FinGaz
Njabulo Ncube
FRANCE and the United
States of America (USA) yesterday said the
increasingly isolated Zimbabwean
government's overtures to Britain will
count for nothing unless Zimbabweans
first engage in political dialogue
among themselves before seeking a deeper
rapprochement with foreigners. They
were unanimous that there was no dispute
between Zimbabwe and Britain but a
need for Harare to address concerns
expressed by the international community
such as the stifling of democratic
space, the erosion of human rights, the
growing absence of the rule of law
and accelerating economic collapse. This
meant that former Tanzanian
President, Benjamin Mkapa - thrust at the centre
of the delicate arbitration
- could only help Zimbabwe out of its deepening
crisis if he managed to
convince the government to acknowledge its
responsibility for the crisis and
the need for political reforms and
national dialogue. Mkapa's terms of
reference have not been made public.
"The United States sees no evidence
to sustain the argument that the real
and growing problems Zimbabwe faces
can be resolved on the basis of
bilateral dialogue between Harare and any
other country or countries. As a
sovereign and independent nation, it is up
to the government and people of
Zimbabwe to recognise that the roots of the
country's current crisis lie
within Zimbabwe and equally to assume
responsibility for devising viable
solutions internally," said the US
embassy in Harare.
Michel Raimbaud, France's ambassador to Zimbabwe,
concurred that only
internal dialogue could get the country out of the
nagging political crisis
in which the ruling party has flatly rejected a
political settlement with
the feuding MDC. The US and French remarks come at
a time when Zimbabwe,
which accuses its former colonial master Britain of
pushing for regime
change, has publicly admitted that it is keen to build
bridges between the
two countries.
"Why not re-engage in political
dialogue, as we propose, which would allow
you to resume links, which have
been broken or slackened . . . And after
all, if you accept to discuss with
foreigners, why not talk among
Zimbabweans as you are? . . . Of course we do
wish to build bridges, we want
bridges to be built. But is it so wise and so
necessary to cut first the
bridges that have been linking Zimbabwe with
traditional partners, those
partners that have been, until very recently,
friends of Zimbabwe . . . ",
Raimbaud said.
The French ambassador's
sentiments, whose country is a key member of the
European Union, make it
clear that the chasm between Zimbabwe and Britain
could prove impossible to
narrow. The EU members, which have imposed
targeted sanctions on the
Zimbabwean government and ruling ZANU PF
officials, usually act in concert
on such issues. In addition the French and
US remarks also seemed to suggest
that other EU members would have to be
consulted in every move aimed at
normalising relations between Zimbabwe and
Britain.
Despite being a
member of the EU bloc that has maintained targeted sanctions
on President
Robert Mugabe and his inner circle, Zimbabwe generally
considers France to
be a friendly state. France, which came under attack for
waiving travel
restrictions on President Mugabe last year, gave Zimbabwe 7.6
million Euro
in aid and a further 700 000 Euro in food aid in 2005.
Observers however said
this week that remarks by both Raimbaud and the US
embassy, could be an
indication of France and the USA's disapproval of ZANU
PF's reluctance to
engage the main opposition party. President Mugabe has
refused to engage the
MDC, insisting instead to talk to what he referred to
as its "principal", a
reference to British prime minister Tony Blair who he
accuses of working
with the opposition to effect regime change.
President Mugabe early this
month announced the appointment of Mkapa to
break the impasse between Harare
and London which, according to the
government, stems from a bilateral
dispute over the controversial land
reform programme.
The British embassy
in Harare has however, denied the existence of a
bilateral dispute with
Harare, insisting the Zimbabwe crisis was due to bad
governance and human
rights violations.
The French ambassador said his country was convinced
Zimbabwe would come out
of its present political quagmire "reconciled and
feeling at peace,
internally as well as internationally, without renouncing
any of its
legitimate aspirations for sovereignty,, independence and without
giving up
its pride."
FinGaz
Nelson Banya
A BITTER
dispute over a plush Borrowdale house, pitting deputy Industry and
International Trade Minister Phineas Chiota and a Harare woman, has opened a
can of worms for the government official, who is reported to have an
extraordinarily close relationship with a top diplomat's wife.
Biata
Nyamupinga, who is married to Felix Nyamupinga, the charge de affairs
at
Zimbabwe's embassy in Australia, and is central to the case, is reported
to
be 'very close' to Chiota.
Sources this week told The Financial Gazette that
Chiota, who has emerged
seriously damaged by the sleaze factor, was a
frequent visitor to the
Nyamupingas' Greystone Park residence along Harare
Drive. A telephone call
to the house this week reinforced the claims.
Chiota's driver was also
reported to regularly collect the Nyamupingas'
child from a primary school
in Chisipite.
The sources said following the
fallout, Sarudzayi Nhundu, who was taken to
court by Chiota after she
cancelled an agreement to sell her house to the
deputy minister citing his
failure to use his influence as part of a deal to
give her fuel and sugar
licences, has threatened to disclose details of the
pair's
relationship.
Contacted yesterday, Chiota refused to explain the relationship
and
threatened to sue.
"What kind of a question is that? People should
not just write what they
think. Is it not in our interest to fight people in
the courts," Chiota
raged.
Biata Nyamupinga referred the question to
Chiota, but hinted she was related
to the deputy minister.
"Ungadzipedza
here hama dzake? Anyway, I am driving and cannot talk to you,
why don't you
talk to him?" Nyamupinga said.
Nhundu claims it was Biata who introduced her
to Chiota.
"My friend by the name Biata Nyamupinga introduced me to the
applicant
(Chiota)," Nhundu states in her affidavit lodged with the High
Court. "After
the introduction, my relationship with the applicant grew
stronger to such
an extent that we used to have lunch and supper
together."
Nhundu says it was on one such visit that Chiota made an offer to
purchase
her house.
"He gave me his offer, which I turned down because it
was below the market
value. I told him that his offer was too low and the
amount could not enable
me to purchase another property and inject capital
into my business. The
issue of the house was left in abeyance until my
friend Biata Nyamupinga
came back from Australia where she had gone for a
visit. On January 24 2006,
the applicant and Biata Nyamupinga paid me a
visit at my residential home.
The issue, which loomed large in our
discussion was about the house. I told
them that I could not sell my house
below prevailing market value and that
is when the issue of licences to sell
petrol and sugar was introduced to me.
"The applicant then made an
undertaking that he was going to facilitate in
obtaining the two licences on
my behalf since he is the Deputy Minister of
Industry and International
Trade. The applicant even assured me that I will
not run a loss in the sugar
and petrol business and that Biata Nyamupinga
was going to partner me in
this business and that Biata also knows people I
had assisted in that area
and had succeeded," Nhundu disclosed in her
deposition.
In the end,
Nhundu agreed to sell the house to Chiota for $28 billion, half
the market
price for the property at the time. When the abortive contract
was signed,
Biata signed as witness for both Nhundu, the seller, and Chiota,
the
buyer.
The deal was soon to fall through, however, triggering the current
dispute.
"After persistence by the two, the applicant and Biata Nyamupinga, I
then
signed an agreement of sale on the understanding that the applicant was
going to obtain the two licences for us. I was very alive and alert to the
issue of licences of petrol and sugar and that kept me anxious for the five
days they had said I would be having them. The issue of the two licences was
a condition precedent to the agreement of sale," Nhundu said.
The case
opens in the High Court on July 27 before Justice Chitakunye.
Nikita Madya
of Wintertons represents Chiota, while Tapuwa Mudambanuki of
Mudambanuki and
Associates acts on behalf of Nhundu.
FinGaz
Rangarirai Mberi
BANK
statutory reserve ratios will come down a further 2.5 percentage points
on
Monday, central bank governor Gideon Gono said yesterday, but dropped no
hints as to his intentions on interest rates at a meeting with
bankers.
This is the second time that statutory ratios have been adjusted
since July
3, when they were reduced to 47.5 percent from 50 percent. The
RBZ had
reduced the ratios from 60 percent to 50 percent for commercial and
merchant
banks and from 45 percent to 40 percent for discount houses on June
19, in
response to pleas by several top banks that they were under severe
strain.
Ratios for discount houses will go down to 35 percent.
The central
bank's latest move on statutory reserves, announced at a meeting
with
bankers yesterday, has sparked debate on what message governor Gideon
Gono
could be sending to the market ahead of his monetary policy statement.
The
market has been split on how Gono could treat rates in his next
statement,
with the withdrawal and quick reintroduction of 91-day Treasury
Bills having
confused the markets.
At his last meeting with bankers in April, a hawkish
Gono said he would
"continue to maintain a tight monetary policy stance,
characterised by
maintenance of positive real interest rates and short money
market
positions."
However, after inflation slowed by 8.9 percent to
1184.6 in June, observers
believe he could be tempted to ease his tight grip
on monetary policy, while
others argue that he could even tighten it further
given that the inflation
outlook remains poor despite the largely unexpected
June slowdown.
The uncertainty has seen many investors trading cautiously.
The Zimbabwe
Stock Exchange (ZSE) was marginally higher yesterday, stemming
Tuesday's
steep losses to climb back above the 70 million-point
mark.
"The market had been oversold, and this has been a correction," said
Donaldson Mandishora, analyst at ZABG. Mandishora however said the market
was virtually devoid of new buying orders, as investors hug the sidelines
ahead of the policy statement.
FinGaz
Njabulo Ncube
ZIMBABWE'S main
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will today hold
discussions with
Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) chairman and
Botswana
President, Festus Mogae, to urge the regional body to refocus on
the crisis
in Zimbabwe. The opposition says the mediation efforts of former
Tanzanian
president Benjamin Mkapa are just a ruse by the government to
divert
attention from a mounting economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe.
With
SADC heads of state converging in Maseru, Lesotho, on August 17, the
Tsvangirai camp said yesterday it was worried President Robert Mugabe wanted
to sell SADC leaders a political dummy through the much publicised Mkapa
mediation initiative expected to be tabled at next month's
summit.
Instead, the anti-senate MDC, which analysts say has been
weakened by the
October 12 fallout, would table the roadmap it intends
implementing to end
Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis.
The
roadmap, launched about two months ago, includes a call for an
all-stakeholders constitutional conference, the drafting of a new
people-driven constitution and the staging of free and fair elections under
international supervision.
"President Tsvangirai is meeting with SADC
chair President Mogae of Botswana
in Gaborone to try to mobilise and
galvanise regional solidarity on the
crisis in Zimbabwe, particularly
considering the state of the nation and the
continued escalation of the
crisis," Nelson Chamisa, the spokesman of the
Tsvangirai-led faction of the
MDC, told The Financial Gazette.
"We want to put the political crisis in
Zimbabwe into its proper
perspective. You are aware in the past there has
been some misrepresentation
and mischaracterisations of the crisis that it
is about a bilateral dispute
with Britain. Mr Tsvangirai will use this
meeting with President Mogae to
try to clarify these misrepresentations.
This will then bring the president
to discuss the Mkapa mediation issue and
present the view of the party,
particularly where the problem is located,"
said Chamisa.
"There is a general consensus within the party that the Mkapa
issue is an
escape route for Mugabe and ZANU PF to try and run away from the
actual
problem which is a crisis of governance, leadership betrayal and a
dictatorship," he added.
President Mugabe appointed Mkapa to mediate in
the crisis between London and
Harare, effectively railroading efforts by
United Nations Secretary General
Kofi Annan to personally interfere in the
Zimbabwean crisis.
Annan, who has in the past not hesitated to blast Harare
over its alleged
excesses, has endorsed the Mkapa project, putting an end to
earlier
proposals by him to visit Zimbabwe although diplomats insist the UN
chief is
pulling strings behind the scenes.
Information obtained by The
Financial Gazette yesterday indicates that
Tsvangirai - whose main camp of
the faction-riddled Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) has designed a
continental diplomatic offensive dubbed the Save
Our Country Campaign - was
scheduled to leave Harare this morning
accompanied by his deputy, Thoko
Khupe, deputy national organising secretary
Lovemore Moyo and Elphas
Mukonoweshuro, the camp's secretary for
International Affairs.
Although
Zimbabwe has dispatched its own envoys to lobby SADC leaders to
support the
Mkapa project, diplomats that spoke to this newspaper said they
were still
in the dark about the former Tanzanian leader's terms of
reference and
agenda.
President Mugabe is expected to officially announce Mkapa's
appointment at
the Maseru summit where the issue of funding of the project
will also be
clarified.
The SADC secretariat this week said it was yet to
draft the agenda of the
August 17 summit.
FinGaz
Nelson Banya
IT is now
official. Zimbabwe faces yet another costly wheat deficit of
almost 170 000
tonnes, despite trillions of dollars in inputs and subsidies
having been
channelled into this winter's crop. Economic Development
Minister Rugare
Gumbo, who led a high-level cabinet team that scoured the
country to review
wheat production, has revealed that only 53 percent of the
targeted 109 367
hectares has been cultivated, raising the spectre of huge
wheat
imports.
"From the current reports of the Validation Exercise of the 2006
winter
wheat programme, information gathered from the eight provinces
indicates
that the area planted is 53 percent of the targeted hectarage. Of
the total
targeted hectarage of 109 367 hectares, 57 835,8 hectares have
been planted
in the eight provinces. In terms of land preparation, a total
of 62 298,85
hectares have been prepared.
Figures also show that almost a
third of the land was put under wheat by the
private sector (12 000
hectares) and the military (just over 5 000 hectares
under "Operation
Maguta").
"Given these statistics and this trend, total production will be
about 218
046 metric tons. This implies a deficit of 164 954 metric tons,
which the
country has to import," Gumbo revealed in a consolidated report of
the
ministerial monitoring teams.
Zimbabwe's annual wheat consumption is
estimated in the 400 000-420 000
tonne range, although Gumbo's statistics
suggest a lower requirement of 383
000 tonnes.
Indications are that this
year's yield is smaller than the previous year's,
a fact which should worry
those in charge of agricultural planning in this
country, but is certainly
not a surprise to many who have always viewed
official projections with
suspicion.
As late as last month, government officials still insisted 110 000
hectares
would be put under wheat, despite warnings from the three farmers'
groups -
the Commercial Farmers Union, Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers' Union
and the
Zimbabwe Farmers Union - that only half that was attainable. In late
May,
Gumbo told a Parliamentary Portfolio committee that "at least 80 000
hectares" had, by then, been put under wheat, adding he was still optimistic
the target would be met.
In his report, Gumbo cites the critical shortage
of ammonium nitrate at a
time when 80 percent of the wheat needed to be top
dressed, the shortage of
equipment, labour problems, erratic fuel supplies,
limited technical support
and frequent power outages.
Indeed, the
disparity between the land prepared, 62 298,85 hectares, and the
area that
was actually planted, 57 835,8 hectares, while appearing
insignificant, can
be attributed to the dearth of inputs.
That, however, is only part of the
problem. The huge incentives and
subsidies extended by government have, in a
perverse way, actually served to
undermine production.
The government,
through the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM), sells
fuel to farmers
at $11 000 per litre, a hugely discounted price from the
average $420 000
pump price.
This creates a huge arbitrage opportunity some of Zimbabwe's
newest farmers
can scarcely resist. Earlier in the year, several ruling
party officials in
Manicaland were hauled before the courts for abusing the
fuel facility in a
case that is clearly indicative of a widespread
malady.
As the nation once again counts the cost of the disruption of
commercial
agriculture and gets ready to face more bread shortages as a
result of the
wheat deficit, questions will remain as to whether the
government's subsidy
policy can work to revive an industry which, in another
of the government's
optimistic projections, should grow by 14 percent this
year.
Top of the bill, of course is $3.25 trillion in ASPEF funds, an
additional
$250 billion advanced by Agribank, US$6.5 million advanced to
fertiliser
firms by the central bank and US$40 million for the importation
of inputs.
Discount the costs of having 'high-level' ministerial teams
criss-crossing
the country to assess how much wheat had been planted.
FinGaz
Njabulo Ncube
PRESIDENT
Robert Mugabe's blistering condemnation of the violence that
recently rocked
the faction-riddled Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has
raised fears of
a crack-down on the main opposition party.
Addressing ZANU PF's 66th
Ordinary Session of the Central Committee,
President Mugabe said violence in
the MDC
needed to be nipped in the bud.
"MDC violence and brutal behaviour
is an evil we just have to remove from
our body politic. We can't continue
to have it and they must get a warning.
No party that is dedicated to
violence should be allowed to exist in
Zimbabwe. It is this violence to
which we have always striven to draw the
attention of our detractors and
which lies deep and inherent in the MDC,"
President Mugabe said.
He was
commenting on the assault of Harare North legislator Trudy Stevenson
early
this month by assailants thought to be linked to Morgan Tsvangirai's
faction
of the split opposition party.
President Mugabe added: "Now our detractors
have come face to face with acts
of the monster they sired, raised and
pampered and yet they are either
silent or equivocating about it in their
characteristic hypocritical manner.
Their behaviour is part of the hypocrisy
and double standards we have come
to associate with the MDC's European
godfathers, so comfortable with lies."
However, some political analysts said
President Mugabe's statement could be
interpreted by the less sophisticated
in ZANU PF to mean that the opposition
has to be eliminated.
But they say
government would find it difficult to ban the main opposition
party, as the
country was not in a state of emergency.
"This is a careless statement which
could be taken seriously by zealots to
mean the MDC is banned," said Takura
Zhangazha, a political commentator
based in Harare. "The MDC is too big a
political entity to be ignored or
banned at this time in Zimbabwe. But the
statement shows ZANU PF still
thinks it is the only party," said Zhangazha.
"The history of political
violence in this country can well be traced to
ZANU PF. It is the party that
needs to be lectured on the
subject."
Although European countries and the United States have condemned
the assault
on Stevenson and four others of the Mutambara faction, they
however, have
attributed the prevalence of political violence in Zimbabwe to
ZANU PF.
FinGaz
Rangarirai Mberi
NOW, even
the computers are having trouble making sense of all those zeros.
Some 72
representatives from commercial banks and the central bank have met
to
discuss the hard time their computers are having reading the zeros on
Zimdollar transactions.
Apparently, software - obviously written for
normal economies - is now
failing to handle "transactions amounting to
trillions and therefore
creating an urgent need for a solution", according
to minutes of the meeting
seen by The Financial Gazette.
The meeting,
held last Wednesday, considered three options to get around the
problem;
increase the maximum number of digits allowed by systems, or
increase the
field size so that large amounts can be handled; remove the two
decimal
places in the amount field; or reduce the number of zeros in the
amount
field: drop zeros, effectively dividing all values by the same
number.
One representative said his bank's software suppliers had said
they would
not change their systems to accommodate more zeroes. "He went on
to say the
current cost estimate given by their supplier is US$300 000 and
this is
prohibitive."
The meeting also heard that software suppliers are
not keen to change their
entire systems and programs just to accommodate
users from Zimbabwe as it
does not make any business sense for them.
FinGaz
Kumbirai Mafunda
ZIMBABWE police
yesterday arrested two journalists who were covering a
demonstration against
the extension of the term of office of the commission
running the city of
Harare. Ndamu Sandu, a senior reporter with The
Standard, and Godwin
Mangudya, a journalist with the banned Daily News, were
rounded up in the
capital alongside 17 demonstrators protesting the
deteriorating service
delivery and calling for fresh elections in the
capital.
The
protestors, mobilised by the Combined Harare Residents (CHRA), were
gathering at Town House building when riot police arrived and broke up the
crowd. The demonstrators had marched to Town House to deliver a petition
calling for the ouster of Sekesayi Makwavarara and condemning the extension
of the tenure of the commission running the city of Harare.
FinGaz
Rangarirai
Mberi
SO why does a government that loves to cloak itself in the national
flag
believe that the future of Zimbabweans hinges on Britain "accepting
that we
are a sovereign state"?
President Robert Mugabe's
administration, which waves the patriotic flag
each time criticism of its
management goes up a notch, has accepted Benjamin
Mkapa as a mediator in its
"bilateral" dispute with Britain.
With most Zimbabweans wondering what that
mediation is all about, government
spokesman George Charamba told The
Financial Gazette this week that the
much-hyped Mkapa mediation will have
the primary aim of getting the former
colonial ruler to accept that Zimbabwe
is a sovereign and independent
country.
"What we want to negotiate for is
the recognition of Zimbabwe's sovereignty
by Britain," Charamba said.
The
obvious follow-up question is why Zimba-bwe, this self-proclaimed last
fortress of anti-imperialist struggle, is still obsessed with getting
Britain to accept its sovereignty, 26 years on?
It is because it is
interfering in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe,
government says,
encouraging its European partners to slap sanctions on the
country. And, at
least according to President Robert Mugabe, the British
have been - pirate
Black Beard style - hijacking oil ships on the high seas
and turning them
away from Zimbabwe.
Britain, government officials say, is therefore the cause
of Zimbabwe's
troubles, and it is therefore, natural that it is Britain that
must clean up
Zimbabwe's mess.
The crisis has nothing to do with ZANU PF
types "farming" their $11 000 per
litre fuel on the black market or
patchwork policy that appears designed for
no other purpose than to scare
everyone away.
To charges by critics such as the French and cleric Trevor
Manhanga that
government needs to first build bridges with its own people at
home before
trying to get all chummy with the British, Charamba had a
characteristically
glib rejoinder:
"But mediation between government and
the people is done through the ballot
box."
So, the belief is that once
the British accept that Zimbabwe is after all an
independent country, "able
to chart its own future", inflation will slide
towards single digits, and
ordinary Zimbabweans will once again know what it
is like to live in a
normal country.
Makes patriots wonder, then, whether Zimbabwe has moved on in
the past 26
years, or whether it has thrown itself right back to Lancaster
1979 - still
arguing that the country cannot live until Britain allows it to
breathe.
These are tough times for patriots: the future of their country is
now
suddenly in the hands of Britain, the great imperialist herself. Tony
Blair
must drop all he's doing now - and the poor man has got a lot on his
plate -
so that he can attend to the all-important duty of dishing out
sovereignty
to Zimbabwe as a way of solving all its problems. Whatever
happened to
"Blair, you keep your England and I'll keep my
Zimbabwe"?
It's normal that politicians everywhere publicly blame others for
their
problems. But it gets scary when politicians appear to actually
believe what
they say, as increasingly appears to be the case in
Zimbabwe.
FinGaz
NO-HOLDS-BARRED
Gondo Gushungo TO Zimbabweans the sincerity,
commitment and political will
of President Robert Mugabe's government to rid
the country of corruption
remains highly debatable. That is why the
government has not won any
plaudits for their much-vaunted anti-corruption
drive. But to a visitor from
Mars, President Mugabe easily passes for
someone who takes umbrage at
corruption, if only his public statements and
their elaborate tones are
anything to go by.
And when in early 2004
he controversially amended the Criminal Procedure and
Evidence Act under the
Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures Act)
ostensibly to deal with
pervasive and cancerous corruption, many thought the
revving was over and
the gears were about to engage. Indeed, this move was
interpreted by some to
mean that this was a tacit admission by government
that the pendulum had
swung too far the other way insofar as corruption was
concerned. The country
was at that time unflatteringly perched up there
alongside Venezuela,
Honduras, Uzbekistan, Ethiopia, the DRC, Sierra Leone
and Moldova, among the
most corrupt countries in the world.
But it also raised a furore, especially
within legal circles. Critics in the
legal fraternity were of the view that
in this case, the provisions of an
emergency law were being used for a
non-emergency case because the culture
of corruption had been
institutionalised in Zimbabwe for close to a quarter
of a century. Their
view was that since Zimbabwe is supposed to be a
constitutional democracy,
the wrong arm of government was making the law. To
them, there was more to
it than just meets the eye.
But government insisted that this was the only
way to decisively deal with
corruption. However, despite the hype, nothing
much happened. It has been
anticlimactic, to say the very least. The grand
total of legal charges
brought against the corruption-accused has been
negligible. And what has
been the upshot of it all? People no longer have
any high hopes for the
government putting a stop to corruption. The longer
they waited, the less
they hoped. This has given credence to observations
that government just
pays lip service to the idea of lowering the boom on
corruption. But it
lacks the political will and commitment. In reality there
are red lines the
government will not dare cross in dealing with corruption,
probably to keep
the lid on the political dimension of the scourge.
The
negative sentiment on government sincerity and commitment to deal with
corruption has not changed much. True, only last week, President Mugabe
publicly rebuked and admonished his ZANU PF colleagues for corruption but
this did not cut the ice with the critics. And they are not holding their
breath. To them, the curtains will, just like before, come down before the
theatre even begins!
If anything, President Mugabe's tongue-lashing
against the corrupt in ZANU
PF raised the same old questions that have been
asked time without number,
which questions are born of healthy scepticism
among Zimbabweans. The
questions - chief of which is how far will government
go this time around -
always reach a dead end when they are followed up?
Even as the President
issued threats to deal with those implicated in
corrupt practices, the video
footage showed that ZANU PF's corrupt officials
who have been wallowing in
corruption like rhinoceroses in the muddy pools
of the Hwange National Park
were unfazed, seemingly daring him to act. What
is the big deal? The bark
has been more ferocious than the bite anyway.
There would be no lucid
expose` or indictments. That is why they, for
example, have reduced the
agrarian reform exercise into a senseless land
grab orgy with impunity in
spite of government's publicly stated policy of
one-man-one farm.
Their source of comfort seems to be the fact that despite
the empty rhetoric
from the powers-that-be, the extent to which government
will deal with
corruption will very much be determined by the stature,
status and possibly
political party affiliation of the culprits. Evidence
abounds where in the
past, the long arm of the law has tended to go for the
proverbial hares
while avoiding the elephants. It would be naive to read too
much into the
arrest of Chris Kuruneri in 2004. He is, to all intents and
purposes, a
political lightweight with no clout and can therefore be used as
a
sacrificial lamb to placate a public agitating for strong measures against
corruption.
If all the other cases - such as the abuse of the VIP Housing
Scheme, the
War Victims Compensation Fund, the multiple farm ownership, the
abuse of
US$268 million by dubious fuel dealers and the ongoing looting of
minerals
and farm equipment where trillions of dollars have silted up the
pockets of
a corrupt few - are now being treated as water under the bridge,
or as if
they never happened, what has changed now? Is there anything
fundamentally
different between the corruption committed then and now?
I
make my case by reference to facts. As can be gleaned from press reports,
prominent political figures and their cronies were tarred with allegations
that they abused the facilities cited above. But what the government knows
about this abuse remains largely off the public record. Why doesn't the
government adopt a punitive name and shame approach? Why keep a lid on the
identity of the culprits? Is it because influential senior ZANU PF
politicians are implicated in this corruption which has been feeding from
the country's deeply-rooted political patronage system? In which case,
government would therefore rather turn a blind eye than pursue the
anti-corruption drive to its full expression which it sees as a double-edged
sword that would raise the ire of the enemy within just as the matador's red
flag would get the bull raging. Already, speculation is swirling about how
the toothless, ineffective but expensive anti-corruption commission is being
prohibited from looking into sensitive cases that are proving to be
politically sticky. How then does government hope to promote public sector
accountability and transparency and serve that specific public interest by
exposing waste, fraud, abuse and criminal activity? Or are we supposed to
believe that the identifiable harm to ZANU PF of such a lucid expose`
outweighs the public interest?
These are the questions whose answers are
not very obvious because
government's inaction over these burning issues has
not only been
extraordinary but extremely perplexing too and hence a cause
for grave
concern. And this is why the government's anti-corruption drive,
for which
there is very little to show, is widely seen as window-dressing
for the
public's benefit amid an outcry over the festering cancer of
corruption in
high places.
I hope that President Mugabe himself sees the
justice of it all as to why
critics say it will take an incredible leap of
faith for Zimbabweans to
believe that his government will ever up the ante
in its half-hearted fight
against corruption.
The truth of the matter is
that the President, who in all fairness should be
blamed for failing to
recognise promptly how corrupt his colleagues are, can
talk himself hoarse
about how damaging corruption is to the country. But it's
like talking to a
brick wall. His colleagues in ZANU PF are so remorseless
and self-centred
that for them there is no limit to greed, no shackles on
avarice and no end
to cupidity, if only Maxwell Newton's words can help me
say it like it
is.
We are talking about the kind of people whose integrity former editor of
The
Atlantic, Robert Manning said would fit into the navel of a flea and
there
would be room left for a caraway seed and his heart. Thus President
Mugabe
has to realise that the old adage that actions speak louder than
words holds
true today as it did centuries ago. He has just said all there
is to say
about the sickening corruption of his colleagues. And it's now
time to act,
failure of which Zimbabwe remains very much unimpressed. This
is a case
where the President should never put off to tomorrow what should
have been
done yesterday.
- email: gg@fingaz.co.zw
FinGaz
Mavis Makuni
AFRICA FILE
COMMENTING on the effectiveness of the
proposed African Court on Human and
Peoples' Rights, African Union (AU)
Commissioner for Political Affairs,
Julia Joiner, is reported to have told
journalists: "This court will
strengthen jurisprudence and contribute to the
promotion and protection of
human rights in the continent."
She was
speaking at the end of the AU summit held in the Gambian capital,
Banjul,
about two weeks ago, during which the assembled heads of state
resolved to
establish the court, which is to be based in Tanzania.
The AU leaders were
galvanised into acting to speed up the establishment of
the court, first
mooted in 1998, because of their anxiety to ensure that
'African solutions'
are applied to deal with cases such as that of Hissene
Habre, the former
president of Chad. Habre, who has lived in exile in
Senegal for the last six
years, has been accused of human rights abuses,
mass killings, torture and
other atrocities during his term in office, which
ended when he was
overthrown in a coup in 1990.
After the courts in Senegal declared their lack
of jurisdiction to try
Habre, his alleged victims turned to Belgium, which
has a universal
jurisdiction law allowing its courts to try human rights
offenders anywhere.
The AU is, however, opposed to the move because the
heads of state believe
western courts are biased - a curious charge
considering that it is not
based on any precedent of a leader from Africa
having been falsely accused
and prosecuted.
A panel set up by the AU to
decide Habre's fate after Belgium asked for his
extradition has said it
opposes "total impunity" for the former strongman -
suggesting that some
immunity will be acceptable. The panel recommended that
Habre could stand
trial in Chad or Senegal or appear before an ad-hoc
tribunal anywhere in
Africa. Another option is that he could be summoned to
a court hearing by
any of the 45 countries in Africa that are signatories to
the convention
against torture.
In expressing confidence that the AU court would fulfill its
mandate, Joiner
said, "It means you have another level where states and
people can seek
recourse before the African Commission on Peoples' Rights
(ACHPR) and
prosecutions can be made, not just judgments and resolutions."
However, the
inertia and collusion of African leaders in the past when they
should have
dealt decisively with reports on human rights abuses in given
countries does
not give ordinary Africans reason to believe that things will
be any
different under the proposed new dispensation.
A case in point is
the report on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe
which the AU has
aggressively and persistently refused to discuss for one
unconvincing reason
or another over the past four years. The report was
compiled by an ACHPR
delegation headed by Professor Jinaiba Johm of Gambia,
which undertook a
fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe in 2002.
On his return from the AU summit in
Gambia a fortnight ago, Zimbabwe's
Foreign Minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi,
waxed lyrical about the victory
the government had scored in Banjul. In an
interview with Zimbabwe
Broadcasting Holdings chief correspondent, Reuben
Barwe, Mumbengegwi could
hardly conceal his satisfaction as he responded to
fawning leading questions
posed by Barwe about what had happened to the
ACHPR report. Mumbengegwi said
Zimbabwe had effectively dealt with the
matter and it was now dead for good.
Mumbengegwi, who used to be Zimbabwe's
ambassador to Britain, inherited the
issue of the ACHPR report from Stan
Mudenge, whom he succeeded as foreign
minister last year. Mudenge was
equally proud of how he had succeeded in
blocking the tabling of the report
at various forums where it should have
been debated openly. Every trick in
the book was used to prevent the report
from seeing the light of day.
The
subterfuge included at one stage a claim that the ACHPR report was sent
to
the wrong address in Harare - the Ministry of Justice and Parliamentary
Affairs - and therefore the government had not "seen" it. At last year's AU
summit in Khartoum, it was announced the Council of Ministers had thrown the
report out because, among other things, it resembled versions that had been
submitted on other occasions.
It is therefore a slap in the face for
ordinary Zimbabweans for the minister
to exude a sense of achievement for
having blocked their voices from being
heard by a continental body that is
supposed to be working to ensure justice
and a better life for
all.
Mumbengegwi would have been entitled to be pleased with himself if after
exhaustive and open discussion of the ACHPR report, the AU had exonerated
Zimbabwe and shown that it was being falsely accused of violating human
rights, muzzling the press and crushing dissent. That Mumbengegwi is proud
that the government was allowed to deny the people of Zimbabwe the right to
seek redress through the AU does not inspire confidence in the new set
up.
The government of Zimbabwe has indicted itself by displaying the same
aversion to scrutiny and intolerance for divergent views at the continental
level that it has been accused of at home. Under normal circumstances,
Zimbabwe's antics in forestalling AU scrutiny of its controversial conduct
with respect to Operation Murambatsvina and alleged human rights violations
should have made the continental body more determined to get to the bottom
of these matters.
But alas, the AU heads of state have been over-eager to
let the Zimbabwean
government off the hook. Rather than using the AU
platform to facilitate the
tackling of issues affecting ordinary people
continent-wide, the leaders
continue to regard the organisation as a
personal fiefdom existing solely to
serve their interests by granting each
other immunity for acts of tyranny
against their own people.
In view of
the fact that reports such as the one on the human rights
situation in
Zimbabwe could not even clear the first hurdle, - its tabling
before the
heads of state - it is difficult to see how the proposed AU court
can be
effective when the attempts of ordinary Africans to seek redress are
thwarted by the very leaders at whom accusing fingers are pointed. As far as
these heads of state are concerned, African justice and solutions are
euphemisms for impunity, collusion and covering up for each other. The
western bias they have complained about is not against ordinary Africans but
tyrants guilty of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other
atrocities.
Things fall apart
ZIMBABWE is now beginning to
count the cost of the destruction of commercial
agriculture through a badly
managed and rushed-for-political-expediency land
redistribution
programme.
Agriculture, once the mainstay of the economy is, for want of a
better
expression, going to hell in a handcart. Nothing seems to be falling
in
place in the key sector. It is hard to believe that this is the engine
that
once powered the erstwhile reassuringly resilient economy. As we
pointed out
in our leader of last week, the government's much-vaunted
radical land
reform exercise was a prelude to economic disaster. Thus the
law of the
unintended has taken hold. We have our reasons for saying
so.
The very unreliable Ministry of Agriculture headed by Joseph Made earlier
on
claimed that A1 and A2 farmers would put two million hectares under maize
in
the 2005/2006 season which could have produced a surplus to national
requirements. Hell's bells, the country, which by March this year had forked
out US$135 million to finance grain imports, faces yet another deficit for
the staple maize!
No less than four independent and credible bodies - the
Food and Agriculture
Organisation, the European Space Agency's Global
Monitoring for Food
Security Project, the United States Department of
Agriculture and FEWSNET -
have all disputed the maize forecasts by the
government which seems to guess
the facts about the situation without enough
information.
The four organisations are forecasting a yield of between 900
000 and 1.1
million tonnes of the staple crop, well below the projections by
government,
which has hardly been a credible source of information where
forecasts on
food production are concerned. This means that Zimbabwe will
need at least
U$35 million ($15 trillion on the black market) to import
maize to make up
for the deficit at a time when foreign currency is coming
into the country
in dribs and drabs.
The independent organisations blamed
this scenario on sub-optimal
utilisation of land resulting from shortages of
critical inputs spawned
largely by a biting foreign exchange crunch. Added
to this, most of the "new
farmers" to whom the government dished out farms
like confetti have neither
the financial wherewithal nor the farming
expertise.
Not only that, but in a rare moment of truth, the government which
- for
political reasons has previously lied to the dregs of infamy about the
country's food security situation and usually has a conniption fit over any
talk of a failed harvest - last week begrudgingly admitted that the country
has once again failed to produce enough wheat to meet national requirements.
According to figures provided by Economic Development Minister, Rugare
Gumbo, Zimbabwe will have to import close to 170 000 tonnes of wheat.
The
sad story does not end there. The country's erstwhile premier export
earner,
tobacco, geared for the unmanufactured international leaf market, is
to all
intents and purposes teetering on the verge of collapse. Tobacco
production
for this year is just about 45 million kg - a mere 18 percent of
its
pre-crisis levels when the country produced 250 million kg in 1999. That
was
when tobacco, then known as "the golden leaf" earned upwards of US$700
million even when prices on the international market were relatively soft
due to a rise in the global supply of tobacco.
The terrifying decline in
the production of the three crops cited above is a
microcosm of falling
production in agriculture in general. The same can be
said of beef, which
had a reputation for quality and was previously in great
demand on the
lucrative EU market, horticulture which at one time was the
fastest growing
sub-sector and dairy to mention but a few.
It is disappointing. But it was
not unexpected given the chaotic nature of
the agrarian reforms. This is why
critics say that the unfolding crisis in
the agricultural sector which has
in turn accelerated the unprecedented
economic meltdown reads more like a
chronicle of a catastrophe foretold. Not
only is Zimbabwe, the regional
breadbasket-turned-basket case failing to
feed itself but it now risks
losing its traditional export markets for
commodities such as beef,
horticulture and tobacco, which was in demand from
international cigarette
manufacturers for blending purposes.
We said it before and we will say it
again. International businesses need
guaranteed supply because they are in
for the long haul. They do not buy
these commodities on an ad hoc basis. And
given what is happening in
Zimbabwean agriculture right now, there is a real
danger of them looking
elsewhere for fear of being caught flat-footed in the
event of local
agriculture collapsing. That it is a matter of prudence for
any business
that supplies of raw materials or even finished products be
constantly
reliable, cannot be over-emphasised. These businesses cannot risk
disruptions in their operations because of the Zimbabwean drag.
FinGaz
Mavis
Makuni
PERSONAL GLIMPSES
NATIONAL Security, Lands and Land Reform and
Resettlement Minister, Didymus
Mutasa admitted at the weekend that his
ministry's attempt to evict Bulawayo
businessman Langton Masunda from land
previously allocated to him so as to
make way for a senior government
official to take over the property was
wrong.
Mutasa said the
ministry had used the wrong procedure to nullify an offer
letter given to
Masunda in 2002 authorising him to take over a hunting
concession and Jijima
Lodge in Matabeleland North. Mutasa conceded that an
error had been made and
promised that the situation would be rectified only
after a high court judge
had ruled in the businessman's favour a second
time. This was after Masunda
had filed an urgent court application
challenging the decision to kick him
out of the lucrative concern to make
way for Speaker of Parliament, John
Nkomo. Justice Francis Bere's ruling,
dated July 7, ordered Masunda's
reinstatement "in his occupation and use of
land he was allocated by Cde
Mutasa and to his occupation of Jijima Lodge
and its environs."
Mutasa
withdrew Masunda's original offer letter on June 7 on the pretext
that he
was hunting on the property without following procedures. And
despite a
ruling by another high court judge, Justice Nicholas Ndou for
Nkomo and his
agents to stop interfering with Masunda's operations, Mutasa
persisted in
ordering his eviction in defiance of the court ruling. "Please
be advised
that the Minster of State for National Security, Lands and Land
Reform and
Resettlement in the President's Office is withdrawing the offer
of land made
to you. You are required forthwith to cease all or any
operations that you
may have commenced thereon and immediately vacate the
piece of land", said
Mutasa's letter to the businessman.
The timing of Mutasa's latest comments
about the Masunda case is
interesting. His statement was made last Friday,
the same day President
Robert Mugabe blasted ZANU PF bigwigs for abusing
their authority to amass
wealth and properties corruptly and unfairly. The
President castigated these
greedy chefs while addressing a meeting of the
ruling party's central
committee in Harare when for the first time he used
the combative and
disparaging "Pasi nemi" (down with you) slogan that he
normally reserves for
the opposition and other politically undesirable
elements, against members
of his own party.
He launched into a scathing
attack on high-ranking officials who were
evicting ordinary people from
farms and those who threw their weight around
to demand first preference
when business stands or houses built under
Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle
were allocated. The President warned, "We
shall now be bound to have a
campaign of cleansing the central committee."
Most cynical Zimbabweans must
have retorted "too little, too late," because
corruption has been left for
too long to permeate every facet of public
life. The stony-faced silence
that greeted the head of state's
podium-thumbing indignation was a dead
giveaway that even his normally
sycophantic and vociferous supporters knew
it was pointless to threaten to
close the door long after the horse has
bolted.
The wrangle between Masunda and the Speaker of Parliament over
ownership of
the hunting concession had raged since last year when Nkomo
first instituted
moves to have Masunda kicked out. Claiming he had 'lost' an
original offer
letter issued in 2003 when he was in charge of land
distribution, Nkomo now
produced a letter dated September 2005 signed by
Mutasa to justify the
ejection of Masunda after three years on the property.
The case highlights
the reasons why the chaotic atmosphere besetting the
agricultural sector is
unlikely to improve any time soon so that normal
productivity can be
restored.
The most glaring is the hypocrisy and greed
of the leadership. Mutasa and
Nkomo's vindictiveness in ganging up against
Masunda, is not reflective of
principled senior ruling party officials
anxious to promote the success of
the land reform programme for the benefit
of the generality of the people.
Their actions are not in any way influenced
by patriotic or revolutionary
zeal but by a desire for self-aggrandizement.
Mutasa in particular cannot
hope to preside over the successful completion
of an orderly land
redistribution exercise when he is at the forefront in
sabotaging its
progress by abusing his ministerial position to accede to the
under-handed
demands of those wishing to reap where they did not sow. All a
chef who
covets a successful concern run by a hard-working individual or
group has to
do is to get an offer letter from Mutasa and hey presto, the
ordinary person
who has toiled all season is bumped off and the big fish
claims the harvest.
The Masunda case is not the first in which Mutasa has
failed to act firmly
and fairly and has instead chosen to collude with
fellow chefs to corruptly
eject individuals already operating on thriving
farms. Last year, Midlands
Governor Cephas Msipa took over Cheshire Farm in
Gweru after "surrendering"
an offer letter which entitled him to another
farm in Zvishavane and getting
a fresh document from Mutasa. Commenting on
the turn of events, the former
owner of Cheshire Farm, Graham Ingle said, "I
told them that I don't think
that a system which allows government to
dispossess people of their farms
willy-nilly is good for business or
investment."
Recently, the press reported on another dispute in which some
war veterans
lost billions of dollars worth of crops they had toiled to
cultivate because
Higher Education Minister Stan Mudenge secured an offer
letter from Mutasa
for their land as the former fighters prepared for the
season's harvest.
What will Mutasa do to rectify this and other anomalies
that have resulted
from his belated dishing out of offer letters to people
who are attracted to
certain farms by the size of the homestead, the
equipment and infrastructure
available and ready-to-harvest crops?
It is
pertinent to ask if Mutasa would have seen anything wrong with the
unfair
treatment of Masunda for the benefit of Nkomo if the President had
not
attacked such practices at the central committee meeting. The answer is
no
and sadly it applies to the way the majority of those in government
operate.
FinGaz
Kumbirai
Mafunda
ZIMBABWE'S state-run broadcaster, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings
(ZBH), this
week embarked on a countrywide licence blitz on defaulting
viewers and
listeners in a desperate bid to enhance its depleted revenue
base.
Faced with empty coffers, the loss-making broadcaster began sending
teams of
inspectors accompanied by members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police
(ZRP), on
a countrywide radio and television licence inspection.
In
Harare the joint crack teams were deployed in the high-density suburbs of
Highfield, Glen View, Glen Norah and Budiriro while in Bulawayo they are on
the prowl in Cowdray Park, Pumula, Mpopoma and Luveve.
ZBH says the
crackdown will later spread to other areas as it aims to
collect enough
revenue to finance its operations by forcing viewers and
listeners to sign
up to its lacklustre service.
The discredited state broadcaster has for a
long time been facing cash flow
and viability problems due to inefficient
revenue collection methods.
A number of senior journalists and radio
presenters have left the national
broadcaster citing poor salaries and
deteriorating working conditions and
more are contemplating
leaving.
Because of poor programming, ZBH has been losing its audience to
foreign
broadcasters.
The national broadcaster, which enjoys a monopoly
of the airwaves also risks
falling foul of the Iranian financiers of its
digitalisation project due to
problems in the amortisation of a five million
euro ($655 billion at the
official rate) loan advanced by Tehran.
To date
only Zimbabwe Television (ZTV), Newsnet and Power FM have been
digitalised,
while SFM, Radio Zimbabwe and national FM are yet to be
digitalised.
An
ambitious project to launch another television station, National
Television
(NTV) was abandoned due to lack of funding.
Presently, the Ministry of
Information and Publicity headed by acting
Minister Paul Mangwana, who was
appointed following the death of the then
Minister Tichaona Jokonya says it
will 'soon' unveil a leaner set-up at the
state broadcaster whose bloated
structure of nine companies was dissolved
and merged into two companies in
June to restore viability to the ailing
public broadcaster.
FinGaz
Geoff Nyarota
(THE
GEOFF NYAROTA COLUMN
"WHEN you see an owl flying in broad daylight," the
celebrated Nigerian
writer, Chinua Achebe, opines in his famous Things Fall
Apart, "you know
something is after its life."
When a series of
unusual events occur in quick succession, chances are that
certain
prodigious happenings are either under way or are about to take
place. A
fine example of such an unusual event would be the sudden
acquisition of an
impeccable command of the Queen of England's language by
an otherwise
semi-literate Harare municipal policeman-turned-politician.
Hard in the wake
of that most regrettable and mind-boggling incident, the
violent attack in
Mabvuku on opposition politician Trudy Stevenson, the
Member of Parliament
for Harare North, a series of strange events occurred.
Stevenson immediately
identified her alleged assailants by name. The MP for
Mabvuku, Timothy
Mubawu of Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC was accused of having
organised the
attack. This revelation was made at a press conference which
raised eyebrows
on account of the speed with which it was organised,
considering the nature
and extent of Stevenson's injuries. Professor Arthur
Mutambara's breakaway
faction of the opposition MDC, the political
organisation to which she
belongs, responded swiftly. Through statements
issued by secretary general
Professor Welshman Ncube, considered by many to
be the de facto leader of
the party, and Gabriel Chaibva, the secretary for
information, Tsvangirai
was fingered as having orchestrated the dastardly
attack. Also fingered was
MDC official Eddie Cross, who was accused of
having harboured some of the
culprits in his Bulawayo home before they were
allegedly spirited out of the
country and out of the reach of the long arm
of the law.
Not that the
said long arm of the law was proving effective back in Harare,
where rather
miraculously, those members and officials of the mainstream MDC
identified
by Stevenson and duly exposed in the media as having attacked her
were
allowed to remain at large for four days.
Meanwhile the case was publicly
tried in The Herald and elsewhere. In the
process, the self-confessed
Godfather of Jambanja or violence, Joseph
Chinotimba, one of the masterminds
of the ferocious farm invasions which
left scores dead, hundreds either
maimed or homeless and our economy in
total ruin, crafted a lengthy and
eloquent statement which he caused to be
published in The
Herald.
"Members of the European Union (EU), George W Bush and Tony Blair,"
Chinotimba waxed lyrical in his expressive treatise, "I would like to bring
to your attention the recent act of violence by the Tsvangirai-led MDC
faction that attacked the MDC legislator for Harare North constituency Trudy
Stevenson and four other high-ranking officials of the Mutambara faction for
allegedly turning against Tsvangirai.
"The recent violent acts by
Tsvangirai's faction can at best be described as
barbaric and intolerant
conduct and such attacks should be condemned with
all the admonition they
deserve."
This cannot be the same Chinotimba who marched in front as war
veterans not
only caused loss of life but also created total mayhem on the
commercial
farms before he personally stormed the dignified chambers of
former Chief
Justice Anthony Gubbay, causing him to resign almost
immediately thereafter.
In his published statement Chinotimba assumed the
mantle of chief justice
and hastily cast to the wind any question of the
matter being sub-judice.
"It is apparent," he said, "that Stevenson was only
exercising her right to
join a political party of her choice and Tsvangirai
is denying her, her
legitimate rights."
Even Stevenson must have squirmed
at this rather unexpected show of
solidarity from a person who is not
exactly renowned for his respect for the
rule of law. Chinotimba's bone of
contention was that neither Washington nor
London had criticised Tsvangirai
for attacking Stevenson.
"Can we interpret this to mean that you are allowing
whites to be attacked
by your 'good boy' in Zimbabwe?" he asked.
With
this simple question, the now supposedly erudite Chinotimba unwittingly
gave
away the whole plot. The prodigious length and rare eloquence of
Chinotimba's dissertation prompted speculation that the ruling ZANU PF party
had pooled all its linguistic and literary skills and resources to craft the
said critique. Tsvangirai may have to call a press conference to explain why
he rendered the task of his rivals so easy by orchestrating an attack on
Stevenson at a time when they were desperately hunting for evidence that he
was prone to violence.
The citizens of Zimbabwe do not want any
politician with a disposition
towards violence to aspire to be President. If
Tsvangirai is, indeed, a
violent person, as alleged, then he must be
exposed. The focus of any police
or journalistic investigative work is the
establishment of the motive for
any criminal or reprehensible conduct. Which
political organisation stood to
benefit most from an attack assigned in
broad daylight by Tsvangirai on a
frail white politician belonging to Prof
Mutambara's breakaway faction of
the MDC?
Prior to Chinotimba's outburst
ZANU PF has rarely been known to articulate
any principled condemnation of
political violence. When thousands of
innocent and unarmed peasants were
massacred by the Five Brigade in
Matabeleland and the Midlands ZANU PF did
not protest. When MDC activists
Talent Mabika and Tichaona Chiminya were
brutally murdered in broad daylight
in 2000 in full view of police officers
at Murambinda in Buhera neither
Chinotimba nor ZANU PF uttered a word.
To
date, Joseph Mwale, a CIO operative and Kainos Kitsiyatota Zimunya, a
ZANU
PFelection campaign activist, the alleged perpetrators of the dastardly
act,
have not been brought to book. When Macheke farmer, David Stevens was
killed
in cold blood by war veterans in 2000, ZANU PF never expressed any
outrage.
When Martin and Gloria Olds were brutally executed by war veterans
on their
ranch in Bubi-Umguza in Matabeleland North in 2001 Chinotimba never
issued
any statement. When former Gweru Mayor, Patrick Kombayi, was disabled
in a
vicious attack by a CIO agent and a ZANU PF activist his attackers were
tried, found guilty and sentenced to prison terms. President Robert Mugabe
immediately pardoned them. Chinotimba was apparently still too illiterate to
pen any eloquent and effusive protest for publication in The Herald.
The
Stevenson case highlights a remarkable deficiency of Zimbabwe's
present-day
body-politic; an absence of professional police investigators,
as well as a
total lack of a cadre of skilled and dedicated investigative
journalists to
unravel such mysteries. There appears to be a new breed of
journalist in
Zimbabwe whose professional creed is:
"Why allow logic and the facts to stand
in the way of a damaging scoop." A
combination of too many unsophisticated
politicians, especially within the
ranks of the opposition, and a rather
gullible public at large compounds the
sorry situation.
The
simple-mindedness of politicians such as those who so very easily jump
to
conclusions and instantly make public such conclusions has no place in
the
Zimbabwe that we must build after Mugabe.
To place the issue of violence such
as the recent attack on Stevenson in its
proper perspective it is necessary
to take a trip back into the history of
political violence in
post-independence Zimbabwe. In spearheading this
exercise my objective is to
illustrate how ill-advised it is for observers
of acts of political violence
to jump to instant conclusions in seeking to
identify the alleged
perpetrators.
During the run-up to the first democratic elections leading to
our
independence in 1980 the infamous Selous Scouts and other agents of Ian
Smith's Rhodesian Front regime mounted a relentless campaign to stage-manage
acts of violence in a bid to discredit Zanu-PF and its armed wing, Zanla, as
well as the organisation's leader, Robert Mugabe, just returned from years
of exile and struggle in Mozambique.
Because the ultra-efficient
Rhodesian propaganda machinery had portrayed
Mugabe as a Marxist terrorist
bent on destroying the Christian faith in
Zimbabwe after independence, the
Selous Scouts mounted a campaign which
targeted Christian churches for
attack.
Two operatives, Lieutenant Edward Piringondo of Mbare and Corporal
Morgan
Moyo, blew themselves to smithereens when the explosives they carried
in the
back seat of their car detonated prematurely as they approached St
Michaels's Church, Runyararo, in Mbare. An official Rhodesian security
forces communiqué announced, amid much official embarrassment, that two
Selous Scouts had died in action in Mbare. Mbare had not been the scene of
any military action during the just-ended war. The incident occurred, in any
case, at a time when all Rhodesian troops, as well as both Zanla and Zipra
guerillas were confined to their barracks or to the assembly camps,
respectively, in terms of the ceasefire agreement then in force.
Had the
explosives destroyed St Michael's Church, as intended, with
Piringondo and
Moyo making good their escape, Mugabe would never have been
able to convince
anyone, least of all the local and international press that
Zanla had not
been responsible for the attack on the church. The story would
have hit the
headlines in Harare, London, Washington and elsewhere.
A similar masterpiece
was hatched in the Midlands capital of Gweru, where a
fake issue of Moto
newspaper hit the streets. The allegations published in
the fake issue in
question against the Zanu-PF leader, Mugabe, were so
scandalously defamatory
of him that I dare not repeat them in the columns of
a respected business
and family weekly.
Under cover of darkness on that ill-fated night, two
agents approached the
premises of Mambo Press, the publishers of the
newspaper. They carried heavy
explosives in their car. The plot was to
destroy the press that had printed
the newspaper that had made mincemeat of
the Zanu-PF leader. No sane person
would have failed to jump to the
conclusion that the enraged Zanu-PF leader
had commissioned the
attack.
As fate would have it, just before the agents reached their target
their
payload detonated prematurely. Both men died in the explosion. To the
mortal
embarrassment of both the government and the security forces, one of
the
deceased turned out to be a full-bloodied Selous Scout of Caucasian
origin.
Had this particular mission succeeded, it most probably would have
signalled
the end of Mugabe's political career and Zanu-PF might have lost
the 1980
elections to either Dr Joshua Nkomo's PF-Zapu or Bishop Abel
Muzorewa's
United African National Council (UANC).
Zanu-PF's alleged
campaign of violence, as orchestrated by the Selous Scouts
in 1980, was not
entirely without its moments of hilarity.
A bomb was planted outside the
Roman Catholic Cathedral along Fourth Street
in Salisbury, as the capital
city was then called. The device failed to
explode and was defused.
Scattered at the scene were several posters which
bore the hastily scrawled
legend: "Pamberi neMugabe", meaning "Hail Mugabe".
For some inexplicable
reason, white Zimbabweans learning to speak the
indigenous Shona language
have a problem distinguishing between the prefix
"ne-", which means "with an
object" and the prefix "na-", meaning "with a
person".
Even Joseph
Chinotimba, with his severe handicap in terms of literary
skills, would
never write such a grammatical aberration as "Pamberi
neMugabe." But for
this tiny error in the execution of the plot Mugabe would
never have been
able to explain his way out of an attack mounted on a church
by assailants
who extolled his virtues in written posters deposited at the
scene of the
crime.
In any case, by that time the majority of the Zimbabwean electorate,
eager
to go to the polls for the first time in a free and fair atmosphere,
had
become politically circumspect. They had learnt never to jump to
conclusions
in trying to establish the identity of perpetrators of acts of
political
violence. When the elections were held they voted overwhelmingly
for
Zanu-PF, despite the massive propaganda mounted against the party in the
Rhodesian media.
One cannot help but wonder whether the successors to the
Selous Scouts in
the current Zimbabwean security establishment did not
inherit some of these
stratagems that can befuddle gullible politicians and
members of the public,
who have a tendency to jump to conclusions at the
slightest excuse.
Saying of the Week
"It is a tragedy that this
Mabvuku attack has enabled Zanu PF to point
fingers at the MDC." - Trudy
Stevenson (New Zimbabwe.com, Monday July 17,
2006)
(gnyarota@yahoo.com)
FinGaz
Bornwell
Chakaodza
NATIONAL AGENDA
ONE lesson I have learned over the years but
reinforced during my recent
sojourn in Banjul, The Gambia, is that the world
does not owe anyone a
living.
The world may and does help but in the
final analysis it is the people of a
given country who have to help
themselves. So it is with our crisis here in
Zimbabwe. None but ourselves
can solve our own problems. It is just that
simple!
The pressing need for
Zimbabweans to get their own house in order and not to
rely solely on
outside forces was driven home to me and my colleague and
brother, Nyasha
Nyakunu at the just-ended African Union (AU) Summit in
Banjul, The
Gambia.
Two events in relation to the Zimbabwean tragedy stood out like sore
thumbs:
President Robert Mugabe's meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan and
the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR)
damning report
on Operation Murambatsvina and other human rights violations
in this
country.
Both events showed the extent to which continental and
international
organisations such as the African Union and the United Nations
are unable to
make decisions or take risks, their desire to keep everything
as it is and
the refusal to confront reality. The tendency towards avoiding
the truth
until the eleventh hour when there is bloodshed and the resulting
crisis
management appears to be the hallmark of these organisations.
Take
the meeting between President Mugabe and Secretary General Annan for
example. It was more of a chit-chat than a formal and serious meeting. It
took place in an open area where all and sundry were criss-crossing. Given
the acuteness of our crisis one would have thought that a room conducive to
serious discussions would have been found for the two leaders. But alas
No!
The informal meeting lasted for no more than 40 minutes. President Mugabe
did most of the talking while the UN Secretary General was nodding his head
all the time. The atmosphere was undoubtedly very friendly. Nyasha and I
wondered what Annan was nodding to. Whether he was nodding approvingly or
politely-African style, we could not figure it out. But President Mugabe
seemed to be in charge of the show all the way.
In attendance on
President Mugabe's side were of course his errand boys:
Foreign Affairs
Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, Justice Minister Patrick
Chinamasa, Central
Intelligence Organisation director General Happyton
Bonyongwe, among one or
two others. On the secretary general's side were UN
Under Secretary General,
Ibrahim Gambari and one other official. None of the
officials spoke at this
meeting, which bore all the hallmarks of being a
hurried and off-chance
meeting.
The outcome of the meeting is now common knowledge. The outgoing UN
boss is
no longer coming to Zimbabwe and former Tanzanian president Benjamin
Mkapa
is now the mediator between President Mugabe and Britain, as if the
Zimbabwean crisis is a bilateral dispute between the two countries when in
fact it is nothing of the sort. In closing the chapter that never was, Annan
said at his press conference:
"There is room for only one mediator in
this matter and I will give time and
space for President Mkapa to do his
job".
What a far cry from the excitement and hype that was created by the
media
here in Zimbabwe and elsewhere before the Banjul Summit. Annan was
seen as
the last hope to resolving the Zimbabwean crisis and now Mkapa is
being
touted as a saviour of sorts in some circles. Such naivety on the part
of
supposedly normal human beings boggles the mind. The lessons of failure
of
Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo are completely lost in the
misplaced eagerness of Zimbabweans to clutch at any straw that is thrown
their way. May God convert us from such foolishness!
Have we been so
mercilessly beaten by ZANU PF that we can no longer separate
hype and
falsehoods from substance and reality? Has the situation become so
hopeless
that we can no longer separate the chaff from the wheat? If that is
the case
I suggest that we fall back on our African culture, which has
served us so
well in the distant past.
When a member of the Shona and Ndebele people
encounters a situation where
there appears to be no hope, he invokes the
spirit of his ancestors for
their wisdom and strength to come to his aid. It
could be we have long
resisted asking for our ancestors' guidance preferring
national prayers
fearing that an appeal to the long departed might be taken
for weakness and
backwardness. Perhaps we should come to understand this is
not necessarily
so.
The media is also to blame big time in our
misplaced
optimism in the ability of international mediators to fix our
problems. In
times of crisis like this we find ourselves in right now, there
is always a
strong appetite for news, any new. Journalists, who by nature of
their work
are at the forefront of the intelligentsia, who have clarity and
super
literacy at their fingertips, must be careful always. When the media
become
focused on a story like the Annan/ Mugabe story, we sometimes find
ourselves
driving it, not just reporting it. We must be very careful and we
must get
better at what we do. Essentially, we are dealing with African
dictators who
are doing nothing but diverting the public's attention from
real solutions.
The media therefore must be on its guard - always.
As
media practitioners, we must always progress with the growing conviction
that the pen and the camera are indeed mightier than the sword. We must not
therefore dissipate our energies on the wrong things like the Mkapa
initiative as if it is going to provide the long awaited panacea to all our
ills. As a journalist of long standing myself, I just happen to know that
journalists say things they know are not true in the hope that if they keep
on saying it long enough, they will eventually become true! In many
instances, it is not always the case.
As pointed out earlier on, the
Banjul Summit was also notable for the
holding back by the AU executive
council of foreign ministers of the African
commission of Human and Peoples
Rights report on the human rights situation
in Zimbabwe. For the umpteenth
time, the damning report was never passed on
to the Heads of State and
Government from the tables of the foreign
ministers. I doubt myself if the
report will ever be tabled again at any
future AU summit - signalling once
again the failure of African leaders to
rein in colleagues who violate human
rights in there own countries.
Patrick Chinamasa gave a spirited defence of
the indefensible in the
executive council of foreign ministers citing the
usual mantras of legal
technicalities and requesting more time to comment
despite the fact that the
same report was tabled at the previous summit in
Khartoum, Sudan. In this he
was supported by other authoritarian and
totalitarian regimes notably
Swaziland. Chinamasa and other African
ministers went to the extent of
saying that the report was a product not of
the African commission on Human
and People's Rights but of Amnesty
International.
Identical sentences, phrases and words found in the Amnesty
International
reports were given as examples. Poor chairperson of the ACHPR,
she proved no
match for these African dictators- reflecting the need to
strengthen this
commission in every way possible. At least she could have
emphasised the
global human rights standards by which all governments the
world over have
signed on and sworn to abide by.
Be that as it may, it
was clear from the conversations that Nyasha Nyakunu
and I held with some of
the African officials and their reading of our
materials we had distributed
to the Summit that, in the heart of their
hearts, they were unhappy with the
fact that Zimbabwe had once again escaped
the censure by the
commission.
Perhaps this has to do with the fact that a number of African
leaders have
something in common with our own dear leader here - hence
walking hand in
hand and turning a blind eye to human rights
violations.
President Yahya Jammeh, the host of the Summit is no exception.
The Gambia
is one of the six countries on the African continent including
Zimbabwe,
Swaziland, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Tunisia which constitute the
hotspots of
extreme violations of human rights and press Freedom. This was
amply
demonstrated by the Gambian authorities when they banned a forum on
Freedom
of Expression in Africa, which was supposed to take place in Banjul
prior to
the summit and to which Nyasha Nyakunu and myself were invited. It
is indeed
a very sad reflection of a mindset or a culture on our continent
which says
bugger- all misgovernance or violations of human rights in some
African
countries, I will stand by my brother president right or
wrong!
By way of conclusion, I would like to re-emphasise the folly of pining
all
our hopes on external mediators such as Benjamin Mkapa. The real problem
is
not between Zimbabwe and Britain but between President Mugabe and the
people
of Zimbabwe. This is the brutal truth and the bottom line.
Outside
forces can help but in the end it is dialogue among all political
parties in
Zimbabwe, political will and commitment on the part of the ruling
Zanu PF
Party, and in the absence of all these things People Power (call it
whatever
you will), that will eventually make a difference to the lives of
all
Zimbabweans. It is my hope and prayer therefore that the people of this
country have enough sense to know that in their hands lie the answers to
this nation's crisis.
E-mail: borncha@mweb.co.zw
FinGaz
Tawanda
Karombo
BINDURA Nickel Corporation (BNC) says it has struck a deal with
an unnamed
investor to undertake the US$100 million Hunters Road project.
BNC plans to
construct a new open cast mine in the Midlands, where some 30
million tonnes
of nickel deposits have been discovered.
BNC
spokesperson James July confirmed the deal, but said the identity of the
new
partner would remain confidential as both parties were still tying up
contractual and other agreements.
July said US$100 million would be
required to kick-start the project. Nickel
deposits in the Midlands, seen as
being of superior grade, will provide
additional feedstock to BNC's
refinery.
Besides the Hunters Road project, BNC has other capital projects
planned,
including an oxygen injection project and a shaft re-deepening at
both
Trojan and Shangani mines.
BNC recently played a central role in a
US$50 million fuel deal signed
between the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)
and French bank BNP Paribas,
where BNC's future output will be used to
secure the facility.
At that signing, BNC managing director Fred Moyo said he
hoped his company's
involvement would see BNP supporting some of its future
expansion plans.
Financial Gazette
(Harare)
OPINION
July 20, 2006
Posted to the web July 20,
2006
Allen Choruma
Harare
WE have all the seen the headlines in
the various national print media:
"Minister named in scandal, Ministers
accused of looting farm equipment,
Tender procedures flouted, Board
chairperson accused of bribery, Director
commandeers company vehicle, CEO
arrested on fraud", and so on. Some people
are probably thankful that they
have escaped the net and were not the
subject of a newspaper
story.
The level of greed and self aggrandizement in Zimbabwe has reached
alarming
levels to an extent that President Robert Mugabe has openly
castigated some
senior party and government officials who were abusing their
authority to
amass property and wealth and stressed that such leaders should
be weeded
out of public office.
The President has said "NO" to
corruption, abuse of power, self
aggrandizement and other forms of unethical
practices. "Tagarwa neiko?",
(what has gotten into us) His Excellency
publicly lamented recently in his
mother tongue.
Corruption has not
only reared its ugly head in the public sector, it has
also spread its
tentacles to the private sector.
Corruption is rolling down the hill like
a mud slide. Be warned.
Tone at the top
In this article I am going
to stray a little bit from my usual approach to
the subject of corporate
governance.
I strongly believe that we cannot look at corporate
governance in isolation
from national governance. National governance sets
the tone, the so called
"Tone from the top". Tone at the top means continued
and repeated emphasis,
followed by commensurate behavior by government
ministers and other top
officials, on the importance of good governance to
both our public and
private sectors.
Tone at the top means government
ministers and top officials should lead by
example, by adherence to good
ethical standards.
Tone at the top has an overwhelming influence on
corporate governance.
Good corporate governance can only thrive in an
environment where both the
public and private sectors follow and foster a
culture of responsible
ethical behaviour.
There is a relationship
between national and corporate governance. The
latter heavily depends on the
former. The sustainability of our economy and
the success of our corporate
entities (which create wealth and employment)
depends on this
relationship.
Government Ministers
As the President highlighted
last week, government ministers and other
public office bearers should lead
by example.
They should set the tone for good governance by upholding
high ethical
standards themselves.
Government ministers are
responsible for formulation and implementation of
national, social,
political and macroeconomic policies. Government ministers
also have
statutory oversight functions over strategic state enterprises and
other
public institutions.
As such, ministers have an onerous responsibility to
be the torch bearers of
good governance.
When some of these people
who are supposed to be national leaders and
harbingers of good governance
are repeatedly found on the wrong side of the
law, it sends negative
messages to the entire economy.
Company directors
Recent corporate
failures and scandals in Zimbabwe have shown that
corruption is a big issue
in our economy.
Some company directors, CEOs and senior executives,
driven by greed and self
aggrandizement, have extended their hands into the
investors' funds.
Investors entrust their assets to company management
and expect company
directors to oversee management so that their investments
can be protected.
Instead some of these people entrusted by investors
have turned into thieves
and have looted shareholder investments.
In
addition some company directors and executives have garnered substantial
compensation packages for themselves even as their companies face
collapse.
These corporate scandals have caused a lot of public anger at
the failure of
our governance systems to protect investor
interests.
The result has been the breakdown of public trust, a decline
of confidence
in the integrity of our financial and capital markets and
overall loss of
confidence in the manner in which our corporations are
governed.
Furthermore some professional advisors to companies such as
lawyers,
auditors and consultants in various fields have also compromised
good
corporate governance by failing to provide balanced and independent
advice
and professional judgement to protect their business
interests.
Tough measures
This is the time to take tough measures
to promote good governance in both
public and private sectors.
We can
talk and preach about good governance at conferences but if we do not
address and weed out corruption, our efforts will be
futile.
Corruption will derail our efforts to promote good
governance.
People have called for enactment of tough legislation to deal
with
corruption.
However it has often been said that no nation can
legislate against
corruption. Tough legislation may be put in place but it
may not stop graft.
Legislation does not fully address issues of
corporation. My personal view
is that we need to pursue a number of
initiatives simultaneously. Tough
laws, on their own, will not usher good
governance.
Ethics
Ethics is a central nervous system for good
governance. Leaders in all
sectors of our economy should take business
ethics seriously. They need to
preach and lead by example. Leaders should
take personal responsibility for
their own actions. According to Professor
Paul Sulcas, in his article on
Corporate Crime published in the South
African BoardRoom magazine 4/2005,
every organization should be guided by
good business ethics as charecterised
by the following attributes:
Discipline, Transparency, Independence,
Accountability, Responsibility,
Fairness, and Respect.
These attributes are cornerstones of good business
ethics and should be
embedded in the day-to-day operations of all
organizations. This will go a
long way in preventing future major financial
debacles, concluded professor
Sulcas in his article.
Other
Countries
We have a lot to learn from our friends south of the Limpopo.
South Africa
has responded to corporate scandals and failures by coming up
with the King
1 and 2 Reports on Corporate Governance.
Although the
King Report is not a piece of legislation, it has been adopted
into the
rules of the JSE, as has happened in the UK. The current review of
the
Companies Act in SA is expected to adopt some of the recommendations of
the
King Report into law in an effort to strengthen good governance.
Our
neighbors have also gone further by coming up with Governance Guidelines
for
state enterprises, i.e. Protocol on Corporate Governance in the Public
Sector. A Business Ethics Institute was also set up in SA to further bolster
initiatives for good governance.
We in Zimbabwe should not just talk
of corruption and end there. Rhetoric
will not address the threats to good
governance.
We need a balanced approach that involves the following:
legislation and
regulation, active government participation (right tone at
the top),
promotion of self regulation governance mechanisms such as
corporate
governance codes, massive campaigns on ethics, strengthen
governance through
activities of bodies such as ZSE, IODZ, promote
shareholder activism and
other initiatives.
On another front we need
to strengthen law enforcement and the judiciary
system to ensure compliance
with our laws and regulations. If we don't do
this, good corporate
governance may remain an illusion in Zimbabwe.
Financial Gazette
(Harare)
COLUMN
July 20, 2006
Posted to the web July 20,
2006
Harare
I SUSPECT this is the first time I have penned such a
sub-title in the past
half year. The reason being that the stock market had
fallen out of favour
vis-à-vis the money market. Again we are finding the
RBZ at a crossroads,
regarding the national debt.
Whether to keep
churning out lucrative, albeit unaffordable, paper to the
market or allow
the governor's nemesis, the stock market (apparently he
thinks the stock
market should not react to any piece of rational news) to
hit the roof in
light of low interest rates.
Fighting with nature and reason has never
helped many people in life; most
notably the church of old during the times
of Copernicus and Galileo.
In spite of being chastised by the church
which refuted their conviction
that the earth was round, today's church,
realizing the weaker reasoning of
their predecessor happily embraces their
findings as fact.
The governor's futile fixation with a burgeoning stock
market can only yield
high blood pressure on his part and here is
why.
When the central bank brought in the high yielding paper on the
market,
players like FBC Holdings took varying positions on the money
market.
Whether or not the positions were a result of a leak from RBZ is
better left
out of this argument.
All we know is that a few banks
yielded a lot of money in the process as
some had placed significant
portions of their capital into the paper.
What then happened is that a
few players like the one aforementioned, made
obscene and unsustainable
amounts of interim profits.
Now that the central bank is wary of its own
medicine investor money,
financed by the high yielding paper, is now finding
its way into the same
counters that have benefited from the high yielding
paper in order to double
their profits.
What has now happened is that
out of nothing industrious, money has been
created for the benefit of
punters and central bank insiders.
In short one can double their money
(already doubled courtesy of the central
bank) by betting on a company that
has doubled its money courtesy of the
central bank.
Now any sane
person with minimal economic literacy will tell you the scales
that hitherto
cover their eyes have been lifted.
Actually, they would infer, the
central bank has been a big player not only
in printing money, but also in
multiplying it without any production backing
it.
The conclusion, of
course, is that had the central bank left the market to
play on its own the
stock market would not have gone to where it is now.
Because they
intervened, the stock has backfired by getting excited.
Wither now the
incongruent talk of inflation being the number one enemy?
Dog
Cash
After the central bank resoundingly rejected both six-month and 1
year paper
bids, one is left wondering what to do with their
cash.
Maybe the only thing is to buy a bit of tangibles which, I must
hasten to
add; will cause one more headaches by way of looking for extra
cash to
maintain them.
Think of buying a car as an inflation shield.
If one can afford one in this
day chances are that they probably have
another already.
That means either more fuel to please that extra family
member or more money
to hire some retrenched guy next door to protect it
from man-vultures.
Now with a routine service for a so-so car licking at
least $50 million off
your wallet, one starts thinking of the benefits of
securing value in
assets.
Or maybe there is forex.
But then
there is the risk of theft.
Tsvangirai must get to the bottom of
this
EDITOR - The violence perpetrated on Trudy Stevenson by
supporters of the
Tsvaingirai faction of the MDC should be condemmed as a
cowardly act of
prehistoric barbarism that should never be allowed to happen
again given the
democratic principles upon which Zimbabwe's opposition
parties claim to be
founded.
It is not enough for Morgan Tsvangirai
to condemn the perpetrators, but he
should call for them to be brought to
book and to be punished in the
severest possible way by the courts of law.
Tsvangirai's party should, if
they are not accomplices to this act, publicly
distance themselves from such
uncouth activities and roundly condemn those
that still seek to use force
upon others to think and act in predetermined
ways.
If Tsvangirai's party is involved in this as widely believed, then he
should
expect some people to withdraw their allegiance to a party that
preaches
democracy but practices anarchy and blood-letting. Some of us are
extremely
disturbed by this and the hope we had of the MDC turning things
around for
Zimbabwe wane on account of such events.
We want to hear a
stronger condemnation of this dastardly act and hope that
the message will
be repeated at every possible opportunity in the foreseable
future.
If
the opposition find themselves doing the same things they seek to
overturn,
where then is the logic and basis for change? Chinja Tsvangirai,
Chinja
maitiro.
F Maringire
United Kingdom
--------
Why blame ZANU
PF this time?
EDITOR - Your article in last week's issue of the
Fingaz about American
comments on the attack on Trudy Stevenson refers. What
truth does America
want as regards to what happened to Trudy. She personally
said ZANU PF had
never hurt her nor attacked her since her entry into
politics.
Why does America want to blame ZANU PF for the MDC's internal
problems?
While America may have issues against Zimbabwe, I have no problem
with that
but to try and blame everything on ZANU PF worries me a lot. Trudy
was
attacked by her own colleagues and she says so.
Isn't it correct to
say that when ZANU PF defends itself and blames
everthing on the so-called
Zimbabwe Democracy Bill (whatever it is called,
because I have never given
myself time to bother about this racist piece of
legislation) Zimbabweans
should also listen.
This draws me to a case of kidnapping that happened in
occupied Iraq a
couple of months ago. When Jill Caroll, a journalist, was
released by her
captors, she personally made a statement to the Bush
administration to pull
out of Iraq. You know what the Americans did? They
said she made the
statement under duress. Even after her release she has
never retracted her
statement.
Americans believe in freedom of expression
but when that expression does not
suit their whims they cry freedom from a
different angle. Be careful of
these Americans. My comments are as I see the
world. America is not the
Messiah.
Walter
Manamike
Harare
----------
Zimbabwe is the boss
EDITOR -The
future of Zimbabwe is in the hands of the people, not the
government. This
government has failed and will continue to fail because it
is the same
brains at work now as 25 years ago. They are now mentally
exhausted and
incapacitated.
ZANU PF may have the majority in Parliament to make the
irrational
constitutional changes they desire. But the people of Zimbabwe
hold the
majority when it comes to determining how their country is to be
run,
whether it be through elections or just standing up for their right to
live.
Even though this government feels that it was legitimately elected to
represent the common man, it has failed to carry out this mandate (a command
from the people of Zimbabwe). With this in mind the people of Zimbabwe carry
the power to pass a vote of no confidence.
After this government was
employed by the people it recruited the CIO,
police and army to exercise
force and instill fear in its bosses. Weird.
Zimbabweans must stand up and
fire these incompetent individuals. Do this
for your children and your
children's children. They need to taste what
absolute freedom to live is.
The face of Africa will only change when those
who love it take
responsibility for it. The people who were previously given
this task have
shown where their hearts are: To bring Africa to it knees.
Jason Rily
Olson
Harare
----------
Some causes are worth dying
for
EDITOR - I would like to know whether Financial Gazette
journalists are
still reporting from Zimbabwe or if they are now based in
South Africa. I
have been in America for five years and I rely on your paper
for information
on what's going on in Zimbabwe. But I'm now beginning to
wonder if you guys
are in Zimbabwe and how it is possible for a Zimbabwean
paper which sounds
very independent like you to operate in Zim.
I was
reading your article "No politician worth killing, dying for"
(No-Holds-Barred), and I think it was very insightful, but I was left
wondering: Are their causes worth dying for?
Let's suppose Morgan
Tsvangirai was a genuine leader in pursuit of freedom
(be it political,
economic, freedom of speech etc, is that not worth giving
one's life
for?
I am being a hypocrite because I am very far away but any chance you
could
explore that line of thought, which if you really think about it, is
what
maybe our problem. Zimbabweans (in the ZANU PF camp and now apparently
MDC)
are willing to torture and kill for the cause of corruption and
dictatorship. Shouldn't we be willing then to defend our right to live in
freedom even if it means giving it our all?
I believe there are "causes
worth dying for" but it's just a thought which
mainly stems from the fact
that I am disappointed with us Zimbabweans
because we seem to be willing to
tolerate abuse and we are not putting up a
fight for what is rightfully ours
-Freedom.
Tineyi
United States
----
No logic in having more
varsities
EDITOR - THE ZANU PF government in its perennial culture of
making disatrous
decisions seems to be pressing ahead with mistaken
intentions of
establishing more universities probably as many as there are
mosquitoes.
There are plans that each region will have a university.
Proposed
universities are Lupane, Tsholotsho, Matabeleland South, a
university in
Bulawayo, another in Marondera and in Chitungwiza.
My
opinion, which I know many educationists will agree with, is that this
development will only serve to destroy further the deteriorating education
standards. It is a total antithesis to meaningful educational and economic
development for a number of reasons.
It's a stubborn fact that
infrastructural developments and the staff
complement in current
universities is not the least impressive. We have the
case of the National
University of Science and Technology where buildings in
this supposedly
state-of-the-art university have remained uncompleted for
over a decade.
Plant and machinery are lying idle, accruing costs which the
taxpayer will
be expected to make good. The completion of these buildings,
namely the
library, residence halls and lecture rooms is in limbo.
The Midlands State
University is another case in point. To date not a single
building has been
built ever since its transformation from a teachers'
college into a
university. The same situation prevails at Bindura, Masvingo
and Chinhoyi
universities.
The Lupane University like the Matabeleland Zambezi Water
Project, will
remain a pipe dream only to be resurrected each time there is
another
crucial election.
Over the years we have witnessed a painful
deterioration in the education
system, which was once the envy of many
countries but is now the laughing
stock of the region. Crucial examinations
were localised without adequate
resources and preparation.
Corruption is
rife at ZIMSEC with officers doctoring results for their
girlfriends and
relatives. We need a clean-up of the system before
commitment is put on
projects the government cannot handle.
The introduction of more universities
will be a death knell for the
education system. Close monitoring of
standards and quality of education in
individual universities will be
difficult. Zimbabwe and its people deserve
better.
Asher
Tarivona-Mutsengi
University of Texas, USA