Exiled victims of
President Robert Mugabe's regime were staging a protest today at the start of
the England-Zimbabwe cricket test series.
Some 500 demonstrators were
promising a peaceful protest at Lord's cricket ground in London.
Some
were planning to follow that up with an open-top bus ride through the capital
to the Zimbabwe High Commission where they were hoping to deliver a letter
calling for an end to state-sponsored political violence.
Protest
organiser Washington Ali stressed that the intention was to stage a peaceful
demonstration.
He said: "We are planning a peaceful protest. We do not
support pitch invasions or other attempts to disrupt the match.
"This
is a day for Zimbabweans to draw the world's attention to the
crisis afflicting our country. It is not a day for headline-grabbing stunts
by individuals.
"The protest is intended as a show of solidarity with
our brothers and sisters who are suffering back home."
However human
rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, leader of another protest group, the Stop
The Tour campaign, has fiercely criticised the MCC's handling of the tour and
warned that his group feels under no obligation "to show
restraint".
Some 94 Labour and Conservative MPs signed a Commons motion
opposing the tour.
By going ahead, the series would misleadingly
suggest that the situation in Zimbabwe was returning to normal, they argued,
adding the Government should step up its efforts to resolve the crisis in the
southern African nation.
Many of the MPs who signed up to the motion had
urged England to boycott its games in Zimbabwe during the World Cup earlier
this year because of human rights abuses under the Mugabe
regime.
Could you circulate the address for Interpol so we may
all write to them? The more objections the better. Also ask Zvakwana and JWs'
contacts to do the same? It would be good if it is not just white ex
farmers
Greetings Alan,
Herewith as requested Interpol's email
address: cp@interpol.int Have also forwarded
with your mail to Zvakwana and J W together with the address as per your
suggestion.
Apparently there are to be meetings at various places
throughout the country today and tomorrow to discuss the ZTA's sale of TS
shares - another piece of blatant chicanery which I presume the respective
members of their hierarchy are going to talk themselves out of and away
from...... Which reminds me of the following excerpt taken from Pg 3 of the
Daily News on Tuesday 13 May 2003, under a heading "Tobacco farmers seek
assurances" - and which there appears to have been, to date, no reaction to
or comment on from any quarter:
"We got through this season, but not
without difficulties," Zimbabwe Tobacco Association president, Duncan Millar,
said yesterday ........... "It was very difficult for the newly settled
farmers - the beneficiaries of the government's land reform programme -
because besides fuel, they also had to deal with galloping inflation," Millar
added.'
Correct me if I am wrong but is he (Duncan Millar) not referring
to those who are in effect illegal squatters who have been encouraged by an
illegal regime who preside over a lawless society, to take/steal land from
the farmers who both own and are represented by, among other notable
bodies, the ZTA? Are Zimbabweans now so lost in the mire that the
ZTA's president's words, (above), are to go unnoticed and unchastised?
Can this be read as acceptance or
apathy?
Letter
3: Seok Hyun Hong - President World Association of Newspapers and Gloria
Brown Anderson - President World Editors Forum
His Excellency President
Robert Mugabe Harare, Zimbabwe c/o High Commission in Canada Email:
zim.highcomm@sympatico.ca
19
May 2003
Your Excellency,
We are writing on behalf of the World
Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum, which represent 18,000
publications in 100 countries, to express our serious concern at the
deportation of journalist Andrew Meldrum.
According to reports, on 16
May Mr Meldrum, correspondent of the London-based The Guardian, was deported
from Zimbabwe after 23 years. Earlier that day Mr Meldrum had been called to
a meeting with immigration officials who ordered him to leave the country. As
he spoke to reporters outside the immigration building, police grabbed him by
the collar, pushed him into an unmarked car and drove him to the
airport.
On 7 May, immigration officials had appeared at his Harare home
after dark demanding to question him. Mr Meldrum was not there but his lawyer
said that she suspected that they may have been trying to deport him. On 13
May, immigration officials confiscated his residence permit and passport
and told him that he was only allowed to write about economics and
tourism.
Mr Meldrum's expulsion follows a series of attempts by the
authorities to silence him, including an unsuccessful attempt to deport him
last year after he was acquitted of charges of publishing
falsehoods.
We respectfully remind you that the deportation of Mr Meldrum
constitutes a clear breach of his right to freedom of expression, which is
guaranteed by numerous international conventions, including Article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: 'Everyone has the right
to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to
hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media, regardless of frontiers.'
We
respectfully call on you to rescind the order to deport Mr
Meldrum immediately and to permit him to carry out his profession in Zimbabwe
free from harassment. We urge you to ensure that in future your country
fully respects international standards of freedom of expression.
We
look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Yours
sincerely,
Seok Hyun Hong President World Association of
Newspapers
Gloria Brown Anderson President World Editors
Forum
According to the international police we
have a perfect example..... Police Commissioner Chihuri......our
(Zimbabweans) chief of police... the man the international community feels
should be VICE PRESIDENT OF INTERPOL ??????? I understand that politics plays
a big part in your election process but why do you choose the one person in
modern history who has based his career on converting his whole police force
into a violent political force in support of the ruling party, regardless of
the judiciary. ??????
We had a referendum concerning the constitution in
this country and the president realised that the people had finally turned
against him. The Democratic system we had at the time would have prevailed,
the incumbent president would have been replaced and life would have
continued. However commissioner Chihuri had other ideas... He publicly
announced that he could not recognise anyone other than Mugabe as
president.
He then set about throwing out every senior policeman who
didn't agree with him right down to District level and replaced them with
junior officers known to be loyal to the Zanu pf machine. They were complicit
in the aggressive land acquisition program.... anyone who stood up to the
violence would be arrested..... anyone who committed a crime in the name of
land acquisition would be protected by the only authority in the land that
the common man could appeal to.
A personal example of this is an
observation of a local businessman in a town near Harare who owned a security
company, being abducted and held captive in the middle of town for two days
without food by war vets and his own security staff. This incident was in a
main industrial street and everyone in the town was aware of it. No one could
intervene, as the police were present in uniform supporting the
abductors. Finally after three days the High Court Of Zimbabwe issued
an order to the police to intervene and release this person. This was
personally witnessed by many individuals and the police arriving with the
written warrant and their joining in a dance around a fire lit next to the
main office, with shouts and cheers they burnt the docket and having hugged
the people surrounding the victim they left..... laughing. Many many personal
examples and thousands of documentary examples can be given.
A friend
of mine (Dave Stevens) was dragged out of a police station, tortured
horribly... and executed. How could the perpetrators avoid justice without
your VICE PRESIDENT of INTERPOL actively participating in ensuring that no
one was arrested ???? In a Police Station???
Zimbabwe would have muddled
through the politics and numerous compromises would have occurred but for the
fact that the Zimbabwe Republican Police have been converted into a totally
partisan force that is complicit in torturing any opposition to the present
government. I attribute 99 % of our suffering to the fact that our police
force deserted us. INTERPOL vote our commissioner VICE
PRESIDENT..
All
letters published on the open Letter Forum are the views and opinions of the
submitters, and do not represent the official viewpoint of Justice for
Agriculture.
Zimbabwe's economic and social crisis has become "unbearable" under President
Robert Mugabe and the regime faces a crisis in the very near future, a
leading Catholic prelate and one of the country's most outspoken human rights
campaigners said yesterday. "Life is terrible, unbearable
in Zimbabwe right now," said Pius Ncube, archbishop of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's
second-largest city, in an interview during a trip to Washington this week to
meet with senior U.S. officials and humanitarian
groups. Archbishop Ncube, who has clashed repeatedly with
Mr. Mugabe for his public condemnations of government policies, said he was
optimistic about the future of Zimbabwe if only because "the situation can
hardly go on much longer as it is." "Even Mugabe must
realize that," said the bishop. "Things in our country can hardly get
worse." The U.S. government has echoed many of the
archbishop's criticisms of the Mugabe government, condemning the regime for
suppressing political liberties, mismanaging the economy, failing to deal
with a food crisis and the spread of AIDS, and adopting a coercive
land-reform program that has driven most the country's productive white
farmers off their land. Mark Bellamy, principal deputy
assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau of African Affairs, said
the Bush administration was determined to maintain "targeted sanctions" on
Mr. Mugabe and his top aides until a deal is struck on new elections paving
the way out for the 79-year-old Mr. Mugabe. The United
States and the European Union "must not yield to appeals to restart official
aid," Mr. Bellamy said. "We must make it clear we will only assist Zimbabwe
when it is on the road to political recovery." With South
Africa, Nigeria and Malawi trying to engineer a compromise between Mr. Mugabe
and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the beleaguered Zimbabwean
opposition movement, Archbishop Ncube said he was trying to keep a low
profile during his Washington visit. But he was given
meetings with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and with officials from the
National Security Agency during his stay. State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday's meeting with Mr. Powell was designed
to "thank the archbishop for his principled stance in favor of human rights
and the rule of law in Zimbabwe." Mr. Bellamy, who joined
the archbishop at a forum on Zimbabwe yesterday at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, was critical of Zimbabwe's neighbors, in particular
regional power South Africa, for failing to apply more pressure on Mr. Mugabe
to step down. "We have not gotten very far in this crisis
because some of the main actors, notably South Africa, have been apathetic at
best," he said. Mr. Mugabe, who helped the country achieve
independence from Britain in 1980, has slammed his critics as "colonialists."
He defended the land-distribution program as necessary to redress past
injustices. A widely disputed election last year, a
regional famine, and mounting clashes between the government and the MDC have
left Zimbabwe's economy in tatters. Unemployment is at 60 percent and
inflation is running at 500 percent annually.
Archbishop Ncube noted that the Zimbabwean dollar was on a par with the U.S.
dollar a decade ago. Today, a bottle of Coke costs 1,000 Zimbabwean dollars
on the streets of Harare, the capital. "My heart simply
bleeds for my country," he said. "And I am only telling you 1 percent of the
problems we face."
THE Central Intelligence
Organisation (CIO), Zimbabwe's spy agency, is probing alleged links with the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of former finance minister
Simba Makoni, widely touted as a possible successor to President Robert
Mugabe, it was established yesterday.
The
investigations were stepped up this week after disclosures that MDC leader
Morgan Tsvangirai was spotted by CIO agents on Monday evening paying a
private visit to Makoni's Harare residence to offer his condolences following
the death of Makoni's son in South Africa last
week.
Makoni's 23-year-old son, Tonderai,
a student at the University of Cape Town, was buried in Harare on
Saturday.
South African media reports
claim that he committed suicide, but the Makoni family has not commented on
his death.
CIO officials yesterday said
their agents had trailed Tsvangirai's motorcade from the High Court after his
treason court case had adjourned and monitored his talks with Makoni, who was
thrown out of the government last year after repeatedly calling for a
devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar.
Mugabe
and his inner-circle ministers publicly rebuked Makoni, 53, for his
stance.
Tsvangirai confirmed yesterday
that he visited Makoni's residence on Monday as an ordinary citizen to pay
his condolences. Like any Zimbabwean, he said, he was free to attend any
event of his choice.
Intelligence
officials said their investigations would also cover alleged fund-raising
activities of Makoni's wife on behalf of the MDC prior to her husband's
appointment as finance minister in July
2000.
Reports have suggested that she was
then the fund-raising chairperson of the Harare chapter of the women's league
of the opposition party. She could not be reached for comment up to late last
night.
The CIO is understood to have
placed Makoni under surveillance to monitor his meetings and contacts,
especially Harare-based diplomats, since he quit the government in a
huff.
"There is an investigation going on
over Makoni's perceived links with the MDC," a senior CIO official told The
Daily News yesterday.
Predictably, the
official preferred not to be named.
"We
have information that Tsvangirai indeed visited Makoni's residence and we
accept this was because of the bereavement, which is within our culture," the
official said.
"It is important to note
that Tsvangirai, as the leader of the opposition in Zimbabwe, has never
attended any State occasion, let alone a funeral for any top official within
(the ruling) ZANU PF.
"From an
intelligence gathering perspective, we do not lose sight of the whole
picture," the official said.
He added that
"it is important to distil and analyse Tsvangirai's private visit to Makoni
and not to dismiss it as a routine visit to pay condolences because there is
a history and pattern which we are
following".
State Security Minister
Nicholas Goche, who runs the CIO, refused to comment on the issue yesterday,
saying his ministry's operations
were confidential.
"I don't want to
comment on any issue. Are you saying I should always tell newspapers how we
perform and carry out our functions?"
Makoni, seen as a moderate in a party dominated by hard-liners who want to
tough it out during Zimbabwe's present economic and political crisis, has
long been mentioned as a possible successor to Mugabe, who is under
increasing international pressure to quit before the end of his term in
2008.
The former finance minister was axed
from the government after Mugabe himself branded as economic saboteurs any
Zimbabweans calling for the devaluation of the
dollar.
Ironically, the government later
devalued the dollar after Makoni's enforced exit from the Cabinet,
highlighting Harare's desperate quest to mobilise scarce foreign exchange
needed for critical imports of fuel and food, both in short supply in
crisis-sapped Zimbabwe.
Since his
departure from the government, Makoni - still a member of ZANU PF's supreme
Politburo organ - has also been calling for reconciliation talks between the
MDC and the governing party.
THE Ministry of Education, Sport
and Culture will from today, deploy officials at all government schools to
determine whether striking teachers have returned to work as ordered by the
Labour Court, the ministry's acting permanent secretary, Stephen Mahere, said
yesterday.
Teachers, who have been on
strike since early this month, were given 48 hours to return to work after
the Labour Court on Monday declared the strike
illegal.
The 48-hour deadline expired at
midnight yesterday.
"We will be sending
officers to all schools to assess the situation and see if the teachers have
returned to work," Mahere said, adding that it was only after this assessment
that the ministry could determine if teachers had returned to
work.
"However, I don't anticipate any
problems as the teachers are anxious to have their grievances resolved," he
said.
Mahere would not say what action the
government would take if teachers defied the
order.
Some teachers yesterday said they
would return to work but would maintain a go-slow until their grievances were
addressed.
They want the government to
review their salaries and to complete a job evaluation exercise that is
expected to put them at the same level as other civil
servants.
TRUSTEES of the Zimbabwe
Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) pension fund met in Harare yesterday and
resolved to investigate allegations that ZESA executive chairman Sydney Gata
allowed nearly $1,6 billion to be illegally borrowed from the fund, The Daily
News has established.
The allegations have
been raised by the Zimbabwe Electricity Energy Workers' Union (ZEEWU), whose
officials say senior managers at the power utility were allowed to borrow the
money for the government's rural electrification
programme.
ZESA insiders said the
allegations of misuse of funds came to light barely five months after the new
trustees of the ZESA Pension Fund took over from a board led by Edmore
Tofirepi, a ZESA employee whose term of office ended in
January.
Officials at the electricity
company said the trustees and workers were concerned about inconsistencies in
the use of money belonging to the fund and this had lead to a meeting between
the trustees and Gata yesterday.
Gata is
also chairman of the pension fund. Workers, who went on strike on Monday, are
demanding that Gata be removed from
office.
"The trustees are now
investigating the allegations being levelled against the fund managers and
those who might have benefited from the fund," one official said. "The nearly
$1,6 billion that ZESA borrowed from the fund has not been
repaid.
"It has to be repaid at zero
percent interest rate. It's really shocking that the workers who contribute
to that fund are denied that right to borrow when some senior managers are
doing it with Gata's approval," the official
added.
Irene Tembo, one of the ZESA
Pension Fund trustees, yesterday confirmed that the board of trustees held a
meeting with Gata, but declined to give
details.
She said: "This meeting was meant
to assist us to understand how the fund was being managed. As new people, we
want to find out what has been happening and Gata was helping us because he
is the chairman."
Wilson Lungu, the
pension fund manager, also confirmed the meeting at ZESA head office, but
refused to provide details.
Sources at the
power utility however said each ZESA employee contributed 6,25 percent of his
or her monthly salary towards the pension fund, but workers were not allowed
to borrow from it.
They however said ZESA
as a company had withdrawn money from the fund without workers' consent and
had not paid it back.
A senior official at
ZEEWU said representatives of ZESA workers from across the country met last
Wednesday at a ZESA Harare area office in Wyne Street, to discuss, among
other things, the unapproved borrowing by ZESA from the pension
fund.
"We met to deliberate on the
allegations against Gata as the executive chairman of ZESA and the pension
fund," the official said. "The workers are saying ZESA should not have
borrowed from the fund in the first place because the fund is strictly there
to be invested for the benefit of workers when they retire from ZESA. It
should have been invested in the
properties market."
The official said
after the deliberations, the workers asked Lungu to explain how the fund was
being managed, but he reportedly failed to answer in a satisfactory
manner.
It was then resolved that the five
trustees of the ZESA Pension Fund, led by Irvine Chidhakwa, should look into
the allegations of misuse of
fund money.
One of the trustees
yesterday said the main bone of contention between Gata and the workers was
his dual chairmanship of the pension fund and the power
utility.
"As trustees, we feel that Gata
should not be left to remain the chairman of the ZESA Pension Fund and the
ZESA parastatal," the trustee said. "We are investigating how the fund was
being managed. We are saying there is conflict of interest as regards Gata's
position with regards the ma nagement of the
fund."
The ZESA public relations office
yesterday had not responded to written questions from The Daily News at the
time of going to print, despite promising to do so by 3:30
pm.
Meanwhile, the ZESA workers' strike
spread from Harare to other towns, including Hwange, where the parastatal has
its main power station.
The work stoppage
had also spread to Mutare, Chinhoyi, Bulawayo, Gweru and
Masvingo.
Ian Munjoma, the general
secretary of ZEEWU, said the strike would continue until workers and
management came to an agreement.
Workers
are demanding a basic salary of $125 000 a
month.
In Bulawayo, ZESA workers yesterday
petitioned Amos Midzi, the Minister of Energy and Power Development, to
relieve Gata and his board of directors of their duties with immediate
effect.
"We hold Gata solely responsible
for the collapse of ZESA, which is evidently affecting all the different
stakeholders, namely domestic customers, government, workers and industry,"
the petition reads in part.
State destroyed evidence of
payment to Ben-Menashe
5/22/2003
8:30:04 AM (GMT +2)
Court
Reporter
CENTRAL Intelligence Organisation
(CIO) boss Happyton Bonyongwe revealed yesterday that the State security
agency destroyed documents relating to the payment of US$30 000 to the
government's star witness, Ari Ben-Menashe, for the production of a
video-tape forming the basis of treason charges against top leaders of the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Bonyongwe said receipts and invoices from the transaction between
the Zimbabwe government and Ben-Menashe were destroyed three months after
they were received.
He said the
destruction of the documents was part of State
security regulations.
Bonyongwe made
the revelations after George Bizos, the South African advocate leading the
defence team in the trial, demanded receipts and invoices for the money paid
to Ben-Menashe, a copy of the regulations which provided for the destruction
of the documents and the identities of the people who destroyed the
papers.
The CIO boss refused to produce
the copy of the regulations which authorised the destruction of the
documents, claiming State
security privilege.
He would also not
reveal the names of the people who destroyed the papers or those of the
people who authorised them to do so.
The
court took an early adjournment after acting Attorney-General Bharat Patel
asked for leave to consult the Minister of State Security, Nicholas Goche, on
whether Bonyongwe should be questioned on details of the government's
dealings with Ben-Menashe, which Bonyongwe said
were privileged.
"We will argue that
the monies were paid for services rendered and for the production of evidence
in an attempt to secure a conviction," Bizos said, referring to the US$30 000
paid to Ben-Menashe to video-tape a meeting at the headquarters of his
consultancy firm, Dickens & Madson, attended by the MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai.
Ben-Menashe claimed that at
the meeting Tsvangirai requested Dickens & Madson's aid in the murder of
President Mugabe and the staging of a coup to topple the ZANU PF
government.
Tsvangirai and his co-accused
Welshman Ncube, the MDC's secretary-general, and Renson Gasela, the party's
shadow minister for agriculture, have denied the
charges.
"The motive of Mr Ben-Menashe
(for producing the tape) has been articulated by him saying it was for the
love of the people of Zimbabwe," Bizos
said.
"We don't have to accept the say-so
of Mr Ben-Menashe. We have to investigate why the money was paid. We hope the
Attorney-General and the minister will not issue another certificate to
prevent us from questioning the witness on how and why the money was
paid."
In February, Goche issued a
certificate barring defence lawyers from cross-examining Ben-Menashe on his
consultancy contract with the
Zimbabwe government.
Goche argued that
disclosure of details of the contract would "prejudicially affect the
security of the State".
I am an American, and I have
tried to keep up with the events in Zimbabwe.As an American, I believe in the
principles of my nation, that truth and justice will prevail, and that all
people have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.
I am saddened when Jack Zaba
says that the citizens of Zimbabwe are in danger of losing their dignity (The
Daily News, 20 May).
This cannot be true.
For dignity comes from within and is shown in your countrymen's spirit of
strength.
There will come a day when your
nation will be rebuilt. There will come a day when you can look to your
country's future.
There will come a day
when you can stand amongst your neighbours and proudly proclaim your love of
country. There will come a day when freedom will
abound.
In my country, Martin Luther King
Jr is remembered for his civil rights work. He worked diligently to bring
about change in our nation's laws, for Americans of all races to be treated
equally.
He was a minister, a great man,
who believed that every person had worth, and a role in our country's
future.
He is known for his civil
disobedience to America's unjust laws, remembered for his speeches, and is
one of our nation's historical figures.
He
believed in the spirit of each person, that we could work together and make
our nation better.
King's "I Have a Dream"
speech still rings true today, because all people are given strength and
dignity by the Creator.
No man can take
your dignity away, unless you allow him
to!
King was a minister, and knew that God
was within each of us, giving us strength and
comfort.
Zimbabwe will be blessed. The
time is coming. Remain strong today, so that you can rejoice
tomorrow.
King reminds us that our hope
binds us to the future of all men: "I have a dream today. I have a dream that
one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made
low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made
straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall
see it together. This is our hope."
I
am hoping Zaba can find comfort in knowing that he is not alone. The world is
watching, and waiting, cheering his spirit and that of Zimbabwe on. Zimbabwe
is part of the dream.
G8 leaders urged to take
firmer stand against Mugabe
5/22/2003 8:33:41 AM (GMT +2)
Staff
Reporter
THE Lawyers' Committee for Human
Rights (LCHR), a United States-based human rights advocacy group, has asked
the G8 countries meeting in France at the beginning of next month to take a
firm stand against President Robert Mugabe, whose conduct they say threatens
the success of economic recovery programmes aimed at
Africa.
In a letter written to United
States president George W Bush on 16 May and copied to the leaders of G8
countries, LCHR's executive director, Michael Posner, said the G8 countries
should give due attention to Zimbabwe, whose population they say has become
targets of Mugabe's repressive regime.
The
G8 leaders will meet in the French resort town of Evian from 1 to 3
June.
Posner said the resolution of the
Zimbabwe crisis was fundamental to the successful implementation of the
group's Africa Action Plan and the New Partnership for Africa's Development
(NEPAD).
"The very fundamental challenges
to NEPAD presented by the Zimbabwe crisis and the response to it must be
prioritised at the G8 meeting," said Posner in the letter, also copied to
foreign secretaries and ministers of the G8
countries.
"The resolution to the
Zimbabwean crisis is not only a legal and moral imperative, but is also
fundamental to the successful implementation of the G8 Africa Action Plan and
the New Partnership for Africa's Development,"
he added.
Under NEPAD, which is
modelled on the "Marshall Plan", through which the US helped rebuild Europe
after World War Two, Africa needs US$64 billion (Z$52 736 billion) of
investment inflows annually to ensure
sustainability.
But Western countries that
are expected to bankroll the ambitious economic recovery plan have demanded
that African leaders put in place peer review mechanisms to ensure good
governance and stability on the
troubled continent.
However, despite
their promise to the industrialised nations to ensure that these conditions
are met, South African president Thabo Mbeki and his Nigerian counterpart,
Olusegun Obasanjo, the main architects of NEPAD, appear to have failed to
solve the Zimbabwean crisis.
The two
leaders have also publicly supported Mugabe's government, seen as the major
threat to NEPAD's success.
Nigerian
Foreign Affairs Minister Sule Lamido on Tuesday indicated his country's
continuing support for Mugabe by saying Nigeria would campaign for Zimbabwe's
early re-admission into the
Commonwealth.
Zimbabwe was last year
suspended from the club of mainly former British colonies
for alleged gross human rights abuses. The
suspension was extended to December by Commonwealth Secretary-General, Don
McKinnon. But Posner said the G8 countries should use their influence to
press African leaders to rein in the 79-year-old Zimbabwean
leader.
"Efforts to end the crisis must
involve the combined efforts of governments and civil society groups in
Africa which are encouraged by the G8. Since your June 2002 meeting, the
situation in Zimbabwe has further deteriorated, and its black population is
targeted for abuse," said Posner.
He
added: "The crisis in Zimbabwe is a litmus test for the efficacy of your
discussions. The situation in Zimbabwe starkly contradicts the principles
contained in NEPAD and supported by the Africa Action
Plan."
Zimbabwe, facing record
unemployment and inflation, is experiencing its worst economic crisis since
independence. Unemployment stands at more than 70 percent, while inflation
has shot up to 269 percent.
Efforts by
several parties, including African leaders, to revive stalled talks between
the ZANU PF and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have also not been
successful.
The MDC is challenging in the
courts, the outcome of last year's presidential election, which returned
Mugabe to power, citing alleged electoral
fraud.
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe
and his main rival Morgan Tsvangirai appear to be slowly edging towards a
negotiated settlement of Zimbabwe's political crisis, but analysts say the
country's economy, on a free-fall since 2000, might not be able to hold out
much longer.
After three years
marked by political violence and bickering, the two protagonists have in the
past few weeks strongly signalled that they now want to negotiate an end to
the political impasse and chart a way out of the economic and social crisis
gripping Zimbabwe. Subject to each first satisfying the other's
pre-conditions.
But the analysts warned
that Zimbabwe's economy had dangerously picked up momentum towards total
collapse, which could trigger a social explosion that could overtake, or even
consume, both the ruling ZANU PF and opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC).
Harare-based independent
economic analyst John Robertson said Zimbabwe 's battered economy, which in
the last five years has miraculously survived crisis after crisis, could not
sustain a likely protracted waiting period before Mugabe and Tsvangirai
reached a political settlement.
Robertson
said: "Take for example spiralling inflation, it is a clear sign of worse
trouble to come for an economy whose key sectors, such as commercial
agriculture and tourism, are at best in a state of
near collapse."
The government's
Central Statistical Office this week announced that inflation had in April
jumped to an all-time high of 269,2 percent, to raise the profile of a
burgeoning economic crisis that has manifested itself through acute shortages
of hard cash, food, fuel and essential drugs. Inflation was at 228 percent in
March.
Zimbabwe's mainstay commercial
agricultural sector has been virtually destroyed after Mugabe controversially
seized land from skilled and resource-rich white farmers and parcelled it out
to landless black peasants. The resettled farmers have however not been given
inputs or skills training to enable them to maintain
production.
Tourism, once the country's
fastest growing sector, is on its knees because visitors shun political
violence and lawlessness in the country.
University of Zimbabwe (UZ) political scientist Eldred Masunugure
said despite tough public posturing, there was "a new meeting of the
minds" between Mugabe and his ZANU PF party on one hand and Tsvangirai and
his MDC on the other.
He said the two
now realised that they had to negotiate or there was a real danger events
could explode beyond control of both of
them.
The discernible shift towards a
negotiated solution was partly because of pressure on both sides by the
regional and international community, and also because of the law of
necessity on the ground, the respected UZ political scientist
said.
Bowing to pressure by continental
powerhouses South Africa and Nigeria, both Tsvangirai and Mugabe have
separately said they are ready for mutual negotiations over the country's
crisis. But Mugabe demands that Tsvangirai first recognises him as the
legitimate leader of Zimbabwe.
On the
other hand, Tsvangirai refuses to grant the recognition because he says
Mugabe fraudulently won re-election last
year.
Instead, Tsvangirai wants Mugabe to
announce when he is leaving office before he can withdraw a court application
challenging the ageing leader's ballot victory last year, setting the stage
for what observers says will be a difficult and prolonged negotiation
process.
Meanwhile, the economic crisis
has heightened in the past month with fuel and electricity, already in short
supply, severely limited because foreign energy companies are refusing to
supply Zimbabwe due to
outstanding debts.
Masunugure said:
"The situation in Zimbabwe demands negotiations and the major political
forces realise they risk being swept away by the tide of change if they do
not take the opportunity to talk."
But
Masunugure was quick to point out that the movers and shakers of Zimbabwe's
political landscape were in a do-or-die race for time with the country's
deepening economic crisis to cobble up a settlement or risk spontaneous
social unrest.
Masunugure, who heads the
UZ's political studies and administration department, said the grinding
poverty, joblessness, forex, fuel and food shortages were "incendiaries which
could trigger off a popular outburst
of anger".
He said: "My reading is that
the centre may be holding now, but it cannot hold for much longer. The
situation in the country is highly inflammable. All the ingredients for a
social conflagration are there."
UZ
Institute of Development Studies associate professor Brian Raftopoulos said
if ZANU PF and the MDC earnestly resumed dialogue that they abandoned last
year, that could temporarily hold back public
discontent.
But he added negotiations
would have to be fast-paced or the anger of Zimbabweans, already at a
knife-edge, could explode.
"There would
have to be something substantive on the table, ideally before the end of the
year, otherwise the truth is there is no time for delays in resolving this
situation," he said. But Robertson said
Zimbabwe's economy was already progressively collapsing that even an
immediate settlement between the government and the opposition could not
reverse the slide.
"It does not matter
what the politicians do now, it will take time to reverse the decline of the
economy. There will have to be a long period of recovery," Robertson
warned.
A triumphalist headline in the
government-run Herald newspaper yesterday proudly proclaimed that the
Australian Foreign Minister had been rebuffed by other Commonwealth ministers
in his bid to apply new sanctions against the Zimbabwe
government.
The newspaper, reporting on
the London meeting of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, gloated over
the apparent failure of Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to win
support among the eight-nation group to get tough with Zimbabwe over its
bloated human rights record.
To drive home
Harare's celebratory mood, presidential special affairs permanent secretary
Willard Chiwewe chipped in to state categorically: "Downer knows that the
(human rights) situation in Zimbabwe is better than in
Australia.
"There is less racism in
Zimbabwe than in Australia and there is more tolerance here than in Downer's
country. Clearly the situation in Zimbabwe needs to be handled by more
serious people and not bigoted diplomats with narrow and racist
interests."
Most Zimbabweans are not
surprised to see Chiwewe once again waving the racism card - the only defence
the government now invokes each time it is caught short in its human rights
record.
This ploy, frequently used by the
government in the past to misinform many Third World governments on the
actual causes of Zimbabwe's meltdown, plays on the soft and emotional racial
attitudes of formerly colonised people to try to win
sympathy.
Crucially the government - and
indeed Chiwewe did the same in his latest statement - refuses to explain the
single most important question raised by most Zimbabweans and Downer himself
on Tuesday: why the wanton seizure of productive commercial farms, an
exercise which is still going on long after Harare said it had been
completed?
But the gross human rights
violations, dramatised once more only last week by the illegal deportation of
American-born journalist Andrew Meldrum, go further than the seizure of farms
and the earlier murders of farmers and their workers. Almost daily,
opposition and pro-democracy activists are being harassed - some tortured at
police stations - by government security agents and ruling ZANU PF followers
in the name of maintaining law
and order.
Opposition members are being
denied food aid in parts of Zimbabwe; the judiciary and the media are under a
state of siege as a frightened government, led by a "war" Cabinet, fights to
hang on to power in the face of a popular public
revolt.
Instead of beating its drums and
celebrating a Pyrrhic victory in London, the government ought to be thankful
that it escaped yet another international censure for being a pariah among
the world's civilised nations.
It ought
to be racing faster than Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher in
righting the many wrongs and injustices that it has caused Zimbabweans, young
and old, and those still to be born in what is now an economic wasteland of
Zimbabwe. But then long-suffering Zimbabweans know only too well that this
government is beyond redemption and will not listen to anyone but
itself.
Chiwewe and others still fighting
for the lost cause could help themselves and their motherland immensely by
not celebrating ephemeral victories and trashing well-meaning leaders such as
Downer. They ought to be offering wise counsel to Zimbabwe's errant leaders
and telling them what they hate most: for the sake of Zimbabwe, please go
NOW.
Or could it be that Chiwewe and other
ZANU PF supporters still
believe that they
can derail the people's overwhelming march to freedom and somehow rewrite
history like no one else before them? Are they really reading the writing
that is on the wall or do they comfort themselves, as Vice-President Simon
Muzenda keeps telling us, that Zimbabwe' s problems are only a dark cloud
that will soon pass?
The reality on the
ground is that the government has run out of time and ideas to end Zimbabwe's
crisis - a crisis it has created - and the longer the government clings to
power against popular sentiment, the more intractable the problems will
become. Indeed the reality on the ground is that each day that passes without
President Robert Mugabe cobbling up his exit package, the harder it will
become for him to leave office peacefully and orderly, which is perhaps what
most Zimbabweans would still prefer, even at this eleventh
hour.
We urge Mugabe and his advisors not
to follow what looks like the path of the brave and yet it is doomed, but to
courageously stand up like amadoda sibili (the real men) - to quote the
President himself - to confront the hard decisions that must be made for the
sake of their country.
It can be done;
others have done it before and so can we. Over to
you, chefs.
The economy and rule of law
are inseparable cousins
5/22/2003
8:20:56 AM (GMT +2)
By Cyprian
Muketiwa Ndawana
WITH the inflation rate
currently standing higher than the new Reserve Bank building, the New
Economic Recovery Programme (NERP) which the government is hyping up is
nothing but a hare-brained, mundane exercise in pumping air into a
bubble.
After leading the country on a
forced march to the prevailing socio-economic demise, who in his
well-functioning faculties would lower his trousers and offer their bums to
the government to administer some
economic energisers?
If there is a such
person, then nature was unfair, if not downright cruel, to endow him with the
gullibility of a turkey that yearns for an early
Christmas.
Trusting the government to roll
up its sleeves and heave the economy back on track is as foolish as trying to
rehabilitating a rapist by appointing him hostel master at a girls'
dormitory.
The last serious and credible
efforts by government to resuscitate the economy were initiated by the then
Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Simba
Makoni.
He had laid down a
well-thought-out strategy that was so comprehensive that many were convinced
that the government had at last graduated from economic fantasy to
reality.
But no sooner had the ink with
which the blueprint was written dried, than Makoni was booted out of
government.
President Robert Mugabe
declared that the measures Makoni wanted to pursue were hatched by enemies of
the state. These included the devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar, among
others.
Makoni's genius counted for
nothing. He was unceremoniously discarded, hence the contention that NERP is
yet another jaunt that will end in abortion as was the case with other
recovery plans before it.
In the NERP
advertisement, the government mentions that we have the land, people, and
other resources. True, we have them. And, we have always had
them.
What we do not have, and which we
desperately require, is the conducive environment for economic recovery. The
government has to put in place the fundamentals, which include the
restoration of the rule of law, if NERP is to succeed where its forerunners
flopped.
All things being equal, an
economic recovery plan that does not start with concerted efforts to reduce
government expenditure is an exercise in vain. It is just like mixing steel
with clay.
With a Cabinet comprising 25
ministers, Mugabe is enjoying the pleasure of
maintaining a horde of hangers-on at the
expense of the hard-pressed populace. In addition to that, the eight
provincial governors and the Attorney-General enjoy full ministerial
privileges.
As if that is not onerous
enough, there is also a pool of 12 deputy ministers who ironically do not
deputise for their bosses during
their absence.
Given the geographical
size of the country, the population, and the issues to be tackled, arguments
in favour of this large Cabinet can only be advanced by those with personal
rather than national interests to
safeguard.
If Jesus Christ did a splendid
job with only 12 disciples and without draining taxpayers' money, surely
Mugabe does not need so many people in
his government.
If Jesus' is too
spiritual an example for him to follow, in the secular world there are
numerous cases to borrow a leaf from. There are several conglomerates that
have downsized, doing away with non-core businesses. These are pathfinders
whose footprints are so visible that Mugabe will not get
lost.
One does not need to have undertaken
studies in workstudy management to know that efficiency levels can be
improved by reducing the Cabinet by
75 percent.
Abolishment of the office
of resident minister and governor, all ministers of State, deputy ministers
and an amalgamation of some ministries can drastically reduce government
expenditure, while at the same time improving on the economies of
scale.
A look through the Cabinet
portfolios reveals a serious element of duplication of
services.
Take for example that of Youth
Development, Gender and Employment Creation. This can easily be amalgamated
into the two ministries of education so that we come up with a single, yet
focused ministry. The same applies to those of Defence, Home Affairs and
State Security.
The current ministries are
unnecessarily fragmented.
If they are
merged, they become easier and cheaper to manage. Surely anyone in his right
senses would not need specific ministries for State Enterprises, Small and
Medium Enterprises Development and Science
and Technology?
Most of the ministries
can easily be dissolved and be made into departments, resulting in drastic
cost saving. This country can be run, at most, by a 14-member Cabinet. With
the savings that will accrue from the resultant leaner Cabinet, funds can be
channelled to such areas as public health programmes, which owe their
continued existence to donor funding.
With
the relations between government and the private sector as cold as snow, the
prospects of NERP's success are slim. The government has not endeared itself
to industry and commerce because of the arbitrary manner in which it is
gazetting prices.
It is not taking
manufacturing costs into consideration, with some commodities being
controlled below the break-even point.
Manufacturers and service providers are reduced to pawns as the government
ekes out schemes of perpetuating its precarious stay in
power.
The controlling of prices, amid the
rampant load-shedding, fuel woes, high interest rates, foreign currency
shortages among other unpalatables, have serious consequences on industry,
yet the government is as far from coming up with solutions as the medical
fraternity is from inventing a cure for
AIDS.
The government trampled upon any
flickering hopes of attracting some injection of foreign capital - it notched
up an incredible pauper's victory by riding roughshod over its own laws to
deport Andrew Meldrum, a permanent resident of the country, and put a damper
on the economic recovery plan.
With the
Presidency allegedly giving State agents the blessings to wilfully dribble
past High Court orders, the prospects of success for NERP compare well with
those of attempting to shoe a galloping
horse.
The economy and the rule of law are
inseparable close cousins - you either have them both or they both desert
you.
Cyprian Muketiwa Ndawana writes on
social and political issues.
ZIMBABWE'S arrears to the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) have jumped nine percent since January to
US$305 million (Z$251 billion), almost equivalent to the country's total
revenue in 2002, according to latest information from the
IMF.
The figures come two weeks before the
IMF executive board sits to discuss a report produced by fund officials who
were in Zimbabwe in February and March for Article 4 consultative
discussions.
The board is also expected to
decide whether the country should be relieved of its voting rights, which
would begin a process that could lead to Zimbabwe losing its membership to
the fund.
Latest statistics from the IMF
show that the cumulative overdue amount owed by Zimbabwe to the multilateral
institution was US$305,8 million at the end of last
week.
This translates to $251 billion at
the official exchange rate of $824:US$1 and is only $14,5 billion shy of the
$265,5 billion collected by the government in revenue in
2002.
The cumulative amount owed by
Zimbabwe to the IMF at the beginning of this year was US$279 million ($229,8
billion).
Gerry Johnson, the IMF resident
representative in Zimbabwe, said the total principal overdue to the fund was
US$210,1 million, while the interest overdue was US$14,35
million.
Zimbabwe's outstanding principal
overdue to the IMF at the beginning of the year was US$184,95 million, while
the interest due on the principal was US$12,7
million.
Information from the Bretton
Woods institution shows that the Zimbabwean government, which is faced with a
severe hard cash crisis, is scheduled to pay US$28,53 million this year and
another US$24,07 next year.
Analysts
yesterday said Zimbabwe's growing arrears were an indication of the country's
worsening foreign currency crisis, which has forced Harare to suspend
payments due to several foreign creditors.
These include the IMF, the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the
European Investment Bank.
The IMF
executive board is scheduled to meet in two weeks to discuss the report
produced by an IMF mission to Zimbabwe in
March.
The board is expected to decide
whether the southern Africa country should be stripped of its voting
rights.
Consultant economist John
Robertson said it was almost certain that the report would be damning,
capturing the steady decline of Zimbabwe's economy since 1999 when the IMF
suspended economic aid to Harare.
The IMF
and other multilateral agencies suspended balance of payments support to
Zimbabwe citing Harare's failure to implement economic programmes and
government policies that had eroded the rule of law and property
rights.
The suspension of international
assistance, coupled with a sharp drop in foreign direct investment, had
contributed to a severe four-year foreign currency squeeze. The withdrawal of
voting rights, if implemented, would effectively set into motion a process
that could lead to the formal suspension of Zimbabwe's membership of the
fund.
Analysts say this will worsen
Zimbabwe's image as a bad credit risk and contribute to a further plunge in
foreign direct investment.
"It is bound to
happen that we will not have our voting rights because there has got to be a
penalty for not following the rules," Robertson told The Business
Daily.
"I believe the report will be
damaging, but I believe it will be capturing what is happening here," he
added.
Zimbabwe is in the grip of its
worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, manifested in record
unemployment of more than 70 percent, hyperinflation of 269,2 percent and
severe shortages of hard cash.
The foreign
currency crisis has lead to fuel and electricity shortages that have hit
industry and commerce, forcing most firms to operate at below capacity, a
development that has only worsened the hard cash
situation.
MINES Minister
Edward Chindori-Chininga has demanded the resignation of the board of
Zimbabwe's sole coal producer, Wankie Colliery Company Limited (WCC),
following differences over the appointment of a managing director for the
firm, ministry officials said this week.
The officials told The Business Daily that the minister had asked for the
board's resignation last month, "for the umpteenth time", but had made no
progress.
The government is the majority
shareholder in the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed Wankie, which falls under
the Ministry of Mines.
Ministry of Mines
officials said Chindori-Chininga and the board fell out late last year over
the choosing of a general manager for WCC, which is facing serious financial
problems and is operating at below capacity because of fuel shortages and
other factors.
Board favourite Jabulani
Mavimba, former Circle Cement boss, and Godfrey Dzinomwa have both been
mooted as possible replacements for incumbent Kudzai Bwerinofa, who was
retired early in October.
Bwerinofa is
still serving in an acting capacity.
Chindori-Chininga would not discuss the matter this week, saying he would
"address the issue at an appropriate fora and time" and not in
the Press.
"Any matters arising from
Wankie are better addressed at the appropriate time," he said, adding that
there was nothing he wanted to expand on at this
time.
Wankie Colliery chairman Ngoni
Kudenga would also not comment on reports that Chindori-Chininga had asked
for his board's resignation.
He said: "I
will not be drawn into talking about
that."
He however admitted to The Business
Daily yesterday that efforts to recruit a new managing director for Wankie
had stalled.
"All l can tell you is that
there hasn't been any progress on that matter," Kudenga
said.
The appointment of a new boss for
Zimbabwe's sole coal producer was derailed at the end of last year when
Chindori-Chininga withdrew his earlier endorsement of Mavimba, whom he had
recommended to President Robert Mugabe.
The minister made an about turn in November, directing the board to settle
for Dzinomwa, believed by government officials to be the best person to
replace Bwerinofa because of his mining background and his stint at WCC in
the 1990's.
Correspondence made available
to this newspaper indicates that the minister sought to convince President
Mugabe to issue him with an order that he could use to have Dzinomwa
appointed.
Sources said this infuriated
the Wankie board, which had set its mind on a managing director from the
private sector.
The sources said the
President had however ordered the company to "put its house in order" because
he did not want to be involved in "cheap operational matters and
bickering".
It was not possible to secure
comment from Information and Publicity Secretary George Charamba, who was
said to be in meetings throughout Tuesday and
yesterday.
But a source close to the
matter told The Business Daily: "Mugabe has ordered Wankie principals to put
their house in order. He would not take kindly to the deadlock and
indecision, and he has distanced himself from the unfolding saga or fiasco.
But all Mugabe wants is continuity at Wankie and thus, he has demanded a
revisit of the matter (appointment), if need
be."
The sources said the Wankie board's
strength lay in the company's articles of association, which they said had
made it difficult for the minister to sack its
officials.
The board, using the articles
of association, has emphasised in successive letters to the ministry that it
is solely in charge of operational issues, even matters pertaining to the
appointment of top officials.
Despite
holding a 40 percent majority, the government has least say in the 10-member
board, which also represents the interests of
private investors.
THREE fuel tanks went up in
flames yesterday morning at Harare's Cold Comfort Farm, which is run by
Didymus Mutasa, the ruling ZANU PF's secretary for external
affairs.
Mutasa is a founding
member of Cold Comfort Trust.
According to
farm workers who were still milling around the scene of the accident when The
Daily News visited the farm late yesterday afternoon, the cause of the fire
was not yet known.
However a farm worker
said the fire might have been caused by intense pressure on the plastic tanks
that were used to store petrol, which is sold from a fuel station on the
farm, located in Harare's Tynwald
residential area.
"We do not know what
really transpired," the worker said. "We are just assuming that these tanks
blew up maybe because of intense pressure
and heat."
The worker said only one of
the tanks that caught fire was full, the other two were
empty.
According to the workers, the
city's fire brigade had to be called to put out the fire and the police also
attended to the scene.
Farm workers could
yesterday be seen clearing the burnt area and cutting surrounding
trees.
The workers said no-one was hurt in
the accident.
Contacted for comment,
Mutasa said he was not aware that the fuel tanks had gone up in
flames.
"This is news to me and I am not
in a position to comment on something that I am not aware of," he
said.
The unnamed fuel station located on
the farm was originally run by Soundrider Comm Private Limited, a company
jointly owned by a Chinese national and local business
people.
Cold Comfort Farm, closely
associated with Zimbabwe's struggle for independence, was founded in 1959 by
the late Anglican priest Guy
Clutton Brock.