International Herald Tribune
By Michael Wines Published: August 2,
2007
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe: Earlier this month, shortly after
President Robert
Mugabe proposed legislation mandating a gradual transfer of
ownership of all
businesses to "indigenous" citizens, a Zimbabwean
businessman received an
unexpected telephone call.
The caller, a
stranger, said that he represented a group of indigenous
investors. The
investors, he said, would like to discuss the merchant's
plans for complying
with the coming ownership law.
There is a flip side to Zimbabwe's
incrementally unfolding human tragedy,
and this is it: as 11 million or more
people descend into destitution, a
tiny slice of the population is becoming
ever more powerful and wealthy at
their expense.
No one outside of
Mugabe's inner circle, of course, can say with certainty
why he has pursued
a series of policies since 2000 that have produced
economic and social
bedlam. For his part, Mugabe says Zimbabwe's chaos is
the product of a
Western plot to reassert colonial rule.
Among many outside that circle,
however, the growing conviction is that
Zimbabwe's descent is neither the
result of paranoia nor Mugabe's
longstanding belief in Marxist economic
theory. Instead, they say, Zimbabwe
is fast becoming a kleptocracy, and the
government's seemingly inexplicable
policies are in fact preserving and
expanding it.
"Their sole interest is in maintaining power by any means,"
David Coltart, a
Bulawayo lawyer and politician, said this week. "I think
their calculation
is that the rest of Africa is not going to do anything to
stop them, and the
West is distracted by Iraq and Afghanistan. The platinum
mines can keep the
core of the elite living in the manner they're accustomed
to - just in a sea
of poverty."
Coltart, a member of the Zimbabwean
Parliament, is both white and a leader
of Zimbabwe's minuscule political
opposition, which may make his opinion
appear both cynical and suspect. And
there surely are other views. One
influential member of the ruling ZANU-PF
party - the Zimbabwe African
National Union-Patriotic Front - says that
Mugabe, now 84, is rushing to
empower black Zimbabweans before he
dies.
This, he said, explains why the government seized thousands of
white-owned
commercial farms early this decade, and why Mugabe ordered
manufacturers and
merchants this month to slash their prices by 50 percent
and more. It
explains why he now proposes to require that every Zimbabwean
business be
controlled by native Zimbabweans.
"The old man wants to
leave a legacy," said that politician, who insisted on
anonymity. "He's in
the twilight of his life, and he wants it to be
remembered that he left
something to Zimbabweans."
Yet in interviews in Zimbabwe this week,
Coltart's harsh view was widely
shared by blacks and whites alike, many with
no political ax to grind. Even
the ruling party politician acknowledged that
whatever the aims of Mugabe's
policies, their execution as gone terribly
awry.
Zimbabwe's farm seizures destroyed the country's rich agriculture
industry,
and vast tracts of land were handed over to party elites in the
form of
patronage. The looming takeover of businesses is expected to produce
the
same result.
"Some of these people, his cronies, are being
greedy," the ZANU-PF official
said. "That's the tragedy of this country.
Those who benefited from land
reform are also going to benefit from this
takeover."
And in fact, the circumstantial evidence that Zimbabwe's
decline has become
a zero-sum game, in which one side's loss inevitably is
the other's gain, is
not easy to ignore.
Zimbabwe's plummeting
currency - 200,000 Zimbabwe dollars now buy a single
American dollar on the
black market - has rendered the salaries of working
Zimbabweans worthless.
Yet the official exchange rate is not 200,000, but
250. Those with
connections to the government's reserve bank are widely said
to ply that
influence to buy American dollars cheap, sell them dear and reap
an 800-fold
profit on currency transactions.
Mugabe's own government declares
currency trading illegal, but regularly
dumps vast stacks of freshly printed
bills on the black market, still
wrapped in plastic, to raise foreign
exchange for its own needs.
The country's extraordinary hyperinflation,
last pegged at 10,000 percent a
year, would seem to benefit no one. Yet
after the government ordered
merchants in July to slash their prices in
half, cadres of police and
soldiers moved into shops to enforce the new
controls, scoop up bargains,
and give friends and political heavyweights
preferential access to cheap
goods.
Should the price controls
continue, they are widely expected to force many
businesses into insolvency.
Coincidentally or otherwise, Zimbabwean business
officials say, viable but
bankrupt businesses will be prime targets for
well-placed persons seeking to
benefit from Mugabe's new law placing
enterprises under so-called indigenous
control.
"After all," said the business executive who was approached to
sell his
firm, "if you can't make a company viable, you might as well sell
50 percent
of it and make what you can."
From The Times (UK), 2 August
Jan Raath in Harare
Word got out on Monday night
that the warehouse on the outskirts of Harare
would be selling a small
consignment of cement at the state-enforced price
of Z$150,000 (40p) a sack.
When The Times arrived on Tuesday morning, there
was a one-kilometre line of
cars. The drivers had spent the night there
waiting for the building
supplies. No sooner had a lorry arrived carrying a
cargo of 600 bags than
uniformed soldiers and police turned up at the
warehouse. "They took charge.
They told people to get in line," one witness,
who gave his name as Willie,
said. He recounted how the soldiers distributed
sacks of cement to a few
customers at a price of Z$150,000. "Then the
soldiers and police drove their
own trucks in and took more than 100 pockets
[sacks] at the same price. They
are going to sell on the black market for
Z$1.5 million," he said.
As
soon as the men in uniform were gone the staff began to sell the cement
at
the higher black-market rate of Z$1.5 million, but only to a select few
who
had personal contacts at the warehouse. Not until midday did the queue's
nerve break and the vehicles peel off. The scene was one of the unforeseen
consequences of President Mugabe's month-long attempt to smash inflation by
forcing businesses to halve their prices. Those responsible for enforcing
the price cuts are openly running a black market in the goods. Meanwhile,
ordinary people cannot get goods and prices are going up faster than before.
The last official inflation figures were for April, when the annual figure
hit 3,700 per cent. Data have not been released since, but Christopher Dell,
the outspoken former United States Ambassador to Zimbabwe, predicted that
President Mugabe would be forced out of office within six months as a result
of uncontrolled inflation.
The business sector immediately became the
new enemy, denounced as "agents
of regime change", forcing up prices
deliberately to stoke up discontent
that would spill over into mass street
violence. About 6,500 businessmen
have been arrested since "Operation Reduce
Prices" began. Shops dare not
openly deviate from official prices that are
below procurement costs. This
week magistrates were jailing minibus
operators for a week for each
passenger that they charged above the official
limit. "Price controls that
are being enforced are likely to exacerbate
shortages and, ultimately, fuel
inflation," the International Monetary Fund
said this week. If the current
trend continues, "year-on-year inflation
could well exceed 100,000 per cent
by year end". Commuter transport has
withdrawn from the roads effectively.
For weeks supermarkets have been
without maize meal, the national staple,
meat, chicken, eggs, milk and
cooking oil. Yesterday even vegetables were
running out.
The United
Nations food agency appealed for £60 million in expanded food aid
for
Zimbabwe yesterday and pledged to assist about 3.3 million starving
citizens. "On top of panic buying, the problem is fuel," a supermarket chain
executive said. Since the Government fixed the price of fuel at Z$60,000 a
litre, fuel imports have dried up. "The manufacturers can't deliver. They
say, 'Come and fetch your orders', but we can't," he said. Despite repeated
declarations that "there is no going back on the war on prices", the
evidence is that President Mugabe is faltering. On Tuesday the central bank
issued a Z$200,000 note, worth 50p at the unofficial rate. Previously the
highest denomination was Z$100,000, which could buy a mug of black-market
petrol.
On Monday the Government reversed a ban on the import of
food-stuffs, an
attempt to control the illegal currency market that would
have had dire
consequences for millions of Zimbabweans who survive on
cross-border
trading. At the same time it was announced that private
abattoirs that had
their slaughter licences revoked as punishment for
refusing to sell meat
below the cost they bought it at were going to be
relicensed. President
Mugabe is pressing on with another key strategy for
economic survival:
printing money. "Where money for projects has not been
found, we will print
it," he said last week. "It's like someone with lung
cancer smoking 100
cigarettes a day to complement the chemotherapy," a
Harare business
executive remarked.
International Herald Tribune
The Associated PressPublished: August 2,
2007
HARARE, Zimbabwe: Six Zimbabwean businessmen were
sentenced to 105 hours of
community service by a magistrate who noted that
fines have not ensured
government orders to cut prices were obeyed, a
state-owned newspaper
reported Thursday.
Magistrate Olivia Mariga's
order that the businessmen clean government
buildings was the first sentence
to community service in the prices
clampdown. At least 5,000 people, from
top corporate directors to street
vendors, have been arrested as police and
price inspectors enforced the June
26 order to cut prices of all goods and
services by around 50 percent. Most
of those arrested have been fined and
quickly released.
An insurance company has been advertising on state
television offering
"directors and officers liability cover" against arrest,
with fees based on
the level of risk companies faced.
After
Wednesday's court session before Magistrate Mariga, two of the
businessmen
were overheard "asking court officials if it was possible for
them to hire
other people to carry out the community service on their
behalf," the Herald
newspaper reported.
Zimbabwe is in its worst economic crisis since
independence from Britain in
1980, blamed largely on disruptions in the
agriculture-based economy in the
former regional breadbasket after the often
violent, government-ordered
seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial
farms began in 2000.
The price cuts, meant to tame official inflation of
4,500 percent, have left
many shelves across the country bare of corn meal,
bread, meat, eggs, milk
and other staples, with retailers arguing they
cannot afford to sell goods
for less than they cost. Many minibus taxi
drivers, who provide the main
means of commuter transport and were ordered
to cut fares, were staying off
the roads because they cannot afford or find
fuel.
A trip town from Harare's township suburbs that should take 30 minutes
now
takes up to five hours, most spent waiting, trying to flag down passing
drivers and scrambling onto vehicles that stop. Hitching rides in Zimbabwe
normally involves payment to the driver.
Funeral parlors have even
put hearses to work picking up commuters. Police
in the second city of
Bulawayo hailed the move as a "public service" but
said the drivers of
hearses, trucks and other vehicles should not overload,
state radio said
Thursday.
It did not say whether rides were given with coffins
aboard.
Business Week
By ANGUS
SHAW
HARARE, Zimbabwe
Funeral parlors have put hearses to work
as temporary buses to alleviate the
chronic lack of public transport,
official media said Thursday, in yet
another illustration of Zimbabwe's
economic collapse.
Police in the second city of Bulawayo hailed the move
as a "public service"
but warned the drivers of hearses, trucks and other
vehicles on the dangers
of overloading when carrying commuters on
"humanitarian grounds," state
radio said.
Transportation licensing
laws would not be invoked unless there were fights
to board vehicles, the
radio said. It did not say whether rides were given
with coffins
aboard.
Under a government decree last month the price of gasoline and
commuter
fares were slashed by more than half, leading to acute gas
shortages and
forcing many minibuses, the main means of commuter transport,
out of
service.
A routine 30 minute trip from Harare's township
suburbs now takes up to five
hours, most spent waiting, trying to flag down
passing drivers and
scrambling onto to vehicles that stop. Hitching rides in
Zimbabwe normally
involves payment to the driver.
Minibus drivers
were fined earlier this week for overcharging. One driver of
a 12-seater was
convicted for overcharging 18 passengers desperate to get
home crammed into
his minibus at the time of his arrest.
In another twist, the Zimnat Lion
Insurance Company began showing an
advertisement on state television
offering businesses insurance against
arrests of staff. It announced the
policy as "directors and officers
liability cover" with fees based on the
level of risk companies faced.
At least 5,000 executives, including the
country's top corporate directors,
and managers, street vendors and bus
drivers have been arrested as police
and price inspectors enforced the June
26 order to cut prices of all gods
and services by around 50
percent.
The move -- meant to tame official inflation of 4,500 percent --
has left
many shelves across the country bare of corn meal, bread, meat,
eggs, milk
and other staples.
The state Herald newspaper, a
government mouthpiece, said Thursday six
businessmen were sentenced to 105
hours of community service cleaning
government buildings after magistrate
Olivia Mariga noted that fines were
not proving to be a deterrent to
"economic saboteurs" still defying the new
price rules.
It was the
first sentencing to community service in the prices clampdown.
After
Wednesday's court session, two of the businessmen were overheard
"asking
court officials if it was possible for them to hire other people to
carry
out the community service on their behalf," the paper reported.
In
another bizarre twist, police appealed to corporate executives -- some
fresh
out of harsh and filthy police jails with near freezing temperatures
at
night -- to help with sponsorship and funding for a regional police
chiefs'
sports gathering for officers and men being hosted in Harare later
this
month, state radio said.
Aenias Chigwedere, the education minister and
head of a government committee
tasked with attracting tourists to Zimbabwe
from among soccer fans headed to
the 2010 World Cup in neighboring South
Africa, also went on state
television saying the government could not afford
to upgrade facilities for
spillover visitors and asked private companies and
sponsors to step in.
Many traditional commercial sponsors are facing ruin
in the prices
clampdown.
Yahoo News
HARARE
(AFP) - Two senior Zimbabwe opposition figures who had defected from
the
main camp led by Morgan Tsvangirai returned on Thursday saying only a
united
front could end the rule of Robert Mugabe.
Shacky Matake, a founder
member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
and Silas Mangono said
they were returning because their splinter faction
had ruled out any
prospect of reconciling with MDC leader Tsvangirai.
"I strongly believe that
only a united MDC will unseat Robert Mugabe,"
Mangono, who had been
education spokesman for the splinter group led by
Arthur Mutambara, told a
press conference.
"In the MDC led by President Morgan Tsvangirai there
are many values which
resonate with the aspirations of the majority of
Zimbabwe and I have no
choice but to go along with my conscience and with
the majority of our
people.
"I don't want to be judged harshly by
history for having contributed to the
fragmentation of the
opposition."
The MDC split into two factions in 2005 over a decision to
participate or
boycott senate elections which Tsvangirai said were a waste
of money.
The prospects of a united challenge to 83-year-old Mugabe at
next year's
elections dimmed last weekend amid further bickering between
Tsvangirai and
Mutambara.
"I decided to come back after realising
that it's important to participate
as a united front in the coming
elections," said Matake, who was a
provincial secretary in the Mutambara
faction.
Three other opposition MPs did a similar about-turn and returned
to
Tsvangirai's camp last year.
IOL
August 02
2007 at 08:06PM
By Moabi Phia
Gaborone - The Southern
African Development Community (SADC) denied on
Thursday its efforts to end a
political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe were
crumbling.
"This
is a process and a very delicate one," SADC secretary general
Tomaz Salomao
told a news conference in Botswana's capital. "If you have a
problem in one
meeting, you cannot say that the whole process has failed."
Leaders
of SADC's 14 nations delegated South African President Thabo
Mbeki in March
to mediate talks between Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party and
the main
opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The
move followed a crackdown on MDC activists which sparked
international
outrage and renewed calls on African nations to pressure
President Robert
Mugabe to agree to political reforms.
Despite a
media blackout on the talks, there are reports that South
African
negotiators have struggled to get Zanu-PF representatives and the
MDC to
agree on anything of substance in the past five months.
Mbeki will
report on the progress of the talks this month at a SADC
summit in Lusaka,
South Africa's Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad told a
separate press
conference in Pretoria.
Scrutiny of the talks has intensified in
the wake of a growing refugee
crisis.
Thousands of Zimbabweans
are crossing daily into South Africa, legally
and illegally, to buy food and
look for work. The influx has raised fears
that South Africa, the
continent's economic powerhouse, will be overwhelmed.
Zimbabwe is
struggling with official inflation of about 5 000 percent,
soaring poverty,
80 percent unemployment and chronic shortages of food, fuel
and foreign
exchange.
Salomao said SADC was preparing to recommend that
fertiliser, fuel and
other energy supplies be supplied to the southern
African nation to ease the
crisis. He did not give further details of the
proposal.
Reuters
Thu 2 Aug
2007, 16:14 GMT
By Paul Simao
PRETORIA, Aug 2 (Reuters) - South
Africa is struggling to cope with a rising
tide of refugees from Zimbabwe
and must take action to solve the growing
crisis, Deputy Foreign Minister
Aziz Pahad said on Thursday.
In a briefing with reporters in the capital
Pretoria, Pahad said there were
clear signs that the numbers of Zimbabweans
entering South Africa, both
legally and illegally, had increased recently,
posing a "serious problem"
for authorities.
"We must do more to see
what we can do to deal with this influx of
refugees," Pahad said, adding
that South Africa had both a moral and
economic interest in helping its
northern neighbour avert a total economic
collapse.
Zimbabweans are
struggling with official inflation of about 5,000 percent,
soaring poverty,
80 percent unemployment and chronic shortages of food, fuel
and foreign
exchange amid an eight-year depression.
Thousands every day cross
illegally into South Africa to look for food and
work. The number, however,
has jumped in recent weeks since Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe's
government introduced a radical price freeze in a
bid to stem
inflation.
The move has led to panic buying and prompted some stores to
stop stocking
bread, milk and staple items. Zimbabwe's main opposition
party, the Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC), has accused Mugabe of
driving the economy into
the ground.
South African President Thabo
Mbeki, who is trying to broker a political
agreement between Mugabe's ruling
ZANU-PF party and the MDC, will report on
the talks this month at a Southern
African Development Community summit in
Lusaka, Pahad said.
Pahad
also expressed concern about a deteriorating political situation in
Burundi,
where there are renewed fears of a return to the 12-year ethnic war
that
killed some 300,000 people in the central African nation.
Leaders of the
rebel Hutu Forces for National Liberation (FLN) have
disappeared from the
capital Bujumbura after quitting a joint ceasefire
monitoring team. Many
Burundians believe the FLN has returned to the bush
and will resume
fighting.
South Africa played an instrumental role in bringing the
Burundian
government and rebel forces to the bargaining table, mediation
that led to a
peace deal last year. More than 1,000 South African troops are
in Burundi to
keep the shaky peace.
Pahad said South Africa would
"respond very aggressively" if the FLN
attacked its troops.
UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks
2 August 2007
Posted to the web 2 August
2007
Harare
The lifestyle normally associated with an urban
society is fast disappearing
from Zimbabwe's once bustling capital,
Harare.
The city's 2.8 million residents are adopting a way of life more
akin to the
country's rural areas, where drinking water is drawn from
shallow pits and
electricity is all but unavailable, although the
metropolitan area's
population density has produced its own quirks, such as
untreated sewage
spilling onto the streets.
Nomusa Dube, a night
shift nurse living in Chitungwiza, a dormitory town
about 25km from Harare,
told IRIN her daily routine started with the search
for water. After queuing
for three hours at a shallow well that is also a
watering point for cows and
donkeys, Dube finally fills her 20-litre
container with muddy water at
2pm.
She glances anxiously at her watch; she has an appointment at her
home, 5km
away, with a supplier who said he would deliver firewood at 3pm,
about the
same time a colleague promised to bring her some candles, which
have become
much harder to get.
She is in luck: by just after 4pm the
firewood and the candles have been
delivered, and she sets off on her
two-hour walk to work, telling her
colleagues on the way how successful her
day has been.
Dube is just one among millions of city dwellers adapting
to the
ruralisation of Zimbabwe's urban areas, brought on by the collapse of
service delivery in an economy once described as one of the most promising
in Africa.
No escape from the decay for the middle classes
In
the capital's affluent areas of Chisipite, Borrowdale and Glen Lorne,
erratic power supplies have turned electrical hobs and other appliances into
little more than decorations, and dusk is greeted by clouds of smoke
billowing from suburban homes as the well-heeled residents use wood-fired
ovens for cooking their evening meal.
"With each passing day, we have
forsaken and abandoned the basic comforts
and lifestyles associated with
living in an urban environment, particularly
a capital city like Harare,"
said Dadirai Chimuko, who lives in Chisipite.
"It is becoming more and
more difficult to distinguish the difference
between living in a rural area
and an urban area, because the truth is that
urban areas in Zimbabwe are
fast becoming more and more like rural areas."
She told IRIN that she had
not had potable water for three months and had
dug a shallow well on her
property.
Electricity rationing has reduced availability to four hours a
day, even for
those with access to the power grid, since the national power
utility,
Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), introduced daily
20-hour cuts.
Sarudzai Muzenda, a resident of Glen View, a working-class
suburb, told IRIN
that having electricity for four hours a day did not mean
they were better
off than others, who received nothing.
The
electricity comes in the middle of the night when we are asleep, and
therefore is not of any benefit
"The electricity comes in the middle
of the night when we are asleep, and
therefore is not of any benefit because
we would have used firewood for
cooking. In fact, the power cuts have come
at a great inconvenience to many
families whose household electrical goods
have been destroyed as a result of
power surges."
But it was the
small comforts, taken for granted in the past, that Muzenda
missed most,
like an evening stroll or visiting friends in the
neighbourhood.
"Way
before we started getting unreliable electricity supplies, the city
authorities were not replacing expired street bulbs because of a lack of
foreign currency," she told IRIN. "But now, at night, it is total darkness,
and those who venture out have to travel in large groups for fear of being
mugged."
ZESA's energy production relies mainly on thermal power
stations, but its
ability to do so is severely handicapped because it does
not have the
necessary finance to buy the coal from the Hwange Colliery
Company, the sole
supplier, or the foreign currency for spare parts to
maintain its power
stations.
The power utility is producing less than
half its normal output, and
Zimbabwe relies on electricity imports from
neighbouring South Africa,
Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo,
although shortages of
foreign currency have led to wrangling over payments
in a region where
economic demands are outpacing energy
supplies.
Price controls
Zimbabwe is facing severe shortages of
just about everything from water to
petrol, and four out of five people are
without jobs. According to
international donors, in the coming months more
than a quarter of its 12
million people will be living on food
handouts.
The government introduced price controls six weeks ago,
ordering retailers
and wholesalers to slash their prices by 50 percent.
Stock flew off the
shelves, only for the goods to reappear on the parallel
market at prices
even more expensive than before the government introduced
price controls:
foods like beef and chicken are almost unobtainable on the
formal market,
and beer is a rarity.
The attempt to curb
hyperinflation resulted only in empty shop shelves.
Inflation is estimated
at over 4,000 percent, although some independent
economists put the rate at
40,000 percent; if current economic trends
prevail, the International
Monetary Fund expects inflation to reach 100,000
percent by the end of the
year.
A Zimbabwean manufacturer, who declined to be identified, told IRIN
of the
prevailing mood in the business sector: "We were told to sell our
commodities at near give-away prices, but now we cannot afford to restock,
so we hope the government will come with a rescue package to help us remain
in business ... many have closed shop and many are considering doing the
same."
Waterborne diseases
Mabvuku, one of Harare's
high-density suburbs, is pockmarked with shallow
wells, a consequence of
potable water not being available in the area for
the past six
months.
"It looks like the municipal authorities and the government have
abandoned
us. Recently there was an outbreak of diarrhoea and several people
died
after drinking unsafe water," Constance Chiminya, a resident, told
IRIN.
"Because authorities cannot provide the community with any form of
water, we
are now resorting to digging shallow unprotected wells, which we
share with
some animals."
She said the authorities had brought in
water bowsers when there were
incidents of waterborne diseases, but once the
outbreak was contained the
bowsers were withdrawn.
In Kadoma, a
mining town of 80,000 people about 140km south of Harare, 20
people died
during an outbreak of diarrhoea in July. The United Nations
Children's
Agency (UNICEF) installed water tanks in the town's high-density
suburbs and
provided disinfectants to prevent further outbreaks.
Precious Shumba,
spokesperson for the Combined Harare Residents Association,
told IRIN that
service delivery had collapsed in the capital and the risk of
the waterborne
diseases was high.
They now use the bush to relieve themselves ...
Unfortunately it is in the
same bushes that shallow wells are dug to provide
water for residents
"Many households have gone for months without water
so, naturally, residents
are not using their lavatories. They now use the
bush to relieve themselves
... Unfortunately it is in the same bushes that
shallow wells are dug to
provide water for the residents. This creates a
ticking health time-bomb
because, in addition, refuse is not being
collected, while burst sewer pipes
are not being attended to on
time."
The former elected executive mayor of Harare, Elias Mudzuri, told
IRIN: "You
see, when I was the mayor, we had some twinning arrangements with
some
cities around the world. Harare was twined with Munich, in
Germany."
Mudzuri, from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
party, was
replaced by commissioners appointed from the ranks of President
Robert
Mugabe's ZANU-PF government. "They [Munich] were ready to assist us
with
equipment for managing refuse collection, but they pulled out from the
arrangement, saying they only dealt with elected city leaders," he
said.
"It is scandalous that the capital of a country has raw sewage
flowing in
some streets, and that people go for weeks without water. How can
the
streets of the capital of the country be in total darkness because the
commission managing the city abandons its role of lighting up the
streets?"
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the
United Nations ]
Financial Gazette
(Harare)
2 August 2007
Posted to the web 2 August 2007
Zhean
Gwaze
Harare
ZIMBABWE'S agricultural production for 2006 is estimated
to have declined by
14 percent due to operational challenges, farmer unions
say.
Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) president Trevor Gifford said a
number of
issues had contributed to the slump in the sector, the mainstay of
the
country's economy.
Gifford said the sector had been affected
by dry spells and irregular
rainfall, the high cost and unavailability of
inputs. He indicated that the
supply of fertiliser remained perennially
erratic, with shortages of
electricity and erratic fuel supplies combining
to disrupt operational
activities in the sector.
The livestock
industry had been badly hit by a shortage of stockfeed whose
cost is now too
high.
Shortages of the main ingredients such as maize, cotton and soya
bean
by-products meant that the industry had to rely on imported raw
materials, a
factor which had pushed up the price of feeds
enormously.
"In addition to the worrying increase in eviction notices,
commercial
agriculture is now faced with one of its biggest challenge ever.
Recent
legislation introducing imposed price controls is the largest single
threat
to the viability of the industry," Gifford said.
While
appreciating that the government was working to rein in inflation,
legislating for businesses to sell their products at below cost had serious
implications for sustainability, Gifford said.
Estimates for maize
output indicate a drop in production from 945 000 tonnes
in the 2006/2007
season to around 697 000 tonnes this year against a
national requirement of
1 800 000 tonnes.
Approximately 250 000 cows were sold for slaughter,
which is 20 percent
lower than the total for last year.
Annual milk
production has fallen slightly to around 87 million litres, just
47 percent
of the national requirements. Gifford noted, however, that there
was growth
in production of soya beans at 26 percent up on last year, while
tobacco
output could swell by 25 percent on last year's figures. An
estimated 51
percent increase in cotton production is expected.
The CFU chief also
noted that the lack of secure property rights continued
to restrict
investment in capital goods and infrastructure development in
the
sector.
The main disincentive remained the threat of expropriation by the
state
through application of the Acquisition of Farm Equipment and Materials
Act.
Widespread theft and vandalism of equipment and the very high cost
of
replacement also served as deterrents to farmers in making meaningful
investments in their businesses.
On a positive note, however, the
agricultural sector had been fortunate to
receive funding at a concessionary
interest rate of 50 percent per annum
from the central bank's ASPEF
facility.
ASPEF has been a vital source of funding for the sector,
without which most
farmers would have been unable to finance their
crops.
"The prospects for agriculture, in particular commercial
agriculture, depend
largely on successfully resolving land tenure issues and
creating conditions
which allow for positive growth in the economy.
Agricultural production
cannot flourish in an environment of uncertainty and
economic turmoil.
Farmers need clear direction on the future in order to be
able to invest in
the future with confidence," Gifford noted.
VOA
By
Netsai Mlilo
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
02 August
2007
While thousands of Zimbabweans are fleeing the country each
week in
desperate attempts to better their lives, many foreign citizens say
they're
staying. They say they're confident they'll survive the economic
decline and
political upheavals. Several people say despite ongoing economic
problems,
Zimbabwe's infrastructure is still intact, making life here better
than in
their own homelands.
Voice of America Zimbabwe Service
reporter Netsai Mlilo tells us that
Nigerians and Congolese top the list of
so-called "easy to spot foreigners"
in Bulawayo. Locals joke that they're
usually easy to spot, because of their
accents and flashy
clothing.
Josea Katende is a permanent Zimbabwean resident from
Lubumbashi, in the
Democratic Republic of Congo. A computer science student
at a local college,
Katende says he's been in Zimbabwe for nearly a decade.
He explains he left
the DRC with his family, when he was a teenager in the
mid 1990s. Initially,
his family lived in Zambia before coming to Zimbabwe.
Katende says although
Zimbabwe's economy is collapsing, life is still better
here than in the DRC,
"It's bad. The economy is bad right now in Zimbabwe
but the difference
maybe, is the infrastructure and that things haven't like
collapsed in
Zimbabwe like they are in the Congo. Like right now, the
situation is bad
but you can still post a letter and it gets to wherever it
must go which in
our countries there it doesn't exist anymore. So at least,
there is some
kind of order in Zimbabwe."
Katende says since coming
to Zimbabwe, he has watched the number of
Nigerians and Congolese nationals
in Bulawayo expand. He argues that's
because there are numerous
opportunities in Zimbabwe to make money. Most
foreigners sell popular items
like clothes, cell phone handsets and
accessories.
Katende adds with
the money he makes, he can buy a lot more goods here than
he'd be able to
purchase in the DRC, "When we came to Zimbabwe, I think I
only knew two
Nigerians but now, you know, there is a lot of Nigerians
because they find
it easier here. It's hard to make money but its easier
living yet in Nigeria
like in DRC you can easily make a lot of money but the
life is just not
easy, the comforts that go with it. If you are living in a
place with power
cuts, potholes everywhere, you can't really live properly."
Several
Nigerians -- who declined to be named or recorded - said their major
misgiving about living here is locals often suspect them of being drug
dealers. As a result, they say they keep to themselves, rather than interact
with Zimbabweans.
Katende says although he's better off being in
Bulawayo, he still misses
home, "I think it's the food. We have nice food
there and just being there,
being with people who are likeminded culturally,
and I just wish I had grown
around my relatives, my uncles, I think that's
important. But maybe, I
gained in the fact that having lived in all these
countries I get to
appreciate people."
Katende says he and other
Congolese families try to keep in touch and share
traditional meals, in an
attempt to keep their cultural links strong. He
adds that Nigerian and DRC
nationals meet regularly, for poetry and music
sessions. But he also
acknowledges that if things don't improve soon in
Zimbabwe, he may be
tempted to move again, as soon as he completes his
studies.
Zimbabwe suddenly looks like it has been in a war. The
shops are empty,
there is little traffic and everyone is walking around in a
daze. People
stop me and ask what is going on? Well just remember Pol Pot.
He came to
power in Cambodia in the mid seventies, launched what they called
the Khmer
revolution and in a matter of months they reduced the capital city
to a
shell occupied by 25 000 people - down from two million.
In the
process they had killed hundreds of thousands of skilled and
experienced
Cambodians, forced millions into the rural areas where they were
required to
undergo re-education and make a living from subsistence
agriculture. It will
take Cambodia millennia to recover after this rapacious
and ideologically
driven regime was removed from power by military
intervention.
People
outside Zimbabwe have no idea of just what has happened in Zimbabwe
in the
past month. Conditions have gone from difficult to impossible. I am
not
exaggerating when I say there are no basics - no flour, no maize meal,
no
cooking oil, no margarine, no matches, no fuel, no meat, no eggs. On top
of
this there are widespread shortages of water and electricity. I simply do
not know how people are surviving.
These terrible conditions are
being deliberately created in a Pol Pot style
operation that is supposed to
be dealing with run away inflation. Its real
goals lie elsewhere.
We
now know that this operation was planned a long time ago - probably as
soon
as it became apparent that elections would have to be held in March
2008.
This is no knee jerk reaction to inflation, or to remarks by the US
Ambassador about regime change. It began with an exercise to generate a
sudden spurt in inflation. This was achieved when the State started buying
foreign currency on the open market in June, using freshly printed
currency.
In a week of frenzied activity the price of the US dollar went from
about
Z$70 000 to Z$400 000. Importers and industrialists were forced to
raise
prices to cover the replacement cost of stocks.
The State then
unveiled its "operation good governance". Under secret
orders, the security
forces were instructed to impose price reductions on
all businesses. There
was no legal basis for these instructions - just
orders to go into firms on
a systematic basis and order them to cut prices
or else. Managers and owners
were specifically targeted to intimidate them
into compliance. These have
been arrested in their thousands, abused and
held over in filthy,
overcrowded cells with ordinary prisoners.
Trillions of dollars of stock
values were slashed from prices, no rational
basis for these price cuts were
sought or tolerated. Suddenly firms faced
the situation where they could not
restock, could not manufacture and sell
for a profit - most of their
established products were now being priced into
the market at below cost.
The more you produced, the faster your demise.
Fuel was priced at half its
landed cost and overnight some Z$400 billion in
stock values was lost as
customers scrambled to buy cheap fuel at half price
or less. All imports
stopped.
The prices of all staple foods was likewise set at half or less
the cost of
production and when stocks ran out there was nothing to
sell.
Now many theories have been put out about this operation - it was
popularist
is one, "they are preparing for the elections and forcing firms
to cut
prices is an attempt to curry favor with voters". Many actually say
it was
about time that business was brought to heel - a reaction to the
sharp price
hikes caused by the first stage of this operation. It is too
early for that
to be the real reason; they see it as one outcome, but with
little long-term
value in their strategy.
My own view, based on what
I know about the background, is that this is a
carefully planned and
ruthless exercise to reduce the urban voting
population, undermine the
remaining support base of the MDC and take full
control of the population
and the economy in time for the March 2008
elections.
The dismantling
of the commercial farm industry has reduced the voting
population on
commercial farms from 2 million to about 600 000 and all of
them are now
under the control of either the State or Zanu PF elements who
can dictate
how they vote. These resettled areas are virtually no go areas
for the
MDC.
In Communal areas the food supply has been brought under control and
direction, as has all other essentials for survival including the right of
abode. Traditional leaders are tightly controlled by the State and are now
under close supervision by resident CIO operatives who watch their every
action. They have been through three elections and now believe that they can
control the vote in these areas by these means. They are probably
right.
So the remaining threat is the urban vote. Now in the majority,
with over 6
million people living in urban areas, the towns and cities are
the last
remaining centers of opposition. So like Pol Pot, the powers that
be, in
this case the small coterie of leaders surrounding Mugabe and the
people
involved in the Joint Operations Command, have decided to do some
surgery.
When this operation is concluded they hope to have reduced the
urban
population by as much as half, destroyed or taken over all major firms
in
the private sector and facilitated the takeover of all other surviving
firms
by loyal Zanu PF supporters. They are deliberately halting food
supplies to
the cities, destroying jobs and the transport industry. They
will then take
the pick of the commercial and industrial infrastructure that
remains -
intact, almost as if a neutron bomb had been used, and move on
from there.
The remaining urban population would then be in the same position
as the
population in the rural areas - under tight control and able to vote
only
under supervision.
Then Zanu can allow an election to take place
- probably in March as
planned, even with observers for the last few days of
the campaign and
during the vote itself. Zanu feels confident that it can
win a clear
majority - even a two-thirds majority vote under such
circumstances. The
only other issue is what happens to the three million
Zimbabweans displaced
by this ruthless, but clever scheme.
Most of
them will swim the Limpopo or cross the border at Beitbridge. Once
in South
Africa, or Botswana, or Zambia or the UK or the USA, they will
settle down,
breathe a sigh of relief to be somewhere where sanity prevails
and try to
make a living, any sort of living. They will gradually be
assimilated and
will start sending small sums of money "home" to keep their
relatives alive
in Mugabe's national detention camp. Most importantly, they
will not be able
to vote.
What remains of Zimbabwe will be a sea of poverty and
subsistence activity
with Party controlled islands of prosperity. A few
foreign firms will be
allowed to exploit our resources under close
supervision and control and the
output used to support the lifestyles of the
new elite who will continue to
enjoy the luxury and pleasures that have
become their norm in recent years
on the gravy train. It has nothing to do
with price control.
egcross.
Afrique en ligne
Harare (Zimbabwe) An acute shortage of fuel in Zimbabwe is
beginning
to affect the country's education sector, with some schools now
demanding
petrol and diesel from desperate parents, APA learnt here
Thursday.
One of the leading private schools in the capital Harare,
has told
parents that their children's education risked being affected
unless they
donated fuel to enable teachers to come to school.
A letter from Gateway School, made available to APA Thursday, said
that each
parent of the more than 1,500 students at the school must
contribute five
litres of fuel towards the school.
The request for fuel comes
barely a month after other private schools
started accepting payments for
fees in foreign currency, citing the rapid
depreciation of the Zimdollar for
their action.
Zimbabwe has been experiencing acute shortages of
fuel since the
government imposed a ban on petroleum imports by individuals
and private
companies three weeks ago.
Only the state-owned
National Oil Company of Zimbabwe is now allowed
to import fuel into the
country, a development that has resulted in the
shortages.
Combined with constant electricity cuts, the fuel shortage has forced
many
businesses to downsize operations because of the shortage of fuel.
JN/nm/APA
2007-08-02
African Press Agency
http://africanhuntinginfo.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=718
2007/8/2
15:25:51
By Bernard Unti
As famine looms for millions of his poorer
citizens, President Robert Mugabe
of Zimbabwe has declared open season on
one of his nation¹s greatest
treasures characterized his whole career,
Mugabe has ordered rangers at
Zimbabwe¹s National Parks to cooperate with
rural authorities in the
wholesale killing of wild animals, including
elephants.
The expressed goal of the political strongman who has
dominated Zimbabwe
since it gained political independence in 1980? To feed a
hungry rural
constituency whose support ensured him a majority of seats in
Zimbabwe¹s
March 2005 parliamentary elections.
An indeterminate
number of wild animals were killed by authorities during
the run up to the
March elections, with at least ten elephants barbecued as
part of the March
18 celebrations commemorating the 25th anniversary of
Zimbabwe¹s
independence. Four of the elephants were shot by park rangers,
reportedly in
the presence of tourists near the Matusadona National Park
bordering Lake
Kariba. The others were killed by a farmer at the request of
a local rural
council in the Urungwe Safari Area bordering the Mana Pools
National
Park.
Rangers killing elephants is nothing new. They¹ve been shooting a
limited
number of these animals for years in an attempt to minimize
human-wildlife
conflicts on the borders of Zimbabwe¹s parks, but in the wake
of Mugabe¹s
order, these actions have taken on an ominous cast to many
observers.
Specifically, Mugabe¹s Operation Nyama, or ³Operation Meat,²
which kills
elephants to provide meat for starving villagers, has come under
fire for
being nothing more than a front for illegal ivory
poaching.
The Politics of Famine
This latest threat to Zimbabwe¹s
wildlife is inextricably tied to the
politics of food. Notoriously scornful
of western nations, Mugabe has
rejected international offers of food aid and
denied the claims of his
political opposition, the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), that
Zimbabwe cannot meet the challenge of its food shortage
without help. The
MDC has urged the government to seek international
assistance.
A recent communiqu&rom the United States Agency for
International
Development (USAID) confirms Zimbabwe¹s dire condition. The
agency issued an
emergency alert on May 2 saying that Zimbabwe¹s summer
grain harvest will
not satisfy the food needs of its residents. The
country¹s population
exceeds 12 million, of whom an estimated four million
rural poor are
affected by food shortages.
Mugabe has acknowledged
that Zimbabwe faces a threat of famine, and has
sworn that he will not let
his people go hungry. During the March elections
Mugabe essentially
campaigned on a Vote for Us or Starve platform. But
Mugabe faces many crises
at the moment: Once the engine of a promising
postcolonial state, Zimbabwe¹s
economy is in free fall, with high
unemployment, hyperinflation, and
shrinking capital investment. The country
also faces water, electricity, and
fuel shortages, and an accelerating crime
rate.
Given all the
country¹s problems U. S. Congress recently questioned whether
the
international community¹s policy of isolating Mugabe¹s government was
the
right approach. Members of Congress instead called for a concerted
effort at
strategic engagement, with the United States and members of the
African
Union, especially South Africa, pressing Mugabe to reform.
Responding to
Mugabe's proposal, Andrew Rowan, executive vice president for
operations for
The HSUS, sent a letter on May 2 asking that Zimbabwe
reconsider its
position on accepting food relief from international
agencies. Rowan's
letter to Mugabe pointed out that outside assistance would
help Zimbabwe's
people and its animals, preventing further damage to the
nation's wildlife
sector and setting the stage for Zimbabwe's future as a
premiere venue for
wildlife-related tourism.
Land Redistribution
Even before Mugabe¹s
latest decree, Zimbabwe¹s wildlife was in serious
peril, especially from the
controversial land redistribution program
sponsored by his
government.
In 2000, Mugabe ordered the confiscation of white-owned farms
for
redistribution to peasants and political supporters. This marked the
culmination of two decades of battles over land policy that pitted Mugabe
against white farmers, political opponents, and the United Kingdom, which as
a colonial power once governed the nation formerly called
Rhodesia.
With Mugabe¹s encouragement, thousands of black Zimbabweans
invaded the
nation¹s farms. The destruction that ensued caused white farmers
to flee,
crippled the economy, and ushered in widespread commodity
shortages, as the
commercial farming sector, once an important source of
exports and jobs, was
devastated.
The presumed beneficiaries of land
redistribution did not fare very well,
either. With poor soil quality and
low rainfall, many of the subdivided
properties proved too barren to sustain
crops. Thus, thousands of
Zimbabweans turned to poaching as a source of food
and income, trapping
animals for their own sustenance as well as for an
expanding market in bush
meat.
The new settlers were indiscriminate
in their killing of animals, but their
main targets were antelopes (kudu and
impala), buffaloes, elephants,
giraffes, leopards, wildebeests, and
zebras.
The Spread of Dis-Ease
Hunting and wildlife-related
tourism were once the source of millions of
dollars annually for Zimbabwe¹s
economy; millions of acres of lands too arid
or rocky for farming could
sustain wildlife, and proved well-suited for
photographic and shooting
safaris. Despite his promise that the compulsory
acquisition of white-owned
lands would be limited to agricultural farms, it
was not long before private
reserves and conservancies were under siege.
Mugabe loyalists, politicians,
police officials, the landless poor and other
parties participated in a
virtual invasion of private and state-owned
conservation areas, killing
animals for their meat and skins.
By burning grazing lands and chopping
down trees along the way, the mostly
impoverished legions decimated
Zimbabwe¹s natural environment, even as they
took a fatal toll on their
nation¹s wild animal population. After all, the
indigenous savannah woodland
that characterized many ranches and
conservancies provided suitable habitat
for many rare species, including
African wild dogs, cheetah, black rhino,
and roan and sable antelope.
While these game ranches were never
perfectly ³safe² for animals, they were
at least guarded by scouts, and
animals enjoyed relative safety when not
within the sights of a trophy
hunter¹s rifle. What¹s more, during the 1990s,
such ventures enjoyed a
measure of protection from the Mugabe regime, which
viewed them as a
reliable revenue source.
Making matters worse, once the land invasions
began, trophy hunters, biltong
hunters, and illegal safari operators from
South Africa and elsewhere took
advantage of Zimbabwe¹s unstable
circumstances, bribing their way into
conservation areas at a pittance, to
shoot cheetahs, elephants, leopards,
lions, and other animals.
Food
or Trophies?
By some estimates, the combined effect of the lawlessness
and disorder of
the last few years has been the loss of 80% of the wild
animals in
Zimbabwe¹s wildlife conservancies and game farms animals in its
national
parks. The grim toll has shaken wildlife protection advocates.
Until the
mid-1990s, the relative abundance of certain species in Zimbabwe
had given
advocates hope that Zimbabwe could become a haven for
wildlife.
Until 2000, for example, Zimbabwe had the world¹s single
largest
concentration of black rhinos, approximately 500 in number, having
recovered
from a critical two-decade decline. But in 2004, Johnny Rodrigues
of the
Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force estimated that only 200 rhinos
remained.
The slaughtered rhinos¹ horns, hacked off by poachers and others,
are highly
valued in East Asia, where they can bring up to
$90,000.
Elephants, too, had been thriving in Zimbabwe until the recent
turmoil. In
2001, the Zimbabwe Department of National Parks and Wildlife,
together with
the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), placed the number of
elephants within
the country at 84,000 justify their ongoing efforts to cull
elephants or
ease trade restrictions. For example, in 1999, amidst bitter
international
controversy, Zimbabwe received permission from the Convention
on
International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to sell ivory to Japan
on
a limited and strictly monitored basis.
Mugabe's latest plan,
Operation Nyama, may be even more controversial. Some
believe that the
campaign to provide elephant meat to starving villagers in
northern
Matabeleland is providing cover for an officially sanctioned
poaching ring
that moves ivory out of Zimbabwe and into illicit markets.
Operation Nyama
was to have ended in December, but in early March, it was
reportedly still
going strong.
Zimbabwe already has huge stockpiles of ivory, an estimated
24,000
kilograms. Worldwide demand, were it not hampered by the CITES
prohibition
and steady political pressure to maintain the ban, would make
ivory a ready
source of foreign exchange revenue for Zimbabwe were the
international
markets to open up.
The Wisdom of Elephants
In
December 2003, British journalist Michael Durham published a story in The
Guardian about elephant ³refugees² who fled Zimbabwe by wading across the
Zambezi River into Zambia to avoid being killed by poachers, marauders, and
illegal trophy hunters. The elephants¹ movement seemed to exceed normal
rates of seasonal migration and a Zambian game warden told Durham that it
was not a coincidence. Elephants are quite intelligent and can communicate.
They know they are safer on this side of the river.
The wisdom of
elephants notwithstanding, it won¹t be possible for the
majority of
Zimbabwe¹s wildlife to evade the long shadow cast by President
Mugabe.
Should Mugabe¹s orders take hold, Zimbabwe¹s national parks, where
wildlife
losses have not been as high as those on game farms and
conservancies, will
be in trouble. Dispatching armed rangers into parks with
orders to kill
animals for their meat would provide no real answer to
Zimbabwe¹s food
crisis or its other problems. It would be a disaster and
should it occur,
treasures such as Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe¹s largest
park and one of
Africa¹s outstanding havens for wild animals, will become
nothing less than
hollowed-out monuments of a nation¹s political, social,
and ecological
collapse.
What You Can Do
Please send an appeal to President
Robert Mugabe in care of the Republic of
Zimbabwe¹s Ambassador to the United
States, Simbi Veke Mubako. Ask President
Mugabe to accept the offer of
international food aid, and tell him that his
simple decision will not only
help his starving people, but also save
Zimbabwe¹s already imperiled
wildlife.
His Excellency Simbi Veke Mubako, Ambassador
Embassy of
Zimbabwe
1608 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC
20009
202-332-7100
Fax: 202-483-9326
E-mail: zimemb@erols.com
If you wish, send a
copy of your letter or communication to the
following
people:
Representative Christopher H. Smith
Chair,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights, and
International
Operations
The Committee on International
Relations
United States House of Representatives
2170 Rayburn House Office
Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Fax: 202-225-2035
E-mail: HIRC@mail.house.gov
The Honorable
Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C
Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20520
E-mail: Contact Secretary Rice via her
web form.
IOL
August 02 2007 at 04:51PM
Harare - Lawyers for six Zimbabweans
facing charges of plotting to
overthrow President Robert Mugabe protested
the suspects' detentions on
Thursday, saying there was no case against
them.
"There is no evidence against our clients and therefore no
reason for
their continued detention," lawyer Charles Warara told AFP after
a court
hearing.
Lawyers were planning to ask the court to
dismiss the case at the
hearing, but it was postponed until
Monday.
"The case is fatally defective and we are arguing that
there is no
reason for them to continue to be inside except for political
reasons," he
said.
Warara said the magistrate postponed the
hearing at the request of
state prosecutor Joseph Makwakwa, who still had to
familiarise himself with
the details of the case.
In June a
judge denied the suspects' bid to be released on bail out of
fears they
could flee the impoverished country.
The six men,
including a retired soldier, Alfred Matapo, have been in
prison for nearly
two months over an alleged attempt to topple long-ruling
Mugabe and replace
him with rural housing minister Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Mnangagwa is
among those seen as Mugabe's possible successors.
The prosecution
said Matapo conspired with the other suspects and
recruited various members
of the security forces in preparation for the
alleged coup.
Matapo allegedly planned to incite soldiers to take over the
government and
later declare himself interim ruler before installing
Mnangagwa as
president.
Their lawyers said the suspects were discussing the
formation of a new
political party when they were arrested during a meeting
in the capital.
Moneyweb
Business presents 14-page rescue
plan to Mugabe.
Tawanda Jonas
02 Aug 2007 16:14
Harare
-
Zimbabwe's fawning business leaders have tabled an ambitious economic
recovery and rescue plan to deal with the country's eight-year-old economic
slump in 90 days.
The confidential 14-page rescue plan was presented
to President Robert
Mugabe when he met with business executives. It proposes
to reverse the
country's economic slide within three months of
implementation. The plan
suggests foreign currency be used to stabilise the
country's skidding
exchange rate and all pricing misalignments currently
prevalent on the
market be removed.
The document, a copy of which was
seen by Moneyweb, also suggests "a primary
budget surplus", be
created.
It was reported that Mugabe was likely to give accent to the
proposal by the
business leaders because he was evidently feeling the heat
in the run-up to
next year's presidential, local government and
parliamentary polls.
"He has no other option except to give the
entrepreneurs the nod, Mugabe and
his officials within government know that
in the past they have tried to go
it alone and this has not worked," said
Pattisani Mkandla, a local political
analyst. He added that Mugabe now
realises that the solution to Zimbabwe's
economic downturn lies in the
economy not his "self imposed but ill
conceived and badly implemented
policies of expediency".
The entrepreneurs who met Mugabe stressed the
importance of the need for the
implementation of extraordinary measures and
unconventional methods.
"Your Excellency, we. seek your advice and
guidance so that we deal with the
grave situation out there within the next
90 days. We propose that you
consider setting up a small team of people
drawn from government and
business to put together and implement a
comprehensive emergency package of
measures designed to rescue, stabilise
and eventually turnaround our
economy," the presentation to Mugabe
reads.
The business executives are positive that the implementation of
the economic
rescue package would significantly reduce the country's runaway
inflation,
which at over 5 000 is the highest in the world.
They also
hope that the plan will help increase capacity utilisation and
increase
confidence in the economy.
Presented during a four-hour long meeting with the
president, the plan
proposes the implementation of "a credible, transparent
pricing mechanism
that ensures both business viability and affordability for
consumers for
controlled and monitored products through the framework from
the social
contract".
The business captains suggested restructuring
of the country's under
performing and undercapitalised public
enterprises.
They also suggested other measures to the effect of
retaining skills in the
various sectors of Zimbabwe's incapacitated economy.
Economic sectors such
as the mining and manufacturing industry have the
capacity to turn around
the country's economy should the proposals by the
business leaders be
implemented in whole.
Once the internal package
of measures achieves traction, the business
leaders would then "seek
external balance of payments support on favourable
terms", according to the
proposals.
During the meeting, Mugabe is believed to have called for the
business
leaders to desist from reaping exorbitant profits from their
businesses.
He is also believed to have two items on the list of
proposals cited above.
The items added could not immediately be obtained, as
they are not on the
original list that was presented to Mugabe and seen by
Moneyweb.
Delta Corporation CEO Joel Mutizwa, Zimbabwe Chamber of
Commerce (ZNCC)
president Marah Hativagone and the Zimbabwe Confederation of
Industries
(CZI) leader Callisto Jokonya are among some of the delegates who
were
hosted by Mugabe.
*Tawanda Jonas is a Zimbabwean
journalist
The Southern African
:: The Southern African
Thursday, 02 August
2007
LUSAKA - When Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa likened
Zimbabwe to a
sinking titanic in March this year, he must have forgotten
that he would
soon host President Robert Mugabe, the captain of the "sinking
titanic".
From August 10, Mwanawasa is hosting the annual SADC
heads of state
summit and suddenly the Zambian leader is faced with the
prospect of awkward
moments or even a snub from the Zimbabwean
leader.
But, according to the AFP, Mwanawasa has found a timely
solution. He
dispatched a special envoy to Harare to repair relations with
Mugabe ahead
of the summit.
Diplomatic sources told AFP that
none other than veteran diplomat,
Vice-President Rupiah Banda has been sent
to do damage control on a
diplomatic discord caused when Mwanawasa made the
titanic comment when
reacting to reports of the torture of opposition
leaders that sparked an
international crisis.
"Quiet diplomacy
has failed to help solve the political chaos and
economic meltdown in
Zimbabwe (which is like) a sinking Titanic whose
passengers are jumping out
in a bid to save their lives," Mwanawasa said
then.
He added
that Zambia had been forced to re-think its position after
"the twist of
events in the troubled country", which "necessitates the
adoption of a new
approach".
Inevitably, the Zimbabwe crisis will top the agenda at
the summit
where a report from President Thabo Mbeki, the chair of the
Zimbabwe
political crisis talks, is highly anticipated.
"President Mwanawasa wants to make up with Mugabe before the summit.
He
wants to assure Mugabe that he will not use his position to attack
Zimbabwe," a source told AFP.
IOL
August
02 2007 at 04:48PM
Harare/Johannesburg - A man was killed in a
scuffle about a loaf of
bread in Zimbabwe, where food shortages are
worsening, press reports said on
Thursday.
The man, believed to
have been an illegal gold panner, was killed on
Thursday on the outskirts of
the city of Gweru, central Zimbabwe, the
official Herald daily
said.
The report said the man bought a loaf of bread on credit from
a woman
running a small shop. Half an hour later, five men, including the
shopowner's husband, confronted the man and his brother and demanded cash
for the bread.
"A misunderstanding ensued over the matter
resulting in the five men
assaulting the two brothers with fists, iron bars
and stones," police
spokesperson Emmanuel Mahoko
said.
One of the men died of his injuries later
that night. Police have
arrested the five alleged assailants, according to
the Herald.
Bread is in critical short supply in Zimbabwe following
President
Robert Mugabe's controversial price blitz early last month. Price
inspectors
demand that bread, where available, be sold at just ZIM$22 000
(about R8)
per loaf.
On the black market a loaf of bread
fetches up to ZIM$90 000. Flour is
also short supply. - Sapa-DPA
By Lance
Guma
02 August 2007.
Instead of celebrating the first anniversary of
the Save Zimbabwe Campaign
on the 29th July, Zimbabweans were rocked this
week by the withdrawal of the
Mutambara MDC from the platform. The party
cited what they felt was bias for
Morgan Tsvangirai and his party. As the
dust settles on that episode the
National Students Union (ZINASU) has moved
to re-affirm its support for the
coalition. Speaking on our Behind the
Headlines programme, Promise Mkwananzi
spoke of the need to unite all
progressive forces 'to mount a spirited
campaign against the ills and
misdeeds of an illegitimate and brutal Zanu PF
government.' He said students
believe the Save Zimbabwe coalition is the
only viable option for people to
articulate their demands.
Mkwananzi who sits on the general council of
the group said at no point was
it ever agreed that the different groups
would support a particular
individual's aspirations. He said 'It is
unfortunate and sad that they have
pulled out (Mutambara MDC),' but that
'there was a general understanding we
would promote the concept of one
candidate for the forthcoming 2008
elections.' He said those remaining in
the grouping will adhere to the
memorandum of agreement drawn up. Mkwananzi
said it would have been ideal to
have everyone on board but that even after
the withdrawal, the Save Zimbabwe
Campaign 'had enough manpower and stamina
to carry the struggle for
Zimbabweans.'
Meanwhile Pius Wakatama, a
spokesman for the Christian Alliance which
launched and coordinates the
campaign, said 'it was business as usual,' and
they would continue in their
efforts to liberate Zimbabweans. He told
journalists it was unfortunate
Mutambara announced his decision to the media
without discussing his
concerns with them. Only recently members of the
coalition, including
Tsvangirai, Mutambara, Lovemore Madhuku (NCA) and Paul
Siwela (ZAPU) among
others, embarked on a tour of European capitals to lobby
for more pressure
on Mugabe's regime. A prayer rally by the coalition in
March was brutally
crushed by police with two activists, including Gift
Tandare, being killed
by police.
As elections scheduled for 2008 draw nearer commentators are
urging groups
in and outside Zimbabwe to forge common platforms to try and
work together.
In the United Kingdom, the Zimbabwe Action Group led by
Robert Gonouya has
already drawn up a concept paper, listing terms of
reference for a coalition
that will unite pressure groups there. 'It is
clear that unless we become
more adroit and all progressive forces unite,
our effectiveness will always
be limited. The challenges we face as a people
demand that we put the need
to effect positive change in our circumstances
above personal interests and
pride,' Gonouya said. 'There is no room for
tribal prejudices, bickering or
ambivalence. The advantages of us working
closely together are obvious,' he
added.
NB: The full interview with
Promise Mkwananzi can be heard on our Behind the
Headlines programme,
Thursday and will also be available on archives after
broadcast.
SW
Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
expatica.com
2
August 2007
Harare (dpa) - As inflation bites and shortages worsen,
Zimbabwe's mandarins
have been offered help from a highly-controversial
source - the Church of
Scientology, reports said Thursday.
Government
officials, including cabinet ministers have all been given free
copies of
the book The Problems of Work written by Scientology founder L Ron
Hubbard.
The books were handed over by a representative from an
international book
distributor, state radio said, adding that The Problems
of Work tackles
issues on how to handle exhaustion and
confusion.
Scientology is not recognized as a religion in several
European countries
including Britain, France and Germany, and the Berlin
government considers
Scientology a moneymaking enterprise with a history of
exploiting the
vulnerable.
The creed however has various
high-profile adherents who include Hollywood
film star Tom Cruise.
It
was not clear why President Robert Mugabe's government accepted the
books.
Zimbabwe already has its own motivational literature,
including three books
by respected author and newspaper columnist Milton
Kamwendo. Like many
Zimbabweans, he is also a
Christian.
DPA
Peoples Daily
21:25, August 02,
2007
The first group of Zimbabwean students enrolling for
a Chinese
language course at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) will graduate
Friday, New
Ziana said on Thursday.
UZ acting Director
for Information and Public Relations Daniel
Chihombori said a total of 57
students successfully underwent the five-month
course.
"The 57 students are the first group of graduates under this
non-degree
course offered by the Confucius Institute. The aim of the
institute is to
teach Chinese language and culture and we are the seventh
country in Africa
to establish it," he said.
The institute, which is
collaborating with People's University
in China, was opened in
March.
Chihombori said enrolment for the next group would
begin soon,
adding that plans were at an advanced stage for the Confucius
Institute to
start offering a degree program.
Chihombori
expressed gratitude to the Chinese embassy for its
support to the
program.
He said through the embassy's support, the institute
was able to
construct in April this year, a state of the art laboratory to
facilitate
the teaching of the language.
The
establishment of the Confucius Institute followed the
signing of a
memorandum of understanding between the UZ and the Chinese
Language Council
International in August last year.
Source: Xinhua
By Tererai
Karimakwenda
02 August, 2007
The growing number of Zimbabweans
flooding into South Africa has clearly
become a serious problem for the
government of President Thabo Mbeki, yet
officials there continue to deny
there is a problem next door in Zimbabwe.
SABC news reported on Thursday
that the department of home affairs said
"Zimbabweans streaming into South
Africa cannot be classified as refugees,
as they are not facing persecution
in their home country." The report also
said the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees agrees with this,
saying it is not yet critical. The
evidence on the ground shows otherwise.
The news comes on the same day
that 300 protestors marched to the office of
the Premier of Gauteng
Province, to deliver a petition for President Mbeki
urging him to reform the
government's policies towards Zimbabwean refugees.
Also on Thursday The Cape
Times reported that SA Police had called on
farmers near the northern border
to stop their vigilante campaign against
Zimbabweans. A Sky News report in
the UK on Wednesday had shown the border
farmers hunting down desperate
Zimbabweans who are cutting down the farm
fences and killing game for food,
as they escape hunger and persecution in
Zimbabwe. And last week three
Zimbabweans were stabbed and injured in Port
Elizabeth, in an incident that
was attributed to xenophobia.
MP Mark Lowe, the Home Affairs spokesperson
for South Africa's main
opposition Democratic Alliance party, said clearly
there is a problem but if
the government of South Africa admits this then
they will be admitting their
policy of quiet diplomacy has failed. He added:
"And they are obviously not
going to do that. So we have this crazy
situation where we have thousands of
people coming across the border every
day and the government saying there is
no need to provide facilities for
them." Lowe explained that South Africa's
Home Affairs admitted Thursday
that there are a growing number of
Zimbabweans crossing over, but they are
disputing the numbers. He said the
problem has never been numbers, but has
always been a humanitarian problem
of providing shelter and
care.
Bishop Paul Verryn who shelters hundreds of Zimbabwean refugees at
his
Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg agrees with Lowe. He said many
of
the people he assists are professionals who escaped from Zimbabwe and
prefer
to live under squalid conditions in South Africa. The Bishop asked:
"Clearly
something is wrong in Zimbabwe. No right-thinking individual would
leave a
decent life, abandon normalcy and choose to come here where they
have
nothing and are treated so badly." Verryn helped organise the demo in
Johannesburg on Thursday.
Joyce Dube from the South Africa Women's
Institute for Migration Affairs
(SAWIMA), was also an organiser of the
Thursday demo. She said the fact that
President Mbeki agreed to mediate the
talks between Zimbabwe's ruling party
and the opposition means that he
admits there is a problem in Zimbabwe. As
such she believes he has the
responsibility to address the issue of refugees
fleeing to his country. The
petition that was delivered for Mbeki by the
protestors Thursday urges him
to care for the basic humanitarian needs of
Zimbabwean refugees in South
Africa. In the meantime SAWIMA has launched a
soup kitchen in Johannesburg
that Dube said feeds about 700 refugees every
day.
As thousands of
Zimbabweans continue to cross into South Africa every day,
the government
there and the UN Human Rights Commission will surely,
ultimately, be forced
to act. Their denial is reminiscent of the reluctance
of the international
community to state that genocide was taking place in
Rwanda, because that
would have meant they had to do something. A report in
South Africa's
Business Day newspaper on Tuesday said: "The officially
created disaster in
Zimbabwe is the longest-running genocide affecting the
greatest number of
any people for more than half a century."
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Deterioration in relations between opposition factions likely to
hand
ZANU-PF victory on a silver platter.
By Norman Chitapi in Harare
(AR No. 124, 2-Aug-07)
The divided opposition Movement for Democratic
Change, MDC, has all but
sealed its fate ahead of next year's combined
parliamentary and presidential
elections, with the leaders of its two
factions in an all-out attack on each
other in the state media this
week.
However, analysts are split on the likely impact of the
announcement by the
Arthur Mutambara-aligned camp that unity talks between
the two factions had
irretrievably collapsed after MDC founding president
Morgan Tsvangirai
recently refused to attend a joint press conference to
announce a code of
conduct which had set up a mechanism to reduced tensions
between the rival
groups.
The analysts predict that a divided MDC
will hand the ruling ZANU-PF party
victory on a silver platter in next
year's election. They all believe the
opposition will perform far worse in
the ballot than it has done since it
was founded eight years
ago.
There are also fears that the party could scuttle South African
president
Thabo Mbeki's mediation efforts after he made it a precondition
that he
would only deal with a united MDC.
Mutambara accused
Tsvangirai of sabotaging efforts to present a common front
against ZANU-PF.
He accused his counterpart of being "weak and indecisive"
and lacking the
ability to think strategically.
Mutambara also announced that his faction
was pulling out of the "Save
Zimbabwe Campaign", a conglomeration of some 20
civic organisations,
political parties and student and labour unions, which
he said was being
used to advance Tsvangirai's personal
interests.
While he has made it clear that he is not interested in
reunification
between the two factions after the split in 2005, Tsvangirai
did not
directly attack Mutambara when he spoke at a rally in the poor
suburb of
Kuwadzana on July 29.
"We need unity of all progressive
forces in this country," he said. "The
enemy is not Tsvangirai. The enemy is
President [Robert] Mugabe."
Analysts said the attack on Tsvangirai by
Mutambara was playing into ZANU-PF's
hands without in any way helping the
cause of the forces fighting Mugabe's
oppressive regime.
"We know
there is no love lost between the two opposition camps," said a
political
observer in Harare, adding that he believed Mugabe was "ready for
the
picking" after the worsening economic situation triggered by the recent
onslaught against business. However, pointed out the observer, "One cannot
rule out ZANU-PF's dirty tricks in this whole affair. Why is the state media
suddenly interested in reporting what is happening in the MDC when all along
it has refused to do so? After all, coverage of opposition parties by the
state media is one of the key issues being raised at the stalled talks in
South Africa."
The observer said the fact that the two factions were
attacking each other
in public was a clear sign that they were going their
separate ways and were
therefore likely to split their vote, which would
favour ZANU-PF.
"One of the key conditions of the talks between the two
factions was to
present a common front against ZANU-PF. This meant that they
would field a
single candidate in next year's presidential election," said
the observer.
"What is now happening is that the single-candidate principle
they were
talking about is dead and buried. There is no way any of them can
turn
around and support the other as the leader of a united
MDC."
They would also not likely field candidates against each other in
the
parliamentary constituencies, but would instead compete on a
proportional
representation basis.
A retired journalist in Harare
said Zimbabweans would be the biggest losers
in the war of egos between
opposition leaders. He said it was evident to
everyone else that a divided
MDC could not win against ZANU-PF - no matter
what the conditions on the
ground. But this did not seem to matter to the
leaders.
"I would be
surprised if their combined seats surpass 25 per cent of the
total vote in
next year's elections," said the journalist.
At the weekend rally,
Tsvangirai announced that his faction would launch its
presidential and
parliamentary campaign on September 9 at Zimbabwe Grounds
in the poor suburb
of Highfield, the same venue where many civic and
opposition activists,
including Tsvangirai, were arrested and severely
beaten in police custody.
The crackdown prompted an emergency Southern
African Development Community,
SADC, summit in Tanzania, which led to Mbeki
being ask to mediate the
crisis.
"Neither faction enjoys any significant support in rural areas
and if they
split the vote in urban areas where they have traditionally been
strong,
ZANU-PF will pick up those seats again. This is definitely bad news
for
Zimbabwe, whatever motives the opposition leaders might have," said the
journalist.
More significantly, it would be difficult for the
opposition to extract any
concessions from Mbeki at the mediation process,
he added.
Mugabe has always been reluctant to talk to the MDC, especially
meeting
Tsvangirai face-to-face.
"Now that they have proved unwilling
to stand together in defence of their
own interest, it will be more
difficult for ZANU-PF to take them seriously,"
said an African diplomat
based in Harare. "It will be even more difficult
for Mbeki to argue with
ZANU-PF that they are a serious party."
The SADC in March this year
mandated Mbeki to mediate in Zimbabwe's
eight-year political stalemate and
economic recession, which has seen
inflation spiral to over 4,500 per cent.
Unemployment is estimated at over
80 per cent.
The country has been
plagued by shortages of almost all basic commodities, a
situation aggravated
by a unilateral order by government at the end of June
for products and
service providers to reduce prices by 50 per cent. The move
led to a buying
spree by consumers, which has left most shops empty.
An MDC member who
attended Tsvangirai's rally noted that the MDC was setting
itself up for
failure. "Up to now not many people know whether or not the
MDC will be
participating in next year's elections. Then you have this
confusion about
the format the party wants to adopt in combating ZANU-PF.
Why should these
things be happening at the last minute when the party
should be mobilising
supporters and urging them to register to vote?" he
said.
"The long
and short of it is that the MDC is digging its own grave. Once
they lose
next year's election, whatever the electoral conditions, they are
unlikely
to recover again. People have given them enough chance and have
been hoping
that they would take advantage of the mediation effort by Mbeki
to improve
electoral laws, and even get some concessions on a new
constitution. They
have blown all that."
He noted that government had removed the ban on
political gatherings and
that both factions of the MDC were allowed to hold
rallies whenever they
wanted to. Whether government was genuinely trying to
accommodate opposition
views was still unclear but it was up to the MDC to
test the extent of this
commitment, he said.
"They cannot do this
when they cannot put their own house in order first,"
said another analyst.
"In all probability, ZANU-PF is just trying to cleanse
itself - to be seen
to be improving conditions in the country to win
legitimacy in any future
elections. It cannot be blamed for the MDC's
immaturity."
Norman
Chitapi is the pseudonym for an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.
Monsters and Critics
Aug 2, 2007, 17:35 GMT
Johannesburg/Harare - The wife
of the Zimbabwe army chief is to sue
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and
independent news services over
claims she assaulted a photographer during a
tour of a nearly-empty
supermarket, state radio said
Thursday.
Jocelyn Chiwenga, wife of army commander Constantine Chiwenga,
told a press
conference convened in Harare that the reports were an attack
on her private
life, the radio said.
Websites and private news sites
were awash Thursday with reports the
general's wife had slapped photographer
Tsvangirai Mukwazi who was
accompanying Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
president Tsvangirai
during a tour of a South African-owned shop in Harare
on Wednesday.
Seeing the mainly empty shelves at the store, Tsvangirai is
reported to have
criticized President Robert Mugabe's controversial price
slash last month.
Mugabe, 83, ordered shops, businesses, hotels,
restaurants and schools to
slash their prices by at least 50 per cent,
leading to widespread shortages.
The MDC said the move was a political
gimmick meant to shore up waning
support for the ruling party ahead of next
years polls.
Reports said Jocelyn Chiwenga was enraged to see the MDC
leader accompanied
by his bodyguards and journalists in the store, and
immediately ordered
guards to close the shop.
Photographer Mukwazi is
reported to have been trapped within the
supermarket, where he was allegedly
slapped and insulted by Chiwenga, who
was shopping at the time.
State
radio said the army commander's wife was furious to hear Morgan
Tsvangirai,
who she said had called for sanctions on Zimbabwe, referred to
as the
president.
She has announced she will sue the MDC leader and independent
news services
that have carried reports on the alleged incident.
©
2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
The Herald (Harare) Published by the
government of Zimbabwe
2 August 2007
Posted to the web 2 August
2007
Bulawayo
A PRIVATE college in Bulawayo which doubled the
price of uniforms after
Government froze prices was yesterday fined $3
million.
Foundation College, represented by Victor Katsholo, the board
secretary,
pleaded guilty to the charge of overcharging before Bulawayo
magistrate Mr
Sikhumbuzo Nyathi.
Prosecutor Mr Jeremiah
Mutsindikwa told the court that on Friday last week
members of the price
task force visited the college along Herbert Chitepo
Street.
The task
force discovered that the college authorities had increased the
price of
uniforms from $1 million in June to about $2,5 million in July.
Appearing
before another court, Matopo Book Centre, situated at Lutheran
House in
Bulawayo, was also fined $3 million for selling a packet of candles
above
the stipulated price.
The company, represented by John Wesley Ncube,
pleaded guilty to the charge
before Bulawayo magistrate Ms Ntombizodwa
Mazhandu.
Prosecutor Ms Nonhlanhla Ndlovu told the court that last week
on Friday
members of the task force visited the centre and found that a
packet of six
candles was being sold for $186 000 instead of the recommended
price of $169
000.
John Birch Society
2007-08-02 18:56
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
Twenty-seven years ago,
with the help of worldwide communism, Robert
Mugabe took control of
Rhodesia. He changed its name to Zimbabwe and
instituted a brutal one-party
dictatorship that has destroyed the nation's
productivity and brought it
back to almost stone-age privation.
COMMENTARY:
With enormous
pressure from the likes of Henry Kissinger aided by the
United Nations and
other powerful Western leaders, and with horrifying civil
strife supposedly
generated to oppose colonial rule, the government of
Rhodesia (called
Southern Rhodesia before its Unilateral Declaration of
Independence in 1965)
led by Ian Smith capitulated and pro-communist Robert
Mugabe became the
nation's leader. He quickly overcame rival revolutionary
Joshua Nkomo,
changed the country's name to Zimbabwe in 1980, and
established himself as
the supreme dictator.
Previously, Rhodesia had been a prosperous jewel
surrounded by a host of
backward African nations. An exporter of food and
other commodities,
Rhodesia helped to keep starvation from impacting
neighboring nations. But
Mugabe nationalized many of the white-owned farms
that had been owned and
managed over several generations by European
settlers. In many cases, huge
agricultural operations were confiscated
without payment to their owners and
turned over to Mugabe's followers who
proceeded to convert prosperity into
want.
More than two million
Zimbabweans have fled the country. Approximately
4,000 entrepreneurs have
been arrested, fined, and jailed by Zimbabwean
police loyal to
Mugabe.
In recent months, the nation's paper currency has become
virtually
worthless, hospitals are without basic necessities, shops and
manufacturing
facilities are all but closed, and the people face starvation.
In typical
dictatorial fashion, Mugabe has devalued the currency, imposed
wage and
price controls, and sent his police throughout the nation arresting
those
who are trying to survive in the government-directed economic
chaos.
Like the emperor Diocletian before him, Mugabe will soon learn
that wage
and price controls cannot solve the problems his regime has
created, and
that economic laws cannot be repealed. Acting as numerous
dictators have in
the past, Mugabe blames the nation's problems on a
conspiracy seeking to
reimpose white colonial rule.
There is no
doubt that his days as Zimbabwe's leader are numbered. But the
horror his
rule has brought about will take generations to correct -
assuming that
future leaders have any intention of correcting nearly three
decades of
enormous crimes against this once-civilized outpost.
John F.
McManus
John F. McManus is President of The John Birch Society.