Tough Times for Tsvangirai

OhMyNews

            The MDC leader is Zimbabwe's only hope against Robert Mugabe

            Nelson G. Katsande (NELKA)

           Published 2006-08-10 11:25 (KST)

      If Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai thinks he can rule
the country while Mugabe is still alive, he can think again.

      Mugabe, who has always referred to Tsvangirai as a British puppet,
declares that the opposition leader can only rule over his dead body.

      Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader was a trade unionist. Born in
1952 in Buhera, he worked in the textile industry before joining a nickel
mine in Bindura. His trade union activities catapulted him to political
fame.

      In 1997 and 1998 he organized and led a successful nationwide
industrial strike which paralysed and brought the country to a standstill.
However, later industrial strikes were met with resistance from Mugabe who
unleashed the military machinery onto the strikers.

      Fed up of being taken for a ride by Mugabe, the people urged
Tsvangirai to form a political party, hence the birth of the MDC in 1999.

      The Movement for Democratic Change is Zimbabwe's only promising
opposition party and the people's only hope of rescuing them from Mugabe's
brutal rule.

      Mugabe's grip on power was put to the test in the June 2000 general
elections with a hard blow from the MDC. Though Mugabe retained the
presidency, the opposition rejected the results citing irregularities.
Election observers too noted that the elections were not free and fair. The
elections of 2002 also led to allegations of vote rigging and corruption.

      Mr Mugabe has previously said that he will not resign from the
presidency before accomplishing his land reform programme. What the people
of Zimbabwe want now is a lasting solution to their day to day problems. The
high cost of basic consumer products has had a negative effect on the
people.

      Since 1980 Mugabe has relied heavily on the rural voters to whom fear
has been instilled. In the run down to elections Zanu(PF) youths have been
seen intimidating voters into voting for the incumbent government.

      The majority of the rural voters are illiterate and have been
brainwashed into believing that if Mugabe relinquishes power a bloody civil
war will ensue. Mugabe has vowed to remain in power and regularly dodges
questions regarding who will succeed him.

      Mugabe's wife, Grace also continues to hog the limelight for the wrong
reasons. Her love for expensive shopping sprees and holidaying abroad while
the country reels under severe economic hardships has been cause for
concern. She has been spotted shopping for designer clothing and China ware
in neighbouring South Africa.

      Grace also benefitted from her husband's controversial land reform
programme by grabbing Iron Mask farm in Bidura, a town located 80 miles
north-east of Harare. The independent press too has taken a mickey out of
her for alleged infidelity.

      Mugabe like Joseph Stalin is prepared to inflict more harm than good
to the economy and people for as long as he is in power.

      The nation has now turned to God hoping that a solution to the
problems facing Zimbabwe will soon be found.

ZNCC to Discuss Power Shortage

The Herald (Harare)

August 9, 2006
Posted to the web August 9, 2006

Harare

The Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) will this week hold a
conference to discuss the critical shortage of electricity that has become a
cause for concern among the business and farming community.

The chamber is urging the business community to come up with solutions on
how they can overcome electricity problems to make sure that industries
operate at maximum capacity.

While industry's capacity has been severely constrained as a result of
critical input shortages, power outages and the introduction of
load-shedding by Zesa Holdings has dealt another blow to the already
incapacitated sector.

Farmers irrigating the winter crop are among the worst affected by the power
outages.

ZNCC chief executive Mr Cain Mpofu said the conference was not aimed at
confronting Zesa Holdings, but "we are saying, among the business people,
they may come up with ideas on how we can normalise the situation".

"As business people we are expecting Zesa to come up with new ideas on how
they can get over the current problem," added the ZNCC chief executive.

Recently, the Government has restructured Zesa Holdings into four companies
in a bid to make the loss-making power utility viable, improve service
delivery and increase accountability.

Presentations at the conference, which will be held in Bulawayo, will be
made by energy management experts on how business should manage the crisis
to protect machinery and equipment, and minimise losses.

"We therefore invite all economic agents in industry, manufacturing,
agriculture, commerce, mining, civil society, and all other stakeholders,"
the chamber said in a statement.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is expected to experience
power shortages beginning next year when demand is expected to exceed
supply, and Zimbabwe is making frantic efforts to put in place measures to
alleviate the situation.

Central Bank Needs to Address Fate of Existing Notes, Coins

The Herald (Harare)

August 9, 2006
Posted to the web August 9, 2006

Harare

A Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) publicity campaign team which visited
Chegutu last week said there is need to urgently address the fate of the
existing notes, from $1 000 and below as well as coins in circulation, as it
is envisaged that there will be confusion after August 21.

The team, led by the Minister of State for Policy Implementation Cde Webster
Shamu, also observed that banks in the town were still conducting their
transactions in old bearer cheques as they had not received new notes.

It said all banks in the town were not aware of their role in the currency
change over and no bank had been swapping old notes for new ones although it
was assumed that the urban residents would have their cash swapped in banks.

The team also said the period of the currency changeover may turn out to be
too short to cover some communities that the central bank currency swap
teams were targeting.

It observed that residents of Chegutu generally felt that the removal of
zeros on bearer cheques had resulted in prices of most commodities going up,
thus negating the convenience gains arising from the introduction of the new
family of bearer cheques.

"Churches were generally fully supportive of the current initiatives by the
Governor of the RBZ, Dr Gideon Gono to make things work in the economy.

"They, however, unanimously expressed disappointment that the real enemy,
which is corruption, is yet to be tackled as they allege that the real
perpetrators of that corruption seem to be going free," said the team in its
obser- vations.

Cde Shamu, who is also Member of Parliament for Chegutu, said every
Zimbabwean must support Government's efforts to turn-around the economy.

"We want the economy to take off through concerted efforts of everybody.
This programme is not about Dr Gono or Dr Murerwa but interests of the
nation," said Cde Shamu.

He said with the majority of Zimbabweans behind progress, victory over
economic challenges in the country was certain.

Dr Gono last week slashed the three zeros from the country's currency as
part of measures to fight inflation, corruption, speculation and the
indiscipline that had gripped the economy.

Presenting his Mid-term Monetary Policy Statement in Harare, Dr Gono gave
depositors a 21-day deadline to change their money after which the old
bearer cheques would cease to be legal tender.

More than $35 trillion was believed to be in the hands of speculators in
Zimbabwe and outside the borders, especially in Zambia and Mozambique.

Mugabe sits backs as his opponents squabble amongst themselves

zimbabwejounalists.com

      By Tino Zhakata

      HARARE - Many Zimbabweans have been hoping to reverse the steep
decline of their country by supporting the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change, MDC, and a civil society movement, the National
Constitutional Assembly, NCA - but both have let the public down.

      This year the MDC declared war on itself instead of the main enemy,
      President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party. A serious, and
sometimes violent, split opened up which left two separate factions both
claiming to be the "true" MDC. The opposition infighting left the electorate
confused, while Mugabe and his supporters were delighted with the turn of
events.

      Hope for sustained opposition switched to the NCA which was launched
back in 1997 by a wide alliance of trade unionists, church groups, human
rights activists, lawyers and journalists to gather public support for a new
and more transparently democratic constitution.

      However, the faith the public vested in the NCA has been dashed
because its own leadership has begun behaving in the same dictatorial way as
the man the NCA set out to topple - Mugabe.

      Mugabe decided that the best way to counter the activities and
      ambitions of the NCA was to initiate his own programme for
constitutional reform. In April 1999, the ZANU PF government set up a
constitutional commission, which was given the job of drawing up a new
constitution to be put before the electorate in a national referendum.

      The commission was dominated by ZANU PF. Most of its 400 members, or
commissioners, were Mugabe's personal nominees from the ruling party,
including every one of ZANU PF's members of parliament.

      Seeing its project hijacked, the NCA urged the public to boycott
      Mugabe's commission and the MDC also spurned it, for its proposals
left the vast powers and patronage that Mugabe had acquired as president
over two decades and through seventeen major constitutional amendments
untouched while giving him the additional right to hold office for another
decade.

      The commissioners approved the draft commission and Mugabe added yet
another clause allowing him to expropriate land without consultation or
compensation, believing it would be popular and help to secure the rural
vote in coming elections.

      Mugabe miscalculated. The referendum campaign on the draft
constitution in January-February 2000 came at a time of mass unemployment,
increasing poverty, fuel shortages, factory closures, power cuts, crumbling
public services and an unpopular war in the Congo. Public attention focused
more on the government's record and the result was a stunning referendum
defeat for Mugabe and a short-lived triumph for the NCA and MDC.

      Mugabe responded furiously with a series of decrees that led to ZANU
PF gangs armed with axes and pangas invading white farms across the country,
in defiance of the law and numerous court rulings, to expel, and sometimes
kill, farm-owners. The invasions destroyed agriculture, the source of
Zimbabwe's main foreign exchange earnings, and triggered a meltdown of the
entire economy.

      Never were a resolute NCA and MDC more badly needed.

      But, first, the MDC split and became politically impotent. And now, to
      widespread shock through wider civil society, NCA chairman Dr Lovemore
Madhuku has emulated Mugabe and manipulated amendments to the pressure
group's constitution to give himself an extended tenure in office beyond the
two mandated five-year terms he has already served.

      "This is a tragedy for Zimbabwean democracy," Douglas Mwonzora, a
senior NCA official who opposed Lovemore's constitutional amendments, told
IWPR. "It appears as though Madhuku has been secretly admiring the very man
we have been fighting."

      NCA sources said Madhuku began campaigning quietly for key amendments
that entrenched his power long before the recent crucial annual general
meeting where the movement's constitution was changed. Officials at the
NCA's head office handpicked delegates, leaving out anyone suspected of
being opposed to the changes. With control of the organisation's finances,
those who opposed Madhuku said he was able to mobilise support much as
Mugabe does at national level.

      Opponents of the changes realised too late the degree of preparation
and manipulation by Madhuku and his supporters. When they raised
      objections from the floor at the annual general meeting they were
threatened and manhandled by the chairman's followers. Brilliant Mhlanga, a
journalist on the weekly Zimbabwe Independent, wrote, "Everyone has chosen
to be quiet on the violence at the NCA's annual general meeting. No one from
civil society had the temerity to stand up and remind Madhuku that violence
is violence ...

      "Civil society is showing double standards [while] Madhuku is twisting
the NCA constitution inside out. They seem to be confirming the view
      that elites give way to elites. What a shame for democracy."

      Journalist Pedzisai Ruhanya commented, "The bitter paradox of Lovemore
Madhuku's political expediency is that he has done what he wants Mugabe and
the president's government to stop doing."

      Madhuku justified his Mugabe-style coup by saying "the people" want
him to continue in power at the NCA until a new national constitution has
been achieved. Only then will he step down - an echo of Mugabe's declaration
that he will leave office only when "the people" say so.

      "What is going on in the NCA is not what we wanted when we formed it,"
said senior MDC parliamentary deputy Welshman Ncube. "As one of the founding
members of the NCA, I am totally dismayed that the leadership is refusing to
hand over power to a third generation under the excuse of having been asked
by 'the people' not to step down."

      Since its formation nearly a decade ago, the NCA has been the leading
light in Zimbabwe's struggle for democracy. Countless times its activists
have defied draconian legislation that outlaws demonstrations and public
gatherings of more than two people.

      But the recent palace coup has, for the time being, left civil society
      with no moral high ground from which to challenge Mugabe's autocratic
rule.

      Speaking for many, Joseph Jemwa, a vegetable vendor in the poor Harare
township of Mbare, told IWPR, "What we need now is divine intervention
because we have failed to solve our problems on our own. I don't believe
anyone will remove Mugabe and our suffering will just continue."

      Tino Zhakata is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.

Will Mugabe reward vicious spin-doctor?

zimbabwejounalists.com

      By Hativagone Mushonga

      HARARE - With the recent death of Tichaona Jokonya, who had been
minister of information in Robert Mugabe's government for a short period
since last year, Zimbabweans have been speculating intensely about who will
take over one of the most powerful ministries in the land.

      Many fear the successor might be George Charamba, the ministry's
      venomous permanent secretary.

      Those who have had close dealings with him talk of an easy-going and
humorous man, but Charamba's acerbic tongue and policies speak only of a man
of spiteful character.

      Charamba had remained quietly in the background until 2000 when he
acquired a new and very aggressive boss, Jonathan Moyo, appointed
information minister as Mugabe sought to revive his fortunes after seeing
his popularity plunge in the midst of a debilitating national economic
meltdown.

      The 43-year-old Charamba, who used to get on well with journalists,
has lately become a grumpy spin-doctor battling hard to please his
      political masters in the face of growing resentment by Zimbabwe's
citizenry against the ruling party's corruption and increasingly destructive
and disastrous policies.

      "He seems not to be his own man," said Farai Mutsaka, former chief
      reporter of the Daily News, Zimbabwe's only independent daily until it
was closed down in 2003 by Moyo, who sent in armed police to expel staff
from their offices and seize computers and other equipment. Two years
earlier, operatives from Mugabe's much-feared Central Intelligence
Organisation planted a bomb that destroyed the paper's printing presses.

      "Charamba was friendly and a nice guy before Moyo came, but he's now
vicious to the private media and has not even made life easier for the
journalists in government media," said Mutsaka.

      International figures, too, are frequently subject to his verbal
      lashings.

      Charamba accused a western diplomat of wandering in parts of Harare's
Botanical Gardens where "so many of our youthful citizens have been
deflowered, lured by the greenback from generous and flaunting foreigners
not given to enjoying sex the conventional way".

      When he further told United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan
      recently that he was no longer welcome to the country to pursue a
"stale" mediation mission, it became abundantly clear that Charamba was
intent on proving himself Mugabe's most robust and loyal propagandist.

      In June, Charamba contradicted his superiors - Jokonya, Moyo's
      successor, who died on June 24, and his deputy Bright Matonga - when
he announced the government's withdrawal of its invitation to Annan to visit
Zimbabwe. Mugabe had invited the secretary-general to personally assess the
impact of the government's widely condemned Operation Murambatsvina
(Operation Drive Out the Filth) - the mass demolition of the homes of
opposition supporters in urban areas that the UN said had left more than
700,000 people homeless.

      The increasingly paranoid ZANU PF government decided that Annan's
visit might be used to pile pressure on Mugabe to quit.

      "As an information permanent secretary, Charamba has managed to
confuse journalists and ministers alike by pretending to espouse the views
of Mugabe when in effect he is given to talking in his personal capacity,"
an executive member of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, who asked not to
be named from fear of victimisation, told IWPR.

      Charamba was a close collaborator with Moyo, whose full-blooded
      propaganda war against the private media was credited with saving
Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party from the jaws of electoral defeat in
2002 and 2005 at the hands of the opposition.

      Charamba and Moyo together are notorious for having crafted the
      Orwellian 2002 Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act,
AIPPA, which dictates that journalists who work without the approval of a
Mugabe-appointed media regulator - a notorious Mugabe ally named Tafataona
Mahoso - can be imprisoned for two years. Opponents of the government allege
that AIPPA and the equally draconian 2001 Broadcasting Services Act and the
2003 Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (Commercialisation) Act were
specifically designed to silence private media critical of the increasingly
autocratic Mugabe.

      When Moyo brought the AIPPA to parliament, the chairman of the
      parliamentary legal committee, the late Dr Eddison Zvobgo, a senior
ZANU PF deputy and long-serving government minister, said, "I can say
without equivocation that this bill, in its original form, was the most
calculated and determined assault on our liberties guaranteed by the
constitution in the 20 years I served as cabinet minister."

      Charamba has boasted that he is proud to be associated with AIPPA,
      although the law has seen four newspapers - the Daily News, the Daily
News on Sunday, The Tribune and the Weekly Times - being banned since 2003
under the act's provisions. In addition, AIPPA has been used to harass and
arrest hundreds of journalists who have been branded "ignorant" and
"unpatriotic" by Charamba.

      "Charamba, like Moyo and Tafataona Mahoso, believes the current crop
of journalists cannot [produce stories] in sync with the thinking he
misconstrues as national interest," a veteran journalist based in
      Harare told IWPR.

      Another local journalist added, "He is not different from Moyo and
      Mahoso, since all three of them display evil characteristics, worrying
      [little] about the impact of their actions on Zimbabweans."

      Charamba's ministry, especially during Moyo's five-year ministerial
      reign, wasted no time in setting the police on journalists and filing
huge lawsuits over seemingly harmless stories. But for now he seems to have
decided to confine his war against the media, government critics and
opposition politicians, as well as the West, to press statements and
articles in the state media as he builds his own political profile in search
of ministerial office.

      Moyo, now an independent legislator since Mugabe fired him, said in a
recent newspaper column that Charamba "regularly violates his civil service
oath [of independence] and obligations" by writing the virulent Nathaniel
Manheru column in the government-owned Herald newspaper.

      Moyo warned that if Charamba repeated attacks on him in the Nathaniel
Manheru column he would reveal many things, "including how Charamba
attempted to murder his wife in cold blood and how that attempted murder has
been covered up ... This is not a threat but a promise".

      In recent columns, Charamba/Manheru has labelled Mavis Makuni, an
intelligent and trenchant critic of the Mugabe government with the weekly
Financial Gazette, a "menopausal columnist".

      And in an extraordinary attack on the country's non-government
      organisations, on whom the populace is increasingly dependent for
survival, Charamba/Manheru said they are "depressed bipeds who crave, feed
and fatten on human tragedies, much the same way maggots grow white-fat on
decaying carcasses ... Their mission for governance pits them against the
governors of this land on behalf of bitter Blair [British prime minister
Tony Blair, President Mugabe's top foreign hate figure]".

      Charamba's political ambitions are among Zimbabwe's worst kept
secrets, but he will find it hard to rise through the ranks of ZANU PF where
the old guard is now wary of "young Turks" after Moyo's meteoric rise nearly
destroyed the veterans' stranglehold on power.

      However, Charamba seems not to be as shrewd and calculating a schemer
as Moyo was. He has clashed with senior ZANU PF officials, and this will
hamper his political ambitions. Moyo has also implicated him peripherally in
the so-called "Tsholotsho declaration", a meeting in Moyo's rural Tsholotsho
constituency in western Zimbabwe where the possibility of a coup against
Mugabe is alleged to have been discussed in December 2004.

      The meeting led to Moyo's sacking and to that of several other
      high-ranking ZANU PF officials.

      "Charamba emerges as a government official stung by his failure to
land a substantial ministerial post in the post-Moyo era," said one analyst.

      "He tries hard to build a profile of an individual capable of
defending
      Mugabe's policies to the hilt, expecting due notice from the president
      for his efforts."

      In the early 1980s, Charamba was a protégé of the late Canaan Banana,
Zimbabwe's former ceremonial president when Mugabe led the country as prime
minister. They met at the University of Zimbabwe where both were taking
karate lessons.

      After Charamba graduated with a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in
English, Banana recruited him into State House as a press and information
officer. When the titular presidency was abolished and replaced with the
executive presidency, Charamba remained at State House when Mugabe moved in.

      Hativagone Mushonga is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in
Zimbabwe.

Why are we importing fertilizer?

The Zimbabwean

Zimbabwe has three modern, highly-developed fertilizer manufacturing
companies - operating at a fraction of their capacity due to the country's
chronic shortage of foreign currency.
In a country suffering from 80 percent unemployment, one would have thought
that any available forex would be directed to those companies to source the
raw materials required for the manufacturing process.
But in a move typical of Zanu (PF) thinking, government recently imported
800 tonnes of compound D through its input support scheme. The fertilizer
has been declared substandard after failing quality tests by the ministry of
agriculture.
Knowing Zanu (PF), one immediately smells a rat. Whoever was responsible for
this transaction surely must have received a kick-back.
The people of Zimbabwe deserve a full investigation into this matter. The
buck must stop somewhere. Where are the checks and balances? Where is the
responsible minister, or permanent secretary - part of whose job description
must surely be to ensure that this kind of thing doesn't happen.
And why is the company importing fertilizer at all? Precious jobs are at
stake. Why is Zanu (PF) undermining local industry?
At the same time that he announced the fertilizer debacle, the permanent
secretary for agriculture also dropped a bombshell for the 'new farmers' -
telling them that they must now stand on their own feet as government cannot
afford to nanny them.
Welcome to the real world guys. We hope this includes all the Zanu (PF)
heavies, some of whom have been caught selling fertilizer, fuel and other
commodities received under the inputs scheme - which had become just another
coach on the gravy train.
Despite government support for the "new farmers", agriculture in Zimbabwe
has remained a basket case.  It is difficult to see how the withdrawal of
government assistance can make things any worse.

The once beautiful Book Fair sculpture park now resembles a car park

The Zimbabwean

HARARE- A handful of school children, a few tatty stands and some tables
sparsely scattered with well-thumbed tomes- this is all that remains of the
once vibrant  Zimbabwe International Book Fair.
During the 1990s the fair grew to become sub-Saharan Africa's premier
literary meeting place for writers, dramatists, literary agents, publishers,
booksellers, libraries and teachers as well as thousands of readers.
Only one thing remains the same: the ongoing battle between the government
and the  Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe. Suspected state security agents at
the weekend destroyed their stand.
The ZIBF's executive director, Greenfield Chilongo, confirmed that equipment
belonging to the controversial organisation had been damaged.
The Zimbabwe government at one point banned GALZ from exhibiting at the book
fair but the controversial group won a High Court order banning government
from interfering with their activities. - ZimOnline

The 'naked' truth

BY GRACE KWINJEH
The largely paranoid regime of Robert Mugabe is showing all signs of fear of the peoples' resistance against its despotic rule, as Zimbabweans in both rural and urban areas brace themselves to reclaim their lost dignity as a people.
The latest issue of the government mouthpiece, the Manica Post, has an article in which they claim that I have been enlisting the services of elderly women from the Makoni area to strip naked in front of law enforcement agents, during our planned non-violent protests. This, they claim, is taboo.
This response to the MDC's largely successful rural outreach programme in Manicaland leaves no doubt that the regime knows its time is up. It does not question why the people would want to protest but only the method, thus acknowledging the opposition's political influence in the province.
What is really taboo is the way Zanu (PF) has abused the rural folk for so long, with its show of contempt for the elderly through its policies that have left this constituency marginalized. In fact, our culture stipulates that we respect the elderly. We have an obligation to look after them into the old age till they die.
Chiefs, headmen, women and men from rural Zimbabwe who have come out in support of the MDC do not need us to mobilize them to any agenda that goes against their cultural beliefs or values.  The poverty in which they languish does not need explaining, neither does the State's tyranny. 
During the rally at Temaruru Business Centre, I gave examples of the many methods of peaceful non-violent democratic resistance that citizens can engage in- such as commodity boycotts in South Africa under apartheid and the famous Green Belt Protests, led by Professor Wangari Muta Maathai, in Kenya. There are many things we can do in a non-violent manner to express our displeasure with the current regime.
For instance, the leadership of the MDC Women's Assembly congregated in front of parliament during the official opening last week. We refused orders to sing Zanu (PF) songs or repeat its slogans, at which point members of the Central Intelligence Organisation, (CIO) led by one William Nhara targeted and threw some of us out of the Square. The point is that the women who participated democratically resisted Zanu (PF) and its machinery in a non-violent manner. 
The women did not wave, shout or sing when Robert Mugabe passed, even as Zanu (PF) supporters tried to inject an air of pomp and ceremony. The women just stood there, hands down, and watched. The ratio of those who sloganeered as compared to those who just stood still clearly shows we outnumbered Zanu (PF) and its hired thugs.
This is the time to reclaim our dignity as a nation. If it means that as women we are going to strip down to our birthday suits, so be it. In fact this whole debate goes back to the patriarchal nature of our Zimbabwean society, which has relegated us to second class citizens. For who are men at the Manica Post and their Zanu (PF) male bosses, to dictate to us what the most dignified methods of protest are?
It is simply patronizing for the editor of the Manica Post to pose as a custodian of our cultural beliefs at a time when oppression has become part of that so-called used to strip women of our dignity.
It is a contradiction that the very vehicle used by the regime to propagate its hate and abuse against innocent citizens, especially the elderly, should now want to pose as a champion of their dignity. The lack of development in rural areas has impacted on  elderly women more than any other group, stripping them of that very dignity.
Elderly women in Zimbabwe do not need me or the rest of the party leadership to persuade them to strip as a way of protest against the regime. In fact the article in the Manica Post has now put me under so much pressure from women all over the country, who want to know the time and place this ultimate protest will take place. They want to take their clothes off to show Mugabe they are tired of him.
Zimbabwean women, young and old, are tired of the incessant abuse of us by the Mugabe regime.  What woman's dignity can this regime claim to protect, when it is its very policies that see us today stand 'naked' in front of our respected ones?
There is no other 'nakedness' that can match the state of the Zimbabwean woman today.
What better dignified place can we demand in the world when there are begging bowls for us to receive donations of sanitary products from friends in the international community? I will not talk of birth control pills or the state of maternity wings in our public hospitals. Neither will I go into the statistics of the injustice being perpetrated against mothers and their new-born babies detained in the same hospitals for failing to settle their bills. 
Thousands of Zimbabweans are dying each week, many more are finding their way back to the rural homes in search for a respectable way to die. Grandmothers have no rest.
What dignity can I as a young Zimbabwean woman celebrate when I am told that my life span has been shortened to 34 years? The lowest in the world. 
No amount of paranoia from the Mugabe regime will stop us from freeing ourselves from its oppression, neither can our resolve to Save Zimbabwe be weakened. The rural folk feel as strongly about this those in the towns do.
And so when we do decide to strip 'naked' in protest against Zanu (PF)'s bigotry and tyranny, please understand it is only to reclaim our lost dignity.

Gono in serious trouble

The Zimbabwean

NORTON- Last week's savage attacks on Gideon Gono's two farms have sparked a
new twist to President Robert Mugabe's succession issue amid reports that
there is a bigger plot to eliminate the central bank chief.
Top ruling party officials say the burning of the Reserve Bank governor's
250-hectare unharvested maize field at his Donnington Farm in Norton and a
raid by four armed men at his flower project near Beatrice is only a tip of
the iceberg.
The officials said the attacks were "highly political" rather than mere
arson, although state security minister Didymus Mutasa, who oversees the
operations of the Central Intelligence Organization, labelled Gono's
assailants "economic saboteurs".
"Gono's closeness to President Mugabe has made both Mujuru and Mnangagwa
feel very uncomfortable," added the source.
Mnangagwa is being investigated for mismanagement of funds of companies
owned by Zanu (PF). Although Gono did not publicly name anyone, he said
graft is a cancer in the country that wants to be dealt with ruthlessly if
economic recovery and development is to be achieved.
Although Gono lost huge sums of money in last week's mishap, the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had no kind words for him.
"The fact that Gono has more than two farms proves that his statements are
hollow and rhetoric. He has a galloping ambition for power," said MDC
spokesman Nelson Chamisa.- Wilson Butete

Govt imports useless fertilizer

The Zimbabwean

BULAWAYO - The Zimbabwe government has imported 800 tonnes of
useless Compound D fertilizer which has been tested unsuitable for local
soils.
The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Simon Pazvakambwa
confirmed that the 800 tonnes of fertilizer was declared substandard after
failing quality tests.
He also revealed that government had stopped supplying new farmers with free
agricultural inputs, as they had become a strain on the national
budget.Henceforth the new farmers should provide for themselves, he said. -
CAJ News.

Decline in state brutality - Forum

The Zimbabwean


LONDON- Human rights violations declined in June because there was less
activity by civil society organisations, and because not all cases may have
been reported, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum has said.
However, isolated cases continue, including threats by the CIO, which have
driven a Methodist bishop into hiding.
The Forum, a coalition of 16 human rights NGOs which monitors in careful
detail organised violence and torture by state agents, noted that cases
usually increase during major political events such as elections and
demonstrations by civic groups.
The monthly report said that on July 22 state security agents reportedly
threatened pastors from Harare and Chitungwiza saying that that a meeting
held at a Methodist Church in Highfield earlier in the day was illegal.
Methodist Bishop Levee Kadenge is reported to have gone into hiding after he
had been threatened with death by a CIO operative, who warned that they
wanted to kill him.
"The Forum again deplores such unwarranted actions by state security agents
and urges their members to desist from the practice of using death threats
as a way of stifling the exercise of civil and political rights as enshrined
in the Constitution of Zimbabwe," it added.
In other cases, a victim was arrested near Harvest House, taken to Harare
Central Police Station, detained unlawfully for four days, beaten up and
denied food, and released only when a court had established that he had no
case to answer.
The Harare City Council gave about 30 residents of Matapi flats in Mbare
notices of eviction. The residents said they were being evicted because they
did not have "certificates of occupation". They are either children of the
deceased original leaseholders, or of people who have relocated to rural
areas. The eviction notices were issued despite the fact that some of the
residents had lived at Matapi for more than 10 years.- Own Correspondent