The ZIMBABWE Situation Our thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe
- may peace, truth and justice prevail.

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Pretoria News

      Two families, two farms, one country
      April 28, 2005

      By Hans Pienaar

      President Thabo Mbeki says the past should be buried and South Africa
should focus on helping Zimbabwe rebuild itself after its land revolution.
Hans Pienaar of the Independent Foreign Service spoke to two families
involved in the resettlement programme.

      Patrick Musirah is an elderly "new farmer", a settler on land
redistributed under Robert Mugabe's ambitious resettlement scheme.

      His new farm is situated in the ruling Zanu-PF heartland of Bindura
about 70km north of the capital Harare.

      One of the most convincing arguments in favour of Zimbabwe's land
reforms, that would allow one to take all the chaos and failure in one's
stride, or several of them, is that a piece of land provides a home base
from which to launch a new life .

      Which does not necessarily have to be a farming one. The self-esteem
that would be returned to Zimbabwe's colonially repressed landless, was
worth it alone.

      The domestic scene at his farm was another puzzle.

      There was a spacious cooking hut, and in the centre a small fire was
lapping at two raw pieces of chicken and some mealies.

      Light shone through the windows and smokehole on to the built-in brick
shelving, moulded in cement patterns and painted black. It was the perfect
background for the colourful plates and mugs being displayed.

      Patrick's wife Shingai, who wore a Limp Bizkit T-shirt, proudly stood
for pictures. She had elephantisis in her one foot, which only seemed to act
as a spur to an irrepressibly merry spirit. She was constantly laughing and
hamming it up.

      She was far too smart, one realised, for that T-shirt not to be an
ironic comment on something.

      The family, consisting of the couple and their four sons, had lived in
a cramped communal area about 30km away before 2000.

      They were given a first plot of land, lying between Bindura and
Shamva, followed by a few more, scattered around the koppie on which they
lived.

      At first they brought the whole family, but then they had sent back
the small children.

      Why? They became hesitant and would only say that the schools were
better in the communal area.

      Researchers had discovered that after the first euphoria of occupying
their new plots, many participants had trekked back to the communal areas,
exacerbating the congestion there, as the new farmers had not planted the
crops in the communal area they would usually have.

      In the end, only 10% decongestion had been achieved, according to Sam
Moyo, the director of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies. This is
way off the target of 50%.

      The Musirahs were trying to have the best of both worlds. Half the
family was now staying on the new land, while the others were guarding the
claim in the communal areas.

      The Bindura contingent looked contented enough.

      The crops on the small fields around the huts stood uneven, but tall.
Not as high an elephant's eye as it was before 2000, but still.
      For pictures, the old man insisted that we stand before some huge
sunflowers.

      Everything was fine, he said, He repeated that several times. The
government was looking after them. They had no problems. No, they did not
know of farmers failing. On the other plots they were growing cotton. Which
they sold to an international company. The company wanted to buy up the
plots of all the farmers, Patrick said, apropos of nothing.

      Patrick's wife climbed on her donkey cart.

      She demonstrated how she whipped the animal, ka-cha, ka-cha, and how
her big body would wobble along from one side of the cart to the other.
Everybody fell about laughing.

      Another hut belonged to a young couple.

      The old people's hut was clearly off-limits, but through the door one
could spy a lavish interior, with brightly coloured cloth hanging everywhere
and covering everything.

      Apart from her humour, Shingai also had a talent for interior
decorating.

      It was an idyllic existence. What more would one want?

      Roadside vendors were selling tomatoes in a blanket. The bush became
lush, turning into forest with skyscraper trees.

      There was an austere building, which covered the area of three high
schools. Around the building was a sprawling garden of modernistic
sculpture.

      It seemed to be uninhabited. Only a lone gardener toiled away. The
building turned out to be the Frontline Development Institute. What did they
do there? They taught farmers how to farm.

      But there was absolutely nothing going on. On a basketball court a
group of people, fitted in the latest American gear, as seen on satellite
TV, were busily playing basketball.

      A Chinese instructor at the Frontline Development Institute said her
job was to teach management skills to students from the former Frontline
countries - Zambia, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia. It was not clear which
management techniques a member of the Communist Party of China would teach
aspirant farmers on another continent.

      She described how they frequently had to go for three days without
water or power.

      Once she generously let a student have a shower ahead of her, only for
the water to be cut for the next two days.

      They seemed to talk about condoms and Aids all day long.

      Someone turned into the farm of the Musirahs. He was probably the man
for whom the meal was being cooked.

      Maybe a son, or a brother, who worked as an instructor at
      the Frontline Development Institute?

      He probably dropped in every afternoon at 4pm for something to eat
after the basketball game in the afternoon, when the hunger pains started to
gnaw.

      For some in Zimbabwe's resettlement exercise, life is an idyll.
Others, who don't have the right credentials or family connections - the
majority of the population - will just have to wait some more.

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The Star

      I'd love to see the back of dictator Mugabe, says Blair
      April 28, 2005

      London - British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he would like to
"get rid of" dictators such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and North Korea's
Kim Jong-il - but can't.

      Blair, who is seeking re-election on May 5, made his remark in
interviews with radio and TV channels in Britain's north-west during
campaigning yesterday.

      Blair was asked why, if he took the view that the Iraq war had "freed"
the people of that country from tyranny, it was not possible to free other
oppressed people, such as the Zimbabweans.

      "I would love to do it there, but I can't, it's just not possible. I
would like to be able to get rid of Mugabe, I would like to be able to get
rid of the guy in North Korea, who is the most appalling, brutal dictator,
but I can't do everything, I'm afraid," said Blair.

      "It does not follow from that that we should not do anything. We
should do what we can," he added. - Sapa-DPA.

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Sunday Times (SA)

Zimbabwe has 'run out of food'

Thursday April 28, 2005 07:55 - (SA)

HARARE - Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
party said the country had run out of food, including the national staple
maize, and demanded an apology from President Robert Mugabe's government for
lying about abundant harvests.

"The country has now stocked out. This country has run out of maize, this a
fact ... the country has no food," Renson Gasela, MDC's shadow minister of
agriculture told a news conference. "No country with a functional
government, with no national catastrophe or disaster should ever stock out,"
he said.

Gasela said the government, which last year claimed the country had produced
a bumper harvest, should apologise for misleading Zimbabweans and start
approaching international aid donors. "Any honest government, having misled
the nation that there was more than enough maize, even to the extent of
stopping donors, would apologise to the nation for its omission or
commission," Gasela said.

Mugabe admitted in the run up to parliamentary elections in March that
Zimbabwe would have to import grain following drought and a poor harvest.
Gasela, who claims he has been in constant contact with international
humanitarian aid donors, said "donors have not been approached nor a signal
been given that government would welcome assistance."

"We demand to be given an import programme," Gasela said, adding that it
took between two and three months for grain to be freighted into the country
from the time an order is confirmed. Gasela said Zimbabwe would harvest some
500,000 tons of maize against a demand of 1.8 million tons.

Food is one of the key commodities running short following elections
disputed by the opposition. Foreign exchange scarcity has led to shortages
of among other things, petroleum-based fuels and electricity. Zimbabwe's
economy has been in the doldrums over the last five years, characterised by
runaway inflation and perennial shortages of basic commodities.

AFP
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CNN

Zimbabwe retains human rights role
From CNN Producer Liz Neisloss
Thursday, April 28, 2005 Posted: 0136 GMT (0936 HKT)

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Over U.S. opposition that branded Zimbabwe an
"entirely inappropriate" choice, Zimbabwe was re-elected Wednesday to the
U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

"We remain deeply concerned that the government of Zimbabwe maintains
repressive controls on political assembly and the media, harasses civil
society groups and continues to encourage a climate where the opposition
fears for its safety," said William J. Brencick, a deputy U.S.
representative at the world body, in a statement to the 53-member
commission.

"According to non-governmental organizations and independent observers from
many countries, last month's parliamentary elections were not free and fair.
The government's assault on democratic institutions has wrecked Zimbabwe's
economy and forced millions to flee."

In response, Zimbabwe's U.N. ambassador Boniface Chidyausiku said, "No
country is beyond approach" and "those who live in glass houses should not
throw stones."

The U.N.'s main human rights body has long been the target of attacks by
human rights groups and Western nations and the subject of ridicule by U.N.
critics, who pointed to the removal of the United States from the commission
in 2001, even as Sudan was voted in, as an example of its inconsistency.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed that the commission be
changed to include only those countries that abide by the "highest human
rights standards."

He has not proposed specific criteria for membership, but has suggested
scrapping the current system wherein regional groups vote in favor of a
broader two-thirds vote in the 191-member General Assembly.

Human Rights Watch has long advocated a massive overhaul of the commission.

Reacting to Wednesday's vote, Joanna Weschler, the group's representative at
the U.N., said, "This only further underscores the diagnosis and the cure
suggested by Kofi Annan which is that the commission should be replaced by
something else."

The 15 members elected Wednesday to three-year terms, replacing replace
nations whose terms had expired, were: Botswana, Cameroon, Morocco,
Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, China, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Australia,
Austria, Germany and the United States.
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27 April 2005

Mugabe Regime Hampering Hunger Relief Effort, NGO Official Says
Bureaucratic harassment by Zimbabwe government cited at House hearing

By Jim Fisher-Thompson
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington - U.S. Government-funded humanitarian organizations like Catholic
Relief Services (CRS) that have been operating programs in Africa for
decades are finding their ability to relieve hunger in Zimbabwe severely
limited by the actions of President Robert Mugabe's regime.

David Coddington, southern Africa regional representative for CRS, told
lawmakers at an April 21 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global
Human Rights and International Operations that his organization was fighting
an uphill struggle because of misguided policies, worsening economic
conditions and "bureaucratic pressures" exerted by the Zimbabwean government
against international assistance agencies.

The relief official told Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Smith (Republican
of New Jersey), "The most immediate threat to the people of Zimbabwe is food
insecurity," which is being caused by the "counterproductive policies by the
Government of Zimbabwe."

CRS is a large nongovernmental organization (NGO) that serves as a conduit
for the millions of dollars of humanitarian and development aid funding it
receives from the U.S. government to help hundreds of thousands of people in
Zimbabwe survive.  Between 2002 and 2003, Coddington said, CRS and its
partner NGOs "provided nutritional assistance to 180,000 food-insecure
Zimbabweans each month," with part of the funds coming from the Office of
Foreign Disaster Assistance of the U.S. Agency for International
Development's.

Despite such efforts, however, Zimbabweans are increasingly at risk of
hunger and malnutrition because of misguided policies like Mugabe's
disastrous land reform program, Coddington said.  Begun in 2000 "to address
what many Zimbabweans regard as historic wrongs and injustices, [the reform]
has badly damaged the once lucrative agricultural sector, a traditional
source of export earnings and foreign exchange," he said.

The program devolved into seizures of mainly white-owned farms and has had a
profoundly negative economic effect on the nation as a whole, Coddington
explained.

"Over 400,000 [mainly black] agricultural jobs have been lost in the wake of
the land reform process.  The tourism sector, once a major source of foreign
exchange and revenue, has also collapsed.  Furthermore, the IMF recently
suspended Zimbabwe due to its failure to meet budgetary goals and financial
obligations," he said.

To make matters worse, the Mugabe regime has also consistently
underestimated the nation's growing food deficit, the NGO expert told
lawmakers, with many international and domestic experts pointing to serious
faults in the Zimbabwean government's agricultural production projections
and predicting another food crisis.

Despite a recent United Nations report that shows "alarming" increases in
infant malnutrition throughout the country, "no formal requests for
assistance have yet been made by the government of Zimbabwe to the U.N. or
any other donor," Coddington said.

NGOs remain committed to helping the people of Zimbabwe through this crisis,
the CRS official said, but added, "It is.clear that the impact of
international aid in Zimbabwe is severely mitigated by the political
environment in which NGOs are forced to function, which only the Government
of Zimbabwe can change."

Part of that "environment" involves bureaucratic pressures on NGOs by the
Mugabe government that really amount to harassment, Coddington said, giving
the following examples:

-- "Unprecedented" denials of work permits to NGO workers to the extent that
some organizations have had all their work permit appeals rejected and have
been forced to roll up relief operations;
-- "Unexplainable" delays in desperately needed food imports and medicines;
-- An "artificially low" international exchange rate that has "greatly
inflated" NGO costs;
-- Increases in rent for office space that for CRS, for example, amounted to
a 200 percent increase in one month; and
-- a series of Zimbabwean government investigations into the work of NGOs
that "carry the threat of prosecution and fines."

All these forms of harassment by Mugabe's regime, Coddington emphasized, are
"eroding our capacity to carry out efficient and effective relief and
development programs."

Established in 1943 during World War II, CRS operates humanitarian and
development programs in over 90 countries on five continents.  Half of its
annual multi-million dollar funding comes from the U.S. government.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information
Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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New York Times

Zimbabwe's Role in U.N. Rights Panel Angers U.S.
By WARREN HOGE

Published: April 28, 2005

UNITED NATIONS, April 27 - Zimbabwe was re-elected Wednesday to the United
Nations Human Rights Commission, a panel that Secretary General Kofi Annan
has proposed abolishing because of its practice of naming known rights
violators to its membership.

Zimbabwe's selection as one of the 15 countries winning three-year terms
drew protests from Australia, Canada and the United States, with William J.
Brencick, the American representative, saying the United States was
"perplexed and dismayed by the decision."

In a speech to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, Mr. Brencick
said Zimbabwe had repressed political assembly and the news media, harassed
civil society groups, conducted fraudulent elections and intimidated
government opponents.

"How can we expect the government of Zimbabwe to support international human
rights standards at the Commission on Human Rights when it has blatantly
disregarded the rights of its own people," he said.

Mr. Annan, in his proposals made last month to bring broad changes to the
United Nations, recommended scrapping the commission, which is based in
Geneva, saying its practices "cast a shadow on the reputation of the United
Nations as a whole."

He said the commission had been undermined by allowing participation by
countries whose purpose was "not to strengthen human rights but to protect
themselves against criticism or to criticize others." In recent years,
members have also included Cuba, Libya and Sudan.

Mr. Annan proposed replacing the 53-nation commission with a smaller
council, whose members would be chosen by a two-thirds vote of the
191-nation General Assembly rather than by regional groups, as is the
current practice. Zimbabwe won re-election automatically because it was the
choice of the African group.

Boniface G. Chidyausiku, Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United Nations, said
that no country was above reproach when it came to human rights and "those
who live in glass houses should not throw stones." He said the United States
has "a lot of dirt on its hands" because of prisoners held at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba.

The other countries named Wednesday were Argentina, Australia, Austria,
Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Germany, Japan,
Morocco, the United States and Venezuela.
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Business Day

Posted to the web on: 28 April 2005
Zimbabwe: Mbeki forgot his resources
Dumisani Muleya

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE row that erupted last week between Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) and President Thabo Mbeki's government over how to
sort out Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis has put Pretoria's brand
of diplomacy towards Harare in the spotlight. The MDC said it had henceforth
dumped Mbeki as mediator in possible future talks between President Robert
Mugabe's ruling Zanu (PF) and itself to facilitate a negotiated political
settlement, because Mbeki was not impartial.

Mbeki was the broker in the previous failed talks. The MDC accused Mbeki,
whose cabinet recently endorsed the disputed election result, of being
openly biased towards Mugabe's party, among other things. Although Mbeki's
government denied the allegations, the wrangle thrust SA's "quiet diplomacy"
into the full glare of publicity and renewed debate on the approach widely
criticised as ineffective.

While Mbeki's line of engagement with the Zimbabwean crisis remains the only
faintly credible one now, its major weakness was that it was never backed up
by real measures. Mbeki's flawed diplomacy has been backed largely by
fraternal political persuasion and revolutionary solidarity slogans, which
have never been known to influence the behaviour of rogue states.

In international politics, diplomacy and foreign policy normally work when
they are supported by credible capabilities, usually military and economic.

Nigeria is able to influence the west African region because it is usually
willing to use its military and economic leverage to back its diplomacy.

Although SA has huge military and economic capabilities that could be
deployed to sort out the Zimbabwean issue, Mbeki has failed to harness his
resources to his advantage. This has rendered SA's diplomacy ineffective.

A country may fail to influence another, even though it is a regional
superpower, if its capabilities are not credible and relevant.

The issue is not that Mbeki should attack Zimbabwe or impose sanctions -
things that may not be practicable for many reasons - but that he should use
his resources to underpin his approach by ensuring that beyond a certain
point of negotiation they can be leveraged.

Mugabe would have been moved by Mbeki's diplomacy if he knew that SA was
willing to deploy its capabilities against him.

One way of using those capabilities would have been refusing to bale out
Zimbabwe economically, with electricity and fuel, unless Mugabe addressed
certain fundamental issues.

Mugabe seems to think Mbeki has given him a blank cheque, and that is
sabotaging SA's diplomacy. It makes it impossible for Mbeki to strengthen
his hand by threatening to bring into play his capabilities. If he does, as
we saw in the past, Mugabe resorts to blackmail, claiming Mbeki is now being
influenced by imperialists. It became worse when Mbeki was publicly
designated the "point man" on Zimbabwe by US President George Bush.

Applying SA's leverage does not imply stopping fuel or cutting the power
supply to Zimbabwe, but using real threats to do so to influence the
Zimbabwean leadership.

Further, if SA's army and intelligence had established close links with the
Zimbabwean security agencies, it would have been easy for Mbeki to use those
links to influence politics in Zimbabwe.

If SA's economic and military leverage was exploited, Mbeki would have been
able to adopt a well-calculated and compelling approach to influence Mugabe
and secure a solution to Zimbabwe's woes.

Muleya is Harare correspondent.
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Business Day

Posted to the web on: 28 April 2005
Shortages return to Zimbabwe's cities
Dumisani Muleya

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harare Correspondent

FUEL stocks ran out in major centres of Zimbabwe, and additional sources of
desperately needed grain were sought this week as the country's economic
decline picked up speed after a temporary slowdown ahead of last month's
election.

Widespread fuel shortages, which eased during elections after five years of
erratic supply, returned to the capital Harare and other centres this week.
Shortages of electricity and other basic commodities also returned.

Zimbabwe is struggling to raise enough foreign currency to pay its import
bill.

While the government claims the economy will grow 5% this year and foreign
exchange earnings will rise dramatically, to $3bn, the country is failing to
raise $34m a month to import enough fuel to meet its needs. It also needs
$17m a month to import electricity.

Harare was plunged into darkness last week after nationwide power cuts that
authorities blamed on technical problems.

Zimbabwe's power utility said generators at power stations and a faulty
distribution line connecting Zimbabwe to a power grid in the Democratic
Republic of Congo caused the blackouts.

President Robert Mugabe's new "development cabinet" has not yet made an
announcement on the steps it intends to take to reverse the economy's
downward spiral. Central bank governor Gideon Gono revised his inflation
target from 20%-35% at the end of this year to 75%-85%. Inflation, which
peaked at 622% last year, is now 123%.

Meanwhile, it was reported on Tuesday that Zimbabwe had turned to Zambia,
Uganda and Tanzania for grain imports as the state Grain Marketing Board
tries to replenish dwindling maize and wheat stocks.

Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche confirmed
to the IRIN news agency that Zimbabwe had expanded its grain sources to
include these three countries, in addition to major supplier SA.

"We have been looking for more and more sources of grain. There are
contracts that have been in existence but not in force - we are reactivating
those, and signing up new ones, to ensure food keeps coming," Goche said.

Goche, formerly state security minister, assumed his new portfolio following
a cabinet reshuffle last week.

The government's admission came as economists said the country needed to
import at least 1,2-million tons of maize, 200000 tons of wheat, and
unspecified quantities of barley and sorghum to meet its immediate needs.

Although there were no responses from the embassies of the three source
countries, an official at the Grain Marketing Board procurement division was
quoted by IRIN as saying the Zimbabwe-Uganda maize import deal was signed
during President Yoweri Museveni's recent visit.

State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa said he could not divulge any details
beyond what Goche had said. With ZWnews
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