Lifting the lid on Zimbabwe's brutality

Mugabe stacks odds in his favour with plan for 'rigged' election

Independent, UK

By Basildon Peta in Johannesburg
Published: 19 April 2007

Robert Mugabe has unveiled his blueprint for a fixed election, in clear
defiance of international calls for a free and fair vote in Zimbabwe.

Among measures approved at a cabinet meeting yesterday was an expansion of
parliament from 150 MPs to 210 in a blatant gerrymandering coup. The new
MPs' districts will be set up in rural areas where the ruling party
exercises near total control of the vote, according to sources inside the
country.

The move will be an embarrassment to South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki.
He was recently mandated by the 14 leaders of the regional Southern Africa
Development Community (SADC) to intervene in Zimbabwe on their behalf and
help to end the long-running economic and political crisis.

Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change,
signalled that his party would be forced to boycott any poll where the new
measures are enforced: "We are not going to be part and parcel of this
shameless charade," he said. "SADC has mandated Mbeki to resolve these
problems, but in typical style and crass contempt, Mugabe is already
unilaterally laying down the rules."

Mr Mbeki's main mandate is to ensure that Zimbabwe holds free and fair
elections next year, since rigged polls and a skewed electoral framework are
widely viewed as being at the core of Zimbabwe's crisis. He had already
kick-started his mediation efforts by writing to leaders of the MDC, asking
them to outline what they consider to be the basic conditions for ensuring
free and fair polls. He copied his letter to President Mugabe.

Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, the two leaders of the divided MDC,
responded to Mr Mbeki this week. The South African leader had earlier
indicated that he would take their views to Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party
to set the stage for formal talks, but President Mugabe pre-empted that move
with his new measures that effectively make it impossible for the opposition
to make any significant gains or challenge for the presidency.

It is understood that most of the gerrymandering to increase parliamentary
seats will happen in Mr Mugabe's rural support bases where the opposition is
in effect banned. The rural areas also host detention camps in which dozens
of opposition supporters have reportedly been murdered.

Apart from guaranteeing Mr Mugabe an absolute majority of MPs, the
opposition says that increasing the number of rural constituencies will also
involve setting up more polling stations. This will create more chances for
Mr Mugabe's handpicked electoral authorities to manipulate ballot figures.

In previous elections, huge victory margins, even exceeding the number of
registered voters, have been announced for the ruling party in these rural
constituencies. Polling stations have also gone unmanned after opposition
polling agents were beaten and chased away.

In addition to the gerrymandered constituencies, Mr Mugabe will also retain
his power to appoint some MPs, in this case 30 of the 210. The current
requirement of an election to be convened within 90 days if an incumbent
president, for any reason, leaves office before his term's expiry will be
cancelled. Instead, parliament will choose the next leader.

The opposition says that this is clearly designed to ensure that the ruling
party clings to power if anything happens to any of its leaders, since the
groundwork will have been laid to guarantee it a majority of MPs in
parliament.

Lovemore Madhuku, chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly civic
group, which agitates for a new constitution, said the only option left for
the opposition was to mobilise internal pressure and take the "struggle to
Mugabe's doorstep until he is forced out".

How P.W. Botha put the squeeze on Mugabe

moneyweb

And would the AU condone military intervention to prop up ZANU-PF?

James Myburgh
18 April 2007

When the South African Presidency has been challenged on their inaction in
the face of Robert Mugabe's depredations in Zimbabwe one of the standard
responses is to pretend that there is very little South Africa could do. In
an October 2002 interview President Thabo Mbeki complained that when people
called on him to "do something" about Zimbabwe, "what they mean is march
across the Limpopo and overthrow the government of President Mugabe, which
we are not going to do."

The truth is, as the ANC and ZANU PF know full well, South Africa has huge
leverage over its landlocked northern neighbour should it choose to exercise
it. As James Kirchick pointed out recently in 1975 Prime Minister B. J.
Vorster withdrew South African military units fighting from Rhodesia and
also halted oil supplies to the country. This action played a crucial role
in forcing Ian Smith to the negotiating table and into accepting the
introduction of majority rule.

What is less well remembered, but perhaps of more contemporary relevance, is
how the government of P.W. Botha then put the squeeze on the new government
of Robert Mugabe in the early 1980s.

In a July 1983 article in the Economist Simon Jenkins explained how this had
been done. Shortly after coming to power Mugabe had assured South Africa
that he would not provide military assistance to the ANC. However, he
continued to deliver speeches attacking the "racist Pretoria regime",
criticised Zimbabwean migrant workers working across the Limpopo, and banned
any of his Ministers from having any dealings with the South African
government.

The hawks in the South African government responded by threatening to allow
to allow a preferential trade agreement with Zimbabwe to lapse - "at least
until a proper minister came and asked for renewal" and to send the 40 000
migrant workers home at the end of their contracts. "Eighty wagons borrowed
from South Africa and desperately needed to shift Zimbabwe's record 1981
harvest were abruptly recalled. Mr Mugabe's hope of using Mozambican railway
links to avoid his exports passing through South Africa was sabotaged by
frequent MNR bomb attacks."

In December 1982 the Pretoria government meted out a mauling to Mugabe
which, Jenkins noted, "illustrates the crippling hold South Africa has over
Zimbabwe's fate". In the early morning of the 9th December a South African
recce commando blew up the oil depot at Beira, destroying two and a half
months of oil supply for Zimbabwe, leaving the country with just two weeks
domestic supply and facing economic ruin. An alternative rail route for oil
from Maputo was also sabotaged.

"This left South Africa with a grip on all of Zimbabwe's oil supplies,
whether purchased direct or from Maputo by the (unsabotaged) Komatipoort
rail link. South Africa suddenly announced that there was an industrial
dispute on this line and wagon turnarounds would be long delayed. It was a
big squeeze, far worse than any UDI sanctions. The resulting chaos hit
Zimbabwe over Christmas. The government admitted its total vulnerability."

After diplomatic intervention by the United States fuel supplies were
restored and the pipeline repaired, but "South Africa had made its point."
By August 1985, Michael Holman wrote in the Financial Times, Zimbabwe's
relations with South Africa operated on two levels: "Condemnation of
apartheid is frequent and forceful, and there is the suspicion that South
Africa could seek to destabilise Zimbabwe....But in practice the two sides
have established a modus vivendi, brought about in part through mutual
self-interest and regular unpublicised contact at high levels."

Trade remained normal, and the preferential tariff scheme remained in place.
Pretoria had threatened to retaliate militarily if Zimbabwe provided bases
or training for ANC guerrillas and as a result, the ANC had "only a low-key
diplomatic presence in Harare."

In another article, this time for the New Republic Online Kirchick raises
the intriguing, albeit highly unlikely, possibility that South African
troops could march across the Limpopo in support of the Mugabe government if
it was threatened by a popular insurrection. South Africa has, he notes,
"committed itself to the Mugabe regime through a series of continental,
regional, and bilateral legal agreements."

Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the African Union allows the AU "to
intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in
respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes
against humanity." At a 2003 summit the member states of the AU adopted an
amendment [pdf] which extended this clause, adding "as well as a serious
threat to legitimate order to restore peace and stability to the Member
State of the Union upon the recommendation of the Peace and Security
Council." Kirchick writes that Zimbabwe could be the beneficiary of the
clause as South Africa and the AU both formally recognize the democratic
legitimacy of the Mugabe regime.

At the time Kathryn Sturman, an African security analyst for the Institute
for Security Studies, observed that the amendment was "not intended to
protect the individual rights but to entrench the regimes in power." She
says that although she does not think that South Africa would intervene to
support Mugabe, there are various reasons why this could not be done through
the AU.

According to a senior official in the Peace and Security Commission, whom
she spoke to at the AU Commission in Addis Ababa earlier this year, the
amendment "has not yet entered into force and is unlikely to do so for some
time." It was adopted under pressure from Libya, but as an amendment to the
AU's constitution, it needs two thirds of the 53 member states to ratify it
to enter into force. "The official was sceptical about this happening,
implying that they signed the amendment without any intention of ratifying
it." So, for now at least, article 4(h) remains as originally adopted.

Sturman adds that South Africa recently "stood down from the 15 member Peace
and Security Council of the AU, so is no longer in a decision-making
position on AU interventions (Angola, Lesotho and Botswana are now the
Southern African members). The AU Peace and Security Commission is taking a
lead in steering the member states towards humanitarian interventions in
places like Darfur, Somalia and Burundi, while the African Commission on
Human and Peoples' Rights has published strong criticism of voter
intimidation and human rights violations in Zimbabwe."

"The AU has also spoken out against coups in Mauritania and Togo, so is
starting to shift away from the norms of non-interference and solidarity
that SADC still adheres to. Intervention in support of Mugabe would go
completely against the direction the AU is currently moving in, so South
Africa wouldn't get the support, particularly of Nigeria, Senegal or Ghana,
for this kind of intervention."

US House Urges 'Return To Sanity,' End To Violence In Zimbabwe

VOA

      By Ndimyake Mwakalyelye
      Washington
      18 April 2007

The U.S. House of Representatives has called upon the government of Zimbabwe
to "return to sanity, end state sponsored violence and address the needs of
its people" in a resolution passed on the eve of the country's 27th
anniversary of independence.

The resolution passed late Tuesday said the Harare government of President
Robert Mugabe is "bent on a bitter and disastrous course that no sane or
rational appeal from its own citizens or the community of nations has been
able to reverse."

Introduced by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-California), chairman of the House
Committee on Foreign Affairs, called on the Southern African Development
Community and the African Union to consult with the Zimbabwean government
and pressure it to resolve its economic and political crisis. It urged
Zimbabwe to respect its commitments as a signatory of the African Charter of
Human and People's Rights.

Resolution co-sponsor Rep. Donald Payne (D-New Jersey), a former chairman of
the Congressional Black Caucus, told reporter Ndimyake Mwakalyele of VOA's
Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that "there has to be a cessation of this brutality"
against the Zimbabwean opposition by state security agents.

Police crack down on new youth movement

zimbabwejournalists.com

18th Apr 2007 20:59 GMT

By a Correspondent

HARARE - Police in Harare have arrested 20 members of the Zimbabwe Youth
Movements (ZYM) on the day they were launching their organisation at the St
Mary's Shopping Centre in Chitungwiza.

At least a 100 youths are said to have been present at the launch of the new
youth movement which has threatened to take the fight for freedom in
Zimbabwe to another level.

Those arrested include Colin Chibango, the ZYM president, Sinduza Ndhlovu
and other youths who had gathered to listen to the former university and
college students who were expelled by the government for their political
activism.

Chibango and his colleagues castigated the Zanu PF government for the
economic and political woes that afflict Zimbabwe today, adding there was
nothing for the youths of Zimbabwe to celebrate as Zimbabwe marked its 27th
birthday.

He said President Robert Mugabe's government has betrayed the Zimbabwean
people.

ZYM's partnering organisation, Free-Zim Youth, which is based in the United
Kingdom, said Mavhuma was beaten by the police together with some of his
colleagues.

"They need urgent medical treatment. At the moment we cannot find our
colleagues, we do not know where they are being held," said Alois Mbawara of
Free-Zim Youths.

"As an organisation we condemn the police actions and brutality. We stand in
solidarity with our fellow comrades who are in the trenches. This brutality
has been enforced by security forces mandated by the bourgeois nationalist
Zanu PF elite in its continued demented pursuit to repress and oppress the
majority," he said.

"The 18th of April is meant to be a monumental day for African history, thus
the youth of Zimbabwe, as the vanguard of the revolution take this
opportunity to warn the betrayers and pseudo forces that we are not prepared
for any reformist changes but for a complete change - a revolution! What we
demand is nothing short of Zanu PF's demise, a complete end to their tyranny
and bourgeoisie politics."

Zimbabwe Opposition Factions Stake Out Positions On Crisis Mediation

VOA

      By Patience Rusere
      Washington
      18 April 2007

South Africa has received preliminary responses from both factions of
Zimbabwe's opposition giving their views of the crisis in their country and
how President Thabo Mbeki should proceed with his brief from the Southern
African Development Community to try to mediate a solution, officials in
Pretoria said.

South African officials would not comment on the substance of those
communications, and the secretary generals of the two Movement for
Democratic Change factions - Tendai Biti of the faction led by Morgan
Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube of the grouping headed by Arthur Mutambara -
could not be reached Wednesday.

But spokesman Nelson Chamisa of the Tsvangirai MDC faction told reporter
Patience Rusere of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that a home-grown solution to
the political and economic crisis is still the best option for Zimbabwe.

Spokesman Gabriel Chaibva of the Mutambara faction said that group's main
concern is to see a "people-driven" constitution drafted to pave the way for
democracy.

The Worthless Life of Africans

Mmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone)

EDITORIAL
April 18, 2007
Posted to the web April 18, 2007

For most African leaders the life of the common citizens is as cheap as
nothing. They attach no value to the life of the people they lead. This is
not strange given the African leaders' lucklustre attitude when dealing with
the unfolding meltdown in neighbouring Zimbabwe or the pogroms of Darfur in
Sudan.

No wonder the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo told the perplexed world
this week that the Saturday state elections had "gone on very well across
the country". This is despite the fact that 34 civilians and 10 policemen
have lost their lives in clashes over the weekend poll.

It beats logic why the leader of Africa's most populous nation should accept
as normal an electoral process in which lives are lost and property
destroyed. Several factors could help explain this situation, leading among
them the obsession with making the elections as not free and unfair as
possible. As a result, scant attention is given to the creation of a proper
electoral infrastructure that ensures the conduct of elections is free and
fair. It is common knowledge that elections however heated or big should not
cause death and destruction. Otherwise how do countries such as the US,
Japan, and others with comparable populations manage to hold elections
without the unnecessary loss of life and property?

If anything, some African leaders go all out to ferment chaos, in which they
ultimately thrive. Obasanjo, a former jailbird of Sani Abacha's military
regime, has ensured chaos prevailed in the run-up to this month's state and
presidential elections in Nigeria.

For a start, he has tried everything in the book to make sure his nemesis
and vice-president Atiku Abubakar does not stand for elections. Obviously,
Abubakar's unforgivable crime was to deny Obasanjo an opportunity to violate
the Nigerian constitution and seek a third term in office through a
misguided amendment.

Having failed to achieve his primary objective, he resorted to a well-tested
Plan B, which in recent years has been effectively deployed by Frederick
Chiluba of Zambia, Bakili Muluzi of Malawi, and Sam Nujoma of Namibia. The
strategy involves the imposition of an anointed 'stooge' on the reluctant
populace. Obasanjo subsequently unleashed trumped-up corruption charges
against Abubakar.

One would have thought the much-touted African Peer Review Mechanism was
meant to sort out such matters. His African peers, however, have decided
neither to see nor hear anything evil as Obasanjo embarked on subverting the
presidential contest which could be the first time a civilian administration
hands power to another in Nigeria since independence.

Today's Thought

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it.

- Henry David Thoreau

Awful fate that awaits the kings of wishful thinking

The Times
April 19, 2007

Graham Searjeant, Financial Editor
Colleagues of a frugal émigré working at the London School of Economics in
the 1950s were puzzled by his eccentric dress. He was still wearing wing
collars at least a generation after they had been dropped for normal dress
as, literally, too stuck up. During the German hyperinflation of 1923, he
explained, his mother was so desperate to get rid of her cash income that
she bought a gross of wing collars, the only goods available before the
money became worthless. During that episode, consumer prices multiplied 7.2
billion times in 16 months as the Government printed money to finance its
spending promises in a ruined economy that raised little tax and had no
credit to borrow.

Even this lesson was lost on some fools and desperate men. Hungary repeated
the experience with extra noughts after the Second World War. When communist
Yugoslavia broke up, the Serb rump printed money to finance its army's
campaign to grab it back. What cost one dinar in 1990 required an estimated
100 billion billion by 1994.

When inflation is that high, it is a bit of a guess. No wonder Moffat
Nyioni, head of Zimbabwe's Central Statistical Office, postponed publication
of figures showing a monthly price rise of more than 50 per cent, a
benchmark for hyperinflation. Inflation already topped 3,000 per cent
annually, which means that many prices do not stay still long enough to
count.

Gideon Gono, Governor of Zimbawe's Reserve Bank, has taken it upon himself
to print money to finance expenditure essential to the functioning of a
state where most urban workers are unemployed. He dismisses "ancient
textbook economics" as irrelevant to local conditions and paused only when
the presses ran short of paper and ink.

Such rashness puts into perspective the 3.1 per cent rise in the UK's
Consumer Prices Index (CPI) in the year to March, and even the 4.8 per cent
rise in the cost of living index, the measure used before 1997. But they do
have one thing in common: they are both the result of taking risks with
money on the back of wishful thinking.

None of the central bankers who have presided over hyperinflation imagined
doing so. They thought they were helping to tide their country over
short-lived difficulties that would soon be resolved, only to find that
confidence was lost, first in themselves, then in money, exacerbating the
country's initial plight.

Mervyn King has only one vote on a Monetary Policy Committee of nine, which
has split into camps. He has had to write the open letter after inflation
strayed above its target by more than half, but its smug tone may convey MPC
majority thinking.

The MPC sought to shield the UK economy from the shock of a surge in oil,
gas and metal prices. In terms of output, it has succeeded, so far. But the
Governor always claimed that the high oil price would have to be paid for in
lower real pay and profits, or lower growth and fewer jobs, if it were not
be to inflationary.

So far, this has proved to be wishful thinking. Instead of domestic business
absorbing much of the higher global raw material costs, inflation has been
gathering pace in most CPI sub-sectors, especially labour-intensive
services. The exceptions are mainly where prices are held down by imports,
not least from China. Inflation tops 3 per cent in most main divisions of
the CPI and has done for months.

Risks to inflation were also greater than risks to output. The economy has
been expanding at or above its sustainable rate for years and is at full
capacity. The MPC has relied on the proposition that the surge of skilled
migrants since the 2004 EU enlargement will continue, preventing
inflationary labour shortages. Predictably, earnings growth in the private
sector has risen past the level once seen as the danger signal. Whatever
happens to the annual rate this year, inflation pressure is rising as you
would expect at the peak of a cycle.

The letter insists that the MPC has no duty to keep CPI rises within 1 per
cent either side of its target. That legalistic assertion will undermine the
MPC's carefully built credibility more.

If people cannot rely on inflation staying within a 1-3 per cent range,
other than in exceptional circumstances, they will revert to thinking of the
current rate of inflation as what to expect in the future. If they did,
people should be looking for at least 5 per cent pay or price rises.
Persuading us that inflation will be near to target in future, whatever it
may be today, was the main achievement of the MPC's first decade. It has
allowed us to keep employment higher and raise real incomes faster.

Present MPC members, both inside and outside the Bank, seem to take that for
granted. Their wishful thinking has hurt their credibility. Faith needs to
be rebuilt, at greater cost to the economy than if the MPC had chosen
caution over risky fine-tuning.

The latest rise in Bank Rate, in January, was voted only by five to four. A
rise early next month seems certain. There is a case for a half-point rise,
at least for a while, to admit that the Bank messed up and does not intend
to do so again. But strong sterling may be worth a quarter-point. It is more
important that the vote next time should be unanimous. Anything less will
damage confidence severely.