Hopeless Zimbabweans prepare for bitter 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

As ever more of her cattle died of starvation, Martha Theron's despair
turned to fury.

By Peta Thornycroft, Zimbabwe Correspondent
Last Updated: 8:31PM GMT 27 Dec 2008

Three weeks ago, unable to prevent the animals from dying, she grabbed her
husband's gun, ran into a field and began shooting the animals, before
breaking down and weeping uncontrollably.

Such despair is now almost universal in Zimbabwe. It is being felt by white
farmers losing their land, by black farmers watching their cattle die - from
starvation, by the growing number of cholera victims, and by anyone opposed
to President Robert Mugabe.

Hope is something few Zimbabweans possess as 2009 dawns.

Mrs Theron and her husband, Deon, are among the surviving handful of white
farmers. Despite everything, Mr Theron still clings to some belief in a
future as a farmer.

"I know in my heart there is a future for white farmers in Zimbabwe. I think
about that today and every day," he said, speaking on Christmas Eve from the
offices of the Commercial Farmers' Union, of which he is vice-president. He
commutes to the Harare office most days of the week to answer the
never-ending calls from distressed colleagues.

"I am no less patriotic than any other Zimbabwean," he said. "I cannot
believe there is no room for us. I will not leave the country of my birth.
How we survive and get there, I don't know."

It is a question that politicians the world over have been asking this week.
Both America and Britain have publicly discounted any chance of a
power-sharing deal between the regime and the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change having any chance of working for as long as Mr Mugabe
stays as president.

Desmond Tutu, the retired Archbishop of Cape Town, led a chorus of
disapproval with his most outspoken attack yet on the 84-year-old leader. In
an interview for Radio 4's Today programme on Wednesday, the Archbishop
said: "How much more suffering is going to make us say, 'No, we have given
Mr Mugabe enough time.' "

His comments made little impact in Zimbabwe itself, however, where news
comes almost entirely from the state media.

The universal condemnation also came as Jestina Mukoko, a human rights
activist who has been missing for three weeks, was brought to court and
accused of plotting to overthrow the government. Despite a judge ruling that
the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project and her fellow accused should be
taken to private clinics - under police supervision - the police ignored the
order.

Meanwhile, four white farmers now face prosecution on Jan 5 for
"trespassing" on land they had farmed for years. The prosecutions are in
defiance of a Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Tribunal which
has stated that as many as 78 white farmers, including the defendants, Brian
Bronkhorst, Ken Bartholomew, Thomas Beattie and Colin Cloete, had been
improperly deprived of their land. If convicted, the men face imprisonment.

About 4,000 white farmers have been forced out of their homes since the
onset of the land seizures in 2000. But only this year was a white farmer
evicted "legally", and that was Mr Theron. He lost a case in the Harare
Magistrates' Court in March, having been accused of trespassing on land he
had bought in 1984, four years after Zimbabwe's independence.

He was allowed no witnesses in the two-month-long trial and was sentenced to
six months imprisonment, suspended on the condition that he vacated Zanka
farm located 58 miles south of Harare, within 30 days. Four days before the
deadline, the Therons packed up the contents of their very ordinary home and
herded their 700 cattle to a patch of his mother's land about five miles
way.

"I went to have a look at [the farm] two weeks ago for the first time since
I left," said Mr Theron, 54. "It was taken by Elias Musakwa from the Reserve
Bank [of Zimbabwe]. He told the court he needed it urgently as he was
importing 250 cattle from South Africa. There are two beef cattle there, 20
sheep and 35 goats, and he doesn't live there."

With more than 1,200 deaths from cholera in the last two months and the
country's agriculture decimated, leaving 5.5 million, or half the
population, needing food aid, restless lower army ranks and infighting among
Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF hierarchy, no one is sure where the Zimbabwe catastrophe
is heading.

Public doctors began withdrawing their services in October because they said
they could not work in hospitals without drugs or equipment. When cholera
gripped in November, the two main Harare hospitals, including the 1,000-bed
Parirenyatwa Hospital, were closed.

Schools are in little better condition. The regularly detained president of
the Progressive Teachers' Union, Raymond Majongwe, said that most children
had only 23 consecutive days of schooling in 2008. "Thousands of teachers
have gone, there is no teaching or learning in government schools," he said
in an interview earlier this year.

People, such as Mr Theron, can only wonder: "I can't believe the world will
do nothing to stop this."

Life or death in Zimbabwe depends on a sack of seeds

Cholera epidemic is still 'out of control'

Associated Press
The Observer,
Sunday 28 December 2008

International aid agencies warned yesterday that Zimbabwe's humanitarian
crisis was deepening, with a sharp rise in acute child malnutrition and a
worsening cholera epidemic.

President Robert Mugabe's government has acknowledged the collapse of
Zimbabwe's health system, but he also claimed earlier this month that the
epidemic had been brought under control and that there was "no cholera" in
the country.

Critics blame Mugabe's land reform policies for the collapse of Zimbabwe's
farming sector and the ruin of what had been the region's breadbasket.

Zimbabweans are continuing to die of hunger and disease and acute child
malnutrition in parts of the country had increased by almost two thirds
compared with last year, said aid agency Save the Children in a report. Lynn
Walker, the agency's Zimbabwe director, said "some children are wasting away
from lack of food". The report said 18,000 tons of food were needed for
January, with around five million people - half the population - in need of
food aid.

In a separate report, the World Health Organization said that 1,518 people
had died of cholera, with 26,497 cases recorded, since the start of the
outbreak in August. The percentage of cholera patients dying from the
disease rose to 5.7% last week, from 4% at the beginning of the month.
Normally, only 1% of patients die in large outbreaks.

Paul Garwood, a WHO spokesman, said the outbreak was not under control and
that neighbouring countries such as South Africa and Botswana, where the
disease has also been reported, should increase their disease monitoring
surveys and preparedness.

Diplomats watch to see if Robert Mugabe dare go on holiday

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

The Sunday Times
December 28, 2008

Jon Swain in Harare
Each morning and afternoon a nauseating ritual is performed in Harare as
President Robert Mugabe travels in a heavily guarded motorcade between his
home and State House. Police motorcyclists force traffic off the road to
allow the presidential motorcade unimpeded progress through the crumbling
streets of the capital.

Guarded by truckloads of soldiers, Mugabe sits in the back of a
custom-built, armoured and gadget-equipped Mercedes. A small man in a black
Savile Row suit, he is invisible behind the black-tinted windows. Woe betide
anyone who gets in the way - even pointing at the motorcade can lead to
imprisonment.

In a few days the people of Harare may be spared the twice-daily passage of
their unpopular president, at least for a little while. Mugabe is due to
take his traditional new year holiday with his wife Grace - notorious for
luxury shopping - in the Far East. This has been their favourite destination
since they were banned from Europe and America and most of their assets have
been transferred there.

However, a question has arisen over their holiday this year. Zimbabweans and
Harare-based diplomats are watching keenly to see whether Mugabe leaves the
country. They will see his decision as a sign of how secure he feels in the
face of intensifying outrage against his rule.
In the past few weeks, as Zimbabwe has battled economic disintegration and a
ferocious cholera epidemic spread by the collapse of the water and
sanitation systems, Mugabe has come under unprecedented pressure to quit.

He has reacted viciously. Before Christmas, security agents secretly
arrested some 40 activists ranging from humanitarian workers to journalists,
academics and opposition supporters. It now appears the agents are
determined to link them to a trumped-up plot to overthrow the president.
Last week police defied a High Court order to release eight of them into
hospital.

Another matter that may give Mugabe cause to hesitate before leaving the
country is the disunity within his ruling Zanu-PF party. Its annual party
conference, which has just ended, was largely held in disarray with
delegates drifting away. Mugabe had to apologise for delegates' food being
stolen - a sign of how desperate even his supporters have become.

While these developments suggest that Mugabe has his back to the wall like
never before, his fiery rhetoric shows that his determination to stay in
power through 2009 and beyond is undiminished. He has decided to rule
without the opposition, even though Zimbabwe has been without a legal
government since Zanu-PF lost the elections in March to the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC). He bases his legitimacy on having won a second
presidential round in June amid massive intimidation.

Just before Christmas he reinforced his hard line, remarking that Zimbabwe
is "mine, mine, mine". But last week America piled on the pressure,
indicating that it wanted the international community to impose greater
sanctions against members of Mugabe's government and entourage. It also
dropped its support for power sharing between Zanu-PF and the MDC, saying
the only solution to the economic and humanitarian crisis was for Mugabe to
leave power.

Lord Malloch-Brown, Britain's Africa minister, endorsed the American
position and yesterday predicted that Mugabe would step down in 2009 because
he had lost the support of the army. "We have seen difficulties around army
pay day for the last two months," he said. "In November troops actually
rioted. There were reports of disturbances in the December pay day."

He also said a serious outbreak of malaria was likely because of the
collapse in public health measures, such as the distribution of free
mosquito nets and the chemical spraying of public spaces.

Zimbabwe: despair in the time of cholera

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

The Sunday Times
December 28, 2008

Purity Mwandisi, 46, a single mother of five children, describes the agonies
of everyday life over Christmas in Marondera, eastern Zimbabwe
Sunday, December 21: We were all at the Catholic church for the Christmas
thanksgiving service but it was not the same as past years. This is the
worst of all years.

We brought boiled water for drinks and the priest gave us mealie meal to
cook; but it was so scary all the people eating together, using the same
plates and toilets. All I could think about was cholera - I lost a third
friend last week.

Walking back home, I saw sewage on every road. I had to step over dirty
pools with flies and worms right by the houses.

In the afternoon I went to Marondera hospital to visit my friend and her
baby, who was born prematurely at seven months and has a broken leg. They
were not hard to find: only one ward was open and all the men, women and
children were there together.

There are about 40 patients but no doctors and no medicines, just nurses who
are only there because they are scared of being beaten but are not being
paid so don't do anything. There's no electricity or water and it is very
dirty and there are several cholera cases.

If you are sick you are just stranded. You think if you go to hospital
someone might help you but really there's no point. My friend and her baby
were just sitting there, like they were hoping for a miracle.

Last time I went to the hospital there was a woman in labour and screaming
in pain but the nurses said they weren't going to help her. She begged and
cried and eventually gave birth on her own to a stillborn baby in front of
my eyes. It was so awful.

The worst thing is walking past the hospital mortuary. It's full of bodies
from those days of murdering after the elections of March 29 when Mugabe
wouldn't accept he had lost. You can see stuff seeping out under the door
from the rotting bodies. It's so disgusting. All the mortuaries are full so
if a person dies you have to keep the body in your house until you can get
money to bury them.

Monday,December 22: Today I went to the bank. I used to work as a nanny and
cleaner for a white family but they lost their farm six years ago and it's a
long while since I had work. We survive because my eldest daughter,
Priscilla, lives in the UK, working at a care home, and sends us £75 when
she can.

As usual the queue at the bank was long and we waited outside for hours and
hours and hours. Rain came and I was soaked but we stood so long I got dry
again.

In the queue were soldiers and policemen. We would never have opened up with
them because we were scared but now everyone is so frustrated and discussing
openly that Mugabe should go. When you hear him say there's no cholera you
get furious. I have seen it everywhere.

Eventually, at 4.30pm, they said there was no money left in the bank and we
would have to go to Harare [45 miles away].

Money is a huge problem. Banks only allow you to withdraw Z$10 billion a
week and that doesn't even buy a kilo of wheat. If you buy a bar of soap
then you have no money left for anything else.

The government has no paper so is printing only big denomination notes of
$500m and nobody has change. Some of the notes are printed on cotton. Every
few weeks they take off three zeroes then start all over again.

Some of the shops now take only foreign currency - American dollars or South
African rand.

Tuesday December 23: This morning I stepped out for a break from the kids
and there, right outside my house, there was sewage flowing with flyworms in
it. I couldn't stand it and had to go back into my little box house.

I heard today that a man in my road has got cholera. It's like this monster
coming closer.

The government is saying schools will open but I don't think it's a good
idea with all the cholera. I'm not willing to send my kids now.

I can honestly say none of my kids learnt anything at school all year. All
they did was play because there were no teachers. Precious, my 10-year-old,
who is enrolled at the local school, hasn't been since before the elections
in March.

My 16-year-old, Susan, went to a Catholic mission boarding school. The white
family I worked for used to pay the fees, but they can't help any more.

Susan was supposed to be doing O-levels this year and the headmaster asked
me to pay foreign currency and buy groceries for the teachers. I tried to
manage from the money Priscilla sends from the UK but she has her own life
and, in the end, Susan was sent back home.

The next oldest, Loveness, is 18 and used to dream of going to college. I'm
worried what will happen to the children. I have no education to teach them.
It's so painful.

Also I'm asthmatic and need a Ventolin pump but have no medicine. I'm
waiting for the day I have an attack and die. Two months ago I had an attack
and had to use herbs which made me even worse but I was saved by a woman who
gave me some tablets that helped, thank God. Now it's the rainy season and
it will be worse.

Wednesday, December 24: In other years I would have been busy preparing for
Christmas today. We used to have chicken, sticky rice, lamb, ice cream and
jelly. This Christmas you are happy if you have sadza (mealie meal porridge)
and mowa, a kind of weed you find in the bush during the rainy season.

As usual I wake about 4am and wait for it to get light. About 5am I go to
the forest and pick wild fruits or roots, either to sell to others to buy
mealie meal or to boil up.

We're eating once a day, if at all. Sometimes we're going for days with
nothing. I can't remember the last time we bought bread or meat. Everyone's
getting thinner and thinner. Those who have food are those who cross the
borders to other countries, Botswana or South Africa, and bring it back to
sell at ridiculous prices.

Thursday, December 25: It's Christmas Day and very different from any I have
experienced. People have nothing special to eat. Since I was a baby there
hasn't been a year when we didn't have a chicken, however bad things were.
This year I prepared some nyeze, wheat which I mixed with sadza. I also had
two cups of rice I have been saving.

We started off the day at church. We prayed, as we do every day, that things
will get better, but it's going on for so long. Sometimes we ask: "Where are
you, God?"

I spent the day with my three younger daughters, my son-in-law and my niece.
My son stayed in Harare because he didn't have money to come home and also
there was no point. I told him it's a special day and we should all be
together but I guess he was right.

We had no presents, none at all. The girls had been collecting empty Coke
bottles for the deposit money and my son-in-law managed to get some Cokes.
It was such a treat - the girls were all running around like something big
had happened.

We did have electricity, which was a surprise, so we could watch television.
We have a dish and can pick up South African TV. I don't watch ZBC [the
state channel] any more as it's only lies and lies.

On the South African news we heard this guy called Desmond Tutu saying
Mugabe should be removed and if he won't go he should be forced. Everyone
feels the same. We don't understand why people don't do anything. Now
everyone is hoping America will help us with this new President Obama.

This week is a new year and, to tell the truth, most people have lost hope.
I was hoping and hoping and hoping. This year in March, with the elections,
I hoped things would get better. Instead they became even worse. Then, when
we heard there were peace talks, I thought maybe now the kids can go back to
school and I'll get work, but instead cholera came.

Sometime I get so cross or wonder what's the use.

We can reach Zimbabwe's people

http://www.independent.co.uk

Raymond Whitaker:
As Mugabe recruits thugs with the promise of a square meal, spreading the
truth is the watching world's most powerful weapon

Sunday, 28 December 2008

After a year of unparalleled misery, Zimbabwe can only expect worse in 2009.
To understand what that means for the country's hapless people, consider
what happened in 2008.
This was the year in which Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF regime abandoned
any pretence of governing legitimately. After a violent election campaign
descended into all-out thuggery, forcing Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) to pull out of the second round of the
presidential poll after leading in the first, African nations were
sufficiently shocked to force Mugabe and his opponent into a power-sharing
agreement. But now the President has rejected the deal, and is openly
challenging his neighbours to do something about it.

Not only has the government abandoned legitimacy, but it has also ceased any
semblance of administration. When I went to Zimbabwe in April, inflation was
sky high, the currency was all but worthless, and millions had left the
country in search of work. Yet people somehow coped, through barter,
cross-border trading or remittances from relatives abroad. By the time I
returned in November, however, the country's downward slide had become a
free-fall. Doctors, nurses and teachers have walked off the job because they
cannot feed themselves. Institutional collapse is beginning to erode the
country's infrastructure, and cholera is spreading fast.

In the midst of all this, the government has made it plain that its only
interest is in retaining power. It cannot be bothered to rescue its own
population from starvation, but it has seized a leading human rights
activist, Jestina Mukoko, and about two dozen others. Fulfilling the latest
paranoid official fantasy, they have been charged with organising the
military training of young Zimbabweans in neighbouring Botswana to overthrow
the government. Mukoko's friends were relieved that she was alive, having
been taken away at dawn. The high court ordered her release, but the
government simply ignored the ruling.

For some, all this hand-wringing over Zimbabwe is misplaced. In the
Democratic Republic of Congo or Darfur, they point out, there is mass rape
and murder. That is true, but there are reasons for us to consider Mugabe's
behaviour outrageous, and not merely because we used to be responsible for
Zimbabwe.

The main one is that he has taken a country with advantages that Congo or
Sudan never had, and reduced it to brutal squalor. The pity that people feel
for his subjects is shown by the response of readers to our Christmas appeal
for Save the Children's work in Zimbabwe, which has raised more than
£40,000. Dismay at the state of Zimbabwe is all the greater among people who
remember what the country used to be like.

When I was growing up in neighbouring South Africa and Ian Smith declared
independence, setting off a nasty bush war, what was then Rhodesia still
seemed less totalitarian than the apartheid regime. And when majority rule
was negotiated and Mugabe came to power, the stability and modest prosperity
of the new Zimbabwe were unanswerable ripostes to those in South Africa who
claimed that the only alternative to white rule was bloody chaos. It took
another 14 years for black South Africans to achieve what their neighbours
gained in 1980 - one reason why their leaders were, until recently, so
squeamish about criticising Mugabe.

Somehow his ruthless suppression of the Matabele minority in the early
1980s, which cost some 20,000 lives, did not register either with me or most
international observers. When I visited Zimbabwe for the first time a decade
later, it reminded me of an earlier, more peaceful South Africa, before the
violence and political repression got into full swing. The people were, and
are, optimistic and friendly. It frustrates those who wish Mugabe's people
would rise up against him, but heightens indignation at the way they are
being treated.

What those who have never been to a country like Zimbabwe fail to understand
is that it is easier to control a population that is weakened by hunger, and
where thugs can be recruited with the promise of a square meal. The "war
veterans" and the "youth militias" are being exploited as well as the people
they are beating up. That is the worst thing Mugabe's rule has done to his
land. He is almost certainly right, unfortunately, that none of his
neighbours will take military action to oust him, and it is absurd to
imagine that they would allow us to do so. Nor should we: what was wrong in
Iraq would be wrong in Zimbabwe too. We have to find other ways to get him
to go.

But while we wait for sanctions and moral pressure to work, we do not have
to tolerate Mr Mugabe's propaganda. His own people are told that their
suffering is because of British and American embargoes, when in fact they
apply only to him and his circle. While accusing Britain of wanting to
re-colonise Zimbabwe, he has abdicated responsibility for the country's
health and welfare systems to foreign NGOs and charities, many of them
British-funded. We have to look after his people as best we can, because he
will not. Perhaps we should be less shy about pointing it out.

Mother's last-ditch plea to Home Office against deportation

http://www.independent.co.uk

Zimbabwean family due to be expelled tomorrow

By Jane Merrick, Political Editor
Sunday, 28 December 2008

A Zimbabwean mother who has been refused asylum by Britain despite being a
victim of Robert Mugabe yesterday revealed her terror at being sent back to
the country.

Writing from her cell in Yarl's Wood detention centre, Priviledge Thulambo
said she could not believe the UK Government was handing a "death sentence"
to her and her daughters, Valerie and Lorraine. The three women are booked
on a flight from Heathrow to Malawi tomorrow, but their solicitors will
lodge an application for judicial review hours earlier, giving them a
crucial delay in the proceedings.

The Home Office has refused to grant the family asylum because they entered
Britain on Malawian passports. However the papers were forged as a means of
escape from Zimbabwe seven years ago, meaning it is almost certain they will
end up being sent to their home country.

Mrs Thulambo, whose husband was killed for supporting the opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai, has been tortured and raped by President Mugabe's men.
She arrived in Britain in 2000, and Valerie, 20, and Lorraine, 18, came here
in 2004.

The family spent Christmas at Yarl's Wood after being arrested on 12
December. In her note, handwritten on Christmas Eve, Mrs Thulambo, 39, said
they would be sent to jail in Malawi for their fraudulent documentation,
before being deported to Zimbabwe, where they face torture and death.

"We can't believe that the Government can't see how much this is torture we
are already suffering while we are here. As soon as we get to Zimbabwe, no
matter where we are going to be, our lives are in danger.

"I call this a death sentence. I know people might ask why am I so afraid,
but I know what I have gone through. I have been trying to be strong for my
two daughters and with the help from my friends in Sheffield, but now I can
smell torture and death.

"All these years I have been here I had started to feel comfortable and have
a sense of belonging... I had started to rebuild my girls' lives and mine,
hoping to be given permission to stay. Everybody knows what is going to
happen when we are to be returned to Malawi. It is facing death. Only God
knows what I am going through."

The family's MP, Angela Smith, and their former MP, the Liberal Democrat
leader Nick Clegg, have protested at the decision to turn down their asylum
applications. The Home Office insists it has followed proper procedures.

How Long Will Mugabe Reign of Terror Last?

http://www.politicalcortex.com

By Bill Hare
12/27/2008 07:15:11 PM EST

There was a day when Zimbabwe was known as the food basket for Africa, a
land rich in the needs to sustain a great nation.
All it takes for a land rich in natural resources to be demolished is
ruthless and authoritative leadership.  This has regrettably occurred in the
nation that gained independence in 1980 -- Zimbabwe.

Its current strong man Robert Mugabe achieved power after a struggle with
political rival Joshua Nkomo.  To say that the current situation in Zimbabwe
is a calamity would be an understatement.  Virtually any words in the human
language to describe the current state of disaster would be an
understatement.

While the fortunate ones have been able to escape to neighboring South
Africa, those that remain have experienced horrendous plights.  Some
political rivals have not survived while others who dared oppose Mugabe's
brutal regime had their legs hacked off by his brutal thugs, loyal party
functionaries enforcing control at the expense of the masses.

Hunger is acute.  Just last week an international survey revealed that the
average citizen of Zimbabwe is now eating one meal per day with many going
beyond 24 hours for any replenishment.
There are others worse off.  They are suffering from cholera.

In an excellent BBC report available online about Zimbabwe, in addition to
other informative materials there appears a diary from a woman known by the
pseudonym of Esther, for her own protection.  This 28-year-old woman who is
a professional living and working in Zimbabwe's capital of Harare has
painted an unforgettable portrait of current life in a tragedy riddled
nation.

Esther reveals the following comments:

"We deserve a better life.  We are not a country at war but look at the kind
of life we are living.  What on earth is going on?

"People are dying in great numbers and there is no treatment because ...
Harare's two main hospitals are closed.

"In some parts of town there is raw sewage running down streets.

"But you should know that some people in the poor, poor parts of the high
density areas have had to live with this every day for five years now.  It
is just that now pictures are circulating because of the cholera crisis.

"Where I stay, we had water problems even before the complete city
shut-down.  It was becoming the order of the day -- sometimes water would
run from the tap, but normally, not a drop."

Esther noted that "absolutely everyone is boiling all their water."  There
is no power so people need to "make a fire" to boil water.

While the cholera epidemic sweeps across the nation activists disappear.
According to Zimbabwean human rights activist Annah Moyo "They (Mugabe
government operatives) are trying to come up with confessions from these
activists."

Mugabe, who has become a billionaire during his ruthless rule, had become so
notably unpopular that he partially recognized the last election result by
agreeing to a power sharing arrangement.

Is what is now occurring power sharing?  Mugabe continues to punish his
opposition, part of a long term trend.

Meanwhile cholera spreads and the nation reaches systemic collapse as food
shortages and hyperinflation continue to take their toll.

Robert Mugabe continues to get away with a continuing pattern of death,
destruction and turmoil without reprisal.

The Threats of Military Intervention in Zimbabwe

http://www.globalresearch.ca/

Mamdani, Mugabe and the African scholarly community: The Africanisation of
exploitation

by Horace Campbell

Global Research, December 27, 2008
pambazuka.org

Concerned scholars should revitalise their opposition to Zimbabwe's Mugabe
regime, writes Horace Campbell. While being against any form of
opportunistic, external intervention in the country, Campbell argues that
scholars must come to offer an effective challenge to ZANU-PF's persistent
retreat into spurious anti-imperialist discourse. Heavily critical of
writers like Mahmood Mamdani for echoing ZANU-PF's claims around the effects
of economic sanctions levied against Zimbabwe, Campbell argues that blocking
international payments would prove a far more efficacious means of tackling
Mugabe's misappropriation of funds.

It was most apt that on the 60th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration
of Human Rights a group of 200 scholars at the 12th congress of CODESRIA
expressed their concern over the threats of military intervention in
Zimbabwe. The scholars pointed to the detrimental effects of military
intervention, noting that:

'Military interventions exacerbate political and socio-economic crises and
internal differences with profoundly detrimental and destructive regional
implications. We recognize that threats of military intervention come from
imperialist powers, and also through their African proxies.'

These scholars were signaling their opposition to the vocal calls for the
removal of Robert Mugabe by the Secretary of State of the United States and
by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of
South Africa and the Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, had earlier
raised the call for the removal of Robert Mugabe by the force of arms.

This scholar joins with African people everywhere who welcome the alertness
of our colleagues against foreign military intervention. I also welcome
their concern for the appalling situation in Zimbabwe.

It is important that the Mugabe government and the spokespersons for ZANU-PF
do not consider the statement by scholars as an endorsement for the
appalling tragedy that has befallen the Zimbabwean poor and exploited. After
all, these CODESRIA scholars termed what is happening in Zimbabwe 'a
nightmare'.

This was in the same week that President Mugabe argued that the imperialists
were planning a military invasion and that the cholera outbreak had been
based on biological warfare against Zimbabwe. The Minister of Information
went further and in a statement in the Herald newspaper the minister
claimed:

'The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe is a serious biological chemical war
force, a genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British.
Cholera is a calculated racist terrorist attack on Zimbabwe by the
unrepentant former colonial power which has enlisted support from its
American and Western allies so that they invade the country.'

This claim by Dr Sikhanyiso Ndlovu was an insult to the intelligence of
humans everywhere in so far as cholera is an acute intestinal infection
caused by unsanitary conditions. The key to prevention of the disease is
simple: clean water.

It is because of the simple nature of the cure that the response of the
Zimbabwe government to the death of more than 1,000 persons is one more
callous response to the exploitation and brutal oppression of the Zimbabwean
working peoples. Biological warfare is a serious matter not to be used for
games of crying 'wolf'. One world figure is already leaving the stage with
the record of this kind of crying wolf in Iraq.

While this writer will oppose any form of external military intervention by
imperialists, it is important that concerned and progressive scholars oppose
the crude anti-imperialism of the Zimbabwean political leadership under
Mugabe. This writer awaits equal concern from my colleagues over the gender
violence, repression of trade union leaders, wanton destruction of lives by
the Mugabe government and the brutal repression of ordinary citizens.

At the same time that the statement of concern was being signed human rights
activists were calling on the Zimbabwean government to account for the
whereabouts of Jestina Mukoko, director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP).
Mukoko is only one of the more than 20 known human rights activists who have
disappeared in the past six weeks. Mukoko's 15 year-old child saw his mother
being abducted from their home.

We must raise our collective voices against such kidnapping and abduction
while opposing any imperialist plans for a military invasion of Zimbabwe.
One question that immediately came to mind after reading the CODESRIA
statement was whether our colleagues have become blind to the suffering of
ordinary people in their struggle against the latest and more complex phase
of imperialism in Africa.

MUGABE AND THE EXPLOITATION OF ANTI-RACIST AND ANTI-IMPERIALIST SENTIMENTS

The Zimbabwe government is very aware of the anti-imperialist and
anti-racist sentiments among oppressed peoples and thus has deployed a range
of propagandists inside and outside of the country in a bid to link every
problem in Zimbabwe to international sanctions by the EU and USA.
Anti-imperialists in the USA cite the Zimbabwe Reconstruction and
Development Act - passed by the US Congress in 2001 - as being a source of
economic woe for poor Zimbabweans. While the scholars at the congress of
CODESRIA hardly resorted to the same kind of praise for Mugabe as their
counterparts writing in the special issue of Black Scholar, there is not
enough evidence that there was sufficient attention paid to the gross
violation of basic rights. If this debate did occur at the CODESRIA congress
it was not reflected in the statement.

One of the key entrepreneurs of the Zimbabwe regime, John Bredenkamp,
commands considerable experience in manipulating the question of sanctions
for the enrichment of those in power, both in the time of Rhodesia and now
Zimbabwe. Bredenkamp started on his way to fortune by breaking sanctions for
Ian Smith. Bredenkamp has been involved in the politics and economics of
looting southern Africa and is one of the key props of the ZANU-PF regime.
His plundering activities also tie him to the political and financial
leaders in South Africa who are being probed by the Serious Fraud Office
(SFO) in relation to the £100 million in bribes to ensure the sale of
weapons to the South African government. This author is calling on members
of the CODESRIA network to reveal their research findings on John
Bredenkamp, Muller Conrad Rautenbach (a.k.a. Billy Rautenbach) and to
recommend the arrest and charge of those involved in looting Zimbabwe and
southern Africa. Both Bredenkamp and Billy Rautenbach (of the white settler
forces) featured in the orgy of looting in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC) and established long term business relationships with ZANU-PF's
leaders. John Bredenkamp had matured in the art of manipulation while
aligned with Ian Smith. He exulted in this dual service to imperialism and
to African nationalists with the leadership of ZANU-PF, and his expertise
has been placed at the service of the crude accumulators within the South
Africa's ANC.

Instead of oversimplifying imperialist threats in Zimbabwe, those who want
to see the demilitarisation of Africa must aggressively support the exposure
of the arms deals that have linked Bredenkamp and Fana Hlongwane across the
politics of repression in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The British arms
manufacturer British Aerospace (Bae) has been involved with Bredenkamp and
Hlongwane in Africa, along with corrupt elements in the Middle East. There
have been calls for BAe to be prosecuted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act (FCPA) of the USA. Such an investigation would have potentially seismic
consequences for military contractors and arms manufacturers and would
provide another means of opposing Western militarism in Africa.

BLAMING ZIMBABWE'S PROBLEMS ON ZIDERA

The convergence of fraud, corruption and cover-ups in South Africa, Zimbabwe
and Britain render simplistic conceptions of imperialism less than useful
for those who want to see peaceful change in Zimbabwe. The Mugabe government
blames all of its problems on the economic war launched by the USA and
Britain. For the Mugabe regime, at the core of this economic war are the
targeted sanctions against Mugabe's top lieutenants under its Zimbabwe
Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA), passed by the Bush
administration in 2001.

What has been clear from the hundreds of millions of dollars of investments
by British, Chinese, Malaysian, South African and other capitalists in the
Zimbabwe economy since 2003 is that the problems in Zimbabwe have not been
caused by an economic war against the country. Even when facing pressure
from the British government, Anglo-American indicated its willingness in
2008 to invest an additional US$400 million to continue its control of
platinum mines in Zimbabwe. What has been most remarkable has been the ways
in which the dictatorship in Zimbabwe has destroyed the rights of workers in
the mining sector in order to facilitate and welcome foreign capitalists in
the diamond and mining sectors. Whole villages are being laid to waste in
order to support and welcome external diamond mining interests.

If human rights activists and committed scholars were to expose the linkages
between ZANU-PF arms dealers John Bredenkamp and Fana Hlongwane along with
the wider linkages to international capital, then it would be clear that it
is quite an oversimplification to argue that ZIDERA is at the centre of
Zimbabwe's problems. Bredenkamp had been schooled from the Smith era to
blame everything on sanctions while beating the sanctions with the help of
apartheid South Africa. In the present period Bredenkamp is an ally of the
ANC, ZANU-PF and British imperialist arms manufacturers like BAe all at the
same time. It is also important for African scholars to join the call to the
South African President Kgalema Motlanthe for an arms deal judicial
commission, in order to bring to the attention of the wider public the
dealings of individuals such as Fana Hlongwane.

Scholars, while alerting the world against foreign military invasion, must
examine the conduct of the Zimbabwe military and especially those ordering
Mugabe to remain in supreme control.

It is in the interest of concerned scholars everywhere to understand the
conditions of farm labourers and mine workers in Zimbabwe. What was not
expected was for Professor Mahmood Mamdani to use his scholarly knowledge to
repeat ZANU-PF's sham argument that economic sanctions have aggravated the
economic crisis in Zimbabwe. While the nationalists have been crude in their
fawning over the 'revolutionary' credentials of Robert Mugabe, Mahmood
Mamdani used his considerable international reputation to line up support
for the Mugabe regime in a lengthy review published in the London Review of
Books.

IS THERE A DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION GOING ON IN ZIMBABWE?

From the outset Mamdani located himself as a victim of forced expulsion,
identifying the forced expulsion of the Asians in Uganda with the
expropriation of the white setter farmers in Zimbabwe. In the process,
Mamdani compared Robert Mugabe to Idi Amin of Uganda. Mamdani went on to
explain the popularity of Amin's economic war against Asians and used the
word 'popularity' in his characterisation of the current ZANU-PF leadership.
Very few would doubt the 'popularity' of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and other
parts of Africa in the period of the anti-colonial struggles, but in the
past fifteen years Mugabe has turned the victories of the people into a
never ending nightmare of murders, killings, forced removal and brutal
oppression. Idi Amin remains popular in West Africa, just as Mugabe is
popular in West Africa and other parts of the world where there is not a
full understanding of the real tragedy of what is going on in Zimbabwe. Idi
Amin, like Robert Mugabe, is popular outside of his own country for the
wrong reasons.

Mahmood Mamdani as a Ugandan is very aware of the extent to which the
British government supported elements within the Amin dictatorship while
using the British media to revile Africans in general, and Idi Amin in
particular. Amin (who was promoted by the British and the Israelis in the
military coup of January 1971) was useful as a propaganda tool for
imperialism. As a scholar who has written extensively on Uganda and on the
politics of fascism, Mahmood Mamdani is very aware of the role that Bob
Astles played as an agent of US and British imperialism in eastern Africa.
Bob Astles (ally and confidant of Idi Amin from 1966 to 1979) had been
implicated in the scandals involving looted gold from the Congo in the 1960s
and survived with Amin as a key confidant, until he left for Britain when it
became clear that the Tanzanian military invasion of Uganda would succeed.
Mahmood Mamdani had returned to Uganda in 1979 in the military train of the
Tanzanian military and political forces. This was a case where Mamdani
recognised that it required regional African intervention to rid Africa of
the manipulation of the British and the brutal genocidal politics of Idi
Amin.

Contrary to his research on the Ugandan dictatorship, Mamdani's research
skills seem underused while elaborating on the 'Lessons of Zimbabwe'.
Professor Mamdani has maintained that, 'In social and economic - if not
political - terms, this was a democratic revolution. But there was a heavy
price to pay.'

This line of the 'democratic revolution' emanated from the Newtonian
concepts of hierarchy that had been internalised by some who have called
themselves Marxists. During the period of the Soviet Union, this discourse
was used to support so-called revolutionaries such as Mengistu, the butcher
of Ethiopia. Is it by chance that Mengistu has found his refuge in Zimbabwe?

Under this 'democratic revolutionary stage', African capitalists had to
accumulate so that there would be a maturation of capitalism in Africa.
Walter Rodney refuted this 'stages' theory in his book, How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa. In that study Rodney established the reality that
there was a link between the development of capitalism in Europe and the
forms of plunder, looting and genocide in Africa. Capitalism in Africa had
been implanted in a very different form, and all over the continent those
who supported capitalism have used the formulation of the 'democratic
revolution' to support black capitalists. This is nowhere more evident than
in South Africa, where the communist party, as one component of the
tripartite alliance, has used this formulation to silence itself in the face
of the crudest and fastest rate of accumulation by a fledgling capitalist
class in recent history.

In his elaboration of 'the heavy price to pay' for this democratic
revolution in Zimbabwe, Mamdani noted the impact on: (a) 'the rule of law';
(b) Farm labourers; (c) The urban poor; and d) Food production.

What was most contradictory about Mamdani's line of argument is that while
he recognises the impact of the policies of the Mugabe government on the
urban poor and farm workers, he expends a great deal of his analysis on a
critique of the absence of donor support for the people of Zimbabwe. Before
the era of neoliberalism and the pseudo-humanitarianism of the so-called
international non-governmental structure, these donors would have been
called imperialists and there would have been a call for the government of
Zimbabwe to use its resources to provide clean water, sanitation and
healthcare for its people. Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF have selectively
implemented a home grown neoliberal agenda to enrich one of the crudest of
the capitalist classes in Africa while depending on international
imperialist agencies to provide social services for the people. Mamdani
overlooks the fact that the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange has been posting the
most profitable gains under the Mugabe regime.

Mamdani is wrong.

While the discussion about whether Zimbabwe is going through a 'democratic'
revolution can be debated, Mamdani is wrong on numerous grounds. As a
scholar who has written on genocide, it is curious why he left out the close
relationship between the leaders of the Interahamwe and the Zimbabwean
military in the DRC. Mugabe's military trained those had committed genocide
in Rwanda to fight for Laurent Kabila. He is simply wrong to use tribal
formulations to describe the sharp class divide in Zimbabwe. It is here that
the consistency of the donor language corresponds to the language of ethnic
divisions in Zimbabwe. In describing the manipulation of Mugabe, Mamdani
noted:

'Very early on, the colonial bureaucracy had translated the ethnic mosaic of
the country into an administrative map in such a way as to allow minimum
co-operation and maximum competition between different ethnic groups and
areas, ensuring among other things that labour for mining, manufacture and
service was not recruited from areas where peasants were needed on large
farms or plantations. These areas, as it happened, were mainly Shona and so,
unsurprisingly, when the trade-union movement developed in Rhodesia, its
leaders were mostly Ndebele, and had few links with the Shona leadership of
the peasant-based liberation movement (Mugabe belongs to the Shona
majority).'

What is this language of Shona majority? Is this not the old tribal
discourse of the colonial anthropologists?

Mahmood Mamdani's benign criticisms cannot disguise the reality that his
submission has been represented as one component of the anti-imperialist
intellectual support for the Mugabe regime. Despite the atrocities, killings
and abductions of grassroots activists, Mamdani has managed to use the term
'popularity' in the same sentence while describing the current Zimbabwe
leadership. Nowhere did this writer take note of the fact that this 'popular'
government withheld the election results in March 2008 for over a month.
Mamdani says there is a democratic revolution at a high price. Indeed at the
price of democracy itself and in its most simple expression: the right to
vote.

Writing this backhanded support for Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF as a review of
a number of books on Zimbabwe, Mamdani was inordinately dependent on the
scholarship of those from the Agrarian Institute for African Studies in
Zimbabwe. The papers from this institute have been fulsome in their praise
of the 'land reform' process in Zimbabwe. The authors of these papers
supporting Mugabe were the very same ones claiming that the horrors of
'Operation Murambatsvina' (the operation to round up hundreds of thousands
of citizens) were exaggerated by the Western media.

Neither Mamdani nor the scholars from CODESRIA have expressed their outrage
in relation to the repression and forced removal of 750,000 people from
Zimbabwe's urban areas in 2005. If a white government had done this there
would have been outrage. Current scholarly work on the displacement of
Zimbabwean farm workers by Amanda Hammar will assist future scholarship
focused on the reintegration of individuals scattered across Southern
Africa. These citizens suffered from the xenophobic attacks against poor
migrants in South Africa.

While merely recycling the scholarship of this agrarian institute, Mahmood
Mamdani was careful to hedge his bets in noting that: 'What land reform has
meant or may come to mean for Zimbabwe's economy is still hotly disputed.'

What is not in dispute is that the policies of the Mugabe government have
destroyed the agricultural sector in Zimbabwe. In our examination of the
fast track land seizures in the book, Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of
the Patriarchal Model of Liberation, we exposed the reality that an
examination of land reform cannot be separated from water, seeds,
fertilizers and most importantly, the labour that has worked on a piece of
land. It is on the question of workers and labour where one would have
expected Mamdani to have drawn on the scholarship of Brian Raftopoulos and
Lloyd Sachikonye. It is not too late to recommend to Mahmood Mamdani two
books that will shed light on the relationship between land and labour:
Striking Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe,
1980-2000, edited by Brian Raftopoulos and Lloyd Sachikonye; and Lloyd
Sachikonye, The Situation of Commercial Farm Workers after Land Reform in
Zimbabwe.

IDI AMIN AND BOB ASTLES; ROBERT MUGABE AND JOHN BERDENKAMP

Qualifications on the disputed outcome of the 'land reform' by Mahmood
Mamdani should not derail committed scholarship on what a democratic land
reform process could yield in the new southern Africa when there is serious
decolonisation instead of the Africanisation of exploitation. Mamdani's
analysis could not hide the reality that there is a capitalist class that is
profiting from the misery and exploitation of the peoples of Zimbabwe. The
present divide in Zimbabwe that is manipulated under ethnic terms cannot
hide the opulence and disparity between those with power and the
exploitation of millions, with hundreds dying of cholera. The billions of
dollars being exported by those in the regime, along with the leadership of
the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, will only come to light when scholars, in
general, and African scholars, in particular, support the UN Stolen Assets
Recovery Initiative. African dictators from the Sudan to Equatorial Guinea
and looters from Nigeria and Angola to Kenya want African scholars to be
silent on the repatriation of stolen wealth. This writer opposes all
sanctions against Zimbabwe (including ZIDERA) because sanctions do not work
when there are experienced entrepreneurs such as John Bredenkamp and Billy
Rautenbach in the service of ZANU-PF. What is far more important is a full
analysis of Gideon Gono's exportation of money at the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe. As a scholars in universities with the space and resources to do
research, it is our collective duty in the context of an Obama
administration to call on the US Justice Department to prosecute those of
the British firm BAe who have been involved in corruption and fraud in
southern Africa.

Additionally, African scholars and progressives must pressure the Obama
administration to use the resources of the Treasury Department of the Office
of Foreign Assets Control to democratise the information on the billions of
dollars being stolen from Africa, and in this case, southern Africa.

As in the case of Idi Amin, imperialism can be very selective in releasing
the information of the theft and export of capital by the Mugabe leadership.
In the past month the Treasury Department of the United States Office of
Foreign Assets Control slapped further sanctions on John Bredenkamp.

There is need for concerted research and exposure of the continued role of
elements such as Bredenkamp and the alliance with those in the South African
government who are profiting from the misery and exploitation of the
Zimbabwean people. Is it by accident that the same forces aligned with
Bredenkamp also supported the 'quiet diplomacy' of Thabo Mbeki? The
countries of the European Union are also complicit in the looting of
Zimbabwe. Decent individuals in Europe and concerned African scholars must
pressure the democratic forces in Belgium to call on the Belgian Central
Bank to expose the amounts of money being exported by Gideon Gono on behalf
of Robert Mugabe and the dictatorship. The international banking system now
relies on a network administered by Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) based at La Hulpe outside Brussels.
SWIFT links 7,800 financial institutions in 205 countries, including
Zimbabwe's banks, and processes about US$6 trillions' worth of transactions
each day. Although owned by banks, SWIFT specifically falls under the
control of central banks and, in particular, the control of the Belgian
Central Bank. Instead of speculating on whether the Mugabe regime is
exporting US$9 or US$15 billion every year, the exposure of the head of the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is far more important than talks of removing Mugabe
by force. Blocking international payments is far quicker and more effective
than trade or other sanctions. This strategy can also be reversed as soon as
its objectives are reached, without permanent damage to the economy or its
infrastructure.

COMMITTED SCHOLARS SHOULD BE OUTRAGED AT WHAT IS HAPPENING IN ZIMBABWE

People are being killed and brutalised. Homophobia and virginity tests
reflect the most extreme forms of patriarchy and deformed masculinity in
Zimbabwe. The women who bear the brunt of this oppression have called for
international solidarity. Under the leadership of the group, Women of
Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), these brave fighters have exposed those who mobilise
sophisticated post-modernists and anti-imperialist discourse to support
Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwean workers are being assaulted every day and it is
the task of concerned African scholars to defend the rights of organised and
unorganised Zimbabwean workers alike.

Unfortunately for Mamdani this article defending Mugabe came out at a time
when there was news of the health emergency and the more than 1,000 who have
died from cholera. Already, spokespersons for the Mugabe dictatorship have
begun to use the writing of Mahmood Mamdani to give legitimacy to their
anti-imperialist rhetoric. Mahmood Mamdani opposed the expulsion of the
Asians from Uganda. This author opposed the expulsion of the Asians from
Uganda on the grounds that it was racist. Mahmood Mamdani has recognised
that after the removal of Idi Amin the top Asian capitalists returned to
Uganda. In order to ensure that imperialism and the white settlers are not
the beneficiaries of the quagmire and nightmare in Zimbabwe, there is a need
to explore new agricultural techniques rooted in the experiences of farm
workers to develop cooperatives as a means of breaking the domination of the
new black capitalists. It was the democratic right of the Zimbabwean people
to reclaim the lands seized by British colonialists, but progressive
scholars must oppose all forms of exploitation, whether black or white.

At this time, this author supports the Zimbabwean farm labourers and opposes
both the settler capitalist classes in Zimbabwe and their African allies
seeking to continue the exploitation of the country's workers, poor peasants
and traders.

Western imperialism understands the delicacy of the balance of forces in
Zimbabwe. It is for this reason that the West is pressuring neoliberal
elements in the MDC to join a government of national unity with the same
group that has killed over 20,000 Zimbabweans and expelled over 750,000
urban dwellers from their places of shelter. The recent scholarship on
Zimbabwe offers one avenue for those who want to interrogate the links
between ZANU-PF and the immense suffering of the country's (as reflected in
the Special Bulletin of the Association of Concerned African Scholars)[1].
Mamdani is correct to draw attention to the influence of neoliberal forces
such as Eddie Cross within the MDC, but neoliberalism is dead and the
governments of western Europe and the USA are busy nationalising banks
without democratic control and accountability. Zimbabweans who want
transformation must oppose the neoliberal forces within the MDC to ensure
that the suffering of working people does not continue after the ultimate
departure of Robert Mugabe.

There is nothing democratic or revolutionary about what is going on in
Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF. African scholars and progressive
forces must use all of their resources to support producers as they seek new
forms of emancipatory politics in the face of the global capitalist crisis.
Africans, like decent humans in all parts of the planet, want to live in
dignity and with basic rights.

* Horace Campbell is a member of the African Studies Association and the
National Conference of Black Political Scientists.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at
http://www.pambazuka.org/

[1] Timothy Scarnecchia and Wendy Urban-Mead, 'Special Issue on Zimbabwe',
ACAS Bulletin 80, 2

Bleaker than ever

http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/review2008/content/story/384019.html

Steven Price

December 27, 2008

Given the escalating social and economic turmoil inside the country, it was
hardly surprising that there was little cheer on Zimbabwe's cricket front.
There is even an argument that simply keeping the sport alive represented an
achievement on the part of Zimbabwe Cricket.

That having played so little - in the entire year they managed only 12
ODIs - they continued to receive substantial ICC funding remained a
contentious point. Zimbabwe's results hardly appeased their critics, with
0-5 whitewashes in Pakistan in February, and at home to Sri Lanka in
November. In between they contrived to lose an ODI to Kenya, and most
embarrassingly to Uganda, and tied a Twenty20 international with Canada.
Their one win of any consequence was against Ireland in a rain-hit
triangular tournament in Nairobi.

Zimbabwe did punch above their weight in the political arena. Although the
long-awaited independent audit commissioned by the ICC highlighted some
serious flaws, the executive decided that no one person was to blame.
Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief executive, found that unpalatable, and weeks
later lost his job as a result of his refusing to attend a press conference
to announce the findings.

But even the ICC's unquestioning support began to waver when faced with the
loss of hard dollars, and ZC chairman Peter Chingoka was forced to agree
that Zimbabwe would withdraw from the ICC World Twenty20 in England in 2009
rather than risk a showdown with the UK government, which had made clear he
was unwelcome. The board's lingering claims to be apolitical were all but
blown away three weeks later when Chingoka was banned by the European Union
for "having publicly supported the terror campaign carried out before and
during the [March 2008] election".

The virtual revolving-door approach to the appointment of a national coach
hardly helped the team. Robin Brown, who had slowed if not arrested the
slide, and instilled some self-belief in a young side, was dumped
unceremoniously when his one-year contract came up for renewal - rumours of
major rows with the executive had been doing the rounds for months - and his
replacement was the unknown Walter Chawaguta, a fringe first-class player,
and A team and Under-19 coach. Within months it was abundantly clear he was
out of his depth, and he found his job was being advertised on the ZC
website. A replacement had not been found at the time of writing.

The rumblings of discontent among the players continued. Brendan Taylor fell
out with the board and opted to head to England and then Australia; former
captain Terry Duffin did likewise, and other fringe players sought contracts
in South Africa. Tatenda Taibu, who in 2005 walked out after claiming
threats had been made against his family with the knowledge of the board,
ended the year again in dispute - and in court - after an alleged
altercation with a ZC official.

Domestic tournaments did take place, but the veneer that the game still had
a national hold was brushed aside when it emerged that provincial sides were
being bolstered by players bussed in from Harare. Even then, the quality of
matches was poor. Representative sides did gain vital experience in South
Africa's second-tier domestic competitions, but that lifeline was withdrawn
when Cricket South Africa's president, Norman Arendse, cut ties for
political rather than cricketing reasons.

The mess inside the country meant more and more grounds became unusable,
victims of hyperinflation that made obtaining parts and fuel for machinery
all but impossible. The collapse of the water-supply companies earlier this
month just made an already wretched existence even worse.

New kid on the block
Despite being a young side, Zimbabwe blooded only two new faces in 2008, a
reflection on the lack of alternatives rather than a sign that they had
settled on their best squad. The best hope seems to be wicketkeeper-batsman
Regis Chakabva, who scored 41 in his only ODI, but who might feature more if
Taibu's relationship with the board continues to deteriorate.

Fading star
Chingoka was last year's nominee, but he has held on so far by the skin of
his teeth. His EU-wide ban was a blow to a man with interests in the UK, and
after his ICC climb-down he became increasingly invisible. He still has
friends in high places in the ICC, but that will not be enough to save him
if Robert Mugabe is toppled.

High point
The best moments came in the third, fourth and fifth ODIs against Sri Lanka.
After two thumping losses, Zimbabwe put themselves in good positions to win
the last three matches, only to choke in the final furlong. Their lack of
experience was largely to blame, but at least it showed they could come
close.

Low point
Aside from withdrawing from the ICC World Twenty20, Zimbabwe's remarkable
collapse in the first ODI against Sri Lanka was car-crash viewing for the
faithful inside the Harare Sports Club. Cruising at 124 for 3, they managed
to lose seven wickets for three runs in four overs. Numbers 6 to 11 all made
ducks.

What 2009 holds
This is outside the control of ZC or the ICC. If Mugabe's 28-year rule ends,
the board can start rebuilding, and the ICC's help will rarely have been
more vital. While there can be no overnight solution, a number of former
players and coaches are likely to be tempted back, and overseas investment
will follow. Chingoka and his sidekicks will depart in the aftershocks of
any regime change, paving the way for a less political and more focussed
executive. If Mugabe survives, then by the end of 2009 it is possible that
cricket in Zimbabwe will be limited to a handful of grounds and a few dozen
diehard players. It really has got to that stage.

Steven Price is a freelance journalist based in Harare

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