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By TERRY LEONARD,
Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 58 minutes ago
JOHANNESBURG, South
Africa - Times are hard and getting harder in Zimbabwe,
where people too
proud to cry about hunger, joblessness and misrule could
soon find it too
dangerous to joke about them.
Parliament plans to debate proposals next
month to empower the secret police
to eavesdrop on mail, e-mail and phones
without any court approval.
The government denies any sinister intent, saying
it is putting its
anti-terrorism legislation in line with international
practice. But Zimbabwe
is not on the front lines of the war on terror, and
government agents could
use the proposed powers to monitor the
communications of the political
opposition, journalists and human rights
activists who are critical of
President Robert Mugabe.
Secret police
and intelligence agents could violate attorney-client
privilege, track
financial transactions and negotiations, and eavesdrop on
anyone's private
life. Anytime a Zimbabwean visits a Web site, makes a deal
or tells a joke,
Big Brother could be listening or watching.
Internet and cell phone
service providers would, at their own expense, have
to provide the
government with equipment to sort and intercept
communications.
The
aim "is to monitor and block communications for political reasons and to
use
information they get to persecute opponents," said Lovemore Madhuku,
chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly, a group critical of
repressive laws and actions of Mugabe's government.
Telephoned from
neighboring South Africa, he said: "It is part and parcel of
the process of
controlling dissent and stifling democratic debate."
South Africa has
quietly adopted a similar law, with the important
difference that a court
must approve any interception. In Zimbabwe, that
authority would rest solely
with Mugabe's minister of transport and
communications.
A package of
other security and media laws has done away with freedom of
press and
speech. People cannot protest against the government or hold
political
gatherings without prior police approval. Clergymen have been
arrested for
holding unauthorized prayer vigils.
To a government which has arrested
people for insulting the president,
joking about him is no laughing matter.
It's a felony. It is also illegal to
say or write something that can
"falsely" bring the government into
disrepute.
"Jokes about Mugabe
are a crime," Jim Holland, the chief executive of Mango,
a Zimbabwean
Internet service provider, said in a telephone interview. "But
people send
these jokes all the time on cell phones or e-mails."
In one of them, a
policeman asks a motorist for a donation toward the ransom
demanded by
terrorists who have abducted Mugabe and threatened to douse him
with
gasoline and set him alight. The motorists asks what other people are
giving
and is told, two or three gallons.
In another, a man tired of waiting in
line at a closed gasoline station
announces he's off to State House to shoot
the president. He returns a short
time later complaining that the line there
was even longer.
Holland believes the proposed law will have a chilling
effect on such humor
but that the real dangers lie in the government's
ability to target
legitimate opponents and monitor sensitive business and
financial
communications.
"It is troubling in a country like this
with its record on corruption that
the government could monitor financial
transactions or even internal
communications ahead of a company making a
tender offer," Holland said.
He said in early discussions of the bill a
man who would be involved in any
government monitoring effort told a
gathering there was no cause for concern
because the proposed law was only a
threat "to criminals and human rights
activists."
There is a chance
that opponents will manage to block the bill, arguing that
it is unworkable
and could further undermine the faltering economy. The
opponents also draw
some hope from the fact that Mugabe is not personally
pushing the bill. But
all agree the chance is slim.
That leaves the courts, but lawyers here
note the government has packed them
with friendly judges, and simply ignored
rulings it dislikes.
IOL
July 23 2006 at
12:44PM
By Peta Thornycroft
Super rich Zimbabwe
businessman John Bredenkamp was arrested on his
estate near Harare before
dawn on Friday and is due to appear in court on
Monday
Bredenkamp, 65, returned to Zimbabwe from Britain last week after
being
advised in early June that the police wanted him for questioning.
He went to London six weeks ago, on what his business associates say
was a
planned trip, which included his annual date watching the lawn tennis
championships at Wimbledon.
Several Zimbabwe newspapers
reported at the time he left, that he had
fled Zimbabwe to escape arrest in
connection with allegations of foreign
currency deals and dual citizenship.
The state controlled press said
Bredenkamp, a Zimbabwean, had another
passport, which is illegal.
After his arrest at
Thetford, the glorious home he bought and
developed into one of Africa's
finest estates in the Mazowe Valley 25 km
west of Harare, he was taken to
the fraud squad at the Harare Central Police
Station.
From
there he has been transferred to a suburban police station and
is, like
other awaiting trial prisoners, receiving food and visitors.
Sources close to his family say the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is
particularly
interested in his case. Bredenkamp made his fortune out of
tobacco when he
was living in Europe.
Bredenkamp has regularly been accused of
having close relationships
with various Zanu PF cabinet ministers, in
particular with rural housing
minister Emmerson Mnangagwa. They fell out two
years ago and have had no
contact since then.
Bredenkamp is due
to stage a spectacular wedding reception for his
eldest daughter at his
estate in October, and many top foreign business
associates have been
invited.
This article was originally published on page 2 of
Sunday Argus on
July 23, 2006
Zim Online
Mon 24
July 2006
MASVINGO - At least 650 000 people in Zimbabwe's southern
Masvingo
province will require food aid this year following poor harvests
last
farming season, according to a senior government official.
Masvingo provincial administrator, Felix Chikovo at the weekend told
ZimOnline that most areas in the province were in dire need of food
assistance with only a few districts in the drought-prone province having
harvested enough food.
"Some parts of the province did not have
a good harvest and as a
result, they will need food aid this year. We will
move food from areas
which had a bumper harvest to areas that have a serious
food deficit.
"Preliminary investigations have reveled that about
650 000 people in
Masvingo province alone will need food aid," said
Chikovo.
Chikovo said the worst affected areas included Chiredzi,
Mwenezi and
some parts of Chivi district where some families did not harvest
enough
food.
A villager in Chiredzi district,
Steven Mado, told ZimOnline that the
food situation was critical for most
families in the area.
"By the end of next month we will have
exhausted everything that we
harvested last March. We are appealing to the
government to consider giving
us food aid this year.
"We had
tried our level best to grow enough food but shortage of
fertilizers and
agricultural inputs such as seeds affected our production,"
said
Mado.
Zimbabwe has battled perennial food shortages since President
Robert
Mugabe began seizing productive farms from whites for redistribution
to
landless blacks in a campaign he said was necessary to correct historical
imbalances in land ownership.
But Mugabe failed to support
black villagers resettled on former white
land with inputs and skills
training to maintain production, a situation
that saw food output tumbling
by about 60 percent to leave once food self
sufficient Zimbabwe dependent on
food handouts from international aid
agencies.
A report
released two weeks ago by the Consortium for Southern Africa
Food Security
Emergency, which brings together non-governmental
organisations involved in
relief work, said most families in Zimbabwe's
rural areas would again
require food assistance this year because few
harvested enough.
Mugabe however denies his controversial land reforms are to blame for
causing food shortages and instead blames erratic rains and an economic
crisis that he says is a result of Western sabotage and which has caused
shortages of farming inputs. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 24
July 2006
HARARE - His hands are bruised. The deep cuts on his
darkened face are
only beginning to heal and so are the soles of his feet
that were so swollen
he could not wear shoes.
From observing
the injuries you could only conclude one thing, that
whoever did this to him
must have wanted not just to punish and maim but to
leave a lasting
impression on his victim.
Meet Thabani Mlambo, a youth official of
Zimbabwe's main opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, who
was two weeks ago brutally
tortured by members of the army at a military
garrison along the highway
from Harare to the capital's dormitory town of
Chitungwiza.
"They did a thorough job on me," Mlambo says, somehow
sounding as if
he feels compelled to explain the many scars and injuries all
over his body.
"They beat me up in the groin and dipped my head in
cold water while
holding me by the feet and they said for my own good, I
should never tell
this to anyone," Mlambo said.
A slight quiver
in his voice and the tears forming in his eyes, clear
signals that his
experience at the garrison is perhaps a chapter he would
rather not be
reminded of.
But the assault and torture at Manyame military
barracks that fateful
Sunday two weeks ago was not Mlambo's first encounter
with state security
forces.
Earlier this year in April, Mlambo
was picked up from his home in
Chitungwiza's low-income suburb of Zengeza
by members of President Robert
Mugabe's dreaded spy-Central Intelligence
Organisation (CIO).
He was whisked away in blindfolds to the CIO's
offices at Makoni
shopping centre where he remained for the next three days
being beaten and
tortured for working for the opposition.
"I
was terribly beaten up and they only let me go on the third day and
only
after my family and senior MDC officials laid a siege on the CIO
offices
demanding to know where they had taken me," he says.
The grotesque
dark and purple markings in Mlambo's groin and the black
imprints of whips
on his back are testimony of that beating three months
ago.
Mlambo's latest ordeal with state security forces began on a bright
Sunday
morning two weeks ago as he waited by the roadside for a vehicle to
pick him
up for a party meeting in Chitungwiza.
A pick-truck pulled-up close
to where he stood and as the three men in
the truck made to alight from the
vehicle they greeted him.
Thinking they were acquaintances, Mlambo
returned the greeting but
before he knew it, he was bundled into the truck
and driven away to Manyame
barracks.
He narrates what followed:
"First they asked me to tell them which
army officers were conniving with
MDC leaders and how far we have gone in
our preparations for mass
demonstrations to oust the government.
"When I refused to answer
their questions, they started beating me up,
they beat me in the groin on my
feet soles then they held me up by the feet
while dipping my head in ice
cold water. This continued for about eight
hours when they decided to let me
go but told me I was never to report the
matter to the police although I
could seek medical attention."
But Mlambo is not alone.
Thousands of MDC supporters and officials have been beaten up and
tortured
by soldiers, police and CIO agents as punishment for backing the
opposition
party.
Many suffer silently, afraid of reporting or even telling
their
experiences to friends for fear of victimisation by state
agents.
A recent joint report by two non-governmental organisations
working
with victims of abuse and torture, Amani Trust and Action-Aid makes
startling revelations.
It concluded that one in 10 Zimbabweans
needs psychological help while
another one in 10 people over the age of 30
in the southern Matabeleland
provinces is a survivor of
torture.
Rape, electrocution, severe beatings on the body and the
soles of the
feet, forced nakedness, witnessing the torture of family
members and friends
are all part of a long list of horrifying actions
allegedly committed by
government security forces.
The
government denies that its security forces target its political
opponents
for abuse and torture.
But a study by the Zimbabwe Human Rights
Forum (ZHRF), whose results
were released last month, all but confirms the
use of torture by state
agents.
The study by the ZHRF, which is
a grouping of more than 17 human
rights and pro-democracy NGOs, showed that
out of the torture cases brought
before the courts against state security
agents, the victims have won in 90
percent of the cases.
Human
rights groups however note that almost in all the cases, none of
the state
agents accused of torturing opposition supporters have ever been
brought to
book.
"Eventually, one realises it's futile even to go to the
courts because
nothing happens to the perpetrators," says MDC legislator Job
Sikhala, who
himself was once severely tortured by the CIO.
"My
case died a natural death. What is clear is that there is no hope
for
torture victims in this country," Sikhala says.
Innocent Gonese,
the MDC's secretary for justice, said the party's
welfare department had a
long list of torture victims looking for medical
and legal
help.
He said: "We cannot cope. We are not sure whether we will
manage to
help them because it appears nothing happens in the end. We only
hope the
cases are important in a post-Mugabe era."
Maybe in
that post-Mugabe era all who are committing torture against
defenceless
citizens will be forced to answer for their actions.
But until
then, hundreds of victims have little to expect from a
justice system that
has so woefully failed them. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon
24 July 2006
JOHANNESBURG -South Africa's Department of Home
Affairs says it is
battling to contain a tide of Zimbabwean immigrants
pouring across the
border fleeing their home country because of economic
turmoil.
Department officials told the local Press that they had
deported 51
000 illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe between January and June
this year but
more immigrants continued flooding through the porous border
between the
region's economic powerhouse and its troubled northern
neighbour.
The department which said it had taken a "financial
knock" from the
influx of immigrants said it was on average deporting 265
Zimbabweans every
day while the cost of detaining illegal immigrants had
shot up from 22 rands
per day five years ago to 75 rands today.
Pretoria spent a total of 218 million rands on immigration control
last year
- more than double the amount the department spent in 2004. Last
year 97 433
Zimbabweans were deported from South Africa while 72 112 were
removed from
the country in 2004.
Zimbabwe is grappling an acute economic crisis
that is characterised
by the world's highest inflation of 1 184.6 percent,
shortages of fuel,
electricity, essential medicines, hard cash and just
about every basic
survival commodity.
The main opposition
Movement for Democratic Change party and Western
governments blame the
crisis on repression and wrong policies by President
Robert Mugabe such as
his seizure of productive farms from whites for
redistribution to landless
blacks.
The farm seizures destabilised the mainstay agricultural
sector and
caused severe food shortages after the government failed to give
black
villagers resettled on former white farms skills training and inputs
support
to maintain production.
But Mugabe - who has ruled
Zimbabwe since the country's 1980
independence from Britain - denies
mismanaging the country and says its
problems are because of poor weather
that has caused droughts and economic
sabotage by Western governments
opposed to his seizure of white land. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 24 July
2006
HARARE - Zimbabwean bakers at the weekend hiked the price of
bread by
more than 50 percent in yet another sign of worsening economic
conditions
for the southern African country.
A loaf of bread
now costs Z$200 000 up from the $130 000 it used to
cost last
week.
Bakers say they had no choice but to increase the price of
bread after
millers hiked the price of flour from $3.5 million to $6 million
for a 50
kilogramme bag of the commodity.
Milling industry
sources told ZimOnline yesterday that the state-owned
Grain Marketing Board,
which is in charge of wheat allocations in Zimbabwe,
had also failed to
provide wheat to the millers forcing most millers to
import the commodity at
a higher cost.
The latest increase is likely to hit hard most
Zimbabweans who are
already battling under a severe six-year old economic
crisis most critics
blame on mismanagement by President Robert Mugabe's
government.
Wheat, like most other basic foodstuffs, is in short
supply in
Zimbabwe after Mugabe disrupted the mainstay agriculture sector
through his
controversial seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to
landless
blacks over the past six years.
But the newly
resettled black farmers have failed to maintain
production on the farms
after the government did not provide them with
skills training and inputs
support. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 24 July
2006
HARARE - The youth and women's wings of Zimbabwe's opposition
Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) party will tomorrow march to
Parliament to
present a petition to the government to resolve the country's
worsening
crisis.
President Robert Mugabe, blamed by the MDC
for ruining Zimbabwe's once
vibrant economy, opens the second session of
Zimbabwe's fifth Parliament
tomorrow.
Youth secretary general
of the Morgan Tsvangirai-led faction of the
divided MDC, Solomon Madzore,
told ZimOnline that the petition would be
handed to Justice Minister Patrick
Chinamasa.
The Tsvangirai camp of the MDC is the larger of the two
factions and
is widely regarded as the main challenger to Mugabe and his
ruling ZANU PF
party.
Madzore said: "On behalf of the
brutalised young people of Zimbabwe,
we hope to petition the government to
resolve this crisis as a matter of
urgency. The youths face peculiar
problems such as unemployment, high fees
at tertiary colleges and HIV/AIDS
but this government is taking a passive
approach in resolving the national
crisis."
Tsvangirai and his MDC party have threatened to call mass
protests
this winter to force Mugabe to accept sweeping political reforms
they say
are critical to end Zimbabwe's political and economic
crisis.
The opposition party wants Mugabe to give up power to a
transitional
government that would be tasked to write a new constitution
and organise
fresh elections under international supervision.
Mugabe who has in the past used the army and police to thwart
opposition
street protests has rejected the MDC's demands and has vowed to
ruthlessly
crush any attempts by the party to instigate a Ukraine-style
revolt by
Zimbabweans.
The police have also stepped up a crackdown on the MDC
banning several
public meetings or demonstrations by the party over fears
the party could
use these to spark mass protests against the
government.
Under the government's Public Order and Security Act,
Zimbabweans must
first seek clearance from the police before holding public
political
meetings or demonstrations.
It was not clear whether
the opposition women and youths had sought
police clearance for tomorrow's
march to Parliament, but the MDC has said
it will no longer seek permission
from the police to hold public activities,
accusing the law enforcement
agency of using the security law to ban the
opposition party from holing
meetings and demonstrations. - ZimOnline
IOL
July 23 2006 at
12:54PM
Harare - Zimbabwe's security forces are investigating a
German
foundation for allegedly financing meetings of a faction of the
opposition
Movement for Democratic Change, a newspaper reported on
Sunday.
"Security authorities are investigating a German
non-governmental
organisation (NGO), The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), for
allegedly paying
bills incurred by the anti-Senate MDC members," the
state-run Sunday Mail
said, referring to an opposition faction run by former
trade unionist Morgan
Tsvangirai.
Once seen as the strongest
challenge to President Robert Mugabe's
government, the MDC has been split
over a disagreement about whether to
participate in senate elections last
year, with one group under Tsvangirai
and another led by student leader
Arthur Mutambara.
The German foundation was alleged to
have given money to Tsvangirai's
group for meetings in April at a local
hotel and at a training centre in
Harare, controvening "sections of the
Political Parties Finance Act, which
forbids foreign funding of political
parties," the paper said.
Quoting unnamed security sources, the
Sunday Mail said investigators
would look into how on April 13, the FES paid
a local hotel Z$119-million
(about R8 272) after a suspected MDC
workshop.
Investigators will also look into the FES's payment of
100 million
Zimbabwe dollars to a local training bureau following another
meeting.
Nelson Chamisa, spokesperson for the MDC's Tsvangirai
faction, denied
receiving funding from the German foundation.
"We are not funded by FES at all," Chamisa said on Sunday.
"Our
funds come from old people, Zimbabwean workers, and besides we do
not hold
meetings or rallies at hotels... These are done at open grounds or
under the
trees."
Zimbabwe's parliament in 2004 passed the NGO Bill that
required
independent organisations to submit to government scrutiny and
banned
foreign funding for organisations involved in governance
programmes.
The law however was never signed by
Mugabe.
The government said the controversial bill was a response
to the
proliferation of NGOs it alleged were being used by foreign powers as
conduits for channelling funds to the MDC.
IOL
July 23 2006 at
12:21PM
South Africa is battling to contain a flood of Zimbabwean
immigrants
as more people flee across the border to escape economic hardship
in its
northern neighbour, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
South Africa deported more than 51 000 illegal Zimbabwean immigrants
between
January and June this year as "floods of people fled economic
collapse", the
Johannesburg-based Sunday Times said.
"The Department of Home
Affairs says it is now deporting 265
Zimbabweans a day. Last year, 97 433
Zimbabweans were deported compared with
72 112 in 2004," the paper
said.
Zimbabwe is in the grip of a seven-year recession which has
seen
inflation skyrocket to nearly 1 200 percent and the southern African
country's economy shrink by more than a third.
The
country is also grappling with severe fuel shortages and a foreign
currency
crunch.
South African officials told the Sunday Times that they
were battling
to cope with the stream of Zimbabweans crossing the Limpopo
River, the
border between the two countries.
"The Department of
Home Affairs has taken a financial knock from the
influx of illegal
immigrants," the paper said.
Pretoria spent a total of R218-million
on immigration control last
year - more than double the amount the
department spent in 2004.
"The costs of detaining illegal
immigrants have gone up from R22 per
day per detainee in 2001 to R75 a day
today," the paper said.
"On being deported, most of the deportees
quickly find their way back
into South Africa through makeshift entry points
along the
crocodile-infested Limpopo River," it added.
Zimbabwe's long-time leader President Robert Mugabe has in the past
blamed
Western sanctions targeting him and his inner circle as well as
drought
conditions for the current predicament, but critics largely point
the finger
at Harare's controversial land reform policies.
Around 4 000 white
commercial farmers have lost their land since
Mugabe launched his fast-track
land reform program in 2000 to redress the
imbalances in land ownership from
the colonial era.
Fewer than 600 farmers remain on their properties
in Zimbabwe, once
called the breadbasket of southern Africa.
Mail and Guardian
Tom
Eaton: VIVA GAZANIA!
21 July 2006
11:25
Act 1, Scene I. A desert place, courtesy of
Operation
Murambatsvina. Thunder and lightning. Enter three Zimbabwean
Witches ...
"When shall we three meet again, in thunder,
lightning, or in
rain?"
"How about after
Generations?"
"That will be ere the set of the sun.
Sevenish."
"Where the place?"
"Upon the
heath."
"Eish, Lulubelle, it's all heath since the bulldozers
left."
Scene II. High camp near Harare. Alarum within --
antacids are
called for. Enter Comrade Mugabe, with chihuahua Idi and
Professor Claude
Mararike in tow. But more of them in a moment
...
The 21st century will belong to Africa. This is because
China
will buy Africa the 21st century, in return for all its topsoil and
most of
its fertile women. The title deed, illuminated with bootlegged clip
art and
scratch-and-sniff Hello Kitty stickers, will prove it: Sold, by
China, 1 x
Century (21) to Africa. Congratulations on your engagement! PS:
please stop
phoning us. We gave you heap big wampum, now bugger off and
leave us alone
or we may be forced to stop being inscrutable. Modernisation
will be rapid
and dramatic, and by 2060 African scientists will have
pioneered a way to
grow trees in the perma-sludge, while African doctors
will be doing
ground-breaking work in the treatment of asbestos-perforated
lungs.
All of which will make for some frisky multicultural
high jinks
when modernity meets tradition.
The belief in
magic and witchcraft is a lovely thing. It
provides answers to profound
questions. It puts one in touch with the
broader rhythms of the planet. It
encourages wonder and exploration. It
offers solace.
But
then one enters kindergarten, and learns why it's not
helpful to lick
snails, and everything becomes a little austere. That's the
trouble with
developing critical facilities. It robs one of all the
pleasures of being a
halfwit.
Which is not to say that those who believe in the
powers of
witches, or of wicked frogs, or of demonic chameleons, or of youth
commissioners are halfwits. Indeed, many of them are successful people,
running large organisations, such as sausage factories and Home Affairs.
Some are even doctors: witness the scene in Khensani hospital some weeks ago
when a teenaged prisoner told nurses that he had a baby living inside him,
after which the baby spoke out of the boy's mouth and instructed them to
release its host, presumably for some sort of paternity
leave.
One can never be too careful when talking babies
inside teenage
boys' stomachs want to go on the lamb, and so the staff
ordered an X-ray. It
revealed nothing. Said provincial health spokesman
Phuti Seloba: "We later
discovered that this young man is just very
talented, and has the ability to
make anyone believe that he has a child
inside him." The duplicitous fiend!
To prey on the good faith of medical
professionals like that!
Of course, one has to wonder just
how many chatty abdominal
homunculi pass through Khensani hospital. Have
they ever, in fact,
encountered one? If they haven't, at what stage are they
going to embrace
their medieval credulity, and do away with evidence
entirely? And if they
have, what were they injecting into their eyeballs at
the time? Either way,
why are they allowed to touch human beings, let alone
put things into them?
It's enough to make a decent
witch-fearing citizen come down
with bad luck, limp penis, low salary, a
spell from a rival at work, bad
rash, cancer, low sex drive and unfaithful
spouse all at once.
But if it all gets too much, one can
always visit Vic Falls for
the evening. Which is where Professor Claude
Mararike, a sociologist at the
University of Zimbabwe, comes back into the
picture; for it was this scholar
who last week broke the news that it is now
possible, with the right muti,
to fly in a reed basket between Harare and
South Africa. Indeed, the
professor is keen to "develop the science, patent
it and market it".
Further details were sketchy, but one
assumes he was describing
the standard single-seater Bulrush Zephyr model,
with wicker altimeter,
raffia ejector-seat, and the usual four-gallon
muti-tank, that gets about
500 miles to the monkey paw, a little more if you
go for the richer mix of
human ear and tiger testicle. Stable and compact,
it has only two blots on
its safety record: an unexplained crash somewhere
along the banks of the
Nile about 3 000 years ago (an infant survived), and
a 1967 hijacking
attempt in which an American heiress held a Zippo to the
fuselage and
screamed, "Take this basket to Cuba!"
A
basket case, indeed.
By MICHELLE FAUL
The
Associated Press
NDAKU YA PEMBE, Congo -- Election banners festoon the rutted
main road that
divides the village, but no candidates have come to press for
votes from
these cassava farmers whose lives seem locked in another
century.
Children draw polluted water by hand from shallow wells. Women walk
miles to
collect firewood.
They're only 60 miles south of the
capital, Kinshasa, but have no
electricity. Congo is the world's biggest
source of coltan, a mineral on
which cellphones depend. But there's no
cellphone service here.
Yet the political chatter is lively and savvy in
Ndaku ya Pembe as villagers
prepare to join some 25 million of Congo's 58
million people in their first
free elections of a president and parliament
in 46 years.
The July 30 vote puts this vast heart of Africa among the
continent's
growing array of countries that have embraced democracy, however
fitfully.
If multiparty politics can take hold here, after decades of
dictatorship,
misrule and two multinational conflicts that came to be called
an African
world war, all Africa will have turned a crucial
corner.
"We need a really credible head of state, one that will take his
duties
seriously, that will help provide a good quality of life to alleviate
the
misery, and that means creating jobs that pay a livable wage, not such a
pittance that it's hardly worth waking up in the morning," said Guylain
Kasongo, a 25-year-old farmer.
Delivering ballot slips requires a
daily airlift by hundreds of aircraft,
with armies of Congolese to deliver
them by boat, bicycle or on foot to the
farthest village in this western
Europe-sized country.
Further complicating matters, soldiers and rebels
left over from the wars of
1996-2002 continue to terrorize eastern Congo,
forcing some 360,000 people
from their homes this year despite the presence
of 17,500 U.N. peacekeepers.
It is bound to be an imperfect poll, but
Congolese have seized the moment
with gusto. Despite a prohibitive $50,000
registration fee, 33 Congolese are
running for president and 9,500 for 500
legislative seats. In some districts
so many candidates are running that the
six-page ballot slips are bigger
than newspapers.
The candidates are
a mixed and not entirely promising bag: former rebels
accused of killing,
looting and pillaging resources; former cronies of
Mobutu Sese Seko, the
late and little-lamented dictator of 32 years; Mobutu
opponents who served
in his government and fell out with him; and the
front-runner, Joseph
Kabila, who has headed a transitional government for
four years.
U.N.
officials have chastised government officials for refusing to allow
political rallies and for encouraging soldiers and police to break up
opposition rallies.
Rwanda's genocidal war spilled over its borders,
and a regional battle began
in 1998 over control of Congo's vast resources,
which include 30 percent of
the world's cobalt and 10 percent of its
copper.
Country after country plunged into the war -- Angola, Burundi,
Namibia,
Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe. All sent troops to support Laurent
Kabila,
Joseph's father, in return for mining concessions. Madeleine
Albright, then
U.S. secretary of state, called it "Africa's first world
war." The elder
Kabila was assassinated in 2001.
Four million people
died, mainly from strife-driven hunger and disease, and
the war left the
country in such disarray that even now, the U.N. estimates
1,200 people die
each day in fighting or of diseases such as AIDS, bubonic
plague and
malaria.
Facts about Congo
THE LAND: Congo is nearly three times
the size of Texas and borders on
Angola, Burundi, the Central African
Republic, the Republic of Congo,
Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and
Zambia.
THE PEOPLE: A population of more than 58 million people, of whom
about 25
million are registered to vote. Of more than 200 ethnic groups,
about 70
percent are Christian, 10 percent Muslim and the rest adherents of
indigenous beliefs. French is the official language, but dozens of African
languages and dialects are spoken.
THE ECONOMY: Cobalt, copper,
diamonds, gold, silver, tin and coltan, an
essential component in cellphones
and computer circuit boards, make Congo
one of Africa's mineral-rich
countries. It is also abundant in coffee,
rubber and palm oil. Its wealth,
however, has only partially been exploited
because of poor infrastructure
and years of conflict.
HISTORY: Gained independence from Belgium in 1960
after 75 years of colonial
rule. Its first elected prime minister, Patrice
Lumumba, was assassinated,
and its first president, Joseph Kasavubu, was
overthrown in 1965 by Mobutu
Sese Seko, who ruled for 32 years. Widespread
corruption and mismanagement
ravaged the nation's infrastructure during
Mobutu's reign, which ended in
1997 when rebel leader Laurent Kabila was
propelled to power by Rwandan
forces. In 1998, Rwandan-backed rebels rose up
again and Congo became
embroiled in a war that drew in the armies of half a
dozen African nations
and left rebels ruling rival fiefdoms. Kabila was
assassinated by a
bodyguard in 2001. His son, Joseph, inherited the
presidency. Joseph Kabila
ended the war with a 2002 peace deal that reunited
the country, saw foreign
forces withdraw and brought rebel leaders into a
transitional government.
THE VOTE: The 2006 election is Congo's first
democratic vote for a new
leader since 1960.
SOURCE: The Associated
Press