Zim Online
Tuesday 16 January 2007
HARARE
- Zimbabwe Judge President Rita Makarau on Monday broke with
tradition to
openly criticise President Robert Mugabe's government for
undermining the
judiciary by starving it of resources and reducing it to
"begging for its
sustenance".
In an alarming admission that the country's worsening
economic crisis - that
has seen the government struggle for resources - had
virtually crippled
justice delivery, Makarau for example said the High Court
last year failed
to travel to Masvingo province to hear hundreds of criminal
cases simply
because there was no money.
The High Court, which
Makarau heads, permanently sits in Harare and the
second largest city of
Bulawayo while it periodically visits the other major
centres across the
country to preside over cases.
"It is my view that the place and role of
(the) judiciary in this country is
under-appreciated," said Makarau in a
speech to mark the opening of the
first term of the High Court this
year.
"It is wrong by nature to make the judiciary beg for its
sustenance. It is
wrong to make the judiciary beg for resources from central
government. It is
wrong to make the judiciary beg from any other source,"
Zimbabwe's first
woman head of the High Court said.
Court libraries
were barely functional, while judges and magistrates had to
make do without
adequate computers or basic stationery but more frightening,
according to
Makarau, was the way corruption was beginning to take root
among judicial
support staff chiefly because of the poor salaries they are
paid.
She
said: "Reports have reached my office . . . that support staff in the
courts
are engaging in corrupt practices. While these reports are alarming,
one can
understand without excusing such conduct. Salaries of support staff
are not
commensurate with their place in the administration of justice."
The
Judge President said constant appeals to the Ministry of Justice that
handles the budget for the judiciary had been fruitless with the ministry
maintaining it did not have cash.
Contacted for comment Justice
Minister Patrick Chinamasa said he was still
on leave and busy at his farm
and unable to discuss work-related matters.
"I am on leave until February 8,
2007. Call me then I might be able to
comment," said
Chinamasa.
Zimbabwe has for the past seven years been gripped by a
debilitating
economic crisis, shown by the world's highest inflation rate of
more than 1
000 percent, rocketing unemployment, shortages of food, hard
cash and just
about every basic survival commodity.
The economic
meltdown, described by the World Bank as the worst in the world
outside a
war zone, has also seen Mugabe's government scrounging for cash to
pay for
day-to-day operations.
For example, state hospitals that are the source
of health services for the
majority of Zimbabweans are barely functioning
because doctors and some
nurses are on strike demanding more pay.
The
government admits health workers deserve more money but says it does not
have enough in its coffers to bankroll the 8 000 percent salary hike doctors
are demanding to cushion themselves against the rampant
inflation.
But Makarau criticised the way in which the well-heeled both
in the
government and the private sector are always able to find enough of
the
scarce hard cash to import groceries, including expensive cars from
neighbouring countries or to send their children to schools in foreign
countries while key national institutions such as the judiciary were
crumbling because of lack of resources.
She said: "When shortages of
certain grocery items manifest themselves in
local supermarkets, we shop in
neighbouring countries. We have managed to
avoid what we perceived as
shortcomings in the local education system by
sending our children to
schools and universities in South Africa, Australia,
United States and the
United Kingdom.
"When we need complex medical procedures and attention
that the local
hospitals cannot now provide, we fly mainly to South Africa
but sometimes to
the UK or the USA. Yet, when we have to sue for wrongs done
to us, we cannot
do so in Australia or South Africa and have to contend with
the inadequately
funded justice system in the country." - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Tuesday 16 January 2007
HARARE
- Zimbabwe will expropriate more farms that are protected under
bilateral
investment promotion and protection agreements (BIPPA) signed with
other
countries for redistribution to landless blacks, according to Land
Reform
Minister Didymus Mutasa.
Mutasa, who was speaking last week at a
co-ordinating meeting for heads of
government departments in the eastern
Manicaland province, said some BIPPAs,
concluded before Zimbabwe was
ostracised from the international community,
were hurriedly negotiated and
could not be allowed to stand in the way of
land reforms.
But the
Lands Minister, who is also in charge of state security and is one
of
President Robert Mugabe's most trusted lieutenants, promised that Harare
would compensate foreign owners of farms covered under bilateral investment
agreements.
"We will not stop acquiring the farms because they are
under BIPPAs. We will
acquire the farms and compensate the owners. I am sure
these agreements were
made in a hurry," Mutasa said at the meeting held in
Mutare city last
Thursday.
He did not say whether the government
would pay for actual land as well,
only saying that the government would
address the "issue of farms under the
BIPPAs on a case-by-case
basis."
The Harare administration, which has over the past six years
seized nearly
all land previously owned by the country's about 4 000 white
farmers and
gave it over to blacks, has in the past maintained it would not
pay for the
land because white colonial authorities stole it from blacks in
the first
place.
The government has to date paid compensation to a
handful of former white
landowners and only for improvements on farms such
as buildings, roads and
dams.
But a group of Dutch nationals whose
farms in Zimbabwe were seized by the
government have dragged the Harare
administration before the International
Centre for the Settlement of
Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Paris demanding
US$15 million in damages for
the loss their properties.
The Dutch farmers argue that their properties
were protected by a bilateral
investment treaty under which Harare promised
to pay full compensation to
Dutch nationals in disputes arising out of any
investments in Zimbabwe.
The ICSID is yet to hear the matter. If the
Dutch farmers win the case they
would be entitled to seize Zimbabwe
government property anywhere in the
world if Harare fails to pay
up.
But more worrying for the government, success by the Dutch farmers'
could
pave way for similar appeals for compensation from scores of foreign
landowners dispossessed during the land reforms.
Several countries
among them Austria, France, Germany, Mauritius, Holland,
South Africa,
Sweden and Malaysia signed investment protection agreements
with Zimbabwe
before the land reform programme began in 2000.
The chaotic and often
violent land reform programme - that Mugabe says was
necessary to ensure
blacks also owned some of the best land previously
reserved for whites by
former colonial governments - is blamed for
destabilizing the mainstay
agriculture sector and knocking down food
production by about 60
percent.
Zimbabwe has largely survived largely on food handouts from
international
relief agencies since the land reforms began seven years ago.
Harare however
denies its land redistribution exercise caused hunger and
instead puts the
blame on poor weather and a crippling economic crisis
responsible for
shortages of seed and fertilizers for farmers to produce
enough food. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
Tuesday 16 January
2007
HARARE - The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade
Unions (ZCTU) on Monday called on
the government to address grievances of
striking state doctors and nurses to
avoid further loss of lives.
In
a statement to the media yesterday, the ZCTU said it was disturbed by the
government's lack of urgency in addressing the five week old strike that has
paralysed state hospitals around the country.
Negotiations between
the government and the doctors broke down last week
after the doctors
rejected a salary offer of Z$210 000 per month which had
been tabled by the
government.
They are demanding basic salaries of Z$5 million each per
month.
"Zimbabweans have been pelted left, right and centre by shortages
of drugs,
inaccessible hospitals especially in remote areas and by a general
increase
in medical care expenses. The strike action by doctors has worsened
this
situation.
"We demand that government should, as a matter of
urgency, address the needs
of striking doctors in order to avoid loss of
lives at hospitals," the
union said in a statement signed by secretary
general Wellington Chibebe.
Chibebe said while his union did not condone
the actions of doctors, the
salaries of around Z$56 000 and allowances of
Z$57 000 earned by the junior
doctors were too low.
The ZCTU boss
said the government should review salaries of health personnel
and other
civil servants to avert looming strikes.
Zimbabwe's health delivery
system, once lauded as one of the best in Africa,
has crumbled due to years
of under-funding and mismanagement.
An unprecedented seven-year old
economic crisis has seen the country fail to
import critically needed
medicines because of a severe shortage of foreign
currency while doctors and
other skilled health personnel have continued to
leave in droves to seek
better paying jobs abroad. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Tuesday 16 January
2007
HARARE - The main wing of
Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) party has postponed to
Wednesday a press briefing where the
party was expected to announce plans to
stage mass protests against
President Robert Mugabe's
government.
Insiders told ZimOnline last Friday that a
meeting of the party's
national executive committee had resolved to press
ahead with mass protests
first threatened by the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC
last year.
The decision to call mass protests within the next
12 weeks
would be announced by Tsvangirai at a press briefing that the
sources had
said would take place yesterday at the opposition party's
Harvest House
headquarters in Harare.
But MDC spokesman
Nelson Chamisa said the party was still
attending to some unfinished
business from last Friday's meeting of the
party's national
executive.
"We are still to finish on the resolutions hence
the
postponement to Wednesday," said Chamisa.
Chamisa did
not refer to any plans by his wing of the MDC to
call mass protests and said
whatever programmes planned for the future would
be disclosed by Tsvangirai
when he addresses the media on Wednesday.
The MDC says Mugabe
should accept sweeping political reforms and
abandon plans to extend his
rule by two more years until 2010.
Tsvangirai, who founded
the MDC in 1999 and saw the party split
into two rival camps last year,
promised to roll out nationwide mass
protests before last December, invoking
intense criticism when he did not
act on his promise.
Prominent academic Arthur Mutambara who heads the other wing of
the MDC, has
also called for the use of "any means necessary" to force
Mugabe's
government to accept democratic change.
Analysts say
discontent is running too deep among long-suffering
Zimbabweans that all
that is needed is good planning and visionary
leadership to organise
effective mass protests that could force Mugabe and
ZANU PF to accept
democratic reforms. - ZimOnline
Zimbabwejournalists.com
By a Correspondent
HARARE -
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor, Gideon Gono, is set to sue to
the weekly
independent Standard newspaper and the Zimbabwean for publishing
articles
last week alleging he had blown around US$365 000 on a new Mercedes
Benz
BRABUS E V12 car at the expense of RBZ workers.
The Standard broke the
story which was picked up by many news organisations
with the Zimbabwean
alleging Gono was being investigated by the
Anti-Corruption Commission for
allegedly using "trinkets from the
fertilisergate scandal to purchase his
latest luxurious Mercedes Benz".
Two statements have been issued today by
the RBZ board and Zimoco, the
general distributor for Mercedes Benz vehicles
in Zimbabwe, denying Gono had
bought the luxurious vehicle.
The RBZ
board said the Standard story, which resulted in a flurry of
articles on the
alleged purchase in the local and international media, was
"entirely and
totally false".
Zimoco's general sales manager, Mrs D. Ritson said in a
statement the
distributor had not imported a BRABUS vehicle on behalf of any
Zimbabwean
customer to date and in any case did not encourage sales of any
BRABUS
products "due to the fact that they have highly tuned engines and
extensive
modifications to suspension, brakes and tyres which are not
considered
suitable for African conditions".
In addition, all these
conversions and modifications are only covered by
BRABUS Warranty and are
not supported by DaimlerCrysler through Zimoco.
"BRABUS is an after
market conversion and customerisation of a Mercedes Benz
which is sold
mainly to European and Middle Eastern customers.
DaimlerCrysler have no
connection to this company other than as a customer,"
said
Ritson.
She said Zimoco had not received any serious enquiries about
BRABUS
vehicles.
Speaking on behalf of the RBZ board, external board
member Lovemore Chihota
said the RBZ had used US$138 000 to upgrade Gono's
old S500 Mercedes Benz to
an S600 through a swap and top-up arrangement at a
local garage. The top-up
was paid in local currency. The S600 was delivered
by ZIMOCO last May 2006.
"The allegations about the Mercedes Benz Brabus
are, therefore, wholly and
totally untrue and entirely a creation of the
media house and the journalist
who wrote the story! As a corporate body, the
Reserve Bank, its Staff,
Management and Board have equally stood grossly
victimised and humiliated by
this false article," said
Chihota.
"Given the anxiety this falsehood must have caused to the
Governor, our
Principals in Government, the Corporate Sector, Labour, Civic
Society and
all other Stakeholders here at home, within the region and
internationally,
the Board of Directors has resolved that the Reserve Bank
of Zimbabwe should
take immediate steps to bring legal action on the media
houses concerned,
The Standard and The Zimbabwean, as corporate entities,
and against Mr
Caiphas Chimhete in his individual capacity as the instigator
of the
damaging falsehood."
He said the RBZ board will leave no stone
unturned in ensuring the integrity
of the Central Bank was
preserved.
The also assured all stakeholders the Central Bank would
continue to
"jealously guard the use of the scarce foreign exchange
resources of the
country and allocate the same to national pressing priority
areas".
Reuters
Mon
Jan 15, 2007 1:47 PM GMT
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's biggest sewage
plant has broken down, sending
tonnes of raw effluent into a major river and
polluting the water supply of
the capital Harare, city authorities said on
Monday.
Harare's Firle sewage plant has been down since last week and
requires at
least 20 billion Zimbabwean dollars (U.S.$80 million) to fix, a
huge burden
for a country already in the grip of its worst economic crisis
in decades.
Officials from the national water authority said half of the
raw sewage from
Harare -- a city of some 1.5 million -- was now discharged
into a river that
flows into the capital's main water reservoir, the
state-owned Herald
newspaper reported.
The Zimbabwe National Water
Authority declined to comment further on the
issue on Monday. But the Herald
said the discharge of the untreated sewage
was "posing a serious health
hazard downstream."
Harare's sewage crisis is the latest symptom of an
economic crisis which has
left the country close to collapse and many key
infrastructure facilities
from roads to power plants badly in need of
upgrade or repair.
Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation rate of
1,281 percent and
unemployment has surged to about 80 percent under an
economic crisis many
critics blame on President Robert Mugabe's
government.
The Herald said the Firle plant was completely
inoperable.
"Biological nutrient removal plants, inlet works, primary
settling tanks,
biofilters and effluent pumps as well as clarifiers,
digesters and boilers
at the plant are all down," the newspaper
said.
Mugabe, 82, and the southern African country's sole ruler since
independence
from Britain in 1980, denies he has ruined one the continent's
most
promising economies, saying it is a victim of sabotage by opponents of
his
black nationalist policies.
New Zimbabwe
By Staff
Reporter
Last updated: 01/16/2007 03:10:23
THE Zimbabwe government, which
has waged a fierce war with private schools
over fee hikes, has increased
fees at state universities and colleges by
between 300 and 2,000%, reports
said.
A senior government official described the increases as reasonable,
according to the official Sunday Mail newspaper.
But there will be
fears some students, battling to survive in Zimbabwe's
hyperinflationary
environment, could be forced to abandon their studies.
Hard-hit will be
medical and veterinary students at state institutions, who
will now be
forced to pay 180,000 Zimbabwe dollars ($720) per year, up from
Z$44,000.
Students at government-run industrial training centres will
be forced to pay
Z$42,000 per year, up from Z$2,000.
"The need to
increase fees arises from the essence of maintaining quality
higher and
tertiary education and global competitiveness in terms of
Zimbabwean
academic standards," said Washington Mbizvo, the permanent
secretary in the
Ministry of Higher Education.
"These increases in tuition fees, as
illustrated, are comparatively
reasonable to allow as many of those who
qualify to have access to higher
and tertiary education," Mbizvo added as he
announced the new fees on
Saturday.
At 1,281.1%, Zimbabwe's inflation
rate is the highest in the world. - DPA
SABC
January 15, 2007,
07:00
An estimated 200 cattle have died of anthrax in Masvingo in
Zimbabwe in the
past two months, Harare's Herald newspaper reported
today.
Its website said the anthrax outbreak had been cited as the
biggest threat
to Masvingo's efforts to restock its beef herd which was
almost halved in
1992 nationwide drought. Chivu was among the districts
worst affected.
An acute shortage of vaccines was stifling efforts to
tame the outbreak.
Willard Chiwewe, the Masvingo governor, yesterday
expressed dismay at the
rate at which the province was losing cattle to
anthrax.
He urged the government to prioritise the procurement of anthrax
vaccines to
contain the outbreak. "We want to continue urging the government
to
prioritise the procurement of vaccines so that we can contain the anthrax
outbreak," the governor said.
"We are deeply worried by the continued
death of cattle from the disease and
more importantly owing to an acute
shortage of vaccines." Most of the
province's cattle were contracting
anthrax from wild animals such as
buffaloes which are found mostly in
conservancies in the Lowveld. -
Sapa
by Oskar Wermter SJ
Mbare Report No 40
School has reopened and we have
to deal with parents asking for help to pay
the school fees for their
children. We are battling to keep as many children
in school as possible,
i.e. as many as friends and donors enable us to
assist with
fees.
Often it is grandmothers, themselves just above starvation level,
who ask on
behalf of their orphaned grandchildren. That is the situation in
Mbare and
elsewhere: AIDS takes the young parent generation away, leaving
the children
and their grandparents. Or rather it is AIDS plus our
collapsing medical
care: many young HIV positive mothers could be given some
more years,
crucially important to themselves and to their children, if we
had a
nationwide campaign of treating AIDS patients with ARV drugs. But you
need a
functioning economy to support such a life-saving
campaign.
One of these days a monument must be built in honour of those
old ladies
without whose care and concern many more parentless children
would roam our
streets. They have done so much more for human happiness than
those
gun-toting heroes carved in stone or cast in bronze, who, when still
alive,
brought more misery than freedom.
A young boy who lost his
mother a few years ago recently lost his father as
well , killed outside a
beerhall by a bus. Now the boy is all alone, if not
in the world, at least
in Zimbabwe: just at present he wants the bus-fare to
go and collect the
belongings of his late father. His only relations live in
Mozambique. That
will be quite a bureaucratic problem to re-unite him with
is family or
rather to enable him to join a family he has never met before.
For all
these troubled people there is normally something we can do. There
is only
one problem to which I have no answer: when people ask for a roof
over their
heads. I recently asked people in church: if you have a room, a
little
corner in your house to spare, where someone who is homeless and
sleeps in
the open (maybe paying $ 3000 for the privilege of being allowed
to sleep in
someone's yard or garden) please come forward and let us know. A
number of
people did come forward, but not to tell me that they had a room
to let, but
that they too were in need of one. Instead of solving my problem
I only
learned it was even greater than I had thought.
Housing and shelter for
the low income people is a huge problem everywhere
in the developing world.
But we have managed, through Murambatsvina, to make
it much worse. That,
like Gukurahundi, was an "act of madness".
Was the "War of Liberation"
not about "regaining the land taken from us"?
And now I meet people almost
every day who do not even have those few square
meters everyone needs. And
some, when they die, do not even have that little
space where they should be
buried.
We need a second liberation, non-violent and free from all those
'acts of
madness'.oWePSZimbabwe Television today showed people living in
plastic
hovels in the middle of Mbare, without water and sanitation. It
expressed
the fear conditions as before "Operation Restore
Order/Murambatsvina" might
return. This is misleading. Mbare was not a slum
before "Murambatsvina".
Dwellings destroyed were quite sound little brick
cottages. That destructive
campaign has left people homeless, with the
result that some live now in
such plastic hovels.
Will they be
destroyed? What will happen to the people? More solid shelters
could be set
up. But will the authorities permit this to happen?
International Herald Tribune
The Associated PressPublished: January
15, 2007
STOCKHOLM, Sweden: Activists from Myanmar, India and
Zimbabwe will share
this year's World's Children's Prize for the Rights of
the Child, organizers
announced Monday.
Myanmar's Cynthia Maung,
India's Inderjit Khurana and Betty Makoni of
Zimbabwe were named the
finalists for the prize, which is split into three
parts - the Global
Friends' Award, the World's Children Prize and an
honorary award. The
winners of each award will be announced on April 16, and
the three finalists
will split a 1 million kronor (US$140,000; ?108,000)
cash prize.
The
prize, honoring those who defend youth rights, was set up in 1999 by the
Swedish Children's World Association, with millions of children worldwide
voting on the winners each year.
Maung fled her native country -
formally called Burma - 18 years ago, and
now runs a medical clinic in
Thailand that provides free health care for
refugee children, organizers
said.
Khurana was honored for starting and running the organization
Ruchika that
runs schools and nurseries for poor children in India, while
Makoni's Girl
Child Network help Zimbabwean girls escape trafficking, abuse
and child
labor.
The World's Children's Prize is decided by a jury of
children who have been
exposed to child labor, slavery, war or poverty,
while 5 million children
worldwide will vote on the winner of the Global
Friends' Award.
___
On the Net:
http://www.childrensworld.org
The Herald (Harare)
January
13, 2007
Posted to the web January 15, 2007
Tsitsi
Matope
Harare
GOVERNMENT is investigating the operations of a local
children's home,
Shungudzevana Trust in Hatfield, following reports of
suspected
malnutrition.
Three children from the home were on
different occasions last year admitted
to Harare Central Hospital's
Nutrition Centre with complications related to
poor diet.
Several
children's homes are failing to cope with the high cost of basic
food
commodities.
The latest to be admitted at Harare Central Children's
Hospital is a
three-year-old girl who was referred to the home a year
ago.
She is reportedly suffering from kwashiorkor.
Authorities
from the children's hospital said they had, after the Christmas
holiday,
admitted the child in one of their wards. The child was
subsequently sent to
the hospital's nutrition centre to boost her
nutritional
level.
Standard Chartered Bank employees, who sponsor the child, noticed
her
abnormally large stomach when they hosted a Christmas party at the
hospital
recently.
Ms Florence Kaseke, Harare provincial head in the
Department of Social
Welfare, said the matter was under
investigation.
"We will discuss our concerns with Harare Central
Children's Hospital
officials and Hatfield Clinic, which is supposed to
regularly visit the home
to check on the health of the children," Ms Kaseke
said.
She said children's homes could be facing mounting challenges in
fulfilling
their mandate and could do with more financial
assistance.
"We have also realised that there is no standard set-up on
how children in
various situations should be looked after in homes and that
in itself is a
big challenge. We are working towards implementing a training
programme on
standardised residential care of children for all owners of
homes to be able
to look after the children in a professional
manner."
She said it was also important for homes to find out why some of
the
children under their care were not growing normally.
Concerns
were also raised by officials from Harare Hospital over the
placement of
more children at Shungudzevana by the Department of Social
Welfare.
This follows the readmission of two children suffering from
severe
malnutrition. Shungudzevana Trust is run by Sister Mercy Mutyambizi,
a Roman
Catholic nun.
In an interview yesterday, Sr Mutyambizi said
she was disappointed about the
lack of appreciation for her
work.
"The children I took from Harare Children Hospital were ill and as
a result
are not healthy and their growth stunted.
"I provide these
children with shelter and give them a balanced diet as
advised by child
experts. They are also monitored by health experts every
month and if they
have a disease affecting their development, I cannot do
anything about it,"
Sr Mutyambizi said.
She said she was also not happy with Harare Central
Children's Hospital for
what she described as "undue interference" with her
work.
She said she was prepared to send back the children she took from
the
hospital if that was what her detractors wanted.
"Why should
Standard Chartered Bank give goods to Harare Central Hospital
when I am the
one looking after the three-year-old girl they have admitted?"
she asked.
People's Daily
The Zimbabwean defense forces have expressed contentment with the
mutual
services that are being reaped as a result of the professional
relationship
that has been nurtured with the Chinese People's Liberation
Army (PLA), the
Sunday Mirror reported.
The acting commander of the
Zimbabwean defense forces, Lieutenant General
Philip Sibanda, made the
remarks at a dinner he hosted in Harare on Friday
for the outgoing Chinese
military training team that has been in the country
for the past 36
months.
Sibanda hailed the transformed relationship between the two
forces, saying
that commanders of the out-going and in-coming Chinese
training teams have
reaffirmed their determination to strengthen the
military ties between the
two countries which are deeply rooted in the
history of the liberation
struggle.
The Chinese People's Liberation
Army training officers are seconded to the
Zimbabwean staff college and
Zimbabwean defense forces officers have
benefited immensely from the
teaching expertise of these officers.
In their teaching at the staff
college, the Chinese concentrate on subjects
like international affairs,
geo-strategic studies, air defense systems and
information security studies
among others.
Source: Xinhua
People's Daily
Moves by a Zimbabwean firm, Saltlakes, to import agricultural
machinery and
equipment from China, have received a major boost after a
senior government
engineer certified the implements as suitable for use by
farmers in Zimbabwe
because of their high quality, The Sunday Mail
reported.
In a report to the Minister of Agriculture, Joseph Made, after
inspecting
the equipment in China last month, Engineer Ashton Machiwana of
the
Agricultural and Rural Development Authority ( Arda), recommended the
purchase of the equipment, saying the move would benefit many farmers across
the country.
The equipment which Saltlakes intends to import includes
250 Changfa
tractors and their spare parts, Sailor trucks and more spare
parts for 658
Euro Leopard tractors that were imported from the same country
by the
Zimbabwe Indigenous Agro-Dealers Association (ZIADA) but, apparently,
without back-up service.
Machiwana, who toured China from Dec. 15 to
24 last year, together with a
Saltlakes delegation headed by chief executive
officer Temba Mliswa, said he
was impressed by the high quality of the
equipment and urged Saltlakes to go
ahead with the planned
purchases.
"The inspected machinery and equipment was of good quality,
worth the value
and suitable for use by farmers in Zimbabwe. Saltlakes can
therefore acquire
this machinery and equipment.
"Since Zimbabwe has
limited financial resources, it should benefit from the
capacity of the
Chinese economy to supply agricultural mechanisation inputs
at affordable
prices. Considering this, the acquisition of agricultural
machinery and
equipment from China through Saltlakes will facilitate the
acquisition of
mechanisation inputs by many farmers in Zimbabwe," said
Machiwana.
During the tour, the delegation visited Changfa
Agricultural Equipment
Company in Changzhou City in southern China and
inspected the machinery the
company had to offer.
Saltlakes and
Changfa clinched a deal under which the latter will supply 100
(80
horsepower) tractors and 150 (90 horsepower) tractors.
Saltlakes will be
the sole distributor of Changfa tractors in six Southern
African countries,
which are Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi
and
Zimbabwe.
To facilitate the supply of the spare parts, a bonded warehouse
will be
established in Zimbabwe.
The delegation also toured the
Yuejin Motor Group Corporation in Tianging
City, also in southern China, and
the company agreed to supply Saltlakes
with three, five and eight-ton trucks
together with the necessary spare
parts.
The Zimbabwe Electricity
Supply Authority has already acquired 100 trucks
from the same company. The
trucks are said to be performing satisfactorily.
Another deal was struck
with Great Wall company for the supply of Sailor
trucks.
Machiwana
reported that their tour of Shandong Foton Heavy Industry Company
was an
eye-opener as the company is now a leading manufacturer of
construction and
agricultural machinery in China.
Foton agreed to supply Saltlakes with
spare parts to repair the Euro Leopard
tractors, which are already in
Zimbabwe.
The tractors have been affected by poor repair and maintenance
work because
of lack of spares and the absence of appointed dealers to
service them.
Foton also pledged to send technicians to assist Saltlakes
technicians in
repairing the Euro Leopard tractors.
The positive
report by Machiwana is expected to pave the way for the
purchase of the
machinery.
Source: Xinhua
zimbabwejournalists.com
By a
Correspondent
TRUDY Stevenson has castigated the appointment of
Tendai Mahachi as Harare's
Town Clerk saying this simply rubbed more dirt
into the wound of Harare
residents, already suppurating from the
re-appointment of Sekesai
Makwavarara and her expanded commission for
another six months.
The Harare North legislator, who is also the
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change's (MDC) minister for local
government, said Mahachi's
track record was hardly impressive, despite his
academic qualifications.
"Mahachi was suspended and then fired as CEO of
Air Zimbabwe in 2005, only a
year after his appointment, while his ability
as City of Harare Strategist
is all around us - potholes, garbage, broken
street and traffic lights,
water shortages and general deterioration of our
capital city's
infrastructure, environment and bank balance," said
Stevenson.
She continued: "Chombo said when he reappointed Makwavarara
that she had
done a good job. We all asked ourselves what that good job
was, since
Harare has gone from bad to worse under her illegal continued
chairmanship.
Then she boasted that she managed to pay the workers on time,
and the penny
dropped - she must be an essential part of the ZanuPF
machinery, ensuring
that card-holders are employed and paid, using
ratepayers' money! "
"Doubtless that is the sort of strategy Mahachi was
hired for - not that
there is any such position as City Strategist in the
Urban Councils Act -
and we also wonder what Chester Mhende was doing.
Residents must guard
against being fleeced more and more to support the
voracious ruling party
machine, with other strategies the new Town Clerk
thinks up. The 1000
grasscutters called for only yesterday is a case in
point - why can't the
already-employed workers do their job? What are we
paying them for?"
Stevenson said Mahachi was not a strategist by training
but a chemist. "So
perhaps there is some chemistry at work, somewhere along
the line," she
said.
"Whatever the case, Harare residents have every
reason to review their
continued payment of ever-increasing rates to support
the machinations of a
fired CEO and an ex- data capture
clerk."
Mahachi was given a golden handshake when he was fired from Air
Zimbabwe.
SABC
January 15, 2007,
10:15
Two Zimbabwean soldiers have been arrested on the South African
side of the
Beitbridge border post in Limpopo on charges of fraud and
corruption.
South African police say the two allegedly received a R200
bribe from two
Zimbabwean nationals to assist them to cross the border into
South Africa.
Ailwei Mushavhanamdi, a police spokesperson, says the
suspects worked
hand-in-hand with a criminal syndicate suspected of
transporting illegal
immigrants to different parts of South Africa
The
Reporter (Addis Ababa)
ANALYSIS
January 14, 2007
Posted to the web
January 15, 2007
Fred Bridgland
Prominent Zimbabweans feel
Mugabe was wrong to reject Ethiopia's request for
its former leader to be
sent home to face justice
Opposition representatives, top human rights
lawyers and church leaders in
Zimbabwe have called for the extradition of
the former Ethiopian president
Mengistu Haile Mariam who was sentenced to
life in prison in absentia for
crimes of genocide by a court in Addis
Ababa.
A day after the conviction on December 12, Zimbabwe's
president Robert
Mugabe rejected an appeal by the government of Ethiopia to
extradite
Mengistu, found guilty of causing the deaths of between half a
million and
1.5 million of his fellow countrymen, to face justice at
home.
Mengistu, dubbed "The Butcher of Addis", fled ten days before rebel
forces
entered the city in May 1991 and was given asylum and permanent
residence in
Zimbabwe by Mugabe.
Justifying protecting a leader
responsible for more deaths than any other
African dictator, Mugabe said
through his spokesman, "As a comrade of our
struggle [against white rule in
former Rhodesia], Comrade Mengistu and his
government played a key and
commendable role during our struggle for
independence and no one can dispute
that."
The Ethiopian court found Mengistu guilty of genocide for
atrocities
committed under his Marxist regime. "Members of the Dergue
[government] who
are present in court today and those who are being tried in
absentia have
conspired to destroy a political group and kill people with
impunity," said
the presiding judge, Medhen Kiros. The trial lasted twelve
years and
sentence, when passed at the end of December, seems certain to be
death. The
Soviet-backed revolution that brought Mengistu and a group of
other young
army officers to power in 1974 ended the feudal rule of Emperor
Haile
Selassie, treated as a deity by millions of dirt-poor people in
Africa's
second most-populous country. The court was told how the ageing
emperor was
suffocated to death with a pillow and his body buried under a
lavatory in
the royal palace, where he was under house
arrest.
Mengistu provided arms to Mugabe's ZANU, Zimbabwe African
National Union,
and guerrilla movement and trained Zimbabwe's air force
pilots after
independence. But Mugabe has come under a barrage of criticism
from human
rights and opposition groups in Zimbabwe for protecting Mengistu.
Various
international organizations such as the London-based International
Bar
Association have called for the president himself to be tried by the new
International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against
humanity.
"Verdicts such as this [in Addis Ababa] build up pressure and
send the
message that leaders who are bloodstained must not be allowed to
retire in
comfort," said Peter Takirambudde, Africa head of Human Rights
Watch. He
said Mengistu would find it impossible to travel to neighboring
countries,
even for medical treatment, without facing the danger of arrest.
"This man
and his followers committed monstrous crimes against humanity, and
international justice demands he be brought to face justice. The cycle of
impunity must and will be stopped."
Mugabe has appointed Mengistu as
one of his own security advisers. In that
role, said Nelson Chamisa,
national spokesman of the Movement for Democratic
Change, MDC, Zimbabwe's
main opposition party, Mengistu helped plot last
year's devastating
Operation Murambatsvina (Operation Clean Out the Trash),
in which police and
Mugabe's personal militiamen bulldozed, sledge hammered
and burned down the
homes of some 700,000 to a million town dwellers, most
of them MDC
supporters.
Chamisa said most Zimbabweans regard Mengistu as an
undesirable guest who
has long outstayed his welcome. He added that Mugabe's
refusal to hand over
the former Ethiopian dictator to face justice betrayed
his own inner fear of
international law, saying, "The days in which
dictators would consort in a
boys' club and luxuriously look after
themselves are over. Mr. Mengistu may
be safe in Harare for now, but for how
long?"
Leading Zimbabwean human rights lawyer Otto Saki, of Zimbabwe
Lawyers for
Human Rights, said his organization demanded that Mengistu be
conveyed to
Ethiopia to accept responsibility for his crimes. "We expect the
government
to fulfill this commitment," he said. "We expect government to
draw a
precedent from the Taylor case."
Former Liberian president
Charles Taylor was extradited this year from
Nigeria, where he had been
given political asylum, to face charges of war
crimes and crimes against
humanity at the United Nations-backed Special
Court for Sierra Leone,
Liberia's neighbor where Taylor gave weapons to
rebel forces. Taylor is
presently imprisoned in The Hague awaiting trial.
For 17 years in
Ethiopia, Mengistu ran The Dergue, perhaps the most
terrifying regime modern
Africa has known. Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch both estimate
that at least half a million, and possibly as
many as 1.5 million, people
died in assassinations and executions, warfare
and politically induced
famine during Mengistu's "Red Terror" campaign
against opponents.
It
is difficult to exaggerate the scale of Mengistu's crimes. At the start
of
the darkest days of his rule in 1976, Mengistu stood before a huge crowd
in
the central plaza of Addis Ababa and smashed a series of bottles filled
with
pigs' blood. They represented, he said, the blood of the
"counter-revolutionaries" that would flow as his regime set out to eliminate
rivals of the ruling junta.
"The revolution needs to be fed by the
blood of traitors," he said. Human
rights groups reported that at the height
of the terror campaign, organized
by Soviet advisers and Mengistu's East
German-controlled Department of State
Security, government hit squads were
summarily executing 100 to 150
"anarchists, feudalists, exploiters of the
people and
counter-revolutionaries" each day on the streets of Addis Ababa,
other
centers and in the notorious state prison on the edge of the
capital.
It became commonplace to see students, suspected government
critics and
rebel sympathizers hanging from lampposts each morning. Families
had to pay
a tax known as "the wasted bullet" to obtain the bodies of their
executed
loved ones. At the height of his power, Mengistu himself frequently
garroted
or shot dead opponents, saying that he was leading by example, and
may have
personally killed Haile Selassie.
During his 1974-1991
rules, Mengistu's mass herding of Ethiopia's peasant
farmers into giant
collective farms spawned a famine that took hundreds of
thousands of
lives.
Mengistu, also known as the Black Lenin, was alleged to have fled
Ethiopia
with many millions of US dollars, including a chunk of the 300
million
dollars that Israel paid for the right to evacuate 15,000 Falasha
Jews from
Ethiopia. In the months before he left, Mengistu nationalized
Nestlé's
Ethiopian Livestock Development Company without compensation. He
sold the
cattle stock for 10 million dollars and took the money with him to
Zimbabwe.
The Ethiopian people did not get a cent.
In Zimbabwe,
Mugabe gave Mengistu a luxury villa in the up market Gun Hill
suburb, where
Zimbabwean reporters have observed up to six luxury cars,
including a
Mercedes and a BMW, parked in the drive. The house is heavily
protected by
soldiers from Mugabe's elite Presidential Guard battalion, and
anyone who
attempts to take photographs is arrested. On the rare occasions
when
Mengistu is spotted shopping, he wears military boots and carries a
pistol.
Mengistu, 69, has also been given a large farm 45km
outside Harare and a
property in the far north on the shores of Lake Kariba,
to which he is
believed to have moved in July for security
reasons.
Kenya's main daily newspaper, The Nation, commented: "Why does
it not come
as a surprise that President Mugabe is not willing to hand over
Mengistu to
the Ethiopian government? It is no wonder that he [Mengistu]
long ago found
a soul-mate in Mugabe and was given sanctuary; the two are
birds of a
feather when it comes to atrocities against their
people."
Among the voices raised against Mengistu's presence in Zimbabwe
is that of
Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Mugabe's
most
fearless and outspoken critic who repeatedly says the best service the
Zimbabwean head of state can do for his countrymen is to die. "Mugabe is
using the taxpayers' money to keep a dictator who killed a million people,"
said the archbishop. "You can see what kind of friends Mugabe keeps. You
need one dictator to prop up another."