Scoop, NZ
Saturday, 23 September 2006, 3:32 pm
Press Release: International
Confederation Of Free Trade Unions
International Day of Trade Union Action on
Zimbabwe
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the
World
Confederation of Labour (WCL) and the European Trade Union
Confederation
(ETUC) express their firm support for the leaders and members
of the
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). We strongly condemn the
completely
unwarranted police brutality against ZCTU activists in reaction
to the
protest demonstrations of September 13. We denounce in particular the
planned and ruthless torture inflicted on 15 ZCTU leaders and activists at
Harare's Matapi Police Station. We deplore that those who had fought so hard
for freedom from an oppressive past, now find themselves facing similar
retribution from the very people who they believed had delivered them from
tyranny. This is not what Zimbabweans had fought for; they deserve much
more.
The international trade union movement calls on the Government
of Zimbabwe
to respect the internationally recognised labour standards it
purports to
uphold, and to cease all further harassment against ZCTU members
and
leaders. As a first step it should drop all criminal charges against the
30
ZCTU activists due to go on trial on 3 October. No further legal action
should be taken against the ZCTU as a result of the September 13
demonstration. Instead, the situation in Zimbabwe requires the rapid launch
of a genuine process of social dialogue with the workers so as to find
solutions to the very genuine concerns of the workers such as falling wages,
rampant inflation and access to life-saving anti-viral drugs for those
living with HIV-AIDS.
The Government of Zimbabwe has consistently
violated the fundamental
Conventions of the International Labour
Organisation (ILO) protecting trade
union rights that it freely signed up
to. These most recent incidents,
including the very serious injuries
sustained by ZCTU leaders while in
police custody, are developed in a
detailed and very serious complaint
against Zimbabwe to be submitted to the
ILO today.
The international trade union movement is now considering
additional steps
to increase the pressure on Zimbabwe to respect
internationally recognized
workers' rights.
The ICFTU represents 155
million workers in 241 affiliated organizations in
156 countries and
territories: http://www.icftu.org ICFTU is
also a member
of Global Unions: http://www.global-unions.org
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=992
My
Filed under: Africa - Ethan @ 1:08 pm
It's a
long way to South Africa, and I try to limit myself to one trip a
year. So
the goal is to accomplish as much as possible on a single trip,
visiting
friends and colleagues around the region. I'd thought I might have
some
meetings in Cape Town and booked my ticket to South Africa with enought
time
to accomodate those meetings. They fell through, and I found myself
with a
decision: pay to change the ticket and go home, entertain myself in
South
Africa, or find somewhere else in the region to visit.
That one was easy.
Harare it is.
I enjoy being wrong when I travel. There's something doubly
satisfying about
having travel adjust or correct your perceptions - not only
do you know
something new, you "unknow" something wrong. As an American who
reads and
writes a great deal about Africa, I've read a lot about Zimbabwe.
And there
were lots of preconceptions to correct in travelling to Zimbabwe.
and others
that turned out to be more or less accurate.
I spent less
than three days in Zimbabwe, never left Harare and spent almost
all my time
in the company of different flavors of civil society activists.
So I got a
very brief and one-sided picture of the country. Still, I learned
a lot -
most centrally, I learned a little about why people who have the
option to
leave continue to live in Zimbabwe: it's one of the most beautiful
countries
I've ever been to, and the Zimbabwean people I interacted with are
some of
the smartest, bravest and friendliest folks I've ever met.
Which doesn't
mean that I'll be hurrying back. The ways in which Zimbabwe is
broken are
deep, profound and would be intolerable to most people around the
world. The
fact that Zimbabwe continues to exist - that people go to work,
to the
market, to the bars and cafes - is a tribute to the resilience and
flexibility of the Zimbabwean people. I'd snap, within days or
weeks.
Over the next couple of days - as I make my way from Harare to
Jo'burg to
London to New York to the blissful calm of Lanesboro, MA, I'll
try to share
some thoughts, impressions and photos from a very dense three
days. Thanks
to everyone who was willing to talk with me in Harare, and
especially to my
wonderful and gracious hosts who packed my days with a
wealth of fascinating
people to meet.
You might be having a currency crisis if....
Filed
under: Africa - Ethan @ 1:12 pm
There's a sign over the front desk in my
hotel which reads as follows:
"Non-Zimbabwean guests must pay their
accomodation charges in foreign
currency."
I've been to several
countries where it's been forbidden to denominate
salaries or prices in a
foreign currency - you had to pay in the local
money, helping ensure that
you didn't end up with two parallel economies
(one in dollars or other "hard
currency" and another in a local currency),
leading to black market trades
between the two.
But this sign reflects a much more dire reality.
Zimbabwe is desperately
short of foreign currency, and their own currency is
in an inflationary free
fall - CNN reports an annual inflation rate of
1200%. For businesses like my
hotel, which makes a lot of purchases abroad
to feed guests and keep us in
clean sheets, it's critical to have dollars on
hand, since few vendors will
accept payment in Zimbabwean dollars. And it's
hard to buy dollars, and
probably impossible to buy them at the official
exchange rates. So the hotel
needs me to pay them in dollars so they can buy
the goods to run the hotel
for the guests who pay in a currency that's
losing its value every day.
There's another reason as well. Since the
hotel can't be seen dealing with
foreign exchange at black market rates,
they are changing dollars at $250
Zim = $1 USD, less than half of the street
rate. This means that, to pay my
$100 hotel bill, I could change a US $50 on
the streetcorner, come back in
with $27000, pay my bill at the official rate
and have change left over.
(In truth, the opposite happens. The hotel
charges me for breakfast in
Zimbabwe dollars, then asks me to pay the bill
in US dollars, doubling the
real cost.)
All of this means that one of
my goals for this trip is to leave Zimbabwe
with as few Zimbabwean dollars
as possible. For one thing, they lose value
by the day. For another, they
might expire before I come back.
I've never seen currency with an
expiration date on it before. The bills I
carry are, technically, "Bearer
Cheques". They read:
"Pay the bearer on demand Twenty Dollars on or
before 31st July 2007 for the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Issue date 1st
August 2006."
In other words, good luck getting my $20 - (about two and a
half US cents at
today's black market rate) after August 2007 - the currency
is technically
worthless at that point. (Friends tell me that previous
currency marked like
this has been "extended" by legislative act to maintain
its worth.)
This currency looks temporary, too. It's got one ink color
(as opposed to
the multicolored fantasy of earlier bills) and no security
thread. Given how
much it costs to print money, how little the bills are
worth, and how fast
they'll become worthless, it seems no surprise that a
government scrambling
to make ends meet might cut some corners in the
national mint.
Speaking of cutting, the major innovation in the recently
issued bills is
the removal of three zeros. This means that the currency is
trading at
roughly 500:1 to the dollar, rather than 500000:1, which can get
a little
awkward. Reserve Bank chief Gideon Gono claims that the change was
made
because the size of the sums involved was beginning to break Zimbabwean
banking software. but many speculate that the change was designed to
distract people from the relentless pace of inflation.
Many folks
still refer to the price of things in terms of how many million
something
costs. It's taken me a while to mentally translate "million" as
"pound
sterling", which is a rough equivalent. Others seem to be having
translation
issues as well - banks have this helpful poster outside designed
to let you
convert from your millions to your thousands. (Note the slogan:
"Zero to
Hero")
(An old joke is that Mugabe had succeeded in making all
Zimbabweans into
millionaires, since that illustrious status used to involve
having more than
$2 USD. The ugliness of the joke - unless something
changes, lots of
Zimbabweans will find themselves millionares again
soon.)
Even with a big, thick stack of funny money, you'll have a hard
time buying
petrol in Harare. Most stations have signs out from that say
"Direct Fuel
Import Refuelling ONLY". That translates as "we don't accept
Zimbabwean
currency". To legally purchase fuel, your best bet is to visit a
site like
Mukuru.com and purchase fuel vouchers using dollars or pounds. You
end up
receiving a digital voucher, which you can trade in for a quantity of
fuel
coupons from the Mukuru office in Zimbabwe, which you can then turn
into
fuel at stations, 20 liters at a time. What you're doing - technically
- is
importing fuel from abroad for your own use, not paying for fuel in
Zimbabwe
with foreign currency, which would be illegal - hence, "Direct Fuel
Import".
And if you don't have internet access and foreign currency to
buy petrol?
You buy black market petrol from the back side of the petrol
station, paying
a sharp premium to the vendor for his willingness to break
the law.
Legal petrol is 52 pence a liter, 50 pence in large quantities -
close to $2
USD a liter. Bottled water is only slightly less expensive, at
$1.50 a
liter. This, I suppose, is only fair - bottled water is a commodity
bought
mostly by tourists and the wealthy. But it's odd to spend more for
two
liters of water than for lunch. I'm considering brushing my teeth with
beer
instead which is, thankfully, about half the cost of bottled
water.
My friends tell me that prices of all goods change rapidly - which
is to be
expected, when the currency is halving in value over the course of
a month.
I got a taste of this at the psuedo-Texan steakhouse I made the
error of
having dinner in last night. The menus were glossy and
professionally
printed. but lacked prices. The prices were printed on a
separate sheet of
paper, xerox'ed and placed in a laminate folder. I'd
expected prices to have
been scratched out on menus - the decision to print
without prices at all
seems like a reflection on a state used to the notion
that their currency is
in free fall and won't be landing any time soon.
(This proved to be true at
every restaurant I visited, save the South
African Steers chain across the
street from my hotel, including room service
in the hotel. It's a bit like
being the guest at a fancy restaurant - pick
what you want and try not to
worry about the cost.)
To review - signs
that your economy is in trouble include:
- You can't use your own money to
purchase essential goods and services.
- Critical goods, like petrol, can be
purchased by average citizens only if
they're willing to break the law.
-
Prices change so fast it's not worth printing them.
- Your currency includes
an expiration date, and may well be worthless
before that date.
And
it's probably not good news if you're brushing your teeth with beer,
either.
Reading between the lines
Filed under: Africa,
Human Rights/Free Speech - Ethan @ 4:57 pm
I'd been warned that my laptop
could be searched when I entered Zimbabwe. I
correspond with a few folks in
Zimbabwe regularly and had a few documents on
the laptop - previous
blogposts, primarily - that reference the nation. So I
spent half an hour or
so in the Johannesburg airport, putting potentially
sensitive files into
innocuously named folders: "Fred", "family photos",
gzipping them into
archives and encrypting the archives to myself with GPG.
I renamed and
refiled the encrypted files to look like they were part of
system libraries,
hid the USB key in a corner of the lining of one of my
checked bags and
concluded that this would probably protect me and my
correspondents even if
the laptop was seized, copied and inspected at
leisure of Zimbabwean customs
officials.
But then I started to worry about the newspapers I had with
me. The Mail and
Guardian - South Africa's excellent newsweekly had a story
about Chinese
military advisors training the Zimbabwean military. Would that
be seized?
How about my copy of The Economist? (After all, this is a
publication that
once ran a story that began, more or less: "Robert Mugabe
is a snappy
dresser and an enthusiastic fan of cricket. That previous
sentence is the
only sentence in this article on Zimbabwe which could be
published in that
nation.")
No one looked at my luggage as I entered
Zimbabwe from South Africa. The
procedure to obtain a visa didn't involve a
single form - just passing $30
USD across the desk to an official who
entered my name and passport number
into a notebook and handed me back a
shining new Zim visa. (The immigration
form does include two unusual
questions - an inquiry about precisely how
much cash I was carrying, and a
query whether I or anyone in my family had
ever been charged with a crime.)
No security forces demanding my root
password so they could copy my hard
drive or wielding black markers to
sanitize my newspapers. It was oddly
disappointing.
(This is not to say that people aren't searched when
entering Zimbabwe, just
that I'm not one of them. I suspect that if I were a
known Zimbabwean
activist, my movements would be followed more closely and
my luggage checked
more carefully.)
I was amazed to discover that
both the Economist and the Mail and Guardian
are available in Zimbabwean
newsagents. However, they're so expensive that
they're not read by the vast
majority of Zimbabweans. This characterizes
much of the situation regarding
the press in Zimbabwe - it's free for people
who can afford it, and is
little more than naked propoganda for those who
can't.
Broadcast
television in Zimbabwe consists of a single channel, which
alternates reruns
of "The Golden Girls" with locally produced programs that
include such
hard-hitting programming as "Media Watch", which consists of a
gentleman in
a suit reading headlines from government-owned newspapers. (One
of my
favorite headlines: "Mugabe blasts 'Stupid Democracy'". The
accompanying
photo features Mugabe, Lukashenko and Chavez sharing a laugh at
the summit
of non-aligned nations. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at that
gathering.) You
can see other programming in Zimbabwe via Multichoice DSTV
(Digital
Satellive TV, based in South Africa) - the Multichoice bundle
includes CNN
and BBC, both of which feature critical coverage of Zimbabwe.
But it costs
roughly $55 a month - paid in foreign currency - a huge sum for
most
Zimbabweans, and as a result, only a fraction more than 1% of
Zimbabweans
have access to this type of programming.
(That said, Multichoice can turn
up in surprising places. Rashweat Mukundu,
national director of MISA (Media
Institute of Southern Africa) tells me that
rural bars sometimes subscribe
to Multichoice so they can broadcast football
games. Because they've paid
for the whole service, this sometimes means they're
watching CNN or SABC in
the middle of the day.)
One reason Zimbabwe permits a small number of
citizens to receive
programming from Multichoice is that the operator pays
the Zimbabwe
Broadcast Holdings for the right to broadcast their programming
to the rest
of the continent - critically, these payments are in hard
currency.
The situation with radio is a bit more complex. The Zimbabwean
government
has made it virtually impossible for private companies to enter
the radio
market. A group called "Capital Radio" applied for a broadcast
license in
1999 and had their application denied - they appealed to the
supreme court
and won, but still not allowed to begin broadcasting. Since
then, the
regulations regarding media licensing have gotten yet more complex
- foreign
investment in media is controlled almost to the point of
prohibition; owners
of media companies can't have more than 10% of the
shares of the business,
forcing companies to build large consortia of
investors. And no independent
stations have yet been licensed. (TVRadioWorld
has an excellent list of
radio stations in Zimbabwe. You'll note that all
the stations that actually
broadcast are part of the national broadcaster,
ZBC.)
The organizers of Capital Radio moved to London and reorganized as
Shortwave
Radio Africa, broadcasting into Zimbabwe from outside the nation.
Unfortunately, they don't have many correspondents in Zimbabwe, and
shortwave radios are scarce, limiting their listener base. Reaching a wider
audience is Studio 7, a US-government funded radio program produced by Voice
of America. Broadcast from the US, via a repeater in Botswana, the program
is available for two hours in the evening, and boasts a listenership of over
a million. Friends involved with the project are proud that the station
offers a range of voices, including individuals affiliated with the ruling
ZANU-PF party as well as opposition figures. But they acknowledge that two
hours a day isn't enough to balance the 24 hour coverage on government
stations.
The government evidently thinks that two hours of Studio 7
is plenty. There
are many reports that the station is periodically jammed,
allegedly with
Chinese assistance. (Censorship is the sincerest form of
flattery.)
A third alternative radio voice is the subject of an ongoing
court battle.
Voice of the People Radio has been producing radio content in
Zimbabwe and
sending it to the Netherlands, where it is transmitted via
satellite to
listeners throughout the southern hemisphere. Despite the fact
that no
transmission is taking place in Zimbabwe, the government has taken
the
founders of Voice of the People to court, alleging that they are
illegally
operating a radio station. My friend Isabella Matambanadzo is one
of the ten
defendants - she points out that the media ownership laws are
designed to
guarantee that a large set of people are required to take a risk
to start a
media venture, and that since those people are Zimbabwean, they
are
vulnerable to the sorts of charges she and her colleagues are now
facing.
Should they be convicted later this week, they'll each face two
years in
prison for their alleged transgression.
The effect of suits
like the case against VOP is to scare the heck out of
anyone who might be
tempted to engage in media broadcasting. But innovators
are still testing
boundaries. Unable to get a license for a community radio
station, Radio
Dialogue in Bulawayo is creating programming and
disseminating it on
cassette tapes, which they hand out to the drivers of
minibuses. The bus
drivers play the tapes on their runs, "narrowcasting" to
their passengers
and avoiding most reasonable definitions of broadcasting.
Still, the reach
is small and Radio Dialog like others would prefer to reach
the airwaves,
not just the highways; as their site puts it, "Radio Dialogue
is a
non-profit making community radio station aspiring to broadcast to the
community of Bulawayo and surrounding areas."
Zimbabwe's most diverse
media is the print media. This diversity reflects
the history of media
evolution in the state. Prior to Zimbabwe's
independence in 1980, Zimbabwe's
broadcast media was controlled by the
Rhodesian Front, and later the
Rhodesian state. When Rhodesia became
Zimbabwe, the state owned broadcaster
moved from one state owner to another
without becoming a public
broadcaster.
But there had been competitive newspapers in Zimbabwe
since the early 1900s,
and that situation continued after independence. The
new government received
a six million dollar investment from Nigeria to
allow the purchase of
several newspapers and the regional affiliate of the
Africa News Agency, but
numerous other papers competed with those
state-owned outlets. In early
1990s, publications like the Daily Gazette and
the monthly magazine,
Horizon, challenged official accounts of events,
especially those of The
Herald, the main government paper. In 1998, the
Daily News - founded by the
independent firm Associationed Newspapers of
Zimbabwe - started challenging
the Herald head on.
But the media
environment in the late 1990s became increasingly difficult
for independent
papers. A proximate cause was Zimbabwe's involvement in the
DRCongo's civil
war - roughly 11,000 Zimbabwean soliders backed Laurent
Kabila's forces
against the rebels supported by Uganda and Rwanda. The war
was extremely
unpopular in Zimbabwe - as one friend told me, "It was our
Vietnam. We've
got no cultural ties with DRC - we speak English, they speak
French. We were
colonized by different people. No one had any idea what we
were doing
there."
What they were doing there had a great deal to do with financial
deals
between Kabila and Mugabe to reward certain Zimbabwean businesses with
gold
and diamond deals for the support during the war. Reporters covering
these
stories discovered that their efforts were often blocked by the Law
and
Order Maintenance Act, a 1960 law from pre-independence Rhodesia, which
provides for the prosecution of journalists making statements which might
cause "fear, alarm or despondency" in the country.
The irony of using
a law passed by Ian Smith's supporters to prevent ZANU-PF
from accessing the
press was not lost on Mugabe - ZANU-PF eventually
replaced the law with a
very similar bill, titled the Public Order and
Security Bill. But no matter
what the name, LOMA/POSB was a strong tool
against independent journalism.
In 1998, Ibbo Mandaza and Grace Kwinjeh of
the Mirror were charged under
LOMA for writing a story about a Zimbabwean
solider, killed in the DRC,
whose head was returned home without his body.
The editor of the Standard,
Mark Chavunduka and reporter Ray Choto were
arrested and allegedly tortured
for a story about an attempted military
coup.
Attacks directly on
papers discouraged independent journalists as well. The
Daily News offices
were firebombed four times in 2002 - the paper eventually
retreated to South
Africa. This has become a popular strategy for many
figures in the
Zimbabwean press - The Zimbabwean is written by authors in
South Africa and
the UK, printed in London and distributed in Zimbabwe,
Botswana and South
Africa. At least 10,000 copies a week come into
Zimbabwe - because the paper
is produced outside the nation, it would
require a modification of trade
regulations to prohibit its distribution.
Other "independent" weekly
papers exist, though their degree of independence
can be debated. The
Financial Gazette, once one of the more critical papers,
is now controlled
by Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe's central bank.
(Depending on who you
ask, it may also be controlled by the CIO, Zimbabwe's
clandestine
intelligence services.) But there's no alternative daily paper,
and with
government control of the print, radio and TV, there's little
opportunity
for the opposition to counter official accounts of events.
An example is
the protest by the Zimbabwe Council of Trade Unions on
September 13th.
According to most media accounts in Zimbabwe, a small group
of trade
unionists were assembling for an illegal protest, and were
dispersed by
government forces - the official word implied that the protests
were small,
disorganized and evidence of the disarray of the ZCTU and the
opposition MDC
party. Foreign news reports focused on the mass arrests of
participants and
the brutal treatment of the organizers while in custody.
Walking around
Harare, rumors were spreading that the protests had been
massive and
succesful, closing off much of the south side of the city.
Who's right? I
don't know. The foreign stories tend to skew towards painting
the government
as brutal and irresponsible; the domestic stories have
factual gaps and
sometimes don't cover events at all; the rumors are rumors.
Without the
presence of outside journalists on the ground, it's very hard
for any events
in Zimbabwe to avoid turning into Rashomon.
(A note - one of the most
interesting and critical comments about the rally
and the arrests comes from
Mavis Makuni in the Financial Gazette. When my
friend Dumisani Nyoni argues
that there's an independent press in Zimbabwe,
these are the sorts of voices
he's pointing to.)
Many of the journalists who used to write from within
Zimbabwe continue to
write from outside the country on websites designed to
report events from a
critical perspective - New Zimbabwe and ZimDaily are
two of the most
prominent. These sites are accessible from within Zimbabwe -
at least when
the net's turned on. But it's only a limited set of
Zimbabweans who can
afford to access this information.
My activist
friends in Zimbabwe are unanimous in their diagnosis of the
media situation:
Zimbabwe needs an independent daily newspaper and a radio
station so that
the general populus can get information critical of the
government. They're
experimenting with alternatives - community newsletters
printed on A4 paper,
distributed in "high density suburbs" (townships) from
person to person;
news programs and activist songs distributed on CD and
cassette.
But
if they were suddenly given a license to broadcast or publish a paper,
there
would still be obstacles. The Zimbabwean economy is so fragile that
there's
very little advertising support for papers. The history of
harrassment,
imprisonment and torture of journalists makes many writers
fearful to report
certain stories. Criminal libel law means that libel can
carry jail time as
well as fines, which helps prevent attacks on public
figures. And the fact
that journalists must be licensed and must renew their
accreditation every
two years helps keep pens down as well.
What's really going on in
Zimbabwe? I don't know. Neither do you. And
neither do most Zimbabweans,
whether they live at home or abroad. Reading
the BBC or CNN won't help -
they're not on the ground here either. And like
every other situation in
Zimbabwe, it's both better and worse than you've
heard.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Dancing
Out of Tune", a history of the media in Zimbabwe, written in 1999
by Richard
Saunders as the companion to a film by Edwina Spicer is
indispensible as
background on the current press situation in Zimbabwe -
unfortunately, it
doesn't seem to be available online. MISA Zimbabwe is an
amazing resource
for anyone interested in the Zimbabwean media. So is the
Weekly Media Update
produced by the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe -
unfortunately, this
resource is a bit hard to access at present due to the
bandwidth
restrictions the country is facing.
Mark Glaser from Mediashift has an
excellent interview with independent
Zimbabwean journalist Frank Chikowore,
who I was lucky enough to meet with
while in Harare - for media outside of
Zimbabwe looking for a brave and
smart correspondent in the country, Frank's
a great guy to start with.
Unsurprisingly, some of the best voices in
Zimbabwe are the ones you can
access online. Kubatana is a great place to
start for news on the NGO
community and general news on freedom of
expression. Sokwanele and their
blog This Is Zimbabwe provide a critical
view of events on the ground.
Zimpundit, who covers the country for Global
Voices as well as maintaining
her own site, is a must read. Eddie Cross is
more than a little
controversial, but is also very much worth reading.
Source: Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET)
Date: 22 Sep
2006
Summary and implications
The Government's
monopoly of the national cereal market has made cereal
deficit parts of the
country dependent on the Grain Marketing Board (GMB)
for maize supplies and
vulnerable to shortages of maize and maize meal. The
parastatal has been
experiencing serious transport problems that prevent the
timely movement of
grain from surplus to deficit areas. Severe maize
shortages were experienced
in a number of southern districts for the greater
part of August 2006, even
while some surplus farmers in the Mashonaland
provinces were frantically
trying to sell their maize to the GMB with
limited success. The shortages
caused dramatic maize meal/grain price
increases of over 114 percent in
parts of the deficit areas over the month
of August 2006 alone. Inflationary
pressures are not showing any signs of
subsiding in the immediate future,
and rampant inflation continues to eat
into the purchasing power of both
urban and rural households. This has
seriously curtailed the ability of poor
households, particularly in grain
deficit areas and urban centers, to access
food. Shortages of fertilizers,
fuel and foreign currency to procure spare
parts and other critical
agricultural inputs are likely to dampen prospects
for the forthcoming
2006/07 cropping season.
Current hazard
summary
- High annual inflation - measured in July 2006 at 993.6 percent
- continues
to erode household purchasing power.
- Fuel and
fertilizer shortages could hinder agricultural production in the
2006/07
season (seed supplies are adequate).
- The cereal deficit for the 2006/07
marketing year is projected at about
22%, with the highest deficits in the
southern districts as well as the
western and eastern margins of the
country.
VOA
By
Patience Rusere
Washington
22 September
2006
Nongovernmental organizations in Zimbabwe are demanding that
Harare cease
what they contend are continuing serious violations of human
rights before
they will agree to cooperate in setting up the human rights
commission the
government proposes.
Such was the message coming from
the margins of a consultative meeting
concerning the controversial human
rights commission in progress Friday in
Kariba, in northern Zimbabwe, though
officially there was a media gag on the
proceedings there.
Human
rights have come to center stage in Zimbabwe in recent days following
the
severe beatings administered to trade union officials on September 13,
allegedly at the hands of police and security agents. President Robert
Mugabe, in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, said
"overzealous" police were to blame.
NGOs also want assurances from
the government that it will repeal laws
including the Access to Information
and Protection of Privacy Act which
rights advocates inside and outside the
country have denounced as
repressive. The government is now pushing ahead
with a law that would let it
monitor phone and Internet
communications.
Civil society sources added that the government is also
putting pressure on
NGOs to give up funding from outside the country,
especially from Britain
and the United States, which according to authories
puts a suspicious light
on their activities.
Spokesman Fambai
Ngirande of the National Association of Non-Governmental
Organizations told
reporter Patience Rusere of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe
that his
organization wants Harare to show it is serious about human rights
before
civil society engages on the creation of a state-sponsored human
rights
organization.
People's Daily
Air Zimbabwe's second Boeing 767, which developed
an oil leak in July
in Britain, is expected to be back in service in the
second week of October
after undergoing engine maintenance in
Germany.
The airline's corporate communications department said on
Friday
subsequent investigations into the oil leak had shown the need for an
engine
overhaul to give the plane a longer life span.
"Lufthansa Technic, our German partner who overhaul our B767 engine,
is
about to complete the overhaul and advises us that it should be ready for
putting back on the wings in October," Air Zimbabwe acting director of
engineering and technical operations Boston Odongo said in a
statement.
The airline will be sending 12 engineers to Germany in
October to do
an engine re-installation, general aircraft inspection and
maintenance
before the plane flies back to Zimbabwe on October
9.
The work being done on the craft, Air Zimbabwe said, makes it
new and
gives the engine an additional life span of more than 10
years.
Using one Boeing 767 has forced the airline to revise its
schedule and
at times had to charter planes to carry heavy passenger loads,
especially
during the peak season in July to September.
Source:
Xinhua
Please send any material for publication in the Open Letter Forum to
jag@mango.zw with "For Open Letter Forum" in the
subject
line.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1
Dear
JAG,
Thank you for circulating information regarding the workshop on
"Stress,
Burnout and Psychological Trauma".
The day was well attended
with 46 participants. Most were ex farmers and
their wives or those still
trying to farm. We gained a very helpful
perspective of what we have
experienced and how we can deal with the issues
involved. The programme built
up from simple stress and it's management to
trauma and Post traumatic stress
Syndrome. A greater understanding of how to
cope with and manage anger. Most
participants found the afternoon session,
which pulled it all together, very
helpful.
Patrick Strong has kindly agreed to repeat the day next Tuesday
26th
September and the Dominican Convent has offered the same facilities
again.
Please can you again circulate this invitation to those who may
be
interested? The programme will be the same.
Many thanks
Best
regards
Ben
Purcel-Gilpin
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2
Dear
JAG,
Comment on Patrick Strong's Workshop on Stress, Psychological Trauma
and
supporting people affected by trauma.
This was an excellent
presentation. Patrick has a wealth of both theoretical
and practical
knowledge that he communicates to his audience very well.
Dramatic accounts
of traumatic situations and events in Albania, Croatia,
Ireland Scotland and
the Armed Services, many of which were from Patrick's
own experiences, helped
the participants feel they were not alone. His
method of presentation was
interactive, using the audience as a training
resource, which worked
surprisingly well considering the large size of the
Workshop
group.
Although this is his first trip to Zimbabwe Patrick very quickly
recognised
the stresses and strains being felt by the participants and dealt
with them
with warm empathy.
I believe that every one of the
participants found the day's discussions
therapeutic. I certainly
did.
I cannot end this comment without praising the facilities and
refreshments
laid on by the Dominican Convent.
Tim
Copley
22 09
08
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
All
letters published on the open Letter Forum are the views and opinions of
the
submitters, and do not represent the official viewpoint of Justice
for
Agriculture.
Email: jag@mango.zw : justiceforagriculture@zol.co.zw
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT:
FREE HELP, OPPORTUNITY FOR THE FARMING COMMUNITY
The first workshop was
run on Thursday 21st September and was a huge success
with over 50 people in
attendance. On the strength of the success of the
first day we are now
enrolling people for the second workshop on Tuesday
26th September. A number
of people who could not make the first day have
provisionally booked and will
need to confirm their attendance.
For the purpose of managing the two
days it is important that you phone in
and enrol with the JAG office on
04-799410. There is absolutely no charge
for this workshop.
The JAG
Team.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Workshop
on Stress, Burnout and Psychological Trauma: Tuesday 26th September
2006 at:
Dominican Convent: Entry Via Selous Gate: 08:30 for 09:00 hours
Morning
Session: Stress and Burnout
Tea Break
Late Morning: Psychological
trauma
Lunch Break
Early Afternoon: Supporting people affected by
trauma
This workshop will be conducted by Mr Patrick
Strong,
Patrick Strong was educated by the Christian Brothers in
Ireland. He
graduated from the Open University with a BA degree in Education
and Social
Sciences and from Wolverhampton University with an MSc degree
in
Occupational Psychology. The topic for his dissertation was
stress
management.
After qualifying and practicing as a psychiatric
nurse he held various posts
in the English Health Service including education
and management.
For the past twelve years he has worked as an independent
training
Consultant. In this role he has been mainly involved in designing
and
running various training programmes in human resource management and
change
management. In addition he holds workshops on stress management,
mental
health, disaster management and spirituality.
His main area of
work is Eastern Europe and the Causasus with the newly
independent
countries.
He has also worked on refugee relief projects in Somalia and
Albania
following the Kosovo crisis.
Patrick has a special interest in
the interface between psychology,
spirituality and counselling. He has
taught in the Major Seminary of Christ
the King in Nyeri, Kenya and regularly
contributes to the Redemptorist
Renewal Course at Hawkstone Hall near
Shrewsbury, Central England where he
lives. He is also visiting lecturer in
the Venerable English College in
Rome.
Please could anyone, interested
in attending this highly beneficial
workshop, enrol with the JAG office on
04-799410.
FROM THE ZIMBABWE VIGIL
News Release, 22nd September 2006
Leaders of British Trade Unions turned out in pouring rain
to protest
outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London against the ill-treatment
of trade
unionists in Zimbabwe. The demonstration was part of a world wide
protest
by labour movements in response to the recent brutal suppression of
peaceful
protests organised by the trades union movement in
Zimbabwe.
The President of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Alison
Shepherd, said they
wanted to demonstrate the depth of their support for
fellow workers in
Zimbabwe. She said there had a long and close
relationship with the
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and they watching
the situation in
Zimbabwe with great anxiety. Leaders from a number of
unions took part in
the protest, among :them Amicus, T&G, ATL, GMB,
Unison, Prospect and other
unions including the NUJ. They were joined by
members of the Zimbabwe Vigil
who have been holding a protest outside the
Zimbabwe Embassy every Saturday
for four years.
.
Vigil
Co-ordinators
The vigil, outside the Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand,
London, takes place
every Saturdays from 14.00 - 18.00 to protest against
gross violations of
human rights by the current regime in Zimbabwe. The
Vigil which started in
October 2002 will continue until
internationally-monitored, free and fair
elections are held in Zimbabwe. http://www.zimvigil.co.uk.
http://africantears.netfirms.com/thisweek.shtml
Saturday 23rd September 2006
Dear Family and Friends,
Every
day things in Zimbabwe get just a little bit harder and while ordinary
families stagger from one crisis to the next, the country's leadership seem
to be completely bereft of ideas. The latest phrase from government
officials and ministers is "Very Soon". It's never completely clear if 'very
soon' is a threat or a promise but the litany is faithfully regurgitated at
every occasion. 'Very Soon' we will have petrol they say; 'Very Soon' we
will grow enough food; 'Very Soon' we will drive out every white farmer;
'Very Soon' we will turn around the economy and 'Very Soon' we will change
the currency again, this time with just one day of warning. This week the
threatened promise is that 'Very Soon' corrupt cabinet ministers and members
of parliament will be arrested. Somewhere along the line, however, instead
of arresting corrupt leaders, police this week arrested top company
directors. All accused of increasing prices without government approval, the
CEO's of Dairibord (milk), Lobels (bread), Saltrama (plastic), Windmill
(chemicals), ZFC (fertilizer) and Circle (cement) were arrested. It is not
clear how any business can maintain prices when inflation is officially
reported to be 1204% but is crystal clear that when the ideas run out it is
easier just to arrest and detain.
The arrests of people trying to
express their dissatisfaction at events in
Zimbabwe also continued this
week. At least 140 NCA members were arrested as
they marched in protest over
the recent abuse and torture of union leaders
demonstrating in Harare. The
NCA members were arrested in Masvingo, Gweru,
Harare and Mutare in a clear
sign that unrest is spreading in the country.
And in between the arrests
there has been a whole rash of absurdity that
leaves you just shaking your
head in wonder. This week email and internet
service was all but impossible
in the country. Zimbabwe's Internet Service
Providers said that there had
been a 90% drop in internet traffic and that
it was a situation of "virtual
standstill." The state owned telephone
company Tel One apparently owes a
massive seven hundred thousand US dollars
to a satellite company and were
appealing to the central bank to bail them
out of the debt. At one point in
the week a major ISP put out an email to
all its subscribers asking if
anyone had a connection in high up places that
may be able to intervene in
the crisis. Towards the end of the week Tel One
posted an advert in the
state owned press saying that with immediate effect
the cost of internet
services had increased by two thousand seven hundred
percent. Nothing is
done in measured steps in Zimbabwe. The Big Stick comes
out, threat/promises
of Very Soon are uttered and prices are backdated by
years not
months.
The irony of arresting the baker for increasing the price of
bread by 50%
but ignoring the government owned phone company for increasing
internet
prices by 2700% is absolutely bone shaking.
Until next week,
thanks for reading, love cathy.