http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com
July 2, 2008
By Cris
Chinaka
HARARE (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe returns to Zimbabwe on
Wednesday
under pressure from fellow African leaders to form a national
unity
government in the wake of his re-election in a violent poll ruled
unfair by
monitors.
An African Union summit in Egypt, attended by
Mugabe, approved a resolution
calling for him to negotiate with opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who
withdrew from the run-off election because of
violence against his
supporters.
The resolution fell short of the
tougher statement wanted by some African
countries, but it was an
unprecedented rebuff to Mugabe, previously feted as
a liberation
hero.
In the strongest public statement from one of Zimbabwe's neighbours
since he
was sworn in on Sunday, Botswana called for Mugabe to be barred
from the AU
and the southern African regional body SADC.
Last
Friday's second-round election, in which he was the only candidate, was
condemned by monitors and much of world opinion as violent and
unfair.
"In our considered view . the representatives of the current
government in
Zimbabwe should be excluded from attending SADC (Southern
African
Development Community) and African Union meetings," Botswana
Vice-President
Mompati Merafhe said, according to a text of his
remarks.
Botswana said Mugabe's participation in African meetings "would
give
unqualified legitimacy to a process which cannot be considered
legitimate".
Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has called for Mugabe,
84, to be
suspended from the AU after the election.
European Union
president France said the EU would only accept a Zimbabwean
government led
by Tsvangirai, echoing a Western position that Mugabe was an
illegitimate
leader.
Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in the first round of the election on
March 29
but withdrew from the run-off after he said pro-government militias
killed
86 of his supporters.
Botswana's statement underlined deep
rifts in Africa and among Zimbabwe's
neighbours over how tough to be with
Mugabe.
South Africa, the designated mediator in Zimbabwe, has resisted
open
condemnation. The AU summit, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh,
called for SADC mediation, led by South African President Thabo Mbeki, to
continue.
Mbeki has been criticised in the region and at home for
what is seen as
ineffective mediation that favours Mugabe.
At the
summit, Mugabe attacked his critics in Africa and outside but did not
object
to the resolution, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki
told
reporters.
"There was a lengthy debate, many views were put forward
including very
critical views of the Zimbabwean ruling party and the
president," Zaki said.
Mugabe spokesman George Charamba earlier rejected
ideas being discussed for
a power-sharing deal and MDC Secretary-General
Tendai Biti said there was no
chance of negotiations.
Biti said
Mugabe's decision to go ahead with the June 27 election "totally
and
completely exterminated any prospects of a negotiated settlement".
MDC
spokesman Nelson Chamisa said the party would respond to the AU
resolution
on Wednesday.
The summit did not back a U.S. push for U.N. sanctions
against Mugabe,
including an arms embargo.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com
July 2, 2008
By David
Williams
SHARM EL-SHEIKH (MailOnline) - The African Union has called for
a national
unity government in Zimbabwe after the controversial re-election
of Robert
Mugabe.
But the African leaders rejected a demand for the
Zimbabwe president to be
barred from future meetings of the
group.
The plea for his suspension came from Botswana. The country's
representatives said Mugabe's participation in AU meetings 'would give
unqualified legitimacy to a process which cannot be considered
legitimate'.
The meeting, on Tuesday night did approve a resolution
calling for a unity
government in Zimbabwe and urged the opposing parties in
the country to
begin negotiations.
But Mugabe's spokesman George
Charamba rejected ideas being floated for a
Kenyan-style power-sharing deal
in which the president and prime minister
are from opposing
parties.
He insisted the 84-year-old leader would not offer anything
beyond dialogue
with the opposition - and had no intention of standing
down.
"He's a few days into office and you expect him to retire, do you?
Why is
the issue of the retirement of the president of Zimbabwe such an
obsession
for the West?" he said at the summit in the Egyptian resort of
Sharm
el-Sheikh.
"He has come here as President of Zimbabwe and he
will go home as president
of Zimbabwe, and when you visit Zimbabwe he will
be there as the president
of all the people of Zimbabwe."
When asked
for Mugabe's reaction to Western pressure in the wake of the
weekend's
election which has been condemned by monitors and global leaders
alike,
Charamba said: 'They can go hang. They can go and hang a thousand
times.'
Botswana's stance was the toughest public statement from one
of Zimbabwe's
neighbours since Mugabe was sworn in on Sunday.
Kenyan
Prime Minister Raila Odinga has also called for Mugabe, 84, to be
suspended
from the AU.
But Mugabe had threatened before the summit to confront his
critics and his
spokesman targeted Mr Odinga's own regime.
Charamba
accused Odinga of having blood on his hands over the crisis in his
country,
in which 1,500 people died.
"Odinga's hands drip with blood, raw African
blood. And that blood is not
going to be cleansed by any amount of abuse of
Zimbabwe. Not at all," he
told reporters.
Odinga joined a
power-sharing government with President Mwai Kibaki under an
AU-backed deal
to end the Kenya crisis. The African Union Tuesday night
called for a
national unity government in Zimbabwe after the
widely-condemned re-election
of President Robert Mugabe.
But the African leaders rejected a demand for
Mugabe to be barred from
future meetings of the group.
The plea for
his suspension, from Botswana, underlined the deep rifts both
within Africa
as a whole and among Zimbabwe's neighbours.
Zimbabwe Today
More African states join the
protest against Mugabe
As the Zimbabwe crisis deepens, the African
tradition that one country does
not comment on the internal affairs of
another is beginning to crumble.
Yesterday saw a momentous move by our
neighbouring country, Botswana. Its
Vice-President, Mompati Merfahe, took
the rare step of addressing Mugabe
directly across the floor at the African
Union (AU) conference in Egypt.
Merfahe told the Zimbabwean President
that the presidential re-run vote last
Friday, which Mugabe won against no
opposition, had been so flawed with
violence that it "did not reflect the
will of the people." He demanded that
Zimbabwe should, as a result, be
excluded from the AU.
The Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, also
urged the AU to suspend
Mugabe until he allowed free and fair elections. And
Sierra Leone President
Ernest Koromo commented that the people of Zimbabwe
had been "denied their
democratic rights."
However, these three stood
out from the majority of the African leaders, who
instead eased their
consciences on the issue by adopting a milk-and-water
resolution calling for
a government of national unity in Zimbabwe.
Observers in Zimbabwe are
sceptical that this laudable aim can ever be
achieved, especially after the
Zanu-PF violence of the past few weeks.
Morgan Tsvangirai has already
stated that any negotiations between his
Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) and Mugabe's people would have to be on
the basis of the first
presidential election, which Tsvangirai won by a
clear margin.
And at
the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba
said
that the crisis would be solved in the "Zimbabwean way." He also said
that
the West had no basis to speak about the situation, and "could go hang
a
thousand times."
Meanwhile the terror and persecution across Zimbabwe
continues, with
Mugabe's militia hunting down an ever-widening range of
targets.
The western media is widely reporting than an elderly white
farmer, Mike
Campbell, 75, his wife and their son-in-law were badly beaten
and thrown off
their Harare farm on Sunday. Similar assaults and worse
continue to be
inflicted on black Zimbabweans on a daily basis.
Globe and Mail, Canada
COLIN FREEZE
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
July 2, 2008
at 1:16 AM EDT
A controversial Canada-based consultant, whose previous
claim to fame was
framing Zimbabwe's opposition leader in a coup plot, has
received more than
$14-million (U.S.) from a white South African to broker
deals for Zimbabwean
farmland, according to U.S. government documents seen
by The Globe and Mail.
Asked about the deal, Ari Ben Menashe said that in
today's Zimbabwe "there
are all kinds of possibilities; it isn't all doom
and gloom." He added, "Now
the government is willing to lease all kinds of
land to all kinds of
people."
Pressed about what he has done to earn
his millions, he replied, "This is
not money that is going into our
pockets," and then added, "I don't want to
get into details."
The
Montrealer, who once described himself as an international man of
infamy,
was a paid "public-relations" consultant for President Robert
Mugabe's
regime from 2002 to 2004. At the time, he was trying to shore up
the image
of a pariah government that was seizing farmland from whites.
Although he
might have not made the ruling ZANU-PF party look good in this
period, Mr.
Ben Menashe certainly helped make the opposition look bad.
Before going to
work for Mr. Mugabe, he had been dealing with Zimbabwe's
opposition leader,
Morgan Tsvangirai. He invited Mr. Tsvangirai to his
Montreal offices to
discuss the impending 2002 election.
In Canada, Mr. Ben Menashe put to
his guest several leading questions about
"eliminating" Mr. Mugabe. Thanks
to a pinhole camera Mr. Ben Menashe had
installed in the ceiling, the whole
conversation was taped.
Because the videotape was sent back to Zimbabwe
as proof of a coup plot, Mr.
Tsvangirai wound up jailed on treason charges
in the midst of the 2002
presidential election campaign. He was eventually
acquitted and lived to
fight in this year's election, though he stood down
last month complaining
that state-sponsored election violence had resulted
in the deaths of more
than 80 of his supporters.
During the 2002
controversy, Mr. Ben Menashe circulated a press release
saying that he sent
the videotape to Harare because he felt "morally
compelled to assist the
embattled people of Zimbabwe and their President
Robert
Mugabe."
However, records show that shortly afterward, his consultancy,
Dickens &
Madson, signed a $400,000 contract to do PR work for Mr.
Mugabe.
Those details are all a matter of public record. Under the terms
of the U.S.
Justice Department's Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA,
freelancers
such as Mr. Ben Menashe must inform Washington of any attempts
to lobby the
United States on behalf of any foreign entities.
Newer
FARA filings obtained by The Globe indicate Mr. Ben Menashe is no
longer
directly employed by the Mugabe regime. Rather, the focus of his
enterprises
these days is Paul Calder LeRoux, a 35-year-old South
African-Australian
dual citizen, who lives in the Philippines and who made
his fortune building
call centres.
Mr. LeRoux is not commenting on the deal, but the text of
it, as filed by
Mr. Ben Menashe, reads that the Montrealer is to "promote
policies of the
United States favourable to the business activities of the
principal," Mr.
LeRoux, who "intends to become involved in the leasing of
real estate for
farming and other purposes in Zimbabwe."
To that end,
the FARA filings indicate that Mr. LeRoux made a series of
large payments to
the Montreal consultancy beginning on March 16, 2007, and
ending on Jan.
30.
The amount totals almost $14-million, and it's unclear from the
documents
whether any land has been leased and why so much money was being
paid so
quickly. It is also unclear precisely who is pocketing the millions
if Mr.
Ben Menashe, who said he still visits Zimbabwe, is not.
iafrica.com
Article By:
Wed, 02 Jul 2008
07:40
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe would retaliate with more violence
if too
much pressure was exerted on him, his biographer Heidi Holland warned
on
Tuesday.
Addressing a seminar organised by the Cape Times
newspaper at the University
of Cape Town, Holland said the Zimbabwean leader
was an emotionally insecure
person who reacted with violence at the
slightest provocation.
"He is emotionally incapable of accepting defeat.
The key to understanding
Mugabe is his urge for revenge," Holland
said.
Holland interviewed Mugabe prior to publishing her book. She
described
Mugabe as "emotionally fragile" with a tendency to unleash
violence on those
who opposed his will.
She cited the killing of
several thousand Ndebele people in the 1980s,
Mugabe's constant verbal
denouncement of Britain, and the recent violence
targeting those who did not
vote for him in the recent election, as evidence
that Mugabe was capable of
doing anything in his power to harm his
opponents.
Sapa
Yahoo News
by
Aderogba Obisesan 24 minutes ago
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - South African
President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday
rejected an EU position that it will only
accept a Zimbabwean government led
by opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai.
"The result that comes out of that process of dialogue
must be a result that
is agreed by the Zimbabweans," said Mbeki on SA FM
radio after an African
Union summit in Egypt attended by Zimbabwean leader
Robert Mugabe.
"And certainly, the African continent has not made any
prescriptions about
the outcomes of what Zimbabweans must negotiate among
themselves."
Mbeki added: "That surely must mean that when the
Zimbabweans say that we
have all met, discussed and negotiated and this is
what we have agreed to
take our country, Zimbabwe forward."
African
leaders on Tuesday, in their final resolution after their summit in
Egypt,
called for dialogue between Zimbabwe's political foes and a national
unity
government following Mugabe 's widely discredited reelection.
Their
two-day conclave agreed "to encourage President Robert Mugabe and the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai to initiate
dialogue with a view to promoting peace, stability".
Mugabe was
present when the resolution was adopted, and raised no
objections.
The European Union said Tuesday that it will only accept
a Zimbabwe
government led by Tsvangirai , who overtook Mugabe -- the
country's leader
since independence -- in the first round of presidential
poll held in March.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said as
Europe prepared to step up
sanctions against Mugabe that the European Union
will only accept a
government led by the opposition leader.
The
European Union, on the first day of France's rotating presidency, took a
tough stance on Mugabe, with Kouchner telling France 2 public television
that Brussels "will not accept a government other than one led by Mr
Tsvangirai".
"The French presidency, along with the (European)
Commission, is clear: the
government is illegitimate if it isn't led by
opposition leader Mr
Tsvangirai," Kouchner stated.
Tsvangirai, who
failed to win an absolute majority in that poll, withdrew
from the second
round of voting, held last Friday, saying that violence had
made a fair vote
impossible.
Mugabe, 84, who was the sole candidate in that exercise, was
declared
winner, and was hastily sworn in for another five-year
term.
The opposition claims more than 80 of its supporters had been
killed in a
campaign of intimidation ahead of the vote and thousands
injured.
With South Africa the most influentual country in southern
Africa, the
regional bloc Southern African Development Community (SADC) has
appointed
Mbeki mediator in the crisis.
"So we are fully supportive
of the cooperation and dialogue among political
parties to find a solution
to the challenges they face," Mbeki said
Wednesday.
"And that is why
they came to the conclusion that the only way forward out
of this was to get
Zimbabweans, to encourage Zimbabweans to engage and
indeed produce an
inclusive government.
"Everybody is convinced that it is only via the
instrument of an inclusive
government that includes all of these political
parties of Zimbabwe within a
framework that they themselves would
agree...this is the only way that you
can take Zimbabwe forward," said
Mbeki.
African Union Commission President Jean Ping called Tuesday on the
international community, which has led criticism of the election, not to
interfere too much in the Zimbabwe crisis.
Los Angeles Times
X-rays of
injuries from the political violence show the use of horrendous
force. 'It's
an illustration of unbelievable, intentional brutality,' he
says.
From a
Times Staff Writer
July 2, 2008
HARARE, ZIMBABWE -- The doctor
points impassively to two X-rays on a screen.
One is of a foot fractured in
four places, the breaks more severe than if
the victim had been run over by
a car, the doctor says.
The second is of a leg fractured at the thickest
part of the tibia, just
beneath the knee. The fibula, a smaller leg bone, is
smashed to pieces, says
the doctor, who despite eight years' experience with
cases of trauma and
beatings has never seen an injury like the tibia
fracture.
The leg and foot injuries were not the only ones
suffered by the two
victims, a 41-year-old polling agent for the opposition
Movement for
Democratic Change party beaten on the soles of his feet and a
46-year-old
MDC provincial secretary struck with a metal bar. Both had two
broken arms
and one had broken ribs.
The pair are among the thousands
of Zimbabwean activists who were injured in
the run-up to Friday's
presidential runoff, overwhelmingly opposition party
supporters attacked by
ZANU-PF ruling party militias and operatives,
according to Human Rights
Watch. At least 85 opposition activists were
killed before the runoff, which
concluded with longtime incumbent Robert
Mugabe being the sole
candidate.
An additional 200 are missing and presumed dead. And roughly
200,000 people
were displaced from their homes in the violence, the
opposition says.
In some areas, the opposition could not field a single
polling agent to
monitor the election because of safety concerns.
MDC
presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai, who described the election
campaign as being like a war, pulled out of the vote because of the severe
violence against MDC activists. Mugabe, 84, who had finished second to
Tsvangirai in the initial presidential vote in March, was inaugurated Sunday
for a new five-year term.
The X-rays convey only the bald medical
facts of what happened to two of the
many victims, but to a doctor, the
pictures speak as eloquently as courtroom
testimony.
The doctor,
whose name has been withheld because of safety concerns and
possible
repercussions, describes himself as a man interested in facts, not
emotions.
He does focus on the biographical details of the men involved, who
they were
and what were their thoughts and feelings.
"I just write the medical
reports," he says. "I try to keep it as objective
as possible."
What
staggers him is the level of suffering, and the length of time that the
victims will continue to feel the pain.
"Every time that person puts
his foot down for the next five years, it will
hurt," he says.
"You
have four metatarsal fractures," the doctor continues, gesturing at the
bones in the central part of the foot in the first X-ray. "You just don't
get full metatarsal fractures at the same time. It's very unusual. It
requires a huge amount of force.
"You could drive a car over
someone's foot and if you broke two of them it
would be a lot," he
says.
He jabs a finger at the X-ray of the tibia injury. "Will you look
at that
bone? The massive strong part of the tibia has been separated. You
just
don't get complete severing of the tibia from the knee like that. I
could
not hit someone hard enough to do this.
"It's an illustration
of unbelievable, intentional brutality," he says.
"This is not over when the
election is over."
The areas hardest hit by the violence were traditional
ZANU-PF strongholds
that had swung strongly to the MDC in the March
vote.
Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights, a group of independent doctors,
reports
that 2,000 people were treated for injuries suffered in political
violence
in June and more than 5,000 since February. The doctor is a member
of the
organization.
"One of the most disturbing things is that there
is nowhere that people can
turn to. You have got no refuge, no ombudsman, no
policeman," the doctor
says.
He switches off the lighted screen
behind the X-rays, takes them down and
slides them into two brown envelopes.
There are many others like them, he
says.
The Zimbabwean
Wednesday, 02 July 2008 05:04
By Staff Reporter
BULAWAYO
- Scores of youths believed to be part of the notorious ZANU
(PF) militia
have descended on bus termini in the second biggest city of
Bulawayo, where
they are harassing commuter omnibus crews whose vehicles
have not displayed
Robert Mugabe's potrait.
Commuter staff who spoke to The Zimbabwean
at the busiest Basch Street
terminus, popularly known as Egodini, on Tuesday
complained that they are
now operating under fear and constant harassment
from the youths, all of who
are wearing ZANU (PF) T'shirts dished out during
campaign for the
Presidential run-off election, which later became a one-man
contest pitting
Mugabe against himself, after favourite, Morgan Tsvangirai
of the Movement
for Cemocratic Chnage (MDC) withdrew citing a number of
factors, ZANU (PF)
violence being one of them.
"We have not
been able to operate freely since Sunday evening as these
youths accuse all
those whose vehicles do not have Mugabe's potrait of being
MDC supporters.
They say that this country has returned to ZANU (PF) rule
and only vehicles
whose owners accept will be allowed to load passengers
here," said one bus
conductor at the terminus.
During his campaign, Mugabe, through the
government-run National Oil
Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM), sold cheap fuel to
minibus owners in the city,
who were in turn required to display four of his
potraits, at both sides,
the front and the rear.
The buses were
also ordered to charge each passenger Z$500 million for
a single trip and
also to allow ZANU (PF) members to campaign during trips.
Commuter
omnibus, who buy five litres of fuel at above Z$200 billion,
instead of the
NOCZIM's Z$6 billion for the same amount of fuel, are
charging Z$10 billion
for a single urban trip.
These also do not have Mugabe's potrait
and are subject of harassment
by the youths.
"You will not
carry passengers here until you display the President's
picture. You will
all go to Britain," declared one member of the militia,
derisively referred
to as Green Bombers, as he blocked a commuter omnibus.
Some
commuter crews said that they had resorted to bribing the militia
to be
allowed to load passengers, as police had turned a blind eye to the
development.
"We are now paying them an average of Z$5 billion
a trip because they
have taken over the termini. They are everywhere and
they seem to be above
the law," said a spokesman for the Bulawayo Urban
Transporters Association
(BUPTA).
Police spokesman, Assistant
Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena, professed
ignorance of the
harassment.
"I have not heard about that and I have no comment," he
said briefly.
Mail and Guardian
TONDERAI KWIDINI | HARARE, ZIMBABWE - Jul 02 2008
06:00
The perennial political and economic crisis in
Zimbabwe has wreaked havoc
with the country's once-thriving tobacco
industry.
Tobacco was the mainstay of the Southern African state's
economy during the
1980s and 1990s. The "golden leaf" was the county's main
export product,
accounting for about 50% of Zimbabwe's foreign currency
earnings. About 700
000 people are dependent on the industry for their
living.
For decades, Zimbabwean tobacco was coveted by blenders as among
the finest
in the world. According to statistics from the statutory body
Zimbabwe
Trade, the country was the second-largest producer of flue-cured
tobacco
after the United States in the 1990s. Its crop was recognised for
its
quality in major tobacco markets in Europe, Asia and the US.
But,
since 2000 when the government introduced chaotic "land reform"
policies,
the tables have been turned. Brazil has since taken over as the
world's
second-largest flue-cured tobacco producer.
Production of tobacco plunged
from a record level of 267-million kilograms
in 2000 to a dismal 73-million
kilograms last year, according to the
Zimbabwe Tobacco Association
(ZTA).
In an ostensible bid to redress the racial inequities in arable
land
ownership, white farmers who were more experienced have been displaced
from
tobacco farms. These farms have subsequently been taken over, in some
cases,
by inexperienced and underfunded communal farmers and, in other
cases, by
friends of the rulers.
Farmers have to put up with a
plethora of problems. For example, the
government is not providing
sufficient support for tobacco production, and
banks are reluctant to offer
loans in the light of the uncertainty of the
situation, including the
expropriation of farms.
All these problems have contributed to a very low
yield of tobacco of which
the quality has also been reduced.
Selling
woes
Since 2000, every other tobacco-selling season has been plunged into
disarray as tobacco farmers hold on to their crops, complaining about low
prices and delayed payment.
This year's season was characterised
by on-off selling as farmers clamoured
for better prices -- which were
quickly wiped out by the country's
staggering inflation rate of more than
100 000%.
The official opening of the tobacco-selling season this year
was scheduled
for the month of April. It was delayed by more than two weeks
as farmers
refused to send their crops to the tobacco sales floors in
Harare, demanding
a review of prices.
Farmers have been objecting to
the tobacco being sold in US dollars while
they are paid in local currency
at the official exchange rate, which is not
commensurate to their labour
input.
Last year, similar wrangles were witnessed. Sales were postponed
indefinitely after farmers indicated that they were not ready to sell their
tobacco until they got a special exchange rate. They rejected the exchange
rate of one US dollar to Z$250 that applied at the time.
Although the
rate was adjusted upwards to a special rate of one US dollar to
Z$30 000,
farmers insisted that this was still not enough. The US dollar was
at the
time fetching 20 times more on the parallel market, which is where
most of
them were getting money to buy farming implements.
The impasse was only
resolved after the intervention of the government. The
price of 1kg of
tobacco was pegged at 1,50 US dollars last year. This year
the price was
moved up to $2,26 per kilogram, although the farmers had
demanded a rate of
$4 per kilogram.
In May this year, farmers stopped selling their crops in
protest against
non-payment. Most of the communal farmers prefer to be paid
in cash rather
than cheques as they need the money for food and school fees
for their
children and for the purchase of farming
implements.
Auction problems
Since April, business has grounded to a
halt at the country's three main
auction floors -- Burley Marketing
Zimbabwe, the Tobacco Sales Floor and the
Zimbabwe Tobacco Auction Centre,
all located in the capital, Harare.
Some disgruntled farmers complained
that they had sold their crop 21 days
previously but had still not received
payment despite government promises.
A few farmers said they had received
Z$5-billion, which is equivalent to
only $5, while the remainder was
deposited in their accounts or paid out in
cheques.
In Zimbabwe at
the time of writing, Z$5-billion was only enough to buy a
five-litre pack of
orange juice.
"What can we do with Z$5-billion? It all goes to settle
food bills that have
accumulated during the period that we have been here
waiting for payment,"
said a disgruntled farmer at the Tobacco Sales
Floor.
An official at the Tobacco Sales Floor acknowledged that there was
a crisis
but nothing could be done until the currency crisis gripping the
country was
resolved.
"It's a problem of cash, but we hope that once
we start getting special
cheques from our banks the payment situation will
improve," said Wilson
Gopoza, Tobacco Sales Floor MD.
The "special
cheques" come in the form of promissory cheques that can be
used as money.
These were introduced by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe in May
in a desperate
bid to solve the cash crisis in the country's banking system
and to make
trading easier.
Before the introduction of these cheques, farmers were
forced to liquidate
their cheques through illegal cash dealers. They were
being charged a
commission of up to 70%, a situation that ended up diverting
money from the
farmers to the cash dealers.
"These disruptions cost
farmers a lot of money. Why can't the government
just put its house in order
and set prices well in advance so that we don't
have to pay for storage
facilities in Harare while we await the resolution
of price issues?" asked a
tobacco farmer from Headlands, about 50km
north-west of Harare.
A
representative of the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board said the delays are
caused by the government, which takes time to determine the price of
tobacco.
Decline in production
Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Tobacco
Growers' Association (ZTGA) projected at the
beginning of the year that
tobacco production for 2008 would decline by 20%.
ZTGA president Julius
Ngorima said the initial target of 120-million
kilograms of tobacco in 2008
would not be achieved due to a combination of
factors, including late
planting, shortage of diesel and fertiliser, and
heavy rains.
"We are
now expecting an output of below 100-million kilograms," Ngorima
said.
Other organisations are, however, expecting the yield to be
much lower than
100-million kilograms.
ZTA president Andrew Ferreira
said: "We're expecting a crop of less than
70-million kilograms because
drought earlier in the season and incessant
rains more recently have
affected the crop. Some growers have opted out of
tobacco because of the
problems related to obtaining inputs."
ZTA figures show the decline in
output: from 267-million kilograms in 2000,
when the ruling Zanu-PF started
to turn the screws on its political
opposition, to 202-million kilograms in
2001; 165-million kilograms in 2002;
80-million kilograms in 2003; and a
paltry 68-million kilograms in 2004.
Statistics for this year's crop
yield were not available at the time of
writing but analysts projected that
the season might just be the worst in
the history of the country, given the
extreme social upheaval caused by new
heights of state-sponsored torture and
murder. -- IPS
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com
July 2, 2008
By Raymond
Maingire
HARARE - Zimbabwe's troubled central bank has further increased
the daily
maximum cash withdrawal limits for both individual and corporate
clients to
Z$100 billion, up from Z$25 billion with effect from
Wednesday.
The Z$25 billion limit had been eroded given the recent wave
of steep price
increases.
In a statement, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
(RBZ) governor Gideon Gono
increased the limit to Z$100, ostensibly to bring
relief to the transacting
public.
Gono said the increase is
"consistent with macro economic pressures,
particularly
inflation".
But the amount falls far short of meeting the daily
requirements for most
depositors who continue to endure countless trips to
the bank to raise money
for household and other basic needs.
"The
money is still not enough to cater for my daily needs as it can buy
only
just three loaves of bread on the black market," said Tawanda Mudimu, a
school teacher based in Harare.
Bread has become a rare commodity,
hardly available on supermarket shelves.
Workers routinely spend hours in
bank queues as they try to comply with the
RBZ cash withdrawal limits when
withdrawing their salaries while those who
are resourceful enough have
resorted to opening multiple bank accounts to
try and beat the
limits.
"The current environment where there is high inflation and
frequent salary
adjustments tend to increase the demand for cash," said an
official with a
commercial bank in Harare, "Most people would want to
immediately convert
their earnings into cash to allow them to buy goods and
services."
Since December last year, Gono has increased the withdrawal
limits on no
less than five occasions.
Only in May this year, Gono
raised maximum cash withdrawal limits for both
individuals and corporations
to Z$5 billion, up from Z$1 billion.
A few weeks later he reviewed the
limit to Z$10 billion, only to revise it
some days later to Z$25
billion.
The unpopular cash withdrawal limits are designed ostensibly to
place
controls on the amount of money circulating, which Gono claims is
fueling
the world's highest inflation.
Gono favours the use of the
so-called plastic money where people meet value
for goods and services using
less conventional methods of value exchange
such as bank
cheques.
Critics say the central bank chief is fighting a losing battle
as bank
queues continue to resurface as the demand for Zimbabwe's worthless
currency
keeps ballooning.
Commuter transport fares in most urban
centres have now shot up to Z$10
billion for trips of less than 10km. The
amount has increased ten-fold over
the past month.
In May, a loaf of
bread cost Z$200 million dollars. It has since ballooned
to Z$7 billion on
the formal market and Z$25 billion on the thriving black
market where bread
is more readily available.
Similarly, a 2-litre bottle of fruit juice,
which was marked at Z$6 billion
less than two weeks ago, has increased
20-fold to Z$120 billion.
A single unit of the South African Rand now
exchanges for as much as Z$3, 2
billion on the street market while US$1 now
fetches up to Z$25 billion.
Zimbabwe's galloping inflation is now pegged
at over 9 million percent with
no sign of a speedy solution to the crisis in
sight.
The government has stopped releasing statistics of inflation, but
statistics
allegedly obtained from the Central Statistical Office (CSO) by a
weekly
paper, The Independent newspaper a few days ago, indicate that annual
inflation was now more than 9 million percent.
The last official
inflation figure was released in February, when the CSO
said it stood at 165
000 per cent.
Most Zimbabweans now give the banks a wide berth,
preferring to convert
their cash to foreign currency in a bid to preserve
its value and ensure
guaranteed access when ever they choose to use it. Many
cash transactions
are now conducted either in South African Rand or in US
dollars.
For years now Zimbabwe has been under strain from lack of
foreign currency,
food shortages and ill-conceived populist spending by
President Robert
Mugabe's government.
Most ordinary Zimbabweans have
become very poor trillionaires.
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)
acting secretary general, Japhet
Moyo said it was now difficult to recommend
a minimum salary for affiliate
groups with prices changing nearly every
minute.
He added, "It is now very difficult even to peg the Poverty Datum
Line as
prices are shooting every minute."
But President Mugabe, who
retained power last week allegedly on the strength
of his party's so called
"100 percent total empowerment" campaign slogan, is
optimistic Zimbabwe's
comatose economy can still rise to a model economy.
This, he says, can be
achieved on the back of an anticipated resurrection of
the agricultural
sector.
His critics, who accuse him of bludgeoning his way to victory
after being
defeated in March by his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC,
say nothing
outside total commitment to political transformation, can save
Zimbabwe from
further economic collapse.
Dispatch, SA
2008/07/02
INSIGHT
Philip
Cole
ROBERT Mugabe has again been declared president of Zimbabwe, despite
being
the only candidate in last week's election after Movement for
Democratic
Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew in the face of
massive
violence and intimidation of his supporters.
The flawed
"election result" has been greeted by worldwide condemnation of
Zanu -PF and
its violent campaign of repression during the election. What is
likely to
happen next?
The first thing to realise is that Mugabe is a very clever
politician. Like
many of the most successful politicians, he is a survivor
and his main
interest is in survival. He is also now tied at the hip to the
corrupt and
repressive Zanu-PF hierarchy, especially the military that he
has both
fostered and which is now his only prop to stay in power. Mugabe
and Zanu-PF
are now gearing up for the end-game, and the "election" is part
of their
strategy to negotiate from a position of strength.
And make
no mistake, Zimbabwe has entered the end-game phase. The country
has sunk so
low, with a collapsed economy and mass unemployment, that even
the most
stubborn politicians in both Zanu-PF and the MDC will be forced to
the
negotiating table. We are likely, sooner or later, to see a government
of
national unity in Zimbabwe as part of a managed transition to new, free
and
democratic elections.
Mugabe and the Zanu-PF elite are not fools - they
know this. The declaration
of Mugabe as the new "president" is part of their
strategy to negotiate from
a position of strength and ensure that they are
able to get out of the
country with their money and their dignity
intact.
For Zimbabwe, the question now is how to transfer power from a
corrupt,
oppressive political-military elite that remains in firm control of
the
country, to a democratic and inclusive society. South Africa has been in
this position before and we have both the recent experience and expertise to
help the transition. That is why President Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy"
is both the only show in town and the only strategy most likely to
work.
It is an unpleasant fact to have to face, but if an oppressive
government
cannot be defeated by force of arms or by popular demonstration,
then an
accommodation must be reached with the dictators while they are
still in
power. And part of that accommodation is unfortunately that they
get out
with their money and reputations still intact.
The same thing
happened in South Africa.
After the then-Prime Minister PW Botha failed
to "cross the Rubicon" in
1984, South Africa erupted into a contained civil
war for the rest of the
decade. The numbers of United Democratic Front (UDF)
supporters dead and in
detention steadily rose, the bombing of "soft
targets" increased - but there
was still no solution to the impasse. While
South Africa's economy collapsed
and its isolation increased, the apartheid
government remained in control
and its military remained undefeated.
Something had to give to break the
impasse.
The turning point in the
transition to a democratic state came when the
African National Congress
realised that South Africa could not be militarily
defeated and that
apartheid would have to be negotiated out of existence.
What would happen to
the leaders of the apartheid government was a major
issue in the Convention
for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) negotiations
and in the subsequent
transition to democracy. The compromise that was
agreed eventually was the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The
deal that was struck was that
if apartheid's hit men and enforcers came
clean to the TRC, they would not
be prosecuted and would be given amnesty
for their past abuses.
Make
no mistake, there were many abuses that needed to be confessed. The ANC
submission to the TRC estimated that "the human cost (of apartheid) was
1.5million dead through military and economic action, most of them children,
while a further four million had been displaced from their homes". From 1985
to 1989, over 80000 people were detained without trial, of which 10000 were
"tortured, assaulted or in some way abused". Between 1990 and 1993, in the
run up to the elections "nearly 12000 civilians were killed and 20000 were
injured in thousands of incidents, including several major
massacres".
The Human Rights Commission recorded the "accelerating pace
of
assassinations of anti-apartheid figures: 28 in 1990, 60 in 1991 and 97
in
1992". This human cost dwarfs the cost of Mugabe's misrule in
Zimbabwe.
The ANC, to achieve democracy, was forced to accept an
accommodation with
apartheid's rulers. And the price of this accommodation
was that the big
guys got off the hook. Botha, Defence Minister Magnus Malan
and others were
allowed to thumb their collective noses at the TRC and
refuse to testify
about their knowledge of death squads or covert
operations, while Vlakplaas
commander Eugene de Kock and the other
foot-soldiers were sent to rot in
jail.
We should not underestimate
how morally repulsive this appears to the many
physically crushed, poverty-
stricken victims of apartheid. Yet it was the
price of getting rid of its
evil.
We must prepare ourselves for the same thing to happen in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe
and the rest of the Zanu -PF high-ups know how they are going to
negotiate
themselves out of existence. Their final destinations may be North
Korea
rather than the wilderness, but they will make sure they get to keep
their
US dollars and the last remaining pieces of prestige.
And here
in South Africa we should realise that we have the competitive
advantage in
negotiating an end to repulsive governments.
Let Mbeki get on with his
"quiet diplomacy", however repulsive it may seem.
He knows how to shuffle
dictators off into the sunset.
After all, the ANC has already done it
here.
Philip Cole is an independent development economist based in
East London
WorldNetDaily
Posted:
July 02, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
© 2008
Voting early on the
morning of Election Day in Zimbabwe, the only candidate,
Robert Mugabe,
smiling broadly, said he was "happy and hungry for victory."
In his wake are
the corpses of at least 80 members of the Movement for
Democratic Change and
thousands of tortured and beaten opposition
Zimbabweans. Among them - seen
on the front page of the June 26 New York
Times - is an 11-month-old boy
whose legs were shattered by the "Green
Bombers," Mugabe's youth
militia.
Following Mugabe's Stalinesque triumph, the U.N. Security
Council expressed
"deep regrets" that the election was conducted "in these
circumstances."
That language would have been a tad more critical, but South
Africa, not
wanting to hurt Mugabe's feelings, objected to describing the
elections as
"illegitimate."
On the very day before, hospitals in
Harare, the capital, were overflowing,
as there weren't enough doctors. Some
hospitals, responding to threats by
the military, refused to take any more
victims of torture.
Not at all surprisingly, the U.N. Human Rights
Council has yet to even put
on its agenda Mugabe's extended version of the
Nazis' "Kristillnacht" that
presaged the Holocaust, when the world also
declined to intervene.
As the June 25 Times of London
reported, Mugabe, the "Liberator" of his
country, crowed: "Other people can
say what they want, but the elections are
ours. We are a sovereign state,
and that is it."
The United Nations insists that the sovereignty of its
members - even those
who terrorize their own people - is inviolable.
Savoring that guarantee,
Mugabe declared during his solo "campaign": "We
will not accept any meddling
in Zimbabwe's internal affairs, even from
fellow Africans."
Among the millions of Zimbabweans abandoned by the
world are the survivors -
in Chitungwiza, 18 miles south of Harare - of an
attack on a home that was a
refuge for Movement for Democratic Change
members. Said one of them,
57-year-old Georgina Nyamutsamba, in a June 27
Washington Post report:
"There are so many boys buried in (nearby) Warren
Hills Cemetery, killed by
Mugabe. Please help us suffering in Zimbabwe. What
can we do?"
One of the owners of that refuge, Annastasia Chipiyo, has
given up any hope
of deliverance from Zimbabwe's Liberator. She says: "I
have nothing to fear.
I've just lost my son" - one of the four murdered in
the June 17 attack on
her home. She has nothing left to lose. Untold numbers
of Zimbabweans are
also frozen in hopelessness.
Morgan Tsvangirai,
leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, withdrew
from the run-off
election because he did not want to add to the broken
bodies of his
supporters, saying in the June 25 edition of The Guardian
newspaper in
London: "Zimbabwe will break if the world does not come to our
aid."
Tsvangirai has called on the United Nations to send
peacekeepers to
Mugabeland to clear the way for the new elections so that he
could campaign
as a "legitimate candidate," for whom Zimbabweans can vote
without putting
their very lives in danger.
But if the United Nations
were to do more than express "deep regrets" and
only impose more economic
sanctions on Mugabe and his primary accomplices,
that would hardly cause
fear in the Hitler of Africa. Though well-intended,
Queen Elizabeth's ruling
on June 25 to strip Mugabe of his 1994 knighthood -
Knight Grand Cross in
the Order of Bath - must have been derisively received
by the cashiered
knight. You think he cares?
Sarah Childress of the Wall Street Journal
has been covering this satanic
"election" - that has shamed Africa and the
world - with consistent
accuracy. "Mr. Mugabe," she wrote on June 26, "has
long disregarded what the
world thinks of him. Unless Mr. Mugabe is
pressured by his African
counterparts, there is apparently little diplomats
can do to sway him."
Will the African Union expel Zimbabwe, as Mugabe is
strangling that nation?
What actions will now be taken by the Southern
African Development
Community, which Childress describes as "the most
powerful international
(economic) actor in Zimbabwe's drama"?
How
about military intervention, if all else fails, by Zimbabwe's African
leaders, an increasing number of whom are dismayed and repelled by Mugabe's
literally getting away with murder? Even the revered Nelson Mandela has, at
long last, conquered his acute desire not to criticize another former
freedom fighter against European colonizers. (The white rulers of Rhodesia
kept Mugabe in prison for 10 years before he was out, and Rhodesia became
Zimbabwe.)
Celebrating his 90th birthday at a dinner in London,
Mandela faced the
naked, barbaric truth and said there is "a tragic failure
of leadership" in
Zimbabwe. He didn't speak the dreaded name, but the
message was clear. Maybe
Mugabe, on hearing Mandela's irreverence,
shrugged.
To be continued: Are there specific, realizable answers to
Zimbabwean
Georgina Nyamutsamba, mourning "so many boys buried ... killed by
Mugabe"?
"What can we do?" she asks. Will there be no reply except more
deep
regrets - and the impossibility of first having to get permission from
U.N.
Security Council members China and Russia to actually intervene with
armed
forces?
The Zimbabwean
Wednesday, 02 July 2008 05:23
Genocide
The crime of genocide
is defined in international law in the
Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide. The Genocide
Convention was adopted by the United
Nations General Assembly on 9 December
1948. The Convention entered into
force on 12 January 1951. More than 130
nations have ratified the Genocide
Convention and over 70 nations have made
provisions for the punishment of
genocide in domestic criminal law. The text
of Article II of the Genocide
Convention was included as a crime in Article
6 of the 1998 Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court. Zimbabwe is
a signatory to this
Convention.
There are two salient articles in the
Convention:
Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means
any of the
following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national,
ethnical,
racial or religious group,
as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily
or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the
group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction
in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births
within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be
punishable:
Genocide;
Conspiracy to commit genocide;
Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
Attempt to commit
genocide;
Complicity in genocide.
The following are acts
of genocide when committed as part of a policy
to destroy a group's
existence:
Killing members of the group includes direct killing and
actions
causing death.
Causing serious bodily or mental harm
includes inflicting trauma on
members of the group through widespread
torture, rape, sexual violence,
forced or coerced use of drugs, and
mutilation.
Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to
destroy a
group includes the deliberate deprivation of resources needed for
the
group's physical survival, such as clean water, food, clothing, shelter
or
medical services.
Deprivation of the means to sustain life can
be imposed through
confiscation of harvests, blockade of foodstuffs,
detention in camps,
forcible relocation or expulsion into deserts.
Prevention of births includes involuntary sterilization, forced
abortion,
prohibition of marriage, and long-term separation of men and women
intended
to prevent procreation.
Forcible transfer of children may be imposed by
direct force or by
through fear of violence, duress, detention,
psychological oppression or
other methods of coercion. The Convention on
the Rights of the Child
defines children as persons under the age of 14
years.
As can be seen, acts of genocide need not kill or cause the
death of
members of a group: torture, political rape, displacement,
deprivation, and
various other actions, short of killing, also are included
in the
definition. Furthermore, it is a crime to plan or incite genocide,
even
before killing starts, and to aid or abet genocide. The criminal acts
described in the Convention include conspiracy, direct and public
incitement, attempts to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide.
Wall Street Journal
July 2, 2008;
The world
rarely looks to summit meetings of the African Union for
statesmanship, and
this week's meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm
El-Sheik met those
expectations. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, illegitimately
"re-elected" to a
sixth term in office last week, was accorded the honor of
being personally
escorted to the plenary session by host Hosni Mubarak,
himself in his fifth
term. Dictators have a way of enjoying one another's
company.
Western leaders had hoped the summit would prompt
African leaders to have a
stern talking-to with "Comrade Bob," if not for
the catastrophe he has
inflicted on Zimbabwe then for the embarrassment he
has brought their
continent. But despite a muted resolution urging a
power-sharing deal
between Mr. Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai, the summit
mainly proved an opportunity for Mr. Mugabe to
embrace African leaders for
the TV cameras, apparently without
rebuff.
At least not all of Africa's leaders are buying into this
charade. From
Nairobi, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga called for
suspending Zimbabwe
from the African Union and sending peacekeepers to
ensure a free election.
Mr. Odinga knows whereof he speaks: Like Mr.
Tsvangirai, he led the
opposition in December's tainted Kenyan
polls.
Also notable were comments from Senegal's foreign minister, Cheikh
Tidiane
Gadio. Africans insist that the West should "leave us alone and
[that] we be
left to decide our own destinies," he said, but at the moment
of crisis "we
don't want to talk about it. That doesn't make any sense."
Senegal is one of
Africa's more democratic countries. The tragedy is that
there aren't more
African leaders willing to stand up against a tyrant who
is bringing such
shame to their continent.
Business Day
02 July 2008
Paul
Moorcraft
SOUTH
African leaders are finally emerging from their Alice-in-Wonderland
policies
on Zimbabwe. Jacob Zuma has spoken his mind, and finally Nelson
Mandela has
felt able to comment on the tragedy. President Thabo Mbeki has
been left
looking spineless and isolated in his own country and in the
world.
And yet Mbeki might just pull a rabbit out of the hat.
Robert Mugabe wants
to finesse a deal with SA after winning his sham
election. No matter what
his fellow African leaders say in the African Union
(AU) summit in Egypt
this week, Mugabe will try to forge a government of
national unity, with
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as a junior
partner.
This could be a replay of the settlement in Kenya. Emerson
Mnangagwa, who
could emerge as Zanu (PF) frontrunner if Mugabe becomes
ceremonial
president, would try to do to the Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) what
he did to Joshua Nkomo's old party - swallow it up. This act of
force
majeure, or farce majeure, may be the least worst option.
A
political settlement based on a revised constitution is still possible,
and
the Southern African Development Community (SADC) might then send in
peacekeeping forces. But first there has to be a peace to keep, and the
Zimbabwean government has to invite them in.
The other scenarios
are all worse and could lead to outright civil war and
possible external
military intervention.
Fundamentally the crisis is about two
Zimbabwean civil wars - a muted
struggle within Zanu (PF); and the ruling
party versus the MDC. Either could
produce a major shooting
war.
Tsvangirai could go into exile, set up a provisional government
and
encourage internal insurrection. Some African states may tacitly support
him. But even without this, Zimbabwe - with inflation running at 1000% per
day, and mass starvation and terror - could just
implode.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu's blockade idea is unlikely to
materialise. Tougher
western sanctions are likely to follow soon, but they
will make the regime
more intransigent, and the stricken Zimbabwean
population ever hungrier.
But what happens if another Rwanda results,
or whites are hunted down as in
the Congo massacres of the
1960s?
SA is reluctant to deploy its depleted military, despite the
Zimbabwe crisis
rapidly infecting the whole region. SA itself is becoming
Zimbabweanised.
South African forces, even after apartheid, have a history
of invading a
local state, and Tanzanian troops drove out the deadly buffoon
Idi Amin from
Uganda.
In extremis, the United Nations (UN) would
have to mandate intervention
forces. The new doctrine of "responsibility to
protect" would be invoked. If
Rwanda were revisited, even China would feel
impelled to line up with the
west in the UN Security Council. A
UN-sanctioned enforcement mission would
include mainly African troops, but
logistics, air power and transport,
intelligence and command and control
would be provided by western forces.
British newspapers have been
carrying banner headlines about military
intervention. Despite what the Zanu
(PF) propagandists say, the last thing
London wants is to be embroiled in
its former colony. If SADC should
intervene out of self-interest, then the
UK feels driven by moral and
humanitarian imperatives.
Some on
the right wing in UK politics have rushed to point out that Ian
Smith was a
better ruler than Mugabe. That may be true, but that is not part
of the
current debate in Britain. Both right and left/liberal opinion, the
latter
through the gritted teeth of their post-imperial guilt, are saying
Britain
must now lead, though not the military intervention. As the
well-known
conservative columnist Simon Heffer put it: "It may be very
uncomfortable
and embarrassing for whites to intervene to stop the butchery
by black
tyrants. But if they don't, hecatombs of lives will be lost."
Despite
the overstretch of British forces, real troops would soon make
mincemeat of
so-called war veterans and militias, who are used to killing
defenceless
men, women and children. In the unlikely event they were to be
spared from
the war on terror, a small contingent of the British SAS, acting
as a
spearhead for SADC forces, would make short shrift of the demoralised
Zimbabwean army. (And, on the way home, no doubt some of the SAS soldiers
would like to spring Simon Mann from Equatorial Guinea.)
Britain
already has detailed plans for the military evacuation of the
thousands of
British passport-holders in Zimbabwe. Again, this is no
neocolonial
conspiracy. The UK ministry of defence planners work on
contingency plans
for numerous crisis zones. The British plan ranges from a
separate
military-backed humanitarian assistance package to a military
occupation of
Harare airport (it was originally assumed with Pretoria's
connivance) to a
much smaller deployment of troops and medical units to
work, with the
Commonwealth neighbours' permission, at exit points on
Zimbabwe's
borders.
British staff officers will play a vital role in military
planning, but for
political reasons they would take a back seat in any
international military
force.
Despite the legacy of Iraq, if
wholesale killings erupt in Zimbabwe,
muscular western humanitarian
intervention will be considered. The bottom
line would be the rescue of
European Union and US citizens in this former
British colony, but it would
also prompt the fall of Mugabe.
Should this come to pass, it will
prove humiliating for the AU and Africa.
The problem is African leaders are
always saying, "Let us find an African
solution," but they rarely provide
one. Mbeki has one last chance to justify
his quiet diplomacy in
Zimbabwe.
African opinion throughout the continent has swung away
from Mugabe. This
might be his last chance to escape without a trial. And
Tsvangirai could
also be facing a final choice: to swallow his pride and
accept a deal, or
permanent exile.
Mugabe has a point when he
says his recent elections - for all their many
faults - are better than
anything staged in the majority of African states
that are not democracies.
And the common belief - "surely anybody must be
better than Mugabe" - may be
misplaced. Mnangagwa is no bleeding-heart
liberal, and an MDC government
might spawn a disastrous series of
retributive bloodletting.
In
the next few weeks, southern Africa will be on the cusp of potential
chaos.
Pretoria can do a deal in Zimbabwe, or the road lies open to civil
war and
all sorts of messy regional and possibly western interventions. This
was not
the rainbow optimism that Nelson Mandela bequeathed.
Prof Moorcraft,
the director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Analysis,
London, formerly
served in the UK ministry of defence, and has just returned
from
Zimbabwe.
Business Day
02 July 2008
Steven
Friedman
TOO
much pessimism about Zimbabwe will prevent us understanding it. Too much
optimism will prevent us helping it. Zimbabwe's people are enduring horrors.
But much of the despair at democracy's latest defeat has tended to ignore
history.
There is, sadly, nothing new about Zimbabwe's elite using
force to deny
citizens their voice - it has been doing this since it sent
the Fifth
Brigade into Matabeleland to crush Joshua Nkomo's Zapu. Despite
maintaining
the trappings of democracy, the elite, like its colonial
predecessor, has
been, for nearly three decades, unaccountable to the
people.
What is new - since the government's defeat in the 2000
constitutional
referendum - is that parts of Zimbabwean society developed
the muscle to try
to hold this elite to account and to demand a government
which is chosen by,
and serves, the people. Tragically, the elite fought
back, launching an
eight-year reign of terror.
We are, therefore,
witnessing the most sustained attempt yet by Zimbabweans
to govern
themselves. We ought to be angry at the violence used to suppress
it. But we
are not seeing a society slide backwards. We are, rather, seeing
one trying
to move forward, blocked by those with an interest in the past.
While change
may not be around the corner, we are seeing the pangs of a
democracy trying
to be born. And this is a source of hope.
But, if it is important to
recognise the signs of hope, it is equally
important to avoid the optimism
which holds that a workable settlement is
possible now, that the sham
election can now be followed by a government of
national
unity.
Unity governments can help to settle conflicts; Zimbabwe
may one day need
one because the opposition enjoys popular support but faces
a hostile
military and police. But they work only when conflicting parties
realise
they must respect each other because they need each other. And there
is no
way Zimbabwe's ruling elite believes that.
IT IS
doubtful that Robert Mugabe and the politicians around him are still
running
Zimbabwe. Authority seems to have passed to the senior military and
police
officers in the Joint Operations Command, who are clinging to power
to
protect their economic interests: they believe they have crushed the will
of
the people and can dictate terms to a unity government.
To understand
what a unity government in these circumstances would mean, we
need to listen
to opposition activist Lovemore Madhuku who has pointed out
the parallels
between today's events and the crushing of Zapu in the 1980s.
Then, Madhuku
reminds us, the elite battered Zapu into submission and
co-opted it into an
alliance as a junior partner. He is surely right to
argue that it wants to
repeat the exercise - to so crush the Movement for
Democratic Change and its
allies that they will be corralled into a unity
government to rubber- stamp
whatever the elite has in mind.
This will not change until the
balance of power changes and the security
establishment realises it needs to
compromise. Since the top brass have so
close an interest in blocking
change, it may need the next level of officers
to realise the costs of
clinging to power and to reach out to the
opposition. This will take a
while, because it needs a combination of
internal resistance and
international pressure to change the power balance
and make a settlement
possible.
Support for a national unity government, rather than for
pressure, will,
therefore, stall change. To work for it, as our president is
doing, is to
invite being remembered as the Thatcher or Reagan of the
Zimbabwean
conflict, as the friend of an illegitimate government which used
talk of
pragmatism and mediation to protect it against
change.
Zimbabwe needs a compromise - but only when its elite is
forced to realise
that it must respect those who speak for the people. Real
friends of
Zimbabwe will devote their efforts now to building the pressure
which will
make that possible.
.. Friedman is director of
the Centre for the Study of Democracy, a
University of Johannesburg and
Rhodes University initiative.
Washington Post
The continent's leaders respond
weakly to Robert Mugabe's murderous
repression.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008;
Page A14
ASHA-ROSE MIGIRO, a United Nations deputy secretary general,
bluntly told
the African Union summit Monday that the crisis in Zimbabwe
presented "a
moment of truth for regional leaders." Sadly, those leaders
failed to rise
to the occasion. Yesterday, the summit, badly divided between
democrats
outraged by Robert Mugabe's campaign of terror against his own
people and
dictators who have applied similar repression, could agree only
on a weak
statement calling for a "unity government." The truth the leaders
dodged is
that there can be no political peace in Zimbabwe until Mr. Mugabe
and the
clique of thugs around him give up power -- and that, in turn, is
unlikely
to happen if Zimbabwe's African neighbors do not apply tangible
diplomatic
and economic sanctions.
Both Mr. Mugabe and his
opposition, which defeated him in a March 29
election, have publicly
rejected the unity government proposal, which has
been peddled mainly by
such apologists for Mr. Mugabe as South African
President Thabo Mbeki. The
general idea is that Zimbabwe would adopt the
model of Kenya, which formed a
coalition government after a disputed
election last year. But Raila Odinga,
the Kenyan opposition leader who
became prime minister in that accord, was
among those who called for an
entirely different course of action on
Zimbabwe. The African Union, Mr.
Odinga said, should expel Mr. Mugabe's
government "and send peace forces to
Zimbabwe to ensure free and fair
elections."
Encouragingly, a number of other African leaders have taken a
similar stand
against the 84-year-old strongman, who all but destroyed his
once prosperous
country even before launching his murderous campaign this
year to reverse
the election results. Botswana also called for Mr. Mugabe's
ouster from the
African Union and the Southern African Development
Community; Liberia and
Sierra Leone, two formerly failed states that are
recovering thanks to
internationally sponsored elections, lobbied for a
formal condemnation of
the regime. The problem is that Mr. Mugabe is not the
only autocrat in the
African Union -- the fellow thugs who embraced him at
the summit included
its host, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak.
Africa's failure
means that the challenge of Zimbabwe must now be taken up
by the U.N.
Security Council; Mr. Mugabe spurned its unanimous vote in favor
of
postponing the one-sided runoff election he staged last week. The United
States is circulating an appropriately tough resolution that would declare
Mr. Mugabe's new mandate illegitimate, freeze the assets of key associates
and apply an arms embargo against his regime. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations, boldly predicted that some action will be
taken, despite the predictable resistance of China and South Africa. "If
there is no response," he asked, "what does that say about the council?"
Answer: It would say that the United Nations is no more prepared than the
African Union is to protect a suffering nation from a criminal
government.
New York Times
By MARK Y.
ROSENBERG
Published: July 2, 2008
Johannesburg, South Africa
NOW
that President Robert Mugabe has been sworn into a sixth term after an
election widely viewed as illegitimate, what is the rest of the world going
to do about it?
So far, the response has been slow or ineffective;
the United Nations
Security Council has managed to pass only watered-down
condemnations of Mr.
Mugabe's electoral terror because of resistance from
South Africa, China and
Russia. And Tuesday, the African Union urged Mr.
Mugabe to join in a
power-sharing agreement - a government of national
unity.
But a better idea may be for Zimbabwe's elected officials to cut
the
84-year-old Mr. Mugabe out altogether - by getting rid of the office of
president.
At first glance that may appear difficult: the Zimbabwean
regime is marked
by an extremely powerful executive presidency coupled with
a largely
neutered Parliament. Nearly all state power now rests with Mr.
Mugabe, who
has run the country since independence in 1980, and now presides
over a
nation with severe fuel and food shortages and an inflation rate of
more
than a million percent a year.
Yet it is possible for the
Parliament to jettison the presidency. Recall
that Zimbabwe's parliamentary
elections in March gave the opposition party,
the Movement for Democratic
Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai, 109 seats in
the House of Assembly to 97
for Mr. Mugabe's party, ZANU-PF. Though by no
means flawless, these
elections were not marred by the same degree of
violence and intimidation as
the recent presidential election, in which the
winner of the first round,
Mr. Tsvangirai, withdrew from the race in fear
for his life and those of his
supporters.
The Movement for Democratic Change's slight majority is a
relatively
accurate depiction of the country's political landscape, giving
both sides
significant representation in Parliament, with the M.D.C.
controlling the
210-seat lower house, and the parties effectively tied in
the Senate. That
would allow a Prime Minister Tsvangirai to govern while
still requiring his
party to compromise with ZANU-PF to gain the two-thirds
majority needed to
pass constitutional amendments - like getting rid of the
presidency for
good. That would also help protect ZANU-PF supporters,
including military
officers, from state-sponsored revenge.
More
immediately, a newly empowered Parliament would give reformist elements
in
ZANU-PF a forum in which to conduct politics and make deals. The party is
no
longer a monolith: former Finance Minister Simba Makoni ran for president
against Mr. Mugabe in the first round, and there are leaders within ZANU-PF
who are more than willing to abandon the "old man" given the opportunity to
do so. These leaders - including Gen. Solomon Mujuru and former Home Affairs
Minister Dumiso Dabengwa - are the natural negotiating partners of the
Movement for Democratic Change, not the indefatigable Mr. Mugabe and his
coterie of hard-liners.
The newly elected parliamentarians haven't
been sworn in yet, and some seats
remain contested. But once they find a way
to meet, they could rather
quickly declare the Parliament sovereign and
terminate Mr. Mugabe's reign.
In the last few decades, African countries
like Benin and Mali made
transitions from authoritarian rule by taking
similar actions at so-called
national conferences.
What's more, a
sovereign parliament with significant ZANU-PF backing could
credibly offer
amnesty deals to the generals who had sustained Mr. Mugabe's
tyranny.
Although distasteful, such amnesty deals would be critical to any
lasting
settlement and would be far easier to achieve without Mr. Mugabe in
the
picture - particularly if the Parliament's sovereignty were recognized
by
the African Union and the United Nations.
A parliamentary government
would have the virtue of not only dislodging Mr.
Mugabe, but assuring a more
democratic Zimbabwe in the future. Indeed,
Zimbabwe began as a parliamentary
democracy, but Mr. Mugabe found that form
of government too restrictive and
abolished the office of prime minister in
1987, concentrating power in an
executive presidency.
Political scientists have demonstrated that
parliamentary regimes are more
likely to remain democratic than their
presidential counterparts. Power and
legitimacy in the new regime would be
vested in a representative body, not a
single person or office. Moreover,
parliaments are institutionally
appropriate for politically and ethnically
divided societies like Zimbabwe:
they ensure representation for political
minorities and generally require
compromise in order to form
governments.
With other geriatric presidents clinging to power throughout
Africa - Omar
Bongo in Gabon and Paul Biya in Cameroon are but two examples
- more
Zimbabwe-like crises may be on the horizon. The international
community
would be well served to support institutional alternatives to the
continent's
over-empowered executives, beginning with a parliamentary (and
free)
Zimbabwe.
Mark Y. Rosenberg is the southern Africa analyst for
Freedom House.
iafrica.com
Article By:
Wed, 02 Jul 2008
07:04
The "horrid nightmare" in Zimbabwe showed what happened when people
were
prepared to kill for their leaders, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on
Tuesday.
His comment, during a panel discussion at the University of Cape
Town,
followed assertions last month by leaders of the African National
Congress
Youth League and Cosatu that they were ready to kill for ANC
president Jacob
Zuma.
Killing for Zuma and Mugabe
"We have to
remind some in our country that there are those in Zimbabwe who
have been
ready to kill for Mr Mugabe," said Tutu.
"See what happens.
"They
[the South Africans] speak about a revolution. Now, I don't know what
that
refers to, but whatever it is, that revolution is not going to be
sustained
and preserved by intemperate, almost inane utterances.
"That revolution,
the dream that is South Africa, the promise that is South
Africa, that is
going to be preserved when you and I are vigilant, you and I
preserve
freedom, you and I stand up for justice... you and I say, hey, our
people
did not shed blood for nothing."
South Africa's experiment in human
relations had to succeed not only for the
sake of its people, but also for
the sake of Africa and the world.
Tutu urged African leaders to confound
Afro-pessimists and declare that last
week's poll in which incumbent Robert
Mugabe was returned as president was
illegitimate.
They should insist
on negotiations for a transitional government in which
the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change would have "the prominent
part".
Academic Wilmot James, another member of the panel, said
United Nations
peacekeeping troops should be sent to protect the Zimbabwean
people against
further abuse.
This was possible under the new
international doctrine whereby the global
community had a responsibility to
protect citizens of countries where the
state failed in its own duty to
protect them.
This doctrine was developed in direct response to the
world's failure to
intervene in Rwanda, and the controversial interventions
in Somalia, Bosnia
and Kosovo.
SA has failed Zimbabwe
He said
he was tired of the "smug arrogance" of the South African government
on the
Zimbabwe issue.
It was "hugging and coddling a dictator" for reasons that
defied rationality
and diplomatic progress.
Businesswoman and former
UCT vice chancellor Mamphela Ramphele said the
South African government had
to shoulder the largest portion of blame for
promoting a culture of impunity
in Zimbabwe, a culture that had led to the
reproduction of the apartheid
killing ground Vlakplaas in many places in
Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe and
South Africa had a culture of personalised politics that
invested too much
power in leaders.
Noting that young South Africans were pledging to kill
for Zuma, she asked
what kind of democracy could be built on such a
foundation.
For too long South Africa had gloried in its image as an
international
wunderkind.
"We are now messing up big time in some
areas," she said.
The 2009 general election was an opportunity for South
Africans to ensure
their vote was not taken for granted by any political
party.
"The limits of impunity are within our power to set. The question
is whether
we are prepared to do so before it is too late."
The panel
discussion was part of the "difficult dialogues" series organised
by the
Economic Justice Initiative.
Sapa
The American Dictator
By Erin
Wildermuth
Published 7/2/2008 12:07:19 AM
On Sunday Robert Mugabe was
inaugurated for his sixth term as President of
Zimbabwe, continuing a
26-year legacy. This comes after credible allegations
that the recent
election cycle fell short of the desired standard of freedom
and
fairness.
The international community is in uproar. Mugabe has been
de-knighted. No
one will invite him to tea or to play cricket. America is
implementing
sanctions. Journalists are condemning him left and
right.
The rhetoric is near universal: Mugabe has no right to rule the
country
because of the way he conducted himself during elections. He
abducted
opposition leaders, arrested journalists, and watched people vote
under
threat of bodily harm. The African Union (AU) should most certainly
declare
his election a sham and throw him out of the country.
Leaders
of the AU are confused at this because, in many cases, a
condemnation of
Mugabe on that basis would be paramount to condemning
themselves. Just take
a look at some of the men who are being asked to side
against
Mugabe.
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo became the president of Equatorial
Guinea in
1979 by leading a coup d'etat in which the former president,
Nguema's uncle,
was killed. He has held elections in which he consistently
wins 97 percent
of the popular vote. No one believes they are free or
fair.
In 1993 Eritrea became an independent nation and Isaias Afeweki
became its
first president. Since then there has been only one party in the
country.
Afeweki has never called elections. Journalists who dare label him
a
dictator are simply expelled from the country or simply
disappear.
In 1989 a coup against a democratically elected government
brought Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir to power. Bashir has imposed
Sharia law over the
North and is accused of supporting ethnic cleansing in
Darfur. Bashir's
track record includes dissolving parliament (twice),
banning political
parties, and imprisoning opposition
leaders.
President Biya of Cameroon has been re-elected four times since
1975. The
elections have been suspect. He has been appropriating money from
state
enterprises for years and reportedly owns mansions in both Germany and
France. Just this year, Biya amended a two-term limit in Cameroon's new
constitution in order to maintain his 25-year hold on the
country.
Muammar Gaddafi took power in Libya via a coup in 1969. Among
his many
accomplishments he has called for the assassinations of dissenting
Libyans
living overseas, expelled all Italians and Jews from the country and
taken
part in acts of international terrorism. While he is rumored to have
mellowed with old age, his past crimes certainly qualify him as a
dictator.
That's already five of the 53 African leaders who attained and
maintained
their positions of power in much the same way that Mugabe did.
Actually,
Mugabe has only been maintaining his. He at least received the
original
nomination legitimately.
ACCORDING TO THE Washington
Post, Mugabe announced that if anyone dared
point a finger at him he would
"check if that finger were clean or dirty."
If the standard to be measured
against is simply dictatorship, then many
fingers would be dirty.
But
the standard that the rest of the world is asking Africa to uphold
should
have very little to do with dictatorship. Mugabe differs
significantly from
the other African dictators. And, no, it's not because he
doesn't have oil.
Rather, it is because he is mismanaging his country to
financial
ruin.
Zimbabwe is the only country mentioned whose annual GDP growth has
been
negative since 1999. It is the only country whose inflation rate has
surpassed 100,000 percent. Yes, you read that right. One hundred thousand
percent.
His country's economy was once the fastest growing of the
continent. Before
Mugabe began a campaign of nationalizing white-owned farms
and giving them
to his friends instead of to competent farmers, Zimbabwe was
considered the
breadbasket of Africa. In only a few years, the country went
from being a
provider of regional food relief to a desperate
beggar.
No other dictator has this track record of destruction. Sure,
they commit
egregious acts of terror upon their people. There is no freedom
of press,
money is stolen by state officials and journalists are imprisoned.
They
certainly won't be winning any Nobel prizes, but the extent to which
their
activities affect the general population is small potatoes compared to
ruining a country's entire economy.
Not to mention that changing
social habits of cronyism and nepotism is not a
feasible short-term goal.
Removing one dictator will almost certainly lead
to the instatement of
another. In those cases where is does not, luck seems
to be the primary
factor.
If the dictator is at least getting the economics right, if the
country is
developing at a steady rate and moving towards sustainable
industries, then
standard of living will continue to grow despite corrupt
leaders.
Mugabe isn't really being called out because of the fraudulent
elections.
The West would be willing to turn a blind eye to his cronyism and
even some
acts of violence. What the West will not tolerate is his
mismanagement of
the Zimbabwean economy, to the detriment of not only his
citizens but all
the countries in the region.
Leaders in the AU
should recognize this and hold Mugabe accountable for his
actions. Their
fingers are not "dirty" compared to his. They haven't
inflicted famine,
grinding poverty, and 100,000 percent inflation on their
peoples.
Erin Wildermuth is a Koch Journalism Fellow at The
American Spectator.
American Jewish World Service (AJWS)
Date: 01 Jul 2008
INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT AND HUMANITARIAN ORGANIZATION DECRIES FRAUDULENT
ELECTION AND
FEARS FOR PUBLIC WELL-BEING
212.792.2893
New York, NY; July 1,
2008 - Ruth W. Messinger and James Meier, respectively
president and
chairman of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), today issued
a statement
expressing solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe and calling on
the
government to grant its citizens fair and peaceful elections and the
right
to live without daily fear of violence. AJWS's statement follows a
presidential run-off election marred by attacks on civilians and physical
intimidation by the ruling party.
For more than 20 years, AJWS has
supported grassroots projects promoting
civil society and human rights in
the developing world, including Zimbabwe
where AJWS has been partnering with
community development organizations for
the past 10 years. The political
turmoil in Zimbabwe comes amidst a period
of historic inflation and
unemployment and also at a time when HIV/AIDS is
taking a tremendous toll on
communities throughout the country.
In the days leading up to the run-off
election between challenger Morgan
Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe,
Tsvangirai was repeatedly detained
by government authorities; one of his key
advisors was arrested on treason
charges; and there were widespread reports
that opposition supporters and
their families, including young children,
were targeted for acts of violence
and murder by agents acting on behalf of
Mugabe. Fearing for his personal
safety, Tsvangirai ultimately withdrew and
sought refuge in the Dutch
Embassy.
The run-off election was called a
'sham' by President George W. Bush. The
African Union said the election
'fell short' of that body's standards and
the United Nations Deputy
Secretary General told the New York Times that the
growing humanitarian
crisis in Zimbabwe represents the 'single greatest
challenge to regional
stability' and that the election sets a 'dangerous
precedent'.
In
their joint statement, Messinger, who is currently in South Africa, and
Meier said the following:
'We stand by the citizens of Zimbabwe who
were recently denied the basic
human right of being able to select a leader
through a fair, peaceful and
democratic process. We are appalled by the
reports of violence and
intimidation directed at Zimbabweans who are
suspected to be supporters of
the opposition. Our connection to the
Zimbabwean people is deep and we are
very fearful for what Zimbabwe's future
may hold.
'This is clearly a nation in crisis. Unemployment has reached
80%; inflation
is at more that 160,000%; and nearly 2 million people in
Zimbabwe suffer
from AIDS. Increased hunger, due to skyrocketing food prices
and political
turmoil, has led to a broader surge in violence that has
reportedly
displaced more than 10,000 children. In neighboring South Africa,
we are
seeing what had been a stream of refugees from Zimbabwe swell to a
river in
recent weeks.
'Zimbabwe, once called the 'breadbasket of
Africa', is on the verge of
becoming the world's next humanitarian
catastrophe.'
Media Contact: Joshua Berkman, Associate Director of Media
and Marketing