Blair to
urge SA to pressure Mugabe
By James Lamont and James Blitz
Tony Blair is preparing to lean heavily on the South African
government to get increasingly involved in international efforts to curb Robert
Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, warning that more pressure must be brought to bear
by the authorities in Pretoria.
As Mugabe continues to evict white farmers
from their land and stifle political opposition inside his country, Blair is to
press Thabo Mbeki, South African president, to act more forcefully and publicly
against the Zimbabwean president and his policies.
Blair and Mbeki are
expected to hold a bilateral meeting in about 10 days when the prime minister
attends the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
"Blair
will seek assurances from Mbeki that the UK and South Africa are seen to be
pursuing policies that mutually reinforce each other," one UK official said on
Friday. "Our perception is that the onus is now on South Africa to play an
increasingly important role here."
Earlier this year, Zimbabwe was suspended
from the Commonwealth in protest at Mugabe's campaign of political violence.
South Africa, Nigeria and Australia have since worked with Zimbabwe's ruling
Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change to bring about
reconciliation and help rebuild the shattered economy.
But there is
frustration in London that Mbeki has not criticised the Mugabe regime forcefully
and has sought to deal with the Zimbabwean leader by operating behind the
scenes. The Foreign Office has also expressed concern that the turmoil in
Zimbabwe undermines the credibility of the New Partnership for Africa's
Development (Nepad), an African-backed plan to promote democracy and good
governance in return for aid and investment.
The UK government continues to
insist that the Johannesburg summit is an important opportunity to set new goals
for sustainable development. But Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary,
said she was concerned the summit might not meet many of these goals.
Blair
has come under strong pressure this week to act on Zimbabwe. The US has stepped
up its rhetoric against the Zimbabwe regime, flatly stating for the first time
that Mr Mugabe is not democratically elected. The Conservative opposition has
urged Mr Blair to boycott a speech by Mr Mugabe at the summit.
On Friday
night the instability in Zimbabwe increased after Mr Mugabe sacked his cabinet.
This week, the South African government released a statement on Zimbabwe to
ward off local and international criticism of the lack of progress made in
restoring stability in the country. South Africa, and the 14-nation Southern
Africa Development Community, is widely viewed as having the most influence over
Zimbabwe.
But Pretoria insists that internal reconciliation is more
effective in restoring stability than international pressure.
Financial Times
Monday
26 August 2002
From The Norway
Post, 26 August
Norwegian MP refused entry to
Zimbabwe
Three Norwegian women members of parliament were on
Sunday refused entry to
Zimbabwe. The three MPs were threatened with jail if
they did not leave the
country on the first plane. The three had been invited
by the Red Cross to
inspect several aid projects operated in Zimbabwe by the
organization, and
the visit was cleared by the authorities in Zimbabwe, says
Ingvild Vaggen
Malvik. However, they got no further than to the passport
control at the
Harare Airport. "When I showed my passport, which stated that
I was a member
of parliament, all three were refused entry to Zimbabwe," says
Vaggen Malvik
to NRK on the phone from Johannesburg. She says the experience
was very
unpleasant for the three, who were accompanied by two
representatives from
the Red Cross.
Transcript frpm Carte Blanche
High Crimes
Date : 25
August 2002
Genre : Africa, PoliticsHe’s one of
the world’s longest surviving dictators. Behind him a 22-year legacy of
atrocities and human rights abuses. Robert Mugabe has never taken to opposition
crossing his path.
For the past two-and-a-halve years Carte Blanche has
told the story of Zimbabwe’s systematic destruction. In March 2000 we broadcast
the first exclusive footage of the beginning of land invasions.
[File
footage - 12 March 2000]
Zim-farmer: “Ja, there’s a group of a hundred to
150, over.”
[File footage - 25 June 2000]
Voice-over: “Morgan
Tsvangirai’s MDC is the first real opposition party in 20 years that Mugabe’s
Zanu-PF is facing.”
[File footage - 26 August, 2001]
Zim-farmer:
“There was vandalism like you cannot believe. Everything was stripped that could
be carried out and otherwise everything was just broken.”
[File footage -
17 February, 2002]
Voice-over: “These testimonies were filmed secretly at
great risk in Zimbabwe over the past 6 weeks.”
[File footage - 19 March,
2002]
Voice-over: “… at some polling-stations he counted thousands of
extra ballot-papers.”
[File footage - 14 July, 2002]
Voice-over: “More
than six million Zimbabweans are facing starvation, as the country’s self-made
economic disaster seems to be in its final downward spiral.”
But
starvation was not the last of Zimbabwe’s problems. In the past few days
president Mugabe has done what white farmers have feared for more than two
years. Hundreds were arrested, charged and ordered to pack up and leave. Their
crime? Refusing to give up the farms they’d legally bought and developed for
years.
It was a defining moment after a long time of brutal harassment by
the regime.
Dr. Philip du Toit: “The whole world is crying out and
saying something must be done about this. But nobody is doing anything. It’s
just talk.”
This man has decided enough is enough. South African lawyer,
Dr. Philip du Toit, is representing the Zimbabwe Victims Coalition and he says
he will bring Mugabe to book. Philip’s office has been inundated by e-mails and
faxes sent by victims of the regime from around the world.
Philip:
“Robert Mugabe led his country into an abyss of misery, and we are preparing a
basket of charges against him in person.”
These charges will be presented
to the ICC, the newly established
International Criminal Court, the first
permanent international tribunal capable of trying an individual for serious
human rights violations. The treaty for the ICC was adopted in Rome in
1998.
The horrors of Rwanda - the original idea for a permanent
international court gained momentum when a tribunal was set up here in 1994.
Also, an international war tribunal was set up in The Hague for the former
Yugoslavia.
[File footage]
Unidentified speaker: “The
international war tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is now in
session.”
Slobodan Milosovic is on trial for gross human rights
violations and genocide. A video shown as evidence in Milosovic’s trial is
reminiscent of what happened at the Matabeleland massacre in Zimbabwe twenty
years ago.
It was shortly after independence in 1980 when Mugabe’s Fifth
Brigade crushed opposition ZAPU-supporters. Thousands were severely beaten,
displaced, killed and buried in mass graves.
Zaa Nkweta: “I’ve seen the
application that you’ve made to indict Robert Mugabe, forwarded to the United
Nations in New York. What was the response?”
Philip: “They’ve given us
all the information that they require and the steps we need to take because
Zimbabwe counter-signed together with 139 countries, but their government to
date have not yet ratified the agreement. But there are other avenues to use in
order to bring the man to justice.”
Zaa: “What are those other
avenues?”
Philip: “Well, there’s various organisations through-out the
country, via the United Nations, Amnesty International, human rights
organisations that we are then going to approach.”
Carte Blanche linked
up by videoconference with Brigitte Suhr of Human Rights Watch in New York who
is very interested in the creation of the International Criminal
Court.
Zaa: “Now Zimbabwe has not ratified the treaty. Does the ICC have
jurisdiction in a case like this one?”
Brigitte: “It would not have
jurisdiction at this time. This treaty says that either the state of nationality
of the accused or the territory where the crimes occurred has to have ratified
for the case to go before the ICC. Sadly whatever occurs on the territory of
Zimbabwe cannot go to the ICC.”
The United States has refused to ratify
the treaty along with several other countries.
Brigitte: “We’ve been very
successful in many countries to get ratification. There are always going to be
some countries who don’t ratify. Libya hasn’t ratified, Iraq hasn’t ratified.
The civil society has a responsibility to do everything it can to get the
government to ratify but there will always be dictators and despots who don’t
ratify.”
Zaa: “Can president Robert Mugabe be indicted on these
crimes?”
Brigitte: “President Mugabe can not be indicted by the ICC for
crimes he commits in Zimbabwe. Not yet.”
But things can suddenly
change.
In the last 24 hours Carte Blanche got hold of this letter
written in January this year and addressed to the Minister of Justice in
Zimbabwe. It’s from the Southern African office of the ICC. Not only does it
remind Zimbabwe of its commitment to ratify the Rome treaty, it also clearly
states SADC’s recent undertaking to ratify as a region.
SADC – or the
Southern African Development Community – has given its commitment to ratify the
Rome treaty. But will it put pressure on Zimbabwe?
Dr. Ian Taylor:
“Mugabe led Zimbabwe to independence. There’s reluctance by many African heads
of state to criticise as such figures seen as the fathers of the
nation.”
Dr. Ian Taylor is a political analyst and lecturer at the
University of Botswana in Gabarone. He has written many articles on Southern
African politics.
Ian: “There’s also a reluctance on the part of certain
leaders to criticise Mugabe because if they criticise Mugabe, well who’s
next?”
For the first time the Bush administration also made its voice
heard. The New York Times reported that the US Assistant Secretary of State for
African Affairs, Walter Kansteiner, stopped short of calling for a change in
government in Zimbabwe. Kansteiner said Zimbabwe’s political status quo is
unacceptable because the elections were fraudulent.
Ian says if Britain’s
aim has been to try and halt the Zimbabwe crisis, then its foreign policy has
failed. “British policy towards Zimbabwe has failed because at the end of the
day if you try to address the Zimbabwe situation as primarily about land, then
you’re bound to fail because it’s not about land. It’s about the political
survival of the Zanu-PF regime and Mugabe’s ultimate stake in
power.”
Having rights and having land – that’s what most African
liberation struggles were all about. But more than 20 years after independence,
president Robert Mugabe would have the world believe that Zimbabwe’s current
crisis is still just about that. Well, is it?
Unidentified speaker 1
[identity concealed]: “The economy of the country is retarded, is tarnished,
destroyed.”
These two Zimbabweans represent a group of more than 1 500
people who aim to litigate against Mugabe in an international forum. They can’t
be identified because they fear for their lives.
Unidentified speaker 1
[identity concealed]: “What is happening is that land is being given to people
who do not have expertise - mostly the allies of Mugabe, those who are the top
officials in Zanu-PF, his political party. That’s the ones who
benefit.”
Unidentified speaker 2 [identity concealed]: “If you can look
at the Zimbabwean people, they used to live free and they could do whatever they
could. But at this stage you cannot talk of anything that has to do with
politics. You cannot do any gathering because once you see a black Mercedes Benz
coming to your place and they will tell you we just request this boy, we just
want to go and ask him questions, we are the police, then you automatically know
this person is going to disappear.”
The case against Mugabe will include
their testimonies and those of other victims they represent. The human rights
abuses against the white farmers will also constitute part of the international
litigation.
Two of the farmers arrested are family members of Steven
Wilde who was on holiday in South Africa when news of the arrests
broke.
Wilde: “Why must I leave? My family got there 10, 15 years after
the Matabele. Why should I have any less right to live in my country than
anybody else?”
Ian: “The first struggle was to try and get rid of the
white minority regime of the Rhodesian Front, the Ian Smith regime. And they
succeeded. I think now, in 2002, there is a new struggle and that struggle is to
try and get rid of the oppressive regime, which the Zanu-PF has turned into.
It’s a major disappointment for all those who held out hope for
Zimbabwe.”
Philip: “We have to be realistic and face the facts and say
well if nothing is being done about this, the reality is going to hit all of us,
not only in Zimbabwe but also in South Africa, to a large and very serious
extent.”
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: While every attempt has been made
to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents
cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human
error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription
recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of
mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual
speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
Zimbabwe denies
entry to 30 foreign visitors
August 26 2002 at
10:53AM
Harare - Zimbabwe barred 30 foreigners from entering
the country this month, but denied the restrictions were in retaliation for a
travel ban on the country's officials, a newspaper reported on
Monday.
Those barred included six US nationals, three from Britain, five
from the Netherlands, one from Belgium, one from France and one from Australia,
the official Herald newspaper said.
An immigration official told the
paper that the barring of the foreign nationals, some of whom were nationals of
African countries, was because they did not hold the correct travel
documents.
Last month the EU broadened the scope of a list of ruling
Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) officials it intends
to bar from visiting its member states, accusing President Robert Mugabe's
government of human rights abuses.
'We are not retaliating against any
nation because we don't have the power to do so'
The United States has also
imposed travel restrictions on Zimbabwe officials.
"We are not
retaliating against any nation because we don't have the power to do so," chief
immigration officer Elasto Mugwadi told the Herald.
"We don't have such
instructions (from the government) at the moment save for barring journalists
from certain hostile countries as well as other foreign nationals barred on
security grounds," Mugwadi added.
Such people were on a "watch list"
compiled in conjunction with various government departments, he told the paper.
- Sapa-AFP
CNN
Mugabe rejects ethnic cleansing
barb
August 26, 2002 Posted: 8:31 AM EDT (1231
GMT)
HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) -- The
Zimbabwean government has rejected as "racist madness" charges by Australia that
its controversial seizures of white-owned farms for landless blacks amount to
ethnic cleansing.
Information Minister Jonathan Moyo told the official
Herald newspaper that criticisms by Australia and Britain that President Robert
Mugabe had reduced Zimbabwe to a pariah state could only be believed by racists
and their puppets.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told
Australian Channel 10 Television on Sunday that his government was considering
new sanctions against Zimbabwe.
"President Mugabe appears to be entirely
oblivious to the views of the international community. He's effectively
conducting a policy of ethnic cleansing on the farms," he said.
Moyo said a
media and diplomatic campaign by Britain against Mugabe's drive to seize land
from white farmers for indigenous blacks had reached hysterical proportions.
"The allegation of ethnic cleansing is not only outrageous, it is a joke.
They wish there was ethnic cleansing to justify foreign intervention," he added,
saying land reform was legal.
Mugabe is banned under Western sanctions from
travelling to the United States and most of Europe, but is scheduled to attend
the U.N.'s World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg at
some point before it ends on September 4.
Opponents are hoping to confront
him there, but an initial protest on Monday drew barely 100 supporters of
Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The protesters,
flanked by dozens of armed police, marched peacefully to the heavily-guarded
Sandton convention centre, chanting anti-Mugabe slogans and waved placards
saying: "Mugabe is an election thief" and "Mugabe is starving his own people."
Environment being destroyed
"We are telling the world
that Zimbabwe's environment is being destroyed. The invasions of farms, the
invasions of game parks -- they have been destroyed," MDC member of parliament
Moses Mzila-Ndlovu told reporters.
"Mugabe argues land for the poor, but
it's a lie. It's about power," he added.
Opponents in Zimbabwe and foreign
monitors including the United States allege that the best farms are being given
to Mugabe's friends and allies, including his wife, Grace, and not to landless
peasants.
But Moyo said the white farmers now posing as the victims of land
seizures had stolen this land from blacks, and were defying government orders to
vacate their farms on the advice of Britain to feed the charges of ethnic
cleansing.
"Africa rejects this notion that yesterday's oppressors want to
keep the land they looted," he said.
"The British who looted our land cannot
now claim to be the victims because we are following a legally-binding
programme," he said of a programme condemned by critics at home and abroad.
Moyo accused Britain, Australia and other Western countries of trying to use
Zimbabwe's current food shortages to maintain white domination in land
ownership, saying the starvation the country was facing was due to drought.
About six million Zimbabweans are amongst close to 13 million Africans
facing starvation over the next six months as drought, mismanagements and
political turmoil slash food output.
"It shows quite clearly what we have
been pointing out all along that the white Commonwealth, led by Britain, is
doing everything including the use of outright lies to defend white supremacy in
Africa to prevent Africans from correcting racial injustices of colonialism,"
Moyo said.
Mugabe has been in power since the former Rhodesia gained
independence from Britain in 1980.
BBC
Monday, 26 August, 2002, 16:10 GMT
17:10 UK
'War cabinet' for Zimbabwe
Amidst controversial land reform disaster
beckons
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has sworn in a new more
hardline cabinet.
He said his "war cabinet" would tackle the country's economic problems and
counter opposition from the international community to his policy of land
reform.
He also said they would address action by Britain - the former colonial power
- and its allies in interfering in Zimbabwe's affairs.
One political casualty is the moderate finance minister, Simba Makoni, who is
said to have had disagreements with other ministers and resigned.
'Ethnic cleansing'
Earlier, Zimbabwe angrily rejected weekend criticism over President Mugabe's
two-year campaign to transfer white-owned farms to black Zimbabweans.
Jonathan Moyo: Ethnic cleansing slur 'a
joke'
|
Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said in an interview with the official
Herald newspaper that the white Commonwealth was doing everything possible,
including telling outright lies, to defend white supremacy in Africa.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Sunday that his country
might impose sanctions on Zimbabwe for what he described as ethnic cleansing of
white farmers ordered off their land to make way for new black farmers.
But Mr Moyo described these claims as absurd, saying land reform was legal.
"The allegation of ethnic cleansing is not only outrageous, it is a joke.
They wish there was ethnic cleansing to justify foreign intervention."
Food crisis
On Sunday, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw accused President Robert
Mugabe of plunging the country into starvation in the name of land reform.
Mr Moyo said it was black Africans who grew food - all they needed was land.
Straw: Keen to isolate Mugabe's
government
|
And he said that the West was trying to use Zimbabwe's current food shortages
to maintain the white domination of land ownership, saying the reason the
country was facing starvation was due to drought.
Critics blame food shortages in Zimbabwe partly on the disruption to farming
caused by the drive - which the government says is aimed at correcting
colonial-era inequities.
At least six million people - about half Zimbabwe's population - are
threatened by famine, according to UN figures.
Click here to read Colin Shand's diary
President Mugabe is banned under sanctions from travelling to much of the
West, but is due to attend the 10-day United Nations environmental summit in
South Africa.
The main opposition party in Zimbabwe has staged the first of a number of
protests there, with some 200 members of the Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) marching through Johannesburg calling for new elections and the removal of
the president.
CNN
Mugabe rejects aid, says Red
Cross
August 26, 2002 Posted: 6:20 AM EDT (1020
GMT)
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- Four Norwegian
politicians and a Norwegian Red Cross representative were turned away from
Zimbabwe after arriving on a pre-arranged fact-finding mission on Sunday, a
member of the group said.
Dag Seierstad, a political adviser for the
Norwegian parliament, told Reuters the group was outraged at its treatment after
being forced to board a flight to Johannesburg, which was held up for two hours
for the group to board.
"As soon as they realised we were politicians they
refused us entry. They gave us the simple choice of taking the next plane back
to Johannesburg or going to jail," Seierstad said.
Seierstad said the group
had intended to get information about the famine threatening southern Africa and
the spreading HIV/AIDS pandemic.
The trip had been arranged by the
Red Cross and had received approval from Zimbabwe's foreign ministry.
Zimbabwe has come under heavy international fire for its seizures of
white-owned farmland, which aid experts say are exacerbating a worsening food
shortage caused by draught.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe dissolved his
cabinet on Friday in a move official sources said was linked to the
controversial land reform programme, retaining his most loyal ministers. (Full
story)
"They tried to break us up as a group, they said they would call
security and force us to get on the plane...it was quite intimidating and
unpleasant and we were quite shocked frankly," Seierstad said.
The other
four members of the group -- all women -- included Labour MP Gunhild Oeyangen,
Socialist Left Party MP Ingvild Malvik, Centre party MP Inger Enger and Norway's
South Africa-based Red Cross representative Greta Oesgtern, he said.
The
group had flown in from Norway via Johannesburg. They arrived on a British
Airways flight at 1030 GMT and were forced to board the same flight on its
return journey, he said.
Seierstad said the group had not decided what it
would do next and was waiting for reaction from Norway's Foreign Ministry.
BBC
Monday, 26 August, 2002, 09:31 GMT
10:31 UK
Zimbabwe dismisses
attacks over land policy
Zimbabwe has hit back at renewed criticism of its
land reform programme from Australia and Britain.
The Zimbabwe Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo,
said in an interview with the official Herald newspaper that the white
Commonwealth, led by Britain, was doing everything possible, including telling
outright lies, to defend white supremacy in Africa.
On Sunday, the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw,
accused President Robert Mugabe of plunging the country into starvation in the
name of land reform. Mr Moyo said it was black Africans who grew food - all they
needed was land.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said his
country might impose sanctions on Zimbabwe for what he described as ethnic
cleansing of white farmers ordered off their land to make way for new black
farmers.
But Mr Moyo described the claims of ethnic cleansing
as outrageous and a joke.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
The
Age
Zimbabwe defends actions
HARARE|Published:
Monday August 26, 8:06 PM
Zimbabwe has hit back at criticism of its
land reform program by Australia and Britain, accusing white Commonwealth
countries of trying to preserve white supremacy in Africa, a newspaper
said.
Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said his country might
impose sanctions on Zimbabwe for what he said was the "ethnic cleansing" of
white farmers ordered off their land to make way for new black farmers.
Also
yesterday British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, writing in Britain's Observer
newspaper, accused President Robert Mugabe of plunging Zimbabwe into starvation
"in the name of land reform."
Zimbabwe's information minister, Jonathan Moyo
told the official Herald newspaper today that the claims of ethnic cleansing
were "outrageous" and "a joke".
"The white Commonwealth, lead by Britain, is
doing everything including the use of outright lies to defend white supremacy in
Africa to prevent Africans from correcting racial injustices of colonialism," he
said.
"It is black Zimbabwean farmers who grow food," he said. "All we need
is land. Food security in Zimbabwe will not be achieved as long as we do not
have the land," Moyo added.
Aid agencies and western countries have warned
that the land reform program, aimed at correcting racial imbalances in land
ownership, will exacerbate a food crisis threatening half the country's 12
million people.
Washington Times Editorial
Zimbabwe in black and white
Zimbabwe is a glaring
example of how much damage a corrupt, hate-mongering leader can wreak on a
country. Robert Mugabe, the country's president-by-fraud, has been seizing
white-owned farms just as a drought threatens to bring full-blown famine.
Despite the drought, Zimbabwe's reservoirs for
irrigation are full. But the land seizures have caused such severe disruption in
farming that southern Africa's former breadbasket is now in a food crisis. Since
February 2000, 2,900 white farmers have been forced to surrender their land.
Most have resisted, and police have arrested nearly 200.
The clumsy land-grab is causing widespread
problems for blacks and whites alike, said a white Zimbabwean farmer, who has
been ordered off her family's land, along with the more than 300 employees and
their family members living there. Such seizures have led to fatal clashes,
while Mr. Mugabe's family and cabinet members take over the best farms. "The
peasants are getting nothing but a kick in the butt," she said. "What you read
about the homeless and jobless people is
true."
President Bush is mulling ways of
ridding Zimbabwe of its Mugabe blight. The White House is currently working with
the European Union to try step up its so-called smart sanctions on Mr. Mugabe by
imposing a joint freeze on his assets and those of his associates.
But the administration is reticent about
imposing more comprehensive sanctions that could further devastate already
ailing Zimbabweans. "A trade embargo is a blunt instrument that could, in fact,
affect the general population . . . What we're trying to do is influence the
policy-makers at the top," said the State Department's Walter H. Kansteiner on
Tuesday. The United States and other countries have been giving Zimbabweans food
aid through non-governmental organizations.
The
administration has wisely reached out to civil society groups to try to
strengthen Zimbabwe's democratic institutions. And while the White House has
lobbied African countries to voice collective condemnation of Mr. Mugabe, it
must step up these efforts, focusing specifically on the region's economic
powers, South Africa and Nigeria. South Africa's back-door efforts to urge
better behavior from the Mugabe cabal have clearly been ineffectual.
But convincing South Africa and Nigeria to
lead the charge is tricky, which is probably why the White House has had little
luck. Mr. Mugabe is still an icon of Africa's liberation efforts, due to his
fight against Zimbabwe's apartheid rule in the 1960s. He won democratic
elections in 1980 but has been largely accused of rigging Zimbabwe's last
election earlier this year. He also has some vocal supporters, such as Namibia's
leader Sam Nujoma, who could be a Mugabe in the making, Libya's economically
powerful Moammar Gadhafi, and the Congo's Laurent Kabila, who is propped up by
Mr. Mugabe.
Zimbabwe is to South Africa what
Mexico is to America. Strife in Zimbabwe resonates in South Africa, particularly
through waves of immigrants. While some distinguished South Africans have
publicly rebuked Mr. Mugabe, such as Nobel Prize winners Nelson Mandela and
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South African President Thabo Mbeki has been more
muted, fearing a backlash or political
upheaval.
Mr. Mugabe is literally starving his
people and is keen to strike relationships with other budding despots. African
leaders realize what a threat he is. Whether they will push Mr. Mugabe to strike
an agreement with white farmers and hold democratic elections remains in
doubt.
Walking for Animals in
Zimbabwe
East Cape News
(Grahamstown)
August 26, 2002
Posted to the web August 26, 2002
Haru Mutasa
Grahamstown
Staring at Karen Davies sitting on
the grass, one cannot help but admire her guts and determination. At first
glance she appears to be an unasuming, quiet person. It is hard to imagine her
in the Zimbabwean bundu and even harder still imagining her surviving a grueling
ten-day ultra-endurance race along the long and narrow gravel roads of th
Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe -- sleeping in community halls and rural school
buildings.
Her dog Ophelia runs up to her. She
lovingly leans over and softly strokes her long golden-brown fur. It does not
take an expert to realise that animals are one of Karen's passions.
The 46-year-old South African
professional race walker left South Africa two weeks ago for Zimbabwe to
participate in the annual Blue Cross challenge held in the Eastern Highlands, a
scenic area in Zimbabwe.
Sitting in her tranquil garden in
Grahamstown, far away from the chaos in Zimbabwe she said: "I was not really
worried about the unrest there. But before going I did ask about the security.
The organisers assured me that they had patrolled the route we would be using
and anticipated no problems. The strange thing was that we were supposed to have
police escorts but they never showed up. I guess they were busy elsewhere -- but
we were alright." She stretches her long, athletic legs which are "over-run"
with blisters, a souvenir from the race, and continues: "In fact, the only thing
I saw was a lorry of war veterans, but they thought us pretty harmless and left
us alone. The area is beautiful but the atmosphere is definitely tense. The
whites seemed resigned almost -- they have no where else to go and are
determined to stay on their farms. You can definitely see how desperate the
situation is over there." Through donations and sponsorship from South Africans
in Grahamstown, Cape Town and Johannesburg, Karen managed to raise R15 000 for
the SPCA in Zimbabwe. She brings out a buldging A4 envelope and displays the
many faxes and receipts of donations she received.
She says unhappily: "I see all that
is going on over there through the media and one wonders what one can do to
help. At least this way I can say that I did my bit, even though it was the
animals that benefited and not so much the people. The SPCA is the only aid
agency in Zimbabwe that looks after the plight of animals!" Twenty-four walkers
took part in the Blue Cross challenge, 14 South Africans and 10 Zimbabweans.
Karen was the first woman to cross the finish line and came fifth in the 'Light
infantry' category. The ten day event began on August 4. Competitors walked 500
km covering 50km a day. They started at Mahenye 150 meters above sea level on
the Save/Runde river and ended off at Nyangani, 2 600 metres above sea level
near Mutare, Zimbabwe's third largest city.
" It was fantastic!" she exclaimed,
" I broke last year's record by three and a half hours! The Blue Cross
challenge, started in 1996, and aims to raise money for the Zimbabwean SPCA. It
sees South Africans and Zimbabweans competing for the coveted gold medal and
trophy. Of course the most important outcome at the end of the day is the
animals. Some have been abandoned on deserted farms and others, their owners are
just too poor to look after them." Karen beams with adoration for 64-year-old
Meryl Harrison, fearless heroine and leader of a project to save or humanely
kill some of the hundreds of thousands of animals that are dying, starving or
being mutilated as a result of assaults on Zimbabwe's commercial
farms.
"She was with us for the first three
days of the race," said Karen, "and she was always out and about looking after
the donkeys in the tribal lands." Harrison has gained world-wide support for her
determination to rescue Zimbabwean animals, one of the many innocent victims of
Zimbabwe's brutal land grabbing stance.
Zimbabwe pet rescue project
fundraiser Estelle Walters, a volunteer organisation based in Cape Town said in
an earlier interview: "As well as rescuing some of the animals deserted on the
farms, Meryl and her men put down animals they find with broken backs, broken
limbs and gaping wounds as a result of attacks by the war vets. Cows and sheep
are having their hamstrings cut as some kind of political warning by the war
vets. Cows have been found alive with axe-heads embedded in their bodies. In one
case a cow's leg had been cut off for meat and the animal left alive. Un-milked
cows are dying in agony, and hooves have been sliced from children's ponies. In
one incident a farmer locked himself in his house with his award winning bull in
an attempt to save the animal".
Of the 14 South Africans that went
down to Zimbabwe, 10 of them were women. SAfm radio talk show host Patricia
Glyn, who inspired Karen to participate, was among them.
Despite the sore limbs, the red sore
blisters and chapped lips, Karen has no regrets.
"It was 10 days of getting up early
in the mornings and walking -- just walking. It was lonely at times and I'd say
to myself I just want to go home, what am I doing here? But I told myself that
this is a challenge I chose to take and I have to see it through," she said.
Close to R180 000 (Z$ 20 million) was raised through the efforts of the
competitors and those who sponsored them. "I will not be participating next
year," she says looking at her poor feet, "once is enough for the moment. I did
learn a lot about myself and got to see first-hand what it is like in Zimbabwe.
I kept saying to myself, gosh -- what must it be like to live among this misery?
I spoke to children who had lost their parents. It is desperate over there. But
then I saw lots of fancy cars too. There is money in Zimbabwe, the question is
where is it all going?"
Time Farmers Admitted
Game is Up
Business Day
(Johannesburg)
EDITORIAL
August 26, 2002
Posted to the web August 26, 2002
Johannesburg
ONE of the mysteries of the Zimbabwe
saga, now hurtling towards its catastrophic climax, is why the white farmers
still sit passively, like sheep, on their expropriated farms, waiting for
somebody to deliver them from ethnic cleansing. Perhaps they think New Zealand's
ferocious sanctions will change Robert Mugabe's mind, or that the pin-prick
sanctions of the Western powers will break his obdurate will.
More likely, they are misled by
their vociferous but uninfluential local supporters to believe South Africa will
throw the place into economic collapse and social disorder by cutting off the
electricity.
They surely cannot still be hoping
that South Africa's one battleready unit of 3000 men, a bit short on helicopter
pilots, will take on Mugabe's army, which has 9000 troops deployed in the Congo
alone.
In any event, the farmers wait like
dumb animals, pleading with white South Africans to induce President Mbeki to
intervene. Local whites respond with enraged declamations about justice and
property rights that never occurred to most of them when their own government
was stealing land.
It is sound and fury, signifying
noth ing. Some kindly person should tell the farmers that the game is up. It
hasn't been fair, or just, or even intelligent, but it's over. If you insist on
being a Zimbabwe farmer, find a job as farm manager for Mugabe's cronies. Or
open a roadside stall. Or get the hell out.
From outside Zimbabwe, judicial
processes may have some utility. It may prove possible to seize Zimbabwean
exports or aircraft as compensation for lost farms. It might be possible to
bring Mugabe, sooner or later, before an international court on human rights
charges.
But to appeal to Zimbabwe's courts
denotes a pathological inability to face reality, a form of psychological
sickness.
One day, 20 years hence, a
devastated Zimbabwe may invite the farmers back, as poor Mozambique has tried to
lure old Portuguese colonists to return, but for the time being Zimbabwe is in a
vortex of self-destruction. Neither Nepad nor South Africa can do anything about
it, and none of the Great Powers will do anything. Only the people of Zimbabwean
can possibly end Mugabe's rule, and then only if they are neither led by, nor
funded by, nor associated with whites. Whites are soft targets, like tethered
turkeys. They weaken any alliance.
Rail at the injustice if you like. A
lot of people do that. It relieves their feelings. Or abuse President Mbeki, if
that makes you feel better. It seems to give many Democratic Alliance members
pleasure.
Brace yourself, anyway, for the
fresh barrage of propaganda to continue through the Johannesburg summit as local
lobbies do their best to blackmail our government to intervene by besmirching
its reputation in front of the visitors, like an angry spouse trying to
embarrass a partner at dinner.
Mbeki won't change course. He's a
fixer, not a man of action. He doesn't go for frontal attacks, he manoeuvres
silently. That's his style. White South Africans argue, some in genuine
conviction, that if Mbeki refuses to berate Mugabe it proves he himself will
soon be nationalising the mines and the banks, as well as the farms. The
argument is silly, but if you truly believe it, take heed of what happened to
Zimbabwean farmers who sat complacently waiting for the Great White Queen Across
the Sea to send a warship. The time to act is now.
There's no point waiting to see if
President Mbeki intends to fiddle a third term for himself. If you plan to
leave, go quickly, but if you plan to stay here, try to learn some lessons from
Zimbabwe.
Firstly, a white power bloc like Ian
Smith's 20 reserved seats in Parliament, or the DP-NNP pact is not a shield but
a target.
Secondly, the price of survival is
the transformation of the country until the middle classes, the farmers, and the
taxpayers are predominantly black. Thirdly, the perception that all whites are
rich and all blacks poor may be false but it is deadly, so stop showing
off.
Above all, don't take sides in
Zimbabwe lest you prompt the landless majority of your countrymen to take the
other side, and so import Zimbabwe's racial conflict into this
country.
The dawn had not yet come, but the cocks were
starting to crow, as the
orange streaks filtered across the early morning
sky, and I lay in bed
listening to the sounds that were as familiar to us
both, as breathing the
fresh morning air.
Today was very different, this
was our last morning on our beloved farm, and
we both lay distraught and
sobbing as we would hear this no more, certainly
not whilst, the evil
dictator, Robert Mugabe and his henchmen ruled this
devastated and starving
country.
I came as a 22 year old bride to this wild bit of bush, young, full
of life
and love, and fell instantly under the spell of the
beautiful
Rhodesian/Zimbabwean bush. And now 35 years later, we
were being forced
off our land, so that some "fat cat chef" of the Mugabe
elite, could claim
our home, our life blood, and our children and
grandchildren's inherited
land.
It is the start of spring in Zimbabwe, and
for those of you who have visited
my beautiful country, will know that for
farmers, this is the start of a new
season. And a new season,
brings with it, an uplifting feeling of joy and
life that is about to start a
new cycle. All one's hopes and dreams are
started at the
beginning of spring, all past bad dreams and omens are
forgotten, past
droughts and floods, invasions of army worm and other fungi,
hail storms with
their punishing damage, everything is forgotten in that
rush of adrenalin, at
the first sight of the Msasa trees unfurling their new
colourful array of
leaves, in a paintbox of russets, burgundies, golds,
pinks, and finally
emerald greens.
No longer to hear the women singing on their way to work, the
men shouting
greetings to each other, the roar of tractors as they set out
for work, to
till the rich soils. This farm has been silent for
18 months, as Mugabe
and his thugs, have murdered, raped and reduced all
within their path to
pathetic and sad ruination. Cattle starved
and hamstrung, domestic pets,
stoned to death, beautiful trees wantonly cut
down, because their crime was
to house inquisitive monkeys, who would raid
their pathetic attempt at
"farming". Where once fields of green
wheat waved in the wind, with
underground irrigation piping to ensure bread
for all, now lie fallow and
full of weeds, the piping broken and
destroyed. Fences stolen to make
snares to trap the wild game,
introduced into the small game park we
started, to utilise land not suitable
for cropping or cattle. Don't listen
to their lies of
"drought"!! Sure there was a small dry spell, but all
could have
been avoided by irrigating from dams, throughout the country,
which were all
over 90% full!!
Giving land to the "landless peasants", is a total lie, it is
a "free for
all Ministers, Police and Army heirarchy, and Zanu pf party
thugs, to lay
their hands on property that they have not paid
for. In the free world it
is called "looting and theft"! when you
take something that you have not
earned!
Our millions of dollars of
irrigation, is confiscated and stolen, we are not
allowed to take our
equipment with us, it must be left behind, to be used
and abused, then
abondoned, destroyed for ever.
My husband,'s family have been on the farms
for 80 years, and many of our
workers, are third generation born on this
property. Mugabe and his
henchmen, ZANU pf have destroyed this
country, land is NOT THE ISSUE, just
straight theft, rape, and a blind rage
to destroy a people who were sick to
death of his murderous reign, and the
systematic looting of the country's
wealth, at the expense of his
people.
No more to roam the grassy fields, with dogs at heel, and birds atop,
the
kudu with twitching ears, the cough of the leopard in the dead of night;
the
roar of the river in flood, the smell of the tobacco curing in the
barns,
the hoot of the owls that roost in the trees, the glorious smell of
the
first rains on the earth, after the long dry winter. The
lowing of the
cattle, and the gentle whistle of the herdsman as he walks his
charges out
to the pastures.
Dear God, if you are listening to our prayer,
save our wonderful country and
its people from the evil that pervades this
land, bring us peace, oh Lord we
beseech, and rid us of this nazi
beast. Zimbabwe cries out for justice, law
and order, the return of
people's human rights, and an end to the murder,
rape, torture and theft, by
the ruling party, and may the free world stop
standing by, and end this hell
on earth, and bring the perpetuators to
justice at the court in the
Hague! Don't wait until 6 million people are
starved and tortured
into submission.
I end with this poem to all farmers in Zimbabwe, as my heart
breaks and my
tears flow, at such vast destruction of my Beloved Country
Zimbabwe.
ZIMBABWE FARMERS, TRUE SONS OF THE
SOIL
NO GREATER LOVE HATH A "SON OF THE SOIL",
THAN BENEATH BLUE
SKY TO WORK AND TOIL.
TO WATCH A CARPET OF FINGERS GREEN,
RISE UP IN
ROWS NEAT AND CLEAN.
FOR ONLY THEY FEEL MOTHER EARTH'S BEAT,
AS THEY
RAISE THEIR CATTLE OF MILK AND BEEF.
GOD SMILES ON THE MAN WHO NURTURES HIS
EARTH,
INCREASES HIS GIFTS AND WIDENS HIS GIRTH!!
TO BREAK A ZIMBABWE
FARMER'S SOUL,
IS TO DENY HIM THE RIGHT TO DISC AND HOE,
GIVE ME YOUR
SOIL, DRY AND WEEDY,
AND I WILL FEED MY NATION'S NEEDY.
GIVE ME THE
LABOUR TO TOIL WITH ME,
FOR WE ARE A FAMILY AS A SPREADING TREE,
THE
TRUNK, THE BRANCHES, LEAVES AND ALL,
ALL TRADITIONALLY LINKED TO THIS "SON
OF THE SOIL".
IN TIMES OF PEACE AND GENTLE CALM,
HIS HEART EXPANDS LIKE
AN EVER REACHING PALM,
AND TOGETHER WITH HIS FAITHFUL WIFE,
THEY
FACE TOGETHER, LIFE, AND WEATHER'S STRIFE.
YOU CAN THROW AT HIM, ALL MANNER
OF ILLS,
AND FAITHFULLY HE WILL CONTINUE TO TILL,
BE IT FLOODS, OR BE IT
DROUGHTS,
STEELY ENDEAVOUR, HE STRONGLY FLOUTS.
AND WHEN A NEIGHBOUR IS
IN DESPERATE NEED,
A STEADY HAND, IS A FRIEND INDEED.
NEVER DOUBT MY
PRIDE FOR THESE GIGANITIC MEN,
WHOSE AWESOME STAMINA, MOST CANNOT
KEN,
FOR ONE I MARRIED, AND TWO I BRED,
WE MIGHT BE DOWN, BUT WE ARE
CERTAINLY NOT DEAD!
SO THROW WHAT YOU MAY AT THESE "EARTHY SONS",
THIS
EVIL REGIME, THEY WILL OVERCOME.
A NEW DAWN AWAITS THE FAITHFUL AND
BRAVE,
ESPECIALLY THOSE WHOSE ROOTS ARE ENGRAVED,
IN THE SOIL OF THEIR
FARMS, AND THE ROADS THAT THEY PAVED.
FARMERS AND WIVES ,TAKE THIS POEM TO
YOUR HEART,
FOR OF THIS HERITAGE, YOU TWO ARE A PART.
IT IS AN HONOUR TO
BE A MEMBER OF THIS TEAM,
AND MAY THE SUN UPON YOU, ALWAYS BEAM,
MAY
YOUR RIVERS ALWAYS FLOW, AND YOUR DAMS BE FULL,
YOUR COWS NEVER EMPTY, AND
YOUR SIRES FULL OF BULL!
YOUR CROPS EVERGREEN, AND YOUR EYES TO THE
SKY,
AND ON THIS, YOUR LIBERATION DAY, FLY HIGH.
PAMMY
WHALEY
Daily News
Makoni firing
slammed
8/26/02 8:20:29 AM (GMT
+2)
By Guthrie Munyuki and Henry
Makiwa
LAWYERS, academics, economists and
opposition leaders yesterday
attacked President Mugabe for kicking out of his
Cabinet, Simba Makoni, seen
largely as one of the few ministers with an
understanding of the enormity of
the country's economic
problems.
They dismissed the new Cabinet
as pathetic with little to offer to the
tottering
economy.
Mugabe on Saturday announced a
new Cabinet in which Makoni, the
Minister of Finance and Economic
Development, was the only minister removed
besides Dr Timothy Stamps, who was
incapacitated by illness a few
months
ago.
Stamps' Health and Child
Welfare portfolio was taken over by his
former deputy, Dr David
Parirenyatwa.
Mugabe reassigned Home
Affairs Minister John Nkomo to the new
portfolio of Special Affairs in the
President's Office.
Most of the other
ministers retained their posts or were shifted
to
new
ones. These included the unpopular
presidential appointees Jonathan
Moyo (Information and Publicity), Joseph
Made (Lands, Agriculture and Rural
Resettlement) and Patrick Chinamasa
(Justice, Legal and
Parliamentary
Affairs).
The only
newcomers were Witness Mangwende, who bounced back as
Minister of Transport
and Communications, and ex-diplomat Amos Midzi, who
was appointed to the new
Ministry of Energy and Power Development.
Three former deputy ministers were elevated to full ministers in the
new
Cabinet. These are Kembo Mohadi, who replaced Nkomo at Home
Affairs,
Parirenyatwa (Health and Child Welfare) and Paul Mangwana, appointed
to the
new Ministry of State Enterprises and
Parastatals.
Mugabe also appointed six new
deputy ministers, which saw the number
of deputy ministers increasing from
nine to 12.
Makoni was replaced by Herbert
Murerwa, whose previous post at
Industry and International Trade was taken
over by Samuel Mumbengegwi, the f
ormer Minister of Higher Education and
Technology. Swithun Mombeshora
replaced
Mumbengegwi.
Commenting on the new
Cabinet, Professor Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, a
senior lecturer in the Faculty of
Social Studies at the University of
Zimbabwe (UZ), said Mugabe's new Cabinet
lacked the complexion to
resuscitate the economy and was riddled with dubious
ministries.
Mukonoweshuro said Mugabe's
expansion of the Cabinet flew against
economic
sense.
He said: "This is no reshuffle.
Mugabe has just moved people from one
ministry to the
other."
Eric Bloch, the Bulawayo-based
economist, said he was disappointed by
Makoni's dismissal at a crucial moment
when he was trying to put in place
austerity measures to revive the waning
economy.
He said: "By dismissing Makoni,
Mugabe is sending out a loud message -
that he has no interest in changing
government policies."
Bloch noted the
increase in Cabinet portfolios would add expenditure
when the government was
saddled with huge deficits.
"There is no
indication or the intent whatsoever to reverse the
current economic
situation."
"This is a very disappointing
line-up with nothing that creates
excitement," said Dr Lovemore Madhuku, the
chairman of the Department of
Public Law at the UZ. "It's pathetic and shows
an unbelievable display of
incompetence on Mugabe's
part."
Madhuku, the chairman of the
National Constitutional Assembly, added:
"The Cabinet shows Mugabe's lack of
seriousness. The idea was just to fire
Makoni, but he could have done that
without dissolving the
previous
Cabinet."
He criticised the redeployment
of Murerwa to the Finance Ministry
where Mugabe often attacked him for not
delivering during his tenure between
1997 and early
2000.
"One wonders what new measures
Murerwa can bring about to rescue the
economy," Madhuku
said.
Tendai Biti, the opposition MDC
shadow minister for Foreign Affairs,
said Murerwa would "go down in history
as the Finance Minister who threw the
last sod of soil on Zimbabwe's grave.
Murerwa is intellectually lukewarm.
There is nothing new he can
bring."
Biti said by retaining his
loyalists, Mugabe had sent a loud message
that he was brooking no
dissent.
Biti said: "We are going to see a
political shift to the right which
means there will be more violence and
retribution."
Murerwa was the Minister of
Finance in November 1997, when the
government approved the hefty one-off
payment of unbudgeted $4 billion in
gratuities to war
veterans.
The Zimbabwean dollar crashed on
14 November, known in financial
circles as Black Friday. The local currency
has not recovered from the
battering. It is now selling at $650 and $950
against the United States
dollar and the British pound, respectively, on the
parallel market.
Frank Chamunorwa of
Mashonaland East said Makoni's exit was expected
as the die was cast when
Mugabe attacked him during the opening of
Parliament last
month.
He said: "But Makoni should know
that well-meaning Zimbabweans still
have a lot of respect for him and wish
him good luck in his endeavours."
Ordinary
Zimbabweans blasted the new cabinet as a recycling of
Mugabe's old
cronies.
Felix Vambe, a businessman said:
"Nothing has changed except the
ouster of Makoni. We were hoping that the
likes of Jonathan Moyo and Joseph
Made would finally face the axe after
leading the country to near ruin.
"It
somehow shows Mugabe simply had no guts to openly fire Makoni and
waited for
a reshuffle to send the only sane man in his government
packing."
Farai Nyazika, a student at the
Mutare Polytechnic College, applauded
the change in the Ministry of Higher
Education and Technology, saying
students were hoping for better times after
Samuel Mumbengegwi's relocation
to the Ministry of Industry and International
Trade.
He said: "We have been feeling
neglected as students. Mumbengegwi has
been very insensitive to our plight.
Students have been reduced to beggars,
prostitutes and
thieves."
Swithun Mombeshora, the former
Minister of Transport and
Communication, has taken over from Mumbengegwi as
the Minister of Higher and
Tertiary
Education.
Colleta Munyepi said she was
shocked that Made had been retained. "Any
Zimbabwean whose finger is on the
pulse of the nation is aware that Made is
one of the most infamous
personalities, after leading the country
into
starvation.
"It is quite shocking
and mind-boggling that the President retained
him. I can only conclude that
the two are working in cahoots to lead us into
mass
starvation."
Daily News
Census exercise
hits snag as foreigners refuse to be
counted
8/26/02 8:24:39 AM (GMT
+2)
Staff
Reporter
SOME foreign residents in
Zimbabwe are refusing to disclose
information about themselves to census
enumerators, census manager
Washington Mapeta said
yesterday.
He said he had received reports
that some foreigners were hostile to
his staff, as they argued that the
census was internal and did not
concern
them.
Mapeta said most such
foreigners were from Europe and the United
States of America, which have
imposed smart sanctions on President Mugabe
and most members of his inner
circle.
Mapeta said he received
information that an American man living in
Harare refused to give details
about himself to enumerators because he said
he was a
foreigner.
"It's a question of the methods
used in enumerating," said Mapeta.
"Some
countries send census enumeration forms to their citizens in
different parts
of the world to fill in so that when we do our own here they
would say the
census doesn't concern them."
Meanwhile,
The Daily News has received information from a number of
enumerators around
Harare that people of Malawian, Mozambican and Zambian
origin were also
refusing to be counted.
It is said most
such people born in Zimbabwe but whose parents or
ancestors were of foreign
origin are arguing that they are turned away from
the Passport Office
whenever they seek to renew their Zimbabwean
passports.
These second or third
generation Zimbabweans say they are told to
approach the embassies and high
commissions of their forebears' origin
for
passports.
But Mapeta said he had
not received such reports.
Last week
Mapeta said the exercise was hindered in Bindura because of
transport
problems and in Murehwa, Mutoko and Marondera because of
fuel
shortage.
But yesterday he said
the situation in those areas had improved.
The national census, which began on 18 August, ends tomorrow 27
August. The
last one, conducted in 1992, settled on a figure of more than 13
million
which was disputed.
There was murmurings
in Bulawayo and most of Matabeleland and in
Chitungwiza where residents
complained they had not all been counted.
Unlike the previous census, which received substantial donor
assistance, the
government is conducting this year's census on its own as
the international
community is boycotting the country to press the
government to observe human
rights and to uphold the rule of law.
The population census provides data on the demographic and
related
socio-economic characteristic of the population at national and
sub-national
levels.
It is used for
planning and implementing development programmes such
as housing, provision
of water, sanitation and scientific
research.
Daily News
Evicted SA farmer
lashes out at Mbeki
8/26/02
11:53:58 AM (GMT +2)
Staff
Reporter
CRAWFORD Van Abo, a South African
farmer and investor who was evicted
from his farm by the government last week
has accused President Thabo Mbeki
and the government of failing to protect
his substantial business interests
and those of other South Africans in
Zimbabwe.
He told journalists in Cape Town
that his neighbours from France and
Germany, for instance, were not being
subjected to the illegal expropriation
of their land by the
government.
personally spoke to my
neighbour, a Frenchman. When he was threatened
his government stepped in and
said: ?ou don? touch him??
He said other
European farmers in Zimbabwe had not been touched either
because their
governments had intervened on their
behalf.
?t? not a question of land,?said
Van Abo. ?t? a question of politics.
?he
sad part of it is that the people who are victimised are not the
ones who
left in 1980 when Zimbabwe gained independence. They are the
productive
citizens who pay their taxes and duties and are being victimised
because of
the political situation.?
At a press
conference in Cape Town, Van Abo told reporters he had sent
Mbeki a letter in
March asking for help.
He and other South
Africans are among commercial farmers or landowners
who have been targeted by
the Zimbabwean government.
. . . I feel
free to appeal to you to assist me to a just settlement
as a loyal South
African citizen,?the letter states.
Van
Abo said he was advised the matter had been referred to the
Foreign Affairs
Ministry for action.
?o date I have heard
nothing further from either the president, the
minister of foreign affairs,
or any official for the department of foreign
affairs that my request is
still being considered or that it has been
rejected on principles of
policy.?
Van Abo was arrested in Zimbabwe
on Monday while visiting one of his
farms in the south of the
country.
He, along with other white
commercial farmers, appeared in court the
following day and were released on
bail. They have to appear again in court
on 18
September.
Van Abo ?who in his letter to
Mbeki said he had given premises to the
ANC in Bothaville and had been bombed
and branded a sellout ?described
himself as a loyal South African and a
supporter of the New Partnership for
Africa? Development
(Nepad).
I expected that as a South
African investor in Zimbabwe, I would at
least have been protected by my
government against the draconian actions of
an African regime which is
totally in conflict with the principles of Nepad
and the new African
Union.?Van Abo said he had never been a politician and
had always been
involved in agriculture.
In a statement,
the New National Party (NNP) leader in Parliament, Dr
Boy Geldenhuys, said
his party was disappointed that the South African High
Commission in Harare
had apparently failed to do anything for Van Abo and
other South Africans in
a similar predicament.
Geldenhuys offered
to be the link to Deputy Minister Aziz Pahad, whom
the NNP had met earlier in
the week to raise its concerns about the Free
State
farmer.
Geldenhuys repeated that the
long-term solution would be for South
Africa and Zimbabwe to conclude an
agreement protecting South African
investments in that
country.
Daily News
One law for us,
another for them
8/26/02 12:01:02
PM (GMT +2)
By Gugulethu
Moyo
It all began with some rather
hyperactive digestive enzymes affecting
my otherwise usually good
judgement.
At exactly 1:25 on Tuesday I
felt an overwhelming craving for
Jerk
Chicken.
The only logical thing to
do, or so it seemed at the time, was for me
to make a quick dash to my
favourite takeaway food outlet in Ballantyne Park
and return quickly to the
office for a 2.30 meeting.
So, as it
turned out, I was driving at no leisurely pace when an
ominous looking green
reflective sleeve flashed right before my
eyes.
My foot hit the brakes and I stopped
just in time to hear a police
officer shouting triumphantly: "You were
driving at 102 km/hr in a 70 km
zone. Park your car and go across the road to
pay a spot fine." He pointed
in the direction of two men who looked more like
businessman than regular
policemen and were standing across the road. I will
call them Police Officer
B and Police Officer
C.
True, I had been cruising along
Borrowdale Road rather fast. That had
been my original intention. So, I
compliantly made my way across the road to
Police Officer B, who was busy
issuing tickets to other
entrapped
individuals.
What occurred
next was not what I had expected. "Sister," the police
officer said looking
at me sternly, "in your case, you have to go to court.
Your speed was too
much - 102! I don't have the power to assess the fine in
such a serious case.
You just have to go to court. Give me your licence." "I
don't have it on me,"
I responded.
"Now," the officer said, an
ominous smile spreading across his chubby
face, "that will be another serious
offence - driving without a licence. You
really need to go to court
sister."
While Police Officer B was
advising me of my legal wrongs, Police
Officer A, behind the camera, netted
another two offenders in quick
succession. The first one walked towards me.
"I did not realise that lawyers
also commit traffic offences," he said,
addressing me directly.
Police Officer B
looked at me, obviously quite amused by this new bit
of information. He asked
me to confirm that I was, indeed, a
lawyer.
After I furnished him with the
required confirmation, he asked me to
tell him which firm of legal
practitioners I worked for.
"So that you can
defend me," he said mockingly.
I politely
declined to tell the officer where I worked, giving the
excuse that I did not
think that I could ever defend him, since he seemed to
know the law even
better than I did.
In the meantime, it
turned out, quite coincidentally that my friend
had also been "found guilty"
of driving his BMW 328i at the speed of
102km/hr in a 70km zone. Like me, he
was informed that he had to go to court
for assessment of his penalty. What
happened next was again not quite what I
expected to see by the roadside on
this Tuesday afternoon.
My friend walked
across the road to the police officer behind the
camera. He then swiftly
handed him something, but not fast enough for me not
to see, even from a
distance, that it was quite clearly a brand new $500
note. My friend jumped
into his car, waved to me and sped off.
I
was shocked and that is, perhaps, an understatement. I recovered and
summoned
enough courage to ask Police Officer B whether my own case still
warranted a
court appearance, given that my friend had so easily purchased a
permanent
stay of prosecution, courtesy of a $500
note.
"I can use my discretion," answered
the officer, as he rewarded me
with a meaningful look. "I don't have to treat
all offenders the same. I
have the discretion to fine someone, to take them
to court or even just to
caution them and let them go. But you are going to
court, sister."
I told him point blank
that I doubted that his "discretionary powers"
included taking bribes in lieu
of law enforcement.
Confusion broke out at
this point.
Police Officer C said to
Officer B, "Issue the ticket and let that
woman go. She is a trouble maker."
"You will have to write out the ticket
yourself," Officer B said as he thrust
pen and charge book into the hands of
Officer A, before walking away. Officer
A scribbled out the ticket. He asked
me to pay a $500 admission of guilt
fine, which I did. As I walked away
towards my car, I said to the police
officer that since he had seemed quite
keen to know where I worked I would
stop by on my return from Ballantyne
Park and satisfy his
curiosity.
Before I drove off I asked
Officer A, as he peered into the camera,
whether I had really been driving at
102km, since he had never furnished me
with any proof of my speed before
referring me across the road.
"Yes, you
were," he said. "But if you had been driving slowly enough
for me to see that
it was such a beautiful woman driving such a beautiful
car, I would, perhaps,
not have even stopped you!"
On my way back
I stopped to talk to the law-enforcement agents. I
informed Police Officer B
that I worked for The Daily News.
I don't
know why, but this information did not seem to be quite what
my police
officer friends had expected to hear that Tuesday afternoon. His
jaw dropped
and his mouth froze while open for what seemed to me like a full
102 seconds.
"My sister," he said after he regained his composure, "why did
you not tell
me that at the beginning.
"Otherwise I
would not have issued the ticket. Only yesterday we
caught Minister Simba
Makoni speeding. We decided it was not right to issue
a minister with a
ticket. So we just let him go. I am sorry, sister, but you
should have told
us who you are." Apparently he decided I was not
sufficiently
placated.
"This name," he said as he
pointed at the duplicate copy of the
admission of guilt coupon, "is it your
husband's name or your maiden name?".
"It's my surname," I informed him. "Ah,
so you are not yet married!" he
exclaimed triumphantly. "Please, let me have
your telephone number."
I gave him a
number which he carefully recorded on the back of the
charge
book.
"Maybe you and I can go for a
drink," he said optimistically, as I
engaged gear while resisting a strong
urge to say, "Go jump into the nearest
lake, my
brother."
And so if the story be told like
it is, in the style of The Daily
News, this was my first encounter with
Zimbabwe's justice enforcement
system, where police discretion might be
exercised to serve, not the public
interest, but the interests of corrupt
police officers, bribe-dispensing
law-breakers, beautiful women in beautiful
cars, government ministers and
other such people, who might be deemed to be
above the law.
Gugulethu Moyo is the
Company Secretary of Associated Newspapers of
Zimbabwe, publishers of The
Daily News.
Daily News
Leader Page
Mugabe is the real crisis in
Zimbabwe
8/26/02 12:07:17 PM (GMT
+2)
IT'S amazing that there are
people who hoped President Mugabe would
break with the dark past and appoint
a progressive Cabinet capable of saving
Zimbabwe from almost certain economic
catastrophe.
There were no such
indications on the ground: his public denunciation
of the Minister of Finance
and Economic Development, Simba Makoni, as a
potential "saboteur" of the
economy signalled his determination to keep his
head firmly in the sand of
the economics of political expediency.
Once he had intimidated Nkosana Moyo, the former Minister of Industry
and
International Trade, out of the Cabinet last year, only a few months
after
his much-ballyhooed appointment, the signs were
clear.
The economy would remain anchored
in the sunken ship of Zanu PF's
failed policies, superintended by the party's
geriatric troika of Mugabe,
Simon Muzenda and Joseph
Msika.
Makoni, like Moyo, had been brought
in, ostensibly, to give the
Cabinet "new
blood".
But this was a smokescreen through
which Moyo managed to perceive his
own political
demise.
Makoni, a Zanu PF cadre, retained
faith in the party even when others
advised him to follow Moyo's
example.
He must know now that Zanu PF is
beyond redemption.
For some inexplicable
reason, Mugabe seems to believe his land reform
programme will solve all our
economic problems.
Hence his reason for
retaining the three non-constituency ministers
who have been his most
prominent and aggressive apologists - Patrick
Chinamasa, Joseph Made and
Jonathan Moyo.
As the chief government
legal adviser, Chinamasa has dragged the
country into the gutter.
Internationally, its reputation for law breaking is
one of the most appalling
in the world.
He himself was almost jailed
for contempt.
If Mugabe enjoys his company
so much, it must explain why the rule of
law is in tatters
today.
Made is a classic example of a
minister who believes his own
propaganda. The chaotic implementation of the
land reform programme has had
no impact on him
whatsoever.
As far as he is concerned,
Zimbabwe does not have a food deficit and
will continue to enjoy food
security for many, many years to come,
especially after the resettled farmers
have been given their new hoes.
As for
Jonathan Moyo, he would be well-advised to prepare for a fight
to the finish
in his battle to emasculate the privately-owned media in
this
country.
Nobody is going to lie
down and die because he believes the only
ethical journalism permissible is
that which licks his and his boss's boots.
The independent media is ready to shed its last drop of blood before
it
allows Moyo to castrate it into the eunuch that he has made of the
public
media. The future of democracy in Zimbabwe is firmly linked to the
future of
a free and unfettered media. One cannot exist without the
other.
The rest of the Mugabe reshuffle
has a certain surrealist quality to
it: what possible justification can there
be for bringing into the Cabinet
has-beens such as Witness Mangwende and Amos
Midzi?
Makoni's replacement at Finance is
Herbert Murerwa, who held that
portfolio for some time, until Mugabe
humiliated him publicly, before
switching him to another less challenging
post.
There could be a good reason for
torturing the country with another
term of Murerwa as its Finance Minister,
but the only one we can think of is
that he is so unlike Makoni in his
approach - he has no original approach to
speak
of.
Mugabe has lumbered this country with
a Cabinet that is, in a manner
of speaking, "very Mugabe" - long on talk and
threats and very short on
action and
consultation.
Makoni said the economy was
in crisis and probably earned Mugabe's
everlasting wrath for his
candour.
Today, there will be nobody in
the Cabinet with the courage to tell
Mugabe the unadorned truth - which is
what Mugabe cherishes the most.
The real
crisis in Zimbabwe, if the truth be told, is Mugabe
himself.
Daily News
Leader Page
One man's actions endanger entire
region
8/26/02 12:07:54 PM (GMT
+2)
By Harry
Sterling
WHAT is Africa going to do about
Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe?
At a time when
African states have been trying to convince the outside
world that their
newly created African Union intends to ensure all countries
fully respect
democratic principles and the rule of law, President Mugabe
has ordered most
remaining white farmers to leave their lands
without
compensation.
This action
follows hard on the heels of stringent new media
regulations to further
muzzle the few voices within Zimbabwe still prepared
to expose his
government's systematic violation of human
rights.
Mugabe's actions are an affront to
those who have tried to downplay
the undermining of rights in Zimbabwe and
the violence unleashed by
the
President.
His latest land grab was
set in motion weeks ago, while African
leaders were in Alberta trying to
convince G8 member nations, including
Canada, to support their proposed New
Partnership for Africa's Development
between African nations and donor
states.
Some of those same leaders,
including South African President Thabo
Mbeki, have gone to bat for Mugabe in
the past when other countries wanted
tough sanctions imposed on his
government for violating human rights and
allegedly rigging the presidential
election.
But no one should be surprised
by Mugabe's expropriation of most
remaining white-owned
farmland.
Anyone who has followed Mugabe's
actions over the years could have
predicted what has happened, not just to
white farmers, but also to
Zimbabwe's newly
created political opposition and human
rights
organisations.
Once it became
apparent that his government's gross economic
mismanagement and corruption
was endangering his political future, Mugabe
didn't hesitate to hit back at
his opponents, as he did in the 1980s when
his followers ran amok in
anti-Mugabe areas, massacring entire
villages.
Although Mugabe initially tried
to win back popular support by
confiscating white-owned lands, this clearly
did not eliminate the threat
posed by the neophyte political opposition
force, the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC), led by former trade union
head Morgan Tsvangirai.
When the MDC
appeared to be gaining popular support, even from Mugabe'
s own Shona tribe -
traditionally loyal to his Zanu PF party - the President
set his thugs upon
MDC activists, torturing and killing dozens prior to the
recent presidential
election.
His followers also fire-bombed
the country's only independent daily
newspaper, The Daily News, repeatedly
harassing its editor and journalists.
When
members of the country's High Court ruled the land seizures
violated
Zimbabwe's Constitution, Mugabe intimidated law-minded judges into
"retiring"
out of fear for their lives.
He then
packed the court with compliant new judges who reversed
earlier findings
against land seizures.
The land seizures
take place at a time when about half the population
of 12 million face
chronic food shortages, with starvation now appearing in
various
areas.
Much of the responsibility for this
growing tragedy rests with Mugabe.
Until
recently, Zimbabwe actually exported grain to other
countries.
(In recent days, Mugabe
threatened to seize the country's largest food
processing company for not
selling salt at uneconomic,
government-controlled
prices.)
But
Mugabe's repressive actions and the deteriorating economic
situation are not
only destabilising his country; they could have a
dangerous spillover effect
on neighbouring states.
Famine and
instability could spark a major humanitarian crisis and a
flood of refugees
into nearby nations, particularly South
Africa.
(The seizure of white-owned farms
in Zimbabwe has also had an impact
in South Africa, where some blacks support
similar actions against their
country's white farmers, several of whom have
been killed in the past
several years.)
It is very much in the interest of African states, as well as
Commonwealth
nations and others, to recognise the danger Mugabe's continued
rule
represents.
Direct dealings with his
government should be severely restricted and
humanitarian and development aid
channelled exclusively through
reputable
non-governmental organisations.
African
leaders such as Mbeki and Nigeria's President Olusegun
Obasanjo can no longer
afford to find excuses for Mugabe's repressive
rule.
If they don't act to restrain his
excesses, they could confront
another crisis right on their own
doorsteps.
And the horrific events in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra
Leone, Rwanda and elsewhere graphically
illustrate what could happen if
African leaders continue to stay silent while
Mugabe drags everyone closer
to the
abyss.
Former diplomat Harry Sterling is
an Ottawa-based commentator who has
served in Africa
twice.
Daily News
Starving
Matabeleland villagers
8/26/02
1:12:31 PM (GMT +2)
From Our
Correspondent in Bulawayo
THOUSANDS of
people are starving in the Madlambudzi area of
Bulilimamangwe District
despite humanitarian efforts by the World Vision and
the World Food Programme
to help stave off starvation in various parts
of
Zimbabwe.
Many villagers in the
Madlambudzi area, some 77km west of Plumtree,
now live in abject poverty
which has been worsened by a drought that
resulted in the failure of crops in
the naturally dry region.
World Vision, a
non-governmental organisation, started its operations
in the area in July
this year, giving a six-member family a 50kg pack of
yellow maize, two litres
of cooking oil and some sugar beans.
But
this is regarded as inadequate for such a large
family.
"While the World Vision's
initiative is a commendable step, I think
more should be done to save us from
starvation," said Nyungwe Ndlovu, a
widow struggling to
survive.
"As it is, with the aid that we
get, we can only afford one decent
meal a day," she
said.
Another villager, Christopher
Tshuma, said humanitarian efforts should
be intensified to cushion people
from starvation.
"Concerted efforts should
be made to come up with a viable programme
that will contain an already
explosive situation," he said.
Some
villagers who have not yet benefited from the programme are
reported to be
surviving on wild fruits which they pound into a powder to
make some
porridge, sparking fears that this may result in people eating
poisonous
fruits.
Meanwhile, some villagers cross
the border illegally into Botswana to
exchange earthenware utensils for
anything edible.
"Scores of people are
crossing the border into Botswana to barter
their products for anything that
is edible. Something should be done by the
government to help us," said
Sheddy Ngwenya, another
villager.
Daily News
Chissano to open
Harare Show
8/26/02 1:13:00 PM
(GMT +2)
By Collin
Chiwanza
PRESIDENT Joaquim Chissano of
Mozambique will officially open this
year's Harare Agricultural Show, the
country's premier farming showcase,
which starts
today.
Last year, the show was officially
opened by Major General Joseph
Kabila, the DRC
president.
Dr Tony Mutukumira, the
information officer for the show, confirmed to
The Daily News that Chissano
would be this year's guest of honour.
This
year's official opening ceremony will be held on Friday
30
August.
Showgoers will this year not
have the opportunity to view the
different fascinating varieties of cattle,
while there has also been a
significant drop in the number of exhibitors in
the dairy and tobacco
sections.
There
was a sharp decline in the number of exhibitors in the dairy
produce section,
with a total of about 38 exhibitors coming this year as
compared to last
year's 51.
In the tobacco industry
section, only 28 exhibitors, from last year's
76 will be coming to
participate at this year's agricultural
show.
Mutukumira attributed the sharp
decline in the number of exhibitors to
the ongoing chaos on most commercial
farms throughout the country.
He said
while the absence of animals last year was mainly due to the
foot-and-mouth
disease outbreak, this year most commercial farmers showed a
total lack of
interest in the event because of the
serious
uncertainties they face on their farms.
Thousands of commercial farmers have been served with Section 8
eviction
notices which compel them to vacate their premises within the
stipulated
deadlines or face arrest.
More than 200
farmers have already been arrested over the past few
days and dragged before
the courts on charges of failing to comply with the
eviction
orders.
A number of them were given very
stringent bail conditions, which
forbid them from visiting their farms or
even getting anywhere near
them.
Daily News
A tale of the
fiddling DA and the inflammable
major
8/26/02 12:31:27 PM (GMT
+2)
Candid talk with Masola
waDabudabu
At times I think I am
traumatised by some of the nasty things that
happened around me at one time
or the other.
I occasionally suffer bouts
of uncontrollable fits as I relive some of
the dreadful events that affected
me.
Some of my memories on the sad events
are so vivid and so scary that I
find myself living in fear of the horrors
brought on by those memories.
I get scared
when my sour experiences come back like a déjà
vu.
While somehow those memories of the
intense aerial bombardment of our
camps in Zambia by the Rhodesian Air Force
jets have finally been accepted
by my system as having been a necessary evil
during an armed struggle, I
find myself having to ponder over some more
recent sanguinary issues.
I shall share
with you one such instance with its chilling
memories.
I recall with exacting accuracy the
curfew that visited the railway
town of Plumtree in 1984. I recall most of
the events that took place as the
curfew hit the ordinary people
hard.
During the curfew, some special
forces were deployed in Plumtree.
Luckily, they were not the men from the 5
Brigade, which was affectionately
known as the Gukurahundi by its
owners.
They claimed to have come from a
place known as Empress Mine near
Kadoma. They called themselves the
Presidential Guard.
When these gentlemen
arrived in Plumtree and its environs and told the
people that they were
called the Presidential Guard, most of us felt
honoured to be afforded men
who normally brush shoulders with the President,
for our
security.
I remember a friend of mine
expressing his gratitude to the then
President, Canaan Banana, for
compromising his own safety for the safety of
the people of Plumtree. We felt
very honoured indeed.
Our positive
excitement was short-lived when the men who had been
"donated" to the menace
of the marauding armed dissidents took no time in
exhibiting their rough
edges. The men soon began working their way into the
feelings of the innocent
people by adopting a heavy hand.
I am not
sure if they extended the same treatment to the dissidents
they were hunting
down, though.
My friend, the very one who
had applauded the deployment of the men
from the Presidential Guard,
concluded that the soldiers seemed to believe
that everyone in their
operational areas was a dissident.
My
first real encounter with the men from the Presidential Guard is
the focus of
this article.
Early one morning, I was
awoken by a forceful knock on my door. When I
asked the person who was
knocking to reduce his or her degree of rudeness, I
was shocked to hear the
voice at the other end threatening to blast its way
into the
house.
Timidly, I opened the door to three
average-sized soldiers who were
armed for hot combat. Before I could welcome
them in, a blow from the butt
of a rifle into my stomach introduced me to the
mood of the occasion.
The three men told
me the next time they called at my place, my
response should be prompt and
polite. They got into the house and demanded
to search it for arms of war and
armed dissidents.
Everyone in the house
was roused from their sleep and interrogated on
the subject of dissidents.
After the three soldiers had finished, they
ordered us to join the rest of the people of Plumtree town who were
being
gathered at the shopping centre in Dingumuzi
township.
At Dingumuzi shopping centre, I
found out that most of the people had
already been
gathered.
The soldiers and some
non-uniformed personnel were busy screening
the
people.
Emphasis seemed to be on
men aged between 16 and 40.
I fell into
that group.
We were all bundled into army
trucks and driven to Plumtree Police
Station. At the station, there was more
screening. Those who did not pass
the test were again loaded into army trucks
and sent to a destination we did
not know. My innocent face saved me. I
passed the screening exercise with
flying
colours.
Those of us who had passed the
screening test were ordered to walk
back to the shopping centre where the
rest of the people had remained.
When I
got to the shopping centre, I discovered that the soldiers were
addressing
the people. An army major stood up and started leading us in
shouting party
slogans.
He got the shock of his life. The
people did not respond.
Of all the people
gathered at the shopping centre, a negligible
percentage had ever been
subjected to Zanu PF slogans. Most of the people
were used to shouting PF
Zapu slogans.
In anger, the major started
haranguing the people of Plumtree for not
responding to his slogans. Angrily,
he told them that the time was
approaching when everyone would shout his
party's slogans with great zeal.
The army
major went on to insult the people of Plumtree for being
backward and
uneducated. He boasted that at that particular instant, he was
the only one
with a university degree. I personally felt emotionally and
physically
injured.
Here was a man insulting the
intelligence of the people of Plumtree. I
knew I had dropped out from
varsity, but that did not mean that everyone
else in Plumtree was as
illiterate as the army major was claiming. The
people of Plumtree felt
injured. I felt injured too.
Since the
army cordon was taking place for the first time in the town
of Plumtree, I
was left wondering what the influential people were doing,
letting this army
man stage a coup d'etat in their town. I wondered where
the district
administrator (DA) was. I had had faith in the authority of the
DA until the
army major breached that faith.
When the
major was over and done with us, the people were left visibly
shaken and
taken aback by the exercise. Little did they know that more was
coming their
way. As the curfew period got on, we began to understand that
the beatings,
the meetings and the tirades would go on until kingdom come.
We got used to
the beatings. We got used to the
insults. We
got used to the slogans.
We never really
got used to being bona fide members of his party. As
for me, I never got used
to being part of bush democracy, even though I had
spent part of my life in
the bush.
The tale of the politically
active army major and that of the inactive
DA has lived with me for a long
time. I thought I would never have to fall
foul of their different ways of
indifference and deviousness again. I
was
wrong.
I had an encounter with the
twosome during the March presidential
election. The one who had made us
respond to the slogans had been honoured
to supervise the election, while the
DA who did not react to a military
take-over was busy giving the results of
the presidential election
constituency by constituency in
Ndebele.
This could explain why eight
years ago the DA fiddled while the major
and his men were busy torching his
district with flames of hate.
The
involvement of the two in an election revived my dormant memories.
I remember
it all . . .
Daily News
Feature
Africa's simple choice - bullets or
ballots
8/26/02 1:05:13 PM (GMT
+2)
While the world's richest
nations debate trade liberalisation and
fixing flawed aid programmes, two
recent key events suggest African leaders
are at last committing themselves
to democracy, human rights and the
eradication of
corruption.
Together they signal a new
dawn for Africa that can do far more good
for the continent than anything
that comes out of this week's big United
Nations summit on sustainable
development in Johannesburg.
Last month,
the leaders of the continent's 53 states established the
African Union (AU),
modelled on the European Union.
This new
body will include an Executive Council, a Pan-African
Parliament, Court of
Justice, and a Commission. Its programme calls for
"respect for democratic
principles, human rights, the rule of law and good
governance" to make
African nations self-reliant.
The other
important step took place at the recent G8 summit in Canada,
when world
leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the New Partnership for
Africa's
Development (Nepad) and undertook "to establish enhanced
partnerships with
African countries whose performance reflects the
Nepad
commitments".
Countries must now
commit themselves to good governance, democracy and
the rule of law, and
pursue policies that spur economic growth, alleviate
poverty and encourage
foreign investment.
Both events represent
African solutions to Africa's problems,
signaling a desire to rediscover the
Lost Continent and replace dictatorship
by the bullet with decision-making
through the ballot. Europe must support
this call by African leaders, since
it is in all our interests to see
political stability and economic growth
there.
But the real challenge for the AU
and Nepad is, as one village elder
told us: "You cannot eat democracy!"
Certainly, the continent's problems
speak for
themselves.
The World Bank forecasts the
number of poor people will rise to 345
million by 2015 from 300 million in
2000. On present trends, around 37
percent of Africans will survive on US$1
per day by 2015, and over half the
children will receive no education. UNAids
estimates over 19 million have
died of Aids, and by 2020, 55 million more
will die without treatment and
prevention
programmes.
And then there is the famine
now hitting over 13 million people across
southern
Africa.
But will African leaders opt for
growth based on individual freedoms,
or unity where the battle cry "evil
West" is the answer to all problems?
True,
the colonial past left Africa with borders that divide
traditional
communities, and tragic memories of slavery and
oppression.
But the history is complex,
and the continent should aspire to move
beyond the trauma of the past in the
hope of finding a new global role.
Key to
any moves forward is Nepad's recognition that past attempts to
establish
continent-wide development programmes "for a variety of reasons,
both
internal and external, including questionable leadership and ownership
by
Africans themselves" were unsuccessful. But this depends critically
on
African politicians no longer wishing to grab and then retain power
whatever
the price.
Nepad's African
peer-review process will be a decisive element in
securing democratic
stability, and will affect future aid disbursements.
Whilst most African
countries hold multiparty elections fairly regularly and
some governments are
unseated, multiparty competition has not yet led to
more effective and
accountable government nor sustained
economic
development.
Without an
independent judiciary, public service ethos and free media,
African democracy
institutionalises an oligarchy which exploits and distorts
ancient tribal
loyalties.
Nations like Nigeria,
Mauritius, Cape Verde, Senegal, Ghana, Botswana,
Madagascar and Mali all
offer hope for the future, and recent developments
in Zambia are promising.
But Uganda, Guinea Bissau, Cameroon, Kenya, and the
tragic crisis in Zimbabwe
show there is a long way to go.
Since
Nepad will be linked to the African Union, the international
donor community
will have a good chance to re-assess its approach to aid by
increasing
cooperation between donors and reducing
duplication
andbureaucracy.
Donors must
seriously discuss what enhanced partnership by and with a
selected group of
countries entails. Nepad refers to "an independent
mechanism for assessing
donor and recipient country performance" based on
mutually agreed criteria.
The contractual relationship contained in the
ACP-EU Partnership Agreement
(signed in Cotonou) between 92 nations across
Europe, Africa, the Caribbean
and Pacific regions is one model for
development policy globally with its
mechanism for suspending
non-humanitarian
aid.
But in turn the developed world
should remove its tariffs and
subsidies and give better advice to developing
nations on economic
restructuring.
Optimism
for Africa's future is sadly undermined by the brutality of
several regimes.
And indeed, previous African leaders like Idi Amin Dada,
Jean-Bedel Bokassa,
Mobutu Sese Seko, Kamuzu Banda, Laurent Kabila and Siad
Barre should remind
us all of past mistakes.
But African
leaders have worked more closely among themselves to
resolve outstanding
conflicts. Here the recent success in the Sudan peace
talks, and between the
Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, could
mark a commendable
change.
Crucial to the African Union's and
Nepad's evolution are two electoral
tests of the will to pursue democracy and
reform. This year, in Kenya,
President Daniel arap Moi ends his 24 years in
power.
And in 2003, Nigeria - with 120
million citizens and over 250 ethnic
groups - has its presidential election
to decide if President Olusegun
Obasanjo continues in office. Before 1999,
Nigeria was under military rule
for 16 years, and the recent rise of Islamic
fundamentalism may prove
critical to the outcome in
Nigeria.
In a testament to this, an
Islamic court in northern Nigeria this week
upheld the Draconian conviction
of death by stoning of Amina Lewal, who has
an eight-month-old baby, for sex
outside marriage.
We share a moral,
social, economic and historic responsibility to make
the AU and Nepad work.
We must also be prepared to talk bluntly and to
tackle vested
interests.
No longer should taxpayer money
be squandered by dictators, but this
also means financial and industrial
conglomerates must not act as havens for
corrupt
dealings.
Ultimately Africa's people must
be able to exercise their democratic
rights if the continent is to achieve a
more prosperous and stable future in
which individual freedoms are respected.
And without good governance and
transparency no amount of aid money will turn
around failing state
structures.
Mr
Corrie is a British Conservative member of the European Parliament
and
honorary life president of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. Mr
Beyer
Helm is a policy adviser for the European People's Party
(Christian
Democrats) and European Democrats group in Parliament. - Wall
Street Journal
From The Sunday Telegraph (UK), 25
August
Dora, 12, gang-raped by Mugabe's men for four
hours
In the rape camps of Zimbabwe, young girls are
horrifically abused - often
to punish Mugabe's political opponents. Foreign
Correspondent of the Year
Christina Lamb meets the victims and reveals their
anguish
'The game we are about to play needs music," the Zimbabwean
police constable
said to the 12-year old girl. But as he tossed a mattress on
to the ground
it was clear that it was no game that he was planning. For the
next four
hours the girl's mother and younger sisters, aged nine and seven,
were
forced to chant praises to Robert Mugabe and watch Dora being gang-raped
by
five "war veterans" and the policeman. "Every time they stopped singing
the
policeman and war vets beat them with shamboks and sticks," said
Dora,
crying and clenching her hands repeatedly as she recalled the ordeal
which
took place behind her family hut in a village in the dark shadow of
the
Vumba mountains of Manicaland, in eastern Zimbabwe. "They kept
thrusting
themselves into me over and over again saying: 'This is the
punishment for
those of you who want to sell this country to Tony Blair and
the whites'.
When they had finished it hurt so much I couldn't
walk."
Now in hiding, spending most of her nights in frightened
wakefulness, she
remembers feeling the rough breath on her face, the hands
forcing apart her
thighs, and "that animal thing" as she calls it slamming
into her underfed
body. Dora was raped because her father is a supporter of
the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change. He is not a candidate, not a
party official,
just a simple carpenter who had mistakenly believed that he
lived in a
country where he could vote for whom he liked. Dora's story, as
she tells
it, started with a Land Rover full of war veterans drawing up at
the door
around 10pm one evening in June, while her father was away, and
ended with
her left bruised and bleeding at 2.30am. "There had been a bad
luck owl in
the msasa tree that day," she said, recalling hearing it in
between passing
out. But the real beginning of the horror can be traced back
to March when
her village voted against Mugabe in the presidential elections.
For rape has
become the latest weapon in Mugabe's war on his own population.
Dora's
echoing screams on the African night was a warning to all the
other
villagers as to what might happen to those who even think of defying
the
president again.
Dora is one of hundreds of young girls who
are being raped in the fields and
mountains of rural Zimbabwe every month as
part of what human rights workers
are calling a "systematic political
cleansing of the population". Many of
the girls are taken to camps run by
Mugabe's youth militia, the Green
Bombers, a sinister parallel to the rape
camps of Bosnian Muslim women
established by Serb forces in the early 1990s.
And with half the country
facing starvation, more and more youths are being
lured to join the militia
by the prospect of food. In Zimbabwe, though, there
is an extra, fatal
dimension to the ordeals that the women endure: with 38
per cent of the
population HIV positive, the rape is often the start of a
death sentence.
"We're seeing an enormous prevalence of rape and enough cases
to say it's
being used by the state as a political tool with women and girls
being raped
because they are wives, girlfriends or daughters of political
activists,"
said Tony Reeler, the clinical director of the Amani Trust, a
Harare-based
organisation that monitors and treats torture victims. "There
are also
horrific cases of girls as young as 12 or 13 being taken off to
militia
camps, used and abused and kept in forced concubinage. But I suspect,
as
with Bosnia, the real extent of what is happening is going to take a hell
of
a long time to come out."
Rape goes unreported in many
countries but more so in Africa, particularly
in rural areas where a raped
daughter is seen as bringing shame on the
family and afterwards becomes hard
to marry. The pressure to remain silent
is even stronger in a repressive
police state where the police are often the
perpetrators. Dora's family did
go to the police station only to be laughed
at with the words: "We're not
fools to arrest one of our colleagues." Nor do
many rape victims receive
medical treatment. In Dora's case the local clinic
had no drugs and the
family did not have the money to take her to hospital,
so she is being
treated with traditional herbs. Her own dreams of becoming a
nurse are in
tatters as she is terrified that she may have been infected
with the Aids
virus. In a month-long investigation, one of the most
disturbing I have ever
conducted in 15 years of foreign reporting, I and The
Sunday Telegraph's
photographer Justin Sutcliffe visited villages in the
Zambezi valley,
Matabeleland and Manicaland, interviewing rape victims and
their families in
secret locations. We talked to a teacher beaten so badly
that she had lost
her baby, and a former militia member who had participated
in the raping and
pillaging intended to pacify the countryside. We found a
population living in
terror, some towns completely "cleansed" of all
opposition. We spent a night
in terror ourselves when our car broke down in
a village in the Zambezi
valley, 40 miles from the nearest telephone,
leaving us to listen to chants
of "Pasi ne murungu" ("Down with the white
man") and other slogans of
Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party coming from a group
of men around a
fire.
Fear and hunger are what passes for life in much of Mugabe's
Zimbabwe. In
the capital Harare there is a facade of normality - workmen
repaint the blue
trolley shelter in the gleaming new airport terminal, the
traffic lights
work, and pavement cafes serve the best cappuccino in Africa.
The roads are
full of gleaming new BMWs, known as "Girlfriends of Ministers'
cars", bought
by government officials profiting from black market money
speculation. The
only signs of anything amiss are the long snaking queues for
bread, sugar
and fuel, the absence of maize (previously the country's staple
food) from
all shops, and the number of people simply hanging around.
Unemployment has
now reached 70 per cent of the working population. In the
rural areas that
Zimbabwe's Marxist president regards as his stronghold it is
a different
story. Furious that so many of "his" people voted against him in
elections -
which he knows very well he did not really win - and incensed by
calls such
as that last week from the Bush administration demanding a rerun,
he has
unleashed his forces to wreak revenge in the most horrible manner. At
his
inauguration in April, the 78-year-old who has ruled the country
since
independence in 1980, warned the opposition: "We'll make them run if
they
haven't run before." Imagining his declaration of victory would bring an
end
to the violence which had dogged the campaign, no one then realised
the
lengths to which he was prepared to go. Officials now speak of "taking
the
system back to zero" and of reducing the country's 12 million population
in
a chilling echo of what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia in the 1970s
and
seem to even be employing similar tactics of emptying cities and
targeting
teachers.
Last week Didymus Mutasa, the organisation
secretary of Zanu PF, said: "We
would be better off with only six million
people, with our own people who
support the liberation struggle." With rural
council elections due next
month which the president has no intention of
losing, the violence has
re-started. What has changed is the focus on women
and the blatant use of
police along with youth militia who are supposed to be
doing national
service and call themselves "taliban". The situation is
particularly bad in
Manicaland, or Eastern Highlands as the settlers called
it, apparently
reminded of Scotland by its misty mountains. In the town of
Buhera, anyone
who is against Mugabe has been forced to flee. Many have been
served with
court orders not allowing them back into the area until October
2, three
days after the elections. In Chiminga, the court officials have fled
because
they had been beaten by Zanu PF militia for granting bail to MDC
members.
"Mugabe has no intention of being challenged again," said Roy
Bennett, the
opposition MP for Chimanimani in Manicaland. "He looks at anyone
who doesn't
support Zanu PF as an enemy of the state who must be crushed
using any
means, and he has completely politicised the
police."
The outside world has played into Mugabe's hands by focusing
on the plight
of the 4,300 white farmers and the bizarre attempts to destroy
commercial
agriculture at a time when half his population is threatened
with
starvation. Hundreds of white farmers have been arrested over the past
10
days for defying a government order to move off their land. The other
evil
that he is perpetrating in the countryside is not easy to
investigate.
Mugabe has stationed two officers from his feared Central
Intelligence
Organisation in every village; merely talking to a murungu, or
white man,
can lead to interrogation or beatings. Driving around remote
eastern and
northern areas, not knowing who might be watching or what side
they might be
on is an eerie experience. In areas such as Hwedza, where most
of the
farmers have been evicted, the war veterans who have taken over are
setting
fire to the fields to prepare them for traditional subsistence
farming.
Plumes of smoke dot the horizon and flames lick the side of the road
- at
times it seems as if the whole country is burning. Every so often a
white
homestead surrounded by red bougainvillea and jacaranda trees comes
into
view, a strange island amid the blackened land. In almost every
village
where people were known to have voted against Mugabe, we pieced
together the
same story of beatings of teachers and wanton destruction of
property.
Everywhere we saw the charred skeletons of burnt bicycles, the main
mode of
transport of rural MDC workers. "The Black Boots [police] burnt my
house,"
said 47-year-old George, an MDC campaigner forced to flee Buhera two
weeks
ago. "We don't own much but they smashed all we had in front of my
children,
then urinated in the small amounts of sugar and flour we had
left."
The villagers' greatest fear is being taken to one of the
camps. They were
set up before the elections to train the youth militia to
harass the MDC and
many remain in existence. Apparently funded from the Food
to Work programme,
under which youths are supposed to receive food aid for
work such as road
building, they form the centres for Mugabe's terror
campaign. We visited one
of the most notorious at Bazeley River in
Manicaland. On the main road
outside the camp was a police roadblock, clearly
designed to stop anyone
getting near. With The Corrs blaring from our car
stereo, however, they
believed our story of being tourists lost in search of
a particular mountain
and incredibly let us through. We reached the camp by
crossing a narrow
bridge and driving up a dirt track. The series of tents
around a trestle
table at which young men were helping themselves to
breakfast looked
unnervingly like a scout camp apart from the "Do Not Enter"
sign painted
angrily on the gate, the surly red-eyed men hanging around
wearing T-shirts
bearing the legend "The Third Chimurenga", after the
liberation war, and
pictures of Osama bin Laden. It was here that 15-year-old
Priscilla, whom I
had interviewed in a safe house in Harare, was raped
repeatedly for three
days then had her genitals burnt with a poker. It was
here, too, that
Benjamin, a 32-year-old teacher, was badly beaten after
having his house
burnt down. "They accused me of repeating the word chinja
[change - the
opposition MDC election slogan] in lessons. They took me in to
one of the
tents and forced me to lie on my stomach and said they would keep
beating me
until I defecated. I told them I had already defecated in my pants
but they
said: 'No, you must defecate your whole intestines.' Finally they
stopped
and made me crawl in the mud. When they let me go, they said this is
only a
taste of what will happen to you."
A former member of the
youth militia, who fled because he was so appalled at
what he was being
ordered to do and is now in hiding, agreed to talk to The
Sunday Telegraph
about what went on in the camp. "I was desperate," he said.
"I had lost my
job in a fried chicken takeaway last November and have a wife
and
13-month-old baby girl to support. So when Zanu PF people came around
our
houses I joined. They said we would get Z$50,000 [about £600] but we
didn't
get any money, just food and beer. There were about 200 of us in the
camp and
we called ourselves 'the taliban'. Our doctrine was to be against
the white
man, he was our worst enemy, and our hero was bin Laden because of
the way he
stood up against the West. We were trained to be vigilant, always
looking for
opposition supporters, and were told if we saw anyone with an
MDC T-shirt we
must assault them with whips, catapults, steel bars. The idea
was to instil
fear in people so they would be frightened to vote and to take
revenge
against those who had. Then a couple of months ago they said it is
the women
who are behind this campaign to bring back white rule. They told
us to take
them to the bush, that they are daughters of dogs and coconuts,
and to bring
young ones back to the camp to service us. When I said we can't
do this, that
these are our sisters, they accused me of being a 'sell-out'
and beat
me."
Few of the victims are prepared to talk about their experiences.
One who did
agree to be interviewed in a safe house in Mutare was a girl
called Sara who
looks younger than her 16 years. Sara had been left with her
12-year-old
brother and orphaned seven-year-old twin cousins when her parents
fled their
village after numerous beatings and threats, believing that the
children
would be safer on their own. "One night around midnight we were
woken by
banging on the door," she recalled. "There were about 25 men. They
demanded
to know where my parents were. I told them that they were away at a
funeral
but they refused to believe me. They took everything out of the
cupboards,
all our pots and plates, and started breaking them with iron bars.
I begged
them to stop but they said: 'You must pay the price for what your
parents
have done.' One of them asked me if I'd ever slept with a man. I said
no,
and he said: 'Today you start, come and show us the white in you.' He
stuck
his hand in my mouth to stop me screaming. When he had finished he peed
on
me." In tears, she added: "I told my brother. We didn't know what to do,
we
were just children." When Sara's father discovered what had happened he
was
outraged. "I went to the police and they said: 'You people voted for
a
nonsense party, why didn't you vote for Zanu PF?' " Shaking his head,
Sara's
father insists: "This is not a local thing, it's from the top, from
the
president himself. This is a monster government doing monstrous
things."
The names of the rape victims have been changed for their
protection