From The Star (SA), 15 August
'Invalid vote' ruling gives MDC new hope
Harare - Zimbabwe's Supreme Court on
Tuesday nullified thousands of postal ballots cast in the June parliamentary
elections. In his ruling, Justice Nicholas McNally said thousands of ballot
papers - all from troops serving in the war in the DRC - were "invalidly
issued". "All votes cast on such ballot papers are void and invalid," he added.
The main opposition party, the MDC, has claimed the June elections were marred
by irregularities and vote-rigging and had asked the courts to disallow
thousands of applications for postal votes by Zimbabwean troops in the
DRC.
McNally said he reached the judgment
following agreement with a full bench of the country's five Supreme Court
judges. The MDC challenged the postal ballots after its polling agents observed
shortly before the election that application forms for the postal votes were not
signed by the applicants, as is legally required. The MDC's laywer, Antony
Brooks, described the ruling as "gratifying" and said it would affect the number
of opposition electoral petitions currently before the courts. The MDC is
challenging the results in 36 constituencies won by the ruling Zanu-PF of
President Robert Mugabe. "The Supreme Court has demonstrated again its
determination to uphold the rule of law," Brooks said.
In constituencies where the invalidated
postal ballots were cast, Brooks said either a by-election would be held or the
ballots would be recounted without the postal votes. "It will have an effect on
those constituencies which won with narrow margins," he said, but declined
further comment because the challenged returns were still before the court.
Zimbabwe has between 11 000 and 12 000 troops in the DRC, but it was not
immediately known how many of them had voted by post. In the June election, MDC
took 57 of the 120 contested parliamentary seats to Zanu-PF's 62, but the
opposition party says electoral fraud, violence and intimidation of voters
compromised the returns.
From The Star (SA), 15
August
Mugabe turns on Kabila as Congo
talks flop
Lusaka - Critical talks aimed at getting the faltering peace
process in the DRC back on track failed early on Tuesday as DRC President
Laurent Kabila refused to accept former Botswana president Ketumile Masire as
the facilitator for the talks. Kabila's chief ally, Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe, expressed frustration with him: "Kabila has refused to listen or discuss
the matter." Mugabe said it was time that Kabila started listening if peace was
to come to the war-torn Congo. "It is important that he sees the views of other
leaders in the conflict if the problem is to be solved," Mugabe said today after
the talks closed and before dashing back to Harare. This is the first time that
Mugabe has expressed strong criticism of Kabila, who depends very largely upon
the 12 000 Zimbabwean troops for his continued ability to fend off the rebels
trying to oust him. Earlier Bizima Karaha, rebel leader of the Kisangani Rally
for Congolese Democracy, had said: "Kabila is nothing without Mugabe."
Kabila also refused to budge on his previous insistence that UN
peacekeepers could not be deployed in government-held territory in the war zone,
where his troops are fighting rebel movements backed by Rwanda and Uganda. In a
communique issued at the end of the summit, other leaders of SADC, besides
Mugabe, appealed to Kabila to reconsider his decision and issued a veiled threat
of sanctions if he did not do so. South African and other diplomats said they
believed that Kabila's objection to Masire, whom he has blocked from doing his
job, was just a ploy to avoid engaging in constitutional negotiations with all
Congolese parties - including the armed rebels. On Tuesday Zambian President
Frederick Chiluba, the convener of the DRC negotiations appointed by SADC, said
a start had been made but it looked as though peace would take much longer to
achieve than the region had hoped or expected.
Earlier, OAU secretary-general Salim Ahmed Salim had raised
hopes by saying that the talks had kicked off on a sound note. "There have been
very serious and constructive discussions in the meeting," Salim said. "Everyone
is determined to iron out the obstacles and move forward." But Karaha, a major
rebel player in the conflict, said: "It's not going well. If it was going well,
we would have been out of here by now."
From The Daily News, 15
August
Mugabe now spends Z$1,5b a month to
prop up Kabila
THE presence of Zimbabwe's 11 000 soldiers in the DRC is now
estimated to be costing $1,5 billion a month. Economists Eric Bloch and John
Robertson, in separate interviews, said the government was spending $50 million
a day in the DRC. The government, facing hard currency and fuel shortages, had
been spending up to $114 million a month to keep the soldiers in the DRC before
the devaluation of the dollar last month. Bloch said the soldiers should be
pulled out of the DRC at the earliest possible opportunity as the cost of their
continued presence would rise to $18 billion a year.
"The withdrawal of the soldiers could benefit us in the form of
foreign currency needed badly to buy fuel and other import needs and to speed up
the reduction of inflation," said Bloch, an economic analyst and director of
companies based in Bulawayo. "The government's withdrawal of the soldiers will
improve our relationship with the international community in general and would
be a major step forward towards the restoration of support by the IMF, World
Bank and other donor agencies," he said. The country's economic recovery
programme would improve, he said. "Having made the initial mistake of going into
the DRC, we must now minimize the costs by withdrawing without further delay,"
said Bloch.
Robertson, who runs a consultancy in Harare, described the
continued stay of the soldiers in the DRC as nonsense. "It is ridiculous. That's
way beyond our means as a country." He said the high rate of inflation had to be
brought down with a lot of work needed to restore confidence in the economy. "We
are now looking at the consequences of the inflation, of the depreciation of the
dollar, high interest rates, rising unemployment and the government's failure to
meet its international obligations by failing to pay its debts, that's a very
serious issue," said Robertson.
From Reuters, 15
August
Zimbabwe Farm Union Says Members
Still Under Siege
HARARE - Zimbabwe's land invaders are wreaking havoc and
disrupting vital agricultural production on farms despite government orders to
police to clamp down on lawlessness, a farmers' union spokesman said Tuesday.
The CFU reported enforced work stoppages, threats of violence, poaching and
orders to vacate farms from war veterans who have invaded almost 1,000 farms
since February. ``The war vets (veterans) are now demanding their share of the
land. The police are refusing to act,'' the CFU said in a statement.
The CFU said the war veterans were ignoring Police Commissioner
Augustine Chihuri's promises to union president Tim Henwood that there would be
no more invasions, threats or lawlessness. Yet the owner of a farm where school
children were abducted and allegedly sexually molested by war veterans last week
had been forced to leave his property, the CFU said. In the Macheke area,
several farms had been forced to stop work while the owner of Airlie farm had
been issued with a four-day eviction notice. The independent Daily News reported
Tuesday that about 125 tons of sugar cane had been stolen last week and several
rhinos had been poached by war veterans who had invaded a ranch in southeastern
Zimbabwe.
From The Times (UK), 16
August
UK envoy accuses
Mugabe
JOHANNESBURG - The British High Commissioner in South Africa
has accused President Mugabe of manufacturing Zimbabwe's land crisis and of
taking revenge on his own people for daring to challenge the Zanu (PF) grip on
power. In an outspoken valedictory interview, Dame Maeve Fort, who retires this
week, said that Britain had always been prepared to support land reform in
Zimbabwe, but Mr Mugabe had chosen to spurn London's offer of financial help.
"The possibility of funds for land reform has always been there, but it was only
when he lost a referendum and nearly lost an election that he embarked on this
course," she said. "It almost seems like revenge on his people for rejection."
Dame Maeve said that she welcomed the recent decision by SADC to ask President
Mbeki of South Africa to lobby Britain to secure funds for the land reform
programme. She said, however, that Britain could not act unconstitutionally by
using funds earmarked for development. "In the UK, funds for development can
only be spent on development and not to reward cronies and so-called war
veterans for outbreaks of lawlessness," she said.
The land crisis had tested diplomatic relations between Britain
and South Africa, she added, but there was still a good relationship between
London and Pretoria. However, she said she found it disturbing that the
development community leaders at last week's summit meeting in Namibia failed to
take a more robust stand against the violence in the run-up to the Zimbabwe
election. In a veiled criticism of South Africa's failure to publicly condemn Mr
Mugabe's violation of the rule of law, she said that Pretoria could limit the
impact of Zimbabwe's turmoil on the region only by stating clearly and
unambiguously that it had a stable political environment that welcomed foreign
investment. Dame Maeve, whose 34-year career in the diplomatic service includes
serving as Ambassador to Chad, Maputo and Beirut and High Commissioner in
Mozambique, will be succeeded by Ann Grant, the Foreign Office's Director for
Africa, in October.
From The Daily News, 15
August
War vets arrested for alleged
torture of victims at stadium
Bulawayo - The police last week arrested two war veterans in
connection with the torture of civilians in a small room at Bulawayo's White
City Stadium, used as a torture chamber during President Mugabe's rally in the
run-up to the June parliamentary election. John Ncube and John Hungwe
Simbarashe, both of Nkulumane, were part of a gang which assaulted civilians
suspected to be supporters of the MDC at the stadium. The ex-combatants are also
accused of stealing their victims' property, including cellphones and their
identity cards in an apparent attempt to prevent them from voting in the
elections. One victim, Themba Dube, yesterday said he had recovered his
cellphone although he was yet to get his identity card, jacket and a notebook.
He was beaten up inside the stadium when he was found with a diagram of the
stadium and was accused of planning to kill the President. Police in Nkulumane
said they were looking for the other members of the gang.
From The Star (SA), 15
August
Consolidate defence industries ,
SADC urged
SADC needed an industry to manufacture arms in the region and
for the region, former Zimbabwean army-general Tshinga Dube said on Monday.
Speaking at the Africa Defence 2000 summit in Midrand in Gauteng, he said such
an industry would produce arms appropriate to local conditions, keep money in
the region and create jobs. Dube, who is now chief executive of Zimbabwean
Defence Industries, said the United Nations would benefit from this as it did
not have an army of its own but drew peacekeepers from member states. "The UN
will find it more appropriate and cost-effective to draw up a peacekeeping force
from the region."
He called on SADC states to come together and consolidate their
defence industries. "A mechanism can be put in place whereby industries are set
up in countries according to the resources available to them. "An industry to
manufacture brass cartridges of different calibre maybe set up in Zambia where
there are large reserves of copper. "Likewise Zimbabwe with plenty of iron and
still coupled with its sophisticated foundries can produce cast products like
mortars and artillery shells," he said. Dube said it was wasteful for the region
to spend billions of United States dollars purchasing military hardware from
Western and Eastern European countries. He also said Africa was "becoming the
most lucrative market for weaponry and other defence equipment, the bulk of
which was imported from outside of
Africa".
