http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4541279
August 04, 2008 Edition 1
Mercury Foreign
Service-Sapa-AFP
JOHANNESBURG: Power-sharing talks between Zimbabwe's
rival political parties
resumed yesterday, a South African official
said.
Mukoni Ratshitanga, the spokesman for mediator President Thabo
Mbeki, said
talks were under way in Pretoria. It was not immediately
possible to confirm
this with either side.
The future roles of Robert
Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai are expected to be
major sticking
points.
Meanwhile, police found a second bomb that failed to detonate in
the debris
of an explosion at Harare's central police station on
Saturday.
Destroying 13 offices and a kitchen on the first floor, the
bomb blast came
on the eve of the resumption of talks.
Unusually,
police were cautious in apportioning blame.
"We are not going to
speculate or jump to conclusions until we have gathered
all the evidence,"
police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said. - Mercury Foreign
Service-Sapa-AFP
VOA
By
Peter Clottey
Washington, D.C.
04 August
2008
Zimbabweans are reportedly acting cautiously
optimistic about the beginning
of a second round of peace negotiations
between the ruling ZANU-PF party and
the main opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) in South Africa's
capital, Pretoria. The talks,
which resumed Sunday after a short break are
geared toward finding a lasting
solution to resolving Zimbabwe's political
and economic crisis. But some
Zimbabweans are expressing pessimism, about
previous negotiations with
President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANUPF party,
claiming they have not
alleviated the suffering of ordinary people.
They add that what
Zimbabweans want is a change in leadership and a
transitional government,
which would lead to a free and fair vote under a
new constitution. Glen
Mpani is the regional coordinator for the
transitional justice program of
the Center for the Study of Violence and
Reconciliation in Cape Town South
Africa. He tells reporter Peter Clottey
that Zimbabweans are not overly
enthusiastic about the talks.
"Zimbabweans are looking at the current
talks with cautious optimism. They
are very weary of the likely outcome from
these negotiations. As you are
aware, in 1987, there were negotiations
between the ZANU-PF and ZAPU
(Zimbabwe African People's Union) and the
negotiations came up with a unity
agreement that basically failed to address
the core issues. Basically, the
agreement led to the annihilation of the
opposition in Matabeleland," Mpani
pointed out.
He said Zimbabweans
are worried history would repeat itself in future
elections.
"Zimbabweans are quite weary that for the MDC to go and
negotiate with the
ZANU-PF, such a scenario like the previous talks might
come out of those
negotiations. The second thing is that Zimbabweans are
quite cognizant that
whatever negotiations take place, their will or their
decision in March 29
is non negotiable, which means that the decision that
they made that the MDC
is the government they would want to be in place
needs to be respected in
any negotiation process," he said.
Mpani
said some Zimbabweans feel disappointed by the international
community.
"The fact that the SADC (Southern African Development
Community) and the AU
(African Union) are monitoring the peace process does
not give Zimbabweans
confidence, based on the fact that the two bodies have
had their credibility
eroded to a large extent. The AU's acceptance of
Robert Mugabe to go to the
AU summit after the African Union and PAN African
parliament and SADC had
all declared that the election in June were not an
expression of the free
will of the people of Zimbabwe was an indictment on
the AU. It was a sign
that the AU body is complicit with Mugabe in terms of
subverting the will of
the people of Zimbabwe," Mpani pointed out.
He
said Zimbabweans feel particularly let down by the African Union and
SADC.
"So, there is some hesitance on the part of Zimbabweans to say
there is no
guarantee that the AU will protect their vote. More importantly,
that it was
exacerbated by the resolutions that came out advocating for a
government of
national unity," he said.
Mpani said Zimbabweans
overwhelmingly want a change in leadership that would
lead to a free and
fair election, conducted according to international
standards.
"What
Zimbabweans want with the ongoing talks is a negotiated settlement
that
brings back democracy, a Zimbabwe that is able to allow the recovery of
the
economy within the country. And thirdly and more importantly is, they
want
the process to guarantee them that if they are to go for an election
again,
they can get the leadership that they deserve, which means that these
negotiations, one should deal with institutional reform deal with the
de-politicization of the army, the police, and the militia. These
negotiations should deal with the overhaul of the constitution and more
importantly lead to a process where we have got a framework which can come
up with formulating a base and a foundation that can lead to an election,"
Mpani pointed out.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=1976
August 4, 2008
By Our
Correspondent
HARARE - As government prepares to assess the food
requirements of
households in the capital city this week, residents
complained of being
forced to express support for Zanu-PF or denounce the
opposition Movement
for Democratic Change, in order for them to qualify for
food aid from the
state.
Harare as well other major urban centres are
known strongholds of the MDC.
Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono set up
the Basic Commodities Supply Side
Initiative (Bacossi) as food shortages
worsened in both rural and urban
areas, hoping to provide basic food
commodities at "affordable prices" to
the people.
The initiative has
been condemned by both industrialists and retailers who
say they feel the
central bank should make foreign currency available for
companies to import
inputs for manufacturing basic commodities and save jobs
rather than use
scarce foreign currency to import the commodities for
distribution.
But the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) welcomed the
government move
saying it would ease poverty among vulnerable groups. "The
initiative is
commendable as it ensures that consumers have access to
commodities at a
time when basic commodities are beyond the reach of many,"
CCZ executive
director Rosemary Siyachitema said.
Simbarashe Moyo,
the chairperson of the Combined Harare Residents
Association (CHRA) has
accused government of politicising the basic
commodities under
Bacossi.
Moyo said government should not have banned humanitarian food
aid
organisations from distributing food to the poor as a political
expedient.
"It is evil to politicize food aid and lie that the population
of Zimbabwe
will benefit immensely from the much publicized Bacossi
program," Moyo
charged.
"The reality on the ground is that people are
starving and there is an
urgent need to complement each other in assisting
the starving people. Those
who are thinking that the Bacossi program alone
without the intervention of
the NGOs will stop starvation are either doing
so irrationally or are merely
politicking at the expense of the suffering
Zimbabweans" Moyo said.
He said a parallel survey carried out by his
organisation had revealed that
four out of five families interviewed were
living on one meal of very little
sadza and boiled vegetables a
day.
Basic goods procured by the state under the Bacossi program, which
are only
accessible to people or business persons with connection to
Zanu-PF, are
never found in the shops. Most of these goods are finding their
way to the
parallel market where they are sold at exorbitant prices; which
the majority
cannot afford.
Moyo said government must ensure that
state food aid is accessible by all
who are in need, irrespective of their
political affiliation or inclination.
"We remind the state that the food
stuffs procured under Bacossi do not
belong to Zanu-PF, but are goods bought
using tax payers' money. In the same
way that tax is collected regardless of
one's political affiliation, we
demand that 'all that is procured using such
money must be provided to all,
in the same manner that the money used is
collected'.
He said his organisation needed to remind the government that
it has no
capacity to feed the increasing numbers of starving residents, and
therefore
must immediately lift the ban on all NGO field activities so that
the
population can access food as well as other goods and
services.
Angered by the historic defeat at the hands of the MDC in the
March 29
elections, Zanu-PF imposed a blanket ban on all the field work of
NGOs.
"Without the aid from the NGOs, starvation among the population has
worsened
as the economy continues to deteriorate," Moyo added.
http://zimbabwemetro.com/financial-news/gideon-gono-to-step-down-september/
Gideon
By Tongai Gava-Special Projects Editor ⋅ ©
zimbabwemetro.com ⋅ August 3,
2008 ⋅
Embattled Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
governor Gideon Gono reportedly confided
to close associates that he will
immediately step down in two months if
talks between ZANU PF and the MDC
break down, a source close to Gono who is
also a ZANU PF central committee
member revealed.
Gono reportedly said there is no way he can turn around
the economy unless
there is a political settlement. His bargaining chip when
he agreed to help
Mugabe in the run-off was that after Mugabe’s victory the
MDC must be
co-opted into government.
Gono was reportedly frustrated
and felt powerless after substantial foreign
currency reserves in Germany
were suddenly frozen and a fully paid
consignment of new currency was
confiscated by the German government. The
total costs of the seized
consignment excluding shipping are estimated to be
over US14 million
dollars.
But there are real threats to the dialogue and it might collapse
despite
public pronouncements to the contrary.
ZANU PF has already
rejected any substantive position for Tsvangirai.
“We will not accept
anything other than that President Mugabe remains the
executive president as
he won the presidential run-off on June 27.
Tsvangirai must be content with
the third post of vice-president.
“The Zanu-PF politburo has resolved
that while the party is committed to the
talks, the issue of president is
non-negotiable and we will reiterate the
issue when we resume talks.” one of
the negotiators was quoted saying.
Efforts to reach Gono’s spokesman
Kumbirai Nhongo were unsuccessful.
http://www.hararetribune.com/index.php?news=130
Gilbert Muponda 03 August, 2008
09:57:00
On 30 July 2008 the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) released the
Mid-Term
Monetary Policy which included currency reforms.
Whilst the
statement had several positive policy shifts the Economy is
unlikely to
improve due to the unresolved political crisis arising from the
contentious
March 29,2008 election and the run-off in June. In the absence
of an
undisputed political settlement Zimbabwe will remain with the crisis
of
confidence and as such investment, production and International support
will
remain at undesirably low levels.
The currency reforms are welcome in
as far as they address the strain on IT
systems and the general burden to
the public of traveling with huge amounts
of currency even for simple
shopping trips. The public will obviously be
relieved that instead of
carrying suitcases to go shopping, now a wallet can
in fact do the trick.
Banks which had now been forced to develop various
sub-accounts for clients
will now have to re-adjust to normal practices.
These are the immediate and
likely only benefits.
The Zimbabwe dollar will however remain weak and
under speculative pressure
due to the depleted (non-existant) foreign
currency reserves. In addition
the inflation differential between Zimbabwe
and its major trading partners
is so high that the Zimbabwe dollar can not
sustain its newly acquired value
for any foreseeable future. The Global
inflation forecast is approximately
4.8% for 2008.And Zimbabwe's current
inflation is 2.2 million % and
forecasts indicate it could easily hit 100
million % before year end. The
Zimbabwe dollar is therefore likely to
depreciate by a margin that mirrors
the inflation differential between
Zimbabwe's inflation and that of its
trading partners and that difference is
running into millions.
The removal of Zeroes would have been a perfect
measure if supported by
significant balance of payment of support from
various sources including
IMF, Africa Development Bank, PTA Bank and the
wider international
community. In addition other measures would be required
such as building
import cover for 6 to 18 months. The lack of import cover
means the nation's
reserves are basically operating on a hand to mouth basis
and as such the
currency can not stabilize just by the removal of
zeroes.
The currency reforms in the absence of political settlement which
is
required for Zimbabwe to be re-admitted into the Global financial system
means the measure would be a wasted effort in as far as stabilizing the
currency and inflation. The political settlement is key in that the various
targeted sanctions that have been announced are now going beyond individuals
and the latest addition included various listed corporates and numerous
parastatals. The effect of this is to limit the counterparties these
entities can trade with and will in the long run entangle most companies
listed on the Zimbabwe stock exchange. This will further worsen capital
flight and dampen one of the few viable investment destinations that remain
for most Zimbabweans.
The other side is some of the targeted
sanctions come with a stick and
carrot approach and upon being lifted
Zimbabwe will qualify for various
specific programmes to help rebuild the
Economy.
The Mid-Term Monetary Policy mentioned the need to invite
private sector
participation in various parastatals. This is a positive
measure but needs
to go further and in fact pursue an aggressive
privatization programme which
will free State resources only to those areas
which the private sector has
no capacity. It is clear most of the recent
Quasi-Fiscal activities have
been necessitated by the need to keep
parastatals on their feet. This can be
avoided by privatizing most of these
institutions many of which have ready
buyers and at attractive prices should
this be accompanied by political
settlement.
In the absence of
political settlement Privatization may not realize optimal
values as assets
are likely to remain depressed due to political
uncertainty. Zimbabwe has
attractive assets in mining, telecommunications;
transport, food processing
and these assets could be disposed of in foreign
currency and help build
stable import cover capacity. Simulteously the
disposal will save the public
purse from the now routine rescue missions of
RBZ hand outs to the
parastatals.
In addition to export incentives the authorities need a
clear plan to
encourage Non-Resident remittals to come through the official
systems. Many
nations including Mexico, Cuba, India, Pakistan, Philippines,
and Nigeria
have developed channels and institutions to help and encourage
their
non-resident citizens to remit more funds back home. This needs to be
a
genuine effort which is normally accompanied by the right of these
non-resident citizens being allowed to vote. This is critical to build a
sense of nation-hood and nation building after all remittals with no right
to vote is similar taxation without representation.
Gilbert Muponda
is a Zimbabwe-born entrepreneur. He can be contacted at
gilbert@gmricapital.This article
appears courtesy of GMRI Capital. More
articles at www.gmricapital.com
http://www.radiovop.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3434&Itemid=756
HARARE, August 4 2008 - Prices of goods have increased
phenomenally
following the introduction of a redenominated currency by the
Reserve bank
of Zimbabwe last week.
A survey by radio
VOP revealed that business people have taken
advantage of the new currency
to double prices. The prices only appear cheap
in numerical terms yet
exorbitant in real terms.
A two-litre bottle of cooking oil
went up to $120 in new currency,
which is $1,2 trillion in old currency. A
two-kilogramme packet of sugar is
now selling at an average of $50 from $25,
a loaf of bread is now $25 that
is $250 billion in old currency from an
average of $15.
Comfort Muchekeza, the Consumer Council of
Zimbabwe's spokesperson for
the Southern region bemoaned the price madness
and urged the government to
crackdown on businesses to restore sanity and
put a stop to the unilateral
price hikes.
President Robert
Mugabe last week warned that his government might
have to declare a state of
emergency in order to contain an economic crisis
that has seen prices rise
on a daily basis while inflation has shot to 2.2
million percent, the
highest in the world.
Meanwhile the chairperson of the National
Incomes and Pricing
Commission (NIPC) Goodwills Masimirembwa said he would
be holding a meeting
with the business sector on Monday, to warn them
against profiteering.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=1965#more-1965
August 4, 2008
By
Raymond Maingire
HARARE - A cross section of Zimbabweans have decried the
Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe's action in splashing resources, including scarce
foreign currency
on pampering members of the judiciary, at a time when the
majority of the
population is reeling from severe hardship, including
starvation.
The official media reported last week that the cash-strapped
central bank
had spent US$50 000 each on 16 Mercedes-Benz E280 luxury sedans
for senior
judges of the high court, the electoral court and the labour
court. The
judges will now give the staid content of the Zimbabwe
Broadcasting
Corporation television a wide berth to watch foreign news and
entertainment
programmes on their brand new 32-inch plasma TV sets. The
chief justice and
judge president were allocated 42-inch screen sets, all
supplied for free by
the central bank.
To facilitate the accessing of
foreign broadcasts the bank installed
sophisticated satellite dishes at the
residences of the judges, with
generators being installed to circumvent
electricity blackouts. The judges,
who have also been allocated commercial
farms, also received Toyota and
Isuzu four-wheel-drive trucks to negotiate
the rough terrain to the farms.
In seeking to justify the preferential
treatment of the judges, Master of
the High Court, Charles Nyatanga, said
last week, "It was not desirable for
judges to drive Mercedes Benz in rough
terrain when going to their farms."
He especially commended the RBZ for
donating generators to the judges at a
time when the country was
experiencing severe power cuts.
"We are very happy that at long last the
judges have been given their
entitlement," Nyatanga told the
state-controlled Herald newspaper.
But ordinary Zimbabweans and
opposition politicians expressed outrage at the
lavish gesture by Reserve
Bank governor Gideon Gono as being not only
inappropriate for a central bank
governor, but also for being too
superfluous, especially at a time when the
majority of the population can
hardly afford to put a modest meal on the
table.
Most of the people interviewed over the weekend by The Zimbabwe
Times, also
questioned the motive behind this lavish splashing on members of
the bench,
which some said was tantamount to bribery of an already
compromised
judiciary.
Some pointed out that this pampering of judges
with fat perks had happened
at a time when most civil servants can hardly
survive for half a week on a
month's salary.
"Zanu PF has a history
of dolling out gifts to the police, the army and
traditional chiefs," said
King Matenda, a former primary school teacher in
Harare. "Now it is the
judiciary.
"Zanu-PF is probably aware it may not have so much control
over the
judiciary once a political settlement is reached between them and
the
opposition. This could be the last thank you to a judiciary that has
been
coming in handy in the numerous cases that have had a large bearing on
the
political welfare of the ruling party."
Former Mount Pleasant MDC
legislator Trudy Stevenson said she was worried by
the timing of the perks
when Zanu-PF and the MDC were now negotiating the
formation of an
all-inclusive government.
"They are obviously trying to buy the judges,"
she said, "But I am worried
about the timing. Why now and not at any other
time. I think if it is
something to do with the talks, then the judges may
come in handy when
dealing with crucial matters like the
Constitution."
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) secretary general
Wellington
Chibhebhe concurred.
"It would be hard to believe Gono has
a bona fide motive," says Chibhebhe,
"The approach of the Reserve Bank
governor to such issues has always been
questionable.
"His official
role is not to dole out gifts to sections of the civil
service. The judges
fall under the Public Service Commission which should be
the one
spearheading this.
"But given the history of the Reserve Bank when
dealing with such matters,
this is not surprising. If it is not the army
being given preferences ahead
of every other Zimbabwean, it is the police or
the chiefs. Now it is the
judges."
A junior magistrate based in
Harare who cannot be named for fear of
breaching his employer's code of
conduct also criticized the central bank
chief for his selective approach to
rewarding sections of the civil service.
"I do not know why government
believes the judiciary starts and ends with
the judges," he said.
"I
wonder if they are aware that the net result of all this is to demoralize
everyone else. We as magistrates are equally as important as the judges in
as far as the justice delivery system is concerned.
"It is not good
to find government piling up perks on judges when junior
magistrates are
still using public transport to travel to work."
But there are still some
who think the move by Gono was justified.
An employee with the justice
ministry who also spoke on condition of
anonymity said he believes nothing
is fundamentally wrong with Gono's
gesture.
"To me this is
justified," he said. "There are three arms of the state;
which are the
executive, the legislature and the judiciary.
"The executive and the
legislature have already been catered for. Judges, as
anchors of the
judiciary, were the only ones left out."
Political commentator Professor
Heneri Dzinotyiwei differed.
He said the controversial move by Gono
pointed to the existence of a clique
of people who were preparing for their
future in the event of far-reaching
change on the political
landscape.
"Gono is doing this for his own sake," he said. "He may be
aware of what
most of us are not yet aware of and may well be preparing for
his future.
Perhaps he may very soon be called upon to account for some of
his decisions
and feels he should smoothen his relationship with those who
matter most.
"Judges are a major institution when it comes to matters of
shaping the way
forward. Gono's primary challenge at the moment is to focus
on the economy.
Giving perks to judges does not contribute to that
focus."
Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) chairman Raymond
Majongwe was
up in arms. Members of the teaching profession are among the
least paid
civil servants. They have constantly staged strikes, while many
have
resigned and crossed the border into South Africa or Botswana where
some
have taken up menial but better paying jobs.
"I smell a rat,"
Majongwe quipped. "There is a very opaque deal in the
offing. It looks like
somebody is planning ahead. Obviously whatever the
outcome of the talks, the
next government will find itself going for two to
three years with the same
judges.
"This could be a case of the current government trying to retain
control of
the judiciary. We will get to know about this in the foreseeable
future.
"Gono is not aware that he is putting the bench in a very
invidious
position. He needs to be reminded that the credibility of the
judges lies
upon their independence. He is setting a very dangerous
precedent."
Majongwe said if this was meant to be an honest move, Gono
should advance
the same perks to university lecturers "who are also being
lured with fat
perks outside the country".
He says the central bank
governor's actions demonstrate that he now enjoys
too much power and has
become the "de-facto Prime Minister of the country".
Arthur Mutambara,
leader of the smaller faction of the MDC wrote in a press
article two months
ago that elected MDC MPs who now form the majority in
Parliament will demand
the "immediate removal from office, and criminal
prosecution of, the RBZ
Governor, Gideon Gono".
In another article which was published on April
15, Gugulethu Moyo, a
Zimbabwean lawyer who was the company secretary of
Associated Newspaper,
publishers of the now banned Daily News, but who is
now based in London, put
everything in a nutshell.
"Over the past
seven years, the judges of Zimbabwe's courts - virtually all
of whom owe
their jobs to Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party - have operated, day
in and day
out, in a world suffused with politics.
"Judges appointed or retained on
the bench after 2001 were chosen for one
quality above all others: their
apparent willingness to lend the court's
process to the service of Mugabe's
executive.
She was commenting on the refusal by high court Judge Tendai
Uchena to
compel the immediate release of the 29 March presidential election
results.
In numerous cases, she wrote, challenging the legitimacy of the
executive
measures that were palpably in violation of the law and the norms
of
justice, the new judges departed from established legal principles in
order
to render executive actions legitimate.
"With few exceptions,
the newly-appointed judges have actively collaborated
with a regime that has
systematically violated human rights and subverted
the rule of law in order
to maintain its hold on power, she said.
"No one is appointed to
Zimbabwe's bench without deep political connections,
especially not since
about 2000, when the ruling party's hold on power was
seriously
threatened."
"Mugabe's government has ensured their compliance by
co-opting them into a
number of schemes that compromised their independence.
Independent audits of
Zimbabwe's Fast-track Land Resettlement Scheme show
that, with the exception
of two or three individuals, all judges serving in
the High Court were
propelled to the front of a long queue of ruling party
cronies who were
given farms acquired from white commercial farmers under
legally
questionable arrangements.
"Over the years, the farming
judges have benefited from preferential loans,
subsidised farming equipment,
fuel and other government assistance to enable
their farming enterprises,
which they juggle with regular court duties.
"Authorities turn a blind
eye while judges spend most of their working hours
farming instead of
hearing cases, or use their clerks to sell tomatoes and
chickens in court
premises to a captive market of litigation lawyers."
Vigil supporters were crowded
between our banners draped from the four maple
trees outside the Embassy--
the police having removed the metal barriers
which have expanded our space
for the past few months. Perhaps they thought
there would be a fall in
turnout at the Vigil following the elections. But
being penned between the
trees made us realise how big the Vigil has become.
The crowd produced some
passionate singing, which echoed down the Strand.
Passers-by were, as
always, very supportive and many stopped to discuss the
disappearing zeros
and the talks in Pretoria.
Supporters were briefed by Patson Muzuwa on
plans for our demonstration
outside the Chinese Embassy in London on Friday,
8th August, to mark the
opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing. We welcome
the opportunity to work
with Burmese and Tibetan groups to protest jointly
at China's use of the
veto in the UN Security Council to block action
against dictators such as
Mugabe. We are meeting at 10 am in Portland Place
opposite the Chinese
Embassy (for how to get there see below).It has been
suggested that we wear
something black (such as Vigil t-shirts) and bring
flowers. There will be a
black coffin representing mourning for the heroes
who lost their lives in
our struggles.
To catch the lunchtime
television news, we plan a stunt between 11 and 11.30
am. This will consist
of our well-known Mugabe impersonator, Fungayi
Mabhunu, and a Burmese human
rights activist impersonating Senior General
Than Shwe kneeling before
someone representing China. We are glad to say
that Kate Hoey MP, Chair of
the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Zimbabwe,
will be joining
us.
Otherwise, it was a typical busy Vigil. Some highlights:
1.
Bride walked past in full gear with L plate attached followed by
bridesmaids.
2. Powerful gospel singing from Salome.
3.
We took a collection for Virginia Nyoni who is ill in the
Leicester Royal
Infirmary. We pray for her swift recovery.
4. SABC spent the day with
us filming a documentary on Zimbabweans in
the Diaspora. We will let you
know when it is broadcast. CNN were also
with us. We were also happy to
have students from University College London
and London Metropolitan
University following our activities.
For latest Vigil pictures check:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/.
.
FOR THE RECORD: signed the register.
FOR YOUR
DIARY:
· Protest outside the Chinese Embassy. Friday, 8th August, 10
am to
1.30 pm. Venue: Outside RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London W1B 6AD
(opposite
Chinese Embassy, Map link:
http://www.architecture.com/Files/RIBAHoldings/Premises/66PortlandPlaceMap.pdf.
Nearest underground: Great Portland Street, Regents Park and Oxford Circus.
Portland Place is the northern extension of Regent Street.
· We
were pleased to be invited to promote our cause at a new
production of
'Euripides' Elektra' at 9.15pm on 11- 13 August at the Camden
People's
Theatre, 56 - 61 Hampstead Road, London NW12PY. The play is set in
Zimbabwe
and hopes to raise questions about the current situation. For
bookings
contact; www.camdenfringe.org
· Next
Glasgow Vigil. Saturday 16th August, 2 - 6 pm Venue: Argyle
Street Precinct.
For more information contact: Ancilla Chifamba, 07770 291
150, Patrick
Dzimba, 07990 724 137 or Jonathan Chireka, 07504 724 471.
· Zimbabwe
Association's Women's Weekly Drop-in Centre. Fridays
10.30 am - 4 pm. Venue:
The Fire Station Community and ICT Centre, 84 Mayton
Street, London N7 6QT,
Tel: 020 7607 9764. Nearest underground: Finsbury
Park. For more information
contact the Zimbabwe Association 020 7549 0355
(open Tuesdays and
Thursdays).
Vigil co-ordinators
The Vigil, outside the Zimbabwe
Embassy, 429 Strand, London, takes place
every Saturday from 14.00 to 18.00
to protest against gross violations of
human rights by the current regime in
Zimbabwe. The Vigil which started in
October 2002 will continue until
internationally-monitored, free and fair
elections are held in Zimbabwe. http://www.zimvigil.co.uk.
http://zimbabwemetro.com/news/mnangagwa-faction-responsible-for-police-hq-blast/
By Roy Chinamano ⋅ ©
zimbabwemetro.com ⋅ August 3, 2008
Mystery surrounds a bomb explosion at the
Harare Police station that damaged
offices but there were no
casualties.
Speculation is rife that one of the ZANU PF factions could be
responsible
for the bomb plant so as to scuttle talks.
A pact of
former ZAPU members is reportedly strongly opposed to the talks
and to date
no former ZAPU official has publicly backed the talks.
On the other hand
a Zanu PF faction led by Emmerson Mnangagwa is bitterly
opposed to the talks
and is responsible for the violence that has continued
against MDC
supporters that has claimed three lives since the run-off.
Last month we
reported that soon after arriving back from the AU Summit in
Egypt, Mugabe
met with the Joint Operations Command, namely Chiwenga,
Chihuri, Shiri,
Mnangagwa, Zimondi and others and they agreed on a plan to
destroy the MDC
completely but the plan was rejected by the Mujuru faction
which said
violence will backfire.
The Mujuru faction is supportive of talks with
the MDC and a real power
sharing deal,while the Mnangagwa faction is of the
idea that any inclusion
of the MDC in government will destroy its political
prospects.
Despite the fact that the Mnangagwa faction is represented in
the talks by
Patrick Chinamasa,he does not have the full endorsement of the
faction as
they suspect he is striking individual deals with the opposition
to avoid
prosecution for corruption and political violence, leaving other
faction
members exposed.
Last month when MDC Secretary General,Tendai
Biti was in prison,the faction
sent its emissaries to interrogate
Biti.
“There is so much distrust and suspicion in Zanu-PF that these
people wanted
to verify what Goche and Chinamasa are after. There was a
sense from the
questions that the interrogators thought Goche and Chinamasa
were trying to
negotiate their own future and not protect everybody else at
the top of the
party,” said a source.
Most members of the Mujuru
faction have vast investments in Zimbabwe and
they are worried that
Zimbabwe’s economy is collapsing ever more rapidly,
with prices of ordinary
goods now running into billions of local dollars
amid 1,600,000% inflation,
and ZANU PF has no answers.
So the only way to protect their investments
is a negotiated settlement with
the MDC which will resuscitate the
economy.
‘Do you think Gono can improve the economy,the only thing Gono is
good at is
printing more Bearer cheques’ a source in the Mujuru faction told
Metro
then.
Most members of the Mnagagwa faction are not in business
and some including
Mnangagwa himself have invested outside Zimbabwe in
China,Malaysia and DRC,
so there is a feeling that the economy to them is
not a priority.
The Mnagagwa faction’s strategy is also to eliminate a
few MDC MPs through
arrests from their strongholds, to compensate for loses
on March 29 and
fight by-elections so they could have more MPs which could
be strategic when
parliament votes for Mugabe ’s successor.
Already
most MDC MPs that have been arrested on thumped up charges unseated
Mnangagwa faction members including John Nyamande who unseated Patrick
Chinamasa,Sherperd Mushonga unseated Chenhamo Chimutengwende and Shuah
Mudiwa defeated Minister of Transport Chris Mushowe .
‘The strategy
is to keep up the harassment of the MDC and completely
paralyse it to a
state where they will accept anything,keeping Tsvangirai
away from assuming
any senior position in government will mean options for
Mnagagwa are still
open’, the source said.
http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=3498
by Mutumwa Mawere Monday 04
August 2008
OPINION: Zimbabwe's future is now squarely in the
hands of principally two
men - the discredited incumbent President Robert
Mugabe whose international
reputation has been dented by the outcome of the
March 29 elections and his
long-time political nemesis, opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai.
This is a defining week in the history of
post-colonial Zimbabwe. There is
no doubt that an agreement will be reached
between the three parties on
political accommodation.
The nature,
context and content of the Zimbabwean crisis compel all to
pause, stop and
reflect on what the country requires to move forward.
Notwithstanding the
questionable legitimacy of Mugabe, it is evident that
the thinking of the
current administration on the root causes of the crisis
will never change.
Both Mugabe and his principal economic advisor, Gideon
Gono, are convinced
that the economic crisis is largely externally driven.
On the eve of the
resolution of the political stalemate, Mugabe still holds
the view that the
market system has failed Zimbabwe and who controls the
resources of the
country is the primary issue that needs to be resolved by
the next
administration.
A simplistic interpretation of the crisis has been
adopted by the
administration ignoring the complex interplay of the issues
at play that
have combined to systematically reduce Zimbabwe into a basket
case.
The stabilisation of the economy ought to be at the centre stage of
the
negotiations. However, it is important to note that Mugabe's problems
with
the multilateral development institutions did not begin with the
emergence
of the MDC rather it was deeply rooted in ideology. It is no
secret that
Mugabe is highly suspicious of the West and the applicability of
neo-liberal
economic policies to post colonial development
challenges.
His antipathy against the West may explain why he chose to
work in Ghana
instead of the West when he was young.
It is
significant that Mugabe has never used any Western address as a
residence in
his 84 years of existence but has chosen Africa as his theatre
of
operation.
Accordingly, it is unlikely that the negotiations will change
his worldview
on how the crisis ought to be resolved.
He sees the
objective of the negotiations as principally to decouple the
MDC-T from the
West.
To Mugabe, the negotiations provide an opportunity to test the
nationalism
and patriotism of the two MDC factions. He has not subscribed to
the notion
that economic turnaround is a superior objective to the
protection of his
definition of sovereignty.
The transition from Ian
Smith's suicidal approach to nation building and the
use of the state of
emergency powers to the post colonial dispensation
appears to have been
seamless.
The events of the last 10 days expose the fact that in Gono,
Mugabe has a
reliable thinker; implementer and partner in the enlargement of
the state as
a player in the economy notwithstanding the disastrous results
so far.
In an article entitled: "New cash measures on way: Gono"
published by the
Sunday Mail on July 26 2008 it was reported that at a
hastily organised
press conference, Gono took the opportunity to warn
businesses and
individuals who were charging for their goods and services in
foreign
currency. He was reported to have said such people risked getting
arrested
either by the police or RBZ officials.
In the face of
intractable economic challenges, Gono's worldview is no
different from
Mugabe's. It was significant that prior to the announcement
of dropping
zeros from the hyper-inflated currency, Gono was reported to
have
said:?"Conducting business in foreign currency is illegal. No rentals
or
goods should be charged in forex. Dollarisation - that is using the
currency
of another country - is not a position that we have taken. We are
not in
that situation yet. Report all such persons, including those who are
selling
cash (Zimbabwean dollars) to the nearest police station or RBZ
officials."
It was not surprising that Gono invited Mugabe to the
currency announcement
function where he made similar threats confirming the
widely held view that
notwithstanding the outcome of the negotiations, the
thinking of the new
administration whatever character it takes - GNU or
transitional authority
(TA) - will not change. For the first time, Mugabe
attended the address by
Gono to demonstrate his unreserved support to the
currency manipulation
gimmicks.
Like Gono, Mugabe threatened to
impose a state of emergency if businesses
profiteer from the country's
economic and political crisis. This is what he
had to say: "Entrepreneurs
across the board: Don't drive us further. If you
drive us even more we will
impose emergency measures. The country is under
illegal sanctions. These are
intended to achieve regime change. We must
strengthen our will and
resistance so we can go through this time of
difficulty."
With this
kind of thinking, there is no doubt that no rational development
partner
will come to the party as expected after the conclusion of the
inter-party
dialogue.
The failure to attract sustainable international financial
support must
necessarily, therefore, be located in the framework that has
informed ZANU
PF and Mugabe's thinking since taking over power in
1980.
It is increasingly becoming clear that Mugabe is not alone in
thinking that
the market is evil and anyone who operates in the market
framework is also
an enemy of post-colonial nation building.
The
absence of a systematic domestically generated attack on both Gono and
Mugabe's reckless statements highlights the complexity of the crisis and
solutions there from.
The government of Zimbabwe stopped paying its
commercial, bilateral and
multilateral debts long time ago and it is
unlikely that there will be any
positive response from such partners without
a sound economic plan in place.
Even Gono and Mugabe will agree, albeit
in the quietness of their time, that
no serious forward thinking policy
maker will resort to removing 13 zeros as
a remedy to a crisis that is
deeply rooted in tested and wrong economic
policies.
Zimbabwe's
economy is already over regulated and the role of the RBZ in the
economy
ought to be the starting point for any serious negotiation aimed at
rebuilding the fractured and helpless Zimbabwean economic model.
The
state is omnipresent in the economy even to the level of providing basic
goods and yet the crisis has no end in sight.
After 28 years of
experimenting with the state as an instrument of
generating supply response,
it is regrettable that a lot of reliance is
still placed on the state as the
saviour.
Gono's 56 months at the helm of the RBZ has exposed the
bankruptcy of a
policy framework premised on fear and intimidation. Former
Finance Minister
Herbert Murerwa warned, rightly so, that the zeros will
come back with a
vengeance and it appears that no lessons were
learnt.
While it is accepted that the resolution of the political crisis
should
provide a foundation stone for tackling the country's economic
problems, it
must now be accepted that any settlement that will leave Mugabe
with
executive powers will not lift the country up.
Mugabe is too old
to change his thinking and with the help of young voodoo
economic
practitioners like Gono there may be no incentive for him to change
particularly at a time when the global food and energy crises are compelling
people to rethink about critical ideological questions regarding the role of
the market or the state in addressing and alleviating poverty. -
ZimOnline
http://www.hararetribune.com/index.php?news=131
Peter Godwin 03 August, 2008 12:18:00
Zimbabwe's
longtime ruler, Robert Mugabe, made a brutal sham of recent
elections, after
banning Western journalists.
For more than five hours on the afternoon of
April 4 the man who sees
himself as synonymous with the destiny of Zimbabwe,
and who has made himself
the country's dictator to ensure it, remained
locked in a meeting in Harare,
the capital, with his four-dozen-member
politburo. The man was Robert
Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, and the session
was taking place in the upper
reaches of the ruling party's headquarters,
Jongwe House. Everyone in Harare
knew that Mugabe had to be up there; the
soldiers of his presidential guard
were still lolling around outside, in
their distinctive gold berets.
Mugabe was chairing the meeting himself,
in a dark suit and polka-dotted
tie. On Mugabe's flanks were the men and
women who fought victoriously with
him 28 years ago to transform white-ruled
Rhodesia into black-ruled
Zimbabwe. Now, six days after elections for
parliament and president, this
group was facing certain defeat. Although the
government had not yet
officially announced the results, and despite
strenuous efforts to rig the
election, it was clear that Mugabe's zanu-P.F.
party had lost not only its
parliamentary majority but the presidency as
well. The purpose of the
meeting was to decide whether to accept the loss
gracefully and relinquish
power to Mugabe's bitter rival, the Movement for
Democratic Change (M.D.C.),
led by Morgan Tsvangirai (pronounced
Chahn-gur-eye), or to fight on,
manipulating the results so as to force a
second round of voting for the
presidency.
Mugabe's party is divided
now between hawks and doves, between hard-liners
and conciliators, and it is
riven as well by rival succession candidates.
Mugabe's clan totem is
Gushungo-meaning "crocodile" in Shona, the language
of most Zimbabweans-and
on the occasion of his 83rd birthday, last year, a
giant stuffed crocodile
was presented to him as a symbol of his "majestic
authority." But even the
wiliest crocodiles eventually tire and die, and the
word on the street was
that he had been stung by the extent of his defeat,
and that his young wife,
Grace, had urged him to step down and enjoy his
last years with their three
children in his 25-bedroom mansion. The mood in
Harare was expectant, even
giddy.
I grew up and was educated in Zimbabwe, served as a conscript, and
maintain
close ties to the country. Because of these roots I have been able
to live
and travel there even at times, such as the present, when other
foreign
journalists have been expelled. In Harare that afternoon I spent
time with
friends as the hours wore on. Finally an old school chum called to
say that
"the General"-his uncle, a politburo member and a former guerrilla
commander-had at last emerged from Jongwe House, and that the meeting was
over.
The General, Solomon Mujuru, is now considered a "moderate,"
but he was not
ever thus. Twenty-five years ago, not long after the end of
the war of
liberation, the General had once put a gun to my heart and
threatened to
kill me. The gun was a Russian-made Tokarev with a
mother-of-pearl handle.
Odd how you remember such details. The General had
been working his way
through a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label at the
time, but his grip was
steady.
This was in 1984, during the
Matabeleland massacres, when Mugabe unleashed
his fearsome North
Korea-trained Fifth Brigade into that southern province
to crush the
opposition. I had written about the massacres for a British
newspaper, which
is what prompted the General to draw his gun when our paths
crossed.
But now, on April 4, the General had bad news to report. In
the end Mugabe
had decided that he intended to do everything necessary to
retain his
powers. Behind the scenes the presidential ballot boxes would be
effectively
stuffed to indicate that Morgan Tsvangirai, though still winning
more votes
than Mugabe, had not achieved the 50 percent threshold necessary
for
election. (This was possible because there had been a third candidate in
the
race.) Further, in the weeks leading up to the runoff, Mugabe would wage
a
campaign of bloody intimidation to ensure that Zimbabwe's voters
understood
where their self-interest lay. Indeed, a secret battle plan was
actually
drawn up, in detail. A leaked copy dated April 9 was shown to me;
the key
section carried the heading "Covert Operations to Decompose the
Opposition."
For all the talk of doves and hawks within the politburo, it
was clear that
hawks remained ascendant. On the government television
station, ZTV, I
watched the official news reports of the politburo meeting.
You could see
Mugabe moving slowly around the horseshoe table, shaking hands
with each
member. They seemed to revere him, lowering their heads when he
came near. A
few of the women rose to curtsy, as though to a
monarch.
The Crocodile
If you were casting the role of "homicidal
African dictator who stays in
power against all odds," Robert Gabriel Mugabe
wouldn't even rate a
callback. To look at him and hear him talk, he's still
the prissy
schoolmaster he once was-a slight, rather effeminate figure, with
small,
manicured hands given to birdlike gestures. The huge banners that
span
Zimbabwe's streets do their best to make this 84-year-old into
something
more heroic-he is seen shaking an arm at the heavens, above the
words "The
Fist of Empowerment." The image is marred somewhat by the little
white
handkerchief often held in Mugabe's fist, and by the outsize gold
spectacles
that dominate his face, and that seem to be wearing
him.
Mugabe is no swaggering Idi Amin, the onetime heavyweight boxing
champion of
Uganda. He remains profoundly enigmatic. Godfrey Chanetsa, his
former
secretary, described to me how Mugabe has always stayed aloof even
from his
Cabinet, rarely seeing them outside the scheduled Tuesday-afternoon
meetings. "He listens a lot. He just blinks and listens. He lets you talk.
He leans back with his head cocked to one side, resting on his hands."
Throughout his life Mugabe has been essentially friendless. Abandoned by his
carpenter father, he was brought up largely by his mother and his maternal
grandparents and by Catholic priests. A shy, bookish, unathletic boy, he
reacted querulously to criticism, and worshipped the Anglo-Irish Jesuit
principal of his mission school. He went on to earn a degree at the black
University of Fort Hare, in apartheid South Africa-Nelson Mandela's alma
mater-and became a schoolteacher.
Mugabe was politicized during a
stint in Ghana in the late 1950s, just as
that colony became the first in
sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from
Britain. There he also met and
married Sally Hayfron, a fellow teacher. In
late 1963 he returned to
Rhodesia. The following year, Ian Smith, the
incoming white prime minister,
ordered Mugabe's arrest and detention for
subversion. In 1965 Smith
unilaterally declared the colony's independence
from Britain and kept Mugabe
in detention. He remained there for the next 10
years, during which time he
acquired another six college degrees, taking
correspondence courses mostly
from the University of London. Ian Smith
released him in 1975, and Mugabe
slipped across the border into Mozambique
to join the nationalist movement,
the Zimbabwe African National Union, or
zanu. He quickly clawed his way to
the top.
Mugabe's most potent personal influences are mainly white ones.
The
repressive apparatus of his enemy Ian Smith became a model for his own.
A
more important influence is the former colonial power itself, Great
Britain,
with which he has long been besotted. Mugabe was in fact awarded an
honorary
knighthood in 1994 for his "important contribution to relations
between
Zimbabwe and Britain." The evidence of his Anglophilia is
everywhere: his
Savile Row suits, his love of cricket and tea, his penchant
for Graham
Greene novels, and his continuing reverence for the Queen, even
though she
stripped him of his knighthood in June. Mugabe did not blame the
Queen for
this disgrace; no, it was those "demons" at No. 10 Downing
Street.
The love of Britain is matched in Mugabe by a deep resentment.
"You can
never ever convince an Englishman that you are equal to him, never,
never,"
Mugabe has said. In Mugabe's recent election campaign, he often
appeared to
be running against Britain as much as against Morgan Tsvangirai,
employing
slogans such as "Zimbabwe will never be a colony again!"
In
reality, Britain (and the West more generally) indulged Mugabe for far
too
long, contributing greatly to the creation of the dictator we have
today.
Mugabe's generally accepted story arc in the press tends to be "good
leader
turned bad": liberation hero wins Zimbabwe's first democratic
election,
rejects Communism, embraces capitalism and his white former
oppressors,
allows them to keep their farms, and fearlessly opposes
apartheid in
neighboring South Africa, and then, sometime in the late 1990s,
he has a
sudden rush of blood to the head and loses it. The precipitating
cause of
this change is often given as the death, in 1992, of his wife,
Sally,
regarded as a tempering influence on the inner tyrant. The mortician
who
embalmed Sally's body told me that Mugabe visited the funeral parlor
every
day for nine days, until her state funeral, to sob over the open
casket-a
touching scene slightly curdled by the fact that Mugabe had already
sired
two children by one of his junior secretaries, Grace Marufu, 40 years
his
junior, whom he finally married in a lavish ceremony in 1996.
Grace, a
woman of prodigious retail appetites-the Imelda Marcos of Africa-is
known to
her people as the First Shopper. By 1995, Godfrey Chanetsa was
Zimbabwe's
ambassador in London, and he made the mistake of complaining, as
he told me,
that the embassy "was being turned into a warehouse for Grace's
shopping."
He was immediately recalled to Harare.
The true Mugabe plotline differs
from the accepted one. It goes like this:
From the very start his default
reaction to any political threat has been a
violent one. During Zimbabwe's
first democratic elections he kept his
guerrillas in the field, where they
spread a chilling message: Vote for
Mugabe or "the war goes on." In the
early 1980s, when he encountered
opposition in Matabeleland from remnants of
his former ally Joshua Nkomo's
forces, he sealed off the province and, as
noted, laid waste to it. He
called the action Operation Gukurahundi, using a
Shona word that refers to
"an early rain that clears away the chaff."
Estimates of the chaff vary from
10,000 to 25,000 dead. Through all this
Mugabe got a free pass from the
West. During the Cold War he was seen as
pro-Western. Mugabe was also able,
as a leader of the so-called Front Line
States, which opposed white-ruled
South Africa, to leverage the specter of
apartheid. If you attacked Mugabe,
he immediately painted you as a
pro-apartheid apologist. That changed when
Nelson Mandela was released from
prison, in 1990; Mugabe had to play second
fiddle. Mandela later made light
of Mugabe's predicament: "He was the star,
and then the sun came
up."
By the late 1990s, Zimbabwe's economy was in a shambles-corruption,
misrule,
and a disastrous military intervention in Congo had all taken their
toll. To
buy favor, Mugabe resorted to expropriating land and giving it to
his
supporters. The full story does not bear repeating here; land reform was
certainly overdue and had been stalled for many reasons. But Mugabe did what
he always does when there is something he needs: he employed brute force.
And because the first victims were white-farmers who had their property
jambanja'd (seized and occupied), and who in some cases were assaulted or
murdered-the Zimbabwe story suddenly piqued the interest of the Western
media. This is why the year 2000, when the farm seizures hit the headlines,
is mistakenly seen as Mugabe's watershed-the year he went bad. The truth is
he had been bad long before that.
"The Fear"
The tragic irony
of Zimbabwe is that what is today a hellish country should
by all evidence
be a paradise. Its high, malaria-free interior is a magical
place: sweeping
vistas of long tawny grasses slope up to the mountain ranges
of the eastern
highlands; in the north the land falls sharply down to the
Zambezi River,
which tumbles magnificently over the Victoria Falls. Zimbabwe
is blessed
with rich, loamy soil. Beneath it lie generous seams of gold,
chromium,
coal, iron, and diamonds. At independence in 1980, Mugabe
inherited a
sophisticated, well-maintained infrastructure. The black middle
class grew
fast, and Zimbabwe enjoyed the highest standard of living in
black-ruled
Africa.
But that was yesterday. The most recent World Values Survey shows
that
Zimbabweans are today the world's unhappiest people. Their economy has
almost halved in size in the past 10 years. The unemployment rate is more
than 80 percent. About half of all Zimbabweans are reliant on food aid. Some
20 percent of the population is afflicted with H.I.V./aids. Zimbabwe today
has the world's shortest life span-the average Zimbabwean is dead by age 36
(down from age 62 in 1990). As a result the country now has the highest
percentage of orphans on the planet.
Everywhere in Zimbabwe there are
long lines: lines for bread, lines for
cooking oil, lines for maize meal
(the staple food). Buying gasoline
requires an array of byzantine
procedures. Zimbabwe can now boast, if that
is the word, the highest rate of
inflation in history. As I write, it's
running at about nine million percent
a year. How can I convey what it's
like to live with this kind of
hyperinflation? Imagine that you're out
grocery shopping, and in the time it
takes you to reach the checkout line,
the prices of the items in your cart
have all gone up. Golfers now pay for
drinks before they tee off, because by
the time they've completed 18 holes
the bar prices will have risen. No one
uses wallets for cash; mostly you
carry around bags full of blocks of money
secured by elastic bands. During
my latest trip to the country, the Reserve
Bank of Zimbabwe issued new,
higher-denomination notes no fewer than three
times in a period of two
months, the last one being the
500-million-Zimbabwean-dollar note. At its
introduction it was worth two
U.S. dollars. Four weeks later, its value had
fallen to five
cents.
To feed the ravenous monster of hyperinflation, Mugabe has been
importing
banknote paper from a Munich-based company, Giesecke &
Devrient; presses in
Harare have been running 24 hours a day to pump cash
onto the streets and
into the hands of the soldiers and policemen and party
militia who torture
and imprison Mugabe's opponents. This is nothing less
than blood money.
Why don't Zimbabweans rise up? In fact, Zimbabweans do
rise up. They rise up
and leave. As many as 70 percent of Zimbabweans
between the ages of 18 and
60 now live and work outside the country. These
aren't just a busboy
underclass, wading across the crocodile-infested
Limpopo River to take
bottom-rung jobs wherever they can. Many are doctors
and accountants and
computer technicians-Africa's educated elite, the
leadership echelon, and
Mugabe is happy to see the backs of them. Many
others are the truly
dispossessed, eking out a living in South Africa's
townships, where they
have been subjected to terrifying xenophobic
attacks.
You can feel the population loss in Harare, which is palpably
less bustling
and vibrant than it once was. There's a second reason for
this. Three years
ago the authorities launched Operation
Murambatsvina-Operation "Clear Out
the Shit"-to expel masses of people from
Harare and other towns and cities,
and demolish their houses, in what was
touted as urban renewal. The victims
understood it to be an act of
"electoral cleansing," designed to rid the
cities of the urban poor, who
have increasingly opposed Mugabe. All told,
some 2.4 million people have
been affected by Operation Murambatsvina-many
of them driven from the cities
at gunpoint and dumped in the countryside.
This is a society dominated by
terror. After Mugabe's politburo decision, in
April, his security forces
launched yet another operation. They called this
one Operation
MaVhoterapapi-Operation "Whom Did You Vote For?" Harare's
hospitals rapidly
filled up with its handiwork. People in Zimbabwe have a
name for what has
been happening. They call it simply "The Fear."
I found Denias Dombo
lying broken on a hospital bed, his dark head propped
up on pillows, trying
to eat a slice of bread. His left leg was in plaster
from hip to heel, a
calloused sole peeping out against the bright-white
sheet. Both arms were in
plaster, too, right up to Dombo's powerfully veined
farmer's biceps. He
winced as he turned to pick up a teacup because several
of his ribs were
broken. On his bedside table was a copy of Robert Louis
Stevenson's
Kidnapped. "I've just finished it," he said, following my gaze.
"I have form
two." (Form two is the equivalent of 10th grade.) Until a week
before, Dombo
had lived in a tidy homestead with three houses and a granary
up on stilts,
and seven head of cattle. As a district organizing secretary
for the
opposition M.D.C., "it was my job to apply to the police for
clearance to
hold party meetings," as required by law. So everyone knew his
political
affiliation. After the elections, Dombo had just left his
homestead when he
heard a vehicle growling to a halt outside his home. He
turned back to see
"bright flames-my brick-and-thatch house already on fire"
and the two men
who had set it alight scampering back to their truck. He
says he recognized
both men, one of them a newly elected zanu-P.F. member of
parliament. The
vehicle in which they sped off had zanu-P.F. logos on its
doors, and in the
back sat a group of youths in party T-shirts. Dombo yelled
after them, "I
see you, I know who you are, and you are the ones who have
burned down my
house!"
He walked all night to cover the 15 miles to the police station
to report
the crime, and then walked the 15 miles home. Shortly after he
returned, the
youths in the T-shirts swarmed onto his property, armed with
sticks and iron
bars. Dombo and his family tried to barricade themselves in
a building, but
it was clear that defense was pointless.
Dombo made
up his mind. "I decided, Better for me to come out, or they will
kill my
family." So he told his wife, Patricia, who was holding their infant
son,
Israel, and he told his 14-year-old daughter, Martha, and his
9-year-old
daughter, Dorcas, "I'm going to go out, and when they come after
me, you
must all run away as fast as you can and hide." Dombo ran out toward
his
attackers. Just as he'd anticipated, they converged on him. He tried to
protect his head with his arms while they beat him. "I heard the bones in my
arms crack and I cried out: Oh, Jesus, I'm dying here-what have I done
wrong?" As they beat him, on and on, his assailants made him shout, "Pamberi
ne [up with] Robert Mugabe!" and "Pasi ne [down with] Tsvangirai!" At last
the ringleader said, "Let's leave him here-we'll come back and finish him
off tonight."
Dombo lay by the embers of his house. He tried to stand
up but fell, tried
to stand up once more but fell again. Dombo could see the
jagged shard of
his left shinbone "waving out." One arm hung limp and
shattered. "I was in
such terrible pain, and I thought I was dying, and I
decided, Better to kill
myself than just wait for them to come." So he
picked up a thick length of
wire, twisted one end into a tight noose around
his neck, and summoned his
remaining strength to reach up and attach the
other end to a hook in the
brick wall of his house. Then he allowed his body
to sag. He felt the wire
tighten around his throat, saw the light dim-but
suddenly he dropped to the
ground. The wire had snapped.
Then he
heard a little voice calling to him. It was Dorcas, his daughter.
She
brought a neighbor who gingerly loaded Dombo into a wheelbarrow. Now he
was
here, in a private hospital.
Nearby lay a man named Tendai Pawandiwa. A
group of armed Mugabe supporters
had run him to ground near a river and,
telling him that they were going to
baptize him in the name of zanu-P.F.,
held his head underwater in order to
drown him. He managed to wriggle free,
and fled. His body bore the stigmata
of a free and fair election: deep
lacerations on his back and legs.
Pawandiwa listlessly flicked through the
pages of a four-year-old copy of
People magazine.
I went from bed to
bed, listening to the stories. They were all, in essence,
the
same.
That evening, at a farewell party for a British diplomat, I was
introduced
to a black man in a clerical collar, but amid the hubbub I missed
his name.
In conversation I angrily described the torture victims I'd just
been
visiting-and noticed that he began to look distinctly uncomfortable.
Then it
dawned on me whom I was speaking with: Father Fidelis Mukonori, the
head of
the Jesuits in Zimbabwe, but, more important, Robert Mugabe's
personal
chaplain.
"Well," Fidelis said, "one hears these things
generally, but one is not sure
if they are true, of the details." "Come with
me tomorrow," I said. "You'll
get all the details you need." He gave me his
card.
I called Fidelis the next day, but-predictably, I thought-he had
switched
off his mobile phone. I went back to the hospital with some books
for Dombo.
On the way in, I found Fidelis-he had come to the hospital after
all. In
front of the priest, Dombo repeated his story. Now Fidelis knew, and
he knew
that I knew he knew. There was no middle ground here-moral choices
had to be
made. He promised to "get the message up the line" to "the old
man"-that is,
Mugabe, as if he weren't responsible for it all to begin
with.
"How will this end?," I asked the priest finally. Fidelis sighed.
"The old
man is tired," he said. "He wants to go."
The
Ambassador
But it is not at all clear that he wants to go; it seems more
likely that he
will have to be carried out in his Jermyn Street oxfords. The
first round of
elections in Zimbabwe took place only after long
negotiations, brokered by
South Africa. The opposition obtained a seemingly
small, but vital,
concession: the raw final vote count at each polling
station would be taped
up on a wall. Wherever they could get access-which
was blocked in a number
of the 9,000 polling stations-the M.D.C.'s party
agents were able to copy or
take cell-phone photos of these numbers, so they
had a fair idea of how well
they'd done. And although the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission (essentially a
lapdog of Mugabe's) released parliamentary results
in dribs and drabs in the
days after the election-showing that the M.D.C.
had effectively won a
majority of seats-it ominously made no announcement
for more than a month
about the presidential results. According to the
M.D.C., this provided time
for Mugabe to alter the tabulation at polling
stations where the M.D.C. hadn't
been able to secure a backup record. The
intervention was enough to throw
the presidential contest into a runoff, set
for the end of June.
In one sense the runoff was literal-the opposition
had to run off. Morgan
Tsvangirai and his deputy, Tendai Biti, got serious
word of assassination
plots against them and fled the country. Their
departure, together with the
absence of foreign correspondents-virtually all
foreign journalists had been
banned from working in Zimbabwe-gave Mugabe a
free hand to unleash The Fear.
During this period, the diplomatic corps in
Harare played a key role in
offering protection and sounding the
alarm.
The most prominent among the diplomats was the American
ambassador, James
McGee, a career foreign-service officer with four previous
African postings.
I met McGee at six o'clock one morning in mid-May inside
the courtyard of
the heavily guarded American Embassy to join a trip he had
organized to look
into the widespread intimidation and violence. Because the
fact of the trip
had been leaked to the government, McGee arranged for a
decoy convoy that
would set off in the wrong direction. Playing the role of
McGee in the decoy
limo was a large black man from the embassy's local
security staff. McGee,
an African-American from Indiana, stands six feet
four inches tall. The
government's propaganda newspaper, The Herald, refers
to him as an "Uncle
Tom" and a "house Negro."
On the day of the trip,
McGee wore a dark-blue golf shirt bearing the emblem
of his old air-force
unit. (He served for six years in Vietnam and was
thrice awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross.) The convoy-the real
convoy-was made up of 11
vehicles and included diplomats from the European
Union, Britain, the
Netherlands, Japan, and Tanzania, along with half a
dozen of McGee's embassy
staff, several Zimbabwean journalists, and a
Zimbabwean pastor who served as
a guide.
I rode with McGee in the second car. An hour north of Harare we
came to
Mvurwi-once a white commercial-farming district, now only
sporadically
cultivated. We stopped at a place called Rhimbick Farm. The
white sawmill
manager there peeped around the door, astonished to see this
sudden
convergence of diplomats. Interviews with torture victims had
directed us to
the Mvurwi area-it was one of the places where zanuP.F. had
done its work.
The sawmill manager pointed up the hill: "That's their base."
It was an old
farmhouse, and every night scores of zanu-P.F. youths would
congregate
there.
On this day, in full sunlight, we found only four
militia members. They
naturally denied any wrongdoing. As the conversation
with the diplomats
continued, I went into the house. It was not hard to find
the "black rooms,"
without windows, where political opponents had been
thrown between beatings.
I came across a backpack and from inside it took
four school notepads, each
labeled "Interrogation Book." The zanu-P.F.
militants had systematically
recorded their beatings and interrogations, in
Shona longhand. They also,
helpfully, gave their own names.
We found
and spoke with many torture victims in a nearby village. Initially
the place
had seemed deserted, but as word spread about what the convoy
really was,
the villagers started to come forward. They told us their
stories and showed
us their wounds. At the nearby Mvurwi hospital a nurse
said that she had
been overwhelmed with beating victims, but that most had
discharged
themselves prematurely, their wounds suppurating, afraid that
they would be
too easily found if they stayed in one place.
As we prepared to leave, a
plainclothes police officer suddenly approached
McGee. After examining
McGee's credentials, he ordered him to report to the
local police station.
McGee brushed him off and told his convoy to proceed.
More police officers
then arrived, these armed with shotguns and rifles, and
they shut the
hospital gates. When they refused McGee's request to let us
out, he walked
over to open the gates himself. "Stop! Stop!" they demanded.
"What are you
gonna do?," McGee asked. "Shoot me? Go ahead." He pulled open
the heavy
metal gates and waved the convoy through.
McGee's final destination was
the Howard Hospital, run by the Salvation
Army. Here we found dozens of
victims. They had been beaten on the soles of
their feet and on their
buttocks. Don't think of these as "normal" beatings.
Think of deep,
bone-deep, lacerations, of buttocks with no skin left on
them, of being
flayed alive. Think of swollen, broken feet, of people unable
to stand,
unable to sit, unable to lie on their backs because of the
blinding
pain.
Andrew Pocock, the British ambassador, was part of the fact-finding
convoy.
He lives in a 27-acre compound in the Harare suburb of Chisipite,
not far
from where my parents used to live. On my way there, I passed the
Triton
Gym, where diplomats and expats and fat cats pound on treadmills,
hoping to
become trim cats; today, right behind the gym is a zanu-P.F.
"re-education
camp," where local residents who have been rounded up are
forced to endure
all-night political harangues. Zimbabwe can be a land of
surreal
juxtapositions. Ambassador Pocock walked me around the residence.
Next to
the swimming pool is a squash court that was recently converted into
a
crisis command center, with satellite phones and computers and its own
generator. In the event of what the British foreign secretary, David
Miliband, has called a "doomsday scenario," it would be from this squash
court that Pocock would supervise an evacuation of British passport holders
still in Zimbabwe. There are currently 10,000 such people. Thirty years ago,
at independence, there were more than 200,000 whites, most of whom had the
right to a British passport.
The Nemesis
Morgan Richard
Dzingirai Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's opposition leader, lives on
a cul-de-sac in
the Harare suburb of Strathaven, in an unremarkable house
with pale-pink
walls and a red tiled roof. Outside, two bodyguards in dark
suits sat on a
concrete culvert. More milled around inside. Tsvangirai is a
man of 56. When
I met him at his house he had only just returned-the
previous day-after
living outside the country for a month, since the first
round of elections,
keeping himself safe and trying to enlist African
leaders in his cause. He
looked exhausted, tilting back in his office chair
in the converted garage
at the back of the house. In many ways Mugabe's
nemesis is also his
antithesis. Physically Tsvangirai is a bear to Mugabe's
bird, his face
round, his smile quick. He appears to share none of Mugabe's
aura of
messianic entitlement.
I had gone to the airport the day before to
witness Tsvangirai's return. A
few hours later he held a press conference at
a downtown hotel, then set out
on a round of bedside visits to torture
victims. Toward day's end he
addressed the hundreds of displaced supporters
who had crowded into his
party headquarters, Harvest House, seeking
sanctuary from the violence. It
was a biblical scene: a vast, gloomy cavern
of an office building, with tier
upon tier of supporters carefully arranged
by size, small children and
nursing mothers seated in front. Many had been
badly injured; some were in
wheelchairs or on crutches. The white gleam of
plaster casts and bandages
was everywhere. The walls were lined with black
plastic garbage bags holding
whatever people had been able to flee with. The
questions they asked were
mostly practical ones. How do I find blankets,
clothes, food, safety? One
woman, shaking with grief, told Tsvangirai that
when she had fled she became
separated from her two-year-old child. "Please,
please, help me find my
baby," she sobbed.
"This has been an
evolution for me," Tsvangirai said as we sat in his
office. "I was
politically conscious, yes-but never in my wildest dreams did
I expect to be
in this position." The hyper-educated Mugabe derides him as
"an ignoramus"
because, as the eldest of nine children of a poor bricklayer
from the
southeastern province of Masvingo, Tsvangirai dropped out of high
school to
support his family. He became a mine worker and moved up the ranks
to lead
the trade-union movement. By 1997 he had broken with Mugabe's ruling
party
over what he calls its "misrule, official corruption, and
dictatorship."
Soon after, he became the founding leader of the Movement for
Democratic
Change.
The M.D.C. has always been, as its name would suggest, more a
movement than
a party-a grab bag of opponents to Mugabe. It attracted
support mostly from
the urban working class, but also from the educated
elite, white farmers,
churchmen, academics, industrialists, and ethnic
Ndebeles (the southern
tribe that had been the target of the Matabeleland
massacres). Mugabe has
done his best to portray the M.D.C. as the bastard
child of revanchist
whites and neo-colonial Western governments. But 99
percent of M.D.C.
supporters are black. And white farmers threw in their lot
with the M.D.C.
only after Mugabe announced he would summarily confiscate
their farms
without compensation.
From the very start of his
political career, Tsvangirai has had a hard time
of it. In 1997, Mugabe's
war veterans tried to bundle him out of a
10th-story window. Since then he's
been arrested and imprisoned multiple
times, and charged with treason on two
separate occasions. He has survived
two more assassination attempts. Several
of his bodyguards have been
murdered. Last year he was tortured while in
police custody. The freelance
cameraman who smuggled out footage of the
badly injured Tsvangirai was
himself abducted. His body was found a few days
later, dumped at a farm
outside Harare.
Despite such tactics,
Zimbabweans remain resilient and defiant, as I
discovered when I myself was
arrested. I had wanted to attend a service at
Christchurch, where my father
and sister are buried, but arrived to find the
congregation blocked at the
entrance by a platoon of armed riot police. The
congregation, about a
hundred strong, almost all of them black, mostly
middle-aged women in their
Sunday finery, refused to disperse. They joined
hands and, in harmony, sang
the hymn "On Jordan's Bank." Then the police
commander noticed me and
suspected the presence of a journalist. "Batai
murungu," he ordered-"Get the
white man."
The worshippers would have none of it. First the priest, then
his deacon,
and then the entire congregation came to my defense, refusing to
give me up.
So the police arrested the entire crowd, and because we were so
many, they
herded us on foot to the police station. During the march, one by
one,
members of the congregation came up close behind me and surreptitiously
removed incriminating notebooks and cell phones from my bag, slipping them
under their dresses. While I was being interrogated inside the police
station, they refused to leave, loudly singing hymns, until finally, after a
couple of hours, the police, perhaps shamed by this chorus, let me
go.
Dreamland
Zimbabwe's runoff election was scheduled for June
27. Morgan Tsvangirai and
the M.D.C. withdrew from the contest a few days
beforehand, unable to
compete in safety or with any guarantee of fairness.
The party had
effectively been prohibited from campaigning. Rallies were
banned.
Tsvangirai himself was arrested and detained five times. Mugabe's
slogan in
the runoff election was "The Final Battle for Total Control." With
no
competition he won handily.
By then the body count from Mugabe's
pre-electoral spasm of violence stood
at a hundred, with another 5,000
people missing, many of whom must be
presumed dead. Bodies have been found
collecting at the spillway of a Harare
reservoir. Others have been found in
the bush, sometimes mutilated, hands or
feet cut off, eyes gouged out. In
the months leading up to the runoff some
10,000 people had been tortured.
Some 20,000 had had their homes burned
down. Up to 200,000 people had been
displaced.
Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, has been Africa's
and the West's
designated negotiator with Mugabe, but in truth he has
functioned mainly as
his protector. He continues to insist that the solution
in Zimbabwe is not a
free, internationally observed election, but, rather, a
coming together of
the tortured and the torturers, a "government of national
unity."
(Zimbabweans look at the acronym formed by those words and say the
result
would be not a gnu but a wildebeest.) The African Union held its
annual
summit in Egypt immediately after Mugabe's inauguration, and shrank
from any
direct action. Mugabe himself was there, and in a closed-door
session
challenged African leaders to cast the first stone. I may have dirty
hands,
he said, but many of you have hands dirtier than mine. The African
leader
who has been the most outspoken proponent of democracy in Zimbabwe,
Zambia's
president, Levy Mwanawasa, was felled by a stroke on the eve of the
summit.
Mugabe must have shed crocodile tears.
The world's major
powers are unlikely to take significant steps against
Mugabe. Zimbabwe lacks
both of the two exports-oil and international
terrorism-that attract direct
intervention. The German government did
finally press the banknote company
Giesecke & Devrient to stop sending
banknote paper to Mugabe, and
G&D acceded to this request in July. Even as
the West adds diminutive
darts to its tiny quiver of sanctions, the greatest
pressure is likely to
come from within Zimbabwe, as its society continues to
fall apart.
Or
Mugabe's demise may come some other way. "How do you fight a dictatorship
using democratic means?," Morgan Tsvangirai asked me. "In Africa, they
usually use the gun. We have resisted that." The unspoken words were "so
far." Tsvangirai had gone out of his way during the campaign to give
assurances that any transition would be peaceful, offering amnesty to
Mugabe's
coterie and promising to make no move against their bank accounts.
Times
change. In Johannesburg, during the period of The Fear, a senior
M.D.C.
figure had offered a vision of the future. If cheated at the ballot
box, he
said, the M.D.C. could pull out of the political process in Zimbabwe
entirely, set up a government-in-exile (possibly in Botswana), and appeal to
the world for recognition as the legitimate government of Zimbabwe. And then
elements within the M.D.C. would fight back, launching an armed guerrilla
resistance. The senior official described all this to me as a "worst-case
scenario"-but also as something for which plans were being laid.
Not
long after this conversation, back in Zimbabwe, I attended the Harare
International Festival of the Arts-another of those jarring juxtapositions.
It came as Zimbabwe awaited the results of the first round of voting in the
presidential election-and as Mugabe's militias were raining violence upon
the land-but at the opening, men and women gathered in formalwear and sipped
champagne.
The festival began with a musical revue called
"Dreamland," by the South
African director Brett Bailey. It had a single
scheduled performance, in a
downtown park, and given the nature of the show,
it would not have been
granted a second. No amount of metaphorical
distancing could disguise its
meaning. It started with a gigantic figure,
the tyrant king, wearing a
bloated, blood-red mask and a white military
uniform, who made his way out
to the end of a lonely ramp that jutted into
the audience. "A long time ago,
in a beautiful land far from here," the
narrator began, "there lived a king
who had bewitched his
people."
Onstage the members of a choir, dressed in striped pajamas, were
beaten down
by baton-wielding hyenas in military fatigues. The singers
vomited votes
into ballot boxes, then fell into a trance. "The king
swallowed the songs of
all his people," the narrator continued. "And the
only sound to be heard in
that beautiful land was the drone of the king's
voice."
The tyrant king remained on his lonely perch. The narrator went
on: "But in
that time there were songs that the king could not reach. These
were the
people's most precious songs: the songs they sang in their dreams..
In the
dry valleys of Dreamland the silent choirs sang their songs: The
battered
men in forgotten jails. The broken women on foreign soils. Families
resting
in unmarked graves. The hungry, the lost, the landless. And their
songs rose
like thunderclouds over the land."
Then, suddenly, a choir
of children began to sing "Over the Rainbow" in
pure, piping voices. The
prowling hyenas came up behind them and, one by
one, pulled rough hoods over
their heads and hauled them off, until at last
there was only one little
girl left onstage. She made it to the last line-"Why,
oh why, can't I?"-but
before she could finish, she, too, was hooded by the
hyenas and dragged
away.
All around me in the packed arena Zimbabweans wept for their
country. And so
did I.
Native Zimbabwean Peter Godwin is the author
of When a Crocodile Eats the
Sun. This article was written for Vanity
Fair.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=1998
August 4, 2008
By Jane
Madembo
THERE is no love lost between Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF and Morgan
Tsvangirai's
MDC. But in order to save Zimbabweans from an abyss of poverty
and misery,
the two bitter foes are currently engaged in talks to form a
marriage of
convenience. Each side has a list of what they hope to gain from
the union.
It's an attractive proposition, but will it bring long lasting
peace,
democracy and good governance to Zimbabwe? Let us not forget that the
rotten
police and military forces will still be there at Mugabe's biding.
His
Zanu-PF cohorts will still be there to play their tricks. Their chief
occupation will be to further their agenda, and to frustrate the efforts of
those who want to bring genuine change to Zimbabwe.
It became clearer
to me after I took a taxi ride from a pub to my apartment
the other day. In
New York City, a lot of taxi drivers are African men. As I
opened the door,
I heard music blaring from the front; it was a Senegalese
singer, whose name
I couldn't recall. The driver turned the volume down.
"Hey sister," he
said cheerfully.
Being so far from home, anyone who calls me sister
reminds me of my brothers
whose company I miss. I responded with a smile. He
adjusted his mirror and
looked at me.
"You from Africa, yes, where?"
he said without giving me a chance to
respond. How did he know that I am
from Africa? Well, for starters, I am one
of those few women who still sport
a huge kinky afro. My dark skin, my hair
and ample self said it loud and
clear - African woman.
So we started a conversation, mainly one-sided. He
asked questions and I
answered.
"You come from Ghana? No? Zambia? No?
Then where are you from? Ghana? South
Africa, Zimbabwe? "I kept quiet during
his guess work because I didn't want
to talk about Zimbabwe. You see, every
time I mention Zimbabwe people either
pity me or profess their love for
Mugabe. Talking about Zimbabwe these days
is like putting pressure on an
open wound. I hoped by my silence the driver
would answer
himself.
"South Africa?" He continued his eyes trained on me through the
rear view
mirror, "Zimbabwe?" He must have read something from the
expression on my
face.
"Yaah, Zimbabwe, Mugabe? How's Robert Mugabe?
Africa liberation, Zimbabwe!
He take the land, give it black to people. Good
man. White men take
everyting! America no good." "
Just as suddenly
he dropped the politics.
"Where is your husband? You married? You got
green card?"
The questions kept coming.
"Myself," he said, his
eyes darting back and forth, between the street in
front of him and me, "I
have green card. I marry American woman for greed
card. After green card,
divorce."
He turned to me with a self-satisfied smile.
"I love
only African woman." He handed me his calling card.
"Call me, anytime,"
he said, obviously getting excited. "I take you
anywhere, anyting you want
eat. African man take care of woman."
I asked him to stop as I had
reached my destination. I left the card on the
car seat, as I quickly got
out of the car. You see even though the taxi
driver was an attractive man,
there was something disingenuous about the
man. He had deceived one woman
already. Who knew what he was trying to pull
with me? Later I realized that
it took a lot of self control not to tell the
man off. Why should the
cheating and devaluation of another woman make feel
me special?
After
Gukurahundi, Mugabe proposed a government of national unity with
Joshua
Nkomo of ZAPU, but that union only served Mugabe's interests. It was
signed
to ensure the obliteration of ZAPU, and to make Zimbabwe a one-party
state.
It was also done to silence the voices of the Gukurahundi victims.
What did
Joshua Nkomo gain from that partnership besides a cushy cushion for
himself?
Like what the crafty taxi driver kindly offered me, it was a
marriage of
convenience.
Marriages of convenience are nothing new, but they are never
fair. The
parties involved never want the same thing; it's a matter of
compromise. You
give me what I want and I give you what you want. Not
everybody gets what
they want in the end. There are winners and losers.
There is a certain lack
of transparency in the whole process, and this leads
to more problems down
the road. A European friend did the same thing, he
told me, unlike the taxi
driver who lacked the resources to pay the woman
(the taxi driver pretended
to be in love); he paid the woman a tidy sum of
money. However, when the
time came to dissolve the marriage, the woman
resisted because she wanted to
make the marriage a real thing. He had to pay
her off again to finally get
rid of her even though they never lived
together.
Mugabe doesn't want to cede power. What he wants is for Morgan
Tsvangirai to
become one of his puppets, to use him to get what he wants. In
this marriage
Mugabe wants to be the man of the house. A man of the house
who has acted
without reason or restraint. A man of the house who has failed
to feed his
children and protect them from harm. A man of the house who
doesn't listen
to anyone but himself, who doesn't take the advice of his
neighbors. He is a
man of the house who has lost the respect of
many.
A lot of people have lost their lives in Zimbabwe, since Mugabe
came to
power. We may never know the full extent of the brutal operation in
Matabeleland because then the media was not like what it is today. Since
then, thanks to the internet revolution, we have been witness to the murders
perpetrated by Zanu-PF militia, the victims' bodies splashed on our computer
screens; the battered men and women and the bodies of MDC activists and MDC
supporters.
We saw images of Zimbabwean refugees at the South African
Embassy. The media
has been stifled and journalists forced to flee for their
lives. But their
voices have not been silenced. Petra Gappah wrote that "If
history was a
draft, then Zimbabwe would be in trouble." That might be so,
but this is a
result of Mugabe's policy. Facts and the truth are hard to get
in Zimbabwe
today, but there is no disputing the bodies of dead people, the
displaced
people and the crumpling economy.
Some facts speak for
themselves.
Millions of Zimbabweans have left Zimbabwe for better or
worse. They are
languishing in foreign lands, some in places like Russia and
Iceland,
depressed and traumatized by their forced separation from their
families.
The murders of innocent people, the crumbling economy, coupled the
condemnation of the world at large is propelling Mugabe to say I do to
Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC. He wants to save his skin and that of his
cronies.
But does Mugabe love the Zimbabwean people?
He turned his
back and allowed people who purported to be war veterans go on
a rampage of
killing and theft. He rendered the law enforcement, judiciary,
and education
system impotent, by interfering with the justice department.
The police
failed to maintain law and order or in some cases allowed
soldiers and
police to become agents of terror themselves.
What do the Zimbabwean
people want? They want an overhaul of the Zimbabwean
government. It is
rotten, dysfunctional, and corrupt. They don't trust
Mugabe. Forming a
government of national unity with Mugabe is like sweeping
dirty under the
carpet hoping it won't resurface.
Please Mr Tsvangirai, don't say I do to
Cde Mugabe.
http://www.hararetribune.com/index.php?news=133
Tribune Staff 03 August, 2008 04:57:00
Thanks
to the ZANU-PF militia violence condoned, and provisioned by ZANU-PF,
hordes
of tourists are staying away from the country.
Zimbabwe, Harare-- A total
of 33 000 tourists intending to visit the country
cancelled their visits
during the first quarter of 2008 following travel
warnings issued by tourism
source markets.
A report by Zimbabwe's state controlled Sunday Mail
revealed that a total of
33 000 cancellations had been recorded during the
first quarter of the year.
"Japan and South Korea have reportedly joined
the United Kingdom and America
in issuing travel warnings to their
respective citizens with warnings from
the Commonwealth also contributing to
cancellations from Italy and Spain,"
said the Sunday Mail.
Zimbabwe
Tourism Authority (ZTA) chief executive officer, Karikoga Kaseke,
said
Zimbabwe lost over 2 000 visitors from South Korea in the second
quarter of
the year, which translates into the flight of a possible 4 000
bed nights,
while 3 800 tourists expected from April to July translated to
some 7 600
bed nights were lost, as most of these tourists spend an average
two
nights.
"The country's largest hospitality group African Sun Limited said
arrivals
during the six months to March had declined six percent from last
year's
growth of 17 percent. The group said they had cancellations of close
to 10
000 rooms by foreigners just before the harmonised elections,"
reported the
Sunday Mail.
Surprisingly Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)
statistics indicate that the
tourism and distribution sector grew by an
estimated 11 percent.
"Tourist arrivals recorded an 11 percent increase
from 305 757 in the fist
quarter of 2007 to 340 810 recorded during the
first quarter of 2008,
despite the negative publicity that the country is
currently going through,"
said RBZ governor Gideon Gono while presenting his
post election monetary
statement last week.
At its peak in 1998,
tourism accounted for eight percent of gross domestic
product, 12. 5 percent
of formal employment and about 11 percent of foreign
exchange earnings.