Zim Online
Mon 4 September 2006
HARARE - President Robert Mugabe has
told top officials of his ruling
ZANU PF party that a decision whether to
hold a presidential election due in
2008 will depend on how well central
bank governor Gideon Gono was able to
stabilise Zimbabwe's sickly economy,
authoritative sources told ZimOnline.
The sources, who are members
of ZANU PF's inner politburo cabinet,
said Mugabe told the key committee
during one of its regular weekly meetings
last week that Gono was an "agent
of the party (ZANU PF)" whose specific
assignment was ensure the party -
grappling the worst economic crisis of its
26-rule - would have something to
sell to voters should a ballot be called.
According to the sources,
who did not want to be named because they
did not have permission from ZANU
PF to disclose such information, Mugabe
made the remarks about Gono after
some politburo members had raised concern
over the central bank chief's
increasing unilateralism particularly his
decision last month to change
Zimbabwe's currency.
"He (Mugabe) told us as that as far as he was
concerned, Gono was an
agent of the party, that his (Gono) mandate was to
ensure that, come 2008,
there would be some stability in the economy and as
a party and government
we would not have to face voters empty-handed," said
one senior ZANU PF
official.
According to
another senior official of ZANU PF who spoke to ZimOnline
on the same
matter, Mugabe - who has indicated that he will not seek
re-election in 2008
- had not explicitly said the holding of the
presidential ballot would
depend on the economy.
But the Zimbabwean leader was clear that the
state of the economy
would play a major role in determining political events
two years from now,
our source said.
The ruling party official
said: "The President said success in the
2008 elections or even the decision
whether or not to hold the election
hinged on how far Gono would have
successfully turned around the economy. He
told us (politburo) to back
Gono's efforts and reminded us there was no way
we could go into an election
with the economy this bad."
ZANU PF spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira
said the politburo had discussed
several issues including the Reserve Bank
of Zimbabwe (RBZ)'s currency
reforms. But Shamuyarira vehemently denied that
the politburo had
specifically discussed Gono or that Mugabe had told the
party organ that the
RBZ governor was now an agent of ZANU PF.
Shamuyarira said: "We discussed several issues and yes the recent
currency
reforms were part of the discussions. But at no point did anyone,
including
the President say Gono is now an employee of our party."
Gono,
appointed RBZ governor in 2003 and is widely regarded as
Mugabe's
troubleshooter on the economy, unveiled hawkish monetary reforms at
the end
of July, which included a more than 60 percent devaluation of the
local
dollar and lopping off three zeroes on every banknote.
He gave
Zimbabweans 21 days to surrender all old cash in exchange for
new money with
less zeroes in what he said were efforts to restore dignity
to the near
worthless Zimbabwe dollar.
But the currency reforms angered many
Zimbabweans chiefly because of
their arbitrariness, while senior leaders of
ZANU PF and the government were
angry that Gono had not consulted them or
even his political boss, Finance
Minister Herbert Murerwa.
There were even reports carried by local papers that Gono and senior
staff
at the RBZ were receiving death threats from unknown people over the
currency reforms.
But Mugabe last month publicly threw his
weight behind Gono and said
he was aware that some people wanted him (Gono)
dead.
While Mugabe could step down in 2008 as he has indicated he
will, his
ZANU PF party could still amend Zimbabwe's Constitution to avoid
having to
face the electorate if it felt that whoever it eventually selects
to succeed
Mugabe would - for one reason or another - not fare well in an
open poll.
ZANU PF commands enough parliamentary majority to pursue
several
options including postponing the poll and extending Mugabe's current
term or
allowing Mugabe to step down but change the Constitution to have the
next
president chosen by Parliament and not in an open ballot. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 4 September 2006
HARARE - Political
tensions rose a notch up in troubled Zimbabwe after
the country's labour and
student movements at the weekend announced plans to
stage nationwide mass
protests in two weeks time to force the government to
resolve worsening
economic hardships affecting them.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade
Unions (ZCTU) - which had since last
July threatened to call nationwide job
stoppages but had put the action on
hold to allow for more consultations
with workers - finally announced worker
protests will begin on September
13.
The ZCTU, the umbrella union body for Zimbabwe's workers, wants
the
government and employers to accept linking wages and salaries to
inflation,
at 993.6 percent the highest in the world. Union president
Lovemore Matombo
told the Press that the phased protests would continue
until employers and
the government acceded to worker demands.
He said: "We will have a one day (street) protest the first week and
if they
don't address our grievances will hold demonstrations for two days
the
following week and three the next week until they succumb to our
demands."
As workers gird up for protests, the Zimbabwe
National Students Union
(ZINASU), grouping students at the country's
universities and other tertiary
colleges, said it would today hand the
government a two-week ultimatum to
reduce fees and improve conditions at
colleges or face protests by students.
ZINASU president Promise
Mkwananzi, told ZimOnline: "The government
must be forced to meet its social
obligation to provide qualitative and
affordable education for all people
regardless of their social, economic or
political standing.
"We
(ZINASU) have collected millions of signatures from both parents
and
students to protest against the fees structure especially at tertiary
colleges where the fees charged are 50 times more than the students'
payouts."
The clamour by students and workers for confrontation
against
President Robert Mugabe's embattled government comes after
opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party leader Morgan
Tsvangirai and top
leaders of his party last Friday marched in Harare, in
what they said was a
warning of more protests promised by their party to
force Mugabe to accept
sweeping political reforms.
But the
police were quick to warn the ZCTU, MDC and students that
unsanctioned
protests would be ruthlessly crushed.
Under Zimbabwe's
controversial Public Order and Security Act,
Zimbabweans must first seek
permission from the police to hold public
political meetings or
demonstrations, a requirement the opposition and civic
groups have said they
will defy this time round.
Zimbabwe has remained on knife-edge
since Tsvangirai, who leads the
main faction of the MDC which split last
year, threatened last March to call
mass protests to force Mugabe to give up
power to a transitional government
that should write a new democratic
constitution for Zimbabwe and organise
fresh elections under international
supervision.
Both the ZCTU and the MDC accuse Mugabe of plunging
Zimbabwe into its
worst ever economic crisis dramatised by hyperinflation
and shortages of
fuel, electricity, essential medicines, hard cash and just
about every basic
survival commodity.
Mugabe, in power since
Zimbabwe's 1980 independence from Britain,
denies mismanaging
Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwean leader, who has in the past deployed armed
soldiers and
police to thwart dissent, has also vowed to be ruthless with
any protests
against his government, publicly boasting that the security
forces would
"pull the trigger" against protesters. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 4
September 2006
BULAWAYO - One of the leaders of the two factions of
Zimbabwe's
splintered main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
party,
Arthur Mutambara, has said reuniting the party depended on leaders,
first
finding mutual respect for each other and re-committing themselves to
the
party's founding principles.
The MDC came closest to
unseating President Robert Mugabe's government
in elections in 2000 and
2002, losing by narrow margins amid claims by local
and international
observers that the government rigged the ballot to win.
But
analysts say the MDC's split last year after senior leaders
disagreed on how
to win power has greatly weakened the opposition party's
drive to end
Mugabe's decades-old rule.
Mutambara, who was addressing
journalists in the second largest city
of Bulawayo at the weekend, said:
"Any talks on uniting the two MDC factions
should be premised on recognition
and respect for each other, the need to
shun violence and if we can come to
terms with the founding principles and
the code of conduct of the MDC, then
maybe we can come together."
Asked if his faction was engaged in
any reunification talks with the
larger wing of the MDC led by party founder
Morgan Tsvangirai, Mutambara was
somewhat evasive and instead chose to
emphasise the fact the two opposition
factions had one common agenda to
bring about democracy in Zimbabwe.
He said: "What is important now
is that you can't have unity when you
do not recognise and respect each
other. We do not want to fight our
friends.
"We want our
friends to be with us. We don't want the dubious
distinction of being
accused of directing our efforts against working
together."
Senior officials of the two MDC factions clandestinely met in South
Africa
last week, in what some of the officials who spoke to ZimOnline
anonymously
said were talks about co-operation and possible reunion in the
future.
The officials also said the two opposition groups, that
have since
their split focused more on attacking each than on pressuring
Mugabe to
accept democracy, had agreed a 'non-aggression' pact and resolved
to stop
attacking each other.
But officials from both camps
however insist there has been no talks
about unity between them, saying
whatever discussions they may have had were
meant to improve on strategy on
common interests especially in Parliament
where they are still regarded as
one political party.
Political analysts say Mugabe and his ruling
ZANU PF party will remain
firmly in charge unless the MDC factions could
bury the hatchet and work
together with civic society organisations to take
on the 82-year old veteran
Zimbabwean leader. - ZimOnline
Reuters
Sun 3 Sep
2006 6:16 AM ET
By Stella Mapenzauswa
HARARE, Sept 3 (Reuters) -
Zimbabwe's main labour federation said on Sunday
it would hold
demonstrations in major towns on Sept. 13 to protest against
poor wages and
workers' lack of access to anti-retroviral drugs to fight
HIV/AIDS.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions first warned of
protests in May as its
members struggled with inflation at around 1,000
percent, part of a
deepening economic crisis widely blamed on President
Robert Mugabe's
government.
On Sunday ZCTU secretary-general
Wellington Chibebe said the union's
decision-making general council had
decided the previous day to press on
with mass action.
"We will hold
peaceful demonstrations in all major urban centres on
September 13 to press
for better pay and we also want workers to get access
to ARV's because they
are the ones who pay for them (through taxes) but it's
only the big shots
who are benefiting," Chibebe told Reuters.
Health officials estimate at
least 3,000 people die of AIDS every week in
Zimbabwe, but a chronic
shortage of foreign currency has hampered imports of
life-saving ARV
drugs.
Chibebe said workers wanted a minimum salary of about Z$90,000
($360) per
average family per month and would also demand that the
government reduce
income tax to 30 percent from 35 percent.
"The
average worker in Zimbabwe is getting about Z$20,000 at the moment,
about
the price of lunch for a company chief executive," Chibebe said.
During
protracted wage negotiations, employers have said they cannot afford
to meet
pay demands as this would drive many companies out of business.
The ZCTU
is an ally of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) which
has threatened nationwide anti-government protests at an
unspecified
date.
On Friday MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his top lieutenants
marched to
parliament to press demands for a new constitution to replace one
viewed as
entrenching Mugabe's rule, and to call for laws that provide for
"free and
fair elections".
The MDC, which poses the strongest
challenge to Mugabe's ZANU-PF party since
independence from Britain in 1980,
says the veteran leader has rigged
elections since 2000 to hold on to power.
Mugabe denies the charge.
Mugabe has warned the opposition it is "dicing
with death" over the protest
threats, and police have in recent years
crushed attempts to march on
Zimbabwe's streets, using tough security laws
forbidding protests without
approval.
Mugabe, 82, denies
responsibility for Zimbabwe's woes and says his local
opponents are being
manipulated by Western powers he accuses of sabotaging
the economy to pay
him back over his forcible redistribution of white-owned
farms among
blacks.
IOL
September
03 2006 at 03:21PM
Harare - Police in Harare have issued a stern
warning to the main
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which is
planning to hold
countrywide protests against poor pay and living conditions
this month.
On Sunday police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena told the
state-controlled Sunday Mail newspaper that police were ready to deal with
any unlawful acts after the ZCTUs general council set September 13 as the
date for long-awaited street marches.
We have suffered enough.
We can take it no more, ZCTU Secretary
General Wellington Chibebe told
Deutsche presse-Agentur dpa in a telephone
interview.
He said
that from Monday the word would go out to the unions 300 000
members to be
ready for protests on September 13.
The labour
union, which is closely aligned to the main opposition
Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) has been threatening mass action for
several
months.
Last month President Robert Mugabe told thousands of people
on Defence
Forces Day that his government would crush any
protests.
But Chibebe dismissed threats against the demonstrations,
saying the
union had the right under international statutes to hold mass
action to
press the government to act on deteriorating economic conditions
here.
He said the world was unaware of the suffering of the
country's
workers.
"We are more intimidated by suffering than
the words of a human
being," said Chibebe.
"If they (the
security forces) pull the trigger, the world will know,"
he
said.
Workers are demanding wages linked to the Poverty Datum Line,
which
now stands at more than 80 000 Zimbabwe dollars (about R1800) a month
for
the average family of six.
Few workers here get more than
25 000 dollars (about R750) a month and
struggle to survive in a country
where prices of basic commodities are
spiralling amid inflation of close to
1000 percent. - Sapa-dpa
Zimbabwejournalists.com
By Bill Saidi
HARARE - A number of
elections are in the offing in Zimbabwe. They
include by-elections for the
National Assembly and elections for local
authority councils.
A
government spokesman announced there would be a vigorous campaign to
educate
voters on their rights.
This will have alarmed some
people.
Twenty-ix years after independence, there are citizens who
are not
fully aware of their democratic rights?
For a country
reportedly with one of the highest literacy rates in
Africa, this is nothing
short of a scandal. It's even more scandalous that
the government is aware
of this deficiency and is willing to admit it
publicly.
One
cause of this lack of education on democracy must rest with the
government
and the ruling party, Zanu PF.
A number of historians could ascribe
it to the ideology forged by the
two parties in the liberation
struggle.
They believe that, because of the nature of the ideology
of their
mentors or angels - the People's Republic of China and the Union of
Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR) - elections would not feature prominently
in the
selection of who ran the country.
In fact, there has
been speculation that a number of ideologues in
both parties advocated for a
name that incorporated "the People's Republic".
So, as the People's
Republic of Zimbabwe, the country would not have
been expected to set great
store for elections. Candidates would be
hand-picked by the party and, since
there would be no opposition party to
speak of, they would all "sail
through".
It must be remembered that the only reason why all this
did not come
about was that the terms of our independence had to be
negotiated with the
British government, the Rhodesia Front of Ian Smith and
the United African
National Council of Bishop Abel Muzorewa.
In
1990, if it wasn't for Edgar Tekere, a one-party parliament would
have
resulted from the parliamentary elections, which must always be
remembered
for the attempted assassination of Patrick Kombayi, who had
challenged the
late Simon Muzenda for the Gweru seat.
The most prominent "people's
republics" in the world today are China
and North Korea. Both have enjoyed
cordial relations with Zimbabwe, mostly
on ideological grounds. They both
armed the Zanla guerillas who fought under
the banner of the party led by
President Robert Mugabe from 1975.
Neither has commented publicly
on the growing economic friendship
between South Korea and Zimbabwe, perhaps
on the grounds that any such
comment might be unprintable.
There must be one reason why Zanu PF has done its best to prevent a
truly
free and fair election from being held since independence. The party
still
cherishes its dream of turning Zimbabwe into a one party state.
The
greatest hiccup it suffered in this campaign occurred in 2000,
when the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) nearly beat Zanu PF into
second
place.
This nearly frightened the party into an apoplectic fit.
Once the
seizure failed to happen, it set about ensuring that, in future
elections,
nobody would cause it to come so near to a political cardiac
arrest.
Yet the scales are shifting slowly against the party.
Mugabe must have
suffered a seizure of some sort after the results of the
Budiriro
by-election were announced a few months ago. The MDC candidate had
won by a
large margin.
The odds against this happening must
have appeared very slim, to
Mugabe, the Central Intelligence Organisation
and the party optimists.
Mugabe had addressed a "huge" rally in the
constituency during the campaign.
What had gone wrong? he might
have asked the officials who had
persuaded him to address the rally,
attended by thousands wearing Zanu PF
T-shirts.
The prospects
for the ruling party are looking distinctly grim as the
clock ticks towards
the next presidential and parliamentary elections.
There can now be
no doubt that most people are extremely fed up with
the economic gymnastics
in which both Gideon Gono and Herbert Murerwa have
engaged as a smokescreen
against the impending collapse of the economy -
unless Mugabe decides to
swallow his Marxist-Leninist pride and return to
the basics.
Educating the people on their democratic rights could be an enormous
task
for the government. Only civic society and the opposition parties can
undertake this campaign without being suspected of subterfuge by the
people.
By now, Zanu PF has lost all credibility. Its failure to
turn the land
reform programme into the roaring success that it had
envisaged so publicly
has persuaded many fence-sitters that there is now
concrete evidence that
Zanu PF has been lying through its teeth for the
last26 years.
Most of them now believe the party is interested in
remaining in power
only because it feels it is entitled to this crown
because it won
independence for the people.
They now know that
its interest in ending the people's poverty,
creating jobs for them by
unabashedly courting foreign investment, giving
them health services far
better than those they received under colonialism
or justice and even fair
play higher than under the successive racist
regimes, is
incidental.
This could be one potent reason for Mugabe's strategy
to remain in
power longer than 2008, when he is due to step down, in terms
of the
constitution.
Without him at the helm, Zanu PF could be
creamed by a united
opposition party.
What Zimbabweans must
know by now is that a "people's government" is
not necessarily answerable to
the people because it owes election to them.
The people's governments of
China and the old Soviet Union had little
respect for the
people.
In fact, under the communist regimes, the equality of the
people, as
projected by Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto, was a
myth.
In the Soviet Union, the leaders built the notorious dachas,
luxury
residences outside Moscow, to which they retired at weekends to wine
and
dine with their cronies while the people lived in crowded
flats.
In Zimbabwe, all you have to remember are the number of big
farms the
leaders have acquired for themselves, sometimes by forcing out
poor people
with no friends in high places.
When the president
and his wife boast of the bumper harvests on their
farms, are the people
expected to applaud, as they scrounge for f3ertiliser
and seed?
For a truly people's government to emerge, all the people who feel
cheated
by the previous government - because it promised them the moon and
delivered
zilch - must turn up at the polls, regardless of how many
impediments the
government places on their path to the voting booths.
For the
moment, the Zanu PF paraphernalia for manipulating the
electoral machinery
seems to be working smoothly. Yet a large voter turnout
can always throw the
machine out of kilter.
Which is where you begin to wonder if the
opposition parties have done
their sums correctly. Nobody wonders at the
cause of the split in the MDC.
This is essentially a political syndrome, as
old as The Great Zimbabwe
itself.
What must be remembered is
that PF Zapu and Zanu PF existed as
separate entities even after the
Organisation of African Unity's liberation
committee under Hashim Mbita had
virtually forced them to come together
under the banner of the Patriotic
Front.
Yet on the eve of the first general elections, they decided
to go
their separate ways. This threw a huge spanner into the unity works
and it
took the needless death of 20 000 mostly innocent people for them to
cement
what remains even today the semblance of a unity of
sorts.
The MDC leaders on both sides of the coin will have learnt
some
salutary lessons from this political history. Divisions, internecine
wars
and the needless spilling of innocent blood may be considered as
politically
"correct" as sadza nederere, but it translates into the most
stupid and
asinine form of political non-strategy ever devised.
There are many useful lessons that the average political student can
learn
from our political history, particularly as it relates to the
liberation
struggle.
One of them must surely be that selfless dedication to
the cause of
the people cannot morally justify the acquisition of personal
wealth in the
guise of promoting the welfare of the people.
That would be what a failure to unite among the leaders of the two MDC
factions would mean. All talk of democratic values or principles would count
for little if the failure to unite meant the survival of Zanu PF in
power.
The Monitor
(Kampala)
OPINION
September 3, 2006
Posted to the web September 3,
2006
Jonathan Moyo
Zimbabwe today is a living hell for all and
sundry. If you are in hell,
there is no amount of convenience that can make
you comfortable. Hell is by
definition inconvenient. Period, writes Jonathan
Moyo
In Zimbabwe, August is a sacred month in which the heroes of the
armed
liberation struggle that led to independence in 1980 are commemorated
and
their achievements celebrated. This year there was a twist to the usual
pomp
and circumstance when the memory of the many heroes had to give way to
a
megabucks publicity blitz on the three zeroes which the country's Central
Bank, led by its ubiquitous Governor Gideon Gono, removed from the greatly
devalued national currency amid anger, controversy and confusion which
turned otherwise conservative money matters into a deadly battle ground in
President Robert Mugabe's increasingly bitter succession war.
Here is
the background. On July 31, 2006 Gono took the nation by surprise
when he
announced during a much awaited presentation of his midterm monetary
review
statement that a new family of bearer's cheques would be introduced
by
midnight that day and further that the new notes would be minus three
zeroes.
What this meant in nominal terms is that if one had a
trillion Zimbabwe
dollars that was immediately reduced to a billion; if you
had a billion that
became a million; if you had a million it shrunk to a
thousand and if you
had a thousand dollars they zeroed to just one dollar.
Under a multimedia
media blitz dubbed, "Project Sunrise", the Central Bank
prescribed maximum
amounts of the old bearer's cheques that individuals and
businesses would be
allowed to deposit with banks per day to get the new
family of bearer's
cheques. The Bank fixed August 1 to August 21 as the
prescribed period for
the purpose.
Zimbabwe has been using short term
bearer's cheques in place of banknotes
since 2003 when the country literally
and inexplicably ran out of regular
banknotes triggering a shortage of local
currency that nearly toppled
Mugabe's Zanu PF government when people could
not access their own money,
including salaries, deposited with
banks.
Since then there has been endless debate on whether the temporary
bearer's
cheques are in fact money and the debate got even more animated
earlier this
year when a rather mischievous junior magistrate who apparently
was missing
his traditional banknotes ruled that the bearer's cheques were
not money at
law and his overzealous judgment earned him an embarrassing
rebuke from
judicial authorities.
Even though the monetary
authorities assured Zimbabweans that the removal of
the three zeroes was
only nominal as the real value of the currency did not
change, that
assurance did not have many takers, especially because
everyone, including
the downtrodden, had become a millionaire with farm
labourers earning a
minimum of 10 million Zimbabwe dollars per month.
The well-to-do had
become accustomed to showing off their often ill-gotten
wealth by counting
it in billions and trillions and so the removal of the
three zeroes, just
like that, was a psychological blow that left the rich
classes crying foul
and feeling like victims of an officially sanctioned
robbery that was
effected through the Central Bank by a stroke of the pen.
More ominous
for the governor of the Central Bank, who is being rather
maliciously
accused in some circles of having embarked on the currency
reforms to launch
a high profile bid to succeed Mugabe as president, there
are strong feelings
in the media that the real targets of the currency
changeover were Zanu PF
barons and bigwigs who had been stashing trillions
of old bearer's cheques
earned through corrupt deals and used for
speculative purposes on the black
market.
These feelings gained some credence when the Central Bank
governor and some
of his officials received death threats soon after the
start of the currency
changeover.
"zero revolution"
But
accountants and others in the banking and financial sector welcomed the
Central Bank's removal of three zeroes from the currency because they say
the trillions that were popping up everywhere were beginning to ruin their
calculators and financial software programmes that were failing to cope as
they had been designed to handle data of a modest economy with manageable
numbers.
But there are some, especially among the beer drinking
brigade and others
that are generally active in the social and clubbing
scene, who welcomed
what they dubbed the "zero revolution" because it
relieved them from the
indignity of having to use wheelbarrows or even sacks
to carry their money
around by bringing back the wallets which had become
extinct through being
just useless.
With the removal of three zeroes
from the currency, the highest new bearer's
cheque is 100,000 Zimbabwe
dollars which is equivalent to one hundred
million dollars of the old
bearer's cheques. This means it is now possible
to conveniently carry in a
wallet one million dollars which is equivalent to
the former one billion
dollars that was impossible to carry without the help
of a crane or a
weightlifter.
Sunday Nation, Kenya
EDITORIAL
Publication Date: 9/3/2006
One US dollar
buys you Sh73. One US dollar buys you 500,000
Zimbabwe
dollars.
A barrel of crude oil costs Sh5,670, but 40,000,000
Zimbabwe
dollars.
There is possibly not enough paper in
Zimbabwe to manufacture
enough money to buy a million barrels of oil. The
country's economy is a
complete basket case.
As the
country burns, its 80-year-old President is still feebly
punching defiance
to neocolonialism and clinging to an unfeasible,
out-of-date liberation
ideology.
Go away, Mr Mugabe. Far, far away.
IOL
September
02 2006 at 02:49PM
Harare - Long and chaotic lines of cars formed
at gas stations Friday
as Zimbabwe's government and fuel suppliers clashed
over gasoline prices.
Worsening gas shortages were
predicted.
Motorists thronged gas stations offering fuel at a new
government
recommended price of $6 (R36).
The lines formed
Friday after banks sold US dollars to fuel suppliers
at the official
exchange rate of $1 (R6) to buy fuel, and the state oil
procurement
enterprise, the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe, released fuel
onto the
market based on the official exchange rate to some suppliers.
However, excluded suppliers had to buy fuel imports at the unofficial
exchange rate of Zimbabwe dollars $1 (about
R6).
As a result their gasoline was more than twice
as expensive as the
officially recommended price -and their petrol stations
were empty of
customers.
The state central bank was expected
soon to announce regulations
pegging the lower gasoline price and making it
an offence to sell fuel for
more, industry executives said.
"There isn't enough official hard currency to go round to everyone in
the
fuel sector and new price control measures will undoubtedly cause
further
shortages.
"You can't be expected to sell something for less than
you paid for it
on the unofficial market, therefore it disappears," said one
private fuel
dealer who asked not to be identified for fear of scrutiny by
authorities.
The government has accused private fuel dealers of
profiteering after
buying hard currency illegally on the black
market.
Zimbabwe has suffered acute fuel shortages over the past
six years as
the economy crumbled in the aftermath of the often violent
seizures of
thousands of white-owned commercial farms that began in 2000,
slashing hard
currency earnings from the main agricultural exports in the
former regional
breadbasket.
Traditional fuel suppliers Libya
and Kuwait cut off shipments after
Zimbabwe failed to pay its debts for oil
products.
Fuel lines snaking around gas stations have been a common
sight in
recent
years.
Disruptions in the agriculture
based economy also led to acute
shortages of other essential imports and
food.
Power and water outages, blamed on shortages of equipment and
spare
parts, are also a daily routine. - Sapa-AP
Sunday Nation, Kenya
Story by PAUL MUTEMBEI
Publication Date: 9/3/2006
Not even the most hardened traveller
would fail to be shocked by
the state of Zimbabwe's economy, best
exemplified by its currency before the
government knocked off three
zeroes.
Walking into a restaurant at the five star Rainbow
Towers -
formerly the Sheraton - there is a sense of normalcy that feels
unusual in a
country beleaguered by a nasty economic recession and the
highest inflation
rate in the world at nearly 1,000 per
cent.
But on checking in, at slightly over US$100 a night,
one is
taken aback by the bundles of notes thrown casually behind the
reception
area. Huge bundles of notes tightly bound by rubber bands are
scattered all
over.
And numerous note-counting machines
are everywhere.
I ask the cashier: Why keep money on the
floor and not the safe?
She turns to pierce me with a
withering look, like she has been
asked this question enough times. Her
reply is casual: "We do not have safes
that can accommodate all the cash we
collect at the front desk."
Welcome to Zimbabwe, where you
would have to tag around
sackfulls of nearly worthless local currency to buy
basic food and
toiletries ... it's that bad.
Visitors can
only pay their bills in foreign currency, but the
real shock is yet to hit
me. After checking in, I decide to relax at the
restaurant with a snack. The
bill comes to over a million Zimbabwe dollars.
That same
evening, with a group of about six fellow tourists
headed to Victoria Falls,
we sit at the bar, drink a couple of beers and
bottles of wine, and are
slapped with a bill of 78 million dollars. Our only
consolation is that we
are finally millionaires!
Because of the runaway inflation,
Zimbabwe has almost become a
cashless society. There are few currency notes
of the legal tender variety.
Business is transacted using
dubious bearer bonds with an expiry
date, some coming in denominations of
100,000 Zimbabwe dollars. The paper
they are printed on looks like something
the average crook in River Road can
easily counterfeit.
But I guess, with the unofficial exchange rate hitting the
500,000 mark
against the US dollar, it would not make sense to counterfeit
these bearer
bonds.
Out in the streets, US dollars are in very high demand
- and you
can understand why.
I get a "discount" of over
70 per cent on an item I want to buy,
once I mention that I might pay for it
in the American currency. Though
illegal, the deal is too good to
ignore.
The logic behind the discount is simple. As a
tourist, I can
only exchange my money at commercial banks or other outlets
sanctioned by
the Reserve Bank at the ridiculous rate of slightly over
100,000 Zimbabwe
dollars to the US dollar.
The black
market rate is closer to 500,000 Zimbabwe dollars.
A good
house on sale fetches between 50 billion and 100 billion
Zimbabwe
dollars!
Car prices are sitting in the region of hundreds of
millions,
extending to billions. The same to mobile phones. It is like
scenes out of
Alice in Wonderland, the only difference being that this is
real. I have
listened to horror stories of motorists driving around looking
for fuel
which is rather scarce. Basic commodities are missing on
supermarket
shelves. And at Zimbabwe dollars 500,000 a litre, mostly
motorists have
grounded their cars.
Harare must be the
only city that does not experience a traffic
jam at 5 pm when office workers
are knocking off for the day.
A pity because Harare is a
beautiful city. In fact, it has some
of the widest roads and boulevards I
have seen in my travels in the region.
The town planners have
done an excellent job of planning a city
with the future in mind, unlike
what we encounter in Nairobi, Kisumu or
Mombasa. Samora Machel Avenue is a
perfect example of what our Kenyatta
Avenue should be like. It has a total
of about eight lanes or thereabouts.
Traffic flows very
smoothly.
Up to a few years ago, the city trains were
electric-powered,
something that is common only in the more advanced
economies. And even
today, the Harare Stock Exchange is one of the most
vibrant in Africa.
I was told that some time back, Harare was
fondly referred to as
North London by its residents, because the
similarities between the two were
many then. Not any
more.
The country's manufacturing base has all but
collapsed.
The farming sector stopped thriving when the
commercial farmers
were shown the door.
Interestingly,
many Zimbabweans are in agreement with President
Robert Mugabe's land
redistribution programme, but fault the manner in which
the whole process
was handled.
They say, with a lot of conviction, that it does
not make sense
for five per cent of the population to own over 90 per cent
of the country's
productive land.
All said and done,
however, Zimbabwe still holds a lot of
promise, if only relations with the
Western world can be restored. The mines
are functioning, the human resource
base is enviable and the infrastructure
is still relatively
intact.
But nobody (except maybe President Robert Mugabe)
knows how long
this situation will hold.
Catholic Information
Service for Africa (Nairobi)
September 1, 2006
Posted to the web
September 1, 2006
Harare
Catholic and other church leaders have
announced plans to initiate a process
to heal the southern African nation
paralyzed by a deepening economic crisis
and bad governance.
"As
shepherds of our people, we are concerned about the current challenges
and
for the future of this great country. We are concerned that the
important
gains made since our independence and that became the source of
our pride,
are daily slipping away," representatives of Catholic, Protestant
and
evangelical churches said at the end of a meeting last Thursday.
The
leaders agreed to produce a common statement of views and vision by the
church in Zimbabwe within four weeks. "We believe that now is the time for
us as Zimbabweans to engage one another in honest, sincere and constructive
dialogue that will enable us respond together to our country's need for
rebuilding, renewal and healing," they said.
Zimbabwe's economic
meltdown induced by bad policies and the iron rule of
President Robert
Mugabe has pushed most of the country's 12 million people
into
poverty.
"We believe that in our divisions as a nation we all have
perceived the
truth in part, just as we all have contributed in part to the
current state
of impasse," the church leaders said. "We confess that these
divisions have
not spared us as church leaders, and that we also have often
taken positions
that have alienated us from one another. We thus believe
that now is the
time for us as a nation to go beyond judging one another and
begin seeking
solutions that will heal and restore our land."
In a
related development, it has emerged that nothing has been done by the
Zimbabwean government to re-house 700,000 people made homeless as a result
of a botched housing "clean up" demolition operation, according to a
devastating report released by Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of
Bulawayo.
The report, which was prepared by the Solidarity Peace Trust
and chaired by
Archbishop Ncube, reveals the desperate plight of Zimbabwe's
homeless
following President Mugabe's "Operation Murambatsvina", Independent
Catholic
News reports.
President Mugabe in May last year ordered the
police and the army to
demolish thousands of city backyard cottages,
shantytowns and informal
business kiosks saying it was necessary to smash
crime and to restore the
beauty of Zimbabwean cities.
As well as the
homeless, the operation also "destroyed the livelihoods of an
estimated
90,000 vendors," the report said.
The archbishop said the United Nations
had been unable to carry out its
emergency housing program because it was
being obstructed by the
government's land policies." The survivors of
Operation Murambatsvina are
living in desperately overcrowded conditions.
Zimbabwe now registers 70 per
cent unemployment, a near 1,000 per cent
inflation rate and acute shortages
of food, fuel and basic commodities," he
said.
From The Sunday Argus (SA), 3 September
Controversial tycoon John Bredenkamp
on Friday pleaded not guilty to
breaking Zimbabwe's tough immigration laws
although he has admitted to
having a second passport. Prosecutor Fungai
Nyahunzvi told the Harare
Magistrate's Court that Kimberley-born Bredenkamp,
66, had illegally
acquired a South African passport in 2001. He said the
South African
government confirmed it issued him a passport and provided
extraordinarily
detailed proof to Zimbabwe police that he had used it 65
times leaving and
entering South Africa. Bredenkamp owns several companies,
including a
luxurious lodge for well-heeled tourists in northern Zimbabwe.
He also owns
a cigarette company, which has recently launched several new
brands in
Zimbabwe. His home in Zimbabwe, Thetford, is extraordinary and
probably one
of the best developed and beautiful estates in Africa. It is
high up in the
treed Mazowe hills about 40km north-west of Harare. He has
created a
densely-stocked wild life paradise and a registered conservancy
where he is
busy producing breeding stock for several species whose numbers
dwindled
during the chaos in former commercial farming areas over the last
five
years.
Bredenkamp, a former Rhodesian rugby star who went on
to marry a Miss
Rhodesia, made a fortune out of tobacco and then out of
controversial
weapons deals. He put that behind him, he said, when he
returned to live in
Zimbabwe full time about eight years ago and invested
heavily in several
companies he created. During the traumatic forced
removals on Zimbabwe's
white-owned farms from early 2000, Bredenkamp and his
staff helped many of
those who had been violently kicked out of their homes.
He was one of the
brains behind a fully funded 1 million hectare land
resettlement project
proposal in 2002, which was spurned by President Robert
Mugabe. Bredenkamp's
advocate, Eric Matinenga, told magistrate Tapiwa Godzi
that Bredenkamp had
"never used his South African passport to leave or enter
Zimbabwe" and that
the country's laws could not apply outside the country.
Bredenkamp seemed
disappointed that the case was not concluded on Friday,
and he was heard
telling his legal team he had urgent medical appointments
in South Africa.
Judgment will be given on Friday. If found guilty,
Bredenkamp faces up to
two years in jail. After five years losing money in
his first and only
mining venture, Bredenkamp struck gold in July when he
sold his half share
of the super-rich cobalt deposit, Mukondo Mine in
Katanga province in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, for more than R300
million.
From The Sunday Independent (SA), 3 September
Peter Fabricius
The leaders of other
Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries
seem to be realising
that the meltdown in Zimbabwe is hurting their region.
At their SADC summit
in Maseru last month, they raised their concerns with
Zimbabwean President
Robert Mugabe and offered to help him sort out his
economy, according to
Lesotho's Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili, the new
SADC chairperson. That
economy is now widely regarded as the
fastest-shrinking in the world,
falling 40 percent since 1998 - just before
Mugabe's land-grab of white
farms sparked the political and economic crisis.
Farm output is down 42
percent, manufacturing output down 53 percent,
exports down 32 percent and
imports 34 percent over that period, and
inflation is now running at around
1 000 percent. Mugabe's response to the
expression of concern from his peers
is not recorded. Some media reported
that he stormed out of the Maseru
summit, stung by their criticism, although
Mosisili insisted the
octogenarian had left Lesotho early only because of
his age. But if Zimbabwe
is evidently hurting the region, it is not easy to
determine exactly how, as
participants at a recent conference of the
Goedgedacht Forum near Malmesbury
discovered. According to the conference
rules, only the names of those who
delivered formal papers may be published.
Among the most tangible
concerns of the region - especially in South Africa
and Botswana - have been
the flows of economic and political refugees from
Zimbabwe over their
borders. Zimbabwean MDC opposition MP Eddie Cross
claimed that as many as
2,3 million Zimbabweans had fled the country, 1,7
million of them to South
Africa. These figures were disputed but no one
denied that the refugees are
many and their impact mostly negative. Just how
hard it is to quantify the
overall impact of the Zimbabwe meltdown on the
region has been demonstrated
by Zimbabwean economist Tony Hawkins. At a
different conference - held by
the Institute of Strategic Studies at the
University of Pretoria in May - he
said that as Zimbabwe's economy has
plummeted, the economies of the other
countries in the SADC region have
actually grown, some quite spectacularly.
Excepting South Africa, they grew
on average by less than 4 percent from
1995 to 2000 (the year the Zimbabwe
crisis began), but by an impressive 11
percent since then. Since 1995,
Angola's economy has grown by 466 percent,
Mozambique's by 192 percent,
Tanzania's by 117 percent, Zambia's by 103
percent, Botswana's by 92
percent, and South Africa's by 58
percent.
Hawkins attributes this apparent anomaly largely to outside
factors such as
the rise of the oil price, good rains and debt cancellation,
and it is
certainly not even across the region. But he also notes that some
SADC
states have benefited from Zimbabwe's decline, grabbing market share
from it
in tourism, agriculture and industry. Others, whom he calls "vulture
capitalists", mainly South Africans, have more directly exploited Zimbabwe's
woes, buying crippled Zimbabwean companies at bargain-basement prices. At
Goedgedacht, another participant pointed out that many analysts blamed the
rand's plunge a few years ago on the contagion from Zimbabwe. Yet after
that, Zimbabwe continued its nosedive, while the rand recovered remarkably.
But if it's true that Zimbabwe contagion has not crippled the rest of SADC,
it is also very likely that regional economies might have done even better
if Zimbabwe had prospered. Cross estimated that, without the crisis,
Zimbabwe's economy would have grown to R91 billion (an increase of 80
percent), exports would have reached R39 billion a year and imports R51
billion. Of that total, trade both ways with South Africa would have grown
to R49 billion a year, whereas it was now only R14 billion - representing a
loss of R35 billion a year. For the rest of SADC he estimated the loss at
about R10 billion.
Cross also offered some very rough estimates
of the loss of regional
investment and tourism because of the Zimbabwe
contagion, but these are even
harder to quantify. And, as Hawkins noted, the
region - certainly Zambia -
has gained too by enticing some tourists away
from Zimbabwe. The Goedgedacht
conference also heard of other kinds of
regional impact of the Zimbabwe
crisis, apart from the economic. These are
even less quantifiable than the
direct economic impacts, though their
effects may be worse in the long run.
Jody Kollapen, the chairperson of
South Africa's Human Rights Commission,
said that the collapse of respect
for the rule of law, human rights,
democracy and governance in Zimbabwe had
spilled across its borders into
other countries, most notably Namibia and
Swaziland. "What was abnormal in
Zimbabwe has become normal elsewhere,"
Kollapen said. On the positive side,
the Zimbabwean experience had
reinforced solidarity among human rights
activists across the region, said
Irene Petras of Zimbabwe's Lawyers for
Human Rights, noting the formation of
the SADC Human Rights Defenders Forum.
Another participant also described
how Zimbabwean human rights activists had
increasingly forced the African
Union to uphold its own human rights
principles, by ensuring that the AU's
African Commission for Human and
Peoples Rights criticised Zimbabwe's human
rights offences. Ben Cousins of
the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies
(Plaas) agreed that the regional
lessons from Mugabe's land-grab were mostly
negative because it had been
done largely outside the law. Overall, the
Goedgedacht conference deemed the
impact of Zimbabwe on the region to be
considerable and the net effect,
negative. By comparison, the reverse
efforts of SADC to influence Zimbabwe
were assessed to have been
negligible.
From The Saturday Star (SA), 2 September
Geoff Nyarota has fled from the despotic Mugabe
regime,but he hopes to
return one day, writes Angelique
Serrao
There aren't many people who inspire journalists with awe.
Perhaps a fault
of the profession, newspaper men and women are often a
cynical bunch, all
too aware how easy it is for those in power to succumb to
the machinations
of that which made them great in the first place. But when
Geoffrey Nyarota
walks into a room of journalists, there is a hushed respect
for an old
newshound whose beliefs in the greatness of the profession go far
beyond the
bottom-line business approach to which so many editors in Western
newsrooms
subscribe. This is a man who has been thrown in jail many times,
whose life
has been threatened, whose newspaper's press was bombed and
eventually
closed down, and who was exiled from the country of his birth,
Zimbabwe, by
Robert Mugabe's dictatorial regime. And yet, despite every
attempt to keep
his mouth closed, Nyarota will not shut up.
If
Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies believed they had finally managed to
silence
the editor of Zimbabwe's former independent daily newspaper, the
Daily News,
when it closed down three years ago, they were sorely mistaken.
Living in
the US, teaching young journalists at the Bard College in upstate
New York,
Nyarota penned his first book, Against the Grain: Memoirs of a
Zimbabwean
Newsman. Beginning in 1977, when Nyarota was a teacher in a
region that was
filled with Zanu PF guerrilla activity, the story travels
through his life
and experiences in a country whose people survived a war
dreaming of
freedom. And just when they thought they had achieved that goal,
they were
betrayed by the very regime that was supposed to loosen the bonds
that bound
them. "I wrote this book because I had a story to tell. When I
was
introduced to people, especially outside of Zimbabwe, and we got talking
about my experiences, most people said to me: 'I hope you write a book about
that'," Nyarota said while in South Africa this week.
"I have
only had one extremely negative reaction so far and that was from
Professor
Jonathan Moyo (a former Zanu PF member). He rubbished the book and
said it
was trash. But this book sits in judgment of people like Moyo and
Mugabe, so
it has to be taken in that context. I hope these people read the
book, but I
did not have them in mind when I wrote it. This book is my
perspective of
Zimbabwe. As a journalist and editor of four newspapers that
were located in
four different parts of the country, I believe I was well
positioned to
observe what was happening. Even before being a journalist, I
was a
schoolteacher in an operational zone, so I saw more than many
Zimbabweans,
and I believe that what I have written will come as a surprise
for many -
even some of my contemporaries." Nyarota paints a picture of a
people who
have been disappointed in a regime that was, for many, their only
hope.
His description of the day of independence in Against the
Grain highlights
the sense of euphoria that surrounded the country when Zanu
PF was voted
into power in 1980: "On 18 April, the reticent boy from Kutama
was sworn in
as the first prime minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe. At the
stroke of
midnight, the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, watched
sombrely
as the Union Jack was lowered for the last time and the magical
strains of
Zimbabwe, specially composed and performed for the occasion by
Jamaican
reggae king Bob Marley, ushered in an era of independence,
self-rule and
freedom for the black majority. "From Rufaro Stadium in Harare
to the
furthest outposts of the land between the Zambezi and the Limpopo it
was a
night of joy and celebration over the fulfilment of a long-stranding
national dream and the sublime belief that milk and honey would now flow
freely over earth still clammy with the blood of thousands." Instead of a
regime that became corrupt many years after being voted into power, Nyarota
believes the Mugabe government went wrong almost from the start; the people
just failed to see what was happening because "we were ready for a hero".
"Mugabe fooled us all. There was so much euphoria after independence that we
didn't subject him to any scrutiny. It is only now; the picture that is
emerging is somewhat inconsistent with the aura around him since
independence, much to the disappointment of many
Zimbabweans."
The cracks in the regime began to show only when
Nyarota was editor of the
state-owned Chronicle newspaper in 1998. He
uncovered an enormous corruption
scandal, dubbed Willowgate, that involved
many Zanu PF leaders who were
using their positions to obtain luxury cars
and then reselling them at a
huge profit. At this point he was noticed by
Mugabe, and was soon fired from
the Chronicle's newsroom. "Having guided
Zimbabwe to nationhood in 1980,
Mugabe could easily have defied the Third
World stereotype of independence
followed by grinding poverty, unbridled
corruption and gross abuse of power.
He had the benefit of learning from the
mistakes of many countries that had
gone that way before. Remarkably,
however, in little more than two decades,
Mugabe reduced a prosperous
nation, once the breadbasket of southern Africa,
to a basket case, mired in
violence and lawlessness and shunned by the
global community," Nyarota
laments in his novel. But Nyarota always dreamt
of a free Zimbabwean
newspaper that lent a voice to people who, under the
constant state of press
censorship, were unable to be heard. It took him
many years to form the
Daily News, but when his dream came true in 1999, he
didn't expect it to
outsell established dailies in the space of just a few
years.
Despite being doomed for closure almost from the start,
Nyarota believed
that his paper had a very important role to play in freeing
his country from
oppression. "The media plays a very significant role in
changing things. In
2000 the Daily News had a role in the elections. The MDC
emerged riding on
the wave of the Daily News, so much so that Zanu PF
genuinely believed it
was pre-planned. I would dearly have loved to be the
editor of the Daily
News under an MDC government, so that I could have had
the chance to keep
them on their toes. A good newspaper is always an enemy
of a bad ruler."
Asked why Nyarota continued to carry on with his paper when
he was jailed
numerous times, when his life was threatened and his
journalists were beaten
up, the newsman is convinced that journalism is more
than just news; it is
an ideal that should never be given up. "There was a
public expectation that
this newspaper was going to achieve something
politically for the benefit of
the people. It was a paper people looked at
to rescue them. You don't just
abandon a paper that was in a way a political
ideology. If we had not
continued we would have betrayed the trust of the
people, so in a way we
became the prisoners of our own
creation.
"We had an unwritten contract with the people to fight on
their behalf, and
the journalists just kept on going. My biggest frustration
was my total
inability to protect them; all I could do was tell them not to
take risks.
It is so unfortunate that, after all that sacrifice, the paper
still closed
down." Nyarota comes from a breed of editors who put the story
before
profits. "Critics accused me of being too idealistic in expecting
that a
paper like the Chronicle or Daily News could force transparency and
accountability on so powerful and corruption-ridden an administration as
Mugabe's. "I lost count of how many times I was reminded that it was folly
to believe in the mission rather than the business of journalism. But in my
view, if the success of a publication such as the Daily News were to be
measured only in terms of the bottom line, with total disregard for its
influence on public opinion, journalism would be an exercise in futility."
It is his strong beliefs that make it so frustrating for Nyarota to be
living in exile. He believes that if he were in Zimbabwe right now, he could
be playing a role in changing the country. "The future inspires me. I don't
believe this current crisis is the final destiny of Zimbabwe. Something has
to change, and this change has to be spearheaded by Zimbabweans themselves,
so that they have propriety over that change.
"But I am getting
less and less optimistic. When I left Zimbabwe in 2002, I
thought something
would happen in the not-too-distant future, but now I am
getting more and
more disappointed. I thought Zimbabweans were backed
against a wall, but we
are a very enterprising people - we find more walls
to lean on, even when
none are left. I think Mugabe has used his security
forces effectively to
scare the people." Nyarota believes his people are now
concerned with
personal survival and it is this instinct that is forcing
thousands to flee
over the border into South Africa. "I think President
Mbeki in particular
does not seem to have the commitment to solve the
current crises in
Zimbabwe, when in my view he is well placed to deal with
Zimbabwe. He has
squandered a real opportunity to gain good credit in
Zimbabwe. Mugabe has in
turn squandered a good opportunity to die a hero,
although he will go to
Hero's Acre when he dies," Nyarota chuckles,
referring to the graveyard
where freedom fighters are buried. "People are
coming to South Africa, where
there is promise. They're surviving in Joburg
better than in their own
country."
Nyarota finds himself a disappointed man who believes his
people failed as a
nation to exploit a golden opportunity to develop their
country. "This
morning I was amazed at the construction happening at
Johannesburg
International and I was jealous in a way that this could be
happening in
Harare, if we had played our cards right." After all that has
happened to
him, Nyarota hopes to set foot on Zimbabwean soil again. "It
really is just
a matter of time. But now this book, well it's an added
dimension. When I
left Harare I was convinced I had used up all my nine
lives, I have just
used up another. My return would have to be timed with
the departure of his
Excellency, a certain Robert Mugabe. "If all
Zimbabweans stood together,
even hardened Zanu PF leaders would abandon
ship, but we aren't always
united and we miss that opportunity."