry over SADC
summit
BY CHIEF REPORTER
JOHANNESBURG - Morgan Tsvangirai,
leader of the MDC and prime
minister- designate, has rejected the idea of
sharing the Home Affairs
portfolio with President Robert Mugabe's Zanu (PF)
as unworkable.
There is mounting pressure for him to withdraw from
the talks, but a
government that excluded him would not win the infusion of
foreign aid and
investment that economists and political analysts say is
essential to
rebuilding Zimbabwe's shattered economy.
European
Union diplomats have expressed concern. "MDC got the finance
portfolio - but
with a desk and a chair and not much else. As far as Home
Affairs is
concerned, it is clear that Zanu (PF) do not want to hand over
control of
the police to the MDC."
"Tsvangirai still doesn't have a passport,
he travelled to the summit
on emergency documents," said a western
diplomat. "That is another
manifestation of the clear lack of desire of
Zanu (PF) to work with the
MDC."
A spokesperson for Prime
Minister Gordon Brown expressed
disappointment over the outcome of the SADC
summit. "The international
community is quite clear that it expects an
equitable agreement on the
allocation of ministries between Zanu (PF) and
the MDC," said the spokesman.
"The longer there is a delay in appointing a
cabinet, the more difficult it
will be for Mugabe and Zanu (PF) to convince
the world of their commitment
to the September 15 agreement." The US State
Department deputy spokesman,
Robert Wood, told reporters that the SADC
proposal only served to reinforce
Mugabe's grip on power. "The US government
is very disappointed by the
outcome of the discussions on Zimbabwe at the
SADC summit."
Human rights group condemns gift
giving
BY CHIEF REPORTER
HARARE - This week international
human rights group, Human Rights
Watch stated its protest and grave concerns
about President Mugabe's
systematic attempts to undermine the independence
of the judiciary by
providing judges with "gifts."
In August
Mugabe presented senior judges of the High court and Labour
court with new
generators, 32-inch plasma television sets, satellite dishes
and
mercedes-Benz E280 luxury cars as well as utility vehicles including
Toyota
and Isuzu trucks.
"There is an established pattern of such "gifts,"
which are obviously
intended to ensure the loyalty of pro-Zanu (PF) judges
or win over those who
seek to maintain their impartiality," Human Rights
Watch said in its latest
report titled 'our hands Are Tied - Erosion of the
Rule of Law in Zimbabwe.'
"The RBZ itself is a potential litigant,"
said leading lawyer Harrison
Nkomo. "It may find itself before the same
judges who are recipients of its
gifts."
Beatrice Mtetwa,
president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ)
explained that while the
country's Bar Association supports proper
remuneration for judges,
"remuneration by the Reserve Bank compromises the
administration of
justice."
RBZ governor Gideon Gono has rejected criticism on the
gifts saying
the RBZ Act legally authorizes the central bank to assist
government
programs.
Master of the High Court Charles Nyatanga
claimed that the RBZ was
merely "[giving] judges essential tools to
necessitate them to work
effectively."
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=7192
November 12, 2008
By Junior
Sibanda
JOHANNESBURG - The 44th session of the African Commission for
Human and
People's Rights has ended in Nigeria with Zimbabwe, currently
experiencing
its worst political crisis in years, coming under immense
criticism for its
atrocious human rights record in recent years.
This
coincided with reports of a new wave of political violence and human
rights
violations that supporters of Robert Mugabe and the police have
unleashed on
opposition supporters and government critics.
Participants at the
session, who raised concern at the human rights
violations, which have
included torture and force, called on the African
Union and the Southern
African Development Community (SADC) to put pressure
on Zimbabwe's warring
political parties in order to reverse the violations.
"Noting that the
political crisis in Zimbabwe remains unresolved, we are
further concerned
that there are reports of renewed cases of politically
motivated violence
and collapse of the social service delivery system,"
reads a memo by
participants at the Abuja event.
The comment come hot on the heels of
Zimbabwean police violently dispersing
protests by Zimbabwe Students Union
and the National Constitutional Assembly
who demonstrated on Tuesday against
the deadlock over key cabinet posts, for
which SADC failed to find a
solution in South Africa this weekend.
"We call upon the AU and SADC to
impress upon Zimbabwean authorities to take
effective measures to stop all
forms of politically motivated violence and
allow for free political
activity, including the opening up of space for the
media and civil society.
We call on AU and SADC to remind Zimbabwe of its
obligations to regional and
international agreements and its current
violation of the human rights in
relation to continued detentions, threats
and gender biased violence,"
participants said.
Among others that criticized the Mugabe regime are the
chairperson of the
African Commission, Sanji Monageng and the Executive
Director of the Centre
for Democracy and Development, Mr Jibrin Ibrahima,
who echoed each other's
sentiments on Zimbabwe's worsening human rights
violations record and
mentioned it in the same breath with other rogue
states around the
continent.
Zimbabwe Exiles Forum director Gabriel
Shumba, who participated at the
African Commission on Human and People's
Rights in Abuja, condemned the
latest round of violence.
Shumba,
himself a victim of torture at the hands of state security agents
said, "The
continued violations of the rights to freedom of association and
assembly in
Zimbabwe should be condemned. In its latest report, the Zimbabwe
election
Support Network observes that despite the signing of the agreement
(between
Zimbabwe's political parties on September 15 and the initiation of
the talks
a violent clampdown of human rights defenders continues to take
place," he
said.
Zimbabwe, where criticism of the government is stifled, is rated
among the
world's worst violators of human rights particularly against
supporters of
the opposition and private media journalists. The country's
elections, the
latest being the June 27 presidential elections, have been
marred by
violence that the ruling party has used to maintain its
stranglehold on
power.
The human rights violations have continued
despite the parties signing a
power-sharing deal, which however has been
derailed by a deadlock over the
allocation of key cabinet posts as Mugabe
and Zanu-PF stubbornly attempt to
hold on to the major cabinet
berths.
Recently the police violently dispersed a demonstration of more
than 150
members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise and arrested 42 of them for
calling for a
resolution of the political impasse in Zimbabwe.
On
Tuesday police descended heavily on students who voiced their frustration
over the ongoing deadlock that has derailed the power-sharing deal that
former South African president Thabo Mbeki brokered between Zimbabwe's main
political parties.
http://www.zimonline.co.za
by Cuthbert
Nzou Thursday 13 November 2008
HARARE - Zimbabwe's
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
party meets on Friday to
plot its next move but analysts said insisting on
defying a directive by
regional leaders to form a unity government with
President Robert Mugabe
could do irreparable damage to the party's standing
in Africa.
Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders at an emergency
summit
in Johannesburg on Sunday ruled that Zimbabwe's rival political
leaders form
a power-sharing government "forthwith" to end a debilitating
political
stalemate gripping the country since Mugabe's controversial
re-election last
June.
The SADC, which brokered Zimbabwe's September 15
power-sharing
agreement, ruled that the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC and
Mugabe's ruling ZANU
PF co-manage the ministry of home affairs, in charge of
the police and whose
control had been a stumbling block to the formation of
a unity government.
Tsvangirai - who wants the MDC to have sole
control of home affairs -
immediately rejected the call to co-manage the
portfolio with ZANU PF and
said his party would not join the unity
government.
He will meet the top leadership of his party tomorrow
in Harare to
decide the next step forward.
But a leading
analyst, Eldred Masunungure, saw little viable option
for Tsvangirai, saying
failure to comply with the SADC ruling could leave
the opposition leader
shunned across Africa, the same way the late UNITA
leader Jonas Savimbi was
after rejecting African calls to end his rebel war
in Angola.
Masunugure, a political science professor at the University of
Zimbabwe
(UZ), said under the tough circumstances that the opposition finds
itself in
their best bet would be to backtrack on their earlier threat to
defy the
SADC and instead agree to join the unity government "under
protest".
"Given the resolution of the SADC - which was not a
recommendation but
a final decision - there are very few options for the
Tsvangirai-led MDC
other than to participate under protest," said
Masunungure.
"It appears to me that the SADC resolution brings the
Cabinet
formation impasse to finality and does not seem to leave room for an
appeal
process," he said.
On Sunday SADC executive secretary
Tomaz Salamao was emphatic that the
15-nation bloc wanted Zimbabwe's
power-sharing deal implemented immediately.
In his words the SADC
wanted a unity government quickly established in
Harare, "whether (all the
Zimbabwean) parties agreed or not".
Mugabe readily accepted the
summit ruling, not least because it
endorsed his plan to deny the MDC sole
control of home affairs while leaving
all the other security arms of
government including the army in the hands of
his ZANU PF
party.
Tsvangirai told journalists in Sandton, the venue of the
regional
summit, that he was "shocked and saddened" by the decision of SADC
and
suggested the African Union (AU) should step in to try to salvage the
power-sharing agreement.
However, another UZ political
scientist Michael Mhike saw little hope
in Tsvangirai taking his case to
Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital and seat
of the AU.
"Tsvangirai is now caught up between a rock and a hard place," Mhike
said.
"He has to be part of the all-inclusive government
because taking the
issue to the AU will not help his agenda. SADC is an
organ of the AU and the
AU will definitely adopt the same position reached
by the regional block."
Mhike said Tsvangirai should participate in
the unity government and
should try to continue arguing his case from within
the government.
Masunungure concurred: "Frankly, the road for
appeals is blocked. To
this extent, the MDC-Tsvangirai has to weigh its
options very carefully and
with sensitivity to its image and place within
SADC (and Africa)."
Masunungure, who is also head of the
Harare-based Mass Public Opinion
Institute political think-tank, said
Tsvangirai had to play his cards in
such a way that any attempts to stick
the detested Savimbi tag on him would
fail.
While the MDC and
Tsvangirai enjoy unquestioned popularity at home,
being likened to Savimbi
and his UNITA movement who were reviled in many
parts of Africa would
cripple attempts by the opposition to increase
pressure on Mugabe by pushing
for his isolation within Africa and beyond.
Mugabe's government has
already made strong attempts to draw parallels
between UNITA and the MDC by
accusing the opposition of recruiting and
training youths in neighbouring
Botswana to destabilise Zimbabwe.
The MDC and the Botswana
government have dismissed the charges as
unfounded and baseless, while
Gaborone has also asked the SADC to send a
fact-finding mission to Botswana
to probe the allegations.
Zimbabwe's power-sharing deal retains the
84-year old Mugabe as
president while making Tsvangirai prime minister and
Arthur Mutambara, who
heads a breakaway faction of the MDC, will be deputy
prime minister.
Analysts say only a government of national unity
could be able to
tackle Zimbabwe's unprecedented recession seen in the
world's highest
inflation of 231 million percent, 80 percent unemployment,
acute shortages
of food and basic commodities.
However
prolonged bickering between Mugabe and his two younger rivals
over
allocation of key Cabinet posts has led many analysts to ask for how
long
the unity government - if it is eventually established - will be able
to
survive the three principals' deep-seated animosity towards each other. -
ZimOnline
http://www.zimonline.co.za
by Simplicious
Chirinda Thursday 13 November 2008
HARARE - Zimbabwe's
National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) said on Wednesday
it will step up
public protests to demand a transitional authority to
re-write the country's
constitution and conduct free and fair elections.
The NCA - the country's
biggest political pressure group - says a
transitional authority and not a
government of national unity between the
country's main political parties
would be best placed to break Zimbabwe's
long running political and economic
crisis.
The group on Tuesday staged protests to demand establishment of a
transitional authority in the cities of Bulawayo, Masvingo, Mutare and
Gweru. But heavily armed police brutally crushed attempts by the group to
stage protests in Harare, arresting some of the group's activists and
injuring scores of others.
In a statement on Wednesday NCA, chairman
Lovemore Madhuku urged Zimbabweans
not to be deterred by police brutality
and promised his group would stage
more protests in the days to
come.
He said: "As a nation, we have to come to terms with the fact that
no amount
of international support to our struggle will come to bear without
local
pressure.
"As citizens we must take back what we have
resignedly outsourced: the right
to save our country from the jaws of the
brutal regime that has dominated us
for far too long."
Madhuku said
his organisation would work with other civic organisations to
try to
mobilise more protests despite the risk of a severe reprisals from
the
police, well known for their high-handed methods in dealing with
anti-government protests.
The NCA - which is a coalition of civil
societies, non-governmental
organisations and political parties - wants a
transitional government to run
the country, craft a new democratic
constitution for Zimbabwe and prepare
for free and fair elections to be
monitored by the international community.
The group is opposed to a
planned power-sharing government between the
ruling ZANU PF and opposition
MDC parties and says both President Robert
Mugabe and main MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai should be excluded from the
transitional authority.
The
push by the NCA for a transitional authority in Zimbabwe comes amid
increasing fears that a September 15 power-sharing deal between Mugabe,
Tsvangirai and head of a breakaway faction of the MDC, Arthur Mutambara,
could collapse.
The three rivals have failed to set up a unity
government outlined under the
power-sharing deal because they cannot agree
on the allocation of the most
powerful ministries, especially the home
affairs ministry that oversees the
police.
An emergency summit of the
regional Southern African Development Community
(SADC) group called to break
the deadlock over ministerial posts resolved
that a unity government be
formed "forthwith" and that the home affairs
ministry be co-chaired by ZANU
PF and the Tsvangirai-led MDC.
Tsvangirai rejected the decision and his
party's national executive and
council will meet on Friday to decide the way
forward while Mugabe has since
said he would "as soon as possible"
constitute a government.
Mugabe said he would invite Tsvangirai to submit
names of members of his
party to be appointed into the 31-member Cabinet.
The opposition leader is
expected to decline the offer. - ZimOnline
VOA
By Sylvia Manika, Carole Gombakomba & Irwin
Chifera
Harare and Washington
12 November
2008
Cholera is spreading in Harare and outlying areas,
independent health
sources said on Wednesday, with the death toll from the
epidemic rising to
at least 100 with the country's virtually collapsed
health care system hard
put to cope with the outbreaks.
Experts
warned that until the causes of the cholera outbreak are addressed,
in
particular the lack of safe drinking water and deterioration of
sanitation
systems, the epidemic will continue, claiming more lives.
A nurse at a Harare
hospital speaking on condition of anonymity said her
institution was without
rehydration fluids for two days until a consignment
of about 100 drips from
the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF,
arrived on
Wednesday.
Correspondent Sylvia Manika reported from Harare.
Dr.
Douglas Gwatidzo, chairman of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for
Human
Rights, told reporter Carole Gombakomba of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe
that
with the disease on the rise the Harare region and drugs in short
supply,
the death toll could mount.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's justice system has
become the latest victim of the
water shortages that have beset the capital
for months: the Harare High
Court suspended sittings due to a lack of water
at its offices in Samora
Machel Avenue, a main
thoroughfare.
Members of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights were
turned away as they
tried to file an urgent chamber application for the
release of opposition
activists.
Communications Officer Kumbirai
Mafunda of the legal defense group expressed
the concern that the closure
was tantamount to denying justice
Correspondent Irwin Chifera of VOA's Studio
7 for Zimbabwe reported.
http://www.voanews.com
By Jonga Kandemiiri
Washington
12 November
2008
Zimbabwean consumers are blaming the breakdown in the
political
power-sharing process for a major surge this week in prices of
basic goods
and services.
A loaf of bread now costs around Z$400,000,
double last week's price of
Z$200,000. Two kilograms of sugar cost Z$1
million and a kilo of maize meal,
Zimbabwe's staple food, goes for one U.S.
dollar or Z$400,000 at the current
parallel market exchange
rate.
However, in the frenzied market in transactions carried out by
check,
someone holding a U.S. hundred dollar bill could receive Z$5
quadrillion - a
five followed by 15 zeros.
Speculators call such
transactions "burning money," using checks in
far-fetched amounts to buy,
for instance, phone cards which they sell on the
street for scarce cash
notes.
Consumers are only allowed to withdraw Z$500,000 from their
bank accounts,
but as financial institutions allow larger withdrawals for
emergencies,
those trying to beat the system present bogus invoices from
funeral homes
pleading the necessity of more cash for a
burial.
Others have tried the more direct expedient of bribing bank
tellers.
Such extreme financial measures are driven by hyperinflation.
The annual
rate of increase in the cost of living was last officially
measured at 231
million percent. But the prominent U.S. economist Steve
Hanke recently
pegged it at 2.79 quintillion percent.
Consumer Alice
Mutengu of Harare told reporter Jonga Kandemiiri of VOA's
Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that many people have felt themselves compelled to
engage in
illegal activities because of the desperate economic situation in
the
country.
|
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has reinstated the Real Time Gross Settlement System transactions and internal bank transfers while reducing the foreign currency surrender requirements for foreign currency shops.
Banks are now required to enforce the "Know Your Customer" requirements whose weak enforcement had encouraged indiscipline.
Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate - already the world's highest - now stands at 231,000,000%.
Suspension of the RTGS had been motivated by widespread abuse by a "breed of selfish and unrelenting money launderers and speculators" who include individuals, corporate entities and some banking institutions, RBZ Governor Dr Gideon Gono said last night.
Among measures announced last night are:
Foreign currency shops that are able to raise external lines of credit will now only sell 5 percent of their earnings to the central bank while banks that on-lend their own resources to these shops will be entitled to 2,5 percent of the shops’ gross proceeds.
All banking institutions will now be required to keep their minimum capital requirements in foreign currency, and will be required to demonstrate the adequacy of their foreign currency-denominated capital bases on an on-going basis.
http://www.iol.co.za
Basildon Peta
November 13 2008
at 06:29AM
Robert Mugabe secretly pleaded with his arch-rival,
Morgan Tsvangirai,
to join him in a unity Zimbabwean government after
regional leaders
instructed the leaders this week to form one
immediately.
But Tsvangirai again declined and refused to name
members of his
Movement for Democratic Change to be appointed to a new unity
cabinet.
Tsvangirai earlier rejected a Southern African Development
Community (SADC)
leaders' resolution to "co-manage" the crucial ministry of
home affairs with
Mugabe's Zanu-PF.
Upon arrival back in
Zimbabwe on Monday after the SADC summit in
Johannesburg, Mugabe vowed to
appoint a cabinet unilaterally this week or
next, but has since been holding
back.
Sources said Mugabe had sent a senior
emissary, Simon Khaya Moyo, a
former cabinet minister and Zimbabwe's
ambassador to South Africa, to try to
persuade Tsvangirai to come home
immediately to co-operate in the forming of
a new government in line with
the SADC's recommendation.
But Tsvangirai, who has remained in
South Africa since the summit,
turned down Mugabe's plea.
Sources said Tsvangirai's stance meant that Mugabe could now proceed
to name
a cabinet immediately.
Some observers believe he might wait for the
MDC's national council
meeting on Friday, hoping that Tsvangirai will be
overruled by a majority
within his party and forced to join the unity
government. A cabinet would
then be named next week.
"Arrogance
is Mugabe's hallmark and he could have proceeded to appoint
the cabinet
without Tsvangirai soon after his hand was strengthened by
SADC's decision.
But he also realises the futility of proceeding without
Tsvangirai and hence
his uncharacteristic effort of reaching out to him on
Monday," said a
Zimbabwean government source.
A cabinet without Tsvangirai would
probably guarantee Zimbabwe's
collapse as donors and investors are unlikely
to deal with Mugabe alone.
Even South Africa's R300-million pledge to help
resuscitate Zimbabwe's
mainstay agricultural sector was offered on
conditional that a unity
government was formed first.
Neither
Tsvangirai nor Moyo could be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Observers believe it is unlikely that the MDC's national council will
overrule Tsvangirai and ask him to join the unity government
Eddie Cross, who is in charge of the MDC-T faction's policy
formulation
department, warned this week that the MDC would have to make a
tough
decision.
In a circular entitled "What Next?" he said the decision
on whether to
proceed with the unity deal would "be the most difficult
decision for the
MDC since we were formed in 1999".
"This time
the consequences of rejection of a flawed deal for our
people will be
immediate and terrible," said Cross, warning that up to a
million
Zimbabweans could perish of hunger.
Zimbabwe's currency is
worthless, with inflation officially at
231-million percent but calculated
by the private sector at eight billion
percent.
The World Food
Programme said this week it had fed two million
Zimbabweans in October, and
expected to feed four million this month. It
warned that it would not be
able to continue the feeding programme because
of a lack of
donations.
Tsvangirai berated the SADC leaders over their "lack of
courage to
look Mugabe in the face and tell him that he is wrong". He has
called for
the establishment of an "eminent persons group" to salvage the
unity deal
signed on September 15.
This article was
originally published on page 4 of The Mercury on
November 13,
2008
http://english.ohmynews.com
Health delivery system in dire
straits
Nelson G. Katsande
Published 2008-11-13 11:24
(KST)
Nursing staff at most government hospitals are taking advantage of
the
collapse in the health delivery system to line up their pockets.
Patients
already hard hit by the acute shortage of medicines are reportedly
paying
nurses in return for preferential treatment.
Patients already
struggling to meet the high costs of treatment are forced
to fork out large
sums of money in payments to nurses in order to receive
treatment. The
poorly paid nurses are creating artificial shortages by
hoarding medicines
which they in turn clandestinely sell to patients.
Others are reported to
have opened mini pharmacies at their homes where they
refer patients to
purchase medicines at exorbitant prices. The shortage of
medicines at
government hospitals is so dire that thousands of patients are
turned away
without getting treatment.
The nurses are said to be working in cahoots
with some doctors. At
Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare, the largest medical
center in Zimbabwe,
nurses are selling food stuffs to patients as the
hospital struggles to feed
the patients owing to severe shortages of basic
food stuffs. Patients lucky
enough to be admitted at the hospital are
advised to bring their own food
and linen.
Even the dead are feeling
the pinch. Officials at some local authorities are
reportedly refusing to
issue burial orders unless they are paid large sums
by relatives of the
deceased. Burial orders are documents issued in order to
facilitate the
burial process.
As fears of cholera outbreak heightens in most parts of
the country as
people drink contaminated water, the number of deaths at home
by patients
turned away from hospitals has increased.
The government
refuses to acknowledge that it has failed to provide basic
care to millions
of people and blames sanctions and western countries for
the worsening
situation.
Almost two months after the signing of the power sharing deal
between
President Robert Mugabe and his main rival Morgan Tsvangirai, the
people are
still waiting to see if the deal will bring any joy. So far, the
parties to
the deal have failed to reach a consensus on the sharing of
ministerial
posts.
Zimbabwe is at a precipice as the country faces
its worst economic woes
since attaining independence from Britain in 1980.
Mugabe has repeatedly
blamed the former colonial ruler for his country's
problems and stifling in
the country's internal affairs.
Despite
signing the power sharing deal, Mugabe still refers to his rival as
"a
British puppet." There has been growing pressure for Mugabe to relinquish
power after 28 years. Analysts blame Mugabe for ruling Zimbabwe with an iron
fist and his refusal to acknowledge that the people have lost confidence in
his leadership.
In the March presidential elections which were won by
Morgan Tsvangirai,
Mugabe conceded defeat but denied the opposition outright
victory. He called
for an election re run in which he won after the
opposition pulled out.
His supporters and war veterans have unleashed a
reign of terror with
thousands of opposition supporters killed in the
aftermath of the March
presidential ballot.
The country is faced with
severe food shortages, high unemployment levels
and political instability.
Millions of Zimbabweans have sought sanctuary in
neighbouring countries. And
those that have remained in their native country
continue to suffer at the
hands of a man who has been branded a "dictator"
the world over.
http://www.nehandaradio.com
12 November 2008
By Fortune
Tazvida
History has proved time and time again that the length of time a
brutal
dictator gets to stay in power is dependent on the threshold of
oppression
tolerated by the oppressed people. Zimbabwe has reached such a
threshold
were it is crystal clear and obvious elections, talks and
condemnation have
done nothing to convince the Zanu PF elite their time is
up.
This year alone over 180 opposition activists were assasinated and
over 10
000 displaced from their homes in a brutal campaign masterminded by
Emerson
Mnangagwa at the helm of the Joint Operations Command. Previous
elections
have led to the deaths of hundreds more MDC activists. The
Gukurahundi
Massacres of the eighties serve as another dark reminder of the
propensity
for violence and murder exibited by Mugabe and his
regime.
What is our response as Zimbabweans to this group of geriatric,
blood
sucking vampires? We have seen the consequences of mortgaging our fate
into
the hands of foreigners like Thabo Mbeki and the entire timid SADC
region.
Mugabe and his lot never sat down with Ian Smith and the Rhodesian
regime
before 1980 to share power in a new Zimbabwe. We had a complete break
from
the past despite the present day betrayal.
How is it that a few
hundred people in Zanu PF have managed to control the
police, army,
intelligence and prison agencies to such an extent that the
human beings
working for those departments have lost all human decency and
taken part in
violence and murder. While it is true money is the root of all
evil and
financial rewards have bought some of this loyalty, all Zimbabweans
are
being affected or have relatives affected by this crisis.
Targeted
sanctions, elections, demonstrations, unity talks, regional and
international condemnation have all proved futile in the fight against
Mugabe's regime. As a people we always shy away from discussing the one
option that clearly Zanu PF understands and that is military action. Mugabe
and his colleagues have grown accustomed to their monopoly of violence and
they remain aware Zimbabweans are peace loving people.
But my fellow
citizens, I ask you today, what use is it to be peace loving
when your
mother is going to die of hunger tomorrow? What use is it to be
peace loving
when your sister will die in a hospital because they did not
have drugs to
treat a simple headache? What use is it to be peace loving
when your brother
gets killed because he voted for the party of his choice?
Before
independence Zimbabweans were confronted with a similar choice on how
to
deal with the rascist Rhodesian government. They chose war for
freedom.
It is almost shameful we tetter from one summit to another
putting faith in
regional leaders whose relevance expired long ago. The MDC
for all their
courage have limitations on what they can do as a democratic
movement trying
to operate within the law. We as Zimbabweans should now
shape our own rules
out of our suffering and say, you know what we have had
enough of Zanu PF
and should get rid of them by all means
necessary.
Zanu PF accused Botswana of training insurgents to destabilize
the country.
These ludicrous claims although untrue were an interesting
betrayal of what
Zanu PF actually fears might happen. This should be the
route we take as
Zimbabweans. Zanu PF does not have a monopoly on violence
and Zimbabweans
should now rise to the challenge and put up a
fight.
We now have a reputation worldwide as the cowards who can't remove
an 84
year old geriatric and his cabal of bootlickers. My fellow countrymen
how
many are willing to join this fight? It is a good fight for which good
will
ultimately prevail over evil.
VOA
The following is an ediorial reflecting the views of the US
Government
12 November
2008
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, caught with its hand in the
proverbial cookie
jar, has returned more than $7 million it confiscated from
an account
intended for groups fighting AIDS and other diseases
there.
Threatened with a possible cut-off of other aid funds, bank
officials
reversed themselves and repaid the account without saying where
the money
went. In the future, though, aid recipients under the Global Fund
to Fight
AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will be able to use U.S. dollars for
all
local transactions, thereby eliminating foreign exchange and loss of
value
from the country's massive inflation, now measured around 231 million
percent.
That's welcome news for humanitarian aid groups and the
people they serve.
Zimbabwe has one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics, a
collapsing health
care system, and a serious and growing hunger crisis. The
country's banking
problems and cash shortages are severely hampering
international aid efforts
to feed the hungry and care for the
sick.
The government of Robert Mugabe has made things worse by treating
the
foreign aid accounts as a source of the hard currency it badly needs to
fund
operations and remain in power. Besides the Global Fund, other aid
groups
have had money on account in the Reserve Bank frozen or diverted for
possible government use. This comes on top of severe restrictions that the
Mugabe government placed on aid groups this summer during the presidential
elections because of their alleged political interference.
The
Reserve Bank's reversal may be too little and too late, however, to
preserve
the government's access to the aid accounts. "We do not want to see
the
people of Zimbabwe who need this money disadvantaged," said U.S.
Ambassador
James McGee. The United States and other foreign donors will now
be looking
for other means to fund hunger, medical and other humanitarian
projects,
possibly through accounts in banks outside Zimbabwe. The U.S. is
committed
to helping the people of Zimbabwe in any way it can.
http://www.zimbabwejournalists.com
13th
Nov 2008 04:09 GMT
By Jon Lee
Anderson
NINE hundred years ago, at a site on a high plateau north of the
Limpopo
River called Great Zimbabwe, Shona kings built stone palaces where
they
lived in splendid isolation from their subjects, with absolute
authority
over their means to sustain life-cattle herds, land, and the gold
that came
out of the earth.
In the nineteen-sixties, members of a
liberation movement in what was then
Rhodesia, among them Robert Mugabe,
adopted Great Zimbabwe's name to refer
to the notional state they were
fighting for.
Today, Mugabe can be said to be the owner of the riches
that remain in the
nation of Zimbabwe. After twenty-eight years, he remains
in power--Zimbabwe's
only President since the end of whiteminority rule, in
1980. His nephew Leo,
therefore, leads a cushioned life. He is an
entrepreneur and has stakes in
several companies, among them a mobile-phone
network. He is a director of
Zimbabwe Defense Industries, which purchases
the weaponry for his uncle's
Army-most of it, these days, from
China.
He also controls at least one large farm that had been seized from
its white
owners. In the nineties, Leo earned notoriety for his alleged role
in
securing kickbacks, on behalf of his uncle and other officials, in the
construction of Harare International Airport. In 2005, he was arrested for
the contraband export and sale of government-owned food, but the charges
were withdrawn for lack of evidence. (Leo said the allegations in both cases
were unfounded.) That year, he was a candidate for Parliament for the
Zimbabwe African National UnionPatriotic Front, known as ZANU-P.F., the
ruling party. He won in a landslide.
Earlier this year, Leo was added
to a sanctions list first imposed by the
United States in 2003 against
Robert Mugabe and members of his government.
The sanctions included a travel
ban and the freezing of foreign assets, and
also prohibit Americans from
doing business with those on the list. Leo was
also named on a sanctions
list maintained by the European Union, for his
arms-dealing activities. The
new sanctions came in response to a wave of
terror that Robert Mugabe had
unleashed in the country's Presidential
campaign. More than a hundred and
fifty opposition supporters were murdered,
many were raped, and thousands of
people were beaten or tortured, often
after being herded into so-called
reëducation camps.
Because of the violence, Mugabe's rival, Morgan
Tsvangirai, whose Movement
for Democratic Change, or M.D.C., had won a
slender majority in the country's
first round of voting in March, dropped
out of the race and went into
hiding. In the runoff vote on June 27th,
Mugabe was unopposed and was
quickly declared the winner.
Leo Mugabe
works from an office building he owns in Harare, where I met him
this
summer. His brand-new silver Toyota Land Cruiser Amazon was parked
outside.
He is a slim, goateed man of fifty-one, and was dressed in a dark
tailored
suit. On the wall behind his desk hung a map of Zimbabwe made out
of a
patchwork of animal skins. His secretary, a young woman wearing a tight
skirt and jacket, very high heels, and a great deal of jewelry, sat down
with us. Her hair was arranged in red-dyed cornrows, and as Leo spoke she
scribbled everything down on a notepad, expressing approval whenever he made
a point, like a personal cheerleader. He was in a good mood, emanating
confidence and optimism over Zimbabwe's future.
"Have you seen anyone
beaten up since you've been here?" he asked. "There
was less violence here
than in Nigeria! And we all know why Zimbabwe's
violence is being
exaggerated-it's about the fortune in the land. We have
certain resources
here, such as nickel, gold, and platinum. I think
Zimbabweans now understand
that they are suffering because of sanctions by
the United States, Great
Britain, and the Europeans." Otherwise, Zimbabwe's
prospects were
excellent-his uncle had been distributing computers to rural
schools, for
example. "In a few years, rural Zimbabwe will be
computer-literate. We are a
nation which is moving, and these children will
understand what empowerment
really means."
That week, however, the inflation rate in Zimbabwe had
officially reached
eleven million per cent, the highest in the world;
analysts later reckoned
it to have been two hundred and thirty million per
cent. Eighty per cent of
Zimbabweans were out of work. Chronic malnutrition
was prevalent, and
starvation was spreading in the countryside. Close to two
million
Zimbabweans depended for survival on food handouts from
international aid
agencies. Twenty per cent of the population was infected
with H.I.V./AIDS.
Zimbabwe's life expectancy is forty-four years for men,
forty-three for
women. But Leo Mugabe scoffed at the idea that the situation
was dire.
"People are going about their business," he said. "No one is
starving-they
are driving nice cars! As a Christian, though, I think it is a
challenge by
God, and the attention being drawn to Zimbabwe is maybe to
highlight that we
are the new people of Israel, and that we have our own
Moses." I understood
"Moses" to be his uncle. His secretary greeted the
analogy with an
exclamation of delight.
Under Robert Mugabe's
leadership, in 2000 his most militant supporters-many
of them veterans of
the seventies civil war-began forcibly occupying the
country's five thousand
white-owned commercial farms, with the help of armed
gangs and, frequently,
ZANU-P.F. officials. By almost all accounts, these
actions precipitated the
country's economic decline. Leo disagreed. "We have
no regrets-he has none,
and I have none," he said.
"We have taken the land," Leo went on. "So
what is the next move? The next
move is the mines, the minerals. We know we
are very rich-without the
British or the Americans. Yes, they invested, but
if we have to we will go
and take over the mines, too." Zimbabwe has the
world's second-largest
platinum reserves and is relatively rich in other
minerals. The country's
mining industry accounts for some forty per cent of
its export income. In
2006, Robert Mugabe threatened to nationalize the
mines by assigning
Zimbabwe a controlling fifty-one-per-cent stake in them.
Negotiations with
the mine owners, which include South Africa's Implats and
Anglo Platinum,
and the United Kingdom's Rio Tinto, have dragged on ever
since.
"Rio Tinto can stay there in London, but their mines and their
equipment
will stay here. Is that what they want? Because that's where they
are
headed," Leo said. "We can give the mines to the black Zimbabweans, the
people who work them now," he added. "We are not going to go back on the
land issue, and the wealth that lies underneath the land will remain ours,
too." ----
Jon Lee Anderson works for The New Yorker, where this
article was first
published.
http://www.mcst.gov.bw
Thursday,
November 13, 2008 .Vol No.214
By Potso
Thari
FRANCISTOWN - Almost two months ago Zimbabweans had their hopes raised
when
three political parties signed a power sharing deal, but all those
hopes
seem to have been shattered.
The deal was signed by the Zimbabwe
African National Union- Patriotic Front
(ZANU-PF) leader, Mr Robert Mugabe,
the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai and
the breakaway MDC leader, Mr Arthur
Mutambara.
In the deal, Mr Mugabe
became the president while Mr Tsvangarai emerged as
the Prime Minister and
Mr Mutambara got the Deputy Prime Minister portfolio.
However, the hopes of
the Zimbabwean people has crashed as nothing positive
has come out of the
power sharing deal yet except for more poverty and
escalating inflation,
which is said to be at 231 million per cent.
The two parties could not agree
on the selection of cabinet as they both
want some key ministries especially
that of Home affairs, which oversees the
police.
To make matters worse,
the special Southern African Development Community
(SADC) summit held in
South Africa on Sunday failed to resolve the current
political
impasse.
The summit issued a communiqué calling the Zimbabwean rivals to
share the
disputed key ministry of Home Affairs, but the MDC rejected the
proposal as
unworkable.
The impasse has made Zimbabweans lose hope on the
agreement as they believe
SADC has failed Zimbabweans.
BOPA took to the
streets of Francistown to gather what individuals had to
say.
A women,
who preferred anonymity, but travels regularly from Zimbabwe to
Francistown
to buy commodities said she supported the Botswana government's
view that
the only solution to the current impasse was to call for fresh
elections and
let the Zimbabweans choose their leader.
"With the current disagreements
between the two leaders, I do not see any
positive results coming out of it
more so that they do not trust each other.
How do we expect them to work
together after this, I do not see it
happening. I think we Zimbabweans are
the only people who can break the
impasse if they call for fresh
presidential elections which to me are the
only solution now," she
said.
Two friends, waiting to board a passenger train to Gaborone to look for
piece jobs, Ms Tendai Moyo and Ms Shirley Farai said SADC has failed the
Zimbabweans as their meetings failed to end the current political
instability in Zimbabwe.
They told BOPA that only fresh presidential
elections can end the end the
saga as Zimbabweans will be able to choose
their own leader.
They called for the monitoring of elections by
international bodies to avoid
the recurrence of violence that characterised
both the March elections and
the run-off in June.
The same sentiments
were echoed by Mr Isaac Dube, 34, who expressed
disappointment over the
regional bloc, saying it cannot help the people of
Zimbabwe. He said the
deadlock on the talks of key ministries which both
parties want, brings more
pain and hunger while inflation continues to rise.
He said when the peace
deal was signed, he had hoped that the political
situation in his home
country would improve and his trips to Botswana will
be minimal and in the
long run come to an end as his country's economy would
have improved.
A
31-year-old woman from Bulawayo who preferred anonymity said both leaders
should go away as they do not have the interests of Zimbabweans at
heart.
She believes that if they did, they could have long resolved the issue
of
cabinet and the living standards in Zimbabwe would be improving. She said
she comes to Francistown almost once a month to buy basic necessities as it
is much cheaper than buying in Zimbabwe where they have to use foreign
currency.
Until the two parties reach an agreement in the issue of key
ministries it
seems the current situation in Zimbabwe will prevail. BOPA
http://www.zimonline.co.za
by Own
Correspondent Thursday 13 November
2008
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa on Wednesday
called on the European Union (EU)
and the United States (US) to help
Zimbabwe develop its agriculture and
attract investment rather than impose
sanctions that have hurt ordinary
people.
"The EU, the United States
and other countries should begin to support the
farmers to plant, to get
fertilisers, to get business people to invest in
Zimbabwe," South Africa's
foreign affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma
told reporters in the
Belgian capital city, Brussels, where the EU is
headquartered.
"It
will help the people, they will get jobs, they will get money, they will
be
able to plant, they will be able to have food and not only to rely on
aid,"
she added.
Last month South Africa said it had set aside a whooping R300
million to
assist Zimbabwe's crippled agricultural sector.
The US and
EU have since 2002 maintained visa bans and asset freezes on
President
Robert Mugabe and senior officials of his government following
controversial
elections and human rights abuses. US sanctions also bar
Americans from
engaging in any transactions or dealings with them.
"They (the sanctions)
hurt the ordinary people . . . if you have sanctions
against the government
then obviously investors will not want to deal with
that government,
tourists get frightened," Dlamini-Zuma said, adding; "They
hurt the people
that deserve the help, they hurt the whole people."
Once a net food
exporter, Zimbabwe has seen its agriculture fortunes plunge
along with an
imploding economy largely blamed on Mugabe's populist
nationalist policies
such as the land seizures and plans to forcibly grab
major shareholding in
foreign-owned companies, especially mines.
But the ageing Mugabe, who has
held power since independence in 1980 instead
blames Zimbabwe's misfortunes
on bad weather and Western sanctions he says
have crimpled the importation
of fertilizers, seed, and other farming
inputs. - ZimOnline
Email: jag@mango.zw; justiceforagriculture@zol.co.zw
Please
send any material for publication in the Open Letter Forum to
jag@mango.zw with "For Open Letter Forum" in the
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1.
Cathy Buckle - Green snake
Dear JAG,
Going to visit a friend in
trouble this week I saw a very large green snake
trying to cross a main road.
I was on a service road which ran parallel to
the highway and watched in
horror at the events that followed. The snake
must have already been hit by a
car because as hard as it tried, it couldn't
get off the road.
It
raised its head and neck and tried to lunge forward but barely moved at
all.
Thrashing from side to side, tongue flicking, the snake managed to
creep
forward a little towards the bush on the roadside but it wasn't enough
and
freedom and safety was so near and yet so far. Suddenly a stream of
cars
came by and one hit the snake full on. A gruesome end was inevitable
and
intervention was impossible. Later, when I passed the same place again,
the
snake had gone but a handful of people were standing around looking
at
something on the roadside and the assumption was obvious.
This is
exactly how it feels to be in Zimbabwe this November 2008. No matter
how hard
we try, we just can't move forward. Change and democracy is so near
and yet
so far away.
People have almost given up hope of ever getting to the
other side of the
road to freedom and safety in Zimbabwe's journey. It's been
eight years
since farms were seized, Title Deeds rendered worthless and
commercial
agriculture destroyed. It's been five years since independent
newspapers,
radio stations and television channels were closed down. It's
been four
years since we've been able to buy fuel from filling stations and
nearly two
years since we've been able to buy food in supermarkets. It's been
seven and
a half months since we voted to change the government of
Zimbabwe.
Throughout all these years the assault on opposition politics,
private
businesses, charities, professionals and all sectors of civil society
has
been unrelenting as time and time again we've been hit head on but still
we
struggle desperately to reach the end.
It's a shocking thing to
admit but most of us don't know how many
Zimbabweans have died in the
struggle to change the governance of the
country. A conservative estimate
must be of at least seven hundred people
who have been killed in political
violence in the last eight years. Multiple
thousands have been arrested and
incarcerated for their political
associations or for daring to protest.
Included amongst these are the
outstandingly brave women of WOZA whose
leaders Jenni and Magodonga were
finally granted bail this week having spent
3 weeks in prison after being
arrested during a peaceful demonstration in
Bulawayo. We also don't know how
many Zimbabweans have had no choice but to
leave the country since the year
2000. A conservative estimate must be of at
least four million people living
in self imposed exile in the region and
abroad.
As I write this letter the leaders of the Southern African
Development
Community are about to meet, again, to discuss Zimbabwe. We
wonder if they
know that ordinary people here have no food - no maize meal,
flour or rice.
If they know that it is our main growing season but ordinary
people have no
seed to plant and no fertilizer for the soil. If they know we
are forbidden
from drawing enough of our own money out of the bank to buy
more than 2
loaves of bread and are having to buy imported food in US dollars
and South
African Rand. Do they know that hospitals have no medicines and
that nurses
earn enough to buy only two loaves of bread a month. Do they know
that
children at most rural government schools have had no lessons for
many
months and have not written public examinations?
Perhaps the SADC
leaders do know all these things and will find the courage
to insist at last
that the voices of the ordinary people must be heard and
respected. We voted
in March, chose new leaders and have been writhing on
the road for too
long.
Until next time, thanks for reading, love
cathy.
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2.
Eddie Cross - What next?
Dear JAG,
As you all know the SADC
summit took place on Sunday, 5 heads of State
attended with officials and
Ministers representing those that could not
attend. They deliberated for 12
hours and then issued a communiqué that
basically endorsed the position
adopted by Mr. Mbeki and then the SADC
Troika. The most significant part of
the whole exercise was that all 14
States supported the decisions reached,
there were no disputing views.
It was a minor political victory for Mr.
Mugabe, Mr. Mbeki and the Troika.
It was a major failure of
leadership.
The final decision that the two main parties should share
control of the
Ministry of Home Affairs and that the rest of the power
sharing deal should
stand as agreed by Mr. Mbeki, is neither rational nor
workable. It ignores
the political realities in Zimbabwe, reduces the chance
of success for the
new Government and could lead to the total collapse of the
deal if the MDC
decides to reject the package.
In a rerun of the
Kenyan situation where regional leaders striving for
compromise, imposed a
solution on Kenya that is a hydra headed monster,
barely capable of walking
let alone running the country, the SADC States
have taken the easy route out
and in doing so have run the risk of creating
a failed State in Zimbabwe and
unleashing uncontrollable violence and
destruction.
But take it or
leave it, it's a done deal and an appeal to the AU or the UN
- both
themselves dysfunctional institutions, will change little. This is
the end of
the road for negotiations.
At this stage the future of Zimbabwe is
totally in the hands of the MDC and
Morgan Tsvangirai. If we accept what has
been decided and go into the new
government on this basis, we will be
committing ourselves to a near
impossible task. It will be up to us to turn
the economy around, establish
conditions for free and fair elections in two
years time and to try and heal
the country, now more deeply divided than
ever.
In this exercise neither Zanu PF nor the Mutambara group have
anything to
offer, except to try and not be spoilers. They bring nothing to
the table
except failure and corruption and unrepresentative participation in
the
institutions of the State. Not one of the Mutambara representatives in
the
new government will be elected while the great majority of the
Zanu
representatives hold their seats through intimidation and
rigging.
The problems facing any new government are staggering - GDP has
collapsed to
less than half of what it was 10 years ago, the local currency
is worthless
and cannot be used for ordinary transactions any more, thousands
are dying
weekly from starvation, malnutrition and disease. 95% of all
teachers in the
public sector are not working, 3 million children are out of
school and
hospitals and clinics are either closed or non-functional. Food
supplies
have run out and everywhere people are desperately looking for
whatever food
is available.
The news today that the aid agencies
feeding the majority of the people will
run out of food in January and are
cutting allocations by half in December
to try and reach 4 million of the
most affected people. The dilemma of the
MDC is that if they walk away from
the SADC deal they will leave ordinary
Zimbabweans naked in a blizzard that
will offer only death or flight.
The tragedy of this situation is that Mr
Mugabe and Zanu PF do not give a
damn - they want the deal to fail and think
that they can in fact do "very
well" on what is left of the Zimbabwe economy.
They do not worry in any
sense about the impact of the final collapse of
Zimbabwe on our neighbours.
They are only concerned about one thing - how
to hold onto their total
control of the State and thereby protect their
standard of living and
personal security.
The tragedy of the SADC
summit is that it is clear that after all these
years and numerous
declarations of commitment to democratic principles and
to all the recognised
human and political rights, when it comes to applying
those lofty principles
to a real time political crisis in their midst, they
mean nothing.
But
that is the reality of African politics at this stage in our history.
Not
pretty or easy, but the stark reality.
So what do we do? Our National
Council will meet this week and receive a
report from the leadership together
with recommendations on the way forward.
It will be the most difficult
decision for the MDC since we were formed in
1999. Unlike our compatriots, we
care, we care deeply for the plight of
Zimbabweans - all of them affected by
the collapse and crisis created by
failed leadership, greed and
corruption.
This time the consequences of rejection of a flawed deal for
our people will
be immediate and terrible. Morgan stated in Johannesburg that
a million
people face death from starvation if the SADC brokered deal
collapses. He
was not exaggerating.
Eddie Cross
12th November
2008
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3.
Jerry Erasmus
Dear JAG,
Clifford Mashiri has hit the nail on the
head. Nothing is going to change
whilst Bob & his henchman are around.
They are playing games to buy time.
Mugabe has never been serious about
anything unless he can have his cake &
eat it. The rest of the African
leaders should adopt the stance of Botswana
& call for fresh elections
supervised by the SADC & the international
community. This is what Mugabe
& his cronies do not want as they know that
they will lose miserably. One
would hope that Morgan does not capitulate
with the devil or be duped into
some deal that will not be worth the paper
it is written on. Many lives have
already been sacrificed & the atrocities
are still continuing. Why should
there be power sharing? This is so that
Mugabe & his murderers can get
away with their evil deeds. Morgan should not
make any deals. All these
meetings they have been having is to pander to
Mugabe. Morgan must stand
firm. He has the support of the majority of
Zimbabweans. Unless Morgan has
true power no meaningful aid will be
forthcoming & neither will there be
any recognition from the international
community. We see that SA is giving
R300million for agriculture. This money
is going to the thieves &
murderers that destroyed agriculture in the first
place, & caused
thousands of farm workers & their families to loose their
jobs &
their homes! The money will disappear just as so much money & aid
has
done before! It would have been better spent if it was used to benefit
the
people who need it the most.
Jerry Erasmus, New
Zealand.
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4.
Joe Whaley - LEST WE FORGET!
Dear JAG,
On the eve of International
Armistice day, when the world remembers its
fallen, I feel very strongly that
we need to remember those of our
compatriots callously murdered by the
"regime", in the ongoing war mounted
by the government of Zimbabwe against
its own citizens.
The murderers of Terry are seen in the background of
the photo callously
watching the `Police' do their investigations, and these
gentlemen still
roam free in Zimbabwe protected by the sinister machinations
of the
government.
May his memory remain untarnished with us. RIP
Terry.
With respects to Martin Olds, Gloria Olds, Dave Stevens, Alan Dunn
et al,
victims of the Zimbabwe Holocaust.
Joe
Whaley
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5.
S Taylor
Dear JAG,
Whatever is decided at any talks about talks
about power sharing between the
MDC and zanu-pf/Mugabe, it must be borne in
mind that the whole issue is
sordid, as Mugabe lost an election by an
extremely wide margin and shouldn't
even be in the scheme of things - why is
everyone so dead scared of the guy?
He's a failed politician - or is this the
expected norm for Africa? Africans
do not seem to WANT to be part of the
global village - it is all "one for
one and none for all" - I said long ago
that Mugabe would add Zimbabwe to
the scrapheap that is Africa - and he
hasn't failed me!!! But shortly we
will see a great revival - Mugabe is in
the final chapter of his big
failing; no legacy to pass on must be rather
embarrassing - "The year of the
Peoples' Storm", "The Year of The Peoples'
Power", "free medical for minimum
wage earners", "housing for all by the year
2,000","free primary education
for all" must ring in his ears like a
nightmare - or does he REALLY care? I
do!
S.
Taylor.
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All
letters published on the open Letter Forum are the views and opinions of
the
submitters, and do not represent the official viewpoint of Justice
for
Agriculture.