VOA
By
Patience Rusere
Washington
16 November
2006
A top official with a leading Zimbabwean humanitarian aid
organization said
Thursday that he hopes to get permission from the Harare
government next
week to distribute food assistance to the thousands of
people around the
country who need it.
Christian Care Deputy Director
Nyika Musiyazviriyo said obtaining
authorization at all levels of government
from Harare ministries to local
rural district councils is critical, as the
World Food Program only ships
food when such permissions are in
place.
For the moment, said Musiyazviriyo, Christian Care is getting
ready to
distribute food now that the traditional lean season is upon the
country,
but has not actually begun to do so, contrary to some reports in
the
Zimbabwean press this week. It is estimated that some 1.4 million
Zimbabweans or more will need food assistance this year.
Reporter
Patience Rusere asked Musiyazviriyo more about current operations
VOA
By
Blessing Zulu
Washington
16 November
2006
Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party is under fire for trying to
amend the
constitution as a way to manage a divisive internal struggle over
the
presidential succession.
ZANU-PF spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira was
quoted in the government controlled
Herald newspaper Thursday as saying the
party supports a presidential term
limit and simultaneous parliamentary and
presidential elections. Insiders
said an amendment is likely to be floated
at the ZANU-PF national conference
set for early December.
But other
members are pushing for an amendment to let President Robert
Mugabe, in
power since 1980, stay in office until 2010 though his term
expires in
2008.
Shamuyarira told reporter Blessing Zulu he was merely expressing
his
personal views as to how the constitution should be amended concerning
the
presidential term.
National Constitutional Assembly chairman and
government critic Lovemore
Madhuku, an expert on constitutional law, charged
that the ruling party is
moving towards extending Mr. Mugabe's term through
another constitutional
amendment.
People's Daily
Zimbabwe's ruling party Zanu-PF supports fixed
presidential terms and
holding of parliamentary and presidential elections
simultaneously, The
Herald reported on Thursday.
Zanu-PF
secretary for information and publicity Nathan Shamuyarira was
quoted by the
newspaper as saying that the ruling party accepts the concept,
which he said
was in tandem with other systems in Africa.
He was presenting a
paper on a conference on governance organized by
the Center for Peace
Initiatives in Africa and attended by government
officials, political
leaders, civic society delegates, diplomats, trade
unionists and church
representatives.
"In Zimbabwe, this fact is acceptable to the
ruling party. Indeed, it
was part of our submission to the Commission that
reviewed the Constitution
in year 2000, but was rejected by the opposition
parties," said Shamuyarira.
"The election of Members of Parliament
and the President should be
conducted at the same time in order to reduce
costs. The mechanisms for such
elections are approved by Parliament and all
participating parties,
administered by an independent electoral commission,"
he said.
He said Zimbabwe was the first country to hold elections
under the
SADC electoral guidelines, which were endorsed as free and fair by
the
regional bloc.
Source: Xinhua
Independent, UK
This is the fate of women in Zimbabwe, where they now
have the world's
lowest life expectancy after 26 years of Mugabe
By
Daniel Howden in Bulawayo
Published: 17 November 2006
A rusted wire fence
divides the old Zimbabwe from the new. On the one side
lies Effie Malamba;
born in 1901 she was buried beneath a granite headstone
90 years later. On
the other is Sylvia Ncube; born in 1974 she was laid to
rest just 32 years
later. The wire separates Bulawayo's old Hyde Park
cemetery from the
extension opened this February. Effie lies amid ordered
ranks of stone
epitaphs. Sylvia lies in a chaos of churned earth. All around
her the mounds
of mud and stones, garlanded with plastic flowers, tell the
story of the
shocking disintegration of Zimbabwe, which now has the lowest
life
expectancy for women anywhere in the world: 34.
A forest of black metal
plates marks the mounting death toll and their
hand-painted white numbers
record the birth dates of a missing generation.
Thulan Sabanda, born 1972;
Ozia Moyo in 1971, Lulu Olomo in 1975, are just
three of
hundreds.
The World Health Organisation has plotted this precipitous fall
in women's
mortality in the former British colony from 65, little more than
a decade
ago, to today's low. Speaking privately, WHO officials admitted to
The
Independent that the real number may be as low as 30, as the present
figures
are based on data collected two years ago.
The reasons for
this plunge are several. Zimbabwe has found itself at the
nexus of an Aids
pandemic, a food crisis and an economic meltdown that is
killing an
estimated 3,500 people every week. That figure is more than those
dying in
Iraq, Darfur or Lebanon. In war-torn Afghanistan, where women's
plight has
received global attention, life expectancy is still above 40.
This cull
is not an act of God. It is a catastrophe aggravated by the
ruthless,
kleptocratic reign of Robert Mugabe, in power since independence
in 1980.
The Mugabe regime has succeeded in turning a country once f๊ted as
the
breadbasket of Africa into a famished and demoralised land deserted by
its
men of working age, with its women left to die a silent death.
With the
state in collapse, the evidence of this tragedy is necessarily
anecdotal.
At Hyde Park, one of many cemeteries in one of many towns,
the grave diggers
are tired. They say they are carving up to 25 graves a day
from the baked
earth, more than double the figure earlier in the
year.
Twenty-six-year-old Shenghi, like almost every other Zimbabwean, is
a member
of a burial society - a kind of morbid Christmas club. These
savings
associations bring people together to meet the costs of burying
their sons,
daughters, sisters and brothers at a rate that's accelerating
beyond
comprehension. "In the last three months we've had to bury 14 of the
50
people in our society," she says.
Zimbabwe is now a place haunted
by incomprehensible numbers: 85 per cent of
the population living in
poverty; 80 per cent unemployment; 90 per cent HIV
infection rates in the
army and most unbelievably, 2,000 per cent inflation.
In this man-made
chaos it is the women, bottom of the social heap, who are
suffering the
most. The men have the option of leaving children to jump the
border into
South Africa. Many return only to be buried but at 37 years,
their life
expectancy remains marginally higher.
Eighteen months ago the government
launched operation Murambatsvina - Drive
Out the Trash - a vicious offensive
aimed at the poorest sectors of society.
Hundreds of thousands of families
were made homeless in slum clearances and
street vendors were arrested,
robbed and driven out of business. Shari
Appel, from the NGO Solidarity
Peace Trust, says that trauma is killing
people before their time: "The
stress and misery mean people are keeling
over and dying. The health system
has totally collapsed. Now access to
education is going the same way and
girls are the first to miss out. In the
overcrowding, domestic violence and
sexual abuse are rife."
Amen is 33 years old. Lying on a stained sheet in
an Aids hospice outside
the country's second city, Bulawayo, she is waiting
to die. Her body is
covered in the tell-tale sores of full-blown Aids. She
has three children
staying with her sister in Plum Tree. It is only an
hour's drive away but
she has not seen them once since checking in four
months ago as no one has
money for transport.
Anna, 25, gets to see
her children. Proud is eight, and out at school,
Agrippa, six, is at home
along with his sister, 18-month-old Violet. Home is
a one-room shack with no
running water or electricity. Violet is sitting on
the bed that takes up
half of the living space. Like her mother and
brothers, she is covered in
sores, her scalp is ringed with white scabs.
There's no money to get a
doctor to tell Anna what she already knows - they
all have Aids.
With
proper health care and access to anti-retrovirals (ARVs) HIV sufferers
can
now live with the disease for decades.
But in Zimbabwe the health system
is disintegrating. Pledges of free ARVs
from the government contrast with
the reality of corrupt, incompetent and
threadbare health care for those
with money - for those without it is
completely out of reach.
State
hospitals are unofficially charging to see patients, dispensaries are
empty
and the brain drain has seen almost every qualified nurse or doctor
leave.
Even dying comes at a cost. Families wanting to collect a relative's
body
must provide a coffin in order to claim them. Many simply cannot afford
this.
The result is on show at the hospital mortuary in Nkayi in the
north of
Matabeleland. Its imposing metal fridge has only one working motor,
so the
bodies are kept just a few degrees below the boiling daytime
temperature
outside. Its nine berths are home to at least a dozen cadavers.
Only a few
are fresh enough to be swollen. The others have decomposed inside
the
clothing that was never taken off them. The stench is
appalling.
When asked how long they had been there, the hospital guard
shrugs and
replies: "More than a year."
Apart from the funeral
parlours the only thing that is booming is the secret
police - the Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO). Its swollen budget,
many times higher than
health spending, has enabled its network of informers
and enforcers to keep
a lid on almost all resistance. They have been
credited with infiltrating
the main opposition Movement for Democratic
Change, which tore itself apart
this year, splitting into rival factions. It
no longer threatens a repeat of
the election win it credibly claims Mr
Mugabe stole from it two years
ago.
In this climate of fear and despair, it is a women's group that has
consistently defied the regime to go out on to the streets and protest.
Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza) was set up three years ago and its founder,
businesswoman Jenni Williams, has been arrested countless times and had her
life threatened on several occasions.
Despite this there are now an
estimated 30,000 members, who are
demonstrating for basic rights including
access to food, education and
healthcare. And so far Woza's strict creed of
non-violence has made it hard
for authorities to crack down on it too
viciously. "It's very hard for a
policeman to intimidate us when his mum,
his sister, or his girlfriend is
there as one of us. It's embarrassing for
them," Ms Williams says. "I'm very
proud to be a Zimbabwean woman right now.
Why should a woman carry all these
burdens and be silent?"
Some names
have been changed to protect individuals.
Nation's decline
4m The
amount the population is thought to have fallen since the last census
in
2002. Current estimates put it as low as 8 million.
34 Life expectancy
for women. It was 65 just over a decade ago. It is much
lower than in
neighbouring countries: in Zambia, life expectancy for women
is 40; in
Mozambique, 46; in Botswana, 40; in South Africa, 49.
120/1000 The infant
mortality rate. During the 1990s, it was 61/10-00.
7,000 The cost in
Zimbabwean dollars of a dose of anti-retroviral drugs to
combat
Aids.
50% The amount Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk since
1999.
2000% The rate of inflation in Zimbabwe. In 1980, when the country
became
independent, the rate was 7 per cent.
73m The size of
Zimbabwe's tobacco output in millions of tonnes. In 2000 it
was 734
million.
A rusted wire fence divides the old Zimbabwe from the new. On
the one side
lies Effie Malamba; born in 1901 she was buried beneath a
granite headstone
90 years later. On the other is Sylvia Ncube; born in 1974
she was laid to
rest just 32 years later. The wire separates Bulawayo's old
Hyde Park
cemetery from the extension opened this February. Effie lies amid
ordered
ranks of stone epitaphs. Sylvia lies in a chaos of churned earth.
All around
her the mounds of mud and stones, garlanded with plastic flowers,
tell the
story of the shocking disintegration of Zimbabwe, which now has the
lowest
life expectancy for women anywhere in the world: 34.
A forest
of black metal plates marks the mounting death toll and their
hand-painted
white numbers record the birth dates of a missing generation.
Thulan
Sabanda, born 1972; Ozia Moyo in 1971, Lulu Olomo in 1975, are just
three of
hundreds.
The World Health Organisation has plotted this precipitous fall
in women's
mortality in the former British colony from 65, little more than
a decade
ago, to today's low. Speaking privately, WHO officials admitted to
The
Independent that the real number may be as low as 30, as the present
figures
are based on data collected two years ago.
The reasons for
this plunge are several. Zimbabwe has found itself at the
nexus of an Aids
pandemic, a food crisis and an economic meltdown that is
killing an
estimated 3,500 people every week. That figure is more than those
dying in
Iraq, Darfur or Lebanon. In war-torn Afghanistan, where women's
plight has
received global attention, life expectancy is still above 40.
This cull
is not an act of God. It is a catastrophe aggravated by the
ruthless,
kleptocratic reign of Robert Mugabe, in power since independence
in 1980.
The Mugabe regime has succeeded in turning a country once f๊ted as
the
breadbasket of Africa into a famished and demoralised land deserted by
its
men of working age, with its women left to die a silent death.
With the
state in collapse, the evidence of this tragedy is necessarily
anecdotal.
At Hyde Park, one of many cemeteries in one of many towns,
the grave diggers
are tired. They say they are carving up to 25 graves a day
from the baked
earth, more than double the figure earlier in the
year.
Twenty-six-year-old Shenghi, like almost every other Zimbabwean, is
a member
of a burial society - a kind of morbid Christmas club. These
savings
associations bring people together to meet the costs of burying
their sons,
daughters, sisters and brothers at a rate that's accelerating
beyond
comprehension. "In the last three months we've had to bury 14 of the
50
people in our society," she says.
Zimbabwe is now a place haunted
by incomprehensible numbers: 85 per cent of
the population living in
poverty; 80 per cent unemployment; 90 per cent HIV
infection rates in the
army and most unbelievably, 2,000 per cent inflation.
In this man-made
chaos it is the women, bottom of the social heap, who are
suffering the
most. The men have the option of leaving children to jump the
border into
South Africa. Many return only to be buried but at 37 years,
their life
expectancy remains marginally higher.
Eighteen months ago the government
launched operation Murambatsvina - Drive
Out the Trash - a vicious offensive
aimed at the poorest sectors of society.
Hundreds of thousands of families
were made homeless in slum clearances and
street vendors were arrested,
robbed and driven out of business. Shari
Appel, from the NGO Solidarity
Peace Trust, says that trauma is killing
people before their time: "The
stress and misery mean people are keeling
over and dying. The health system
has totally collapsed. Now access to
education is going the same way and
girls are the first to miss out. In the
overcrowding, domestic violence and
sexual abuse are rife."
Amen is 33 years old. Lying on a stained sheet in
an Aids hospice outside
the country's second city, Bulawayo, she is waiting
to die. Her body is
covered in the tell-tale sores of full-blown Aids. She
has three children
staying with her sister in Plum Tree. It is only an
hour's drive away but
she has not seen them once since checking in four
months ago as no one has
money for transport.
Anna, 25, gets to see
her children. Proud is eight, and out at school,
Agrippa, six, is at home
along with his sister, 18-month-old Violet. Home is
a one-room shack with no
running water or electricity. Violet is sitting on
the bed that takes up
half of the living space. Like her mother and
brothers, she is covered in
sores, her scalp is ringed with white scabs.
There's no money to get a
doctor to tell Anna what she already knows - they
all have Aids.
With
proper health care and access to anti-retrovirals (ARVs) HIV sufferers
can
now live with the disease for decades.
But in Zimbabwe the health system
is disintegrating. Pledges of free ARVs
from the government contrast with
the reality of corrupt, incompetent and
threadbare health care for those
with money - for those without it is
completely out of reach.
State
hospitals are unofficially charging to see patients, dispensaries are
empty
and the brain drain has seen almost every qualified nurse or doctor
leave.
Even dying comes at a cost. Families wanting to collect a relative's
body
must provide a coffin in order to claim them. Many simply cannot afford
this.
The result is on show at the hospital mortuary in Nkayi in the
north of
Matabeleland. Its imposing metal fridge has only one working motor,
so the
bodies are kept just a few degrees below the boiling daytime
temperature
outside. Its nine berths are home to at least a dozen cadavers.
Only a few
are fresh enough to be swollen. The others have decomposed inside
the
clothing that was never taken off them. The stench is
appalling.
When asked how long they had been there, the hospital guard
shrugs and
replies: "More than a year."
Apart from the funeral
parlours the only thing that is booming is the secret
police - the Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO). Its swollen budget,
many times higher than
health spending, has enabled its network of informers
and enforcers to keep
a lid on almost all resistance. They have been
credited with infiltrating
the main opposition Movement for Democratic
Change, which tore itself apart
this year, splitting into rival factions. It
no longer threatens a repeat of
the election win it credibly claims Mr
Mugabe stole from it two years
ago.
In this climate of fear and despair, it is a women's group that has
consistently defied the regime to go out on to the streets and protest.
Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza) was set up three years ago and its founder,
businesswoman Jenni Williams, has been arrested countless times and had her
life threatened on several occasions.
Despite this there are now an
estimated 30,000 members, who are
demonstrating for basic rights including
access to food, education and
healthcare. And so far Woza's strict creed of
non-violence has made it hard
for authorities to crack down on it too
viciously. "It's very hard for a
policeman to intimidate us when his mum,
his sister, or his girlfriend is
there as one of us. It's embarrassing for
them," Ms Williams says. "I'm very
proud to be a Zimbabwean woman right now.
Why should a woman carry all these
burdens and be silent?"
Some names
have been changed to protect individuals.
Nation's decline
4m The
amount the population is thought to have fallen since the last census
in
2002. Current estimates put it as low as 8 million.
34 Life expectancy
for women. It was 65 just over a decade ago. It is much
lower than in
neighbouring countries: in Zambia, life expectancy for women
is 40; in
Mozambique, 46; in Botswana, 40; in South Africa, 49.
120/1000 The infant
mortality rate. During the 1990s, it was 61/10-00.
7,000 The cost in
Zimbabwean dollars of a dose of anti-retroviral drugs to
combat
Aids.
50% The amount Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk since
1999.
2000% The rate of inflation in Zimbabwe. In 1980, when the country
became
independent, the rate was 7 per cent.
73m The size of
Zimbabwe's tobacco output in millions of tonnes. In 2000 it
was 734
million.
People's Daily
The Algerian government is committed to establish
strong and diverse
ties with Zimbabwe to strengthen bilateral relations
between the two
countries, a diplomat said on Thursday.
Business community in Zimbabwe should utilize the full potential of
business
opportunities offered by the excellent political, diplomatic and
historic
relations that exist between the two countries, urged Algerian
ambassador to
Zimbabwe Ali Mokrani when speaking at a celebration in Harare
to mark the 52
anniversary of the Algerian revolution which ended 132 years
of French
colonization.
In the spirit of cooperation between Zimbabwe and
Algeria, the two
countries drafted agreements in all economic areas to
facilitate increased
business activity and trade between the two
countries.
Algeria also extended solidarity with Zimbabwe through
the provision
of scholarships, food aid and medical donations.
At continental level, ambassador Mokrani said his country believed
that
Africans should pool their resources together to tackle head on the
challenges resulting from globalization and enhance trade rather than
aid.
Speaking on behalf of the Zimbabwean government at the
occasion,
Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Obert Matshalaga said it was
imperative to
conclude negotiations on trade and convene the joint
commission.
He spoke of the need to broaden and deepen bilateral
relations in the
economic, technical and cultural areas and at continental
and global levels
through the African union, the non-aligned movement and
the UN.
Source: Xinhua
People's Daily
The Polish Embassy has started construction of a
technical training
center to provide skills and business training for
disadvantaged youth in
west Zimbabwe province of Matebeleland North, New
Ziana reported on
Thursday.
The multi-billion dollar project
will be constructed in four phases,
with construction of a multi-purpose
hall and lecture rooms already under
way, the state news agency quoted
Polish Ambassador Jan Wielenski as saying.
Phase Two will see the
construction of hostels, the third will cover
the development of sports
fields and the fourth phase will be the
commissioning of a small farm, the
ambassador said.
"The project has already started under the
guidance of the Salesians
of Don Bosco, a missionary group from my country,"
Wielenski said. "We
bought some land on a 99 year lease from Hwange Council
and we have begun
building. It is our policy to first secure a lease before
we start
construction, it gives everyone security."
The college
will train disadvantaged youth in motor mechanics,
carpentry, farming skills
and basic business management. The courses will
run for two years with the
college assisting the graduates to set up their
own businesses.
The Hwange college will be Poland's first in Zimbabwe while the
Eastern
European country has started similar projects in Zambia and Malawi.
Source: Xinhua
Zim Independent
Dumisani
Muleya
VICE-PRESIDENT Joice Mujuru, widely-tipped as
President Robert
Mugabe's successor, has been named in the Ziscosteel scandal
in a report
compiled by the National Economic Conduct Inspectorate (NECI),
an elite
government crime-investigation unit run by state
security.
One of the three volumes of the confidential NECI
report on
Zisco obtained this week, marked "Secret" also names
co-Vice-President
Joseph Msika although it says supporting documents as to
whether he got
something or not were not availed to the investigation team.
Msika has said
Zisco was not looted.
But NECI says Zisco
finances were raided through questionable
contracts and a string of payments
covering services, airfares, hotel
bookings, purchases of goods, foreign
currency, directors' fees, management
expenses and entertainment
allowances.
Government has of late been scrambling to bury
the report to
hide its disclosures while ministers have been trying to
obfuscate the
issue.
The report says Mujuru was paid US$11
000 as allowances by
Ziscosteel subsidiaries in Botswana, Ramotswa/Tswana
Iron & Steel, on
October 4 2003.
"On the 4th of
October 2003 US$11 000 was purchased to provide
some allowance for Mrs J
Mujuru who was in Botswana," it says. "The other
point to note is that this
foreign currency acquired is not properly
accounted for and it is mostly
used to meet 'advances' to visitors."
The report submitted to
Mugabe also says Mujuru received 30 000
litres of fuel from Zisco for her
celebrations after she was elected
vice-president in 2004. Zanu PF got 30
000 litres of diesel and 30 000
litres of petrol for its 2003 conference
worth Pula 64 860 and P59 310
respectively.
Zisco is
facing a serious financial crisis due to poor
capitalisation and mounting
debts. This detail is contained in the thick
Volume 1 of NECI's
report.
According to the report, Mujuru had an air ticket
bought for her
for P8 094,80 for a trip to Botswana, while a room for her was
booked from
October 3-6 2003 by Zisco's marketing executive Rodwell Makuni
at Grand Palm
Hotel Casino & Convention Resort in
Gaborone.
More than P150 000 was spent on hotel bookings for
top
government officials and Zisco managers, especially at the five-star
Grand
Palm Hotel where VIPs spent public funds on food and drink, often
over
weekends.
"At times more than two rooms were booked
using one name in a
bid to hide the identity of the other guests. For
instance, Mr R Makuni was
booked in rooms 543, 544, and 547 from 03/10/2003
to 06/10/2003," the report
says.
"During the same period
some of the room service receipts were
being signed by Mr (Shelton) Chivhere,
the company (Romotswa) business
manager, on behalf of the 'mystery guests'.
This means that there were two
or more guests being catered for using Mr
Makuni's name. The booking
requisition shows the names of Mrs J Mujuru, Mr
(Tirivanhu) Mudariki and Mr
Makuni."
Prominent cabinet
ministers Samuel Mumbengegwi, Olivia Muchena
and Sithembiso Nyoni are also
mentioned in the report as some of those who
could have benefited from the
generous handouts from the government-owned
company. Muchena this week said
she did not travel to Botswana at the time
even though she was invited. The
NECI report says she was bought a ticket.
The report confirms
Mumbengengwi was paid a US$3 000 "allowance"
while he was attending a Sadc
meeting in Gaborone on July 17 2003. He also
had P3 152, 80 paid for his
hotel booking at the Cresta Lodge in Botswana on
May 8
2004.
The NECI report names Higher Education minister Stan
Mudenge,
Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa, former Zanu PF MP Mudariki and
the late
ruling party MP Gibson Munyoro as beneficiaries but also points out
that in
their case - just as in Msika's - documents were not made available
to
investigators.
"The company (Ramotswa/Tswana) also
bought air tickets for
non-Zisco officials. These include Mrs J Mujuru, Mrs S
Nyoni (and) Dr O
Muchena who had nothing to do with Zisco in their official
capacities then,
to mention a few government ministers, and Mr Mudariki,"
the report says.
Annexure 22 of the report has a schedule
showing the air tickets
bought and the names of
passengers.
The report says Mujuru and Mudariki's tickets
were for the
Harare-Gaborone-Harare route, while Muchena, Nyoni and
Mudariki's tickets
bought through Koy Tours & Travel on June 17 2004 were
for the
Harare-Johannesburg-Gaborone legs. Mujuru's ticket cost P8 094,80 and
the
others P16 625.
The report states Muchena's ticket
was for the
Harare-Johannesburg-Gaborone-Johannesburg-Harare trip and its
invoice number
was 764.
Nyoni and Mudariki's tickets had
the same details. Another
ticket was bought for Mudariki on May 24 2003.
Altogether P92 924,40 was
paid for the air tickets. Muchena says she declined
the trip to Botswana. No
comment could be obtained from Mujuru or
Msika.
Zim Independent
Clemence
Manyukwe
FOLLOWING President Robert Mugabe's assenting to the Gazetted Land
(Consequential Provisions) Bill, government plans to evict nearly 50 A2 farmers
in Mashonaland West, some of whom were arrested this week following skirmishes
with a senior Zanu PF official in the area.
The new legislation dictates
that "no person may hold, use or occupy gazetted land without lawful authority"
and provides that former farm owners or occupiers who violate the law are
"liable to a fine not exceeding level seven or to imprisonment for a period not
exceeding two years or both".
Resettled farmers have in the past four years
been protected from eviction by the Land Occupiers (Protection from Eviction)
Act. The Act was repealed by the new legislation giving government powers to
evict resettled farmers, even those who hold offer letters.
In an interview
yesterday, Mashonaland West provincial governor Nelson Samkange said a land
committee had recommended to government the eviction of the A2 farmers from
Impalavale Farm near Kadoma after an audit by the Lands Inspectorate established
that they were underutilising land and vandalising irrigation equipment.
Samkange added that Kadoma businessman and Zanu PF central committee member
Jamaya Muduuri who owns a portion of the farm had made the
recommendation.
The governor said the request had been forwarded to the
National Security, Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement ministry which is yet to
make a decision on whether the people should be evicted or not.
"There was an
audit there and it was established that the people were underutilising land and
vandalising irrigation equipment," Samkange said.
"The land is not for
drinking beer. If you are not planting, it will be taken from you and the law
allows that," Samkange said.
The governor said currently there was
"replanning and reorganisation" and besides those who were going to lose their
land for failing to use it, others would get reduced portions if found to be
failing to fully use their bigger portions.
He added: "There is a
misconception that everyone should get land. Somewhere for you to live yes, but
there is no nation in the world made up of farmers, others should be in
industry."
On the detention of farmers by police on Tuesday, Samkange said
the law enforcement agents were called in after the farmers became violent and
barred Muduuri from his property. The farmers accused Muduuri of engineering
their eviction for him to extend his plot.
It could not be established
whether the farmers who were detained at Battlefields police station in the same
province had been charged.
Asked what would happen to those A2 farmers who
had offer letters, the governor responded: "The law provides that the minister
can withdraw an offer letter if you are not producing. We need to feed this
nation."
Muduuri refused to comment.
Last week President Mugabe issued
99-year leases to 125 A2 farmers which the government said would give them
security of tenure.
On Wednesday the MDC faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai
said leases alone would not guarantee increased food production because of
government's bungling.
It said the leases had been given out mostly to
incompetent people with Zanu PF connections.
"The granting of 99-year leases
mostly to incompetent farmers will not guarantee us a bumper harvest," said
Vincent Gwaradzimba, the party's deputy secretary for lands and agriculture.
Zim Independent
GOVERNMENT has
resorted to secretly importing grain to cover the imminent shortages the country
is facing as solutions to the food crisis continue to elude the
authorities.
Letters between Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono and
Agriculture minister Joseph Made show government is seeking resources to
immediately import 350 000 tonnes of maize and 120 000 tonnes of wheat to
mitigate looming shortages.
In a letter to Made, Gono said the central bank
had secured a loan facility for maize importation from a Botswana
bank.
Gono's letter dated October 3 informed Made that the Reserve Bank had
managed to secure an additional US$12 million facility with ABC Bank Botswana
for the importation of maize.
"We strongly recommend that we anchor the
country's food security through far-sighted investment in strategic grain
reserves.
"It is for this reason that the 35 000 tonnes (of maize) that will
be unlocked from this facility ought to be set aside as a contingent base," the
letter reads.
Government's target is to have brought into the country up to
350 000 tonnes by February 2007.
"I will continue to brief you, Hon Minister,
on any other future facilities as we work to hit an interim target of at least
350 000 tonnes in strategic grain reserves by February 2007," Gono said.
In
the same letter, Gono said they were already importing wheat to augment a paltry
harvest expected this year. Staff Writer.
Zim Independent
Dumisani
Muleya
CABINET was rocked by dramatic clashes last week over the supply of
the wrong type of fertiliser from South Africa which has become another
political battleground for President Robert Mugabe's succession struggle.
High-level sources said the clashes between Vice-President Joice Mujuru and
a number of government officials on the one hand and Reserve Bank governor
Gideon Gono on the other started at the National Economic Recovery Council
(Nerc) meeting on Monday where the fertiliser saga was tabled for discussion.
Mujuru and Gono together with Zanu PF politburo member Emmerson Mnangagwa
are now seen as the main contenders to succeed Mugabe.
Gono was said to
have stormed out of the Nerc meeting in exasperation as the political fracas got
out of hand amid threats and insults.
Secretary to the Cabinet Misheck
Sibanda and Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) Director-General Happyton
Bonyongwe, sources said, tried to intervene to stop the clashes via secret notes
to Mujuru as the Nerc chair in the heat of the moment but were ignored. The CIO
and Nerc compiled separate reports to Mugabe on the same issue.
The drama
spilt over to cabinet meetings on Wednesday and Thursday at which Mugabe was
said to have "hit the roof" because of the internal wrangling that is further
dividing his embattled government and Zanu PF.
Cabinet meetings are usually
held on Tuesdays but last week there were two meetings on Wednesday and Thursday
to debate the fertiliser issue. Cabinet met on Wednesday because Mugabe was away
in China. Sources say Mugabe no longer allows cabinet to meet in his absence as
he used to because he no longer trusts his deputies and ministers.
Cabinet
also had an emergency session on Thursday in the Jacaranda Room at the Rainbow
Towers Hotel because the issue of fertiliser was not conclusively discussed the
day before. The reason the meeting was held at the hotel was that Mugabe wanted
to launch the 99-year leases at the Harare International Conference Centre soon
after.
It was said a report prepared by Nerc on the fertiliser issue was
tabled for discussion at the Wednesday cabinet meeting and Gono was slammed by a
number of Mujuru's allies.
"Some ministers angrily said they were fed up
with Gono," a source said.
After the Wednesday cabinet Mugabe met Gono and
it was decided the governor should give his side of the story to cabinet on
Thursday.
"The tables turned against Mujuru on Thursday after Gono had
presented his lengthy report exonerating himself. Mugabe said after that meeting
it was a 'good show' by Gono," a source said. "Mugabe became very angry with
Mujuru and some ministers. But Gono walked out of the Thursday meeting with a
broad smile."
However, Gono had a torrid time before wriggling off the hook.
During the Nerc meeting Mujuru opened the floodgates for a number of government
officials to attack him.
Sources said Gono came under fire from a group of
officials including the Economic Development minister Rugare Gumbo, Deputy
Finance minister David Chapfika, Agriculture permanent secretary Simon
Pazvakavambwa, and Industry and International Trade permanent secretary
Christian Katsande, who accused him of not consulting on issues. He is widely
accused in government of behaving like a prime minister.
Zim Independent
Dumisani
Muleya
INDUSTRY and International Trade minister Obert Mpofu backtracked on
his remarks before a parliamentary portfolio committee that influential
officials were involved in the Ziscosteel looting saga after an emergency
meeting with Vice-President Joice Mujuru.
Sources said Mujuru summoned Mpofu
to a meeting while he was giving evidence to the parliamentary committee on
Foreign Affairs, Industry and International Trade on September 20. When he came
back to conclude the hearing on September 27, Mpofu was a changed person.
He
claimed he had initially been "quoted out of context" by people with "agendas"
and who were up to "mischief".
Mpofu initially told the committee that
influential people were milking Zisco while the government-owned company was
bleeding.
"There were people making money out of Zisco while Zisco was
actually bleeding. There was even at some stage, a team that was sent by the
Ministry of Finance to go and investigate Zisco and there is a thick file which,
if you see it, you will be shocked," Mpofu said on September 20.
"The people
that are complaining about these things are actually culprits and some of them
are colleagues of mine in parliament."
But Mpofu changed his tune after
meeting with Mujuru.
"I'm not aware of any particular minister it is very
annoying or senior person or MP or anybody (who is involved in Zisco)," he
said. "Even the report was not commissioned by me. It was done a long time ago.
I have not even got that report."
The report in question was the National
Economic Conduct Inspectorate (NECI) document on Zisco.
At his first
appearance Mpofu said he had spoken to Anti-Corruption minister Paul Mangwana to
delay making the report public because government was still negotiating with
investors who wanted to come to Zisco. This was after Zisco's US$400 million
deal with Global Steel Holdings Ltd had collapsed. The parliamentary committee
was investigating that collapse.
A close check on Mpofu's remarks means that
he had stopped Mangwana from releasing a report which by his own admission
he had not seen.
The portfolio committee has initiated a process in
parliament for Mpofu to be charged with perjury for allegedly lying under oath
during the Zisco hearings.
Speaker of Parliament John Nkomo is due to rule
on whether or not Mpofu should be charged when parliament resumes on November
28.
Sources said President Robert Mugabe was likely to let Mpofu sink as he
did not really matter in the broad scheme of Zanu PF politics. If found guilty,
Mpofu could be fined or jailed for a period of up to two years or both.
The
issue has now assumed a political dimension because Mpofu is seen as an ally of
Mujuru, and is widely perceived as fighting for regional influence with Nkomo
and senior Matabeleland politicians.
The Mujuru/Mpofu saga started after a
clerk appeared at the portfolio committee hearing on September 20 to deliver an
urgent message to committee chairman Enock Porusingazi that Mpofu was wanted
straight away by Mujuru. Without wasting time, the sources said, Mpofu dashed
out in the middle of the hearing to see the vice-president.
Although it is
not known for certain what they discussed, sources said they focused on the
Zisco issue and Mujuru warned Mpofu to steer clear of the matter, seen in the
corridors of power as a political minefield.
The sources also said Mpofu,
who at the time had not seen the NECI report, was told to keep his distance from
the Zisco issue because the document implicated politicians including it now
turns out Mujuru herself.
There is speculation that Mujuru promised to
support Mpofu to become vice-president if she managed to succeed Mugabe. Mpofu
is seen as a key Mujuru ally from Matabeleland region where he worked vigorously
to ensure she became vice-president during the Zanu PF congress in 2004.
This was at the height of the Tsholotsho political episode in which a ruling
party faction led by politburo member Emmerson Mnangagwa was accused of trying
to oust Mugabe from the helm.
Mnangagwa's camp was locked in a power
struggle with a faction led by retired army commander General Solomon Mujuru for
the post of vice-president.
Mpofu played a major role in exposing the
"Tsholotsho coup plot", which the Mnangagwa group has described as a fabricated
story.
The Zisco scandal appears to have become the latest front in the
fierce Mugabe succession battle. Mujuru and her allies such as former Zanu PF MP
Tirivanhu Mudariki have been named in the NECI report, while some of those
linked to the Mnangagwa camp like Indigenisation minister Samuel Mumbengegwi and
his Higher Education counterpart Stan Mudenge have also been mentioned.
Mugabe recently said there were "witches" hovering around the political exit
doors waiting to take over from him. He has also previously accused Zanu PF
presidential aspirants of approaching witchdoctors to get supernatural powers in
the hope of securing the presidency.
Zim Independent
Lucia Makamure
IN
a bid to tighten its grip on media training, the government has ordered
lecturers at the School of Journalism and Media Studies at the Harare
Polytechnic to recruit aspiring students who have undergone National Youth
Service training among other relevant courses.
This has led to delays in the
recruitment process as applications were supposed to have been submitted by
September 29. Up to now it is unclear when the selection process will commence.
Lecturers at the journalism school are contesting the government directive
compelling them to recruit only students who have completed their National Youth
Training service.
Government recently ordered the college to ensure that
students for the mass communication diploma must have completed national youth
training and provide proof of having undertaken community work.
A statement
from the vice-principal (training), Runyararo Magadzire, notifying the School of
Journalism and Media Studies of new enrolment procedures says aspiring students
should be 21 years old and have "passed through training centres, have
undertaken community work, and possess 5 Ordinary levels passes and 2 passes at
Advanced levels. Physically-challenged applicants will be automatically enrolled
as long as they meet the minimum entry qualifications.
Part of the document
reads: "The prospective candidates should be able to prove their national
consciousness by way of civic issues and other related issues of national
interest and show ability to enunciate developmental and national issues like
HIV/Aids and the media in general."
Magadzire was appointed chairperson of
the panel of selectors, assisted by a senior lecturer from the department of
National and Strategic Studies and two external selectors, one from the Media
and Information Commission (MIC) and the other one from a "reputable" media
house recommended by the MIC.
The head of the School of Journalism and Media
Studies, plus two lecturers, one from printing and the other from broadcasting,
will complete the panel of selectors.
Under the provisions of the restrictive
Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Aippa), the MIC, chaired by
Tafataona Mahoso, should facilitate training of student journalists. The
legislation does not specify that the MIC should direct the training and
recruitment of trainee journalists.
Mahoso declined to comment saying he was
no longer at Harare Polytechnic and is not in a position to comment on issues
related to the institution.
Bill Saidi, who chairs the advisory board for
the institute, said the government was trying to instill a wrong type of
patriotism in trainee journalists.
"This is a tragedy for Zimbabwe media as
the government by pushing for patriotism will be creating uncritical
journalists," Saidi said.
"I believe that if you destroy one's ability to be
curious you have destroyed that person."
Saidi said he would advise the
college to even take the ministry to court, as academic freedom cannot be
sacrificed for the sake of an unquestioning type of democracy.
In the past
government set a quota for colleges to recruit from the national training
centres.
According to a recent report by a parliamentary committee,
enrolment at national youth training centres widely viewed by opposition
parties, churches and civic organisations as indoctrination camps of the ruling
Zanu PF party, has plummeted by more than 700% owing to lack of funding.
Government says the centres are meant to instill discipline and patriotism
in the youth trainees.
But youths have shunned the centres due to
frustrations over lack of job opportunities after they graduate, while the
public has grown suspicious about the role of the youths. Most have been turned
into ruling party militia.
The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth
Development report said: "Currently, out of the eight national youth service
centres, two are functional although they are operating at under capacity. Each
centre has the capacity of accommodating up to 1 500 students but presently
enroll 200 students due to inadequate resources."
A lecturer at the
journalism school, who declined to be named, questioned why aspiring students
need to have completed the national youth.
"The government is trying to
militarise media schools," the lecturer said.
"Age and national service have
no correspondence with one's performance as a journalist. It is the skills they
acquire here that make them good journalists, not issues," he said.
The
lecturer also noted that the directive would disadvantage urban youths who want
to train as journalists. This in a way is a means for the government to entice
youths to join the National Service, he said.
He said in the past lecturers
have had problems with students who come through the youth centres as most of
them were used as classroom spies who report to the principal's office on the
happenings at the college.
Such behaviour robbed students of their academic
freedom as they feared being reported to the principal regarding class
discussions.
Zim Independent
Itai
Mushekwe
A MESSY tug of war is brewing between Zimbabwe and South Africa
following the refusal by the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe (Caaz) to
grant air evacuation clearance to the International SOS air medical team of
South Africa this week for unspecified reasons.
The impasse deepened
following moves by the South African medical service provider to take up the
issue with their Foreign Affairs department and Zimbabwe diplomats to explain
the reasoning behind what they called a "strange decision".
Medical director
of International SOS, Fraser Lamond, told the Zimbabwe Independent on Tuesday
that his organisation was going to write a "formal letter" seeking explanation
on why Caaz revoked their clearance to have a South African patient evacuated
for urgent medical attention.
The patient had been involved in a car crash
in Zimbabwe.
Lamond said International SOS were no longer sure as to "whether
it had become policy for Caaz to refuse them clearance to evacuate their clients
from Zimbabwe".
"Caaz are refusing to grant authority for the International
SOS air medical team to evacuate patients from Zimbabwe even when their own
members (Zimbabwean members of International SOS) sought evacuation though SOS,"
Lamond said.
SOS Johannesburg is taking up the matter with their Department
of Foreign Affairs and the South African Civil Aviation Authority.
They are
also going to the press in South Africa as this removes the patient's rights to
choose a service provider of their choice, said Lamond, who wondered whether the
decision by Caaz was "closing skies to SA flights".
Zim Independent
Ray Matikinye
EACH time Joseph Kapito trudges over a
ridge that separates his "new" home from the demolished Whitecliff squatter
camp, he curses his misfortune when a housing project looms into view.
Kapito does not need to have enough money to burn a wet mule to know he was
short-changed. Neither does he need a financial wizard to convince him and
scores of other families living in a derelict squatter camp that tricksters,
masquerading as agents for local authorities, swindled them.
They already
know that.
The families yearn for the wheels of justice to gather a bit more
momentum.
To most of the families, losing a house may be regarded as a
misfortune. But to lose both a house and their money looks more like a
catastrophe.
From a distance the eyesore that once was Whitecliff squatter
camp along the main Harare-Bulawayo highway on the outskirts of the capital,
appears all but demolished.
Yet women skirt piled rubble daily to get to
abandoned wells, ringed by lush banana plants to draw water back to the new
settlement.
When you climb further up the ridge a similar, ramshackle camp
has mushroomed to sprawl across the valley below literally rising from the
ashes like a proverbial Phoenix inbetween imposing rock outcrops.
Rickety
hovels interspersed with huge boulders hidden from public view dot the
valley.
At night fires twinkle across the valley as families prepare their
evening meals.
But look back from the top of the hill, and witness how neat
rows of newly-constructed houses squat on the vlei like oversized dog
kennels.
The incomplete houses depict failed government efforts to put back
together the damage it wreaked on poor families during its brutal Operation
Murambatsvina in May 2005.
The slum clearance blitz left more than 700 000
people roofless and an estimated 2,4 million without a source of livelihood,
according to international humanitarian aid agencies.
Whitecliff housing
scheme on the vlei has become a source of disaffection among the homeless
desperate for decent accommodation in an environment of rising building
costs.
"We have waited our turn to be allocated new houses but luck seems not
to be coming our way," complains Kapito, displaying documents that show he
followed all set procedures to merit allocation.
It never dawned on the
architects of Operation Murambatsvina that the long-term costs of their blitz
would far outweigh the intention to spruce up cities and towns.
Demolishing
thousands of houses which authorities say were built without official approval
drastically reduced the country's housing stock.
It worsened an already
severe housing shortage in urban centres still staggering from government
inertia to cut down on a piling backlog.
It could take a while for anything
to come Kapito's way.
Government officials and some unscrupulous ruling
party functionaries have colluded to allow undeserving beneficiaries jump the
queue ahead of the victims of the slum clearance programme for self-enrichment.
Kapito's plight is no different from scores of others left roofless by
government's callous blitz.
He built a temporary shelter from the shattered
debris of his demolished home for his wife and son, sundering part of his
furniture to fashion rafters for the shack. Inside, the shack has not enough
room to swing a cat.
A 20-litre plastic water container and a clutch of
pots, plates and pans battle for space in one corner of the dimly lit
shack.
Other families only managed to put together thatch structures bound
together with tree bark.
Similar hovels roll down the valley as far as the
eye can see.
"The rains are upon us. When it rains our troubles begin,"
Kapito says cautiously edging into the crude cabin in case the whole contraption
comes unstuck at the seams to retrieve evidence of how he was conned.
In the
event of a downpour, the hovel leaks like a sieve, leaving the family drenched
and with nowhere to seek refuge.
The hovel survived last year's rains but it
is doubtful it could withstand another battering again this
year.
Unscrupulous ruling party officials consorted with government officials
to rip off the hapless, homeless families, demanding as much as $30 000 from
each of them, using the ruse that the fee would facilitate speedy allocation at
the incomplete housing scheme.
One woman sold a beast to raise the money
quite possibly for the tricksters to have made enough money to burn a wet mule.
More than 604 families now squatting in the valley as prospective
beneficiaries have petitioned cabinet ministers over the scam.
In July this
year, the city provincial administrator, Justin Chivavaya and Harare West
district administrator, Nelson Mawomo, were arraigned facing allegations of
corruptly allocating 300 houses and 115 stands to undeserving people.
Chivavaya is out on $20 000 bail.
Some of the families have been coming
to court religiously over the past two months hoping the wheels of justice would
gather pace.
Each visit has given them renewed hope as court officials have
taken a keen interest in the case and promised a fresh look at it.
"The net
has widened to include a Commissioner of Oaths who authenticated some of the
forged documents exonerating officials from blame for a fee," says Clever Dave,
another victim of the blitz.
Thrice he has attended court during preliminary
hearings that have emboldened him to pursue the case with renewed
determination.
"All we want is for justice to be done. We deserve better than
the way we have been mistreated and ridiculed by these tricksters," Dave
says.
Another victim, Ernest Nyakatawa, said party officials who connived to
con them were holding meetings to intimidate the complainants.
"They label us
opposition supporters who are running away from paying rents in Kuwadzana
suburb," Nyakatawa said, dismissing the partisan rancor as a mere
smokescreen.
"No party official wants to take action to reverse such clear
anomalies and we marvel when we see posh cars parked outside houses that were
meant for the poor and low income earners."
Kapito said a self-styled agent
of the corrupt officials would phone demanding "juice cards" (a euphemism for
the bribe).
"After persistent pestering for 'juice cards' I paid him $2 000
on June 25 and another $4 000 four days later. I think he was using the words
'juice cards' so that the demands would not incriminate him," Kapito says,
pointing to four hovels abandoned by people who were allocated houses although
they were not on the initial list of beneficiaries.
Kapito and others have
invested hope in the fact that this week the court remanded four of the people
Nolia Ndhlovu, Passway Mubaiwa, one Mawuka and Commisiner of Oaths G Mugijima in
custody until January 27 next year. They will appear in court for routine remand
on December 1.
A Commissioner of Oaths who certified fake affidavits was
allowed bail.
The case of Whitecliff squatters is microcosmic of the
pervasive corruption that shrouds the allocation of houses built as government
turned up its nose on UN agencies' offer for assistance and suggestions on how
to house the poor it had made homeless.
There is an outcry among the poor in
towns and cities countrywide as soldiers, civil servants jumped the queue to
claim houses meant for poor families under the Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle housing
programme.
Local government minister Ignatious Chombo this week said his
ministry had made bids for $50 billion in the budget for next year.
Under
phase one, Chombo says, 5 742 houses had been allocated. Out of these 2 579 had
been occupied out of a target of 7 478 houses with at least 1 736 houses at
various stages of construction.
Government this year allocated a total of
$1,3 billion to the project with the Public Sector Investment Programme chipping
in with a similar amount largely for infrastructure development.
Chombo's
announcement that government had acquired 65 farms around the capital Harare for
housing developments and that it would strive to provide low-cost housing to
urban dwellers sounds surreal to people like Kapito and Dave.
Both fear the
scheme could fall prey to similar corruption as happened at Whitecliff.
Zim Independent
Shakeman Mugari
AFTER failing in his clandestine bid to buy a stake
in Telecel Zimbabwe, Leo Mugabe is now demanding that the telecommunications
company surrenders part of its profits to him. He is also demanding a contract
to literally run Telecel Zimbabwe's technical services department which includes
base station installations, maintenance and network expansion.
Mugabe, who
has been fighting for a share in Telecel Zimbabwe for the past five years, wants
the company to surrender 1% of its annual revenue to his company, Integrated
Engineering Group (IEG). He also wants a contract to recruit technical staff on
behalf of Telecel Zimbabwe.
Mugabe's renewed pressure comes after his
clandestine bid to acquire 11% of Telecel Zimbabwe from Telecel International
collapsed four weeks ago.
His attempt to open negotiations flopped after
it emerged that he did not have permission from the Empowerment Corporation
which owns 40% in Zimbabwe's third mobile cellular firm to undertake such a
deal. Mugabe claimed in his offer letter that he had permission from the
Empowerment Corporation to buy the stake from Telecel International.
Telecel
International however told Mugabe that negotiations would not start unless he
proved that he had permission from Empowerment Corporation. In the latest
overtures, Mugabe is threatening to sue Telecel if they refuse to give him the
contracts and a share of the profits.
He is citing a 1997 agreement which he
said entitles him to part of the profit and a technical management contract.
Mugabe's lawyers, Debwe & Partners, wrote to Telecel on July 25 instructing
them to stop "recruiting technical staff directly without our client's consent".
"Generally, you have continued to carry out intricate technical services
projects including expansion of your telecommunications infrastructure and
network without the services of our client, as your appointed technical partner
and project manager," said the letter. "You have also failed and/or ignored
completely to pay to our client the annual fee of 1% of the total revenue
earned."
The letter also said Telecel must stop using any other contractor
for technical services.
Mugabe refused to comment when contacted to clarify
the issue. "Ini shamwari handina comment. I would rather not comment on the
issue," said Mugabe before hanging up.
Sources at the company said Mugabe's
demands came after Telecel Zimbabwe spurned his offer to buy them telecoms
equipment for their latest network expansion programme.
In a letter dated
July 14, Mugabe said his company IEG had been approached by international
companies that wanted to sell network equipment to Telecel Zimbabwe.
He said
IEG would be the go-between for Telecel and the suppliers. He also offered to
provide financial assistance for the purchase of the equipment.
Sources said
Telecel refused the offer and went ahead to acquire equipment using internal
structures. This, sources said, prompted Mugabe to write the letter of demand.
Zim Independent
Dumisani Muleya
THE
National Economic Conduct Inspectorate (NECI)'s investigation report submitted
to President Robert Mugabe on the Ziscosteel looting scandal confirms Science
and Technology minister Olivia Muchena had an air ticket bought for her by the
company's Botswana subsidiaries.
This came as Muchena this week contested
NECI's report on the issue through her lawyers by writing to the Zimbabwe
Independent which disclosed the matter last week.
Muchena was named in the
NECI report, together with Indigenisation and Empowerment minister Samuel
Mumbengegwi and Small-to-Medium Enterprises Development minister Sithembiso
Nyoni, among others, as having had allowances and air tickets paid for them by
Zisco while on missions that had nothing to do with the company.
However,
Muchena in an interview with the Independent and through her lawyers Gambe &
Partners, says although she was invited by people that she did not name to go to
Botswana at the material time, she declined.
"Our client remembers some talk
during the relevant period about a possible trip to Botswana. She remembers
declining on the basis that such a trip had nothing to do with her ministry,"
Muchena's lawyers say.
Asked who had invited her during an interview on
Wednesday at her offices, she refused to provide the details. Further asked if
she thought NECI was lying in its report, she said: "I have no idea about what
you are asking."
Muchena repeated what her lawyers had earlier said to the
effect that she did not travel to Botswana which neither the Independent nor
the report claims beyond the fact that a ticket was bought for her.
"She
never travelled to the destination referred to in your article during the period
referred to. In fact, her passport details of travel vindicates this," the
lawyers say. "A mere invoice for an air ticket is not proof of travel. The
invoice must have a ticket coupon attached to it to prove travel. If invoice
number 764 exists as per your article, our client's position is that she never
travelled. Verification with the travel agency or the airline will clear the
issues."
Muchena said she does not travel out of the country without cabinet
authority and she had verified that she did not apply for one at the time.
But the NECI report has Koy Travel & Tours' invoice for three air
tickets with Muchena, Nyoni and Mudariki's names on it and stamped
"PAID".
The reports says Muchena, Nyoni and Mudariki had air tickets bought
for them by Zisco's sister Botswana companies via Koy Tours & Travel on June
17 2004 for trips between Harare, Johannesburg and Gaborone. Pula 16 625 was
paid for their tickets.
The report also states Muchena's ticket was for the
Harare-Johannesburg-Gaborone-Johannesburg-Harare trip and its invoice number was
764.
Nyoni and Mudariki's tickets had the same details. Another ticket was
bought for Mudariki on May 24 2003. Altogether P92 924,40 was paid for the air
tickets, including those of Zisco directors who would choose to meet in Gaborone
even if they were all from Zimbabwe.
"The company also bought air tickets
for non-Zisco officials," the report says. "These include Mrs J Mujuru, Mrs S
Nyoni, Dr O Muchena who had nothing to do with Zisco in their official
capacities then, to mention a few of the government ministers and Mr Mudariki."
Annexure 22 of the report has a schedule showing air-ticket details bought
and passengers' names.
Zim Independent
Shame
Makoshori
BREAD manufacturers have warned government of a "total collapse" of
the bakery sector due to government-sanctioned price controls which have left
the industry "bleeding more than any other industry" in the country's ailing
economy.
In a letter to Industry and International Trade permanent secretary
Christian Katsande, the National Bakers Association (NBA) said it was "a sad
story" that throughout the year bread had been kept at uneconomic prices
gazetted by government when other sectors were allowed to adjust prices upwards
fortnightly if not weekly due to the current hyperinflationary environment.
They said the current hyperinflationary environment called for monthly price
reviews "to keep the industry viable".
The letter, dated November 7 and
signed by all leading bakers in the country, indicated that the bakers felt let
down by government, prompting them to act in a manner that had resulted in
clashes with regulatory authorities.
"Now and again we wait for price
adjustments, which never come, up to a point where we are forced to (make)
unilateral increases to just break even and avoid collapse," the bakers charged
in the letter, copied to stakeholders, police commissioner Augustine Chihuri as
well as five cabinet ministers and the deputy Minister of Industry and
International Trade.
The bakers include Lobels, Bakers Inn, Superbake,
Victoria, Mangoma, Koshen and Auflan bakeries as well as bakery departments of
major supermarket chains Spar, OK and TM supermarkets.
Attempts by the bakers
to increase prices in response to increasing input costs have often led to
hostile reaction by authorities who have unleashed the police, resulting in
arbitrary arrests of bakery management.
The wholesale price of bread was
recently adjusted upwards to $295 after having been at $85 for most of the
year.
Bakers said an ordinary loaf should cost $638. Bakers have responded to
the impasse over pricing by reducing the size of the standard loaf. The quality
of bread has also degenerated. This move by bakers is seen as an indirect
increase in the price of bread.
"As we write this letter we applied for a
price of bread of $467 on October 5 and no price review has been awarded," the
NBA said in the letter.
"In the meantime, whilst we were waiting for the
response, costs further escalated and the correct retail price of a loaf of
bread should now be $638," the bakers said.
Those that remain operational
have streamlined operations.
Zim Independent
Dumisani
Ndlela
THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) has moved to February next year
a scheduled board meeting on Zimbabwe after finally securing a date for its
mission to the country for routine Article 1V consultations.
An IMF team is
expected to arrive in the country on December 5 and wind up its consultations on
December 16, top government officials told businessdigest yesterday.
Central
bank and Finance ministry officials were already engaged in preliminary meetings
ahead of the IMF team's visit, preparing what one official said was "information
for the team".
The team's report is expected to inform the IMF board's
decision on the country when it eventually meets in February after several
adjournments due to the institution's failure to agree on the visit with
Zimbabwean authorities.
Sources indicated that the IMF finally broke the ice
with the Harare administration following a visit by the IMF executive director
for Africa, Peter Gakunu, who had sought a high-level meeting with President
Robert Mugabe to discuss Zimbabwe's "frosty relations" with the IMF.
Details
of Gakunu's meeting with Mugabe were not available from either the IMF or
government, but there has been speculation that Gakunu's brief had been to
inform Mugabe of "the dire consequences" of frustrating the IMF's efforts to
conduct routine Article 1V consultations undertaken on every member of the
institution.
Zimbabwe, which survived expulsion after paying up outstanding
arrears in the IMF's general resources account in February, is understood to
have been adamant that its membership with the Bretton Woods institution was
only nominal after the board failed to restore the country's voting rights as
well as rights to the IMF resources in a board meeting in March.
Businessdigest
reported in July that government was planning to block an
IMF Article IV consultation mission to Zimbabwe initially scheduled for
September after failing to reclaim its full membership of the Bretton Woods
institution.
The newspaper understands that Gakunu had hinted at problems
Zimbabwe was likely to experience if it decided to cease its relationship with
the IMF but sources said he had been persuasive in seeking a visit by the IMF
team, expected to be headed by Sharmini Coorey.
Indications are that demands
made in October by the Paris Club, an informal grouping of creditor governments
from major industrialised countries, that Zimbabwe pay its outstanding arrears
to creditor countries and restore relations with the IMF and the World Bank were
a clear warning by creditor countries that they would deal with Zimbabwe's debt
situation in a more robust manner should the country decide to terminate its
relationship with the IMF.
An IMF spokesperson confirmed that the Fund's
board meeting had been rescheduled to February after the IMF had finally secured
a date for its mission but downplayed speculation that problems between Zimbabwe
and the IMF had led to several deferments of the board meeting.
"There is
nothing unusual about changes in board (re)scheduling," the IMF spokesperson
said, adding: "The IMF mission will be going to Zimbabwe in early December to
conduct the annual Article IV discussions."
A central bank official said:
"The diary for the team's visit is kept by the Minister of Finance but I can
unofficially confirm to you that the team will arrive in the country on December
5 and end its mission on the 16th."
Zim Independent
Dumisani Ndlela
THE
banking sector remained sceptical after escaping penal bonds whose take-up had
been tied to their balance sheet sizes, with bank executives saying they feared
policy changes could take place in an increasingly uncertain environment.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono, battling a deepening
economic crisis, suspended an earlier decision compelling banking institutions
to take up economic stabilisation bonds and reduced take-up on financial sector
stabilisation bonds after banks raised fears of bankruptcies.
Banking sector
sources said while they believed they had the governor's word on the new policy
decision, they feared that the lack of a written undertaking by the governor
remained unsettling.
Moreover, they said, Gono's warning that he could reform
his market management strategies pointed to imminent policy adjustments that
could unsettle the banking sector.
Gono last Friday wrote to bank executives
calling upon the financial sector "to take the initiative to meaningfully
finance agriculture through optimisation of their asset allocation frameworks".
This was after government awarded a number of resettled farmers 99-year land
leases.
Gono said since the banking sector had been averse to lending to
agriculture without certainty of collateral, "the 99-year leases, therefore,
come as a laudable answer to the financial sector's concerns".
He said the
central bank's desire to see financial institutions increasing their exposure to
the agricultural sector had been the reason why part of the stabilisation bond
had been set aside.
Zim Independent
Shame Makoshori
A
STOCK market executive has said that two of the three zeros removed from the
country's revalued currency in August had already made an astounding come back
barely five months after being eliminated.
Emmanuel Munyukwi, the Zimbabwe
Stock Exchange (ZSE) chief executive officer, said "two zeros are already back"
on the defenceless currency, under increasing pressure from run-away inflation
currently topping 1 000% year-on-year.
Munyukwi, who was speaking to
journalists at a business workshop last week, said the ZSE's system had
"crashed" due to an overload of zeros long before Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)
governor Gideon Gono lopped three zeros from the currency under an operation
code-named Project Sunrise, but warned there were tell-tale signs the three
zeros could bounce back soon.
"Right now as we do our transactions you can
easily see that two zeros are already back," Munyukwi said.
His remarks
appeared to reinforce views expressed by Finance minister Herbert Murerwa in
September that the three zeros were likely to re-emerge after telling a
parliamentary committee that the country's mounting economic woes were a result
of poor productivity and not the zeros in the currency.
Zimbabwe's economy
is currently going through its worst crisis in history, characterised by
run-away inflation as well as food, fuel and foreign currency
shortages.
Year-on-year inflation surged from 1 023% in September to 1070% in
October, according to statistics released on Friday by the Central Statistical
Office.
Gono made radical currency adjustments in August, slashing three
zeros from the dollar and coming up with a new set of bearer cheques in a bid to
stem rampant speculation in the economy which he has blamed for fuelling
inflation.
Munyukwi said he was worried that the re-emergence of the two
zeroes could disrupt stock exchange operations but said such a threat could be
eliminated by the acquisition of suitable information technology for the ZSE.
This, however, required foreign currency which was not readily available, he
said.
In any case, the software had already been identified but the exchange
was failing to raise the US$1,5 million required to buy it.
The ZSE has 78
listed companies represented sectorally as follows:
Manufacturing 33%,
agriculture 16%, financial services 15%, technology 2%, mining 6%, retail 13%,
tourism 2%.
Zim Independent
Paul Nyakazeya
GOVERNMENT'S domestic debt maintained a downward
trend, slumping to a two-month low of $107,1 billion in October after another
decline in September that put the debt stock at $119,4 billion.
Statistics
from the central bank indicate that domestic debt peaked at an all-time high of
$127,4 billion in mid-September.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said domestic
debt stood at $107,1 billion as at October 27, declining by $12,3 billion from
$119,4 billion.
Government's domestic debt consists of government stocks,
treasury bills and central bank advances.
Since January this year, domestic
debt had been on an upward trend until the sudden downward trend started in
September.
Since January this year, domestic debt has been on an upward
trend.
Government said its borrowing had been bloated by food and fuel
imports.
The country, once the region's breadbasket, has been dependent on
imports to feed its people due to disruptions caused to the farming sector by a
controversial agrarian reform as well as poor harvests caused by draught.
Government's domestic debt opened the year at $14,1 billion and has been
consistently rising since then.
With limited or no meaningful sources of
offshore support for the budget, government has aggressively borrowed from the
domestic market where high interest rates have significantly increased the
domestic debt level.
A highly inflationary environment has created huge
deficits in the national budget, forcing government to resort to aggressive
borrowing.
Last year, the budget deficit out-turn was at 60% of gross
domestic product, according to figures released by the International Monetary
Fund.
Government had, however, claimed the budget deficit for the year was a
paltry 3% of GDP.
Zim Independent
Shame Makoshori
CIVIL Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe (CAAZ)
firefighters deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to protect that
country's airports are embroiled in a dispute with their employer over payments
during the mission.
The firemen are alleging that CAAZ failed to pay them
allowances of US$250 per day as agreed before their deployment and had instead
awarded the firemen individual allowances of between US$50 and US$75 per day.
The firemen claimed they worked under appalling conditions with no medical
cover, scarce food and long working hours as CAAZ had reneged on its commitment
for the agreed payouts.
"Conditions of service were appalling with no medical
cover (and) food was scarce. Our allowances were used to purchase food," said
the firemen in a letter to Transport minister Christopher Mushohwe seen by
businessdigest.
"We worked extra and abnormal hours and must be compensated
by CAAZ as promised. After the whole operation all these concerns were raised
but satisfactory answers were never given," the firemen argued.
The firemen
were deployed to the DRC in October 1999 soon after the eruption of a civil war
pitting the late Laurent Kabila and Rwanda and Uganda-backed insurgents who had
helped him topple the regime of the late Mobutu Sese Seko.
Junior firemen
were paid US$75 while high-ranking officers received US$100 per day in
allowances.
The amounts were later reviewed downwards to US$50 per firemen,
with higher-ranking officers receiving US$75.
CAAZ chief executive officer
David Chaota this week said he was not at the helm of the parastatal when the
firefighters went to the DRC, and could therefore not discuss anything until the
firemen presented their case before him.
Businessdigest
understands that
some firemen had been paid part of their foreign allowances when they returned
to Zimbabwe in 2002.
However, these payments were made in local currency at
the ruling official exchange rate in September 2005.
Information obtained by
businessdigest indicates that the payments amounted to $5 million per person and
these were made after protracted negotiations.
The $5 million per person was
said to have been equivalent to seven months' salaries. The firemen have
disputed that these payments were for salaries.
Zim Independent
Shame Makoshori
CAPTAINS of industry this week rejected plans by
government to set up a permanent National Incomes and Pricing Commission, saying
the body would become redundant once the country's economy turned around.
The Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) and the Confederation of
Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) argued in submissions on the National Incomes and
Pricing Bill that a permanent commission would only be relevant in a turbulent
economic environment.
It would however be irrelevant once prices stabilised,
they said.
Industrialists said the Bill should clearly state the tenure of
the commission to avoid wasting public resources once the economy
stabilised.
The submissions were presented to the Portfolio Committee on
Foreign Affairs, Industry and International Trade in Harare on Tuesday.
If
enacted, the commission would develop pricing models for goods and services
produced in Zimbabwe with a view to balancing the viability of producers,
incomes and consumers' needs.
However, industrialists maintained that instead
of establishing another institution, government should strengthen existing
institutions to deal with prices and incomes.
"We suggest that we strengthen
the price stabilisation committee than set up a commission because once the
problems are over it becomes irrelevant," said the ZNCC.
"This Bill is
counterproductive to foreign investment. Do we really think foreign investors
would be comfortable with price controls?" the ZNCC asked.
Industry was also
unhappy with current excessive government intervention in the pricing of goods
and services.
They proposed that if government went ahead with establishment
of the commission, then it should be autonomous, with powers to review prices in
response to fluctuations in production costs to maintain viable operations.
CZI chief executive officer Joseph Malaba said companies were unhappy with
penalties imposed under Section 26 of the bill for the obstruction of authorised
officials entering and inspecting companies, or delays to produce company
information as demanded by those officials.
The Bill is proposing
imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years for people violating that
section of the proposed Act.
Malaba said this was "tantamount to managing
businesses through the courts".
Industry also said the Bill violated company
law by empowering the arrest of board members or management for offences
committed by companies as legal entities.
Small-scale entrepreneur Paddington
Japajapa fired a broadside at government for failing to curtail rampant price
increments that have characterised the market in the past 12 months.
"Three
days without food when government is saying it is looking after its people. Is
that looking after your people when they are going for three days without food?"
he asked.
The commission comes amid public outcry that businesses were
ripping them off.
Business argues that regular price increments were
important to keep producing because input costs continued to escalate due to
inflation, foreign currency shortages and fuel shortages, among other problems.
Zim Independent
Augustine Mukaro
THE unveiling of the 99-year leases by President
Robert Mugabe last week may instil confidence in the new tenants but still
leaves yawning gaps in the basic fundamentals required to resolve the emotive
land question.
President Mugabe last Thursday handed over 125 leases to
mainly new black farmers who included a high court judge, a top state media
journalist, retired army officers, and a handful of whites regarded as
supporters of the ruling party. An opposition MP was among the first batch of
recipients.
"The issuance of the 99-year leases is a critical milestone in
the implementation and finalisation of the land reform programme," Mugabe said.
"The government has demonstrated that it will not go back on the land reform
programme."
Mugabe said the fact that the 99-year leases were registrable
with the Deeds Office as was the case with title deeds would help farmers secure
bank loans and enable any money lenders to recover monetary obligation in the
event of a lessee defaulting.
"It is from these major provisions of the
lease agreement that I can confidently state that for the farmer, the agreement
offers the ultimate security of tenure," Mugabe said.
But there is lingering
scepticism in the banking sector over the security of their loans.
Land
reform analyst Professor Sam Moyo said although the lease qualifies as
collateral in securing loans it could not be treated as a wholesome solution to
the land question since it is subject to different interpretations by the
various stakeholders.
"By virtue of the lease being registrable in a deeds
registry in terms of the Deeds Registries Act, the lease can be used as
collateral," Moyo said. "However, banks can interpret it differently and with
scepticism stemming from the controversy surrounding compensation plus the
general uncertainty rocking the agricultural sector."
Moyo said compensation
disputes have not been resolved and they have been the central issue on
virtually all pending court challenges including at international
tribunals.
Moyo said the lease system was prevalent throughout the world but
government needed to improve the capacity of the Land Board to enable it to deal
with the administrative side of the leases.
Despite all the jubilation and
fanfare that accompanied the 99-year leases and pronouncements by government
that the documents would help them scale the financial hurdle of collateral
demanded by banks, major banking institutions professed ignorance about the
content of the leases.
Officials from both Agribank and Barclays Bank said
they had not seen the lease agreements to enable them to judge their strength as
collateral.
"We have not seen the lease agreements and what they provide for.
If you have any copies please kindly provide us with one," said an official from
Barclays Bank.
Barclays is still stung by the loss of a lot of its money
advanced to Kondozi Estate as loans for capital projects and assets which were
subsequently looted by senior government officials.
The ignorance in the
financial sector effectively means that the leases are not going to be a
quick-fix to the holders this agricultural season, unless government makes
contingent arrangements to assuage bankers' fears.
Farmers organisations
said although the leases would temporarily stabilise the situation on the
ground, the issues of compensation remained unresolved and might make the new
owners liable to compensation for the property they would have moved onto.
"There is confusion on what is going to happen to evicted farmers who have
not been compensated when their land and improvements are permanently taken over
through a lease," a Commercial Farmers Union spokesman said.
Speaking during
a recent parliamentary committee hearing Chivi South MP Charles Majange
questioned why the ordinary taxpayer should be made to pay compensation for a
property taken over by an individual. He suggested that beneficiaries of the
land reform should themselves pay for what they now own.
Majange's views
were supported by Gutu Senator, Retired General Vitalis Zvinavashe, who said
those who took over farms should be made to compensate the former owners for the
amenities they now enjoy.
The lease allows the new owner to purchase existing
improvements on the farm, which improvements can be used as collateral for
borrowing from financial and other institutions.
Zimbabwe Association of
Tobacco Growers president Julius Ngorima said although the lease gives
confidence to the farmer and encourages financial institutions to consider loan
applications, it doesn't provide an overnight solution to the free-falling
production.
"The lease only gives security of tenure but does not guarantee
improved production," Ngorima said.
Presenting the leases last week Mugabe
said the rest of the land would be administered through formal state promisory
land grants.
"Security of tenure for A1 farmers will be resolved through the
issuance of usufruct permits," Mugabe said. The permits would operate along the
same lines as the communal area type of customary tenure.
Conservancies,
trophy hunting safaris and game reserves would be governed by statutory tenure
in the form of 25-year leases.
A copy of the 99-year lease agreement in the
hands of the Zimbabwe Independent indicates that A2 farmers will now be charged
annual rentals for the improvements on the property for a period of 25 years.
The lessee would also be required to pay a lump-sum deposit before signing the
lease.
In addition to paying rent the farmers would be required to pay all
levies, fees and charges as may be determined by the local authority.
"An
annual rental shall be payable on or before the 1st January of each and every
year during the currency of this lease. The rental may be reviewed and increased
annually by the lessor by such reasonable amount as the lessor may determine,"
reads the lease document.
"The development plan should include provision of
access roads suitably sited, constructed and protected against erosion as
approved by the principal director responsible for Lands and Rural
Resettlement."
The lease bars people from subletting the farms to other
operators without the approval of government.
Zim Independent
By Prosper
Chitambara
IN a few weeks' time Finance minister Herbert Murerwa will present
the 2007 national budget, which will come at a time the country is facing
immense socio-economic challenges.
Inflation has reached record-highs as the
level of economic activity continues to plummet. Corruption is now commonplace
while poverty has become endemic, afflicting 90% of the total population.
The country has become highly polarised as institutions established to
promote social dialogue such as the Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF) remain
largely marginalised and ineffective.
The challenge of the national budget
is therefore to reverse these negative trends so as to set the stage for
sustainable people-centred development.
The national budget is an instrument
for implementing the development priorities of a nation as defined in its
development strategy.
The national budget should alleviate poverty and
initiate a more balanced growth through strengthening the social security
system, increasing and improving housing and infrastructure, implementing a
comprehensive treatment and prevention plan for HIV and Aids and enhancing food
security.
The budget should cushion the vulnerable groups against the harsh
socio-economic conditions, thereby laying a firm foundation for human
development.
It should be an instrument of resource allocation in order to
ensure not just a rapid pace of GDP growth, but also the achievement of
important social objectives such as employment creation, poverty elimination and
overall development.
The ability of ordinary citizens to achieve their basic
social and economic rights is a useful measure of the adequacy or otherwise of
the budget.
Previous budgets have tended to allocate more funds towards
recurrent expenditure as opposed to capital expenditure and social investment. A
case in point is Defence and Security, which have continued to be generously
rewarded with high budgetary allocations even though the country is at peace.
Meanwhile the same generosity has not been extended to social service
ministries such as Social Welfare, Education and Health. There is need for a
readjustment and redefinition of the role of the state so that the state targets
those activities with the greatest social and economic return.
From a rights
approach, this implies directing fiscal expenditure and budgetary allocations
towards ensuring food security, the provision of adequate healthcare at
affordable prices, education, housing, transport and basic utilities
(electricity and water).
Social sector expenditures need to be protected and
targeted measures to deal with poverty should not be seen as "add-ons" but as an
integral part of the national budget.
At Independence in 1980, Zimbabwe
inherited a relatively developed and efficient urban public transport system.
Over the years, with no capitalisation, coupled with unpaid use by government,
the whole urban transport service collapsed, and was replaced by a chaotic
commuter omnibus system in the early 1990s.
With no adequate foreign
exchange and fuel available, the commuter omnibus service has virtually
collapsed, leaving in its wake stranded working people. It is now a reality that
most workers' wages cannot meet the monthly transport bill. Workers are now
walking to work and are involving themselves in survival strategies, including
cutting back on meals.
Basic utilities such as electricity, water, and
refuse collection among others are no longer readily available at affordable
rates.
Since 1991, Zimbabwe has largely followed a market-based approach to
development, with basic social and economic rights in terms of food security,
access to healthcare, education, shelter, transport and basic utilities (mainly
electricity and water) becoming market-driven.
Because even basic rights
have been put onto the market, the majority of Zimbabweans, who are living in
poverty, cannot access them. It is therefore important to return to a basic
needs approach (or a rights-based strategy), which begins and ends with the
people, the real object of development
By focusing more on the formal
sector, past policies and budgets have neglected the non-formal (including
informal) sectors that accommodate the majority of the population, especially
women. The declining economy is, consequently, experiencing unprecedented levels
of informalisation or underground economic activities, as the vulnerable
population tries to devise survival strategies.
The above factors have
therefore reinforced the dual (separate) and enclave (isolated) structure of the
economy. With this structure, the economy cannot rely on the formal economy
alone to meet the development needs of the people.
The expected "trickle
down" from the formal to the non-formal economy has not and will not occur,
implying the need for conscious policies of integrating the non-formal economy
into the mainstream of the economy.
It is therefore important to remove
these distortions to ensure that a broad-based, inclusive and sustainable growth
path is taken, which ultimately promotes sustainable human development.
In
its latest budget, South Africa has undertaken a new approach through which it
is targeting the marginalised groups and sectors (the so-called other South
Africa) to create an inclusive and broad-based growth strategy.
The South
African government has consciously adopted a human-centred approach, with
President Thabo Mbeki adopting a people's contract to deliver basic social
services such as healthcare, education, transport, housing, food security,
electricity and water.
A human-centred approach dictates that people's
priorities for the basic rights to food security, good healthcare, education,
housing, transport and basic utilities need to be prioritised and adequately
financed in the national budget.
Support for sustainable food production by
resource-poor farmers should be increased, especially in terms of agricultural
input provision credit, fertiliser, seed distribution systems and marketing.
As a result of collapsing government support and rising fees, school
enrolments have gone down. School dropouts are on the rise, disproportionately
affecting the girl child.
Thus the policy goal of making education
universally accessible is vanishing. It is therefore important to bring back the
right to education to the top of the national budget agenda.
It is also
common knowledge that Zimbabwe faces a severe housing shortage. Millions of
Zimbabweans do not have access to adequate shelter or basic services. It is
estimated that over one million Zimbabweans are on the housing waiting list in
the major towns.
There is therefore an urgent need to bring back the housing
issue into the public domain as an economic right.
The time has come to
embark on a campaign to return the economy to a normal footing characterised by
decent work and the enjoyment of basic social and economic rights.
Given that
social protection is paramount, especially in the context of the worsening
economic crisis and the HIV and Aids pandemic, it is necessary to ensure that
adequate resources are provided to cushion the populace from the social
dimensions of the crisis and mitigate the impact of the HIV and Aids pandemic.
With 90% of our population living below the poverty datum line (PDL), social
protection is the only recourse for the majority of our people.
Educational
assistance to vulnerable households and the urban public works programmes also
need to be restructured to achieve efficiency, effectiveness, relevance and
sustainability. There is a need to involve other stakeholders in the
implementation of such programmes. This is particularly necessary in that in
spite of the Basic Education Assistance Module, school-drop-outs persist. There
is need for stakeholder participation in the implementation process.
The
interventions assisting vulnerable groups with access to medical care have
failed to deliver, especially in the context of cost recovery. Involvement of
the relevant stakeholders at all levels is also crucial to ensure that delivery
reaches the needy, in an efficient and effective manner.
Overall, the whole
social protection programme needs review. A good example of synergetic
relationships between government and the other stakeholders in poverty
eradication programmes is the example from South Africa where government
provides the policy framework, leaving the implementation to NGOs and other
stakeholders.
Uganda, which has been able to sustainably reduce overall
poverty, is another outstanding example.
Zimbabwe's tax regime remains
onerous and regressive.
While the measure taken in the mid-term fiscal
policy review (supplementary budget) to increase the tax threshold from $7 000
to $20 000 was welcome there is need to review the tax thresholds more regularly
to link the tax threshold to the PDL.
The Central Statistical Office's PDL
stands at as $134 648,59 as at September 2006, implying that workers earning
below the PDL should be exempt from PAYE. The principle adopted by the TNF in
mid-2001 is to link the tax threshold to the PDL.
In addition, the tax bands
are very narrow. Such narrow tax bands easily nullify wage increments as workers
are pushed into a higher tax band.
Ultimately, for the national budget to be
effective there is an urgent need to address the sticking issues of domestic
governance and the polarisation of the country along political lines.
While
the international community can go without Zimbabwe, the country cannot go it
alone and hence the need to normalise our international relations as a basis for
a sustainable turnaround.
* Prosper Chitambara is an economist with the
Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe.
Zim Independent
Ray
Matikinye
QUITE how the ruling Zanu PF ruling elite perfected the art of
using and discarding its supporters when it suits them is amazing.
The recent
repeal of the Rural Land Occupiers (Protection from Eviction) Act (Chapter
20:26) No 13 of 2001, that retracted protection from peasants trespassing on
state land, is one instance of what has become Zanu PF's use-and-abuse pastime.
The law was replaced by the Gazetted Land (Consequential Provisions) Act of
2006 which makes it illegal and "punishable by law to hold, use or occupy a
piece of land that was gazetted for resettlement purposes without authority in
the form of an offer letter".
"This means that no one will claim protection
under the said Act any longer," President Mugabe declared last week at a
ceremony marking the issue of 99-year leases to selected beneficiaries and
driving the final nail into illegal land occupation.
The new Act is a
double-edge sword meant to cow commercial farmers from resisting eviction while
empowering government to dislodge farm invaders without offer letters as the
tragicomedy of the inconclusive land reform unfolds.
A rented
placard-carrying crowd appeared stunned by Mugabe's announcement that portends a
fresh wave of evictions and further dislocations.
At Mugabe's behest,
peasants began moving onto commercial farmland in February 2000. The
often-violent and chaotic land occupation stampede cost an estimated 32 lives,
mostly white commercial farmers and perceived opposition supporters.
The
Rural Land Occupiers Act (Protection from Eviction) Act was railroaded as a
populist expedient after armed soldiers and police forced more than 600 families
to leave Little England Farm in Mashonaland West by torching their homes,
because the land had reportedly been earmarked for a large-scale commercial
farming venture.
Many of the displaced who claimed they had been awarded
plots on the farm by the government in 2000 were abandoned on the
roadside.
If the jubilant crowd that graced the occasion to issue 99-year
leases had asked villagers in rural Svosve how skillful Zanu PF is at disposing
of those that have served its purpose, they would have been more prudent in
their celebrations.
Or better still they could have sought wise counsel from
drum-beating Zanu PF militants who stormed the High Court exactly five years
ago, in support of Samuel Mhuriro's class action on behalf of peasants
trespassing on all commercial farms.
When the hearing was eventually
held, the court reaffirmed its ruling that the government land seizures violated
the law.
The ruling overturned an order by then High Court judge, Godfrey
Chidyausiku, for police not to remove illegal settlers from the farms until the
courts heard an application by Mhuriro and 16 others who had argued that his
constitutional right to white-owned land overrode the Supreme Court's earlier
ruling.
Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay struck down Chidyausiku's ruling
questioning his jurisdiction to override the higher court.
But government
officials ignored that ruling and moved thousands of peasants onto the
farms.
Better still, they could learn a lesson from families that initially
occupied Eirene Farm in Marondera.
Airforce Marshal Perence Shiri was
allocated Eirene Farm at the expense of 96 families who had initially taken over
the farm and banished them to a cattle ranch unfit for agricultural
purposes.
They could have listened to Professor Gordon Chavunduka who noted:
"It looks like land reform was never meant to benefit the ordinary person, and
that is why the ordinary people are having their houses set on fire.
"The
land reform was only meant to benefit a few special individuals, and that may
lay the ground for future conflicts," Chavhunduka said.
Peasant farmers are
not the only unwitting victims of Zanu PF's proneness to the use-and-toss-away
trick.
War veteran Joseph Chinotimba, who stole the limelight as a champion
of black empowerment through factory invasions after wreaking havoc on the
farms, knows better.
When it suited the ruling elite, Chinotimba assumed hero
status. But when the bearded independence war participant allowed his ambitions
to get the better of him, Zanu PF invoked its use-and-toss trick.
Other
victims of the discarding sleight of hand by Zanu PF has been youth brigades
the party's coercing agents of the early 80s who were used for crowd control
during the height of Mugabe's popularity.
Thousands of them have gone
through a process of disillusionment through years of being convenient tools of
the ruling party without a guarantee for a betterment of their lives. Long
periods of joblessness have taken a toll on the youths who now see no profit in
only being recognised when Zanu PF deems it convenient.
For all their years
of trouble at the government's beck and call, Zanu PF has seen it fit to herd
them into the less-edifying youth training centres to dust up their sense of
patriotism.
Scores had their hopes shattered when Zanu PF reneged on its
promises of jobs in the civil service that never came about.
Zim Independent
Comment
REPORTS emerging from the Movement for Democratic Change's NEC
meeting held in Harare two weeks ago make depressing reading. Quite clearly a
significant number of members would rather be fighting the opposing faction of
their party than President Mugabe.
At exactly the moment when the country is
looking for wise leadership and strategic options to tackle Zanu PF's delinquent
rule, MDC mandarins in Morgan Tsvangirai's camp have chosen to do battle with
their former colleagues led by Professor Arthur Mutambara. And one cannot help
being struck by the passion with which they wish to pursue this senseless feud.
Let's name and shame these political hawks who mobilised against their
leader, Morgan Tsvangirai's appeal for unity.
National organising secretary
Elias Mudzuri, youth assembly chairperson Thamsanqa Mahlangu, national chairman
Isaac Matongo, deputy secretary-general Tapiwa Mashakada, and committee members
Ian Makone and Cephas Makuyana were all reported as preferring death to
reunification!
Grace Kwinjeh, in opposing unity talks, claimed that all the
party had to do was work harder on the ground and victory would be theirs. She
seems to think the regime needs a breathing space and evidently hasn't heard
about the outcome of recent rural district council elections!
Women's wing
leader, Lucia Matibenga, also spoke passionately, it is reported, as she accused
the Mutambara faction of seeking to "reinfect" the party.
"We are giving
ourselves the same disease that led to the split. As women we believe that
unity, without addressing the causes of the split, will not help anyone," she
said.
We rather understood those causes as being the use of violence by party
thugs and contempt for the party's rules. It is astounding that as the country
faces its most mortal challenge because of Zanu PF's arrogance and incompetence,
leading members of the MDC would prefer to fight each other than find ways to
confront the enemy. This is political immaturity writ large.
It is no
comfort to hear that this intransigence was reflected in the ranks of
Mutambara's faction. St Mary's MP Job Sikhala, deputy secretary-general
Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, and Nkayi MP Abednigo Bhebhe, argued
vociferously at their meeting against unity, we are told. They said the two
factions had "irreconcilable differences". But they nevertheless agreed to set
up a committee to negotiate reunification, as did the Tsvangirai camp.
As we
stated last December when the party split into two, the MDC was always going to
be weaker without unity. The split in the opposition also dealt a severe blow to
attempts to come up with a broad alliance as civic society also became fractured
along political faultlines caused by the opposition split. Despite the emotional
outbursts last year, the two factions have nothing to show for their "resolute"
stances. This is one whole year wasted and there isn't much time between now and
2008 when the presidential poll is due.
As things stand, the Tsvangirai of
today is much weaker than the one who lost narrowly to Mugabe in the contentious
2002 election. The party requires serious rehabilitation if it is to regain the
strength it had built up five years ago. Part of that rehabilitation is unity
and a visionary leadership.
For his part, Tsvangirai has given a welcome
lead to unity talks. He told the St Lucia Park NEC meeting that he had traversed
the country and held over 60 rallies in the run-up to the rural district council
elections and the feeling of the people was that the party should unite. He said
his supporters had made an impassioned plea to him to make sure all the
democratic forces are reunited to confront the common enemy. While his party had
picked up a few RDC seats, unity was a bigger prize for the suffering people of
Zimbabwe, he made clear.
This at least is a welcome shift in MDC thinking.
Intelligent electoral planning dictates compromise and accommodation. The nation
will never forgive those holdouts in the MDC ranks if it means granting Mugabe
and his gang a renewed lease on political life.
Zim Independent
Candid Comment
By Joram Nyathi
DEBATE on The Zimbabwe We Want document
is likely to suffer (God forbid) a serious miscarriage. This is not because the
document is fatally or even inherently defective. We have either lost the
capacity to debate issues objectively or Zimbabwe's crisis has itself become a
lucrative industry that there are people who wouldn't want it to end soon.
Either way, I believe Zimbabwe shall live.
The fact the National Vision
document has caused divisions on both sides of the political divide is part of
its strength, that it was not designed to pander to any political party or
sectional interest. It sought to be as balanced as possible and all-inclusive.
It has therefore blurred the usual clear-cut political polarisation between Zanu
PF and MDC sympathies.
I will deal briefly first with the historicism of the
church's role in liberation politics that government spin doctors are so
obsessed with.
This is typified by Tafataona Mahoso and Nathaniel Manheru.
The limitation of this approach to the document is that history itself becomes
the measure of one's behaviour in future, it doesn't matter that the leadership
and vision of the church have changed. They pretend that the Sunday Mail and the
Herald never represented the official policies of the settler regimes as they do
the current one. Theirs is a history of revenge.
This explains why they are
comfortable with the late Chenjerai Hunzvi and Border Gezi as appropriate
substitutes for Ndabaningi Sithole and James Chikerema at the Heroes Acre. It is
part of the "post-Independence regression" that has created the "ambiguity"
about who qualifies to be a national hero. It is part of the "bad history we
have lived" that has given us Posa in place of the Law and Order (Maintenance)
Act.
The National Vision document points out the "bad history we must
overcome" before we can get the Zimbabwe we want. It makes no apology for
whether the authors of that bad history are blacks or whites. The pain to the
victims is the same.
By the time you get to the end of Mahoso's thesis you
heave a sigh and ask what the way forward is. There is none. It is as if they
have decided that so long as we can quote copiously from historical records, all
will be well. But history can only be salutary as a warning, not as an end in
itself or as an excuse for blame-shifting.
The other extreme consists of
well-meaning people, those for whom there is no room for compromise with the
regime. For them it's all or nothing, something you can only do from an
impregnable fortress. Archbishop Pius Ncube was quoted as saying the document
given to President Mugabe had been "toned down". Trudy Stevenson claimed they
had not been consulted but dwelt largely on trivialities. Archbishop Ncube
didn't say what fundamental propositions had been expunged to vitiate the impact
of the vision. Let's focus at the root and spirit of the document, what it
seeks.
At the risk of sounding frivolous, Stevenson scoffed at concepts such
as "unity", "consensus" or "sovereignty" as reflective of Zanu PF thinking. But
how do we contemplate a global village without consensus on concepts like human
rights, rule of law or democracy?
Outright demands in any struggle depend on
which end of the gun you are holding. In Zimbabwe, democratic forces are under
the muzzle, fatally wounded by division. Their belligerence against Mugabe is
confined to hotel rooms where sometimes one senses that the attacks seek to
appeal more to the pocket of the donor than the conscience of the nation. It is
a kind of militancy that can only end up in self-combustion through frustration
without achieving anything for the intended constituency of the poor and
oppressed who have no access to donor money. Donors are bound to get tired.
My point is not that National Vision is perfect and should not be attacked.
It is the finality in some of the analyses that so long as Mugabe lives there is
no dialogue or that if someone is not attacking Zanu PF and Mugabe then they are
for the Establishment that worries me. This is so wrong it won't get us far as a
nation.
The mistake the hawkish militants make is to imitate the myth often
peddled of Mugabe himself as an uncompromising freedom fighter and negotiator.
Evidence amply shows that at the critical juncture when history had to be made
he compromised on very fundamental aspects of the liberation war. I will briefly
illustrate.
The Lancaster House conference in 1979 didn't produce outright
military victors or total losers. The constitution was a compromise for the good
of the nation. The talks didn't immediately yield to the majority the factors or
the means of production, they did not gives us land beyond the new state called
Zimbabwe. Yet land was at the core of the war.
Mugabe capitulated on the
"promise" of a willing seller, willing buyer model backed by British financial
support. Once a one man one vote clause was secured the Patriotic Front realised
it was not possible to get everything all at once. The Third Chimurenga bears
testimony to that whether people choose to believe the land reform was a gimmick
by Mugabe to remain in power or something else. Amendment No 17 accomplished
what Lancaster negotiators failed to achieve.
The constitution was even more
blatantly flawed. It came with entrenched privileges for whites, the 20 reserved
seats which Mugabe must have resented with his life. It could not be amended for
the first 10 years to forcibly seize land from whites despite Mugabe's latest
casuistry about a homegrown Lancaster constitution.
But all this did not
stop Zimbabwe gaining majority rule in 1980. All the gains and losses since then
have largely been of our own making. Now we have "politicians" who say we cannot
have a national vision because "a clause on media freedom is missing". It's
called fiddling while Rome burns. The document seeks a meeting of minds on core
issues. It's not about speaking with one voice in the selfish political sense.
What I find to be the weakest part of the Zimbabwe We Want document is its
silence on how to attain it. Is it via the electoral route, negotiations, a
government of national unity or jambanja and stayaways? But then that can still
be debated as people discuss the document. Instead of which our analysts appear
to discuss it from the wrong end altogether.
Zim Independent
Editor's Memo
By
Vincent Kahiya
IT'S a fight to be deemed right. That now appears to be the
guiding light of Zimbabwe's aristocracy grappling with the crises that have
rocked virtually every facet of this sinking economy.
It is this quest for
vanity that has led to the current spat between Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
officials and those from the Ministry of Agriculture. Revelations that the
country could have imported contaminated or sub-standard fertiliser appeared to
draw fire from RBZ governor Gideon Gono who was fingered in press reports as
having had a hand in the importation.
A defensive Gono last Saturday called
a press conference at which he sought to not only portray himself as pure as the
driven snow, but also strenuously plotted to situate the blame on Agriculture
permanent secretary Simon Pazvakavambwa and technocrats in the ministry.
By
virtually skinning Pazvakavambwa, Gono emerged from the meeting thinking he was
a conscientious and diligent worker whose effort to avert a crisis was being
sabotaged by careless officials.
Flanked by senior government officials,
Gono produced a 143-page document to prove his innocence in the importation of
about 800 tonnes of bad fertiliser. Hero and villain having been identified in
the plot, Agriculture minister Joseph Made was happy to take the role of
supporting actor in the agricultural tragedy opening soon at a farm near you.
But his role in the fiasco should be greater than that. His real place is in the
director's chair.
His fingerprints are found all over Zimbabwe's failed
agricultural aspirations in which he has not only come up with ridiculous
projections on grain production but has been found wanting when it comes to
planning.
The issue of fertiliser shortages which has prompted the rushed
importation of the commodity has haunted the country in successive years without
respite. This is despite the fact that Made and the Reserve Bank know where the
problem lies. It lies in fertiliser companies not being availed enough foreign
currency to buy spare parts and import raw materials.
Gono's dossier shows
that meetings to deal with the issue were held as far back as December last year
but the country is still short of the fertiliser. At a meeting held on December
14 Industry and Trade deputy minister Phineas Chihota implored the RBZ to
recognise the importance of agriculture by giving the sector preference in the
allocation of foreign currency.
The minutes state that Chihota said the "RBZ
should be clear of what is required by industry and must work with others, not
in isolation". Remember Project Sunrise!
At a subsequent meeting he proposed
the formation of a committee to manage the disbursement of foreign currency
"because the RBZ was not qualified at all to do the disbursements or manage the
foreign currency properly". Reserve Bank officials took exception to this,
saying the minister was not fully aware of the challenges the country was
facing.
Just a glimpse of our government at work. The deputy minister lays
into the RBZ for alleged incompetence in handling forex. The bank in turn
accuses the minister of ignorance! Where does this leave Made?
But the RBZ,
which is fully aware of the challenges the country is facing, spent millions of
dollars in foreign currency importing vehicles to execute Project Sunrise three
months ago. That was a more pressing issue than importing fertiliser?
No
amount of blame-shifting can mask the fact that the central bank and government
have failed to come up with a judicious plan to ensure that agriculture which
everyone recognises as being key to economic recovery recovers. The fertiliser
saga is an apt reference to the fact that agriculture will not recover through
piecemeal RBZ interventions and public posturing but by ensuring that there is a
holistic plan that ensures that all support industries are functioning. At the
moment, they are not.
The evidence of the failure of our poorly led
agricultural project is evident in Gono's document.
There are letters to
Made from the central bank announcing a facility to import 120 000 tonnes of
wheat and plans to build strategic maize reserves through imports.
The
script from our director of the agro-tragedy has been heavily edited. We have
however not forgotten the original plot of a bumper maize harvest of 2,4 million
tonnes and 220 000 tonnes of wheat. How rewarding incompetence is!
Zim Independent
Muckraker
MUCKRAKER was intrigued by remarks made last week by Justice
minister Patrick Chinamasa. Addressing a workshop for magistrates and
prosecutors, he said his ministry embraced the importance of respect for human
rights. He also said one of the most important aspects of justice was the
independence of the country's judiciary. It was critical to ensure the
enforcement of court judgements, he said.
"Without compliance with the due
enforcement of court judgements the judiciary is gravely undermined and loses
its power, respect and reputation," Chinamasa said.
Indeed it does. But when
did this dawn on him? Was it before or after court rulings on land invasions had
been ignored in 2000 and the police instructed not to act? Was it before or
after Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay had been chased off the bench?
How many
court rulings were ignored in the case of Roy Bennett's Chimanimani farm?
Chinamasa's exhortation that "we must as a country seriously develop a
culture of compliance with court rulings" rings hollow when you consider the
state's record. Court rulings have been repeatedly ignored when it suits the
government to do so. What happened to the court-ordered police investigation
into the abduction and torture of Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto? Why was
contempt of court in the deportation of Guardian correspondent Andrew Meldrum
never followed up?
Above all, and emblematic of the state's refusal to uphold
human rights, where is Joseph Mwale, an officer in the President's Office who
has never been brought to justice?
As for Chinamasa's claim that the
Ombudsman's Office was set up to investigate allegations of human rights abuses,
can anybody recall that office having done anything useful?
Chinamasa should
stop making claims that are so obviously at odds with public perceptions. The
proposed Human Rights Commission would "go a long way in ensuring respect for
rights in the administration of justice", he said.
So why doesn't government
demonstrate its sincerity by upholding human rights here and now? Why does it
need a commission to do the right thing? Oh, and it would also be helpful if the
police refrained from beating up people arrested for exercising their rights. It
makes Chinamasa look like a fool!
We were amused by a Herald heading last
week: "Church document plagiarised", it said in regard to a claim made by
Anglican Bishop Nolbert Kunonga on the National Vision project in an interview
with Caesar Zvayi.
And there below the heading was a photo of three bishops
with British embassy official Gillian Dare plagiarised from the British
embassy's Britain and Zimbabwe magazine. Not a hint of an acknowledgement.
It was also, by the way, extremely tactless of the Herald to carry a heading
about documents being plagiarised in an article by Zvayi who is no stranger to
such claims!
The interview with Kunonga was perhaps one of the most vacuous
carried in Zvayi's column since its inception and could have been summarised
under the heading "sour grapes".
Kunonga wasn't consulted on the National
Vision document, it transpires, and thought he could rubbish it by indulging in
Zanu PF-type allegations about Western views on democracy.
It wasn't
difficult to see why he had been left out: he had nothing to contribute, apart
from claiming that in the land reform programme "there was no bloodshed on the
magnitude experienced in other nations".
Church leaders had "lied" about the
situation in Zimbabwe, he alleged.
Asked what he would consider an
appropriate national vision, he offered the example of the 99-year leases.
How can anybody who calls a contractual document "a vision" be taken
seriously? What's the vision in a lease document? And he helpfully admitted
where he gets his marching orders. "When those in government say 'Kunonga, here
is the land, participate', I must go and plough."
"We must make a
turnaround," he added, "in the spiritual depression and moral decadence we can
see around us."
Does that include bought bishops, we wonder?
Zimbabwe
could be forced to begin importing beef within the next five years if urgent
measures are not taken to arrest the national herd's rapid decline, the Sunday
News reported last weekend. This was based on comments by the CEO of the Cold
Storage Company, Ngoni Chinogaramombe, who said the national herd was dwindling
at a fast pace.
He made reference to Zimbabwe's "huge potential and rich
history as a leading meat exporter in the not-so-distant past". The country used
to slaughter 750 000 head a year, but the figure was now down to 350 000. The
decline had been rapid, he said.
What is absolutely amazing about this
front-page story is that not a single reason was given for the "rapid decline".
No mention of farm invasions or the anarchy on the land that has forced
experienced ranchers out of business. It was a completely decontextualised
story. (Mahoso, where are you?)
Zimbabwe was until 2000 an exporter of beef.
It benefited at one stage from a lucrative EU quota of 9 100 tonnes. Now it no
longer has the beef stocks to export and therefore cannot earn forex. All this
because of a destructive land policy that continues to drive the country down.
The Sunday News was of course unable to say anything about this harsh
reality.
Does anybody recall a funny little story in the Herald about some
white man flying off from Victoria Falls in an airforce helicopter and
registering it in Zambia? It had been "stolen" shortly after Independence, it
was reported by our vigilant state media, and had since been taking tourists on
joy rides over the Falls.
Now it appears that it wasn't a helicopter, it was
a Cessna 206. It wasn't registered in Zambia but in Zimbabwe, according to the
CAAZ. And it didn't once belong to the airforce but to the Forestry Commission.
Apart from that, the story was entirely accurate!
Do not lose heart, the
worst is almost behind us."
That message from Indigenisation minister Samuel
Mumbengegwi reflects his optimism that government is forging ahead with its
empowerment policies. But he cautioned against greed.
"Our business people
must be inculcated," he told the Sunday News, "with a national consciousness
that being rich is a national obligation to serve your nation, not yourself."
It is not clear how the nation's interests were served during his tenure as
Minister for Trade and Industry when, it has been reported, ministers benefited
from payments from Zisco which had nothing to do with the business of the
parastatal. In fact, it would appear, they got rich by taking money from a
publicly-owned company that went down the tubes because it was so badly managed.
Mumbengegwi doesn't seem to have been asked about that version of
indigenisation!
Quite interestingly, Nathaniel Manheru, he of the Other
Side, thinks that PW Botha's death is more important than the National Vision
proposed by some of our church leaders. Nobody in Zimbabwe would ever glorify
Botha as a hero, but then South Africans have always dealt with their past
differently from us. That the likes of Manheru get puzzled doesn't surprise us
because of their obsession with the politics of the colonial past and the quest
for vengeance.
That is part of the "bad history we have lived" that has
given us Posa in place of the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act. The National
Vision document points out clearly the "bad history we must overcome" before we
can get the Zimbabwe we want.
Manheru was of course joined by Tafataona
Mahoso in exhuming and bringing to the fore the whole burden of history that has
become the albatross to national progress.
He can go on admiring the 12
arcane "findings" of his thesis but we don't see how Zimbabwe is supposed to
benefit from that dead weight of history from his equally dead communist friends
swept away by the winds of change in 1989.
Commenting on the National Vision
document and its authors, Mahoso observed: "They have excluded peasants, war
veterans, chiefs, indigenous medicine men and women, indigenous healers,
vapostori and former detainees."
This is even before the document is
distributed across the country for "discussion". So who is feeding Mahoso this
nonsense? Then he wants to continue next week along the same poisonous lines.
How can we get a balanced analysis from someone who starts by telling readers
lies that a document open to discussion has "excluded" people that he is not
even in touch with?
All the hypocrites and beneficiaries of Zimbabwe's
festering crisis are beginning to come out of the woodwork for who they really
are. You are either for the future or for the past. And Zimbabweans are looking
to the future against a "bad history" of the past and present.
Speaking of
which, we notice from his contribution in The Voice this week that Mahoso has
woken up to the reality that Gideon Gono's monetarist approach to the so-called
economic turnaround is woefully wrong.
"What is even more astounding to a
layman is how a policy-maker can seriously claim to be fighting inflation as the
country's enemy number one and yet proceed to devalue and devalue the national
currency quite steeply," wailed Mahoso in shock at this treachery.
We have
said in the past that inflation is merely a symptom of a deeper malaise. Which
is where we part company with Mahoso because at that point he buries his head in
the sand and will not accept that that malaise is a result of a poorly-executed
land reform.
So long as there are serious shortages of basic commodities,
you can't tame inflation.
The effects of the wholesale collapse of
commercial agriculture are there for all to see and we delude ourselves that
these can be solved by tinkering with inflation, interest rates and more
devaluation.
Mahoso again appears to have just discovered that the Zimbabwe
dollar was devalued from $101 to $250 to the US dollar. Yet everyday he pretends
to be speaking on behalf of government. Shame.
Lastly, we were surprised by
remarks by a Plumtree magistrate that two Botswana journalists could have
strained relations between Botswana and Zimbabwe.
He was fining them $5 000
each for transgressing the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act
when illegally taking pictures at a Zimbabwean border post in April. They were
working on a documentary for Botswana Television on foot-and-mouth disease and
the measures being taken to prevent its spread. They had not applied for a
licence under Aippa.
The magistrate told them that as professionals they
should have known "the right course of action to take if your intentions were
not malicious
" Their actions could have strained relations between Zimbabwe and
Botswana, they were told.
The spread of foot-and-mouth disease into Botswana
could also strain relations between the two countries, it can be argued. The
press in Botswana was evidently fulfilling a public mandate of ensuring that
their government was doing its job by preventing the spread of the disease.
Not every journalist is aware of just how draconian and totalitarian
Zimbabwe's media laws are, especially considering that few other states have
such "malicious" regulations.
By needlessly arresting the two as they were
carrying out their duties, the Zimbabwean authorities will have guaranteed
further negative publicity for the country. All the two were doing was filming a
foot-and-mouth checkpoint. We can be sure that as a result of Zimbabwe's
officious action, relations with Botswana will have been further strained.
Well done to all concerned. Our neighbours and the wider world should know
exactly what a nasty piece of work Aippa really is.
Zim Independent
Eric Bloch Column
By Eric Bloch
THERE has recently been very
justifiable excitement in Zambia, for the remarkable economic turnaround in the
last few years has now been capped with a discovery of oil reserves in the
north-west of that country.
The Zambian government is rapidly and
dynamically pursuing the commercial exploitation of the discovery which, if
proven to be viable, will accelerate even more the spectacular recovery of the
economy that has stemmed from the creation, albeit belatedly, of genuine
democracy, respect for law and order, human rights, economic deregulation and an
investment-conducive, welcoming environment.
Not to be outdone, Zimbabwe has
recently discovered the heaviest element yet known to science, and this
columnist is obliged to the anonymous author of the following "authoritative"
report: "The new element has been named Governmentium. Governmentium (Gv) has
one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy
neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together
by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like
particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert.
However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it
comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction, that
could normally take less than a second, to take over four days to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of four years; it does not decay, but
instead undergoes a reorganisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons
and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium mass will actually
increase over time, since each reorganisation will cause more morons to become
neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of moron promotion leads
some scientists to believe that Govermentium is formed whenever morons reach a
critical concentration. The hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical
morass. When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium an
element which radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half
as many peons but twice as many morons.
That Governmentium exists in
pronounced quantities in Zimbabwe is indisputable, for the evidence of its
presence is to be seen within virtually every facet of Zimbabwean life.
Authoritative scientific confirmation that Zimbabwe is possessed of infinite
resources of Governmentium include:
*
Having, over the first
quarter-century of Zimbabwean Independence, had six economic plans to bring
about well-being for all Zimbabweans, each launched with great fanfare and
promises of imminent economic utopia, but none of the promised deliverables
being forthcoming, it is now almost a year since government, with even greater
fanfares, launched the National Economic Development Priority Programme (NEDPP).
But all that it has appeared to yield to date has been the creation of
innumerable "task forces" which have apparently produced nothing but endless
talk-fests, and thousands of column centimetres in the state-controlled media,
heralding the imminent massive economic upturn (whilst ever greater numbers
become unemployed, are homeless, under-nourished, without access to healthcare
and suffering intensely). Only Governmentium can create an administration that
can unendingly be duped by its own specious propaganda, and that can be
continuously blinded by the realities;
*
The Head of State, speaking in
Beitbridge only a few months ago, said that Zimbabwe welcomes white farmers,
wants white farmers, and will facilitate white farmers, provided that they
recognise black farmers as their equals, but his Minister of State for Security
and Lands states vigorously that no whites will be permitted to farm in Zimbabwe
and, pursuant to that intent, continues to authorise and encourage evictions of
whites from farms.
He promotes authoritarian, discriminatory legislation,
spews forth racial diatribes in disregard for policies enunciated by his
president and in disregard for Zimbabwe's constitution, which prescribes against
racial discrimination. Clearly affected by Governmentium, he not only
contemptuously disregards his president, the constitution, justice and equity,
but also exacerbates Zimbabwe's economic ills and national poverty;
*
Governmentium has also pervaded the corridors of the Ministry of Agriculture,
ever since 2000, as is assertively demonstrated by the year-on-year assurances
of gargantuan increases in agricultural output. Undertakings that Zimbabwe would
be rapidly restored to food self-sufficiency, that productivity would be
undoubted because of timeous availability of essential agricultural inputs, and
so forth. In contradistinction, year after year the production of the
agricultural sector has declined, and the economic foundation of Zimbabwe
brought to near-total destruction;
*
Endlessly enthused statements flow
forth from government of the long-awaited upturn in tourism, with those
statements supposedly corroborated by impressive statistics of fast-growing
numbers of tourist arrivals. Concurrently, however, disclosures from tourism
industry operators indicate that there has been virtually no increase in the
number of bed-nights sold. Thus, either the data on arrivals is incorrect, or
the tourists are curtailing their stays in Zimbabwe, or the increases are
attributable to back-packers who do not patronise hotels, caravaners, or
visitors residing with family or friends. Whichsoever of these is the case,
there is little or no benefit to the tourist industry and the economy;
*
Great emphasis is placed by the president, the presidium, the Ministers of
Information and Publicity, Industry and International Trade, and many others,
upon Zimbabwe's supposedly most beneficial "Look East" policy. Few will dispute
that Zimbabwe should, in its endeavours to attract investment, develop the
economy, and generate trade, look to the East, but only contemporaneously with
looking North, West and South. But although the governmental claims overwhelming
success from its "Look East" policies, the populace can see little, if any, of
that supposed success. Admittedly, a cement factory has been opened in Gweru, a
glass factory is being established in Kadoma, a brickfield has been created by
Chinese investors in Mt Hampden, there has been some limited investment into
mining, and there are stated to be 37 other small-scale, corporate investments,
but the aggregate investment is minimal when compared with the repeated
projections of gargantuan investment that emanate from national leaders impacted
upon by Governmentium. To a major extent, Zimbabwe has benefited China, with
comparatively little reciprocal benefit to Zimbabwe.
China has sold at least
six aircraft to Zimbabwe, fleets of buses, tractors, and other mobile equipment,
tonnes of clothing and shoes (much of which were second-hand and rejects,
quality products being consigned to Europe, USA, Australia and other first world
economies), and much else, but the quid pro quo trade has not been substantial.
Those are but five examples of the permeation of Governmentium in Zimbabwe, but
are only indicative of like infiltration of that element throughout the
Zimbabwean autocracy. It is surely an element that Zimbabwe could do without!
State media scribes worst in moonlighting
THE Central Intelligence Organisation are so pathetic and desperate that
I feel sorry for President Mugabe, especially after reading a story on ZimOnline
which revealed that he had instructed the agency to spy on journalists who write
negative stories about the government using Internet caf้s.
Most freelance
journalists I know use their friends' computers and Internet services.
It is
with much sadness that I have to inform these "intelligence" services that 90%
of online stories are written not by desperate unemployed journalists, but by
those journalists employed by the state media.
Yes, you heard me right!
They write from the comfort of their state newsrooms and even use their
government contacts to get information.
A senior correspondent in the state
media once boasted that his salary was his beer money!
He said he could make
up to a million dollars on a good month just from selling stories to the
international media.
He has access to the kind of information that a poor,
unemployed journalist would kill for, and he is always first at a breaking news
event.
One of the most prolific online contributors is an award-winning
senior state media sports journalist.
By and large, there are others (senior
correspondents) at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings and regular sources for
the international media are found at the Ministry of Information. Who is fooling
who?
Most of these guys have bank accounts in neighbouring countries.
Asingadi mari ndiani (Who doesn't like money?)
If the CIO wants names, then
they should be prepared to pay through the nose for the information in foreign
currency. Alternatively, they could go through all the hard drives of those
overworked state media computers.
Even if they manage to arrest all the
"unpatriotic" journalists who use Internet caf้s, nothing will change.
Wake
up and smell the coffee.
Mwana Wevhu,
Harare.
--------------
MDC
stuck between a rock and a hard place
FOLLOWING the conclusion of the
recent Rural District Council elections, three members of the Movement for
Democratic Change have been expelled from the River Ranch irrigation scheme
where they have been operating for some years.
In the semi-desert conditions
of this district, this action has far-reaching consequences for the farmers and
their families.
The three farmers were known as some of the best producers
on the scheme.
The affected farmers are: Josephine Mkwananzi who stood as the
candidate for Ward 6,Sibusisiwe Hove, a polling agent for the MDC in Ward 6, and
Rosina Duve, a polling agent for the MDC in Ward 9.
The physical expulsions
were carried out by a team sent in by the local Zanu PF leadership and comprised
Rabelani Choen, Beauty Mbedzi, Joseph Mleya (elected councillor for Ward 6),
Chipo Nyathi (elected councillor for Ward 9) and Senator Tambudzani Mohadi, wife
of the Minister of Home Affairs Kembo.
They were supported by a team of Zanu
PF youths in a party vehicle. Names are available.
At the end of the
operation, the Zanu PF people asked if there were any other MDC people on the
scheme, the implication being that if known, they too would be expelled.
This
is a typical example of the methods used over the past decade by Zanu PF to
intimidate and coerce the rural population into voting for Zanu PF or to allow
Zanu PF to operate in these areas unopposed.
The Mohadi family lives in
Beitbridge and has extensive commercial interests in the area.
These
interests are used to distribute scarce commodities and farm inputs to the local
people on a political basis as Mohadi is the local MP.
The MDC is considering
what steps to take to protect the interests of its members including legal
action to sue the local leadership of Zanu PF including the senator, for the
families' loss of income.
However, it is also recognised that if such action
were taken, this would expose the families to further retribution including
violence.
No protection or assistance from the police can be expected as
Mohadi is the minister responsible for the police.
We are also considering an
appeal to the local traditional leadership but as these are beneficiaries of
largesse from the state including a salary and a vehicle, this is unlikely to
yield satisfaction.
EG Cross,
MDC.
-----------
Onus on the
young to effect change
WE have all watched events unfolding, hoping for
a better Zimbabwe and today we still hope for the hopeless.
In our scenario
we all know the solution, and tackling it remains our major challenge. The
question is: how do we liberate ourselves as a nation? The old guard's syndrome
of patriotism and looting in the process of protecting one another has led to
scandals, corruption and a further decline of the economy.
An analysis of
events clearly shows that we have been taken for a ride for quite some time now
and the current generation should be involved in finding a lasting
solution.
The revisit of a home-grown constitution and the land reform saw
the birth of democratic forces and resistance by those who fear change.
We
are faced with a government full of people who can't accept failure or
criticism. We can safely say the Abuja agreement, Thabo Mbeki, Joaquim Chissano,
Benjamin Mkapa and the Olusegun Obasanjo mediations, among other internal
initiatives, are now dead and buried.
The church has also brought its
suggestion of the Zimbabwe we want but for how long shall we tolerate our
contributions falling on deaf ears?
The old guard has brought this nation to
its knees while patriotism and nepotism have failed us. As kids we were told to
respect the elderly as they were said to be associated with wisdom. But today we
question the wisdom of those who lead us.
Is this the Zimbabwe we want?
Should we all fall for the ridiculous mantra we fought for this country, or
Zimbabwe ndeyeropa (Zimbabwe came through bloodshed?)
Can we say the whole
bunch of leaders who tried to mediate failed?
I beg to differ with those who
say Mbeki's quiet diplomacy has failed us when we should be uniting to find
solutions on our own. In any case, he has his own problems to worry about in the
ANC.
Another source of our woes are the Chinese seeking to loot our
minerals.
The young generation should unite to bring change for the benefit
of posterity. As one we will conquer, and divided we are bound to fall and be
crushed. No one will ever do it for us but ourselves.
For how long shall we
listen to the same old songs of hope while poverty is the order of the
day?
Keshor,
Glen Norah B,
Harare.
----------
ZEDC should
light the way
I COMMEND the Zimbabwe Electricity Distribution Company
(ZEDC) for their advertisement reminding electricity users of many of the ways
to reduce consumption, but note one glaring omission: the heavy users of energy
called air conditioners!
Perhaps, through this paper, the managing director
would like to instruct both in the spirit of patriotism and of leadership
that all air conditioners in the offices, homes and cars of ZEDC's senior
personnel be switched off during this very trying period.
Perhaps this would
prompt Zesa's senior personnel to follow suit!
EGR
Turner,
Harare.
---------
Not Zinwa alone to blame for water woes
By Water Woes
REFERENCE is made to the letter by Loreen Mupasiri, "We
surely can't suffer for Zinwa's sins," (Zimbabwe Independent, November
3).
While supporting the writer fully, as a matter of fact, one should not
place all the blame on Zinwa alone, for the cancer goes back to long before
Zinwa was formed.
In 1971 Borrowdale Rural Council and the peri-urban town
councils surrounding the city of Harare were absorbed into the city because of
the prevailing water woes.
The water supply was to be metropolitanised.
Plans were made for the major pipeline which was laid from Morton Jaffray
Water Works to Warren Pump Station in 1974/5 to be duplicated in 1982. This did
not take place until the early 1990s.
That duplication raised the water
generation capacity from Lake Chivero and Manyame Dam to its projected
maximum.
Forward planning projected the building of the Kunzvi Dam and a 40km
pipeline from the Nyaguwe/Shavanhowe Catchment, north of the city for the late
1990s if the city was to grow as anticipated.
The Kunzvi Dam and pipeline is
a national government project which has been consistently ignored inspite of
repeated warnings by water authorities.
The city councillors and
commissioners have been as guilty as the respective ministries of dereliction of
duty in regard to their responsibilities towards the ratepayers of Greater
Harare by not providing infrastructural growth to match the city's growth.
Sound technical and town planning appears to be a thing of the past.
The
city continues to grow at an unsustainable rate without matching infrastructural
expansion.
Some of the residential areas have increased property density
with no upgrading of the existing infrastructure.
Water systems were
installed following the 1968 drought on an emergency basis for the density of
residential plots according to the town planning scheme of the time (eg parts of
greater Borrowdale).
Properties reserved for local government or national
use as endowment are being subdivided and sold as residential plots.
Much of
this has been taking place before Zinwa came onto the scene.
The city has
ignored ratepayers' objections, formally presented, against annual published
draft budgets. Residents' constructive suggestions have likewise been
ignored.
Zinwa now, as the metropolitan authority must face the music
provide infrastructural expansion and supply bulk water to revitalised local
town councils based on the existing district offices.
District offices and
their councils must be granted the autonomy to determine how their revenue is
used to maintain their water, roads, street lighting and waste removal
infrastructure to the standards required by their rate payers.
Town council
officials must be given the incentives to take pride in the areas under their
care and act in accordance with the desires of their ratepayers.
* Water
Woes is a pen name for a writer from
Borrowdale
------------------
The lid is off
MORDECAI
Musvera went to town about a fake MBA (the Sunday Mail
(http://www1.sundaymail.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=52&cat=1 ) that he obtained
from a now defunct and unaccredited American university.
I see that he has
included the MBA in his CV that he publishes online
(http:www.onlinejobs.co.zw/cvs/mordecai.htm).
He is employed by the auditor
general's office. Does the auditor general's office recognise this
qualification? If so, for how long has he received a salary based on these
"fake" credentials?
Brotherhood,
Harare.