Zimbabwe publishes law for unity government

Reuters

Sun 14 Dec 2008, 13:07 GMT

By Nelson Banya

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe has published a draft constitutional law to
create a unity government but the opposition MDC on Sunday vowed to block
the proposed changes until its demands for equitable power-sharing are met.

President Robert Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai agreed to form a
unity government in September, but the deal has stalled over disagreements
on control of key ministries.

The state-run Sunday Mail reported that the constitutional amendment bill -- 
creating the office of prime minister for Tsvangirai -- had been published
on Saturday. The MDC immediately rejected the move, saying it was not
consulted.

"This was done unilaterally by (the ruling party) ZANU-PF," MDC spokesman
Nelson Chamisa told Reuters. "The gazetting was supposed to have been done
after consultations."

He said the MDC had not seen the published Bill to establish whether it
conforms with the draft agreed by the two parties during talks held in South
Africa last month.

Chamisa said the MDC wanted its concerns on the allocation of ministerial
posts and provincial governorships addressed before the constitutional
amendments could be dealt with.

"What we are saying is that these political issues will stand in the way of
the legal process. We need to clear the political issues first before moving
on to the constitution," Chamisa said.

On Saturday, state media quoted Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa as saying
Mugabe could call fresh elections if the opposition-dominated parliament
fails to pass constitutional changes for the unity government.

Tsvangirai's MDC won 100 seats in the 210-member lower house of parliament
in a March poll as ZANU-PF lost its majority for the first time since 1980,
garnering 99 seats. The balance is held by a smaller faction of the MDC, led
by Arthur Mutambara.

Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in a presidential poll held concurrently but fell
short of the necessary votes to avoid a run-off poll which the 84-year-old
veteran leader won after Tsvangirai pulled out of the race citing violence.

The second vote was widely condemned and Mugabe has come under renewed
Western pressure to step down in the face of a cholera outbreak that has
killed nearly 800 people, worsening the plight of Zimbabweans grappling with
an economic meltdown blamed on government mismanagement.

Mugabe's government says the cholera outbreak is a calculated attack by
former colonial ruler Britain and the United States which have used
"biological warfare" to create an excuse to mobilise military action against
Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe Opposition Says Constitutional Amendment on Unity Government Premature

http://www.voanews.com



By Peta Thornycroft
Harare
14 December 2008

In Zimbabwe, a proposed constitutional amendment to create a unity
government has been published, paving the way for parliament to take up the
matter. But, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change says negotiations
over power-sharing must be concluded first.

President Robert Mugabe's government says, if the opposition does not
endorse the amendment in parliament, he will call new elections. The two
factions of the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, have a majority of
the 210 seats in Parliament, and a two-thirds majority is needed to amend
the constitution.

Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the MDC, said Sunday 10 of the 31 ministries
still need to be negotiated before addressing the constitutional amendment.

On Saturday, South African President Kgalema Mothlanthe said the publishing
of the amendment will pave the way for the formation of an inclusive
government. Mr. Mothlanthe is also chairman of the regional Southern African
Development Community, or SADC, which at a summit last month said it had
resolved the remaining differences toward forming a unity government in
Zimbabwe.

The African Union last week encouraged all three parties, Mr. Tsvangirai's
MDC, the ruling ZANU-PF party and a small faction of the MDC, whose leaders
signed a global political agreement in September, to go into government as
soon as possible.

Veteran Zimbabwe political analyst Brian Raftopoulos said Sunday, the MDC
was holding out to see if it could get more power over the security
portfolios.

He warned that if the MDC did not go into an inclusive government, the party
should expect that its structures would be further depleted by repression
and that the economic decline would intensify.

Zimbabwe's spiraling economic decline has been compounded by a cholera
epidemic that has killed nearly 800 people and infected nearly 17,000
others.

Missing activist was 'collecting evidence' on Mugabe crimes

Human rights workers are going into hiding across Zimbabwe as regime
launches new wave of arrests
Alex Duval Smith in Bulawayo
The Observer, Sunday 14 December 2008
A prominent Zimbabwean human rights activist abducted 12 days ago was
working on case files to be used as possible prosecution evidence against
members of President Robert Mugabe's regime, The Observer has learnt.

Jestina Mukoko, director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), is the most
prominent among 20 political and civil society activists who have
disappeared in the past six weeks.

According to fellow campaigners, Mukoko had established a network of
hundreds of monitors - mostly church people, teachers and ordinary township
dwellers - who had provided handwritten testimonies of the campaigns of
brutality carried out by Mugabe's government. The testimony could have been
used in any future investigation of human rights abuses by the Mugabe
regime. 'She had catalogued thousands of incidents of murder, assault,
torture, arson, and who the perpetrators are. The work was so meticulous it
could stand up in any court,' said one associate.

A human rights lawyer revealed that just before Mukoko's abduction the ZPP
had shifted from cataloguing violence in townships to the organised abuse of
food aid, where people were forced to support Mugabe in return for maize
deliveries. 'That upcoming report was going to be extremely embarrassing for
the ruling party,' said the lawyer.

Lawyers and opposition politicians believe the abduction of Mukoko was
carried out as part of a new campaign by elements in the ruling party to
intimidate and hinder the work of those gathering incriminating evidence of
human rights violations in the country. Most leading human rights figures
have in recent days gone into hiding. The ZPP has closed and the National
Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (Nango) has warned that 'there
are reasons to fear for the safety of every activist in the land'.

At about 5am on 3 December, 15 armed men wearing civilian clothing burst
into the home of Mukoko in Norton, 25 miles from the capital, Harare. Her
15-year-old son watched as the men, who claimed to be police officers, beat
up a gardener, then bundled her, barefoot and dressed only in her pyjamas,
into a waiting Mazda 323.

Within days, other abductions were carried out by groups of between six and
nine armed men in civilian clothes using unmarked vehicles without number
plates. On 5 December Zacharia Nkomo, 33, brother of leading human rights
lawyer Harrison Nkomo, was taken from his home in Masvingo.

Three days later Brodrick Takawira and Pascal Gonzo, both of the ZPP, were
abducted in Harare. And on 10 December, Gandhi Mudzwinga, a close associate
of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, was kidnapped near Harare.

The ZPP, which was formed in 2000 and is funded by the Dutch and Canadian
governments, is one of the most respected groups in Zimbabwean civil
society. Its reports have been made available to African and Western
embassies in Harare and used in confidential diplomatic briefing documents.

They are likely to have been among documents seen by the European Union
before it added 11 military, police and ruling party officials to its latest
travel blacklist, made official last Monday.

Lawyer Otto Saki said he and his colleagues have made desperate attempts to
establish Mukoko's whereabouts. 'We struggled to find a judge to hear our
application. Three days after her abduction, a judge we finally managed to
speak to in the High Court car park told us it would be heard on Monday, 8
December.

'A week after she was taken, we obtained an order that the police search for
Jestina in all places of detention where they have jurisdiction - in other
words, everywhere except military compounds. But we have no news and the
police say they do not have her.'

Lawyers say the last time the courts acted so evasively was in April - just
after the first round of presidential elections - when Movement for
Democratic Change activist Tonderai Ndira was abducted.Ndira was later found
murdered.

JB Nkatazo of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace said Mutoko's
abduction sent 'cold shivers' down the spines of all Zimbabwean activists.
'The new disappearances send a clear message to civil society that we will
be picked up one by one,' said Nkatazo.

'We must fear the worst for Mukoko,' said Effie Ncube, 35, of the
Masakhaneni Projects Trust for victims of violence. 'If she has been picked
up and tortured, that means she also knows who her assailants were.' Paying
tribute to her courage, he said: 'We last sat together two weeks ago. She
understood the nature of the regime and the risks she was taking. She was
documenting cases of human rights abuses to liberate Zimbabweans but also to
liberate Mugabe. She paraphrased Nelson Mandela who said the South African
transition was about liberating the racists.'

He added: 'What we do is very risky because the regime's attitude is that we
are giving information to the CIA or to MI6. Mugabe's rhetoric is calculated
to set African governments against Europeans, and so we, as civil society,
are viewed as agents of Western imperialism.'

One of the greatest fears of Mugabe and those involved in this year's
election-related violence is that the UN Security Council will call for an
International Criminal Court investigation, as it did over Sudanese
President Omar el-Bashir's involvement in the Darfur killings.

Statements in the past week by Mugabe and his aides provide clear evidence
of the regime's paranoia. Presidential spokesman George Charamba told the
state-run Herald newspaper that Western countries were planning to 'bring
Zimbabwe before the UN Security Council by claiming the cholera epidemic and
food shortages have incapacitated the government'.

On Friday, in a bizarre effort to parry criticism of the regime at
tomorrow's meeting in New York, Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said:
'Gordon Brown must be taken to the United Nations Security Council for being
a threat to world peace and planting cholera and anthrax to invade
Zimbabwe.'

But Minister for Africa Lord Malloch-Brown said the meeting would focus on
the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe, especially concerns that UN medical
officials have been denied access to the country to assess the cholera
outbreak.

'I don't see the prospect of an international tribunal coming up tomorrow,'
he said. 'Mugabe is in a state of exaggerated paranoia. The arrests of the
human rights activists are part of that. But it is certainly the case that
Mugabe's actions this year have exposed him as never before. The day he
falls he has huge future vulnerability.'

Key Mugabe ally is free to live in London

Former minister flies to and from Zimbabwe
Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
The Observer, Sunday 14 December 2008

One of Robert Mugabe's closest political allies is living in luxury in
London while being allowed to fly to and from Zimbabwe, despite her close
s to the dictator's feared Zanu-PF party.

The revelation, coming just days after the list of Mugabe supporters who are
banned from entering Britain was expanded, has prompted politicians to
express concern that the government is failing to restrict the activities of
those who have helped the Zimbabwean President maintain his hold on power.

Florence Chitauro, one of Mugabe's loudest cheerleaders, who during her time
as a Zanu-PF minister was responsible for suppressing strikes against his
regime, lives in a plush town house in west London with her husband, James,
a former senior civil servant in Zimbabwe who played a key role in advising
the Mugabe administration. Their son and daughter also live in the UK.

When confronted by The Observer, Chitauro said she was a 'private citizen at
the moment' and declined to comment further. Asked whether she now denounced
the Mugabe regime, she replied: 'No, I'm not going to say that.'

She said that she was in Britain as 'a way of right', having 'contributed to
the UK for a long time'. She also confirmed: 'I'm here, but sometimes I go
back to Zimbabwe.'

Her ability to move back and forth between the UK and Zimbabwe has raised
questions about the measures employed by the government against the Mugabe
regime. All senior Zanu-PF officials are banned from entering EU countries
and another 11 names were added to the list last Monday. But there are
concerns that others are continuing to slip through the net.

'The UK Border Agency is obsessed with trying to meet targets on asylum
seekers and keeping out any Zimbabwean who they think might not return
home,' said Kate Hoey, chair of the parliamentary all-party group on
Zimbabwe. 'But they need to spend more time checking out some of the Zanu-PF
apparatchiks who have been coming in and out for years and who are
personally responsible for what is happening in Zimbabwe now.'

She added: 'Some of the families and friends of Mugabe's Zanu-PF elite and
others of his hangers-on can practically use the UK as their base because
they can show that they have jobs and assets in Zimbabwe and so are more
likely to go back home. They have multiple entry visas that allow them to
fly in and out at will to live it up in London on the money they make from
the economic chaos back in Zimbabwe.'

Chitauro was Minister for Labour, Public Service and Social Welfare during
the mid to late Nineties when she declared that a national strike against
the Mugabe regime was 'illegal'. She went on national television to warn
those who took industrial action that they would lose their jobs. Troops
were sent into curb the unrest, which eventually gave birth to the Movement
for Democratic Change, the main opposition. Her husband, James Chitauro, is
a former permanent secretary who worked at the departments of defence,
engineering and water, and education.

She went on to become Zimbabwe's ambassador to Australia and provoked a
diplomatic furore after she criticised the country's then Prime Minister,
John Howard, for 'taking it upon himself to be some kind of messiah for
Zimbabwe' after he spoke against its readmission to the Commonwealth. 'John
Howard has not helped this situation by more or less accusing people of
being dictatorial,' Chitauro said in 2003, in comments that earned her a
rebuke from the Australian government. In 2005 Mugabe recalled Chitauro to
stand as a Zanu-PF candidate in elections for the Zimbabwean parliament's
upper house. Mugabe later said he did not remember recalling her.

Meanwhile, there are concerns that a website that carries articles written
by UK-based Zimbabweans is acting as a propaganda machine for the Mugabe
regime. Talkzimbabwe.com started life as a critic of Mugabe but in recent
months has positioned itself strongly behind him and against his rival,
Morgan Tsvangirai. Sekai Holland, a veteran political activist who has been
targeted by the Mugabe regime, said she was worried the site had been
'infiltrated' by Zanu-PF supporters. 'It's very dangerous,' Holland said.
'This website is being used to spread stories in support of Mugabe.'

SA raises the volume to Mugabe

IOL

    December 14 2008 at 10:52AM

By Godfrey Marawanyika and Eleanor Momberg

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is being pressured by South Africa
to swear in his rival for power, Morgan Tsvangirai, as prime minister.

Mugabe threatened to call new elections on Saturday because of the
drawn-out power-sharing disputes.

A draft constitutional amendment paving the way for a unity government
was published in Zimbabwe's Government Gazette on Saturday.

President Kgalema Motlanthe welcomed the draft amendment, which
creates the positions of prime minister and deputy prime minister, and said
he expected the nominees to be sworn in "with immediate effect".

Motlanthe said the gazetting of the constitutional amendment was a
"major step towards the formation of an inclusive government in Zimbabwe".

The amendment creates the position of prime minister, earmarked for
the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
Tsvangirai.

But the rival parties have not agreed on crucial issues and this has
long delayed, and could derail, the formation of an inclusive government.

"In the event that the collaboration that we envisage is not
forthcoming, then that will necessitate fresh harmonised elections," Patrick
Chinamasa, Zimbabwe's justice minister, told the state-run Herald newspaper.

The MDC won control of Parliament for the first time in the March
elections but does not have enough seats to approve the amendment on its
own.

Negotiators for Mugabe and Tsvangirai have agreed to a draft of a
unity government text, but Nelson Chamisa, the MDC spokesperson, warned that
crucial issues remained unresolved.

Mugabe's government has blamed "biological warfare" waged by the
United Kingdom for the cholera that has killed at least 800 people in
Zimbabwe.

His ministers said the disease had been introduced by the UK as part
of a "genocidal onslaught".

Mugabe has long sought to blame the suffering of his country's people
on the former colonial power. But his cholera claim is his most bizarre to
date.

Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, Mugabe's information minister, said: "The cholera
epidemic in Zimbabwe is a serious biological, chemical warfare; a genocidal
onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British. It's a genocide of our
people.

"Cholera is a calculated, racist attack on Zimbabwe by the unrepentant
former colonial power, which has enlisted support from its American and
Western allies so that they can invade the country."

With demands rising for Mugabe to face prosecution in the United
Nations International Court of Justice, in The Hague, for human rights
abuses, Ndlovu called for the British prime minister to be brought to
justice.

"Gordon Brown must be taken to the UN Security Council for being a
threat to world peace and planting cholera and anthrax to invade Zimbabwe,
our peaceful Zimbabwe," he said.

His comments came after Harare claimed that Mugabe had been joking
when he said that there was "no cholera" in Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, the South African government has yet to decide on how much
and what kind of aid is to be sent to Zimbabwe.

The aid package "is still being finalised", Themba Maseko, a
government spokesperson, said.

This week, Frank Chikane, the director-general of the presidency, led
a delegation to Zimbabwe to determine the scale of the aid required.

The South Africans met aid workers to determine how to ensure that aid
reached those most in need.

A senior South African government official said last week that all aid
would be distributed by non-government organisations to ensure that it did
not end up in the hands of Zimbabwean politicians.

This article was originally published on page 2 of Sunday Independent
on December 14, 2008

Oxfam concerned over Zimbabwe disappearances

http://www.radionetherlands.nl

Published: Sunday 14 December 2008 11:08 UTC

Aid organisation Oxfam says it is concerned about the increasing number of
disappearances in Zimbabwe. Oxfam says it is particularly concerned about
Jestina Mukoko, manager of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, who was abducted at
the beginning of this month. There has been no sign of her since she
disappeared. The organisation says 38 union members were arrested after a
strike, and disappearances have also been reported elsewhere in the country.

Oxfam reports that aid workers have been trying to leave the country
following threats. The organisation says the situation is worsening daily
and has called on the Netherlands to urge South Africa to increase pressure
on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

The IoS Christmas Appeal: The brutal reality of family life in Zimbabwe

Thousands have been traumatised by the country's bloody politics, reports our special correspondent in Harare

Sunday, 14 December 2008

Rachel Dwyer

Aqua, Nobel and Nelson were turned out of their hostel room and had to sleep on the street

Zimbabwe's bloody election has been displaced in the headlines by cholera and economic collapse, but thousands of people, among them many children, are still living with the physical and mental consequences of weeks of political violence earlier this year.

Two-year-old Nelson wet himself when we knocked on the door of his crowded dwelling, in one of the poorest areas of the capital. He did it again as soon as we spoke to him directly. He and his young siblings and cousins have been terrified ever since supporters of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party invaded the single room he shares with six other children and his mother, beating her and his 18-year-old brother, Nobel, and turfing the family into the street in the middle of winter.

Nobel took up the story. Their father, John, known to be a supporter of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had gone to South Africa to seek work, like three million other Zimbabweans – a quarter of the population. So when the Zanu-PF Youth League came calling, they seized his wife Sarah instead. "She was taken to the community hall and beaten so badly that her leg was broken," said Nobel. "I cried when I saw her," said his 12-year-old sister, Grace. "Her leg still hasn't healed, nearly six months later, and she has to walk on crutches."

Sarah spent three months in hospital. She used to sell cooking oil from a street stall to help support the family, but has been unable to work since her injury, and was out when we called, seeking help from relatives. "Even if she were here, you would be unable to speak to her," said her eldest son. "She just cries all the time."

Nobel's turn came two weeks later. "They said I was an opposition supporter and took me to the hall, where I was told to lie down," he said. "They beat me on my back and my feet for five hours. They were even beating pregnant women – three of our neighbours had miscarriages. Young girls were being raped outside the hall every night, and when they tried to report it, the police said there was nothing they could do. All the time I was there, I was afraid they might take my sister, and worried about the younger children."

When he was freed, Nobel discovered that his family's furniture had been put out on the street, and their room had been taken over by a Zanu-PF official. Although raw sewage and rubbish lies everywhere in their district, and cholera has now taken hold, their squalid accommodation is still highly desirable to people even worse off.

"We had to spend three weeks in the open in the middle of winter, with frost every night," said Nobel. "My feet were so sore that I could not walk, but I could not go for treatment, because, with my mother in hospital, there was nobody to look after the younger children." Apart from Grace and Nelson, there are two other brothers, Tarrant, 16, and Bedford, eight. Two cousins, Milo, 12, and Aqua, five, also live with the family.

In one respect they were fortunate. After three weeks the police persuaded the party official to leave, and they got back their room, in which there is one bed, shared by Sarah and the girls. The boys sleep in the "sitting room", partitioned off from the "bedroom" by a wardrobe and a curtain. Other families are still on the street, or have been forced to share their accommodation with the new occupants.

The younger children are still traumatised by the violence they have seen, according to Nobel. "Their behaviour has changed," he said. "They don't talk. They stay inside all day, and don't go out to play. They are afraid of strangers." Zimbabwe's state of chaos means nearly all schools are closed; only the youngest of the children occasionally get the chance to go to pre-school. They are also the only ones who get anything to eat in the morning. The rest eat one meal a day, usually some maize mash and vegetables.

Save the Children is helping local charities to supply families like this one with household essentials such as blankets, soap and baby clothes. It also supports day camps where young children can meet others who have suffered violence, and take part in activities which encourage them to talk about their experiences. Older children go for week-long camps outside Harare, temporarily freeing them from the family responsibilities that have been thrust upon them.

Nobel hopes one day to return to school, and become a lawyer, "so I can stand up for those being abused". He admits he still feels anger about what happened to him. "Some of the people responsible are still around," he says. "When I see them, I want revenge."

Some names have been changed

The IoS christmas appeal

£16,666 has been donated so far to our Christmas Appeal, but much more is still needed...

£21 will buy a baby kit, including sheets, cloth diapers, soap, sponge, bucket.

£30 will pay for a recreation day for a young traumatised child.

£40 will provide household goods for a displaced family, including pots and pans, blankets and soap.

£80 will foster a child for a month who has been separated from his or her family.

£170 will provide games, toys and equipment for 50 displaced children.

£200 will pay for a traumatised child to go on a week's confidence-building adventure camp.

Interesting? Click here to explore further

Home Office to deport Zimbabwean family who fled Mugabe's regime

http://www.independent.co.uk

Woman whose husband was killed for his s to the opposition has claim for
asylum rejected after eight years in UK

By Jane Merrick and Emily Dugan
Sunday, 14 December 2008

A Zimbabwean woman and her two daughters who fled the Mugabe regime are to
be deported from Britain despite promises by the Government to protect the
country's citizens.

Priviledge Thulambo, 39, whose husband was murdered by Robert Mugabe's men,
and her children are being detained in a controversial immigration centre
after being seized by immigration officers on Friday.

Friends of the family said the Home Office would be guilty of "murder by the
back door" by deporting the three women. They are all Zimbabwean nationals,
but because they entered the UK on Malawian passports - the only way they
could escape the Mugabe regime - eight years ago, they have had their claims
for asylum rejected.

After spending Christmas in the grim surroundings of the Yarl's Wood
detention centre, they will be forced on to a flight to Malawi on 29
December. Because of their Zimbabwean nationality they are likely to be
immediately sent to their home country, where they face torture or death.

They are in this desperate situation despite UK government policy that no
Zimbabwean nationals will be sent back there unless they are members of the
ruling Zanu-PF party.

It follows criticism last week of the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, who
warned cabinet colleagues of an "influx" of Zimbabwean refugees fleeing the
cholera outbreak.

Mrs Thulambo and her daughters Valerie, 20, and Lorraine, 18, have spent
eight years in the UK. Mrs Thulambo's Cambridge-educated husband, Macca, was
killed for his s to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. His widow tried
to leave Zimbabwe but was arrested at the airport, and later tortured and
raped.

She and her daughters fled to neighbouring Malawi, where they obtained
passports because of her late husband's dual nationality. Immigration
officials seized Mrs Thulambo's Zimbabwean passport during their arrest at
dawn on Friday.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, the family's former MP, said it was
wrong to assess them as Malawian for immigration purposes.

He added: "It is time this Government gets tough on Mugabe, not his victims.
This case illustrates the heartless approach from a Home Office more willing
to deport people to their fate rather than do the right thing. Taking such a
legalistic approach to Priviledge and her daughters shows that the Home
Office is seeking to find any excuse or loophole to deport Zimbabwean
nationals."

Mrs Thulambo is an active member of her local church, St Mark's, in Crookes,
Sheffield. Valerie was looking forward to studying law at university after
passing her A-levels, friends said. According to Kirsten Heywood, a family
friend: "As soon as they arrive in Malawi they will be sent back to
Zimbabwe - which means death. It is terrible what the Home Office is doing.
This is back-door murder."

In a letter to the Home Secretary, Mr Clegg said: "I have met Mrs Thulambo
on several occasions. She has suffered severe mental and physical health
problems after the persecution she and her family suffered in Zimbabwe. She
has become a respected and well-liked member of the community; her daughters
attended the local schools and have integrated into society and have many
friends.

"I believe this is a clear-cut case for the Home Office to demonstrate
clemency and leniency on Mrs Thulambo's case and on others like her."

The Home Office yesterday declined to comment on individual cases, but
added: "We only seek to remove families who are in the UK unlawfully after
all appeal rights have been used and the courts agree that they have no
further right to remain in the UK.

"Once all appeal rights are exhausted, we would much rather that those here
illegally left voluntarily. Sadly, some families choose not to do so even
though they are given every opportunity to leave voluntarily. We then have a
duty to enforce the law."

Meanwhile, a landmark ruling has given hope to thousands of impoverished
asylum-seekers, including those from Zimbabwe, who are barred from working
while the Home Office resolves their cases. The Government's refusal to
allow those who are trapped in the system for long periods to seek
employment has been branded unlawful by the High Court.

According to current estimates, up to 280,000 refused asylum-seekers in the
UK are forced into destitution - often for years - as they wait for their
cases to be processed. Now the blanket policy that bars employment for those
stuck in the Home Office backlog has been declared illegal under human
rights legislation.

The Government has pledged to process its backlog of several hundred
thousand cases by 2011, but for many this could mean facing a life of
poverty for up to a decade with no hope of a job.

The blame for Africa's cholera

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Marxist economics and a failure of African leaders has caused Zimbabwe's
cholera outbreak.

Last Updated: 5:10PM GMT 13 Dec 2008

The responsibility for Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak that has killed 800
people and infected over 16,000 others rests with Robert Mugabe and his
acolytes who have all but destroyed their country through Marxist policies
and political repression.

Other African leaders are not blameless either. With few exceptions,
Botswana's Ian Khama among them, they have failed to defend human rights and
sound economic management in Africa by failing to hold Mugabe to account. By
cossetting the Zimbabwean dictator, they exposed the emptiness of Thabo
Mbeki's "African renaissance".

The lack of good government in much of Africa and the cynicism of many of
its leaders should make Western governments, Britain included, think twice
before disbursing more foreign aid to the continent. Ending Western
agricultural subsidies and trade protectionism would do more good to Africa
than foreign aid ever can.

Dr Marian Tupy
Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity
Cato Institute, Washington DC

Cartoon

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article5336682.ece

 

From The Sunday Times

Gerald Scarfe cartoon: December 14, 2008

 

Mugabe sickens Zimbabwe

http://www.washingtontimes.com

Dale McFeatters
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Zimbabwe's dictatorial Robert Mugabe has added another misery to the long
list of miseries he has inflicted on his long-suffering country - cholera.

That's in addition to a brutal police state, a ruined economy with 90
percent unemployment, an "official" inflation rate of 231 million percent
and the 5 million people that the United Nations says face starvation next
year.

The cholera outbreak is due to polluted water and large parts of the once
modern capital of Harare are without running water or sewage disposal.

The government insists the outbreak is under control although its efforts in
that regard consist of urging people not to shake hands. The U.N. says it is
not and that as of Wednesday there have been 775 deaths - up more than 200
from Tuesday - and 16,141 cases. The disease is not only spreading rapidly
in Zimbabwe but is spreading into neighboring countries as desperate
refugees seek treatment. Zimbabwe's four major hospitals are closed for lack
of drugs, doctors, staff and medical equipment. The situation is certainly
far more dire in the rural health clinics.

And the country is paralyzed by a political deadlock. Mr. Mugabe has refused
to abide by a power-sharing agreement reached after the opposition won a
majority of the National Assembly last spring. He insists on his party
retaining the ministries that control the military, the intelligence
services and the police. The opposition insists on getting at least the
police.

President Bush and the European Union have called on Mr. Mugabe to step
aside and urged the other African nations to join in the demand, but the
best the African Union can muster is to urge further "dialogue." South
Africa, which carries the most weight with Zimbabwe, has been especially
timid and has responded to the most recent outrages by saying it would
resist any attempt to remove Mr. Mugabe by force. No one is suggesting doing
that. But for anyone who cares about the welfare of ordinary Zimbabweans,
it's not a bad idea.

Cholera is easily preventable and curable and in this case the cure begins
by excising Mr. Mugabe and his circle.

Dale McFeatters is a columnist for Scripps Howard News Service.

Strip Mugabe of Order of Jamaica

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/

EDITORIAL
Published: Sunday | December 14, 2008

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, used to be a hero, celebrated
across the world.
Now, unhinged and delusional, Mr Mugabe is a menace to his own people,
bringing them death and despair and their country to ruin.

Just how far Mr Mugabe has parted company with reality was highlighted this
week when he declared in Zimbabwe that there was "no cholera" in Zimbabwe,
that the outbreak of the disease had been arrested. Except, from all
credible information, that is not the situation on the ground.

According to United Nations figures, nearly 800 people have died from the
disease since its outbreak several weeks ago and several thousands are
affected. It has spread rapidly, and, the experts say, remains a substantial
way from being arrested.

The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, however, is no mere health issue, but a
symptom of the deep political and economic crisis that Mr Mugabe has wrought
upon his country in his effort at exclusive hold on power.

For several years now, Mr Mugabe, who has been in office for nearly three
decades, has trampled on opponents and rigged elections. When challenged on
his usurpation of democracy and failure to respect human rights, he accuses
his critics of attempting to recolonise Zimbabwe and reassert white minority
rule, whose overthrow he led.

Months ago, this newspaper, like many people around the world, hoped that
better was in store for the people of Zimbabwe.

Rigged elections

After earlier rigged elections that maintained Mr Mugabe as president but
failed to maintain his ZANU-PF party as the parliamentary majority, the
president signed a power-sharing agreement with the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC), in which the MDC's leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, would
become prime minister, with substantial authority. Since then, however, Mr
Mugabe has sought to frustrate the agreement by seeking to hold on to key
Cabinet posts for his party.

It is time, we believe, that Jamaica and the Caribbean send a clear and firm
signal to Mr Mugabe that not only has he become an embarrassment to people
of African descent in this region, but to freedom-loving people around the
world. In the case of Jamaica, in 1996, this country bestowed on Mr Mugabe
the prestigious Order of Jamaica, the country's fourth-highest national
honour, for his contribution to the liberation of Southern Africa from
apartheid and white-minority rule and the "pursuit of human development
throughout the African continent".

Mr Mugabe has betrayed both the letter and spirit and the implied
commitments of an OJ and is, therefore, unworthy of holding a Jamaican
national honour. In the circumstances, the Jamaican Government is obliged,
in as public a fashion as possible, to withdraw the award from Mr Mugabe.

Moreover, at their summit in July, Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders,
having frowned on Mr Mugabe's antics, urged that he seek a political
settlement in his country and hinted, if he failed, at unspecified action.
Now that Mr Mugabe has stomped on the agreement with the MDC and has ruined
a path to reconciliation and recovery in Zimbabwe, Caricom must act,
starting, we suggest, with the suspension of diplomatic relations with
Harare.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect
the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us:
editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than
400 words. Not all responses will be published.

New modes of terror

http://www.mg.co.za

JASON MOYO - Dec 13 2008 06:00

A series of abductions of anti-government figures has left Zimbabwean rights
activists terrified, as fears rise that President Robert Mugabe will use
last week's military indiscipline to crack down harder on opponents.

Many activists have been taking extraordinary security measures. The head of
one human rights organisation described how she has abandoned her home,
moved her family to a new location and now works away from her office,
following the abduction last week of Jestina Mukoko, the rights activist who
has been missing since then.

The Harare High Court has ordered police to launch a search for Mukoko. Her
lawyers have demanded that military and intelligence premises be searched,
but the police say they are not allowed access to properties used by either
the military or the Central Intelligence Organisation.

Mukoko's family has been holding a vigil at her home west of Harare since
her abduction.

"This is a difficult time for the family," her brother, Simon, said. "We are
especially worried about her health. They didn't allow her to take her
medication with her, any decent clothing or her glasses."

Close to 20 activists have been abducted in the past four weeks and their
whereabouts remain unknown. Fourteen Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
activists are being held at an undisclosed location on charges of receiving
military training in Botswana to overthrow the government. Among them is the
two-year-old baby of one of the detained.

Now activists believe Mugabe plans to use growing international threats
against his rule as a pretext to clamp down on opponents.

This week two more members of Mukoko's Zimbabwe Peace Project, Broderick
Takawira and Pascal Gonzo, were abducted. The organisation was key in the
documentation of violence in the run-up to the June run-off election, which
was boycotted by the opposition. The reports recorded evidence of the
violence, frequently in the form of graphic images of battered victims and
their grim accounts of torture.

Also abducted this week was Gandhi Mudzingwa, a former security aide to MDC
leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Last Friday the brother of Harrison Nkomo, a
lawyer who has represented activists and independent journalists, was seized
from his home in Masvingo at dawn.

Lawyers for the MDC also reported this week that a member of Tsvangirai's
security detail, Chris Dlamini, had been abducted and was still missing
after two weeks. Alec Muchadahama, an MDC lawyer, said: "We do not know
where he and any of the other missing people are or if they are still
alive."

The MDC has sent an appeal to the Southern African Development Community and
the African Union to protest against what it says is an escalation of state
terror, describing the abductions as part of "a systematic plot to decimate
the party structures, the leadership and civil rights groups involved in
compiling dossiers of violence and human rights abuses".

Beatrice Mtetwa, a lawyer for Mukoko, suspects the secret service is
involved in the abductions. Mtetwa asked the court to order the police "to
uphold the law by investigating forthwith [Mukuko's] whereabouts with the
assistance of the lawyers, who are in a position to point out well-known
abduction and torture chambers used by state agents".

In spite of the abductions there were suggestions this week that the talks
between Zimbawbe's main parties were making some progress. Sydney Mufumadi,
Thabo Mbeki's lead mediator, held meetings throughout the week with
negotiators from both sides. An opposition official told the Mail & Guardian
that the Constitutional Amendment Bill required for the formation of the new
government was now complete and would be published officially "within days".
Parliament will sit next Tuesday, but other constitutional requirements mean
the amendment can reach the legislature in only 30 days.

In the interim tensions are building. Western threats against Mugabe, backed
by Tsvangirai's allies, such as Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga and the
outspoken Botswanan government, have turned up the heat. Many fear Mugabe
will lash out against domestic critics under the guise of protecting the
country from an impending foreign intervention.

"It's going to get worse," said Welshman Ncube, secretary general of one
faction of the MDC. "It is in their nature. Killings, abductions and arrests
are how they conduct political struggle."

Zimbabwean cross-border traders flood Musina to stock up on goods

http://www.busrep.co.za

December 14, 2008

The music blaring from the speakers posted outside the little shop are
barely audible over the shouting and haggling taking place inside; customers
jockey for position among a bizarre bazaar of items ranging from oil lamps,
televisions and blankets to stoves, sweets and door frames.

This scene repeats itself in almost every shop that lines the main street of
Musina, with hundreds of people buying whatever they can lay their hands on.

It is as if they have never seen these goods before. Sadly, that is not too
far from the truth.

This scene is not one that would usually be expected in the frontier border
town of Musina. But because of the persistent food shortages, caused by
hyperinflation and a collapsed economy, most Zimbabweans with access to
foreign currency have now turned to neighbouring countries such as South
Africa and Botswana for the goods they need to survive.

Big spenders

Cross-border traders are taking advantage of the economic meltdown across
the Limpopo and are buying everything that is available at the shops of
Musina.

Some of these traders spend in the region of R30 000 to R40 000 in cash per
trip and most of them visit the town at least twice a week.

While these traders make up the biggest share of buyers in Musina, ordinary
Zimbabweans are also flocking across the border to shop for basic goods that
are no longer available or have become too expensive back home.

The local Spar on the main street of Musina is packed to capacity almost
every day with shoppers pushing shopping trolleys full of items such as
milk, bread, sunflower oil and maize meal.

Another item that is flying off the shelves is Coke. This is driven by the
spread of deadly cholera infection through the rapidly declining quality of
water, which has forced people to turn to an alternative to quench their
thirst.

It is an unfortunate and unintended fulfilment of the lifelong dream of
Robert Goizueta, a former chief executive of Coca-Cola who famously said he
wanted to make Coke more popular than water.

At the back of the Spar it is just as busy, as one delivery truck after
another offloads its cargo, which is snapped up in a frenzy by the shoppers
in the front.

The shops in town are doing a roaring trade, with some of them staying open
as late as 10pm every night.

The focus of Musina has changed over the past few years: from a small border
town that used to win awards, such as railway station of the year, to a
business district aimed at providing goods to the Zimbabwean cross-border
traders and refugees trying to flee Robert Mugabe and his cronies.

While this may be fantastic news for local businesses, residents in the town
have just about had enough. "We can't even go to our local Spar anymore.
These guys come here at 6.30 every morning, park their taxis and bakkies in
the parking lot and they stay for the whole day," says a resident who did
not want to be identified.

"If we want to go to the shops we have to park miles away and walk."

Another resident in town confirmed that the situation was out of control. He
said the other day he was cut off by a taxi and, when he confronted the
driver, he was told to "F-Off"! He said the driver then told him that this
was the new South Africa and he no longer had a right to complain. He should
accept things as they were because, if the black people in South Africa
wanted to, they could throw out the white people - just as they did in
Zimbabwe.

This huge boom in business has made itself heard in Johannesburg, as
Shoprite is in the process of building a huge outlet on the border side of
the town.

Other smaller businesses have also had to make drastic changes. A small
building goods supplier in central town has purchased land closer to the
Beit Bridge border post so it can capitalise on the increase of people
crossing into South Africa.

A Zimbabwean cross-border trader said that even though Zimbabwe was not as
great as it used to be, he was happy that the whites were thrown out. He
says he does not mind a little bit of cholera because his business is
booming because of it.

He has had to hire another driver to keep up with demand. With 80 percent of
Zimbabweans out of a job, cross-border trade is currently probably the only
viable source of sustenance for millions of Zimbabweans.

A drive through Musina's main street revealed more vehicles with Zimbabwean
registration plates than South African ones. Almost all of these vehicles
are loaded to the brim with food and dry goods.

Nico, who did not want his surname to be mentioned, lives in a flat on
Musina's main street and says he does not know how much longer he will be
able to put up with this with the permanent frenzy.

Supply shortage

Nico says there is often a shortage of goods in town because the
cross-border traders are buying everything: "My father is in construction,
but a lot of the time he can't get supplies for his business."

Zimbabwe's government on Tuesday ordered retailers to slash prices, after a
wave of price hikes following the release of higher-denomination bank notes.

This will offer little relief to ordinary Zimbabweans who will continue to
flood Musina or buy the goods that are being imported from there.

More deaths reported as Mugabe downplays the situation

http://english.ohmynews.com

Zimbabwe Struggling to Control Cholera Outbreak

Nelson G. Katsande

      Published 2008-12-14 14:32 (KST)

The cholera epidemic that has gripped Zimbabwe is on the increase. A
barefooted 56 year-old woman collapsed and died Friday while walking to the
nearest hospital for treatment.

Dehydrated and weary, she failed to make the 15 mile journey on foot to the
hospital.

Eyewitnesses who arrived at the scene could not contain their anger. The
woman's feet were swollen and bruised. Her death exposes Robert Mugabe's
cruelty. But while statistics show that the epidemic is out of control,
President Mugabe plays down the severity of the problem.

The situation is made worse by erratic water supplies. The water is
contaminated with dirty particles and sewerage in some cases. In most towns
and cities, there are constant sewer pipe bursts, with the result that human
waste contaminates drinking water.

Even boiling the water before drinking is no cure to the problem. When
boiled, the water turns green and smelly. Hospitals are failing to cope with
the number of cholera patients seeking treatment.

Most of the treatment centres have closed owing to an acute shortage of
medicine. Others have given up hope and prefer to die at home than go to
hospitals. Thousands are leaving en masse to neighbouring countries to avoid
contracting cholera.

In this stricken country, cholera and Aids have become the two deadly
diseases wiping out communities. The Zimbabwean government fails to
acknowledge the severity of the diseases and suppresses the number of
deaths.

Even those that voted for Mugabe now acknowledge that it's time for him to
go. Pressure is now mounting on Mugabe to leave power and give way to
energetic young leaders.

Thabo Mbeki's perceived "softly softly" approach to Mugabe is again exposed.
The former president has refused to condemn Mugabe for his brutality.

Speaking at the funeral of politician Elliot Manyika last week, an
unrepentant Mugabe attacked Britain and America for his country's woes.
Manyika, a close ally of Mugabe died in a road accident last week. In the
streets of Harare, there is talk that his death was suspicious.

Zimbabwe is the only African state where powerful political figures die in
road accidents. This has raised many questions among the ordinary
Zimbabweans who point at security forces for these "suspicious" deaths.

Another high profile political figure Border Gezi died in a road accident in
April 2001. In most of these road accidents, officials point the blame on
the conditions of the tires. But ordinary citizens ask, "How can high
profile political figures travel on worn out tires?"

One woman told OhmyNews, "Both Gezi and Manyika harboured presidential
ambitions. Ambitious people are a threat to the government."

Cholera-hit Zimbabwe bans food sales at CAN match against South Africa

http://www.apanews.net

APA-Harare (Zimbabwe) The Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) banned sales
of uncanned food during Sunday's African Nations championships second leg
match against South Africa in Harare amid fears that the ravaging cholera
outbreak could spread, APA learns here.

In a move likely to hit sales by vendors at football matches, the ZIFA
management said only canned drinks would be allowed during the tie between
the Zimbabwe Warriors and South Africa's Bafana Bafana at Rufaro Stadium.

This means that vendors would not be allowed to sell the staple sadza, a
soft porridge dish made up of maize meal and served with beef or vegetables.

Another favourite with soccer lovers that vendors would not be able to sell
on Sunday is roasted or boiled peanuts, according to ZIFA.

The match is the first time the two countries' senior teams have met in
Harare in more than eight years.

Their last meeting in Harare was on July 9, 2000 when Zimbabwe lost to South
Africa in an emotive match that ended with 13 fans dying in a stampede at
the national sports stadium during a 2002 World Cup qualifier.

All previous encounters between the two sides prior to Sunday's match have
been held in South Africa.

Zimbabwe won the first leg 1-0 in South Africa two weeks ago.

  JN/daj/APA 2008-12-14

World must stand up to Mugabe's regime

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au

December 15, 2008

Article from:  The Australian
Zimbabwe's plight has now become a regional crisis.

IS it any wonder Robert Mugabe feels emboldened enough to declare the
cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe is over when the toughest response the
international community can come up with is to blacklist another 11
individuals? The day after Mugabe made his callous and outrageous statement,
the the World Health Organisation announced the death toll had climbed to
792, with 16,700 cases reported. Aid workers fear the actual numbers are
much higher because Zimbabwe's public health system has broken down. Those
suffering from cholera are not bothering to show up at hospitals. The
disease is spreading beyond Zimbabwe's borders, carried by refugees fleeing
pestilence and the collapsing economy. Such is the state of denial within
Zimbabwe's ruling clique that Mugabe's so-called information minister,
Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, had the audacity to blame the cholera epidemic on
Britain, accusing the British of waging biological warfare. As is obvious to
everyone outside Zimbabwe's ruling clique, the cholera epidemic is real, and
responsibility for it lies squarely with poor governance, failed economic
programs, corruption and state-sponsored violence.

Piecemeal attempts at sanctions against Zimbabwe have had little effect.
Despite being on the EU blacklist, Mugabe flew to Rome in June to attend a
global summit on the food crisis while his wife went shopping for Ferragamo
shoes. Attempts by the UN Security Council to impose tougher sanctions have
been thwarted by Russia and China on the grounds that Zimbabwe does not pose
an international threat. As frustration grows, calls for armed intervention
under the auspices of the UN's Responsibility to Protect resolution, adopted
in 2005 to deal with humanitarian crises and crimes against humanity, are
understandable. But it would be unwise to send in troops to overthrow the
Mugabe regime before all other steps have been exhausted. Getting Russia and
China to drop their objections to sanctions would be a massive psychological
blow to the regime, but not enough to dislodge it. As always, that will
require action by Zimbabwe's neighbours. After years of failing to hold
Mugabe to account, the cholera epidemic has finally mobilised regional
leaders to take a tougher line. South Africa's Nobel laureate, Archbishop
emeritus Desmond Tutu, and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga have both
called for an armed humanitarian intervention. South Africa's President
Kgalema Mothlante has signalled a tougher approach by withholding a R300
million ($45 million) aid package. He has called for the immediate swearing
in of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangerai as Zimbabwe's new prime minister
under the country's power-sharing deal. This has been interpreted by Africa
watchers as questioning the legitimacy of Mugabe's rule and is an
improvement on the weak-kneed approach of former president Thabo Mbeki.
Similarly the call by one of the continent's most senior statesman, Botswana
Foreign Minister Phandu Skelemani, to close Zimbabwe's borders and cut off
fuel and food supplies is seen as a sign of the growing frustration within
the South African Development Community at the lack of meaningful progress
in Zimbabwe.

Tough talk on its own, however, will have little effect on such an
intransigent regime. Unfortunately it appears South Africa's leadership does
not have the stomach for a real fight against Mugabe. ANC leader Jacob Zuma
said last week he still supported Mr Mbeki's mediation efforts, aimed at
paving the way for a unity government, despite all the evidence it cannot
work. The reluctance of the South African leadership to dump a fellow
liberation hero will only prolong Zimbabwe's tragedy. A power-sharing
arrangement between the Mugabe regime and Mr Tsvangerai's Movement for
Democratic Change even if implemented, is unlikely to improve the situation.
The only solution to the crisis is for Mugabe and his cronies to step aside,
and for the MDC, the rightful winner of the March elections, to form a new
government.

For years, Zimbabweans and members of the international community have been
asking how bad can it get before Mugabe is ousted from power. The World Food
Program estimates it will need to feed 5.5 million people by early next
year, or more than half the remaining population of what was once the
breadbasket of Africa. Taps in have run dry the capital, Harare, and sewage
flows through the streets. Unemployment is running at 90 per cent, and
schools have stopped functioning. Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation
rate, last estimated in July at 231 million per cent, but now thought to be
many times higher. The central bank issued a $Z500 million note last Friday,
the 29th new note to be put into circulation this year. In such
circumstances. the case for humanitarian intervention appears strong. But
with the UN unable to find enough peacekeepers for Congo, and the African
Union stretched in Darfur, there is little likelihood an intervention force
could be assembled. A better strategy would be for the West to increase the
pressure on South Africa to squeeze the life out of Zimbabwe's delusional,
corrupt and despotic leadership. A first step would be to deny the
legitimacy of Mugabe's illegal regime.

Words, not force

Diplomacy led by South Africa, not an unfeasible military adventure, is the
only answer to Zimbabwe's troubles

Blessing-Miles Tendi
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 December 2008 14.00 GMT

Jeremy Kuper's clamour for an invasion force to be sent to Zimbabwe is
troubling. The conditions in Zimbabwe are deplorable, and the country is on
the brink of becoming a failed state, but calls for regime change are
worrying.

Kuper is a democrat with a cause, but it is unfortunate that he resorts to
the concept of regime change in making his case for change in Zimbabwe.
There are hazards for democratic forces if they conscript terms and ideas
from western centres of power that are regarded as harbouring "imperial"
objectives by many in the world today. America and the "coalition of the
willing's" occupation of Iraq have discredited the concept and language of
regime change internationally. Regime change has become the lingua franca of
a "new imperialism", which makes it easy for Robert Mugabe to outflank
critics. It is imperative that democrats and critics of Mugabe take on this
charge as well as attacking his misrule.

Kuper's assessment of the feasibility and consequences of military
intervention in Zimbabwe are unsatisfactory. The Guardian reports today that
the UK is obstructing the deployment of a European force to the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, where a crisis of much larger proportion than that in
Zimbabwe has persisted since the mid 1990s. In light of this, the likelihood
that the UK would back a European force to Zimbabwe is diminished. The west
has no appetite for new military adventures anywhere in the world. Indeed,
it is at great pains to extricate itself from protracted misadventures such
as Iraq.

As for Africa, the African Union has ruled out the use of force in Zimbabwe.
The African voices making public calls for military force in Zimbabwe are
not new. Botswana, Zambia, Kenyan PM Raila Odinga, and Archbishops John
Sentamu and Desmond Tutu are established critics of Mugabe. Most African
states have remained silent on Zimbabwe. There is no "powerful anti-Mugabe
coalition" building, as Kuper puts it.

Kuper also suggests that Mugabe should be arrested and made to stand trial
at The Hague. This is a favourite and uninformed strategem of many who would
like to see change in Zimbabwe. The international criminal court (ICC) has
no jurisdiction over Zimbabwe, because the country did not ratify the ICC
treaty. And while it is within the power of the UN security council to refer
a human rights situation to the ICC for investigation, this has failed to
materialise for years now - and it is debatable whether consensus for such a
measure could ever be reached, given that Mugabe has some long-standing
"allies" on the security council.

Yesterday Mugabe described Morgan Tsvangirai's lobbying of several countries
in Europe and Africa to put pressure on Mugabe to form an equitable unity
government as a form of "prostitution", Such crude insults reflect the
disdain Mugabe and ZANU-PF have for Tsvangirai and the MDC. Bringing both
parties together in a workable unity government seems impossible, but it is
more likely than establishing democracy by force in Zimbabwe.

ZANU-PF and the MDC - by far the most obdurate obstacles to negotiation -
must be brought back to the table, and only Zimbabwe's regional neighbours
can accomplish this. Tough diplomacy led by South Africa is the only
practical way forward. Many in and outside of Zimbabwe are understandably
frustrated with South Africa, but the country is still Zimbabweans' best
hope. There are many carrots and sticks South Africa can use, if only it
could be bold and innovative in its diplomacy. Mugabe is either out of touch
with realities in Zimbabwe or he simply does not care, as demonstrated by
his ludicrous claim that the outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe is now under
control. Urgent diplomacy is required before more lives are lost.

---------
Comments

    Duballiland
  14 Dec 08, 2:21pm (about 5 hours ago)

    Jeremy Kuper's clamour for an invasion force to be sent to Zimbabwe is
troubling. The conditions in Zimbabwe are deplorable, and the country is on
the brink of becoming a failed state, but calls for regime change are
worrying.

  This is grand hand wringing in action.

  We could do something, but we probably shouldn't.
  After Mugabe turns Zimbabwe into a failed state you will hear about how we
could have done something but now its too late.

  If Mugabe and his cronies were white you would hear a different story.
What the author is writing is a death sentence for Zimbabwean's. It's
deplorable.

    Urgent diplomacy is required before more lives are lost.

  That has already failed. The Council of Elders, so favoured amongst hand
wringers couldn't even get into the country.

  The author of this piece and his defenders are morally bankrupt and guilty
in the face of those who have died, are dying and will die due to inaction.

 

   
    robjmckinney
  14 Dec 08, 2:37pm (about 4 hours ago)

  South Africa is falling apart into the usual post colonial turmoil, it is
going fall in its own internal problems, crime and violence out of control.
The democratic regime is unlikely to survive beyond another ten years and
some despot like Mugabe will take over. African states in general have
failed in most cases to survive the post colonial democratic phase without
despots taking charge. What develops beyond the despot phase is anybody
guess but Western democracy does not seem the answer. A new dominance from
the Muslim religion seems to provide important stability as it rolls across
Africa, perhaps a moderate version should be supported!

  But that would not suit the Neocons and industrilists who wish to maintain
the myths of enemy, Muslim extremists!

 
   

    garikayi
  14 Dec 08, 3:15pm (about 4 hours ago)

  I agree with you Mr Tendi, Zimbabwean problems will be solved by
Zimbabweans with the help of SADC and if anyone thinks that they can use
military power to solve the problems they are dreaming. Zimbabwean army and
the War Vets has got the experience of protecting any form recolonisation of
Zimbabwe under the cover of protecting human rights of Zimbabwe. They fought
wars in Rhodesia, Angola, Mozambique and DRC and I don`t see any military
force defeating these solders. What we need in Zimbabwe is for the
opposition MDC-Party to be mature enough and form a government of national
unity with Mugabe as the only possible solution for laying the foundation of
Zimbabwe for future generations otherwise if they don`t form this government
there will be another fresh elections in Zimbabwe and Zanu PF will win by
over 84% just like the Presidental election run-off with or without the
supervision of UN and other african election monisters, excluding the
commonwealth and EU.

 


    tomper2
  14 Dec 08, 3:25pm (about 4 hours ago)

    A new dominance from the Muslim religion seems to provide important
stability as it rolls across Africa, perhaps a moderate version should be
supported!

  That's demented even by CiF standards.

 

    xenumaster
  14 Dec 08, 3:29pm (about 4 hours ago)

  Tough diplomacy! I can see him giving up before he is talked to death. The
best solution would be invasion by another African country. Mugabe should be
assassinated if possible.

 

Report abuse

   
  14 Dec 08, 3:33pm (about 3 hours ago)

  I have low expectations for the likelihood that this new thread will
produce any new insights. Most probably most contributions will fall into
three categories

  (a) the neo-con hawks, still smarting over the defeat of Bush and Blair in
Iraq and Afghanistan, who will urge instant shock and awe (The same crowd
that announced that the killing of de Menezes was "just the wrong time and
the wrong place" or some similar banality)

  (b) those who oppose on principle all such invasions as western
imperialism and who want only peaceful intervention

  (c) the group in the middle who are anguished about what Mugabe has done,
hate the Iraq and Afghani invasions, but cant reach a position

  You can tell instantly that I am not in group (a).

  I have never, as far as I can recall, heard this kind of debate focus on
the choice of the invader. You get a lot of claptrap nonsense from the far
right along the lines of "would you have preferred Saddam to stay in power"
? The issue should be, "if an invasion is necessary to remove Saddam from
power, are George Bush and Tony Blair acceptable invaders ?" Here I and
probably 98% of the world are agreed, and the answer would be a resounding
"NO" !! These two criminal spivs couldnt possibly be trusted with anything
important to humankind because they are immoral, greedy, and corrupt
bastards.

  So would I find Gordon Brown and Tony Miliband acceptable invaders to
remove Mugabe. With no hesitation, the answer is "NO" ! Brown has no moral
fibre and is such an opportunist that he couldnt possibly be trusted with
such a task. Miliband is an incompetent twit and hardly deserves mention. If
Lord Malloch Brown was independent of nulab, he could at least be considered
because of his honourable service to the UN.

  How about Obama ? My answer would be a "No", simply because Obama is
powerless to keep at bay the war profiteers and scum who see invasions as
business opportunities. America is not fit, in its current condition, to
invade anyone, and their armed forces are too replete with psychopaths.

  NATO is simply America in disguise. The UN's track record has been very
uneven in recent years, and the African Union is unable to discharge this
kind of mission. SADCC would in principle be the best invader, but SADCC is
in disarray and probably not equal to the task.

  So that, in my view is the nub of the issue. Its not a question of whether
or not Mugabe should be removed from power. He is highly unlikely to go
simply because of pressure. But I doubt whether there is an acceptable
invader.

  So I find that my position has to be that it is the task and duty of the
Zimbabwe people to remove Mugabe from power. External allies provide the
type of support, short of an invasion, determined by the leadership of the
Zimbabwe people opposed to this tyrant.

 

    afancdogge
  14 Dec 08, 3:45pm (about 3 hours ago)

  At which point does a state become a "failed state"? When it starts to
murder its people, when it allows mass famine to take hold, when it drives
its people out leaving them to exist in a barren landscape or when it denies
that a virulent disease is ravaging an already weakened population? What
else does it have to do?

  Intervention cannot happen because - Mugabe is a father of freedom in
Africa - it may reek of imperialism - its neighbours are weak and corrupt or
any other reason or excuse someone can think of.

  How many refugees are there now in SA? How many more will there be? When
will the world call halt and insist, diplomatically or through more forceful
means that Mugabe must go? The time for excuses and excusing is over.

  Give the awful man free passage to anywhere that will have him and promise
him freedom from prosecution if that's what it takes but get rid of him -
the Zimbabweans can't wait until he dies. Then get on with the huge task of
rebuilding this once thriving nation.

  Leni

 

    afancdogge
  14 Dec 08, 3:55pm (about 3 hours ago)

 

  I agree - the WHO is the main problem. We are then left with the question
of who will support the population and how? This, I know, is moving your
question one step sideways.
  L

 


    robjmckinney
  14 Dec 08, 4:01pm (about 3 hours ago)

  tomper2

  Any more demented than to wars of occupation replacing soverign
governments that we will lose and the problem still to exist and two more
despots take over. The Sudan finally found stability through the crude
Muslim religion that bought important stability. So the American pay a
foriegn country to invade to maintain instability on the grounds that it was
a war on extremists. While we in the West enjoy our corrupt little
democracy, it cannot work in the Third world. We in the West may not like
certain religons clearly they provide important stability for a country to
modernise, given time, but we always want to 'tinker' and exploit.

  Africa was a mess created by the West, we should not 'tinker' and let them
develop their own way, Zimbabwe is a prime example, Mugabe could not have
survived without Western money and exploitation!

 

    whambham
  14 Dec 08, 4:35pm (about 2 hours ago)

  Words? Mindful that most coups in Africa succeed while The Boss is at the
post-Xmas sale at Harrods filling up a few 40 foot containers of cargo it
could go something like this?

  Bob you old goat - how the hell are you? You know when I hear what those
two-timing English neo-colonialist queers are doing to you mate it makes my
effing blood boil. Have they NO respect. And what's this new thing dropping
cholera in your drinking water? I mean HOW low can you go?

  Listen you need to get away for a while. Am I right? I know I am. O.K. so
here's the deal - what about you and general Vitalis and a few top PLU
popping over to my spot for a few jars and a couple of laughs? Hey? Don't
bring the missus - no use taking coal to Newcastle - catch my drift? Why
don't you lot jump into the jet and take a turn past my place. You won'r
regret it. Hey? You in? Can I order the sushi?

 


   
  14 Dec 08, 4:37pm (about 2 hours ago)

    afancdogge

   
    I agree - the WHO is the main problem. We are then left with the
question of who will support the population and how? This, I know, is moving
your question one step sideways.

  No, I think that is a very useful way to take the debate. The problem
becomes the motives of the supporters.

  Zimbabwe is a country very rich in mineral resources, including uranium
and one of the world's largest supplies of metallurgical-grade chromite, and
substantial quantities of diamonds, gold, platinum, and copper etc.

  There are, on CIF, a large body of what I would describe as the
"ultra-naif", the gullible who believe that when leaders announce
"altruistic interventions" they actually mean what they say. Most of us know
that things dont happen that way. Countries whose main export is asparagus
dont get invaded (just like countries that dont support the phony war on
terror, dont get bombed). There are always motives.

  The UN (but not NATO) is supposedly there to try to give higher principles
some predominance over greed and commercial goals. But the UN has been so
gutted by the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and is so heavily manipulated
by the US and its allies (as well as the other sides), that it seldom
succeeds in following principle. Despite Bush's contravention of the
constitution, America can only intervene with congressional support.
Congress is NOT made up of people of principle. It is made up exclusively of
millionaires with corporate interests. If the good of the Zimbabwe people
happens to coincide with the goals of corporate America, then the support
the US offers to a people's rebellion against Mugabe may be helpful. But
alas, the US would expect the new leader to hand over the extraction and
export of all Zimbabwe's mineral wealth to American corporations, without
even international bidding, just as the US has done in Iraq and Afghanistan,
ie to become a US client state and colony.

  The US cobbled together its "coalition of the willing" based on promises
to share the loot. Of course, Bush et al had no intention of so doing, and
the "coalition" collapsed publicly with much recrimination. The US decided
to use NATO as a cover to the same kind of bribe in Afghanistan, and that
has collapsed too, with European countries unwilling to give any, or more
than token support, to a war that has been lost, and where the loot, other
than heroin and constantly vulnerable oil pipelines, never emerged. Britain
of course, is America's suppository, so it always goes along for the ride.

  So what kind of coalition could be cobbled together to support the people
of Zimbabwe ? I expect only fine words from Obam.the reality is that the
Clintons and the corporations will decide. Brown has zero credibility almost
everywhere, and many concerns about his mental condition as he keeps
announcing in his deluded state that he is saving the world. The
Scandinavians and the Dutch generally put together the most altruistic
coalitions in support of liberation movements, and let us hope they will do
so again. If Canada had a progressive government, which it doesnt (yet ??)
they could be partners too. But the US and the UK will try to dominate, and
this will sully the entire venture.

  Let us just hope that the Zimbabwe people and their leaders are canny
enough to do most of this alone, and to carefully select their external
alliances

 
   

    whambham
  14 Dec 08, 4:42pm (about 2 hours ago)

  P.S. brainwave - why don't you bring old MT along too? Tell him you want
to bury the hatchet (in his head ha ha) I got a BIG pool here yeah? Ring a
bell? Two wrds Albert Mugabe .

 


    MeandYou
  14 Dec 08, 4:56pm (about 2 hours ago)

  The Zimbaweans should blame themselves, to have allowed an 80 something
year old to hold them and their future to ransom.

  My view of them is cowardly. They should lie in their beds as they make
it.

 
   

    JonathanWest
  14 Dec 08, 4:57pm (about 2 hours ago)

  If force is not going to be used, then what does diplomacy have to offer.
Mugabe isn't going to leave of his own accord, so the diplomacy has got to
say something to the effect of "You have to make a real compromise regarding
sharing power or we will...".

  If force is to be ruled out, then how will that sentence be completed?

 

   
    toom
  14 Dec 08, 5:06pm (about 2 hours ago)

  Well I for one am convinced by the anti Iraq war arguments, let's just sit
back and let Mugabe or any other dictator butcher their citizens. Let's
extend the argument to Aid which should be withdrawn and diverted to
democratic countries.
  Any intervention will be criticised by people like the author and the anti
war brigade (who by the way tend to do their moralising from a distance) so
why not try it their way and let the week fend for themselves, sod them why
give a toss just let them go to the wall and let famine disease and genocide
(the problems had their origins in tribal conflict) reduce the population to
a sustainable level.
  Could be a recipe for other countries and save those countries with a
concience a lot of money and lives.

 


   
  14 Dec 08, 5:06pm (about 2 hours ago)

  Jonathan: No, you cannot offer Mugabe power-sharing. He is not only a
thug, but seriously insane, a terrible combination, and he is not fit to
share anything other than a cell in the Hague, or exile in some crappy
place. The US offered Mengistu exile, and he accepted it...he went to
Zimbabwe !!!! I believe that Amin accepted exile as well. That is probably
the only offer that can decently be made.

  I do think that the conditions for a domestic rebellion are becoming
stronger, and that the military must be seriously weighing its options.
Terrible though the suffering is, an internal collapse would be infinitely
preferable to a direct intervention. The world should provide whatever
relief aid it can, and that effort really needs to be jacked up.

  I was brought up under and exiled for my opposition to apartheid, so I do
have a passing understanding of what is happening. I dont think Mugabe will
last for long.

  Incidently, the one option not discussed much so far is a commando raid to
take Mugabe out. I have huge problems with that; but it should be debated

 
   

   
  14 Dec 08, 5:08pm (about 2 hours ago)

  Toom ! O dear !

 

    JonathanWest
  14 Dec 08, 5:20pm (about 2 hours ago)

 

  OK, if you aren't going to offer him something (diplomacy usually consists
of offering something in exchange for what you want). Then the sentence
starts "You must hand over power or we will..."

  How would you complete the sentence? If there is nothing that you will do,
then diplomacy is at an end and you accept that Mugabe remains in power
unless and until forces over which you have no control result in his
removal.

  Blessing Miles-Tendi's argument was that diplomacy was supposed to do
something. Bu posing the question in the way I did, I was in essence asking
what th diplomacy was supposed to achieve, and how it might go about
achieving it. The article was entirely silent on the topic.

 


    toom
  14 Dec 08, 5:22pm (about 2 hours ago)

  , you're right that should have been "weak" not "week",

 

   
  14 Dec 08, 5:40pm (about 1 hour ago)

  jonathan

  Actually, your proposal sounds a lot like a threat or ultimatum, rather
than "diplomacy". I am not disagreeing. I dont think Mugabe is either
morally capable of sufficiently in sound mind to be a target of diplomacy.
It probably has to be a threat. There are many threats you can make, but I
dont believe in making threats as a bluff, the way Gordon Brown and Tony
Milibunch do. You make threats only when you know you can carry them out.
That requires both a tactical assessment of what can be done, and agreement
among the parties who will do it. So the end of your sentence has to emerge
from a process, not from someone's uninformed brain. We can all to the
pretend bit, but that would just be bluster (not of course in any way
foreign to CIF, where bluster prevails)

 


    whambham
  14 Dec 08, 5:56pm (about 1 hour ago)

  gentlemen there is no carrot and there is no stick - only an ass.

 

Report abuse

    afancdogge
  14 Dec 08, 5:57pm (about 1 hour ago)

 

  You have divided the question into its 2 component parts.

  1 How to alleviate immediate suffering - tied in with the "what to do
about Mugabe?" problem.

  2 Long term reconstruction of the country.

  Part 1 is still moot.

  Part 2 . Can politics ever be altruistic and simply respond to need? As
long as national self interest, tied in with the demands of multinats, rule
the agenda the answer must be no.

  Amin did indeed find refuge - in KSA where he reportedly lived on a diet
of oranges !

  Leni

 
   

   
  14 Dec 08, 6:04pm (58 minutes ago)

  Leni

  I have no doubt that Zimbabwe can reconstruct itself. Even under Mugabe,
despite his pretend-socialism, Zimbabwe has had a thriving private sector
and at one time extensive foreign investment. Zimbabwaens are also highly
educated and able by African standards, and can regulate their economy to
limit foreign exploitation. That will not be a problem, I can assure you
after decades of work in international development and intimate
understanding of the country.

  It is true that how much can be done to alleviate immediate suffering is
moot. All we can be sure about is that when it rises above a certain level,
Mugabe's allies will desert him, and then he wont be given the option of
exile.

 



    afancdogge
  14 Dec 08, 6:33pm (29 minutes ago)

 

  Given the undoubted natural resources of the country and the certainty
that it could once again, under the right leadership, become the bread
basket of southern Africa, coupled with your assessment of the abilities of
its people we seem to have come full circle in our question !

  Who can be trusted to support the people, as and when they make their bid
for freedom, who will not use assistance offered as an excuse to
land/resource grab?
  If anyone uses the phrase "nation building" I will go and jump off the
step!

  You talk of an educated middle class with a strong private sector which
could be developed. Is the educational base still there - is the current
generation being educated to a high standard or will there be a generation
gap left when Mugabe goes?

  Leni

 

Report abuse

    MungoTeazer
  14 Dec 08, 6:38pm (24 minutes ago)

  Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy" has been a laughable failure (as anyone
with half a brain cell knew it would be).

  As the leaders of Kenya and Botswana, and South Africans like Desmond
Tutu, have made it clear, the time for diplomatic dancing is over. Diplomacy
has utterly failed to get Mugabe to respect democracy and human rights; it
is business as usual for him.

  Mugabe and his goons must be removed by force; the time for talking is
over. Otherwise, thousands more will die.

 
   

   
  14 Dec 08, 6:49pm (13 minutes ago)

  Leni

  I think that I have already expressed concerns about the baggage that will
be tied to help given to the Zimbabwaen people in their effort to rid
themselves of Mugabe. The history has not been good. I am personally
familiar with the help given by Sandinavian countries to Eritrea in their
battle for freedom. I was quite impressed at the degree of altruism that was
evident in that effort. Until the UK became America's suppository, thanks to
Blair, the UK was also capable of a degree of altruism. That wont return
until Britain cuts the umbilical cord with America. Even under Obama, all
American assistance will be highly conditional.
  The kind of short term help Zimbabwe needs now should be channeled through
UN agencies like UNICEF, WHO, UNHCR, UNIFEM etc. Most countries will do
this, except America which usually insists on its own programs because
America doesnt transfer funds. USAID goes mostly to US contractors.

  After Mugabe has gone, there are thousands of well educated exiles who
will return, easily sufficient to run the country along with the able people
who have remained. There wont be anything like as dramatic as a "lost
generation", but there will be a period of loss in terms of some levels of
education. This is not to underestimate the task of reconstruction; but it
will be achievable. Remember that Zimbabwe has close historical ties to
South Africa where there is incredible capacity to restore essential
infrastructure and agriculture, and recommence mining.

Bringing down Mugabe might not be the answer

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette

The Gazette
Published: 9 hours ago
From Britain's Gordon Brown and France's Nicholas Sarkozy to U.S. Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, world leaders are demanding that Robert Mugabe be
removed from power in Zimbabwe.

And yet voices from inside that country warn that any invasion or
destabilization, however benignly-intended, could do more harm than good.

"What we need now is increased humanitarian aid," says Irene Petras,
executive-director for Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.

Petras and her colleague Andrew Makoni visited The Gazette editorial board
this week, part of a cross-Canada tour on behalf their group, this year's
recipient of Canada's John Humphrey Freedom Award from the well-regarded
group Rights & Democracy.

A cholera outbreak is the latest affliction for Zimbabweans, following
inflation, economic collapse, hunger, and shocking denials of human rights
under the increasingly violent and erratic Mugabe.

With unearthly patience, ZLHR devotes itself not to getting rid of Mugabe
but to protecting the flickering flame of honest courts, democratic
institutions and human rights.

Our guests noted that the sudden disappearance of Mugabe could open the way
for factional fighting among his followers, rather than for an instant
revival of democracy.

And so ZLHR refuses to despair of last spring's power sharing accord between
Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, although it is still not in
effect and Mugabe shows no genuine will to compromise.

ZLHR members gather reports of rights abuses by state agencies and then,
often at great danger to themselves, go to court to start proceedings,
sometimes with success. But several ZLHR monitors have recently been
abducted.

Externally, ZLHR insists, the way ahead is through political pressure on
Mugabe from the African Union and the Southern African Development
Community, the supposed guarantors of the power-sharing pact. If those
bodies were to speak out, "the political parties would behave," Petras said.
But the silence of the AU and SADEC tells Mugabe he can abuse with impunity.

During their time here, the lawyers saw Canada's government teeter on the
brink of non-confidence, veer over to prorogation, and retire in confusion
from the field. Unlike so many Canadians, however, the two Zimbabweans say
they were heartened by what they saw - it was, they said, an example of a
country ruled by law, not by force.

Mugabe fiddles while Zimbabwe dies

http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/1095874.html

From The Economist
Sun. Dec 14 - 4:45 AM

THE ZIMBABWE crisis has reached a new level that is both hideous and,
paradoxically, hopeful. The hideous part is that people are dying - indeed,
Zimbabwe as a country is dying - at an even faster rate than before, as
cholera sweeps across the country.

Mass hunger looms: the UN's World Food Program reckons that, in the new
year, it must provide food for 5.5 million in a population that has shrunk,
through disease and emigration, from about 12 million probably to less than
nine million.

Despite a power-sharing deal that Robert Mugabe signed in mid-September with
the leader of the opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, who defied the stacked odds
to win both a general election and the first round of a presidential one in
March, government violence continues apace.

Mugabe shows no sign of wanting to compromise. Even in the past two weeks,
leading human-rights campaigners and people prominent in Tsvangirai's party
have been abducted. The local currency is worthless, so swathes of public
services have ceased to function.

Zimbabweans have been reduced to subsistence (some survive on roots and
berries), barter, and remittances and handouts from abroad. A true
humanitarian disaster beckons.

The hopeful angle in this horror is that cracks are widening both in Mugabe's
regime and among his backers elsewhere in Africa. Riots by unpaid junior
soldiers have yet to spread to the middle ranks but may do so.

South Africa and the Southern African Development Community, the 15-country
regional club, continue to wobble and waffle, with South Africa's ousted
president, Thabo Mbeki, as feeble as ever in his mandated role as mediator.
But the spread of cholera across the Limpopo River into South Africa has
intensified the debate there.

Talk in high places about removing Mugabe, perhaps even by force, is no
longer deemed outlandish.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an icon of the anti-apartheid movement, has called
for just that.
Voices elsewhere in Africa, such as those of Botswana's president, Ian
Khama, and Kenya's prime minister, Raila Odinga, have become louder in
calling for Mugabe's demise. Botswana's foreign minister wants sanctions
against Zimbabwe to include stopping oil supplies.

In July a UN Security Council resolution to impose targeted sanctions
(travel bans and asset freezes) against Mugabe and his acolytes was blocked
by China and Russia, with South Africa also dissenting, on the ground that
Zimbabwe posed no threat to international stability.
China and Russia can hardly still argue that case with a straight face.

Moreover, Zimbabwe is close to meeting the criteria for invoking the
declaration endorsed at the UN in 2005 that there is an international
"responsibility to protect" people facing, among other things, crimes
against humanity.

A group of peacemakers known as "the Elders," including Jimmy Carter, a
former American president, and Kofi Annan, the UN's former head, having been
refused entry into Zimbabwe, may help to push the issue up the UN's agenda.

Though Mugabe would try to resist such a move, Annan is quietly standing by
to assume the mediator's job in place of Mbeki, an appointment devoutly to
be wished.

Calling for military intervention before wider sanctions have been applied
is premature, even though it may come to force in the end. And economic
sanctions are themselves a blunt instrument that sometimes harm the people
more than the rulers.

Stopping oil supplies may have just that effect. But UN sanctions focused
tightly on Mugabe and his coterie, and supported by South Africa, could have
a big impact. The leader of South Africa's ruling party, Jacob Zuma, likely
to be the country's president next year, must surely respond to the
crescendo of outrage.

The power-sharing deal is being overtaken by events. Tsvangirai is right to
reject the one-sided conditions under which Mugabe says he will implement
it.

As cholera and refugees threaten to destabilize South Africa itself, its
rulers must start to consider drastic measures to rescue the benighted
country that Zimbabwe has now become.
Talk in high places about removing Mugabe, perhaps even by force, is no
longer deemed outlandish.

Just Like It Is - Zimbabwe my heart bleeds

Nation News, Barbados

Published on: 12/14/08.

BY PETER SIMMONS

RECENT REPORTS from Zimbabwe suggest that country, once the bread basket of
Africa, is a crisis-plagued, chaotic basket case. It pains me to listen to
facile apologists, both one-on-one and on the call-in programmes, who keep
their heads buried in the sands of denial, thrashing about desperately for
plasters to cover President Mugabe's numerous sores.

On one of my visits to South Africa, I was introduced to a Zimbabwean
émigré, Blessings, who fled his country fearing for his life. At that time
Barbados was vice chair of the Commonwealth Action Group (CMAG) which was
mandated by Commonwealth Heads of Government to investigate and report on
member states violating basic core values.

He wanted to talk. We met in Johannesburg, he poured out his heart and we
became friends. We continue to communicate and three weeks ago he called.
Mugabe had refused a group of eminent persons - Kofi Annan, former UN
Secretary-General, former United States President Jimmy Carter and Gracia
Machel, wife of Nelson Mandela - permission to enter Zimbabwe on a
fact-finding humanitarian mission.

He was in deep despair. That team of global icons was seeking, in the early
stages of the cholera outbreak, to find the genesis and extent of the
disease, report their findings to the international community and locate
human and medical resources to arrest and treat the often fatal disease
threatening to become an epidemic in Zimbabwe and beyond its boundaries.

In his view, Mugabe is criminally uncaring about the health and welfare of
Zimbabweans. His latest action demonstrated that he has taken permanent
leave of his senses and the puppet regime in Harare was equally culpable,
lacking testicular fortitude and putting self-preservation and personal gain
above the general good of the population at large.

The only salvation he saw for his homeland was armed intervention by the
African Union supported by Commonwealth and United Nations forces. Mugabe
and the entire leadership of his ruling party he labeled a "squalid gang of
marauding thugs" who should be put on trial at the International Court of
Justice on charges of genocide.

In Barbados we see TV images and hear BBC radio capturing the abyss of
death, disease, hunger, government-inspired brutality, widespread
lawlessness and economic chaos into which Zimbabwe has plunged. But from 7
000 miles away we cannot comprehend fully the despair and desperation of a
country crippled by the world's highest inflation, 80 per cent unemployment
and a loaf of bread costing ZIM$2 million( BDS $18).

I hear Barbadian apologists using arguments, some obtuse, some irrelevant,
most rooted in emotion about Mugabe the freedom fighter who brought down Ian
Smith and his kith and kin and delivered Southern Rhodesia from the shackles
of British colonialism. They resile from the fact that he has morphed into a
brutal, genocidal tyrant sacrificing his country to insatiable greed and
ruthless megalomania. Zimbabwe today is devastated by hunger, thirst and
general deprivation unexperienced even in the darkest colonial days.

Lest we forget, his current presidency is founded in fraud. He did not win
the election. Morgan Tsvangirai did and should be President. Magnanimously,
in a power- sharing deal brokered by South Africa President Mbeki,
Tsvangirai agreed to be Prime Minister. Mugabe reneged on numerous
agreements fundamental to the power-sharing deal and, in a weird move,
denied the Prime Minister a passport, keeping him prisoner in Zimbabwe.

I trust our Barbadian apologists noted that two distinguished African
theologians, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Archbishop Tutu and Uganda-born Dr
John Sentamu, Archbishop of York and number two in the Church of England,
have joined the chorus of international outrage calling for Mugabe's
removal. Indeed, Archbishop Sentamu feels so strongly he has removed his
clerical collar, vowing to wear it again only when Mugabe is gone.

African states have been dilatory and indifferent to world opinion in taking
decisive action. Now the anti-Mugabe choir is raising its voice with the
President of Botswana, Prime Minister of Kenya and ANC leader and next
President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, telling him to go or be removed. None
has ruled out the use of force.

Saddled with a demented and demonic leader, Zimbabwe's prognosis is grim.
The economic situation worsens hourly. Government-sanctioned lawlessness is
escalating. Sixty thousand people are estimated suffering from cholera and
over 750 have died. Doctors are fleeing and health services have collapsed.
The flood of refugees into neighbouring states threatens them with cholera,
puts overwhelming pressures on their social services and generates levels of
hostility bordering on xenophobia.

So Blessings, my friend, my heart bleeds for Zimbabwe. Happy Kwanzaa. My New
Year's wish for you and your loved ones is good health, good luck and with
God's help, early deliverance from Mugabe's tyranny.

Peter Simmons, a social scientist, is a former High Commissioner to the UK
and South Africa.