http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=2392
August 11, 2008
By
Raymond Maingire
HARARE - Zimbabwe's feuding political parties failed to
reach common ground
Sunday after a marathon session lasting more than 16
hours of intense
haggling over an elusive power-sharing deal.
It has
emerged that the two parties failed to iron out the so-called sticky
points
that have delayed the conclusion of the two-week old negotiations.
The
talks are set to continue this Monday morning.
The veil of secrecy that
has dominated the talks continued Sunday after both
the negotiating parties
maintained a complete blackout on the progress of
the talks.
Talks
between the two parties began in earnest two weeks ago after the
signing of
the Memorandum of Understanding that bound President Robert
Mugabe's ruling
Zanu-PF and the two opposition MDC parties led by Morgan
Tsvangirai and
Arthur Mutambara to a two-week process of continuous
negotiation.
Negotiators from Zanu-PF and the MDC spent two weeks in
Pretoria and came
back last Thursday night with a draft proposal for a
power-sharing deal.
South African President Thabo Mbeki, the chief
negotiator in the crisis
talks flew into Zimbabwe Saturday evening to help
conclude the deal.
Hopes were high that the signing of a power-sharing
deal would materialise
Sunday after the two parties gave statements during
the week that the talks
were proceeding well.
But the South African
leader failed to diffuse the tensions between the two
parties even with the
bringing together of the three principals at the same
negotiating
table.
The talks began at 9 am on Sunday on the 16th floor of Harare's
Rainbow
Towers and went right up to 01:30 hrs on Monday
morning.
Anxious journalists who spent the entire 16 hours hoping to
capture the most
defining moment in Zimbabwe's 10 year old crisis were
disappointed after all
the parties to the talks failed to disclose what was
delaying the signing of
the deal.
President Mugabe, who was the first
to emerge from the elevator to the
ground floor of the luxury hotel where
the talks are taking place, said the
talks would continue in the
morning.
"No, we have not concluded," he said. "We are hoping to finish
tomorrow
(today)."
Asked if there had been any sticky issues, Mugabe
said: "Yes there will
always be sticky issues in any
dialogue."
Tsvangirai, who emerged 10 minutes later also refused to shed
any light as
to what had been discussed.
"No comment," he said as he
struggled to find his way through a throng of
journalists, "I suppose
President Mbeki is going to give comment."
Mutambara said the talks are
continuing today.
"The talks are work in progress. We are continuing
tomorrow morning," he
said.
Nicholas Goche, one of the Zanu-PF chief
negotiators said the talks would
continue after 10 am after the parties
attend today's Heroes Day
commemoration ceremony at Heroes' Acre.
It
was not clear if Tsvangirai, who has often stayed away from national
events,
would attend the celebrations. It had been speculated earlier that
Tsvangirai and Mugabe would seal the signing of the agreement on Sunday by
making a joint appearance on Monday at a national ceremony that over the
years has become an exclusively Zanu-PF affair.
Close followers of
the crisis talks say what could be delaying the talks
could be the roles to
be played by both President Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
Mugabe feels he should
be the dominant figure in the proposed structure on
the strength of the
result of the June 27 presidential run-off which he won
in the absence of a
challenger after Tsvangirai withdrew his candidature,
citing widespread
violence.
The Zimbabwean leader, who lost the first round of the
elections on March
29, went on against local and international pressure to
declare himself
winner in an election in which he was the only
candidate.
On the other hand, the MDC leader feels any package between
the two parties
should proceed on the basis of the outcome of the March 29
election, which
he won.
The MDC leader however failed to garner the
50 per cent plus majority needed
for him to become President.
IOL
August 11 2008
at 07:14AM
By Peta Thornycroft
President Robert Mugabe
and Morgan Tsvangirai were locked in talks
until the wee hours of Monday
morning, having failed to reach a swift
agreement on the sticking points
that keep them apart.
From noon on Sunday, mediator President Thabo
Mbeki struggled to
strike the accord that would start a transitional era
marking the end of
Mugabe's blood-soaked 28 years in power. By midnight,
there was still no
deal in sight.
The six negotiators from both
factions of the Movement for Democratic
Change and Zanu-PF, in talks under
South African mediation for the last two
weeks, remained outside the closed
doors of the 17th floor of a 5-star hotel
where Mugabe and Tsvangirai
struggled to find common ground.
Tsvangirai, who beat Mugabe in the
March 29 elections, but pulled out
of the second round because Zanu-PF
militia murdered so many of his
officials and supporters before polling day,
argued that both he and his
party had won majority support in the
elections.
By late on Sunday night, the relaxed atmosphere at the
hotel, where a
rich Harare family had gathered for a sumptuous wedding
feast, began to
chill as even the state press began to realise the easy deal
they had
predicted was slipping away.
There was an assumption
by several of them that the "deal", as the
state-controlled Sunday Mail
called the negotiations, was hours away and
would be in place before Monday
- one of the most important days of Mugabe's
calendar, the annual Hero's Day
commemoration at the national shrine in
honour of those who fought and died
to end white rule.
The hotel, surrounded by members of Mugabe's
Presidential Guard, was
also swarming with intelligence operatives and
cabinet ministers.
Many of them face the end of their political
careers, even if Mugabe
retains significant executive power as an agreement
on a new transitional
cabinet has agreed, with almost equal members from
each party in a
transitional authority.
Some of the hardliners
fanatically loyal to Mugabe are as unacceptable
to many younger members of
Zanu-PF as they are to the MDC.
It was expected, if an agreement
was reached, that Mugabe and
Tsvangirai would have equal numbers of cabinet
ministers and one or two for
the smaller MDC faction led by Arthur
Mutambara.
The length of the transitional period was not considered
vital,
according to political sources, as an agreement had been reached by
all
parties that a new constitution would be hammered out within a specified
time frame, and then presented to the people - leading to fresh
elections.
If no deal is reached, then Mugabe faces an economy that
is
unravelling daily and no foreign currency to import food.
"I
cannot even begin to wonder what is happening in Harare at the
negotiations,
as here we are fighting over food," said an MDC MP from
southern Zimbabwe on
Sunday.
"Here there is no maize, and peasants from my area who
tried to buy
some from the state have been cheated out of what they paid for
by Zanu-PF
people and the police. The maize they paid for was taken by
police and the
district administrator.
"We know children were
beginning to starve last week. I am trying to
manage the situation from
Bulawayo, as I cannot go to my constituency as
police are always arresting
me there."
Mugabe banned humanitarian agencies from fieldwork on
June 4, which
means about 1,5-million people in need of emergency feeding
programmes now
are going hungry.
In Chitungwisa, a dormitory
town on the southern tip of Harare, people
say they have not even been able
to find the staple food, maize meal, on the
black market for the past four
days.
"Honestly, we really have nothing to eat but vegetables now,"
said a
clerk at a city centre drycleaning outlet.
Zimbabwe's
most prominent civil rights activist, Lovemore Madhuku,
warned on Sunday:
"Morgan knows that if he sells out, there will be a
tragedy and he will have
betrayed the people and the struggle of the last
eight
years."
*At the time of going to print, no deal had been
struck.
This article was originally published on page 1 of The
Star on August
11, 2008
VOA
By Delia Robertson
Johannesburg
10 August
2008
Zimbabwe's political leaders held talks with South African
President Thabo
Mbeki in a Harare hotel, amid hopes the leaders may emerge
with a power
sharing deal aimed at ending the country's political, economic
and social
crisis. The focus of Sunday's meetings is the composition of any
future
power sharing government, and who will wield executive power.
Marathon
session of talks Sunday ended without agreement on a power-sharing
deal.
After the talks broke up for the night President Robert Mugabe said
the
parties would meet again Monday. This report from Peta Thornycroft in
Harare
and VOA's Delia Robertson at our southern Africa bureau in
Johannesburg.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe (R) walks
beside South African
President Thabo Mbeki (L) at Harare international
airport in Harare, 09 Aug
2008
Will Robert Mugabe remain president but be
reduced to a political figurehead
with real power resting in the hands of
Morgan Tsvangirai in a new post of
executive prime minister? Will overall
executive authority be retained by
Mr. Mugabe? Or will the final agreement
reached between Zimbabwe's political
leaders be a leadership arrangement
somewhere in between the two?
No one, except those directly engaged in
Sunday's talks, knows what deal is
being discussed in Harare. The
confidentiality demanded of participants in
the talks by the South African
leader has been largely observed.
Even so, it is widely understood that
accord on much of the agenda agreed to
just three weeks ago has been
reached. It was left to party officials
themselves to make the decisions on
how executive authority will be divided.
Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change,
won more votes than President
Mugabe in the first round of the presidential
race in March, in an election
widely viewed as generally free and fair. But
he failed to garner a majority
necessary to win outright.
Mr. Mugabe won the uncontested presidential
runoff race in June - but all
observer groups in that election said it
failed to meet African election
standards, and did not reflect the will of
Zimbabwean voters.
In the period between the two polls, humanitarian
organizations said
supporters of Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party supported by the
police and
military, launched a campaign of violence against opposition
supporters, in
which more than one hundred people were killed, hundreds
severely injured
and thousands displaced. That violence has largely
disappeared now.
Analysts caution that whatever deal is reached by
Zimbabwe's political
leaders, in order for it to work, it will have to be
endorsed by the
country's powerful security establishment.
Meanwhile,
with an official inflation rate of over two million percent, the
economy
continues to decline at an exponential rate. Just this past week,
some
Zimbabweans opted for barter rather than the Zimbabwe dollar and sold
vehicles in exchange for gasoline coupons.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=2405
August 11, 2008
By Pardon
Kangara
ANY power-sharing deal that does not free the land from the grip
of the
Joint Operations Command and its retrogressive behaviour will sow the
seeds
for the beginning of a military-controlled government in
Zimbabwe.
There is no point in anyone heading a powerless government
whose welfare
will be at the mercy of a powerful and uncontrollable
military. I certainly
hope that any coming agreement will strongly and
unequivocally curtail the
power of the uniformed services to effect
political change. It should allow
for the de-politicization of the armed
forces.
Arthur Mutambara and Morgan Tsvangirai must put the cessation of
violence
against the MDC members and innocent Zimbabweans as a precondition
before
the signing of any power-sharing document. There should not be a
repeat of
serious omissions of the process of cessation of hostilities like
as
happened during Gukurahundi. A good agreement must be beneficial to the
country more than it can be to any political party. It is important to agree
not only on paper but also in the spirit of where we believe the country
should go.
A document condemning violence signed by the parties
cannot substitute
actual practical measures that must be taken to eradicate
the violence. On
the other hand, it is an adequate measure to call and bus
all the military
personnel and the militias deployed in the rural areas,
towns and cities
back to the barracks and following this to disband the
militias.
There should be an unconditional release of all political
prisoners. We all
know President Robert Mugabe freed some prisoners soon
after being sworn in.
There should be assurance that those released were not
part of additional
sleeper cells of green bombers.
There is a grave
danger to the country and the democratic process if we put
the instruments
of a true democracy on the back burner for the sake of
forming a
transitional government. It seems that the machinations of these
talks and
any power-sharing deal are not driven by a common goal to serve
the people
but are a product of a process to cover up the horrors of
political violence
unleashed on the innocent by Zanu-PF after March 29.
The lessons from
Gukurahundi must be well learned. The MDC should not agree
with Zanu-PF for
the sake of forming a power-sharing government. An
agreement based on
principles which govern their political, moral, economic
and social
leadership obligations to Zimbabwe is critical. If this document
cannot
guarantee the hopes and aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe, it
will be
such a sad state of political malignancy, in both negotiating
parties, in
the face of such a critical turning point for the country.
I also find it
ironical that Mbeki who previously felt there was "no crisis"
in Zimbabwe
should now convene these talks while refusing to be sidelined in
order to
allow someone who is neutral to mediate. However, his efforts are
commendable though late because there has been a great loss in the country
of lives and property. If he had acted back then when he should have done
so, there would not have been need to force any amnesty deal for the
perpetrators violence.
Whatever the deal, it is more imperative to
have a governable country and a
good level of flexibility on the part of the
transitional authority to
promulgate laws that begin to bring the full sense
of a just and fair
society. There must be room in this agreement to deal
ruthlessly with any
elements that seek to undermine the inalienable rights
of Zimbabweans to
gather, speak and do business freely.
There should
be adequate measures to ensure that that those who were members
of JOC and
their backers are not given any influence on the current and
future military
or any political party's structures. Mugabe and the JOC can
only be tamed by
stopping the blood flow that feeds their power; the
militias and a
politically biased uniformed services top brass.
VOA
By Peter Clottey
Washington, D.C.
11 August
2008
Some Zimbabweans are reportedly worried the main
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) might betray ordinary masses
at ongoing peace
negotiations. They say reports of regional and
international pressure being
brought bear on the MDC to make significant
concessions at the talks would
weaken the opposition. They say their fears
were confirmed after a faction
of the MDC claimed the outcome of the peace
negotiations might not
necessarily be the best, but that it would good for
the interim as the
opposing factions find ways of solving the ongoing
economic and political
crisis.
Meanwhile South Africa's President
Thabo Mbeki met Sunday with Zimbabwe's
President Robert Mugabe and
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai amidst
reports of an imminent power
sharing deal. Glen Mpani is the regional
coordinator for the transitional
justice program of the Center for the Study
of Violence and Reconciliation
in Cape Town, South Africa. He tells reporter
Peter Clottey the negotiations
seem to have lost focus.
"Without any tangible information coming out of
the negotiations, which have
been shrouded in secrecy, it is very difficult
for Zimbabweans to be
optimistic that the current negotiations will yield
anything for them
because what they are looking at is the characters and the
true record of
the two political parties. Zimbabweans have experienced
previous unity
agreements before, and they have seen the level of
intransigence
particularly on the part of the ZANU-PF, and they are quite
doubtful that
anything is going to come out of these negotiations," Mpani
pointed out.
He said although Zimbabweans are doubtful of a solution that
could be found
at the talks, they are hopeful of an end to ongoing violence
in the rural
areas.
"Because of the level of suffering in the country
Zimbabweans would want a
solution to come out of it. That is why they are
waiting anxiously for it,"
he said.
Mpani concurs that the main
objective of the negotiations between the ruling
ZANU-PF and the opposition
has been sidestepped.
"They are quite right because over the last one and
a half weeks, the focus
of the negotiations have been to say what is going
to be Mugabe's role, what
is going to be Tsvangirai's role. How long is
going to be the transition or
the government of national unity? And I think
the most important thing in
these negotiations is to say who has got the
mandate to be leading this
process, and what are the issues to be tackled?
What are we going to do with
the perpetrators of violence? Are we going to
grant them amnesty or is there
going to be justice or what is going to be
the framework of the transitional
arrangement? So, all those issues have not
been teased out," Mpani noted.
He said the political parties might come
up with an arrangement at the talks
that would only beneficial to their
course, but not that of the suffering
masses.
"I'm now worried that
we are now having political parties coming up with a
deal that might be in
their best interest, and leaving behind the people of
Zimbabwe, who should
be major beneficiaries of it," he said.
Mpani said the main opposition is
under strain to make significant
concessions that could weaken its position
in future engagements.
"I think the MDC is under immense pressure because
if you look at what has
been going on where the media has been talking about
say there are very few
issues that have been left under the current
negotiations they are about to
sign. One of the pressures is coming from
South African President Thabo
Mbeki who is going to be taking on the
chairpersonship of SADC (Southern
African Development Community) this week.
He would want to go to SADC with a
deal to show that the negotiations of
Zimbabwe has worked," Mpani pointed
out.
He said a division in the
opposition could be an inhibitor of the
negotiating power that the MDC
possesses at the talks.
"The second thing that we have is that we have
got the Mutambara formation.
The Mutambara formation has positioned itself
as an interesting part in the
sense that it has been quite malleable in
inclining itself to the mediator
and to ZANU-PF. And if you read what the
leader of the Mutambara faction
wrote today articulating the position that
they would want a framework that
is Zimbabwean in nature, despite the fact
that it might impact, but it
should be acceptable in the interim. So, there
is already some position of
conceding quite a number of issues. And I think
despite the amount of
support that the MDC has, I don't think they are in a
position under the
current circumstances to be able to say we are pulling
out of this deal
other than them being subjected to the fact that they are
pandering to the
whims of the west," he said.
http://www.zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=4600&cat=4
11th
Aug 2008 00:59 GMT
By Chenjerai
Chitsaru
IT IS not entirely inconceivable that, in African capitals
from Pretoria to
Tunis, diplomats have been consulting feverishly on what
position to take on
the ongoing bloody David-and-Goliath conflict between
Georgia and Russia.
Since the former is backed by the West, there could
be an unmistakeable Cold
War element in whatever decision the countries
take.
If there was a United Nations Security Council vote on who to
condemn for
the as-yet-undeclared war, you can guess which side South Africa
and Tunisia
would take.
You can also guess which side Zimbabwe would
support. In the Security
Council vote on sanctions on Robert Mugabe's
regime, over the murder of
scores of unarmed opposition supporters since 29
March, Russia and China
scuttled any affirmative action by the 15
members.
So, Ambassador Chidyausiku might find himself scratching the
Russian bear's
back, just as it scratched his country's pangolin over the
sanctions.
You can imagine the foreign minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi,
telling a
press conference in Harare, in outraged, ringing tones: "The
republic of
Georgia, being a puppet of the West, provoked the peace-loving
republic of
Russia and must thus be condemned in the strongest
language."
The cold war ended more than 20 years ago, but is about to be
revived, with
all its needless carnage of human life because - to take a
cynical view -
countries want to test the efficacy of their new weapons of
mass
destruction, or the preparedness of their new lean, mean fighting
machines
for a full-scale war against.somebody. .
Russia is so big -
more than 140 million people, compared with little
Georgia's under five
million - to say the latter could be swatted like a fly
would not be an
insult to the Georgians.
One reason Moscow decided on the attack could be
related to Georgia's
intention to join the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation and the European
Union.
It is, probably legitimate for
Russia to have retaliated for Georgia's
attack on secessionist South Ossetia
on its border with the small former
Soviet republic. Yet there must be a
good reason for the failure of
negotiations, before guns were
fired.
When you consider that Vladimir Putin himself, the militant,
war-mongering
former KGB boss now the prime minister of Russia, decided to
personally
check on the military progress, you might not avoid linking this
to his own
apparent intention to frighten the West into letting Russia deal
with the
former Soviet republics as it wishes.
There are some
analysts, in fact, who believe the pro-Mugabe vote at the UN
was probably
more anti-West than anti-MDC, although there are others who
maintain there
is little difference between the two.
This puts the new phase of the cold
war into better perspective. What both
China and Russia seem to be aiming
for is for the West to allow them
unbridled domination of certain countries,
in exchange for their
own "neutrality" or "hands-off" policy in areas
"controlled" or "owned" by
the West.
The strategies on either side
are not as rigid or as predictable as they
were before the end of communism,
but the lust for world domination by
either side remains as robust as it
ever was.
In going to the Beijing Olympic Games, but being blunt in his
criticism of
China's human rights record, President George W. Bush seemed to
display a
pragmatic approach designed to appeal to the Chinese leadership.
Bush, the
lame-duck Republican president, knows you can't risk trade
opportunities
over nebulous short-term political benefits..
Still,
this does not detract from Beijing's anti-democratic attack on the
media in
general, with so many restrictions on their coverage and movements
during
the Olympic Games in Beijing.
The murder of an American by a Chinese who
later committed suicide might, by
now, have been explained away as the
insane act of one mentally disturbed
person, but there are those who are
bound to wonder...
What Africa's major concern ought to be is its
continuing victimisation as a
"prize catch" in this new phase of the cold
war, Sudan, for instance, has
definitely benefited from the patronage of
China which has huge oil
interests in that vast country.
But the
African Union's efforts to end the killing of innocents in the
Darfur region
have been frustrated by the government of the dictator Omar Al
Bashir.
If China took a neutral stance in that conflict, there could
be a dramatic
decrease in the killings.
That, of course, might
parallel a guarantee of non-Chinese and non-Russian
opposition to a fresh UN
Security Council resolution on sanctions against
the Mugabe
regime.
The old cold war stakes were mostly political. Apartheid South
Africa and
Mobutu Sese Seko's dictatorship in Zaire, for instance, were
backed by the
West for the same reason - they were perceived as
anti-communist bastions,
although both were hardly squeamish about killing
their own citizens for
vocal opposition to the regimes, most of it untainted
by ideological
preference...
Russia has so much going for it - vast
natural resources, including oil and
gas. A recent report suggested the
country has so much idle but fertile land
it has allowed British farmers to
come in and exploit this precious
resource - on a commercial
basis.
It could yet be the world's ultimate breadbasket.
But there
was never any unanimity among the Soviet people that the world's
first
one-party dictatorship should be dismantled. There are still some who
feel
it should be revived, although how to subdue the former republics is an
imponderable...
Both China and Russia have made spectacular economic
strides since
abandoning their strict dogma of the people's ownership of the
means of
production.
Russia has certainly shed many of the traces of
the Marxism-Leninism that
dominated the economy until Mikhail Gorbachev and
Boris Yeltsin came on the
scene. But China's displaying of portraits of Mao
Zedong during the Beijing
Olympics must have been the cause for some
disquiet among those who thought
the republic had turned over a new
leaf.
This is the China which sends billions of dollars worth of arms to
an
African country facing its worst economic crisis since independence.
Moreover, the country is not facing a military challenge from any
quarter...
Its only formidable opposition is from an indigenous civilian
political
party of former trade unionists, intellectuals and student
leaders. The
party has galvanised ordinary people against the Chinese-backed
group of
geriatric rulers who have to take massive doses of
performance-enhancing
drugs before they even attempt to walk the few metres
to their official
cars.
Both the Chinese and the Russians can only
back the Mugabe regime for
economic and not political reasons. Their desire
is to replace Zimbabwe's
traditional trade and economic partners, most of
them in the West.
What that must entail is a surrender to the ideological
dogma that both
countries were believed to have abandoned entirely after
their economic
about-face which has now transformed them into economic
giants...
But their readiness to resort to violence must disturb all in
Zanu PF who
believe the economic benefits of this alliance is worth the risk
of
surrendering some of their sovereignty to foreigners.
The Chinese
have steadily raised their economic profile in Zimbabwe. In a
number of
instances, they have treated the workers as if they were no more
than
chattel or serfs.
In Zambia, there were fights between Chinese and
Zambians at workplaces in
one case, with serious casualties. In South
Africa, where the Chinese have
made similar economic inroads, reports
suggest all has not been smooth
sailing. Their methods continue to be crude
and uncaring, the prime
motivation being profit, at whatever
cost.
The Russians are not entirely different, except perhaps in that
they are
handicapped by a racism that has been detected by many Africans
visiting and
working with Russians in their own country.
The
Westerners remain the hated former colonisers. In every country which
won
independence from them, a struggle had to be waged, which ended in
victory
for the indigenous people.
Another round of liberation wars against the
Chinese and the Russians may
not necessarily end that way. The cold war was
vicious; Africa does not
deserve that kind of blood-letting now, 50 years
after the dawn of
independence.
http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=3521
by Mutumwa
Mawere Monday 11 August 2008
Ownership is a key construction
concept in the development of an
Anglo-American socio-economic system that
has been copied by post-colonial
Africa without much thought on the
underlying obligations that an order
founded on the respect of property
rights imposes on it.
The concept of ownership has existed for thousands
of years and is
universal.
It is defined as the state or fact of
exclusive rights and control over
property which may be an object, land/real
estate, intellectual property or
some other kind of property and it is
embodied in a right also referred to
as title.
Concepts such as
money, trade, debt, insolvency, the criminality of theft
and private and
public property that form a bed rock of ancient and modern
societies draw
their origins from the ownership concept.
The nature, form and substance
of the relationship between man and property
and between the state and
property are important in predicting the success
or failure of nation
building business models.
To the extent that citizens can gain, transfer
and lose ownership of
property in a number of ways, the process and
mechanics of ownership are
necessarily important in creating a competitive,
progressive and dynamic
post-colonial order.
Property, a key
construction concept in building a financially viable and
sustainable
Africa, can be acquired through the intermediation of money,
trading it for
other property, receiving it as a gift, stealing it, finding
it, making it
or homesteading it.
It can also be lost through selling it for money,
exchanging it for other
property, giving it as a gift, being robbed of it,
misplacing it, having it
stripped from one's ownership through legal or
extra-legal means such as
eviction, foreclosure and
seizure.
Ownership of a company for example is self-propagating to the
extent that
any profit produced by it will also be owned by the same owner
or his/her
successors and/or nominees.
It has been accepted in human
civilization that if one finds an object, one
can legitimately take
ownership of that object as long as no one claims to
have previously lost
that object.
Throughout history, nations and religions like individuals
have owned
property.
In some societies, only adult men may own
property, while in others,
property is matrilineal and is passed on from
mother to daughter.
In the majority of post-colonial African states, both
men and women can own
property with no restrictions.
To own and
operate property, any progressive society must create its own
institutions
and structures to govern how assets are to be used, shared or
treated; rules
and regulations may be legally imposed or internally adopted
or
decreed.
Some of the many varied types of structured ownership include
cooperatives,
corporations, trusts, partnerships, housing associations
etc.
The interface between Africa and colonialism resulted in the
alienation of
resources from natives.
The colonial business model was
founded on the principle that natives had no
interest in modernity and
could, therefore, not conceivably have any in
interest in land, mineral and
other resources beyond what they needed in
eking a subsistent
living.
The race factor that underpinned the colonial model had the
unintended
consequence of distorting the true nature of ownership and how
this concept
if properly construed can be a powerful instrument in nation
building.
In constructing a non-sexist, non-racial and democratic
post-colonial order,
very little attention has regrettably been placed on
improving literacy on
key foundational concepts like ownership and the kind
of responsibility
implied in assuming title to property to the property
owner.
Unfortunately the ghost of colonialism is still omnipresent in
many
post-colonial African states to the extent that ownership carries with
it a
black and white stigma.
Whether a person is black or white, it
is important that the concept of
liability that is inherent in ownership be
properly understood.
The need to construct a legal and institutional
framework, rules and
regulations that protects, penalises and rewards
property owners in a
predictable and sustainable manner cannot be
overstated.
In its proper construction, a government is a body corporate
that is
governed by a constitution and is formed solely to serve its
members.
Its focus should be on providing service in perpetuam and any
financial
surplus generated should normally be retained to finance growth
and
development.
The standard Anglo-American model of governance is
based on an "agency
model" in which the goal of political governance is to
have state actors act
according to the will of citizens.
The
post-colonial African governance model is in practice based on a
"principal
model" in which the goal of governance is to have state actors
act not
according to the will of the people but the whims and wishes of the
political elites.
The ownership question as it relates to African
resources has often been
used to mask the leadership bankruptcy in the
continent by explaining away
the lack of progress in reducing the frontiers
of poverty on ills of the
colonial ownership legacy.
It cannot be
denied that the class relationships that were inherited from
the colonial
order have been difficult to transform not because blacks are
inherently
inferior entrepreneurs but due to a faulty understanding of the
complex
interplay between ownership and performance.
It cannot be correct to
argue that transferring title to blacks will
necessarily translate into
economic performance without investing in an
understanding of the key
foundational principles required to create a
successful economy.
At
the core of human civilisation must be the individual who while pursuing
his/her personal interests should advance the national cause through a
purposeful and constructive interaction with fellow citizens.
If
Africa needs sustainable investment from both domestic and foreign
sources,
it must critically interrogate its understanding of the ownership
concept so
as to correctly capture the kind of human imagination required to
spur
development and creativity.
Who should drive the African economic agenda?
Should it be the state or the
citizen? What should be the proper role of the
state in post-colonial
Africa? Does Africa need intelligent leaders or
enlightened and empowered
citizens? Who should own Africa's resources? What
kind of Africa do we want
to see?
The paradigm that has informed the
majority of post-colonial African
economies has been premised on the state
serving three different and
conflicting roles i.e. as a shareholder of state
institutions in which
political actors with no experience in business are
expected to transmit
informed market signals to the firm as a market actor;
as a referee in which
it is expected to maintain the institutions of a
market system and
adjudicating disputes while accepting that the market
system in foreign
construct to a majority of African political actors; the
state as a
corrector in which it is expected to intervene in the market to
correct some
failure such as mispricing of externalities or to provide
public goods while
accepting that democracy in Africa can produce absurd
outcomes in political
markets.
The utility of any organisation is
ultimately measured by its ability to
respond to the needs of the target
market.
The construction of accounting rules to determine a surplus or
profit at the
end of each financial year is instructive.
At the top
of the income statement must be located a sales value to
highlight the fact
that an enterprise whose output has no market is doomed
to failure
irrespective of who owns it.
Accordingly, the primary purpose of any
enterprise is to serve the customer
and is so doing a surplus or profit can
be generated.
Underpinning this construction is the fact that the
residual benefit from
any enterprise must belong to the owner who is
typically described as a
shareholder in limited liability
companies.
A shareholder is nothing more than a holder of a piece of
paper like a
passport or birth certificate. Owning the paper does not
translate into cash
unless goods and services are produced and exchanged for
value.
Equally at the top of the income statement of a government's
income
statement must, therefore, be contributions by income earning
citizens
through taxes.
Accordingly, no viable government can exist
without contributions from
citizens in the form of taxes.
It must be
accepted that a successful entrepreneur has to be smart enough to
know and
anticipate what his target market needs.
This does not require academic
qualifications but different skills.
A free society allows the consumer
to make choices and it is incumbent in
the model that the sole purpose of
enterprise is to produce a good or
service that someone is prepared to pay
for.
Regrettably, Africa's post-colonial leaders are at their best using
the
colonial language and arrogantly attempting to think for their citizens
rather than in serving them.
If Africa's fortunes are to improve, it
is important that a dramatic policy
shift takes place in the construction of
the development model from a
prescription-based approach to a user friendly
one.
Ownership without performance is a hollow construct that serves no
purpose
in advancing Africa's cause. - ZimOnline
http://www.reporternews.com/news/2008/aug/10/bittersweet-homecoming/
By Charles G. Anderson
Sr.
Special to the Reporter-News
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Zimbabwe
facts
13.3 million
. Life expectancy: Men -- 38; women -- 37
.
Unemployment rate: 80 percent
. HIV/AIDS infected: 1.8 million
.
AIDS related deaths: 3,000
weekly
. Hospital occupancy: 70 percent
of beds occupied by AIDS patients
Sources: Population Reference Bureau,
CIA World Facts, People's Daily
Online.
Alvaro and Deborah Dos
Santos, of Abilene, with their children, Bianca, 10,
and Jason, 12, walked
to the front gate of their former home in Zimbabwe and
looked on with
sadness and nostalgia.
A guard stood at the door of the house, which now
showed neglect. No one
lived there anymore.
They did not ask to look
around.
The family returned to visit their homeland last month amid
skyrocketing
inflation and violence. President Robert Mugabe is negotiating
a power
sharing agreement with a rival to help resolve a political crisis in
which
dozens have been killed and thousands forced from their homes in the
violence that followed disputed presidential elections this year, according
to the Associated Press.
The Dos Santos family fled their country in
2005 because they feared for
their lives. They eventually made their way to
Abilene, where they had
friends, on July 4, 2006.
Alvaro is a master
shoemaker, and his business once employed more than 400
people in Zimbabwe
and exported shoes around the world.
But when Mugabe came to power in
Zimbabwe, land was taken from the white
landowners.
Alvaro, whose
family is white, found that new government rules made it
impossible for him
to run his business. There were death threats to the
family, and he was
paying the police thousands of dollars a month for
protection. He finally
had no choice but to flee the country, although their
oldest, Philip, 28,
still lives in Zimbabwe. He is hoping to leave soon.
Now, Alvaro travels
the United States helping people understand the needs of
the Zimbabwean
people and raising money to help feed them.
In July, the family wanted to
go back to see relatives and to check on the
thousands of starving widows
and children who had been in a feeding program
since 1990. While living in
Zimbabwe, the Dos Santos family helped sponsor,
often with their own funds,
along with hundreds of individuals and churches,
daily meals to 3,000
people.
The family returned to Zimbabwe on July 3. They found
chaos.
"Many of the shops are raided daily by gangs," Alvaro said. "Our
own
supplies of food for the poor had been raided, too."
They
borrowed a car from a relative and were stopped often by young teenage
men
and women militia.
A container of supplies for the poor had been shipped
in advance, and the
officials made them pay more money to get
it.
"Suffering is without words, desperation without an explanation,"
Alvaro
said in an e-mail sent secretly by a friend soon after they arrived.
"It
hurts to see the devastation that this beautiful land is going
through."
One of the things they saw was the hardship of the people and
the terror
they lived with daily.
Official inflation has soared to
2.2 million percent in Zimbabwe -- by far
the highest in the world -- and
has shot as high as 70 million percent in
the past year, according to an
Associated Press story.
On the second day of their arrival in Mutare,
Alvaro went out to try to find
some bread. He came back with four loaves
costing $20 billion for each loaf.
"Before we left, it cost $100 billion
a loaf," Alvaro said.
"I was very nervous during the trip," Deborah said.
"But I felt it was good
for the family to go back again."
Once,
Deborah and the children were waiting in the car while Alvaro went
inside a
store.
Bianca was sitting under the steering wheel, and officers came by
and
demanded to see her license.
When Deborah explained that she was
just waiting for her father, an officer
said: "You white people think you
can get by with anything."
"He then clicked his tongue in a disrespectful
way," Deborah said.
Throughout the area, the electricity was off for most
of the day, and in
some places, there was none. Alvaro said the only people
with running water
were those with wells.
The family brought back an
independent newspaper and another sponsored by
the government.
The
independent paper carried pictures of men and women who have been burned
on
their arms, buttocks and backs for opposing the present leadership. The
government paper tells of glorious things that Mugabe is
doing.
"Everyone had to be very careful what they said," Deborah
said.
Alvaro was driving in town, and a policeman stopped
him.
"You ran a red light," the policeman said.
"I spoke politely
to him and told him that I was sure that I did not,"
Alvaro said. "I knew
that I did not."
The policeman told Alvaro that he would put him in
prison.
Alvaro knew he had to do something.
"I am really sorry,
sir," he said.
The policeman opened the back door of the car and got
in.
"How much money do you have?" he demanded.
Alvaro knew he had
no choice, so he took $400 billion and put it on the
seat.
It was
about $50 in U.S. dollars at the time, and Alvaro asked him to please
let
him keep some of it.
The policeman took it all, opened the door, and
stuffed the money in his
pocket.
"See you around," the policeman
said. "Have a nice day."
There were big street rallies sponsored by the
government, but the Dos
Santos family stayed away.
Alvaro said the
government sent the militia into the country to bring people
in by the
thousands to march.
"If they found anyone wearing a shirt with MDC
(Movement for Democratic
Change) or refusing to march, they were beaten,"
Alvaro said.
Many of the medical professionals have fled the country, and
the hospitals
are in bad condition, he said. Families must bring their own
food and
medicine to the hospital.
The Dos Santos family was careful
where they went and what they said.
The family returned to Abilene on
July 30.
Jason, 12, said he would not like to go back to live in
Zimbabwe.
"I felt sad," Bianca, 10, said. "I used to invite 15 to 20
friends over for
a birthday party, sleepover or swimming at our
house."
She said only two of her friends are still living in the
country.
"We are so blessed to live in America," Alvaro said. "Zimbabwe
is a
beautiful country and was once the bread-basket of Africa."
He
paused and looked away.
"Freedom can be lost so easily," he said sadly.
"It could happen to any
country."
The Dos Santos family first came to
Amarillo to the home of missionary Lynn
Leverett, where they stayed 10
months. They had known Leverett when he
visited Zimbabwe with World Bible
School. Leverett brought Alvaro to the
Abilene Christian University
lectureships, and he met Raymond Blasingame of
Abilene who agreed to be his
sponsor. They drove into Abilene on July 4,
2006.
He had a temporary
work permit and worked for a while with Blasingame's shoe
companies, RAB's
Comfort and Active Shoes and Leddy Brace and Shoe, but the
permit has
expired. Alvaro hopes to have a permanent work permit, or green
card, soon.
His wife is attending ACU. Meanwhile, he is traveling on behalf
of the
starving people of Zimbabwe and raising money to help feed them.
Alvaro
was born in Portugal but lived most of his life in Zimbabwe. His wife
and
children are natives of Zimbabwe, but Alvaro is not. He lived there from
the
age of 7. He holds a Portuguese passport, which enabled him to reenter
the
country where he was raised.
|
www.chinaview.cn 2008-08-11 10:12:40 |
BEIJING, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- Zibabwean veteran Kirsty Conventry smashed the world record in the women's 100 backstroke semifinals here Monday, shaving 0.20 seconds off the previous record set by U.S swimmer Natalie Coughlin. Conventry, the Athens silver medalist of the event, led all the way to the finsh and touched in 58.77 seconds. The previous record of 58.97 was set by Coughlin at the U.S. Olympic trials in July this year. Conventry said she herself was surprised at the world record-breaking performance. "I thought I'm good. I'm going to make it into the final. So I slowed my tempo down a little bit. I wasn't expecting it." Conventry's parents and boyfriend were at the Water Cube to witness the exciting moment. "I swim really well when I'm feeling happy and my life is balanced, also with my parents and boyfriend in the crowd." Conventry, seen as national treasure of Zimbabwe, has been training hard in hope to continue her Athens glory. "I try to keep the ball rolling, training hard and pressing. I have been in great form. I expect nothing but fast fast swimming tomorrow morning," an excited Conventry said. Conventry won three medals in the Athens Games, including one gold in the 200 backstroke. Coughlin ranked second in Monday's semifinals in 59.43
seconds. Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe broke the women's
100m backstroke world record in the semifinal of the Beijing Olympic Games here
on Monday. (Xinhua
Photo) |