International Herald Tribune
The Associated
PressPublished: August 26, 2007
HARARE, Zimbabwe: Workers were
readying displays on Sunday for Zimbabwe's
weeklong agricultural showcase,
despite the country's collapsing farm
industry and worsening food
shortages.
The Harare Show, to be opened Monday by Equatorial Guinea's
dictator Teodoro
Obiang Ngeuma, will feature exhibitions including more than
100 cattle,
goats, pigs, guinea fowl, rabbits and chickens, the state Sunday
Mail
reported, citing organizers.
One planned highlight is a
livestock auction on Thursday, and as Zimbabwe -
once southern Africa's main
agricultural exporter - faces acute shortages of
meat and staple foods, many
of the animals were expected to quickly
disappear into the cooking
pot.
Organizers said the show's theme this year was "Our Task to Feed the
Nation,
Time for Innovation."
Obiang's participation reflects his
government's strengthening ties with
that of Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe, whose country faces growing
international isolation over its
economic meltdown and record on human and
democratic rights.
Few
Zimbabweans had heard of distant Equatorial Guinea until 2004, when a
group
of white-led mercenary suspects headed for the oil-rich West Africa
nation
was captured after their plane landed in Harare to collect weapons
bought
from the Zimbabwe state arms maker.
Zimbabwe's alliance with Equatorial
Guinea had brought hopes of a gasoline
deal to ease chronic shortages of
fuel.
But gas shortages worsened sharply after a June 26 government
decree to
slash prices on fuel and other goods and services in an effort to
tame
rampant inflation, officially at 7,636 percent - the highest in the
world.
Independent estimates put real inflation closer to 25,000
percent.
The price cuts have left shelves bare of cornmeal, meat, bread,
eggs, milk,
sugar, tea and other staples, forcing shoppers to stand in long
lines for
limited supplies, and leading many stores to close early to avert
unrest.
Two people were killed in a stampede for sugar earlier this
month.
Mugabe has blamed the crisis on Western economic sanctions,
imposed to
protest Zimbabwean policies criticized for leading to political
and economic
turmoil.
Foreign loans, aid and investment have dried
since 2000, when the government
began seizing thousands of white-owned
commercial farms, disrupting the
agriculture-based economy in the former
regional breadbasket.
Western nations have imposed travel restrictions on
Mugabe and ruling party
leaders. Britain last week added central bank
governor Gideon Gono to its
list of prohibited Zimbabweans, accusing him of
helping to fund government
policies that led to corruption and the
undermining of democracy and the
rule of law. The governor also allowed
extra money to be printed, despite
hyperinflation.
Australia said
last week it was mounting "smart sanctions" against the
children of
Zimbabwean leaders studying there. Among those facing expulsion
were Gono's
son Peter and twin daughters Praise and Pride.
Hundreds of banned
leaders' children are studying at universities and
colleges in Australia,
Britain and the United States.
Zimbabwe's main university in Harare,
meanwhile, is near collapse, due to
shortages of staff, books, stationary,
food, water and electricity supplies.
Portable toilet cabins have been set
up on the campus.
The week's news was not good for Zimbabwean soccer fans
either. The national
soccer team dropped out of the world soccer body's list
of 100 competitive
teams for the first time since independence in 1980.
The Australian
Janine Macdonald |
August 27, 2007
JOHN Howard is hosting a visit by Zimbabwean Opposition
Leader Morgan
Tsvangirai, in yet another move to isolate Robert Mugabe by
highlighting to
the Australian public the thuggery of his
regime.
Flown to Australia under a shroud of secrecy for his own
protection, Mr
Tsvangirai arrived on Saturday in Perth -- where he has
relatives -- and is
expected to fly to Melbourne today for the formal start
of
his visit.
In a deliberate snub to Mugabe, the Movement for
Democratic Change president
will meet the Prime Minister -- who as chairman
of CHOGM in 1999 built the
commonwealth sanctions against Mugabe and his
cronies -- and Foreign Affairs
Minister Alexander Downer.
Beaten by
Mugabe's thugs in March, Mr Tsvangirai will use his visit to
detail to
Australians at large the human rights abuses of Mugabe and his
ruling ZanuPF
regime.
Also wounded in the series of mass beatings by Mugabe thugs in
police
detention after being arrested on trumped-up charges was former
Australian
resident Sekai Holland.
Mugabe, presiding over the
economic annihilation of the country he has led
since 1980, said at a
regional conference, after Mr Howard and other world
leader had condemned
the bashings, that the victims "had asked for it".
Mr Howard has invited
Mr Tsvangirai to Australia under the federal
Government's official visitor's
program for a week of meetings and to
address human rights and international
policy forums on the human rights
situation in Zimbabwe.
The visit
follows Australia's targeted sanctions against Mugabe, including
the
decision to revoke the study visas of eight adult children of senior
government officials blacklisted by the commonwealth, US and European Union.
Immigration officials have refused a further two visas, and will screen all
future applications to ensure the children of banned officials and regime
supporters are not able to study in Australia.
Mr Tsvangirai, a
former union leader, is the only credible challenger to
Mugabe's
rule.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said
the visit
"provided an opportunity to underline Australia's determination to
see a
return to democracy, good governance and rational economic policy in
Zimbabwe (and) reflects the long-standing community interest in Australia on
developments in Zimbabwe".
The spokesman said that Australia was
dismayed by the Mugabe regime's gross
economic mismanagement.
"Its
recent attempt to address hyperinflation (estimated at more than 10,000
per
cent) by halving the prices of consumer goods only accelerated the
disintegration of the formal economy," he said.
It is understood that
Mr Tsvangirai was allowed to leave Zimbabwe on the
pretext of attending an
African leaders' summit and the visit has been kept
quiet by Australian
authorities until now to ensure his safe departure from
the country.
Mail and Guardian
Godfrey Marawanyika | Harare,
Zimbabwe
26 August 2007 09:19
A drop in
the monthly inflation rate may have been greeted with
sighs of relief by the
Zimbabwean government, but analysts and consumers
have seen little evidence
that the economy has turned a corner.
After suppressing
inflation data since May, the central
statistics office announced last week
that while the annual rate had hit a
new high of 7 634,8%, month-on-month
inflation in July was 31,6%, a fall of
54,6 percentage points on the June
rate.
Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi said the figure
vindicated
the government's imposition of price cuts in late June, which
effectively
forced businesses and retailers to halve their
tariffs.
But with shelves bare of everyday commodities such
as cooking
oil and sugar, most Zimbabweans find themselves paying well above
the
official rate on the black market where the decline in the official
inflation rate is irrelevant.
"The ordinary consumer is
paying more than the actual price.
This is the real inflation, not the
inflation they show on graphs," said
Daniel Ndlela, an economist with
Zimconsult. "The said deceleration is only
good for those who want to
believe their own lies."
Ndlela said there is evidence of a
crisis everywhere, citing an
example of people who were lined up at a
hardware store to buy cement at the
government price of Z$150 000 per
50kg.
"The queue resembled a desperate situation of people
trying to
enter Rufaro Stadium [in Harare] to watch a popular soccer match,"
he said.
The prospective buyers were not "building homes or anything, but
they will
just resell the same bag at Z$1,5-million around the corner. "That
is real
inflation, not what we hear."
Nothing to
buy
Lucky Mapfumo (23), a University of Zimbabwe medical student,
said a slowdown of the inflation juggernaut means little if there is nothing
to buy. "I have plenty of money on me, but I can not buy anything because
there is nothing in the shops," he said. "We heard the government reduced
prices, but I don't remember the last time I had bread and now we hear that
inflation is slowing down."
Conscious of the widespread
shortages, the government announced
on Wednesday the prices of some goods
such as cooking oil and sugar could be
increased but most shops in Harare
remained bereft of such items.
While the price crackdown was
initially welcomed as it enabled
Zimbabweans to stock up on goods that had
been out of their price range, the
subsequent shortages as a result of
manufacturers being unable to cover
their costs has stoked resentment
towards the government.
Witness Chinyama, a Harare-based
independent economist, said the
suppressed inflation and price cuts were
never going to work. "The way
forward for government is to now try and
stabilise the macroeconomic
environment," he said. "What was announced is
simply suppressed inflation,
which is not helpful because they are
suppressing the symptoms and not the
underlying causes."
Tapiwa Mashakada, secretary for economic affairs for the
opposition Movement
for Democratic Change, forecast the slowdown of
inflation would be
temporary. "People have become professionals queueing for
basic commodities
and there is untold suffering as result of government
actions," Mashakada
said.
Deputy Industry Minister Phineas Chihota said although
inflation
is decelerating, more still needs to be done. "As government, we
have a
distressed funding scheme for companies which we avail funds to firms
at
very low interest," he said. "By availing funds cheaply, this will result
in
goods being available in the shops and this will benefit the ordinary men
in
the street."
Zimbabwe was previously regarded as a
regional bread basket, but
the economy first ran into trouble in 2000 when
President Robert Mugabe
ordered the seizure of white-owned farms that had
been a major source of
revenue.
The situation has
worsened in the intervening years to such an
extent that more than three
million Zimbabweans have fled the country and
four out of five people are
now unemployed.
Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980,
has blamed the
former British colony's economic woes on targeted sanctions
imposed by the
West over allegations he rigged his re-election in 2002. --
Sapa-AFP
At last a brilliant summer day. We
have had a rather dismal spell in London
recently but today the clouds were
gone. It was also great to have so many
people able to stay on for a
post-Vigil planning meeting at our local pub.
First we wanted to organise
our parallel Vigil at Zimfest next Satuday (1st
September). Zimfest is a
largely white event held in London every year and
we want to encourage
people there to give more support to the struggle. We
are having a stand
there with banners, petitions and leaflets. Hopefully,
we'll even be having
our usual drumming and singing. Many thanks to Luka
Phiri and Chipo Chaya
for liaising with the Zimfest organisers to arrange
this. Of course the
normal Vigil will be help as usual.
We also discussed the Zimbabwe Human
Rights NGO Forum event at London's
Chathan House at lunchtime on Tuesday,
4th September. It is the 10th
anniversary of the Catholic Commission for
Justice and Peace's account of
Gukurahundi, "Breaking the Silence". A second
edition (with an introduction
by Elinor Sisulu and a new foreword by
Archbishop Pius Ncube is being
launched. Arrangements are being made for a
group of Vigil supporters to
go.
We have been invited to contribute a
speaker and a singing/dancing group to
a film festival "Ndinadsawapanga"
which means "I will tell" in the Senna
dialect (Mozambique). They would
like someone to speak about the situation
in Zimbabwe from a Christian
perspective after the showing of the film
"Innocent Voices" in London next
Saturday evening. The organiser, Jenni
Lee, wrote to us "I have walked past
your vigil a number of times and heard
the beautiful voices and seen the
dancing of the Zimbabwean people. It would
be wonderful if a small group
would perform one or two short songs before
the screening". Dumi Tutani is
co-ordinating our participation.
We firmed up plans for our special
literature event at the Vigil taking
place on 8th September as part of a
worldwide reading for Zimbabwe organised
by the International Literature
Festival of Berlin. Our event will take
place between 3.30 and 5 pm.
Several Vigil supporters have volunteered to
do the readings which will be
interspersed with singing. The readings
comprise poems by Chenjerai Hove,
Chirikuré Chirikuré and Dumbudzo
Marecharas, and Elinor Sisulu's
introduction to the Gukurahundi book. More
information can be found on http://www.literaturfestival.com/.
Thanks to
Chipo for organizing the programme.
We also discussed
possible venues for the social event after the
commemoration of the 5th
anniversary of the Vigil on Saturday, 13th October.
A cooking team has been
agreed made up of Gugu Tutani-Ndhlovu, Agnes
Zengaya, Netsai Matambadanzo
and Addley Nyamutaka. It was agreed we needed
a venue where we could have
our own music and provide our own food and
drink.
The Vigil
celebrated the birthdays of two staunch supporters: Moses
Kandiyawo,
responsible for Vigil youth / student liaison, and Gugu, mother
of baby Zizi
who gives everybody so much pleasure.
We were pleased to meet Caroline
and her two daughters. Caroline is married
to a Zimbabwean and took away our
petitions to be signed tin her shop in
south London. Other visitors from
Mutare showed us low denomination Zimbabwe
currency which they said nobody
would bother to pick up from the ground.
Another passer-by had just returned
from Victoria Falls and reported that he
was not allowed to pay for anything
in local currency. This was made more
expensive because there was no change
given for foreign currency.
For this week's Vigil pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/
FOR
THE RECORD: 118 signed the register. Supporters from Banbury, Bedford,
Birmingham, Bolton, Coventry, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool Manchester,
Newcastle, North Wales, Northampton, Sheffield, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent,
Wolverhampton and many from London and South East England.
FOR YOUR
DIARY:
- Monday, 27th August 2007 - there will be no Central London
Zimbabwe Forum because it is a public holiday.
- Saturday, 1st
September 2007, 12 noon - 10 pm. Zimfest 2007 (food,
sports, music). Venue:
Prince Georges Playing Fields, Bushey Rd, Raynes
Park, London, SW20 9NB. A
group of Vigil supporters will be there at a
parallel Zimbabwe Vigil. For
more information check: www.wezimbabwe.com.
- Tuesday,
4th September, 12 - 1.30 pm. The International Liaison
Office of the
Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum will be hosting 'Zimbabwe's
Gukurahundi:
Lessons from the 1980-1988 disturbances in Matabeleland and The
Midlands' at
Chatham House in London. Further information on the Chatham
House website
at: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/events/view/-/id/572/.
-
Friday, 7th September 2007, 6.30 pm. Debate on human rights opened
by
barrister James Keeley. Discussion on Zimbabwe led by Albert Weidemann.
Venue: Ripon, North Yorkshire, Address: YMCA, Water Skellgate, HG4 1BQ. For
more information, contact: Albert Weidemann on 01765-607900 or mobile 0779
340 1407
- Saturday, 8th September, 2 -6 pm. Special literature
event at the
Vigil as part of a worldwide reading for Zimbabwe. Readings
have been
chosen by the International Literature Festival of Berlin to be
read and
broadcast around the world on 9th September. We have chosen the
nearest
Vigil to do this. For details, check http://www.literaturfestival.com/.
-
Monday, 10th September 2007. The Zimbabwe Solidarity Campaign, as
agreed
with Ian Paisley Jnr, are presenting a petition to Stormont. They
plan to do
a presentation to the assembly members in the long gallery and
then get as
many members as possible to sign the petition in front of the
press.
- Saturday, 13th October, 2 - 6 pm. Zimbabwe Vigil's 5th
Anniversary
followed by a social event.
Vigil co-ordinator
The
Vigil, outside the Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand, London, takes place
every
Saturday from 14.00 to 18.00 to protest against gross violations of
human
rights by the current regime in Zimbabwe. The Vigil which started in
October
2002 will continue until internationally-monitored, free and fair
elections
are held in Zimbabwe. http://www.zimvigil.co.uk
Zim Standard
BY WALTER
MARWIZI
A Parliamentary Committee says conditions at
Zimbabwe's National
Youth Service (Border Gezi) Centres are appalling, and
has recommended they
be shut down until there is enough food to feed the
recruits.
The report, presented to the House of Assembly last
Thursday, followed
assessments at Dadaya (Zvishavane) and Guyu (Gwanda),
between November 2006
and March this year.
The report revealed
students were near-starvation and living in
miserable
conditions.
The portfolio committee on Youth, Gender and Women's
Affairs, said the
students' diet fell short of the prescribed government
dietary requirements,
putting at risk the health of the students who
undertook gruelling physical
exercises.
The committee, chaired
by Gutu South MP Shuvai Mahofa, said: "While
the centres could previously
manage to feed the trainees, the current
intakes had suffered greatly due to
lack of finances to buy food. The
trainees were given a cup of porridge with
no sugar in the morning.
"Lunch was always sadza and beans or
vegetables without cooking oil."
The committee said trainers had
told them the food did not provide
enough energy as required by the vigorous
exercises they undertook.
The trainees undergo ten-foot drill
programmes designed to "instill a
sense of discipline".
Critics
have claimed the exercises are designed to prepare them for
the violent
campaigns the youths, nicknamed "the Green Bombers" or
"militias" carry out
against opposition supporters.
They have been accused of raping and
murdering MDC activists.
The committee condemned the infrastructure
at the centres, describing
it as appalling.
"At Guyu National
Youth Service Centre, the Committee was horrified by
the state of the
barracks. They had no doors or windows and the students
complained about
finding cats and snakes in the barracks," said the report.
Another
concern was that female trainees were not provided with
sanitary
wear.
At Guyu, trainees told committee members they had only been
given
sanitary wear two days before the committee arrived.
But
what impressed the committee was that female trainees were now
wearing
decent shorts. During a tour of National Youth Service Centres in
2003 they
discovered that female trainees were not happy with what they were
required
to wear during training.
"The length of the shorts that they wore
made the girls uncomfortable
in front of male trainees and instructors. The
Committee made a
recommendation that the issue be looked into and was
pleased to find out
that the recommendation had been taken up and the female
students now wore
longer shorts that they were happy with."
The
committee found that lecturers were mainly people with a military
background
- retired army personnel, war veterans and others with a military
background.
"The Committee recommends that the centre should
have other ordinary
civilians as trainers as these would have a different
frame of mind and
would enable diversity in what the students learn. Social
workers,
counsellors, teachers etc could also be incorporated in the
teaching staff."
But it is not only the youth service centres that
have been affected
by the food shortages as other government-run vocational
training centres
have fallen victim.
The committee noted that
apart from food shortages, Kaguvi training
centre had a shortage of pots
"such that the sadza was cooked in a pot where
vegetables or beans had just
been turned out.
The committee noted that the sadza had a
brownish/greying colour and
the kitchen was heavily infested with
cockroaches and was dirty and
unhygienic.
The committee noted
an incident at the training centre when army
personnel, from the Operation
Maguta programme based at the centre and
National Youth Service students
were engaged in a food battle.
"An upheaval arose over the issue of
delays in the serving of food and
one student had had his arms broken," said
the committee.
Zim Standard
By Vusumuzi
Sifile
and Kholwani Nyathi
THE Zanu-PF MP for
Mudzi East constituency, Christopher Joseph Musa,
is embroiled in a wrangle
with a Harare man after he demanded "ridiculous"
rentals, defying President
Robert Mugabe's call for all rentals to be
frozen.
Recently,
Mugabe declared that "the moratorium on rent increases
remains in force" and
warned landlords to "take note".
While other landlords were "taking
note", the Zanu PF MP was charging
$30 million for a cottage at his house in
Belvedere, Harare, it was alleged.
On Friday last week, Last
Mapuranga, a tenant at the cottage, took
Musa to court after he raised
rentals three times in one week from $1.8
million to $30 million. Harare
Magistrate Brighton Pabwe granted Mapuranga a
peace order against the MP for
the next 12 months.
Mapuranga moved into the cottage last February,
and they agreed that
he would pay $1.8 million a month.
But on
25 June, Musa wrote to inform Mapuranga that "with effect from
01 July 2007,
rentals for the premises have been reviewed upwards to $5
million, in line
with the prevailing situation".
The letter was delivered on 28
June, two days before the due date.
Before Mapuranga could pay the new rent,
he received another letter
informing him that the rent had been increased to
$15 million.
Mapuranga says in his affidavit that he reported the
case to the Rent
Board, which issued a Rent Restriction Order, reminding the
MP that "rents
for residential dwellings have been frozen until further
notice".
After the order, Mapuranga says the MP "started to act
wildly", and
verbally informed him that his rent had doubled to $30
million.
But in his opposing affidavit, Musa said Mapuranga "is so
stubborn"
and the contents of his founding affidavit "are completely
surprising".
"Surely, how can a mere tenant who is not even paying
rent state that
he is fed up with me?" he says. "How can a tenant talk of
losing his temper
and ending up fighting with me . . .? Applicant is, with
respect, an
unreasonable person. I am now living in perpetual fear because
of his
conduct. He has no shame at all."
Meanwhile, businesses
are reportedly queuing up to sue the government
for losses incurred during
the government's price blitz, which left
retailers and other businesses
tottering on the brink of collapse.
The lawsuits come at a time
when the government has made a spectacular
policy about-turn and allowed
businesses to review their prices.
The Minister of Industry and
International Trade, Obert Mpofu
reportedly told a recent meeting with
businesspeople in Hwange TM
Supermarkets had notified the government they
intended to sue over the price
blitz.
"The minister refused to
entertain questions from a TM supermarket
manager, saying his company had
taken the government to court," said a
source. "He said they will meet in
court."
Last week, Mpofu confirmed the pending suit, referring
questions to
the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs,
Patrick Chinamasa,
and the Attorney-General, Sobusa Gula
Ndebele.
Chinamasa could not be reached for comment.
But TM Supermarkets group chief executive, Michael Oakley, denied his
company was suing the government.
A Zanu PF insider said the
court challenges had been discussed in the
politburo and could have
influenced the government to reverse the price
blitz.
"It's not
only one company that has indicated its intention to go to
court," said the
source. "There are insurance companies who claim they lost
at least $3
billion after reversing premiums. It is also common cause that
retailers
were the hardest hit."
It is understood companies are demanding
compensation for losses
incurred during the blitz before the government
formalised the price
controls that sought to roll back prices to pre-18 June
levels.
Zim Standard
By Vusumuzi Sifile
AS you drive along Simon Mazorodze road past the Nutresco premises in
Southerton industrial areas, Harare, in the morning, you are likely to come
across what appears, at first sight, to be a political rally.
There are always hundreds, at times, thousands of people gathered
outside
the entrance.
A closer look establishes, most emphatically that
this is not a
political rally: why would some of the people have
wheelbarrows in front of
them, while others hold empty grain
bags?
They are, in fact, some of the 4 200 Mbare residents who
receive
monthly allocations of food aid sourced by a group of
non-governmental
organisations and a food processing company.
In the past, food relief projects were usually associated with the
rural
areas: now it is a regular phenomenon in the cities and towns.
The
programme, targeting the under-privileged communities in the
oldest
townships in all the major towns, has been going on since December
last
year.
Among the beneficiaries are widows, orphans and other
vulnerable
children. The Mbare programme is by far the biggest relief
operation
targeting Zimbabwe's poor, hardest hit by the escalating economic
crisis.
When The Standard visited the premises on Wednesday, the
beneficiaries
were each being given 40kg of maize-meal, 750ml cooking oil,
375ml peanut
butter and 2kg beans.
Representatives of the
organisations involved refused to provide
details, referring all inquiries
to the District Administrator for Harare
Central, identified only as Masawi,
who could not be reached on his mobile
phone.
An official
involved in the programme could only disclose that it was
a joint initiative
between local and international non-governmental
organisations, donors, and
food manufacturing companies. All of them
realised the hardships facing many
families in Mbare.
Among the key partners in the project are Oxfam
International,
Africare, Care, Zimbabwe Project Trust, Blue Ribbon and
Nutresco Foods.
The government, through the DA for Harare Central,
apparently
"muscled" its way into the project.
"Basically, this
is a joint initiative by local and international NGOs
and donors to assist
vulnerable groups in major towns," said the official.
"In every town we
operate in the oldest suburb. We do not just focus on
food, but the project
has many other facets, such as shelter, clothing and
education.
"Each beneficiary is given a food voucher with a date on which they
have to
collect their food. Every month we dedicate one week to distributing
the
food handouts. In fact, we distribute the food for four days, and then
dedicate the last day to those who would have failed to make it on the other
days."
One beneficiary, Marian Chimuka, a 55-year-old Mbare
widow, said the
handouts had become her only diet.
"If it
wasn't for these handouts, we would be dead by now," she said.
"I stay with
my two grandchildren, whose mother passed away. I used to sell
vegetables,
but the money I made could not sustain us. The food I get here,
if used
well, is enough to last me a month.
"The problem is that some of my
neighbours now know the timetable, and
they come to ask for small portions
each time I get my handouts. They say
there is no food at the
shops."
Rhodes Marime, another beneficiary who left his job in 2000
because of
ill health, said the handouts had gone some way to alleviate
their plight,
but were still not enough.
Zim Standard
By Kholwani
Nyathi
BULAWAYO - There was a verbal standoff between Governor
Cain Mathema
and the city council last week over the fast deteriorating
water situation
in Bulawayo.
Since January, Bulawayo has
decommissioned three of its five supply
dams following insignificant inflows
during the 2006/7 rainy season -
plunging the city into an unprecedented
crisis.
The water crisis sunk to new levels during the recent
holidays as most
high-density suburbs are spending up to five days without
water.
Already residential properties are limited to five-hour
supplies of
water a day and last week council said it was extending the
water cuts to
industries and the city centre, which could now affect major
hospitals.
But Mathema, who has been on the warpath against the
local authority
for resisting a Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa)
takeover of the
water supplies, said there was "something fishy going
on".
"The decommissioned dams can provide up to 85 000 litres of
water and
we do not know how council got to decommission those dams," he
said in
response to the worsening situation.
Bulawayo consumes
an average of 145 000 cubic metres of water a day
but council says following
the decommissioning of Lower Ncema, Upper Ncema
and Umzingwane dams the
available water is now down to 67 000 cubic metres.
Council hit
back at Mathema, saying the governor needed to be
"educated" about laws
governing the extraction of water and the gravity of
the crisis facing the
city, which has been blamed on government dithering.
"I think he
needs to be educated on this," said Pathisa Nyathi, the
council
spokesman.
"When you talk about a dam being decommissioned, it is a
straight
forward matter in terms of the Water Act.
"We can't
draw water to the last drop because there is aquatic life to
protect. At
least one million cubic meters was left in each of those dams
when they were
decommissioned, an amount which is very difficult to extract
anyway."
Nyathi said the water situation was worsening faster
than council had
anticipated, with levels at the Criterion and Magwegwe
reservoirs falling
dramatically in the past few days.
"When we
introduced the daily water cuts the city's consumption had
been expected to
be 79 500 cubic metres a day but our reservoirs can only
supply 67 000 cubic
metres," he said. "This is why some suburbs are no
longer receiving water
during the allocated times."
The council has already started using
water bowsers to supply areas
without boreholes. The government has been
blamed for the water crisis since
it has not built an alternative source
since 1976.
Despite signs that the city would completely run out of
water, the
government has also failed to provide funding for the
rehabilitation of
boreholes at the Nyamandlovu Aquifer, which can provide
the city with 15 000
cubic metres of water a day.
ZINWA also
belatedly started laying a pipeline linking the idle
Mtshabezi Dam to the
city's water works and the project is unlikely to be
completed until the
next rainy season. The remaining dams, Inyankuni and
Insiza, are expected to
run dry between next month and October.
Zim Standard
BY OUR STAFF
THE
Standard Masvingo reporter Godfrey Mutimba was on Wednesday
illegally
detained for four hours by rowdy Zanu PF militia at Mushayavanhu
business
centre in Gutu district while carrying out his duties.
The militia
was patrolling the area where a memorial service for the
MDC founding member
Isaac Matongo was disrupted by heavily armed police over
the Heroes'
Holidays.
Mutimba was following up reports that several villagers
who defied
traditional leaders' orders not to attend the memorial service
were being
victimised by Zanu PF officials.
There were also
reports that Zanu PF militias had declared Gutu North
constituency a no-go
area for suspected MDC members.
But Mutimba did not need to apply
his journalistic skills to find out
whether this was fact or
fiction.
The militias emerged from behind one shop at Mushayavanhu,
armed with
sticks and sjamboks and confronted Mutimba, who was travelling
with a
companion, Robert Chitanga.
"They ordered us to sit down
and produce our IDs," said Mutimba.
"Their leader, Joe Masanga, claimed he
had seen us earlier at Matongo's
memorial. He said we were back on a spying
mission. They wanted to beat us
with sticks and sjamboks and for a moment I
thought that was the end of my
life."
For four hours the
militias pushed and shoved Mutimba and his friend
while business was brought
to a halt as shop attendants, shoppers and
passersby came to catch a glimpse
of the drama.
Mutimba said the militias did not beat him after
Masanga, who is the
ward 35 youth chairperson, was shown Mutimba's Media and
Information
Commission (MIC) accreditation card.
Pleas by Bill
Saidi, Deputy Editor of The Standard, for the militias
to release Mutimba,
who phoned the newsroom in Harare, were in vain.
They only released
him after they contacted ward 35 Zanu PF
councillor, Benson Dandira, who was
at Mupandawana growth point, 15km away.
Dandira is said to have told
Mutimba's captors to release him as he was an
accredited
journalist.
Zim Standard
By our
staff
THE government bungled closure of private abattoirs when
it decreed
the Cold Storage Company (CSC) should be solely responsible for
procuring,
processing and marketing of beef, The Standard has
learnt.
Last week, in one of several instances of admission of its
failure,
Obert Mpofu, the Minister of Industry and International Trade, also
chairman
of the Cabinet Taskforce on Price Monitoring and Stabilisation,
ordered
private abattoirs be re-licensed.
Details of what the
re-licensing entailed were unintelligible, with
industry sources saying the
government had panicked on realising the extent
of its mistake and was
scurrying around trying to cover up the
embarrassment.
The
government has not said exactly which abattoirs it has
re-licensed, again
raising suspicions that figures with absolutely no
meaning were being
bandied around in order to pacify an increasingly
restless public, irked by
continued shortage of beef.
Calls to the major abattoirs in the
country found many still closed
with staff bamboozled by government's decree
which led to closure of the
slaughter houses.
But industry
sources, reluctant to be identified, told The Standard
the CSC ceased to be
a significant player in the industry in 1992. A year
later, they said, the
wholly government-owned company was slaughtering 260
000 cattle, while
private abattoirs were at 345 000.
"By last year (2006)," sources
said, "CSC commanded only 2% of the
total market while private abattoirs
controlled 98% of the share of the meat
market."
Current
performance of the CSC, said the sources, showed that the
company's
abattoirs in Bulawayo, Chinhoyi, Masvingo and Marondera were
operating at
less than 10%.
"This," explained one of the industry players
"indicates that CSC has
no capacity to provide for the nation's beef
requirements."
CSC's lack of capacity saw its foreign currency
earnings from beef
exports declining from about US$40 million in 1996 to
less than US$500 000
last year.
Consequently, even its beef
exports to Hong Kong, which the government
made so much of as proof of the
benefits of the Look East policy, are
expected to decline, as the government
scrambles to put in place measures to
fight off a potential uprising over
meat shortages.
Industry players told The Standard the government
was shooting itself
in the foot as the loss of export revenues was expected
to worsen Zimbabwe's
foreign exchange shortages.
"The
cancellation of licences for private abattoirs means CSC is
responsible for
meat supplies throughout the country," said one of the
industry players, who
preferred anonymity, "but based on its current
performance, it has no
capacity to fulfil domestic requirements. That is why
there is a shortage of
meat."
The best solution, the sources said, was for private
abattoirs to be
allowed to operate alongside the CSC because there was no
way it could
realistically be expected to meet national demand.
The fiasco over private abattoirs is one of many recent ill-advised
measures
by the government that have left many shops empty because
manufacturers
cannot operate under a command system.
Zim Standard
BY OUR STAFF
BULAWAYO - Residents in most of the city's high-density suburbs have
gone
for more than a week without water as the crisis that has seen council
decommission three dams inside six months continues to worsen.
Council has blamed the shortages on low water levels at its Magwegwe
and
Criterion reservoirs, which now supply a mere 67 000 cubic metres a day
against normal requirements of about 145 000 cubic metres.
Following the introduction of seven-hour daily water cuts last month
the
council had envisaged that it would be able to pump 79 500 cubic metres
a
day.
But the situation seems to have taken a turn for the worse as
the
pumping capacity from the remaining two dams - Insiza and Inyankuni - is
failing to cope with demand.
"The situation is deteriorating
very fast," council spokesman, Pathisa
Nyathi said last week.
Meanwhile, the water crisis is having a significant effect on the
daily
lives of residents who now spend most of their time queuing at
boreholes or
at council water points.
An overwhelming majority of people living
in high-density areas are
being forced to forgo basic hygienic requirements
such as bathing regularly.
Some have to walk long distances to the
nearest boreholes to draw
water, while profiteers have seen a business
opportunity in selling water
from unprotected wells and containers at
exorbitant prices.
"There are gangs, which have emerged and are
digging wells and selling
water to residents," said Bulawayo deputy mayor,
Phil Lamola. "But there is
serious danger that these wells might be poisoned
because they are not
protected."
For others, bathing has become
a luxury as they reserve the little
available water for cooking, laundry and
flashing toilets. Instead of
bathing, they wipe themselves with damp
towels.
"I have not taken a bath for two days," Mxolisi Khumalo of
Entumbane
said. "When do I get the time to fetch water from boreholes when I
am
supposed to be at work?"
He walks a round journey of about
15 kilometers to and from work in
the Kelvin North Industrial Sites, where
he is employed as a carpenter
because he cannot afford bus fare.
Zim Standard
By Kholwani
Nyathi
BULAWAYO - The High Court has ordered police officers
who invaded a
safari farm in Matabeleland North to vacate the property
immediately and
return vehicles they seized from the commercial
farmer.
Last month, heavily armed police officers evicted Margaret
Joubert and
her 83-year-old mother, Ellen Maud Dolphin, from their Portwe
Estates in
Bubi District at gunpoint.
The police, who say they
want to turn the farm into a ZRP enterprise,
also evicted farm workers and
dumped them in their communal areas.
The terrified workers were
reportedly told never to set foot in the
district again.
Police
also seized Joubert's three vehicles, computers and three
elephant tusks,
while several hunting rifles were confiscated by police
during earlier raids
as they tried to force one of the few remaining
commercial farmers in the
province off the property.
But on Thursday Justice Nicholas Ndou
ruled that the occupation of the
farm by the police was illegal. He said the
seized property should be
returned.
The evictions were in
contempt of another High Court ruling by Justice
Francis Bere in May
ordering the police who had invaded the farm to vacate
and stop interfering
with its operations.
After the eviction, Joubert, now staying with
well wishers, made an
urgent High Court application for the release of the
property and the
eviction of the illegal settlers.
Martha Cheda
assisted by Eric Moyo defended the police while Advocate
Tim Cherry
represented Joubert.
The government recently instructed chief land
officers in all the
provinces to cause the arrest of white farmers who
remain on land earmarked
for acquisition after the expiry of their notices
of eviction.
But the Commercial Farmers' Union, representing an
estimated 600 white
farmers, says contrary to assertions that white farmers
were resisting the
government's land reform programme, most of those still
on their farms were
awaiting the outcome of applications, lodged with the
government, for land.
Zim Standard
BY CAIPHAS
CHIMHETE
CHIMANIMANI - The Grain Marketing Board is allegedly
preventing
poverty-stricken villagers in Chimanimani district from sourcing
enough
maize to feed their families, The Standard was told last
week.
The GMB allows a person to bring in only a single bag of
maize from
farms in Chipinge or Chimanimani, a distance of
100km.
Among the most affected areas are Hotsprings, Nyanyadzi,
Gudyanga,
Tonhorai in Chimanimani as well as Maunganidze and Birchenough
Bridge in
Chipinge district, where most of the villagers did not harvest any
crops
last season due to drought.
Most villagers buy maize or
exchange old clothes for maize on farms
near Chimanimani and Chipinge towns,
where commercial farmers reportedly
harvested surplus maize.
The restrictions on maize movement are forcing villagers to make
weekly
trips to Chipinge or Chimanimani, draining the little financial
resources
the poverty-stricken villagers have.
One of the villagers from
Tonhorai village, Amon Sithole, said it did
not make sense for the GMB to
limit the amount of maize a person was allowed
to bring home when there was
a serious food crisis in the area.
Sithole urged government to lift
the restriction, saying he looks
after about 15 dependants and a single bag
of maize does not last two weeks.
"I make at least two trips to
Chipinge in a fortnight to buy maize for
my family because the GMB only
allows us to bring in one at a time, which is
not enough," said
Sithole.
If a villager is caught with more than one bag of maize,
the rest is
confiscated and sold at the nearest GMB depot, where it fetches
very little
money, he said.
"I had secured five 50 kg bags of
maize in Chipinge but four of them
were seized at a roadblock. The officers
gave me receipts and said I should
come and collect my money at Chipangayi
depot," said another villager,
Detserai Mukono of Tonhorai
village.
The GMB public relations manager, Muriel Zemura, could not
be reached
for comment.
But GMB loss control department on
Wednesday maintained that no maize
could be moved from one area to another
without their written authorization.
An official with the
department said if a person intended to move more
than three 50 kg bags of
maize, they should seek a permit from GMB.
"The person should give
reasons for the movement, date and quantity of
maize. If he or she once sold
maize to GMB that person should also attach
proof of that," said the
official.
But the Movement for Democratic Change spokesperson for
Manicaland
province, Pishai Muchauraya said restricting the movement of
grain in the
country demonstrates the government's failure to feed the
people.
"If we had good agricultural policies, as we did years ago,
the
farmers would be actually battling to source markets to sell their
maize,"
he said. "This is just a result of poor policies."
He
said at every roadblock there would be a police officer, a soldier
and a GMB
official to make sure no one passes through with more than one bag
of
maize.
Since the government-sponsored land invasions in 2000,
Zimbabwe, once
the breadbasket of the Southern African region, has not been
able to achieve
food self-sufficiency.
Zim Standard
BY OUR
STAFF
THE Domestic Workers Union (DWU) has described the newly
gazetted
domestic workers' minimum wages and allowances as
outrageous.
In a supplement to the Government Gazette dated 20 July
2007, domestic
workers' minimum wages and allowances were increased with
effect from 1
April 2007.
This saw the lowest earning domestic
worker getting $120 000, while
the highest paid will get $142
336.
The general secretary for the Domestic Workers' Union,
Helarious Ruyi,
said the union would not comply with the government minimum
wages, as they
could not sustain basic needs.
"Our union has
pegged the minimum wage of domestic workers at $1.3
million for the least
paid," Ruyi said. "There are four grades in which
these workers are placed
and for each grade there is a difference of $50
000."
Domestic
workers who spoke to The Standard said the government should
consider them
as workers who also have families to look after.
"Inasmuch as
government has tried to control prices, with these
gazetted wages, I have to
work for the whole year to afford to visit my
family in the rural areas,"
said Mavis Moyo, a domestic worker in Glen View.
Some employers
said that the gazetted minimum wages do not recognise
the importance of the
domestic worker.
"The domestic worker is very important in our
daily lives," said
Rejoice Chisi an employer. "If my child minder decides
not to come to work
it means I will have to miss work that day and look
after my baby. The
minimum wage should allow them to meet the necessary
basics."
The domestic workers' union, however, has launched an
advocacy
programme to lobby employers to be more sensitive to the needs of
their
workers and pay them accordingly.
Zim Standard
By Our
Staff
FOLLOWING the enactment of the Domestic Violence Act, the
United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in collaboration with the
government and
the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers' Association is training hundreds
of traditional
leaders across the country.
The training ensures
more than 300 chiefs are reached with information
on how they can interpret
and apply the Act, stop abuse, and offer support
to victims in their
communities.
"Chiefs play a pivotal role in settling domestic
disputes across rural
Zimbabwe," said Unicef representative, Dr Festo
Kavishe. "They are often the
custodians of traditional law and receive the
bulk of cases dealing with
domestic violence. Yet too often in the past they
have lacked the power and
knowledge to prevent and adequately respond to
domestic violence."
Amid continuing economic hardships,
unemployment at 70%, and a growing
HIV/Aids crisis, anecdotal evidence has
shown, not only an increase, but
severity in domestic violence. In Zimbabwe
95% of the victims of domestic
violence are women.
"Advocating
for a Domestic Violence law was a triumph, a great first
stride," said
Unicef's gender focal person, Jelda Nhliziyo. "But this is the
beginning.
The greatest challenges lie ahead. We must fight to change
mindsets,
entrenched values and habits, and in this struggle traditional
leaders are
the key."
The training has enabled 300 chiefs to create
community-level systems
to support survivors of violence. It has also
provided a forum for ongoing
dialogue on the growing problem of violence in
the family setting and how to
curb it. In addition to chiefs, the
Unicef training brought together
councillors, Members of Parliament,
government and civil society to exchange
ideas.
The Domestic
Violence Act provides Zimbabwe with clear laws against
violence in the home.
The Act protects victims of domestic violence and
provides long-term
measures through among other things, stiffer sentences in
criminal matters
and placing special duties on police to assist victims and
providing
for special domestic violence sections at police stations.
Nonetheless, there remains a widespread lack of knowledge about the
Act
(which became law in 2006), and its provisions. In particular, many are
unaware that physical, psychological and emotional abuse are grounds for
protection and that a protection order can remain in force when a
protected
person is living with the perpetrator. The engagement of
traditional
leadership aims to address these knowledge gaps.
Beyond the training, Unicef is actively engaged in working to reduce
domestic violence in Zimbabwe. Unicef also trains pastors, police and
communities on handling domestic violence, together with teachers on how
they can provide life skills to victims of violence. It works with
community-based counsellors to identify and counsel survivors of domestic
violence.
"Some of the biggest victims of domestic violence are
the smallest,"
said Kavishe. "Protecting children should be the absolute
concern of
everybody who is working to see an end to domestic
violence."
Zim Standard
DESPITE the proliferation
of
organisations ostensibly dedicated to the welfare of abandoned and
orphaned
children in the cities and towns, a solution to the problem seems
as far
away as it has ever been, according to many people involved in this
largely
voluntary endeavour.
Others are calling for drastic
reforms in the child protection laws of
the country, as they believe the
present legal arrangements are not enough
to ameliorate the state of the
child.
Recently, The Standard's Zvipo Muzambi conducted a survey of
the
street life of the child in Harare. She also sounded out the concerns of
the
army of volunteers who spend largely thankless hours trying to improve
the
welfare of - the children.
Tawanda Maronga spends his day in
the streets of Harare selling sweets
or begging for money.
Like
many other children found on the streets, Tawanda exudes
confidence and has
developed the uncanny knack of evading municipal police,
whose daily routine
is to pounce on vendors, confiscating their wares.
The only time
the streetwise Tawanda loses his cool and looks as
vulnerable as a bird with
a broken wing is when one starts talking of his
background.
At
13, Tawanda should be in Form One but he has never set foot in a
classroom
because his mother says she cannot afford the fees.
"My mother is
blind," he said last week.
"I am told that my father passed away
when I was just a baby," he
says, suppressing a choke in his voice, trying
hard to hold back the tears.
"The only place I knew as my home in Mbare was
destroyed under Operation
Murambatsvina.
"We don't have a home
anymore. I sleep at Mbare bus terminus with my
mother.
The Roman
Catholic Church in Mbare can only provide us with blankets.
I come
here looking for money to make things easier for my mother."
Tawanda's companion is seven-year-old Marvellous Muvha, who has learnt
to
toil for her own education at that tender age.
While girls of her age
spend most of their time playing, she spends
the day sitting at a street
corner, selling sweets and cigarettes.
"I stay in Epworth with my
mother and I come here everyday," she said.
"My mother leaves me here while
she goes to search for goods with reduced
prices. I go to school at
Domboramwari Primary in Epworth and this business
contributes to my school
fees. My mother can only afford to feed me and my
brother."
Marvellous said her father abandoned them after he married another
woman.
Tawanda and Marvellous are among many Zimbabwean
children who have
become victims to the harsh economic meltdown. As the
hardships worsen, many
children now work in the streets of Harare, trying to
raise money to help
their families keep the wolf from the door.
The children, many from broken homes, are spotted in the city, selling
cigarettes, brooms and fruits. Some said they had to work because fewer and
fewer Zimbabweans were now willing to help their parents with handouts: they
too may have hit rock-bottom as a result of the deepening economic
crisis.
Research by New Hope Foundation, a child care organisation,
established that
many of the children living and working on the
streets were victims of
the government's controversial clean-up operation
launched two years ago.
"A good number of them are coming from our
operational areas such as
Hopley, Dzivaresekwa, Caledonia and Epworth," said
David Chitsungo, a
grants, development and compliance officer with New Hope
Foundation.
"The children lack sustainable sources of livelihood.
Seventy percent
of them are HIV and Aids orphans," he said. "As a result
they find
sustenance from working for themselves and begging on the
streets."
But in the streets, the children are exposed to many
forms of abuse.
Young girls are the most vulnerable to exploitation as
they are
desperate for survival. Many of them are taken from the streets and
end up
in the brothels where they are abused.
Betty Makoni,
director and founder of Girl Child Network said: "The
worst thing that can
happen to a child is to be working on the streets.
There is so much
potential in these children. My worry is why we still see
so many children
on the streets when there are many child-care
organisations. There is need
to redirect our efforts for us to achieve
more."
Makoni said
the "street life" of the girl child was harder than that
of boys as they
doubled up as commercial sex workers at night.
"The girl child has a
double tragedy -being a child who needs to be
looked after, and a woman at
night. This is both child labour and
exploitation."
Zim Standard
BY OUR
STAFF
THE African Development Bank (ADB) has cited Zimbabwe as
a bad debtor
as scrutiny into its embattled economy continues.
The remarks are contained in a statement by the bank's vice-president
in
charge of Infrastructure, Water and Sanitation, Private Sector
development,
and regional integration and trade, Dr Mandla Gantsho, on the
ADB
website.
"We haven't lent to Zimbabwe, for example, because the
country is in
arrears on its loan repayment obligations to the AfDB," he
said.
His comments follow recent sentiments by the International
Monetary
Fund's managing director, Rodrigo Rato; quoted in the Mozambican
media as
saying the IMF board was yet to reach a consensus on the
restoration of
Zimbabwe's voting rights, suspended four years
ago.
Last February, the IMF promised to review Zimbabwe's position
after
six months, which occurs this month.
Other financial
giants to recently cast votes of no confidence against
Zimbabwe include the
South African Reserve Bank and the Standard Bank Group.
Gantsho was
discussing the ambitious idea of a unitary government for
Africa and what he
anticipates for the Bank in its regional integration
activities if the idea
came to fruition.
He said the bank was currently finding it
difficult to work with
individual countries in financial straits, such as
Zimbabwe.
He was optimistic the bank would find it easier to work
with a united
government for the continent.
"We would be more
preoccupied with regional policies, instead of
national policies, and we
would also be spared the difficulty of working
with countries that sometimes
are regarded as non-performing within the
Regional Economic Communities," he
said.
Under a unitary African government, it would be possible to
continue
giving aid to weak economies, he said.
"But if we were
looking at Zimbabwe as a part of a viable region, we
would find a way of
delivering development to the people of that country by
working with the
regional government and then relying on member countries of
that sub-region
to deal with their weakest link through peer pressure.
"They would
turn to the country concerned and say: 'Listen, you are
actually slowing
down the pace of development in our sub-region. You are
making it difficult
for us to get assistance for our regional development
programmes from the
African Development Bank," he said.
Zimbabwe belongs to the
14-member Southern African Development
Community.
Now popular
with seasoned and proven dictators like Libya's Muammar
Gaddafi, the idea of
a unitary Africa was first propounded by Ghana's first
president Kwame
Nkrumah who proposed the formation of a United States of
Africa.
In recent years, President Robert Mugabe has also
spoken passionately
of this hardcore Pan-Africanist pantheon, which remains
the only fall-back
position after the disruption of links with the
West.
A recent summit of the African Union in Accra, the birthplace
of
independence for Africa south of the Sahara, failed to endorse
wholeheartedly the immediate drawing up of a United States of Africa
plan.
ADB has in the past expressed concern over Zimbabwe's failure
to clear
its arrears which stood at a staggering US$300 million as of
December 2005.
Last August, Zimbabwe was unfortunate not to be part
of 13 African
countries which received amnesty which saw the bank cancelling
debts
totalling US$8.5 billion.
Zim Standard
BY OUR
STAFF
ZIMBABWE is set to miss the 80 million kilogrammes of
tobacco sold
this year with less than two weeks before the selling season
ends.
Statistics from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board
(TIMB) show
that on the 82nd day of trade on Wednesday 64.3 million kg of
tobacco valued
at US$151.2 million had gone under the hammer less than two
weeks before the
season came to an end.
TIMB figures show that
Burley Marketing Zimbabwe had sold 8.5 million
kg since the beginning of the
selling season; Tobacco Sales Floor (9.558
million kg); Zimbabwe Tobacco
Auction Centre (7.936kg) and 38.2 million kg
came from contract tobacco
farmers. Last year, 55.5 million kg went under
the hammer.
With
12 days of trade left before the floors are closed on 7
September, tobacco
experts said it was unlikely that the projected 80
million kg would be
achieved, considering the rate at which tobacco has been
flowing since
August.
Zim Standard
by
Jennifer dube
THE government decision to backtrack on its price
blitz shows its
officials have no capacity to run private businesses,
commentators said last
week.
In separate interviews, most said
the government, notorious for its
ruthless handling of ordinary citizens,
could have gone ahead with its
threats to acquire private companies if it
had the money to run them.
Immediately after launching the price
blitz last month, the government
announced it had set aside billions to
resuscitate the defunct Zimbabwe
State Trading Corporation and the Zimbabwe
Development Corporation.
These two were to be used as conduits for
the acquisition of companies
that it might want to take over for engaging in
suspected economic sabotage.
"They (government) have no capacity
whatsoever to take over private
companies," said Mufandaidza Hove, the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
secretary for Industry and
International Trade. "That was an empty threat
made with (the 2008)
elections in mind,"
In June, the government ordered companies to
slash prices of goods and
services by at least 50%.
A task
force was formed to enforce the decree, which led to the arrest
of more than
12 000 businesspeople on charges of insubordination.
But the
government unclenched its fist last week when it moved away
from announcing
new prices for selected products, but authorised businesses
to increase
prices, although still giving some restrictions on percentages.
This came shortly after the authorities reversed plans to monopolise
the
handling of meat and fuel supplies for commercial purposes.
"The
track record of the state companies is not very convincing," said
an
economist who preferred anonymity. "In fact, we do not have many success
stories in that area and it is possible the authorities realised it would be
a mammoth task to take them over, hence the decision to hand back business
to private players."
"Much like the agricultural sector, which
crumbled after the land
reform fiasco, the manufacturing sector was headed
for destruction had the
government pursued its ambitious plans," said
independent economist, John
Robertson.
"They were badly advised
in the beginning, to even think of taking
over the companies," he said.
"Private businesses are difficult to run and
the government would not have
managed them, given their ongoing struggles in
almost all
parastatals.
"Companies are not made up of buildings and machinery.
They are made
up of skilled people and these were going to leave immediately
after the
implementation of the plan. The manufacturing sector was headed
for a
downfall, as happened with agriculture. They (government) now have
farms and
tractors but they are failing to restore viability to that sector
because
they lack the skills."
The blitz created economic
casualties, some of which will be
permanent, despite the decision to be
lenient, commentators said, adding
that a complete halt of government
interference with market forces was
imperative for industry to fully
recover.
They said some of the new prices remained unviable, given
the
hyperinflationary environment.
Zim Standard
Comment
The government likes to cause havoc in the belief that its
interventionist measures will wrap it in the mantle of a knight in shining
armour, a posture it believes will garner votes.
Not satisfied
with the havoc it has wreaked on the economy, the
government believed it
would be popular with the voters if it forced
business to slash prices.
However, it has now gone into reverse mode, giving
the green light for
prices of a raft of commodities to increase. That was
the only way to save
it from the embarrassment of the omnipresent queues for
just about
everything.
Last week in yet another major climb-down, it
"re-registered" 42
private abattoirs in a measure intended to portray the
government as acting
in the interests of ordinary people who can no longer
find meat.
The truth, however, is that the government is backing
down after
realising its foolish miscalculation over the price
blitz.
The Cold Storage Company (CSC) on which the government had
conferred a
monopoly to supply beef to the whole country was only serving a
miserly 2%
of the total meat market in the country. Clearly, someone did not
do their
homework.
The government's directive on supplies of
beef is akin to getting a
street vendor to run, for example, Bon Marche or
the best of the Spar retail
outlets. It just does not work!
It
is the same porous logic that guided the government to instruct
fuel
importers to channel all of their imports through the National Oil
Company
of Zimbabwe whose record of incompetence is well-documented. Noczim
was only
responsible for supplying government vehicles, even though
ironically,
numerous government officials and motor cars with government
registration
plates were a common sight at the Caltex service stations that
catered for
the needs of the private sector and a majority of ordinary
Zimbabweans.
The reason why people are reporting late for work
is because the
government directive on fuel, as in the case of abattoirs,
has backfired and
is producing the "unintended consequences" that the
Central Bank governor
warned about.
Therefore for anyone to ask
CSC or Noczim to take over the role and
functions of the private sector is
to court mischief and demonstrate the
regime change mentality that President
Robert Mugabe is fond of accusing the
opposition of. It is his colleagues
who are working round the clock to
effect regime change by virtue of their
disastrous policies. The agents of
regime change are not in the opposition.
They are in government.
In a bid to outdo other colleagues in
government in the belief that
such actions would win the author elevation to
loftier offices of the State,
someone helped to undermine the government in
a manner no opposition could.
And to expect the electorate to reward a
government that has traumatised
them so much is to demonstrate how far
removed from everyday reality the
regime has become and the reason it
deserves to be red-carded.
The most frightening thing is that none
of those in government ever
foresaw the consequences of the price blitz.
Unfortunately, the
after-effects will continue to be with us until Election
Day in 2008. With
the crisis in water, electricity and basic commodities
coupled with world
record unemployment, it will take more than a miracle for
the ruling party
to survive. There doesn't have to be an opposition. The
ruling party is
doing a better job at discrediting the
government.
Whoever thought of the price blitz deserves the
sack.
Zim Standard
sundayopinion by Bill
Saidi
THE following was part of an editorial, not in The Standard
or The
Zimbabwe Independent:
"South African President Thabo
Mbeki, who has been regarded as one of
Mugabe's few supporters, has already
warned the despot to ensure elections
slated for next year are free and
fair.
"Other African leaders should follow suit and tell Mugabe
that they
will no longer stand for his government failures. They will not be
doing so
to support the West. They will be doing so to save ordinary
Zimbabweans."
The editorial is not from what the Zimbabwe
government would label as
"the usual suspects" - The Daily Telegraph, The
Guardian, The Daily Mail,
The Times - all British; or The Mail and Guardian,
The Johannesburg Star,
The Sunday Times or The Cape Times - all South
African.
Or even The Sydney Morning Herald of
Australia.
The editorial is from The Daily Nation of Nairobi,
Kenya. As far as I,
know, the editor is neither British, South African nor
Australian. He
probably boasts of a respectable Kikuyu, Luo or Kamba totem,
which should
gain him the awe of the Zimbabwean leader, a great stickler for
totems.
Mwai Kibaki, the President of Kenya, has not become the
beacon of
democracy that many Kenyans hoped he would be, after replacing the
Mugabesque Daniel arap Moi, 83 years old as well.
Kibaki is
76 years, a younger brother of the two men, but has so far
not publicly
identified himself with the fervidly anti-Western politics of
Gushungo.
His handling of a vibrant private media is suspect,
although his
recent dismissal of a proposed law forcing journalists to
disclose their
sources is commendable.
The Daily Nation has not
traditionally identified with any ruling
party, although its sympathies
appear to have been with Kibaki's coalition
in the battle with the Kenya
African Union (Kanu).
Yet he too is of the older generation of
African politics, having
served under Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.
Kibaki could join Nelson Mandela, Sir Ketumile Masire and Kenneth
Kaunda in
engaging Mugabe on a resolution of the Zimbabwe crisis.
The
suggestion was made by a Zambian politician. Mugabe is so much
older than
the current crop of Sadc leaders they can hardly communicate on
the same
wavelength.
The proposer of this "elder statesmen" team to tackle
Mugabe included
among them Joachim Chissano (68).
Chissano was
proposed as a go-between for a round of talks between
Mugabe and others. He
was forced to back off when Gushungo expressed
scepticism, as he has on
almost every other attempt to engage him in
dialogue.
Benjamin
Mkapa was another casualty.
Mugabe was the oldest leader at the
recent Lusaka summit, the youngest
Joseph Kabila.
Mugabe is
known to have used his age as an effective lever to cow the
other leaders
into letting him have his way. To Joseph, he could easily say:
"If it wasn't
for my soldiers, your father would not have won . . . Neither
would
you."
Even to Mbeki, he could pull the same political rank:
"You were in
diapers when I started fighting the colonialists . .
."
Eduardo dos Santos, who succeeded Agostinho Neto as Angola's
president
in 1979, could probably be Mugabe's younger brother, not his son,
as the
last two would be.
He is now 65 years old, but has been
in power one year longer than
Mugabe.
Reverence - and not just
respect or awe - for age is a very "African"
thing. The saddest aspect of
all this cultural dogmatism is that the
livelihoods of more than 13 million
Zimbabweans are being sacrificed on the
altar of age.
In their
Worship of Old Age, the Sadc leaders could be contributing to
the beginning
of a long and bitter struggle in Zimbabwe, a struggle to
change leadership,
not through the tried and tested mechanism of free and
fair elections, but
through strife.
His undoubted passion for the peaceful resolution
of conflicts
notwithstanding, even Madiba might find tangling with Gushungo
a new Robben
Island nightmare.
Kaunda would not fare better. He
may have eventually accepted, without
rancour, electoral defeat by Frederick
Chiluba in 1991, but his democratic
credentials are suspect.
His instant conversion to a Mugabe praise-singer was not accepted by
most
cynics as being anchored on a genuine appreciation of the deepest
wishes of
the Zimbabwean people - a return to political tranquility, the
realisation
of the material, spiritual and social potential of their
country.
Only Mandela can be trusted to act without the
impediment of idolising
old age. He is the epitome of age being equated with
wisdom.
saidib@standard.co.zw
Zim Standard
sundayview by
Judith Todd
IN mid-March, my parents invited the Shamuyariras to
dinner. Halfway
through, Nathan said: "Judy, I hope CIO is not still
interfering with your
mail?" I had to think on my feet, as it were, although
I was sitting down.
What worried me was any possible fright to my
mother, so I tried to
pass his question off as a light-hearted matter and
said: "Minister, I haven't
told my mother about this, but everything seems
to have led to vastly
improved relations with the CIO, and Mr Stannard and I
are even due to have
lunch with each other."
The minister
seemed amused, and my mother and the two New Zealand
visitors seemed
unperturbed. I supposed, sitting warmly around the table,
the possibility of
the CIO opening my mail seemed unreal to everyone but the
minister, my
father and me. But of course, whatever I hoped, my mother would
have known
exactly what was happening. Her sensitivity was ultra acute.
Now
and again, I thought I had reached the age and the condition when
nothing
was so bad that it could shock me. That particular thought was in my
mind on
Monday 24 March when Michelle Faul rang to say that we must meet,
which we
did high above Harare on the Meikles Hotel pool deck at lunch time.
She
worked for Associated Press and was a stringer for the BBC.
Four
days earlier, Michelle had been instructed to meet Nathan
Shamuyarira. She
was told that "we" are tired of her reporting; she would
have no further
assistance from the ministry - which meant she would lose
her accreditation.
She couldn't be deported, as she was a citizen by birth
of Zimbabwe, so the
only way to deal with her was detention at Chikurubi.
She was
rightly very frightened, and at the same time ashamed of being
scared. She
was leaving Zimbabwe within the next 48 hours, deprived of her
home, her
right to work and, basically, of her citizenship.
After our painful
lunch, I got back to the office to find a white
woman of about 60 who asked
if I could spare a few minutes. Between Michelle
and now this lady, I
realised that there were still things that could
profoundly shock
me.
She sat down, introducing herself as Margie Schwing, and
although she
never actually wept, she was on the verge of tears and
struggling for
control throughout the awful story she told me. She had been
in Park Street
in November, and all of a sudden was surrounded by five men
who said they
were from CIO and took her off to Harare Central police
station. From there
she was moved to Chikurubi Women's Remand Section. She
appeared once in a
magistrate's court and the CIO opposed bail because they
said they were
still investigating fraud.
From what Mrs Schwing
said, it was CIO throughout, and not the fraud
squad. She said she still
didn't know why she had been held. She was
released at the end of February,
suffering from pneumonia, and was taken to
Parirenyatwa Hospital
outpatients. Due to one of those strokes of good
fortune, Mrs Schwing had
been alone when a member of her church saw her and
came to ask what was
wrong. She was accompanied by two CIO agents, one of
whom had gone to get
her prescription filled, while the other had gone to
the
toilet.
The friend was extremely practical and whipped out a
notebook, and
took down the name and address of Mrs Schwing's son, who
apparently worked
for Tabex in Malaysia, and then darted off before CIO
reappeared.
The conditions she described were terrible: women not
knowing of any
rights they might have; beatings by wardresses; people having
their hair
torn out; a woman having teeth punched in; the use of hosepipes
on prisoners
by the wardresses; malnutrition among toddlers and babies
picked up with
their mothers. She said that on New Year's Day as the women
came out of the
cell blocks, they each received a blow with a hosepipe and
the accompanying
greeting: "Happy New Year!"
Mrs Schwing
also said something that I thought might be the truth of
the matter,
although she apologised for saying it, because, she said, it
sounded so
unreal. She had been at a party before her detention, and Simon
Muzenda was
there. He had been very nice to her, and introduced her to a lot
of people.
Mrs Schwing heard a young man, who seemed to stay close to her
all the time
at the party, saying to someone else: "It's just not fair! I'm
also in
business. Why doesn't Muzenda introduce me to all these people?"
So, she said, it may have all started with jealousy. To me, that didn't
sound unreal.
On Tuesday 1 March 1986, Lieutenant General
Lookout Masuku and the
veteran PF Zapu politician Vote Moyo were officially
released from
detention. As was the case under the Smith regime, the names
of detainees
could not be published, so there hadn't been news of them in
the papers for
the four years they had been imprisoned in Zimbabwe under
Robert Mugabe. Now
their freedom was headline news.
Lookout's
wife Gift managed to get permission for me to see him on
Sunday 9 March from
3.30PM to 6PM at Parirenyatwa Hospital. There were four
heavily armed
soldiers outside his room. I sat down with them, and said I
gathered they
had a permit for me to see Masuku. They were perfectly
pleasant and said
that was fine, so I walked into the private ward.
Lookout was
attached to two drips but sitting up in bed, and he gave a
small scream when
he saw me, jumped up and hugged me hard. The drips were
suspended from a
wheeled stand, so he was mobile.
There was no awkwardness. It was
as if we had known each other for
years and had seen each other yesterday.
But the joy was precisely because
we hadn't seen each other for more than
four years, and because it was so
wonderful to see one another again. I
couldn't begin to fathom the hell of
uncontrolled suffering he had been
going through. There were some days he
had no memory of, which was probably
just as well. The full story would
probably never unfold, but if it did, it
would be bleak. For example, it
turned out that the "specialist" the prison
authorities had told his lawyer
he had seen in December was neither a
specialist nor even a registered
doctor.
I wondered, too, about
the doctor at Chikurubi. I had learned he was a
Russian Jew on contract,
that he had worked previously in Israel and that he
was very timid. I
wondered if he had ended up in his position because he had
such good
qualifications.
We talked non-stop, an interested guard listening
in the corner, until
after six, when the soldiers very reasonably asked me
to leave, as visiting
hours were over. That was sad, because we didn't then
think we would be
seeing each other again in the foreseeable
future.
I rang Gift the next day to thank her, and to say I'd had a
wonderful
time. Of course, "wonderful" was the wrong word. Lookout was
skinny and his
arms were very swollen from trying to find veins for the
drips, and he was
very, very sick. But he sat up all the time I was with him
and was mentally
as bright as a button. There was a heart-rending moment
when he said: "But
what of the future? When I went to prison I got high
blood pressure. Then I
got kidney troubles. Now I have this. What is going
to happen to me next?
I said: "Oh Lookout!" as though, how could he
ask such a question?
But he said: "No, Judy, I mean it. Let's be
practical about the whole
thing."
I feared he was absolutely
right. I had been consulting Professor Noel
Galen, who was very gloomy about
Lookout's future.
Late on Monday night I returned a call from
Gift.
"Have you heard anything?" she asked.
I said I
had heard a rumour that Lookout was to be released. She said
it was true. I
said: "How do you know? Who told you? Is there a piece of
paper?"
She laughed and said the fact that she was telling me
meant that it
was true.
She travelled up the next day from
Bulawayo, and I spent half an hour
with her and Lookout at Parirenyatwa. As
he was now a free man, no permits
were required to see him and the armed
guards had been withdrawn.
At about six that Tuesday evening, an
unknown man walked in and stood
by the bed. Lookout was polite but cool. I
kept thinking, what an odd
doctor. He didn't ask how Lookout was feeling -
he just kept informing him
that he would be seeing him again, the next
night, in hospital, in Bulawayo.
When he left, they simultaneously
said: "CIO." Then I remembered him.
*Excerpt from Judith Todd's
latest book, Through the Darkness; A Life
in Zimbabwe, available from www.zebrapress.co.za.
Zim Standard
THE
recent
presidential and parliamentary elections in Sierra Leone where the
Zimbabwe
Election Support Network (ZESN), under the auspices of the African
Union
(AU) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
(NDI)
sent some observers were an eye-opener and a living testimony of how
other
African countries have evolved democratically. Most importantly, the
Sierra
Leone elections exhibited the gateway to electoral credibility in a
country
whose previous elections were littered with
irregularities.
What struck the ZESN team most was the amount of
trust that the
electorate, the political parties, civil society and
government had in the
National Electoral Commission (NEC), the body tasked
with running the
elections in the country. Other than the fact that the
commission is truly
independent of government, the idea that it is headed by
a person whose
public profile attracts approval and contentment from all
sectors of the
society is neither here nor there.
The Sierra
Leone experience showed the need for a truly independent
electoral
commission headed by a credible individual whose moral aptitude is
beyond
reproach if elections were to be credible in this country. In the
case of
Sierra Leone, the NEC chairperson is a trustworthy and incorrigible
professional whose appointment was acceptable to all stakeholders in the
electoral process. That Dr Christiana Ayoka Mary Thorpe, the head of NEC is
a nun and a devout Christian are not the only facets of her profile that
made her acceptable, but that her vision, that of bringing credibility into
whatever she does, weighed in heavily towards her universal acceptance in
the electoral process is never in doubt.
What a country that
has had a history of disputed elections needs is a
transparent,
people-driven electoral process that could suddenly bring trust
where there
is mistrust, satisfaction where there is suspicion and
credibility where the
song has always been fraud and post election
litigation. This, however,
comes with the appointment of a truly independent
electoral management body
whose secretariat is professional and whose terms
of reference are
non-partisan.
"At NEC we're doing our best to establish credibility
in all what we
do. Our approach has been to get everybody in the process and
let the nation
know that collectively we all have a role to play in ensuring
that the
elections are credible and acceptable," she told one
journalist.
Clearly, fostering credibility is what she did. Party
activists and
polling staff involved in irregularities during the local
elections in 2004
were purged during the staffing of NEC for the 2007
elections. NEC officials
numbering 1 500, who were implicated in electoral
fraud-related accusations
in 2004 or those who were found to be party
activists, were dismissed in the
chairperson's attempt to come up with a
truly independent and professional
team that would ensure the elections are
credible and acceptable.
Furthermore, in its endeavour to "get
everybody into the process," NEC
created a platform through which political
parties interacted with it to
input suggestions and recommendations for
electoral reform that were in
tandem with its goal of ensuring a credible
free and fair election.
Consequently, NEC supervised the
establishment of the Political Party
Liaison Committees (PPLC) at national
and district levels to register,
regulate, monitoring adherence to the code
of conduct and mediate disputes
among political parties. In addition, it
provides political parties with
opportunities to request additional
information and challenge NEC's
decisions on various aspects of the
electoral process.
Despite the logistical challenges the political
campaigns were visible
and vigorous. ZESN officials were impressed by the
scheduling of campaign
activities for different political parties on
different days to reduce
political clashes and tensions. They did not
witness incidences of violence.
Furthermore no campaigns were observed after
the 24 hours deadline before
election day and on election day.
The process of voter registration that NEC embarked on was another
major
stride towards ensuring that a lot of people participated in the
election
process. According to the European Union Observer Mission (EU OM)
about 2
619 565 people registered to vote. This is 91% of the total number
of people
eligible to vote in the country. Apart from people participating
as voters,
35 domestic organisations and 5400 local observers were deployed
to observe
the election covering 87% of the polling stations open on
election day. The
same observers were also accredited to observe the voter
registration and
delineation of boundaries exercises.
It is our submission that our
own electoral management body could
learn from Sierra Leone the importance
of having total figures of people
eligible to vote in the country and making
them public so that when they
announce the percentage number of people
registered in the voter
registration exercise, people would have a benchmark
on which to refer to.
That the 2.6 million registered to vote in
the Sierra Leone election
constitute 91% of the total number of people
eligible to vote gives the
voter registration exercise credibility as an
exercise that sought to ensure
everyone eligible to vote was registered.
However, in our case, it is very
difficult to appreciate the 45 000 voters
registered so far in the on-going
mobile voter registration exercise as a
milestone in ensuring popular
participation in the electoral process.
According to ZEC (Herald 9 August
2007), the 45 000 registered is a
significant number but one would question
its significance vis-à-vis the
unknown total number of people eligible to
vote who were targeted by the
exercise.
In order for an election to be credible, it is key
that there is
constant communication between the electorate and the
electoral management
body through different media available in the country.
In Sierra Leone
communication was always available.
ZESN
officials noted that public debates and forums were conducted by
the Sierra
Leone Association of Journalists. This gave citizens an
opportunity to hear
political parties' policies and manifestos in order to
vote from an informed
position.
According to the NDI preliminary report, "NEC regularly
and
effectively communicated information about the process to voters,
political
parties and the over 37 000 polling staff" it had. NEC also
established a
permanent two-way dialogue with political parties through the
Political
Parties Liaison Committee (PPLC) to inform them of the process and
incorporate their feedback. For instance, the NEC made an important change
to the electoral procedures the week before the polls in response to
concerns raised by political parties during a PPLC meeting.
In
addition, NEC made a provision that voters who lost their voting
cards but
their names still appeared on the register could get a certificate
two weeks
before polling day to enable them to cast their vote on election
day.
NEC also pressured parliament for reforms and urgent
positive changes
to the Electoral Laws Act were passed in June 2007.
Parliament established
the Elections Offences Court, a subdivision of the
High Court with
jurisdiction over electoral offences of criminal nature.
This innovation
built confidence among stakeholders in that there were legal
processes to
address issues of an electoral nature. The Election Petitions
Court was also
established under the Elections Laws Act. It provided
mechanisms essential
for the hearing of electoral civil offences such as
disputed results. These
two courts provide political parties a legal process
to resolve their
disputes without resorting to violence, or taking the law
into their own
hands.
The timetable for petitions was also
improved with the introduction of
a new set of provisions stipulating that
petitions must be submitted within
seven days of the official announcement
of results and should be concluded
within four months.
NEC also
ensured the whole voting process was people oriented as
special treatment
was accorded to groups of people with special needs during
voting. The
elderly, pregnant women and those with babies were given
preferential
treatment on voting day. In another positive development,
tactile ballot
guides for the blind were available in polling centres.
Provisions were also
made for the old and illiterate voters to cast their
votes without
assistance.
There are three ways that a choice can be registered in
Sierra Leone,
by marking an x on the choice or putting a tick. Alternatively
voters may
use ink that is provided in the booth to mark their ballot
papers. This
meant that the aged and illiterate were able to cast their
votes without
assistance from polling officials. This is particularly
important in
Zimbabwe where we a have a huge number of "assisted"
voters.
NEC also made the processing of voters smooth and fast by
the
provision of more than five polling stations in one centre. Despite
voting
starting at 7AM and officially ending at 1700 hours, by 1500 hours no
queues
were noted and this enabled counting to start immediately thereafter
when it
was still daylight. This is unlike in our case where polls close at
7PM when
it is dark thereby increasing chances of cheating during the
counting
process. The counting was conducted in a transparent manner and
immediately
copies of the results were posted on the walls outside polling
stations for
the public to see.
Zim Standard
Fiddler
My office is perhaps
not ideal. It's a bit cramped, and the
ventilation and lighting is rather
poor. High up on the wall there's one
small barred window and the heavy
metal door can only be opened from the
outside by a not very obliging
doorman. The in suite ablution facilities
consist of an overflowing rusty
bucket. There isn't a mini-bar or a
cellphone. This is not quite what I
expected when I undertook to head and
body the Human Rights
Commission.
When the requisite legal instrument was in place
(constitutional
amendment No 653), I phoned the Minister to inform him there
could not be
any better man for the job than I. Although not a woman, which
is hardly my
fault, I'm the most gender sensitive male chauvinist I
know.
The hysterical laughter I heard on the line must have been
either a
crossed line or the Minister's staffers must have just cracked a
good joke.
The long pause on the line was clearly because the Minister had
been
overcome with gratitude and needed time to recover his composure. I
didn't
wait for the Minister to exclaim, "Fiddler, as usual, you are dead
right",
the right to be dead or even alive right being the most fundamental
of all
human rights. But, ever modest, I didn't require expressions of
eternal
thankfulness, but simply told the Minister I would start as soon as
he made
available a suitable official residence in Borrowdale Brooke, a
Mercedes-Benz S600L with all the trimmings and lavish office accommodation.
I told him not to bother appointing other Commissioners as I had already
selected my dream team, a team that even Alex Ferguson would be extremely
proud of. I gave the Minister a flavour of my line up: I had put Jono Moyo
in the position of very right back but had been unable to find a suitable
position for Charles Taylor.
It was not long before my new aide
de camp arrived at my doorstep to
take me on a tour of my workplace.
Regrettably this man was to prove to be a
real pain in the butt,
particularly when he accompanied me to the showers in
the evening. With him
were sundry other burly gentlemen who eyes must be
very sensitive eyes as
they were shielded behind very dark glasses. These
were obviously my
official bodyguards. They greeted me with warm smiles and
due deference by
throwing me into the back of an unmarked car, presumably my
temporary
vehicle pending the arrival of my Merc.
On arrival at my office
premises, I was greeted by the large number of
staff assigned to me. They
were all dressed in smart uniforms. The security
at the premises was
excellent. We must have had to go through at least 30
barred and locked
doors until finally we arrived at my own personal office.
By now I was
feeling distinctly peckish, so I instructed my aide to bring me
the luncheon
menu. He did so telling me that the cuisine would meet my
undoubtedly high
standards. There appeared to be a set menu for all meals.
It
read:
One small sip of aqua - rancid, not chilled.
One
slice of bread - matured for at least two years - unavailable.
Dodi
Supreme.
I pointed out that there was a typographical error on the
last item
but I was assured that there was not. In flagrant contravention of
the price
control regulations no prices for the items were listed. I made a
note to
report this to the relevant authorities.
After the
fortifying meal, I immediately got down to work. My first
important task was
to compile a human manual, which would take at least 20
minutes. The task
was made somewhat more difficult by the fact that my hands
were handcuffed
behind my back. The heavy leg irons were also a bit
uncomfortable. Before
leaving me to my work, my aide mentioned that later
several young men would
come to tuck me in after providing some valuable
practical examples of human
rights violations to include in my manual.
Pen in mouth, I started
work. First, I needed a snappy title for my
manual. I toyed with "Pipe
Dreams about Human Rights and Other Jolly Good
Fables" or "Why ZLHR has such
difficulty in spelling 'human rights.' "
Some days later, whilst
still searching for the most suitable title,
some distinguished visitors
came to consult with the oracle. They were from
International Bleeding
Hearts, Interfering Busybodies based in Eureka,
Georgia. They all turned out
to be barking mad. This I discovered later when
I read their report on their
visit;
"When we entered his cell, we saw a pathetic filthy wretch
huddled in
a corner scratching incomprehensible hieroglyphics on a wall. He
greeted us
with the words 'What's up, my old toerags. I do hope you
remembered to feed
your hyenas as there is a bit of a bull run in the market
at the moment'. He
told us to help ourselves to any tipple we fancied,
provided we had brought
our own.
"After we left his cell, the
guards told us that this week the inmate
thought he was the Chairperson the
Human Rights Commission. The week before
he had been Governor of the Reserve
Bank and the week before that President
of a country called
Murambatsvina."
MDC factions should swallow pride, unite PLEASE keep up the good work of
telling us the truth about what is happening around Zimbabwe.
I
would like to applaud M M V Mlambo's letter (The Standard, 8 July
2007)
because what he said is exactly what is happening in our MDC. A united
front
(MDC) to confront Zanu PF is the only answer to freedom. Arthur
Mutambara is
ready for unity while Morgan Tsvangirai says he will consult
the
provinces.
When the late Dr Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe united
in 1987, did
they go to the provinces in order to consult on the idea of
uniting? We only
saw them on television confirming to the nation that they
had buried their
differences and united.
Which provinces does
Tsvangirai want to consult? He is only famous in
towns and not the rural
areas, unlike Mutambara who has 23 rural councillors
in Matabeleland
provinces.
On the issue of infiltrators, the Tsvangirai faction of
the MDC has
failed to manage them. As I write there are four of their
members who are
serving officers from the Police Internal Security
Intelligence, who joined
the force in January 1981 on a Zanu PF
ticket.
Some within the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC are on Zanu
PF's payroll
with a mission to derail any attempts at unifying the
opposition. This issue
is similar to the PF Zapu and Zanu PF affair during
which the parties were
identified on ethnic lines.
Zanu PF has
three if not four factions but they are united in their
fight against the
two MDCs. In all the past rural council elections where
they fielded
candidates against Zanu PF, the ruling party won.
It is my view
that all Zimbabweans should put pressure on the two MDC
leaders to swallow
their pride and unite. Some in the Tsvangirai faction
fear for their
positions and because of this they are against unity. We have
nine months
left to put our house in order.
Sgobela sika
Qhawana
Redcliff
Kwekwe
-----------
Open letter to Morgan Tsvangirai
THANK you for an informative newspaper. Please kindly publish my
open letter
to Morgan Tsvangirai:
This letter is addressed to you as the
leader of the so-called
main wing of the MDC. You are the sole person
responsible for everything
happening to us because of your refusal to unite
with Arthur Mutambara.
You must exercise your conscience and
see if you are not the one
celebrating the people's misery because of your
refusal to consider and
implement unity. This is now a big hindrance and I
am puzzled how you could
be benefiting from this crisis and how much of an
effect the financial
support from the donor community is.
You have the voice and experience of being in the opposition
trenches, but
the strategic mind is firmly situated in the Arthur Mutambara
faction. A
combination of the two would make for a formidable
opposition.
With only nine months before the election, you
have to accept
the inevitability of unity, come to Matabeleland and address
rallies as a
united MDC and apologise for your remarks during the
split.
Without unity the chances of moving into State House
are slim.
Matabeleland is already MDC and so you will need to concentrate on
the other
provinces in the country. However, your greatest weakness is that
you are
surrounded by some immature politicians.
Lastly,
for the time being, cut down on foreign visits and
concentrate on the job at
hand - unity and preparing to fight Zanu PF during
next year's harmonised
elections.
If by the time this letter is published, you have
decided on
unity, I apologise unreservedly for my
remarks.
MDC Councillor
Jahunda
Gwanda
-------------------
Voter registration a mockery to democracy I
have personally witnessed
the suffocation of democracy in
Zimbabwe.
I was recently in Mberengwa where I wanted to
register as a
voter. When I produced my identification card to the official
of the
registrar's office, I received the shock of my life when he demanded
to see
my Zanu PF membership card first before he could assist
me.
I was perplexed and I told him that my registration had
nothing
to do with my political affiliation. The man was so livid that he
threatened
to beat me up if I persisted asking him
questions.
I approached a member of staff of the school where
the
registration was taking place for help and when he tried to negotiate on
my
behalf, he was slapped in the face and had to flee for his life. To my
surprise all this took place in full view of the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission agents and the police officers but not one of them uttered a
word.
In addition some students who were eligible to
register as
voters were denied the chance as they were said to be
politically immature.
I would like to strongly condemn the
Registrar-General's Office for the
idiocy that is being exhibited by its
agents. It is no doubt that the
registration process is just a botched up
exercise.
Sheunesu Maganga
Mberengwa
------------------
A case of
'Do as I say...' THE government has just approved
increases in NetOne
cellphone charges from $518 to $7 200 per minute. This
if far, far more than
the 20% that Obert Mpofu, the Minister in charge of
the Cabinet Taskforce on
Price Monitoring and Stabilisation. has allowed
retailers of basic
commodities to increase their prices by.
Even in the
increases in freight charges and train fares
are above the 20% that private
business has been permitted. Since the
institutions concerned are State
companies, is this a case of "Do as a say,
not as I
do"?
Concerned
Harare
The Herald (Harare) Published
by the government of Zimbabwe
COLUMN
25 August 2007
Posted to the
web 26 August 2007
Rosenthal Mutakati
Harare
ON first sight
they appear like stranded travellers struggling to find
transport to various
destinations along the Harare-Masvingo highway.
To avoid detection, some
of the group members will be dressed in trendy
outfits -- clutching
travelling bags -- and even strapping children on their
backs. Only God
knows where they get these children they use in such
inglorious
operations.
Others will be playing cards, gambling or just running
about aimlessly.
To them gutter language and violent drunken behaviour is
common, forget
about who is within earshot or the safety of the
babies.
For some dreadlocked boys -- most of them with scars and open
wounds all
over their bodies -- who will be drinking undiluted brandy and
shouting
obscenities, an electricity pylon is about enough cover for them to
relieve
themselves in public.
Their female counterparts are not any
better. They just cover themselves
with waist cloths -- the famous mazambia
-- and the rest is history.
Wait until a car drives by.
Members of
the group literally run in droves towards the vehicle, coercing
the driver
and other occupants to buy their laundry soap, sugar, cooking oil
and even
foreign currency.
"Yaah. Ehh. Inzwaika shasha. Bhigazi. Cooking oil iripo
jahwi ende
yakaslashwa price rough. This two-litre container is going for
just $750
000.
"We can even sell rands for as little as R1: $2 700.
Everything is very
cheap here," said one of the boys who was walking with
the aid of crutches.
Before we were finished with him, a shapely, booty
and cheerful lady --
donning swanky clothes -- who identified herself as
VaChihera came and
offered the same goods at reduced prices.
She said
just a phone call was enough for her to deliver the goods to my
doorstep.
We, however, could not conclude the transaction after she
immediately left
my car window just as a police vehicle was driving
by.
In a flash of a moment, a middle-aged woman, with smelly hair and
torn
tennis shoes was on my window trying her luck.
She resembled a
graveyard. There was everything bad about the clothes she
was wearing
because they were so dirty and ragged that anyone could conclude
the sister
needed help.
But her language was convincing. She spoke good English and
smiled
frequently, exposing her yellowing teeth.
Feeling pity for
her, I ended up buying cooking oil, toothpaste and laundry
soap from
her.
It sounds weird, but this is what is happening at the famous
"Messina" or
White Horse garage in Waterfalls near the former 7 Miles Hotel
along the
Harare-Masvingo highway.
The women and boys who operate
from the area come in different shapes and
sizes.
They seem to be
employed by some big fish because they just move with
samples and rush to
collect the goods from the boot of some parked luxury
cars as soon as
someone registers his intention to buy.
You have to pay cash first,
before the goods are released.
The traders also have their lexicon too.
If one whistles, it's a sign of
danger -- a warning that a policeman or
member of the taskforce on prices is
nearby.
At times they just shout
"ngonjo" to alert their peers.
"Haulume" is used to mock a peer for
failing to lure a customer.
"Kongaz" or "kongiri" is used for a customer
who complains about prices
without arriving at any buy. "Yadya basa" is when
one manages to sell goods,
albeit at an exorbitant price to an unsuspecting
customer. Rands are
referred to as "marara" while the US dollar has been
christened "magreen" or
just "grinazi".
So cunning are some of the
female traders that they can give you a hug or
plant a soft kiss on your
cheek as part of "customer care".
Gentle reader, black market dealers are
now drunk with mischief and
something needs to be urgently done to ensure
they stop condemning ordinary
Zimbabweans to poverty.
Superstar
Oliver Mtukudzi, in one of his timeless classics sang:
Hope hadzina
ndima,
Hadzina, ndima
Ukagudugudza wasaririra.
But until
when will we be expected to put up with the illegal because
someone out
there is trying to eke out a living?
Old Testament prophet Jeremiah is on
record as having cried out to God:
"Yahweh, why do the ways of the wicked
prosper?"
In the same vein, I believe no one can be adjudged mischievous
for daring to
ask as to whether black market activities cannot be put to an
immediate end.
It is clear the blokes are trading in violation of
publicly imposed
regulations such as rationing laws, laws against certain
goods, and official
rates of exchange among currencies.
They are
providing scarce goods readily and one wonders as to where they get
them.
The underground economy seems to be thriving at the expense of
the formal
market, affecting the lives of the ordinary man.
Life in
the ghettos, my main constituency, has been grossly affected by the
illegal
parallel market.
Cheers that accompanied the slashing of beer prices and
the cost of other
commodities have vanished. What with news that beer, which
is supposed to
cost $30 000 a pint in bottle stores, is no longer readily
available.
You can now only find it on the black market for anything
between $80 000
and $120 000 for the same unit.
The dreaded Eagle
lager, a bottled version of masese, is the only brand
available and it is
now common to see guzzlers doing justice to it --
pamunyatso wegondo
adhala.
Shebeen queens are now also back in business. These
businesspeople, the kind
that respects nobody except themselves, can chase
you away for daring to
negotiate a lower price.
"Iwe ibva pano. If
you can't afford these prices, just leave. Hapana munhu
akambosungwa nekuti
murombo," they brag using their coarse and unpolished
language.
But
for how long can this be allowed to stretch?
"This is just dangerous. At
a time when we were celebrating the return of
our lost pride, things are now
worse. Kill the black market. It's just not
good for anyone.
"Fushira
mwoyo, the Scud. That rough beer is no longer available on the
formal
market. Let's fight the black market because it is now causing more
suffering to the people," charged Takunda Muteredzi of Highfield.
The
police, he said, must arrest all people behind the black market.
Takunda
is not the only person who is bitter about the goings on.
"Government has
played its part and we must complement its efforts. The
President cannot
come and feed us. Let's boycott the black market and
everything will be fine
for the rest of the country," cooed Monica Maendesa.
Gentle reader, the
black market has become a flood that is fast eroding the
ordinary man's
purchasing power.
The President was right when he said "Musatora urombo
hwevanhu muchiisa
mudumbu menyu" in reference to businesspeople who were
hiking prices
willy-nilly.
"Poverty is just dangerous. We must treat
other people fairly. The police
must arrest all black market dealers and
ensure that munhu wese anorarama
nenzira dziri pasi pemutemo," said a top
businessman who spoke on condition
of anonymity.
In light of the
evils of the black market, "Dr Love" Paul Matavire was
correct when he
sang:
Munhu akanaka, akarara.
But akarara anorota
horror,
Saka munhu is no good zvamuchose.