International Herald Tribune
The Associated PressPublished: October 31,
2007
ACCRA, Ghana: European officials have invited all members of the
African
Union to an EU-African summit in Portugal in December, Portuguese
officials
said Wednesday, a confirmation that a controversial welcome has
been
extended to Zimbabwe.
Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amando
told reporters in Ghana's capital,
Accra, that all A.U. member states had
been asked to attend.
"Zimbabwe is a member of the A.U., and since the
invitation does not exclude
any member country it means President Mugabe is
invited to attend," Ghanaian
Deputy Foreign Minister Brempong Yeboah
said.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would skip the Dec. 8-9
AU-EU
summit in Lisbon if Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was attending —
a
protest against the alleged economic mismanagement, corruption and
contempt
for democracy in Zimbabwe.
The International Monetary Fund
has said that acute shortages and inflation
in Zimbabwe could cause inflation
to surge to 100,000 percent by the end of
the year.
The summit aims to
strengthen economic and trade ties between the 27-nation
EU and the 53-member
Africa Union.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair stayed away from the
first
EU-Africa summit in Cairo seven years ago because of Mugabe's presence.
In
2003, an EU-African summit in Lisbon was called off when some
African
nations balked at the EU's refusal to invite Mugabe.
Mail and Guardian
Accra, Ghana
31 October 2007
06:36
European Union and African ministers met in Accra,
Ghana, on
Wednesday to decide whether to risk a diplomatic storm by inviting
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to an EU-Africa
summit.
Britain has said it will boycott the proposed summit
in Lisbon
on December 8 and 9 if Mugabe attends. Some African nations have
said they
will stay away if the Zimbabwean leader is not
invited.
Portugal would host the summit as current president
of the EU
and its Foreign Minister, Luis Amado, was the senior European at
the Accra
talks, officials said.
Europe and Africa held
their first summit in 2000. The last
planned meeting in 2003 was cancelled,
also because of Mugabe.
Portugal has said that it wants to
invite all leaders, and
Mugabe has said he will attend if asked, even though
he faces an EU ban on
travel to Europe.
Pedro Courela,
adviser to Portugal's Secretary of State for
Cooperation Joao Gomes
Cravinho, said on Tuesday that invitations would be
issued "in the next few
days".
But the Britain-Zimbabwe dispute has led many
observers to
express doubt whether the Lisbon summit will go
ahead.
Britain Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said neither
he nor any
senior British minister would be at any summit attended by
Mugabe. Britain
accuses him of human rights abuses and fixing 2002 elections
to stay in
power.
Britain has qualified backing from its
European partners.
The Netherlands said on Tuesday it opposed
the presence of
Mugabe at the EU-Africa summit but the Foreign Ministry did
not say if it
would boycott the event if he was there.
Sweden also opposes inviting Mugabe to the summit but will not
boycott the
meeting if he attends, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said on
Wednesday.
European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso
said this month
that the summit should not be derailed by the tensions
between London and
Harare.
Governments belonging to the
Southern African Development
Community regional bloc, which includes
Zimbabwe, have threatened to boycott
the summit if Mugabe is not allowed to
attend.
The leaders of Mozambique and Angola added their
weight on
Wednesday to pressure for Mugabe to be invited.
"We reaffirm our support for the decision taken by the AU, which
demands the
unconditional participation of all African countries at the
Europe-Africa
summit, including Zimbabwe," Angolan President Jose Eduardo
dos Santos and
Mozambique's Armando Guebuza said in a statement after talks
in
Maputo.
Ghana is current president of the African Union and
African
foreign ministers met in the capital at the weekend to try to hammer
out a
stance on Zimbabwe and the final summit agenda.
Top
EU and African officials have been meeting in Accra since
Monday to discuss
the various problems surrounding the summit, where EU and
African leaders
want climate change, migration and China's growing
involvement in Africa to
top the agenda.
Mugabe's relations with the West have
plummeted since he
embarked on a programme of land reforms, which saw
thousands of white-owned
farms expropriated by his government. Zimbabwe's
economy is now in deep
crisis with rampant inflation, mass unemployment and
widespread poverty.
The EU and United States imposed targeted
sanctions, including
the travel ban on Mugabe and his close associates,
after elections in 2002
that he is alleged to have
rigged.
Mugabe says he is not at odds with Europe as a whole
but merely
Britain, which he says has reneged on an agreement to fund the
land
redistribution. -- AFP
Reuters
Wed 31 Oct 2007, 12:37
GMT
HARARE (Reuters) - The trial of white Zimbabwean farmers charged with
resisting eviction from land targeted for seizure was on Wednesday postponed
to December after the state failed to present documents requested by defence
lawyers.
President Robert Mugabe's government embarked on a drive in
2000 to take
commercial farms from whites to resettle landless blacks. An
estimated 600
out of the previous 4,500 white farmers now remain on the
land.
Eleven white farmers from Zimbabwe's northwestern Mashonaland West
province,
who appealed against eviction notices issued by the government,
now face
trial for failing to leave the farms after a September 30 deadline
lapsed.
They have been charged under the gazetted land act for
failing to vacate
farmland marked for acquisition by the government. They
stand accused and it
remains to be seen if the prosecution will seek to
place them in custody.
If convicted, the farmers face heavy fines or jail
terms of up to two years.
"The trial cannot kick off because the lands
office didn't supply the state
with the necessary papers requested by the
defence counsel," prosecutor
Allen Chifokoyo told the court.
"The
state is unable to proceed into trial today and will, with the consent
of
the defence, ask for the accused to be remanded to December 17."
Critics
say Mugabe's controversial land policy has plunged the southern
African
country -- once a food exporter -- into a severe economic crisis
marked by
food shortages and the highest inflation in the world above 7,900
percent.
Mugabe says his land seizure drive was meant to correct
colonial imbalances
that saw a few white farmers owning the bulk of the
country's prime
farmland.
The trial of the first farmer, which was
supposed to start on Wednesday, was
delayed because the lands ministry
failed to provide information requested
by defence lawyers.
Defence
lawyer David Drury had asked the prosecution to provide information
from the
state land allocation committee detailing how the farms in question
were
targeted for seizure, before the trial could begin.
Reuters
Wed 31 Oct
2007, 14:13 GMT
LILONGWE (Reuters) - The United Nations World Food
Programme said on
Wednesday it had bought 35,926 tonnes of white maize for
Zimbabwe from
Malawi as part of over 80,000 tonnes of food it purchased from
Malawi to
feed five countries.
"Food commodities have been bought
from Malawi by WFP for operations in
Liberia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia
and Zimbabwe, "said Mathews Nyirenda
Senior Communications Officer at WFP
Country office in Lilongwe.
Nyirenda told Reuters that in total close to
$11 million has been spent on
food from Malawi.
SW Radio Africa
(London)
31 October 2007
Posted to the web 31 October
2007
Tichaona Sibanda
The SADC led mediation talks on Zimbabwe
resumed in Pretoria on Wednesday
after a month long break. The talks, which
are already behind schedule on
several fronts, missed Tuesday's key deadline
for agreement on a broad
framework for free and fair elections.
A
source told us from Pretoria that during the month long break negotiators
from Zanu-PF and the MDC have been comparing notes and reporting back to the
facilitating team in South Africa.
'A lot of ground was covered
during this period because the negotiating
teams made contact on a number of
times and a number of concessions were
made during this period,' said the
source.
David Coltart, MDC MP for Bulawayo South, said it was unfortunate
that
Zimbabweans were not being informed about the progress of the talks,
but
stressed that whatever the outcome, a transitional period of six months
was
needed to push through any changes agreed on by both sides.
'If
the mediation process were to be concluded today (Wednesday) we will not
have sufficient time to establish conditions for free and fair elections. We
need at least six months to put everything in place before calling for an
election,' Coltart said.
The MP from the Mutambara led faction said
they understood the reasons for
not meeting Tuesday's deadline, because of
the weighty issues under
discussion.
The talks that resumed Wednesday
are expected tackle the remaining issues on
the agenda that include the
roles of the police, military and the CIO during
the elections.
SW Radio
Africa (London)
31 October 2007
Posted to the web 31 October
2007
Henry Makiwa
Next year's crucial elections hang in the
balance after the government said
it has no money to print the voters' roll.
A senior government official on
Tuesday told parliament that the
Registrar-General's Office responsible for
elections had inadequate funds
for the exercise.
Presenting an audit before the Parliamentary Portfolio
Committee on Defence
and Home Affairs in parliament, chief accountant in the
RG's Office Edwell
Mutemaringa said government requires Z$3,5 trillion
before the end of the
year to print the voters' roll. He added that the
department has received
only Z$110 billion from the fiscus.
The
development has raised widespread concerns over the holding of the
crucial
polls, upon which high hopes of a political turn-around are pinned.
The
Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) on Wednesday described the
situation as "unfortunate".
Noel Kututwa who heads ZESN said:
"Constitutional Amendment number 18
created additional constituencies,
meaning that there has to be a new
delimitation exercise and a new voters
roll to reflect the new
constituencies. If there are no funds it means we
will go into the election
with a voters roll that does not reflect the new
scenario and some voters
may be prejudiced; and some may fail to exercise
their right all together.
The alternative will of course be to use
identification cards only, as we
did in 1980. We will however need to use
efficient indelible ink on voters'
hands so that they do not cast ballots
twice or more."
SW Radio Africa
(London)
31 October 2007
Posted to the web 31 October
2007
Henry Makiwa
More than 500 students from Harare's
institutions of higher learning on
Tuesday held a demonstration outside
Robert Mugabe's offices in protest at
the decay of education standards in
the country.
Students from state-run colleges took to the streets of
Harare with a
petition addressed to the Minister of Higher & Tertiary
Education, Stan
Mudenge, expressing displeasure over the deterioration of
the education
delivery system. Most of the students came from the University
of Zimbabwe
and Chitungwiza's Seke College.
According to
witnesses students marched along the capital's streets singing
and chanting
student revolutionary songs and slogans, before riot police
dispersed them
when they reached Monomutapa offices. No arrests were made
but the police
confiscated the petition and Zimbabwe National Students Union
(Zinasu)
banners.
Zinasu spokesperson Dominic Shumba said: "The students have
vowed to
continue expressing their grievances through all means possible
until a
state of normalcy is realised in all institutions of higher
learning.
"The students' unrest emanates from the continued lack of
delivery on the
part of the lecturers who have been on a continuous go slow
since the
semester began. This has compromised the delivery of an effective
education
system. Due to a combination of the unavailability of adequate
teaching
staff, poor and inadequate learning materials, prohibitive tuition
fees and
the unavailability of decent and adequate accommodation
institutions have
been producing half baked graduates."
Elsewhere
Eston Farayi, the President of Masvingo Polytechnic Students
executive
council (SEC), was picked up last night by police from the law and
order
section in connection with a demonstration at Masvingo Polytechnic
early
this month, when students launched the "Free Edison Hltsthawayo
Campaign".
Student leader Hltsthawayo spent a month in custody on
charges of violent
conduct.
The arrest of Farayi brings the total
number of students' arrests in
Masvingo to thirty for the month of October.
There are concerns that Farayi
is likely to miss the end of year
examinations that are currently underway
at the college.
SW
Radio Africa (London)
31 October 2007
Posted to the web 31 October
2007
Tichaona Sibanda
The business community in Bulawayo is
appealing for more funds for its
planned project to draw water from the
Nyamandlovu Aquifer for the city's
high-density suburbs and
industries.
Pledges have already been made to fund the project, but they
are not enough
for the mammoth task, whose costs may run up to Z$30 billion,
according to a
statement released by the business community.
Much
of Bulawayo has had water shortages for months now and residents and
city
officials say large sections in the western suburbs have been virtually
dry
for close to two months, because some dams have dried up.
As a result the
Matabeleland Chamber of Industries and the Association of
Businesses in
Zimbabwe have embarked on a humanitarian exercise to try and
save the
city.
The exercise involves connecting seventy-seven boreholes from the
aquifer
area and directing the water to the high-density areas, as well as
drawing
water from the Nyamandlovu dam to supply the city's
industries.
'The operation of boreholes will provide 15 000 litres a day,
which
represents over fifty percent of normal requirements. It should be
noted
that those less privileged than most of us are spending many hours in
search, and queuing for water. We believe this is within our ability to
alleviate,' said a statement.
But Zapu leader Paul Siwela who is
based in the city was very critical of
the government for doing nothing to
solve the water crisis. He said a lot of
the city's industries were
relocating to other areas where water was readily
available.
'This is
a mission by Robert Mugabe and his government to cause genocide in
Matabeleland by failing to provide water for the people. We appreciate what
the business community is doing but this is an urgent matter that should be
dealt with by the government,' Siwela said.
SW Radio Africa
(London)
31 October 2007
Posted to the web 31 October
2007
Tererai Karimakwenda
Information Minister Sikhanyiso
Ndlovu announced on Tuesday that a new board
had been appointed to the Media
and Information Commission (MIC) and it had
the mandate to immediately deal
with an application by the Associated
Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), to
resume publishing the Daily News newspaper.
Armed police shut down the
popular daily paper back in 2003 and the
publishers have since been battling
government in the courts over the ban.
Speaking at a press conference
in Harare, Ndlovu said this new board will
immediately consider applications
for licenses by independent media houses
plus accreditation for journalists
seeking to practice in the country. The
chairman of the outgoing Commission
which banned the Daily News, Dr.
Tafataona Mahoso, has been retained on the
new board, and this has already
raised suspicion and concern.
It is
widely understood that this move by government is a result of the
ongoing
talks between the opposition and the ruling party, mediated by South
Africa's President Thabo Mbeki. The talks are meant to lead to free and fair
elections next year and both factions of the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change have insisted the need for a liberal democratic space that
includes independent media.
Geoffrey Nyarota, former editor of The
Daily News, described the
announcement by the Information Minister as
"gratifying", given the paper's
long struggle to resume publishing. Nyarota
said: "Any process of political
change in Zimbabwe hinges on the existence
of a level playing field,
including a democratic media
climate."
Regarding government's decision to retain Mahoso on the new
board, Nyarota
said this was not a major concern because he views the former
Media
Commission chairperson as a servant of government who does what he is
ordered. Explaining further he said Mahoso now has a new boss, and it
remains to be seen whether Information Minister Ndhlovu is serious about
change in the media or whether these are more stalling tactics.
Zimbabwejournalists.com
31st Oct 2007 16:15 GMT
By a Correspondent
HARARE - Workers at the
University of Zimbabwe (UZ) last friday went on
strike after failing to
receive their salaries as scheduled. The 25th of
each month is the
traditional payday for the employees.
A number of workers received their
salaries over the weekend and reported
for work this but others who have not
are continuing with the work boycott.
The enraged workers held a meeting
on the matter at the university on
Thursday afternoon where they resolved
that industrial action was the only
way they could arm-twist the UZ
administration and Government to make
available their salaries without
delay.
"The patience of the workers has run thin. We are very poorly paid
so it is
inexcusable for the UZ authorities and the responsible Government
Ministry
to fail to pay us on time. We will only get back to work when we
get paid."
said one worker who refused to be identified.
The workers
checked for their salaries on the 25th and 26th and found no
joy.
The
situation has been made even worse because in September Government
promised
that the back pay that was offered recently to civil servants would
also be
extended to state universities but to date nothing has
materialised.
Efforts to get a comment on the issue from the UZ
management were
unsuccessful but the leader of the workers' representative
body Mr Mapfumo
Tafirenyika, who was rather evasive when he was contacted
for a comment,
said:
"As far as I am concerned the situation has
generally been resolved. In fact
I will be addressing a workers' meeting
this week on the issue. Workers have
started getting their salaries", he
said.
But insiders say the salaries that will be paid out exclude the
retention
allowance that was being paid all along to workers in an effort to
contain
the resignations that have engulfed the university. The sources
added that
retention allowance would only be paid to workers from the 7 th
grade
upwards.
This is likely to further demoralise
workers.
The University of Zimbabwe, once of the most prestigious
universities in
Southern Africa, is now a pale shadow of the once glamorous
academic
institution. Insiders say the UZ is virtually broke.
"The
halls of residence remain closed after they were condemned by the
health
inspectors in the Harare City council, libraries have no lighting,
and
toilets are not working…the list is endless", said a student who could
only
identify himself as Edmond.
The majority of the UZ workers are now
surviving on vending. The Zimbabwe
Times recently witnessed how vending by
UZ workers has become so rife at the
once great academic
institution.
Vending by UZ workers has become an eyesore in front of the
Great Hall. A
number of workers confirmed that the UZ staff buses that carry
workers to
and from work are always full of foodstuffs meant for selling
like pop corn,
bananas and oranges.
REPORTER: I've got the visa. Do I have to go over there and get it stamped or anything, before we go out?
I'm at the border about to cross from South Africa into Zimbabwe. I'm filming secretly because the government of President Robert Mugabe doesn't want the world to know about his country's economic collapse.
REPORTER: OK, so I've got the visa, I've got this form, is there anything left?
To be caught filming or working as a journalist is to risk jail. Anyone seen helping me faces an even lengthier jail term, so I'm posing as a member of a church group until I know it's safe enough to say otherwise.
CUSTOMS: What are you carrying my sister?
REPORTER: I'm carrying my personal stuff, and some food and water.
CUSTOMS: Water?
REPORTER: Water. Yeah, drinking water.
My first stop is to meet a black-market fuel supplier. This is how those with connections or hard currency get around when even the government struggles to buy fuel. These cars are lined up outside a petrol station.
CHARLES MPOFU, BULAWAYO CITY COUNCILLOR: It's very bad, that's the only garage. Look at the size of the city, look at the moving around, not all of them getting fuel from this garage.
I'm being taken on a tour of Bulawayo, the largest city in the country's south-west, by city councillor Charles Mpofu. He says his city suffers from more than just fuel shortages. Whole areas have been without water for months. These people have been queuing for hours at a bore hole to pump some water.
CHARLES MPOFU: Some come early in the morning, around 4:00 or 5:00am and then some come just to prepare the children to go to school.
The supermarkets I visit throughout Zimbabwe's south-west all have one thing in common, virtually nothing for sale. Some shops are open, many no longer bother.
REPORTER: What have you got today?
SHOPKEEPER: Ah, today there is nothing.
REPORTER: He's just saying nothing, nothing has come in today.
SHOPKEEPER: Nothing, nothing, there is only these rolls, these bread rolls.
These bread rolls are amongst the few baked today. So few, they never even make it to the shelves inside the store.
REPORTER: When was the last time you had bread?
SHOPKEEPER: I think a month ago.
CHARLES MPOFU: And this is one of our busiest shops, providing services to the community that come. So this was the hope of getting everything you wanted. But now you can't. There is no washing soap, no bathing soap.
REPORTER: When was the last time you could buy milk?
SHOPKEEPER: Two months back.
REPORTER: Two months ago? When was the last time you could get meat in a supermarket?
CHARLES MPOFU: It was also over two months now. It is a dream to get beef anywhere, it is a dream to get fish anywhere. And it is a dream to get chicken anywhere.
These women have come in search of anything, but they hold out little hope.
WOMAN: Each and everything what comes, there is a queue. With a baby they push you. You don't get anything. At the end of the day and if there is someone who helps, they say "come here with your baby".
CHARLES MPOFU: What makes it like that with the queues? There is scarcity of everything. The little milk that comes, everyone runs for it.
WOMAN: Whatever comes, queue. Whatever comes, queue.
The few things I am able to buy here, some water, vegetables and a plastic bucket to cart water cost more than a million Zimbabwean dollars, which is roughly what a junior shop assistant earns in a month.
REPORTER: Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, a million. Sorry, I don't have.
The average wage for a security guard in Zimbabwe today is about $2 million a month. For a teacher, it's about $2.5 million. But to give you an idea of what that will buy you in Zimbabwe today, it's roughly equal to a simple fast food meal of chicken and chips for a family of four. Malnutrition and contaminated water is taking its toll on people's health.
DOCTOR THANDAZANI: I can say for the past two months about 50% of the patients who are coming in some cases up to 75% of the patients coming in have got diarrhoea and vomiting.
Doctor Thandazani, not his real name, runs a private clinic. But even if you can afford to see him, there's only so much doctors can do without medical supplies.
DOCTOR THANDAZANI: The main thing which has happened is that, as any tradesman or professional, a doctor needs to have his tools in place, like I need to have all the fluids I want, the drugs I want, the gloves whenever I want them, injections, syringes, but these are lacking and sometimes a patient comes who needs emergency care and I just look at them and I feel hopeless because I don't have the tools to use.
At this council clinic people can afford to seek help as consultation fees
have been kept low, but there's no money to buy drugs. This is where the
clinic's few drug supplies are kept.
NURSE: As I told you, we haven't got much, what we haven't got is the larger list.
The day after I left Zimbabwe, I arranged to meet the country's ambassador to South Africa. As it turns out Ambassador Simon Khaya Moyo happened to be visiting Zimbabwe at the same time as me, but it seems like we were in different countries.
SIMON KHAYA MOYO, ZIMBABWE AMBASSADOR TO SOUTH AFRICA: I was last there last weekend and I could see really a lot of activity in terms of manufacturers.
REPORTER: I was also there last week.
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: Yeah.
REPORTER: And there's nothing in the shops.
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: Depends where you were last week.
REPORTER: I was pretty much all over the southern region, I was in Gwanda, I was in Bulawayo, I was in Beitbridge. The shops are pretty much empty.
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: Maybe this is what you wanted to see but I saw a
different story.
REPORTER: I want to major shopping centres everywhere and they were shut.
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: I'm saying so, I also saying so I saw a different story.
REPORTER: Where did you see it?
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: Everywhere I went in Zimbabwe.
REPORTER: What shops?
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: All shops, I'm a minister in government for 10 years, I was a minister of government for 10 years. I'm an ambassador of Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mauritius and Lesotho.
This is rush hour in Bulawayo, a factory siren is calling people to work. Many here have been walking since before dawn. This is the only way for most people to get to work.
REPORTER: How far is it for you to get from your house to work every day and how long does it take you?
'TONY': Definitely around seven to eight kilometres, and I have to walk for 1.5 hours if I am fast.
I meet a man who we'll call 'Tony' on his way to work.
'TONY': But if I am walking slowly so I won't be tired it can take me two hours. If I took a transport alone, it will consume something like $5 to $6 million. As I'm talking, as I talk now, it has been increased to $150,000 per trip which makes it totally absurd. You cannot face reality when you earn less than $2 million yet the transport alone is $6 million.
Tony takes me to his office to show me on paper just how much people earn each month. I decide to chance telling him I'm a journalist. He takes a bigger risk in agreeing to speak to me on camera, saying he wants the world to know what's happening inside his country.
'TONY': There is no water, no mealie-meal, nothing, just nothing. Children are going to school but they're not learning because teachers are just sitting, they cannot teach from empty stomach. Children are just hungry, everyone is hungry. We are totally angry but definitely there is nothing we can do beyond this. Our government is a monster. We cannot get meat anymore, there is no meat in this country.
Tony invites me home to meet his family but the children aren't all his. With almost a quarter of the population having left the country in search of work, and a high death toll due to HIV/AIDS, almost everyone in Zimbabwe is raising someone else's children.
TONY: This young baby needs all types of good stuffs like milk and almost everything but she's getting nothing. We feed this child with this vegetable, we are using it, which is incredible.
Tony once considered himself middle-class, but his family has been thrown
back in time. There's no longer any running water or electricity. These city
dwellers are living a rural life. Water is gathered in buckets, and cooking is
done outside. What were once little things have become major burdens according
to Tony's wife.
WIFE, (Translation): We're struggling to survive. Most things are unavailable. There's no money. If we can find any maize meal, it's poor quality. Sometimes we can't get any, nor any meat or vegetables. And transport people have to walk to work. That's all there is.
REPORTER: You were there last week?
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: Yes.
REPORTER: What you saw, were you embarrassed?
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: I was not embarrassed. I'm very happy because we're really moving in the right direction.
REPORTER: How did you get around when you were there?
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: Pardon?
REPORTER: How did you get around? What form of transport?
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: What do you mean? What form of transport? I have a car.
REPORTER: You went by car. How difficult was it for you to get petrol?
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: I didn't have difficulties.
REPORTER: Did you see everyone walking to work?
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: Pardon?
REPORTER: Did you see everyone walking to work?
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: Of course, the difficulties of transport, as I say if you are slapped with sanctions and your fuel does not come as it's supposed to be, naturally there will be problems but the government has done all measures possible, including even trains are now carrying people, buses are carrying people but certainly the difficulties are there, the challenges are there but those who are responsible for the difficulties know themselves very well.
Ground maize or mealie-meal is the dietary staple in Zimbabwe. At this school, like many across the country, children are fed porridge made from mealie-meal. For a lot of the children here this may be all they get to eat today. The school principal agreed to speak to me and to let me film, but did not want to be identified.
PRINCIPAL: Children are coming to school hungry, some dirty, because soap is so scarce and the water situation is unstable because water is sometimes cut off so children are sometimes forced to come to school without having a bath.
At this school, an international charity supplies the mealie-meal, but it still has to be cooked and with electricity almost non-existent they have to rely on firewood.
PRINCIPAL: We have problems, most of the time we have problems when the firewood runs out because the non-governmental organizations that is providing the porridge is not in a position to constantly provide us with the firewood and when it does run out the money that we use to purchase firewood for the school is so high that at sometimes we find it is very difficult to operate.
The government blames drought for the nation's inability to feed itself. But for years now it's been seizing white-owned farms and giving them to blacks with little farming experience or equipment. Today rumours have spread that new supplies of mealie-meal have arrived, and a queue appears from nowhere. Inside the store the manager is nervous.
REPORTER: Excuse me, Sir. I'm just checking about the mealie-meal. When are you going to start selling it?
STORE MANAGER: I'm sure within 10 or 15 minutes.
Customers are not allowed inside this store to buy, only staff are given that privilege. There's never enough, and there's always fear that hunger may lead to violence.
REPORTER: You're buying? Are you buying it for yourself?
WOMAN: Yes, for my family. At least I can get 10kg, which is for a week or so, and then we start queuing again.
When the gate opens, there's a new scramble to take up positions. And this desperation is only likely to worsen, with aid agencies warning food shortages are set to escalate in coming months due to poor harvests.
GORDON MOYO, POLITICAL ANALYST: The economy is totally collapsed in my view.
REPORTER: So it's not, it's not facing it, it has happened?
GORDON MOYO: It has happened. Only that people continue to say, "it is going to happen, it is going to happen." But the truth of the matter is that it has happened because we cannot sustain anything, families are going for the all day, two days, three days without food, without water, without electricity, and the government can't supply anything.
Gordon Moyo works for a private think tank based in Bulawayo. He says there is only one reason people are able to survive, they rely on money remitted from people who've left the country.
GORDON MOYO: Over 5 million Zimbabweans are living outside of Zimbabwe, in South Africa, Botswana, United States and Australia and these are the people who are at least maintaining families at the household level. Otherwise, from within the country, there is nothing to lean on.
In 2005, the government launched an attack on market traders, and tens of thousands of people were left homeless when their homes were bulldozed. Now manufacturers and retailers believe they're the new enemy of the state. Sam Ncube is a businessman trying to make sense of the government's latest policies. He has outlets selling tyres in two cities but says he has no stock. He agrees to speak to me in his store, but I have to hide my camera when he gets nervous about being seen. We continue crouched low out of view.
SAM NCUBE: What we are seeing at the back here, they are customer tyres which have come for puncture repairs otherwise for new tyres, we have got just those two, few new tyres, big ones. I mean, otherwise we don't have the stocks.
In July, the government forced businesses to cut their prices in half. Widespread looting resulted. More than 10,000 retailers have been arrested and jailed for failing to comply with the new price controls. Now the government is proposing to nationalise 51% of foreign or white-owned businesses. Sam Ncube chooses his words carefully in daring to call for change.
SAM NCUBE: Unfortunately in Zimbabwe, there are certain words which are taboo, and they are things which are undiscussable, and I'm saying I think now, as a people, we have to allow ourselves to discuss the undiscussables, because we have to have a paradigm shift. We have to change ways of doing things. We have to think and say why are we in this predicament, and address, because if we don't do that we'll be fooling ourselves.
But it appears there's no turning back. Having ruined the economy, the
government now says it wants to hand back what's left to black Zimbabweans. The
bill to take over foreign and white-owned businesses is already before the
parliament.
SIMON KHAYA MOYO: The economy must be in the hands of the Zimbabweans and that's exactly what we are implementing. It may not take two days, it may not take three days, but by the end of the day, I can tell you, Zimbabwe would be one example of the country where the economy's reverted to the hands of its indigenous people, and that is very, very correct and it applies to every country.
PAUL SIWELA, INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE: The farming community as you can see this is farming area. Most of these people they used to keep dairy cows, goats, sheep and things like that and do some farming. Nothing is taking place at the moment.
Paul Siwela stood as an independent presidential candidate in the last election. He's since been labelled an enemy of the state and charged with treason. He's taking me to his home just outside Bulawayo city where it should be safer to speak but even here, police have him under surveillance.
REPORTER: They're coming?
PAUL SIWELA: Yes, there they are.
We retreat indoors. He does not believe elections scheduled for March next year will be free and fair, or that Robert Mugabe will willingly hand over power.
PAUL SIWELA: What you are asking me is simply like saying Saddam Hussein
would willingly hand over power to a democratically elected government. There
was no way he was going to do that. Neither would the Taliban they've been
pleased to see democracy in Afghanistan.
REPORTER: Why contest the election then?
PAUL SIWELA: Yes, why contest the election? It's a very difficult question. Because if you don't go to the elections in one way or the other, people will be saying, "Look, you have no support." So this is why you're not going to those elections.
To speak out in Zimbabwe is to invite attack. Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube has been one of the most fearless and vocal critics of the state.
BISHOP PIUS NCUBE, CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP: Unless we care for the poor as a country, we will have failed in our duty to fellow human beings.
Earlier this year, Ncube called for foreign intervention to oust a president who he later called both a bully and a murderer. But he's now he's stepped down, a victim of what's widely believed to be a dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by the state. Just weeks after his attack on Mugabe the state media gleefully published these photos, alleging they are of Bishop Ncube and a number of woman taken in the bedroom of his home.
REPORTER: They showed a video tape on television unusual for here?
FATHER NIGEL JOHNSON, SPOKESMAN FOR BISHOP PIUS NCUBE: It's never happened before. I mean, they don't show people, whoever they are, in bed together on primetime news, even in Zimbabwe you don't. For the majority of the people, though, who are not Catholics, that was not a very big deal, whether it was true or false. The fact was that it was one of their leading people, a champion of theirs, who was being, well, mistreated, tricked, treated very badly.
For now, the one remaining industry in Zimbabwe that appears to be booming is the funeral business. The city's gravediggers can't keep up with demand according to Bulawayo city councillor Charles Mpofu.
CHARLES MPOFU: The requirement of people to be buried a day to move along with the requirement of meeting that demand, we have completely failed and that at the same time one of the reasons we don't have adequate staff.
Zimbabwe is presided over by an octogenarian leader, but it has the world's lowest life expectancy, 37 years for a man, 34 for a woman. This is the children's section of the cemetery. This gravedigger started early this morning. He works slowly because he's hungry. He doesn't earn enough to buy sufficient food for himself, or his family.
REPORTER: How many graves do you do a day?
GRAVEDIGGER: Two.
REPORTER: Two a day?
GRAVEDIGGER: Yes. And I've never ate anything from morning.
GRAVEDIGGER: You've had no breakfast?
GRAVEDIGGER: No mealie-meal, no money. Very difficult.
With little water, electricity, food or fuel and no relief in sight,
Zimbabweans can only pray that they survive the death of their economy.
Feature Report: Zimbabwe – Inside a failed state
Reporter/Camera
GINNY STEIN
Editor
NICK O’BRIEN
Monsters and Critics
Oct 31, 2007, 9:01 GMT
Johannesburg/Harare - Top
Zimbabwean banker James Mushore has to spend
another seven days in custody
after the state appealed against him being
granted bail, the official Herald
daily reported Wednesday.
Mushore, who is being accused of authorizing
the illegal export of foreign
currency when he was deputy managing director
of NMB Bank in 2003, was
granted 100 million Zimbabwe dollars bail by a
Harare magistrate on Tuesday,
the report said.
But the state
immediately opposed the decision.
The banker will now have to spend
another week in custody pending the
outcome of the state's
appeal.
Mishrod Guvamombe, the Harare magistrate who read the bail
ruling, said
something was going on but did not elaborate further, the
Herald reported.
Mushore fled to Britain in 2004 but recently made
several trips to Zimbabwe,
apparently on the understanding he was no longer
to be charged with
violating exchange controls since NMB Bank had already
been fined and
convicted for the alleged offences.
© 2007 dpa -
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
New Zimbabwe
By Sekai
Holland
Last updated: 10/31/2007 07:25:42
WHEN visited Sydney in August
this year, Morgan Tsvangirai he made a
briefing during which he mentioned
that the MDC would adopt a policy of
'Devolution of Power' in the New
Zimbabwe.
Knowing how our male leaders work, I asked him where women
would be in this
scheme, crafted by men with no women present. I demanded
reassurance.
I told Tsvangirai that his handicap is his close friends
masquerading as
advisors who give him bad advice. I quoted the recent
dropping of the deputy
secretary post, an unconstitutional move.
For
MDC women, it has led to the removal of four articulate, solid
professional
women, who are all graduates. These are Dr Elizabeth Marunda
(Policy and
Research), Editor Matamisa (Education), Jessica Majome (Legal
and
Parliamentary Affairs) and Grace Kwinjeh (International Affairs).
They
were part of a list of 10 women proposed by Women's Assembly (WA) chair
Lucia Matibenga after the March 2006 congress for the NEC, to ensure that
MDC met its third quota of women in leadership positions still verbally
agreed to by MDC’s top male leaders who reject the SADC, African Union and
United Nations 50% women's quota whenever we demand it be honoured. There
now remains only two female shadow ministers out of 15 in the new line up. I
told Tsvangirai this was unacceptable. Tsvangirai agreed to correct
this.
I did not refer to my own sacking as secretary of international
affairs in
2003 when I was the first woman casualty of the MDC’s so called
‘Top 6' male
chauvinism and dictatorship. I dealt with that painful episode
decisively
and swiftly when after his announcement, I took the President
Tsvangirai and
Vice President Gibson Sibanda into the president's office and
had my say.
With support from my spouse and a small network, I am still
working even
after that torture with others by Mugabe's thugs on March 11 to
add to
pressure on Mugabe by civil society and the MDC members for free and
fair
elections for a democratic Zimbabwe. For us, the struggle continues
till
victory!
After Tsvangirai’s reassurances in Sydney, the recent
women’s assemly
dissolution was unexpected and is a big shock. We read that
MDC Youth
Assembly (YA) members loyal to Matibenga committed acts of
violence against
WA delegates in Bulawayo! There are no names provided of
the 60 people said
to have been injured and taken to Mpilo Hospital. The
reason for that is
simple, it’s because the YA did not beat up anyone. They
performed their
duties and did so with respect and
excellence.
However, what did happen -- and this information was
everywhere a few hours
after it happened – is that the night before the
congress, Gogo Sanelisiwe
Sibanda, popularly known as Gogo Ma Sibanda, had
her home stoned as
punishment for organising congress delegates according to
the MDC
constitution, which is how Lucia Matibenga invited the 1500
delegates from
all over the country. She followed the MDC
constitution.
Ma Sibanda lives at Emakhandeni just near the Hall. Her
eyesight is her
latest ailment following a long and difficult illness after
surgery these
past few years. Matibenga had not arrived in Bulawayo when
this gruesome act
took place against one of the MDC’s strongest founding
members. We salute Ma
Sibanda for her courage, for her work over the years
in organising the MDC
in such difficult terrain. Sisonke Gogo MaSibanda!
Tiritose Mbuya Sibanda!
Another incident of violence also ignored took
place on the day when MDC
Tsvangirai faction members of parliament met in
Bulawayo. This act is
reported to have been committed by the bodyguard of
one of the
Bulawayo-based NSC members. He hit one of the YA members who sang
with
others against their own two NSC leaders present for derailing the MDC
in
Matabeleland by breaking the constitution.
Someone gave Tsvangirai
wrong information about what was happening in
Bulawayo. He rang the deputy
YA chairperson instructing him to address the
YA members at Emakhandeni Hall
to stop beating people. The YA leader pointed
out that he was unaware of a
WA congress taking place in Bulawayo. The
President had not advised him
about such a congress taking place in the
first place. YA members were
present in force with each delegation from
their provinces. As at any party
congress, they looked after delegates at
Emakhandeni Hall. There was no
violence.
Here is what we know from eyewitnesses.
Even
Bulawayo-based delegates said that they were not told of the congress
venue,
agenda or time. By morning stories were about that women were being
registered secretly at Selbourne Hotel in the city centre. Once they went
inside, their cell phones were taken away from them until after the
congress!
By morning leaks confirmed that the congress was booked at
Emakhandeni Hall.
The properly constituted 1500 delegates went there. There
are no secrets in
Zimbabwe. It was soon whispered that there was a secret
meeting in progress
behind closed doors at Vice President Thokozani Khupe’s
restaurant. The
delegates went there to demand that the congress be convened
at the correct
venue with all present. The restaurant doors were locked.
Some observers
inside came out to interview delegates. The Bulawayo province
chairperson is
a grassroots woman, a party stalwart. She apparently went to
the restaurant
meeting and was ejected from there!
Matibenga as
chairperson addressed delegates outside the VP's restaurant.
The delegates
adopted a resolution that those not attending the Congress at
the venue
booked by the party were deemed absent. Police arrived to confirm
that
Emakhandeni Hall was booked by the MDC for the WA congress that day.
They
advised the women to return there. The delegates made another plea for
those
locked inside the restaurant to return to the venue and join the other
delegates. They refused. Tsvangirai was apparently advised about this
situation.
There are those who write that two congresses were held.
The restaurant
group did not invite their delegates according to the
requirements of the
MDC constitution. Lucia Matibenga did. The restaurant
group did not have the
constitutional composition of delegates to claim that
they held a congress.
They even discussed whether to set up an interim
committee -- another
unconstitutionality, an anomaly! But they then
concluded to make themselves
the real WA NEC.
In Zimbabwe the worst
tragedies produce humour as well. There are many
hilarious stories from the
restaurant crowd from those who were locked in!
The Emakhandeni party
congress deliberated. They resolved not to dissolve
their NEC but gap-filled
the posts of those absent. The meting resolved to
hold their annual
conference this year.
The new WA NEC line up is:
Chairperson –
Lucia Matibenga (Midlands South) Deputy Chairperson –
Sanelisiwe Sibanda
(Bulawayo) Secretary – Faith Musarurwa (Harare) Deputy
Secretary –
(Manicaland Province to provide their name) Organising
Secretary – Lucia
Masekesa (Masvingo) Deputy Organising Secretary –
Constance Taruvinga
(Chitungwiza) Treasurer – Chetamasile Katanga –
(Mashonaland Central
Information and Publicity – Catherine Bobo (Midlands
North).
Those
writing in the press expose their naivety. Accusations are that women
want
Tapiwa Mashakada and Gift Chimanikire as new MDC leaders! How insulting
to
women's intelligence! After everything that has been done to people
inside
the country by Robert Mugabe, the father of male chauvinism, ordinary
people
see through the stupidity of all forms of chauvinisms in Zimbabwe.
The women
at Emakhandeni Hall this weekend were clear. The 50% will be a
reality this
time. They were jubilant.
Those leadership qualities of those NSC members
who made the dissolution
decision will be tested in the next few days. Their
judgment would be how
they work out the solution to bring the party back on
an even keel and tap
the women's energy displayed at Emakhandeni Hall, not
only for our party's
survival but for victory in 2008. There is no going
back. Matibenga has
demonstrated the required skills not only to provide
principled leadership
internationally, but inside Zimbabwe itself. The
weekend proved that.
Matibenga as WA chairperson and Nelson Chamisa as YA
chairperson saved
President Tsvangirai by mobilising consultative gatherings
around Zimbabwe
when he was nearly toppled on October 12, 2005, by his ‘Top
6’ colleagues.
The claim that Matibenga was offered the deputy chairperson's
post to
replace acting chairperson Lovemore Moyo is presumptuous. Matibenga
refused
this offer outright.
This is yet another strategy to get
women fighting. On one hand Matibenga is
expected to vacate her post by
backdoor unconstitutional male deals to make
way for a
favoured-by-male-leaders woman, to kill off the very body in the
party for
women's advancement. On the other she is being made to fight with
me. I
stood as deputy chairperson at the March 2006 congress. Our men fished
out
Lovemore Moyo who stood and lost in the Arthur Mutambara-led MDC
congress
the week before, to block me.
So far when people ask me my plans, I tell
them that as soon as I am well I
am returning home and will contest for the
deputy chairperson's post at this
year's annual conference. So Matibenga and
I are to fight each other for
this post!
The offer to Matibenga is
unconstitutional. We have to fill in the
chairperson's post at the annual
conference whenever that is held, as well
as the deputy chairperson's, by
voting. The restaurant politics has shifted
all that to something new and
exciting.
In conclusion, MDC party structures at home are united that we
must all be
bound by our constitution. Men and women are standing shoulder
to shoulder
to ensure that observance of the constitution becomes an
integral part of
MDC culture, Zimbabwe's culture.
Also, Zimbabweans
everywhere are exhausted. We are in endless pain emotional
and physical. For
example my whole left side has been bad again since all
this drama began.
This latest male chauvinist abuse is dragging all our
positive energies to
ground. It is the height of arrogance, whoever thought
out that plan to hold
this charade in Bulawayo. After everything that has
been done by the regime
to the people of Bulawayo! Udiniwe uBulawayo
bakithi! VokuBulawayo vaneta
veduwe!
Bulawayo is exhausted with Zimbabwe's political antics, always
emanating
unexpectedly from Harare in their backyard. This morning when we
spoke to
members who attended the congress and others, the restaurant, they
said that
Bulawayo was sad at the tragedy played out in their city. Others
were in
fits of laughter at the Harare circus that they said had come to
play out
its foolish show in their otherwise quiet city over the weekend.
Bulawayo
residents are mostly stunned.
Sekai Holland is an active MDC
member. She writes from Sydney, Australia
Zimbabwejournalists.com
31st Oct 2007 16:59 GMT
By a Correspondent
LONDON - The
dissolved MDC-UK executive, led by trade unionist and one of
the opposition
party’s founding members, Ephraim Tapa, has today announced
that it would
next week hold an assembly for its members here against the
wishes of its
leadership in Harare.
The executive, which has refused to accept its
dissolution by the MDC’s
national chairman, Lovemore Moyo a few weeks ago,
says after wide
consultations with the MDC-UK external assembly structure,
“a vigorous and
rigorous scrutiny of the procedures to be followed when a
Provincial
Executive is dissolved” and in light of experiences drawn from
dissolutions
elsewhere within the wider MDC Party, it was formally advising
its
leadership in Harare and members “that we have failed to accept the
outcomes
of the Northampton debacle and that we reject them”.
A
statement from Tapa reads: “We are of the view that what happened on
13/10/2007, Northampton grossly violated the MDC Constitution. We consider
the MDC Constitution to be a sacrosanct document, which should not be
tampered with to satisfy individual idiosyncrasy.”
“It would be
unfortunate if we, as an Executive allow such a flawed process
to go
unchallenged and we also think that it is healthy for the party
leadership
to be aware that their decisions will always be robustly examined
and that
they must be prepared to give their following satisfactory
answers.”
Continued Tapa: “It is our humble submission that any
punishment meted out
must be done justly, fairly and transparently. Since
all these basic tenets
of a democratic organisation were absent during the
Northampton meeting we
are persuaded to disregard the proceedings, appeal
against what was at best
a bad spectacle and continue with our work for the
party that we love. Given
that human beings are selfish by nature, our brief
as a party is to
safeguard and demand the upholding of the party
Constitution in all respects
and promote accountability and equality of all
before the law.”
Tapa’s executive that includes secretary general Julius
Sai Mutyambizi-Dewa
was dissolved following massive disagreements between
the elected leadership
here and Morgan Tsvangirai’s appointed
representative, Hebson Makuvise.
The two groups differed on the way the
party was run, who attended foreign
meetings, talked to the foreign and home
office and related issues. Moyo
said the decision to dissolve the executive
was brought about by the fact
that the executive had failed to work together
in tandem in organising party
structures and related issues. Tapa and his
colleagues deny they failed
instead citing nepotism and tribalism in the way
the MDC is being run.
Makuvise on the other hand accuses Tapa and his
team of failing to totally
to revamp the party in the UK, organise and bring
more people into the party’s
books.
Please read below the rest of
Tapa’s statement to the MDC leadership
3. The first strand of our case is
that the National Chairman did not give
the minimum notice required (7days)
as per Article 5.8.19 of the MDC
Constitution. This therefore means that the
meeting was void ab initio.
Since the Northampton meeting was not properly
constituted, our view is that
any decision/resolution taken therefrom is of
no legal consequence, it’s
null and void. We take it that the 7-day notice
requirement, if observed,
would have given all branches and executives
reasonable time to prepare and
make themselves available for the meeting. We
respectfully hope that in
future the National Chairman or those who organise
such meetings for him
will take this Constitutional provision into
consideration to avoid any
thoughts of him being viewed as vindictive by
those affected.
As a result of the inadequate period of notice, many of our
branches failed
to attend and so did many officials at both branch and
Provincial levels
(including Women and Youth Assemblies). In fact, most of
them went to
commemorate the 5th Anniversary of the Zimbabwe Vigil on that
day.
This scenario left the event open to manipulation by the event
organisers
who happened to be pro-dissolution and had actually orchestrated
the
Chairman’s visit for the purpose. As a consequence, we saw ordinary
people
being organised into representing those branches not in attendance
and in
some cases, branches that did not exist (e.g. Oldham). The
Northampton
meetings (Youth, Women and Assembly) with National Chairman will
go down in
history as the first in the MDC-UK and Ireland where the quorum
or the
Constitution did not really matter.
Whilst we acknowledge the
fact that the Chairman would naturally be unaware
of these anomalies, we
find it difficult to absolve him of blame given that
it was him who called
for the meeting at a time of his choosing and
organised the meeting through
individuals of his choice rather than the
MDC-UK and Ireland Executive. We
are at a loss as to what this was meant to
achieve.
4. The second
strand of our case is that the National Chairperson does not
have the power
to unilaterally dissolve a Provincial Executive. This power
is vested in the
National Council as provided for under Article 5.4.2.1(i)
of the MDC
Constitution. The National Chairperson’s powers are clearly
enumerated in
Article 6.3 of the MDC Constitution. We therefore wonder which
powers the
National Chairman was using to dissolve the Executive. Whilst we
accept that
External Assemblies fall under the office of the National
Chairman, that on
its own does not confer upon the Chairman the power to
dissolve such
structures without due process.
5. The third strand of our case is that
the National Chairman breached the
rules of natural justice in that (1) no
charges or accusations were directly
or indirectly put forward to the
Executive and (2) as the accused persons,
we were never given the
opportunity to tell our side of the story. We have
it on good account that
dissolutions elsewhere within the Party included
efforts to unite the
warring parties and seeking guidance where dissolution
was called for. In
our case, the National Chairman never held a meeting with
the Executive, let
alone, make reference to the constitution. He further
exacerbated the
anomaly by including one of the chief instigators of the
coup (the Chief
Representative) to participate in the decision –making
process. The little
respect left in the process was eventually lost by such
blatant show of
bias.
6. It is also instructive to note that the National Chairman’s
decision to
dissolve the Executive was pre-mediated as the Chief
Representative (Mr
Hebson Makuvise) told everyone who cared to listen two
weeks before the
National Chairman, came that the Executive was going to be
dissolved. This
was shortly after 5 members of the Executive (Rodwell
Mupungu – Vice-
Chairperson, Jaison Matewu- Organising Secretary, Mary
Kasirowore-
Treasurer, Matthew Nyashanu – Publicity and Information and
Jameson
Mashakada – Youth Chairperson) had broke away from the rest of the
Executive
to form the so-called ‘new province’ in solidarity with the 4
suspended
branch Chairs. It is our submission that the National Chairman’s
trip and
the Northampton event were hastily organised at the behest of the 5
to stop
the Executive from executing the Coventry Council resolutions that
included
the filling up the gaps left by the five and restructuring all
branches
affected by the five’s nefarious activities. By agreeing to the
rebels’
agenda, the National Chairman became complicit to the
problem.
7. We are also aware that the National Chairman came here on the
basis of a
fraudulent petition signed by only 7 Branch Chairpersons (that
includes the
chair and organising secretary of the now appointed
coordinating committee)
and a few of their friends, uncollaborated reports
from certain individuals
belonging to the Standing Committee and media
gossip. In his unlimited
wisdom he did not bother to check the veracity of
this petition, reports or
gossip. Equity does not help those who come with
dirty hands, but in this
instance it seems those with dirty hands won the
day. We are also aware that
the other side to the case paid for the National
Chairman’s airfares and
accommodation. This made his position as an arbiter
untenable, as they say;
he who pays the piper calls the tune. In the fog of
the pampering, justice
was lost.
8. We are also worried by the fact
that two people who lost heavily in the
Chairperson’s contest at the 2006
MDC UK and Ireland Congress and the lady
who lost the Women’s Assembly
Chairperson post at the properly constituted
Congress last year were
appointed to lead the Co-ordinating Committee. These
are the very same
people whose failure to accept the Congress results turned
them into bitter
political rivals to the MDC-UK and Ireland Chairman and his
Executive (minus
the 5). A prudent and reasonable adult can easily tell that
something was
very amiss with the whole procedure. Despite the National
Chairman’s
insistence on excluding all those involved in the so-called
problem from
appointment to the coordinating committee, he nevertheless went
on to
appoint 80% of them including the following:
Mr John Nyamande (Appointed
Chair) –contested for the Chairs position at
Congress and managed only 25
votes out of over 200. He failed to accept the
results after running a very
expensive campaign and did everything to ensure
that the Tapa administration
failed from day one. With others, he
masterminded the January 2007 petition,
which was crushed by the people at
the Wolverhampton Assembly and have also
been heavily involved in the most
recent one.
Ms Suzet Kwenda
(Appointed Vice- Chair) – She contested the Women Assembly
Chair’s position
and lost heavily to Amai Chiminya. Like Mr John Nyamande,
she worked
tirelessly with others to cripple the Women Assembly (WA)
Executive and
cause disunity within the party. Furthermore, a year after she
lost office,
she failed to handover over £800 of party funds belonging to
the Women’s
Assembly.
Mary Kasirowore (Appointed Advisor) – Former Treasurer of the
MDC-UK and
Ireland was one of the rebellious five who broke away to form
their ‘new
province, new beginning’ and has failed to arrange for a proper
audit more
than a year since coming into office.
Ms Chipo Machida
(formerly organising secretary for the WA and now Appointed
WA Chairlady)
–the centre of controversy within the WA. Was dismissed by the
WA in August
2007. The same applies to Mr Cuthbert Chisango (Appointed
Organising
secretary) – suspended branch Chair for Milton Keynes and one of
the main
organisers of the ‘new province’.
The list continues and if this is the
Party’s way of dealing with disputes,
then God help us.
9. It is
against this background of a plethora of underhand dealings that
we, members
of the MDC-UK and Ireland Executive (minus the 5 of the ‘new
province, new
beginning’ have decided to reject the results of the
Northampton circus and
resolved to continue with our programmes; branch
formation and
restructuring, demonstrations and rallies, writing support
letters,
fundraising for the Party, etc. We also want to reaffirm our
support for the
President of the Party, Morgan Tsvangirai and his Liberation
Team and hope
that they will see reason and be persuaded to act
constitutionally and
uphold the founding principles of the Party.
We also reiterate the fact
that we have nothing against National Chairman
Moyo as a person or anyone
within the leadership. However, to us nothing
matters more than to remain
true to the aspirations of the People and the
Struggle by way of a
democratic, transparent and fair system as entrenched
in the Party
Constitution. In this resolve, we shall endeavour to support
and co-operate
with all MDC members and Party structures (home and away)
that share the
same values with us and hope that common sense will prevail
within Party
Leadership.
We will not dither nor shy away from the truth and the trust
the people
bestowed in us. WE DARE THE LEADERSHIP, NATIONAL COUNCIL AND THE
GENERALITY
OF PARTY MEMBERSHIP TO DO THE RIGHT THING AND SAVE THE MDC AND
THE SUFFERING
PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE.
10. It is also important to bring
the Party to recalling that the overriding
objective of the existence of the
Party through its National Council in
matters of disputes is not only to be
fair, but also to be seen to be fair
at all times. It is within this
framework that the Standing Committee must
be respectfully reminded that it
does not have the power to make resolutions
but only exists an implementing
arm of the National Council: 5.4.14 The
Committee shall be responsible for
the day to day administration of the
Party and shall report to the National
Executive and shall make no
Executive or Policy decisions.
11. As
such, it is our responsibility within the scope of the inescapable
persuasion to deliver the Party from the temptations of countervailing
behaviour that we are calling on all who are intent on the truth and
sanctity of the MDC Constitution as the guiding manual, be aware that this
by the MDC-UK& IRELAND is in the best interests of the Party of which we
all
collectively belong.
Ephraim Tapa [MDC-UK and Ireland
Chairperson, THE EXECUTIVE AND WE THE
PEOPLE]
“CHINJA MAITIRO, GUQULA
IZENZO!”
Mens News Daily
October 31, 2007 at 12:57 am
·
Yesterday the local State press announced that the government
had agreed to
new regulations that made it an offence to use market exchange
rates in the
determination of either costs of production or final retail
prices on goods
that had been imported. We immediately received reports of
arrests in the
City and assume that these relate to the new regulations.
Already, under the
so-called "price control" regulations, we have had 28 000
businesspersons
arrested and jailed.
The consequences of the price
blitz and the subsequent attempt to hold down
escalating prices driven by
high levels of inflation has simply been the
near complete disappearance of
goods for sale in the formal sector.
Wholesalers and retailers are still
standing with vast areas of empty
shelving and thousands of idle
staff.
Industrial firms are similarly idle - output is tiny in relation
to their
capacities or domestic demand. Export activities have continued -
mainly in
desperation as firms tried to do something that would at least
help with
overheads.
These new regulations (I have not seen the
actual regulations themselves -
just press reports and these seem to be
enough for the Police to act against
traders and businessmen) are another
nail in the coffin of the remaining
private sector in Zimbabwe.
For
those who live in a normal society with a functioning market economy I
must
explain. The State here operates a very strict and rigid exchange rate
regime. Under this regime right now the official exchange rate for the US
dollar is 30 000 to 1. There are many different exchange rates managed by
the Reserve Bank (a different one for exporters, tobacco farmers, wheat
producers and so on) but the "official rate" is the one used for exercises
like this one. The open market rate for the dollar right now is about 1 200
000 to 1. That is 40 times the official rate.
The Reserve Bank buys
about US$500 million from exporters and others at the
"official rate" and
then uses this for essential imports and patronage. If a
Zanu PF person gets
foreign exchange at the official rate from the bank then
they can import a
luxury vehicle, for example, for a tiny fraction of its
real cost. So a
Member of Parliament, who gets a small salary, can in fact
afford to import
and drive a top of the range SUV or luxury car.
But US$500 million does
not go very far when total import demand is in
excess of US$2,5 billion,
especially if a significant proportion is used to
support the life styles of
the rich and privileged (there is a once a week
flight to Dubai - just for
shoppers). So the business community has to buy
its foreign exchange in the
open market. This comes in many forms: -
So called "free funds" which are
available for sale in Zimbabwe in return
for local currency in quite
significant quantities - multiples of 1000 US
dollars at a time perhaps.
These attract the highest rates of exchange as
the funds are not traceable
and can be moved anywhere in the world. People
here who want to liquidate
their assets and get out use this route and pay
the premium (about 50 per
cent over the market rate) to do so. It is
estimated that something over
US$500 million a year makes its way out of
Zimbabwe in this
manner.
Then there are the funds in local Foreign Currency denominated
accounts with
local Banks. These have many sources - foreign inflows from
NGO's, export
earnings, allocations from the Reserve Bank in return for
export commodities
(gold and tobacco). These can be traded - the way this
happens is that the
owner of the FCA arranges to import something for
another company or
individual and then sells that product under a local
invoice that reflects
the agreed price for the foreign exchange used. Often
this system also
attracts a premium as exporters try to make up the
shortfall in export
earnings arising out of the purchase of 40 per cent of
all foreign earnings
by the Reserve Bank at the official rate. Because of
the shortage of foreign
exchange this is accepted as a normal cost of doing
business. It means that
often local manufacturers pay well above import
parity prices for raw
materials etc.
And then there is the street.
About US$100 million a month comes into the
system from remittances sent by
the 4 million or so Zimbabweans living
outside the country. In addition
there are many other smaller sources -
tourists and visitors, diplomats and
any other person with cash foreign
exchange. This market is extremely
efficient - prices change by the hour and
are set nation wide driven by the
ubiquitous cell phone. It also pays the
lowest exchange rates that are
available and are used to set a myriad of
prices - fuel is the best-known
example and this tracks the price of fuel at
about US$85 cents per litre.
The market is huge and the volumes traded daily
exceed the turnover of many
Banks. Traders make a fortune on margins that
are higher than would normally
apply in a formal system.
So any attempt to enforce the use of the
"official exchange rate" on costing
where the open market, in whatever form,
is the source of the foreign
exchange (over 95 per cent of all transactions)
will simply mean that the
whole system will shut down except for those who
wish to close down and
leave with their assets. This will greatly exacerbate
the present chaos in
formal markets and further enhance the informal sector
as the main source of
all basic needs at much higher costs. Yesterday for
example I spoke to a
woman who had paid Z$2,8 million for 15 kilograms of
maize meal that cost
(ex GMB) Z$60 000. Not a bad margin for the seller (a
street trader) but a
disaster for the consumer.
So the so-called "war
on prices" continues. In fact this rhetoric simply
disguises the real
purpose which is to bankrupt the private sector, close it
down and take it
over for a tiny fraction of its value and then resume
production and sales -
but under tight political control. The other main
objective is the same one
that underlay the Murambatsvina exercise - drive
as many of the urban
population out of the country before the 2008
elections, as is possible. In
this respect they are succeeding with nearly a
million Zimbabweans having
fled the country since the start of the year.
This is nothing more or
less than the ongoing Zanu PF/Joint Operations
Command election campaign.
This takes time and I think you can now
understand why the talks with Zanu
PF under the auspices of the SADC have
taken so long to come to finality.
They were supposed to be concluded by the
end of June, then the end of
October, they still meander on - the objective
is clear, to try and hold the
elections before the MDC can recover or get
its message out to the people or
get the Diaspora organised.
I cannot imagine that the South Africans are
not full conversant with this
state of affairs and therefore must conclude
they are in cahoots with Zanu
PF on this issue. It's dangerous for them as
they can ill afford to have
another two million Zimbabweans in their
overcrowded slums wreaking havoc in
their society.
Eddie
Cross
Bulawayo, 31st October 2007
Zim Online
Wednesday 31 October 2007
By
Thulani Munda
HARARE – Zimbabwe's preparation for the synchronised
presidential and
parliamentary elections next year is running behind
schedule as it emerged
yesterday that there is inadequate money for the
printing of the voters’
roll.
Edwell Mtemaringa, chief accountant at
the Registrar General's office that
prepares the voters’ register told a
parliamentary portfolio committee on
Defence and Home Affairs yesterday that
the voters roll is supposed to be
printed this year but this had not yet
happened because of inadequate funds.
“Printing of the voters’ roll has
to be done this year so that it will be
ready for inspection. We requested
$3.5 trillion and were given only $110
billion,” Mtemaringa
said.
Portfolio committee chairperson Claudius Makova told Alois Matonga,
acting
permanent secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, to take the
issue of
the voters’ roll to Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi who would in
turn
brief his colleagues in Cabinet.
“This is a serious issue which
the permanent secretary should raise with the
minister,” said Makova, who is
a legislator of President Robert Mugabe’s
ruling ZANU PF party.
The
voters’ roll requires major surgery to put it in order. For example, the
roll is said to contain millions of names of voters who died or who have
left the country over the years to work and live abroad.
Thousands of
voters have failed to vote in previous polls either because
their names were
entered under wrong constituencies or did not appear at all
on the
roll.
The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party has in the
past
accused the government of taking advantage of the lack of accurate
figures
on the number of voters to rig polls. The government denies the
charge.
Meanwhile a senior police officer told the parliamentary
committee that
preparations by the law enforcement agency to ensure adequate
security
during polls were being hampered by a lack of
resources.
Deputy Police Commissioner William Sibanda said there was need
for the
police to recruit and train more officers but there was such a
serious
shortage of resources with for example, new recruits having to train
in
their civilian clothes because there are not enough
uniforms.
“There is a serious shortage of uniforms. We can't buy
uniforms, even shorts
and T-shirts such that people are being trained in
their own clothes,” said
Sibanda, who was however keen to emphasise that
lack of resources or not,
the police has acquitted itself well in previous
polls.
A long running economic crisis described by the world bank as the
worst in
the world outside a war zone has left the Harare government
scrounging for
cash and resources to keep basic operations
running.
Analysts say credible elections next year are vital to any
attempt to pluck
once prosperous Zimbabwe from an economic meltdown, marked
by the world’s
highest inflation rate of close to 8 000 percent, deepening
poverty and
shortages of food. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Wednesday 31 October 2007
By Hendricks
Chizhanje
HARARE - The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) party has
warned that President Robert Mugabe's dismissal of its
claims about
escalating violence against its members could undermine
delicate talks
between the opposition and the ruling ZANU PF
party.
Mugabe last weekend dismissed as unsubstantiated opposition claims
of
state-sponsored violence against its supporters and labelled MDC leader
Morgan Tsvangirai as being "amateurish" and "unacceptable".
But MDC
spokesperson Nelson Chamisa yesterday accused Mugabe of undermining
the
spirit of ongoing talks between ZANU PF and the opposition by dismissing
its
concerns about escalating violence.
"Mugabe is undermining the people's
confidence. It (Mugabe's tirade)
undermines the confidence of Zimbabweans in
the dialogue process. People
expect positive signals from the incumbent,"
said Chamisa, who last March
was a victim of a government crackdown on MDC
leaders and civic activists.
Chamisa said Mugabe was being economic with
the truth by dismissing the
opposition's claims of violence.
"Mugabe
is either misinformed or is trying to be deliberately mischievous
which is
not going to aid and amplify confidence building. Our biggest
problem in
Zimbabwe is being in a denial mode," Chamisa said.
An opposition
delegation last week met Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi to
substantiate
claims of escalating targeted violence against the party's
supporters
following pressure from some Southern African Development
Community (SADC)
leaders worried that the MDC could pull out of the talks.
"We gave
evidence (to Mohadi) in detailed form," Chamisa said.
Mohadi promised to
probe the allegations of violence against opposition
activists.
Mohadi's meeting with the MDC officials followed
allegations made by the
opposition party that the government had stepped up
violence against its
supporters ahead of next year's presidential and
parliamentary elections.
Chamisa said the MDC was not expecting a
response from the SADC secretariat
after writing to them about escalating
violence in the country.
"Those issues (violence) are going to be
addressed in the context of work
currently in progress," Chamisa said,
referring to ongoing talks between the
two parties.
Negotiators from
ZANU PF and the MDC were this week expected to resume talks
in South Africa
to end Zimbabwe's long-running political crisis.
The South
African-mediated talks are being held under the aegis of SADC,
which last
March mandated President Thabo Mbeki to end the political
stalemate between
the Zimbabwean foes. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Wednesday 31 October 2007
By Regerai
Marwezu
MASVINGO – Local authorities in Masvingo province are buying
water treatment
chemicals from the black market as the country’s sole
manufacturer of the
product is failing to cope with demand, ZimOnline has
learnt.
At a meeting for local authorities held in Masvingo yesterday,
provincial
administrator Felix Chikovo said the quality of water served to
people had
deteriorated because of the shortage of water treatment
chemicals.
Most local authorities in Zimbabwe used to buy water treatment
chemicals
from Zimbabwe Phosphate (Zimphos) Limited but the company, hit
hard by the
country’s eight-year economic crisis, has struggled to cope with
demand.
There are fears that residents in Masvingo town and other
outlying areas
could be forced to drink contaminated water. Masvingo town,
which is home to
about 500 0000 people, needs 30 tonnes of water treatment
chemicals a month.
Masvingo city council has over the past few months
resorted to acquiring the
chemicals from the illegal parallel market at a
cost of Z$11.6 billion for a
month’s supply, according to documents seen by
ZimOnline.
“We are worried with the situation and hope that we are not
going to have a
catastrophe. The water situation is now a major problem and
we have since
approached central government to provide funds to ensure that
clean water
continues to reach the people.
“We cannot continue to
rely on the black market because we do not know how
genuine are these
products from the black market,” said Chikovo.
Masvingo mayor Engineer
Alois Chaimiti confirmed that his council was buying
water treatment
chemicals from the black market.
“We are now buying our water treatment
chemicals from non-traditional
sources because Zimphos is failing to cope
with demand,” said Chaimiti.
“The council has since stopped all water
related capital projects to focus
on the water situation because it has
become a priority.”
Most Zimbabwean cities and towns have battled severe
water shortages over
the past few years due to gross mismanagement and
drought with the country’s
second biggest city, Bulawayo, being the worst
affected.
The Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) was last year
mandated to take
charge of all water supplies around the country amid a
storm of disapproval
from residents in all the major cities and towns who
accused the parastatal
of gross incompetence. - ZimOnline
VOA
By Patience Rusere
Washington
30 October
2007
Some Zimbabwean civic groups are rejecting a draft
constitution said to have
emerged from crisis resolution talks between the
ruling party and the
opposition because, they argue, the document does not
reflects the wishes of
the Zimbabwean people.
About 20 civic leaders
met in Harare Tuesday to compile the results of
meetings held recently on
the South African-mediated crisis talks amid
reports a draft constitution is
afoot - as both factions of the Movement for
Democratic Change have
confirmed.
The draft constitution, reportedly assembled by MDC and
ZANU-PF negotiators
on a houseboat in Kariba, on the Zambezi River, is said
to have been
compiled from drafts produced not only by the political parties
but by a
leading civil society group.
Many in civil society were
incensed in September when the opposition voted
with the ruling party in
parliament to pass a constitutional amendment which
made important changes
in the electoral dispensation, including a provision
which allows parliament
to choose a new president in the event of
resignation, death or
incapacitation.
Support for that amendment by the Movement for Democratic
Change emerged
from the Pretoria talks, engendering distrust of that forum
on the part of
civic leaders who have demanded greater transparency and
disclosure to all
stakeholders.
National Constitutional Assembly
Chairman Lovemore Madhuku told reporter
Patience Rusere that civic groups
and MDC leaders no longer share the same
perspective on important issues and
can no longer collaborate on
constitutional matters.
VOA
By Carole Gombakomba
Washington
30 October
2007
The chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
said Tuesday that his
agency is on track in preparations for national
elections slated for March
of next year.
But many other involved
parties are expressing concern about the timetable,
and civic groups say
that so long as President Robert Mugabe has not signed
a constitutional
amendment concerning elections into law, no definitive
preparations can be
made.
Electoral authorities will have a lot on their hands creating new
constituencies as the constitution calls for the addition of 90 new elective
seats to the lower house.
Also, a delimitation commission will have
to redraw many constituency
boundaries and voter rolls for those districts
will have to be manually
compiled.
Electoral Commission Chairman
George Chiweshe told reporter Carole
Gombakomba of VOA's Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that much remains to be done
before the elections, but until Mr.
Mugabe signs the amendment into law, his
panel's hands are
tied.
Elections Director Ian Makone of the Movement for Democratic Change
faction
led by Morgan Tsvangirai said his formation has written to the
commissioner
expressing concern about the state of preparation for the
elections.
VOA
By Ndimyake Mwakalyelye
Washington
30
October 2007
The faction of Zimbabwe's opposition led by
Morgan Tsvangirai attempted
Tuesday to close a highly charged episode by
naming a new slate of officers
to head its women's assembly following the
dissolution of the executive
earlier this month. But it was not clear
whether the executive removed
earlier this month would concede
defeat.
The naming of the new executive followed a congress of the
women's assembly
of the Tsvangirai faction of the Movement for Democratic
Change held Sunday
in Bulawayo - though logistical confusion resulted in two
separate
congresses being held, one of which voted to restore former
executive
chairwoman Lucia Matibenga to power.
In the statement
released Tuesday, Chairman Lovemore Moyo of the Tsvangirai
MDC faction named
Theresa Makone, wife of the faction's secretary for
elections, Ian Makone,
the new chairwoman of the women's assembly executive.
Moyo asserted that
the dissolution of Matibenga's panel was constitutional,
contrary to a
lawsuit by Matibenga saying it violated the party's
constitution. A Harare
high court judge ruled that a congress should decide
on the issue of
constitutionality - but the disorganization surrounding the
congress seemed
to leave the issue open.
Moyo said the dissolved executive was
dysfunctional and discordant, and he
charged that Matibenga loyalists were
bused to Bulawayo to disrupt congress
proceedings.
The other women
named to the women's executive were: Enna Chitsa, deputy
chairwomen; Evelyn
Masaiti, secretary general; Margaret Matienga, deputy
secretary general;
Sphiwe Banda, treasurer; Lynete Karenyi-Kore, organizer;
Judith Chitembwe,
deputy organizer; and Sibusisiwe Masara, information and
publicity
secretary.
Reached late Tuesday, Matibenga declined to comment on the MDC
move.
South African based political analyst Glenn Mpani, speaking before
the
release of the MDC statement, told reporter Ndimyake Mwakalyelye of
VOA's
Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that the controversy had marred the Tsvangirai
faction's image.
VOA
By Jonga Kandemiiri
Washington
30 October
2007
Zimbabwe's parliamentary committee on transport has
backed a proposal by Air
Zimbabwe to set regional and international fares in
foreign exchange.
The panel said this will help the national airline stay
afloat while
longer-term solutions are found. The committee Monday endorsed
the national
air carrier’s pricing shift.
Air Zimbabwe Chairman Mike
Bimha said last week that he had broached the
subject of hard-currency
pricing with the Ministry of Transport.
Opposition lawmaker Murisi
Zwizwai told reporter Jonga Kandemiiri that Air
Zimbabwe desperately needs
hard currency, not only to pay for fuel but to
retain its pilots.
VOA
By Blessing Zulu
Washington
30 October
2007
Zimbabwe's National Incomes and Pricing Commission,
named by President
Robert Mugabe in August, has warned companies not to turn
to the parallel
market for the foreign exchange they need to finance imports
of goods and
raw materials.
Panel Chairman Godwills Masimirembwa told
the state-controlled Herald
newspaper the commission would let firms
calculate import costs and prices
using the official rate, currently
Z$30,000 per U.S. dollar. It was unclear
how this would help firms given the
hard currency drought and a parallel
market rate of Z$1 million per U.S.
dollar.
President Marah Hativagone of the National Chamber of Commerce
told VOA the
new pronouncement would aggravate already serious shortages of
food in the
country.
Consumers will soon feel the impact as the few
bakeries continuing to
operate have rejected the panel's proposed official
price for bread of
Z$100,000. Chairman VIncent Mangoma of the National
Bakers Association said
a loaf must fetch Z$400,000.
Director Godfrey
Kanyenze of the Labor and Economic Development Research
institute told
reporter Blessing Zulu of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that
even the central
bank is turning to the parallel market to obtain foreign
exchange.
|
|
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Siestas, traditional short afternoon naps taken in hot countries, have been adopted by refugees in Pretoria.
With its searing hot weather, a city park is the perfect place to enjoy a siesta. Thorn trees and other makeshift shelters filter the sun for those who enjoy a nap.
Across the street from the Marabastad Refugee Reception Office of the Home Affairs Department, three groups of people nap under the trees, taking a break from the long queues.
The office is the busiest of the country’s five refugee reception offices. The others are in Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg.
The office is filled with asylum seekers hoping for that piece of paper that will allow them to stay temporarily in South Africa.
Fungiso Mufumi, 41, of Zimbabwe is one such hopeful. Sitting under a tree on an old plastic bucket, he mourns the loss of his treasured permit.
“I finally received the permit last week, but it was stolen.”
Mufumi recently fell off a scaffold. His right arm is in a cast.
A thief took advantage of his injury and stole his money and a jacket.
“I had R384 in that jacket. A brother in Johannesburg who had heard I was struggling sent me the money.
“Now it is gone, taken by people with bad habits,” Mufumi says, hardly looking up.
Thousands of asylum seekers endure long waits while their applications are processed – or not.
An application should take 180 days – six months – to be approved, but it seldom does because of inadequate infrastructure, systems and staff shortages. But the department says it will reduce the backlog by next December.
Director for refugee affairs, Busisiwe Mkhwebane-Tshehla, says: “These challenges are not new.
“We are aware of them. We are not sitting and waiting for the situation to explode.”
She says a process to “turn around” the five reception offices was in progress to “address the influx of asylum seekers”.
The system will double the capacity of the offices.
Mkhwebane-Tshehla denied the process is hindered by officials with little understanding of refugee law. She said officials were trained by the UN High Commission for Refugees.
She said the department was not coping with applications because the “demand for permits is greater than the supply”.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Many seriously ill patients can no longer afford prescription
charges.
By Nonthando Bhebhe in Harare (AR No. 141, 31-Oct-07)
As
the prices of drugs and healthcare continue to soar to astronomical
levels,
many Zimbabweans with life-threatening conditions are going without
the
treatment they need.
Spending an afternoon at one of Harare’s busiest
pharmacies is
heartbreaking, as patient after patient walks in and out
without collection
their prescription because they just can’t afford
it.
Barely able to stand without leaning against the wall, Martin
Sibanda, a
self-employed welder, waits anxiously for the pharmacist to give
him the
prices of the five drugs that were prescribed to him at a clinic
close to
his home in Harare’s poorest suburb, Mbare.
After a
two-minute wait, the pharmacist hands him a piece of paper with the
total
cost of the drugs. He looks at the paper and as if in slow motion, he
shifts
his gaze to the pharmacist, who repeats the figure and asks if he
should
supply the drugs.
Sibanda whispers the figure and shakes his head in
bewilderment, “My son,
are you saying 28 million [Zimbabwean dollars, ZWD –
28 US dollars at the
black market rate]? Did I hear you right? Please check
again, you must be
mistaken.”
But it is not an error. It is the cost
of three life-prolonging drugs for
his two chronic illnesses, and two others
for a new infection.
Sibanda suffers from high blood pressure, stomach
ulcers, and diabetes. A
month’s supply of nifedipine to treat hypertension
costs an average of five
million ZWD; drugs for diabetes go for about six
million ZWD and ulcer
medication costs ten million ZWD.
In addition,
Sibanda has developed a chest infection and was prescribed an
antibiotic and
cough mixture. The antibiotic, erythromycin, costs about 2.5
million ZWD and
the cough mixture, 4.5 million ZWD.
With a teacher’s monthly salary at 14
million ZWD a month as of October - a
figure still below the official
poverty line which was set at 16.7 million
ZWD in August - Sibanda’s
pharmacy bill of 28 million ZWD is way beyond the
reach of the majority of
Zimbabweans.
Sibanda stares blankly at the pharmacist and then turns to
his wife. He
tells her that they will just have to go back home and pray for
God’s
healing.
His predicament mirrors that of millions of other
Zimbabweans, suffering as
a result of a collapsing public health
system.
Zimbabwe’s health service used to be the marvel of the southern
African
subcontinent, with the government’s vision of “Health for All by
2000”
almost within reach.
By the turn of the millennium, each of the
nine rural provinces had a well
equipped referral hospital. District clinics
were complemented superbly by
mission hospitals scattered all over the
country.
However, a declining economic situation attributed to
government’s ruinous
policies has seen the situation deteriorate to
pre-independence levels.
Zimbabwe is going through a severe economic
crisis with serious fuel and
food shortages which are blamed on recurring
droughts as well as the
government's fast-track land redistribution
programme, which has disrupted
agricultural production and slashed export
earnings.
This has taken its toll on the health service. Now drugs are
scarce, those
which are available are exorbitantly priced, medical equipment
is
dilapidated and there are persistent strikes over poor salaries on offer
to
health workers.
In recent years, those who can afford it have been
forced to turn to private
medical practitioners for services no longer
offered by government clinics
and hospitals. However, as private hospitals
now demand an upfront cash
deposit of 50 million ZWD before admission, this
is out of the reach of most
people.
Touched by Sibanda’s plight, IWPR
sought an interview with him. He seemed to
have resigned himself to whatever
fate awaited him.
When IWPR visited his home four days later, his
condition seemed to have
worsened and his breathing was strained. He tried
to sit up on his small
wooden bed, but this made breathing more
difficult.
“I am in a lot of pain. If I had money, I would seek private
medical care or
buy those drugs I was prescribed. But I have nothing and I’m
now waiting for
my death. My condition is getting worse every day and I just
don’t know
anywhere to turn to,” he said.
Asked why he does not go to
any of the government hospitals, Sibanda smiled
and said, “Government
hospitals are now deathbeds – people are referred
there to die. There is no
medication and they are filthy and you can almost
smell death as you enter
their buildings. So, no, thanks – I would rather be
with my loved ones and
die surrounded by love.”
The high costs of medical care are affecting
everyone, including those with
medical insurance, who still have to meet
more than half of the medical
costs.
Commonly prescribed drugs are
unaffordable to most. For example, Ranferon -
which is recommended for
pregnant women to increase circulation and avoid
birth complications - now
costs more than 13 million ZWD.
One pharmacist told IWPR that although
they understood that most Zimbabweans
can no longer afford medication, there
was nothing they could do because
they have to sell drugs at
profit.
“I tell you many people are dying in silence without medication
and proper
health care. I have to develop a hard skin to deal with the
situation in
Zimbabwe. My heart bleeds every single time when a patient
walks out without
her medication,” he said.
“You can almost feel or
even touch the helplessness in people. I am sure if
we were to do a proper
survey, we will find that hundreds of people have
died when they should not
have. The government has to address this issue;
otherwise, it is presiding
over a dying and hungry nation.”
Many of those worst affected by the
rising prices of drugs are those with
HIV.
In a country with the
world's fourth highest rate of HIV infection, many
infected people simply
cannot afford the antiretroviral, ARV, drugs they
need, said Lynde Francis,
who runs The Centre - an HIV/AIDS non-governmental
organisation with 4,500
registered clients.
"People are giving up [taking their] drugs - they
have to choose between
feeding and educating their kids or taking ARVs,” she
said. “It's becoming
more of a struggle to get the basic necessities. ARVs
are way down on their
list of priorities.”
Nonthando Bhebhe is the
pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
They will have their work cut out to reduce tensions ahead of next
year’s
elections.
By Yamikani Mwando in Bulawayo (AR No. 141,
31-Oct-07)
Zimbabwe - like many African democracies - has been plagued by
election
violence since the country opted for multi-party politics upon
attaining
black majority rule in 1980.
Violence has escalated since
the 1999-2000 electoral campaign, when the main
opposition party the
Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, gave the ruling
ZANU-PF a run for its
money. Houses have been burnt, people abducted,
pro-democracy activists
tortured and killed.
Politicians and the ZANU-PF government in particular
have routinely been
accused of fanning violence before, during and after
elections and stoking
tribal conflicts in the
process.
Non-governmental organisations involved in peace-building
initiatives are
already reporting politically motivated violence and
killings ahead of
Zimbabwe’s potentially bruising presidential and
parliamentary elections
early next year.
While some communities have
begun efforts to make this election
violence-free, they agree it is not -
and has never been - an easy job.
Themba Phuthi, 36, a volunteer for the
Catholic Commission for Justice and
Peace, CCJP, is involved in efforts to
ensure tolerance of diverging
political views. He works among communities
where the expression of
political loyalty has, in the past, turned
bloody.
At a time when there is widespread resentment of all things
political, the
CCJP is in the vanguard of preaching peaceful co-existence
amid growing
agitation amongst locals as the nation prepares for next year’s
polls.
“This is a job one has to do,” Phuti told IWPR from Bulawayo,
Zimbabwe’s
second largest city - which was considered a hotbed of opposition
politics
before the MDC was rocked by divisions.
The local authority
has been controlled by the MDC since the 2000
legislative polls. Political
temperatures have risen with each approaching
election as President Robert
Mugabe tries to wrest control of the city from
his political nemesis,
explained Phuthi.
During the 2000 elections - which threatened to oust
the Mugabe regime -
Phuthi said he was on the receiving end of political
violence, which
convinced him to preach a new gospel of political
tolerance.
“This was the time when we were all excited by the prospect of
voting for
change and I was one of the people who actively took part in the
activities
of the new political opposition,” said Phuthi, referring to the
MDC.
Today, however, instead of luring neophytes to a particular
political party,
he preaches tolerance of opposing political
preferences.
“I work with a team of volunteers and we use the platform of
the church to
educate our communities,” he said.
Working from parish
premises has made the job easier for him, as people from
different political
persuasions come in as members of the same church and
are encouraged to
raise these issues with their non-Catholic neighbours.
Because of
Zimbabwe’s restrictive security laws, NGOs say it has become
increasingly
difficult to organise public meetings where issues of a
political nature are
discussed.
Such a meeting would require police clearance under the strict
Public Order
and Security Act - which was introduced in 2002 and makes it
illegal to
“undermine the authority of the president" or "engender
hostility" towards
him - because the authorities maintain such a meeting is
likely to breach
the peace.
So instead, the CCJP has organised
meetings of that nature as “prayer
meetings” within parish premises, John
Nkatazo, the CCJP coordinator in
Bulawayo, told IWPR.
Nkatazo has
made inroads into rural Matabeleland in southwestern Zimbabwe,
organising
workshops on political tolerance. He said it is especially
difficult working
with these communities.
“These are areas where the ruling party says it
enjoys majority support so
you can imagine how difficult it is coming to
these areas preaching peace
and tolerance,” said Nkatazo.
Moreover,
“because we are from the CCJP we are viewed with suspicion”, he
added.
The CCJP was accused by the regime of working in cahoots with
enemies of the
state after it published a damning report documenting
government-sponsored
atrocities in Matabeleland in the early 1980s, and
their relationship has
been stormy ever since.
The report accused the
government of launching a massive security clampdown
against bands of
"dissidents" who were killing civilians and destroying
property, and also
against supporters of the former opposition party the
Zimbabwe African
People's Union.
During this, said the CCJP report, “thousands of unarmed
civilians died,
were beaten, or suffered loss of property during the 1980s,
some at the
hands of dissidents and most as a result of the actions of
government
agencies”.
Working as a peace activist like Phuthi takes a
great deal of courage.
A recent report by the Zimbabwe Peace Project - a
non-governmental
organisation involved in documenting political violence and
human rights
abuses - notes that the project recorded more than 4000 human
rights
violations between January and June this year, which were politically
motivated in most cases.
Seemingly echoing these findings, the
internationally respected Zimbabwe
Human Rights NGO Forum says 2007 is set
to be the worst year for human
rights violations by police and government
agents yet.
This increasingly restrictive climate presents one of the
biggest challenges
for volunteers, such as Phuthi.
“It’s easy to
attract the attention of security agents who are largely
blamed for the
abductions, but the fact that we work within parish walls,
though very
limited in our outreach efforts, we manage to escape their
wrath,” said
Phuthi.
For Nkatazo, the biggest challenge is instilling values such as
tolerance in
parishioners, who also wear another hat as activists of a
particular
political party.
“I have had instances where a parishioner
is a fervent supporter of the
ruling ZANU-PF and has embraced the party’s
beliefs and philosophies about
who are the real perpetrators of violence,
its enemies, etc. So when you try
to explain such issues as tolerance,
instead of understanding these issues
from the point of view of the Church,
they will tell you that is not their
party’s position, but rather that they
have an enemy to fight,” he said.
“They actually try to convert you to
their party. You can imagine the
frustration we have to deal
with.”
Yamikani Mwando is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
President’s rivals caught flatfooted over ZANU-PF candidature for
presidential poll.
By Joseph Sithole in Harare (AR No. 141,
31-Oct-07)
President Robert Mugabe appears to have outwitted ZANU-PF
rivals seeking to
oust him from power, but remains at a loss as to how to
turn around the
country’s collapsing economy.
The ZANU-PF politburo
last week all but endorsed Mugabe as its sole party
candidate for
presidential elections, to be held jointly with a
parliamentary poll, early
next year, beating back any challengers for the
post.
Last December,
he failed to get endorsement for a plan to extend his term of
office by two
years to 2010 at the Goromonzi People’s Conference, where he
faced
opposition from a ZANU-PF faction led by retired army general Solomon
Mujuru. The proposal was also fiercely attacked by civil society
organisations and the Movemnt for Democratic Change, MDC, which accused
Mugabe of trying to extend his term of office because he was afraid of
defeat at the polls.
A ZANU-PF central committee meeting on March 30
again failed to endorse
Mugabe’s bid to extend his term in office. Instead,
it resolved to reduce
the term of the current parliament by two years, to
run concurrently with
the presidential term, starting next year. A special
ZANU-PF congress in
December was scheduled to decide who should be the
ruling party’s candidate
for the presidency, but Mugabe last week managed to
head off any challenge
to his candidature.
For some time now, Mugabe
has deftly turned the tables against the enemy
within. He recently mobilised
alleged veterans of Zimbabwe’s independence
war, led by the abrasive
Jabulani Sibanda, who have been criss-crossing the
country in support of
Mugabe’s candidacy at the party’s special congress in
December. Despite the
resentment Sibanda has provoked among senior members
of the party,
especially from the two Matabeleland provinces, he appears to
enjoy Mugabe’s
tacit backing.
Formerly provincial chairman for Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s
second largest city
and an MDC stronghold, Sibanda was suspended from the
party in 2004, and
expelled two years later, for “indiscipline”,
specifically for attending a
meeting opposing the accession to the
vice-presidency of Joice Mujuru, wife
of the general.
The war
veterans are aligned to Rural Housing Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, a
bitter
rival of Mujuru, and seen by many as a favourite of the president.
The
women’s and youth branches of ZANU PF have already expressed their
backing
for Mugabe. The two groups are led respectively by Gender and Women’s
Affairs Minister Oppah Muchinguri and Youth Minister Saviour Kasukuwere,
both of them in the Mugabe camp.
With the key grassroots
constituencies safely in his pocket, Mugabe last
week turned on his senior
opponents in the party. At the party’s ordinary
session of the central
committee on October 26, Mnangagwa, who is also the
party’s secretary for
legal affairs, said the special congress in December
would only discuss
agricultural mechanisation and the harmonisation of
elections, and ratify a
reduced term for the president from six to five
year - which means there
will be no debate of the presidential candidate.
Mugabe’s opponents were
caught literally flatfooted as two weeks ago ZANU-PF
spokesperson Nathan
Shamuyarira had told the party mouthpiece, The Voice,
that all positions in
the presidium would be contested. But last week,
Mugabe loyalists changed
tack saying there would be no competition since,
according to the ZANU-PF
constitution, the first secretary of the party is
automatically the
presidential candidate.
“What this means is that anybody who raises the
issue of a presidential
candidate other than Mugabe would be declared out of
order,” said a senior
ZANU-PF official in Harare. “Those three agenda items
mean the fireworks
that people were expecting from the likes of Mujuru
challenging Mugabe are
dead and buried. Only divine intervention can change
that reality.”
A University of Zimbabwe political lecturer said he was
surprised by the
ease with which Mugabe had outwitted his opponents within
his party. “He won
without breaking a sweat against dire predictions that
the Mujuru camp would
want to build on the victories they scored in
Goromonzi against [extending
Mugabe’s term to] 2010 and against Mugabe’s
automatic endorsement in March,”
he said. “It’s an unbelievable
anticlimax.”
However, he said the party might have alienated significant
constituencies
in Matabeleland and Manicaland, where senior party leaders
are against the
readmission of Sibanda into the party. Most senior party
leaders in the two
provinces have boycotted Sibanda’s solidarity marches,
while Mnangagwa
claims Sibanda has appealed against his suspension, and in
any case was
doing work for a welfare organisation as leader of the war
veterans.
Another analyst noted a bigger irony in the whole drama. He
said while
Mugabe had made “mincemeat” of his opponents in the party and the
opposition
was too weak to mount any serious challenge, there was no sign
that the root
cause of all the anger against Mugabe’s leadership - a
collapsing economy -
was responding positively to his political
victories.
“If Mugabe could confide in anyone,” said the analyst, “I have
no doubt he
would confess that the economy was his greatest nemesis. He can
see only
spurts of sunlight in a bitterly cold winter night. While he has
made
mincemeat of his political opponents, in fact beating them before the
game
has started, the economy remains his most stubborn challenge against
which
he doesn’t appear to have a trick to play.”
The analyst said
Mugabe had given Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono carte
blanche to print
money in the hope of improving the supply side of the
economy. “They are
hoping that increased production might shore up the
economy,” he said. “But
that is a big ‘if’ because it all depends on the
inputs available and the
rains, over which they have no control.
“Mugabe scored a lot of points
against George Bush at the recent UN General
Assembly in New York. He is
also winning his latest spat with British prime
minister Gordon Brown over
his presence at the forthcoming European
Union-Africa Summit in Lisbon. He
has all of Africa in his pocket. Back
home, the MDC is all but
beaten.
“Yet with inflation raging at 8,000 per cent and unemployment
nearly 80 per
cent, plus pervasive shortages of all basic commodities, the
economy doesn’t
appear to respond positively to Mugabe’s political fortunes.
That should
have been a godsend for any competent opposition
party.”
Joseph Sithole is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in
Zimbabwe.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
As
elections draw closer, the already divided opposition is stricken with
internal strife.
By Joseph Sithole in Harare (AR No. 141,
31-Oct-07)
October has not been a good month for Zimbabwe’s main
opposition party, the
Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, in the last
couple of years.
In October 2005 the party split into warring entities,
while this month two
key groupings within the larger of the two factions
have been dissolved
under controversial circumstances.
The MDC has
also spent the month dealing with the fallout of its
controversial decision
to back constitutional amendments that, among other
things, allow President
Robert Mugabe to effectively hand-pick his
successor.
The MDC split
in October 2005 badly weakened the party in its fight against
the ruling
ZANU-PF. The bigger faction, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, decided to
boycott an
election for the Senate, or upper house of parliament, fearing
that the
institution - newly reconstituted after a eight-year lapse – would
simply be
stuffed with supporters of President Robert Mugabe.
The other MDC, which
took part in the Senate vote, is now led by Arthur
Mutambara.
Both
factions have since tried to damp down their differences as they
confronted
an increasingly violent Mugabe administration, but in September
they jointly
incurred the wrath of their opposition allies when they took a
tactical
decision to back the constitutional bill, which went through both
houses of
parliament unopposed.
They are still struggling to mend the rift with
their main civic society
partners within the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, which
accuse them of selling
out. At a recent meeting in Bulawayo, non-government
groups voted to reject
the amendments and continue pressing for an all-new
constitution.
The MDC factions need to draw a line under this issue and
start working
towards crucial presidential and parliamentary elections in
March next year.
But even as attempts are made to heal the rifts and form
a united front, the
Tsvangirai-led MDC has become embroiled in two internal
conflicts of its own
that could be leading to a messy implosion.
On
October 10, the faction’s influential women’s assembly led by Lucia
Matibenga was dissolved by the MDC’s standing committee, on the grounds of
poor performance.
“With the MDC’s attack on its women’s league, we
are relegated once again to
a second-class citizen position,” said Grace
Kwinjeh, one of the senior
leaders of the dissolved women’s
assembly.
Matibenga disputed the legality of the move and took the matter
to Zimbabwe’s
High Court, which ordered the party to hold a congress of its
female members
to decide whether the assembly should be
dissolved.
MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti rejected claims of unfair
treatment,
saying the party had run an internal inquiry into “disharmony” in
the body
and had acted on the basis of most of the evidence it had gathered.
The
decision did not reflect “patriarchy, chauvinism or contempt of the
feminist
movement”, he said, in remarks quoted by the London-based SW Radio
Africa.
Meanwhile, the Tsvangirai-led MDC branch for Britain and Ireland,
led by
Ephraim Tapa, was dissolved on October 13 at a meeting presided over
by MDC
national chairman, Lovemore Moyo.
Both disputes have stirred
up furious infighting, with accusations of
wrongdoing on both sides, and
claims that people are being pushed out to
make way for friends and
relatives of senior party leaders.
"What happened today among Zimbabweans
here is an assault on both democracy
and human rights. Once again,
Zimbabweans have been deprived of a right to
choose their leaders,” said
Tapa the day he was removed. “The MDC…. can
never take us to the freedom
that we are craving as Zimbabweans. The freedom
I am talking about is the
right to make decisions on who should lead us.”
However, a senior party
official, who declined to be named, defended
Tsvangirai. He said they had
information that the party had been infiltrated
by the Zimbabwean security
services - “hence the need to move with speed”.
“This is a very sensitive
issue, and for the president [Tsvangirai] to
follow all the constitutional
processes at this critical time would have
been remiss,” he said. “He is
fully aware of the constitutional
requirements, hence he has already called
for fresh elections this week.
Those who have been suspended are free to
contest,” he said.
A political analyst in Harare said the internal strife
and the accompanying
allegations reflected badly on Tsvangirai’s leadership
skills.
“It doesn’t augur well for a person who is fighting what is
generally
regarded as a dictator to be constantly accused of ignoring party
rules and
regulations. It gives you an ominous picture of the future when
such a
person wields real state power,” said the analyst, who did not want
to be
identified.
He suggested the lack of unity and public conflict
was bad news at a time
when the MDC should really be focusing all its
efforts on the elections.
"Tsvangirai keeps shooting himself in the
foot," he said. "The party is
already too weak to pose a serious threat to
ZANU-PF in next year's election
and he provokes a new storm in the party
when civic society partners are
already ambivalent about his ability to
lead.
“The MDC is being forced to fight on too many fronts, when it
should be
mobilising the limited resources it has for the big fight against
ZANU-PF. I
don't know what will happen next year, but they appear keener to
destroy
themselves than face ZANU-PF head on as a united
party."
Joseph Sithole is the pseudonym of a reporter in Harare.
World Vision
Date: 30 Oct 2007
by Sibusisiwe
Ndlovu
Diarrhea outbreaks and other waterborne diseases continue to be
reported in
municipal health centres in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest
city, as the
water crisis affecting the city worsens. World Vision is
responding with
efforts to restore water sources and educate the public
about disease
prevention.
Bulawayo has been suffering from an acute
water shortage because of
unreliable rainfall into the dams supplying the
city with water. Drought has
plagued the area for five
years.
Bulawayo Health Director Dr. Zanele Hwalima said that 371 cases of
diarrhea
were reported during the last week of September.
She said:
"The city's health department, working together with community
stakeholders,
is wrestling with this outbreak, as there is urgent need to
stop the spread
of infection. The water crisis has compromised hygiene
standards in the city
as some residents have resorted to using unprotected
water for domestic use
and sewerage systems are functioning far below
capacity due to lack of
water. There are fears of more disease outbreaks in
the drier parts of the
city."
Bulawayo's normal daily water consumption for the city's 1.25
million
residents used to be an average of 145,000 cubic metres but has been
reduced
to 45,000 cubic metres a day as four of the five dams supplying the
city
with water have dried up.
World Vision has rehabilitated 94
boreholes in the city. Residents spend
hours queuing at the boreholes to
obtain the precious liquid for domestic
use.
To avert further
outbreaks and boost hygiene awareness, World Vision will
sponsor a radio
programme that will be aired on a popular local radio
station in
Bulawayo.
World Vision Zimbabwe Water and Sanitation Co-coordinator
Moreblessings
Munyaka said that the programme aims to educate the residents
of Bulawayo on
how best to prevent the spread of diseases, such as diarrhea,
which can be
fatal for young children, and even adults, if not treated
promptly.
"Issues such as basic hygiene and food handling will be
emphasised.
Residents will also be given a platform to share ideas on how
best they can
conserve the little water resources that they have left," she
said.
Commenting on the water crisis, a 36-year-old resident of Magwegwe
High
Density Surburb, said, "If it wasn't for World Vision rehabilitating
boreholes in our area, we would still be relying on a dirty, unprotected
open well."
The mother of four found it difficult to boil water due
to frequent power
outages and scarcity of firewood, increasingly common in
urban areas.
"My family suffered from diarrhea often. But when World
Vision installed a
borehole for us, this problem disappeared from my home,"
she said.
Zim Online
Wednesday 31 October 2007
By Nigel
Hangarume
HARARE - A forensic audit report of Zimbabwe Cricket's finances
was
yesterday tabled before the International Cricket Council (ICC)'s board
meeting which ends in Dubai today.
The ICC had in June ordered the
forensic audit after allegations that
Zimbabwe Cricket's accounts had been
"deliberately falsified".
KPMG South Africa was appointed to handle the
probe after an initial audit
by a local firm was treated
suspiciously.
"The board will consider the forensic audit of Zimbabwe
Cricket, carried out
by accountancy firm KPMG of South Africa," said Brian
Murgatroyd, the ICC's
media and communications manager.
ICC chief
executive Malcolm Speed, in a report leaked to the press, in June
made
damning comments and raised serious concerns about the governance and
financial accountability of Zimbabwe Cricket.
Speed's report came
after disgruntled stakeholders and former Zimbabwe
Cricket administrators
made allegations of mismanagement and embezzlement
against the
union.
Queries had been raised concerning payments totalling US$640 350
which
Zimbabwe Cricket had made to "three unknown companies" as well as a
deal
with a vehicle company which imports cars.
Stakeholders had also
questioned the purchase of an outside broadcasting van
as well as the
contravention of Zimbabwe's tough foreign currency
regulations.
Zimbabwe Cricket chairman Peter Chingoka, who has
survived several attempts
to oust him on the basis of financial
mismanagement allegations, is
attending the ICC board meeting in
Dubai.
The board's discussions also include umpires' taskforce
recommendations, the
ICC centenary and the appointment of the next ICC chief
executive officer. -
ZimOnline
Africa News, Netherlands
Posted on Wednesday 31 October 2007 - 13:04
Solidarity
Peace Trust
Solidarity Peace Trust
Since the onset of the Zimbabwean
crisis, the role of South Africa, as both
a help and hindrance, has been
continuously debated. In particular there has
been a certain cynicism about
South Africa's policy of "quiet diplomacy"
being driven by the economic
interests of the South African state and its
corporate sector.
While
this report argues that South Africa’s policy has been guided by the
broader
political concerns of the South African state on the continent, it
is clear
that the growing evidence of South African business concerns
exploiting the
conditions of the Zimbabwean crisis has to be looked at more
carefully in
terms of its on-going effects on South Africa’s strategy on
Zimbabwe.
The collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy in recent years has been
catastrophic.
Zimbabwe’s gross domestic product (GDP) plummeted 40% from
1999 to 2003,
since when it has continued to decline precipitously. The
drastic
shrinkage of the economy has been attributed to the collapse of the
key
contributors to the country’s GDP – agriculture, manufacturing and
tourism –
following the introduction of the government’s contentious
fast-track land
redistribution programme in 2000.
Manufacturing,
mining and export sectors have declined steeply.
Manufacturing, which at its
height constituted 16% of GDP, has shrunk by
more than 35%. Unemployment
hovers near 80%. The Zimbabwean dollar is
almost worthless from
hyperinflation. Tourism earnings, once Zimbabwe’s
second biggest source of
foreign currency, declined form US$198 in 2004 to
US$98 million in 2005, a
decline of 49%. The mining sector has been faced
with serious shortages of
raw materials due to the dearth of foreign
exchange. Production capacity has
declined precipitously and production
costs have increased hugely. The
deterioration of agriculture, the mainstay
of Zimbabwe’s economy which at
its prime constituted 50% of exports, has had
a disastrous impact on the
economy.
Between 1998 and 2001, foreign direct investment in Zimbabwe
dropped by 99%.
The risk premium on investment jumped from 3,4% in 2000 to
153,2% by 2004.
And Zimbabwe has experienced a tremendous drop in
agricultural production,
with maize, groundnuts, cotton, wheat, soybean,
sunflowers, and coffee
production contracting between 50% and 90% between
2000 and 2003. The
country’s financial institutions are in disarray and
its once productive
farms sit idle. Thanks to the Zimbabwean government’s
lack of fiscal
discipline, Zimbabwe’s domestic debt has swelled considerably
in recent
years. In 2003, the ratio of domestic debt to GDP stood at
14.2%. In May
2005, the ratio had risen to over 16% of GDP.
The
economic crisis in Zimbabwe, like economic crises in many African
countries,
has bred a political and social crisis. Operation Murambatsvina
struck at
the heart of Zimbabwe’s informal economy. With national
unemployment
hovering around 80%, the clean-up campaign aggravated the
already unbearable
levels of poverty, social suffering and hopelessness
pervading Zimbabwe. A
related social impact of Operation Murambatsvina has
been the rise in
homelessness caused by the government’s crackdown on
‘illegal structures and
crime,’ with as many as 1.5 million Zimbabweans
losing their homes in the
clampdown.
Owing to unreasonable price controls and ballooning overheads,
many retail
outlets have not been able to stock foodstuffs and basic
commodities such as
sugar, maize meal, soap, margarine, toothpaste, salt,
milk, bread, flour and
cooking oil. The high demand for essential goods
has led to high prices
for basics, denting the incomes of workers already
reeling from increases in
transport and medical costs. Zimbabwean national
life has been crippled by
a deepening fuel crisis induced by a chronic lack
of foreign currency and
escalating international prices for oil. In
addition to food and fuel
scarcities, Zimbabwe has experienced constant
electricity and water cuts.
The unprecedented economic crisis besetting
Zimbabwe has forced many highly
educated citizens to leave the country.
Doctors, nurses, lawyers, bankers,
teachers, civil servants and many other
professionals have emigrated to
countries such as Australia, Britain,
Botswana and South Africa in search of
a better life. The exodus of
professionals has resulted in critical staff
shortages and the collapse of
key public service sectors, notably education
and health. The health
sector the government had resorted to re-employing
retired nurses to help
alleviate staff deficiencies in government hospitals.
Zimbabwe’s public
hospitals are estimated to have a shortage of 3000 nurses.
This poses
immense challenges for a nation where the overwhelming majority
of the
population depends on public health care, and where approximately 20%
of the
adult population is afflicted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
The responses of
the Zimbabwean government to this economic catastrophe has
thus far added to
the existing problems. In June 2007 the Government
introduced Operation
Reduce Prices, which according to the Reserve Bank
Governor, Gideon Gono, in
part, “fell prey to selfish predatory tendencies
for certain players in the
Taskforce implementation teams.......through a
disproportionate course of
activities geared to promote personal interests”.
This admission adds to the
growing evidence of rent-seeking activities that
have been carried out by
large sections of the ruling party elite and have
contributed to the
economic debilitation of the country.
Similarly with the recently passed
Indigenisation Bill, there is strong
reason to expect that the legislation
which insists on 51% ownership of all
foreign business passing into
indigenous hands, will in fact add to the
patronage base of the ruling elite
without dealing with the more fundamental
problems in the economy. Both
theses responses speak more to the electoral
opportunism of the ruling party
and accumulation needs of the ruling elite
than to the broader national
interests of Zimbabweans.
The roots of the South African government’s
policy of ‘quiet diplomacy’ or
constructive engagement towards Zimbabwe can
be traced to 1999 when Thabo
Mbeki became South Africa’s president. The
key objective of this policy
has been to use non-violent means to
“encourage” the Mugabe regime to bring
about democratic change in Zimbabwe.
Furthermore, the policy has been
designed with the objective of “preventing
a complete collapse of authority
in Zimbabwe.”
South Africa’s policy
of ‘quiet diplomacy’ has drawn severe criticism
internationally, in South
Africa and in Zimbabwe. Some have suggested that
South Africa’s diplomacy
has bordered on collaboration with the Mugabe
regime.
Concerns have
also been raised about the incompatibility of Mbeki’s
Zimbabwe policy with
his proclaimed vision of an African Renaissance.
Given Zimbabwe’s economic
dependence on South Africa, domestic and
international critics of Zimbabwe
have urged South Africa to use its immense
economic leverage coercively
against Zimbabwe by imposing economic
sanctions. Mbeki has adamantly
opposed the implementation of sanctions
against Harare, pointing that
punitive economic measures would have
potentially destabilising
consequences, including a huge including a huge
influx of refugees,
disruption of trade links, and general chaos on the
border.
This
study has four main findings. First, South Africa’s policy towards
Zimbabwe
is extremely unlikely to change under the Mbeki presidency. Mbeki’s
refusal
to consider an alternative policy to ‘constructive engagement’ is
rooted in
several important considerations, including: a desire to shed
South Africa’s
‘Big Brother’ image; a preference for multilateral, not
unilateral,
approaches to conflict resolution; a belief in African solutions
by
Africans; a quest to cement South Africa’s African identity; a
sensitivity
to domestic black opinion; a refusal to interfere in the
internal affairs of
another sovereign state; and constraints imposed by the
challenge to South
Africa’s leadership by other regional states. These are
salient factors
that Mbeki’s successor would have to weigh carefully before
deciding on
his/her policy approach to Zimbabwe.
Second, notwithstanding Zimbabwe’s
political and economic problems, trade
and investment ties between South
Africa and Zimbabwe remain very strong.
Perhaps because of its troubles,
Zimbabwe remains South Africa's most
important trading partner in Africa.
And the strong economic ties between
the two countries are poised to
continue into the future; South African
companies are unlikely to pull out
of Zimbabwe because of that country’s
internal crisis. Many South African
firms believe Zimbabwe is still a
better and easier place in which to do
business than many other African
countries, and they have found ways to
negotiate Zimbabwe’s largely
dysfunctional economy in order to maintain a
presence there in expectation
of eventual political change and economic
recovery.
Third, while the South African government’s response to the
Zimbabwean
crisis has been driven by broad political concerns, it is also
clear that
sections of the corporate sector from South Africa engaged in
Zimbabwe have
exploited the opportunities thrown up by the crisis in that
country.
Fourth, although the South African business sector has supported
the South
African government’s policy of ‘quiet diplomacy’ towards Zimbabwe,
it has
urged the government to take a much tougher line and speak out more
forcefully about the breakdown of the rule of law, human rights abuses, and
economic chaos in Zimbabwe. This opinion has emerged particularly since SA
business interests have also had to deal with the vagaries of the
authoritarian Zimbabwean state. Whether the South African business sector
can meaningfully influence the process of resolving Zimbabwe’s problems will
depend on the degree to which the government is willing to accommodate its
proposals and concerns.
Read full report on www.solidaritypeacetrust.org.za