• Chitepo, Tongogara: Zanu PF will have to own up
• Bindura University suspends student leaders
• Storm brews over farm workers’ exit packages
• Zimbabwe slashes food prices
• EU warns Zimbabwe over threats
• Pretoria to Evict More Than 10,000 Zimbabwean Farm Workers
• Government orders price controls on basic commodities
• Timber firm accuses state of flouting Abuja Agreement
• Government wants farmers to pay redundancy to evicted workers
• Mugabe fights to curb inflation
• ZWnews 10/10/01
  • Gokwe torture I - Times of India
  • Gokwe torture II - DNews
  • 'US must act correctly' - Times of India
  • Murderers hanged - BBC
  • Invaders defy order - DNews
  • Cross-border food raids - ZWNEWS
  • Mai-Mai may hold key to DRC talks - BDay
• Investors rage against 'Mugabe-style' Byers
• Zimbabwe puts price freeze on basic foods
• Plenty of Pain to Share in Zimbabwe Land Reform
• Donors Reconsider Terms for the Heavily Indebted
• 'Zanu-PF tortured us'
• National Aids Council Consults Stakeholders On HIV/Aids Planning
• Magic fidelity spell for Aids

Maize is the stable foodstuff in Zimbabwe

The Zimbabwean government has ordered widespread price controls to cut the cost of basic foods by about a third.

The controls come as the country suffers with soaring inflation, rising poverty and a crumbling economy.

Industry and International Trade Minister Herbert Murerwa told the state-run Herald newspaper that a prize freeze would be issued later on Wednesday.

The price of many basic foodstuffs, including maize, bread, sugar, cooking oil, beef, chicken and pork, will revert to August levels when prices were about one third cheaper.

Black market fears

Analysts have said that the the move marks a return to the country's dictatorial economic policies of the 1980s.

And according to food industry executives, the price controls threaten the viability of milling fims, bakers and other producers.

Mr Murerwa has said that inspectors will punish violations of the new pricing levels by fines or imprisonment.

In the past, price controls led to acute shortages due to hoarding, and an active black market.

The decision comes after the threat of demonstrations due to the spiralling cost of living.

And may observers see the price controls as a political ploy ahead of presidential elections next year.

Isolation

Zimbabwe is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980.

Economists say the country's financial difficulties spring, in part, from the manufacturers' lack of foreign currency.

The situation has been deepened by the government programme to seize white-owned farms, isolating the country and severing links with many key exporters.

Inflation reached a record 76% last month.

And independent studies suggest the price of some goods such as soap and vegetables have risen by up to 180% since January.

Mugabe accuses the West of backing his opponents

The European Union has expressed concern over reports of threats against foreign diplomats and aid agencies in Zimbabwe.

The EU statement follows a warning by Chenjerai Hunzvi, a ruling party legislator in Zimbabwe and leader of the country's so-called war veterans, that foreign organisations would be the next target for government supporters.

Violence began with farm invasions last year

In its letter, the European bloc called on President Robert Mugabe's government to heed the Vienna Convention, which stipulates that host countries should provide full security for diplomatic missions and personnel.

But the Zimbabwean Government has already said it cannot guarantee the safety of diplomats and aid workers who, in its words, become involved in local politics.

The issue has aroused widespread international concern, with the Zimbabwean high commissioner in London being summoned to the Foreign Office to be told that the UK expects the rule of law to be upheld.

Embassies and aid agencies in Zimbabwe are warning staff to be vigilant.

Correspondents say that the rule of law has steadily collapsed in Zimbabwe, with farm invasions and attacks on white farmers spreading to all-out violence and intimidation against anyone who opposes Mr Mugabe's rule.

President Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party has accused Britain, the United States and the EU of backing the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Mr Wilson said Britain was deeply concerned

Mr Hunzvi, whose movement spearheaded the invasion of white-owned farms, says his supporters will visit embassies and aid agencies which back the MDC to "express their displeasure".

For its part, the government says that while diplomats accredited to the country would receive the full protection of the law, those who chose to side with one political party against another could not hope for assistance from the foreign ministry.

It also advised that aid workers who allowed themselves to "indulge in partisan political work" would not be helped if they got into trouble.

The International Federation of the Red Cross responded by moving its staff to safe locations.

And, earlier this week, two German aid agencies closed their offices in Harare, after one of them was attacked by militants.

British Foreign Office minister Brian Wilson told the Zimbabwean high commissioner that Britain was "deeply concerned" by recent events.

The UK, the EU and other countries would be monitoring Zimbabwe's response very closely, Mr Wilson added.

• Gokwe torture I - Times of India
• Gokwe torture II - DNews
• 'US must act correctly' - Times of India
• Murderers hanged - BBC
• Invaders defy order - DNews
• Cross-border food raids - ZWNEWS
• Mai-Mai may hold key to DRC talks - BDay

Since President Joseph Kabila took power in Kinshasa in January 2001, after the assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila, by a bodyguard, impetus has been given to the peace process, rival troops have withdrawn from frontline positions and UN military observers have been deployed across the country. For weeks, the Mai-Mai have demanded their own delegation to the dialogue, a proposal backed by Kinshasa but opposed outright by the rebels, who would rather see the militias integrated into other teams according to their alliances. In March the Uganda-backed Congo Liberation Front, which operates mainly in the northern DRC, announced it would train eight Mai-Mai brigades and integrate them into a joint peace-keeping force. FLC leader Jean-Pierre Bemba has spoken in favour of Mai-Mai participation at the talks "but we invite them to integrate their existing delegations". And the RCD is keen to bring some Mai-Mai into its own fold, as a divisive tactic, according to the Nairobi-based analyst. On Saturday, the RCD said it was planning a meeting with Mai-Mai leaders and that contacts had been made for such a meeting Sapa-AFP.

Analysts at Lehman Brothers said they believed Railtrack's equity was "worthless", although on the City's informal grey market, the shares are changing hands at 30p to 40p. They closed on Friday at 280p.

Zimbabwe puts price freeze on basic foods
By Peta Thornycroft in Harare
(Filed: 11/10/2001)

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe's government yesterday announced the imposition of price controls on basic foodstuffs, dealing a shattering blow to the already crippled economy and threatening widespread food shortages.

With presidential elections due early next year, the government said the retail costs of goods such as bread and sugar would be cut by between 10 and 45 per cent.

Businessmen said the move would lead to hoarding and black marketeering, along with mounting losses and closures among food suppliers and processors.

Annual inflation in Zimbabwe is around 80 per cent, and unemployment is at record levels. Herbert Murerwa, the trade and industry minister, said an official order freezing prices at the levels of two months ago was being prepared.

The economic collapse since Mr Mugabe ordered invasions of white-owned farms 18 months ago has made Zimbabweans poorer than ever before. The costs of basics are now beyond the reach of more than half the population.

Political analysts say the economy is in free fall and Mr Mugabe had to act before the announcement, due within two months, of the date of the presidential election.

"This is going to lead to serious food shortages immediately," said Mac Crawford, president of the Commercial Farmers' Union in the Matabeleland province, which produces much of Zimbabwe's milk.

He added: "Dairy farmers, already harassed by invasions, are going to slash milk production, because they will not be able to afford to produce at fixed prices when the cost of their inputs increases daily."

The chief economist of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, Farayi Zizhou, said: "We were very surprised. We are in continuous consultation with government and we knew nothing of this.

He added: "We had price controls in the 1980s and they led to tremendous shortages, and then the economy was in reasonable shape. Now the economy is desperate, and there will be further retrenchments in the affected industries and queues will begin."

He said the chaotic economic situation led to wage increases of between 60-150 per cent in the last six months.

The acting chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, Anthony Barfoot, said there would be shortages of staples because producers would not be able to supply at fixed rates.

Mr Barfoot said: "Price controls will create even more difficulties in an already bad situation." The foodstuffs that will be subject to price controls are: bread, maize, cooking oil, margarine, soap, milk, beef, chicken and sugar.

Several political analysts predict that as staples become unavailable, Mr Mugabe will blame whites in the private sector, saying that they are sabotaging the economy.

Zimbabwe has no foreign currency for imports and is surviving from day to day.

Plenty of Pain to Share in Zimbabwe Land Reform

By RACHEL L. SWARNS

ARONDERA, Zimbabwe, Oct. 5 — Every morning the sun rises over the glimmering tobacco fields and the black revolutionary carefully sharpens his machete, determined to reclaim the land stolen from his grandfathers. The white farmer sips her tea and prepares for her daily walk, determined to keep the soil she bought and paid for 10 years ago.

She slams the farmhouse door. The crickets hum, her bare feet shuffle, his machete sings.

"Good morning, Lovemore," the white woman calls as she passes the young black man who has become a squatter on her farm.

The black man wipes the sweat from his eyes and smiles back. "I always greet her," he explains.

She is Lindsay Campbell, a steely woman of 33, who often walks these days with a pistol tucked in a holster. He is Lovemore Mashoko, 28, soft- spoken and unemployed, one of a dozen farm invaders who is chopping her trees, building a hut, threatening her family and dreaming of owning his first plot of land in a quiet corner of her cow pasture.

They are rivals and reluctant neighbors, forced to coexist as Zimbabwe lurches ahead with its tumultuous and sometimes violent land reform plan. On hundreds of farms across the country, government officials and black squatters say they are reviving their young country's liberation struggle and redrawing the colonial map that left a tiny white minority with more than half this nation's fertile land.

Joao Silva for The New York Times Lindsay Campbell, a farmer in Zimbabwe, has sent family photographs away in case the house is burned by squatters who will be angered by a court order she and her husband, Angus, have sought to protect their farm. Joao Silva for The New York Times Lovemore Mashoko, a squatter on the Campbell farm in Zimbabwe, is building a hut and dreaming of owning a plot of land in a pasture there.

But after 18 months of attacks against white farmers, black farm workers and opposition party supporters that have left more than 30 people dead, both whites and blacks here at Uitkyk farm and elsewhere are feeling increasingly betrayed.

Critics have accused President Robert Mugabe of fomenting the conflict and say the gap between his rhetoric and what he has so far delivered proves that he is using the promise of land to win votes from poor blacks in presidential elections, which are expected to be held early next year.

Mr. Mugabe, 77, first came to power in 1980 in elections that ended all white rule here. He vowed then to return land that was stolen by British settlers from blacks in this country. It is a promise that few people have forgotten, and with his standing waning after 21 years in power, the president has spent the past year reviving an issue that has great resonance among black voters.

Faced with mounting pressure from Britain, this country's former colonial ruler, and other commonwealth states — including some in Africa — Zimbabwe promised last month to remove illegal squatters, to crack down on violence and intimidation and to carry out its land program lawfully. In return, Britain agreed to help finance the purchase of land for black settlers. But conflicts have continued.

At least 20 new farms have been invaded since the agreement, the white farmers union says. The invaders at the 2,470-acre Uitkyk farm are still threatening to kill Mrs. Campbell and her husband, Angus, to prevent them from planting and plowing. A new law allows squatters who settled before March to remain on the farms. But many invaders here arrived later, and the police, who showed up at the farm this week, have refused to remove them.

Government officials deny that Mr. Mugabe has provoked the crisis for political gain but are increasingly forced to give a nod to grave shortcomings in their program.

In recent weeks, government officials, who often say they have successfully resettled 130,000 households, have acknowledged that many black families have actually been stranded on arid stretches without adequate water or sanitation. The government, which publicly claims to have acquired as many as 4,000 farms over the past 18 months, has acquired only about 91, court records and government reports show.

Officials say such problems are inevitable in a land program of this magnitude and say they are working to resolve them. In court, they produce stacks of police reports to show that officers are responding to complaints. They say that money has been allocated for wells and toilets, and they said the process would move more quickly if white farmers stopped lodging so many objections.

Jonathan Moyo, the minister of information, said the response proves that the government is serious. "We will prosecute anyone," he said. "There's no question about the government's commitment."

Bharat Patel, Zimbabwe's deputy attorney general, says officials are trying to speed up the often cumbersome process of acquiring land. "We're stuck with these technical objections, and that's what slows the process down," he said, "but things are being systemized."

But few deny that Zimbabwe is paying a devastating price for a land program that has yet to bear much fruit. The invasions of white-owned farms and the recent waves of political violence have left an already struggling economy in tatters.

Between 1999 and 2000, foreign investment plunged by 89 percent, government statistics show. The economy is expected to shrink by 8 percent this year. Unemployment stands at about 60 percent, and for the first time in a decade, severe hunger is settling over parts of the country.

In an interview, a senior official acknowledged for the first time that a small number of people have already died from hunger in the southern district of Mberengwa, a community of about 170,000.

"There is starvation there," Rugare Gumbo, the deputy minister of home affairs, said in an interview. "We have a lot of families who have nothing, absolutely nothing, no food. I've had reports of people dying, old men, a handful, maybe three or four. The weak are the ones who are really suffering."

Experts say the food shortages have been caused primarily by two seasons of unusually bad weather, with alternating periods of severe flooding and drought destroying the crops of black farmers with small holdings. But they say the farm invasions have also played a role.

White commercial farmers produce about half of Zimbabwe's corn, the nation's staple crop. Over the past year, commercial production has dropped by 40 percent, partly because of the invasions and partly because of the crop's declining price, said Elliot Vhurumuko of the Famine Early Warning System Network in the capital, Harare.

In its most recent report, the group said that Zimbabwe would not have enough corn to meet its basic consumption needs after November.

The government says it will import corn from South Africa, and last month it banned all exports of flour, cooking oil and sugar. Meanwhile, the Lutheran Church and Care International have begun feeding the hungry in places like Mberengwa and Masvingo.

No matter the disruptions, officials say they will not abandon the land redistribution program, even if that means some continued suffering. They say they must right the historical wrongs and return blacks to the fertile land that was taken by British settlers.

But for all the talk of government officials of enforcing the law and redistributing land, squatters like Mr. Mashoko are still anxiously awaiting deeds to the plots they have been allocated. Mr. Mashoko, for one, fears they may never come.

The provincial authorities have given him plot No. 64 — roughly 7 acres on the Campbell farm — and he has built a small wooden hut there. He hopes to surround it with green fields of corn. But he has no title to the land and no water to nurture his crops.

"The government has a plan to assist us, but I don't know when they are coming," Mr. Mashoko said helplessly. "We are desperately in need of them. It's hard, hard here."

Inflation has sent food prices soaring and Mr. Mashoko said he could no longer afford tea or rice. He subsists mostly on a cornmeal porridge. But he refuses to believe the rumors that the police will soon force him and the others out. "It's real, it's real," Mr. Mashoko said of the government's promise of land for the poor.

But then doubt clouded his anxious brown eyes.

"We need to be clear," he admitted. "Who is going to be on this farm: the farmer or the settlers?"

It is a question that the Campbells would like resolved, too. This time of year, they would normally be planting corn, paprika and their second tobacco crop. But that has been impossible. This week, Mr. Mashoko and other squatters threatened Mrs. Campbell with axes when she put her cattle out to graze.

So Mrs. Campbell has packed up the family photographs and sent them to Harare, the capital, for safekeeping. She and her husband say they will seek a court order to stop the squatters from interfering with their farm, a step that is bound to anger them.

At least if they burn the house down now, Mrs. Campbell said, she and her family would not lose their memories. "We're literally under siege and sometimes I think we're not going to win," she confessed. "Sometime I think we're going to lose what we've got."

But when foreign visitors asked about her new neighbors, the newly resettled farmers, she did not hesitate to direct them to Mr. Mashoko.

"The problem is not with them, really," Mrs. Campbell said. "We can see that the problem of land has to be addressed. We know there is a need for change. We just want government to follow the law. And then, we will all just try to pick up the pieces and try to start again."

Donors Reconsider Terms for the Heavily Indebted

The Nation (Nairobi)

October 10, 2001
Posted to the web October 9, 2001

Paul Redfern

Western countries might become more lenient on the debts of Highly Indebted Poor Countries.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance minister) Gordon Brown said the evidence that many commodity prices have all but collapsed might force the West to consider a more liberal interpretation of the HIPC debt relief terms.

With the price of coffee in particular at a 30-year low, even countries such as Uganda, which have completed their HIPC terms have seen the benefits of HIPC debt relief virtually wiped out, he said.

Britain has been leading the way to push for more lenient debt relief terms for African countries in the current economic recession after criticism from non-governmental organisations in the West and within Africa that the conditions being attached are still too onerous and lengthy.

Mr Brown said lenders would interpret the provisions of the HIPC programme generously to ensure countries were not thrown back into unsustainable debt because of problems in the world economy.

"There is already provision in the HIPC initiative that where world conditions deteriorate we will be as flexible as possible in helping so that the benefits (countries) were to get from HIPC can be maintained," Mr Brown said.

The Guardian newspaper said what appeared to have been on the agenda was that extra relief would be given to countries, such as Uganda, which complete HIPC but still find themselves with an unsustainable debt burden.

Forty-one countries including Tanzania (but not Kenya) are part of the HIPC programme. Most of these are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Under current HIPC terms, the West writes off about a third of the loans of qualifying countries, reducing their debt repayments to a level which the World Bank and IMF consider sustainable.

So far, 23 countries have qualified for the HIPC terms and eventually could receive a total of around US$ 34 billion in debt relief.

Last week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for greater international investment in Africa, saying the current state of poverty in the continent is "a scar on our consciences."

Speaking at the Labour Party annual conference in Brighton, Mr Blair stressed the need for a partnership for Africa between the developed and the developing world.

Britain has a continued military presence in Sierra Leone and Mr Blair pledged that British troops would be available to help implement future peace deals elsewhere in Africa.

Harare - Several members of Zimbabwe's leading opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), claimed on Tuesday to have been tortured by youth activists from the ruling party.

They said they were beaten and burnt by Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) youths campaigning for President Robert Mugabe ahead of next year's presidential election in Zimbabwe's central Midlands province.

"They are preparing for the presidential campaign and they say 'We don't want to see MDC supporters in this area'," Max Mutiri, an MDC official from Midlands, told AFP.

He spoke from the back of a vehicle that had carried him and two relatives to the capital city to receive treatment on Tuesday.

Revealing his severely swollen feet and burn marks on his body, Mutiri recounted how for two days last week he and his relatives had the soles of their feet beaten with iron bars and how he was held over a fire.

"Zanu-PF cannot rule my country if they are doing this," said Mutiri, who vowed to return home to campaign for Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC's presidential candidate in elections due before April next year.

Bid to ban army from police work

Meanwhile a human rights group has petitioned the country's parliamentarians to ban the army from police work.

The army is being used to enforce law and order in the country at a time of heightened political tensions, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) said in a statement released late on Monday.

"Some people have died and a lot of them have been assaulted," said the statement, addressed to the country's parliament, which is made up of 64 ruling party and 53 opposition elected members.

"We feel that government should come up with recommendations that would bar the use of the army in the maintenance of law and order."

The statement lists dozens of assaults by the army on civilians in various parts of the country including the capital, Harare.

Some analysts predict a violent run-up to the election, in which Tsvangirai is expected to present President Mugabe with his stiffest challenge yet to 21 years in office. - Sapa/AFP

National Aids Council Consults Stakeholders On HIV/Aids Planning

UN Integrated Regional Information Network

October 10, 2001
Posted to the web October 10, 2001

In an effort to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS, the Zimbabwe National AIDS Council(NAC) met AIDS organisations to set in motion a process to facilitate HIV/AIDS prevention and care by district HIV/AIDS committees throughout the country.

According to a Safaids report, the NAC consulted different stakeholders including disadvantaged groups, civic organisations and the private sector to reach a common understanding of what was needed to be done. They also identified who the intervention programmes would benefit and defined how the programmes could be conducted.

Groups targeted for intervention programmes include sex workers, the hearing-impaired, the blind and people with other forms of disabilities. The consultations revealed that HIV/AIDS education programmes did not include sign language or braille literature for the blind. The response to HIV/AIDS has mainly been from civic groups, ASO (AIDS Service Organisations) and the international donor community. The private sector has only recently begun to develop intervention programmes, the report said.

Last year, the Zimbabwean government introduced a compulsory levy on company and income tax, in an effort to raise funds for HIV/AIDS intervention programmes. The AIDS levy was collected, yet organisations and individuals questioned how the funds would be used. Since its introduction, the disbursement of funds has been hindered by logistical and political problems. Pressure has been placed on the government to define distribution criteria and the monitoring mechanisms to be used for managing the fund. The NGO sector has been called upon to develop a strategy to advocate and lobby government for better policies in HIV/AIDS prevention, the report said.

Harare - A Zimbabwean healer wants to promote the use of a traditional spell which ensures fidelity, alongside the more conventional methods of condoms and abstinence, to curb the spread of Aids in the country.

Healer Mutsa Chikede came up with the idea of using a technique which involves magically "locking" women and immobilising men, to bar them from having extra-marital sex, alongside condoms and abstinence, because the latter only have a limited impact on stemming the spread of Aids in Zimbabwe.

Around one in four of Zimbabwe's adult population is infected with the HIV virus, and Aids kills an average of 3 000 people in the country each week.

Chikede's proposed technique uses traditional herbs to cast a spell which can be administered by a healer even in the absence of the subject. It has become popularly known in Zimbabwe as the "central locking system," or "immobiliser".

When applied, the spell is supposed to ensure that one cannot have sex outside marriage.

The minority Tonga ethnic group use the practice to "lock" their infant daughters to prevent them from engaging in pre-marital sex, only unlocking them when they get married.

Magically block access to the vagina

Chikede is encouraging couples to go for the voluntary preventive measure, which he stresses is reversible in the event of a partner's death or divorce.

The spell is said to magically block access to the vagina when applied to a woman and prevents an erection in men whenever they try to have sex outside marriage.

"We are looking at the African way of living, and we are saying why not make use of the 'central locking system' as a way of preventing the spread of HIV," Chikede, of Zimbabwe's Natural Medicine Clinic, said.

The idea has been slowly catching on since Chikede introduced it earlier this year, and at least 45 couples have been locked to each other so far, he said. He hopes to formally launch his magical technique later this month at a medical expo in Harare.

But Zimbabwe's official medical authorities are opposed to Chikede's far-fetched idea, with Health Minister Timothy Stamps calling it "primitive and contrary to every concept of human dignity and rights".

'Marriage is no donga'

"It is fundamentally flawed and is contemptuous of marriage... and it's a violation of human rights," Stamps said.

People don't need to be locked into marriages "like animals in a donga (dry gully)," he said, because "marriage is not a prison, marriage is not a form of slavery."

Taking the opposite tack, Peter Sibanda of the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association (ZINATHA) views the concept as a "great preventive measure" and other advocates of the central locking system say it could be used as a means to thwart potential rapists.

But Caroline Maposhere, of the Women and Aids Support Network, said "We don't know the side-effects of such practices. You don't try to curb the HIV/Aids by casting a spell on people - there has to be a voluntary change of behaviour."

The health minister said the whole idea was bound to fail "because people have always found ways of going around locks in the past". - Sapa/AFP