Reuters
Thu 6 Sep
2007, 7:13 GMT
HARARE, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's ruling party said it
was satisfied
with talks with the opposition and wanted unspecified changes
to a
constitutional bill which would allow President Robert Mugabe to pick a
successor.
Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the main opposition Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC) have been holding talks after a push in March by the
Southern African
Development Community to end Zimbabwe's political
turmoil.
South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki is mediating the
talks.
The ruling party's politburo was briefed on Wednesday by Justice
Minister
Patrick Chinamasa -- one of two ZANU-PF representatives at the
talks -- and
was satisfied with the process, the official Herald newspaper
said on
Thursday.
"The politburo ... noted with satisfaction the
progress that has been made
in the dialogue with the opposition," the
newspaper said, quoting a
statement from ZANU-PF's information
department.
Western diplomats have said there has been little progress on
the talks.
The two parties had held another round of talks in South
Africa on Saturday,
the paper said.
The MDC has previously accused
ZANU-PF of trying to undermine the talks by
failing to turn up at two
meetings and planning to change the constitution
ahead of 2008
elections.
The changes include giving powers to parliament to elect a new
president
should the incumbent fail to serve a full term. Analysts say
Mugabe could
use the law, if passed, to step down mid-term after nearly
three decades in
power and anoint a successor.
ZANU-PF's politburo
wanted changes to the Constitutional Bill, which would
be presented in
parliament on Sept. 18 but it did not say what amendments it
sought to
make.
"The politburo ... has approved the introduction through parliament
of
committee stage amendments to the bill," the Herald said.
The MDC
is pressing for a new constitution and says amending the
constitution was in
bad faith as this was one of the sticking points in
talks between the
opposition and ZANU-PF.
Critics blame Mugabe's policies, such as his
seizure of white-owned farms
for blacks, for hurting the economy, which is
reeling under the world's
highest inflation rate and food
shortages.
But the 83-year-old leader says Zimbabwe has been unfairly
punished by the
West over the land seizures.
africasia.com
HARARE, Sept 6 (AFP)
Zimbabwe's failing economy and collapsing services have
provided an
environment ripe for graft, with the impoverished country's woes
facilitating an ever-worsening slide towards corruption.
Despite
setting up a local graft-busting body in 2004, Zimbabwe appears to
be losing
the battle against corruption, with President Robert Mugabe's
economic
policies seen to promote corrupt behaviour, according to a leading
watchdog.
In 2003 Transparency International, an organisation
monitoring global
corruption, ranked Zimbabwe 77th most corrupt out of 130
countries
evaluated. By 2005, Zimbabwe had slid to 130th of 163
countries.
"Zimbabwe is ranked 130th amongst 163 countries and it has
become very
corrupt compared to others," Killron Dembe, executive director
of TI in
Zimbabwe, told AFP.
The most recent corruption index did not
bode well for foreign investment in
the crisis-ridden country, Dembe
said.
He said the country's "economic malaise" had increased levels of
corruption
among a population burdened by steep prices of essentials and
food
shortages.
"When you have people who have become billionaires
overnight and are
considered as role models, you have a challenge because
this becomes part of
the country's culture," he said.
Dembe said
Mugabe's economic policies were exacerbating the situation,
despite his
anti-graft crusade yielding arrests of senior government
officials.
"Zimbabwe needs proper policies to end corruption.
Distorted policy regimes
tend to promote corruption," Dembe
said.
"When you have different exchange rates and different fuel prices,
that
promotes corruption."
Since August last year, the authorities
have kept the local unit at 250
Zimbabwe dollars against the greenback, yet
on the parallel market it has
slid to 23,000 dollars.
Zimbabwe is
facing an economic meltdown with inflation of over 7,500 percent
and
unemployment above 80 percent.
In a 2006 meeting of the ruling ZANU-PF
Mugabe acknowledged corruption had
reached the party's upper echelons,
saying he wanted to cleanse the central
committee amid "many cases" of abuse
of authority.
However the country's Anti-Corruption Commission, set up
with the assistance
of TI, has little to show from its fight against
corruption.
"They have done nothing tangible. There is nothing visible,"
Dembe said of
the commission, whose chairman is appointed by
Mugabe.
"The commission is answerable to the executive ... It's limited
in terms of
independence and its major challenges are resources and
capacity," Dembe
said.
"The question is what is happening on the
ground... there is no visible
action taking place?"
One of the few to
be convicted was Charles Nherera, chief executive of
public bus company
ZUPCO, who was jailed for accepting a US 85,000 dollar
bribe from a Harare
businesman whom he awarded with a contract for 75 buses.
Former finance
minister Chris Kuruneri was acquitted in July after being
accused of
smuggling money abroad to build a house in South Africa.
Johannes Tomana,
deputy chairman of the commission said the public had
reported 9,000 graft
cases since 2006.
Of these the commission was probing 5,000 cases, out of
which only 27 had
been tried in court "and we secured 22 convictions," state
media quoted
Tomana as saying.
"Nobody is immune," he said, urging
whistle-blowers to report corruption as
the public was protected by law and
would not be victimised by those under
probe.
But the opposition
remains sceptical, with Movement for Democratic Change
spokesman Nelson
Chamisa saying the graft battle was a "big joke".
"Just look around,
corruption is being administered from various centres of
power. All state
institutions are oozing with corrupt tendencies." he added.
Vancouver Sun
Don
Cayo, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, September 06, 2007
Tales of death
by starvation, accusations of genocide through the
government's neglect of
people's urgent needs and dire warnings of imminent
economic collapse -- the
news out of Zimbabwe has been awful for years and
it just keeps getting
worse.
So I was astonished to get an upbeat phone call from Stephen
Gwynne-Vaughan,
a Vancouver-born, New Westminister-raised guy who lives
there. And who likes
it -- sort of.
Gwynne-Vaughan is the country
director for CARE, and he's heavily involved
in food aid -- the only thing,
according to many reports, standing between
life and death by starvation for
about four million of Zimbabwe's 12 million
citizens.
Many agencies
are involved in distributing food in the country which, under
the economic
mismanagement of President Robert Mugabe, can produce only a
small fraction
of its needs. CARE is one of the largest; two years ago it
was distributing
bulk food to nearly a million recipients, plus a daily
feeding program for
600,000 children.
Today, as other agencies take over in some regions of
the country once
served by CARE, the agency's beneficiary base is down to
about 900,000.
This means, Gwynne-Vaughan said, his agency can go well
beyond food aid for
the people it's working with.
"Our livelihoods
approach is doing really well here," he said.
"Despite what everyone says
is the story, we're building resilience.
"We don't need to see another
Ethiopia with stick people walking around
starving. So for us, food aid is
not enough, just one part of a package.
"Someone with a very limited
income here in Zimbabwe can produce maybe three
months of their food needs,
and we kick in another two or three months.
"But we also do
income-generating projects. We do seed-multiplication. We do
irrigated
farming. We do conservation farming to adapt to climate change. We
do
agro-forestry. We do a range of things with these communities so that
food
security and livelihood security can both be done.
"We've measured this.
And we know that when we have multiple interventions,
people build assets.
They build productive capacity. They build their social
capital. They are
able then to withstand the shock.
"But if you just give food aid, people
don't move upward. They're still as
vulnerable to the next drought or
whatever."
In personal terms, Gwynne-Vaughan said he and his
Brazilian-born wife saw
their move to Zimbabwe as a welcome one in
comparison to their last posting
in northern Colombia. It's both safer and
more comfortable, he said --
though he noted that, as a representative of a
big and much-needed aid
agency he and his family are made more welcome than
most foreigners would
be.
And, he added wryly, CARE field staff only
ever get to live in the difficult
parts of the world --"if they weren't so
bad, we wouldn't be there."
I found his unexpectedly optimistic view to
provide an interesting insight
for those of us who are perplexed about what
to do to help people in the
worst-off places in the world.
Research
makes it clear that intelligent aid does a lot for countries with
good
policies. But the worst places are inevitably countries that -- almost
by
definition -- don't have good policies. In fact, they usually have
appalling
ones -- misguided at the very least, and probably corrupt as
well -- which
is why they're in such a bad state.
Must we, I've often wondered, condemn
a nation's people to penury and early
death because their leaders are crooks
and fools?
Gwynne-Vaughan's experience suggests there's considerable
merit in bypassing
bad governments and dealing directly with poor
people.
His main criticism of Canada's involvement in direct aid to poor
people is
that our government is too rigid and too bureaucratic. Its
allotments of
food, for example, are set far in advance and often can't be
increased fast
enough to meet new, urgent needs.
"And the more
accountability and transparency that's required, the more it
costs to
distribute.
"So the fact that we need signatures and fingerprints for all
the
beneficiaries, and need to report back on each kilo and where it went,
and
so on -- this makes Canadian food an expensive prospect to
distribute."
dcayo@png.canwest.com
IOL
September
06 2007 at 02:07AM
Harare - Zimbabwe's police have summoned the
main opposition leader
for questioning on Thursday on his tour of shops to
assess the impact of
President Robert Mugabe's controversial price freeze,
his lawyer said on
Wednesday.
Morgan Tsvangirai, the main
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
leader, visited shops in Harare on
August 1 in the company of journalists to
find out how businesses were
coping with the measure, which he said was
unsustainable and had left
inflation-battered consumers worse off.
Zimbabweans have struggled
to buy basic goods since Mugabe's
government ordered businesses to slash
their prices to mid-June levels in a
bid to rein in the world's highest rate
of inflation, officially running
above 7 000
percent.
On Wednesday, Tsvangirai's lawyer Alec
Muchadehama said police had
indicated that the opposition leader's conduct
during the tour had
"compromised security arrangements" at the shops he
visited.
"He has been called to appear before the police for
questioning on
Thursday and he may possibly be asked to sign a warned and
cautioned
statement," he told reporters.
"The police are saying
that Tsvangirai had a team of his reporters who
were taking pictures without
the consent of the shop managers and that
constitutes disorderly conduct,"
said Muchadehama.
Tsvangirai has been arrested several times by
Mugabe's government,
including at an aborted prayer vigil in March, when he
said he and other
opposition figures were assaulted and seriously wounded in
police custody.
Zimbabwe is grappling with a severe economic crisis
that is also
marked by shortages of foreign currency, food and fuel,
unemployment above
80 percent and rising poverty which has left many people
unable to feed
their families.
VOA
By Aida
Akl
Washington, D.C.
30 August
2007
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe remained defiant this
week as he accused
the West of trying to push his ailing nation into
collapse. The southern
African country's economy has been in a free fall as
inflation in July hit
an official rate of 7000 percent a year and
unemployment topped 80 percent.
Nearly one-third of the country's 13 million
citizens have fled to
neighboring states to escape hunger and
poverty.
President Mugabe has blamed Britain, the United States and other
western
countries for trying to bring down his government. The West imposed
targeted
sanctions against Zimbabwe in response to what have been seen as
widespread
human rights abuses, political repression and rigged
elections.
International relations professor Robert Lloyd of Pepperdine
University in
California says the sanctions place travel and financial
restrictions on
senior government officials but have not caused the
country's economic woes.
"Sanctions are really designed to create a
situation [for] expressing
disapproval of President Mugabe and his policies.
In that sense, there is
sort of a moral impact. In terms of an actual
economic impact, the sanctions
are not designed to cause Zimbabweans to
starve. That's caused by internal
policies," says Lloyd. "But President
Mugabe has been making the point that
the reason why Zimbabwe is doing
poorly is because it is standing up to the
West and because the West is
trying to punish him. However, it is difficult
to see what specific policies
the West has adopted which would be causing
massive inflation and a
collapsing economy."
Who is to Blame?
Most analysts agree that
Zimbabwe's crisis is a combination of bad
political, economic and land
redistribution policies instituted by Robert
Mugabe. His military
involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's
civil war a decade ago
drained Zimbabwe's economy. And his seizure of
white-owned farms starting in
2002 to gain political support brought the
country's agricultural sector to
a halt.
Georgetown University's Chester Crocker, who served as Assistant
Secretary
of State for African Affairs during the Reagan administration,
says Mr.
Mugabe used the land ownership issue to build what he calls
"ideological
popularism."
"It started with the government trying to
blame the colonial power [i.e.,
Britain], trying to blame white farmers,
trying to claim that the land
belonged to the people and redistributing the
agricultural land that was in
commercial production. So they've destroyed
the commercial farming sector,
basically," says Crocker. "And so the
government is giving land to its
friends, who generally speaking are not
farmers and don't know how to farm.
Then what they've done is to just hollow
out the agricultural sector of the
economy. Zimbabwe used to feed lots of
southern Africa. Zimbabwe can't feed
itself anymore."
Zimbabwe's
economy has contracted nearly 40 percent in the past decade. Its
currency
has lost most of its value since last year, when the government
printed
trillions of local dollars to repay overdue debts to the
International
Monetary Fund. The crisis was compounded in June when the
government slashed
prices to lower inflation. The measure backfired and
forced the country to
stop producing. Shelves went empty and hunger spread.
Donald Steinberg,
the International Crisis Group's Vice-President for
Multilateral Affairs in
New York, says millions of educated professionals
have left Zimbabwe to
escape hunger and unemployment.
"Many of the producers are exiting. Huge
numbers of other Zimbabweans are
fleeing the country. The capacity to
produce from the agricultural sector,
from the manufacturing sector and from
the services sector is disappearing,"
says Steinberg. "The inflation rate
could reach ten-thousand percent, which
is virtually unheard of in modern
economies. And it really even challenges
the basis of money because if you
can't depend upon the currency, then it
ceases to be a relevant exchange
medium."
Steinberg says cronyism and the politicization of various state
institutions
have added to Zimbabwe's economic problems. "We're seeing
massive
corruption. The government continues to give preferential access to
contracts, to jobs, to farms and to businesses to its friends. Foreign
reserves have been stolen or shipped out of the country. The result of all
of this is a tremendous decline in the socio-economic standards of the
country and massive poverty."
Little Regional Pressure for
Change
Many analysts say it is tragic that Robert Mugabe, who fought
apartheid and
was seen in Africa as a freedom fighter, should leave such a
legacy. Roger
Bate, an economist at the Washington-based American Enterprise
Institute,
suspects that this perception is the reason why neighboring
states have not
done more.
"What I think has happened is that Mugabe
is seen as a hero in Africa as one
of the leaders of opposition to colonial
rule. And frankly, I don't think
that the African nations, the other
countries, are prepared to do anything
because they don't want to upset the
way that Mugabe is viewed. And I am
surprised that they are allowing a
country to entirely collapse internally
because it is going to cost them,"
says Bate. "But ultimately, not breaking
ranks with an anti-colonial freedom
fighter leader seems to be more
important than whether the country in
question is absolutely collapsing."
Some southern African countries, in
particular South Africa, are trying to
mediate a resolution to the crisis.
But most economists say there has been
little progress. And some speculate
that African states are hoping that Mr.
Mugabe will step down ahead of his
country's presidential elections slated
for next March, thereby opening the
door to political and economic reform.
But Georgetown University's
Director of African Studies Scott Taylor isn't
hopeful. "Whether Mr. Mugabe
decides to transition power over in the
elections remains to be seen. For a
man in his early eighties, he is a very
vital person. He is a shrewd
politician, very intelligent. And he may well
not do the transition to a
successor that some people hope for. So I suspect
we'll see business as
usual for the foreseeable future until the entire
political economy simply
grinds to a halt. And when that is - - it's
anyone's
guess."
President Mugabe has clearly stated that he will not be forced
into exile.
Many analysts say he fears prosecution should he step down and
likely will
think twice before making a graceful exit.
This story was
first broadcast on the English news program, VOA News Now.
FinGaz
Njabulo Ncube and Stanley
Kwenda Staff Reporters
THE country faces a crippling civil service and
private sector strike as
anger mounts over the government's ban on salary
increases amid indications
that the army has already been deployed to quell
rising tensions over a
sharp deterioration in the food situation and general
service delivery.
Labour unions, key among them the Public Service
Association, which
represents the country's civil servants, have been
holding crisis meetings
in Harare throughout this week planning a reaction
to the salary freeze
decreed last week.
Prior to the decree, employers,
including the government, were already under
immense pressure from
impoverished workers to pay them a living wage, which
they could not after a
recent price blitz left companies on the brink of
closure while depriving
the state of billions of dollars in tax revenue.
Controls on basic
commodities such as maize meal, beef and cooking oil have
emptied
supermarket shelves and fridges. Desperate consumers have to source
basics
on the black market where they are selling at exorbitant prices.
Yesterday,
army personnel patrolled hotspots throughout Harare, looking to
put down any
signs of unrest.
A Financial Gazette reporter witnessed an army unit beating
up people in a
queue at a shopping mall in a high-density suburb of the
capital city.
Last week, President Robert Mugabe invoked the Presidential
Powers
(Temporary Measures) Act to effectively ban all further wage and
salary
increments for six months.
The new regulations bar employers,
retailers, professional bodies and
schools from pegging any future increases
of prices or wages on the Consumer
Price Index.
All further increases are
to be authorised by the National Incomes and
Pricing Commission, which has
been handed sweeping powers that give it more
authority than government
ministries or the Cabinet Taskforce on Prices led
by Industry and
International Trade Minister Obert Mpofu.
Union leaders in the civil service
and the private sector told The Financial
Gazette yesterday that a
nationwide strike was imminent over the salary ban.
The general council of
the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) meets
this weekend to decide on
what course of action to take. The ZCTU has
condemned the salary ban,
calling it a "satanic" move.
"The workers are tired of being made sacrificial
lambs and bearing the brunt
of bad governance and bad economic policies,"
said Wellington Chibebe,
secretary general of the ZCTU. "The ZCTU will
mobilise the workers to resist
this satanic move, which is not only
economically wrong but also morally
suicidal."
Chibebe said the use of
the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act was
unacceptable in a
democracy and flew in the face of the recently signed
Incomes and Prices
Stabilisation Protocol that sought to link wages and
salaries to the Poverty
Datum Line.
As schools opened this week, representatives of teacher unions
reported a
sizeable number of teachers failing to report for duty around the
country.
Many were Maths and Science teachers, whose skills are badly needed
in South
Africa.
There was no comment from the Zimbabwe Teachers Union,
the country's largest
teachers' union.
But Raymond Majongwe, secretary
general of the Progressive Teachers Union of
Zimbabwe, said teachers were
already on a go-slow, and that a full strike
was imminent.
"As we are
talking, I am in meetings to try and see what we can do for our
members who
are agitating for a nationwide strike," said Majongwe. "We have
given the
government 14 days to adjust teachers' salaries. The ultimatum
expires on
Monday next week."
Teachers currently gross $2.4 million, but unions are
pushing for a basic
salary of at least $15 million, a transport allowance of
$5.2 million and a
housing allowance of $4 million.
Representatives of
government employees, speaking anonymously for fear of
victimisation, said
industrial action was imminent.
"We are in touch with other sectors and
action is imminent. We cannot go for
six months without salary adjustments
when things are either expensive or
not available at all," said a senior
civil servant representative.
Government's price war has turned into a
nightmare, both for those behind it
and consumers.
Officials confirmed
yesterday that government had now sent in the army.
Army spokesman, Simon
Tsatsi, said soldiers had been deployed as part of the
pricing and
stabilisation crack units.
He said soldiers involved in yesterday's beatings
were only being
"mischievous."
"Our officers do not operate any
programmes alone, they are always with the
police officers. This is a
combined operation by the army and police under
the price and monitoring
taskforce. Those officers who are assaulting people
are just being
mischievous."
Police spokesman Oliver Mandipaka also confirmed reinforcements
from the
military.
"The officers are conducting raids on these black
market traders who are
buying commodities with the aim of selling them on
the parallel market."
Critics say a worsening food crisis will heat up
tensions ahead of elections
next year.
Yesterday, Kevin Farell, Zimbabwe
country director for the World Food
Programme, receiving US$3.5 million in
aid to the country from Canada, said
up to 4.2 million people would need
assistance by the end of the 2008 first
quarter.
FinGaz
Shame Makoshori Staff
Reporter
FINANCE Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi is under pressure to put
together viable
strategies that can rescue both ordinary citizens and
businesses from the
effects of a worsening economic crisis when he presents
his maiden fiscal
policy statement and a supplementary budget
today.
But few expect any real changes or reforms.
Mumbengegwi has to
start all over again, because the $4 trillion national
budget presented by
his predecessor, Herbert Murerwa on November 30 last
year was exhausted in
the first three months of the year.
The budget is understood to have
ballooned to well over $30 trillion in the
first six months of 2007, larger
than the $6.5 trillion envelope issued by
Murerwa to finance government
expenditure.
But analysts said this week that while the Finance Minister
still has a
complex jigsaw puzzle to solve on matters such as managing the
burgeoning
budget deficit, it is in the rehabilitation of crumbling social
services, at
both central and local government level, where he needs to get
his
priorities right if he is to make any dent on rising
poverty.
Mumbengegwi will also need to plan for grain imports, with
government having
written off the winter wheat crop and the Grain Marketing
Board admitting
recently that it had taken delivery of only a small fraction
of the national
maize requirements.
He will have to come up with
innovative financing strategies to broaden the
sources of government
finance, without putting extra weight on the already
overburdened taxpayer.
A government blitz on prices has already robbed the
fiscus of substantial
revenue, which Treasury must recoup elsewhere.
"The improvement of funding
for medical drugs and supplies, and hospital and
clinical equipment, remains
critical in today's supplementary budget," says
an economist with a leading
commercial bank.
In November, the Ministry of Health was allocated $590.1
billion, but as
evidenced by the collapse of the country's health delivery
system, the vote
was far from enough.
The World Health Organisation
recommends that governments must allocate
US$23 per citizen in the health
budget, an unlikely scenario given the
parlous state of the
fiscus.
Immunisation, tuberculosis and malaria programmes, allocated 14.5
percent of
the health vote for 2007, have exploded at alarming rates because
of an
acute shortage of drugs.
But the social crisis is much broader than
the health crisis.
The Zimbabwe National Water Authority has shown it does
not have the
financial capacity to replace ageing pipes or to ensure a
reliable supply of
water to industry and residents.
National power
supplier, ZESA Holdings is suffering from serious capacity
constraints
because there is no money to import spares.
At the same time, the transport
crisis, which blossomed at the beginning of
the year, has worsened and
workers in most cities are enduring endless
queues because fuel is not
available.
The public school system is crumbling, and experts say there is
need for a
new system of funding, especially one that would allow quicker
access to
resources for education facilities.
During his 2007 budget
presentation, Murerwa had proposed the allocation of
$3 billion for schools.
But with inflation now at 7 600 percent, that
allocation would not suffice
to keep a single school running.
What option does the parents of the children
have?
They are already heavily taxed, with 50 percent of their salaries
consumed
by the state through various taxes.
Murerwa had raised the
tax-free threshold from $20 000 to $100 000 per month
and spread the tax
bands to end at $1 million, above which income would be
taxed at 35 percent,
starting January 2007.
"Inflation has remained high, thereby making further
reviews necessary," he
said.
This relief never made an impact, because by
the time January came, prices
had raced ahead of incomes.
Mid year,
government announced another tax review - the first outside of a
budget
statement - with the thresholds rising from $100 000 to $1.5 million.
This
was seen as largely symbolic, with little real impact on real incomes.
This
week, many families failed to pay for uniforms, groceries and fees as
the
third term opened.
And last week's decree to freeze salaries can only worsen
the crisis,
because employers were already rejecting pleas for "living
wages", with
profits wiped out in the price blitz.
After the wage freeze,
it is unlikely that Mumbengegwi will give any
significant tax
concessions.
The exchange rate will also come under scrutiny, especially
after a sharp
recent decline in the value of the Zimbabwe dollar in recent
weeks.
"There is a huge increase in the parallel market. So the question is,
do you
price your products on the actual cost of production, or the
anticipated
parallel market rate?" asked Andy Hodges, head of treasury at
ZABG.
FinGaz
Rangarirai Mberi
News Editor
THERE still appears to be loose ends to be tied in H.J.
Heinz's US$6.8
million sale of a 49 percent share of Olivine Industries, the
country's
largest producer of basic goods.
Remarks made by a senior
government official this week, which appeared to
suggest the sale might not
yet be a done deal, have added to the mystery
surrounding the finer details
of the transaction.
Heinz paid US$15.2 million when it acquired the stake in
1982, but had
valued the share at US$111 million by the time it decided to
sell, according
to its latest annual report.
This means the US$6.8
million agreed by the Cotton Company of Zimbabwe
(Cottco) is a huge
discount.
The Heinz annual report says the company had "deconsolidated its
Zimbabwean
operations and classified its remaining net investment of
approximately
US$111 million."
The investment was written down in the
fourth quarter of last year, and was
the largest impairment booked on
Heinz's 2006 accounts.
The Financial Gazette was the first to report the
sell-off in January. The
paper also reported in March that the Industrial
Development Corporation
(IDC) had valued the Heinz stake at US$6
million.
Cottco's announcement on Sunday surprised many, as it had been the
IDC that
had earlier confirmed direct negotiations with Heinz for the
stock.
Businessman Kenneth Musanhi had also showed interest.
Cottco said
it acquired the stake through IDC, but gave no details of what
the
corporation itself would get for its role.
Now George Charamba, government
spokesman, has clouded matters by saying
that "we have not got there yet,"
and that "exploratory discussions between
IDC as government agent and the
Heinz people" were continuing.
Charamba's surprising comments could be taken
as showing differences within
government over how the deal was
structured.
There are suggestions that some in government could have wanted
IDC to take
direct control of the Heinz stake, but it is likely that IDC did
not have
the foreign currency that Cottco, the country's largest cotton
exporter,
has.
Cottco has also put down a separate bid for textile
company David Whitehead.
Heinz's own valuation of its share of Olivine would
value the entire company
at US$220 million, making it very attractive for
buyers, considering the
discounted price at which Heinz is willing to
sell.
But Heinz's Olivine valuation, compared to the US$13.6 million implied
by
the Cottco deal, could also attract the attention of government
hardliners
who would be opposed to a private company gaining control of a
major food
producer.
Although reports have suggested government controls
Cottco, the company is
18 percent owned by the National Social Security
Authority, with Old Mutual
the number two shareholder, with 16.87
percent.
Private investors, among them TA Holdings and two British companies,
hold
the remainder.
Another missing piece of the puzzle is an outstanding
two percent stake in
Olivine. Heinz held a 51 percent share, but Cottco is
only buying 49
percent.
There are also questions as to whether the deal
allows Olivine to continue
distributing Heinz brands in Zimbabwe.
Olivine
is being touted mostly as a producer of cooking oil, but it also
sells a
range of products under the US$3 billion Heinz brand such as canned
foods
and tomato sauce. Heinz products have a huge share of the local food
market.
FinGaz
Clemence Manyukwe Staff
Reporter
GOVERNMENT continues to send mixed signals regarding its policy
on private
investment in diamonds, with a top Mines Ministry official saying
Zimbabwe
is now seeking foreign partners to develop Marange and another
diamond field
in Tsholotsho, Matabeleland North.
In May, Mines and
Mining Development Minister Amos Midzi said the government
would not bring
in any foreign capital to partner it at Marange.
The Zimbabwe Mining
Development Corporation (ZMDC), the state arm that
controversially seized
the Marange diamond fields from Africa Consolidated
Resources (ACR) "would
go it alone", he said.
But Midzi's stance on foreign participation in
diamonds was contradicted by
the Parliamentary portfolio committee on Mines,
Environment and Tourism,
which said in a report that the ZMDC did not have
the capacity to viably
extract diamonds.
Now a letter annexed to High
Court papers in the ACR dispute shows that the
Ministry has in fact directed
the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe
(MMCZ) to look for foreign
investors.
In that letter, Titus Nyatanga, director of Mining Promotion and
Development
in the Ministry of Mines, also discloses that diamonds have been
discovered
in Tsholotsho.
Nyatanga says the government declared the
Marange and Tsholotsho areas where
the diamonds have been found protected
areas to forestall illegal
activities. "While these measures are in place,
the ministry has requested
MMCZ to offer protection of the areas and
facilitate investment
opportunities with local and foreign organisations for
diamond exploration,"
Nyatanga said.
He said the Exclusive Prospecting
Order for the Tsholotsho area was held by
a company called Canister
Resources. The Financial Gazette has since learnt
that Nick Graham is the
majority shareholder of the company.
He was not available for comment this
week.
FinGaz
Clemence Manyukwe Staff
Reporter
THE baking industry is to retrench about 10 000 workers, almost
half of its
current workforce, as the full impact of the price crackdown and
wheat
shortages begins to take its toll.
The National Bakers
Association (NBA) has sent a distress call to
government, saying the sector
faces collapse because of viability problems
brought about by government
policies.
In a letter addressed to the permanent secretary in the Ministry of
Industry
and International Trade, Christian Katsande, dated August 30,
bakers said
since the price cuts, they have suffered serious losses, forcing
many to
send huge numbers of workers on unpaid leave.
The country's major
baker, Lobels Bread, is said to have told its workers
that it could no
longer finance its operations.
The association said it would be forced to
take further "drastic measures"
with regard to its workforce if the
situation did not improve soon.
In the letter to Katsande, the bakers pleaded
for a review of the retail
price of a standard loaf of bread from the
current $27 000 to $73 000.
"Our industry has been double-hit by a serious
shortage of flour and an
unviable price. Because of that, we cannot
survive," they said.
"Most bakeries are not baking and workers have been
seriously affected. The
industry cannot review salaries upwards (so) workers
are being sent on
unpaid leave in large numbers."
The industry is unable
to repair or replace plant and equipment, and
officials warn that once it
collapses, it will be "very difficult" to revive
the sector.
The dire
situation, the letter says, has been compounded by tight state
controls on
the price of bread, while key inputs are sourced on the black
market
Although the gazetted price of flour is $6 million per tonne, it
is only
available on the black market at $15 million.
"In reality, (state
fuel importer) NOCZIM has not performed at all, as most
bakers have never
got diesel from NOCZIM. They are getting fuel from the
open market 100
percent," the association said.
FinGaz
Njabulo Ncube Political
Editor
A HARARE company is suing the Zimbabwe National Water Authority
(ZINWA) for
more than $2.5 billion in damages after one of its vehicles
plunged into a
gaping, unmarked crater dug by the troubled water
authority.
Westwing Investments (Private) Limited is suing ZINWA for
negligence, the
company's lawyer Martin Makoni said.
"We are instructed
that on or about 19 July, 2007, and at around 2000hrs, a
road accident
occurred in which our client's motor vehicle, a Freightliner
lorry borehole
rig, registration number 842-807T, overturned along Prince
Edward Road,"
reads part of the letter to ZINWA.
"The said accident occurred solely as a
result of the negligence of your
servants, in that your servants or
employees excavated a large hole in the
middle of the carriage way with a
diameter of about two-and-a-half metres,
and a width of about one-and-a-half
metres, in order to deal with a water
leakage from the underground water
main pipes along Prince Edward. They left
the hole uncovered and unmarked,
creating a deadly hazard; especially at
night as that portion of the road is
not well-lit."
ZINWA employees had not covered the "deadly hole" for a month
without
erecting warning signs.
The case is almost a replica of one in
which prominent banker Pindie
Nyandoro successfully sued the Harare City
Council for damages caused on her
Mercedes Benz after it drove through a
porthole along Enterprise Road.
The lawsuits reflect growing public concern
about
the general deterioration in infrastructure under the noses of the
country's
municipalities and ZINWA.
FinGaz
Clemence Manyukwe Staff
Reporter
REGISTRAR General (R-G) Tobaiwa Mudede has for the first time
complained of
pressure from politicians with regard to the voter
registration exercise,
which the opposition claims has been used to
disenfranchise its support
base.
A report by the Defence and Home
Affairs Parliamentary committee also
disputes the R-G's view that the
Citizenship Act requires that people born
locally to parents of foreign
descent must first renounce their "potential
foreign citizenship" before
they can be recognised as Zimbabwean citizens.
Failure to renounce their
foreign title, according to the Registrar General,
results in forfeiture of
Zimbabwean citizenship.
Mudede has used this interpretation of the law to
deprive millions of
Zimbabweans of the right to vote.
But quoting the
Government Gazette General Notice 584 of 2002, under the
subheading
Renunciation of foreign Citizenship, the committee said a person
who is a
citizen by birth cannot be deprived of his or her citizenship, and
cannot be
asked to renounce foreign citizenship he or she never acquired.
"It is
recommended that the R-G should abide by the rulings and
interpretation of
the courts and Cabinet, as given in the Zimbabwean
Government Gazette
General notice 584 of 2002," reads part of the committee's
recommendation.
The committee undertook the probe on citizenship after
the Zimbabwe Lawyers
for Human Rights told Members of Parliament that Mudede
was unlawfully
withdrawing citizenship from people with rightful title to
citizenship,
resulting in a flood of lawsuits that his department was
losing.
The report shows that in his evidence before the committee Mudede
claimed he
was under pressure from politicians to register certain groups of
people to
vote in next year's elections.
Although the report does not
identify the politicians, ZANU PF summoned
Mudede in May to appear before
its caucus for a hearing for which the sole
item on the agenda was
"Citizenship problems."
Sources who attended that meeting, which also
discussed the looting of
diamonds in Marange, told The Financial Gazette at
the time that ruling
party legislators had pointed out to Mudede that they
risked losing the
support of millions of potential voters, mainly farm
workers, who were
affected by laws compelling them to renounce foreign
citizenship.
The Parliamentary report says: "The R-G gave the following
evidence: due to
forthcoming elections, some politicians are campaigning to
increase their
support base using services provided for by the Government.
The resistance
to dual citizenship has been an ongoing battle fought in
various fora."
Contributing to the report, ZANU PF Senator for Highfield-Glen
Norah-Glen
View, Charles Tawengwa, said based on the cases that the R-G had
lost in the
courts it appeared that the Government was victimising its
citizens.
FinGaz
Njabulo Ncube Political
Editor
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe, admired across Africa for his liberation
credentials, has been omitted from a list of 76 black "Great Achievers" in
the world, which has former South African president Nelson Mandela at the
top.
The list was compiled by the International Slavery Museum of
Liverpool.
President Mugabe and Mandela's ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela,
lauded
for her role in the struggle against apartheid, are the two most
notable
names removed from the list.
The compilers of the list, released
in London last week and widely
circulated in African media, said they
excluded President Mugabe and
Madikizela because their greatness had been
"compromised by later actions".
Despite fervent western and domestic
opposition to his rule, President
Mugabe still enjoys considerable support
across Africa and in the African
Diaspora, having cast himself as a fighter
against western imperialism.
Last month, he received loud applause at the
Southern African Development
Community Summit in Lusaka, which has ignored
calls to censure him publicly
for his governance record. President Mugabe's
critics accuse him of human
rights abuses, citing the bashing of political
opponents, and are critical
of his management of the economy.
The veteran
politician has scoffed at critics, accusing them of amplifying a
regime
change agenda, sponsored by Britain and the United States, among his
perceived enemies.
President Mugabe alleges his government is being
villified for
redistributing land from minority whites to the landless
blacks.
The list, based on names
submitted by Britons and through
research, has sparked controversy as many
international heroes were
overlooked for the likes of US talk-show host
Oprah Winfrey and little known
slave rebel Gasper Yanga and several British
footballers.
Other notables recognised
l Muhammad Ali:
Boxer, born 1942
l Steve Biko: Anti-apartheid activist, 1946-77
l Viv
Anderson: first black international footballer for England, born 1956
l Kofi
Annan: former UN secretary general and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, born
1938
l WEB Du Bois: sociologist, activist, 1868-1963
l Patrice
Lumumba: politician, activist who won independence for the Congo,
1925-1961
l Kwame Nkrumah: first president of Ghana, 1909-72
l Jesse
Owens: athlete, 1913-80
l Frantz Fanon: writer, psychiatrist,
anti-colonialism campaigner, 1925-61
l Marcus Garvey: civil rights activist,
1887-1940
l Archbishop Desmond Tutu: South African clergyman born 1932.
l
Malcolm X: civil rights activist, 1925-65
FinGaz
Zhean Gwaze Staff
Reporter
AHEAD of the close of the tobacco-selling season tomorrow,
industry players
were yesterday optimistic they would reach this year's
target of 77 million
kilogrammes despite declining deliveries to the auction
floors.
According to figures obtained from the Tobacco Industry and
Marketing Board
(TIMB) 67.2 million kilogrammes of tobacco had been
delivered by August 31,
earning US$158 million.
Daily deliveries that
averaged 1.25 million kilogrammes in May and June had
fallen to 600 000
kilogrammes last month and 400 000 kilogrammes this week.
The average price
also firmed this week to an average of US$2.43/kg, up from
last month's
US$2.34 average.
Deliveries have fallen due to a range of problems, mainly
fuel shortages and
worsening power cuts.
"There are farmers who are yet
to deliver a single kg to the auction floors
owing to a number of problems,
including labour shortages. We, however, held
a stakeholders' meeting
recently and all members agreed that we will achieve
the target," TIMB Chief
Executive Andrew Matibiri said.
Mop-up sales will be conducted three weeks
after the official closure of the
season to accommodate late
deliveries.
The government has so far injected $4.2 trillion to fund the
tobacco support
price of an average $62 500.40 per kg.
This year's
targeted 77 million kilogrammes would be a slight rise from the
55 million
kilogrammes sold last season, and would reverse a pattern of
steady decline
in output that began seven years ago.
Tobacco production, which peaked at
over 200 million kg in 2000, has slid
over the last seven years to 160
million kg in 2001/2, 85 million kg in
2002/03 to 68 million kg in 2004.
FinGaz
Njabulo Ncube Political
Editor
WITH no prospects for the unification of the fractured opposition
Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) with only six months to go before next
year's
elections, there are growing fears that the party could be
annihilated in
the landmark polls.
The MDC marks its eighth
anniversary next Thursday, but political analysts
and observers said this
week that the party is at its weakest point since
its formation, despite
growing anger with President Robert Mugabe's
government over the escalating
economic crisis.
The analysts said while the electoral flaws the MDC blames
for its previous
electoral failures are real, the party had done more harm
to itself by
failing to present a united front against ZANU PF.
The
opposition could have capitalised on the reported divisions within ZANU
PF
and anger over the economic meltdown. But instead, the MDC factions
devoted
their energies to mudslinging in the last two years following the
October
2005 split.
Consequently, the opposition has failed to devise new strategies
to
consolidate support in urban areas, from which it evicted the ruling
party
in 2000.
In addition, the party has failed to make inroads into
ZANU PF strongholds.
In 2000, the MDC, riding on a wave of public
disillusionment with
government, won 57 of the 120 contested seats, only six
months after its
formation.
But the party was already losing momentum
ahead of the November 2005 split,
shedding a large number of its seats in
general elections in March that
year.
With discord deepening after the
split, which party insiders interestingly
still attribute to the Central
Intelligence Organisation, President Mugabe
has a chance to win the polls
convincingly, and not narrowly as in the past.
"They (MDC) are in a
diminished position to win the electoral contest in
2008," said Eldred
Masunungure, a respected political science professor at
the University of
Zimbabwe. "There are internal and external limitations
that make the
opposition very weak as we approach the polls in 2008, and
unless these are
addressed, their chances of upsetting a battling ZANU PF
are very slim,"
said Masunungure.
He said the split has been caused as much by internal
rivalries as by the
political environment.
Both factions believe that
electoral reforms would help them perform better
in the polls, and have told
South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is
mediating in the Zimbabwean
crisis that a new constitution was a
pre-requisite for the staging of future
elections.
Although Mbeki believes it is too late for constitutional reform,
President
Mugabe has indicated there could be some sort of electoral changes
prior to
the polls, such as the setting up of a truly independent Electoral
Commission that Mbeki has insisted on. But even such changes may not be a
guarantee that the opposition would get more votes.
"Even if these
(changes) are delivered, they might not be a godsend for the
opposition if
their house continues to be in disarray. I am afraid the
opposition might
fail to retain some of the seats they won previously, or
win a sizeable
proportion of the seats to be contested," Masunungure said.
In the past week,
confusion has reigned within the ranks of the opposition
over the MDC's
strategy for the polls.
Morgan Tsvangirai's faction had planned to launch its
2008 election campaign
in Masvingo at the weekend, but the event was
postponed. It is believed the
faction is awaiting the outcome of the Mbeki
talks before making a decision.
A new round of talks was expected at the
weekend, and insiders say all sides
involved could report to their parties
by next month.
In contrast, President Mugabe last week rallied his most
aggressive
campaigners, war veterans, galvanising them for the polls.
By
driving the war veterans, feared for leading ZANU PF's violent campaigns
in
the past, through central Harare, President Mugabe was looking to cow the
MDC's own urban campaigners, critics say.
President Mugabe told the
boisterous war veterans that they would be the
"torch-bearers" of his
campaign, suggesting a major role for them in the
run-up to the crucial
elections that would for the first time bundle
together presidential and
parliamentary elections.
Political commentator Ernest Mudzengi agreed with
the view that the MDC has
eroded its own fortunes by failing to end internal
rifts.
"It will be impossible to approach the polls with a divided
opposition. It
will be lucky if the opposition still has sizeable seats in
parliament in
2008," Mudzengi said.
Gabriel Chaibva, spokesman of the
Arthur Mutambara camp, said his party
would not allow ZANU PF to easily
retain power.
"We hear some people want to boycott the elections, but we will
not just
give up like that. We are going to match (President) Mugabe bruise
for
bruise," declared Chaibva.
FinGaz
Staff Reporter
THE
government team leading Zimbabwe's preparations for the 2010 World Cup
tournament has asked Cabinet to approve the immediate release of $1 trillion
for the completion of several projects, including the refurbishment and
upgrade of airports and roads.
In a memorandum presented recently to
Cabinet by Environment and Tourism
Minister Francis Nhema and Education,
Sports and Culture Minister, Aeneas
Chigwedere, the Ministers said the $10
billion Tourism Fund allocated by the
central bank was inadequate for the
completion of the projects which are
running behind schedule Zimbabwe
projects that it will capture a 30 percent
share of the expected revenue
from the World Cup. Some official estimates
put potential earnings for
Zimbabwe at US$50 million.
"Estimates indicate that a minimum of $1trillion
may be needed, with an
initial tranche of $500 billion immediately for quick
impact," Nhema and
Chigwedere said wrote in the undated memorandum to
cabinet.
"The recently announced revolving Tourism Development Fund of $10
billion is
a good beginning. However, the remaining time and the scope of
the challenge
may require that the Fund be boosted to allow many projects to
take off
simultaneously. A bigger revolving Tourism Fund is thus
recommended," reads
the memo.
Ministry of Finance officials told The
Financial Gazette this week that the
proposals could receive a significant
vote in the supplementary budget to be
presented today.
They said much of
the pre-budget presentations made by the Zimbabwe Tourism
Authority (ZTA)
and the Zimbabwe Council for Tourism to government last
month revolved on
the issue of funding the 2010 project.
The country is desperate to spruce up
its soiled image and take advantage of
the expected rise in tourist arrivals
to the region. About one million
visitors are expected during the
tournament. One billion more fans are
projected to watch the event on
television worldwide.
The memo says Zimbabwe also plans to revamp its road
network.
"While the ideal is dualising Zimbabwe's main trunk roads, both time
and
resources make this goal hard to attain within the remaining three
years,"
the Ministers say in their memo.
"It is being proposed that the
Beitbridge-Harare highway,
Beitbridge-Bulawayo-Victoria Falls,
Harare-Bulawayo-Victoria Falls,
Harare-Kariba-Chirundu,
Harare-Rusape-Nyanga, Mutare-Birchenough-Chipinge
and Masvingo-Mutare roads
be repaired and resurfaced."
Work on the Beitbridge to Harare and Bulawayo to
Victoria Falls roads was
particularly "urgent", they said, also urging
faster work on toll gate
construction.
FinGaz
Clemence Manyukwe Staff
Reporter
THE key witness in a political violence case linked to State
Security
Minister Didymus Mutasa and Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa
yesterday
declined to testify, saying he now believed the issue must be
resolved
amicably within ZANU PF.
War veteran James Kaunye, whom the
state alleges was pressured by the head
of the Central Intelligence
Organisation (CIO) in Manicaland, Innocent
Chibaya, and five others, to
withdraw violence charges against Mutasa's
supporters, said he could not
testify because he believed the matter should
be resolved at party
level.
Chibaya, the CIO's head in Rusape, Denford Masaya and three others who
are
facing obstruction of justice charges appeared before Harare High Court
judge Justice Anne-Marie Gowora yesterday.
The charges against the CIO
bosses and the other accused persons stem from
allegations that they
approached Kaunye and ordered him not to testify
against Mutasa's
supporters.
Kaunye had claimed the group assaulted him in 2004 when he stood
against
Mutasa in party primaries.
Kaunye had given evidence against
Mutasa's supporters, who include ZANU PF
Makoni North District chairman
Albert Nyakuedzwa.
The supporters were jailed in 2006, only to be released
three months ago.
Chinamasa was also accused of pressuring Kaunye, but was
latter acquitted by
the Rusape magistrates' courts.
The Attorney General
withdrew an appeal against Chinamasa's acquittal in
May, but gave no
explanation.
One of the lawyers representing the accused persons, Charles
Warara,
confirmed to The Financial Gazette yesterday that after Kaunye had
declined
to testify, the state came up with another witness, who then said
he did not
know anything about the case.
"After Kaunye declined, the
other witness said he did not know anything. He
(the new witness) is
continuing with his testimony," said Warara.
FinGaz
Mavis
Makuni
Current events indicate that newspaper editors are under siege
from Cape to
Cairo for defending the people's right to know in the face of
state attempts
to muzzle the media.
In South Africa, the young editor
of the Sunday Times, Mondli Makhanya, has
stirred a hornet's nest by making
a bold decision to expose scandalous
incidents involving the country's
health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
At the other end of the continent
, in Cairo, the editor of an independent
daily newspaper is to be prosecuted
for publishing reports on the state of
the health of Egypt's 78-year
president, Hosni Mubarak, who has been in
power since 1981. In East Africa
another editor, albeit of a foreign
newspaper, is to be taken to court for
reporting on the theft of US$2
billion from state coffers during the 24-year
rule of Daniel Arap Moi.
The former Kenyan president's eldest son, Gideon
Moi, is reported by the
Sunday Times to have threatened to sue the British
newspaper, The Guardian,
which reported how a risk consultancy firm, Kroll,
had exposed "a web of
shell companies, hidden trusts and frontmen "used by
the Moi dynasty to
"funnel vast sums of money abroad". The Guardian reported
that the stolen
funds were used to buy opulent properties in New York,
London and South
Africa and that "hundreds of millions" were stashed in
foreign bank
accounts.
Reacting angrily to the report, Gideon Moi is
quoted in the press as saying,
"None of us has seen this so-called report
but the allegations contained
there are untrue and highly libelous. To
accuse someone of corruption, which
the report purports to do, at this time
is very damaging and I intend to
take action." The reference to the time of
the year is an allusion to the
general elections to be held in Kenya in
December ahead of which Daniel Arap
Moi has endorsed his successor, Mwai
Kibaki, whose government has continued
to be mired in rampant
corruption.
But despite Gideon Moi's rage against the British newspaper, he
and his
younger brother are reported to be worth a combined 930 million
pounds
sterling, an obscene level of wealth by the standard of any African
country
where the majority live below the poverty datum line.
Ibrahim
Eissa, editor of the daily newspaper Al-Destur is reported to have
offended
Mubarak by publishing reports about the president's health. This
followed
persistent speculation in the country that Mubarak had been
hospitalised and
had travelled abroad for treatment. The editor, whose paper
was once banned
for five years, has had previous run-ins with the
presidency. He is reported
to have been convicted last year for insulting
Mubarak in an article
published in his, newspaper.
His current troubles will re-ignite debate on
whether details about the
health of Africa's long-serving but still mortal
presidents should be a
state secret to be kept away from the people they
govern. At 78, Mubarak is
not a young man and in addition to the natural and
inevitable march of time,
26 years at the helm will also have taken their
toll. It should not be a
punishable offence to report on these
realities.
The Sunday Times and its editor Mondli Makhaya were taken to court
for
publishing details of Tshabalala-Msimang's alcoholism and criminal
record
involving a theft case for which she had been convicted in Botswana
while
serving as a medical superintendent. Msiman-Tshabalala underwent
surgery for
a liver transplant a few months ago. Her liver needed to be
replaced
allegedly because it had been damaged by years of heavy
drinking.
The Sunday Times claimed that under normal circumstances the
66-year old
minister would not have qualified to get a donated organ but had
used her
influence to jump the queue ahead of more deserving cases. The
paper
believed that it was immoral for the minister to continue drinking
after
getting this new lease of life and that it was hypocritical for her to
campaign against alcohol abuse in her official capacity as the steward of
the nation's health when she could not practice what she
preached.
Predictably, Makhanya was crucified by the administration of Thabo
Mbeki,which accused him of conducting a vendetta against Tshabalala-Msimang
and tarnishing the image of the government. Encouragingly, however, in a law
suit instituted by the minister against Makhanya and the Sunday Times, the
editor was vindicated. In an outcome hailed as a victory for the freedom of
the press, High Court Judge Mahomed Jajbhay upheld the public's right to
know and the paper's right to publish, although Tshabala-Msimang's lawyers
had argued that the Sunday Times had obtained the information
illegally.
"The information, although unlawfully obtained, went simply beyond
being
interesting to the public; there was in fact a pressing need for the
public
to be informed about the information contained in the medical
records", said
Jajbhay. "The publiction of the unlawfully obtained
controversial
information was capable of contributing to a debate in our
democratic
society relating to a politician in the exercise of her
functions.
The Sunday Times lawyers had argued that there was debate in South
Africa on
whether or not Tshabalala-Msimang was fit for high office. There
were many
reasons for questioning the minister's fitness for office and
ordinary South
Africans were entitled to any information bearing on that
aspect. The
minister had publicly crusaded against alcohol abuse and pointed
out its
social and economic costs. "In order for this important message to
resonate
with the appropriate authority and persuasiveness, the first
applicant (the
minister) must both live her life consistently with the
message and be seen
to do so. Anything less would suggest both hypocrisy and
seriously undermine
the message."
The judge upheld these arguments,
declaring; "This is a case where the need
for the truth is, in fact,
overwhelming. Indeed in this matter the
personality involved as well as her
status establishes her newsworthiness."
One of the bizarre aspects of the
case was the "dog-eat-dog" reaction of the
South African Broadcasting
Corporation (SABC) to the controversy. Describing
the press as "the enemy of
the people", SABC chief executive officer, Dali
Mpofu complained, "We cannot
remain quiet when our mothers and
democratically chosen leaders are stripped
naked for the sole reason of
selling newspapers."
FinGaz
Personal Glimpses with
Mavis Makuni
THIS past weekend I came face to face with a gruelling sight
- a man lying
dead on the street. I was walking along Mbuya Nehanda Street
in Harare last
Saturday when I saw a huge crowd ahead.
Thinking it
was a disorderly formation of the ubiquitous queues that are now
part of the
landscape of every urban centre, I was not particularly alarmed
or
surprised.
It was only as I was about to pass the scene that I established
the horrible
truth. A man had literally dropped dead on the pavement as he
walked along
the street. The tragedy had occurred early that morning but
this was about
lunch time and police had still not turned up to collect the
body. The
people milling around speculated that the man, who was said to be
about 60
years of age, had died of hunger. A man who was standing near me
shook his
head saying, "I never thought things would come to this - a human
being
dropping dead on the street and his death not giving the police any
sense of
urgency."
As I dragged myself from the scene, I felt profoundly
saddened. Someone
else's death has always reminded me of my own mortality in
the past but this
experience made me realise more than ever before, that
when a human being
cannot have dignity even in death, things are pretty bad.
Here was somebody
who had lived and felt all the emotions that the rest of
us feel such as
sadness and happiness. Most of all, he must also have
experienced that
feeling that springs eternal in the human heart - hope.
Hope that no matter
how bad things are at a given moment, they could always
be better.
However, as I proceeded on my mission to buy any basic commodities
I could
bump into that day, my own sense of hope deserted me. Every shop and
supermarket I entered displayed empty shelves instead of goods. Outside two
adjacent supermarkets two long queues snaked around the block, making it
confusing for new arrivals to identify which was which and for what
commodity. I established that one was for bread and the other was for pasta.
Yes, scores of men and women were pushing and shoving to get a packet of
noodles just as long as it was something to eat! After deciding my chances
of getting anything were remote, I moved on but the story was the same
everywhere - long queues for items that were too few to go round to cater
for the hungry multitudes.
When the government first declared its "price
war" against the business
sector, the explanation given was that this was
being done to rescue the
people from exploitation by unscrupulous
businesspeople. The business sector
was accused of being partners with
foreign interests in a regime change plot
to topple the government of
President Robert Mugabe. The President told the
ruling party's mouthpiece,
The Voice, "We have taken steps on prices, the
prices were increasing as a
result of pressure by the machinations of the
British who wanted to
undermine our economy so that the people go against
the government because
prices would be high and unaffordable."
He was cheered by party supporters
when he announced that the government was
moving in to force manufacturers
to produce goods and they risked losing
their factories if they refused to
play ball. The government would take over
and produce the goods. "They are
saying it's illegal, it's illegal, illegal
when people are suffering
."
The head of state spoke in the same vein during ceremonies to mark Heroes'
Day and Defence Forces' Day. In a report published in a state-controlled
paper on August 15, he was quoted as saying, "More recently we witnessed
unprecedented increases in the prices of basic commodities as part of
efforts to increase the feeling of extreme hardship and suffering among the
general populace, Thankfully, government moved in to stem the price
increases and thus neutralise the objective, which was meant to cause
unbearable suffering on our people."
In view of subsequent developments
such as those described above, I wonder
whether the President is aware that
the price blitz has had some of the
unintended consequences that the Reserve
Bank warned about. While official
rhetoric at the beginning of the price
blitz cast the business operators as
the villains fuelling the suffering of
the people, the government's
intervention has exacerbated the people's
plight to shocking levels. Is he
aware that the absence of the same sense of
urgency to restore normalcy now
that the people are starving casts his
government as the real instigator of
the people's suffering?
It may or
may not be true as speculated that the man whose body I saw on the
street
last weekend succumbed to hunger but stories of other deaths related
to the
critical shortages of food have been reported. These include
incidents of
people dying in stampedes for basic commodities at retail
outlets and even
at the recent agricultural show. In addition to these,
there must be
numerous other related deaths going unreported. Just imagine
what happens to
someone who has a medical condition that requires him or her
to eat
prescribed meals at stipulated intervals. Where are such people
expected to
get the right foods when there is nothing in the shops?
And even when certain
foods become available sporadically, how can the
terminally ill, the
disabled, the elderly and people suffering from other
infirmities be
expected to push and shove in the now ubiquitous queues when
spending long
hours in these lines is not even a guarantee that the effort
will be
rewarded. There are also people on life-long medical regimes who
cannot take
their drugs on empty stomachs. Their lives must be a nightmare
now.
No
one disputes that things were bad when the prices were going up
constantly
but the government's intervention made things go from bad to
untenable. The
government's confrontational approach and its belief that the
introduction
of every new policy or dispensation has to be a "war" is
misguided. The
people are weary from living in a war zone all the time. When
everything is
done by decree as happens in totalitarian states, individuals
are powerless
against the might of the state. Definitely not the Zimbabwe we
want.
mmakuni@fingaz.co.zw
FinGaz
Stanley Kwenda Staff
Reporter
GETTING a loaf of bread is now a feat only for the fittest. And
amid the
commotion, there is a forgotten group of Zimbabweans who, through
no choice
of their own, can never be expected to have such physical prowess.
The
prevailing economic crisis has hit them very hard.
The meltdown
is creating many new poor people everyday. It is pushing the
country's
already disadvantaged groups deeper into destitution.
Elijah Mutiwokuziva, a
disabled vendor who used to work at a brick-making
factory near Harare,
tells the sad story of how he and his fellow disabled
colleagues are
struggling to keep pace with the demands of survival.
"I had no option after
being relieved of my job but to go into the streets.
For three years I have
been selling sweets and cigarettes to look after my
wife and four kids. But
now that we have these shortages, we have nowhere to
get the goods that we
sell," Mutiwokuziva said, rocking uneasily in his
wheelchair.
"When we
try to have our own queue as disabled people at supermarkets, the
police
insist on a single queue."
He moaned: "Sometimes we wonder if we are citizens
of this country."
The life of another disabled vendor who also used to get by
through vending
on the streets now revolves around drowning his sorrows in
opaque beer. But
even beer is in short supply, so he is increasingly abusing
other substances
such as glue and mbanje.
"I have always felt so angry
when people looked at me as a disabled person,
I know I can do something for
myself," he says. "But now I do need help
because I cannot be pushing and
shoving in the queues."
He grew up at the Jairos Jiri Centre for the disabled
in Southerton, but had
to leave the centre to make way for others. Now all
he thinks of, he says,
is going back, even though friends he left there tell
him there is nothing
to eat at the centre.
"We are trying our best to
help, but most of the people who have been
offering us help have since left
the country or have withdrawn their support
due to the current economic
situation in the country," said an official at a
disabled people's
home.
Dominic Tengane is a member of the Zimbabwe Spinal Injuries
Association. The
former taxi driver became crippled after he mysteriously
woke up one morning
with serious back pain from which he never
recovered.
"Life is tough. I just got sick one morning and could not get up.
Since
then, I have not been able to walk. I have accepted that as part of
life and
since then have tried to get a job but nothing has worked out for
me."
During this interview Tengane spoke of how he has to roll his wheel
chair to
Rezende bus station, which has the only toilet for the disabled in
the whole
of Harare's central business district.
If transport is a
nightmare for able-bodied people every morning, it is
close to impossible
for the disabled to scramble onto a bus.
"For me it is better to sell sweets
on the streets than to get formal
employment where I suffer discrimination.
But I face a lot of problems with
transport because most public transporters
are reluctant to ferry disabled
people into town," said Tengane.
Other
disabled people said they have not received any government payouts
over the
last two years.
But even when they are accessible, the payouts cannot meet
the most basic
needs. In January, the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and
Social Welfare
said it was giving out a monthly grant of about $8000, barely
enough to
cover fares for the trip into town to collect the cheques.
The
United Nations General Assembly adopted the first UN Convention to
protect
the rights of the disabled in December last year. The convention,
seeks to
protect the rights of more than 600 million disabled persons and
requires
countries to adopt laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of
any
disability ranging from blindness to mental illness.
The government of
Zimbabwe is yet to ratify the convention.
FinGaz
Rangarirai Mberi News
Editor
SO what is Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi to do?
He
has no tax base to lean on, so everybody knows whatever money he doles
out
today is hot off the printing press.
Government has decimated margins over
the past three months, as previously
reported by this paper, so tax from
corporates will not be much. The other
cash cow, income tax, has dried up
too.
Mumbengegwi could well choose to make up for this by doing what Herbert
Murerwa, his predecessor, did two years ago.
Sitting on a thin wallet,
Murerwa signed off on a raft of taxes.
He raised Value Added Tax, increased
stamp duty, announced a 22.5 percent
surtax on mobile phone airtime, slapped
quarterly taxes on commuter
transport operators, introduced a 15 percent sin
tax on cigarettes, beer and
luxury goods, a five percent tax on small-scale
miners, raised surtax on
imported used vehicles, introduced tollgates, and
imposed a 10 percent
withholding tax on listed marketable securities.
It
didn't work.
In fact, the last tax stopped trade on the stock exchange for
weeks and
government ended up with egg on its face
and an even bigger
hole in the pocket.
But this means that, in his debut statement, Mumbengegwi
is in a good
position to make his mark.
He could choose to stick with the
old, boring routine; the old pose with The
Briefcase for the cameras, the
stroll into Parliament, and the speech, made
up of all that economics mumbo
jumbo - like deficit, quasi-fiasco and all
that. Mumbengegwi might want to
avoid it all.
Everybody knows how broke government is. Yet Mumbengegwi could
use this to
his advantage.
He could change the entire budget tradition.
Central bank governor Gideon
Gono took the lead in January, declining major
policy moves and using his
statement to rally support for broader
reform.
Mumbengegwi is under no pressure, whatsoever, to pull out a miracle
cure.
So, instead of trying to present a "real" budget that can only be a
real
sham, here are a few suggestions on how he could better fill the hour
or so
allocated to him this afternoon.
First, Honourable Minister, you
could tell the nation that these budget
statements, whether annual or
supplementary, have become rather pointless.
If government was broke
by
March, then perhaps it is time to ditch this whole budget charade.
You would,
then, announce a new plan. After every three months, government
will
announce how much more money would be printed for the next quarter, and
how
this new lot is to be allocated.
And, to jazz it up, you would let the
taxpayers know who among your cabinet
colleagues has spent the most of your
money in the previous quarter, and on
what?
A roll call of shame,
Minister, if you will.
Is it at Environment and Tourism, so that Karikoga
Kaseke and Francis Nhema
can invite more of those "travel writers" from
godknowswhere, Tibet maybe,
and have more of those endless tourism parties
at the Rainbow, trips to the
Falls, or fund more seedy beauty "tourism
pageants"?
Or was it Chen Chimutengwende at Public and Interactive
Affairs;
just some money to keep the
people at his cobweb Ministry
awake?
Or perhaps Samuel Undenge at the Anti-Corruption Ministry, so his
Anti-Corruption Commission can hold more of those corny road shows and print
more "fight corruption" T-shirts?
Or could it be Ambrose Mutinhiri, at
Youth and Employment Creation, so he
can disburse wads of cash to some of
those self-employment "projects" - goat
herding consortiums at Ngomahuru or
somewhere?
Then you could also get the following Ministers to stand in Parly
and let
you know how, apart from salaries and perks, they used whatever
allocations
you gave them: Webster
Shamu, Minister of Policy
Implementation, Small Enterprise Minister
Sithembiso Nyoni, Munyaradzi Paul
Mangwana of Indigenisation and
Empowerment, Undenge, Chimutengwende and
Elliot Manyika, the government
utility guy.
The public needs to know who
has spent how much,
and on what, so they know
who to boo and jeer at as
Ministers leave Parliament, or when they see them
at traffic
intersections.
The truth hurts.
Especially for ZANU PF. But at least you
need to be realistic if you are to
take a shot at forecasting.
One of the
reasons, apart from free spending, that this year's budget had
been spent by
March is because it was premised on a 2007-end inflation
forecast of 400-500
percent and growth in mining and agriculture.
Mumbengegwi obviously comes
highly rated. Why else would he be the only
Minister in President Mugabe's
Cabinet without a deputy? He has a chance to
show that today.
Samuel
Mumbengegwi, they would sing in hymns in forty years' time, the
Minister who
finally told the truth.
How about it then Minister?
FinGaz
Economic
Viewpoint with Simon Bere
TALKING about economic turnaround implies that
the economy had taken a wrong
turn and therefore requires to make a u-turn
and then travel along a desired
path from which it previously
deviated.
We need to think seriously about what me mean by economic
turnaround because
it is that meaning that carries the answers we have to
our economic
challenges.
The answers that we have determine our economic
realities both at present
and in the future.
In strategic terms, we need
to assess and quantify what has been lost. This
assessment of what we have
lost must include all components, tangible and
intangible, that are critical
for long term economic success.
Then we must assess what we have gained over
the period starting from a
specific economic baseline (for example, our
economic value in 1996).
The difference will give us our national net
economic value, which is the
sum total of resources we have that we can use
as a basis for making bold,
long term economic decisions for stepping into
the future.
In my view there are two possible directions for our economic
success into
the future: The economic turnaround approach and the economic
recreation
approach. Our national net economic value will determine what
direction to
take.
In my view, economic turnaround implies a restoration
of the economic value
that we have lost. It implies putting back pieces
together to restore what
was already there. It implies using the past as a
model to create the
future. It implies going back to the past in order to
move into the future.
It implies revisiting the good old days.
Economic
recreation, on the other hand, implies using our net economic value
to
create a new economic system. It implies creating a completely new
economic
vision and then using our current net economic value to create that
new
economic vision. In the extreme it implies creating a new economy
completely
different from what existed before.
It implies using human imagination rather
than memories of the past as our
mental springboard into that economic
future.
It implies being comfortable with bold changes and the courage to
rewrite
our economic blueprint and even challenge our current economic
beliefs and
adopting new ones. It implies being comfortable with spending
more of our
mental time in the future rather than in the present and the
past. How do we
decide which direction to take into a better economic
future?
In my view, our net economic value provides the answer. If our net
economic
value is so high that what economy we have lost is marginal, then
an
economic turnaround approach is ideal because it means that the distance
we
have deviated from our ideal is short enough for us to go back and
reconnect
with our ideals.
This means the resources we need to reconnect
are relatively few and the
pain we will experience during the process will
be small and short enough
for us to endure. Victory will be relatively
quick. It is also less risk an
economic operation to undertake and we will
be able to preserve our net
economic value.
If our net economic value is
very low, it means that the distance we have
travelled from our ideal past
is very long and going back to that past is an
arduous task that will take
an enormous amount of time and resources. In
most cases, our resources are
likely to be depleted before we can reconnect
with the ideal past. At the
same time, the small net economic value means
that we are reaching the point
where recreating a completely new economy is
an easier task.
At this
point of recreating a new economy, the future drives all economic
action.
The net economic value is used to kick-start a new creative
process that
begins with a completely new vision and the strategies we need
to achieve
that vision. This process requires increased application of
mental resources
including human imagination, strategic thinking and
emotional intelligence.
Do we need a turnaround road or the economic rebirth
route into the future?
A collective decision is required.
The first
question to ask is "What is our present net economic value?" After
determining our net economic value, we then need to use the result to make a
directional decision. Second we need to ask: What economy do we desire for
our future?
In my view, we are within a major economic discontinuity that
separates the
future economy from the past economy.
We must let go of the
past. The starting point is to let go of the concept
of an economic
turnaround and embrace the idea of economic recreation. Then
we need to
create a new vision for our economy, based on the resources we
already have,
our aspirations and desires. Then we need to focus our
thoughts, feelings
and energies on turning this new vision into reality.
It takes great effort
to build a new economy and turn it into reality. Of
the different efforts
required, the most challenging effort is emotional
effort. It requires the
development of strong positive emotional bonds among
all Zimbabweans.
We
must be prepared to shift our mindsets and embrace new ways of thinking
and
feeling. Faith and hope are important resources in this economic
recreation
effort.
For without hope and faith, even the most promising dreams will die a
natural death.
Simon Bere is a member of the Zimbabwe Economics
Society. The Zimbabwe
Econ-omics Society articles are coordinated by
Lovemore Kadenge and he can
be contacted on e-mail: lovemore.kadenge@gmail.co.zw
Cell
091 2 980 016
FinGaz
Takura
Zhangazha
WHEN we talk about the future of Zimbabwe, we are essentially
talking about
our present and our past both as observers and
participants.
In these conversations we remember past hopes, aspirations
and dreams, we
commiserate about the present and what its circumstances mean
for the
future, and in this, what the future means for our children, the
children of
others and the children of the country.
Zimbabwe's schools
have resumed their academic calendar for the last time
this year with many a
parent/guardian bordering on despair about what it is
that they can expect
of their children as they send them off to school in
this, an examination
term, a transitory term to the next grade/ level
because it has not only
been a trying time just to purchase the basics
needed for education and pay
school fees, but also that they also have a
tacit, if not fearful knowledge
that for their children, the future is laden
with difficulties that make it
almost impossible to imagine every dark cloud
as having a silver
lining.
And it is this 'impossibility' of imagining the full import of the
current
state of Zimbabwe's education system that I wish to interrogate for
a number
of reasons.
The first reason revolves around the fact that ever
since the implementation
of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme
(ESAP) in the 1990s, it was
never a public secret that Zimbabwe's education
system was taking a turn for
the worse. Those who had access to wealth or
the benevolence of mission
schools were always bound to be better off,
because they could afford the
evident withdrawal of state funding from
education.
In many a critique of the education system stemming from the same
years to
the present, the general argument was state centered, arguing about
where
the state had gone wrong, while the same said state was still churning
out
high school graduates who, because of the bottle neck nature of the
system
in place, would either squeeze through to tertiary education or be in
a
majority that begins the arduous process of engaging with the informal
economy.
In other words education was and has always been treated in
Zimbabwe as if
it was a flawed production industry, producing school leavers
whose skills
and understanding were more reliant not only on what the
curriculum had to
offer but how more significantly on how hard they burnt
the midnight candle
in order to get into the 'better 'O' and 'A' level
schools that were the
gateway to climbing Zimbabwe's near impossible social
ladder.
This unwritten rule of there being better schools than the rest was a
clear
testimony to the failure of Zimbabweans as a whole, to imagine beyond
their
own individual family's children's future and start being responsible
for
the future of all of the country's children. Of course, the taught
children
both then and now, would boast of how the schools that they had
been
enrolled at were better than those of their less fortunate
street/village
football or netball colleagues. But this was only a matter of
consequence
because education in its nature tends to bring out not only the
best or
worst in people but most significantly, a competitive edge to those
that are
being taught. The critical point of interrogation is how we, as
Zimbabweans,
allowed education to become as selective as the depths of a
parent's pocket
in order for it to meet what should be universally
recognised standards. The
better schools were always the preserve of the
rich (never mind the academic
capacity of their children) or those that have
been founded by missionaries
that have also increasingly found themselves
courting the rich in order to
stay afloat while occasionally letting in the
religious poor through the
gates of assumed opportunity.
So as it is, and
as it was since the 90's, education, with the evident
approval of the
ministers responsible for all levels of education as well as
social welfare,
has become as elite as owning a used Japanese car and as a
result become
meaningless and a mockery to those that cannot begin to
imagine how they
became so poor as to be unable to at least send their
children to
school.
This brings me to my second interrogation of the current state of
education
which still hinges upon issues concerning imagining the country's
future in
tandem with the present. On numerous occasions, any citizen with
an inkling
of national concern about the future of the country will, for a
moment,
catch a glimpse of school kids walking from a primary or secondary
school
around lunch time and ponder as to what the future holds for these
young
Zimbabweans. The concern shown in such instances is as noble as it
impractical. Because most of my generation (just a few years before
independence) had a little bit of a better time (comparatively) in terms of
quality education in the 80's until just before ESAP was brought to the
universities in the mid to late 90's by Ignatious Chombo, we have tended to
wish that the young comrades will, like some of us managed to do, scramble
from the doldrums to at least make the most of what is a deplorable reality.
This is no longer adequate.
Within the faces of the young comrades that
we teach, meet, bring up or
simply occasionally observe, there is a dying
hope, and this hope is dying
because the present is meaningless. The
meaningless is derived from the poor
education facilities, the absentee
teachers, the disjuncture between the
student movements at tertiary levels
with those at secondary and above all,
the inability of adult Zimbabweans to
challenge the government on this, the
most important testimony of legacy and
posterity that one generation can
bestow another.
It has to be made
apparent to those that claim to be a government of the
people and those that
claim to represent the progressive oppositional forces
within Zimbabwe that
education should not and cannot be allowed to be
elitist. The tricky
position of the Zimbabwe Association of Trust Schools
needs to be considered
in this regard. Their protectionism not only of the
elite schools and their
rich Parents Teachers Associations but
simultaneously of the children of
those that have so abused the education
system cannot be viewed as anything
other than a betrayal of not only the
masses but a complicit undermining of
the future of Zimbabwe for the benefit
of the few.
In order for the
country to move towards a better future, we have to take
into account that
which we are allowing our children not only to learn from
the confines of
classrooms but also that which we have been allowing them to
experience
since independence, that inequality at home immediately connotes
to
inequality in education standards at the various learning institutions
they
attend.
This is then exacerbated by the manner in which the social welfare
system
has completely abandoned those children that come from the poorer
families
that are a veritable majority in both rural and urban Zimbabwe,
where the
worst education is linked to hunger, deprivation and staying
within the
confines of the same even if one is lucky to reach the legal age
of
majority.
As is it is, all those children that have resumed their
schooling this week
have a right to feel betrayed not by any spectacular
revolution, but by the
parents that have allowed this state of affairs to
prevail, even if it is
against their better wishes. They have a right to
remind us, as adult
Zimbabweans of the necessity of planning for the future
through a continual
engagement with its present manifestations embodied by
them, and ask of us
to view their education not as a selfish individual
family endeavour, but
that of a nation, a people and a
future.
lTakura Zhangazha is a senior programme officer with
Misa-Zimbabwe
FinGaz
Comment
A FLURRY of legal
instruments introduced by the government in recent months
to defuse a
potentially explosive economic crisis sticking out like a sore
thumb in the
sub-Saharan region has kept lawyers and laymen alike busy.
Not out of the
desire to exercise their minds or to keep informed, but
because of their
far-reaching effects on the way they live.
At a time when people are
beginning to familiarise themselves with the
National Incomes and Pricing
Commission Act, a raft of other new laws and
amendments they can hardly make
head or tail of, are rushed through out of
the woodwork.
The latest in a
series of new laws to hit them are regulations gazetted last
week, which
have the effect of freezing salaries and prices for six months,
thereby
severely restricting collective bargaining.
Except with the National Incomes
and Pricing Commission's approval, the
amended law prohibits anyone from
adjusting salaries, wages, rents, service
charges, prices and school fees on
account of increases or anticipated
increases in the consumer price index
(CPI). It also outlaws the indexing of
salaries and prices to the exchange
rate (official or unofficial) that had
become a necessity for planning
purposes.
By freezing salaries and prices, the government is hoping to
stabilise
prices and rein in inflation, which, at over 7 600 percent is the
world's
highest. Not that anyone doubts the sincerity on the part of
government in
wanting to cushion consumers from the harsh effects of
inflation. But in as
much as one cannot dispute the fact that the CPI, in
particular, had become
the source for inflationary expectations through
indexing, it is outlandish
to think that freezing salaries and prices is the
panacea for the country's
problems. Far from it.
It is pertinent to note
that the inflationary expectations were created by
government's failure to
prescribe correct medication in order to resuscitate
the ailing economy. The
perennial fiscal deficits, which are widening
year-in, year-out, are a major
component of the country's inflation.
Gideon Gono and his team at the central
bank have worked tirelessly to
remedy the crisis, but their monetary policy
responses lack support from the
fiscal side, where lip service is paid to
issues of trimming the bloated
civil service and privatisation of
loss-making parastatals, among other
things. Nothing short of a radical
fiscal policy shift, of which Finance
Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi will today
have the opportunity to set the ball
rolling, can ease the suffering among
the country's poor.
A parallel market has emerged where consumers are buying
their groceries,
fuel, meat, drugs, etc, which have disappeared from
supermarket shelves.
Consumers are paying as much as $700 000 per kg of beef
and $350 000 per
litre of petrol and yet the powers-that-be would want the
public to believe
that the Cold Storage Company's retail price of $238 000
per kg of super
beef and the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe's $60 000 for
a litre of
petrol is what they should pay.
The parallel market is now a
reality. Pretending otherwise will condemn
everyone accessing products on
the parallel market deeper into abject
poverty, deprive the fiscus of the
much-needed revenue and destroy the few
enterprises still doing business in
the formal sector.
Inadvertently, workers would be forced to strike to press
for realistic
salaries, otherwise the only other alternative left would be
to join the
great trek into the diaspora. The brain drain has already cost
the country
at least three million people and there is no way the economy
can recover
quickly without a solid skills base.
The tightening of the
lid on school fees is the last thing the government
can do if it is serious
about saving the crumbling education system, which
has been crying out for
more funding and economic fees. Putting a cap on
rentals will also deny the
country new investment in real estate and
contribute to the deterioration of
existing properties. By freezing salaries
and prices, the government has
also made it crystal clear that it has lost
interest in the social contract
and is now ruling by decree.
All this demonstrates the lack of consistency in
government policy, a fact
noted by the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank and other
multilateral lending agencies that have since turned
their backs on Harare.
Only recently, the Southern African Development
Community made similar
observations, and recommended consistency in
government policy, but before
the ink is dry on the regional grouping's
secretary-general's report, the
government has made another policy
U-turn.
A free market system, which the government is so much afraid of,
rests on a
highly complex interplay of human decisions and it cannot be
reduced to
simple formulae like freezing prices.
Perhaps the
powers-that-be should take a leaf from author, Andrew Sandlin,
who noted,
"In the economic sphere, the victory of simplicity almost always
necessitates the deprivation of liberty."
Lock them all up
EDITOR - One thing
that frightens me about the opposition is that the
majority of them do not
have a job, have never held a job, and have never
run a successful business
in their lives. They have no work culture yet
almost all of them live a posh
lifestyle. Where do they get money to buy
houses in posh neighbourhoods and
drive the latest model cars?
I am afraid to say that I have not yet found the
answer to that question.
But as I continue to analyse the situation, it
looks clearer to me that most
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) officials
would want President Robert
Mugabe to stay in power as much as possible.
Why?
First, the government does not bother to ask where these officials are
getting their money from. Work culture is not one of their values and
becoming the ruling party would require transparency. To me that is a lot of
freedom to give up.
Secondly, these officials will be forced to live
normal lifestyles. Today,
most of them can afford to travel the world over
and live like kings and
queens. Who in this world would like to forego such
comfort?
When Morgan Tsvangirai maintains his rhetoric about amnesty for
President
Mugabe, what he is actually saying to him is, do not step down
because we
will be forced to forego our luxurious lifestyles. The best thing
for you
and us is for you, Mr President, to stay on.
In my opinion, both
the MDC and ZANU PF officials must be scrutinised slowly
and carefully.
These people are misusing our country's wealth for personal
gain and they
must face prosecution. All the wealth held in their person,
relatives, and
animals must be thoroughly scrutinised and recovered for the
benefit of the
country.
There should never be a question of amnesty. To me, offering an
amnesty is
purely a quest for political power. I understand Tsvangirai did
his part but
it sounds more and more to me that he has reached his limits.
It is time for
fresh leadership and ideas if we are to improve the lot of
Zimbabweans.
My solution is to jail all ZANU PF and MDC officials. The only
condition for
release is full payment of looted wealth. Institute a real
land
redistribution exercise that involves all stakeholders. We cannot waste
time
and more money by setting up land review committees to audit the land
redistribution exercise.
Denford Madenyika
United
Kingdom
-----------
Laws of nature cannot be changed by
decree
EDITOR - So the President thinks that if he orders
prices to stabilise then
market forces will listen to him. Market forces are
driven by natural human
behaviour and the laws of nature cannot be changed
by decree. Political
authority does not change the laws of nature.
I
think what the government has just realised is that when you order prices
to
go down you are basically ordering your revenues to go down as well.
Secondly you cannot order people to produce at a loss. The only people who
do that are slave traders and those who practiced forced labour (chibharo).
Unless the Zimbabwean government plans at some stage to introduce slavery or
forced labour, the route they are following will lead to economic
collapse.
The government must learn that you cannot have your cake and eat it
at the
same time. You cannot order a price freeze in a way which damages
production
and hope to get revenue for regular expenditure as well. After
all,
government revenue is mostly derived from taxing transactions. So
without
high value transactions, the governemnt will not have revenue and
without
revenue it will eventually collapse.
The only proven method of
having a stable economy in the modern era is the
free market
system.
Jupiter Punungwe
UK
------------
What any sensible govt
would not do
EDITOR - Any sensible government tries to
maximise transactions that take
place within its economy. It is from taxing
those transactions that
government gets money. If a government forces people
to curtail
transactions, the result is very obvious. Its own revenue is
going to
decline. Printing money will only worsen inflation.
The
experiments that the Zimbabwean government is trying have been tried
before,
as far back as the days of the Roman Empire.
JP
United
Kingdom
----------
Give us freedom train at the
UZ
EDITOR - I am very upset with the way Levy Nyagura and his
cronies are doing
their work at the University of Zimbabwe. I cannot help
but wonder how they
can close all halls of residence on the pretext that the
city council said
that the halls were unsuitable for students to
occupy.
I cannot imagine ZUPCO, with its depleted fleet of buses, ferrying 8
000
students on a daily basis. If they do not want us to stay on campus,
it's
fine, but what we will need is a freedom train to transport us daily
because
we cannot afford the fares being charged by the private commuter
omnibus
operators.
David Chikoni
Harare
-----------
This
would be a humanitarian crisis
EDITOR - A recent story in
your newspaper recycles an often cited figure of
three million mostly
illegal Zimbabweans in South Africa. I have often
thought that this figure
is meant to suggest that the deterioration in the
economy has made
Zimbabweans move in their millions to South Africa. Really.
First, such a
massive movement of people across the Limpopo would constitute
a
humanitarian crisis of such proportions as to bring all known humanitarian
agencies flocking to the region to help.
Secondly, people who are now
known as Zimbabweans, an ancient people, from
the time of the Great Zimbabwe
civilisation to date have moved to lands
across the Limpopo and back for
economic, political and cultural reasons or
just to visit friends and
relatives. Few Zimbabweans will not know of a
family member who has
resettled in South Africa in the past 50 years.
Thirdly, the current economic
deterioration set in only after the unbudgeted
disbursements to war veterans
and the yet to be fully appreciated impact of
the Congo war. The economic
indices at the time - inflation and the exchange
rate - exhibited a marked
escalation and depreciation respectively. Any
economic analyst worth their
salt will understand that the more recent IMF
withdrawal of balance of
payments support to the country only exarcebated
the effects of a malignant
central government profligacy.
Nonetheless, clouded in all this statistic
peddling is the indisputable fact
that the economy of the country now known
as Zimbabwe from the time it was
Southern Rhodesia has never enjoyed a
growth rate sufficient to generate
enough jobs to absorb the natural growth
in employable adults. A substantial
proportion of the jobs sometimes touted
as lost in the current economic
malaise are low paying slave like jobs on
the tobbaco farms persistently
shunned by locals.
Three million mostly
illegal Zimbabweans in South Africa. Not a chance. Is
this letting the
government off the hook? In this case maybe so. I cannot
recall who it was
who said 'I may not agree with what you say but I will
fight for your right
to say it'.
Jacob M Mungoshi
Canada
----------
Zimbos are
indeed a desperate lot
EDITOR - I feel that as Zimbabweans we
are a desperate lot to let a person
like Thabo Mbeki mediate in the
political impasse we have. Of course we
would welcome any action designed to
change the status quo but should we let
a person whose credentials are
suspect or one who questions the link between
HIV and AIDS mediate for us?
The MDC should understand that Mbeki is not a
reliable broker because of the
following reasons:
lHe sides with the ZANU PF government;
lHe always says
only Zimbabweans can solve their problems so technically he
has no role to
play;
lHe allows ZANU PF to use fabricated and doctored stories about
terrorism
and political violence in the talks even though these have been
found by the
courts to be unfounded.
Even though this has no links to
Zimbabwe, Mbeki retained a minister who
believes in using beetroot to treat
HIV patients and fired a deputy health
minister for questioning the
unscientific basis for the rejection of ARVs in
favour of beetroot. All this
puts his credibility in doubt.
Tariro
Harare
------------
Pius
Ncube: My story was above board
EDITOR - I have noted the
coverage of the alleged sexual scandal by the
Archbishop of Bulawayo
Diocese, Pius Ncube in some sections of the media. In
all articles, several
fabricated and libellous allegations have been made
about my conduct in
covering the story.
Let me put it on record that the allegations are
malicious and designed to
tarnish my reputation as a professional
journalist. I view these allegations
as part of a wider campaign by
reactionaries - who see any exposure of
scandals by opposition and
pro-opposition individuals or groups - to rid the
international media in
Zimbabwe of any balanced and objective journalists.
I was never involved in
any sting operation against Archbishop Ncube neither
did I go to interview
him in the company of Tazzen Mandizvidza and Happison
Muchechetere of the
ZBC as alleged by some media reports. Allegations that I
gave these two SABC
jackets so that Archbishop Ncube could see them as SABC
journalists are
therefore ridiculous. I have no SABC jacket and have not
seen one in my term
as an SABC journalist in Zimbabwe. A check at the SABC
offices in Auckland
Park would have also revealed that there are no such
jackets and if at all
there are there, none has ever been issued to me.
The Archbishop, who as a
Zimbabwean would definitely know Mandizvidza and
Muchechetere, can confirm
that none of those people were present at the
interview. Allegations that I
"quoted" the Archbishop out of context are
also ludicrous. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Nowhere in the
interview did I ever ask Archbishop
Ncube on the goings-on in the USA
regarding Roman Catholic bishops who were
facing allegations of abusing
young children. An unedited copy of the
interview is available from my
office (productions@mightymoviespl.com)
for anyone interested in watching my
entire 25-minute interview with the
Archbishop.
It is appalling that some journalists have jumped onto the
bandwagon of
repeating propaganda spewed by anti-Zimbabwe government
websites, which have
no respect for the basic tenets of journalism (balance,
objectivity and
fairness), without even checking with me for my side of the
story.
I perceive this as the lowest point of media polarisation in Zimbabwe.
It is
so sad that anybody seen to be writing anything critical of the
government
is seen as an enemy. In equal measure, anyone writing critically
of the
opposition or those opposed to President Mugabe is called names, not
least
that they are members of the Central Intelligence
Organisation.
This is the sorry state that Zimbabwean journalism finds itself
in and I
think that some of the guilty publications must take a position to
end this
kind of polarisation. Only by tackling issues and not people, will
our
country move forward. If the media needs to play a meaningful role in
positively changing Zimbabwe, it must move from being a vehicle of hate
propaganda. It must stop character assassination of fellow professionals as
is being done to me. I have not done anything wrong except to do my work.
Tough if anyone has found the story unpalatable but my facts are intact and
it is undeniable that any allegation of sexual conduct by a Roman Catholic
archbishop would make headlines anywhere in the world. In Zimbabwe, the
story is even more interesting because it has a political angle as
well.
Supa Mandiwanzira
Harare
Mens News Daily
September 5,
2007
Statutory Instrument 159A of 2007, issued by Presidential
Decree last week,
is an astonishing piece of legislation. It clearly reveals
the full
intentions behind the price control operation and the
indigenisation
exercise.
1. The State is systematically bankrupting
all independent business. They
are doing so by denying them the right to
produce and market their products
at a profit.
2. They are fully
anticipating wholesale company closures and collapse
across the country. No
distinction is made for local and foreign controlled
companies.
3. As
soon as a company folds they will move in through the IDC and the
State
Trading Corporation to take control. Resources will be made available
to
fund the operations and then price controls will be relaxed and the
companies allowed to resume production.
4. A process of transferring
control to local Zanu PF individuals and
companies will then ensue in a
similar fashion to the Olivine take over.
This was effected by a payment of
US$6,8 million by Cotco - working with the
IDC. The company will warehouse
the shares until it is decided who will get
this plum.
5. The great
danger of this process is the same as was the case in respect
of the farm
invasions. The loss of skills and experience that takes place
during the
transition might actually render the enterprise unmanageable. The
loss of
skills will be permanent because most will leave the country.
The scale and
audacity of this exercise is mind boggling. They are clearly
in a hurry to
do this - I call it the Neutron Bomb exercise - you kill the
enterprise
without destroying the infrastructure which you then take over.
6. The
private sector are not fools - they know what is going on and many
are now
asset stripping their operations - the financial cost of this
operation will
place a huge new burden on the State (Reserve Bank printers)
and will
drastically reduce all form of State revenues. We can therefore
anticipate
that this will further exacerbate inflation.
Nearly all the companies
known to me are vunerable to this operation - no
matter how large. Its side
effect wil be to drive at least 2 million
Zimbabweans out of the country
into South Africa, the only destination that
is close enough and large
enough to absorb this number of people in a short
period of time (three to
six months).
Eddie Cross