Zimbabwe government introduces controversial law
reforms Thu Aug 18, 2005 4:58 PM BST
By MacDonald
Dzirutwe
HARARE (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe's government
presented a bill on Thursday that would let authorities effectively
nationalise all seized farmland and create a controversial second
legislative chamber.
Nine of the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change's (MDC) 41 deputies earlier marched from the party's headquarters to
parliament in a token protest against the proposals.
Mugabe's ruling
ZANU-PF took a two thirds majority in parliamentary elections in March --
criticised as neither free nor fair by the opposition and Western nations --
and is using this mandate to introduce a raft of changes to the
constitution.
"I want to assure honourable members and the nation at
large that ZANU-PF will use this majority to effect constitutional changes
which we promised the people during the run-up to the March 2005 elections,"
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told parliament to murmurs of disapproval
from opposition deputies.
The amendments include barring individuals
whose land has been seized from making a court challenge except on the
amount of compensation, setting up a Senate and a single electoral body and
the imposition of travel curbs on Zimbabweans suspected of "engaging in
terrorist training abroad".
POOR TURNOUT
MDC legislators who
protested on Thursday said the proposed amendments which they say violate
democratic rights.
"What we are saying to the people of Zimbabwe is that
today we've broken the yoke of fear and bondage. We may be (nine) but we've
started saying to the people of Zimbabwe 'stand up and say the things that
matter to you," MDC legislator Priscilla Misihairabwi told reporters during
the march.
MDC officials said most of its MPs were held up by
parliamentary committee meetings. But critics charged that the absence of a
big number of MDC legislators sent a signal that they were not serious
enough about their protests.
It was the second time opposition
members have protested since 2000.
The MDC has spearheaded
anti-government protests before but in June 2003 security forces quashed
nationwide MDC led protests in what was dubbed final push against Mugabe's
government.
The government early this month dropped treason charges
against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai over the failed protests.
The
opposition party has called for a new constitution that will limit the
tenure of a president to two terms in office, create a new "independent"
electoral body and for any senate to be elected by proportional
representation to avoid it being filled with Mugabe's appointees.
The
government's Senate plan calls for 65 members, of which 50 would be elected,
the rest going to special interest groups, traditional chiefs and
Presidential appointees.
Chinamasa defended the changes to the land
laws, saying out of 6240 farms seized by the government to resettle blacks,
only 1126 had been legally acquired. He accused former white farmers of
clogging courts with "unnecessary" challenges.
Mugabe, in power since
independence from Britain in 1980, denies critics' charges of mismanaging
the economy. He says the MDC, which has come closest to unseating him from
power, is working with his foreign opponents to sabotage the
economy.
The veteran Zimbabwe leader has rejected talks with the
opposition as part of efforts to resolve his country's problems, saying he
would rather talk to Prime Minister Tony Blair, who he sees as his chief
Western opponent.
Mugabe throws away chance for dignified exit, warns MDC Fri
19 August 2005
HARARE - Zimbabwe 's opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) party on Thursday said President Robert Mugabe had
thrown away an opportunity for a dignified exit out of his worst ever
political and economic crisis when he rejected African Union (AU)
mediation.
On Wednesday, former Mozambican leader Joaquim Chissano,
who was appointed by the AU to mediate in the Zimbabwe crisis, gave up on
his mission saying he had been told by Mugabe on the sidelines of the
just-ended Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Botswana
that his help was not needed because the Harare administration would engage
the opposition in Parliament.
MDC secretary-general Welshman
Ncube said that the continental body should now stop shielding the veteran
Zimbabwean leader from punitive measures by the international community to
force him to implement democratic reforms.
Most western powers,
who are critical of Mugabe's rule, have accused African countries of siding
with the Zimbabwean leader despite charges of rights abuses and rampant vote
rigging.
"What the AU was doing was to provide
Mugabe with a dignified way out of the crisis he is facing but he has thrown
it back in their face," Ncube told ZimOnline. "What the AU now needs to do
is to tell Mugabe that you are on your own."
Ncube said a
crumbling economy, marked by surging annual inflation, which rose to 254.8
percent in July from 164.3 the previous month, unemployment and widespread
shortages would eventually force Mugabe to engage the
opposition.
But he insisted the MDC would not beg for talks with
Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party and that if negotiations eventually took
place, they would be without any preconditions.
Mugabe has in
recent weeks become increasingly defiant, vowing never to engage the MDC,
which he labels a puppet of former colonial power Britain .
SADC has stuck by Mugabe despite murmurings from mostly Botswana and South
Africa , the latter which has crafted a US$500 million financial bail out
for its embattled northern neighbour.
"Mugabe will not extricate
himself out of the crisis if he does not talk to his very own people whom he
purports to govern. He has to make peace with all the people of Zimbabwe ,"
said Ncube.
Mugabe's ZANU PF party defeated the opposition in the
March 31 parliamentary election, and effectively assumed absolute control of
Parliament enabling his party to unilaterally amend Zimbabwe's constitution.
But the MDC charges that the March ballot, including those held in 2000 and
2002, was massively rigged.
And yesterday Justice Minister
Patrick Chinamasa tabled a controversial Bill to amend the country's
independence constitution amid criticism from the MDC.
The
Bill, expected to sail through Parliament, seeks to bar individuals from
contesting the seizure of their land except on matters of compensation, pave
way for the setting up of a Senate and a single electoral
commission.
It also seeks to empower authorities to prevent
Zimbabweans suspected of engaging in terrorist activities outside from
leaving the country.
A handful of MDC legislators yesterday
launched a token protest march against the amendments saying this was the
start of many more protests to come.
Ncube however said the
proposed constitutional changes, which are seen entrenching Mugabe's 25-year
rule especially through more party supporters in the Senate, would court
hostility against Mugabe from the restive Zimbabwean populace.
"Mugabe can change or write as many constitutions as he wants but it is not
going to resolve the crisis. He can pontificate as much as he likes but we
will not accept to be dictated to," he said. - ZimOnline
No trade at troubled Zimbabwe Stock Exchange amid fears of
looming crash Fri 19 August 2005
HARARE - There was no trade on
the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) on Thursday as the troubled bourse faces
collapse after a government directive on pension funds to increase their
uptake of state bonds and bills while also imposing a new tax on shares sold
on the market.
Finance Minister Hebert Murerwa, desperate to raise
cash to keep the virtually broke government running until year-end, imposed
a 10 percent tax on all shares traded on the ZSE, until now a source of hope
for investors in an economy in its sixth year of bitter
recession.
But Murerwa delivered what could turn out to be a
killer-punch to the ZSE, southern Africa 's biggest bourse after the
Johannesburg Securities Exchange, when he directed that pension funds should
markedly increase their uptake of government paper by October
2005.
ZSE chief executive officer Emmanuel Munyukwi said: "All is
not well, it's now just a sellers' market. It's a disaster, and there is a
very high possibility that the market will collapse. All is not
well."
Munyukwi said trading on Thursday afternoon had lasted only
minutes as the ZSE, voted the region's best performing market in 2001, faces
an uncertain future.
The ZSE boss said: "The new regulations
require that pension funds sell shares to meet the shortfall created by the
new requirement, but no one in the market has the capacity to absorb the
shares. There has not been any activity today. The afternoon session only
lasted five minutes."
But independent economic analyst, Eric Bloch,
last night said it was doubtful the ZSE would crash saying inactivity on the
market was because investors were still trying to adjust to the new
requirements.
Bloch, who is also an adviser to the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe, said: "There are problems yes, but this is a slight adjustment (of
the market).
"What is happening has been caused by the government
inflationary budget, which will cause some adjustment in operations of the
ZSE, but I doubt if there would be a crash something which the media seems
to be fond off." - ZimOnline
Five African states lure displaced Zimbabwean white
farmers Fri 19 August 2005
HARARE - Five west African countries
as well as Sudan and the Central African Republic, taking a cue from the
success achieved in Nigeria, have lined up to enlist displaced Zimbabwean
white commercial farmers to develop their agricultural sectors.
According to an internal report of the largely white Commercial Farmers
Union (CFU) obtained by ZimOnline on Thursday, all in all 23 African
governments had approached the farmers seeking to lure them to their
countries.
Insecurity among CFU members ahead of proposed
constitutional amendments that will effectively nationalise all farmland,
barring landowners from appealing to the courts against seizure of their
land by the state, had only helped heighten anxiety among the few remaining
white farmers who are now eager to grab the opportunities available to
relocate.
"The Nigerian project has opened many doors, and will
continue to open more doors in other surrounding countries, with private
companies, and government departments approaching us, wanting to put
together similar projects," the report reads in part.
Fifteen
expelled Zimbabwean white farmers and their families have relocated to Kwara
State in Nigeria where they have taken up successful commercial
agriculture.
The CFU report said a team from the farmers group was
already working on setting up in Senegal a similar farmer-relocation project
as the Nigerian one. An exploratory team from the CFU had to date made three
trips to Dakar and "proposals are being put together," according to the
report.
"Countries that have contacted us and with whom we are
currently dealing include Ghana , Cameroon , Sudan , Guinea Bissau, Benin,
Central African Republic and Namibia ," adds the report.
Displaced farmers have found new homes in neighbouring Zambia , Malawi and
Mozambique where their presence has lifted the agricultural profiles of
those countries.
Farmers' organisations have warned that the
proposed constitutional amendments on land would result in further decline
in agricultural production in Zimbabwe which has seen a 60 percent drop in
food output since President Robert Mugabe's farm seizure programme five
years ago.
Four million Zimbabweans or about a quarter of its
estimated 12 million people urgently require 1.2 million tonnes of food aid
or they could starve.
Chairman of farmers' pressure group,
Justice for Agriculture (JAG), John Worswick, last week told a parliamentary
hearing into the proposed constitutional amendments that nationalising land
would make it lose its market value.
"While China has accepted
the need for individual property rights, Zimbabwe is moving completely in
the opposite direction," he said.
President Mugabe has adopted a
"Look East" policy where he expects to mimic China 's miracle development
and economic progress through partnerships with the rising Asian giant to
spite Britain and its Western allies he accuses of sabotaging Zimbabwe 's
economy because of his seizure of land from whites for distribution to
landless blacks. - ZimOnline
Magistrate to deliver far-reaching judgment on Daily New
journalist Fri 19 August 2005
HARARE - A Zimbabwean magistrate
will on August 31 deliver judgment in the case of a former Daily News
journalist accused of practising without state registration, setting a
precedent for more than 45 other journalists of the banned paper who are
accused of the same offence.
Former bureau chief of the Daily News'
in Mutare city, Kelvin Jakachira, could be jailed for up to two years if
magistrate Prisca Chigumira upholds the state's case that he violated
government media laws requiring journalists to be registered with its Media
and Information Commission to practise in the country.
Jakachira and at least 45 other journalists of the banned Daily News and its
stable mate, Daily News on Sunday, were not registered by the commission
when they worked for the two papers before their banning because the
commission refused to register them.
Commission chairman Tafataona
Mahoso conceded in court that he had not specifically responded to
Jakachira's application for registration but had rejected wholesale
applications by the two papers' journalists because the publications they
worked for were not registered.
Under the draconian Access to
Information and Protection of Privacy Act, journalists can only be
registered if they work for registered newspapers or if they apply as
freelance reporters.
But the same law allows journalists to
continue working while awaiting determination by the commission of their
application for registration. It is silent on what happens if the commission
decides not to respond altogether as what happened in Jakachira and his
colleagues' cases.
The Daily News and its stable mate refused to
register and instead took the case to the Supreme Court challenging the
constitutionality of the requirement that they register.
The
court refused to hear the application in September 2003 and declared the
publications were operating outside the law resulting in the police shutting
down the two papers a few days later.
Chigumira last week dismissed
an application by the defence for Jakachira's acquittal saying the state had
led reliable evidence and that the journalist had to be put to his
defence.
Eight other Daily News journalists are expected to appear
in court on 12 October 2005 on the same charges as Jakachira, with more
expected to be brought for trial in the coming months.
The
Zimbabwe government has arrested more than a hundred journalists in the last
two years allegedly for breaching its tough media laws but has to date
secured only one conviction with the rest acquitted.
In addition to
the Daily News and the Daily News on Sunday, two other independent papers
have also been shut down by the state since 2003.
World press
rights watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists, rates Zimbabwe among
the three most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. The other
two are Iran and the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. -
ZimOnline
Zimbabwe forges ahead with controversial land Bill Fri 19
August 2005
HARARE - The Zimbabwe government on Thursday presented
a Bill in parliament that will virtually nationalise all farmland and bar
white farmers from contesting in the courts seizure of their
properties.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa presented the
controversial Constitutional Amendment Bill to Parliament yesterday.
Parliament is set to debate the Bill next week.
With President
Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party enjoying a huge majority in the House,
the government is likely to railroad the constitutional changes ignoring
shrills of protest from the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) party.
The new Bill will also seek to reintroduce the Senate
which was abolished 10 years ago and empower the government to confiscate
passports from individuals who are deemed to pose a "risk to the interests
of the state."
The MDC yesterday condemned the constitutional
changes. MDC legal secretary David Coltart said: "We will resist and do all
in our power to oppose this draconian and retrogressive piece of
legislation."
The MDC and some civic groups have all criticised the
proposed constitutional amendments with the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human
Rights warning last week that the new law will "usurp the authority of the
courts by denying people recourse to the law." - ZimOnline
MDC legislators take to the streets in Harare Thu 18 August
2005
HARARE - Zimbabwe 's main opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) legislators on Thursday caught the police by surprise when they
marched in Harare against an "anti-people budget" presented to parliament
earlier this week and pending constitutional changes.
Under
Zimbabwe's tough security laws, it is illegal for Zimbabweans to demonstrate
or gather in groups of more than three people to discuss politics without
first seeking approval from the police.
But the march, which went
ahead in defiance of the security law, was virtually low-key after only nine
of the party's Members of Parliament (MPs) participated in the demonstration
with the opposition party saying the rest of the legislators were attending
parliamentary committee meetings.
The MDC has 41 members in
Zimbabwe 's 150-member parliament.
MDC legislator for Glen Norah
Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga who was part of the march said: "The march
is against the anti-people budget that seeks to milk poor Zimbabweans. We
are also marching against the piece-meal amendments to the constitution
proposed by ZANU PF.
"We want a complete overhaul
of the constitution which is all inclusive. Every Zimbabwean has a right to
participate in the constitutional process," Misihairabwi-Mushonga
said.
The surprise demonstration took place without incident after
the police were virtually caught unawares. The MDC legislators marched from
the party's headquarters at Harvest House to the Parliament Building in
central Harare .
The police have in the past violently crushed
street protests by civic groups. Last month, a demonstration by the National
Constitutional Assembly protest group was violently put down with a number
of the organisation's members arrested.
Misihairabwi-Mushonga
said: "We did not apply to the police because we believe it is our
constitutional right to demonstrate. We also wanted to exercise our
leadership in demonstrating to people that it is time we stand up against
the regime. We cannot sit back while our rights are being trampled
upon."
President Robert Mugabe whose ruling ZANU PF party enjoys a
majority in the House is set to railroad wide-ranging constitutional changes
in parliament to entrench his hold on power.
The MDC is
fiercely opposed to the Constitutional Amendment Bill which apart from
reintroducing the Senate which was abolished ten years ago, will also bar
white farmers from contesting the acquisition of their farms in Zimbabwe 's
courts.
Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa presented on Tuesday a
supplementary budget statement to Parliament that introduced new taxes on
mobile phone airtime and quarterly taxes for public transport operators in a
desperate bid by the government to raise cash to fund food
imports.
Murerwa also raised Value Added Tax from 15 percent to
17.5 percent in a bid to boost government revenue. There was no tax relief
for workers save for raising non-taxable income by a paltry $500 000 to $1.5
million per month. - ZimOnline
Zimbabwe: For the demolition victims, the
nightmare continues
"I can't see a way forward," says Matsito, 55, a
father of five who lives in Mufakose, a working-class district in Southwest
Harare. "I've lost everything. I have no relatives, no one to ask for help.
The people are all in the same predicament." Hundreds of thousands of
victims of a ten-week demolition blitz are living on the edge in Zimbabwe
after their homes, market stalls and shops were destroyed. Promised
housing has for the most part yet to materialize, forcing many of the new
homeless to live in tents while others are recovering scraps from the rubble
of their former homes to rebuild a smaller shack. Tens of thousands of people
are sleeping out in the open, exposed to the bitter cold of the Southern
Hemisphere winter, according to aid agencies. An unknown number have moved to
the countryside where food shortages are acute. Others have been taken in by
family and friends in already crammed homes. After his two-room home was
destroyed, Matsito erected walls by piling his belongings, wrapped plastic
sheeting around them and found a slab of corrogated steel to use as a
roof. His makeshift house lies next to where his backyard dwelling and home
of 15 years once stood. Matsito, who gave a false name out of fear of
reprisals, turned to UN aid agencies for blankets "because the children were
shivering at night", and now depends on hand-outs to survive. His face
drawn and looking thin, Matsito says he sometimes walks three kilometers to
buy bread due to shortages. He worries about the price of maize, the staple
food, which has increased three-fold since he lost his home. "I have
enough maize now for eight days. Where will I find the next bag?" he asks.
Most of the homeless survive on sadza, a thick maize porridge. With
unemployment at 70 percent, finding a job seems an impossible prospect for
those like Matsito who have been robbed of their livelihoods. Street and
market vending remain outlawed after most of the city's stalls and so-called
home industries, small artisan shops, were razed. At Hatcliffe Extension, a
shantytown of some 20,000 people in northwest Harare, Farai Sibanda's family
spent six weeks in a transit camp before being told by Zimbabwean
authorities that they could go back to the dirt field where their home once
stood. The family of eight spent close to a month sleeping outside before
construction workers showed up with material to build new homes in the
coming weeks as part of the government's new Operation Garikai, or Live
Well. But the Sibanda family got fed up with waiting, so last week they
took some of the material to build a small shack -- although they expect
that it too will be taken down. "I don't think the government has the
money or the wish to build housing for these people," says opposition
lawmaker Trudy Stevenson. "They are thinking that they will be grateful that
they are back at Hatcliffe and will shut up." "They will be forgotten,"
says Stevenson who is trying to mobilize aid for the demolition
victims. While the homeless say they blame President Robert Mugabe for their
hardships, there is no talk of protest action, mostly out of fear. "We
are afraid of pursuing anything. We are just waiting," says Sibanda, who
feels he is powerless. "The worst thing is that we were made to feel that
we cannot make decisions. The people who gave us the stand can come and take
it away. The people who evicted us from Hatcliffe are the same ones who took
us back."
ZANU PF legislators revolt against Chigwedere
Bill
Njabulo Ncube 8/18/2005 9:23:19 AM (GMT
+2)
ZANU PF legislators have revolted against Aeneas Chigwedere,
the Minister of Education, Sport and Culture over proposed amendments to the
Education Act that would give government virtual control over private
schools.
Chigwedere, who has accused private schools of
being a law unto themselves and running a parallel education system that
discriminates against poorer pupils through what he deems unrealistic fees,
seeks to fix school fees, oversee recruitment of staff and prescribe
uniforms levies through the Bill. The proposed amendments, however,
drew vehement opposition from the majority of ZANU PF legislators this week,
many of whom have children attending elite schools whose standards would be
threatened by uneconomic fees. Ruling party insiders said a
parliamentary caucus had resolved not to support the proposed
amendments. "We indicated to (Patrick) Chinamasa (the leader of the
House) during our caucus in no uncertain terms that we will not support the
amendments in their present state," said a ZANU PF Politburo member,
speaking on condition of anonymity. "It was felt during caucus that
he (Chigwedere) had not consulted widely and the amendments needed to be
referred back to Cabinet," said the source. Another source alleged
that Chigwedere had not consulted the Politburo before rushing the proposed
amendments to the Cabinet. "He took it to Cabinet, which approved it
before forwarding it to Parliament. However, Chigwedere has been left with
egg all over his face because ZANU PF legislators are against it," added a
ZANU PF Member of Parliament. The ruling party legislators join a
growing chorus of condemnation by private school trusts, teachers, labour
movements and parents' associations who believe the amendment sounds the
death knell for the country's already troubled education system.
Critics of the proposed law say the offending sections are not practical
given that Chigwedere's ministry has previously failed to monitor and review
fees at government schools. Last week the influential Zimbabwe Teachers
Association (ZIMTA), Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) and the
Associated Trust Schools (ATS) presented submissions critical of the
proposed Bill to the parliamentary portfolio committee for education. ATS
officials fear that if the Bill passes in its present state, half of the 61
schools registered with the pressure group face closure by mid-next
year. The justice, legal and parliamentary affairs portfolio committee,
chaired by Shadreck Chipanga, the ZANU PF Member of Parliament for Makoni
East, is expected to issue an adverse report on the Education Amendment
Bill.
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe, under
immense pressure to embrace a Western-backed African Union initiative to end
the political stalemate in Harare, has seriously divided the Southern
African Development Community (SADC) with two distinct camps allegedly
emerging within the regional body.
It is understood the United
States, which diplomatic sources say will assume an influential role in the
political affairs of the regional bloc when Botswana's President Festus
Mogae assumes its chairmanship at the weekend, has been on a crusade in
southern African on the eve of the summit urging SADC leaders to nudge
President Mugabe into accepting the AU initiative. The initiative,
spearheaded by Nigeria President Olusegun Obasanjo, seeks to bring President
Mugabe to the negotiating table with his nemesis, Morgan Tsvangirai, the
leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a
situation fiercely opposed by the ZANU PF government. Diplomatic
sources, speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing SADC summit in Gaborone,
Botswana, said there were intense manoeuvres within SADC, led by South
Africa, Mozambique and Botswana to dissuade the other members of the
13-member grouping from siding with President Mugabe, seen as a stumbling
block in developing the region due to his government's alleged poor human
rights record and mismanagement of the economy. Namibia, Zambia and
Malawi are said to be on President Mugabe's side while South Africa enjoys
the support of Botswana and Mozambique. Obasanjo has appointed former
Mozambican president Joachim Chissano as mediator in the Zimbabwean crisis
but President Mugabe has rebuffed the move. Chissano travelled to Zambia and
Namibia for high-level talks ahead of the SADC summit, allegedly to urge the
two countries which support President Mugabe to change their positions for
"the general good of the region and the entire continent." Harare,
angered by the AU initiative, is understood to be on a diplomatic offensive
at the summit to buttress its position against the AU deal and the West's
"fixation" with President Mugabe. The sources said government
spin-doctors were working overtime in Gaborone campaigning against moves to
push ZANU PF into dialogue with the MDC. The diplomatic sources
said Africa's lack of consensus on the proposed reform of the United Nations
Security Council had also created a diplomatic rift within SADC, with
President Mugabe leading a faction opposed to a compromise deal agreed to by
Presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki and the Group of Four - Brazil, Japan, Germany
and India over the veto. "Zimbabwe has torn SADC apart in two ways," a
diplomat based in Pretoria attending the SADC summit, said by telephone from
Gaborone. "Harare is against the AU brokerage as they don't trust President
Obasanjo in the whole deal. Another issue is the UN Security Council veto
seats relating to Africa where both President Obasanjo and President Mbeki
feature prominently," he said. "However, the US, which sees
Botswana as its blue-eyed boy, is excited by Gaborone taking over the
chairmanship of SADC. It is believed this will enable it to influence
events, while South Africa also uses the loan to Zimbabwe as leverage to get
political concessions from Mugabe. The grand idea is to coax Mugabe to agree
to a new constitution that will usher in fresh elections," he
added. The MDC is said to have agreed to the AU initiative after being
made privy to the conditions of the deal. Tsvangirai is on record saying he
was ready to meet President Mugabe "anywhere and anytime to solve the
country's problems."
THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)
yesterday lifted rates for a second time inside 24 hours after new official
data showed a shock jump in July inflation. The central bank lifted
the key accommodation rate to 260 percent yesterday, adding to an earlier 10
percentage point hike that had taken rates to 200 percent late on
Tuesday.
The rate for unsecured lending was raised to 270 percent
from the initial 210 percent. The RBZ's unprecedented move came
just hours after the Central Statistical Office released a
weaker-than-expected inflation report showing a 90.5 percent surge in annual
inflation to 254.8 percent in July, up from 164.3 percent in June.
The Financial Gazette has heard from reliable sources that a broader rate
hike lies ahead, possibly within the next two weeks. The swift rate
hikes knocked shares lower yesterday, piling further misery on the stock
market, a day after Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa tweaked the prescribed
asset ratio requirements for pension funds - the major market players - and
increased stamp duty while raising taxes on listed tradable
securities. There was no comment yesterday from the central bank on its
latest move, but in earlier remarks, RBZ governor Gideon Gono had hinted at
a round of frequent rate hikes. "Inflation reduction remains the
Reserve Bank's overriding objective," Gono said. "Against this background,
monetary authorities will continue to maintain a tight monetary policy
stance over the outlook period." Yesterday's additional rate hike
indicates the inflation numbers were higher than had been anticipated by the
RBZ, which hopes to bring inflation down to 80 percent by December.
Analysts say the rate hikes and Murerwa's new measures reveal a combined
effort by the RBZ and government to keep investor interest away from
shares.
ONE of the many
paradoxes about Zimbabwe's education system, which has long lost the glamour
that put the country up among the best in Africa, is that a study
commissioned by President Robert Mugabe in 1999 to look into ways of
redirecting the school system to meet 21st century challenges remains
largely unimplemented but has, instead, been adopted and implemented by
neighbours Malawi and Namibia with scholarly zeal.
The tale does
not end there. A report by the United Nations suggests that during the past
five years an average of 2.5 million children have been enrolled at primary
schools throughout the country, but of the 1.7 million who completed seven
years of primary school, a mere 800 000 have had access to secondary school
education. Official statistics show that from about 320 000 students
who sat for Ordinary Level examinations in 2003, 50 000 failed to pass. The
startling statistics point to deteriorating standards of education delivery,
mainly in the grossly under-funded public school system presided over by a
government whose financial resources are stretched to the limit.
Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere who, since coming into Cabinet in 2000,
has presided over the acceleration of the public education system, has laid
out plans to reduce enrolment levels - which average 2 500 per school in
some instances - to 1 000 pupils per school. It is estimated that the
country needs an additional 1 800 new primary schools and 1 500 new
secondary schools to cope with increased enrolment. In the 2005
national budget, of the $5.55 trillion allocated to the education ministry,
a total of $4.95 trillion (89 percent) was set aside to meet employment
costs for primary and secondary school staff. No funds were earmarked for
new works, with work already in progress at 10 schools, each with a $2.5
billion allocation, only provided for the current year. Against this
background, Chigwedere's stated goal of doing away with hot-seating by 2011
through the construction of hundreds of new schools looks decidedly
utopian. The situation clearly cries out for private investment in the
education sector, but instead of facilitating the entry of non-state players
in the sector, the education ministry has, since Chigwedere's appointment,
fought a war of attrition with privately owned schools and has moved to
nationalise all schools. A former headmaster at one of Zimbabwe's
oldest and prestigious government-run schools - Goromonzi - Chigwedere has
ignored the onerous challenges facing public schools in pursuit of a
destructive war with private schools over fees. Although he lost out in
court following a nasty episode which saw school heads arrested and some
schools failing to open for the new term, Chigwedere has now sought to take
the legislative route to assuage his bruised ego. Parents,
represented by their development associations, responsible authorities from
church-run schools, teachers' unions and an association of trusts running
private schools, have come out in force to oppose the Education Amendment
Bill tabled by Chigwedere in Parliament in May, saying if enacted into law,
it would be the final straw. Jameson Timba, chairman of the Association
of Trust Schools (ATS), a representative body of 61 private schools, said
the proposed amendment to the Education Act "was in essence an attempt to
nationalise private educational institutions - from pre-schools up to high
schools." Timba added that this was in contrast to the policy adopted
by the Higher and Tertiary Education ministry, which has been encouraging
the establishment of private tertiary institutions, regulated only in terms
of minimum standards and quality assurance. "The Bill is also
designed to discourage investment in education. The minister is saying in
terms of proposed amendments to sections 21, 36, 59 and 60 an investor is
allowed to invest in education, but immediately after establishing a school,
the investor should hand over financial control of his investment to his
clients and the human resources management to the minister and his permanent
secretary," Timba said. The proposed amendments, if passed, will bring
private schools, which have hitherto retained significant autonomy, under
greater ministerial control in terms of fees and the recruitment of
teachers. The minister will, by means of a statutory instrument, set the
fees that private schools can charge. Last September, Chigwedere
froze school fees and levies through Statutory Instrument 19A, directing
that any hikes needed to be approved by the ministry. However, only last
week, the government effected massive fee hikes for state-run schools, by as
much as 1 000 times, backdated to January - a move which does not inspire
confidence in the ministry's ability to timeously adjust fees to realistic
levels. One of the country's oldest private schools, Eaglesvale,
initiated a process of voluntary liquidation at the height of last year's
fees standoff with government. In its alternative Bill, ATS
proposes that: "Section 21 recognises that non-government schools are
private institutions and, as such, should have the responsibility to set
their own fees as determined by market forces with the participation of
parents but regulated only to the extent that the fees fall outside economic
fundamentals." However, despite all the lobbying opponents of the Bill
have done, recent history with controversial laws passed by Parliament
points to little, if any, chances of success. But the government
does have a fight on its hands, going by Timba's parting shot.
"Significant sections of that Bill will not pass a constitutional test under
any normal constitutional democracy in any jurisdiction under the
sun."
Rising world oil prices spell tougher times for
Zimbabwe
Chris Muronzi 8/18/2005 9:29:35 AM (GMT
+2)
SOARING international oil prices, on the back of the weakening
local unit point to a bleak future for motorists who continue to bear the
brunt of a protracted fuel shortage spanning six years and steep price
increases on the parallel market.
International oil prices have
risen sharply over the past few months, reaching a record high US$66 per
barrel this week amid indications that the price could break the US$70 mark
soon owing to growing demand, mainly in Asia. Players in the
petroleum industry are already pushing for yet another price hike to remain
viable and to catch up with the 62 percent plunge suffered by the Zimbabwe
dollar against major currencies last month. The government approved a
178 percent increase in the pump price of fuel recently, having kept the
prices at uneconomic levels for several months. This has, in turn,
triggered an inflation spiral, with annualised inflation jumping a massive
90.5 percentage points to 264.8 percent in July. Supplies have not improved,
despite the massive price hike, with industry players pointing to a volatile
economic environment, which has already rendered the revised prices
unviable. As a result a vibrant informal fuel market is charging rates
between $45 000 and $60 000 per litre of petrol and diesel, a figure way
ahead of the stipulated $10 000 on the same commodity. Analysts
also point to the recent introduction of fuel sales in foreign currency,
where a litre costs US$1 ($18500 at the auction rate), as another
contributing factor in the recent increase in fuel prices on the informal
market. The development has created arbitrage opportunities fro those
with access to free funds who can purchase the fuel from designated filling
stations, while intrepid arbitrageurs plunder the parallel foreign currency
market, where US$1 is trading at $40 000, to buy the fuel for on-selling at
a profit. The government has not committed itself to regular
reviews of the price to take into consideration inflation and exchange rate
movements, a situation which has resulted in massive price shocks when the
authorities finally move to correct the situation.
WALK the talk: This
is an ordinary and yet befitting adage the country could learn something
following a string of futile deals that twisted in the air over the years
for the simple reason that Zimbabweans could not practice what they
preach.
If there is any area in which Zimbabweans surpass even the
wildest of expectations, analysts say, it is their ability to speak
persuasively - a not so extraordinary feat for a country as full of educated
people as it is endowed with swathes of natural resources. It is
convincing posturing, the analysts say, that has won the country exceptional
support from most parts of the world and tilted the scales in its favour
each time the court of public opinion was divided over Zimbabwe. But
beyond the rhetoric, however, there hasn't been much to show, except for the
footprints of broken promises and a trail of heartbreak as the government
swung from one state to another in search of an elusive economic
miracle. A number of otherwise water-tight deals signed in the past
amid pomp and fanfare have collapsed like a deck of cards as a result of
bureaucratic bungling and a carefree attitude towards business, an attitude
that is deeply entrenched in both the public and private sectors.
Reality has finally caught up, with states offering to salvage the
deteriorating economic crisis demanding action. Harare economist
Godfrey Kanyenze says this has been so because the Zimbabwean economy is
being driven by politics and yet it should be the other way round.
"It comes from the fact that politics is driving the economy and, as a
result, it is not technical people who drive it . . . they merely feed
information to politicians, who then present it for political expediency,"
he said, adding: "In the end, political irrationality overrides economic
rationality." The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)
economist says business people have taken themselves out of the picture for
self-preservation. Most of them, he says, do business with the
government and fear sudden and adverse repercussions if they stick their
necks out. "We theorise about it and say we need foreigners to help us,
sign agreements, et cetera, but we don't have the hunger to do it on our
own. We need to start building on our own capabilities," said the ZCTU
economist. Analysts say Harare should know that rhetoric or talk alone
is no panacea for the full-blown crisis causing untold suffering among
ordinary people. Sooner, rather than later, the world will close the taps on
discovering that Zimbabweans don't follow through on their promises, they
say. Events of the past weeks suggest that the country has reached
a dead end because patience seems to be running out over Zimbabwe, forcing
the government into a corner where the only source of hope could be China,
the world's fastest growing economy, and other "friendly" eastern
states. Reports that China signed a memorandum of understanding with
Zimbabwe that would see 25 percent of the African state's declining export
receipts going towards loan repayments demonstrate the world's increasing
annoyance with Harare. Most world econo-mies appear to have
identified Zimba-bwe's weaknesses at the least expected time, hence the
current trend where they are now setting all sorts of conditions before
extending assistance to the country. Nearer home, South Africa has
attached a string of conditions, including wide-ranging political and
economic reforms, before it canlend US$500 million to Zimbabwe to offset
arrears with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and for fuel and food
imports. In the past, Zimbabwe has fallen out with the IMF over its
reluctance to implement agreed policies. The global lender cut off balance
of payments support to the country in the late 1990s and has since initiated
procedures to expel it in response to its failure to adopt appropriate
policies required to redress macroeconomic collapse. Then came
Libya - once touted as an ally - in 2001 with much promise to help Zimbabwe
overcome chronic fuel shortages that threatened to bring the country to a
standstill. The shortages, which had disappeared last year, have since
resurfaced. Tripoli dumped Harare after the government reneged on its
commitments. The north African state, whose relations with Zimbabwe date
back to the liberation struggle in the 1970s when hundreds of ZANLA cadres,
the military wing of the ruling ZANU PF, were trained in military
disciplines by the Libyans, had put together intricate payment arrangements
involving barter deals and the purchase of strategic assets that were never
fullfilled. Nothing fruitful has also come out of Malaysia, which was
on the lips of most senior government officials. Malaysian Prime
Minister Abdullah Badawi has since departed from his predecessor Mahathir
Mohamad's camaraderie with Zimbabwe, with recent reports indicating he is
cementing ties with South Africa through a Malaysia-South Africa Trade and
Investment Committee to be established soon. A prominent local banker
said Zimba-bweans should learn the hard way that talk alone would not bring
food on the table and should quickly move away from rhetoric into making
full use of the country's abundant natural resources. "The
challenge is on making our deals sustainable and one way of doing it is to
fully utilise the natural resources that we have. It does not help anyone to
move around the world shouting about resour-ces that are not being
utilised. "We are not the only country endowed with resources and
so there is nothing special about us. What is critical though is to make
full use of the resources and ensuring that each agreement we entered is
adhered to," said the banker. "No one is taking Zimbabweans
seriously anymore. We are becoming a laughing stock because people say
despite our respected education, there is nothing on the ground to show for
it," added the banker. Another analyst said the country's failure to
implement strategies stemmed from confusion in the government, where there
were too many ministries with overlapping responsibilities. In the end,
ministries just came up with brilliant proposals and left the implementation
to Webster Shamu, in charge of the Policy Implementation Mini-stry, the
analyst said.
WELL, well, well, it was always coming, wasn't
it? The undeclared media war was always going to get dirtier one day. It was
inevitable. And the last seven days have been marked by a frenzy of
"excitement" for us following what our media colleagues at The Zimbabwe
Independent touted as "a scoop". They "discovered" that the CIO owns this
paper following its sale by previous owners in November 2001 and not in
October 2002 as claimed by The Independent.
The same newspaper,
(The Independent) and the same reporter, helped by a bitter former
shareholder who, with hindsight seems to realise that he sold a cash cow,
had previously predicted the following: 1) That because of the supposed
stigma surrounding the new ownership of The Financial Gazette, shareholders
would reap the whirlwind with rapidly declining sales and advertising; 2)
That the proposed editorial team would not have a snowball's chance in hell
to reposition the paper as the leading business publication. In other words,
the paper would collapse. This was the tenor of the article written by
Dumisani Muleya on October 25 2002 and in which the former ZANU PF Central
Committee member and former Financial Gazette owner, Elias Rusike, was
quoted. The former shareholder had earlier expressed the same sentiments in
the now defunct Daily News. Thus the stage was set for a war in which The
Financial Gazette refused to be drawn. Noone could be fooled. Zimbabwe's
discerning readership could read through these articles stewed in the juice
of deliberate journalistic dirty-mindedness and baseless speculation. It was
hoped that all this would swell up into a wall of negative advertiser and
readership sentiment against The Financial Gazette for obvious reasons.
Suffice to say the much-hoped-for demise of The Financial Gazette following
the change of ownership has not happened nor will it happen in this life. If
anything, the paper has grown from strength to strength. And facts and
figures on The Financial Gazette's circulation, enhanced advertising revenue
and its pole position vis-à-vis its competition (read Zimbabwe Independent),
drive a coach and horses through Dumisani Muleya's claims in a South African
newspaper this week that the paper's survival is threatened. By the time The
Financial Gazette is threatened, the Zimbabwe Independent would be dead.
That The Zimbabwe Independent would take this kind of cheap shot at us was
as mysterious to us as a blocked toilet would be to a plumber. The Zimbabwe
Independent's tactics have not yet changed. This culminated in last week's
story written by Dumisani Muleya, which claimed that The Financial Gazette
is 100 percent owned by the CIO, although he could not provide a shred of
evidence to prove this. The only difference this time around is that
threadbare explanation about the CIO being instrumental in the closure of
The Daily News and The Tribune. This was meant to exonerate and sanitise
Trevor Ncube's friend of many years in a futile attempt to promote their
tribally-based pet project - the so-called Third Way. All of a sudden
Jonathan Moyo, yes he, who for five long years stifled democratic space
through a sustained war of attrition against the private press, fanned
political intolerance, hatred for compromise, systematic bullying and
intimidation of political opponents, has nothing to do with the closure of
The Daily News! How soon we forget. Yet the green slime of his deadly touch
will live with us for a long time to come. Despite being the architect of
AIPPA and POSA, he had nothing to do with the closure of The Daily News and
Tribune? It was the CIO. Please! Dumisani Muleya did a follow-up story for a
South African newspaper on Monday this week which claimed that The Financial
Gazette has not yet refuted his story. Holy dancing and whistling Jesus
Christ! How do we respond to allegations when we have not been contacted to
give our own side of the story? Ibbo Mandaza, Editor-in-Chief of The Mirror
Group, was contacted for comment. Why were no efforts made to contact the
chairperson, chief executive officer, editor-in-chief, or major shareholder
of The Financial Gazette, who is well-known to the owner of The Zimbabwe
Independent? Did Dumisani Muleya know that this would kill his story? This
is hardly surprising though because the real target was The Financial
Gazette, The Independent's direct competitor. The grand plan is to project
The Zimbabwe Independent and its sister paper The Standard as the only
"independent" papers. "In effect this leaves Zimbabwe with only two
genuinely independent papers with a national character - The Zimbabwe
Independent and The Standard," claimed Dumisani Muleya in The Business Day
yesterday. So, this is what it is all about? Need I say more about a woman
who has to remind all and sundry that she is one? Now, it is not my
intention to pick a fight with the provocative Zimbabwe Independent or its
proprietor, Trevor Ncube, because I have no intention of adding to those of
Zimbabwean newspapers already sitting in the sewer. I will not waste
precious energy blowing out other people's candles in order to make ours
shine brighter because we are failing to hold our own. Which is why I am
just going to state the facts as they are as regards the ownership of The
Financial Gazette. We do not owe our colleagues at The Zimbabwe Independent
any explanation as to who our owners are, neither do they owe us any
explanation as to how they came about. Suffice to inform and confirm to our
readers that The Financial Gazette is owned solidly by a group of
individuals with impeccable financial, commercial and business credentials.
They are not CIO agents, neither does this newspaper have under its employ
anyone answerable to the state or any of its agents. I have not checked with
the major shareholder but for the record and to put this issue to rest once
and for all. The major shareholder is a prominent banker, Zimbabwe's best
known turnaround expert, farmer and businessman with whom Elias Rusike
entered a voluntary agreement and was accepting his personal cheques for the
purchase of the newspaper. This can be confirmed by the Merchant Bank of
Central Africa (MBCA), which handled the transaction as Rusike's financial
advisers. Our major shareholder was in fact approached to buy the paper and
minutes to this effect can be produced. These professionals and real owners
of The Financial Gazette take pride in their non-interference in the running
and editorial policy of the paper even when we give positive coverage to
those who choose to be our enemies in the profession today. All our
shareholders want at the end of the day is a financial dividend, derived
from honest, fair and balanced reportage consistent with the highest ethics
in journalism. From an editorial point of view, The Zimbabwe Independent,
some of whose staffers and shareholders have begrudgingly given me those
left-handed compliments about how well The Financial Gazette is doing, only
knows too well who the market leader is when it comes to business papers.
The acceptance of the paper by the public also testifies to the fact that we
have adopted a serious, bold, fearless, incisive, non-partisan and factual
stance. On that scorecard, our record speaks for itself, as it shall
continue to do in the future. ZAMPS quarterly results have over the past two
years consistently shown The Zimbabwe Independent lagging behind The
Financial Gazette in terms of readership. Which is why I will dismiss the
unfortunate remark on Zimonline by the donor-funded Andy Moyse about the
editorial thrust of The Financial Gazette having a certain slant with the
contempt it deserves. How many times has his Media Monitoring Project
begrudgingly said week in week out, "the private media, The Financial
Gazette, The Independent, The Daily Mirror were more analytical in their
coverage of these critical issues". Why the contradiction Andy? I said it
when I came in as Editor-in-Chief, and I will say it again: we have no
sacred cows. For us love and hate have no place in journalism. It is about
facts and not feelings. The Financial Gazette reportage is premised only on
the truth. Political parties and personalities come and go but the truth
will forever last and be enjoyed and cherished by posterity as indeed will
The Financial Gazette. I and the small-in-size but big-in-passion team of
journalists that I lead know that we have a rendezvous with history, which
is why we cannot and have never permitted ourselves to be afraid - we have
the courage of our convictions. We have no political bias and we report
issues as we see them. We have not been afraid to fly in the face of public
opinion where our "views on politics and business are often controversial,
seeking out events we believe will impact" on a national scale, to quote the
Economist. We have taken this path because we care about professional
integrity and credibility. In this business, in which we seek to be the
best, credibility is like virginity - you can only have it once, so to
speak. I am not yet prepared to have mine ruptured. That is why I am keeping
my legs crossed by not supporting partisan causes at The Financial Gazette.
I will be the first to cry foul and I will not hesitate to quit if there is
any interference that compromises the paper's Editorial Charter which
demands that we should not be restrained by outside influences and to which
I am also sworn to uphold. Any deviation from the guidelines and provisions
of the Editorial Charter will mean reducing The Financial Gazette to a
despiser, distorter and denier of the plain truths as regards the Zimbabwean
situation. That will not happen during my editorship because my whole
history as a professional journalist is unequal to that. And I leave the
market to judge me and my team on that basis. To our colleagues at The
Zimbabwe Independent, I say let us meet in the news market place. Let us see
who between us will maintain a fearless, impartial (not hysterical),
factual, relevant and balanced reportage of the quality and standard
expected of a serious business newspaper.
THE editor of this
newspaper is obviously not crazy. He would not be editor otherwise. Which
means that there is a good reason why this paper has, over the last six
months or so, devoted several editorials to the land reform exercise and the
way it is being handled.
The reason this paper has to revisit the
topic is clearly the fact that the government appears not too bothered by
the fiasco. They appear unaware of what this paper figured out many moons
ago: that agriculture is indispensable to the rise of an industrialised and
prosperous Zimbabwe. Although we can continue to rely on it to meet our
food needs, it can not offer sustained prosperity. Because of the subsidies
given to western farmers and the fact that even Zambia is now producing an
excess of food, agriculture's scope for giving Zimbabwe prosperity is
limited even in the medium term. The campaign against tobacco
worldwide also means that even this foreign currency earner will be squeezed
in the long term. Besides, we are not the only tobacco-producing nation in
the world. Still, there is no denying the fact that, in order to power
itself up for true prosperity based on value-added natural resources,
manufacturing and service industries, agriculture must take its place first
as the engine of the current Zimbabwean economy. That is our starting point.
With agriculture having been sorted out, it will be a short hop and skip to
building a sustainably prosperous Zimbabwe. This is the reason this
paper sees it fit to repeatedly call the attention of government to the
fiasco in the land reform programme. Yet, to date, the government
appears not to be bothered. We still have multiple farm ownerships. People
who do not even know the difference between corn and cocoa are still in
possession of farms that have fallen into disuse. The majority of this
second group took up their farms with the hope of getting title deeds,
whereupon they would then sell the farms to real, dedicated
farmers. They are the ones who are not interested in the loans from
Agribank (which do not need collateral) because they want title deeds under
the pretext of using them to get finance, when in fact they just want to
sell and make a killing. Money for nothing. Some of these people
are politicians' relatives and even ministers themselves. They are not
serious about farming at all. They have no interest in the industry
whatsoever. Their interest is purely speculative. Naturally, this paper
sees the recovery of agriculture as the basis of Zimbabwe's return first, to
self-sufficiency, and then on to true prosperity. This is so blindingly
obvious that government's foot-dragging on this issue is extremely
puzzling. Is it that they find it easier to humiliate themselves by
taking a begging bowl to South Africa than to actually get the ministers and
their functionaries to work on resolving this? We have extension
officers in literally every district in Zimbabwe. If need be, rotate them
(to obviate possible corruption) and get them to submit reports within a
month on how the farms in their areas are being utilised. Indeed, this
is such an important issue that it is surprising that ministers are being
allowed to go home at the end of the day at all. They should be spending
sleepless nights trying to ensure that this issue is quickly
resolved. Are they not aware that, today, the world is laughing at the
country. One British citizen (a former Zimbabwean) actually phoned me
specifically to say, "Four thousand white people owned farms and were able
to feed all of you people, yet now you supposedly have three hundred
thousand people with farmland who can not afford to feed you." To
rub in more salt, he then went on to say that the job of feeding Zimbabweans
is actually easier for these three hundred thousand new farmers since more
than three million people have fled Zimbabwe, hence we have less mouths to
feed. "Still, you can are failing." Naturally, I can never agree with
him that the maths then show that one old (read white) farmer is more than
equal to 75 new farmers. Nevertheless, this is a humiliation that is not
necessary. Why do even have a cabinet then, if it can take more than
four years to actually find out who is using his or her farm and who is
leaving it to be taken care of by weeds and birds? Is the job that difficult
for the lot of them? More than anything else, President Mugabe's
leadership is being trampled on by the ineptitude not only at the Ministry
of Agriculture but at virtually all ministries. The fact that he appears
unwilling to crack the whip and get the process concluded quickly is now
making Zimbabweans think that there is truth in the talk that this was a
gimmick, a ruse to maintain political power. Having been witness to
the repeated editorials in this paper calling for the land exercise to be
sorted out once and for all, I and many other people have reached the
conclusion that the government is not interested. For now, their power
is secure and they have cast aside Zimbabwe's cash-cow, agriculture. Our
suffering means nothing to the ministers who can get even the scarce basic
goods, who can rig up a generator when the electricity goes and who get
allocations of fuel every week and never have to queue for petrol.
To them, the crisis in Zimbabwe is a game between the MDC and the ruling
party. Why oh why is the President turning a blind eye to all this? Why
is he behaving as if he really does not care what happens with agriculture
in this country? He and his ministers surely know, like this paper
does, that without first sorting out agriculture, our problems will never
ever go away? The silence can only be a sign of one thing: the government is
past caring. They have the power and that is all that matters to
them.
THE Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE)
headed for a collapse yesterday after a series of shock measures announced
by Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa kept brokers off the trading floor and
left sellers under pressure to crash the market.
Only six
counters traded as buyers deserted the market and left sellers stranded -
raising the possibility of sellers crashing prices and bailing out. The
industrial index closed 6.5 percent weaker yesterday, while the resources
index declined by 8.4 percent as panic set in. Murerwa on Tuesday
announced a 10 percent withholding tax on listed tradable securities, a tax
that brokers say is a grave threat to their industry and the stock exchange.
The new tax is charged on gross proceeds of the sale of stock, and brokers
say a dealer now has to make a return higher than 20 percent just to break
even. This means investors now have to wait for the value of their
shares to rise by at least 20 percent before they can sell. It's a major
threat to brokers, investors and a number of listed companies that had been
planning rights issues to raise critical capital. Brokers staged a sit-in
protest. Pension funds are also now required to have 35 percent of the
value of their portfolios in prescribed assets. Yesterday, leading brokers
told The Financial Gazette that a damaging crisis awaited the
market. "Yes, we are heading for a crash," a broker said late
yesterday. "The minister's new taxes are not practical, they are not
enforceable from a stockbroking point of view. Panic has gripped the market;
there is amazing selling pressure, not even from speculators but from the
pension funds." ZSE chief executive Emmanuel Munyukwi was not available
for comment late yesterday, but a major brokerage said Murerwa's new
measures "could have far reaching effects on investors and the public is
therefore urged to exercise caution when dealing in all listed companies.
The price discovery mechanism has become distorted on the back of selling
pressure." Players say 90 percent of the market's business is from
pension funds, which were queuing to sell yesterday ahead of the October
deadline to bring their prescribed asset ratios in line with the new
requirements. Government, which already collects between $400 million
and $500 million in stamp duty from the market daily, raised the stamp duty
to $2000 from $500.
FINANCE
Minister Herbert Murerwa gave a starkly frank picture of the dire state of
the economy on Tuesday, downgrading growth forecasts and admitting there
would be "no magic solutions" to the economic crisis.
But the
clearest message that emerged from Murerwa's statement was that government
has no real plan to save the economy from ruin. While painting an honest
picture of the dire state of the economy, Murerwa scrapped the bottom of the
barrel for solutions, banking on a string of odd new surtaxes to raise
revenue. Evidence of a badly shrunken industrial base came in Murerwa's
desperate plans for revenue collection. The minister announced new surtaxes
on mobile phone airtime, higher duties on luxury goods, higher stamp duty,
increased withholding tax in securities, and taxes for small-scale miners
and commuter transport operators. There would be no tax breaks for
workers. Confirming that Zimbabwe was bankrupt, Murerwa said he had
rejected requests for fresh funding from ministries because the government
"does not have the capacity to finance them at this time". The
airtime surtax would raise $20 billion, while $140 billion would be raised
from taxes on cigarettes and beverages. A further $60 billion would come
from quarterly taxes from miners and commuter bus operators. Value Added Tax
(VAT) was increased to 17.5 percent and new tax on used vehicle imports was
also announced. The $6.6 trillion in additional expenditure would be
funded by "reallocation and additional measures to raise revenue", Murerwa
told Parliament. He did not elaborate on how he planned to reallocate the
little funds he has at his disposal. The new expenditure would widen the
2005 budget deficit to 8.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), up from
the initial forecast of 5 percent made last November.
Zimbabwe must "not continue with a business as usual approach", Murerwa
warned. But his allocation of $100 billion for the senate is a continuation
of government's tradition of extravagance and presents evidence that the
government is not ready to take the minister's advice to his colleagues that
they "live within their means". Latest figures made available by the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) show government domestic debt at $16
trillion, a sign that despite Murerwa's public rebuke of state expenditure,
there has been little in terms of actual action to rein in spendthrift
ministries. Murerwa has however stuck to projections of positive growth
this year, forecasting growth of 2 percent, down from initial forecasts of
3.5-5 percent. His earlier forecast had been based on projections of a 28
percent growth in agriculture, but Murerwa was this time vague on what
underpins his latest forecast of positive growth. "This year's
growth prospects, initially predicated on the rebound of agriculture, as
well as on the improvement in mining performance, have now receded," Murerwa
conceded. His earlier bullishness over agriculture's prospects has
turned into a desperate appeal for food aid, for which the minister said
Zimbabwe needed $1.4 trillion in foreign currency. Another $1.6 trillion
will be sourced on the local capital markets, Murerwa said. Critics
immediately launched into the statement, saying while revealing the dire
situation of the economy, Murerwa's statement showed little in the way of
substantive policy to lead an increasingly elusive recovery.
Delivered in a markedly downbeat tone to much derision from opposition
benches, the midyear fiscal review statement is unlikely to rekindle any
remaining hope for near term recovery, the critics say. "The
numbers were depressing; the minister looked depressed himself," the head of
a local bank quipped after watching the televised address Tuesday.
Despite the strong criticism though, others warmed to Murerwa's frank
remarks, saying he had done well to steer clear of the high-tower forecasts
he made last November. Murerwa also kept to the new official line
on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) saying Zimbabwe, which in the past
said it did not need the IMF, "remains in contact" with the Bretton Woods
institution and other international bodies. The country is up for
possible expulsion from the IMF in three weeks' time unless it pays off a
significant portion of the US$295 million it owes the global
lender.
THE government has refused to admit
into Zimbabwe food aid from South African churches to feed victims of its
clean-up campaign. The rebuff comes amid fears of widespread starvation
among those displaced by the blitz, which demolished illegal homes and
informal businesses owned by the country's poorest
citizens.
It has emerged that local church officials who were
coordinating the envisaged distribution of food donated by the South African
Council of Churches (SACC) unsuccessfully approached Agriculture Minister
Joseph Made and Labour and Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche in a
desperate attempt to obtain duty-free clearance certificates for the 37
tonnes of maize, beans and oil. Sources within the clergy said
officials from the Zimbabwe Council of Churches and Christian Care, the SACC
donation's designated distribution agency, had for the past two weeks been
shuttling between Made and Goche's offices to have the food cleared but
their efforts had yielded nothing. Two trucks carrying the maize, beans
and oil have for the past two weeks been stranded in South Africa. Harare
has refused to clear the consignment although the relevant documents have
been forwarded to the government. Earlier this week, the government
only allowed into the country one truck carrying 4 500 blankets for the
clean-up victims. Church officials yesterday said they had resigned
themselves to the reality that the government does not want them to feed
starving people in Zimbabwe. "It seems the SACC's actions angered
the government, so we understand there is no way the food will be allowed
in," said a source privy to the saga. Goche has refused to discuss
the issue, saying: "I am not responsible. Why do you think it is
me?" Made was yesterday not available for comment, with agriculture
ministry officials saying he was part of President Robert Mugabe's entourage
to the ongoing Southern African Development Community summit in Gaborone,
Botswana. Zimbabwe, which experienced a drought last season, is
facing serious food shortages and needs about US$230 million to buy about
1.5 million metric tonnes of grain. Aid agencies say because of the
drought and effects of the United Nations-condemned clean-up campaign, an
estimated 4.2 million - more than a third of the country's 12 million
population - could starve unless 1.2 million tonnes of food aid is urgently
provided. On Tuesday the government, which set aside $1.4 trillion -
about US$76 million at the ruling auction rate - for drought relief, opened
up trade in maize and wheat and waived duty on grain imports to facilitate
increased inflow of the key staple into the country. Meanwhile,
civic society organisations officials claimed yesterday they had been
informed the government, which is still to issue an appeal to the World Food
Programme for assistance, had vowed to use its limited resources to feed
those facing starvation.
Taxing the stock
market may do more harm than good to the government's efforts to raise
revenues as the recently announced 10 percent withholding tax on securities
will discourage trading in listed securities.
Essentially the
tax, which will be levied on all sale proceeds from the stock market, will
mean that the seller of listed securities will have to make a return higher
than 20 percent before breaking even. Unlike the capital gains tax, which is
levied on profits, the withholding tax is akin to sales tax as it is levied
on the gross proceeds from disposal. In the short-term the measure will
crowd out individual investors who must now wait for listed securities they
already hold to rise by more than 20 percent to at least get something from
the sale of their securities. The immediate impact is that it will deprive
the government of much needed revenue as the number trades fall
sharply. Since the Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP) of the
early 90s we have seen the listing of companies of many companies on the
stock market. In 1996 the Zimbabwe stock exchange had a market
capitalisation of US$4,8 billion making it one of the biggest African stock
markets. Despite the number of new listings since 1996, the ZSE has
witnessed significant erosion of value and now has a market capitalisation
of US$2.4 billion despite now boasting of nearly 80 listed companies. What
this implies is we are giving our assets away at current market values and
with the expected fall out from the withholding tax we may see further
erosion of value. The industrial index is up 312 percent in the
year to date, while in the previous year it was up only 128 percent by this
time closing the year 2004 up 1,097,493 points. It may look like
the market has done exceptionally well when looking at the movement in
nominal terms but in real terms stock prices have just been responding to
the rise in inflation and in some cases are lagging behind it. Now
that there is the withholding tax on sale of securities and little incentive
to buy stocks, there is a danger that we could see the market regressing
further in real terms, further destroying the little value left. In
fact Zimbabwe has witnessed an increase in the number of employee driven
transactions, which will certainly be a thing of the past now. It
really leaves very little room for investors to reallocate resources within
the stock market as and when the need arises. In short it discourages
investors from buying stocks due to extremely high exit costs and reduces
the level of activity on the bourse. In the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange
case, individual and upcoming investors will be significantly disadvantaged
as there will be a massive shortage of scrip as shareholders wait for prices
to rise enough to justify selling. Not only that but companies and
individuals who have invested in stock market industry will face collapse as
the level of transactions fall. Stockbrokers will not be conducting much
business as before. The same applies to transfer secretaries and ZSE related
companies. Allied with the changes in the Prescribed asset rules where
the ratio is now to be calculated based market value of assets to book
value. This means that the ZSE will now be a sellers market as pension funds
seek to raise money to buy prescribed assets to comply, destroying
value. Effectively an artificial market that does not take into account
the hyper-inflationary impact of the current market conditions has been
created. Inflation is expected to rise above 200 percent in July, taxing
investors further. Zimbabwean investors already face a 20 percent
withholding tax on dividends and given the fact that companies are less
profitable there isn't much tax coming from these, as few companies are
still able to give cash back to shareholders. Investors have therefore
derived comfort in the past from the fact that they do not pay tax on profit
but instead pay stamp duty at roughly 2 percent of the deal amount.
With the new tax it now means the government is taking 12 percent every time
I sell shares. Most African countries within SADC have not introduced the
capital gains tax and have no withholding tax on the sale of listed
securities. One of the fastest growing stock markets has been Botswana,
which has seen the number of listed companies increasing from 16 in 2001 to
44 in 2004. Without stability in our inflation we will continue to see
prices escalating and the rise in the stock market is only a reflection of
the inflationary pressures in our economy. If we contain inflation we will
contain price movements and introduce sanity in our markets. It is hoped
that the introduction of the tax will be viewed in this light, that is a
temporary measure not permanent if investors are to be encouraged to
participate in the stock market. Unfortunately there is little empirical
evidence to support the case for withholding tax on the sale of listed
securities. In most cases taxes have been scrapped to encourage mass
participation on the stock markets. When the market closed yesterday there
were no buyers for most stocks putting pressure on sellers to crash the
market.
UP until a decade ago, Zimbabwe's
education system was the envy of many a country across the world. It enjoyed
the crème de la crème status. And justifiably so.
Enter
Aeneas Chigwedere, the bungling Minister of Education, whose actions even
the best brains in this country have failed to understand, and it is a
different story all together. Thanks to the minister's arrogance and
conceit, the education system has been plunged into a state of disorder and
confusion. The situation is so bad that not even the fractious and irascible
government spin-doctors can defend Chigwedere other than point to what seems
to be local education's obvious merit - the increased number of people going
through it and not necessarily the quality that it produces. That is why we
have always said that Chigwedere must go because when it comes to
educationists Zimbabwe is spoilt for choice. First, it was the
examination debacle where pupils reportedly studied the wrong set books or
syllabi and even received results for subjects they did not sit for. How in
God's name this could possibly happen beats us. Not to mention the fact that
candidates for the Ordinary and Advanced Level examinations are not always
registered on time, a situation the scapegoating education officials have
blamed on, of all things, drought. Or having these exams, as happened this
year, postponed because the truck carrying the examination papers was
supposed to have been hijacked by robbers in South Africa. The list
is endless. Suffice to say that the public's confidence in the country's
erstwhile credible education system is badly shaken. This is hardly
surprising because this is an issue of legitimate public concern. Which is
why almost all stakeholders, concerned with the need to protect the
integrity and credibility of the country's education system, have added
their voices to the chorus of complaints about the terrifyingly swift
decline in standards in this very important sector. As if that was
not enough, Chigwedere, whose antics have not only been singularly
destructive but whose consequences will be felt for a long time to come, has
come up with the Education Amendment Bill 6, 2005 which is currently being
debated in Parliament. If this Bill in its current form sails through, and
perish the thought, the seal of death is at that moment set on private and
mission schools - the rare or only shaft of light amidst the ruins of what
was once a quality system of education. Indeed there are only two ways
of killing the private schools. One is just to close them down. And the
other is for Zimbabwe to accept the Chigwedere-sponsored Bill. Among other
things, the retrogressive Bill seeks to empower the minister to prescribe
fees for the private schools, to deregister them and to formulate the code
of conduct for teachers. Now we are not going to waste time trying to
second-guess what motivated this Bill, which does not create even a remote
semblance of a false impression of novelty. Chigwedere's misplaced hatred
for these private schools is a matter of public record, given his frontal
attack on the schools. He started by instilling the fear of God in the heads
of these schools who had been targets of unjustified rhetoric after they
refused to yield to the minister's arm-twisting tactics to force them to
reduce school fees to unsustainable levels. As we have said before,
he seems to believe that such schools are a bastion of capitalistic
privilege and racial discrimination. Yet nothing could be further from the
truth because the majority of the children at these schools are black. And
the evidence is there for all to see. Indeed it is our considered view that
these schools have a critical stabilising influence in the troubled
education sector given that there are no functional libraries, laboratories,
recreational facilities, not to mention the debilitating acute shortage of
teachers at most public schools. Chigwedere's hollow assurances that
the government would take over the private schools are of very little, if
any comfort. This is nothing but an empty declaration. The capacity just
isn't there. The cash-strapped government simply does not have the financial
wherewithal to run the mission and private schools. This is why it has
scaled down on its services to the public as can be seen from the disastrous
condition of all public institutions in Zimbabwe. Or if it has the
resources, why have they not been channelled towards propping up collapsing
public schools? It is clear from the foregoing that the Parliament of
Zimbabwe should unequivocally reject the Bill because if it is passed in its
current form, it will have far-reaching consequences for millions of school
children on whose scholastic development, the salvation of this great nation
is dependent.
Isaya Muriwo Sithole
8/18/2005 10:18:44 AM (GMT +2)
AT times of crisis we
are inevitably called upon to re-examine our value systems as commonly
accepted standards fail to be adequate. In this age when lowered moral
standards have become the breeding ground for destructive forces, is it not
time for democracy to seek again the sources of her strength, and to
demonstrate to the world the power of moral
principles?
The answer to many of the problems
bedeviling the world today may be found in a re-awakening of the fundamental
values on which democracy was built; in a re-dedication of our people to
those elementary virtues of honesty, purity, selflessness and love which so
many of us have allowed to take a secondary place. The crisis in Zimbabwe
and the world is fundamentally a moral one. The nation needs to re-arm
morally because moral recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic
recovery and political stability. The enemies today are selfish materialism
and moral apathy. Many nations often fail because they try
desperately to combat moral apathy with economic plans. Economic breakdown
walks as a black threat through the heart of every statesman and citizen,
yet the material crisis may obscure the materialism and moral breakdown that
underlie it, so having diagnosed the problem incorrectly they have no idea
how to prescribe a cure. Until we deal with human
nature thoroughly and drastically on a national, even regional, continental
and worldwide scale, nations will still follow their historic road to
violence and destruction. Nations desire the fruits of an answer without an
answer. We want production, prosperity, political stability, a united
Africa, a world organisation etcetera. Right now there is
political heat about reform of the UN Security Council but we do not go to
the root of the matter. The world today lives in an atmosphere of suspicion,
fear, greed and resentment which have worked with deadly accuracy to bring
nations to the brink of catastrophe. We need to wage a world war against
selfishness. Moral re-armament remains perhaps the most
effective answer to recurrent crisis and the one foundation for
reconciliation and future stability. In these critical days the media of
every nation can play a very decisive part in the moral re-armament of world
public opinion. People and nations invariably manifest signs of thinking
abnormally. We often suffer from the numbing disease of
auto-intoxication, drugged by our own egos and blinded by our own
selfishness. People have accepted standards lower than they know they ought
to accept. We need to summon a whole new philosophy of living that is above
party, class, faction and even nations. Moral
re-armament creates white and red corpuscles, energy and protection, in the
national blood stream. The poisons of moral decadence and division are
thrown off, as a healthy organism throws off disease. Leadership of the
future goes to men and women of great moral courage. There must be a new
spirit in enhancing our capacity to fight against the causes of conflict -
against selfishness, greed and hate. In this war everyone has a part. Moral
re-armament will win because it advances with the strength of a united mind
and it awakens the fire of true patriotism because it holds the secret to
tolerance of diversity, good governance and economic
development. Meanwhile the forces of subversion prey
like vultures over the people's disillusionment On every hand we see
disunity. Divisions are the mark of our time. Men oppose other men because
they are of another nation, another race, another class, another party, or
simply because they hold another point of view. The underlying cause of all
this is moral apathy hence we need, as a nation, comprehensive moral
rehabilitation. Admittedly, this is a materialistic age
where man's genius has been largely expended on material science and
technological invention to the neglect of the human spirit and the science
of human relationships. Materialism is democracy's greatest enemy. When one
looks closely at the conflicts within and between nations, you can not miss
the fact that the real struggle in the world is a moral one between
materialist, totalitarian ideologies and the moral ideology of
democracy. The popular practice of democracy in Zimbabwe
and other countries is devoid of sound moral content. Any thoughtful
statesman will agree that we need a new moral climate.
The odds are seemingly against us but, just as individuals are delivered
from their prison cells of doubt and defeat, so is it possible for nations
to be delivered from their prison cells of fear, resentment, jealousy and
depression, and oftentimes through one illumined man, one masterful prophet.
How often this has been true in history! We need to reach a whole new level
of thinking and interacting regardless of the diverse particularities of
race, class, tribe, religion and political persuasion. We
must create in the realm of philosophy and sociology a dynamic of loyalty
and goodwill which, little by little, will change the face of the world. To
produce such a result we must re-arm morally those elements of society which
for a long time have had no sense of mutual
responsibility. Statesmen must find new levers and
appeal to neglected sentiments to set right human relationships within and
between countries. The remedy may lie in a return to those simple home
truths that some of us learnt at our mother's knee, and which many of us
have forgotten and neglected - honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. The
leadership and every other responsible citizen in all spheres of life must
launch a fierce moral offensive. If we make every home
a fortress; every home a life-changing centre, where people just naturally
learn how to change others, we will soon change the moral climate of
Zimbabwe. Imagine a rising tide of absolute honesty and absolute
unselfishness sweeping across the country! That power active in a minority
can be the solvent of a whole country's problems. It is
unfortunate that the anti-people forces seem to be dominating the affairs of
the world. But it is my conviction that there is more goodwill than there is
bad will, but the country and the world at large has suffered immeasurably
and is still suffering from selfishness, and that is because selfish groups
have developed a genius for organising and mobilising, whereas those of good
will have seldom demonstrated a talent for organising. Consequently, only
too often bad will dominate the affairs of man with devastating results, in
the form of cruelty, suffering, despair, starvation, political conflict,
chaos and war, which lend more strength to the anti-people
forces. The whole concept of the African renaissance will
count for nothing if it does not engender a moral renaissance because if our
political systems fail at the moral and ethical level, there is no hope for
success at any other level. We desperately need to reconcile with our
concept of "hunhu/ubuntu" but there is a spiritual dimension to it which I
will deal with in due course. --- Isaya Muriwo Sithole
is a lawyer, political consultant as well as a human, civil and political
rights activist. He can be contacted on isithole@yahoo.com
DO you want to be buried at the
National Heroes Acre? Remember the chances of you, most born-free Zimboz,
being declared even district heroes - let alone national heroes - are very
slim, if non-existent, because you did not fight in the war that made the
only heroes this country has. So for those of you who would want to have the
privilege of being interred next to this or that hero or heroine, this is a
chance of a lifetime.
Below is a small quiz that looks very simple,
but is not so simple. There will only be one winner. And the prize? A burial
place will be earmarked for the winner at the National Heroes Acre in Harare
and the prize is valid for the next two years. So this is the quiz.
Below is how one political editor of a South African paper this week
described someone in his comment: "The trouble with (Him) is that he
lends himself quite easily to caricature. Call the man a bigot and he will
confirm that by labelling gay people dogs; accuse him of sexism and he will
give you the evidence you need by calling Margaret Thatcher a "she-man"; say
he is a xenophobe and he will oblige you by saying his countryman are better
than their fellow African comrades because they are better educated and his
country better developed than the average sub-Saharan country, except SA.
But that is not to say the man is mad and that President Thabo Mbeki should
deal with him the same way he would a mad man. It is also not to say that
his only problem is that he lends himself rather easily to caricature by the
media. His problems are far, far bigger than that and almost all of them are
of his own doing. This is, after all, a man who would much rather destroy
his country than give up power. This is a man who has callously presided
over the total collapse of his country's agriculture and economy . . .
" Who is this man? Operation papers SAD news reaching
CZ from the City of Kings is to the effect that a once good journo colleague
of his almost took his life recently over Operation Show Papers currently
going on at the state-owned Chronicle. Yes, the man took an over-dose
of anti-malaria tablets after the newly appointed editor demanded that
everyone submit copies of their highest qualifications - obviously
qualifications related to their duties - and he was found wanting. So he
thought he would rather die than be subjected this humiliation. Fortunately
or unfortunately for him, he was rushed to hospital on time and he is still
alive . . . and he still doesn't have those papers! You see, there has
always been this big debate about whether a journo is really born or
trained. There is this school of thought that is adamant that a year or two
in a journalism class at the Harare Poly or COSSA - yes the prolific and
generous COSSA! - does not make one a journo. Journos are born with the art
in their blood . . . or do they drink the art together with their mothers'
milk? These people are adamant that real journos do not need to go through
that harrowing experience where some nutty professors lecture them on things
that they have never done themselves. Intros, theories, fact sheets,
interviews, et al. They argue that some of the finest journos in this world
have never been in a journalism class, even for an hour! Then there
are those who would want all journos to be trained and regulated like any
other professional disciplines. Who knows? Both sides might be correct,
but the fact of the matter today is that this idea of journalism being
treated more as an art than a profession has been abused left, right and
centre by some perverts who, after assuming positions of authority by hook
and by crook, end up having their girlfriends, friends, friend's friends,
brothers and sisters . . . in fact the whole clan purporting to be working
as journalists when they are nothing short of conmen! A case in
point is: the same Show Papers Operation took place in one public media
newsroom which was recently in the news for non-performance, and it emerged
that most of the people goofing around there were not journalists but
prostitutes and relatives of one or two bosses! Some had certificates in
cake-making, hair-dressing and cattle dip inspection, yet they were
masquerading as journalists and what exposed them was that they could not do
half what journalists - born or trained - anywhere in the world are expected
to do. Nyek! AND Cde-Dr David Nyekorach-Matsanga was this week
at the professor's throat again. Remember him? Dr Nyek, who last year made
sensational headlines by claiming that he had conducted some forensic
laboratory tests which proved beyond any reasonable doubt that someone was
not straight? Remember. This week he was on this new website
Zimbeat enjoying his freedom of speech to the hilt! Check it
out!
IF the New Testament
parable of the Good Samaritan used by Christ more than 2000 years ago to
teach his disciples about compassion were to be narrated in the context of
the "Zimbabwean story" today, it would have a shocking new
twist.
While as the Biblical version about the man who was
attacked by robbers and left for dead by the roadside highlighted the lack
of concern for fellow human beings in distress on the part of those who
"walked by on the other side", the Zimbabwean version would have the Good
Samaritan being targeted too. The only redeeming value, if it can be called
that, about the thieves on the road to Jericho, is that after robbing and
wounding their victim, they were content to leave it at that. The
issue that has got me thinking about Christ's teachings is neither an
analogy nor imaginary. It is a real situation involving a large number of
people who are being prevented from getting assistance by the people
responsible, as a manner of speaking, for rendering them helpless and
abandoning them by the road side. I am talking about the hard to
comprehend parable of Murambatsvina/Garikayi through which hundreds of
thousands of people have been emotionally battered and robbed of shelter and
livelihoods. It seems that after their horrendous experiences, the
powers-that-be are determined to make sure that no one comes to the rescue
of these Zimbabweans in distress who need food, medicines, water and other
basic necessities. Officialdom seems bent on doing everything in its power
to place obstacles in the path of anyone daring to show compassion towards
these victims of the government's ill conceived clean-up exercise.
In her scathingly critical report on Operation Restore Order under which
hundreds of thousands of people were rendered homeless after an astonishing
decision by the authorities to demolish their abodes without prior notice,
United Nations Special Envoy Anna Tibaijuka, expresses concern over this
"hands-off-our victims" approach. "Most international, regional and local
NGOs have been requested by the government to focus their efforts on their
on-going programmes and not get involved in assisting victims of Operation
Restore Order," reads a section of the UN report. This stance would be
understandable if the government of Zimbabwe was in a position to cater for
the needs of the affected people. In view of the fact that the government is
either incapable or unwilling to look after its own people, its decision to
block those who are ready and able to show compassion is deplorable. It is
one more sign of the rising level of paranoia in Harare where officials seem
to believe that acknowledging realities is a sign of weakness and lack of
bravado. Their illogical actions also betray rather juvenile and
inappropriate fears about losing control or popularity to those willing to
treat distressed Zimbabweans more humanely and fairly than the "people's
government." I recall with bitter despair President Robert Mugabe's
spurning of international aid donors sometime last year when he told them,
"We don't need your food". It later turned out that Zimbabwe's much vaunted
bumper harvest for the 2004/2005 season was a figment of someone's
imagination. Laughably, the government ended up importing maize secretly to
make up for the shortfall in grain stocks while publicly maintaining the
pretence that the country could go it alone and needed nobody's assistance.
Incredible. Alas, we are seeing a repeat of the same approach in the
aftermath of the government-instigated disaster known as Murambatsvina.
Notwithstanding the fact that the architects of this self-inflicted crisis
were themselves caught flat-footed without alternative arrangements to house
and feed the displaced, they are blocking well-wishers from filling the
gap. The South African Council of Churches (SACC) is the latest victim
of the government's "leave- our-people-alone-to-suffer'' syndrome. The SACC
decided to send a consignment of foodstuffs and blankets after a delegation
from the organisation had made an on-the-spot assessment in Zimbabwe of the
humanitarian needs at the end of July. Press reports last weekend indicated
that two trucks carrying the urgently needed consignment had been barred
from entering Zimbabwe. State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa gave
the first indications that the SACC would not be allowed to play the role of
Good Samaritan and would instead become a target of uncalled for verbal
attacks and unfounded allegations. The church grouping was accused of
hypocrisy because, Mutasa claimed, it had failed to help Zimbabweans in
their hour of greatest need during the liberation struggle.
According to Mutasa's tenuous reasoning, the SACC's response to the cry for
help from displaced Zimbabweans was therefore politically motivated. "This
(aid) is really not intended for what they say it is supposed to be, that's
not true," roared Mutasa at the beginning of this month. "They are doing it
to help the MDC". Mutasa's outburst shows to what lengths the
Zimbabwean government will go to justify its reality defying intransigence.
Even if these allegations against the SACC were true, and they are not,
would it be the action of a responsible government to keep a grudge for more
than 30 years? Zimbabwe's liberation struggle took place in the 1970s during
the darkest hours of apartheid in South Africa. Has Mutasa conveniently
forgotten that during this time the SACC was preoccupied with supporting the
liberation struggle in that country and needed assistance itself?
Moreover, it must be remembered that ecumenical support for liberation
movements at this stage was channelled through the Geneva-based World
Council of Churches, which was a staunch and vocal champion of freedom and
justice. The government of Zimbabwe has often been accused of using
food as a tool to blackmail and intimidate voters during elections. Although
this has always been denied, Mutasa's fear that the food being offered by
the churches in South Africa could somehow translate into support for the
opposition MDC is a dead give away. It is a shame that the government would
rather see the people it displaced through Murambatsvina go without food and
other basic necessities because of its paranoid fears and insecurities about
losing ground to the opposition party.
ZUPCO asks Chinese to tailor buses to Zimbabwe
conditions
Chris Muronzi 8/18/2005 10:03:46 AM (GMT
+2)
THE Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO) has given China's
First Automobile Works (FAW) conditions and specifications to meet before
more bus deliveries can be taken.
ZUPCO's move follows concerns
that the Chinese-made vehicles did not quite match much of Zimbabwe's
terrain and deteriorating road system. Sources close to the
developments told The Financial Gazette that officials from the state
company, who were in China on a week-long state visit recently along with
President Robert Mugabe, made strong recommendations to FAW on the
suitability and sustainability of its vehicles under Zimbabwe's road
conditions. ZUPCO chairman Charles Nherera confirmed the parastatal was
considering acquiring more buses from the Chinese automobile maker and had
made recommendations on the new buses. "We are working with the
Chinese and have advised them to look into clearance issues slightly so that
they make vehicles which can ply all routes," said Nherera.
Concerns on the sustainability of the Chinese buses on Zimbabwe's roads are
said to have arisen in the recent months within the Zupco board and prompted
a much stronger position on the vehicles, acquired in terms of the
government's "Look East" policy. ZUPCO, according to the same sources,
is said to have told its Chinese suppliers that it was willing to buy the
vehicles only if they met certain specifications. The public
transporter recently courted controversy when it took delivery of 69 buses
which had previously been rejected by the government tender board due to
lack of conformity with laid-down specifications, among other
reasons. FAW, a leading automobile maker, supplied ZUPCO with 50 buses
earlier this year. The parastatal, whose fleet at its peak of was 1 200
vehicles, says it has plans to buy 250 buses. Zupco has signed a
memorandum of understanding with FAW with a view to setting up a vehicle
assembly plant in the country.
TOBACCO deliveries to the auction
floors, which have been severely affected by fuel and wrapping paper
shortages, have improved as the selling season approaches its final weeks,
according to the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board.
A TIMB
official told The Financial Gazette that deliveries to the auctions had
doubled from an average 1500 kilograms to 3000 kilograms per day.
"The daily sales of tobacco have doubled, we were collecting almost half of
what we have been collecting since the shortage of wrapping paper and fuel,"
Andrew Matibiri, technical services director at TIMB said. The board
recently sourced 200 tonnes of tobacco wrapping paper from Hunyani Holdings
Limited and 50 000 litres of diesel from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, to
deal with fuel and paper supply constraints which, in turn, were slowing
down deliveries to the auction floors. "The earlier the delivery the
better so the growers can start to prepare for the next season. If the daily
deliveries continue to be high, we expect to end the selling season before
the end of September," Matibiri said. "So far growers for both
contract and auction have started to put in applications for the next
season," TIMB said. Industry players continue to doubt official
projections of 85 million kilograms of the golden leaf, putting forward a
conservative 65 million kilograms instead. Zimbabwe's tobacco
output has been affected by the government's chaotic land reform exercise,
implemented at the turn of the century, which forced most experienced
farmers off the land to pave way for inexperienced and under-funded black
farmers.
A HURRIED
reconstruction programme meant to provide decent accommodation to victims of
the government's clean-up campaign is running behind schedule amid fears
that patience could be wearing thin among thousands of people who were
rendered homeless by the two-month blitz.
Investigations by The
Property Gazette this week revealed that only a few structures have been
constructed since the launch last month of the much-hyped Operation
Garikai/Hhlalani Kuhle in two of Zimbabwe's major cities - Harare and
Bulawayo. A damning United Nations (UN) report by a representative of the
secretary-general of the world body, Kofi Annan, put the number of people
rendered homeless by the clean-up at 700 000. The opposition Movement
for Democratic Change had put its estimate at 1.5 million people, a figure
dismissed by the government. The UN report said an estimated 2.4 million
people had been indirectly affected to varying degrees. Sources
said earlier this week the mid-term fiscal policy statement that was
expected on Tuesday would demonstrate the government's commitment towards
the programme, which has been allocated $3 trillion so far. "More
resources have to be channelled towards the programme to make it a success,
otherwise it will be another pie in the sky," said a source. Ignatius
Chombo, the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing,
is on record as saying the government would be able to build houses for the
majority of the affected people by the end of August this year.
Chombo and other officials in the local government ministry could not be
reached for comment at the time of going to print. In a move analysts
said demonstrated increased frustration with the slow progress of the
reconstruction programme, the government recently threatened suppliers of
building materials that they risked losing their licences it they continued
to hike prices "without justification". It is feared that steep price
increases of building materials would push the cost of constructing the
housing units beyond reach, forcing the government to subsidise
beneficiaries of the programme. Operation Garikai/Hhlalani Kuhle is
widely seen as a public relations exercise by Harare after international
condemnation of the government's demolition of poor people's homes and
businesses. Housing has remained a pipedream for millions of
Zimbabweans, most of whom have been on the housing waiting lists of various
municipalities for several years now. The situation has been made
worse by spiralling prices of building materials as a result of surging
inflation.
Zimbabwe's Cosafa heroes get land Zimbabwe's
government will reward the country's football team that recently won the
Cosafa Cup by giving them residential plots of land. The Warriors beat
Zambia 1-0 on Sunday to win the Southern African championship for a third
time.
The plots will be allocated under housing construction
projects which followed on from the government's controversial clean-up
campaign.
Illegally-built houses and structures were demolished in
a nationwide operation in June and July, and ironically some footballers
were among those affected.
A United Nations report claimed that
700,000 people lost their homes, figures that government says are "grossly
exaggerated."
Deputy minister Morris Sakubaya announced that the
team will be given 18 plots of land.
"As a token of
appreciation, my ministry will facilitate you to obtain stands (plots) in
urban centres of your choice where we are carrying out housing projects," he
said.
It is not clear which players will benefit, as more than 18
took part in the four matches during the Warriors' Cosafa
campaign.
"It will be needs-based, we can't have our ambassadors
living in slums and shacks," Zimbabwe Football Association chief executive
Jonathan Mashingaidze told BBC Sport.
"This type of incentive
is the right route to take, and we hope that there will be more plots for
the Warriors if we qualify for the Nations Cup finals."
Harare City
Council is bankrupt and urgently needs at least $1 trillion to put the
city's operations back on track.
Harare owes its creditors over $310
billion and failure to settle the arrears could damage the reputation of the
city with suppliers of goods and services.
According to a treasury
report, the city is reeling from a massive cash flow problem largely
attributed to lack of transport for debt recovery and a huge salary bill,
estimated to be consuming about 90 percent of the city's cash
inflows.
"There is, therefore, a need to have a massive injection of
at least $1 trillion to put the city on an even keel," wrote the acting city
treasurer, Mr Cosmos Zvikaramba, in a memo to town clerk Mr Nomutsa Chideya
and all heads of departments.
The memo, written on July 26, 2005, was
circulated on August 2. Mr Zvikaramba said the recalling of two vehicles to
Town House was hampering the billing system in high-density
areas.
System administrators used the two Mazda 323 cars. He said the
city's expenditure far exceeded revenue collection with almost all the money
collected going towards salaries.
"The potential at current tariff
levels has gone down from $104 billion to $90,6 billion," he
added.
He attributed the reduction to the closure of home industries and
markets. For the months of June and July, council was prejudiced of at least
$23 billion as a result of the closures.
Mr Zvikaramba said the
hiring of equipment, vehicle repairs, hiring of tents for the municipal
police and purchase of their food rations during the clean-up exercise had
gobbled $4 billion.
The acting city treasurer said the huge arrears
amounting to $310 billion had the effect of tainting the city's image with
suppliers. Some of the money was overdue by over 180 days.
"Creditors
currently stand at $310 billion with some over 180 days old. The image of
the city is at the moment very dented due to non-settlement of commitments
(paying creditors)," he said.
The late implementation of the city's
budget, he said, resulted in a loss of $28,5 billion.
The acting city
treasurer also attributed the diminished cash inflows to the decongestion of
high-density areas following the clean-up exercise.
"Assuming that some
water meters in congested high density areas were functional, the
decongestion translates to reduced water consumption, hence reduced water
sales," he said.
He said there was need to exercise financial discipline
by prioritising capital expenditure instead of recurrent expenditure, adding
that the city needed transport to pursue debts it was owed by residents and
companies.
The water disconnections that council effectively employed to
force residents to pay up bills had also been hampered by transport
shortages.
From
Our Correspondent in Bulawayo issue date :2005-Aug-19
POLICE in
Matabeleland North have launched an operation along the Zambezi to curb
elephant poaching following reports that some armed people were sneaking in
and out of Zimbabwe undetected. Officer commanding the province, Senior
Assistant Commissioner Bothwell Mugariri told The Daily Mirror yesterday
that they embarked on the exercise following an upsurge in poaching
activities over the past months by suspected armed Zambians. Mugariri
said the poachers were taking advantage of the Zambezi River to sneak into
Zimbabwe and then canoeing back into Zambia with the jumbos tusks. "There
has been a worrying trend in Victoria Falls where a number of elephants have
been poached by some armed poachers who cross the Zambezi River from
neighboring Zambia," the police chief said. "These poachers have killed
several elephants and at times made off with tusks. At times our officers
and rangers from the National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority have
managed to stop their illicit activities." Early this month, police together
with Parks rangers, engaged suspected Zambian poachers in a four-hour
pitched gun battle clearly demonstrating that they were dealing with a well
equipped enemy. "The exchange showed that the poachers were adequately armed
and knew that they could come across the police," Mugariri said. "It was
after they escaped that we managed to realise they had killed two
elephants." He also noted that cases of cattle rustling were up in Jambezi,
Binga and Victoria Falls. "Most villagers in these areas have lost cattle
worth millions of dollars to these cattle rustlers. They slaughter the
beasts at night and canoe back into Zambia. The cattle owners only recover
the bones (carcasses) when tracing their cattle," Mugariri said.