The Sunday Times
April 20, 2008
Douglas Marle in Harare
ALL across Harare yesterday, men, women,
and children separated from their
parents, including a boy of 12 with
suspected malaria and a fragile
15-year-old girl, were hiding from a
state-run terror campaign unleashed
against Zimbabwe’s
opposition.
Beaten and driven from their homes in the countryside and
crowded townships
in the reprisals that have followed President Robert
Mugabe’s apparent
electoral defeat three weeks ago, they made their way to
the city by any
means possible.
They came in their dozens, by bus, by
train, by communal taxi. Such was one
frightened man’s determination to
escape that he walked for many miles with
bare feet. Even those who did not
need hospital care were still in pain days
after their arrival from beaten,
swollen limbs.
The anonymity of the big city was protecting them. In the
provinces, doctors
and nurses had been warned by militants not to treat
“political cases”.
Those who fled were under no illusion.
Indeed,
they had been warned by the tormentors who had burnt many of them
out of
their homes that, if they returned, they would be killed. There was
at least
one death during the week.
They were from every walk of life: carpenters,
tractor drivers and teachers,
bottle store owners, gardeners and dozens and
dozens of unemployed, a
reflection of the plight of people in a country
suffering 80% unemployment
and 200,000% inflation.
“Is this the way
we should be marking our 28th year of independence?” asked
Jonathan
Chanakira, a trader, in hospital with fractured arms. “It makes me
weep.”
He was speaking as Mugabe marked Zimbabwe’s independence day
on Friday with
a bitter speech accusing Britain of bank-rolling the
opposition as a means
of dominating its former colony. “We are being bought
like livestock,”
Mugabe said.
Chanakira was not listening to the
84-year-old president, who has ruled
since independence in 1980. “We are not
free at all,” he said from his
hospital bed. “It is high time Zimbabwe was
liberated from the liberators.”
Like the majority of those who fled to
Harare, he had been punished for
supporting the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC). His
attackers were uniformed soldiers who dragged
him from a shop, shoved him to
the ground and beat him almost
senseless.
It was their reaction to the opposition’s call for a general
strike last
Tuesday to force the release of the presidential election
results. His
suburb had voted heavily for the MDC.
For 28 years
Zimbabweans have voted in election after election for Mugabe
and his Zanu-PF
party.
They were driven by a mixture of loyalty for the party’s role in
the
independence struggle and fear of retribution if they voted
otherwise.
Even as the wheels came off the economy in recent years, many
continued
supporting Mugabe, especially in backward rural areas where they
could be
easily persuaded.
However, on March 29 Zimbabweans,
including many disenchanted rural
dwellers, found their courage and voted
overwhelmingly for the MDC and
Morgan Tsvangirai, its leader.
Zanu-PF
lost control of parliament and Tsvangirai claimed victory in the
presidential vote with more than 50%. The government has refused to release
the final results and a partial recount of both votes was scheduled
yesterday, a process the opposition believes is designed to keep Mugabe in
power.
It is a critical time. Some 100 MDC councillors, militants and
party
officials, mostly in Harare, have been arrested. Much of the hierarchy
has
been driven underground.
“What is happening is shattering,” said
Iain Kay, the first white farmer to
be beaten up in Zimbabwe in 2000 when
the farm seizures began, who has just
been elected an opposition MP in the
constituency of Marondera Central, east
of the capital.
“It
disempowers you and leaves you struggling for words. We have been taken
back
to a dark place when we thought we had finally come out of it.” Another
said
that so many officials were hiding or in jail that it had “emasculated”
the
party.
Most of the violence is concentrated in former strongholds of
Zanu-PF that
voted MDC. In one constituency in the province of Mashonaland
East, the
campaign manager for an opposition MP became the first target. A
tall man in
his forties, he was told by informants that Zanu-PF activists
had called a
meeting to discuss his fate and some wanted to murder
him.
They nearly succeeded. Last weekend, he said, more than 300 Zanu-PF
youths
came to his house. He escaped by firing warning shots in the air from
the
rifle he kept to protect his livestock from wild animals.
Later
he returned to find his mother severely beaten and his house
ransacked. Half
his pigs were slaughtered, his kitchen was destroyed, his
pickup truck burnt
and his money stolen.
He was seized and locked in the house. The mob was
preparing to set it
alight, but at the last moment one of them relented.
“No,” he said. “Let’s
not kill him. Let’s take him away and show him what we
can do.”
The campaign manager was held prisoner in a militants’ camp deep
in the
bush. “I was interrogated about the MDC. They wanted to know where
the
opposition party got its money from,” he said.
“One of them said,
‘Let’s attach some rocks to his genitals’, but the leader
said it was not a
good idea.”
The questioning went on for three days until the police,
alerted by his
sister, freed him. Perversely, he was immediately arrested
for firing his
rifle, and was charged with committing an act of public
violence.
While in custody, he was told by an airforce commander, one of
the senior
military officers dispatched to the provinces to oversee the
violent
intimidation: “When you get out, I am going to strangle you and you
will
never live here again.”
Freed after paying a fine and receiving
a suspended prison sentence, he ran
away to Harare.
A woman aged 35
from a village near the town of Mutoko, a former Zanu-PF
stronghold 90 miles
north of Harare, said militants had assembled the
villagers and harangued
them for voting MDC. As frightened villagers looked
on, the woman, an MDC
organiser, was dragged to the ground and a youth
kicked her until blood
poured from her nose. Others stood on her neck and
buttocks.
Ignoring
her cries, they beat her with sticks until after 15 minutes she was
unconscious.
However, despite the crack-down to intimidate MDC
supporters and ensure that
Mugabe wins any presidential election run-off
against Tsvangirai, evidence
began to emerge last week that some pillars of
the regime are no longer
regarded by it as loyal.
Police in some
townships have been withdrawn and replaced by soldiers or
militants in army
uniforms, who have been giving the beatings. In the most
violent areas, the
police seem to have been sidelined as Zanu-PF militants
and so-called war
veterans take charge. When victims reported attacks to
police stations,
officers were turning them away, saying there was nothing
they could do; it
was “political”.
Disenchantment seems to have seeped even into the
Central Intelligence
Organisation (CIO). A man called Alfred volunteered
over a drink in a Harare
bar last week that his wife worked for the CIO but
she was “Mugabe’s worst
enemy”.
“We had to sell our car to send our
son to university in South Africa,” he
said. “We both hate him [Mugabe].
Everyone in Harare hates him. They refer
to him as Mudhara [Old
Man].”
Old man he may be, and such remarks may not be representative of
an
organisation that is a mainstay of the regime, but Mugabe does not look
like
a man under pressure.
“Mugabe’s generals have told him, ‘We will
win the election for you,’ and he
has taken their advice,” said a Zanu-PF
insider. “He is properly engaged and
will fight it out to the bitter
end.”
Independent, UK
At first glance, the country's
cities do not seem to be in meltdown – but
only because the once-strong
economy has fallen so far, so fast. With
inflation at 160,000%, Mugabe must
surely be nearing the end. Just don't bet
on it. Raymond Whitaker in Harare
reports
Sunday, 20 April 2008
To the casual visitor, which is
what I was pretending to be in Zimbabwe, the
country does not immediately
appear like an impoverished autocracy. It is
quite possible to drive around
Harare and Bulawayo, the country's two main
cities, without encountering a
roadblock or seeing unusual numbers of
policemen. There are potholes in the
roads, sure, but unlike many parts of
Africa, a 4x4 vehicle is not essential
in urban areas. And at traffic
lights, most of which still work, there are
people selling newspapers that
condemn President Robert Mugabe in the
roundest of terms.
But then you notice the price of one of these papers –
the weekly Zimbabwe
Independent – and any semblance of normality is
dispelled. The current issue
costs 85 million Zimbabwean dollars, up from
Z$55m last week. This Friday
the vendors will probably want more than
$100m.
While much of Zimbabwe's political life under Mugabe consists of
pure
illusion – the President blames British colonialism for anything that
goes
wrong, and acts as though the election defeat three weeks ago simply
did not
happen – nobody can escape the reality of the world's worst
inflation rate.
Even the Zimbabwean authorities admit it is in the region of
160,000 per
cent, but independent economists believe it could be more than
twice that
level.
A bag of bananas costs Z$150m; a loaf Z$300m. At
least, they did a couple of
days ago. One housewife said she was buying
groceries recently for Z$100m
when there was a hitch with her cheque
guarantee card. By the time she
returned from sorting it out at the
supervisor's desk, her bill had gone up
to Z$250m. The widow of a man who
worked all his life for the postal service
gets a pension of Z$1,295 a
month: not enough for a box of matches –
possibly not even one match. A note
smaller than Z$10m is small change, and
anything below one million is simply
scrap paper.
In most basket-case economies, paper bills are sweat-stained
and rubbed to
near-illegibility. Not in Zimbabwe, where the central bank's
presses keep
churning out crisp new notes in ever-higher denominations. The
Z$50m note is
a popular innovation – considerably more so than the $750,000
bill,
introduced a few thousand per cent ago, which made calculations
difficult –
but many believe it is only government pride which is delaying
the Z$100m
note. Even then, Zimbabweans will have to carry sharp-edged
bricks of new
notes for all but the most trivial of transactions. The
struggle to keep up
with soaring prices – those with bank accounts can
withdraw only the
equivalent of a pound or two a day from the few cash
machines, and often
have to queue for more than a hour to do so – has driven
many half-way out
of the cash economy.
Above the high walls of
Harare's smart northern suburbs, maize stalks often
wave. Few people can
afford not to grow their own food, and lawns and
flowerbeds have been
ploughed up for kitchen gardens. Joseph Massundah, 70,
a former senior civil
servant, is part of the generation that came into its
own after independence
in 1980. Government loans helped him buy a
three-bedroom bungalow in the
city's Mount Pleasant area, and both his
daughters received the best
education. But his pension has been drastically
eroded. How does he
cope?
Mr Massundah's wife still works, and when he needed expensive heart
medication, their daughter living in Canada was able to help. Their other
daughter, who has a good private-sector job in Zimbabwe, gets subsidised
food from her employer, and passes some on to her parents. But Mr Massundah,
using the borehole on his large property, has turned market gardener. "I
used to sell just vegetables," he says, surveying the neat rows of runner
beans, onions and squash, "but then I realised there was money to be made
from selling seedlings. I can get Z$40m for 50 onion seedlings. This helps
to supplement my pension," he says. "I've been lucky – I know people who get
a pension that doesn't pay for the bus fare to go and collect
it."
The white widow of the postal worker, who asked not to be named, was
rescued
from near destitution by the Freemasons, who took her into their
sheltered
housing complex in Harare because her son, now in England, is a
member. "My
son invested money for me, but now they tell me the capital is
nearly all
gone," said the 81-year-old. "He can't find a permanent job in
England, so
he's not able to help yet."
In her neat little flat,
outside which she grows gooseberries and tomatoes,
the widow contemplates
her shrinking world. "The water bills are very high,
so they took the
outside tap away, and I have to use bathwater on the
plants," she said. "In
the flats we used to have pay-as-you-go electricity
meters, but now they
can't service them and we will have to pay communally
in advance. The cook
has left, and they can't afford to pay for security on
the front gate any
more."
Many of the 30,000 whites remaining in Zimbabwe – a tenth of the
number in
2000 – are frail pensioners. But they can at least rely on help
from abroad,
as can a growing number of black Zimbabweans. It is estimated
that at least
three million people have left the country in the past eight
years, most for
South Africa.
The widow's living conditions would
still seem unimaginably luxurious to
40-year-old Assalia, who is nursing a
week-old baby, her seventh, in
desperately poor Hatcliffe Extension, on the
outskirts of Harare. She and
her family used to live in a self-built
breezeblock home, but in 2005 fell
victim to Mugabe's Murambatsvina (clear
out the trash) campaign, in which
hundreds of thousands of urban poor, who
tended to support the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change, had their
homes demolished in an attempt to
drive them back to even poorer rural
areas.
"We lived in the open for a month in the middle of winter, then we
were
forced to go to a holding camp for another month," said Assalia. "Then
they
dumped us here." Her 55-year-old husband Pasca lost his job at the
airport
because there was no transport to get to work, and he has had only
odd jobs
since.
With the aid of church groups, they built a shack of
corrugated iron with
adjoining "sitting room", which has a corrugated iron
roof resting on poles,
with plastic sheeting for walls. Unlike some
neighbours, they have concrete,
not beaten-earth, floors. Around the shack,
pumpkins, tomatoes and even
sugar cane grow. Pigeons and guineafowl peck in
the dust, while a coop holds
chickens and a pair of turkeys. The family has
dug a well, and a car battery
powers a battered TV.
"Two of the older
children are in South Africa, trying to find work," said
Assalia. "We do
this and that to make ends meet. If someone buys a bag of
sugar, they sell
it for Z$25m a cup. But if you put out tomatoes to sell
them, they can
arrest you for illegal vending. I have been arrested and had
my goods seized
I don't know how many times."
There is misery still worse than this,
however. In drought-stricken rural
areas, allegiance to Zanu-PF is essential
to avoid starvation. The party
controls distribution of aid-agency food and
gives it only to those with a
membership card. Hunger, the collapse of rural
health systems and one of the
worst rates of HIV/Aids infection has reduced
life expectancy to the world's
lowest.
According to foreign experts,
no economy has ever declined this fast without
going through a war, which
helps to explain why the cities still look
relatively normal. The
infrastructure has not had time to fall apart
completely, but the decay is
plain if you know where to look. Near Assalia's
shack, for example, there is
a well-equipped clinic, but it has no
medicines. In Bulawayo, a new hospital
stands unused because technicians
sent from South Africa to install the
equipment said it was too unsafe to
use.
For the first 20 years of
Mugabe's rule, the economy performed well. Health
and education services
were among Africa's best and the country was the
breadbasket of the region.
All those achievements have been destroyed since
2000, when the President
lost a referendum on extending his powers and
embarked on his present
course: ruling by force, and seizing ever-greater
proportions of an
ever-shrinking economy. The outcome has been rampant
corruption and
black-marketeering. It is impossible to buy fuel without hard
currency, so
anyone with access to subsidised government petrol can make a
hefty profit
by selling some of it on. Harare residents envy the people of
Bulawayo, who
can make shopping trips to neighbouring Botswana, and bring
back goods in
demand at home. The situation has forced everyone to become a
trader.
Those in favour with Zanu-PF can become extremely rich.
Special rates for
buying hard currency help to purchase ornate mansions and
luxury cars and a
country property seized from a white farmer for weekends
away. Philip
Chiyangwa, a former Zanu-PF MP, owns a Hummer, and boasted in
the state
media recently that he has a computerised, colour-coded wardrobe
to match
his hundreds of suits, shoes and accessories at his 30-room home in
Borrowdale, Harare's smartest suburb. But the government is living on
borrowed time and borrowed money. It is taking more and more from the few
businesses left that earn foreign currency, mainly in agribusiness and
natural resources. "It is impossible to plan, or to comply with the law,"
said a small businessman.
Mugabe is adept, however, at maintaining
illusions, economically as well as
politically. The Zimbabwe Independent,
for example, can attack him all it
likes, because he knows only a small
urban elite can afford it.
Government-owned papers such as The Herald in
Harare or The Chronicle in
Bulawayo cost only Z$20m, and the authorities
have a monopoly over
broadcasting. The situation cannot last, say his
opponents – but then they
have been saying that since 2000.
Sunday Times, SA
Bobby
Jordan
Published:Apr 20,
2008
Top-secret
military intelligence reports about Robert Mugabe’s political
rivals are
among a stash of documents handed over to his regime by the South
African
National Defence Force — shortly before the signing of a military
pact
between the two countries.
A detailed index of the
documents — of which the Sunday Times has a copy —
is contained in papers
before the Pretoria High Court, where a prominent
human rights organisation
is fighting for access to them.
The classified documents were handed
back to Zimbabwe in December 2004
shortly after a Johannesburg academic
applied to view them.
The transfer was authorised by the then head of the
armed forces, General
Siphiwe Nyanda, on the grounds that the documents had
been illegally
obtained — and were therefore not South African property. No
copies were
made, according to an affidavit submitted to
court.
The transferred documents — entitled Afdeling Militêre
Inligting Group 4
(‘the Group 4 records’) — include files on informants who
worked against
Mugabe’s liberation movement, the Zimbabwe African National
Union (Zanu), as
well as a file entitled “Zanu Propaganda”.
There are
also dozens of files on the Zimbabwean African People’s Union
(Zapu), which
was Mugabe’s main rival in the south of Zimbabwe before
independence.
Other files cover operational matters ranging from
interrogation to military
manoeuvres. They originate from Rhodesian Military
Intelligence records and
cover a period from the early 1960s to the late
1970s.
Piers Pigou, director of the South African History Archive, who
lodged the
High Court application, said some of the files were “potentially
deadly” if
named informants were still alive. He said it was unclear where
the files
had ended up because there was no sign of them at the Zimbabwean
national
archives. He also asked why no copies had been made when similar
documents
returned to Namibia had been copied and stored on
microfilm.
“We believe the politics of this is more about an attempt to
curry favour
with the Zimbabwe security and intelligence establishment,”
Pigou said.
In its affidavit, his organisation says the Defence
Department subverted
“constitutional and legislative obligations” by
transferring the documents —
in part because they form part of South
Africa’s archival heritage: “These
records are valuable tools in researching
and understanding the history of
destabilisation in the region.”
The
Department of Defence declined to comment this week, saying the matter
was
sub judice.
However, a court affidavit authorised by Defence Minister
Mosiuoa Lekota
claims the documents were handed over to avoid diplomatic
“embarrassment” to
South Africa and “in keeping with the archival principle
that official
government records remain the property of the originating
country and its
people”.
“The records … had been obtained
unofficially by the military intelligence
division of the South African
Defence Force in 1980. These records were
transferred to the department’s
archives in 1993 along with a large number
of military intelligence files
for safekeeping,” the affidavit said.
The files were handed over to
officials at the Zimbabwean embassy in
Pretoria.
University of Cape
Town historian Professor Chris Saunders said the files
should never have
been sent back without a copy being made.
“While most are about
Zimbabwe’s history . .. there are also files relating
to South Africa and
Namibia. Among the latter are files on Swapo and the
Caprivi,” Saunders
said.
Sunday Times, SA
Rowan Philp, Paddy Harper
and Monica
Laganparsad Published:Apr 20,
2008
The
sinister truth behind this arms ship from ChinaAfter Zimbabwe polls,
officers begged for new guns and bullets
Robert Mugabe has been
scrambling to secure weapons for Zimbabwe’s brutal
military in the aftermath
of his March 29 election defeat.
Amid an international outcry
over an attempt by Zimbabwe to obtain 77 tons
of Chinese-made arms via
Durban this week, it has been revealed that:
a.. Just days after the
elections, officers from the police, the armed
forces, the Central
Intelligence Organisation and the president’s bodyguard
were queueing for
weapons at defence companies;
a.. A lack of foreign currency has led to a
series of botched arms
purchases; and
a.. The country is being forced
to buy weapons because its own arms company
has collapsed to the point of
making coffins rather than weapons.
Mugabe’s attempts to rearm coincide with
a brutal crackdown. Yesterday Human
Rights Watch accused Zimbabwe of
embarking on a campaign of torture against
opponents.
This week
Zimbabwe’s Lawyers for Human Rights documented 150 attacks on
opposition
supporters since the election three weeks ago following the
launch of
Operation Mavhoterapapi (Operation How Did You Vote).
Mugabe also accused
the opposition Movement for Democratic Change of
plotting a coup this
week.
The failure of a national strike called by the MDC for Tuesday
was blamed on
police intimidation.
Teacher John Chiweshe said:
“Police and soldiers were forcing everyone to go
to work.”
Nelson
Chamisa, an MDC spokesman, said Zimbabweans were being terrorised.
“Our
people are being arrested on trumped-up charges of violence.”
The Sunday
Times has established that this week’s Chinese shipment of arms
turned away
from Durban harbour on Friday was just one of several botched
attempts by
the embattled Mugabe regime to buy arms this year.
One
well-placed Zimbabwean defence industry official told the Sunday Times:
“In
the first three working days after the election, there were queues of
people
outside (arms procurement) offices — police, the presidential
bodyguard
unit, army, the CIO.
“I saw 20 to 30 officers in a single waiting room,
all begging for new
weapons and ammunition. (But) most of the orders could
not be filled,
because the Reserve Bank doesn’t have the forex.”
And
on March 20, military intelligence chiefs sent a full detachment of the
presidential bodyguard to escort a small shipment of 70000 rifle bullets
after it was mistakenly believed to have gone missing when the driver “went
drinking”, causing panic among Mugabe’s military intelligence chiefs, who
believed the MDC had seized the shipment.
Another police order for 25
shotguns and ammunition had to be amended to
exclude the shotgun cartridges
for lack of hard currency, while a US4.1-
million tender for anti-riot
equipment was abandoned when the Zimbabwe
Reserve Bank failed to raise the
forex. A revised tender of US2.2-million
was abandoned for the same reason.
Finally, a US200000 purchase of Chinese
equipment was made after personal
intervention by Mugabe.
This week’s batch of 3 million AK-47 bullets,
1500 rockets and 3500 mortar
shells on the cargo ship An Yue Jiang was
bought from Poly Technologies — a
Chinese state company under indictment in
the US for weapons smuggling. The
order for the cargo was placed on April 1,
three days after the elections .
The ship sailed from Durban harbour
on Friday with its six container-loads
of arms still on board, after the
Durban High Court ordered the seizure of
the weapons.
Earlier on
Friday, the German state bank, which lent the Zimbabwean
state-owned Iron
and Steel Company € 40-million in 2000, was granted a
separate order in the
Durban High Court to attach the cargo as a portion of
the unpaid
loan.
Yesterday, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa said
the ship had
reportedly taken off with its transponder switched off so that
it could not
be traced.
“Furthermore, in light of reports of a heavy
security presence throughout
Zimbabwe, and of an increase in reported
detentions of activists and
organisers, the events that are taking place at
the moment are reminiscent
of those that led up to the tragedy in Rwanda in
1994,” said Open Society
spokesman Sisonke Msimang.
She said that
urgent intervention by the United Nations, the African Union
and the
Southern African Development Community was needed to stop the
weapons being
delivered. It is suspected the ship may be heading for an
alternative port
in Mozambique.
But Mozambique said yesterday that there had been no
application by the ship’s
owners or the Zimbabwean government for it to be
unloaded at Beira or
Maputo.
Zimbabwe has bought R1.6- billion
worth of arms from China in the past four
years, including 12 fighter
aircraft.
Yesterday the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission began a recount of
23 of the
country’s 210 constituencies, despite opposition efforts to block
it. The
recount could overturn the majority the MDC gained in the
parliamentary
vote. Zanu-PF lost 16 of the 23 constituencies and needs nine
more seats for
a majority in parliament.
The Telegraph
Last
Updated: 12:01am BST 20/04/2008
Robert Mugabe appears
determined to cling on to power by stealing
Zimbabwe's
election.
The delay in releasing the tally of votes has only one
cause: the need
to fix the count so that Mugabe can claim to have "won" an
election he has
clearly lost. The dismal decision by Zimbabwe's courts to
uphold the
government's failure to provide any count of votes at all, three
weeks after
the country went to the polls, demonstrates Mugabe's continuing
ability to
intimidate officials who, in theory, ought to be independent of
his power.
Britain, which, as the former colonial power, has
special
responsibility for Zimbabwe, can do very little to improve the
situation.
Perfectly reasonable criticisms of the Mugabe regime's tyranny
are used by
Mugabe to buttress his claim that everything wrong with Zimbabwe
is the
fault, not of his incompetence, greed and bullying dictatorship, but
of a
conspiracy organised by racist whites in London.
South
Africa, the country best placed to put pressure on Mugabe, is
unfortunately
reluctant to do so. Thabo Mbeki is no Nelson Mandela, willing
to stand up
for democracy: the South African president appears content to
let Mugabe
remain in power.
Abysmal government of Mugabe's kind is all too
common across Africa.
The various prime ministers and presidents are
reluctant to voice criticism
of other African tyrants, perhaps on the
principle that those in glass
houses shouldn't throw stones: if they
highlight the deficiencies of other
tyrants, they fear themselves will be
next to be overthrown.
The contempt of government officials for the
people they are meant to
serve, and their conviction that the point of
office is self-enrichment, are
together perhaps the most lasting, and
certainly the most poisonous, legacy
of the colonial administrations of the
19th and 20th centuries.
If Africa's people can only find a way to
free themselves of their
governments, their future is bright. But until they
do, they will continue
to suffer the hideous tyranny of brutes such as
Mugabe.
Independent, UK
By Raymond Whitaker in Bulawayo
Sunday, 20 April
2008
Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, the presumed
front-runner
in the presidential election held three weeks ago, has said he
intends to
remain out of the country for the time being for fear of being
attacked or
imprisoned.
"It is no use going back to Zimbabwe and
become captive," the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) leader, who left
Zimbabwe 10 days after the poll,
told Canada's The Globe and Mail. "Then you
are not effective. What can you
do? Do you want a dead hero?"
Mr
Tsvangirai, who has spent most time recently in South Africa, said he
would
return, but first wanted to mobilise international support against
President
Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF government. The ruling party lost
its majority
in the 29 March election, and independent monitoring groups
calculate that
the MDC leader fell just short of a first-round victory in
the presidential
poll, securing between 49 per cent and 50 per cent of the
vote.
After
an initial period of turmoil, Mr Mugabe and his associates have
embarked on
a clear strategy of seeking to reverse the result of both polls.
The result
of the presidential election has been withheld, and MDC officials
and
supporters in Zanu-PF's former strongholds have been attacked. Some
officials of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) have been arrested,
along with members of the country's largest voluntary poll monitoring
group.
Yesterday, the nominally independent ZEC began recounts in 23
seats, 16 of
which it had previously declared in favour of the opposition.
Zanu-PF would
regain its majority if the results in nine seats were reversed
in its
favour, but lawyers have said the exercise, which is expected to last
three
days, violates electoral procedures, and the MDC has said it will
ignore the
outcome. "We reject the outcome of this flawed process," said MDC
spokesman
Nelson Chamisa. "As far as the MDC is concerned, the first results
stand.
Anything else will be an illegitimate process." He said it was
"clear" that
the ballot boxes had been tampered with in the three weeks
since polling.
The recounts were being observed by a South-African led
team from the
Southern African Development Community, but the opposition has
been
disillusioned by the feeble stance of the organisation and its
designated
mediator, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. Yesterday former
UN
secretary-general Kofi Annan said the situation in the country was
"dangerous" and pointedly urged Africa's leaders to do more. "The recounts
remove any doubts about the ZEC being a partisan organisation," said David
Coltart, an opposition senator and constitutional expert. "If they start
announcing that someone else has won a seat, it will be illegal. Only a
court can decide that a result should be overturned."
It was clear,
Mr Coltart added, that Zanu-PF had known the presidential
result since 2
April, when the government-owned Herald newspaper reported
that there would
be a run-off. The delay since then had removed any claim to
legitimacy that
the poll could have given Mr Mugabe. "All this amounts to is
a rather clumsy
coup disguised as an election."
The US government and the New York-based
group Human Rights Watch is among
those that have accused the Mugabe
government of violent retaliation since
the election. Zanu-PF, it said, was
setting up "torture camps to
systematically target, beat, and torture people
suspected of having voted
for the (opposition) MDC in last month's
elections".
According to dissident policemen who have been briefed on the
ruling party's
strategy, about 50 constituencies have been targeted for
intimidation. The
aim was to have mixed groups of police, army officers,
Zanu-PF militants and
"war veterans" in place for the snap announcement of a
presidential election
run-off.
The police said they had been ordered
to stand by and watch when party youth
militia and "war veterans" attacked
opposition supporters, to emphasise to
the victims that they would receive
no protection. The aim was to displace
MDC supporters and officials, so that
they would not be able to vote when
the second round was called. They had
also been told that less strict
scrutiny would make it easier to stuff
ballot boxes.
Meanwhile, a Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe which
was turned away
from South Africa is heading to Angola in hopes of docking
there. The ship
left South African waters on Friday. It is believed to be
carrying three
million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 1,500 rocket-propelled
grenades, and an
unknown number of mortar rounds. Mozambique's transport and
communications
minister told Reuters that Mozambique has been monitoring the
ship's
movements since it left South Africa.
The Telegraph
By special correspondent in Harare and Gethin Chamberlain
Last
Updated: 12:08am BST 20/04/2008
Robert Mugabe is planning
to step down from power within 18 months if
he is eventually declared the
winner of Zimbabwe's bitterly contested
presidential election, say senior
figures in his party.
Colleagues say he is tired and had wanted to
hand over the leadership
before the election, but decided to fight on to
rally support for his
Zanu-PF party.
He is said to have chosen
a long-time ally, Emmerson Mnangagwa, as his
eventual
successor.
Three weeks after Zimbabweans went to the polls, Mr
Mugabe appears
increasingly determined to cling to power until a time of his
own choosing,
refusing to concede defeat either in the presidential vote or
in the
parliamentary elections which his party lost to its main rival, the
Movement
for Democratic Change.
Election officials have begun
recounting votes in 23 out of 210
constituencies, amid fears that Mr
Mugabe's party was attempting to overturn
the result.
The
recount was staged as violence against opposition supporters
continued, with
unconfirmed reports of 10 murders over the past week and
allegations from a
human rights group that a network of "torture camps" had
been set up across
the country.
Human Rights Watch claimed that supporters of Mr
Mugabe's party set up
the camps "to systematically target, beat, and torture
people" suspected of
voting for the opposition in last month's
elections.
The Foreign Office cautioned Britons not to travel to
Zimbabwe unless
absolutely essential, "due to the continuing tension
surrounding the
election and the deployment of uniformed forces (police and
military) and
war veterans across the country".
It also warned
British residents: "The current situation is
unpredictable, volatile and
could deteriorate quickly, without warning."
Influential members of
Zanu-PF said that a deal to agree the hand-over
of power from Mr Mugabe to
Mr Mnangagwa, the minister for rural housing and
social amenities, was
hatched during talks in Harare last month.
"Mugabe will hand over
power to Mnangagwa within 1½ years," one said.
"In one meeting,
Mugabe declared he was tired and wanted to step down
and rest. But his fear
was that if he stepped down before the elections,
[MDC leader Morgan]
Tsvangirai would trounce a Zanu-PF presidential
candidate because there were
divisions in the party. Mnangagwa has been
picked as the successor. He has
been going through a grooming programme in
the past three
months."
Mr Mnangagwa was head of Zimbabwe's feared intelligence
service in
1981, during the civil war which followed independence and at a
time when
about 20,000 of the minority Ndebele population were
slaughtered.
Mr Mugabe chose him to head Zimbabwe's delegation at
talks in Lusaka
last week on the crisis. "Mnangagwa is running the party,"
said a Zanu-PF
source.
Reuters
Sat 19 Apr
2008, 21:53 GMT
ACCRA, April 19 (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon
said on Saturday he would discuss the post-election
deadlock in Zimbabwe
with African leaders during a U.N. trade and
development conference in Ghana
which starts on Sunday.
"In the next
few days I will be discussing with President (John) Kufuor (of
Ghana) and
other African leaders who will be in Accra ... the issue about
Zimbabwe and
how to get developments there back to normal," Ban told
reporters on arrival
in Ghana. (Reporting by Kwasi Kpodo; Writing by Nick
Tattersall)
Zanu-PF accused of torture as
Mugabe clings on
Chris McGreal in Harare
The Observer,
Sunday April
20 2008
Zimbabwe's opposition alleged widespread irregularities as the
partial
recount begun yesterday of votes cast in the presidential and
parliamentary
elections held three weeks ago, including ballot boxes with
seals broken
before they were delivered for the count or with no seals at
all.
The Movement for Democratic Change said some boxes had been stuffed
with
votes for President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF in an effort to
overturn
the opposition's capture of a parliamentary majority for the first
time
since independence 28 years ago.
'This is a discount of the
people's will in the guise of a recount,' said
the MDC's spokesman, Nelson
Chamisa. 'We have found ballot boxes already
open or with no seals. We
believe other boxes they opened and forged new
seals. This is not an
isolated problem."
The recount, which state radio said could take three
days, came as the
opposition presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, said
he fears for his
life if he returns to Zimbabwe. Yesterday, Human Rights
Watch accused
Zanu-PF of establishing a network of torture camps in a
campaign against
Tsvangirai's supporters. The recounts are taking place in
23 constituencies,
all but one lost by Zanu-PF to the MDC. Mugabe's party
will regain control
if the MDC's victories are reversed in nine or more
seats.
If Mugabe retains power it would be important to him to also
control
parliament, in part because if he retires before the next election
his
successor as president for the remainder of the six-year term will be
chosen
by MPs.
The recount will also affect the outcome of the
presidential race, which
Tsvangirai claims to have won with a little more
than 50 percent of the vote
based on the MDC's own tally of polling station
returns.
But if the official results do not deliver an outright victory
to either
Mugabe or Tsvangirai the law requires a run-off within three
weeks.
Tsvangirai has vacillated over whether to participate in a second
round,
saying that a fair election is not possible amid surging violence in
rural
areas. The MDC leader, who has been touring southern Africa to drum up
support, has also expressed fears for his own safety and said he will remain
abroad for now.
'It is no use going back to Zimbabwe and becoming
captive. Then you are not
effective. What can you do?' he told a Canadian
newspaper. 'Do you want a
dead hero?'.
The campaign of violence,
called Operation Makavhoterapapi ['Where did you
put your cross?'] by
Zanu-PF officials, has spread across regions where
opposition support surged
in the election.
HRW said it had collected evidence from victims and
witnesses of illegal
detention centres in Mutoko, Mudzi and Bikita 'to round
up and instil fear
in suspected political opponents'.
Georgette
Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said: 'Zanu-PF
members are
setting up torture camps to systematically target, beat and
torture people
suspected of having voted for the MDC. Several individuals
told HRW they had
been held in these camps for up to three days and
interrogated about MDC
leaders, MDC funding, and the location of other MDC
supporters.'
In a
further sign that support for Mugabe is eroding among regional leaders,
Botswana's foreign minister, Phandu Skelemani, took the unusual step of
publicly contradicting South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki, who has said
there is 'no crisis' in Zimbabwe. Skelemani said Mbeki was alone in that
view at a regional summit last weekend.
Former United Nations
secretary general Kofi Annan yesterday urged African
leaders to intervene
urgently. 'The question that has been posed is where
are the Africans? Where
are the leaders of the countries in the region, what
are they doing, how can
they help the situation?' he said in Nairobi. 'It is
a serious crisis with
impact beyond Zimbabwe.'
There were conflicting reports yesterday as to
the destination of a Chinese
ship turned away from South Africa after
dockers in Durban refused to unload
a cargo of weapons destined for Zimbabwe
and a legal rights group won a
court order blocking the delivery.
The
An Yue Jiang was at first reported by a human rights group to be headed
for
Mozambique but was later said to be heading south, possibly destined for
a
friendlier port in Namibia or Angola.
VOA
By Akwei Thompson
Washington, DC
19
April 2008
On Friday Zimbabwe marked its 28th independence
anniversary. President
Robert Mugabe seized the occasion to denounce the
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) and former colonial power
Britain, and also to
accuse the opposition of treason. The country’s high
court on the same day
turned down the opposition’s appeal to have a recount
of the March 29th
election stopped.
On Thursday the leader of the
opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, asked the South
African Development Community
(SADC) to relieve President Thabo Mbeki of his
duties as mediator and
replace him with a special envoy for talks between
SADC and President
Mugabe.
Nelson Chamisa is spokesman for the MDC. Nightline’s Akwei
Thompson first
asked him for his reaction to the high court’s decision to
allow the recount
of the vote. A spokesman for the ZANU-PF declined to be
interviewed.
Chamisa said the decision was quite disappointing
considering the fact that
their case "was very compelling, legally." He said
the decision did not come
as a surprise and that the MDC had actually
“anticipated this kind of
behaviour”. “What we get from this court and this
judgment is that the
courts are working according to the whims and caprices
of this dictatorship
of Mugabe regime and as such it’s very difficult for us
to get any kind of
recourse or relief from Mugabe’s institutions…,” he
added.
Sunday Nation, Kenya
Story by
KENNETH OGOSIA
Publication Date: 4/20/2008 Prime Minister Raila Odinga has
asked leaders of
African countries to act with speed to save Zimbabwe from
collapse.
The PM said the age of dictators was long gone and that
President
Robert Mugabe of the Southern Africa country should not be allowed
to hold
his country to ransom by interfering with the release of election
results
three weeks down the line.
Mr Odinga said President
Mugabe should emulate President Kibaki’s
statesmanship and put the interests
of the nation above his own.
The PM said Africa had witnessed a
series of uprisings including
millitary takeovers due to lack of genuine and
sincere leaders while citing
the case of Zimbabwe, which he labelled
pathetic. Mr Odinga pledged to use
all means necessary to make President
Mugabe retire honourably.
“I sympathise with the people of Zimbabwe
and I will play a key role
in letting him unite his people. African Heads
of States should use force
if necessary to remove people like Mugabe from
power, especially those who
do not want to respect the people’s decision
through the ballot,” he said.
Mr Odinga said democracy in Kenya was
made able by the citizens who
resisted bad governance and monolithic
regimes.
He said Africa, and more so Zimbabwe, needed leaders like
Ghanian
President John Kufuor who saved Kenya from the pain of political
mischief.
“He came to Kenya when the country was on fire, carried a bucket
of water
which he poured onto the fire when some people claimed he came for
a cup of
tea,” Mr Odinga said.
The Prime Minister explained
that by inviting Mr Kofi Annan to broker
a political agreement, President
Kufuor achieved special status for acting
differently from some African
leaders who are shy to “remove the log in
their cohorts’ eyes”.
Mr Odinga was speaking during a dinner hosted in his honour following
his
appointment.
| ||
Ruling party decides to circumvent President Mbeki and deal with Zanu-PF and MDC directly
The African National Congress has taken a decision to sidestep President Thabo Mbeki and directly intervene between Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
The Sunday Times has established that the ANC National Working Committee (NWC) has asked the party’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, to establish contact with Zimbabwe’s two main protagonists in an attempt to bring them to the table.
This separate ANC initiative comes as Mbeki’s mediation efforts in the Zimbabwean crisis took a severe blow as both the MDC and the ANC this week strongly questioned his impartiality as an “honest” mediator.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said that his party had decided to dump Mbeki. It has requested Southern African Development Community (SADC) chairman, Zambia’s President Levy Mwanawasa, to recall Mbeki as the regional body’s mediator in the conflict.
On Thursday, Tsvangirai also met Mbeki’s director-general, Frank Chikane, and Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi to convey his displeasure about Mbeki’s alleged bias.
In a statement on Monday, the ANC appeared to question Mbeki’s impartiality, saying he “needs to observe a neutral position in this matter”.
Mbeki has been widely condemned for his statement, made after a meeting with Mugabe in Harare last weekend, that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe.
Mbeki’s attempts to protect Mugabe were again exposed this week when he tried to sweep the Zimbabwean crisis under the carpet by not including the matter on the agenda of the UN Security Council meeting, of which he was chairman.
But he was forced to put the matter on the agenda by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
“No one thinks, having seen the results at polling stations, that President Mugabe has won this election,” said Brown, who warned that “a stolen election would not be a democratic election at all”.
Brown was backed by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who reiterated his call for the election results to be released, warning that unless there was “a transparent solution to this impasse, the situation could deteriorate further with serious implications for the people of Zimbabwe”. Both leaders were joined by Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, whose country heads the African Union, in condemning Mugabe’s refusal to release the results.
A senior ANC leader who attended the party’s NWC meeting in Cape Town on Monday — where Mbeki’s role in the Zimbabwean crisis was discussed — said the ANC could not ignore the situation in Zimbabwe and claim there was no crisis.
“We cannot adopt Mbeki’s position. What he has said is irrelevant to us, because the ANC has to articulate its position. The ANC is bigger than an individual and it has always had a position on Zimbabwe, but never had a mouth.”
Referring to pictures of a smiling Mbeki walking hand in hand with an ecstatic Mugabe in Harare last weekend, the ANC leader said: “If you hold hands with one of the protagonists in a conflict, you are compromising your objectivity.”
He accused Mbeki of “passing judgement even before arriving at the (SADC) talks” that were convened by Mwanawasa to discuss the Zimbabwe crisis.
Mugabe, whose Zanu-PF has lost the parliamentary elections to the MDC, is believed to have also lost the presidential race to Tsvangirai. This would explain his refusal to release the presidential results, as well as his insistence on a controversial recount of 23 constituencies which he had lost to the MDC.
As the Zimbabwe crisis deepened this week, Mbeki appeared increasingly isolated. Even his own “frustrated” Cabinet broke ranks when, on Thursday, it called for the urgent release of delayed results from Zimbabwe’s presidential election.
Mbeki was not present at the Cabinet meeting, which agreed to release a statement condemning Harare’s withholding of presidential election results.
In an unusual step, government spokesman Themba Maseko described the situation as “dire”.
“Zimbabweans need to be informed about those reasons for holding the results. But the most important thing is that the results need to be verified and released as soon as possible.
“When elections are held and results are not released two weeks after, it is obviously of great concern,” he told a media briefing after Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting.
Although he has subsequently denied that he said there was no crisis in Zimbabwe, Mbeki’s role as a neutral mediator in the Zimbabwe crisis has drawn widespread criticism.
In an interview with the Sunday Times Tsvangirai said: “We have made an assessment informed by various events, the latest being the violence that is being unleashed.
“No public comment, no public denunciation of Mugabe from our mediator (Mbeki). We believe that there have been instances where this continuous bias cannot give credibility to an honest broker.
“We went to President Mwanawasa, explaining these frustrations. I have been under tremendous pressure from our people back home, from the region, from the international community, and I have been the first one to defend President Mbeki.
“But I think we have reached a point where we should draw the attention of SADC to this. We are not happy with the way things are going. The best way, given the extraordinary circumstances we face, is to recuse President Mbeki.”
Tsvangirai revealed that Mbeki said the MDC “must be sensitive to the reaction of Robert Mugabe. But the situation is that we can not all continue to ply to the ego of Robert Mugabe, who is at the centre of the crisis’’.
Sunday Times, SA
Published:Apr 20,
2008
They
might as well be modern-day Romans — for Zimbabweans are tripping the
light
fantastic even as their world caves in, writes Paddy Harper.
My
heart’s in my mouth as I walk towards immigration at Harare International
Airport. There’s a weird silence hanging over the terminal — seemingly a
million miles, but less than two hours from OR Tambo.
I think I’ve
got a fair enough reason to be scared. I’m here illegally, to
cover what’s
arguably the most important election in Zimbabwe’s history. I’ve
just
realised that my press card is still in my wallet. I also discover I’ve
lost
my passport. Photographer Esa Alexander — my partner for the gig — is
up
ahead of me. We’re studiously avoiding each other in a bid to stay under
the
radar.
The night before, four border jumpers like ourselves — we later
start
referring to the journos accredited with the Zimbabwean government as
embedded — were picked up. That can cost us three months of a boiled
peanuts-only diet and God knows what else at Harare’s notorious Chikurubi
Prison.
A cleaner finds my passport before the plane leaves; the
immigration guys
buy my story about being an IT jock on holiday. I’m
through.
We go to the Hotel Bronte. It’s in the Avenues, a beautiful part
of Harare
which has become the heart of its red-light district and part of
its party
zone. We settle and get working.
That night I’m game for a
drink and it’s off to the bar for me. Alexander is
Muslim and doesn’t drink
or hang out in drinking holes. He deals with his
fear in the
gym.
It’s Friday, and I don’t know it yet, but bars and clubs are to
become a key
centre of my work. As a border jumper, I have to — in the main
— get to talk
to people without letting on who and what I am. It goes
against the grain of
my journalism, but there’s no choice and it gives me an
entry point into the
crazed, hedonistic world that is Harare — a place where
people drink with a
capital D, where thousands think nothing of partying
till 5am on a
weeknight, where the bulk of business is done in the dark.
It’s clear that
the years of economic collapse, paranoia and uncertainty
have taken their
toll and spawned a heaving culture of self-obliteration,
where people live
for now and act like there is no tomorrow.
The
Bronte’s bar turns out to be an office for the classier hookers working
the
Avenues and profiteers who capitalise on the insane inflation rate, to
turn
forex into literally billions upon billions of Zim dollars. It’s also
infested with Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) operatives and Zanu-PF
cadres celebrating the election “victory” (the hacks and spooks in the place
outnumber even the whores).
I meet up with Mike Madidi, the son of a
leading Zanu-PF politician, who is
in shipping.
Madidi, like many
Zimbabweans of his class who I meet over the next 10 days,
couldn’t give a
toss about politics. He just wants to make money and party.
Every time I see
him he’s doing a deal and has a beer in his hand, 10am or
10pm.
I’m
joined by Lucretia and Isobel, two whores who want double brandies with
Stoney ginger beer and offer to “ suck your dick till you cry, baby” for
US20 a piece. I turn them down and head for my room and a conversation with
a litre of Glendiffich 12 from duty-free.
After deadline the next day
we hook up with the other Sunday Times crew in
Zimbabwe, Jimmy Oatway and
Charles Molele. It’s great to see them: they’re
having the same sense of
paranoia we have and there’s a false sense of
security in numbers.
We
hit Amanzi, an upmarket fusion-food restaurant on Enterprise Road, where
many of the foreign diplomats live. It’s wall-to-wall opulence: a bottle of
Aussie Shiraz weighs in at Z1.5-billion.
Then it’s Mannenberg, a way
cool jazz club where blues guitarist Dave Ndoro
and his band are sharing the
bill with the Luck Street Blues Band. It’s
rocking. Dave is shit-hot and
tears the place up with his screaming electric
blues. The punters are
drinking like crazy. We’re up for it. There’s a lot
of fear and deadline
anxiety to work off. By the end of the gig we’re bent.
The bill:
half-a-metre of Z10-million notes. We’re unfazed — the sheer
volume of the
notes we have to cough up makes it Monopoly money. We’re
starting to think
like Zimbabweans already. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so
sad.
Next
stop is Circus at Avondale with Edith Chihuri, a stunning 27- year-old
boutique owner from Kwekwe, about three hours’ drive from Harare, who I meet
at Mannenberg. The door at Circus costs Z1.8-billion for the two of
us.
Inside is a seething mass of flesh, amazing porn-star honeys, 50 Cent
wannabees holding court, all East Side/West Side banging, bling city. We
fight our way upstairs and meet Chihuri’s bra, Sam Takawira, white-clad from
head to toe, sunglasses at night. He’s connected and a real heavy hitter. We
get couches in the VIP area and hit the private dance floor.
Chihuri
introduces me to sele sele, baby (ass ass, baby), the dance craze
sweeping
Harare’s clubs. She faces away from me, bends at the waist and
thrusts her
tungsten ass against my crotch, gyrating in circles while I hold
her waist
to keep us joined. We go down, then up, then down again. Lock and
go up. All
around us couples are doing the same. It’s pure sex on the
dancefloor,
doggy-style to Dr Dre.
Elections? “I don’t want to talk about politics. I
want to have fun,” is
Chihuri’s response. “We’re sick of politics, we just
want to live life and
make a living, that’s all. Whoever wins the elections,
nothing is going to
change for a long time. For now, we just want to
live.”
The next day I meet Chris Wagner, a mixed-race shopowner who’s a
serious
ganja smoker. Wagner smokes his spliffs of hard-core Malawi manyisa
rolled
in Z10-million notes, “because they burn better than telephone-book
pages
and have less ink”. There have been no Rizla papers in Harare for the
past
two years, says Wagner, whose blades from Joburg ran out a month ago.
The
Harare drug scene? Local weed — Swazi-type gear, but with less kick — is
Z25-million a sloop (parcel); manyisa twice that. A gram of coke
(Z2.5-billion) is available outside many clubs.
That night we bolt
from the Bronte. We’ve realised it’s hot. We move in with
Oatway and Molele,
in an upmarket lodge about 30km from the Harare CBD. A
contact links me with
opposition MPs, youth activists, the unions and
human-rights groups. It’s a
flashback to working in South Africa in the ’80s,
but harder: the terrain’s
unknown, any meeting could be a trap .
Every interview involves hours of
preparation. It takes four days to rent a
black-market SIM card — it’s
virtually impossible to get one legally. The
network’s so overloaded that it
takes five or six tries to get a text
message through. Calls: don’t
bother.
Monday and Tuesday nights are spent at the lodge. Beer in the
Jacuzzi, then
we deal with my Glenfiddich, Oatway’s 15-year-old Solera
Reserve and Molele’s
Glenmorangie. By Wednesday we’re cavesick and hit The
Book Café next to
Mannenberg. Anjiii, a massive coloured woman with a
travelling audience from
her district, is blasting soul and R‘n’B
covers.
Then it’s Sports Diner in Samora Machel Avenue. It’s the 10th
South African
province: the beer and music are from home ; Champions League
football on
the big screen. Next stop is Tipperary, a whorehouse with a
dance floor,
overpriced drinks, nightfighters in search of dollars, hustlers
selling
three-packs of condoms outside.
It’s nearly daybreak when we
leave. Tipperary is still choked. Nicky Moyo,
who works as a waiter where we
stay, jols there. “You should see it on
weekends,” he says. “People party
till 8am, go sleep and come back at 12pm
and start drinking. That’s what we
do.”
Bina Dube, vice-president of the Zimbabwe National Student’s Union,
believes
the stresses of life in an oppressive society and a general sense
of
hopelessness fuel the drinking culture among the poor, while the rich
“simply don’t care about anyone else”.
“It’s selfishness, believe you
me. We have people who are capitalising on
government policies to get rich
and don’t care what happens to the rest of
us.”
Andrew Marshall, an
activist who is my contact man with the unions,
attributes the hedonism to a
life of uncertainty in an imploded economy — to
living in a society where
the real money is made in the dark, where you
break the law to live. He
equates the Harare upper and middle classes with
the “me generation” of
Congress-run India, children of varying levels of
privilege so insulated
from the economic and social deprivation of others
that they simply cease to
care.
“We have a whole class and generation of people whose families have
benefited from the political system, who are still comfortable despite the
collapse of the economy, who are making astronomical profits on the black
market. There are no norms and standards. We have more Hummers in the
streets than any other African city, when people have to queue for days for
petrol. That is what you are seeing.”
Zimbabweans want to drink,
dance, f*** and forget. With the conditions we’re
working under — where
business is conducted in a philosophical darkness,
where to survive you have
to deny who and what you are — it’s hard not to
follow suit.
Sele
sele, baby.
a.. Names have have been changed to protect people’s
identity
The Telegraph
By Stephen Bevan
Last Updated: 12:07am
BST 20/04/2008
Charged with 'practising journalism',
the Sunday Telegraph's Stephen
Bevan was locked up in Harare. Here he
describes the misery endured by him
and the hundreds of others jailed
routinely for 'arbitrary' reasons
Even over the noise of downtown
Harare I could hear the beep from my
mobile phone announcing a new text
message.
I was in the back of a pick-up truck bumping through the
rush-hour
traffic. Beside me, my fellow accused, Barry Bearak, the
Johannesburg-based
correspondent for The New York Times, sat lost in
concentration.
Our destination was Harare Central police station,
the headquarters of
the Orwellian-sounding Law and Order Division of the
Zimbabwe Republic
Police (ZRP).
A female police officer pulled
my phone out of her bag.
"You've got a message," she said. "It's
from Colin Freeman [the chief
foreign correspondent of The Sunday
Telegraph]. 'Are you OK?' "
She laughed, clearly enjoying the joke,
while I stared helplessly at
my phone, my gut churning.
Barely 36
hours earlier, I had left my home in Pretoria, South Africa,
one of dozens
of journalists heading into Zimbabwe, despite the government's
refusal to
give accreditation to all but a handful from "friendly"
countries, such as
China and Iran.
We were all aware of the dangers. Yet, as I flew
into Harare airport
there was a mood of excited optimism.
The
BBC and CNN were reporting that Robert Mugabe was ready to step
down after
losing to the opposition in the March 29 "Harmonised Elections".
Even the
immigration officers seemed more relaxed.
But by the time I checked
into York Lodge, a guesthouse popular with
foreign journalists, on April 2,
the mood had begun to change. The result of
the presidential vote had still
not been made public. One leading civil
activist told me that Mugabe would
never leave power of his own volition.
"Imagine a picture of evil
then darken it, that's Mugabe," they told
me. Already there were reports of
attacks on opposition supporters in the
rural constituencies, a taste of the
violence to come.
I had been there for only an hour when there was
an urgent knock on
the door. It was one of the staff.
"The
police are here. You should leave - you can go through the gate
in the
garden."
I grabbed my laptop and backpack and headed towards the
garden. But I
had taken only a few steps when, from behind me, someone
barked: "Where are
you going? Stay where you are."
I turned to
see a large man in a dark suit and trainers. Suddenly,
there were police
everywhere - some carrying guns. I was surrounded.
Barry told me
later that there were more than 40 police officers. One,
Jasper Musademba -
whom we later dubbed the singing policeman for his habit
of singing and
dancing while tapping out a charge sheet on an ancient
typewriter - had
threatened to shoot him if he left the hotel room.
While they were
busy with Barry, I asked one of the staff to let the
British Embassy know
what was happening.
Meanwhile, across the city, the feared secret
service, the CIO, were
raiding the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change's centre of
operations. President Mugabe's regime was tightening its
grip and we were
like flies caught in its web.
It was dark by
the time we reached the police station. Filing into the
inner quadrangle of
Harare Central - a vast Rhodesian era complex infamous
as a centre of
torture - I was struck by the beautifully maintained gardens.
They
would be an odd sight anywhere in this city, but here at the
heart of one of
the most feared institutions in Harare, they seemed surreal.
The
impression of carefully maintained order was quickly dispelled,
however, as
we entered the Law and Order offices on the second floor, all
peeling
paintwork, scuffed floors and battered furniture, with barely a
computer to
be seen. By now my legs were shaking.
We sat in a line facing our
chain-smoking accuser, Det Insp Dani
Rangwani, a thin restless man with
large watery eyes and close-cropped hair,
dressed in a scruffy, shapeless
checked jacket and baggy trousers.
"No one has told me what me what
I am being charged with," I said.
Rangwani paused and reached for
another cigarette. "You are being
charged with practising
journalism."
He spat the words out. "That is collecting, processing
and
disseminating information as a journalist without accreditation." He
gave a
shy smile.
It was to set the tone for all our dealings
with the police - an
unsettling combination of civility and friendliness,
with an undertone of
menace.
I had the sense of being a pawn in
a game in which I did not
understand the rules. As Beatrice Mtetwa, our
fiercely bright and tireless
lawyer, told me: "In your case, this is
political, so there are no rules."
The hostile interrogation I had
prepared myself for on the night of
our arrest turned out instead to be
little more than a mild form-filling
exercise.
"Was that it?" I
asked Beatrice, incredulously, afterwards. It was
only when we were taken to
the cells that the brutal reality of our
situation really hit
me.
With each step we took down the filthy unlit corridors towards
the
cell block, the knot in my stomach tightened.
Inside,
the air was thick with the scent of unwashed bodies and years of
ingrained
dirt. The two night guards, dressed in the green uniform of the
ZRP and
smart brown shoes, entered our names in a huge register before we
were led
to the back office, where another guard lay snoring on the desk.
Our
belongings and money were recorded on a slip then placed inside a canvas
bag.
Panicking at the thought of being thrown into a filthy, crowded
cell where
we might be attacked, I offered money to the guards to let us
sleep
downstairs.
They agreed and we spent the night curled up on a
wide wooden bench. As an
extra concession, they allowed us to keep all our
clothes on.
We sat hunched against the wall watching the cockroaches
zig-zag across the
filthy floor. "Cockroaches the size of skateboards,"
joked Barry.
Not for the first time I thanked my luck that we had been
arrested together.
His calm presence and dry wit brought even the most
frightening situation
down to scale.
What sleep I got was brief and
restless. It was autumn in Harare and,
without a blanket, it was bitterly
cold.
By morning, my hip bones were aching from rubbing against the hard
wood. The
scene of my arrest played over in my mind and the thought of my
family back
in Pretoria, my wife, Melinda, and our two sons, worrying about
me made me
feel sick.
I was woken the next morning by one of the
guards shaking me. "You must go
to the cells now. My bosses will be coming,"
he said.
Reluctantly, we stripped off layers of clothing and removed our
socks and
belts. Prisoners are allowed only one layer of clothing and no
shoes, socks
or other possessions.
The guard led us up the stairs to
another gate. It was pitch black and the
stench was almost
overwhelming.
"It's the official smell - urine and excrement," said
Barry. We followed the
guard through another iron gate.
"I've got a
smart room for you," said the guard, oblivious to the irony, as
he led us
into an empty room - a rare privilege in a place where they pack
up to 14
men in a cell.
The dawn light through the only window high up the back
wall revealed a
large brick box, about six metres by two and a half. On both
sides were huge
bunks with three concrete shelves. It was bare. There were
no mattresses or
blankets.
Behind a low wall, was a concrete shelf
with a hole in it - the powerful
stench of excrement signalled that this was
the lavatory. "Call
housekeeping," I joked.
The only water supply was
a broken tap. Prisoners are not expected to wash.
"To hell with Mugabe,"
said the graffiti scratched into one wall - a
sentiment I
shared.
Exhausted, we hauled ourselves onto the top bunks, where there
was at least
room to sit up. We chatted about past trips, books, children -
anything but
our increasingly desperate situation. Eventually, we lapsed
into silence.
The sounds of the market and bus station outside only
highlighted our
isolation.
As I lay on the concrete shelf, a tiny
creature with a flat grey body fell
onto my leg and I flicked it off into
the darkness below. But another was
making its way downwards and more were
emerging from the cracks between the
bunks and the wall.
Gradually, I
realised the entire cell was crawling with bugs. I pulled my
hoodie tight
over my head and tried to ignore them. The sensation of insects
crawling and
biting every inch of my body, together with the hard concrete
bed made
trying to sleep torture.
After I was released, I discovered I had
scabies, a skin disease caused by
tiny mites that lay their eggs under the
skin.
Each morning, prisoners would compare bites and give us advice on
which
cells had the worst infestation.
"Agh, they never clean these
cells. No one should be kept in these
conditions. It's hell in here," said
Donald, a short, wiry 30-year-old who
had been arrested for poaching - on a
bus in Harare. When I met him, he had
not eaten for two days and he begged
me to get a message to his brother,
letting him know where he
was.
Like many of the prisoners at Harare Central, his case seemed almost
arbitrary. Many were never charged, they were simply held over the weekend
or until they paid the required bribe to the police.
Few had formal
jobs. Simbaya, a 20-year-old arrested after a dispute over
money, worked as
a printer before his newspaper was closed down. Now he buys
and sells mobile
phones for the black market.
"It's the only way to survive," he said. "We
must have change. The old man
[Mugabe] should go."
As the only whites
among the hundred or so prisoners, we were both a source
of fascination and,
more importantly, of food.
In Zimbabwe's prisons the only food and water
is brought by your friends or
family. If they don't know you are in jail, or
don't care, you starve.
Fortunately, the consular staff from the British
and American embassies, who
took it in turns each morning and evening to
bring in supplies, gave us
enough to share.
At meal times, desperate
prisoners would surge forward, pleading with the
guards to be allowed
downstairs to the "feeding pen" so they could share our
food.
At the
start of each day, the cells were unlocked and we shuffled single
file up to
a large bare room, one floor above. It was a relief to breathe
fresh air and
feel the warmth of the sunlight streaming through the gaps
high up in the
walls.
Our names were called out from the register and then we were each
searched
carefully. I recall the pathetic terror I felt when I thought the
pair of
socks I had hidden down my boxer shorts might be discovered and
taken away.
Luckily, I managed to manoeuvre them into the sleeves of my
hoodie and
escaped detection.
At the suggestion of one of the other
prisoners, I had offered money to one
of the guards for some blankets. That
night as we were spreading them out on
the top bunk, Barry slipped and fell,
injuring his back.
We worried that he might have broken a rib and many
outside were convinced
he had been beaten, but we were always well treated
by the guards.
Most days we would be called out of the cells by one of
the detectives and
walked barefoot to their offices where we would find
Beatrice and the
consular staff waiting for us.
To the police it
seemed as if it were a game. Our lawyer explained to Det
Insp Rangwani that
the offence of "practising journalism without
accreditation" was no longer a
criminal offence - something none of us had
realised.
It had been
superseded by a new offence of "holding oneself out as an
accredited
journalist" with a maximum sentence of two years. She also said
that they
had no evidence to suggest that either of us had been reporting,
he simply
looked sheepish and laughed.
It seemed that they were determined to make
an example of us. When the
Attorney General's office told the police that
there was no case against and
we should be released, they simply ignored it
and kept us anyway, saying
that they didn't agree with the
decision.
Later, they claimed to have returned to the AG's office with
more evidence
and persuaded the law officers to reverse their decision, but
it was a
transparent lie and there was no record of either the visit or the
second
decision.
But when the government itself flouts the law by
condoning violence against
the opposition and by attempting to rig the
election, why should anyone be
surprised that the police and prosecution
services have no respect for it?
Frequently, prosecutors fail to turn up
at court or turn up late - as they
did several times in our case. A
favourite police tactic is to re-arrest
someone, preferably on a Thursday,
so they can hold them over the weekend.
What is perhaps most
extraordinary is that there are still magistrates who
are prepared to stand
up to the police, as our young magistrate did.
"The magistrates are just
ordinary people and they are suffering like
everyone else," explained
Beatrice. "They are paid so little they can barely
afford to buy a
Coca-Cola."
Indeed, it is a wonder that they function at all. At Harare
Magistrates
Court the clocks have stopped at 7.10 because there is no money
to replace
the batteries. There are no stenographers, so magistrates and
lawyers take
their own notes.
For a while, after we had been granted
bail on the Monday after our arrest,
it looked as though we might have to
stay in the cells another night because
the clerk's office had run out of
bail receipts.
But we were lucky. We could afford a lawyer, something
that is out of reach
for most ordinary Zimbabweans. Some prisoners slip
through the cracks.
During one of the frequent interruptions to our case,
we watched as the
magistrate was asked to send one prisoner back to remand,
where he had
languished since 2006, because the prosecution had "lost" his
docket. She
berated the prosecutor and released the man
immediately.
Giving her reasons for releasing us, the magistrate said the
State had
"dismally failed to prove reasonable suspicion" and was "lingering
in limbo,
scratching their heads trying to come up with a
charge".
But it was clear to me that the prosecution was simply going
through the
motions and had been told by their bosses to let our case
go.
Even so, we were taking no chances. We were warned that the police
might
re-arrest us if we used Harare airport, so we decided to go overland
to
Zambia and get a flight to Johannesburg from Lusaka.
A friend had
already provided a car and driver with the relevant
documentation and
suggested we headed for a sleepy border post used mostly
by tourists, where
even Barry's expired Zimbabwean entry visa raised little
more than an
eyebrow.
As we passed derelict farms and shabby towns where the petrol
stations have
no fuel and the shops have only empty shelves, I felt almost
guilty for
leaving. For me the waiting was over - but for Zimbabwe the agony
continues.
The Sunday Times
April 20, 2008
China returns to africa: A Superpower and
a Continent Embrace edited by
Christopher Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo de
Oliveira
The Sunday Times review by Max Hastings
In the era of Mao
Tse-tung, 40 years ago, one of the commoner sights in the
African bush was
that of a gang of local labourers sweating on a road or
railway line under
the supervision of Chinese comrades, who scampered
hastily into the trees
with their Little Red Books whenever a westerner hove
into
view.
China made a determined ideological thrust into the continent in
the 1960s -
and was humiliated. Mao's men learnt by painful experience that
Africa mocks
“isms”. Beijing's local clients, President Julius Nyere of
Tanzania notable
among them, contrived the economic wreck of their own
societies with their
disastrous experiments in socialism. When the social
engineers were deposed,
the Chinese comrades departed discredited with
them.
In the past 15 years, however, a new Chinese invasion of Africa has
taken
place. This is infinitely more pragmatic than the last one, and driven
by a
quest for energy and raw materials. It is being conducted with some
skill,
and backed by China's huge new wealth. Its implications are likely to
be
much more far-reaching than the past Maoist adventures, and thus they
prompt
corresponding alarm among western powers.
Anybody interested
in the continent, and in the rise of Chinese power, needs
to know what is
going on. The editors of this hefty volume have assembled
essays by 24
academics of a dozen nationalities, who possess exceptional
knowledge of
China's operations in Africa. Successive chapters address such
diverse
subjects as the social influence of the 750,000-strong Chinese
diaspora in
the continent; Chinese medicine; the history of the disastrous
Tanzanian
railway; and, most important, the progress of Beijing's drive to
buy into
oil and mineral resources the length and breadth of the continent.
The
outcome is scarcely bedside reading, but it presents an impressive and
balanced study of one of the most important developments in the modern
world. Beijing fetes African leaders, and in 2006 held a showpiece “Forum on
China-Africa Co-operation” to celebrate its new strategic partnership. That
year, two-way trade accounted for almost £30 billion.
Some 800
Chinese companies have already invested £6 billion in African
countries, and
there is more - much more - to come. The editors of this book
say in their
introduction: “China's expanding relations with Africa are the
most
important dynamic in the foreign relations and politics of the
continent
since the end of the cold war.” The Chinese offer African
countries three
things: big money - usually significantly more than western
competitors will
pay; long-term commitments; and Beijing's cool, ruthless
assurance of
“non-interference”, which means that local dignitaries will not
be troubled
by the tiresome needling they get from Europeans and Americans
about human
rights and corruption. The tyrannies of Sudan and Zimbabwe have
been
especially notable beneficiaries. President Robert Mugabe has responded
enthusiastically, urging his subjects to “look East”. Likewise, a former
Nigerian president told Chinese guests enthusiastically: “When you're
leading the world, we want to be very close behind you.”
The book notes
that the Chinese media enthuses about Africa's future in a
very different
key from western reports and prophesies of gloom and doom.
Chinese leaders
tour the continent assiduously. Chinese traders flourish in
Cape Verde and
Senegal, Chinese cash funds industrial take-off in Mauritius,
and is
rebuilding the infrastructure of war-torn Angola. China is buying
feed from
Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania; cobalt from
South
Africa and Congo; copper from Zambia and South Africa; ferrous metals
from
Mauritania, South Africa and Zimbabwe; chemicals from Niger; oil from
everywhere it can buy the stuff. Angola has now overtaken Saudi-Arabia as
China's biggest supplier.
The authors are even-handed in assessing
the costs and benefits to the
continent of Chinese engagement. On the credit
side, increased competition
for commodities has boosted the prices paid to
producers. Paranoia about
“Chinese imperialism” would ill-become the West,
since many of the trade
practices adopted by Beijing have been commonplace
among western companies
since the 19th century. Almost everybody has always
been in Africa for what
they could get out of it. China's engagement does,
however, incur risks and
costs of which sophisticated Africans are
increasingly aware. Reliance on
capital-intensive commodity industries does
little to help the poorest
people in poor societies, and risks trapping
their economies in
price-volatile activities. Much of Beijing's money goes
straight into the
pockets of Africa's rich elites, and thereafter into Swiss
banks.
Trevor Ncube, a Zimbabwean newspaper publisher living in South
Africa, says
sardonically: “If the British were our masters yesterday, the
Chinese have
come and taken their place.” Western pressure on African
leaders about human
rights may be ineffectual, but Chinese pressure is
nonexistent. It is an
ugly spectacle to see China backing Sudan and Zimbabwe
in world forums. In
2005, China opposed debate in the UN Security Council
about Mugabe's
appalling demolition campaign, which left 700,000 Zimbabweans
homeless. The
book cites a spokesman of the Kenyan government saying
approvingly: “You
never hear the Chinese saying that they will not finish a
project because
the government has not done enough to tackle corruption. If
they are going
to build a road, it will be built.” The Chinese ambassador in
Zambia showed
his country's claws with unusual directness during the
country's last
election in 2006. He publicly threatened dire consequences if
the “wrong”
candidate, from Beijing's perspective, secured the
presidency.
Christopher Clapham, the editor of the Journal of Modern
African Studies,
argues in his contribution: “In the longer term, no
external power with
long-term interests in Africa can escape the issue of
‘governance', because
this is the essential precondition for maintaining
stable economic
relationships.” Clapham also suggests, interestingly, that
China may suffer
from the absence of any spiritual dimension in this
“deeply, indeed
intensely spiritual continent, in which the rival agendas of
Christianity
and Islam, along with extensive indigenous systems of belief,
are best
understood not merely as some new kind of religious cold war, but
as an
extremely important part of ongoing attempts to make sense of human
life
under rapidly changing and often deeply troubling
circumstances”.
Yet it suits African dictatorships to do business with
China, which is
content to deal exclusively with state actors, heedless of
their brutality
or corruption, and ignores political oppositions and
employees' lobbies.
Beijing offers them a real alternative to dealing with
the West and its
heavy moral baggage. Christopher Alden, a lecturer in
international
relations at the LSE, writes: “Africans, as agents of their
own destiny to
an extent not seen before, are increasingly deciding the
shape that
relations with Asian states will take rather than allowing these
to be
experienced and understood through western eyes.”
Clapham
believes, however, that Chinese cultural penetration of the
continent will
be limited by lack of inclination on both sides, together
with the absence
of any shared historical memory. He notes that many African
countries, even
in the 21st century, still choose to do business with the
nations that
colonised them - the Congolese with Belgium; the Senegalese
with France; the
Eritreans with Italy; the Ghanians, Nigerians and many
others with Britain.
In other words, China's engagement in Africa, while
likely to persist and
indeed grow much more important, may remain restricted
to the economic
sphere. The West, Clapham believes, still has much to offer
the continent
that the Chinese cannot or will not match.
He may be right. The authors
of this book are surely correct, in refusing to
take a high moral line about
what the Chinese are doing in Africa. Their
economic offensive should be
measured coolly against the West's past
policies there, which have scarcely
been unselfish. But it would be nice to
hope that the optimists are right:
that Africans themselves will soon recoil
from China's shamelessly cynical
cash-and-carry policy, which flaunts its
absolute indifference to the
interests of indigenous people. Western
moralising may sometimes be
hypocritical, but it is surely preferable to the
absence of any morality at
all in dealing with the likes of Mugabe.
CHINA RETURNS TO AFRICA: A
Superpower and a Continent Embrace edited by
Christopher Alden, Daniel Large
and Ricardo de Oliveira
Hurst £25 pp400