Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2005 5:46 PM Subject: Good enough
reasons
Dear Family and Friends, A small bent over piece of brown
cardboard tied onto a post on the side of the road was all the sign I needed
to tell me I was headed in the right direction this Friday. The Stop sign at
the junction of the intersection has gone. The road markings warning me to
stop have long since worn off the tar. The road is littered with potholes and
the grass on the verges is uncut and about five foot high, making it almost
impossible to see oncoming traffic. I stopped at the intersection and across
the road one piece of white string held a poster to a street light whose bulb
hasn't worked for months. The wind had folded the poster in half so I
couldn't read it but this too made me believe I was going the right way. When
I got to the gates of the school I slowed down, pulled over and looked at
the line of yobs sitting on the wall in front of the school hall. They
were men and women in their late teens and early twenties and clearly had
no reason to be in a junior school where the oldest pupil is 12. Some of
the yobs were wearing T shirts with slogans advertising the ruling party
and then I knew for sure I had arrived at the right place to check if my
name was on the voters roll.
I was absolutely determined not to be
intimidated by a bunch of bored bullies. I had read the reports by the
opposition that in some areas their supporters had been physically assaulted
after checking if their names were on the voters roll. It would have been
very comforting to see the friendly face or colourful vest of an independent
election observer but of course that's just a pipe dream. As I walked past
the yobs sprawled on the wall, someone hissed and someone else passed a
comment which set them all to laughing but it was water off a ducks back
compared to what I'd had to endure in the last two Zimbabwean elections.
Inside the junior school hall there was a singing lesson in progress and a
teacher was trying to get a class of seven year olds to sit up straight, stop
pushing each other and pay attention and sing. The sound of the children
singing was wonderful and their innocence such a stark contrast to the
bullies on the wall outside. I was the only person checking if my name was
on the voters roll. There was no one ahead of me or behind me, no queue
outside, no one waiting in the car park and with just a week left for voters
roll inspection, this is not a good sign.
The opposition MDC have
still not announced if they are going to take part in the March poll so
basically, just weeks away from an election, there is apathy, confusion and a
tired resignation by many ordinary people who just say they couldn't be
bothered anymore.
I sit at my desk on a Saturday morning writing this
letter and it is a glorious day. The sky is blue, rain clouds are gathering
on the horizon and birds flit backwards and forwards past the open window in
an endless fashion parade. Paradise fly catchers with long orange tails,
migrant bee eaters, red bishop birds, yellow weavers and so many others with
their spectacular breeding tails and exotic colours. Over the road from me
a woman and two little children live in a wooden shack on a building
site. They always smile, laugh and wave and clap with cupped hands if I stop
to give even a single sweetie. I know people who have been
tortured, murdered, abused, raped and imprisoned in Zimbabwe's fight for
democratic governance since February 2000. All of these reasons are good
enough ones for me to go and check if my name is on the voters roll and then
to endure whatever is necessary to cast a ballot in the March elections.
Until next week, with love, cathy. Copyright cathy buckle 22 January
2005.
He is the former captain of Zimbabwe who became a successful
businessman - but it is as England's most successful coach that Duncan
Fletcher has gained a towering reputation, says Vic Marks
Sunday
January 23, 2005 The Observer
'So will England play positively at
Centurion?' Duncan Fletcher was asked at a midweek press conference in
Johannesburg. 'I'll tell you after the Test,' he replied. This seemed an
unnecessarily defensive answer to an innocuous question, but it surprised
nobody. Fletcher is famously guarded in front of the media, taciturn almost
to the point of obstruction. He remains an enigma to those on the
outside.
Fletcher is, by a substantial margin, the most successful coach
of England's cricket team, albeit against scanty opposition: Micky Stewart,
Keith Fletcher, Ray Illingworth and David Lloyd. The scribes can probe all
they like, their tape recorders can keep rolling, but there will be no
indiscretions. In the case of Illingworth and Lloyd, they were bound to come
along eventually.
I asked Fletcher afterwards about that response.
'Why should I divulge how we're going to play? I'm not going to give
anything away.' That's half the story. It needles him that in the wake of a
thrilling victory the focus could still be on the negatives - Geraint
Jones's keeping, Steve Harmison's bowling, Andrew Flintoff's fitness and
batting form. 'Some players perform, some don't and we can still win. In the
past, we lost if our key men didn't produce. You should concentrate on the
whole picture. I get disappointed when I hear a stream of negative
comments.' This is clearly aimed at Geoffrey Boycott.
Fletcher has no
reason to be negative himself. He has never failed, as a player for
Zimbabwe, in his previous career in the computers business, and more
recently as a coach.
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easyodds.com At Western Province, where he took
charge in 1993, with the youthful Jacques Kallis and Herschelle Gibbs under
his wing, the side were consistently successful. Under his guidance,
Glamorgan suddenly won the County Championship in 1998 and since his
appointment as England coach in 1999 the team have steadily improved. They
are legitimately second in the table of Test nations. Even when he captained
Zimbabwe back in the early 1980s, Fletcher oversaw the odd astonishing
result. In 1983, Zimbabwe, then an official minnow, beat Australia at Trent
Bridge in the World Cup (Fletcher 69 not out and four for 42). It is clearly
no coincidence that Fletcher, 56, is associated with successful
teams.
Why he is so good? Fletcher tries to help me out. But there are
obstacles. He is not minded to blow his own trumpet - he genuinely does not
need public adulation. The thrill of seeing a player develop under his
guidance is sufficient. And he says: 'I don't analyse how I operate too
much. Do that and you can try to become too clever. I'm naturally positive.
Even when I was with Zimbabwe I would not give up if six wickets were needed
in six balls. It's going to happen one day. But ask the
others.'
There are plenty of them willing to speak up for the coach.
Nasser Hussain singles out Fletcher as the crucial influence on his career.
'He's a brilliant analyst of the game. Loyalty and trust are key factors
with Duncan. He'll never make you look an idiot in public.'
Marcus
Trescothick speaks of Fletcher's flexible cricket brain and his ability to
think laterally. Michael Vaughan regularly summons him to the nets when his
game requires some intensive care. It is not just the batsmen who
acknowledge his prowess as a coach. Andrew Caddick says: 'Duncan understands
what's required as a bowler and treats us as individuals.' Darren Gough
reckons: 'No other coach has challenged me to do better as consistently as
Fletcher.' Ashley Giles was prepared to remodel his action last winter at
Fletcher's suggestion.
From beyond the England set-up, Bob Woolmer,
currently in charge of Pakistan, is another admirer. Woolmer was preferred
to Fletcher by South Africa in 1993.
'It was right to give it to
Woolmer,' says Fletcher. 'I had only had four games with Western Province at
that time, though we had won all of them.' Woolmer says: 'He's probably the
best of the current international coaches.' Maybe with a hint of envy,
Woolmer adds: 'I wish I could keep in the background like he
does.'
Lord MacLaurin was quite keen to appoint Woolmer to the England
job in 1999, when he was chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board,
but he was impressed by Fletcher's 'strong character and good business
background' and the fact that he was unflappable. 'We had no doubt after
interviewing that Duncan was the one. He handled Nasser Hussain
extraordinarily well and he's obviously got a very good relationship with
Michael Vaughan.'
Up to the age of 45, Fletcher worked in computers in
South Africa. When he was given the England job, he used a business analogy
to define his role. The coach, he said, was the consultant; the captain the
managing director. In other words, he was anxious to establish the primacy
of the captain.
Fletcher once told me how he came to this conclusion.
'When I was first made captain in Zimbabwe, I thought I needed a coach to
run everything. I was an all-rounder and I wanted time to concentrate on my
own game. So I had Peter Carlstein installed as an omnipotent coach. It took
me two practice sessions to establish that this was not working. The players
can't have two bosses; the captain must be in charge.'
The same
principle still applies although the lines of demarcation are more blurred
after more than four years in the job. Fletcher's authority is now massive;
any newcomer will automatically defer to him, if he knows what is good for
him.
And on tour his influence on policy and selection is decisive. Only
when politics intervenes - usually involving Zimbabwe - does he take a back
seat. Discipline is his province and he runs the practices. But on the field
there is no question that Vaughan is in control. This structure helps to
explain the evolving character of the England side. The team have tended to
mirror the captain rather than the coach. Under Hussain, they were
tenacious, tense and bloody-minded; under Vaughan, they are more relaxed,
more eager to express themselves, more aggressive. In 2004 no side scored as
quickly as England.
Fletcher the consultant is a source of valuable
information. He will study videos of the opposition, although he has not
spent too much time in front of the screen this winter since the personnel
of the South Africa side has not changed much since the last series. Then he
will pass on the relevant data to the team. I wanted specific examples of
his assessments. He was too cagey to oblige.
What of Graeme Smith, so
prolific on the recent tour of England? 'We had our plans in England but
there is always the problem of execution,' says Fletcher. Those plans have
not changed significantly here. It is fairly plain that Smith is prone to be
lbw to the ball swinging into him - usually when delivered by Matthew
Hoggard. His head falls over to the off-side, an obvious flaw. Fletcher has
also identified strategies for Gibbs and the classical Kallis, whom he knows
so well but whose flaws are not so easy to pinpoint. He will not tell me
what they are.
But his research has paid dividends often enough to gain
the confidence of his players. Hussain can recall one striking example. 'I
remember the World Cup game against Pakistan at Newlands. Fletcher had
pointed out how Yousuf Youhana shuffles on the back foot at the start of his
innings and that he was unusually susceptible to the yorker. The next day
[James] Anderson bowls him first ball with a yorker and the boys suddenly
realise, "Duncan said that last night". That's why they listen to him. There
will already be a dossier in the files - or the laptops - on all the
Australian players.'
Fletcher also studies his own players intimately.
One-to-one sessions are a key element of his coaching regime, but he is
loath to dive in with suggested amendments of technique, especially if they
are still scoring runs. 'I like them to ask themselves three times whether
any change is justified and then it must be their decision.' This ties in
with his insistence that players must take responsibility for their own
games. But the longer the player is in the set-up, the more they trust his
judgment and under Fletcher's regime there are some long-servers. He sees
stability and consistency of selection as key ingredients to
success.
Fletcher wishes he could devote more time to these one-to-one
sessions. 'It is particularly difficult on tour to give attention to those
not in the Test team, but players respond if you give them individual
attention.' It confirms that the coach cares.
The limited time for
preparation is a common theme of Fletcher's. 'I've always said that there
should be four days between back-to-back Tests. I'm not a knocker of county
cricket. [Fletcher has often been portrayed as disdainful of the county
game.] There are some good players out there, but I think we play too much
domestic cricket.' He recalls his time at Western Province. 'I remember
spending an hour and a half bowling off-breaks at a young Kallis in a net
-just the two of us - because he had a slight flaw against them, and going
down every few deliveries to discuss how he was playing. There is no time
for that in England.'
So much for the clinical analyst with the capacity
to articulate simply what he sees. So much for the attention to detail
(although Fletcher told me that the stationing of England's reserve
fieldsmen as ball boys around the boundary at the Wanderers on the final
afternoon of the fourth Test, a ploy to save a few minutes, was Vaughan's
idea, not his). What was so striking about the England victory at the
Wanderers last Monday was the passion of the side.
Where does that
come from? Fletcher is probably too level-headed to deliver the Churchillian
oration. (I have, though, always enjoyed the closing call to arms of his
first team talk to the Glamorgan side: 'Let's get this road on the show.')
His explanation is prosaic.
'It all stems from hard work, which creates
confidence. That can lead to victories, which brings enjoyment to the
players. When you have invested all that hard work, you don't give up
easily.'
That work ethic is vital and he likes it to pervade the entire
touring party. He tells me how he insisted that the current media liaison
officer, David Clarke, should join everyone else in a gym session. Clarke
was obviously proud of his presence there. But this little episode
reinforced the notion that everyone was part of the team and that everyone
has to strive for improvement.
'You win more games in the changing
room than you do on the field,' he says.
At the start of the 1994-95 tour
to South Africa, Ray Illingworth and John Edrich, England's coach and
batting specialist, pottered over to the Wanderers Golf Club for a few holes
while the team were doing their physical jerks under the supervision of
skipper Mike Atherton. England have moved on since then.
Nor would
Fletcher dream of publicly criticising his players as Illingworth was prone
to do. By and large, they respond with their loyalty. 'There are always a
few niggles,' says Fletcher, 'but it would be boring if there weren't.' He
is conscious of the character of a player when contemplating
selections.
My impression has always been that he is black and white
in his estimation of cricketers and their personalities, that he will never
change his mind on someone. He denies that. 'Sometimes you have to make
sacrifices with those with exceptional talent.' But he has been reluctant to
stick with the wayward maverick unless the results are immediate. Under
Fletcher, it did not take long for Phil Tufnell to be replaced by the
dependable Giles. Tufnell, for all his talent, let his hair down - and maybe
the side - too often to be of service.
I suspect Fletcher can let his
own hair down occasionally as well, but outside the cocoon of the England
team we shall never know. BBC Wales's cricket correspondent can recall being
rugby-tackled in a hotel corridor by Glamorgan's beaming coach after some
post-match celebrations of a victory in Yorkshire. Fletcher possesses an
impish grin and a waspish sense of humour, but it is not for public
consumption.
He insists that all the sides that he has ever been involved
with - Zimbabwe, Western Province, Glamorgan and England - have been happy
ones. There is a simple reason for that. They have tended to win.
He
is a man of letters whose consummate skill at negotiations was dealt out in
spades when he, together with Joshua Nkomo, entered the hallowed portals of
Lancaster House in the UK and agreed to implement the political route to end
Zimbabwe's second chimurenga.
The war was about universal
franchise, access to and ownership of land, and Mugabe led a national
liberation movement that advocated these ideals.
Today, 24
years down the drag, the man is still in charge, and this weekend Cosatu is
scheduled to meet its counterpart, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, in
Harare.
The government of Zimbabwe has made it painfully clear the
South African labour federation is not welcome and has accused it of
interfering in that country's "internal affairs". This is fantastically rich
coming from a movement that relied on extensive international solidarity and
support to topple the fascist regime of Ian Smith.
Cosatu, for
its part, has made it abundantly clear that it will not shirk its
international responsibility as a working class movement. It is determined
to gather factual information - from those directly affected - about
conditions of employment, workers' rights, human rights violations and
political freedoms.
But the man of letters will have no
truck with this information gathering exercise. It is, according to him, an
attempt to undermine Zimbabwe's sovereignty and a direct challenge to his
authority as a democratically elected leader.
When Mugabe was
elected to the top job over two decades ago, his strategy was one of
reconciliation. His commitment to education and training made Zimbabwe the
most literate of the continent's nations.
The Thatcherite UK
government defaulted on its commitments to compensate commercial farmers for
land that was supposed to be awarded to small-scale and peasant farmers.
Combined with Mugabe's own brand of radical nationalism and cronyism, this
heralded the start of the decline.
Historical ties and loyalties
can no longer be used to cover up his excessive abuses of power. The
Zimbabwean state must be engaged robustly, even when the learned man goes
into hysterical fits. Cosatu has a job on its hands.
By
Samuel Issacharoff Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page B01
Despite the
deteriorating security situation that has left dozens dead in Iraq during
the past few days alone, many Iraqis will feel justifiably proud to take the
first step toward democracy when they cast their votes for a transitional
national assembly a week from now. By itself, the election is a milestone.
But it is not the key to their country's democratic legitimacy. The lasting
success of democracies lies not in seeing that the will of the majority is
expressed through the ballot box, but by two more long-standing factors:
first, a commitment by a nation's elites that a victorious electoral
coalition will not use its hold on power to exact revenge on the losers; and
second, proof that the people can vote their leaders out as well as vote
them in.
The history of the 20th century is littered with the remains of
elections that augured neither democracy nor the rule of law. The entire
Soviet empire was enamored of show elections in which every citizen was
given the privilege of voting for the winner -- and only the winner. Fascist
and corporatist regimes would routinely invoke the plebiscite to crown the
claimed rule of the people, a tool used by Hitler to consolidate power in
the 1930s. Post-colonial regimes in countries such as the Central African
Republic or more recently Zimbabwe would hold elections only to see the
victors proclaim themselves rulers for life -- what the British
ex-colonialists would sneeringly call "one man, one vote, one time." What's
more, all these oppressive regimes would hold their elections pursuant to
constitutions that stood as paeans to human dignity.
For most Iraqis,
the act of voting alone is understandably a major event, as their country
has not had a meaningful election since 1953. Assuming that the elections
are held across most of the country, that they are not fraudulent and that
the majority prevails, most would conclude that democracy, at least in some
rudimentary fashion, has been established. While elections may be necessary
to a democracy, though, they are by no means sufficient.
The dirty
secret about democratic processes is that they come into being in a
decidedly undemocratic fashion. Before any election can be held, there must
be ground rules that determine what the elections are for, and formal
institutional structures that will be filled by the elections. But what
justifies those rules? The answer can only be given retrospectively, based
on the success of the democratic experiment itself.
All democracies
enter this world with this so-called democratic deficit -- a system
preordained by no particular democratic process. In Iraq, for example, over
100 parties appear on the ballot, but no candidates do, even though there
are more than 7,000 candidates running for the 275 seats in the National
Assembly.
Each party has named a slate, and its delegation to the
constituent assembly will be determined by the overall party votes that
entitle a set number of slate members to assume office. Each party is
obligated to name a woman to every third slot on its list in order to ensure
that 25 percent of the Assembly be women. There are no districts, as in the
United States or Britain, there is no second chamber of the Parliament, as
in many countries, and the Assembly will select the president and the two
deputy presidents, as well as serving as the drafting body for a new
Constitution.
All of this is the result of negotiations conducted under
the auspices of the United Nations and implemented under the authority of
the recently created Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq.
This
lack of democratic pedigree puts Iraq in excellent company. No one
authorized the Americans gathered in Philadelphia at our founding to
jettison the Articles of Confederation and craft a new constitutional order.
No one selected the South African negotiators who decided the terms of a new
democratic era, complete with an embryonic constitutional plan. No
democratic election preceded the gathering of the loya jirga in Afghanistan,
which met to decree a new election code and plan the transition to
democracy. In fact, with the possible exception of the French Fourth
Republic, no constitutional democratic order has emerged from anything that
would pass muster as a genuine democratic process. And the Fourth Republic,
a duly authorized constitutional overhaul by the French Parliament after
World War II, collapsed in only a few years -- a victim of the paralysis
built into it by parliamentary self-interest.
Which brings us back to
the two critical elements to a democracy's success. Prevailing political
thought prior to the 20th century doubted that it would ever be possible to
gain a credible commitment from a nation's elites to prevent a victorious
electoral coalition from misusing its hold on power to settle old scores.
British philosopher John Stuart Mill, for instance, wrote that political
liberalism was impossible in a country with ethnic or national divisions:
"Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak
different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of
representative government, cannot exist."
Over the past half century the
need to secure democratic order in countries fractured by racial, ethnic or
religious cleavages has robbed us of the easy assumption that democracy
simply cannot take hold in riven societies. From the Asiatic steppes of the
former Soviet Union to South Africa to the Iraqi cauldron, stabilizing
democratic tolerance is the most vital issue to face the geopolitical
order.
Much as we may associate democracy with the will of the majority,
the success of constitutional democracies, in fact, turns on the ability to
constrain the majority by limiting the powers of government, while allowing
minorities and oppositions to exist and flourish. Constitutions by their
nature impose obstacles on the ability of the majority to claim its
immediate objectives. The U.S. Constitution creates a formidable hurdle
through the amendment process. Most Western European constitutions build in
delay to temper the momentary zeal of an electoral majority, as with the
Finnish and French requirements that two successive parliaments must approve
any constitutional change. Germany goes even further and declares critical
portions of its constitution unamendable.
In South Africa, the most
successful transition from authoritarian to democratic rule of the late 20th
century, negotiations between Nelson Mandela's African National Congress and
the apartheid National Party focused extensively on the interim principles
that would form the basis of the new constitutional order. It was this
embryonic constitution that provided protection against the country's white
minority trying to hold out in a fratricidal civil war. The promise of
limits on the political power of the majority was the precondition for the
new democratic order.
The second requirement is even more difficult to
assess. The key to democracy turns out not to be the capacity to elect
rulers, because elections can also provide tyrants-in-waiting with the
ability to marshal their partisans and use the veneer of democracy to
consolidate their treachery. Whether in the form of pure evil, as with Adolf
Hitler, or simple venality, as with Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, or just
demagoguery, as with Argentina's Juan Peron, the partisan zeal unleashed in
electoral combat may prove the first step to a power grab immune from any
form of further accountability.
Democracy, then, is ultimately not
about the ability to elect rulers; it is about the ability to send them
packing. The political tragedy of post-colonial Africa was not the absence
of elections. It was the inability to ever vote rulers out of
office.
This is why the election of 1800 in the United States continues
to fascinate historians: Amid tremendous rancor and charges of foreign
intrigue, the fledgling republic faced its ultimate challenge: Could
elections dislodge a chief executive (John Adams) and bring to office his
bitter rival (Thomas Jefferson)?
Democracies aspire to ennoble their
citizens, to allow them to reach beyond the most basic concerns for security
and survival. The first elections in a divided nation such as Iraq will no
doubt revolve around group identities. The hope, however, is that the
process of governing will diminish those concerns and allow politics to
focus on governance and statecraft. The ability to vote out of office the
initial governors is critical to the democratic enterprise.
Whether
an election is indeed a harbinger of democracy is best addressed in
hindsight once the security of the minorities can be assessed and once the
first elected rulers face retrospective accountability before the
electorate.
It may well be, as Harvard professor Samuel Huntington
once famously wrote, that "Elections, open, free, and fair, are the essence
of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non." Iraq will have made great
strides if it is able to hold elections across most of the country and if a
governing coalition can be forged. But we should also be aware that
elections alone are not enough.
Author's
email:si74@columbia.edu
Samuel Issacharoff is a professor at Columbia Law
School and an author of "The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the
Political Process" (Foundation Press).
JOB Sikhala's troubled St Mary's constituency yesterday
threatened to take the MDC leadership to court, as the confusion surrounding
the holding of primary elections in one of the opposition party's hottest
spots deepens. Sikhala, the MDC problem child, told The Daily Mirror last
night that he would abide by the decision of his constituency to take the
party to court. "Those are my masters and I am their servant," Sikhala
said. Hundreds of party supporters who gathered at Sikhala's house yesterday
unanimously resolved to institute litigation against the MDC over the way it
was handling the primary elections issue, accusing the party of oscillating
and avoiding the real problem in that political hot bed. St Mary's
district secretary, Unganai Tarusenga told the supporters that: "We the
people of St Mary's declare today that after a torrid and protracted
struggle for democracy in our party since last year, resolve that we have
withdrawn our mandate to bless a treacherous, bogus, mitigated and
bastardised primitive rigging of a process which must give us a candidate of
our popular choice. "Our party has been at pains to find a clean route to
impose a candidate on us since last year to represent us on the forthcoming
parliamentary elections." The MDC had been vacillating on how to handle
primary elections in St Mary's, amid charges that the opposition party
intended to ditch Sikhala because of his outspokenness against party
policies. Sikhala recently wrote to party leader Morgan Tsvangirai, demanding
to know his fate. The MDC is under fire from the people of St Mary's who
alleged that party deputy secretary general, Gift Chimanikire yesterday
allegedly conducted a verification exercise at Harvest House, the MDC
headquarters, yesterday without the constituency's participation. "Today
as we address this meeting Chimanikire is engaged in an astonishing circus
at Harvest House, bussing people who are not St Mary's residents to confirm
them as such to achieve the dream of the hallucinations," Tarusenga
charged. In a petition to Chimanikire, the people of St Mary's recused
themselves from participating in the "fraudulent" verification of structures
in the constituency, citing irregularities. "As the St Mary's district
executive representatives, we have sat down and come up with a resolute
stance that for the moment we are withdrawing from further participating in
the ongoing verification processes for the following reasons: "We were
invited by your high office to verify structures for St Mary's district
executive. What surprised us was that a number of people whom we know are
not St Mary's residents were bussed from different provinces and districts
in and around Harare and were locked up in different toilets and kitchens
within Harvest House building to form fake structures. The scenario is very
disturbing and we feel that our continued participation is not worth-while,"
read the petition. MDC organising secretary, Esaph Mdlongwa, who is
responsible for running the party's primaries, yesterday professed
ignorance on the goings on in St Mary's. "I am in Bulawayo and as such I
am not aware of what is happening in the constituency. Chimanikire is the
man in charge of that province and should handle things properly," Mdlongwa
said. But MDC director of education, a Rusike, who claimed to be
Chimanikire's assistant in handling the party's primaries, said the St
Mary's verification exercise was postponed to today after the constituency
complained. Efforts to get a comment from Chimanikire were in vain at the
time of going to press last night. MDC national chairman Isaac Matongo did
not answer his phone last night.
From Pamenus Tuso in Bulawayo issue date
:2005-Jan-22
Farmers in Zimbabwe are facing a major setback as the
shortage of seed maize and fertiliser continues in
Matabeleland.
While the cut-off point for planting is almost over, some
farmers in Matabeleland are still looking for seed, especially short season
varieties. Maize and fertiliser have been in short supply since the onset of
the plantingseason. While seed companies claim that they have released
enough seed on the market in the 2004/2005 farming season, the supply of the
commodity remained erratic countrywide. A critical shortage of foreign
currency has resulted in fertiliser companies producing quantities well
below normal requirements of farmers countrywide. An official from Seed-Co
Limited depot in Bulawayo this week said they were currently turning away
farmers because they had no maize seed in stock. The official said they had
suspended operations and only expected more seed consignments next
season. "The cut-off period of supplying seed is almost over now. Right now
we are busy stocking seed for winter cropping," he said. There is low
activity in most newly resettled commercial farms in Matabelelnad due to the
shortage of seed, fertiliser, tillage equipment and diesel. The
government has resettled thousands of mainly black farmers since 2000 to
spearhead its land reform programme. A poor rainfall pattern this season is
also threatening the country, with crops in some parts of the country
showing signs ofstress. In some parts of Matabeleland, crops have
reportedly wilted as the dry spell has prevailed for a long time.
Economist, Samuel Udenge has
won the right to represent Chimanimani constituency on a Zanu PF ticket
after beating Hwange Colliery boss, Munacho Mutezo by just 60 votes, in the
ruling party primary elections that took place on Thursday. According to
results released by the ruling party's national election directorate chaired
by Elliot Manyika, Undenge polled 4 130 votes against Mutezo's 4 074 in
primaries where the other contestant, Beta got 1631. In another election
in the province, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Shadreck Chipanga clinched
the Makoni East constituency after beating Mandi Chimene by 3 432 to 827
votes. Results for Bulawayo province's seven constituencies were also made
available last night, with Zanu PF secretary for youths, Absolom Sikhosana
winning the Nkulumane seat ahead of David Ndlovu. Sikhosana polled 398
against the latter's 312. In Bulawayo East, former city mayor Joshua
Malinga polled 235 votes against Rachel Matshazi's 7 to clinch the ticket to
represent the constituency. Two other contestants, Themba Sibanda and Rona
Moyo withdrew from the race. In Makokoba, the seat went to Dickson Basuthu,
while Ntombikhaise Mpofu was unopposed in Lobengula-Magwegwe
constituency. Former cabinet minister and also Zanu PF deputy political
commissair Sikhanyiso Ndlovu beat two other contestants, Edison Ncube and
Judith Ncube to win in Mpopoma. Ndlovu polled 534, while the other two
got 220 and 23 votes respectively. Godfrey Malaba won in Pumula Luveve in a
poll he was facing two other candidates. In Bulawayo South, minister of
small enterprises Sithembiso Nyoni won the seat after defeating Liso Masuku
who had 67 votes. Nyoni garnered 135 votes. In Mashonaland West, former
Chinhoyi mayor, Faber Chidarikire beat central committee member Robert
Sikanyika, and a woman candidate Prisca Mupfumira. Chidarikire polled 3 514
votes against 652 and 251 secured by Sikanyika and Mupfumira
respectively Results for two other constituencies, Makonde and Kariba, were
not available at the time of going to press last night. The same case
applied to two constituencies in the Midlands - Gokwe Central and Gokwe
North (Chireya). In Gokwe Central there was a rerun, while in Chireya there
were logistical problems that affected voting last weekend. In
Matabeleland North, Tsholotsho went to Musa Mathema, the wife of Bulawayo
governor Cain Mathema, who polled 533 in a five-woman race. In Binga,
Samuel Mugande won the ticket to represent Zanu after defeating George
Nyathi, the only other person who was contesting. Mugande polled 880 votes
against Nyathi's 667. In Matabelelend South, Gwanda's seating MP and foreign
affairs deputy minister Abednico Ncube retained the seat after amassing 4
603 votes, after battling it out with four other aspiring parliamentarians.
FIFTY Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings
(ZBH) employees and ex-workers residing at the company's flat in Harare's
Avenues area face eviction after failing to pay rent for the past 12
months.
ZBH has since enlisted the services of a debt collector to
recover the overdue rentals, or evict the employees. The debt collector's
spokesperson, Tendai Kanengoni, confirmed to The Daily Mirror that his firm
had been hired to recover the overdue rentals, but did not say how much was
owed to the national broadcaster. "The employees were served with final
notices on January 14 2005 instructing them to pay their dues. Failure to
comply with the notices will result in eviction," Kanengoni
said. Loveness Chikozho, ZBH public relations executive, could neither
confirm nor deny that the employees and ex-workers would be evicted from the
flat. She also declined to reveal how much the company was owed in
rentals. "This is a matter involving our own staff members who are
occupants of Hatley House and as such you will appreciate that this is
an internal matter and we need not involve outsiders," she said
in response to written questions from The Daily Mirror. Chikozho added:
"As for the questions regarding how much we are owed, for how long tenants
have been defaulting, and the course of action we are taking, as well as the
composition of our tenants, please note that if The Daily Mirror were to be
asked about these questions, it would say it's an internal
process." However, some of the tenants told this newspaper that they were
bitter that ZBH wanted them evicted when it was partly to blame for their
failure to pay rent. The tenants said ZBH had of late failed to pay
wages and salaries on time, resulting in them prioritising bread and butter
issues first. "Where does ZBH expect me to get the $350 000 rent when in fact
they are failing to pay my salary? I have not been paid for the past two
months," said an angry tenant. Another tenant said it was strange for ZBH
to engage a debt collector to deal with its employees, as the matter could
have been resolved internally. "It's strange that an employer takes his
employees to debt collectors. This is an internal issue. ZBH could have
instructed the salaries department to deduct the money from the workers'
salaries. The problem is that we are not being paid on time. Where will
they deduct it from?" asked the employee. The tenants also complained that
since last Friday, they had been without water after the Harare City Council
disconnected supplies for non-payment. Chikozho said she was not aware that
the council had disconnected water supplies to the flat. She said: "It's
surprising. It's news to me that there is no water at the flat. I am yet to
find out."
Stop using national youth graduates in public
works: Chaibva
The Daily Mirror Reporter issue date
:2005-Jan-22
THE MDC shadow minister for local government, Gabriel
Chaibva, has described as "irrational", moves by the Ministry of Local
Government, Public Works and National Housing to force local authorities to
enlist national youth service graduates in their public works
programmes. Harare has already enlisted the services of national youth
service graduates in flushing out street vendors who have invaded the
capital's central business district due to the prevailing harsh economic
conditions, with Mutare being the latest recipient of a directive to absorb
the graduates. "I know that the system of patronage is part and parcel of
the political agenda of Zanu PF. How can a party running a council and has
its own policies be forced to employ people whose political allegiance is
obvious and have a history of violence against us (MDC)?" Chaibva added
that the government was usurping the powers of councillors by continuing to
give orders, saying this had also led to the paralysis of the Harare City
Council. "Harare is now totally bankrupt because of this gross interference.
Nearly every district office in Harare is now being manned by these youths,"
Chaibva alleged. Most local authorities have public works programmes that
are meant to benefit disadvantaged and unemployed youths. Councillors
normally identify such people in their respective wards. Contacted for
comment, the Minister, Ignatius Chombo, denied that they had directed the
councils to engage the youths. He said: "There is nothing like that (the
directive) and besides such matters, are dealt with by officials in the
ministry since they are purely service issues," he said. The vice
president of the Urban Councils Association, Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube, who is
also the executive mayor of Bulawayo, said he could not comment on the matter
since provincial governors and resident ministers were now handling
issues of public works programmes. "The governor is now handling all public
works programme matters and his office is now responsible for all the
recruitments," he said. Since the establishment of the national youth service
programme in 2000, government has made it a policy that all public
institutions give preferential treatment to graduates from the programme
when recruiting employees.
CHARLES Pemhenayi, a
tobacco farmer and businessman, has won the right to represent Zanu PF in
Mutare Central after his opponent Esau Mupfumi, withdrew from the race at
the last minute.
Pemhenayi, 44, was declared the Zanu PF
candidate for the crucial March poll by the ruling party politburo member,
Retired General Solomon Mujuru.
Although it was not
immediately clear why Mupfumi, a transport operator, withdrew from the race,
sources said he indicated he would not want to challenge
Pemhenayi.
Shadreck Beta, whose weekend victory against Mupfumi
was annulled amid charges he had manipulated the voting system, attempted to
stand again but was barred from doing so by Mujuru.
Beta's
supporters had thronged polling stations vowing to vote or disrupt the
voting process if their candidate was not allowed to participate. But there
was no incident since polling was called off because Pemhenayi was
unopposed.
Sources said after Mujuru had made it clear Beta
would not be allowed to participate in the fresh primaries, Mupfumi
immediately withdrew from the race.
"After Mujuru ordered
Beta off the race Mupfumi said he was unwilling to contest Pemhenayi," said
one source.
"So Mujuru immediately declared Pemhenayi the
winner."
Pemhenayi will now meet Innocent Gonese, the
opposition MDC chief whip in the fight for Mutare Central. Pemhenayi was not
immediately available for comment.
Video on plight of Zimbabwean refugees
well received, says Trust
Date: 23-Jan, 2005
JOHANNESBURG - The Zimbabwe Solidarity Peace Trust says its report and video
on the persecution of Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa titled "No War in
Zimbabwe," has played a crucial role in raising awareness about the plight
of the refugees on the continent.
A representative of the
trust, Selvan Chetty told Daily News Online that since the launch of the
report two months ago, several Africa embassies in South Africa had welcomed
and accepted it saying they would use it to lobby their governments to help
resolve the crisis.
"Although the South African government has
dismissed the report, we are pleased that several African countries such as
Nigeria and Kenya have acknowledged it and promised to take the matter to
their presidents," said Chetty.
He said the purpose of the
report and video was to highlight the plight and suffering of the Zimbabwean
refugees and so far, the response from the region was
positive.
Chetty said although the South African government had
not acknowledged the report, it was making efforts quietly to rectify the
problems faced by refugees, especially Zimbabweans.
"The
situation has not really improved but we understand that the Department of
Home Affairs is doing something to resolve the crisis," said
Chetty.
The Zimbabwe Solidarity Peace Trust is a
church-related organisation advocating for a peaceful resolution of the
Zimbabwe crisis.
SA labour union heading to Harare once more January 23
2005 at 01:16PM
Cape Town - The Congress of South African Trade
Unions intends sending a second fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe in the
first week of February, the trade union federation said on
Sunday.
A similar fact-finding delegation was deported in October
last year by the Zimbabwean government.
The announcement
followed a three-hour meeting between Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima
Vavi and his Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions counterpart Wellington
Chibebe in Cape Town on Saturday.
Zimbabwe's labour minister, Paul
Mangwana, warned last week that Cosatu would not be welcome in his country,
and that it should confine its "labour politics" to South Africa. -
Sapa
HARARE, Jan. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- Zimbabwe
is facing a shortage of ammonium nitrate, which might reduce cotton
production this year, an official said on Sunday.
A cotton
specialist with Cottrade Private (Ltd), Obert Jiri said cotton yield might
drop to around 280,000 tons from the expected 350,000 tons if farmers don't
get the commodity in time.
"The major problem that is likely to
reduce cotton yield is theshortage of ammonium nitrate," Jiri
said.
"The shortage of the fertilizer is quite critical at the
moment.Seed houses like Seedco are getting 60,000 tons of ammonium nitrate
fertilizer per week instead of 100,000 tons."
Jiri said
representations about the shortage of the commodity had been made to the
government, which has since announced that imports were being made from
South Africa to augment local stocks.
The cotton specialist
said yields could still reach the projected 350,000 tons if the commodity
was made available within the next two to three months.
Zimbabwe has been facing shortages of seed and fertilizer in the last few
years due to low production capacity.
The country produced
340,000 tons of cotton worth close to 160 million US dollars last
year.
The crop has emerged as one of the country's major
foreign currency earners in recent years. Enditem
Tanzanian leader aligns himself with Mugabe January 23
2005 at 01:19PM
Harare - Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa on
Saturday predicted "handsome victories" for both his party and Zimbabwe's
governing Zanu-PF in upcoming general elections in the two
countries.
Mkapa, who jetted in to Harare for talks with Mugabe,
told reporters after the meeting that Zimbabwe "has elections in March, I
have elections in October - and we both expect we will win very
handsomely".
The Tanzanian leader said he was "very satisfied" with
his talks with Mugabe in which "we exchanged views on the situations in both
our countries" and underscored that his CCM (Chama Cha Mapinduzi
-Revolutionary Party) and the Zanu-PF were "partner
parties".
He left for Tanzania after attending a special lunch
hosted for him.
Mugabe and Mkapa enjoy warm ties.
Earlier this month, Mugabe was the sole foreign leader to attend the
anniversary of the bloody 1964 revolution in Zanzibar which led to the
ouster of the island's Arab oligarchy and its union with Tanganyika to form
Tanzania.
Zimbabwe's March elections are seen as a litmus test
to its commitment to fall in line with southern African regional standards.
The last two elections in 2000 and 2002 were marred by allegations of
violence and rigging.
Mkapa, who is due to retire at the end of
his second and final five-year term in November, a month after the East
African nation hold its third multi-party general elections, has pledged to
hold free and fair polls. - Sapa-AFP
Arrested agent exposes Mbeki plot on Mugabe Gavin Du
Venage, Cape Town January 24, 2005 IT sounds like something the CIA might
have tried back in the days of the Cold War: send an agent to bribe the
cronies of an errant dictator, get them on board and slowly gain control of
the regime while pulling the strings from afar. And if the spy gets caught,
hope his torturers don't learn anything that can't be denied in
public.
It is not yet clear how much the 48-year-old white man now in the
custody of Zimbabwe's feared Central Intelligence Organisation has told his
interrogators. Since the news broke last week of his capture 10 days before
Christmas, the man has confessed to working for South Africa's National
Intelligence Agency.
His job, according to the Zimbabwean state
media, was to hire top officials of the ruling ZANU-PF party, paying them up
to $US10,000 ($13,000) a month in return for their allegiance and a steady
flow of information about the inner workings of President Robert Mugabe's
regime.
Five senior members of Mr Mugabe's party have been arrested since
the man was questioned. An MP, an ambassador, two senior office-bearers and
one of the country's wealthiest businessmen have all been arrested on
treason charges, crimes for which they could be hanged.
Two cabinet
ministers are also awaiting a late-night knock on the door, according to
reports in some South African newspapers.
That the plot was hatched in
Pretoria - and not White Hall or Washington or even Canberra, which Mr
Mugabe has constantly warned his followers to guard against - is what caught
observers off-guard. South African President Thabo Mbeki has steadfastly
defended Mr Mugabe. He has consistently opposed sanctions, fought for the
Zimbabwean leader in the Commonwealth, and laid out the red carpet when he
and his officials visit the country.
But now it appears Mr Mbeki was
planning for a future without Mr Mugabe.
"He (Mbeki) was quietly studying
the inner workings of ZANU-PF, its policies and politics," says Zimbabwean
constitutional law lecturer Lovemore Madhuku.
"It has always been Mbeki's
intention to replace Mugabe without replacing ZANU-PF," Dr Madhuku
said.
The foiled plot comes as a huge embarrassment to South Africa's
intelligence service, not to mention the Government. The NIA is still
basking in its spectacular success in destroying the plot to overthrow the
Government of Equatorial Guinea, led by wealthy Britons Mark Thatcher and
Simon Mann.
Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, a former communist
guerilla who spent years on the run from the apartheid regime, has refused
to comment on the Zimbabwe arrest. So has Mr Mbeki.
In the meantime,
local reports say the luckless agent is still being interrogated and
subjected to torture in Harare. Once the CIO has finished with him, he will
no doubt be put on trial, along with the men he recruited. And like his Cold
War forebears, he will be able to count on little help from the agency that
set up his assignment.
Zim can't get 'secrets' right 23/01/2005 15:58 -
(SA)
Harare - State documents produced in court and obtained on
Sunday make the disturbing charge that the director-general of the South
African secret service (Sass) paid a top Zimbabwean Zanu-PF MP for state
secrets.
The intelligence boss is named as "Madikiza". However, according
to Sass its director-general is Hilton Dennis and sources in agency said
they had never heard of "Madikiza".
Police documents in a high court
hearing claimed that Phillip Chiyangwa, a Zanu-PF MP, had been paid $10 000
a month for supplying "political and economic information" to Sass
agents.
No official explanation could be obtained for the Zimbabweans'
case of mistaken identity.
However, legal observers said the error
now casts doubt on the entire case against him and four other Zanu-PF
officials, who say they were abducted by agents of the Central Intelligence
Organation (CIO).
Chiyangwa was arrested in December with Zimbabwe
ambassador-designate to Mozambique Godfrey Dzvairo, Zanu-PF director of
external affairs Itai Marchi, ruling party deputy director of security Kenny
Karidza and Tendai Mutambanadzo, company secretary for a bank owned by a
Zanu-PF tycoon.
All have been charged under the Official Secrets Act with
selling information to South Africa.
State lawyers have confirmed in
court that authorities are holding an unnamed alleged South African
agent.
There is no indication under what legislation or conditions he is
being held under, whether he has been brought to court or if he has been
granted diplomatic access.
The police charge sheet against Chiyangwa
states that he was "recruited by Jack", a Sass agent.
The court
papers also detail severe abuse of power by authorities.
He claims that
he was kidnapped at Harare's Holiday Inn on December 15 by CIO
agents.
They threw a hood over his head as they drove him away, and then
kept him in solitary confinement for two weeks.
He was subjected to
"extensive and unconventional interrogation", he said.
He has high blood
pressure and during his detention, he said, he suffered a mild
stroke.
He was denied access to his lawyers until the end of his
detention, and was then transferred to a regular prison.
Peter
Kumbawa, the magistrate who dismissed Chiyangwa's first application for bail
on December 31 when he was first moved to legal custody, "invented
allegations" and found him "guilty without hearing any evidence" against
him, the affidavit claims.
Kumbawa said in his ruling: "Here we have
a man who has access to all national information but who is also capable of
selling the same away with no qualms.
"a few American dollars placed
surreptitiously in his pocket", Chiyangwa had decided to "peddle its
(Zimbabwe's) economic interests or political strategies like cheap oriental
goods in bazaars".
The scale of the nightmare he
was caught up in struck Tich Mataz in a Zimbabwean prison this week when he
was ordered to taste the food he had brought for his brother. The radio and
TV presenter had to prove that the Chinese takeaway he had taken to Harare's
Remand Prison was not poisoned. Reeling, Mataz walked to a
double-chicken-wire fence and stared in disbelief at his wealthy older
brother, shackled to another prisoner: an unshaven man in khaki overalls,
accused of betraying his country. This week, the "relatives and friends" of
he and two others accused of spying on Zimbabwe for the SA government wrote
to the Sunday Times declaring: "The constitutional rights of the accused are
being sacrificed [for politics]." No individual family member would make
statements critical of the espionage trial for fear of intimidation.
However, Mataz, a former 5FM DJ and presenter of SABC's Woza Weekend TV
show, said yesterday that his brother had nothing to gain from spying. Mataz
whose christened name is Tichafe Matambanadzo - claimed that brother Tendai
Matambanadzo, a former executive with the Metropolitan Bank of Zimbabwe, had
grown wealthy from his profession and didn't need "any espionage
money".
Mataz flew to Harare from England two weeks ago in a panic,
believing his brother had been kidnapped by criminals. Matambanadzo was
seized by security police outside his home in Harare's luxury suburb of
Chisipite on December 13, and held without charge for 11 days. Like four
high-profile members of the ruling Zanu PF, he has been accused of selling
"state secrets" to a SA spy-master. His wife, also named Tendai, described
the family nightmare: "The day before his birthday, someone came and
threatened the guard at our home. By the time I arrived home, Tendai was
gone without a trace. I filed a missing persons report. I went to every
hospital and every mortuary in this town; I did not believe real policeman
had taken him away." Mataz said: "I thought it was a robbery or kidnapping.
But after I arrived [in Zimbabwe], he phoned [his wife] to say, 'I'm fine.
It's not what you think; it's these security guys - they're doing an
investigation. But I can't say where I am.'" Matambanadzo signed a
confession and pleaded guilty to espionage on December 24, along with
Godfrey Dzvairo, former Zimbabwean consul-general to South Africa, and Zanu
- PF director Itai Marchi - having been denied access to a
lawyer.
However, the three, newly represented by attorney Selby
Hwacha, have applied to change their plea to "not guilty" on the grounds
that their confessions were won through intimidation. A final appeal to the
Supreme Court will be filed this week. On Friday, Hwacha did not deny that
some of his clients gave or sold information to SA government employees.
However, he said such information was not a state secret and "therefore no
offence has been committed". He said that even the defence team had no idea
of the identity of the SA agent who fingered their clients to Zimbabwean
police, and that the court had agreed it would be kept secret. Zanu PF
central committee member Phillip Chiyangwa and party strong-man Kenneth
Karidza, also charged with selling secrets, will make separate, belated
appearances in court after suffering mental and physical abuse in
detention.
Harare - South Africa's Independent Electoral
Commission would be perplexed and perhaps even infuriated trying to discover
who is supposed to run Zimbabwe's next general election, expected in March.
There is no similarity, apart from the jargon, between polls in South Africa
and those held by its turbulent northern neighbour. Zimbabwe's constitution
says a five-man Election Supervisory Commission, plus a chairperson, shall
"supervise registration of voters and the conduct of elections". It is
appointed by President Robert Mugabe and has run all elections since
independence in 1980. Its budget dwindled over the years and it lost its
ability to manage the voters' roll, surrendering it to Mugabe's close
associate Tobaiwa Mudede, the registrar-general. At present, as in the
presidential poll of 2002, the commission is two commissioners short and its
new chairperson was announced only on Thursday. After the Southern African
Development Community's electoral principles were adopted last August, the
words "independent electoral commission" heaved their way into Zimbabwe's
political lexicon. So Patrick Chinamasa, the justice minister, formulated a
new law, finally signed by Mugabe last week, called the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission Act. On Thursday Chinamasa announced the names of four members of
the Zimbabwe Election Commission who were "agreed to" in a Zanu PF-dominated
parliamentary committee this month. Mugabe alone appointed the chairperson,
high court judge George Chiweshe, who came to the bench via the army.
Chiweshe made legal history when he denied a critically ill opposition MP
bail saying the state did not have to provide prima facie evidence to
support his continued detention. He was also recently appointed by Mugabe to
chair the Delimitation Commission that delivered its map before Christmas
and excised three constituencies in urban strongholds of the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC), the official opposition, and added three to
traditional Zanu PF rural areas.
Mudede set the election ball
rolling by opening the voters' roll on Monday for inspection for 14 days.
But few turned up to check if they were registered, at least in urban areas,
because Mudede only advertised the exercise in two state newspapers that
only a minority in towns can afford to buy. No postal votes are allowed
except for security services on election duty, and permanent residents have
been deprived of their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. Priscilla
Misihairabwi, an MDC MP, laughed in exasperation this week recalling her
eight-day slog to get a copy of the voters' roll for her constituency in
Harare. Welshman Ncube, the MDC secretary-general, a Bulawayo MP, and Paul
Themba Nyathi, the party spokesperson and MP for Gwanda, asked her to pick
up voters' rolls for their constituencies but she was told they had to
personally collect. Thoko Khupe, MDC MP for Zimbabwe's oldest township,
Makakoba, in Bulawayo, who has seen much of her constituency erased from the
map this election, lamented that she no longer knows who her constituents
are because she was told she can't buy a voters' roll in Bulawayo. The
voters' roll exists on two CDs but Mudede won't let opposition parties have
copies. He says the national roll is available only on printouts that would
fill a small shed and cost R12 000 per copy or the equivalent of the annual
salary of an MP.
So what will the new Zimbabwe Election Commission
do? Well, it is supposed to supervise the voters' roll but that has already
been done by the registrar-general. It has powers to design ballot papers
and boxes, and conduct voter education. It only has 32 days left before
nomination courts if elections are going to be held before the end of March,
as expected, and it has neither offices nor staff. It can "supervise"
elections, but that role is already assigned to the Electoral Supervisory
Commission. The new commission will have no powers over observers or
monitors as they will be selected by the Electoral Supervisory Commission,
and invitations to foreign observers will be made by a committee appointed
by Mugabe and a small cabinet committee. Which of the commissions - if
either - will prevail? In theory the original one - the Electoral
Supervisory Commission - as it is protected by the constitution, but the
constitution is regularly ignored. However, Chinamasa said on Thursday the
old commission will "monitor" the new one. A new Electoral Act emerged in
the frenzy of new legislation late last year that was also signed into law
by Mugabe last week. A significant difference from the previous Act is that
the military can now legally do what it did covertly in the presidential
election three years ago - run the elections. The new Act allows military,
police and prison officers, and thousands of youth militia at present being
inducted into the security services to run both voting and counting at 6 000
polling stations which, for financial reasons, will largely be unattended by
opposition parties. The military recruited to run the elections will be
answerable to the original Electoral Supervisory Commission, not the new
one. And voting will now take place on one day instead of two.