(HRW)
Date: 29 Apr 2008
AU and UN Security Council Should Act to
Help Protect Zimbabweans at Risk
(Johannesburg, April 29, 2008) – The
Zimbabwean army is responsible for a
new wave of rights violations
throughout Zimbabwe, Human Rights Watch said
today. Military forces are
providing arms and trucks to so-called ‘war
veterans’ who have been
implicated in numerous acts of torture and other
violence against opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) members and
supporters.
‘The
army and its allies – ‘war-veterans’ and supporters of the ruling party
ZANU-PF – are intensifying their brutal grip on wide swathes of rural
Zimbabwe to ensure that a possible second round of presidential elections
goes their way,’ said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights
Watch. ‘The African Union and UN Security Council should take immediate
steps to help prevent a further escalation in violence.’
Human Rights
Watch called on the African Union and the UN Security Council
to intervene
in the crisis to protect Zimbabweans at increasing risk of
violence. They
should publicly and privately press the government to stop
the violence,
take action against those responsible, and take steps to
ensure that the
police and army remain impartial and act to protect all
Zimbabweans. They
should also urge the government to permit international
human rights
monitors and the media unfettered access to the country.
In the aftermath
of general elections that took place on March 29, 2008,
Human Rights Watch
has documented serious abuses in the worst-affected areas
of Zimbabwe – the
capital Harare, and the provinces of Mashonaland East,
West, and Central,
Manicaland, and Masvingo. Members and supporters of the
Zimbabwe African
National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), the army, police,
and ‘war
veterans’ have organized and carried out a brutal campaign of
torture and
intimidation against anyone perceived as supporting the MDC.
According to
scores of victims and eyewitnesses interviewed by Human Rights
Watch,
ZANU-PF supporters and ‘war veterans’ are drawing up lists of MDC
activists
who are then systematically targeted for abuse. These ZANU-PF
allies are
also forcing people to attend meetings to swear allegiance to
ZANU-PF and
denounce those remaining MDC supporters.
For example, Human Rights Watch
investigations in Manicaland province
indicate that ZANU-PF supporters are
collaborating with the army in
unleashing a campaign of terror and violence
against MDC members and
supporters. Eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch
that ‘war veterans’ have
set up camp at an army base called ‘Three Brigade,’
which is the official
military barracks in Manicaland. Sources told Human
Right Watch that the
army had given the ‘war veterans’ guns and army trucks
to carry out raids on
the homes of known MDC supporters and members.
Military officers are also
directly involved in these raids.
On April
23, in Manicaland, a group of ‘war veterans’ and ZANU-PF supporters
fired at
a group of 22 MDC activists who had enquired about the whereabouts
of 12 MDC
supporters. Earlier the ‘war veterans’ had abducted the 12 MDC
supporters
and taken them to Chiwetu Rest Camp – an informal torture center
set up by
the ‘war veterans’ and ZANU-PF youth in Makoni West, Manicaland
province.
When the MDC activists arrived at the camp they found up to 50
‘war
veterans’ and ZANU-PF supporters – 12 of whom were armed. The ‘war
veterans’
ordered the activists to sit on the ground and then fired shots
into the
air. As the MDC activists tried to flee, the war veterans fired
another
round of shots, this time at the group, hitting three of them. One
activist,
Tabeth Marume, was shot in the stomach and died of her wounds on
the way to
the hospital. Two other activists were also injured during the
incident.
One of the victims of the shooting told Human Rights Watch
that the man who
fired the shot that killed Tabeth Marume was a known ‘war
veteran.’ When the
victims informed the local police about the incident, the
police refused to
take action, claiming that such an incident could not have
happened since
they had no knowledge of any civilians in the area who were
allowed to keep
firearms.
The current whereabouts of the 12 abducted
MDC supporters are not known. The
activists who went to the camp told Human
Rights Watch that they saw their
colleagues at the camp with their hands
tied behind their backs, lying on
their stomachs. They said the 12 activists
were badly bruised and injured.
The activists also reported to Human Rights
Watch that they later saw the
‘war veterans’ bundle their colleagues into
pickup trucks and drive off.
The lack of arrests and investigations into
this and other incidents of
organized political violence carried out by
ZANU-PF and its allies contrasts
starkly with the arrest of 215 people last
Friday accused of committing
reprisal attacks against ZANU-PF, Human Rights
Watch said. Human Rights
Watch expressed concern that those arrests were
politically motivated
(http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/04/25/zimbab18653.htm).
‘With
increasing incidents of politically motivated, state-sponsored
violence in
Zimbabwe it is essential the African Union and the UN Security
Council work
together to press for the protection of civilians,’ said
Gagnon. ‘Getting
international human rights monitors and the media on the
ground provides
Zimbabweans some protection in the face of the escalating
crackdown by the
army and police.’
© Copyright, Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth
Avenue, 34th Floor New York, NY
10118-3299 USA
New York Times
Editorial
Zimbabwe's
president continues to terrorize his opponents while withholding
the results
of the election he lost.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008; Page A18
THE
EVIDENCE is now overwhelming that the Zimbabwean regime of Robert Mugabe
is
engaged in a massive, orchestrated and brutal campaign to punish and
terrorize its opponents. Security forces and militia groups loyal to the
84-year-old autocrat have rampaged across the countryside for the past
month, targeting opposition activists and whole villages suspected of having
voted against the government in the March 29 elections. In some areas,
torture camps have been established where victims are taken and beaten while
their homes are looted and burned. The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association
said yesterday that at least 10 people have been killed and hundreds
displaced; the opposition Movement for Democratic Change counts 15 dead,
3,000 refugees and 500 hospitalized.
While this criminal repression
goes on, Mr. Mugabe is still blocking the
release of the results of the
presidential vote held one month ago. Using
totals posted by individual
election districts, independent monitors have
calculated that opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai defeated Mr. Mugabe by a
wide margin, though it is
not clear whether he obtained the 50 percent
majority needed to avoid a
runoff. But while the electoral commission
finally confirmed Saturday that
the opposition won a majority in Parliament,
it has repeatedly delayed the
certification of the presidential vote;
yesterday it said it would not begin
until Thursday. While the bureaucrats
drag their feet, Mr. Mugabe's campaign
of terror continues in the
countryside -- and virtually ensures that if a
presidential runoff is held
it will not be free or fair. "What we are
witnessing constitutes a form of
rigging," said the chairman of the human
rights association.
In few places in the world could such a brazen
operation proceed without
triggering intervention by neighbors or the United
Nations. Sadly, Zimbabwe
remains one of those places, largely because the
president of its most
powerful neighbor, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, has
chosen to shield Mr.
Mugabe from pressure. Though the U.N. Security Council
finally met to
consider the Zimbabwean situation yesterday, it did so in
private and issued
no statement -- because its current chairman happens to
be from South
Africa. The Southern African Development Community has been
similarly
stymied, even though its chairman, Zambia's Levy Mwanawasa, has
courageously
stood up against Mr. Mugabe.
The rest of the world can
no longer allow this criminal violence to continue
unpunished. To its
credit, the European Union yesterday endorsed a British
proposal for a
global arms embargo against Zimbabwe, which this month tried
to import a
shipload of arms from China. The Bush administration dispatched
an assistant
secretary of state, Jendayi Frazer, to the region in an attempt
to mobilize
pressure on Mr. Mugabe. In an interview with the Associated
Press on Sunday,
Ms. Frazer correctly said that "the international community
has a
responsibility to step in and try to stop that government from beating
its
own population." The United States should begin working immediately with
other members of the Security Council on an arms embargo and other sanctions
aimed at forcing an end to the violence -- and compelling Mr. Mugabe to
accept the election results.
International Herald Tribune
By Warren Hoge and Celia W. Dugger Published: April 30,
2008
UNITED NATIONS: The Security Council heard on Tuesday
what an American
official called a "sobering" account of electoral stalemate
and violence in
Zimbabwe, but ended up discouraging proposals for direct
United Nations
involvement in the crisis.
"There are a number of
delegations that don't believe the Council should be
engaged on this, which
is regrettable," said the official, Alejandro Wolff,
the deputy American
ambassador.
The briefing, delivered to a closed session of the Council by
B. Lynn
Pascoe, the under secretary general for political affairs, prompted
calls
from the United States and its European allies for sending a
fact-finding
mission or special envoy to the country.
Karen Pierce,
Britain's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said Pascoe
had spoken of
"a level of political intimidation and violence that I think
many Council
members found quite chilling."
But diplomats said the proposals ran into
opposition led by South Africa,
this month's president of the Council. "It's
their country; we don't need a
special envoy," said Dumisani Kumalo, the
South African ambassador.
Arguing that the electoral impasse did not
constitute the kind of threat to
international peace and security that
demands the Council's involvement,
Kumalo said: "Different countries hold
elections; some do it very well, some
do it not so well. That is the only
way you can look at elections around the
world."
The final results of the
March 29 election in Zimbabwe have still not been
released, and the delay
has led to accusations that the nation's autocratic
president, Robert
Mugabe, is trying to ward off what appears to have been a
defeat for him and
his ruling party, ZANU-PF.
Tendai Biti, the general secretary of the
opposition Movement for Democratic
Change, or MDC, called the outcome of the
Council consultations "tragic as
it is disappointing." He added that some
countries "have decided to play
Ping-Pong with our people."
Pascoe
said that the United Nations had "a great deal of concern" about the
unrest
in Zimbabwe and that it was working through the African Union and the
Southern African Development Community. "At the moment, I think they have
the lead on this issue, so let's see what the government and the opposition
want us to do," he said.
In Zimbabwe, most of the people who were
rounded up Friday at MDC
headquarters in Harare, the capital, were freed
Tuesday by order of the
country's High Court, without being officially
charged.
Alec Muchadehama, the lawyer representing them, said 182 people,
who had
been scattered to police stations across the capital, were released.
Among
them were people wounded in the postelection violence, some with
broken arms
and legs.
Muchadehama said their detention since Friday
in Harare jails would probably
deter others from coming forward to lodge
complaints with the police about
attacks by the governing party's youth
militias and supporters.
The Herald, the state-owned newspaper, reported
Tuesday that on Monday the
police had released 29 of those taken into
custody Friday, primarily women,
babies and the elderly.
In what
could be interpreted as a clear warning to those who claim to have
been
attacked by state-sponsored thugs, the newspaper quoted the chief
police
spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, as having said, "We have profiled
everyone we
rounded up, so that if need arises, we will always make a
follow-up."
Zimbabwean election officials had raised hopes over the
weekend that Mugabe
and his leading challenger for president, Morgan
Tsvangirai of the MDC,
might be called in as early as Monday to begin
verifying the outcome of the
presidential election, a process expected to
take about a week. But Utoile
Silaigwana, the deputy chief election officer,
said Tuesday that the
verification would not begin until Thursday,
representing yet another delay
in satisfying a growing clamor for Zimbabwe
to finally say who won the
presidential contest.
Election officials
say a recount of 23 of the 210 parliamentary seats is
completed, but they
have yet to officially announce the results for all 23.
There has been no
change in the outcome of races in which they have
announced recount
results.
It is now widely expected that the MDC and a faction that
splintered from it
will together have a majority in Parliament, the first
time the governing
party led by Mugabe has lost control of the legislative
branch since
Zimbabwe gained independence from white rule in
1980.
Warren Hoge reported from the United Nations, and Celia W. Dugger
from
Johannesburg.
By Our
Correspondent
HARARE, April 30, 2008 (thezimbabwetimes.com) – Angry
villagers overwhelmed
a group of soldiers who are part of a group that was
deployed recently in
the Makoni District of the eastern province of
Manicaland.
There has been widespread deployment of the military
throughout rural
Zimbabwe in the aftermath of the controversial elections
held on March 29
Rampaging villagers, said to be MDC youths reportedly
disarmed the three
soldiers who, with the support of 10 war veterans,
attempted to disperse a
rampaging mob of villagers in Makoni West on Monday,
as Zimbabwe sunk deeper
into post-election violence.
As clashes raged
after the murder of an opposition politician in the area by
soldiers and war
veterans, dozens of MDC youths overwhelmed and disarmed the
three soldiers
and 10 war veterans loyal to president Robert Mugabe after
they threatened
to shoot everyone.
They reportedly took the three guns seized from the
soldiers to Headlands
Police Station.
MDC national spokesman Nelson
Chamisa said yesterday that elsewhere five
people have been killed over the
past two days in the latest outbreak of
violence. This brought the total
death toll to more than 20 since violence
erupted following last month’s
controversial elections. He said parts of
rural Zimbabwe had been paralyzed
by a fresh wave of violence over the past
two days.
He said an MDC
activist, Tabitha Marume, had been shot in cold blood by
soldiers at Chiwetu
Rest Camp in Makoni West. He said a school-teacher,
Percy Muchiwa, had
allegedly been brutalized by Zanu-PF supporters in the
Bakasa area of Guruve
until he collapsed and died on Monday.
Chamisa said Tenos Manyimo and
Bigboy Zhuwawo, both of Mbire in Mashonaland
Central, had been murdered on
Sunday allegedly by members of the Zanu-PF
militia who accused them of being
MDC supporters,.
MDC polling agent Clemence Dube of Poshayi Village in
Ward 12 in Shurugwi,
was assaulted until he died on Monday, allegedly by
Zanu-PF supporters and
war veterans.
The police said yesterday that
they were maintaining an open mind over the
“alleged deaths”.
“It was
all political, period,” Chamisa said. “These people were murdered
for being
MDC supporters. The violence by the Zanu-PF militia and youth
continues to
increase to alarming levels.”
MDC youths clashed with Zanu-PF supporters
in the town of Rusape in
Manicaland. They openly vowed to clear the area of
Zanu-PF supporters,
accusing them of the murder of MDC
supporters.
Meanwhile, human rights doctors reported yesterday that they
had treated a
further 62 cases of victims of organised violence and torture
in the three
days leading up to April 25. The doctors said the victims were
mostly from
Mudzi, Mutoko and Murewa.
United Nations Human Rights
Rapporteurs also issued a joint statement
detailing accounts of the various
acts of intimidation, violence and torture
which they said were occurring
“as a form of retribution against, or
victimization of people or groups
suspected to have voted for or otherwise
supported the MDC.
“There
are reports that security forces, paramilitary groups and gangs have
deployed in particular in rural areas, townships and farms, where the MDC
reportedly gathered more votes than Zanu-PF, and are attacking the homes of
suspected MDC supporters and persons involved in the elections for the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).”
MASVINGO, April 30, 2008
(thezimbabwetimes.com) - At least two MDC
supporters were killed yesterday
and scores were injured in Masvingo as the
current wave political violence
spreads across the country, the police have
said.
Zvidzai Mapurisa of
Gunikuni village in Masvingo Central constituency was
murdered by suspected
Zanu-PF supporters while Cathrine Mukwenje of Mawarire
Village in Mwenezi
was also killed by suspected war veterans as President
Mugabe’s ruling party
unleashed a violent political campaign ahead of the
expected presidential
run-off.
The police in Masvingo yesterday confirmed the death of Mapurisa
and
Mukwenje, both prominent MDC supporters.
The officer commanding
Masvingo province Assistant commissioner Mhekia
Tanyanyiwa confirmed the
deaths and said investigations were underway,.
“I can confirm the death
of Mapurisa and Mukwenje both suspected MDC
supporters,” said
Tanyanyiwa.
“We are urging all people to report all cases of violence so
that the police
can attend to them timely to avoid loss of human
life.”
At least 20 people have been arrested in connection with the
murders and
more arrests could be made,” he said.
About 15 people
most of them who men are admitted to Morgenster Mission and
Neshuro
hospitals after they were brutally assaulted by the suspected
Zanu-PF
militants.
According to police sources Mapurisa was abducted from his
home on Saturday
and was subjected to beatings and later thrown into a near
by dam where his
body was found floating.
In Mwenezi Mukwenje was
confronted by suspected Zanu-PF supporters and
assaulted heavily before her
assailants allegedly plucked out one of her
eyes.
She died yesterday
of injuries she sustained during the assault.
MDC Masvingo provincial
secretary Tongai Matutu said the marauding Zanu-PF
supporters were targeting
MDC supporters whom they accused of voting for the
opposition during the
March 29 harmonised elections.
“These people are targeting our
supporters, mostly those residing in
resettlement areas,” said Matutu.
The Zimbabwe Times
Letter
THE ramblings in The Herald are getting more
bizarre.
The latest admits implicitly that Zanu-PF don’t have control of
Parliament
(after a “recount”) and now want to “guarantee” seats in cabinet
for minor
parties, “as in Switzerland”. With a new post of prime
minister.
Then an unelected council of worthies (including army chiefs
and
businessmen) will appoint a President without an election.
What
this all means is that Zanu-PF are admitting they have lost, don’t
control
Parliament, can’t win an election with their president and are
implicitly
admitting they are a minority party, and want to try and get
cabinet seats
by changing the rules (again).
They also want to have a parallel
administration with Zanu-PF bigwigs
appointing a President without an
election involving the population.
As the government in Zimbabwe works
now, this means they want to retain the
powers of the presidency in Zanu-PF
without the input of the electorate.
They want elections that will produce
a paper or window-dressing parliament
with no real power; one that
“guarantees” Zanu-PF seats on the cabinet. That
way the MDC cannot operate
without their input or sabotage, and Zanu-PF will
control parts of
government.
The cabinet seats they want guaranteed are probably going to
be Home Affairs
(police), Defence, State Security (CIO), Agriculture,
Judiciary, Finance and
Trade, or all the posts that have effective power and
can protect their
ill-gotten gains and prevent any possible human rights
prosecutions.
All of this means that effectively Zanu-PF are admitting
they have lost
power and are trying to scrabble for protection from the MDC
and write
guarantees to stop the MDC President from using the powers that
Zanu-PF
arrogated to the presidency against Zanu-PF.
They seek to
impose an unelected President chosen by Zanu-PF outside of
Parliament.
Alisdair Budd
nasdaq
UNITED NATIONS (AP)--The Zimbabwe opposition's
second-in-command urged the
U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to appoint a
special envoy to help resolve
the country's worsening crisis following last
month's elections.
But the deeply divided council took no
action.
The council president said it's up to Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon to
decide whether to dispatch an envoy or fact-finding mission, and
the U.N.
political chief said Ban hasn't decided if it's
necessary.
The response was frustrating for Tendai Biti,
secretary-general of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change, who flew
to New York hoping to
address the U.N.'s most powerful body, with the
results of Zimbabwe's March
29 presidential election still in
limbo.
The council heard a briefing on the situation in Zimbabwe behind
closed
doors, with no outsiders allowed, leaving Biti scrambling for
appointments
with the 15 council members. The U.S. helped out late Tuesday,
organizing a
meeting at its mission and inviting many council members,
diplomats said.
Biti called the current situation "desperate" and said it
was time for
international action to help Zimbabwe, which he said has become
"a war
zone." He accused President Robert Mugabe of unleashing "systematic
violence" which has killed at least 18 people - and probably 50 - since the
elections.
"We would like the international community to intervene
before dead rivers
start floating" with bodies, Biti said in an interview
with Associated Press
Television News.
While the U.S., U.K. and
France back sending a U.N. envoy to Zimbabwe,
diplomats said South Africa,
Russia, China and other members oppose any
action now.
"We find that
there are certain people and certain countries that have
decided to play
pingpong with our people," Biti said. "There is a
humanitarian crisis.
People are dying, and more importantly, there is an
obvious - such an
obvious and embarrassing subversion of democracy."
South Africa's U.N.
Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, the current council
president, said that "the
only thing that the members seemed to agree with"
is that the Southern
African Development Community should push Zimbabwe's
electoral commission to
publish the results of the presidential race.
Beyond that, he said,
"there was no agreement" on what to do next.
(END) Dow Jones
Newswires
04-29-082004ET
IOL
April 30
2008 at 07:21AM
By Allister Sparks
At last we may be
witnessing the final chapter of Zimbabwe's drawn-out
agony. At the time of
writing, the final election results have still to be
announced, but it looks
as though Robert Mugabe is on his way out.
I know this has been
predicted before, only for some new twist to dash
hopes. This
Götterdämmerung opera will not be over until the Old Man sings.
But this
time things do look different.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's
sudden acceleration of its recount
of those 23 disputed parliamentary seats,
after a full month of stalling,
and its confirmation that the figures were
correct after all and that the
reunited Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
had indeed won control of
parliament, smelled of a deal having been
done.
It suggested the old regime had
capitulated. Even if Mugabe were able
to rig a run-off election, he would
face the task of trying to govern with a
hostile legislature. Not
impossible, but tortuous. It would mean ruling by
presidential decree,
effectively declaring himself a dictator, which not
even the timid Southern
African Development Community could condone.
What brought about
this sudden capitulation? One can only speculate,
but the surge of public
disapproval throughout the region, and particularly
in South Africa, has
undoubtedly played a role. As long as the disapproval
came only from the
"imperialist" West, Mugabe could brush it aside. But the
surge of outrage in
his own backyard shook him and opened cracks in the
Zanu-PF
leadership.
There have been tell-tale signs of this along the way.
Ten days ago,
City Press published a question-and-answer interview with MDC
leader Morgan
Tsvangirai in which it managed to bury an item of singular
newsworthiness at
the tail-end of a 2 000-word report.
In what
should have been its front page lead, the newspaper quoted
Tsvangirai as
saying he knew on the Sunday following the March 29 election
that the MDC
had won, and that the next day an emissary from Mugabe's ruling
Zanu-PF came
to see him.
"On Monday they sent an emissary to say we have been
trying to
persuade Mugabe to concede," Tsvangirai said. "Mugabe has
accepted, now the
question is how can you accommodate us? They even
suggested, why don't you
give Mugabe a role for six months? We said: 'No. He
should go and retire.'"
Asked what went wrong, Tsvangirai replied:
"I think what went wrong is
this: some of the hawks in the military said we
can't accept transfer of
power and that's when the problem started. The
hawks in the military, the
hawks in Zanu-PF, were not prepared to accept the
verdict of the people. I
think they regrouped and went to Mugabe, and
Mugabe, being a hawk himself,
found a constituency."
I have
managed to substantiate independently that this indeed
happened, three days
after the election.
It changed the whole strategic picture. It
meant the central problem
was no longer Mugabe himself, but the military
commanders.
The reason is clear. The Sadc leaders and Tsvangirai
himself had
pledged publicly to give Mugabe "an honourable exit" with
immunity from
prosecution for crimes against humanity. But no such
assurances were given
to the six commanders of the security services - the
chiefs of the defence
force, the army, the air force, the commissioners of
police and prison
services and the head of the central intelligence
organisation, who together
form the powerful joint operational command
(JOC), which is the power behind
Mugabe's throne.
Two are
particularly vulnerable: Air Marshall Perence Shiri, who
commanded the
notorious North Korean-trained 5th Brigade which massacred
some 20 000
people in Matabeleland in a campaign ordered by Mugabe in the
early 1980s,
and defence force chief Constantine Chiwenga, who has been
involved in more
recent atrocities.
These men have every reason to fear a change of
regime and the
departure of their protector. One can imagine them feeling
aggrieved at
Mugabe's willingness to step down into safe retirement while
leaving them to
face the music.
This meant the strategic focus
needed to switch to them. If the
Zimbabwean crisis was ever to be resolved,
there would have to be a deal
with the JOC chiefs.
I suspect
this is what has engaged the mediators, whose resolve
appears to have been
strengthened by the intervention of the US Assistant
Secretary of State for
Africa, Jendayi Frazer, who has been doing some
not-so-quiet diplomacy of
her own as she has shuttled around the Sadc
region.
Ironically,
Mugabe's cynical attempt to buy time to deploy his forces
so he could win a
rerun while beating his opponents into submission has
allowed time for
behind-the-scenes negotiations to deal with the problem of
the
commanders.
Just how this is being handled is not yet clear. But it
should have
been obvious from the outset that it was an issue that required
the closest
attention, that a way would have to be found to grant the JOC
chiefs
immunity from prosecution in return for their retirement from the
armed
forces - which would have to be depoliticised if Zimbabwe was to be
reconstructed.
The other side of such a deal may well be to
persuade Tsvangirai to
agree to form a government of national unity -
without Mugabe, but including
several Zanu-PF ministers. As we South
Africans know from our own
experience, including members of the old regime,
however odious, into the
new administration is vital if one is to achieve a
measure of national
reconciliation.
Finally, it must be said
that Jacob Zuma's outspokenness and that of
his Cosatu allies have played an
important role in stepping up the pressure
on the Mugabe
regime.
Zuma has been forceful, calling the crisis "a sabotage of
democracy",
and describing Zimbabwe as "a police state". Coming with the
full backing of
the ANC, Zuma's admonitions have not only helped clear the
suspicion that
South Africans have been secret supporters of Mugabe's
misrule, but his
strong leadership has opened space for others in the ruling
alliance to
become more assertive.
Thus Cosatu's Zwelinzima
Vavi has accused Mugabe of waging war on his
people and of staging a coup
d'état. Vavi has denounced the regime as
"illegal", and called on labour
movements and governments to make it clear
that "this regime cannot be
tolerated in Africa".
Strong stuff, contrasting sharply with
President Thabo Mbeki's quiet
diplomacy. And the words have been backed by
action. We have seen the
Cosatu-backed Transport and General Workers' Union,
and civil society
activists, turn away the shipment of Chinese arms intended
for Zimbabwe.
That was a watershed event, which sent a strong message to
Mugabe and his
military chiefs. It told them in no uncertain terms that
their powerful
southern neighbour was strongly critical of their oppressive
rule, and
warned that the new ANC leadership would take a much tougher line
if they
were still there when it comes to power next year.
It's
that kind of pressure that causes tyrants to waver and cracks to
appear in
their ranks.
Sparks is a veteran journalist and political
commentator.
This article was originally published on page 9 of
Cape Times on April
30, 2008
The results put Tsvangirai at 51.7%, while President Robert Mugabe is at
43.3%. Below are the match ups MDC versus Zanu-PF presidential vote allocation
breakdown in the country’s 10 “provinces”,please note it excludes independent
candidate Simba Makoni who got a significant share in Matebeland
provinces. The total number of votes cast including those of other candidates is 2 413
830. The results concur with those that MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti provided
at a news conference three days after the poll. That projection was provided by
the Zimbabwe Election Support Network it showed Tsvangirai received between 47.0
to 51.8 of the vote and Robert Mugabe 39.2 to 44.4. The Margin of Error was 2.4.
State media have since seized on 47.0 and ignored 51.8 to say he failed to win
an absolute majority. The
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is circulating statistical evidence to the
press to back up its claim that it won with an absolute majority in the
presidential election.
Presidential Poll Results as Provided By the MDC
Morgan Tsvangirai
Robert
Mugabe
Bulawayo
49 660
11 146
Harare
227 387
60 523
Manicaland
212 553
131 856
Mashonaland Central
78 650
150 889
Mashonaland East
130 753
156 746
Mashonaland West
126 832
134 329
Masvingo
164 345
152 327
Matebeleland North
68 656
39 143
Matebeleland South
34 437
44 995
Midlands
155 122
162 338
TOTAL
1 248 395
1 044 292
Percentage total
51.7%
43.3%
Business Day
30 April 2008
Anton
Harber
A
CHANGE of government in Zimbabwe provides an opportunity to reshape its
media along democratic lines. Last time Zimbabwe went through major
political change — independence in 1980 — the colonial media system was
simply transferred to the new state and continued to play a partisan role as
the new government became increasingly repressive.
Robert Mugabe’s
government kept a stranglehold on broadcast media and took
over the major
newspapers from the then Argus Group of SA. It built up a
machinery of media
control, forcing the registration of journalists and
publications and using
this — and more direct repression — to suppress
opposition
voices.
Private newspapers were given very little space in which to
operate in the
past decade or so, and most were closed down. The country has
had no
independent mass-market dailies for the past few years. This in a
country
with a high literacy rate and strong demand for reading material.
The
absence of a free media contributed significantly to the delay in
bringing
democratic change.
That the opposition has been able to win
parliament in a situation where
they have had almost no media platform, and
faced the naked hostility of
powerful state media, is a remarkable
achievement. On the other hand, this
led to a lively media-in-exile,
particularly on the internet. Newspapers,
radio stations and internet sites
proliferated on foreign soil. Much of the
opposition communication has also
been via SMS, another new technology hard
for the state to control. In the
words of my colleague, Tawana Kupe:
“Zimbabweans have become masters of
alternative communication and media
strategies as surrogates for mainstream
media.”
Now there will be important choices to make to rebuild and secure
democracy.
The first step will be dismantling the legal and state machinery
which
controls and contains the media. Most of it, such as the
state-appointed
Media Council, and the security laws, can simply be done
away with.
New institutions, such as an independent broadcasting
regulator, will need
to be put in place. Such moves should allow for a
blossoming of private
media.
A MISTAKE, however, would be to
privatise state-controlled media. The need
for diversity will not be served
if such a large and dominant group is
simply sold off to a new owner,
reproducing the imbalances inherited from
the colonial era.
The
government could break up the state media group, though they would have
to
be careful to ensure the bits and pieces remain viable under what will be
tough economic conditions for some time at least. They could also try and
convert it to a true public service media, relinquishing control over the
trust and ensuring it falls into the hands of the great, the good and the
independent.
We know from the South African experience that this can
be difficult to
achieve. It is one thing to create the right policies and
structures, but it
is another to immunise the structures from the
interference of the ruling
party and other powerful political and economic
interests. This requires
trustees and board members who are dedicated to
protecting and preserving
the media’s independence and prepared to stand up
to those who will
inevitably try to compromise it.
Some of the
world’s greatest newspapers are owned by trusts, such as the
Guardian and
the Economist, and they have proven to be structures which can
allow for
quality media that enjoys a greater independence than those in
private or
listed companies.
I would hope that the new Zimbabwean government goes
for a basket of media
reforms: opening up the private media sector,
privatising some state media,
putting the rest in a well insulated public
service trust.
A new government should also invest in a broadband network
which will give
widespread internet access. That will not just empower
people, but ensure
that it will be much harder for any authority to control
information the
same way again.
.. Harber is Caxton Professor of
Journalism, Wits University.
New York Times
Published: April 30,
2008
Zimbabwe’s voters have waited more than four weeks for the results of
the
March 29 presidential election. A recount was supposed to begin on
Tuesday,
but it was again postponed. The only explanation for the delay —
and the
mounting attacks against the opposition — is that President Robert
Mugabe
and his henchmen are still trying to figure out a way to fix the
vote.
Mr. Mugabe has wreaked havoc on his country — inflation is more
than 100,000
percent and life expectancy has dropped to below 40 — and most
Zimbabweans
are eager, indeed desperate, for a change.
An official
recount of the parliamentary election showed that the opposition
Movement
for Democratic Change, known as the M.D.C., won a majority of
seats.
Meanwhile, independent election observers say that the M.D.C.’s
leader,
Morgan Tsvangirai, came in first in the presidential vote, with 49.4
percent
to Mr. Mugabe’s 41.8 percent. We would have preferred a clean count
in which
the presidential election results were officially certified and
accepted by
all sides. At this point, the government has had more than
enough time to
stuff as many ballot boxes as it wants. So it is time for an
imperfect
solution.
South Africa and other African nations must put aside their
hero worship and
find ways to persuade or pressure the 84-year-old Mr.
Mugabe — who helped
lead his country to majority rule in 1980 — to allow a
peaceful transfer of
power to Mr. Tsvangirai. Whether that means Mr.
Tsvangirai enters into a
power-sharing deal, serves a full term or
temporarily holds office until a
new — fair — election takes place should be
decided by Zimbabwe’s new
Parliament.
South African dockworkers who
refused to unload a shipment of Chinese arms
bound for Zimbabwe’s military
deserve praise for supporting the democratic
process in Zimbabwe.
Unfortunately, the South African president, Thabo
Mbeki, who has the most
potential influence, is still refusing to get
involved.
We don’t know
if there is any way to get through to Mr. Mugabe. But his
cronies and his
army generals are vulnerable to outside pressure. Mr. Mbeki
and other
African leaders must tell them that any further manipulations and
thuggery
will be punished — with restrictions on their bank accounts and
denial of
visas.
We applaud the United Nations Security Council for taking up the
issue. A
U.N. envoy could help ease the transition. And if Mr. Mugabe
continues to
resist, the Security Council will need to ratchet up the
pressure, starting
with an arms embargo. This charade must end.
Dispatch, SA
2008/04/30
THABO
Mbeki, the South African president, likes to make the point that the
world
is obsessed with Zimbabwe because white farmers have been victims
there.
Mbeki’s argument is that there are many other African countries where
black
people are oppressed that are not even a blip on the screen of CNN or
the
BBC. Mbeki is wrong, of course. The worst victims of Robert Mugabe’s
kleptocracy have been black folk, the poor people without British or South
African passports whose only choice is to live, impossibly, with 165 000
percent inflation, or, to become illegal migrants in South Africa, and who
have now been defrauded of the one thing that gave them dignity – their
democratic rights.
Mbeki is wrong, too, about why Zimbabwe attracts
the world’s attention.
Certainly, dispossessed white farmers play well,
particularly in the
right-wing British media.
But global interest
spotlights Zimbabwe for reasons not dissimilar to those
that drew thousands
to the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s: It has
become the symbol of a
larger struggle, this time between an old African way
of doing things and a
new one.
Mbeki himself called for an “African Renaissance” early in his
tenure. Well,
one was happening just across the border, where a vibrant new
coalition of
civil society, working across old ethnic boundaries, coalesced
in 1999 into
an opposition that formed the first real challenge to Mugabe’s
effective
one-party state and heralded something of a post- neocolonial era
in Africa.
It had happened already in other countries – specifically,
Kenya and
Zambia – but there was a spirit to the Zimbabwean opposition that
seemed
particularly rejuvenating.
In the March 29 elections, if
preliminary results posted at polling stations
are anything to go by, a
slender majority of Zimbabweans were willing to
vote against
Mugabe.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) under Morgan
Tsvangirai
won a clear plurality of the vote, although as we go to press
it’s unclear
whether this was an outright majority or there would need to be
a second
round. (There was a third candidate – Simba Makoni, one of Mugabe’s
former
finance ministers, who ran as an independent.)
What has been
happening ever since – the ruling Zanu-PF’s refusal to release
results and
the “recounting” of certain marginal constituencies – is indeed
a silent
coup, as the MDC alleges.
It is the ruling elite’s refusal to obey the
will of the people and a ploy
to allow the ruling party’s thugs to
intimidate voters away from the MDC if
there is a second round. That there
is not – yet – carnage on the Kenyan
scale is testament to the pan-ethnic
sophistication of the Zimbabwean
opposition.
But the intimidation has
begun: Human Rights Watch has documented a dramatic
increase in torture and
violence by the ruling party.
The perplexing thing to outsiders is how
susceptible Zimbabweans have been
to this kind of intimidation. Their
courage during the Chimurenga – as the
decade- long war of independence
against the white-minority Rhodesian regime
is known – is legendary. They
were far more willing to go to war than were
their neighbours in South
Africa. And yet when the unions called a national
strike to protest the
delay in announcing election results, it was a flop.
Mugabe’s security
apparatus managed to hector nearly everyone back to work.
The Zanu-PF
government has proven far more adept at intimidation than
Rhodesia’s white
supremacist ruler ever was.
The truth is that a significant minority –
more than 40 percent, it seems –
voted for Mugabe. It is important for
students of African democracy to
grapple with this. Do Zimbabweans have some
kind of suicidal millenarian
impulse?
Are atavistic loyalties
stronger than reason? Or is it simply that
old-fashioned two-step –
brainwashing and intimidation – at play? Whichever,
Mugabe is not
universally reviled. His power is rooted in significant
popular
support.
That, plus the fact that he and his generals will not
voluntarily give up
power, means there is really only one solution to the
crisis – a negotiated
settlement.
Of course, this is unjust to the
valiant victors of the March poll, just as
the Lancaster House agreement in
1979 was unfair to the brave soldiers of
the Chimurenga. But the balance of
forces dictates that there is now, as
then, no other way
out.
Tsvangirai has acknowledged this; in a recent statement he called
for a
“government of national unity.”
Even though everyone still
seems to be fighting over who won the election,
the battleground has
shifted, almost imperceptibly.
Now it’s about who will play the leading
role in some kind of negotiated
settlement.
Tsvangirai believes that
as the victor, he has the right to convene such a
settlement. Mugabe works
off a different logic: that possession is
nine-tenths of the
law.
What is going on behind the scenes is not only an attempt by Mugabe
to seize
power but attempts by mediators, including Mbeki, to get both sides
to agree
to a settlement.
Mbeki’s preference is for Makoni, whose
candidacy he has been tacitly
supporting.
Although Makoni won no more
than 10 percent of the vote, he might win in the
horse-trading as a
transitional leader acceptable to both sides.
Mbeki and his South African
team of mediators seemed for a while to be
making headway; they brokered the
deal that allowed the election to happen
in the first place.
But now
Mbeki has discredited himself beyond repair by identifying too
closely with
Mugabe. And the regional Southern African Development Community
is too
divided to act with singular purpose. Mugabe has very powerful
friends,
particularly in the even more rotten Angolan regime.
The United Nations
has, to date, left the matter to the SADC, but Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon, who was lobbied recently by Tsvangirai at a conference
in Ghana, is
showing signs of impatience. Surely he would not like his
copybook to be
blotted, as his predecessor’s was by the UN’s failures
regarding Rwanda,
although it is unclear what Ban can do. Sanctions and
embargoes seem only to
make Mugabe more defiant.
Ultimately, people and not governments or
intergovernmental agencies will
uproot African tyranny.
On April 17,
there was a salutary sign of the civil-society power that
originally spawned
the MDC. The refusal by South African dock-workers to
unload a ship full of
arms headed for the Zimbabwe Defence Force and the
high court interdict
obtained by South African clerics to prevent the ship
from docking. The ship
defied the interdict, which required it to stay in
the port until
inspection, and fled.
Shamefully, the South African authorities did
nothing about it.
Meanwhile, as the designated, if discredited, mediator,
Mbeki has one
unforgettable lesson to teach Zimbabwe from South Africa’s
experience: A
real settlement can be reached only when each side accepts,
incontrovertibly, that it cannot win. Tragically, none of the players in the
Zimbabwean conflict – least of all Mugabe – has come to this
realisation.
Mark Gevisser is the author of Thabo Mbeki: The
Dream Deferred
The Zimbabwe Times
By
Paul Trewhela
ZANU-PF'S rule is founded, as Stalin's was, on the ordinary
human emotion of
resentment.
The decision of the states of the
Southern African Development Conference to
endorse the dictatorship of
Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe under the fiction of a
re-run election was
anticipated in an analysis of totalitarianism by the
English philosopher,
Roger Scruton.
In an essay, "The Totalitarian Temptation", delivered in
an address in 2003
to a conference on totalitarianism organised by the
University of Krakow in
Poland (a country that knew both Hitler's and
Stalin's boot), Professor
Scruton considered the origin of totalitarianism
to lie in the ordinary
human emotion of resentment.
Totalitarianism
he considers to be present when there is the "absence of any
fundamental
constraint on the central authority." It is a form of government
that "does
not respect or acknowledge the distinction between civil society
and the
State.... [N]othing limits the power of the State in the way that
might be
limited by a representative legislature or a system of judge-made,
or
judge-discovered, law." Following the model pioneered in Russia by Lenin
and
Trotsky and perfected by Stalin, its form is as follows: "Society was
controlled by the State, the State was controlled by the party, and the
party was controlled from the top by the leadership." This conception fits
the reign of Zanu-PF as led by Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
This party
leadership defines itself by its particular ideology. This
ideology is "not
a truth-seeking device but a power-seeking device." It is
"a power-directed
system of thought". Scruton suggests that "the interests
advanced by
totalitarian ideology are those of an aspiring elite". What is
important,
according to Scruton's analysis, following Nietzsche, is that
totalitarian
ideologies - like the race and class ideology of Zanu-PF - are
"ways to
recruit resentment", or as Nietzsche put it, using a French word,
ressentiment. This is a "virulent and implacable state of mind, that
precedes the injury complained of".
Resentment occurs in all
societies, but what is unique about totalitarian
ideologies is that they
"rationalize resentment, and also unite the
resentful around a common cause.
Totalitarian systems arise when the
resentful, having seized power, proceed
to abolish the institutions that
have conferred power on others:
institutions like law, property and religion
which create hierarchies,
authorities and privileges, and which enable
individuals to asset
sovereignty over their own lives...Once institutions of
law, property and
religion are destroyed - and their destruction is the
normal result of
totalitarian government - resentment takes up its place
immovably, as the
ruling principle of the State."
That is the case in Zimbabwe, with the
endorsement of the SADC. Once in
power, “the resentful are inclined to
dispense with mediating institutions,
and erect a system of pure power
relations, in which individual sovereignty
is extinguished by central
control. They may do this in the name of
equality, meaning thereby to
dispossess the rich and the privileged. Or they
may do it in the name of
racial purity, meaning thereby to dispossess the
aliens who have stolen
their birthright. One thing is certain, however,
which is that there will be
target groups.”
In Zimbabwe, the totalitarian project exercises its right
to rule through a
combination of the two forms, the appeal to equality and
to race (and, more
specifically, but implicitly, to tribe). It unites both
the Stalin
(hostility to privilege) and the Hitler (hostility to race)
forms. As such,
it is “directed collectively against groups, conceived as
collectively
offensive and bearing a collective guilt”.
As Scruton
argues, this project is “not conducted from below by the people,
but from
above, in the name of the people, by as aspiring elite”.
Totalitarian
ideologies, very widely endorsed in southern Africa, as the
decision of the
SADC shows, “legitimize the resentments of an elite, while
recruiting the
resentment of those needed to support the elite in its
pursuit of hitherto
inaccessible advantages. The elite derive its identity
from repudiating the
old order. And it casts itself in a pastoral role, as
leader and teacher of
the people”, as if it were a “priestly caste”. The
elite then “justify its
seizure of power by referring to its solidarity with
those who have been
unjustly excluded”.
The leader of such a totalitarian project, according
to Scruton, is
frequently an embittered and isolated person, who seeks “some
opportunity to
take revenge on the world that has denied him his due”. Such
people are
“fired by a negative energy, and are never at ease unless bent on
the task
of destruction”. When such a person achieves power, he will
“compensate for
his isolation by establishing, in the place of friendship, a
military
command, with himself at the head of it. He will demand absolute
loyalty and
obedience, in return for a share in the reward. And he will
admit no one
into his circle who is not animated by resentment, which is the
only emotion
that he has learned to trust”.
Such a characterisation
suits Mugabe.
The political project of this leader "will not be to gain a
share of power
within existing structures, but to gain total power, so as to
abolish the
structures themselves. He will set himself against all forms of
mediation,
compromise and debate, and against the legal and moral norms
which give a
voice to the dissenter and sovereignty to the ordinary
unresentful person.
He will set about destroying the enemy, whom he will
conceive in collective
terms, as the class, group or race that hitherto
controlled the world and
which must now be controlled. And all institutions
that grant protection to
that class or a voice in the political process will
be targets for his
destructive rage.”
At this point Scruton very
precisely identifies the sham and scam that the
electoral process has
revealed itself to be in Zimbabwe, as a typical
feature of the totalitarian
regime. He writes that the inevitable result of
the seizure of power in this
project will be the “establishment of a
militarized core to the State -
whether in the form of a party, a committee
or simply an army which does not
bother to disguise its military purpose.
This core will have absolute power
and will operate outside the law. This
law will itself be replaced by a
Potemkin version that can be invoked
whenever it is necessary to remind the
people of their subordinate
position.”
In citing this “Potemkin
version” of law, Scruton refers to the supposed
tricky practice of Prince
Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin when acting as
chief minister to Empress
Catherine the Great of Russia, who held absolute
power in the late 18th
century. The Russian peasantry lived in abysmal
poverty and shabbiness.
Empress Catherine wanted however to believe that
everything was for the best
under her enlightened government.
Potemkin was alleged to have squared
the circle by having fake, cardboard
villages erected along the route the
Empress travelled on her tour of the
Crimea. Constitution, law and elections
in Zimbabwe are a Potemkin village.
By implication they are also actually or
potentially so throughout the
states of the SADC, South Africa included,
their leaders having so crassly
endorsed Mugabe's Potemkin-type electoral
scam.
As Scruton writes, under the totalitarian regime this “Potemkin
law” will be
a “prominent and omnipresent feature of society, constantly
invoked and
paraded, in order to imbue all acts of the ruling party with an
unassailable
air of legitimacy. The “revolutionary vanguard” will be more
prodigal of
legal forms and official stamps than any of the regimes that it
displaces.... In this way the new order will be both utterly lawless and
entirely concealed by law.”
In this way, as Scruton quotes the former
President of the Czech Republic,
Vaclav Havel, the people oppressed under
the totalitarian regime are
required to “live within the
lie”.
Scruton gives also a telling characterisation of the Mugabe type.
He notes
the pathological character of the resentments carried by the great
leader in
the totalitarian project, people who “have an exaggerated sense of
their own
entitlements, and a diminutive capacity to observe them...Their
resentments
are not concrete responses to momentary rebuffs but accumulating
rejections
of the system in which they have failed to
advance.”
Intellectuals, it seems, are "particularly prone to this
generalized
resentment....Hence we should not be surprised to find
intellectuals in the
forefront of radical movements, or to discover that
they are more disposed
than ordinary mortals to adopt theories and
ideologies that have nothing to
recommend them apart from the power that
they promise.”
This fits Mugabe to the tip of his little
moustache.
[Roger Scruton's essay, "The Totalitarian Temptation" is in
Roger Scruton’s
A Political Philosophy (Continuum, London and New York,
2006. pp.146-160)].
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It takes me two days, three glasses of wine and prayer to accept this assignment and spend a night sleeping on a cold floor with thousands of Zimbabwean refugees.
Disguised as a hobo and speaking only my home language, isiZulu, I make my way with colleague Mfundekelwa Mkhulisi to the Central Methodist Church in Small Street in central Johannesburg, home to thousands of Zimbabweans fleeing their country’s turmoil.
Mkhulisi seems calm and focused. I’m afraid that someone will rape or rob me. I have succumbed to the stereotypes surrounding Zimbabweans in my country.
We arrive after 10pm to find Small Street has become a dank bedroom for those who can’t make it into the crowded refuge.
Cold as it is, sleeping bodies dot the blocks around the church.
At least most have “blankets” to cover themselves, if only newspaper or cardboard. No wonder groups of young men are drowning themselves in alcohol.
It is noisy, filthy and smelly, but the sleepers seem oblivious to their surroundings.
We stumble over bodies and five minutes later enter the church. I push the glass door open, take two steps and from then on step carefully between sleeping bodies.
The first floor is solid with them. They all cover their heads with a ragged blanket or their arms as if in pitiful defence against the cruel world around them.
There are no lights and the smell is stupefying, but we wend our way carefully through this heaving human mass, thanks to the reflection from the street lights outside.
I enter a toilet where two women, no older than 25, stand naked as they dab themselves with water from a basin.
I greet them, hoping to make conversation, but they respond in Shona. I leave them to their sorry attempt to maintain a modicum of decency with their painful ablutions.
We climb the steps to the second floor, still stepping gingerly over sleeping bodies.
The second floor is a small, dark space with a men’s toilet and what looks like an office.
The steps to the third floor are even darker – pitch black and reeking.
I notice a group of half-naked men, stop and let Mkhulisi approach them. I find myself a little open space and sit with my chin on my knees. My heavy breathing catches the attention of the sleeping body I have just stepped over.
A dark fellow with short dreadlocks says something in a language I do not understand and I reply in isiZulu, asking him to repeat himself.
He responds in Sindebele .
“Where are you from in Zimbabwe?”
I panic and consider saying Harare but decide that will get me into trouble. So I pretend to choke until Mkhulisi returns.
We’ve seen enough of this horror and return to the first floor, find an empty step on the stairway and sit down. Big mistake. A man charges at us.
“Women are not supposed to sleep on the steps. Are you new here? Who are you?”
“No, my brother, we are from KwaZulu-Natal,” Mkhulisi responds calmly. “We are stranded. The person who was supposed to pick us up did not show. We were told we would be safe here.”
Proud to be of service, Richard takes us under his wing and offers to lead me to where the women sleep. Much to my relief Mkhulisi insists on accompanying us to what residents call Robert’s Room.
Don’t ask me if it’s named after Mugabe.
Richard directs a woman called Esther, standing at the far corner of the hall, to find a space for me so I can sleep.
I stumble over sleeping women and children until I reach her. I smile, realising she was the woman I’d seen in the toilet.
My smile isn’t returned.
“You don’t have a blanket? Here is a space. Sleep here with your head facing left. I’ll face the right. Here’s a blanket,” is all she says.
I have already learnt how to use an old newspaper: lay the news pages on the floor as if they are a mattress, cover yourself with the sports pages and use the classifieds as a pillow.
She isn’t interested in who I am and why I am here. That’s fine by me. The horror of these conditions makes me retreat into myself like everyone else around me .
I curl up in my little space and wonder what has become of Mkhulisi. I’m sure he’ll be safe. The lights are left on outside Robert’s Room and two men stand guard .
I lie on the hard floor trying hard to breathe through my mouth to keep the stench at bay. I try to ignore the coughing and crying baby, but unlike the regulars I cannot sleep.
The previous night I had watched an episode of African Idol and had seen talented young Zimbabweans trying to become music stars.
I was convinced there was no crisis in Zimbabwe. What can be worse than living like this?
At about 3am, the door opens, Richard peeps in and calls to me.
“Dudu, your husband is calling you.”
I jump up, grab my shoes and make my way, to the door. Then I notice a baby girl sleeping next to her mother. The baby is uncovered.
I hesitate for an instant to pull the blanket over the baby, but it is filthy. And in that instant I lose my own humanity and flee.
“Let’s get out of here,” Mkhulisi says.
As the door swings closed behind us I know I have just escaped from hell.
Reuters
Tue Apr 29,
2008 8:22pm EDT
By Martin Petty
BANGKOK (Reuters) - With a
gold-medal tally trumped only by swimming giants
Australia and the United
States, Zimbabwe's performance at this month's
world short-course
championships was staggering.
Most impressively, one swimmer -- Kirsty
Coventry -- won all Zimbabwe's
medals.
"On the medals table, you
can't see who wins what but yes, it was just me --
it feels amazing," a
beaming Coventry told Reuters in an interview in
Manchester,
England.
"It's a great honor to represent my country, so we finish so
high on the
medals table. It's a great achievement for
everyone."
Coventry won four titles in Manchester -- three in
world-record times --
plus a bronze medal, to put Zimbabwe fourth overall,
behind the U.S.,
Australia and the Netherlands, who also won four golds as
well as five
lesser medals.
Her performance brought some rare
positive news to her economically-crippled
country which is locked in a
political crisis after a disputed presidential
election.
Unsurprisingly, with severe food, fuel and job shortages
and inflation at
165,000 percent, Zimbabwe is a country not used to winning
anything in
sport.
"Things aren't that good. I take any opportunity I
can to raise our
country's flag really high and get some shining positive
light on things
over there," added Coventry, a white Zimbabwean who moved to
the United
States because of the lack of funding and facilities at
home.
"My family, friends and parents are still there. I know how much it
does for
people back home."
Although she has always preferred not to
discuss politics, Coventry, 24,
said the situation had become so dire in
once-prosperous Zimbabwe that
urgent change was needed for the sake of its
13 million people.
PEOPLE HURTING
President Robert Mugabe, who has
ruled the southern African country for 28
years, affectionately called
Coventry "a golden girl" despite his tough
stance towards minority
whites.
"Everyone there including President Mugabe knows something needs
to change
because so many people are hurting," Coventry said.
"I hope
that does happen. I know that's part of why I'm doing what I do. I
hope it
makes a difference and gives people back home hope that things will
change
for the better.
"People have to remain positive and believe in those
dreams. It's really
important."
Although she always thinks about
home, Coventry said her move to the U.S. --
first Alabama and now Austin,
Texas -- was "the best decision of my life".
In 2002 she took up a
scholarship at Auburn University, home to one of
America's most decorated
swimming teams, and two years later helped to bring
an end to Zimbabwe's
24-year wait for an Olympic medal.
At the Athens Games, Coventry won
three -- gold, silver and bronze -- and
was treated to a hero's welcome on
her return home to Harare.
Coventry walked a red carpet to the beat of
African drums while thousands of
Zimbabweans danced and sang. She was given
$50,000 "pocket money" and a
diplomatic passport at a party held by Mugabe,
the 84-year-old leader blamed
by critics for the country's
problems.
VIP TREATMENT
Several newborn babies were named Kirsty,
some with the middle name
Coventry, others were even called "Goldmedal" or
"Threemedals" to celebrate
her Athens haul.
One newspaper said the
sight of her atop the medals podium had "soothed the
country's
soul".
"Everyone at home is so supportive," she said. "People recognize
me, say how
proud they are of me. It's awesome to hear, it's amazing to know
I can touch
so many people in a positive way."
Before Coventry's
success, Zimbabwe's only Olympic medal had been gold for
the women's hockey
team at the boycott-hit Moscow Olympics in 1980, the
country's first year of
independence.
Coventry is now Zimbabwe's biggest sporting name, taking
over the mantle
from former Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar, a close
family friend.
Despite her glittering record, which includes Commonwealth
gold, six world
titles and seven golds at the 2007 All-Africa Games, she
says success at
August's Beijing Olympics is not guaranteed.
"It's
been amazing, I could only have dreamt of doing things like this, but
it's
keeping me focused," said Coventry, tightly clutching a hefty glass
trophy
for the best individual performer of the world championships.
"I have to
stay on track, focus on Beijing, focus on the challenge. All I
know is it's
going to be really, really exciting."
(Editing by Clare Fallon)