03/04/2007 07h34
HARARE (AFP) - A
call for a two-day general strike by Zimbabwe's main union
organisation
appeared to have received a cool response on Tuesday as most
shops and
services were running as on a normal working day.
Bus companies were
running full services while post offices, banks,
government offices,
supermarkets and high street shops were all open in the
centre of Harare,
according to AFP correspondents in the capital.
Some workers said they
could simply not afford to lose some of their salary
as they are already
struggling to make ends meet.
"Our boss warned that if we did not show up
he would simply deduct two days
wages for each day," said Alice Ushe, a
cashier at a supermarket in Harare
which opened as usual at
8:00am.
"I cannot afford to make society happy by staying at home. I have
a family
to feed I need the money because as it is, my salary is not nearly
enough."
There were signs that the strike call had been received more
sympathetically
in the industrial areas of Willowvale and Southerton in
Harare, where some
factories were shut and the streets had the feel of a
Sunday morning.
A low-level police presence was seen in the streets
throughout the capital
and several roadblocks had been mounted on roads
leading into the city.
Police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, warned Monday
that the elite security
force would be deployed across the country to ensure
peace.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) launched the general
shutdown
as opponents of veteran President Robert Mugabe turn up the heat on
his
beleaguered government.
The ZCTU, formerly headed by Zimbabwe's
main opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai, called the strike, accusing the
government of failing to respond
to concerns about the worsening economic
crisis.
Eighty percent of Zimbabweans are jobless and inflation stands at
1,730
percent, the highest in the world.
Mugabe, 83, who has been in
power for 27 years, is widely blamed for the
country's political and
economic woes.
But recent union demonstrations have been stopped in their
tracks by
Mugabe's security forces, with several union chiefs arrested in
September as
major nationwide protests were crushed at the outset.
New York Times
By PETER
GODWIN
Published: April 3, 2007
EVER since Zimbabwe began imploding in
2000, the conventional punditry about
its president, Robert Mugabe, has
largely been of the good-leader-turns-bad
variety. Now, as the country's
economy enters its death throes -
hyperinflation at 1,700 percent and
expected to exceed 5,000 percent by year's
end; unemployment at 80 percent;
the average person's purchasing power at
1953 levels; life expectancy the
lowest in the world; an exodus of Africa's
most educated population - it
would seem a good time to re-examine that
orthodoxy and decide what the West
can do to ease the dictator's departure.
In fact, Mr. Mugabe has been a
completely consistent leader. It's we who
have changed. During the cold war,
we in the West were so grateful that this
militant Marxist had instantly
become a benign capitalist that we ignored
his history of political violence
within his own party, and intimidation at
the 1980 elections that brought
him to power upon Zimbabwe's independence.
We supported him in the same way
we supported venal leaders like Mobutu Sese
Seko of Zaire - our friends
simply because they were not Moscow's.
The other parapet behind which Mr.
Mugabe found convenient shelter was
apartheid, which persisted in his
southern neighbor for the first 13 years
of his rule. As the leader of the
so-called front-line states facing a
hostile white government in South
Africa, he deserved our support, and we
gave him the benefit of the doubt
even after his hands were bloodied in his
southern province of Matabeleland
- where his North Korean-trained Fifth
Brigade killed as many as 25,000
civilians in 1983 and 1984.
It was a massacre I saw and reported on, but
not a big story in news terms,
and there was barely a peep out of the
international community. Somehow, to
attack Mr. Mugabe was to appear to be
giving succor to white South Africa,
and Zimbabwe's strongman was a master
at spinning it that way. (When I wrote
about the massacres, he immediately
claimed I was a South African spy and
had me declared an enemy of the
state.)
Then things went quiet - but only because he'd bludgeoned the
opposition
into quiescence and established a one-party system. The next time
Zimbabweans had the temerity to question Mr. Mugabe's absolute rule was in
2000, when they voted against him in a referendum to extend his presidential
term limits, a vote that in his complacency, he hadn't even bothered to rig.
He reacted to his defeat with violence and intimidation: his thugs began
killing opposition supporters, evicting white commercial farmers (whom he
had invited to stay on and contribute to the new Zimbabwe), and intimidating
voters at subsequent rigged elections.
In recent months, Mr. Mugabe
has stepped up the violence against opposition
members and leaders in
Zimbabwe - with the chilling development of Latin
American-style hit squads
that abduct and torture opposition supporters. On
Friday, he quashed a
challenge to his rule from within his own party. What
can outside powers do
to help ease out an 83-year-old leader who, after 27
years in power, would
rather destroy his country than step down voluntarily?
Zimbabwe lacks the
two exports necessary to interest the United States in
direct intervention:
oil and terrorism. International sanctions on Zimbabwe
are now minuscule. We
could ramp up "smart sanctions" against Mr. Mugabe and
his coterie, for
example by freezing their ill-gotten external assets, but
any wider
sanctions would probably only hurt those at the bottom of the food
chain,
not the elite kleptocracy. Megaphone diplomacy tends to feed Mr.
Mugabe's
portrayal of Western powers as shrill, hectoring, imperialist
bullies.
The real key to the Zimbabwe stalemate is to be found in
South Africa, which
has an economic choke hold on its landlocked northern
neighbor. But thus
far, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa has refused to
do anything about
Mr. Mugabe. His policy of "quiet diplomacy" has, in truth,
been a silent
one. And he has paid a high price for such tacit support of
Mr. Mugabe,
whose embarrassing exploits ensured that Mr. Mbeki's
much-vaunted African
Renaissance was stillborn.
It has long been a
political parlor game to figure out why Mr. Mbeki hasn't
done more about
Zimbabwe. He sometimes pays lip service to the principle of
non-interference
in the internal affairs of another sovereign state, but
South Africa quickly
sent its army into Lesotho in 1998 after a rigged
election there. Part of
Mr. Mbeki's reluctance to act may have to do with
Mr. Mugabe's residual
status as a liberation hero. But mostly, I believe, it
stems from Mr.
Mbeki's distaste for the Zimbabwean opposition, the Movement
for Democratic
Change and its main leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who used to
head up the
Zimbabwean trades union movement.
Therein lies the problem: Mr. Mbeki's
ruling African National Congress party
is actually a troika, and one of its
legs is the Congress of South African
Trade Union, which is getting
increasingly fractious. The group has strongly
backed Zimbabwe's Movement
for Democratic Change, and if Mr. Tsvangirai were
to come to power in
Zimbabwe, it would greatly embolden the South African
union confederation,
encouraging it to secede from the African National
Congress and pose a
challenge to Mr. Mbeki. Thus has Zimbabwe become a
function of South African
domestic politics.
In so far as diplomacy is the art of the possible,
Pretoria still provides
us with the main fulcrum for change. South Africa
controls and has the power
to obstruct transportation links, lines of credit
and electricity supplies,
and it alone has the power and regional clout to
face down Mr. Mugabe.
Mr. Mbeki may soon be in a position to do more. In
a woeful display of the
inadequacies of pan-African institutions, the 14
members of the South
African Development Community last week came out in
support of Mr. Mugabe's
dictatorship. But they nominated Mr. Mbeki to
facilitate dialogue between
Mr. Mugabe and his opposition.
The
international community should make it clear to Mr. Mbeki that he, and
the
new South Africa, have a special moral obligation to help a nearby
people
who are oppressed and disenfranchised, having been assisted in its
own
struggle by just such pressure. And that "quiet diplomacy" is nothing
less
than the appeasement of a violent dictatorship. If President Mbeki
continues
it, South Africa will squander the good will of the world.
Peter Godwin
is the author of a forthcoming memoir, "When a Crocodile Eats
the Sun.
Independent, UK
3 April 2007 16:58
The fields are barren, the filling stations empty, the people starving.
Daniel Howden travelled the length of Zimbabwe to survey the slow
disintegration of Africa's erstwhile breadbasket Vic Falls to the Halfway
Hotel
Published: 03 April 2007
The Kingdom is empty. It boasts all
of the trappings of ersatz tourist
Africa apart from the tourists. The vast
dining hall of the hotel which
should be the centrepiece of Zimbabwe's
tourist industry has fake elephant
tusks, shield-shaped menus and empty
tables. Outside in the car park a
battalion of beige uniformed porters hide
from the fierce sun, rousing
themselves only to compete for tips from the
very occasional arrival.
Across the Falls, Zambia's town of Livingstone
and its packed hotels deliver
hard currency holidays in the shadow of one of
the great wonders of the
world. Leaving The Kingdom, beggars crowd to the
open windows of the
pick-up. What traffic there is, either battered taxis or
the white 4x4s of
the NGOs, disappears beyond the airport.
At the
wheel, staring straight ahead is Cameron. The road is Romaically
straight,
cutting a tarmac line as far as the 35C heat haze on the horizon
but he
doesn't look away for a second. "You have to watch for the cows and
goats,
especially the goats," he says. "You never know with them which way
they'll
go. With the cows it's easier, if their heads are down they won't
move."
There used to be a wire fence, he tells me, protecting the
road, but it has
long since been stolen and sold for scrap. Cameron is one
of the dwindling
number of white Zimbabweans who have stayed on despite
their privileges
being eroded and their lives and livelihoods coming under
physical and
political threat.
The dry bush with its low trees and
burnt red earth stretches away from the
road in all directions. The maize
fields that provide the porridge that is
the staple for most Zimbabweans are
dry and dead. The rains have failed
again this year and starvation is
coming. The crop failure in this region is
95 per cent.
"People have
started eating the field mice," says Cameron. "Usually there
would be
thousands of them. Where are they?"
Starved-looking children stand with
hollow faces and swollen bellies at the
roadside. The lucky ones are holding
out the only thing there is left to
sell - anaemic watermelons, little
larger than grapefruits.
Halfway Hotel to Bulawayo
Even for those
with money there's next to nothing at the Halfway Hotel. The
only watering
hole on the five-hour drive between the Falls and Bulawayo,
its picnic
tables once provided an opulent lunch for well-off travellers.
Now the
four-page menu is a memory. Whatever it says the kitchen runs to a
tired
burger and an antique Fanta. At the filling station next door they've
had no
fuel for weeks. An ambulance parks by the pumps and draws a curious
crowd.
But the driver is just looking for shade on the forecourt. It goes
without
saying that it's a private ambulance, no one's seen a public
ambulance for
years.
Two white men on an empty road arouse suspicion. With the latest
round of
brutal suppression of all opposition the roadblock count has
sky-rocketed.
Cameron counted eightbetween the Falls and Bulawayo. And the
police are
terrified of reprisals. "You never see two policemen, they're
always in
groups; safety in numbers," he says.
Lazy from the sun the
police still perform the ritual of the stop and
search. Satisfied that we
are on our way to a family wedding in Harare, the
search is less than
half-hearted. I ask them what they're looking for.
"Gold, diamonds or guns,"
says a tired-looking officer. No one seems to
think we'll have any of
these.
In fact, Cameron came back from studying in the UK in the hope
that the
family mining business might survive the economic holocaust. One of
the few
industries that had survived was the same one which drew Cecil John
Rhodes
here in the first place - gold. With nine out of 10 Zimbabweans
jobless and
the economy in freefall, Cameron explains that thousands of
people had
turned to panning for gold again in recent years. Now even that
has stopped.
As the bankrupt regime has hunted down every last cent of hard
currency, or
"forex", in the machine, it has closed in on and killed its own
goose that
laid golden eggs by forcing panners, miners and millers to sell
to the state
at official prices. The state buys gold at a price linked to
the official
exchange rate - a wildly unreal 160 Zimbabwean dollars to the
US dollar. The
real exchange rate, the one that rules the black market, was
running at
Z$16,000 that day. Until the end of last year the commercial
mines had
survived by giving a small cut to the state at official prices and
selling
the rest at black market rates. Now police raids across the country
aimed at
forcing gold to be sold through official channels have closed the
mines and
brought production to a near standstill.
"No one can afford
to mine or process rough gold at that price - it's like
paying the state to
give them gold," he says.
At the outskirts of Bulawayo the graveyard
shift is clocking off. These mud
and rubble cemeteries are spreading fast in
a country that is dying on its
feet.
Bulawayo to Kezi to
Bulawayo
The tight grid of central Bulawayo was built for a world and a
climate which
no longer exist. Its main roads are criss-crossed with giant
humps designed
to let the heavy seasonal rains run off and prevent flooding.
In today's
arid weather the cracked tarmac just gives the driver a mild
seasickness
like a boat bobbing in gentle waves. Heading south the avenues
of jacarandas
and flamboyant trees with their intense blood orange flowers
give way to the
savannah and the dramatic rock formations of the Matopos
National Park.
Jonathan joins me from a lay-by halfway to Kezi. Unemployed
and beating a
path back and forth through Matabeleland looking for work, he
doesn't mind
our grim destination and is happy to help in return for a Coke
and a free
ride to Kezi. We are looking for what remains of Balagwe
Camp.
After independence in 1980, the new Zimbabwe was still home to
three armies:
the Rhodesian forces that fought for Ian Smith's white
minority; Robert
Mugabe's Zanla guerrillas, the army drawn from the
Shona-speaking majority;
and Joshua Nkomo's Zipra force of mainly Ndebele
fighters.
When the victorious Mugabe swept the first elections he wasted
little time
in disbanding Zipra and launching a campaign of ethnic cleansing
against his
tribal rivals. Gukuruhundi - "the wind that sweeps away the
chaff" - lasted
for nearly eight years and claimed as many as 40,000 lives,
according to
disputed estimates.
Mugabe unleashed the North
Korean-trained Fifth Brigade on Matabeleland and
the former army base at
Balagwe became a notorious holding camp.
In Kezi no one can understand
why we want to find Balagwe. Confused
directions lead straight out into the
bush. Villagers eventually lead us to
a collection of derelict buildings,
with thorn trees pushed through ruined
doorways. It is hard to imagine that
this is where so many men were beaten
and tortured, while hundreds of women
were raped, many with broom handles or
gun barrels. We ask the villagers
whether they know what happened here.
Someone says something about soldiers.
Jonathan explains: "Everyone lost
parents and family. No one wants to
remember the camp."
Everyone is agreed that the bodies were dumped in the
mine shafts that
honeycomb the local hills. Smallholders near by complain
that the hills are
haunted and that skeletons prowl around, carrying guns.
Others still insist
that in the afternoon you can see human bones and
clothes at the bottom of
the shaft.
But the light is fading and the
thin ribbon of tarmac that leads back
through the roadblocks to Bulawayo
beckons. There is no time to find the
mountain graves.
Bulawayo to
Harare
It takes longer to count the money than to fill the tank. The
pick-up takes
50 litres. More violence and more unrest has seen the exchange
rate leap to
Z$25,000 to $1. That means a little over Z$1m. And that kind of
money needs
to be carried in bags, not wallets. Hyperinflation and the
ensuing fuel
crisis has pushed petrol beyond the means of normal people.
Zimbabwe is now
a nation of hitchhikers, the lay-bys crowded with people
waiting and waving,
sometimes for days if they can't afford to pay for a
lift.
The police are no exception. Dominic is a young policeman looking
for a ride
outside Bulawayo. His friend who is carrying a fishing rod hops
on the open
back, but the policeman rides up front. Far from questioning me,
Dominic
needs little prompting to air his frustrations: "This country is a
bloody
mess," he says, taking off his cap and looking at me for
encouragement. I'm
going to run away down to South Africa."
He asks
me if I've been and what it's like. I tell him there are a lot of
Zimbabweans and that conditions for many of them are very hard. Dominic
can't believe that it can be any harder than his life is already. I tell him
that at least he has a job here. He's not convinced. "This job is worthless,
the money they give us is nothing." He reaches into his pocket. "You can't
buy anything with this money," he says showing a fistful of Z$1,000 notes.
"What future is this?"
After dropping him off the next policeman I
meet is at a roadblock. "Tell me
how much gold you are carrying," he
bellows. I point at the steel frames of
my sunglasses and try to make a
joke. Happily he laughs at the ludicrousness
of the question and waves me
on.
Joyce joins me just beyond Gweru. A middle-aged woman, she is trying
to get
to church. She hitches her way along this road to work every morning,
she
explains, and comes on Sunday as well for morning prayers. Sometimes the
bus
which charges Z$4,000 is cheaper, sometimes paying for a lift works out
better. "I have a car but I can't afford to use it anymore," she says. "Who
can get fuel now?"
Joyce earns Z$100,000 a month working in an
office, and after transport
there's barely any money left at all. She used
to buy mealie-meal in 50kg
bags but you can't find them anymore. The 20kg
bag is Z$20,000, and that
lasts about two weeks, she explains. It doesn't
add up and she admits that
she goes to work hungry and comes home
hungry.
Like everyone else who flags me down she expects to pay for a
lift and
uncoils a wad of fast depreciating notes to do so.
Crossing
Harare
Off Robert Mugabe Drive, there is a large queue building of
patient-looking
people. John, a young journalist sacked from the information
ministry for
suspected sympathies with the opposition, has joined me. He
explains the
crowd are waiting for passports. None have been issued for
nearly four
years. The Registrar's office has long since run out of paper,
or ink, or
bindings and, in fact, everything else they need to do its job.
"There's a
lot this morning. There must be a rumour that they've got ink,"
says John.
"People come back each week to see how their application is
going."
Mothers and babies, young men and pensioners stand in the
unmoving line, and
everyone is carrying sheafs of battered old papers. "They
are always told to
come back next week."
This exhausting pantomime is
just one of many being repeated patiently
around the city.
At night
Harare exists in a confusing half-light. Many of the "robots", or
traffic
lights, have stopped working. The bulbs and aluminium parts, like
the
streetlights, have been looted and sold for scrap. The confusion is
added to
by the closure of the main avenue leading north out of the city.
From 6pm
until 6am, it is sealed off to stop traffic from disturbing the
presidential
residence.
At the filling station closest to Mugabe's residence they
laugh at me when I
ask if they have fuel. Makeshift blackboards like
specials menus now hang on
the forecourts. Those that don't have fuel
advertise specials such as brake
fluid or firewood.
Later and lost in
search of a safe house in the wooded northern suburbs, I
take one wrong turn
too many. I find myself driving beside an endless blue
and white wall, it
goes on for kilometres. The sight of a single,
lonely-looking soldier tells
me this is a VIP estate. I'm told the next day
that actually no one lives in
the vast buildings behind the walls. It is
Robert Mugabe's unfinished
retirement home, and its construction is a
no-expenses-spared hobby for his
extravagant wife, Grace. As for the
soldier, he lives in a battered tent
pitched on the verge outside.
Reuters
Tue Apr 3,
2007 1:57AM EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - South African President Thabo
Mbeki was quoted on Tuesday
as saying he believed Zimbabwean President
Robert Mugabe would peacefully
renounce power at some point.
"I think so.
Yes, sure," Mbeki, appointed by the Southern African
Development Community
(SADC) to mediate over Zimbabwe, said in a Financial
Times interview when
asked whether he thought such a move would ever happen.
"You see,
President Mugabe and the leadership of (the ruling) Zanu-PF
believe they are
running a democratic country," said Mbeki.
"That's why you have an
elected opposition, that's why it's possible for the
opposition to run
municipal government (in Harare and Bulawayo)," he said.
The SADC
appointed Mbeki to act as mediator between Mugabe and the
opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) when it held a summit in
Tanzania last
week after the Zimbabwean government's violent March 11
crackdown on
political opponents.
"You might question whether ... elections are genuinely
free and fair ...
But we have to get the Zimbabweans (to a position that
they) do have
elections that are genuinely free and fair," said
Mbeki.
On Friday, Mugabe's ZANU-PF party endorsed the 83-year-old leader
as its
candidate for elections expected in 2008 -- a move that could see him
remain
in office through to 2013.
The SADC, criticized in the West
for turning a blind eye to Mugabe's
crackdown, hopes its appointment of
Mbeki will lead to talks between Mugabe
and the MDC.
The West accuses
Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain
in 1980, of
authoritarian rule and economic mismanagement.
Zimbabwe has the world's
highest inflation rate, soaring unemployment and
regular food and fuel
shortages.
Mugabe says he is being punished for seizing white-owned farms
to give to
landless blacks, accusing Western countries led by Britain of
seeking to use
the MDC to effect "regime change" in Harare.
Mail and Guardian
03 April 2007 07:11
Zimbabwe's trade unions have called a two-day national strike
from Tuesday
morning, ostensibly over the plummeting value of wages under
rampant
inflation that has left many people unable to afford the bus fare to
work.
But many Zimbabweans view the strike as a demand
for an end to
Robert Mugabe's 27-year rule. Previous attempts to call a
strike have
flopped, in part because of intimidation by the police and army,
but also
because almost anyone with a job in a country with 80% unemployment
is
desperate to hang on to it.
If the protest fails to
prove a turning point it will also be
because, in the eyes of many
Zimbabweans, the political opposition has again
missed the opportunity to
capitalise on a surge of public anger at home and
one of the periodic bursts
of pressure on Mugabe from abroad that followed
the increasingly violent
repression of the president's opponents.
There was a flicker
of hope among many in Zimbabwe that their
president may have pushed things
too far. But three weeks later, Mugabe
appears emboldened and his opponents
are still struggling to challenge him.
"The MDC [the Movement
for Democratic Change opposition]
promised us they would get rid of him
years ago. We are waiting," said
Debora Mukasa, a market trader who says she
now earns only enough to give
her children one meal a day. "What can we do?
If we protest, the police beat
us or the army shoots us. I don't know how we
get rid of this man."
Many ordinary Zimbabweans say they are
waiting for the MDC to
lead the way. Its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, says he
is waiting for the
people to rise up and then he will take charge. Felix
Muzambi, a member of
the MDC's national executive, is among those who thinks
that will not happen
soon.
"People are angry but they are
passive. There is trouble here
and there, but they are not ready to go out
and die for the cause. I think
they are looking for others to do it for
them. They want Mugabe to go, but
it's hard to get them mobilised," he
said.
The failings of the political opposition are reflected
in the
rise of civic organisations and church-led protests through movements
such
as the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, which has attempted to organise mass
prayer
meetings.
"I'm not one of those who believes Mr
Mugabe's fall is
imminent," said the leader of one prominent civic protest
group, Mike Davis
of the Harare Combined Residents Association. "It will
probably come from a
mix of pressures, but I don't think we can expect mass
street protests to be
a factor until his last days. It will be other
internal pressures,
particularly the economy, that will bring him down, when
he runs out of
money to spread his patronage and those in Zanu-PF realise
they are going to
lose everything."
Zimbabwe's Catholic
archbishop, Pius Ncube, has called
Zimbabweans "cowards" for not taking to
the streets to confront Mugabe's
forces. But Davis says he does not blame
people for that.
"Just surviving day-to-day is so demanding
for people. Some of
the people I know spend four hours a day walking to work
and back because
the bus fare takes all their pay," he
said.
"There are now more Zimbabweans working in South Africa
than
here. They are the kind of people who could have been expected to join
protests, but they've had to leave to find work. That's provided relief for
Mugabe."
Some Zimbabweans persuaded themselves that the
region's leaders
would tell Mugabe he has to go at a summit meeting last
week. But Zimbabwe's
president emerged proclaiming it a great victory
because his neighbours
pronounced his rule legitimate and blamed Britain and
its allies for
Zimbabwe's problems.
Then Mugabe's many
dissenters reassured themselves that the
ruling Zanu-PF's central committee
meeting last Friday would produce a
revolt against his plans for another
five years in power.
But the president proved as adept as
ever at outmanoeuvring his
opponents, packing the meeting with dancing
supporters singing liberation
war songs and turning it into a rally at which
he stifled all debate and
engineered his confirmation by acclamation as the
party's candidate in next
year's election.
Many
Zimbabweans say that their country cannot sustain galloping
inflation and
chronic unemployment and food shortages for much longer. But
they do not
have to look far beyond their borders for examples of how much
further their
own country could sink.
Citizens of the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC) watched the
erosion of their nation over three decades until
there was hardly a proper
road outside a few major cities. The telephone
system, hospitals and schools
rotted away. Today, most of the DRC's
population knows little else but the
rot.
For
Zimbabweans, decline is still an aberration, but there is a
fear that if
Mugabe were to remain in power until 2013, just short of his
90th birthday,
a whole generation may grow up knowing not hope but decline.
Mukasa wants more for her children but doesn't see how it will
come.
"I voted in the last election but I won't again.
There's no one
to vote for and even if you do, the government won't let them
win. Someone
has to help. Even God is failing us," she said. - Guardian
Unlimited ©
Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
The Telegraph
By
Mike Pflanz, Africa Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:25am BST
03/04/2007
Zimbabwe's opposition leader made a desperate
appeal to President
Thabo Mbeki of South Africa yesterday, pleading with him
to help "halt the
suffering" of millions in his homeland.
Morgan Tsvangirai, left beaten and bruised from his time in the
custody of
President Robert Mugabe's police last month, was in Johannesburg
to receive
medical treatment when he called on the influential South African
leader to
intervene to alleviate the plight of Zimbabwe's impoverished
masses.
"It is critical that President Mbeki acts quickly and
decisively to
halt the suffering of millions of Zimbabweans," said Mr
Tsvangirai, a leader
of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). "There is
no time to waste. The
people of Zimbabwe need food and jobs, they need
freedom and help."
Mr Mbeki was chosen by southern African leaders
last week to lead
mediation efforts between Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai
after a month of
attacks on opposition figures in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwean police said yesterday they have asked a special police
branch to
maintain order during a two-day strike that begins today.
A
spokesman in Harare said that a paramilitary force would be deployed
across
the country because the authorities were "determined to ensure that
peace
prevails during the so-called mass stay away".
Mr Mugabe has openly
admitted his security forces "bashed" Mr
Tsvangirai and other opposition
leaders when they were arrested at a prayer
rally on March 11.
Nine
other MDC officials were arrested last Wednesday, as Mr Mugabe
travelled to
Tanzania for an extraordinary meeting of the Southern African
Development
Community (SADC), called to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe. At
that meeting,
Mr Mbeki, who has been criticised for his softly, softly
approach to
diplomacy with his neighbour, was picked to drive through peace
talks
between Zimbabwe's government and its opposition.
There have been
previous attempts by South Africa to bring the two
sides together, which
failed after Mr Mugabe walked out.
Mr Tsvangirai said yesterday:
"Let's look at 2004 when there were
these talks about talks. It's Mugabe who
scuttled them because he was not
interested in any negotiation, in any
solution."
"This time around I think President Mbeki must be wary
not to be led
along a garden path of Mugabe pretending to go through some
process of
negotiations but with an intention of scuttling those
talks."
Mr Tsvangirai added that he had not yet spoken to the South
African
president, but he appealed for the West to back the
SADC.
Mr Mugabe was endorsed by his Zanu-PF party on Friday to
stand as its
candidate in elections in 2008 and Mr Tsvangirai said it was
crucial that Mr
Mbeki ensures the vote is free and fair.
Inflation in Zimbabwe is expected to top 2,000 per cent by the end of
April
and 80 per cent of the country's 12 million people are unemployed.
As a result, thousands of Zimbabwean refugees are streaming into South
Africa, Botswana and Mozambique looking for work.
Washington Post
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday,
April 3, 2007; Page A15
JOHANNESBURG, April 2 -- Zimbabwean
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said
Monday he is ready to negotiate
with President Robert Mugabe without any
preconditions, despite ongoing
abductions and beatings of anti-government
activists
there.
Tsvangirai, speaking at a news conference in Johannesburg, praised
the
decision by regional leaders last week to appoint South African
President
Thabo Mbeki to mediate negotiations. Tsvangirai has criticized
Mbeki in the
past for not pressuring Mugabe aggressively enough, but in
Monday's remarks
he voiced no discontent with Mbeki's
selection.
"These are new circumstances. I have no doubt in my mind that
the whole
region is behind President Mbeki. . . . That is a positive step,"
said
Tsvangirai, who is seeking a new constitution that ensures free and
fair
elections in 2008. "I am hoping that President Mbeki approaches these
[negotiations] with a new perspective."
Tsvangirai, who was in
Johannesburg seeking medical treatment for injuries
suffered during his
arrest and severe beating on March 11, announced no new
plans to mount
demonstrations against Mugabe but said, "The broad
participation of the
people is what's going to put pressure on the regime."
Zimbabwean labor
leaders plan a two-day national strike beginning Tuesday.
Though nominally
about protecting workers' wages at a time of
hyperinflation, the strike is
widely seen as a test of opposition strength
in the aftermath of the March
11 police crackdown. Tsvangirai was among
about 50 anti-government activists
arrested for attending a political rally
when such meetings had been banned.
Most were badly beaten, and many remain
in hospitals.
In the three
weeks since those attacks, more than 100 other activists have
been arrested,
abducted or beaten by government forces, opposition leaders
say. Mugabe has
threatened more violence if public protests against his rule
continue.
The president has portrayed the opposition as seeking the
violent overthrow
of his government after nearly 27 years in power. Police
have repeatedly
accused Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic
Change, of
orchestrating a series of bombings against police stations and
other
government targets over the past month.
Tsvangirai denied those
allegations on Monday and called on the
international community to increase
pressure on Mugabe, who plans to run for
reelection in 2008, to leave
office. The nation is seven years into economic
collapse, with some of the
world's highest rates of inflation and
unemployment.
"It's the
responsibility of the international community to keep a crisis
from
escalating into a conflict," Tsvangirai said.
Also on Monday, Time
magazine correspondent Alex Perry, a British citizen
based in Cape Town, was
freed by Zimbabwean police after paying a small fine
for reporting without
proper accreditation, news reports said. He had been
arrested on Saturday.
Reporting in Zimbabwe without government
accreditation, which is rarely
given, is a crime punishable by two years in
prison.
The Sun, Nigeria
By The Sun
Publishing
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Who will wrench Zimbabwe from
the evil grips of Mr. Robert Mugabe? How
should the rest of the world
respond to a near megalomaniac gone berserk?
Should the world stand by and
watch while one man drunk with power drive his
country to a failed state? It
is, indeed, time to call Mugabe's bluff - time
to do something and that
something must be potent enough to sink his boat.
For a man who led his
country to independence after decades of gruesome
guerrilla warfare and then
became its President, a fitting tribute should
have been a garland and a
revered place in the pantheon of world's elder
statemen. But Mugabe is
proving that he is not a candidate for such eminent
position. He has
practically driven his country to the strait.
Repression has become a
ready and happy instrument for public
administration. He recently banned all
political rallies and the regime has
become increasingly repressive and
brutal on opposition. The savage
treatment meted out to members of
opposition, the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) a few weeks ago, has
added to the ever-growing phenomenon of
the regime's intolerance to
political opposition and also a slur on the
country's human rights
record.
His repressive tendencies heightened since after his
controversial land
redistribution programme of 2002. That, too, has remained
one big undoing
for the country. What should have been an egalitarian
gesture turned out to
be a wicked undertaking, because the once thriving
commercial farms were
seized from white owners and given to blacks who often
lacked experience and
resources to work the farms like their former
owners.
Once the food-basket of the region, Zimbabwe is going to go
hungry this
year, that is, if aid is not forthcoming. The economy has
continued to
slide, shrunken, actually by half since 1999 and unemployment
is at least 80
per cent. Inflation is running at over 1,700 per cent, the
highest in the
world and is expected to worsen. Many Zimbabweans now
survive, thanks to the
black-market and money and food said to come from the
three million or so
nationals living outside the country.
In spite of
all this, Mugabe is not in any way showing signs that he would
want to
retire. He has just declared himself ready to stand in next year's
election
for another six-year term - that is, after he failed to secure
extension of
his current term till 2010. The world's fastest shrinking
peace-time economy
has left the country tottering on the brink.
So, how would the world
respond so that Zimbabwe does not slip into the
brink? In other words, how
would the outside world save Zimbabwe from
Mugabe? In fairness to them, the
European countries, together with America
have been pushing to end the trail
of nightmares in that African country.
But now they should see the need to
do more. The hands of the opposition
need to be strengthened. And the AU
members must prevail on the big tyrant
in Zimbabwe. It remains very curious
that South Africa, its neigbhour and
the inevitable butt of an eventual blow
out in Zimbabwe, has remained
unmoved and manifestly unperturbed by the
brewing disaster next door.
South Africa, collaborating with other
members of the Southern Africa
Development Community (SADC) can make more
than a dent. The community will
need to begin to mediate between the ruling
Zimbabwe African National Union-
Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the main
opposition MDC. The community can put
in place a power-sharing transitional
government to oversee development of a
new constitution, repeal of
repressive laws and the holding of an
internationally supervised election in
2010.
However, that remains in the realm of wish. For Zimbabwe to
recover, Mugabe
must tolerate the opposition. He must step down when his
term ends in 2008
and the opposition parties must negotiate a political
transition leading to
a new constitution and viable, democratic
institutions. All said, for
Zimbabwe not to live up to our worst fear - a
failed state - both domestic
and international actors must do more than they
are doing presently.
Cricinfo
staff
April 3, 2007
Steve Waugh believes the Australia players do
not want to go ahead with
their scheduled tour of Zimbabwe in September.
Australia are supposed to
play a three-match ODI series there to fulfil
their agreement that every ICC
member nation must tour each other country at
least once every five years.
However, the Australian government has
called for the visit to be axed due
to continued violence in Zimbabwe and
the increased crushing of dissent by
Robert Mugabe's regime. Waugh said he
thought the players would probably
agree.
"It's a difficult question
for Ricky [Ponting] but I feel the Australian
players probably generally
feel they don't want to go," Waugh told Reuters.
"I might be speaking out of
school, but I've got the feeling they think it
is not the right thing to
do."
Australia last toured Zimbabwe in May 2004, when Stuart MacGill
famously
made himself unavailable in a self-imposed boycott. With security
concerns
growing, Waugh said he would not advise Australia to go ahead with
the trip.
"It's easy for me to say that because when you're a player it's
your career
and you don't want to get too involved in things like that,"
Waugh said.
"But I think it will be tough for them to go in that environment
with what's
happening in Zimbabwe. I've got the feeling they probably won't
go."
The Australian government indicated it would discuss the matter with
Cricket
Australia (CA) after the World Cup. It said there might be ways for
CA to
avoid the fines of up to US$1.6 million from the ICC if Australia
cancelled
the tour.
Waugh, who was speaking at the Laureus world
sports awards in Barcelona,
also said match-fixing was damaging cricket and
it was up to the players to
help stamp it out. "I don't want it in cricket -
I think it is terrible,
disgusting," Waugh said on AAP.
"I'm getting
asked at these awards by other sporting legends about what's
going on in
cricket and it's bad for the sport's image. Really it's about
the players,
they have to put their hands up and say I'm 100% or sign
declarations but
something has to be done because it is damaging the sport.
Waugh said
match-fixing might be more widespread than many people thought.
"It would be
pretty naive to say it was just one or two countries," he said.
"I don't
know who is involved but the odds are it is more than one or two
countries.
But what do you do to stop it?
"I don't think the ICC or anyone knows how
to stop it or it would have been
stopped before. They formed a committee
years ago and nothing too much seems
to have changed. Something serious has
to happen now or the game will be
damaged for ever."
© Cricinfo
News-Medical.net
Published:
Monday, 2-Apr-2007
A trial in Zimbabwe has shown that a programme
of integrated peer
education, condom distribution, and management of
sexually transmitted
infections did not reduce the overall incidence of
HIV-1.
The study, published in PLoS Medicine, by Simon Gregson and
colleagues
from Imperial College London, randomised different communities in
eastern
Zimbabwe over a 3 year period. Six pairs of communities in Eastern
Zimbabwe
were compared, each of which had its own health center. Control
communities
received the standard government services for preventing HIV.
The other
communities received a package of additional strategies including
education
and condom distribution amongst sex workers and their clients;
better
services at sexually transmitted infection clinics; and educational
HIV/AIDS
open days at health centers. This was a large trial with more than
63,000
meetings being conducted and 7 million condoms distributed by trained
peer
educators. The researchers found that although male participants
benefit ed
from the programme with a decrease in incidence of HIV-1, a
reduction in
reporting of unprotected sex with casual partners, and a
decrease in
symptoms of sexually transmitted infections, overall there was
no change in
any of these outcomes for the population at large including the
incidence of
HIV-1 among the population in general - the main outcome of the
trial.
These results are disappointing given the urgent need for
control
measures for HIV-1 in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors conclude that
they
"emphasise the need for alternative strategies of behaviour-change
promotion."
http://www.plos.org
The Daily Reckoning
Posted by Mogambo Guru on Apr 3rd, 2007
Chapter eight of Michael
Panzner's book, Financial Armageddon, is titled
"Hyperinflation" and he
opens the chapter with a quote from Robert Mugabe,
the moron who has
destroyed Zimbabwe by creating so much money that
inflation is running at
hundreds of percent per month. The quote is, "I will
print money today so
that people can survive." Hahaha!
And speaking of inflation in Zimbabwe,
a reader asked, "Hey, Big Stupid
Mogambo (BSM)! How much has an ounce of
gold risen in Zimbabwe, the country
with the highest inflation in the world,
and which is now running at almost
2,000% a year? Did gold rise enough - as
you claim all the damned time with
your Big, Fat Stupid Mouth (BFSM)
yammering, yammering, yammering until we
are sick of hearing it - to
preserve buying power in Zimbabwe? If not, drop
dead, you miserable, filthy
little creep!"
Instantly, I realize that this sounds exactly like the way
my mother used to
talk to me! But since she died a long time ago, I figure
that her ghost has
taken over the writer's body, and is using his fingers
and email skills to
dig at me, one more time, from beyond the
grave.
And since the only way to ever shut her up was to prove that her
accusations
and lawsuits were baseless, we go to People's Daily Online to
discover the
fact that "the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is offering a gold
support price of
28 U.S. dollars per gram."
And how much is that in
ounces? Google says that "1 troy ounce = 31.1034768
grams." The Mogambo
Arbitrage Sensor (MAS) instantly realizes that if the
Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe is willing to offer $870 an ounce for gold, where
are the
arbitrageurs buying gold in the USA for $660 an ounce and selling it
to
these idiots in Zimbabwe for $870? It seems (I say with arched eyebrow)
too
nice of a juicy plum to turn down!
The fact is that there are surely
tariffs, duties, fees, legal issues and
taxes enough to make a complete
mockery of the bank offering a "support
price of $28 U.S. dollars per gram",
or else that bank would be up to its
knees in gold bullion right
now!
In a more realistic vein, AllAfrica.com writes, that in local
currency,
"current gold producer price stands at Zim$16,000 per gram." This
is the
producer price, which works out to Zim$497,655.63 per
ounce.
Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) president George Kawonza, says
"with the
inflation rate standing at 1,729.9% we agreed that the gold price
should be
pegged at around Zim$180,000 per gram", which comes out to
Zim$5,598,625.86
per ounce. Although with inflation raging at almost 2,000%
per year, there
is no exact "price" for anything, although I imagine that
gold selling for
around Zim$6 million per ounce comes close
enough.
So, given the fact that less than twenty years ago the Zimbabwe
dollar and
the U.S. dollar had roughly the same value, and thus gold was
priced the
same in U.S. dollars and in Zimbabwe dollars, I would say, "Hell,
yes, the
value of gold has preserved its buying power! And not only that,
but
everything else in the damned country has turned into worthless crap,
which
makes the miracle of gold even more spectacular! Hahaha! In your face,
mom!
Hahaha!"
So, the lesson is clear; those Zimbabweans who put
their savings into gold,
instead of Zimbabwean dollars and assets that can
be easily seized and
devalued by a government, made out very well, just as
the theory predicts!
I got an email from Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR)
Tom D. that clearly
explained one of the finer points of the modern voodoo
of Hedonic Indexing
of inflation statistics when he wrote, "Dear Mogambo,
I'm afraid you still
don't have this substitution thing down. You see, as
the cost of food rises,
people will 'substitute' eating (which is expensive)
with starvation (which
is free)! Therefore, as the price of food rises, the
CPI decreases. I hope
this helps."
Boy, did it ever! In this bizarre,
alternate-reality world that I commonly
refer to as "beyond Kafka-esque", it
actually DOES help make sense of what
is happening with the Federal Reserve
and Congress! We're freaking doomed!
Michael Nystrom is the Editor of
bullnotbull.com, and as such, is my natural
enemy, because after awhile you
just get fed up (up to freaking HERE!) with
editors angrily crumpling up
your creative sweat and blood right in your
face and saying things like
"What in the hell is this trash? Do you call
this 'writing'? This is crap!
You are crap! Everything you do is crap! What
in the hell is wrong with you,
you Worthless Mogambo Moron (WMM)? Get out of
my office! Go someplace and
die, you stinking no-talent hack!"
Since I can never actually dispute the
dismal facts of their argument, I can
instead take delight in plotting and
seeking revenge. So you can imagine my
delight at running across some essays
written by this same Mr. Nystrom! I
think to myself "Aha! At last, the
tables have turned!" Prepared to gloat in
glee as I mercilessly rip into
him, hammer and tongs, I was horrified to
note that they shared a terrific
title: "Three Bears, No Goldilocks"!
Hahaha! Fabulous! I love it!
The
bad news is that now, instead of just being mad at him from a purely
irrational distrust of editors in general, I now also hate him out of pure,
shameful envy for coming up with such a great title and exposing my creative
incompetence. "Three Bears, No Goldlocks!" Hahaha!
Anyway, even
better is that in Parts I and III he reviewed each of the new
books by Peter
Schiff (Crash Proof, with the subtitle "How to profit from
the coming
economic collapse") and Michael Panzner (Financial Armageddon,
with the
subtitle "Protecting your future from four impending
catastrophes"), and
did a terrific job. Now I hate him for that, too, the
little bastard
show-off!
I am currently reading both books, but the news is so horrific
and bleak
that, after just a few paragraphs of either one, I have to drink
bourbon and
other alcoholic brown liquids just to calm my ragged nerves,
more and more,
until my nerves are, at last, comatose. The time-line data
shows, in case
you are interested, some lagged vomiting, too.
And
believe me when I tell you that you will want to know what happened to
the
economy, as that is what everybody will soon want to know, and it will
be a
very popular subject on the TV news shows and with Congress for a long,
long
time. Or, as Mr. Panzner himself put it in his book, "The dangers that
a few
observers had foreseen - which were discounted, misunderstood, or
overlooked
- will be the only thing that growing numbers of Americans will
be able to
think about."
Such as Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) Tim J., who writes,
"Dear Mogambo, I too
am angry about this inflation. The dog food which
killed six of my elderly
friends was up 10% from last year." Hahaha!
Sublime!
Until next week,
The Mogambo Guru
for The Daily
Reckoning
The First Post
Today's stay-away will prove as futile
as Mbeki's
proposed mediation, says a s h smyth
Though unusually public about its concerns, the resolution
from last week's
Southern African Development Community summit - to despatch
Thabo Mbeki to
reconcile Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition MDC -
was nonetheless
a pathetically empty gesture.
For starters, there's
simply no middle ground for Mbeki to
negotiate. Secondly, the mealy-mouthed
resolution stipulated no specific
objectives or time limits, nor what should
follow were Mbeki to fail. And
fail he most probably will. So, with an eye
to his own presidential legacy,
the hyper-cautious Mbeki will be in no
hurry.
Observing that the SADC has no bite to match its
pitiful
bark, Mugabe promptly showed two fingers to his regional peers by
getting
himself nominated as his party's presidential candidate for yet
another
five-year term. And though Moses Moyo's
daily
chronicling of Harare life for The First Post
demonstrates
deep resentment of Mugabe's continuing reign - even within
Zanu-PF - there
is little reason to assume the resentment will bear fruit
any time soon.
Opposition is in disarray. They don't
speak with one voice
and are saturated with government informers. They
cannot take advantage of
foreign support, since this undermines their cause
by allying them with
'colonialists'. And Morgan Tsvangirai himself has no
struggle record, an
issue that still carries far more weight than it ought
to.
Meanwhile, Mugabe has shown no compunction about
rigging
parliamentary and presidential elections, and military chiefs have
repeatedly warned that they simply will not tolerate an electoral victory by
the MDC.
So the ugly question no one wants to ask
is this: what's
the point of today's union stay-away? With unemployment at
80 per cent, and
the Zimbabwean economy fast becoming an oxymoron, what
possible effect can
it have? Little beyond a few cracked skulls and broken
arms, I'd guess, and
then a series of kangaroo
trials.
FIRST POSTED APRIL 3, 2007