http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=12370
February 24, 2009
By Our
Correspondent
HARARE - The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will hold
emergency
meetings today to consider pulling out of the government of
national unity
after learning that President Robert Mugabe had reassigned
all the permanent
secretaries' posts to members of his own party.
The MDC
has described this latest development in the short life of the
troubled new
government as a serious breach.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said last
night what made the latest episode
unfortunate was the fact that that it
came on the back of a series of acts
of bad faith by their partners in the
GNU.
"Half the permanent secretaries appointed should be taken out of
Zanu-PF's
hands, otherwise the MDC will walk away from the GNU," Chamisa
said.
A meeting of the MDC standing committee was scheduled for this
Wednesday
morning to discuss the appointment of permanent secretaries and
coordinate
a response.
State television announced that the Chief
Secretary to the President and
Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda had reassigned
some permanent secretaries and
appointed new ones.
However, all the
34 permanent secretaries, including the so-called new ones,
are all members
of President Mugabe's Zanu-PF party. Zimbabwe now has 41
Cabinet ministers.
This means that seven vacancies are still outstanding.
Sibanda told ZTV
in a statement that appointments in the remaining
ministries and departments
in the Office of the President and Cabinet, the
offices of the Vice
Presidents, the Office of the Prime Minister and the
offices of the Deputy
Prime Ministers will be made in due course.
He also announced senior
appointments in the President's office.
Dr Ray Ndhlukula has been
re-assigned as deputy chief secretary for Policy
Co-ordination and
Administration in the Office of the President and Cabinet
while Retired
Colonel Christian Katsande has been promoted to deputy chief
secretary in
the department of Economic Research and Policy Analysis in the
Office of the
President and Cabinet.
Chamisa said Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was
not consulted about the
appointments of permanent secretaries as the global
political agreement
clearly prescribes. He said the lack of good faith and
the absence of a
paradigm shift by Zanu-PF and, more importantly, the lack
of trust and
respect Zanu-PF had exhibited towards the other parties to the
GNU
threatened the inclusive government.
"This is not a stand alone
issue," Chamisa told The Zimbabwe Times. "It's
coming on the back of other
serious violations. We have always known we are
dealing with a dishonest
partner. But their dishonesty is now becoming
encyclopaedic. It's a serious
breach."
SADC chairman and South African President, Kgalema Motlanthe,
who helped
mediate the power-sharing deal between the MDC and President
Mugabe's Zanu
(PF) party last month and leads a body that is a guarantor of
the GNU, was
due to be alerted of this latest breach and will be called in
to try and
salvage the agreement, which was meant to break the country's
long political
impasse.
Chamisa said the latest episode echoes the
ministerial grab by Mugabe in
October. Mugabe allocated to Zanu-PF every
important ministry, including
defence, home affairs, justice, foreign
affairs and local government, and
only surrendered the finance ministry to
the MDC. Mugabe refused to
equitably share the ministries until the MDC
backed down and accepted his
unilateral appointments.
He also
attempted to grab all the 10 gubernatorial posts for his party but
regional
leaders persuaded him to relent and share. Eventually MDC got five
governors, Zanu-PF four with one post reserved for the breakaway MDC faction
led by Prof Arthur Mutambara.
Chamisa said Mugabe and Zanu-PF had
continued to undermine the agreement by
kidnapping and arresting party
supporters, senior officials and civil
society allies. He said the arrest of
the MDC treasurer, Roy Bennett, just
as he was set to join government as
deputy Minister of Agriculture and the
latest grab of all permanent
secretary posts was the last straw to break the
camel's
back.
"Zanu-PF is pushing its luck too far," he said. "Also they are
taking the
MDC for granted. It's not supposed to be a Zanu-PF government.
It's supposed
to be an inclusive government."
Ideally, said Chamisa,
the appointments of permanent secretaries and all
senior civil servants
should have been handled by the Prime Minister working
with Mugabe, "not
this appalling unilateralism".
"It's the same with what they did with
governors, same thing with ministers
of State," Chamisa said. "It was
unilateral action without the input of the
MDC. Just like what they are
doing, continuing to invade farms, arresting
Bennett, keeping (Reserve Bank
governor Gideon) Gono and Attorney General
Johannes Tomana in their
jobs."
The MDC, which won the parliamentary elections and the most votes
in the
first presidential ballot in March last year, said the issue of
permanent
secretaries was not negotiable.
The permanent secretaries
appointed are:
Judith Kateera - Department of Economic Research and
Policy Analysis in the
Office of the President and Cabinet
Ngoni
Masoka - Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development
Margaret
Chiduku - Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs
Martin Rushwaya
-Defence
Dr Desire Sibanda - Economic Planning and Investment
Promotion
Dr Stephen Mahere - Education, Sport, Arts and
Culture
Justin Mupamhanga - Energy and Power Development
Florence
Nhekairo - Environment and Natural Resources
Willard Manungo -
Finance
Joey Bimha - Foreign Affairs
Dr Gerald Gwinji - Health and
Child Welfare
Dr Washington Mbizvo - Higher and Tertiary
Education
Melusi Matshiya - Home Affairs
Abigail Shonhiwa -
Industry and Commerce
Dr Samuel Kundishora - Information Communication
Technology
David Mangota - Justice and Legal Affairs
Lancaster
Museka - Labour and Social Services
Sylvia Tsvakwi - Land and Land
Resettlement
Killian Mupingo - Local Government, Rural and Urban
Development.
George Charamba - Media, Information and
Publicity.
Thankful Musukutwa - Mines and Mining
Development.
David Munyoro - National Housing and Social
Amenities.
Constance Chigwamba - Public Service.
Engineer George
Mlilo - Public Works.
Tadeous Chifamba - Regional Integration and
International Trade.
Prof Francis Gudyanga - Science and
Technology.
Elizabeth Ndlovu - Small and Medium Scale Enterprises and
Co-operatives.
Partson Mbiriri - Transport and Infrastructural
Development.
Ringson Chitsiko - Water Resources Development and
Management.
Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango - Women's Affairs, Gender and
Community Development.
Prince Mupazviriho - Youth Development,
Indigenisation and Empowerment
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=12364
February 24, 2009
By
Jakaya Goremusandu
ZIMBABWE'S 19 million hectare communal lands, the
former tribal trust lands,
have all but been a source of food security, but
because of land tenure
limitations and policy flip flops, never a source of
inspiration for
development.
So desolate are those lands today and so
used up are soils that it is shame
to Zanu-PF which invaded formerly white
commercial farms under the guise of
de-congesting these dust bowls of
poverty and uncertainty through farm
invasions.
Land is a thorny
issue in Zimbabwe, partly because of lack of
industrialisation (another
indictment on Zanu-PF's nearly three decades of
rule) which assures the
nation of a viable social security system.
Land would cease to be factor,
almost immediately, if the current and new
generations know that Zimbabwe
can still look after them in case of
unemployment, retirement and after
death. The fact that this is not
possible, and has never been, pushes nearly
all black people to think of
land as a form of security - much to the
detriment of rationale debate and
reasoning.
To illustrate the
gravity of this issue, black Zimbabweans have never
regarded land as a
potential source of business. The tin houses littered in
the rural areas
were built from remittances from industry, from the urban
areas.
A
few, especially teachers, agriculture extension officers and migrant
workers
in the case of Matabeleland, parts of lower Masvingo and Chipinge
used their
savings to put together asbestos or tin roofed dwellings, usually
tiny three
or four roomed houses. Some from Seke, Chihota and Domboshava, so
goes the
urban legend, managed to put together brick under tile homes from
resources
acquired through dubious means in Harare and the surrounding
metropolis.
The point remains that none of what one could call better
housing in
Zimbabwe's rural areas today arose from agriculture proceeds or
savings.
Since 2000, nobody seems to have a proper record of the numbers
that moved
into the former white-owned commercial farms. But what is clear
is that
none, absolutely none, to this day has put up a permanent structure
in the
form of a home. They say they were advised by the government to
wait.
None of these new farmers, especially those who came in on the
strength of a
Zanu-PF party card from the rural areas, has any semblance of
food security.
They are failing to make ends meet, despite good soils and
abundant water.
All they could do was to vandalise farmhouses, rip off
irrigation
infrastructure, cut down firewood for sale and hunt down game for
food. You
hear farmers newly resettled on productive land complain that they
are being
sidelined by donors for food aid!
Against this background,
recent reports that close to 100 farms were invaded
recently makes
interesting, but ridiculous reading. The urge to acquire and
to sit on
capital is a Zimbabwean disease. All land today is dead capital
because of
these farm invasions which respect no international property
rights and
disregard agriculture as a business enterprise.
Let us face it; Zimbabwe
needs to industrialise to absorb the aspirations of
millions of young people
who queue daily at Internet cafes in urban areas in
order to connect with
the world. Zimbabwe needs a paradigm shift to deal
with a society that has
no connection to peasant, subsistence farming - a
society that has long
joined the global computer society through mobile
phones and Internet
connections.
This generation makes up nearly 60 percent of our population
and is
currently confused about the future as they migrate from country to
country
in search for food and economic security.
Nearly half of
Zimbabwe's young adult population, the prime intellectual
minds of the
nation, are in exile. If land was an attractive business
option, they could
all have come back a long time ago to try it out. But
this was not so, and
will never be. Instead they are leaving the land behind
to venture into the
Diaspora.
Zimbabwe needs to de-emotionalise land ownership. The starting
point is a
review of the situation of the communal lands. What are the
tenure issues
there that require investment to pour in and turn these
potentially
productive constituencies - with millions of hard working people
with
support or markets for their produce - into viable entities?
The
current invasions will serve no purpose other than to turn these farms
into
barren lands, like what happened to the rest of the country. Unless the
interim government deals with this thorny issue in the broader scheme of
stabilising Zimbabwe in the short term, no attempts at attaining food
security would bear fruit. All the money coming into the country would go to
food imports.
The new government was so lucky. The economic collapse
meant that no
Zimbabwean owed anybody anything, either for their homes in
urban areas,
vehicles or household furniture. For all his faults, Robert
Mugabe and
Zanu-PF turned nearly everybody into a businessperson. This could
turn out
to be our advantage in future.
In the past, Zimbabweans were
cushioned by a healthy economy, hated dirty
jobs and still could live in
relative comfort. One could quite competently
argue that by importing labour
from Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia into the
agricultural sector, Zimbabwe
enjoyed full employment status for its
citizens.
When the situation
turned sour, and overnight, fools became Pharaohs as they
turned to gold
panning, sold foreign money, fuel, trinkets, and tyres,
literally anything
of value.
What this means is that all the money likely to get into
Zimbabwe today
could easily be channelled into the productive sector as the
people have had
an experience with business ventures of different kinds
during the past 10
years. Such local investment could cause an economic
turn-around which could
be much faster than originally
anticipated.
But issues of food security are central to this resolve.
Without food,
without an economic recovery anchored on agriculture, there is
no way this
economy can be turned around.
The new invasions of the
remaining white owned farms simply dent the image
of the interim government
in the eyes of reasonable international investors
and political watchers. It
makes the recovery process impossible as nobody
would understand the new
direction the regime is going.
If one considers the waste in the rural
areas because of poor farming
methods and techniques, there is no land
problem - according to need and not
greed - in Zimbabwe today. We live in
interesting times, and it is up to the
new government to work out a way out
of the current chaos, which seems to
have blessings from Robert Mugabe - one
of the signatories to the peace
agreement.
Dozens of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe have reportedly been invaded by
supporters of President Robert Mugabe this month as the long-time opposition
joined a national unity government. Some suspect this is part of an attempt by hardline Mugabe supporters to
scuttle the agreement. Catherine Meredith, 40, tells the BBC what happened to
her farm. They told my husband that our farm was now being taken over by a local
businessman. Their manner was boastful and arrogant. When I came back from South Africa a few days later, I was advised by the
French embassy not to return to the farm (I'm originally from France). This is because in 2008 there were similar invasions of white-owned farms and
it got quite violent. Back then, there were people threatening to kill us and we
had to leave our farm for some time. This time, there was less violence, but I was in touch with my staff on the
mobile from Harare. They told me the invaders had been menacing towards them and
stopped them from working. This made my staff very angry, but they were under strict instructions from
me not to lose it. 'Rent-a-crowd' After a week, my husband and I returned to the farm. In the meantime we had
obtained a court order in Harare saying the squatters had no right to our
land. Then, 17 of them broke into our garden. Luckily, the police for once stuck up
for us and prevented them from breaking into our house. These squatters are arbitrary people who have been paid to squat on our farm.
We call them 'rent-a-crowd'. But generally the local police haven't been very helpful. Despite the
eviction order, they haven't tried to force the squatters off our land. They
claim they haven't got the manpower to help us. 'Change is coming' Financially this has cost us a great deal. The man who ordered the crowd to
seize our land has allowed his cattle to walk through our maize fields. This has
partly destroyed our crops. Emotionally, it's absolutely draining. You think you are protected by the law
and then this happens. All of our children are grown up and have moved away and thank goodness for
that. Otherwise we would have to worry about their safety as well. On the surface, this invasion seems more peaceful than the one last year. But
there are still about 12 of them on our land and you never know what they are
capable of. I have lived here since I was 23. Zimbabwe is my home now, I wouldn't know
where else to go. My husband was born in this area and he speaks Shona. We belong here. We are not giving up. We strongly believe that change is coming to Zimbabwe.
My feeling is that we are very near the end of these troubles. We have a new
prime minister now. I'm 100% confident that in five years' time, I'll still be living on this
farm.
On February
6, a crowd of 30 men showed up on our land. Most of them were young, many of
them wearing [President Mugabe's] Zanu-PF T-shirts.
I was away in South
Africa visiting my son at university but my husband had stayed behind. We had a
feeling that something could happen so we decided one of us should stay.
The crowd was still there. The atmosphere was very tense, very
unpleasant.
We calmly handed the eviction papers to the leader of the
pack. We want to follow the law by the letter. The local sheriff was with us. He
explained to them that they had no right to be there.
They kept saying
they hadn't been violent. But that isn't true. Last week they seized a member of
my staff and pushed his face to the ground to get him to hand over the keys to
our garden gate.
They drink and smoke pot quite a bit, and it worries me.
http://www.businessday.co.za
Posted
to the web on: 25 February 2009
Dumisani Muleya
Harare Correspondent
SOUTHERN
African Development Community (SADC) finance ministers, including
SA's
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, will meet in Cape Town today to discuss
Zimbabwe's economic recovery plan amid news the country needs $1bn to pay
vital obligations.
The summit, which comes a day ahead of the
SADC council of ministers
conference - also to be held in Cape Town tomorrow
- is critical as it could
inspire or undermine confidence in Zimbabwe's new
unity government.
Western countries and donors have said that they
would wait to see if the
new government was serious about tackling the
country' s economic malaise
before providing aid. Some are sceptical the
arrangement can work while
President Robert Mugabe remains at the
helm.
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has said the
country needs at
least $5bn to ensure recovery. Economic experts, however,
suggest $10bn is
needed for reconstruction.
Zimbabwe's economy
collapsed under Mugabe's leadership, and policy failures
have reduced the
country to a failed state.
The economy, its agricultural base
destroyed by violent land seizures, has
experienced 10 years of negative
growth. Its inflation rate is the world's
highest . Compounding efforts to
rebuild the country, its infrastructure -
roads, airports, railway networks,
schools, hospitals and clinics,
waterworks, power stations and bridges - is
collapsing.
Official documents show that Zimbabwe needs more than
$1bn to cover
essential imports and overdue debts. Payments outstanding
include bills for
food, fuel, electricity, as well as debt to Equatorial
Guinea for oil and
financial aid.
Education Minister David
Coltart said yesterday $438m was needed to
stabilise the education
sector.
"The ideal amount of money we need is $438m, and that is just for
the first
six months.
"Now in the current economic climate - and in
the context of world
recession - that is a completely unattainable figure.
So we have to cut it.
We are hoping to raise $80m."
Coltart held
marathon meetings with teachers' union representatives in a bid
to persuade
teachers to end their strike and return to work by next month.
Teachers, who
were paid R1000 last week, have been on strike since last
year.
Zimbabwe used to have the highest literacy rate in Africa,
but literacy has
plummeted throughout the drawn-out political and economic
crisis.
Besides the SADC finance ministers' summit and the SADC
council of ministers
conference, there is another crucial meeting today in
which Zimbabwe will
feature prominently. That meeting is between SA's
President Kgalema
Motlanthe and United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon, who arrived
in SA yesterday.
Motlanthe and Ban are
expected to discuss the situation in Zimbabwe among
other issues. They will
also discuss the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Sudan, Somalia, Madagascar
and the Middle East situation.
Other issues on their agenda include
the Durban Review Conference on Racism,
Xenophobia and Related Intolerance ,
the global crisis, climate change and
the reform of the UN .
The
UN on Monday pledged to help Zimbabwe tackle its critical humanitarian
crisis . The country faces chronic food shortages and a cholera
epidemic.
The World Health Organisation last week said that 3759
people who had
contracted the disease had died.
A total of 80250
cases had so far been reported.
A visiting UN team promised to deal
with the humanitarian situation gripping
the country after meeting Mugabe on
Monday.
UN assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and
deputy emergency
relief co-ordinator Catherine Bragg said the world body
would step up
efforts to help Zimbabwe.
"We are focusing on cholera
and any form of humanitarian assistance the UN
can offer," she
said.
Bragg visited cholera treatment facilities to assess the
situation.
She also met the ministers of labour, education, health,
agriculture and
foreign affairs.
http://www.radiovop.com
HARARE, February 25 2009 - The Zimbabwe
Broadcasting Holdings (ZBH)
continues to shun covering Movement for
Democratic Change activities despite
a directive given by the newly
appointed Minister of Information Media and
Publicity, Webster Shamu, last
week at a meeting held at Munhumuutapa
offices.
Prime
Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and ministers from his party have not
been given
much airtime on both radio and television compared to the old
ZANU PF
members since the formation of the inclusive government on February
11.
Last week Shamu and his deputy Jameson Timba (MDC),
summoned ZBH
Chief Executive Happison Muchechetere and his News
Editor-In-Chief Tarzen
Mandizvidza, both ZANU PF propagandists, to a meeting
where they were
ordered to address all members of the inclusive government
as Comrades and
give them equal media coverage.
http://www.businessday.co.za
25
February 2009
PATRICK BOND
bondp@ukzn.ac.za
ZIMBABWE's rancid
political deal may be doubted for the detentions of
Jestina Mukoko, Roy
Bennett and dozens of others, or for the 77 farms newly
redistributed to
Zanu (PF) elites, or for the bloated cabinet. But yet more
pain threatens
the country's future.
President Robert Mugabe's more than $5bn
foreign debt has not been serviced
since 1999, and paying arrears now will
mean belt-tightening for ordinary
Zimbabweans, who must by now be the
world's thinnest people.
South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel
and the African Development
Bank (AfDB) are the main diet advocates, with a
troubling precedent: the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. In June 2002, the
South African cabinet
lent R760m to the (unelected) government of Joseph
Kabila, saying it was "to
help clear (the Congo's) ... obligations with the
International Monetary
Fund (IMF)" to pave the way for new IMF loans.
Pretoria thus sanitised loans
made to Mobutu Sese Seko.
The
people of the Congo were previously victims of SA's apartheid-era
allegiance
with Mobutu. Thanks to unwitting postapartheid taxpayers, the
Mobutu loans
would be neither repudiated nor forgiven, but instead honoured
and serviced.
IMF staff were allowed back into Kinshasa with new loans plus
fierce
neoliberal condition s.
In a just world, Mobutu's and Mugabe's debts
should be repudiated by any
democrat. Mugabe's arrears stand at more than
$1,2bn merely to the AfDB,
World Bank and IMF.
Don't repay
Mugabe-era debt, says the director of the Zimbabwe Coalition on
Debt and
Development, Dakarayi Matanga: "There is danger that any new loans
will add
to the already huge debt stock. We therefore called on the
political
leadership to reveal the nature of these pledges, and for donor
countries to
cancel existing debts unconditionally instead of creating more
debt in order
for a new beginning to take place." He advocates "repudiation
of any odious
and illegitimate debts".
Repayment is impossible based on current
internal resources. Estimates of
flight capital over the past few weeks run
to $45m in the wake of reserve
bank governor Gideon Gono's liberalisation of
the currency and capital
controls, as the local unit utterly
collapsed.
The flood of crony capital to Sandton banks is not new: a
study last year on
capital flight by economists Leonce Ndikumana and James
Boyce found Zimbabwe
to be Africa's third-most victimised country in
relative terms, after
Nigeria and Angola.
Establishing a
respectable currency under conditions of continuous
government delegitimacy
will be a heroic task, especially if new loans are
mainly meant to repay old
loans, or if they facilitate more flight capital.
Worse is the
potential conditionality. The biggest hit to the democratic
credentials of
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Finance Minister Tendai
Biti will be
creditor instructions to further impoverish the "povo".
Advice from
IMF country staff hasn't changed: pure Washington Consensus. The
United
Nations Development Programme has joined the neoliberal chorus, with
its
Zimbabwe report, so reminiscent of the early 1990s Economic Structural
Adjustment Programme (Esap ). Matanga says: "The problems of access to clean
water, skills flight in local medical and health institutions, and poor
infrastructure vividly illustrate the current poor state of social services.
The genesis of this social decline can be located in the implementation of
neoliberal policies linked to Esap ."
Other South African
vultures are examining the dying corpse . Consider a
suggestion to
Tsvangirai last September from Investec's Roelof Horne:
"Austerity from
within".
Yet as Zimbabwean activist Elinor Sisulu said last week: "I
have seen the
(SA-led) mediation process as undemocratic and manipulative. I
have warned
the MDC that they are lambs going into crocodile-infested
waters."
If repaying the $1,2bn is priority one for the AfDB and the
Treasury, then
greedy crocodiles are also resident in Tunis and Pretoria.
How diabolical
would it be for SA to belt-tighten Zimbabweans, following
years of
belt-whipping sponsored by former president Thabo Mbeki financed by
the
multilaterals?
a.. Bond directs the University of
KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society
and co-authored the UKZN Press book
Zimbabwe's Plunge.
http://www.zimdiaspora.com
Wednesday, 25 February 2009 04:08
Zimbabwean army starts
recruitment drive among rural youths after one-third
of soldiers deserted
Printer friendly version Zimbabwe has embarked on a
mass recruitment
exercise of rural youths to be trained as soldiers against
the backdrop of
massive desertions of exasperated junior and middle ranking
officers over
low pay.
Soldiers in the country have been forced to turn to crime, looting
shops and
supermarkets and confiscating money and food from civilians;
sparking fears
of full-blown mutiny.
Runaway inflation estimated at
sextillion per cent meant that the buying
power of soldiers who were being
paid in local currency until this month had
been eroded, forcing many to
desert the armed forces.
The army employs about 30,000 soldiers but
inthenews.co.uk was told that
only about 20,000 soldiers or less are left in
Zimbabwe as a result of the
desertions.
"The last two months
witnessed a high number of desertions without any
official notice," a senior
army officer said.
Another army officer added: "Most of the junior
soldiers deserted jobs after
having received no response from the
authorities about their submitted
letters of resignation."
The army's
top brass, who have strong links with president Robert Mugabe,
bar junior
and middle level soldiers from quitting on suspicions that they
are leaving
national service to work with enemies of Zimbabwe to push for
regime
change.
Most of the senior military leaders participated in Zimbabwe's
1970s war of
independence and have vowed unwavering loyalty to Mugabe, who
at 85 years is
one of Africa's oldest leaders.
In a bid to protect
against the massive resignations, army officials said
they will up to the
end of March embark on a mass recruitment exercise of
youths in rural areas
for training as soldiers.
Strict requirements, like a basic educational
qualification, that have been
synonymous with past recruitment exercises
have been waived to woo jobless
rural youths to the army, inthenews.co.uk
was told.
Zimbabwe army Spokesperson Major Alphios Makotore said: "The
mass
recruitment started this week and will run through to the end of
March.
"There are no specific or strict requirements. What is only needed
is that
the youths should be fit and weighing about 50 to 60kgs and with a
height of
between 1.68m and 1.7m. Holders of the national youth certificate
have an
advantage."
President Mugabe introduced national youth
service in 2000, saying the
programme is aimed at instilling patriotism,
discipline and appreciation of
Zimbabwean culture.
Entrepreneurial
skills were supposed to be part of the national service
scheme.
However, military training, denouncement of the opposition
and ruling party
slogan chanting took up most of the training time. The
graduates were
nicknamed the Green Bombers because of their green military
type attire.
According to army sources, sparking massive resignations of
junior soldiers
is the huge salary gap between them and the top brass that
Mugabe relies on
to maintain grip on power.
Senior members of the
army earn about $2,000, are well looked after and
regularly diverted scarce
army resources for private use on huge tracts of
land they had been
allocated.
Junior soldiers were being paid in the hyper-inflated local
currency until
this month when prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai paid them
$100 vouchers
http://www.thecitizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?pDesc=89978,1,22
Published:
2/24/2009 17:45:59
PRETORIA
Legal counsel for South African farmer
Crawford von Abo will return to the
Constitutional Court on Thursday in an
application to confirm a lower court
ruling.
The bid is in the hope
that the highest court will confirm a Pretoria High
Court finding that the
South African president and the 2007 government had
violated his
constitutional rights by not protecting him when he asked for
diplomatic
help.
In November the Constitutional Court postponed to February what was
to be
the final leg of the Free State farmer's legal battle to make the
government
help him protect his property and investments in
Zimbabwe.
Von Abo maintains that farms he owned and built up since the
1950s were
confiscated without compensation during the Zimbabwe government's
land
restitution programme, equipment was destroyed, game and cattle
slaughtered
and at one point he was arrested for being on one of his
farms.
In March 2002 he turned to then president Thabo Mbeki and wrote to
him
asking for diplomatic assistance after effort to resolve the matter,
according to him, were ignored.
During Thabo Mbeki's tenure the South
African government pursued a policy of
"quiet diplomacy" in its relations
with Zimbabwe, which was facing mounting
criticism over the way it was
carrying out its land restitution policy,
including land invasions by "war
veterans".
Von Abo also tried various other departments including foreign
affairs and
justice.
Von Abo, reportedly, also discovered that
international agreements that may
have helped him had not been signed into
force by the South African
government, and court documents were filed
late.
The high court declared that Mbeki and the other ministers cited
had failed
to consider properly the request for diplomatic
protection.
It further declared that he had the right to diplomatic
protection from the
government and ordered that the government must within
60 days file a report
in which it detailed what steps it had taken to have
the Zimbabwean
government's violation of Von Abo's rights
remedied.
In the Constitutional Court, Von Abo seeks confirmation of the
declaration
that the conduct of the president in respect of his request for
diplomatic
protection was unconstitutional.
The Constitution requires
that an order of constitutional invalidity
regarding the conduct of the
president must be confirmed by the
Constitutional Court.
The
application is opposed on three main grounds.
That the application cannot
be brought in terms of section 172(2)(a) of the
Constitution, as the conduct
complained of is attributable to the government
as a whole and not just to
the president.
Secondly, the application is premature because the order
of the high court
is a supervisory order and the high court is still seized
with the matter.
Lastly, it has been submitted that the president (then
Mbeki) and the
government (of 2007) had given proper consideration to, and
had properly
acted on Von Abo's request for diplomatic
protection.
The matter was initially due to be heard on November 11,
2008.
However at the hearing the respondent requested that the matter be
postponed
in order to file a formal application to tender new evidence, a
portion of
which they would request the Court to keep
confidential.
The Court postponed the hearing, ordering the respondents
to file the
application no later than the November 28.
This was
filed, however later than the due date.
For this reason at the hearing
the respondent will ask the court to condone
the late filing of the
application to tender further evidence.
- Sapa
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=12358
February 24, 2009
By Our
Correspondent
HARARE - Zimbabwe's new Information Communication
Technology minister on
Tuesday moved to calm a turbulent phone market after
a huge public outcry
that followed the dollarisation of telecoms and a
ten-fold hike in mobile
phone tariffs.
Minister Nelson Chamisa on
Tuesday met with leaders of the Posts and
Telecommunications Regulatory
Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ), leaders of
State-owned fixed line network,
TelOne as well as bosses of Net*One, the
cellular phone operator at the
minister's office along Samora Machel Avenue.
Chamisa's new office is
next to Hardwicke House, the Central Intelligence
headquarters in central
Harare, just next to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
building. Net*One managing
director, Reward Kangai, who is the new chairman
of the Telecommunications
Association of Zimbabwe, attended the meeting
together with acting managing
director for TelOne, Humpton Mhlanga.
The Zimbabwe Times heard that there
was delicate balancing of two competing
interests, the need for the
parastatals to break even and the basic right of
citizens to access
communication and free expression.
The meeting, was held amid a consumer
storm, in the wake of intensifying
public outrage over the prohibitive
foreign currency-pegged tariffs being
charged by telecommunications
operators and the sky-high bills.
Chamisa said he had asked the phone
operators to review the tariffs.
"I advised them to revisit the billing
tariffs to address concerns being
raised by the majority of consumers,"
Chamisa told The Zimbabwe Times. "We
are supposed to be responding
positively to the consumers."
The operators were in December granted
permission by the government to
charge tariffs in foreign currency which has
seen subscribers across the
three networks Telecel, Econet Wireless and
Net*One paying USD0, 29 cents
per minute and USD0,30 cents per 3 minute on a
landline.
Previously bills were payable in Zimbabwe dollars, at a nominal
rate.
Net*One contract line subscribers were shocked with recent massive
cellphone
bills ranging between US$50 and US$20,000 for two weeks. The
statements also
contained threats that payments were overdue and warnings of
disconnection
if payment was not made immediately.
Because of late
notification of change in payment terms for users, Net*One
subscribers
picked up astronomical bills that could take some of them up to
10 years to
pay settle.
At least 20 000 Net One contract line subscribers reportedly
face the threat
of losing their lines over failure to meet the current
foreign currency
billing system.
The sharp hike has seriously
disrupted the business structure of e-commerce,
e-banking, e-business and
ordinary phone users.
Demand for payment in foreign currency for mobile
telephone use has made
phoning unaffordable in Zimbabwe as the majority has
no access to foreign
currency. About 94 percent of the population is
unemployed, and the few who
still work are paid in Zimbabwean dollars. Under
the present circumstances,
the majority of Zimbabweans have no hope of using
a mobile phone at such
costs.
Press freedom group, MISA Zimbabwe, has
also made representations to the
minister, arguing that access to tools such
as the Internet, fixed and
cellular telephony networks have become a
privilege for a few in Zimbabwe.
This goes against the emphasis of the World
Summit on Information Societies
(WSIS) summit held in Tunisia in 2005 to
which Zimbabwe was a signatory.
"This deprivation of the people of
Zimbabwe's right to communicate is, in
MISA-Zimbabwe's view, an impediment
to accessing a basic right to
communication and free expression, as
guaranteed in Article 9 of the African
Charter on Human and People's
Rights," said MISA chairman Loughty Dube.
"Zimbabweans find themselves
increasingly silenced by a plethora of laws
that suppress dissent and now
added to that, the prohibitive cost of simply
talking."
Although
subscribers argue that the tariffs are too high, mobile phone
companies such
as Econet Wireless and NetOne still maintain that the charges
are within
regional levels.
Captains in the industry say despite the public outcry,
the tariffs are in
tandem with regional levels.
"It's just that
Zimbabweans love talking," said one.
A senior telecoms industry official
told The Zimbabwe Times that the
reduction in value added tax on airtime
from 22,5 percent to 15 percent had
seen a slight reduction in tariffs
bringing them to the regional average of
US$0,30 per
minute.
"Migration from cheap Zimbabwe dollar-based calls to realistic
tariffs has
been a challenge," he said.
Dube urged the operators to
take into serious consideration the fact that
telecommunications remain key
pillars of freedom of expression and access to
information as articulated
under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
http://www.chronicle.co.zw
Wednesday,
February 25, 2009
By Brian Chitemba
THE
Bulawayo business community yesterday attacked ZESA and TelOne over high
bills, saying they were threatening to cripple their
operations.
Speaking at a meeting in the city yesterday members of
the Zimbabwe National
Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) said they were enraged by
the "unrealistic bills
charged by the parastatals".
The businesspeople
challenged the companies to reduce the rates immediately.
Mr Oswald Nyakunika
of Knight Frank, said his company received a shocking
US$4 600 bill from
TelOne.
He asked whether the parastatals appreciated the real value of either
the
United States dollar or the rand.
"We got a huge bill last month and
we were wondering whether it was
realistic or not. Where in the world can
anyone pay a US$4 600 telephone
bill," asked Mr Nyakunika.
"Zimbabweans
should start appreciating the real value of foreign currency.
We don't
produce US dollars in Zimbabwe and thus they are scarce. We can't
pay such
high bills."
Another businessperson who preferred anonymity said she received
a telephone
bill of as much as US$1 100.
"I can't pay the bill because
it's just too much. Where can I get 10 000
rand to pay a telephone bill.
It's outrageous," she said.
The businesswoman urged TelOne and ZESA to slash
their rates to enable
businesses and domestic consumers to pay the
bills.
A businessman also lashed out at ZESA after receiving a US$1 200 bill
for
January.
He said his company was not operating at 100 percent
capacity and was
worried how his bill hit US$1 200.
ZNCC past
vice-president, Mr Charles Chiponda, also expressed concern over
the high
bills charged by the parastatals.
He said the companies should charge rates
that would allow businesses to
remain afloat.
However, managers from the
parastatals defended the high bills saying they
were realistic.
They said
the bills represented the real economic situation in Zimbabwe.
In response,
ZESA Western Region general manager, Mr Lovemore Chinaka, said
their bills
were even lower than those charged in neighbouring countries.
"We will
maintain the tariff for the whole year because we believe it covers
costs to
generate and import electricity. The idea is to make sure that we
provide
power daily without load shedding. Load shedding for the whole day
is
madness. We don't like it," he said.
Mr Chinaka admitted that his office was
inundated with phone calls from
angry consumers.
"We import power and
equipment to use on our network and that requires a lot
of foreign currency.
Therefore what we are charging now are cost reflective
tariffs," he
added.
The TelOne Matabeleland Regional Customs Manager, Mr Tielo Ncube, said
the
bills were realistic and could not be reduced now because they also
reflected operational costs.
He said TelOne was charging a fixed monthly
rental of US$15 for commercial
while domestic customers pay US$5.
"We
don't estimate our bills, they are actual bills, therefore people must
pay.
However, we are not going to disconnect if customers fail to pay," said
Mr
Ncube.
The Government has liberalised the economy by allowing businesses and
parastatals to charge market rates.
Meanwhile, our Harare Bureau reports
that the Government has ordered Zesa
Holdings to stop disconnecting power
supplies to consumers who have failed
to settle their bills until
appropriate tariff regimes have been set.
Addressing journalists in Harare
yesterday, the Minister of Energy and Power
Development, Engineer Elias
Mudzuri, urged the power utility to reconnect
all consumers that have been
recently disconnected.
"One of the major areas of concern for the Government
and my ministry are
the current electricity bills and disconnection that
have brought about an
outcry from consumers.
"In the spirit of getting
industry working to optimum levels and helping the
ordinary people, Zesa has
been asked to reconnect all the customers that
have been disconnected of
late and put all disconnections on hold until 15
March, by which time an
agreeable tariff charge will have been worked out,"
he said.
Eng Mudzuri
said domestic consumers would pay a minimum of US$10 of their
bills with
industry and other consumers paying at least a third of their
bills.
"This will at least enable the utility provide service without
undue
interruption of service," he said.
Eng Mudzuri said his ministry
was conscious of the need to do all within its
means to ensure provision of
adequate, reliable and affordable electricity
supplies to the nation.
Eng
Mudzuri said the ministry also recognises that electricity should be an
input to raising the capacity utilisation in industries and mines as well as
agriculture hence it would cautiously consider the appropriate tariffs
required for this development.
He said the ministry was also working with
the petroleum industry to come up
with prices that are consummate to the
industry.
Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Walter Mzembi commended
Eng
Mudzuri for his swift response to industry's concerns over power
cuts.
"We raised the issue this afternoon at the Cabinet meeting and the
ministry
has swiftly moved to redress the situation.
"Some of the bills
being sent to companies, let's say for water and
electricity, are not
recoverable by the companies and this move would be
essential for the
companies," Minister Mzembi said.
He urged consumers not to hesitate to
approach the Government when they had
queries over utility services.
"We
should never get to any situation where such institutions are taken off
the
grid. If there are any disputes, the ministers are the last ports of
call
for solutions," he said.
In a related development, the Minister of Media,
Information and Publicity,
Cde Webster Shamu yesterday met chief executives
of cellphone and telephone
service providers.
In a statement, Secretary
for Media, Information and Publicity Cde George
Charamba said Minister Shamu
had a meeting with executives of NetOne, TelOne
and Potraz to discuss the
current tariff regime with a view to charging
reasonable tariffs.
"The
ministry has been inundated with calls by the public who feel the
recent
hikes in telephone charges, both fixed and mobile, are making
communication
difficult for users," he said.
TelOne and NetOne were last month granted
licences to charge tariffs in
foreign currency.
The meeting came at a
time when the phone service providers are working out
a transition from the
use of local currency to foreign currency.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=12353
February 24, 2009
By Our
Correspondent
BULAWAYO - Government has scuttled two multi-million dollar
coal-mining and
electricity generating projects planned by a consortium of
indigenous
business people in partnership with an Indian company and awarded
the
project to one of Zanu-PF's major financiers.
Under the
proposals, Fumana Energy Private Limited led by Bulawayo
businessman, Delma
Lupepe says it would have partnered an investor from
India to inject capital
into the power station upgrade in partnership with a
consortium comprising
the Matabeleland Development Association and
individual business
people.
The two projects estimated to cost US$600 million and US$400
million
respectively to implement would have broken Hwange Colliery Company
long
held monopoly in coal mining and Zimbabwe Power Corporation (ZPC) in
power
generation.
According to the Fumana proposal, both entities
lack the capacity to
mobilise funds needed to invest in upgrading power and
coal supplies for
increased generation and initiate other downstream
industries from coal
by-products
It is claimed that the proposed
Fumana project would have witnessed the
opening up of coalfield in Hwange
district and coal-bed methane in the
Lupane Halfway area of Sinamatella
where geological surveys have indicated
96 million tons of coal deposits
await exploitation.
The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA)
chief executive officer,
Engineer Benjamin Rafemoyo announced the power
utility had entered into a
US$ 800 million deal with Conrad Bill Rautenbach
a known Zanu-PF financier
on an identical project which Fumana had earlier
proposed.
The Zimbabwe Times incorrectly reported that ZESA's partner was
John
Bredenkamp, also a known Zanu PF financier.
South African-born
Muller Conrad Rautenbach, otherwise known as Billy
Rautenbach, who was
identified by the EU as financially supporting President
Robert Mugabe's
government, fled in 1999 from South Africa, where he faced
charges of theft,
bribery and fraud.
He has enjoyed the patronage of Mugabe since the
1990s. His company,
Ridgepoint Overseas Developments, which is registered in
the British Virgin
Islands, has also been blacklisted by the
EU.
Rautenbach was appointed by DRC President Laurent-Desire Kabila as
the chief
executive of the state-owned mining company, Gecamines after
Mobuto Sese
Seko, was ousted. His position at Gecamines was reportedly
secured in direct
negotiations between Kabila and Zimbabwean political
strongman, Emmerson
Mnangagwa, now the Minister of Defence, as payback for
Zimbabwe's military
backing.
A UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal
Exploitation of Natural Resources and
Other Forms of Wealth of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, reported
Rautenbach's involvement in "a
network of Congolese and Zimbabwean
political, military and commercial
interests [that] seeks to maintain its
grip on the main mineral resources -
diamonds, cobalt, copper, germanium -
of the [DRC] Government-controlled
area.
The report said the network had "transferred ownership of at least
US$ 5
billion of assets from the state mining sector to private companies
under
its control in the past three years, with no compensation or benefit
for the
State treasury of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Among the
Zimbabwean military-political elite allegedly involved in
plundering DRC
resources the report named Rautenbach, Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe
Defence Force
Commander, Retired Gen Vitalis Zvinavashe, as well as his
family members,
Air Marshal Perrence Shiri, Brig-Gen Sibusiso Moyo, and
Sidney Sekeramayi
now State Security Minister. The names of all appear on
the EU sanctions
list.
Sources close to the consortium of indigenous businesspeople in
Bulawayo say
Fumana had applied for a concession which falls under the
Ministry of Lands
and Land Resettlement, but Minister Didymus Mutasa had
given preference to
a belated application by Rautenbach because of his
Zanu-PF connections.
The Western Area Coalfields was allocated to ZPC,
but the stipulated period
to develop the coalfields has since elapsed before
the power utility
undertook any tangible work on the concession. It is
highly unlikely that
ZPC would make any meaningful development of a mine in
five to seven years.
On the other hand Hwange Colliery Company (HCC),
which is also vying for the
same coalfield has neither the production
capacity nor the financial
resources to develop a mine in the short
term.
The project envisages providing thermal coal to Hwange Power
Station Stage 3
which Hwange Colliery Company is unlikely able to support
under its current
performances that has resulted in coal shortages both for
industrial and
agricultural as well as for domestic use. Fumana Energy also
envisioned
mining coking for internal markets such as the Zimbabwe Iron and
Steel
Company (ZISCO), Zimbabwe Alloys and Zimasco as well as for export
while
providing general purpose coal to support agricultural and domestic
needs.
According to the project blueprint, mining coal-bed methane which
has a
myriad of other applications such as petrochemicals and fertilizers
would
buttress foreign currency generation through exports. Fumana CEO,
Lupepe in
June last year said in a letter to President Mugabe the project
would bring
economic development to the Matabeleland region, increase
foreign currency
inflows through the export of coking coal and increase
employment.
"We think that this is a unique opportunity for Zimbabwe to
demonstrate its
ability to address the current challenges being faced,
through a joint
venture partnership 'that empowers the people of Zimbabwe,
retains national
ownership while increasing the country's electricity
generation capacity"
part of the letter says.
http://www.radiovop.com
MASVINGO, February 25 2009 - The Zimbabwe
National Army has invited
journalists working for both the public and
independent media to a one day
familiarisation
workshop.
The invitations were extended by Zimbabwe
National Army (ZNA)
headquarters, 4 Brigade's commander, Brigadier Albios
Mtisi.
Of late the army has been in the media for wrong
reasons. There have
been numerous stories about soldiers vandalising,
looting property and
terrorising the public as a result of delayed or
inadequate salaries. A
number of soldiers have deserted the army and fled to
neighbouring countries
citing poor salaries and hunger in the
barracks.
In the past two weeks, soldiers have been accused of
carrying out a
spate of robberies in and around Masvingo. Some of the
soldiersreportedly
robbed patrons USd 1 000 at Chigudu and Sarudzai
nightclubs in the city last
week, and tried to resist arrest. They were only
arrested after the police
set their vicious dogs upon them.
In another incident, two absentee soldiers who had stolen a rifle with
several rounds of ammunition, were arrested in Chiredzi after a series of
carjackings and rampant Rhino poaching.
http://www.kubatanablogs.net/kubatana/?p=1312
Like Leonard Matsa, I have my misgivings about this deal and
its new
government. One of the challenges will be how to measure the success
or
failure of a government where so much decision making may be based on
mistrust and rivalry.
For example, last week Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai started asking for
donor support to rebuild Zimbabwe. He
estimates it may take USD 5 billion.
On Monday, donors pledged USD 100
million / month for 6 months - largely to
pay civil servants and to rebuild
Zimbabwe's sewage system. On Tuesday,
this story the same donor called this
story as a fabrication.
So USD 600 million may or may not be pouring into
Zimbabwe any time soon.
But either way, this possibility alone raised
several questions for me and
my colleague when we were talking about
accountability yesterday, such as:
1.. What about the other USD 4.4
billion? Where will that come from?
2.. If it doesn't come, how do we judge
the performance of ministries?
3.. If a ministry is in part responsible for
its own fundraising, will
those whose Ministers are members of Zanu PF be
penalised by some donors? If
so, who is to blame if that Ministry performs
poorly?
4.. Into what accounts would that USD 600 million go? How would
these
accounts be monitored, and that spending tracked?
5.. Will the
new Finance Minister submit a new 2009 Budget to Parliament?
6.. If a
Minister fundraises for her own Ministry, is this money added to
that
Ministry's budget allocation, or will the money budgeted to that
Ministry
instead be diverted to ministries that didn't fund raise for
themselves?
In Zimbabwe, we've become very used to a polarised analysis
of "regime" and
"opposition," in which the two separate entities can be
analysed and judged.
Now that the two are working together, the task of
monitoring government,
and measuring its successes and failures in
delivering on its promises to us
is no less important - and even more
challenging.
This entry was posted on February 25th, 2009 at 8:55 am by
Amanda Atwood