| The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe - may peace, truth and justice prevail. |
By Ed O'Loughlin in Johannesburg
Until a couple of years ago, when Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe suddenly declared war on Britain's colonial legacy, he was fond of quoting Shakespeare in public.
He is probably familiar, then, with the aging Macbeth who, as foes close in, decides he has waded too far though blood to think of backing out.
Outside his own immediate power structure Mugabe, 77, seems to have few allies left in his battle to cling to power.
The Zimbabwean Council of Churches has become the latest influential body to join the chorus of condemnation. In London, Zimbabweans of all races gathered outside the High Commission last week to protest against state-sponsored violence.
Since losing a constitutional referendum in February last year Mugabe has repeatedly blamed his difficulties on a conspiracy backed by Britain, the former colonial power.
On Friday UN human rights investigators urged the Government to protect five independent journalists whose names have appeared on an alleged hit list to be killed or harmed as presidential elections near next April.
In the United States, Mugabe's wealthy inner circle risks being targeted by "smart sanctions" set out in a pro-democracy bill making its way through Congress.
South Africa, whose currency is being battered by fears that it may go Zimbabwe's way, also shows signs of taking a firmer stand against Mugabe.
But analysts fear that all this opposition may only make Mugabe escalate the violence.
Zimbabwe's respected judicial system has been gravely weakened by the retirement under threat of violence of several senior judges and the appointment of government allies in their stead.
One regional analyst said: "I think the odds are at this point that, given the lengths to which they've demonstrated they are willing to go to stay in power, Mugabe will by hook or by crook declare himself the next president, whatever anyone else says".
With the armed security forces on his side he can cling to power regardless of what happens to the 12 million people he rules.
The biggest threat to his survival may come from food shortages caused by unrest on the land.
Experts predict a 600,000-tonne fall in last year's 2.1 million-tonne maize harvest.
To avoid famine as the election approaches, fertile Zimbabwe needs to import 800,000 tonnes of grain.
But with the economy in crisis and foreign exchange almost impossible to obtain, it is likely that only massive western food aid can fend off disaster.
Analysts say it is extremely unlikely that any of the big grain producing countries would give Mugabe a lifeline by channelling aid to his government-controlled food schemes.
But if people begin to die, and bodies appear on television screens, public sentiment could force a change of heart.
In post-independence Africa, in places like Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, there is a long tradition of callous dictators and warlords exploiting their people's starvation for political and financial gain.
HARARE, Aug 27 (AFP)
The Zimbabwe government Monday hit out at South African central bank governor Tito Mboweni for blaming the fall of the rand on instability in neighbouring Zimbabwe. Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said that for South Africa to ascribe every fall of the rand to Zimbabwe "has now become so childish as to convince only those who are either insane or plain incompetent". "If true, the remarks are highly sensational, irresponsible, dangerous and therefore most unfortunate," Moyo said in a statement. Mboweni was quoted last week by South Africa's Business Day newspaper as saying that "the wheels have come off in Zimbabwe" due to President Robert Mugabe's plans to seize 90 percent of white-owned farms to resettle black farmers and landless peasants. Moyo said Mboweni should be "more responsible as governor of South Africa's Reserve bank because of the dignity and sensitivity of the position of his office". "The irresponsible remarks attributed to Mr Mboweni are so flippant, ill-considered and ill-informed as to be no different from the usual gibberish churned out by the all too familiar quarters whose agenda against Zimbabwe ... is now a public secret," said Moyo. On Tuesday, the rand fell to its lowest level ever against the dollar when it closed at 8.44 to the greenback, and on Wednesday it hit record lows against the pound and euro, trading at 12.26 and 7.77 respectively.
AFP
MAPUTO, Aug 27 (AFP)
Mozambique and neighbouring Zimbabwe on Monday agreed to launch the Beira Development Corridor, a road and railway network linking landlocked Zimbabwe to the Indian Ocean. The decision was announced after talks between heads of state of the two countries, Joaquim Chissano and Robert Mugabe in the Mozambique central port city of Beira. A memorandum of understanding signed by the two leaders says the Beira Development Corridor will be launched mid-October. A road and railway network aleady exist between the two neighbours, but operate below capacity due to non-maintainance, among other factors. Zimbabwe used to be the main user of Beira port but due to its economic crisis the flow of Zimbabwean freight has fallen drastically.
A similar corridor in southern Mozambique is already operational. The Maputo Development Corridor comprises a modern road linking Maputo and the South African city of Witbank, and a railway line between the two states.
From The Independent (UK), 28 August
South African leaders tell Mugabe to find peaceful solution on farms
Harare - President Robert Mugabe's status suffered a further blow on Monday when southern African leaders - seen as crucial to diplomatic progress in Zimbabwe - called him to a meeting and insisted on a peaceful and legal solution to the land crisis in his country. Their encounter with the 77-year-old President in the Mozambican port of Beira came as Zimbabwe's Agriculture Minister, Joseph Made, made a sharp U-turn by admitting that his government is facing a maize shortage. Mr Made, a close ally of President Mugabe, said Zimbabwe would need to import 100,000 tons of maize from South Africa in the next few months.
In Beira, under the banner of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique and President Bakili Muluzi of Malawi expressed concern that Zimbabwe's crisis could snowball across the entire southern African region were it not resolved without violence. "Their message was the same one that the SADC leaders have been saying... let land redistribution proceed without violence," said a top Zimbabwean foreign ministry official. The source said presidents Muluzi and Chissano had agreed that there was need for SADC to launch an initiative to appeal for international aid to fund Zimbabwe's land reform. "However, all that would be made easier if the President [Mugabe] is seen as doing something to stop commercial farm violence," said the official.
In the 18 months since government-orchestrated violence began in Zimbabwe, diplomats in Britain and other European Union countries have formed the view that President Mugabe's Achilles heel lies in the attitude of other African leaders. In past years, he could count on the loyalty of the liberation old-boy network to back him in the face of the former colonial powers. Monday's meeting featuring President Chissano - who was best man at President Mugabe's second wedding in 1997 - showed starkly that those days are over. Two weeks ago, a SADC meeting in Malawi - the current chair of the organisation - established a four-country task force to examine the land issue and its impact on investment in South Africa and other countries in the region. On 6 September, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, will travel to a Commonwealth meeting brokered by Nigeria at which he will confront his Zimbabwean opposite number.
Mr Made's announcement on the maize shortage came after months in which he had claimed that Zimbabwe had adequate maize stocks, despite the United Nations' predictions that the country faced significant food shortages because of crop deficits caused by the weather and by violence on commercial farms. The minister told state-run media yesterday that the 100,000 tons that Zimbabwe will buy from South Africa will be stored until April or May when the country's own supplies are due to run out. Other southern African countries affected by floods and droughts in the past two years will also need to import maize, including Zambia, which needs 300,000 tons, and Malawi, which requires 210,000 tons.
President Mugabe, meanwhile, refused yesterday to meet the head of the World Council of Churches after Zimbabwean churches criticised him for failing to halt political violence. Konrad Raiser, secretary general of the group, said that Mr Mugabe's office did not respond to requests to meet a six-member delegation on a five-nation African tour that took it to Angola, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.
From News24 (SA), 28 August
Mboweni 'childish and ill-informed'
Harare - The Zimbabwe government on Monday hit out at South African Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni for blaming the fall of the rand on instability in neighbouring Zimbabwe. Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said that for South Africa to ascribe every fall of the rand to Zimbabwe "has now become so childish as to convince only those who are either insane or plain incompetent". "If true, the remarks are highly sensational, irresponsible, dangerous and therefore most unfortunate," Moyo said in a statement.
Mboweni was quoted last week by South Africa's Business Day newspaper as saying that "the wheels have come off in Zimbabwe" due to President Robert Mugabe's plans to seize 90 percent of white-owned farms to resettle black farmers and landless peasants. Moyo said Mboweni should be "more responsible as governor of South Africa's Reserve bank because of the dignity and sensitivity of the position of his office". "The irresponsible remarks attributed to Mr Mboweni are so flippant, ill-considered and ill-informed as to be no different from the usual gibberish churned out by the all too familiar quarters whose agenda against Zimbabwe ... is now a public secret," said Moyo. On Tuesday, the rand fell to its lowest level ever against the dollar when it closed at 8.44 to the greenback, and on Wednesday it hit record lows against the pound and euro, trading at 12.26 and 7.77 respectively.
From The Daily News, 27 August
Mob bars Tsvangirai from entering hospital
Masvingo - A group of about 30 Zanu PF supporters yesterday barred Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC president, from entering Masvingo General Hospital where three MDC officials are hospitalised. The group comprising mostly of women, blocked the hospital entrance and charged towards Tsvangirai’s motorcade. Clad in Zanu PF T-shirts, the group declared that the MDC leader should not be allowed into the hospital premises. Tsvangirai who had been in Masvingo since Thursday last week, deplored the action as a reflection of the lack of democracy in Zimbabwe. Visibly disappointed Tsvangirai said: "We had scheduled to visit the hospital where three MDC officials are hospitalised. When we arrived at the gate, a group of Zanu PF supporters blocked the entrance and closed the gate. We succumbed to their demands and we drove off."
He said the incident reflects gross abuse of human rights. "It clearly shows that there is no democracy in this country. The action was unnecessary and was aimed at disrupting my visit. I think and feel I had a right to see my party officials who are in hospital." The news that the MDC leader was in Masvingo did not go down well with Zanu PF supporters and war veterans who later grouped and refused him entrance into the hospital. Said Tsvangirai: "I am a free citizen of this country and, therefore, should be allowed to move freely. I was in Masvingo to meet party structures so as to consolidate our support." Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Zanu PF supporters who refused to be named, told The Daily News in an interview that the party supporters had gone to the hospital to do some charity work. "We had gone to the hospital to clean the wards. It was just unfortunate that Tsvangirai came when we were starting to clean the hospital premises and we had to block him from entering."
From The Star (SA), 27 August
Zim to import 100 000 tons of maize from SA
Harare - Zimbabwe is to import 100 000 tons of maize from neighbouring South Africa in a bid to avert a looming food shortage, Zimbabwean Agriculture Minister Joseph Made said in an interview on Monday. The 100 000 tons will be stored away until April or May 2002, when the county's maize stocks are expected to run out, the minister said in the state-run newspaper The Herald. The decision came after a weekend meeting in Harare of 14 members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which agreed to lift regional trade barriers on the staple food. Other SADC countries are expected to place their orders with the South African government within a week "so that South Africa does not sell its surplus maize to people outside the region," Made said.
Agricultural production in Zimbabwe has been crippled because of land invasions on commercial farms. Since February 2000, supporters of Zimbabwe's ruling party have invaded hundreds of white-owned commercial farms to push for faster land reforms to redress colonial-era inequalities in ownership. The farm invasions have been closely tied to political violence, mainly targeting opposition supporters. Other SADC members which will urgently import maize are Zambia, which needs 300 000 tons, Angola (257 000 tons), Malawi (210 000), Lesotho (147 000) Botswana (128 000), Namibia (119 000), Swaziland (82 000) and Mauritius (35 000). Much of Southern Africa faces cereal shortages after devastating floods destroyed many crops earlier this year.
From The Star (SA), 27 August
DA releases Zimbabwe 'torture' plan
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has released a secret document outlining an alleged Zanu-PF strategy to harass farmers out of Zimbabwe and infiltrate the opposition by next year's presidential elections. The document, which was circulated last month before the recent round of invasions in Chinoyi, Doma and Hedzwa, was obtained by DA MP Stuart Farrow and released on Sunday. He said he had obtained it from a reliable source and had confirmed most of his findings during a fact-finding tour of Zimbabwe last week. He was still trying to verify its authenticity, since it did not have a letterhead, when details of the same document were published in Britain's Sunday Telegraph.
Zimbabwe's Information Minister Jonathan Moyo declined to comment on "rubbish". He said Zanu-PF was a mature party that spoke for itself. "I am not interested in talking about something that is not ours. I do not want counter-intelligence where you produce your own documents and want us to comment on it, he said. The document says: "Operation 'Give up and leave' should be thoroughly investigated and planned so that farmers are systematically harassed and mentally tortured and their farms destabilised until they give in and give up." It also says:
The opposition should be systematically infiltrated with highly paid people to destabilise it and cause infighting.
Methods should be devised to create negative press reporting about the opposition, regionally and internationally.
Some farmers should not be harassed, but should disappear. Their disappearances should point to no one but themselves.
"Sell-outs" in farms should disappear without trace.
The document says that as a reward for successfully implementing the strategy, there will be no going back on farm seizures and those who participated in the strategy will get top jobs. It also promises "rewards" if farmers and the opposition are brought to their knees and that there will be no prosecutions for politically motivated crimes. Farrow produced Zimbabwe newspaper headlines promising top jobs for war veterans in the past and more funding for the Zanu-PF-backed Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions (ZFTU). He said employers were being forced to deduct fees for ZFTU in order to undermine the support of Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, associated with the Movement for Democratic Change.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, 77 and in power since leading the former white-ruled Rhodesia to independence from Britain in 1980, is struggling to contain a deepening economic crisis blamed on government mismanagement. This has been compounded in the past year by a controversial land reform programme aimed at redistributing white-owned commercial farms to landless blacks.
From The International Herald Tribune, 27 August
Anti-Racists in Durban Can't Ignore Mugabe's Crime Nearby
Jim Hoagland
Washington - The choice of South Africa to host the United Nations World Conference Against Racism instantly rang true. The post-apartheid governments of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki have worked hard to ease the racial hatreds and fears that once made South Africa an international pariah. The conference opens on Friday in Durban. The force of South Africa's example could deepen the discussions on this human evil. The reasons for the choice of site remain valid, despite the conference's debilitating controversy over efforts to revive the propagandistic Zionism-is-racism slogan. And what is going on next door in Zimbabwe reinforces the reasons for the delegates to come to the southern tip of the continent. They can learn a lot about the political uses of racism from President Robert Mugabe's predatory, nation-wrecking behavior.
Racism is not for racists alone. It is a handy political and economic tool for the quick, the desperate and the greedy as well as for biological and cultural ideologues. It can become as vicious a diversionary weapon in unprincipled black hands in Africa as it was in white ones in Mississippi. President for two decades, Mr. Mugabe has turned his once pleasant and relatively prosperous agricultural nation into an African nightmare. His persecution and brutal dispossession of white farmers and their black workers threatens to inflame tensions in South Africa. But he drains the moral authority that post-independence Africa has claimed in world politics because of the continent's suffering and exploitation by European colonialists.
Africa's leaders still find it nearly impossible to criticize totalitarianism by one of their peers. They fear that speaking out would weaken Africa's credibility, when it is actually their silence which does that. Their dilemma is heightened by the perception that Mr. Mugabe's primary targets and victims are whites. This perception is essentially false - his real struggle is with the disillusioned and despairing black majority that wants him to leave office. Like Mississippi's Theodore Bilbo, South Carolina's young Strom Thurmond or Alabama's George Wallace, Robert Mugabe knows the value of obscuring the causes of man-made poverty by appealing to innate fears of the other - who can be blamed or at least hated for the way things are.
Power for life is President Mugabe's goal, to be achieved by fanning the embers of resentment toward the settlers who followed Cecil Rhodes north from Pretoria to subdue and trick African chieftains out of their lands. Today, after 21 years of independence, about 4,000 white farmers own one-third of Zimbabwe's farmland while 8 million Africans live on the rest. That is a real problem. Britain, the former colonial power, has offered to help finance a serious land reform program. Mr. Mugabe prefers confrontation and violence. He has betrayed not only the revolution he led but also the foreign governments that exerted pressure on the white settler regime with effective economic sanctions. His own abuses of human rights now rival the actions of those who oppressed him.
Imposing a trade embargo would bring life-threatening shortages of food and goods. Zimbabweans have effectively become Mr. Mugabe's hostages. His mismanagement of the economy, which turned the population against him in the first place, has become his international shield. The South African government outlawed land seizures this month to prevent Zimbabwe-style takeovers from spilling into South Africa. But Pretoria is still reluctant to criticize its neighbor directly or to join international efforts to stigmatize Mr. Mugabe. The racism conference comes to South Africa to celebrate a recent, impressive triumph of humans over their own worst instincts. But their gathering will lose all credibility if the leaders and citizens who assemble in Durban turn a blind eye and a mute mouth toward Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe is running a laboratory case study for them on the political uses of racism.
President Robert Mugabe's status suffered a further blow on Monday when southern African leaders seen as crucial to diplomatic progress in Zimbabwe called him to a meeting and insisted on a peaceful and legal solution to the land crisis in his country.
Their encounter with the 77-year-old President in the Mozambican port of Beira came as Zimbabwe's Agriculture Minister, Joseph Made, made a sharp U-turn by admitting that his government is facing a maize shortage. Mr Made, a close ally of President Mugabe, said Zimbabwe would need to import 100,000 tons of maize from South Africa in the next few months.
In Beira, under the banner of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique and President Bakili Muluzi of Malawi expressed concern that Zimbabwe's crisis could snowball across the entire southern African region were it not resolved without violence.
"Their message was the same one that the SADC leaders have been saying... let land redistribution proceed without violence," said a top Zimbabwean foreign ministry official.
The source said presidents Muluzi and Chissano had agreed that there was need for SADC to launch an initiative to appeal for international aid to fund Zimbabwe's land reform. "However, all that would be made easier if the President [Mugabe] is seen as doing something to stop commercial farm violence," said the official.
In the 18 months since government-orchestrated violence began in Zimbabwe, diplomats in Britain and other European Union countries have formed the view that President Mugabe's Achilles heel lies in the attitude of other African leaders. In past years, he could count on the loyalty of the liberation old-boy network to back him in the face of the former colonial powers. Monday's meeting featuring President Chissano who was best man at President Mugabe's second wedding in 1997 showed starkly that those days are over. Two weeks ago, a SADC meeting in Malawi the current chair of the organisation established a four-country task force to examine the land issue and its impact on investment in South Africa and other countries in the region.
On 6 September, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, will travel to a Commonwealth meeting brokered by Nigeria at which he will confront his Zimbabwean opposite number.
Mr Made's announcement on the maize shortage came after months in which he had claimed that Zimbabwe had adequate maize stocks, despite the United Nations' predictions that the country faced significant food shortages because of crop deficits caused by the weather and by violence on commercial farms. The minister told state-run media yesterday that the 100,000 tons that Zimbabwe will buy from South Africa will be stored until April or May when the country's own supplies are due to run out.
Other southern African countries affected by floods and droughts in the past two years will also need to import maize, including Zambia, which needs 300,000 tons, and Malawi, which requires 210,000 tons.
President Mugabe, meanwhile, refused yesterday to meet the head of the World Council of Churches after Zimbabwean churches criticised him for failing to halt political violence. Konrad Raiser, secretary general of the group, said that Mr Mugabe's office did not respond to requests to meet a six-member delegation on a five-nation African tour that took it to Angola, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.
Maputo, Mozambique, Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The heads of seven African nations
will meet to discuss Zimbabwe's land crisis next month, Agence France-Presse
said, citing Malawi President Bakili Muluzi.
Heads of state from Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and South
Africa will convene in Zimbabwe, Muluzi said at a meeting with Zimbabwe's
President Robert Mugabe and Mozambique's President Joaquim Chissano, in Beira in
central Mozambique.
``I invited them to come and see the situation for themselves,'' AFP quoted
Mugabe as saying on state television. Zimbabwe's opposition, white farmers and
other groups will be invited to attend the meeting. It will be held by
mid-September, Mozambique's presidential spokesman Estefane Moholovi told AFP.
Zimbabwe's land crisis began last February when ''war veterans'' started
occupying white-owned farms in support of Mugabe's plan to redistribute land to
blacks. About 2,000 farms have been seized, disrupting planting when the country
is expected to face shortages of corn and wheat later this year.
Zimbabwe plans to import 100,000 metric tons of corn from South Africa this
year in a bid to avert a food shortage, the state-controlled Herald newspaper
reported yesterday. The government's own research unit, Agritex, said the
country will need 600,000 tons of corn to avoid a shortage.
SAFM, a South African state-owned radio station, cited Mozambique's Chissano
as saying Mugabe may reconsider the land program.
The farm invasions and food shortages come in the run-up to presidential
polls that Mugabe must call before the end of April. His support is being eroded
by the country's worst economic crisis. More than half of Zimbabweans are
unemployed and annual inflation is near a record 70.1 percent.
Botswana faces flood of illegal immigrants
-- The Mail&Guardian, August 28, 2001.
MSIZI NCUBE
Poverty-weary and politically
disgruntled Zimbabweans are increasingly emigrating to Botswana, despite some
crude deterrent measures imposed by authorities there
Of greater concern are the fatalities that go with the trend. In March 16
Zimbabwean deportees died when the truck they were travelling in collided with a
heavy-duty vehicle. However, Zimbabweans are not deterred, believing that
nothing, not even death, could be worse than the poverty and harassment they
experience back home, where the economy is at its lowest ebb and political
violence and intimidation are the order of the day.
Some have successfully integrated into Botswana’s formal business sector and
are enjoying all the benefits entitled to indigenous business people. Josphat
Moyo (35), a Zimbabwean, owns a dairy stall outside Gaborone. He first came to
Botswana in 1990 and worked as a cattle head boy before pulling strings to
secure a work permit. “It did not come on a silver plate though. You have to
work hard, persevere and develop a never-say-die spirit,’’ he says.
Asked
if he has any intention of ever going back to his homeland, Moyo says he will
only be willing to do so the day Zimbabwe has a truly democratic, honest and
transparent government.
Deterrent measures taken against foreigners found in Botswana without proper
residential or travel documents include prolonged detention of two to three
weeks in police holding cells before trial or deportation.
The rising number of illegal immigrants has also led to xenophobia among
Botswana’s citizens, who believe the foreigners are getting the better of the
job market. Immigrants say they are regularly vacated without due notice from
rented residences, with preference given to locals. They are called derogatory
names and allegedly often denied the right to justice and police protection in
case of criminal victimisation.
Meanwhile, South Africa, Mozambique and Botswana are preparing for a greater
influx of refugees in case the economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe worsens
in the coming months.
Tens of thousands of people are expected to flood across the borders if the
land crisis causes major food shortages or the campaign of terror unleashed by
Mugabe deepens in the run-up to next year's presidential election.
Pretoria has had contingency plans in place since the end of last year. A
summit of regional leaders earlier this month warned that Zimbabwe's economic
crisis could seriously undermine its neighbours. As a result the three countries
held discussions with United Nations officials about their preparations for a
major refugee crisis. South Africa is planning a tented refugee camp at Beit
Bridge, just inside the border with Zimbabwe. Mozambique says it will house
refugees at the port city of Beira. The Botswanan army is planning a camp in the
far north of the country, near the Caprivi strip.
Zimbabwe is predicting a 600 000-tonne maize shortfall — one-third of its
usual production — by the end of the year. The political crisis also looks
likely to deepen. The Minister of Land, Joseph Made, told a state newspaper last
week that white farmers whose land has been listed for seizure must abandon
their homes within a fortnight to make way for black settlers.
By ANNA HUSARSKA
HARARE,
ZIMBABWE
The Age: Monday 27 August
2001
The most closely watched foreign politician in Zimbabwe these days is not some high official in Africa or the former colonial power, Britain. It is Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Serbia now awaiting trial by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Milosevic's fate gives hope to Zimbabweans that their own President, Robert Mugabe, will one day answer for his deeds - that dictators can be overthrown without bloodshed and that civil society can prevail over a despot.
Just as Comrade Slobo thought the whole world was anti-Serbian, so too does Comrade Bob accuse the whole world of being anti-Zimbabwean. And just as with Milosevic, Mugabe's excesses - human-rights violations, lack of rule of law, economic decline and state-sponsored terrorism - threaten to plunge his country into civil war.
Mugabe, who has been in office for 21 years, has paid no heed to criticism from the United Nations ("deeply concerned") or the (former British) Commonwealth ("concerned that problems continue"), or to the straightforward words from US Secretary of State Colin Powell about "totalitarian methods".
When groups of citizens gathered here in early August to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe, Mugabe's Minister for Information, Jonathan Moyo, called the participants "mercenaries" and "a bunch of sellouts". When the judiciary tries to oppose the most outrageous actions by authorities, be it violating the law on airwaves, rigging elections or unlawfully occupying farms, the government ignores the Supreme Court rulings. It has even forced the chief justice to resign and packed the court with three new judges.
When the local press writes stories that are unwelcome, the printing or editorial offices are bombed and journalists are tortured. Foreign journalists who are too critical get expelled, or their accreditation is not renewed; there is now screening of journalist visa applicants.
Is there any way to get Mugabe to change course and spare his country more suffering? There is one certain way at least to show him that he is persona non grata in democratic company, and here again the example of Yugoslavia is relevant. What's needed are sanctions aimed specifically at Mugabe and his close circle of collaborators in the government and in the ruling party.
The International Crisis Group proposed in two reports last year that other nations "isolate senior government and party leaders by declining to receive them abroad; stop visa issuance to senior officials". In our report issued last month we enlarged this recommendation: "Impose travel restrictions on most senior and responsible Zimbabwean Government officials and their families and request endorsement by the UN Security Council."
The Zimbabwe Democracy Act, which was passed by the US Senate on August 2 and is now going to the House, orders implementation of "travel and economic sanctions" against those responsible for the deliberate breakdown of the rule of law, politically motivated violence and intimidation in Zimbabwe, "and their associates and families".
As in Serbia, such sanctions would be more effective if adopted by more countries than just the US - say, the European Union and, if possible, the Commonwealth, or at least some of its member states.
The sanctions should cover travel and stay permits for extended family members (the only exceptions should be for openly estranged family members). No more shopping sprees at Harrods for Grace Mugabe, the young wife of the 77-year-old leader; no more lovely escapades for Comrade Moyo to his house in Johannesburg; no more dreams of finishing at a school in Switzerland for the daughter of Solomon Mujuru, ruling party Politburo member. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa would have to remove his son Kangai from that school in the US.
If the comrades who wage war on their own people don't hear the voices of international organisations or their own public opinion, they might listen to the voices of their sons, daughters, nieces and nephews, suddenly angry because they are unwelcome abroad or because they have lost a precious fellowship or a chance to get a prestigious diploma from a foreign academy.
There are far too many Zimbabweans who, because of the policies of Mugabe and his coterie, are losing much more - their lives, health or livelihood.
A simple travel ban would not cure all the ills of Zimbabwe, but it would be a step in the right direction.
Anna Husarska is senior political analyst at the International Crisis Group.
From The Cape Argus (SA), 28 August
Leaders to hold summit on Zim land crisis
Maputo - Six regional heads of state will attend a summit on Zimbabwe's land crisis in Harare in September. Mozambican presidential spokesperson Estefane Moholovi said the move was decided during a meeting involving the current Southern Africa Development Community chairperson, President Bakili Muluzi of Malawi; President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique; and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. "The meeting will be held by mid-September, but no date was fixed," he said. Zimbabwe state television reported that Mugabe had invited his neighbours to see the country.
The conference would be attended by the heads of state of Mozambique, Malawi, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Angola. Zimbabwe's ruling party, the opposition, white farmers and other interested groups will be invited to attend. Monday's meeting in the Mozambican port of Beira was a follow-up to a decision by the SADC at a meeting in Blantyre early this month to take steps to address the problem, including setting up a task team. President Mbeki was quoted in a World Council of Churches press release telling the council's visiting general secretary Konrad Raiser that Mugabe had agreed to a visit to the country by the heads of states. "We agreed that the group needs to intervene. It will talk with commercial farmers, war veterans, landless people and all stakeholders in the land question in Zimbabwe," Mbeki told the council.
From News24 (SA), 28 August
Abuja to host crisis talks
Lagos - Nigeria will host talks in Abuja next week aimed at defusing tensions between Harare and London over Zimbabwe's controversial land reform campaign, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday. "Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and one or two other Commonwealth countries will attend," a foreign ministry spokesperson said. "But we're not sure yet of the level of representation," adding that the talks would be on September 5 - 6. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe said earlier this month he was confident Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo would be able to help patch up relations between Britain and Zimbabwe. The talks in the Nigerian capital were originally scheduled for mid-August but were postponed to give the parties more time.
Zimbabwe, the former British Colony of Rhodesia, has been immersed in an economic and political crisis since February last year when self-styled war veterans, encouraged by the state, seized hundreds of white-owned farms across the country. The secretary general of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association, Andy Mhlanga, told Britain's Guardian newspaper on Tuesday that militants were set to intensify the seizure of white-owned land, taking over many of the country's largest farms at a faster rate than before.
Mugabe says Britain must pay compensation to white farmers for land to be seized by the state. But London has said it will not finance land reform amid violence and disregard for the rule of law. Officials from the British High Commission in Abuja were not immediately available to comment on whether Foreign Secretary Jack Straw would attend next week's talks. Nigeria is part of a Commonwealth ministerial group created in June to resolve the land reform crisis along with Britain, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Jamaica, Australia and South Africa. It also chairs the Organisation of African Unity's special committee on Zimbabwe, which was created last month and comprises representatives from Algeria, Kenya, Zambia, Cameroon and South Africa.
From News24 (SA), 28 August
Zim opposition unveils economic recovery plan
Harare - Zimbabwe's main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), vowed on Tuesday to revive the collapsing economy if voted into the presidency next year, and unveiled a 1,000-page scheme on how it would run the economy through 2004. The economic scheme was the most specific proposal yet of how the two-year-old MDC would run the country if its leader Morgan Tsvangirai were to win the presidential election, expected in April.
Tsvangirai told a news conference that the first step in reviving the economy would be to rein in the violence that has engulfed Zimbabwe's countryside during the last 18 months. "The country's economy is in a total mess. The state-sponsored violence, lawlessness and intimidation is what has led this country to where it is today," Tsvangirai said. MDC's shadow finance minister, Eddie Cross, said restoring commercial agriculture was essential to bringing the economy back on track, in a nation where 50% of the economy is based on agriculture.
With the national debt expected to exceed US$10 billion by April 2002, Cross said a MDC government would turn to the Paris Club level. Now at about 70%, he said the inflation rate could reach 100% by the year's end. The scheme also calls for stabilising the exchange rate, officially pegged at Z$55 to US$1, but soaring to about 300 to the greenback on the thriving parallel market. The plan would boost social spending to rebuild the health and educational systems and to combat the spread of diseases, notably Aids.
But the MDC said it would also reduce spending by restructuring debt payments and by pulling out of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Zimbabwe is suffering its worst-ever economic crisis, fuelled by the political instability stemming from President Robert Mugabe's violence-wracked land reforms.
Mugabe's black victims
President Robert Mugabe claims his quarrel is with those clinging to a colonial era, with white farmers who refuse to agree to a more just distribution of land. But while it's the attacks on white farms that have attracted the world's condemnation, Channel Four News has discovered that Mugabe's regime is perfectly prepared to use the same tactics against the black farming community.
Our diplomatic correspondent Lindsay Hilsum has this special report on the widespread campaign of violence being waged on the black farmers who have dared to speak out.
Maxwell Taruvinga watched his friend Vusa Mkweli die in a police cell. "He was bleeding a white substance from his nose and mouth," he remembers. "I reported to the cell guards, but they said we will take him to hospital tomorrow. They said, just monitor him. So I monitored him until he died." Mr Taruvinga covered his friend with a blanket, and lay down next to his body on the concrete floor. The two men were arrested on August 8th in the small town of Gokwe, south-west of the Zimbabwean capital Harare, accused of political violence. Mr Mkweli had been epileptic for a year, ever since youths loyal to President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party assaulted him during the parliamentary election campaign.
But according to Mr Taruvinga, for two days the police would not let his friend - a member of the local branch of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change - retrieve his medicines from home. At first he fitted every five minutes. Then every two. "Then he passed away," said Mr Taruvinga. I met Mr Taruvinga as he was carried into the offices of a human rights organisation in Harare, a plaster on one leg, bandages on the other, his face creased in pain. He feared that he too would die if he stayed in Gokwe. After Mr Mkweli’s funeral, he and other MDC members went to their office. ZANU PF militants followed them - and attacked. "I ran away but they caught me," said Mr Taruvinga. He was beaten with iron bars, rubber sticks and stones. "They left me because they thought I died," he said.
Far from the drama on Zimbabwe’s white-owned farms, an even more violent campaign is unfolding. Determined to weaken the opposition MDC, Zanu PF has embarked on a programme to intimidate MDC members so much that few will dare vote against President Robert Mugabe in next year’s Presidential election. Mr Taruvinga is not as badly injured as Anna Charukah, another member of the funeral party. She is in hospital in Harare, in traction, her neck and hand in plaster. A refugee in her own country, she is now dependent on charity for her hospital bills, food and shelter. When she comes out of hospital, she like Mr Taruvinga will go to one in a network of safe houses in Harare, places where the victims of violence can hide, anonymous in the city, too scared to go home, to villages where their houses have been destroyed and their enemies are still pursuing them.
The Zimbabwean government says opposition activists like Mr Taruvinga and Mrs Charukah are not victims but instigators of political violence. The Home Affairs Minister, John Nkomo, denies that President Mugabe’s government has embarked on a campaign of intimidation. In an interview with Channel Four News, he said human rights groups were to blame. "The so-called human rights groups are themselves violators of human rights. Some of them have been sponsored by outsiders who would like to destabilise Zimbabwe, and they must blame us for everything that goes on."
He refuses to accept as a legitimate opposition party the MDC, which won nearly half the seats in last year’s parliamentary elections. "They’re a sponsored group - the result of efforts by white commercial farmers who wanted to defeat our land reorganisation programme and sponsored, financed and sustained that party." The evening news on state television shows President Mugabe presiding over the "Land Committee" whose job is to oversee land reform. The idea is to redistribute to landless black people farms stolen by white Rhodesian colonialists and passed onto their offspring. The foot-soldiers in the campaign are "war veterans", many of whom are too young to have fought in Zimbabwe’s war of Independence which ended in 1980.
Imagine then, the feelings of Philemon Matibe, one of Zimbabwe’s most successful black commercial farmers, the day in June when the District Administrator, accompanied by Zanu PF militants, "war veterans" and villagers arrived on his farm and ordered him and his family to leave. Philemon Matibe: "They had a hat, so they put bottle-tops with numbers in the hat. The villagers had to pick a number, and that was the plot they were allocated." Mr Matibe, his wife and two children gathered what they could of their belongings and left. A week later their farm was burnt to the ground.
I wandered around the burnt-out shell of the farmhouse, the destroyed barns and tobacco sheds, the blackened ashes of maize cobs, fields of charred tobacco and wheat, and stalks of barley drying in the hot sun after the irrigation pipes were ripped out. "I have lost everything. All my life savings," said Mr Matibe. The men from the government who took his farm made him an offer. If he renounced the MDC - of which he is a leading member - he would be given another farm of his choice, anywhere in the country. He refused. "I was targeted specifically because of my membership of MDC, and I sincerely believe if I were not a member of MDC I would still be farming today," he said. It was the local police who told Mr Matibe his farm had been burnt. "They said they had done their investigations, and someone had been playing with matches. It’s one of those unsolved mysteries," he said. The insurance company, however, says it’s a result of political violence so they will not pay compensation.
Thandiwe Ncube went to the police after her husband, John Kamonera, was dragged from their house at midnight on July 3rd. She had already fled, knowing the gang was after her, because she’s a leading member of the MDC in the Harare suburb of Epworth. Her husband, however, stayed behind because he was not politically involved and could not imagine he might be a target. He was wrong. Mrs Ncube waited until 3pm at the police station. "I went into a small house and saw two bodies there," she said. "I identified my husband. I said, where did you find him? They said, "Ah, we were just called by war veterans to come and take your husband because he was dead". I said, why didn’t you arrest him? They said, "we are not allowed to arrest them, and even us we feel pain about it, but there is nothing we can do because we are just workers."
These are not the worst human rights violations in the world, nor even in Africa. But Zimbabwe was never expected to be like this. After the war in the seventies, there was cruel blood-letting in the province of Matebeleland, but after that Zimbabwe became peaceful and relatively prosperous. Now it is on the brink of economic ruin and its people live in fear. "I was a very proud Zimbabwean," says Philemon Matibe. "I used to brag that we are different Africans. I was very proud of Robert Mugabe. I felt that we were a shining example to the rest of Africa on how to run an economy and how to co-exist. Now I’m embarrassed even to mention to people that I’m a Zimbabwean." I have asked all the people I have met in Zimbabwe if they would like to testify anonymously. Every one has said they would prefer the show their face, give their name and tell their story. Their only fear is that before next year’s Presidential poll, thousands more Zimbabweans will suffer as they have done.
From The News Statesman (UK), 29 August
Profile - Robert Mugabe
Once hailed as a new African hero and a non-racist, his behaviour is now that of the paranoidal personality. Robert Mugabe profiled by Colin Legum
One of the more unpleasant features of the horrific situation in Zimbabwe is Ian Smith sitting on his large, unassailed farm, smirking and saying: "I told you so." But there is a direct connection between the lawlessness of white-ruled Rhodesia under Smith's UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) regime and the lawlessness of black-ruled Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe.
The country Mugabe inherited at independence in 1980 was riven with problems. Two of the most acute dilemmas were the landlessness of the peasantry and the total control of the economy by the white minority - inequities that are difficult to rectify without creating other injustices and inflicting short-term damage to the economy. Yet a transition with similar problems was managed in South Africa and Namibia. Why not in Zimbabwe? Mugabe, when he became president, was hailed as a new African hero, respected as an intellectual and sincere Catholic, and admired as a non-racist who, on coming to power, assured the former white Rhodesians that they were welcome to stay in the new Zimbabwe.
Moreover, after independence, Zimbabwe achieved a growing economy, a multi-party parliament, an independent judiciary (though never a free press) and a society in which relations between whites and blacks were tolerant enough for them to share, for example, a mainly white cricket team that was elevated to Test match status. Why did it go wrong? Was it all down to Mugabe?
What is too often underplayed in political analysis is the role of the paranoidal personality, which is not the same as clinically defined paranoia. Stalin was a classic example of the latter: an Indian ambassador once managed to leave an interview in possession of one of the Soviet dictator's habitual doodles, and it showed a solitary figure in a circle surrounded by wolves. Paranoidal personalities, however, become paranoics, in practice, only when they come under severe, sustained pressure. I watched the decolonisation process for about 40 years, and paranoidal personalities triumphed more often than balanced personalities such as Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere. Why? Because the paranoidal personality survives, being quicker than others to detect enemies (not always real) and readier to attack them before they can act.
I first met Mugabe when he was a young, self-exiled teacher in Nkrumah's Ghana in the 1950s. He was an introverted, studious person who somewhat lightened up when he married Sally, a buoyant Ghanaian. Back in Rhodesia, and after a period of imprisonment, he became a minor figure in the nascent nationalist movement that, from early on, had become polarised between Zanu, led by the Shona people, and Zapu, led by the Ndebele. Zapu, under Joshua Nkomo, was for long the more powerful party. Zanu was handicapped by clan differences within the Shona until the emergence of Herbert Chitepo, who was mysteriously murdered.
Only then did Mugabe emerge as a contestant for the succession. What counted against him was that he was a Zezuru, one of the smallest Shona clans. It took considerable skill and courage for him to win the Zanu leadership, but he was vulnerable from the start and, not surprisingly, developed a minority complex. Soon after independence, he narrowly escaped being blown up. He took extreme measures to protect his personal security, but he was surrounded by real enemies. They included small Shona factions that had lost out in the liberation struggle, to say nothing of sections of the white population who, with the support of South African agents, were seriously engaged in destabilising Mugabe's government.
But the most serious threat to Mugabe came from Zapu. Although ostensibly linked to Zanu in the Patriotic Front, Nkomo - the elder statesman of Zimbabwean nationalism - was unforgiving towards Mugabe, whom he regarded as an upstart. Mugabe, distrusting the national army and believing that Zapu's armed wing still had weapons secretly buried around Bulawayo, engaged the North Koreans to train his own special Fifth Brigade, made up entirely of Shona. This force was unleashed into Matabeleland, where it suppressed the Ndebele with unspeakable atrocities. Although Zapu later agreed to merge with Zanu to form a virtual single-party state, the hatred of the Ndebele for Mugabe was undiminished.
Mugabe set about building a centralised political system with himself alone at the top. Distrusting everybody, he increasingly refused to listen to advice. To maintain control, he established a patronage system that degenerated into extensive corruption. Mugabe is an ascetic, and liked to spend his holidays alone, studying and passing English university exams. But after the death of his first wife, he married Grace, a Zimbabwean with a taste for extravagant living; for her, he built two grand mansions, costing millions of Zimbabwean dollars at a time when most Zimbabweans lived in extreme poverty. (Today, 65 per cent are unemployed, and 75 per cent live below the breadline.) The urban unemployed increasingly turned for leadership to the strong trade union movement, led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
But the maldistribution of land has been at the dead-centre of all of Rhodesia-Zimbabwe's political discontent - a spluttering time bomb threatening the country's stability, a perennial guarantee of poverty, and an incipient threat to white-black relations. Mugabe had 21 years to tackle the land question seriously. In his first five-year term came the only planned programme to resettle 52,000 families on unoccupied land, using funds provided by Britain at independence. That scheme was only a partial success. Around 800,000 peasants continue to live in overcrowded areas covering about 16 million hectares, while 4,500 mainly white farmers occupy 11 million hectares of prime land. But the current campaign of forcible land takeovers offers no solution. The haphazard division of the land, not always in viable sizes for farming, and the lack of provision for tools and seeds is a sure-fire recipe for failure. Besides, with the veterans (so-called, although most were actually too young to fight) taking possession of what they can grab, the landless peasants have had no share in the loot. Their lot remains what it has always been.
Mugabe alone cannot be blamed for Zimbabwe's plight. Three severe droughts and the quadruple rise in the price of oil in 1976 were among the causes of the country's economic setback. The biggest failure, however, was on the part of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Mugabe was one of the African leaders who bought into their Economic and Structural Adjustment Programme; after a full five-year period and the allocation of five billion Zimbabwean dollars, none of the targets had been met. Some of the failure was Mugabe's, especially the huge payout of compensation to the veterans in an attempt to prevent not only a serious threat to the regime, but also the risk of violence, as well as the crazy decision to commit the army to intervention in the Congo; but the real failure was not achieving structural adjustment.
Can Mugabe survive? One looks for signs of a palace coup against him, or an army takeover. Over the past six months, some senior ministers have held secret meetings with Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, in which they told him of their concern about Mugabe, "who no longer listens to anybody". While they believe they can get a majority of the cabinet against Mugabe, they feel less sure about having their decision endorsed by Zanu's all-powerful political bureau. But their major concern is that, if they did vote Mugabe out of the cabinet, they could not count on the support of the security forces. The possibility of a military takeover would increase if Mugabe sticks to his commitment to bring back his army from the expensive intervention in the Congo. There are credible reports that, having suffered serious casualties, shortage of regular payments and hard conditions, it would be an angry army that returned.
Mugabe knows there is a strong possibility that his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, will win if next April's presidential elections go ahead. His alternative is to cancel the elections by declaring a state of emergency. The likelihood then is that he would face a wave of violent protest and a final breakdown of what remains of law and order. The hard question is what should be done by the external powers, both African and western. Demands for economic sanctions are unrealistic. Tsvangirai, for one, opposes them "because the country could not survive" and, in any case, Mugabe could simply use them to gain support for the declaration of a state of emergency. Zimbabwe's immediate neighbours - South Africa, Mozambique and Botswana - take the same view.
But certain steps could be taken without imposing additional burdens on the already suffering population. These would include a worldwide travel ban on Mugabe, all members of his government and senior officials; freezing their bank accounts; suspending diplomatic relations, which would include withdrawing Mugabe's right to attend the Commonwealth summit in Brisbane in October; suspending all aid other than for humanitarian projects; insisting on free presidential elections conducted under the supervision of monitors supported by the United Nations and the new African Union. It is to such action that Zimbabwe's neighbours and fellow members of the Southern African Development Community are moving. Under Mbeki's leadership, they intend a showdown with Mugabe on the grounds that his policies are destabilising the entire subcontinent. That would be high noon for the president. But, whatever the outcome of outside intervention, the bottom line is that the Zimbabweans will be their own liberators.
Colin Legum is a former associate editor of the Observer