Dear Friends

Please find attached my end of year report to my constituents which will this week be printed and circulated throughout Bulawayo South. I have also attached 3 photographs which I hope will not clog up your systems. The first is a photograph of me, Councillor A.G. Ndlovu and volunteer workers at the new Aids victims self help centre being built in Umgwanin. The second is a shot of the opening of the Bulawayo South Constituency office (my great friend Abednigo Bhebhe MP for Nkayi is speaking in the foreground) and the third is a rather blurred shot of me handing over the Presidential Challenge Heads of Argument to President Wade of Senegal in Dakar. Mug shots galore!

Happy Christmas to you all.

Best wishes, David Coltart

    HARARE, Zimbabwe — With the new school year set to begin next month, the
government of President Robert Mugabe has ordered a tenfold increase in fees
at state schools, forcing many parents to stop educating their children.
     "That's it. It's the end," said a father of two in a suburban
supermarket east of the capital, Harare, looking for something he could
afford to feed his family.
    "We won't send the children to school next year. There is nothing else
to do."
    The man, a junior civil servant in a vehicle-repair workshop on the edge
of the city, added: "Don't ask my name; you know why."
    Parents run the financial affairs at most of the 6,000-plus government
schools in Zimbabwe, and they have been holding meetings to set fees for
January.
    With interest rates soaring to between 400 percent and 500 percent and
inflation topping 1,000 percent according to private-sector economists,
governing bodies say they have no alternative but to ask parents to pay more
for school.
    At one high school, in the Mabvuku township, about 10 miles east of
Harare, fees are going up less than in many other places, from about 75
cents to about $7.50 a term.
    It is a school for children in a working-class neighborhood where up to
80 percent are unemployed.
     At Lewisam Primary, a government school in a richer suburb, where the
pupils come from middle-income families, fees have gone up from about $2.80
to about $37.
    Education Minister Aenias Chigwedere blamed "unscrupulous" schools,
rather than the economy, for the increases, which he condemned as a scandal.
     The hard-currency value of the Zimbabwean dollar does not reflect the
extraordinary and unprecedented pain of the ordinary family trying to feed
itself and pay school fees.
     A U.S. dollar is equivalent to about 15,000 Zimbabwean dollars on the
black market, which is where most foreign currency changes hands, including
at banks.
     Most factories are now paying their lowest-paid workers about $18 a
month. Rent, fuel and other everyday items are priced according to the
black-market value of U.S. dollars and are therefore out of reach of many
workers.
     World Bank statistics on Zimbabwe show that two years ago it had the
highest literacy rate in Africa, at about 97 percent between the ages of 15
and 24. Last year, 2.4 million children attended school and were served by
61,000 teachers.
     Fidelis Mahashu, a lawmaker from the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change, said: "The quality of education is deteriorating fast, and the new
school fees must not be used by the government to prevent children from
going to school.
    "Every child has a fundamental right to education, and fees must be
affordable. It is the responsibility of the government to not only
superintend schools, but to provide adequate funds so every child can go."

Zimbabwe's ruling party is currently experiencing its most intense economic and political challenge in its 20-year history. This book, written in an easy-to-read journalistic style, charts these troubled times. It takes the reader inside Robert Mugabe's party, ZANU-PF, and the oppositional Movement for Democratic Change. The author has met with members of both parties who have been prepared to talk candidly.

The book considers critics and observers, the huge role played by the independent press and the often contradictory responses to Mugabe from the international community. It also looks at the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans living in a collapsing economy. Finally, it considers Zimbabwe's future - the challenge that lies ahead to rebuild the country

The Battle for Zimbabwe contains harrowing reports of human rights abuses and an epilogue on whether the situation across our border could affect South Africa. More than 1000 people were interviewed for the book and, at the launch, Geoff will give his views on what he believes is now "the final countdown" in the battle for Zimbabwe.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Geoff Hill grew up in Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe. In 1980, he joined the Manica Post newspaper on the border of Zimbabwe and Mozambique and, after the nationalisation of the press in 1982, he moved to Australia and spent eight years with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. In the past twenty years, he has worked in Australia, the USA, Britain, Zimbabwe nd several other African countries, and is currently Africa correspondent for the Washington Times.
In September 2000 he became the first non-American to receive a John Steinbeck Award for short-story writing, and he also won the 2000 Common-wealth Short Story Award for Africa.

SOKWANELE

Enough is Enough

Zimbabwe

PROMOTING NON-VIOLENT PRINCIPLES TO ACHIEVE DEMOCRACY

We have a fundamental right to freedom of expression!

Sokwanele reporter

17 December 2003

Zimbabwe's apparent knee jerk decision to pull out of the Commonwealth of Nations last week is proof that President Robert Mugabe, is repeating the same political blunder that South Africa committed when it voluntarily pulled out of the Club in 1961, a leading lawyer said this week.

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) shadow minister for justice and constitutional affairs, David Coltart, says Zimbabwe's decision to leave the Commonwealth is isolationist and ill-thought. Coltart argues that the decision made on Monday last week, will disadvantage Zimbabwe internationally contrary to government claims that Zimbabwe has nothing to lose by leaving the 54-member Commonwealth.

In 1961, the then South African prime minister and apartheid apologist, Hendrik Verwoerd, led his country out of the Commonwealth after the club condemned his regime apartheid policies. Coltart draws a parallel between Verwoerd's position then and Mugabe's position 42 years later. "There are several parallels not just because these are African leaders but they are both leaders that have picked a fight with Britain and have used the issue of race as the centrepiece of their political programmes and have
both presided over tyrannical regimes," Coltart said.

Zimbabwe was suspended from the Councils of the Commonwealth of Nations in
March 2002 after the international community accused Mugabe of poll fraud in the Presidential elections. The country's long catalogue of human rights abuses including the beating up and killing of opposition opponents, the muzzling of the press and emasculation of the judiciary have not endeared Mugabe nor his regime. From a celebrated statesman who at independence preached reconciliation and nation-building to a iron-fisted tyrant of equal standing to Malawi's Kamuzu Banda, Uganda's Idi Amin, Nigeria's Sani Abacha, Mugabe has squandered all the international goodwill Zimbabwe enjoyed.

Coltart said like Verwoerd's apartheid regime, Mugabe has fashioned his own banana republic and both men on recognising that their positions internationally have become untenable resorted to isolationist approaches than democratic reforms. In arriving that the decision to quit the Commonwealth, the government of Zimbabwe has played to the ruling party whims. The ruling party has passed a resolution to terminate the country's
membership to the Commonwealth. This was endorsed by Cabinet. Currently, the ruling party caucus has further called for the expulsion of British, Canadian, New Zealand and Australian envoys from Zimbabwe. The opposition part, MDC has opposed plans to boot foreign envoys from Zimbabwe. "I think the Mugabe regime has constantly miscalculated when it comes to the opposition," said Coltart, adding that "Zanu PF adopted a very cynical attitude to the elections both in 2000 and in the presidential elections in 2002. Their calculation was that they could manipulate the election victory and over period of time crush the opposition and any international condemnation would wane and they could secure their admission to the international community institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF and for that matter the Commonwealth." A major miscalculation on the government's part, argued Coltart, was the power of the opposition to communicate to the outside world what was going on in Zimbabwe - the killing of opposition members and the banning of the only independent daily paper, The Daily News. "Over the years it was the Chogm meeting in Lusaka that really moved the people to peace process culminating the Lancaster House talks, " he said. "It was also the Commonwealth that played an important role in ending apartheid and it was the Commonwealth that was to play this unique role in bringing about reconciliation in our country and resolving the crisis we face as a nation. So the withdrawal is a great loss for Zimbabwe."
ends

Everybody Wants to Rule the Web
by Adam Thierer and Wayne Crews

Adam Thierer is director of telecommunications studies and Wayne Crews is
director of technology studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
They are the editors of "Who Rules the Net? Internet Governance and
Jurisdiction" (Cato Institute, 2003)

There's mounting evidence that the Internet's good old days as a global
cyber-zone of freedom -- where governments generally take a "hands off"
approach -- may be numbered. In fact, last week, delegates from 192
countries met in Geneva to discuss how the Internet should be governed and
what steps should be taken to solve the global "digital divide" and "harness
the potential of information" on behalf of the world's poor. Also on the
table at the session -- the United Nations World Summit on the Information
Society -- was the question of domain name management and how much
protection free speech and expression should receive on the Net.

The real issue, however, is whether a "U.N. for the Internet" is on the way.
Last week's summit and another in 2005 will discuss whether Internet
decisionmaking should be shifted from largely private management to the
United Nations.

In one sense, none of this is surprising. Regulators across the globe have
long been clamoring for greater control over content and commerce on the
Internet. Ironically, in the guise of protecting the world's citizens,
Statists around the world want to get their hands on one of the world's most
liberating communications technologies.

While the U.N. conferees have "generously" agreed to retain language that
enshrines free speech, despite the disapproval of countries such as China
and Iran, these matters are far from settled. There've been a few notable
international cyber-spats already, such as a French court's attempt to force
Yahoo! to block the sale of offensive Nazi materials to French citizens, and
an Australian court's ruling that the online version of Dow Jones
publication Barron's could be subjected to that country's libel laws. And
Chinese officials have attempted to censor the search engines Google,
AltaVista and Yahoo!

Apart from speech and libel laws, sales taxes, privacy policies, antitrust
statutes, intellectual property laws, and that fearsome "digital divide" are
other hot button issues that will undoubtedly find their way onto the U.N.
agenda. What gives foreign bureaucrats the right to wrap their tentacles
around the World Wide Web? How can a Web site operator know how to act or do
business in this confusing legal environment? And who really should have
jurisdiction over Internet activities anyway?

We examine these complicated questions in a new Cato Institute book, Who
Rules the Net? The threat a patchwork of international laws poses for online
vendors and the growth of e-commerce arises from the fact that compliance
with 190 different legal codes would be confusing, costly, and technically
impossible for all but the most well-heeled firms. A Web site operator's
only option would be to conform its online speech or commercial activities
to the most restrictive laws on the planet to ensure global compliance. If
you like the idea of Zimbabwe's dictator du jour setting libel standards for
everyone on Earth, this sort of lowest common denominator regulation is the
legal regime for you.

If enough countries start playing these games, the threat of retaliation and
potential trade wars increases as cross-border legal spats intensify over
privacy, gambling, pornography, intellectual property, and tax policy. All
these interventions provide footholds for poorer nations to effect wealth
transfers from wealthier nations to address digital divides and poverty
largely of their own making -- problems rooted in fundamentally inept or
despotic governance rather than Internet governance.

The implications for online commerce are profound. The moment one puts a Web
site online, one has "gone global." Should that mean you have automatically
and willingly subjected yourself to the laws of every country on the planet?
Shouldn't the origin of content matter?

This is one reason some favor the "U.N. for the Net" model. But others have
suggested that international treaties or adjudication by the World Trade
Organization might offer the better approach. Still others assert that the
best answer is to do nothing because the current unregulated Web environment
has helped expand free speech and commerce globally for companies, consumers
and citizens alike.

We favor the latter. But to the extent pure laissez-faire is not an option,
"country of origin" standards may provide the best default solution. That
is, government should only exert authority over those actors who physically
reside within the confines of their traditional geographic borders. In this
sense, an origin-based jurisdictional methodology protects sovereignty while
simultaneously giving meaning to the notion of "consent of the governed" in
an online setting. Healthy jurisdictional regulatory and tax competition via
origin-based rules would allow companies and consumers to have a "release
valve" or escape mechanism to avoid oppressive jurisdictions that seek to
stifle online commerce or expression.

Software-enabled geographic targeting may increasingly play a role, too.
Particularly as U.N. power-grabbing grows more extensive, businesses may
choose to avoid interaction by using geo-location technologies to
selectively target their services instead of making materials available to
the entire planet. Such targeting may be the better approach from a
marketing perspective anyway. But to have it forced by U.N. shenanigans
would be unfortunate.

The great advantage of the Net is precisely the ability to reach as many
people as possible and overcome artificial restrictions on trade or
communications at traditional geographic boundaries. The Web, whatever
problems it has raised, has provided far more opportunity and freedom to
mankind. The U.N. appears eager to assume greater control over the Net, not
because of it's failures, but because it undermines members' authority. That
sounds like the best reason ever to make sure a U.N. for the Internet never
becomes a reality.