Reuters
Thu 29 Mar
2007 15:00:33 BST
By Paul Simao
JOHANNESBURG, March 29
(Reuters) - Zimbabwean police are beating up people
suspected of supporting
the main opposition party as a crackdown on dissent
spreads beyond political
circles, a researcher with Human Rights Watch said
on
Thursday.
Tiseke Kasambala, who earlier this month visited Zimbabwe for
the U.S.-based
human rights group, said she had met Zimbabweans who were
savagely abused by
police after being accused of ties to the Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC).
"The police have been going door-to-door
beating people up," Kasambala said
in a news conference in Johannesburg a
day after she returned from a
two-week research trip to the politically
volatile southern African nation.
"The crackdown has spread. It is not
just targeted at the opposition but
also at ordinary Zimbabweans," she
said.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe met Southern African leaders in
Tanzania at
a special summit on Thursday to address Zimbabwe's crisis.
Western leaders
are urging a tough response.
In Harare, MDC
Secretary-General Tendai Biti accused Mugabe's government of
carrying out
more than 250 assaults over the last few weeks as well as
abductions of
opposition officials and civilians as part of a "guerrilla"
war to hang on
to power.
"A low-key, high-intensity war has been unleashed by the state
on civilians
... the state is behaving like a guerrilla outfit," Biti said
in a news
conference on Thursday at MDC headquarters in the capital
Harare.
ABDUCTIONS
"Hundreds, and this is not a metaphor,
of lower level officials are being
abducted ...," said the senior MDC
official, who took reporters on a tour of
the party's offices, which he said
were vandalised by police during a raid
on Wednesday.
MDC leader
Morgan Tsvangirai and other MDC activists were briefly arrested
Wednesday
afternoon shortly before they were to hold a news conference.
Authorities
said the arrests were in connection with a spate of petrol
bombings.
It was the second time in less than a month that police had
detained
Tsvangirai and other opposition members. The MDC leader and dozens
of others
said they were beaten in police custody after an aborted March 11
anti-Mugabe protest in Harare.
The Zimbabwean capital remains the
focal point of the MDC's campaign to oust
Mugabe. Kasambala said police and
government intelligence officers patrolled
in large numbers in the city,
concentrating on crowded neighbourhoods.
"Security agents are
everywhere," she said.
The police repression has drawn sharp
international protests and renewed
calls for African nations to tackle
Mugabe's 27-year rule in Zimbabwe, which
now faces its worst economic crisis
in decades along with escalating
political tensions.
In power since
independence from Britain in 1980, the 83-year-old Mugabe
says he is the
victim of a Western-sponsored campaign to overthrow his
government in
retribution for his policy of seizing white-owned farms to
give to landless
blacks.
Human Rights Watch was among those to call on the Southern
African
Develoment Community (SADC), which includes Zimbabwe's influential
neighbour
South Africa, to condemn the violence in Harare and urge Mugabe to
investigate the allegations of police brutality and rights
abuses.
"Zimbabwe is a threat to stability and peace in the southern
Africa region,"
Kasambala said. "The crisis is almost reaching a breaking
point."
(Additional reporting by Cris Chinaka in Harare) (Johannesburg
bureau 27 11
775 3165; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
zimbabwejournalists.com
1st Dec 2007 00:24 GMT
By Sebastian Nyamhangambiri
HARARE -
Scores of fruit and vegetable vendors from across the city were
yesterday
forced to close down their businesses and participate in the one
Million Men
and Women March.
The march which seeks to endorse President Robert Mugabe
as the Zanu PF
candidate for next year's election was organised by war
veterans leadership
to drum up support for Mugabe who has become unpopular
both in his party and
with supporters because of the economic meltdown in
the country.
In an interview with some of the vendors who declined to be
named in fear of
victimisation, they said they were forced to attend the
march.
Many in Highfields reported that the war veterans were apparently
forcing
commuter buses to offload people going about their business at the
Zimbabwe
Grounds to wait for Mugabe to speak.
There were also reports
of beatings in Highfield where there was also a very
high presence of riot
police on the streets.
Most people could not conduct their businesses due
to the march and the war
veterans high-handed nature in dealing with those
refusing to do as they
asked.
"We were told that there would be a
register and if we failed to turn up we
will be punished," one of the
frustrated vendors said in Highfield as he
found their way back to his base
in the CBD.
Asked what they meant by punishment the war veterans said the
vendors would
be removed from their stalls, where they make little money to
feed their
families as most of them are widows.
The march has been
dubbed by fellow Zanu PF supporters as a desperate
measure by Mugabe to
cling on to power.
In an interview John Nkomo, the Zanu PF chairman
dismissed the allegations
by vendors.
"Do they mean to tell me that
all the people there were forced? People must
not cook up stories just to
tarnish Zanu PF," said Nkomo.
New Europe
1 December
2007
Issue : 758 The practice of limiting presidents to a couple of terms
in
office is "a luxury" and President Robert Mugabe should continue to rule
until he dies, according to Zimbabwe's vice- president, further compounding
the European Union's dilemma on how to handle the autocratic ruler when he
comes to the EUAfrica Summit in Lisbon on December 8-9.
Joseph Msika, 84,
one of two vice-presidents of both the ruling party and
the government, was
quoted in the statecontrolled Sunday Mail as he backed
the 83-year-old
leader as the party's sole candidate for presidential
elections expected in
March 2008. The ruling party is due to hold an
extraordinary congress in
December at which the only topic of significance
is the ratification of
Mugabe's candidacy and to prevent any others from
running.
The national
constitution has not limited periods in office since an
executive presidency
was passed in 1987. Mugabe has been in power
continuously for 27 years,
since independence from British colonial rule in
1980. "We do not change
leaders as fast we change our shirts," Msika said.
"In Zimbabwe we do not
accept that. So the issue of changing a leader after
a specified period is
out of the question. It is a luxury we cannot afford.
If they are still
serving the people, then they should stay on or even die
there," dpa
reported. Zimbabwe is in the throes of dramatic economic
decline, with GDP
having shrunk 40 per cent in the last seven years,
inflation at 15,000 per
cent and the currency, which was at parity with
British Sterling at
independence, now worth .0000003 Pounds Sterling.
Famine has set in for the
fifth consecutive year in the west of the country,
the supply of goods to
shops and supermarkets has almost totally dried up,
fuel is critically
scarce and businesses, farmers and private homes suffer
from continual power
and water cuts as infrastructure in what was Africa's
second most highly
developed country, crumbles.
The collapse is blamed on continuous misrule and
reckless economic
decisions, from the lawless seizure of productive
white-owned farmland from
2000, to price controls decreed in June that
forced retailers to sell their
goods at prices far lower than the wholesale
prices. Mugabe blames the
situation on an alleged plot by Western
governments to overthrow him. Msika
said Zimbabwe had "continued to excel
under Comrade Mugabe's leadership."
Mugabe recently declared that the
country "will not collapse, now or in
future."
Msika's remarks are
expected to raise eyebrows amongst regional Southern
African leaders who are
shepherding talks between Mugabe's ruling ZANU(PF)
party and the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change, with major
democratic reforms on the agenda,
including the limiting of presidential
terms of office.
Observers point
out that Mugabe, who still appears in good health, has never
seriously
indicated any willingness to retire and is set to rule for the
rest of his
life, although he has not formally assumed the status of
"president-for-life" decreed by many African dictators with the withdrawal
of colonial powers in the 50s and 60s.
Few of them achieved this, most
having been forced out of office by violent
coup d'etat, and many were
executed. Meanwhile, although the invitation to
Mugabe to attend the
EU-Africa Summit was made by Portugal, which holds the
rotating EU
presidency until the end of the year, a Portuguese official said
Mugabe's
appearance will not cause any dissension in the EU, even though
British
Prime Minister said he won't come and the Czech Republic and
Slovakia won't
send their leaders either.
"It is not in any way a diplomatic embarrassment,"
Joao Gomes Cravinho,
secretary of state in the Portuguese foreign ministry,
told TSF radio. "We
deeply regret that what is new in terms of relations
between Europe and
Africa be obscured by the media's obsession with the
presence of Zimbabwe's
president," he said.
"It is clear that his
presence amounts to a major attraction for
journalists, but it is substance
that remains in history, and when the
history of the Lisbon summit is
written, Mugabe's presence will only be a
footnote," said Cravinho, reported
by IC Publications.
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since its 1980 independence
from Britain and is
accused by the West of stifling democracy and leading
his southern African
nation to economic ruin. No EU-Africa summit has been
held since the first
and only one in Cairo seven years ago, as several
European countries
rejected inviting Mugabe, accused of human rights
violations. Portugal's
Foreign Minister, Luis Amado, broke with his own
leadership though when he
told astonished European diplomats he thought it
"preferable" if Mugabe did
not attend, since he might divert participants
from essential issues.
zimbabwejournalists.com
1st Dec 2007 00:39 GMT
By David Baxter
KAMPALA - The Commonwealth
cannot ignore the crisis in Zimbabwe, Stuart
Mole, the director of the Royal
Commonwealth Society, has said.
Addressing a public dialogue under the
theme "Zimbabwe in crisis; time for
Commonwealth action" at the Grand
Imperial Hotel in Kampala last week, Mole
appealed to the heads of
government to address the plight of millions of
Zimbabweans.
The
Zimbabwean opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai , said the rate of
inflation
in his country had soared to over 10,000%.
At least 85% of the people are
unemployed and nearly four million people,
half of the population, depends
of food aid, Tsvangirai , the leader of the
main opposition political party,
the MDC said.
Tsvangirai said four million Zimbabweans have fled the
country.
"It is a situation the Commonwealth cannot ignore. We hope that
in future,
the country will return to the Commonwealth because the bloc
played a big
role in the birth of a free Zimbabwe in Lancaster," he
said.
When South Africa left the Commonwealth in 1961, he recalled, the
organisation only redoubled its support for the people of South
Africa.
"Let us re-engage Zimbabwe in dialogue, prepare for free and fair
elections
so that the people can speak. Let us keep up the pressure,"
Tsvangirai said.
"The life expectancy is now the lowest and inflation is
the highest in the
world. All forms of businesses, rural and urban are on
the verge of
collapse. The formal economy has disappeared."
He said
one million children had dropped out of school whereas hospitals
lack
essential drugs, staff and equipment.
Maja Daruwala, the director of the
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative,
said an open approach to the crisis
would be efficient.
"The Commonwealth must be engaged at the level of
open dialogue and
diplomacy," she said.
The chairperson of the Legal
Resources Foundation in Zimbabwe, Nokuthula
Moyo, said shops and markets in
her country were empty.
She said industries had been closed due to
arbitrary slashing of taxes by
the state and people were depending on
cross-border black market products.
There is massive arrest of opposition
politicians in Zimbabwe, she added.
"Nobody earns enough money to travel to
and from work a month. Several
people have lived in darkness for months due
to power shortage," Moyo said.
Kumi Naidoo of a South African NGO,
CIVICUS, appealed to President Mugabe to
create space for international
humanitarian organisations to save his
people.
Montreal Gazette
Sunday, December 2,2007
To
their disgrace, the 14 members of the Southern African Development
Community
have united in support of the crack-brained regime of Zimbabwe's
Robert
Mugabe. The 14 say they will boycott next week's meeting of African
and
European Union leaders unless the Euro-delegates kept quiet about the
nightmare Mugabe has imposed upon his people.
The summit seems to be
unravelling before it starts, as have attempts at
such meetings since 2000.
The U.K.'s Gordon Brown will boycott this one,
just because Mugabe might
attend. Czech PM Mirek Topolanek will stay away,
too.
African leaders
can be on the side of the incompetent tyrant Mugabe, or else
on the side of
the people of Zimbabwe. It's a sad spectacle to see which
they have
chosen.
www.cathybuckle.com
OUTSIDE
LOOKING IN
Dear Friends.
It's been over two months since I wrote; my
long silence has been one
of the consequences of moving house and losing my
internet connection.
That meant I couldn't listen to SW Radio or read Zim
News; in short I
was cut off from home and it was a very frustrating
experience.
Phonecalls and letters together with the occasional newspaper
item
here in the UK kept me in the picture and once a week there was The
Zimbabwean to fill in the details. One advantage I had over similarly
news-starved Zims at home was that I was not faced with the nightly
barrage from the ZBC or the poisonous propaganda of the Herald!
When I
was finally connected again, I was struck by how little I had
missed. It
seemed that nothing had changed ? except for the worse.
Power cuts are now
a daily occurrence all over the country, lasting
for days at a time. Fuel
is still unobtainable except on the black
market at astronomical prices. In
two months inflation has doubled;
basic food items have become even more
scarce and the supermarket
shelves are still virtually empty. ( People from
home phoned to say
that they had forgotten what bread tasted like and one
friend told me
he had come across bread being sold on the black market in
one of
Harare?s townships at $600.000 a loaf.) Violence against the
civilian
population has gone on unabated despite the Mbeki?led
negotiations
between the two main parties.
Looking in from the outside
at the near-silent 'talks' I was struck
as I so often am by the
unbelievable naivety of the opposition that
they could consider talking to
the very people who are so clearly
intent on their destruction. Surely,
even in a situation of outright
war, the guns have to be silenced before
the two sides can sit down to
negotiate the peace, yet the opposition
continues to negotiate while
their followers at home are being beaten and
imprisoned, refused food
aid and blocked from any form of democratic
protest. Perhaps I'm
missing something here but its hard to understand how
a supposedly
mature political party can go on believing in the integrity
and
trustworthiness of Zanu PF when all their past dealings have shown
them to be precisely the opposite. Has the opposition learned nothing
of the true nature of the ruling party over the long years of
betrayal,
of lies and deceit and rigged elections? Such naivety is
criminal when one
considers the effect it has on ordinary people. In
my two months of
isolation from events back home I was reduced to
tears on several occasions
by heartbroken calls from an opposition
political activist, a friend of
mine, wanting to know what the hell
was going on and how he and his fellow
activists were ever going to
keep up the spirits of the growing numbers of
opposition supporters in
the rural areas when the leadership appeared to be
selling out to
Mugabe and co. It was not a question I could
answer.
While Zimbabwe continues on its seemingly inexorable path to ruin,
we
have seen one example of how, very slowly and with a good deal of
pressure from outside- democracy takes root. In Pakistan, after a
period if intense political upheaval, President Mushareff has taken
off
his military uniform and promised to lift the State of Emergency
and hold
free and fair elections. He has released the thousands of
detained
opposition supporters and allowed his two main rivals back
into the
country. None of this happened without a great deal of
pressure,
particularly from the Americans, who need a democratic
Pakistan to help
them in their 'war on terror'.
In the southern African context, some people
had hoped that President
Mbeki would be the one to put that kind of
pressure on Mugabe; it
hasn't happened and it looks unlikely that it will
happen. Mugabe
attends the EU/ Africa summit in Lisbon next week and will
no doubt
strut his usual stuff and spew his usual lies and distortions
about
how his country?s problems are all caused by sanctions imposed by
the
west. Thabo Mbeki will be there to support him no doubt. Gordon Brown
won?t be there; he says he wont sit down at the same table as Robert
Mugabe. With or without Brown, it's unlikely anyone will challenge
Mugabe; he seems to be having it all his own way at the moment.
Perhaps
all hope is not lost however; Mugabe's great friend and
political ally Hugo
Chavez might well provide another example of how
dictators always get their
come-uppance in the end. Chavez is trying
to abolish the time limits on his
presidency so that he can remain in
office until 2030 but his plan has run
into considerable opposition on
the streets. One of the reasons for this is
the shortage of basic food
stuffs! Like his friend in Zimbabwe, Chavez has
introduced strict
price controls and, hey presto, no milk, no eggs, no
sugar, no flour
and no cooking oil in the shops. Middle-class Venezuelans
are
emigrating in droves, apparently. A 'Yes' vote in Sunday's referendum
on the constitution will give Hugo Chavez absolute control over the
enormous oil reserves, and the right to expropriate private property
and censor the media 'in times of emergency' You have to wonder at the
similarities between these dictators; they learn from each other
apparently.
Unlike Venezuela, however, Zimbabwe does not have huge oil
reserves at
its disposal and since Mugabe has already destroyed the
economy; there
is not much left for him to exploit - except the suffering
masses.
'We know you're short of bread' he told the people at a recent
rally,
'but just wait patiently.' Tell that to the starving children, Mr
President.
Yours in solidarity. PH
WHY ARE WE A NATION OF PEOPLE FORCED TO
EMBRACE DEATH AND DESPAIR?
WE DESERVE TO FIGHT FOR LIFE AND FACE OUR FUTURE
WITH HOPE
World AIDS day comment by Stella Allberry, MDC Secretary for
Health (Arthur
Mutambara.)
" .sadness and grief if not acted on,
result in despair. And despair is a
response we cannot permit.
Justice
Edwin Cameron South African Supreme Court of Appeal. (HIV/AIDS and
the Law
2nd Edition)
These words were written by a man of the law, thereby giving
them even more
weight in his recognition for the need for justice for those
who are
suffering. Here is a man who cannot bear to permit despair as a
consequence
of grief, suffering and bereavement caused by the absence of
policy,
legislation and insufficiency of response to the HIV/AIDS
crisis.
But sadly, despair is the overwhelming response of our people in
our
beleaguered Nation at this time. Zimbabwe is tragically a country where
too
many of its affected people and those around them are doomed to live a
life
of despair, of desolation, a heartbroken existence of
hopelessness.
Is this all on account of HIV/AIDS? No!
They see
their futures being snatched away because the illegitimate regime
refuses to
hear or heed their needs. The majority of Zimbabweans, from the
very day that
they consider they may be infected see a brief life ahead
filled with much
suffering and anguish. They fear for their futures so much
more than those
HIV positive people elsewhere in the world. This is not
permissible.
A
typical and true Zimbabwean story.
A few weeks ago a young married
teacher visited a government clinic. He was
coughing copiously, he was very
thin and he had ulcers in his mouth. The
young doctor attending asked him
kindly if he would consider being tested.
His answer was, "No. My wife and I
have decided there is no point in being
tested." The doctor reported that
the young teacher could not face the
frustration and anguish. He agreed to
take TB treatment and went away.
He had given up on all and any options
other than death and these are the
reasons why.
He may possibly be
tested and found to be positive. Then what? He and his
wife would have to
spend unavailable money on seeking out an Opportunistic
Infections clinic
that has available ARV therapy. He would have to queue
for days using up all
his leave from his school and all his finances to pay
for the transport to
and from the hospital. When he would eventually reach
the front of the queue
he would then be put on a waiting list, if he could
get on the list at all
for recently the books have been closed. If he could
get on the list, he may
die while waiting to begin treatment which could
take up to six months to
start. In the report put out by the International
Treatment Preparedness
Coalition (ITPC) in July of 2007 the Zimbabwean
research team states,.. (page
80 ) "Meanwhile the government programme is
over-subscribed... The government
programme also experiences regular stock
outs. For instance, Kotwa District
Hospital had no ARV's between March and
May 2007." .... (page 81) "My neice
died on the 21st May after waiting for
more than a year to commence
treatment." an activist lamented during an
interview.
His option
of going out of the city to a mission Hospital where he may
receive ARV's is
too great a risk and more than likely would lead to further
disappointment
and a financial burden exacerbated by the transport crisis.
This teacher
could never afford to buy the ARV treatment privately for a
month's supply
costs more than his entire salary. It is likely he did not
have any
benefactors in the family living in the Diaspora who could help him
as many
Zimbabweans have - we are a nation now dependant on
outside
resources.
In the meantime he knew that his resistance was
devastatingly poor from
malnutrition. He is a teacher so he is not
ignorant. He knows as a
Zimbabwean that this is now the way of life - that
most people living with
HIV/AIDS will not live far beyond their mid thirties.
Eventually when he
needs an intravenous treatment he would have to buy his
own kit or die from
diarrhoea or other treatable illnesses because the
treatment is simply not
there or the hospitals have little or no staff to
treat him. (ITPC - page
81) "Some hospitals in rural areas share personnel,
with doctors covering a
number of districts that are more than 100km apart.
As a result patients
have to wait from weeks to months before receiving a
doctor's attention."
Whichever way our teacher turns he feels he has no
worth - the process of
dehumanisation is very real to him. Despair has
overwhelmed him and he has
chosen to wait for death. He left the clinic,
another victim of a regime
committed to blotting out the helpless. The young
doctor has not forgotten
that despair because he too feels it on a painfully
regular basis. He
suffers despair in being a doctor and not being able to
administer proper
treatment even to his own family. " I can diagnose my
family members'
conditions but I cannot afford to treat them." he says. (ITPC
- page 81) "In
May 2007 a Municipal Nurse earned Z$1,300,000.00 (US$ 26 at
the parallel
market rate) while junior doctors earned less than US$ 100 per
month. Most
health workers have fallen below the official poverty
line."
Hospital treatment is dire in this country. Our medical staffs are
leaving
public service in droves. Basic medications are now almost
entirely
unavailable. Added to that, Zimbabweans have very little strength
to fight
off infections as a result of government induced unavailability of
food and
the growing reality that only Zanu(PF) supporters have access to
the little
food in store.
It is despair that drives people to leave
their children at home and seek a
living in the diaspora. The children may
end up starving or prostituting
themselves to survive or feed their
siblings. Fear and anxiety of too early
a responsibility is never far away,
let alone the consequence of HIV through
abuse. A mother too would sell her
body to feed her children.
All this diabolical suffering is not
necessary!
This is not how a country and a people should have to live.
This is not how
a country should be governed. The Zanu PF government shows no
concern for
the suffering of the people but are obsessed with self
aggrandisement, and
cementing itself in power, regardless of the plight of
the people it feeds
off.
We in the MDC believe first and foremost that
each and every Zimbabwean has
a right to life. It is an inalienable and
fundamental right to health.
Zimbabwe is a signatory to the 1978 Alma Ater
declaration of health for all,
yet Zanu PF merely pays lip service to the
declaration. The MDC is committed
to health for all and will honour the Alma
Ater declaration.
We will declare HIV/AIDS a national disaster.
We
will allocate the right and necessary funding for the prevention
and
treatment of HIV/AIDS enlarging the ARV therapy program to all to make
a
difference.
We will allow and call on existing and sidelined NGO's and
international
support to assist us urgently.
We will uplift the conditions
of the medical staff at all levels and work
tirelessly at reversing the brain
drain.
We will utilise all the available resources, human, intellectual
and
spiritual resources.
We will support and treat all those suffering,
the ill and the care givers,
the grieving, the broken and the mentally
exhausted.
We will change the very fabric of our society by dealing with the
need to
work towards poverty and hunger alleviation using all we have at
our
disposal. There is only one thing to do and that is to make the
right
choice. We have chosen to lift up the eyes of the oppressed to find
hope. My
prayer is that the young teacher will live to see that
day.
Stella Allberry
MDC - Secretary for Health
From The Church Times (UK), 30 November
By Pat Ashworth
The disgraced former Bishop of
Harare, the Rt Revd Nolbert Kunonga,
reportedly resorted to forgery last
week, in an attempt to block the
appointment of Dr Sebastian Bakare as the
diocese's interim Bishop, and to
blacken his name. Bishop Kunonga, whose
attempts to withdraw Harare from the
Province of Central Africa resulted in
his own dismissal from the province
(News, 2 November), told the Harare
Herald, a Mugabe-friendly newspaper,
that Dr Bakare, retired Bishop of
Manicaland, had turned down the
appointment because the money was not good
enough. Under the headline,
"Bakare Spurns Church's Offer", the Herald
reported that Dr Bakare had
demanded a $1500 salary. "Even a mansion in
Harare's posh Borrowdale suburb
also failed to sway Bishop Bakare into
taking up the post." The "plot to
oust Bishop Kunonga" had been "thrown into
a quandary", the paper stated. It
went on to quote "correspondence" between
Bishop Albert Chama, Dean of the
Province of Central Africa, and the
"Anglican Church Harare Diocese",
allegedly sent to all the clergy and laity
in the diocese. And it reported
that the Church "has since appointed Zambian
Bishop L. Mwenda as a
replacement, further plunging the Church into
administrative chaos". Bishop
Chama was quoted as saying in the letter that,
when Bishop Bakare had
"turned down the appointment", he had been "without
an option but to appoint
another. . . I hereby appoint Bishop L. Mwenda to
be caretaker of the
Diocese of Harare. . . My fellow Christians, may you
support him."
The Bishop of Botswana, the Rt Revd Trevor Mwamba, said
that the letter,
supposedly signed by Bishop Chama, was a forgery. "It is a
propaganda
warfare. Kunonga realises his time is finished, and is using the
system
because he is part of the system. It is lies upon lies - it is
amazing how
they have spun it out," he said. "We wait to see what he will
dream up
next." Dr Bakare dismissed the report as a "complete fabrication
and
blatantly mischievous and misleading". The Anglican Diocese of Harare
(CPCA), as it will in future be known, issued a press statement on the
breakaway by Bishop Kunonga and his supporters. "Bishop Bakare, not Dr
Kunonga, is now recognised throughout the province and the Anglican
Communion worldwide as leader of the diocese. Dr Kunonga and those clergy
who support him are responsible for causing a schism in the Church." Dr
Bakare's supporters say that the clerics who back Bishop Kunonga are
principally unqualified men, whom he pulled off the streets and ordained, to
replace the priests in the diocese who opposed him. It was these clerics who
prevented Bishop Chama's proclamation of Dr Bakare's appointment from being
read, as instructed, in all churches on 7 November. The diocese set the
record straight at a meeting of churchwardens and priests presided over by
Dr Bakare and at which the Chancellor of the Province, Eric Matinenga, and
the Chancellor of the diocese, Bob Stumbles, were present. Mr Stumbles, who
has tenaciously pursued the bringing to trial of Bishop Kunonga on 37
serious charges, is also Deputy Chancellor of the province.
A
statement from the meeting confirmed: "Dr Kunonga and all the clergy
supporting his campaign to destabilise the diocese and the Provincial
Church, and bring into disrepute the Church as a whole, are no longer
recognised by the province as licensed to exercise any ecclesiastical
functions, including officiating at holy communion, baptisms, confirmations,
marriages, and funerals." It instructed all parishioners to assume total
control of their funds and property, and instructed existing clergy to
declare as soon as possible where their affiliation lay. Bishop Kunonga
travelled last week to Kampala, reportedly in at attempt to ally his
breakaway group with the Church of Uganda.
IPSnews
By
Miriam Mannak
VICTORIA FALLS, Northern Zimbabwe, Dec 1 (IPS) - To tackle
droughts in
Southern Africa, one needs to think out of the box instead of
pointing
fingers at obvious causes such as lack of rainfall, experts said
this week
during the third Zambezi Basinwide Stakeholders Forum, held in
Victoria
Falls, Zimbabwe.
The Nov. 27-29 gathering, an annual event,
was organised by the 'Zambezi
Action Plan Project 6, Phase 2' (ZACPRO 6.2),
an initiative of the Southern
African Development Community that aims to
facilitate social and economic
development in the Zambezi River Basin
through improving management of its
resources.
The Zambezi Basin --
one of the largest river basins in Africa -- is shared
by eight countries
(Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania,
Zambia and
Zimbabwe) and is home to over 40 million people.
One of the discussions
at the meeting focused on the management of water
related calamities such as
drought -- a common phenomenon in Africa's
southern region, often blamed on
scarce rainfall.
However, the reality is more complex, Dominic Mazvimavi
of the Okavango
Research Centre in Botswana told IPS: "Insufficient rainfall
is one of the
causes of droughts, but there is more to the
story."
Bad management, poor decision making and lack of investment are
also
important causes of water scarcity and droughts, he added.
"The
Zambezi River has enough water to provide each person living in the
basin
with 200 litres per day. So why is it that some communities do not
have
enough water? It is not expensive to pump water from the
Zambezi."
According to Mazvimavi, droughts in general are avoidable -- if
the root
causes of such events are treated, rather than the symptoms and
consequences.
Government's role is central in this regard. "We need
to be more proactive
instead of being reactive. Government participation is
crucial.
Unfortunately, many authorities tend to treat water as a
non-priority. The
development of water infrastructure has, for instance,
fallen behind in many
regions in Southern Africa."
Mazvimavi said it
was now necessary for governments in the Zambezi Basin and
elsewhere in
Africa to put more funds aside to tackle hydrological problems.
"More
money is needed for water infrastructure development, human resources,
research, and systems to collect hydrological and climatological and
scientific data. And, this information needs to be transformed into
understandable knowledge, which should be made available and accessible to
people at grass roots level."
Water organisations, non-governmental
groups and other stakeholders should
also increase efforts at making
authorities more aware of water related
challenges. "We need to come
together and make the issue of water attractive
to the authorities," noted
Mazvimavi. "We have to make them realise why they
should invest in
water."
It is incorrect to state that the frequency of droughts in Africa
is on the
increase, Mazvimavi said.
"This is often claimed so by the
media, but it is nonsense. Scientific
evidence rejects this. According to
the statistics, the number of droughts
in Southern Africa has not increased
over the past decades. It may be that
the structure of rain seasons is
changing, but this does not mean that
specific regions are becoming
dryer."
Sometimes what it termed drought may in fact be
aridity.
"There is a lot of confusion about the difference between
drought and
aridity. Not every dry period is a drought, and it is a
misconception that
areas are drought prone," Mazvimavi
explained.
"Dry periods occur in every region across the continent, even
in Victoria
Falls, which is not famous for being dry. This is simply due to
the fact
that climate in this part of the world is incredibly variable. The
1970s
were a wet period, while the 1980s were dry. The key is how these dry
periods are handled."
Mazvimavi said crop failure was often blamed on
lack of rainfall, but that
other factors -- poor land use, high population
density -- should also be
taken into account.
"If land is used
extensively in a non-sustainable way, land erosion occurs
and soil fertility
decreases. This augments the chance of failed crops. This
situation worsens
when a lot of people extensively use the same water
source."
Furthermore, "When crops are not suitable for a certain
region, they have a
chance of failing. To prevent this, people need to adapt
their crops to the
region and not the other way around." (END/2007)
Saturday December 1, 2007
The
Guardian
Gordon Brown is right not to attend the Lisbon summit if it
means sitting
down with Robert Mugabe (World briefing, November 30). When
change comes in
Zimbabwe, as it will, the leaders of the EU and African
Union who have
failed to join him in his principled stand will be shamed by
their
gullibility. After every tyranny and genocide in Africa we vow "never
again"
and yet next week a dictator prepared to starve a nation to maintain
his
grip on power will be welcomed at an EU summit. His venom will be
directed
at the UK and yet it is humanitarian aid provided by our taxpayers
that is
keeping millions of Zimbabweans alive. The crisis in Zimbabwe is not
about a
spat with the UK government; it is about the denial of fundamental
human
rights and democratic freedoms to the people of
Zimbabwe.
Kate Hoey MP, chair, parliamentary all-party Zimbabwe
group
New York Times
The
secret of Malawi's success: heavy subsidies for fertilizer, farmers say.
The
World Bank had pressed for their elimination.
By CELIA W.
DUGGER
Published: December 2, 2007
LILONGWE, Malawi - Malawi hovered for
years at the brink of famine. After a
disastrous corn harvest in 2005,
almost five million of its 13 million
people needed emergency food
aid.
But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl
to the
world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more
corn to
the United Nation's World Food Program than any other country in
southern
Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to
Zimbabwe.
In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has
fallen sharply.
In October, the United Nations Children's Fund sent three
tons of powdered
milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished
children, to Uganda
instead. "We will not be able to use it!" Juan
Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef's deputy
representative in Malawi, said
jubilantly.
Farmers explain Malawi's extraordinary turnaround - one with
broad
implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa - with one
word:
fertilizer.
Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some
rich nations Malawi depends
on for aid have periodically pressed this small,
landlocked country to
adhere to free market policies and cut back or
eliminate fertilizer
subsidies, even as the United States and Europe
extensively subsidized their
own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the
worst in a decade, Bingu wa
Mutharika, Malawi's newly elected president,
decided to follow what the West
practiced, not what it
preached.
Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the
way to
reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical
reception
from the United States and Britain. Malawi's soil, like that
across
sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of
its
farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices.
"As
long as I'm president, I don't want to be going to other capitals
begging
for food," Mr. Mutharika declared. Patrick Kabambe, the senior civil
servant
in the Agriculture Ministry, said the president told his advisers,
"Our
people are poor because they lack the resources to use the soil and the
water we have."
The country's successful use of subsidies is
contributing to a broader
reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in
alleviating poverty in
Africa and the pivotal importance of public
investments in the basics of a
farm economy: fertilizer, improved seed,
farmer education, credit and
agricultural research.
Malawi, an
overwhelmingly rural nation about the size of Pennsylvania, is an
extreme
example of what happens when those things are missing. As its
population has
grown and inherited landholdings have shrunk, impoverished
farmers have
planted every inch of ground. Desperate to feed their families,
they could
not afford to let their land lie fallow or to fertilizer it. Over
time,
their depleted plots yielded less food and the farmers fell deeper
into
poverty.
Malawi's leaders have long favored fertilizer subsidies, but
they
reluctantly acceded to donor prescriptions, often shaped by foreign-aid
fashions in Washington, that featured a faith in private markets and an
antipathy to government intervention.
In the 1980s and again in the
1990s, the World Bank pushed Malawi to
eliminate fertilizer subsidies
entirely. Its theory both times was that
Malawi's farmers should shift to
growing cash crops for export and use the
foreign exchange earnings to
import food, according to Jane Harrigan, an
economist at the University of
London.
In a withering evaluation of the World Bank's record on African
agriculture,
the bank's own internal watchdog concluded in October not only
that the
removal of subsidies had led to exorbitant fertilizer prices in
African
countries, but that the bank itself had often failed to recognize
that
improving Africa's declining soil quality was essential to lifting food
production.
"The donors took away the role of the government and the
disasters mounted,"
said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who
lobbied Britain and
the World Bank on behalf of Malawi's fertilizer program
and who has
championed the idea that wealthy countries should invest in
fertilizer and
seed for Africa's farmers.
Here in Malawi, deep
fertilizer subsidies and lesser ones for seed, abetted
by good rains, helped
farmers produce record-breaking corn harvests in 2006
and 2007, according to
government crop estimates. Corn production leapt from
1.2 billion metric
tons in 2005, to 2.7 billion in 2006 and 3.4 billion in
2007, the government
reported.
"The rest of the world is fed because of the use of good seed
and inorganic
fertilizer, full stop," said Stephen Carr, who has lived in
Malawi since
1989, when he retired as the World Bank's principal
agriculturalist in
sub-Saharan Africa. "This technology has not been used in
most of Africa.
The only way you can help farmers gain access to it is to
give it away free
or subsidize it heavily."
"The government has taken
the bull by the horns and done what farmers
wanted," he said. Some
economists have questioned whether Malawi's 2007
bumper harvest should be
credited to good rains or subsidies, but an
independent evaluation, financed
by the United States and Britain, found
that the subsidy program accounted
for a large share of this year's increase
in corn production.
The
harvest also helped the poor by lowering food prices and increasing
wages
for farm workers. Researchers at Imperial College London and Michigan
State
University concluded in their preliminary report that a well-run
subsidy
program in a sensibly managed economy "has the potential to drive
growth
forward out of the poverty trap in which many Malawians and the
Malawian
economy are currently caught."
Farmers interviewed recently in Malawi's
southern and central regions said
fertilizer had greatly improved their
ability to fill their bellies with
nsima, the thick, cornmeal porridge that
is Malawi's staff of life.
In the hamlet of Mthungu, Enelesi Chakhaza, an
elderly widow whose husband
died of hunger five years ago, boasted that she
got two ox-cart-loads of
corn this year from her small plot instead of half
a cart.
Last year, roughly half the country's farming families received
coupons that
entitled them to buy two 110-pound bags of fertilizer, enough
to nourish an
acre of land, for around $15 - about a third the market price.
The
government also gave them coupons for enough seed to plant less than
half an
acre.
Malawians are still haunted by the hungry season of
2001-02. That season, an
already shrunken program to give poor farmers
enough fertilizer and seed to
plant a meager quarter acre of land had been
reduced again. Regional
flooding further lowered the harvest. Corn prices
surged. And under the
government then in power, the country's entire grain
reserve was sold as a
result of mismanagement and corruption.
Mrs.
Chakhaza watched her husband starve to death that season. His strength
ebbed
away as they tried to subsist on pumpkin leaves. He was one of many
who
succumbed that year, said K. B. Kakunga, the local Agriculture Ministry
official. He recalled mothers and children begging for food at his
door.
"I had a little something, but I could not afford to help each and
every
one," he said. "It was very pathetic, very pathetic
indeed."
But Mr. Kakunga brightened as he talked about the impact of the
subsidies,
which he said had more than doubled corn production in his
jurisdiction
since 2005.
"It's quite marvelous!" he
exclaimed.
Malawi's determination to heavily subsidize fertilizer and the
payoff in
increased production are beginning to change the attitudes of
donors, say
economists who have studied Malawi's
experience.
Britain's Department for International Development
contributed $8 million to
the subsidy program last year. Bernabé Sánchez, an
economist with the agency
in Malawi, estimated the extra corn produced
because of the $74 million
subsidy was worth $120 million to $140
million.
"It was really a good economic investment," he said.
The
United States, which has shipped $147 million worth of American food to
Malawi as emergency relief since 2002, but only $53 million to help Malawi
grow its own food, has not provided any financial support for the subsidy
program, except for helping pay for the evaluation of it. Over the years,
the United States Agency for International Development has focused on
promoting the role of the private sector in delivering fertilizer and seed,
and saw subsidies as undermining that effort.
But Alan Eastham, the
American ambassador to Malawi, said in a recent
interview that the subsidy
program had worked "pretty well," though it
displaced some commercial
fertilizer sales.
"The plain fact is that Malawi got lucky last year," he
said. "They got
fertilizer out while it was needed. The lucky part was that
they got the
rains."
And the World Bank now sometimes supports the
temporary use of subsidies
aimed at the poor and carried out in a way that
fosters private markets.
Here in Malawi, bank officials say they
generally support Malawi's policy,
though they criticize the government for
not having a strategy to eventually
end the subsidies, question whether its
2007 corn production estimates are
inflated and say there is still a lot of
room for improvement in how the
subsidy is carried out.
"The issue
is, let's do a better job of it," said David Rohrbach, a senior
agricultural
economist at the bank.
Though the donors are sometimes ambivalent,
Malawi's farmers have embraced
the subsidies. And the government moved this
year to give its people a more
direct hand in their distribution.
The
village of Chembe gathered one recent morning under the spreading arms
of a
kachere tree to decide who most needed fertilizer coupons as the
planting
season loomed. They only had enough for 19 of the village's 53
families.
"Ladies and gentlemen, should we start with the elderly or
the orphans?"
Samuel Dama, a representative of the Chembe clan,
asked.
Men led the assembly, but women sitting on the ground at their
feet called
out almost all the names of the neediest, gesturing to families
rearing
children orphaned by AIDS or caring for toothless
elders.
There were more poor families than there were coupons, so
grumbling began
among those who knew they would have to watch over the
coming year as their
neighbors' fertilized corn fields turned deep
green.
Sensing the rising resentment, the village chief, Zaudeni Mapila,
rose.
Barefoot and dressed in dusty jeans and a royal blue jacket, he acted
out a
silly pantomime of husbands stuffing their pants with corn to sell on
the
sly for money to get drunk at the beer hall. The women howled with
laughter.
The tension fled.
He closed with a reminder he hoped would
dampen any jealousy.
"I don't want anyone to complain," he said. "It's
not me who chose. It's
you."
The women sang back to him in a chorus
of acknowledgment, then dispersed to
their homes and fields.