Mugabe unleashes wave of terror with mass abductions

http://www.independent.co.uk


By Daniel Howden in Harare
Monday, 22 December 2008



Fears are mounting in Zimbabwe for the lives of more than 40 opposition
officials and human rights activists who have been abducted as part of a
renewed crackdown by the regime in Harare. At least two more members of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change have disappeared in the past week,
along with a freelance investigative reporter.

"The abductions are increasing and it now seems to be happening nationwide,"
Nelson Chamisa, an MDC spokesman,said yesterday.

The operation, codenamed Chimumumu according to sources in the army, aims to
eliminate political opponents and remove human rights monitors. The
kidnappings follow a pattern familiar from the past two years of political
intimidation, where key middle- and lower-ranking officials are
"disappeared" in an attempt to terrorise or destabilise opponents of the
ruling party. Among those taken in the past month are Chris Dlamini, the
head of security for the MDC, and Jestina Mukoko, the director of Zimbabwe
Peace Project. The ruling party and security services have denied any part
in the abductions.

Mr Dlamini was amongst the first to be abducted this month. Under normal
circumstances he would have been the MDC's spokesman about such
disappearances. His daughter, Victoria, has travelled from South Africa and
is refusing to leave the country until her father's fate is known. She said
the family have received no help from the police. "I don't know who to talk
to at the moment. This is an incredibly tough time for us. By now we just
want to know if he is alive or dead," she said.

Repeated appeals, including lawyers' petitions and, in the case of Ms
Mukoko, a high court order, have failed to force authorities to release
details of where the abductees are being held.

Kerry Kay, the MDC's welfare secretary, said that with each passing day hope
they will be found alive is fading.

Monitors including Human Rights Watch and The Independent have documented
hundreds of cases of politically inspired disappearances and false
imprisonment, torture and murder.

Police claim they do not know the whereabouts of Mr Dlamini, or any of the
other 41 missing people. However, a "confession" by Mr Dlamini is reported
to have been included in a dossier of evidence of foreign conspiracies
against Harare that the Zimbabwean government handed to the SADC, a
development bloc of African states. Robert Mugabe's administration has
accused neighbouring Botswana of setting up camps to train guerrillas to
topple his government. The 84-year-old President has also said that Britain
is planning to invade its former colony. The "confession" and other alleged
evidence has been dismissed by the SADC. "They are so predictable it is
frightening," said Ms Kay.

The Mugabe regime has used similar tactics in the past and even produced a
grainy video purported to be evidence in support of treason charges brought
in 2002 against the MDC's leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. The voices on the tape
were largely inaudible and it turned out to have been produced by an Israeli
conman. After an 18-month trial that prevented Mr Tsvangirai from
campaigning during the run-up to the 2002 election, he was eventually
acquitted. Meanwhile, the kidnapping of a respected journalist, nicknamed
"Saddam", has sent many of his colleagues into hiding. Shadreck Manyere has
not been seen for more than a week. His wife said he had received a call at
their home outside Harare and had gone to meet a contact.

Plainclothes police appeared at her house in the early hours of last Sunday
morning demanding to search the building and claiming her husband had been
involved in an accident. They were refused entry but returned with a search
warrant and ransacked the house, taking a computer, video camera and other
material.

The pattern of abductions suggests a systematic effort to close down any
information-gathering about government activities, either by the opposition,
journalists or human rights groups.

However, dissident factions within the army are presenting a new problem for
the government. Unprecedented clashes this month between soldiers and police
have been followed by more skirmishes as the army is being affected by the
economic crisis.

One soldier, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that off-duty
colleagues had attacked and beaten up the brother of the Central Bank
governor, Gideon Gono, in a case of mistaken identity. Mr Gono, who travels
with a heavy security detail, is widely hated in the country for the wealth
he has accumulated and his stoking of the unprecedented hyperinflation that
has impoverished most of his compatriots.

There have been unconfirmed reports that some of those abducted are being
held at a military base in Kariba, near the border with Zambia.

Mr Tsvangirai, who is in Botswana, has given a deadline of the end of the
year for the release of the abductees, otherwise his party will "suspend"
power-sharing talks with the government.

Mugabe's genocide: The images of despair that reveal the full horror of Zimbabwe

 

Our chilling undercover report reveals how President Robert Mugabe is cynically deepening the country's crisis for his own twisted ends

By Sue Reid

Last updated at 2:09 AM on 22nd December 2008

His body ravaged by cholera, two-year-old Amos barely opens his eyes as a nurse in protective white plastic boots and gloves checks his temperature.

Tenderly, his mother Rachel strokes her son's head. But in her heart she must know that his chances are slender.

Her little boy is staring death in the face  -  in all likelihood, he will not survive to see Christmas.

Last Tuesday, Rachel walked five miles carrying Amos on her back to an emergency cholera clinic near Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.

Distraught mother Rachel comforts her dying two-year-old son Amos at a cholera clinic

The young are particularly vulnerable to killer diseases such as cholera

'I tried to run fast,' says the 27-year-old tearfully, as she sits beside him. 'I thought he wouldn't get help in time. Now I can only pray.'

Yet Amos is lucky. He made it here; one of 1,000 children in one month to be treated by nurses (many paid for by British donations) at the tiny three-ward clinic in the dusty commuter town of Chitungwiza. Hundreds of other children are dying before they can reach medical care at all, as Zimbabwe's latest horror unfolds.

Clutching her Zanu PF membership card required to claim treatment, Destiny, 25, delivered her baby at Bulawayo's Central Hospital two weeks ago. She was separated from the child to be treated for her own malnutrition. She is slowly starving to death

In the final indignity for its benighted people, the nation is now in the grip of a cholera epidemic.

In the past few weeks, the disease has swept through a country in political chaos, economic meltdown and on the brink of starvation.

Little by little, news has filtered through of a large-scale medical emergency.

But what is the reality? Last week, I went to Zimbabwe to investigate for myself the human toll the disease is taking.

I travelled undercover  -  along with photographer Jamie Wiseman  -  because foreign journalists are barred from the country and face five years in prison on spy charges if caught.

I talked to nurses, charity workers, church leaders and local politicians.

I visited families living deep in the bush, and those in the cities and suburbs. And what I found is, quite simply, a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions.

It is a tragedy, moreover, that some believe may even have been deliberately orchestrated by Robert Mugabe in a warped attempt to crush his critics for good and reassert absolute rule.

As Rachel Pounds, the British-born director of Save The Children in Zimbabwe  -  which helps to finance the cholera clinic treating baby Amos  -  told me: 'This country is going to hell in a hand cart. Children are chronically malnourished and cannot fight off illness  -  even a common cold, let alone a killer such as cholera. The epidemic is out of control.'

Across the city in Mbare, a poor Harare suburb where the stench of sewage in the streets stings your eyes, local priest Father Oskar Wermter went further.

He stated plainly: 'We are witnessing a crime against humanity. There is evil going on in this country.

'It is being perpetuated by a President who greedily hangs on to power without a care for his people.'

In Zimbabwe, where every government-run service is in ruins, cholera marched in through an open door.

It first took hold a month ago after filthy, untreated water began pouring out of taps into homes, and raw sewage leaked from pipes into streams where people wash their vegetables.

Stella Manhando, 54, and her three-month-old grandson Tinotenda, who she cares for since the death of her daughter, live in a slum in Harare

Stella Manhando with her grandson in Mbare, Harare, at the grave of Stella's daughter Shamiso who died from cholera three weeks ago

Only this week, the tyrannical Mugabe blamed the tragedy on the British. We had, he claimed, planted cholera in his country to pave the way for a military invasion orchestrated by Downing Street.

But the truth is that Zimbabwe has been broken by Mugabe himself. The bankrupt country does not have enough foreign currency to buy chemicals from abroad for the filtration plants that are supposed to purify its water system.

Meanwhile, the cracked sewage pipes have not been repaired in years.

Two Zimbabweans look on as a relative struggles to survive in a makeshift hospital

Dirty water is killing the people: 1,123 have died so far and 21,000 have been infected, the United Nations has said.

At one cemetery in Harare, the gravediggers are burying 31 child cholera victims every week. In a chilling prediction, the UN says that 60,000 people may lose their lives before it is all over.

Yet still the world seems too paralysed to respond. In an act of misplaced loyalty, many of Africa's leaders refuse to denounce this despot because he was once a Marxist freedom-fighter against white colonial rule.

From Britain there have come platitudes about bringing back true democracy to Zimbabwe and the promise of £45million extra in aid to prop up the country. But is this hopeless naivety against a dictator who even uses the threat of starvation as a political tool?

The Mail has discovered that those who do not carry the red membership card of Mugabe's Zanu-PF party (complete with the President's mugshot) are routinely refused the chance to register for emergency food aid from international charities.

Crucially, gifts of grain, cooking oil, soya beans, powdered milk and medical supplies are not reaching the children who so desperately need them.

The charities hand out the aid to local tribal chiefs (often in positions of power because of their allegiance to Zanu-PF) for distribution.

Time and again, the food is then given exclusively to party henchmen for their own use or for sale on the black market.

Some is even exported by them to neighbouring African nations in exchange for U.S. dollars, now the only meaningful currency in Zimbabwe.

Yet some suspect even more sinister happenings: that Mugabe's men may be encouraging the spread of cholera in areas where opposition to Zanu-PF is strong.

Campaigners say it is no coincidence that the green and brown water pouring out of taps is particularly evident in areas which do not support the President.

Young patients are attended to at a cholera clinic in Chitungwiza, where 120 people a day are presenting with symptoms of cholera

Empty shelves in a Bulawayo supermarket illustrate how the economy has collapsed under Mugabe's rule

'The question has to be asked: "Is this by design or by default?"' said John Worsley-Worswick, a white Zimbabwean and head of Harare's Justice for Agriculture Trust, which campaigns against food shortages.

'We are witnessing genocide here; first by starvation and now by cholera, too. A hungry, sick nation is a compliant nation.'

Even for those who survive the epidemic, the future is eternally bleak. Nine out of ten adults are jobless, while inflation surpasses anything witnessed in world history. It topped 260 million per cent this week, dwarfing even the rampant hyperinflation of Germany's Weimar Republic during the early Thirties.

Malnourished children near their home in the country's south

This facility in Chitungwiza aims to treat those who have fallen ill after drinking contaminated water

The response from Mugabe, at his heavily-guarded mansion, is to print more money in bigger denominations. The latest  -  introduced for Christmas  -  is a 10 billion Zimbabwe dollar note, worth less than 20 U.S. dollars.

However, no one is allowed to withdraw more than 500,000 dollars daily from the bank, enough to buy one-and-a-half loaves and a bottle of cola.

Patiently, the people queue from dawn for this meagre sustenance, although by evening the prices may well have doubled again and they will get only half what they wanted.

Showing the signs of malnutrition, 18-month-old Tholakele Ndlovu holds the cup from which she is fed barely once a day

Meanwhile, the shops are yawningly empty. In Bulawayo, the country's second biggest city, the hypermarket was selling only washing powder and imported wine last week. In the vegetable and fruit section there was not even a banana.

This was once the farming capital of Zimbabwe, yet I met middle-class families here who have eaten only once a day for months, because they simply cannot find  -  let alone afford  -  more than this.

As Julia, a 31-year-old mother and teacher, explained: 'Sometimes I eat nothing, because if it is a choice between me and my child, my child comes first.'

Doctors and nurses have to devote so much of their day to searching for basic food for their families that most of Zimbabwe's hospitals are shut through lack of staff.

In a hideous scenario, 700 pregnant women needing emergency Caesarean sections have been turned away.

Even Mugabe's state police are hungry. Their uniforms hang off their bodies as they stop cars at road blocks and order that any food belonging to the driver or passenger is handed out to them through the window.

As we travelled through Bulawayo, our car was pulled over by a young policeman. He made the driver get out and asked him: 'Where are you taking those whites?'

When the driver loyally refused to answer, the policeman instructed us to hand him our bottled water and sandwiches before we were allowed on our way. There was an automatic pistol in his holster.

In a chilling analysis, Tendai Biti, Secretary General of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, estimates that 4,500 Zimbabweans are dying of hunger each week, many of them babies and the old. At least 50,000 children have swollen stomachs and stunted growth  -  the signs of malnutrition.

In Plumtree, 80 miles from Bulawayo, I watched as two small girls stood at the grave of their baby sister, Lucie. Their mother, Sara, knelt in respect as their father pulled off his white cotton hat to mourn the child who died of hunger four months ago.

The only food the family had to eat that day was a spoonful of sadza, a maize porridge that is the staple diet of Zimbabweans. Of course, it is not enough to keep a human being alive for long.

Government services have all but collapsed in Zimbabwe. More than 1,000 people have died from cholera

Eight-month-old Kudi from Bulawayo at an emergency UNICEF Malnutrition Centre with his mother Liliosa, 22. Initially deceived by his plump appearance caused by malnutrition, treatment wasn't sought until diarrhoea set in. Doctors worry he may not survive as he weighs just 5kg

'I am afraid we will lose another of our daughters by Christmas,' 27-year-old Sara told me at the graveside. 'Before our baby died, I was so thin I did not have enough breast milk to feed her. She just faded away, her eyes sank into her head. We had hardly any porridge then, and now that is running out, too.'

The reality is that Mugabe's Zimbabwe, which he has ruled for 28 years since it gained independence from Britain, is now staring into the abyss. Zimbabwe once happily exported grain to the rest of Africa, but it is now a decade or more since it grew enough to feed itself.

Melissa, 4, from Bulawayo, with her mother. She is malnourished and shows signs of stunted growth. She is almost two-thirds of the weight she should be, and almost eight inches shorter than an average British four-year-old

Racially inspired 'land reforms' ordered by an increasingly demonic Mugabe in the late-Nineties put paid to that.

The 6,000 white farmers who owned 46 per cent of the arable land were forced to hand their thriving enterprises to black Zimbabweans  -  often henchmen in Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party  -  with no experience of agriculture.

The result? Huge tracts of Zimbabwe are returning to bush. The land lies untilled while almost every kind of food is imported.

No wonder the people, black and white, share a cynical joke. 'We were once the bread basket of Africa,' it goes. 'Now we are the basket case.'

Yet Mugabe, at 84, still clings on, declaring only this weekend: 'Zimbabwe is mine.'

Before presidential elections earlier this year, which every sane observer dismissed as a sham, he ordered his followers to murder and beat political opponents (even cutting off their limbs and genitals) to terrify thousands into voting for him.

And still such atrocities continue: 41 human rights activists, journalists, and opposition politicians have been abducted in the past few weeks after a knock on the door from Mugabe's men. Most have simply disappeared.

Meanwhile, Mugabe himself continues to live the high life (financed in part by the sale of Zimbabwe's £250 million platinum rights to China). He has five mansions (two confiscated from white farmers) and flies in foreign foods on a fleet of private planes.

His wife, Grace, 40 years his junior, is known as 'Gucci Grace' because of her profligate spending in the boutiques of Europe with other Zanu-PF leaders' wives.

For months the dictator has cynically sidestepped a power-sharing deal which might give Zimbabwe a future. His main political opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, has fled to neighbouring Botswana for his own safety.

Now Zimbabwean people are thinking the unthinkable: that the tyrant has deliberately provoked the collapse of his country as a forerunner to declaring a state of national emergency and outright military rule.

It is a scenario Zimbabweans dread. As Jessica, a 44-year-old social scientist from Harare, explains: 'We are frightened. We think the end game is near. Already, we look over our shoulders. We are careful what we say, even to neighbours. We put up Mugabe posters on our front doors to protect ourselves. It is like a Stalinist state.'

Some of the malnourished children found by The Daily Mail in Bulawayo, southern Zimbabwe

Outside Harare, at the Granville Cemetery, there are lines of newly dug graves in the 'cholera section'. Each has a tin sign with the age of the victim. Most have died unbearably young. The gravedigger tells me: 'We are beginning to lose count of the coffins arriving. We have buried 120 children every month since September.'

Here, families place silver Christmas tinsel on top of the graves instead of the headstones they cannot afford.

In the nearby St Peter's Church, where the services in the run-up to Christmas are under way, Father Oskar Wermter has never been busier. The priest, who recently spent weeks in hiding when he was threatened with abduction by the Zanu-PF, is visiting the emergency cholera clinics, praying for the sick and giving solace to those who have lost loved ones.

The leader who betrayed his people: Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe

During Mass and other services, it is normal for worshippers to shake hands with each other as a sign of peace. But this week, even this simple act had disappeared at St Peter's. 'People are afraid to touch, in case it leads to them catching cholera,' said Father Wermter. 'We just nod at each other instead.'

It may seem like a small thing, but in this once-civilised and prosperous country, it is yet another indignity imposed by Mugabe on his long-suffering people.

Hopes fading for 40 officials abducted in Mugabe crackdown

http://www.independent.ie


By Daniel Howden in Harare


Monday December 22 2008

Fears are mounting in Zimbabwe for the lives of more than 40 opposition
officials and human rights activists who have been abducted as part of a
renewed crackdown by the regime in Harare.

At least two more members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
have disappeared in the past week, along with a freelance investigative
reporter.

"The abductions are increasing and it now seems to be happening nationwide,"
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

The operation aims to eliminate political opponents and remove human rights
monitors. The kidnappings follow a pattern familiar from the past two years
of political intimidation, where key middle- and lower-ranking officials are
"disappeared" in an attempt to terrorise or destabilise opponents of the
ruling party.

Among those taken in the past month were Chris Dlamini, the head of security
for the MDC, and Jestina Mukoko, the director of Zimbabwe Peace Project. The
ruling party and security services have denied any part in the abductions.

Under normal circumstances, Mr Dlamini would have been the MDC's spokesman
about such disappearances.

His daughter, Victoria, has travelled from South Africa and is refusing to
leave the country until her father's fate is known.

She said the family have received no help from the police. "I don't know who
to talk to at the moment. This is an incredibly tough time for us. By now we
just want to know if he is alive or dead," she said.

Repeated appeals, including lawyers' petitions and, in the case of Ms
Mukoko, a high court order, have failed to force authorities to release
details of where the abductees are being held.

Kerry Kay, the MDC's welfare secretary, said that with each passing day hope
they will be found alive is fading.

Missing

Police claim they do not know the whereabouts of Mr Dlamini, or any of the
other 41 missing people.

However, a "confession" by Mr Dlamini is reported to have been included in a
dossier of evidence of foreign conspiracies against Harare that the
Zimbabwean government handed to the SADC, a development bloc of African
states.

Meanwhile, the kidnapping of a respected journalist has sent many of his
colleagues into hiding. Shadreck Manyere has not been seen for more than a
week. His wife said he had received a call at their home outside Harare and
had gone to meet a contact.

The pattern of abductions suggests a systematic effort to close down any
information-gathering about government activities.

There have been unconfirmed reports that some of those abducted are being
held at a military base in Kariba, near the border with Zambia.

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who is in Botswana, has given a deadline of
the end of the year for the release of the abductees, otherwise his party
will "suspend" power-sharing talks with the government. (© Independent News
Service)

- Daniel Howden in Harare

Companies blacklisted in US for allegedly backing Mugabe operate freely in UK

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

December 22, 2008


Tristan McConnell, Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg and Dominic Kennedy
Businessmen who have been accused by the US Treasury of financially
supporting the Mugabe regime are operating freely in Britain, in spite of
Gordon Brown's declaration that "enough is enough" in Zimbabwe.

Of 21 companies put on a US blacklist by President Bush last month, 14 are
based in Britain, two in the Isle of Man, one in Jersey and one in the
British Virgin Islands. The other three are based in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, Florida and Zimbabwe itself.

Top of the list of alleged Mugabe cronies now under sanction by the US
Treasury is the British-based businessman John Bredenkamp.

Mr Mugabe and his henchmen use a number of ploys to stay in power and live
in luxury as their countrymen suffer. In this they are said to receive the
help of white businessmen, several with British passports, and a number of
London-based companies. The foreign currency that these men bring into the
country allows top Zanu (PF) figures to buy hard currency at the official
rate - way below the currency's true worth - and earn small fortunes.

"They basically buy real money with worthless Zimbabwean dollars. That way
they can buy a car for what an ordinary person would use to fill a tank with
petrol," an insider said.

The operations of some British or British-owned companies have also caused
concern. It was reported this year that Foreign Office officials were
worried that the Zimbabwean subsidiary of the London-based Standard
Chartered Bank was violating European Union sanctions. According to inside
sources, the Foreign Office asked the Treasury to make "discreet inquiries"
as to whether Standard Chartered loans to the Zimbabwean Government breached
the sanctions.

Standard Chartered Zimbabwe is a subsidiary of Standard Chartered Plc of
Britain. A Foreign Office official was quoted as saying: "I'm still nervous
about the position of other [British-owned] banks [in Zimbabwe], and in
particular Standard Chartered."

Britain has failed to take action against individuals and companies while
calling for Mr Mugabe to go. By contrast, the US Treasury last month named
four financier "cronies" - Mr Bredenkamp, Muller Conrad "Billy" Rautenbach,
Nalinee Joy Taveesin and Mahmood Awang Kechik - of Mr Mugabe and put them on
a blacklist, freezing their US assets and banning American citizens from
doing business with them.

The list, issued by America's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), was
rounded off by the 21, mainly British-based, businesses.

"The financial and logistical support they have provided to the regime has
enabled Robert Mugabe to pursue policies that seriously undermine democratic
processes and institutions in Zimbabwe," the US Treasury said.

Mr Bredenkamp has been granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain, and
operates some of his businesses from an office in Berkshire.

Mr Bredenkamp, 68, was born in Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia, and is one
of the coterie of "Rhodies", or white Rhodesians with British connections,
whose influence has grown under Mr Mugabe. The US Treasury calls him "a
well-known Mugabe insider involved in various business activities, including
tobacco trading, grey-market arms trading and trafficking, equity
investments, oil distribution, tourism, sports management, and diamond
extraction".

Mr Bredenkamp's spokesman issued a point-by-point denial, saying: "Breco [a
company he controls] does not trade in tobacco. At 'free' auctions, it
purchases tobacco from the producers and adds value through cigarette
manufacturing. Mr Bredenkamp is a passive investor in ACS, an accredited
agent to major Western defence and aerospace companies who are regulated by
their own governments. ACS does not operate, therefore, in the grey market.

"Alongside the likes of Shell and BP, who have major networks of petrol
retail outlets in Zimbabwe, Breco supplies petroleum products, purchased
from the State Oil Company by law, to a mere five retail outlets. It also
has a small bulk fuel distribution business whose clients include Unicef.

"Mr Bredenkamp has never been involved in the exploration or extraction of
diamonds."

In 1993 Mr Bredenkamp made an estimated $100 million selling his Casalee
tobacco company, and set up Breco, a private equity group now on the US
blacklist. His spokesman said: "Mr Bredenkamp recently received notification
from the US Treasury that he was on the OFAC list. He wishes to make it
clear that he is challenging that decision on the grounds that it is based
on erroneous information."

Mr Bredenkamp strongly disputes any suggestion he gives the regime funds to
help Mr Mugabe to cling to power. His spokesman said: "Just because he is a
Zimbabwean and is based in Zimbabwe and has a business in Zimbabwe does not
mean he provides the Zanu (PF) regime with funds. He employs around 1,500
people in his businesses in Zimbabwe - their remuneration supports
approximately 6,000 people. Is he meant to quit and put all these people out
of work?"

The former England spin bowler Phil Edmonds is chairman of the Central
African Mining and Exploration Company (CAMEC), of which the blacklisted Mr
Rautenbach is a shareholder. CAMEC announced its acquisition of an interest
in platinum assets in Zimbabwe in April. As a result, CAMEC inherited an
agreement between Lefever, the company it acquired, to lend $100 million to
the Zimbabwean Government as an advance against future dividends.

"CAMEC is conscious of its responsibility to protect the welfare of its
employees in Zimbawe," the company told The Times, "and has invested
considerable sums in housing, education and medical projects, not to mention
long-term employment opportunities." It said it had delayed bringing its
platinum project into production "until the political situation is
stabilised and the platinum price recovers".

The banks Barclays and Standard Chartered, listed on the London Stock
Exchange, have faced criticism over their subsidiaries operating bank
accounts for Mr Mugabe's close aides. To do so is not illegal, but critics
question the morality of it.

Standard Chartered said: "We have a long-term commitment to the welfare of
our 860 staff, their extended families who depend on them and for our many
thousands of customers who rely on our services. Standard Chartered Group
makes no money in Zimbabwe. We comply with all US, UK and EU sanctions. We
have been consistently clear on the morality of keeping our operation open.
It's quite clearly morally the right thing to do."

Barclays said: "Barclays Bank Zimbabwe is not opening branches and, in fact,
Barclays is not making any new investment in Zimbabwe. Revenue generated in
the country is used only to maintain day-to-day operations, pay staff and
keep the bank running ... Barclays is fully compliant with EU sanctions
relating to Zimbabwe."

Neither Standard Chartered nor Barclays have been blacklisted by the US
Treasury.

A fortnight ago Mr Brown launched his toughest attack on Zimbabwe. "We must
stand together to defend human rights and democracy, to say firmly to Mugabe
that enough is enough," he said. However, Britain's sanctions regime against
Zimbabwe is much narrower in scope than America's. It consists largely of
Zimbabwean politicians and public figures, none with any serious stake in
the British economy.

Asked what action Britain would take against Mr Bredenkamp, a spokesman for
HM Treasury told The Times: "We are considering a range of measures with EU
partners in response to the continuing impasse in Zimbabwe, including
further targeted measures. Announcing these prematurely would be
ineffective."

Additional reporting: Jan Raath

On the US blacklist

John Bredenkamp "A close ally of Mugabe's", according to the US Treasury. It
lists the following entities, owned or controlled by him: Alpha
International (Private) Ltd; Breco (Asia Pacific) Ltd, also Breco (Eastern
Europe) Ltd, (SA) Ltd, (UK) Ltd, Breco Group, Breco International, Breco
Nominees Ltd, Breco Services Ltd; Corybantes Ltd; Echo Delta Holdings Ltd;
Kababankola Mining Company; Masters Int Ltd; Masters Int Inc; Piedmont (UK)
Ltd; Raceview Enterprises; Scottlee Holdings (Pvt) Ltd; Scottlee Resorts;
Timpani Ltd; and Tremalt Ltd

Muller Conrad Rautenbach (aka Billy Rautenback) Zimbabwean businessman "with
close ties to the regime". Supported Zanu (PF) individuals during the
conflict with the Democratic Republic of Congo and "provided logistical
support" for mining projects that "benefit a small number of corrupt senior
officials". One entity designated is owned by him - Ridgepoint Overseas
Developments Ltd

Nalinee Taveesin A Thai businesswoman who has organised "a number of
financial, real-estate and gem-related transactions" for Grace Mugabe and
others on the US blacklist

Mahmood Awang Kechik A Malaysian urologist. Alleged to have used his clinic
to hide the destination of medical equipment coming into the country. Also
implicated in schemes to "generate wealth for these regime officials" and
the Zimbabwe Government"

Source: US Treasury Department

Comment
Not surprising. The UK is useless at convicting bad guys. I guess the US
could go for proceedings against these 'entrepreneurs' cos we can't tell a
thief from a Samaritan. I just hate that they see money more important than
cholera, torture, murder and denial of the most basic human rights.

John Christopher, Washington, US

Congo re-exported ammunition to Zimbabwe-UN experts

http://africa.reuters.com


Sun 21 Dec 2008, 22:19 GMT

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The Democratic Republic of the Congo
re-exported more than 50 tons of ammunition to Zimbabwe earlier this year,
according to a recent report by a U.N. group of experts for the Security
Council.

In their report on U.N. arms trade restrictions on Congo, where factional
violence has raged in the East for years, the group also said that arms it
believed originated in China had been flown into Congo from Sudan.

The five-person group said that the ammunition sent to Zimbabwe must have
first been imported into Congo but did not specifically say it had come from
China.

The U.N. Security Council has imposed an arms embargo on militias operating
in eastern Congo. It permits arms supplies to the Congolese government army
or FARDC but requires that exporters first notify a U.N. sanctions
committee.

The experts' group said it was "aware of large amounts of ammunition
arriving in eastern Congo without any notification by exporters to the
sanctions committee" and that the FARDC might be exporting weapons and
ammunition to other countries in the region.

"As the Democratic Republic of the Congo does not produce weapons or
ammunition, this stock would have been imported to the Democratic Republic
of the Congo without notification and then possibly exported in violation of
the original end-user agreement with the original exporter," it said.

It said that between Aug. 20 and 22 of this year, a Boeing-707 aircraft
carried out two return trips from Congo to the Zimbabwe capital Harare,
transporting a total of 53 tons of ammunition destined for the Zimbabwean
army.

"While this is not a violation of the arms embargo, it is an indication that
the Democratic Republic of the Congo could become a transit point for
weapons destined for other countries," it said.

Zimbabwe is suffering from an economic meltdown as well as a months-long
political deadlock between the ruling party and the opposition over a
proposed unity government.

The U.N. experts also said that a Congolese Boeing-707 had carried out five
flights between Khartoum and the Congolese city of Kisangani to deliver
military supplies to the FARDC.

The group said it was "not aware of the required notification to the
Security Council by the government of the Sudan" and had "received credible
information that the weapons transported originated in China."

The group had written to the Chinese government and was awaiting a reply, it
said.

A controversy erupted in April over a shipment of Chinese arms for
landlocked Zimbabwe that South African port workers refused to unload. There
were conflicting reports over where the arms ended up. Zimbabwe is not under
U.N. sanctions. (Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Turn screw on Mugabe, US urges

Chris McGreal in Johannesburg
The Guardian, Monday 22 December 2008

The US yesterday called on southern African governments to force President
Robert Mugabe from power, saying it had dropped support for the troubled
agreement under which he was supposed to share power with his main rival,
Morgan Tsvangirai.

Jendayi Frazer, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa, who has been
touring the region to press its leaders to take a stronger stand against
Mugabe, said in Pretoria that mediation efforts by the former South African
president Thabo Mbeki had failed. "We think the facilitation is over. It led
to a power-sharing agreement that is flawed," she said. "We think [Mugabe]
has reneged on the principle of power sharing."

Frazer said Mugabe's attempts to blame the west for the cholera epidemic
that had claimed more than 1,000 lives in Zimbabwe was evidence that he was
"a man who's lost it, who's losing his mind, who's out of touch with
reality".

Under the agreement signed three months ago, Mugabe was to cede a
considerable amount of his power to Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, who
was to be prime minister. But implementation stalled because Mugabe insisted
on controlling the most powerful cabinet posts, including security and
finance.

Frazer said Washington had been sceptical from the beginning about the
power-sharing agreement but had bowed to South African pressure to give it a
chance. "Let's acknowledge now that the power-sharing agreement hasn't
worked," she said.

It was now time for the region's leaders to step in and tell Mugabe to go.
"It is as easy as them coming together and saying to Mugabe: 'It's over'. He
won't then have the cover of saying it is the west when his brothers say
'you are no longer our comrade'," she said.

Frazer said other governments in the Southern African Development Community
(SADC) accepted that Mugabe was no longer a legitimate leader but were
reluctant to take a firmer stand against him because it would lead to the
total collapse of Zimbabwe, with serious consequences for its neighbours.

"We think the country is already in collapse. [SADC leaders] were hesitant
to go against Mugabe because they did not want to see the whole thing fall
apart, but it has fallen apart," said Frazer. "SADC is losing more of its
credibility the longer this situation continues."

Zimbabwe's Mugabe Dismisses Washington's Pronouncement

http://www.voanews.com/



By Peter Clottey
Washington, D.C
22 December 2008


Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has dismissed as nonsensical a
pronouncement by the United States that a power sharing deal with the
opposition wouldn't work while Mugabe remains the president. He said he
would not stoop to international pressure to step down, adding he would go
to his political death to see the opposition rule Zimbabwe. The president's
comments followed a statement by Washington that it had lost confidence in
the success of the power sharing deal with Mugabe as president. Some
political observers say Washington's new stance would put pressure on the
Southern African region to take a stronger position against President
Mugabe. Glen Mpani is a Zimbabwe political analyst. He tells reporter Peter
Clottey that Washington is playing into Mugabe's propaganda.

"The statement coming from Robert Mugabe is consistent with the stance that
he has taken that he is going to be rebutting everything that comes from the
West that he is the president of Zimbabwe; that he is going to seek a
process to legitimize the so-called victory that they got on the 27th of
June," Mpani pointed out.

He said Washington's pronouncement would give Mugabe an excuse not to focus
on the problems facing ordinary Zimbabweans.

"But I think on the side of the comment that have come on the side of the
American government, while they have said in a previous statement that they
don't recognize the Mugabe government, what they are also doing is they are
providing a side show for Mugabe to change the attention from the real
issues within the country and start responding to external issues. Rather
than focusing on the problems that he has created within Zimbabwe," he said.

Mpani said there is reason to believe that President Mugabe is unwilling to
equally share power with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

"The indicators within the country show fully well that he is not prepared
to share power. Going ahead to appoint the attorney general, the governor of
the reserve bank, the outright condemnation or the hate speech that comes
out of his speeches, is sign of a man who does not believe that they are in
a power sharing agreement. In fact for him, this is all about accommodating
the MDC rather than sharing power with the MDC," Mpani noted.

He disagreed that Washington's new stance on President Mugabe would put
pressure on members of the Southern African development Community (SADC),
especially South Africa to be tough on Harare.

"I don't think it would do that because what the South African government
would not want to be seen doing is that it doesn't want to be seen as
yielding to external pressure. Remember the argument that Mugabe has been
putting across is that African countries that are independent are under
external pressure. So, for the South African government to be seen
capitulating to that, that in itself would alienate one, from the Zimbabwe
government and two, it would be regarded as not being Africa," he said.

Mpani said Zimbabwe's powerful neighbor seems to be ready to thwart any
effort at undermining Mugabe's grip on power.

"So, what the South African government is going to do is to continue to
protect Mugabe. Just like what they have been doing at the UN Security
Council, blocking any initiative to put more weight on the Zimbabwe
government. So, I think in a way it is retrogressive in that way that it
emboldens the African position that it was slowly peeling out of the African
leaders," Mpani noted.

He described as a grave error Pretoria's pronouncement that Mugabe as
President and Tsvangirai as Zimbabwe's Prime Minister is the only way
forward.

"For them to say that is the only solution I think is based on the option
that is on the table. But I think while they are saying that is the only
option available and both parties have said that they are willing to go into
agreement they should go beyond that and say what are the problems that have
caused this agreement not to work? And how should they address them? For
them to be simply saying they would want Mugabe to be the president and
Tsvangirai to be the prime minister does not resolve the problem. The
problem is the way the ZANU-PF government has arrogated itself the position
of being the sole end of leadership in the country. Those are the real
problems," he said.

Power-sharing talks between the ruling ZANU-PF party and main opposition MDC
have stalled over implementing a power-sharing deal, which would have left
Mugabe as president and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as the prime
minister.

Mugabe threatened early this month to hold new elections in the next
one-and-a-half to two years if the power-sharing deal with the opposition
arrangement failed.

Mugabe attacks Standard Chartered & Barclays

http://www.zimbabwemetro.com

Local News
December 22, 2008 | By Staff
Self inaugurated President Robert Mugabe vowed to fend off his "political
death" and urged his party to be ready for new polls as he blamed banks for
the economic woes facing the country.

"The financial system is not under our control. It is in the hands of our
detractors. Banks such Standard Chartered and Barclays, they do the bidding
of their masters abroad," Mugabe said. "You can tell from the irregularities
they have committed over the past few months."

Closing the ZANU-PF party's 10th annual conference in Bindura,Mugabe brushed
off international pressure to resign as Zimbabwe crumbles under its worst
humanitarian and economic crisis.

"Zimbabweans will refuse that one of their sons must accompany (George) Bush
to his political death," he said. "Is it a ritual now that Bush with his
political death must be accompanied by some African from Zimbabwe, and that
African must be the leader himself, and that leader is Mugabe?"

Mugabe never mentioned the raging cholera epidemic that has taken more than
1 000 lives since August, and instead focus only on the elections.

"We don't want to be shamed again like what happened in March. If elections
are called we should be confident of victory. Provinces should start
strengthening the party."

A defiant Mugabe led his disciples in chanting: "Zimbabwe will never be a
colony again."

Referring to his rival Tsvangirai, Mugabe said, "In a dishonest and
hypocritical manner, Britain condemns us as a country violating human rights
and imposed a political monster that will oppose all that we fought for."

Mugabe has refused to allow a unity government with the MDC to reverse his
controversial policy of seizing white-owned farms to give to blacks.

"We will never allow regression in regard to our land policy," he said. "The
biggest issue is of land. The land has already been given to the people, it
will not be returned to whites."

Zanu PF and the MDC have failed to implement a power-sharing deal signed in
September. The pact has stalled as they fight over who should control key
ministries.

Under the deal brokered by the former SA leader Thabo Mbeki, Mugabe would
remain president while Tsvangirai would become prime minister.

Mugabe is 'losing his mind': Zimbabwe's leader branded 'mad' by Africa's top U.S. envoy

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk


By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:35 AM on 22nd December 2008


Robert Mugabe is 'losing his mind', the top U.S. envoy for Africa has said.


In a scathing assessment of the Zimbabwean president, Jendayi Fraser, the
U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, claimed Mugabe was 'a
man who's lost it'  -  effectively branding him mad.


As a result, America could no longer support a Zimbabwean power- sharing
deal that would leave the president  -  'a man incapable of sharing
ower'  -  in the top job, she said.


Mugabe is still failing to consult the opposition despite the September
deal, she added, continued to harass and arrest opposition and human rights
activists, and was making the appalling  -  largely self-inflicted  -
deterioration of Zimbabwe's humanitarian and economic situation worse.


Particularly worrying, she noted, was the rapid spread of cholera, an easily
treatable and preventable disease that has killed at least 1,000 Zimbabweans
since August.


Mugabe's claims that the West deliberately started the cholera epidemic
showed he is 'a man who's lost it, who's losing his mind, who's out of touch
with reality', she said.


If Mugabe's neighbours were to unite and 'go to Mugabe and tell him to go, I
do think he would go', she added.


Miss Fraser's comments are likely to put huge pressure on Zimbabwe's
neighbours  -  South Africa in particular  -  to abandon Mugabe.


However, South Africa yesterday insisted that the power-sharing agreement  -
under which Mugabe is president and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai the
country's prime minister  -  was the only way forward.


Miss Fraser said it was understandable that South Africa would try not to do
anything that could lead to Zimbabwe's collapse  -  and perhaps create a
refugee crisis.


It was 'fair', she added, for the country to try quiet diplomacy and to try
to move the stalled unity deal forward.


'But when these actions don't work, more robust response must be
considered,' she added.

Tsvangirai opposes military invasion

http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=8992


December 21, 2008




By Geoffrey Nyarota

THE president of the Movement for Democracy (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai, has
distanced himself from any proposed military invasion of Zimbabwe by foreign
troops.

Tsvangirai says not only would such a move be impractical; it would be
inconsistent with the MDC's principles of achieving democratic change in
Zimbabwe . He also said that to launch a military invasion of Zimbabwe would
be to play right into the hands of President Robert Mugabe.

Tsvangirai said this in an interview in his temporary home in the Botswana
capital, Gaborone. Tsvangirai's home for now is a well-guarded but sparsely
furnished guest-house in an exclusive part of the Botswana capital. The huge
living room of the house is virtually empty except for a coffee table and
three straight-backed chairs.

Tsvangirai's hosts appear to have been more concerned about their guest's
security than his creature comforts. A black Mercedes Benz sedan is parked
outside.

"I am aware of the frustration that people now have with Robert Mugabe," he
said. "I will be the last person, however, to ask for his removal through
unorthodox means. I do not subscribe to any method that is not democratic.
We should ask Mugabe to respect the will of the people.

"To launch a military invasion of Zimbabwe would be to play right into his
hands. He wants to become a martyr. He loves martyrdom. In any case,
removing a president through unconstitutional means could produce a
disastrous situation such as we have witnessed in Iraq ."

Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga launched an attack on Mugabe early this
month and called for the deployment of foreign troops to intervene in
Zimbabwe to end a worsening humanitarian crisis. He said Mugabe should be
investigated for crimes against humanity.

"If no troops are available, then the AU must allow the United Nations to
send its forces into Zimbabwe with immediate effect, to take over control of
the country and ensure urgent humanitarian assistance to the people dying of
cholera," Odinga said, endorsing the calls by several world leaders for
action on Zimbabwe

Tsvangirai spoke strongly in opposing the prospect of any such foreign
invasion of Zimbabwe in a bid to dislodge Mugabe from power.

"While I don't define the foreign policies of foreign governments, whatever
they do must be in the interests of the people of Zimbabwe ," he said. "We
cannot achieve our national goals through an international invasion."

In another interview, Phandu Skelemani , Botswana 's foreign minister and a
relentless critic of the Mugabe government, said his country strongly
opposed any foreign invasion of Zimbabwe .

"We object to any initiative to take President Mugabe out by force,"
Skelemani said. "Every Zimbabwean would see foreign troops as invaders of
their country.

"I do not think the army of Zimbabwe would remain in their barracks in the
face of a foreign invasion. The problem with an invasion is that innocent
civilians would be killed."

Skelemani said the government of Botswana was, therefore, totally opposed to
any military invasion of Zimbabwe .

"We also don't agree with any sanctions that have the potential to hurt the
people of Zimbabwe ," he said.

Tsvangirai said allegations by Mugabe that the MDC was a violent party and
that some of its members were receiving military training in Botswana were
nothing but a red herring. He said Mugabe merely sought to divert attention
from the serious problems inside Zimbabwe by raising issues that were
totally without basis.

"We have discussed these allegations with the Botswana officials and their
official attitude is that the allegations must be verified through SADC
protocols. The problem is not that the allegations are being made; it is why
they are being made."

Tsvangirai said the political momentum that had been built during the run-up
to the March 29 elections had been lost during the wave of violence
following the election, ahead of the June 27 election re-run.

"While we won the elections there was no transfer of power. What we need now
is a national and international challenge or movement against Mugabe," he
said.

"The nucleus of the movement must be national but with international
support. But there must be cohesion and unity among the internal forces
campaigning against Mugabe. We must sort out all issues that divide us and
must sing with one voice.

"We will continue to fight the Mugabe dictatorship using democratic means.
But dictators do not usually go on the basis of persuasion or negotiation.

"Now they are accusing Botswana of training militias for the MDC because
they want Botswana to back off from its support for the MDC. President Khama
has stated clearly that his country is not training any MDC people."

Tsvangirai responded to criticism of his extended stay outside Zimbabwe at a
time when there was a growing chorus of calls for him to return to Harare.
He said he agreed with this sentiment in principle. He could not be pinned
down on when exactly he could be expected back in Zimbabwe .

He said his failure to return was for practical reasons.

"My passport expired more than three weeks ago," he said. "It expired during
the SADC summit in Sandton. I used the expired document to travel to France
, Senegal , Morocco and Botswana . All these countries are sympathetic to my
plight and did not demand a passport.

"There is no doubt about my intention to go back to Zimbabwe . But I cannot
travel back on an expired passport. The only way I can travel back to Harare
in the circumstances would be through an unauthorized entry, perhaps as a
border jumper."

Tsvangirai said he had raised the issue of his expired passport with Mugabe
himself.

"I said to him, 'You want to entrust me with national authority as Prime
Minister, when you cannot trust me with a passport.'"

In response to a question about a statement by him during a recent radio
interview that Mugabe's behaviour rendered it difficult to work with him,
Tsvangirai said while it was difficult to work with Zanu-PF it was not
altogether impossible.

"I can work with Zanu-PF," the MDC leader said. "The problem is I have no
counterpart in the party because Mugabe has become an erratic old man who is
not conscious of his obligations under the Global Political Agreement which
we signed on September 15. It's now difficult to work with Zanu-PF but it's
not impossible.

"Zanu-PF has become like the apartheid regime of South Africa , which
continued to kill people while negotiating with Nelson Mandela. Mugabe has
an obligation to uphold the rule of law. The agreement that we signed says
the security organs must uphold the rule of law.

"The socio-economic situation in the country will show Mugabe that he cannot
go on like this forever. He will soon realise that he has reached a dead
end.

"Take the police, for example. Every one of them is suffering like everyone
else. Mugabe enjoys their obedience, but not their loyalty. Patronage has
its limitations."

Tsvangirai said even if Constitutional Amendment Number 19 was adopted, that
was no guarantee that the MDC would participate in a coalition government.

"In any case, the formation of a new government is itself not a panacea to
the problems that Zimbabweans are facing," he said. "A possible panacea is
that Zanu-PF must accept that the MDC won the elections back in March.

"The MDC must have a leading voice in the coalition government. We will not
enter the coalition government to maintain the existing status quo. As MDC
we are talking about an equitable sharing of power but as far as Zanu-PF is
concerned, the whole question revolves around a power retention arrangement.
There are a number of other outstanding issues to be agreed on apart from
the Amendment Bill."

Tsvangirai reacted angrily to a question about the alleged existence of a
so-called "Kitchen Cabinet" within the leadership of the MDC. He dismissed
it as a term created by people who wanted to undermine the leadership of the
MDC.

"My style of leadership is that there is collective discussion of issues and
collective ownership of decisions. The MDC has a standing committee of
people elected by the party's congress.

"The decision that I should boycott the presidential election re-run in June
and the decision that the MDC should participate in negotiations with
Zanu-PF were both collective decisions.

He said nobody could prove that he had taken individual decisions or that
the so-called Kitchen Cabinet had imposed any decisions on the MDC.

Meanwhile, Botswana 's Ambassador to Zimbabwe has dismissed as mere
speculation recent reports, including in the Zimbabwe Times, which stated
the the Botswana embassy in Harare was closing.

"It is certainly not true that we are closing the embassy," Pelokgale Seloma
said in an interview in Francistown . "What happened is that we put our
office furniture and equipment on auction.

"It is government policy that embassies dispose of furniture and other items
every five years. In fact, the sale of furniture in Harare was long overdue.
So we held an auction on Saturday, December 6, after placing an
advertisement in the press."

He said the auction had been held at a time of tension between Gaborone and
Harare and people concluded that the embassy was closing.

"I don't think we would ever close the embassy," he said. "Our focus in
Harare now is to ensure that relations between our two nations remain good.
At some stage there was talk that we were about to introduce visas for
Zimbabweans.

"I said we can't do that because there are so many Zimbabweans entering
Botswana and we don't want to appear as if we are restricting them. It has
never been our intention to close the embassy.

"The government of Botswana has adopted its policy on Zimbabwe not because
it wants to fight Zimbabwe . We feel that as neighbours we should be free to
give advice. The advice that we give to the government of Zimbabwe is
genuine.

"We hope our brothers realise that we are not doing this out of malice."

Seloma's visit to Francistown coincided with a heavy influx of Zimbabweans
in town for their Christmas shopping.

Zimbabwe's inflation means jail wardens steal from prisoners to stay alive

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

December 22, 2008

Martin Fletcher in Harare
Zimbabwe's highways are littered with police checkpoints, which is
discomforting for foreign journalists working there illegally. But they are
simply a pretext for extracting food or money from drivers.

"What are we having for Christmas?", one policeman asked The Times. "I'm
hungry," another said bluntly. A third threatened to issue me with a ticket
for stopping a yard past the point where he was standing. He then said that
my companions - hitch hikers - were "unlawful passengers". Eventually he
backed down, but a black driver would have had to pay.

More alarming was when I was flagged down by two police officers near
Bulawayo, prompting visions of Christmas in a lice-infested Zimbabwean
prison. But they just wanted a lift.

In the car they raged against President Mugabe's regime. The senior one, a
sergeant of five years' standing, claimed that his monthly salary did not
buy even a litre of cooking oil. His work was merely "community service". He
said that he felt sympathy for the suffering of ordinary people, and that if
they rebelled he would not fire on them.


Another passenger was a warden at Bulawayo's infamous Khami prison. The
previous month he had earned 200 million Zimbabwean dollars - less than US$1
at today's rate. Of that sum he could withdraw only a fraction after
queueing for four hours at the bank each morning. Every day and a bit, its
value halved.

He said that he had five children to support and had not eaten bread for a
year. He survived by stealing the prisoners' sadza - a porridge that is now
a luxury for most - or by trading favours for food brought in by families.
"There's no discipline ... We depend on the prisoners to stay alive."

Four inmates shared cells designed for one; 400 shared a single tap. There
were no working lavatories and it was overrun with rodents. Some prisoners
suffered from pellagra, an illness caused by vitamin deficiency, and several
died each day. Their bodies were seldom claimed because of the funeral
costs. Most were kept in a stinking mortuary for the statutory 12 days, then
put in sacks and given paupers' burials in the prison grounds.

Many prisoners were not criminals at all, the warden said. "They stole food
to keep themselves alive."

Zimbabwe's collapse is evident everywhere, with broken picnic tables in
lay-bys serving as poignant reminders of happier times. The roads are
crumbling and potholed. Few traffic lights or streetlights work. Many
vehicles are ancient jalopies that frequently break down.

Everywhere, even in the country, people walk along the roadside for lack of
transport. From the verges they hawk firewood, vegetables or a sour fruit
called mazanje foraged in the bush. Some hold out live chickens to passing
vehicles in desperation.

Outside the town of Victoria Falls two young brothers named Freedom and
Promise were selling clumps of tiny fish on strings that they caught at
great personal risk each day by wading into the middle of the
crocodile-infested Zambesi. "We have no choice," Freedom said.

Military removal of Mugabe would be regional disaster

http://www.businessday.co.za

 22 December 2008

Adam Habib

ZIMBABWE is back in the news. The human catastrophe unfolding in the
country, and the political impasse in the negotiations have led to renewed
calls for action. What is new, however, is the demand for military
intervention by high-profile political and religious figures. Led by a
bishop, a head of state and a head of government, the calls by Desmond Tutu,
Botswana President Ian Khama and Raila Odinga, prime minister of Kenya, have
received widespread publicity.


What are we to make of these calls? The most charitable interpretation
suggests these individuals, frustrated by the lack of progress and the scale
of the human disaster, were venting and were not really advocating this as a
serious option. The conspiratorial view, by contrast, suggests these
individuals, and many others, have fallen prey to militaristic and
adventurist elements outside of the continent. Whichever thesis you
subscribe to, the strategic option must not be allowed to go unchallenged,
as it could have serious consequences for the region.


Military intervention would be a moral and a strategic disaster. The call
for military intervention is being made on humanitarian grounds. But we
would be deluded to believe that it could not get worse. Cast a glance at
Iraq to see how bad things can really get.

External military intervention would cause the violence to spiral out of
control. In such conditions of violent instability, murder and rape would
become widespread, services would deteriorate even further and the
consequences would be borne by Zimbabweans.


Democracy can never be realised through the barrel of the gun. Iraq is the
latest in a long list of historical examples which prove this. The belief
that you can generate democracy by external military intervention has always
only been a fantasy of the political right. And it has only been undertaken
by the big powers in the international system when it suited their national
security or strategic ends.


Military intervention would also be disastrous on strategic grounds. The
Zimbabwean military has been one of the most active in southern Africa. Its
South African counterpart, while probably having better equipment in some
areas, is an ageing force without active military service for at least 15
years. As a result, it is severely limited in its capacity and reach. Given
this, it is doubtful that military intervention by SA would be a quick
affair. And no other power in the region would even have the prospect of
success in this regard.

The most likely outcome, then, would be the regionalisation of the conflict,
which would have disastrous consequences for all of the countries in the
region.


For a recent case study of the regional consequences of military
intervention, cast a glance at the Horn of Africa. There, the Ethiopians,
prompted by the Americans, militarily intervened in Somalia. In the process,
they made worse an already bad national situation - it militarised Somalia
even further, subjected its citizens to greater hardships, and now that they
are leaving, destabilised the entire Horn of Africa.

Should such a situation prevail in southern Africa, SA's citizens, the
business and political establishment have the most to lose. As the largest
investor in the region, SA has benefited most from the postapartheid
regional stability - the peace dividend in Mozambique and Angola, and the
stabilising and economic growth effects of democratisation in the rest of
the region. A regionalisation of the Zimbabwe conflict would jeopardize
these gains.


But where do we go from here? Clearly the situation cannot be allowed to
continue to deteriorate. Perhaps the starting point should be to heed the
advice of my colleague, Jimi Adesina, professor of sociology at Rhodes
University, who in a recent engagement argued graphically that "we have to
first chase the hawk away before we can deal with the chickens".

Africa's political elites must make it clear to external powers - the US, UK
and China included - that they need to be more circumspect in their
engagements and in their calls for action. They must be categoric that a
political solution is the only game in town, which all external actors must
respect.


Then, southern African leaders, supported by the African Union, must call in
Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai and make it clear that harsh action will
be taken against both if a settlement is not agreed by their respective
parties.

Mugabe must be told that he will be expelled from regional bodies, his
access to the rest of the continent will be shut down, and the tap of
regional aid and solidarity will be closed. If he complies, however, Zanu
(PF) will be an integral component of the settlement.

The generals must also be brought on board with promises of a deal if they
comply, and threats of charges at The Hague if they do not.


Similarly, Tsvangirai must be given an ultimatum. If he does not play ball
and recognise that a political solution is the only game in town, and act
accordingly, he too will have his access to the continent closed. Tsvangirai
knows that ultimately he requires southern Africa as his base if an
inclusive solution involving him is to be realised for Zimbabwe.

The final breakthrough in every major political settlement in the region -
including the South African and earlier Zimbabwean one - was made when one
or more regional leaders threw down the gauntlet and insisted that a deal be
struck. Machel did it to Mugabe. Vorster did it to Smith. Regional leaders
did it to the African National Congress. It is now time for our collective
leadership to do it to Bob and Morgan.


Habib is deputy vice-chancellor research, innovation and advancement at the
University of Johannesburg.

ROHR members under siege from Zanu PF militia and state agents

From the Zimbabwe Vigil

Appeal from our partner organisation ROHR Zimbabwe. We would be grateful for any publicity

Rose Benton

Vigil co-ordinator

The Vigil, outside the Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand, London, takes place every Saturday from 14.00 to 18.00 to protest against gross violations of human rights by the current regime in Zimbabwe. The Vigil which started in October 2002 will continue until internationally-monitored, free and fair elections are held in Zimbabwe. http://www.zimvigil.co.uk

Sign the Avaaz petition

Dear friends across Africa,

Three months ago today we looked on with hope as Robert Mugabe and MDC
leader Morgan Tsvangarai signed a deal to solve the country's political
crisis. Now the negotiation has all but broken down and Mugabe's de facto
regime is clinging to power whilst destroying the country and creating
regional rifts which threaten stability in Southern Africa.

There is one government that could stop Zimbabwe's meltdown − South Africa.
President Motlanthe has the power to get a political solution based on the
will of the Zimbabwean people which Africa could unite behind.

This tragedy needs a courageous leadership. Today we are launching a
emergency campaign across Africa to urge President Motlanthe to step up and
take immediate action. Zimbabweans are pleading for help and if we join our
voices across the continent in solidarity, our appeal will be heard in
Pretoria. Sign our petition now, and please spread it to friends and family
−− and we will deliver it to the South African government and run it as ads
in South African newspapers. We need to show President Motlanthe that we are
counting on him − lets get thousands of Africans to endorse this message:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/south_africa_for_zimbabwe/98.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

Zimbabweans have been waiting desperately for security and stability since
March this year, when the majority clearly voted for MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangarai. In recent weeks the situation has deteriorated dramatically −−
paralysed with no government, the highest inflation in the world, widespread
hunger, and rising state violence, Zimbabweans have now been struck with a
cholera emergency spreading into Botswana, South Africa and Mozambique.

Western governments and a handful of African leaders have condemned the
situation, but South Africa's ANC government has greatest leverage over
Zimbabwe's Zanu PF primarily because of their historic alliance during the
liberation struggles and because of strong economic ties and leadership in
the South African Development Community. To date, talks have been left to
former President Thabo Mbeki, but his cautious mediation, accused of lacking
neutrality, has come to a deadlock, lost legitimacy and run out of time. Now
the region is offering humanitarian aid, but that is not enough−− now is the
time for the governing ANC to act boldly and bring an end to the regime.

Last week ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe said: "What will we do to
make Mugabe retire? We will persuade him." The South African government
knows it can do it. Let's give President Motlanthe a strong mandate from the
African people to act in our name and save Zimbabwe. Sign our emergency
petition now and spread it to friends and family:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/south_africa_for_zimbabwe/98.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

The resolution of the breakdown of Zimbabwe is complex for many of us
because Mugabe was a hero of Africa's liberation, but as President Kagame of
Rwanda says: "People need to be held accountable for any wrong they do
notwithstanding what good things they did in the past including, liberating
the country". At this crucial time, let's stand together as African citizens
and call on President Motlanthe to keep Zimbabwe's liberation alive.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/south_africa_for_zimbabwe/98.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

In hope,

Ricken, Alice, Graziela, Brett, Ben, Paul, Pascal, Luis, Paula and the whole
Avaaz team

Medical staff end strike after NGO incentive

http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=9007


December 21, 2008


By Raymond Maingire

HARARE - Zimbabwe 's health workers have reportedly agreed to end their
crippling strike after a group of foreign aid groups pledged to top their
normal monthly salaries with incentives pegged in hard currency.

Zimbabwe's health workers have been on an intermittent strike for the whole
year.

But the strike became full-blown in November after the workers decided to
down tools, saying government was not willing to take their case seriously.

Sources have revealed the European Union and the American embassy alongside
aid groups such as the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United
Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Department for International
Development (DFID) are among the organizations that have volunteered
financial support to the ailing sector.

The government, which shall continue to pay the workers' salaries in local
currency, has reportedly approved the new arrangement.

According to the source, the lowest ranked health worker would receive their
normal monthly salaries while a $US50 incentive would be paid as a top-up.

Specialist and general doctors would also be paid their normal salaries by
government while an additional $US850 and $US500 would be paid as
incentives.

It was not clear as to the time frame during which the incentives would be
paid although it was said they would be paid simultaneously with normal
monthly salaries.

The new arrangement has, however, not been formally communicated to the
affected health workers although their representatives to the deliberations
are said to have assured government they would call off the strike.

"The doctors are almost sure to end their strike beginning January," the
source said.

"A whole group of donor agencies have pledged to resuscitate the sector
through incentives pegged in foreign currency."

Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights co-ordinator, Primrose Matambanadzo, said
her association was not ready to comment as it was yet to know the details
of the proposed arrangement.

"All I can confirm is that yes, we have heard some arrangements are being
worked out for health workers to be paid incentives in foreign currency,"
she said.

"What I cannot tell you are the finer details of the arrangement as we are
not yet privy to them."

But a practising doctor with one of the Harare hospitals said the incentives
being offered were not going to end the exodus of medical personnel who
continued to leave the country to seek better paying jobs in the region.

"This will not stop the brain drain from the medical fraternity," he said.

"While it may seem we are now better than most ordinary Zimbabweans who
frequent banks to withdraw worthless amounts of money as salaries, we are
still far behind in terms of the average salaries being paid to our
counterparts in the SADC region."

In Botswana and Namibia, specialist doctors get a gross salary of up to $US4
000 while general doctors earn above $US2 600.
.
Most public hospitals in Zimbabwe were forced to close when the health
workers went on strike.

Some people have since died at their homes after failing to raise funds in
foreign currency, which were charged by private hospitals.

More than 95 percent of Zimbabweans are said to be dependant on public
health institutions.

The country's health system, once among the best in Africa , has since
collapsed under the weight of the world's highest inflation rate, officially
estimated at 231 million percent, but believed to be far above that by
independent economists.

Most hospitals are now unable to provide even basic medicines.

Lawyers say no progress in missing activist's case

http://www.zimonline.co.za/

by Wayne Mafaro Monday 22 December 2008




HARARE - Zimbabwe human rights lawyers said on Sunday that there has been no
progress in the search for missing rights activist Jestina Mukoko, almost
two weeks after the High Court ordered police to investigate her abduction.

The fate of kidnapped journalist Shadrack Manyere, two of Mukoko's workmates
and at least 23 opposition MDC supporters also remained unknown, as human
rights groups expressed fear the wave of abductions of anti-government
activists could worsen in the absence of a power-sharing government in
Zimbabwe.

"There has been no movement in so far as the investigation is concerned. We
have not had any positive feedback from the investigating officer chief
superintendent Makunike," said Otto Saki one of the lawyers working on
Mukoko's case.

"Lawyers have visited Norton police station on two occasions with the hope
of having a meeting with him and giving him information that we have for the
adverts . . . but there hasn't been any progress," he said.

High Court Judge Anne-Marrie Gowora ordered the police to probe the
disappearance of Mukoko and to place adverts in newspapers soliciting for
information about her whereabouts following her abduction three weeks ago by
a group of armed men who claimed to be members of the police.

Mukoko, a former staffer at the state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corporation and now director of human rights organisation Zimbabwe Peace
Project (ZPP), was kidnapped from her home in Norton town, 40 km west of
Harare.

Two more workers of the ZPP, Broderick Takawira and Pascal Gonzo, were five
days later kidnapped from the organisation's offices in Harare.

They have not been seen or heard from since then, while another High Court
Judge Alphas Chitakunye last week ordered the police to probe their
abduction.

Of the 23 missing MDC activists, 15 were arrested by the police in October
and have been held incommunicado despite a High Court order that the police
either release them or bring them to court to face trial if they are
suspected of committing crime.

Lawyer Aleck Muchadehama said "the police are in contempt of court" for
failing to abide by the order to release or charge the MDC activists.

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai - who says he holds President Robert Mugabe
responsible for the fate of the missing civic and opposition activists -
last Friday threatened to suspend power-sharing talks with the Zimbabwean
leader unless the government acted to stop abductions and those being held
in captivity were released.

Mugabe, Tsvangirai and another opposition leader Arthur Mutambara agreed to
form a power-sharing government three months ago, in an agreement that
sparked hope that Zimbabwe could finally emerge from its crisis.

But the agreement brokered by former South African President Thabo Mbeki
looks increasingly in danger of unravelling as Tsvangirai and Mugabe wrangle
over distribution of who should control key ministries and other top
government posts.

The abductions of MDC supporters and other anti-Mugabe activists have added
to doubts over the agreement.

Analysts see little hope of recovery in Zimbabwe without a unity government.

Once one of the most vibrant economies in Africa, Zimbabwe is in the grip of
an unprecedented economic and humanitarian crisis marked by acute shortages
of food and basic commodities, amid outbreaks of killer diseases such as
cholera and anthrax. - ZimOnline

'Harare gets farm aid only after unity govt'

http://www.zimonline.co.za/

by Own Correspondent Monday 22 December 2008









JOHANNESBURG - Zimbabwe will only be able to access a R300 million
agricultural assistance grant from South Africa after a unity government
between President Robert Mugabe and the opposition is in place, Pretoria
said on Sunday.

"We said we would be able to help with agricultural assistance worth
about R300 million once a new government has been formed, and that has not
changed," said President Kgalema Motlanthe's spokesman Thabo Masebe
responding to a Zimbabwean state media report that South Africa had released
agricultural inputs under the scheme.

Masebe pointed out that the only aid that Pretoria has sent to Harare
has been directed towards alleviating an unprecedented economic and
humanitarian crisis marked by acute shortages of food and basic commodities,
amid outbreaks of killer diseases such as cholera and anthrax.

The United Nations on Thursday reported that the death toll from
cholera had risen to 1 123 and from 20 896 cases since the outbreak began in
August, while relief agencies say at least five million people or about 45
percent of the 12 million Zimbabweans will require food aid by January.

"In parallel, there have been efforts to assist with the humanitarian
crisis so that may be what they are referring to," Masebe said.

Zimbabwe's state-run Sunday Mail newspaper quoted Agriculture Minister
Rugare Gumbo as saying farming inputs like maize seed, fertiliser and fuel
forming part of the 300 million rand South African package had arrived in
Zimbabwe.

"The South African government has sent a consignment of agricultural
inputs to Zimbabwe under its 300 million rand farming support facility," the
paper said.

The withholding of the agriculture grant is the first strong action by
South Africa to try to push feuding Zimbabwean political rivals - Mugabe and
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai - to form a coalition government under
the provisions of a September 15 power-sharing agreement.

Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara who leads a rebel faction of
the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party agreed a
power-sharing pact that retains the 84-year-old leader as president while
Tsvangirai becomes prime minister with Mutambara one of his deputies in a
unity government.

The agreement that had brought hope that the troubled southern African
nation could finally emerge from its crisis looks increasingly in danger of
unravelling as Tsvangirai and Mugabe wrangle over distribution of who should
control key ministries and other top government posts.

Western leaders blame Mugabe for ruining one of Africa's model
economies and have called on him to step down but he says economic sanctions
are at fault, and has vowed "never to surrender" to what he says are efforts
to topple him. - ZimOnline

In Zimbabwe, Survival Lies in Scavenging

http://www.nytimes.com



By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: December 21, 2008
NZVERE, Zimbabwe - Along a road in Matabeleland, barefoot children stuff
their pockets with corn kernels that have blown off a truck as if the
brownish bits, good only for animal feed in normal times, were gold coins.

In the dirt lanes of Chitungwiza, the Mugarwes, a family of firewood
hawkers, bake a loaf of bread, their only meal, with 11 slices for the six
of them. All devour two slices except the youngest, age 2. He gets just one.

And on the tiny farms here in the region of Mashonaland, once a breadbasket
for all of southern Africa, destitute villagers pull the shells off
wriggling crickets and beetles, then toss what is left in a hot pan. "If you
get that, you have a meal," said Standford Nhira, a spectrally thin farmer
whose rib cage is etched on his chest and whose socks have collapsed around
his sticklike ankles.

The half-starved haunt the once bountiful landscape of Zimbabwe, where a
recent United Nations survey found that 7 in 10 people had eaten either
nothing or only a single meal the day before.

Still dominated after nearly three decades by their authoritarian president,
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabweans are now enduring their seventh straight year of
hunger. This largely man-made crisis, occasionally worsened by drought and
erratic rains, has been brought on by catastrophic agricultural policies,
sweeping economic collapse and a ruling party that has used farmland and
food as weapons in its ruthless - and so far successful - quest to hang on
to power.

But this year is different. This year, the hunger is much worse.

The survey conducted by the United Nations World Food Program in October
found a shocking deterioration in the past year alone. The survey, recently
provided to international donors, found that the proportion of people who
had eaten nothing the previous day had risen to 12 percent from zero, while
those who had consumed only one meal had soared to 60 percent from only 13
percent last year.

For almost three months, from June to August, Mr. Mugabe banned
international charitable organizations from operating, depriving more than a
million people of food and basic aid after the country had already suffered
one of its worst harvests.

Mr. Mugabe defended the suspension by arguing that some Western aid groups
were backing his political rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, who bested him at the
polls in March but withdrew before a June 27 runoff. But civic groups and
analysts said Mr. Mugabe's real motive was to clear rural areas of witnesses
to his military-led crackdown on opposition supporters and to starve those
supporters.

The country's intertwined political and humanitarian crises have become ever
more grave - with a cholera epidemic sweeping the nation, its health,
education and sanitation systems in ruins and power-sharing talks at an
impasse. Meanwhile, Mr. Mugabe has blamed Western sanctions, largely aimed
at senior members of his government, for the country's woes.

His information minister even charged last week that Britain, Zimbabwe's
former colonial ruler, had started the cholera outbreak - spread by water
contaminated with human feces - as an act of "biological chemical war
 force," a charge widely derided as paranoid or cynical.

But for all Mr. Mugabe's venom toward the West, a central paradox rests at
the heart of his long years in power. It was the failed policies of Mr.
Mugabe and his party, ZANU-PF, including their calamitous seizure of
commercial farms, that made this nation so utterly dependent on aid from the
European and American donors he so reviles. And the same applies to Western
leaders: Despite their scathing denunciations of him, it is their generous
donations that have helped him survive by preventing outright famine among
his people.

"You're acting to save lives, knowing that by doing so you are sustaining
this government," said one aid agency manager, speaking on condition of
anonymity for fear of reprisals. "And unfortunately, ZANU-PF is good at
exploiting this humanitarian imperative."

American-financed charities and the World Food Program have been feeding
millions of Zimbabweans since late 2002, at a cost of $1.25 billion over the
years. After a slow start this year because of the aid suspension, the
United States and the United Nations are feeding almost half of Zimbabwe's
population this month.

But the World Food Program is short of nearly half the food needed for
January, said Richard Lee, a spokesman.

"You're not looking at mass starvation yet," said Sarah Jacobs, of Save the
Children, adding that without an urgent infusion of food, "we may be
reporting an even scarier, more horrible situation by January."

No food aid has reached the village of Jirira in Mashonaland, near Harare,
the capital. So each morning, people rise before the sun and stumble from
their huts, beneath the arching canopy of a starry sky, to fill metal pails
with the small, foul-smelling hacha fruit. Those who arrive as dawn breaks
find the fruit has already been picked clean.

The sweet, fibrous, yellow pulp of the fruit has become the staple of the
villagers' diet. The fruit is now infested with tiny brown worms.
Nevertheless, the women peel it, crush it and soak it in water. Some of the
worms float to the surface and can be skimmed off. The mashed ones they eat.

Parents search for other sources of food as well. Bengina Muchetu tries to
quiet her 2-year-old daughter Makanaka's pangs with a dish of tiny, boiled
wild leaves.

Maidei Kunaka grinds the animal feed she earns in exchange for her labor on
a nearby ostrich farm - an unappetizing amalgam of wheat, soy bean, sand and
what she calls "green stuff" - to nourish her three children.

"It's not tasty, but we at least have something in our stomachs," she said.

Villagers around here date the onset of Zimbabwe's decline to the year 2000.
It was then that Mr. Mugabe first felt the sting of political defeat, when a
referendum that would have given him greater executive powers was defeated.

He took his vengeance, unleashing veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war and
gangs of youth to invade and occupy highly mechanized, white-owned
commercial farms that were then the country's largest employer and an engine
of export earnings. In time, thousands of farms were taken over. Farm
workers and their families - about 1 million people altogether - lost their
jobs and homes, according to a 2008 study by Zimbabwean economists for the
United Nations Development Program.

Land redistribution often turned into a land grab by the political elite,
and frequently poor farmers who received land did not get necessary support.
The annual harvest of corn, the main staple food, has fallen to about a
third of its previous levels, the Development Program reported.

The narrow roads that threaded this part of Mashonaland used to be lined
with beautifully tended farms, residents say. Now, much of the land is
overgrown with grasses. Trees sprout in the fields.

In Nzvere, a group of scrawny men sat under a Musasa tree, rolling
cigarettes in bits of newspaper and chewing over the central fact of life in
rural Zimbabwe: It is impossible to make a living as a farmer anymore.

In the 1990s, these men said, they harvested a cornucopia of vegetables on
their small farms and sold the surplus in Harare. Now their land doesn't
yield nearly as much. With the formerly white-owned, large-scale farms no
longer productive, the economies of scale that kept prices low for hybrid
seed and fertilizer are gone. These small farmers cannot afford the higher
prices.

The dollars and cents of farming simply do not add up, they said. The
government monopolizes the buying and selling of corn through the Grain
Marketing Board. With inflation running officially at hundreds of millions
of percent, anything the board pays them is worthless by the time they get
it out of the bank.

The farm redistribution has done them no good, they said, instead benefiting
those who helped the ruling party grab the land. Even when food aid has
come, only those in the ruling party hierarchy have gotten any, the farmers
said.

So they have become scavengers, living off the land and surviving on field
mice and wild fruit, white ants and black beetles.

The story is much the same in Jirira. Hacha fruit has mostly sustained the
villagers, but soon the season will be over. And then what? "Only God knows
what will happen," Gloria Mapisa, the mother of a 1-year-old girl, said.

The suffering is not limited to the countryside.

This month, the Mavambo Trust, a small charitable group that works in a
suburb of Harare, had its Christmas party, with a lavish feast of cornmeal
porridge, chicken, vegetables and soft drinks. It was ample for 250
children, but more than 500 showed up. As word spread, famished children
arrived early in the morning to wait by the steaming, fragrant pots of food.
"So many came we couldn't even shut the gates," said Sister Michael
Chiroodza, a Catholic nun.

Mavambo also runs a daily lunchtime feeding program for children on the
grounds of a Catholic church. One recent afternoon, Annah Chakaka drifted
into the church courtyard with her orphaned grandsons, Bhekimuzi, 13, and
Bekezela, 10. They had come to beg for cornmeal to take home.

The boys, their handsome faces chiseled by hunger, said they do little now
but help their grandmother with chores - fetching water, washing clothes,
sweeping the floor. That, and hunting for food. They usually walk three
miles to a muhacha tree to collect its hacha fruit.

But on this morning, Mrs. Chakaka said it had been difficult to wake the
boys. They just lay there, too weak to get up. "Today we were just too
hungry to look for wild fruit," she said.

They drifted from the church's courtyard as they had come, empty-handed.

Regional bloc launches aid package for crisis torn Zimbabwe

http://news.yahoo.com


2 hrs 14 mins ago

HARARE (AFP) - A southern African bloc Sunday announced humanitarian aid for
Zimbabwe as the country battles food shortages and a deadly cholera outbreak
which has killed over 1,120 people.

"We are here to launch the initiative and find out how far we are in terms
of delivering the required assistance," Southern African Development
Community (SADC) executive secretary Tomaz Salomao said.

The undisclosed amount of assistance follows a visit by a SADC team led by
South Africa two weeks ago to assess the country's humanitarian crisis.

Salamao said part of the package was South Africa's 300 million rands' worth
(30 million dollars, 22 million euros) donation of seed, fertilisers and
fuel to help revive the country's agricultural sector.

South Africa had maintained that it will hold off any kind of aid assistance
to Zimbabwe until a unity government is in place.

"This is regional solidarity. When you are facing difficulties, you have to
count on the solidarity of your brothers. We cannot fail in assisting
Zimbabwe, that's the critical and most important thing," said Salamao.

Regional countries who contributed to the package include Tanzania, Botswana
and Namibia.

On Sunday, the United States announced that it will not extend aid to
Zimbabwe as long as its leader Robert Mugabe remains president.

Once hailed as a model economy, Zimbabwe's fortunes have nosedived since
2000 when Mugabe seized white-owned farms and handed them over to landless
blacks, often with no farming skills.

Plans to form a power-sharing government between Mugabe and his rivals have
been stalled by disagreements over the allocation of key ministries.

Rudd must toughen Zimbabwe stance: Libs

http://news.theage.com.au


December 22, 2008 - 2:19PM


The coalition wants the Rudd government to exert maximum pressure over the
issue of Zimbabwe, after the US suggested President Robert Mugabe should
stand down.

The top US convoy for Africa has said the US could no longer support a
proposed power-sharing deal that would leave Mugabe, "a man who's lost it",
as president.

Addressing his ZANU-PF party's annual conference on Friday, Mugabe declared:
"I will never, never, never, never surrender. Zimbabwe is mine".

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Helen Coonan says Mugabe's recent
"chilling statements" meant Australia most now "up the ante".

"It is high time Prime Minister Kevin Rudd adopted a more principled
approach and joined in exerting maximum pressure on the Mugabe regime,"
Senator Coonan said in a statement.

"The government can do this through not only establishing a special envoy on
the Zimbabwe crisis, but also by coordinating representations to (African)
states with others opposing the continuation of the Mugabe regime such as
France, the United States, Britain and Canada."

Senator Coonan said a power-sharing arrangement with the Zimbabwean
opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), wouldn't save the
African nation from a ruinous political crisis and a deadly cholera
epidemic.

"By seeking a power-sharing arrangement ... the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) is following a path which will not deliver security, health
and relief from risk of famine in Zimbabwe," she said.

Senator Coonan said South Africa and other SADC members would not put
sufficient economic and political pressure on Mugabe to permit fresh
elections.

"Australia needs to undertake measured diplomatic efforts to influence SADC
to toughen its stand in mediations."

South Africa says the agreement under which Mugabe would remain president
and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai would take a new prime minister's
post is the only way forward.

The MDC says it also remains committed to the stalled talks aimed at forming
a power-sharing government.

Comment was being sought from Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.

With Barack Obama, world has chance to end Robert Mugabe's grip on Zimbabwe

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

December 22, 2008


Comment: Richard Beeston, Foreign Editor
Zimbabwe may be on its knees economically, while a cholera epidemic claims
more than 1,000 lives, but Robert Mugabe's grip on power is unshaken. To
date a dozen countries, including Britain, America and France, have called
for his removal, but the 84-year-old ruler has not budged. In a speech to
his supporters at the ruling Zanu (PF) annual conference, Mr Mugabe mocked
his adversaries. African nations were "not brave enough" to topple him,
Britain would never win its battle against him - "Zimbabwe is mine," he
declared.

It is hard to challenge his assertion. Nine months ago Mr Mugabe and his
Zanu (PF) thugs used violence and intimidation to reverse the results of an
election victory for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The world was suitably outraged. Gordon Brown and Lord Malloch-Brown, the
Foreign Office Minister responsible for Africa, pushed for action at the
United Nations, confident that quiet diplomacy combined with Zimbabwe's
isolation would bring the regime to its knees. Mr Mugabe had "at most, weeks
or months left in office", they predicted.

How wrong they were. Russia and China blocked any hope of concerted UN
action. America became distracted with other pressing problems at home and
abroad. South Africa devised a power-sharing agreement intended to leave Mr
Mugabe in power. Britain, we now learn, was long on talk but short on
action. While Whitehall stepped up the rhetoric, it turned a blind eye to
British-based businesses that helped to prop up the regime in Harare.

So how much longer must this tragedy continue? Until Zimbabwe's neighbours
are forced to act out of self-interest when millions of desperate refugees,
some infected with cholera, pour across their borders? Until Mr Mugabe dies
peacefully in his palace? Until one of his cronies decides to seize power
for himself?

If the world is serious about defending human rights and democracy and
encouraging development and good governance in Africa, then there are real
opportunities at hand. In less than a month Barack Obama will be sworn in as
US President. There are many demands being made of him, but he must be urged
at the highest level to act immediately on Zimbabwe.
As a half-African whose grandfather was part of the liberation movement
against the British in Kenya, he needs no lectures about neo-imperialism
from the likes of Mr Mugabe. There is huge support for Mr Obama on the
continent; some of the more courageous countries, such as Kenya, Zambia and
Botswana, have already broken ranks to condemn Zimbabwe and demand change.

Mr Obama must galvanise this movement. Above all, he must use all the
considerable weight of his office to pressure South Africa, the critical
power in the region, to stop shielding Mr Mugabe. Jacob Zuma, the new ANC
leader and South Africa's likely next President, must be told in unambiguous
terms that removing Mr Mugabe must be his top priority. If not, South
Africa's relations with America and Europe will be set back at every level,
from aid to trade and even the football World Cup Final in 2010.

For too long Thabo Mbeki, the former South African President, was allowed a
seat at the top table of international affairs while neglecting his primary
responsibility to the wellbeing of his neighbours in Zimbabwe.

If force is needed - for instance, to protect humanitarian relief efforts to
rescue millions from disease and hunger - then South Africa must be ready to
weigh in, as it did in other African emergencies. America and Britain must
be ready to assist any African-led operation with logistics and money.

The slow death of Zimbabwe has dragged on for the best part of a decade. The
country is still salvageable, but not if Mr Mugabe is still around in 2010.

The Failure of Quiet Diplomacy

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

December 22, 2008

While Robert Mugabe believes that he is untouchable, the Foreign Office
believes it would be a mistake for Britain to get tough. It is mistaken
Its people reduced to eating leaves and berries, its children dying of
cholera, farms choked with weeds and industry at a standstill, Zimbabwe has
plunged ever deeper into misery and penury. At each stage, things seemed as
though they could not get worse.

Each month, however, the cruelties inflicted by a repressive regime have
intensified. Robert Mugabe, an 84-year old dictator, has showed himself
indifferent to suffering and impervious to pressure. And now he parades his
megalomania as a taunt to the outside world. Zimbabwe, he declared last
week, was "mine". No one could take the country from him.

The world has watched the slide towards starvation and collapse in despair.
At each stage, Britain, the former colonial ruler has muffled its reaction.
Diplomats appeared to think that quiet diplomacy in tandem with Zimbabwe's
neighbours would achieve more than an open call for Mr Mugabe's overthrow,
which, the Foreign Office believed, would be used by the President as proof
that colonialists were plotting against him.

Mr Mugabe has made a mockery of African neighbours who urged him to
negotiate with his opponents. He has danced rings around the so-called
international community. He has outwitted the political Opposition, scorned
the result of an election and killed his defenceless compatriots. He is now
convinced that he is untouchable, that he cannot be removed from power
either by his opponents in Zimbabwe or by any external force.

So far, he has been proved right. Harsh words at international meetings have
had no effect. Isolation makes no difference to a country where money no
longer has value and government no longer functions. It is high time David
Miliband recognised that international intervention is the only course now
available to save more than seven million people from catastrophe. Britain's
reticence has been not only fatuous; it has encouraged Mr Mugabe in his
hubris and the pampered party and military elite to believe they can hang on
and outlast their enemies.

Britain is guilty of more than feeble diplomacy. It has failed to ensure all
the loopholes are closed in this country. The United States Treasury has
named some 21 companies that it has placed on its blacklist that are still
trading with Zimbabwe. Disgracefully, many of these are in Britain or in
terrorities controlled by Britain (see page 6).

What makes the failure to deal with these companies particularly lamentable
is that targeting Mr Mugabe's entourage and the companies that may make
their life easier is supposed to be a major part of the British Government's
strategy for dealing with the regime. If even this policy is not pursued
with sufficient vigour then what is left?

Any talk of wanting to keep open a lifeline to the people of Zimbabwe is
hypocritical. The people have long lost hopes of food and support from
abroad. The only lifeline is to the regime now in power.

Gordon Brown has declared that "enough is enough". He is absolutely right.
But words do little to halt cholera or feed children dying of starvation.
They do little to rattle a regime that is so far steeped in evil that it
dare not now retreat. It is high time Britain called for an emergency
meeting of the UN Security Council to authorise armed intervention.

There are enough legal powers, including the visible threat Zimbabwe's
collapse now poses to the health and security of its neighbours. Mr Miliband
should respond to Mr Mugabe's odious claim with his own démarche. The world
can take his despairing country from him. And it must.

Photos and report from Zim Vigil

Click here to read the report and see the photos.