The Sunday Times, UK October 30, 2005
Christina Lamb,
Harare
ZIMBABWE'S president, Robert Mugabe, has
ordered his ministers
to disclose all their assets in a move aimed at
blocking any plots against
him as the country descends into economic
collapse.
"Mugabe has files on everyone," said a source close to
the
81-year-old leader. "He encourages those around him to stick their hands
in
the till so the moment anyone gets cold feet about what he's [Mugabe's]
doing and wants to quit - or starts thinking he's a liability - he pulls out
their file."
The order has left ministers
scrambling to divest themselves of
assets such as apartments in
Johannesburg, houses in Cape Town and diamond
holdings in
Congo.
Some properties, such as farms in Zimbabwe itself,
have simply
been grabbed. Others have been acquired with the aid of a
differential in
exchange rates that allows government and ruling party
officials to buy US
dollars at less than a quarter of the market
rate.
However, sources of foreign exchange are drying up. The
country's
main foreign exchange earners - tobacco, agriculture and tourism -
have been
largely wiped out by a government land grab that began five years
ago and
has left only about 200 of 4,500 commercial farmers
operating.
With few foreign heads of state willing to be
linked with a
brutal dictatorship, Mugabe is rapidly running out of friends.
Even his
closest allies were horrified by Operation Murambatsvina (drive out
the
filth), which saw the demolition of at least 700,000 homes and
livelihoods
last summer and has resulted in mothers and babies squatting in
cardboard
shelters.
South Africa has refused to give a $1
billion bailout unless
conditions aimed at restoring democratic government
are met. China, which
has provided buses, passenger planes and fighter jets
in the past year, gave
only $30m after it received warning telephone calls
from the presidents of
Nigeria and South Africa.
Some
companies have been forced to make "donations" to the
ruling Zanu-PF party
to continue operating. Those which fail to do so are
well aware of their
likely fate. In the past two years seven private banks
have been "specified"
- closed down and their assets seized.
Mutumwa Mawere, one of
Zimbabwe's richest tycoons, had his
flagship conglomerate, Shabanie Mashaba
Mines, seized by presidential decree
last year, along with finance and
insurance companies and supermarkets.
"Mugabe is willing to
downsize the whole economy just to feed
the political elite, a few hundred
thousand at most," said a European
diplomat. "It's a mafia
state."
During his 25 years in power Mugabe has become
extremely skilled
at drawing people from all sectors into his web of
patronage. Among those
handed farms that had been seized were High Court
judges, police chiefs,
military officers and the Anglican bishop of
Harare.
However, Mugabe is now running out of the means to do
this.
According to Zimbabwean bankers, the Central Bank has had no foreign
exchange available for weeks.
Mugabe's lieutenants are
increasingly resorting to criminality
in the scramble for the country's
remaining assets. Apart from extortion,
many have launched get-rich-quick
schemes. Residents of Harare were
astonished when signs suddenly appeared
all over the city earlier this month
threatening fines of 1m Zimbabwe
dollars for parking illegally. A government
minister had apparently acquired
a tow-truck and hundreds of people have
since had their cars
clamped.
Other forms of profiteering include buying fuel or
flour at the
official low price and then re-exporting it to Congo, Zambia or
Mozambique,
where prices are much higher. Leo Mugabe, the president's
nephew, was caught
smuggling flour into neighbouring countries earlier this
month.
Shortages of fuel are so severe that the top prize in
the
national lottery is a tank of petrol while the plummeting Zimbabwe
dollar -
now standing at almost 200,000 to the pound, makes spiralling
school fees of
Z$17m a term almost unattainable. Teachers and civil servants
earn Z$3m a
month.
Mugabe's recent announcement that he
will not stand for
re-election when his term ends in 2008 has seen bitter
jostling for position
within the ruling party, with many ministers already
referring to this as a
transitional period.
Last month
Patrick Chinamasa, the minister of justice, revealed
that the government was
considering changing the constitution to synchronise
presidential and
parliamentary elections. This could extend Mugabe's term to
2010 or
beyond.
Even if he were to step down, that would not be the
end of
Zimbabwe's problems. "This is not just about Mugabe any more," said
Roy
Bennett, a former white farmer and leading member of the opposition
Movement
for Democratic Change.
"There are many people
with blood on their hands, including
military and intelligence officers who
know that as long as Mugabe is there,
they are protected. The moment he's
gone, they start being exposed and
accountable for what they have done. You
are talking about an entire cabal
with an interest in this
continuing."
We tend to forget that Europe went through a long period
of history, which
is now loosely described as the "dark ages". During this
time the main form
of State administration was feudal in character and this
resulted in
massive, absolute poverty for the great majority and enormous
wealth for a
tiny elite who owned the assets of the countries affected by
this episode in
European history.
The historical evidence of that era
is still seen today in the massive
houses and mansions that litter the
European landscape. The human suffering
of those times is well documented and
remembered even today. Modern
conflicts such as the IRA insurgency in Ireland
and the ideological
conflicts that caused such suffering in the 20th century
are testimony to
the legacy of the "dark ages".
Could it be that
Africa is going through such an era? It is of course
different in many ways -
the underlying culture is different, the global
context is totally changed
and there is the influence of travel,
communications and education as well as
the legacies of a 100 years of
colonial occupation when for a short time the
influence of local culture and
history was subdued and an imposed colonial
subculture prevailed which was
more "European" than African.
With the
sudden collapse and subsequent withdrawal of such imposed
influences, Africa
has progressively slipped back into a form of tribal
feudalism that allows a
small elite to dominate and in fact use the legacies
of colonial
administration to loot national resources in the pursuit of
wealth.
So
Africa slides back into poverty and decay associated with some of
the
greatest fortunes in terms of personal wealth, in the world. Mabutu in
the
old Zaire, with a fortune estimated at the size of his countries GDP.
The
Nigerian President's family taking US$1 billion a year from the
exchequer
and their children arriving in European capitals with suitcases of
hard
currency. The government of Angola, a "Marxist" regime, stealing a third
of
total oil revenues. The list goes on and on - fortunes being
accumulated
with scant regard to the welfare or interests of the countries
and the
peoples being governed. The term kleptocratic state takes on new
meaning in
modern Africa.
But is this any different from the
conditions that prevailed in Europe a
scant 200 to 500 years ago? We may be
late in coming to the party but it is
that same play - different actors,
different stage. It also will not last
hundreds of years. Our dark age will
be decades, rather than centuries -
appropriate in a world that measures
progress by the speed of change.
But that does not make any excuses for
people like Robert Mugabe - because
they really have had all that it takes to
enable them to avoid the pitfalls
that have created these nightmarish
conditions in many African countries. He
is well educated - a classical
Catholic education in the hands of the
dreaded Clergy, well traveled, he gets
his suits from Saville Row, he is
above all an Anglophile and has several
University degrees.
Do not for one-minute think he does not understand
what he is doing - he is
highly intelligent and astute. He is also totally
ruthless - but then so are
the Mafia in modern Europe. The great difference
is that he claims to be a
Marxist, a modern socialist and a Pan African
humanist. He is actually none
of those things in reality and his behavior of
late has simply branded him
as a tsarist thug who has looted his countries
wealth in pursuit of personal
gain and power. His actions under the guise of
the Murambatsvina programme
are in line with Stalin's genocide against the
Kulaks. He cares little for
the suffering of the majority - only for the
welfare of those who can ensure
he remains where he is and has the continued
capacity to rape and pillage.
But in any "Dark Age" you have your islands
of enlightenment and hope. And
so it is in Africa and in places like
Zimbabwe. You can find such places by
visiting our private schools where
dedicated teachers and administrators are
maintaining a small but effective
system of education that continues to
produce outstanding athletes, sportsmen
and women and fine academics. Above
all they produce achievers - men and
women who go out into the world and
succeed wherever they go. You can find
them by visiting certain business
organisations - I have a friend here who
runs a globally competitive
clothing factory - he exports the great majority
of his output to the most
sophisticated markets in the world. Another friend
manufacturers fruit
drinks and chemicals - walk through the doors of his
business and you are in
a clean, modern environment, which is comparable to
any in the world. Staff
are motivated and work hard and their product is
expensive, but always good
quality.
Another person I know has all 32
members of his family here - they meet
weekly to discuss problems and
opportunities and to agree on any thing that
needs action. They support each
other, help with school fees and medical
costs and they ensure that the
family has what it needs to prosper and enjoy
a life style that is second to
none. Walk through the doors of one of our
modern private clinics or
hospitals and you are in a first world
environment - you do not have to wait
a year for a procedure as in the UK,
you pay and it gets done. And remember I
am talking about life in Zimbabwe -
that collapsed State created by bad
government.
Recently our local Catholic Hospital suffered a serious fire
that destroyed
the top floor and the roof and damaged some of the rest of the
building.
Volunteers rescued the patients, the local fire department was
there in a
few minutes and now - just six weeks later, the roof is back on
and the
tiles are being laid - much of the work, design and construction done
by
volunteers. Islands of hope and enlightenment in a sea of despair and
human
suffering.
To be frank, we are yet to see similar islands of
enlightenment in the
political realm in southern Africa. The Congo is a mess,
Zambia and Malawi
are struggling with internal problems, South Africa has its
problems with
Jacob Zuma and corruption in high places, even little Botswana
now shows
signs of political intolerance and studied neutrality when it comes
to the
problems of its neighbor - Zimbabwe.
Unless the MDC gets its
act together, and soon, it too might lose its image
as a beacon of hope in an
otherwise dismal morass. While I accept that much
of the MDC problems can be
sourced in the Zanu PF Secret Police who are the
African equivalent of the
East German Stasi, we are guilty of shooting
ourselves in the foot over the
Senate issue and are not exhibiting a great
deal of maturity right
now.
As for the consequences of Gono's revelations last week - this week
the gold
price quadrupled, the stock market nearly doubled in value and the
improved
flow of resources into many of those small centers of excellence and
hope
began to improve. This will, if they stick to their guns, bring new
life
back into the private sector across the country and help us to keep
things
going while we sort out our political leadership.
Eddie
Cross
Bulawayo, October 29 2005.
Zim Online
Mon 31 October 2005
HARARE - A US$200 million dollar project to
increase generation capacity
at Zimbabwe's Kariba South hydro power station
has failed to take off
because Harare could not raise a US$30 million down
payment required to
unlock a financing package for the deal.
According to confidential documents from the government's power
utility,
ZESA Holdings (Private) Limited that were shown to ZimOnline, the
cash-strapped government has also failed to provide a guarantee for a loan
for the generation project that was agreed between ZESA Holdings and Export
Development Bank of Iran (EDBI).
The agreement, signed in
Harare on July 19 2005, would have seen the
Iranian institution providing
hard cash required to add two more power
generation units at Kariba each
with capacity to provide an additional 150MW
of electricity.
ZESA chairman Sydney Gata confirmed that the Kariba expansion project
had
not yet taken off but would not divulge further details only saying:
"The
matter is between ZESA and two other parties and I cannot
comment."
President Robert Mugabe's government is
grappling its worst ever hard
cash crisis that has also seen crippling
shortages of fuel, electricity,
food, essential medical drugs and almost
every other basic survival
commodity because there is no cash to pay foreign
suppliers.
The Kariba power generation project is one on a long
list of national
projects that have flopped because the government is unable
to raise hard
cash to finance the projects or cannot meet strict conditions
set by foreign
financiers such as guaranteeing repayment of loans in hard
cash.
ZimOnline reported four weeks ago that another project to
expand the
country's biggest Hwange thermal power station had stalled after
Harare
failed to guarantee a Chinese financing firm that it would be repaid
in hard
cash if it provided a loan for the project.
Zimbabwe
faces an unprecedented energy disaster by 2007 if it does not
urgently
expand its electricity generation capacity by about 630MW.
Presently the crisis-hit country consumes 2 100MW about 30 percent of
which
is imported from the Southern African Power Pool comprising
neighbouring
countries such as South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia.
Due to
rising domestic demand, these countries will in two years time
be unable to
export power to Zimbabwe. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 31 October
2005
HARARE - President Robert Mugabe's government has barred more
than 150
000 registered voters from participating in a senate election next
month
under a new constitutional amendment prohibiting permanent residents
and
non-citizens from voting.
Registrar general Tobaiwa Mudede
told state media at the weekend that
150 269 mostly descendents of former
migrant workers from neighbouring
countries had been disqualified from the
voters' roll in terms of the
controversial new law.
Most of
those disqualified are from rural districts next to former
white-owned
commercial farms or in low-income suburbs in towns which were
labour
reservoirs for the white ruling class of the British colony of
Rhodesia
before it became independent black-ruled Zimbabwe.
Many of the
migrant workers came from neighbouring countries such as
Malawi, Mozambique
and Zambia and many of them are believed to be
sympathetic to the main
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
party.
The MDC,
which failed to block the constitutional amendments because
it has fewer
seats in Parliament than Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party, is
contesting in
only 26 out of the 50 senate seats following sharp differences
among the
party's leaders over whether to participate in the poll.
MDC leader
Morgan Tsvangirai has opposed contesting the poll saying it
is pointless to
take part in a poll that will be rigged by Mugabe and his
government.
The MDC accuses Mugabe and his government of
stealing three national
elections in the last five years, a charge the
veteran President and his
government deny.
Tsvangirai also says
the proposed new Senate is of no value to a
country that should be diverting
all its energies to fighting hunger
threatening a third of the 12 million
Zimbabweans.
But other senior leaders led by party secretary
general Welshman Ncube
say the MDC should contest after its national council
narrowly voted for it
to take part in the November 26 poll. Ncube and the
other leaders also say
the MDC cannot surrender political space to Mugabe
and ZANU PF by boycotting
the poll. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 31 October 2005
JOHANNESBURG - Thirty-four year old
Charles Magura walks slowly into
the vast churchyard in downtown
Johannesburg, South Africa.
Clutched in his hand, is a small
bulging plastic bag with left-overs
scrounged from "kitchen soups" in the
city.
As soon as he settles down "home", his eight friends suddenly
swoop on
the meal. You need no invitation here to join in but in the spirit
of
camaraderie, it is an unwritten rule that food is communally
shared.
For Magura, life in Johannesburg has never been kind to him
ever since
he skipped the border, fleeing political persecution from
President Robert
Mugabe's ZANU PF supporters in Makoni district in eastern
Zimbabwe.
While he expected a swift change of fortune in Egoli,
"the city of
gold" as Johannesburg is affectionately known, his experiences
in the
sprawling city, like those of thousands of fellow refugees in South
Africa,
reads like a scary script from the deeper dungeons of
hell.
Magura is part of about 150 people, the majority of them men,
who are
staying at the Methodist Church in downtown Johannesburg after the
church
opened up its halls to accommodate the growing numbers of refugees
fleeing
hunger and political persecution in Zimbabwe.
"I have
tried to look for a job without success. Most of the people
who are staying
at the church are finding it hard to fend for themselves. As
a result they
end up getting involved in criminal activities," said Magura.
At
least four million Zimbabweans, a quarter of the country's
population of 12
million, are living outside the country, the majority of
them in South
Africa, after fleeing home because of economic hardship and
political
persecution.
The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) party accuses
Mugabe of ruining Zimbabwe's economy and of unleashing
violence on
opposition supporters in a bid to hold on to power. Mugabe
denies the
charges.
Zimbabwe is going through a severe economic
crisis which has seen
millions crossing over to South Africa in search of a
better life.
Inflation stands at 359.8 percent, one of the highest
such rates in
the world. Food, medicines and fuel are all in critical short
supply because
there is no hard cash to pay foreign suppliers.
But after fleeing terror in Zimbabwe, the refugees say their life in
South
Africa has been a nightmare.
"Most of the refugees in this church
are sick. This is worsened by
stress and depression given the troubles they
have to face every day. The
place is just dirty and over-crowded as if we
are in a prison.
"Some can't access medical services because they
don't have valid
documents as refugees. If they get sick, they are turned
away at the clinics
and hospitals," said 29-year old Eddie Matawu, another
refugee at the
church.
But Methodist Bishop Paul Verryn said
although the place was far from
being a "tourist paradise," it was better
than sleeping on the streets.
"Though the place is far from ideal,
it is a roof off the street", he
said.
"There is only one
bathroom being shared by more than 70 residents.
Though the situation is
pathetic, this is the best that we can offer," the
Bishop said.
Besides churches, there are several non-governmental groups that have
mushroomed in Johannesburg in the last three years, all purporting to
represent the interests of Zimbabwean refugees.
But for Taurai
Mashiti, another Zimbabwean exiled here in
Johannesburg, many of such groups
are mere parasites feeding off their
misery.
"They are only
there to enrich themselves. We have never received
anything tangible from
them. We only hear about them when they are calling
for anti-Mugabe
demonstrations in Pretoria. They are only interested in
using us to boost
numbers during such demos," charged Mashiti.
But Oliver Kubika, the
secretary general of the Zimbabwe Political
Victims Association (ZIPOVA), an
organisation that helps Zimbabwean victims
of political violence who fled to
South Africa, rejected claims ZIPOVA and
other similar groups are out to
feather their nests on the misery of
refugees.
Kubika said the
civic groups were doing the best they could but were
limited by a lack of
adequate financial resources.
He said: "We are only able to give
out what we have been offered (by
the donors). However we try by all means
to assist whenever it is possible.
We have even opened our offices to these
refugees to use during the night as
it is not safe to sleep on the streets."
- ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 31 October 2005
HARARE - Leaders of Zimbabwe's
main opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) party are set to meet
again today to iron out sharp differences
threatening to tear apart the
six-year old party.
The MDC was last Monday left on the verge of
breaking up after 26
members submitted their names to stand in next month's
senate election in
open defiance of party leader Morgan Tsvangirai's call to
boycott the poll.
But last Thursday, the bickering MDC leaders met
for the first time
after weeks of trading damaging accusations in the press.
Tsvangirai and his
deputy Gibson Sibanda, issued a terse statement at the
end of their meeting
last week recommitting themselves to dialogue and to
focus pressure on
President Robert Mugabe and his government.
Today's meeting which is expected to be chaired by respected
University of
Zimbabwe academic Brian Raftopolous, is set to chart the way
forward for the
embattled opposition party.
Tsvangirai, earlier this month differed
with five other senior leaders
of the party led by secretary general
Welshman Ncube, over whether the MDC
should contest next month's senate
election.
The opposition leader insisted that the party should not
contest an
election that was certain to be rigged by Mugabe. He also argued
that the
new senate was a waste of resources for a country that should be
putting its
energies into fighting hunger threatening a third of its 12
million people.
But Ncube and his group insisted the MDC should
contest the November
26 election after its national council narrowly voted
for the party to
participate in the poll. The group also argued that it
would not be wise for
the MDC to surrender political space to Mugabe and
ZANU PF by boycotting the
poll.
The dispute between the two
factions of the MDC has also assumed an
ethnic dimension with support for
Tsvangirai's position strong among regions
dominated by the Shona ethnic
group to which he belongs while Ncube, a
Ndebele, is solidly backed in
south-western regions populated by his Ndebele
tribe. - ZimOnline
2005-10-31
2:59:35
African Leaders arrived in Addis Ababa Sunday to take part
in the fifth
extraordinary summit of the African Union (AU), in a bid to
break a
stalemate over the bloc's stance on stalled UN
reform.
AU officials said presidents of Namibia, Sierra Leone,
Zambia and
Zimbabwe were among the leaders who arrived in Addis
Ababa.
Prime minister of Algeria, Djibouti, Lesotho and
Tanzania as well as
South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma
also arrived, they
said.
They added Nigerian President
Olusegun Obasanjo, also AU's current
chairman, is expected to arrive on
Monday morning.
In August, after heated debate, the pan-African
body rejected calls to
change its demand for a 26-member UN Security Council
with six new
permanent, veto-wielding seats, of which Africa will have two,
and five
non-permanent seats of which Africa would have
two.
At the time, AU leaders rebuffed an appeal to join the G4
grouping of
Brazil, India, Japan and Germany that has proposed expanding the
council to
25 members, with six new permanent seats without veto power and
four
non-permanent seats.
(Source: Xinhua)
Sunday Nation, Kenya
Story by MUTUMA MATHIU
Publication Date: 10/30/2005
Among the warrior (samurai) class of feudal Japan, ritual
suicide was an
accepted part of the code. If you were sent out by the boss
to get this or
that and came without it, you didn't come to waffle excuses
about "factors
beyond our control." Your hand crept towards your own
scabbard.
The most brutal and painful of all forms of
ritual suicide was,
of course, hara kiri, which involved disembowelling
oneself and suffering a
most painful and bloody death. Usually, the suicide
would have on hand an
assistant to lop off the head and put a stop to the
whole gory ordeal. The
repulsive practice ended hundreds of years ago, with
feudal lords whose
followers practised it being severely
punished.
Whereas the suicide bit is way over the top, the
honour code of
the samurai is, of course, eminently admirable. To them
honour was more
important than life and they placed loyalty and service well
above their own
interests and even lives. Or so I learnt from Mr Google. Mr
Google also
informs me that well-bred ninjas ventilated their stomachs for
the following
reasons:
-To atone for disgrace and defeat.
If you are sent to disrupt a
Maembe rally and fail to do so, you don't come
to tell the chieftain that
the police unexpectedly showed
up.
- As the supreme demonstration of grief at the death of
the said
lord and master. That is to say, if the liege and lord drunk
himself to the
ground on busaa, you don't summon the professional mourners
to come, wail
and disembowel the cattle. That's right, you reach for the
scabbard.
- To show contempt for the enemy. Since the entire
purpose of
the enemy is to disembowel you, you do it yourself and save them
the
trouble. (I haven't quite figured out how that
connects.)
- As a bloody and painful way of protesting
injustice. If a
Maembe person has his rally disrupted by some other fruit,
then the
expectation, were he a samurai, was that he would take matters in
his own
hands as a form of protest.
- As a way of getting
the liege and lord to reconsider an
unwise, unworthy - in a word, foolish -
decision. Thank God we don't live in
some shogunate in the middle of the
last century. All the dissenters of Narc
would quite probably have to
irrigate the flowerbeds of State House with
their life essence, what with
the objections they raise over almost every
decision their liege and lord
makes.
Last, a good samurai would take his own life to save
others. I
think Jesus did something similar, but then that was a thousand
and more
years before the samurai.
Spies are routinely
required, in the novels, to bite a little
pill rather than fall into enemy
hands and have information tortured out of
them. Which is why our
politicians would not make very successful spies. Any
time they come across
a secret, official or otherwise, they get an
overwhelming urge to
SMS.
On March 18, 2002, I was at the Moi International Sports
Centre,
Kasarani. Prof George Saitoti, then a very ill-used Vice-President,
towered
over us. "There come a time," he thundered, "when the nation is more
important than an individual."
Prof Saitoti was
articulating the same seppuku philosophy, only
his version involved bowing
to the inevitable nomination of Mr Uhuru
Kenyatta.
But
the point was, and is, well made. There are times when the
interests of one
person, however much justice is stacked in his corner, are
less important
than the interests of a whole nation.
President Robert Mugabe
is a man of strong convictions. Now, a
few mzungus own all the land in
Zimbabwe so Mr Mugabe has been reclaiming
some of it for the blacks. This
has meant taking on Britain, the US and the
whole Anglo Saxon conspiracy
that rules the world. Plucky but dumb. Zimbabwe
is today completely
destroyed. One US dollar will buy you 90,000 Zimbabwean
dollars. It is all
very well to fight for justice, but what is the point of
fighting a war that
you are certain to lose and destroy yourself fighting?
Transport minister Chris Murungaru is not a particularly nice
guy. He has
made no known sacrifices for the nation. He was just inflicted
on us by the
voters of Kieni and President Kibaki. Now Dr Murungaru has had
himself
banned, barred and otherwise excluded from the land of our former
colonial
master and their American allies.
As a strategy of fighting
back, he is suggesting that the
British who support the Liberal Democratic
Party are fighting a proxy war
for LDP. He has also accused the British
wanting to protect contracts and
dictating who should sit in the
Cabinet.
It would be inadvisable to form government policy
depending on
the visa requirements of Dr Murungaru. Put another way, this
country cannot
afford a war against the British and the Americans for the
sake of getting a
visa for a minister. To save his boss embarrassment and
get the government
out of a tight corner, Dr Murungaru should review the
option of career
seppuku. He should leave the Cabinet and pursue legal
redress as a private
citizen. If he is cleared and determined to be
innocent, he will not have
been the first law-abiding and deserving Kenyan
to be denied a British visa.
They do it every day. In any case, we don't
know what the Brits have on
him.
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Be careful what you put in the law. The Tanzanians wrote a law
that said if
a presidential candidate or a running mate dies after
nominations but before
polling, the election is to be put off for not less
than 21 days to allow
the mourning party time to put its house in order.
So what
does the ailing fringe running mate of a fringe
presidential candidate of a
fringe two-bit party do? Kicks the bucket two
days to a much
looked-forward-to election. And the whole thing is postponed,
parades are
rained on.
Sunday Herald, UK
From Fred Bridgland in
Johannesburg
MALAWI is one of the poorest and most corrupt
countries in Africa. The
country's most celebrated preacher, the Roman
Catholic Father Edward
Masauko, laments that when Malawians go to the polls
their only choice is
between "murderers" and "thieves".
Corruption at the
top - rife since the time of the first president of
independent Malawi, the
Church of Scotland elder Hastings "Conqueror, the
Saviour" Banda, who built
a personal fortune of £200 million - has filtered
down through every level
of business and government to school teachers who
pocket students' fees and
medical orderlies who run black market operations
with public
medicines.
The country's corruption issue shot to the fore again last
week, as Britain
and other key donors to Malawi said they would not support
a new government
if the current president, Bingu wa Mutharika, a campaigner
against graft in
the southern African country, was impeached.
The
donors' statements came as Malawi's opposition- dominated parliament
started
a debate on whether to go ahead with impeaching wa Mutharika on
charges that
he abused his office and violated the constitution - and as the
president
prepared to visit Edinburgh this week to sign an international
co-operation
agreement aimed at strengthening links between Scotland and the
African
state.
Malawi is dependent upon foreign aid for at least half of its
budget, but
the aid is dispensed so corruptly that some donors have
completely severed
or curtailed their funds, notably Denmark and the United
States. The former
cut off all forms of aid and the latter blocked funds to
fight Aids, which
is rampant in Malawi, because, according to the US
ambassador Steven
Browning, "greed and graft are so
widespread".
"Putting money where corruption is not controlled is a
waste. Malawi's
efforts to combat corruption are not good enough," he
said.
In 2001, in one particularly spectacular Malawian scam, finance
minister
Friday Jumbe sold most of the country's 160,000-tonne grain reserve
in a
private transaction. At the time, Jumbe was director of the state's
agricultural marketing board. The depletion of the reserves meant millions
of Malawians starved during the drought of 2002 while Jumbe bought the
Superior Hotel and a nightclub in Blantyre, the commercial capital, with
some of his proceeds.
Jumbe said the grain had been sold on the
advice of the International
Monetary Fund, an assertion the IMF
denied.
This month Malawi's new anti-corruption bureau launched an
investigation
into how between £7m and £53m in international donor cash
landed in the
private bank accounts of Bakili Muluzi, the country's
president from 1994
until he stepped down last year.
In office Muluzi
generously handed out the state's money through his
extensive patronage
network. While ostensibly governing the country, he
acquired a vast fortune
built on a business empire of petrol stations, TV
and radio stations, banks,
office complexes, shopping malls and the country's
top football
team.
In December 2003, Kalonga Stambuli, a former business associate and
government adviser to Muluzi, researched and circulated a dossier of
Muluzi's
extensive holdings. Shortly afterwards, Stambuli was found dead. He
had been
poisoned and strangled.
Under Muluzi, it is alleged that
British and other aid funds were skimmed to
buy 39 Mercedes-Benz limousines
for his ministers. But when questions were
asked in the House of Commons and
the then British high commissioner, George
Finlayson suggested that the
implicated ministers step down, one simply
replied: "We don't resign in
Malawi."
Even wa Mutharika, whose anti-corruption drive is being backed
by Britain
and other Western countries, has made some questionable moves.
His first act
on achieving power was to throw MPs out of parliament in
Lilongwe and make
the building, with 300 air-conditioned rooms set in 555
hectares of gardens,
his personal palace. The MPs had to conduct state
business in hotel
conference rooms.
Admittedly, wa Mutharika did move
out again, but only after he said the
palace was haunted and that he was
being overrun at night by rats.
Wa Mutharika, who also owns a farm in
Zimbabwe - protected from land
invasion by President Robert Mugabe's regime
- has also just awarded himself
a 353% pay rise, scarcely a year after
coming into office, and his education
minister, Yusuf Mwawa, has been
arrested on charges of using public funds
for his lavish wedding
ceremony.
For many Malawians, wa Mutharika's anti-corruption drive came
as a surprise,
not least because he was seen as a stooge of Muluzi, who was
prevented by
the constitution from running again for another presidential
term.
Some senior civil servants have gone as far as to advise caution to
wa
Mutharika, not least because some of the missing government millions that
landed in Muluzi's accounts were almost certainly spent on wa Mutharika's
election campaign.
But as the anti-corruption tussle continues
between Muluzi and his
hand-picked protege, Malawi Law Society president
Alick Msowoya said Muluzi
was not legally obliged to explain how he got his
wealth. "Constitutionally,
Muluzi has the right to remain silent," he said.
"If anything, Muluzi can
defend himself in court and that is the time for
him to explain his side.
Muluzi is not guilty of any offence. He is just a
mere suspect."
As Muluzi and wa Mutharika wrestle over the allegations of
corruption,
Britain's high commissioner to Malawi, David Pearey, warned this
month that
the prolonged political crisis is distracting Malawi's government
and has
caused its parliament to lose focus amid a worsening food crisis.
Pearey
said politicians are placing personal ambition above the concerns of
ordinary Malawians.
The UN estimates that five million of Malawi's 13
million people will need
emergency food aid until March next year as a
result of four years of
drought and the non-delivery of subsidised seed and
fertiliser. Britain has
so far donated £16m to buy emergency food, mainly
maize.
An indicator of Malawi's deep poverty is the number of deaths of
mothers in
childbirth - the second worst rate in the world, according to the
UN .
Malawi's ailing health services have been hard hit by drug shortages
as a
result of budget cuts, while an exodus of medical personnel to richer
Western nations is threatening to cripple the already struggling sector.
There are, for example, more Malawian doctors working in Birmingham than in
the whole of Malawi itself.
30 October 2005
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 8:50 AM
Subject: Remarks on one of your
stories
I would like to make some remarks on the article by Ivor
Waldeck on Mugabe
and Mbeki:
1. When the Matabele arrived in what is
now Zimbabwe there did not exist an
entity called Shona, for any reason. The
reference to people of this region
as Shona emerged with the arrival of both
Matabele and Whites.
2. The people of Zimbabwe would better be organised
according to their
totems and the alliances built by marrying women from
other totem groups.
What are often called Shona tribes are really dialect
clusters. So you have
today people of one totem, speaking differnt dialects.
If you organised them
according to their dialects you fragment their family.
Yet if you
acknowledged their totem you realise they are one family
speaking
Chikaranga, Chimanyika, Chizezuru, Chitoko etc. According to
totemic
relationships the Shona-Ndebele dualism is difficult to
maintain.
3. The British used the tribal card to divide and rule the people
of
Zimbabwe. The present regime, instead of correcting this British
hatchling,
assumed it and have propagated it, obviously for political
expediency.
4. Ndebele raids into the lands of the scattered "shona" kingdoms
were not
universal to all of what is now Mashonaland and Manicaland,
Masvingo. A lot
of Shona groups never experienced Ndebele raids and got to
know about them
from the experience of those that had been affected.
5.
The Ndebele raids were not as extensive and as devastating on the whole
of
non-Ndebele territory - the numbers just do not tally - instead they
were
blown out of proportion by the British who had an agenda. The Brits
used
their bloated version of Shona-Ndebele rivalry to a) effectiviely
neutralise
the Ndbele threat to their occupation and rule and b) to annex
Mashonaland,
in the name of protecting them. If you like the Ndebele had no
weapons of
Mass Destruction!!, but the trick was effective.
6. One reason
why the Ndebele, now consituting roughly 20% of the
population, could
effectively raid the Shona is that there was no cohesion
among the many Shona
groups.
7. The Brits went on to create the "Shona," most of whom had nothing
to do
with each other up to this time. Even the Ndebele threat had not
been
effective enough on its own to make the so called Shona come together.
The
British threat, at least and for the first time, rallied the people into
a
Shona Union. Nehanda was a mere family spirit, not the
proto-ancestral
spirit of the Shona whom he has been made to be. His female
medium, who has
come to be known as the ancestor Zimbabwe, was indeed a
charismatic person,
who managed to sway her infleuence beyond that of her own
family. I still am
doubtful if Nehanda had a grand vision of defending
"Zimbabwe", or if she
thought she was simply doing the best she could for her
own family. A lot
of retrojection has happened in the creation of the
Nehanda myth, much of
which was effective propaganda for the nationalist
movement. The same could
be said of Mkwati, Dzivaguru, Mwari and Chaminuka.
During serious drought or
other pestilence it was not uncommon for a Shona
tribe to seek the
assistance of the spiritual mediums of another tribe. This
was purely
functional, not so much the result of an ancestral allegiance as
the
desperation of trying anything that will work in the crisis. Mwari
of
Matonjeni was no universal deity, but one family's ancestor to whom
many
tribes turned during crisis, again and again. Note that Mwari entered
the
Christian Bible to translate Yahweh, by mistake. One of the serious
falacies
of Zimbabwean Religious history today is the notion that the
Shona
worshipped a Supreme Being called Mwari at Matonjeni. This notion
is
anachronistic.
8. Mugabe's ancestors may not even have been in Zimbabwe
during the time of
the Ndebele raids. Where did they come from? Remember
Kutama Mission was one
of the failed experimental christian villages where
the saved/redeemed were
brought in to live a life uncontaminated by contact
with so called primitive
heathen tribal life. This programme had most success
with people who had the
least of tribal /family ties, your migrant worker
from Nyasaland, Zululand
etc who married a local girl and became a Christian.
It was very hard for
locals to enter into the Christian village scheme
because they could not
sever their family ties. It was much easier for
mabvakure (those who came
from far afield) to be assimilated into mission
life. What we are absolutely
certain about Mugabe's family and their origins
is Kutama Mission. Maybe
they were pioneer Christian Villagers? Maybe they
retained their link with
the mission so long after the failure of the
Christian Village model because
they were mabvakure in Zvimba? I don't know
enough about the Mugabe
family's roots, but chances are there were far away
from kwaZvimba or
Chishawasha when Lobengula impis were visiting these areas.
So we want to be
very careful with statements like Mugabe's grand parents had
suffered the
wrath of Lobengula.
9. At the beginning of the nationalist
movement in Rhodesia Joshua Nkomo
rose as a leader of all the people.
Remember Nkomo was a labour activist,
and labour issues affect all people
working regardless of their origins .
Little mileage was made out of
Shona-Ndebele rivaly in the ealry days of
nationalism. Look at how names like
Musikavanhu, Nkomo, Chinamano, Sithole
et al. share the same platform in
these days. Patrick Kombayi will argue
that Mugabe introduced the tribalist
card as he entered the play ground and
coverted the cherished position of
Father Zimbabwen held by Nkomo. Kombayi
will tell you that how Mugabe pushed
the argument that in order for Nkomo to
be acceptable as a National Leader,
he had to appease the angered Shona
spirits, agrieved by Nkomo's ancestors.
To this effect n' ángas were sought
out and Bulls were offered. By the time
Nkomo finished the ritual cleansing
of Shona blood from his hands, his grip
on the nationalist movement had
slackened. Mugabe capitalised on this and
started his long journey to
dislodge Nkomo.
10. If you know the Ndebele's
very well you will realise that someone with a
name like Nkomo is not a
"true" ezansi Ndebele in the sense that he does
not belong to the group,
that arrived from Zululand. Nkomo's ancestors were
obviously Karangas who
were coopted into the Ndebele system. It is as
fallacial as it is
anachronistic to blame Nkomo, on behalf of his ancestors,
for Ndebele raids
on the Shona. Nkomo is infact a victim, whose family was
raided, deported and
stripped of their identity, and forced to assume a
second class status in the
Ndebele Kingdom. Nkomo's people lost much more to
Lobengula, than the few
bags millet that is the minimum of what was ever
plundered from most
families, the farther from Gubulawayo they were.
11. Now if Lobengula raided
Shona girls, brought them to KwaBulawayo, these
are the matriarchs of the
majority of present day Ndebeles. It is more
logical to claim that
Lobengula's raids made the Shona and Ndebele more of
blood relatives of each
other. The argument that alienates the Shona and the
Ndebele ignore this
crucial fact that most of you Ndebeles are the spawn of
good shona matriachal
stock. The Shona have been wrongly taught by the
British and by Mugabe to
despise their own blood, just because the Ndebele
speak a different language
from theirs. This fact should be taken seriously
as a point for forging
stonger Shona - Ndebele unity today.
12. About the Zanla and Zipra conflict,
often the issue of professional
military standards is overlooked. What
sparked conflict in the new ZNA is
partly due to the fact that Zipra cadres,
who had recieved more conventional
military training, resented being under
the comand of Zanla cadres whom had
little more that guerilla tactics. The
tribal factor has often been given
more emphasis than is actually factual.
Mugabe's instigation of that
conflict must not be overlooked. Remember it
was after the visit to
Matebeleland of Mnangagwa and Nkala that things went
bad at Entumbane. Check
the the tribal credential of these two men. Mnangagwa
hails from the
Midlands. Is he really a Mukaranga or he is of Zambian
extraction, raised up
in the Midlands, a melting pot of the subregion? Nkala,
like Nkomo is
Ndebele as far as mother tongue is concerned, period.
13. I
am not sure if there were any or a significant enough number of, ZIPRA
cadres
who went back to the bush to stage a dissident war. If you read
Nkomo's 1983
letter to Mugabe, on SWRadio, you will agree with me that
Mugabe created the
dissident skirmish, and acheived his ends in the name of
fighting the
dissidents.
14. If I am not mistaken, Mugabe would be more alligned to PAC
than ANC in
South Africa up to the time ANC becomes teh ruling party. Did we
have the
ANC operating in Zimbabwe after independence. i dont think so. I
think
Mugabe did not want them there because he wanted PAC. I am not very
sure
about this, but I have heard something like that. However I would like
us to
be certain before we can make generalizations and connections between
ZANU
PF and ANC on one side and the Ndebele with the Zulus on the other.
These
are dangerous generalities and quite wrong too.
I agree with the
rest of the article, but really felt I must speak about the
above points.
There has been a lot of historical dostortion in Zimbabwe and
much suffering
as a result of this. Another serious distortion perpetrated
by the Mugabe
regime is that Zanu PF won Zimbabwes independence, single
handedly, by
military victory. Actually the indipendence of Zimbabwe was a
settlement
agreed upon by the Rhodesians, the Patriotic Front (which
inclusdes PF Zapu
and not Zanu PF alone) under the auspices of Great
Britain. Zanu PF did not
fight a war against Britain, as Mugabe and his
regime tell us. Instead the
Patriotic front fought a war against the
intransigent Rhodesian regime.
Britain actually came in to try to mediate
between these two warring parties.
Britain had wanted to give majority rule
to Rhodesia in the 60's. That is why
Ian Smith had to take the drastic
measure of UDI. Smith's regime were
desperate to avert the posibility of
Britain giving the country to the Black
Majority as had happened in Zambia,
Malawi and other African countries.
Britain responded to Smith's UDI by
imposing sanctions on Rhodesia and
lobbying the rest of the world to do so.
Britain was desperate to give us our
country! They were tired of colonies!
They regretted that enthusiasts like
Rhodes has run Union Jack planting
marathons! Did not Prince Charles come to
Zimbabwe at Independence to
recieve the UNION JACK which was respectfull and
neatly hoisted down and
poignantly handed to him? If Zanu PF had truimphantly
beaten the British at
war, as Mugabe still thinks, how could this hand
over-takeover ceremony been
possible?
So we will need to tell our
children the truth about Chimurenga II, namely
that we fought against the
Rhodesians and not against the British. We shall
have to tell our children
too, that there was no loser and nor victor to
Chimurenga II. There was
instead a Cease Fire, brockered by the Bristish,
and many talks afterwards,
all which culminated in the settlement of our
indipendence. We shall need
too, after some exhumations in the Warren Pak
area, to tell our children that
the true heroes of our country are all the
people at home and abroad, in the
town, farms, mines and rural areas, those
who crossed over into Mozambique to
run away from the hardships, those who
got trained militarily, those who
engaded the enemy in military combat and
many more categories of resistence.
I read Joshua Nkomo's 1983 letter to
Mugabe and my heart bleeds at how much
he has been wronged. We shall need to
tell his story to our children and to
cleanse his name in the minds of many
Shona people. In the New Zimbabwe, that
I hope to live to see, there is
going to be more that just repairing the
extensive economic damage tthat the
Mugabe regime has visited on us. There
shall be a great need for the healing
and rewiring of our memories, our
collective national memory, that have been
so much distorted.
Thank
you.
From The Sunday Argus (SA), 30 October
Reconciliation between 'insecure' Morgan Tsvangirai and
Gibson Sibanda may
have averted a split in the Zimbabwean
opposition
Getting Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and
his estranged
vice-president Gibson Sibanda together at a media conference
last week took
extraordinary effort by various people of good heart,
including churchmen,
and one political analyst respected by both sides. The
meeting has possibly
averted a massive split in the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) which
would have destroyed the chances of any real opposition
to President Robert
Mugabe. The last time the two saw each other a week
earlier, Tsvangirai
accused his old friend and trade union struggle
colleague of treachery. Days
later Sibanda allowed a retaliatory media
statement to go out under his name
attacking Tsvangirai, a step he must now
regret. So when they appeared
together - both looking tense, and refusing to
answer questions after
issuing a terse statement of intent to find a
solution through "dialogue" -
it was a breakthrough. There has been a year
of simmering problems in a
party paralysed in the extra-parliamentary
terrain which finally coalesced
over whether the party should participate in
senate elections. Tsvangirai
was passionately and publicly against
participation. Secretary general
Welshman Ncube expressed no opinion but was
outraged when Tsvangirai angrily
assumed powers he doesn't have and overrode
the party's constitution and
refused to accept the narrow majority vote for
participation by the National
Council.
The damage to the MDC has
been deep, intense, and appeared early last week
to be irreparable,
especially to Ncube who took the brunt of anger from
Tsvangirai's
supporters. Compromises by both sides are under discussion. One
is that
Tsvangirai will dispense with his widely mistrusted "kitchen
cabinet" of
paid and volunteer advisors who have become more important to
him than
elected officials. In return, those who believed and still do, that
adherence to the MDC's constitution is a bottom line may quietly try and
persuade candidates now registered for next month's senate elections to
withdraw. If some refuse then they would be disowned by all leaders. Some
analysts say an exception might be made for the Matabeleland provinces in
recognition that thousands were killed by Mugabe's North Korean trained
Fifth Brigade in the 1980s and memories run too deep to surrender to Zanu PF
without a fight. Tsvangirai will be required to commit himself to the
party's constitution and accept that he has no powers to override the
National Council. A key point of consensus is already achieved -
Tsvangirai's first public statement since the senate drama began by
committing the party on a public platform to the ending of sporadic violence
in the MDC by frustrated, unemployed youths, close to some in the "kitchen
cabinet.
So where did it go wrong? What happened to Tsvangirai,
the street fighter
who effortlessly speaks the language of the grassroots
better than any
other? One of Tsvangirai's closest friends believes he lost
his engaging
working- class confidence when he was accused of treason weeks
before the
presidential election of 2002. Tsvangirai made a fateful decision
in
December 2001 when he travelled alone to Montreal to meet a "crook", as
advocate George Bizos described Canadian businessman Ari Ben Menashe, and
fell into a trap set up by the Central Intelligence Organisation to lure
Tsvangirai into making a single statement about violence and Mugabe.
Tsvangirai never told Ncube, who had signed a normal lobbying agreement with
Ben Menashe, he was going to Canada. Ben Menashe, a highly-paid agent of
state security minister Nicholas Goche, promised naive Tsvangirai a meeting
with then US secretary of state Colin Powell, and US$2 million for the cash
strapped MDC weeks ahead of the presidential campaign. Had Ncube or perhaps
any other more worldly wise member of the MDC travelled with Tsvangirai they
would have abandoned the meeting immediately it degenerated into talks
outside lobbying.
Zimbabwe's partisan justice system allowed
Tsvangirai, Ncube and a senior
colleague, Renson Gasela who had met Ben
Menashe once in London, to be
prosecuted on the flimsiest of evidence from
the secretly recorded video
tape of the meeting. Even after he was
acquitted, Tsvangirai, who had been
on bail for nearly half the life of the
MDC by then, struggled to regain
composure and confidence. So much so that
six months later he missed the
opportunity to galvanise resistance in May
and June when 700 000 of his
closest supporters' homes were demolished under
Mugabe's pretext of "slum
clearance". His "kitchen cabinet" kept him fearful
so much so he didn't even
get out of his armour-plated vehicle during a rare
camera opportunity among
the dispossessed in the post bulldozer rubble.
"They fed his insecurities,
undermined his confidence, and diverted his
concentration," said one of his
loyal friends this week. His uneasy
relationship with officials in President
Thabo Mbeki's office also fed into
Tsvangirai's crumbling confidence as
several made it clear they preferred
cerebral Welshman Ncube even after he
explained he had no ambitions, nor the
necessary grass roots charisma, for
the top post, and that it was still too
soon for an Ndebele to be a national
leader.
Wilfred Mhanda,
second in command in Mugabe's army during the liberation
war, said this
week: "The MDC leadership totally underestimated Mugabe. They
believed the
struggle for democracy would be hard, but they never understood
he was
prepared to destroy everything - them, the economy, institutions,
infrastructure, the whole country and everything in it to survive. The MDC
thought they could win by being right, by appealing to the majority, and
they got that support, but that was never enough." Mugabe controls the
security forces, the courts, the media, the intelligence services, the
assets and he has perfected the system of patronage manipulating each and
every person in positions of power. "Mugabe was impossible to defeat in
elections because he controls every aspect of them too. The task was too big
for the decent MDC and the party neglected making inroads in the lower ranks
of the army who are just as poor as everyone else." Veteran political
analyst and reconciler Brian Raftopoulos who kept his powder dry during the
fracas, spent most of Thursday with Tsvangirai and carefully brought about
the ceasefire in the most serious rift in this extraordinary political party
in one of the most uneven political playing fields in contemporary history.
From The Sunday Times (SA), 30 October
The South African Air Force may outsource its
basic pilot training to
eliminate unsuitable candidates and save on the
costs. The move follows a
drop in the quality of pupil pilots selected for
training that has resulted
in a higher failure rate in exams and flight
tests, crashes and even deaths
in recent years. Underfunding has seen the
SAAF lose key personnel -
especially technicians and pilots - to the
civilian sector. This week the
SAAF would only say that the "outsourcing of
certain training needs is an
option being investigated. It is, however,
early days to even speculate
whether outsourcing will be viable". But
experts say the move is not only
necessary but should also be welcomed.
Defence analyst Helmoed Römer Heitman
said this week that the SAAF would
almost certainly introduce some measure
of screening for trainee pilots.
"They need to find the people who will be
committed to flying and not leave
just because things are getting tough." He
said black air force pilots were
being poached by civilian airlines that
could offer higher salaries and were
keen to nail their affirmative-action
colours to the mast. "With the
screening, and the fact that the SAAF is
planning to do its own recruiting
nationwide, rather than have it done by
the Department of Defence, mainly in
Gauteng, many of the SAAF's problems
can be solved," said Heitman. An SAAF
instructor said this week that the
plan was necessary to weed out candidates
who considered military flying as
just another job. "Often, when they get to
the SAAF they find they cannot
live with the discipline and the high
workload, but by this time expensive
training on hi-tech aircraft has
already begun."
(This week The Zimbabwean reported that 14 instructors
and 30 technicians
from the Air Force of Zimbabwe were to be hired out to
the SAAF to undertake
this training.)