International Herald Tribune
The Associated PressPublished: April 19,
2007
CAPE TOWN, South Africa: The South African government
said Thursday it would
provide no public blow-by-blow of its Zimbabwe
mediation efforts.
Spokesman Thembo Maseka said it was vital to get
Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe's government and opposition leaders
talking and it would be
counterproductive to publicize details of the
effort.
Southern African leaders last month named President Thabo Mbeki
as mediator
in the Zimbabwean crisis - even though Western governments and
domestic
critics, including his own brother, have criticized him for not
being tough
enough with Mugabe.
When asked what advice he would give
his older brother in handling the
Zimbabwe issue, Moeletsi Mbeki said: "I
think the South African government
needs to show a lot more energy in
dissuading Zimbabwe's ruling party Zanu
PF from brutalizing the opposition
party."
"We need to send a message across to the Zanu PF that an
opposition in a
democratic country has a right to exist and has the right to
participate in
activities," the political analyst said at a lecture in
Pretoria, according
to the South African Press Association.
Mugabe's
brutal clampdown on opposition leaders earlier this month earned
international condemnation. Following that storm, the Southern African
Development Community named Mbeki as mediator. Mbeki has long advocated a
quiet diplomatic approach, saying public pressure on Mugabe was
counterproductive.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has said
it welcomes South
African mediation efforts. South African spokesman Maseka
wouldn't say
whether Mugabe had agreed to cooperate.
"The critical
and urgent challenge facing all Zimbabweans is to take the
necessary steps
to create an environment that would be conducive for free
and fair elections
in 2008," Maseka told journalists after a regular Cabinet
meeting.
He
said Mbeki wanted to deal with the Zimbabwe crisis "behind closed doors
and
confidentially."
POSTED: 12:40 p.m. EDT, April
19, 2007
By Jeff Koinange
CNN
Editor's note: In our
Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share
their experiences in
covering news and analyze the stories behind the
events. This week marked
Robert Mugabe's 27th year in power in Zimbabwe.
Here, CNN Africa
correspondent Jeff Koinange shares his perspective on
Mugabe's
reign.
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (CNN) -- I was 14 years old in 1980 and
vividly
recall that historic day on April 18 when the southern African
nation of
Rhodesia became independent Zimbabwe.
I remember the
British flag being lowered and the Zimbabwean one being
raised. To me, it
seemed there wasn't a dry eye in the crowd at Rufaru
Stadium in the
country's newly named capital, Harare, previously known as
Salisbury.
Rhodesia was named after the British
financier-turned-philanthropist, Cecil
Rhodes, and was a bastion of white
settler rule with commercial farms,
producing everything from tobacco to
maize. Africa's latest independent
republic rightfully boasted the title:
southern Africa's bread basket.
Among the guests at the stadium that
night was reggae superstar, Bob Marley
and the Wailers. Zimbabweans went
wild as Marley took to the stage, belting
out his song
"Zimbabwe."
Watching these events unfolding on my black and white TV in
not-too-distant
Kenya, I thought what a great feat this nation had just
accomplished.
Also impressive for me that night was the man speaking at
the podium, the
bespectacled, articulate, smartly dressed and newly elected
prime minister
of independent Zimbabwe: Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
His
speech was like nothing I'd ever heard. His diction, impeccable -- his
command of the English language, inspirational.
Mugabe was the toast
of his nation that night, and the envy of millions
across Africa. In the
minds of most, he could do no wrong having inherited a
stable economy, a
solid infrastructure and an agriculturally rich nation.
How wrong they
turned out to be.
Mugabe cuts off 'nose to spite face'
Less than three
decades later, Mugabe continues in power at the age of 83
years old despite
squandering the post-independence inheritance.
In 2000, he ordered the
invasion of commercially owned white farms -- what
critics say was a huge
mistake. Those farmers who didn't get killed or
injured fled the country in
droves.
The world cried foul -- in particular, Zimbabwe's former colonial
power,
Britain. The United States chipped in as well, and imposed sanctions
on the
government.
Mugabe's answer was to tighten his grip on
power.
I was in Zimbabwe for those first farm invasions in April 2000.
What I saw
was a country in a state of self-strangulation. One of the white
farmers
being forced off his farm told me: "Mugabe's about to cut off his
nose to
spite his face."
At least 12 white farmers were killed in the
next few months. Months later,
the confiscated farms ended up in the hands
of Mugabe's close allies. Few of
them had experience farming and the land
quickly deteriorated to the point
of lying barren.
Mugabe also
clamped down on just about everything and everyone he felt was a
threat,
from lawyers to doctors to teachers and nurses. He even went after
the
churches.
I continued to cover Zimbabwe's downward spiral, from the
presidential
elections in 2002 that saw Mugabe defeat his opponent, Morgan
Tsvangirai. It
was an election that was seen by international monitors as
largely flawed.
I returned again for the 2005 parliamentary elections in
which the
opposition lost badly, leading to deep divisions. Mugabe laughed
off the win
saying, "No one can beat me, not now, not ever."
Some of
our reports infuriated him and it was just a matter of time when
Mugabe
would turn on us. In 2003, he expelled most Western broadcasters from
reporting within Zimbabwe.
"We consider the CNN and the BBC as enemy
agents," was what Zimbabwe's
ambassador to the United States, Machivenyika
Mapuranga, said as he was
being interviewed live on CNN
recently.
'Millionaires go to bed hungry'
Zimbabweans have been
fleeing their country across the border into South
Africa in large
numbers.
The United Nations estimates there are now more than three
million Zimbabwe
exiles in South Africa alone. That's about one-fourth of
Zimbabwe's
population. Many more have fled to Europe, Australia, the United
States and
Canada.
What Zimbabweans are leaving behind is a country
spiraling out of control.
Inflation is the highest in the world -- at more
than 1,700 percent. The
country's currency -- the Zimbabwe dollar -- is
being printed so fast that
Morgan Tsvangirai, the country's opposition
leader, declared, "Zimbabwe is
the only nation in the world where
millionaires go to bed hungry."
Eight out of 10 Zimbabweans are out of
work, according to the CIA fact book,
which profiles the countries of the
world. Many can't afford to send their
children to school and life
expectancy due to the onslaught of HIV-AIDS, as
well as the current economic
woes, is among the lowest in the world. (Read
about Zimbabweans so desperate
for food they eat rats)
Add to all this what happened just weeks ago: the
battered, bruised and
bloodied images of opposition members who'd been
savagely attacked while in
police custody.
Mugabe had managed with
this single incident to turn his splintering
opposition into global heroes.
Whatever Mugabe's intentions had been, these
pictures, Africa watchers say,
had shown a gross miscalculation on his part
and a possible sign he may be
starting to lose his grip.
Mugabe has not backed down, saying police have
the "right to bash"
protesters.
Is this the 'end game'?
Some in
Zimbabwe see these latest events as the beginning of the end for the
long-time leader.
"I hope these are pangs of birth for a new Zimbabwe
and that this dictator
must be brought down, brought down by peoples'
power," said Pius Ncube, one
of Mugabe's most outspoken critics, who is the
Archbishop of the southern
Zimbabwe city of Bulawayo.
However, not
every one believes this will happen.
Sekai Holland, a 64-year-old mother
of two children and grandmother of 10,
was among the opposition leaders who
were badly beaten.
"I really think that for people to assume that this is
the end game is quite
silly -- unless efforts are done to ensure that Mugabe
understands and
accepts that," she said.
Any efforts to that end
would have to come from other presidents in Africa,
she said. "Unless that
can be done, there is really no end game here. He
will continue to abuse
until I don't know, Zimbabwe is sitting down because
right now we are on our
knees."
Africa analysts say the future of Zimbabwe -- with or without
Mugabe -- is
crucial due to the possible spillover effect across
Africa.
"Zimbabwe is on the skids," said political analyst Moeletsi
Mbeki. "The only
positive thing is that there is a bottom to the
skids."
That bottom could be what some experts fear most -- that
Zimbabwe, which
literally means "House of Stone," could come crumbling down
to its
foundations.
By Tichaona
Sibanda
19 April 2007
Most European Union countries will likely
boycott a summit with African
leaders set for Portugal in December if Robert
Mugabe is allowed to travel
there, Newsreel learned on
Thursday.
Reports this week suggested Mugabe was likely to be allowed to
travel to
Portugal for a second summit between EU and African leaders. The
summit has
been postponed the last four years because of a disagreement
between the two
continents over whether Mugabe may attend.
Portuguese
Foreign Minister Luis Amado said that the EU was now determined
the summit
would be held in Lisbon in December, with African leaders united
that Mugabe
should also attend.
But the MDC's chief representative in the UK Hebson
Makuvise said Portugal
is in danger of failing to get the necessary support
from other EU nations
for Mugabe to attend. Makuvise has already embarked on
a diplomatic
offensive among EU embassies in London on an anti-Mugabe
campaign and has
been told by diplomats that Portugal's invitation to the
dictator would
weaken the diplomatic isolation of his regime that most
European Union
states are trying to maintain.
'Portugal's position
now is that African leaders are united that Mugabe must
attend but it's
exactly the opposite with the European Union. African
leaders took a similar
stance earlier this year and even threatened to
boycott the summit in
France. But in the end they all turned up while France
was forced not to
extend an invitation to Mugabe,' Makuvise said.
He added that EU states
are united in their efforts to see to it that they
will not attend if Mugabe
makes it to Portugal. And the Portuguese cannot
afford
to lose the
support of its counterparts.
'It's a tricky situation for Portugal but
the main thing is they cannot
afford to undermine efforts by other EU states
to keep Mugabe under pressure
for human rights abuses. Only yesterday
(Wednesday) the EU stepped up
pressure on Mugabe by adding five names of his
deputy ministers to a list of
top officials banned from the bloc and
expressing strong concerns about
human rights abuses,' he added.
The
MDC chief in the UK said a statement by ambassadors of the EU member
states
in Brussels also expressed strong concern at the rapidly
deteriorating human
rights, political and economic situation in Zimbabwe.
'So can you tell me
if these same people can turn around in December and sit
in the same
conference room with Mugabe in Portugal. What would have changed
between now
and December when everyone knows that Mugabe is immune to
change,' Makuvise
added.
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
Let us not forget that one reason of the fifty listed by the Independent last month for liking and supporting the European Union was its ability to unite and put pressure on bloodthirsty thugs like Robert Mugabe. Well, if not exactly put pressure, at least prevent them and their best friends and relations from visiting European countries.
As we have seen, this does not always work out, what with people not giving their full names when asking for visas and what not. The question of Mugabe himself coming to Europe has come up again.
A report by Africast says that the Portuguese Foreign Minister, Luis Amado, is muttering that the EU is determined that there will be an EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon in December and if that means asking Mugabe, so be it. He will be asked, given visa and welcomed, undoubtedly with all pomp and circumstance.
The EU, according to this, wants to carry on bilaterally with Zimbabwe in order to exert pressure (can’t see why they should bother as they have been so totally unsuccessful) but, as it has been made clear by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the South African Foreign Minister, that there can be no summit without Zimbabwe’s participation, the EU will have to swallow its objections.
Incidentally, recent rumours in various publications that the South African government was about to put some pressure on Mugabe or try to replace him by someone else, have clearly not corresponded to anything resembling reality.
The report is quite helpful in explaining the difference between bilateral and multilateral negotiations:
This issue in some ways illuminates two contrasting approaches to analyzing Africa’s problems: the one identifies internal causes as paramount; the other, external causes.Usually, as here, bilateral approaches stress internal causes while multilateral approaches stress external causes.
The EU prefers, as a matter almost of principle, multilateral approaches, though, to be fair, those could stress internal causes a bit more with all African countries, especially Zimbabwe. Incidentally, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph, Robert Mugabe has proclaimed joyfully that he has managed to beat off another attempt by Tony Blair to turn Zimbabwe back into a British colony. The reaction of his audience (after the tumultuous applause died down) is not recorded.
Why is it so important to hold this summit, apart from the EU’s need to show that it does have a common foreign policy towards other parts of the world?
One of the main strategic concerns that is now motivating the EU towards holding this summit is the flood of illegal African migrants to Europe in the last few years and the eruption of rioting among African immigrant communities already in Europe.Amado said the EU and AU were already working on a joint strategy to be ratified at the summit that would include a tripartite approach to the migration problem.
This would be: increased security to address illegal immigration; better integration of legal migrants; and more and better development aid in Africa (to reduce the push factor, presumably).
This does not sound very promising to me. Given the security situation across most of Africa the first one seems all but impossible, unless a huge security fence is built round the European Union, including its sea-shores. It would dwarf the Israeli security fence, so much disliked by the transnational great and the good.
Better integration of legal migrants has precious little to do with the African Union and not a whole lot with the European Union. Each member state has to deal with that separately, not least by working on definitions of national identity, something the EU actually dislikes and tries to undermine.
There seems to be no suggestion that trade, fishing and agricultural policies might be changed in order “to reduce the push factor”. So, we are left with more development aid money that goes to kleptocratic African tyrants, who then continue the wrecking of their countries, thus forcing more people to flee.
It is hardly worth undermining one’s moral standing over Robert Mugabe over this.
By Tererai
Karimakwenda
19 April, 2007
Hundreds of members from the Congress of
South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
gathered at the Beitbridge border post
on Thursday to demonstrate in
solidarity with the workers in Zimbabwe.
COSATU acting spokesperson Patrick
Craven said this was the continuation of
a campaign which was launched on
April 3rd and 4th this year, during the
mass action stay-away organised by
the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions
(ZCTU). He said hundreds of
Zimbabweans living in South Africa had also
turned out for the event and he
hoped it would encourage many more to take
part.
Explaining further Craven said: "It is one of the founding
principles of
COSATU that we must act in solidarity with workers under
attack." The
powerful labour group has also organised protests at the border
of Swaziland
in solidarity with workers in that country who are under
siege.
In Zimbabwe, officials from the ZCTU including President Lovemore
Matombo
and Secretary General Wellington Chibhebhe, have been arrested and
tortured
on several occasions as part of a government campaign to replace
them with a
group more sympathetic to the ruling party. But the umbrella
labour union
said they refuse to betray the needs of the workers and will
continue to
fight.
The majority of workers in Zimbabwe are earning
wages below the poverty
datum line. When they express their frustration by
demonstrating, as is
allowed by the constitution, they are beaten severely
and arrested.
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
By Lance Guma
19
April 2007
The leaders of a newly formed youth movement who were arrested
on Wednesday,
were dumped in the bush near Marondera by arresting police
officers. 5
leaders from the Zimbabwe Youth Movement were bundled into a
police truck
after riot police violently broke up their rally at Huruyadzo
shopping
centre in Chitungwiza. The youths say they were trying to
commemorate a
betrayed revolution, which has seen the ideals of the
liberation war being
forsaken by the Zanu PF regime. Collen Chibango the
president of the group
told Newsreel how their national organising secretary
Hentchel Mavuma was
severely beaten up during the violent disruption of
their Independence Day
rally.
Mavuma, a former footballer who
underwent an unsuccessful knee operation a
few years ago, was clobbered by
baton sticks on exactly the same knee. He is
said to be requiring urgent
medical attention. The entire top leadership was
arrested including
Chibango, Vice president Sinduza Ndlovu, Information
Secretary Garikai
Kajawu, National Organising Secretary Hentchel Mavuma and
Wellington
Mahohoma the treasurer. Other reports say Sendisa Sandura a
member of the
group was also arrested. By the end of the day the police had
arrested over
20 other youths in follow up operations, but they were
released on the same
day.
Chibango said they were taken to what looked like Makoni police
station and
locked up in a back room for about 3 hours. They were then put
into a
Landrover Santana vehicle with civilian number plates and driven
along the
Chitungwiza-Marondera road. He says after a 40-minute drive the
police
turned into a dirt road by the side and stopped the vehicle. At this
point
the youths were interrogated about their organisation and who was
funding
them. The police also asked if they had any links to the opposition,
the
Save Zimbabwe Campaign or the Zimbabwe National Students Union. It was
only
after an hour of interrogation and threats that they were dumped in the
bush
around 4am in the morning and left to walk back to
Chitungwiza.
The youth movement issued a defiant message saying they will
not be cowed by
the harassment and instead will be organising an 'all youth'
convention in
which a strong leadership will emerge that will complete the
'betrayed
Chimurenga revolution.'
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe
news
By Tererai
Karimakwenda
19 April, 2007
Electoral reforms announced in the state
media on Thursday have been
strongly criticised due to government's failure
to consult other
stakeholders and for tilting the playing field to favour
the ruling party.
The state's Herald newspaper reported that the government
has almost
completed the alteration of boundaries for Harare Metropolitan
Province, in
preparation for the joint elections due in 2008. The Minister
of Local
government Ignatius Chombo said the new boundaries would be
gazetted soon
and a similar exercise would be undertaken in Bulawayo
Metropolitan Province
and other cities and rural areas. The changes seek to
increase the size of
the electoral constituencies in Harare and Bulawayo, to
include rural areas
nearby.
Dr Reginald Matchaba Hove, director of
the Zimbabwe Election Support Network
(ZESN), said it is their position that
any changes to electoral legislation
should be done in full consultation
with all stakeholders. This includes
opposition political parties and also
civil society. He added: "What
government has done here goes contrary to
what was agreed to in
Dar-es-Salaam at the SADC summit. The idea was for
President Mbeki to level
the playing field before conducting elections. And
if already one party is
setting the agenda and altering the odds then this
raises suspicion."
Matchaba Hove stressed that President Mbeki be advised of
these changes and
that he should strongly move to block them.
The
electoral changes announced Thursday were approved at a cabinet meeting
on
Tuesday. This was a day after Mugabe's cabinet approved the harmonisation
of
presidential and parliamentary elections in 2008. But no other
stakeholders
were consulted in the process. Critics believe Robert Mugabe
plans to
scuttle any plans Mbeki may have. The South African president was
recently
appointed as the key mediator on Zimbabwe by regional heads of
state at an
extra ordinary summit in Tanzania. His task is to facilitate
dialogue
between the political parties, to lead to free and fair elections
in
2008.
According to the Herald, Harare Metropolitan Province would be
expanded by
incorporating some parts of Mashonaland West, Mashonaland East
and
Mashonaland Central provinces. This means Harare's current 45 wards will
be
increased to include more rural wards.
In Bulawayo, the change would
be to incorporate some of the commercial farms
where resettled farmers live.
Large wards in rural areas would be subdivided
to create more rural
wards.
Matchaba Hove explained why suspicion over these changes is
justified. He
said: "If we look at the March 31st 2005 parliamentary
elections, ZANU-PF
won only one seat in Harare and that was Harare South
which was a newly
created constituency which predominantly consisted of
rural areas,
especially commercial farms that had been
resettled."
One media report from South Africa quotes a government
official there who
said President Mbeki would make sure SADC regulations on
elections were
adhered to in Zimbabwe. But Mbeki has so far made no attempt
to even
criticise the current government sponsored campaign of violence
against the
opposition, or urged Robert Mugabe to put an end to
it.
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
Northern Echo, UK
ZIMBABWE is 5,000 miles
away. When the media brings us images of its police
openly assaulting people
on its streets, it can seem a lot further. But walk
through its towns and
cities, and this southern African nation appears a
very British place.
Buildings, street names and even mannerisms are
strangely familiar - like a
scene from a nostalgic movie. Stay within the
commercial centre of Harare,
the high-rise capital home to 1.6 million, and
you could be in any city in
the world.
But this is a fragile facade.
"What should I do about
Mugabe?," I finally found the courage to ask a new
friend over
dinner.
It was early July 2006 and I was in Mutare,
a provincial city in eastern
Zimbabwe. We had been enjoying drinks, good
food and good company. But the
atmosphere changed. I knew it would, but I
still had to ask.
My new friend, a large, shaven-headed black Zimbabwean,
sighed and looked to
the floor. "You buy a gun, and I'll shoot
him."
When I entered Zimbabwe, on the last day of June 2006, I had spent
the
previous six months working as a missionary volunteer in neighbouring
Zambia. Perhaps I had become too cocksure - thought I had learned everything
I needed to know about Africa. If so, my stay in Zimbabwe was to shake me
from this belief.
After nine days, I could not understand how
Zimbabweans survived from one
day to the next.
Robert Mugabe became
Prime Minister of Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980. His
election, following the
white minority rule of Ian Smith, was welcomed by
many in the West who saw
him as a moderate liberal - part of a new
generation of democratic African
leaders. Twenty-seven years later,
inflation stands at 2,200 per cent,
unemployment at 80 per cent and Mugabe,
now President, has been accused of
widespread human rights abuses.
Last month, two people were killed when
police broke up a prayer vigil.
Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change,
was arrested and badly beaten.
I
travelled to Zimbabwe to visit students I had been teaching at a Zambian
Christian adult education college. The great pity of Zimbabwe is it could be
a success story. It has huge expanses of good farmland and millions of
people ready to work and learn - the tragedy is there is no one to lead and
teach them.
Most white farmers were removed under a disastrous land
reform programme,
replaced by Government stooges with no knowledge of
agriculture. Zimbabwe
used to feed the whole of southern Africa. Now it
depends on food aid to
feed itself. It went from bread basket to basket
case. It also used to be a
manufacturing nation - rivalling South Africa in
industrial output. Now,
anyone who can afford electronic items imports
them.
I travelled to Mutare on an ageing bus, taking in everything I
could of the
countryside through its large, grimy windows. I wrote in my
journal:
Zimbabwe seems a very dark place - a place living in fear, where
the
electricity is intermittent and people huddle in remote farms, hoping
Mugabe
will never come knocking.
But it is also a beautiful place.
There are green rolling hills for miles
and miles, nourished by rain many
African nations can only wish for - all of
which only adds to the illusion
of being back in Britain.
But the first reminder that I was an outsider
came before I had even entered
the country. At the northern Lake Kariba
border crossing, to be granted a
visa I had to promise I would leave the
country within ten days, and not
sell my laptop or digital camera. I was
glad UK passports do not carry the
holder's occupation. Mugabe does not
think highly of British journalists. He
banned the BBC from the country
entirely.
The border crossing also brought my first contact with
Zimbabwean dollars.
Zim dollars, as they are known, are the most obvious
example of the bizarre
double life the country leads. The official exchange
rate - that offered at
the border checkpoint - was 100,000 Zim dollars to
one US dollar. That in
itself is a fairly staggering statistic. I wrote at
the time of a 'confusing
string of zeros'. But no one uses that rate.
Everyone wants foreign currency
and, on the street, a US dollar brought five
times as much.
With the largest Zimbabwean note at the time being the
100,000, this brought
practical difficulties. For one US dollar, I was given
a stack of paper I
struggled to fit into my bag. Zimbabwe is not a good
place for
wallet-makers.
A man I met in Mutare market told me: "My
bag is heavier with money when I
go to market than when I return with my
shopping." Another said the rate of
inflation was so high that a shop
assistant's first job each morning was to
add another nought to every price
tag. A wage agreed at the start of the
month was worthless by the time it
was paid at the end. If you forgot to buy
a bar of soap in town on Monday,
by Friday it would cost you twice as much.
In a hectic supermarket, a bag
of apples cost me $1.9m Zim dollars.
Another problem is fuel. Most of
Zimbabwe's petrol is imported, meaning it
comes through the
government-controlled border points. It is then
distributed to government
staff and supporters.
"The government has the fuel, the food and the
jobs," a friend told me. "If
you are starving and the President offers you a
bag of food to vote for him,
you will vote for him."
"What is going
to happen?" I asked.
"I can only see civil war," he replied.
JOHANNESBURG, 19 April 2007 (IRIN) - The United Nations (UN)
Special
Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Miloon Kothari, has described the
"non-response" by the African Union (AU) and southern Africa to the
"oppressive" Zimbabwean government as "shocking" and "unhelpful".
He
was critical of regional leaders' reaction to the Zimbabwean government's
forced evictions during Operation Murambatsvina (Clean out Filth) in 2005,
which left more than 700,000 people homeless or without livelihoods. "The
recent clampdown on the opposition, the lack of transparency, has made it
difficult for us to track down those affected by the operation," he
added.
The rapporteur said the government's promises to provide the
deserving
displaced with decent and affordable accommodation in subsequent
campaign,
Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle (Live Well), had been a
"failure".
Soon after the sudden eviction campaign in 2005, he and
several other
international and regional human rights experts had warned
that Zimbabwe was
"very, very close to a complete collapse of the society",
but the region had
chosen to ignore the "early warning".
His efforts,
as well as those of other agencies, to hold Zimbabwe's
government
accountable for the consequences of the campaign since 2005 had
been caught
up in a flurry of diplomatic manoeuvrings, led by the AU and
South Africa,
who insisted on pursuing "quiet diplomacy".
Zimbabwe not
alone
There were other countries in the region, and elsewhere in the
world, with
the same tendencies as Zimbabwe, which were "cutting across a
human rights
approach and not to give preference to the needs of the most
vulnerable;
reluctant to pursue housing policies which were inclusive and
underlined the
need for mixed neighbourhoods".
Kothari is in South
Africa to look at access to and affordability of
adequate housing, land and
civic services, homelessness, evictions, security
of tenure, women and
housing, non-discrimination, and the rights of
indigenous people.
He
said even "progressive" countries like South Africa were evicting the
poor
from the inner cities in their attempt to "create world-class cities".
According to the Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions, a Geneva-based
nongovernmental organisation, up to 26,000 squatters living in inner
Johannesburg, South Africa, were suffering widespread human rights
violations as a result of the city's redevelopment plan.
"Countries
are adopting a neoliberal approach, be it privatisation of
essential
services, such as water, with the installation of prepaid water
meters,
which creates other problems. Even in countries with strong human
rights
commitment, such as South Africa, there is a big gap between the
recognition
and the detailing of the recognition," Kothari commented.
"There is often
contradiction between economic policies which necessitate
eviction, which
leads to further segregation along economic lines, as
happened under
Operation Murambatsvina, and even the recent evictions in
Luanda (Angola's
capital)," he added.
According to the rapporteur, thousands of poor
people in Luanda have been
forcibly removed to make way for new
developments. Last year 600 people were
removed from poor areas on the
outskirts of Luanda, near the official
residence of President Jose Eduardo
dos Santos, to make room for the
expansion of a government-sponsored housing
project, ironically called 'Nova
Vida' or New Life.
"Providing
adequate housing is a huge challenge, and Luanda is an extreme
example. It
was originally built to accommodate 400 or 500 people but it is
home to four
to five million people, and 90 percent of them live in slums,"
he
added.
Countries often cited the market as a stumbling block to providing
affordable adequate housing to the poor, said Kothari, because governments
were reluctant to intervene for fear of destabilising the economy. The
existing housing finance system in most countries did not meet the needs of
the bottom 20 percent of the global population, and was geared to the
lower-middle and middle classes.
The Herald
(Harare)
April 19, 2007
Posted to the web April 19,
2007
Michael Padera
Nairobi
ZIMBABWEAN delegates attending the
21st Session of the Governing Council of
the United Nations Human
Settlements Programme (commonly known by the
acronym UN-Habitat) here, have
shot down a proposal to send a mission to
Zimbabwe to talk to social groups
involved in housing.
The delegation said money earmarked for such trips
should instead be
invested in proper housing delivery.
UN-Habitat
is mandated to promote socially and environmentally sustainable
towns and
cities with the goal of providing shelter for all
Reacting to a
presentation on the proposed visit to Harare by Mr Cesare
Otolini, the
co-ordinator of the International Alliance of Inhabitants,
Bindura mayor
Advocate Martin Dinha said it would be in the best interest of
Zimbabweans
if the group sent a mission to build houses.
Mr Otolini had indicated
that the group would come to Zimbabwe to try and
bring the Government, local
authorities and social groups together with a
view to agreeing on the
modalities of availing accommodation to people
displaced by Operation
Murambatsvina.
But Advocate Dinha instead accused UN-Habitat and Mr
Otolini of "celebrating
poverty", saying this was evident in the existence
of slum settlements like
Kibera in Kenya, which, if removed, would leave the
agency without work.
"Why another mission to Zimbabwe to support social
movements? Why not send a
mission to build houses? You people celebrate
poverty," said Advocate Dinha.
Zimbabwe Local Government Association
president Cde Jerry Gotora echoed
Advocate Dinha's sentiments but urged the
proposed mission to consult the
right people if it succeeds to visit
Zimbabwe.
UN-Habitat under secretary general Mrs Anna Tibaijuka said
Zimbabwe was far
ahead of even some developed countries in terms of the
management of slum
settlements.
She said only 3,4 percent of the
country's population was living in slums
while the figure in some developed
countries was 5 percent.
Mrs Tibaijuka said some people affected under
Operation Murambatsvina were,
in fact, victims of a skewed colonial system
that outlawed blacks from urban
centres.
With independence people
began to settle in urban centres leading to an
unplanned boom.
She
said some of the victims had come to Zimbabwe as migrant labourers to
work
on white commercial farms who flocked to cities following the land
reform
programme and were then caught up under Operation Murambatsvina.
Making
references to Kibera, she said Africa should be ashamed to have
people
living in slums.
Mrs Tibaijuka said for the first time in the history of
Kibera, the Kenyan
government had put a budget for slum
upgrading.
Responding to concerns by the Zimbabwean delegation, she
claimed her
recommendations after her mission to Zimbabwe following
Operation
Murambatsvina had stood the test of time. She said the
recommendations were
also meant to garner international solidarity on the
situation in the
country.
Reuters
Thu Apr 19,
2007 7:22PM BST
HARARE (Reuters) - A Briton accused of plotting a coup in
Equatorial Guinea
told a court convened at Zimbabwe's top security prison on
Thursday that he
would be tortured if extradited to face trial in that
country, his lawyer
said.
Former special forces officer Simon Mann,
convicted by a Zimbabwean court in
September 2004, is fighting a bid by
Equatorial Guinea to have him
extradited to Malabo to face charges of
plotting to assassinate President
Teodoro Obiang Nguema
Mbasogo.
Mann's lawyer said the Briton told a magistrate's court
specially convened
at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison on the outskirts of
Harare that he
would not get a fair trial and would be tortured if sent to
Equatorial
Guinea.
"He denied that he was going to Equatorial
Guinea, he denied that he had
anything to do with what was happening there
and he told the court that he
would not receive a fair trial," lawyer
Jonathan Samkange told Reuters.
"He also told the magistrate that he would be
subjected to torture (if
extradited) and that the charges he is facing are
of a political nature and
according to Zimbabwe's laws he cannot be
extradited," Samkange said.
The court case was moved from Harare
magistrate's court to Chikurubi, where
Mann is imprisoned, after the state
said he was a "high security risk" and
could not be brought to
court.
Samkange said Mann had also told the magistrate he was too sick to
be
extradited. Last week a doctor examined Mann, and Samkange said he needed
a
hernia operation.
Equatorial Guuinea's attorney general has said
there is enough evidence to
convict Mann and he would get a fair
trial.
Mann was accused of being the ringleader of the coup plot and is
serving a
four-year sentence in Zimbabwe for trying to buy weapons without a
licence.
He is due for early release for good behaviour on May
11.
Sixty-six defendants, arrested when their plane landed in Harare,
served
less than one year in jail after pleading guilty to charges of
violating
Zimbabwe's civil aviation and immigration laws.
Eleven
others, including a number of foreigners, are serving sentences
ranging from
13 to 34 years in an Equatorial Guinea jail in connection with
the coup
plot.
Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's son Mark, accused of
having helped
fund the foiled coup, pleaded guilty to taking part but cut a
deal with
prosecutors in South Africa, where he lived, to avoid
jail.
US Department of State
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
East Auditorium
Washington,
DC
April 19, 2007
(9:45 a.m.
EST)
Excerpt...
QUESTION: Thank you very much. I must start by
saying that I'm from
Zimbabwe. Adam Mutambara (ph). I'm one of the
opposition leaders. I want to
start by expressing our gratitude to the
United States Government for
supporting us, in particular last month when we
were brutalized, tortured
and arrested. But my emphasis today is to say we
need more than democracy in
Africa. In other words, democratic existence is
a necessary but not
sufficient condition for progress. We want Zimbabwe, for
example, to be a
peaceful, democratic and prosperous nation. What we want in
Africa is
African countries becoming knowledge economy driven, technology
driven,
globally competitive economies.
What policies are we putting
in place to promote technology transfer into
Africa, to promote free and
fair trade between Africa and the U.S., to
promote value-added manufacturing
in Africa? When we are successful,
Secretary, we would want Zimbabwe to be
exporting IT products, technology
products to the U.S. In other words, we
are saying where are we committing a
little bit of economic suicide on the
part of the U.S. because we want to be
competing against you and also being
your equals in the long run.
SECRETARY RICE: That's good. Yes.
Yes.
QUESTION: Thank you very much.
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very
much. That's great. (Applause.) Well, first
of all, thank you for your
courage as a member of the opposition in
Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a story that
I think the world should be more focused
on. Particularly the countries of
the region need to be more focused on what
is going on in Zimbabwe. The
people of Zimbabwe I think did not fight for
independence only to find
themselves in a position of repression. And so you
will have our support and
we have spoken out.
I'd love to have Zimbabwe as a competitor
internationally. I think that the
United States has always had a view that
free trade is not a zero-sum game,
that in fact you can grow all economies
through free trade. And it's why the
United States and this President, but
really American presidents for decades
now have been strong proponents of
free trade. In Africa in particular, we
have had programs that recognize
that democracy is a necessary condition,
but not sufficient to be able to
deliver for people. And so we've begun to
talk more and more about democracy
and development.
We have through the African Growth and Opportunity Act
made it possible for
a product to come into the United States. And I have
seen in some cases when
I visited Africa how that's affected and helped
promote small business. We
have been very involved in education in Africa
which after all with an
educated population you can compete better in the
international economy. The
United States has almost quadrupled official
development assistance to
Africa over the term of this presidency because we
believe that trade, aid
and foreign direct investment have to go together to
improve people's lives.
Finally, with the Millennium Challenge Account,
which I dearly hope one day,
if governance can be improved, that Zimbabwe
would be a possible candidate
for that kind of program, we have been
rewarding governments that are
involved in good governance, that are
fighting corruption, that are
investing in their people with really rather
large development compacts that
are -- you might be interested as members of
-- some of you as members of
civil society -- that are actually developed
between the United States, the
government and civil society as to how to
help to alleviate poverty.
So I think in Africa, we've been working very
hard to try to make the link
between development and democracy because
you're right, democracies perhaps
even more than non-democratic forms of
government have to be able to deliver
for their people because when people
cast their vote, they expect that the
government is going to be able to
deliver for them. And so this link between
democracy and development is very
important.
Yes, yes.
SABC
April 19,
2007, 17:00
Moeletsi Mbeki, the deputy chairperson of the South African
Institute for
International Affairs, says he believes the South African
government is not
taking action on Zimbabwe because the crisis there does
not directly impact
on the political elite.
Moeletsi was speaking in
Pretoria at an African Dialogue lecture titled The
Crisis in Zimbabwe. Mbeki
says the driving interest of our own dominant
elites is not affected by what
is going on in Zimbabwe.
He says government's quiet diplomacy is a "do
nothing scenario" which
impacts on the poor. He says the only element of
South African society that
is affected by the plight and the near collapse
of the Zimbabwean economy
are the poor in South Africa, who are then forced
to compete with the poor
from Zimbabwe for jobs, housing and
services.
Pressure from western countries
Mbeki, however, says the
South Africa government is feeling pressure from
some western countries that
are sensitive about human rights abuses in
Zimbabwe. These western powers,
he says, had been party to the struggle
against the white minority rule in
South Africa.
Mbeki says the South African government is also feeling
pressure from its
own people as the great majority of South Africans have
learnt about
dictatorship from the example of the National Party, which
ruled from 1948.
He says South Africans have seen the consequences of
dictatorship in
independent countries, and want something to be done in
Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, Claire Doube, the Civil Society Watch Programme
manager, says
civil society has a role to play in convincing their
governments to stand up
for human rights and democracy. She says South
Africa holds the key in
unlocking the crisis, and therefore it is fitting
that President Thabo Mbeki
has been mandated to facilitate the dialogue
between government and
opposition in Zimbabwe.
Fin24
19/04/2007 09:14
IN THE
"Money Matters" column in the Finweek magazine of April 5 by Vic de
Klerk
(aka Trader Vic), the feasibility of a contrarian speculation on
Zimbabwe
was raised, but not answered.
I hope in this column to give the informed
outsider an overview that will
serve to filter a decision to further
investigate - or not.
There are currently 82 listed counters and the
stock exchange was originally
founded in the 1890s, so it's old and
established.
Some have an element of foreign ownership by large
multi-nationals, e.g.
Circle Cement by Lafarge, Delta by SAB and Barclays
Zim by Barclays plc.
The only places for investors (private and
institutional) to hide from the
ravages of hyper inflation are the property
and stock markets, both of which
have been stable in real terms over the
past seven years.
Daily trades currently average about US$0.8m. That is
small by SA standards,
but respectable by African standards, and in any case
both bombed out shares
and markets have a tendency to be
illiquid.
Savage deflation
There is something very important to
remember about hyper inflating
economies. In effect, in real terms, they
inflict a savage deflation on
their populace.
Here are a few examples
of the joys inflicted by the economically illiterate
octogenarian child of
Mao:
GDP is down by over 50% since 1999. Inflation in February was
officially at
1 739% and just released figures for March suggest over 6
000%.
Real disposable incomes are falling and there is declining Capacity
Utilisation (firms indicate 15-30%). Real interest rates are hugely
negative.
Unemployment of 70% (excluding the informal sector) is
often quoted. There
is a large civil service, arbitrary price controls on
certain products and
full exchange control.
Zimbabwe is cheap for
good reason. In the face of problems, the government's
answer has been to
throw money straight off the printing press at them. This
is unsustainable,
not least because there has been no dollarisation, nor has
there been
indexation.
Political will
Both of these were crucial to
perpetuating hyperinflation in Latin America
in the 1980s. Up to now, the
private sector has been amazingly resilient and
adaptable, but the public
sector has been the opposite and is crumbling -
hence public sector strikes
and an unhappy security forces.
The ministry of finance and the Reserve
Bank have admitted the cause of the
problem and have some idea how to mend
the economy. The Governor has even
suggested that the country only needs the
political will to take the
necessary pain. But one year before an election,
this may not happen.
If it doesn't, the problem will get worse. With
hyperinflation, time is not
a luxury any politician can afford. The pressure
is on and the world's media
is watching. However, we would like to caution
that we are dealing with a
smart political strategist who has "Houdini"
characteristics. Change is
inevitable, only the timing is unclear.
So
how do recovery prospects look?
Like SA, it has a broad industrial base
due to sanctions driving self
reliance in the 1970s. Zimbabwe is rich in
mineral resources, with some of
the largest platinum deposits in the world,
substantial reserves of coal and
gas, gold, chrome and diamonds (potential
investments into the mining sector
could easily top US$1.5bn), but it would
help if Bob went.
Scope for quick recovery
Agricultural prospects
would be assessed from a low base but infrastructure
(dams etc) is in place.
Growing conditions for sugar and tobacco are
excellent. The financial sector
is well developed with stock exchange,
banks, building societies, asset
managers, pension and insurance funds in
place. The work force is well
educated.
The large Diaspora may well prove a source of redevelopment
funds (may
number as high as 3m people). Currently there is scope to recover
quickly,
but the longer the delay in squandering the opportunity, the more
permanent
the damage will be.
How would the mechanics look? The
official exchange rate in Zimbabwe is
Z$250 to US$1, the unofficial about
Z$19000 to US$1. Foreign investors would
never contemplate an investment
using Z$250, nor would they invest illegally
through the black market. They
can however legally buy Old Mutual shares on
the LSE or JSE and sell on the
ZSE for Zim$.
This gives rise to an "implied exchange rate" (OMIR) that
at the end of
March stood at Z$21000 to US$1. Since this is a
market-determined rate at
which foreign assets can enter and leave the
country, it is the rate
foreigners use to value Zimbabwean
assets.
However, since this rate of exchange is determined using
equities, the
derived exchange rate will tend to be more volatile than
normal exchange
rates. Company Law allows share buybacks in Zimbabwe. On the
negative side,
hyperinflation can distort economic profits resulting in
excessive tax.
Holding cash is suicide.
Buying 'the world'
The
universe of stocks valued at just over US$1bn buys a Lafarge cement
plant, a
monopoly brewer and coke bottler, two property companies, Barclays
Bank
Zimbabwe, a construction company, a building materials company, Rio
Tinto
Zimbabwe, the largest cellphone operator, BAT Zimbabwe, a monopoly
paper and
pulp producer, a sugar refiner, a hotel group, two supermarket
chains, the
world's largest crocodile skin producer, the monopoly dairy
products group,
two tea estates and a leading regional seed producer.
Barclays Bank
Botswana is valued at US$1bn and Barclays Kenya US$1.2bn. To
pay <$50m
for Barclays Zimbabwe would appear a bargain.
In monetary terms, the
economy at OMIR rates is worth about US$3bn, 30% the
size of neighbouring
Zambia which has less infrastructure and a less
diversified
economy.
On a turnaround, the currency (on an OMIR basis) would firm
overnight, so
the key is to hold assets in anticipation of a change that
hopefully will
otherwise hold their value in real terms. The upside is
considerable - but
so too the volatility during the waiting period. Here are
just a few
possibilities:
SAB's Delta is highly cash generative and
virtually as dominant in its home
market as its parent, as long as current
power cuts don't too badly destroy
productivity.
The irrigated barley
crop is highly dependent on electricity. The group
secured an order to
supply 16m beer bottles worth US$2.8m to SABMiller,
South Africa, also malt
exports to the DRC worth US$1m was also secured.
CFI is a food producer
from which Kevin James of the soon to be listed (on
the JSE) Country Bird
hails. Turnover typically outpaces average inflation,
especially in the
poultry division which contributes greater than 50% to
turnover. Stock feed
constraints are a risk.
War chest of free cash
Main worry is the
tight cash conversion cycle dealt with by borrowing.
Innscor (recall that
Nando's when listed was an investor) had franchise
stores across Africa, and
a war chest of free cash flow. It also is a croc
farmer and expects to be
doing 100 000 skins by 2010.
Dawn Properties holds the creme de la creme
of hotel properties. Earnings
power is very limited but capital uplift would
be immense should
international donor support resume and a turnaround occur
in the tourism
sector.
Nicoz Diamond is a dominant player in the
short-term insurance market, with
over 20% market share. Negative real
premium growth is destroying viability
of smaller players.
The claims
ratio is likely to deteriorate with the worsening economic
environment.
Afdis - African distillers has dominant market share in
its segment. It is
owned and controlled by Distillers (SA). Dairibord has a
significant share
of its market. Hunyani, the paper producer, has a high
export content (about
33% of volumes F2006). Circle Cement has a market
capitalisation of only
US$30m, despite annual capacity of 450000 tons.
Ludicrous.
Investable capital
In his article, Vic expressed the
wish to see a fund formed to offer
exposure. I can say with confidence that
there are a number available in
Europe, which obviously has a far deeper
pool of investable capital.
A South African investor can if he/she really
wants to, absolutely insist
that their adviser sources a fund to make such
an investment, but must bear
in mind that it will not be regulated of
supervised by the South African
FSB.
Any prospective investor into
Zimbabwe should ensure that they receive
adequate expert guidance. While I
have extensively drawn upon the work of my
colleagues (at Imara Edwards and
Imara Asset management) in Zimbabwe, this
column absolutely must not be
considered as advice.
Warwick Lucas is an industrials and quants analyst
at Imara SPReid
Africa-interactive
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe Wednesday reiterated his
government's
controversial plans to claim shareholding in privately-owned
foreign mining
companies operating in the country, as part of a new wave of
economic
empowerment for the majority blacks.
In the last seven
years, his government has seized thousands of prime farms
from white owners
and re-distributed them to landless peasants to
economically empower
them.
The seizures attracted international rebuke, including sanctions from
Western countries, but Mugabe ignored the censure and went ahead.
He has
now trained his eyes on foreign-owned mining companies operating in
Zimbabwe, from which his government plans to claim, again to economically
empower blacks.
Under the draft plans, the government will take
either controlling 51
percent stakes or 49 percent shareholding in the mines
on agreement with
each company.
Part of the shareholding would be paid
for, but the bulk would be taken over
for free just as the farms.
"We are
tired of being illegal miners," Mugabe said, referring to mostly
prohibited
small-scale mining by blacks.
He said a bill would soon be presented in
parliament to enable the
government to go ahead with the mine
seizures.
The planned seizures have drawn criticism, and led to most
international
investors to stay off Zimbabwe until government plans become
clear. 19 April
2007 - PANA
VOA
By Delia Robertson
Johannesburg
19 April
2007
Last month, Southern African leaders appointed South
African President Thabo
Mbeki their mediator to facilitate talks between
Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe and opposition groups in his country.
The goal is to end the
political crisis in Zimbabwe, prepare for free and
fair elections as early
as next year, and lay the groundwork for an economic
recovery program. In
this report from our southern Africa bureau in
Johannesburg, VOA's Delia
Robertson takes a closer look at how the
facilitation might work and what
its chances of success
are.
Zimbabweans wondering what President Mbeki has in mind for
negotiations in
their country need look no further than South Africa
itself. The blueprint
Mr. Mbeki will be working from is the one that
brought an end to apartheid
in South Africa.
But Mr. Mbeki will not
be seeking to impose the same final model on Zimbabwe
that South Africans
chose. Rather he will be asking them to use similar
methods. This means
having talks with as wide a range of interest groups as
possible, each with
an equal standing, discussing and debating, giving and
taking, until
consensus is reached.
Already Mr. Mbeki has asked the two factions of the
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) for proposals, including on
constitutional reform
and on requirements for the holding of free and fair
elections. And Tomaz
Augusto Salomão, the executive secretary of the
Southern Africa Development
Community (SADC), has begun an audit of the
Zimbabwe economy to determine
what will be needed to kick-start its
recovery.
But Chris Landsberg, director of Johannesburg's Center for
Policy Studies,
says that looming large over all Mr. Mbeki's plans is
President Robert
Mugabe, who he says has, on four previous occasions,
obstructed regional
initiatives to end the crisis in Zimbabwe.
"But
since 2000 SADC in general - South Africa in particular tried to do
something - they have consistently offered something since 2001, they have
offered something in 2002, 2003 - we know about the significant offer in
2005 where South Africa even offered a loan package as much as $1 billion in
exchange for political concessions," he said.
Mr. Mbeki has set
himself a tight timeline. He would like an agreement
between the parties
early enough to allow adequate preparations for an
election next March that
will be viewed as free and fair not only by all the
parties in Zimbabwe and
by Southern African leaders, but also by the
international community.
Landsberg warns that Mr. Mugabe is likely to
resist for as long as
possible.
"I think what we are likely to see between now and next year's
proposed
election, we are going to have Mugabe dragging out the Mbeki
facilitation as
much as possible," he added. "In other words, he is going
to posture, he
going to play games, he is going to be too busy, he is only
going to show
urgency to meet Mbeki and to formally participate at a time
when he will say
it is too late to have the facilitation and to have
elections. One of the
things must give. So he'll make a convincing case
for the postponement of
the elections."
Landsberg argues that Mr.
Mugabe will likely want to postpone elections
until 2010, the latest
possible date they could be held under the current
constitution. He says
that this will enable Mr. Mugabe to delay identifying
his successor,
because, he says, once this happens, Mr. Mugabe will lose
whatever control
he has left within ZANU-PF, his own party.
"At some point he is going to
anoint a successor," he explained. "And, of
course, he is going to go for
somebody who is likely to be seen by him as a
puppet. And instead of that
power working in his favor, people will then
say this is it, he is now
weakened, then they will really push him out."
But other experts, such as
Chris Maroleng of the Institute for Security
Studies in Pretoria, say that
the confluence of events in Zimbabwe and the
region in recent months may be
enough to propel Mr. Mugabe to fall into line
on the timeline set by
southern Africa leaders for completion of the
mediation.
Maroleng
argues that the octogenarian leader has never before had such poor
support
within his own party. Also that he has never previously had to face
a
united opposition from southern Africa leaders, as he did last month in
Dar
Es Salaam.
"If he yet again scuttles such an opportunity, this would
create the
impression in the region that he doesn't take his counterparts
seriously,"
he explained.
Following the Dar Es Salaam meeting, the
leaders issued a statement that
expressed support for Mr. Mugabe and also
called on western countries such
as the United States and the United Kingdom
to abandon so-called smart or
targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe. Maroleng
says that it has become
common knowledge that in the privacy of the meeting,
Mr. Mugabe was
subjected to severe criticism from the regional grouping. He
says their
call for an end to sanctions was a device to prevent Mr. Mugabe
from finding
excuses to avoid or delay the mediation.
"The fact that
they are distancing themselves from a western approach to
regime change is a
clear indication that the southern African development
community is really
preparing the groundwork for a mediation in Zimbabwe and
closing any exit
that Mugabe has taken where he has [in the past]
consistently accused any
mediator as puppets of the west or neo-colonial
lackeys of the west," he
said.
Like all previous initiatives, the current effort will likely
include an
offer that will allow Mr Mugabe to retire gracefully without the
threat of
being brought on charges before the International Criminal Court
or even
before Zimbabwe's own courts for crimes against humanity.
To
satisfy Zimbabwe's opposition, Mr. Mbeki will have to find a way to
ensure
that pre-election campaigning and the elections themselves are
overseen by
an independent electoral commission supported by a peacekeeping
body, such
as the Peace Commission which operated in South Africa in 1994.
In addition,
opposition groups also want the support of southern African and
western
observers.
Any agreement will also include an economic recovery program
designed to
kick-start Zimbabwe's ailing economy as quickly as possible.
That will
require the support of the international community, particularly
the
industrialized nations, and Mr. Mbeki will be keenly aware that this
support
will not be forthcoming unless the agreement meets their criteria
for free
and fair elections.
Mr. Mbeki has appointed two seasoned
South African facilitators who have
already held several meetings with
representatives of the two factions of
Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic
Change and with representatives of some
Zimbabwean civil society
groups.
The facilitators will draw up a draft agreement, and when that is
ready in
the coming weeks, Mr. Mbeki will want to present it to Mr. Mugabe.
It is at
that point, that Zimbabweans and regional leaders will get their
first
indication of whether or not Mr. Mugabe intends to fully cooperate
with the
Southern Africa Development Community's mediator.
The Zimbabwean
(19-04-07)
Zimbabwe
mediation
April 18, 2007 Edition 1
Allister Sparks
If President
Thabo Mbeki is to perform his role as Southern African
Development Community
(SADC) mediator in Zimbabwe with any chance of
success, then he must
intervene immediately to stop Robert Mugabe's vicious
campaign of physical
assaults aimed at crushing the political opposition
there.
Mbeki's role
is to initiate dialogue between Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF and the
opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), leading to free and fair
elections
next March.
Well, the election is less than 11 months away, which means
it should
already be in the campaigning stage. Competing parties should be
registering
voters, naming candidates and holding election rallies. But the
MDC can do
none of that. Political meetings are banned, some 600 prominent
opposition
figures, including its top leaders, have been arrested on trumped
up charges
and badly beaten. At least three have died and dozens have been
seriously
injured. It is an appalling situation.
Mugabe's strategy is
obvious. It is a crude attempt to cripple the
opposition, to shatter its
organisational structure, brutalise its
leadership and so intimidate its
followers that it will be unable to mount a
coherent election challenge.
Then in the last few weeks, when foreign
observer teams start arriving,
Mugabe can put on a show of openness to
enable them to proclaim the election
"free and fair."
Mbeki should act now to stop this travesty. He should
tell Mugabe that
unless he stops this brutal campaign right now, SADC will
have no option but
to pronounce the elections as having not been free and
fair. And he should
spell out the implications of that to Mugabe - that SADC
would not be able
to validate his re-election or recognise his new
government. It would be an
illegitimate regime.
Mbeki's defenders
often challenge those who accuse him of being craven in
the face of Mubage's
human rights violations and economic devastation,
asking what they expect
the president to do. "Do you want him to send in the
army?" they ask,
knowing the absurdity of such a suggestion.
Or impose sanctions, which
would cause even greater misery for the suffering
population while the
ruling elite would still have access to what resources
remain? Or close the
border and cut off electricity supplies, which would
have much the same
result? Or publicly condemn Mugabe, what Mbeki himself
calls megaphone
diplomacy, which would simply make the old tyrant more
stubborn and
vindictive than ever without achieving anything?
There is merit in these
rejoinders, although I believe a measured public
expression of disapproval
would have undermined Mugabe's strategy, which has
been remarkably
successful, of deluding his followers into believing he is
waging an
honourable struggle against an iniquitous campaign by Western
powers, led by
US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, to
punish him for
giving white farms to landless blacks - and that all of
Africa is behind
him.
Simply to have exposed that lie would have gone a long way to
undermining
Mugabe's political staying power.
But my real point is that
there is now an active, positive, effective thing
Mbeki can do, and that is
simply to give Mugabe that warning that a
continuation of his campaign of
brutalising the opposition will lead to SADC
declaring the election invalid.
It does not have to be uttered loudly, or
even publicly. It can be done in
the context of "quiet diplomacy." It can be
conveyed to Mugabe in private -
so long as Mbeki says it in a way that
Mugabe understands it is
meant.
What is more, Mbeki can do this without acting in his capacity as
President
of South Africa. He need not expose himself to an accusation that
he is
acting on behalf of the West or of white South African business, a
retaliation that would be typical of Mugabe. Mbeki can do it on behalf of
SADC, which has mandated him to act on behalf of all 14 of the member
states.
Moreover, SADC has its own clear criteria for holding free
and fair
elections, and Mugabe must be told to abide by them or face the
consequences. And he must be told now.
I believe that could stop him
in his tracks. There can be nothing Mugabe
fears more than being disavowed
by his SADC colleagues. Being a cunning and
resourceful man, he would
doubtless try to wriggle out of such a corner, but
if the warnings kept
coming and if he knew they were seriously intended he
would have to respond.
He could not risk having the election invalidated.
Not least, and
political considerations aside, such a serious warning would
put an end to a
lot of gratuitous human suffering. A lot of good, honest
people have already
been grievously damaged in these batterings. I know some
of them. One is
William Bango with whom I worked as a colleague at the
Institute for the
Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg, where he was
head of print
training for several years. Many of our leading South African
journalists
will remember him as a lively, witty, talented man.
Willie is typical of
many who are trying to bring about change in their
devastated country and
who are certainly not agents of some nefarious
foreign power. Willie joined
Zanla, Mugabe's guerrilla army, as a youth and
fought in the chimurenga, the
liberation struggle.
He was wounded and the movement sent him abroad to
further his education. He
obtained a masters degree at Cardiff University's
renowned Thompson School
of Journalism.
Willie left the IAJ to return
to Zimbabwe and become news editor of the
Daily News. When Mugabe closed
that excellent independent paper and his
military thugs blew up its presses,
Willie joined the MDC and became the
spokesman for its leader, Morgan
Tsvangirai.
I visited Willie at his home the last time I was in Harare.
"I am a
millionaire," he told me laconically, "but I am poor." He spelled
out some
of the realities of life in a country whose currency has collapsed
to Weimar
Republic levels. His wife had received a call from an insurance
company to
tell her an annuity policy had matured. The payout was enough to
buy a
bottle of Coca-Cola.
Willie was with Tsvangirai on that
watershed Sunday, March 11, when police
arrested them on their way to a
prayer rally. He was with him when uniformed
thugs arrived in a truck and
began systematically beating them up with boots
and iron bars, when
Tsvangirai suffered a fractured skull and Willie himself
serious internal
injuries.
The world was shocked to see pictures of the bedraggled
opposition leader
with his ugly head injury. Now the photographer who took
those pictures has
been murdered.
Willie was flown to South Africa
for medical treatment. He collapsed on
arrival at the hospital. He underwent
emergency surgery to remove his gall
bladder and repair other ruptured
internal organs. He was lucky to survive.
Willie is back home now. I
phoned him last week to ask how he was. He said
he was OK, but had lost
20kg, which is a lot for a small man. I asked if he
was ready now to pitch
into an election campaign.
There was a hollow laugh in reply.
Sparks
is a veteran journalist and political commentator.
BuaNews
(Tshwane)
April 19, 2007
Posted to the web April 19, 2007
Shaun
Benton
Cape Town
The South African government would comment on
developments in talks between
Zimbabwe's politicians when "milestones" were
reached, government
spokesperson Themba Maseko said Thursday.
In late
March, President Thabo Mbeki was mandated by the Southern African
Development Community (SADC) leaders to facilitate dialogue between the
government and opposition of its northern neighbour.
The decision
was taken at a meeting of the SADC Double Troika and an
Extraordinary SADC
Summit in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.
Until milestones were reached in what
are likely to be sensitive
negotiations, the South African government would
not release statements on
the discussions, Mr Maseko said, briefing
reporters on the sixth meeting of
Cabinet this year, which took place
Wednesday.
He said Cabinet welcomed the decision by the SADC Heads of
State and
Government giving President Mbeki the mandate to facilitate such a
dialogue.
"The government, opposition and people of Zimbabwe must take
advantage of
the goodwill shown by the SADC Heads of State and move speedily
towards
finding a lasting political solution," Mr Maseko said.
"The
critical and urgent challenge facing all Zimbabweans is to take the
necessary steps to create an environment that would be conducive for free
and fair elections during 2008."
Zimbabwe and the whole SADC region,
explained Mr Maseko, need a stable
socio-economic and political climate that
would enable the region to attend
to "the urgent challenges of economic
growth and development of our
peoples."
Cabinet welcomed, and was
encouraged by, the confidence placed by the
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) in South Africa's ability to
facilitate a negotiated
resolution to Zimbabwe's problems, Mr Maseko said.
Emphasising that
President Mbeki and Government would not be making regular
utterances on the
developments, because of the sensitive nature of the
negotiations, Mr Maseko
said "these discussions [between the Zimbabwe
government and the opposition]
must be handled as confidentially as
possible".
Discussions will
continue to be held behind closed doors and there will be
no comments made
on progress in these talks "until substantial progress has
been made", Mr
Maseko said.
All South Africa's efforts "must be aimed at making sure we
get all parties
[in Zimbabwe] to sit around the table and talk", he said,
adding that South
Africa was looking at "full negotiations".
South
Africa will also continue to talk to the two parties separately, he
said.
It could be expected that "all kinds of statements will be
made" by the
protagonists in Zimbabwe during the course of talks aimed at
developing a
consensus that will allow the country to move forward.
Mail and Guardian
Pretoria, South Africa
19 April 2007
04:45
South Africa's Cabinet has urged Zimbabwe's government
and
opposition to stop pointing fingers at each other in
public.
"We are aware, as we move closer and closer to
getting
negotiations on track, chances are that both parties would be making
all
kind of statements about and against each other... I see no value in
both
parties, the opposition leaders and the government, continuing pointing
fingers at each other," said government spokesperson Themba
Maseko.
Briefing the media on Thursday following a Cabinet
meeting on
Wednesday, Maseko said President Thabo Mbeki would encourage the
Zimbabweans
to express their views and critique each other "around the
table" as part of
the process for preparing for full
negotiations.
Mbeki was asked by the Southern African
Development Community to
act as facilitator, a responsibility the Cabinet
welcomed.
In the meantime, Maseko said the South African
government would
not make any statements on the progress of the
facilitation.
"We'll handle these matters behind closed doors
and handle them
confidentially and will not divulge any details about what
is happening
between our government and the various protagonists in
Zimbabwe," he said.
"There will be milestones and when
milestones are achieved there
will be communications." -- Sapa
IOL
April 19 2007 at 04:54PM
Eleven men arrested after a Hillbrow shop
robbery are believed to be
part of a gang running stolen goods to Zimbabwe,
said Johannesburg police on
Thursday.
Superintendent Lungelo
Dlamini said the 11 were all Zimbabwean
citizens.
"It is
believed that the 11 are part of a syndicate transporting goods
to
Zimbabwe," said Dlamini.
The shop in Hillbrow was burgled on
Wednesday night.
"They broke the shop's burglar bars and entered
the shop from the back
door.
They then took goods valued at
more than R120 000 and loaded them onto
three vehicles," said
Dlamini.
Dlamini said that a security guard patrolling the area
became
suspicious and called police.
"Police
tracked the men down at the corner of Caroline and Banket
streets in
Hillbrow," said Dlamini.
Three vehicles, as well as goods including
blankets, electrical
appliances as well as groceries were
recovered.
Dlamini said police were still looking for other men
linked to the
robbery.
The men aged between 20 and 30 years
old, appeared in the Hillbrow
magistrate's court on Thursday on charges of
possession of stolen property.
"Their case has been postponed for
further investigation," said
Dlamini. - Sapa
BBC
A recently retired
junior school teacher tells the BBC News website
anonymously about her
career spanning four decades.
1960s: First job
I am from a family
of teachers.
My father was a junior school teacher, but in the 1950s he
stopped teaching
to look for better-paid work in Salisbury, which is now
Harare. He worked as
a foreman at a construction company so he could pay for
all eight of us
children to go to school.
We lived on my father's
farm where we were the labourers. We attended a
Methodist Church school to
begin with. Afterwards I was at boarding school.
I did my teacher
training at a mission school and my first job in 1965 was
right out in the
rural areas. It was a rule that you had to take a posting
in the rural areas
before you could transfer to the cities.
To be honest, I have completely
forgotten my first day. I just know that I
wasn't scared at all. I was free
as anything then and I was enjoying my
kids.
I didn't have to be
strict, because children in the rural areas behaved much
better than those
in the urban areas. They were not a problem at all. Much
more
respect.
I remember that the accommodation was very poor - just simple
houses built
with daga [clay] and thatched with grass. No running
water.
During that time we taught about 30 children in a class -
enrolment was very
low there.
Most rural schools were run by missions
and the children didn't pay school
fees. Our salaries were paid by the
government.
After a year I transferred to a larger boarding school where
I stayed until
I got married and moved to a township near
Salisbury.
1970s: Townships
Working in the townships was easier -
bread was available to you, sugar and
everything - compared to the rural
areas where you had to walk or travel by
bus to a shopping centre to buy all
those things - which was a bit hard.
I taught at a government school
where about 40 to 45 pupils were enrolled in
a class. Most children came to
school.
Their school fees were about nine cents per term, so 45 cents
for the whole
year - which was cheap at the time because the price of living
was low
generally.
I was happy teaching there; the environment was
good. The liberation
struggle did not directly affect schools in
town.
We used to teach in English, although sometimes we'd mix English
and Shona
as there were some who didn't understand English very
well.
All the text books were in English, even those for teaching
Shona.
1980s: Independence
Four years after independence in 1980 I
transferred to what was called a
Group A school in Harare.
Group
A schools had been only for white children; Group B schools had been
for
black children.
My class was mixed and I taught white children for the
first time. They were
good students except for Shona, which they tended to
lose interest in.
Group A schools had always been better funded and
equipped, and their way of
teaching was different too.
For instance,
they used phonics and a lot of activities in lessons. We
didn't teach
English phonetically, we used the look and say method.
Children also
received milk in break times, although unlike the high density
area pupils,
they had to pay for it.
The milk scheme was stopped altogether in around
1990.
The school classification actually remained in place for about
another 10
years - with the Group A schools getting more
money.
1990s: Bigger classes
Class sizes began to grow in the
1990s: I think it was because people were
moving to urban areas, building
houses and so on.
At one stage, there were so many children in our
area that "hot-sitting" was
tried - with morning and afternoon
sessions.
However it didn't work out as teachers found it hard sharing
classrooms and
text books with their colleagues.
A teacher's salary
has always been low. But in the 1990s a teacher could get
by. The 1980s were
the best when a teacher could live well and pay credits -
even during those
first days we could survive as things were cheap.
2000s:
Hunger
But life became really difficult on a teacher's salary from 2000.
Teachers
went on strike recently and were given an increase, but many of us
only
manage to pay our transport costs because our children overseas are
giving
us money.
Hunger also became a very big problem with some
children from struggling
families coming to school with nothing to
eat.
Uniforms, which were never very expensive, are also a problem
now.
More and more people have come to settle in the high density areas,
where
the schools are very few.
Whether or not standards in education
have fallen, I am not sure. I can just
measure by my class and my standard
of teaching didn't go down right up till
the day I resigned.
I was
very, very particular that a child could only go into the next grade
once he
or she was able to read.
In my younger days it was very competitive among
the teachers to see who
could get good results.
Teachers today don't
seem very serious because you can just see them
chatting to each other
during teaching time; sometimes they come in a bit
late, they don't even
bother - to them it's nothing.
And if you don't have enough text books
that is lowering the standards.
Will I miss teaching? No, after all this
time I was very tired. "
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
The South African president will have to work hard to
persuade Zimbabwe's
government and opposition to talk to one another - and
even to him.
By Takesure Dengu in Harare (AR No. 109,
19-Apr-07)
Mutual mistrust and suspicion remain the two key obstacles to
a negotiated
political settlement in Zimbabwe, say analysts. A third
challenge facing
South African president Thabo Mbeki, who is leading the
latest mediation
attempt by Zimbabwe's neighbours, will be persuading the
personalities who
will be involved in any talks to put their egos to one
side.
Police attacks on opposition leaders and their supporters on March
11 led to
an international outcry against the deteriorating human rights
situation in
Zimbabwe. The United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand
cranked up
pressure on Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe to give his
opponents
breathing space to operate, and threatened more "targeted
sanctions" against
the ruling egime's elite.
The traditionally
lethargic Southern African Development Community ,SADC,
called an emergency
summit in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam on
March 28-29 at which
they privately made Mugabe aware of their concerns
about the TV images
showing a badly beaten Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of
the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change, MDC.
Although the president tried to
downplay this ticking-off when he reported
back to ZANU-PF supporters at
home, and went on to secure endorsement from
the party's Central Committee
as its sole candidate in next year's
presidential election, South Africa's
Thabo Mbeki has said Mugabe was told
that what was happening in Zimbabwe was
"not acceptable".
Mugabe's talks with the SADC were was followed by more
arrests, beatings,
abductions and torture of opposition activists accused of
bombing state
infrastructure and police stations.
SADC heads of state
appointed Mbeki to mediate between the MDC and the
ruling ZANU-PF. Mbeki has
set up a five-member team to consider how such a
negotiation process would
work.
Last week, Mbeki met the secretary-generals of the MDC's two
factions in
Johannesburg. According to sources close to Mbeki, he refused to
deal with
them as separate factions and instead said he wanted to address
them as a
united party, and then take their common demands to the ZANU-PF
leadership.
A political analyst in Harare said the biggest problem facing
Mbeki was the
abiding atmosphere of mistrust. ZANU-PF accuses the MDC of
being a front for
the West, while the opposition party returns the
animosity, and also remains
suspicious of the South African leader's
credentials as an impartial broker.
"The MDC has always had problems with
Thabo Mbeki since his earlier
involvement in the Zimbabwean crisis," said
the analyst, who asked not to be
named. "They don't trust Mbeki, in the
first place because they think he is
too close to Mugabe. Secondly, they
don't trust his so-called 'quiet
diplomacy', whereby Mbeki has refused to
openly criticise Mugabe's brutal
rule."
By contrast, a ZANU-PF
insider told IWPR that "Mbeki is welcome to discuss
our challenges with us.
We are neighbours. We help each other in times of
need."
Speaking on
condition of anonymity, the party insider repeated the official
line that
the MDC exists only to advance western interests.
"It is up to them to
prove they are Zimbabwean. Why do they always appeal to
foreigners whenever
there is a problem at home? They must renounce their
western roots and
denounce the sanctions which are hurting our people if
they want to talk to
us," he said.
He was dismissive of the MDC's demand for a new
constitution, and refused to
say whether ZANU-PF would consider the issue if
it were put on the agenda of
the proposed talks.
"They rejected a new
constitution in 2000. Have they changed their mind now?
What are they
proposing?" he asked. "It is their problem. Comrade Mugabe has
said the
current constitution is sacrosanct and non-negotiable."
A foreign
diplomat based in Harare, who did not want to be named, said there
was a
need for compromise on both sides. He said it was wrong to declare any
issue
out of bounds in a negotiating process.
"For the sake of progress and for
the good of the country, Tsvangirai will
have to accept a face-to-face
meeting with Mugabe. He can't avoid him," he
said. "If it means recognising
him as head of state, he will have to. After
all Mugabe, has only a few
months as president if he is defeated in next
year's election."
He
said there was a chance that the South African president would be able to
persuade Mugabe to meet his nemesis Tsvangirai at some stage.
"If
Mugabe has accepted that there is a crisis in his country and wants
financial help from SADC, he cannot afford to humiliate those trying to
help," he said. " Zimbabwe is unlikely to get help from the World Bank or
the International Monetary Fund so long as there is no acceptable political
settlement."
To sum up, he said, "These are the pressures on both
leaders. They will have
to subordinate their egos to the national good. It
would be unfortunate to
squander this window of opportunity and allow the
situation to get worse
than it already is now, or the institutions of the
state will start to
collapse completely."
The MDC says it might
boycott next year's joint parliamentary and
presidential elections if no
major constitutional reforms take place before
then, and if draconian laws
like the Public Order and Security Act and the
Access to Information and
Protection of Privacy Act have not been repealed.
The party is also
calling for fair elections under international
supervision, and for the
opposition to be given access to state-run media.
Overcoming the gulf
between the MDC's demands and the Mugabe administration's
refusal to budge
presents a huge challenge to the South African leader.
"Mbeki's mediation
skills will be put to the test," said the Harare-based
analyst. "He cannot
afford to fail again. Nobody in the region wants this
crisis to
continue."
Takesure Dengu is the pseudonym of a journalist in Zimbabwe
Xinhua
www.chinaview.cn 2007-04-19
16:08:23
by Li Nuer
HARARE, April 19
(Xinhua) -- The Sino-Zimbabwe trade and economic
cooperation has entered a
brand-new development stage in the wake of the
Beijing Summit of the
China-Africa Cooperation Forum last year, a senior
Chinese diplomat said on
Thursday.
In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, the Chinese
Ambassador to
Zimbabwe Yuan Nansheng said fundamental changes have taken
place in the
bilateral relations and economic cooperation between the two
countries since
last year's summit.
China has now become
the second largest trade partner of Zimbabwe,
after South Africa, and China
is also the biggest tobacco buyer from
Zimbabwe, with the total trade volume
between the two countries reaching 275
million U.S. dollars in 2006, while a
few years ago, China was not even
among the top ten trade partners of
Zimbabwe, according to the Chinese
ambassador.
According to
the figures from the economic and commercial
counselor's office of the
Chinese Embassy in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe has bought
more than 100,000 tons of
fertilizers and pesticides from China with a 200
million dollars buyer's
credit loan offered by the Chinese banks, and China
also put in place nearly
20 million dollars to improve the
telecommunications facilities in Zimbabwe
under a 300 million dollars
agreement signed a few years
ago.
Also, Zimbabwe's largest bus company Zupco has newly
bought 55
luxurious buses and various motor parts from China's FAW since
last year.
Yuan said the action plan adopted at the
China-Africa Cooperation
Forum last year has also boosted Chinese investment
in this southern African
country.
China becomes the
investor with the fastest direct foreign
investment growth in Zimbabwe,
replacing the western countries.
The Sino-Zimbabwe Cement
Company has become one of the largest
cement producers in Zimbabwe with its
quality products exported to many
countries in South African region, earning
Zimbabwe millions of U.S.
dollars.
The construction of a
large-scale modern glass producing and
processing center by Jingniu Group,
one of the renowned Chinese glass
producers, is in full swing in Kadoma, an
industrial city in central
Zimbabwe.
With a planned
investment of 400 million dollars and occupying an
area of 100 hectares,
China Jingniu Glass Factory in Zimbabwe is expected to
be completed in five
years.
To bring into reality the action plan of the
China-Africa
Cooperation Forum, the Chinese government plans to build two
rural schools
and an agricultural technology experimenting center in
Zimbabwe in the near
future, Yuan said.
Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe last week commissioned 424
tractors imported from
China at more than 25 million dollars to be used by
tobacco contract farmers
under agricultural concern, Farmers' World.
The consignment
also included disc harrows. These tractors were
imported with a preferential
loan provided by the Chinese government last
year, Yuan
said.
In January this year, the first 15-member group of the
Chinese
young volunteers for Africa was sent to Zimbabwe, and they have
joined hands
with their local counterparts to contribute to Zimbabwe's
economic and
social development, Yuan said.
The trade and
economic cooperation between China and Zimbabwe in
the new historical period
will focus on the agriculture sector and on the
interests and benefits of
local ordinary people, Yuan said.
China has committed to
helping Zimbabwe to develop the
agricultural production in a bid to secure
the food of local people against
the sanctions by the Western countries and
the droughts, he explained.
The Chinese ambassador said he
hopes there is a greater success in
the cooperation between the two
countries within five years, with the total
trade expected to surge to 500
million dollars in 2008.
He said Zimbabwe will see more Chinese
assistance and investment
in agriculture and mining, and the Chinese
companies will help Zimbabwe to
build more projects in the country's
infrastructure field.
Comment from The Mail & Guardian (SA), 12 April
Justice Malala
It is the small
things that get you. Like, Nathaniel's wife is six months
pregnant. He is a
young man who, anywhere else in the world, would be making
his way up the
corporate ladder. She is somewhere in the deep dark depths of
Mutare,
Zimbabwe. He is working as a gardener in the northern suburbs of
Johannesburg. He cannot go home. The last time he went home, in December
last year, it took him two months to get back into South Africa. He crossed
the Limpopo River, like so many thousands of his compatriots every day, on
foot. He was arrested and sent back home. Failure is not an option for
people like Nathaniel. If he does not get to South Africa, his wife and
child will die of hunger. So he made the perilous trip again, carrying only
a 500ml bottle of water. This time he succeeded, arriving in Johannesburg
bedraggled, gaunt and thirsty.
He lives in a room in a flat in
Hillbrow. He is regularly arrested because
he has no official papers and has
to bribe the police with amounts as small
as R10 to be let off into the
seething suburb. He knows one thing: he
travels with at least R20 in his
pocket just in case he is stopped. He knows
it is usually enough to get him
out. I have known Nathaniel for three years
now. Instead of things getting
better, his problem just gets more
intractable. He cannot buy fake South
African documents - an identity
document and passport, primarily - because
the police ignore these anyway.
They have managed to work out the accents,
he says. Without these documents
he cannot get a formal job, he cannot
engage in any commerce, he cannot put
his numerous talents out into the
marketplace. He quests, and yet he is
condemned to a dark, underground,
desperate life. He is perpetually playing
hide-and-seek with the law;
gambling with his life as he attempts to get
home through game parks and a
crocodile-infested river.
He is not the only one. Nowadays,
everywhere one goes in South Africa, there
are brutalised Zimbabweans
walking the streets, their lives a terrible cycle
of waking up, despairing,
seeking a better life and despairing again. They
are not political activists
or people who seek an insurrection in Zimbabwe.
They are not political at
all. They are the type you harangue about their
responsibilities to
democracy; you beg them to vote. They are ordinary human
beings trying to
make their way through life. And now they are just a hungry
people, shamed
into an ignominious exile. South Africa's official statistics
on the number
of illegal Zimbabweans here are a joke. The more believable
figure bandied
about most by NGOs is three million. I know that in every
aspect of my life
there is a Zimbabwean. At work, in my job as a media
consultant, I meet
brilliant young Zimbabweans. In my social life, I meet
and drink and weep
with Zimbabweans. They are the lucky ones: they have jobs
and can afford to
buy a beer. They have papers.
The tragedy is in the parallel worlds
of the domestic worker, the gardener
and the street seller. The tragedy is
the life of the ordinary man and woman
we used to call, in Marxist parlance,
"the most advanced class, the worker".
They are here now, with their vaunted
consciousness, looking after our
children, fixing burst car tyres in
Hillbrow. They don't have papers. These
are people who go home, knowing that
they might never get back. Then they
get back and wonder how they are going
to make that trip again. They have
left their mothers and fathers behind.
They have children in Zimbabwe
because they still believe the schooling is
better there. Until one day,
when Dorothy tells me that there are only three
teachers at her child's
primary school. Her daughter has been going to
school every day since
January and has still not received a single lesson.
"Perhaps, next year, I
can bring her to South Africa to live with me," she
says.
It is these small, human moments that cause a weakness in my
limbs, the
oomph as my breath rushes out of my whole body. It is not
President Thabo
Mbeki refusing to condemn torture of opposition activists or
the closure of
newspapers. These make me angry. The Zimbabweans are not
coming. The
Zimbabweans are here. They are no longer a vast, depressed,
heart-wrenching
mass. They are men and women, once proud, reduced to
begging, to hustling,
to a shifty-eyed nether world. It should not be like
this. As a young man I
spent a year in Zimbabwe studying for my A-levels.
The people I met were
proud of their country and their leader. They worked
hard and wanted to do
well. They wanted their children to be better human
beings - materially and
spiritually - than they were. Most importantly, they
believed that these
dreams could and would be achieved. Being there, one
knew that this could be
done. The education system was pumping out
well-spoken, well-grounded,
inquisitive minds. The economy was open and the
international community
believed that this remained a place to invest. The
transition from colonial
rule to democracy had been handled in exemplary
fashion.
And then ... and then they are here. They are not refugees,
because we say
there is no problem in Zimbabwe, and our department of home
affairs will not
give them refugee status. They are not freedom fighters,
because Zimbabwe is
free, right? So the Zimbabweans I knew are a nothing
people now. Every day I
meet these nothing people. Sometimes I get a call:
"Perhaps you can help me
...". These are the little things and I wonder why
they do not get to so
many of my fellow countrymen. How, fresh from
oppression and exile
ourselves, we don't wonder why so many people can want
to leave their
mothers and children to seek a better life elsewhere. Why,
when we claim to
put people at the centre of our every diplomatic
initiative, do we keep
quiet when evil reigns just a few hundred kilometres
to our north?
news.com.au
Robert Craddock
April
20, 2007 12:00am
AUSTRALIA is again in a bind over whether to tour
Zimbabwe with Cricket
Australia declaring it will not withdraw on moral
grounds.
Australia is scheduled to play three one-day matches in the
strife-torn
country in September but the tour remains in doubt.
Several
players are known to have reservations about making the trip with
continued
reports of widespread violence and general degeneration in the
standard of
living in Zimbabwe.
Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland
said while the moral
issues remained a concern, they were contracted to make
the tour.
Safety and security reasons -- or a directive from the Federal
Government --
are the only ways CA can cancel the tour and not be deemed
liable for a $2
million fine.
"We are not turning a blind eye to the
issues in Zimbabwe but the reality is
we have major formal commitments we
are binded to," Sutherland said last
night.
"It is certainly in our
minds but the difficulty we have is that we have a
contract with the ICC and
all of the other full member countries, which
includes Zimbabwe, to play
matches there.
"From that perspective we do not have much room to
move."
Asked whether the tour could be cancelled on moral grounds,
Sutherland said:
"no . . . there is no escape clause on that
front.
"I cannot tell you what pressure we are going to come
under.
"I know there is speculation about but that is par for the course
of a
Zimbabwe tour.
"At the moment we are focused on the World
Cup.
"We will at some stage look at the security issues surrounding the
World
Cup."
Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said he would
help Cricket
Australia explore all avenues to call off the trip but the
government
insisted it would not order the team not to tour.
Eastern Province Herald
By Deon Van
Der Merwe East London Correspondent
THE publication of a scholarly work
on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe,
and how he has taken his country to
the brink of an abyss, is set to revive
the return of the lively publishing
culture which characterised the
University of Fort Hare and the Lovedale
Press more than 70 years ago.
The book, Zimbabwe: With Robert Mugabe to
the Brink of the Abyss, by Prof M
J Matshazi, has just been published by the
UFH's National Heritage and
Cultural Studies Centre in Alice. It examines
the economic and political
meltdown in South Africa's northern
neighbour.
The launch of the book, which coincided with Mugabe's latest
crackdown on
opposition parties and dissidents, is expected to prove a
popular read with
both academics and the lay reading public alike. It is
generally viewed as a
work which will lend further impetus to secure the
return of the healthy
culture of publication which characterised the UFH and
Lovedale Press during
the 1930s and '40s.
The latest publication
follows closely on the heels of the centre's first
successful publication
last year of the book Sport and Liberation in South
Africa; Reflections and
Suggestions.
Edited by the centre's director, Dr Cornelius Thomas, the
work analyses the
role played by sport in the liberation of South
Africa.
Thomas says the centre's archives, housed on the Alice campus of
the UFH,
represent an internationally and nationally important
resource.
They hold the liberation archives of the PAC, the Unity
Movement, Azapo and
the Black Consciousness Movement.
"We also hold
the personal papers of people such as Dr Costa Gazi and Dr
Motsoko Pheku
(both PAC leaders)," Thomas said of the centre. See Page 10.
deonews@telkom.net