The ZIMBABWE Situation Our thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe
- may peace, truth and justice prevail.

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New Zimbabwe

Annan's blast at Mugabe

By Staff Reporter
Last updated: 07/07/2004 02:40:58
THE United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan on Tuesday fired a
thinly-veiled broadside at Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe for refusing to
hand over power.

Annan urged African despots to "pass the baton to the next generation". His
counsel, delivered in Ethiopia at the opening session of the African Union,
would have been uncomfortable listening for Mugabe, in power for 24 years.

"There is no greater wisdom and no clearer mark of statesmanship than
knowing when to pass the torch to a new generation. And no government should
manipulate or amend the constitution to hold on to office beyond prescribed
term limits," he said to applause.

Annan's rebuke was seen as a direct attack on Mugabe who has been in power
since Zimbabwe's independence in 1980. His comments came just 24 hours after
the African Union broke with tradition, releasing a damning report on
Zimbabwe's human rights abuses.

Annan said the new spirit of democratic empowerment in Africa had to find a
home in every African country. For this to happen, politics had to be
inclusive, and a careful institutional balance needed to be preserved.

This included:
. regular free and fair elections;
. a credible opposition whose role was respected;
. an independent judiciary which upholds the rule of law;
. a free and independent press;
. effective civilian control over the military; and
. a vibrant civil society.

"Let us pledge that the days of indefinite one-man or one-party governments
are behind us," he said.

There was no direct response from Zimbabwean officials but speaking directly
after Annan, outgoing AU chairman Joaquim Chissano said: "Some of us felt
that he was pointing his finger for those of us who are not following the
right direction."
Chissano, who is outgoing president of Mozambique, said Africans accepted
this welcoming the pointing of fingers at each other as envisaged in the
AU's peer review mechanism.

Chissano also took the opportunity to propose Swahili as the African lingua
franca for the AU, delivering his speech in that language.

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New Zimbabwe

      MASOLA WA DABUDABU HOPEWELL

      My flight into exile
      Last updated: 07/06/2004 22:56:08
      ONCE upon a time, I felt that my life in Zimbabwe was not how it was
supposed to be. I felt there was something lacking and that there was
someone lurking in the alleys ready to pounce on me because of my
convictions and beliefs.

      The State could not guarantee my safety as a citizen. My life lacked
the security that a law abiding citizen would normally enjoy; all because I
wrote what I thought was the truth about a regime gone out of control. My
innocent political convictions earned the unlawful chagrin of the lawless
regime; with various arms state mechanisms competing to disable my voice!

      Leaving the country that was led and is still led by the killer regime
was the best I could do. I left in a huff. I did not even have the chance to
say bye to my loved ones. As daring as I am; I could not even post a small
note to bid the torturous facets of the regime a farewell. I left in a
hurry. I left my children. I left my loved ones. I left my friends. More
importantly, I left the bulwark of my enemies.

      I consider myself a loving father, perhaps a bit selfish because when
I left, I never told my children what was happening. They also saw me in
intense conversations with my sister and her husband! I was actually
organising for their up-keep at my sister's place. At least I was glad that
my sister, so dear to me; would be a pillar of hope and support for my
children during my absence from the land of strife.

      My sister gladly took my children and provided them with the comfort
they could possibly need. Her husband would naturally offer the father
figure-head to my little darlings whom I love so much! I was confident that
I had left my children in a family environment! I missed my little brats and
I know they missed me; yet we all had clear consciences that they were well
catered for for their physical and physiological needs!

      As a truly responsible father, when I got a little of this and a
little of that, I did remember to share with my children, my sister, her
husband and their children. It was quiet a pleasure to send this or that to
them. I know that everything I sent was appreciated, however small it was.
Whilst I missed my children; I was happy that they were getting what I
considered the bare necessities given the shortages and the inflationary
prices in Zimbabwe.

            "I wish I could strangle someone! If I were in Zimbabwe, I would
have committed murder to avenge the abuse of my daughter!"
            MASOLA WA DABUDABU
      Life is not fair. Early last year, my sister fell ill and within three
weeks of her illness she passed away. It was traumatic for her children, my
children, her husband and myself. I was so close to her and she was so dear
to my children. I cannot state how loving she was to her little ones.
Needless to say, she was buried in my absence and my heart bled for her. I
would be naive to start wondering what took my sister. It was the plague.
She succumbed to one of the deadly opportunistic diseases of AIDS.

      After mourning my sister, I had to tackle the quandary of the up-keep
of my kids. I made frantic phone calls to this and that relative to see how
best my kids would be catered for. Eventually I talked to my brother-in-law,
my sister's widower. He was kind. He would continue to look after my kids
until such time that he felt he could not. After-all my kids and his had
developed a bond that made it difficult to separate them from his. Being my
nieces and nephews, his kids had even some resemblance to mine. So; it was
passed between my late sister's husband and myself that he would remain with
my kids.

      As agreed between my brother-in-law and myself, my kids remained at
his place and continued to enjoy the privileges they had enjoyed when my
sister was still alive.

      Of my two kids that were at my sister's place there was Sylvia, born
14 February 1989. Well, I do not discriminate my children; but in this case
I would say Sylvia was my little girl whom I liked so much more and she knew
it. This did not however antagonise my relationship with the other kid!

      I shall for-ever term the month of June the season of the witch. It
was in June that I left Zimbabwe with the fear of persecution supreme. It
was in June last year that my sister and my mother died. It was in the moth
of June this year that I got devastating news from home that my lovely
daughter, fifteen year old Sylvia was pregnant! It was in the month of June
that I sadly learnt that my brother-in-law, the widower of my late sister
who died from AIDS related diseases was responsible for my daughter's
predicament.

      I wept.

      I could not imagine my brother-in-law; with his health very much
frail; doing what he did to my daughter. I would not have thought that he
was going to be that evil to my daughter. For God's sake my daughter is
younger than his own son and she used to play with his own little daughter.
I was devastated. I remain devastated. My heart bleeds for my daughter whose
life has been ruined by a sick man who is older than me. I pity my daughter
whose education was cut short by a man I trusted; someone who had been a
father figure-head to her!

      I have to mention that my daughter is now almost seven months
pregnant. Knowing that she was pregnant, this brute had the guts to take my
money, pay the expensive school fees in May as if everything was alright.
When the school authorities decided to expel my daughter from school; he had
the audacity to send his girl-friend to collect her from school. Luckily the
school authorities had already investigated the whole issue and they refused
to hand her over to the girl-friend.

      Enter my conniving maternal uncle! My maternal uncle connived with the
lustful brother-in-law and went to collect my daughter. After collecting
her, he straight away handed her over to the brute again! Frantic telephone
calls were then made in an effort to panel beat me into accepting the sordid
affair as a forgettable one! I refused to be part of a scandal on my
daughter. I made it clear that the man had to face charges of statutory
rape. My daughter will only turn sixteen, the age of consent in February
next year!

      Somehow I find the ugly face of politics rearing its head in this
case. My I mention that the said brother-in-law is an ardent follower of
ZANU-PF, being an ex-ZIPRA combatant and serving in Mugabe's army! My
maternal uncle who wanted to cover the bloody trail is also an ex-ZIPRA
combatant; a new farmer and a new convict in the belief that Mugabe is an
earthly god! Also taking a lead in trying to save the neck of this rapist is
my maternal cousin. He is also an ex-ZIPRA combatant and serving as a
Lieutenant in Mugabe's army.

      These people tried to cover up the whole issue. I had to bull-dose my
way so that at least the police interviewed the culprit. Somehow he was
released and I am yet to speak to the investigating officer to get to the
bottom of the case. I hope the dirty hand of politics does not relegate this
serious case of biological terrorism on my daughter to the dust bin. At the
moment I do not know how far the case would go. It is not a good omen that
the perpetrator is out. A rape suspect should not be given bail! He is a
dangerous rapist who has the additional lethality of HIV!

      I would want the culprit to hang ten times over. I trusted him and he
destroyed that trust. I know that my sister would not mind to see the man
being tormented for his crime. If I could have my way, even those relatives
of mine who tried to pervert the course of justice should face the music.
Unfortunately they belong to the 'right' party. They can escape any judicial
ordeal with ease.

      I wish I could strangle someone! If I were in Zimbabwe, I would have
committed murder to avenge the abuse of my daughter! But then I cannot be in
Zimbabwe because of Mugabe!

      Law breakers beware! This goes for all those who do crimes and hide
behind the ZANU-PF bloody shadows! The time shall come. There shall be
gnashing of teeth!

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SABC

UN says sub-Saharan Africa faces food emergency

July 06, 2004, 15:16

Millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa face food emergencies this year
because of locusts, poor rains, civil strife and HIV/Aids, the UN Food and
Agriculture Organisation (Fao) says. Twenty-three countries in the region
are seriously affected by food insecurity, according to Fao's latest Africa
Report.

Sub-Saharan Africa's food aid requirement for this year is estimated at 2.9
million tonnes, compared to about four million tonnes last year, the Fao
said.

In Sudan, the humanitarian crisis in the greater Darfur region has had grave
consequences with more than 1.2 million people forced from their homes and
fields, the report said.

Despite good rains and a record cereal crop last year, prospects for the
2004 season are extremely poor as a result.

"Reports paint a grim picture where the conflict has engulfed almost all
parts of Greater Darfur, disrupting agricultural production and other
essential activities."

In eastern Africa, poor rains and the lingering effects of past droughts and
conflicts have increased the likelihood of serious food shortages in several
countries.

"In Somalia, the situation is very alarming," the report said, singling out
the drought in the northeast as particularly worrying.

In Ethiopia, rains have been inadequate, while in Eritrea the likelihood of
another drought-reduced harvest is very high. In Uganda, crop prospects are
unfavourable because of erratic rains and Kenya's unfavourable crop
prospects are compounded by cases of aflatoxin poisoning, a poison found in
mouldy crops.

In western Africa, the overall food supply situation remains satisfactory
reflecting good harvests in 2003, the FAO said, but food difficulties
persist in several countries.

An upsurge of desert locusts poses a serious threat to this year's coming
crops in the Sahel, while insecurity and the lack of agricultural input
continue to cause problems in Ivory Coast.

In the Central African Republic, cereal production is expected to fall for
the third year running as a result of civil strife, while in the Congo
Republic a delicate security situation is still hampering humanitarian
assistance.

Southern Africa is beset with HIV/Aids and drought and the preliminary
estimate of the 2004 cereal harvest there puts production at about 20
million tonnes, roughly a 4% drop from last year. Production of maize, the
region's most important crop, declined by 9% from the previous year to 14
million tonnes.

In Zimbabwe, cereal production remains well below average levels, with
anticipated food shortages for 2.3 million rural people - and at least as
many in urban areas.

The report cited a number of underlying factors including erratic rains,
shortages of seeds and fertiliser, underused commercial farms, and the
impact of HIV/Aids.

"Hyper-inflation, combined with extremely high levels of unemployment,
greatly limit access to food for the most vulnerable people," the FAO
added. - Reuters

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New Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe ministers dodge question time

By Staff Reporter
Last updated: 07/06/2004 22:55:40
QUESTIONS of national importance posed during Parliament's question and
answer session are going unanswered due to non-appearance and in some cases
the late arrival of cabinet ministers.

The session held every Wednesdays consists of questions with and without
notice, generally covering any issue under a particular minister's
jurisdiction.

Last week, when the august House started its business, only one minister,
Paul Magwana, who is in charge of the Public Service, Labour and Social
Welfare ministry, was present.

The majority of ministers trooped in late when parliament was close to a
motion on the Movement for Democratic Change's alleged links with the
British government as well as voting on the Criminal Procedure and Evidence
Act was underway.

Their presence was widely attributed to the fact that the two items were
treated as matters of priority by the ruling Zanu PF party.

Their absenteeism from providing answers led the MDC's chief whip, Innocent
Gonese, to lodge a complaint with the Deputy Speaker, Edna Madzongwe.

"I just want to raise a concern and l have raised it before that on
Wednesdays, we do not have ministers coming to answer questions. We have got
only the Acting Leader of the House and one minister. I just want to place
on record that previously the Leader of the House has undertaken that in
future he will ensure that ministers attend question time and it does not
seem to be happening .We will be grateful if your office could assist and
make sure that the Leader of the House complies with his undertaking," said
Gonese.

In some instances after their arrival, some ministers sought questions
directed at them to be deferred to a later date.

This was despite the fact that some of them had asked for the same questions
to be waived before, in addition to a notice given, effectively giving them
time to prepare the answers.Parliament's question and answer time generally
reveals how a minister is well versed with issues under his or her
portfolio, judging by the way he or she tackles questions posed.
From the Daily Mirror
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New Zimbabwe

Mbeki stance on Zim baffles UK MPs

By Henry Makiwa
Last updated: 07/06/2004 22:56:09
THE name of South African president Thabo Mbeki once again emerged
prominently in a House of Commons parliamentary debate on Zimbabwe last week
in which British MPs fell just short of fingering him as the major stumbling
block to a speedy resolution of the country's political crisis.

Mbeki, who has for the past year adamantly professed presiding over talks
between ruling Zanu PF party and the opposition MDC, was criticised for his
"quite diplomacy" tactics on President Robert Mugabe's increasingly despotic
regime.

In a lengthy and often heated debate in the House of Commons last Thursday,
the British secretary of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jack Straw,
expressed concern over Mbeki's slow approach at addressing Zimbabwe's
worsening crisis.

"The Prime Minister (British Premier Tony Blair) and I have had an ongoing
dialogue with President Mbeki of South Africa and his foreign minister,
Nkosazana Zuma, and we have encouraged them to shift their position," Straw
told British parliamentarians during the near six-hour long debate.

"We respect the view that they are taking but we do not altogether agree
with it. But we have encouraged President Mbeki to continue with the private
talks between the MDC and Zanu PF that he says have begun to develop. We
have yet to see a positive result, but if they produce one we will be the
first to cheer," he said.

Straw's statements echo sentiments of Bulawayo's Catholic Archbishop Pius
Ncube who, in a recorded speech that was put out in London at the UN Torture
Day commemorations a fortnight ago, blamed Mbeki for having a "club
mentality" towards Mugabe.

On Thursday another British MP, Henry Bellingham, called for more
international pressure to be put on Mbeki and subsequently on the ageing
Mugabe's regime.

Bellingham said: "The greatest deficit is in the international response. I
have to say that it has been lamentable. For a start, far greater pressure
must bear on Mbeki. He must be told the bold truth that his policy of quiet
diplomacy is dead and buried.

"What happened in his vain promise to President (George) Bush last year that
by June 2004 Zimbabwe's problems would be solved?" Bellingham asked.
Other parliamentarians who participated in the discussion include David
Winnick and the fiery Kate Hoey of the Labour party.

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New Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe life expectancy to drop below 35

By Staff Reporter/Agencies
Last updated: 07/06/2004 22:53:46
THE prevalence of HIV/Aids in Zimbabwe is set to reduce the life expectancy
to below 35 for people born over the next decade, according to shock new
figures released this week.

Across southern Africa, the world's hardest-hit region by Aids, life
expectancy has dropped to 49 and without large-scale treatment programmes
could plummet to below 35 in some countries, a UN AIDS report said Tuesday.

Food shortages hitting at least six countries are also giving AIDS a
"magnifying effect" exacerbating problems surrounding poverty, the plight of
women and the government's ability to respond, the report said.

On average, the prevalence rate in southern Africa is about 25 percent with
Aids and HIV affecting, in order of magnitude for 2003, 38.8% of adults in
Swaziland, 37.3% in Botswana, 28.9% in Lesotho and 24.6% in Zimbabwe.

"In seven African countries where HIV prevalence exceeds 20 percent the
average life expectancy of a person born between 1995 and 2000 is now 49
years - 13 years less than in the absence of Aids," said the UN's 2004
Global report on Aids.

"In the worst affected countries of eastern and southern Africa the
probability of a 15-year-old dying before reaching age 60 has risen
dramatically," said the report, which is being released worldwide.

South Africa, which has the largest number of people living with Aids at 4.8
million, has a prevalence rate of 21.5% while 16.5% of adults are living
with HIV and Aids in Zambia, 21.3% in Namibia, 14.2% in Malawi and 12.2% in
Mozambique.

Infection rates are still climbing in some countries, the report said,
adding that while HIV and Aids may appear to be making fewer inroads in
others, that may be because the death rates conceal the continuing high rate
of new infections.
"In Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the average life expectancy of people
born over the next decade is projected to drop below 35 years in the absence
of anti-retroviral treatment," the report added.

"Unless the Aids response is dramatically strengthened, by 2025, 38 African
countries will have populations which will be 14% smaller than predicted in
the absence of Aids," the report said.

As in the rest of Africa, more women are suffering from HIV and Aids than
men in southern Africa, with 20 women affected for every 10 men in South
Africa.
The UN report said a combination of factors were working in concert to fan
the spread of Aids in southern Africa.

"These factors include poverty and social instability that result in family
disruption, high levels of other sexually transmitted infections, the low
status of women, sexual violence and ineffective leadership during critical
periods in the spread of HIV."

A food crisis in the region is also worsening the situation.

"In six of the 10 highest-prevalence countries - Lesotho, Malawi,
Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe - more than 15 million people
required emergency food aid due to widespread chronic and acute food
shortages," the report said.

Food shortages were triggered by adverse weather conditions and a "series of
policy and governance-related failures that seriously affected food
production."
"Aids made the situation worse," said the report highlighting countries like
Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe where households with sick adults suffered
"marked reductions in agricultural production and income generation."

The report said Aids has spread rapidly in many southern African countries,
including Swaziland where the average prevalence among pregnant women was
39% - up from from 34% in 2000 and only 4% in 1990.

Only Angola appears to have been spared from the ravages of Aids with a
prevalence rate of only 3.9% in 2003, up from 3.7% in 2001, the report said.
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The Herald

Parents in rush to meet examinations deadline

Herald Reporter
THERE was a flurry of activity at most schools in Harare last week as
parents tried to beat Ordinary and Advanced level examinations' registration
deadlines for their children.

While registration for the examinations only began on Monday last week, some
schools have already closed the entries.

Parents who called the Zimbabwe Schools Examinations Council to inquire
about the registration dates were reportedly told to "hurry up and register"
or their children would fail to sit for the examinations.

They described this as "unfair", saying Zimsec should take the blame because
it had taken long to announce the registration dates and the new examination
fees.

Examination fees went up mid-June from $100 to $500 for "O" Level and $1 000
to $5 000 for "A" Level.

But a week after they went up, some schools were already closing entries.

According to staff at Zimsec, it was up to the schools to determine when to
close entries.

As soon as a school was satisfied that all prospective candidates had
registered, it could close entries.

"The last we heard from Zimsec was that the registration dates would be
announced soon and then our children just started telling us that they had
to register by last Friday or else they would not write.

"Yes, as a caring parent, I had the money put aside already but my daughter
is in boarding school and getting the money to her is a process, which might
result in the money taking long to reach her so there should be more time
for registration," said Ms Maria Muchena of Harare.

Others said they did not even have the money and needed time to look around
for it.

"I had set aside the old examination fees because the Government had
indicated that there would be no changes. So, naturally, I would have wanted
more time to get the extra cash," said another parent who spoke on condition
of anonymity.

Hardest hit are those students whose fees are paid under the Basic Education
Assistant Module. They had applied for the new fees only after they were
announced.

It took long for them to get the money in some instances, while in others,
the pupils were told that the money was not available.

The Secretary for Education, Sport and Culture, Dr Stephen Mahere, said the
matter would best be dealt with at the provinces, but efforts to contact
Harare's provincial director for education, Mr Tomax Dhoba, were fruitless.

A snap survey conducted by The Herald yesterday showed that there were still
a few centres open for registration.

Others had already submitted their entries to Zimsec.

Efforts to get a comment from Zimsec's information and publications manager
Mrs Faith Chasokela were unsuccessful.

Previously, Mrs Chasokela had said registration dates would be announced
last week or this week.

Registration for the November examinations was delayed after Government
refused to sanction a proposal by Zimsec to increase examination fees from
$100 to $20 000 per subject for "O" Level and from $1 000 to $100 000 for
each subject for "A" Level. Parents and pupils were becoming anxious at the
continued delay in announcing the new fees and registration dates. There
were also growing fears that the November examinations might not take place.

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The Herald

Small opposition parties resurface ahead of polls

Herald Reporter
THE handful of small opposition political parties which have had very little
impact on the country's political terrain have started resurfacing ahead of
next year's parliamentary elections.

Although next year's parliamentary election is largely expected to be a
two-horse race between the ruling Zanu-PF and the MDC, leaders of some small
opposition parties told The Herald yesterday that they were already making
preparations to contest the polls scheduled for March next year.

Zanu secretary for information and publicity Mr Reketayi Semwayo yesterday
said his party would definitely take part in next year's elections.

"Because of limited resources within our party, we will, however, restrict
our participation to areas where we believe we have significant support and
these are provinces like Manicaland, Masvingo and Harare," said Mr Semwayo.

"One problem we have is that although we are represented in Parliament we
are not beneficiaries of the Political Parties Finances Act. We would have
wanted to contest in all constituencies but we can not."

According to the Political Parties Finances Act, a party which has at least
15 percent of representation in Parliament is entitled to funding from the
State.

The party is currently represented in Parliament by its president, Mr Wilson
Kumbula, who is the MP for Chipinge South.

National Alliance for Good Governance political commissar Mr Douglas
Chihambakwe said although his party was keen to participate, it was still
weighing its options.

He said his party was wary of the violence usually associated with the
elections.

NAGG does not have a substantive president after Dr Shakespeare Maya
relinquished his post to join the MDC recently.

"We have already embarked on a consultative process within our structures to
come up with a common position," said Mr Chihambakwe, who is tipped to
succeed Dr Maya as president.

Small political parties are often dogged by disagreements which subsequently
lead to splits and their inability to stand the political heat.

For example, in the run-up to the March 2002 presidential election, Zapu was
rocked by differences among its leadership which saw Mr Paul Siwela opting
to stand as an independent.

In Manicaland, disagreements within Zanu spilled into the High Court.

Supporters loyal to Ms Vesta Sithole, the wife of the founder of the party,
the late Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, sought a High Court order interdicting
Mr Kumbula from using the party's symbol in registering his name for the
elections.

Zimbabwe's elections have since independence been marked by the emergence of
small parties, which tend to disappear - some of them for good - once
elections are over.

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Global Debate.

On Sunday Zimbabwe tennis players in the form of Cara Black and her brother,
Wayne, made real history at Wimbledon - Cara won the ladies doubles title
with her partner and then took to the court with her brother to win the
mixed doubles title on the same day. Cara is a small person - but obviously
has a big heart. We are all so proud of her and Wayne. Makorokoto.

For the Black family this must be the crowning achievement of a long history
of success on the tennis court. Only sorry her dad could not be there to see
it happen. But Zimbabwe flags were flying and at home here in Zimbabwe we
were watching and cheering.

Its not part of the great debate going on in the world - Darfur, Iraq, the
presidential campaign in the US are all the main news. But for us in this
tiny African State in the middle of the continent it was a sign that life
does go on in the midst of turmoil and conflict. How do you get from a dusty
tennis court in the backyard of your parent's home to winning the premier
tennis titles in the world? By sheer determination plus a little talent. The
other key is clearly committed and determined parents - look at the Williams
sisters.

There must have been many times when Cara felt that it was all a waste of
time - she was never going to get into the big time. When that happened she
had to pick herself up and get the courage to go back out onto the courts to
practice and then to the competitions and lonely hotel rooms. Not easy, but
I bet Sunday made it all worthwhile.

All around me I see despair. Headmasters, who are struggling to keep their
schools running, doctors without medicines, business without orders, hotels
without tourists. People are tired and weary and many are dropping by the
wayside. It is at times like these that you can separate those who will
eventually win and become champions and those who will drop out and be
forgotten. No one says it is easy.

If we needed to be reminded that we do matter there were three important
developments this week - the British Parliament held a full-scale debate on
Zimbabwe for the first time in 7 years, exhibiting a substantial degree of
bipartisan support for the democrats in Zimbabwe. The AU came out with a
damming report on human and political abuse in Zimbabwe and at last Thabo
Mbeki spoke out on the issue of the slow progress in the resolution of the
deepening crisis in Zimbabwe.

The last two items are clearly linked. Mbeki met with the MDC last Sunday,
then spoke to Zanu PF representatives and on Thursday he authorised a
statement by his office to the effect that progress was too slow and that
this was a matter for the AU. On Saturday the AU Executive Council (53
Foreign Ministers) met and adopted a damming report that had been prepared
two years ago and held under wraps until now. Only the Zimbabwe Foreign
Minister objected and his views were noted and the report adopted. That
could not have happened if Mbeki had maintained his protective cover for the
Mugabe regime.

Reading the report makes sobering reading - but for me the most astonishing
thing about this is that the AU has had this report for two years and done
nothing about it until now. But it is comprehensive and honest and we just
hope that today at the Heads of State meeting, the report will be debated
with Mugabe present and he will be told to go and put his house in order. A
week ago I would have said that was impossible - now I am not so sure.

Reading the debate in the British Parliament I was also surprised by the
depth of knowledge and understanding of the Zimbabwe situation and the very
real concern expressed. However it was worrying that there was such a
shortage of ideas as to how to help resolve the crisis. The Conservatives
put forward a 5-point programme that I thought had real merit.

But it all comes back to African leadership. The days are over when the
major western countries could dictate solutions, or even suggest solutions.
We must also accept that in the great debates of the world community, the
Zimbabwe crisis is a minor irritant. A reminder that bad governance can
quickly destroy all that has been created over many years of hard work.

I spent the weekend with the Mayors and Deputy Mayors of the 11 cities and
towns that elected MDC majorities in the recent local government elections.
They are all under siege by a rogue administration that is determined to
undermine any chance of these MDC administrations being successful. Even so,
I was deeply impressed with their commitment and their determination to do
what they can and to continue to do so until we can change central
government. What a privilege to work with these men and women.

We are doing all we can as individuals and as organisations to keep things
going. We are succeeding - under very difficult conditions. But this is
important if we are going to pick up the pieces and start rebuilding one day
soon. Others actually say we should let things slide - the sooner we hit the
bottom the better. The problem with this approach is that it pays little
attention to the needs of those who suffer most in any collapse of this
nature.

This week saw the money supply numbers hit 1000 per cent growth in 12
months. This means that inflation cannot be far behind. This week also saw
the Rand go through the 1000 to 1 barrier for the first time - at Beitbridge
the rate on the street on Friday was 1200 to 1. That is a 50 per cent
devaluation over the official auction rates, which stand at about 860 to 1.
Business is very slow in all sectors. My son and his wife went out to a game
park for their 10th wedding anniversary - they had the whole place to
themselves.

The economic crash continues - I doubt if we have planted 10 000 hectares of
winter wheat and much of this has been planted too late to develop. The
preparations for next year's tobacco crop are even slower than last year -
and we will only market about 20 per cent of our normal crop this year. In
many areas the country is starting to look really destitute - broken signs,

dirty buildings, broken windows, sewerage on the streets, people in rags.

I am one year away from having 5 pension policies mature after a lifetime of
saving. When they mature, their combined value will not buy me one month's
groceries. That is a measure of just how far down we have gone in the past 5
years. It's got nothing to do with our "colonial past", nothing to do with
"globalization", nothing to do with the imperial west. Its just plain greed,
corruption and political tyranny - all self imposed by intelligent, well
educated political leaders who have lost their way.

It is time for them to go.

Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 7th July 2004
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Back to Index

JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURE URGENT LEGAL COMMUNIQUÉ - 5TH JULY 2004

Email: justice@telco.co.zw; justiceforagriculture@zol.co.zw
Internet: www.justiceforagriculture.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
LEGAL COMMUNIQUÉ

Herewith Friday 2nd July 2004 Listing of Section 8 Acquisition
Orders published in the Herald under Lot No. 9 pertaining to 85 properties.
Collection of Section 8 Orders for lodgement of Section 5 Notice objection
letters can be effected at the following address which is not given in the
Herald:

Block 2
Makombe Complex
cnr. Herbert Chitepo Street/Harare Street
Harare
See Mr. Pazavakombewa
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 LAND ACQUISITION ACT (CHAPTER 20:10)
  Vesting of land, taking of materials and
  exercise of rights over land

NOTICE is hereby given, in terms of paragraph (iii) of subsection (1) of
section 8 of the Land Acquisition Act (Chapter 20:10), that the President
has acquired compulsorily the land described in the Schedule for
resettlement purposes.

J L NKOMO,
Minister of Special Affairs in the President's Office in Charge of Lands,
Land Reform and Resettlement.

______________________________________________

LOT 9 SECTION 8 2ND JULY 2004

Bellingwe

2.7.2004.  1.  1847/01.  Maxville Farming (Private) Limited: Bellingwe:
Shenandoah of the Umsungwe Block: 80,9359 ha
2.7.2004.  2.  1338/59.  Moorcroft and Moorcroft: Bellingwe: Remaining
Extent of Lromdraao Estate: 8 420,6127 morgen

Goromonzi

2.7.2004.  3.  2959/71.  Melfort Farm P/L: Goromonzi: Melfort B:
398,2267 morgen
2.7.2004.  4.  8629/99.  Becontree Investments (Private) Limited:
Gormonzi: Rots Der Eeue Estate A: 189,5461 ha
2.7.2004.  5.  11038/97.  Propkept Investments (Private) Limited:
Gormonzi: Remainder of Subdivision C of Learig: 370,5811 ha

Gwelo

2.7.2004.  6.  5508/89.  Christoffel Gideon Laurens: Gwelo: Subdivision
A of De Rust of Fallowfield: 1 027,8196 ha
2.7.2004.  7.  1111/80.  Heynie Lodewikus Kiebenberg: Gwelo: Taranaki of
East Shangani Block: 933,1793 ha
2.7.2004.  8.  211/65.  Freda Mary Kaschula: Gwelo: Remaining Extent of
Subdivision 20 of West Gwelo Block: 1 961,8913 acres
2.7.2004.  9.  3117/73.  Joseph Pytlik and Maria Elizaabeth Pytlik:
Gwelo: "Shaw Lands": 1 284,771 ha
2.7.2004.  10.  4710/90.  Manuel Dos Santos: Gwelo: Lot 75 of the
Umsungwe Block: 389,7143 ha
2.7.2004.  11.  398/66.  James Redmond and Cathering Mary Redmond: Gwelo:
Berkshire of the Prie Scott Block: 1 787,7874 acres
2.7.2004.  12.  1014/71.  Walter James Avery: Gwelo: Gwelo small Holding
28: 239,6509 ha
2.7.2004.  13.  1302/99.  Davis Granite (Private) Limited: Gwelo: La
Rochelle of Bendhu: 102,4531 ha
2.7.2004.  14.  2248/83.  Clive Leopold Hein: Gwelo: Remainder of
Dopton: 2 284,7657 ha
2.7.2004.  15.  2843/72.  Petrus Jacobus Van Der Merwe: Gwelo: Buda: 2
446,9736 ha
2.7.2004.  16.  1949/68.  Ina Stewart Cos: Gwelo: Adamantia: 4 517,6155
acres
2.7.2004.  17.  2559/86.  Hester Antoenetta Mortley-Wood: Gwelo:
Remainder of Dewhurst: 1 357,3013 ha
2.7.2004.  18.  1517/94.  Despute Farm (Private) Limited: Gwelo: Despute
of Ghoko Block: 1 131,3514 ha
2.7.2004.  19.  1353/82.  Michael Edwin Futter: Gwelo: Remainder of Four
Chums Block: 921,4884 ha
2.7.2004.  20.  2107/70.  Colin Charles Barry: Gwelo: Ellangowan of
Foxton: 1 000,0507 cares
2.7.2004.  21.  1248/97.  Chrisgid (Private) Limited: Gwelo: Woodlands:
2 802,5028 ha
2.7.2004.  22.  341/96.  Elsie Hester Herbst: Louisa Antionetta Erasmus;
Anna Magdalena Van Durten and Hendrika Maria Griffiths: Gwelo: Good Hope
of Ghoko Block: 2 213,5004 ha
2.7.2004.  23.  2004/76.  Norman Naisbitt (Private) Limtied: Gwelo:
Hursley Park of Walton: 736,6055 ha
2.7.2004.  24.  2004/76.  Norman Naisbitt (Private) Limtied: Gwelo:
Subdivision A of Staines: 1 070,5754 ha
2.7.2004.  25.  98/47.  Robert Basson: Gwelo: Farm 'Koppies' portion of
East Shangani Block: 1 100 morgen 201 square roots
2.7.2004.  26.  2377/94.  Maliyetu (Private) Limited: Gwelo: Hebron of
Kenilworth: 213,7327 ha
2.7.2004.  27.  870/84.  Arcadia Farm (Private) Limited: Gwelo: Gwelo
Small Holding 26: 215,8126 ha
2.7.2004.  28.  1428/81.  Agnes Particia Mountford, George Mountford and
Godwin Emmaunel Mountford: Gwelo: Fairview C of Fairview A: 501,9196 ha
2.7.2004.  29.  3022/97.  Holyland Farming (Private) Limited: Gwelo: The
Remainder of Lot 3 of Bushy Park 2: 3 946,8085 ha
2.7.2004.  30.  2588/94.  Basil Walter Scheepers: Gwelo: Lot 1G Mnyomi:
224,6212 ha
2.7.2004.  31.  856/79.  Moral Re-Armament: Gwelo: The Remainder of
Gwelo Small Holding 18: 134,726 ha

Hartley

2.7.2004.  32.  3621/97.  Ellingham Investments P/L: Hartley: Remainding
Extent of French Hoek: 581,8641 ha

Lomagundi

2.7.2004.  33.  770/65.  Hilltop Farms (Private) Limited: Lomagundi:
Remaining Extent of Hilltop: 2 473,9504 acres
2.7.2004.  34.  2558/60.  Mhangura Copper Mines Limited: Lomagundi: Lot
1 of Suiwerspruit: 750,008 acres
2.7.2004.  35.  1991/72.  Lomagundi Smelting & Mining (Private) Limited:
Lomagundi: The Remainder of Subdivision B of Sinoias Drift: 242,0565 ha
2.7.2004.  36.  998/81.  J J Estates (Private) Limited: Lomagundi: Alfa
A: 1 021,0565 ha

Makoni

2.7.2004.  37.  4482/86.  Hanging Rock (Private) Limited: Makoni:
Hangklip: 1 239,69 ha
2.7.2004.  38.  5128/74.  Dagbreek Estates (Private) Limited: Makoni:
Dagbreek: 486,5422 ha

Que Que

2.7.2004.  39.  2937/00.  Michael Barry Jansen: Que Que: Xanthippe of
the Main Belt Block: 1 333,0262 ha
2.7.2004.  40.  1491/97.  Eggton (Private) Limited: Que Que: Boulderwood
of the Main Belt Block: 1 284,7771 ha
2.7.2004.  41.  862/84.  N G Coetzee and Son (Private) Limited : Que Que:
Subdivision 4 of East Clare Block: 41,2790 ha
2.7.2004.  42.  4284/89.  Brimley Estate (Private) Limited: Que Que:
Bezuidenhout's Kraal: 1 284,7771 ha
2.7.2004.  43.  3124/72.  Henry Swan Elsworth: Que Que: Kilkenny: 2
569,5570 ha
2.7.2004.  44.  188/84.  Richard James Danvers: Que Que: Maliami:
809,3567 ha
2.7.2004.  45.  660/61.  Bealuieu Farm Holdings (Private) Limited: Que
Que: Lot 1 of Newlands: 3 065,1754 acres
2.7.2004.  46.  2691/81.  Harold John Corbelt: Que Que: Bridgewater of
the Quantocks: 987,2561 ha
2.7.2004.  47.  2348/77.  Colin Charles Barry: Que Que: Remainder of
Kingswood of the Main Belt Block: 877,0381 ha
2.7.2004.  48.  3671/72.  Eduan Estate (Private) Limited: Que Que:
Remainder of Lot 1 of Sherwood Block: 794,7301 ha
2.7.2004.  49.  367/72.  Eduan Estate (Private) Limited: Que Que:
Toekoms Droom of Sherwood Park of Sherwood Block: 368,1420 ha
2.7.2004.  50.  292/98.  Junita Farm (Private) Limited: Que Que: Junita
of the Main Belt Block: 1 675,7662 ha
2.7.2004.  51.  2666/73.  Caberfeigh Estate (Private) Limited: Que Que:
Runnimede: 940,4568 ha
2.7.2004.  52.  2666/73.  Caberfeigh Estate (Private) Limited: Que Que:
Collynie: 1 027,8216 ha
2.7.2004.  53.  363/01.  Finchley Farms (Private) Limited: Que Que:
Finchley: 467,6500 ha
2.7.2004.  54.  616/79.  Hilton Stewart Gifford: Que Que: Kabanga Ranch:
8 604,6302 ha
2.7.2004.  55.  2335/81.  Anthony David Graham Blarke: Que Que:
Remainder of Bon Accord of the Main Belt Block: 188,6096 ha
2.7.2004.  56.  4313/87. Mark Anthony Macgregor: Que Que: Lot 1 of
Graydene: 124,6356 ha
2.7.2004.  57.  1279/89.  Derek John Louis Austen: Que Que: Lot 2 of
Matchebel: 258,4497 ha
2.7.2004.  58.  2020/81.  Edwin Ridley Trewin Parker: Que Que: Gwengula:
1 417,3662 ha
2.7.2004.  59.  3493/00.  Theunes Farming Company (Private) Limited: Que
Que: Lime Ridge of the Main Belt Block: 1 564,0134 ha
2.7.2004.  60.  1095/98.  Douglas Harry Hensberg and Heather Hensberg:
Que Que: Summerfield of East Clare Block: 102,0557 ha
2.7.2004.  61.  670/76.  Paul Redin Savory: Que Que: Remainder of Loozan
Estate: 2 733,7627 ha
2.7.2004.  62.  413/64.  Patrick Joseph Burke: Que Que: Circle G Ranch:
17 264,2780 ha
2.7.2004.  63.  2742/88.  Jenville (Private) Limited: Que Que:
Sandspruit Estate: 1 058,0361 ha
2.7.2004.  64.  4309/88.  Maria Elizabeth Steyn: Que Que: Long Valley of
Belgrave: 808,1267 ha
2.7.2004.  65.  141/87.  Pavloma (Private) Limited: Que Que: Maryann: 3
419,8564 ha
2.7.2004.  66.  1687/86.  Que Que Cinema Investment Company (Private)
Limited: Que Que: Solitaire: 1 735,1571 ha
2.7.2004.  67.  2639/80.  H E Elsworth & Son: Que Que: Gabbari
Extension: 2 589,1470 ha
2.7.2004.  68.  226/90.  D I J (Private) Limited: Que Que: Remainder of
Glen Arroch of the Main Belt Block: 1 221,2191 ha

Selukwe

2.7.2004.  69.  2065/76.  Arcadia Farm (Private) Limited: Selukwe:
Valentia: 815,4052 ha

Urungwe

2.7.2004.  70.  8214/96.  R K Farm (Private) Limtied: Urungwe: Tengwe
89: 1 472,2473 ha
2.7.2004.  71.  4196/90.  Ropet Investments (Private) Limited: Urungwe:
Lot 1 of Massau Estate: 1 011,7106 ha
2.7.2004.  72.  8631/88.  M Liebenberg (Private) Limited: Urungwe:
Tengwe 55: 273,3247 ha
2.7.2004.  73.  8631/88.  M Liebenberg (Private) Limited: Urungwe:
Tengwe 62: 416,7007 ha
2.7.2004.  74.  5685/73.  Charles Aarthur Parker: Urungwe: Tengwe 119:
371,4274 ha
2.7.2004.  75.  812/89.  D A Duvenage (Private) Limited: Urungwe: Tengwe
57: 304,2572 ha
2.7.2004.  76.  812/89.  D A Duvenage (Private) Limited: Urungwe: Tengwe
56: 300,9224 ha
2.7.2004.  77.  812/89. D A Duvenage (Private) Limited: Urungwe: Tengwe
61: 513,1443 ha
2.7.2004.  78.  2971/76.  Nicholas Philip Wiggins: Urungwe: Tengwe 117:
298,1460 ha
2.7.2004.  79.  7254/86.  Hendrick Pieter Terblanche: Urungwe: Lot 1 of
Temple Combe: 386,7580 ha
2.7.2004.  80.  2244/71.  James Melville Barker: Urungwe: Nyahoa Estate:
1 328,2998 ha
2.7.2004.  81.  180/85.  Tesson (Private) Limited: Urungwe: Remainder of
Kyogle: 811,0338 ha
2.7.2004.  82.  4492/2000.  Ruggick Investments (Private) Limited:
Urungwe: Kemasembi: 281,8765 ha
2.7.2004.  83.  7058/96.  Danasha Farming P/L: Urungwe: Tinhini:
448,1462 ha
2.7.2004.  84.  7254/86.  Hendrick Pieter Terblanche: Urungwe: Lot 1 of
Dundazi: 362,5971 ha
2.7.2004.  85.  2912/85.  Rockwood Estate P/L: Urungwe: Remaining Extent
of Ansdell: 696,7998 ha

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE JAG TEAM

JAG Hotlines:
(011) 612 595 If you are in trouble or need advice,
(011) 205 374
(011) 863 354 please don't hesitate to contact us -
(011) 431 068
                                we're here to help!
263 4 799 410 Office Lines
Back to the Top
Back to Index

JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURE URGENT LEGAL COMMUNIQUÉ - 5th July 2004

Email: justice@telco.co.zw; justiceforagriculture@zol.co.zw
Internet: www.justiceforagriculture.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
LEGAL COMMUNIQUÉ

Herewith Friday 2nd July 2004 Listing of Section 5 Acquisition
Orders published in the Herald under Lot No. 148 pertaining to 87
properties.
The above listings will be circulated on Monday 5th July 2004.
_______________________________________________

Collection of Section 8 Orders for lodgement of Section 5 Notice objection
letters can be effected at the following address which is not given in the
Herald:

Block 2
Makombe Complex
cnr. Herbert Chitepo Street/Harare Street
Harare
See Mr. Pazavakombewa
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 LAND ACQUISITION ACT (CHAPTER 20:10)
  Vesting of land, taking of materials and
  exercise of rights over land

NOTICE is hereby given, in terms of paragraph (iii) of subsection (1) of
section 8 of the Land Acquisition Act (Chapter 20:10), that the President
has acquired compulsorily the land described in the Schedule for
resettlement purposes.

J L NKOMO,
Minister of Special Affairs in the President's Office in Charge of Lands,
Land Reform and Resettlement.

______________________________________________

LOT 148 SECTION 5 2ND JULY 2004

Goromonzi

2.7.2004.  1.  945/01.  Propkept: Goromonzi: Lot 2 of Subdivision 'C; of
Learig: 252,1499 ha

Gwelo

2.7.2004.  2.  1726/87.  Sidney Petrus Schoultz: Gwelo: Remainder of
Sonambula: 832,2044 ha
2.7.2004.  3.  3081/99.  Malthar Enterprises (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Sunnyside: 766,3124 ha
2.7.2004.  4.  1762/84.  Arthur Graham Granceys: Gwelo: Merve of
Buttercups: 513,8265 ha
2.7.2004.  5.  478/95.  Corrangamite Farm (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Corrangamite: 2 602,1489 ha
2.7.2004.  6.  1722/01.  Basil Farming Company (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Remainder of Farm 9 of West Gwelo block: 544,7938 ha
2.7.2004.  7.  3845/99.  Jeam Pamela Thompson: Gwelo: Lot 1 of Lot 55 of
the Umsungwe Block: 172,3571 ha
2.7.2004.  8.  3167/03.  Pentatron Services (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Remaining Extent of Lot 62 of the Umsungwe Block: 377,4767 ha
2.7.2004.  9.  1720/93.  S C Shaw (Private) Limited: Gwelo: Subdivision
4 of Four Chums Block: 2 111,5668 ha
2.7.2004.  10.  251/93.  Louis Mallory Paul: Gwelo: Remainder of
Figtree: 2 809,1577 ha
2.7.2004.  11.  2248/83.  Clive Leopold Hein: Gwelo: Remainder of
Dopton: 2 284,7657 ha
2.7.2004.  12.  3222/87. Graham Ingle: Gwelo: Cheshire of Fife Scott
Block: 408,6276 ha
2.7.2004.  13.  628/94.  Simpoco Enterprises (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Allysloper Estate: 2 605,7911 ha
2.7.2004.  14.  2221/95.  Jomat (Private) Limited: Gwelo: Groenvlei of
East Shangani Block: 781,9682 ha
2.7.2004.  15.  140/49.  Robert Basson: Gwelo: Koppies Ptn of East
Shangani Block: 1 100 morgen
2.7.2004.  16.  3556/88.  P R Hapelt and Company (Private) Limited:
Gwelo: Hillpath: 521,2712 ha
2.7.2004.  17.  3605/99.  Rundle Farms (Private) Limited: Gwelo: Hilo of
Weltervreden: 598,6740 ha
2.7.2004.  18.  568/93.  Phillpina Hohanna Susara De Meyer: Gwelo:
Belton of Clydesdale: 47,0512 ha
2.7.2004.  19.  1255/93.  Foxton Estate (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Remainder of Foxton: 880,0751 ha
2.7.2004.  20.  2874/95.  Cropal Farming (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Subdivision A of Stormvale: 1 175,9103 ha
2.7.2004.  21.  1414/95.  Audrey Florence Meikle: Gwelo: Remainder of
Farm 8 of West Gwelo Block: 963,1014 ha
2.7.2004.  22.  2704/81.  Olaf Wentzel: Gwelo: Forestvale of Bembezaan:
1 456,0807 ha
2.7.2004.  23.  1259/81.  Christoffel Giedon Herbst: Gwelo: Remainder of
Pender: 868,4340 ha
2.7.2004.  24.  677/85.  Mark Andrew Heathcote: Gwelo: Fallow Corner:
428,2590 ha
2.7.2004.  25.  2035/83.  Friederick Garth Heathcote: Gwelo: Sangari:
588,9589 ha
2.7.2004.  26.  1474/90.  Staper (Private) Limited: Gwelo: Lingfield:
426,9343 ha
2.7.2004.  27.  2278/75.  John Ernest Stanton: Gwelo: Loads: 1 267,6467
ha
2.7.2004.  28.  4198/88.  Charles John Rundle: Gwelo: Middel Bult of
West Rapids: 794,3094 ha
2.7.2004.  29.  991/67.  J A Barry: Gwelo: Long Valley: 2 120,70043 ha
2.7.2004.  30.  709/65.  J N H Viljoen: Gwelo: Sandwich: 1 351,536o ha
2.7.2004.  31.  2218/78.  P S Viljoen: Gwelo: A of Vlaakfontein:
428,2633 ha
2.7.2004.  32.  1287/88.  Ernest Hughes Smith: Gwelo: Willow Run:
767,3274 ha
2.7.2004.  33.  1626/75.  R and T J Alwanger: Gwelo: S/D 16 of West
Gwelo Block: 182,1014 ha
2.7.2004.  34.  5629/99.  J P Thompson: Gwelo: Lot 55A of the Umsungwe
Block: 274,8139 ha
2.7.2004.  35.  883/00.  Flan enterprises (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Caradoc of Indiva: 809,6294 ha
2.7.2004.  36.  1867/80.  W B Lawry: Gwelo: S/D 21 pf West Gwelo Block:
1 544,3977 ha
2.7.2004.  37.  1248/97.  Chrisgid (Private) Limited: Gwelo: Woodlands:
2 802,5028 ha
2.7.2004.  38.  1607/96.  Galaxy Farming (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Remainder of Lincoinshire of Fife Scot Block: 419,3384 ha
2.7.2004.  39.  2690/70.  Owen Lockie Shaw: Gwelo: Lot 49 of Wildebeeste
Block: 1 291,3982 ha
2.7.2004.  40.  35/82.  Posts and Telecommunication: Gwelo: Small
Holding: 4 188,6096 ha
2.7.2004.  41.  4043/87.  Len Harvey & Sons (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Lot 1 of Lot 1 of Coulder Estate: 809,3579 ha
2.7.2004.  42.  1231/59.  Jane Lockie Smith: Gwelo: Hyrcania: 1 694
morgen
2.7.2004.  43.  3703/73.  Tarma Company (Pvt) Ltd: Gwelo: Derbyshire of
Fife Scott Block: 701,1029 ha
2.7.2004.  44.  987/81.  Heynie Lodewikus Liebenberg: Gwelo: Remaining
Extent of Lot 6A East Shangani Block: 1 115,7503 ha
2.7.2004.  45.  841/76.  Jan Mathyze Kapp: Gwelo: Subdivision C of
Bendhu: 123,8822 ha
2.7.2004.  46.  2572/99.  Beuna Suerte Mining (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Subdivision E of Bonnyvale: 77,4912 ha
2.7.2004.  47.  2592/99.  Tombern Engineering (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Subdivision D of Bonnyvale: 40,8670 ha
2.7.2004.  48.  641/78.  Heynie Lodewikus Liebenberg: Gwelo: Remainder
of Lot 15 of East Shangani Block: 636,7229 ha
2.7.2004.  49.  606/80.  Green Gwelo: Gwelo: Laymore of Bendhu:
101,5806 ha
2.7.2004.  50.  4391/87.  Frederick Garth Heathcote: Gwelo: Lot 64 of
the Umsungwe Block: 700,4933 ha
2.7.2004.  51.  4670/97.  Yellow Leaf Farming P/L: Gwelo: Lot 1 of Lot
6A East Shangani Block: 1 956,4603 ha
2.7.2004.  52.  2645/88.  Bar 'V' Ranching (Private) Limited: Gwelo: Lot
65 of Umsungwe Block: 477,9442 ha
2.7.2004.  53.  2645/88.  Bar 'V' Ranching Company (Private) Limited:
Gwelo: Lot 63 of Umsungwe Block: 363,7646 ha
2.7.2004.  54.  2353/75.  Lodewicus A M Coetsee: Gwelo: Remainder of
Oxfordshire of Fife Scott Block: 295,7334 ha
2.7.2004.  55.  5006/98.  Peachucle Investments (Private) Limited: Gwelo
Subdivision A of 9 West Gwelo Block: 635,8953 morgen
2.7.2004.  56.  3167/03.  Pentatron Services (Private) Limited: Gwelo:
Lot 62 of Umsungwe Block: 377,4767 ha
2.7.2004.  57.  2900/00.  A P A Distributors (Private) Limited.  Gwelo.
Lot 73 of Umsungwe Block: 397,8070 ha
2.7.2004.  58.  2766/98.  Golden dollar Ranching Company (Private)
Limited: Gwelo: Lot 67 of Umsungwe Block: 202,3410 ha
2.7.2004.  59.  514/93.  Lower Gwelo Bambanani club: Gwelo: Mangwene: 1
190,5601 ha
2.7.2004.  60.  3267/90.  Elizabeth Cathrine Rundle: Gwelo: Remainder of
Welterrvreden: 598,6740 ha
2.7.2004.  61.  1773/91.  Stuart Brendon Roselt: Gwelo: Arizona: 2
591,3982 ha

Lomagundi

2.7.2004.  62.  2380/66.  Harold Edwin Schultz: Lomagundi: Remainder of
Lion's Den: 1 801,5572 acres
2.7.2004.  63.  1422/67.  Leslie Reginald De Jager: Lomagundi: Friedawil
of Renfield: 991,7851 acres

Mrewa

2.7.2004.  64.  7167/95.  R C Reeve (Private) Limited: Mrewa: Lot 1 of
Graigielea: 739,9513 ha

Que Que

2.7.2004.  65.  1285/82.  Rudolph Hohannes Van Den Bergy & Nicholas
Johannes Van Den Bergh: Que Que: Remaining Extent of Benholm: 4 011,5028
ha
2.7.2004.  66.  659/79.  Anthony David Graham Clarke: Que Que: Zoe of
the Main Belt Block: 1 522,5265 ha

Gwelo

2.7.2004.  67.  2707/79.  Colin Charles Barry: Gwelo: Remainder of
Queenswood of the Kingswood of the Main Belt Block: 674,5242 ha
2.7.2004.  68.  233/94.  Rolling River Enterprises (Private) Limited:
Gwelo: The Remainder of Rolling River Tanch: 8 645,8615 ha
2.7.2004.  69.  18976/83.  Sable Chemical Industries Limited: Que Que:
Lot 1 of Lot 5 of Sherwood Block: 52,0378 ha
2.7.2004.  70.  1942/80.  Sebakwe Farms (Private) Limited: Que Que: Lot
9 of Sherwood Block: 21,4963 ha
2.7.2004.  71.  1941/80.  Sebakwe Farms (Private) Limited: Que Que: Lot
8 of sherwood Block: 1 270,5840 ha
2.7.2004.  72.  1279/89.  Derel John Louis Austen: Que Que: Lot 2 of
Matchebel: 258,4497 ha
2.7.2004.  73.  2691/81.  Harold John Corbett: Que Que: Bridgewater of
the Quantocks: 987,2561 ha
2.7.2004.  74.  5552/88.  Aberblock (Private) Limited: Que Que:
Remainder of Aberfoyle Block: 4 341,7895 ha
2.7.2004.  75.  85/76.  Stephen Charles Johnson: Que Que: Subdivision 28
of East Clare Block: 101,6622 ha
2.7.2004.  76.  2348/77.  Colin Charles Barry: Que Que: Remainder of
Kingswood of the Main Belt Block: 877,0381 ha
2.7.2004.  77.  2743/88.  Jenville (Private) Limited: Que Que: Lot 1 of
Loozani: 319,5872,ha
2.7.2004.  78.  3269/88.  Selvia Investments (Private) Limited: Que Que:
Lot 3 of Oliphant of East Clare Block: 309,1467 ha
2.7.2004.  79.  3670/72.  Eduan Estate (Pvt) Ltd: Que Que: Remainder of
Lot 1 of Sherwood Block: 794,7301 ha

Selukwe

2.7.2004.  80.  1195/84.  Noel Frank Dollar: Selukwe: Lot 2 of Home
West: 364,3689 ha
2.7.2004.  81.  2556/80.  Lawrence Edward Pinchen: Selukwe: Remaining
Extend of Impali Source: 1 105,3627 ha
2.7.2004.  82.  3385/86.  Oliver Baden Henderson Anderson: Selukwe:
Subdivision 2 of Aberfoyle Block: 1 003,9896 ha
2.7.2004.  83. 2554/81.  Lonrho Limited: Selukwe: Remainder of
Subdivison A of Safgo: 1 048,2139 ha
2.7.2004.  84.  166/82.  Bruce Michael Rensburg: Selukwe: Remainder of
Adare: 1 360,7400 ha
2.7.2004.  85.  1484/01.  Kur-Ref Farms (Private) Limited: Selukwe:
Remaining Extent of Subdivision A2 of Wallclose: 462,9426 ha
2.7.2004.  86.  5842/88.  Hendrik Petrus Bakkes: Selukwe: Remaining
Extent of Clarans: 1 427,1701 ha
2.7.2004.  87.  2385/84.  Aletta Petronella Barry: Selukwe: Lot 6 of
Home: 117,0170 ha

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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IOL

MDC welcomes AU report slamming Zimbabwe
          July 06 2004 at 03:15AM

      By Beauregard Tromp and Peta Thornycroft

      Addis Ababa - The African Union's executive council was set to defer
publication of a damning human rights report on Zimbabwe to afford Robert
Mugabe's government an opportunity to respond to the allegations of abuse
raised in the report.

      While the Zimbabwe government has remained silent about the report,
opposition groups and lawyers welcomed it.

      The report slams the Zimbabwean police, the government and youth
militias for human rights violations.

      The report by the African Commission on Human and People's Rights is
the first ever clear condemnation of the Mugabe regime by the AU.

      A working document under discussion by the AU executive council
suggested deferring publication of the report until the Mugabe government
responded.

      A working document compiled for the heads of state and government
meeting which begins today recommended the "adoption" of the report, but
added that publication be deferred until the government of Zimbabwe was
given an opportunity to respond.

      The AU executive council recommended that Zimbabwe be given two weeks
to respond.

      When the report was first introduced last Friday, Zimbabwe's Minister
of Foreign Affairs Stan Mudenge objected to its presentation, arguing that
his government had not seen the report and were not afforded the opportunity
to respond.

            'Zanu-PF can no longer hide'
      Arnold Tsunga, director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said:
"Although it has taken far too long, the (African) commission has found the
courage to confront the Zimbabwe government.

      "The report confirms what many Zimbabwean rights activists have said
for so long and not been heard in Africa until now. The abuses have nothing
to do with race, or land reform and black empowerment. Zimbabwe signed
international and African human rights conventions which it does not
respect."

      The AU's Gambia-based commission on human rights visited Harare in
2002, three months after the violent and disputed elections brought Mugabe
back to power.

      The commission, headed by South African academic Barney Pityana took
evidence from a broad section of Zimbabweans including the government.

      Several members of the Zimbabwe government said on Monday that they
have not yet seen the report and could therefore not comment.

      Paul Themba Nyathi, spokesperson for the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change, said he welcomed the report as an encouraging sign from
Africa.

      He said, as far as he could tell, this was the most powerful African
voice so far to have condemned Zimbabwe's human rights record.

      "Zanu-PF can no longer hide. They can't rubbish the report saying it
comes from white voices about land, or the British government, or the
European Union or the Commonwealth.

      "The commission has passed a verdict which should wipe out any
lingering doubts, if there are any, over Zanu-PF's record of human rights
violations."

          .. This article was originally published on page 4 of Cape Times
on July 06, 2004

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The Star

      The truth will out
      July 6, 2004

      By the Editor

      A year ago President Thabo Mbeki promised that the Zimbabwe crisis
would be solved within 12 months. It has patently not been and looks no
closer to being solved.

      Last week Mbeki expressed disappointment with the lack of progress in
negotiations between President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF and the
Movement for Democratic Change.

      Though Mbeki did not apportion blame between the two parties for this
delay, it is obviously mostly, if not entirely, Mugabe's fault. This weekend
he firmly rejected talks with the MDC, dismissing them as puppets of the
British government.

      Though Mugabe has made some concessions towards a more acceptable
electoral system, it is clear that he is not serious about negotiating a way
out of the crisis. And he is making a fool of Mbeki by privately promising
him that he will talk to the MDC and then publicly contradicting this.

      Today the heads of the African Union meet for their annual summit in
Addis Ababa. It is surely now high time that they discipline Mugabe. So far,
they have been, at least publicly, accepting his basic premise that the
crisis is essentially about countering the historic injustices of land
ownership.

      But this weekend one of the AU's own bodies - the African Commission
on Peoples' and Human Rights - let the cat out of the bag. In a report
leaked to our sister paper The Sunday Independent, it expressed grave
concern about a multitude of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and
characterised the problem as essentially one of human rights abuse, not of
land.

      The spotlight is now on the AU leaders to see how they deal with this
report. Will they shelve it, as sceptics suggest they will, on some
bureaucratic pretext? Or will they summon up their courage at last and
endorse this excellent report, thus sending a clear message to Mugabe that
his conduct is completely at odds with the basic democratic and humanitarian
principles of the new African Union and can no longer be tolerated?

      We wish we could confidently predict the latter but experience
cautions us to expect the former. That would be a travesty and a tragedy for
Africa.
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From: "Trudy Stevenson"

This reflects Hatcliffe Extension (in my constituency) quite well!  We need
HELP to overcome these very serious problems.
.....................................
M&G
Watch out! Here come the flying toilets ...

Nawaal Deane

02 July 2004 05:33

‘Flying toilets’ are a new phenomenon in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum, where
women and girls are forced to use desperate measures to overcome inadequate
sanitation. “We keep our business [faeces] for the evenings. In the dark we
wrap it in plastic bags and throw it as far away as possible. These are our
flying toilets and our neighbours do the same.”

Plastic bags of human waste are thrown on to the roofs of shacks in the slum
because it takes two hours to queue for the public toilets, which are often
unhygienic and overflowing with human waste. For most people living in the
slum in the country’s capital city, the “flying toilets” are the only way of
answering nature’s call: you simply use a plastic bag, and then fling it as
far out of sight as possible.

This testimony from Halima, a Nubian girl who lives in Kibera, was heard by
delegates attending the 12th Commission of Sustainable Development (CSD12)
at the United Nations in New York during the last two weeks of April. Her
testimony, read out by Kenyan civil engineering student Teshamulwa Okioga,
brought to the fore the reality of how inadequate sanitation impacts on the
safety and health of women in developing countries.

Halima said when it rains the “flying toilets” and their contents get washed
along with the rainwater and accumulate on the doorstep. “The faeces stay
there for days and my younger sisters play with it. We have no hope of
leaving here,” she added in desperation.

Her story was a part of a session coordinated by UN-Habitat, called “Unheard
voices of women at CSD12”. Women from India, Tanzania, Kenya and Jamaica
shared tales of the impact of inadequate sanitation on the lives of women in
slums.

The overriding message was that sanitation is not just about waste
management or providing latrines, but is linked directly to issues of
privacy, safety, convenience and above all human dignity. Delegates heard
blunt, shocking testimonials of women from developing countries about issues
like the lack of dignity involved when girls get their periods and they have
no access to water or sanitation.

“I will ensure that there is a toilet in the house where I marry my daughter
because I know how important a toilet is for a blind person. Life is hell,
and I would not let my daughter’s life become hell.” This was the testimony
of an Indian mother who criticised governments for not consulting women when
building toilets.

The commission – a review of progress on targets set at the 2002 World
Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and by the UN Millennium
Development Goals – provided a wake-up call for the global community when it
reviewed progress of the past two years since WSSD.

It found that if the efforts of the international community are not scaled
up, the targets that have been set for water, sanitation and human
settlement will not be met. The inter- national community has pledged to
provide 1,6-billion people with access to water and two billion people with
access to sanitation by 2015. It has also promised that by 2020, the living
conditions of 100-million slum dwellers will be substantially improved.

“Achieving the targets is do-able,” said Børge Brende, Norwegian Minister of
Environment and chairperson of CSD12. “The time-bound targets are specific,
practical and realistic. They are technically feasible and financially
affordable.”

The commission aimed to encourage dialogue between trade unions, UN
agencies, women’s groups, youth groups and more than 100 government
representatives. It was urged to be a “watchdog” on progress in reaching the
millennium goals.

UN Secretary General Kofi Anan criticised global efforts, pointing out that
“high-level political attention has been diverted from sustainable
development by the recent emphasis given to terrorism, weapons of mass
destruction and the war in Iraq”. He said currently R900-billion is being
spent on arms while reaching the goals requires R50-billion, yet the world
is finding it hard to reach the goals. “We need to overcome entrenched
interests and economic short-sightedness that hinder progress.”

In his final summary, Brende said although there has been progress since
WSSD towards reaching the goals, a large number of countries are not on
track. “Achieving the goals will require high-level political commitment and
a strengthening of governance at all levels, and substantial efforts at
mobilising and effectively using resources.”

SA sets new trends

Throughout the two weeks that the three pillars of sustainable development
were discussed, South Africa was constantly referred to by delegates as an
example of where sustainable projects are in use.

On the issue of water, the country is setting a trend in combining a right
to water with payment for water. Brende was just one of the delegates who
referred to the innovative use of water meters with a tariff-based system
for each household to receive 6 000 litres of free water each month. “Those
who want to have long baths must pay for it,” he said.

The figure is calculated on the assumption that a family of eight can get by
on 25 litres per person/per day (the World Health Organisation recommends a
minimum of 50 litres per person/per day). But this system is still facing
controversy locally around issues of privatisation of basic services.

Mike Muller, director general of Water Affairs and Forestry, gave a brief
presentation at CSD12 where he discussed the water challenges faced by South
Africa since the advent of democracy. He said the country has gone through
radical water reform and the key focus has been to “confirm water as an
indivisible national asset over which provincial and local governments have
no jurisdiction”.

The department also had to end the link between the use of water and
ownership of land by abolishing the riparian principle. “Determine that
water is not owned but merely used and that its use can be regulated in the
public interest,” he advised.

Muller attributed South Africa’s high profile at CSD 12 to the fact that the
country was an important architect of a new approach to issues of
sustainability introduced during the WSSD in Johannesburg and that people
look to the country to provide some direction. “What is important from the
discussions on sanitation during the first week is recognition that it is
not just South Africa, and indeed not just developing countries, that have
major challenges to face.”

Muller said it was clear that the problem lies not in finding technical
solutions to sanitation challenges, but rather solutions that are acceptable
to people. “In this regard, I found it encouraging that large European
organisations are installing alternative sanitation technologies in their HQ
buildings.”

A pilot project in South Africa using ecological sanitation was cited in a
paper entitled “Ecological sanitation and re-use of wastewater”, by
Professor Petter Deinboll Jenssens from the Agricultural University of
Norway. In his “thinkpiece on ecological sanitation”, he cited different
practices where communities do not use conventional water-flushing toilets.

The South African project has 3 000 inhabitants living in new, medium-income
households in Kimberley equipped with ecological sanitation systems. Urine
is collected and is used by the forestry department for silviculture. The
faecal matter is collected for composting and grey water.

“In developing countries 90% of this sewage is flushed into surface waters,
polluting rivers – this has contributed to the spread of diseases among the
poor,” said Dr Ken Gnanakan in the same paper.

Putting a face to problems

Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, executive director of UN-Habitat, said issues of
water and sanitation cannot be addressed without placing human settlements
high on the agenda. “We all know that a business-as-usual approach will not
be enough. We need a fundamental change in our approach – we need a strategy
that is workable, realistic and will make a difference in the lives of
people,” she said.

But non-governmental agencies attending the commission said human
settlements and slums had not received “due attention” and they called for
this failure to be redressed at CSD13, planned for February and March 2005.

Financing access to water and sanitation and improvements to human
settlements was a key discussion topic at CSD12. Partnerships are still
punted as the best option, especially by the European Union and the United
States. But the NGOs challenged the focus on partnerships, saying they were
not the only option and the international donor community still needs to
invest in countries.

South Africa also stood out in human settlement practices at a session where
representatives of the South African Homeless People’s Federation sat on a
panel that discussed financing in human settlement.

“Urban poverty is vividly manifested in slums,” said Tibaijuka. About
930-million people live in slums. “If the trends continue, 1,5-billion
people will live in slums by the year 2020 … The finance gap is huge, and
requires close partnerships of UN agencies with the international financing
institutions to supplement domestic resources.”

The South African Homeless People’s Federation was established in 1990 and
is a national network of autonomous local organisations that develop
savings, credit schemes and develop their own housing schemes. It has earned
a name for itself as an international pioneer in the field of tenure
security and people’s housing.

It is made up of more than 1 500 active savings groups, whose size ranges
from a minimum of 15 to a maximum of more than 500 members. The federation
has a presence in all nine provinces of South Africa, and has set up and
supports federations of savings groups in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland,
Zambia, Madagascar, Kenya, Uganda and Ghana.

One of the federation’s savings schemes, the Victoria Mxenge Housing Savings
Scheme in the Western Cape, is an example of how financial responsibility is
generated from community mobilisation. Formed in 1991 by Victoria Mxenge, it
has managed to construct 140 good-quality houses by women.

“In 1992, I heard about the federation. At the time, no one trusted it in
Khayelitsha. They all said it was those crazy women. Then they did not like
the fact they should make their own bricks. And it was all women,” said one
member in a book called Empowering Squatter Citizen.

The book is a compilation of eight case studies where local and national
initiatives seek to address the deprivations suffered by low-income urban
populations. It was evident through the participation of some of these
members from the case studies at CSD12 that the gathering in New York was
aimed at including all role-players.

But ultimately CSD12 ended with the recognition that there is no silver
bullet to reach the goals. A popular speaker at the commission was David
Satterswaite, a senior fellow on the human settlements programme from the
International Institute for Environment and Development, who did not shy
away from critically assessing whether the global community is “hitting the
target or missing the point”.

He said currently the goals are very output- and outcome-driven and are too
focused on the role of international agencies and national governments.
Goals neglect the investments and ingenuity that low-income groups can bring
to problems, and the scale they can achieve working with local government.

“We need to change the Millennium Development Goals’ focus on the poor from
being ‘targets’ to being the agents for the achievement of the goals,” said
Satterswaite.

The biggest issue involves the institutional difficulties donor agencies
have supporting complex, diverse local processes in ways that often do not
need much money. For Satterswaite, the investment should be directed at
grassroots organisations like the eight case studies featured in Empowering
Squatter Citizen, and not through the complex financial structures that
international donor agencies generally use.

“Much of the most important innovation in water and sanitation in urban
areas has been locally driven. The importance of these [works] as ‘precedent
setting’ for what local governments can and should do.” He said often
problems arise because national governments do not want donor funding or aid
allocated directly to local organisations that benefit poor groups. “Each
locality has powerful interests that do not want pro-poor local processes.”

Women in the Eastern Cape are still struggling to gain access to water.
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6 July 2004

 

PRESIDENT TSVANGIRAI’S TUESDAY MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE

We completed our provincial consultative meetings on Zimbabwe’s electoral standards in Chinhoyi on Sunday.

Unlike the violence that marked the end of the Mashonaland Central meeting on Friday, the Chinhoyi gathering ended without incident.

There is a broad acceptance countrywide that once a dictatorship starts to yield to popular pressure, the people must push it further towards full political reform for the sake of a lasting solution and peace. Deceit is a recipe for long-term national instability.

Political transformation is a comprehensive process of change, as was the case in Eastern Europe and in South Africa. We are prepared to maintain the pressure for a total package. Zanu PF has run out of options. Zimbabwe needs the guidance and leadership of the people.

I am happy that all the senior leaders of the MDC, right down to our provinces and districts, are united on the need for a radical revision to our electoral standards before we embark on another national plebiscite.

The Mashonaland assemblies vowed to reject any cosmetic changes to our electoral framework. Our successes at the weekend exposed the myth and unmasked the falsehoods and perceptions that Mashonaland provinces are no-go areas for the MDC. Our party is as strong in those areas as in other parts of the country. Against all odds, our structures are still visible and our membership is increasing daily.

At our meetings, we worked out ways to revive the spirit of 1999. We designed strategies to intensify our campaign for free and fair elections and to curb violence. There is so much political confidence in the three provinces – sufficient confidence in the MDC to deal with any attempts to repeat the horrors and experiences of the past five years.

Starting today, we are taking the campaign to individual districts. We shall liaise with all the communities and share our vision for the future. We have to reach out to millions of people in the next few months, even if it requires us to conduct our meetings at night.

Our country is hungry. Our country is bleeding. Our country desperately needs help. The MDC has to do its best to consult and search for solutions from the people.

As I drove through Mashonaland at the weekend, it became impossible to ignore the highly visible knock on agriculture in an area whose previous production levels helped to earn Zimbabwe the term the breadbasket of the SADC region.

From the Mazowe Valley to Mvurwi, from Concession to Bindura, from Mt Hampden to Chinhoyi, vast tracts of prime commercial farmland lie fallow and abandoned. In some places, I noticed strings of smoke trickling out of a few pole-and-thatch shacks dotted around, usually near the roadsides, in scenes similar to what can be seen in remote areas normally occupied by shift cultivators. All these people are need of food aid.

The restoration of order onto our land is a national priority. We aim to introduce an efficient distribution mechanism, accompanied by a comprehensive land use programme in order to clean up the mess in the former commercial farming areas. We are committed to land reform. We are committed to ending the crisis in agriculture through a democratic, transparent and lawful process. We are committed to food security and prosperity.

Zimbabwe will have surplus food as soon as we implement our programme, based on need and ability to work on the land.

Agricultural recovery will be rooted on a non-negotiable return to the rule of law, restoration of private property rights and a strict adherence to the fundamental rights enshrined in a people-driven Constitution.

What I witnessed on the former commercial farms in the Mashonaland prime agricultural districts is too much for anybody to conclude that claims of bumper harvest and food security this year are mere political statements from a cornered regime that is keen to cover-up a failed populist experiment.

For an economy largely dependant on agriculture, what happened here in the past four years is unfortunate. If you tamper with the land, you destroy your revenue base. You blow life out of all essential services: health, education, taxation, public services and employment. We must restore sanity in agriculture to use that industry to revive education, to repair our health services, to restart the economy and to create jobs.

Food security is a basic human right. The MDC policies and programmes seek to observe that fundamental right as a social and legal obligation, on the part of the state, to ensure that all Zimbabwean citizens get sufficient food. Because of our abundant resources, full employment can be a reality within a short space of time.

We wish to make it clear that Zimbabwe will never experience food shortages again, given the lessons confirmed by the current wave of carelessness. Zimbabwe has enough agriculture resources to steer us from starvation, economic deprivation and poverty. We have all it takes to reassert our previous position as a net exporter of food.

Surviving on handouts either from the state or from international donors diminishes the people’s dignity and their influence and choices over what and how they are being fed. The situation gets worse when the little that is available is distributed along partisan lines.

Access to food and food availability affect the protection and promotion of human dignity.

One of our values as a party emphasise the concept of equity and solidarity. Since we recognise adequate food as a fundamental right, we shall deploy considerable resources to dealing with the concerns of weaker communities and vulnerable groups.

The concept of human rights refers to the manner in which our human dignity is respected and recognised. Merely feeding people degrades them, especially when they know that they are capable of looking after themselves.

What Zimbabwe needs is a comprehensive political programme that creates conditions for the nation to feed itself, to achieve self-sufficiency and to export. Agriculture is an economic asset – a national resource that must be within the reach of all who wish to take up farming as a way of life.

We need to meet without hindrance and to express ourselves without restrictions. We need an atmosphere in which mechanisms exist for us to question and to remedy developments that infringe on our sovereignty.

The MDC believes the right to assemble and to speak out provides essential solutions to food deficits. That is the only way we can shape our destiny because we will be in control of the conditions in which we live.

Food production and access to food have strong links to our crisis of governance. What I observed in Mashonaland explains why politics is the main factor in our failure to assure Zimbabweans of adequate food as a human right.

After our consultations in Mvurwi on electoral standards with the grassroots leadership of the MDC from Dande, Kanyemba, Guruve, Mukumbura, Mt Darwin, Dotito, Shamva, Bindura and Chiweshe, the subject of access to food cropped up.

Hundreds of MDC supporters, whose property was destroyed in political violence, complained about discrimination in the allocation of food in their wards. Some had their granaries burned down; others were denied seed.

The issue was raised again on Saturday by delegates from Uzumba Maramba Pfungwe, Hwedza, Chikomba, Murehwa, Mutoko, Marondera West and Goromonzi. Officials from Zvimba, Msengezi, Chegutu, Chitomborwizi, Makonde, Mhangura, Banket, Hurungwe, Karoi and Kariba made similar submissions, protesting at the use of food as a coercive political weapon. The levels of abuse are so open and so deep that only a truth and justice commission can assist in healing our nation.

At the centre of this Zanu PF tragedy is political intolerance. Unless Zanu PF accepts multi-party democracy and advises its supporters about the diversity of Zimbabwe’s political thought, we shall always run into problems with our election process. It became clear from the attack on our meeting in Mvurwi that our political system is still too primitive and too raw for comfort. It could be unthinkable in other societies that a stone, or a brick, is still a useful political weapon, to Zanu PF, in modern politics. The hooligans who disturbed us used Zanu PF and government trucks, indicating official collusion in the scheme to destabilise a lawful meeting.

Instead of creating conditions for debate and discussion where consensus and disagreement are possible outcomes, our opponents in Zanu PF still believe that whenever we meet, notwithstanding the police clearance and monitoring, they should start to organise violence.

The society we seek to build has no room for such behaviour. In concert with civil society, we shall search, promote and establish a Zimbabwe that is open to all. We shall strive to develop communities that recognize our historical, traditional and cultural diversity. The need for a new, tolerant society is long overdue in Zimbabwe. That explains why we have a serious food deficit.

Our people shall be encouraged to get down to work. The rationalization of land allocation will reconcile the MDC’s policy principles with on-the-ground realities. We shall resolutely apply the principles of justice to the letter to rectify the anomalies created in Mugabe’s land reform process.

Total agrarian reform, covering the whole country including the communal lands, must be one of our top priorities. With an impartial, independent and well-resourced Land Commission to determine the legal status of all land holdings through a comprehensive land audit, our aim is to rationalize ownership and land use patterns as a precursor to a properly planned resettlement programme. Zimbabweans must never be hungry again.

Together, we shall win.

Morgan Tsvangirai

President.

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The Accountability Commission

 

 

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The Accountability Commission  Z i m b a b w e

 

 

 

Press Statement

 

Date: 6 July 2004

 

Re: African Union Report on Zimbabwe

 

The Accountability Commission-Zimbabwe (AC) welcomes with relief the African Union Executive Council report on Zimbabwe. The report condemns the government of Zimbabwe for ‘flagrant human rights abuses’, arrest, harassment and torture of opposition Members of Parliament, human rights lawyers and journalists as well as the breakdown of the rule of law in general.

 

As a human rights organisation involved with victims of gross human rights violations in the country, the AC feels that civil society has been vindicated in noting that the Zimbabwe government if ruling the country through terror, torture and tyranny. Indeed, the AU has urged the government of Zimbabwe to take measures to ensure that the country ‘withdraws from this precipice’. The AU would like to see this unprecedented and forthright condemnation followed by tangible and concrete action from all African countries to force the ZANU (PF) regime to restore fundamental human rights and to create an environment in which every citizen of Zimbabwe can elect his or her own government freely.

 

The AC also urges individual the Southern African Development community and individual governments, in particular South Africa, to take the cue from the African Union and stop shielding the Mugabe regime from international pressure.  To condemn human rights abuses on our continent is an imperative for all progressive country and is also consistent with the principles that guide the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the African Renaissance.

 

In conclusion, the AC hopes that the African Heads of State will have no hesitation to endorse the report of the Executive Council.

 

 

 

Gabriel Shumba

Legal Director

Accountability Commission-Zimbabwe

C/o Centre for Human Rights

University of Pretoria

Pretoria 0002

South Africa

Cell: +27 72 6393 795

PH: +27 (12) 420 3034

Fax: +27 (12) 362 5125

 


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Something to laugh about from Zimbabwe

Chicken tale - lighterworld

SEVERAL people were asked a simple question: "Why did the chicken cross
the road?"
Such a simple question ... This is what they had to say:

*Kindergarten teacher: "To get to the other side."

*George Bush: "The chicken is either with us or with them. If its on
their side then it will be destroyed."

*Ronald Reagan: "I forgot."

*Martin Luther King: "I have a dream where all chickens will be free to
cross roads without having their motives called in question."

*Richard Nixon: "The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the
chicken did NOT cross the road."

*Nelson Mandela: "It was on its long walk to freedom. A true Rainbow
chicken."

*Phillip Chiyangwa: "The government will ensure that a fair quota of
black chickens cross the road as well. Why should black chickens remain
on this side of the road?" I only watch black chickens crossing the road
anyway ..."

*Gideon Gono: "Makes me think: We don't tax chickens crossing roads yet
..."

*Chinotimba: "No wonder where thati chickeni goes, we have the able to
went back to the bush to fight back to safeguard our sovhereniti."

*Welshman Ncube: "Let's join the chicken and cross the road !"

*Pius Ncube: "Weee should have crossed the road with him. Together weee
will make a difference."

*Thabo Mbeki: "I don't really have an opinion about this ..."
(puff..puff..puff)

*Jonathan Moyo: "All right thinking and patriotic Zimbabweans will
obviously agree that the idea of chickens crossing the road and making
this place to be viewed as a Tarzan zone for the amusement of Americans
and Europeans who want to come to primitive and jungle Africa has no
future."

*Robert Mugabe: "Stop that chicken! It must be repossessed together with
the farm it belongs to. And the farm opposite the road where it was
going to. And all the chickens on both farms. Repossess them all.
"And it's nobody's business what I do in my country. It is the British's
fault for bringing chickens here anyway."
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News24

'Africa must not pay its debt'
06/07/2004 07:15  - (SA)

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - A top economic adviser to UN secretary-general Kofi
Annan told African countries on Monday to refuse to pay their huge debts if
rich countries did not cancel them.

American economist Jeffrey Sachs made the comment to a conference on hunger
on the eve of a summit of the heads of state of the African Union (AU),
which estimates sub-Saharan Africa has foreign debts of $201bn.

"The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable," said
Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special
adviser to Annan on global anti-poverty targets.

"If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction. You do it
yourselves."

The 53-member African Union, which is to discuss taking a more prominent
role in conflict resolution on the continent, announced on Monday that it
will send a 300-strong armed protection force as soon as possible into
Sudan's Darfur province.

Sam Ibok, director of the AU's peace and security division, said the troops'
role will be to protect refugees in Sudan and in neighboring Chad, where
many have fled from a campaign of terror by Arab militiamen - a situation
the United Nations describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The force will also protect military observers currently being sent to
Darfur, he said.

The number is significant increase from the 150 unarmed AU monitors that
were expected to go to Darfur as part of an April cease-fire agreement in
Sudan. A few AU monitors already are there.

The leaders of Ethiopia, Mauritius, Sudan, Uganda, Mozambique, Mali and
Burkina Faso attended Monday's hunger conference.

Sachs called on the developed world to double aid to Africa to $120bn a
year, and meet commitments they made in 1970 to spend at least 0.7% of their
gross domestic product on grants and loans.

The United States and other rich nations spend billions of dollars on arms
but only a minute fraction of that on fighting poverty, he said.

Budget

In his remarks to the conference, Annan warned that hunger was becoming
worse for the most vulnerable segment of Africa's population.

"Africa is the only continent where child malnutrition is getting worse
rather than better," said the UN secretary-general.

"Tragically, the past decade has seen very little progress."

Annan said Africa needs a "green revolution" to meet a 2015 target to end
hunger.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organisation, said progress in ending hunger was "painfully slow" and
predicted it will take more than a century to achieve it in Africa.

On Tuesday, the chairperson of the AU's commission will unveil a three-year,
$1.7bn plan to beef up the organisation.

At present the African Union has an annual budget of $43m, but contributions
from its 53 members add up to only $13m, leaving the organisation with a
$30m deficit, according to AU officials who did not want to be identified.

The organisation spends only $1.6m resolving conflicts on the continent,
said Ibok.

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Business Day

Damning report on Harare kept secret

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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AFRICAN foreign ministers have avoided confronting Zimbabwe over its human
rights by agreeing not to publish a report slamming Harare's record of
abuses.

Foreign ministers adopted the report earlier, but they yesterday accepted
Harare's word that Zimbabwe's government had not had enough time to see a
damning report written by an African Union (AU) body two years ago.

This means that the report will not be published and that AU leaders
attending this week's summit from today in Addis Ababa will not have an
instrument with which to call Harare to task, had they the political will to
do so.

The report on Zimbabwe, which was written by the AU Commission on Human and
People's Rights has only now come to light.

Though the Zimbabwean claim that it had not seen the report may be a
bureaucratic delaying mechanism, the fact that a critical report was written
by the AU Commission gives it enormous credibility.

But the existence of the report, which is more than two years old, places
great pressure on foreign ministers and heads of state to act, something
they have balked at doing. There is no AU protocol that would force African
leaders at the summit in Addis Ababa to take action against Zimbabwe.

Resolutions have been passed dealing with other African crises such as those
in the Great Lakes region, Côte d'Ivoire, Somalia and Burundi.

Zimbabwe opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan
Tsvangirai yesterday welcomed the existence of the AU report, which
condemned political repression and economic decline.

Tsvangirai said the report, which concluded that there "flagrant human
rights abuses and arbitrary arrests" in Zimbabwe, was the "most serious
African indictment yet of President Robert Mugabe's authoritarian regime".

"This is a welcome and significant reaction from the AU to the broad
political and economic crisis existing in Zimbabwe.

"I think it's really a breath of fresh air," Tsvangirai said.

"If the AU continues on that path of hearing and seeing evil in some member
states then the organisation will consolidate its credibility and perform an
important role of liberating the continent of tyrannical regimes."

An effort to get comment from the Zimbabwean government failed yesterday.

The report was compiled after the commission visited Zimbabwe two years ago
to investigate allegations of widespread human rights violations and
political violence, especially during the country's elections.

The commission's delegation met a cross-section of Zimbabweans, including
government, the ruling Zanu (PF), MDC and other opposition parties,
civilsociety groups, professional organisations and NGOs.

While the government claimed there were no human rights transgressions or a
political crisis in Zimbabwe, opposition parties and other groups resisting
repression provided mountains of evidence to the contrary.

When the commission left after a two-week investigation it said it had
gathered more than "20kg" of documentary and video evidence of human rights
abuses.

The AU's foreign ministers, meeting in the Ethiopian capital ahead of the
start of this week's conference of 53 heads of government and state, adopted
the report condemning the Harare regime for the arrests and torture of
opposition MPs and human rights lawyers, harassment and arrests of
journalists, the stifling of freedom of expression and abuse of civil
liberties.

African foreign ministers ignored the shrill protests by the Zimbabwe
delegation, which complained that it had not been given an opportunity to
study and respond to the report by the AU's commission on human and people's
rights.

Harare was given an opportunity to defend itself during the investigation,
but refused.

Oluyemi Adenjiji, Nigeria's foreign minister and chairman of the AU's
executive council, reportedly allowed the report to stand unamended after
"noting" the objections of Stan Mudenge, Zimbabwe's foreign minister.

The commission concluded after a thorough probe that "at the very least
human rights violations and arbitrary arrests have occurred" in Zimbabwe.

It was "particularly alarmed" by the arrest and detention of Sternford Moyo,
the former president of the Zimbabwe Law Society, who was arraigned for
allegedly collaborating with the British to oust the government.

The commission also condemned government for supporting lawless behaviour
during the chaotic and often violent land invasions about four years ago.

"Many land activists undertook their illegal actions in expectation that the
government was understanding and that police would not act against them,"
said the commission.

"Government did not act soon enough and firmly enough against those guilty
of gross criminal acts."

Zimbabwean society was now highly polarised, the AU organ said, and needed
mediators, including religious organisations, to help it to "withdraw from
the precipice".

The report said that Draconian laws had to be repealed, the judiciary freed
from political pressure and the media freed from the "shackles of control".

Judgment on opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been set for July 29
in his treason trial in Harare, Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai was accused of plotting
to assassinate President Robert Mugabe. With Business Day Reporter

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Baltimore Sun

Zimbabwe farmers set roots in Zambia
By John Murphy
Sun Foreign Staff
Originally published July 6, 2004

KAYANJE FARM, Zambia - When a truckload of government-sponsored thugs chased
Chris Thorne and his family from their wheat and soybean farm in Zimbabwe
three years ago, ransacking his home and decrying him as a racist, Thorne
was left to wonder whether a white farmer like him could have a future in
Africa.

Thorne is finding his answer in Zambia.

Just north of Lusaka, Zambia's sleepy capital, Thorne is busy felling trees,
leveling termite hills and laying irrigation lines to expand his new
7,000-acre tobacco and maize farm.

"The opportunities are endless here," says Thorne, a ruddy-faced
56-year-old, who clicks through Zambia's advantages as if he were making a
sales pitch: good rainfall, rich soils and vast expanses of arable land,
about 70 percent of it not being cultivated.

What's more, he adds, the racial tension that led to such agony in Zimbabwe
seems nonexistent here.

"It's got it all," he says of his new home.

Cast as greedy colonialists by Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, about
4,000 of Zimbabwe's 4,500 white farmers, including Thorne, were tossed off
their farms beginning in 2000 as part of what the government billed as a
land reform program, in reality a government effort to redistribute
white-owned land to blacks.

The program deteriorated into violence as the government dispatched youth
brigades and veterans of Zimbabwe's civil war to take over white-owned
farms.

Many of Zimbabwe's white migrants packed their bags for Great Britain, New
Zealand and Australia, wary of farming again on a continent where Zimbabwe's
land reform policies enjoy support from many African leaders.

Preferred destination

For the farmers who vowed to stay on the continent, few destinations have
been as attractive as Zambia, a former British colony slightly larger than
Texas with a population of 10 million. An estimated 200 white farmers and
their families have settled here in the past three years.

Zambia's government, if somewhat cautiously, is welcoming them as the spark
the country needs to jump-start its ailing economy. Largely as the result of
the arrival of Zimbabwean tobacco farmers and their access to millions of
dollars in loans, Zambia's tobacco industry is booming. Since 2001, annual
harvests have increased from to 33 million pounds from 6.6 million pounds.

More than 20,000 jobs have been created nationwide, according to tobacco
industry representatives, and plans are also under way to build a
tobacco-processing plant in Lusaka.

By comparison, Zimbabwe's once-powerful tobacco industry is in tatters,
shrinking to 143 million pounds of tobacco this year from a high of 528
million pounds in 2000.

In more than just tobacco, Zimbabwe's economic loss has been Zambia's gain.
Zimbabwean mechanics, engineers and other agricultural suppliers are moving
to Zambia to do business. Tourists reluctant to visit Zimbabwe are choosing
to visit Zambia to go on safaris and visit Victoria Falls, the spectacular
waterfall on Zimbabwe's northern border with Zambia.

"It's rewarding to my government to have investors who have in their mind
adding value to Zambia and who get on with the people of the country,"
Mundia Sikatana, Zambia's minister of agriculture, told a gathering of
tobacco farmers this month.

After facing severe food shortages in recent years, last year Zambia
exported 100,000 metric tons of food aid - much of it going to Zimbabwe.
Long dependent on copper mining, the Zambian government now hopes to make
grain and tobacco as well as vegetables, roses and beef the backbone of the
economy.

"The sky's the limit," Sikatana said.

For Chris Thorne, Zambia at first was not an attractive destination. He had
moved to Zambia once before in 1970, believing that the spacious country
would offer more opportunities for a young farmer than Zimbabwe, then known
as Rhodesia.

But soon after his arrival, Zambia's economy went into a tailspin; the
government nationalized all land and private businesses and the price of
copper, Zambia's main export, plummeted. Heavily dependent on foreign aid,
Zambia's people were left poorer than they were at independence in 1964.

Retirement postponed

Thorne returned to his birthplace, where during the next 25 years he became
one of Zimbabwe's most prominent farmers, operating a consortium that grew
one-fifth of the country's wheat and soybeans.

Just when Thorne was looking forward to a relaxing retirement, Mugabe
launched his land reform program. When Thorne lost his 3,750-acre property
in Zimbabwe's Mazowe Valley in 2001, he began looking for a new home.

The question was, where would he feel welcome? There are no easy answers for
whites in Africa, who have often struggled to find a place on the continent
since the end of colonialism more than four decades ago. He and his wife
briefly considered a move to Australia before vowing to stay in Africa, the
place of their birth.

"We are Africans," he says. "We don't want to leave Africa."

He traveled to Mozambique, Uganda and Angola looking at properties before
turning to Zambia, which he decided he would give a second chance.

Searching through a database of hundreds of available properties, Thorne
eventually found an abandoned organic vegetable farm overgrown with thorn
trees and weeds just north of Lusaka, where he secured with a 75-year lease
from the government.

Backed by $1 million in loans from a local bank and the Richmond, Va.-based
Universal Leaf Tobacco Co., Thorne planted his first crop of 200 acres of
Virginia leaf tobacco and 625 acres of maize last year.

Walking through his dusty compound, Thorne proudly showed off his 14 new
metal sheds used for curing tobacco and a mammoth warehouse, where Zambian
workers sort, grade and bale tobacco under fluorescent lights for shipment
to auction.

Rising out of a thicket of thorn and acacia trees is Thorne's new home, a
stunning brick house with oriental carpets and cathedral ceilings.

"At the beginning, this was all bush," says Thorne, who lived with his wife
and son in tents for the first five months of their stay. Thorne is planning
to build brick homes for his 400 Zambians workers, many of who have never
held regular jobs before.

Innocent Bwalya, a 21-year-old who pressed handfuls of yellow and brown
tobacco leaves into a baling machine, said he plans to save his earnings to
study agriculture.

"My aim is to have my own farm someday," he said.

If Bwalya's dream comes true, it would be a step in the right direction for
Zambia, whose leaders would like to see the country's newfound tobacco
fortunes shared with the black population.

Low-key activity

Zambia's government is reluctant to advertise the arrival of the white
farmers, on a continent where efforts to reclaim white-owned land enjoy
enthusiastic support, including in South Africa and Namibia. Last year, in
what analysts considered a face-saving move at a conference in Paris,
Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa publicly dismissed reports that white
farmers were moving to his country.

Likewise, Zimbabawe's transplanted white farmers are wary of trumpeting
their successes here too loudly, afraid that their economic success might
breed the same ill will it did in Zimbabwe.

"I thought we were working closely with the government [in Zimbabwe] but we
didn't work closely enough. ... You need to be sure you are carrying
everyone with you," says Peter MacSporran, whose lost his farm in 2001
before moving to Zambia, where he set up Agricultural Advisors
International, a company that assists farmers relocating to Zambia.

In an effort to spread tobacco wealth beyond the white farming community,
Universal Leaf Tobacco Co., which is backing the white farmers with $30
million in loans, plans to offer $12 million to black Zambian farmers
wanting to join the industry.

For the tobacco industry, investing in Zambia makes good business sense,
says Philippe Rusch, managing director of Universal Leaf Tobacco. After
years of reaping a dependable harvest from Zimbabwe, the economic and
political turmoil left the tobacco industry without a dependable supply of
Virginia leaf tobacco.

Now the tobacco industry is diversifying its investments, investing in farms
not only in Zambia, but also Malawi and Mozambique.

"They realized that putting all your eggs in one basket is not a clever
thing to do," says Rusch.

Even so, Thorne is placing his bets on Zambia, putting all his savings into
his farm in Zambia and hoping that after jumping from Zambia to Zimbabwe and
back again, he has finally found a place he can call home.

"This is our third time around. We have to make this one good," he says.
"We'll do it."
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From The Chronicle, 5 July

Zanu PF elects provincial executive

Khulani Nkabinde

Elections for the Zanu PF Bulawayo provincial executive delayed taking off
by six hours yesterday as a result of alleged divisions centered on the
candidature of national war veterans chairman Cde Jabulani Sibanda. Sources
within the party said troubled started after delegates were told that Cde
Sibanda who was ousted from the post of chairman was not eligible to vote
and some of them threatening not to vote. Senior party officials led by Zanu
PF national commissar, Cde Elliot Manyika convened a consultative meeting at
a city hotel to deliberate on the issue. The elections were however
eventually conducted and Bulawayo war veterans chairman, Cde Themba Ncube
was unanimously voted party provincial chairman. A small group made up of
some interim committee members walked out when Cde Ncube was declared the
winner. Cde Charles Ncube was also elected unopposed to the position of
vice-chairman. There was another outcry when Cde Mika Parira Mpofu was
disqualified for having one time left Zanu PF for the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC). "We will not allow that to happen. We can not
have people, who go and join the opposition and come back wanting to be
voted into positions in the ruling party. As a party there are laws that
govern such conduct, in fact such a person can only be eligible to take part
in elections after a period, of five years," said Cde Manyika, addressing
the voters. His explanation diffused the situation paving way for the
continuation of the voting process. Cde George Mlala won the position of
provincial secretary also unopposed. Cde Canaan Ncube became the
vicesecretary after standing, also unopposed.

An elated Cde Ncube said having been elected the chairman, he would work
towards strengthening the party in the province. "We now have to work hard
to unite the party and the people of Bulawayo," said Cde Ncube who was a
clear favourite with the majority of the delegates who gave him a standing
ovation when he was elected. Cde Mkhululi Dube was elected the provincial
commissar. Cde Dube had initially been opposed by Cde Mazwi Gumbo, who later
pulled out just as the casting of votes was to begin leaving Cde Dube the
winner. Cde Antony Dube was elected the secretary for security while Cde
Ellen Murefu was elected provincial publicity and information. Cde Ernest
Msipa was elected secretary for lands. Cde Raphael Baleni was elected deputy
provincial commissar while Cde Effort Nkomo was elected deputy officer for
publicity and information. The National Secretary for Security, Cde Nicholas
Goche, the Secretary for Women Affairs, Cde Thenjiwe Lesabe, the Secretary
for the Commissariat in the Women's League, Dr Olivia Muchena, the Secretary
for Youth Affairs, Cde Absalom Sikhosana and the Secretary for Legal
Affairs, Cde Patrick Chinamasa conducted the elections. Also present were
Matabeleland South Governor, Cde Angeline Masuku and the Deputy Secretary
for the commissariat, Cde Sikhanyiso Ndlovu. Bulawayo province had been run
on an ad hoc basis since the suspension of Cde Sibanda with prominent city
businessman and former councillor, Alderman Abedinigo Nyathi at the helm of
the interim executive until yesterday.

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Ignore Council's New Rates: Chombo

The Herald (Harare)

July 6, 2004
Posted to the web July 6, 2004

Harare

THE Government has expressed concern over the decision by the Harare City
Council to increase rates without relevant authority.

It emerged on Sunday night that the Harare City Council had increased rates
without seeking approval from the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works
and National Housing as per provisions obtaining in the Urban Councils Act.

The Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Cde
Ignatius Chombo, said last night Harare residents should ignore the new
rates that have been effected by the Harare City Council until the granting
of relevant authority.

"The city council has not sought any authority to increase rates. As far as
Government is concerned, nothing new has been worked out yet. So there is no
need for people to be paying more," he said.

Despite the fact that the massive rate increases of up to 1 000 percent were
supposed to be with effect from July 1, bills received by most people living
in high-density areas were unexpectedly high following the announcement of
the intended increases.

Residents who used to pay an average of $10 000 found themselves being
billed around $80 000.

As a result, rentals in most suburbs also went up with landlords trying to
cushion themselves against the rate increases by pushing the costs onto
their lodgers.

In some instances, a room that cost $30 000 went up to as much as $75 000.

Cde Chombo said Harare City Council could only effect new rates after coming
up with realistic figures and presenting them to the Government for
discussion.

"After that, those figures should be taken to the people for their
consideration before implementation," he said.

Dr Chombo said charges for municipal services should reflect the reality on
the ground.

"It is just like Bulawayo, they increased rates in January this year by 1
000 percent and they wanted to effect another increase in October.

"The basis was that they were procuring chemicals in foreign currency but
the exchange rate they were purporting to be using has since changed as
things have stabilised. This should be felt by the consumer," he said.

Cde Chombo last month ordered Bulawayo City Council to freeze its proposed
rates and levy increases, which were due to be effected at the beginning of
next month.

The freeze will last until next year.

Cde Chombo said Harare City Council, which had not effected any increases in
January wanted to compensate for that.

"They now want to make changes but the assumptions that they would have used
at that time are no longer accurate as things have stabilised," Cde Chombo
said.

Some residents who queried the unusually high bills they received were told
to go and pay to Cde Chombo if they wanted to pay less.

Council spokesperson Mr Leslie Gwindi last week said while they were in
agreement with Government, all comments and information on the freezing of
rates would best come from the ministry itself.

Other sources within council said residents were supposed to pay what they
had been billed and have the excess credited to the next month but those who
went in to pay were told a different story.

In some cases, residents said they had just paid the high bills they had
received, as they did not know what to do.
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City Gets $10bn to Ease Water Woes

The Herald (Harare)

July 6, 2004
Posted to the web July 6, 2004

Harare

GOVERNMENT has rescued Harare City Council with a grant of $10,7 billion for
boosting capacity at Morton Jaffray water treatment plant by almost 20
percent and refurbishment of the main sewage treatment plants to ensure
discharges cease polluting Lake Chivero.

Illegal settlers on Porta Farm would be moved to other properties to allow
the Harare City Council to develop a sewage treatment plant on the farm, the
Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Cde
Ignatius Chombo, said yesterday.

The settlers have been given up to the end of August to move to other
properties already earmarked for housing development by the Government.

The upgrading of the water pumps and the refurbishment of equipment at Firle
and Crowborough will take six months.

The $10,7 billion grant was made available by the Ministry of Local
Government, Public Works and National Housing through Resident Minister Cde
Witness Mangwende, Harare City Council spokesman Mr Leslie Gwindi said
yesterday.

From the grant, $9 billion has been earmarked for the refurbishment of the
two main activated sludge sewerage works, with the balance of $1,7 billion
committed to the refurbishment of the Morton Jaffray Water Treatment Works.

This, it is hoped, would boost pumping capacity from 575 million litres a
day to 675 million litres daily, which should allow the city to meet demand
on all but the hottest summer days.

The Firle and Crowborough sewage treatment plants won engineering awards
when they were commissioned in the 1980s.

At that time they were able to process the sewage of the bulk of the city
and discharge almost pure water in the Mukuvisi and Marimba rivers, ensuring
that Lake Chivero received a regular inflow of clean water.

With the growth of the city and under-budgeting in the 1990s and 2000s, the
plants became overloaded and run down, despite some extensions.

Harare's water problems have been partly blamed on heavy pollution of the
city's water sources as a result of sewage discharge into the water system.

The heavy pollution has resulted in a huge budget for water treatment
chemicals and an elaborate water treatment process.

The city this year budgeted $815 billion for the purchase of water treatment
chemicals, accounting for 80 percent of its budgetary estimates.

Mr Gwindi said the $9 billion would be used to replace effluent and raw
sewage pumps, electrical and mechanical spares at Crowborough and Firle
sewage treatment works.

He said the refurbishment of the sewerage works would run for six months
with the resultant effect of improving the quality of water going into Lake
Chivero and thus in the treatment works at Morton Jaffray.

The refurbishment of Morton Jaffray centres on design, fabrication, supply
and installation of clarifiers one up to seven, Mr Gwindi said.

Cde Chombo said Government decided that the settlement at Porta Farm was
improper as it posed a health hazard because of its proximity to the heavily
polluted Manyame River.

The settlers, the minister said, would be relocated to at least six farms
around Harare and they would be asked to join housing co-operatives on those
farms.

A vetting exercise to establish whether these were genuine settlers would be
carried out.

Cde Chombo said some criminal elements taking advantage of the haphazard
settlement to hide from the law while some people who had never been on
Porta in the first place would also want to take advantage so as to be
included in the resettlement exercise.

"The Harare City Council will take over and build a sewerage treatment
plant," he said.

Harare's current sewerage treatment works are overloaded and failing to
cope. This has resulted in raw sewage being offloaded into the water system
and invariably increasing the cost of treating water.

The cost of water treatment has ripple effects on residents who are in turn
charged more on potable water.

Cde Chombo also disclosed that Government would this week dispatch a team
led by his deputy, Chief Fortune Charumbira, to assess developments at White
Cliff Farm.

Officials from the Ministry of Environment would also be present.

The tour would be to determine whether the settlement complies with
laid-down town planning regulations.

Cde Chombo said Government was worried with the settlement because of its
closeness to the city's water sources and that it is on a vlei.

Meanwhile, work at the waterworks would involve mechanical work on
gearboxes, metering pumps and clarifier channels.

Harare has for the past few months experienced crippling water shortages
that have seen some areas going for up to a week without a drop.

Morton Jaffray was commissioned in the early 1950s to take advantage of the
then newly-commissioned Lake Chivero, a joint project of the city and the
Government. The works were extended as more water was drawn for city use,
but the works were grossly inadequate by the end of the 1980s.

The same augmentation scheme that saw the commissioning of brand new sewage
treatment plants and the drilling of the tunnel to Lake Manyame, also saw
the waterworks doubled in capacity. The planners had hoped that the councils
of the early 1990s would then keep Harare on tight rationing for a few more
months to allow the old works to be renovated fully and only then open the
taps with a doubled capacity.

The then council overrode its own experts and did not order the needed
renovation. Since then the old half of the works has given growing problems.

Yesterday the city's director of works, Mr Psychology Chiwanga, reported
that most of the city reservoirs had stable supplies of water despite
experiencing reduced pumping at the Morton Jaffray Water Treatment Works on
Sunday.

The reduced pumping was because of a mechanical fault that affected one of
the big pumps and a power failure at Warren Control between 7pm and 7.32pm
the same day.

Seven of the 16 water reservoirs were above 50 percent full, five between 30
 and 49 percent and three were below 10 percent.

Mr Chiwanga said water supplies would be cut off in Hatfield, Waterfalls,
Queensdale, Cranborne, Hillside, Greendale North, Kambanji, Glen Lorne,
Chisipite, Eastlea, Chadcombe, Msasa Park, Ruwa and Epworth today.

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The life and times of a sugar daddy

L'Express (Port Louis)

6 Juillet 2004
Publié sur le web le 6 Juillet 2004

Nicholas Rainer
Port Louis

Gallic Thunderbolt is essential reading for anyone who has ever so much as
stirred a spoonful of sugar into his tea or coffee. The present challenges
facing the industry make it more contemporaneous than ever.

The story of René Leclézio and Lonrho Sugar is that of sugar in Africa.

By the time he retired from Lonhro Sugar Corporation in 1994, René Leclézio
had achieved what mere mortals only dream about. From humble beginnings as
laboratory chemist for Beau- Séjour and Beau-Vallon sugar factories, René
went on to become Chairman of Lonrho, an international force in the sugar
world. Along the way, he inspired all those who worked with him and
accomplished the Herculean task of turning all Lonrho ventures in Africa, a
continent renowned for its political, economic and meteorological
volatility, into profitable, well-run entities.

Gallic Thunderbolt is one of the rare birds of the book world. It is
unostentatious and unassuming, yet it provides for great reading from cover
to cover. Through the contributions of René's collaborators and friends, it
effortlessly retraces the steps of a man renowned for the energy and
stubbornness with which he attacked life. Gosnell explains how Leclézio
obtained his poetic nickname, "He was soon to become known as the Gallic
Thunderbolt for his impossible working and travelling habits. However
inconvenient or simply exhausting working to René's pattern might become,
hardly anyone ever let him down, mainly because of the example he set, his
inspiring leadership and the Gallic charm he used to such great effect when
spirits were flagging."

Gallic Thunderbolt is written in a self-effaced and limpid manner
privileging substance over stylistic flourish. The subject matter and the
almost maniacal attention to detail enable the reader to relive René's
travails across the vast African continent all the way to Lonhro's London
headquarters. The early years in Hippo Valley in Zimbabwe and the SUCOMA
estate in Malawi provide a plethora of earthy, and often humorous, anecdotes
of the living conditions encountered by the Mauritian clique. Guy de
Rosnay's reminiscence of the SUCOMA era is a good example: "It was thrilling
because there was everything to do. We were on virgin land, there were no
means of communication and living at Chikwawa, 50 kilometres from the
estate, the reigning mosquitoes wrapped us in one massive and aggressive
cloud!"

The glorious pastof Lonrho

This is not simply the chronicle of a success story. Instead, it is a
fascinating foray into the world of yesteryear when business was a mountain
that only true pioneers could conquer. The reader will also note that most
of René's relationships were forged for life and the respect he inspired
amongst his staff ensured that they would always strive to get him what he
wanted even when that implied making considerable sacrifices. René had many
of the characteristics inherent to leaders and those who worked with or for
him instinctively knew that nothing short of excellence would be acceptable.

A key facet of René's rapid ascendancy was his symbiotic relationship with
the mercurially brilliant Tiny Rowland, CEO of Lonrho. The latter's
connections with African leaders coupled with the dynamism of his Gallic
Thunderbolt, gifted the duo with a Midas touch that they used profusely.
Chris Saunders, an early collaborator describes the chemistry that united
Tiny and René: "He was recruited by Tiny Rowland of Lonrho who recognized
this man as a kindred soul - someone who was prepared to take risks, fight
for a principle, be happy to go to the ends of the earth if he saw an
advantage for his employer, and most important of all, recognize loyalty as
the supreme gift that a man can offer his superior."

By the time René reached the pinnacle of his career, being named Chairman of
Lonrho in 1991, the company was stuck in the financial doldrums with profits
falling from £273 million in 1990 to £80 million in 1992. The purchase of a
large minority in the share capital by German entrepreneur Dieter Bock
heralded the dawn of a new era where investment brokers decided on policy
and the African estates, on which the Lonrho Sugar empire had been built,
were all but forgotten. Bock, who had acquired the office of Joint Chief
Executive and Managing Director along with the share capital, was to sound
the death knell by selling Lonhro in 1997. Thankfully, René had resigned in
1994 so he didn't have to witness the end first-hand.

René Leclezio's story is the story of sugar in Africa - politically,
economically and, most importantly, socially. His life shows us that no
obstacle is insurmountable, no problem without a solution. This is the
spirit we must rekindle if we are to have even a glimmer of hope.

Gallic Thunderbolt is on sale in bookshops at Rs 480.
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JAG OPEN LETTER FORUM 6th July2004

Email: justice@telco.co.zw; justiceforagriculture@zol.co.zw
Internet: www.justiceforagriculture.com

Please send any material for publication in the Open Letter Forum to
justice@telco.co.zw with "For Open Letter Forum" in the subject line.

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JAG OLF 281
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our
private experience and verifying them here.  All history becomes
subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only
biography."
          --- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882

______________________________________________

OPEN LETTER FORUM

Letter 1

I hope that many read an excellent article by Everjoice Win in the Standard
on 6 June: Zimbabwe's [political crisis: 'Whose problem?'

Two points seemed particularly important and cannot be made too often: the
first is that many Zimbabweans seem to expect, seem to have long expected,
a salvation from ZANU that they can watch from their tv chairs or their
place on the fire without the need to move a muscle.  Other people will do
the work.  As Win noted - those who are the loudest in saying 'they
(someone, somewhere) must do something' are those for who even subscribing
to a stayaway is too exacting.  Those who really benefit from the Mugabe
regime: ZANU ministers and commissars, beneficiaries of the land theft, a
small band of absurdly rich business men are out numbered thirty to one by
those of us whose lives have been blighted by Robert Gabriel Mugabe.  Yes,
he is still there because he, and his beneficiaries, have guns and we do
not.  but also he has been subsidised by the reluctance of all but a brave
minority to actually challenge and confront him on anything more than a
very occasional basis.

The second point Win tackles is the absurdity of those who make prim and
specious observations about the MDC as if it were a normal opposition party
in a normal country engaging in normal politics.  The remarkable thing
about the MDC is that it is still there at all.  Nearly all of its MPs have
been arrested or beaten up, its rural organisation has been brutally
excised and its urban structures all but driven underground.  Its leader
has been on trial for years on absurd charges and the death toll among its
supporters rises as the months pass.  Despite all this it won two elections
in every respect but the declared result.  As Win observes ZANU itself can
decide, with an eye on African opinion, how many seats MDC will win at the
next election.  If little changes it may win fifteen or twenty and ZANU
will gurgle and caper, as they do, with glee.  The recent Globescan survey
indicated that just 3% of Zimbabweans feel that life is improving.  That
figure probably represents the proportion of ZANU beneficiaries.  A logical
deduction would be that a brave and democratic opposition party, with wide
international backing, would pick up 97% of the popular vote in an
election.  But such logic is unlikely to deter, or even be noticed by,
ZANUPF.  Normal standards do not, and need not, apply.The factor common to
both these points is normality, or rather the desire to impose it on a
wholly abnormal political landscape.  ZANU do it all the time.  What Mugabe
and his gang yearn for is normality.  Like children who have played with
matches and burned down the nursery they long to be patted on the head and
told that there is virtue in all that charred furniture, that it was
somehow clever to turn all their toys to ashes.  But apart from the steady
approval of Uncle Thabo, and a few mad relatives like dear old Cousin Sam
Nujoma, and the occasional discreet pat on the head from Uncle Jaques
Chirac, they are left among the ashes braying that this was what they meant
all along.

Even the more responsible elements of the international community are
little better and play the same game.  What are the EU nations calling for
now?  Free and fair elections.  Engagement.  Rapprochement.  Well that
should do it.  And watch as they tumble over each other to claim that each
new trick, each new ZANU face-saving ploy, each zig and each zag on the
long road downhill, is actually evidence that Mugabe has at last come to
his senses.  All year for some faint trace of normalisation so that they
can claim that their craven policies are not entirely bankrupt.  But they
are bankrupt.  The Zimbabwe crisis will not be solved by standard
diplomatic solutions.

Some of us in the farming community have played the same foolish game from
the very start.  As farm after farm was invaded or destroyed some still
called for mediation, for a deal, for some sensible way out.  Remember
ZJIRI?  Many played along with their local 'war veterans' and thugs, hoping
that to do so would preserve their own, shrinking island of normality.  It
was never going to happen.  Some still shake their heads and counsel that
confrontation must be avoided at all costs.  And look where that bit of
foolishness has got us.  ZANU may have destroyed Zimbabwe but few of us can
claim that we made it particularly hard for them to do so.

We must remember, as we struggle, through our daily lives, that all this is
wrong.  The sun still rises and sets, the bush, what's left of it, is
beautiful, the kopjies still stand and there is kindness in the hearts of
many.  but all that Mugabe has painted on that canvas over these last four
years, and in many of the years before, is wrong and foolish and wicked.
ZANU with their childish propaganda and their absurd Comrade this and
Comrade that, their teenage war veterans, pungwees and show trials, their
printed, misspelled banners and dragooned truckloads of supporters, their
Maoist rhetoric and hopeless ministers, their pitiful lies and laughable
policies, out of tune military bands and out of step soldiery, crack-handed
election fixing and casual brutality, electrodes and state rapists,
childish squabbles and bloated, pompous Politburo, 'new farmers' with their
4Wds and empty fields ..... all would be laughable if it had not already
shattered the lives of millions and condemned a nation to silent poverty.
It has no place in the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first, and
soon the tide of history will carry it all away.  In one way it is a pity
that Mugabe will soon die for I would like him to taste, and shrink from,
the contempt and ridicule which history will soon apply to him.

For the time being there are few weapons left to us.  but we must treasure
in our minds the certain knowledge that this is folly that must be wiped
away.  No financial fiddling by Gideon Gono, no cosmetic arrangements about
elections, no statements about AIDS or Aid or maize production can or
should change that certainty one iota.  And any who conciliate ZANU , deal
with them, pay off squatters, farm their crops, grow tobacco to sustain
Mugabe, or huddle around the meagre fire hoping that someone else will make
it go away, are themselves spear-carriers in Mugabe's grand farce.  And are
the lesser for that.

Eddie Cross recently wrote an inspiring letter to the Forum describing the
small, routine actions that we can take every day that defy ZANU, some
brave, some simply altruistic.  but there is more: all of us know, indeed
are perhaps related to, people who in their daily lives, through their
various businesses, are directly or indirectly backing the illegal Mugabe
regime.  Some are growing tobacco and other products that Mugabe can trade
for forex and electioneering maize.  Some are deep in imaginative schemes
that trade Zimbabwe's future for short term political advantage.  Some are
sacrificing the integrity of the aid agenda to keep themselves in business.
Some are even manoeuvring to assist those who stole our farms and threw our
workforces into the wilderness.  Some are people that I know and even now
find it hard not to like even though their actions are contemptible.

Some of these will say 'aaach I'm just a businessman.'  How that line makes
me sick.  Some talk of wives and children.  Some enjoy the trite argument
that they have to keep things going for when the rest of us return.  Some
imply it is somehow unsporting, discourteous, to raise such a delicate
subject.  Some say that we have to deal with the prevailing situation and
if that demands compromises - so be it.  And do we return to the theme of
normality.  These are not normal times.  Normal standards and mores do not
apply.  Those people should stop doing what they do and turn their
undoubted energies to activities that do not further Mugabe's repellent
agenda.  Better still, turn their energies to activities that challenge it.
Far from easy.  But so very very necessary.

I do not like reading articles that note that some former commercial
farmers have thrown their lot in with Mugabe, some to their considerable
profit.  I do not like not being able to challenge those articles for
containing what ought to be lies.  Please (and you know who you are) just
stop.

Simon Piribright

______________________________________________

Letter 2 Subject: Thank You!
Dear Mr Ancram

I know I bombard you with pleas on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe - this
time I say thank you, thank you, thank you for, as our dear Cathy Buckle
said in some desperation a few weeks ago, "keeping banging on the drum".
Please don't stop!

I am attaching the text for the benefit of all to whom I am copying this
e-mail just in case they missed it!

Best regards

Sue Shaw

_______________________________________________

Letter 3 Subject Open Letters Forum

Having just read your communiqué on Identity Documents, I find it very
interesting that this law does does not seem to apply to certain people in
Mandara.

We have un-registered Security Companies working in the area of Mandara,
and as Neighbourhood Watch we were told by DISPOL that we can arrest these
"guards" as they carry no form of identification, no personnel
identification or any form of identification from the Security Company they
represent. Which also means they could be someone up to no good and cannot
prove they are a Security Guard.

One night when the patrollers wanted to round up these people and Highlands
ZRP were contacted for help, Highlands did not arrest them and took the
side of the "guards".

So one wonders if this law does apply to everyone!

Mandara Neighbourhood Watch

_______________________________________________

Letter 4 Subject Vacation Work

Dear Sir
  It has come to my notice that there are young school leavers EX
Zimbabwean, who are interested in vacation work on Tobacco farms in Zambia
and would probably be interested in Malawi and Mozambique. The problem is
that they have no contacts in those countries , they also appear short of
cash to get there .
   I was wondering if there is any way in which Jag can help solve the
problem .
   I recently saw an advert from Gordon Chance, looking for tobacco
assistance. There is also Peter Mac Sporran in a different area and there
is a group being assisted by a Tobacco CO in Southern Zambia, I would be
most grateful if you could let me have the E- Mail addresses of the above
and I will try and contact them. Perhaps a tobacco Co would like to sponsor
these young chaps with say an organised tour of the tobacco areas, The
Holidays these young people are talking about are the coming Xmas holidays
and perhaps the future ones as well . I would love to see Zambia taking
Zimbabwe's place as the second biggest exporter, If they have the will they
have everything else.
  Ask John W.W. what he thinks?
Anticipating an answer ASAP.
 Yours sincerely
   Ben Norton
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All letters published on the open Letter Forum are the views and opinions
of the submitters, and do not represent the official viewpoint of Justice
for Agriculture.
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JAG JOB OPPORTUNITIES Updated 6th July 2004

Please send any classified adverts for publication in this newsletter to:
JAG Job Opportunities <justice@telco.co.zw>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.  Advert Received 2nd July 2004

TOP FLIGHT PA/ADMIN MANAGER AVAILABLE
Experience in Belina and other payrolls.
General office administration including debtors/creditors and petty cash.
Organisation of strategic meetings, luncheons and office functions.
Management of the MD's and Chairman's diary, typing and correspondence.
Please contact lindsay@tsl.co.zw for a detailed CV
______________________________________________

2.  Advert Received 2nd July 2004

Wanted - 10kgs Seville Oranges
Contact 011 808 288

_______________________________________________

3.  Advert Received 2nd July 2004

I am a guy with qualification in the fields below
 Industrial instrumentation and control city and guild part 2 & 3 .
Microcomputer technology city and guildspart 1 and 2.
Laboratory Technology certificate
Computer Science Degree up to year 3 (on part time)

I would like to change environment and wishes to take a task that is
challenging and with a serious practical approach.
_______________________________________________

4.  Advert Received 2nd July 2004

Bookkeeper Wanted:

We are looking for an experienced bookkeeper/ administrative supervisor to
administer accounts at our business located in Milton Park.  Nice working
environment and an attractive package for the successful candidate. Our
current bookkeeper/ admin supervisor is moving to the UK.

Please contact Mr Demos Demou at the Numbers Below or at
demos@houses.africaonline.co.zw

Houses For Africa

Tel: + 263 4 702 412

Fax: +263 4 790 584

email:demos@houses.africaonline.co. zw
_______________________________________________

5.  Advert Received 2nd July 2004
Subject: Position available
Farm manager position available on a citrus estate in the Beitbridge area.
Husband and wife team required.  Wife to help with general office work etc.
Pastel and Belina an advantage, but can be sent for training.  Husband to
help in citrus, wheat, poultry and vegetable cropping.  No guarantees, due
to land situation.  Please contact us for more details on:
bristow@mweb.co.zw
_______________________________________________

6.  Advert Received 4th July 2004

FOR SALE :

1 second hand pellet gun (Gecado Mod. 27) plus carrier bag.  $800 000.00

1995 white Landrover Discovery.  Very good condition.  150 000kms. $70 000
000.00 (neg).

Tel: 04-494720 or cell : 091-247001 or email : cocky@zol.co.zw

______________________________________________

7.  Advert Received 4th July 2004

Required - Lady who loves dealing with public and has good sence of humour.
Abit of office skills needed and whole lot of honesty. Tel Linda 091321640

_______________________________________________

8.  Advert Received 5th July 2004

Available a mature excellent houseworker , Lucy, in Harare.
 Her current employer of 8 years is emigrating; she was with the previous
employer for 15 years.  available from end July.
contact: - Sue Ford, at 720234 weekday evenings / early
mornings,
or dafordsu@zol.co.zw

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JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURE PUBLIC RELATIONS COMMUNIQUÉ - 6th July , 2004

Email: justice@telco.co.zw; justiceforagriculture@zol.co.zw
Internet: www.justiceforagriculture.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.  At last the AU stands up for its own principles.

Eddie Cross

AU slams abuses in Zimbabwe Beauregard Tromp
    July 04 2004 at 12:38PM

Addis Ababa - The African Union has lambasted President Robert Mugabe's
government for flagrant human rights abuses. It is Africa's most damning
condemnation of Zimbabwe yet.

A report adopted by the AU executive council on Saturday slams the
government for the arrests and torture of opposition members of parliament
and human rights lawyers, the arrests of journalists, the stifling of
freedom of _expression and clampdowns on other civil liberties. This is the
harshest criticism Mugabe has had to bear from his continental peers.

The report was adopted on Saturday by the AU's executive council, which
comprises foreign ministers of the 53 member states, despite strong
opposition from Zimbabwe.

It was compiled by the AU's African Commission on Human and People's
Rights, which sent a mission to Zimbabwe from June 24 to 28 2002, shortly
after the presidential elections.

'Government did not act soon enough and firmly enough' The report was
apparently not submitted to the AU's 2003 summit because it had not been
translated into French.

It will now be considered by the AU's annual summit of heads of state and
government that begins in Addis Ababa on Tuesday.

After speaking to victims of political violence and other victims of
torture in Zimbabwe, the mission said that "at the very least" human rights
violations and arbitrary arrests had occurred.

It was particularly alarmed by the arrest of Stenford Moyo, the president
of the Law Society in Zimbabwe. "The mission is prepared and able to rule
that the government cannot wash its hands from responsibility for all these
happenings," read the report.

"It is evident that a highly charged atmosphere has been prevailing, many
land activists undertook their illegal actions in the expectation that
government was understanding and that police would not act against them.

"Government did not act soon enough and firmly enough against those guilty
of gross criminal acts.

"By its statements and political rhetoric, and by its failure at critical
moments to uphold the rule of law, the government failed to chart a path
that signalled a commitment to the rule of law," the report said.

The mission was not able to find definitively that the human rights
violations were part of an orchestrated plan by the Zanu-PF government. But
the report said the Zimbabwean state did acknowledge to the observers that
"excesses did occur".

Stan Mudenge, the Zimbabwean foreign minister, protested vehemently against
the adoption of the report at the meeting on Saturday, stating that the
Zimbabwean government had not been given an opportunity to review and
respond to the report.

But Oluyemi Adeniji, the chairperson of the AU executive council, and
Oluyemi Adeniji, Nigeria's foreig minister, disagreed and allowed the
report to stand, with the minister's objections noted.

The report recommended that Zimbabwe needed mediators to help it "withdraw
from the precipice".

It suggested that religious organisations were best suited to this task and
further suggested that "the media needs to be freed from the shackles of
control to voice opinions and reflect societal beliefs freely".

The report also called for a repeal of draconian laws and asked the
government to abide by the judgments of the supreme court, which should be
free of political pressure.

The report said the whole the mission found Zimbabwean society to be highly
polarised.

"The land question is not in itself the cause of division. It appears that
at the heart is a society in search of the means for change and divided
about how best to achieve change after two decades of dominance by a
political party that carried the hopes and aspirations of the people of
Zimbabwe through the liberation struggle into independence," the report
said. - Foreign Service

___________________________________________

2.

Ancram: A five-point plan for Zimbabwe
Speech in the House of Commons on Zimbabwe

"I welcome this debate. It is not before time. It is in fact extraordinary
that in seven years of government this is the first time we have had a
debate on Zimbabwe in government time. I am nevertheless grateful. I only
hope that this belated recognition by the Government of the need to debate
it is an indication that at last they are beginning to address this issue
with the seriousness it merits.

I could after these seven years indulge in a sort of 'recherche du temps
perdu'. It would serve little purpose. Zimbabwe's problems may be rooted in
the past. But they are very much current and in the future. Four years on
from the last rigged parliamentary elections, and two years on from the
'stolen' presidential election, preparations for the next parliamentary
elections are already being made. The problems are worse, and they must
urgently be addressed.

As the House knows I have been shouting about Zimbabwe for the last two
years and more. I have sometimes been criticised for spending so much time
on it. I make no apologies. This is not, as someone once admonished me,
just another African country upon which we should not seek to impose our
values. Zimbabwe is a country which has enjoyed democracy and the Rule of
Law. Zimbabwe is a country which has known prosperity and full stomachs and
economic stability. All of these are now lost or under threat.

Nor is Zimbabwe a far away country of which we know little. Zimbabwe is a
country we know well, for which we must still feel a sense of
responsibility, if only a moral one. We cannot say that it has nothing to
do with us, that to seek to interfere smacks of neo-colonialism. That is
not what the dispossessed black farm workers told me when I met them in the
woods outside Harare two years ago. That is not what the politicians and
the many other victims of Mugabe's brutality told me. They believed that we
had a moral duty to act. They felt a sense of betrayal at what they saw as
our inactivity.

That is why I welcome this debate today.

The simple fact is that month after month the situation in Zimbabwe is
getting worse. It was bad enough when I was there. It is considerably worse
now. I saw some pretty horrifying sights of ethnic cleansing, of political
intimidation and of food queues. My Rt Honourable Friend for Buckingham -
who cannot be with us today because he is in Darfur - visited only a few
months ago. The situation he witnessed was far, far worse. We are watching,
the birth of a failed state, the victory of crude despotism, and the
failure of the international community to respond.

I am baffled by the inertia with which the international community has
responded to Mugabe's vile regime. To quote the most recent International
Crisis Group report of 19th April "the response . has been inadequate and
ineffectual at all levels. Their (the US and the EU) policies do not begin
to address the roots of the crisis". I am not advocating a military
solution; I am asking for international action. More of that later.

First it is worth reminding ourselves of the nature of the crisis in
Zimbabwe. It can best be described as a series of deficits.

First the democratic deficit. A patently rigged parliamentary election four
years ago. A stolen presidential election two years ago after which the
Foreign Secretary told us "we do not recognise the result or its
legitimacy." What we have seen is a systematic undermining of the
principles of free and fair elections, and the flouting of the (ironically)
named Harare Principles and the SADC principles. What we have seen over
these last years has been dishonest voter registration which allowed Mugabe
effectively to rig the Register, rigged vote counting with ballot papers
going missing, voter intimidation and bribery, and the physical persecution
and even murder of political opponents. And now we learn that voter
registration for next year's elections has begun, without any independent
supervision or verification - and in one case at least without the sitting
opposition MP being told until after it was completed. And Mugabe announces
that he will have no observers in Zimbabwe for this election. The
democratic deficit is almost complete.

Then the Rule of Law deficit. Many opposition members of Parliament in
Zimbabwe have been subject to murder attempts, torture, assault and arrest.
A recent survey of MDC members of parliament found that 42 percent claimed
to have been assaulted in the past four years, most commonly by the police,
while 24 percent said they had survived assassination attempts. And because
of the politicisation of the police and of the judiciary there is rarely
any legal comeback. The once proud rule of law in Zimbabwe, despite the
immense courage of many Zimbabwean lawyers, lies in tatters.

The independent judiciary, one of the pillars of democracy, has been
severely compromised, with the Bench packed with Mugabe supporters. The
'Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act', adopted before the
elections of 2002 requires journalists to provide detailed information
about themselves. If they do not, they will not receive a journalist
license. The law has been used to close Zimbabwe's only independent daily
newspaper and to arrest people for "suspicion of journalism." The state now
claims a virtual monopoly of written and broadcast media; foreign
correspondents, meanwhile, are a thing of the past. The Public Order and
Security Act restricts the freedom of association. The government in
Zimbabwe has used it to stamp out any form of activity or protest by
opposition groups.

The rule of law has been exchanged for the rule of tyranny and of the
organised mob. And then there is the Law and Order Deficit. Mugabe has
skilfully created a society in which his orders to kill, maim and destroy
are easily carried out. His private militias, the so-called Green Bombers
are evil. The methods in which they are trained in special camps to which
often they are abducted include not only systemised violence, but also
organised rape and brutal abuse and humiliation. The first hand accounts of
these from some former members who have fled to South Africa are chilling.
And then the Economic and Social Deficit. Zimbabwe's economy is among the
fastest-shrinking in the world. Unemployment has risen to more than 70 per
cent . As recently as 1997, Zimbabwe was twice as rich as the median
sub-Saharan nation. Now it is crashing. Inflation still rides high at over
440 per cent. GDP has shrunk by one-third in 5 years . The black market
exchange rate still flourishes, despite legislation to outlaw it. At the
official exchange rate, £1 is worth Zimbabwe $815, on the black market, £1
buys $7,000.

And now we hear threats of wholesale nationalisaton of agricultural land,
despite the fact that current land seizures have already led to the
collapse of the once prosperous agriculture sector with all the attendant
consequences on food production.

And of course there is the Humanitarian Deficit. Zimbabwe has lived on food
aid since 2001 and last year 6.5 million people, more than half the
population, depended on international help.

Mugabe is now refusing help from the United Nations World Food Programme.
Regime officials say that Zimbabwe will have a bumper maize crop this year
of 2.4 million tons, more than enough to meet domestic needs. Yet a report
from the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee - a government body -
concludes that 2.3 million people in rural Zimbabwe "will not be able to
meet their minimum cereal needs during the 2004/05 season".

We know why Mugabe lies. By keeping the UN and aid agencies out of
Zimbabwe, he can ensure that his regime controls all food aid.

Mugabe thinks he can feed his people by doing black market deals to buy
grain and then tell the world it is home-grown.

It is of serious concern that two American companies are in cahoots with
Mugabe. Sentry Financial Corporation and Dimon Incorporated are both
involved in the tobacco-for-maize scam. Surprisingly our Government does
not seem to know about it. I quote from Baroness Amos, who said only last
week: "I am aware of the rumours with respect to Zimbabwe selling tobacco
in exchange for maize." These aren't rumours. They are real. At least the
that the US authorities are aware of what is happening. Both Congress and
the Treasury are now investigating the two firms involved.

Aids is rife. A third of the population has HIV. The government's Aids levy
is failing to get through to the frontline services. Hospitals and clinics
cannot afford even the most basic of Aids testing kits. I wonder if the
money is actually being directed to the fight against Aids.

A recent National Audit Office's report on DFID's HIV/AIDS strategy was
highly critical. It found that DFID's own country assistance plans do not
address the issue of HIV/AIDS consistently, and many of them "failed to
consider the effect of the epidemic on poverty reduction" .

I hope that the Minister will address these points when he speaks later on
in this debate. And on the day that the ICC meet there is the thorny
question of cricket. Sometimes I am told that I should not try to bring
politics into sport. This is not a question of sport versus politics. It is
a question of morality versus money. Given the situation I have described
in Zimbabwe, I cannot see how in conscience England's cricketers should be
asked to play even one-day internationals in Zimbabwe this autumn. The
Tests have gone, but we are told these matches are still on. The ZCU, whose
patron is Mugabe, has already played cynical and apparently racist politics
with its own team selection. Anything that gives comfort to them or to
Mugabe in terms of sport should be abandoned. The Tour should not take
place, full stop. The Government should clearly and unequivocally say so,
and say so now. The greatest deficit is in the international response. It
has been lamentable. For a start far greater pressure must be brought to
bear on President Mbeki of South Africa. He must be told the bald truth
that his policy of quiet diplomacy is dead and buried. What happened to his
vain promise to President Bush last year that by June 2004 Zimbabwe's
problems would be solved? Just last week Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister
Aziz Pahad is on record again as saying: "it is clear that we will not meet
the June deadline"."I have no other alternative to quiet diplomacy, so we
will continue with quiet diplomacy." The truth is that it has failed and
our Government should acknowledge it.

I have been to New York and asked why the UN does not get involved. The
response, I have to say, is pathetic. I am fobbed off with the answer that
because the Zimbabwe crisis is an internal or domestic problem, the UN
can't get involved. Tell that to some 127,000 Zimbabwean refugees are
trying to get into Botswana each month. Is the UN blind to the refugees
which flee over the border to Botswana, to South Africa and to Malawi,
bringing economic havoc in their wake? And doesn't the demolition of human
rights, or ethnic cleansing, or genocide concern the UN. If not, why then
their sudden interest in the appalling problems of Darfur in Sudan? Come to
think of it the UN response is to put both Zimbabwe and Sudan on the UN
Commission for Human Rights. Is it surprising that the people of Zimbabwe
feel betrayed? And then there is the EU and their much-vaunted sanctions.
EU sanctions are pretty toothless. The red carpet treatment Mugabe received
in Paris a year ago was disgraceful. It totally undermined the credibility
of EU sanctions both internationally, and in Zimbabwe where they are a
laughing stock. There is a strong suspicion in Zimbabwe that some European
members tacitly wish to support Mugabe. When there is a need to
comprehensively strengthen these sanctions, we hear that there are voices
in the EU that are arguing that they should be abandoned. So much for a
common EU foreign policy. The EU has a chance of imposing real pressure on
the Mugabe regime. When will it accept its moral responsibilities and act
effectively? The sad reality is that by the time the EU sanctions come up
for review next year, Zimbabwe could well have become a failed state with
all the domestic and international implications which that involves. What
defines a failed state? "In general terms, a state fails when it is
unable:- · to control its territory and guarantee the security of its
citizens; · to maintain the rule of law, promote human rights and provide
effective governance; and · to deliver public goods to its population (such
as economic growth, education and healthcare)."

All of these apply to Zimbabwe today. This is not my defintion. It is the
definition of the FS in a speech in September 2002. I agree with him. He
even offered a solution. "Experience suggests that the prevention of state
failure depends on a scarce commodity: international political will. If we
are to secure public and international support for action, we need to make
the case for early engagement much more strongly." I could not agree more.
So why the failure on the part of the Government to act decisively or even
to take a firm lead? Why the relcutance to lead from the front? The
Americans have no such hang-ups. Christopher Dell, the newly nominated next
Ambassador to Zimbabwe, with experience in Kosovo, Mozambique and Angola,
explained to the Ambassadorial nomination hearing last week that "In
Kosovo, I witnessed firsthand how misrule by one man and his regime in
pursuit of narrow political advantage devastated the lives of millions of
his citizens, both Albanian and Serb, and I'm proud to have helped in the
effort to bring about Slobodan Milosevic's departure from power by
Democratic means." A clear message to Zimbabwe which we would do well to
emulate. So what would we do? I have a five-point plan which I believe
should now urgently be pursued. First we must, if necessary by invoking the
benefits of good governance in return for Nepad aid, persuade South Africa
and the other SADC countries to insist on the SADC norms for the March 2005
parliamentary elections. We must be prepared to criticise South Africa's
culpable inaction in the face of the evil of Mugabe. Second, the UN should
join with the SADC to produce free and fair parliamentary elections in
Zimbabwe by supporting any SADC benchmarks that are developed to determine
whether the process is credible. We must see SADC and UN teams in Zimbabwe
as soon as possible to observe the entire electoral process. UN personnel
on the ground must be demonstratively effective in their monitoring and
humanitarian advocacy. Mugabe must never again be allowed to select which
countries can send observers. Third, pressure should be brought to bear by
not only the EU but also the US to repeal of the Public Order and Security
(POSA) and Access to Information and Protection of Privacy (AIPPA) Acts and
amendment of the Electoral Act. Fourth there is an increasingly urgent need
for EU and US targeted sanctions to be revised to include the family
members and business associates of key Zanu-PF figures. Freezing the assets
of those who bankroll Mugabe would have an immediate and dramatic effect.
Fifth and finally it is time the British Government tabled a Resolution to
send UN observers to Zimbabwe to monitor the fair distribution of food.
This would at last internationalise this crisis. The FS argues that we
would never get a Resolution through. Perhaps not at the first attempt. He
should then persist, in his own words "making the case for engagement more
strongly", shaming those who vote against such a resolution, until he
succeeds. One thing is certain; if he doesn't try he will never succeed.
For too long Zimbabwe has been the crisis from which the world has averted
its gaze. South Africa has murmured about quiet diplomacy on the one hand
and feted Mugabe on the other. The EU have imposed targeted sanction which
have then been more honoured in the breach. And the British Government has
wrung its hands and walked by on the other side. The time of walking by is
over.

Zimbabwe cries out for international action.

We should take the lead in making sure they get it."
______________________________________________

3.  Was Mugabe EVER the legitimate leader of Zimbabwe?  This extract from
the UK Parliament House of Commons debate on Zimbabwe yesterday 1 July 2004
is very revealing. ..................................

Sir Nicholas Winterton (Con) .................. Zimbabwe is only one of the
United Kingdom's overseas problems, but Britain has a unique and
unprecedented responsibility. It was this Parliament, under a Conservative
Government, that granted Zimbabwe independence and brought Robert Mugabe to
power. I remind the House that a United Kingdom Government promised, to
outlaw all intimidation during the 1980 election; but then^×again, I am
deeply ashamed of this^×the Government and their representatives proceeded
to ignore hundreds of affidavits testifying to the sustained intimidation
that finally ensured Mr. Mugabe's outright victory.

Despite the recommendations of the acting governor, Christopher Soames^×who
suggested to the Foreign Secretary at the time that certain areas should be
taken out of the election because of the levels of intimidation^×the
Foreign Secretary refused to allow the exclusion of those areas. As a
result, Robert Mugabe came to power.

Mr. Bellingham : That was Peter Carrington.

Sir Nicholas Winterton: Yes, it was Lord Carrington. I know what happened
for a fact, because the chief executive of Cheshire county council, Sir
John
Boynton, was returning officer for the election in Zimbabwe. Many
representatives of the Cheshire constabulary were also there to monitor the
election, and ensure that it was free and fair. The views that they
expressed on their return to this country suggested that in many areas it
was far from free and fair.
______________________________________________
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