Various News articles - 4 May 2000
Wednesday, 3 May, 2000, 16:09 GMT 17:09 UK
Defiant Mugabe prepares
for election
Mugabe: Will not order an end to land occupations
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has
launched his party's election campaign in
defiant mood, saying he will not order an end
to the occupation of white-owned farm land.
"Let no one ever think
that we will call upon
the war veterans to
withdraw. They need
the land to backtrack
to," Mr Mugabe said,
unveiling an election
manifesto in which land is the central issue.
"What we are saying is we need half of the 12
million hectares in white farmers' hands," Mr
Mugabe told several hundred supporters at the
launch of the manifesto.
In London, UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook
responded by announcing further sanctions
against Zimbabwe because of the continuing
violence surrounding land reform.
British sanctions
In a statement to parliament, he said Britain
would not grant any new export licence
applications for arms and military equipment to
Zimbabwe, including spare parts for
British-made Hawk jets.
"I am sorry to say that the events of the past
two weeks and President Mugabe's
inflammatory speech earlier today suggest the
government of Zimbabwe is interested in the
issue of land reform only to create a condition
of crisis in which it can secure its re-election,"
Mr Cook said.
Mr Mugabe has still to set a date for the
parliamentary elections, which he originally said
would take place in May.
Those polls could be held at any time in the
next three months.
The ruling Zanu-PF party has chosen the
election slogan: "The economy is the land -
the land is the economy."
War veterans' leader
Chenjerai Hunzvi was
meanwhile due to
appear in court on
Wednesday, facing
contempt of court
charges over the
occupation of
white-owned farm land
by his followers.
Two court rulings have
declared the land
occupations illegal.
Mr Hunzvi also faces fraud charges.
Violence continues
At least 15 people including farm workers,
opposition supporters and two white farmers
have been killed in escalating pre-election
violence.
In the latest incident,
an opposition activist
was killed in his home
village in the east of
the country.
Elliot Pfebve, a member
of the National
Executive Committee of
the Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC) said his brother,
Matthew, 47, was
murdered late on
Monday by a mob of war veterans and
supporters of Zanu-PF.
Mr Pfebve, a candidate in the elections, said
his brother had been kidnapped by a group of
Zanu-PF supporters, and beaten to death.
Their father was also seriously injured in the
attack.
The MDC says its followers are routinely
intimidated. There are reports of gangs of
government supporters roaming the
countryside, searching houses and beating
suspected MDC activists.
Commonwealth concern
On Tuesday, the eight foreign ministers of the
Commonwealth Action Group, which monitors
human rights in member-states, voiced their
concern at the ongoing violence, loss of life,
illegal occupations and failure to uphold the
rule of law in Zimbabwe.
An interesting article from the Daily Mail
How did the polite student who picked fruit on our Essex farm
become the most feared man in Zimbabwe?
HE is the most feared man in Zimbabwe, the leader of land occupations which
have left two white farmers dead and the homes of black workers in flames.
Chenjarai 'Hitler' Hunzvi, a 49-year-old doctor, has become a hero to the
tens of thousands of veterans who fought in Zimbabwe's war of independence.
Under his leadership they have invaded more than 900 white-owned farins and
claimed them as their own. It is in his power to end or intensify the current
trauma in southern Africa.
But it may surprise many of those who look up to him that the man
rechristened Hitler at a 'revolutionary baptism once worked happily for white
farmers in Essex.
Eleven years ago Hunzvi spent over two months working as a picker at
Oliver's Orchard, a fruit farm in Colchester, as part of a team of casual labour
brought in from Eastern Europe.
It was a visit he enjoyed so much that at the end of the season he decided
not to return immediately to Poland where he was studying medicine but to stay
on as a guest of farm owners Rupert and Jenny Knowles, who knew him as Chen.
'He was very friendly, warm-hearted and intelligent,' recalled 52-year-old
Mrs Knowles yesterday. 'We were absolutely amazed that lie has turned into
this.
'We remember him as very polite and generally good fun. It is all so
unbelievably different to the image we are seeing now and it has come as a
terrible shock. How he can order attacks on these farins I just don't know
after the kindness and hospitality he received.
'We recognised his voice on the radio and then saw him on television and in
the newspapers. There is absolutely no doubt that it is him.'
Her husband, who tried unsuccessfully to contact Hunzvi during a visit
three years ago to Harare, said: 'I remember one wonderful day after the others
had gone home we took him to Cambridge and went to evensong at King's College
Chapel. He was very moved by it all. It could not have been more different to
what we are seeing today.'
Photographs taken by Mrs Knowles show Hunzvi dancing at a disco in the
farmhouse, at a funfair and eating meals with fellow pickers.
Records from the time give an address in Warsaw and show that he arrived
at,the farm in July, 1989, leaving in September after being paid wages of
825.97.
He was recruited through an agency and was one of about 15 students from
Poland among a workforce of 50 pickers who lived in tents.
At one stage, he was in charge of honey at the farm but also picked
apples, pears, strawberries, gooseberries and pumpkins. Fellow picker Cate
Wilson, 30, who now works for the Inland Revenue, remembers him as easy-going,
with an eye for the ladies.
'We would sit as a group late at night talking about life but he was
careful and never discussed anything happening in Zirnbabwe,'she said.
'I remember the Poles talked about their situation at home but he would
never be drawn. He was always polite but had a prescence and you had to be
careful with him.
Hunzvi studied to be a doctor at Warsaw University after gaining a degree
in Romania. Fluent in several languages, he still has a practice as a GP in
Harare.
prominence in Zimbabwe in 1996 when he re-organised the War Veterarans of
Zimbabwe and they began to press the government to pay them for their service to
their country. Doubt has been cast however as to whether he himself fought
against Rhodesian rule.
In November 1997 Mugabe agreed to pay 55,000
men claiming to be veterans the equivalent of 850 each as well as an increase
in monthly pensions - moves which almost broke the exchequer.
There is
now compelling evidence that these 'veterans', many of whom
are too young to
have served, are being used on behalf of Mugabe to
intimidate his opponents
before next month's elections.
Last week Hunzvi declared: 'I am like Napoleon Bonaparte, Che Guevara or
Adolf Hitler himself. They are figures no one could stop and who led a
revolution. Now no one can stop the revolution we have started.
'The white farmers have two options: to hand over the land and leave or to
stay and see what land we leave them. The whites are foreigners, they are
British. They should go back to Britain. We don't need them here.'
Back in Essex, Mrs Knowles listened to the declaration with astonishment.
'I am just so shocked by this,' she says- 'I suppose he could have been
meeting with people in England in connection with Zimbabwe on days off. It
makes you wonder now but he never discussed what was happening
there or the
war of independence.'
Zanu PF linked to bomb hoax at Daily
News
Business came to an abrupt standstill mid-afternoon yesterday after
a bomb hoax at The Daily News. An anonymous caller telephoned to say a bomb had
been placed in the offices of the newspaper and was primed to detonate in five
minutes.
The call came through on one of the newspaper's cell phone numbers,
with the caller announcing that the bomb was set to explode at 3-15pm. Employees
of the newspaper and other companies housed in Trustee House on Samora Machel
Avenue, streamed out with haste after the police issued instructions on the
phone for them to evacuate the building.
When the police arrived 45 minutes
later, staff were standing restlessly on the other side of Samora Machel Avenue.
An officer from the army’s bomb disposal unit was on the scene within 15 minutes
of the report being filed with the police.
After their arrival, the police
cordoned off the area and entered the building, to conduct a search. They
declared the building safe and all streamed back in with relief. The newspaper
people rushed back to catch up with deadlines, after an hour of lost production
time.
The number from which the telephone call was made was recorded in the
memory of the cell phone. It was 750697. While waiting for the arrival of the
police, a member of staff dialed the number:
“Zanu headquarters, good day,” a
female voice answered cheerfully at the other end.
An official at the ruling
party’s offices confirmed that 750697 was one of the general numbers at Zanu
headquarters. He said, however, that while all outgoing phone calls were
recorded manually, there was no record of the phone call to The Daily
News.
The PTC made a quick investigation of their own and
confirmed the phone call had, indeed, come from Zanu PFheadquarters. The police
were duly informed.
Daily News Thursday 27 April
2000
Thursday 4 May, 2000
Govt says no to election monitors
David Masunda,
Deputy Editor-in-Chief
ZIMBABWE headed for a fresh showdown with Britain and
the European Union
(EU) yesterday after the government said it will not
invite international
monitors to check on the validity of general elections
expected to be held
in June.
A high-level Zimbabwean delegation to
last week's London talks on land
reform, led by Local Government Minister
John Nkomo, had assured the British
government that Zimbabwe was ready to
invite international monitors and
observers for the
elections.
President Robert Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba said
yesterday that the
government's position had not changed. Observers could
come as they had
always done, but monitors were out, he told the Financial
Gazette.
Mugabe has always maintained that there is no need to invite
international
monitors to this year's elections, expected to be the most
tightly contested
in 20 years.
Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party is facing
a stiff challenge from the
labour-backed Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC).
"The view of the government is that we need observers and not
monitors. Why
do we have to be observed, anyway?" Charamba
said.
Britain, plus the Commonwealth — a grouping of Britain and its
former
colonies — and the EU have said Zimbabwe should invite
international
monitors and observers for the elections if they are to be
deemed free and
fair.
This week an official from British Foreign
Secretary Robin Cook's office
warned that should Zimbabwe renege on the
promise to invite international
monitors, it would be difficult for the
election results to be accepted if
ZANU PF won.
"It is important that
Zimbabwe demonstrates that the elections are free and
fair if they want to
encourage investment and if they want to have the
confidence of the
international community," said the official, speaking by
telephone from the
British capital.
Nkomo's team, which included Foreign Minister Stan
Mudenge and Commerce and
Industry Minister Nathan Shamuyarira, had told the
British that a public
announcement on the monitors' issue would be made after
the delegation
arrived back in Harare.
It was not possible to get
comment from any members of the team this week.
Charamba said the way the
international monitors' issue had been covered by
the international media was
a way of the British saving face. The issue was
out of the Zimbabwean team's
mandate to discus.
"It was an exit route of the British," he
said.
Opposition parties led by the MDC have pressed for impartial
international
monitors, accusing ZANU PF of rigging elections held in the
past.
"I am not going to pretend that it was a position that was welcome
to the
government of Zimbabwe," British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who
chaired
the London land talks, said afterwards when queried on the
Zimbabwean
position on international monitors.
The talks ended without
agreement on British funding for the farm reforms.
Meanwhile Australia,
oblivious of the Harare turnaround, this week called
for the early posting of
international observers to supervise Zimbabwe's
elections.
Foreign
Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said in Canberra that the
observers needed
to cover a wide range of issues such as whether opposition
parties had access
to the media and could hold rallies across the country
freely.
A
ministerial panel of the Commonwealth condemned widening political
violence
in Zimbabwe this week at its meeting in London and urged the
government to
end the lawlessness in which 18 people, most of them
opposition members, have
been killed by rampaging mobs of ZANU PF
supporters.
Commonwealth
secretary-general Don McKinnon, a New Zealander, says he plans
to visit to
Harare to deliver the group's concerns to the government.
Tuesday, 2 May, 2000, 17:01 GMT 18:01 UK -BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_733000/733177.stm
Cook rallies leaders
against Mugabe
Hunzvi
got a rapturous welcome at court
The United Kingdom is rallying
its
Commonwealth partners to isolate President
Robert Mugabe amid ongoing political violence
in
Zimbabwe.
Commonwealth ministers are currently
meeting
in London, and are expected to announce
a
joint response to the situation in
Zimbabwe.
But in Harare, crowds of supporters turned
out
to greet President Mugabe as he arrived at
a
cabinet meeting.
Government
supporters
also surrounded the
court building
in Harare
where war veterans'
leader Chenjerai
Hunzvi
is facing fraud charges.
Intimidation
condemned
The London meeting
is
the first by the
Commonwealth's
ministerial action group
-
which monitors
standards of human rights and governance
in
member states - since the Zimbabwe crisis
blew up.
UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook set the
tone
for the meeting by saying the whole
Commonwealth condemned the climate of
intimidation prevailing
in Zimbabwe.
He ruled out economic sanctions or
suspension
from the Commonwealth, but hinted that
could
change if President Mugabe failed to
hold
elections.
Monitors
BBC diplomatic correspondent James
Robbins
says the emphasis at the Commonwealth
meeting is most likely to be a commitment to
sending the
strongest possible team of
observers to scrutinise the
elections expected
later this month.
This could take the
form of putting
monitors
in very soon
to keep a close watch
for
intimidation
throughout the
campaign, not just
to
check polling stations
on election day
itself.
Cheering supporters
The
Zimbabwean
Government has not
disclosed what
was discussed at its cabinet
meeting, though land reform was
expected to
be high on the agenda.
Mr
Mugabe has indicated recently that he will
invoke presidential
powers to allow land
seizures to go ahead without compensation
for
the present owners.
Arriving at the
meeting, President Mugabe
raised his arms aloft in a clenched
fist salute
to the hundreds of cheering
supporters.
Many of them were from the
Zimbabwe
National War Veterans' Association, which
has
led the invasion of white-owned farm
land.
'Hitler' on trial
Shortly
afterwards, riot police were deployed
to keep back hundreds of
the war veterans
who mobbed a court building in
Harare.
Their leader, Dr Hunzvi, was appearing
on
charges of medical fraud - one of a number
of
fraud charges he faces.
He is also
accused of stealing money from a
compensation fund for war
victims, and faces
contempt of court charges over the
land
invasions.
The proceedings were
delayed for two hours
as the prosecution complained of a
siege
atmosphere.
Veterans pushed at the
gates outside the
court building, singing songs and chanting
Dr
Hunzvi's name.
In a separate case, Dr
Hunzvi is due in court
again on Wednesday to explain what steps
he
had against farm invasions, which courts
have
declared illegal.
He be sentenced for
contempt of court on
Friday if his explanation fails to satisfy
the
court.
Aid
package
Britain has offered $55m (36m) to help
fund
Zimbabwe's land reform programme on
condition that the political violence ends and
free and fair
elections are held.
A delegation of ministers from
Zimbabwe
rejected the conditions attached to the
aid
package in talks last week.
But South
Africa - which previously stopped
short of speaking out against
Mr Mugabe - has
made its most critical remarks of
the
Zimbabwean Government's handling of the
political violence.
In what was taken as a reference to
President
Mugabe, South Africa's Deputy President
Jacob
Zuma said that it was bewildering that
some
African leaders were unable to respect
constitutions they themselves drafted.
President Thabo
Mbeki also voiced concern
over Mr Mugabe's failure to control
the political
violence.
As Zimbabwe's
largest trading partner and main
provider of energy and
imported goods, South
Africa is seen as one of the only
countries that
can bring real pressure to bear on
Zimbabwe.
Thousands of Mr Mugabe's supporters
have
occupied hundreds of white-owned farms
over
the past two months.
Fourteen people
have died during the farm
occupations and in pre-election
political
violence.
Hundreds of farm
workers believed to be
supporters of the opposition Movement
for
Democratic Change (MDC) have been
assaulted.