Yahoo News
Sat Sep 8, 10:49 AM ET
VIANA DO CASTELO, Portugal (AFP) -
Britain has warned fellow EU nations that
Prime Minister Gordon Brown will
not attend a planned Europe-Africa summit
if Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe
does, diplomatic sources said Saturday.
British Foreign Secretary
David Miliband made London's position clear on
Friday during an informal
meeting of EU foreign ministers in the northern
Portuguese town of Viana do
Castelo.
"He told them that the PM would not be there if Mugabe goes," a
source close
to the closed-door talks said.
Miliband contented
himself Saturday by saying: "I don't think anyone wants
to be part of a
media circus in December," when the summit will be held in
Lisbon.
"There is serious work to be done and that is what we are
focussing on," he
said before joining his fellow foreign ministers for a
group photo.
"I think we all want a successful summit, but we are also
very, very
concerned about the situation in Zimbabwe," Miliband added,
pointing out
that the Zimbabwean currency had been devalued by 1,200 percent
on Thursday.
A senior British official told AFP that "it is difficult to
imagine a
scenario in which the British prime minister and other EU leaders
will
attend a summit at which Mugabe is present."
He added that
Zimbabwe should nevertheless be represented at the meeting.
While Africa
as a whole and Zimbabwe in particular have serious issues to
discuss, such
as poverty, climate change and security "none of them will be
properly
discussed if Mugabe rolls up and we have a Mugabe circus," the
British
official said.
He added that there were precedents for such cases, such
as Myanmar's
involvement in the Association of South East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) despite a
bar on prime minister Than Shwe attending.
An EU
official said there could be some room for manoeuvre on the problem.
"You
know how it goes, you send a generic invitation to everyone and hope
that
there will be some kind of transport problem... The Africans know very
well
that it is in their interests that this summit takes place".
Portugal,
which holds the EU's rotating presidency, has said that it has no
intention
of discriminating against Mugabe.
"It is not up to Portugal, current head
of the EU, to invite some people
rather than others," Portugal's Deputy
Foreign Minister Joao Gomes Cravinho
said at a Lusaka summit of southern
African leaders last month.
The 83-year-old Mugabe is officially barred
from travelling to the 27
nations in the EU.
The issue has long
hampered efforts to organise a second summit between the
European Union and
African states. The first was held in Cairo in 2000.
For a country which is in a state of economic collapse, there is
a surprising amount of movement in Zimbabwe today. Drive through the darkened streets of Harare at night - for
there is no electricity - and you see hundreds of people walking purposefully at
two and three o'clock in the morning.
They are the few who need to get to work - only one in five of
the adult population still has a job. They take up their positions on street corners waiting for a
passing car or pick-up truck. There is no petrol, and regular bus services are already a
distant memory. "I sometimes wait four or five hours to get to work," said one
office worker.
"But even the bosses don't complain." Everyone in Zimbabwe understands life is difficult. Bread queues A couple of hours later, as dawn breaks over the capital, many
people - the mothers and unemployed - start forming long, silent queues that
wind around entire blocks of the city. There is a rumour that bread could be arriving in the city
today.
Five hours later, people are still waiting. Policemen arrive, apparently helpfully supervising the queue and
giving a surreal air of normality to the city scene. "They just pretend," said one man in the queue with five
children at home to feed. "They get the first news if a lorry is on its way with bread,
sugar, or mealie meal and they jump to the top of the queue and loot the food."
Once one of the richest countries in Africa, Zimbabwe has become
a barrow, bucket, and bag economy. You see people walking for miles, wheeling barrows, buckets on
their heads, and plastic bags in hand. Like the "bag ladies" in the former Soviet Union, they are
always on the ready just in case something turns up. But it seldom does. Medical horror People are starving. The evidence is in the hospitals where
tiny, wizened babies lie dying in their cots while their mothers look on
helplessly.
One mother cradles a child who is losing her hair and her skin,
a sign of the most advanced form of Kwashioka or vitamin deficiency. It is certainly the first time I have seen this condition in 20
years of reporting on the developing world. "Zimbabwe once offered the most comprehensive medical service in
Africa," a doctor explains. "It is now becoming a textbook case of medical horror."
Many children arrive with grandmothers. Grandmother or child-headed families are a growing social
phenomenon in Zimbabwe today, often the result of the Aids epidemic. In other cases - if parents still have the energy and the means
- they flee abroad to look for food and to send back money. Fleeing to South Africa Buses loaded with people and luggage wait for days around the
petrol stations on the roads leading out of the country. When fuel eventually arrives, they lurch off, swaying
precariously under the weight of so many passengers, on the five-hour journey to
the border with South Africa. Zimbabwean immigration officials do not bother them and, on the
South African side, they can be paid off with bribes.
For those who do not have the money and who have to duck through
the bush, there is a greater risk. Gangs wait on either side of the river for the groups of
desperate refugees. "They had guns and knives," one girl tells me. "There were 15
boys and five girls in our group. "They killed one boy when he refused to give them his shoes.
They raped all the girls." Still, they arrive in South Africa at the rate of thousands a
week. The many victims of political persecution will never go back
while Robert Mugabe is alive. Others just come for a few weeks to make enough money to take
home. I met two teachers. Liliana told me she worked as a domestic
cleaner while Patience told me she worked as a prostitute. "What else can I do?" she said. "My husband is dead and I have three children back home to
feed." Slow agony It is a situation that suits the governments on both sides.
Among the refugees, there are doctors, engineers, agricultural
experts, just the kind of people who are needed by South Africa's growing
economy.
Zimbabweans have long since given up hope that the South African
leader - Thabo Mbeki - will put pressure on his old friend, Robert Mugabe, to
reform. And as for Robert Mugabe, an opposition politician in Harare
says: "This makes him a very, very happy dictator. "He gets rid of his opponents and they in turn send back money
to their families in Zimbabwe and that keeps things ticking over." Anyone expecting a swift conclusion to Zimbabwe's agony will be
disappointed. Thanks to the ingenuity and tolerance of people still in the
country and the remittances sent back by those who have left, Zimbabwe's death
throes could last a long time yet. From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday 8
September, 2007 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme
schedules for World Service transmission times.
8 September 2007, 11:13 GMT 12:13
UK
Harare
Yahoo News
HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwe's main labour union will stage a
two-day strike
against the economic meltdown in a country with the world's
highest
inflation rate and could launch more "drastic" protests, its head
said
Saturday.
Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress
of Trade Unions (ZCTU)
told a news conference that the union had decided to
"continue with the
national action in the form of a stay-away on September
19 and 20."
Matombo said the supplementary budget presented by the finance
minister on
Thursday also falls short of workers "expectations of a tax free
threshold
that is linked to the poverty datum line".
"September 19
and 20 is a warm up. If government does not heed our calls
they will be more
drastic measures such protests and demonstrations which
the ZCTU is known
for."
Zimbabwe's economy has steadily declined over the past seven years,
characterised by inflation running well past the 7,500 percent mark and high
employment, with at least 80 percent of the population living below the
poverty threshold.
The southern African nation is in the midst of an
eight-year recession,
characterised by food shortages, high unemployment and
an economy shrunk by
more than a third.
Matombo criticised President
Robert Mugabe's government for ignoring demands
to link wages to the poverty
line and expressed concern at a recent
presidential decree in which Mugabe
barred any pay rises without special
authorisation.
"What the
president has done is direct interference and unconstitutional,"
he
said.
In September last year, labour unions were forced to abandon plans
for mass
anti-government protests after organisers were rounded up in a
police
crackdown.
News24
08/09/2007 14:01 -
(SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's ruling party
announced on
Saturday it will hold an extraordinary congress this year in a
move analysts
say is meant to whip dissenting factions into line ahead of
key elections
next year.
Mugabe is due to stand as his party's
candidate in presidential elections
expected to be held jointly with
parliamentary elections in March next year.
Mugabe, who has ruled without a
break since 1980, will be seeking
re-election at the age of 84.
But
political commentator Bill Saidi said Zanu-PF was in a state of
disarray,
with some of the party's political provinces against having Mugabe
stand as
the party's candidate.
He said he expected Mugabe to call for unity and
make a few threats at the
congress due in early December.
"From what
we have heard, there's a movement in some provinces to not have
Mugabe as a
candidate. This congress is to sort it out and formally announce
Mugabe as
the candidate," Saidi, who is the deputy editor of the private
Standard
newspaper, told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa.
"Maybe Mugabe is going to
read them the riot act," he said.
The ruling party is divided into at
least two rival factions jostling to
succeed Mugabe - one aligned to former
parliamentary speaker Emmerson
Mnangagwa, and the other behind former army
commander Solomon Mujuru, whose
wife Joyce is one of the country's two vice
presidents.
Traditionally, Zanu-PF holds a congress every five years. The
next congress
was only due in 2009, with only a much smaller national
conference billed
for later this year.
Writing cryptically in his
weekly newspaper column under his pen name
Nathaniel Manheru, Mugabe's
spokesperson George Charamba suggested news of
the extraordinary congress
could prompt speculation of an imminent unity
pact with the main opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.
But he quickly dismissed the
idea.
"It (MDC) has to be defeated. Extirpated from the body politic," he
wrote.
"The Extraordinary Congress will be about Zanu-PF!"
This
year's meeting had been scheduled to take place in the northern mining
town
of Bindura, but has now been moved to the capital to accommodate
hundreds of
delegates drawn from more than 50 districts across the country,
state media
reported.
Mugabe's party is set to pass into law a constitutional
amendment bill that
will allow presidential and parliamentary elections to
be held jointly in
March.
The amendment will also allow the Zanu-PF
dominated parliament to choose a
successor to Mugabe should he die in office
or stand down mid-term.
Discussions around the harmonised 2008 elections
are due to take centre
stage at this years Zanu-PF congress, said a report
on state radio. -
Sapa-dpa
Mail and Guardian
MacDonald Dzirutwe | Harare, Zimbabwe
07
September 2007 03:46
President Robert Mugabe's exchange-rate
devaluation and promises
of tax relief were dismissed on Friday by
Zimbabweans weary of an economic
crisis marked by the world's highest
inflation and severe shortages.
His government's latest bid
to ease the economic turmoil,
announced in a supplementary budget on
Thursday, highlighted the worsening
plight of the Southern African nation
and widespread fears that cash will be
worthless in the face of runaway
prices.
Zimbabwe's inflation rate has surpassed 7
600%.
Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi -- who devalued the
official
exchange rates -- said on Thursday that the tax changes would see a
worker
earning Z$4-million a month no longer pay tax. The threshold had
previously
been Z$1,5-million.
But that raised few
spirits on Friday on the streets of Harare,
where a chicken costs
Z$1-million.
"This [budget] is ridiculous," said Tawanda
Sambaza, an
electrical technician in Harare.
"I can only
buy four chickens with that money on the other
[black] market because there
is nothing in the shops," added Sambaza, who
earns Z$14-million more than
the average Zimbabwean.
Queues for everything from soda to
maize-meal are getting
longer. Zimbabwe's main bakery said this week that
bread shortages would
worsen after closing one of its outlets due to a lack
of wheat from
Mozambique.
A growing number of Zimbabweans
have resorted to using a
thriving black market for foreign currency to try
to protect themselves
against the inflation that has caused the Zimbabwean
dollar to plummet in
value.
The government on Thursday
scrapped a two-tier foreign-exchange
system for government and exporters,
devaluing both rates for the Zimbabwe
dollar to 30 000 against the
greenback.
Zimbabwe had applied an exchange rate of 250 to
the United
States currency for government transactions and had allowed
exporters and
foreign currency account holders to exchange at a rate of 15
000 prior to
the move.
The new rate still falls short of
a widely used black market
rate of about 250 000 to the US
dollar.
Amid fears that the economic bleeding could lead to
growing
support for a divided opposition, Mugabe, in power since
independence from
Britain in 1980, has cracked down on political opponents,
tightening his
grip on power ahead of presidential and parliamentary
elections expected
next year.
But the economic crisis may
pose the biggest threat to his rule,
analysts say, and his Western foes, who
have imposed sanctions in a bid to
weaken Mugabe's rule, are still banking
on their strategy.
"On the political front the government may
be winning but the
economy is its Achilles' heel," Eldred Masunungure, a
political analyst,
said. "This budget is testimony that the economic
policies are not working."
Mugabe remains defiant, attempting
to focus attention on the
Western powers he accuses of sabotaging Zimbabwe's
economy in retaliation
for his controversial seizure of white-owned farms
for redistribution to
landless black Zimbabweans, analysts
say.
He is likely to push a Bill through parliament,
dominated by his
Zanu-PF party, that would give Zimbabweans majority
ownership of
foreign-owned firms, fuelling fears it will drive away the few
remaining
foreign investors.
The veteran leader's salary,
along with those of his ministers,
was sharply raised this year. Veterans of
Zimbabwe's anti-colonial struggle,
among the hardest core supporters of his
government, also saw their
allowances increased.
"I'm
disappointed there's no real attempt to cut spending,"
economic commentator
Eric Bloch told Reuters.
"The income tax measures are not
sufficient ... they are still
taxing people who are starving." --
Reuters
VOA
By Patience Rusere
Washington
08 September
2007
The supplementary budget unveiled this week by
Zimbabwean Finance Minister
Samuel Mumbengegwi came in for some harsh
criticism this week from the
faction of the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change led by Morgan
Tsvangirai, which called it a "hotch-potch
of contradictory and
self-defeating policy tools.
Mumbengegwi told
parliament this week that the government would need more
than Z$37 trillion
dollars (US$145 million at the parallel market rate) to
run the country
until the end of the year. Of this, he said Z$735 billion
would go to
finance presidential and parliamentary elections due in march
2008, while
Z$500 billion would cover upgrades to airports in Harare and
Victoria Falls
with South Africa's 2010 World Cup in view.
Secretary General Tendai
Biti of the Tsvangirai MDC faction said in a
statement put out Friday that
the fact "that the supplementary budget can
exceed the original budget
presented in December 2006 by 800% betrays a
fundamental lack of
understanding of the nuts and bolts of economics. But
even more importantly,
it exposes the fact that the regime has no failing
control over this failing
economy (and) they do not care."
Biti said Mumbengegwi's fiscal plan had
little connection with the National
Economic Development Priority Program
launched by the administration of
President Robert Mugabe in March 2006.
"Sadly, the supplementary budget is
not anchored on this. Instead, it is a
hotch-potch of contradictory and
self-defeating policy tools."
He
said a "staggering" Z$12.662 trillion or a third of the supplementary
budget
was dedicated to the office of the president, which encompasses the
"notorious Central Intelligence Organization," the Defense Ministry and the
Home Affairs Ministry.
The supplementary budget would increase the
nation's stock of domestic debt
to Z$16 trillion from Z$8.1 trillion, Biti
stated, while at the same time in
order to dispose of the necessary funds
the government would be obliged to
aggressively print money.
He
charged that in presenting the supplementary budget without disclosing
estimated revenues, the government had violated Section 103 of the
Zimbabwean Constitution requiring full disclosure of revenues and
expenditures in an appropriations bill.
Biti expanded on his critique
of the supplementary budget in an interview
with reporter Patience Rusere of
VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe.
cathybuckle.com
Saturday 8th September
2007
Dear Family and Friends,
This week I write with three short
anecdotes from small town Zimbabwe. They
are not connected to each other in
any way except by example of life in a
country which, by all reasonable
accounts, is barely functioning. These are
all true stories, and putting
them down in black and white makes the
absurdity, and fragility, of our
lives here frighteningly real.
Milk is like gold in our town, as it is
almost all over the country. When
you appreciate that the shops are empty
and there is no food to buy, no
protein, no meat or eggs and now not even
bread, you understand that people
are desperate for nourishment. A phone
call to the local bulk dairy
marketing outlet this week went as
follows:
Q: Hello, Do you have milk please?
A: Nothing.
Q: What about
lacto (sour milk)?
A: Nothing.
Q: Any cheese?
A: (Bored) Nothing
Q:
Ice Cream! ?
A: (Slightly annoyed) No, we have nothing. We are playing
football in the
car park!
I happened to be waiting for a friend
outside a respectable local restaurant
in the town this week. Business
inside has come to a virtual standstill.
They have no cold drinks, no
alcohol, no bread or rolls, no sandwiches or
snacks to sell. As I waited a
decrepit pick up truck, belching the smoke of
paraffin mixed with diesel,
shuddered to a noisy halt next to me. A very
well dressed man in dark suit
and red tie struggled to open the battered
door and emerged looking
harassed. Many eyes watched, intrigued and eager to
see what the strangely
shaped bundle in the back was. Covered with a filthy,
tattered piece of
black plastic, there was a gasp as red tie man pulled off
the plastic to
reveal an enormous rib cage and section of beef carcass. No
refrigeration,
no hygenic wrapping, no protection from dirt and dust, just a
great,
bloodied chunk of nyama (meat!) Red tie man looked at the half dozen
spectators, sweat beading his forehead and we all knew that he had probably
been through hell to get this meat. Someone jokingly asked red tie man if he
was having a braai (barbecue) and someone else asked if they could come!
"This is for the restaurant," red tie man volunteered. "It's come straight
from the abbatoir you know" he said defensively, in answer to our silent but
raised eyebrows.
A geyser in my roof burst this week and when the
plumbers got it out the
original price was hand written in marker pen on the
side of the tank
alongside a dated sticker from the shop where it had been
purchased. The
date stamp was from a local hardware store and was machine
printed: "02.
2000" was still legible. The price, written in clear red
letters was one
thousand, nine hundred and eighty five dollars. The plumbers
gave me a quote
to repair the geyser by welding the numerous leaking joints,
flushing the
sludge which had gathered (thanks to our filthy and very
intermittent local
water supply) and reinstalling the tank. The quote was
for twenty six
million dollars. To replace the geyser with a new one, the
plumbers quote,
before labour, was for one hundred and twenty million
dollars. In just seven
years the price had gone from under two thousand
dollars to 120 million
dollars - which, in reality is actually 120 billion
dollars because 3 zeroes
were slashed from our currency a year
ago.
And so we stumble into another week wondering what absurdity awaits.
A
devaluation of 1200% as announced yesterday by the Minister of Finance? A
supplementary budget of 37 trillion dollars as produced this week? The
leader of the opposition charged for 'disorderly conduct' because he toured
empty shops followed by journalists?
Until next week, thanks for reading,
love cathy.
Latin American News
Agency
Havana, Sep 8 (Prensa Latina)
Zimbabwe Vice President Joyce Teurai
Ropa Mujuru starts Saturday an official
visit to Cuba, fulfilling an
invitation by the island's
government.
The African vice president will come accompanied by
Health Minister
David Pagwese Parirenyatwa, as well as other top government
officials.
Her agenda until September 12 will include
meeting with Council of
State Vice President Esteban Lazo and other Cuban
leaders, in addition to
touring sites of cultural and scientific
interest.
Her visit is an expression of the excellent
relations existing between
the two governments and peoples and will also be
an occasion to discuss the
regional and international situation.
VOA
By Netsai Mlilo and Ndimyake Mwakalyelye
Bulawayo and Washington
07 September 2007
Public
hearings in Harare and Bulawayo on the Zimbabwean government's
proposal to
amend the national constitution in ways that would significantly
change the
electoral landscape are primarily turning up opposition to the
measure.
A parliamentary public hearing Friday in Bulawayo, the
country's
second-largest city, failed to draw a large turnout - but the few
who showed
up said the amendment was an ill-timed waste of resources that
would do
little to relieve suffering Zimbabweans.
Correspondent
Netsai Mlilo reported from the Rainbow Hotel in Bulawayo.
Though
parliament was registering public opinion on the proposed amendment,
some
who attended the hearings said they doubted whether the public input
would
have an impact on the final shape of the legislation to be tabled in
parliament.
Experts noted that as a constitutional amendment, the law
does not have to
be vetted by a parliamentary committee but can go straight
to the floor for
debate after which the ruling party ZANU-PF party, armed
with the two-thirds
majority it claimed in the 2005 general election, could
easily pass it for
signature by President Robert Mugabe.
Another
issue of concern is timing - presidential and general elections are
just
seven months off, and many of the constitutional changes that are
envisioned
in the draft of the legislation would tip the scales in favor of
Mr.
Mugabe's ruling party.
For instance, the amendment will create 60 new
house seats, for a total of
2010, giving the ruling party an opportunity to
gerrymander ruling
party-safe districts.
For insight, VOA turned to
Chief Executive Officer Cephus Zinhumwe of the
National Association of
Non-Governmental Organizations and National Advocacy
Chairman Felix Mafa of
the National Constitutional Assembly, who spoke at
public hearings this week
in Harare and Bulawayo, respectively.
NANGO's Zinhumwe told reporter
Ndimyake Mwakalyelye of VOA's Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that while civil society
groups doubt the hearings will make much
difference once the legislation is
tabled in parliament, they want to
register their views.