Daily News
Angry Mugabe flies out after Sadc snub
10/8/02 2:39:33 PM (GMT +2)
Staff Reporter
PRESIDENT Mugabe left the Angolan capital, Luanda, in anger last week
after
his regional allies turned on him and denied him the chance to be next
year's
chairman of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc),
according to
the latest issue of The Sunday Times of South Africa.
The
newspaper said other regional heads of state told Mugabe the way
he was going
about land reform made him unfit to be a future chairman of
Sadc.
Mugabe was next in line to be deputy chairman of the body, a position
which
would have made him chairman a year later.
In a lengthy article in
yesterday's issue of the government-controlled
Herald newspaper, Professor
Jonathan Moyo, the Minister of State for
Information and Publicity, claimed
Zimbabwe had voluntarily handed over the
Sadc vice-chairmanship to
Tanzania.
He said the government's priority now was to "attend to
our economy
through increased agricultural productivity to consolidate the
gains of The
Third Chimurenga".
But The Sunday Times said all
pre-summit documentation had billed
Mugabe as the new deputy chairman of
Sadc, who would take over leadership
from Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos
Santos in 2003.
But, instead of going through the motions of
electing him, heads of
state who were meeting at the annual Sadc summit, told
him the image of the
regional body would suffer in his hands.
The newspaper said the decision was conveyed to Mugabe by Malawian
President
Bakili Muluzi, on Wednesday. Due to Zimbabwe's internal and
external battles,
it was not the correct time for the country to be talking
on behalf of Sadc,
Muluzi is reported to have told Mugabe. He did not
protest as it was clear
that the other leaders supported Muluzi's view,
in-siders said.
Mugabe was to deliver the closing address at the two-day summit on
Thursday
evening, but instead left for Harare that morning.
A few hours
later, he flew to Maputo to attend the 10th anniversary
celebrations of
Mozambique's peace agreement between the Frelimo government
and former rebel
movement, Renamo.
After private consultations before the start of
the summit on
Wednesday, most regional leaders agreed that allowing Mugabe to
lead Sadc
would jeopardise the region's development projects and the
organisation's
future, as Sadc is almost entirely dependent on Western
donors, The Sunday
Times said.
During the meeting on Wednesday,
Botswana's President Festus Mogae
asked Mugabe why television news reports
showed white farmers packing their
possessions if Zimbabwe was only
expropriating surplus land, the newspaper
said.
Mugabe said the
reports were not correct because all the farmers still
had
houses.
"The leaders who spoke made it clear that they support the
principle
of land redistribution. However, nobody said they supported the way
in which
it was being carried out," one Sadc official said.
One
minister told the newspaper: "They were not hostile, but were very
firm and
made it clear that they would not calmly tolerate what was going on
in
Zimbabwe any more."
President Thabo Mbeki is said to have
contributed very little to the
debate.
At the meeting where he was
stripped of the prospect of chairing the
regional body, Mugabe said he had
discussed land reform with former British
prime ministers Margaret Thatcher
and John Major.
Both had undertaken to sponsor the land reform
programme but the
current British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had sabotaged
the process,
forcing the Zimbabwean government to act on its
own.
The newspaper said other Sadc heads of state decided to
announce that
it had been Zimbabwe's decision to decline the position and
offer it to
Tanzania.
The newspaper alleged that Sadc was also
heading for a showdown with
the European Union over Zimbabwe.
The two groups are scheduled to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to
discuss
co-operation, but the EU has indicated it is not prepared to have
the meeting
if Zimbabwe is part of the delegation.
IRIN
ZIMBABWE: Opposition seeks UN investigation of rights
abuses
JOHANNESBURG, 8 Oct 2002 (IRIN) - Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai
wants
the United Nations to investigate alleged human rights abuses in
Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai told IRIN on Tuesday that the Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC) was hoping a UN investigation would "stop the
carnage, the violence
and human rights abuses that are taking place in the
country".
When asked what kind of intervention the MDC was seeking,
Tsvangirai said:
"It is clear that the [political] crisis is deepening and we
want the UN
Security Council to consider the matter. What we want is to stop
the
violence against the people, we want a UN Security Council
investigation
into the matter."
Tsvangirai lost the March presidential
elections to President Robert Mugabe.
However, the MDC has rejected Mugabe's
victory as fraudulent, claiming the
poll was rigged in Mugabe's favour and
that opposition supporters were
intimidated or prevented from
voting.
The United States and the European Union imposed sanctions
against
Zimbabwe's ruling elite after the March poll, while the
Commonwealth
suspended Zimbabwe's membership.
"We are seriously
considering contacting the [UN] Human Rights Commissioner
to put the matter
before the [Security] Council. We will be moving on that
issue very
shortly.
"We believe that there's not just the humanitarian crisis with
regard to
hunger [about six million people require food aid until March
2003], but
regarding ethnic cleansing that is taking place, the selective
application
of the law and serious and deliberate displacement of people,
especially
farm workers. The human suffering has gone beyond just a question
of hunger,
there have been serious abuses," Tsvangirai alleged.
A
spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva told
IRIN
that the office "on its own cannot initiate an investigation" and would
have
to have a UN mandate based on a request.
[ENDS]
IOL
MDC calls for UN intervention in Zimbabwe
October 08
2002 at 06:40AM
Harare - Zimbabwe's main opposition leader on
Monday called on the United
Nations to intervene over the country's political
crisis, charging that
President Robert Mugabe's government threatened
stability in the region.
"The Mugabe regime is now clearly bent on
exporting anarchy and instability
to the region and this constitutes a clear
threat to international peace and
stability," said Morgan Tsvangirai, leader
of the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC).
In March Tsvangirai lost
to Mugabe in presidential elections whose result
the MDC rejected, claiming
the vote was rigged in Mugabe's favour, and that
MDC supporters were
intimidated from voting.
Tsvangirai said at a meeting to discuss
constitutional reform that the only
way out of the crisis was a re-run of the
elections.
Constitutional reform was a prerequisite, he said, but only as
the product
of "a legitimate government working together with the
legitimate
representatives of the people and the democratic forces in the
country."
It was time the UN through its Security Council helped to find
"an
internationally guaranteed lasting peace to the Zimbabwe crisis,"
Tsvangirai
added.
The US and the European Union (EU) imposed sanctions
against Zimbabwe's
ruling elite after the March poll, and the Commonwealth
suspended Zimbabwe -
a member-country - from its meetings.
For more
than two years political tension between the MDC and the ruling
Zimbabwe
African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) has seen scores of
mainly
opposition supporters killed. - Sapa-AFP
Daily News
Sadc commended for seeing light at last
10/8/02 3:05:16 PM (GMT +2)
THE strident tone in which the
official government spokesman tried to
gloss over the decision of the
Southern African Development Community (Sadc)
's decision to deny Zimbabwe
the deputy chairmanship of the group smacks of
desperation.
The government in Harare seems desperate to deny that the Sadc summit
in
Luanda decided Tanzania, and not the increasingly politically
leprous
Zimbabwe, should assume the deputy chairmanship.
That
post would ensure that Zimbabwe becomes the Sadc chairman at the
next summit
in 2003. The attitude of the other 12 members, according to the
government
spokesman in Harare, was that they saw no undesirable political
and
economic repercussions flowing from that eventuality.
That would
have been absolutely amazing. Most member-states have
suffered the economic
contagion of Zimbabwe's isolation by the international
community.
Some have protested that, as a result of Mugabe's racist, violent and
often
illegal land reform programme, his iron-fisted treatment of
dissent,
including political parties and the independent media, they have
endured a
severe decline in tourism.
Others have seen a sharp
decline in new foreign investment because of
their proximity to the political
powder-keg that is Zimbabwe. Most must have
decided that not acting to show
Mugabe how harmful his policies are would be
stretching
Sadc
solidarity to potentially ruinous lengths.
The rest of the Sadc
members were bound to lower the boom sooner or
later on Zimbabwe. Closer
allies such as Namibia and Angola, whose troops
joined Zimbabwe in the
misadventure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
persuaded others to put
off any precipitous action until now.
But, in the end, a sense of
enlightened self-interest must have
prevailed. Even in the dubious cause of
maintaining African unity, was it
worth following your friend into
penury?
This is Zimbabwe's destiny, if Mugabe clings stubbornly to
his "Go to
Hell!" response to the loud calls around the world for Zimbabwe to
come to
its senses.
Zimbabwe, because of its anti-people policies,
launched amid much
bloodshed in the 2000 parliamentary election campaign, has
had a love-hate
relationship with most Sadc members, particularly South
Africa, Botswana and
Mozambique.
After that violence, some members
campaigned for a change in the
chairmanship of the powerful organ on
politics, defence and security, then
held by Zimbabwe.
Just as
vigorously, Mugabe mustered all his political skills to resist
this onslaught
on what he must have seen as one of his most prestigious
posts, as an elder
statesman of the region.
But the others would have none of it. He
eventually had to relinquish
the position, which was taken over by
Mozambique.
Mugabe's wings had been clipped, but he still enjoyed a
modicum of
support among some members, notably from the increasingly Mugabe
wannabe,
Sam Nujoma of Namibia.
But perhaps, for his detractors,
the recklessly juvenile speech at the
World Summit on Sustainable Development
in Johannesburg was the last straw.
In that speech, he stoked the fires that
eventually led to his humiliation
in Luanda last week.
The
bigger political picture, ignoring the arguments about whether
Zimbabwe
withdrew its claim to the deputy chairmanship voluntarily, or was
kicked out
on its ear, is that Sadc has at last seen the light.
Most people in
Zimbabwe had given up on Sadc as an effective and
active player in the
democratisation stakes in the region.
Zimbabweans have been
particularly disillusioned with South Africa's
Thabo Mbeki and Mozambique's
Joachim Chissano.
Their domestic policies seemed in tune with the
aspirations of the
people of Zimbabwe as expressed in their decision to
reject Zanu PF's draft
constitution in 2000 and their decision to reject many
Zanu PF Members of
Parliament in the elections in the same years. Yet when it
really mattered,
the two leaders would not lend their full support to
policies, domestic or
foreign, which would rein in Mugabe's excesses. This
latest decision by the
group, whatever Mugabe's spin doctors say of its
origins, is to be
commended. Sadc has at last seen the light.
Daily News
NCA urges Zimbabweans
10/8/02 2:48:28 PM
(GMT +2)
By Pedzisai Ruhanya
THE National
Constitutional Assembly (NCA), yesterday urged
Zimbabweans to confront
President Mugabe's government in order to usher in a
new democratic
dispensation in the country.
Its chairman, Dr Lovemore Madhuku,
said there was consensus among
political parties and civic organisations to
have an election re-run after
last March's election controversially won by
Mugabe.
Speaking at a constitutional reform meeting attended by
more than 500
people in Harare, Madhuku said Zimbabweans should be more
united than before
in order to stop the current human rights violations in
the country.
He said: "We have to confront the regime in order to
have democracy.
It should be noted that a new constitution will result in an
election re-run
and an accountable government."
Madhuku said
that the NCA would soon announce how it intends to defy
unjust laws in the
country in order to have a new democratic constitution.
Wurayayi
Zembe, the president of the Democratic Party who represents
political parties
in the NCA task force, said it was sad that Mugabe talked
about the country
not returning to former colonialists yet he used a
colonial
constitution.
"Mugabe is not serious and this talk about returning
the country to
former Rhodesian rulers is nonsense. If he hates colonialism
so much why is
he using a colonial constitution to govern this country?,"
Zembe asked.
He said the only way to solve the current political
crisis was to
unite and fight for a new constitution that represents the
wishes of all
Zimbabweans.
Daily News
Beef industry collapsing
10/8/02 3:49:02 PM
(GMT +2)
From Energy Bara in Masvingo
THE
Zimbabwean beef industry faces imminent collapse as more than 200
000 head of
cattle, worth billions of dollars, have been lost in Masvingo
province alone
by commercial farmers in the past two years. The losses were
as a result of
cattle rustling and death due to a critical shortage
of
pastures.
Mike Clark, the Commercial Farmers' Union
regional spokesperson, said
the national herd had been heavily depleted and
the country might be forced
to import breeding stock in the next agricultural
season to save the
industry from collapse. Clark said of the 400 000 head of
cattle in
Masvingo, more than half were lost through rustling and death
related to a
shortage of grazing. "The breeding herd has to be imported if
the beef
industry is to be saved from collapsing," Clark said. "In fact, the
country
will soon be importing all agricultural products such as eggs, beef,
butter
and wheat because the whole commercial agriculture industry has
been
destroyed through the land reform programme."
Clark said
the outbreak of such diseases as foot-and-mouth had also
contributed to the
collapse of the beef industry, as most fences across the
country had been
destroyed. In Masvingo, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth
disease was reported in
the Save Valley Conservancy and rural Sengwe. This
was attributed to the
uncontrolled movement of cattle by the new settlers
and the breaking down of
controlling fences. He said there were no vaccines
to treat the cattle while
no measures had been put in place to control the
movement of livestock.
Meanwhile, commercial farmers in Masvingo have said
they are not preparing
any land for cropping this season because of the
tension prevailing on the
commercial farms. "We cannot talk of planting any
crop because the situation
is terrible. We are appealing to government to
engage in serious discussion
with farmers in order to resolve the problems,"
Clark said.
Daily News
Police accused of harassing farmers in
Matabeleland
10/8/02 3:13:59 PM (GMT +2)
From
Sandra Mujokoro
THE eviction of farmers in Matabeleland province
has taken a new
dimension with reports that police are harassing farmers.
Police, together
with the National Land Task Force Committee, last week
stepped up the
eviction of white commercial farmers, both with and without
section 8
notices.
Last Wednesday, the national task
force on land and the provincial
land task force met and resolved to suspend
negotiations with the farmers
until they have all left their farms. The
national committee, led by the
chairman, deputy police commissioner Godwin
Matanga, said it wanted the new
farmers to move onto the land before the
rains. According to a report from
Justice for Agriculture (JAG), an elderly
couple from the Gwayi area, Jimmy
and Ruth Chatham, both 76-years-old,
sustained injuries to their arms after
being manhandled by police officers
during eviction. A Lupane district
council vehicle allegedly arrived on their
farm on Wednesday with four
uniformed police officers and the rest in
plainclothes. They broke into the
yard, loosened the wire to the fence post
and took the Chathams' three
rifles.
The couple were then
allegedly handcuffed, put in the back of the
vehicle and taken down the road,
only to be returned and told to pack their
suitcases. The couple's son,
Aubrey, and Jimmy's brother, Dave, were also
evicted despite having been
issued only with preliminary notices (Section
5). The police allegedly told
them the papers they had meant nothing to
them.
Buck deVries of
Gwayi was given just two hours to get off his property
and was told to report
to Dete police station, which he did. While there,
the police allegedly
verbally abused him for some time before he returned to
his son's homestead.
On Mike Woods' GlenCurragh Farm in Nyamandlovu, war
veterans and settlers
allegedly went into the workshop area and took
handcuffs and pepper
sprays.
They then proceeded to search the scouts' homes for
weapons. The
scouts were told not to return to the fenced area and all staff
were
expected to get paid and leave. JAG also reports that David Olds,
whose
mother Gloria and brother Martin were killed by suspected war
veterans,
received neither Section 5 nor 8 but was threatened with arrest if
he
remained on the farm. Meanwhile, three farmers arrested last Monday
for
contravening Section 8 orders, Leefie Cahill from Shangani and Julius
and
Enerst Rosenfels from Marula, have been released. Cahill and Julius
were
released with no bail while Enerst was released on $4 000 bail. He
will
appear in court on 30 October.
Other farmers evicted on
Thursday evening include Clive Biffen of
Inyati, L Cummings, Piet Van Den
Berg, Ian Erasmus, and a Bowan, all of
Matetsi. Also affected were Trevor
Kendall from Gwayi, Keith Keogh and Peter
Hubert from Nyamandlovu and
Beitbridge farmers Bengi Kawood, who was given
five minutes to vacate, Ian
Ferguson and Digby Bristow. Others are Tony
Debois, Deon Steffa, Gert
Oosterhuizen and Rob du Preez. The farmers join 29
other commercial farmers
from the Matabeleland region who have so far been
evicted from their
properties since the crackdown began last week.
STATEMENT
I Michael
Anthony Clark of Umbono Ranch, Mwenezi, make the following statement on behalf
of the Mwenezi farmers in my capacity as Chairman of the Mwenezi Farmers’
Association:
This morning, October 7, 2002 at about 8.30am I
received a telephone call from Ernel Wartington of Sonop Ranch. He said that
the District Administrator, (DA) Mr. Zvondove and the Officer in Charge of the
Mwenezi Police Station, Inspector Moyo had visited him. The DA had given him 2
hours to vacate his property, failing which he would be prosecuted.
Wartington and many other Mwenezi farmers whose
Section 8 notice’s 90-day eviction period had expired have co-operated by
volunteering to the Police Station several weeks ago. Warned and Cautioned
statements were made and they have been remanded on bail to return to court on
November 15th.
Wartington was informed that if he failed to comply
with the DA’s order he would be arrested and charged under the same charge he
is awaiting to be heard in November. He would therefore be charged twice for
the same offence.
At the time of writing the team had visited the
following farms, all of which are subject to the above bail conditions:
Sonop Ernel Wartington
Alternberg Kemp Landman
Limburgia Tommy van de Venne
La Pache Tim Evans
Kayalami Keith Knowles
Quaggapan Ron Hawkins
Bubye River Hennie du Plessis
Malumba Christine Langenhoven
Kalahari Corrie Cornelius
- The DA
consistently refused to put the order in writing.
- Farms
have now been evacuated but there are about 20,000 head of cattle, other
livestock and pets remaining unattended on the farms.
- Inspector
Moyo instructed farmers to remove all their furniture and equipment to
safety in case it was stolen or destroyed.
- Mwenezi
Police Station has no transport to investigate crime in the area, yet
Police transport was provided for this exercise.
- 44 farms
will eventually be affected.
- Police
have said that they are not interested in any Court orders against the
Section 8s.
- It is
impossible to move a lifetime’s accumulation of tools and furniture in 2
hours.
- None of
the farmers have had their acquisitions heard or confirmed in the
Administrative Court.
- None of
the farmers have received any form of compensation or offer for their
properties.
- The
majority of the affected farmers are single farm owners, which fall under
the often-stated policy of one-man-one-farm.
Signed………………….. October 7, 2002
M.A.Clark
World News Daily
AFRICAN POWDERKEG
White-farm land-grab set for
Namibia
192 properties listed for Zimbabwean-style
confiscation
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Posted:
October 8, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Anthony C. LoBaido
© 2002
WorldNetDaily.com
SOSSOSVLEI, Namibia - Following the lead of neighboring
Zimbabwe, the
government of Namibia has announced a plan to confiscate
white-owned farms.
President Sam Nujoma recently released a list of 192
farms to be
confiscated. Among them are 99 farms owned by German nationals
and another
91 owned by white South Africans. There are 350 foreign-owned
farms in
Namibia. The total land area covered by these 192 farms is four
times the
size of Luxembourg.
Namibia is a Marxist nation once part of
apartheid South Africa. Its
government is led by the Southwest Africa
People's Organization, or SWAPO,
which was trained and funded by China in its
war of liberation from white
rule. Namibia was known as Southwest Africa
until 1990, when the apartheid
regime handed over control of the nation after
a 15 year "Border War"
against the Soviet Union and Cuba. Much of the land
problem in Namibia
stretches back to the tribal rebellions of the Nama and
Herero between 1904
and 1907, which sent scores of black tribesmen out of
their ancestral lands
and created cheap labor for German colonial
farmers.
Inklings of a campaign to confiscate white-owned Namibian farms
began at the
World Summit on Sustainable Development last month. It was then
that Nujoma
railed against the West - particularly British Prime Minister
Tony Blair -
and announced his endorsement of Zimbabwean dictator Robert
Mugabe's policy
of killing white farmers and confiscating white-owned farms
in that troubled
nation. Nujoma blamed Blair for the trouble in Zimbabwe,
saying the British
leader failed to "bankroll" Mugabe's land seizures from
the "British
colonialists."
"The landless majority of our citizens are
growing impatient by the day,"
Nujoma told the last SWAPO congress. "If those
arrogant white farmers and
absentee landlords do not embrace the government's
policy of willing-buyer,
willing-seller now, it will be too late
tomorrow."
Nujoma, much to the consternation of liberals in the UK, has,
along with
Mugabe, threatened to expel all homosexuals from his country, ban
homosexual
tourists and has purged the Namibian government's broadcasting
network of
foreign films he believes are "corrupting" and bringing "a bad
influence" on
Namibia's youth.
Kobus Dippennar, a white Afrikaner
Namibian farmer from Windhoek, told
WorldNetDaily that he is afraid Namibia
will turn into a "living nightmare."
"When my country, Southwest Africa,
fell to the SWAPO terrorists, I
mistakenly believed that the communists would
learn the error of their ways
and seek a just peace for all Namibians,"
Dippennar said. "I was wrong.
Nujoma is turning into a megalomaniac, just as
Mugabe is.
"I will say this: Nujoma is right about the foreign,
especially Hollywood,
films. They are disgusting. What has happened to the
American people? Isn't
it sad that it takes a communist or Muslim dictator to
stand up to the filth
coming out of Hollywood?"
Asked why the two
southern African strongmen place so much emphasis on
agricultural land
reform, Dippennar, who fought with the South African
Defense Force in the
Border War as a special forces reconnaissance operator,
was
resolute.
"Ours is an age of industrialization and hi-tech," he said.
"Agriculture in
Namibia is not a vital part of the economy. I believe the
answer can be
found in the fact that Nujoma and Mugabe received their
political
indoctrination from China. The Maoists in China were agrarian
reformers.
Thus they created, through the export of Maoism, the likes of Pol
Pot,
Robert Mugabe and now, it seems, our president, Sam
Nujoma."
Nujoma has changed the constitution of Namibia to allow himself
to serve
another term in office, lasting till 2004. He recently had made
noise about
serving beyond his already unconstitutional third term. Nujoma
purged his
most likely successor, former confidant Hage Geinbog, a moderate
"reform
minded" Cabinet minister.
When scores of black Namibian
communal farmers marched against SWAPO
demanding land reform, Nujoma placed
the communal farmers' leader, Gabes
Shihepo, into the Cabinet as the deputy
minister of information and
broadcasting, thus effectively ending the
communal land protests.
Obstacles to land confiscation
For now,
Nujoma lacks the "secret police" apparatus and paramilitary youth
militia -
as Mugabe has raised up in Zimbabwe - needed to carry out his
planned land
seizure. His plan to disenfranchise Namibia's "arrogant white
farmers" faces
other speed bumps, as well.
Since Nujoma came to power in 1990, only 7
percent of commercial farmland
has been turned over to black farmers. At that
rate, it will take until 2070
to get 50 percent of Namibia's farms into black
hands. Beginning in 1996,
the SWAPO regime annually appropriated $2 million
toward a "willing
seller-winning buyer" strategy aimed at acquiring
white-owned commercial
farms. However, only 33 percent of those monies have
actually been spent.
Nujoma has appropriated several white farms in the
Otavi region for his own
personal use via loans from the Agricultural Bank of
Namibia.
Franz Keppler, a German tour guide working in Namibia and a
retired German
army officer told WorldNetDaily that Nujoma "has not been a
radical land
reformer because his main tribe of support, the Oshiwambos of
northern
Namibia, never had their land confiscated by the Afrikaners or the
Germans.
Rather, it was the Portuguese who took away their land in southern
Angola.
"After the Portuguese sent the Oshiwambos packing out of southern
Angola,"
Keppler continued, "it was the German colonial soldiers who gave
them food,
protection and land in Namibia. Perhaps these people have a soft
spot for
Germans in their hearts, or at least their ancestors
did."
Another chink in the armor of Nujoma's land-reform activity is the
fact that
the Herero tribe has found a political home in the Democratic
Turnhale
Alliance, which is SWAPO's main opposition in the government. The
DTA gets
most of its financial support from rich white farmers. In the late
1980s and
early 1990s, the DTA carried almost 40 percent of the popular vote
in
Namibia.
Up to now, Nujoma's land reform "mission" has been a
dismal bust. He has
complained loudly that the white farmers are out of line
in asking $25 per
hectare for their farmland. In 1999, out of 142 white farms
put up for sale,
only four were actually purchased. In 2000, more than 125
white farms were
put in the market. Only 15 were purchased. As of last month,
only 118 farms
in total have changed hands at a total cost of just over $10
million.
Another $10 million recently was appropriated by SWAPO to buy land
for
"landless people."
An Internet website that lists "Namibian farms
for sale" now - for obvious
reasons - states, "Sorry, there are no properties
available at this time."
Yet, the largest obstacle is Namibia's bilateral
treaty with Germany
(Namibia's former colonial ruler until World War I, when
South Africa, then
controlled by the British Empire, took control of the
territory), which will
make confiscation more difficult than the blitzkrieg
farm theft in Zimbabwe.
This accord, called the "Protection of Investment
Agreement," was signed in
1993.
The agreement states that the SWAPO
regime must offer market value to all
German farmers if their lands are taken
away. (When Rhodesia declared
independence from the UK in the 1960s, no such
agreement was set up.) Most
of Namibia's white German farmers have German
passports.
As for the future, Claus Van der Mere, a German national and
white Namibian
farmer, told WorldNetDaily he is "fearful, hopeful yet
realistic."
"The handwriting is on the wall. One might say that if Nujoma
confiscates
all of the German owned farms, he will ruin the national budget.
But look at
Mugabe. Zimbabwe is in total ruins and nobody give a damn about
any
government budget," noted Van der Mere.
Daily News
Leader Page
War veterans now see the
light
10/8/02 3:01:30 PM (GMT +2)
AFTER 30 months of chaos in which three national elections
have led to
150 murders, hundreds of thousands of homeless people and 6,8
million people
needing food aid to survive, I never ever thought I would find
even one
complimentary word for the men and women who call themselves
Zimbabwe's war
veterans.
For it is you, the men and women
who led to the birth of Zimbabwe, who
have done your master's bidding for the
last 30 months.
It was you who went onto the farms and chased away
the growers of
food.
It was you who held the all-night pungwes
(meetings) to supposedly
re-educate the people of Zimbabwe.
It
was you who began the crippling of our economy, when you
demanded
compensation, pensions, gratuities, school fees and then blood
money.
It was you who went into our schools, hospitals and
clinics
threatening and terrifying teachers, doctors and nurses.
You chased them away, you fired them and you ordered them to vote for
your
master.
It was you, the veterans, who fought for freedom and
democracy, who
spawned and nurtured this terror, taking away the very things
your comrades
died for.
Have you, the war veterans of Zimbabwe, at
last seen sense?
Many amongst your ranks saw the light two years
ago, understood the
nature of this so-called Agrarian Revolution and found
the courage to say
they wanted nothing to do with it.
Many of
Zimbabwe's real war veterans saw through the treachery and
recognised the
face of evil. They formed the Zimbabwe Liberators' Platform.
Now, 30
months later, it seems that the rest of the war veterans are
at last
beginning to see that they have simply been used and off-handedly
paid
off.
Zimbabwe's war veterans, on Thursday 3 October 2002, finally
admitted
that they were just pawns in this mayhem and said, for the first
time in 30
months, that they were ready to expose the "Agrarian Revolution"
for exactly
what it is - the most infamous political con ever pulled off in
our country.
"The government should value those brave war veterans
who led the farm
invasions and assist them.
"We will ask why we
fought for the land if it (reform) is not
transparent. Those people who were
given the job of administering the land
exercise at
district and
provincial levels have not done so."
These words were said by an
aggressive, angry Patrick Nyaruwata a few
days ago.
He was
responding to pressure from his colleagues who are fed up of
watching the
politicians and leaders getting the succulent meat and
drumsticks of Zanu
PF's agrarian cockerel while they are left to squabble
over the bones from
the carcass.
Senior officials in the war veterans' association are
very unhappy
that they are being left out in the cold as the spoils of
Zimbabwe's farms
are being shared out.
Now that they can see the
fields and combines, the dams and houses,
the swimming pools and gardens
being given to their masters, they seem to
have finally realised that they
have been used and are going to be the
ultimate losers.
War
veteran Agrippa Gava says that his colleagues who have been
occupying farms
since 2000 are now being removed to make way for the chefs
and he accuses
district and provincial land committees of operating under
unclear
circumstances.
He talks about bribery and corruption in the land
distribution, while
his colleague, Endy Mhlanga, says a national land audit
will now be carried
out to expose the massive fraud.
It is a
tragedy it is that the war veterans have taken this long to
see the light,
but now they must look into their hearts and do the right
thing.
I hope they don't change their minds, that they will not be silenced
and that
they will act with great speed before it is too late for us all.
Zimbabwe is heading down the slippery slope faster than ever before.
Weather
experts are talking of El Nino's effects all over the world.
Massive floods in many European countries have already been seen,
drought has
plagued Australia and Papua New Guinea and almost all of
southern Africa is
dogged by famine and starvation.
Zimbabwe's war veterans must now
delve into their store of resilience
and find courage.
They must
blow the whistle long and loud. They must say that the
Agrarian Revolution
has not empowered the masses, but enriched the
politicians.
They
must join their colleagues in the Zimbabwe Liberators' Platform
and demand
that the people with the knowledge, expertise and capital be
allowed onto our
farms to save us all from starvation.
Nyaruwata, Mhlanga, Gava and
their colleagues have an onerous burden
on their shoulders now.
Zimbabwe is starving, there is no maize or wheat, no bread or sugar,
no oil
or salt.
There is no petrol, diesel or gas, no foreign currency and
no way of
earning any.
The time is now for Zimbabwe's war
veterans to get onto their knees,
beg our forgiveness and do the right
thing.
VOA
Some NGO Food Distributors to Halt Operations in
Zimbabwe
Peta Thornycroft
Harare
8 Oct 2002 14:29
UTC
The Zimbabwe government has told some non-governmental
organizations
involved in food distribution to stop operations. Aid workers
have been told
they could be arrested if they continue to distribute food
without being
registered with the government.
Britain's
well-known charities Save the Children and Oxfam learned in
a newspaper
advertisement in the state-controlled press that they have to be
registered
before they can continue to operate.
As food donors, their
registration must be done through the U.N. World
Food Program. The Zimbabwe
government has turned down applications by some
charities that the WFP
included in its list presented to the government,
including Save the Children
and Oxfam.
Those organizations said they are appealing the
decision, and had sent
all their financial statements and other records for
scrutiny by the
government, as required.
Both say they are
continuing to operate, but are aware that they could
be stopped at any
moment. They have been involved with Zimbabwe's poor since
independence in
1980.
The WFP says it needs at least 14 organizations to assist
in
delivering food to people who are beginning to die of starvation in some
of
the driest parts of southern Zimbabwe.
The social welfare
ministry will not comment on the situation. But the
government says it is
drafting new legislation to regulate non-governmental
organizations in
Zimbabwe.
Political analysts say this legislation is intended to
control access
to foreign funds by human rights groups.
University of Zimbabwe political scientist John Makumbe says the
government
will use the new legislation to try close down human rights
organizations,
particularly the Amani Trust, which monitors political
violence. He says the
new law will also be used against various charities
that were distributing
food, particularly those from Britain.
Zimbabwe's President Robert
Mugabe regularly accuses Britain of
supporting the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change.
The World Food Program has had its own share of
problems in trying to
acquire and distribute food to rural communities where
it is most needed.
Sources in the aid community say the Zimbabwe government
had, until a week
ago, blocked the WFP from expanding its capacity to deliver
food to more
areas. In addition, the government recently rejected a U.N.
initiative to
help the private sector import more food.
The
United Nations estimates that more than 6.5 million Zimbabweans
are in need
of food aid.
The aid groups say they are reluctant to speak out in
public, not
wanting to jeopardize their ability to provide food for the
hungry. One
agency spokesman said the situation in Zimbabwe is "urgent," and
there is no
time for bureaucratic delays.
Corruption And Public Confidence in SADC Region
Agencia de
Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
October 8, 2002
Posted to the web
October 8, 2002
Maputo
Public confidence in government commitment
to tackle corruption is low in
the SADC (Southern African Development
Community) region, and the public
generally regards the governments as
vulnerable to corruption, according to
UN expert Ugi Zvekic.
In a
paper given to a Maputo forum on "Transparency and Corruption" on
Tuesday,
Zvekic, who is a senior expert with the UN Office for drug control
and crime
prevention, said that political will to deal with corruption has
been shown
by the recent adoption of the SADC Protocol Against Corruption.
"Without
exception, each member state in the region has professed
determination to
tackle corruption within their own countries, but in some
states this has yet
to be translated into anything more than tokenism", he
added.
Zvekic
listed the "corruption prone sectors" as law enforcement,
procurement,
customs, employment and delivery of some basic services (such
as water,
electricity and pensions).
One bright spot in his paper was the claim
that perceptions of corruption
are out of line with experience of corruption.
Thus surveys showed that
perceptions of government corruption were four times
higher than actual
experience of corruption in Namibia, and 40 times higher
in Botswana.
"These discrepancies suggest that perceptions may be shaped
more by news
media reports of a small number of high profile incidents, of
the accounts
of friends or neighbours, or an overall low level of confidence
in the
ethics of the public sector, than any direct personal experience",
said
Zvekic.
However, Namibia and Botswana are generally regarded as
among the least
corrupt of the SADC states. Zvekic admitted there was a much
higher level of
direct experience of corruption in Zimbabwe.
As a
result 62 per cent of Zimbabweans believed that all, or most, of their
public
officials are involved in corruption: this compares with 48 per cent
in South
Africa, 40 per cent in Malawi and only 20 per cent in Namibia.
(These
figures come from the "Afrobarometer" surveys, and no survey using
the same
methodology has been done in Mozambique.) Zvekic stressed that
"public
perceptions will remain part of any standardised methodology, as
citizen
input provides an important measure of anti-corruption efforts and
trends.
Once the gap between the perception of corruption and any direct
experience
of it decreases, it will present an indicative measure in itself
of the
levels of success and effectiveness of anti- corruption policies,
programmes
and interventions".
Zvekic noted that whereas some countries are setting
up operationally
independent anti-corruption agencies, others prefer
specialist
anti-corruption units within existing criminal justice
structures.
He stressed that neither approach will be successful "without
a well
functioning, efficient and non-corrupt criminal justice system".
Mugabe's Rantings: a Self Indictment
Zimbabwe Standard
(Harare)
OPINION
October 7, 2002
Posted to the web October 7,
2002
Mavis Makuni
BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has
been made the focus of President
Mugabe's rantings at the Earth Summit in
Johannesburg and the United Nations
General Assembly in New York recently,
was only 27 years old when our soon
to be octogenarian head of state assumed
power in 1980
Blair, who is now 49 years old, only came into power in
Britain in 1997 when
his new Labour Party defeated the Conservatives in a
general election five
years ago
But, despite a 30-year headstart in
terms of chronological age and a 17-year
lead as head of state and
government, Mugabe does not have anything to teach
the younger Blair in the
departments of human dignity and statesmanship
Mugabe may not be aware of
it, but his obsessive scapegoating of the British
Prime Minister for his
failure to address the land question until he was
jolted by the resounding
"No" vote in the February 2000 constitutional
referendum amounts to
self-indictment
It is tenuous for Mugabe to claim that his inertia
vis-a-vis the land
problem for a full 20-years after independence was Blair's
fault. He should
explain why he did not make this issue a priority when the
no-nonsense
Margaret Thatcher and her successor John Major were at the helm
in Britain.
How clever is Blair to be able to thwart Mugabe's programme in
the short
time he has been prime minister?
Moreover, it is
transparently irrational to claim, as 'the strongman' is
fond of doing, that
the British have anything to do with the anarchy that
Mugabe has unleashed
since he decided that land reform was the only rallying
call he could make so
as to extend his hold on power
Another method Mu-gabe is fond of using to
unwittingly shoot his own
argument down is his resort to undignified
harangues and bombast at
international gatherings during which he claims to
be defending Zimbabwe's
sovereignty. How can a country's sovereignty be
threatened by mere criticism
of its leader's conduct on specific
matters?
Other nations regularly take such criticism in their stride.
These include
Britain and the United States which Mugabe is fond of blasting
at every
opportunity
Mugabe becomes more belligerent and paranoid by
the day because he knows
that the only thing threatened by the training of
the spotlight on his
disregard for the rule of law and his dictatorial
tendencies is his
incumbency as head of state
Because of this, his
voice is bound to become more shrill and irrational as
he tries desperately
to raise the tempo of the ill- conceived and
ill-advised Mao-style propaganda
campaign, fashioned by his rabble-rousing
information junior minister,
Jonathan Moyo
Despite being caught in a time warp, Mugabe and Moyo appear
to believe that
the totalitarian methods of indoctrination that failed to
turn the Chinese
masses against westerners 50 years ago will somehow work in
an environment
where information technology has so vastly improved that the
world has truly
become a global village
Just how rooted in the past
and how bankrupt of fresh ideas Mugabe and his
"propaganda expert" are is
demonstrated by their faith in the possibility of
this totalitarian approach
working in the 21st century
When Mugabe refers to Tony Blair as the
"gangster of London", or members of
Blair's cabinet as "gay gangsters", he is
plagiarising terminology used
about 50 years ago when anti-Americanism was
Mao's favourite battle cry
Lyndon Johnson, who took over as US president
after the assassination of
John F Kennedy, was routinely lampooned in the
Chinese media as the "bandit
president" and the word gangster was used to
characterise America and its
policies
Chairman Mao knew that his
revolution needed enemies, hatreds and a sense of
constant danger to maintain
its momentum. It was by maintaining this
heightened sense of urgency that the
masses could be exhorted to make
sacrifices and be ready to continue
swallowing an enforced diet of communist
party dogma
Mao and other
despotic leaders favoured using waves of anti-American
propaganda because
they knew it would be impossible for their citizens to
check the veracity of
the wildly unrealistic allegations made against these
external
enemies
Mugabe appears to believe in the efficacy of this approach, hence
his choice
of Blair as the external enemy to be blamed for interfering with
Mugabe's
revolution. Noteworthy is the fact that whenever he embarks on any
of his
paranoid tirades against Blair, the Zimbabwean 'strongman' never
gives
specific examples of what Blair has done or said to cause the
latest
outburst
Believing the totalitarian fallacy that if repeated
often enough a lie will
be accepted as the truth, Mugabe appears to be at his
wits' end because the
people of Zimbabwe who have ready access to information
about foreign events
(including Blair's utterings), are immune to his
exhortations
At least when Mao-Tse-Tung embarked on his anti-American
campaign he could,
initially, point to the brutality, corruption and
incompetence of the
Chiang- Kai-Shek regime to whip up national fervour and
resentment
Mugabe's dilemma is that whenever he becomes more vociferous
in his
pontification against Blair and the west, he is actually raising
the
decibels against his own and his party's dismal track record. His attempt
to
identify Blair as the enemy responsible for his and Zanu PF's failures
over
the past 22 years can only elicit derision and sarcastic
shoulder-shrugging
from the populace
It may also be the reason why
Tony Blair usually never bothers to comment on
the idiotic accusation
levelled against him
The British Prime Minister may also believe in the
Biblical exhortation
never to "answer a fool according to his folly lest ye
be like him"
The main thing to tamper Zimbabweans' incredulous
eye-rolling at the old
man's increasing eccentricity is the fact that
millions of dollars of tax
payers' hard-earned cash are spent on this
self-defeating and futile
campaign
But when all is said, Tony Blair
comes through as a dignified, mature and
humane statesman while the
Zimbabwean president, who should have mellowed
with age and experience,
projects himself as a bitter, insensitive, raging
bull.
Resettled Farmers Causing Accidents
Zimbabwe Standard
(Harare)
October 7, 2002
Posted to the web October 7,
2002
Parker Graham
Several accidents which claimed several
lives along Masvingo-Beitbridge
highway were largely blamed on newly
resettled families, police have
confirmed
Masvingo provincial police
spokesperson, Inspector Learn Ncube, said some
naughty resettled people in
Chivi, Mwenezi and up to Beitbridge were cutting
the fence along the highway
letting wild animals and livestock loose on
roads thus causing
accidents
"People cut and steal the fence on both sides of the
Masvingo-Beitbridge
highway letting the livestock loose. Police will not
hesitate to prosecute
those newly resettled families caught cutting the
fence," said Inspector
Ncube
He called on resettled farmers along the
highway to desist from cutting
fence on the road sides saying such actions
were counter productive
"Such actions are causing serious accidents and
deaths," said Inspector
Ncube
In July, 11 people died on the spot when
a Cross Boarder Association kombi
overturned in Chivi when its driver lost
control while trying to avoid
hitting a donkey which had strayed onto the
highway
A month later, three people travelling in a Mazda perished near
Ngundu halt
when their vehicle hit a donkey
Commercial Farmers Union
(CFU) Masvingo Provincial Vice Chairman, Mike Clark
, said besides the
cutting of the fence, the haphazardly resettled people
were using snares to
trap wild animals and cattle
"Cutting of fence along Masvingo-Beitbridge
highway has become so
rampant,"said Clark.
Christian Science Monitor
Venezuela and Zimbabwe: Democracy on the
brink
By Dennis Jett
GAINESVILLE, FLA. - Robert Mugabe and Hugo
Chávez have something in common.
The president of Zimbabwe and the president
of Venezuela are both leading
their countries to ruin. While Zimbabwe's
friends are helping to send it
over the edge, Venezuela's friends could help
avert a catastrophe and pull
the country back from the brink.
In order to
stay in power, Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Chávez are destroying their
countries'
economies, undermining their democratic institutions, and
promoting deep
divisions within their societies that could lead to civil
wars.
In
Venezuela, Chávez would like to install a Fidel Castro-style government.
To
do so, he is intimidating the press, subjugating the judiciary, and
ensuring
the irrelevance of the Congress. In Zimbabwe, Mugabe is using the
same
tactics. But while Chávez exploits the division between Venezuela's
rich and
poor to gain support, Mugabe prefers using racism.
He is seizing farms
owned by whites without paying any compensation. While
he claims he wants to
give the land to poor peasants, much of it winds up in
the hands of his
family and friends. His wife, Grace, personally threw out
the owners of the
2,500-acre estate she coveted. Others have also benefited
from the takeovers.
For instance, the head of Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corporation was rewarded for
his loyalty with a 1,500-acre farm.
In the past, Zimbabwe was the
breadbasket of the region. Lack of rain and
Mugabe's policies ended that and
now half its people are facing starvation.
As one official at the US
Agency for International Development observed
recently: "If I had to list
five things that a government could do to turn a
drought into a famine, the
Mugabe government is doing all of them
exponentially."
Remarkably, the
reactions of the regional political organizations in these
two situations
could not be more different. The African Union (AU), which
recently replaced
the Organization of African Unity (OAU), has done nothing.
Perhaps that is an
improvement, as the OAU actually endorsed Mugabe's
attacks on the opposition
and his fraudulent election last year by declaring
the voting legitimate. But
the AU may yet turn out to be little better than
the OAU in supporting
democracy, as one of its very first acts was to refuse
to admit the president
of Madagascar to the group. His crime: unseating a
long-term incumbent in
elections that were free and fair.
The leaders of the AU are currently
touting a new program, the New
Partnership for Africa's Development or NEPAD,
in the hopes of attracting
more aid from wealthy countries. One of the
NEPAD's selling points is that
it includes an African peer review mechanism
that will supposedly help
ensure good governance. Mugabe no doubt takes heart
in the fact that the
peers doing the judging would be the corrupt rulers of
Libya, Sudan,
Liberia, Mozambique, and others. African leaders have also
blocked any
serious consideration of Mugabe's tyranny by other groups like
the
Commonwealth countries and the Southern African Development
Community.
In Venezuela, the situation is grave, but not hopeless, thanks
to help from
the Organization of American States (OAS). Venezuela's largest
union and
largest business organization have called for mass demonstrations
and a
national strike in mid-October. In response, Chávez has urged his
supporters
to take to the streets to defend his "revolution." Many of the
poor see
Chávez as their only economic hope, while many in the upper and
middle
classes think the only thing to negotiate is the date of Chávez's
departure.
Such a sharp division makes violence all the more
likely.
The OAS, with the help of The Carter Center and the UN
Development Program,
are nonetheless trying to promote a dialogue between
Chávez and the
opposition. A recent mission to the capital, Caracas, by those
three groups
came up with a long list of recommendations on ways to achieve
some level of
national reconciliation.
The OAS saved Venezuela's
democracy last April when it expressed its
disapproval of a coup that had
ousted Chávez. The president was returned to
power within 48 hours. It is
trying to keep the lid on until a referendum
sometime next year can let the
voters decide whether Chávez goes or not.
Even the best efforts of outsiders,
however, may not save Venezuelans from
themselves a second time.
.
Dennis Jett is dean of the International Center at the University
of
Florida.
Washington File
07 October 2002
U.S. National Security Document Cites
Importance of Africa
(Experts agree on Bush strategy emphasizing development
aid) (1630)
By Jim Fisher-Thompson
Washington File Staff
Writer
Washington -- President Bush's recently released national
security
plan is clear evidence that a stable and democratic Africa remains
a
priority goal of U.S. government policymakers, said several
noted
Africanists in separate conversations with The Washington
File.
According to "The National Security Strategy of the United States
of
America," a plan of action issued by the White House on September
17,
Africa is important to peace and security worldwide and will
receive
all necessary help from the United States toward its political
and
economic development.
"It's a complicated business to get involved
in African affairs, but
the continent does need institutional development for
cooperation and
the United States can help" by working with regional
organizations on
the continent, said I. William Zartman, the director of the
Conflict
Management Program at The Johns Hopkins University School of
Advanced
International Studies (SAIS) and former director of its
Africa
department.
With the war on terrorism the U.S. government's
chief foreign policy
priority, the Bush strategy paper emphasized that
America can never be
secure while economic hardship and political unrest
abound. In a
preface to the plan, President Bush said, "Poverty does not make
poor
people into terrorists and murderers. Yet poverty, weak
institutions,
and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist
networks
and drug cartels within their borders."
According to the
paper, in Africa, "promise and opportunity sit side
by side with disease,
war, and desperate poverty. This threatens both
a core value of the United
States -- preserving human dignity -- and
our strategic priority -- combating
global terror." Therefore, it
says, the U.S. government "will work with
others for an African
continent that lives in liberty, peace, and growing
prosperity."
The section of the Bush strategy plan entitled "Work With
Others to
Defuse Regional Conflicts" cites three key "interlocking
strategies"
for U.S. policymakers:
-- working with countries "with
major impact on their neighborhoods,
such as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya,
and Ethiopia;
-- coordinating with European allies and international
institutions,
which is "essential for constructive conflict mediation and
successful
peace operations"; and
-- aiding Africa's "capable
reforming states and subregional
organizations," which "must be strengthened
as the primary means to
address transnational threats on a sustained
basis."
For former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
Herman
Cohen, the focus on Africa in the national strategy paper is
"a
pleasing development, but not a great surprise." He said, "It's good
he
[Bush] stressed the development aspect because Africans are making
serious
attempts to reform, although Africa is not a source of
terrorism like other
regions of the world."
The former U.S. Ambassador to Senegal said,
"Africa suffered terrorist
attacks [on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
in 1998], but these
came from outside" the continent. "I can't think of a
single instance
where there was an anti-American terrorist attack coming from
Africa
itself. And there were no Africans in these groups, al Qaeda or
what
have you, even though 50 percent of Africans are Muslims -- and
devout
Muslims at that."
Cohen, who now runs his own international
consulting firm, said,
"African nations are cooperating with U.S. authorities
on the war on
terrorism and are making the kind of political and economic
reforms
that attract investors. So it's only natural that this
administration
sees Africa as worthy of the type of development assistance
that
enhances trade and investment."
In economic terms, the national
security strategy outlined U.S.
government assistance to the continent that
includes:
-- expansion of favorable trade provisions in the amended
African
Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), signed into law by President
Bush
last August;
-- ensuring that World Trade Organization (WTO)
intellectual property
rules are "flexible enough to allow developing nations
to gain access
to critical medicines for extraordinary dangers like
HIV/AIDS,
tuberculosis, and malaria";
-- stepping up development
assistance in the form of the new
multi-billion-dollar Millennium Challenge
Account, 50 percent of which
will go to eligible African nations that
President Bush said "govern
justly, invest in their people, and encourage
economic freedom"; and
-- proposing an 18 percent increase in U.S.
contributions to the
International Development Association (IDA), the World
Bank's fund for
poor countries, and the African Development Bank
(AfDB).
Brett Schaefer, Africa specialist for the conservative
Washington
think tank The Heritage Foundation, noted: "From a national
security
standpoint, the administration's recommendations are quite
consistent.
They are trying to focus on reducing conflict and instability
within
Africa, which is a large priority. And they want to work with
their
European allies to achieve those objectives, especially if there is
a
need for peace operations."
On the latter point, Schaefer said,
"Africa, as important as it is,
obviously is not a place where America would
seek to station vast
amounts of troops. So the administration is trying to
multiply its
impact by working with other nations such as the regional powers
it
mentions in the strategy."
SAIS's Zartman said the security paper's
focus on coordinating with
"European allies" is "absolutely on target,
especially concerning the
French."
"It is time we worked with France
to get over their part and our part
of the 'Fashoda complex,' where they see
any American activity or
presence in Africa as an attempt to kick them out
and where we see the
French as leftover colonialists. We have got to
discontinue this
spitting war that has hurt us too much," Zartman
declared.
On the report's call to strengthen "Africa's capable reforming
states
and subregional organizations," the SAIS scholar said, "I think
the
most important reform proposed for Africa over the last decade was
the
CSSDCA, or the Conference on Security, Stability, Development
and
Cooperation in Africa, otherwise known as 'the Kampala Document.'
It
was the most important blueprint for change on the continent
and
deserves our support."
While CSSDCA has become somewhat
fragmented, Zartman said, a part of
its "spirit -- that intervention by a
group of states into the affairs
of another state can be justified because of
gross humanitarian
violations -- has been taken up by the new African Union
(AU)," the
successor to the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
This
came about, the scholar explained, because CSSDA was modeled
after the 1975
Helsinki Accords, whose emphasis on human rights
eventually contributed to
the downfall of the Soviet Union. Like
Helsinki's "baskets" of issues, CSSDA
has a number of "calabashes," he
explained, adding, "Interestingly, the
development calabash seems to
be pretty much replicated in NEPAD [New
Partnership for Africa's
Development]."
The White House security plan
singled out the AU for mention, saying,
"The transition to the African Union
with its stated commitment to
good governance and a common responsibility for
democratic political
systems offers opportunities to strengthen democracy on
the
continent."
This "is an appropriate move," said Cohen, because,
"the AU, as well
as grassroots efforts like NEPAD, are making a genuine
attempt to
understand why African development has been lagging. They
have
discovered that that includes bad economic policies that have to
be
reformed and also that good governance and democracy have been
lagging,
which are needed to encourage investments."
The brainchild of leaders
like Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo
and South African President Thabo
Mbeki, NEPAD is as much a guide for
development on the continent as it is a
plan of action. Assistant
Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter
Kansteiner recently
praised the program saying, "At the core of NEPAD's
theology . is a
notion that good governance is not only expected, but good
governance
is going to be required."
Kansteiner said, "That's a
different perspective than what we've seen
in the past, and we think it's an
important one -- we embrace it
fully."
Former Assistant Secretary
Cohen called these African efforts "very
encouraging because it is not just
the U.S. telling them what to do,
but it is the Africans themselves
recognizing that they have a problem
and moving to correct it."
With
that in mind, the security plan's focus on the African Growth and
Opportunity
Act was also a good move, Cohen said, because "if you look
at some of the
trade statistics since AGOA started [two years ago],
the countries that are
doing best in terms of economic growth are the
ones benefiting from AGOA. For
example, South Africa is exporting BMW
cars [to the U.S.
market]."
This means that "a lot of South African workers and their
families are
doing better now because of AGOA," Cohen said. And, he added,
"I
personally believe that is what Africa needs -- more revenue from
trade
so that wealth can be created for governments to provide more
social services
and infrastructure like clean water and electricity."
Heritage's Schaefer
agreed with Cohen on AGOA, noting, "All in all,
the trade act has been a very
large success for the continent as far
as exports are concerned." The
Africanist disagreed, however, on the
importance of the newly formed AU. "I'm
a little skeptical of the AU,"
he said. "It seems to be a repackaging of the
old organization in new
paper."
He added: "The promises sound great,
but it [AU] has been reluctant to
chastise one of the most horrific abusers
of his own people on the
continent -- [Zimbabwe's President] Robert Mugabe.
This lapse seems to
be a bright neon arrow pointing to the weakness of the
organization,
and that is African nations seem to be very reluctant to
chastise each
other."
In general, Schaefer said, "I think the
president has actually put
quite an emphasis on Africa over the past year or
so. Secretary [of
the Treasury] Paul O'Neill went over there for an extended
trip; Bush
announced the Millennium Challenge Account [50 percent of which
will
go to Africa, and] he announced the HIV/AIDS and water
initiatives,
both of which are targeted at Africa. So it was natural that
Africa
got the mention it did in the security paper."
(The Washington
File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This site is produced and maintained by the U.S. Department of State's
Office
of International Information Programs (usinfo.state.gov). Links to
other
Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the
views
contained therein.
New farmers have potential to expand export base in
Zimbabwe
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xinhuanet 2002-10-09 05:24:50
HARARE, Oct.8 (Xinhuanet) -- The
Chief Executive of Zimbabwe Trade
Freddy Chawasarira said here Tuesday that
the government's land reform
program has ushered in new players in the
country's agricultural sector, a
development that has potential to expand
Zimbabwe's export base.
Addressing delegates at the 2002
Confederation of Zimbabwe
Industries in Harare, Chawasarira said that the new
farmers need to be
quickly integrated into the mainstream economy to ensure
ready export
markets for their produce.
"The ongoing
transformation of the economy through the inclusion
of new players in the
agricultural sector has the potential to expand
Zimbabwe's export base,"
Chawasarira said.
"The new players in agriculture have to be
quickly integrated into
the mainstream, thus ensuring that export markets for
our agricultural
produce are retained and linkages with local manufacturing
industries not
only maintained but also increases," he said.
Chawasarira said the strategy would ensure export of value added
goods
and services.
Chawasarira said a new export development
paradigm shift that
reflects and takes into account these developments
together with the thrust
of promoting the country's agricultural industrial
basehas to come aboard.
He said the fundamental challenge
facing the nation was to
formulate a national development approach that
enhanced foreign currency
inflows in order to meet the country's import
requirements.
The government was importing fuel, electricity
and food among
other essential needs.
Chawasarira said a
national strategy on export development would
provide a platform for economic
growth and the achievement of other key
goals such as employment creation,
raising of household incomes, and poverty
alleviation.
But
for these goals to be achieved, he said it was essential that
the country
adopted an outward looking stance, predicting itsgrowth on the
development of
external; markets and the increased inflows of foreign
direct
investment.
He said economic parameters such as
interest rates and import
tariffs should be supportive of the drive to
enhance the
country'sinternational competitiveness. The country, Chawasarira
said,
should also strive to upgrade its manufacturing capacity and to make
maximum
use of modern technology to increase productivity andraise
standards.
He added that the government should continue to
foster bilateral
relations and negotiate preferential financial, trade and
technical
agreements while also developing new markets.
The
two-day congress was held under the theme "Overcoming the
Crisis" and it
ended on Tuesday with business people agreeing on the need
for urgent
measures to be taken and for greater co-operation between the
business sector
and the government to revivethe country's struggling
economy. Enditem
SABC
News
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Zimbabwe faces exclusion from EU-SADC summit
October 08, 2002,
17:30
The EU has joined the US in calling for the
exclusion of
Zimbabwe from all formal gatherings between itself and the
Southern African
Development Community (SADC). The latest development
threatens to derail
consultative meetings convened by western power
blocs.
The annual gatherings are aimed at reviewing
development
programmes within the region. First it was the EU's targeted
sanctions
against Zimbabwe for its turbulent land reform programme. Now the
west is
aiming to enforce "soft" sanctions on SADC as a collective, the
reason being
that regional Heads of State have failed to read out a riot act
to President
Robert Mugabe.
A crucial US-SADC consultative
meeting, which was due to be held
early next year, has been put on ice by
Washington, which insists that
Zimbabwe will have to be excluded in order to
allow talks to go ahead as
planned. This is a tough choice facing the
regional body, diplomats have
remarked, but SADC has maintained its stance
not to succumb to any form of
blackmail by the west.
The
EU, SADC' largest trading partner, says no Zimbabwean
representatives are
welcome at the envisaged EU-SADC summit due to take
place in Coppenhagen next
month. SADC has nevertheless put a brave face and
has resisted any attempt to
isolate Zimbabwe.
Prega Ramsamy, the SADC executive
secretary, says: "If we are
going to participate as SADC in any international
event, it will have to be
14 member states otherwise it's not SADC, so this
is the point of
contention."
In an effort to revive
diplomatic relations with the west, the
SADC secretariat has offered to host
both the US and EU consultative
meetings within the region.
Zimbabwe's white farmers
drop interest for Tanzania
Wednesday, October 09,
2002
.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
By
Bilal Abdul-Aziz
Unfavourable environment for investment in the
agricultural sector,
particularly infrastructure, has made interested white
Zimbabwean farmers
become reluctant to come and invest in the country, the
Tanzania Investment
Centre (TIC) has said.
Speaking to The Guardian in Dar
es Salaam yesterday, the TIC Information
Officer, Edgar Mbano, said following
the current land crisis in the central
African state, some white Zimbabweans
had shown interest to invest in the
country.
"Some white farmers from
Zimbabwe early this year had contacted the TIC
through e-mail and by
telephone asking for possibilities to invest in the
country," Mbano said,
adding that since then the contacts had naturally
stopped.
Mbano said that
in an attempt to find out the reason for the decline, the
TIC discovered that
investors found it expensive to invest as the country is
plagued with poor
infrastructure in most of its rural settings where
agriculture is
conducted.
"You know, these farmers have been there for three generations or
so. Along
with the key investment on agriculture, they have already
installed
infrastructure facilities in the estates there. They did not find
it
feasible to come here and start afresh," Mbano said.
He said that
according to the current regulations of the TIC applicable to
foreign
investors, the farmers could have been accepted in the country since
the door
is open for such investments.
Tanzania is one of the countries that have
supported Zimbabwe's land reform
programme.
PRESS
RELEASE
From October 12, there will
be a protest vigil outside the Zimbabwe High Commission in London every
Saturday from 12.00 – 18.00.
The date has been chosen to
coincide with a desperate attempt by the High Commission to improve Zimbabwe’s
dire image. The aim of the vigil is to
draw attention to the true facts.
It is clear that the
situation in Zimbabwe is deteriorating rapidly. The threat of starvation is now a reality – especially for
supporters of the opposition, who have been denied international food aid by
Mugabe’s illegitimate regime. People
are dying of malnutrition and others are being killed, tortured and raped by
thugs of the ruling Zanu-PF.
The regime is trying to deny
access to rural areas to stop outsiders seeing the extent of violence and
intimidation. But it has failed to stop
at least one observer who reports that everywhere he was met by torture victims
without fingers, without ears, without lips, with flayed feet bandaged.
The vigil is organised by
the Freedom for Zimbabwe Campaign supported by concerned groups and individuals
in the United Kingdom and will be maintained until democracy is restored. It is hoped that it will eventually be
extended to an around-the-clock protest along the lines of the anti-apartheid
vigil outside the South African High Commission.
PHOTO OPPORTUNITIES: singing and dancing demonstrators with
posters, flags and drums.
INTERVIEWS: arranged
with demonstrators and torture victims.
CONTACT: Dennis Benton
email:
rose@grbenton.demon.co.uk
Tel:
020 7272 1015
Daily News
Feature
Think beyond elections in Mugabe's
Zimbabwe
10/8/02 4:22:44 PM (GMT +2)
Features
Story: ZIMBABWEANS may still be wondering why the MDC
still takes part
in elections when they are routinely rigged through the
government's
unflinching refusal to open up the country for people to make
informed
choices about their future. Gone are the days when elections were
part of a
strategy to remove President Mugabe from power. He has shown the
world that
such a route does not work - at least in
Zimbabwe.
Elections here have failed to provide a barometer
of democracy, as a
concept that is widely accepted across a gamut of
political creeds. The MDC'
s experiment and experience with elections, as a
method of creating an
enduring political culture of competition, has now run
its course. While it
accepted that political parties and their supporters
learn to participate by
actually participating in elections and that such
activities bring about a
healthy, active and knowledgeable electorate, care
must be taken to avoid
taking part for the fun of it. Taking part in a race,
no matter how
difficult, must trigger a renaissance in national development
and must
register specific and measurable outcomes - not a repeat of the same
old
story of violence and repression.
People need alternatives
to mesh gears with Mugabe, despite his
increasing reliance on the military to
silence patriotic critics. He has
refused to accept that basic political
decisions and democracy flourish in a
society where the people are sovereign
and autonomous; where the idea of
free and fair elections is firmly
entrenched. The votes must carry equal
weight, whether cast by a peasant or a
president, to determine an acceptable
outcome and expressed preferences of
each citizen. For 20 years, Zimbabwean
elections were marred by severe
political apathy. Zanu PF thrived in such a
scenario, winning term after term
in office with a minority registered vote.
When the MDC entered the
fray in 2000, the pattern changed. So did
Zanu PF. There was a sudden gush of
interest in elections as people felt the
time was right to take part
effectively in the selection of the country's
political leadership. The
majority felt the urge to register their
collective feeling about a
government that had presided over their lives for
two decades. Many died in
the process. White commercial farmers were
specifically targeted for
punishment and they paid dearly for the assumed
sins of revolting
blacks.
There was widespread disappointment with the outcome and
the resultant
social disorder that has driven thousands of young
professionals into the
diaspora and left a hungry nation behind. The MDC
prepared several dossiers
on the unbecoming conduct of the government and
challenged the result.
Nothing happened, except to prove Mugabe's dishonesty
and to highlight the
flaws in the electoral system. Up until then,
Zimbabweans thought they would
be able to express their preferences
accurately, without hindrance and equal
opportunity as they did in the 2000
constitutional referendum. Few realised
they had lost control of the agenda
until they saw hordes of militants roam
the countryside, invading farms,
setting up militia bases, illegal
roadblocks and declaring no-go areas to
fellow citizens and privately-owned
newspapers. The game was up. For two
years, the country was plunged into
chaos as the government maintained a
vicious campaign against order and
tolerance. Now in our third year since the
fiasco began, the crisis remains.
The MDC participated in every
by-election since 2000, again preparing
fresh dossiers highlighting numerous
irregularities in the process. Last
week, the party went ahead and engaged
Zanu PF in local government
elections. Once again, another dossier has been
compiled on the flawed
plebiscite. The government introduced a new strategy
to limit the numbers of
voters, physically and through legislation. Mugabe
has shown the nation that
he is against a system that promotes discussion,
debate and competition
among divergent groups. He hates political parties and
pressure groups,
unless they are single-member organisations. Civil society,
an essential
prerequisite for any democratic order, was gagged, families were
torn apart
and communities pushed to the edge.
If a citizen is
denied a chance to take part in an election or to seek
an enlightened
understanding of the politics around a particular community,
then it is
unlikely that the marginalisation of the majority in a democracy
will ever be
overcome.
Zimbabwe risks accepting the untenable circle of limited
or
non-participation politics, a factor often visible through
silence.
The silence of the majority could mean a loss of control
of the
political agenda, a loss of political equality. That could lead to
dangerous
times ahead. Now that Mugabe is through with the white farmers, who
is next
in line? There are fears through Matabeleland that the "war cabinet"
could
be devising ways of dealing with the area. Ordinary villagers say
they
anticipate a horrendous scenario in which they could be starved
as
punishment for rejecting Zanu PF. They are concerned that food was
a
puissant weapon which could be unleashed to break the opposition
structures
and ensure forced allegiances to the government.
They
recalled that the late Maurice Nyagumbo and Enos Nkala devoted
their weekends
to rural Matabeleland between 1982 and 1985, receiving
surrendered PF Zapu
cards and replacing them with Zanu PF identity
documents. The practice only
stopped when PF Zapu scooped all the
parliamentary seats in Matabeleland in
the 1985 general election. Already
people in urban areas are feeling the
pinch. The councils they elected to
run their affairs are under siege,
fighting off a range of allegations from
the government. Japhet
Ndabeni-Ncube, the executive mayor of Bulawayo,
anxiously awaits the result
of a court case in which he is accused of
bribing a voter with $20. Elias
Mudzuri of Harare is equally in trouble,
completely unable to breathe under a
ton of directives and other forms of
interference in the affairs of the city.
Chegutu and Masvingo face different
problems.
Significantly,
maize stocks have dwindled to nothing in most towns.
Attempts to bring in
supplies from villagers are often thwarted as police
and war veterans mount
roadblocks to seize grain from rural buses.
Conditions on the ground offer
countless opportunities to tackle the budding
fascism. There can never be a
viable substitute for good governance. Urban
workers have already made a
statement by banishing Mugabe from towns and
cities. They need to make a
follow-up to that.
Villagers must begin to do something, even if it
means camping at each
district council office or at the new councillor's
home, demanding to eat
from the same pot.