Zimbabwe
Opposition Member of Parliament, Roy Bennett MP, said today that he had been
attacked in his prison cell by Government security
operatives following his arrest at the weekend. One of the two colleagues
arrested with him was also savagely beaten.
Mr Bennett said that
soldiers entered his cell under the supervision of Joseph Mwale, Head of
the Central Intelligence Organisation for the area. Mwale said he was
acting under direct orders from President Robert Mugabe.
First, Mr
Bennett was told that the soldiers had come to kill him. Then
he was stripped and held on the floor, while booted soldiers stamped on
his feet and then on his legs. This continued for a period of nearly half
an hour. Mr Bennett is nowe receiving medical attention for damage to his
legs. An associate of Mr Bennett's, Mike Magwaza received even worse
treatment, with savage beatings over a period of days. Mr Bennett said
that he and his wife witnessed the first of these beatings, and described
Mr Magwaza, who has now also been released, as being in "very bad
shape".
Mr Bennett said that he had been denied food or water for more
than a day and a half after his arrest. However, others being held in the
same gaol cells had suffered even worse, he said. In all, Mr Bennett was
moved between three gaol cells, and in each he found groups of arouind a
dozen young men who were being held without trial or access to lawyers,
and had received violent beatings. Mr Bennett said moist of these
prisoners had been without food for at least four days.
In one
gaol, armed soldiers yelled instructions through the window to
other prisoners in the same cell as Mr Bennett, ordering them to attack
him or they would be shot. Mr Bennett said the response was "inspiring".
"These brave, unarmed young men shouted abuse at the soldiers. They yelled
that I was their MP and nobody was going to harm me. They dared the
soldiers enter the cell to see what would happen to them". Mr Bennett said
that although this had been a "very rough" experience, the treatment being
experienced by many black members of the community, and in particular by
opposition supporters was even worse. When Mr Bennett told Joseph Mwale
that his actions were unlawful, he was told "There is no law
in Zimbabwe, other than Robert Mugabe"
Mr Bennett also reported
that Opposition MDC voters in his area had been visited at their homes in
the run up to last weekend's local elections, and had been told that, when
the came to vote, they must line up in the queue for people unable to
write, and their ballot paper would be marked for them. If they did
not, he said, they were told they would be killed.
Mr Bennett was
elected by a constituency of 50,000 black and just eleven white voters. He
said that the support of his community through this terrible time had been
"an encouragement and an inspiration", adding that the
growing frequency of extreme violence showed "just how desperate this
regime is growing".
Blessed Or Benighted Leadership? Facing
Challenges in Zimbabwe And the Ivory Coast
Accra Mail
(Accra)
OPINION October 2, 2002 Posted to the web October 2,
2002
E. Ablorh-Odjidja
After the Troika meeting at Abuja,
September 23, 2002, the verdict seemed to be that the AU would rather have
Zimbabwe explode than solve the problem there.
Considering other
complex issues facing Africa today, one would have thought that the Zimbabwe
matter was one the AU could have found easy to solve. But, it seems ludicrous
now to have supposed that such optimism was possible in African affairs in
the first place.
Now the AU should get ready for the next conflagration;
translation, next stop, the Ivory Coast.
The Abuja meeting took place
in the capital of Nigeria, under the auspices of the Commonwealth and the AU;
with Australia, South Africa and Nigeria as the Troika members to consider
disciplinary sanctions against Zimbabwe.
The mission leading to the
meeting was clear: The Troika was to bring back Zimbabwe from the brink.
Presidents Mbeki of South Africa and Obasanjo of Nigeria were there as
representatives of the AU and they failed to do that.
Mbeki and Obasanjo
spent the good part of this year trumpeting the merits of the AU and NEPAD
and the new found strength in "good governance through peer review". The
cynics among us responded, "Yeah right!" And the dupes snapped back "shut up,
this is a new day for Africa!" And now look. Mbeki and Obasanjo had a chance
to make the call for "good governance" and they promptly lost their nerves at
their very first encounter with a despot!
So the situation in Zimbabwe
continues. We have a stolen election, an aging dictator who is bent on going
down with the ship, a mounting internal and external disaffection with
matters in Zimbabwe, a worsening economic and political situation in the
country, a threat to good governance as defined by NEPAD, and failure to
extend common courtesy to the AU, and Obasanjo and Mbeki found reasons to let
Mugabe off the hook!
You can bet that the AU is off to a very bad start
with this failure. What explains this disappointment?
Nothing! It is
the same old OAU. The OAU did not morph into an AU with a real bite. It
showed up at the Troika meeting as the same tired fraternity of presidents
under a different guise. So the hope that was invested in Mbeki and Obasanjo
to bring sense to the situation in Zimbabwe came back defeated, swept away
like a wet paper towel in the path of a deluge.
Unfortunately, there is
still more trouble to come out of Africa. There is the Ivory Coast gaining
notoriety daily, and others yet to surface that would make the problems of
Zimbabwe look like a leaking faucet compared to the cascade at Victoria
Falls.
The major portion of the troubles engulfing Africa is impersonal
and impermeable to reason. Obviously, one cannot approach AIDS, the disease,
to talk reason. Neither can one talk logic to the half wit who is intent
on ruling a country because he found himself in charge of an army. But all
this is small matter if one cannot talk sense to Mugabe, a well educated
African, and a liberator who has governed a country for 22 years.
But
that was exactly what happened at Abuja. Mugabe didn't even show up to listen
to anybody talk sense.
When asked about the failure to sanction, John
Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, who together with Mbeki and Obasanjo
chaired the Troika meeting, was so diplomatic.
"Australia" he said
"was of the opinion that Zimbabwe should be fully suspended from the
Commonwealth with immediate effect. The other two members of the committee
are of the opinion that the progress of Zimbabwe should continue to be
monitored over the next six months."
Really a nice answer for what should
have been a charge for dereliction of duty against Mbeki and
Obasanjo.
Not even the snobbery at the invitation to come to Abuja could
goad Mbeki and Obasanjo to take action against Mugabe. Before the meeting,
the impression was that Mugabe, by failing to appear at Abuja, had risked
the anger of the Troika and therefore had invited the wrath and
certain sanctions of the AU and the Commonwealth. How mistaken was the
prediction!
As strange as things always are in Africa, the attempt to
sanction Zimbabwe fell apart because South Africa sided with Nigeria against
Australia, some said, along racial lines.
But knowing what has
transpired in Zimbabwe for the past year or two, Australia can be excused
from charges of racism. A racist, to be honest, would have preferred the
confusion to continue.
The decision by Mbeki and Obasanjo, however, is
another matter and should be suspect. Sanctions against African leaders by
their brethren are rare. This is how past scripts of the OAU always
read.
Still, Mugabe of all people should know that he has fought long and
hard to make gains for his people. Nobody expects him to solve all the
problems in his life time. And no one is asking for issue change.
No
African, including Tsvangirai, the opposition leader of Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC), is plotting for the land issue to die. All that
is being asked for is a new approach, a fresh start and a fair chance to
choose a leader for the same country known as Zimbabwe. On this latter
issue, Mugabe is seriously flawed.
Tsvangirai, has called the last
election a "coup d'etat", and is asking for a re-run under international
supervision. He has warned of a gathering "people's storm" that would do
battle with what he called President Robert Mugabe's "civil-military junta".
Do we blame him? Can the Ivory Coast serve as a lesson?
What started
in the Ivory Coast as an attempt to steal an election lead to a coup in year
2000. Once one of the most stable countries in Africa, the Ivory Coast has
become a tottering political mess. The insurrection is on, and the end is not
in sight yet. The AU is also yet to respond with meaningful
action.
Earlier this year, the same AU instructed Mugabe to halt the
political violence in Zimbabwe, to stop harassing the press, political
opponents, and to seek to redress election and human rights
abuses.
Mugabe's rebuff of the Abuja Troika, and the subsequent victory
handed him mean that he is not likely to listen to the AU; at least not
within the six months charitably bestowed on him by Mbeki and
Obasanjo.
After the talks in Abuja failed, Australia declared that she
might go it alone and impose sanctions against Zimbabwe. But what will the AU
do after six months?
The AU needs to draw a parallel between Zimbabwe
and the Ivory Coast, and to add to that the possibility that the whole middle
portion of coastal West Africa is in danger of a spreading war.
This
war in the era of the AU, NEPAD and the much touted renaissance for Africa
that one assumed reason and courage would guide the affairs of the continent.
So how did Africa fail with the champions of "good governance" Mbeki and
Obasanjo at the helm?
The decision not to suspend Zimbabwe is a setback
for progress in Africa. Minister of Information, Jonathan Moyo's "No serious
person expected us (Zimbabwe) to be part of that kind of circus (in
Abuja),"
notwithstanding, Abuja should have been the proper venue to have
brought sanity to Zimbabwean affairs.
So once again we are forced to
look at the AU like an intrepid reporter did once at the League of Nations
after Italy invaded Ethiopia: "On the surface, very little is happening.
Beneath the surface nothing is happening," he was reported to have
said.
You may say same about AU deliberations. Africa is under invasion
by forces of the most unreasonable sorts. The continent is burning, but our
leaders have turned cheerleaders for the arsonists. Now ask why Africa is
so blessed. But first ask why we have leaders who so much want to lead, yet
are unwilling or incapable of making those calls that leadership requires
of them - to save the
continent.
September
29, 2002 Posted to the web October 2, 2002
Ranjeni
Munusamy Johannesburg
<i>'If it is not diplomacy we pursue in
dealing with Zimbabwe, then it is war'</i>
SOUTH Africa and
other African countries will not bow to pressure to "declare war" on
Zimbabwe, Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said this week.
In the
South African government's strongest defence of its approach to the crisis in
Zimbabwe and a rare broadside against a Western power, Pahad said British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw should come up with "concrete proposals" on how
to resolve the situation.
"We don't believe that their megaphone
diplomacy and screaming from the rooftops has helped anyway . . . If it is
not diplomacy we pursue in dealing with Zimbabwe, then it is war. We will not
go to war with Zimbabwe," Pahad said.
"We do not need to be lectured
to about democracy, respect for the rule of law and human
rights.
"Southern African states are conscious of our responsibility and
of the economic and political impact of the situation in Zimbabwe. But we
cannot be like people far away who keep shouting about
Zimbabwe."
Pahad's comments were in response to Straw's disappointment at
the outcome of a meeting on Monday of the Commonwealth troika, made up of
President Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and Australian Prime
Minister John Howard, which failed to reach consensus on further punitive
action against Zimbabwe.
The two African leaders opposed Howard's
attempts to impose full Commonwealth suspension and sanctions on Zimbabwe, in
addition to the year-long suspension already in place. Full suspension would
entail Commonwealth member states ceasing trade with Zimbabwe, breaking
all sporting links and isolating the country diplomatically.
Straw
said this week that he shared Howard's "acute disappointment" about the
failure of the troika to agree on tougher measures against Zimbabwe.
"We
would wish to see particularly the Southern African governments
exerting greater pressure on the [President Robert] Mugabe regime," he
said.
Pahad said Straw's criticism of the outcome of the meeting was a
"hint at our heads of state that they have a lack of commitment to deal with
the issue".
"What are they proposing we should be doing? Jack Straw
and others must tell us what they expect the Southern African Development
Community to do."
The leader of Zimbabwe's Opposition Movement for
Democracy, Morgan Tsvangirai, also slammed the outcome of the troika meeting
as a "great disappointment". He said the troika was supposed to "pursue the
issue of Mugabe's illegitimacy".
"Instead they have sought to divert
from that critical issue and follow an agenda that expresses solidarity with
and protects Mugabe. They have totally abdicated their responsibility to
discharge their functions as mandated by the Commonwealth," Tsvangirai
said.
"They have abandoned Zimbabweans at their greatest hour of need. It
is increasingly futile for the troika to continue to profess concern
and sympathy for the plight of the people of Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans have
been left to face their own fate."
The statements by Pahad and
Tsvangirai come ahead of the annual summit of the SADC in Angola this week,
where the region's heads of state will be under international pressure to
rebuke Mugabe over the disputed election and the seizure of white-owned land
in Zimbabwe.
Pahad said while the Zimbabwe issue was not on the summit's
formal agenda, it was likely to come up in the secretary-general's report on
the state of the region and could even be raised by the Zimbabwean
government.
The troika is only to consider the Zimbabwean issue again at
the end of the suspension period in March. However, Commonwealth
Secretary-General Don McKinnon has been asked to resume efforts to engage
with the Mugabe government on the developments in the country, Commonwealth
spokesman Joel Kibazo said.
"The secretary-general was mandated by
heads of government and the troika to talk to the Zimbabwean government and
seek clarification on a number of issues. It is important that dialogue
starts. So far there has been little or no response from the Zimbabwean
government towards achieving that dialogue," Kibazo
said.
HARARE, Oct 2
(Reuters) - A U.S.-based famine unit has warned Zimbabwe's food crisis is
deepening and millions more people face starvation unless they receive urgent
aid and the government eases its monopoly on grain trade.
Drought,
political turmoil and mismanagement have created a food shortage threatening
more than 14 million people in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Lesotho
and Swaziland.
In its latest monthly update on Zimbabwe, Famine Early
Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) said on Wednesday a food security
assessment showed 6.7 million people would need food aid between December and
March 2003, up from 4.5 million between September and November.
Some
486,000 tonnes of emergency food aid would be needed from September to March
next year "to avert countrywide starvation", FEWSNET said.
Mugabe's
government, which has accused aid agencies of promoting the interests of the
main opposition party, has put in place legislation that gives the state
Grain Marketing Board a monopoly on all trade in the
staple grain.
"The maize marketing system needs to be reviewed to
allow more private sector participation in the marketing and distribution of
maize to increase supplies, lower prices, and make maize accessible to
starving people," it said.
More than 90 percent of farmers had no
maize seed, it added. Small-scale black farmers account for 70 percent of
Zimbabwe's annual maize output.
"Without a timely and urgent distribution
of maize seeds, many of Zimbabwe's farmers will not be able to plant. The
consequences of a drop in maize production would be staggering."
The
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said customs officials had impounded
some 2,000 bags of maize the party had imported from neighbouring South
Africa, citing the lack of an import licence.
The MDC vowed earlier this
week to keep importing maize.
"The regime simply is failing to feed the
people of Zimbabwe. It is only natural that resources and efforts from
everyone should be harnessed to bring in food to feed starving children," MDC
Information Secretary Paul Themba Nyathi said.
Once the bread basket
of southern Africa, Zimbabwe now needs food aid because of a sharply lower
maize output, which aid agencies partly blame on Mugabe's controversial
seizure of land from minority whites for redistribution to landless
blacks.
The government says the shortage is due solely to a drought that
has hit small-scale black farmers who account for 70 percent of Zimbabwe's
annual maize output.
Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) has protested the arrest of two members of parliament this week
and accused the government of continued violence against its
supporters.
MDC parliamentarians confronted police on Wednesday when they
tried to present a protest petition over the arrests that followed local
council elections at the weekend, which human rights group Amnesty
International said were marred by state-sponsored violence and
intimidation.
MDC MP Tichaona Munyanyi was arrested on Tuesday in
connection with the recent murder of a ruling party supporter. He was
expected to appear in court on Thursday.
On Sunday, MDC MP Roy
Bennett, his bodyguard and a South African accompanying them, were arrested
at a roadblock in Chimanimani, in the east of the country, for allegedly
taking pictures at a polling booth.
The MDC's legal affairs secretary
David Coltart told IRIN that opposition MPs had attempted to hand a signed
petition to the speaker of parliament, protesting the arrest of their
colleagues and alleged intimidation and torture of MDC
supporters.
"Our chief whip was denied permission to hand it [the
petition] to the speaker and was then thrown out of parliament, we all [MDC
MPs] left parliament and walked across to police headquarters in an effort to
hand it over to the police commissioner," he said.
However, the police
refused to receive the petition. MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube told
IRIN that the police were "very hostile" towards the MPs and were allegedly
"issued an instruction that they should actually assault us, fortunately the
police at the gate refused to carry out that instruction, instead they
negotiated with us".
The MPs were told that in terms of protocol the
petition should be handed to the minister of home affairs, to whom it was
later delivered.
"The petition sets out our concern about the breakdown
of the rule of law, the selective application of the law, the arrest of
opposition MPs and activists, the torture inflicted upon opposition activists
and demands that the police apply the law impartially and desist from
harassing the opposition," Coltart said.
Amnesty International has
"strongly condemned" what it described as state-sponsored violence, torture,
arrests and intimidation of opposition candidates and supporters during the
local council elections held on 28 and 29 September.
"Once again,
government authorities have failed to ensure that elections take place in a
climate free from harassment and intimidation. All allegations of human
rights violations, including torture, against ... MDC officials and
supporters during the local elections must be effectively investigated," the
rights group said in a
statement.
MATABELELAND Yesterday, four farmers were arrested for
remaining on their farms despite having set aside their Section 8 orders, or
having them overturned in administrative courts. Three are from the Marla
farming area: J Rosenthals, E. Rosenthals and R Rosenthals (the last of whom
was later released last night). The fourth, Mrs Leefie Cahill, who is
in her late 50's, farms in the Shangani area. Three of them are still in
custody, and no court date was set as of four this afternoon. Furthermore,
ultimatums have been delivered to some 27 other farmers in various areas of
Matabeleland, demanding that they vacate their properties within 24 to 48
hours. It remains to be seen whether action will be taken on these farmers,
many of whom are legally resident on their farms.
The Woods have been
chased off their property by a large group of war veterans, who have since
settled in the workshop area of the security fence. They were advised that
any property that they have not removed from the farm by tomorrow morning
would be considered the property of the state, and would be auctioned off as
such.
CHIMANIMANI Roy Bennett, Stewart Girvin and Manson Magwaza were
released yesterday from Chipinge police station. They had been taken into
custody about 50km outside of Chimanimani by several police officers and CIO
agents, including Joseph Mwale. They were arrested at gunpoint, and
threatened, before being taken off to Chimanimani police station. Bennett, an
MP, was charged with contravening Section 8 of the Land Acquisition Act,
although he was later charged in court with contravention of the Electoral
Act. All three were beaten in custody, and Magwaza was so badly beaten that
his shirt, which was torn and bloody, had to be replaced before he was taken
to court. The trio have been released on
bail. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
following two letters by Ray Passaportis, one of JAG's chief legal advisers,
have been included because of their relevance to the farming community. The
first in particular, regarding the surrendering of title deeds, should be
read and forwarded to as many people as possible. The second has bearing on
the actions of police, and outlines how individual police officers can be
held responsible for their actions. Bearing this in mind, we may be able to
influence police into behaving in a law-abiding manner by bringing action
against certain individuals.
1.
I have recently had occasion to
give an opinion on whether or not farm owners should release to Government
Officials title deeds to their farms.
The provisions of the Land
Acquisition Act, Chapter 20:10, do not require a farmer to hand over title
deeds at any time while the acquisition process is in progress.
Even if a farmer has submitted an LA3 Form for the subdivision of a property
and this is accepted by Government, original title deeds should not be
released.
In many cases, farm owners have subdivided pieces of land or
offered land in substitution for another. Original title deeds
should always be retained by the owner until full compensation has been paid
and until, in the case of a subdivided piece of land, the property has
been properly subdivided.
Where land has been offered and accepted by
Government or where there has been a subdivision, Section 10 (1) of the Land
Acquisition Act obliges the State to notify the Registrar of
Deeds. The State lodges with the Registrar of Deeds confirmation
of acceptance by the State of the land in question (presumably by lodging a
copy of Form LA1 or LA3, as the case may be.)
In the case of a
subdivision the State must also lodge a diagram signed by a land surveyor
showing the extent of the land acquired by Government. The
Registrar of Deeds will then endorse the title deeds in the Registry with the
acquisition. When the owners copy become available, the Registrar
will make a similar endorsement on it. In my view, the owner
should only make available the original title deeds in the circumstances
mentioned above i.e. once full compensation has been paid and, in the case of
a subdivision, once the land has been surveyed and a diagram deed prepared
and passed by the Surveyor-General's office.
Yours sincerely R M
Passaportis
2. The Legal Principle Of Vicarious
Responsibility
Vicarious liability is a legal principle in terms of which
an employer may be held liable for the acts or omissions of his
employee.
In many land cases which I have dealt with, illegal acts have
been committed by police officers. By virtue of the principle of
vicarious liability, the Commissioner of Police can be held responsible for
these wrongful acts.
However, it is important to remember that
individuals who act outside the law can also be held personally responsible
for their conduct. In the example given above, it would be usual
to cite the Commissioner of Police as the one defendant and the police
officer as a co-defendant.
I have already expressed the strong view that
the current legislation relating to Section 8 and Section 9 Orders is
invalid, principally because it offends several provisions of the
Constitution of Zimbabwe. These legal issues are to be decided in the
Quinnell case.
There are many instances of arrests of farmers and even
farm managers in circumstances where such arrests are clearly unwarranted and
indeed unlawful. Farm managers cannot be arrested because they
are not owners and neither are they occupiers within the meaning of Land
Acquisition Act. They are not subject to Section 8 Orders. Farmers have
been arrested within the 90 day period allowed by a Section 8 Order
and forcibly evicted from their farms. Farmers have been arrested
without having even received a Section 8 Order. Farmers have been
arrested when demonstrably Section 8 Orders are invalid by operation of law
or by order or a superior court. These are some of the
instances in which policemen, army officers and others have acted
unlawfully.
A clear message must be sent to them that they will be held
personally accountable for their actions. Writing letters to them
seems to have little impact. A court action citing the
individuals as defendants will get across the message quickly and
forcefully. It is also important that the litigation be pursued
as quickly as possible to finality.
Yours sincerely R M
Passaportis Honey &
Blanckenberg ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
JAG
NEWS
JAG now has a Housing and Job Procurement subcommittee, which,
although in its infancy, has already found homes and jobs for a number of
people. For those farmers currently relocating into Harare, housing is a
major issue, and we do have a number of places available currently. Please
don't hesitate to contact us - we may not be able to help, but we will
certainly do our best.
THE JAG TEAM
Hotlines: (091) 317
264 If you are in trouble or need
advice, (011) 205 374 please don't
hesitate to contact us - (011) 863
354 we're here to
help
Zimbabwe Farmers near Botswana
Border Ordered Out Peta Thornycroft Harare 2 Oct 2002 18:16
UTC
Dozens of ranchers in southern Zimbabwe have been ordered to
leave their homesteads or be arrested. At least three ranchers were held
Tuesday in police cells near the Botswana border, while others are expecting
to be detained.
Commercial Farmers Union spokesman Mac Crawford said
at least 40 farmers in the dry Matabeleland Province were ordered to leave
their homes immediately.
He said some of the affected farmers had
eviction notices they had defied, others had court orders allowing them to
remain, and several had not received notice their properties were to be
nationalized.
While 90 percent of commercial farmers in central
Zimbabwe were forced to leave their land in the past few weeks, those in
Matabeleland Province had been least affected. Despite several murders of
both ranchers and farm workers since President Robert Mugabe ordered
invasions of white-owned land 31 months ago, about 300 farmers in the
province remained.
Farmers in Matabeleland run huge dairies and produce
most of Zimbabwe's beef.
Mr. Crawford said following police raids a
few ranchers had quit for good. He said others are expecting to be arrested
and are preparing a court challenge.
Farmer and opposition Member of
Parliament Roy Bennet was released from detention in eastern Zimbabwe, just
hours before he marched with his fellow parliamentarians to police
headquarters.
Limping badly from wounds he said he suffered while in
police cells, Mr. Bennet and fellow opposition parliamentarians took a
petition to the police to protest torture.
They said increasing
numbers of officials and ordinary members of opposition groups, including
youngsters, are being routinely tortured in
police custody.
At the recent meeting of the Commonwealth Troika in
Abuja, Nigeria, the South African government appears to have taken a foreign
policy gamble in blocking Australia's attempt to suspend Zimbabwe from the
Commonwealth. The thinking behind the gamble is that in six months' time,
when the Commonwealth is next due to consider Zimbabwe, what remains of the
country's white community will be politically dead and buried with the
completion of Robert Mugabe's programme of seizing 11 million hectares of
white-owned farm land; stripped of financial support, the Movement for
Democratic Change will then recede from the African diplomatic landscape,
like Renamo in Mozambique or Unita in Angola; and South African President
Thabo Mbeki's African National Congress will be rewarded for its "quiet
diplomacy" by having a grateful Zanu PF administration in power in Zimbabwe
well beyond the peaceful retirement of Mugabe.
Mugabe first used
the expression "the game is up" for Zimbabwe's whites in August, when he said
his "fast track land reform" would be successfully completed by the end of
the month, with 300 000 black Zimbabweans settled, ready to plant crops.
British journalist Max Hastings, writing in London's Daily Mail, commented:
"Africa is reverting to a dark continent...The remaining whites will be
driven out of Zimbabwe. The wise ones will go while they still have the skin
on their backs. I would go further and suggest the game is up for the white
man throughout Africa." Underlining Mugabe's game' s-up declaration, his
Agriculture Minister Joseph Made taunted the MDC when the Land Acquisition
Act was steamrollered through Parliament, saying that the Act's annulment of
all victories won by commercial farmers in court meant the party had failed
to deliver promised reversal of land seizures to its white masters, and would
wither away. But Mbeki's gamble may be based on a false comparison between
the MDC and Mozambique's Renamo and Angola's Unita rebels, both of which had
backing from former white colonists. Renamo had support from former
"non-assimilados" ("unassimilated" rural Mozambicans) against the urban black
establishment, and Unita had a tribal base. In election after election,
however, the MDC has shown itself above tribe and race. Its urban support is
among Zimbabweans earning perhaps Z$10 000 - 50 000 a month, who may employ
domestic help and own a television but cannot afford a car, let alone the
BMWs and cell phones of Mugabe's black elite.
Also, Mugabe's
boycott of Abuja revealed his inherent weakness. Just as independent
journalists have been excluded from his press conferences for the past ten
years because he does not like their questions, Mugabe dared not face
questions from Australian Prime Minister John Howard. As his wartime
companion Edgar Tekere avers, Mugabe loses his nerve when unable to play the
bully. In contrast, given a clear road as at the Johannesburg Earth Summit,
or surrounded by his goons with machine guns and rocket launchers, or met by
some stammering diplomatic nonentity, he revels in the role of hectoring
headmaster. As well as the reluctance of African leaders to criticise each
other publicly, Mbeki's policy toward Zimbabwe is motivated partly by an
obsession among some ANC luminaries with what they see as blacks regaining
ownership of South Africa's resources. Many in the ANC may have sympathy for
the likes of Jocelyn Chiwenga, wife of Zimbabwe's army commander, who told a
farmer whose land she has appropriated that she "had not tasted white blood
since 1980, and missed the experience, and that she just needed the slightest
excuse to kill somebody". Offered a compromise over farm usage, Jocelyn
Chiwenga said (according to papers lodged at the High Court last week) that
she "had no intention of shaking hands with a white pig."
There
could be no greater contrast to this than the treatment fellow
inmates accorded recently-retired High Court Judge Fergus Blackie when he
was detained on September 13 on spurious charges of misconduct. Blackie,
65, could not be brought food and medication when thrown in filthy cells
in Harare's worst slum area, Matapi Hostels, since his whereabouts were
kept secret from his family and lawyers for 27 hours. His seven cellmates,
some of whom may have seen him before from the dock, willingly shared
their humble provisions with him. The light at the end of the Zimbabwean
tunnel can be seen clearly from the Matapi police cells, by those who know
where to look. Morgan Tsvangirai, asked about the ANC's gamble, reminded
South Africa that ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity that never
succeeds: some of the intended victims always survive, even when confronted
with enemies of vastly greater efficiency than Mugabe's Zanu PF. "This
movement was not created by the white community," said Tsvangirai. "This
movement was created out of the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe. You
cannot destroy the MDC because you chase away the whites - and some of them
will not be chased away. We represent the future, Zanu PF the past." At
Abuja, added Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean people "had been abandoned in their
hour of greatest need," but they would face their fate and liberate
themselves.
By Joseph Ngwawi Business
News Editor 10/3/02 2:28:03 AM (GMT
+2)
STATE auditor and Comptroller-General
Eric Harid this week issued a damning report on the government's finances and
said Treasury is owed more than $575 million by civil servants, including
more than $380 million by the President's Office, in outstanding travel
allowances and other advances.
The report,
which also highlighted gross negligence in the administration of the fiscus
and covered the financial year ended December 31 1999, revealed that most
government ministries and departments ignored Treasury instructions with
impunity and exceeded their allocations for block advances
grants.
The advances relate to monies
given to civil servants as travelling and subsistence allowances during
domestic and foreign trips.
Some of the
funds advanced to the public servants have been outstanding since 1991,
raising concern that the money will not be recovered because the individuals
involved could have left the civil service or
died.
The President's Office, which was
the main culprit, exceeded its advances limit for all the 12 months during
the period under review.
According to
statistics accompanying the report, President Robert Mugabe's office exceeded
its allocation by an average $20 million a month in 1999 against a budget of
only $8 million.
Mugabe, well known for
his frequent trips abroad, has been known to gobble billions of dollars of
taxpayers' money each year through his
foreign trips.
The foreign excursions
have however been limited to a few countries since the start of this year
after Mugabe and his ruling elite were slapped with travel bans by the
European Union, the United States and other Western countries in protest
against his disputed re-election in March.
Other major culprits that did not account for their spending on travelling
and subsistence included the ministries of public service, education, local
government and home affairs, which accounted for a combined $150
million.
The Ministry of Public Service,
Labour and Social Welfare, which was then run by Zimbabwe's ambassador to
Australia Florence Chitauro, did not account for $48.03 million, followed by
the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture with advances worth $41.8
million outstanding.
The Local Government
Ministry had outstanding advances amounting to $30.1 million, although $15.2
million of that amount related to the variance between balances on returns
submitted for audit and balances on
computer printouts.
Civil servants in
the Ministry of Home Affairs owed Treasury $30 million as at December 31
1999, with the Zimbabwe Republic Police accounting for more than $25 million
of that money.
Harid noted in his report,
whose release was delayed by the late submission of financial statements by
several government ministries, that the advances were either not cleared
immediately after the trip or were not accounted at
all.
"This would appear that advances were
being used as soft loans... In some cases, officers were being given advances
before clearing previous ones, contrary to laid down Treasury instructions,"
Harid noted.
Treasury Instruction 1505
stipulates that no civil servant should be given an advance in respect of
travelling and transport expenses unless he or she has cleared advances made
previously.
According to the Treasury
instruction, the respective permanent secretaries for the various ministries
must deduct the outstanding amounts from the salaries of their officers who
fail to account for their
travel allowances.
Meanwhile, the
Comptroller and Auditor-General report also revealed that the government
exceeded the limit on the amount the Treasury is allowed to borrow from the
central Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) by more than $20.3 billion in
1999.
The net government overdraft at the
RBZ stood at $30.2 billion on December 31 1999 against a limit of $9.9
billion.
"The overdraft limit of $9.889
224 000 allowable by section 9(2)(a) of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act
(Chapter 22:10) was exceeded by $20 350 818 474," Harid
said.
Under the RBZ Act, the government
can only borrow up to 20 percent of revenue earned in the previous
year.
Since October 1999, the government
has relied heavily on borrowing from the RBZ and the domestic banking sector
to finance recurrent expenditure after Western donors cut off aid in protest
against its controversial policies, including the seizure of private
farms.
SENIOR staff at the government-owned
National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM) this week stood accused of
colluding with drivers of private oil firms in siphoning scarce fuel from
NOCZIM depots for resale mostly in Harare in a racket that is costing the
state firm millions of dollars.
The
alleged racket, if proved, could be the second to hit the scandal-troubled
NOCZIM in three years.
High-level oil
industry officials this week said more than two million litres of fuel,
mostly diesel worth over $140 million at current pump prices, had been
diverted by the racketeers to illegal selling points in the past
year.
Zimbabwe, in the throes of an on-off
fuel crisis which erupted two years ago, needs 60 million litres of fuel a
month or 720 million litres annually. It imports most of the fuel from
Libya.
The oil industry officials,
preferring not to be named, told the Financial Gazette that several NOCZIM
managers were colluding with drivers of some private fuel companies to pull
off the scam.
The drivers acted as
middlemen and were used to divert the fuel to the illegal selling
points.
Most of the fuel is from the
Mabvuku and Msasa depots in Harare, where senior officials would authorise
the drivers to have additional fuel pumped into their tankers, which they
would then take to these outlets, the officials
alleged.
The racket is believed to going
on at all NOCZIM fuel depots.
"We believe
that up to two million litres of fuel is finding its way to these outlets not
only in Harare but across the country and it seems everything is well
coordinated with the drivers acting as the middlemen," one official
said.
But NOCZIM's managing director
Webster Muriritirwa this week said he found it hard to believe that fuel
could be illegally siphoned out of the company's depots because pumping of
the fuel was done automatically.
"In
theory that will not happen because everything is done automatically and
there are reconciliation statements at the end of each day," he said. "You
can come to Msasa next week and see how the
system operates."
The oil industry
officials however argued that because individuals operated the system, it
could be beaten.
They said at no point had
oil companies which receive fuel from their drivers complained that they were
short, indicating that the fuel at illegal selling points was over and above
that allocated to these firms.
"So you
need to ask yourself now where all this fuel is coming from if the oil
companies are not losing their fuel," another official
said.
NOCZIM has been ridden by scandals
over years. In 1999, at the height of the worst fuel crisis, investigations
by this newspaper revealed that billions of dollars had been lost through
shady deals conducted by senior officials, some of whom were later
sacked.
The company's debt peaked at a
staggering $22 billion two years ago.
On
Tuesday this week, a Financial Gazette news crew visited one of the illegal
fuel outlets in Harare's Graniteside industrial area, where three young men
kept a vigil on the site.
One of the three
said the fuel they were selling came from NOCZIM and was transported by
tankers belonging to private oil
companies.
A tanker, which had made a
diesel delivery, had just left when this newspaper's news crew
arrived.
"The tankers bring it direct from
NOCZIM," one of the young man said.
"We
can supply up to 1 000 litres as long as you bring your drums but you have to
phone me first to confirm your order."
The
oil industry officials said because most of the tankers were rarely filled to
maximum capacity, this allowed additional fuel to be pumped into the
tankers.
A single tanker can carry up to
30 000 litres of diesel or petrol.
Depending on the available space in the tankers, up to 5 000 litres
of additional fuel could be siphoned at a
time.
For their part in the deal, the
drivers get a handsome kickback while the operators of the illegal fuel
points in turn pay the NOCZIM officials.
The fuel is sold at inflated prices mostly to transport operators, including
owners of commuter buses, in 200-litre
drums.
It is believed that local
businesspeople run the illegal fuel depots but sources said there could be
links between the operators and the NOCZIM officials, or the latter even
owned some of the illegal outlets.
Chombo ups political stakes for Harare, other
cities
By Joseph Ngwawi Business
News Editor 10/3/02 2:30:34 AM (GMT
+2)
THE ruling ZANU PF party is using the
back door to reclaim control of Harare and is employing similar strong-arm
tactics to wrestle other urban local authorities from the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC), analysts said this
week.
The ruling party, using the name and
authority of Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo, this week appointed a
five-member commission which will virtually usurp some of the powers of the
elected MDC-dominated Harare City
Council.
The commission comprises human
resources experts Benjamin Madzivire and Patrick Chingoka, University of
Zimbabwe accountancy lecturer Timely Chitate, banker Isaac Mhaka and
accountant Daniel Mangwanjana.
The
commission, handpicked by Chombo and the second in three years to be
appointed to run Harare, is expected to produce a blueprint for the so-called
turnaround of the capital, a task overwhelmingly given by the city's
residents to MDC mayor Elias Mudzuri and his colleagues seven
months ago.
Chombo accused the city
council of lacking "depth" and "clarity of vision," as well as failing to
steer Harare out of the doldrums - vague accusations which analysts rejected
as masking the minister's political high-handedness and real
intentions.
The analysts said ZANU PF,
which has lost control of Zimbabwe's two major cities in a rout by the MDC
but continues to garner support in the less influential rural councils, was
manipulating the Urban Councils Act to regain control of
Harare.
"The latest move is intended to
gain control of Harare and undermine the MDC-led council," political analyst
Brian Raftopolous told the
Financial Gazette.
Constitutional
lawyer Lovemore Madhuku said it was illegal for Chombo to appoint a
commission that would operate simultaneously with an
elected council.
"It is outside the
terms of the Urban Councils Act for the minister to do something like that
because it is tantamount to usurping the powers of a democratically elected
council," Madhuku said.
Mudzuri said his
council would meet today to decide the course of action to take but hinted
that he would not recognise the
commission.
He told the Financial Gazette
that unlike the Solomon Tawengwa-led council, the present local authority had
not failed to deliver in the six-month period since its election despite
constant interference and obstruction by Chombo, whose ministry administers
councils.
"What the minister has done
confirms media allegations that he was determined to remove the MDC-led
council to safeguard his own personal and partisan interests," Mudzuri
said.
Tawengwa's ZANU PF-dominated council
was fired in September 1999 by then local government minister John Nkomo for
incompetence.
Mudzuri has in just seven
months however managed to deliver better services to the city, including the
rehabilitation of Harare's crumbling road network and improvement of refuse
collection.
He said Harare residents
should be allowed to decide whether the present council was delivering on
promises made during the March ballot.
"However one thing for sure, according to the council's perception, is that
the move appears to be a strategic stride towards not only tarnishing the
image of council, but also removing it from office through
unorthodox backdoor political manoeuvres," the mayor
said.
Mudzuri, who has repeatedly refused
to budge to a plethora of directives from the government, was last month
summoned to appear before a high-powered ZANU PF delegation that included
Chombo, Home Affairs minister Kembo Mohadi, State Security minister Nicholas
Goche and Youth Development minister Elliot
Manyika.
The purpose of the meeting was to
force him to toe ZANU PF's line and stop the dismissal of individuals
irregularly appointed during the Elijah Chanakira-led commission which was
handpicked by Chombo's predecessor Nkomo.
"Minister Chombo should unequivocally tell the nation and the world tactfully
that he is dissolving the democratically elected council of Harare," the
mayor said.
The analysts said the action
by Chombo and ZANU PF would not end with the Harare City Council but spread
to Bulawayo and Masvingo, two other cities where the MDC dominates the local
authority.
"My suspicion is that this is a
step-by-step testing of the mood of the people and if the residents don't
move fast enough to stop this, then the minister is going to move on to fire
Mudzuri and other councils where the MDC is dominant," Madhuku said, echoing
the views of most analysts
and residents.
By Nqobile Nyathi
Assistant Editor 10/3/02 2:40:49 AM (GMT
+2)
AN annual summit of southern African
leaders this week talked tough on resolving Zimbabwe's political and economic
crisis, but regional analysts said the group would be hamstrung by its
ambivalence to tackling a blot weighing down members'
economies.
The three-day summit of the
Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) kicked off in Angola's capital
Luanda on Monday with an unprecedented public chastising of Zimbabwe's
failure to end its crisis, but the analysts said that was probably all that
the divided meeting would achieve.
Officially Zimbabwe was not on the conference's agenda, but some SADC trade
and foreign ministers publicly made known that the time had come for Zimbabwe
to shape up, indicating that they would vigorously convey this message in
their closed-door talks.
"Clearly we have
to resolve the governance issues in the region," Mauritian Foreign Minister
Anil Gayan said at the start of the
meeting.
"We cannot be punished for the
mistakes of one country - Zimbabwe. We shall be asking that they shape up,"
he said in a rare condemnation of a crisis that has crippled Zimbabwe,
triggered the fall of South Africa's currency and hit crucial tourism across
the region.
According to Angola's
state-run Angop news agency, the situation in Zimbabwe was among the issues
discussed at the opening of the ministerial meetings on Monday, but the
agency gave no details.
The SADC ministers
indicated that they would use the closed-door sessions to tell the Zimbabwe
delegation it was time to resolve the country's crisis, which stems directly
from President Robert Mugabe's disputed re-election in March and use of
strong-arm tactics to crush political
dissent.
"It's better than nothing," South
Africa Institute of International Affairs research fellow Ross Herbert told
the Financial Gazette.
"With Angola as
chairman of SADC, I wouldn't expect any confrontational stance, but we can
expect some behind-the-scenes pushing."
University of Zimbabwe (UZ) political science lecturer Eliphas Mukonoweshuro
said: "It might not be the heads of state who are saying that they will
reprimand Zimbabwe at the moment, but you must remember that the foreign
ministers who are gathered in Angola have no individual
brief.
"They would have to be speaking on
behalf of their presidents. In terms of diplomacy, much is achieved at that
level because that's where issues are thrashed out. So what's being expressed
there are the positions of various heads of states of the region. Zimbabwe
might not be on the agenda, but it is still being
discussed."
But the analysts said although
SADC ministers might take the Zimbabwe delegation to task on behalf of their
heads of state, the regional bloc's continued public support for Mugabe's
administration would weaken any tough talking in
private.
The region's leaders have
publicly thrown their weight behind Mugabe, refusing to condemn alleged
electoral fraud as well as the government's alleged involvement in political
violence and human rights abuses.
Recently, SADC states are reported to have threatened to boycott
a SADC-European Union (EU) foreign ministers' meeting scheduled for early
next month in Copenhagen.
Militant
European parliamentarians say the Copenhagen meeting will be a test of the
EU's seriousness in assisting in the resolution of the Zimbabwe crisis
through smart sanctions, which have been slapped against Mugabe and his top
hierarchy and would prevent Zimbabwe from sending a delegation to the
talks.
Zimbabwe's Foreign Minister, Stan
Mudenge, is among 79 senior government officials barred from travelling to EU
member states as part of the smart
sanctions.
European Union foreign
ministers were on Monday expected to call off the Copenhagen meeting because
of "deteriorating relations with
Zimbabwe".
But after a brief discussion on
Monday, the ministers "tasked the permanent representatives committee to
remain seized of this matter".
An EU
official told the Financial Gazette: "What I think this means is that the
officials should prepare the meeting, but they don't want to say in advance
if Zimbabwe will attend because they might be aware of
(SADC) sentiments."
In addition,
regional powerhouse South Africa, widely expected to take the lead in
assisting in the resolution of the Zimbabwe crisis, has refused to adopt a
tough stance towards Mugabe, last week opposing Zimbabwe's full suspension
from the 54-nation Commonwealth of Britain and its
former colonies.
Then, in what has been
billed as South Africa's strongest defence of its policy, deputy Foreign
Minister Aziz Pahad said at the weekend that South Africa and other southern
African countries would not declare war
on Zimbabwe.
He said: "If it is not
diplomacy we pursue in dealing with Zimbabwe, then it is war. We will not go
to war with Zimbabwe. We do not need to be lectured to about democracy,
respect for the rule of law and human
rights.
"Southern African states are
conscious of our responsibility and of the economic and political impact of
the situation in Zimbabwe. But we cannot be like people far away who keep
shouting about Zimbabwe. What are they proposing we should be doing? (British
Foreign Minister) Jack Straw and others must tell us what they expect the
Southern African Development Community to
do."
Mukonoweshuro said: "This is the kind
of problem we have at the moment within SADC: there is a kind of ambivalence
on how best to resolve the Zimbabwe
crisis.
"On the one hand, as a region they
should be seen to present a united external front. But if you then look at
the discordant voices of countries like Mauritius, there is an indication
that behind the veneer of solidarity, there is real concern about
Zimbabwe."
He said as long as public
concern was not being expressed by countries like Botswana, Mozambique,
Namibia and South Africa, the Zimbabwe government would continue with its
policies, turning a deaf ear to whatever fears were being raised in
private.
Herbert noted: "Mauritius and the
Seychelles don't really count much, Botswana and Mozambique won't say
anything because of possible economic fallout, Namibia and the Democratic
Republic of Angola are allies of Zimbabwe and Malawi and Swaziland have
problems of their own and don't want anyone to bother
them.
"Doing the mathematics state by
state, you're not going to find anyone willing to stand up and take a
confrontational stance."
The commentators
said SADC ministers' plans to tell Zimbabwe to "shape up" were likely to boil
down to window dressing, with regional leaders trying to show the world that
they were attempting to rein in
Mugabe's government.
"I think to some
extent there are elements of reaction because they want to be seen to be
doing something," one regional analyst
said.
"The (Zimbabwe) question invariably
comes up from journalists and the answer is 'we are going to have
behind-the-scenes meetings', but nothing really comes of
it."
ZIMBABWE'S bankers, who are hesitant
to fund President Robert Mugabe's controversial agrarian reforms, have
demanded to be taken around the country to assess the viability of newly
resettled farmers, the Financial Gazette learnt
yesterday.
Sources said the bankers have
asked the government to organise visits to Zimbabwe's eight provinces to get
first-hand information on the situation on the ground before agreeing to fund
the new farmers.
"We have suggested that
banking is a business and we can only fund the new farmers after carefully
assessing our chances of getting the money back," one bank chief executive,
who is also an executive member of the Bankers' Association of Zimbabwe
(BAZ), told the Financial Gazette.
No
comment was available from the BAZ or Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa
yesterday.
The sources said besides the
need for the government to guarantee the loans to the new farmers, the banks
want to ascertain that the new farmers have actually settled on the land and
the numbers involved because of fear that the money being sought could end up
funding other government and ruling ZANU PF party
activities.
The government, which needs
more than $160 billion to fund its reforms, has since July been pressing
local financial institutions to finance the programme under which the state
is seizing farms owned by whites to give to landless
blacks.
The bank chiefs, who meet the
government under the auspices of the BAZ, have refused to budge, insisting on
a guarantee that Treasury will pick up the tab if any of the more than 300
000 new farmers default on their debts.
They also want Mugabe to use the proceeds of a levy slapped earlier this year
on financial institutions to fund the reforms. The government says the levy
will be used in a separate programme to economically
empower blacks.
The sources said the
government has not responded to the bankers' request for site visits since
the meeting was held about six weeks ago.
"The next thing we heard was that there is going to be an agricultural bond
and we now don't know whether the silence is a sign that there is really no
order on the ground as far as the government's resettlement programme is
concerned," another banker said.
The
government plans to raise $30 billion through the issue of five-year
agribonds, which will target insurance companies and
pension funds.
Zimbabwean banks are
already sitting on debts of more than $12 billion owed by white farmers, most
of whom are being expelled from their properties by the
government
By Abel Mutsakani News
Editor 10/3/02 2:31:16 AM (GMT
+2)
VICTORY by the government in council
elections at the weekend confirmed President Robert Mugabe's upperhand over
his political foes, but analysts warn that the use of violence to smoother
opponents could spell a tumultuous end to his political
career.
The analysts said Zimbabwe's
deepening economic and political crisis remained unchanged by Mugabe and his
ruling ZANU PF party's win in the local government vote which observers and
Amnesty International, the human rights watchdog, and the United States said
was marred by pre-voting violence
and irregularities.
South Africa
Institute for International Affairs senior researcher Ross Herbert said
Mugabe's Achilles' Heel remained the economic crisis which has manifested
itself in runaway inflation of 135.1 percent and acute shortages of foreign
currency, fuel and food.
"He is leading
the country towards a situation where there will be less and less money (hard
cash), more company closures, more poverty and more food shortages," he
said.
"Eventually, he will be unable to
buy off even the army, the police and secret service and that will be
it."
A tough-to-beat political fox in his
heyday, the 78-year-old Mugabe has cunningly projected the rag-tag mob of
self-styled veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s independence war and at times even
the starving masses in the countryside as the bedrock of his political
career.
But critics say it is the well-fed
army generals, the police and the spy Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO)
which form the iron fist that has kept multitudes of disgruntled Zimbabweans
from erupting into a popular uprising against Mugabe, who founded Zimbabwe in
1980 out of the ashes of the former British colony of
Rhodesia.
All top commanding officers in
the security agencies either served under Mugabe's ZANLA guerrilla army or
that of his rival and later vice-president Joshua Nkomo's ZIPRA army during
the independence war.
A week before a
tricky presidential election earlier this year, Zimbabwe army commander
Vitalis Zvinavashe, police head Augustine Chihuri, then CIO boss Elisha
Muzonzini and prison service director Paradzai Zimondi issued a statement
declaring they would never salute a president who did not fight in the
independence war.
Observers said the
statement was a clear reference to opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai who, unlike Mugabe, did not participate in the
war.
The security chiefs deny the
statement was aimed at Tsvangirai or
his supporters.
The opposition MDC
accuses the police of taking sides and routinely harassing its leaders and
activists on trumped-up charges.
Police
boss Chihuri, himself a self-proclaimed ZANU PF follower, denies charges that
the law enforcement agency is partisan.
ZANU PF won 700 of the council seats unopposed because MDC candidates in the
respective wards had either been denied registration or had fled violence
unleashed on the party's leadership by ruling party
militants.
The MDC, which in just nine
months nearly unseated ZANU PF in a parliamentary poll it lost in June 2000
by five seats, says in some cases its candidates were assaulted and chased
away from registration centres while police stood by watching
helplessly.
One MDC supporter, Nikoniari
Chibvamudeve, was reportedly killed by ZANU PF militants while several
hundreds were allegedly beaten up and tortured by ruling party
militias.
The Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum,
an umbrella body for the country's major human rights and pro-democracy
groups, says 58 people and most of them MDC supporters have been killed in
political violence between January to August this
year.
ZANU PF vehemently denies charges it
is using violence to cow the opposition and instead accuses the MDC of
terrorising and murdering
its supporters.
In addition to
violence, critics say Mugabe and ZANU PF have used their majority in
Parliament to take away the rights of Zimbabweans and close off the
democratic space to the opposition and all
perceived opponents.
"ZANU PF operates
like Zimbabwe is a one-party state," said Tarcey Zimbiti, the acting head of
the Catholic Commission for Justice and
Peace (CCJP).
Zimbiti, whose
organsiation had obsevers deployed in many parts of the country to monitor
the just-ended council ballot, said opposition candidates and their
supporters in many rural areas were chased away from their
homes.
"This was one election that had
nothing to do with democracy," Zimbiti said, adding that the CCJP had, for
example, been unable to send observers into the ZANU PF stronghold of
Mashonaland Central province because it would have been "suicidal" to do
so.
Herbert said Mugabe and his government
could continue using force to hold down the seething public discontent even
for a longer period, just as much as Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko
did.
But he said with the economy's
backbone of the agriculture sector falling apart because of Mugabe's drive to
seize land from white commercial farmers and the international community
stepping up the ostracization of the regime, there would be worsening food
shortages and poverty and the long patience of Zimbabweans would snap
up.
"Whenever that is, is anybody's
guess," Herbert observed.
"But clearly if
Mugabe continues on this path, then he is ensuring his career will end not
through the ballot but through the barrel of the
gun."
War veterans seek Mugabe's intervention over pension
rise
Staff
Reporter 10/3/02 2:43:49 AM (GMT
+2)
VETERANS of Zimbabwe's 1970s
independence war are seeking President Robert Mugabe's intervention after the
cash-strapped Ministry of Finance threw out their demands for an immediate
150 percent hike of their pensions and
allowances.
Andy Mhlanga,
secretary-general of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans'
Association, said this week members of his organisation were unable to make
ends meet and had no choice but to demand Mugabe's intervention in the
matter.
He said the high cost of living in
Zimbabwe, shown out by record high inflation of 135.1 percent, required that
the Ministry of Defence reviews war veterans' pensions, which he described as
meagre.
As well as the high inflation,
most basic foodstuffs including the staple maize meal are in short supply
because of a devastating drought last season and government land reforms
which have crippled agriculture, the mainstay of the
economy.
The few available foodstuffs are
found on the parallel market, which levies exorbitant prices beyond the reach
of ordinary Zimbabweans.
Mhlanga told the
Financial Gazette: "We are now demanding to meet our patron, President Robert
Mugabe, because the majority of war veterans are suffering and yet nothing is
being done to address their plight.
"Life
has become difficult for all of us. We all buy from the same shops and we are
suffering like any other person in Zimbabwe. War veterans are suffering and
any review of their meagre pensions will
help."
The war veterans wrote to Defence
Minister Sydney Sekeremayi in April, requesting that their allowances be
increased and that a medical aid facility be set up for them by the
government.
Lack of action from the
defence ministry prompted the war vets to seek an audience with Mugabe, but
they were told to follow official
channels.
The war veterans want their
monthly pensions raised from $7 890 to $20 000, school fees allowances hiked
from $20 000 per term per child to $35 000 and a special
government-subsidised medical aid scheme for members
launched.
Mhlanga said since the enactment
of the War Veterans' Act in 1997, none of Zimbabwe's freedom fighters had
benefited from a facility that allows them to secure soft loans of between
$250 000 and $500 000 as stipulated by the
Act.
The war veterans in 1997 forced
Mugabe to pay them more than $4 billion in unbudgeted expenditure after
staging a series of protests against what they said was the government's
neglect of their welfare.
Each war veteran
was subsequently paid a once-off gratuity of $50 00 in a move that triggered
Zimbabwe's present economic meltdown, causing a crash in the country's
financial markets.
The veterans also led
the violent seizure of commercial farms in February 2000 and spearheaded a
campaign for Mugabe's disputed re-election in
March.
The war veterans were allocated
more than $15 million to campaign for the ZANU PF leader. They have also been
promised 20 percent of all the land that is seized for resettlement under the
government 's controversial agrarian
reforms.
A GOVERNMENT task force assisted by
police this week began physically evicting white farmers in a move seen as
the government's last push to remove the farmers from their land before the
start of the rainy season next month.
The Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) chairman for Matabeleland, Mark Crawford,
said about 40 farmers had been evicted in Matabeleland province alone between
Monday and yesterday.
The task force,
which includes provincial and district land committees, moved to Matabeleland
South yesterday after touring farms in Matabeleland North on Monday and
Tuesday and evicting the farmers.
"About
40 farmers were forcibly and physically evicted from their farms by the
police between Monday and today (Wednesday)," Crawford told the Financial
Gazette.
"This government task force is
going around with the police, and when they leave a particular farm, police
members remain on the farm to evict the farmers by giving them between one
hour and 36-hour notices."
Crawford said
most of the farmers being evicted had contested the government's eviction
orders in court and were awaiting judgment on their cases. Most of them have
however left for safe havens in Bulawayo, he
said.
The task force is expected to start
touring farms in other provinces next
week.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena
yesterday denied knowledge of the forcible eviction of the farmers by the
police.
CFU president Colin Cloete said
the government was continuing with its onslaught on the farmers, adding that
efforts by CFU members to subdivide their farms and share them with black
farmers were not being recognised.
He said
a sizeable number of farmers would be forced off their properties today after
the expiry of their Section 8 eviction notices, but he was not able to
indicate exactly how many farmers would be
affected.
Some agricultural industry
sources said more than 300 farmers would be evicted between today and
November 8 when their Section 8 orders
expire.
More than 360 farmers have been
arrested since August 10 for defying a government order to vacate their
properties after the lapse of the 90-day period they were given by the
government to wind up their operations.
"A
batch of farmers will have to leave the farms tomorrow (today) when their
Section 8 orders expire but I am not too sure of the number,"
Cloete said.
"This will go on until the
middle of November when most of the farmers will have
left."
More than 2 500 farmers whose
Section 8 orders expired last month are still on their properties, but Cloete
said with the amendment of the Land Acquisition Act last month, most would be
evicted by the middle of November.
THE government has no records on
the utilisation of its Grain Loan Scheme, according to a report released this
week by Auditor-General and Comptroller Eric
Harid.
According to the report, no records
exist showing how many people received grain under the scheme, the quantities
involved and how much was repaid.
In
the report, Harid slams the lack of guidelines to govern the operation of the
scheme.
"Consequently, records of quantity
of grain lent, grain recovered and grain outstanding were not made available
for audit examination and there was no list of beneficiaries produced," he
says.
According to reports in the
state-controlled media, the government loaned out 161 581 tonnes of grain
worth $390 million to drought-prone Masvingo's seven districts at the
inception of the scheme in the 1995-96 agricultural
season.
Most of the grain was never
repaid. There are no statistics available on other
provinces.
Most of the beneficiaries of
the scheme complained of increasingly poor yields in the years beyond 1996 as
an excuse for not repaying the grain and the government suspended the
facility in 1999.
It has since been
re-activated in the face of Zimbabwe's worst food crisis that has been
triggered by another severe drought and the government's chaotic land reforms
which have disrupted farming, cutting food output in the key sector by at
least 60 per cent last season.
Harid's
report also accuses the Ministry of Local Government and National Housing of
delaying the handover of $1 923 524 to the National Drought Fund, which had
been recovered from Grain Loan Scheme
recipients.
The money was reportedly held
in the ministry's temporary
deposits account.
lAbout $96 million
was disbursed from the National AIDS Fund to the Zimbabwe Network of People
Living with HIV/AIDS (ZNNP+) without control mechanisms to ensure the money
reached the intended beneficiaries, Harid's report
said.
It said an audit was not able to
establish if all the beneficiaries receiving money were
genuine.
"The ZNNP+ membership is supposed
to be made up of people living with HIV/AIDS who in particular have tested
positive or who may have spouses or minor children who tested positive. No
such evidence was availed in some cases," the report
said.
The report said that some members of
the organisation belonged to two or more groups and some were allegedly
involved in the embezzlement of funds.
"For instance, the payments made to the ZNNP+ office in Masvingo province and
during the group's sixth millennium congress were not made on the strength of
adequate supporting documents, thereby raising concern as to whether the
money was used for its intended purpose," it
noted.
"About $936 266 was issued by the
Masvingo office as loan advances to Masvingo-Fact, an organisation that had
already received $4 490 800 from NAC (National AIDS Council). There was no
evidence that the money was repaid and channelled towards the intended
purpose identified in the budget submitted by ZNNP+ to NAC when it applied
for funding."
The National AIDS Council is
responsible for mobilising and managing financial resources in support of a
national response to the
HIV/AIDS scourge.
On average, the
council collects $793 903 645 annually from workers. As at December 31 2000,
NAC's total fixed assets were valued at $3 781 509 and net current assets
were $7 058 662.
Since the establishment
of the AIDS levy fund in 2000, questions have been raised about the
transparency of its disbursement. There was a major outcry recently when the
Ministry of Information tried to pressure NAC to direct more than $30 million
towards the staging of the controversial Miss Malaika beauty
pageant.
More than 2 000 Zimbabweans die
every week from HIV/AIDS and it is estimated that about a quarter of the more
than 13 million Zimbabwean population is
HIV-positive.
THE Zimbabwe government has blocked
efforts by international donors to set up a US$85 million basket fund that
would have allowed the private sector to import 400 000 tonnes of food into
the famine-hit country, the Financial Gazette established
yesterday.
International aid agency
sources yesterday said discussions on setting up the fund between the
government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which had
dragged on for more than four months, had all but broken
down.
The UNDP was going to coordinate the
basket fund that was also going to be used to finance other humanitarian
imports such as essential medicines.
"As we speak, there are no more discussions taking place on the setting up of
the fund," a senior officer with one food aid agency told the Financial
Gazette.
Social Welfare Minister July Moyo
could not be reached for comment on why there had been no agreement with
donors on a fund seen as vital in a country that has seven million people, or
half the population, facing starvation because of drought and policy
failures.
United Nations coordinator and
UNDP resident representative in Zimbabwe Victor Angelo refused to discuss the
issue, saying only: "The offer is still on the
table."
International donors, most of them
reluctant to release money directly to the Harare authorities, had been on
standby for the launch of the fund, the sources
said.
More funds were expected to be
released in addition to the US$85 million that was expected to kick-start the
fund, with local private companies without foreign currency allowed to borrow
cheaply from the fund to pay for food
imports.
But the government, which has
banned companies other than its Grain Marketing Board (GMB) from trading in
the two staples maize and wheat, is said to have objected to the fund saying
private sector involvement in food importation would push up
prices.
The prices of milled maize and
bread - as indeed those of virtually all other basic food commodities - are
controlled by the government.
But critics
say the government fears that allowing too many players to bring food into
the country could dilute the political mileage it is getting from food
distribution, particularly in rural areas where in some cases its GMB is the
only source of food.
While no deaths from
hunger have been officially reported so far, the UN says Zimbabwe's food
crisis is deteriorating fast, with 600 000 children - or 30 percent of under
fives out of two million - already vulnerable to nutritional
problems.
Poor rains last season have
caused food shortages across southern Africa, but in Zimbabwe - the epicentre
of the food crisis - the government's chaotic and often violent drive to
seize land from large-scale producers has destabilised the key agricultural
sector.
LOCAL Government Minister
Ignatius Chombo this week took the first step towards sacking the
democratically elected Harare City Council, openly subverting the voters'
mandate and daring them to act against his
decree.
His appointment of a government
panel to virtually run the city's affairs had long been coming. This was
because Chombo and his ruling ZANU PF party could simply not come to terms
with, let alone countenance, seeing the opposition MDC in charge of
Zimbabwe's capital.
Thus, the plot to oust
the MDC council kicked off as soon as the council took office a short seven
months ago.
The plot's script, faithfully
implemented by Chombo so far, reads as follows: frustrate the council by
giving it impossible directives such as the mayor cannot hire or fire anyone
within the council and no development project can go ahead without the
government's nod.
Deprived of financial
resources to implement its plans and harassed by ZANU PF mobs employed before
the March elections to precipitate instability within the council, it was
only a matter of time before mayor Elias Mudzuri' s team came to a dead end -
and so it has.
But let it be stated for
the record that Mudzuri's council, hamstrung as it was by official shackles,
went on to deliver better services and carried out more development work in
the seven months it was in charge than any ZANU PF council ever did in two
decades.
By concrete example, Mudzuri's
team showed that much work could be done even with limited resources. Hence
for the first time, Harare's crumbling road network was rehabilitated, the
city's dilapidated water systems, drainage and sewerage vastly improved and
its notoriously poor rubbish collection network completely
overhauled.
Chombo's action and its timing
are clearly meant to add insult to injury to the MDC in a week when ZANU PF
militants have wreaked havoc across the country to help their party sweep the
just-ended local government elections.
Chombo's tentative steps to sack the Harare Council and the violence by ZANU
PF's militants, which forced many MDC poll candidates to pull out of the
ballot, show a new determination by the ruling party to shut all voices of
dissent by whatever means.
Clearly alarmed
by the MDC's growing political support in the past two national elections,
ZANU PF has decided to fight back with all the resources it has, chiefly
brute force and the ruthless state apparatus, to reclaim what it lost through
a popular vote.
All Zimbabweans, even
those benefiting from a party which prides itself in having degrees in
violence against foes, must ask themselves: how far will this madness be
allowed to go on?
When a father or mother
is forced to turn against his or her own children for the sake of a
revolution gone awry, a brother has to turn against a brother and a sister
against her own, who will be next and who will be
safe?
No doubt, the answer is
sobering.
And yet Zimbabwe's governance
crisis - it is the same crisis which has triggered allied crises that
threaten the economy and the wellbeing of all in the land - is deepening on
an hourly basis.
The longer Zimbabweans
seem to accept their stark misrule, the bolder the government has become to
literally tell them, as Chombo has just done: we will do whatever we like
because we are in charge of central
government.
It is this unbridled arrogance
and the belief that might is always right and will triumph which have brought
Zimbabwe to its knees. The country will remain in semi-permanent crisis until
its citizens wake up from their long slumber to reclaim their full
sovereignty.
LAST week I said that those who would
have wanted me to write about "Abuja Two" would have to wait another day. But
suffice it to say, I saw in Abuja Two a long rope with which to hang
ourselves.
As if we were not already
hanging ourselves, we had been given six more months to continue doing so.
Whether our impressionistic minds saw it or not, I alleged that we had been
set up for another six months.
The
question was: can we come to our senses within the next
six months?
I intimated that my son
Chandi "thinks we can", but said "later for the Chandi
thesis".
Last Saturday on our way to the
Harare International Airport, I asked Chandi to repeat the argument he had
made the other day.
"But I thought that by
saying 'later for the Chandi thesis' you were being dismissive; you didn't
think much of what I was saying," he replied, sounding somewhat
humiliated.
"I was setting myself up," I
said. "A set-up for my readers to anticipate a subsequent contribution on the
'Chandi thesis', if I understood correctly what you were saying the other day
when we were speculating about what President Robert Mugabe's grand strategy
could be."
"If you wouldn't want me to
write about it or couldn't remember what your argument was, then 'later for
the Chandi thesis'," I explained.
It's a
familiar argument, though with a Chandi twist to it. It goes like
this:
Sometime ago the regime realised it
had lost substantial ground in terms of popular support. This had been shown
during its campaign for a "yes" vote which it lost to the opposition in the
February 2000 referendum on the
constitution.
With parliamentary elections
coming up only four months thereafter (in June 2000) and then the highly
prized presidential election two years thereafter (in March 2002), something
tantamount to a "survival" plan would have to be improvised and adopted very
quickly.
Hence the "fast-track" land
resettlement programme, pronounced as such, "fast
track".
The regime could have continued to
"slow-track" resettling people as it had been doing for the past 20 years.
But all of a sudden, the regime decided to "fast-track"
it.
Why pick on land resettlement? Land is
an emotive issue historically in all colonial situations, more so where the
British were involved - it had to sell.
Why use force, even on blacks, the intended
beneficiaries?
"Those who don't want to be
free shall be forced to be free," a concept from Jean Jack
Roussau.
Then the Chandi twist: "It's not
that the regime is not sensitive to the harsh (if ruthless) methods and the
attendant international revulsion. But the power imperatives, at least for
the moment, dictate that such ruthless and crude methods are employed.
'Moreover, we can always explain to the people and international community
later. For the end justifies
the means.'
"So, now that they are
securely in power (it doesn't matter by foul or fair means) the next move is
to concentrate on the less important issues in power consolidation:
governance issues. Six months is long enough to do
it.
"'Moreover, we don't have to do it all
at once. All we have to do is be seen to be doing something towards 'good'
governance, 'rule of law' and 'human rights', all things which are easy to do
when you are securely in power.'
"I
don't believe anyone in ZANU PF believes they can permanently fight against
popular domestic and international opinion and win. Everybody knows we need
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank money to get their
economies together.
"But for the time
being, the imperatives of power must dictate priorities, no matter how
temporary.
"'What about the people who are
suffering as the country collapses into economic ruin? Don't our leaders care
any more?
'But those are moral issues and
not issues of power.'"
Essentially, that
is Chandi's argument, as I understand it. Not that he necessarily believes in
its amorality, but in its rationality.
I
find this argument plausible in its appreciation of Niccolo Machiavelli's
thesis in The Prince.
In essence, this is
saying: when the power imperatives suggest that they heed domestic and
international pressure, the ZANU PF leadership, especially Mugabe, will
presumably come to their senses within the
six months.
Prospects for this
happening are good given that nothing has changed in Zimbabwe's worsening
economic fortunes since the "great" speech at the Earth Summit in
Johannesburg; since another "spectacular" performance at the UN General
Assembly in New York recently; and after "yet another diplomatic success" in
Abuja only two weeks ago. In fact, the situation seems to have worsened at
every turn.
This is why we suspect that it
would not make any difference anymore whether the regime changes its ways
even within six months.
There is a certain
threshold of being offensive to both the domestic and international
environments beyond which a regime must not pass if it hopes to be still
listened to. Zimbabwe may have exhausted this
threshold.
Professor Masipula Sithole is a
lecturer of political science at the University of Zimbabwe and director of
the Harare-based Mass Public
Opinion Institute.
THE question of the way forward and
the modus operandi has been the subject of intense debate in post-election
Zimbabwe.
The debate, regrettably, takes
place in a charged atmosphere characterised by polarisation and
intolerance.
In fact, distancing and
confrontational attitudes have been the dominant feature of Zimbabwean
politics from the time of the historic referendum of February
2000.
The ensuing June 2000 Parlimentary
and March 2002 Presidential elections were marred by massive pre-election
violence, and now there is an impasse crystallised by the failure of the
South African and Nigerian brokered talks between ZANU PF and the
MDC.
The failure of these talks, which
could have been more than a placebo but not a panacea to the Zimbabwean
situation, has shifted the focus of the debate to a question of whether what
Zimbabwe needs is an election re-run or a new constitution, "especially in
light of the Mac's court challenge of the results of the Presidential
elections.
However, these seemingly
divergent positions have not been clearly articulated. In the opinion of this
author, it would appear that leading opinions have failed to expose the
necessary truth that these alternatives are not necessarily incompatible or
in tension but are in fact complementary. I will discuss these alternatives
in a future contribution and try to suggest a way
forward.
It is necessary to articulate a
position that is predicated upon a thorough grasp of the issues at hand. An
informed understanding of Zimbabwe's problems should provide the framework
within which to debate options and map a way forward. It is high time we
become brutally honest with ourselves and start implementing some of the
ideas which we have come to take for
granted.
The progressive forces of
Zimbabwe risk becoming irrelevant, if not retrogressive, if they fail to
re-constitute, reorganise, re-strategise and come up with an agenda that cuts
across and appeals to a broad spectrum of various sectional interests
regardless of the diverse peculiarities of race, tribe, religion, conscience
or political party affiliation.
A
functional democracy requires a vibrant and discerning civil society,
independent media; viable political parties, a tolerant political culture and
transparency. This entails a new social and political value system which can
only be developed through social mobilisation, civic education,
participation, effective information dissemination, new education curricula
and economic empowerment.
A major
constitutive part of the Zimbabwean debate on democracy is the structure of
the debate itself, which is characterised by racism, ethnicism and the
politics of difference. In other words, a major part of the problem consists
precisely in viewing diversity as a problem rather than a source of mutual
enrichment. This is what the opposition tends to share with the ruling
party.
A widespread consensus on the
status of diversity as a problem gives rise to some of the most efficient
forms of discrimination, subtly veiled from sight by rhetoric of tolerance
that radiates the best of intentions. There has developed in Zimbabwe
systematic distancing and confrontational attitudes based on the concept of
"us" versus "them". Group relations are arbitrarily formations created by our
perception of ourselves
vis-a-vis others.
One's religion,
mother tongue, culture, also one's education, class, sex, skin colour, even
one's height, age and family situation are all potentially unifying factors.
Each factor can be ignored in the formation of an "us." The role which each
individual parameter plays in determining group identity depends fully on
group internal and group external perceptions and conceptualisations which
are historically and socio-culturally
shaped.
Group identities do not only
determine our opinions and discourses about others but also other forms of
behaviour towards them. The intensification of contacts between two groups
increases the otherness of the other group as more differences are being
discovered. At the same time, the discovery of more similarities (which
necessarily goes hand in hand with noticing differences) is not deemed very
relevant, as they are a source of agreement and not of
conflict!
The inventory of real or
imagined differences between "us" and "them" is growing continuously in
Zimbabwe and this "management paradigm" creates the impression of insuperable
barriers, and minor details hardly important in daily life turn into pegs on
which to hang supposedly fundamental ideological and intercultural
misunderstandings. The more the "other" becomes different, the more he or she
is problematised and construed as a source of potential
conflicts.
In that process discourses are
created and new ways of speaking about ourselves and others emerge. If only
our affairs were more wisely ordered and if we were clearer-sighted than we
are now in seeing our own interests, it could be that this diversity could be
used as a resource for mutual enrichment, strengthening our feelings of
community towards the building of a common social
consciousness.
By placing the
"problematic" people outside our own temporal space, they lose every chance
of doing something about their situation.
No doubt the time has come to stop flattering ourselves and to
start questioning the ideas which we now take for granted about the
management of intergroup relations.
Management is always in the hands of the powerful and the management of
diversity is no exception. Despite an overtly professed democratic attitude,
the "managed" have little say in all this.
Therefore the debate is really about the "other" viewed from the perspective
of the majority.
More often than not, we
pay less attention to true characteristics than to what the "other" might
represent in our socio-psychological and moral frame of reference. We
construct the other in terms of our own categories, expectations, habits and
our own reality fits these categories and expectations and
norms.
However, not everything in our own
reality fits these categories and expectations and not all of our behaviour
corresponds to these habits and norms. But the deviation, the "abnormality"
is attributed to tile the "other" as an essential
trait.
Full awareness of these seemingly
trivial processes is crucial for an understanding of our thinking about
ourselves as well as "others". In the case of discourse about "others", there
are additional complications on top of the tendency to be led by stereotypes,
implicit norms and patterns
of expectation.
The debate is
essentially based on a distancing and confrontational view of "us" versus
"them'' captured in (often implicit) terms or normality" versus
"abnormality".
The tendency to abnormalise
the other combines with the assumption underlying the "management paradigm"
that diversity itself is somehow abnormal and problematic. This double
problematisation has been the major ingredient of the current political
impasse that we are experiencing in Zimbabwe - a
deadlock.
This infection has also crept
surreptitiously into the progressive forces of this country. Apart from the
effect of the recently enacted repressive laws like POSA, the paralysis that
grips civil society is also a result of failure on their part to articulate a
pragmatic programme that is characterised by tolerance of diversity and a
wide mass base and induce, rally and harness all the pent-up forces behind
such a programme, without any political party or organisation trying to
monopolise the "other" as an essential
trait.
Civil society must utilise its
capacity to create an atmosphere where there is celebration of difference.
Chenjerai Hove (a talented Zimbabwean writer who now lives in self-exile - a
victim of intolerance!) in his article, "Violence without conscience"
(Palaver Finish pp 79) wrote that:
"Difference is a great thing. Imagine that the Gods had created us all the
same. Thinking the same, walking, talking the same. Our ideas and the way we
present them would be the same. Can you imagine a whole village of people
nodding at the same time to the same idea expressed in the same
way.
What a boring world it would
be!"
a.. Isaya M Sithole is a
newly qualified legal practitioner practising in
Harare
THE Central African Republic (CAR) has
become the latest African country to offer refuge to Zimbabwean white farmers
chased off their land under the government's agrarian
reforms.
CAR Prime Minister Martin Ziguele
last week said his country was ready to receive Zimbabwean farmers displaced
by the chaotic land redistribution programme pursued by President Robert
Mugabe since 2000.
Ziguele, who also
doubles as his country's finance minister, told journalists at the end of a
meeting of African ministers at the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
headquarters in Washington last week that the CAR had large tracts of rich
farmland that the Zimbabwean farmers
could develop.
"The Central African
Republic wants to contribute to the resolution of the Zimbabwean problem in
its own way because, as I have said during my mission, we are ready to
receive Zimbabwean farmers and let them live in our country to develop our
farmland because we have 620 000 square kilometres but we are only a few
hundred thousand inhabitants," Ziguele
said.
About 75 percent of the CAR is made
up of forests and woodlands, with only three percent of land being presently
utilised.
The central African country
borders Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and
Sudan.
"We would like to have contact with
organisations for Zimbabwean farmers so that we can concretely see what might
be done," said Ziguele.
Justice for
Agriculture (JAG), a militant grouping that broke away from the Commercial
Farmers' Union (CFU) this year and whose members have vowed to fight the
government over the land grab policy, this week said similar offers had been
received from Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique
and Uganda.
JAG spokeswoman Jenni
Williams could however not say how many farmers had taken up the
offers.
No comment was available from the
CFU, although farming industry sources said it was difficult to determine how
many farmers had so far left the country since the exodus was not
coordinated.
"There are no figures
relating to how many farmers have so far taken up the offers to go and farm
in neighbouring countries because this is being done individually and there
is no way of knowing who has left the country," one farmer
said.
Mugabe says Zimbabwe's drive to
reform land ownership is a belated righting of the wrongs of more than a
century of colonial rule that left about 4 500 white farmers in charge of
more than 80 percent of the country's arable
land.
At least 2 900 white farmers have
been ordered to leave their properties to make way for landless
blacks.