| The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe - may peace, truth and justice prevail. |
|
TELEVISION footage of the violence engulfing Zimbabwe
often gives the impression that this is primarily a battle between rich white
farmers and landless blacks. According to farmer Ian Kay, journalist Benhilda Chanetsa and human rights
worker Noma Nabanyama, the violence is being inflicted by war veterans and party
militants loyal to President Robert Mugabe.
The victims are from all sections of Zimbabwean society – white landholders,
black farm workers and opposition groups and non-government organisations out of
favour with the Government.
All three have suffered in this reign of terror. Ms Nabanyama has the most
heart-wrenching story. Her father, political activist Patrick Nabanyama, was
kidnapped by war veterans last year and is feared dead, while Mr Kay was badly
beaten on his farm at Marondera.
Photographs of his battered body were published in newspapers around the
world in April last year.
Ms Chanetsa, a sub-editor at The Standard newspaper, works in a
climate of fear. Her editor was arrested and tortured by war veterans and now
faces defamation charges.
The source of this chaos, they say, is Mr Mugabe. The 78-year-old leader,
faced with a crumbling economy and a strong challenge from the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change in elections due next year, is turning on the
terror in a desperate bid to stay in power.
His shock troops are led by militants from the ruling Zanu-PF party and
veterans from the 1970s war of liberation which ousted white minority leader Ian
Smith.
For Ms Nabanyama, the terror arrived on June 19 last year. On that day, war
veterans came to her home and dragged away her father Patrick, who was an
election agent for MDC politician David Colthard.
"They came to our house in Bulawayo at 4pm," she said.
"They took him out violently, started dragging him . . . bundled him into a
car and that was the last time we saw him.
"I was with my mother and four young brothers. We screamed at them but they
wouldn't listen.
"I don't think he is still alive. It has been a year now."
The kidnapping of her father propelled Ms Nabanyama into a new life as a
human rights activist with the Amani Trust, an organisation dedicated to the
rehabilitation of torture victims.
For Mr Kay, the trouble started in 1998 when his farm was first invaded. He
says he was an obvious target because of his political involvement with the MDC
and before that with the Zimbabwe Union of Democrats.
But it was in April last year that he had a brush with death.
"I was checking our work at our farm school," he said.
"A group of youths arrived at where I was and surrounded me and started
beating me.
"They tied me up and were taking me into the bush to dispatch me, so they
said.
"Before we arrived where there was any cover, my son came with a vehicle.
"They took fright and I ran away."
Mr Kay left his 2000ha maize and cattle farm after this beating and stayed
away until September last year. The war veterans have forced him to remove all
stock and to scale back his cropping program.
As for recent efforts to curb the farm invasions, Mr Kay said these had
failed. The Zimbabwean Government had agreed at a summit in Nigeria last month
to end violence against white farmers and respect the rule of law.
But Mr Kay said that since beginning of September, 20 more farms had been
invaded and there had been 25 incidents of household sieges or beatings of
farmers.
Although Ms Chanetsa has not been personally attacked, she has seen her
workmates beaten and intimidated.
"My editor Mark Chavunduka and chief writer Ray Choto were tortured in police
cells with electric shocks," she said.
"If you ask them today, they will tell you that they still have nightmares
about what happened."
These attacks happened in January 1999 and caused such an international
outcry that the Government was forced to pull back.
"They use other methods now," Ms Chanetsa said.
"They can send their thugs to harass journalists and prevent them from
entering state functions."
She said the Government also was resorting to defamation laws in a bid to
cripple the media.
The Standard, a weekly paper with a circulation of 80,000, is facing
two criminal defamation charges after it quoted a London Sunday Times
story which claimed that Mr Mugabe was haunted by the ghost of Josiah
Tongogara, a former rival who died in 1980.
Both Mr Kay and Ms Chanetsa think that Mr Mugabe is in desperate political
trouble, especially in urban areas.
"In the cities he has no support whatsoever," Ms Chanetsa said.
"The inflation rate is officially 70 per cent but it is actually more.
"If there was a fair election, the MDC would probably win it."
Mr Kay said that there was a desperate need for outside pressure to assist
Zimbabwe's people.
This is wrong,
say three Zimbabweans who visited Brisbane recently.
Zimbabweans have reacted angrily to the order by South Africa for thousands of farm workers to be deported back to Zimbabwe.
Although the South African authorities have postponed the mass expulsions, due to have begun this week, it has not stopped about 8,000 farm workers from crossing the Limpopo river back into Zimbabwe.
 After all our sacrifices in the anti-apartheid struggle, we
are very angry that South Africa's way of thanking us is to deport our
people  |
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Chihway Kurauone Chihwayi
|
The government temporarily halted the removals following a court case and direct pleas from farmers who fear that the removal of 15,000 workers might ruin their business.
They say they would not find South Africans to replace the migrant workers.
Jobs for locals
The reprieve is to last for 14 days, according to the South African Home Affairs ministry, whilst exceptional cases are processed.
South Africa's immigration department argues that the deportation of Zimbabweans would open up jobs in a country also faced with high unemployment.
But that move has not gone down well among Zimbabweans who accuse South Africa of being ungrateful, unfair and completely arrogant.
"After all our sacrifices in the anti-apartheid struggle, we are very angry that South Africa's way of thanking us is to deporting our people," said Chihwayi Kurauone Chihwayi, president of the Zimbabwe National Debate Association.
Planning return
ZImbabwean MP Saviour Kasukuwere, said: "We are surprised to note that South Africa is going ahead to deport our citizens when Malawians and Mozambicans in Zimbabwe enjoy citizenship rights."
 Migrants take up menial jobs South African do not
want |
The Herald said that thousands of workers were now camped in the bush, scrouging for food and planning to return to their jobs in South Africa.
For many others who have worked and lived in the richer neighbouring country for many years, it may mean a long and painful journey back home where they face a bleak future.
Although paid better than in their home countries, the farm workers have nothing to show for their many years in South Africa where they took up menial jobs despised by locals.
Traders next
But back home, they will have to fight for jobs in a shrinking agricultural job market which has seen 70,000 farm labourers displaced as a result of the violent occupation of white-owned farms by goivernemtn supporters.
Those evicted are now living in appalling conditions in makeshift camps and squatter settlements along main roads.
A Zimbabwean working in Harare described the move as mean-spirited, unfair and spiteful.
 South Africa takes no chances with
immigrants |
He said he was disappointed that despite South African President Thabo Mbeki's call for an African Renaissance, he had done nothing to stop the anti-foreigner feeling in the country.
A cross border trader fears the move would only add to more crime in the region.
Better life
He says once farm workers are sent back, it would be small traders like himself next.
Before the South African Government's high profile move to remove illegal migrants about 2,600 Zimbabweans were deported each month.
But they mostly find their way back into South Africa where prospects for a better life are brighter.
From The Daily News, 16 October
Mugabe’s speech angers Muchachi’s relative
A close relative of the late Clement Muchachi, the former Cabinet minister buried at the National Heroes’ Acre yesterday, reacted with utter dismay to President Mugabe’s use of the occasion to deliver a hate-filled political speech against his government’s perceived enemies. Grief-stricken Alice Chimunhu, daughter of the late Muchachi’s sister, said Mugabe’s government should have just buried Muchachi in peace without pretending they loved him so much when they had let him die a sad, destitute man. In his graveside speech, Mugabe made no mention whatsoever of government and Zanu PF’s total neglect of the veteran politician’s material and other needs in the final years of his life, a sore point with Muchachi’s relatives. Chimunhu said she was not impressed by Mugabe’s speech. Another relative, Hilda Veremhu, quickly restrained Chimunhu from saying more, warning her she would be mentioned in newspapers in bad light. The government gave Muchachi, once delivered to a clinic in a scotchcart, a grand funeral. The first Minister of Public Works at independence in 1980, Muchachi tasted more luxury in death than he ever did in real life: an expensive golden casket and bouquets of flowers at the funeral which was markedly low-key. Friends who had not visited him even once in his Shurugwi village in the twilight years of his life were present to bid him a grandiose farewell and shower him with praise.
Instead of explaining why his government had neglected Muchachi, Mugabe lambasted with customary venom, his nemesis, Britain, for interfering with Zimbabwe’s domestic affairs, especially on the land issue. But he acknowledge that Muchachi had lived a simple life and died a poor man seeking no accolades for his achievements. Mugabe decried as "selfish" industrialists who increased the prices of basic commodities "hourly" to make huge profits. He said the price increases were political and required a political solution. "We have now decided to re-introduce price controls and those businesses which want to withhold products or close down may go ahead and do so. Those who want to close can go," he said. He said it was "absolute nonsense" to suggest the government must not interfere with market forces. The International Monetary Fund-prescribed Economic Structural Adjustment Programme was dead and buried and "at least the socialism we wanted can start operating", Mugabe declared, proving true those who have always held that he has never really abandoned his Marxist ideology.
Meanwhile, Victor Osward Chitongo, the MP for Murehwa North, yesterday attacked his party and government for its contradictory behaviour regarding the death and hero status of Muchachi. Chitongo spoke as The Daily News discovered the Zanu PF government had hired a lodge in Harare’s Hillside suburb for Muchachi’s relatives to stay in for the duration of the funeral. The lodge, owned by a businessman only identified as S Magombedze, was for use by Muchachi’s relatives from outside Harare. Workers at the lodge said the relatives had just come back to pick up their luggage after Muchachi’s burial at the Heroes’ Acre. They were taken back to the Midlands province in a Zupco bus. "They did not even cook anything here," a worker who did not want to be identified said. "They came back from the Heroes’ Acre, picked up their belongings and promptly left." It was not immediately clear how much the government had paid for the use of the lodge but the executive suite, which is the most expensive room at the lodge, costs $950 a night. The lodge, No 10 Soden Avenue, has more than six bedrooms on offer. Chitongo accused the government and the Zanu PF leadership in the Midlands of hypocrisy. He said they knew of Muchachi’s plight and that he had become destitute but offered him no help, only to recognise his heroism after his death.
"This man died a pauper. He had nothing. He couldn’t even afford to go to hospital," he said. "They saw this man suffer day in day out, they knew of his plight since the signing of the Unity Accord, but they kept quiet only to appeal to the politburo for hero status to be accorded when he had died." Chitongo said every nation had a duty to look after its heroes, dead or alive. "I am of the opinion that the government and the party should draw from its experiences with Muchachi and set up a fund to look after people like him, people we know are true heroes but do not want to seek accolades or steal from people simply because they joined the war and fought for this country," Chitongo said.
From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 16 October
Farmers, govt agree to stall Zim repatriations
South African farmers opposed to the repatriation of some 15 000 Zimbabwean farm workers reached an out-of-court settlement with the government on Monday, giving the workers a temporary reprieve. The farmers filed for an urgent interdict in the Pretoria High Court to prevent the country from expelling the workers, whose work permits expired on Monday. According to the deal reached late on Monday afternoon, South Africa's home affairs department will make no arrests or carry out deportations before further talks have been held with agricultural unions in the area. The deal also provides for dates to be set within a week to make representations in the case to Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
But home affairs representative Leslie Mashokwe said farmers were reneging on a deal made a year ago between them and the government to have all Zimbabwean workers off some 93 farms in the Limpopo valley in northeastern South Africa on the border with Zimbabwe. Last week, the department again confirmed that no new Zimbabwean work permits would be issued. The department argued that deportations would create jobs for South Africans in the impoverished Northern Province, where unemployment stands at 34%, according to 1999 government statistics. "The issue at stake here is that they willy-nilly decided to break their end of the bargain," Mashokwe said.
The farmers have warned that a decision to hastily repatriate thousands of Zimbabweans workers would plunge the local economy into chaos. They are asking for more time to resolve the matter and phase out a foreign workforce that has been working on their farms for up to 15 years. Many families lived on both sides of the South Africa-Zimbabwe border, divided by the Limpopo River. Some workers had married South Africans and had children with them. The repatriation would leave farmers in want of a workforce to harvest crops, mainly perishable fruit and vegetables, said Edward Voster, a representative for AgriSA, the agricultural union umbrella body which represents mainly white farmers. Voster added he could not state how many Zimbabwean farm workers had already left, but said that those who had had done so voluntarily. "The people that have left so far have done so voluntarily because they didn't want to find themselves caught by South African law," he said.
From The Australian, 17 October
Mugabe's campaign of fear
Television footage of the violence engulfing Zimbabwe often gives the impression that this is primarily a battle between rich white farmers and landless blacks. This is wrong, say three Zimbabweans who visited Brisbane recently. According to farmer Ian Kay, journalist Benhilda Chanetsa and human rights worker Noma Nabanyama, the violence is being inflicted by war veterans and party militants loyal to President Robert Mugabe. The victims are from all sections of Zimbabwean society – white landholders, black farm workers and opposition groups and non-government organisations out of favour with the Government. All three have suffered in this reign of terror.
Ms Nabanyama has the most heart-wrenching story. Her father, political activist Patrick Nabanyama, was kidnapped by war veterans last year and is feared dead, while Mr Kay was badly beaten on his farm at Marondera. Photographs of his battered body were published in newspapers around the world in April last year. Ms Chanetsa, a sub-editor at The Standard newspaper, works in a climate of fear. Her editor was arrested and tortured by war veterans and now faces defamation charges. The source of this chaos, they say, is Mr Mugabe. The 78-year-old leader, faced with a crumbling economy and a strong challenge from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in elections due next year, is turning on the terror in a desperate bid to stay in power. His shock troops are led by militants from the ruling Zanu PF party and veterans from the 1970s war of liberation which ousted white minority leader Ian Smith.
For Ms Nabanyama, the terror arrived on June 19 last year. On that day, war veterans came to her home and dragged away her father Patrick, who was an election agent for MDC politician David Coltart. "They came to our house in Bulawayo at 4pm," she said. "They took him out violently, started dragging him…bundled him into a car and that was the last time we saw him. I was with my mother and four young brothers. We screamed at them but they wouldn't listen. I don't think he is still alive. It has been a year now." The kidnapping of her father propelled Ms Nabanyama into a new life as a human rights activist with the Amani Trust, an organisation dedicated to the rehabilitation of torture victims.
For Mr Kay, the trouble started in 1998 when his farm was first invaded. He says he was an obvious target because of his political involvement with the MDC and before that with the Zimbabwe Union of Democrats. But it was in April last year that he had a brush with death. "I was checking our work at our farm school," he said. "A group of youths arrived at where I was and surrounded me and started beating me. They tied me up and were taking me into the bush to dispatch me, so they said. Before we arrived where there was any cover, my son came with a vehicle. They took fright and I ran away." Mr Kay left his 2000ha maize and cattle farm after this beating and stayed away until September last year. The war veterans have forced him to remove all stock and to scale back his cropping program. As for recent efforts to curb the farm invasions, Mr Kay said these had failed. The Zimbabwean Government had agreed at a summit in Nigeria last month to end violence against white farmers and respect the rule of law. But Mr Kay said that since beginning of September, 20 more farms had been invaded and there had been 25 incidents of household sieges or beatings of farmers.
Although Ms Chanetsa has not been personally attacked, she has seen her workmates beaten and intimidated. "My editor Mark Chavunduka and chief writer Ray Choto were tortured in police cells with electric shocks," she said. "If you ask them today, they will tell you that they still have nightmares about what happened." These attacks happened in January 1999 and caused such an international outcry that the Government was forced to pull back. "They use other methods now," Ms Chanetsa said. "They can send their thugs to harass journalists and prevent them from entering state functions." She said the Government also was resorting to defamation laws in a bid to cripple the media. The Standard, a weekly paper with a circulation of 80,000, is facing two criminal defamation charges after it quoted a London Sunday Times story which claimed that Mr Mugabe was haunted by the ghost of Josiah Tongogara, a former rival who died in 1980. Both Mr Kay and Ms Chanetsa think that Mr Mugabe is in desperate political trouble, especially in urban areas. "In the cities he has no support whatsoever," Ms Chanetsa said. "The inflation rate is officially 70 per cent but it is actually more. If there was a fair election, the MDC would probably win it." Mr Kay said that there was a desperate need for outside pressure to assist Zimbabwe's people.
From The Daily News, 16 October
Schools close as violence grips Gokwe
Eight schools in Gokwe North have been closed over the past two weeks in the wake of a new wave of terror being unleashed by suspected war veterans and Zanu PF militants against MDC supporters in the area. Scores of teachers at schools in Nembudziya, Gumunyu and Choda are reported to have fled after being beaten up by marauding Zanu PF supporters. The schools affected are Chomuwuyu, Zumba, Gumunyu, Nyamasanga, Mashame, Makwiyo, Mashuma and Dekete. The violence is likely to affect students sitting for the Grade 7 and O-Level examinations in the next fortnight.
The militants, who have formed a group of about 500 people, are alleged to have established camps at Tenda and Mashumba primary schools where suspected MDC supporters are reportedly taken for torture. Last Friday more than 20 teachers at Mashumba Primary School fled after the Zanu PF supporters besieged the school and attacked them. "We had to walk for 40km to Zumba business centre from where we got transport to Gokwe Centre," said a victim who fled to Gweru. On the same day the militants allegedly disrupted a prize-giving day at Chomuwuyu Secondary School, assaulting three teachers and forcing several others to flee. "Our main worry is that escalating violence against the teachers will affect Grade Seven and O-Level examinations due in the next two weeks," said a teacher from Mashame Secondary School. The headmaster of the school fled after the raiders threatened to kill him. Most of the teachers said they would only go back to the school when their security was guaranteed.
The attackers are allegedly being led by a Zanu PF councillor and two war veteran leaders. Isaac Tanyanyiwa, the Midlands regional director for Education, said yesterday he was unaware of the disturbances. Six MDC supporters were admitted to Mtora Hospital and later transferred to the Avenues Clinic in Harare after they were kidnapped and severely assaulted by Zanu PF supporters camped near Mtora growth point last Thursday. Several MDC supporters have fled their homes after receiving death threats and having their homes burnt down. All this is happening at a time the government is constantly reassuring the international community that it is strictly complying with the Abuja Agreement which, among other things, requires it to enforce the rule of law. MDC officials and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association have accused the police in the area of failing to protect victims of political violence. The nearest police station, Choda police post, is manned by two officers.
From The Star (SA), 16 October
Kabila, rebels boycott DRC convention
Addis Ababa - On the first working day of talks meant to shape the future political landscape of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), delegates on Tuesday argued fiercely about putting off discussions whose very agenda has yet to be precisely defined. The wrangling involved only a few of the 80 delegates who took part in Monday's anti-climactic opening ceremony, which DRC President Joseph Kabila, and then leaders of both main rebel groups, decided not to attend at the last minute. In contrast to the cordial and optimistic mood at a preparatory meeting held in August in Gabarone, the rebels and the government were opposed on several key issues in Addis Ababa. The Rwanda-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) wants real negotiations to get under way as soon as possible in the Ethiopian capital - but Kinshasa has dismissed the cash-strapped gathering as nothing more than a technical forum. Kabila declared on Sunday that national elections should be held as soon as possible. But the RCD, the Uganda-backed Congo Liberation Front, and other delegates here immediately rejected the idea, insisting a period of transition was an essential prelude.
The ceasefire accord signed in Lusaka in 1999 - and rarely respected – of which this "National Dialogue and Reconciliation" is a central pillar, makes no direct mention of a transitional government or of a period of power-sharing, concepts nevertheless on everyone's lips in Addis Ababa. But Lusaka does call for a new army that includes rebels, for a "new political dispensation" and for "free, democratic, and transparent elections," so it could be argued that a power-sharing transition period is taken as read. "How can he (Kabila) organise elections when he only controls a third of the country?" wondered rebel delegate Vincent Lunda-Bululu.
As for putting off real discussions to a later date and another location, most delegates, including some members of a mediating team led by Botswanan former president Ketumile Masire, seem convinced this is a certainty. The government supports a postponement, claiming some key issues must be resolved first, notably how to accommodate allied militia groups known as the Mai-Mai into the dialogue. Kinshasa want the Mai-Mai on board as a separate delegation with its own voice; under Lusaka, all participants enjoy equal status. The rebels want them integrated into existing delegations for exactly the same reason. The full quorum of the dialogue is meant to be 33O delegates. Lack of funds - a chronic problem for the DRC peace process - prompted Masire to reduce this to 80 for the opening and an initial week of procedural talks. Representatives of civil society and of the government want all 330 delegates present for the debates, which presupposes a delay. The rebels want discussions to start right away, regardless of whether a quorum is reached. The opposition delegates are divided on this issue.
