| The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe - may peace, truth and justice prevail. |
Zimbabwe's security forces, the
front-line enforcers of President Robert
Mugabe's brutal regime, are being
paid only a fraction of their salaries as
the country's economic crisis
deepens.
Many soldiers and police officers, whose loyalty has
traditionally been
bought with high pay and other perks, are receiving less
than half of their
wages because there is not enough money in the Treasury
coffers, according
to serving police officers.
The pay cuts are
threatening to undermine the forces' morale and, crucially,
their loyalty to
Mr Mugabe. Opponents say that Mr Mugabe continues in power
only because
critics of the regime risk violence, jail and death at the
hands of his
ruthless state security forces, including the feared Central
Intelligence
Organisation.
Last week, with the help of an intermediary, The Telegraph
met two policemen
in the capital, Harare, who were prepared to speak out, on
condition of
anonymity.
One officer, in his mid-thirties, said:
"Recently I have been paid only a
small part of my salary and it is making
life very difficult. I have a wife
and children. How am I supposed to feed
them if am not being paid properly?"
The other, a slightly older man,
said: "If you were in the security forces
you always knew that you would be
rewarded well because you were protecting
the regime. But that is not
happening now and many police officers are
suffering, and soldiers too. It
makes us wonder why we do it."
The Government denied that security
officers were not receiving their full
salaries and said that all civil
servants would receive pay rises from July
1. The police officers were
adamant, however, that they were not being paid
in full and said that the
cuts were causing "deep resentment".
Members of the ruling Zanu-PF's
40,000-strong youth militia threatened to
revolt last year because they had
not been paid, but a rebellion by
experienced security officers would pose a
serious threat to Mr Mugabe's
rule - and possibly his life.
The pay
cuts will hit particularly hard because they come at a time when
prices in
the shops are soaring - Zimbabwe's inflation is just under 300 per
cent - and
there are serious shortages of basic foods, petrol and medicines
in the worst
economic crisis since independence from Britain was won in
1980.
David
Coltart, an MP for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC), said
that if Mr Mugabe was unable to pay the police and army it would
be "a
devastating blow" to the regime. "Without the military, Mugabe is
nothing,"
he said.
One Zimbabwean opposition MP said that Mr Mugabe would "simply
print
millions of banknotes" to pay his security forces, even though this
would
send inflation soaring even higher. There is an another problem:
the
collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar means that it now costs 700 dollars (50p)
to
produce a note for 500 (36p).
The banknotes are printed by a
government-owned company in Harare. Last
week, it was frantically churning
out notes to meet increased demand because
of inflation and last week's
strikes. The $500 note - Zimbabwe's highest
denomination note, which was
worth £500 just after independence in 1980 - is
now not enough to buy a
bottle of beer.
Protesters said they were very concerned about the arrest
of Morgan
Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC who called last week's protests
as a
"final push" against Mr Mugabe.
Mr Tsvangirai, 51, is in custody
on charges of treason for plotting to use
illegal means to overthrow the
government. His lawyer, George Bizos, who
represented Nelson Mandela in his
treason trial 40 years ago, said: "By
keeping political opponents silent, the
country's difficulties will not be
solved."
Last week, Mr Mugabe
threatened to expel Brian Donnelly, the British High
Commissioner in Harare,
for "interfering in Zimbabwe's affairs by helping
the MDC to organise its
demonstrations". A spokesman for Mr Donnelly denied
any role in organising
the protests. Western diplomats saw the warning as Mr
Mugabe's latest attempt
to blame his troubles on the former colonial power.
Where coming home with a battered loaf makes it a day of triumph
Andrew
Meldrum
Sunday June 15, 2003
The Observer
Idda Mandanza gets up in
the dark at 4.30 each morning to hike several
kilometres into Harare to catch
a train to her work, where she is an
assistant production manager, by 8am.
She does not get home until 8pm.
She no longer has breakfast before leaving.
Lunch at work is her main meal
and she often has no dinner. Mandaza, 53,
shares a rented room with her son,
Kennedy, 20, who gets home even later.
Frequent power cuts mean they cannot
even make tea and must sit in the
dark.
Like all Zimbabwe's workers, their lives have become drastically
more
difficult because of hyperinflation (currently at 269 per cent), food
and
fuel shortages and power blackouts.
'We used to take the commuter
vans to work, which are much faster and more
convenient, but now they are
much too expensive,' she says.
Going to the supermarket, Mandaza is
greeted by staff who complain they have
not seen her for weeks. 'I am
embarrassed to tell them I can no longer
afford to shop here regularly,' she
said. She walks by empty shelves that
used to hold Zimbabwe's staple food,
maize meal, as well as other essential
items such as sugar, cooking oil and
margarine. 'What we need, the shops no
longer have. And what the shops do
have, we can no longer afford,' says
Mandaza.
She picks up a jar of
jam, looks at the price and then slowly puts it back
on the shelf. 'It used
to be my favourite, but now it is just too
expensive.'
There is a rush
of people in the shop and Mandaza runs over to the bakery
section. Bread is
suddenly available and a scuffle ensues. Mandaza emerges
triumphantly,
holding up a slightly battered loaf of bread. 'My son will be
very happy with
this,' she says.
Walking home, she says that life has become much harder
in the past six
months. 'We thought things were bad last year, but this year
is much worse,'
she says. 'Things in our country are terrible.'
She
blames Robert Mugabe. 'We all blame him and his government,' she says.
'The
shortages, inflation, the repression. It's all getting to be too
much.'
She is not impressed with Mugabe's seizure of land from white
farmers. 'What
good did that do us? It has made food unavailable for us,' she
says
scornfully. 'People don't want land. They want better jobs. They want
better
living standards. And Mugabe has made those things worse.'
What
does she think will improve the situation? 'A change of government.
Genuine
elections would sort out our problems quickly,' she says. 'But that
is what
Mugabe is trying to prevent. That is why we have gone on strike. We
know the
police and the army will shoot, but people are saying, "We are dead
anyway,
this is not a life". I don't know when I will go out on the streets
against
Mugabe. I am afraid people will get shot and beaten. But we must
stand up for
our rights.'
Sunday Times (SA)
Wads of cash outlawed in Zimbabwe
Focus on
Zimbabwe
© The Telegraph,
London
Zimbabweans struggling with
hyperinflation and grubby wads of worthless
banknotes learnt this week that
police will now view holding large stashes
of cash as a crime.
With
prices rising by the day, people visit shops with extra bags to
carry
Zimbabwe dollar bills. After filling up their cars, drivers routinely
hand
over more than 4 000 individual notes, bound into heavy bundles
.
The pressure created by inflation of 270% has caused a national
shortage of
banknotes, paralysing the shattered economy. The highest
denomination bill -
Z500 - is worth barely R2.50 and is virtually
unobtainable.
The lack of cash follows a long list of other
shortages. Supermarket shelves
are empty of sugar, cooking oil, flour,
margarine and mealie meal, the
staple food. Fuel shortages have crippled the
economy since 2000.
President Robert Mugabe routinely reacts to
shortages by blaming the
opposition and promising tough measures against his
"nefarious enemies".
Thursday's edition of the Herald warned of
"sterner measures against
individuals or organisations found with huge stakes
[sic] of banknotes".
David Chapfika, an MP from the ruling Zanu-PF
party and chairman of
parliament's finance committee, told the paper:
"Zimbabwe has a
sophisticated banking structure . . . and there is no need
for anyone to be
carrying huge stakes of money."
He claimed that all money in Zimbabwe belonged to the government.
Police have begun
raiding companies and stopping people at roadblocks,
searching for what they
describe as "unusual" amounts of cash.
At Gauntlett Security Services
in Harare, they threatened to confiscate
between 40 and 50 million Zimbabwe
dollars (R200 000 to R250 000). Peter
Harris, the director, said: "We called
our lawyer, who sent the police
packing. There is no law stopping people
holding onto their money."
The official hunt for stocks of money is
illegal, Adrian de Bourbon, an
advocate, said: "There is no law in Zimbabwe
which makes it a criminal
offence for people to hold cash, unless it is to be
used for illegal
purposes."
Most banks are limiting cash
withdrawals to a maximum of Z50 000 (about
R250). They regularly hand it over
in Z20 bills, forcing customers to
stagger out with 2 500
banknotes.
Officially, R1 is worth Z101. The free market real
exchange rate is above
Z250 to R1. According to the Economist Intelligence
Unit, Zimbabwe will have
the highest inflation rate in the world this
year.
Sunday Times (SA)
Reality dawns: It's Nepad or
nothing
Analysis
Although only 15 of 53 African Union states have
agreed to peer review,
there is no doubt that Mbeki's plan will forge ahead,
writes
Ranjeni
Munusamy
In
the three-year evolution of the New Partnership for Africa's
Development
(Nepad), there has not been as large a gathering of its
evangelists and
sceptics as there was at this week's World Economic Forum
Africa Summit in
Durban.
With the African recovery plan popularised
internationally, and information
about its operation now freely available,
the summit presented the first
real opportunity for the continent's corporate
captains to unpack the plan
and define their involvement in it.
On
the opening day of the summit, Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu, President
Thabo
Mbeki's point man on Nepad and chairman of the recovery
programme's
secretariat, delivered a progress report on its peer-review
mechanism.
The system - which allows African states to appraise each
other's adherence
to good political, economic and corporate governance - is
perhaps the most
talked about and crucial facet of Nepad.
Asked
why only 15 of the 53 African Union member states had so far signed up
to be
evaluated, Nkuhlu's response was that it was unrealistic to expect
all
countries to be on board from the beginning and that "not every
African
leader is democratic".
A few sniggers and knowing looks were exchanged.
Pressed further, Nkuhlu said it was felt in some
quarters that Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe had "overstayed his welcome"
and that African
leaders were not doing enough to encourage his
exit.
"But Zimbabwe is not pertinent to the Nepad process, and Nepad
doesn't have
anything to do with Zimbabwe," Nkuhlu said.
At the
back of the room, the Zimbabwean government delegation applauded.
Some people
in the audience murmured in disbelief while others burst
out
laughing.
But by the end of the conference, most business
leaders were putting their
signatures on a pledge committing to
Nepad.
A representative from a Zimbabwean hotel chain noted that his
government was
seemingly content with the objectives and offsets spelt out in
Nepad but,
predictably, had deep reservations about the peer-review
mechanism.
He said he doubted the mechanism would achieve its
objectives because of the
insistence by African leaders, particularly Mbeki,
that national sovereignty
prohibited intervention in crisis situations. A
Ghanaian banker said until
there was a demonstrable example of how African
leaders could call each
other to order - and Zimbabwe was the most obvious
challenge - Nepad's noble
objectives would remain a pipe
dream.
But both of them signed the declaration.
It is not
clear where the turning point came during the summit. Perhaps it
was a
statement by Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano that there was
really no
alternative to Nepad, warts and all. He said Zimbabwe already
provided the
demonstrable example. Even before the peer-review mechanism had
been
launched, African leaders were using its principles to help Zimbabwe
out of
its morass. They regularly engaged with Mugabe and, due to pressure
from his
peers, the Zimbabwean president was revoking oppressive laws
against the
media and opposition
This is the crux of the matter. There is an
increasing public demand that
the peer-review process should be open and
transparent - almost a mob
mentality which demands a lashing in the market
square.
Mbeki said this week that while the peer-review mechanism was
voluntary,
adherence to the principles of the AU Constitutive Act was
obligatory for
member states.
Again Zimbabwe is the test as it
stands in violation of several principles:
respect for democratic principles,
human rights, the rule of law and good
governance.
But until the
AU establishes institutions such as the African Court of
Justice, little can
be done about breaches, and no punitive action can
be
taken.
Chissano said peer review represented the AU in action
and was a way of
sealing "intra-African" co-operation.
"Maybe
people think we want it [the peer-review mechanism] to give answers
to
outside partners. But the aim is to improve governance and therefore
promote
sustainable development," Chissano said.
He said it was essential
that the system get off the ground immediately and
operate even with limited
buy-in from African states.
"Through example, we can show others that
it is worth it to participate as
they will see that we are not being
punished. They will instead see changes
in our countries and new successes,"
said Chissano.
But not all African heads of state are on the same page.
Botswana, which this week came up tops in a survey on good
governance in
Africa, has not signed up to participate in the peer-review
process.
Botswana is the darling of the international community and has
nothing to
fear from being scrutinised, but President Festus Mogae is
sceptical and
wants more clarity about how peer review will
operate.
It became clear this week that the assessment will largely
be conducted by a
panel of eminent persons, not the heads of state or peers.
They will study
each country's constitution, audited financial statements,
economic policies
and human-rights records, and will interview relevant
stakeholders.
Nkuhlu said heads of state would step in only when
serious problems required
them to call their colleagues to
order.
But it remains unclear whether the peers can force changes or
simply provide
advice.
The Nepad secretariat wants to play down
the punitive options, insisting
that the aim is to rectify problem areas to
keep states on board and not to
punish or exclude them.
There was
a concerted effort by Nepad's drivers this week to get business to
"walk the
talk".
According to the group chief executive of the Ashanti
Goldfields Company in
Ghana, Sam Jonah, only 10% of business on the continent
is intra-African, in
contrast to Europe, where 80% of trade is between
European states.
The aim of this week's discussions was not just to
convince the sceptics but
to reverse the brain and capital drains from
Africa.
Discussions about Africa's rescue plan are always prefaced by
its problems -
the devastation caused by colonialism, conflict, poverty,
HIV/Aids, the debt
burden, corruption, the lack of international market
access and the bad
press that the continent invariably receives
.
To illustrate the rich-poor divide, Jonah said the average cow in
Europe or
Japan was much better off than 80% of Africans, due to the highly
subsidised
agricultural industries in these countries. Most Africans lived on
less than
$2 a day, while the cows lived on $7.
Nepad seeks to
dismantle all the odds stacked against Africa's progress and
to draw
investment to promote the growth of domestic economies.
But many
business captains pointed out this week that, while continental
projects were
welcome, the test would be in how Nepad influences domestic
agendas and
policies.
Kwesi Botchwey, executive chairman of the African
Development Policy
Ownership, noted: "What is going to deliver Nepad is what
happens at
national level. If policies are inconsistent or not in congruence
with the
overall mission, it will not happen."
The executive
chairman of African Rainbow Minerals, Patrice Motsepe, said
many of the
discussions were "frank, forthright and undiplomatic".
"Various
political leaders were asked questions which were difficult for
them to
answer," Motsepe said.
The most difficult question to answer is how
to get all African leaders to
act in unison .
Mbeki, using the
example of "on-the-ground" resistance to South Africa's
macroeconomic policy
framework, said it required resilience to withstand the
"agitation in the
streets" to break in unpopular and misunderstood policies.
Decoded,
this meant that Nepad and its controversial peer-review mechanism
would forge
ahead with or without the support of everyone.
Mbeki and Chissano,
who takes over as AU chairman from the SA President next
month, are making it
clear that they are prepared to leave the
detractors
behind.
Business quickly woke up to the reality. In a
dramatic sea change ,
delegates posed a question to themselves: How could
they make a meaningful
contribution to Nepad and possibly fund it
themselves?
"It would be an excellent thing if we could finance Nepad
ourselves," Mbeki
noted. "I don't think we have thought about
this."
But it is clear that converting business sceptics into Nepad
believers was
always his plan.
Sunday Times (SA)
Tsvangirai shackled in 'horrendous' prison
Focus
on Zimbabwe
Sunday Times Foreign
Desk
Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan
Tsvangirai, who has been in detention
on treason charges for more than a
week, is being kept in "horrendous
conditions" at Harare's infamous remand
jail, said a colleague.
The spokesman for the Movement for Democratic
Change, Paul Themba Nyathi,
claimed that Tsvangirai was being kept in
terrible conditions at the remand
custody centre, held in handcuffs, leg
irons and prison clothes.
This is the same jail where former
opposition spokesman Learnmore Jongwe
died last year while awaiting trial for
allegedly murdering his wife during
a domestic dispute.
"The
conditions that Tsvangirai is being kept in are horrible, as
is
characteristic of custody conditions in prisons and jails all
over
Zimbabwe," he said. "They are really horrendous, extremely bad. They
are
inhumane, just like the conditions under which the colonial regime
kept
nationalist leaders and democratic activists."
Tsvangirai
remained in custody when on Friday High Court judge Susan
Mavangira postponed
his bail application to this week.
The MDC leader is facing new
treason charges stemming from the recent mass
action that paralysed the
country for a week. The current treason charge is
his fourth. Two emanated
from "subversive statements" made at rallies, while
the other stemmed from
allegations that Tsvangirai plotted to kill Mugabe
last
year.
Zimbabwe's prison conditions have been widely described as
dreadful by
former prisoners and human- rights activists.
A report
tabled last week by a parliamentary portfolio committee that toured
local
prisons at the beginning of the year said prison conditions
were
appalling.
The report said prisoners complained of severe
beatings by prison guards,
and cited one instance in which a prisoner died,
allegedly as a result of
beatings. The prisons visited were also
overcrowded.
When asked to comment, the officer-in-charge at Harare
remand prison, Vee
Machingauta, said Tsvangirai was being kept "just like
others" in prison.
"There is no problem at all," he said. "Things are
very normal . . . He is
okay. Those are exaggerations."
However,
Tsvangirai's wife, Susan, who has visited her husband in detention,
has
expressed dismay at the conditions under which her husband is
being
held.
"I am personally fearful about his security at remand
prison, because the
place is open to abuse by authorities," she said.
Sense of despair haunts the African Renaissance
This was supposed to be
the dawn of a fresh era from the Sahara to Cape
Town. Instead, cycles of
unstoppable violence have condemned millions to
death, with famine, Aids and
economic catastrophe in their wake. Peter
Beaumont, foreign affairs editor,
reports on the end of hope
Sunday June 15, 2003
The Observer
In
the Liberian town of Redemption last week the bodies of the dead littered
the
main street. Aid workers with Médecins Sans Frontières described a smell
of
death hanging over the town. 'People have come from camps where the last
food
distribution was months ago,' said Alain Kassa. 'They have again been
fleeing
for six days with nothing to eat. Here in the city they won't even
find the
bits and pieces of food that they can gather in the bush.'
Kassa was
describing Liberia, but his words could just have easily been
applied to the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Ivory Coast or
southern Sudan - five
trouble-plagued places, but all of them in Africa. A
few bloody weeks have
seen a failed coup in Mauritania, fighting for
Liberia's wrecked capital,
Monrovia, appalling inter-ethnic violence around
the eastern Congo town of
Bunia, and violent suppression of political
protests in Zimbabwe.
It
was not supposed to be like this. In the decade after the end of the
Cold
War, the proxy wars of the United States and Soviet Union were coming to
an
end, apartheid had breathed its last gasp and a new generation of
African
leaders had been anointed who promised to transform their continent.
That
dream they dubbed the African Renaissance.
Last week, however,
amid the tales of horror, the impotence of UN
peacekeepers sent to keep a
meaningless peace, amid the hunger, mutilation
and inevitable tragic columns
of refugees, the question was being repeatedly
asked: what has happened to
that promised African Renaissance?
First mooted as a concept by President
Nelson Mandela at the Organisation of
African Unity's summit in Tunisia in
1994, the African Renaissance has,
however, been most associated with
Mandela's successor, Thabo Mbeki.
Its crucial test was that set out by
Jacob Zuma, South Africa's Deputy Prime
Minister, at the launch of its South
African chapter when he declared in
1999 that 'we will know that the African
Renaissance has been achieved once
war and destruction are a mere chapter of
Africa's history rather than a
daily reality'.
Would the African
Renaissance succeed or would it go the way of the other
ideas of African
transformation like Negritude, Pan-Africanism, African
Unity and African
Socialism that were supposed to change the African horizon
but
failed?
At first sight it appears already to have failed. For a summation
of Africa
even by those - like Kwame Owusu-Ampomah of Durban-Westville
University -
who believe in the idea of an African Renaissance makes for grim
reading. In
a paper two years ago Owusu-Ampomah listed a litany of familiar
ills.
'At the turn of the twenty-first century,' he wrote, 'Africa
continues to
waddle in poverty, disease, and ignorance, having long lost the
momentum of
the socio-economic gains of the 1960s and the early 1970s. Worse
still, the
continent is being ravaged by internal and international
conflicts,
notwithstanding the scourge of Aids, with devastating effects on
life and
property.'
It is a picture of gloom that is not alleviated by
the bald tabulation of a
continent's woes. More than 30 wars in Africa since
1970 account for 'more
than half of all war-related deaths worldwide' and
have been responsible for
between up to 9.5 million refugees, UN figures
show.
The average African lives on less than two dollars a day;
three-quarters of
the world's poorest countries are African. Growth rates,
after the economic
gains of the Sixties and Seventies, were negative in the
Nineties.
The continent is also saddled with debt. Its apparently
intractable problems
account for 75 per cent of the UN Security Council's
deliberations. Then
finally there is the scourge of HIV, running at infection
rates of well over
30 per cent in countries like Zimbabwe, whose damage is
economic and social
as Aids has carved a swath through Africa's skilled and
educated classes.
The twin trajectories of the Africa of the twenty-first
century are
signified by the 10-year anniversaries next year of two of the
continent's
most significant recent events - the first free and fully
inclusive
elections in South Africa and the genocide in Rwanda.
What
they represent is a continent's imperfect progress towards
democratisation of
its societies, set against the warning of the most
terrible kind of war. They
represent, too, both the palpable successes of
the African Renaissance and
its bloody failings.
'Every decade some new idea emerges that is supposed
to change Africa for
the better,' says Alex Vines, head of the Africa
programme at the Royal
United Services Institute at Chatham House. 'At the
beginning of the
Nineties everyone was talking about "good governance". Then
we had Baroness
Chalker's model for multi-party democracy; now we have
African Renaissance.
'The reality is there are some good things going on,
but there are also
deepening problems. One of the really good developments
has been in terms of
freedom of expression and the biggest single thing that
has helped has been
the mobile phone, which in recent elections in Kenya,
Ghana and Senegal has
had a significant impact in reducing electoral fraud as
people have been
able to mobilise very quickly against it when they see
something funny going
on. It has encouraged whistle-blowing.
'There
have also been some democratic watershed elections as in Kenya, where
we see
an entrenched leader like Daniel arap Moi being forced to
stand
down.'
There have been other success stories in a similar vein.
In Zambia, when
President Chiluba attempted to change the constitution to
stand again he was
slapped down. Ghana is in the process of peaceful
transition from the
Rawlings era. Angola, too, is at the beginning of a
decade of transition
following the end of its long war.
It is in terms
of its economic challenges that the African Renaissance is
having its
greatest impact, not least in its argument that Africa has been
shamefully
treated by trade restrictions and tariffs that, as President
Museveni of
Uganda argued in Washington last week, meant that Africa was
subsidising
Western trade.
'The point about African Renaissance is that it is a great
grab bag of
ideas,' says Patrick Smith, editor of Africa Confidential . 'But
its
economic arguments are the ones that are now quickly becoming the
orthodoxy.
'There are two points that come out of this: firstly that
Western
agricultural subsidies are an international scandal, but that even
with
their removal African farmers need to be helped to take advantage of
this.
'It is exactly what Kwame Nkrumah (Prime Minister of Ghana) was
arguing 50
years ago - that Africa needs to develop systems of manufacturing
and
marketing if it is not to stay at the bottom of the pile. But finally
Africa
seems to be winning the argument on this.'
The West - and
America's response in particular to this argument - has been
at best an
imperfect response, as Smith argues, pointing out that the much
vaunted
agreement by America to open its markets to finished African
textiles to the
tune of $2 billion is highly conditional and represents a
drop in the ocean
for the US textile industry.
Smith argues, too, that it is the success of
this kind of economic reform
that is crucial for stabilising Africa
economically, politically, and in
terms of bringing an end to its wars. For
its wars, as Smith argues,
recently have been as much about economic activity
in failed states as about
tribal competitions.
'What people have to
remember is that the armed militias of the kind we are
seeing in Congo at the
moment are a business - that war is business and that
is not just enough to
pay fighters $30 to hand over their guns if the
fighter then does not have
something economically useful to do.'
It is the long wars like that in
Congo which cast the deepest and the
darkest shadows. These are wars that
envelope all sectors of society, where
all are potential victims; all
potentially incorporated into an effort
inimical to Africa's fragile civic
societies. They are places where the
violence has gone on so long it has been
part of daily life.
And it is a failure of leadership that goes beyond
the African Renaissance
to implicate the West and the United Nations which
have allowed problems
like Congo and Liberia to fester and whose solutions
have showed a lack of
imagination. 'We are seeing a failure in Liberia
exactly the same as in
Iraq,' Vines says. 'There is an agenda to remove
President Charles Taylor
which was behind his indictment by the UN. There is
a fixation with his
removal but no road map as to how Liberia should proceed.
It puts the
country's future agenda in the hands of armed
groups.'
Recent military interventions, more successfully by the largely
British
forces in Sierra Leone and more equivocally by the French in Ivory
Coast,
have shown how successful quick intervention can be in bringing
conflict to
an end or stabilising a dangerous situation.
'The Congo is
the greatest shame to the UN system,' Smith argues. 'If the
Permanent Five do
not act with serious money and serious resolution, with
sufficient troops and
logistics, it will simply go down the drain.'
What happens in the next
few months in Congo and Liberia may be the test of
the African Renaissance
and the test, too, of whether the world can usefully
intervene in Africa for
good.
sundayherald.com
Could Africa finally save itself?
As
the continent's situation descends further into chaos, Fred Bridgland
in
Johannesburg examines the problems and explores a home-grown solution
that
aims to solve them all
Warfare and political collapse
have got so bad in Africa south of the Sahara
since the world became obsessed
by Iraq that Americans last week were even
willing to allow themselves to be
rescued by French soldiers.
The surreal episode happened in Monrovia as
French helicopters airlifted
stranded Americans -- many, no doubt, Jacques
Chirac-hating George Bush
voters -- from the besieged Liberian capital to a
French navy rescue warship
offshore.
Tragic scenes similar to those in
the West African country, whose head of
state Charles Taylor was last month
indicted by the United Nations on
charges of crimes against humanity, are
being enacted across black Africa.
In the questionably titled Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Hema tribesmen
and child soldiers in Bunia, in the
northwestern province of Ituri, were
massacring 450 Lendu people with whom
they had lived reasonably peacefully
side by side for generations. Lendus
retaliated by killing more than 120
Hemas in a village outside
Bunia.
United Nations official Carolyn McAskie, visiting Bunia as part of
a UN
ambassadorial delegation, said she had never witnessed a
similar
humanitarian crisis: 'We've seen the most horrible things. Women
who've lost
their arms and legs, child amputees, men chopped to bits, women
raped.'
Elsewhere the Hitleresque and illegitimate president of Zimbabwe,
Robert
Mugabe, was parading Morgan Tsvangirai -- the country's legitimate
leader
deprived of power by Mugabe in a rigged election a year ago -- through
the
country's courts in handcuffs and leg irons on trumped-up treason
charges.
Meanwhile, in Togo, a former French West African colony,
GnassingbŽ EyadŽma,
Chirac's own 'Mugabe', who has ruled for 36 years after
assassinating Togo's
first president, Sylvanus Olympio, was re-elected
president in a blatantly
fixed poll. The EU did not bother to send observers
because hardly a soul
took last week's process seriously. EyadŽma declared
himself the winner
before the votes were even counted, and in the past few
days EyadŽma's main
opponent, Bob Akitani, has simply disappeared -- a common
occurrence in
EyadŽma-land. The Togo president is counting on his long
friendship with
Chirac to prolong his power and obviously believes problems
of democracy in
Africa will attract scant attention in the present wider
international
climate.
Against this background, African political and
business leaders tried hard
last week to move South African president Thabo
Mbeki's ambitious 'Marshall
Plan' off the drawing board. More than 700
government, business and civil
society representatives met in the Indian
Ocean city of Durban for a summit
designed to discuss progress achieved on
Nepad, the New Partnership for
Africa's Development, since its launch two
years ago.
The core idea of Mbeki's hard-worked, intellectually coherent
plan is a
trade-off with the world's aid-weary powers. Africa, in an effort
to shake
off its persistent begging-bowl state, commits itself to democracy,
good
governance, financial discipline and market-oriented policies in return
for
more help from developed countries, especially with better access
for
Africa's exports.
The intricate plan has obvious merit. It was
drafted by Africans for
Africans and so is free of any imperialist taint.
Presidents Olusegun
Obasanjo of Nigeria, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and
Abdelaziz Bouteflika of
Algeria are its co-authors. Mbeki's Nepad
presidential team knows the
developed countries are sick of pouring their
taxpayers' money into Africa
only to see it end up in the pockets and
offshore accounts of corrupt
leaders while the ordinary people -- Franz
Fanon's 'wretched of the
earth' -- sink into ever deeper
poverty.
There is no space here to describe Nepad's institutions, but the
ultimate
ideal is to end Africa's conflicts, encourage accountable government
and
achieve growth rates that can at least absorb into employment the
millions
of African children who leave school each year, let alone the many
millions
who get no education at all.
Inevitably, given Africa's
wretched post-independence record, there are
regiments of cynics about
Nepad's prospects. But it was the same with Jean
Monnet's fragile European
Coal and Steel Community which grew into a sturdy
European Union that has
presided over the longest war-free period Western
Europeans have ever
known.
Mbeki has no illusions about the difficulties of nurturing Nepad,
as he
himself illustrated last week with the tale of one African
minister
attending the summit who approached him and said: 'Where does this
Nepad
come from? Is this something the World Bank is trying to force on us?'
Mbeki
pointed out to the minister that his own President had endorsed Nepad
last
year. 'But the President obviously didn't even tell his cabinet,'
Mbeki
said.
Whatever its early infant weaknesses, Africa and the rest
of the world needs
Nepad. Consider just one illustration. The story begins
with President
George Bush's lunatic allegation that the EU's refusal to
certify imports of
new US strains of genetically modified food crops is
perpetuating famine in
Africa. In fact, one of the main causes of African
hunger lies closer to
Texas -- subsidies for American farmers.
In West
African countries along the upper Niger river cotton is the main
cash crop,
employing more than two million people and providing sustenance
to ten times
that number. With world cotton prices at a 30-year low,
extended families of
30 or more people are barely surviving on annual
earnings reduced to less
than £1250 per 20-acre plot.
In the Mississippi Delta, meanwhile,
American cotton growers are thriving --
even though, with air-conditioned
tractors using global positioning
satellites to determine the proper amounts
of expensive fertiliser and
defoliants to apply to the maturing irrigated
crop, they are higher-cost
producers than the cotton farmers of Mali with
their primitive ox-towed
ploughs. Huge subsidies -- more than £2.5 billion
for cotton this year from
Washington -- have made millionaires of the
Mississippi men who spend 51p to
produce each pound of cotton against a mere
14p a pound in Mali, where
cotton growers who could clothe us all much more
cheaply are going to the
wall.
Not only is this unfair economic
madness, it is murderous. It is not even in
the developed world's
self-interest.
As schooling and minimal health care have become
unaffordable luxuries in
Mali, families are leaving in droves for the crowded
Muslim quarters of
European cities while fundamentalist Middle Eastern
Islamic clerics find
more and more ready listeners in West Africa. There has
to be a more
imaginative way to run the globe.
15 June 2003
Worldwide Faith News
AANA BULLETIN No. 23/03 June 16, 2003
(b)
Pope Criticises Zimbabwe's Land Reform
Programme
HARARE/VATICAN (AANA) June 16 - Pope John Paul II has
criticised Zimbabwe's
chaotic land redistribution programme, which is widely
blamed for plunging
the country into its current economic
crisis.
Reports from the Vatican City in Italy say the Pontiff was
welcoming
Kelebert Nkomani, Zimbabwe's ambassador to the Holy See and 11
other
diplomats in May, when he made comments critical of the country's
much
publicised land reform programme. But Nkomani has said that the
programme
would establish equity and social justice.
The Pope is said
to have made reference to a 1997 Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace
document titled Towards a Better Distribution of Land,
which notes that "real
success will not only come as a result of
expropriating large tracts of land
and dividing it into smaller units given
to others".
In the period
following rejection of a 2000 draft constitution that
supported land
redistribution without compensation, Zimbabwe's President,
Robert Mugabe,
condoned forceful occupation of white owned commercial farms
by veterans of
the 20-year liberation war that brought independence.
According to the
President, the violent land seizures by the war veterans
and his youthful
supporters emanated from past colonial wrongs.
However, the Pope said:
"Justice must be made available to all if the
injuries of the past are to be
left behind and a brighter future built".
He went on: "If land
redistribution was to offer any practical and
sustainable response to serious
economic and social problems in a given
country, the process must continue to
develop over time, with necessary
infrastructure being put in
place".
Currently facing the country is a critical food and foreign
currency
shortage, with more than half the population in need of food aid
because of
the land reforms that has severely disrupted commercially
farming
activities.
Reported by Rodrick Mukumbira
Daily News June 14th
SA seeks Tsvangirai's release
6/14/2003 9:41:43 AM (GMT
+2)
By Sydney Masamvu Assistant Editor
THE South African
government has approached Harare about releasing
Zimbabwean opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai and about the
resumption of dialogue between the country's
main political parties,
diplomats told the Daily News this week.
They
said Western countries were also pressing South Africa to use its
influence
to ensure that Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC), Zimbabwe's main opposition party, was not
detained for much
longer.
Tsvangirai, who is already charged with treason for allegedly
plotting
to assassinate President Robert Mugabe, was arrested last Friday
at
the end of the five-day anti-government protests called by his
party.
He is facing fresh treason charges for allegedly making
statements
calling for the unconstitutional removal of Mugabe and is in
remand
prison pending a ruling on his application for bail.
The
diplomatic sources said Malawi, Nigeria and South Africa, which
are
attempting to facilitate dialogue between the MDC and Mugabe's
ruling ZANU PF
party, were keen to secure Tsvangirai's release.
They told the Daily News
that South African Deputy President Jacob
Zuma had a telephone conversation
with Mugabe on Monday morning,
during which Tsvangirai's arrest and continued
detention were brought
up.
South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana
Zuma also had a telephone
conversation with her Zimbabwean counterpart, Stan
Mudenge, on the
same issue, the diplomats claimed.
The sources said
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo had also
discussed Tsvangirai's
detention with Zimbabwean government officials.
"There was contact
between the South African Vice-President, Jacob
Zuma, and President Robert
Mugabe, which centred on Tsvangirai's
arrest," one diplomat told the Daily
News.
Zuma was Acting President on Monday while South African
President
Thabo Mbeki was on a visit to Switzerland.
The diplomat
added: "In the same breath, Foreign Minister Nkosazana
Zuma also had a
conversation with Stan Mudenge on the same issue."
However, South African
Foreign Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said
he was not aware of any contact
between Zuma and Mudenge because the
South African minister was in
Congo-Brazzaville this week.
He said: "I am not aware if any contact has
been made with the
Zimbabwean government over Tsvangirai's arrest. In any
case, even if
any contact had been made, we would not divulge such
information."
Meanwhile, Mbeki's spokesman Bheki Khumalo also said he was
not aware
of any communication between the South African government and
Harare
because he was also in Switzerland this week. He however said
the
South African president was closely monitoring the situation
in
Zimbabwe.
"I am not aware if any contacts have been made regarding
the MDC
leader's arrest. I have been with the president in Switzerland for
the
past five days," he said.
Khumalo added: "What I know is that the
presidency, through our
mission in Zimbabwe, is fully briefed and has been
kept fully informed
of the developments taking place regarding the issue of
Morgan
Tsvangirai's arrest. The issue is being closely monitored."
Western
diplomats this week told the Daily News that their governments
were
closely monitoring the situation in Zimbabwe and were trying to
work
with the region to put pressure on Harare to reconsider
Tsvangirai's
detention.
The diplomats said Western governments feared
that the MDC leader's
continued incarceration could affect attempts to broker
talks between
his party and ZANU PF.
Negotiations between the two
parties broke down last year in May when
the MDC filed an application with
the High Court contesting Mugabe's
re-election the previous
March.
Commentators say dialogue between the MDC and ZANU PF could begin
a
process that could lead to the resolution of the country's
political
stalemate and worsening economic crisis.
Daily News
Powell slams Tsvangirai's detention
6/14/2003 9:45:22
AM (GMT +2)
Staff Reporter
AMERICAN Secretary of State Colin
Powell has condemned the Zimbabwe
government's detention of opposition
leaders, comparing the actions of
the Harare authorities to those of Burma,
which two weeks ago detained
its chief political foe, Aung San Suu
Kyi.
Powell, speaking after a meeting with United Nations
(UN)
secretary-general Kofi Annan to review the world's trouble spots,
said
he and the UN boss had focused on Burma and both condemned
Aung's
continued detention.
"And in a parallel way, I would like to
point out that in Zimbabwe, we
see a similar situation where opposition
leaders trying to express
their dissent to the government are being detained
and put at
considerable risk of personal injury as a result of that detention
and
we condemn these kinds of activities," he told journalists
in
Washington, DC, late on Wednesday.
He becomes the most senior US
administration official to censure
Harare for its crackdown of leaders of the
opposition MDC in the
aftermath of a nationwide shutdown last week ordered by
the party.
Workers countrywide backed the MDC's so-called mass action by
staying
away from work and shutting down business, forcing the
beleagured
government to seize more than 800 MDC officials and supporters
after
forcibly breaking up opposition street protests using the army and
the
police.
Among those held is MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai, who
has been
charged with treason - the second such charge levelled against
him
this year.
Western diplomatic officials said yesterday that
Powell's indignation
at Zimbabwe highlighted widening international pressure
that is being
brought on Harare to end its siege against the MDC, the
biggest
political threat to President Robert Mugabe's two decades in
power.
"Powell's comments reflect growing international concern over
blatant
human rights violations by the Harare regime," one diplomat told
The
Daily News.
"Unless the situation improves quickly, one senses
that there will be
serious repercussions for this sort of unacceptable
behaviour," the
diplomat said, declining to elaborate on possible
international action
against Mugabe, widely accused of presiding over
Zimbabwe's economic
collapse.
Mugabe and most officials of his ruling
ZANU PF party are already
under Western economic sanctions for their alleged
violations of human
rights and are banned from travelling to much of the
world.
Diplomats hinted yesterday that the actions of Harare's
government
could end up being brought before the UN Security Council for
debate.
It is known that some of the permanent members of the council
favour a
tougher line against Harare, which has repeatedly
ignored
international accords and appeals for it to observe the rule of law
in
the past three years.
Daily News
Mugabe vows to crush demonstrations
6/14/2003 9:46:13
AM (GMT +2)
From Chris Gande in Bulawayo
BULAWAYO - President
Robert Mugabe yesterday vowed to crush any future
attempts by the opposition
to organise mass protests, telling
villagers at Nyamandlovu, about 50
kilometres from Bulawayo, that
participating in demonstrations called by the
Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) would be to "play with
fire".
Mockingly referring to the mass protests organised by the MDC
last
week to force him to resign or agree to negotiations with
the
opposition party, Mugabe said: "They said by Friday the MDC would
be
in power and (Morgan) Tsvangirai would be in State House. He is in
the
State House now."
Tsvangirai is in remand prison awaiting a ruling
on his application
for bail after police arrested and charged him with
treason for
allegedly seeking Mugabe's unconstitutional
ouster.
Tsvangirai is already standing trial for treason over allegations
he
and two other officials of his party plotted to assassinate
Mugabe
ahead of last year's presidential election.
The opposition
leader denies both the charges of treason levelled
against him by the
State.
Hundreds of villagers, some of them allegedly bussed to
Nyamandlovu
from Hwange - more than 200 kilometres away - had to wait for
Mugabe
the whole day.
Matabeleland North governor Obert Mpofu told the
villagers that the
helicopter ferrying Mugabe from Harare had lost direction
and gone to
Tsholotsho, resulting in Mugabe's delay.
Daily News
Mangwengwende says he's not on suspension
6/14/2003
9:46:47 AM (GMT +2)
Staff Reporter
SIMBARASHE Mangwengwende,
referring to a story published by The Daily
News yesterday, has denied that
he had been suspended from the
Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority
(ZESA).
In a story headlined "Ministry to probe allegations against
Gata", The
Daily News said ZESA sources had indicated that
Mangwengwende
continued to receive a chief executive's salary from the
parastatal,
"although he is said to be on suspension".
Mangwengwende
told The Daily News yesterday: "While it is true that I
am on the ZESA
payroll, it is untrue that I am on suspension. I am
still the lawful chief
executive of ZESA in good standing."
ZESA is, however, presently being
run by Sydney Gata, who is executive
chairman.
Daily News
Police officer accused of evading questions in Nkala murder
case
6/14/2003 9:48:12 AM (GMT +2)
Staff Reporter
DEFENCE
lawyers in the trial of six opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC)
party activists accused of murdering Bulawayo war veteran
leader Cain Nkala
yesterday accused police officer of attempting to
evade answering key
questions put to him by claiming he had
co-investigated the matter with
another police officer.
Advocate Eric Morris accused police
superintendent Martin Matira in
court yesterday of having accepted being
referred to as the
investigator of the murder case in the earlier stages of
the trial but
was now claiming he was co-investigator with another police
officer, a
chief superintendent Mukahlera, in order to avoid
answering
embarrassing questions.
Morris told Matira: "You only
invented the concept of co-investigator
when my colleagues started
cross-examining you to avoid answering
embarrassing
questions."
Another defence lawyer, Edith Mushore, said Matira had for
the first
eight days of the cross-examination, been the sole
investigating
officer in the case but had in the past six days relegated
himself to
a co-investigator so he could evade some questions.
Matira
told the court he co-investigated the matter with Mukahlera and
that while
they had had meetings during the course of investigations,
he could not alone
explain every detail of the investigation since he
did not get feedback from
his colleague on every matter pertaining to
the police inquiry into the
murder.
MDC legislator Fletcher Dulini-Ncube, its director of security,
Sonny
Masera, and activists Army Zulu, Remember Moyo, Kethani Sibanda
and
Sazini Mpofu are accused of kidnapping and murdering Nkala in
November
2001.
The MDC members deny the charge and accuse the police
of beating them
to force them to confess to the crime.
The ongoing
hearing before High Court judge Justice Sandra Mungwira is
to determine
whether the murder suspects voluntarily confessed to
murdering
Nkala.
Daily News
Ruling on Tsvangirai's bail bid postponed to next
week
6/14/2003 9:44:40 AM (GMT +2)
Staff Reporters
THE High
Court yesterday reserved to next week a ruling on Movement
for Democratic
Change (MDC) president Morgan Tsvangirai's bail
application, amid reports
that the opposition party had resolved to
shelve proposed demonstrations to
protest its leader's arrest and
detention.
Tsvangirai will spend his
second consecutive weekend in custody after
Justice Susan Mavangira postponed
her ruling, saying she needed time
to consider submissions made by the State
and the defence.
She said she would make a ruling "some time next
week".
Tsvangirai, who is already standing trial for allegedly plotting
to
assassinate President Robert Mugabe before last year's
presidential
election, was arrested last week on Friday on fresh treason
charges
and detained in police cells until Tuesday, when he was moved
to
Harare Remand Prison.
He is charged with allegedly making
statements calling for the
unconstitutional removal of Mugabe.
Justice
Mavangira's ruling came a day after the MDC national executive
is said to
have decided to postpone mass protests it had threatened to
hold if
Tsvangirai was not immediately released from custody.
MDC vice-president
Gibson Sibanda said on Sunday that the party would
embark on nationwide
protests to demand Tsvangirai's immediate
release.
But MDC officials
said a national executive meeting held on Thursday
resolved to shelve the
planned protests and wait for the High Court's
ruling on the bail
application.
The officials said the decision was made based on advice
from legal
experts, who had indicated that the proposed protests could lead
to
the State taking a tougher stance against Tsvangirai.
Opposition
party sources who attended Thursday's meeting said some
officials had
insisted that street protests should begin on Monday to
demand Tsvangirai's
release, while others maintained that the party
should follow legal
advice.
"Most national executive members decided to stick to the legal
advice
they had received that protests would be counter-productive to
the
president's case," one official told the Daily News.
"It was felt
that the government would seize the opportunity to
bolster the argument that
Tsvangirai would incite his supporters into
unleashing violence if he was
released. The majority agreed to wait
for the court decision."
MDC
spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi would not comment on the matter
yesterday,
referring this newspaper to a statement issued by the party
after Thursday's
meeting.
The statement made no mention of the proposed street protests,
but
urged supporters to remain on the alert.
"The regime does not know
what is coming next and seeks to make you
act outside your plan. Let us
remain alert. Let us remain ready to act
within all lawful and peaceful means
for our freedom," part of the
statement reads.
An official who
attended Thursday's meeting said: "We argued that
Mugabe was using
Tsvangirai's detention as a test case to see how the
party would react and
gauge the extent to which we had been cowed
because by remaining docile, we
would have given him the leeway to do
whatever he wants to break our
back.
"That is why we wanted the whole country to be closed for the whole
of
next week to show him that we are still determined to
fight.
Tsvangirai's arrest has already psyched up people so much that
they
are more than ready to act."
Meanwhile, in the High Court
yesterday, Tsvangirai's lawyers said
their client had spent "too much time in
prison on an arrest and
commitment which is not justified" and urged that the
judge should
expeditiously make a ruling on the matter.
Responding to
Tsvangirai's bail application, Morgen Nemadire, a chief
law officer in the
Attorney-General (AG)'s Office, said the State had
decided to press charges
against Tsvangirai because he sought to
change the government through
unlawful means.
"The charge does not necessarily have to be violent or
coercive,"
Nemadire said, adding that a person could be charged with high
treason
for sitting alone contemplating changing a constitutionally
elected
government.
He said: "It's not really a question of
personally, physically
participating in a violent or forceful act. If a party
is aggrieved by
the results of an election, there are channels which they can
follow.
An example is the election petition pending before these courts.
To
want to change the government by any other means except those
provided
by the government becomes a problem."
He said the State had
not considered bail conditions should Justice
Mavangira grant Tsvangirai's
application.
South African advocate George Bizos, who is representing
Tsvangirai,
said through its silence on bail conditions, the AG's Office had
shown
its determination to keep the MDC leader in custody.
Daily News
Undertakers to appeal to government for fuel
6/14/2003
9:47:18 AM (GMT +2)
Staff Reporter
HARARE undertakers yesterday
resolved to appeal to the government to
allocate them fuel so that they could
conduct burials, which have been
adversely affected by severe shortages of
petrol and diesel in
Zimbabwe.
At a meeting in the capital city
yesterday, the undertakers agreed to
send a delegation to Energy Minister
Amos Midzi.
The representatives will approach Midzi with a letter
detailing the
undertakers' appeal.
Mizeki Kazinge, the manager of
Foundation Funeral Services and
spokesman for the undertakers, said: "We have
selected four people to
go and present our letter of appeal to the minister.
The meeting
deliberated on the serious problems we as undertakers are facing
at
various service stations in the capital.
"We believe the government
has the responsibility to assist bereaved
families in these difficult times.
On Tuesday, we will meet to draft
our letter, which we will immediately
present to the minister and his
secretary for their immediate
attention."
He said the ministry should find ways to ensure that
Zimbabwe's
funeral industry received fuel at least once a week so that
burials
could proceed without problems.
He said the undertakers wanted
to be allocated specific fuel stations
where they would have no problems
securing fuel.
The government has designated specific service stations
for public
transporters in an attempt to alleviate serious transport
problems
worsened by the fuel crisis.
Midzi last week admitted that
the fuel shortages in the funeral
industry needed urgent attention because it
provided an essential
service.
He said the government's policy was
that essential service providers,
such as funeral parlours and ambulance
services, should receive enough
fuel for their operations.
Daily News
British envoy denies hand in MDC protests
6/14/2003
9:47:45 AM (GMT +2)
From Our Correspondent in Mutare
BRITAIN'S
High Commissioner to Zimbabwe yesterday denied allegations
by President
Robert Mugabe that he had helped opposition protests that
shut down the
country last week.
"The British government and the British High
Commission had no role in
funding or organising in any way whatsoever last
week's stayaways or
protests," Brian Donnelly said in a statement
yesterday.
Britain's top diplomat in Harare however said in the statement
that
London supported the rights of Zimbabweans to freedom of
expression
and association although it did not involve itself with how people
in
the southern African country chose to enjoy or express those
rights.
"The British government supports the fundamental rights of
Zimbabweans
to freedom of expression and freedom of association. How
Zimbabweans
choose to exercise those rights is entirely up to them," the
statement
read in part.
Speaking at a rally at Nyakomba Resettlement
Scheme in Nyanga
district, more than 300 kilometres east of the capital
Harare, Mugabe
threatened to expel Donnelly from Zimbabwe if he
continued
collaborating with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC)
in what he said were the opposition party's attempts to remove
his
government from power through undemocratic means.
The MDC says
last week's mass protests were meant to force Mugabe to
resign or to concede
he had failed to run the country and agree to
negotiate with the opposition
party a solution to the country's
deepening economic and political
crisis.
Zimbabwe is in the throes of its worst food, fuel and foreign
currency
crisis following Mugabe's controversial land reforms that
disrupted
the key agricultural sector and scared foreign investors out of
the
country.
But Mugabe, who founded Zimbabwe out of the ashes of the
British
colony of Rhodesia in 1980, blames Britain and the West
for
orchestrating the crisis in order to incite the people against
his
government to fix him for his land reforms.
Daily News
Maize, wheat harvests decline this year: CFU
6/14/2003
9:48:40 AM (GMT +2)
Staff Reporter
THE Commercial Farmers' Union
(CFU) this week said Zimbabwe will this
year harvest less than 750 000 tonnes
of maize or about 42 percent of
annual requirement while wheat production
will decrease to a paltry 50
000 tonnes or about 13 percent of total annual
consumption.
In a report released on Wednesday this week, CFU marketing
executive
Vanessa Mckay said: "Forecasters and observers have subsequently
met
after the announcement of the official maize crop estimates of
1,3
million tonnes.
"They have all agreed that the crop is likely to
be in the region of
only 750 000 tonnes - this equates to 42 percent of
national annual
requirements of 1,8 million tonnes."
Mckay, who is
responsible for commercial oil seeds, cereal and grain
producers'
associations at the CFU said the country's wheat producers
were expected to
harvest only 50 000 tonnes or less of winter wheat,
which is far below the
360 000 tonnes needed to carry the country to
the next harvest.
The
CFU official said the mainly white large-scale producing farmers
who
traditionally supplied 95 percent of the national wheat output
would this
year only produce between 12 500 and 15 000 tonnes of the
vital crop chiefly
because most of them were unable to grow more wheat
due to ongoing farm
evictions under the government's controversial
land reforms.
The
Indigenous Commercial Farmers' Union, resettled farmers and the
government's
Agricultural Rural Development Authority would make up
the
remainder.
The government says it has completed its seizure of land from
white
farmers for redistribution to blacks but evictions continue around
the
country. Pro-government militias and self-styled veterans of
Zimbabwe'
s 1970s liberation war also continue to disrupt farming activities
on
the few remaining commercial farms.
Most farming experts largely
blame the food shortages gripping
Zimbabwe on the government's land reforms
that have virtually
destroyed commercial agriculture.
The government,
which has already asked international food aid donors
to continue providing
food relief to Zimbabwe, says poor rains and not
its farm reforms are to
blame for the food shortages.
The CFU said erratic rains plus lack of
capacity of the new farmers
hastily resettled by the government on land
seized from commercial
farmers had hampered the maize crop which had been
forecast to hit 1,3
million tonnes, especially after good rains towards the
end of the
last season.
But according to Mckay the rains came a little
too late and did not
benefit the late planted crop, limiting total output
countrywide to
750 000 tonnes or more than 55 percent less than the 1,8
million
tonnes of maize Zimbabwe consumes per year.
Once a net food
exporter, Zimbabwe is grappling with its worst food
and economic crisis in
decades.
Bread, cooking oil, the key staple maize and nearly every other
basic
food stuff is in short supply while hard cash needed to pay for
food
imports is also in acute shortage.
Only the intervention of the
World Food Programme and other
international relief groups saved eight
million Zimbabweans or about
half of the country's population from starving
to death.
Daily News
LEADER PAGE Saturday 14, June
ZBC's envisaged 100
percent local content will kill us
6/14/2003 9:40:49 AM (GMT
+2)
By Musavengana Nyasha
I remember being in the minority when I
supported the introduction of
the 75 percent local content legislation while
still at the Zimbabwe
Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC).
I saw it as an
opportunity for the Zimbabwean arts industry to
blossom. I also believed in
it as a policy that would help Zimbabweans
' self-determination socially,
culturally and economically. I still
do.
I am, however, horrified at
the idea of the government reviewing the
policy to increase the percentage of
local content in the electronic
media to 100 percent.
I pray that the
idea be stillborn.
One of the results of our country's colonisation by
the British was
self-hate and belief that everything foreign was better.
This
obsession with things foreign covered language, culture, music
and
skin colour among other things.
It was, therefore, undeniably the
duty of an elected government of a
sovereign nation to help change such
attitudes and promote self-belief
in its countrymen. Therein lies my belief
in the 75 percent local
content law.
Musical acts like Sani Makhalima,
Roy and Royce, and Plaxcedes Wenyika
are products of this policy. Sandra
Ndebele has also benefited from
the policy, under which there has also been a
deliberate attempt to
promote artistic efforts from the Matabeleland region,
which has for
long been overshadowed by South Africa.
Seventy-five
percent local content has seen the birth of Studio 263
and Fragments and we
look forward to other local productions. The
industry is set to grow with the
discovery of more writers, producers
and actors. I personally expect to
benefit from the policy because I
have been encouraged to take up from where
I left off at high school
as a playwright and start writing for
television.
I see the springing-up of video production companies, more
dance
troupes and choreographers that should help improve the quality of
our
musical videos and, therefore, see the growth of the industry and
the
creation of more jobs.
These are the positive sides of the
promotion of local productions. On
the negative side, if all local products
are promoted simply because
they are local, a massive deterioration of
standards is inevitable.
Products must make the grade. Competition
should, therefore, be
vigorously encouraged.
As things stand, ZBC's
television in particular is failing to cope
with the 75 percent edict. ZBC
unadvisedly decided that all its
channels broadcast 24 hours a day and yet
did not have enough quality
material even in the days when they still closed
at 12 midnight, let
alone for the extended broadcasting time.
The
corporation's television musical programmes are terribly
predictable. Anyone
who has suffered from insomnia has also suffered
irritability when watching
the same videos over and over again on
Sisonke Sounds. We see the same videos
day-in day-out.
Imagine what would happen if we had to see strictly
Zimbabwean videos.
We might even start to see some videos played twice in one
show. The
presenters would obviously have to say that this was due to
"popular
demand".
We already see Studio 263 almost on a daily basis,
but I foresee a
situation where we'll see one episode twice in one day - one
at the
usual time and another after the news at eight "for those who
will
have missed it earlier", not forgetting the usual repeat the
next
morning.
The fear of repeats is just one of the reasons that make
me
apprehensive of the broadcast of 100 percent local content on
our
radios and TV. Quite frankly, Zimbabwe would die. I may sound like
an
alarmist, but imagine a country unable to compare itself with
other
countries in the region and the world over.
The introduction of
the likes of Kabanana and the African movies on
our television was very
welcome. Not only can we identify with other
Africans, but we also compare
our own productions with these and are
inspired. Besides, do the continent's
presidents not encourage closer
ties and trade amongst nations? What about
URTNA?
Imagine not being able to watch the likes of Suburban Bliss or My
Wife
and Kids for instance. Never ever! How about being unable to hear
the
music of Ringo Mandlingozi, R Kelly or, God forbid, Koffi
Olomide!
Have we as a nation, decided not to be part of Africa? Have
we
abrogated our membership to the world? Do we hope to be an island
one
day? If we are able to compare ourselves only with ourselves,
this
will have disastrous consequences on all sectors of our
country's
developmental endeavours. I guess we would now say goodbye to
watching
the Miss Malaika beauty pageant, unless if it were to come back
to
Zimbabwe. Goodbye Champions League football! Goodbye Kora
Awards!
What will happen to the news? Will it be affected by the policy?
And
the weather? If a Zimbabwean were to travel to Johannesburg, would
TV
and radio be allowed to tell him or her the type of weather to
expect
there?
The problems of self-isolation and lack of exposure are
plenty. When
South Africa was a pariah nation, it suffered from the inability
to
compare itself with others. When the isolation ended, South
Africa's
Bafana Bafana came to play the "shoe-shine piano" brand of
soccer
against our own Warriors. The South Africans were humiliated
because
they were clearly out of touch.
Zimbabweans can visit other
countries in order to be exposed to other
people's cultures, sports and
business, or we can simply sit in front
of our television sets. Let's not be
denied of this right.
When the 75 percent local content was introduced
there was a public
outcry partly because this move was so unexpected.
Resistance to
sudden change is a natural human reaction. The public were
also
sceptical of the motives behind the idea. Artists, however,
were
ecstatic.
Zimbabweans have only just started to accept the merits
of the policy,
though the motives were largely believed to have been
political. It
would truly be a tragedy if the gains achieved through this
policy
were to be wiped out due to the overzealousness of a complete ban
on
foreign productions. If such an Act were to be passed, when the
time
comes for legislators to repeal such an Act - for such a time
will
surely come - it may even be deemed unnecessary to afford
local
content any special treatment.
That would be a
shame.
Those of us who cannot afford satellite dishes are making video
rental
shop owners millionaires. I sincerely hope that when
Professor
Jonathan Moyo talked about the 100 percent local content idea, he
was
simply taking a leaf out of Aeneas Chigwedere's book when he
mooted
the idea of a national school uniform. If so, I have thrown my
two
cents in.
Musavengana Nyasha is a former producer/presenter at the
ZBC who is
now working as an independent entertainment consultant.