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Travails of spending day in a fuel queue
By Abel Mutsakani Deputy Editor-in-Chief 12/19/02 3:31:34 AM (GMT +2)
JAMES Chirove, a Harare business executive, believes he has found asmarter way to fill up his car with petrol that beats queuing for hours atthe capital city's congested service stations.
He sneaks his motorbike through the long queue of cars, up to thepumps where the attendants always seem too busy haggling with impatientmotorists to notice him as they quickly fill up his bike's 10-litre tank andtell him to go away.
In about seven trips, Chirove will have emptied enough petrol into the64-litre tank of his Mazda 626 parked at home and will still have some fuelleft over in the bike for the next petrol-hunting spree.
"Can you imagine, this is how bad things have become," he tells theFinancial Gazette, barely suppressing his anger.
"For as long as the people who are in charge of the country todayremain in control, then we Zimbabweans are a condemned lot."
Like other motorists with vehicles parked in a queue stretching formore than two kilometres from the fuel pumps at Marimba shopping centre inHarare's affluent Belvedere suburb, Chirove is not just bitter about thegovernment's handling of the severe fuel crisis that has gripped Zimbabwe inthe last five weeks.
He is also angry over the state's general mishandling of the entireeconomic crisis engulfing the country.
Zimbabwe is in the throes of its worst economic and social crisissince independence from Britain 22 years ago.
Fuel supplies have been erratic since 1999 due to a hard cash squeeze,while drought and the government's agrarian reforms have left other basiccommodities such as cooking oil, sugar, salt, bread and essential drugs inshort supply.
In the last few weeks, the shortage of fuel, especially petrol, hasreached alarming proportions, almost forcing Zimbabwe to grind to a haltwith long, winding queues a common sight at the handful of garages stillselling petrol in Harare and other major centres.
President Robert Mugabe, who blames the country's economic and foodproblems on political opponents at home and foreign interests he says wantto punish him for seizing white-owned farms for redistribution to landlessblacks, has blamed the deepening fuel crisis on inefficiency by somegovernment officials.
Officials at the state-owned National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM)have failed to take advantage of a deal with oil producer Libya, he told anannual ruling ZANU PF conference last weekend.
Under the agreement, Zimbabwe buys oil in local currency in exchangefor Libyan joint-ventures with Harare in tourism and exports of beef andsoya beans.
But for Zimbabwe's motorists, bracing for a bleak Christmas withoutfuel, the long queues they have to endure at pump stations, the foodshortages, the crumbling health sector and the country's collapsingfactories are all a sign of how Mugabe has ruined an economy that not solong ago was a showcase of hope for Africa.
The anger of most of the people queuing for fuel is almost palpableand invariably all motorists interviewed by the Financial Gazette during atour of garages in Harare last weekend were directing their rage at Zimbabwe's leaders.
"This!" a man waiting with other motorists at a Mobil garage nearHarare's High Glen shopping complex said, as he angrily waved a copy of lastSaturday's Herald newspaper at our news crew.
The headline on the lead story of that day's issue of the state-owneddaily screamed: "Hard Decisions Vital: President."
The article quoted Mugabe informing delegates to the ZANU PFconference that hard decision and tough measures were necessary to turnaround the economy and save people from the hardships they were facing.
The man brandishing the Herald - part of the small crowd that had nowgathered around our news crew - identified himself only as Solo andcontinued with his tirade: "Only Mugabe and his government have a harddecision to take, and that is all of them must resign because they havemessed up this country.
"No petrol, no food, no jobs: must we all die before these guys admitthey have failed to run this country?"
It was perhaps easy to understand Solo's desperate frustration.
The previous day, he and most of the about 200 other motorists queuingat the High Glen garage had waited for their turn to fill up their carsuntil 10 o'clock in the evening, when the pumps were closed.
Solo and his colleagues had returned to the garage at dawn, hoping tobe the first in line when the pumps reopened. But three hours later, theywere still waiting because the service station's petrol supplies hadactually run out the previous night.
Joseph Mupande said: "We are waiting, one: because you cannot affordto waste the little petrol still in the car looking around for a garage withfuel and secondly, we are just hoping these guys here might just receiveanother delivery of fuel from NOCZIM."
At a BP Shell garage in the high-density suburb of Budiriro Five,about five kilometres from High Glen shopping mall, we joined a long andwinding queue of cars and commuter omnibuses that appeared relativelyorderly.
For two hours the queue inched forward at a painfully slow pace. Thensuddenly, and to our pleasant surprise, the cars began moving faster. Whenwe finally emerged from behind the shop buildings into full view of thepetrol pumps, the reason the queue had suddenly picked up pace becamepainfully clear.
Motorists were driving away because
there was no more petrol. And suchis the test of endurance that the simple
act of filling up a car has becomein Zimbabwe.
FinGaz
10 000 cattle
succumb to drought in Mat
South
12/19/02 3:26:29 AM
(GMT +2)
BULAWAYO - More than 10 000 head
of cattle in Matabeleland South have
succumbed to drought in the past three
months, worsening the damage already
inflicted by rustlers to the province's
herd, it was learnt this week.
Cattle
industry officials said among the areas hardest hit by the dry
spell in the
province, which falls under Zimbabwe's natural region five and
is perennially
dry, were Beitbridge, Gwanda, Filabusi, Insiza, Kezi
and
Matopo.
According to statistics
from the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU), the
commercial herd in Matabeleland
North and South has fallen from 300 000 two
years ago to 60 000 because of
drought, disease, rustling and destocking
resulting from the land reform
programme.
"The situation is very critical
as far as livestock is concerned,"
Stuart Hargreaves, the director of
Veterinary Services, told the Financial
Gazette. "The reports I have indicate
that about 10 000 cattle have died in
that part of the country (Matabeleland
South). There is a shortage of
pasture because of the erratic
rainfall.
"We are getting reports of
cattle dying everyday and if the rains do
not come soon, we are going to have
a disaster on our hands."
He said areas
outside Matabeleland South that had received some rain
in the past few weeks
were not as badly affected.
"The reports
that I have show that Matabeleland South is the hardest
hit. It has always
been a problem area," Hargreaves said.
He
was however unable to say how many head of cattle had died because
of drought
around the country, adding that the figure of 10 000 for
Matabeleland South
did not reflect the cattle that died in the bush and were
not
reported.
Mac Crawford, the deputy
national chairman of the CFU, who is also
head of the organisation's
Matabeleland branch, said commercial farmers were
concerned that the
province's commercial herd would be wiped out if there
was still no rain by
Christmas.
He told the Financial Gazette:
"We are in trouble, cattle are dying
everyday. The figure of 10 000 could be
an under statement. This region has
had little
rain.
"It is very dry and cattle have no
pasture and water to drink. They
are dying in large numbers. We are doing a
survey to determine the actual
figures but I believe those that have died as
a result of the drought are
over 10
000."
He said the situation had been
worsened by the eviction of commercial
farmers in Mashonaland and other areas
with pasture, who in the past had
assisted drought-stricken
areas.
"During the drought of 1991-1992 we
got a lot of assistance from
farmers in Mashonaland who sent us grass. But
now they are no longer on the
farms and we can't get that help," Crawford
said.
According to CFU statistics,
Zimbabwe's commercial herd has fallen to
160 000 from 1.7 million two years
ago.
Crawford said: "The commercial herd
has taken a huge knock because of
a combination of factors, among them farm
evictions and the drought. The
communal herd has also been affected by the
drought.
"The farmers can't buy stockfeed
because of the high prices. I don't
think the price controls on stock feeds
will help because the cattle have
already started dying and they are dying in
large numbers."
FinGaz
Only $70m Byo council funds
recovered
12/19/02 3:27:51 AM
(GMT +2)
BULAWAYO - The cash-strapped
Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has this year
recovered only $70 million of the
$1.5 billion it is owed by residents, the
government and industry in
outstanding rentals and other supplementary
charges, municipal officials said
this week.
hey said the resulting cashflow
problems had forced the Japhet
Ndabeni-Ncube-led council to resolve to shelve
plans to implement a massive
housing project to provide 70 000 low-cost
houses near the Joshua Mqabuko
Nkomo International
Airport.
The officials said ratepayers
were ignoring final demand letters
issued by the council, while those whose
water supplies were disconnected
for non-payment were not making any effort
to settle their debts.
"There is nothing,
people are not coughing up," Lennox Mhlanga, the
senior public relations
officer of the Bulawayo City Council, told the
Financial Gazette. "I think it
has to do with the prevailing harsh
economic
environment.
"The council is
trying by all means to have these monies recovered but
only about $70 million
has so far been recovered. We need these funds to
give quality service to the
residents."
Council officials said the
government had not yet approved the
municipality's application to be allowed
to borrow $2.3 billion from the
financial markets to fund capital projects
proposed for next year.
"We don't have
money and as we are talking, we are in the red," said
Charles Mpofu, chairman
of the city council's finance and development
community. "There is no money
to start new projects. We have resolved to
suspend all capital
projects.
"What we are doing is to finish
the projects that have already been
started. At the same time, we don't want
to burden the long suffering
residents."
FinGaz
Mining royalty scheme to empower
communities
Staff
Reporter
12/19/02 3:27:18 AM (GMT
+2)
RURAL communities located near mining
concessions could earn at least
$5 million every month under new regulations
introduced by the government in
December, according to Mines and Energy
Minister Edward Chindori-Chininga.
The
regulations allow for the creation of 14 gold-buying concession
areas around
the country which are each expected to produce 150 kilogrammes
of gold every
month.
Gold producers in the concession
areas will pay to the communities
they operate under a royalty of 0.5 percent
of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
(RBZ)'s gold floor support price, which is
presently $7 000 per gramme of
gold.
Chindori-Chininga said this would entitle rural district councils
(RDCs) in
the concession areas to $35 for every gramme of gold paid for by
the central
bank.
"The royalty scheme will be 0.5
percent of the amount of gold
purchased and will be payable by the RBZ to
every rural district council
whose area has any gold purchased under a
permit," Chindori-Chininga said.
"The
total royalty that will be payable to the rural district council
by the RBZ
will be at least $5 million a month to ensure that they benefit
from the
exploitation of their natural resources."
The royalty scheme is similar to one administered by the Communal
Areas
Management Programme of Indigenous Resources, which was launched in
1989 to
empower rural communities through the sustainable use of
wildlife.
RDCs will use money received
under the royalty scheme to implement
developmental projects and improve the
lives of rural communities living
near mining
areas.
Chindori-Chininga said his ministry
would consult the RDCs every month
to find out the progress of the projects
they would undertake using money
from the scheme. He said the ministry would
liaise with local communities to
also monitor that the funds were not
mismanaged.
The royalty scheme is part of
measures gazetted by the government this
month to regulate alluvial gold
panning and small-scale mining activities.
The regulations are expected to
aid in the indigenisation of the gold
mining
sector.
FinGaz
Orphanages not spared food
shortages
By Zhean Gwaze Staff
Reporter
12/19/02 3:30:56 AM (GMT
+2)
AT LEAST two million orphaned
Zimbabwean children face starvation and
acute malnutrition because of the
country's economic crisis and food
shortages, with many likely to run out of
food stocks before the next maize
harvest in
April.
According to statistics from the
National AIDS Council (NAC), at least
two million Zimbabwean children have no
parents and 700 000 of them have
been orphaned by
AIDS.
An official with the NAC, who
declined to be named because he is not
the organisation's designated
spokesman, told the Financial Gazette:
"According to statistics, there are
two million orphans in the country who
are either homeless, displaced and
abandoned.
"About 700 000 are orphaned by
the HIV/AIDS pandemic."
Representatives of
local orphanages this week said children's homes
had been hard hit by
Zimbabwe's economic crisis and food shortages resulting
from drought and a
controversial government land reform programme that has
cut food production
by at least 60 percent this year.
The
agrarian reforms have led to the appropriation of more than 90
percent of the
country's white-owned commercial farms for the resettlement
of landless
blacks, many of who do not have the resources to farm on
a
large-scale.
The combined impact of
drought and the land reforms has left Zimbabwe
with a significant maize and
wheat deficit, forcing the country to import
grain at a time it is also
facing a serious hard currency crisis.
Officials at the country's orphanages said many children's homes were
likely
to run out of the little food stocks they had before the maize
harvest next
April.
Joyce Chavarika, deputy
superintendent of the Matthew Rusike Children'
s Home in Epworth near Harare
told the Financial Gazette: "We are not
confident that we will be sustained
until the next harvest in April because
our food stocks are
insufficient."
Matthew Rusike, founded in
1950, needs about two tonnes of maize per
month to feed the 100 children in
its care. The orphanage has the capacity
to house 120 children but does not
have adequate resources.
Chavarika said
since July, the home had been feeding children with
food donated by well
wishers, but this was insufficient to meet demand. The
orphanage last
received maize from the state-controlled Grain Marketing
Board (GMB) in
July.
Orphanage officials said the GMB's
monopoly over trade in wheat and
maize made it impossible for children's
homes to stock large quantities of
grain, which would alleviate some of their
problems.
SOS Children's Village deputy
national director Gary Birditt said:
"The GMB will not allow us to hold any
stock of maize, but their supplies
are not frequent and not
enough.
"Unless the GMB increases its
supplies, we are going to fail to meet
our obligation to more than 3 000
children that we look after in
our
villages."
SOS is supposed to
provide 10 kgs of maize every month to each child
under its care, but the
food crisis has made this impossible.
In
the past, orphanages supplemented grain supplies with bread and
rice donated
by well wishers, but because of wheat shortages and price
controls imposed
last year, bread is difficult to secure from bakeries,
forcing staff members
to spend most of their time in food
queues.
However, bread is available in a
thriving black market at more than
treble the controlled
price.
While rice is also still in supply
at most supermarkets, prices have
also risen significantly in the past year,
making it unaffordable for not
only the orphanages but their donors as
well.
Drought and the agrarian reforms
have also slashed the number of
donors who in the past supported children's
homes.
Maria Sithole, the director of the
Harare Children's Home which looks
after more than 100 orphans, said most of
the home's donors were farmers,
but many were now unable to spare anything
for charity because of poor
harvests.
Mike Murefu, a 12-year old orphan at Matthew Rusike, told the
Financial
Gazette: "These food shortages paint a bleak future for orphans
because the
donors who send us food aid are unable to do so because of
the
crisis."
He said in the past, the
home supplemented donations with produce from
its 4 500-hectare garden and
from rearing poultry and pigs.
But this
year, the home has been forced to kill most of its animals
because it has no
stockfeed to sustain them, while drought has cut output
from the home's
garden and produce has been insufficient to meet
demand.
He said morale at the home had
fallen because some of the children
could not understand why food supplies
were now low and erratic.
Orphanage
officials said organisations caring for orphaned and
abandoned children now
had no option but to look to the government
for
assistance.
But resources allocated
to the department of social welfare have
dwindled in the past few years while
Zimbabweans in need of financial
assistance from the government have
increased because of the HIV/AIDS
pandemic as well as rising unemployment and
homelessness.
About 25 percent of
Zimbabweans are said to be infected with HIV, the
virus that causes AIDS, and
2 000 die from AIDS-related illnesses every day.
Meanwhile, unemployment has
topped 70 percent, increasing the number of
adults and children in need of
social welfare.
According to the United
Nations' Children's Fund, the number of
children orphaned by HIV/AIDS will
rise 20 percent by 2010 in Zimbabwe,
Lesotho and Botswana. Many of these
children are infected with HIV
themselves and have special needs that are
already taxing the resources of
their care
givers.
Chavarika said Matthew Rusike's
medical bill was huge because of the
number of children that had to be
treated for the opportunistic infections
associated with HIV
infection.
But the social welfare
department is unable to meet the needs of most
orphans, making available a
paltry $600 000 to each children's home a year.
The homes however have annual
budgets exceeding $20 million.
Chavarika
said: "We are dependent on donors because the government
cannot help us with
much."
In addition, officials at
children's homes said they had difficulty
accessing funds from the NAC, which
distributes money raised through a
national AIDS levy to individuals and
organisations affected by the
pandemic.
The officials said the NAC concentrated on assisting organisations
dealing
with HIV/AIDS patients at the expense of
orphans.
However, it was not possible to
secure comment on these charges from
NAC director Everisto Marowa, who was
said to be away on leave.
But orphanage
officials said despite the difficulties facing the
government and donors, the
welfare of the country's orphaned children should
continue to be a
priority.
Sithole told the Financial
Gazette: "Although the government and
donors are facing a crisis, we urge
them to continue offering the best they
can so that we meet the obligations
of the Child Protection and Adoption
Act, which says all orphans should be
helped to grow into autonomous
adults."
FinGaz
2003 has all the ingredients of a stormy
year
By Sydney Masamvu Assistant
Editor
12/19/02 3:30:09 AM (GMT
+2)
ZIMBABWE enters a new year in a
fortnight without a workable solution
to a fast deteriorating economic crisis
that analysts this week said could
prove to be the undoing of both the ruling
ZANU PF and the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC).
The analysts said with no respite
to the problems that have bedevilled
the country in the past twelve months,
President Robert Mugabe and his
ruling ZANU PF must act boldly and fast to
arrest the situation or they face
a social uprising in the next
year.
But commentators noted that the main
opposition MDC would also be
judged by its potential to alleviate the
suffering of the majority
of
Zimbabweans.
"The whole economic
decline will reach rock bottom in the new year and
the social upheaval that
will result from it can bring down the present
government in the new year if
it is not contained," economic consultant John
Robertson told the Financial
Gazette.
Robertson spoke as a fuel
shortage gripping Zimbabwe for the last five
weeks threatened to bring the
southern African nation to a halt, with only a
handful of garages in Harare
and other centres still selling fuel this
week.
Queues for food have also lengthened
in the past few weeks as more
retailers have run out of basic commodities
whose prices have been frozen by
the government in what it says is an attempt
to protect consumers from the
soaring cost of
living.
But manufacturers hurt by the
price freeze have scaled down production
of controlled products, worsening
the shortages already accompanying
Zimbabwe's economic crisis, drought and
agrarian reforms that have
contributed to reduced agricultural
output.
The price controls have also
spawned a black market in almost all
products, where the cost of goods has
more than trebled in the past year,
making even basic foodstuffs unaffordable
for most people, whose incomes
have been eroded by inflation that is expected
to top 500 percent in 2003.
According to
recent government statistics, about eight million
Zimbabweans, at least two
thirds of the population, need emergency food aid
because of drought and the
land reform programme.
Analysts expect the
number of food insecure people to shoot up next
year if southern Africa is
hit by another drought.
The Southern
Africa Development Community Monitoring Centre last week
issued its first
drought warning, urging countries to prepare
contingency
measures.
Analysts said
even if Zimbabwe received normal rainfall, agricultural
output might still
decline next year because most of the farmers resettled
under the land reform
programme did not have the resources to produce enough
to feed the
nation.
University of Zimbabwe Institute
of Development Studies associate
professor Brian Raftopoulos said the
pressures building on the government
because of the economic crisis would
next year force it to reengage the
international community and its opponents
at home.
He said this might be crucial to
avert a revolt by a population
stretched to the
limit.
Raftopoulos said: " The economic
situation has reached depressing
levels and all the symptoms of a total
collapse are now evident.
"This situation
is unsustainable in the new year because it will cause
a social explosion
that can undermine the government."
He
said the crisis engulfing Zimbabwe would give more leverage to
South Africa
to successfully push for the resumption of national dialogue
between ZANU PF
and the MDC.
South African President Thabo
Mbeki was quoted in the media telling
delegates at this week's African
National Congress conference that his
government was ready to "engage ZANU PF
and "all others" in an attempt to
resolve the Zimbabwe
crisis.
Raftopoulos ruled out the
possibility of the Commonwealth expelling
Zimbabwe in a bid to pressure
Mugabe to deal with the country's problems,
saying the organisation was more
likely to seek the direct involvement of
South Africa to resolve the
crisis.
He said: "The economic meltdown
actually strengthens the role South
Africa will play in seeking the
normalisation of the situation, which it has
been pushing for but has failed
to achieve.
"The economic conditions have
deteriorated to an extent that the
Zimbabwean government would have no choice
but listen to South Africa, or it
will be left to sink. South Africa will
capitalise on this to exert
its
influence."
But analysts said
Zimbabweans should not underestimate ZANU PF's trump
card, its control of the
defence forces and powerful legislation that it can
wield to crush
dissent.
The laws, especially the Public
Order and Security Act and the Access
to Information and Protection of
Privacy Act, hamper free expression,
freedom of the Press and of assembly,
and have been used to haul government
critics before the
courts.
Commentators this week said the
challenges facing the ruling party
could also apply to the MDC, which next
year would also have to prove that
it had viable solutions to end
Zimbabweans' suffering.
They said while
many Zimbabweans had been willing to give the main
opposition party the
benefit of the doubt in the past three years because
they were disillusioned
with ZANU PF, the MDC would now sink or swim on its
ability to convince the
nation that its ideas for resolving the country's
political and economic
problems were sustainable.
In the past few
months, the MDC and other civic society groups have
been accused of running
out of ideas to solve Zimbabwe's political and
economic
crisis.
"In the past year, the MDC has
managed to survive under repression,
but the challenge they face now is how
can they bring in a new dispensation
to stem the economic crisis," Robertson
said.
He said MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai's proposal of a year long
transitional government that would pave
the way for a fresh presidential
election was a realistic compromise and
could be the starting point for
economic and political
stability.
The economic consultant said
the proposal might be welcomed by ZANU PF
moderates, who realised Mugabe
might have to give way to a successor.
Robertson said: "The international community is not going to deal
with
Zimbabwe with Mugabe on board, anyone else will
do.
"The situation is desperate and every
effort has to be made to avert
an upheaval in the new
year."
FinGaz -
Comment
Read the
signs
12/19/02 2:27:15 AM
(GMT +2)
FORECASTS by the Economist
Intelligence Unit (EIU) that Zimbabwe will,
for the third year running, have
the world's fastest declining economy in
2003 are most disturbing and
highlight once again the depth of the
country's
crisis.
But these predictions
merely confirm what all right-thinking
Zimbabweans know very well: that
unless decisive and painful action is taken
NOW, the house of cards the
government is busy shoring up with its crisis
management will collapse with
disastrous consequences for everyone.
In a
recent report, the EIU says Zimbabwe's gross domestic product has
fallen by
25 percent since 1999 and will shrink by as much as 8.8 percent
next year,
even though southern Africa's economy is expected to grow by
3.9
percent.
Zimbabweans are already
struggling with the impact of year-on-year
inflation of more than 175
percent, but this could just be the tip of the
iceberg, according to the
think-tank.
Inflation could shoot up to
between 400 and 500 percent next year,
compared to the five percent of
Zimbabwe's neighbours in the region.
The
EIU said: "We expect Zimbabwe's economy to continue contracting
during the
next two years, resulting in increased hardships for the
population at large,
industry and other productive sectors.
"There is a possibility that an enraged population, particularly in
the
cities, will revolt. Worsening food and fuel shortages,
triple-digit
inflation and rising unemployment could provide the spark
leading to mass
protests against the government in
2003."
The signs of discontent are already
there for all to see in the faces
of long-suffering Zimbabweans forced daily
to queue for fuel and food and
often turned away because these commodities
are unavailable or because they
cannot afford
them.
It is also evident in the increased
hostility of the country's
homeless, the poorest of the poor, towards those
they perceive as being
richer than
themselves.
Only this month, a skirmish
over bread resulted in a Harare man's lip
being bitten off, that's how
precious a loaf of bread has become in
this
country.
It is only a matter of
time before these kinds of reports become as
common as the food queues and
empty supermarket shelves that many
Zimbabweans laughed off as a grim fantasy
this time last year.
But even as all the
signs point to the nation's growing impatience
with its worsening poverty and
food insecurity, the government seems unable
or unwilling to offer a viable
solution to the crisis.
The ruling ZANU
PF's sixth annual conference held last week
demonstrates clearly once more,
if anyone needed further proof, that only
the same old, tired and discredited
strategies can be expected from
the
government.
It must be clear by
now, even to a primary school child, that
tightening the monitoring of price
controls will neither reduce prices nor
put goods back on the shelves, yet
that is all ZANU PF can offer as the
resolution to ballooning prices and
product shortages.
Taking over the
infrastructure of multinational oil companies will not
bring fuel to
Zimbabwe. Neither petrol nor diesel flow spontaneously out of
taps. The
government will still be faced with the seemingly unresolvable
problem of
accessing foreign currency to buy fuel.
Zimbabweans must also be disheartened by ZANU PF's continuing
encouragement
of hostility against some sections of the
population.
This is despite the public
media's almost frenzied campaign to bombard
the nation with messages about
national unity ahead of this Sunday's 15th
anniversary of the 1987 unity
accord, and despite the fact that this is a
time Zimbabweans of all races,
ethnic groups, religions and political
affiliations should rally together to
resolve the country's worst economic
crisis in 22
years.
The time is coming when Zimbabweans
will say enough is enough, they
will no longer stand for the government's
prevarication, hate speech and
downright
insensitivity.
We would honestly advise
the country's leaders to read the signs and
take the necessary actions to
avert this truly catastrophic development.
While all Zimbabweans appreciate ZANU PF's continuing control of the
police
and the army, there will come a time when this will no longer be a
deterrent
to a hungry, homeless and poverty-stricken
populace.
The signs are there for all to
see and those who can would do well to
pay heed to them so that they are not
caught unawares.
May God bless Zimbabwe
and its people during this difficult festive
season and the months
ahead.
FinGaz
And now to the
Notebook . . . Bob's visitor
12/19/02 2:24:47 AM (GMT +2)
The Prince is
now fully briefed on the suffering that most Zimbabweans
are enduring and
this is thanks to the courage of a man sources have only
identified as
Nyandoro.
Impeccable sources tell Mukanya
that on December 8, Nyandoro, who
resides in Kambuzuma, decided enough was
enough and resolved he would go to
State House and confront the man in charge
of the mess the country has
become.
On
getting to State House, Nyandoro told the presidential guard
soldiers he
wanted to see VaMugabe. The soldiers allowed him in, probably
thinking he was
a close relative of the President. Mukanya would like to
believe they were
convinced Nyandoro had to be a relative because no man,
unless he is
desperate to die, would dare venture near the gates of State
House without an
invitation.
The Prince was called to
receive his relative but of course, he only
needed one glance to tell that
Nyandoro was not of royal blood.
But
according to the sources, Nyandoro was equally quick and before
the soldiers
could drag him away, he was already narrating why he had come
to see the
President:
"VaPresident zvinhu zvaoma
munyika. Tofa nenzara here? Iyezvino
ndakabata mabhiza angu ndikahwina mari
yakawa-nda asikuti nditange
kabizimisi kanobhuroka nekuti zvinhu hazvina
kumira mushe munyika." (Mr
President, things are tough in the country. Must
we starve to death?
Recently, I won a considerable amount of money through
horse betting but it
is pointless to invest it in any income-generating
project because the
project will collapse because of the harsh economic
environment.)
Of course, it is important
to note that Nyandoro, who surely is lucky
to be still alive, later got a
thorough beating from the soldiers whose
laxity he had
exposed.
But the important thing, as far
as Mukanya is concerned, is that the
truth got straight to the Prince,
undefiled by Professor Jonah or George
Charamba's
editing.
God save us
all
Deputy Transport
and Communications Minister Chris Mushowe was seen on
Thursday last week
jostling with lesser mortals for fuel at a service
station near Five Avenue
shopping centre.
According to Muka-nya's
usually impeccable source, the deputy minister
was even sandwiched between
two commuter omnibuses in the queue, which must
have been a test of endurance
for the chef.
If government ministers who
are at the forefront of telling us the
Zimbabwe/Libya fuel deal is still on
themselves cannot get the commodity,
then God save us
all!
Plenty in the midst of
want
A convoy of ZANU
PF trucks was seen last Wednesday driving along
Lomagundi road that leads to
Chinhoyi, the venue for the sixth ZANU PF
annual conference. The trucks were
heavily leaden with various kinds of food
and drink: tinned beans, fresh
milk, soft drinks, mealie-meal and sugar, you
name
it.
A bemused friend could only ask: "Was
it a national conference they
were having in Chinhoyi or was it a Christmas
party?"
Mukanya must admit he is not so
sure about the correct answer to that
question but at least now we know why
the Prince and his court find it so
hard to comprehend what we mean when we
say there are food shortages in
this
country.
Of
ground-breaking ceremonies & failed
projects
Does anyone
remember former transport minister Enos Chikowore
performing - for that's
what Chikowore used to do before television
cameras - a ground-breaking
ceremony to mark the start of the construction
of the Harare/Chitungwiza rail
link?
This was sometime before the 2000
parliamentary election, yet I doubt
if even a metre of that railway line has
been laid.
Which brings to mind yet
another project that keeps popping up at
election time but remains a mirage,
the Matabeleland Zambezi Water
Project
(MZWP).
Dumiso Dabengwa, who
chairs the MZWP Trust, will tell you this project
will start soon or
sometimes that it is already underway. But God knows
there is no such thing
happening, certainly not in Matabeleland.
Another favourite line of government ministers is that a team of
Malaysian
experts assisting with project X or Y is on its way to Zimbabwe.
That team
has been on its way to this country for several
years.
Made went to
school
Readers might
remember Mukanya asking early this month if anyone knew
which university
awarded Agriculture Minister Dr Joseph Made his doctorate
and in which field
of study.
Well, a good citizen of the
world dug out this information and sent it
to us: "Records show that a Joseph
Mtakwese Made earned a BSc (1980); MSc
(1981) and a PhD (1982) from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in the
Department of Continuing and
Vocational Education."
Well, it's proven
that the good doctor actually did read these
things.
But Mukanya is not so sure if the
University of Wisconsin-Madison
would consider Made one of its best
ambassadors. For instance, would the
American university agree that the best
method of research to determine the
size of your maize harvest is to go up in
the air, preferably in an army
chopper, circle around the country and count
every green thing you see on
the ground, even people wearing green
sunhats?
FinGaz
Zim's children in the diaspora (Part
4)
Masipula
Sithole
12/19/02 2:30:33 AM (GMT
+2)
IN Part One (see Fingaz, November 28
2002), we dealt with the diaspora
at a conceptual level and the dynamics of
those who had left Zimbabwe during
and as a result of the inhospitable
conditions of white-settler rule.
In Part
Two (see Fingaz, December 5 2002), we looked at those who have
since left and
are leaving the country in search of the "good life" which
they find elusive
back home, albeit under a black
government.
In Part Three last week, we
touched on the disturbing phenomenon of
Zimbabwe's children across our
borders; disturbing in that in creating
refugee situations across our
borders, our leaders seem unaware that
conditions for Bwanyamulenge-like
insurgencies are being created across all
our
borders.
This contribution is a
continuation of the themes of the past three
articles in that it seeks to
link Zimbabwe's children in the diaspora with
those of her children who, for
one reason or another, stayed home. It
focuses on the dynamic relationship
between them.
Yet our leaders, for some
reason or another, seem unaware that they
are busy, very busy sowing seeds of
their own destruction. In that sense we
are victims of the curse of history
in that we are repeating it script
by
script.
There are probably 10 000
Zimbabwean professionals in the diaspora as
we speak, some of them earning
handsomely good salaries in "good money".
Even if they were 5 000 of them, it
would still be 4 000 too many of
Zimbabwe's "best and brightest" living and
working out of the country,
unless we had a strategic relationship with them,
which we don't. Instead we
are busy alienating
them.
Skilled labourers in the entire
diaspora are probably 75 000 to 100
000; semi-skilled, unskilled labourers
and refugees are probably in excess
of a million-and-a-half to two million. I
understand somebody has
commissioned a proper study of this phenomenon. If
not, I will. I can even
ask Moyo (the other Moyo) to sponsor
it.
We are probably talking here of two
million to three million
Zimbabweans in the diaspora, near and far. Even half
this number is 75
percent too many, even assuming they are happy wherever
they are, unless
again we had a strategic relationship with them, which,
regrettably, we don'
t have.
They
should be attracted back home, even as tourists. We know they
have relatives
at Tamandayi villages across the country with whom they will
feel obligated
to leave something to buy off their sense of
"great
betrayal".
No, no, no, of course
not. I don't at any moment feel that those
working in the diaspora should
have any sense of guilt or betrayal. Quite to
the contrary, I feel that we
have betrayed our children and run them away to
foreign lands. I honestly do;
at times I get visibly emotional about it.
Nakigwayi zvenyu imi. Jabulani lina. Enjoy yourselves. Chete don't
forget us.
As if that were at all possible.
There is
an organic, almost interminable linkage between those in the
diaspora (far or
near) and "the people", about nine to 10 million of them.
Most important of
these are those referred to by the unsuspecting Simba last
week as a tiny
"hard core" minority who will "not leave Zimbabwe come rain
or
sunshine".
These are the people whom the
late veteran nationalist Maurice
Nyagu-mbo was referring to when he said, in
reply to a question why he would
not leave the country (Rhodesia then): "Some
of us have to remain with the
people." (His book is aptly titled With the
People, 1984).
If you detain or put them
into prisons, they multiply; if you kill
them, they mutate and permutate in
their rebirth. This is not idle talk. The
entire leadership of ZANU PF is
living testimony to this experience; even
Jonathan is a mutation (only a bad
one) of this experience.
Yet they are
busy, very busy forgetting their own experience. Each one
of them, man or
woman, knows I am telling the truth as experienced by them
and
myself.
It's not that we are theorising
here; we are merely giving a
theoretical explanation to our national
experiences. This, after all, is
what I am paid by the state through the
University of Zimbabwe to do, not to
lie or keep quiet about. That to me
would be irresponsible,
almost
unpatriotic.
As I understand it,
those in the diaspora (almost to a family),
particularly during these harsh
and hard times of famine and unemployment,
are sending rands, pounds, euros
and the "almighty US dollar" to help
their
relatives.
The government, in its
blind wisdom, is trying to stop this by
stopping or trying to stop the
parallel market in the hope of generating
foreign currency for itself. Assume
it succeeds in stopping diaspora aid to
the local population, what happens
then?
Without this relief - relief from
relatives in the diaspora - to whom
is the anger and resentment going to be
turned? Hardly at Tony Blair and
George W Bush. The people don't know who
these two foreigners are. It's like
Ian Smith blaming Krhuschev and
Mao-tse-Tung (communism) for his own and his
party's misconception of the
world.
In the past, the people did not
find it difficult to distinguish
between Smith and President Robert Mugabe as
the cause of their misery. For
some reason now we expect them not to
distinguish between Mugabe and
opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai or
whoever as the cause of their
suffering - and still claim
sanity!
Granted, not every family has
relatives in the diaspora. But our
government would have that many less
mouths to feed if it approached its
citizens (both inside and outside the
country) properly. Instead, we are
approaching them in this bully manner, and
without a plan whatsoever. If a
plan exists, reveal it to
us.
Assume the government got all the
foreign currency it wanted. Will it
be used properly and for the needy? But
why are we in the sorry state we are
in today? Is it not our mismanagement
and misappropriation of
foreign
currency?
We are just returning
from a four-year spree of burning billions of
foreign currency in a distant
conflict that hardly threatened our
national
interest.
What did Zimbabwe
gain from the war in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC), really?
There have been private gains, alright. But a national
army is not to be used
for private but for national interests.
Who does Mugabe expect us to believe: the United Nations and the
DRC
government we were trying to rescue, or him in his silence or his
implicated
colleagues? Sure, sure, VaMugabe, no investigation whatsoever?
Even
yokutivhara meso, shuwa, shuwa? Tatadzeiko kuti mutibate zvakadai,
shuwa,
shuwa?
Where is the next war
going to be fought? Is it at home or
abroad?
What I am saying is that even
inside the country we are busy, very
busy alienating those with nowhere to
go. We are embarked on a process of
declaring war against
ourselves.
If and when things run amok
inside the country today or tomorrow as
the result of the hardships we have
no credible answer for, what is the
likely reaction going to be of the
refugees across our immediate borders and
those in the broader
diaspora?
What is the reaction going to be
of those who remained at home whom we
are alienating in so many
ways?
What I am saying is that, wittingly
or unwittingly, we are headed to
far much worse trouble than we have
experienced, hitherto. But our luck in
all this is that this calamity can be
avoided by one person at last acting
responsibly and in the national
interest. But that is also the tragedy of
our
situation.
A "curse" has been defined as
an avoidable calamity or disaster that
is
unavoidable.
Show us if that definition is
wrong.
(I meant this to be the last in
this series on the diaspora, but the
response from many of Zimbabwe's
children in the diaspora asking what they
can do to effect change back home
has been humbling. I feel I should honour
up and give them the benefit of my
thoughts on the issue. Accordingly, Part
Five, which I promise will be the
last in this series, is my reply to this
legitimate question. Musandityira.
As always, I will be responsible
and
patriotic!)
a..
Professor Masipula Sithole is a lecturer of political science at
the
University of Zimbabwe and director of the Harare-based Mass Public
Opinion
Institute. While he is currently on sabbatical leave in the United
States of
America, Sithole can be contacted at e-mail address
msithole@usip.org and telephone number
(202) 429 3819.
FinGaz
An elephant can be killed by small
insects
12/19/02 2:18:02 AM
(GMT +2)
THERE'S is a very important
Ndebele proverb that I would like to open
this article with, it goes . . .
"Indlovu ibulawa yibunyonyo". The
translation, 'An elephant can be killed by
small insects'.
This quote represents a
key message to Zimbabweans that many small
things can overcome a big
thing.
What are the small things that can
make a difference? Women banging
their pots to sound out their anger that
mealie meal is not available, or
that if they want to buy it they must have a
ZANU PF card or have sex with a
grubby 'green
bomber'?
Or the fact that millions of
dollars of production are lost whilst
desperate Zimbabweans queue for fuel,
bread, cooking oil, salt, sugar,
mealie meal, flour, tampons, milk and milk
powder for babies?
We queue to obtain our
identity documents and even to get married. We
queue for transport to go to
work and then again to go home. Zimbabwe has
become a nation of queues and a
nation endowed with too much patience!
What will make us impatient enough to revolt? is it that we will
become too
bored with perpetual queues or will our pockets empty and wear
our patience
thin? There are many issues that have kept our tempers
in
check:
lWe are by nature
peace loving and respectful of
authority.
lPoliticians have
polarised us across tribal, racial, political and
class
lines.
lWe give too much credit to
the words of our politicians and are blind
to their
deeds.
lWe fell for a false
message of reconciliation in 1980.
lAlthough we wanted constitutional reform and the majority voted NO to
ZANU
PF imposed amendments, we abandoned the fight for change midway and
went back
into our 'no politics' cocoon form of
existence.
lWe lacked the
discipline to say NO to a corrupted land reform
campaign and accepted this
version instead of one that would become a
'blueprint' for
Africa.
lMany of us then embraced
the Movement for Democratic Change and
tasked them with doing a job that we
should have done.
MDC were found wanting
in living up to those expectations because they
were unrealistic in the first
place.
So now where are
we?
Well in the year 2000, Zimbabweans
rallied together for a common cause
to change the constitution. We won the
day. However the prize is yet to
be
awarded.
The 'coveted trophy' - a
new constitution that embodies our
sovereignty and reaffirms our status as a
peace-loving nation is yet to
be
secured.
The trophy will not be
given to Morgan Tsvangirai or any other
politician - it can only be awarded
to Zimbabweans at large so we must queue
up to receive
it.
In joining this queue, we must ignore
the fact that we are hungry -
6.7 million Zimbabweans are hungry with us. We
must put out of our minds the
fact that we are bitter about the Gukurahundi
massacre, which was a form of
genocide. 20 000 people disappeared and many
died, their families still
grieve amongst
us.
We must close our eyes to the past
struggle for independence in which
many lives both black and white were lost
and focus on this new struggle
for
democracy.
We ache for those dying
of the HIV/Aids pandemic that is overshadowed
by the politics of the day.
Those patients cannot readily access good
nutrition to give them quality of
life in their final days.
We must brace
ourselves for the crashing of the economy as we head for
the IMF projected
inflation rate of 522.2 percent next year.
Farmers old and new need to queue with us for the right to produce
food for
the nation without political interference, but with access to
collateral and
support in terms of inputs for commercial
production.
Many people have already lost
their jobs -- they need to join us to
remind politicians that they are more
than a statistic. Unemployment is now
85 percent, and 75 percent of the
population is living in dire poverty.
According to an initial census report, the number of resident
Zimbabweans
stands at 11.6 million, although indications are that it should
be 14
million. This means that approximately 2.4 million Zimbabweans are now
living
in the diaspora. They need to lobby in their new locations and where
possible
send help home.
Zimbabwe was already
headed for the economic doldrums before our short
awakening in the year 2000.
But now our attitudes seem steeped in despair
and we seem to lack the energy
to issue the necessary Save Our Souls(SOS)
call for urgent
help.
We need to shake each other from
this sleepwalking and queuing for
change and freedom to participate
politically.
If we are to find our way
through this darkness we must have as our
lights the values of; compassion,
respect, human dignity and
collective
unity.
Many a politician
knows that they have deserted these values, and if
Zimbabweans call for a
restoration of such principles not even 'Mr
Propaganda' could dispute the
call.
It was therefore interesting to read
the speech given by MDC leader,
Morgan Tsvangirai at a fundraising event in
Harare. The MDC leader has
offered ZANU PF a route back onto the morale high
ground.
Tsvangirai made a renewed call for
President Mugabe to retire
immediately and recommended that ZANU PF then work
with MDC to establish a
transitional government. He said: "Unless we begin to
move in that
direction, Zimbabwe will continue to bleed and slide into deeper
chaos."
This is an interesting development
and Zimbabweans must watch
carefully to see how long it will take ZANU PF to
accept the olive branch or
if they remain determined to crush and
burn.
We know that ZANU PF has de-facto
power through the flawed march
election, and that a president can only be
changed through a presidential
election. We know that this is a route certain
people are reluctant to
travel.
However
rumour has it that there are those in ZANU PF who fancy that
they can go to
confession and have some of their sins absolved and once
again become
refreshed. The olive branch has been extended to this
camp.
Yes, we know they will fight amongst
themselves as to who should be
the messenger to State house, who could do the
unseating and then they will
squabble over who could be the 'chief invader'
of the high chair.
Zimbabweans must queue
to attend this 'contest' and supervise from the
sidelines. Once a 'winner'
has been announced, maybe even at the ZANU PF
congress, we must bombard that
person with our expectations.
Their first
priority will be to overcome the humanitarian crisis
facing our country and
secondly to ensure a conducive climate for free
political activity without
fear of violence. This 'president on a short
leash' would work with all
opposition and stakeholders as a transitional
authority and would be part of
a crisis team.
They would draw up an
18-month recovery programme and appoint an
independent electoral commission
to organise fresh presidential elections.
Guess what Zimbabweans - that means 18 months of 'we talk and
politicians
listen and make promises' until a fresh election. Well after all
we have
suffered; we could finally have a queue worth joining to get that
'coveted'
trophy for winning the struggle for
democracy!
But remember it is many small
things or insects that kills
the
'elephant'.
Jenni Williams
is a member of the International Association of
Business Communicators. She
can be reached on email address
jennipr@mweb.co.zw
FinGaz
The continuing
deadlock in Zimbabwe
Brian
Raftopoulos
12/19/02 2:36:01 AM (GMT
+2)
ZIMBABWE seems a long way from the
period 1996 to 2000, when for the
first time in the post-colonial period open
debate flourished in the country
's
politics.
There was a real sense of
possibility as the nation at all levels
began a debate on the constitution,
which was substantively an audit of the
governance record of the ruling
party.
This was also a time when social
movements, such as the labour and
constitutional movements, emerged as
autonomous agencies determined to
establish their own critical agendas and to
push for a more serious debate
on the future of the post-colonial state in
Zimbabwe.
Not surprisingly, this focus on
the legitimacy of the ruling party
also became a debate about the past, both
the inequities of the settler
colonial state and the legacies of the
liberation struggle.
It was a welcome and,
for a brief period, fruitful airing of national
issues in which formerly
sacrosanct subjects were brought into the open.
Under these conditions,
legitimacy gained from an honourable political past
could not serve as a
protection against scrutiny in the contemporary
period.
The ruling party's defeat in the
2000 constitutional referendum was
therefore symbolic of a broader need for
reflection on the nation and its
past. The gatekeepers of the ruling
orthodoxy were understandably vexed by
such questions and their broader
implications.
For the ruling elite, the
battle for the past is usually as important
as the fight to retain control in
the present. This is because the past
contains reservoirs of legitimacy which
must be protected from dissenting
interpretations and enforced as a uniform
process of national consciousness,
unfolding in the inevitable victory of the
ruling party and its great
leader.
This
is the kind of nationalist mythology that has been severely
discredited by
historians, but which has found its way back onto the agenda
by leading
nationalist politicians, sycophantic intellectuals and ruling
party
thugs.
The so-called orientation courses
provided at national youth service
training centres, the proposed loyalty
tests for civil servants and the
"history lessons" provided in numerous
newspaper articles, news editorials
and television and radio documentaries
are part of a broader process of an
ideological policing operation whose
precedents can be found in the various
types of dictatorships of the 20th
century. This deeply authoritarian
practice is likely to have severely
damaging effects on the educational and
research agendas of our schools and
universities.
It is this ideological
operation which needs to be understood as
intricately as the more coercive
actions of the state. For this regime of
ZANU PF stays in power not only
through the more open acts of violence and
repression, but by the symbolic
power it has constructed as the bearer of
the liberation legacy, and as the
broader champion of the pan-Africanist and
Third World
cause.
I have on many occasions pointed
out that what we have witnessed since
2000 is the reconstruction of the state
into a more repressive party
structure. This operation has been performed in
many areas: the judiciary,
the media, the attacks on the labour movement, the
crackdown on selected
non-governmental organisations and the disruption of
local government
structures.
This
operation has also been performed through the use of youth
militia, the
continued use of violence as an election strategy, judicial
harassment of the
opposition MDC leadership, the attacks on civil servants
like teachers and
health workers considered sympathetic to the opposition
and the
politicisation of food aid.
As important
as this overt repression is to the regime, it is also
important to understand
the constituencies that this form of politics has
created, and the new
opportunities that it has provided for its supporters.
For repressive power
not only constrains and destroys, it is also productive
for certain sections
of the society.
The most obvious case of
such opportunities is the land occupations.
In this area the ruling party has
not only produced casualties, but victors
who it is envisaged will form the
new commercial agrarian class that will
provide the long-term basis for the
future of ZANU PF.
At lower levels,
notwithstanding the chaos on the land and the
unevenness of distribution,
sections of the African middle class are finding
new ways to accumulate that
which the structures of the formal economy did
not
allow.
Similarly in the financial world,
fuel supply sector,
telecommunications and other sections of industry, a
close relationship to
the ruling party has provided fertile soil for a new
breed of bankers,
suppliers and other "fast-track" entrepreneurs, while the
growing black
market has also created opportunities in various
areas.
Additionally, the
non-constitutional activities of the regime have
created a plethora of
opportunities for power to be exercised and abused at
local, micro levels,
allowing many Chinotimbas to emerge - unaccountable,
brutal and subject to no
legal constraints. These extra- judicial activities
have also provided new
short-term opportunities for some unemployed
youth.
More disturbingly, this lack of
restraint has made life more
vulnerable for women and children as male party
members and supporters have
re-asserted their violent, macho behaviour,
taking their cue from a
leadership that has been determined to press home its
own insecure notions
of masculinity.
To
return to the issue of symbolic power, it has been an essential
part of the
ruling party strategy to represent itself as the sole
representative of the
national interest and the authentic heir to the
pan-Africanist
cause.
President Robert Mugabe's
performance at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development, the recent
support of the African-Caribbean-Pacific
(ACP) countries at the European
Union/ACP summit in Brussels and the
selective support of the
African-American diaspora has had enormous symbolic
importance for the
regime. It has made it more difficult to isolate ZANU PF,
and allowed the
latter to subordinate the issue of the abuse of the human
rights of
Zimbabwean citizens.
This strategy of ZANU
PF has demonstrated the capacity of an
authoritarian state in crisis to
repackage itself as a champion of Third
World rights in a global situation
where Mugabe's anti-globalisation message
finds a wider
resonance.
However this strategy has a
limited shelf life, for it has to ensure
that this symbolic power is
transformed into a sustainable, national
development strategy. Presently,
ZANU PF is unable to provide any answers to
the rapidly declining economy,
with its hyperinflationary trend, fuel and
forex crises and shortages of
several basic commodities such as maize,
bread, cooking oil, sugar, milk and
other items.
Most serious of all is the
shortage of food that is likely to affect
up to six million people over the
next year. It is foolish for the regime to
blame this largely on the drought,
for whatever the longer-term effects of
the land occupations, the short-term
results are likely to be catastrophic.
By
its own admission, ZANU PF has failed to deal with the food deficit
and,
notwithstanding Mugabe's triumphalism, the land question is in
disarray. In a
situation where it finds itself economically isolated - with
no access to
financial assistance, growing unemployment and negative
economic growth - the
regime has resorted to increasing economic controls
over prices, incomes,
foreign exchange, food and fuel
distribution.
In effect Zimbabweans are
living in a wartime economy. In a more
accountable government driving a more
sustainable economic strategy, various
forms of control would have a place
for given periods of time. However with
a regime under such siege, these
economic controls, linked to increasing
political repression, have moved the
country into recognisably
fascist-style
politics.
The just-ended
ZANU PF annual national conference was predictable in
its outcome. Mugabe
used the stage to repeat his anti-imperialist diatribe,
proving beyond doubt
the ruling party is devoid of new ideas and
strategies.
At a time when the strategists
in ZANU PF should be seeking ways to
move them out of isolation, Mugabe
showed how little statesmanship he has to
offer. Given the continued course
this regime has set itself, we must thus
expect more destructive economic
decisions and further deepening of the
general crisis in this
country.
It is also clear that even if
there were some voices in ZANU PF
seeking a change of strategy, those
elements have neither the courage nor
the integrity to speak the truth to
power in their party.
One of the minor
tragedies of the last few years has been to witness
one-time progressive
intellectuals giving their support to this repressive
regime because of its
perceived anti-imperialist politics. The severe
intellectual and political
limits of this kind of analysis have become only
too apparent in the face of
the crude accumulation strategies of the
political elite and the murderous
political tactics they have deployed
against their
opponents.
Mugabe's conference speech was
saturated with threats and hate-filled
messages that epitomise the kind of
vicious structure that ZANU PF has been
for many
years.
It is to the discredit of the South
African government that it has
actively embarked on a course to attempt to
legitimise ZANU PF rule and to
seek a re-engagement between the latter and
the international community on
the basis of the abominations that have
characterised Zimbabwean politics
since
2000.
It is clear that the South African
government, for the most part, has
little regard for the MDC and feels that
it is more realistic to try to
"manage" ZANU PF into a more presentable form.
This strategy says a good
deal about the more general problem of
post-colonial politics of former
liberation
movements.
For the opposition and the
civic movement, there is little doubt that
there are huge obstacles to be
overcome in dealing with such a regime. There
is need for a multi- pronged
approach that will include developing a broad
set of alliances nationally,
using a variety of mobilisation strategies as
well as continuing to lobby at
regional and international levels against the
ruling
party.
It cannot be assumed that
deteriorating economic conditions will
automatically mobilise the people.
Such conditions are just as likely to
induce a sense of retreat and fatalism.
This means that mass job stayaways
have to be properly prepared for, and the
objectives more clearly thought
out.
Moreover, stayaways cannot be the only strategy available to an
opposition.
More patient activities based on building and consolidating
legitimacy are
essential for the more confrontational approaches to
be
successful.
This is a very dangerous
time for Zimbabweans, with the loss of hope
quite palpable among many people.
However, it should be remembered that in
moments of danger opportunities
might also emerge.
It is not unlikely that
given the negative effects of the Zimbabwean
crisis on the region, new
pressures will emerge for some form of national
dialogue as a means to
finding a way forward. Much work needs to be done to
push Zimbabwean politics
in this direction.
lBrian Raftopoulos
is an associate professor at the University of
Zimbabwe's Institute of
Development Studies.
FinGaz
Residential rentals up by over 200% in
2002
Staff
Reporter
12/19/02 1:53:39 AM (GMT
+2)
ZIMBABWE'S residential rentals have
more than doubled this year,
driven up by cash-rich individuals unable to buy
their own properties
because of serious shortages in the residential property
sales market, it
was learnt this week.
A snap survey by the Financial Gazette this week found that since
the
beginning of the year, rentals had increased by more than 200 percent
in
most of Harare's residential areas as desperate tenants competed for the
few
houses and flats on the market.
Though some of the rental hikes were a result of efforts by property
owners
to keep pace with inflation, which rose to a record high of 144.2
percent in
October, real estate agents said some of the increases were
caused by
potential tenants offering more money to secure
accommodation.
Archie Mberi, a consultant
with a Harare real estate firm, said demand
for properties was so high that
his firm received more than 10 serious
applications and several telephone
inquiries for every house advertised.
He
said some applicants offered to pay more than the asking
rental.
"The demand is so serious that, in
some cases, when we get a house to
rent out for say $100 000 per month,
someone will not only offer to pay $120
000 but also to pay rentals for the
whole year in advance," Mberi said.
Partly
because of this, rentals in high-density areas such as
Mufakose, Budiriro and
Glen Norah have increased from around $10 000 in
January to between $25 000
and $30 000.
Properties in middle-density
areas such as Msasa Park, Mabelreign and
Hillside, as well as flats near the
city centre, which used to cost between
$15 000 and $20 000 per month, are
now around $50 000.
In low-density areas
such as Mandara, Greendale and Borrowdale Brooke,
properties that were over
$40 000 in January now cost up to $200 000 per
month. Some up-market
properties in these areas are being rented out for $1
million per
month.
Single room rentals have increased
from around $1 000 at the beginning
of the year to $3 000 in high-density
suburbs and from $3 000 to above $6
000 in middle-density
areas.
Mberi said the margins of rental
increases varied depending on the
location of the properties, their condition
and whether the owners closely
monitored and followed trends on the
market.
Another property consultant said
Zimbabweans who had prospered despite
the country's economic crisis were
moving to secure, up-market locations,
while those whose incomes had been
eroded by inflation were moving out of
the city centre and from
middle-density suburbs to cheaper locations without
reliable
transport.
High-density areas, which are
located some distance from city centres,
have been hard hit by transport
shortages, the result of Zimbabwe's fuel
crisis and a foreign currency
squeeze that has hampered imports of spare
parts and new
vehicles.
"The highest rental offers are
made for properties in locations that
have good security and where it is easy
to get transport, that is why you
see people moving from areas like
Chitungwiza and Glen Norah to areas like
Warren Park and Arcadia," the
property consultant said.
He said those
with money to spend and concerned with security were
moving to rent
properties in residential complexes like Borrowdale Brooke,
which has
round-the-clock security.
FinGaz
Zim today: story of an African
alarm
By Charlene
Smith
12/19/02 1:55:49 AM (GMT
+2)
The earth begins bleeding over
Limpopo. Viewed from an aircraft it is
red, raw,
sunburnt.
As the plane proceeds over
Zimbabwe blackened shrubs cluster, large
tracts of earth carry the greyness
of death, parts are as bleached as bone,
depleted by the sun, overgrazing and
poor agricultural policies.
On a Harare
street outside a fancy shopping centre a man steps forward
and whispers: "You
want maize, sugar, flour?
Contraband
food.
Driving through the lush Bvumba
mountains, a Zimbabwean passenger sees
a pedestrian walking with a maize bag
on her head. The passenger shouts for
the car to stop. She interrogates the
woman: "Is that maize meal?
"It is
maize."
"Where did you get
it?"
"From a local
farm."
"How
much?
It was Z$2 000, around R20 at
parallel market rates, but also a fifth
of an average monthly salary and
Z$800 cheaper than store rates - on the
rare occasions that maize or maize
meal finds its way to shop shelves.
The
passenger is on a mission for food - a little later she stops a
woman outside
a country store.
"Is there
bread?"
There is. She emerges
triumphantly, after a little haggling, with
four
loaves.
In the same area close to
the Mozambique border, late afternoon is
marked by endless rows of people
walking.
Petrol shortages are biting deep
and increased police and army
patrols, trying to prevent Mozambicans coming
to Zimbabwe to buy cheap food
and petrol, harass taxi
owners.
Few taxi operators are willing to
work in the area. This is a mixed
blessing because unaffordable car repair
rates - Z$60 000 for a lubrication
service is six months' salary for a
teacher or three months' salary for the
average worker, which means that many
cars are not roadworthy.
One taxi operator
who could not afford repair costs would drive in
reverse down winding Bvumba
roads because his brakes had failed. His taxi
finally went off a
cliff.
Food and petrol prices are kept
artificially low by government price
controls, which in part have led to food
shortages because it has become
more expensive to produce food than the
returns manufacturers get.
Land invasions
have seen the beef herd cut by 60 percent, leading to
meat
shortages.
Shrunken dairy herds see
Zimbabwe producing only a third of its milk
requirements. Manufacturers and
stores are increasingly ignoring price
controls and food prices have soared
100 percent in the past month.
A branch of
South Africa's Spar in Harare looks well-stocked - until
one notes that goods
are pushed to the front of shelves and spread
thinly.
There are just four litres of milk
- a shopper looks around, then
crams all four into his trolley. There is
baking powder but no flour, tea
but no
sugar.
At OK Bazaars in another town, 250
g of South African butter costs R28
at parallel market rates of Z$100 to the
rand - the official rate is Z$6 to
the rand. The same amount of butter costs
R7 in South Africa.
Hiring a car is a
nightmare. At the first company, Rocksands, a small
firm in Harare, the
consultant asks for an R80 000 deposit for an aged Mazda
323, the cheapest
car available.
At Europcar in downtown
Harare, an offshoot of Imperial car hire, a
US$1 500 deposit is requested.
Too tired to argue, someone produces a credit
card that can provide that sort
of deposit for a VW Chico.
At seven one
evening, a Mutare petrol store owner watches a petrol
queue quickly assemble
as word spreads that a tanker is filling some of his
fuel
tanks.
"This business is impossible now,"
he says. "I make Z$4.70 a litre on
fuel - 4.7 SA cents - we can't make more
because of price restrictions."
A formerly
wealthy Zimbabwean businessman - many people are now
"formerly wealthy" -
takes out a bag of crushed wheat that he gives to his
workers, when it is
available, as a substitute for maize.
On
roadsides people sell tiny, dark-brown potatoes, which are
replacing maize
wherever sufficient water can be accessed to irrigate
them.
There has been no rain since October
and even then it has been a
mere
sprinkling.
Each day dawns with
the sort of deep turquoise skies beloved by
tourists - not that there are
many in Zimbabwe - and regarded with
apprehension by
farmers.
A seamstress explains how
villagers in an area close to the mountains
that separate Zimbabwe and
Mozambique brewed beer and took it up a local
mountain as an offering to the
mountain gods to plead for rain.
The gods
on this mountain are believed to be powerful. A white farmer
who went up the
mountain with a gun got lost for hours and almost died - the
gods don't like
guns.
No one takes dogs up with them
because dogs disappear or are stoned by
the monkeys that are the lookouts for
the gods.
About three kilometres from
where an American visitor was shot dead at
a roadblock a month ago, three
policemen in blue threadbare uniforms step
across a small country road and
flag down our vehicle.
One has an
automatic rifle. A young officer with a smiling face greets
us, courteously
answers a question then waves us on. Later that afternoon
when we pass again
they are sitting around a fire. They wave cheerfully and
shout
hello.
Sometimes fear in Zimbabwe is more
a feeling in your heart than a
daily reality. Black and white Zimbabweans
report increased racism, whites
are sometimes insulted by passers-by on the
streets.
What is greater than fear,
however, is economic deprivation - 80
percent unemployment and 145 percent
inflation that the World Bank predicts
will reach 550 percent next
year.
It shows in people's dusty skin
because soap is hard to come by and
expensive. Poverty is seen in broken
shoes and torn, dirty clothes. Hardship
shows in
faces.
And yet there are areas where
grandeur gives a glimpse of aspirational
Zimbabwe. The old and stately
Leopard Rock hotel looks out onto one of the
finest golf courses in
Africa.
Leather armchairs sit empty in a
stately pub. There are two cars in
the parking lot. No one in the casino.
Staff stand and wait.
Beautiful huge,
black wattle baskets and intricately embroidered
tablecloths flank the
roadside to Tony's, the best cake shop in Africa, a
Hansel and Gretel house
which owner Tony Robinson refers to as his
villa.
Down a path flanked by huge King
proteas and tumbling masses of pink
roses is a small restaurant where tea is
served in eggshell china and
silver
teapots.
The cakes are
unbelievable, a voluptuous orange and carrot cake
slathered in cream; tiny
meringues; a flourless whisky-and-chocolate cake
decorated with lavender,
nasturtiums and chocolate lace.
Robinson's
blue eyes glow with happiness: "I love this place. I lived
in Cape Town
before, but I had a dream I needed to follow and I found this -
nowhere in
the world is better."
A few kilometres
away at the Vumba club - a favourite of Doris Lessing
and a short drive from
Ardroy, the farm she abandoned to pursue her writing
career in London - no
one has arrived for Sunday lunch.
A
so-called Thai curry of mince and packaged Indian curry sauce is
reheated.
There is a corner in memory of Lessing's son, Peter Wisdom, who
hated his
mother. A huge old billiard table sits under
canvas.
A woman with a homemade bamboo
fishing rod stands at a lake below the
Vumba club with ragged children at her
feet. There are no fish, she
complains, because the weather is cold.
Everywhere there are signs of hunger
and an economy rapidly sliding into ruin
despite the best efforts of the
Tony Robinsons of
Zimbabwe.
The new budget, announced
last month, will also destroy the export
market, businessmen believe, with
provisions that insist exports have to be
paid at the unrealistic
government-set currency rate and not the
market-related parallel
rate.
The owner of a large company that
has relied on exports has a face
etched with
sadness.
"I'm liquidating everything. New
labour provisions say I have to pay
workers two months' wages for every year
of employment.
"The new budget provisions
will ruin us. I have to lay off workers. We
have had people working for us
for 30 years - I'll have to sell everything I
own to pay them. With luck
someone will buy the business, otherwise we'll
have to close the company my
father began more than 50 years ago."
In
Harare three young men, Tonderai Ndira, 26, Reuben Tichareva, 25,
and
Barnabas Ndira, 22, sit on a porch chewing matchsticks. Among them, the
three
Movement for Democratic Change youth leaders have been charged 25
times in
the past two years. They have yet to be convicted of any
crime.
Charges range from public violence
under the wide provisions of the
Public Order and Safety Act to inciting
violence.
Tonderai, the son of a Shona
chief, says he has been on the run since
16 war veterans came to his home a
year ago. "They were armed with AKs and
handcuffs, claimed they were police
and had come to arrest me. They were not
in uniform. I asked for IDs, but
they had none. They fired two shots and I
ran - I haven't stopped
running."
He smiles and rubs a scar on his
arm, a memento of a police beating.
He saw
starvation across the country. "I was in Mrewa (about 90km
northeast of
Harare) and people eating wild fruits called mazhanje and the
root of a
flower called elephant. Zanu-PF said they would give the people
food, but
they are selling it at $500 for a 20kg bucket. No one has
money."
Mavuku is a township that has
grown rapidly over the past two years as
farmworkers from farms that have
been taken over have had to move to this
parched
scrubland.
No one appears to have
employment, few houses have electricity or
water because of unpaid bills and
cutoffs. Everyone is hungry.
The last time
Tonderai worked was in 1998. Reuben lost his job in 1997
when the company he
worked for closed down. Barnabas has not found work
since he completed school
four years ago.
They operate an informal
food distribution scheme in Mavuku with
donations from wellwishers in Harare.
They conduct township cleanups to try
to "encourage a sense of dignity among
people", Reuben says. "People get
depressed when they have no
work."
They say HIV-positive people are
succumbing to Aids quickly as
inadequate food sees immune systems collapse
faster and opportunistic
infections take hold. Across Zimbabwe those who work
with HIV/Aids report
that clinics have no medications, "not even
paracetamol".
Zimbabwe has the capacity to
produce generic medications for HIV,
given free by Thailand which helped it
set up production lines. Production
was to have begun in February. Nothing
has happened.
"We don't understand how the
South African government can keep telling
us things are good in Zimbabwe,"
Barnabas says.
"Where do they go when they
come here? Whom do they speak to? South
Africans must see people are tumbling
into SA because the situation in
Zimbabwe is
bad."
Barnabas adjusts his
hat.
"The person who says he doesn't need
the British, that he doesn't want
the whites, he has everything. He can say,
'We don't need them', and go to a
hotel afterwards. We go to the bush and dig
for roots."
ENDS - Cape
Times
FinGaz
Dialogue between Zim, C'wealth breaks
down
Staff
Reporter
12/19/02 3:24:12 AM (GMT
+2)
Dialogue between Zimbabwe and the
Commonwealth has broken down, with
Harare said to be refusing to even return
telephone calls or diplomatic
notes from Don McKinnon, the secretary-general
of the 54-nation club of
mainly former British colonies, diplomatic sources
told the Financial
Gazette this week.
McKinnon was tasked by the Commonwealth to initiate dialogue with
Zimbabwe,
which was booted out of the councils of the organisation over its
March
presidential poll, which the Commonwealth says President Robert Mugabe
won
through violence and fraud.
The group
discusses Zimbabwe again at its heads of state and
government meeting in
Nigeria in three months time.
"Since South
Africa and Nigeria blocked tougher action against Mugabe,
he has become more
defiant against the Commonwealth and will not even
respond to McKinnon's
efforts at restarting positive dialogue. There is no
progress whatsoever on
that issue," a Harare-based diplomat said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Stan Mudenge could not be reached for comment
on the
matter yesterday.
However, Mudenge
recently announced that the government had finished
compiling a comprehensive
response to the Commonwealth presidential election
observer group's report,
upon whose recommendations Zimbabwe was suspended
from the
club.
Director for information and public
affairs at the Commonwealth's
London-based secretariat, Joel Kibazo, told the
Financial Gazette by phone:
"The secretary-general (McKinnon) has made
repeated attempts to have
cooperation and dialogue with the Zimbabwe
government over the last few
months but so far, these attempts have proved
fruitless."
South African President Thabo
Mbeki and Nigerian leader Olusegun
Obasanjo, who together with Australian
Prime Minister John Howard form a
special troika on Zimbabwe, blocked tougher
sanctions against Harare in
September.
The African leaders argued that Harare should be allowed another six
months
to address the concerns of the Commonwealth before the group could
take
tougher measures.
Mbeki and Obasanjo also
agreed that McKinnon should reopen dialogue
and cooperation with Harare
during the half year.
Analysts say
Commonwealth sanctions against landlocked Zimbabwe would
immediately bring
down Mugabe and his government because all the landlocked
country's
neighbours are members of the group.
Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party have been able to defy smart
sanctions
imposed against them by the European Union, United States of
America,
Switzerland Australia, New Zealand and Canada only because of the
support of
its regional neighbours.
FinGaz - letters
ZANU PF
mayhem isn't land reform
12/19/02 2:19:46 AM (GMT +2)
EDITOR - I am
continually amazed that so many people continue to go
along with the
propaganda that the land grab had anything whatsoever to do
with genuine
agrarian reform.
Please people, engage
brain! Ask yourself: why was the land conference
of 1998 totally rejected by
the Zimbabwe government?
The conference
promised billions of dollars for real agrarian reform -
the snag being of
course that it had to be "open, transparent and aimed at
the alleviation of
poverty". These tenets are and always have been totally
inimical to President
Robert Mugabe and his associates.
For 20
years, zero happened. I have visited many resettlement areas in
the course of
my business and, with a tiny number of exceptions, what was
there was far
less than what had been there before.
I
particularly remember the areas around Mahusekwa and Msasa, as well
as to the
east of Murehwa. You could see where the farms had been, vast
cleared fields
with nothing but weeds, and in one corner, possibly, a
decrepit hut and a
small patch of sickly-looking maize.
Strangely, all the farmhouses I saw had been destroyed; the roofs,
doors and
windows removed and used to build shacks nearby. Was
this
progress?
One of my customers
taught agriculture at a school near Ruzawi and he
showed me a few people who
had managed to grow some healthy-looking tobacco.
The Zimbabwe Tobacco
Association had a scheme for training small-scale
tobacco farmers at a place
near Marondera.
It is way too late now,
but when - or if - sanity is ever restored we
will have to rebuild our
economy as a matter of extreme urgency. Agriculture
is the foundation of
prosperity in Zimbabwe; therefore a sane and workable
agrarian policy is
imperative.
This does not need a United
Nations task force and hundreds of
academics; it only needs input from local
people and above all common sense.
First,
reset all agricultural land ownership to say 1998. No legal
changes in
ownership have taken place since then.
Next, urgently get farmers who know how to farm back on the land. Food
and
foreign currency-generation are vital.
Once this is done, or even while it is being done, start a genuine
programme
of agrarian extension. We need more farmers; we need more food and
more
export crops. We can never have too much.
Those wishing to farm should be assisted with training and loans to
purchase
land.
Although land values can be
subsidised land must never be given away
free because land is a national
asset and must be well used by the owner.
Those who are unable to repay land
loans must have their money returned to
them, and the land then sold to a
better farmer.
Inherent in this scheme is
that all farmers who have bought land,
whether a small plot or a large farm,
will own it and hold the title deeds.
Any
Zimbabwean who wants to farm should be encouraged and assisted to
become a
productive farmer with training and technical
assistance.
As agriculture recovers, so
will the supporting industries such as
fertiliser manufacture, stock feed,
processing, and agricultural implement
manufacture and
repair.
The problem is that every day the
present regime remains in power the
situation gets harder and harder to
rectify. But if the
nation is to survive and
prosper in the long term (which is doubtful)
then good common sense plans
must be formulated now.
The present ZANU
PF mayhem is not land reform. It was never intended
as land reform, only to
seize assets and cling to power.
Finally,
to believe that Mugabe and ZANU PF will change or "see the
light" is wishful
thinking of the most dangerous kind. The stark and simple
truth is that the
country will continue its plunge into oblivion until he
and his party are
removed. There is no other
way.
Charles
Frizell,
United
Kingdom.
--------
Waste no more time on softly-softly
approach
12/19/02 2:19:03 AM (GMT
+2)
EDITOR - The good Zimbabwe that our brothers and sisters
perished for in the
gruesome liberation war has since expired. That's
a
fact.
The economy of Zimbabwe is liquidated. That's a
fact.
The people of Zimbabwe, who by natural laws must be supreme over
any
political body - whether it be a regime or a movement - have been
relegated
to the dustbins of poverty, hunger and hopelessness. That's
a
fact.
And everybody knows full well that the culprit for all this is
none other
than our dear old leader Robert Mugabe and his policies that are
at gross
tangent to the dictates of the new world
order.
There are times when I become strongly convinced that the
actions of Mugabe
are inspired by the devil. Increasingly, I am beginning to
doubt that Mugabe
has the nine degrees that he claims to
have.
The people of Zimbabwe have for long been dragged along the path
of brutality
for too long and many have died in silence from Mugabe-induced
starvation and
torture. The Zimbabwean economy is long dead and Mugabe is
forcibly dragging
it along, hoping that he will bring it back to life. This
is a
fallacy.
Mugabe has failed and will fail to bring back sanity in Zimbabwe
and the
people will go through more pain as long as he is there. We must not
sleep
and endure on hoping that things will be better. They will
not.
As has been said before, the only solution to this is for the
people of
Zimbabwe to reclaim their power from Mugabe. And when I say
claiming their
power I mean by all means
necessary.
Those who dream that Mugabe will accede to a new constitution
and a rerun of
elections which he knows full well he will lose are wasting
their time. Those
who believe that a miracle may happen and that Mugabe will
freely hand over
power are in Disneyland, where anything can be
possible.
The fact is that it is only a people's revolution that will
dislodge Mugabe
from power and nothing else. And a revolution is an all or
nothing state of
affairs.
There is no middle ground. And history teaches us that freedom
is never for
free. The costs of freedom are
high.
I think what is important now is not to waste more time on a
softly-softly
approach. It is time for Zimbabweans to map out a robust and
multi-pronged
strategy to end this misery once and for
all.
It is time to open to every possibility on this earth to
liberate the people
from the agonies of perennial hunger, incessant
brutality and persistent
oppression. As Henry Steel Commager once said
in
1954:
"Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we
have security
and prosperity and enlightment; it is rather, antecedent to
all of these, for
without it we can have neither security, nor prosperity
nor
enlightment."
S
Bere,
Harare.
FinGaz
The power of queues
and our spinelessness
Maggie
Mzumara
12/19/02 2:09:45 AM (GMT
+2)
Driving around the "City of Kings"
(Bulawayo) with a friend a few
weeks ago, she said something that at face
value made me burst out laughing.
But upon sobering down and giving it more
thought a little later I realised
that it was actually sad and could even be
said to be somewhat tragic.
We had been doing
what most other Zimbabweans are doing on a regular
basis in these days of
'survival of the corruptest'. Willing and ready to
pay however-much to
whomever-could-deliver we were doing the rounds chasing
after corners,
outlets, back of beyonds, dingy sanitary lanes or whatever
else that had been
rumoured to have the much sought after present day gold -
the bread,
mealie-meal, sugar and yes flour in these parts. These foodstuffs
really have
become like gold haven't they?
So anyway,
we frantically drove around this way, that way, took that
turn, skipped that
one, and pursued that other one before negotiating that
bend over there we
were confronted with queues all over the place, at the
same time mindful of
not spending too much petrol in a desperate bid to
delay yet another need to
queue for fuel yet another "hot"
commodity.
Left, right and centre we saw
long winding queues, and that's supposed
to be no big thing these days seeing
as queues have actually become part and
parcel of the our landscape.
Really?
The queues were long, winding,
unrelenting, unforgiving and yes an
insistent and stubborn existence. Queuers
showed no signs of boredom or
urgency. Instead they demonstrated a
preparedness and even some willingness
to wait for whatever commodities they
waited for for the long haul - without
so much as a
complaint.
In fact some could even be said
to have been enjoying this provision
of something to do in this economy of
no-jobs even after acquiring some
decent
education.
Somebody we had in the car
remarked something about these queues and
how people were so used to them.
That's when my friend said something to the
effect that when and if the
situation in the country does stabilize and the
hunt for foodstuffs stopped
leaving people without a need to a queue that
some people would actually feel
lonely. (We have to hold on to that hope
that this shall come to pass, don't
we. What else can we do?)
"Some people are
so used to these queues that they will actually feel
lonely and find their
days empty and themselves with nothing to do should
these queues go away,"
she said matter of factly. To which I laughed out
loud - finding humour in
this innocent but powerful and sarcastic
observation. Humour
indeed?
On the surface maybe it's a little
funny. But really is it funny? It's
tragic. It isn't funny that a people or
nation should be reduced to such? To
a bunch of idle, queue bugs ready and
willing to spend loads of time - as
precious as time is supposed to be. Time
is supposed to be money you know.
To spend hour upon hour waiting for one
loaf of bread. That's if you are
lucky, because often times just when you get
your turn at the counter you
are told the bread, mealie-meal or whatever form
the gold was taking in that
particular queue is finished and so you go home
empty handed.
For the ordinary person in
the street the order of the day is now
pretty predictable. One wakes up,
takes a quick wash of the face and teeth
if one is that way inclined but for
others they just get up straight from
bed and present themselves like that in
these queues in this hot humid
weather
.
This is like in the morning say just
after eight. They go to a queue,
line up for some 'Kenya'(yellow
mealie-meal), spend a good part of the day
on that queue till say well after
mid-day.
If they get what they wanted they
go straight to somewhere else where
they will wait once again in another
queue for another elusive turn at
getting yet another rare commodity this
time perhaps a loaf of bread, for
which they pay through the nose in these
devil-may-care times
of
charge-what-you-will-the-docile-victim-will-comply-no-matter-what-beause-the
y-have-no-choice.
It might sound silly and tedious but behold the power of the queue.
There is
plenty of truth in what my friend said. These queues, in the days
of if you
can't beat them join them, have assumed a larger than life
personality and an
importance of their own.
These queues are
a sign of the times - a sign we have to contend with.
They have really
redefined the Zimbabwean cultural fabric and social scene.
They have taken on
such significance - its unbelievable.
People are devoting so much of their times and days on these queues it
's
become like an occupation - one where a person dare not a miss a day lest
you
get a less than perfect attendance record.
It's in these queues where popular opinions of the day are being
formulated
and determined. Here news is gathered and exchanged; some
business is
conducted as others are taking this opportunity to showcase
their talent and
wares - "A-a munoruka madhoiri, mozondirukirawoka
machair-backs/ Uyeluka
amadoili? Ungelukela lami amachair-backs (Oh, you can
make doilies, please
make me a set of chair-backs); political secrets are
whispered and shared -
"Kunyeperwa imi. Ndivo vakauraya
Learnmore/ikiqanjelwa amanga yiyo enjabulalu
uLearnmore."
There also might be some
serious discussion of religion, domestic or
foreign affairs - some of the
tidbits might have a grain of truth in them
while others maybe quite
inaccurate. Here is this one doing the rounds you
be the judge of
it.
Hanzi kuma national youth camps
vasikana vanzwa nekurepwa/ kuthi wa
kunational youth camp amankazana
ayabanjwa irepu. That the national youth
camps have become breeding grounds
for sexual abuse of the female recruits.
If word at these queues is true apparently Sexually Transmitted
Infections
cases are high at these at camps. Of course there are no queues
without their
share of pleasant or malicious local neighbourhood gossip in
the form of who
is doing what to whom with what effect.
Apart from being a "hang-out" place these queues have resulted in
knitting
together of neighborhood folks creating a feeling that this
closely-knit
togetherness represents a new but enduring breed of
nationals.
Enduring, indeed. The so called
'docile' people of Zimbabwe have and
continue to demonstrate much endurance
and this might even be said to be
what contributes to their docility. We are
too accepting of our ill-fated
lives. We are so quick to "normalise" the
abnormal and accept the
"unacceptable". Standing in queues for more than say
an hour is not normal
and unless we communicate it as such, the people that
mete out these fates
to us will continue doing it why not they are getting
away with it aren't
they. But for how long? And till when? Enough of this
docility.
Maggie Mzumara is a local media
specialist, social commentator and
entrepreneur.She can be reached at
maggiemzumara@msn.com
VOA
Zimbabwe's Opposition Leader Demands Reforms Before
Talks with Mugabe
Tendai Maphosa
Harare
18 Dec 2002, 21:40
UTC
The leader of Zimbabwe's main opposition party, The
Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), says the British and South African
governments are trying to
arrange for him to meet with President Robert
Mugabe. But the opposition
leader is not particularly interested in holding
such talks.
In a statement, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he
is not
interested in talks with the president unless certain conditions are
met.
Mr. Tsvangirai accused President Mugabe of trying to use him to
deflect
attention from Zimbabwe's crushing economic problems. The opposition
leader
said he will not meet with Mr. Mugabe unless he institutes a variety
of
reforms including an end to limits on political activities, an end
to
attacks on political opponents and an end to what he calls
the
politicization of food distribution.
Mr. Tsvangirai also accused
Britain and South Africa of working with Mr.
Mugabe in what he called a
'diabolical' plan that would legitimize the
Mugabe government.
Mr.
Tsvangirai never accepted the results of last March's presidential
election,
which he lost to Mr. Mugabe. Most African countries said the
election was
fair, but western countries did not accept the results.
Mr. Tsvangirai
has petitioned the courts to have the election result
annulled and fresh
elections held under international supervision.
During his party's annual
conference last week President Mugabe said he
would not bow to external
pressure to form a coalition government with
the
opposition.
The
Times
December 19,
2002
England to play in Zimbabwe after ICC ruling
By John Goodbody and Matthew
Pryor
THE International Cricket Council (ICC) will confirm today that
six matches
in the 2003 World Cup can be staged in Zimbabwe and that England
will also
fulfil their obligation to play a game in a country still racked
by political
and economic
turmoil.
The decision, to be announced at Lord's, will trigger huge
political
opposition in Britain, where all the main parties have spoken out
against the
national team playing in a country where nearly 200 people have
been killed
during the past two
years.
However, Malcolm Gray, the ICC chairman, will emphasise today
that the real
concern of cricket's world governing body is the security of
the teams. He
will say that ICC inspectors were satisfied during their
recent visit that
matches could go ahead safely and that journalists
covering the event, which
runs from February 9 to March 23, would be
granted
visas.
Zimbabwe is co-hosting the tournament with South Africa and
Kenya, and
England's opening match is scheduled to be in Harare against
Zimbabwe on
February 13. It would be possible for England to refuse to play
in this game
and still qualify for the later stages of the
tournament.
However, it is understood that the ECB will say today that the
national team
will take part in this match, which is keenly awaited by
cricket lovers in
Zimbabwe. The ECB's one caveat is that it will monitor the
situation and if
it became unsafe for a team to visit Zimbabwe, it would
think
again.
The decision by both organisations will create furore in
England. Speaking in
a parliamentary debate in Westminster Hall on Tuesday,
Mike O'Brien, the
Foreign Office Minister, said that England should boycott
the match. He said
that the decision on whether to play "should be taken in
the light of what is
happening in Zimbabwe and in recognition of the fact
that the situation -
political, economic and humanitarian - could
deteriorate in the next few
months. We will not issue orders to the ICC and
ECB . . . but my personal
view is that it would be better if they did
not
go."
Yesterday, 10 Downing Street emphasised that the final decision
should rest
with the ICC but drew attention to the present Foreign Office
travel advice,
which recommends that visitors from the UK should exercise
caution and avoid
taking part in partisan
activities.
Assuming the matches go ahead in Zimbabwe, the problem of
unfettered access
for the media remains. All accredited journalists will
apparently now be
allowed into the country, but if they stray from reporting
on the cricket and
related stories into the countryside and political
issues, they will have to
deal with the Zimbabwean
Government.
Last month, two journalists - Owen Slot, of The Times, and Huw
Turbervill,
who was to have worked for the Daily Mail - were refused visas
to accompany
the ICC inspectors. That was despite the best efforts of the
ICC and the
Zimbabwe Cricket Union to guarantee entry. Richard Caborn, the
Sports
Minister, said at the time: "I do not accept that any country should
censure
qualified journalists from reporting on sporting
events.
"If they (the Zimbabweans) are going to ban journalists in this
way, then I
think the ICC, the governing body, should consider whether this
is a fit and
proper place in which to run international cricket
matches."
The ICC has now apparently been given assurances that, in common
with every
other leading sporting event, such as the summer and winter
Olympics and the
football World Cup, all media it accredits will be
granted
visas.
Whether they will have to pay about $600 for the privilege of a
Zimbabwean
visa remains to be seen, as does whether staying in the country
will be as
easy as getting
in.
"There is no hard and fast rule, but if journalists end up in
other parts of
the country outside Bulawayo and Harare, I would say they are
going over the
line," an ICC source told The Times. "If President Mugabe
visits a match, it
is legitimate to report it, but if they are found on a
farm in the country,
they are probably not writing about the cricket. The
ICC's accreditation
extends only to cricket. Those that need admission for
other reasons will
have to work that out with the Zimbabwe
Government."