Zim Online
Tuesday 17 July 2007
By
Tsungai Murandu
HARARE - The international community will have to inject
up to US$10 billion
to revive Zimbabwe and stop the current slide of what
was once one of Africa's
economic beacons, according to an international
think-tank.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said in a report
released last week
that southern Africa alone would be unable to shoulder
the burden of
resuscitating the comatose Zimbabwean economy, estimating that
it would take
between US$5 billion and US$10 billion over the next five
years to
effectively put the economy back on track.
The EIU reported
in the wake of reports that Zimbabwe's southern African
neighbours had
hatched a plan to extend the monetary union covered by the
stronger South
African rand so that it also included Harare.
The reports were denied by
the South African and Zimbabwean governments as
well as by the Southern
African Development Community (SADC) under whose
aegis the rand rescue
package was supposed to be implemented.
"It is also questionable whether
South Africa, currently running a
current-account deficit of six percent of
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and
faced with very high levels of poverty and
unemployment, could take on the
financial burden of bailing out Zimbabwe,"
the EIU said.
The think-tank noted that the reported rand bail-out
package would have
required convergence of macroeconomic indicators such as
inflation.
"Bringing Zimbabwe into the rand monetary area, shared by
South Africa,
Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, would involve harmonising
currencies from
countries where the inflation rate ranges average around six
percent (South
Africa) and 5 000 percent (Zimbabwe)," the think-tank
said.
The EIU said any SADC rescue plan for Zimbabwe was bound to fail
unless
there was a major change in policies in Harare.
It cited the
ongoing campaign against businesses by the Harare authorities
in which more
than 2 000 businesspeople have been arrested for failing to
comply with the
government's "price rollback" order as a stopgap measure
that would have to
be backed by more solid policies.
President Robert Mugabe has during the
past three weeks ordered prices to be
rolled back to mid-June levels in a
move targeted at reining in runaway
inflation now estimated at more than 5
000 percent.
Manufacturers have responded by stopping production,
prompting the ageing
Zimbabwean leader to threaten to nationalise any
companies that close down
or retrench staff.
"As the supermarket
shelves empty, goods disappear from the warehouses and
fuel becomes
increasingly unobtainable, the government will have to think
again," the EIU
said.
Zimbabwe is suffering a debilitating economic crisis that is
highlighted by
the world's highest inflation rate, a rapidly contracting
GDP, the fastest
for a country not at war according to the World Bank and
shortages of
foreign and fuel.
Mugabe - 83 and seeking another
five-year term in 2008, which will take his
reign in the southern African
country to more than three decades - denies
that his policies are
responsible for the economic meltdown and instead says
he is being sabotaged
by the west to punish him for seizing white-owned
farms to give to landless
blacks. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Tuesday 17 July 2007
By Menzi
Sibanda
BULAWAYO - Authorities in Zimbabwe's second largest city of
Bulawayo say
they are considering limiting water supplies to residents to
once every
three days, in a development highlighting worsening drought in
the city and
an acute economic crisis that has crippled efforts to improve
water
supplies.
President Robert Mugabe's government, accused by some
of neglecting the
opposition-supporting Bulawayo, says it has failed to
build a pipeline to
draw water from the Zambezi river because of lack of
funds as Zimbabwe
grapples a severe economic crisis that has seen inflation
nearing 5 000
percent, pushing costs beyond budget.
Bulawayo
spokesman Phathisa Nyathi said in a report released at the weekend
that
water levels in the three dams supplying the city were dropping at an
alarming rate.
The city, tucked at the heart of the arid Matabeleland
region, normally
draws water from five dams but two have been decommissioned
due to low water
levels and two more dams are set to be decommissioned in
two months time to
leave the city of more than 1.5 million people depending
on just one dam,
according to Nyathi.
He said: "The situation will
deteriorate further when Inyankuni Dam is
decommissioned in October. At that
point the city will get a paltry 46 000
cubic meters a day. Current average
daily consumption is around 120 000
cubic meters.
"With Insiza dam as
the only source of water, there will be a huge deficit.
Water may be
supplied only once every three days."
Nyathi did not indicate whether
factories and other businesses would also be
limited to getting water only
once in every three days, a situation that
could quicken the collapse of
industries that are already facing immense
viability problems due to a
hostile operating environment and government
price controls.
Domestic
consumers in Bulawayo already have to face long and daily water
cuts,
lasting as long as 10 hours.
Nyathi said the city council would attempt
to sink boreholes across the city
to help ease water shortages but ruled out
the immediate construction of new
dams or refurbishing existing ones because
of lack of resources.
The worsening water crisis is only an addition on a
long list of hardships
that Bulawayo residents like other consumers across
the country have become
accustomed to as the country grapples with a severe
economic recession
described by the World Bank as the worst in the world
outside a war zone.
In addition to hyperinflation, the economic meltdown
is also seen deepening
poverty, shortages of food and just about every basic
survival commodity. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
Tuesday 17 July 2007
By Own
Correspondent
JOHANNESBURG - Zimbabwean and South African labour leaders
on Monday called
on President Robert Muagbe to abandon populist policies and
cooperate with
regional governments to save Zimbabwe from
collapse.
In a joint statement issued after a meeting in Johannesburg,
the Congress of
South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade
Unions (ZCTU) also called for the Harare administration to
conduct free and
fair polls next year in line with a regional protocol on
elections.
"We want a democratic process, involving civil society, to
draw up a new,
progressive constitution and free and fair elections in line
with SADC
(Southern African Development Community) protocols," they said in
the
statement.
Zimbabwe, which is grappling with its worst ever
economic crisis, holds key
presidential and parliamentary elections next
year, which the main
opposition party has warned it could boycott unless the
country adopts a new
constitution to guarantee free and fair
polls.
Mugabe has said there is no need to change Zimbabwe's constitution
and last
week representatives of his governing ZANU PF party failed to turn
up for
talks with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party
chaired
by the South African government and at which constitutional reforms
top the
agenda.
South African President Thabo Mbeki was last March
asked by SADC leaders to
spearhead efforts to resolve Zimbabwe's eight-year
political and economic
crisis by facilitating dialogue between ZANU PF and
the MDC.
Pretoria said at the weekend the dialogue between the two
Zimbabwean
political parties is still on course despite ZANU PF's failure to
turn up
last week.
COSATU secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said a
total collapse Zimbabwe's
economy would have dire consequences for the
entire region.
"We are worried that if this (SADC-led dialogue) all fails
the Zimbabwe
economy will collapse completely, with dire consequences for
the poor of
that country and our region as a whole," Vavi said.
The
COSATU leader said for example, about 5 000 Zimbabweans were being
arrested
every week while trying to cross into South Africa. There would
however be
no way of stopping a whole tide of refugees marching into South
Africa in
the event of a total collapse in Zimbabwe, he said.
The two unions
demanded an immediate meeting between the Harare government,
labour and
business to find ways to solve the crisis of empty shelves, food
shortages
and hunger.
COSATU said it would be discussing with its alliance and
civil society
partners a package of "people-based humanitarian
interventions" in
preparation for Zimbabwe's possible economic
collapse.
Meanwhile South Africa's official opposition Democratic
Alliance (DA) has
called for camps to be set up along the border with
Zimbabwe to shelter and
feed multitudes of refugees expected to flock into
South Africa as the
situation in Zimbabwe deteriorates.
"If
government takes its humanitarian duties seriously (it should)
immediately
begin to investigate setting up refugee camps in order to assist
the people
from Zimbabwe who so desperately need our help," the party said
in a
statement.
It is estimated that three million Zimbabweans are already
living inside
South Africa, most of them illegally.
The DA said the
South African government should begin mobilising assistance
from the
international community to feed and care for Zimbabwean
efugees. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
Tuesday
17 July 2007
By Mandla Sithole
HARARE - The past
week has been both scary and exciting in the world of
shopping.
Scary
because every time I see hoards of people scrambling for something in
short
supply I fear that people will end up fighting for whatever is
available and
excited because for the first time in my life I am
experiencing a fairy tale
of goods being sold at unbelievable prices.
I have over the past few
months watched prices spiral at a maddening speed
and in just a few days the
prices fell with a huge THUD!
I have not benefited from this bounty but I
have friends and relatives who
have been at the right place at the right
time and they walked away with
goods they would never have even thought of
buying a month ago.
Maybe some people are just born lucky or they are
more street-wise. Since
the price control squad was born, I have tried to
stake out one shop after
the other but have been unlucky. They never show up
when I am there.
I am not sure I would be able to walk away with anything
if the "price
police" showed up while I am in the shop anyway, because I am
not used to
pushing and shoving which is an important ability in these times
of shopping
madness.
You need to be able to shove people without
feeling guilty and you should be
the kind of person who can even snatch a
packet of salt from someone and
walk away as if it is the most normal
thing.
If you want to be successful during this current shopping craze
you have to
develop a thick skin and become the kind of person that your
family would
never recognise.
Forget about being highly educated or
having a posh job when you set foot
into a bargains enriched
zone.
Zimbabweans have patience! Some people wait in queues for hours
just to get
anything they can lay their hands on. What beats me is the
madness that
seems to overcome these bargain shoppers.
Why does a
housewife who wants to feed her family need to buy three cooler
boxes,
several bread bins?
Someone walks into the shop and buys three cartons of
sugar, split into two
kilogramme packs and immediately sets up shop
somewhere close-by and starts
re-selling the sugar.
Yes prices had
become a nightmare but can someone tell me why, when the
prices are slashed
we have groups of people buying anything between four and
ten DVD players
per person?
Is someone running their own business empire
somewhere?
Years ago one would walk into a shop and find packets of sugar
on a shelf
and you would buy what you needed. Now the shops open a window
and sell
sugar in cartons to black marketers.
The shops have helped
create the shortages by making it hard for working
people to buy sugar or
cooking oil. Unemployed people who can wait in queues
for hours have become
major associates of the shops.
And these people always know when the
sugar, mealie-meal or cooking oil will
be delivered.
When the prices
were slashed there should have been a requirement to the
effect that no one
was allowed the privilege of buying out the whole shop.
We have career
shoppers who are now following in hot pursuit of the price
control squad and
buying everything in sight. Where are they taking all that
stuff? It can not
possibly be for their own consumption!
If these people are not stopped we
will end up like some of those countries
where goods are found at dusty
markets and shops belong to the past. And
where are these people getting the
money?
Are we creating "up-market" roadside stores that will just
continue to
squeeze the poor?
Everyday people complain about low
salaries but prices get slashed and you
suddenly have hoards of people
splashing millions of dollars in non-basic
commodities. Yes buy a plasma
television if you must but do you need to buy
10?
There is something
askew with our priorities. Mothers who normally complain
about the price of
meat are now more interested in buying snacks and
biscuits.
Someone I
know was right behind the price control guys when they visited one
of the
Bata shoe shops in the capital. She said she just grabbed anything in
sight
and worried about sizes later.
At Edgars' stores, she bought clothes that
her children could never wear
because they are too small but she just wanted
bargains. She is going to
resale the stuff, that much I am certain
of.
People who might have needed those shoes and clothes, people who a
month ago
could no longer afford those same products could have benefited
were it not
for a few greedy people in our midst.
I am worried about
at the ripple effect of the price controls. Employees are
shopping their
employers.
Customers are making good use of the hotline numbers published
in the State
daily to tip off the price control unit. At this rate no one
can trust the
next person.
I hope once we are all shopped out we can
still find more goods in the shops
and that we are not going to end up with
an even bigger number of unemployed
people.
Most shops have bare
shelves and refrigerators have not been restocked.
Goats and sheep are
selling fast as people panic. Mobile phone shopping has
been taken to dizzy
heights as people inform each other about what is
available where.
If
you are fortunate enough to have extra cash on you, you buy basics that
you
can lay your hands on. Forget about choice because there is just no time
for
that. You dither, you lose.
If you are like me who watches helplessly
when others are using all they
have to get to the flour or sugar, then you
have a hard time ahead.
I wonder what will happen when someone decides to
buy a car and shops the
several car dealers around the country. We might
start buying cars again -
well those of us who know who the price control
guys are and where they are
at a particular time.
I hope before it
all ends I will have managed to get a few things too. Be
blessed.
Zim Online
Tuesday 17 July 2007
By Tanonoka
Joseph Whande
GABORONE - Muammar Gaddafi is an angry man. He is impatient
and frustrated.
He cannot understand why Africans are so slow in accepting a
United States
of Africa.
Gaddafi hopes to be both midwife and father
to a predictably stillborn
fantasy. I sympathise.
Gaddafi denounced
the African Union as an ineffective and useless
organization. For once, I
agree with him. But he can go hang!
There is so much talk, mainly from
Gaddafi himself, about establishing a
'United States of Africa' and Gaddafi
dreams of leading such a 'state.' It
was Kwame Nkrumah's dream
too.
But that was when Africa was inhabited by humble, complying
Africans. Not
anymore.
If the champions of a proposed unitary African
state are the seasoned and
proven dictators of the likes of Muammar Gaddafi,
please stop the world
because I want to get off. And I am not the only
one.
I will tell you something here and now. There is no way I would
accept
Gaddafi as leader. Actually, I feel sorry for the Libyans who
continue to
suffer under his despotic rule just as much as some Libyans feel
sorry for
us suffering under Robert 'Pol Pot' Mugabe.
Some people are
just not made out to be leaders. And, have you noticed, it's
always the
dictators who want to champion people's 'freedom.'
Before we can talk
about this subject, let us, please, take note of
paramount issues that need
to be taken into consideration. There is just too
much work that needs to be
done before we can talk about a unitary African
state.
To begin with,
who are the leaders we would put forward to lead such a
unitary state? Do we
have an African who can look at Africa without seeing
borders? We don't need
pretenders like Kofi Annan, people who are bent on
pleasing certain sectors
at the expense of others.
Second, we have to work on a constitution that
does not take anything away
from the people. Freedom of worship, for
example, is not negotiable.
Third, African nations themselves are heavily
polarised internally. There is
tribal discontent as some ruling leaders put
their tribes above others.
There is tribal strife and inequality in many
countries like Ethiopia,
Sudan, Zimbabwe, and others.
Would
Botswana's Basarwa have elevated status in a United States of Africa?
And
the pygmies? Would they enjoy equal status with the rest?
In Sudan,
Bashir allows black people to be enslaved by light-skinned Arabs,
what will
black people elsewhere think?
What will Africa's continental government
do about supposedly small internal
conflicts in individual nation states
(Basarwa in Botswana, Caprivians in
Namibia, the Shangaani and the San in
Zimbabwe, etc)?
What will we do about western Morocco, which the
Polisario Front already
calls the Saharawi Arab Republic? How can we unite
when we are embroiled in
border disputes?
How does a fragmented
nation become part of a whole?
In addition to tribal loyalties, African
nations were polarised during
colonial times so much that we now mostly
dwell on our differences and not
our similarities. How much influence will
petrol dollars have on poorer
African countries?
Where will equality
come from? Or, maybe, first, we might need to define
what an 'African' is.
You will be surprised to find that there is no such
thing, in real terms,
except "a person from Africa, especially a black
person."
Consider,
too, that the name Africa is itself not even 'African'. Africa or
Africana
"refers more or is connected more to especially southern
Africa."
Semantics, yes, but still, there appears to be nothing we all
have in common
except residing on the same continent. And that's not enough.
But I wonder,
if Gaddafi and Mubarak are Africans, am I an African
too?
But it's not a question of geography. Being African means more than
being on
the same continent with someone. It is a way of
life.
Morocco spends more time pursuing membership in the European Union
than
worrying about the African Union although it is also a member of the
Arab
League. May I please call such indecisiveness 'bilateral
prostitution'?
I do admit, though, that the African Union, like Gaddafi
says, is a sterile
group meant to cover up for the excesses of African
despots like Gaddafi
himself. He is frustrated that Africans don't want to
cede authority to him.
And Mr Kuffuor has my sympathies because the
African Union he leads has
nothing to do with 'African' unity or welfare of
Africans. Before Africa and
its 'Africans' start thinking about a unitary
state, they should first
identify themselves and clear the dense political
forests in every African
country.
They should first remove local
political cobwebs that interfere with the
running of even villages. I am a
pitch black African and, owing to the
colour of my skin, am a potential
slave for Bashir, Mubarak and Gaddafi.
The Arabs assisted the whites and
took part in the slave trade. Oh, this has
nothing to do with
reconciliation. If it has, why is it that the victims are
always the ones
expected to reach out and reconcile?
Okay, then. Let us start with
southern Africa. Let's start with SADC. Who
would we vote for to lead the
southern part of the continent or Africa
itself? Mbeki? Don't laugh, this is
not a comedy.
Mugabe? God have mercy! Mogae? Why? Dos Santos? Dos who?
Levy Mwanawasa?
Hifikepunye Pohamba? Bingu Mutharika, King Mswati? Stop
shaking your heads
so vigorously.
These 'leaders' are all we have.
All of them, except one, are very
uninspiring, I know, and it is a mystery
why they are leaders of their
respective nations.
Move further up
north then and you find murderers and slave traders. There
is Museveni, the
lackadaisical Kibaki, the charlatan Yar'Adua and many
hardly democratic
leaders.
Is Africa's best in Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Mali, Equatorial
Guinea or
Tanzania? For goodness sake, where are African leaders? Don't be
fooled.
Africa's fortunes will not improve by uniting.
Why should we
unite anyway? And under what banner? I want to keep my
identity. My religion
will be under threat too, given a particular religion's
propensity for
intolerance.
We are different and all we can do is support each other's
cause, if need
be. I am not going to unite with slave traders or with those
Arabs and
Indians who find racism even in religion.
There is
absolutely no way that would find me looking at Qaddafi as Africa's
leader.
Gaddafi should stop abusing money from national coffers to promote
his idea.
Even if the idea were to mature, he would not be the leader.
He is never
going to rule Africa the continent. Gaddafi, like Morocco,
should channel
his energies to Europe and the League of Arab states, taking
Israel in
between. A united states of Africa is not going to be a child of
Africa's
dictators, especially dictators like Qaddafi who are in the
forefront.
It is all very well to be united. But it is not mandatory
to be united with
people who do not share your vision.
What does
Gaddafi wish for Botswana? In Zimbabwe, he took some of our land
and farms
in exchange for petrol. Botswana must make sure your elephants
remain
here.
I fear that our intention to unite is being hi-jacked by
ill-meaning peoples
who have no allegiance either to us or to our continent.
When we unite, we
give up part of our objectives in acknowledgment of our
colleagues.
It has to do with faith. Unity is compromise and when we
compromise, none of
us get what we wanted in the first place. Our wishes are
replaced with
trust, hope and promises.
I now hear about unity, as in
a 'United States of Africa.' Unity does not
mean stupidity on the part of
black Africans.
*Tanonoka Joseph Whande is a Botswana-based Zimbabwean
writer.
Reuters
Mon 16 Jul 2007,
18:59 GMT
BERLIN, July 16 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown
on Monday
urged Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to change course to end
poverty and
famine, saying he was concerned about the damage being done to
the country's
people and economy.
"We are very clear about the damage
being done to Zimbabwe by the actions of
President Mugabe," Brown said at a
joint news conference with German
Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"We are
very worried about the safety of civilians in Zimbabwe and we are
very
worried about the damage being inflicted on the economy of Zimbabwe by
the
decisions that are being made.
"We call upon the president to change
course, and we call on him to respect
the civil liberties of the people of
Zimbabwe. We call on him to end what
has been a disastrous period of poverty
and in many cases famine," said
Brown, a former finance
minister.
Once viewed as southern Africa's bread basket, Zimbabwe, a
former British
colony, is suffering a political and economic crisis with
soaring inflation,
estimated at 4,500 percent, and food and fuel
shortages.
The government has embarked on a price freeze programme,
backed by police,
forcing thousands of businesses to sell bread, milk and
other goods at
mid-June prices.
Shops are empty of basic foodstuffs
and gas stations have run dry after a
spate of panic buying. The crisis has
renewed fears the Zimbabwean economy
will collapse.
Critics point to
a range of policies by Mugabe's government which have
damaged the economy,
including the forcible redistribution of white-owned
commercial farms to
landless blacks, often ill-equipped to use the land.
Zimbabwe's main
opposition party accuses Mugabe of vote rigging to stay in
power.
SW Radio Africa
(London)
16 July 2007
Posted to the web 16 July 2007
Tererai
Karimakwenda
Residents in Harare's high-density suburbs, including
Mufakose, Budiriro,
Kuwadzana, have reported that soldiers are attacking
street vendors and
confiscating their goods as they flee for safety. Reports
say the uniformed
units do not announce themselves. Our Harare correspondent
Simon Muchemwa
said they arrive suddenly and start assaulting the street and
market vendors
without showing any identification. This is clearly linked to
the ongoing
price reduction campaign by government.
According to
Muchemwa the soldiers told vendors that they must reduce their
prices if
they want to continue selling on the street. But the prices they
are
insisting on are so low that it makes no sense for anyone to comply.
Muchemwa gave the example of a 1kg bar of soap which street vendors were
selling for Z$280,000. The soldiers told them to reduce the price to as low
as Z$50,000. The gazetted price in the shops is
Z$134,000.
Muchemwa said the vendors say this is a government ploy to
wipe out the
informal market and force people to buy from government
sanctioned vendors
only.
Last week government announced new
regulations requiring cross border
traders to apply for licenses in order to
import grocery items. As of August
1st, cross border traders will need a
license to bring in certain amounts of
grocery items from neighbouring
countries. Although there is an allowance
for personal use, traders fear
police and price monitoring teams will
confiscate their goods the way they
have looted the shops, taking advantage
of their powerful position.
Chris McGreal in
Bulawayo
Tuesday July 17, 2007
The Guardian
Togara Sanyatwe was
buried in the sprawling West Park cemetery on the edge
of Bulawayo at 83
years of age. The granite headstone reveals nothing more
about his life but
he would already have been considered an elder of his
community at the time
those who now lie around him were being born.
They include Zah Zah Ngwenya,
who was just 28 at the time of her death on
the same day as Mr Sanyatwe. A
little further on lies Mabutho Njini, who
died a fortnight shy of his 46th
birthday, but he still enjoyed more years
than Norah Manyati, who barely
made it past 30.
Their graves sit at the beginning of a narrow road
running through the
newest part of the cemetery. Its length is a chronicle
of Zimbabwe's surging
death rate and plummeting life expectancy as political
crisis and economic
collapse have fused with rampant Aids to transform the
graveyards from
resting places for the elderly at the end of a full life to
the premature
final stop for a generation barely out of youth.
In
Bulawayo, the cemeteries are filled to the point that there is now
pressure
to put two corpses in each grave.
Women in Zimbabwe live an average of 34
years and men manage just three
years more, half of the life expectancy of
little more than a decade ago.
Prince Handina didn't even make that. He died
at 20 years old. Plan Ndebele,
in the neighbouring grave, made it to
39.
The pair are buried just after the road passes the walled and
padlocked
Muslim cemetery. Here the graves begin in January 2004. The
numbers buried
each month are already rising, their ages dropping and the
plots squeezed
closer together.
A little further down the road, among
the graves of 2005 and 2006, granite
headstones, decorated with pictures,
fond messages or biblical quotations,
increasingly give way to black metal
plates hand painted with white
lettering that tell no more than a name and
dates of birth and death. It is
one more sign of the growing poverty as
Zimbabweans struggle to survive.
One grave stands out because it has been
transformed into a carefully
nurtured plot of aloes but many others are
untended and unmarked, their
metal plates stolen and recycled for other uses
- sometimes as coffin
handles.
Not far away is the children's
cemetery, packed with bodies of those who did
not live long enough to make
it to school.
At the far end of the road, where there is almost no more
room to spare, the
recent arrivals are easy to spot. Multicoloured plastic
flowers adorn the
freshly turned earth mounds that are almost on top of each
other.
Odian Ncube is digging a new grave in front of the last resting
place of
Sibonginkosi Dube, who was buried last week at the age of
30.
"We have enough for two more rows of graves before we reach the
road," he
said. "Maybe they will find room somewhere else. Perhaps this
whole city
will be a graveyard."
President Robert Mugabe's
destruction of his own economy as he fights to
hold on to power - with
inflation running above 10,000%, power and water
cuts a daily reality, shops
rapidly emptying of food and the grain harvest
expected to fail yet again
after the seizure of white-owned farms and
drought - has played a large part
in the surging number of deaths.
Millions are underfed, weakening immune
systems and bringing on Aids. Few
can afford the drugs to treat the
illnesses that the disease brings on, even
if the medicines are available
which, increasingly, they are not.
Many of the country's doctors and
nurses have left for South Africa or
Europe.
The World Health
Organisation estimates that that lethal combination is
claiming 3,500 lives
a week in the former British colony. The World Food
Programme says 4 million
Zimbabweans, one-third of the population, will need
food aid this
year.
Mr Ncube's team of diggers is making four to five new graves each
day, and
that is just in one corner of one cemetery. "We work harder now.
There are
many many more. Look, you can see it's different. Over there the
graves are
like they used to be, a certain distance apart. Now we put them
almost on
top of each other," he said.
Many of the dead are laid to
rest in cardboard coffins or cloth bags. Mr
Ncube says some people come in
and bury their relatives at night in the
graves dug during the day because
they cannot afford the funerals or the
ubiquitous burial societies, a
savings club that provides a decent funeral
for the dead if nothing for the
surviving family.
The number of burials in Bulawayo is rising by about
20% each month. The
mayor, Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube, says the time has come when
people will have to
be buried one on top of the other or not at all. He
wants the city's
residents to accept two bodies in a grave or cremation, a
social taboo for
many.
"It is very real. In most cases we run away
from facing reality," he told a
council meeting last week. "It is incumbent
upon us to go and spread the
message on cremation and the burying in the
same grave, and at the same time
continue with the fight against
Aids."
Another councillor, Amen Mpofu, said the real problem was not how
to bury
the dead but how to save the living. "I think the most important
question we
should ask ourselves as we discuss this is why are people dying
at this
rate? I think this is what we should zero in on," he said.
SW Radio Africa
(London)
16 July 2007
Posted to the web 16 July 2007
Tererai
Karimakwenda
Public euphoria over reduced prices has begun to turn
into panic as the
reality becomes clearer. Faced with long queues and empty
shelves,
Zimbabweans are quickly waking up to the fact that the government's
forced
price reductions have destroyed business, as predicted by experts.
Government's Operation Dzikisai Mitengo (reduce prices) was welcomed by
consumers three weeks ago when businesses were first ordered to reduce
prices by 50%.
By the time the regulations were published by
government a week later
specifying profit margins, most shelves in the shops
were empty of basics.
Cooking oil, soap, sugar and bread were nowhere to be
found. The shortage of
fuel created a transport crisis and Zimbabweans began
to suffer the
consequencies of this latest government induced crisis.
Critics say it has
been just a ploy to get support ahead of the elections
next year, in the
face of growing discontent caused by the hyperinflation.
Thousands of
business executives have been arrested and many large shops
such Jaggers
were closed.
Meanwhile people bought everything in
sight over the weekend and electronic
goods were extreme popular. Widescreen
televisions sold like hot cakes, some
for as low as £20. Fearing arrest for
failing to comply with government
regulations shop owners reduced the price
of all electronic goods. But by
Monday many shops had nothing left and
queues had become longer than ever.
Suddenly consumers were
worried.
It is believed the directors of many large super stores have
decided to
close their stores while they assess the damage so far and work
out a way
forward. Police are also accused of joining in the looting. The
Makro shop
at Woodlands in Bulawayo closed after massive looting took place
there. Our
Bulawayo contact Zenzele said he witnessed police looting there
on Frida, as
a journalist from the government owned The Chronicle newspaper
took photos.
He was arrested and later released after an editor from the
paper showed up
to defend him. Other contacts told us a police truck was
seen on the
Plumtree road loaded with furniture and headed for the
Donnington Police
Station. Police involvement in looting has been documented
on several
occasions.
VOA
By Patience Rusere
Washington
16 July
2007
University of Zimbabwe authorities have defied a Harare
high court order to
readmit to campus housing thousands of students it
evicted on 30 minutes
notice last week.
University of Zimbabwe Vice
Chancellor Levy Nyagura issued a statement in
the Sunday Mail, a state-run
newspaper, saying the displaced students would
face automatic expulsion if
they were found anywhere near campus residences.
The high court issued an
order late last week for the students to be allowed
back into university
residences, and authorities initially agreed to let
female students back in,
saying residences for men were uninhabitable
following student
protests.
But it subsequently reneged on its commitment and Nyagura
reportedly told
students that they should put up at the high court if they
had nowhere else
to go.
About 5,000 students were evicted July 5
following demonstrations against a
fee hike of Z$1 million levied to meet
additional expenses due to a
lecturer's strike.
Attorney Rangu
Nyamurundira of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights,
counsel for the
evicted students, told reporter Patience Rusere of VOA's
Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that that he has asked the court to find Nyagura in
contempt.
VOA
By Ndimyake Mwakalyelye
Washington
16 July
2007
Zimbabwean government officials applauded the departure
on the weekend of
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Dell, an outspoken critic of
Harare, saying they
hoped the end of his tenure might lead to improved
relations with the United
States.
Following what many observers
describe as three turbulent years, Dell is
headed for Afghanistan to serve
as deputy chief of mission to Ambassador
William Wood. The White House and
State Department have not said who will
succeed him in Harare.
Dell's
departure has been the occasion of many a barb in the
state-controlled
Herald newspaper, which reflected the rocky and at times
overtly hostile
relations between Harare and Washington, and Dell's
outspoken criticism of
the ZANU-PF government and President Robert Mugabe,
who once invited the
envoy to "go to hell."
Dell left Zimbabwe on Saturday without officially
taking leave of Mr.
Mugabe, saying that under the circumstances such a
gesture would have been
"inappropriate."
The relationship was
problematic from the outset: Harare was already
accusing the U.S. government
of seeking "regime change" in Zimbabwe, and
things went downhill from there
to the point where Dell acknowledged that
the relationship had iced
over.
Activist and human rights lawyer Brian Kagoro told reporter
Ndimyake
Mwakalyelye of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that relations were
tense even
before Dell came on the scene, and worsened as the country slid
deeper and
deeper into crisis.
Harare took exception in particular to
public statements by Dell placing the
blame for the crisis squarely on the
ruling party, the government and Mr.
Mugabe, alleging gross misgovernance
and corruption, at one point
threatening him with
expulsion.
Zimbabwean Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu did not
mince words in
describing Harare's distaste for Dell, calling him the worst
envoy Harare
had ever accredited.
While Ndlovu and other Harare
officials said Dell broke diplomatic protocol
by overtly criticizing the
government, others said his interventions were
appropriate and
timely.
International affairs expert Robert Rotberg, a professor at
Harvard
University's Kennedy School of Government and head of an institute
on
intra-state conflicts, credited Dell with raising global awareness of
conditions in Zimbabwe.
Rotberg said Dell's course was appropriate in
light of Zimbabwe's situation.
Ambassador Dell was not available for
comment prior to his departure.
New Zimbabwe
By Lebo Nkatazo
Last
updated: 07/17/2007 07:39:22
ZIMBABWE'S Attorney General Sobusa Gula-Ndebele
returned to work on Monday
after a reported fall-out with Justice Minister
Patrick Chinamasa.
Ndebele went on leave under a cloud of speculation
about his future.
Speculation was rife within the legal fraternity that
the AG was considering
quitting following reports that Chinamasa was working
on a proposed
legislation that would see the minister also being the AG, in
addition to
his ministerial duties.
Efforts to speak to Gula-Ndebele
Monday were unsuccessful, his officials
saying he was in
meetings.
His secretary did, however, confirm that the AG had returned to
work.
Ndebele and Chinamasa are said to have clashed after the AG's
office okayed
the minister's prosecution last year on charges of attempting
to defeat the
course of justice.
A magistrate cleared Chinamasa in
the case in which he was said to have
bribed war veteran James Kaunye to
withdraw his testimony against National
Security Minister Didymus Mutasa's
campaign manager, Albert Nyakuedzwa.
Nyakuedzwa was later sentenced to three
years for assaulting Kaunye.
Chinamasa, who is also the leader of the
House of Assembly has hit back
against Gula-Ndebele by throwing away the
Attorney General's Office Bill
that would have given the AG autonomy from
his ministry.