OhMyNews
The
MDC leader is Zimbabwe's only hope against Robert Mugabe
Nelson G. Katsande (NELKA)
Published 2006-08-10 11:25
(KST)
If Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai
thinks he can rule
the country while Mugabe is still alive, he can think
again.
Mugabe, who has always referred to Tsvangirai as a British
puppet,
declares that the opposition leader can only rule over his dead
body.
Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader was a trade
unionist. Born in
1952 in Buhera, he worked in the textile industry before
joining a nickel
mine in Bindura. His trade union activities catapulted him
to political
fame.
In 1997 and 1998 he organized and led a
successful nationwide
industrial strike which paralysed and brought the
country to a standstill.
However, later industrial strikes were met with
resistance from Mugabe who
unleashed the military machinery onto the
strikers.
Fed up of being taken for a ride by Mugabe, the people
urged
Tsvangirai to form a political party, hence the birth of the MDC in
1999.
The Movement for Democratic Change is Zimbabwe's only
promising
opposition party and the people's only hope of rescuing them from
Mugabe's
brutal rule.
Mugabe's grip on power was put to the
test in the June 2000 general
elections with a hard blow from the MDC.
Though Mugabe retained the
presidency, the opposition rejected the results
citing irregularities.
Election observers too noted that the elections were
not free and fair. The
elections of 2002 also led to allegations of vote
rigging and corruption.
Mr Mugabe has previously said that he will
not resign from the
presidency before accomplishing his land reform
programme. What the people
of Zimbabwe want now is a lasting solution to
their day to day problems. The
high cost of basic consumer products has had
a negative effect on the
people.
Since 1980 Mugabe has relied
heavily on the rural voters to whom fear
has been instilled. In the run down
to elections Zanu(PF) youths have been
seen intimidating voters into voting
for the incumbent government.
The majority of the rural voters are
illiterate and have been
brainwashed into believing that if Mugabe
relinquishes power a bloody civil
war will ensue. Mugabe has vowed to remain
in power and regularly dodges
questions regarding who will succeed
him.
Mugabe's wife, Grace also continues to hog the limelight for
the wrong
reasons. Her love for expensive shopping sprees and holidaying
abroad while
the country reels under severe economic hardships has been
cause for
concern. She has been spotted shopping for designer clothing and
China ware
in neighbouring South Africa.
Grace also benefitted
from her husband's controversial land reform
programme by grabbing Iron Mask
farm in Bidura, a town located 80 miles
north-east of Harare. The
independent press too has taken a mickey out of
her for alleged
infidelity.
Mugabe like Joseph Stalin is prepared to inflict more
harm than good
to the economy and people for as long as he is in
power.
The nation has now turned to God hoping that a solution to
the
problems facing Zimbabwe will soon be found.
The Herald (Harare)
August 9,
2006
Posted to the web August 9, 2006
Harare
The Zimbabwe
National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) will this week hold a
conference to
discuss the critical shortage of electricity that has become a
cause for
concern among the business and farming community.
The chamber is urging
the business community to come up with solutions on
how they can overcome
electricity problems to make sure that industries
operate at maximum
capacity.
While industry's capacity has been severely constrained as a
result of
critical input shortages, power outages and the introduction of
load-shedding by Zesa Holdings has dealt another blow to the already
incapacitated sector.
Farmers irrigating the winter crop are among
the worst affected by the power
outages.
ZNCC chief executive Mr Cain
Mpofu said the conference was not aimed at
confronting Zesa Holdings, but
"we are saying, among the business people,
they may come up with ideas on
how we can normalise the situation".
"As business people we are expecting
Zesa to come up with new ideas on how
they can get over the current
problem," added the ZNCC chief executive.
Recently, the Government has
restructured Zesa Holdings into four companies
in a bid to make the
loss-making power utility viable, improve service
delivery and increase
accountability.
Presentations at the conference, which will be held in
Bulawayo, will be
made by energy management experts on how business should
manage the crisis
to protect machinery and equipment, and minimise
losses.
"We therefore invite all economic agents in industry,
manufacturing,
agriculture, commerce, mining, civil society, and all other
stakeholders,"
the chamber said in a statement.
The Southern African
Development Community (SADC) is expected to experience
power shortages
beginning next year when demand is expected to exceed
supply, and Zimbabwe
is making frantic efforts to put in place measures to
alleviate the
situation.
The Herald
(Harare)
August 9, 2006
Posted to the web August 9,
2006
Harare
A Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) publicity campaign
team which visited
Chegutu last week said there is need to urgently address
the fate of the
existing notes, from $1 000 and below as well as coins in
circulation, as it
is envisaged that there will be confusion after August
21.
The team, led by the Minister of State for Policy Implementation Cde
Webster
Shamu, also observed that banks in the town were still conducting
their
transactions in old bearer cheques as they had not received new
notes.
It said all banks in the town were not aware of their role in the
currency
change over and no bank had been swapping old notes for new ones
although it
was assumed that the urban residents would have their cash
swapped in banks.
The team also said the period of the currency
changeover may turn out to be
too short to cover some communities that the
central bank currency swap
teams were targeting.
It observed that
residents of Chegutu generally felt that the removal of
zeros on bearer
cheques had resulted in prices of most commodities going up,
thus negating
the convenience gains arising from the introduction of the new
family of
bearer cheques.
"Churches were generally fully supportive of the current
initiatives by the
Governor of the RBZ, Dr Gideon Gono to make things work
in the economy.
"They, however, unanimously expressed disappointment that
the real enemy,
which is corruption, is yet to be tackled as they allege
that the real
perpetrators of that corruption seem to be going free," said
the team in its
obser- vations.
Cde Shamu, who is also Member of
Parliament for Chegutu, said every
Zimbabwean must support Government's
efforts to turn-around the economy.
"We want the economy to take off
through concerted efforts of everybody.
This programme is not about Dr Gono
or Dr Murerwa but interests of the
nation," said Cde Shamu.
He said
with the majority of Zimbabweans behind progress, victory over
economic
challenges in the country was certain.
Dr Gono last week slashed the
three zeros from the country's currency as
part of measures to fight
inflation, corruption, speculation and the
indiscipline that had gripped the
economy.
Presenting his Mid-term Monetary Policy Statement in Harare, Dr
Gono gave
depositors a 21-day deadline to change their money after which the
old
bearer cheques would cease to be legal tender.
More than $35
trillion was believed to be in the hands of speculators in
Zimbabwe and
outside the borders, especially in Zambia and Mozambique.
zimbabwejounalists.com
By Tino Zhakata
HARARE - Many
Zimbabweans have been hoping to reverse the steep
decline of their country
by supporting the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change, MDC, and a
civil society movement, the National
Constitutional Assembly, NCA - but both
have let the public down.
This year the MDC declared war on itself
instead of the main enemy,
President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF
party. A serious, and
sometimes violent, split opened up which left two
separate factions both
claiming to be the "true" MDC. The opposition
infighting left the electorate
confused, while Mugabe and his supporters
were delighted with the turn of
events.
Hope for sustained
opposition switched to the NCA which was launched
back in 1997 by a wide
alliance of trade unionists, church groups, human
rights activists, lawyers
and journalists to gather public support for a new
and more transparently
democratic constitution.
However, the faith the public vested in
the NCA has been dashed
because its own leadership has begun behaving in the
same dictatorial way as
the man the NCA set out to topple -
Mugabe.
Mugabe decided that the best way to counter the activities
and
ambitions of the NCA was to initiate his own programme for
constitutional reform. In April 1999, the ZANU PF government set up a
constitutional commission, which was given the job of drawing up a new
constitution to be put before the electorate in a national
referendum.
The commission was dominated by ZANU PF. Most of its
400 members, or
commissioners, were Mugabe's personal nominees from the
ruling party,
including every one of ZANU PF's members of
parliament.
Seeing its project hijacked, the NCA urged the public
to boycott
Mugabe's commission and the MDC also spurned it, for its
proposals
left the vast powers and patronage that Mugabe had acquired as
president
over two decades and through seventeen major constitutional
amendments
untouched while giving him the additional right to hold office
for another
decade.
The commissioners approved the draft
commission and Mugabe added yet
another clause allowing him to expropriate
land without consultation or
compensation, believing it would be popular and
help to secure the rural
vote in coming elections.
Mugabe
miscalculated. The referendum campaign on the draft
constitution in
January-February 2000 came at a time of mass unemployment,
increasing
poverty, fuel shortages, factory closures, power cuts, crumbling
public
services and an unpopular war in the Congo. Public attention focused
more on
the government's record and the result was a stunning referendum
defeat for
Mugabe and a short-lived triumph for the NCA and MDC.
Mugabe
responded furiously with a series of decrees that led to ZANU
PF gangs armed
with axes and pangas invading white farms across the country,
in defiance of
the law and numerous court rulings, to expel, and sometimes
kill,
farm-owners. The invasions destroyed agriculture, the source of
Zimbabwe's
main foreign exchange earnings, and triggered a meltdown of the
entire
economy.
Never were a resolute NCA and MDC more badly
needed.
But, first, the MDC split and became politically impotent.
And now, to
widespread shock through wider civil society, NCA chairman
Dr Lovemore
Madhuku has emulated Mugabe and manipulated amendments to the
pressure
group's constitution to give himself an extended tenure in office
beyond the
two mandated five-year terms he has already served.
"This is a tragedy for Zimbabwean democracy," Douglas Mwonzora, a
senior NCA
official who opposed Lovemore's constitutional amendments, told
IWPR. "It
appears as though Madhuku has been secretly admiring the very man
we have
been fighting."
NCA sources said Madhuku began campaigning quietly
for key amendments
that entrenched his power long before the recent crucial
annual general
meeting where the movement's constitution was changed.
Officials at the
NCA's head office handpicked delegates, leaving out anyone
suspected of
being opposed to the changes. With control of the
organisation's finances,
those who opposed Madhuku said he was able to
mobilise support much as
Mugabe does at national level.
Opponents of the changes realised too late the degree of preparation
and
manipulation by Madhuku and his supporters. When they raised
objections
from the floor at the annual general meeting they were
threatened and
manhandled by the chairman's followers. Brilliant Mhlanga, a
journalist on
the weekly Zimbabwe Independent, wrote, "Everyone has chosen
to be quiet on
the violence at the NCA's annual general meeting. No one from
civil society
had the temerity to stand up and remind Madhuku that violence
is violence
...
"Civil society is showing double standards [while] Madhuku is
twisting
the NCA constitution inside out. They seem to be confirming the
view
that elites give way to elites. What a shame for
democracy."
Journalist Pedzisai Ruhanya commented, "The bitter
paradox of Lovemore
Madhuku's political expediency is that he has done what
he wants Mugabe and
the president's government to stop doing."
Madhuku justified his Mugabe-style coup by saying "the people" want
him to
continue in power at the NCA until a new national constitution has
been
achieved. Only then will he step down - an echo of Mugabe's declaration
that
he will leave office only when "the people" say so.
"What is going
on in the NCA is not what we wanted when we formed it,"
said senior MDC
parliamentary deputy Welshman Ncube. "As one of the founding
members of the
NCA, I am totally dismayed that the leadership is refusing to
hand over
power to a third generation under the excuse of having been asked
by 'the
people' not to step down."
Since its formation nearly a decade ago,
the NCA has been the leading
light in Zimbabwe's struggle for democracy.
Countless times its activists
have defied draconian legislation that outlaws
demonstrations and public
gatherings of more than two people.
But the recent palace coup has, for the time being, left civil society
with no moral high ground from which to challenge Mugabe's autocratic
rule.
Speaking for many, Joseph Jemwa, a vegetable vendor in
the poor Harare
township of Mbare, told IWPR, "What we need now is divine
intervention
because we have failed to solve our problems on our own. I
don't believe
anyone will remove Mugabe and our suffering will just
continue."
Tino Zhakata is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in
Zimbabwe.
zimbabwejounalists.com
By Hativagone Mushonga
HARARE -
With the recent death of Tichaona Jokonya, who had been
minister of
information in Robert Mugabe's government for a short period
since last
year, Zimbabweans have been speculating intensely about who will
take over
one of the most powerful ministries in the land.
Many fear the
successor might be George Charamba, the ministry's
venomous permanent
secretary.
Those who have had close dealings with him talk of an
easy-going and
humorous man, but Charamba's acerbic tongue and policies
speak only of a man
of spiteful character.
Charamba had
remained quietly in the background until 2000 when he
acquired a new and
very aggressive boss, Jonathan Moyo, appointed
information minister as
Mugabe sought to revive his fortunes after seeing
his popularity plunge in
the midst of a debilitating national economic
meltdown.
The
43-year-old Charamba, who used to get on well with journalists,
has lately
become a grumpy spin-doctor battling hard to please his
political
masters in the face of growing resentment by Zimbabwe's
citizenry against
the ruling party's corruption and increasingly destructive
and disastrous
policies.
"He seems not to be his own man," said Farai Mutsaka,
former chief
reporter of the Daily News, Zimbabwe's only independent
daily until it
was closed down in 2003 by Moyo, who sent in armed police to
expel staff
from their offices and seize computers and other equipment. Two
years
earlier, operatives from Mugabe's much-feared Central Intelligence
Organisation planted a bomb that destroyed the paper's printing
presses.
"Charamba was friendly and a nice guy before Moyo came,
but he's now
vicious to the private media and has not even made life easier
for the
journalists in government media," said Mutsaka.
International figures, too, are frequently subject to his verbal
lashings.
Charamba accused a western diplomat of wandering in parts
of Harare's
Botanical Gardens where "so many of our youthful citizens have
been
deflowered, lured by the greenback from generous and flaunting
foreigners
not given to enjoying sex the conventional way".
When he further told United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan
recently that he was no longer welcome to the country to pursue a
"stale"
mediation mission, it became abundantly clear that Charamba was
intent on
proving himself Mugabe's most robust and loyal propagandist.
In
June, Charamba contradicted his superiors - Jokonya, Moyo's
successor,
who died on June 24, and his deputy Bright Matonga - when
he announced the
government's withdrawal of its invitation to Annan to visit
Zimbabwe. Mugabe
had invited the secretary-general to personally assess the
impact of the
government's widely condemned Operation Murambatsvina
(Operation Drive Out
the Filth) - the mass demolition of the homes of
opposition supporters in
urban areas that the UN said had left more than
700,000 people
homeless.
The increasingly paranoid ZANU PF government decided that
Annan's
visit might be used to pile pressure on Mugabe to quit.
"As an information permanent secretary, Charamba has managed to
confuse
journalists and ministers alike by pretending to espouse the views
of Mugabe
when in effect he is given to talking in his personal capacity,"
an
executive member of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, who asked not to
be
named from fear of victimisation, told IWPR.
Charamba was a close
collaborator with Moyo, whose full-blooded
propaganda war against the
private media was credited with saving
Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party
from the jaws of electoral defeat in
2002 and 2005 at the hands of the
opposition.
Charamba and Moyo together are notorious for having
crafted the
Orwellian 2002 Access to Information and Protection of
Privacy Act,
AIPPA, which dictates that journalists who work without the
approval of a
Mugabe-appointed media regulator - a notorious Mugabe ally
named Tafataona
Mahoso - can be imprisoned for two years. Opponents of the
government allege
that AIPPA and the equally draconian 2001 Broadcasting
Services Act and the
2003 Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation
(Commercialisation) Act were
specifically designed to silence private media
critical of the increasingly
autocratic Mugabe.
When Moyo
brought the AIPPA to parliament, the chairman of the
parliamentary
legal committee, the late Dr Eddison Zvobgo, a senior
ZANU PF deputy and
long-serving government minister, said, "I can say
without equivocation that
this bill, in its original form, was the most
calculated and determined
assault on our liberties guaranteed by the
constitution in the 20 years I
served as cabinet minister."
Charamba has boasted that he is proud
to be associated with AIPPA,
although the law has seen four newspapers
- the Daily News, the Daily
News on Sunday, The Tribune and the Weekly Times
- being banned since 2003
under the act's provisions. In addition, AIPPA has
been used to harass and
arrest hundreds of journalists who have been branded
"ignorant" and
"unpatriotic" by Charamba.
"Charamba, like Moyo
and Tafataona Mahoso, believes the current crop
of journalists cannot
[produce stories] in sync with the thinking he
misconstrues as national
interest," a veteran journalist based in
Harare told IWPR.
Another local journalist added, "He is not different from Moyo and
Mahoso, since all three of them display evil characteristics, worrying
[little] about the impact of their actions on Zimbabweans."
Charamba's ministry, especially during Moyo's five-year ministerial
reign, wasted no time in setting the police on journalists and filing
huge
lawsuits over seemingly harmless stories. But for now he seems to have
decided to confine his war against the media, government critics and
opposition politicians, as well as the West, to press statements and
articles in the state media as he builds his own political profile in search
of ministerial office.
Moyo, now an independent legislator
since Mugabe fired him, said in a
recent newspaper column that Charamba
"regularly violates his civil service
oath [of independence] and
obligations" by writing the virulent Nathaniel
Manheru column in the
government-owned Herald newspaper.
Moyo warned that if Charamba
repeated attacks on him in the Nathaniel
Manheru column he would reveal many
things, "including how Charamba
attempted to murder his wife in cold blood
and how that attempted murder has
been covered up ... This is not a threat
but a promise".
In recent columns, Charamba/Manheru has labelled
Mavis Makuni, an
intelligent and trenchant critic of the Mugabe government
with the weekly
Financial Gazette, a "menopausal columnist".
And in an extraordinary attack on the country's non-government
organisations, on whom the populace is increasingly dependent for
survival,
Charamba/Manheru said they are "depressed bipeds who crave, feed
and fatten
on human tragedies, much the same way maggots grow white-fat on
decaying
carcasses ... Their mission for governance pits them against the
governors
of this land on behalf of bitter Blair [British prime minister
Tony Blair,
President Mugabe's top foreign hate figure]".
Charamba's political
ambitions are among Zimbabwe's worst kept
secrets, but he will find it hard
to rise through the ranks of ZANU PF where
the old guard is now wary of
"young Turks" after Moyo's meteoric rise nearly
destroyed the veterans'
stranglehold on power.
However, Charamba seems not to be as shrewd
and calculating a schemer
as Moyo was. He has clashed with senior ZANU PF
officials, and this will
hamper his political ambitions. Moyo has also
implicated him peripherally in
the so-called "Tsholotsho declaration", a
meeting in Moyo's rural Tsholotsho
constituency in western Zimbabwe where
the possibility of a coup against
Mugabe is alleged to have been discussed
in December 2004.
The meeting led to Moyo's sacking and to that of
several other
high-ranking ZANU PF officials.
"Charamba
emerges as a government official stung by his failure to
land a substantial
ministerial post in the post-Moyo era," said one analyst.
"He tries
hard to build a profile of an individual capable of
defending
Mugabe's policies to the hilt, expecting due notice from the president
for his efforts."
In the early 1980s, Charamba was a protégé of the
late Canaan Banana,
Zimbabwe's former ceremonial president when Mugabe led
the country as prime
minister. They met at the University of Zimbabwe where
both were taking
karate lessons.
After Charamba graduated with
a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in
English, Banana recruited him into
State House as a press and information
officer. When the titular presidency
was abolished and replaced with the
executive presidency, Charamba remained
at State House when Mugabe moved in.
Hativagone Mushonga is the
pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in
Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwean
Zimbabwe has three
modern, highly-developed fertilizer manufacturing
companies - operating at a
fraction of their capacity due to the country's
chronic shortage of foreign
currency.
In a country suffering from 80 percent unemployment, one would have
thought
that any available forex would be directed to those companies to
source the
raw materials required for the manufacturing process.
But in a
move typical of Zanu (PF) thinking, government recently imported
800 tonnes
of compound D through its input support scheme. The fertilizer
has been
declared substandard after failing quality tests by the ministry of
agriculture.
Knowing Zanu (PF), one immediately smells a rat. Whoever was
responsible for
this transaction surely must have received a
kick-back.
The people of Zimbabwe deserve a full investigation into this
matter. The
buck must stop somewhere. Where are the checks and balances?
Where is the
responsible minister, or permanent secretary - part of whose
job description
must surely be to ensure that this kind of thing doesn't
happen.
And why is the company importing fertilizer at all? Precious jobs are
at
stake. Why is Zanu (PF) undermining local industry?
At the same time
that he announced the fertilizer debacle, the permanent
secretary for
agriculture also dropped a bombshell for the 'new farmers' -
telling them
that they must now stand on their own feet as government cannot
afford to
nanny them.
Welcome to the real world guys. We hope this includes all the
Zanu (PF)
heavies, some of whom have been caught selling fertilizer, fuel
and other
commodities received under the inputs scheme - which had become
just another
coach on the gravy train.
Despite government support for the
"new farmers", agriculture in Zimbabwe
has remained a basket case. It is
difficult to see how the withdrawal of
government assistance can make things
any worse.
The Zimbabwean
HARARE- A handful of school children, a few tatty stands and some
tables
sparsely scattered with well-thumbed tomes- this is all that remains
of the
once vibrant Zimbabwe International Book Fair.
During the 1990s
the fair grew to become sub-Saharan Africa's premier
literary meeting place
for writers, dramatists, literary agents, publishers,
booksellers, libraries
and teachers as well as thousands of readers.
Only one thing remains the
same: the ongoing battle between the government
and the Gays and Lesbians
of Zimbabwe. Suspected state security agents at
the weekend destroyed their
stand.
The ZIBF's executive director, Greenfield Chilongo, confirmed that
equipment
belonging to the controversial organisation had been
damaged.
The Zimbabwe government at one point banned GALZ from exhibiting at
the book
fair but the controversial group won a High Court order banning
government
from interfering with their activities. - ZimOnline
The Zimbabwean
NORTON- Last week's savage
attacks on Gideon Gono's two farms have sparked a
new twist to President
Robert Mugabe's succession issue amid reports that
there is a bigger plot to
eliminate the central bank chief.
Top ruling party officials say the burning
of the Reserve Bank governor's
250-hectare unharvested maize field at his
Donnington Farm in Norton and a
raid by four armed men at his flower project
near Beatrice is only a tip of
the iceberg.
The officials said the
attacks were "highly political" rather than mere
arson, although state
security minister Didymus Mutasa, who oversees the
operations of the Central
Intelligence Organization, labelled Gono's
assailants "economic
saboteurs".
"Gono's closeness to President Mugabe has made both Mujuru and
Mnangagwa
feel very uncomfortable," added the source.
Mnangagwa is being
investigated for mismanagement of funds of companies
owned by Zanu (PF).
Although Gono did not publicly name anyone, he said
graft is a cancer in the
country that wants to be dealt with ruthlessly if
economic recovery and
development is to be achieved.
Although Gono lost huge sums of money in last
week's mishap, the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had no
kind words for him.
"The fact that Gono has more than two farms proves that
his statements are
hollow and rhetoric. He has a galloping ambition for
power," said MDC
spokesman Nelson Chamisa.- Wilson Butete
The Zimbabwean
BULAWAYO - The Zimbabwe
government has imported 800 tonnes of
useless Compound D fertilizer which has
been tested unsuitable for local
soils.
The permanent secretary in the
Ministry of Agriculture, Simon Pazvakambwa
confirmed that the 800 tonnes of
fertilizer was declared substandard after
failing quality tests.
He also
revealed that government had stopped supplying new farmers with
free
agricultural inputs, as they had become a strain on the national
budget.Henceforth the new farmers should provide for themselves, he said. -
CAJ News.
The Zimbabwean
LONDON- Human rights
violations declined in June because there was less
activity by civil society
organisations, and because not all cases may have
been reported, the
Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum has said.
However, isolated cases continue,
including threats by the CIO, which have
driven a Methodist bishop into
hiding.
The Forum, a coalition of 16 human rights NGOs which monitors in
careful
detail organised violence and torture by state agents, noted that
cases
usually increase during major political events such as elections and
demonstrations by civic groups.
The monthly report said that on July 22
state security agents reportedly
threatened pastors from Harare and
Chitungwiza saying that that a meeting
held at a Methodist Church in
Highfield earlier in the day was illegal.
Methodist Bishop Levee Kadenge is
reported to have gone into hiding after he
had been threatened with death by
a CIO operative, who warned that they
wanted to kill him.
"The Forum
again deplores such unwarranted actions by state security agents
and urges
their members to desist from the practice of using death threats
as a way of
stifling the exercise of civil and political rights as enshrined
in the
Constitution of Zimbabwe," it added.
In other cases, a victim was arrested
near Harvest House, taken to Harare
Central Police Station, detained
unlawfully for four days, beaten up and
denied food, and released only when
a court had established that he had no
case to answer.
The Harare City
Council gave about 30 residents of Matapi flats in Mbare
notices of
eviction. The residents said they were being evicted because they
did not
have "certificates of occupation". They are either children of the
deceased
original leaseholders, or of people who have relocated to rural
areas. The
eviction notices were issued despite the fact that some of the
residents had
lived at Matapi for more than 10 years.- Own Correspondent