The Village Voice, NY
Nat
Hentoff
Land of Fear, Rape, and
Hunger
The City Council Welcomes a Dictator
October 4th, 2002
4:00 PM
People have been detained and tortured. In the country now,
literally, no
one's safety and security is guaranteed if there is even the
slightest doubt
of support for President Mugabe.
-Adotei Akwei, Africa
advocacy director of Amnesty International USA, The
New York Times, September
16
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In
the rape camps of Zimbabwe, young girls are horrifically abused-often
to
punish Mugabe's political opponents. . . . Mugabe has stationed two
officers
from his feared Central Intelligence Organisation in every village;
merely
talking to a murungu, or white man, can lead to interrogation or
beatings.
-Christina Lamb, Sunday Telegraph, London, August
25
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
On
September 12, Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe-once its liberator and
now
its brutal dictator-was welcomed to New York's City Hall. Invited by
voluble
city council member Charles Barron of Brooklyn, Mugabe spoke to a
dozen or so
councilmembers, most of them members of the black and
hispanic
caucus.
The rest of that deliberative body stayed away,
including council speaker
Gifford Miller. Although saying he was 'deeply
troubled' by reports of human
rights abuses in Zimbabwe, Miller properly
opened a conference room for what
amounted to a tribute to Mugabe because, he
said, it would have been "a
terrible mistake" to deny him free
speech.
Also obviously entitled to free speech and free association by
the First
Amendment were the councilmembers who could have come and countered
Mugabe's
flow of self-justifications. Their questions and rebuttals would
have
educated the public and the media about a country on the brink of
mass
starvation, where Mugabe denies food to those who voted against
him.
In Washington, on August 20, Andrew Natsios, the administrator for
the
United States Agency for International Development, said, "We now
have
confirmed reports in a number of areas in the most severely affected
region
of this country, which is the south, that food is being distributed
to
people who are members of Mugabe's political party and not being
distributed
based on need." (Emphasis added.)
Why were Gifford Miller
and other members of the City Council, who are aware
of Mugabe's ruthless
rule, not present to confront him? Surely, some
wouldn't have stayed away
years ago if the head of South Africa's apartheid
government had come to City
Hall.
Were they afraid of offending Charles Barron? In the September 16
New York
Times, Joyce Purnick noted that few of Barron's colleagues-"even
those
offended by the Mugabe visit-will criticize the councilman publicly,
saying
they fear he'll find a way to register his displeasure."
To be
sure, the vivid Mr. Barron very vigorously and articulately exercises
his
First Amendment rights. But when I called him-never having spoken to
him
previously-before I could even say "Mugabe," the cordial councilmember
spoke
enthusiastically of something I had written long ago about a jazz
original,
Pharoah Sanders. When we did get to the subject at hand, Barron
called for
"balance" in reporting on Zimbabwe.
"Everybody wants to
talk about human rights," he told me, "but what about
the white farmers who
so long have taken and held the land belonging to the
people of
Zimbabwe?"
Indeed, Mugabe makes much of how he is liberating these farms
so that their
rightful owners, the people, can take them back. Well, speaking
of balance
in reporting on Zimbabwe, there is this dispatch, distributed by
AllAfrica
Global Media (allafrica.com), which appeared in the September 20
Daily News
of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare (formerly Salisbury). Some members
of the
press in that country, at considerable personal risk, keep speaking
truth to
power.
In his account, Pedzisai Ruhanya, the paper's chief
reporter, writes:
"Monica Chinamasa, the wife of the Minister of Justice,
Legal and
Parliamentary Affairs, Patrick Chinamasa, has joined other VIPs in
the
scramble to take over prime farms under the pretext of resettling
landless
peasants. . . . She joins other high-ranking . . . officials, senior
civil
servants, business people, and top military officials who have
acquired
prime land under the government's controversial fast-track land
resettlement
programme."
Had Gifford Miller and other City Council
members been present at the
reception for Mugabe, they could have asked
further about his views on
equitable redistribution of the land. They might
also have asked the maximum
leader about Andrew Natsios's claim-in speaking
of parts of Zimbabwe being
on the edge of a famine-that "the children of
opposition party members have
been driven away from school supplementary
feeding programs in rural areas."
Since Charles Barron is clearly very
knowledgeable about the life force of
jazz, I would think he might be
interested in finding out about the life
prospects of these children whose
grave offense to the nation is that their
parents voted the wrong way in the
last election.
And the civil libertarians on our city council could have
asked Mugabe about
the following report from the Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights, which has
been an invaluable source of information on Mugabe's
Zimbabwe. The
committee, referring to the Public Order and Security Act,
passed by the
Mugabe-controlled parliament in January of this year,
notes:
"The Act makes it an offense to make a public statement with the
intention
to, or knowing there is a risk of, 'undermining the authority of
or
insulting' the President. This prohibition includes statements likely
to
engender 'feelings of hostility towards' the President, cause
'hatred,
contempt, or ridicule' of the President, or any 'abusive, indecent,
obscene,
or false statements about him personally, or his office. The use of
the word
'or' here indicates that even true statements are considered
criminal."
Since Charles Barron is an irrepressibly free spirit, he is
fortunate he is
not a citizen of Mugabe's Zimbabwe, because at some point,
his own zest for
free speech would do him in.
Next week, a message
from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who persistently fought
against apartheid and
now has engaged Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe's 'Speeches' Beside the
Point
Zimbabwe Independent
(Harare)
OPINION
October 4, 2002
Posted to the web October 4,
2002
Osmond T Chinhema
WHETHER our illegitimate president was
jeered or cheered at the World Summit
is besides the point, the truth is
Mugabe is suffering from mental
diarrhoea.
Whenever he addresses a
gathering, be it at the Taliban acre or
international guests, the man just
runs out of ideas.
His speeches are full of vitriol and are
vulgar.
Whatever he says is silly and stupid.
Mugabe and his
bootlickers who have ruined the once promising economy in
Africa can no
longer hoodwink the nation.
Joining the fray is the stammering and
foolish Namibian president who
demanded that "the EU must give Africa money",
just like that. That's
poppycock. Anyone in his right mind will not give
credibility to such a
muddle of words. Money to build militia camps and
torture opposition
supporters who are regarded as "enemies" yet the ruling
party is the real
enemy of the people!
These guys are fast becoming
senile. It is high time they became fiction
writers.
Robert and Sam
must get real, the world is watching and history will
ruthlessly judge them.
They must be reminded that they are now diplomatic
garbage. How can they
waste their time pouring vitriol at Western leaders
yet their populace is
languishing in poverty whereas Westerners have almost
everything?
Had
madness been a virtue, these guys deserve some accolades.
Unfortunately
madness is a vice. They try and outdo each other speaking
nonsense as if
there is a price for insanity.
Regardless of the
audience and the occasion, Mugabe uses the same speech if
ever it's worth the
name, what he regularly changes are the dates.
He is always confused like
a cockroach, thus he ends up deviating from the
norm because he is feeling
the heat as each day passes.
Problems in Zimbabwe are too numerous to
mention all because of Mugabe and
his cronies who terrorise defenceless
civilians for their own selfish ends.
Some among the top echelons in the
ruling party give their workers shoes and
bicycles as exit packages when
their "businesses" fold because they use bank
loans to live lavish lives,
buying new cars.
I wish I could be innovative so that I could design a
condom going for over
$1 million because there are ruling party fat cats and
friends who provide a
ready market since they want the most expensive thing
available. These are
just well fed dogs that bark for their master until
reality catches up with
him.
Whether the number of MPs or councillors
that each party has means anything
about the people's wishes or not, the
truth is Zanu PF cannot win a free and
fair election. The way the economy is
being run is a replica of what is
happening in Mugabe's cronies'
businesses.
Take heart beloved Zimbabweans, though our hearts bleed
because of the
current fiasco, one day we will rejoice. Expect the worst and
hope for the
best. Let us pray for the civic society for their unwavering
desire to see a
just and well-fed society. May God richly bless them. To the
ruling party's
fat cats who are holding people to ransom, let them be
warned:
Zimbabweans must not be in bondage forever, everything has its
season.
By the way, does the weird claim that "the economy is the land
and the land
is the economy" still hold any water? To me it's just a myopic
view of the
economy which is being mortgaged to the Libyans in exchange for
oil.
Have you ever realised that when Gaddafi greets black people he
wears white
gloves? Any comradeship to talk about? Food for
thought.
MOZAMBIQUE: Focus on a decade of
peace
Thursday, 03 October 2002
MAPUTO, 3 Oct 2002 (IRIN)
- Returning to a country after many years away can
bring surprises. But few
are prepared for all the changes that have taken
place in
Mozambique.
Barnaby Phillips, who worked as the BBC correspondent in
Mozambique eight
years ago, found himself lost sometimes, despite having
lived in the
capital, Maputo, for several years.
"I am staying at
the 'Avenida' a posh hotel that didn't exist in my time. I
ate at the famous
Mundos Restaurant yesterday, which also didn't exist. And
after dinner I
tried to find my old flat, which used to be just in front of
a huge gaping
hole in the ground. That hole also no longer exists. I got
lost. Then I
realised that instead of the hole there were these high rise
luxury apartment
blocks, some of which were for sale," he told IRIN.
The fact the
apartments were for sale was also a new phenomenon, in what was
just over 10
years ago a Marxist Leninist oriented one-party state, where
houses were
owned by the state.
Even driving from Johannesburg in South Africa to
Maputo was a dramatically
different experience for Phillips. "Before we used
to take our lives in our
hands driving from the capital, Maputo, to the
border. There was a risk of
armed bandits, and the road was a single
carriage-way, badly lit and with
large potholes."
Today, thanks, to a
huge US $1.4 billion investment project, the road from
Johannesburg to Maputo
is "astonishingly good", said Phillips.
Indeed today, Mozambique is one
of the top destinations for investments in
Africa. And most of these
investments and changes are due to 10 years of
peace in the
country.
Before 1992, Mozambique was ravaged by an 18-year civil war.
Half of the
country's population was dependent on food aid for their
survival, an
estimated quarter of the population was displaced by the war and
one million
Mozambicans had sought refuge in neighbouring
countries.
The General Peace Accord marks its 10th anniversary on 4
October. Over the
past decade, two multi-party elections have been held,
refugees have long
returned, people are now farming, landmines are slowly
being cleared and the
economy boasts a 13 percent growth rate - although
international aid still
plays a critical role in the economy.
But it
has not all been a smooth ride nor will it continue to be. According
to the
1998 Mozambique National Human Development Report, sponsored by the
UN
Development Programme, despite the growth in the country's
economy,
Mozambique has the lowest per capita GDP, the most precarious
school
enrolment rate and one of the lowest life expectancy indices in the
region.
Some 69.4 percent of the 18 million population live in absolute
poverty.
Martins Cumbane, a security guard in Maputo, admits that his
life is much
better now. He had served for 20 years in the army fighting in
the bush
first against Ian Smith's white minority regime in what was then
Rhodesia,
and then Renamo rebels in Mozambique. Cumbane can now live
peacefully with
his wife and four children. But, he said, "my wage is not
enough. Wages do
not correspond to reality."
Cumbane finds providing
quality health care and education for his children
especially difficult. He
acknowledges that many new schools and health
facilities have been rebuilt
since the war (half of all schools and health
facilities were destroyed by
Renamo). "But the state-run clinics are not so
good. Even the tablets they
give you have sometimes expired," he said.
However, the new private
health clinics that have sprung up are expensive,
averaging around US $20 for
a consultation, just about US $10 less than the
minimum
wage.
Cumbane's eldest daughter received a poor education. She had to
attend the
last shift of school, which begins at 6.30pm and ends at 11pm.
Apart from
the obvious problems of studying at night when a child is tired or
should be
playing, "transport home was very difficult for her," said
Cumbane.
However, a few people have become very rich, some of whom are
benefiting
from flourishing organised crime and corruption. Mozambique has
become one
of the most important corridors for drug traffickers, mainly for
the South
African market.
Unsurprisingly, fear exists around the
investigation of organised crime. One
of the country's most renowned
journalists, Carlos Cardoso, a father of two
children, was shot and killed in
the heart of Maputo almost two years ago.
At the time he was delving into the
disappearance of millions of dollars
from one of the main banks. One of the
six people held in a maximum security
prison for Cardoso's murder was able to
escape last month just before his
trial was due.
Mozambique is
vulnerable to natural disasters too. Floods in February 2000
left about 700
dead, one million people displaced and economic activity
disrupted in the
southern part of the country. Today, a drought and
resulting food shortages,
although not nearly as severe as in neighbouring
Zambia and Zimbabwe,
threatens about five percent of the population.
But the most serious
modern day disaster for Mozambique is HIV/AIDS.
Mozambique now has one of the
world's highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates with
about 12.2 percent of the
adult population infected. In 1999 an estimated
600 people became infected
every day.
Life expectancy will drop dramatically due to AIDS and the
already high
infant and child mortality rates in Mozambique are expected to
increase by
at least 20 percent, according to UN figures.
HIV/AIDS
particularly affects adults between the ages of 20 to 49, who are
often the
income earners and the most productive members of society.
Households will
face the costs of increased health care, funeral expenses
and loss of income
due to illness and death. Moreover, many families will
have to absorb
children orphaned by AIDS.
How Mozambique copes with the devastating
HIV/AIDS epidemic, rampant
poverty, corruption and organised crime will
undoubtedly be key to how its
notable economic developments really benefit
its people over the next 10
years.
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Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs 2002
Epiphany under the
sun
Almost 40 years ago, Paul Theroux was an idealistic young
teacher in Malawi.
In this exclusive extract from his new book, he returns to
find his former
school in ruins and the country in crisis
Saturday
October 5, 2002
The Guardian
Paved roads ran where there had once been
only rutted tracks; the train line
to Balaka that I had taken in 1964 to a
Mua leprosarium by the lake was
defunct - and so was the leper colony.
The
ferry at Liwonde across the Shire River had been replaced by a bridge.
All
this was progress, but still on these new thoroughfares the
Africans,
buttocks showing in their tattered clothes, walked
barefoot.
I did not arrive in the hill-town of Zomba until after dark.
The main street
was unlit, people flitting and stumbling in the dark. Zomba
had been the
capital of Malawi's British incarnation, the little tea-growing
protectorate
of Nyasaland.
The still small town was a collection of
tin-roofed, red-brick buildings
clustered together at the edge of Zomba
plateau. The Zomba Gymkhana Club had
been the settlers' meeting place and
social centre in British times but,
absurdly, membership was restricted
according to pigmentation, whites
predominating, a few Indians, some
golden-skinned mixed-raced people known
then as "coloureds". Even in the
years just after Malawi's independence in
1964 the club was nearly all white
- horsey men and women, cricketers and
rugger hearties.
Back then, I
was not a member of any club, but was sometimes an unwilling
party to rants
by beer-swilling Brits, wearing club blazers and cardigans,
and saying, "Let
Africans in here and they'll be tearing up the billiard
table and getting
drunk and bringing their snotty little piccanins in the
bar. There'll be some
African woman nursing her baby in the games room."
This was considered
rude and racist, yet in its offensive way it was fairly
prescient, for the
rowdy teenagers now at the billiard table were stabbing
their cues at the
torn felt, the bar was full of drunks, and a woman was
breast-feeding her
baby under the dart board. But if the fabric of the place
had deteriorated,
the atmosphere was about the same as before. Some relics
remained - the sets
of kudu and springbok horns mounted high on the wall,
the glass cases of
dusty fishing flies. The calendar was months out of date,
the portraits were
gone, the floor was unswept.
Soon my friend arrived and greeted me
warmly. He was David Rubadiri, whom I
had first met in 1963, when he had been
headmaster of my school, Soche
Hill - Sochay, was the correct way of saying
it. The shortage of college
graduates at independence meant that Rubadiri was
plucked from the school
and put into the diplomatic service.
The prime
minister, Hastings Banda, appointed him Malawi's ambassador to
Washington.
There, Rubadiri prospered until three or four months after
independence, when
there was a sudden power struggle. The cabinet ministers
denounced Hastings
Banda as a despot and held a vote of no confidence in
parliament.
From
a distance, Rubadiri joined in, but Banda survived what became an
attempted
coup d'etat, and he turned on his accusers. Those who had opposed
him either
left the country or fought in the guerrilla underground. Banda
remained in
power for the next 30 years.
Rubadiri was disgraced for taking sides, and
lost his job. He went to Uganda
to teach at Makerere University. After it
became known that I had assisted
him - I delivered him his car, driving it
2,000 miles through the bush to
Uganda - I was accused of aiding the rebels
and branded a revolutionary. I
was deported from Malawi late in 1965, ejected
from the Peace Corps ("You
have jeopardised the whole programme!"), and with
Rubadiri's help, was hired
at Makerere.
One week I was a
schoolteacher, the following week a university professor.
The combination of
physical risk, social activism, revolutionary fervour,
Third World politics
and naiveté characterised this drama of the 60s.
So our careers,
Rubadiri's and mine, had become intertwined. We had been
friends for 38
years. His fortunes had risen again with the change of
government in Malawi.
In the mid-90s he was appointed Malawi's ambassador to
the UN, and after four
or five years, was made vice-chancellor of the
University of
Malawi.
He had two wives and nine children, and was now almost 70,
grizzled and
venerable. It was wonderful to see him again. We went down the
hill to the
University Club, another glorified bar from the 20s. One man I
recognised
almost immediately as an old student of mine - the same chubby
face and big
head on narrow shoulders, the same heavy-lidded eyes that made
him look
ironic. His hair was grey but otherwise he was Sam Mpechetula, now
wearing
shoes. I had last seen him when he was a barefoot 15-year-old, in
grey
shorts.
He was now 52, in a jacket and necktie. He was married, a
father of four,
and a teacher at Bunda College, outside Lilongwe. So at least
I could say
that one of my students had taken my place as an English teacher
in a Malawi
classroom. That had been one of my more modest goals.
"Do
you remember much about our school?" I asked. "It was a good school -
the
best. They were the best days of my life," he said. "The Peace Corps
guys
were wonderful. They brought blue jeans and long hair to Malawi."
"What a
legacy," I said. "They talked to Africans. Do you know, before they
came,
white people didn't talk to us."
Dinner was at Rubadiri's house, the
former home of the British High
Commissioner - a sprawling one-story colonial
mansion. His wife, Gertrude,
stayed up late, drinking tea and monologuing.
She was intelligent and, for
her generation, highly educated, having gone to
Fort Hare university in
South Africa. Robert Mugabe, later guerrilla fighter
and erratic president
of Zimbabwe, had been one of her
classmates.
"Mugabe was so studious - we called him
'Bookworm'."
Fearful of offering an insult, I at first tentatively
suggested that on my
return to Malawi I was seeing a country greatly reduced.
Gertrude seized on
this, for she too had been away for a long time - perhaps
25 years.
"Things are worse," she said decisively. "When I came back in
1994 the
poverty here really shocked me. I could not believe the people could
be so
poor... The people were dressed in rags. The streets were littered
with
rubbish. The foreign charities here are doing our work for us - so many
of
them! What progress are they making? Will we have them for ever? There
were
not so many before. Why do we still need them after so long? David says
I am
a pessimist, but to tell the truth I am a bit ashamed."
I set off
the next morning to revisit my school, 45 miles down the road from
Zomba. I
had been imagining this return trip down the narrow track to Soche
Hill for
many years. It was a homecoming in a more profound sense than my
going back
to Medford, Massachusetts, where I had grown up. In Medford, I
was one of
many people struggling to leave, to start my life; but in Malawi,
at Soche
Hill school, I was alone, making my life.
The African world I got to know
was not the narrow existence of the tourist
or big-game hunter, or the
rarified and misleading experience of the
diplomat, but the more revealing
progress of an ambitious exile in the bush.
In Malawi I began identifying
with Rimbaud and Graham Greene, and it was in
Africa that I began my lifelong
dislike of Ernest Hemingway, from his
shotguns to his mannered prose. Ernest
was both a tourist and a big-game
hunter. The Hemingway vision of Africa
begins and ends with the killing of
large animals, so that their heads may be
displayed to impress visitors with
your prowess.
That kind of safari
is easily come by. You pay your money and you are shown
elephants and
leopards. You talk to servile Africans, who are generic
natives. The human
side of Africa is an afternoon visit to a colourful
village.
Of all
the sorts of travel available in Africa, the easiest to find and the
most
misleading is the Hemingway experience. In some respects the
feed-the-people
obsession that fuels some charities is related to this, for
I seldom saw
relief workers who did not in some way remind me of people
herding animals
and throwing food to them, much as rangers did to the
animals in
drought-stricken game parks.
Fearing the draft, I had joined the Peace
Corps and been sent to Nyasaland,
an African country not yet independent. So
I experienced the last gasp of
British colonialism, the in-between period of
uncertain changeover, and the
hopeful assertion of black rule. That was
lucky, too, for I saw this process
at close quarters, and African rule,
necessary as it was, was also a tyranny
in Malawi from day one.
My
work justified my existence in Africa. What I liked then was what I
still
like, village life, and tenacious people, and saddleback mountains of
stone
and flat plains. The road from Zomba had everything - vistas almost
to
Mozambique, the savannah of scattered trees, small villages, roadside
stands
where people sold potatoes and sugar cane - famine food, for the maize
was
not yet harvested.
I liked the sweet somnolence of rural Africa. I
stopped at the nearby town
of Limbe, which began abruptly, the edge of the
town slummy, with outdoor
businesses, bicycle menders, car repairers, coffin
makers - the rest of it
chaotic, litter and mobs, and a proliferation of bars
and dubious-looking
clinics. I went into a bank to get a cash advance on my
credit card.
The clerk said, "This transaction will take three days." An
African behind
me in line sighed on my behalf and said, "That should take no
more than an
hour. That's disgusting."
He was a Malawian, Dr Jonathan
Banda, a political science teacher at
Georgetown, in Washington DC. He had
left Malawi while quite young, in 1974,
had travelled and studied in various
countries but had finished his PhD in
the United States. He had just come
back to Malawi and he was disappointed
by what he saw.
"It is dirty -
it's awful," he said. "The people are greedy and
materialistic. They're lazy,
too. They show no respect. They push and shove.
They are awful to each
other."
I asked him about charities and aid agencies - the agents of
virtue in white
Land Rovers. What were they changing? "Not much - because all
aid is
political," he said.
"When this country became independent it
had very few institutions. It still
doesn't have many. The donors aren't
contributing to development. They
maintain the status quo. Politicians love
that, because they hate change.
The tyrants love aid. Aid helps them stay in
power and it contributes to
underdevelopment. It's not social or cultural and
it certainly isn't
economic. Aid is one of the main reasons for
underdevelopment in Africa."
I walked up the main street to see if the
Malawi Censorship Board was still
operating. Indeed it was, still a
government office in its own substantial
building at the east end of town. I
knocked on a door at random and found an
African man in a pinstripe suit
sitting at a desk, a Bible open at his
elbow.
"I can sell you this,"
he said, and handed me a pamphlet titled Catalogue of
Banned Publications,
Cinematograph Pictures and Records, with Supplement,
dated
1991.
"Please give me five kwacha." He then opened a ledger labelled
Accounts
Section Censorship Board, and filled out a lengthy receipt in
triplicate,
stamped it, and tore out a copy for me.
"Don't you have
anything more recent than 1991?" "Please wait here. I will
need your
name."
This Malawian catalogue of banned books would have constituted a
first-year
college reading list in any enlightened country. Flipping through
the
pamphlet I saw that it contained novels by John Updike, Graham
Greene,
Bernard Malamud, Norman Mailer, Yukio Mishima, DH Lawrence, James
Baldwin,
Kurt Vonnegut, Vladimir Nabokov and George Orwell.
Animal
Farm was banned, as well as - more predictably - many books with
titles such
as Promiscuous Pauline and School Girl Sex. Salman Rushdie's
name was on the
list - the president, Mr Muluzi, was a Muslim, that could
explain it - and so
was my name; after all these years, my novel Jungle
Lovers, set in Malawi,
was still banned.
The censorship officer was still down the hall. It
seemed to me that the
wisest thing to do was leave the censorship board
before they linked my name
with that of the pernicious author on their
list.
I drove out of Limbe by a familiar route: uphill through a forest
that had
once been much larger, past a village that had once been much
smaller, on a
paved road that had once been just a muddy track. My hopes were
raised by
this narrow but good back road that ascended to the lower slopes of
Soche
Hill, for I assumed that this improved road implied that the school too
had
been improved.
But I was wrong, the school was almost
unrecognisable. What had been a set
of school buildings in a large grove of
trees was a semi-derelict compound
of battered buildings in a muddy open
field. The trees had been cut down,
the grass was chest-high. At first glance
the place seemed abandoned: broken
windows, doors ajar, mildewed walls,
gashes in the roofs, and just a few
people standing around, doing nothing but
gaping at me.
I walked to the house I had once lived in. The now-battered
building had
once lain behind hedges, in a bower of blossoming shrubs, but
the shrubbery
was gone, replaced by a scrappy garden of withered maize and
cassava at one
corner. Tall elephant grass had almost overwhelmed it and now
pressed
against the house. The building was scorched and patched and the
veranda
roof broken. Mats lay in the driveway, mounds of white flour drying
on
them - except that falling rain had begun to turn it to paste.
To
someone unfamiliar with Africa the house was the very picture of
disorder. I
knew better. A transformation had occurred, an English
chalet-bungalow turned
into a serviceable African hut, not a very colourful
hut, even an unlovely
hut. But it was not for me to blame the occupants for
finding other uses for
the driveway, or chopping the trees up for firewood,
or slashing the hedges,
or growing cassava where I had grown petunias.
I met two teachers
standing in the wet road, chatting together. They
introduced themselves as
Anne Holt from Fife in Scotland, and Jackson Yekha,
a Malawian - new teachers
here.
"I've read some of your books," Anne said. "I didn't know you'd
taught
here." She was 22, as I had been here at Soche Hill, and so as a ghost
I was
visiting and haunting my earlier self, and seeing myself as I had
been:
thin, pale, standing on a wet road in the bush, with a foxed and
mildewed
textbook in my hand.
It was Jackson Yekha, not I, who
bemoaned the poverty and disorder in the
country. He said, "Things are
terrible. What can we do to change?" I said,
"First you have to decide what's
important to you. What do you want?" "I
want things to be better. Houses.
Money. The life."
"What's stopping you?"
"The government is not
helping us."
"Maybe the government wants to prevent things from becoming
better."
I sketched out my theory that some governments in Africa
depended on
underdevelopment to survive - bad schools, poor communications, a
feeble
press and ragged people.
They needed poverty to obtain foreign
aid, they needed ignorance and
uneducated and passive people to keep
themselves in office for decades.
"The NG0s pull out the teachers,"
Jackson said. "They offer them better pay
and conditions."
That was
interesting - the foreign charities and virtue activists, aiming to
improve
matters, coopted underpaid teachers, turned them into food
distributors in
white Land Rovers, and left the schools understaffed.
The library, a
large substantial building, had been the heart of the school.
It had never
been difficult to get crates of new books from overseas
agencies. My memory
of the Soche library was an open-plan room divided by
many high bookcases and
filled shelves, 10,000 books, a table of magazines,
a reference section with
encyclopedias.
It was almost in total darkness. One light burned. Nearly
all the shelves
were empty. The light fixtures were empty too.
"What
happened to the books?"
"Students stole them."
I thought: I will
never send another book to this country. I also thought:
if you're an African
student and you need money, it made a certain criminal
sense to steal books
and sell them. It was a justifiable form of poaching,
like a villager snaring
a warthog, disapproved of by the authorities but
perhaps necessary.
I
looked around the dismal school and thought how I had longed to return
here.
I had planned to spend a week helping, perhaps teaching, reliving my
days as
a volunteer. This was my Africa.
"You're planting a seed!" Some people
had said. But the seed had not
sprouted and now it was decayed and probably
moribund. I wanted to see some
African volunteers - caring for the place,
sweeping the floor, cutting
grass, washing windows, glueing the spines back
on to the few remaining
books.
Or, if that was not their choice, I
wanted to see them torching the place
and dancing around the flames; then
ploughing everything under and planting
food crops. Until either of those
things happened I would not be back.
On my return to Zomba I drove to
Blantyre (named after David Livingstone's
birthplace in Scotland) and stopped
at a shop on a side street, Supreme
Furnishers, to see another of my
students, Steve Kamwendo. He was now branch
manager, aged 51, father of six,
a big healthy man. I told him where I had
been. His face fell.
"You
went to Soche?" he said. "Did you shed tears?" He lamented that the
school
was in a bad way, that crime was terrible and life in general very
hard. His
own business was good. Malawian-made furniture, and bedsteads and
lamps from
South Africa and Zimbabwe, were popular because furniture
imported from
outside Africa was so expensive.
"Your old students are doing well, but
the country is not doing well. People
are different - much poorer, not
respectful."
"What about your kids, Steve?"
"They are in America -
four of them are in college in Indiana. One is
graduating in June."
By
any standards, his was a success story. All his savings went
towards
educating his children elsewhere and, though he was gloomy about
Malawi's
prospects, he was encouraging his children to return to the country
to work.
"It's up to them now," I said.
I returned to Zomba sooner
than I had expected, with an unanswered question
in my mind. Why were the
schools so underfunded?
"I can tell you that," Gertrude Rubadiri
said.
"The money was taken."
It seemed that two million American
dollars, earmarked for education from a
European donor country, had recently
been embezzled by politicians in a scam
that involved the creation of
fictional schools and fictional teachers. The
men were in jail, awaiting
trial, but the money was gone.
After dinner one night, I sat with David
Rubadiri. In his expansive mood he
was a romantic. He had lived through the
worst years of Malawi, he had
occupied high positions, he had been an exile,
and he was now powerful
again, running the national university, though it was
millions in debt and
so behind in salaries that all classes had been
cancelled. Students were
threatening to hold demonstrations in Zomba. "Your
children are doing so
well," he said.
"When I was in London one of
them had his own TV show and the other had just
published a novel. Clever
chaps."
"Thanks," I said. Though I was flattered, I found it hard to say
more. My
feeling of annoyance had turned into physical
discomfort.
"What I would like," David said in an emphatic way, a little
theatrical, "is
for one of your children to come here for a
spell."
After what I had seen since entering Malawi weeks before, I found
the idea
shocking and unacceptable, like Almighty God instructing Abraham
to
sacrifice Isaac. Shock gave way to incredulity and
bewilderment.
"What would either of my sons do here, for goodness
sake?"
"He would work, he would teach, he would be a source of ideas
and
inspiration." It was the old song, but just a song. I said, "But you've
had
plenty of those people. Years of those people. Years and
years."
"I want your son." What he meant as praise and, perhaps flattery,
offended
me. Now in his insistence he sounded like one of Herod's hatchet
men, just
before the Slaughter of the Innocents. I want your son. Why were
these
murderous Biblical metaphors occurring to me? Perhaps because Malawians
were
such a church-going bunch.
"How many children do you have,
David?"
"As you know, nine."
"How many of them are teaching
here?"
"One is in Reno, one in Baltimore, one in London, one in
Kampala,
another..." he stopped himself and looked tetchy.
"Why are
you inquiring?"
"Because you're doing what everyone does - you're asking
me to hand over one
of my kids to teach in Malawi. But Marcel taught in
India, and Louis was a
teacher in Zimbabwe. They've had that experience -
have yours?"
I was a bit too shrill in my reply. He took it well but he
saw me as
unwilling, someone no longer persuaded by the cause. He suspected
that I had
turned into Mr Kurtz. He was wrong. I was passionate about the
cause. But
though my children would be enriched by the experience of working
in Africa,
nothing at all would change as a result of their being
here.
Still trying to control my indignation I said as quietly as I
could, "What
about your kids? This is their country. They could make a
difference. They
are the only people - the only possible people - who will
ever make a
difference here."
This was my Malawian epiphany. Only
Africans were capable of making a
difference in Africa. Everyone else, donors
and volunteers and bankers, were
simply agents of subversion.
Back in
Blantyre, I saw a man on the sidewalk lying in wait for me. Seeing
me, the
man smiled and frolicked ahead, flapping his arms to get my
attention. Then
he crouched in front of me, blocking my path, and said, "I
am hungry. Give me
money." I said "No", and stepped over him and kept
walking.
· This is
an edited extract from Paul Theroux's book Dark Star Safari:
Overland from
Cairo to Cape Town (Hamish Hamilton, £17.99).
· This is an edited extract
from Paul Theroux's book: Overland from Cairo to
Cape Town (Hamish Hamilton,
£17.99). To order a copy for £15.99 plus p&p
call Guardian book service
on 0870 066 7979.
Globe and Mail, Canada
Global Fund
fights AIDS with tied hands
Kofi Annan's ambitious initiative
against disease
in developing countries struggles with unpaid
bills,
unkept commitments and corrupt governments. As STEPHANIE
NOLEN
reports, its head office doesn't yet even have voice
mail
By STEPHANIE
NOLEN
Saturday, October 5, 2002 - Page
F6
It was announced as a bold new
solution for the world's worst problem.
It was to be an unprecedented
partnership between rich nations and
multinational companies to vanquish
AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, the
triumvirate of diseases that are the
worst killers in poor countries.
The idea
was born in mid-2001, and in January, United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi
Annan formally announced the creation of a Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria
and Tuberculosis. He said about seven to 10
billion new dollars a year were
needed to tackle the diseases, and the fund
would put those dollars directly
into the hands of the people best able to
use
them.
Applicants, whether developing
nations or independent organizations,
would design their ideal anti-AIDS
programs and submit proposals to the
fund. The fund would assess those
applications rigorously, based on the
technical soundness and transparency of
the programs. If the plans were
good, money -- unprecedented amounts of money
-- would arrive, and fast.
But nine months
in, the fund has raised only a sliver of the money it
needs, at the most
conservative estimates; it has announced $1.6-billion
(all figures U.S.) in
grants to poor nations, but not given out a dime. The
state of the fund has
activists harping and its own staff apologetic: If
this is the radical
solution, things don't bode well for the
problem.
"There's been no money for
months, nothing has come in, and there is
no plan extant on who owes and how
they will pay," said Stephen Lewis, Mr.
Annan's special adviser on AIDS in
Africa. "We're really in trouble unless
it gets turned
around."
An estimated 40 million people
worldwide are infected with HIV, and
250,000 die from AIDS each month, the
vast majority of them in the
developing world. In a bleak tandem with HIV
come tuberculosis -- to which
HIV patients are hugely vulnerable, and which
kills two million people a
year -- and malaria, which weakens thousands and
kills a million more. The
spread of these three diseases is rapidly
undermining the gains made in
public health in the Third World in recent
years.
The first 58 fund applications were
approved in April, with a total
value of $1.6-billion. They include bed nets
soaked in insecticide for East
Africa, and a push to widen access to the
anti-AIDS retroviral "cocktail" in
West Africa. A second round of
applications was submitted last week and
approvals will be announced in
January. But will the fund have any money to
give
out?
The sum total of pledges to date is
$2.1-billion over five years, a
fraction of what Mr. Annan wanted. Actual
cheques are quite another thing --
right now there is only $500-million in
the fund's account. Canada has
pledged $150-million (U.S.) over four years;
the first $37.5-million payment
has been delivered. There have been no
significant corporate donations; the
only big non-state pledge is
$100-million from the Bill and Melinda
Gates
Foundation.
Anil Soni, adviser to
the fund's executive director, acknowledged the
widespread worries. But he
said the first payments will go out this month, a
pace he called "remarkably
quick" in comparison with other large
multilateral
organizations.
Still, the fund is further
hobbled by the fact that it must create an
international organization totally
outside existing structures. This is not
a UN fund, and it was created with a
promise that it would not use any
existing multilateral bodies to manage its
money; at the same time, it must
be "light" and poised to disburse funds
fast.
The U.S. administration made it
clear, early on, that in keeping with
the President's larger campaign against
"wasteful" foreign aid, the fund was
going to have to prove it was unlike
existing donor mechanisms if it wanted
American support. So it was obliged to
create its own infrastructure,
accounting and procurement operations -- not
just at its head office in
Geneva but in every country where it
operates.
A British public-health expert
named Richard Feachem has assumed the
job of executive director, but the fund
still lacks many senior staffers,
and the Geneva office doesn't yet have even
voice mail. More gravely, it
lacks a financial
plan.
Next week, Dr. Feachem is expected
to announce a schedule for when
money will go out, and a plan for wresting
money from apathetic donors. One
proposal on the table is a formula to
calculate what the richest nations
should donate, based on gross domestic
product, in much the same way UN dues
are tabulated. Its success will depend
on its reception in the White House.
The
"bold new initiative" has other problems as well. With only one
round of
applications approved, it is already clear that the process is
not
"unfettered." Malawi, for example, was approved last month for
$196-million
over five years. But the small southern African nation, where an
estimated
one in four adults has HIV, initially asked for $1.6-billion over
four
years.
The official story is that
the fund board praised Malawi's ambition
but was not confident that its
National AIDS Commission could absorb that
money. Malawi redrafted the
proposal repeatedly, until the $196-million
version was
approved.
Supporters such as Erasmus
Morah, a Canadian who directs the UNAIDS
operation in Malawi, says this was
reasonable. "The feeling was, don't take
such a big piece of pie that you
choke on it, and you ruin the possibility
of more pie later," he said. "The
country felt pressure to submit a proposal
that has a 'reasonable budget,'
not relative to the need, because the need
is insatiable, but relative to
what they think can do."
Certainly,
Malawi's government has a troubling track record on
transparency and
corruption. Ominously, after the grant was announced,
responsibility for the
AIDS commission -- and its funds -- was removed from
the office of the widely
respected vice-president to the
less-trusted
president.
But others --
including Jeffrey Sachs, renowned Columbia University
poverty theorist --
accused bilateral donors (including the British
Department for International
Development and USAID) of beating the proposal
down, threatening to withhold
their vital "partner approval" because they
feared losing their influence if
such a massive amount of money went
directly to the government. Prof. Sachs
suggested they did not like the
competition for
donations.
Amir Attaran calls it
stinginess -- "it is a long-standing practice of
aid donors, particularly on
HIV/AIDS, to practise demand management, to
limit what countries ask for" --
with ominous consequences for Malawi's
fight against the
diseases.
"The $200-million version is
more likely to fail than the larger
version would have been," said Prof.
Attaran, a Harvard expert on health
issues in developing nations. Very little
of it will go to infrastructure,
he said. "As I see this unfolding, crate
upon crate of medicine will arrive
at Lilongwe Airport, to a country with
grave logistical and human-resource
problems -- not through any wrongdoing on
their part, but because they are
poor, and everyone is
dying."
Prof. Attaran was also sharply
critical of the first round of
approvals, which included middle-income
developing nations such as Chile and
Argentina. "Chile, with $8,000 GDP per
capita, got grants -- Chile does not
need grants," he said. "The fund was
supposed to be for the poorest, most
disease-ridden countries. If none of the
poorest submitted good enough
proposals, [they should] hold on to the
$80-million and let Chile go to the
World Bank for
loans."
Another founding principle, a
stipulation for good governance, was
undermined by awards to Zimbabwe and
North Korea, Prof. Attaran added.
But Mr.
Soni, the fund adviser, countered: "I think that's an example
of what the
fund is doing right: If what we require of the government in
Haiti or Cuba is
to sit down with NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and
figure out what
they need, that supports not only the fight against the
diseases but also the
democratic institutions that will help the country
perform better. In Haiti,
for example, that money won't go bilaterally to
[the government]; it will
come from the fund to the NGOs."
But the
relationship between states and NGO applicants is another
uncertain issue. A
project in the South African state of KwaZulu-Natal has
been granted
$75-million (U.S.) for an AIDS-care project that includes
providing
anti-retroviral medication -- in defiance of the South African
government's
stated opposition to the drugs, which it says are
toxic.
The government said it would shut
the project down before it let them
have the grant; the fund said the cash
would be awarded there or not at all.
The situation is unresolved, but fund
watchers have been waiting to see Dr.
Feachem speak out in this test case and
tell South Africa that the fund will
watch closely to make sure the project
gets the cash.
But what cash? The fund may
soon find itself writing cheques for money
it doesn't have, and Prof. Attaran
says that may be a necessary strategy, as
it will embarrass the donors. "They
can either parcel out funds in a
pusillanimous way to one country after
another and have no country get
what's adequate," he said. "Or they can say,
'Our core principles require us
to approve amounts of money commensurate with
the problems of AIDS,
tuberculosis and malaria, when a proposal is
technically good, the country
genuinely needs the money, and it practices
good government. So we will
operate on those criteria. We will overcommit. We
will go into a deficit
situation. And if the international community doesn't
like that, it needs to
publicly reverse the commitment that this fund will
have $7-billion to
$10-billion a year.'
"
Mr. Soni pointed out that the next test
for the fund is how the first
recipients do with their new infusion of cash:
"We've placed enormous trust
in those partnerships, and the challenge is to
now support those countries
so they get results." Otherwise, it will more
difficult than ever to wrest
money out of reluctant donors, Mr. Lewis
added.
Mr. Morah, surrounded by the
devastation of AIDS in Malawi, remains
cautiously optimistic that the fund's
problems can be resolved. "They wanted
a bold approach. They said they needed
to get out of the box [in] handling
these issues, and tap new funds,
especially private funds," he mused. "But
when you're out of the box
completely, it's hard to move out there, on
your
own."
Stephanie Nolen writes on
foreign affairs for The Globe and
Mail.
East London Dispatch
No govt knows
of Ryan and his R800m project
By Eddie Botha
Business
Editor
EAST LONDON -- Both the Mozambican government and Zimbabwe's
Commercial
Farmers Union (CFU) have sided with the British government in
denying all
knowledge of a R800 million project to relocate Zimbabwean
farmers to
Mozambique.
A Daily Dispatch investigation yesterday
revealed that potential investors
were being lured locally to invest in the
project which claims support from
the British and Mozambican
governments.
Despite these denials, the initiator of the project,
Christopher Ryan, who
allegedly signed the deal with investors and apparently
promised huge
returns on investments, insisted it was on
track.
Mozambique High Commission spokesman Bernardo Serage told the
Dispatch that
he had never heard of the project. "I am sure that neither the
ambassador
nor the government knows about it."
CFU director David
Hasluck said from Harare that his organisation would have
known about the
project, but that he also had not heard about it. "My farm
borders with
Mozambique and I can assure you that there are no such plans. I
also have
never heard of a Ryan," he said.
Earlier the British High Commission
denied all knowledge of the project and
spokesman Nick Sheppard said it would
also not endorse such a project.
However, Ryan, who phoned the Dispatch
from London where he currently lives,
maintained that "this was a fantastic
project".
He insisted that the project would create jobs for about 500000
people in
Mozambique and would result in making Mozambique independent of
food aid in
three years.
"The farmers and Mozambican government and
British Parliament all agree that
this is one of the most beautiful (mooiste)
projects," said Ryan, who spoke
in Afrikaans.
He admitted that at
least one investor had not been paid back what had been
promised in the
contract.
The Dispatch yesterday reported that the investor had been
promised, within
six weeks, returns of 10 times the amount he had invested in
June.
Until this week he had received nothing.
"I have sent
documents to attorney Hannes Schoeman and asked him to deal
with this
claim."
Ryan insisted that he had discussed the project with the British
government,
which he claimed had been very supportive.
"If it had not
been for the assistance from so many British members of
parliament, I would
not have progressed this far."
Ryan said that he would soon reveal the
names of all the project's
supporters.
"I have a list of investors.
The American and Mozambican investors will
contribute the largest part and
they will become members of the new
company."
He would also reveal the
names of top people in the banking industry who
back the
project.
"There are many wealthy people who decided to get into the bus
with us after
studying the project."
Ryan said that he has been a
financier all his life, operating in
Johannesburg and Cape
Town.
Daily News
Kunonga's critic gets death
threat
10/5/02 9:26:25 AM (GMT
+2)
By Pedzisai Ruhanya Chief
Reporter
THE infighting in the Anglican
Church in Harare took a dark turn this
week when Pauline Makoni, a critic of
the embattled Bishop Nolbert Kunonga,
on Monday received an anonymous death
threat.
Mrs Makoni is the wife of
well-known banker, Dr Julius Makoni, and the
daughter of the retired bishop
of the Anglican Church, Peter Hatendi.
It
is reported that a vehicle came up the driveway of her Highlands
home and an
envelope was tossed over the gate. By the time the gardener
picked up the
envelope the vehicle had already taken off at high
speed.
When Makoni read the letter,
addressed to her personally, she was
brought face-to-face with the threat of
death.
"'Please note," the letter reads,
"that your church executive you are
in (sic) should resign not later than
today or you will face death. This I
assure you and if you do not tell your
members . . ."
The last part of the letter
contains more threats, this time in Shona,
but unprintable in a family
newspaper, with obscene references to Mrs
Makoni's private
parts.
Pauline Makoni refused to discuss
her ordeal yesterday. "Who gave you
that letter?" she said when contacted by
The Daily News. "I cannot discuss
the letter with you because of the pending
court case. But I can assure you
I am not in any way
scared."
The letter to Makoni did not bear
the name, address or signature of
the
writer.
The matter was reported to
Highlands Police Station the same day, but
yesterday the police refused to
comment.
This was the latest incident in
the ongoing upheavals that have rocked
the Anglican Church in Harare since
the appointment of Kunonga as head of
the Harare
Diocese.
The threat to Makoni's life
follows an application in the Harare
Magistrates' Court by Kunonga in which
he seeks the court's authority to bar
the leadership of the Cathedral of St
Mary and All Saints in Harare,
including Makoni, from attending services and
visiting church buildings in
the Harare
Diocese.
As a result of Kunonga's
application, Makoni said the leadership of
the Harare Diocese, including
herself, were on Saturday barred from
church
activities.
In his affidavit,
Kunonga alleged the leadership had disrupted church
services by joining other
parishioners in accusing him of abusing his
position by preaching pro-Zanu PF
sermons.
But in her affidavit, filed in
the court yesterday on behalf of the 18
other parishioners by Beatrice Mtetwa
of Kantor and Immerman legal
practitioners, Makoni said the ruling to stop
them from carrying out their
duties should be reversed because Kunonga did
not have the legal power to
take such a decision. Under Chapter 8.6 of the
Acts of the Diocese, any
legal action had to be taken with the consent of the
diocesan trustees.
She said one of the
trustees, Chris Molan, confirmed that the diocesan
trustees did not authorise
Kunonga to bring the matter to the court.
It was noted that Kunonga did not have the power to remove duly
elected
councillors and wardens because they were not there to serve the
personal
interests of the sitting Bishop as their power derived entirely
from the
diocesan acts and not from the Bishop.
"Kunonga also appears to have totally ignored that the respondents are
a
creature of the vestry and that they are obliged to carry out the
lawful
instructions and resolutions made at the annual vestry
meeting.
"If he has a problem at all with
the proceedings of the vestry
meeting, his course of action is not to seek to
undo what was achieved
through a democratic process of the church through the
back door,'' she
said.
Makoni said that
as councillors legally elected in a vestry meeting
which was lawfully held on
the authority and request of Kunonga, "our
mandate is to act in the best
interests of the ecclesiastical division and
to ensure that Christian
principles are at all times upheld".
She
denied that any of the respondents did anything improper and
Kunonga's
failure to particularise the allegations of improper conduct could
only serve
to demonstrate that there was nothing to substantiate
the
allegations.
They said they wanted
the court to dismiss Kunonga's application and
allow them to do their duties
in accordance with laid out
church
regulations.
"Kunonga has no
power to stop any of the respondents from attending
church and I challenge
him to point out the Act and regulation under which
he believes he can bar
members from worshipping at any of the diocesan
parishes,'' she
said.
Kunonga is a known Zanu PF supporter
and is the only clergyman in
Zimbabwe to be slapped with a travel ban by the
United States of America,
joining President Mugabe and other government and
party officials, on
allegations of human rights abuses and the break down of
law and order.
Daily News
Drama as Sheriff attaches ZBC news crew's
vehicle
10/5/02 9:00:05 AM (GMT
+2)
By Lloyd
Mudiwa
A Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation
(ZBC) news crew covering a story
at the Harare Magistrates' Courts yesterday
turned into a juicy story
themselves when their vehicle was attached outside
the court by the office
of the Deputy Sheriff, to the titters from amused
by-standers.
The drastic action against
the cash-strapped corporation was taken
over a $3 million debt the
government-owned broadcaster owes a
private
company.
The news team, led by
the courts and crime correspondent, Tonderai
Katswara, was covering the
initial remand hearing of Tichaona Munyanyi, the
MP for Mbare
East.
Munyanyi is a suspect in the murder
of Ali Khan Manjengwa, a Zanu PF
activist allegedly assasinated inside
Nenyere hostels in Mbare last month.
But
the ZBC car was confiscated and towed to Ferreira's Auctions where
it is
expected to be auctioned to offset a $3 million debt the corporation
owes
Comms Africa (Pvt) Ltd for compact disc players supplied in
January.
Meanwhile, Justice Moses
Chinhengo of the High Court in Harare on
Thursday ordered Munyaradzi
Hwengwere, the ZBC's chief executive, to assist
the Deputy Sheriff to attach
the corporation's property over a $3,7 million
debt owed to another company,
Fawcett Security Operations (Pvt) Ltd, for
security services
rendered.
ZBC had barred the Deputy
Sheriff from entering its Pockets Hill
headquarters so he could attach its
property, despite court judgments
permitting the
seizure.
The corporation claimed its
premises were off-limits as they were
protected by the Protected Places and
Area Act.
Chinhengo granted Thursday's
order with the consent of the ZBC and
Hwengwere, represented by Wilson
Manase.
Fawcett was represented by
Innocent Chagonda.
Chinhengo, in an earlier
judgment, blasted ZBC for refusing to repay
the debt and barring the Deputy
Sheriff from attaching its property.
He
also attacked the member-in-charge of Borrowdale police station for
failing
to assist the Deputy Sheriff to attach the property from the
premises,
guarded by ZBC's own guards, armed police and
soldiers.
The ZBC had refused to settle
the debt, saying that it is in "dire
financial
constraints".
The corporation blamed the armed
police and soldiers for barring the
Deputy Sheriff from attaching their
property.
ZBC said the uniformed forces
refused to take orders from the
corporation, but only from the ministries of
Home Affairs and Defence.
Chinhengo
ordered Borrowdale police to help the Deputy Sheriff and to
ensure the ZBC
paid the costs of the
application.
Daily News
Todd suffers stroke
10/5/02 9:00:39 AM (GMT +2)
Staff
Reporter
THE former Prime Minister of
Southern Rhodesian, Sir Garfield Todd,
93, suffered a stroke and was admitted
at Mater Dei hospital in Bulawayo
on
Monday.
His daughter, Judith, said
yesterday: "My father was taken ill on
Monday and is recovering at Mater Dei
hospital where he has been ordered to
take a complete rest. He is not allowed
any visitors."
Sir Garfield was prime
minister of Southern Rhodesia from 1953 to 1958
when he was defeated in an
election largely because he was seen to be too
sympathetic to the Africans'
cause for a share of political power.
He
was detained by the illegal Ian Smith regime in 1965 and 1972 for
his stand
against the Unilateral Declaration of Independence and the
settlement
proposals struck between the Smith regime and Britain in
1971.
Early this year he won a case in
which the government had denied him
the right to vote saying he was not a
Zimbabwean citizen.
Daily News
Losing MDC candidate vows to continue her fight for political
change
10/5/02 9:02:43 AM (GMT
+2)
Staff
Reporter
AFTER losing in the
violence-marred rural district council elections
at the weekend, Francisca
Ngwende, the MDC candidate for Ward 24 in Murewa
South, is still determined
to continue playing her part in agitating for
political change in the
country.
Ngwende, 38, has been assaulted,
threatened with death and had her
Macheke house set on fire in January
allegedly by Zanu PF militants.
All that
has not deterred her, as she vowed this week to continue to
fight for change
as an MDC member rather than join forces with the
ruling
party.
Last Saturday, she
sustained a fractured left arm in an attack by
suspected CIO
operatives.
Ngwende, married to war
veteran Raphinos Madzokere, and the mother of
five children aged between six
and 18 years, said the Zanu PF youths had
tried since the June 2000
parliamentary election to force her into
renouncing her MDC
membership.
She said she was abducted from
a bus stop in Macheke and severely
assaulted by suspected CIO men driving a
cream Peugeot 504 registration
number
395-377G.
"We were waiting to deploy our
polling agents at the roadside when the
car stopped for us," she said. "Three
of our agents got into the car going
to the Waterloo polling station. There
was only the driver. I remained
behind waiting for other agents to
go."
Ngwende said 30 minutes later, the
vehicle returned with three people
inside. She said they stopped their
vehicle and flashed some employment
identification
cards.
But before she could make out what
was happening, the three men
bundled her into their vehicle together with
Wilbert Chimbwedza, 27, another
election agent and sped off along the Murewa
Road with them.
She said they severely
assaulted her with fists, fan belts and
sticks.
"They accused me of using the
driver to transport MDC agents when he
belonged to the Zanu PF government,"
she said. "He even said President
Mugabe would have the driver fired from
work if he was found assisting the
MDC agents to travel to polling
stations."
She was dumped by the wayside
and walked to Macheke police station
where she made a report to Constable
Sumwa.
Instead, she was fined $100 for
alleged misconduct before the police
and Chimbwedza was fined $200 for
alleged public violence.
Daily News
Nhema pleads lack of resources to curb rampant
poaching
10/5/02 9:05:29 AM (GMT
+2)
By Columbus
Mavhunga
FRANCIS Nhema, the Minister of
Environment and Tourism, says the
country cannot curb rampant poaching and
environmental degradation because
it does not have enough
resources.
Nhema spoke in Parliament on
Tuesday as he presented the Environment
Management Bill, which seeks to
concentrate and harmonise the responsibility
for all environment issues under
his ministry.
At the moment environmental
legislation is fragmented, with about 20
pieces of legislation administered
by five different ministries.
The main one
is the National Resources Act of 1940.
As a
result of the multiplicity of overlapping legislation, vehicle
emissions have
become a health hazard in most urban areas and there is
rampant cutting down
of trees and poaching of wild animals, especially in
the newly resettled
areas.
Nhema said the proposed Bill would
tighten the loopholes.
"The present
legislation allows a fragmented approach to the
management of natural
resources. Therefore, the existing laws do not
consider the environment in
its totality, nor do they take into account the
international agreements to
which Zimbabwe is party.
"Moreover, the
fines for causing environmental damage are too low, and
they do not include
the precautionary principle."
But most
members of parliament who contributed to the debate on the
Bill as it went
through its Second Reading, said environmental degradation
and poaching would
continue as long as the government did not observe the
rule of
law.
Gabriel Chaibva, the MDC MP for
Harare South said: "What we need is
the rule of law. This simply means that
following on whatever laws we would
have put in place and that has nothing to
do with Britain or America.
"There is
rampant cutting down of trees everywhere in places such as
the
Henderson
Research Station in Mazowe.
Ministers, the police, MPs from that area
see it and do nothing about it. So
whatever pieces of legislation (are in
place) the situation will not change
until we observe the rule of law. The
police and the army are involved in the
poaching."
He said there was need to
address poverty if there was any commitment
to the fight against
poaching.
"There are more than two million
people who have no means of
livelihood as a result of displacement by the
land policy. They have now
resorted to poaching," Chaibva
said.
Daily News
MDC attacks EU laxity on
sanctions
10/5/02 9:10:41 AM (GMT
+2)
Political
Editor
THE MDC has strongly criticised the
European Union for allowing senior
Zanu PF
officials and government ministers to travel to Europe despite the
targeted
sanctions against them.
Moses
Mzila-Ndlovu, the MDC shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, said
the
EU
was legitimising President Mugabe by
debating whether Zimbabwe should
be invited to the Sadc-EU summit in
Copenhagen in November.
"The MDC is
surprised that the EU policy on application of smart
sanctions, has so far
not been effective. It is being undermined by the EU
itself as it has allowed
targeted
persons, including the regime's
Foreign Affairs Minister, Stan
Mudenge, to travel to Europe. This has
rendered the policy an 'all bark and
no bite policy'," said
Mzila-Ndlovu.
He said there should be no
debate on whether or not Zimbabwe should be
allowed to attend the Sadc-EU
summit in Copenhagen.
"By succumbing to
Sadc pressure for Zimbabwe to be allowed to
attend
the
meeting, the EU would be guilty
of endorsing the Zanu PF culture of
violence and vote-rigging as witnessed in
the recent local government
elections, which were held under an atmosphere of
violence and lawlessness."
Daily News
Zanu PF youths accused of
arson
10/5/02 9:12:04 AM (GMT
+2)
From Our Correspondent in
Mutare
FIVE families from Makwenjere
village in Mutasa district were on
Wednesday left homeless after Zanu PF
youths celebrating their victory in
the rural district council elections
allegedly set their homes on fire.
The
houses belong to MDC members Tobia Tsadziva, Luke Dambaza and
Elias
Makwenjere.
In Mutasa, Zanu PF won all the
wards.
Pishai Muchauraya, the MDC
provincial spokesman, said the attack took
place at around 4pm when Zanu PF
supporters were celebrating their victory.
Asked why the incident was not reported to the police, Muchauraya
said: "We
have been reporting cases for a long time now and nothing is
happening.
Instead, we are arrested."
Daily News
Farm inputs business low after
evictions
10/5/02 9:16:35 AM (GMT
+2)
Staff
Reporter
DUCOUDRAY Duke, the managing
director of Banket Farmers' Centre in
Banket, says his business has suffered
seriously after the departure from
the area of nearly 250 commercial
farmers.
Duke said the government's land
redistribution programme had seriously
affected farm equipment companies such
as his.
"Things have changed for the
worse," Duke said. "Expenditure towards
capital investment has dwindled. Can
you imagine that in 1997, I sold 77
tractors but I have not sold a single
tractor for the past three years since
this land exercise
started?"
He said he used to import
agricultural machinery like fertiliser
sprayers from
France.
But since the government began
implementing its controversial land
redistribution exercise, he had not
imported anything.
Duke, whose farm
equipment firm serviced Kadoma, Mutorashanga,
Raffingora, Darwendale and
Chinhoyi, said he had lost about 75 percent of
his potential
income.
He said commercial farming sustained
the small town of Banket.
"Our overhead
account cannot be sustained any more. We have been
digging into our reserves
which were held in stock but unfortunately, these
are dwindling fast and it's
frustrating."
He said presently his
business received on average 40 communal
customers a day who only bought such
small items as newspapers, coffee and
occasionally some cutting
blades.
"This heralds the demise of a once
viable agriculture enterprise,"
Duke said. "It is imperative that the
agricultural sector remains alive,
otherwise it will be very difficult to
restart commercial agriculture."
He said
several productive commercial farmers in the Banket area
wanted to continue
but the government and war veterans had barred
them.
The government in August served
Section 8 eviction orders under the
Land Acquisition Act to about 1 900
commercial farmers in Zimbabwe.
Under that
law, the farmers were ordered to cease all
farming
activity.
Duke said he hoped
the current problems in the agricultural industry
would one day be resolved
and allow productive-minded people to implement
their development projects,
in order to revive the economy.
About 500
000 former farm workers were affected by the controversial,
and sometimes
violent, land acquisition exercise.
The
programme has caused serious food shortages, leaving about half
the
population of Zimbabwe in dire need of
food.
Daily
News
Police accused of complicity
in rape
10/5/02 9:17:09 AM (GMT
+2)
From Our Correspondent in
Bulawayo
LUPANE police reportedly delayed
the arrest of a senior Zanu PF
official on a charge of raping a minor so that
he could run the party's
campaign in last weekend's rural district council
elections.
The rape allegations against
Cliford Sibanda, the provincial secretary
for Lupane, came to light on
Tuesday last week.
The police, acting on
orders from "above", allegedly refused to arrest
Sibanda until Monday this
week after the elections, won easily by Zanu
PF.
Lupane police on Thursday refused to
comment on the matter.
Sibanda, 41, on Tuesday
appeared for initial remand before Lupane
magistrate, Felix Ndlovu, facing
one count of rape. He was not asked
to
plead.
Allegations against Sibanda
were that on 29 September at a house at
the Lupane district administrator's
compound, he grabbed the girl, aged 14,
and dragged her to a room in the
house.
The girl was described as a maid at
the compound and was sweeping a
room when the alleged offence took
place.
It is alleged that Sibanda raped
her once and then tried to buy her
silence with
$310.
The offence only came to light when
the young girl was asked about
the
money.
She spilt the beans and the
matter was reported to the police who
reportedly reacted a week
later.
Daily
News
Polling agents
abducted
10/5/02 9:17:37 AM (GMT
+2)
From Our Correspondent in
Masvingo
FOUR MDC polling agents were
allegedly abducted from their polling
stations and severely beaten up by
suspected Zanu PF youths from Mushagashe
training
centre.
The youths are alleged to have
carried out a vigorous campaign of
violence against the opposition during
last weekend's rural district
council
elections.
Police in Masvingo
yesterday confirmed they had received a report on
the violence but that
investigations were still in progress.
Lovemore Nyikavanhu, Vincent Chemhere, Pikirai Pikirai and Chenjerai
Bhobho,
were abducted from their polling stations in Masvingo North
constituency on
Saturday morning and taken to Mushagashe training centre
where they were
allegedly beaten up by the Zanu PF youths The former skills
training centre
was this year turned into a training institution for Zanu PF
youths
undergoing so-called national
service.
Daily News
Public blasts government over fuel
crisis
10/5/02 9:15:14 AM (GMT
+2)
By Chris Mhike Business
Reporter
'Motorists condemn government for
lying with a straight face about the
fuel crisis currently rocking
Zimbabwe'
Members of the public, captains
of industry, social commentators and
the MDC have blamed the government for
the country's erratic fuel
supply
situation.
The country has been
experiencing irregular fuel supplies for the past
four years while the
government has been insisting that the country has
adequate
stocks.
However, each time the government
insists there are enough supplies,
queues
outside most filling stations country-wide tell a different story.
Sometimes
the government blames the shortages on panic buying and
hoarding.
A snap survey by The Daily News
yesterday showed that fuel was in
short supply or unavailable at numerous
filling stations in Harare.
Motorists, in
most cases find petrol and no diesel at most fuel
outlets. There is never a
situation where both are available at the
same
time.
Reuben Marumahoko, the
Deputy Minister of Energy and Power Development
told Parliament on Thursday
that large amounts of fuel were being pumped out
from the Msasa depot and he
was surprised by the presence of fuel
queues.
Marumahoko said: "There is no need
to panic because the country has
enough fuel. Right now we have called in all
the distributors to find out
where the fuel is going. We are still
investigating.
Members of the public
interviewed by The Daily News yesterday however
dismissed statements by
government officials as "cheap talk."
"This talk of the nation having abundant fuel supplies is a lot
of
nonsense.
"Ironically, as we queue
for fuel while listening to our car radios,
we are told that the country has
enough stocks." said an irate motorist in
Harare
yesterday.
Farai Zizhou, acting chief
executive of the Confederation of Zimbabwe
Industries said: "It is disturbing
to note that the statements coming from
government officials are
contradictory to reality.
"If government
is claiming that we have a lot of fuel then, the onus
is on them to explain
what is happening," Zizhou said.
Brian
Raftopoulos, a social commentator and Associate Professor at the
University
of Zimbabwe's Institute of Development Studies said government
was being
dishonest in its statements.
Raftopoulos
said: "Obviously government is not telling the truth about
the fuel supply
situation. They must be having serious problems with
payments for fuel. I
suppose there are problems even with the
Libyan
arrangement.
"Whatever is
happening, the bottom line is that they are not telling
us the truth,"
Raftopoulos said.
Meanwhile, the Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) yesterday issued a
statement in which it blamed
government for the chaotic fuel
supply
situation.
The MDC said the shortage
of fuel being experienced in Harare and
other cities was only a symptom of
the bigger crisis of governance by the
present
government.
Paul Themba Nyathi, the
party's secretary for Information and
Publicity said: "The recent denial by
both the illegitimate regime's
ministry of transport and energy, and
officials from the fuel industry that
the country is facing a fuel crisis,
only serves to confirm our fears that
the Mugabe regime is now beyond
redemption and will unashamedly lie to the
nation with a straight
face."
He said there would be no need to
hoard fuel if, indeed it was
readily
available.
Zimbabwean streets
have in the past month, been marked by frequent
fuel
queues.
President Mugabe travelled to
Libya two weeks ago with, among other
officials, Herbert Murerwa, the Finance
and Economic Development Minister;
and Gideon Gono, chief executive of
Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe, the bank
that is responsible for Zimbabwe's fuel
transactions with Libya.
Daily News
Inflation threatens publishing
industry
10/5/02 9:17:59 AM (GMT
+2)
By Colleen Gwari Business
Reporter
MOST media and publishing houses
are experiencing a major slump in
business due to the escalating cost of
newsprint and the economic downturn
facing the
nation.
Elias Rusike, chief executive
officer of The Financial Gazette, who
spoke at length in a telephone
interview with The Daily News, expressed
concern over the challenges facing
the media and the publishing industry.
"Things are extremely difficult and most media houses are failing to
cope,"
said Rusike.
He said it was sad to note
that most papers and publishing houses were
faced "with collapse if no
immediate solution to the socio-political and
economic crisis gripping the
country was found".
Economic problems
characterised by a severe shortage of foreign
currency, high inflation,
unemployment and a critical shortage of basic
commodities has contributed to
the fall in newspaper sales.
"Surely with
all these problems facing the country, the newspaper and
publishing industry
has been a sacrificial goat," said Rusike.
With inflation soaring to record levels of 135 percent, costs of key
raw
materials such as newsprint have risen significantly putting a strain on
most
media and publishing houses.
A tonne of
newsprint which was selling at $295 000 late last year, has
gone up to $350
000.
Rusike said most media houses were
facing serious cash flow problems
and urgent intervention strategies were
being sought.
"The only solution lies in
the total transformation of the political
and economic environment," said
Rusike.
Daily News
Providing food for mourners now nightmare for most urban
families
10/5/02 9:18:45 AM (GMT
+2)
By Colleen
Gwari
WITH the severe shortage of basic
commodities gripping the country and
prices escalating to record high levels,
providing food at funeral
gatherings has become a nightmare for most bereaved
families.
A majority of households are
failing to secure daily basics such as
mealie-meal, bread and cooking oil for
their families, thus rendering the
provision of food at funeral wakes
something of a luxury.
It has become
common for people attending funeral wakes to go without
food. Gone are the
days when food and alcohol were available in abundance at
such
vigils.
The situation is quite bad in
urban areas, but in rural areas it has
become a
nightmare.
While a few affluent families
can still afford to feed relatives and
friends at funerals, the situation is
chaotic for the relatively poor where
mourners reportedly fight for
food.
A snap survey by The Daily News
around major supermarkets in and
around Harare shows that the situation is
getting worse by the day with most
shelves running empty. However, in cases
where a sought after commodity is
available, the price is just but
unaffordable to the ordinary
man.
Daily News
Leader
Page
Greed and political survival
driving so-called land reform
10/5/02 9:27:26 AM (GMT +2)
GREED
and political survival are the engines driving the country's
so-called land
reform programme.
While the government
likes to portray the exercise as peasant-driven,
several factors have
unmasked its purported agrarian reform as nothing more
than naked acquisitive
greed, perpetrated in the name of the common people
of this
country.
From the beginning, the
distribution of the land acquired by the
government has never benefited the
ordinary people.
The strategy has been to
create a facade - make a lot of noise about
villagers resettled on land
mainly inappropriate for resettlement of those
previously trapped in the
communal areas.
Ever since the government
started taking land for resettlement, the
best farms have gone to senior
government and ruling party officials, and
those in the security agencies -
the police, the army, the air force and the
secret
service.
Clearly, the rationale behind
extending this gravy train to the
security agencies is to ensure they will
defend what the government is
doing, as they too will be defending their
interests.
But the avaricious greed that
has been propelling the so-called
agrarian reform is illustrated by the
several farms, farm homesteads and the
proceeds from the farming activities
that have been seized.
A number of
government politicians have acquired several farms. Just
how this is supposed
to rectify a historical injustice and make more land
available to the
landless is puzzling, especially as the outcome is the
creation of land
barons out of politicians, government ministers and
their
associates.
Justice for
Agriculture (JAG) has listed several farms owned by
government ministers and
Zanu PF politicians, exposing the government's lies
as to what this so-called
agrarian reform seeks to do.
A recent
illustration of the avarice propelling the government
ministers and
politicians to evict commercial farmers and grab their land is
the wealth the
farms are generating for the farmers.
A
recent court case heard proceeds from flowers and vegetables from a
farm
forcibly taken over was valued at nearly $130
million.
For a government that has a
history of rapaciousness dating back to
the Willowgate car scandal, the lure
of millions is being disguised as land
redistribution. An agricultural
operation generating nearly $130 million is
very tempting for the barracudas
in the government.
This is one of the
little explained reasons behind the rushed and
forcible acquisition of
farms.
The political leadership are
envious of the wealth the commercial
farmers have created and now they want
it.
That they are greedy is also
demonstrated by attempts to prevent the
commercial farmers from removing
their agricultural equipment from the
listed farms. These politicians are so
unashamed they want farms that are
ready-made for
them.
It is likely many of them want to
acquire these farms purely for
speculation, so they can make a fat
killing.
But several factors could render
their excitement and celebrations as
Zimbabwe's new land barons
short-lived.
The first is that through
organisations such as JAG, the commercial
farmers could ensure that any
exports from the government's "new farmers"
are seized on arrival in Europe
and the money paid to the evicted
commercial
farmers.
Such a development
will close all the markets for agricultural or
horticultural produce from
this country in Europe, save for Cuba, Libya
and
Malaysia.
The second is to launch
legal action outside the country, as
demonstrated by relatives of victims of
the 2000 parliamentary election. The
outcome would be the seizure of
Zimbabwe's assets abroad in order to
compensate commercial farmers who have
been kicked out of their properties,
with just the clothes on their
backs.
But it is also possible that a
change in government - which is
inevitable - could result in the land grab
being reversed and the commercial
farmers getting back their farms or, with
the help of the international
community, being adequately
compensated.
The only way the government
politicians and their associates can enjoy
their ill-gotten gains is to
ensure the security agencies, whose leadership
has benefited, would do their
utmost to prevent any real change from
taking
place.
Daily News
Leader
Page
Zimbabweans of all colours
leaving the country must examine
their consciences
10/5/02
9:28:01 AM (GMT +2)
THERE is an
old saying: "When the going gets tough, the tough get
going" and these words
are particularly apt in Zimbabwe in 2002.
It seems that everywhere we turn to, we meet a friend who is leaving
the
country.
At every function we go to,
whether it is business or social, there
are people talking about leaving
Zimbabwe.
Middle class Zimbabweans, be
they black, brown or white, are flooding
out of Zimbabwe for what they
perceive to be the greener pastures of New
Zealand, Australia, Canada and the
United Kingdom.
White people have perhaps
got the greatest reason to be leaving
the
country.
At every turn we've been made
to feel as if we are no longer welcome
in Zimbabwe
anymore.
When the wife of the Commander of
the Zimbabwe National Army, Jocelyn
Chiwenga, recently evicted a farmer, she
said she had not tasted white blood
for 22 years and she got away with her
obscene, racist words.
Almost every day we
are insulted by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corporation, by ministers and even
by the President himself.
We've been
called "pink-nosed racists"; we are repeatedly blamed for
every single thing
that is wrong in the country and for everything that is
in short
supply.
We have no legal, human or
constitutional rights and our rural homes
and businesses have been taken from
us.
But when all is said and done, there
are not an awful lot of us with
white skins in Zimbabwe who have done a damn
thing about what has been
happening for the
past 30 months.
We have allowed our
leaders to insult us, we have not stood up for
what is right, we have not put
our heads in the spotlight and have justified
our behaviour by saying: "Aaah,
but we are few, what can we do?"
We have
allowed ourselves to be victims and now, when things fall
apart, we cash in
our assets and leave the country for greener
pastures.
We should be utterly ashamed,
but we are not alone.
Middle class black
people are also pouring out of Zimbabwe in
2002.
Doctors and dentists, teachers and
lawyers, middle and upper
management professionals can't get out of Zimbabwe
fast enough anymore.
The moment an
opportunity arises they are gone without a single
thought for those that are
left behind.
I wonder what their
justification for leaving is.
Many say they
can no longer afford to stay here.
I don't
believe them because frankly, anyone who can raise $2 million
for four air
fares for their family to get to the United Kingdom and another
$2 million to
have their belongings containerised, is not that hard up and
does not need to
leave Zimbabwe
Some say they are going because
of their children or because the
schools and hospitals are
collapsing.
If these services are falling
apart, it is because the doctors, nurses
and teachers are
leaving.
Others say they are leaving
because there is no future in
Zimbabwe
anymore.
If you really feel this
way, then why are you sending back foreign
currency and investing in luxury
homes in Harare?
Is it because when the
problems are over and the stress has gone, you
will come back to live in the
lap of luxury and say with pride that you
are
Zimbabwean?
What all the people
leaving do not seem to realise or do not want to
accept is that with every
departure they are taking Zimbabwe one step closer
to
collapse.
As each Zimbabwean leaves, they
take with them a skill that we
desperately need, a service that we depend on
for survival, a talent that
will not be easily
replaced.
With every Zimbabwean that
leaves, they take with them another little
piece of hope, another voice that
should be heard, another vote that could
be
used.
I wonder, when you leave, if you
stoop to the African soil and thank
God for everything Zimbabwe has given you
in the years that went before.
All the
Zimbabweans - black, white and brown - who are leaving may
very
well
justify their decisions with a host of
reasons, or perhaps they are
excuses, but I believe they need to look to
their consciences and then be
honest.
You are leaving because you have given in to
despair.
You are leaving because you think
that this evil that has become our
daily lives will
last.
It will not and when it is over each and
every single Zimbabwean
should be able to say they played their part in its
end.
I have no doubt that many of my words
will raise anger amongst people
who are leaving Zimbabwe. They will say I do
not understand.
But I do: I am white, a
woman, a single mother and an ex-farmer, but
Zimbabwe is my
home.
If I have to wait and then start
again, there is nowhere else in the
world that I want to wait than here, and
nowhere else I want to start again,
except here, in
Zimbabwe.
I would like to change that old
saying to: "When the going gets tough,
the tough keep
going."
IOL
Dissident Christians face
arrest in Zimbabwe
October 05
2002 at 05:10PM
By Angus Shaw
Harare, Zimbabwe - Dissident
Christians opposed to their bishop for his
support of the ruling party face
arrest if they defy an order banning them
from weekend services or church
activities, their lawyer said on Saturday.
Bishop Nolbert Kunonga, head
of the Anglican Church in Harare, won a court
order banning 19 church
wardens, officials and choir members after they
disrupted his sermons to
protest their political content and praise of
President Robert Mugabe and his
regime.
Zimbabwe has been gripped by more than two years of economic
turmoil and
political violence, widely blamed on the increasingly
authoritarian ruling
party.
They can be
arrested, even if someone invites them to a parish house
for tea
The
parishioners, who want politics kept out of the church, will appeal for
their
banning order to be struck down by the Harare magistrate's court on
Tuesday,
their lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said.
The interim order banned them from
worshipping at the main Anglican
Cathedral in downtown Harare and from
visiting church-owned buildings and
activities until further
notice.
"It means they can be arrested, even if someone invites them to a
parish
house for tea," Mtetwa said.
In court documents dated September
25, Kunonga accused the 19 church
officials of disrupting services, with
choir members refusing to provide
choral music and on one occasion leading
the congregation into
"uncontrollably" singing hymns to stop the
service.
He also alleged some church wardens failed to follow routine
administrative
and financial procedures and were intent on subverting the
authority of the
bishop's office.
'Uncontrollably' singing hymns to stop the service
Mtetwa described Kunonga's
court application - and the granting of it -as
irregular. Under diocese and
parish rules, diocesan trustees needed to agree
before any legal action was
taken.
Disputes in the church were normally considered first by the
church
chancellor and two registrars, all three of them
lawyers.
Kunonga was elected bishop last year after being accused of
using ruling
party influence to secure the post. He was also accused of
firing priests
who opposed his nomination.
Strict security laws passed
earlier this year that ban public gatherings
without police permission have
affected some meetings of church leaders
critical of the
government.
Last month, a group of Christians was briefly arrested during
a prayer vigil
outside a police station where a member of their congregation
was being
held.
About half Zimbabwe's 12,5 million people face severe
food shortages blamed
on drought and the government's seizures of thousands
of white-owned farms. -
Sapa-AP
News just in .. British national Rachel Ranson
(26) has been charge with
'Obstructing the course of justice and has been
fined Zd$ 60 and released
from custody.
News Release
(On behalf of
Justice for Agriculture - JAG)
A total of 65 farmers from the
Matabeleland region have, as of Saturday 5
October, been evicted from their
homes by members of the police force and
war veterans. More than half of
these (26 in total) were arrested during the
early August nationwide sweep of
commercial farmers, following the expiry of
Section 8 Notices. They were
however either released on bail, or the courts
had ruled in their
favour.
Matabeleland Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) Farming Associations
number 14 -
Beit Bridge / Bulawayo Landowners/ Figtree/ Gwaai Valley / Gwanda
/
Insiza/Shangani / Inyathi / Marula / Matetsi / Matopos South/ Mberengwa
/
Umzingwani / Nyamandlovu / West Nicholson. There are 319 members of
the
Commercial Farmers Union on a total of 562 farms.
Estimates to
hand indicate that these latest evictions leave only 25% of the
farms with
resident owners with varying degrees of operation. Matabeleland
is an arid
region with most farming operations being ranching, game farming
and animal
husbandry (Ostriches) and some cropping such as paprika
and
maize.
This latest spate of eviction seen over 15 workers
assaulted and scores
evicted along with their owners.
In Nyamandhlovu,
4 game scouts from Mike Wood's GlenCurragh Farm were locked
up on Thursday
night, without food or water, by war veterans. Mr. Wood's
dogs, which had not
eaten since his eviction, were finally fed on Friday
morning after one of the
female settlers pleaded with her counterparts to
allow the maid into the yard
to give them food.
On Wally Herbst' s farm, war veterans demanded that
the dogs be removed, the
animals had to be driven off the property and
abandoned under pressure.
Meanwhile, two war veterans, both about 30 years
old are now ensconced in
the main house on Thursday evening.
In Umguza
district, Clive Biffen managed to remove some items off the farm,
however,
war veterans barricaded the road on Thursday. Mr. Biffen called the
police
who came out and impounded the vehicles. Police are refusing to
release
the items before they are inspected.
In Gwaai, armed police broke into
the premises of Nemba Safaris, where there
was an Australian hunting client.
A war veteran spat in the face of the
professional hunter, the client had to
be evacuated for his safety.
Three men arrived on Jonathan Taylor's farm,
at about 10am on Thursday
morning stating that they were the new owners of
the property. They were
Sipho Gama (of Bulawayo), Ben Ncube (of Lupane) and
Colin Ndebele (of
Lupane). They proceeded to help themselves to 4 lister
engines, 1 water
tank, 1 band saw and 1 disc harrow, all valued at
approximately Zd$ 5
million.
They also told the staff that the tractor
must not leave and they would be
moving in later in the day. Taylor has
had to cancel his next safari as a
result of this eviction. A report
was made to the police, who arrived later
in the afternoon and told the staff
not to remove any of Mr Taylor's
property, including firearms belonging to
the game scouts.
It is of interest to note the chain of command being
followed by the
eviction parties. The Lands representative, Melusi Sibanda
reports to the
Mrs Mafa, the regional lands officer who reports to the
Matabeleland North
Governor, Obert Mpofu. They are supervised by a member of
the Central
Intelligence Organisation, Mr Moyo and the Officer in Charge of
Nyamandlovu,
Mr R. F. Ncube with Officer Commanding Rural North Chief
Superintendent Moyo
and Assistant Commissioner Sibanda and his Provincial
Police Chief for
Matabeleland North. This exercise falls under the total
control of Deputy
Commissioner of Police - Mr Matanga, himself a beneficiary
of a farm in
Mashonaland.
In Umzingwane, Matabeleland South, on Scott
Buchan' s farm, war veterans
broke into the fenced area and tried to get the
workers to leave the farm
village. They disarmed the security guards (took
their handcuffs and
torches), and 20 workers, mostly women, went to the
police station to report
the matter. There were still about 50 workers left
in the village. A
Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO) bus later arrived
with the
notorious youths known as "green bombers" who proceeded to harass
some of
the workers.
A further onslaught ensued when 8 war veterans
arrived at midnight and told
the workers to leave by 4 pm on 4/10/02. The
workers resisted and the war
veterans retreated only to return with
reinforcements an hour later, 20
strong and armed with 3 pistols. Four
workers were beaten unconscious. Two
workers were able to run away and
went to the police to report the matter,
however when the Police 2nd in
Command arrived, he said his hands were tied
and there was nothing he could
do and told the workers to leave. The four
workers are in
hospital.
Late update 4 pm Saturday
Yesterday, Johan Kriedl (70)
(Austrian subject)- He did not move so on
3/10/02 about 20 people arrived in
4/5 vehicles at approximately 16h20pm -
they put him in the back of one
vehicle and took some of his clothes and put
them on the front seat and drove
to the Esigodini Zanu PF offices. This
group left 4 men at the house
and they promptly looted household good. The
group took him to the Zanu PF
office in Esigodini (a small farming town
Matabeleland South). He was
assaulted and is badly bruised and shaken as one
of the invading party shot
Kriedl' s pistol into the air above Kriedl' s
head. Mr Wally Kriedl, upon
hearing of his father's predicament, traveled to
the farm only to himself be
'abducted' to the Zanu PF offices. Pressure
being brought to bear by the
Austrian Embassy, resulted in the farmer and
his son being transferred to the
Police station and then subsequently
released. Mr Kriedl went to see the
Lands Committee today (4/10/02), who
told him, they would extend his eviction
period and give him another 12
hours and further pressure resulted in an
extension to Monday.
5/10/02 - Bill McKinney's property. Armed
police and Lands committee
arrived at the gate. The two girls went out
of the fenced area to talk to
them and locked the gate behind them. They
refused to let the police into
the yard and hand over the keys. The police
threw Rachel Ranson (26) (A
British subject) to the ground and handcuffed her
and put her into the back
of the vehicle and have taken her to the police
station. Having left the
farm at 11 am the Police truck arrived just
after 3:30 at Inyathi Police
Station and we await news of what Rachel will be
charged with.
Ends
Saturday, 5 October 02
NB: PHOTOGRAPHS OF RUTH
CHATHAM, THE ELDERLY COUPLE FROM GWAAI WHO WERE
MANHANDLED BY POLICE, ARE
AVAILABLE ON REQUEST.
For more info, please contact Jenni
Williams
Mobile (+263) 91 300456 or 11213 885 or on email jennipr@mweb.co.zw
Or Fax (+2639)
63978 or (+2634) 703829 Office email: prnews@mweb.co.zw
A member of the
International Association of Business Communicators. Visit
the IABC website
www.iabc.com
Herald Sun - Australia
Another
great terrain robbery
06oct02
A SECOND leader determined
to rid his country of "arrogant" whites has
emerged in southern
African.
Namibian President Sam Nujoma this week ordered the seizure of
more than 200
foreign-owned farms, confirming fears the evil unleashed by
Zimbabwean
strongman Robert Mugabe would infect neighbouring
countries.
Nujoma, who has claimed foreigners spread homosexuality, plans to
give the
land to peasant farmers ahead of elections in 2004.
The move
mirrors events in Zimbabwe. There, Mugabe stepped up often-violent
land-grabs
ahead of elections in 2000 and 2002.
Nujoma this week also banned foreign
television programs, saying they
corrupt the nation's youth.
The
Namibian Broadcasting Corporation was ordered to televise only those
programs
"that show Namibia in a positive light".
US soap opera The Bold and the
Beautiful and science fiction series Dune
were the first casualties. They
were replaced by a program on a recent
meeting of the ruling Swapo
Party.
Nujoma, who has been in power since independence from South Africa
in 1990,
has become increasingly outspoken recently.
He has threatened
to arrest and deport homosexuals, and promised to ban gay
tourists. He has
also referred to AIDS as a man-made biological weapon.
At the Earth
Summit in South Africa last month he praised Mugabe, pinned the
blame for
Zimbabwe's troubles on British Prime Minister Tony Blair and told
foreign
donors he did not want their aid.
"We don't need your investment. You can
keep your money. We will develop our
Africa without your money," he
said.
But it is his land seizure program that threatens to condemn
Namibia to
international isolation.
Among farms listed this week for
seizure were 91 owned by South Africans and
99 by Germans. The rest were
owned by US, Dutch and British nationals.
Nujoma told the farmers to
co-operate or expect the same treatment as their
counterparts in
Zimbabwe.
About 4000 whites own 36 million hectares -- 44 per cent of all
land -- and
Swapo is determined to correct the imbalance.
By law, the
Government has first refusal on any farm for sale, but since
1990 has bought
only 100.
The whites whose land has now been earmarked for seizure will
receive the
market price.
The party has also introduced legislation
which would ban foreigners from
buying land.
Whites make up 6 per cent
of the two million people who live in Namibia,
which was a German colony
until 1918 and was controlled by South Africa
until 1990.
Nujoma is in
his third term as president, having changed a law restricting
him to two
five-year terms, but he must go to the polls in
2004.
From The Zimbabwe Independent, 4
October
BAT pulls plug on Williams
award
Vincent Kahiya
In what looks like an
embarrassing case of corporate cowardice, British
American Tobacco Zimbabwe
(BATZ) pulled its sponsorship from the
Communicator of the Year award this
year because one of the nominees was
Justice for Agriculture (JAG)'s
spokesperson, Jenni Williams. Zanu PF has
chosen to demonise JAG as opposed
to land reform. Correspondence at hand
shows that BATZ gave an ultimatum to
the organisers of the event, the
Zimbabwe Institute of Public Relations
(ZIPR), to withdraw Williams'
nomination or the tobacco company would cancel
its support for the event.
The award ceremony was due to take place last
Friday but was scrapped after
the sponsors pulled out citing fear of courting
controversy by recognising
Williams. Williams has over the past year
articulated the story of the
commercial farmers who have lost their
properties due to the current
agrarian reform programme. JAG advocates
judicial recourse so government is
held to its own laws. Williams was
Commercial Farmers' Union spokesperson
before she switched to
JAG.
"We are uncomfortable with this year's awards becoming socially
and/or
politically controversial and we therefore confirm that as
representatives
of ZIPR, Pro-Comm are to approach Ms Jenni Williams or the
people who
nominated her to either withdraw from the competition or withdraw
their
nomination," said BATZ corporate affairs manager Peter Parirewa in a
letter
to Pro-Comm on September 19. Pro-Comm handles public relations for
ZIPR.
Williams however responded four days later refusing to withdraw. "On
being
made aware of this and after consultation with my proposers, I refuse
to
withdraw my nomination," said Williams in a letter to ZIPR. "I do this
on
the basis that I am a professional communicator and as such am not
political
and my role as a communicator should be separate to that of the
product I
communicate - I should be judged on the professionalism under which
the
product, view or issue is communicated by me and my company," she said.
"I
take great exception to this attempt to violate certain norms
and
understandings and request that BATZ make a principled and ethical stand
and
allow the competition to go ahead with all the original and valid
nominees
intact, thus allowing the judges their unfettered 'courtesy of
choice' which
is the BATZ motto," she said.
Asked to comment on
the cancellation of the event, Parirewa first professed
ignorance of the BATZ
ultimatum. "I am not aware of that," he said. But when
told that the
Independent was in possession of a letter he signed he quickly
questioned who
had supplied the paper with the letter and promised to come
back with a
response. In a statement yesterday BATZ said the event was
cancelled after
consultations with ZIPR. "British American Tobacco, the
sponsor of this award
felt that some of the entry conditions had not been
met by some possible
candidates. Being a prestigious award it was prudent on
the part of BATZ
after consulting with ZIPR that the cancellation of this
year's event be
effected," the statement said.