The Sunday Times, Ireland May 07, 2006
Richard
Oakley
WITH worthless pensions, barely enough money
to buy a loaf of
bread, and a home that was a constant target for thieves,
Ann and Michael
had no choice but to sell up, leave everything behind and
flee Zimbabwe for
Ireland.
The couple, who do not want their
real names published for fear
of endangering relatives left behind, are
among 19 Irish people who have
been helped by the Irish government to flee
president Robert Mugabe's
terror-stricken state in the past two
years.
The mostly elderly emigrants have been
provided with financial
assistance and resettled in new homes in Ireland.
Their cases have been
handled by the Safe Home programme, a Mayo-based
organisation established to
help returnees.
"The
situation in Zimbabwe is of grave concern," said Mairin
Higgins, its
programme director. "There is a waiting list of first- and
second-generation
Irish people wanting to come back and we are trying to
help them. Many are
elderly couples, but we have families and single people
as
well."
Up to 3,000 Irish people live in Zimbabwe, where
annual
inflation is currently running at 1,000%.
"When
they leave Zimbabwe they are allowed take nothing with
them," Higgins said.
"We are trying to get as many back as we can, but it is
a slow process and
we have to ensure there is assistance for them when they
arrive. There is no
point getting them out of one hell hole to dump them in
another."
The Department of Social Community and Family
Affairs confirmed
it had processed a number of cases. "We have received
communication on the
plight of these people from the Irish ambassador in
Pretoria and received
details from Safe Home," it said.
"Members of the Irish community in Zimbabwe are being allowed by
the Mugabe
government to sell their houses to purchase air tickets, but are
not allowed
to take out Zimbabwean currency, which would appear worthless in
any event."
The euro is currently worth more than 128,000 Zimbabwean
dollars.
Ann and Michael, originally from Northern
Ireland, left behind a
14-bedroomed home in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's
second-largest city. They have
been relocated in a one- bedroomed apartment
in Ballyhaunis.
"We went to Rhodesia in 1963, when my husband
worked for the
British civil service, and stayed there through all the
difficulties because
we loved living there," Ann recalled. "In the last few
years conditions
deteriorated dramatically. Our house was constantly being
broken into. We
had three cars robbed in one night. We had to have big
security gates and
chicken wire on the walls, but still it wasn't
safe."
A former teacher, Ann said once the couple retired
they found it
impossible to afford living in the country.
"My pension was worth 12,000 dollars (?0.09) a month. My husband
would get
about 40,000 dollars, but a loaf of bread now costs 80,000 so both
were
pretty useless.
We sold our house and we got two billion
dollars (?15,589) for
it.
"We went out for dinner that
night and the bill came to 5.5m
dollars. I had my bag stuffed with 20,000
notes. You stack them up until
they come to 1m dollars and you call that a
brick. People go around asking
how many bricks things are, and it's
impossible to buy things like fuel,
except on the black market," she
said.
They used what was left of the house proceeds to buy
first-class
air tickets and gave the rest to their son.
"We
flew first class because we could take nothing with us. When the plane
took
off, we sat back, raised a glass of champagne and cursed Mugabe," Ann
said.
The couple now live on the old-age pension. "It's not a whole lot,
but we
are doing okay and it's great that we are safe. Mayo is lovely and
it's good
being back in Ireland."
Paul and Kate, another
elderly couple, moved to Leitrim in 2002 having first
fled Zimbabwe for
England. They did not make use of Safe Home assistance,
but have been
advising Irish people still living in Zimbabwe to do so.
"Zimbabwe is not
a safe place and is controlled through a tyranny. We would
be afraid that if
we said anything and were identified; it could get back
and our relatives
would be in danger," Kate said.
Paul is an accountant from Dublin, while
Kate is a radiographer from
Bundoran in Donegal. They moved to Rhodesia in
1973, but left when things
became "really dangerous".
"We left
everything - a lovely house, our African friends and all our
money," Paul
said. "We have nothing. We are both in our sixties, but we can
work for a
few more years and pay rent on our house. At least we are safe."
The
Sunday Times recently revealed how pensioners in Zimbabwe are now
struggling
to live and many people having to beg to survive, while Mugabe
has refused
to seek food aid.
Sunday Herald, Scotland
By Jenifer Johnston
MSPs have urged
Scots not to abandon efforts to raise funds for Malawi after
it emerged that
the country's president used European Union funding to build
a road, which
he then named after Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
President Bingu wa
Mutharika invited the dictator to be guest of honour last
week at the
opening of the new highway in Malawi.
The Scottish Executive has provided
financial aid and support to the nation,
and First Minister Jack McConnell
has urged the public to donate funds to
the impoverished country, which is
the 10th poorest in the world.
By pledging £2.4 million, Scotland has
promised to train nurses, teachers
and health professionals to help stem the
HIV crisis in Malawi, which claims
85,000 lives a year.
Tory MSP
Murdo Fraser, a member of the Scottish parliament's cross-party
committee on
Malawi, said: "It is unfortunate that the president of Malawi
is inviting
Mugabe to his country and naming highways after him, but I would
certainly
hope we do not stop our efforts to support the Malawi people."
Other MSPs
on the committee argued the parliament still had a moral duty to
help the
Malawian people.
SNP MSP Alex Neil said: "It is not always the case that
my friend's friend
is my friend - it is morally and politically right that
we should help
Malawi. But in order to do that we will have to work with
their government,
perfect or not."
LibDem MSP Mike Pringle said
Mutharika's decision to honour Mugabe was "an
absolute disgrace".
"To
give any credit to that man, who is about 10 feet away from being
Hitler,
and responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Zimbabweans, is
dreadful," he
said. "I'm appalled that the government of Malawi decided to
do
this."
However, he added: "We are not supporting the government with our
initiatives, we are supporting the ordinary people of Malawi and I don't
imagine they had a say in whether Mugabe was invited to their
country."
Pringle said the subject of Malawi's relationship with Zimbabwe
"did not
come up" during last year's visit to Scotland by
Mutharika.
Mugabe has overseen a disastrous restructuring of Zimbabwe,
which has seen
hyper-inflation take hold, oppression and torture of members
of the
opposition, white farmers evicted from their land leading to mass
food
shortages, and last year the arbitrary demolition of 700,000 homes by
the
police, leading to a number of deaths.
Honorary Scottish consul
to Malawi Colin Cameron said: "Many roads in Malawi
are named after foreign
heads of state. You would need to ask the government
why Mugabe was honoured
in this particular way, but Malawi and Zimbabwe have
a strong and close
connection going back generations."
A Scottish Executive spokesman said:
"There is no suggestion that the Malawi
government has the same disregard
for human rights as Zimbabwe."
07 May 2006
The Sunday Times, UK May 07, 2006
Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Abul
Taher
STANDING in the dock of Canterbury crown court
in November 2004,
a smartly dressed woman who called herself Sheena Daniels
was finally facing
justice. Daniels, a con artist from Zimbabwe, had stolen
the identity of a
dead baby and a clerical worker and over a decade had
defrauded British
taxpayers of more than £120,000.
Daniels,
an illegal immigrant whose real name is Sungaradazzo
Mudgyiwa, was sentenced
to 3½ years in prison for the elaborate benefits
fraud and warned that she
was likely to be deported on her release. To those
in court that day, the
message was clear: Britain was not a soft touch.
But
less than 18 months after the case, Mudgyiwa is out of jail,
she has not
been deported and is back in her old council house in
Whitstable, Kent. She
is still even living under an assumed name that she
stole from one of her
victims.
Mudgyiwa is just one of many foreign prisoners who
have
benefited from the lax and often chaotic Home Office rules on
deportation.
Last week, Tony Blair, embroiled in the row over
freed foreign
prisoners, pledged to restore public confidence in the system.
He said all
criminals who committed serious offences would be "automatically
deported".
His offensive on foreign nationals in Britain's
jail will now be
spearheaded by John Reid, the new home secretary. Charles
Clarke, his
predecessor, was sacked by Blair on Friday, even though the
prime minister
previously insisted he should be allowed to remain in office
to deal with
the problems.
Cases uncovered by The Sunday
Times show Blair's plan is likely
to founder on legal challenges, the
problems of false identity and
international relations. As one immigration
lawyer observed last week: "When
Blair started talking about people being
deported automatically, I laughed
my socks off. It's just not going to
happen."
Mudgyiwa is among hundreds of Zimbabweans who have
escaped
deportation because of a ruling by the Asylum and Immigration
Tribunal that
the country is unsafe for deportees. The government has
successfully
challenged the ruling but is still not sending back deportees
pending
another legal hearing.
As Mudgyiwa explained
after her release: "I'm not going
anywhere. I'm staying right here. Benefits
cheating is not right, but
everyone does it."
Lawyers
argue it is not just Zimbabwe that is unsafe. Countries
including
Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Iran, Jamaica, Turkey and China may all
be
considered dangerous for some freed foreign prisoners.
Sex
offenders claim they are particularly at risk. Courtney
Burry, 39, a
Jamaican who was jailed in 1996 for gross indecency involving a
nine-year-old girl, is among those who have been allowed to stay in
Britain.
Burry, who was also convicted on two counts of
indecently
assaulting a woman, told a tribunal that sex offenders were
"stigmatised" in
Jamaica and it would be unsafe for him to return. He was
allowed to stay in
the country and he has settled in Dumbarton, Scotland,
where neighbours say
he is living on benefits.
Since May
2004 the government has not been returning deportees
to Somalia for reasons
of safety, even though commercial airlines fly into
the country. Those who
have been allowed to stay include Salah Ahmed, 47,
who was recommended for
deportation after being sentenced to 2Å years for
sexually abusing an
eight-year-old boy.
Ahmed pinned the boy to his bed, held a
hand over his mouth and
abused him. He was jailed in 1994, but has been
allowed to remain in Britain
because of the political instability in
Somalia.
Usha Sood, an immigration lawyer, said: "Blair's
proposal to
automatically deport people is theoretical and legal nonsense,
which would
be in breach of the Human Rights Act and the 1951 United Nations
refugees
convention. All of these cases would be open to legal challenge and
it would
be unlawful to remove someone from the country if they were in the
process
of claiming asylum."
Legal experts say Blair reacted
to the controversy over the release of freed
foreign prisoners with an
ill-thought-out proposal. They argue that if the
Home Office had heeded
warnings dating back eight years about failures in
the deportation system,
more effective measures could have been taken to
avert the scandal.
The
case of Rashid Musa, a freed foreign prisoner, was one of the first to
expose the dangerous flaws in the system. In February 1998 Musa, a dangerous
ex-convict whom the Home Office had failed to deport, raped a woman cleaner
in London. The next day Musa attacked and raped a schoolboy on a
train.
When he was convicted, the Old Bailey judge highlighted
that a court had
previously recommended Musa's deportation and called for a
Home Office
inquiry into what had gone wrong. A leader in The Sun newspaper
proclaimed:
"The stupefying incompetence of the immigration service allowed
a convicted
sex attacker to go free when he should be have been deported.
Their
unforgivable slackness meant a woman and boy were raped."
But
despite the warnings, the scandal continued with 1,023 foreign national
prisoners being released between 1999 and 2006 without even being considered
for deportation. Gordon Turner, a lawyer who fought for compensation for
Musa's female rape victim, said: "It is absolutely lamentable that that
government did not act on this issue before.
"This woman's life was
ruined by what happened and she was refused
compensation from the Home
Office. She didn't even get a letter of apology.
She lives in London and she
sees the Houses of Parliament every day and she
thinks to herself, 'What the
bloody hell do they actually do in there?'" One
of the biggest problems for
the Home Office is that even when it correctly
identifies foreign nationals
in prison to deport, the prisoner can use an
often lengthy appeal system to
their advantage.
Adnan Alatawneh, 40, who lives in Acton, west London, is
typical of a
foreign prisoner who has successfully opposed the government's
attempt to
deport him. Alatawneh was found guilty of raping a 19-year-old au
pair at
her home and jailed for five years at the Old Bailey in 1998. He was
recommended for deportation but successfully claimed he was a Palestinian
who fled his home country of Jordan after serving time as a political
prisoner.
Hikmet Bozat, a Kurdish Turk, is a convicted terrorist who
is still in
Britain 13 years after an Old Bailey judge recommended that he
be deported
after serving his prison term for helping petrol bomb the
Turkish embassy, a
community centre, airline offices and two Turkish banks
in London in 1993.
He was jailed for 15 years but the Home Office allowed
him to stay in
Britain on human rights grounds.
Tracked down to a
flat in north London, Bozat admitted his past, but said he
had moved on, and
was now a history teacher: "I am not involved in
anything - I'm living my
life with my children and my wife. I am very
happy."
The Home Office
insists there will now be a "presumption" that those
convicted of serious
offences would be deported. A spokeswoman said the
proposals would be
subject to consultation and it was too early to comment
on claims that they
were "unworkable".
Additional reporting: Robert Booth, Ali Hussain,
Ed Habershon
The Sunday Times, UK May 07, 2006
Christina Lamb
SHE
has been arrested 22 times, tortured so badly that her front
teeth were
knocked into her nose and had an AK-47 thrust up her vagina until
she bled.
Thabitha Khumalo's crime: to campaign against a critical shortage
of tampons
and sanitary towels in Zimbabwe, one of the least talked about
and most
severe side-effects for women of the country's economic crisis.
Now her cause has been taken up in Britain by celebrities
including the
actors Anna Chancellor, Gillian Anderson, Prunella Scales and
Jeremy
Irons.
Later this month they will launch "Dignity.
Period!", a
fundraising campaign to buy sanitary products for Zimbabwe's
women. It will
start with a night of entertainment at the 20th Century
theatre in Notting
Hill, west London, hosted by Stephen
Fry.
So desperate is the situation that women are being
forced to use
rolled-up pieces of newspaper. Zimbabwe already has the
world's lowest life
expectancy for women - 34 - and Khumalo believes these
unhygienic practices
could make it drop to as low as 20 because infections
will make them more
vulnerable to HIV. "It's a time bomb," she said. The
shortage is forcing
schoolgirls to stay at home when they start
menstruating.
The crisis began in 1999 when Johnson &
Johnson, the healthcare
manufacturer, pulled out of the country because of
the worsening economic
situation. Zimbabwe then had to import products from
neighbouring South
Africa. But the collapse of the currency and the world's
highest inflation,
now more than 1,000%, have made the products unaffordable
to all but the
elite.
In a country where the minimum wage
is Z$6m (£17.14) a month,
the cost of a box of 20 tampons is Z$3m. "Who in
their right mind is going
to spend half their earnings on tampons?" asked
Khumalo. "As it is most
people can only afford to eat once a day. Women are
being forced to choose
between their own health and the survival of their
family."
Khumalo, 45, general secretary of the Women's
Advisory Council
of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, and a mother of
two, started her
campaign after she saw a woman walking awkwardly on the
street: "She told me
she was going home from work because she had her period
and could no longer
afford sanitary protection or cotton
wool."
When an MP raised the issue in parliament, government
ministers
fell about laughing and dismissed the matter. Khumalo has tried to
highlight
it through public meetings and distributing scarves printed with
demands for
affordable sanitary wear. As a result she has been repeatedly
arrested and
beaten, but refuses to be deterred.
For more
information, see www.actsa.org
Zim Standard
BY OUR STAFF
SOLDIERS, the police, teachers and other civil
servants appear
to have been taken for a ride by the Public Service
Commission (PSC) as it
has begun to emerge that the "hefty" salaries they
were promised may have
been just a mirage.
Irate
soldiers, teachers and other civil servants called The
Standard last week to
blast the government for making what they termed empty
promises.
Public Service Commission chairman,
Mariyawanda Nzuwah flanked
by army commander, General Constantine Chiwenga
and Police Commissioner,
Augustine Chihuri, recently announced that the
lowest grades among teachers
would be paid $33 million while the lowest paid
soldiers would be paid $27
million a month.
A few days
later, Nzuwah told The Sunday Mail that top
performing civil servants and
members of the uniformed forces, would receive
more
money.
He said there would be additional incentives, which
would see a
rural teacher receiving a total package of $36, 5 million while
their
graduate counterparts would gross $39 million.
However, when the salary schedules were released last week, the
civil
servants and the uniformed officers were shocked to see that the
figures had
been inflated.
For example, a teacher will this month receive
a basic salary of
$21 071 048 instead of the promised $36,5m a month.
Additional transport and
housing allowance bring the figure to $30 912
629.
The highest paid non-graduate teacher in Grade C3 would
get
gross $32 597 079.
A teacher, who had all along been
dreaming of grossing almost
$37 million, told The Standard: "It appears we
were conned. The government
should have announced percentage increments but
because they knew they had
something to hide, they just started confusing
everybody with figures."
It appears to be the same story for
soldiers.
While government had said those in the lowest ranks
of the army
would receive $27,2 million, senior army officers told their
juniors that
they would get $21 million.
A private who
spoke to The Standard on Friday said: "Yes, that
is what we were told. It's
depressing."
He said there was widespread disgruntlement in
the camps
following the revelations that they would not get the promised
$27,2
million. Other soldiers who spoke to The Standard said they were angry
at
what they termed deceptive behaviour by the PSC.
Said
one soldier: "As far as we were made to understand, the
gross salary for the
lowest paid soldier would be $27 million but according
to the new payment
schedules, the gross is $21 million. I don't know why
they announced things
they knew were not true. Right now prices have of
those
announcements."
There are reports that some landlords have
started hiking their
rentals after hearing that the civil servants' salaries
were increased by
300%. The government is believed to have hastily announced
a salary
increment for Civil Servants amid fears that they could join any
opposition-led demonstrations against the government.
Raymond Majo-ngwe, (pictured) the secretary-general of the
Progressive
Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe, said a wrong impression had been
created over
the increments.
"It must be clearly stated that there is a
difference between a
salary and an allowance. You cannot group salaries and
allowances and then
assign a percentage increase. As we speak many teachers
are being
congratulated by people who believe that their salaries are out of
this
world.
"Rentals are beginning to go up; shops have
increased their
prices in anticipation of the 'hefty' salaries. By the time
teachers receive
their May salaries inflation would have eroded them,"
Majongwe said.
Zim Standard
By
Foster Dongozi
FORTY-EIGHT student leaders from universities
and tertiary
institutions around the country were arrested and detained
after they
alle-gedly vandalised President Robert Mugabe's portrait, The
Standard has
learnt.
Other students were also arrested
for allegedly calling Mugabe's
official portrait a
"poster".
The arrests came in the wake of the Zimbabwe
National Students
Union's congress held in Harare last week, Harare lawyer,
Alec Mu-chadehama,
yesterday said the 48 students were arrested on Friday
and all but 10 were
still detained at Rhodesville Police Station by last
night.
He said: "The police are saying the students stole
towels and
glasses from the Management Training Bureau in Msasa Parkwhere
they held
their congress but when they were searched, nothing was found on
them."
One of the students who had been detained at
Rhodesville Police
Station was released by police after he collapsed while
in the cells.
His condition deteriorated and he was rushed to
the Avenues
Clinic where he was still hospitalised by late
yesterday.
Incoming Zinasu president, Promise Mkwananzi, said
when their
congress started on Wednesday; students had resolved that they
would not
hold their deliberations with Mugabe's portrait in the auditorium
surveying
them.
Mkwananzi said: "Congress delegates
resolved to remove Mugabe's
portrait because they were convinced that he had
lost the 2002 Presidential
election and holding the meeting in the presence
of his portrait would have
been a form of legitimising his
loss."
He said after some of the students brought down
Mugabe's
portrait, "some colleagues went the extra mile in their discontent
and
removed Mugabe's portrait from the frame."
Mkwananzi
said the congress had resolved to reject the latest
tuition and examination
fees at colleges and universities around the
country.
"Our secretary-general has already started writing a letter to
the Minister
of Higher Education which he will copy to President Mugabe
telling them that
we reject the new fees because they are beyond the reach
of many. If they do
not respond within two weeks, then we will mobilise for
a national lecture
boycott."
Mkwananzi said the government had two options to
improve the lot
of students.
"Either they drastically
reduce the tuition and examination fees
or they drastically increase our
payouts."
Zim Standard
By Foster Dongozi
STRIDENT calls by the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change
for demonstrations to protest
against President Robert Mugabe's failure to
stem the country's rapid
economic decline appear to have panicked the
government into desperate
pre-emptive measures, chiefly the generous salary
increments for the
increasingly restive State workers, observers say.
Two weeks
ago, MDC's president Morgan Tsvangirai reminded
soldiers, police and
intelligence officers that they were among the worst
paid workers in the
country but continued to support Mugabe's government.
Unrest
had already permeated the military as evidenced by
recent reports of
soldiers at 2 Brigade reportedly sabotaging the unit's
vehicles in
frustration at poor working conditions.
After Tsvangirai's
statements, the government reacted by
assigning Public Service Commission
chairperson, Mariyawanda Nzuwah, to
announce massive salary increments for
the uniformed services and teachers
at a widely publicised news conference
in Harare. Also present at the press
conference were Police Commissioner,
Augustine Chihuri and Zimbabwe Defence
Forces Commander, Constantine
Chiwenga.
The government - facing a looming supplementary
budget - has
reportedly started printing $60 trillion to finance the
unbudgeted for
salary increments.
Most civil servants
were earning between $8 million and $10
million but will now earn between
$27 million and $33 million this month.
A few days later,
soldiers, teachers and police were in for
another pleasant surprise. All
rural-based teachers will get 15% of their
monthly salaries as risk
allowances while police officers and soldiers will
be entitled to 10% of
their basic income in risk allowances.
As if an
after-thought, nurses were also awarded an increment.
The details of their
increments were, however, not available, confirming
suspicions that nurses
were given the raise out of fear that they could join
the planned
potentially crippling industrial action if they were left
out.
Not to be outdone, Nicholas Goche, the Minister of
Public
Service came out to pacify domestic workers, pegging their wages at
between
$2, 5 million and $2, 9 million.
Sociologist,
Professor Gordon Chavunduka said the government
had mainly wanted to
increase salaries for soldiers only. "They increased
the salaries because
they were afraid of the soldiers as some of them had
begun to openly
complain about the poor salaries and working conditions.
Other civil
servants like teachers and nurses were brought in so as not to
cause
friction but the aim was to calm the restless soldiers," Chavunduka
alleged.
"They (government) are just buying time. In two
months time
those increments will be useless because they would have been
eroded by
inflation," he added.
Raymond Majongwe, the
secretary general of the militant
Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe,
accused authorities of misleading
workers over the issues of increments.
"The government said the lowest paid
teacher would be earning $33 million
but they did not mention that the basic
salary would be $21 million and the
rest allowances.
"Now landlords are hiking rents because
everybody thinks
teachers now have a lot of money," Majongwe said.
Zim Standard
By Foster Dongozi
AS the adult population
dithers on how to confront the Zanu PF
regime on the deteriorating standards
of living, children have decided to
take the lead by demanding that the
government immediately reverse plans to
implement a more than 1 000 percent
increase in school fees.
The latest development adds to the
plethora of demands
confronting government which critics say have been
brought about by 26 years
of uninterrupted misrule.
Observers note that while other countries in the region are
witnessing an
improvement in their standards of living, only Zimbabweans
continue to
wallow in a lifestyle of uncertainty and poverty as evidenced by
near 1 000%
inflation rate, shortage of fuel, electricity, food, high
prices, low
salaries, high unemployment and high levels of poverty.
The
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is
reportedly pushing for
mass peaceful demonstrations to protest worsening
lifestyles. The mass
action is expected to take place this winter.
Not so with the
younger generation.
Mark Demba, the spokesman for the Child
and Youth Budget
Network, a child-led coalition of children's organisations
said they wanted
to do all in their power to ensure that the shock school
fees increment is
annulled before schools open on 9 May.
The network is a grouping of children's organisations such as
Child MPs,
Junior Councillors and schools interact clubs.
"We will do
all we can to ensure that the increases are reversed
before schools open for
the second term. We will try to meet officials from
the Ministry of
Education because our parents cannot afford what the
government wants to
charge them."
He said following the high increases, the
educational future of
1, 4 million orphans and that of an additional figure
of vulnerable children
would be uncertain.
"The Basic
Education Assistance Module provision of $399 billion
would have been enough
to pay just the school fees for orphans and
vulnerable children before the
increases.
School fees at government schools rose from $250
000 to $2
million as did the General Purpose Fund. Our parents cannot afford
these
high fees. These are just for tuition, 'O'-level students have to pay
$500
000 a subject, up from $35 000 while A-level students have to pay $1, 2
million a subject, up from $95 000 a subject."
The
children also issued a statement targeted at the government.
"We request the government to re-look and consider an immediate
reversal of
the hikes in fees (tuition and examination fees). This is our
appeal and
request to government that it provides lasting solutions to the
children's
educational problems by providing practical and not theoretical
solutions to
this appeal. Most importantly, we demand that government put
children first
and make children's issues a priority."
They also called for
transparency in the administration of BEAM.
"We require that
BEAM be administered transparently and that
realistic amounts be allocated
to BEAM to aid the retention of children in
schools. We request that
government and private schools be effectively
regulated in order to control
school fees increases and that where such
increases are approved, they
should take into account, the average incomes
of the
majority."
The Minister of Education, Sport and Culture,
Aeneas
Chigwedere, could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Zim Standard
By
Valentine Maponga
HIGH levels of unemployment, mounting
poverty and the
ever-rising cost of living have led to a sharp increase in
cases of armed
robberies and car-jackings because more desperate people are
turning to
crime for survival, The Standard has
established.
Zimbabweans now live in constant fear of being
robbed or
mugged - in the streets or at their homes. Police statistics show
that crime
is on an upward trend in Harare. For example in February last
year, police
recorded 44 cases of armed robbery compared to 109 cases
recorded the same
month this year.
"Robbers target
vehicles, the latest models and electrical
gadgets when they break into
houses. They want the gadgets because they have
a ready market," said police
spokesperson Inspector Jessie Banda.
Recent reports indicate
increasing use of firearms by criminals
in attacks on suburban homes and
motorists. Last week three armed robbers
from Epworth were arrested after
raiding a store and a home in Mazowe.
Police last month shot
dead three armed robbers and arrested
three others in Hatfield following a
tip-off. The robbers are suspected to
have committed a series of armed
robberies around the country.
Reports show that the crimes
are committed in an almost similar
manner where a group of young men, armed
with either pistols or revolvers,
pounce on victims before taking away cash
and other valuables.
In other cases, the muggings involve a
group of young men who
surround and overwhelm their victim in a public area
before escaping with
valuables.
Thieves target cash and
cellphones, which have a ready market in
Harare, where latest phones with
cameras, videos and other extras can fetch
as much as $200
million.
Several people who spoke to The Standard blamed the
police's
inactivity over the increased crime rate in the
city.
"At times it happens in the presence of the police and
they
just seem not to care," said Fidelis Mataranyika of Highfield. "It's
very
rare to see them arrest some of these criminals. From all these
reports, it
seems like armed robbery is becoming a career for many
people."
Stella Katerera of Hatfield, who was almost robbed
of her
handbag, last week said it was dangerous to walk alone during
evenings.
"These days you can't go for more than a week
without receiving
reports of armed robberies," said Katerera. "It is very
frightening. One
wonders where these criminals get all these
guns."
Social commentators attributed the rise in crime to
high rates
of unemployment and deteriorating economic conditions. Professor
Gordon
Chavunduka said the rise in crime was due to the general economic
meltdown
and the breakdown of the rule of law.
"Because
of the breakdown of law and order in this country,
people no longer fear to
commit crimes. The answer to all these ills of the
society should come from
those in power . but here it is very unlikely,"
said
Chavunduka.
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, in response to the
ever-rising
criminal cases, recently donated a toll-free line to enable
members of the
public to make urgent reports to the
police.
Econet's Corporate Communications Manager, Dakarayi
Matanga,
said the donation was a direct response to an appeal for assistance
made by
the police in Harare.
"The rate at which crimes
are being committed daily raises the
possibility that the average criminal
is likely to get away with their
offences," he said. "A major reason for
this is that witnesses do not report
these incidents to the police. By
assisting the ZRP with equipment for a
toll free line, we make it easier for
the public to report crime."
Zim Standard
BY A CORRESPONDENT
CHINHOYI Mayor Risipi
Kapesa hired a Mercedes Benz for three
days for $150m without council
approval, The Standard can reveal.
Kapesa used the luxurious
C-Class Mercedes to travel to
Bulawayo for last week's Zimbabwe
International Trade Fair.
Well-placed council sources told
The Standard that the vehicle
was hired without going to tender. The deal
was sealed three weeks ago
between the Mayor and a Chinhoyi businessperson
without the involvement of
the council's management
committee.
Kapesa was allocated an Isuzu Twin Cab this year
after his
official Mercedes Benz was involved in an accident. Instead of
using his
official vehicle Kapesa opted to use the hired Mercedes
Benz.
Kapesa could not be reached for comment yesterday but
Chinhoyi
acting Town Clerk Abel Gotora confirmed that the
Mayor hired the vehicle from a businessperson identified as
McDonald
Zvavanhu Mapanga.
While Mapanga is not in the car rental
business, Gotora
defended the move saying all other car-hiring companies had
quoted the
council for a similar vehicle, amounts up to $480
million.
Gotora also said the car rental companies had
demanded payment
up front. Gotora however could not produce copies of those
quotations saying
they were given over the phone.
But a
councillor, who preferred anonymity, has suggested that
there be an official
inquiry into the matter.
Recently, the Chinhoyi council
purchased a $7 billion Mazda 4x4
Eagle for the Mayor but the vehicle is yet
to be delivered - three weeks
after full payment was made.
Zim Standard
BY OUR
STAFF
BULAWAYO - US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell,
cancelled a World Press Freedom Day address to journalists on Wednesday
after the government objected to his invitation.
Sources
at the Bulawayo Press Club said Bright Matonga, the
Deputy Minister of
Information and Publicity, telephoned the Press club's
leadership and
grilled them over the diplomat's invitation.
One of the
sources said: "The minister was livid that the Press
club executive composed
mainly of Zimpapers and Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Holdings' journalists
cancelled an earlier invitation for him to address the
journalists at the
Zimbabwe International Trade Fair and were now inviting
Dell."
Addressing a Press conference at Radio Dialogue
offices on
Wednesday, Dell said he was aware that Matonga had blocked his
address to
the Bulawayo-based journalists.
Thabani Mpofu,
the secretary general of the Press Club, denied
that Matonga -who repeatedly
did not answer his mobile phone yesterday - had
threatened
them.
"As far as I am concerned there was nothing like that
(threats). It is a lie," Mpofu said.
Zim Standard
BY
OUR STAFF
OPERATION Maguta has worsened food insecurity in
communities
instead of improving maize production, according to findings by
the
Solidarity Peace Trust (SPT).
The
government-initiated programme, which seeks to put all
agricultural
activities under the military, began late last year in a bid to
increase
maize production.
It involves co-operation of government
agencies: the
Agricultural Rural and Development Authority (ARDA) and the
Agricultural
Research and Extension Services (AREX) who identify
under-utilised land
where soldiers can spearhead maize
production.
However SPT, a South African-based NGO whose
co-chairpersons
are Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo and Bishop Rubin
Phillip of
KwaZulu-Natal, says a study it commissioned showed that the
programme had
made communities poorer.
"Command
agriculture has been a failure in the 2005/06 season
in relation to
improving maize production at irrigation schemes. It has
undermined such
production and has had an extremely negative effect on the
community at
large," said the organisation in a report.
The 30-page report
says that soldiers have left plot holders in
rural communities on the verge
of starvation after destroying their
lucrative market gardens, which were
their source of livelihood.
This action by the soldiers, says
the report, is designed to
force political compliance in rural communities
as their harvests are taken
to the urban populations where there is a
greater risk of civil disobedience
in the event of food
shortages.
"The usurping of the early irrigation harvests
could be an
indication of the government intending to ensure that maize ends
up in urban
areas where there is a danger of riots if people are hungry,
while in rural
areas, hunger makes people compliant," the report
says.
Operation Maguta, the report noted, "should be seen to
be part
of the continuing process of closing all remaining democratic space
in the
country".
"It can be predicted that the presence
of the army across the
nation, including the rural areas, will intensify
over the years ahead of
the next presidential and or parliamentary
elections. Command agriculture
will provide the perfect justification for
such army deployment."
In Matabeleland South, "soldiers
beating people in the fields
and withholding food is reminiscent of the
great food curfew of 1984 in the
Gukurahundi era".
"The
destruction of market gardens can be viewed as part of the
pattern of abuse
of communities by government. The destruction of the
economic base of these
communities is either an act of stupidity, or
furtherance of a policy aimed
at impoverishing rural communities as a means
of controlling
them."
According to the report, command agriculture has also
resulted
in once well-utilised irrigation schemes becoming
under-utilised.
At the same time, soldiers have destroyed
crop-rotational
structures together with the fertility of the fields through
excessive
application of fertiliser, it said.
The trust
said there is an urgent need for Zimbabwean NGOs and
the international
community to seek clarification on the government's
intentions.
Zim Standard
BY OUR
STAFF
A HEALTH hazard is looming at the University of
Zimbabwe's where
two female halls of residence have been without a constant
water supply for
two weeks.
As a result, students attend
lectures without bathing.
Female students in Swinton and New
Complex Four said they were
not happy with the administration's delays in
responding to their problems.
The students, who refused to be
named for fear of victimisation,
told The Standard that living conditions
over the past week had been
terrible because the water cuts were disrupting
lectures.
"We have been experiencing water shortages since
Tuesday
morning. The situation is pathetic and as for students like me whose
rooms
are close to the toilets, it's horrible my friend - kana mapublic
toilets
epa Mbare Musika anosara pasi," said one
student.
Another student, who only identified herself as
Sarah, said
there were growing fears that an outbreak of diseases like
cholera and
diarrhoea could hit the campus.
"We are
likely to suffer from constipation, diarrhoea or
cholera. The situation is
hazardous and if the college authorities do not
react in time, the
institution has to close before we contract diseases,"
she
said.
Other students said the water cuts were forcing them
to attend
lessons without bathing.
"The smell coming
from our toilets is bad and we still need to
use the same toilets. We have
now resorted to visiting male hostels to bath
and relieve ourselves," said
another female student.
However, the UZ Public Relations
Director, Taurwi Mabeza,
dismissed the students' claims. "There is nothing
like that. We never
experienced water cuts here at UZ but we only had
pressure problems with our
taps," she said.
Zim Standard
BY OUR CORRESPONDENT
BULAWAYO - Rising
inflation that has triggered constant price
increases on groceries,
education, rentals and transport has left a majority
Zimbabwean workers
struggling to survive on their wages.
Bulawayo workers,
mainly those employed in the textile sector
are finding it extremely
difficult to cope because they are taking home half
of or even less their
monthly earnings.
Workers in the clothing industry earn an
average of $5 million a
month, a figure way below the Poverty Datum Line of
approximately $40
million for a family of six.
The
reduced earnings are a result of clothing and textile
companies introducing
short-time work, citing shortages of raw materials.
Under this arrangement,
workers work for two weeks and spend the remainder
of the month at
home.
Beauty Moyo (not her real name) worked for a Bulawayo
clothing
company for three years as a seamstress. Moyo said she quit her
job last
month when the firm announced plans to put workers on
short-time.
"It was pointless for me to continue working for
$2 million a
month. It barely covers my rent. I would have had to find
money for
transport. So I was going to work for nothing," she explained.
Now the
25-year-old earns a living plaiting her
neighbours.
Short-time work is provided for in the Labour
Relations Act but
trade unionists complain the provisions are
"pro-employer".
Section 12 D of the Act allows employers
facing viability
problems to place workers on shift or short-time work to
avoid
retrenchments. Mandla Sibanda, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions
para-legal
officer for the western region said he is receiving numerous
reports from
workers complaining that their employers are not following laid
down
procedures.
"Short-time work is provided for in the
Labour Relations Act but
unfortunately it is being abused. Workers know what
the law says but because
things are tough, workers are overlooking their
legal rights to save their
jobs," Sibanda said.
He said
some of the infringements by employers included giving
workers insufficient
notice and paying them less than half their monthly
wage. Companies should
give workers at least six months' notice before
starting short-time
work.
Sibanda added the legislation exacerbated workers' woes
by
preventing employees from seeking alternative employment during the
period
they are at home. Most workers said they resorted to fruit and
vegetable
vending or cross-border shopping.
Affected
workers claim they are being abused by companies that
are allegedly
stockpiling goods. The workers accuse the firms of selling
such goods are
exorbitant prices while their workers sit at home earning
nothing.
But labour consultant, Davies Ndumiso Sibanda,
dispelled the
claims. He argued few enterprises are able to stockpile under
the
prevailing economic environment.
"While there's a
likelihood that a few employers are
stockpiling, that likelihood is very,
very low. The main issue here is
there's no trust in the majority of cases
between employers and workers and
at the same time the workers have a
problem of not understanding how
businesses operate," he
said.
Davies Sibanda said he has attended negotiations for
short-time
work at various companies where both warehouses and stockrooms
were empty.
He warned that short-time work is not helpful if implemented
over longer
periods because such organisations end up being
liquidated.
Zim Standard
BY OUR STAFF
POLICE in Harare have launched yet another
clean-up campaign
ridding the streets of beggars and street people, who have
now been dumped
at a temporary camp outside Ruwa, it has been
learnt.
Scores of beggars and street children, rounded up
during a
controversial "Operation Murambatsvina" last year, had already
started
returning back to the streets, prompting police to launch the latest
operation.
People living near Mbuya Nehanda Camp in
Melfort last week
said the place where the street people were being held, is
being guarded
round the clock by armed police.
"There
are lot a of people that have been put at a camp here.
There are some
heavily armed police officers guarding the vagrants," said a
source.
He added that the street people sleep in tents
that were
hastily pitched to accommodate them. Apparently, the police
operation
started just before the Easter Holidays.
Police refused to comment when contacted. Assistant
Commissioner Wayne
Bvudzijena maintained that he does not speak to The
Standard.
The government launched "Operation
Murambatsvina" in May last
year, razing shacks, homes, market stalls and
small shops. The exercise
left nearly one million people homeless,
according to a United Nations
report.
Zim Standard
By Nqobani Ndlovu
BULAWAYO - The
Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) has accused
the government of throwing
the majority of Zimbabweans into abject poverty
and sending locals to the
brink of starvation.
The ZCC noted that bad governance,
unjust laws, corruption,
lack of integrity and unfair distribution of
resources had contributed
significantly to the dire situation faced by
Zimbabweans. As a result,
Zimbabweans, noted the ZCC in a recent Pastoral
Letter to the nation, have
been forced to "live on selected basis, eroding
the quality of life of the
locals".
"Having thoroughly
and critically observed the unfolding events
in Zimbabwe, the ZCC notes with
great sadness the rapid decline in the
quality of life for ordinary
Zimbabweans. Zimbabweans are now being forced
to live on selected
basis.
"The majority of our people now lives in abject
poverty, is
unemployed and is severely threatened with hunger and diseases.
In instances
where investigations have been done to establish the cause of
our situation,
the results have pointed to bad governance, unjust laws,
corruption, lack of
integrity and the unfair distribution of resources," the
letter reads in
part.
ZCC further noted that: "The
economic situation has
deteriorated to the extent that we have become a
burden to the neighbouring
countries as millions . have become economic
refugees ."
Zimbabwe is going through an unprecedented
economic decline
characterised by high unemployment levels at above 80%,
recurrent food
shortages, foreign currency shortages, daily increases in
basic commodities
and high inflation which is at present galloping towards
1000%.
Most Zimbabweans are struggling to survive with the
Consumer
Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ), putting the monthly breadbasket, for a
family of
five at $40 million. To halt the massive decline, reports say the
government
has put the economy under a State security arm; the Zimbabwe
National
Security Council chaired by President Mugabe, at the same time
unveiling a
new economic blueprint, the National Development Priority
Programme (NEDPP).
But the ZCC says the future is bleak for
the country, where
"the propensity to borrow for recurrent expenditure is
growing when the
nation is under economic insecurity".
Turning to efforts by the government to fight corruption, the
ZCC deplored
the move saying "efforts should not be cosmetic but be put into
full and
effective use in order to rid society of this monster".
On
food security, the ZCC said food inflation would continue to
rise as long as
farm disruptions continued unabated.
The ZCC also called for
the urgent overhaul of the country's
constitution which has since
independence been amended many times by the
ruling Zanu PF-led
government.
Zim Standard
BY
CAIPHAS CHIMHETE
SEVERAL businesses are relocating from
Harare's central business
district (CBD) because of continuous deterioration
of the inner city, the
commission running the affairs of Harare has
noted.
Minutes of a recent Environmental Management Committee
said a
lot organisations and companies were moving out of Harare's inner
city due
to falling standards.
". The committee raised
concern over the deterioration of
standards within the central business
district. It further noted with
concern that a number of organisations and
companies were relocating to
areas outside the central business district,"
read the minutes of a meeting
held on 28 February this
year.
The commission implored council and other stakeholders
to
rehabilitate the city centre "into safe, clean, comfortable and beautiful
place" to attract investment.
The commission tasked the
city's acting director of works,
Michael Jaravaza, to come up with a policy
on Prevention of Inner City Decay
that gives incentives to the business
community to entice them to operate
within the inner city
centre.
Once dubbed the sunshine city, Harare's CBD is now
full of
uncollected garbage, and human excreta emitting foul smells from
alleys
while street people terrorise business executives, begging for food
and
money.
On the roads, potholes have developed into
"craters" in central
Harare while traffic and streetlights stopped
functioning a long time ago.
As a result, Harare's CBD is
experiencing a sharp increase in
the amount of vacant commercial
space.
A property consultant with a local estate company said
businesses thrive on efficiency and "if facilities and services fall apart
they find alternative areas".
He said only shops and
banks prefer Harare's CBD because of
convenience to their
customers.
Zim Standard
BY CAIPHAS CHIMHETE
THE police have
resorted to antiquated methods of testing
suspected drunken drivers because
their breathalysers are not working,
police sources told The Standard last
week.
The sources said the police were unable to access
foreign
currency from the central bank to import spare parts for
breathalyzers in
need of repairs, forcing officers to conduct "physical
checks" on drivers.
"They (breathalysers) are now obsolete
because we are failing
to get foreign currency to import. We are now using
observation forms if we
suspect someone to be drunk," said one officer, who
requested anonymity.
The officer said traffic police were now
looking out for slurred
speech, the suspect's balance when standing, or
alertness to questions to
determine whether they were drunk or
not.
"At times, we order the person to walk in a straight
line or to
stand on one leg, say, for two or so minutes," said the police
officer.
Another officer said it was difficult to make a
conviction in a
court of law using the current physical methods of testing
drunken drivers.
As a result, most police officers were reluctant to arrest
suspected drunk
drivers for fear of answering questions in
court.
"Most police officers are very reluctant to take
drunken
drivers to court because the method has loopholes," said the
officer.
Only a few years ago, Zimbabwean police highway
patrol vehicles
were equipped with state-of-the-art breathalysers, making
detection of the
amount of alcohol in a driver's blood easier. Zimbabwe
prohibits drivers
with alcohol levels of above .08 percent from
driving.
An official with the Zimbabwe Traffic Safety Board
said the use
of physical checks by police was outdated and would "not stand
up" in a
court of law.
"We are not in agreement with
such a method because it does not
show the level of alcohol content in one's
blood. The courts should refuse
that as evidence," said the
official.
Zim Standard
BY CAIPHAS CHIMHETE
COMMUNICABLE
diseases, mainly TB and cholera are rife at the
Hopley farm settlement in
Harare where the government dumped victims of
"Operation Murambatsvina" last
year.
A health progress report prepared by the Medecins Sans
Frontiers (MSF) reveals that the settlement, accommodating about 1 600
households, has been hit by a number of diseases.
These
include tuberculosis, scabies, pneumonia, malaria and
sexually transmitted
infections (STIs).
People live in crowded conditions and in
many cases in makeshift
shelter with plastic sheeting. They have neither
clean supply of water nor
toilets, says the report compiled by the
organisation's project
co-ordinator, Simon Ejore.
From
January to March this year, the international organisation
says it treated 5
324 patients, most of these with skin and respiratory
infections. A total
of 110 suspected cases of TB were recorded and 30 of
these were
confirmed.
"In the same period, MSF diagnosed 30 falciparum
malaria cases
and many sexually transmitted infections, some linked to
prostitution which
in turn is partly caused by lack of food in the
settlement," says the
report.
MSF, an international
medical association that provides free
treatment and medication to needy
populations, says lack of food continues
to plague Hopley families, who lost
all their belongings when government
demolished their houses in the
city.
Some patients, says Ejore, said they turned to
commercial sex
work to enable themselves to earn money to feed their
families.
"MSF has also attended an unexpected high number
of trauma
cases, some linked to looking for food (children falling out of
fruit
trees), but more linked to violence provoked by conflicts over limited
resources such as food supply," says the report.
Hopley
Farm Settlement has no regular supply of water and
currently has no toilets,
exposing the community to communicable diseases
such as cholera.
Zim Standard
BY OUR
STAFF
RADIO Voice of the People, the local radio and
production house
whose directors are being persecuted by the State, has been
awarded the 2006
One Media Special Award for Community Media. The award
will be presented in
London on 8 June.
Radio VOP, as it
is commonly known, is privately owned by
Zimbabweans and has since 2000 been
battling to obtain a commercial licence
to broadcast locally on
FM.
A bomb destroyed its Milton Park offices in 2002 while
police
and officials of the Central Intelligence Organisation raided new VOP
offices in Beverly Court in December - in search of transmission equipment,
which they could not find. They ended up by arresting three employees who
were only released four days later, after the directors had presented
themselves to police.
On Thursday, Harare Magistrate
Rebecca Takavadii remanded the
VOP directors out of custody to 14 June.
The directors are being accused
of broadcasting from Zimbabwe without
licence, a charge they deny.
Zim Standard
By Nqobani Ndlovu
and Loughty Dube
THE cash strapped Zimbabwe Electricity
Supply Authority (Zesa)
is facing a national electricity deficit of 250
megawatts per day due to the
underperformance of the Hwange and the Kariba
power stations,
Standardbusiness has learnt
The deficit
has forced the loss making company to introduce load
shedding and periodic
power cuts while at the same time increasing imports
from South Africa,
Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Zesa, in a
bid to deal with the mounting deficit, has applied to
the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe (RBZ) for funding to the tune of US$900 million
that it says it
needs to refurbish and expand the Hwange and Kariba power
stations.
Zesa is facing serious po-wer shortages that it
also blames on
the uneconomic tariffs it is charging. The government in
March this year
reversed a 560% tariffs hike proposed by the power
company.
Zesa Corporate Affairs Manager James Maridadi, said:
"We have a
national power deficit because our main suppliers Hwange and
Kariba power
stations are under performing and as a result we applied for
funding to the
tune of
US$ 900 million so that we can
refurbish the two power
stations." Zimbabwe needs 1 400 megawatts of
electricity a day but Hwange
currently supplies the nation with 400
megawatts of power per day while
Kariba power station generates 750
Megawatts leaving a national deficit of
250 megawatts
everyday.
Hwange generates 920 megawatts when it is operating
at full
capacity but is currently struggling to generate 400 megawatts. The
country
imports the difference from neighbouring countries while the small
thermal
power stations in Harare and Bulawayo contribute a small fraction of
the
total needs.
Maridadi however said the country's
power needs are expected to
jump to 2 100 megawatts as winter approaches and
said Zesa was facing
serious foreign currency shortages for importing the
extra power.
"We are currently operating at a loss because
the electricity
that we import we are buying at US three cents but in
Zimbabwe we sell the
electricity at US half a cent and these uneconomic
rates are affecting our
plans to expand the network and to refurbish some of
our plants
nationwide,"Maridadi said.
On the issue of
unannou-nced power interruptions, Maridadi said
some of the reasons for the
power cuts were beyond Zesa's control.
"We have serious cases
of vandalism of our equipment, there is
theft of cables and in some
instances we have thieves who drain oil from our
transformers and replacing
a single transformer costs us $1,2 billion while
vandalism of infrastructure
in January alone cost Zesa $15 billion," he
said.
Zim Standard
By
Nqobani Ndlovu
BULAWAYO: Government Ministers last Wednesday,
snubbed the
International Business Conference held at the Zimbabwe
International Trade
Fair meant to impart ideas on strategies the State can
employ to solve the
country's crises.
The business
conference focused on "foreign currency generation
strategies" but Ministers
snubbed it for a Zanu-PF party meeting.
Zimbabwe is
undergoing economic recession characterised by
shortages of almost
everything, especially forex, part of which critics
attribute to the fast
track land reform programme that destabilised the
nation's major foreign
currency earner: agriculture.
The government says it is
implementing economic revival
strategies but lack of foreign currency
continues to bog down any
initiatives.
Government
Ministers led by Vice President Joyce Mujuru were
absent despite the fact
they had been scheduled to deliver certain topics.
Patrick
Zhuwawo, the Deputy Minister of Science and Technology,
told delegates that
the Ministers were attending a Politburo meeting.
Samuel
Undenge, the Deputy Minister of Economic Development and
Phineous Chihota
the Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce, attended the
conference.
Ministers who snubbed the conference include
Obert Mpofu, the
Minister of Industry and International Trade; Finance
Minister Herbert
Murerwa; Rugare Gumbo, the Minister of National
Development; Rural and Water
Development Minister, Munacho Mutezo and Olivia
Muchena, the Science and
Technology Minister.
Also absent
was the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor, Gideon
Gono, and former Finance
Minister, Simba Makoni, whose presence were eagerly
expected.
Mujuru was scheduled to present a paper on In
pursuit of a
Shared Vision, Mpofu and Gumbo on Springboard for Economic
Revival, Mutezo
on Water Supply and Demand Management, while Muchena was to
speak on
Transport, ICT Development.
Murerwa was set to
speak on the Role of Corporate Leaders on
Foreign Currency Generation
Strategies.
Some delegates at the conference, angered by the
absentee
Ministers, called on the President Mugabe-led government to quit
office and
let industrialists run the country on a caretaker
basis.
Industrialists also accused the government of running
down the
country with populist policies, ignoring business ethics and
advice.
The government's 'Look East' policy was also attacked
as a
disastrous long-term solution to the country's
crises.
Zimbabwe Electricity Distribution Company (ZEDC)
spokesperson,
James Maridadi, said politicians "act as if you hold the
monopoly to country's
problems".
"A caretaker government
is the best as with this current
government in power, we are all going to
perish," said Evans Mbambo, an
official of a Mutare-based company.
Zim Standard
Comment
AS long as
political interference is tolerated, Zimbabwe's
efforts at an economic
turnaround remain doomed. Politicians have no
business running the economy.
They have made a mess of running the country.
That is
enough!
The national carrier, Air Zimbabwe, used to be run on
a sound
professional basis until recent years when politicians began
disregarding
professional advice, directing and determining what equipment
the airline
should acquire.
It is hard not to suspect
sinister motives. If the meddling by
politicians is intended to assist Air
Zimbabwe, how come there is a seized
Boeing aircraft that has been parked at
Manyame Air Force Base for more than
a year without being
commissioned?
The reason could be very simple: there is no
personal benefit to
those who meddle in the affairs of parastatals. As long
as professional
people are not allowed to make decisions on running
parastatals as
businesses, the proposed unbundling of the national airline,
like that of
the National Railways of Zimbabwe, will remain a gigantic hoax
- an attempt
to disperse the problem in the hope that those responsible will
remain
unaccountable.
It was reported last week that Air
Zimbabwe is to acquire
Russian aircraft in order to beef up its fleet.
Nothing could be more
damning for the airline than such a political
decision.
The national passenger carrier has operated a fleet
of Boeing
aircraft. A switch to Russian planes will require retraining of
both
engineers and technicians. Politicians are very naïve. You can not take
a
Mazda mechanic or technician and switch them to servicing Mercedes Benz
vehicles with the same efficient results. The sooner the politicians realise
this, the better.
But that is being too optimistic.
Politicians are not
necessarily driven by national interests although they
try to disguise their
pursuits in the name of nationalism and
sovereignty.
The Minister of Transport, Christopher Mushowe
and the Governor
of the Reserve Bank, Gideon Gono, recently travelled to
Russia where they
signed an agreement to buy at least five Russian planes.
There was no input
from the technical people at Air Zimbabwe. The same
approach was employed in
the acquisition of Chinese MA60 aircraft, one of
which was reportedly
grounded soon after its
commissioning.
When confronted over this latest proposed
purchase Mushowe's
remarks were revealing.
"I am
surprised because when we acquired the MA60 planes from
China last year, the
nation knew about it; everybody was told," he said. "So
this is imaginary.
It's something I don't quite comprehend."
There is a vast
difference between telling and consulting a
nation. Mushowe is right that
the reaction to the proposed acquisition of
the aircraft is something he
does not quite comprehend.
Air Zimbabwe is one of the key
critical foreign currency
earners. But political interference has delivered
the air travel market to
the national airline's competition and dashed Air
Zimbabwe's recovery
prospects.
It's time Parliament
showed its resolve in interrogating some of
these decisions that look
appetising in the short-term but harm Zimbabwe's
long-term
prospects.
Zim Standard
sundayopinion by Christopher Dell
* An
address to NUST School of Journalism on World Press Freedom
Day
TODAY's media has command over a greater breadth and
depth of
information than ever. It enjoys unprecedented levels of
technology and
capital and reaches billions of people. With the ideological
wars of the
Cold War behind most of the world, it is less politically or
legally
fettered than ever in most places.
If Francis
Bacon's dictum "knowledge is power" remains true -
and it certainly does -
then the media today is surely more powerful than
ever.
But with Bacon's dictum I would charge the future journalists
among us here
to always keep close a second, more recent dictum. It is the
lesson of the
great American comic book superhero, Spiderman: "With great
power comes
great responsibility."
For those not familiar with Peter
Parker's web-slinging alter
ego, Spiderman repeatedly sees his super-powered
attempts to do good produce
unintended, often unhappy consequences.
Disillusioned, he often tries to
walk away from the super-hero business of
trying to help people and make the
world a better place. Each time,
however, Spiderman - whose alter ego is a
photojournalist - returns to the
inescapable conclusion that those with
power have an obligation to use it,
and to use it responsibly to the best of
their ability.
But what exactly is the journalist's responsibility? There are
no doubt
many formulations, but let me share with you one advanced by
Mahatma Gandhi
- a man who very effectively used newspapers over the span of
his life to
improve governance in his own country, change attitudes around
the globe,
and make the world a better place. He cast the journalist's
responsibility
as "(1) to understand the popular feeling and give expression
to it, (2) to
arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments, and (3)
fearlessly to
expose defects." To be sure, each of these objectives
sometimes conflicts
with another, testifying to the complexity of the
journalist's task. But it
is hard to imagine any proper journalistic effort
that does not draw on one
or more of these objectives.
Ladies and gentlemen, that
freedom of expression is a
fundamental right is axiomatic in the modern
world. Article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
declares:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
expression;
this right includes freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through
any media and
regardless of frontiers.
Unifying diverse, even
conflicting political regimes, the
Declaration was ratified in 1948 by
proclamation of the UN General Assembly
with no opposing
votes.
In my country, this right is enshrined in the First
Amendment to
the US Constitution. In pertinent part, it provides simply
that "Congress
shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the
press." The
great American Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
expressed its
rationale and centrality to the Constitution in a famous
opinion in 1919.
He concluded that "the ultimate good" was best reached by
"a free trade in
ideas ... that the best test of truth is the power of the
thought to get
itself accepted in the competition of the
market."
The Zimbabwean Constitution describes freedom of
expression in
some length in its Article 20. In the case of In Re Munhumeso
in 1992, the
Zimbabwean Supreme Court cast freedom of expression as a
"vitally important
right" that lies "at the foundation of a democratic
society" and is a "basic
condition for the progress of society and the
development of persons."
According to the Court, freedom of expression
serves four broad purposes:
(1) it helps an individual to obtain
self-fulfillment; (2) it assists in the
discovery of truth; (3) it
strengthens the capacity of an individual to
participate in decision making;
and (4) it provides a mechanism for
establishing a reasonable balance
between stability and social change.
I will not today
belabour freedom of expression's intrinsic
value, which is now almost
universally accepted. Instead, I would like to
elaborate on one aspect of
free speech that has been perhaps
under-appreciated. I'm talking about the
relationship between free speech
and economic prosperity. Indeed, most of
the four purposes of free speech
defined by your Supreme Court apply
directly to the foundations of economic
development.
The
logic of the connection is not hard to understand. In a
society where
freedom of expression is tolerated, open debate can flourish.
In a
competitive marketplace of ideas, all ideas - in large part by and
through
an energetic media - can be aired and the best rise to the top.
Here I'm
simply echoing Justice Holmes' rationale and the second purpose
articulated
in the Zimbabwean Court's formula.
For governments, this
dynamic process yields policies that best
account for conflicting variables,
policies that balance the interests of
all groups. Such policies maximize
the effectiveness of economic players -
buyers and sellers, producers and
consumers, regulators and the regulated,
individuals and corporations. The
result instills confidence in domestic
and international investors to act in
such a climate. The whole open
process drives growth, builds prosperity,
and - advancing the Zimbabwean
Court's first purpose - fosters individual
self-fulfillment.
Of course, in today's complicated,
interconnected global
economy, even open societies can still get policies
wrong. But freedom of
expression is a central self-correcting mechanism in
such societies. When
the consequences of bad policies emerge, a free press
covers the outcry from
affected groups. The party in power learns to adjust
its policies. If the
party doesn't and conditions deteriorate sufficiently,
democratic systems
allow informed citizens to vote that party out, and a new
government comes
to power with the chance to try different ideas. (Recall
the Zimbabwean
Court's third purpose: to strengthen the capacity of an
individual to
participate in decision-making.) In this way, an open society
gives its
leadership a chance to learn and to adapt to a constantly changing
and ever
more competitive world at a pace that suits the people. (This is
consistent
with the Zimbabwean court's fourth purpose: to provide a
mechanism for
establishing a reasonable balance between stability and social
change.)
Beyond the policy front, freedom of expression is
also a crucial
element in a functioning market economy on the microeconomic
level. Indeed,
"free flow of information" is an essential element of
definitions of
"perfect competition" and "market economy" in classic
economic theory.
Investors, companies, and individuals can't make informed
economic decisions
in their interest without free access to information.
Thus, an important
political right is also a pivotal economic
mechanism.
Again, as in the case of economic policy, the
logic of free
speech's underpinning of economic prosperity on the micro
level is not
complicated. If producers and consumers do not operate in a
transparent
system with information flowing freely between and among them,
pricing
mechanisms will always be distorted to the detriment of society as a
whole.
In some cases, prices will be "too high", resulting
in
consumers spending more of their disposable income - at the expense of
other
consumption - and getting less. If you have to spend all your
available
money to buy petrol at black market prices, you will have to
forego
something else - sadza, school fees, chibuku, whatever. In some
cases
prices will be "too low", resulting in wide shortages and
disinvestment by
producers. When the price of sugar is frozen by regulation
below its cost
to the shopkeeper, for example, sugar disappears from the
shelves and
consumers must do without.
Innumerable
distortions emerge in this environment: shortages
of basic commodities such
as food, fuel, and foreign exchange; unfair
two-tiered pricing, with
artificially cheap prices for elites and steep
black market prices for those
not politically favored; diversion of
increasingly scarce private resources
from productive investment to basic
consumption; diversion of increasingly
scarce public and private resources
to import what the economy can no longer
produce; resistance by elites with
a stake in an inefficient and unfair
system to any efforts to change that
system.
Without
a free flow of information, the privileged few who
have access to and
control of information can manipulate information flows
to benefit
themselves at the expense of the majority. While such a system
enriches a
very few, it impoverishes the vast majority and undermines a
society's
overall economic prosperity. In nearly all cases, the system of
restricted
access to information serves as a foundation for corruption on a
massive
scale that misallocates societal resources and widens the gulf
between the
haves and the have-nots.
In all cases, efficiency and
productivity suffer. While it is
today fashionable in some quarters to
declare that the laws of supply and
demand can be suspended at will, you
don't need a PhD in economics to
understand that this flaunts human nature -
people understand their
interests and act accordingly. Those who pretend
otherwise should remember
King Canute and his doomed effort to tell the tide
it should not rise.
Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist
of the World Bank and
Nobel Prize winner in economics for his work on
asymmetries of information,
concludes that corruption is more of an economic
issue than a political one.
Noting that economists - and really, all of us -
oppose "artificially
created scarcities", he calls secrecy in the economy an
artificially created
scarcity of knowledge.
Artificially
created scarcities - in this case of knowledge -
give rise to rent-seeking
opportunities. These in turn give rise to
corruption, as it becomes easier
and less risky to make a fast dollar by
exploiting your access to
information than to produce goods or services.
Stiglitz's
work has been instrumental in moving transparency and
the vital economic
function of a free press to the center of international
financial
institutions' agenda for poverty reduction in the developing
world. I note
that the World Bank, for example, is now training some 1 000
journalists in
investigative reporting, precisely because of the media's
crucial role in
advancing prospects for improved governance and poverty
reduction in their
countries. Years ago, World Bank training for
journalists would have been
considered off-limits as "too political". Our
evolving understanding of
free speech's pivotal role in development has
changed all this, and we now
realize journalism training is not too
political at all, but appropriately
conomic.
Friends, history has shown time and again that an
environment
that fosters freedom of expression is an essential pillar to
support the
economic development of any people. The contrasting experiences
of East and
West during the Cold War offer compelling evidence of the
centrality of free
speech to economic prosperity. In the 1950s, Soviet
Premier Nikita
Khrushchev famously told the Free World: "We will bury you."
But the
ensuing decades saw the Free World achieve unprecedented levels of
prosperity while the Communist Bloc suffered technological backwardness,
declining health standards, and failure even to maintain food
self-sufficiency.
Standing before the Brandenburg Gate in
1987 on the eve of the
final collapse of Stalinism, President Reagan
underscored the one great and
inescapable conclusion of that era: "Freedom
leads to prosperity. Freedom
replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations
with comity and peace.
Freedom is the victor."
Six years
ago, then Georgian President and ex-Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard
Shevardnadze eloquently punctuated this point on the
occasion of World Press
Freedom Day. He wrote: "The greatest achievement of
humanity - freedom of
speech - has served [as] both the source and the
incentive of progress...
Today... hardly any nation can call itself
civilized unless its citizens
enjoy genuine freedom of speech... I firmly
believe that the moral and
political failure of the communist system was
largely due to the suppression
of this natural right, for it is no
overstatement to say that free access to
information is as crucial to human
happiness and development as are water
and bread for the physical survival
of humankind. Suppression of free
thought inevitably results in an
accumulation of colossal amounts of
negative energy that will ultimately
smash every wall erected by a
totalitarian system or dictatorship."
I'm sure you'd find
agreement on Shevardnadze's analysis
throughout much of Eastern Europe,
where the citizens of Poland, Hungary,
the Baltics and other nations are
enjoying job creation, rising incomes and
economic abundance at levels
undreamed of before the dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact. Ladies and
gentleman, this is not the result of development
assistance or balance of
payment supports. For the most part, their
turnaround was the product of a
citizenry exploiting political and economic
freedoms not previously
enjoyed. For sure, international assistance can aid
development, but the
growing wealth of Eastern European nations is primarily
the result of
expanding freedom - including freedom of speech and unfettered
access to
information - unleashing the potential of the citizens of these
countries.
In other words, government got out of the way of its public and
let real
markets develop. Equally importantly, the political process became
more
inclusive so government became more responsive and
accountable.
The experience of the East Asian tigers over the
last two
decades buttresses the lesson that building a strong policy
framework on
freedom of expression, among other freedoms, will drive
impressive economic
growth. Tellingly, glaring exceptions to that pattern
in East Asia are
countries that suffer the lowest levels of political and
economic free
speech in East Asia. Burma is a country as rich as any in
natural resources
but handicapped by a government that brooks no dissent and
imposes a heavy
hand in economic affairs. Another exception is North Korea,
which by trying
to enforce uniformity of thought has guaranteed a
food-insecure and
impoverished people. Not coincidentally, Burma and North
Korea are two of
just a handful of countries publicly described by US
Secretary of State Rice
as the world's remaining "outposts of
tyranny".
The Nobel Prize-winning Indian economist Amartya
Sen offers a
noteworthy historical truth that drives home the relationship
between
freedom and prosperity, especially in the developing world: Of all
humankind's
terrible famines, none has ever occurred in a functioning
democracy with
regular credible elections, healthy opposition parties, and
an unfettered
media.
Famines historically have been
associated with one- party states
such as the Soviet Union in the 1930s,
China in the 1950s, Cambodia in the
1970s, and North Korea this past decade;
military dictatorships such as in
Ethiopia and Somalia; or colonial
arrangements such as in pre-independence
Ireland and India. Notably, not
just rich countries avoid famines; poor
societies that are open and
democratic have never experienced famine either.
Newly
independent but democratic India underscores the point.
Colonial India
experienced a devastating famine just four years before
independence.
Desperately poor on achieving independence in 1947, India had
a huge
population, suffered erratic monsoon rains and regional droughts, and
relied
heavily on traditional agricultural methods. You would have thought
the
nation was ripe for famine. Yet it never happened. Sure, times
remained
difficult but there was no collapse. I submit to you that a key
reason was
the openness of India's society and adequate market mechanisms
based on a
free flow of information. Accordingly, surpluses found areas of
deficit,
and basic food was available throughout the country.
In stark
contrast, the horrific three-year famine suffered in
China beginning in 1958
tragically demonstrates the other side of the point.
An estimated 30 million
people died during that period in the wake of the
Chinese government's
"great leap forward".
Statist economic policies were
disastrous, but the Chinese
government refused to face facts. The famine
unfolded and the government
did not adjust its disastrous policies for three
more years. Intolerance of
dissent inside and outside the party ensured the
party could not adjust.
Steered by its own propaganda and reports from local
officials hoping for
credit with senior authorities, many even believed that
the country had
millions of metric tonnes of food that in reality never
existed.
In elaborating on this tragedy, Amartya Sen noted
that no less a
personage than Chairman Mao himself later spotlighted the
insidious role
played by the suppression of information in the famine. In a
1962 speech,
Mao told party cadres that "without democracy you have no
understanding of
what's happening down below. The situation will be
unclear. You will be
unable to collect sufficient opinion from all sides.
There can be no
communication between top and bottom. Top-level organs of
leadership will
depend on one-sided and incorrect material to decide
issues. You will find
it difficult to avoid being
subjective."
Not surprisingly, World Bank studies in recent
years bear out a
strong causal relationship between the degree of a
country's civil liberties
and media independence and its development
outcomes. Daniel Kaufmann,
writing last year for the World Bank on "Myths
and Realities of Governance
and Corruption", pointed out that even popular
lore subscribes to the
importance of transparency, as illustrated by the old
adage "sunlight is the
best disinfectant." He found a strong positive
correlation between
transparency and better socioeconomic and human
development indicators, as
well as higher competitiveness and lower
corruption. He also suggested that
much progress could be achieved without
investing inordinate resources. In
fact, he noted that transparency reforms
were substantial net savers of
public resources, and could obviate the
necessity for excessive regulations
or rules. His paper put forth numerous
examples of concrete and effective
transparency reforms such as freedom of
the media and effective
implementation of freedom of information laws,
public disclosure of assets
and incomes of public officials, and effective
implementation of conflict of
interest laws.
One does not
have to look beyond the SADC region, indeed
anywhere beyond Zimbabwe's
immediate borders, to find evidence of the
correlation between freedom of
expression and economic growth. With one
glaring exception, countries in
this region are beginning to exploit the
relationships between civil
liberties and economic development established
in World Bank studies. In
short, those countries of the SADC region that
have become more
participatory, democratic, and tolerant of free expression,
are becoming
more responsive, more accountable - and prosperous.
As a
whole, the region shows positive trends on freedom of
speech. Freedom
House, a respected NGO, ranks the medias of three of the
five countries
neighbouring Zimbabwe as "free" and ranks none lower than
90th in the larger
community of nations.
Sadly, Zimbabwe ranks 153rd. Most
nations in the region
reflected improvement in press freedoms, according to
another NGO, Reporters
Without Borders. Zimbabwe was the only nation in the
region to be placed by
that NGO in the bottom tiers of its press freedom
index - not surprising, in
view of the continued closure of independent
dailies, harassment and growing
legal controls on journalists, and a
strictly enforced government monopoly
on broadcast
media.
With growing freedom of the press and the advance of
other
civil liberties, the rest of the region is growing faster
economically.
Every one of Zimbabwe's neighbours, for example, registered
real per capita
GDP growth in 2005, led by Mozambique's 5.2% - the highest
growth rate on
the continent among non-oil-exporting countries. Ethnically
diverse South
Africa registered 4.0% per capita GDP growth in 2005 - the
third straight
year in which its growth rate increased. With a natural
resource base
similar to Zimbabwe's, Zambia's per capita GDP grew 2.6% in
2005 and is
forecast to grow even more in 2006. With a per capita GDP
growth rate of
4.2% in 2005, Botswana has averaged annual growth rates
exceeding 4.0% per
annum for the last ten years.
Sadly,
Zimbabwe is the exception that in this case proves the
rule. According to
IMF estimates, in 2005 - a year which saw good rains but
no meaningful
reform - Zimbabwe registered a per capita GDP "growth" rate of
minus 6.5%,
the sixth year in a row the rate was negative. None but a few
within the
Government have predicted a return to real growth this year.
Friends, permit me to elaborate a bit on the case of Zimbabwe.
It is
undeniable that Zimbabwe's economy is in a downward spiral unmatched
by any
other country not at war. And yet, if you rely on the state media,
things
aren't that bad. In fact, the outlook is very rosy indeed and
recovery is
only months away. Read the government dailies - the only daily
newspapers
circulated in this country. Listen to state radio - the only
radio
permitted to broadcast from Zimbabwean soil. Watch state TV - the
only TV
permitted to originate in Zimbabwe. The economy will grow we're
told 1-2%
this year - the agricultural sector by nearly 10%.
And this
despite a 40% contraction over eight straight years of
decline and no
foreseeable change in economic policy on the horizon! I
for one will watch
with interest to see how this turnaround will be
effected.
I say that noting that the Government has just
announced the
composition of a National Economic Recovery Council - what it
casts as a
public-private partnership to tackle the nation's severe economic
ills.
However, I have carefully read the Government's statements for
evidence that
there will be policy shifts that might address the fundamental
problems in
the economy here - shifts that would restore domestic and
international
faith in the Zimbabwean economy and lead to renewed investment
and a cycle
of recovery. So far, I see structure, but no real debate. I
see form, but
no substance. I see committees, but no commitment to change
policies that
have shown they do not work.
One can't help
but recall the series of economic plans announced
periodically since the
country's economic crises got underway at the
beginning of this decade. We
have had the MERP - Millennium Economic
Recover Plan; the NERP - New
Economic Recovery Plan; a Ten-point Plan; a
NERP 2; a TNF - Tripartite
Negotiating Forum; and now, a NERC. All
announced with great fanfare;
unfortunately, none yielding effective policy
to arrest economic
decline.
We certainly hope the NERC enjoys a different and
happier fate,
but historical experience suggests some cause for healthy
skepticism.
If I've done my job at all well here today, the
relevance of
freedom of expression to economic prosperity in Zimbabwe should
already be
clear to you. I won't go into details lest some accuse me of
overstepping
diplomatic limits - notwithstanding my undeniable right of
reply to the
government's repeated attribution of its economic problems to
my government's
policies instead of its own.
But simply
recall the lessons of history and you will see that
there is little new
here.
When governments attempt to control information
throughout
society, economic "strategies" tend to be top-down prescriptive
exercises
that produce little because those most affected have little real
input.
When prices are set by cumbersome bureaucracies with imperfect
information
and political agendas instead of by innumerable motivated buyers
and sellers
responding nimbly to ever-shifting market information, then
disinvestment,
shortages and black markets inevitably occur. And with
distorting
artificial scarcities of knowledge, everyone cheats - from the
farmer who
buys scarce inputs from the black market and sells outside
unremunerative
government channels to survive, to the elites who access
scarce inputs at
subsidized prices and exploit the black market to resell
those cheap goods
for a huge, quick profit.
In short,
look behind nearly every economic dysfunction and
shortage in this country -
unavailability of fertilizer and fuel,
underutilization of land, burgeoning
corruption - and you will likely find
some impediment to a free flow of
information or the freedom to act on that
information.
Such statist systems - with their obsession to control political
and
economic information -- didn't work in 1930s Soviet Union or 1950s China
and
it seems doubtful that they'll ever work elsewhere. Recall Chairman
Mao's
caution: "You (i.e., government) will be unable to collect sufficient
opinion from all sides. There can be no communication between top and
bottom. Top-level organs of leadership will depend on one-sided and
incorrect material to decide issues. You will find it difficult to avoid
being subjective."
In other words, operating in an
information vacuum, any
government - even with the best of intentions - will
get it wrong under the
best of circumstances. Remembering the experience of
China and the
conclusions of Chairman Mao on the central importance of
information flow
is, I submit, ladies and gentlemen, an important lesson and
a real benefit
to be learned from a policy of "Looking East."
Re-living the horrors of 'Murambatsvina'
THIS month
marks the first anniversary of our purge from the
urban centres by a
government-led exercise called "Operation Restore Order".
The past 12 months
have been the most traumatic experience in the lives of
many of us who were
displaced by the government.
It will require medical experts
to document how "Operation
Murambatsvina" - I suppose we were the dirt the
clean-up refers to -
affected many people, especially children and
housewives.
While Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights would be
the first we
can expect to make this undertaking I can understand why they
too might not
be so enthusiastic. For the first time the fascist nature of
the government
would be exposed.
What the United Nations
Secretary-General's special envoy, Anna
Kajumulo Tibaijuka's report
documented would resemble a tea party compared
to the medical conditions
brought about by "Operation Murambatsvina". What
the government fears is
that along with Gukurahundi, last May's urban
cleansing could form the basis
for indicting the government and its leaders
for the worst human rights
violations witnessed during this century.
The first thing
that this month reminds us of is the government's
unfulfilled promise to
house the victims of its operation nationwide. A year
later the houses are
yet to be completed and the beneficiaries allocated.
But I
have my own doubts. My family and I lived in a rented
two-roomed cottage in
Pazarangu Street in Mbare. Our daughter was in Form II
at Mbare High
School. When the bulldozers came and destroyed what had been
to us "home"
for years we were not asked for our particulars. There was
never, to the
best of my knowledge, a register of the victims of "Operation
Murambatsvina".
Now if no record of who lived where, when
the "Caravan of
revenge" came, how will the government identify my family as
the victims of
its exercise in need of redress? As usual the government and
ruling party
will resort to their structures to "identify" victims of
"Murambatsvina",
thus opening it up to all forms of abuse. But the truth is
that it was never
part of the government's scheme of things to do anything
to the victims
beyond driving them out of the urban
centres.
The government only began talking of proper planning
after
concerns about the operation were raised by the United Nations. This
was
part of the government's damage control. We were not supposed to receive
any
consideration at all and I still do not believe we will. Most readers
will
recall how the government was going to build so many hundreds of houses
and
create so many thousands of jobs. Today I ask the "people's government":
where are the houses and where are the jobs? They are nowhere to be found
because they were never part of the initial plan by the
government.
I sent my wife and our children to the rural
areas to live with
relatives. I have remained behind, because there is
nothing to help sustain
my family in the crowded communal areas of
Manicaland where I come from. The
heavens were not kind to my family this
year because there were in
sufficient rains and the other villagers my
family depended on for odd jobs
are unable to help because they too feel the
effects of a poor agricultural
season.
Back in Harare
where I remained, I sometimes go to Lake Chivero
to get fish, which I in
turn sell in order to raise some money to send to my
family. My abode is
either the rural bus terminus or the railway station.
This is
how I have learnt to survive in order to look after
myself. There are many
others with far worse stories to tell. I do not
believe the government means
it when it says it will build houses for us.
That is cheap talk. This month
we will re-live the horrors of the nightmare
we encountered last
May.
Victim of Murambatsvina
Harare
-------------
Chinotimba - when is an employer a
worker?
IN the Zimbabwean context, the definition of a worker is
someone
who is employed by a company or by someone in exchange for an income
at the
end of the day, week or month.
Joseph Chinotimba,
Zanu PF's self-styled commander-in-chief of
farm invasions, runs a security
services company, Edlan. This makes him an
employer -
right?
How then is it possible that an employer can prance
around
during May Day celebrations purporting to represent workers? Not a
single
person protested against this misrepresentation. We deserve what we
get.
As commander-in-chief of farm invasions Chinotimba
raided farm
properties and businesses throwing many workers out of their
jobs. At the
last count an estimated 400 000 workers were rendered jobless,
while the
national unemployed statistics are put at 80% part of that figure
can be
attributed to factory invasions - thanks to Chinotimba and his rag
tag gang
of saboteurs of our economy.
So how does this
man, whose actions have put so many workers out
of their jobs, come to
represent workers? Because Zanu PF and the government
say
so.
I hope therefore that Chinotimba's workers are paid wages
that
are above the Poverty Datum Line because as a workers' representative
he
must surely know where the shoe hurts. But my understanding of these
ruling
party-aligned politicians is that they rank among the worst offenders
when
it comes to abusing their workers, simply because they are above the
law.
The moment anyone taking up their case realises that there is a Zanu PF
functionary behind the company experiencing labour disputes they lose
interest because there is usually a high price to pay.
Other readers can tell us of the numerous companies owned by
Zanu PF
politicians that are among the major violators of workers' rights,
further
explaining how farcical Chinotimba's role in representing workers
is.
I can only imagine the reasons why he is involved is
to ensure
that workers do not make outrageous demands and that they are
there to lend
support to the government at the expense of the ZCTU. It is
for this reason
that Chinotimba and company are accorded observer status at
the Tripartite
Negotiating Forum because real decisions are made for them
and they are just
window-dressers.
Chinotimba and company
will claim credit for last week's
announcements of salary increments for
civil servants and the uniformed
forces, as well as the introduction of a
Public Service Housing Programme,
effective from this month. Nothing could
be further from the truth.
The government is only making
these gestures in order to save
its bacon. The government is running scared
that the threatened
opposition-led mass action programme will ultimately
embolden an assault on
the government and therefore unseat it. That is the
only reason why the
government has acted.
As for the
housing programme, Zimbabweans are very gullible. How
many versions of this
scheme have we had since the time of the late Enos
Chikowore and the
scandal-ridden Pay-for-your-house scheme?
The government is
paying off workers in order to prevent the
opposition from embarrassing
President Robert Mugabe's government. Many Zanu
PF supporters may not
readily acknowledge this but they have the opposition
to thank for their
fortunes because without it, the government would have
no reason to act on
improving their lives.
The government's pre-occupation is
remaining in power for as
long as it takes - thanks to people like
Chinotimba, whose sole purpose
appears to be to subvert the interests of the
workers.
M Moyo
Fitchlea
Kwekwe
----------
Our collapsing health system: a personal
experience
I have read reports about how the health system is in
the
Intensive Care Unit but never really believed things were this bad until
I
took my sister-in-law to hospital recently.
She was
referred to the provincial hospital for X-rays
following a review by a
doctor at a clinic on 27 April.
At the hospital the following
morning, she was informed that the
X-ray equipment had broken down. She
tried another institution but there was
no electricity. So she went back
home.
On visiting her, I found her very sick and decided to
take her
back to the hospital. A doctor who was passing by the hospital
assessed her
condition and ordered that she be admitted. I was asked to pay
a deposit fee
of $1 500 000. When we got to the female ward, we were told:
"We do not have
any blankets, so you should go back home and fetch some
blankets." I asked
my husband to take the blankets to the hospital.
Imagine my horror when he
came back and told me he had been told there was
no food!
The following morning I asked about the treatment
that the
doctor had ordered and was told that they had given her nothing. I
requested
a prescription and then went to buy the medication. In the
afternoon, we
assisted the patient to bathe in very cold water as there was
no hot water.
During my training as a nurse, I was taught
nutrition and
cleanliness were essential to healing.
I
feel sorry for the nurses because they can not do anything for
the patients,
besides watching them die helplessly. Lord have mercy!
Horrified
Harare
------------
Harare demands
elections now
THE Combined Harare Residents' Association rejects
the idea of
replacing a failed commission with another commission to run the
affairs of
Harare at the expense of a democratically elected
council.
Residents of Harare are clear on what they want. For
the record,
the residents were loud and categorical at the Girls' High
School on
Tuesday, 25 April, before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on
Local
Government that conducted a public hearing into the state of service
delivery by the City of Harare.
Perennial commissions
with unlimited terms are unwelcome in
Harare and any other local authority.
What we demand are elections for a
people's council right
now.
CHRA is not hoodwinked by the vilification of the
Sekesai
Makwavarara Commission by some people in government who are leaking
information to the media as a pre-emptive strategy. We are aware that the
plot is to get residents to endorse the removal of Makwavarara and celebrate
a new commission. Service delivery and legitimacy are non-existent in the
current strategy.
While we welcome the inevitable exit of
Makwavarara and her
fellow commissioners, CHRA demands that the Minister of
Local Government,
Public Works and Urban Development, Ignatious Chombo, and
the Minister of
Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Patrick Chinamasa
urgently
organise fresh mayoral and council elections for Harare. This is in
line
with Section 80 (4) of the Urban Councils' Act (Chapter 29: 15) that
says;
"Before the termination of office of a commissioner appointed in terms
of
subsection (1), otherwise than at a general election or in the
circumstances
referred to in paragraph (a) of Subsection (3), the
commissioner shall cause
an election to be held on such date as may be fixed
by the commissioner to
fill the vacancies on the council as if they were
special vacancies.
The prolonged administration of Harare by
commissions that
clearly lack the mandate of residents will further
prejudice residents of
their democratic right to choose leaders of their
choice. The principle of
re-appointing commissions beyond the mandatory nine
months was ruled illegal
by the High Court and the Supreme Court (Makarau's
judgement in Case Number
HC12862/00 of Christopher Magwenzi Zvobgo versus
the City of Harare.
Supreme Court judge Justice Wilson
Sandura in the case of Lottie
Stevenson versus the Minister of Local
Government and others in case SC
38/02 and High Court judge Justice Hungwe's
judgement in case Number HH
210/2001 of CHRA and another versus the
Registrar-General) have made similar
judgements.
We
categorically state that what we want is not a change of
faces at the helm
of the city but a lasting solution to local government
structural problems,
locally and nationally, starting with democratic
elections.
Precious Shumba
Combined Harare
Residents' Association
-------------
Tinkering with
constitution a betrayal of the masses
WHERE do those in public
office derive the power to govern? It
is generally recognised that people
can make and unmake governments and
provide them with constitutions,
administrations and even political parties.
But can these
same people who elect those governments have the
capacity to limit the power
of governments they make? That is the most
fundamental problem: how to
preserve liberty from the ravages of government.
It is a problem that
engaged the anxious concern of philosophers for more
than three thousand
years but it has never been solved to the satisfaction
of those most deeply
concerned - the people themselves.
In free states, the people
are considered the fountain of power.
The short of this is that governments
should derive their power from the
consent of the
governed.
George Mason once wrote that "government. is
instituted for the
common benefit, protection and security of the people,
nation or community".
Of all the various modes and forms of
government, that is the
best which is capable of producing the greatest
degree of happiness and
safety and is most effectually secured against the
danger of
maladministration, and when any government shall be found
inadequate or
contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an
indubitable,
unalienable and indefensible right to reform, alter and abolish
it.
The people - the governed have an unalienable right to
reform or
alter the government. This is the heart of political
constitutional
democracy.
How then can we the people -
the true bearers or holders of
political power - exercise this right to make
and unmake governments?
Basically this power is exercised
through constitutional
mechanisms that have been devised and evolved through
the ages. The starting
point is the constitution and its making
process.
The constitution is a national document against
which all other
laws should be aligned. It is now generally accepted that
since it is a
document that spells out the powers of those in political
office; it should
derive its existence from the people because they elect
governments.
Most African states got their constitutions
through negotiations
between the colonial masters and the leaders of
liberation movements. The
constitutions obtained through this way were most
reflective of the
aspirations and attitudes of the general populace. These
were discarded by
the post-colonial states in favour or home-grown,
people-driven
constitutions, a case being South Africa.
This is in contrast to what is obtaining in Zimbabwe. This
democratic
deficit is not only limited to the general populace but also
extends to
those in political power.
Instead of serving its purpose of
limiting the arbitrariness
and exercise of power, the constitution has been
viewed by those in office
as a document that enables and facilitates the
exercise of power, hence its
subjugation to an array of amendments. The
general populace just watches as
amendments follow one after another. This
is so because they do not identify
with a document that is "foreign" to
them. It did not emanate from their
popular will.
What
the Zanu PF politicians are doing to the constitution is a
betrayal of the
powers conferred on them - if that is what genuinely
happened - by the
Zimbabwean electorate. Amendments should only be carried
out through the
approval of the people.
Public power in Zimbabwe has been
abused to the detriment of the
conferrers of that same power. It has been
used by the ruling elite not for
the betterment of the popular will but for
the advancement and propagation
of selfish ends. Note a president uttering
sentiments of death to an
innocent man leading a struggle for the
emancipation of the oppressed
masses. He wants to die clinging to the
political office. This is not
surprising because the vanity and presumption
of governing beyond one's
lifetime is the most ridiculous and insolent of
all tyrannies.
We are the real holders of political power and
the ramparts of
defence against tyranny lies in the hearts of the
people.
We, the people
Bindura
---------
Those who support the dictatorship will be
called to account
CHIPINGE South constituency was represented by
the late Reverend
Ndabaningi Sithole and more recently, Wilson
Kumbula.
None of them ever faced charges of theft. Recent
developments in
the constituency show the extent of Zanu PF's corrupt and
intolerable
governance.
It did not take long for the
alleged offences to take place.
This at a time when socially the country is
facing its worst problems. There
are health centres that are either without
drugs or where they are
available, they are beyond the reach of the majority
and this is one of the
reasons why doctors and nurses are leaving the
country.
The educational system is in the Intensive Care Unit
and
deterioration of the system was hastened by the localisation of our
examinations, coupled with a poorly planned decentralisation
programme.
As a result, school fees like health costs, are
beyond the reach
of the ordinary people.
President Robert
Mugabe once boasted that no one could manage
the economy better than he has
done. However, the results of what is
happening to the economy are self
evident. Unsound economic policies
formulated by Zanu PF have resulted in
improper business practices and this
has resulted in corruption, which is
gnawing at our social fabric. By
allowing corruption to flourish, Mugabe has
prescribed the demise of our
economy.
It is largely
because of corruption that we are faced with the
twin evils of foreign
currency crisis and fuel shortages.
Faced with the threat to
his political survival, Mugabe decided
to let so-called war veterans and
supporters of the ruling party invade and
occupy once viable commercial
farms. Not content with that, he has gone
further and worked tirelessly to
isolate Zimbabwe from the rest of the
world - even finding the temerity to
tell off international financial
institutions such as the IMF and the World
Bank.
Despite the fact that we need more friends than
enemies, our
leaders are doing the opposite - isolating us from the rest of
the world.
History informs us that working against the
interests of the
majority of the people will never yield positive results.
Ian Smith can
confirm this. Mugabe is making the same
mistake.
As for the opposition, it is saddening that the
party is riven
with such serious divisions. But in a struggle, sometimes
this phase is
unavoidable and necessary.
To Morgan
Tsvangirai I say sometimes a noble undertaking at
first looks impossible. Do
not let current failures deter you. One day this
country will be freed from
the chains of oppression by our own black
brothers. The people of this
country are their own liberators.
Those who prolong the
lifespan of a dictatorship need to be
advised that they are prolonging the
people's suffering and that one day
they will be asked to explain their role
when Zimbabwe holds its own
Nuremberg.
One thing is
certain: Change is inevitable.
M V Maunganidze
Checheche
Chipinge South
---------------
Hunger, my companion
WE have had it up to
here! What have we done to deserve this?. People
this side of the country
wake up at 3AM in order to prepare to leave for
work. We have nothing to
show for it and no one to fight on our behalf.
There is nothing to look
forward to and no one to look up to.
We have never suffered like
this before because the cost of food,
rentals and transport has become
unbearable. Everything is just too dear.
In the good old past we
used to take sweets in order to bribe and
assuage the pangs of hunger, but
now hunger is my constant companion.
Milton N Mandaza
Pumula North
Bulawayo
------------
TeleAcess
mourned
PLEASE pass my condolences to Daniel Shumba for the
stillbirth of
TeleAccess.
Now we can see that he is a failure
of the highest magnitude. Please
inform POTRAZ that every able
businessperson is waiting for the licence.
We will be most grateful
now that he can't, if he moves out of this
business and tries potato selling
or maybe something else. We will be most
grateful to see the many
professionals he has let down being taken on by
other
enterprises.
Rest in peace TeleAccess.
C
Banda
Harare
---------
In danger of
drowning
IT is now three months since I reported a burst water pipe
along 37th
Avenue, in Haig Park, Mabelreign. What started as a small trickle
has
developed into a small stream and threatens to become a
flood.
Clearly, the municipal authority is now overwhelmed by its
own
shortcomings and can no longer cope. They must admit it.
DK
Harare
----------
Smell of football
nepotism in Independence Cup
IS the Independence Cup only by
invitation.? To me this was more
like football nepotism of the worst kind by
the so-called new Zimbabwe
Football Association in order to favour Dynamos
without shame.
Thomas Mapfumo has already correctly
identified such acts as
corruption. There it is - for everyone to see and
judge.
I suggest that Premier League clubs unite and fight
this cancer
together before it gets far. Today it is Motor Action, but who
knows because
tomorrow it will be any of the clubs except Dynamos - the
favoured one.
In the past we have had various football cups
competed for and
among them were BAT, Chibuku, Dairibord, Castle and BP. All
these have
disappeared from the football calendar because of poor football
administrators. As I write, there is no sponsor for the 2006 Premier
League.
Sponsors cannot risk their hard-earned cash on blind
football
administrators. They would rather give to charity where it is spent
in a
worthwhile manner.
Where in the world do football
administrators handpick teams for
cup matches? In the past, when the above
cups were competed for, teams had
to really sweat to win and that was real
football - enjoyed by all football
fans.
That was when we
got names such as "giant killers" as well as
"cup kings" because of the high
level of football competition.
On "This is football"
programme on the above issue, Charles
Mabika as the adjudicator was very
biased and aligned to Dynamos. The way he
put his questions across to
Simeon Jamanda betrayed his pretence at
neutrality towards the issue being
discussed.
Mabika should have asked fair and neutral
questions. I salute
Jamanda for responding with cool, clear and intelligent
answers to Mabika's
provocative questioning
D R
Mutungagore
Mutare