The Times October 14,
2005
From Jan Raath in
Harare
The American
Ambassador to Zimbabwe was arrested
briefly by troops this week while taking
a stroll in the capital's National
Botanic Garden near President Mugabe's
residence, state radio reported last
night.
The incident happened on Monday when Christopher
Dell was seen in the
popular spot adjoining Mr Mugabe's heavily guarded
home. The Defence
Ministry said that Mr Dell "has the men on duty to thank
for their
restraint" in not shooting him.
Members of Mr
Mugabe's presidential guard, in full
combat gear and carrying automatic
rifles with fixed bayonets when on duty,
are notorious for harassing
passers-by, including children walking to
school.
A Foreign Ministry statement accused
Mr Dell of
ignoring "no entry" signs and said that he had "intended to
provoke an
unwarranted diplomatic incident". "He risked being shot," the
statement
said. "He was well aware a similar breach of his security in his
country
would not be tolerated."
The arrest
is the latest in a string of incidents in
which Western diplomats have
fallen foul of Zimbabwean security men or
ruling party militia and suffered
assault, abuse or arrest.
Reuters
Fri Oct 14, 2005
10:13 AM IST
By James Macharia
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Where have the
billions of dollars poured into
Africa to fight AIDS gone?
A lot of
this money is channelled through non-governmental organisations
(NGOs)
mainly to pay for life-prolonging drugs and education campaigns on a
continent where many national healthcare systems are broke and in
tatters.
Donors increasingly prefer to fund NGOs rather than African
governments,
many of which are seen as corrupt. But because the NGOs number
in the
thousands, it is unclear how much money they have received or how it
was
used.
"The trail of donor money is as clear as mud," said Annabel
Kanabus,
director of UK AIDS charity Avert.
The United Nations AIDS
agency, UNAIDS, says sub-Saharan Africa has just
over 10 percent of the
world's population but is home to more than 60
percent of all people living
with HIV. Around 2.3 million people died of
AIDS in the region in
2004.
UNAIDS estimates that $8.3 billion will be available to fight AIDS
globally
from all sources in 2005. Although this is up from $6.1 billion in
2004,
when the U.S. alone gave $2.7 billion, it will leave a $4 billion
shortfall,
it says.
Even though some cash appears to have been
misused, the main concern is that
most of the money given so far has simply
not been enough, and much of it
does not reach those most in
need.
"Too little of this money is currently reaching community
initiatives,"
Geoff Foster, a child health expert in Zimbabwe said in a
report for the
charity Save the Children.
GRASSROOTS, CARS AND
SALARIES
The biggest slice of the funding cake goes to the same big,
well-known NGOs,
while smaller community-based groups that often have a
grassroots connection
to those in need, such as orphans, were left
empty-handed, experts said.
"Donors need to address this paradox,"
Jonathan Cohen, a HIV/AIDS researcher
with Human Rights Watch,
said.
"Organisations that are best qualified to fight the disease on the
ground
are the least able to obtain funding."
U.S.-based writer Helen
Epstein, who has researched on AIDS in Africa, says
one such grassroot AIDS
group in Soweto, South Africa, struggles to feed and
counsel AIDS
orphans.
The organisation, run by Elizabeth Rapuleng, has a yearly budget
of $60,000.
"She (Elizabeth) worries about whether there will be enough
food for the
children, whether they all have toothpaste and shoes, and
whether they are
all going to school," wrote Epstein in the latest New York
Review of Books.
A study on U.S. foreign aid showed much donor cash never
leaves the country
of origin.
"At least 60 percent of U.S. foreign
aid funding never leaves the U.S., but
instead is spent on office overheads,
travel, procurement of American-made
cars, computers ... as well as salary
and benefit packages," Curt Tarnoff
and Larry Nowels, specialists in foreign
affairs, said in a paper for the
U.S. Congress on foreign aid
spending.
NGOs said salary packages were aimed at attracting scarce human
capital, and
were not designed to enrich individuals.
"NOT ENOUGH
MONEY"
In Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, some 4 million people
are
infected with AIDS and UNAIDS says donors will have given some $500
million
to NGOs to fight AIDS in 2002-2006.
"This may seem like a lot
of money, but when you set it against the size of
the population it's not
enough," said Pierre Mpele, UNAIDS coordinator for
Nigeria. "They (NGOs) do
very important work that cannot be quantified in
terms of
money."
Only 25 of 66 centres offering anti-retroviral treatment (ARVs)
in the West
African country were state-run, Mpele said.
NGOs fighting
AIDS in Africa mainly get their cash from President George W.
Bush's AIDS
fund, which gave $2.4 billion worldwide in 2004, and the
Geneva-based Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which
mainly funds
governments.
South Africa, the country with the world's highest HIV/AIDS
caseload -- more
than five million people are estimated to carry the virus
-- is the largest
recipient country under Bush's 2005 plan, securing about
$150 million for
dozens of NGOs.
The nation's top home-grown AIDS
lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign
(TAC), says it spends about half its
annual budget of $3.06 million on staff
and operational costs, which experts
said reflected the spending pattern for
many NGOs.
Nathan Geffen, a
TAC official, said the group spends the other half on
education materials
and training workshops.
It also spent $76,750 on CD4 tests -- which show
how far HIV has advanced --
for 1,000 members, ARVs for 100 people and
anti-fungal fluconazole for
thousands more.
AIDS CASH
SCANDALS
Alan Whiteside, an AIDS expert at the University of
KwaZulu-Natal said most,
but not all, NGOs used the money well. Government
agencies ranked badly in
comparison to NGOs.
In Kenya, a former
director of the National Aids Control Council, Margaret
Gachara, was jailed
in 2004 for a year for defrauding the government out of
about $366,800 in
accumulated salaries after she falsified documents to get
the top
job.
Critics said her salary diverted funds that could have helped the
fight
against AIDS.
Gachara was later freed under a presidential
amnesty.
Neighbour Uganda, praised for cutting HIV infection rates to
around 6
percent from 30 percent in the early 1990s, is probing a health
department
scandal over how it spent AIDS money.
Out of a promised
$201 million over two years, the Global Fund had given $45
million, but
stopped over concerns that there was possible misuse of the
money.
"To steal money intended for ... medication, food and welfare
is to steal
from them (AIDS patients) their last glimmer of hope, and to
pull the only
rag from under their feeble feet," said Justice James Ogoola,
who is heading
the inquiry.
(For more news about emergency relief
visit Reuters AlertNet
http://www.alertnet.org email: alertnet@reuters.com; +44 207 542
2432.)
(Additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon in Abuja and Daniel
Wallis in
Kampala)
VOA
By Studio 7
Staff
Washington
13 October 2005
Zimbabwe
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said Thursday he is standing
firm on his
decision as president of the Movement for Democratic Change that
the party
will boycott November senate elections, despite objections from
other senior
officials.
Mr. Tsvangirai told the Voice of America's Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that
whatever other views may be held in the party he speaks for it
on major
policy points.
But Paul Themba Nyathi, nominally spokesman
for the country's main
opposition party, said there is room for negotiation
with Mr. Tsvangirai. He
and MDC Secretary General Welshman Ncube are among
those who want to contest
the Nov. 26 elections.
Reporter Carole
Gombakomba of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe spoke with Mr.
Nyathi, asking
where the party now stands on the senate issue from his own
perspective.
Civil society leaders, meanwhile, were praising Mr.
Tsvangirai for what they
see as his defense of opposition principles in his
override of the MDC
National Executive Council vote, which by most accounts
was marginally in
favor of election participation.
Zimbabwe
Integrated Program Chairman Heneri Dzinotyiwei says democracy has
limits and
Mr. Tsvangirai's decision was in the best interests of the party.
But he
adds that the burden for the moment is on Mr. Tsvangirai to bring
around his
colleagues.
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition spokeswoman Elizabeth Marunda
says her group
backs the "decisive" position taken by the MDC
leader.
Studio 7 reporter Blessing Zulu sought the views of Lovemore
Madhuku, the
influential chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly
advocacy group.
Political analyst John Makumbe told Carole Gombakomba
that while both
positions are valid, the current environment is simply not
conducive to free
and fair elections.
The ruling party continued to
dismiss the MDC decision to boycott the
ballot, saying it will proceed with
the elections and select its candidates
this weekend.
Deputy Minister
for Youth Saviour Kasukwere, a politburo member of the
Zimbabwe African
National Union-Patriotic Front, told Studio 7 reporter
Patience Rusere that
Mr. Tsvangirai's override of party dissenters showed
"political
immaturity."
Smaller opposition parties said they will seek seats. But
some, like Zanu
Ndonga, complain that electoral officials seem uninformed on
senate election
regulations.
Zanu Ndonga President Wilson Khumbula
told reporter Chris Gande that
candidates in the election will also have to
contend with fuel shortages
throughout the country.
Email: jag@mango.czw; justiceforagriculture@zol.co.zw
Please
send any material for publication in the Open Letter Forum to
jag@mango.zw with "For Open Letter Forum" in the
subject
line.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter
1:
Dear Jag,
Some comments regarding Kevin Murphy's
letter:
'In response to Sarah Carter's appeal I admire her courage to
rejuvenate
Bally Vaughan, however one bit of advice, do NOT term your Full
Breakfast
as an "English Breakfast".
She is to be admired indeed. All
the best, Sarah.
Kevin, how should Sarah then call the 'Continental
breakfast'? Breakfast
number 2? Sarah, to be quite honest Full Breakfast
sounds fine. Everyone
in Zim will know what that means.
It is
blatantly obvious they, the British, have done nothing for Zimbabwe
for over
ten years at least and have no intention of doing anything ever. I
live here
and can assure you that half of them still think we are a
province of South
Africa and the other half have no idea what has gone for
the last five years.
Do not give any credence to their lifestyle, it is
seriously not worth giving
credence to !!!
I think you are overreacting a bit here, Kevin. When you
say 'I live here'
I assume you are in the UK now. If it is so bad here, what
are you doing
here? You could have picked another destination. Whilst I agree
with you
regarding their lifestyle sometimes (in this case the younger
UK
generation) and that their geography can be appalling, I disagree with
you
that the English in general are doing nothing for Zim today. Don't tell
me
that you too have been brainwashed, Kevin. In my interaction with people
at
work, neighbours, etc, I have found that most are very well informed
about
the situation in Zim and Britain still provides humanitarian aid behind
the
scenes to Zim and other countries in Africa. Kevin, you have to
ask
yourself who is not letting that aid get through - and if it does
get
through, who are the beneficiaries?
Yours respectfully,
Jo
Schermuly
(ex-Harare)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter
2:
Dear Jag
What a lot of poppycock came with Stuart Chappell's
letter.
I would suggest he study past history of politics in Rhodesia
also read the
facts of Agriculture. Does he not know that Africans, Indians
and all
races did have the vote and could register if they earned or owned
property
with a value of £ 480? This was brought in many years ago. Does he
not
know that tribal systems are the norm in Africa and that the
populace
looked to the chiefs as their leaders ? Does he not know that Ian
Smith
involved the Council of Chiefs in his Government, trying to teach
them
Western style democracy ?. Does he not know that the British
Labour
Government wanted to hand over the reigns to the Africans with
no
experience of Government under a one man one vote system. No voters
roll
required ?
Has he never heard of African Purchase areas, where
Africans owned their
properties and had all the teaching resources at their
call Has he never
looked into the facts of land distribution in Zimbabwe ?
He reads too much
in the press. That 70 % of land owned by the Whites and
many Blacks, Is
only of the commercial farm land. Much of this is on poor
sandy soils
ideal for tobacco production, not the best land as reports
indicate? Does
he really think of all land under the Communal system,
National Parks,
Urban land, Mining land, Agricultural Research land, Dams,
Lakes and so on,
takes a huge chunk of the land mass?
Encourage him to
buy a farm, or lease a farm, and I truly think, in a short
space of time, he
will wish he never started. Go for it Stuart, many
farmers will sell to you
for forex, in cash though and deposited in an
overseas account.
When
you get there do not lock your sugar, bread , meat, soap, and drinks
away.
You must share these with your household employees!!
You have a lot of
reading to do, studying true facts, before you put your
foot, mouth and brain
into gear.
Yours Aye
Phil
Brereton
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter
3:
Stuart Chappell displays a serious lack of knowledge on the facts on
the
ground in Zimbabwe today. He is fortunate that he lives in Britain
where
anyone is able to support any political party, express views contrary
to
the government doctrine and take advantage of the freedoms that a
western
democracy offers. The British democracy was able to take root
and
establish itself on the riches earned from Africa and the colonies. It
was
also built on the subjugation of the Scots and Irish people and
the
establishment of a Upper class and royalty that until very recently
allowed
no person of poor breeding into the "ranks".
The reason that
there was such a thing as a Rhodesian is that the Brits
encouraged the
emigration of many thousands of working class people to
Southern Africa.
These people were sick and tired of both the First and
Second World Wars
during the early and middle part of the 20th Century and
came seeking a
better life. They came to a country inhabited by a people
already "living in
mud huts". Wages in 2005 are a pittance if compared in
real terms to what
they were paid prior to 1980. The Rhodesian regime was
in power for 15 years
and the liberation struggle took place between 1970
and 1980 - 10 years, not
"nearly 20 years".
The Zanu government has had 25 years to carry out land
reforms and many if
not most of the farms owned by white farmers was bought
prior to 1980 and
was only able to be bought if the government provided a
certificate of no
interest.
I would assert that the British have
milked Africa for over 100 years and
when the freedom demands of the Africans
were raised the Brits retreated to
Whitehall. The White settlers who had been
encouraged to come in the first
place were then abandoned and left to sort
the problem out themselves. How
long do we continue to blame all the troubles
that Zimbabwe finds itself in
on the Rhodesians or the British? The Indians
and Sri Lankans have not
continued whining about colonialism, they have put
the past behind them,
educated their people, established industry, built on
their democracy and
are uplifting their people; all with a much higher
population density and
much harsher climate.
Botswana (has Stuart ever
heard of the place?) has a sharply growing
economy, is rapidly enfranchised
their population and is a thriving
democracy which allows political debate
and freedom of expression
comparable to many western countries.
No
Stuart, it is about Power, absolute power! You have fallen into the
trap of
believing the garbage that comes out of the mouth of Mugabe and
his
ministers.
The communist doctrine teaches that if you tell a lie
for long enough and
allow no other debate to reach the ears of the listener
he will eventually
think that the lie must be true.
Your comments of
"70% of the land etc " and "The Estate agents are all
white" show how naive
you are.
Your final two paragraphs really show how little you know about
our country
and how silly the views you express are. Do you as a citizen of
the UK
subscribe to the fact that you have to support the Labour Party or
your
property will be taken from you without compensation? Would you
suggest
that because it was Muslims who carried out the London bombings then
all
Muslims in Britain should be disenfranchised and forced out of the
country?
If this is not the case then do not suggest to us Zimbabweans,
Black, White
or of Asian descent that we have to support a brutal and
repressive regime
in order that we be allowed to retain our property or
freedoms.
Please do not fool yourself that the reason that Van
Hoogstraten expresses
support for Mugabe is because he believes in his
doctrines. He does it
because he is enriching himself and his friends and
will continue to do it
whilst the money tree still bears fruit. Many of the
white farmers that
are still on the land feed the monster that Zanu is, and
do it solely for
economic reasons. They are prepared to do it because of
desperation to hang
on to their life's work. As soon as these people are no
longer useful to
Mugabe he will discard them and appropriate their
assets.
Murambasvina was carried out to deliberately force the people
from the
towns & cities back to the tribal areas. The government is
unable to
control the cities where lively political debate rages in the bars
and
tuckshops. Mugabe wants the people back under the direct control of
the
tribal leaders and chiefs who are in turn under his control through his
CIO
and spies. It has nothing to do with cleaning up anything. The new
houses
that are being built will in all cases be given to loyal party workers
and
the desperate people who had their lives blown apart will be
further
reduced to beggars or return to be subjugated in their
homelands.
Sanctions hurts Mugabe because he is unable to freely express
his lies in
front of a gullible world press. The Mugabe loyalists find it
very
difficult to send their wives to London for shopping or their kids
to
Oxford whilst he destroys the health and education sectors at home. It
is
hurting their pride and having very little effect on the general
populace.
What is hurting the populace is the suicidal policies that Zanu
are
pursuing in a desperate bid to cling on to power.
John
Kinnaird
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter
4:
Dear Sirs,
May I resubmit this letter as I feel that it is
pertinent to point out that
it was written nearly 10 months ago, particularly
in view of the recent
Mutasa statement.
Best
wishes,
Simon
Zimbabwe - Persecution and Ethnic Cleansing
Continues and the World Watches
Silently (First written Dec 20,
2004).
Right now, innocent families are under siege by government
sponsored thugs
roaming the countryside in a carefully orchestrated campaign
to remove
Zimbabweans of European origin, from their homes and property.
Their
crime, they are "white" and declared enemies of the State!
In
Kosovo proportions, ethnic cleansing has now cleared up to 20,000
whites
(Mainly from the farming community) from rural areas of the
Zimbabwe.
Racist hate speech emanates from the state controlled media on a
daily
basis in a deliberate attempt to fuel ethnic tension. Like the
Balkans
before it, the world has turned the other way, wishing it was
not
happening.
In Darfur, Arabs displace blacks and, in Zimbabwe, it
is white Africans who
are the victims. Why the silence? It is simple.
History is an
embarrassment. Whites have been in southern Africa for over
400 years and
in Zimbabwe, both the Bantu (blacks) and whites, as well as
Asians and
Coloureds, are guests in the geographical region now known as
Zimbabwe. The
only indigenous people were the San, a brown race better known
as Bushmen,
who were wiped out by the Bantu moving south from west and then
central
Africa.
Does this explain the sickening denial of what is
grossly unjust? Why is
it that when whites are persecuted, there is barely a
hint that this is
reprehensible and should be condemned internationally at
the highest level.
In Zimbabwe, a racist and illegitimate government
openly declares its
policy to rid the country it rules by default, of every
semblance of
opposition. By definition, it makes easy sense to focus on
whites. They are
generally well educated and have stood behind the democratic
forces
striving hard to bring justice, the rule of law and prosperity back to
the
country that, only just a few years ago, stood as a gleaming example of
how
an African country could excel. The policies of the authority of the
day,
resemble those of Pol Pot, Hitler and Milosevic, but still the
silence.
Those who claim to be people that uphold the principles of
decency, will
one day be forced to reconcile themselves with the truth of
their
despicable duplicity and hypocrisy.
Simon
Spooner
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter
5:
Dear Jag,
I refer to GGG of Scotland's letter on forum no
387.
His/her judgements of past history and the rather wishy-washy
comment "Thus
White farmers made so many mistakes that would lead to their
own downfall"
is utter and complete rubbish, given what has happened. I am
certainly not
a fan of the British or the British government but it's worthy
to stick to
the facts. For a start, the British government dished out money
(40 million
pounds) for land settlement, specifically targetting poor
black
Zimbabweans. That was the agreement. Mugabe dished out this money and
land
as part of his patronage system. The facts are all there for all to
see.
Mugabe never sticks to any agreement and this is just one example.
British
taxpayers money went to Mugabe's cronies, not poor black Zimbabweans.
No
wonder the British pulled the plug.
GGG of Scotland has a go at
Zimbabwe's white commercial farmers. It seems
that providing schools, clinics
and other amenities is not good enough
because, as GGG states, "Thus White
farmers made so many mistakes that
would lead to their own downfall". Get
real GGG, you do not know what these
white farmers did and you do not know
what you are talking about. It's
ignorant people like you that annoy so many
Zimbabweans.
Farmers are not politicians. Farmers are simply farmers.
They provide food
and if you chase them away, you get starvation. At
Independence, Mugabe
encouraged White commercial farmers to stay and remain
farming. It was only
in the latter years when he was staring defeat in the
face, did he use
Zimbabwe's white commercial farmers as the scape goat. Even
as late as
1987, when asked about land resettlement, the minister of
Agriculture said
it was not an issue.
The truth of the matter is that
these white farmers were protecting a huge
electorate of farm workers which
voted against Mugabe in 2000. Mugabe had
to destroy the fabric of this
society to remove this threat and he did it
most effectively but at a great
cost which will never be recouped
It's perfectly easy to make simple
judgements with scattered knowledge,
especially when one doesn't understand
the complexities on the ground. The
possible cause of this opinionated
condition is obviously as a result of
too many "English Breakfasts" (ref
Kevin Murphy's letter no 387). GGG's
confusion is abundantly highlighted with
the reference to "Mugabe's right
wing policies". Right wing? - far too many
English breakfasts, I say !!
Fambai
zvakanaka
Canaan
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter
6:
Dear JAG,
Jatropha Trees
Yes - there are such things as
"Oil Trees" - we grew a whole lot in our
Seedling Nursery for the people in
SA doing some research into it. They
are being grown in the coastal areas as
they are very frost tender. Have
no idea how long they take to grow - but I
doubt that they will solve the
short or even medium term problem of lack of
fuel in Zim!!!
Kat Chaning-Pearce - Greytown - KwaZulu Natal
RSA
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter
7:
Dear Stuart Chappell,
I read with interest your letter on the
JAG website and felt I had to make
a few points. I am a white Zimbabwean
having to reside in Britain due to
what has happened in Zimbabwe.
I am
not sure if you are aware that about %80 of the farms that have been
taken
were bought and sold under Mugabe's rule, taxes paid etc and are now
owned by
mainly the elite Black people who are Mugabes friends. I must also
reiterate
that yes some White Farmers were living in the past but many had
schools,
clinics and housing on their farms of which Mugabe cannot provide,
given all
the aid Zimbabwe has received since 1980. May I also remind you
that this is
not a race issue. After all in the 2002 elections I think it
was, that Black
Zimbabweans voted in some white people to represent them in
politics.You also
mention that Mugabe promises to give land back to whites.
How many promises
has Mugabe kept? Nigeria, Libya and now South Africa are
not taking Mugabes'
word for it.I question why then, have some of my family
and I who only owned
one fully utilized farm each, had our only livelihoods
taken away from us and
we are Zimbabweans, whilst some favoured foreigners
who fund Sunup get to
keep farms? We are denied our own birthright in many
ways.
Everyone is
suffering hence the many Zimbabweans Black and White are living
in the UK at
this point in time. You have to have lived in Zimbabwe to
understand life
there and how it should be and not make assumptions. You go
and try to live
there. It is a beautiful country but the logistics and
efficiency are
unbearable. I was born there 1977 and lived there nearly all
my life and have
witnessed this tragedy. Please do not be fooled, race is
not the issue and
neither is land (there is enough for all). It is greedy
politics that is the
cause. Remember that, so too in UK, that majority of
the land is owned by
about %1 which are farmers compared to population.
Only that white people are
a majority there, hence it is equal when taking
colour out of the
equation.Another thing, you state that white people owned
or ran the estate
agents......who stops Black people in Zimbabwe from
entering that line of
business? It is a country where no laws state who and
what colour can be
involved in whatever profession.Thank you.
Stuart
Schultz
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
The
Herald (Harare)
October 13, 2005
Posted to the web October 13,
2005
Harare
Government is considering re-introducing price
controls and subsidies on
basic goods to cushion consumers from price
increases.
The Minister of State for Public and Interactive Affairs Cde
Chen
Chimutengwende yesterday branded some industrialists and retailers as
economic saboteurs, bent on effecting Government change through increasing
people's suffering due to offending price increases.
Addressing a
Press conference in Harare, Cde Chimutengwende said Government
was shocked
with the manner prices were going up.
"Any country that is under siege is
bound to crop up policies that will
protect the consumers. If such errant
practices are not brought to an end,
Government might be forced to revisit
the issue of price controls in the
interest of the public and the nation as
a whole," said the Minister.
He took the opportunity to urge producers,
retailers and service providers
to desist from profiteering and from
activities that sabotage the economy.
Cde Chimutengwende said it was
worrying to note that industrialists and
retailers took Government's silence
on the price increases as a sign of
acceptance of their wayward practice at
a time Zimbabwe is under sanctions.
He said Government did not own or
control any industries and service
providers as in line with the free market
system existent in Zimbabwe.
The Minister said it was hoped under the
free market system profiteers and
saboteurs would either disappear or at
least remain few, saying the impact
of their activities would be
insignificant.
The Government had in the past few months been closely
monitoring the
situation and had observed with great concern the price
increases that have
had adverse impact on the poor, the vulnerable and the
lowly paid.
"It had been the Government's position that prices of most
commodities and
transportation will not be State controlled but determined
by the market
system itself," he said.
While appreciating that
production costs of the commodities have also gone
up, Cde Chimutengwende
said it was unjustifiable that prices of basic
commodities and vital
services be increased on a monthly or weekly basis.
"It seems that many
businessmen have either adopted the dangerous policy of
extreme profiteering
or have decided to deliberately sabotage the economy.
Both tendencies are
totally unacceptable to the Government of Zimbabwe. They
have to stop this
forthwith," he said.
Cde Chimutengwende said manufacturers and retailers
are the ones who
advocated for the removal of price controls, only for them
to behave in the
manner they were doing.
Government consented to
their request in the hope that it would bring sanity
but the opposite
happened resulting in the majority suffering.
"Now the majority of the
people in the country have had the bitter pill of
the current situation," he
said.
Cde Chimutengwende dismissed arguments that manufacturers were
sourcing fuel
on the black market hence the huge price increases saying most
manufacturers
were getting allocations from the National Oil Company of
Zimbabwe while
some were importing directly.
He also said fears that
re-introducing price controls and subsidies would
put Zimbabwe on the
collision course with the International Monetary Fund
did not have merit
because no matter what the country did, the IMF would
also not
approve.
"IMF has been on a collision course with us whether we do
something or
nothing. They still blame us and uphold the idea of Government
change
centred on what they term our weaknesses," he said.
BBC
Zimbabwean
asylum-seekers are awaiting a crucial test case ruling
which could stop the
government deporting them.
At a hearing earlier this month, lawyers for
an unnamed refugee argued
ministers had not properly assessed the risk of
abuse faced by deportees.
The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal's
decision could prompt a judicial
review of the policy by the High
Court.
The Home Office denies deportees face abuse but has
suspended removals
pending the outcome of the test case.
Hunger
strike
Lawyers for the refugee told the tribunal how deportees were
considered traitors and spies by the President Robert Mugabe's
regime.
Zimbabwean asylum seekers staged hunger strikes and public
protests at
immigration centres earlier this year.
At least 50
people took part in the protest, supported by members of
the Zimbabwean
community and asylum campaigners.
Some 12,000 people from Zimbabwe
claimed asylum in the UK between 2002
and 2004.
The British
government has described the regime there as one suffering
political and
social unrest that has led to death and serious injury.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
The Daily Mirror
Reporter
issue date :2005-Oct-14
THE Deputy Minister of Industry and
Trade, Phenias Chihota, was yesterday
heckled in Parliament for more than 20
minutes by MDC legislators when he
moved a motion condemning the opposition
party president, Morgan Tsvangirai's
calls for sanctions against
Zimbabwe.
Chihota, Zanu PF's Seke MP, resorted to shouting in order to be
heard but
his efforts were in vain as the opposition legislators drowned his
voice,
with St Mary's MP Job Sikhala in the forefront denouncing the deputy
minister.
Sikhala's attempt to have the deputy minister barred from
moving the motion
also hit a brick wall.
The St Mary's MP had argued that
in terms of the legislative assembly's
standing orders, Tsvangirai could not
be debated since the opposition party's
leader had no right of reply in
Parliament.
However, the Speaker of Parliament John Nkomo said the motion
should go
ahead as it was already on the august House's order
paper.
Nkomo also expelled MDC Mpopoma MP Milton Gwetu from Parliament for
persisting in raising points of order to stop the motion.
Amidst the
shouting and heckling that continued unabated, justice minister
and leader
of the House, Patrick Chinamasa moved for the adjournment of the
debate on
the motion.
According to Parliament's order paper, Chihota motion sought to:
"condemn in
the strongest terms the persistent unpatriotic behaviour
bordering on
treason by Mr Tsvangirai manifested in his recent appeal to,
and threats
against, South African companies investing in Zimbabwe and the
cutting off
of electricity and communication links between Zimbabwe and
South Africa in
order to bring about economic collapse and regime
change."
The motion also condemned the "like minded Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions
(ZCTU) alleged support for a ban on the trade of asbestos.After
the
adjournment of Chihota's motion, Parliament was adjourned to November
1.
Chinamasa said the adjournment was to allow campaigning for the Senate
elections.
Meanwhile, Parliament is inviting all legislators to a
workshop on
strategies to improve constituency information centres to be
held at a lodge
in Borrowdale, Harare, on Monday.
Parliament's chief
Public Relations Officer, Tarisayi Chirinda said the bus
carrying the
legislators would leave the legislative assembly building at
8:30 am for the
workshop that would start at 9am.
She said the objectives of the workshop
would be to review current
administrative arrangements, identify
institutional problems associated with
the constituency centres, among
others.
Daily Mirror, Zimbabwe
The
Daily Mirror Reporter
issue date :2005-Oct-14
AN obscure party based
in Matabeleland, which does not register a tremor on
the political richter
scale Zapu-Federal Party, says it will not participate
in next month's
senatorial elections arguing the playing field was uneven.
Party president
Paul Siwela, Zapu-FP's national executive committee and the
central
committee, met last week and decided to boycott the November 26
elections.
"The whole electoral process is full of chicanery. Political
parties are
not given coverage unlike Zanu PF in the public media," Siwela
charged.
"Already, under the Constitutional Amendment Act (No. 17) which
is a result
of these elections, Zanu PF is guaranteed 16 seats. You call
that
democracy?" he asked.In the 66-member reintroduced upper House, 50
seats
will be contested for and 10 will be reserved for traditional chiefs
while
the President will appoint the other six. "You cannot have free and
fair
elections when we have such prohibitive, restrictive and selective laws
such
as POSA. It is extremely difficult to hold political meetings these
days,"
Siwela claimed without giving evidence.
Siwela claimed that his
party had carried out a research, which had revealed
that the electorate no
longer has confidence in the country's electoral
system.
Zim Independent
Dumisani
Muleya
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe and Vice-President Joice Mujuru have been
sucked
into the Mediagate saga which involves a controversial takeover of
private
newspapers by the Central Intelligence Organisation
(CIO).
Intelligence sources said Mugabe had apparently overruled Mujuru
on the
matter after she tried to remove the CIO from the Zimbabwe Mirror
Group of
Newspapers. Court documents show that Mujuru was involved in the
matter as
letters were copied to her.
The CIO had a leveraged
buy-out using public funds at the Mirror titles, the
Daily Mirror and the
Sunday Mirror, from which CEO and editor-in-chief Ibbo
Mandaza has been
suspended. Mandaza is fighting his suspension and takeover
of the papers in
court.
The CIO has also reportedly taken over the Financial Gazette
through an
ownership front structure. Central bank governor Gideon Gono was
key in the
deal as "financial advisor".
It has also been learnt
the CIO has influence in state media newsrooms,
production houses which
generate news and commercials, a prominent news
agency and the Media &
Information Commission.
Reports also indicate the CIO was behind the
closure of Associated
Newspapers of Zimbabwe titles - the Daily News and the
Daily News on
Sunday - the Tribune and Weekly Times. The state security
agency is
currently trying to buy into another private
weekly.
Sources said Mugabe had seemingly overruled Mujuru in her
attempt to make
the CIO withdraw from the Mirror papers. It is said Mandaza
approached
Mujuru's husband, retired army commander General Solomon Mujuru,
after the
Mediagate disclosures to enlist his support to drive out the
CIO.
The Mirror papers played a significant role in supporting Mujuru
in her bid
to become vice-president in the run-up to the ruling Zanu PF
congress last
December. The papers were openly hostile to her rival, Zanu PF
heavyweight
Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Sources said Mujuru approached
State Security minister Didymus Mutasa on the
issue after Mandaza had spoken
to her husband in an effort to resolve the
Mirror ownership problems spawned
by Mediagate.
It is said Mutasa agreed with Mujuru that the CIO had
no business in the
media. Mutasa told Mirror managers over lunch on August
22 that the CIO
would withdraw because a decision had been made on August
19.
However, Mutasa made a dramatic U-turn on September 19 at a
meeting with
Mandaza, CIO director-general Happyton Bonyongwe and disputed
Mirror chair
Jonathan Kadzura. Instead of being informed when the CIO was
leaving,
Mandaza was told to quit.
It was at this point that
Mugabe was thought to have intervened because
Mutasa suggested at the
meeting that a higher authority had overruled him.
The following day Mandaza
informed Mutasa he was prepared to leave on
December 31 if paid
off.
Mandaza then put his exit proposal in writing on September 21.
But the CIO
rejected it on September 29, a day before the date they had set
for
Mandaza's departure.
Prior to that, Mandaza had on September
14 written to Kadzura informing him
Mutasa had confirmed on August 22 the
CIO was moving out. Court documents
show the letter was copied to Mujuru,
which confirms her involvement in the
saga.
In a move seen as
Machiavellian, sources say Mugabe on September 28 raised
the Mediagate issue
in the Zanu PF politburo where he reportedly asked
Mutasa why they were
taking over Mandaza's papers. Insiders thought that
Mugabe was only trying
to dissociate himself from the move.
Zim Independent
Loughty Dube
THE
Bulawayo city council and the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa)
are
headed for a showdown after Zinwa announced that it is ready to take
over
the whole water supply system in the city.
The announcement by Zinwa has
irked city fathers who do not want the water
authority to tamper with the
city's water supply.
Willie Muringani, the Zinwa board chairman, last
week announced that the
government agency was prepared to take over the
water supply in the city if
Bulawayo council felt that it was over-burdened
and was failing to supply
residents with water.
Muringani said
Zinwa had made a similar decision in Harare and there was no
reason why the
water authority would fail in Bulawayo.
Muringani was part of a local
government team that visited Bulawayo last
weekend to assess the water
situation in the city.
Speaking in one of the ad-hoc meetings held
across the city, Muringani said
Zinwa would pay for the cost of drawing
water from source to the treatment
works while council would put its own
mark-up to cover the costs of
distribution to residents.
However,
Bulawayo executive mayor Japhet Ndabeni Ncube told the Zimbabwe
Independent
this week that the council would not accept Zinwa's takeover of
the city's
water infrastructure.
"That should have been a joke by Zinwa, the
water in our dams is managed by
them and they are the ones who are supplying
us with water. What do they
want to take over? Do they want to take over our
valves or water pumps or
our water taps?" Ncube said.
Bulawayo
has been plagued by water shortages with some suburbs in the city
going for
close to two months without water supplies.
The city has failed to
supply residents with water due to dwindling dam
levels and damage to water
pipes by newly resettled farmers and war veterans
at the Nyamandlovu
aquifer.
Ncube said there was no way Zinwa would take over the city's
water supply
system since the same water authority was failing to adequately
supply the
city with water.
"They (Zinwa) are the ones who are
failing to connect the city to Mtshabezi
Dam. They are the ones failing to
implement the Matabeleland Zambezi Water
Project and they have failed to
repair the pumps at the Nyamandlovu
aquifer," Ncube said.
"Have
they solved all the water problems in Harare where they have taken
over bulk
water supplies?" he asked.
"All this shows that they have failed and
they cannot blame council for
problems that are of their own making."
Zim Independent
COMPLETION of the upgrading of Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo (JMN)
International
Airport in Bulawayo has been delayed due to lack of money. The
project
commenced in 2002 and was scheduled to be completed last
year.
The refurbishment of the JMN International Airport was part of
government
plans to upgrade four airports in the country to international
standards.
The four airports were the Harare International domestic
terminal, Buffalo
Range, Victoria Falls and the JMN.
In 2003 the
cost of refurbishing the four airports was estimated at $800
million but the
figure has since ballooned. The cost of renovating JMN
airport alone is now
estimated to be $350 billion.
Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe
(CAAZ) acting chief executive officer,
David Chaota, confirmed that the
project was facing difficulties.
"There have been setbacks to the
project but we are doing our best to ensure
that it is completed," said
Chaota.
"We are faced with foreign currency and cement shortages and
the rate at
which the project is progressing is very slow."
He
however said the contractors were doing internal works at the
airport.
A visit to the Bulawayo airport by the Zimbabwe Independent
did not show
that there was any work taking place and no refurbishment
was evident.
The upgrading of the JMN was supposed to cover the car park
and extension of
the terminal to increase passenger-handling
capacity.
The second phase of the project will see the construction
of commercial
facilities that include a five-star hotel, banks, duty shops
and a golf
course.
The project has stalled before due to lack of
funding and failure by the
authorities to import equipment and accessories
for the upgrading of the
airport whose costs keep
escalating.
Last year the CAAZ received a US$6 million loan from the
African Banking
Corporation and a further line of credit from a Chinese
company but the
funds were insufficient to make meaningful
progress.
Standards at the JMN fall far short of international
requirements.
JMN currently has a handling capacity of 180 passengers
for both local and
international flights.
International norms bar
the mixing of domestic and international passengers
at terminals for
security reasons. - Staff Writer.
Zim Independent
Ray
Matikinye
WHEN Local Government minister Ignatious Chombo announced a
reconstruction
programme to cater for families left roofless by a
government-sponsored slum
clearance exercise, the homeless clapped their
hands in joy.
But five months after the state launched Operation
Murambatsvina and sought
to counter its disastrous consequences that left
700 000 people roofless
countrwide, victims remain without homes and with
little hope of getting
housed any time soon.
Just across the
debris of a demolished settlement along the main
Bulawayo-Harare highway
rows of unfinished houses stand as a testimony to
the time-tested adage that
it is easier to destroy than to build.
Gloating over a reconstruction
programme put up to remedy an ill-conceived
slum clearance exercise has come
back to haunt the government so much that
it has had to save face by
claiming success for private-company housing
schemes as its
own.
In July government announced it had allocated $3 trillion to the
reconstruction programme, hoping to parry criticism and worldwide
condemnation of its callous demolition exercise.
This was dented
when Finance minister Herbert Murerwa cut the allocation by
two-thirds to
just $1 trillion in his mid-term budget review, saying the
clean-up was not
planned.
Gradually the sad realities of exaggerating its capabilities
to provide the
number of houses it set itself seems to have dawned on
it.
Two months after setting itself an impossible target, it moved
the deadline
for the completion of its Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle
housing programme
to December due to the slow pace of construction and lack
of resources. It
said building delays due to shortages of fuel and
construction materials had
necessitated the extension of the deadline beyond
August 31.
Less than 400 housing units are under construction in the
Harare suburb of
Hatcliffe, where a total of 15 000 units are
planned.
Recently, Chombo embellished the state's success in meeting
its targets by
claiming credit for a housing project a private mining
company put up for
its employees in Zvishavane. Mimosa Mining company has,
as part of its
community responsibility, built more than 900 houses under a
home ownership
scheme in Zvishavane town, 30 km from the mine to avoid a
"ghost" settlement
when mining operations cease.
It intends to
construct 151 units for its senior employees.
Government has also
claimed credit for an on-going housing project in
Cowdray Park initiated by
the Bulawayo city council some five years ago.
In Manicaland province,
less than 100 houses have been completed out of the
960 earmarked for the
current construction phase.
The housing project has been hit by fuel
shortages that constricted the
delivery of building materials. About 350
houses are already under
construction in the province, according to
officials overseeing the
programme.
Less than 100 of the 10 000
housing units planned for the Whitecliff
settlement in the capital, Harare,
have been built.
Prospective beneficiaries might have prematurely
clapped their hands too as
it has emerged that the majority of the people
affected by Operation
Murambatsvina may not meet the criteria for ownership
of the new houses.
The programme is no longer specific to the poor
who make up the majority of
the victims.
"The government has
effectively handed over the allocation of stands to
municipal authorities.
One has to earn above a specified salary category to
qualify, be on the
municipal (housing) waiting list and be able to afford
the deposit and
monthly installments," the mayor of Gwanda, Thandeko
Mnkandla,
said.
"The houses will only be available to the gainfully employed,
and one has to
be well paid to afford the installments," Mkandla was quoted
as saying.
On Monday, the High Court in Harare ruled in favour of 252
families who were
displaced by the blitz, granting a provisional order
barring their eviction
from open spaces in the Mbare suburb of
Harare.
The families, who are now squatting outside Mbare No Five
grounds and
Jo'burg Lines, had decent homes until the demolition of their
houses in May.
They could have been among those who have come to
realise that they clapped
their hands too soon when government promised a
new beginning for them.
Zim Independent
Loughty Dube
THE politicisation and manipulation of food as a
campaign tool by Zanu PF
has come under spotlight in the ongoing case where
the opposition MDC
candidate for Gweru Rural Renson Gasela is contesting
ruling party
candidate, Josphat Madubeko's victory in the March 2005
parliamentary
election.
Gasela says the politicisation of food by
Madubeko and his election agents
tilted the scales against him since most of
the villagers at the time were
facing drought and had no option but to vote
for Zanu PF to receive food.
Zanu PF has in previous elections come under
fire over allegations of using
food as a campaign tool.
The
electoral case in which Gasela is challenging his loss to Madubeko has
revealed a lot of politicking and use of food as an election strategy by
Zanu PF, especially in rural areas where village headmen are responsible for
deciding who gets food.
Gasela, the MDC's agriculture spokesman,
wants the court to nullify
Madubeko's victory claiming the election was held
under a climate of fear
and violence directed at his supporters who he says
were also denied food.
In leading evidence, Nicholas Mathonsi, the lawyer
representing Gasela,
alleged that Madubeko and his election agents
systematically used food as a
weapon to force villagers to vote for Zanu
PF.
"We have evidence of food manipulation. The respondent and his
chief
election agent, Thomson Ncube, systematically used food as a weapon to
force
hungry villagers to vote for Zanu PF," Mathonsi told the court last
week.
"Zanu PF officials led by the area councillor were in total
control of food
distribution and they decided who got food and who did
not.
"The councillor is the one who sources the food from the Grain
Marketing
Board (GMB) and is the one again who leads the food committee in
the area
while the headman, who is also sympathetic to Zanu PF, keeps a list
of who
is allowed to buy the food when it arrives."
Mathonsi said
villagers paid chiefs, who are known Zanu PF supporters, for
the food that
they received. He said when the GMB maize was delivered the
councillor would
take control of the distribution process.
In previous elections,
especially the 2000 parliamentary and the 2002
presidential elections,
allegations of food politicisation were levelled
against Zanu PF, provoking
an international outcry.
In 2002 Human Rights Watch published a
report titled The politicisation of
food in Zimbabwe which stated that the
Zimbabwean government and the ruling
Zanu PF manipulated the distribution of
grain through a registration process
where known opposition supporters were
ferreted out.
The opposition has accused Zanu PF of abusing food
distributed through the
GMB while Zanu PF has accused non-governmental
organisations working inside
the country of using food aid to campaign for
the opposition.
In October 2002, members of the Zanu PF militia and war
veterans in Binga
ordered a local NGO, Save the Children, to stop a feeding
programme alleging
that officials were favouring MDC supporters. Binga is an
MDC stronghold.
In the same year, the World Food Programme (WFP)
suspended relief operations
in Insiza district after ruling party militia
stole three tonnes of maize
and handed it to Zanu PF supporters a few days
before a by-election.
Just this year, the MDC provincial executive in
Matabeleland South wrote to
the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC)
detailing how the Zanu PF MP for
Insiza and deputy Minister of Environment
and Tourism, Andrew Langa, was
barring MDC supporters from purchasing maize
meal in the area.
During the two weeks of the election petition,
several witnesses took to the
stand to testify that Madubeko and his
election agents were responsible for
the distribution of food and
manipulated food in the run up to the
parliamentary
election.
Madubeko and his supporters deny the charge and allege that
Gasela is a bad
loser clutching at straws to save face over his clear loss
to the Zanu PF
candidate.
A witness for Madubeko collapsed and
fainted under intense cross-examination
from Mathonsi on how food was
distributed in rural Gweru before the
election.
The witness,
Another Sibanda, a councillor for the area, allegedly called
meetings on the
pretext that they were intended to discuss food and
development
issues.
Mathonsi alleged that Sibanda was abusing his position as
councillor by
calling for the food and development meetings when he knew
they were Zanu PF
campaign meetings.
In his own personal account,
Gasela told the court that he lost to the
former headman because the ruling
party used food to buy votes from the
Gweru Rural constituents.
Zim Independent
Ray
Matikinye
CONTROVERSY over the resignation of career journalist Jonathan
Maphenduka
from the Media and Information Commission board came to a head
this week
when Maphenduka accused MIC chair Tafataona Mahoso of manipulating
board
decisions.
Maphenduka called Mahoso a "blatant liar" who was
trying to assassinate his
character to retain his job.
"The MIC
board is being manipulated to keep one man in employment," said
Maphenduka
in a statement yesterday. "Whereas three years ago Dr Mahoso had
nothing to
his credit except his two feet, walking his way to the nearest
commuter
omnibus bus stop like most ordinary Zimbabweans, today he is driven
home in
a Mitsubishi Pajero and his gate is opened for him by a police
officer. This
new taste for luxury is his sole source of motivation,"
Maphenduka
said.
Until his appointment as chairman of the MIC, Mahoso was a
pedestrian,
easily identifiable on the pavements of Harare by his bulky
Gladstone bag
during his stint as chairman of the National Arts Council and
the ZBC board.
He was fired amid acrimony from the ZBC
board.
Mahoso claimed this week that Maphenduka had resigned from the
MIC because
the United States embassy had denied him a visa to travel to the
US.
"The claim by Dr Tafataona Mahoso that I told him I had been
denied a visa
by the US embassy is a blatant lie, a brazen and shameful
fabrication
designed to assassinate my character. If the US embassy
officials have
banned me from travelling to their country, they have not
bothered to inform
me," Maphenduka said.
"The argument that the
MIC board has taken collective decisions is
ludicrous," Maphenduka said
accusing Mahoso of canvassing commissioners to
reject the September 2003
application by the Associated Newspapers of
Zimbabwe (ANZ) for
registration.
He said to keep his job, Mahoso manipulated most of the
MIC's decisions by
making outlandish claims, especially in the case of the
banned Weekly Times,
which he said harboured secessionist ideas merely
because of the name of the
publishers.
Maphenduka said the
decision to ban the fledgling weekly was made despite
legal advice that
there was no link between Mthwakazi Publishers and
Mthwakazi UK and
Mthwakazi On-Line.
He also revealed that legal experts had advised
the MIC board there was no
basis to deny the ANZ, publishers of the Daily
News and the Daily News on
Sunday, registration. The ANZ has spent close to
$10 billion in legal fees
in a protracted battle to get a licence to publish
since its ban on
September 13 two years ago.
In his press release
on Monday, Mahoso accused Maphenduka of resigning from
the MIC for
expediency.
Mahoso said although Maphenduka claimed he had resigned
because he did not
agree with the "punitive determinations" made against
errant mass media
services, he had in fact agreed with all board
decisions.
Maphenduka said he did not attend the board meeting that
decided to deny the
ANZ registration on September 17 2003.
Zim Independent
Augustine
Mukaro/Godfrey Marawanyika
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has made an undertaking to
respect the sanctity of
Bilateral Investment Protection and Promotion
Agreements (Bippas) and to
regularise bilateral investments affected by the
chaotic land reform.
In a document released this week, titled Investing
in Zimbabwe, signed by
Mugabe, government reiterates that investment remains
a key pillar of the
country's economic turnaround.
"Government is
committed to respecting the sanctity of international
agreements, including
modalities of compensation along with the terms and
conditions that were
agreed upon in the bilateral agreements signed after
independence with such
government institutions as the Zimbabwe Investment
Authority, Export
Processing Zone Authority and other government
ministries," the document
said.
The document said cognisant of those investment pull-factors
and
perceptional risk factors in the investment source markets, government
was
working on a framework to regularise Bippas that were inadvertently
affected
during the emotive land reform.
"We are pleased to
inform our potential investment partners that Zimbabwe,
as part of the
global community, is fully aware of the need to protect and
encourage inward
investments as a tool to attract international capital
mobilisation," the
document said.
President Mugabe has declared 2005 a year of
investment.
The country has Bippas with several European Union
countries, four of them
ratified by Mugabe.
Central bank governor
Gideon Gono has condemned fresh farm invasions in
Manicaland as
"criminal".
Despite Gono's open denunciation of the new wave of
evictions, Zanu PF thugs
and armed militants have continued on a land grab
orgy, violently kicking
out white farmers in a number of
provinces.
Police have not taken any action against the perpetrators.
Police spokesman
Wayne Bvudzijena said police had nothing to do with land
distribution issues
unless criminal activities were reported in the
process.
"Land issues concern the Ministry of Lands," Bvudzijena said.
"We don't take
issue with the allocation but will only act when criminal
activities are
reported. There is no way we can take anyone to court when
there is no
complainant."
State Security and Land Reform minister
Didymus Mutasa a fortnight ago said
the land reform would continue until all
farms had been acquired by the
state, a statement viewed as having prompted
the new wave of land
seizures."Naturally we are going to acquire all land in
Zimbabwe, make no
mistake about that. After we have done that we are going
to allocate that
land to everybody irrespective of their race," Mutasa
said.
Violence against the remaining white commercial farmers gained
momentum over
the past two weeks with the latest incident being the eviction
of one farmer
in Rusape on Tuesday night and an attack on Andrew Bruford in
the Beatrice
area on Sunday.
Zim Independent
Shakeman
Mugari
GOVERNMENT is going to retrench workers to reduce a wage bill widely
blamed
for the burgeoning budget deficit.
Finance minister Herbert
Murerwa told a pre-budget seminar last week that
government was finding it
increasingly difficult to sustain the current wage
bill because of its
contracting revenue base.
He said government would soon come up with
a labour audit to flush out
"ghost workers and
pensioners".
"Furthermore, our economy cannot sustain the current
size of our public
service. The 2006 budget should benefit from the current
exercise by
government to realise a lean civil service," Murerwa said. "This
will be
accompanied by an audit exercise to flush out any ghost workers and
pensioners."
The wage bill has been gobbling up a massive 20% of
gross domestic product
(GDP) for the past two years.
Murerwa said
civil servants could only be remunerated well when their number
was severely
cut through retrenchments. "This is also the only way we can
begin to
adequately remunerate the public servant," Murerwa said.
The
International Monetary Fund (IMF) has since 1990 insisted that the
government's wage bill is too large and should be reduced to contain
expenditure. The fund has also raised concerns about the size of the army,
which although not part of the civil service, has been consuming a large
chunk of national funds.
Over the past three months the
government has been battling to maintain the
army, with reports that a
number of barracks have closed due to lack of
food. The biting food
shortages have forced the army to send some soldiers
on forced leave to easy
the pressure on the limited resources.
During his presentation,
Murerwa admitted that the government's bungling had
widened the budget
deficit.
"Our budget expenditures over the years have, save for 2004,
always been
exceeding the economy's capacity to fund them through tax
revenue.
Hence, budget deficits and recourse to highly inflationary
borrowings have
become a permanent historical feature of our fiscal policy
formulation,"
Murerwa said.
He said capacity utilisation remained
"unacceptably low across most of the
major economic sectors, further
worsening unemployment".
He said some of the country's problems were
caused by the "structure and
performance of our budget as an instrument of
economic policy".
Zim Independent
Shakeman Mugari
THE
Zimbabwe Allied Banking Group (ZABG) saga took a new twist this week
with
the former directors of Trust Bank taking the Reserve Bank to court to
compel it to make a determination on the fate of their assets that were
acquired by the state bank.
The former directors filed an urgent
application seeking the High Court to
compel the RBZ to make a determination
on the matter within four days.
The new court action is in response
to the Reserve Bank's failure to respond
to their earlier appeal to stop the
ZABG from using Trust's assets, which
the Supreme Court ruled last month to
have been acquired illegally.
The Supreme Court ruled that the sale
of Trust Bank's assets to the ZABG was
unlawful, "null and void and of no
force or effect".
In the application filed on Tuesday, the former
directors want the court to
compel the RBZ to make a decision on the
assets.
"Respondent (RBZ) shall determine the appeal of the applicant
(Trust) and
announce its determination within four days of the date of this
order," said
the papers, which were served on the RBZ on
Tuesday.
The directors said the delay by the central bank in making a
decision on the
matter was prejudicing them.
"The matter is
therefore urgent in that both the Reserve Bank, to which an
appeal has been
lodged, and the curator, who has been asked to put the
matter right, have
simply ignored applicant's plea and appear to be willing
to allow the
unlawful disposal of the assets of Trust Bank Corporation Ltd
to stand," it
said. Hearing has been set for this afternoon.
Zim Independent
Editor's Memo
THE Bible in the book of Matthew contains rather
controversial advice
to Christians. It says: "Do not give dogs what is holy,
and do not cast your
pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot
and turn to attack
you."
I take it to mean that we shouldn't
give what is precious to us to
those who are stubborn, unappreciative or do
not value our assistance.
Pigs are unclean animals, according
to God's law (Deut 14:8), and
anyone who touches an unclean animal becomes
"ceremonially unclean" and
cannot go into the temple to worship until the
dirt is removed.
The moral of this biblical tale of pigs,
pearls and dogs is that
believers should not entrust holy teachings to
unholy or unclean people. It
is futile to try to teach holy concepts to
people who don't want to listen.
Christianity does not
encourage believers to stop giving God's word to
unbelievers, but there is a
warning that we should be wise and discerning in
what we teach, and to whom,
so that our time is employed fruitfully.
The small sermon
sprang to my mind on Tuesday after reading a
statement from World Bank boss
Paul Wolfowitz on Zimbabwe. Wire services
quoted him as saying the World
Bank may withhold further aid to Zimbabwe to
"set an example". He said
allocating money to Zimbabwe under the present
government would be a
"terrible waste of funds".
He said the World Bank would be
allocating its funds "very, very
carefully, and in the case of Zimbabwe,
perhaps not at all".
"My Africa experts say that with the kind
of misgovernment that is
taking place in Zimbabwe, it is not clear that
development is possible at
all.
"For several reasons we
have to be very careful about corruption and
its effects. We need to set an
example. It is a terrible waste of funds if
it is diverted into corruption,"
Wolfowitz said.
If Wolfowitz had used the analogy of the
pigs, dogs and pearls to
illustrate his point on Zimbabwe, he would have
been branded a racist or
other worse terms. But did he not mean the same
thing?
Wolfowitz's statement on Zimbabwe is one of the most
acerbic delivered
on the country. It sends an unambiguous signal to would-be
investors not to
be associated with a nation that is now an international
billboard of
misrule and corruption.
Most multi-lateral
donors get their cue from the World Bank which has
now struck a resonant
riff which is likely to be replicated across
continents. The statement could
also be indicative of a more robust approach
by the bank against the conduct
of President Mugabe's government.
The bank has been critical of
the country's economic policies,
especially the land reform programme,
largely blamed for pushing the economy
to the wall. Wolfowitz's statement is
an indictment of the country's
political system and a call for behavioural
change. Repaying debts to the
IMF, as Zimbabwe did last month, is not enough
to mollify the Bretton Woods
institutions. They are saying the politics need
change if the country is to
take useful advantage of
assistance.
When central bank governor Gideon Gono returned
from the United States
last month where he had gone to plead Zimbabwe's case
not to be expelled
from the International Monetary Fund, a sibling of the
World Bank, he gave
us the impression that fences were being mended with the
international
financiers.
This was not so. Despite his
efforts, the bank believes support to
Zimbabwe would be a terrible waste of
money. It is tantamount to casting
pearls before swine: ".they will trample
them underfoot and attack you".
Remember this statement
from President Mugabe in Havana last month:
"The IMF is almost never of real
assistance to developing countries.It is
willed by the big powers which
dictate what it should do," Mugabe told
reporters.
"We have
never been friends of the IMF and in the future we will never
be friends of
the IMF."
So is there reason for the IMF to keep its pearls?
The answer is no
because Zimbabwe needs help, no matter how much President
Mugabe and his
government try to convince us that salvation will come from
the East.
The country needs international support to buy
medicines and equipment
for hospitals. The dualisation of trunk roads has
progressed at a
painstakingly slow pace because funds are simply not there.
There is no
fuel, Zesa cannot expand its infrastructure while local
authorities are
struggling to provide potable water to residents. The common
man is hurting
as relations between Zimbabwe and the world
deteriorate.
In 1998, Mugabe, then head of the Organisation of
African Unity,
denounced the World Bank as the "new
oppressors".
"African countries are going through a hard
political test," he said
"After getting rid of colonialism, they suffer from
the new imperialism of
those who seek to humiliate us.
"These institutions don't worry about the price increases that their
requests cause and problems that they pose for the poor. But the governments
concerned don't have any choice, because they need the credits granted by
these institutions. The result is what happened in Indonesia and other
countries, as well as in mine. The people take to the streets because they
can't stand the inflation."
He added: "People who supported
the government yesterday have turned
against it."
Five
years after dumping the IMF, what does he have to show for his
defiance?
Zim Independent
Dumisani Muleya/Shakeman Mugari
THE International Monetary
Fund (IMF) warns that Zimbabwe's economy will
shrink by 7% this year against
official forecasts of a 2% recovery.
The IMF, which was in the country
for two weeks last month to assess the
economic situation, said on top of
the 7% contraction after a 4% decline
last year, and 10,5% negative growth
in 2003, inflation would notch 400% in
December.
As if to confirm
this worrying prospect, official figures released this week
showed inflation
galloped from 265% in August to 360% last month.
The IMF projected a
widening of the fiscal deficit which would fuel money
growth, pushing
inflation to over 400%. It said although monetary policy had
tightened, this
has not been consistent .
It said the fiscal deficit would widen
substantially in 2005 to 11,5% of
gross domestic product (GDP), from 4,7% in
2004, due to greater spending.
While much of this increase was due to higher
interest payments, the primary
deficit (excluding interest payments), is
also projected to increase by
almost 2,5% of GDP.
This expansion is
due to a sharp increase in the government wage bill from
15,5% of GDP in
2004 to about 20% in 2005.
With President Robert Mugabe locked in his own
succession crisis, government
is barely doing anything to reverse the damage
caused by his regime's failed
policies.
The ruling Zanu PF is
grappling with Mugabe's succession struggle.
Zanu PF is trying to
postpone the 2008 presidential election to 2010 on the
pretext of
harmonising the parliamentary and presidential polls when in fact
it wants
to extend its rule through the backdoor while grooming Mugabe's
successor.
Analysts say the situation is worsened by the emergence of
a clique of
securocrats holding the reins behind the scenes. Last week it
emerged that
Zimbabwe's state security agents engineered the disastrous
Operation
Murambatsvina in which thousands of homes and informal businesses
were
destroyed in the name of an urban clean-up.
Analysts say, if
true, this shows Mugabe is now hostage to his increasingly
bold security
apparatus - army, intelligence and police - which is pulling
the
strings.
There is also a risk the country will become even more
repressive as the
economic and political situation deteriorates. The
diplomatic disengagement
by South Africa and the international community
offers further room for
Mugabe to ratchet up repression.
The IMF said
key macroeconomic fundamentals would be skewed further.
Entrenched
structural and administrative distortions in the economy remain
unattended
to and this will prevent economic recovery.
The IMF projections should
provide a sobering reality check for delusional
government spin-doctors
always keen to mislead the nation on the state of
the economy.
The
IMF report is also a serious indictment of central bank governor Gideon
Gono
who, against all rational economic forecasts, initially predicted the
economy would grow by 5% this year. Gono later revised his forecast to
between 3,5% and 5%, before further climbing down to a 2%-2,5%
growth.
Gono is still clinging to his snake-oil prediction that inflation
will come
down to between 50% and 80% in December when every literate
citizen can see
it is practically impossible to achieve that - except by
gross manipulation
of figures.
Analysts say it is high time Gono and
his team cast away their ostrich
mentality and faced up to
reality.
"Gono has done his best but the problem is mainly the politics,"
one banker
said. "However, he is also sometimes naïve because he allows
himself to be
used for electoral agendas, only to be left alone on the
economic
frontline."
"The other problem is he seems to understand
more of business management
than economics. He is a very good business
manager, but has no clue at all
about economics."
Analysts have
wondered how an economy can grow when all its major sectors -
agriculture,
mining and manufacturing - are shrinking in real terms.
Only last week,
Zimbabwe's sole tyre manufacturing company, Dunlop, shut
down due to foreign
exchange shortages, throwing 820 workers on to the
streets.
MD Phil
Whitehead was quoted as saying: "We stopped production last week,
and
workers are at home. This is a huge disaster. You cannot run an economy
without tyres."
Dunlop is one of hundreds of companies that have
closed down in the past
five years. There are other factors showing the
economy is fast vanishing
down the tubes.
In addition, a new wave of
farm invasions is sweeping the country.
The Commercial Farmers Union said
last week that government had ordered 25
of the few remaining whites farmers
in Manicaland to vacate their land by
the end of this month.
The
picture from other economic indicators is equally grim. Apart from the
rise
in inflation, which is marching on unchallenged, problems in
agriculture,
the mainstay of the economy, foreign exchange shortages,
particularly for
fuel imports and other essentials, will cause real GDP
contraction, ensuring
Zimbabwe's economy continues to be the fastest
shrinking in the
world.
Economic analyst Eric Bloch said the IMF report merely spelt out
the reality
that government has been trying to dodge for the past five
years.
"History has shown that government is hostile to external
criticism and they
might just react in the same way to the IMF report. They
may just ignore it,
but at their own peril," Bloch said.
"The reality
is we have to genuinely restore agricultural productivity, cut
the huge
government expenditure, curb corruption and restore our
international
relations, before we can dream of an economic recovery."
Zimbabwe already
has the highest inflation and the weakest currency in the
world.
A
World Bank director Hartwig Schafer recently said he had never seen an
economy withering at such a pace outside a war zone as the Zimbabwean
one.
"I can't think of a country that has experienced such a decline in
peace
time," Schafer said. "The major reasons for this decline are the
breakdown
of agricultural productivity and distortion of economic
policies."
Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce president Luxon Zembe
said while the
IMF report was damaging, it was also true. He said the
attitude of
politicians was still the problem.
"Most of our
politicians are still in a denial phase. They want us to
believe that
everyone is wrong and they are the only ones who are correct,"
Zembe
said.
"For example, there are still people invading farms at a time when
we need
every farmer to be working to produce for the country. We are
planning a
Senate election when the country is broke. These are the kind of
things
which are undermining the economy."
Zim Independent
By Jonathan
Moyo
IF there is one clear and present danger now threatening political
stability
in Zimbabwe, it is that President Robert Mugabe's succession
crisis has
become so uncertain and dangerous that it is now in the hands of
unaccountable yet politically-ambitious securocrats.
These
securocrats - the security apparatus - are working in a manner
reminiscent
of the callous brutality of their Rhodesian and Gukurahundi
predecessors who
caused mayhem under the cover of Ian Smith's state of
emergency which was
after Independence renewed by Zanu PF until 1990.
The difference between
the wicked Rhodesian state of emergency that ended in
1990, after having
been extended by Zanu PF to justify the Gukurahundi
campaign, and the
current one, is that the former was declared and therefore
governed by some
rules even if they were extremely vicious, while the latter
is undeclared
and more dangerous because it is not governed by any publicly
known rules
besides the whims and caprices of the securocrats themselves and
those of
their president who is now playing dirty politics with the nation.
A
rare window into the shocking and totally unacceptable operations of the
power-mad securocrats in our midst was opened last week, courtesy of the
Herald which was obviously prompted by some beleaguered wordsmith in
officialdom.
The revealing article ran 13 controversial
paragraphs detailing the clearest
confirmation that the dastardly Operation
Murambatsvina, which destroyed the
homes and livelihoods of 18% of the
population, was hastily planned and
implemented by some panicky and
overzealous elements of the Central
Intelligence Organisation
(CIO).
What was even more dramatic about this confirmation is the
disclosure that
the operation was exclusively approved by President Mugabe
without regard to
the constitutional rights of the targeted innocent victims
and the knowledge
or involvement of other constitutional bodies and
processes - including the
cabinet.
The confirmation by the Herald
made it crystal clear that our body politic
once again is being run by some
very ambitious and dangerous securocrats who
have steadily exploited
President Mugabe's record of governing under a
brutal state of emergency, as
he did during the first 10 years of our
Independence, not only to take over
civilian governance as is
constitutionally defined, but to also take over
the running of Zanu PF,
which left on its own, has become a dead
duck.
In political terms, Zanu PF and President Mugabe are today
singing from the
hymn book of securocrats. In fact, Zanu PF and CIO
structures have become
one and the same thing, and this largely explains why
democracy has become
an impossible proposition within the ruling party
because it has given way
to securocracy. That's what happens in sunset
politics in authoritarian
states.
Even the ever-dithering and
politically-impotent official opposition - the
MDC - is showing all signs of
a party that has been heavily infiltrated by
the same
securocrats.
One tragedy from this backward development is that we
now have security
chiefs who cannot tell the difference between President
Mugabe's political
interests as a politician, Zanu PF party interests and
the national interest
of all Zimbabweans.
This conflation of
interests by misguided securocrats has become a fertile
ground for
unprecedented national conflict with trappings of ominous
bloodshed.
Although (editor) Baffour Ankomah imagined that his
story, republished by
the Herald last week, was given to him by President
Mugabe's wordsmith as a
scoop to be revealed by New African magazine, the
fact is that the
information about how Operation Murambatsvina was planned,
and by whom, and
for what reason, was already public knowledge in
Zimbabwe.
What remained was corroboration of the information by sources
closer to
officialdom.
And when it comes to such sensitive
matters involving the securocrats, you
cannot get a better confirmation than
from the good old Herald. Anyone who
knows anything useful about media
politics in Zimbabwe will tell you that
there is no way in heaven the Herald
would publish such a telling article
that was not only damning, but also
revealing in that it confirmed the truth
about a government now run by
panicky securocrats and a hostage president.
It is very dangerous to have
a president who is a prisoner of securocrats
because he does not only lose
his executive powers to them, but is also
often prompted to act in the
narrow interests of his security apparatus
without properly measuring the
political consequences of his decisions.
The Gukurahundi and
Murambatsvina episodes are classic examples of what
happens when securocrats
are in charge.
The unassailable facts confirmed by the Herald with
the support of those who
pushed for the article to be run are that Operation
Murambatsvina had
nothing to do with the habitat niceties of cleaning slums
out of Zimbabwean
cities.
We now all know Murambatsvina was a
security operation whose
Gukurahundi-like objective had everything to do
with demolishing the homes
and livelihoods of slum dwellers and informal
sector traders who make up 18%
of our population, so as to disperse them in
order to render them
politically-impotent.
There is no amount of
self-righteous pontification by Mugabe's
British-trained and managed
wordsmiths that can obfuscate these facts
anymore.
Another trick
from the wordsmiths that has fallen flat is their absurd
attempt to deflect
attention away from the disastrous consequences of
Murambatsvina through
outlandish claims about the fiction called Operation
Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle
which does not have even one satisfied housing
beneficiary.
What
is worse about the nonsense around this fiction is that, like
Murambatsvina,
Garikai/Hlalani is also run by securocrats, some of them in
military
uniform.
Given that where there is no vision the people perish, the
implications of
the dramatic takeover of national politics and civic works
by wayward
securocrats are so staggering that if nothing decisive is done,
and done now
by the people of Zimbabwe to put a stop and reverse the
situation, then we
are headed for conflict on a scale never before witnessed
in this country.
Mugabe and his securocrats will bear responsibility
for whatever happens
because they are currently busy mobilising anger
against themselves and
instigating instability through repressive
measures.
They must remember that when that happens they will also be
entangled and
may not come out clean. They have to learn lessons from what
is happening
around the world, otherwise they might spend the rest of their
lives on the
run, afraid of incurring the people's wrath as a result of the
consequences
of their excesses and the inevitable need for them to be held
accountable
for their actions.
The Herald confirmation that
Operation Murambatsvina was the brainchild of
alarmed CIO elements who
hastily implemented it outside the confines of
constitutional governance,
clearly means that Zimbabwean laws, including the
constitution itself, were
violated. This alone warrants an independent
judicial
inquiry.
Besides such an inquiry or regardless of its findings, there
is a prima
facie case that President Mugabe once again did not uphold the
oath of his
office by acting in a unilateral manner whose consequence was to
render
destitute some 2,5 million Zimbabweans.
On this sad score,
President Mugabe does not have moral and political
legitimacy to remain in
office. He can remain there only as a hostage of the
very same securocrats
who have become public enemies of the people but that
will only help prompt
instability which is looming large in Zimbabwe and
raise the urgent need to
take steps to avert it.
We have seen that elsewhere around the world,
including in Iraq of all
places, security officials who become a law unto
themselves by abusing
prisoners or terrorising civilians are legally liable
to disciplinary action
and prosecution while victims are compensated. Why
not in Zimbabwe?
Did Zimbabweans give their sacrifices during the
liberation war so that
President Mugabe and his securocrats can use the
cover of Zanu PF to
terrorise the population into permanent docility even
when 18% of the
population has its homes and livelihoods illegally destroyed
by the
government whose first duty should be to protect life and
property?
Surely, in any constitutional democracy, the people have an
inalienable
right to rise up against an evil government acting against state
interests.
There is a difference of night and day between rising up against
a wicked
government of the day ruling against the interests of the people
and rising
up against the state.
Despite its pretensions fuelled
by politically-corrupt securocrats, Zanu PF
is not the state and the state
is not Zanu PF. That's very clear.
The state is the people and the
people cannot rise up against themselves.
The time has come for these
distinctions to be understood and made. There is
need for action to be taken
to nip the impunity of securocrats and their
political hostages in the
bud.
One major reason why the securocrats had no qualms at all about
Operation
Murambatsvina is precisely because of the impunity from the
Gukurahundi
precedent which is at work here. The fact that nobody was held
liable for
the Gukurahundi massacres of over 20 000 people and for the
destruction of
homes and livelihoods of more than 25% of the population
means that as a
nation we remain at risk of similar or worse atrocities
committed by panicky
securocrats in cahoots with an aloof and unaccountable
president. We must
never allow this sort of thing to happen
again.
In this regard, the planning and execution of Operation
Murambatsvina by
securocrats with the approval of President Mugabe in the
manner they did,
serves as a rude wake-up call to Zimbabweans that the
Gukurahundi mentality
of government-engineered and led atrocities is still
pervasive among some
security elements who have learnt nothing from our dark
past and who are now
taking advantage of the collapse of the Zanu PF
commissariat, President
Mugabe's undemocratic nature and the impotence of
the official opposition,
to implement an undeclared state of
emergency.
It is no wonder that these apprehensive securocrats known
to conjure up
hasty operations with nefarious objectives are now proposing
to postpone the
presidential election until 2010.
They are also
pushing for a law- and-order approach to monetary policy while
seeking to
control and run the public and private media - including the Zanu
PF
official mouthpiece.
These sinister agendas of the securocrats are
only surpassed by their own
breathtaking incompetence which guarantees that
they will always want to
come up with wicked operations either to deal with
people merely holding
different political views, as in the case of
Gukurahundi, or to criminalise
poverty, as in Murambatsvina's case, which
they are largely responsible for
creating through their leadership and
policy failures.
The sooner Zimbabweans understand this and do
something big to stop it once
and for all, the better for posterity and the
prosperity of our republic.
* Professor Jonathan Moyo is independent
MP for Tsholotsho.
Zim Independent
By Bornwell
Chakaodza
"FIX it or go" (Zimbabwe Independent, Editor's memo, October 7).
"Stop the
destruction, Gono must go", said Tendai Biti, MDC's secretary for
economic
affairs; and "Gono's trillions no panacea to Zim woes," wrote
Shakeman
Mugari.
These are some of the headlines in last week's issue
of the Independent by
which the paper made conclusions on Reserve Bank
governor Gideon Gono's
record over the past two years.
Let me
remove the danger of misrepresentation by pointing out from the
outset that
although you certainly goofed by over-estimating the governor's
transformative power on the Zimbabwean crisis, the Gono conundrum excites
extremes of opposing views.
Like no other governor of the Reserve
Bank of Zimbabwe since Independence,
Gono is a subject of intense interest
and controversy, and not just among
financial or economic experts but in the
entire Zimbabwean society.
Therefore, many of the things (not all)
contained in the three articles
already referred to deserve attention as an
antidote both to the excessive
and sometimes embarrassing hero-worship that
has attended the governor in
the government gazettes - the Herald, the
Sunday Mail and ZBC; and to the
mindless and ill-founded political slanging
to which he has sometimes been
subjected from some of the more
un-neighbourly of his colleagues and fellow
Zimbabweans.
Democracy is all about deep debate and it is
important that differences of
opinion continue to exist side-by-side
peacefully.
Having made these preliminary points, let me state my
position. It is based
four-square on the premise that "though knowing we
won't succeed, we try
anyway". We have to. Someone has to.
Gono
has been thrust into a situation not of his own making but that of the
endlessly bungling and arrogant Zanu PF. This is a Zanu PF-induced crisis.
It was not Gono's decision to pay more than $36 billion gratuities to former
political prisoners, ex-detainees and restrictees - a figure which will
further paralyse the Zimbabwean economy.
The Reserve Bank
governor is not the cause of our predicament. It is the
ruling party, and by
their docility and inaction, all Zimbabweans must take
full responsibility
for this crisis.
What Gono is trying to do is to manage the crisis
and de-accelerate the
decline of the economy. The trying will of course be
an empty experience
without his colleagues to assist him to make things
happen. It is truly a
communal effort!
Against all odds, against
all adversity, the governor and his team are
trying, and trying and trying.
And let us give them credit for that. Far
from improving anything, perhaps
the governor's "heroism" lies in his
ability to hope, to believe and to act,
even in the face of justifiable
despair. It could be that Gono cannot
control trying!
Yes, things have got much worse in whatever direction
you care to look.
Inflation is continuing to make a determined assault on an
economy which is
already in the intensive care unit. All one has to do is to
take a look at
the statistics of sadness that stand before us day-in and
day-out.
The $9,6 million September monthly basket of basic
commodities for an urban
family of six that the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe
came up with is to me
not a true reflection of how prices have skyrocketed
in recent weeks. All
Zimbabweans buy from the same supermarkets whether
poverty-stricken or
otherwise, and considering the way prices are going up
on an hourly basis, I
shudder to think how the vast majority of Zimbabweans
are surviving.
My questions, not to Gono, but to President Robert
Mugabe and Zanu PF: How
much practice will it take to plan a human sacrifice
of your own people?
What would it take to say: "We have done our bit,
let us go for the sake of
all Zimbabweans?"
The level of
destitution in this country has to be seen to be believed. My
questions are
directed to the Zanu PF political establishment because it
holds the key to
the turnaround of the fortunes of this country - not Gono
and his colleagues
at the central bank.
Gono cannot and will not fix the problem. There
are decided limits to what
he can do with the best will in the world. With
these kleptomaniacs in
government, what amount of power and influence can
Gono wield over them?
Zanu PF must admit openly that we have become a
failed state. And it is Zanu
PF which has to fix the problem. It is a very
difficult situation for any
governor of the Reserve Bank whoever it could
have been.
We cannot expect Gono to remain asbestos in a melting pot.
The real epidemic
is the ruling Zanu PF. This is the contextual framework
which was lacking
particularly in your Editor's memo and the article by
Biti.
Yes, by dishing out trillions to corrupt and unaccountable
parastatals,
local authorities and other organisations, the Reserve Bank is
merely
offering bandages and patches to a worn-out tube.
It can
never be a cure for an economy that is terminally ill. And I think
there is
a very simple point that the Reserve Bank management has to grasp:
Without
Zanu PF willing and able to fix the politics of this country, no
amount of
fresh blood you continue to pump into an anorexic Zimbabwean
economy will
revive it. Any business the world over needs political
stability, security
as well as the environment in which it can grow and
thrive. That kind of
environment does not exist in Zimbabwe.
But that does not mean Gono
and his team do nothing until the environment
becomes propitious. Far from
it. Giving up now can never be an option, to
quote Gono's favourite
expression.
As a central bank you have a huge task on your hands but
do not give up. I
think this is the bottom line. The answer obviously lies
in political hands
but continue to persevere. I want to challenge all
Zimbabweans to say that
if any one of us was in Gono's shoes in the current
political climate, would
we fare any better? A big no is my
answer.
Things could be much worse without Gono. Ours is an abnormal
environment. I
want to repeat what I said earlier on: Though knowing we
won't succeed, we
try anyway. In Gono and his colleagues, we must pay some
homage to the power
of the human spirit and to their extraordinary efforts
against crushing
oppression.
This is the context which was
conspicuous by its absence when the editor
said about Gono: "Fix it or go".
If hypothetically Gono were to go tomorrow,
will things begin to improve in
our troubled country? Will they improve
under the present political
environment? I think it is important to keep
things in
perspective.
Although his heart is in the right place or near enough,
Gono has obviously
made mistakes, as every active and creative man
does.
I am sure the governor will be the first person not to claim
infallibility
like the Pope. Foremost are the governor's false predictions
on the fuel,
forex and inflation fronts. The truth is that the Reserve Bank
governor has
made public promises before he has come to appreciate the
complexities
surrounding these issues, especially in this ever-changing
troubled
environment of ours.
In fairness to Gono, promises are
hard to keep in a fast-changing and
unplannable environment. The fact of the
matter is that no chief executive
officer of an organisation, especially in
today's Zimbabwe, can say that he
is immune from contradictions between
promise and reality. This is another
level to which Zanu PF has sunk
Zimbabwe. Most of those who critically
support Gono are well aware of this
aspect of his record and it inspires in
them a definite caution and
reserve.
The key point that I want to leave with your readers is: It
is one thing to
fix a problem and another to try, particularly when it is
not of your own
making. And I do respect and admire Gono and his team for
trying.
To tell the youthful Gono to go is to completely miss the
point. You very
well know which ageing leader should go! And that is where
the opposition
MDC, civil society, the business community, the churches and
ordinary
Zimbabweans have to raise their voices continually rather than
remain silent
and submissive.
Criticising Gono yes, but to tell
him to go is to present an illusion, to
take us to the land of fantasy and
fiction.
* Bornwell Chakaodza is former editor of the Standard and
the Herald
newspapers.
Zim Independent
Eric Bloch Column
FOR a long time, government believed that the business community
was crying
"wolf" with recurrent prognostications of imminent collapse of
their
enterprises, due to an insufficiency of foreign currency to fund
essential
imports.
Undoubtedly that disbelief was fuelled by two
primary factors. The first was
government's never-ending belief that all
businessmen are endlessly
resorting to pronounced profiteering, at the
expense of the populace and of
the well-being of the economy and that
therefore, if they bewailed any
circumstance, they are misrepresenting
realities in order to achieve even
greater profits sought by their
never-ending greed. Any factors given by the
business community would,
therefore, either be wholly disregarded by
government, or would be
cavalierly dismissed as being wild distortions or
exaggerations, of little
or no consequence.
Inevitably, the second factor that has motivated
government to treat the
desperate pleas of the business sector with
contempt, must be assumed to be
that government itself has become so prone
to misrepresentation that it
automatically takes it for granted that
everyone else does likewise. This is
compounded by the fact that government
suffers from pronounced paranoia, and
therefore it perceives the distressed
wails of the business sector to be
nothing but veiled criticisms and attacks
upon government, instead of
recognising that the cries of probable collapse
are genuine, and are
distraught appeals to government to do something
constructive to resolve the
looming crisis.
It is time that harsh
realities are recognised: the amount of foreign
currency falls far short of
the national need. Such foreign currency as is
forthcoming, primarily by way
of export proceeds, is fast exhausted in
funding a few priorities, leaving
little or nothing for most enterprises. By
the time food imports have been
paid for (necessitated by the state's near
total destruction of the
agricultural sector), fuel imports paid for (albeit
for a fraction of the
fuel that the country needs), and foreign currency is
allocated for the
purchase of agricultural inputs (in the vain hope of
recovery of
agriculture, as improbable as that recovery is until the
so-called land
reform programme is constructively restructured), there is an
insignificant
amount of foreign currency left for other purposes. Moreover,
much of that
insignificant amount is required for government's own purposes.
Some of
those purposes are very merited, such as honouring Zimbabwe's
grossly
overdue debt repayment obligations with the International Monetary
Fund, but
it is extraordinarily difficult to justify others, in Zimbabwe's
straitened
foreign exchange circumstances. How can one credibly justify the
purchase of
jet fighters for the Air Force, aviation fuel for consumption at
air shows,
and dozens of new motor vehicles for chiefs and for unnecessarily
appointed
additional cabinet ministers, when one cannot provide a
sufficiency of
foreign currency for anti-retrovirals, for the manufacture of
pharmaceuticals (with some of the manufacturers not having received any
foreign currency since last February), for the manufacture of goods for
export (which would thereby generate foreign currency), and for the
manufacture of import substitution products (thereby reducing foreign
currency needs), and for sufficient fuel to keep Zimbabwe on the move? Any
attempt at such justification must be spurious.
The bottom line is
that numerous enterprises are on the verge of collapse.
They have struggled
vigorously to continue operations, sourcing whatsoever
imported inputs they
could by recourse to lines of credit from suppliers,
until the suppliers
understandably withdrew those lines, as a result of the
recurrent debt
default on the part of their Zimbabwean customers, due solely
to the ongoing
inability to access the foreign exchange necessary to service
the
debts.
They also tried energetically to continue operations by very
careful
management and productive usage of whatsoever limited stocks that
they had.
And, in order to meet market needs, continue to provide
employment, continue
to generate export revenues, and continue to be
contributive participants in
a declining economy, many resorted to imports
financed through the parallel
market, only to be prosecuted for so
doing.
It is time government recognises, even though belatedly, that
Zimbabwe's
economy is in crisis mode. The ranks of more than two million
unemployed,
who wish for employment, will soon be joined by many more,
unless some very
positive actions are taken, without delay, to address the
crisis. The
decline in the economy, which government has been foreshadowing
in
presidential and budget statements as being reversed, will intensify,
unless
effective steps towards foreign exchange generation are forthcoming
without
delay, no matter how unpalatable they may be. And the revenue flows
to the
impoverished fiscus, with its disastrous levels of debt, will shrink
even
more, as businesses collapse, more and more become unemployed, and the
already constricted consumer spending power is constrained to an ever
greater degree.
The first of the necessary steps is for government to
pursue policies which
are complementary to the Reserve Bank's monetary
policies. No matter how
soundly based most of the monetary policies are,
they cannot succeed when
they are undermined by the contrary policies of
government, mainly being
politically driven polices which destroy investor
and business confidence,
are destructive of economically necessary,
harmonious, international
relationships, and which swell the fiscal deficit.
In particular, government
needs to prioritise many of the foreign currency
requirements of the private
sector ahead of many of its own. It needs to
reduce its own foreign exchange
usage to the bare minimum and absolute
essentials, instead of spending on
its "like to have"
needs.
Secondly, it must work intensively to repair its relationships,
and restore
the good, past Zimbabwean image, with the international
community. Doing so
requires, in the first instance, to rid itself of its
pronounced paranoia.
It needs to disabuse itself of the misconception that
the former colonial
power, Britain, and its allies, are enemies of the
present Zimbabwe,
determined that the country should again be subject to
colonialist control.
That is the last thing that Britain, the European
Union, and the United
States actually want. Empire-building and colonialism
is something of the
past, to which they no longer aspire. What they do want
is evidence of
democracy, respect for human rights, justice and real law and
order,
constructive economic policies, and a desire for a meaningful
contribution
to global harmony and international
collaboration.
Aligned to such policies must be the creation of a
genuinely
investment-conducive environment. That does not exist when the
president
threatens indigenous takeovers of equity in the mining sector,
perceived
nationally and internationally as being a potential replay of the
injustices
that characterised Zimbabwe's catastrophic land reform programme.
(The
programme was very necessary, but the manner of achieving land reform
was
unjust, inhuman and economically disastrous.) And that
investment-conducive
environment does not exist when the Minister of
Transport and Energy talks
of forced nationalisation of white-owned
businesses, even if thereafter the
Minister of Industry and International
Trade commendably makes a statement
that no such action is contemplated, and
that it will not occur.
Such an environment also does not exist when
foreign investors are entitled
to dividend remittances, but cannot effect
them when the foreign currency is
not available. And it does not exist when
the speedy processing of foreign
investor applications by the Zimbabwe
Investment Centre is negated by
inordinately prolonged delays in procuring
work permits for essential
expatriate employees.
Concurrently,
government and the Reserve Bank must work together, with great
urgency, to
assure exporter viability. Although the exchange rate moved very
significantly over a period of six months, the move was not sufficient, if
measured against the rate of inflation, and for the last few weeks has been
almost static. Exporters cannot survive if inflation-driven cost increases
are not offset by appropriate exchange rate movements. Exporters can also
not survive if they are obliged to surrender 50% of export earnings, in the
event that their import contents of the exports exceeds 50%.
Whilst
the present foreign exchange crisis requires maximum possible
surrender of
export revenues to the Reserve Bank, Zimbabwe is "cutting off
its nose to
spite its face" when it requires surrenders to an extent as
preclude export
operations.
Hand in hand with assuring exporters of their currency needs,
Zimbabwe needs
to recognise that many potentially exportable products are
not export price
competitive against like products, especially from the Far
East in general,
and China in particular, because of the magnitude of export
incentives that
the competitors receive from their governments. Zimbabwean
export incentives
fall far short of those given by China and others, and
government and the
Reserve Bank need to revisit the export incentive regime
(within the World
Trade Organisation/GATT constraints).
These are but
a few of the measures necessary to avoid an intensifying
collapse of a
business sector which already has innumerable enterprises
operating on a two
or three day working week only, or under closures with
personnel being
required to proceed on leave pending imported inputs being
forthcoming.
Time is fast running out and, if the right actions are
not urgently embarked
upon, the only growth businesses in Zimbabwe will be
those of professional
liquidators
Zim Independent
Muckraker
STATEMENTS in the official press last week provided an
interesting view of
the Byzantine manoeuvres surrounding official
policy-making at Munhumutapa
Building.
It has long been known that
Operation Murambatsvina was the product of a
small cabal that included
intelligence and police officers. Anna Tibaijuka
referred to the absence of
broad consultations when she submitted her
report.
So it was useful
to have Baffour Ankomah's confirmation of this in his New
African article
subsequently carried in the Herald . George Charamba's
disingenuous rebuttal
last Saturday has simply alerted us to the regime's
sensitivity on the
issue.
" New African can now reveal that the operation was the brainchild
of
Zimbabwe's intelligence community which felt it had to move quickly to
nip
in the bud a Ukrainian-style revolution (or street protests) then being
planned in Zimbabwe and funded by the same Western countries who paid for
Ukraine's so-called Orange Revolution earlier this year," Ankomah
wrote.
"Vulnerable slum dwellers" were to be the cannon fodder of this
revolution,
he tells us, hence the authorities' sense of urgency in dealing
with them.
Ankomah has declined to respond to an invitation from
Muckraker to reveal
who sponsored his visit to Zimbabwe where this
implausible story was fed to
him. The one thing everybody understands
perfectly well is that no street
protests or indeed any other protests could
be expected from the supine MDC
despite evidence of yet another stolen
election. The mood was sullen but not
insurrectionary.
The CIO - one
of the best intelligence services in the world, Ankomah
believes - panicked
and nipped the pending street protests in the bud by
demolishing the
habitats of the slum-dwellers. Because of the speed at which
the operation
moved, many cabinet ministers and senior officials who would
normally know
about such an operation were kept in the dark, he claims. The
security
services "drove the process" and laid-down procedures were
"short-circuited".
You have to be very gullible indeed to swallow all
of this. Yes, a small
cabal of securocrats may have been driving the
crackdown. But the threat of
an Orange Revolution was pure fiction fed to
Ankomah by the same people who
paid for his visit.
Then we had
Charamba blaming the independent press for picking up on the
story.
Murambatsvina, he claimed, was a "collective programme premised on
the twin
goals of dealing with lawlessness and providing decent
accommodation".
Nothing of course could be further from the truth. If
there was any
lawlessness it stemmed from Murambatsvina, as has been widely
documented.
That is why Tibaijuka suggested there might be grounds for
prosecution of
those responsible.
If it was a "collective programme",
why was it not discussed at the cabinet
meeting in the week that it was
launched? And the "decent accommodation" has
been slow to materialise. Why
wasn't it provided in the first place?
It is difficult to work out
whether Charamba's statement on Saturday was
designed to castigate the
Herald's editor for carrying Ankomah's very
revealing remarks or provide a
pretext for attacking independent media
editors.
And who is the
"fringe politician" who gets dragged into Charamba's tirade?
Perhaps the one
who is subject to further abuse by Nathaniel Manheru in the
same edition?
The one Manheru was cheering on after his attacks on
journalists only a year
ago!
And how interesting to see that the deputy minister's lie about
Morgan
Tsvangirai hopping aboard his 4x4 during his first walk into town is
repeated by Manheru whose office will have been provided with material
evidence that the vehicle was nowhere in sight on the day in question,
largely because it was locked in Tsvangirai's garage. The world's best
intelligence service cannot have been that blind behind those dark
glasses!
And then we are lectured by Charamba about the "abuse of
journalism".
Purleez!
Muckraker is confused about Zimra's foreign
exchange rates provided to the
Herald every week to assess the value of
imported goods. They provide rates
for the Austrian schilling, the Belgian
franc, the French franc, the German
mark, the Irish punt, the Netherlands
guilder and the Spanish peseta, among
others.
What is puzzling about
all these currencies is that they were abolished four
years ago with the
introduction of the euro. So where Zimra gets its rates
from is anybody's
guess!
Why does Zanu PF get away with holding voters in contempt by
promoting
electoral failures to high office?
We have before us the
example of William Nhara who failed to get elected to
parliament in Harare
and is now principal director in the Interactive
Affairs ministry. Then we
witnessed a number of parastatals with shocking
records of mismanagement
rushing to congratulate Engineer George Mlilo on
his appointment as
permanent secretary in the Ministry of Transport and
Communications. This
follows his failure to secure the Bulawayo mayorship.
Does anybody still
remember Mlilo's record at Bulawayo City Council. As
chief engineer
he
almost went to jail for ill-treating pigs!
It will be interesting
to see who the president appoints to the senate after
his assurance that
there would be no more rejected candidates as ministers.
We were
intrigued to note Mugabe's recent remarks that "the country's
ancestors had
endured worse treatment and conditions, including brutality,
detention and
many other inhumanities and deprivations at the hands of
colonialists".
But what about brutality, detention, and other
deprivations at the hands of
his regime? How does he explain such
depredations in the post-Independence
era? What was the fate of Lookout
Masuku?
Then we had Cain Mathema making what must be some of the daftest
remarks of
the year - in a highly contested field. He said: "It's not the
president who
invented poverty in Zimbabwe, (it was) foreign investors who
came here, such
as Cecil John Rhodes."
Mathema is right. The
president did not invent poverty. He just made it a
great deal worse.
Investors should take note: living standards have now
fallen below those
obtaining 40 years ago. A remarkable achievement for any
leader and one
which even Mathema would have difficulty excusing.
Muckraker was alarmed
by Sunday Mirror columnist the Scrutator's positive
evaluation of Lands
minister Joseph Made's contribution to land reform.
While Made might have
spent many years at Arda and is a "qualified" (pun
intended) agricultural
economist, the Scrutator is silent on his disastrous
trail there. Arda
estates are some of the worst performers in the country.
It is also
myopic to say only so-called "casualties of the land reform . . .
hate him
with a passion". He claims Made was the first to make things (land
reform
presumably?) really work because by January 2003 the country had
increased
the number of "commercial farmers" from 4 500 to 80 000.
Two issues
emerge here. It's not simply casualties of Made's ineptitude who
"hate" him,
but all those now facing starvation because of a programme
executed with
criminal malice and incompetence. Did the Scrutator expect
Zimbabweans to
award Made an honorary doctorate for predicting a bumper
harvest that never
was?
As for the number of commercial farmers, the Scrutator's revelation
is the
stuff of fiction. Anyway, how do you explain the paradox of 4 500
white
commercial farmers feeding the whole nation and then 80 000 black
commercial
farmers failing to do so, as the late Enos Chikowore pointed out
at the Zanu
PF congress?
And what has happened to those small-scale
farmers who, we were always told,
produced more than 70% of the maize? All
displaced in the name of land
reform and the Scrutator calls that Joseph
Made's greatest achievement!
As usual, we failed to make sense of Tendai
Chari's raillery against the
media in Zimbabwe which he said was silent on
the release of Judith Miller
of the New York Times newspaper who was
imprisoned for refusing to disclose
a source.
Zimbabwean media were
accused of "thinking inside the box" because they
failed to make a
connection between the US government's actions and their
implications for
third world journalists.
It's a pity we are having to be told of lack of
press freedom in the US by
the same "media" analysts and lecturers who have
never written a single word
in support of the Daily News and the plight of
its workers; the same
analysts who are quick to point out that the US is not
a "paragon" of press
freedom to justify the enactment of satanic laws like
the Access to
Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
As for
claims that America is a paragon of press freedom, surely that can
only be
peddled by the state media here. We have no evidence of the
Americans making
such self-righteous claims for themselves.
What we know is that American
media don't believe a sitting president should
be protected by law from
public scrutiny. Nobody is infallible. They have
attacked George Bush over
Iraq and he was recently forced to accept that
Hurricane Katrina was poorly
handled after excoriating criticism in the
press.
We know Chari is
able to tell us how many US soldiers have died in the war
in Iraq but is
curiously silent on Zimbabwean soldiers who died in the DRC
campaign.
It's called "thinking outside the box" Mr Chari. We thought
it was only
Joseph Chinotimba who needed help to see Hurricane Katrina in
its proper
perspective. Remember Oliver Mtukudzi's Handiro Dambudziko
?
Then there was Nathaniel Manheru and the IMF. He was patriotically
furious
that Zimbabwe was nearly expelled from the IMF when it was not the
most
delinquent debtor. We are not worried about Manheru's contrived reasons
why
the IMF wanted Zimbabwe out. It is the league in which we find ourselves
that worries us most.
The worst offenders, according to the fund, are
Somalia, Liberia and Sudan.
We are not quite that bad in terms of
indebtedness apparently. And that is a
cause for relief and celebration at
Munhumutapa Building!
After a lot of head-scratching Manheru found the
usual reasons for
Zimbabwe's problems with the fund: land reform and our
involvement in the
DRC war, as if there is anything redeeming about those
disastrous
adventures.
But an obvious point that Manheru conveniently
ignored was that our fellow
outcasts have been virtually at war during the
whole period that they have
failed to meet their obligations to the IMF.
Zimbabwe was not. Which means
our failure was almost entirely due to fiscal
mismanagement.
As for Somalia, it has not had a government since the
ouster of Siad Barre
in 1991. The civil war is not yet over in Sudan. In
Liberia the wounds of
war are still raw.
It is this lack of a sense
of shame that has been the curse of this country;
that those who should be
seeking to take the country further than Ian Smith
did instead want to lead
us back to the Stone Age so that we compare well
with other
failures!
Is success so unAfrican that we must always seek company among
the world's
rogue states? We found ourselves being reminded again of the
much-abused
expression about "normalising the abnormal".
And
obviously when Manheru went ballistic about the IMF's inflation
projections
of 400% by year-end he hadn't seen the Central Statistical
Office's figures
this week. By year-end the figure could be higher than 400%
and there is
nothing Gideon Gono can do about it. His crime is pretending
that he
can.
We liked the letter in the Herald last week from "Patriotic Farmer".
It was
the usual tosh about how we must all support the government's
efforts. But
like all these true patriots, the writer gave himself away. His
letter
carried a Mt Pleasant address!
Finally, we note the Met Office
is now giving "predictions" instead of
forecasts. The Department of
Meteorological Services, as it is properly
called, on Tuesday "predicted"
that the rainy season would begin at the end
of this week. Masvingo,
Beitbridge, Mwenezi and Chivhu would be the first to
benefit, we
were
told.
Let's hope this prediction is not of the same sort as
President Mugabe's
prediction of fuel deliveries, Joseph Made's prediction
of a bumper harvest,
and Gideon Gono's prediction for inflation!
Zim Independent
Comment
AS
Zimbabwe's inflation soared to 360% this week the central bank appeared
unfazed by such a damaging development that has blown away any prospects of
economic recovery this year.
Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono was
quoted in the state media on Wednesday
as promising to deal decisively with
the scourge because he has the
ammunition to do so.
"We have a
sufficient battery of policy instruments to deal with the
resurgence," said
Gono.
So he has a secret weapon to fight inflation? Where has he been
hiding it?
Gono's military-speak about his mystery arsenal makes it even
more confusing
to tell where exactly the economy is headed now that all the
other measures
he has paraded since December 2003 have failed.
If
indeed there is such a weapon to unleash on the country's number one
enemy,
why has it not been deployed in the past to deal with the problem
once and
for all? There was no need to wait for inflation to head towards
the 400%
mark before rolling out his secret weapon because, as the
International
Monetary Fund said in its report released last week, the
economy has
"collapsed".
Part of the reason for that, it said, was the Reserve Bank's
profligacy in
throwing money at failing paraststals and the clean-up
operation which no
bank had any business getting involved
in.
Inflation has effectively wiped out the purchasing power of savings
held as
paper assets. It has distorted the economy in favour of extreme
consumption
and hoarding of real assets, causing the monetary base, whether
specie or
hard currency, to flee the country. Zimbabwe has become anathema
to
investment, which calls for a speedy resolution of the crisis. The nation
is
waiting for a new strategy to be paraded and critiqued before it is put
into
action. Covert operations unleashed on the populace create unnecessary
hostility and tensions between the Reserve Bank and stakeholders.
The
greatest weapon to win the inflation war is commonality of purpose by
all
interested parties and ultimately ownership of the fight by those on the
frontline. It would be futile for Gono to dispatch troops with a different
cause to fight the inflation war. I am referring here to the carrot and
stick approach, the hallmark of Gono's monetary policy.
The stick has
been wielded more often than the carrot has been offered.
Businesses which
have felt the punitive hand of the central bank more than
they have tasted
the benefits of reform have not applied themselves fully in
the fight to
achieve economic recovery.
We agree with Gono that the fight against
inflation requires desperate
measures to ensure the problem is not only
wiped out but does not recur.
Gono has introduced a form of shock therapy in
his monetary policy reforms
aimed at curtailing money supply growth,
encourage exports to curtail
imported inflaton and to stabilise the local
currency. This worked to an
extent before the general election when there
was political will by the
government to put things right, as a campaign
gimmick.
Buoyed by this temporary trend, the central bank was projecting
inflation
would fall to between 20-35% by year-end. It was subsequently
revised to
50-80% and then 265%.
This week Gono said double-digit
figures would be achieved at the end of
next year and single-digit inflation
by the end of 2007. Does anyone still
believe him?
For any form of
therapy to work there should be full commitment by the
political leadership.
Shock therapy worked in post-war West Germany in the
late 1940s. During 1947
and 1948, price controls and government support were
withdrawn over a very
short period. This had the effect of kickstarting the
economy. Germany had
previously had a highly authoritarian and
interventionist fiscal
regime.
Lately, Ecuador's therapy involved placing the nation under a
currency board
which allowed the central bank to print only as much money as
it had in
foreign reserves. A currency board is a system by which a currency
is
convertible at a fixed exchange rate with another currency. This means
that
the currency is fully backed by foreign reserves.
Gono's major
problem when he rolls out his secret weapon is whether he will
be allowed to
make proper use of it. The government of President Mugabe,
stuck in the
groove of populist rhetoric, is averse to any drastic changes,
especially
those that will induce more pain in a restive populace. Signs of
the
government's disinclination to radical changes were manifest when Gono
decided to devalue the dollar and when he introduced a measure of
dollarisation.
The fight is still on but Gono should know that his
plans must pass the
political test. In his January 2005 monetary policy
statement, he said he
would "not pursue policies that unduly undermine
people's livelihoods." He
has nothing to lose now because most people's
livelihoods have already been
undermined.