Zim Independent
Dumisani
Muleya
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe (pictured) was yesterday
endorsed as the
ruling Zanu PF’s presidential candidate in next year’s poll
amid subdued
protests by senior party officials against what they described
as a
"fraudulent process" exposing "blatant intrigue and
manipulation".
The stunning revelations of Mugabe’s heavily
contrived endorsement
came from senior Zanu PF politburo members who spoke
to the Zimbabwe
Independent behind closed doors to explain how their leader
secured the
party’s approval.
Top Zanu PF officials said Mugabe
was endorsed through manipulation
that involved violation of the party’s
constitution, use of unprocedural
means, and coercion.
War
veterans leader Jabulani Sibanda’s recent nationwide solidarity
processions
and the "one million man" march were part of the coercive
methods used,
including a propaganda blitz in the state media.
The intimidation
succeeded, at least for now, in whipping into line
the faction led by
retired army commander General Solomon Mujuru which had
pressed for congress
in May to remove Mugabe. The Mujuru camp had pushed for
a congress because a
conference cannot elect leaders, but congress can
choose the leader, the two
deputies and the chairman. The hope was that
Vice-President Joice Mujuru
would take over from Mugabe.
However, Mugabe by February when he
first announced he would stand for
re-election — despite initially saying he
would retire in 2008 — started
demolishing the Mujuru camp after it blocked
his 2010 bid at Goromonzi. To
fight back, the Mujuru camp pushed for the
congress to evict him, but he
out-manoeuvred them in the
process.
"If the truth be told, Mugabe’s endorsement yesterday was
done in an
unconstitutional, unprocedural and coercive manner," a senior
politburo
official said. "The constitution of the party and procedures were
not
followed. What this means is that it was a manipulated and stage-managed
process."
Details of a Zanu PF politburo meeting on November 28
show that the
party was divided over whether to declare and confirm or
nominate Mugabe as
the candidate. Zanu PF administration secretary Didymus
Mutasa read out
"declarations" by the Women’s League, Youth League and
provinces that Mugabe
was the candidate in terms of Article 6 (30) (3) of
the constitution at that
meeting. This was also done yesterday.
The sources said the first problem which was apparent yesterday was
that
Mugabe was endorsed at the extraordinary congress in terms of the party
constitution, Article 6 (30)(3).
However, Article 6 only deals
with issues of the annual National
People’s Conference, not the
extraordinary congress. The relevant section
(30)(3), says one of the powers
and functions of the conference is to
declare the president of the party
elected at the last congress as the
presidential election
candidate.
But that section was arbitrarily employed to declare
Mugabe the
candidate yesterday despite the fact it is not a function of the
congress
but that of a conference. Zanu PF officials said this was
unconstitutional.
Zanu PF politburo member Dumiso Dabengwa raised
this issue at the
November 28 politburo meeting, saying party legal affairs
secratary Emmerson
Mnangagwa was "mixing up" provisions of congress and
those of conference.
Mnangagwa, pushing for Mugabe’s endorsement,
unconvincingly tried to defend
his decision.
Prior to that at a
politburo meeting on October 24, Dabengwa had asked
what the nomination
procedures to elect the candidate were. Mnangagwa,
sources said, had
replied, saying the December congress "would have no
nominations". Party
officials said this is the unprocedural part of congress
yesterday.
The October 24 politburo meeting first came up with
a strategy to
pre-empt potential challenges to Mugabe at the
congress.
Mnangagwa was the architect of the plan.
At
the November 28 politburo meeting, Vice-President Joseph Msika
asked why
party organs and provinces "were being told what to do and say
instead of
them coming up with their submissions".
"Msika said the proper
procedures to nominate President Mugabe were
done in 2004," a senior
politburo member related. "He said at the
extraordinary congress, the one
yesterday, the process of nomination should
be followed because some people
might have developed interests and ambitions
to be the party candidate since
2004.
Women’s League head Oppah Muchinguri said nomination was more
credible
than confirmation.
But Mnangagwa said the nomination
process would "violate the party’s
constitution". However, nomination was
the normal congress practice, the
senior party official said.
Zanu PF transport and social welfare deputy secretary Tendai Savanhu
said at
the November 28 politburo meeting Mugabe should be declared and
confirmed —
not nominated — because he was still serving his term until
congress in
2009. However, others said he should be nominated because the
extraordinary
congress might decide to nominate another leader and the
confirmation does
not allow for that.
The party information and publicity deputy
secretary Ephraim Masawi
suggested that the party should declare and confirm
Mugabe instead of
nominating him because "that might create
problems".
In the end, Msika said it appeared the majority wanted
confirmation of
Mugabe as leader instead of opening up the nomination
process and the
meeting agreed to adopt the confirmation
method.
However, Dabengwa and others still felt that it was
unprocedural, even
unconstitutional.
It is understood Mnangagwa
carefully crafted the plan to endorse
Mugabe without challenge to frustrate
the Mujuru faction which outmanoeuvred
him in 2004 for the post of
vice-president currently held by Joice Mujuru.
The sources said
Mnangagwa also worked closely with Sibanda to
frighten the Mujuru camp and
other rivals from challenging Mugabe yesterday.
"The strategy
worked because Mujuru and his camp ended up supporting
Mugabe, at least in
public, and for Mnangagwa it was sweet revenge after his
2004 defeat,"
another source said.
Zim Independent
Constantine Chimakure
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe, who was
yesterday endorsed as Zanu PF’s 2008
presidential candidate amid rumbling
protests, appealed to party members not
to sabotage his re-election bid and
that of would-be legislators and
councillors.
Addressing the
ruling party’s extraordinary congress, Mugabe said
those who lose primary
elections for next year’s harmonised polls should
rally behind the winners
and campaign vigorously to secure his victory and
that of Zanu
PF.
"We want peace in the party, divisions must be minimum…Not
everyone
aspiring for a position will win," Mugabe said. "Avo vacharuza
musarudzo
dzemuparty ngavasazorovera bhora mudondo… Unenge uchitozvinwisa
(Those who
lose primary polls, should not kick the ball into the bush . . .
You will be
scoring against your side.) In this game we should be scoring.
Why in the
first place did you agree to be part of the team? "
Mugabe’s plea came amid fears that some disgruntled party members
would not
campaign for him as they were allegedly arm-twisted by war
veterans and the
women’s and youth leagues to endorse his candidacy through
solidarity
marches.
Zanu PF is expected to hold its primary elections in
January to elect
candidates for the House of Assembly, Senate and council
polls.
In his speech, Mugabe did not announce his party’s election
manifesto
or say how his government intended to resolve the economic crisis
in the
country — the biggest challenge to his re-election bid.
Instead, the 83-year-old leader as usual attacked former British
premier
Tony Blair, his successor Gordon Brown, and US President George Bush
for
allegedly interfering in the country’s internal problems.
He
reiterated that the diplomatic dispute between Zimbabwe and Britain
was a
result of the refusal by Blair’s government to bankroll land reform in
Zimbabwe in line with the 1979 Lancaster House agreement.
"We
signed the agreement with the Conservative Party and when the
Labour party
later won the election to rule the UK, Blair reneged to finance
land reform.
We said to him keep your money and we will take our land,"
Mugabe
said.
He claimed that Blair and Brown wanted to dictate to Zimbabwe
how to
handle its affairs.
"They say ‘do this and that. If you
do not follow, we will not speak
to you’," Mugabe said amid ululation from
the delegates. "We do not desire
to talk to them, but there is an issue
between them and us. How do they
expect the issue to be resolved (without
talking to us)? That is the
question."
Mugabe said there was a
systematic campaign by Britain and the West to
isolate Zimbabwe in the
region, in Africa and among the international
community.
Zim Independent
Augustine Mukaro
ZANU PF’s extraordinary congress, which
endorsed President Robert
Mugabe as the ruling party’s presidential
candidate in next year’s
elections, was a predetermined event held to simply
rubberstamp his
political ambitions.
From the outset, party
chairman John Nkomo who presided over the
proceedings declared that he would
not entertain any other issues outside
the agenda, confirming fears that the
whole event was stage-managed to go
Mugabe’s way. The declaration whipped
any elements that could have wanted to
spring surprises into line, making
them follow the proceedings without
question.
To confirm that
the event had a foregone conclusion, all provincial
representatives brought
and read prepared speeches which had basically the
same wording and
content.
The women’s league gave the game away when the lady chosen
to read the
national women’s assembly resolution failed to follow the lines.
The woman
stammered and repeated the same lines showing that she had no
input in the
crafting of the statement.
By merely walking into
the City Sports Centre, one could easily tell
that the delegates had been
coached into praising Mugabe with song and
poetry. Songs with themes such as
"Mugabe is a gift from God, let him rule"
and "We will all vote for him and
make him win forever" engulfed the arena.
All placards had Orwellian
inscriptions praising Mugabe such as "Mugabe is
right. Long live Cde RG
Mugabe, VaMugabe chete chete, Umugabe kuphela,"
clearly showing that the
congress was geared at forwarding a Mugabe agenda.
Mugabe’s arrival
at the congress venue summed it all up as he was
greeted with wild ululation
and praise as he walked around greeting the
delegates from the 10 provinces.
Party national commissar Elliot Manyika led
the delegates in praising
Mugabe, calling him by his totem, Gushungo.
Youths and women
toyi-toyed to show their allegiance.
The proceedings of the
congress were punctuated by songs and slogans
from senior party officials
who took to the podium to praise the visibly
tired Mugabe. But on a lighter
note Vice-President Joseph Msika had to ask
the delegates to stop chatting
among themselves because it was distracting
him from his speech. He wasn’t
used to it, he said.
During Emmerson Mnangagwa’s report, Elliot
Manyika had to intervene to
ask delegates to stop making a racket. It was a
very important matter, he
declared, as Mnangagwa was explaining details of
the 18th constitutional
amendment. He singled out Mashonaland Central for
misbehaviour.
Zim Independent
THE ruling Zanu PF has splashed about $3 trillion on its five-day
extraordinary congress that started on Tuesday at a time when the country’s
economy continues in an unprecedented free-fall.
Information
gathered by the Zimbabwe Independent revealed that in
October the party’s
politburo was told that the congress should be
bankrolled to the tune of
between $2 and $3 trillion to cater for about 10
000 delegates’ transport,
food and accommodation.
About 2 670 delegates were drawn from the
party’s district
coordinating committees up to the central committee, while
6 171 were from
districts and 210 from Zanu PF affiliate organisations —
giving a total of 9
051.
The large number of delegates forced
Zanu PF to move the congress from
its traditional venue at the Harare
International Conference Centre to the
City Sports Centre.
Harare City Council that owns and run the centre provided the venue to
the
party at no cost.
Two weeks ago, the politburo was also informed
that the organising
coordinating committee of the congress had identified 45
sites for the
delegates’ accommodation and that Zanu PF would hire 132 buses
to transport
the members.
In a clear abuse of state resources
Zupco pledged to provide between
60 and 70 buses to augment the 132, while
the National Railways of Zimbabwe
chipped in with trains.
The
Zimbabwe National Army and the Zimbabwe Republic Police’s staff
messes were
roped in to provide catering.
During the same politburo meeting
concerns were raised over the
disappearance of 21 beasts carried over from
the 2005 Esgodini and 2006
Goromonzi conferences, which could have reduced
drastically the catering
costs.
The disappearance of the cattle
is now the subject of investigations.
Zanu PF is also expected to
splash out over $661 billion and US$1,2
million for capital expenditure and
general campaign funds for next year’s
harmonised polls.
The
government is currently appealing to international agencies for
US$320
million for food aid and medicines. — Staff Writer.
Zim Independent
Dumisani
Muleya
TALKS between the ruling Zanu PF and the main opposition
Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) are facing collapse after the two
parties this week
bitterly disagreed on the implementation of a new
constitution. The fierce
clash led to the MDC walking out of the talks on
Tuesday.
Sources said Zanu PF negotiators Patrick Chinamasa and
Nicholas Goche
have told President Robert Mugabe that the negotiations were
now on the
rocks because the MDC wants a new constitution before the
elections. The MDC
also wants elections postponed to June.
However, Zanu PF does not want a new constitution before the
elections. The
ruling party took a decision at its September 5 politburo
session that it
would not accept a new constitution before the polls. The
party also rejects
postponement of the elections.
Mugabe said yesterday elections
would be held in March.
"We are going to have elections in March
without failure. I want to
emphasise that the elections will be in March. We
started announcing that
there would be elections in March next year six
months ago. We announced
this well in advance, people must be prepared. If
some parties are not
ready, it’s their fault, we have given them enough time
to prepare and there
is another three months."
Sources said
that Mugabe made these remarks after the MDC threatened
at the talks to
boycott the elections. They said this came after Zanu PF
told Mugabe serious
problems had emerged over the constitution and polls.
"Chinamasa
and Goche told Mugabe this week after meeting in Pretoria
and Harare that
talks have run into serious difficulties because Zanu PF and
the MDC are not
agreeing on the need for a new constitution before
elections," a source
said.
"Disagreements are so serious that after their meetings in
Pretoria
starting last week into early this week, the parties clashed in
Harare. At
one of the meetings on Tuesday the MDC walked out in
protest."
Sources said MDC delegate Welshman Ncube stormed out of
the meeting on
Tuesday after sharp differences emerged with Chinamasa and
Goche.
This was the first time any of the delegates had walked out
of the
talks.
The other MDC negotiator Tendai Biti is said to
have sympathised with
Ncube because Zanu PF was becoming rigid in its
approach, backtracking on
initial promises to the talks
facilitators.
The MDC backed Zanu PF’s constitutional amendment
agenda recently on
the understanding — given by facilitator South African
President Thabo
Mbeki — that Zanu PF would reciprocate by accepting a new
constitution and
an array of legislative amendments before the polls. Mbeki
became the
underwriter of the deal on behalf of regional leaders who
mandated him in
March to facilitate the dialogue.
Despite the
differences mainly on those two issues, the parties remain
at the
negotiating table and are travelling to Pretoria again today for
crisis
meetings starting tomorrow. The delegates had gone to Pretoria last
Friday
and returned on Monday after the talks ran into serious hurdles over
constitutional implementation mechanisms and the elections
date.
"Every meeting is now a make-or-break encounter," a source
said. "Zanu
PF seems to be becoming inflexible, while the MDC wants
reciprocation. It is
now a do-or-die phase of the talks and that’s why the
parties are now at
each other’s throats."
With Mugabe and Zanu
PF not prepared to compromise and the MDC not
willing to continue making
concessions without reciprocation, collapse of
the talks is fast becoming a
reality.
"Zanu PF and the MDC are now standing at the North and
South poles on
the outstanding issues and unless they find common ground
again a breakdown
is looming," a source said.
The parties were
recently engaged in serious and heated exchanges over
the contentious final
agenda item, the political climate, which has proved
to be a difficult issue
for the negotiators. An inside source described the
latest developments as
tantamount to "war".
The parties were battling over the
demilitarisation of state
institutions, the use of militias, abuse of state
food aid and traditional
chiefs, sanctions, land and hostile political
rhetoric. The full agenda
includes the constitution, electoral laws,
security legislation, media laws
and general political climate.
The parties have almost agreed on everything save for the contentious
issues
on the implementation mechanisms and the date of elections, the most
important issues for the MDC at the moment. Implementation and the date of
elections were expected to be the sticking points.
The
comprehensive package from the talks if agreed is expected to be
taken to
parliament for ratification and be implemented in terms of the
agreed
transitional mechanisms and dates.
The Zanu PF congress yesterday
claimed to have "ratified" amendments
to the constitution even though
lawyers said the ruling party could not
ratify the changes beyond a decision
by its central committee to support the
reforms. "There is no way Zanu PF
can ratify constitutional amendments
because that is not how laws are made
and indeed constitutions changed," one
lawyer said. "What they should say is
that they have ratified
their own party’s position on the issue of
constitutional reforms, not
ratify amendments themselves."
Zanu
PF and MDC negotiators have missed deadlines since September and
may also
miss their proposed cut-off date this week again unless a dramatic
breakthrough is found. Mbeki was in Zimbabwe recently to urge Mugabe and MDC
leaders to step up their negotiating pace, but now the problem no longer
seems to be just deadlines, but irreconcilable positions.
Zim Independent
Constantine Chimakure
AS President Robert Mugabe arrived at
Zanu PF headquarters in Harare
on Tuesday for a politburo meeting, members
of the women’s league, among
others, huddled against the walls in apparent
fear while at the same time
craning their necks to have a glimpse of the
aging leader.
Mugabe’s bodyguards armed to the teeth jumped from
the back of Land
Cruisers and took positions all over the headquarters
before the
octogenarian nationalist could disembark from his posh black
limousine.
As the president walked towards the entrance of the Zanu
PF
headquarters building, heading for his 14th floor office, the women burst
into song and dance — Mugabe takamupiwa naShe. Ndiye chete, chete (We were
given Mugabe by God. He is the only one to lead us).
It was
evident that the 83-year-old Mugabe’s endorsement as Zanu PF’s
2008
presidential candidate at the party’s five-day extra-ordinary congress,
which started with that politburo meeting, would sail through without any
resistance.
Another point that is clear was that Mugabe had
secured the party’s
candidacy through instilling fear in his
opponents.
Party insiders said the Zanu PF president and first
secretary was so
feared in the party that no one would dare challenge his
leadership, let
alone suggests that he retires from active
politics.
The insiders say it was clear as from last February that
Mugabe was
here to stay when he declared that there was "no vacancy" for
president.
Through intimidation, Mugabe forced his major opponents
to his
continued reign in power, the Solomon Mujuru faction, to climb down,
while
he roped in another camp in the succession battle led by Rural and
Social
Amenities minister Emmerson Mnangagwa to fight in his
corner.
Zanu PF sources said Mugabe reached out to the Mnangagwa
camp and the
war veterans to be part of his campaign machinery for the
elections after he
realised that his fallout with the Mujuru camp created a
rift that could not
be bridged before next year’s elections.
Mugabe and the Mujuru camp fell out in February after he made thinly
veiled
attacks on Vice-President Joice Mujuru, the person the faction wanted
to
succeed the veteran nationalist.
The president accused her of
plotting with former Zanu PF secretary
general Edgar Tekere and prominent
publisher Ibbo Mandaza to use Tekere’s
autobiography, A Lifetime of
Struggle, to undermine him while in the process
promoting her presidential
bid.
At the Zanu PF conference last December in Goromonzi, the
Mujuru camp
successfully opposed Mugabe’s bid to push harmonised
presidential and
legislative polls to 2010.
Mugabe also failed
during the party’s crucial central committee
meeting in March to secure his
endorsement, leading his loyalists to mislead
the public on the issue,
claiming his candidacy was approved when it was
not.
Mugabe —
with the support of Mnangagwa and Justice minister Patrick
Chinamasa —
during the same meeting managed to sway the central committee to
make a
decision that the polls take place next year.
With pressure
mounting for him to leave office, Mugabe, through
Mnangagwa, roped in the
war veterans using Jabulani Sibanda, the women and
youth leagues to
spearhead his campaign.
Sibanda was expelled from Zanu PF in 2004,
but was plucked out of the
cold by Mnangagwa — without the party knowing it
— and reinstated as leader
of the war veterans, much to the surprise of the
party chairman and also
national disciplinary committee head, John
Nkomo.
The three bodies embarked on nationwide solidarity marches
canvassing
support for Mugabe and at the same time deriding party officials
seen as
opposed to the pro-Mugabe marches. Last month, women’s league boss
Oppah
Muchinguri at one of the marches in Gweru called for Mugabe to be
declared
life president.
Muchinguri said: "The late
Vice-president Joshua Nkomo died in office
and the late Vice-president Simon
Muzenda died in office; President Mugabe
must also be allowed to die in
office."
Soon after Mugabe secured endorsement of the politburo on
November 25,
the women’s league intensified fears that Mugabe wanted to
fight and win in
order to become president for life after the league members
burst into song
saying "Mugabe is our leader forever."
Even
Vice President Joseph Msika who had earlier on indicated that
Mugabe was not
nominated to represent the party next year, rallied behind
the aging leader
and last month declared that he must rule until death.
Msika said
the practice of limiting presidents to a couple of terms in
office was "a
luxury" and Mugabe should continue to rule until he dies.
"We do
not change leaders as fast as we change our shirts," Msika
said. "In
Zimbabwe we do not accept that. So the issue of changing a leader
after a
specified period is out of the question. It is a luxury we cannot
afford. If
they are still serving the people, then they should stay on or
even die
there."
The war veterans, women and youth leagues’ marches
culminated in the
November 30 "Million Man march" in Harare that again saw
war veterans, the
women and youth leagues calling for Mugabe to remain in
power until death.
Party insiders said Vice President Mujuru
realised at the beginning of
November that the game was up and decided to
make a summersault by making a
public announcement that she was never
interested in Mugabe’s job.
"If there is a person who wants to
succeed President Mugabe, it’s not
me. A-a, aya mashura andirikutonzwa muno
(These are ill-omens I am hearing
here)," Mujuru said while addressing
Mashonaland Central leaders in Bindura.
"The presidium is made up of four
people and I am already in the presidium.
I am not going
anywhere."
She backed Mugabe saying reports that she intended to
oust him were
lies meant to tarnish her image.
However, party
insiders said Mujuru’s U-turn was prompted by the
arrest of one of her
camp’s key members, Attorney General Sobusa
Gula-Ndebele, as part of
Mugabe’s onslaught on the vice-president’s camp.
Ndebele was
arrested for alleged abuse of office for reportedly
meeting fugitive banker
James Mushore and failing to report to the police
that he was back in the
country from the UK.
Mujuru’s summersault was also reportedly out
of fear of a backlash
from a vengeful Mugabe, after reports that Muchinguri
would be appointed to
replace her as vice president.
Zanu PF
Masvingo province secretary for information and publicity,
retired Major
Kudzai Mbudzi, last week became the first victim of those who
opposed the
pro-Mugabe marches led by Sibanda.
The provincial executive
committee chaired by retired Major Alex
Mudavanhu said Mbudzi had abused his
office by verbally attacking Sibanda
who spearheaded Mugabe’s
campaign.
Mbudzi had insisted that Sibanda should not have any role
to play in
Mugabe’s campaign because he was expelled from the
party.
Apart from Mbudzi, there is pressure from war veterans, the
women and
youth leagues to have Msika, Nkomo and politburo members Dumiso
Dabengwa,
Sikhanyiso Ndlovu and retired General Mujuru censured by Mugabe
for snubbing
the "million man march."
While it is clear that
the majority of Zanu PF members no longer want
Mugabe to remain in power,
the politics of coercion have won for him another
term.
Zim Independent
By
Jonathan Moyo
IF President Robert Mugabe truly and honestly
believes that he is a
serious presidential candidate in the general election
scheduled for March
2008 and that he can best govern this battered country
until 2013 should he
win, then he miserably failed to demonstrate that at
the controversial Zanu
PF extraordinary congress which started late
yesterday afternoon.
The simple truth is that Mugabe has no
national reason to seek
reelection and that Zanu PF is being particularly
irresponsible by allowing
him to do that in a disgraceful manner as shown
yesterday at the special
congress.
So pathetic was Mugabe’s
performance that when he was formally
declared the ruling party’s
presidential candidate, fair-minded Zimbabweans
in and outside Zanu PF who
had or still have a soft spot for him for one
reason or another did not know
whether to laugh or cry. The televised
ill-fated declaration was as unwise
and as sad as a different but morally
equivalent event some 29 years ago
when an aged and out-of-shape Muhammad
Ali unwisely agreed to defend his
world heavy weight boxing title against a
young and agile Leon Spinks who
went on to clobber and humiliate him on
February 15 1978.
Because Zanu PF’s irresponsibility has caused it to fail to protect
the
national interest and because Mugabe is apparently determined to thrive
under that failure in pursuit of his personal ambition to be president for
life, it is now up to Zimbabweans across the political divide to rise to the
challenge by finding a united front to stop Mugabe and his cronies from
turning their self-indulgence into a national catastrophe.
Before he was declared as the Zanu PF candidate yesterday, Mugabe
opened the
Zanu PF special congress with an uncharacteristically insipid
speech,
delivered in a cracking voice and notable for its shocking
incoherence,
irrelevance and lack of inspiration. His rambling speech sent a
clear, loud
and very worrying message to bemused delegates that Mugabe now
represents an
unhappy past.
But if Mugabe’s speech was pathetic from the point of
view of someone
who desperately needed to convince his special congress
delegates and the
television audience that he has what is required to solve
the nation’s
daunting problems many of which have been caused by him or
during his
controversial rule over the last 27 years, the proceedings that
followed his
uninspiring speech proved beyond any doubt that the Zanu PF
special congress
was a charade.
Consider the following:
Mugabe’s hopeless speech, which was full of
the same old clichés he has been
saying over and over again to no useful
end, was immediately followed by a
perfunctory tabling of the central
committee report for adoption by Vice
President Joice Mujuru who had the
appearance of someone who was so removed
from it all that she could not care
less. Her dutiful act was followed by
long-winded and useless vote of thanks
from Vice President Joseph Msika
whose essence was to confirm that the Zanu
PF presidium would be better
consigned in a museum than anywhere else in a
properly functioning society,
let alone a democratic one.
When the presidium was done, the
secretary for legal affairs, Emmerson
Mnangagwa, was asked to announce the
main purpose of the special congress
and he outlined two. First, he said
that the special congress was being
asked to ratify constitutional amendment
18 and he narrated the background
to its enactment by the Parliament of
Zimbabwe which he situated in the Sadc
mandated South African led talks
between Zanu PF and the two MDC factions.
What was shocking is that
Minister Mnangagwa did not seem to
appreciate the absurdity of asking a Zanu
PF congregation, with no standing
in our Constitution whatsoever, to ratify
an Act of the Parliament of
Zimbabwe. The matter would have been different
and even understandable if he
had asked the Zanu PF special congress to
ratify decisions of the Zanu PF
central committee in support of processes,
including the inter-party
dialogue, leading to the enactment of Amendment
18.
Someone needs to tell Zanu PF’s manipulative barons that once a
law
has been enacted by the Parliament of Zimbabwe, and assented to by the
President, only the courts can pronounce themselves on that law one way or
the other. No other body has the competence to ratify or do anything else
about that law besides abiding by it.
After the absurd and
meaningless ratification of Amendment 18,
Minister Mnangagwa then announced
that the second, and obviously most
important, business of the day was to
declare Mugabe as the Zanu PF
presidential candidate in the 2008
presidential election allegedly "in
compliance with Article 5 section 22(4)
of the party’s constitution and in
terms of Article 6 section 30(3) of the
same constitution".
Article 5 section 22(4) of the Zanu PF
constitution deals with the
convening of an ordinary, not special, congress
and provides that
resolutions emanating from the party’s provincial
structures, youth league
and women’s league shall be circulated to the
constituent organs of congress
at least 14 days prior to the date of
congress.
A number of these organs did not meet the requirement for
making
resolutions 14 days before the congress and some of them, like
Matabeleland
North, made their resolutions in support of Mugabe only last
Saturday on
December 8 while Masvingo reported to have done so only
yesterday on the day
of the congress! In the circumstances, while all the
reporting organs
recited Article 5 section 22(4) of the Zanu PF constitution
to justify the
resolutions they read in support of Mugabe, a majority of
them violated that
provision and shamelessly displayed their violation on
national television.
In addition to this, all the reporting 10
provinces along with the
youth league and women’s league claimed that they
were declaring Mugabe as
the candidate of the party in terms of Article 6
section 30(3) of the Zanu
PF constitution which deals with the powers and
functions of the national
people’s conference. Section 30(3) of that article
provides that the
national people’s conference "shall declare the president
of the party
elected at congress as the state presidential candidate of the
party".
What is instructive here is that this article is
specifically about
the powers and functions of the national conference and
not congress or a
special congress. It was very strange, and indeed
incomprehensible, for the
youth league, women’s league and 10 provinces to
pretend to be following the
Zanu PF constitution when they were in point of
fact using a provision on
the national people’s conference and mischievously
conflating it with the
special congress.
While those who read
the strange resolutions in support of Mugabe’s
candidacy did not know what
they were doing and clearly are not familiar
with the Zanu PF constitutional
provisions that they were invoking, those
who drafted the resolutions new
exactly that they were manipulating the
party’s constitution in order to
violate it . This was done as part of the
desperate efforts to impose
Mugabe’s candidacy on an unwilling but helpless
ruling party now
incapacitated by deep divisions.
After all the organs had read the
resolutions that had clearly been
written for them by manipulative powers
behind the scenes, Zanu PF national
chairman, John Nkomo, formalised the
declaration of Mugabe as the
presidential candidate by
acclamation.
The delegates responded by looking at each other in
bewilderment. The
usual chanting of slogans, singing and dancing were all
forgotten. Even the
singing national commissar, Elliot Manyika, remained
glued to his seat
looking as confused if not as sorry as everyone else.
Mugabe himself looked
equally perplexed and even fearful. As if there was
the hand of God at work,
Nkomo looked at Mugabe and sought to reassure by
saying, "Cde. President we
have tried".
All this was live on
television. There was something about the images
which seemed to foretell
what we are most likely to see on the day of the
results of the 2008 general
election.
To any discerning observer who was either inside the
special congress
yesterday or who watched the charade unfold from the
beginning to the end on
television, it was clear that nobody in Zanu PF
actually supports Mugabe’s
candidacy. Everyone understands that it is wrong
and the most telling
statement in that regard is the holding of a sham
special congress when a
national people’s conference was in
order.
The tragedy in Zanu PF is that its leading factions,
especially those
associated with Solomon Mujuru and Emmerson Mnangagwa, are
now using their
mutual hatred as a way of expressing their support for
Mugabe. The divisions
between these factions has widened and deepened as
they compete to prove
which faction supports Mugabe more than the other. One
can only imagine what
would happen if these factions were to unite against
Mugabe in support of
Zimbabwe.
* Professor Jonathan Moyo is the
Independent MP for Tsholotsho.
Zim Independent
Kuda
Chikwanda
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe yesterday threatened to launch a
new blitz
targeting producers and businesses which he accused of hiking
prices of
basic commodities without government approval.
Speaking at the Zanu PF Extraordinary Congress, Mugabe said he was
worried
by the recent spate of price increases. He said appropriate action
would be
taken on errant businesses.
"I want, finally, to warn them
(businesses) that unless they
themselves are disciplined, a discipline that
is recognised by us (as
government), we might have to take action against
them," he told thousands
of delegates.
Mugabe said government
would continue to implement measures to turn
around the economy and that
government would not stand by and watch
Zimbabweans suffering.
"Government will continue to take more measures to turn around the
economy
but we want to ensure that our people have a good Christmas," he
added.
Mugabe’s threat seemed to support National Incomes and
Pricing
Commission (NIPC) chairman Godwills Masimirembwa who was forced to
eat
humble pie by Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono three
weeks ago.
Masimirembwa was diplomatically whipped into line by
Gono after he
threatened to unleash the second phase of the blitz. Most
businesses are yet
to recover from the devastating effects of the
controversial price blitz
launched in July.
Gono told the
business community that he believed that
Masimirembwa —whether or not he had
issued the threat — had been misquoted
and assured the business community
that there would be no return to the
"madness" that characterised the blitz
in July and resulted in widespread
shortages of basic
commodities.
Mugabe also indicated that the Mines and Minerals
Amendment Bill was
still on the way and reiterated that government wanted
majority stakes in
all foreign owned companies.
"We have said
before that we need investment in the mining sector,
expertise in the
sector, but not at the expense of the people. That is why
we came up with
the Mines and Minerals Bill," Mugabe said.
"We will insist on
equity in precious minerals for the majority of our
people. The majority of
shareholding will be held by our people; 51% of
investment in precious
minerals should be held by Zimbabweans."
Mugabe also said
government was opposed to indigenous people being
used as fronts by
foreigners to circumvent the 51% ownership whilst
retaining benefits for the
foreign investor.
"We do not want blacks to be fronts in
‘partnerships’. If you are
fronts we say no! We want you to be rich owners,
it must be a true
partnership," Mugabe added.
The Mines and
Minerals Amendment Bill seeks to enable government or
indigenous people to
take up 51% of mining companies, especially those
mining precious
minerals.
The Bill provides for government to acquire 25% of every
mining
company engaged in the extraction and exploitation of strategic
minerals or
precious stones without paying for it.
The Bill
allows for government or other indigenous investors to pay
for the remaining
25% with Section 54 of the Bill proposing explicitly that
the state or
indigenous people hold a controlling interest in all mining
companies.
At least 10% of the shares of a mining company must
be owned by the
state or indigenous investors within the first two years,
while at least 20%
of the shares should have changed hands within the first
five years.
Companies engaged in the extraction of strategic
minerals must ensure
that at least 40% is owned by the state or indigenous
investors no later
than five years from the Bill becoming law, while the
threshold of 51% is
reached within seven years.
The Mines and
Minerals Amendment Bill was drawn up two years ago but
was sidelined as the
Indigenisation and Empowerment Bill picked up steam and
was passed into law
recently although it awaits Mugabe’s assent.
Zim Independent
THE Zimbabwe
Tourism Authority (ZTA) has taken the National Incomes
and Pricing
Commission (NIPC) to task over its decision to approve price
hikes to
tourism operators without consulting the authority.
The NIPC was
forced into a fresh round of talks late last week after
ZTA rejected the new
rates it had approved for players in the tourism
industry. An emergency
meeting was held last week between the NIPC, ZTA and
Zimbabwe Council for
Tourism (ZCT) in a bid to come up with a new pricing
structure for tourism
operators.
The meeting came after ZTA boss, Karikoga Kaseke, had
attacked the
NIPC’s top management for hijacking the authority’s
mandate.
"Kaseke told them to stop poking their noses in his
jurisdiction,"
said a ZTA source who attended the initial meeting which was
characterised
by serious accusations.
"He was angry that the
NIPC could just barge in and determine hotel
rates without consulting with
the ZTA which is the industry’s regulator."
Kaseke is reported to
have then ordered the NIPC and the ZCT to sit
down with the ZTA and come up
with a new pricing structure with rates which
were lower than what had been
agreed on by the two parties in late November.
The NIPC, ZCT and
ZTA proceeded to meet in the authority’s boardroom
last Friday. The meeting
lasted over four hours.
ZTA was represented by its Research and
Development director Simba
Mandinyenya and Marketing Director Givemore
Chidzidzi while NIPC was
represented by the acting chief executive officer,
Esau Ndlovu.
Businessdigest however understands that the talks were
only a partial
success as they had only resulted in a marginal reduction in
rates. ZTA is
understood to have told the meeting that it was still not
happy with the
rates.
Further talks are scheduled for next week
to resolve the crisis.
Hotels were mandated to return
to
the drawing board and bring before both the ZTA and the NIPC a new
and
"reasonable" price structure.
Mandinyenya and Chidzidzi would not
comment and referred
all questions to Kaseke. Kaseke however said he
would prefer to
comment on the matter after it was resolved.
"There is nothing to say at the moment, talks are ongoing," he
said.
The NIPC allowed tourism operators to hike their charges by
between
250% and 400% on November 28 this year.
Breakfast at a
four and five-star hotel was set at $24 million, while
meal prices for
deluxe restaurants were pegged at between $16 million and
$25
million.
Bed and breakfast prices for single bookings at five and
four star
hotels were set at between $94 million and $109,3 million. Double
bookings
at the same hotels were allowed to rise to prices between $133
million and
$156 million.
The NIPC set a single booking at a
three star city hotel at between
$84,6 million and $94 million while a
double booking would require between
$106 million and $133 million. A one
star hotel now costs between $55
million for a single booking and $83
million for a double booking.
Bed and breakfast for two at a luxury
lodge is now set at $130 million
while at a standard lodge now costs $91,6
million. The NIPC said the rates
will only be reviewed in February next
year. .
However, businessdigest has since established that most
hotels were
still charging in excess of these new prices. They have also not
reduced
their rates as demanded by the ZTA.
Most hotels were
charging bed-only rates within the limits set by the
NIPC while breakfast is
charged separately. This has made the whole package
overpriced as regards
breakfast was noted making the combined bed and
breakfast significantly more
than agreed.
Most five star hotels were charging between $30
million and $36
million for breakfast despite the NIPC permitting four and
five star hotels
to charge only $24 million for breakfast. — Staff
Writer.
Zim Independent
Shakeman
Mugari
THE struggle for control of the Zimbabwe Revenue
Authority (Zimra) has
intensified with revelations this week that Finance
minister Samuel
Mumbengegwi has virtually taken over the authority’s key
operations.
Mumbengegwi has over the past three months moved
swiftly to take-over
Zimra commissioner general, Geshom Pasi’s
responsibilities and consolidate
his grip on the authority’s
affairs.
Mumbengegwi’s plan is to transform Zimra into a government
department
under the Finance ministry as it was six years ago. Zimra came
out of the
transformation of the merger of department of Taxes and the
department of
Customs and Excise in September 2001.
Mumbengegwi
has since directed that all Zimra’s accounts be put under
his control.
Mumbengegwi last month took over Zimra’s salaries and Value
Added Tax refund
accounts held with the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe. This
means that all
financial decisions will now be made by Mumbengegwi himself.
Mumbengegwi is
now also in charge of approving any travel that can be
undertaken by senior
employees of Zimra.
He will also approve any senior appointment at
Zimra.
"Pasi has been emasculated. His role is now almost
ceremonial," said a
source close to the issue.
At the moment
Zimra can not pay VAT refunds to companies without
Mumbengegwi’s approval.
Monthly salary payments will also have to be
approved by the
minister.
Businessdigest understands that the situation has been
worsened by the
fact that Zimra’s board chairman Gibson Mandishona is siding
with
Mumbengegwi.
"The board has made it clear that they
support the minister," the
source said. Last month Mandishona told a
parliamentary portfolio committee
that he was in favour of restructuring
Zimra arguing that it was top heavy.
Mandishona has been fighting Pasi over
the proposed restructuring insisting
that the authority implements
Mumbengegwi’s directive.
Angry letters have been flying between
Mumbengegwi and Pasi since
August.
Pasi is arguing that Zimra
cannot be reduced into a mere department
because it was set up by an Act of
Parliament which he said made it an
autonomous organisation. "Pasi is
insisting that restructuring of Zimra will
be illegal unless approved by
Parliament," the source said.
Although Zimra’s commissioner-general
reports to the ministry, the law
states that he is supposed to be in charge
of the authority’s operations,
personnel appointments and approve salaries
structures in consultation with
the board of directors.
Zimra
has a different salary structure from that of the Finance
ministry. It is
this independence that Mumbengegwi has set out to destroy
since he took over
from Herbert Murerwa as the Minister of Finance.
Mumbengegwi is
also said to be unhappy with the salary levels at
Zimra. He wants to push
the package levels in line with the rest of the
government
departments.
Mumbengegwi’s move has already started causing
commotion at Zimra
which is currently struggling to pay its salaries and VAT
refunds on time.
The authority has also been dogged by a serious labour
dispute due to
Mumbengegwi’s delays in approving a salary
review.
The source said Mumbengegwi tried last month to fire Pasi
on the basis
that the rift between them made it impossible for Zimra to
operate
effectively. The minister is understood to have said Pasi was
ignoring
government directives. He cited Pasi’s reluctance to implement
government’s
directive compelling vehicle importers to pay duty in foreign
currency. Pasi
had initially argued that Zimra’s legal experts were of the
view that the
regulations would not stand their ground if challenged in a
court of law.
The move to fire Pasi however failed because his
appointment was
approved by Murerwa before he left the
ministry.
Murerwa approved Pasi to be the commissioner general for
another five
years starting from September this year. Firing Pasi would be
costly for the
government which will have to buy out his contract.
Zim Independent
Kuda
Chikwanda
IN his first heady days in office, Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe (RBZ)
governor Gideon Gono promised so much that those who dared
view his optimism
as excessive were labelled pessimists and
unpatriotic.
Overzealous politicians were more uncouth in their
description of
those who doubted Gono and called them enemies of the
state.
There was hope. After all, his appointment came at a time
when the
unthinkable had occurred. Zimbabwe had run out of its own money.
The economy
was sliding at an accelerated rate.
Gono who had
rescued the country through several deals — most of them
being for the
supply of fuel during his time as chief executive officer of
the Jewel Bank
— was seen as the only suitable candidate for the post.
His
appointment came during the era of talk of technocrats running
government
operations. Gono was not just a technocrat. He came across as a
skilled
banker with the "ability to think outside the box".
Gono’s
catchword was "failure is not an option". The whole nation was
soon singing
in tune and applauding as Gono seemingly left no stone unturned
in the fight
for economic turnaround.
Fast forward to four years later, and with
one year left on his first
term of office, the situation is totally
different. The cash crisis is
gripping.
Not that he has not
tried but that his efforts have not yielded
anything tangible.
The crisis rages as inflation reached 14 840% in August.
Long
winding queues for money have become the order of the day.
Gono’s
decision this time has made life much worse for Zimbabweans
through the cash
crisis.
He has really disappointed on the cash issue which he could
have
otherwise handled better. His aloof attitude has not been helpful at
all.
He has refused to inject more money into circulation. He
reckons that
most of the money has disappeared from official circulation
courtesy of cash
barons and parallel market dealers.
Gono said
he would watch from the sidelines and would not intervene in
the cash crisis
which has worsened.
Instead he said he would launch Operation
Sunrise 2 to introduce a new
currency and force the illegal dealers hoarding
$30 trillion for speculative
purposes out of business.
That was
three and half weeks ago. Now as we approach the halfway mark
in December,
there has been neither the new currency nor any update by the
central
bank.
The queues have worsened. In the first days of the crisis,
queues for
the Realtime Gross Settlements (RTGS) were small.
Now they are as long as queues for cash.
It is not surprising to
find that many Zimbabweans are yet to access
their November salaries. And
now December salaries are about to be
deposited, and people are still
queuing daily to get their monies.
In most cases they queue in
vain. It is grim.
One just has to imagine the trillions in lost
productivity as millions
queue for worthless Zimbabwe dollars.
Gono revealed in November that he was sitting on $20 trillion of
printed
$500 000 bearer cheques which are yet to be issued. He said he was
not ready
to issue them.
Already the US dollar rate on the parallel market
has started going
down, from highs of $2,2 million for the greenback to $1,5
million on
Tuesday. But this is just the cash rate; the parallel market rate
continues
to rise and currently stands at over $4 million on the RTGS
facility.
Monetary authorities need to understand that bank
transfers or cheques
do not pay for commuter transport. It is cash that runs
people’s lives here.
No commuter bus operator accepts
RTGS.
Speculation has been that starving the market of cash will
bring down
inflation. It appears to be succeeding, but assuredly this is
only a
cosmetic solution.
It only serves to defer
inflation.
Hard times bring a lot of introspection. And to many
Zimbabweans, this
introspection has brought the harsh realisation that while
Gono may not be
the reason they are suffering he certainly is not helping
things.
Cash availability is a responsibility of the central bank.
The buck
stops with him as the governor.
People need answers
why they have to spend valuable time in queues.
It’s a serious
issue. Most people are getting $5 million per day,
money enough for a trip
back home and a loaf of bread.
In most cases they would have to
borrow more money to come back into
town for another $5
million.
Some are on the verge of being evicted from their homes
because they
have not paid their rentals. If this is not enough to worry a
central bank
them what will?
It’s bad enough that people have
to queue for basic commodities but
for them to be forced to wait for hours
to get their hard-earned cash is
another thing.
The time has
come for the governor to redeem himself and show us that
there is still a
side to him that is human first and foremost and a central
banker,
secondly.
We would not want to believe the entire team at the
central bank is
incompetent, would we? Or to believe that indeed Gono has
failed?
Zim Independent
By Nhlanhla
Nyathi
WHO would have ever imagined a well-endowed country with
huge mineral
and natural resources failing to feed its people?
President Robert Mugabe, at a recent state function while
commissioning a
bio-diesel plant, said that there was no excuse for the
current bad state of
the economy given the abundance of mineral, natural and
human
recourses.
Since the expulsion of Zimbabwe from critical
International Monetary
Fund (IMF) balance-of-payments support programmes in
1999, the government
has employed a cocktail of economic recovery programmes
most of which have
been unsuccessful.
Seasoned economic
analysts and the IMF have suggested that the
continued deterioration of the
economy is largely a product of policy
inconsistencies and incoherencies
within government decision-making
structures.
Many point to
swelling government expenditure and the just-presented
2008 expansive
national budget of $7,8 quadrillion combined with
quasi-fiscal operations
spearheaded by the RBZ as major contributors to the
unrelenting inflationary
pressures.
Others point to the distorting effects of the overvalued
official
exchange rate as having a hand in reducing productivity in all
sectors of
the economy and encouraging contagion in parallel market
trading.
Some have gone further to blame the over-valued official
exchange rate
as the main motivating force behind smuggling and
under-invoicing of
Zimbabwean minerals and products exported out of the
country to the
detriment of its people.
Other analysts have
gone further to suggest that the Zimbabwean
economic situation would have
not reached such alarming levels of
deterioration had monetary and fiscal
authorities handled policy issues
differently.
Many ask whether
the exercise of slashing zeros and the subsequent
introduction of a new
currency should be an annual activity of masking the
effects of
inflation.
During the slashing of the first three zeros and
subsequent
introduction of a new family of bearer cheques in August 2006
excessive
financial resources were consumed to educate the public and to
print the new
notes.
This year, with inflation already at 14
840% and still rising, the
prospect of the so-called Sunrise Two is imminent
as part of the
psychological management tactics of inflation. Surely the RBZ
cannot
continue to undertake this daunting task yearly at such a massive
cost to
the nation. There should be some other way that addresses the
underlying
problem first.
A study conducted by the United
States Joint Economic Committee on
official dollarisation in emerging
markets in 1999 indicates that
economically unstable developing countries
with high inflation and unstable
currencies are good candidates for
dollarisation.
The report suggests official use of the US dollar or
other foreign
currencies is rare today except in small economies mainly
because of the
perceived economic advantages of an independent monetary
policy.
An independent monetary policy implies that a country has a
distinct
domestic currency, typically issued by a domestic central bank.
According to
some economic theories, an independent monetary policy enables
a country to
manage the money supply, interest rates, and exchange rates so
as to
facilitate economic growth or at least to manage it within reasonable
limits.
In practice, though, developing countries with central
banks have had
worse economies and lower economic growth than those without
central banks.
Despite this poor record, central banking in
developing countries
persists because many people are adamant that it should
work well in theory
and because it has the political advantage of allowing a
government to print
money when it cannot or does not wish to cover its
budget deficits by other
means.
Finally, many governments see a
domestically issued currency as a
symbol of national identity and political
pride, even if their citizens
would prefer to use US dollars or some other
currency exclusively.
Dollarisation happens when the US dollar to
some extent displaces
domestic currency as the preferred currency for
holding savings, making
payments, and pricing goods. Often "dollarisation"
is used in a generic
sense to refer to any foreign currency, not just the US
dollar, which
displaces domestic currency.
This description
mirrors the current modus operandi in Zimbabwe albeit
largely in an
unofficial manner. Mainly due to high levels of inflation that
have rendered
the local currency useless as a store of value, more people
transact in US
dollars, South African rands and British pounds and hold the
same hard
currencies as "mattress" money to preserve value.
People have lost
faith in the domestic currency and only remains as
legal tender because of
statutory restrictions. The problem with the
piecemeal dollarisation so far
undertaken by the government and the RBZ is
that it adds to distortions in
the economy in the sense that other sections
of the economy which are not
dollarized will strive to dollarise illegally
fueling the parallel
market.
The desired course of action would be to officially
dollarise the
whole economy and automatically eliminate the management of
interest rates,
exchange rates, and money supply of which our failure to
manage these
factors has been the primary precipitator of the economic
recession. The
very fact that a stable foreign currency will be used in the
local monetary
system implies a more orderly and predictable progression of
economic
indicators.
The existence of a parallel market which
thrives on the vast
difference between the official and the black market
rate will cease to
exist and facilitate a re-birth of all the productive
sectors of the economy
through more internationally aligned
market-determined pricing structures
devoid of distortions.
The
RBZ under the new system would be relieved of the task of
structuring
monetary policy and the government would have no recourse to the
RBZ to
print money in the event of a budget deficit.
Consequently, the
government would have to live within its tax revenue
collection limits as
the luxury to print US dollars will not be at Zimbabwe’s
disposal.
The RBZ would also cease to exist as a lender of last
resort to
commercial banks and as a result force banking institutions to
develop
international lines of credit as an alternative.
The
intricacies of the logistics involved in introducing dollarisation
would
obviously require government or the RBZ to institute further research
into
the subject, which was not the basis of this article.
The current
system of having an expansionary budget and expanded
quasi-fiscal operations
spearheaded by the RBZ in the hope of reviving the
economy have proved
rather ineffective because of the existence of
distortions in the market
that encourage recipients of concessionary funding
to engage in black market
activities.
There have been several reports made of farmers abusing
subsidised
fuel facilities, fertiliser allocations and concessionary loans
because of
the temptations of a black market that stands ready to transact
in anything.
It would be hard to imagine that the so-called
people’s 2008 budget
would increase production and reduce inflation because
it is empty in every
respect. It is silent on how the growth will be
achieved and how the
targeted inflation will be reached. In terms of real
fundamental solutions
the budget has nothing.
It would be
better to rid the market of distortion first and then
inject massive
concessionary funding to get the desired result.
In principle,
dollarisation would rid the market of such distortions
and does seem to
offer a viable alternative.
Zimbabwe would not be alone in the
dollarisation quest and should not
be perceived as a failure option by
authorities but a valiant effort towards
finding lasting solutions. Just to
show the level of confidence other
countries have placed in the US dollar, a
study conducted by the US Federal
Reserve estimates that 55%-70% of US
dollars in circulation are held outside
the United States, most of which are
in US$100 bills.
* Nhlanhla Nyathi is an independent financial
analyst. He can be
contacted on 0912 250 092.
Zim Independent
Constantine
Chimakure
THE outcome of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
(ZEC) constituency
delimitation exercise ahead of the 2008 House of Assembly
elections is
biased in favour of Zanu PF and reveals glaring gerrymandering
by the
electoral body.
From the 210 seats to be contested, ZEC
allocated 143 constituencies
to communal lands and the remaining 67 to urban
and peri-urban areas.
The ruling party has since Independence in
1980 received its main
support from rural areas, and according to analysts
it was most probable
that Zanu PF would win a two-thirds majority in the
polls next year.
Apart from being skewed in favour of the ruling
party, the
delimitation process did not take into consideration the on-going
Sadc-initiated dialogue between the MDC and Zanu PF.
In the
talks, the opposition is pushing for a reconstituted ZEC that
would
institute a fresh voter registration process and delimit
constituencies
thereafter.
The MDC argues that it supported the Constitution of
Zimbabwe
Amendment Number 18 in Parliament on the understanding that the ZEC
would be
reconstituted and become independent.
The opposition
further argued that the commission’s composition was a
scandal as it was
staffed with "former military personnel, Zanu PF
functionaries and
individuals whose identities are suspect".
ZEC chairman Justice
George Chiweshe last week announced the number of
House of Assembly
constituencies in the country’s 10 provinces that saw
Matabeleland North
having 13 constituencies, Mashonaland West 22,
Matabeleland South 13,
Bulawayo 12, Harare 29, Midlands 28, Manicaland 26,
Mashonaland Central 18,
Mashonaland East 23 and Masvingo 26.
The Zimbabwe Election Support
Network (Zesn) said it should be
compulsory and prudent for the ZEC to give
political parties and other
interested groups the opportunity to make
meaningful representations about
constituency boundaries redrawing to avoid
controversies.
"The commission should then have the obligation to
take these
representations properly into account before finalising its work
on drawing
new boundaries," Zesn said. "This should apply particularly to
the extensive
changes that will be necessitated by the large increase in
numbers of seats
in the Lower House brought about by the recent
constitutional amendments."
Zesn said the delimitation should not
have been rushed and there must
be ample opportunity for objections to be
taken into account.
"It would be useful if the commission made
public the main criteria it
took into account when arriving at its proposals
for new boundaries," the
election organisation said.
According
to the ZEC, it determined the constituencies in the
provinces after dividing
the number of registered voters that stood at 5 612
464 by the 210 seats to
get an average of 26 726,02 voters per constituency.
After rounding
off to the nearest whole number, the figures
representing the average number
of constituencies that should be delimited
in each province added up to 211
constituencies instead of the required 210.
To resolve the issue,
the commission adopted two methods to get the
desired results.
The decimals of the figures representing the average number of
constituencies per province were arranged in their descending order. Only
provinces with decimal figures of five and above were first considered for
rounding off to the nearest whole number.
Seven provinces had
decimal figures of five and above. However, if all
were to be rounded off to
the nearest whole number the effect would have
been the same. Thus only
those provinces with decimal figures of six and
above were rounded off to
the nearest 10 in order to get rid of the extra
constituency.
Political analyst Michael Mhike said the delimitation of the
constituencies
was not perfect given that there was poor publicity of the
voter
registration exercise that took place recently.
"Moreover the
registration was biased in favour of perceived Zanu PF
strongholds," Mhike
said. "The registration was done in such a way that
there will be more
constituencies in rural areas where the ruling party
claims to have its
majority support."
The analysts said in the 2005 parliamentary
elections, the ZEC headed
by Justice Chiweshe, redrew constituency
boundaries of a number of
constituencies and it was alleged that these
boundaries were redrawn in a
manner that gave the ruling party an electoral
advantage.
"Certain constituencies dominated by Zanu PF like Gokwe
were split to
create individual constituencies without any justification of
demographic
changes," Zesn said. "On the other hand, some urban
constituencies, which
were the stronghold of MDC support, were redrawn to
incorporate abutting
rural areas where Zanu PF has support."
For instance, in Mashonaland West the new constituency of Manyame was
deliberately created to give Zanu PF a better electoral chance in the
constituency.
The MDC faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai has
since dismissed the
delimitation exercise as a Zanu PF ploy to rig next
year’s polls.
"The MDC believes that the ZEC, as currently
constituted, has become a
weapon to puncture people’s confidence in
electoral processes," party
spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said. "Delimitation
as a process to enhance a
free and fair poll has been hijacked to suit Zanu
PF’s interest against the
spirit of the dialogue process."
The
party argued that under Constitutional Amendment Number 18, only a
reconstituted ZEC should engage in a fresh exercise of voter registration
and delimitation.
"It is ironic that before the conclusion of
the talks, Zanu PF is
Nicodemously and nocturnally imposing its will and
antics in an attempt to
evade the obvious people’s harsh verdict in 2008,"
Chamisa said. "The MDC
calls on the region, African Union and the
international community to put
pressure on the government to respect the
will of the people.
"They (people) want independent electoral
institutions and electoral
management bodies that guarantee the safety of
their vote. They are not
demanding the moon. They simply want the regime to
adhere to the Sadc
guidelines on the conduct of free and fair elections
which demand that a
truly independent body must run and manage elections,"
Chamisa added.
However, Chiewshe said the ZEC was properly
instituted to carry out
the delimitation exercise and dismissed suggestions
that the commission was
an appendage of the ruling party.The High Court
judge denied MDC claims that
the commission had used a flawed voters’ roll
to draw up the constituencies,
adding that the opposition did not provide
evidence to that effect.
"The MDC wrote to us with that complaint
and we have replied to them
in confidence. However, there will be
complaints, some valid and some not,"
Chiweshe said.
"Sometimes
people make allegations without giving facts and evidence.
On the face of it
we don’t see that the voters roll is in a shambles. I am
not saying the
voters roll is perfect, but it is credible."
Zim Independent
By Luke
Tamborinyoka
WE are a nation in crisis. There is no bread on
our tables. There is
no food on the supermarket shelves. We cannot even
access our hard-earned
money because there is no cash in the
banks.
There is massive starvation throughout the country. There is
nothing
taking place on the farms which Zanu PF grabbed seven years ago amid
pomp
and fanfare.
We are headed for another bleak Christmas.
The usual carnival
atmosphere that characterised this time of the year is
long gone.
The camaraderie is now a thing of the past. Each family
is mired in
its own misery, wondering about the next meal and whether they
will make it
into the next year.
Our hospitals have become dark
chambers of death. There is no
transport to ferry us to work, to our homes
and to our villages. There is no
electricity in our homes.
Power cuts are the order of the day and the national power company,
Zesa
appears to have a special mandate to generate darkness into our homes
and
our factories. We have no access to clean water as the Zimbabwe National
Water Authority seems competent at doing nothing.
In the rural
areas, our mothers, our sisters, our brothers and
grandmothers are in the
throes of a debilitating crisis. The grinding mills
are not operating
because they have no power. Every night is an endured
nightmare as
despondent families keep hoping that the next visit to the
grinding mill
will bring them back home with maize meal.
Our industry has
collapsed. Very few people are still in employment.
Inflation, wreaking
havoc at over 15 000%, remains the highest in the world.
We have no
foreign currency for critical imports such as power, food
and fuel. Eighty
percent of the country’s population live below the poverty
datum line and is
surviving on less than US 30 cents a day.
Zanu PF cannot afford to
be in denial about this crisis. A serious
government should take its
responsibility seriously. The Sadc-brokered talks
between Zanu PF and the
MDC were meant to be a starting point in resolving
the national crisis. Zanu
PF must simply accept that the MDC is a
people-driven reality that cannot be
wished away.
Although the Zimbabwean crisis goes beyond the persona
of Robert
Mugabe, the octogenarian leader is at the epicentre of our
problems. Mugabe
is at the core of the Zimbabwean crisis.
The
man has chosen to intertwine the fate of the country to his own
political
fortunes. The old man from Zvimba district appears set to go down
with the
country, clinging to power against the rising tides from within and
without
Zanu PF. Mugabe has become the millstone around the country’s neck;
an
albatross that is determined to sink this country to the depth of a deep
and
dark abyss. History will judge us harshly if we allow his whims to
prevail
against the national wish. Mugabe must go, never again to bestride
our
beloved nation like a Colossus.
Like the civet cat that turns away
all and sundry, Mugabe made sure
several heads of state and government
stayed away from Lisbon for fear they
might have to shake his hand. Whether
Mugabe made it to Lisbon or not is not
the point. The point is that when
your presence becomes a global subject and
eventually turns away prospective
delegates, it must be very clear who is
the problem.
It must be
cause for Africa’s embarrassment that in Portugal, the real
feeling of the
ordinary Zimbabwean was not captured by any African leader,
especially
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who a few years ago said he
would not
belong to the "trade union of African presidents". Today, he is
neck-deep
into that trade union.
The feeling of the ordinary Zimbabwean in
Mandidzudzure and
Msampakaruma was ironically captured and summed up by a
foreigner, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel. Africa should be ashamed that it
has become
complicit with the regime in Harare against the spirit of the
much-vaunted
peer review mechanism.
Only a fornight ago, Mugabe
dragged poor and hungry villagers from
their fields and coerced them to
march for him for over 20 kilometres in the
name of a misnamed "million man
solidarity march".
For some of us, the ‘marching millions’ are the
hundreds of poorly
paid workers and civil servants who are walking to
work.
The real million man and woman march refers to those innocent
people
who are slowly trudging towards an empty automated teller machine in
the
vain hope of accessing their hard-earned cash.
The million
man march should indeed refer to the men and women in
Harare, Chitungwiza,
Bulawayo, Mutare, Victoria Falls, Kariba and other
urban areas who march to
the nearest forests and water aquifers to fetch
firewood and water which
have become urban scarcities while Zanu PF
continues to pursue a power
retention agenda.
The real million man march must surely refer to
all those people who
are marching to prophets and witch-doctors because they
cannot afford
medical care.
Indeed, the real million man march
must refer to those millions who
shall make a bold statement in a free and
fair election that should usher in
a new Zimbabwe and a new
beginning.
The million man march is not Mugabe’s drama that we saw
in Highfield.
The real march will take place next year if the regime allows
Zimbabweans to
elect their own leaders in a free and fair
election.
Zimbabweans derive their hope from the MDC and its
leader, President
Morgan Tsvangirai. Despite the crisis, the people know
that a free and fair
election next year will provide them with hope and
purpose to change their
lives. They know that their vote is their voice. An
election should not be a
purposeless ritual. It is an event that should
change people’s lives.
The people are aware that their hour has
come. They know that the MDC
has solutions to the problems besetting the
nation. They know that the MDC
has the proper policies in education, in
health, in the economy and in
mining and industry that will provide the
basis for a new Zimbabwe and a new
beginning.
Zimbabweans are
ready for change. History provides us with the
cardinal lesson that no one
can stand between a dedicated people and their
vision; between a people and
their destiny.
Mugabe is certainly no exception. Whether he likes
it or not, the
dynamics playing themselves out are a clear sign that
Zimbabwe is in an
irreversible transitional phase.
Mugabe is a
crisis that Zimbabweans are ready to deal with. All
evidence points to a
crumbling edifice called Zanu PF. The fissures have
become too glaring to be
papered over.
Faith and hope are the last things we should lose as
a nation. Freedom
is coming tomorrow.
* Luke Tamborinyoka is
the director of information and publicity in
the MDC led by Morgan
Tsvangirai. He is a former news editor of the banned
Daily News.
Zim Independent
Jacob
Rukweza
FOR some time now President Robert Mugabe — whose
ambition to become
Zimbabwe’s life president is now an open secret — has
tried unsuccessfully
to peddle the preposterous propaganda that pursuing
regime change in this
country is a crime tantamount to treason.
It is now clear that from his unpopular one-party-state policy in 1980
through the unity accord in 1987 to the million man march this year Mugabe
has been consistently pursuing his ambition to rule this country for
life.
This mentality which has been the hallmark of Mugabe’
political
grandstanding since 1980 explains why all those who have tried to
form or
belong to opposition political parties have been branded like
enemies of the
state.
It also explains why all opposition
leaders since 1980 have been
pursued, harassed, arrested or charged with
treason.
Even after the victory in 1980 all opposition parties
still became
targets for physical elimination by Mugabe who Edgar Tekere
said does not
take lightly to any competition against him.
In
Mugabe’s eyes political parties existing outside Zanu PF were
veritable
symbols of regime change thus inimical agents to his ambitions.
Referring to
opposition parties after winning elections in 1980 Mugabe was
on record as
having said to his Zanu PF supporters, "Endai munogobora
zvigutswa zvese (go
and uproot all the stumps)".
According to Mugabe’s thinking the
opposition parties were
inconvenient stumbling blocks to his dream to rule
forever — they had to be
uprooted.
The target of Mugabe’s 1980
post-election venom included Ndabaningi
Sithole’s Zanu, Abel Muzorewa’s
UANC, Chief Kasiya Ndiweni’s UNFP, James
Chikerema’s ZDP as well as Henry
Chiota’s NDU.
When Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu became a serious threat to
Mugabe’s quest for
absolute power two years after Independence the
culmination was a
near-genocide marked by the senseless killing of
approximately 20 000
innocent people in Matabeleland and Midlands suspected
to be sympathetic to
Zapu and its leadership.
Senior Zapu
cadres, among them intelligence supremo Dumiso Dabengwa
and Zipra commander
Lookout Masuku, were arrested and charged with treason
after being accused
of plotting a military coup against Mugabe. The two
freedom fighters were
detained in prison like common criminals in
independent Zimbabwe for five
years between 1982 and 1987.
Zapu president and founding father of
the nationalist movement in
Zimbabwe the late Joshua Nkomo was for the same
reason pursued by Mugabe,
escaping death by a whisker.
An irate
Mugabe had declared that "to deal with a cobra you have to
crush its head" —
Zapu had become a dangerous snake and its head — Nkomo —
had to be
crushed.
This remains the level of determination driving Mugabe in
his pursuit
of his shameful life presidency agenda.
To save his
life Nkomo had to jump the border into Botswana reportedly
dressed like a
woman.
Mugabe has reluctantly admitted to these "moments of
madness" while
Nkomo has captured these embarrassing episodes of our history
in his
autobiography — The Story Of My Life.
The recently held
pro-Mugabe million man march by ruling party
supporters confirms beyond any
reasonable doubt a suspicion that has endured
within Zanu PF and outside
since Independence that Mugabe has always
harboured the ambition of becoming
Zimbabwe’s life president in the mould of
Malawi’s Kamuzu
Banda.
After leading Zanu PF for the past 30 years since 1977 the
now-clueless 83-year old Mugabe has shocked even the most loyal party
supporters by clamouring to remain party leader while seeking endorsement by
the ruling party for his sixth term presidential bid.
But what
remains conspicuous in all of Mugabe’s actions which are
characterised by
violence, intimidation, coercion, patronage, demagoguery,
arrogance and
constitutional chicanery is the unflinching pursuit of his
selfish desire to
rule forever.
It is not surprising therefore that when Mugabe was
confronted by the
MDC during the 2000 elections he declared: "we have
degrees in violence".
The MDC like its predecessors represented a
stumbling block to Mugabe’s
self-serving political ambitions.
Naturally MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his supporters become
enemies of
the state. Characteristically the MDC agenda of regime change was
criminalised and the opposition leader dragged to court on trumped up
treason charges.
Later on party activists and employees meeting
at the MDC headquarters
in central Harare were arrested and charged with
crimes ranging from
terrorism to banditry.
A decade earlier in
the 1990 general election, when Tekere and his
Zimbabwe Unity Movement
attempted to challenge Mugabe’s de facto one party
state, they were
predictably met with violence, kidnappings, assaults and
murders. Muzorewa
and Sithole who entered the same election with the
financial support of
white farmers were warned in no uncertain terms by a
determined Mugabe who
declared: "we will chop off their colonial redneck".
Mugabe’s
habitual criminalisation of opposition politics and the
regime change agenda
should be located in the context of his primitive one
party state mentality
and the enduring but absurd ambition to be life
president.
To
consolidate his grip on power a cunning Mugabe has in the past
rallied
unsophisticated bootlickers and overzealous henchmen in the party
and
government to effect constitutional changes that made dictatorship and
his
power-mongering antics constitutional.
With the signing of the
unity accord in December 1987 and a raft of
constitutional amendments that
conferred executive presidency on the head of
state Mugabe became one of the
most powerful leaders in the world with the
power to declare war without
consulting parliament — the same powers he
invoked when he committed
Zimbabwe’s troops to a costly war in the DRC in
1998.
Mugabe
invariably became state president, the parliament and the
judiciary all in
one. In the ruling party Mugabe succeeded in booting out
his nemesis and
powerful Zanu PF secretary general, Edgar Tekere, who
fiercely opposed the
one party state policy often accusing Mugabe of
despotism.
After rail-roading Tekere’s expulsion from the party, Mugabe tactfully
used
the 1989 united Zanu PF congress to amend the party constitution
abolishing
the powerful post of secretary general and instead creating the
inferior
post of administration secretary with diminished powers in the
party.
A new post of first secretary and president was created
with the
deliberate intention of constitutionally allowing Mugabe to usurp
the powers
of both the party president and the secretary general of the
party in the
face of a suspicious unity accord. Again Mugabe became not only
the leader
of the party but the sum total of the party with the powers to
appoint
everyone in the two most powerful organs of the party — the
politburo and
central committee.
Democratic elections in the
party were conviniently relagated to the
lower and less influential organs
of the party in the provincial structures.
The reason why the Zanu
PF extra-ordinary congress will endorse Mugabe
this week is not because
Mugabe is still popular in the party because he is
not.
The
real reason why Zanu PF will fail to isolate Mugabe is because he
is too
powerful after the powers vested in him by the Zanu PF constitution
after
the unity accord. As things stand Mugabe is the party and Zanu PF is
inevitably destined die with him in the short run if Zanu PF members are not
strong enough to stop Mugabe.
To save itself from imminent
collapse Zanu PF must isolate Mugabe from
the party.
But
outside Zanu PF the resolve to isolate Mugabe before regime change
is
becoming more solid as the unprecedented economic meltdown spawned by
Mugabe’s misrule continues unabated.
Regime change as it was
necessary and legitimate before 1980 has
become even more urgent in Zimbabwe
today in order to extricate the country
and its people from Mugabe’s
colossal grip before restoring majority rule
and a process of rebuilding the
country’s economy.
But before we can rebuild Zimbabwe and restore
majority rule it is
imperative to isolate the power-mongering Mugabe whose
octopus-like
stranglehold on the state has fatally suffocated both the
economy and our
politics.
Effective regime change and
socio-economic reconstruction must begin
with deconstructing Mugabe’s
sources of power which are the Zanu PF
constitution as well as the national
constitution. Zimbabweans —including
Zanu PF members — must also resolve to
deal with Mugabe’s tendencies of
violence, intimidation, coercion,
patronage, demagoguery, arrogance and
constitutional chicanery by any means
necessary.
Mugabe must be isolated from his cisterns of power
before he achieves
his sadistic objective to take Zimbabwe with him to his
grave.Those who have
aided Mugabe and are committed to sinking with him
should also be isolated
with him.
It is obvious that at his age
Mugabe neither has the ideas nor the
energy to rebuild or take Zimbabwe
forward. The truth of the matter is that
Zimbabwe’s perestroika urgently
requires a new protagonist.
* Jacob Rukweza is a sub editor at the
Zimbabwe Independent.
Zim Independent
By David
Moore
ONE might think that Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe
has been
locked in conflict with all things British for a long time.
Celebrating the
EU’s decision to welcome him to the Lisbon meeting recently,
he gloated at
the "disintegration" of "the sinister campaign by Britain to
isolate us".
At the September UN general assembly meeting, he
declared Zimbabwe
"won its independence … after a protracted war against
British colonial
imperialism which denied us human rights and democracy" and
that British
colonialism was — and is — "the most visible form of (Western)
control" over
southern Africa’s despoiled lands. Further, it was the
negation of "our
sovereignties". He decried Messrs Bush, Blair and Brown’s
"sense of human
rights (which) precludes our people’s right to their
God-given resources,
which … must be controlled by their kith and
kin".
Yet investigation of Mugabe’s history with the British
"colonialists"
shows he was most eager to co-operate with them.
He embraced their notions of human rights and justice. Archival
evidence
shows he was close to these "sinister" forces. He even wrote
personal
letters and telegrams to Prime Minister Harold Wilson from
Salisbury’s
jail.
In 1970, Britain’s home secretary threatened to end Mugabe’s
wife
Sally’s stay in the UK.
Her visit, arranged by the Ariel
Foundation, an organisation linked to
the tobacco-funded Ditchley Foundation
and devoted to introducing African
nationalists to the powers-that-be in the
"west", to study secretarial
science, started in 1967.
Sally
Mugabe had been allowed to work at the Africa Centre as PA to
the director
and teaching African dress-making and her visa had been
extended once but
would expire in December 1969.
Home Secretary Mervyn Rees wanted
her out. The Ariel Foundation,
started by Dennis Grennan (a long-time friend
of African nationalists, in
whose home Sally resided) mounted a petition
campaign for Sally to stay.
Colin Legum’s Observer articles helped too. To
his examples of white
Rhodesians in England with dubious legality, he asked
if the situation would
have been the same if Sally had been Ian Smith’s
offspring. The petition
garnered nearly 400 parliamentarians’ signatures.
Victory ensued. Legalities
notwithstanding Sally could stay.
In
the meantime, Sally and Robert Mugabe’s letters to various
imperialists
indicated their willingness to utilise the empire’s services.
They used the
moral imperative of human rights discourse, hoping that the
technicalities
of the law would not stand in the way. Sally’s marriage to a
Rhodesian did
not allow her citizenship and the British protection due to
residents of an
illegally independent state: thus the home Secretary told
her to return home
to Ghana.
On February 23 1970 Sally wrote to Maurice Foley, the
Royal African
Society’s director (who Ariel Foundation’s executive secretary
Anthony
Hughes had importuned to take up her case), urging more action on
her
behalf: she wanted his advice on how to "touch the hearts of the
decision
makers".
Hughes had opined to Foley that Sally
Mugabe’s case was "exceptional"
due to "human and political factors": her
trials and tribulations had
brought her to a "breakdown".
In
any case the British state should take on responsibility for the
residents
of a rogue state. "Surely", he wrote, "Britain has a moral duty to
alleviate, not worsen, her unhappiness". In a letter to MP Bernard Braine,
Hughes refers to "Robert" as if he were a mutual friend. He reminds Braine
that "for a number of personal reasons" the Ariel Foundation thought it
would be "appropriate to bring Sally to Britain in order to help her obtain
further skills …"
The letter and telegram from Robert Mugabe
directly to Prime Minister
Harold Wilson are most interesting. On June 8
1970, the telegram "appeal[s]
you recognise her status and grant residence
permit till my release from
political detention". A three page letter
follows a day later, documenting a
first attempt with foreign secretary
James Callaghan and the case’s history.
Mugabe appeals on legal grounds, but
ends with "more than that": that being
the British state’s "moral
responsibilities towards … persons in my
circumstances (and) their wives …".
Mugabe closes with a request: "Sir, that
you personally exercise your mind
on the case … so that justice is done to
my wife and myself". The postscript
follows: "I regret that the consequences
of my writing this letter will
inevitably be a surcharge on you, Sir …"
Mugabe’s and his
interlocutors’ language is laden with the human
rights discourse so derided
in his speeches of today, and used with such
slipperiness by the
"west".
Mugabe’s words are Victorian and moralistic, pleading yet
almost
secure in assuming idealistic yet rational and middle class action.
His
appeal to justice goes beyond the letter of the law and the strictures
of
sovereignty.
It’s no wonder that Mugabes’ London friends
lauded his cool intellect
and asceticism (in contrast to Joshua Nkomo
spending all their money on
women and drink, one said).
Yet
besides unearthing historical ironies, the correspondence forces a
question:
today, why has the same discourse no purchase? Missing a meeting
in Lisbon
does not go far in the pursuit of "justice" in contemporary
Zimbabwe.
Progressive internationalists in and on the fringes
of states are not
"exercising their minds" strenuously to meet the "moral
duty to alleviate,
not worsen (Zimbabweans’) unhappiness".
*
Moore is visiting Professor, Institute of Political Economy,
Carleton
University, Ottawa, Canada.
Zim Independent
Editor's Memo
By Dumisani Muleya
WHEN it started it used
to be funny. A lot of people enjoyed it for
comic relief, especially in
these hard times. Then it became sad and now it’s
a tragedy.
I’m referring to President Robert Mugabe and his ancien regime’s
increasingly ridiculous saturation propaganda.
This week
following the controversial EU-Africa summit held in Lisbon
Mugabe and his
hard-to-believe spin-doctors were in action, telling the
world they had
staged a major diplomatic coup against Britain.
"We defeated the
British, we were the victors over the British,"
Mugabe pathetically
proclaimed, betraying the extreme anxiety of an isolated
and cornered
leader. "What is Britain after all? They think the empire still
runs. The
empire is no more, it has collapsed. If the British understood
this they
would not behave like the imperial power they used to be."
How did
Mugabe defeat Britain when he was told by Portugal, the host,
that he was
invited but not welcome? At the summit it emerged that when
German
Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised Mugabe, she had actually been
asked by
Portugal, which holds the EU presidency, to speak on behalf of the
bloc.
If Britain was defeated why was Mugabe despondent, stuck
in isolation
when he made his "gang of four" remarks against critics. Only
the usual
suspects from Africa, President Thabo Mbeki and Senegalese leader
Abdoulaye
Wade, defended him.
Why, we may also ask, was
Information minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu angry
on behalf of Mugabe, using
words like "racist", "fascist" and "Nazi" to
refer to Merkel? That betrays
bottled anger, not victory.
If by any stretch of the imagination
that is a triumph, then it’s
worse than a pyrrhic victory. Zimbabwe is more
isolated now than before the
summit as French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s
remarks ("I didn’t shake his
hand") show.
The problem is
Mugabe’s government does not have a consistent official
line on issues. When
the targeted sanctions were imposed, Mugabe said they
were ineffective and,
after all, he did not need to worry about them because
he did not want to go
to freezing-cold countries, but of late he has been
bleating that sanctions
were hurting the economy.
So what’s it to be Mr President? Do you
care or not?
Contradictions are inherent in the policies of a
regime which reasons
by conclusions. This government first concludes what it
is going to do and
then looks for a plan or evidence to back it up:
self-fulfilling prophecy,
usually without success.
To show the
desperation, government officials even celebrated Mugabe’s
Hollywood-style
publicity stunts at the summit. Mugabe’s barely credible
spokesmen claimed
their leader was swarmed by hordes of stampeding reporters
and photographers
because of his huge popularity.
Mugabe himself said journalists’
interest in him underlined his
reputation at home and abroad.
"All the cameras were focused on me and my neck was almost aching with
cameramen asking me to look this way and that way for them to take my
photos. That was the interest people had in us. Our popularity comes from
your support here at home," he said
This sounds incredible,
especially coming from a head of state unless
it was meant to be humorous.
If it was humour then it was not particularly
funny, but if it was as
serious as it almost certainly was, then in that
case it was a PR
disaster.
It did not seem at all to have occurred to Mugabe that
recently his
friend, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also mobbed
by the media
when he arrived at the United Nations General Assembly in New
York, not
because he was popular but due to his unsavoury global reputation.
However,
Ahmadinejad was sharp enough to realise that the journalists were
chasing
after him, not because of his popularity but notoriety gained over
his
nuclear enrichment fight with the United States.
Mugabe and
his ministers apparently can’t distinguish between
notoriety and popularity.
Only a demagogue would think jeering and cheering
are one and the same
thing! Mugabe was hustled by journalists who wanted
headline-grabbing
stories and pictures from him because Zimbabwe is in the
news on account of
his disastrous policies. It’s as simple as that in
journalism.
However, Mugabe, the self-styled leader of a largely non-existent
anti-imperialism crusade in Africa, would have us believe that cameramen
followed him because he is a popular leader.
Give us a break,
even the most gullible of his followers would not
believe this. If Mugabe
wanted to measure his popularity in his party he
should have allowed
delegates to his party congress yesterday to vote via
secret ballot for a
new Zanu PF leader and he would have been shocked by the
results.
While other leaders were discussing trade issues,
Mugabe and
hangers-on were mesmerised by encounters with the
paparazzi.
Their publicity gimmicks would have left a lot of
Hollywood stars
green with envy. But most people saw through the charade.
Mugabe was
successfully ring-fenced by his hosts and left high and
dry.
The behaviour of government officials after the summit proved
one
thing, if no other: that this regime is now a monument of failure. No
amount
of smoke and mirrors in the official press could change that.
Zim Independent
MuckRaker
President steals the show," the Sunday Mail announced.
"Oh no, what
has he stolen now?" might have been the response of many
readers.
"The show" in question was the EU-Africa summit. And the
Sunday Mail
was thrilled that Mugabe was the centre of so much media
attention. A
front-page picture showed dozens of cameramen mobbing the
president ahead of
the opening ceremony. Mugabe complained his neck was sore
from posing for
them.
But state-media correspondents appeared
to think this was because
Mugabe was such a great statesman. They didn’t
tell us what headlines those
pictures attracted. Those published in the
Herald on Wednesday were the
polite ones!
And how pathetic to
hear the head of a broken-down, impoverished
country boasting of having
"defeated" Britain just because he was allowed to
attend a conference. Was
this the same statesman who used to strut with ease
upon the world stage?
Who people listened to and respected? The Zimbabwe he
now presides over was
the subject of a London Times feature headed "A
journey into hell", also
carried in the Johannesburg Sunday Times. It
catalogued the steady decline
of a once self-sufficient nation and should be
required reading for all
ministers. In particular it describes the fate of
Bulawayo’s
residents.
"We are shocked by Bulawayo," Times reporter Martin
Fletcher says. "It
was once Zimbabwe’s industrial hub, but its factories are
mostly now silent.
Its power station is shut. Four of its five water
reservoirs are empty and
shops have nothing to sell."
At first
he thought supermarkets were selling shop shelves!
"Mugabe", a
resident tells him after visiting the grave of Cecil John
Rhodes, "is in
serious danger of giving colonisers a good name."
Sikhanyiso
Ndlovu didn’t help the government’s cause with his foolish
attack on Angela
Merkel, calling her a "Nazi remnant". She spoke for Europe
when she said
Zimbabwe hurt the image of the new Africa.
Standing only a few
yards in front of Mugabe, who is usually shielded
from public criticism,
Merkel said: "The current state of Zimbabwe damages
the image of the new
Africa. Because this is so, we must take the chance
here, in this framework,
to put all our efforts together into strengthening
democracy. We don’t have
the right to look away when human rights are
trampled on. Intimidation of
those with different opinions and breaches of
the independence of the press
cannot be justified. We, the whole European
Union, are united in our
assessment… Zimbabwe’s situation concerns us all,
in Europe as well as in
Africa."
That must have struck a chord with other African heads of
state
because very few, if any, rushed to Mugabe’s defence.
Germany, Ndlovu declared, needed a leader like Otto von Bismarck.
Bismarck was of course the "blood and iron chancellor" who crushed
Germany’s
enemies and imposed harsh peace terms.
Ndlovu, despite being an
educationist, knows little or nothing we
suspect about that period of
European history. Was he in all seriousness
proposing Merkel should attack
France and Austria? And can you imagine the
German public reading Ndlovu’s
remarks? Was this somebody they should take
seriously? Or was he just a
caricature of a Mugabe minister — all big mouth
and no brains?
Merkel "should shut up or ship out", Ndlovu declared.
The
exprssion, Cde Minister, is "shape up or ship out". Alternatively
he might
have said Merkel should "put up or shut up". But not "shut up or
ship out".
Can George help here?
A Minister of Information should know what
abuse he is hurling so he
doesn’t look completely daft in front of the
European public including 80
million Germans. And the Tom Cruise film on the
1944 assassination attempt
on Hitler, despite protests, was eventually made
in Germany. Again, Ndlovu
got it wrong. And the Herald slipped in a funny
little story about Merkel
asking Mugabe to go soft on her because she was
only speaking for her
constituency. Can you imagine somebody raised in the
rough-and-tumble of
German politics asking for favours from Mugabe — a kiss
of death if ever
there was one!
Dutch prime minister Jan
Peter Balkenende said he was "honoured" to be
included in Robert Mugabe’s
"gang of four" critics of Zimbabwe’s human
rights record. The president used
the phrase about the Netherlands, Germany,
Sweden and Denmark after
criticism of the country for its violation of human
rights at the summit.
Balkenende said Mugabe’s outburst was not just about
the four countries,
because the critical remarks came from EU foreign
minister Javier Solano and
commission chairman José Manuel Barrosa, who
spoke for the whole EU. But he
said: "I consider it a badge of honour."
Solano said Zimbabwe’s
problems stemmed from bad governance, not
sanctions.
The
Zimbabwean public was given the impression that Mugabe was the
hero of the
hour in Lisbon. So the following extract from a Financial Times
report may
help clarify the picture.
"We know he was there because he was
invited. But it was difficult to
find anyone attending the EU-Africa summit
in Lisbon who had encountered
Robert Mugabe, the pariah leader of Zimbabwe,
close up," the paper said.
"The EU may have lifted a travel ban to allow in
a man accused of torture
and repression so African countries attended but
its leaders seem to have
adopted their own personal exclusion zones. José
Manuel Barroso, the
European Commission president, saw him across the table
at the morning
session on Saturday, but did not have the chance to shake his
hand, his
spokesman said. In the family photo afterwards, Mugabe was
positioned next
to Omar El Bashir, the Sudanese leader seen as a fellow
partner in crime."
And that was the tenor of most reports emanating
from the meeting. How
the Herald could have found something to crow about
merely underlines its
capacity for invention. Mugabe was shunned in Lisbon
and even African
sympathisers could see that.
Irish premier
Bertie Ahern said he would have preferred Mugabe not to
have attended. "He
has increased emigration 1 400% and halved the life
expectancy of his
people," Ahern said.
José Socrates, summit host and premier of
Portugal, was pictured
greeting him with his hands behind his back.
Balkenende insisted that Mugabe
was there to listen to him condemn his
"objectionable regime". Nicolas
Sarkozy, French president, brushed him
aside: "We do Mugabe too much honour
to allow seven years delay [to the
summit] because of him." However, he
added: "I did not give Mugabe my hand.
I did not meet him."
That should put the Herald’s iconic coverage
in some sort of
perspective!
Muckraker forecast last week
that Zimbabwe’s governance record would
be discussed in Lisbon whether Sadc
executive secretary Tomaz Salamao liked
it or not. He is now whining in the
media that the EU was wrong to bring up
the issue. It was not part of the
agreed agenda, he complained, Zanu
PF-style.
"Zimbabwe was not
part of the agreed agenda of the summit," Salomao
told
reporters.
"Our position is that we are dealing with the issue.
(South African)
President Thabo Mbeki is dealing with the issue.... Zimbabwe
is our problem,
we are dealing with it."
"Our problem"? But at
least it’s official now. Zimbabwe is a problem.
Mugabe wanted to
know why Merkel thought she knew more about Zimbabwe
than Sadc. The fact is
many European countries have much better information
about Zimbabwe than
Sadc states who hear nothing, see nothing and know
nothing! Salomao didn’t
know what an IMF Article IV visit was until March
when he got a special
briefing on it.
Among the pro-Mugabe demonstrators was our old
friend George Shire
who, while supporting Zanu PF, refuses to come and live
in the hell-hole
they have spawned, preferring the land of Gordon
Brown.
"People think I am a paid supporter of Robert Mugabe," Shire
told
reporters, "but this is not the case. I just happened to be in Lisbon
at the
time of the summit."
How convenient!
Reading the Committee to Protect Journalists’ publication, Dangerous
Assignments, it is interesting to note that Zimbabwe’s two main allies
outside Africa, China and Cuba, are among the world’s worst media-abusers.
In China it is an offence to advocate political reform from a website. One
such offender, Zhang Jianhong, was charged with "incitement to subvert the
state’s authority" and jailed for six years.
In Cuba, Oscar
Sanchez Madan who wrote about local corruption for
CubaNet, a Miami-based
website, was sentenced in April to seven years
imprisonment. His offence?
"Social dangerousness"!
Would it be socially dangerous of us to
point out that two recent
appointees to state commissions have been struck
off the legal register for
helping themselves to clients’ funds? Why doesn’t
the government give a damn
about corruption? And how does Samuel Undenge
earn his keep?
Answers on the back of a postage stamp
please.
What is going on at the cellular phone companies? It is
possible to
call a number in the UK or Far East but absolutely impossible to
get through
to South Africa. You can dial a landline in South Africa from
your cell
phone but not another cell number.
Why haven’t the
cellular companies told the public what the problem
is?
"Error
in connection" is all you get which is a lie because there is
no error, just
an inability by the service provider to connect to the South
African system
— probably to do with money.
And is the woman who says "Sorry, the
subscriber you are dialling is
unreachable, please try again later", on
Telecel, still in the country? This
or "network busy" is the standard
response on 023 to any attempt to reach
any of the high-density suburbs from
the city centre.
We don’t want to hear about ambitious plans to
provide 3G or other
"rollouts". We just want a cellular system that works
and provides value for
money.
Zim Independent
By Eric Bloch
THE Concise Oxford
Dictionary defines a bully as being a "user of
strength or power to coerce
others by fear", and the act of bullying as
"persecution and oppression,
physically or morally, by threat of superior
force". Based upon such
definitions, it must be indisputable that the
Zimbabwean government is
naught but a bully, and that it is endlessly
engaged in
bullying.
Never endingly it resorts to raucous, aggressive threats
of dire
recriminatory actions against those that it either perceives as its
opponents or as the causes of economic destruction, or that they choose to
perceive as such in order to divert attention form their own
culpability.
This is far from a new Zimbabwean phenomenon. As
government
progressively drives the country, and the people it is supposed
to govern,
into ever deeper deprivation and ruination, it exponentially
intensifies its
spurious allegations against all and sundry, ranging from
most of the
international community to those who would, given an enabling
environment,
be the fulcrum of restoration of economic wellbeing, as well as
very many
others.
And wheresoever it is able, it accompanies
it’s specious diatribes
against the targets of their vitriol with endless
threats. It blusteringly
contends that all that is wrong is due to the
actions of others and, as is
the case with all bullies as are obsessed with
their authority and power,
never-endingly threatens the most dire of actions
and retributions.
The grievously debilitated Zimbabwean economy,
which has been brought
to the verge of total annihilation by government’s
continuous foolhardy,
ill-conceived, and destructive policies, is collapsing
at such a horrendous
pace that government is inevitably intensifying its
allegations and
accusations against others. This it must do, for it cannot
conceive that it
can in any manner be accountable for the economic
Armaggedon.
Even if it did not recognise that its acts of omission
and commission
are the primary causes of the economic morass, it has not the
maturity or
the integrity to admit it, let alone to take necessary actions
to enable
economic recovery to become a reality.
Last week
witnessed yet further prime examples of government’s
continuing recourse to
strategies of blame deflection, and threats against
those that, with very
rare exception, are wholly innocent of the allegations
made against them. On
Thursday last week, Finance minister, Senator Samuel
Mumbengegwi, vigorously
reiterated the oft-repeated threat of the last few
months that government
will "take-over" any business discontinuing
production. Moreover, he stated
that in anticipation of having to do so,
government had set aside requisite
funding. Only one day later, the Industry
and International Trade minister,
Obert Mpofu again stated government’s
intent to take over any non-producing
enterprises.
In making these threats, the honourable ministers, and
all those in
government who have previously done so, ignore five key
factors, being:
* Government does not have the resources to fund
such takeovers, with
especial reference to the ongoing working capital
requirements thereof.
Although minister Mumbengegwi claimed to have the
monies set aside, there is
no such provision in his 2008 budget, presented
to parliament on November
29. That budget projects a 2008 deficit of $1 760
trillion, and such deficit
is before any funding of acquisitions, and
funding of working capitals, of
business.
* There is no
authority in law for government unilaterally to assume
ownership and control
of businesses. Doing so would be tantamount to theft
(although that is
probably not an issue of governmental concern, having
regard to the
precedents it has set by the theft of farms and the contents
thereof).
* Government does not have the technological and
managerial skills to
run the businesses. This lack of such essential
resources is
incontrovertibly evidenced by the years of failures of most of
the
Zimbabwean parastatals, such failures, in most instances, increasing in
intensity. Admittedly there are a few pronounced exceptions, such as Air
Zimbabwe, hindered only by lack of capital and inadequate foreign exchange
generation, but in marked contrast are entities such as Zesa, TelOne, Zinwa,
CSC, and the like.
* Businesses cannot succeed, and cannot
produce, if they are precluded
from realistic pricing of their products. In
a hyperinflationary
environment, triggered by grossly excessive governmental
spending, endless
printing of money to fund that spending, gargantuan
scarcities of imported
inputs, with those available being obtainable only at
massive premiums in
alternative markets, and unavoidably low productivity,
constant price
increases are inevitabilities. Governmentally managed
businesses would
suffer the same low productivity levels, due to ongoing
energy supply
interruptions, inadequate water supplies, insufficient foreign
exchange to
fund imports, low exports due to non-market competitiveness in
the absence
of realistic exchange rate devaluation, poor domestic consumer
spending
power and, therefore, low consumer demand, and much
else.
* Threatened control and ownership transferral of private
sector
enterprises is yet another nail in the coffin of investment. Neither
domestic or foreign investors have any interest in investing in an
environment wherein government has a total disregard for international and
national laws, contemptuously disregards property rights, and resorts
continuously to vituperative attacks on businesses, accompanied by
sabre-rattling, menacing fulminations.
On the principle of
"better late than never", it is time that the
Zimbabwean government divested
themselves of their arrogant beliefs of
infallibility, of their paranoic
beliefs that all economic ills are
conspiratorial of third parties to
overthrow government, and that they are
so powerfully omnipotent that they
can increasingly resort to bluster,
threat, and all the other
characteristics of the hardened bully. Failure by
government to do so must
result in it finally receiving its "come-uppance",
being ousted from power,
for no bully thrives forever as was learnt, at
their cost, by the Third
Reich, the Leninists and Marxists, the Stalinists,
Saddam Hussein and those
led by him, and many others. But, just as
inevitable is that, in the absence
of a change in governmental stance, and
pending a resultant change in
government, the economic collapse will
continue, hardship, poverty and
misery will intensify, and the wellbeing of
all Zimbabweans will sink
ever-lower.
Zim Independent
Comment
AFRICAN countries have of late tried to show their robust
and militant
side in demanding equality with the rest of the world,
especially the West.
This has been illustrated in demands for a permanent
seat on the United
Nations Security Council and other representative
international bodies.
President Mugabe has added his weight to this
macho figure of Africa
by declaring that Zimbabwe will not be dictated to by
the West on issues of
governance and human rights.
This same
Africa, which has started to throw its weight around is also
keen to show
the world how small it is when asked to sign formal trade deals
with the
West.
This is the contradiction of Africa where its leaders want,
in spirit,
Europe to treat the continent as an equal, yet they want anything
but parity
at the negotiating table on trade.
In Lisbon during
the EU-Africa summit — dubbed the summit of equals —
last weekend the
European Union proposed a new trading arrangement to
replace the current
dispensation — allowing special treatment — which become
illegal on January
1.
In its place, the EU has proposed a new package, Economic
Protection
Agreements (EPAs). They offer African, Caribbean and Pacific
countries full
access to EU markets while allowing them to protect about 20%
of their own
industries, including some of the most vulnerable. Exposure to
competition
from Europe would be phased in only gradually. It would be a
gentle
introduction to the world of free trade where Africa will have to
compete on
an equal footing with the rest of the world.
But
Africa has said no to this arrangement. The continent says it
requires
special treatment. It cannot open its markets to European goods
because that
would kill off the still developing industries on the
continent. African
leaders argue they need more time to prepare their weaker
economies for the
impact of the end of preferential trade arrangements.
South African
President Thabo Mbeki and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal led the
charge to reject
the trade proposals.
"It’s clear that Africa rejects the EPAs,"
Wade told reporters. "We
are not talking any more about EPAs, we’ve rejected
them... we’re going to
meet to see what we can put in place of the
EPAs."
Alpha Oumar Konare, head of the African Union Commission,
said in an
opening address: "Africa intends to draw up its own agenda and
take
responsibility for its own future rather than run behind others and try
and
catch them up."
By rejecting the proposals Africa is
sending out a clear message that
it is content with playing catch up with
the developed world. African
leaders — including our own — have failed to
exorcise the ghost of
colonialism from their failed systems of governance.
While the summit, the
first in seven years, was supposed to put colonial
history firmly in the
past, it failed dismally on this front. Africa as a
continent today cannot
meet and agree on a plan that can be implemented
collectively as Wade
promised.
The leaders of this vast
continent, while speaking cordially of their
fraternal bonds are still in
varying stages of political evolution.
President Mugabe represents those who
still find it convenient to blame
colonial rulers for all the continent’s
failures of the present. This group
does not have its eyes on
trade.
We do not expect the continent to reach consensus soon on
the
modalities of a trade agreement with Europe. Even if such a document is
penned, there is bound to be disagreements on its implementation just as the
continent’s leaders have quarrelled over issues like Nepad, the operations
of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and conflict
resolution.
The Zimbabwe government today regards the African
Commission as a
sinister creation of imperialists, even though President
Mugabe appended his
signature on the founding document setting up the
charter. Its crime? It has
condemned Zimbabwe’s human rights deficit.
African leaders are good at
signing documents at conferences and condemning
the same when they return
home. Is it not ironic that in Lisbon President
Mugabe — known for human
rights abuses together with other dictators on the
continent — signed a
democracy pledge in which they promised to "build a new
strategic political
partnership for the future, overcoming the traditional
donor-recipient
relationship and building on common values and goals in our
pursuit of peace
and stability, democracy and the rule of law, progress and
development"?
African countries will soon discover that exchanging
one form of
colonial bondage for another is not a way forward. What we will
probably see
now is some states or regional groups forging their own
arrangements with
the EU. Africa will probably be the poorer for failing to
grasp the trade
nettle in Lisbon.
Zim Independent
Candid Comment
By Teldah Mawarire
THE trend with a
good number of newspapers is that the more frequently
an event occurs, the
less likely it is to be newsworthy. The assumption is
that with repetition
comes the risk of "reader fatigue".
A friend e-mailed me this week
to say she has had water in Chisipite
for one day in November. Yes, one day
of water in a whole month, and Zinwa
dutifully sent her a bill with a "due
date" unashamedly printed in bright
red.
This sort of story is
no stranger to my "inbox" and no longer
alarming. It’s happening to all of
us but is sadly moving off the headlines
of most of our local and even
international media. It’s sort of becoming the
boring "repeat" show that the
broadcaster just won’t pull off air for
whatever reason, or the distantly
nagging sore tooth that just won’t ease
off naturally.
What
concerns me however is that as citizens when faced with
abnormalities, we
all fit into two general stereotypes: those that let their
creative juices
flow and find ways to attempt to beat the abnormal and those
that just get
by each day with the unusual as if all is well, either without
looking for
alternatives or after such innovative alternatives have been
exhausted.
Last week, I visited our neighbours across the
Limpopo — certainly not
my first or last visit. Being conditioned to life
here, things appeared
"abnormal" there. I’m not talking of your "Sandtons"
and "Rosebanks". Soweto
has its own fair share of problems but is largely
well catered for in terms
of basic utilities. The taps do not just go dry
for days on end without
prior warning, neither do streams of raw sewage flow
freely in between
homes.
What annoys me is that the Zanu PF
government is fighting tooth and
nail to maintain a grip on the reins of
power when it has failed the most
basic test of governance — provision of
basic utilities.
The United Nations Committee on Economic, Cultural
and Social Rights
in 2002 agreed on the "general comment" that: "Water is
fundamental for life
and health. The right to water is indispensable for
leading a healthy life
in human dignity. It is a pre-requisite to the
realisation of all other
human rights."
The World Health
Organisation website says the "general comment" in
this case is an
interpretation of the provisions of the International
Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights. Zimbabwe is one of the 145
countries that
ratified this Covenant and is "compelled to ensure that
everyone has access
to safe and secure drinking water".
Zimbabwe commemorated World
Human Rights Day on Monday. Sad that water
provision was nowhere near the
placards of those who were part of the
procession.
If you
cannot have a safe and reliable water supply, you have been
stripped of
human dignity. Water provision, especially to urban dwellers
that have no
alternative, is a basic human right.
President Mugabe delivered his
State of the Nation Address last week
to Parliament. While the relevance of
this statement is debatable, it can
give useful insight into at least what
the highest office is planning for
the year ahead and what it makes of its
achievements in the past year — if
there are any. Mugabe’s solution to
"persistent" water problems is (don’t
hold your breadth) to "drill boreholes
in the affected places"!
Something is seriously wrong here. How can
one expect those riled by
the absence of water in our taps for months on end
to be pacified by
boreholes? This is not very far off from madness. Having
taken over one of
the best water reticulation systems in Africa in 1980,
someone is working
overtime to reverse us.
Mugabe’s explanation
as to why we have no reliable water service is
that Zinwa is experiencing
"teething" problems. It appears it’s becoming
harder for anyone to defend
Zinwa’s glaring ineptitude and bungling. Zinwa
is still restless on a
nation-wide crusade in search of more water
authorities to dispossess. Why
is Zinwa being allowed to continuously bite
what it cannot chew? A baby that
cannot get past the "teething" stage is
cause for serious concern for any
mother.
Enter Zesa. The plug is pulled for weeks on end on many
citizens
without regard to schools, hospitals or any such institutions. Is
there any
thought that goes into these load-shedding schedules?
There is no shortage of long press releases of explanations. First it
was
cable thieves, and then came old equipment, then sub-economic rates
(that
seem immune to adjustment). Now it’s lightning and rain! Please.
People just
need power in their homes.
Hotels are spending three days and even
more without electricity or
water. Worse still, there is no feasible
solution in sight. Is darkness now
some sort of tourist
attraction?
Any government that can no longer provide its citizens
with basic
utilities — power and water — has certainly outlived its
usefulness.
Zim no longer needs annual budget
A BUDGET is a plan quantified
in monetary terms and every organisation
or entity needs a budget to make
decisions. The budget could be a short-term
or long-term one depending on
the situation or environment in which the
budget has been
prepared.
As such our country has been presenting national budgets
since
Independence for strategic decisions in order to attain the set
objectives
or goals for the nation. When a budget fails to meet the goals
which it was
set to attain, it becomes necessary to review the whole budget
preparation
process and make the required adjustments so that it conforms to
the
required standards.
Sadly in Zimbabwe since 2000 there has
been Supplementary Budget after
Supplementary Budget. This means the
national yearly budgets were not able
to complete the period. The problem
has not been with the budgets per se but
those who prepare them and the
environment.
Truly speaking the $7,84 quadrillion budget announced
by Samuel
Mumbengegwi will be spent by February 2008. The other ministries
proposal
had amounted to $42 quadrillion leaving an appalling shortfall of
$34,16
quadrillion from the budget announced. In other words the budget is
less
than a quarter of the required funds for use by different
ministries/sectors
meaning that the money is too little, not withstanding
the source of the
funds.
What makes the budget "cosmetic" is
its concomitant statistical
projections of inflation and the 4% growth in
the economy. Anyone who
believes that in our hyper inflationary environment
and complete disregard
of property rights by the government the economy will
improve, must be
living in wonderland. The current official inflation rate
is at more than 14
000% and thinking that by December 2008, it will recede
to 1 978% is day
dreaming.
The budget puts its hope on
agriculture with this season blindly and
insanely dubbed "Mother of all
agriculture seasons". This is tantamount to
putting all eggs in one basket,
because agriculture is but one of the
sectors which drive the economy. The
budget pays "lip service" to mining,
manufacturing and other
sectors.
The only practical government revenue base is through tax,
so naming
the budget "The people’s budget" is mere blackmail and
unforgivable.
Although Mumbengegwi increased the tax free threshold from $4
million to $30
million with effect from January, this is meaningless in line
with infation.
Instead he should have reduced the tax bands thus giving
relief to workers.
What makes everything gloomy is the fact that
there is a shortage of
local currency in banks. Gono continues to
pontificate about introducing a
new currency. What hogwash! As long as the
economy is in shambles like this,
introducing a new currency is a waste of
time and resources.
The Mines and Minerals Act which allows the
government to grab 25% of
shares in all foreign-owned mines helps to kill a
sector capable of
providing the country with the much-needed foreign
currency. The
Indigenisation and Empowerment Bill is another piece of shoddy
legislation
meant to completely destroy the economy. It forces all foreign
owned
companies to renounce at least 51% to "blacks". Faced with an array of
man-made and natural problems, planning becomes difficult hence the need to
have quarterly or half yearly budgets.
One has to sympathise
with poor Mumbengegwi for the shoddy job that he
did, because he was
instructed to do that by Mugabe. Without change of
political colour
budgeting in Zimbabwe will remain an unnecessary and
unworthy
exercise.
Andy Mangoma,
Bulawayo.
-------------
Time running out for Zimbabwean
opposition
THE MDC faces the biggest opportunity to unseat Mugabe
come elections
in March next year. However, lack of decisive leadership and
statesmanship
in putting Zimbabwe first ahead of parochial interests is the
opposition’s
biggest undoing and clearly a betrayal to the suffering masses
who are
craving for change.
In fact, time is fast running out
for the opposition and the earlier
they realise what Martin Luther King Jnr
called, "the urgency of now", the
better for the opposition risks being
annihilated by Mugabe and his ruthless
campaign machinery come
elections.
The urgent issue is for the opposition to unite for
there is strength
in unity. Without a united opposition coalition, Mugabe
will simply win by
default. Global history is replete with examples where
unity or lack of it
has done or undone a democratic people’s
struggle.
During the Chinese revolution, Mao and his communists
were pitted
against Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalists in a bitter armed
struggle and
the Japanese invaded China. Mao went to Chiang and told him
that: "Brothers
quarrelling at home will join forces against the outside."
The bitter foes
declared a temporary truce and combined forces to fight the
Japanese. After
repelling the Japanese, they then fought for supremacy. This
is an
extraordinary act of statesmanship which is clearly lacking in
Zimbabwe
opposition forces today.
Therefore it is upon the
fragmented MDC to rise above petty personal
interests, culture of hate and
suspicion and endorse one candidate for
president, senator, MP, councillor
etc so that each vote counts against Zanu
PF. With patriotism, this is quite
possible. There is greater opportunity
for such an arrangement to work since
the Mutambara faction is willing to
endorse Tsvangirai as president.
Tsvangirai should welcome this gesture and
rein in anti-unity hawks in his
party for the national good.
The advantages of a united coalition
under Tsvangirai which should
also include other opposition parties,
independent MPs, civil society, the
church, students and trade union
movement, reformists who are willing to
join from Zanu PF and those in the
diaspora are manifold. It will create
national euphoria that is now clearly
lacking in the battered population
today. That euphoria or national
excitement of believing, like in 2000, that
Mugabe and his rigging machinery
can and will be defeated especially if
there is an overwhelming opposition
vote, is insurance against the
hopelessness that has gripped the populace
who are now more likely to be
apathetic to the polls.
The
opposition must never fool itself that Mugabe will postpone
elections to
June. Tsvangirai must rise to the occasion as time has run out.
They have
the power of technology, volunteers, the situation and indeed the
people of
Zimbabwe to launch a decisive campaign to defeat the power-hungry
Mugabe.
The opposition must stop preaching the gospel of
election rigging.
Opposition supporters will simply believe that the
elections are already
rigged and stay away from the polls handing Mugabe
undeserved victory and in
the process sentencing the people of Zimbabwe to
more years of poverty. The
content of the opposition message must be
directed not at the international
community but to grassroots
supporters.
Indeed the opposition forces must urgently unite and
mount a serious
campaign of hope otherwise history will never absolve the
opposition for
blowing a golden moment to unite and inspire the people to a
new and
prosperous Zimbabwe.
Garikai Chimuka,
The Netherlands.
-------------
Time to expose Mugabe's
hypocrisy
By Jethro Mpofu
FOR a long time now
President Robert Mugabe has been fooling some
Zimbabweans, some Africans and
some entities within the global community by
pretending to be a gallant
African statesman of the Nkrumah model. Through
his long speeches Mugabe has
been painting a picture of himself as a valiant
pan-Africanist defending
Zimbabwean and African economic and political
interests that are
continuously being threatened by Western imperialism.
I think, in
the interest of Zimbabwe’s recovery from the current
economic and political
decay,the time has come for the democratic forces in
Zimbabwe and beyond to
know and understand Mugabe for what he is. I believe
that Mugabe has never
been and he will not be a genuine pan-African
liberator. Mugabe has injured
the African people that he leads at local
level.
He has
impoverished them and used the historical Zimbabwean heritage
of land to buy
votes and cement his partisan interests and has divided the
Africans in
Zimbabwe almost beyond repair.
He has killed the economy of
Zimbabwe and has in the past conspired
with Western forces against the
economic and political interests of the
Africans in Zimbabwe.
lMpofu is a political activist based in
Bulawayo.
-------------
Mugabe should have walked
too
By Wilson Katungu
THE much publicised million man
march by Zanu PF supporters recently
was a non-event. Given other pressing
political and economic demands in this
crisis-ridden nation such as
shortages of food, fuel, electricity, cash and
escalating transport and
accommodation costs, this circus was just a hoax
meant to distract our
attention from these hardships.
Do people have to show support for
their candidate on the street or at
the ballot box?
Shame on
Jabulani Sibanda who organised the 200 000 poor and hungry
rural villagers
to walk to Zimbabwe grounds. And shame on Mugabe who came in
a motorcade
while his loyal subjects walked from one end of town to the
other. He should
have shown solidarity with the masses and walked too.
This was just
one of Mugabe’s tricks to intimidate and silence his
opponents within the
party. We did not have these useless marches in 1995
and in 2002. Moreover
the million man march was done through abuse of public
entities like the NRZ
used to transport marchers who did not even know what
was going on from
remote areas.
Mismanagement of scarce resources, corruption and
hero worshiping
within Zanu PF are the major cause of our
troubles.
Mugabe is obsessed with sanctions and the Bush and Brown
paranoia
instead of seeing the real issues.
Now that he has
returned from the EU-Africa Summit, he claims to have
defeated the British.
Exactly whose war is Mugabe fighting? And if we are
winning, then where are
the spoils of war? We still have no water,
electricity or
food.
* Katungu writes from Harare.