The ZIMBABWE Situation Our thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe
- may peace, truth and justice prevail.
Back to Index
Back to the Top
Back to Index
Mugabe palace hints at plans to stay

Andrew Meldrum in Pretoria
Thursday August 28, 2003
The Guardian

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, is building a lavish palace
costing £3.75m on the outskirts of the capital, Harare.
Furnishings and security are expected to send the cost to more than £6m at a
time when nearly half of Zimbabwe's population is dependent on international
food aid.

Its sprawling accommodation includes 25 bedrooms with bathrooms and spas. It
is three times the size of the president's official residence, State House,
and his adjacent offices.

The mansion, located in the upmarket Borrowdale Brooke area, about 15 miles
north of the city centre, is nearing completion. The construction company
Energoproject, based in Belgrade, is building the palace.

Mr Mugabe has built smaller mansions in Harare and Zvimba, his birthplace,
as well a Chivu, the birthplace of his wife, Grace.

The construction of a helicopter pad and extensive communications lines at
the new site cast doubt over Mr Mugabe's intention to retire from politics,
suggesting that he intends to continue running the country from his new
home.

The current negotiations between Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change hinge on the president retiring as
chairman of the party at its annual congress in December. Another possible
retirement date would be his 80th birthday in February.

Once Mr Mugabe steps down, the two parties could draw up a transitional
arrangement that would lead to free elections.

"The whole point of this mansion is that Mugabe is unlikely to step down
from power," said John Makumbe, a political science lecturer at the
University of Zimbabwe.

"This is not a sign that Mugabe is preparing to go. It is a sign that Mugabe
expects to carry on with business as usual and to live like a monarch while
the rest of the country is mired in poverty."

Mr Makumbe, also a member of the anti-corruption group, Transparency
International, asked where Mr Mugabe got the funds to build the colossal
structure as its cost outstripped his annual salary of £23,000.

"It is an affront to the suffering people of Zimbabwe," Mr Makumbe said. "It
shows that Mugabe will need a further push to convince him that he really
must negotiate an end to his reign."
Back to the Top
Back to Index
Reuters

Zimbabwe frees oil imports, raises fuel prices


Wednesday August 27, 4:59 PM EDT

By Cris Chinaka

HARARE, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's embattled leadership sought to ease
fuel shortages that have crippled the economy on Wednesday by scrapping some
price controls and relaxing the state monopoly on imports.

Business leaders had long urged the move, which the state-run Zimbabwe
Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) reported would allow private companies to
import fuel to meet the country's needs and sell it at market rates.

President Robert Mugabe's government is grappling with the country's worst
political and economic crisis since independence in 1980, which many critics
blame on controversial policies and general mismanagement.

The economic squeeze is dramatised for ordinary Zimbabweans by severe fuel,
foreign currency and banknote shortages, and by inflation of nearly 400
percent, one of the highest rates in the world.

Relaxing the market for fuel will undermine a thriving black market that had
been fostered by unrealistically low price controls. Previous efforts to
fight the illegal trade had seen the government banning Zimbabweans from
carrying fuel in cans without a state permit.

The ZBC reported on Wednesday that Mugabe's government had officially ended
the state's monopoly in importing fuel and in setting retail prices.

"The government has deregulated the oil industry...which means that
registered oil companies will be allowed to import and to sell fuel at
market prices," it said.

But the ZBC said the government would run a dual system under which its
National Oil Company (NOCZIM) would import fuel for state departments and
public transporters which would be sold at a discounted price.


NEW PRICES

Private oil companies, including subsidiaries of a number of multinational
corporations which have mostly been confined to the retail sector, had
already agreed on a new pump price of Z$1,170 a litre for petrol and Z$1,060
for diesel, it said.

The new petrol price is about three times the old tariff, which was pegged
by the government in April after a rise of about 300 percent to Z$450 for
petrol and Z$200 for diesel. Fuel had been commanding much higher prices on
the black market.

Zimbabwe's official Herald newspaper reported on Wednesday that police had
seized fuel from a firm owned by a top member of Mugabe's ruling party,
accusing it of selling petrol at seven times above government-set prices.

The police move was one of the first to target a senior ZANU-PF member with
charges of profiteering from the country's economic meltdown.

Zimbabwe's fuel woes have worsened since a trade deal with supplier Libya
collapsed last November, a visible sign of the country's economic plight.

Mugabe, 79 and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, rejects
critics' charges he has mismanaged the economy, insisting it has been
sabotaged by opponents of his seizure of white-owned farms for
redistribution to landless blacks. ($1 = Z$824 on official market; $1 =
Z$3,800 on black market)
Back to the Top
Back to Index
Reuters



                  28 Aug 2003 01:04:12 GMT
                  FEATURE-Zimbabweans drift to neighbours as economy ails

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

            By Stella Mapenzauswa

            JOHANNESBURG, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Zimbabwean Kenneth Khumalo has
worked in South Africa for nearly a decade and says the turmoil at home is
unlikely to see him return any time soon.

            With unemployment hovering above 70 percent, many Zimbabweans
have sought work in neighbouring South Africa and Botswana while thousands
of others have gone as far as Britain, the United States, and Australia.

            The Zimbabwean exodus has gathered pace as President Robert
Mugabe's government faces its sharpest economic and political crisis since
independence from Britain in 1980.

            While Mugabe and his political opponents wrestle over how to
pull the country out of its mess, more and more Zimbabweans are voting with
their feet -- joining a flow of economic refugees that poses new problems
for both Zimbabwe and its neighbours.

            Khumalo, born Kenneth Sibanda, adopted the more South African
surname Khumalo to get "more of a South African feel", an indication he is
ready to stay in his adopted country.

            "I still have friends and relatives in Zimbabwe, but I only see
them once a year at Christmas. There is nothing to draw me back home
permanently," said Khumalo, who left Zimbabwe's southwestern city of
Bulawayo after leaving school in 1992.

            Mugabe's critics, led by the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) say he has mismanaged the country during his more than two
decades in power, leading to acute shortages of foreign currency, food, fuel
and -- increasingly -- patience.

            White-collar Zimbabweans, who once enjoyed one of Africa's most
promising economies, have seen their standard of living drop and many are
now leaving the country to take up menial jobs abroad working as bus
drivers, street cleaners and hotel workers, often illegally.

            "It is hard sometimes, you never completely get over the
homesickness," said Khumalo, who said he was in South Africa legally.

            The influx of Zimbabweans has raised hackles in South Africa,
which has its own serious unemployment problem and where locals increasingly
accuse foreigners of taking scarce jobs.

            Figures from South Africa's latest national census show that
41.6 percent of adult South Africans lacked formal work in 2001. Among
majority blacks, one in two people were unemployed.

            South African statistics say almost 47,000 Zimbabweans were
legally resident in the county in 2001, but officials estimate that about
one million more are in the country illegally and say between 3,000 and
4,000 are deported each month.

            BRAIN DRAIN

            Zimbabwe, too, is struggling to cope with what amounts to a
serious brain drain.

            The country's health and education sectors have been hit
particularly hard as salaries for teachers and medical workers fail to keep
pace with Zimbabwe's rocketing inflation, currently rated among the highest
in the world at nearly 400 percent.

            Zimbabwe government doctors went on strike in June, complaining
that a recent evaluation and pay review of public sector jobs had whittled
away their already-unsatisfactory monthly wage.

            The Harare-based Scientific and Industrial Research and
Development Center says more than 479,000 Zimbabweans work outside the
country, mainly in South Africa, Botswana, Britain and the United States --
but the opposition and human rights agencies say the hardships at home have
driven many more people out.

            South Africa, which lies just south of the Limpopo River, is the
nearest land of opportunity, and has the added advantage of allowing
Zimbabweans to visit home regularly and send back essential commodities
unavailable there.

            Work may be better in South Africa, but many Zimbabweans still
long to return home and avidly read Zimbabwe's newspapers online to track
political and economical developments.

            "It all looks gloomy at the moment, but I believe one day I will
be able to return to a more prosperous Zimbabwe," said Thulani Dube, another
Zimbabwean who works at the same hotel as Khumalo in Johannesburg's posh
Sandton district. Dube's wife and three children still live in Zimbabwe's
Gweru city.

            Among those who have sought employment across Zimbabwe's borders
are former agricultural labourers left jobless by Mugabe's seizure of
white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to landless blacks -- a
political move that critics say is partly responsible for the country's
economic headaches.

            Industry officials say over one million commercial farm workers
had lost their jobs or been displaced by the land reforms by December 2002,
and that fewer than 1,000 commercial farms remain operational out of 4,400
when the drive began.

            A large number of white families have also emigrated to South
Africa over the last three years, joining thousands who left Zimbabwe when
Mugabe took over in 1980, ending decades of white minority rule in the
former Rhodesia.

            Human rights groups say only about 60,000 thousand whites remain
in Zimbabwe from about 100,000 just after independence.

            Expatriate Zimbabweans and their South African allies have held
a number of anti-Mugabe demonstrations in South Africa, and many count
themselves as supporters of the MDC, which was formed in 1999 and has
emerged as the most potent political opposition.

            The MDC controls slightly over a third of the 150 parliamentary
seats in Zimbabwe after 2000 elections. Its leader Morgan Tsvangirai has
launched a legal challenge to Mugabe's victory in last year's presidential
elections, condemned as fraudulent by the opposition and several Western
countries.

            Mugabe, who says the MDC is a puppet of Western powers, denies
the mismanagement charges levied against him, and in turn accuses local and
international opponents of his land seizures of sabotaging Zimbabwe's
economy.

            Zimbabweans abroad remain divided about what has brought their
homeland so low. Khumalo and Dube agree that whoever is to blame, the road
to recovery will be long and hard.

Back to the Top
Back to Index
The Herald

Stop flouting exchange regulations, banks warned

By Masimba Karikoga
MOST financial institutions have continued to deliberately engage in illegal
foreign currency transactions in defiance of the Exchange Control Act, it
has emerged.

Acting Reserve Bank governor Mr Charles Chikaura this week threatened to
withdraw licences from at least nine financial institutions.

In a letter addressed to one of the financial institutions, Mr Chikaura
warned the banks (names supplied) against flouting exchange control
regulations or risk having their licences withdrawn.

"I appeal to you to ensure full compliance with exchange control regulations
by your bank.

"This is the last time the Reserve Bank will offer an option of a fine to
banks caught violating exchange controls," he said.

The letters were copied to the Minister of Finance and Economic Development
Dr Herbert Murerwa and the Registrar of Banks one Mrs M Mpofu.

Although Mr Chikaura and officials from the financial institutions could not
be reached for comment yesterday, sources confirmed that warnings had indeed
been issued from the central bank headquarters on Monday.

Executives from some of the financial institutions are said to have sought
assistance from their political connections, which led to withdrawal of
further action.

The financial institutions have briefly ceased trading in foreign currency.

Mr Chikaura said compliance monitoring inspections had been intensified and
banks found in contravention of regulations, especially those who continued
to trade in the parallel market or facilitate such transactions would have
their authorised dealer licences cancelled without an option of a fine.

In July last year, the Reserve Bank engaged external auditors to conduct
compliance inspections of all banks’ foreign currency trading activities.

The audit was completed in October 2002 and all banks were given an
opportunity to make representations or give explanations on the findings by
the auditors.

From the audit findings, the central bank noted with concern that
contravention of Exchange Control Regulations were rampant and widespread
among banking institutions.

Mr Chikaura said foreign currency trading activities by some banks revealed,
among other things, willful disregard of directives and some provisions of
the Exchange Control Regulations.

In order to stop such malpractice, the central bank took appropriate action
against the banks concerned.

The banks were given two options, either payment of a financial penalty in
terms of the Code of Conduct or Suspensions of Foreign Currency Dealing in
terms of Section 37 of the Exchange Control Regulations.

"Regrettably, most banks chose to ignore the Reserve Bank directives and we
are left with no option but to take the drastic action of cancelling
licences against the culprits, '' said Mr Chikaura.

The latest development comes amid serious allegations of rampant involvement
by financial institutions in activities on the parallel market.

Such activities are said to be fuelling the growth of the parallel market
and encouraging the fall of the Zimbabwe dollar against major currencies.

This also comes barely a year after the Government ordered the closure of
several bureaux de change amid allegations of heavy trading on the parallel
market.

Sources in the financial sector said several banks had taken over the role
of bureaux de change although the trade was being done secretly to avoid
detection.

Last year three commercial banks were fined more than $20 million for
flouting the Exchange Control Act after they bought foreign currency from
the parallel market.
Back to the Top
Back to Index
The Herald

African ministers discuss peri-urban farming

Herald Reporter
A TWO-DAY southern and east African ministers’ conference on Urban and
Peri-Urban agriculture begins in Harare today.

In a joint statement, the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and
National Housing, Cde Ignatius Chombo, and the regional director of the
Municipal Development Partnership for Eastern and Southern Africa, Mr George
Matovu, said the conference would provide participants with the opportunity
to relate urban and peri-urban agriculture to food security.

The conference is geared towards garnering support for environmentally
sustainable urban and peri-urban agriculture in the 11 participating
countries.

The conference would enable ministers responsible for urban development in
the two regions to share ideas and experiences on the emerging important
sector of urban and peri-urban agriculture and to develop an agenda for
action.

"It is expected that the conference will recognise the significant
contribution of urban and peri-urban agriculture to food security of urban
households, generation of jobs and income, self-esteem and environmental
improvement," they said.

The conference is expected to come up with a declaration known to be called
the Harare Declaration on Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture.

The declaration is expected to encourage local authorities to promote urban
and peri-urban agriculture in their cities.

"Further, the declaration is expected to encourage participating governments
to include urban agriculture in their programmes to alleviate poverty and
economic empowerment, food security, promotion of local economic development
and environmental and health improvement," they said.

Delegates are expected to call upon non-governmental organisations and
international development partners to support financially and materially
urban and peri-urban agriculture projects for the benefit of the urban poor.

The private sector would also be urged to invest in high value intensive urb
an and peri-urban agro-industries in order to create employment
opportunities.

"During the conference, a directory of local governments in the Sadc region,
which was developed by the regional information centre on local government
would be launched," they said.

The Minister of Special Affairs in the President’s Office, Cde John Nkomo,
is expected to officially open the conference this morning.

Other participating countries are Botswana, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Kenya,
Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

The workshop was organised by the Government of Zimbabwe and the Food,
Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, Food and
Agriculture Organisation and the Resource Centre on Agriculture and Food
Security of the Netherlands.
Back to the Top
Back to Index
JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURE
PRESS RELEASE - August 27, 2003

Email: justice@telco.co.zw; justiceforagriculture@zol.co.zw
Internet: www.justiceforagriculture.com

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

Press Release

JAG stands appalled at the apparent support by SADC leaders for the regime
in Zimbabwe.  JAG is bemused by the SADC leaders' plan to "build on
positive developments that are taking place at present" especially in the
light of the current wave of state sponsored illegal evictions of farmers
from their homes with the resultant job and production losses.  The
continued systematic breakdown of the rule of law and the ongoing state
sponsored human rights abuses need to be acted upon firmly if they are to
be stopped.  The SADC leaders' seeming ambivalence to the climate of fear,
widespread hunger and economic collapse that the above continues to create
is very worrying.  JAG believes that the SADC leaders' lack of resolve in
bringing truth and justice to Zimbabwe threatens the peaceful future of the
whole SADC region.

Back to the Top
Back to Index
JAG OPEN LETTER FORUM
Email: justice@telco.co.zw; justiceforagriculture@zol.co.zw
Internet: www.justiceforagriculture.com

Please send any material for publication in the Open Letter Forum to
justice@telco.co.zw with "For Open Letter Forum" in the subject line.

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

Letter 1: Ben Freeth

The White Man and Zimbabwe

The white man in Zimbabwe has been systematically discriminated against,
vilified and victimised by the state.  Is there a future for him in
Zimbabwe?

The last three years have without doubt seen an unparalleled decimation of
communities throughout rural Zimbabwe.  Farmers, farm workers, families and
friends have been ripped apart by the unstemmed tide that has been labelled
"land reform" by its apologists but which is in actual fact something far
more sinister.  As the years of this nightmare pass the dust continues to
fly and the evil men that stir it up continue to revel in it - for it is a
grand orgy of a revolution where the lusts of greed and power have been let
loose to kill, to steal and to destroy.

As whites and as farmers, we have borne the brunt of the revolution's
vanguard.  It has crashed over us like a wave, swamped us, overpowered us,
and left us bewildered, frightened and gasping.  Nine of every ten families
have lost their homes, lost their income and lost their community as they
are scattered to the four winds, blown like chaff, separated now from their
roots that seemed so strong.

The farm workers' plight is perhaps more pathetic, for apart from no home
they do not know where their next meal is coming from; or if there is to be
a next meal.  Around them death stalks in a predatory manner, snatching the
weakest, the poorest, the ones that have given way to despair, of those 2
million voiceless souls.  The whirlwind of AIDS has now gathered momentum
and they're falling like dominos.  With life expectancy now at 33, those
that have managed to work a single decade in their short lives are now old
men, lucky to have got to their 30th birthday.  Death is everywhere.  The
drums beat where those that are left behind are strong enough to beat them.

How do we cope with this manmade orgy of human tragedy?  How do we stop
ourselves from being eaten up with bitterness; overwhelmed by grief;
scarred deeply within by the hands of hatred and anger?  How do we disperse
the building sense of despair damming up behind each one of us?

For surely Zimbabwe was God's own country.

The easy way out is to wash our hands of the whole unhappy affair - go to
another continent where the smells of home do not worry the wounds that we
carry; bury ourselves in work and hard living.  Forget, just try and forget
about where we carved our niche in Africa.  But the wounds will always gape
and yaw; and the roots pull, and pull harder as time goes on.  We cannot be
chaff forever.

For once, just for once, as white men in Africa, our duty is surely to
stand; to stand by our old people who are destitute now and have nowhere to
go; to stand by our workers, who one day if we fight hard enough, might
stand again with us to stand by all, those who are hungry and need food; to
stand by the echoes of our past - a past of self-sacrifice and integrity
that propelled the land between the Limpopo and the Zambezi from a
pre-wheel or written language culture to a civilisation of educated, well
fed, healthy people in half a century.

The situation is fast reverting.  Well-fed healthy people are a thing of
the past; and soon education will be too.  Can we let Zimbabwe go to the
dogs in this twilight that we screw up our eyes to try and see through?
Would we not be betraying our past - the Africa that is in our blood as
strongly as in any other African?

We are a small tribe - there are less of us than elephants in Zimbabwe and
there has been for some years.  But we have still got a lot to offer.  What
we have echoes through us from former generations - missionaries,
agriculturalists, conservationists, doctors, teachers, builders.  Through
it the vein of integrity pulsated, a vein that we must preserve and guard
fiercely, for without it we will be lost and foundering in an evil sea.  If
we lose our integrity, a value so little prized and still less practiced in
Africa, and join the revolution by appeasing it and gaining through it, we
will not deserve our place under the African sky.

Anything good has got its price.  The emerald spotted wood dove's mournful
cry; the singing of golden grasses in August; the smell of impalpable dust
at the end of the dry season; the heady scent of African rain after the
October heat build-up, the feeling of release when the heavens open in all
their dramatic fury; these things, the wild and savage things are what make
Africa such a fierce and passionate place to live in.

But it has its price.  It is a brittle place where, left to the revolution,
there will be nothing left; nothing wild and beautiful; nothing worth
fighting for.  The battle then will be just like the battle of hyenas over
a rotting carcass.  The fierce passion in our hearts will have seeped away,
down through the ground like a stream in winter.

But for now the stream still runs.  The lion still roars at dawn.  The
wilderness is still home to more elephants than any other country on Earth;
but the shadows are getting longer.

The price has to be paid.  If we do nothing to end the revolution the
revolution will go on; and we in our gormlessness, our greed or our terror
will be implicated in silencing God's voice that reverberates through His
creation so poignantly here.  The task is a lonely one for so many have
turned their backs on their pasts.  Integrity has to be claimed fiercely;
passionately; from the heart.  We all have a part in bringing back the
fundamental criteria that a society needs to go forward.  We all have lines
that we should draw in the sand; but to find the honest man in Africa
prepared to do what needs to be done at his own selfless expense is
sometimes a hard task.

The only way that the evil can be overcome is through good.  Fight evil
with evil and we fight a battle that will never be won.  "Survive" evil
with compliance or fence sitting and evil thrives until survival becomes no
longer possible.  The history of Africa testifies to it.  Fight evil with
integrity, truth, justice and God and evil cannot perpetuate itself for
long.  The trouble is it needs men of integrity willing to fight selflessly
from the heart with passion.  In our weakened, unsteady state such men are
hard to find, but they're coming forward: Journalists, lawyers, doctors,
agriculturalists, economists, industrialists, accountants, judges,
policemen, soldiers, trade unionists, politicians, conservationists,
students, workers, church men *. They're coming forward in integrity to
support the battle against the destruction of Zimbabwe and its people.
Never before in post independent Africa has a country stood such a fighting
chance of coming through, of overcoming the revolutionary tide that has
destroyed so many to the enrichment of so few.

The white man in Zimbabwe has not stood completely aloof as the revolution
would want him to, watching it all happen like expats from elsewhere.  Many
have, but there are notable men, brave men who have stood with their
integrity intact against the revolution.  These men will continue to stand
alongside the black men who have stood so courageously for the same, taking
the imprisonments, the beatings and the tyranny's persecution of them for
the general good.  They deserve at the very least all of our unreserved
support in whatever way we can give it.  All of our futures depend on this.

But for each of us now, will we sit on our verandahs this eventide,
watching the sun sinking and the shadows spanning out believing that it is
all inevitable, just another day in Africa repeating itself?  Will we hear
the drums pulsating through the night over and over again beaten by those
that are left behind until the night is silent?  I hope not.  The future
does not belong to such people.  Through history it never has.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
All letters published on the open Letter Forum are the views and opinions
of the submitters, and do not represent the official viewpoint of Justice
for Agriculture.

Back to the Top
Back to Index
The Sun
 
Mugabe's residents evil
Lavish ... workmen have almost finished this £6million palace for Zimbabwe's brutal leader Robert Mugabe
VICIOUS dictator Robert Mugabe is having a lavish £6million palace built for himself — while millions of his people starve.

The sickening proof of Mugabe’s corruption was uncovered yesterday when photos of the building emerged from crisis-torn Zimbabwe.

A tragic 5.5million Zimbabweans — almost half the population — will need food aid by the end of the year. Many earn as little as £6 a month.


Destroyed ... Hitler's home was bombed in his final days

But that has not stopped evil Mugabe treating himself to a 25-bedroom retirement home set in three acres. The ceilings are being decorated by Arab craftsmen and its roof clad with tiles from China.

Opposition spokesman David Coltart said: “It has always been assumed that Mugabe himself has not been corrupt. The size of his house would suggest otherwise.”

Back to the Top
Back to Index
Mail and Guardian

Zimbabwe's fuel price up by 500%

      Harare

      28 August 2003 09:06

The price of fuel in Zimbabwe went up by more than 500 percent on Wednesday
as the government announced a deregulation of the petroleum oil industry.

Energy Minister Amos Midzi announced on state television the government was
relaxing controls on the oil industry to allow private operators to import
their own fuel.

The opening up of the oil sector to private players came with the
introduction of a dual fuel pricing system under which government-procured
fuel would be sold to government departments and public transport operators
at the old government prices.

Other motorists would buy fuel at more than five times the government
stipulated price.

Diesel that used to cost 200 Zimbabwean dollars (25 US cents) a litre will
now be sold at 1 060 Zimbabwean dollars (US$1,32) while petrol price has
gone up from 450 (56 US cents) to 1 170 Zimbabwean dollars (US$1,46).

Zimbabwe has grappled with an acute fuel shortage for three-and-a half
years.

Lately fuel has been available on the black market at prices that were eight
times more than the official pump price. - Sapa-AFP
Back to the Top
Back to Index
Sunday Times (SA)

MDC dismayed at SADC support for Mugabe

Thursday August 28, 2003 07:11 - (SA)

HARARE - Zimbabwe's main opposition expressed dismay yesterday at the
failure by a summit of southern African nations to condemn President Robert
Mugabe for what it called the "hoard of ills" that are currently burdening
the country.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said cheering Mugabe does not help
the situation in Zimbabwe, which is experiencing political stalemate and
deep economic woes.

Mugabe was greeted with applause and ululation at the start of a Southern
African Development Community (SADC) summit in Tanzania on Monday where
calls were made for an end to sanctions against his country.

"The MDC is deeply disturbed and dismayed by SADC's unwillingness to open
frank debate on the Zimbabwean crisis ... and to condemn Mugabe's illegal
regime for the hoard of ills that bedevil the Zimbabwean people today," the
party's shadow foreign minister Moses Mzila-Ndlovu said in a statement.

It said SADC has a "moral and historical obligation to intervene in Zimbabwe
on behalf of the suffering people".

The MDC also called on SADC to put pressure on Mugabe's government to resume
talks with the opposition and "agree on a transitional arrangement and free
and fair election".

The party is disputing Mugabe's victory in last year's presidential
elections.

"This option is not only good for Zimbabwe but for the whole region in that
it will certainly prevent a spill-over of the crisis into neighbouring
countries," Mzila-Ndlovu said.

AFP
Back to the Top
Back to Index