From The Daily News, 22 August

16 Zesa power generators break down

Sixteen power generators used by the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) have broken down, compounding the already weak power supply of the utility, officials said. Zesa says it is unable to repair them because of foreign currency shortage. In addition, two power stations at Kariba are down and four others at Hwange Power Station are out of service owing to serious mechanical faults. In a statement, Zesa said the Harare power plant had limited power outages and could not sufficiently supply electricity to the city. Munyati power station was shut down because there is no coal for the generators, while another power station in Bulawayo has limited coal stocks. Zesa said it had suffered more operational losses in most of its core business activities, including generation, transmission and distribution systems.

The debt-ridden parastatal introduced power rationing on 27 January. "Regrettably, the authority has been forced to depart from that programme on several occasions due to the continued supply shortfalls mainly as a result of foreign currency and fuel shortages," said a Zesa spokesman. The persistent fuel shortage has seriously affected Zesa's thermal power stations. We have recently concluded an agreement with SNEL of the DRC to increase power supply from 150 MW to 250 MW, payable in local currency," said the spokesman. Additional electricity would only be obtained after the upgrading of the line between Zambia and the DRC.

The power authority, reeling under a heavy operational loss of nearly $1 billion, imports power from South Africa's Eskom, DRC and Mozambique's Cabora Bassa. The executive chairman of Zesa, Sydney Gata has denied reports that Eskom has threatened to cut off supplies to Zimbabwe because of a mounting debt. "We never received threats to cut supply of electricity from Eskom," he said. But Gata said the South African company was under pressure from its consumers not to continue to supply Zesa with power without payment while "it quickly disconnects South African consumers for failing to pay their bills". Gata said Zesa owes Eskom and the Cabora Bassa Company of Mozambique US$20 million and US$35 million respectively. Gata also said that Zesa's contract with Eskom runs up to 2003. He said Zesa would soon get a loan facility of US$95 million from the Standard Chartered Bank in London to clear its debts with suppliers from neighbouring countries.

From The Daily News, 22 August

Foreign Press in Zimbabwe forced to reduce operations

Foreign journalists working in Zimbabwe have been forced to scale down their operations after the British and American foreign offices warned them they could be targets of government-sponsored intimidation. Some foreign journalists told The Daily News yesterday they had either increased security around their homes or scaled down their operations so they did not work late. This was after intelligence reports that Western journalists in Zimbabwe could be targeted for violence as President Mugabe continues to attack the foreign Press for his country's negative image abroad. Mugabe has, in almost all his speeches before and after the June parliamentary election, attacked the foreign Press for worsening Zimbabwe's plight through their articles. Only last week, at the Heroes' Day commemoration, he lashed out at the foreign Press for describing the land reform process at "a land grab".

Editorial from The Daily News, 22 August

Recounts alone not a fruitful exercise

Less than 24 hours after Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede announced the final results of the 24 and 25 June general election, MDC president, Morgan Tsvangirai, gave notice that his party would challenge the poll results in at least 20 constituencies. The number of constituencies in which results are being disputed has since nearly doubled.

Explaining his party's reasons for challenging the results in specified constituencies, which included Buhera North where he himself narrowly lost to former Manicaland governor, Kenneth Manyonda, Tsvangirai said that Zanu PF had won in most of the rural areas because of political violence or subversion by either its ordinary supporters, war veterans or both. That these are, indeed, valid grounds for challenging the poll results in most, if not all, rural constituencies, no one can doubt. With the obvious exception of the group of observers from South Africa which consisted mostly of parliamentarians, and which group appears to have had an agenda of its own in setting itself up as a separate observer group in the first place, all independent observer groups, foreign and internal, were unanimous that the election was neither free nor fair.

Indeed, even the somewhat maverick, if a little naive, Commonwealth Secretary-General, Don McKinnon, declared as much. Having earlier badly tarnished his image by allowing himself to be used by President Mugabe to gloss over his party's terror campaign, McKinnon found himself at the end having to endorse the Commonwealth Observer Group's verdict. The high level of pre-election violence unleashed on voters by Mugabe's Zanu PF, he told the world, had rendered the holding of a free and fair election impossible.

Thus, it came as not much of a surprise that the MDC, which, barring the pre-election terror campaign, had been widely favoured to win by a landslide, took the decision to challenge the election results. In fact, the opposite would have been true. Had the MDC not disputed the results most of its supporters would have been surprised or even disappointed. Already, the MDC has successfully challenged the results in at least three constituencies, namely Mazowe East, Marondera East and Buhera North. In all of these constituencies all that the courts did was to rule that there were reasonable grounds to suspect electoral irregularities and duly proceeded to order a recount in each case.

And in each case the recount has yielded the same result: the number of votes did not tally with those originally given by Mudede. That all the recounts also so far have invariably had the apparently embarrassing effect of stretching the lead by which the winners beat their MDC opponents is neither here nor there. It is the fact of irregularities having been proved to have crept into the polls that is all-important. In addition to these ongoing successes in its challenges of individual constituency results, the MDC has also scored an important victory in its bid to prove conclusively that it was robbed of victory in a number of constituencies. Last week the Supreme Court nullified 6 000 postal votes cast in the June election, opening the way for possible fresh challenges by the opposition in those constituencies where such votes can be viewed as having been a decisive factor. The ballots in question were cast by members of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces on active duty in the DRC and we are told the constituencies affected by the ruling include Buhera North, Marondera East and West, Makoni East and West, Chinhoyi and Bindura.

It is said that the law is an ass. And this particular exercise makes it appear to be decidedly just that. The average citizen can be forgiven for regarding this whole process as needlessly tortuous and frustratingly long. What the opposition would like to see to force fresh polls is the establishment by the courts that sufficient undue influences such as duress, violence and threats were used and possibly swayed results in favour of Zanu PF in any given constituency. Yet all that these recounts have achieved so far is to emphatically confirm the results. We are told they are necessary to establish the fact that the electoral process was flawed. Maybe. Here is to hope this will lead to the logical next step - the staging of fresh polls in those constituencies. Anything less would render the whole thing a costly, fruitless exercise and, therefore, foolish.