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Zimbabwe has no money for elections: minister
By Fanuel Jongwe (AFP) – 3
hours ago
HARARE — Cash-strapped Zimbabwe is appealing for foreign help
to fund
presidential and parliamentary elections planned for later this
year,
Finance Minister Tendai Biti said on Monday.
"It's self-evident
that treasury does not have the capacity to fund
elections," Biti told
parliament.
He said the country needed $132 million (100 million euros)
for the
elections, which veteran President Robert Mugabe's party wants held
as early
as June.
However Biti said the government would not borrow
this money from local
firms as it did for a March referendum on a new
constitution, which paved
the way for the polls to be held.
"This
ministry of finance has no intention to emasculate the economy for
this
event, which will happen on one day. As far as we are concerned the
international community must come to assist."
Biti said that, on top
of an appeal for funding through the UN, the
government recently wrote to
South Africa and Angola to ask for loans for
the elections.
South
Africa's cabinet has approved a $100 million loan for budgetary
support
following discussions in September last year, the minister said.
He
admitted that "all is not well" with Zimbabwe's economy, which is
battling
to recover from a decade-long downturn marked by galloping
inflation which
at one point peaked at 231 million percent.
This has since stabilised
with year-on-year inflation going down to 2.8
percent in March, according to
the national statistics agency.
While the economy is growing -- at five
percent last year -- public finances
remain in disarray.
In March the
government collected a total of $241 million in revenue against
a target of
$301 million. Exports since January stood at at $689 million
while imports
for the same period totalled $1.7 billion.
"We are already under
pressure. We are being suffocated even before we
include the elections of
2013," Biti said.
He said the government received no revenue from diamond
mines in January and
February and only $5 million in March against a target
of $15 million.
"If there was honesty from diamond revenue we would not
be asking for money
from anyone for the elections," the minister
said.
Long-time rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's camp has accused
Mugabe's
ZANU-PF of pocketing diamond revenues.
"We essentially raped
the economy for the referendum," Biti said adding that
the funds borrowed
for the elections could have been lent to companies to
increase
production.
Some companies that had closed at the height of the economic
woes reopened
following the formation of the power-sharing government, but
production has
remained low.
Zimbabwe is expected to hold elections
at the expiry of a power-sharing
government formed four years ago by Mugabe
and Tsvangirai.
There is no agreement yet on the date of the elections.
Mugabe wants them
before June 29, while Tsvangirai wants the elections later
in the year to
allow for reforms to ensure a fair vote.
South
Africa approves $100 million Zimbabwe loan: Biti
http://www.timeslive.co.za/
Reuters | 15 April, 2013
15:33
South Africa has approved $100 million in budgetary support
to cash-strapped
Zimbabwe, which is due to hold elections in the second half
of the year,
Finance Minister Tendai Biti said on Monday.
Zimbabwe's
economy has been on the mend since President Robert Mugabe and
Prime
Minister Morgan Tsvangirai agreed to share power after disputed 2008
elections but is still suffering a hangover from a decade-long recession
widely blamed on Mugabe.
Last year, Biti said Harare had approached
regional economic giant South
Africa and oil-rich Angola for $150 million
amid a lack of aid from Western
donors who have imposed sanctions on Mugabe
and his inner circle over
charges of human rights abuses.
"Pursuant
to discussions in September 2012, I'm aware the South African
cabinet has
made a decision and it's a positive decision," Biti told a news
conference.
South African officials could not be reached for
comment.
Biti said he had also made an additional plea to South Africa
and Angola to
fund elections expected later this year. The government
borrowed $40 million
domestically to fund a March 16 constitutional
referendum.
"It is self-evident that Treasury has no capacity to fund
elections. We're
not going to borrow again for the elections," he said,
repeating his call
for foreign funding for polls which have an initial
budget of $132 million.
Zimbabwe has also appealed to the United Nations
for election funding. A
visit by a U.N. team to assess Harare's needs has
been delayed due to
squabbling in the unity government but is now expected
to take place soon,
he added.
Biti said government revenues remained
depressed while expenditure, mainly
wages, continued to exceed
receipts.
A poor farming season and lower-than-expected diamond revenues
from the
government's Marange fields continued to weigh on the budget, Biti
said.
He added that Zimbabwe expected to harvest 900,000 tonnes of maize,
the
staple food, this year, down from just over 1 million tonnes in 2012
because
of a mid-season drought.
Zimbabwe would import 150,000 tonnes
of maize, mostly from Zambia and South
Africa, Biti said, but the bulk of
purchases would be by private millers and
not the government.
Blocked
UN team set to return to Zim after NGO deal
http://www.swradioafrica.com/
By Violet Gonda
15
April 2013
A United Nations (UN) team that was due in Zimbabwe to assess
requirements
for general elections, returned to the US empty handed after
being stuck in
South Africa for almost a week. ZANU PF was not happy with
the mission’s
request to conduct a needs assessment first before agreeing to
help Zimbabwe
fundraise for the polls.
Both Finance Minister Tendai
Biti and Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa had
written a letter to the UN
appealing for financial assistance. But Chinamasa
is said to have gone
behind Biti’s back and told the world body that
Zimbabwe will not accept
assistance that came with conditions, such as
meeting civil society
organizations.
Government sources told SW Radio Africa the mission will
be invited back
after Chinamasa, Biti and local UN officials agreed on a
shortened version,
which means NGO groups were removed from the list of
stakeholders the
mission wanted to meet.
Biti on Monday confirmed the
UN mission had been blocked from coming to
Zimbabwe because “one section of
government decided it was not in the best
interest of the UN to come to
Zimbabwe.”
“So we had a situation where from Wednesday to today (Monday)
the UN mission
was still stranded in Johannesburg. I believe they are now
trying to make
their way to New York,” Biti told
journalists.
Desperate to resolve the matter, the two ministers held
emergency
negotiations on Sunday with the head of the UN in Zimbabwe and his
deputy,
and amended the mission’s terms of reference.
“We eventually
panel-beat an agreement in our ugly handwritings to allow the
mission to
come,” added Biti.
Under the revised agreement the world body will not
meet civil society
organizations but will meet a carefully selected list of
people.
Besides meeting Biti and Chinamasa, the mission will meet several
other
government ministers including Constitutional and Parliamentary
Affairs
Minister Eric Matinenga, Minister of Regional Integration Priscilla
Misihairabwi-Mushonga, the co-Home Affairs Minister Theresa Makone and Kembo
Mohadi and the principals.
They will also meet the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission, the body that
controls the elections; the Registrar General
Tobaiwa Mudede and the
Fishmonger Group of ambassadors –also known as
Friends of Zimbabwe and SADC
diplomats.
Biti said there was no
agreement on the issue of civil society
participation. “So we have agreed
that the issue should be resolved at
principal level and I hope that will be
done as a matter of urgency.”
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition coordinator
McDonald Lewanika said the
developments are unfortunate but typical of the
government. He said civil
society organizations have been shut out of
important national issues
before, such as the constitution making process
and the events that led to
the formation of the coalition
government.
Lewanika said they have channels that allow them to meet the
UN mission
outside formal invitations by the state.
The Finance
Minister said it will be very tragic if the UN mission fails to
conduct this
needs assessment, as failure to fund the harmonized poll
adequately will
compromise the quality of the election.
“And if we have to raid the
economy again the long term effects of that will
be catastrophic,” warned
Biti.
Western donors have urged Zimbabwe to also look for election
funding from
the country’s own resources.
Biti revealed that
Zimbabwe’s diamond exports were $800m last year but only
$45m went to the
Treasury. He said the country should have received at least
$300m. “If there
was honesty in diamond revenues we should not even be
asking for elections
money from anyone – and that is a fact,” Biti added.
Zanu-PF bars UN
election team
http://www.iol.co.za/
April 13 2013 at 12:14pm
By Independent Foreign
Service
Harare - President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF has stopped a UN
assessment team
from entering the country to investigate funding the crucial
presidential
and parliamentary elections to be held soon.
The team,
put together by the UN Development Programme, cooled its heels in
South
Africa this week, unable to get clearance from Harare to travel there
to
assess whether it could or should fund the polls.
The UN virtually runs
elections which it funds.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who belongs to
Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
told the cabinet
repeatedly last year that Zimbabwe could not afford to fund
its elections.
He and Zanu-PF Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa were
then instructed by
the cabinet to ask the UN for funding, which they then
applied for. The UN
said it would see whether it could raise money from
donors for elections,
but would first have to assess the situation in
Zimbabwe, including
investigating the quality of electoral infrastructure
such as the voters’
roll and judging the political climate.
It said
it would send a UN Electoral Needs Assessment Mission led by a
member of the
UN Electoral Assistance Division, Tadjoudine Ali Diabacte, to
do the
evaluation.
Zimbabwe’s next polls will be simultaneous presidential,
parliamentary,
senate and local government elections which must be held
before the end of
September.
With just 10 weeks to go before
Zimbabwe’s inclusive government expires,
Zanu-PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo
confirmed yesterday that the assessment team
had not been cleared to begin
work in Zimbabwe.
“My understanding is that the UN assessment
team is making all sorts of
demands, and as far as we are concerned we
cannot meet their demands. I don’t
know what their demands were,” Gumbo
said.
Douglas Mwonzora, an MDC spokesman, said Zanu-PF was in
such disarray that
it was blocking entrance to the UN team to “buy
time”.
“Zanu-PF does not seem to want elections in spite of all its
bravado about
elections,” he said. “It wants to win by disagreeable means.”
Biti
slams lack of diamond remittances
http://www.swradioafrica.com/
By Alex Bell
15 April
2013
Finance Minister Tendai Biti has slammed the ongoing failure by
mining firms
to remit the government’s share of diamond profits to the
Treasury, which he
said is the leading cause of Zimbabwe’s current economic
woes.
Speaking at a press conference in Harare on Monday, Biti said that
so far
only a fraction of the expected diamond remittances for 2013 have
been
funelled into the State coffers. He explained that there was no money
remitted from the diamond sector in January or February, and only about $5
million dollars was remitted in March, despite profits of over $100 million
being realised.
Last year, the government only saw $40 million from
the sector, which is
only a fraction of the $300 million Biti had estimated
the Treasury would
receive. He said this money, if it had been channeled to
the Treasury as is
supposed to happen, the country would be able to fund its
own elections.
“If Treasury was receiving cash from the sale of diamonds,
we should not be
begging for cash from donors since we own about 50% shares
in diamond mines.
The funds that are being realized from diamond sales
should be channeled
towards the conducting of polls in the country but the
problem is that there
hasn’t been transparency in the remitting of diamond
proceeds,” Biti said.
He added: “This business where we don’t receive
anything from the diamonds,
and where some people in Cabinet act as private
shareholders in the
diamonds, it must stop.”
Biti went on to
reiterate that the government does not have the money for
the polls this
year, and insisted that international funding was needed. He
went on to
state that South Africa has approved $100 million in budgetary
support to
Zimbabwe.
Last year, Biti had approached South Africa and Angola for $150
million to
help shore up Zimbabwe’s meager finances. In November last year,
South
African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said the government had not
made a
final decision on the request by Zimbabwe but the Treasury was
considering
various possible forms of assistance.
On Monday, Biti
told a news conference: “Pursuant to discussions in
September 2012, I’m
aware the South African Cabinet has made a decision —
and it’s a positive
decision.”
There was no official comment from South Africa on Monday.
Allow
people to vote with IDs’: Khumalo
http://www.dailynews.co.zw/
By Jeffrey Muvundusi, Own
Correspondent
Monday, 15 April 2013 10:38
BULAWAYO - Thabitha Khumalo,
MDC MP for Bulawayo East constituency, has
proposed the use of national
identity cards for voting in the forthcoming
elections, arguing the voters’
roll is too trashy to be trusted.
Khumalo, who was addressing journalists
during a discussion forum on
elections at the Bulawayo Press Club on Friday,
said voter registration in
Zimbabwe was still a mammoth task and was being
used to deny citizens their
democratic right to choose their own
leaders.
She alleged that though international laws, which Zimbabwe is a
signatory
to, necessitate the registration of all eligible citizens as
voters,
authorities in Zimbabwe have ensured that thousands fail to
register.
Khumalo claimed that the voter registration exercise “is
partisan,
non-transparent, biased and prejudiced”.
“We have people
who are not registered and sadly voter registration is
taking place but it
has proved a mammoth task.
“For instance, in my constituency I have tried
to take people to where voter
registration is taking place and shockingly,
the requirements keep
changing,” she claimed.
Khumalo said she
believed its time national IDs were seriously considered as
the only
requirement for voting.
“We have proved beyond doubt that we can do it
when we voted for the supreme
document of this country using our IDs,” she
said referring to last month’s
constitutional referendum.
“Why then
can’t we do it to choose our MPs? What is more powerful, the new
constitution or a Member of Parliament?
“It is the constitution so
why not allow people to go and vote using their
IDs. For the record in 1980
we voted using the same method so why not now,”
asked
Khumalo.
Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede has repeatedly rubbished claims
such as
those peddled by Khumalo, claiming that the voters’ roll is one of
the best
in the world.
Zimbabwe
has '5,500 landmines per kilometre'
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/
15/04/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
ZIMBABWE has 5,500 unexploded landmines per
kilometre, a UK-based
organisation dedicated to removing the debris of war
has claimed.
Despite clearance conducted by the military demining
squadron following the
1970s liberation war, Zimbabwe still has more than
200 square kilometres of
ground assessed to be impacted by landmines,
according to HALO Trust.
“Zimbabwe has one of the densest minefields in
the world, with about 5,500
landmines per kilometre,” HALO Trust’s Tom Dibb
said in Harare during a
discussion on landmines as part of the U.S. Embassy
Public Affairs ‘Food for
Thought’ public lecture series.
“The
proximity of the people to the minefields shows that it is inevitable
that
there will be a trickle of accidents due to the need to grow crops and
herd
cattle.”
Dibb said Rhodesian forces laid an extensive series of
minefields along the
borders between Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), Zambia and
Mozambique in an
attempt to prevent liberation fighters from moving in and
out of the country
for training and supplies.
These belts of
landmines are located on Zimbabwe’s northeast border with
Mozambique and
extend 335km from Musengezi to Rwenya and traverse major
border towns
including Mukumbura and Nyamapanda.
Efforts to demine the country’s
border are supported by HALO Trust and the
Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA).The
western border in the Victoria Falls region
was successfully demined by the
Zimbabwe National Army.
Dibb, who managed mine clearance programmes in
Chechnya and Afghanistan,
co-presented the April 2 public discussion session
with two University of
Zimbabwe researchers, Trust Masiya of the Institute
of Mining Research and
Professor Charles Nhachi of the College of Health
Sciences.
The academics shared information about how mercury is used in
gold mining
and the dangers of mercury in general, as part of a public
awareness
programme for International Mine Action Day (April 4) facilitated
by Jean
Phillipson of the U.S. Embassy.
The disparate topics are tied
together by a common misconception that
landmines contain valuable “red
mercury,” resulting in people tampering with
the explosive
devices.
Dibb and his co-presenters demystified the popular belief that
there is
mercury in landmines, stating that there is no mercury of any sort
in
landmines.
Landmines claimed the lives of over 20 people in
Zimbabwe throughout 2012,
said Dibb.
Early this year, five people were
killed in Zengeza, a suburb of
Chitungwiza, by a landmine explosion. Police
speculated that it was in an
attempt to extract this mythical red mercury
which is believed to fetch
value elsewhere.
Misinformation about the
presence of valuable “red mercury” in landmines has
encouraged people to
tamper with dangerous explosive ordnances. While not
present in landmines,
mercury, if not used correctly, can be harmful to
people and has
environmental impacts.
“Exposure to mercury could cause adverse health
effects,” said Professor
Nhachi. “It is toxic to plants and the soil as
well. When it is in its
organic form, it easily penetrates membranes in the
body.”
He said that renal lesions are one of the symptoms of exposure to
mercury,
which injures the urinary system and can lead to death in the most
extreme
cases.
Small-scale miners continue to use mercury – not the
mythical red mercury –
to extract gold, a situation Masiya described as
unfortunate given the
health and environmental consequences that come with
improper use. There are
more than 400,000 people involved in artisanal small
scale mining
countrywide.
“Small scale miners use mercury because
they believe it is the most
effective way to mine gold. It is cheap and
readily available; it costs
about $150-$200 per kilogram; and there are no
permits for purchasing the
product,” Masiya said.
He said most small
scale miners use their bare hands to separate mercury
from the gold and when
smelting gold over an open fire, resulting in them
inhaling the toxic
vapours.
Besieged
High Court Judge Hungwe referred to Mugabe
http://www.swradioafrica.com/
By Nomalanga Moyo
15
April 2013
High Court Judge Charles Hungwe looks set to be removed from
the bench
following a probe into alleged misconduct led by Chief Justice
Godfrey
Chidyausiku.
According to state media, which have been
leading the crusade against
Hungwe, Chidyausiku wrote to President Robert
Mugabe last week recommending
the judge’s sacking.
“In the wake of
this communication, President Mugabe is obliged to set up a
tribunal to
probe Justice Hungwe’s conduct,” according to ZANU PF mouthpiece
the Herald
on Monday.
Quoting unnamed sources, the paper reported that Hungwe faces
three charges
relating to firstly, an alleged delay in “finalising a case
pitting Old
Mutual chief executive Jonas Mushosho and a man who bought the
latter’s
property, after losing the court record.”
The second charge
pertains to an order he issued granting the release on
bail of prominent
lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, following her arrest in March.
Hungwe was sharply
criticised and accused of hearing the Mtetwa bail
application at night at
his Darwendale farm, instead of in court.
Thirdly, Hungwe is being attack
for granting search warrants to the Zimbabwe
Anti-Corruption Commission to
investigate the offices of some ZANU PF
ministers.
Many within the
human rights circles in Zimbabwe suspect that the probe
headed by the
pro-Mugabe Chidyausiku is nothing more than a smokescreen to
enable ZANU PF
to get rid of those judges deemed to be sympathetic to the
opposition.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) on Monday
reiterated the
comments made earlier this month when they issued a statement
calling for
the government to intervene to stop the persecution of the
judge.
“This is not only a measure to protect the judicial officer
concerned, but
also one that is vital to reassure the entire bench at every
level, as well
as the legal profession in the public and private sector,
that they will be
free to undertake their professional and constitutional
duties without fear
or favour and not be victimised as a result of non-legal
concerns and
motives,” the ZLHR said.
The Law Society of Zimbabwe
through its President Lloyd Mhishi also
condemned the attacks on Justice
Hungwe, adding that the media onslaught on
the judge had “mischievous
intent”.
Zim 'may be
helping Moz crush Renamo'
http://www.news24.com/
2013-04-15 09:43
Harare – At
least 100 Mozambican troops have graduated after completing
intensive
training in Zimbabwe, amid reports that Mozambique is facing a
threat from
former rebels, Renamo.
The Mozambican military troops graduated on Friday
at the Zimbabwe Military
Academy in Gweru after receiving training at
several military bases dotted
across the country.
The training course
content included foot and arms drill, physical training,
section and platoon
battle drills, battle procedure, low intensity
operations and conventional
warfare.
Mozambique is faced with a threat from Renamo rebels who are
training in
preparation for "war" after demanding a re-negotiation of the
1992 peace
agreement.
Zimbabwe last week said it was closely
monitoring the situation in
Mozambique following reports of growing signs of
a civil war breaking out in
that country.
The Zimbabwe National Army
Commander Lieutenant General Phillip Valerio
Sibanda who officiated at the
graduation ceremony said the two countries
shared a strong military
relationship that dated back to the days of "our
liberation" struggle and
also during the Mozambican disturbances in the
early 1980s.
Strong
bond
Zimbabwe deployed thousands of combat troops and heavy artillery to
shore up
the Mozambican army during the armed conflict with
Renamo.
The Commander of the Mozambican Navy Rear Admiral Lazaro Mienete
thanked
Zimbabwe for training their officers and said efforts should be made
to
continuously hold joint military training programmes.
"The
officers you have trained and are graduating today have an important
role to
play back home," he said.
"We share a strong bond with Zimbabwe and this
relationship dates back to
the days of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle and
Mozambican disturbances in
the 1980s."
Dormant since October 1992
when the government and Renamo signed a truce,
the animosities were
rekindled last week when attacks on police and
civilians resurfaced in
central Sofala province.
An escalation of violence in Mozambique would
have a serious domino effect
on Zimbabwe's shaky economy.
The
landlocked country is currently importing 90% of its fuel requirements
through Mozambique via the 287km Beira-Feruka oil pipeline. - CAJ News
Kasukuwere
threatens Tongaat over indigenisation
http://www.swradioafrica.com/
By Alex Bell
15 April
2013
South African sugar company Tongaat Hulett is facing even more
pressure to
comply with the ZANU PF led indigenisation drive, with the
Empowerment
Minister threatening to expel the company.
Saviour
Kasukuwere last week said if Tongaat failed to comply with the
country’s
indigenisation regulations by July this year, it would be barred
from
operating in Zimbabwe.
“Tongaat Hulett is a major cause for concern. They
don’t respect the laws of
the country and that is unfortunate. Come July,
they will not be planting
cane in Zimbabwe, maybe they will be in Durban.
Those who don’t want to
comply must pack and go. They are a big company, it
is fair they respect the
laws of the land. We are not against their
investment, but their bad
attitude,” he said.
He also went on to
accuse the company of harbouring a regime change agenda
to oust ZANU
PF.
“Any company defying us is saying ZANU PF must go to hell. Some
companies
are doing it for political purposes. They have a regime change
agenda. They
think the bid to remove ZANU PF from power will succeed. But
there is no
regime change, if you think MDC will win, forget it. If you are
thinking
there is an electoral upset for (President Robert) Mugabe, you are
lost,”
Kasukuwere said.
Kasukuwere has for months led a threatening
campaign against international
companies that have been slow to give in to
the indigenisation exercise, and
the sugar company has been facing worsening
threats. Last November,
Kasukuwere said an investigation had been launched
and threatened the
company directors with jail time, for allegedly lying
about the ownership
structure of its Zim subsidiaries Triangle and Hippo
Valley.
There were also other threat last year. In a letter dated October
23rd and
addressed to Triangle, the Ministry of Indigenisation warned that
it was
losing patience with the sugar company and, “should we not receive a
proper
compliant plan within the prescribed period, ministry and government
would
take it that shareholders of Triangle are not interested in continuing
to do
business in the country.”
Zim
welcomes new Global Fund funding model
http://www.dailynews.co.zw/
Monday, 15 April 2013 10:45
HARARE
- It is known globally as the region most affected by HIV/ Aids yet
southern
Africa has for decades suffered from underfunding with lesser
affected
regions getting donor attention ahead of the more deserving region.
That
is about to change.
Last month, the international health financier Global
Fund announced a new
funding model which would see southern African
countries, including
Zimbabwe, get a lion’s share.
The National Aids
Council (Nac), a quasi-government body which coordinates
HIV response
strategies, has applauded the new Global Fund model that has
for the first
time reversed the situation.
Programmes under the new funding model are
expected to run between 2014 and
2016.
Nac says changes to the
funding structure will help mitigate HIV in the
country.
“It was
surprising that all along we were getting far less than East Africa,
whose
HIV burden is much lighter than ours,” said Amon Mpofu, the Nac
monitoring
and evaluation director.
“We are very happy that we have now been
allocated much more, $300 million,
under the new funding model,” said
Mpofu.
Under the old model, East Africa, which has a lower number of
infections was
getting 24 percent southern Africa received 15 percent of the
funds.
Zimbabwe has about 1, 2 million people with HIV but less than half
of them
are on treatment.
Mpofu applauded the Global Fund for coming
up with a less cumbersome process
of applying for grants unlike the former
grant application process.
“Instead of calling for applications yearly,
countries will now be required
to apply when there is a need. Funding
proposals would be done with guidance
from the Global Fund to ensure every
application meets the criteria,” Mpofu
said.
The Global Fund last
called for applications for funding under the “rounds
system” in
2012.
Out of the 34 million infected people globally, 23,5 million of
them are in
Sub Saharan Africa. Figures show that 34 percent of those living
with HIV in
Sub-Saharan Africa are in southern Africa.
“East and
southern Africa remains the area most heavily affected by the HIV
epidemic.
Out of the total number of people living with HIV worldwide in
2009, 34
percent reside in 10 countries of southern Africa,” according to a
UNAids
report.
According to the World Health Organisation, the Global Fund has
disbursed
almost $16,2 billion for HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis in the
first 10
years since 2002.
No round was processed in 2013 as the
Global Fund was in a transition phase.
Now Zimbabwe is one of the six
countries in the world that has been invited
to apply as “early applicants”
for funding for programmes under the new
model.
The other five
countries are the Democratic Republic of Congo, El Salvador,
Myanmar,
Kazakhstan and the Philippines.
At least 47 carefully selected countries
are targeted to receive grants from
the Global Fund through renewals, grant
extensions and redesigned programmes
that can rapidly make use of funds in
2013.
Global Fund, which has provided $500 million plus to Zimbabwe since
2001,
finances, with other development partners, the bulk of funding for HIV
activities but officials admit it is hardly enough to achieve zero new
infections.
Due to inadequate funding, Zimbabwe has been forced to
look at home-grown
solutions that are attracting the attention of other
African countries such
as Uganda and has won more international
funders.
With a paltry $30 million coming through national coffers
through the Aids
Levy, taxed on the formally-employed, community-based
groups are also a
large part of the matrix to beating HIV.
Nac
launched the community initiatives in 2001, pooling a critical mass of
grassroots foot soldiers focused on behaviour change and home-based
care.
Their efforts are making up for poor funding and hospital staff
shortages
and today the country boasts of having achieved an incredible
decline in
prevalence rates from 24,6 in 2004 and the current 15 percent. -
Wendy
Muperi
MDC-T
campaign targets one million Harare voters
http://www.swradioafrica.com/
By Tichaona Sibanda
15
April 2013
The MDC-T has kicked off its door-to-door campaign in Harare,
where it is
targeting to recruit up to one million voters for this year’s
make or break
presidential and parliamentary elections.
Party
spokesman for Harare province Senator Obert Gutu told SW Radio Africa
on
Monday the campaign that started on Saturday will cover all of the
metropolitan’s 24 political constituencies.
The MDC-T holds 23 out of
the 24 constituencies. Only the Harare South
constituency was secured by
ZANU PF’s Hubert Nyanhongo in the 2008 poll.
Gutu said they’re working flat
out to ensure ZANU PF does not win any seat
in the province this time
around.
“Our door-to-door campaign was jointly launched by Tendai Biti
(secretary-general) and Nelson Chamisa (national organising secretary) two
weeks ago at the Harare exhibition park,” Gutu said.
He continued:
“So the campaign itself kicked off this weekend and from the
feedback I got,
it has been a resounding success. This door-to-door campaign
is the most
effective mass mobilisation and voter awareness exercise. For
instance in
Harare East, the campaign covered 2500 households in 24 hours
and we will be
doing this until election time,” Gutu said.
Metropolitan Harare is a
stronghold of the Morgan Tsvangirai led MDC and has
at least three million
residents, by far the largest province in terms of
population.
But
turnout in past elections has been poor, forcing the MDC-T to devise new
ways of exciting young and new voters. With a few months before Election
Day, the MDC-T is spurring efforts to engage young and new voters even
before the mobile voter registration exercise starts.
Gutu said they
are using a combination of social media, personal contact and
persuasion
through door-to-door conversations to get young and new voters to
show up at
the polls.
“Young people have the biggest stake in this election,” Gutu
said, adding:
“If they don’t vote, their future will be in somebody else’s
hands. If they
vote, the future will be in their hands.”
As the party
intensifies its quest for votes countrywide, the police have
increased its
crackdown on party officials.
Makoni South MP, Pishai Muchauraya has been
ordered to report to the Harare
Law and Order section of the CID on Tuesday,
while Charlton Hwende, a senior
official from Mashonaland West province has
also been asked to report to the
Chegutu police law and order on
Tuesday.
Hwende wrote on his Facebook page that he is being summoned to
the police
for allegedly violating the draconian POSA
legislation.
Muchauraya, the party spokesman for Manicaland told SW Radio
Africa police
want to question him over the distribution of short wave
radios in his
constituency.
“Early this year I distributed radios to
people in my constituency and that
was my democratic right to do so because
they were being starved of
information in the rural constituency,” the
Muchauraya said.
He added: “I didn’t break any law at all so I was quite
surprised to receive
a phone call from the police in Harare inviting me for
questioning over the
radios.”
Unity
govt shows MDC can deliver: PM
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/
14/04/2013 00:00:00
by Staff
Reporter
PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai told thousands of
supporters in Chiredzi
that the MDC-T’s performance in the coalition
government showed the party
was ready to take over power and turnaround the
country’s fortunes.
The MDC-T’s top leadership addressed a series of
rallies across the country
over the weekend as the party steps up its
campaign for elections due later
this year.
In Chiredzi, Tsvangirai
told supporters Saturday: “The four years we have
spent in the Government of
National Unity (GNU) have been useful in soft
landing Zimbabwe’s crisis.
These years in government have shown that we are
able to
deliver.”
Tsvangirai agreed to join President Robert Mugabe and form a
coalition
government after violent but inconclusive elections in 2008. The
MDC-T
leader won the first round of the Presidential vote but pulled out of
the
run-off, accusing his rival of brutalising his supporters.
The
unity administration forced an end to years of world record inflation,
shepherding the country’s economy on a path to recovery and moved to prevent
the collapse of key social sectors such as education and health.
The
MDC-T claims credit for the improvements and insists that it provides
the
only hope of ending the country unemployment crisis and other
problems.
“We encourage people to register and vote in the coming
elections. We must
all mobilise to register and vote to complete the
change,” said Tsvangirai.
“It is not Zanu PF that can solve our problems
because they were the ones
who destroyed this economy. The MDC can create
jobs, which can bring
investment and make the economy
functional.”
Critics however, accuse the MDC-T leadership of dashing the
hopes of
supporters by joining the government gravy train with Tsvangirai
also
attracting unedifying headlines over his personal life.
But the
premier assured supporters that Mugabe’s lengthy stay in power would
come to
an end this year.
“We are here in Chiredzi to prepare for a new beginning.
You will deliver
the victory and you have a job to make sure that the
journey we started in
1999 will be achieved as you know that the vote was
stolen from us in 2008,”
he said.
“At the congress in 2006, we agreed
to pressurise Mugabe and Zanu PF to the
negotiating table. Our main
objectives were a new constitution then a free
and fair election but there
was a price to pay. Others were killed while
others were raped but we took
the sacrifice.”
He also vowed to resist Mugabe’s bid to hold elections
before the end of
June, insisting the Zanu PF leader lost the power to make
unilateral
decisions when he appended his signature to the GPA deal in
2009.
“Mugabe and I will agree on the election date. Mugabe knows that he
cannot
declare a date unilaterally,” Tsvangirai said.
The MDC formations
favour a delay to between August and September to
facilitate the
implementation of reforms they believe will help ensure a
credible vote.
Eight
people killed in a Byo accident
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/
15.04.13
by Gladys
Ncube
Eight people died in an accident 13 kilometres out of Bulawayo
along the
Bulawayo-Gwanda highway when a Toyota Regius commuter omnibus
vehicle burst
a rear tyre and plunged into a ditch.
The
overloaded Toyota Regius vehicle was on its way from Gwanda when it got
involved in the fatal accident after a rear tyre burst near Kensington
suburb just outside the city. Seven people died on the spot while the eighth
person died on his way to hospital.
“What happened is that ,the
driver lost control after a rear tyre burst
killing seven people on the
spot. But for further details you can talk to
our national office I have
forwarded everything there,” Bulawayo Police
Spokesperson Mandlenkosi Moyo
told The Zimbabwean.
When The Zimbabwean visited the accident scene,
police and fire brigade
officers were busy retrieving bodies from the
vehicle wreckage while
ambulances were ferrying the injured to
hospital.
Hundreds of Zimbabweans including some senior government
leaders have
perished in road accidents that experts have largely blamed on
the poor
state of roads and human error.
Statistics from the Zimbabwe
Traffic Police show that road accident
fatalities have increases from 35
deaths per thousand accidents to 45 deaths
per thousand
accidents.
According to the Ministry of Transport, 30 percent of the
country’s roads
require rehabilitation, while the remainder needs periodic
maintenance.
Zimbabwe introduced tollgates in August 2009 as a way of
mobilising
resources for the rehabilitation and maintenance of the country’s
road
network, but not much has been achieved so far.
Tributes
paid to ‘good local governance’ advocate
http://www.swradioafrica.com/
By Nomalanga Moyo
15
April 2013
Tributes have been paid to Farai Barnabas Mangodza, who will
be remembered
by many for his work with the Combined Harare Residents’
Association (CHRA).
Mangodza passed away at Harare Hospital on Saturday
after suffering a
stroke, and was laid to rest Monday at the capital city’s
Warren Hills
cemetery.
He served as the chief executive officer at
CHRA before leaving the
association in 2011 to pursue other
interests.
CHRA chief Simbarashe Moyo, who worked with the late Mangodza
from 2005 to
2011, said Zimbabweans had been robbed of “a workaholic who
gave his all to
improve the lives of Harare residents.”
“He was a
hard-worker who managed to put things in place. He was passionate
about
improving the status of residents and not just those of Harare but
also
nation-wide through his work with the Zimbabwe United Residents’
Association
secretariat,” Moyo said.
He added: “So he will be remembered by those who
knew him and worked with
him as someone who was committed to his work
despite the obvious political
challenges associated with representing
residents in a highly-politicised
environment.”
In another tribute
posted on the social networking site Facebook, former
colleague and director
at Harare Residents’ Trust Precious Shumba expressed
his sadness on hearing
the news of Mangodza’s death, adding that despite
their differences on
certain issues, the deceased was a great advocate for
good local
governance.
Shumba said: “I recall the great moments we shared as local
government
development practitioners. The narration for the struggle for
good local
government in Zimbabwe will be incomplete without mentioning
Barnabas
Mangodza.”
He went on: “We were worlds apart in specific
areas of our life, but I will
always remember your contribution in my life
and the movement. He was a
thorough man in terms of documentation, and he
wanted documents to be
straight to the point. I learnt to structure
presentations in a logical and
conclusive way, developing my personality in
a significant way.
“He would also reminisce on the days he wanted to be a
Roman Catholic
Brother, kupikira hufata, and we would laugh about it,”
Shumba added.
Detectives
Summon Lawmaker for Threatening Geoff Nyarota
http://www.voazimbabwe.com/
Jonga
Kandemiiri
15.04.2013
WASHINGTON DC — Political parties and their
candidates for the crucial
harmonised elections, whose dates are yet to be
announced, have started
opening their campaign offices for making contacts
with voters.
In the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formation of
Prime Minister
Morgan Tsvangirai, daggers have already been drawn in a
number of
constituencies where candidates are seeking endorsement by party
faithfuls
to stand on the party's ticket in the crucial election.
In
Makoni South, for example, incumbent Pishai Muchauraya may battle it out
for
the hearts and minds of the people in the MDC primaries with media guru
and
former Daily News editor Geoffrey Nyarota and several others.
But before
that, it looks like they may have to settle some cases in the
courts first,
if things go that far.
Muchauraya tells Studio 7 he has been summoned by
detectives from the Law
and Order Section at Harare Central Police Station
for allegedly threatening
Nyarota with unspecified action.
Muchauraya
said a Senior Assistant Inspector Run’anga called him Monday and
told him to
present himself to the police Tuesday to answer charges related
to his
alleged threats to Nyarota and several other issues.
Studio 7 reached out
to Nyarota, who in his own words said: “Apa hapana
nyaya (this is a trivial
issue).” He preferred not to comment any further.
As electioneering
reaches fever pitch, many more such cases are expected to
crop up in other
political parties.
Zim’s
first toll plaza set to rake in US$1,7m annually
http://www.herald.co.zw/
Monday, 15 April
2013 00:00
Michael Chideme Reporter
The commissioning
of Zimbabwe’s first toll plaza at Ntabazinduna, a few
kilometers outside
Bulawayo
is a major step towards boosting revenue collection and
enhancing
inter-regional trade between Zimbabwe and other Sadc countries.
The toll
plaza, which is one of the eight to be built along the Plumtree-
Mutare
highway is said to have the capacity to rake in US$140 000 a month
and
roughly US$1,7 million a year. This will help assure the nation of good
user
friendly roads through some guaranteed funds for
rehabilitation.
Inadequate funding from treasury over the years had
hampered efforts by the
government to rehabilitate all the country’s major
road networks.
Zimbabwe, which has road network of 87 654km comprising of 8
194km of urban
roads, 61 000km rural and 18 460km of state highways, needs
about US$2
billion to rehabilitate the entire road network and bring it to
international standards.
But the introduction of toll gates in the
past few years as a strategic way
of generating funds to maintain the
country’s roads has brought a glimmer of
hope to motorists and the haulage
transport industry.
Road construction and engineering experts say funding
of road development
through toll plazas and Public Private Sector
partnerships has provided the
country with an effective solution for the
rehabilitation of roads.
Transport, Communications and Infrastructure
Development Minister Nicholas
Goche said good roads promote national trade
and efficient transit traffic
flow between Zimbabwe and neighbouring
countries.
The Plumtree-Mutare Highway, which links Zimbabwe with
Botswana, Namibia and
South Africa to the west and Mozambique, Malawi and
Tanzania on the eastern
side is expected to be complete by March
2014.
The road which is being rehabilitated using a US$206 miilion-dollar
facility
secured from the African Development Bank will also help link
Zimbabwe with
the interior — Uganda, Tanzania and other countries in the
Great Lakes
region.
A 2009 World Bank report says if all African
countries were to catch up with
the best infrastructure, per capita growth
rate could increase by 2.2
percent.
The report dubbed “Infrastructure in
Africa” indicates that poor
infrastructure services are a huge handicap to
inter-Africa trade, reduce
businesses productivity by 40 percent and holds
back the attainment of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Good
road infrastructure can bring numerous benefits that include
employment,
boosting tourism, reducing vehicle maintenance costs and other
social and
economic issues.
Improved roads also support and strengthen regional
integration right from
sub-regional trade blocs to continental trade
groupings.
Group Five chairperson Mrs Philisiwe Mthetwa says her company
is promoting
the use of sustainable energy practices through the
installation of toll
gates that use green energy.
“All measures have
been taken to ensure a substantially reduced carbon
footprint.
“We can
confidently say that what we have here is one of the most energy
efficient
designs for a toll plaza in the world,” she said.
“Furthermore, the road
protocols have been largely aligned to the rest of
the Sadc region, thereby
providing consistency of interpretation for cross
border travellers and
encouraging safer driving habits.”
Last year, Sadc adopted the Regional
Infrastructure Development Master Plan
Vision 2027, a 15-year blueprint that
will guide the implementation of
cross-border infrastructure projects from
2013 to 2027.
The plan will serve as a key strategic framework to guide
the implementation
of efficient, seamless and cost-effective transboundary
infrastructure
networks in an integrated and co-ordinated manner in six
sectors, namely
energy, transport, tourism, ICT and postal, meteorology and
water.
The master plan will be implemented in three five-year phases —
short term
(2012-2017), medium term (2017-2022) and long term
(2022-2027).
With a good road infrastructure, Zimbabwe can enhance its
business
opportunities by tapping into the huge Sadc market of 234 million
people
which generates a GDP of US$760 billion per
year.
Additionally, it can also enhance its access into the Common Market
for
Eastern and Southern Africa, a free trade area with 20 member states
stretching from Zimbabwe to Libya.
Mutasa
floors Mnangagwa
http://www.dailynews.co.zw/
Monday, 15 April 2013 11:31
HARARE -
President Robert Mugabe’s loyalist Didymus Mutasa is walking with a
spring
after outsmarting a wing within Zanu PF linked to Defence minister
Emmerson
Mnangagwa at the weekend.
Mutasa successfully pushed for the dissolution
of the Zanu PF Manicaland
provincial executive, which Mutasa floors
Mnangagwa was packed with
Mnangagwa loyalists.
Ousted chairperson,
Mike Madiro was part of the infamous Tsholotsho coup
plot in
2004.
Officials have been tight-lipped about the closed door Manicaland
meeting
which lasted 14 hours.
But sources said a resolution was
adopted to dissolve the entire provincial
executive, giving Mutasa a chance
to influence the appointment of an interim
committee packed with Mugabe and
his own loyalists.
Apart from dismantling the provincial executive,
Mutasa is plotting the
downfall of Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa, who
was a key figure in the
2004 Tsholotsho coup plot, the Daily News can
reveal.
With elections around the corner and factionalism rearing its
head, Mutasa
is emerging as a stumbling block to the factions, some which
already doubt
Mugabe’s capacity to win elections at 89, insiders
say.
There have been reports that there is a group of power hungry Zanu
PF
politburo members, who are plotting Mugabe’s ouster even before elections
arguing that at 89, it will be difficult to sell him as a Zanu PF
candidate.
Warring factions within Zanu PF are engaged in a fierce battle
to succeed
Mugabe, with Mnangagwa and Vice President Joice Mujuru reportedly
leading
the two largest factions.
Like Tsholotsho in 2004, Manicaland
has of late become the epicentre of the
factionalism affecting Zanu
PF.
This forced Mugabe, who badly needs the factions to rally behind his
candidature, to appoint a special probe team headed by party chairman Simon
Khaya Moyo, which convened the weekend meeting.
Moyo yesterday
refused to divulge details of the meeting or the factional
fighting.
“I don’t think it is worth talking to you,” he said, before
hanging up.
Sources said Mutasa appeared to be losing the war going into
the meeting
after party heavyweights such as Chinamasa, politburo women’s
league boss
Oppah Muchinguri and ousted provincial chairman Madiro appeared
to have
successfully plotted a revenge mission.
The camp had been
angered by the way Madiro was suspended after being
accused of looting close
to $1 million donated to the party by diamond
companies. Madiro was also
recently in court accused of stealing beasts
donated for Mugabe’s birthday
bash held at Sakubva Stadium last year.
According to reports, the camp
met at Muchinguri’s house in Mutare and
drafted a petition for Mugabe’s
attention lambasting Mutasa, resulting in
the Khaya Moyo-led
probe.
“He (Mutasa) turned the tables at the meeting. You see, he is
fashioning
himself as Mugabe’s defender against the factions,” said a
source.
Madiro and Chinamasa were both part of the infamous Tsholotsho
declaration
which in 2004 sought to manoeuvre Mnangagwa to the vice
presidency post
ahead of Mugabe’s preferred candidate Mujuru.
Even
though Mugabe punished people who were involved in the Tsholotsho
declaration, including serial political flip-flopper, Jonathan Moyo, the
ghost is back to haunt his party ahead of a crucial poll which may be held
in less than two months.
Zanu PF’s spokesperson Rugare Gumbo
yesterday dismissed talk of
factionalism.
“I only know of one team
led by Khaya Moyo that went to Manicaland
investigating challenges in that
province. There is no issue of
factionalism in the party,” said
Gumbo.
But sources say the Manicaland debacle is the latest kick in the
teeth for
the Mnangagwa faction, which suffered a massive setback when the
party
decided to dissolve grassroots structures widely known as district
coordinating committees which were loyal to the Defence minister.
As
the secretary for administration, Mutasa is a powerful figure in Zanu PF
and
has often used his weight to get his way.
Apart from thwarting the
interests of the Tsholotsho cabal, Mutasa is also
seeking to check
Chinamasa’s bid to fight for the Makoni Central
Constituency by pushing his
close ally Basil Nyabadza for the post.
Nyabadza in 2009 resigned as
provincial chairperson in protest after Mutasa
lost the battle for the
party’s national chairmanship to Khaya Moyo.
Water Rescue For Bulawayo
http://www.bizday.co.zw/
Mon, Apr
15th, 2013
Bulawayo, April 15, 2013 –
The Department of International Development
(DFID) in joint efforts with
World Vision has donated $5,5 m for emergency
water provision in the second
major city of Bulawayo which faces a perennial
water shortage.
Head
of the DFID in Zimbabwe, Jane Rintoul, said the UK is providing the
assistance over the next 12 months to increase the water sanitation services
in Bulawayo.
“We intend to support the most vulnerable, urban
communities in response to
recent water shortages. We expect 140 000 people
to benefit directly from
the services and the rest of the city to benefit
indirectly,” said Rintoul.
The programme will also deliver improved
levels of school sanitation,
through construction and repair of facilities
in 73 schools where 80
elevated 10 000 litre tanks will be
constructed.
DFID has plans to provide clean water and sanitation to over
three million
people in Zimbabwe by 2015.
“I do not remember any
other city that has suffered such a crisis,” Dr
Samuel Sipepa Nkomo said
this while launching the Bulawayo Emergency Water
Supply Augmentation
Project at the Bulawayo City Council Offices last week.
“You have
suffered but managed well. It is commendable that you stuck to
your
principles to ensure equitable supply of water to all residents,” Dr
Nkomo
said.
Nkomo has called for a water summit, which will be held during the
Zimbabwe
International Trade Fair on April 22, in which water experts around
the
country will discuss a lasting solution to Zimbabwe’s water woes
particularly in arid regions such as Matabeleland and Masvingo.
As elections
loom, Zimbabwe crumbles
http://www.iol.co.za/
April 15 2013 at 12:39pm
By Peta
Thornycroft
Will Robert Mugabe be in power at independence
celebrations in 2014? Maybe.
He will be 90 then.
“It’s another year. Just
another year.” That was the reaction of academic,
publisher and raconteur
Ibbo Mandaza answering a question about how he felt
about Zimbabwe’s 33rd
anniversary of independence on Thursday.
“People are despondent, and
there is no engagement with upcoming elections
except in the newspapers.
People don’t even know when elections are going to
take place.”
He
should know, as at the side of his attractive NGO in Harare is a
restaurant
where many of the main political talkers, across the political
divide,
gather at lunch. Mandaza and everyone else, including Zanu PF
seniors know
that the pattern of Zimbabwe’s independence celebrations hardly
changes.
President Robert Mugabe will make a long speech in English and
Shona. He
will be frail but his voice will resonate when he recalls the
liberation
struggle.
Since the inclusive government was established early in 2009 he
has eased up
blasting usual enemies, the West, and of course, Morgan
Tsvangirai, his
rival from the Movement of Democratic Change who these days
is usually
sitting in the stadium quite close to him.
Then, the main
event begins, a soccer match which is why many ordinary folk
turn up to
independence day celebrations. The second day of the holiday is
armed forces
day where there are parades and where the man of few words and
even fewer
smiles, defence minster Emmerson Mnangagwa will make a speech.
He is so
desperate to inherit the Zanu PF presidency from Mugabe, who for
some reason
does not trust him, and seems to prefer vice president Joice
Mujuru.
Mnangagwa, blamed for organising or being involved in the
worst political
violence since independence, is a rich man and has been into
alternative
gold markets for years. However unapproachable he may be,
however feared,
some MDC seniors say that despite this he gets things done
and keeps his
word.
There will be little security sector reform
before the elections, but the
entire Zanu PF hierarchy is old, like
Mnangagwa whose influence and that of
the generals has waned. The powerful,
right-wing generals who many believed
ran the country behind the scenes, and
who many fear will control elections,
are no longer nearly as powerful as
they were five years ago, not least
because they are now very much richer
than they were.
But for the first time since independence Zimbabwe cannot
afford to fund
elections which must take place before the end of
September.
The maize harvest is only a third of what Zimbabwe needs so
huge imports of
grain from Zambia are on their way. But many thousand new
tobacco farmers on
formerly white-owned land are making cash as Chinese
buyers boost the price
of Virginia leaf, sometimes hitting R40 per kilogram.
This year’s production
will be about two thirds of productions prior to land
invasions.
Despite the despondency on the streets Zimbabwe has begun to
change even
though Zanu PF’s opponents, human rights organisations, MDC
activists and
protesters are still regularly arrested and usually released
before being
charged.
There is more media now than ever before, and
there is less political
violence now than at any time since the Movement for
Democratic Change burst
on to the scene in 1999, while some of those who
fled in the last decade
have begun to return.
That, human rights
defenders say, does not mean that there won’t be violence
in elections this
year. Zanu PF is used to winning. It cannot conceive of
not being in power,
but the inclusive government gave them a taste of
reduced power.
Main
roads linking all main border posts are being rehabilitated and
Zimbabweans
are paying for this via income from tolls which feeds the loan
from the
Development Bank of Southern Africa.
Mining has surged ahead particularly
new, controversial investments into
alluvial diamonds in the eastern
Zimbabwe and some recovery in the gold
sector. There is Indian interest in
large deposits of low grade iron ore and
expansion and capital investment in
platinum production is actually
increasing despite talk of
indigenisation.
Zimbabweans have not found money to buy the 51 percent
shares offered by all
large foreign companies to the government.
A
few community trusts have been set up at some of the larger foreign-owned
mining companies and there are credible reports emerging that some of these
trusts are being looted by the network of people feasting on the
beaurocracies set up to process indigenisation.
Mugabe is likely to
tell people on independence day that no Zimbabwean will
have to pay for the
51 percent of shares in mining companies because the
underground assets of
those mines belongs to the country and therefore sets
off the share
value.
But what Mugabe says is not law, and despite a largely pliant and
underqualified judiciary, the rulings emerging from the courts in the last
few years are more often rooted in the law. Diaspora, diamonds and divinity
dominate recovery in the property market in Harare, according to one of the
busier and most established estate agencies.
In the rest of the
country few properties are being sold and there are
spectacular bargains
around for brave investors.
Everything including the birth rate is
shrinking and statistics point to
urban drift for the first time since
independence, according to preliminary
figures of last year’s census which
recorded a 1.1 percent population
increase to 12.9 million.
Will
Mugabe be in power at independence celebrations in 2014? Maybe. He will
be
90 then.
He has long-lived genes from his late mother, and although he
will struggle
to beat Tsvangirai in the presidential poll next year, he
wants to die in
office.
Sunday Independent
Breaking the Silence
Oppression, Fear, and Courage in
Zimbabwe
By Alexandra Fuller
Photograph by Robin Hammond
There are at least two things to know
about Zimbabweans. The first is that they have an immoderate attachment to their
land, and no wonder. Anyone who has seen the spring-red blush of musasa woodland at the beginning of the rains, or
felt the crackle-hot wind of a lowveld summer afternoon, or absorbed the scents
of sweet potato and marigold as dusk settles over the bush will know that theirs
is a soul-snagging land. Of course such an attachment to land comes at a price.
For it, and over it, there will be wars and revolutions, and the inevitable loss
of land by the vanquished or the politically unlucky will be so unendurable that
the unmoored people will end up true ghosts, souls in search of
soil.
The second thing to know about Zimbabweans is that they are a
small but persistently noisy nation of storytellers and musicmakers. The Bhundu
Boys were pop diva Madonna’s supporting act at Wembley Stadium in London in
1987. Thomas Mapfumo, the Lion of Zimbabwe, created a genre of protest
music—chimurenga(uprising). Africa’s most prestigious literary award, the
Caine Prize, has twice gone to Zimbabweans in its 13-year history (Brian
Chikwava in 2004, NoViolet Bulawayo in 2011). Charles Mungoshi won two Pen
International awards in 1976, and Dambudzo Marechera won the Guardian Fiction
Prize in 1979. Doris Lessing, who spent her formative years in the country, won
the Nobel Prize in literature.
I am not now Zimbabwean, but for
several years in the 1970s my British-born parents owned a farm on the eastern
edge of what was then the rogue state of Rhodesia. They fought—my father as a
conscripted soldier, my mother as a police volunteer—to keep the country
white-run and avowedly out of the hands of communists. By any calculation, it
was a questionable cause: Ian Smith, Rhodesia’s prime minister, campaigned in
1965 on a slogan of “A whiter, brighter Rhodesia,” and for the next decade and a
half a decreasing minority of whites (just over 200,000 in the early ’60s to
about 150,000 in 1980) tried to hold on to power in a country populated by a
black majority that grew from about 3.5 million to more than 7 million during
that period.
By late 1979 liberation forces were coming into
Rhodesia from camps in neighboring Mozambique and Zambia faster than government
troops could kill them. A peace was negotiated. The following February general
elections were held and won by the Zimbabwe African National Union—Patriotic
Front (ZANU-PF). Its leader became Zimbabwe’s first prime minister.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe exuded an air of conciliatory magnanimity. My mother
wasn’t buying it. My parents moved north to Malawi.
Working along fault lines well established by the white minority
government before him—which is to say, ethnic, racial, and political—Mugabe went
about further dividing his nation and securing absolute power for
himself.
There are two main ethnic groups in Zimbabwe: the
majority Shona and the minority Ndebele. Mugabe is Shona. In 1983 Mugabe
deployed his North Korean-trained Five Brigade into the west of the country to
preempt any Ndebele political opposition. Over the following five years, an
estimated 20,000 Ndebele were massacred. “He understood and manipulated our
weaknesses very well,” Wilfred Mhanda, a formerZANU-PF liberation commander who fought along with Mugabe,
told me. “There is nothing more deadly than someone so profoundly insecure
mimicking the aggression of his oppressors and becoming an oppressor in
turn.”
Mugabe tolerated corruption in his cabinet, as long as it came
with loyalty to him. The country’s economy was collapsing, and by the mid-1990s
there were fuel shortages, civil servants were striking, and liberation war
veterans began to demand the compensation they had been promised at
independence. Then, in 1998, Mugabe sent troops into the Democratic Republic of
the Congo to prop up the teetering regime of Laurent Kabila, at an eventual cost
equivalent to a million U.S. dollars a day. Zimbabwe’s economic fate was
sealed.
The Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) was launched in 1999, headed by a former
labor union leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Mugabe countered the new political
outspokenness this came with and the increasing dissatisfaction among his own
supporters by allowing them to appropriate white-owned commercial farms without
compensation. In 2000, with Mugabe’s explicit blessing, unemployed ZANU-PF supporters led by war veterans armed with axes and
machetes invaded the farms, shouting, “Hondo! War!” Domestic food supplies plummeted. In
2005, after the MDC won several parliamentary seats, Mugabe retaliated with
Operation Murambatsvina (Operation Clear the Filth). Across the country market
stalls and homes belonging to the urban poor, who constituted much
of ZANU-PF’s
opposition, were razed. An estimated 700,000 people lost their homes or
livelihoods, and more than 2 million were driven further into
poverty.
Then, in a first round of elections held in 2008,
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF finally lost to Tsvangirai’s MDC. Calling for a runoff
election, supporters and officials of ZANU-PFwent
on a vicious state-sponsored rampage. Hundreds of MDC supporters were killed and
thousands injured, hundreds of women and girls were raped, and tens of thousands
of people became internal refugees. “If you wanted to commit suicide in 2008,
you just wore an MDC T-shirt,” I was told. By November of that year, Steve
Hanke, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, had
calculated Zimbabwe’s monthly inflation rate at 79.6 billion percent, second
only to Hungary’s in 1946.
To avoid worse bloodletting and even more unimaginable economic
collapse, Tsvangirai withdrew from the race, and Mugabe declared himself the
winner. Thabo Mbeki, then president of South Africa and a bafflingly uncritical
Mugabe supporter, persuaded the two men to negotiate a power-sharing agreement.
Mugabe retained control of the mines, the army, and the police and intelligence
services—in other words, everything that ensured his continued dominance.
Tsvangirai inherited the ministries of finance, education, health,
environment—in other words, everything that ensured he couldn’t run away with
power.
A tenuous purgatory of waiting ensued—waiting for Mugabe’s grip on
power to ease, waiting for Mugabe to die (he was born in 1924). But in spite of
rumored puffy ankles—cancer was one of the whispered speculations—Mugabe
appeared as robust as ever. In 2010 Foreign Policy magazine named Mugabe the second worst
dictator in the world, after North Korea’s late leader Kim Jong Il. In 2012 the
Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization the Fund for Peace ranked Zimbabwe
fifth in its annual Failed States Index.
Still, when I arrived in the
country in mid-October 2012, things in the capital, Harare, seemed to be
business as usual. An influx of diamond money—the 2006 discovery of diamonds in
the east of the country has been called the biggest find of its kind—had lent a
Botoxed sheen to the place: adoption of the U.S. dollar had simplified trade,
new cars were on the roads, shops were full of South African imports, mansions
mushroomed behind massive walls in the suburbs beyond State
House.
But beneath the impression of regularity, disquiet
remained. Ahead of tentatively scheduled elections in July 2013, ZANU-PF youth gangs were stirring in densely populated market
centers; on international television ZANU-PF officials were blatantly threatening that they would
not support a Tsvangirai win. At the same time headlines reported Tsvangirai’s
domestic intrigues, culminating in his recent marriage to Elizabeth Macheka,
daughter of a ZANU-PF central committee guru. His position as a robust
alternative to Mugabe seemed in question.
Meanwhile personnel from the Central Intelligence Organisation
(CIO) were reportedly monitoring citizens’ activities everywhere. “Yes, there
are people who say I should watch out,” Tafadzwa Muzondo, a 33-year-old
Zimbabwean playwright told me. “But I have to do my duty. I am a citizen first.
I am an artist second. And isn’t it better to say at the end of your life that
you tried to make a difference?” Muzondo had suggested we meet behind the
National Gallery in the Harare Gardens. It was a steamy morning, and
thunderstorms threatened, but we stayed out in the open, the better to spot any
government-sponsored eavesdroppers, although I didn’t see how a dried-up patch
of lawn was going to do much to protect us against the CIO. But Muzondo had
written a play that had provoked the government, and he was talking to a foreign
writer, and to do either of those things in this place and at this time was to
court trouble.
A concerned person can’t help but keep track: In the decade from
2001 to 2011 official oppression has forced at least 49 Zimbabwean journalists
into exile, the fifth worst record in the world. Within Zimbabwe’s borders,
scores of national and a few international human-rights activists, writers, and
photographers have been intimidated or arrested, and one local cameraman,
suspected of passing photographs of a beaten-up Morgan Tsvangirai to foreign
media, was murdered in 2007. Since 2000 Tsvangirai has been arrested numerous
times and once nearly beaten to death by Mugabe’s henchmen. In theory, freedom
of speech is protected. In practice, a series of imaginatively broad laws
attempt to ensure silence. Regardless of when or how Mugabe leaves power, it’s
going to take his country a long time to recover from him.
“How do we intend to solve our violent history if we can’t talk
about it?” Muzondo asked. “You combine my poverty with my fear, with my
silence—life is not worth living. They might as well just do mass killing.”
Zimbabweans are in the fearful position of watching themselves become the
unspoken, the unheard—the mute, whose stories will be told only by foreign
correspondents and Western aid workers. Once boasting the highest literacy rate
in Africa—more than 90 percent—some predict that Zimbabwe’s literacy rate will
fall to 75 percent by 2020.
“We know this. Without our voice, we have no choice,” Muzondo
said. “Without choice, where are we? We’re forever stuck in
violence.”
But Zimbabwean writers, artists, and
playwrights haven’t given up yet. Robust, sometimes mordantly funny, politically
controversial novels, art exhibitions, and plays appear faster than CIO agents
can object to them. In the past eight years Muzondo has written half a dozen
plays dealing with pressing social and political issues. His latest—No Voice,
No Choice—was banned in August 2012 after an enthusiastically received run
around the country. “People were coming up to us afterwards and saying, ‘We were
scared of what would happen to us if someone noticed us watching your play, but
then we noticed you were not scared of performing it. We felt more courageous
because of your bravery.’”
The letter from the national authorities banning the play was
Orwellian in its nonsensical doublespeak: “Please be advised that the Board of
Censors read your Play Script and observed that the play is about discouraging
youths participating in political violence … The play is inciteful and against
the spirit of national healing.” I turned the letter over, as if shaking up its
words would make it more coherent, to say nothing of rectifying the
unintentional pun (inciteful/insightful). “Someone felt uncomfortable with the
truth,” Muzondo said. “But that truth is this: We’re all in this together.
Neighbors have assaulted neighbors. Now we have to sit down together and face
what it is we’ve done to one another. The government doesn’t want us to have
that conversation. But what if we did?”
This was never part of the political calculation. Eventually
Zimbabweans might be brought together by their common bond of suffering and
begin to insist on their own liberation. In fact, Mugabe seems to have
deliberately turned so many ordinary Zimbabweans—soldiers and police officers,
obviously, but also schoolboys ordered out of their classrooms to rape and
torture—into perpetrators that there is now widespread fear a change of
government might bring with it recrimination. “Victims of the political violence
are afraid it will resurface with every election; perpetrators of the political
violence are afraid it will end,” Rutendo Munengami, an advocate for victims of
rape, told me. “Everyone knows who the culprits are; they are our neighbors and
officials. They are not hard to find. Those people are afraid of a government
who will call them to account.”
I met Munengami and fellow
activist Margaret Mazvarira in the garden of a quiet Harare restaurant a few
mornings after my meeting with Muzondo. The sun appeared to take up the whole
sky, and musasa tree pods cracked, showering seeds on the barely rain-softened
earth. The two women spoke over each other, finishing each other’s sentences,
confirming the connecting braid of shared experience between
them.
In the early hours of June 3, 2003, Munengami—whose
husband was then an MDC councillor—was torn from her bed, her nursing
nine-month-old son still in her arms. While soldiers looked on, Munengami told
me, she was raped by a prominent ZANU-PF minister. Afterward, the minister drove her to a
police station in Harare, where she and her son were dangled over a pit of acid
while the soldiers decided whether or not to kill her. “They wanted to throw the
baby to the ground,” Munengami said. “They shouted, ‘He will be the same as the
father. He will want to give the country to the white
man.’”
Mazvarira was abducted in 2000 from her home in
Chivhu, a small town south of Harare, and raped by two ZANU-PF CIO officers after her 17-year-old daughter, an MDC
organizer, was killed by a petrol bomb. Mazvarira contracted HIV from the
assault. “They told me, ‘You and your daughter are Tsvangirai’s bitches.’” When
Mazvarira went to the police station to report the attack, the officer in charge
refused to hear her case. “The police are only ZANU-PF,”
she said.
The two women are not placid about what happened to them, but what
converted them from victims into activists is that they were never able to hold
their attackers to account. “The government won’t help us. No one can help us.
It is up to us, ourselves, now. That is where we are.” In 2009 Munengami
launched Doors of Hope, a nonprofit organization that supports and speaks for
victims of politically motivated rape. Doors of Hope now has 375 members from
all over the country. “We are standing for women,” Munengami said. “Those
so-called war vets raped so many women during the liberation struggle, but they
don’t want to talk about it. So we are going to talk about it. Whether it’s
1975, or now, we don’t want this to continue. We have had enough. We are sick
and tired of being quiet. Where has silence got us?”
In a nearby jacaranda tree, the call of a cape turtle dove echoed
Zimbabwe’s eternal lament, “My mother is dead, my father is dead, all my
relatives are dead.” From my recent travels across the country, I knew that
organizations like Doors of Hope existed all over Zimbabwe. I had spoken to the
director of Radio Dialogue, a small station in Bulawayo that had circumvented a
ban on independent broadcasting by distributing cassettes and CDs to minibus
drivers. I had spoken to survivors of political torture who had organized
healing circles with their erstwhile attackers and were now running a nonprofit,
Tree of Life, which had gone into scores of communities throughout the country
holding workshops to help both victims and perpetrators recover from past
political violence. I had spoken to the editors of Weaver Press in Harare, which
still published brave, politically sensitive books, and I had picked up copies
of poetry published by amaBooks in Bulawayo. I had spoken to artists and writers
and doctors who were challenging the inevitability of a silent, violent
future.
“I am like that tree,” Mazvarira said suddenly, pointing toward
the jacaranda. “I’ve had my branches cut, but I am not dead. I am attached to
this soil, and it feeds my roots.” She pushed her plate away. “Today I got to
tell my story. I was heard. That is my rain.” She leaned forward with a smile of
the kind that can come only when there is still hope in a nearly hopeless place.
“So please tell your world not to turn the page on us yet. Tell them to keep
hearing us. We are still speaking.”
Alexandra Fuller’s
family memoir, Cocktail Hour Under
the Tree of Forgetfulness, appeared
in 2011. That year Robin Hammond received the Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism
Award, which enabled him to spend five months in Zimbabwe last
year.