ATTENTION SUBSCRIBERS: Please note that the first paragraph of the article sent
out on 12 June 2002 should read: "Forty thousand people - mainly children - in
Zimbabwe's western Binga district will not receive their food aid after a food
distribution programme run by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace was
closed by police on Wednesday." A corrected version
follows.
JOHANNESBURG, 12 JUNE 2002 (IRIN) - Forty thousand people -
mainly children - in Zimbabwe's western Binga district will not receive their
food aid after a food distribution programme run by the Catholic Commission for
Justice and Peace was closed by police on Wednesday.
Father Tom McQuillen
told IRIN that as trucks were being loaded with food in the morning, war
veterans arrived and put a chain and a padlock around the gate of the church
grounds and wouldn't let them leave.
The police were called but,
McQuillen said: "Their orders are that we are to stop feeding. We received
nothing in writing. We were told we could discuss it with the district
administrator at a meeting on Monday."
This was not the first time the
project, funded by Britain's Catholic Fund for Overseas Development (CAFOD), has
been targeted by war veterans. McQuillen said that three Saturdays ago the war
veterans blocked all the gates to the church grounds and wouldn't let anyone
enter or leave. They finally left when the police intervened but returned before
Sunday mass and the police again intervened.
When they threatened to
burn the project's vehicles, feeding was suspended.
"Kids were going to
the locations looking for food and not understanding why there was none," he
said.
McQuillen said that after receiving reports that children were
fainting, they decided to start distributing food again.
However, before
they could start again on Wednesday, the war veterans returned and prevented the
resumption of the programme.
In April 2001 war veterans also tried to
close the offices but police stopped them. In February this year one of the
project's workers was harassed and threatened, he said.
McQuillen said
the project feeds 8,497 pre-school children, 13,795 primary school children and
18,969 families who only have food stocks to last one week. They had planned to
expand as the area had no harvests for a second year.
The people of Binga
form part of the 6.1 million Zimbabweans that a joint World Food Programme(WFP)
and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) assessment has identified as being
in danger of having no food this year.
"People are not coping, it is
very hard to get food even if there is money. The young children don't know why
they're not getting food," he said.
The Save the Children Fund, which
works alongside McQuillen's organisation in the region, had to suspend its
operations for two days earlier this year.
Michael O'Donnell, emergency
food security advisor, said that their programme which gives 55,000 people
one-month rations per household, had to close temporarily.
"The
authorities looked into the question of whether the Save the Children operation
was operating along political lines in favour of the opposition [Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC)].
"We suspended operations voluntarily while the
district and provincial authorities investigated but we were cleared and we have
no more problems," he said.
A spokesman for the war veterans was not
immediately available to comment.
Meanwhile in Manicaland the MDC said
its offices in Chimanimani had been closed.
MDC spokesman Pishai
Muchauraya said a driver at the farm of Roy Bennet, a local MDC member, was
stopped at a roadblock and his car was impounded by police and security forces.
Muchauraya said the driver was allegedly assaulted and later taken to the MDC
offices where a security guard was also allegedly beaten.
Muchauraya said
police told people in the MDC office that the party was banned from the
area.
He said a planned rally in Mutare south had to be cancelled because
at least 2,000 ZANU-PF members had arrived to disrupt the rally.
Another
MDC spokesman, Dryden Kunaka, said: "They are targeting areas where the MDC is
very strong."
In March President Robert Mugabe was re-elected over MDC
leader Morgan Tsvangirai, in a poll which the Commonwealth and European Union
believe was not free and fair. The MDC has launched court action for a fresh
election.
In Harare the media came under the spotlight as the trial of
American journalist Andrew Meldrum began. Meldrum faces charges of publishing
false information under the country's new access to information
laws.
Meldrum was arrested after his newspaper, the British Guardian,
published a story on the alleged beheading of the wife of an MDC supporter by
ZANU-PF members. The original publisher of the story, The Daily News, has since
said it doubts the story as the woman's grave cannot be found and the paper
suspects the man who told the story fabricated it for money.
Meldrum
pleaded innocent and Daily News reporter, Lloyd Mudiwa, will appear on the same
charges next week.
IRIN-SA
Tel: +27 11 880-4633
Fax: +27 11
447-5472
Email: IRIN-SA@irin.org.za
FinGaz - Comment
When governance fails
6/13/02
2:07:23 AM (GMT +2)
AN innocent Zimbabwean civilian - a taxi driver
going about his
already hard enough daily chores - was shot dead by police
this week, a
victim of the siege mentality which is increasingly gripping the
government.
Lloyd Midzi's only crime was not to stop at a police
roadblock, itself
triggered by the government's fear of looming mass action
by its own
harassed citizens.
Midzi did not deserve to die, let
alone at the hands of those whose
first duty it is to protect life and
property of all who live and work in
Zimbabwe.
Midzi's death
mirrors the tragic chaos which Zimbabwe now typifies as
the nation's key
institutions and other pillars of governance give way under
the strain of two
harsh decades of unsustainable misrule.
It takes place when the
government is raising its tempo on a crackdown
on real and imagined
dissenters and political foes, crucially against
journalists, human rights
activists and lawyers who are staying the course
in raising the flag of
freedom and democracy.
It takes place when half the population of a
country which once
proudly fed itself and poorer neighbours stares mass
starvation, thanks to
the haphazard and violent seizure of productive
commercial farms under the
guise of addressing land hunger.
It
takes place when an unprecedented foreign currency crisis, itself
spawned by
reckless economic policies which have all but killed the export
sector,
threaten the entire economy with total collapse, with 70 percent of
the
formal labourforce already unemployed.
Add to the grim toll the
fact that 80 percent of Zimbabweans now live
below the poverty line - and not
just on the one US dollar a day which much
of the world even derides - and
that millions are succumbing to AIDS without
any medicines or resources to
buy these.
The latest tensions testing the long patience of
Zimbabweans are a
direct result of all of these things and much more that has
gone by, but
crucially the result of the disputed presidential election held
in March.
Instead of acting with utmost urgency and determination
to ease the
high tensions and the festering crisis, President Robert Mugabe
appears to
have been lulled into a sense of false security given by the
breathing space
bought with South African and Nigerian
diplomacy.
Unfortunately, the message within Zimbabwe and out there
in the
proverbial outside world and Mugabe's own record are not helping his
cause
much.
He needs to go back to the drawing board - and do so
very rapidly -
because Zimbabwe is really burning and God knows what will
become of the
country if nothing decisive is done right now.
That a government claiming to have won popular support from a recent
election
should panic so much in the face of the threatened mass action is
truly
disturbing, if revealing.
If the government was not afraid of its
own people, there would be no
need to erect the many instant roadblocks that
we see these days, one of
which this week tragically became Midzi's death
bed.
Peaceful protests are an acceptable face of democracy
worldwide and
must surely be allowed in Zimbabwe unless, as it seems in all
but the
statutes, the country is now firmly under a state of emergency or
martial
law.
And yet even if this were the case, the reality is
that guns and tanks
will never reverse the inevitable march of history. The
human spirit and its
deep yearning for real freedom is stronger than the arms
of destruction.
Undoubtedly, Mugabe has played his cards well in
the past in
outflanking his political opponents but this time the sheer scale
and range
of problems facing him, most of them self-created, threaten to bury
him
politically unless he finds an instant solution.
There is
palpable high tension across Zimbabwe for anyone who cares to
listen and see,
and the looming famine and extraordinarily high prices of
the few basic goods
that are still available combine to make a potentially
explosive
mix.
God forbid that this powder keg, this time bomb, is allowed
to
explode.
FinGaz
Army, police on high alert
By Sydney Masamvu
Political Editor
6/13/02 2:43:07 AM (GMT +2)
THE
government has placed a crack army battalion and riot police units
on high
alert in Harare and directed them to crush any opposition mass
action meant
to force a fresh presidential election, security officials said
this
week.
They said the government's Joint Operation Command (JOC), a
think-tank
of top military and security officials, had mapped out a broad
security plan
to stamp down on the mass action that is being planned by the
opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which accuses President
Robert Mugabe
of stealing the March vote.
The plan, devised by
JOC in the past two weeks as tensions rise in
Zimbabwe, envisages the
deployment of heavy security in all government
offices and heightened
day-and-night police patrols in all urban
high-density suburbs in the coming
week.
Depending on the unfolding events, " a curfew in Harare has
not been
ruled out", one senior security official told the Financial
Gazette.
This official and others spoken to preferred not
to be named.
Security agencies were also racing to gather and check
information on
what the government alleges is the involvement of foreign
nations in the
planned mass action, whose timing and duration the MDC has
still to
announce.
The government has specifically accused
Britain of being involved in
the threatened strike, but London has rejected
the charge as absurd.
JOC consists of ministers of defence, state
security and home affairs
and includes heads of the army, police, the secret
service, the air force
and prisons.
According to security
sources, a crack army battalion and riot police
have been put on high alert
in volatile Harare, the seat of government,
specifically to crush the mass
action.
They said other measures to head off the strike countrywide
had been
put in place but Harare, which strongly backs the MDC, had been
given the
highest priority.
The sources said a team of soldiers
and police had been trained to
handle the mass action, which the MDC says it
will call anytime now to force
Mugabe to re-stage the presidential vote,
which was condemned as flawed by
the international community.
"A
watertight strategy is in place to foil the mass action by the MDC,
' another
security official said.
Police spokesman Assistant Commissioner
Wayne Bvudzijena said
yesterday he was not at liberty to discuss strategies
which would be used to
put down the mass action but stressed that adequate
resources had been
marshalled.
He could neither deny nor confirm
that the army was also involved in
the exercise.
"The security
of the nation is the responsibility of all security
organs," he told the
Financial Gazette, declining to elaborate.
He accused the MDC of
paying people to engage in the strike but said
adequate measures had been
taken to prevent anarchy.
The MDC, which is still consulting on its
projected action, has
already denied state media reports that it is funding
youths to spearhead
the strike.
The MDC's leadership, which has
been touring Zimbabwe to mobilise for
what could turn out to be the country's
most costly mass action in economic
terms, this week moved into Manicaland,
the last stop of the party's
whirlwind campaign.
The reported
security clampdown follows the gunning down by police of
a Harare taxi
driver, Lloyd Midzi, earlier this week in one of the many road
blocks erected
in and around cities and towns by the police in the past
few
days.
Police accused Midzi of failing to stop at the
roadblock, forcing them
to fire live ammunition to try to stop
him.
The security alert comes as long-festering tensions fuelled by
a
political and economic crisis are threatening to burst into the surface
in
Zimbabwe.
The economy has virtually crumbled, weighed down by
skewed government
policies which have triggered a biting shortage of foreign
currency, plus
the state's runaway spending that is fuelling inflation to
record highs of
122.5 percent.
Unemployment is at nearly 70
percent and poverty at 80 percent at a
time when half the nation is facing
starvation because of a drought and
precipitate land reforms which crippled
output in the farming sector, the
country's economic
mainstay.
FinGaz
Inflation surges to 122.5%
Staff
Reporter
6/13/02 2:48:43 AM (GMT +2)
ZIMBABWE'S annualised
inflation surged to a new record high of 122.5
percent in May as the partial
lifting of price controls began to take
effect, although economists say the
consumer price index (CPI) is set to
worsen in June because of the
depreciating exchange rate on the parallel
market.
Figures
released by the Central Statistical Office yesterday showed
that the CPI
jumped from 114 percent in April to 122.5 percent last month on
the back of
significant increases in the prices of beverages, fruit and
vegetables, rent
and rates and bread and cereals.
Analysts attributed the sharp rise
in inflation to the decision by the
government to allow prices of basic
commodities, controlled since October
last year, to adjust
upwards.
"But wait and see the figure for June when the effects of
the
depreciating exchange rate on the parallel market is taken into
account,"
said consultant economist John Robertson.
The
Zimbabwe-US dollar exchange rate on the parallel market, where
Zimbabwean
firms now get their foreign currency due to an acute shortage of
hard cash in
the country, has declined from 55 to one greenback to more than
620 in the
past few weeks.
This has significantly increased the cost of
production for most
companies and these increases will be reflected in the
prices of goods and
services.
Nyasha Chasakara, an analyst with
First Mutual Asset Management,
warned that Zimbabwe's inflation, already one
of the highest in the world,
would average 100 percent this year unless the
government moves to contain
its expenditure and restores confidence in the
crumbling economy.
"The rising inflation will therefore raise wage
expectations because
workers will want to match the level of price increases
to their wages,"
Chasakara said.
The cash-strapped Harare
authorities have been borrowing more than $1
billion a day from the domestic
banking sector to finance pressing food
commitments and repay part of
outstanding foreign commitments.
Finance Minister Simba Makoni has
already said that the government
needs about $44 billion (US$800 million)
this year for drought relief
following a poor agricultural season in
2001/02.
As well as the drought, farming on prime food-producing
commercial
farms virtually collapsed as government supporters seized the
properties
from their white owners as part of President Robert Mugabe's
revolutionary
land redistribution scheme.
FinGaz
Britain denies claim
6/13/02 2:49:55 AM
(GMT +2)
THE British Government yesterday again denied allegations
in the
Zimbabwe state media that it is involved in covet operations to
destabilise
the southern African country.
A British High
Commission spokeswoman said the embassy had written to
Pikirayi Deketeke, the
editor of the state-run Herald, in protest against an
article published in
the newspaper yesterday alleging British involvement in
what it called
attempts to foment public violence and pave the way for
foreign military
intervention in Zimbabwe.
"It is ridiculous to suggest that the
British High Commissioner, Mr
Brian Donnelly, will be behind mass protests,
commanding the operations from
high-tech mobile communication centres to be
deployed throughout the
country," the commission wrote to the
Herald.
The letter follows a similar protest by Britain last week,
triggered
by baseless charges in the Herald that the British High Commission
in Harare
was linked to what the paper said was a plot by the opposition
Movement for
Democratic Change and the Law Society of Zimbabwe to overthrow
the
government.
Long-simmering tensions in Zimbabwe are rising
rapidly ahead of a
planned mass action by the MDC to try to force the
government to re-run a
March presidential election which was condemned by the
opposition and most
of the world as fraudulent.
The ruling ZANU
PF party rejects the MDC charge, saying President
Robert Mugabe won a
relatively free election fairly. - Staff Reporter
FinGaz
Zambia moves to restrict entry of cheap Zim
goods
Staff Reporter
6/13/02 2:54:19 AM (GMT
+2)
THE Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) this week introduced
measures to
restrict the entry of cheap products from Zimbabwe and other
southern
African countries, according to ZRA tax and revenue commissioner
Chriticles
Mwansa.
He told the Financial Gazette yesterday that
his organisation had
researched the prices of products in the region and
compiled a database that
would be used to ensure that cheaply priced goods
did not enter the Zambian
market.
Zambia has been plagued by
cheap imports from member nations of the
Common Market for Eastern and
Southern Africa free trade area since 2000.
It has especially had
problems with products from Zimbabwe where,
because of significantly devalued
exchange rates on the parallel market for
hard cash, Zambians have been able
to buy Zimbabwean goods more cheaply than
they cost to produce in
Zambia.
This is a threat to Zambian manufacturers who are unable to
compete
with the cheap products.
Mwansa said: "What the ZRA has
done is to go through the region and
get the official prices of products and
we are using these official prices
as reference for the products that are
declared at the border for assessment
of value."
He said the
measures were separate from efforts by Zambia's Ministry
of Commerce and
Industry, which has said it will adopt a statutory
instrument to curb the
dumping of cheap Zimbabwean goods on its market.
The revenue
authority had also embarked on a major anti-smuggling
operation, which
involves physical inspections and escort of goods in
transit, among other
measures to prevent cheap goods from being dumped in
Zambia.
"This can be seen in simple language as anti-dumping measures, but not
in the
WTO (World Trade Organisation) sense," Mwansa said.
FinGaz
MDC demands forex receipts from RBZ
Staff
Reporter
6/13/02 2:57:01 AM (GMT +2)
THE opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has written to the
Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe requesting the country's foreign currency receipts
for last year in
an attempt to determine the central bank's utilisation of
Zimbabwe's scarce
hard currency resources.
MDC economic affairs secretary Eddie Cross
said this week the request
had been made under the controversial Access to
Information and Protection
of Privacy Act, section six, which says a person
can make a written request
for information from a public body.
In his letter to Reserve Bank governor Leonard Tsumba, Cross said the
MDC
believed the central bank had access to about US$1.1 billion in the
financial
year ended December 31 2001 and would receive about US$980 million
this year
in spite of a decline in gold, tobacco and other key exports.
"In
the context of the Zimbabwe economy, these are very large sums of
money and
given the low level of official exchange rates, this money is
being made
available to the bank at prices well below its real value,"
Cross
wrote.
"With exchange rates in the parallel market now
averaging well over
400 to one, or over seven times the official exchange
rate for the US
dollar, the question of to what use these resources are being
put is one of
national importance.
"In view of the importance of
this information, we wish to receive
from you a complete breakdown for the
past financial year of all foreign
exchange receipts by the bank and a
schedule of what purpose these resources
are allocated. We would also like to
know at what prices these foreign
exchange resources were sold to the
beneficiaries."
The MDC also requested the central bank's economic
forecasts for the
current year.
It was not possible to ascertain
this week whether the Reserve Bank
had received the MDC's request, but Cross
said he was yet to receive a
response from Tsumba.
Cross however
said a further demand would be sent to the central bank
if there was no
response to the first letter.
Under the Access to Information Act,
a public body must respond to a
request for information within 30 days. But
it can refuse to grant
information if it feels disclosure may harm its
planning, financial or
economic interests or those of Zimbabwe.
Cross said the MDC had resolved to request information on Zimbabwe's
foreign
exchange receipts because of fears of mismanagement of hard cash at
a time
the country is facing desperate foreign currency shortages.
In a
report on the foreign currency situation, the MDC's economic
affairs
committee says: "Given the current failure to service foreign debt,
slow
payment for purchases of electricity from South Africa, the paucity of
drug
supplies for the state hospital system and the reported purchase of
a
proportion of liquid fuels in local currency, the question must be
asked:
what is government doing with the very substantial flow of resources?"
FinGaz
NRZ gets wagons from Botswana, Zambia
Staff
Reporter
6/13/02 2:56:30 AM (GMT +2)
THE National Railways
of Zimbabwe (NRZ), dogged by acute locomotive
and wagon shortages, this week
said it had arranged to use locomotives from
its counterparts in Botswana and
Zambia to rapidly move goods into Zimbabwe.
NRZ public relations
manager Gamaliel Rungani said the government-run
rail firm had made the
arrangements in March to expedite the movement of
imports and exports in and
out of the country, which is battling one of its
worst food crises in
decades.
Goods destined for Zimbabwe are normally left at its
borders, where
they are collected and distributed by the NRZ. But under the
new deal,
regional rail operators will travel past the borders to deliver
goods to
Bulawayo and Thompson Junction near Hwange.
Rungani
said a similar arrangement had been struck with
Beitbridge-Bulawayo Railways,
which uses South Africa's Spoor-net
locomotives, to move goods from
Beitbridge to Thompson Junction.
The arrangement, which Rungani
said was used when the need arose, was
sought because the NRZ faced shortages
of locomotives and wagons, most of
which have been grounded by Zimba-bwe's
foreign currency crisis.
Hard currency shortages have made it
difficult for the NRZ to buy
spare parts needed to put its locomotives and
wagons back into operation.
Under the NRZ's deal with regional
counterparts, locomotives provided
by Botswana and Zambia will go past
Zimbabwe's borders to deliver goods only
if the NRZ has insufficient
locomotives.
NRZ crews will operate the two countries' locomotives
past the borders
into Zimbabwe and back.
"Besides alleviating
the shortage of locomotives besetting the
organisation, the arrangement has
greatly improved the movement of
import-export and transit traffic," the NRZ
spokesman said.
The shortage of locomotives and wagons, worsened by
maize imports from
South Africa, is expected to improve in the next 18 to 24
months following
the NRZ's receipt of a US$100 million ($5.5 billion)
offshore loan to
bankroll its recapitalisation pro-gramme.
Meanwhile the latest edition of the NRZ's journal Railroader says rail
firms
in the Southern Africa Development Community are exploring the
feasibility of
jointly running scheduled international freight trains.
Work on
this virtually non-stop international train service has
already begun with
chief executives of several railway companies in the
region creating rail
corridor management committees that will spearhead the
project.
Trial runs for the service are expected to begin in March next year.
FinGaz
Govt gets ultimatum on AIDS drug
Staff
Reporter
6/13/02 2:56:00 AM (GMT +2)
THE Women and AIDS
Support Network (WASN), a Zimbabwean
non-governmental organisation, yesterday
threatened to take the government
to court if it did not begin systematically
supplying the anti-AIDS drug
Nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women before
December 1.
Nevirapine is an antiretroviral drug that reduces by 50
percent the
mother-to-child transmission of HIV, the virus which causes
AIDS.
Germany-based Boehri-nger Ingelheim, the manufacturer of the
drug, is
supplying it free of charge to several developing countries,
including
Zimbabwe.
"Women and AIDS Support Network has launched
a petition to demand that
government avails Nevirapine to HIV-positive
expectant women at all health
centres throughout the country by 1 December
2002," a WASN spokeswoman said
yesterday.
"If the government
refuses, legal action will follow because we
already have a precedent in
South Africa. But we hope we do not have to go
that far. We are working on
programmes to conscientise the public."
South African AIDS
activists last year won a court case to force their
government to provide
free Nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women giving
birth at state
hospitals.
WASN said although the drug was being supplied free of
charge in
Zimbabwe, it remained largely unavailable to most HIV-positive
pregnant
women and private medical practitioners.
The
organisation said only 35 health centres in Zimbabwe offered
Nevirapine to
HIV- positive expectant mothers, yet it is estimated that out
of the 600 000
Zimbabweans who give birth annually, 200 000 of them are
HIV-positive and 30
percent transmit the virus to their babies.
This means that between
55 000 and 60 000 babies are born infected
every year.
"Given
these figures and the fact that half the year has already
passed with less
than 35 centres offering Nevirapine, WASN questions the
government's
commitment to the programme," WASN said.
The NGO said it was
concerned that conditions set by the government
for health centres applying
for Nevirapine would not be met because most
centres were short-staffed and
their standards had deteriorated, especially
in rural areas where half of
Zimbabweans live.
The conditions stipulate that health centres must
have adequate AIDS
counsellors, nurses, doctors and medical
equipment.
WASN said: "If the government is to put such measures,
most of the
centres will not qualify to participate in the programme,
particularly in
rural areas where the bulk of women are based. To us as WASN,
this is
unacceptable."
FinGaz
Independent editors launch forum
Staff
Reporter
6/13/02 2:53:49 AM (GMT +2)
EDITORS of Zimbabwe's
independent news media yesterday launched a
national editors' forum to
promote and defend Press freedom and free speech
in the country, taking a
leaf from a similar initiative already in existence
in neighbouring South
Africa.
The Zimbabwe National Editors' Forum (ZINEF) was launched
by editors
Geoff Nyarota of the Daily News, Francis Mdlongwa of the Financial
Gazette,
Iden Wetherell of the Independent, Bornwell Chakaodza of the
Standard and
Parade's Chiza Ngwira.
Nyarota, named ZINEF's
interim head, said: "ZINEF is designed to
provide a mechanism for
consultation and policy formulation around issues of
freedom of the
Press.
"ZINEF's objectives will be to protect editors against
victimisa-tion
for carrying out their professional duties and to defend and
promote media
freedom, to nurture and deepen media freedom as a democratic
value in all
communities and at all levels of society."
He said
the forum would press the government to promote transparency
and
accountability in public administration and to encourage media diversity
to
foster free speech.
Nyarota said all media editors in Zimbabwe were
free to join the forum
but said their applications would be subjected to a
review by their peers,
focusing especially on the individual editors'
demonstrable adherence to
defending and upholding media freedom.
The formation of ZINEF comes at a time when the government is cracking
down
on journalists for alleged abuses of media privilege.
Several
journalists, editors, lawyers and members of the public have
been arrested in
the past few months under the govern-ment's sweeping Access
to Information
and Protection of Privacy Act and the Public Order and
Security
Act.
The government has also established a media commission manned
by
ruling ZANU PF loyalists, which is supposed to register media
organisations,
accredit journalists and monitor professional
standards.
Nyarota told journalists yesterday: "Enquiries made to
the chairman of
the commission suggest that the commission regards all media
organisations
already registered under the Companies Act to be duly
registered 'for the
time being' by the commission.
"The Minister
of Information and Publicity (Jonathan Moyo) is supposed
to issue regulations
for this (registration) under the Act.
"No such regulations have
been made to date and no forms exist for
registration. Nor has any indication
been given as to the quantum of the
fees. Until we have seen the prescribed
regulations for registration, we
reserve our rights under the
law.
"We are, together with publishers, currently taking legal
advice on
what form any challenge to the Act should take."
FinGaz
Mugabe under EU spotlight again
6/13/02
2:52:35 AM (GMT +2)
THE general affairs council of the 15-nation
European Union (EU) will
on Monday to consider a report on Zimbabwe submitted
by an EU team which has
just visited southern Africa, it was learnt
yesterday.
The delegation met several southern African leaders in a
bid to
pressure them to act on Zimbabwe's lawlessness and descent into
chaos.
The EU has already imposed targeted travel bans into Europe
on
President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle, among other
sanctions.
The EU's representative in Harare, Francesca Mosca, told
the Financial
Gazette yesterday: "No decision has been made (after the EU's
mission to
southern Africa). A report will be submitted to the general
affairs council
on Monday, June 17.
"The report will be examined
during the meeting next week and then
there will be a discussion. I don't
know what decision will be made."
Mosca would not disclose what the
team discussed during its southern
Africa safari.
Meanwhile EU
parliamentarian Glenys Kinnock this week called for the
stepping up of EU
sanctions against Mugabe, who attended a United Nations
(UN) food summit in
Rome earlier this week despite the EU travel ban.
Addressing the
626-member EU Parliament in Strasborg, Kinnock, who is
also a British Labour
MP, said: "Mugabe is using these UN meetings to parade
himself in Europe in
defiance of our ban while the people in his country
suffer because of his
policies.
"The EU must keep up the pressure and extend the impact
of its
sanctions while continuing to deliver aid to the needy in Zimbabwe. We
must
not confuse our campaign against Mugabe with the need to
maintain
humanitarian assistance."
She said Mugabe, who under
international law can enter Europe or the
United States only to attend UN
summits, must not be allowed to enjoy any
shopping trips or tourism while in
Rome.
Conservative MP Geoffrey Van Orden added: "President Mugabe's
visit to
the World Food Summit in Rome is an act of astounding hypocrisy. The
mass
food shortages and starvation in many parts of Zimbabwe can be
attributed in
significant measure to his misgovernment and corrupt land
reforms.
"The fact that he is able to travel to Rome at all is a
mockery of
international law and of the EU's travel ban. The international
community
must find more effective ways of controlling the actions of Mugabe
and his
courtiers."
The EU has been under pressure to widen its
sanctions against Zimbabwe
's ruling elite, which are presently limited to
Mugabe and 20 other
officials.
Travel bans have also been
imposed on Zimbabwean leaders by the United
States, New Zealand, Canada and
Switzerland in protest against lawlessness
and what they say is an
illegitimate government that retained power after a
flawed election in
March.
Washington last week said it was considering further action
on Mugabe.
FinGaz
MDC wants Parliament to oversee food aid
Staff
Reporter
6/13/02 2:49:22 AM (GMT +2)
OPPOSITION Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan
Tsvangirai yesterday said the MDC
is planning to approach legislators about
creating a bi-partisan
parliamentary committee to oversee the distribution
of food aid in
Zimbabwe.
The proposal follows allegations that ruling ZANU PF
supporters are
preventing suspected MDC members from getting food handouts in
areas hit by
shortages.
A Denmark-based non-governmental agency,
Physicians for Human Rights,
says it uncovered widespread discrimination
against MDC supporters in food
distribution, even in areas receiving aid from
international agencies during
a survey last month.
Similar
accusations have been made by Zimbabwean witnesses in several
parts of the
country, including Bulawayo.
Tsvangirai yesterday said: "Our
position is very clear on the food
situation. We want it to be co-ordinated
by a bi-partisan parliamentary
committee from the two political parties -
that is ZANU PF and MDC.
"We are going to approach Parliament on
the issue because that is
where you've got ZANU and MDC having a common
ground."
He said the committee should include representatives from
the
government-run Grain Marketing Board and non-governmental
organisations.
"We propose a way of effectively de-politicising the
food
distribution, a tripartite distribution arrangement involving
the
administration, specifically the Grain Marketing Board, local churches
and
participating NGOs," Tsvangirai said.
"This mechanism will
be complemented by a bi-partite arrangement on an
equal parliamentary
representative basis involving the two major parties. It
is only such a
distribution mechanism that can ensure that the distribution
of grain in the
country is fair."
He said the MDC would not approach President
Robert Mugabe's
government on the proposed distribution of food aid because
the
administration is illegitimate.
United Nations agencies
estimate that about six million Zimbabweans -
almost half the population -
need emergency food aid between now and next
year. Harare authorities say as
many as 7.6 million people face starvation.
Zimbabwe is facing its
worst humanitarian crisis caused by a
combination of drought and the
government's chaotic land reforms and farm
seizures which have disrupted
farming and slashed output from agriculture.
ABC Australia
Thu, Jun 13 2002 9:45 AM AEST
PM contemplates
Zimbabwe sanctions
Prime Minister John Howard says it is time to consider
what he calls "smart
sanctions" against Zimbabwe.
In March a committee
of three heads of state led by Mr Howard decided to
suspend Zimbabwe from the
Commonwealth, after the controversial election
that returned President Robert
Mugabe to power.
But Mr Howard has told Sydney radio he is now ready to
reconvene the
committee to consider stronger action.
"The behaviour of
that government has gone from bad to worse and I think
they are going to face
a stronger reaction than many of them have imagined,"
he said.
FinGaz
Govt meets less than 1% of foreign commitments
By Joseph Ngwawi Business News Editor
6/13/02 12:20:41 AM (GMT
+2)
THE Zimbabwe government, which faces possible expulsion from
the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) over non-payment of its foreign debt,
paid
only $31 million (US$570 000) to external creditors during the first
quarter
of this year, less than one percent of what it had budgeted to spend
in the
first three months of 2002.
Finance Minister Simba Makoni had
budgeted in the 2002 national budget
to spend more than $30.1 billion on the
repayment of foreign loans and
bonds. This translated to equal payments of
more than $2.5 billion a month
or $7.5 billion for each quarter of the
year.
But, according to figures released this week by the Reserve
Bank of
Zimbabwe (RBZ), the Treasury only paid $31.4 million to the
country's
external creditors between January and March or 0.42 percent of the
budgeted
amount.
Analysts this week said the defaults on the
government's foreign
obligations mirrored the deepening hard cash crisis
Zimbabwe is facing.
"It all shows that the arrears on the country's
foreign debt have
increased further during the past few months," said
economist Witness
Chinyama.
The arrears on Zimbabwe's external
debt are estimated at more than
US$1 billion, with the bulk of the money owed
to the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which are owed
US$122.4 million and US$109.7
million respectively.
The IMF
board was expected to meet in Washington yesterday to decide
whether to expel
Zimbabwe from the organisation for non-payment of its
loans.
However, despite the government's failure to meet its external
obligations
for the first quarter of the year, Zimbabwe's budget deficit
stood at more
than 12 percent of annualised gross domestic product (GDP) in
the first three
months of 2002, compared to about seven percent of GDP
during the same period
in 2001.
"The deficit could be higher than that if the authorities
had been
meeting their foreign obligations," said consultant economist
John
Robertson.
The RBZ said the budget deficit between January
and March 2002 was
$28.1 billion compared to only $9.4 billion during the
first three months of
last year.
Zimbabwe's annual GDP is
projected at about $928 billion this year
compared to $488 billion in 2001
although the increase is attributed to
rising inflation, which stood at 114
percent in April 2002.
This translates to GDP of about $232 billion
for the first quarter of
2002 and $122 billion for the period between January
and March last year,
assuming the output is evenly spread throughout the 12
months.
According to the central bank's figures, total government
revenue
between January and March was $55.7 billion while expenditure
amounted to
$83.9 billion, resulting in a budget deficit of $28.1
billion.
"This was financed from domestic bank sources, (which
accounted for)
$25 461.6 million, domestic non-bank sources ($2 614.2
million) and proceeds
from the sale of assets ($10.2 million)," said the RBZ
in its latest Monthly
Review.
The bulk of the expenditure was
accounted for by the government's
salary bill, which consumed more than $26.5
billion while transfers took up
another $16.4 billion.
Analysts
said the deficit was expected to increase this year due to
the government's
pressing expenditure commitments, including food imports
and part of the
outstanding foreign debt.
"We expect the budget deficit for this
year to rise due to expenditure
commitments for the government," Chinyama
said.
Makoni had initially forecast the budget deficit for this
year at 14.9
percent of GDP.
FinGaz - National Agenda
Roots of Zimbabwe's economic
collapse
Daniel Ndlela
6/13/02
12:16:30 AM (GMT +2)
THE unprecedented meltdown of
Zimba-bwe's economy can
easily be traced to self-engineered political
instability by the present
government. Subsequently the roots of political
instability further led to
economic mismanagement and corruption in the
economy.
When in November 1997 it was announced that
war veterans
were to be given unbudgeted payments of magnitude which
threatened fiscal
targets, external investors bolted out of the Zimbabwe
Stock Exchange and
the domestic market foresaw an imminent devaluation - the
Zimbabwe dollar
crashed by almost a fourth of its value in local currency
terms and
continued to slide until the end of that
year.
The currency crisis had suddenly surfaced against
the
background of a relatively optimistic and confident mood that had
prevailed
in the economy during the first and second quarters of that year.
This
proved to be the start of a real crisis of management of the economy,
with
the exchange rate only showing the symptoms of the
cancer.
It also brought into sharp focus the importance
of
redressing underlying fundamental weaknesses in the economy, as well
as
fostering confidence in economic management.
The
response of the authorities to this crisis worsened
the export climate.
Currency collapse to Z$38 to the United States dollar,
rising inflation and
declining exports set the stage for decline into
negative economic growth
(-4.2 percent in 2000, -7.3 percent in 2001, with
the latest official growth
estimated to be minus-nine percent in 2002, but
put at -12 percent by
independent economists), taking cumulative decline in
gross domestic product
(GDP) since 1998 to over 20 percent.
Twenty years of
overspending through appropriation of
resources by the government (on wrong
things) resulted in high deficits,
accumulating debt and underlying inflation
pressure. This led to massive
accumulation of interest burden in the budget
which reached self-sustaining
levels of 69 cents in revenue dollar in 2000.
Inflation reached an all-time
high of 117 percent in January 2002 and is
expected to peak at around 140
percent in the second and third quarters of
the year.
By the end of 1999 the Zimbabwean economy was
already in a
severe macroeconomic crisis: GDP had fallen to below two
percent, inflation
had averaged 58.5 percent and exports had stagnated,
forcing sharp
contraction of imports. Instead of formulating an agenda to
tackle this
downward tumble of the economy, the government pursued a
political agenda
that had further adverse impacts in the economic
sphere.
From February 2000, the government of Zimbabwe
voluntarily
abrogated the rule of law by allowing farm invasions, political
harassment
and murders with the police standing by and taking sides with the
ruling
party. The underlying causes of Zimbabwe's economic crisis had
started, with
its political roots embedded in two main
factors:
- economic activity disruptions as a
result of
state-sponsored lawlessness; and
-
brushing aside decisions of the law courts by the
sitting government. This
clearly undermined business confidence, affected
current output and decimated
investment, causing fuel shortages,
accumulation of arrears in international
payments and an increase in the
budget deficit from 15 percent to 24 percent
of GDP.
Up to the 2002 presidential elections it had
become the
norm that the response of the authorities on intervention in the
economy
significantly worsens the situation, especially the investment
climate and
export environment, for example:
- a
decline in export receipts from US$3.108 million in
1996 to US$1.965 million
in 2001 - a cumulative decline of 37 percent -
which is the main reason for
the current extreme shortage of foreign
exchange, setting the stage for
declines in negative economic growth numbers
of - 4.2 percent and -7.3
percent GDP growth in 2000 and 2001 respectively;
-
lunemployment at a record 60 percent;
- inflation
at an all-time high of 117 percent and still
steadily and steeply going up to
hyperinflationary levels;
- many businesses closing
down, foreign investment having
dried up, donors having frozen
aid;
- 90 percent of the people are facing
starvation with
absolutely no food in the Grain Marketing Board's silos -
thus plunging the
country and its people into a deep crisis of food shortages
with maize meal,
the main staple, being completely unavailable in the
country;
- more price controls likely but these
having only
marginal impact on inflation figures, which are themselves
increasingly
meaningless since the authorities are using the official prices
for
non-existent commodities like maize meal and cooking oil to cushion
the
inflation rate.
Government's response to the
economic crisis
The government has refused to
acknowledge the importance
of the environment under which economic progress
takes place, and that any
improvement of macroeconomic management,
investment, liberalisation of
markets and trade and widening of the space for
the private sector activity
have to be invariably underpinned by good
governance and civil peace.
However, after the 2000
elections the minister of finance
cautiously mentioned in Parliament that the
economy needed peace, stability,
law and order, credibility and confidence
and said that the "relevant
authorities in the government are addressing
these concerns". By this
statement the minister was admitting that the
country's unprecedented
economic crisis is largely a symptom of a more
fundamental political crisis.
If we take this further,
it becomes clear that
technocratic "economic" policy packages have no chance
of success unless
political actions are taken to restore a minimally
acceptable economic
environment.
Thus from 1997 the
ZANU PF government adopted a total
irresponsible politically driven economic
management system that finally
culminated in the 2000 illegal farm invasions
and violent disruptions of
economic activities that have proved that such
venality leads to
unsustainable and irretrievable economic downfall of the
economy.
Indeed even if the ZANU PF government managed
to pull back
the deficit from 24 percent in 2000 to 12 percent in 2001 by
stage-managing
negative interest rate policy from the beginning of 2001 (or
whatever -
final figures which were never released for 2001), from 2002, when
the food
and land costs have been factored in, the budget deficit should rise
back to
24 percent again. This proves that there is no alternative to going
back and
restoring political legitimacy and
stability.
International
isolation
Zimbabwe is now being ostracised by her
major traditional
trading partners. While there are no explicit measures that
are being
imposed by regional partners - the Southern Africa Development
Community
(SADC), the Common Market for East and Southern Africa and the
African
Union - Zimbabwe has been effectively isolated from many
international
regional pacts currently enjoyed by other countries in the
region, for
example the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) facility,
the
implementation of the Cotonou Agreement and recently the New Partnership
for
Africa's Development (NEPAD).
In the last two
years a lot of investment opportunities
were lost as a result of the country
being ineligible to the AGOA. On its
part the NEPAD, a development programme
initiated by African leaders, is a
comprehensive integrated development plan
that addresses key social,
economic and political priorities for the African
continent designed to put
Africa on a sustainable growth path. Zimbabwe has
been completely excluded
from all of the NEPAD's five programme elements,
namely:
- Political governance including peace and
security and
conflict resolution;
- Economic and
corporate governance including measurement
of economic governance and peer
review mechanism;
- Infrastructure including
information and communication
technology, water, sanitation, transport and
energy;
- Agricultural market access including
harmonisation of
standards to encourage intra-African
trade;
- Financial and banking standards including
capital flows
and mobilisation of domestic resources and identifying goals,
criteria and
mechanisms for debt reduction.
Zimbabwe
will certainly have an uneasy time in accessing
conditions for participating
and let alone negotiating the European
Union-sponsored Economic Partnership
Arrangements with its SADC partners on
one hand and the European Commission
on the other.
But economic turnaround does not come
about on its own and
especially the reversal of an economic destruction of
the magnitude that has
visited Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe cannot continue to ignore
the key requirements
for economic and social recovery all of which are
political in nature.
Meanwhile for the ordinary person
there are no jobs, no
staple food in the shops let alone the wherewithal to
purchase the food, no
affordable transport, education and health
facilities.
In order to reverse this level of economic
crisis and
bring back the country to a state of normalcy, it is clear that
the ZANU PF
government has to draw back and address the political instability
stance
that is at the very root of the current economic
crisis.
According to Article 9 (2) and (4) of the
Cotonou
Agreement which Zimbabwe signed as part of the ACP states the Parties
to the
agreement ". reiterate their deep attachment to human dignity and
human
rights, which are legitimate aspirations of individuals and peoples,
.
undertake to promote and protect all fundamental freedoms and human
rights,
be they civil and political, or economic, social and cultural." and
that
they "shall actively support the promotion of human rights, processes
of
democratisation, consolidation of the rule of law, and good
governance."
Thus the Cotonou Agreement, which Zimbabwe
is a signatory
clearly defines human rights, democratic principles and the
rule of law as
the essential elements and recognises that respect for these
elements
constitutes an integral part of sustainable
development.
Confidence-building
measures
The primary casualty in the Zimbabwean economy
was the
destruction of business confidence and especially that of the
private
sector. For economic recovery to happen the Zimbabweans cannot
continue to
ignore answering the big questions that haunt the nation,
namely:
- the restoration of the rule of
law;
- putting land reform onto a sound,
development-oriented
basis;
- putting into place a
credible and serious stabilisation
and recovery programme;
and
- efforts to ensure that export climate is
restored.
The question is whether the government is
prepared to
re-engage and re-establish broken relationships both internally
and
externally.
In order to solve Zimbabwe's
economic decline, the nation
has to first resolve its political embedded
problem and only then can
Zimbabwe start working on a sustained economic
stability growth path.
Ignoring this question is tantamount to act
irresponsibly which will plunge
the economy into further
collapse.
It is obvious to everyone that without a
return to
political stability, Zimbabwe cannot hope to address the following
economic
prerequisites:
- the scrapping of price
controls on basic goods;
- resolution of the foreign
currency crisis;
- ensuring of the country's food
security; and
- re-introducing investor confidence in
the economy.
But dire-hard to its overall political
ideology and
attitude of the government, in the past one month alone the wave
of illegal
farm invasions, occupation and destruction of farm properties,
evictions of
farm owners and farm labourers and their families intensified on
a scale of
monstrous and wanton destruction of property values. The results
are there
for everyone to see - an unprecedented economic
collapse.
Daniel Ndlela is an independent economic
consultant.
FinGaz - Public Eye
The fight for democracy needs
commitment to democracy
Masipula
Sithole
6/13/02 1:55:41 AM (GMT
+2)
IS it possible that the democracy project can be
mounted
by people who, philosophically, do not believe in electoral
democracy?
The argument is that the ruling party and
its leadership
don't believe in democracy and, therefore, cannot mount the
democracy
project that the present and future
demand.
The ruling party's antipathy and contempt for
electoral
democracy goes a long way into the history of the party. In the
mid-70s a
debate raged within the party whether the "party leads the gun or
the gun
leads the party". The philosophy that the "gun leads the party"
triumphed in
an unsettled debate.
In a radio
broadcast from Maputo in 1976 as he rose to the
ZANU PF leadership during the
liberation struggle, President Robert Mugabe
summed up his view of electoral
democracy when he said: "Our votes must go
together with our guns. After all,
any vote we shall have shall have been
the product of the gun. The gun which
produces the vote should remain its
security officer - its guarantor. The
people's votes and the people's guns
are always inseparable
twins."
This view camouflages a basic contempt for
electoral
democracy in that it is actually saying the gun is the more
important of the
"inseparable twins". If the twins have to be separated, the
vote is readily
sacrificed for the gun.
ZANU PF has
demonstrated this ever since it attained power
in 1980; admittedly, power
guaranteed it by its control of the gun.
Zimbabweans have, therefore, been
held hostage to the gun ever since
independence.
The
ZANU PF regime consolidated itself in the 80s through
the use of the gun that
crushed the rival PF ZAPU culminating in the forced
"Unity Accord" of
December 22 1987. In each successive election since
independence, the gun has
been the "security officer", the "guarantor" of
the votes for Mugabe and ZANU
PF who have not at all hesitated to use it.
ZANU PF's
commitment to the use of the gun has increased
as its popularity decreased,
more so since the referendum defeat of February
2000 and in the advent of a
formidable opposition party, the Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC).
The June 2000 parliamentary elections, the
subsequent
by-elections and ultimately the controversial March 2002
presidential
election demonstrate this commitment to a violent strategy as
popular
support shrunk.
More revealing is the almost
pathological obsession with
violence in the ZANU PF leadership that seems to
increase with age. In 2000,
Mugabe boasted having "degrees in
violence".
Even the enlightened Nathan Shamuyarira took
delight in
the party's violent history: "The area of violence is an area
where ZANU PF
has a very long, long and successful
history."
Nobody in the ZANU PF leadership is known for
ever
condemning violence as a method of gaining votes; none whatsoever. What
is
even more alarming in all this is the psych of the generality of the ZANU
PF
party membership. They have this "ZANU ndeyeropa" (ZANU is for
bloody)
mentality. They accept the use of political violence willy-nilly
as
legitimate. They don't talk about political violence except when
considering
to use more of it.
"If we lose the
elections to the MDC, we are going back to
the trenches". What more antipathy
and contempt for electoral democracy than
this?
The
question is: can such a party and leadership preside
over the democracy
project that the present and future demands? Or the
project requires a new
type of leadership, a leadership with a
different
mindset?
We had thought transformation was
possible after the June
parliamentary elections when Mugabe brought what we
thought were "Young
Turks", the "technocrats", into his Cabinet. "They would
give the party a
new face, a new orientation," we
thought.
How mistaken we were.
It turned out that most of them were actually worse than
the "old guard" they
were supposed to replace. In fact, they sought to
outperform the "old guard"
in regressive thinking and in antiquated ways of
doing
things.
Professor Jonathan Moyo's ideas on information
and
propaganda were more reactionary than those of Shamuyarira and
Chen
Chimutengwende combined. (By the way, where is
Chen?).
Joseph Made sought to recklessly outperform the
pragmatic
Kumbirai Kangai in land reform.
The late
Border Gezi was miles ahead of Moven Mahachi as
political commissar in
mobilising the party for commandist politics when the
world was turning its
back on commandist politics. After Gezi, Cde Elliot
Manyika's "Zvinoda
Vakashinga" approach is in no way appealing to the
Zimbabwean democratic
instincts.
The other "technocrats" (you know them) were
"innocuous
middle-of-the-roaders" who were lured by the naďve belief that
ZANU PF
yachinja maitiro. When he discovered to the contrary, Nkosana Moyo
resigned
and ran away into exile for fear of violent
death.
But all these observations camouflage the fact
that,
though frail, the "old guard" are still in control of the
party.
Mugabe and his two deputies - Simon Muzenda and
Joseph
Msika - are in the presidency of both the country and the party. John
Nkomo,
Emmerson Mnangagwa and Shamuyarira are party national chairman,
secretary
for administration and information and publicity secretary
respectively.
Can these and the types of "Young Turks"
recruited to join
them in 2000 take on the responsibility of mounting a
successful democracy
project? It is possible, but highly
unlikely.
Professor Masipula Sithole is a
lecturer of political
science at the University of Zimbabwe and director of
the Harare-based Mass
Public Opinion Institute.
FinGaz
Zim soldiers in Congo food scam
Staff
Reporter
6/13/02 2:48:22 AM (GMT +2)
AN unspecified number
of Zimbabwean army officers have been suspended
from duty on charges they
masterminded a million-dollar racket in which food
meant for southern African
forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC) was diverted and sold on
the black market.
A Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) spokesman told
the Financial Gazette
this week the soldiers, who include senior Zimbabwe
National Army officers
responsible for sourcing and transporting food rations
to troops in the DRC,
are being tried under a court martial.
He
did not say how many suspects were involved in the racket.
"In this
case, the involved servicemen had the duty to source and
transport the
rations on behalf of the SADC allied troops deployed in the
DRC," the ZDF
spokesman said without giving any further details.
"There is a
court martial presently going on. Since the matter is
under the courts, we
cannot give you further information."
Sources however said the
officers would divert trucks and wagons
containing food rations destined for
soldiers operating under the auspices
of the Southern Africa Development
Community (SADC) and sell the loot to
middlemen.
The defence
forces spokesman however said Zimbabwe was not prejudiced
by the racket,
understood to have been going on since SADC forces moved into
the former
Zaire in 1998 to prop up the beleaguered government of slain
Congolese leader
Laurent Kabila.
"Under the SADC allied forces
arrangements/agreement, the DRC
government finances the rations demands," he
said.
Zimbabwe has more than 7 000 soldiers stationed in the DRC
while other
SADC allies Namibia and Angola have pulled out their troops in
line with
ceasefire accords signed by the combatants in Zambia nearly two
years ago.
FinGaz
Private media challenges compulsory
registration
Staff Reporter
6/13/02 2:53:08 AM (GMT
+2)
ZIMBABWE'S private media organisations yesterday said they were
taking
legal advice on the legality of sections of the government's
tough
information laws as a June 16 deadline for the registration of
publishing
houses looms.
Heads of the country's private media
organisations said they would
comply in protest with provisions of the Access
to Information and
Protection of Privacy Act to register by Sunday because
they risked having
their operating licences cancelled.
Under the
draconian media laws, masterminded by Information Minister
Jonathan Moyo last
year but passed by Parliament early this year, no company
will be allowed to
run a newspaper, radio and television station or an
advertising agency after
June 16 unless they are registered by a Media and
Information Commission
hand-picked by Moyo.
No one would also be allowed to practice as a
journalist from Monday
next week unless he is accredited by the commission
chaired by staunch ZANU
PF supporter Tafataona Mahoso, who also heads the
journalism school at the
Harare Polytechnic.
The commission can
refuse to accredit any journalist or media house.
"We are going to
register as required but will challenge the Act in
court in an action we are
jointly taking with the Zimbabwe Independent and
MISA," said Elias Rusike,
the chief executive officer of the Financial
Gazette.
Sipepa
Nkomo, chief executive of the Associated Newspapers Zimbabwe
(ANZ), said:
"Our position is that we will go ahead and register but there
are some
objectionable sections in the Act that we feel need to be
looked
at."
He said the ANZ, which publishes the Daily News and
has been the focus
of a government crackdown on the private media in the past
two years, was
taking legal advice over the issue.
The media
houses also said there was confusion over the criteria to be
used during the
registration process.
Trevor Ncube, publisher of the Zimbabwe
Independent and Standard
weeklies, said he was repeatedly referred from
Moyo's ministry to the media
commission when he tried to find out how the
registration would take place.
"We were eventually told by Mahoso
that our registration with the
registrar of companies will do for the time
being but we are taking legal
advice with regards the implications of the Act
itself," Ncube said
yesterday.
Mahoso and Moyo could not be
reached for comment.
Meanwhile, the cost of newsprint and printing
charges surged by an
average 15 percent in the past week, exerting more
pressure on the already
shrinking margins of Zimbabwe's troubled publishing
industry.
According to Mutare Board and Paper Mills, which is the
largest
supplier of newsprint to the publishing industry, the price of
newsprint
rose by 17.5 percent on June10 and prices will now be reviewed
weekly until
further notice due to volatility in the exchange
rate.
Rusike said the constant increases in newsprint costs and
printing
charges would force most publishers to reduce the number of copies
they
print a day or week in order to remain afloat.
"The sad
part of the whole exercise is that it is the consumer who is
going to suffer
because there is no way we are able to pass on the recent
increases in
costs.
"As publishers, the only course of action at the moment is
to reduce
our already controlled print run," he said.
Ncube said
the latest hike in the cost of production was likely to
trigger another round
of increases in the cover price and advertising rates.
"We have to
ultimately pass on some of these costs to our clients, the
readers and
advertisers," Ncube said.
FinGaz
NGOs meet over internal refugee crisis
By
Nqobile Nyathi Assistant Editor
6/13/02 3:01:05 AM (GMT
+2)
ZIMBABWE's non-governmental organisations (NGOs) meet next week
to
consider local solutions to the country's internal refugee crisis
after
failing to mobilise international aid but NGO representatives fear
the
problem is almost insurmountable.
In April, the NGOs approached
international humanitarian agencies for
assistance in dealing with more than
50 000 people who have been forced to
flee their homes because of political
violence that has disturbed the
country since 2000.
Solutions
suggested to international agencies included the
establishment of a "tented"
city in Harare, where most of the displaced
people have fled to, and the
provision of food and other necessities.
Although international
humanitarian organisa-tions are providing some
assistance for programmes
caring for internally displaced people, NGO
representatives this week said
they had not been able to mobilise the kind
of support they
wanted.
"The scale of the problem is not yet big enough for them to
act," Tim
Neill, one of the organisers, told the Financial
Gazette.
"They act when the numbers of internally displaced people
approach
half-a-million.
"We haven't got anywhere near those
numbers yet and they really can't
help us out."
Andrew Nongogo,
spokesman for NGO coalition Crisis in Zimbabwe, said
the international
agencies had indicated that they wanted to continue
working within United
Nations progra-mmes already in place in Zimbabwe.
"They decided
that they were going to continue with their work with
the WFP (World Food
Programme) and not try to do anything extra because of
the politics around
the issue," he said.
"They said they already have great difficulty
anyway in raising food
and they didn't see the likelihood of being able to
generate any more."
The WFP has since last October been working on
a programme that is
targeting more than 500 000 people in six Zimbabwean
provinces for food aid,
but has received a slow response from donors to pleas
for assistance.
The UN agency, which together with the Food and
Agriculture
Organisation estimates that about six million Zimbabweans -
nearly half the
population - need emergency food aid, is likely to expand the
number of
targeted beneficiaries.
But NGO officials said very
few, if any, of these beneficiaries were
likely to be internally displaced
people who are scattered around Zimbabwe
and are not well known in the
communities they have fled to.
"They are not in their locality and
in their new neighbourhood they
are not known," Nongogo pointed out. "To get
on that (food distribution)
list is a problem.
"We are going to
sit down next week and try to see what we can do
locally. It will be the
NGOs, the churches, trying to find out if there are
other ways we can
approach the problem."
But NGO officials said the task was almost
insurmountable because of
various obstacles facing organisations trying to
assist internally displaced
people.
These include grain
shortages, the govern-ment's refusal to grant
permits to aid bodies to import
food and the state-run Grain Marketing Board
(GMB)'s monopoly over grain
distribution, a result of the severe maize and
wheat shortages facing
Zimbabwe.
"We can't get grain from the GMB because we are not
millers and
because they are facing shortages themselves," Nongogo
said.
"We can't buy grain from people because that's not allowed.
We can try
and get ground mealie-meal from millers, which is what we have
been doing,
but this is not a long-term solution. This is a serious problem
that is
going to require very innovative solutions."
Other
obstacles include the alleged control of food distribution in
rural areas by
ruling ZANU PF activists who are preventing opposition party
supporters and
their children from accessing food.
NGOs said the lack of
definitive statistics on internally displaced
people could also hamper the
establishment of support systems, which have to
provide shelter, food and
counselling for people traumatised by violence and
displacement.
In a report on a survey of displaced farm workers, Amani Trust, which
works
with victims of political torture, said:
"Using the data derived
from the present study, a very crude estimate
would then be derived in the
following way from the above findings: take all
high-risk farms, those with
multiple reports of gross human rights
violations; calculate the rates of
gross human rights violations at 71
percent of all adults; calculate the
rates of gross human rights violations
at 55 percent of all children;
calculate the rate of psychological disorder
at 81 percent of all
adults.
"Now this may seem to lead to impossibly high rates, but in
the
absence of proper epidemiological investigations, it is vital to have
some
estimate of social and medical requirements.
"It is clearly
better in the current humanitarian crisis to err on the
side of generosity
than design helping systems that miss problems.
"It is evident that
the overall number of persons affected by the
events of the past two years
will be exceedingly high indeed, and there is a
pressing need both for
epidemiological investigations into the prevalence of
trauma disorders as
well as an urgent need to design adequate helping
systems that do not
marginalise any sector of the community."
Analysts say these
problems are likely to be compounded by the large
numbers of farm workers who
would have been displaced at the conclusion of
the government's controversial
land reform programme in August.
By then, all commercial farmers
who have been issued Section 8 notices
demanding that they cease farming
should have left their properties.
Neill said: "We are first of all
trying to find out what exactly is
happening by getting some idea of the
scale of the problem. The bottom line
is that there has been displacement
affecting thousands of people.
"What everyone is worried about is
what will happen come August when
farmers who have received Section 8 notices
have to leave their farms. What'
s going to happen to all these
workers?"
Nongogo added: "This is just the bottom end of the
problem. It must be
seen in the context of the larger food situation. We are
facing starvation
and we do not even have the capacity to deliver
grain."
Opposition Movement for Democratic Change president Morgan
Tsvangirai
this week said Zimbabwe had to import about 150 000 tonnes of
maize and
wheat per month to avert starvation, but the country did not have
the
infrastructure for this.
"The task is probably beyond the
capacity of regional ports and
railways, which also have to cater for the
food needs of other countries in
the region. This is a worrying development
to us as starvation in the
country is becoming a certainty," he said.
CFU expresses concern
6/13/02 9:11:58 AM (GMT +2)
Farming Reporter
THE Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) has expressed concern over the continued
poaching and snaring of wildlife and stock theft with little co-operation from
the police.
In its latest Farm Invasions And Security Report the CFU said: “Poaching
and theft seem to be on the increase with minimal reaction or co-operation from
the police in general.
“Poaching and snaring of animal continues on a daily basis . . .
“The majority of producers predict a 50 percent reduction of animals and in
some cases approaching total annihilation.
The safari industry will face collapse shortly if the situation continues.
Snaring is indiscriminate with many young and pregnant animals killed, along
with rare and scarce species.”
Last month the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF) said there has been
an unprecedented level of poaching activities in most conservancies as people
take advantage of the chaotic two-year-old land reform.
But the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management quickly
dismissed the ZCTF’s assertions and said between 2000 and April this year, only
27 rhino and 92 elephants had died either as a result of poaching, natural
mortality, intraspecific fights or to some unknown causes.
Wildlife worth about $100 million has been lost to poaching, illegal
movement of wildlife, overhunting, subsistence and commercial poaching in
ranches and other game areas.
The CFU said poaching and theft were rife mostly in the Save Conservancy,
Chiredzi, Kadoma, Gutu and Nyamandlovu areas.
“In Chiredzi, poaching is ongoing in this area, fast becoming a lucrative
business caused by hunger and the unavailability of mealie-meal,” said the CFU.
“At Wasara Ranch two poachers were arrested last week. “An anti-poaching
unit is said to be on Eureka Ranch Mwenezi.
Mkumi Ranch reports six goats and eight sheep were stolen in broad
daylight.
A Battlefields Ranch security guard apprehended a settler with a donkey
cart in possession of warthog meat.
The guard confiscated the meat and impounded the donkey cart until the
police’s arrival.”