Monsters and Critics
Dec 29, 2007, 11:59 GMT
Harare - A judge in Zimbabwe has
accused police of frustrating efforts to
get to the bottom of a case
involving an illegal foreign currency dealer and
a former central bank
advisor that has shocked the nation.
Dorothy Mutekede, 24, was arrested a
week ago in possession of 10 billion
Zimbabwean dollars' worth of brand-new
banknotes at a time when thousands of
desperate Zimbabweans queued outside
banks in search of scarce cash.
She claimed she got the cash by selling
4,900 US dollars to a prominent
businessman and former central bank advisor,
Jonathan Kadzura. He denies the
claim, saying she only got in touch with him
when she was arrested because
the two were having an affair.
When
Mutekede appeared before Harare Provincial Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe
on
Friday, it emerged that police and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)
officials
had failed to note down the serial numbers of the banknotes
confiscated from
her.
The money was subsequently deposited with the RBZ, and put back into
circulation instead of being kept for police evidence.
'Both the RBZ
and the police are defeating the course of justice,' Guvamombe
was quoted as
saying in Saturday's edition of the state- controlled Herald
newspaper.
'You have handicapped us and we do not know whether that
was deliberate or a
mistake and I am left baffled,' he said.
A police
detective told the court on Friday that the confiscated money had
been
deposited in a cash detention account by mistake. 'I now see the
loopholes
in the system and they should be rectified,' Alison Nyamupaguma of
the
Central Investigations Department was quoted as saying by the
Herald.
Guvamombe implied that police were shielding powerful people
behind the
current cash shortages. He said that a young woman like Mutekede
could only
have got the money directly from the Reserve Bank.
'Why
are you not keen to investigate the big fish as opposed to this
youthful
lady?' he asked investigators on Friday.
'You are not interested in
getting the barons. If you are after the cash
barons why bring 'runners'
like this 24-year-old lady?' he said. Mutekede is
still in police custody.
She is due to be sentenced on Monday.
Last week central bank governor
Gideon Gono accused senior government and
business officials of being behind
the cash crisis. He has threatened to
name them before a parliamentary
committee.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Monsters and Critics
Dec
29, 2007, 8:38 GMT
Harare - Six more people have drowned in flooded
rivers in Zimbabwe,
bringing the death toll from record heavy rains this
month to 27, reports
said Saturday.
Four of the dead were employees
of the state-run ZESA electricity company
who were travelling in a company
lorry that was swept away as the driver
tried to cross the flooded Tiriri
River in Chivi, southern Zimbabwe.
The workers had gone to Chivi to
repair power lines damaged by the storms.
The names of the dead have not
been released.
In a separate incident, two children drowned when they
were swimming in a
flooded river near the mining area of Shurugwi also in
the south of the
country, said the state-controlled Herald
newspaper.
Heavy rains have been falling countrywide since the beginning
of the month,
flooding rivers and sweeping away villages in the remote north
of the
country. Zimbabwe's meteorological department said Friday that
December 2007
was the wettest on record.
The department has records
of rainfall for more than 100 years, according to
the Herald.
Most
areas have received double the amount of rainfall they generally
receive for
the month.
At least 600 families have lost their homes in remote
Muzarabani district,
where relief workers are struggling to reach stranded
villages.
The rains have also damaged homes in the capital Harare,
especially in the
low-income suburb of Epworth, said the Herald. The paper
said several homes
had fallen apart under the pressure of the
rains.
'Following three days of raining, the walls of our house collapsed
while
others developed wide cracks,' resident Rosemary Ngwerume
said.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Mail and Guardian
Harare, Zimbabwe
29 December 2007
12:19
Zimbabweans formed queues at banks on Saturday to beat
a
December 31 deadline to hand in a currency series phased out by the
central
bank.
Reserve Bank chief Gideon Gono declared
that the Z$200 000 note
would become worthless as he introduced three new
banknotes in a bid to
tackle a shortage of the local currency in the
country.
Depositors wishing to withdraw scarce cash and those
handing in
the expiring bills formed parallel queues in banks in the capital
as the
central bank ordered banks to extend business hours on Saturday and
Sunday.
"I am just hoping today [Saturday] I will be able to
get cash,"
said George Chapfunga, waiting in a queue in central Harare,
saying he had
been coming to the bank since Wednesday.
Some depositors were confused as some banks were still
dispensing the bank
notes due to expire on Monday while some shops were
refusing to accept the
Z$200 000 bearer cheque.
Bearer cheques, essentially money
printed on ordinary paper,
were introduced in 2003 as a stop-gap measure to
ease currency shortages
caused by skyrocketing inflation. They are valid for
a year.
Banks were ordered to open this weekend to dispense
cash and
accept the expiring banknotes.
"On Sunday
December 30 2007, no other banking services will be
provided by banks and
building societies except acceptance of deposits from
both individuals and
corporates," the Reserve Bank said in a notice on
Saturday.
The bank has put a ceiling on deposits, and
individuals or
organisations wishing to deposit amounts exceeding the limits
have to
explain the source of the money.
Gono blames the
cash shortages on "cash barons and baronesses"
he said were circulating the
cash outside the banking system.
Zimbabwe is in the eighth
year of economic recession
characterised by record inflation and high
unemployment which has reduced at
least 80% of the population to living
below the poverty threshold. -- AFP
The Guardian Weekly, UK
Friday December 28th 2007
As the
director of information and publicity for Zimbabwe's Movement for
Democratic
Change (MDC), Luke Tamborinyoka was one of the 30 opposition
activists sent
to prison by Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF government on charges of
terrorism.
Tamborinyoka is also the former news editor of The Daily News, an
independent newspaper that was banned by Mugabe in 2003. He spent 71 days in
a remand prison in Zimbabwe before being acquitted because of a lack of
evidence
Friday December 28th 2007
Inscribed on
the door of cell C6 at Harare Remand Prison is a simple message
in the local
Shona language: Zvichapera boyz dzangu, which means: “This
suffering will
come to an end”.
I walked out of the prison gates at 7.30pm on June 7,
2007, after three
months as an inmate. I asked my wife Susan to drive away
quickly, so that I
would never again to look at the place where I had seen
my friends succumb
to disease and malnutrition.
The D-class section,
reserved for "dangerous" suspects, was my home for 71
dark days. It was a
place where one had to adjust to tough conditions such
as leg irons, bad
food, the company of hardened criminals and scowling
prison
officers.
Harare Remand Prison was an odd place for innocent prisoners
like me whose
persecution arose from a relationship to Zimbabwe’s main
opposition party,
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The prison
was a potpourri of the genuinely guilty and those whom Robert
Mugabe wanted
to intimidate. It was a waiting room of extreme fortunes where
two
cell-mates could part to go to contrasting destinations: one for home
and
the other for the guillotine.
My ordeal started on March 28, 2007. On
that day over 500 armed policemen
descended on Harvest House, the national
headquarters of the MDC. For over
three hours an assortment of visibly drunk
policemen wrenched open doors and
seized party equipment, from documents to
computers. They took mobile
phones, prised open cabinet drawers and stuffed
money, passports and other
valuables into their pockets. Everyone was
ordered to lie down while some of
them battered our backs with
batons.
Mugabe's men had come ostensibly to recover “weapons of war” that
were
supposedly hidden at the MDC headquarters. They combed drawers,
ceilings and
any other crevices within reach; they sniffed toilet cisterns
and air vents
in search of the elusive MDC “weapons”.
Their
desperation was understandable under the circumstances. On the
following day
Mugabe was due to leave for Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to
explain why he had
been cracking down on the opposition. His police officers
had recently shot
dead an MDC activist, Gift Tandare.
Mugabe’s police force had also beaten
MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai and
some other senior opposition party
officials. Several MDC members had been
abducted, beaten and dumped in
far-away places. Mugabe may have needed a
plausible explanation for these
events at the summit of the South African
Development Community in Dar es
Salaam. The story of an arms cache at
Harvest House might have helped to
justify a violent crackdown on the
opposition.
The police were
obviously disappointed when they failed to find even a box
of matches at
Harvest House. They ordered everyone in the building –
including tenants and
their clients – to get into the police vehicles. About
100 people were taken
to the infamous Room 93 of the Law and Order section
at Harare Central
Police Station, where a series of assaults began.
One by one we were
called into an office where wild allegations were made
against us: we were
part of the MDC thugs that had “petrol-bombed police
stations”; we worked
for a puppet opposition party; we wanted to hand the
country back to the
white colonialists.
On the following day the number of suspects was
trimmed down to 23 and
eventually to seven. No charge had yet been levelled
against us. For three
nights we were tortured with a baseball bat and
batons. We were denied
access to food, legal and medical assistance. For
three days the guards
continued to ask us about something they called the
“MDC's democratic
resistance campaign”.
On March 31 we were told that
we could go home because the police had
detained us for more than 48 hours
without charging us. It was then that an
official whom I suspect to be a
member of the state security Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO) called
me to a private room. He accused me
of being responsible for the “Roll of
Shame”, a column in a local newspaper,
in which government personalities
were exposed for committing human rights
abuses.
He referred to what
he called “anti-government speeches” that I made five
years ago when I was
secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists,
and accused me of
co-ordinating former Daily News reporters so that they
wrote for
anti-government publications.
For my alleged crimes, the officer said, I
was going to be imprisoned. I and
some others were being charged with
carrying out a spate of petrol-bombings
in Harare and other cities. We were
being accused of “resisting the
government and seeking to remove the
government through acts of sabotage,
banditry and terrorism”.
We were
taken to court under heavy security. This drama, of course, was
meant for
the media. The state-controlled Herald newspaper gleefully
reported the
arrest of the MDC terror-bombers, including that of the
“journalist-cum-activist” Luke Tamborinyoka.
There was no magistrate
when we arrived. We were almost collapsing from
hunger and the injuries
sustained after three days of torture. Someone must
have summoned ambulances
to the magistrates court, but the police ordered
that we should not receive
medical attention. When one of my colleagues,
Shame Wakatama, collapsed the
police allowed the ambulance crew to drive us
to a clinic.
The court
later convened at the clinic, where the magistrate remanded us
under prison
guard until the following Monday. We were put on intravenous
tubes by
hospital staff.
At around midnight, however, a group of gun-toting agents
of the CIO –
backed by prison officers – burst into the clinic, violently
plucked out our
intravenous tubes and frog-marched us to a nearby van via
the emergency
exit. The sight of assault rifles in the van was frightening,
but driving in
the early morning hours with armed CIO agents to an unknown
destination was
terrifying. The eight of us were dumped at Harare Remand
Prison.
Those of my colleagues who had come out worst during the torture
were taken
to the ill-equipped prison hospital to await the attention of a
government
doctor. The doctor was to arrive at the prison two months later
and
interview 30 of us in about 20 minutes.
Life in prison was an
ordeal on its own. Remand prison is supposed to be
temporary but some
inmates had been there for years, seemingly abandoned,
both by the state and
by relatives who no longer came to visit.
Food was acquired at a premium.
It was a one meal per day affair served from
an aluminum bin, and was only
obtained after a stampede. Adventurous inmates
like Reason, one of the most
notorious prisoners in D-class, were among the
few who could afford the
taste of meat. He was notorious for what became
known as the “rat barbecue”.
For the rest of us it was one meal of sadza and
cabbage a day, eaten an hour
before we were ordered to bed at around 3pm.
The cells were overcrowded,
with between 45 and 70 prisoners sharing a
single cell and spending the
night fighting the cold and the lice.
The leader of the MDC, Morgan
Tsvangirai, left his own mark on the prison.
On the day he came to visit us
both inmates and prison officers began
shouting “President!” as they crowded
to catch a glimpse of Mugabe’s direct
opponent. Afterwards, Tsvangirai was
banned from visiting the prison again.
The chants of “president” directed at
him in a government complex must have
made a lot of people
uncomfortable.
By mid-April there were 30 MDC activists in prison, some
shot and abducted
from their homes while others were arrested in the streets
of Harare to face
the same charges I did: terrorism.
The state’s case
against us began to crumble after it emerged that
fictitious witnesses had
been called in to incriminate us. On June 7 the
government conceded that it
had no evidence and we were eventually removed
from remand.
But as I
walked out of the prison complex another reality struck. I realised
that the
whole of Zimbabwe is just another big prison. Harare Remand was a
microcosm
of what the country had become. There is no food on the shelves,
and people
can no longer afford to visit each other because of prohibitive
transport
costs.
I feel that my unwarranted arrest has shown the panic of the
ruling regime.
And Mugabe has every reason to panic. When he came to power
after the
crucial election of 1980 he was 56 years old. Opposition leader
Morgan
Tsvangirai will be 56 in March next year – when elections are
scheduled to
be held. It’s a trivial coincidence, but maybe one that can
still scare an
old tyrant.
• Luke Tamborinyoka was talking to Njabulo
Ncube.
Dawn
December 29, 2007
By Craig Timberg
JOHANNESBURG:
Zimbabwe’s fractured opposition party is preparing to join
forces behind a
single slate of candidates headed by long-time leader Morgan
Tsvangirai in
elections scheduled for March, according to party officials.
The decision
sets up a rematch between Tsvangirai and President Robert
Mugabe, who has
ruled Zimbabwe since the end of white supremacist rule in
1980. Mugabe beat
Tsvangirai in 2002 in an election that international
observers said was
marred by violence and profoundly skewed in favour of the
ruling party.
Mugabe’s party also defeated Tsvangirai’s in the 2005
parliamentary
elections.
Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change, split
that same
year, and he has struggled ever since to regain his role as the
unquestioned
leader of opposition forces. A reunion between the party’s two
factions
would improve its chances of mounting a serious challenge to
Mugabe.
“There’s an understanding, a realisation that every vote must
count, and
there is strength in unity,” said Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for
Tsvangirai’s
faction of the party. “The election in 2008 is crucial for this
country.”
The party’s other faction has not formally embraced
Tsvangirai’s candidacy
but has accepted that his wing of the party will
select a presidential
nominee as part of a unified slate, said spokesman
Gabriel Chaibva. He
expressed no objection to Tsvangirai being that
nominee.
“We have had absolutely no problem with even reunification of
the party,”
Chaibva said.Tsvangirai, a former trade unionist, helped form
the Movement
for Democratic Change in 1999 and has long been its most
visible leader. He
was charged with treason in 2002 – but later exonerated –
and was beaten
severely by Mugabe’s police force in March, along with dozens
of other party
activists.
Yet Tsvangirai also has faced persistent
doubts about his leadership style
and capacity to plot a strategy to remove
Mugabe despite massive political
unrest that has seen millions of
Zimbabweans flee the country, mostly to
South Africa.
Leaders of the
party’s other faction, led by former robotics professor
Arthur Mutambara,
have accused Tsvangirai of authoritarian tendencies,
echoing charges they
long have leveled against Mugabe.
Political analysts also have noted that
Tsvangirai has had difficulty
organizing meaningful mass protests against
Mugabe’s government as it has
grown steadily more repressive.
“I
don’t believe that Morgan Tsvangirai has the wherewithal to lead a
vibrant,
broad-based opposition,” said Trevor Ncube, owner of the Zimbabwe
Independent and the Standard, two of the nation’s few newspapers not under
government control. “He’s not a unifying factor.”
Zimbabwe’s long
decline began soon after the formation of the Movement for
Democratic
Change. Mugabe oversaw often-violent invasions of white-owned
commercial
farms beginning in 2000. Political freedom gradually has dwindled
since
then, with opposition meetings broken up by force and independent
newspapers
closed down.
Rampant hyperinflation has decimated a once-thriving
industrial and
agricultural economy and undermined a school system regarded
as among the
continent’s best. Many Zimbabweans spent this Christmas in
line, seeking to
swap old currency for new amid a mounting cash shortage.
Such basics as
sugar and cooking oil have disappeared from the shelves of
most stores.
South African President Thabo Mbeki has taken the lead
within the region in
seeking to resolve the crisis, deploying what he calls
“quiet diplomacy”.
Jacob Zuma, who toppled Mbeki as leader of South Africa’s
ruling party last
week, has said there will be no change of policy toward
Zimbabwe.
Leaders of both of Zimbabwe’s opposition party factions have
been meeting
regularly in Pretoria with Mugabe’s justice minister, Patrick
Chinamasa, at
the behest of Mbeki and other South African
leaders.
Those discussions recently deadlocked over several issues,
including the
membership of the electoral commission and international
observer missions
for the election.—Dawn/ The LAT-WP News Service (c) The
Washington Post
From The Cape Argus (SA), 29 December
Siyabonga Kalipa
An elderly pensioner who was returning to
Cape Town from Harare was
threatened with a night in an airport police cell
after trying to leave the
country with Z$50 million - less than R200 - in
his bag. Retired security
guard Roy Hunt, 76, said the customs official then
confiscated Z$40m. When
an outraged Hunt protested, he was told to move
along or face arrest for
currency smuggling. But later, while waiting to
board his aircraft, he
noticed people were buying goods from the duty-free
shop. He approached the
customs official's supervisor, retrieved his money,
and spent Z$30m on a
bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label whisky - which
retails here for about
R110. Hunt, who lives in Fish Hoek, had been visiting
an old friend in
Harare. Hunt said: "My friend has got nothing and so
whenever I visit him I
bring him food. Everywhere you go in Zimbabwe there
are queues. Even if you
want to go into a grocery store you have to queue
first. When I got to
Zimbabwe I went to the bank to change the US$700 I had
with me to Zim
dollars. They changed the money but there was no paperwork.
When I asked,
they told me they had no more receipts, and that's when I
started thinking
there was something wrong." When he was due to leave the
country he still
had Z$50m left. He was stopped at the X-ray machine because
his wad of cash
had been spotted in his bag. "The customs official asked me
how much money I
had in my bag and I told him it was Z$50m, so he took
Z$40m. When I
objected, I was told to move along or face arrest for currency
smuggling.
This I did because a spell in a Zimbabwe prison did not appeal to
me." When
he was sitting in the departure lounge, however, he noticed other
travellers
buying goods with Zim dollars. "I went to the security checkpoint
with this
knowledge and informed the supervisor, who asked the customs
official to
return my money.
Yahoo News
Sat Dec 29, 4:31
AM ET
HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has left for an
unnamed
eastern Asian country for his annual vacation, state media said
Saturday.
"President Mugabe and the First Lady left Harare for the Far
East," state
radio reported.
The state-owned Herald newspaper said:
"President Mugabe has taken his
annual leave, part of which he will spend in
the Far East."
Mugabe, who is under European Union and American travel
sanctions, has in
recent years vacationed in Malaysia.
Earlier,
however, Mugabe and his family took their yearly break in Europe
and would
normally make a stopover in London.
Relations between Mugabe and his
former western allies were strained after
Zimbabwe launched controversial
land reforms, seizing farmland from white
farmers to allocate to landless
blacks.
The fallout was exacerbated when the EU and the United States
imposed
sanctions on Mugabe and his ruling party elite following
presidential
elections in 2002 which the main opposition and western
observers charged
were rigged to hand Mugabe victory.
OUTSIDE LOOKING IN
Dear Friends.
As I’ve said before,
one advantage of being in the diaspora is that one is
able to take the wider
view of world events. It is easy to become so totally
immersed in the
complexities of Zimbabwean politics and the unfolding
tragedy inside our
country that one forgets we are just a small part of the
global picture and
that there are links and threads connecting Zimbabwe to
events happening
both in and outside Africa.
Yesterday’s assassination of the
Pakistani opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto
is a case in point. Ms Bhutto
had been in exile from her country for eight
years. She returned in October
this year to fight the forthcoming election
as her party’s candidate and
from the day she arrived back tension has been
mounting inside Pakistan.
With her assassination, violence has broken out in
several districts but
President Musharef has declared that elections will
still go ahead in
January. For Zimbabweans, watching how Musharef handles
the crisis reminds
us of the terrible consequences that may follow once
violence has been
unleashed. Ms Bhutto was killed by a solitary gunman who
then blew himself
up taking twenty other innocent civilians with him.
Whether or not the
Pakistani government was involved will probably never be
known but the
lesson for Zimbabwe as I see it is that, to their credit, the
opposition has
firmly eschewed violence as a means of solving the political
impasse. Even
the current chaos in the country has not as yet provoked the
long-suffering
Zimbabweans to take up weapons. Mugabe’s proud boast that he
came to power
through the barrel of the gun and that he has degrees in
violence is
something we see daily in the behaviour of the police, the army
and the
Youth militia but whatever their failings the opposition have not
fallen
into the trap of thinking that violence is the correct response.
Despite
my profound reservations about the talks going on under Thabo Mbeki’s
partial leadership and his blatant and obvious support for Robert Mugabe and
Zanu PF, I can appreciate the MDC’s continued participation in the talks.
The truth is that the talks are the only game in town; the alternative is
too ghastly to contemplate. I for one dread the day when I turn on the
television and see Zimbabweans killing each other and the country plunged
into a civil war. That may still happen but from what I’ve been reading
lately, it’s more likely to be internecine warfare among members of the
ruling party than any conflict with the opposition that will lead to a
national blood-letting.
However, it needs to be understood
that violence takes many forms. The
violence of Mugabe’s language is one
form, filled as it is with hatred and
intolerance. Deliberate withholding of
food aid is another and the
repression of freedom of expression and
association is another, the list is
endless. ‘The first condition of
non-violence ‘ said Gandhi, ‘ is justice
all round in every department of
life.’ It is that condition which is simply
not present in Zimbabwe under a
Zanu PF government. The long and bloody
struggle against the injustice of
the colonial regime has been replaced by
the injustice of a brutal
dictatorship. But a non-violent response does not
mean that the democratic
forces simply fold their hands and suffer under the
brutality. We need to
fight the oppressor by every means available to us,
using our natural
intelligence, our wit and above all our long experience of
the enemy’s lies
and deceit which should prepare us for all eventualities.
And that means not
allowing ourselves to be taken for a ride by Zanu PF’s
dirty tricks, by
their tinkering with unjust laws in order to fool the world
that these are
genuine moves towards a more just society. Nothing less than
justice for all
Zimbabwe’s citizens will suffice, written into a new
constitution with legal
safeguards ensuring the protection of all.
If the Talks, due to resume on
January 2nd 2008 do not produce that clear
result then the MDC would, in my
opinion, be fully justified in pulling out
and demanding a new and impartial
facilitator of the SADCC mediated
negotiations. Thabo Mbeki has shown time
and time again that he is not the
man for the job.
Yours in the
struggle. PH
http://www.cathybuckle.com
Friday
28th december 2007
Dear Family and Friends.
The Litany Bird is still away
from the nest; let's hope she's having a good
break.
I can remember three
or four years back sitting with her round the kitchen
table discussing the
various cut-off points beyond which life would be
unbearable in Zimbabwe.
For the Litany Bird it was medical care and
education for her son; once
those had gone, she said, life would be
insupportable. For me, it was not
being able to get my own money out of the
bank; that would be the point at
which life would simply be untenable I
thought. At the time Argentina - or
was it Mexico - was in the headlines
with inflation over 1000% and pictures
of desperate people trying to get
their money out of banks before the whole
economy crashed.
Inexorably over the last few weeks the pace of
Zimbabwe's collapse has
accelerated; the decision by the Governor of the
Reserve Bank, Gideon Gono,
to introduce the new bearer cheques within days
of Christmas has brought
about the nightmare scenario of thousands of
Zimbabweans unable to get at
their own money. It's not the first time this
has happened; this is the
so-called Operation Sunrise Two designed, says
Gono, to relieve the shortage
of bank notes. The new notes were issued on
December 19, just six days
before Christmas. The timing of Operation Sunrise
could not have been more
insensitive with thousands of people trying to get
to their rural homes and
buy a few little extras for the 'festive' season.
Was it an act of callous
indifference on the government's part or just the
usual short-sighted
inefficiency, or was there some more sinister plan at
work, designed to
cause panic and mayhem among the populace?
In the
Litany Bird's hometown and in towns up and down the country,
desperate
people have been standing in queues for days on end, some even
with their
cooking pots while they wait in the endless lines. In an
unprecedented move
the Governor ordered the banks to remain open on
Christmas day and Boxing
Day but his order was disregarded and the only
resource for desperate
Zimbabweans was the ATM. There are strict limits on
the amount one can
withdraw and with the issue of the new notes, prices went
rocketing up
again; even the state mouthpiece, the Herald, was forced to
admit that a
bottle of Mazoe orange now costs 9 million Zim dollars in a
state owned
supermarket in Harare! The banks are saying that they were just
not sent
enough of the new bank notes to satisfy the demand so what was the
point of
their opening?
Christmas for Zimbabweans was simply a non-event and with
their usual
arrogant disregard for the well-being of the people the Reserve
Bank
Governor and all the rest of the Zanu PF fat cats disappeared to spend
their
Christmas breaks far from the public eye. One thing you can be sure of
is
that none of the 'chefs' will be sharing the misery of the masses they
claim
to care so much about.
What next for a nation whose citizens
have no cash and no food? Will it be
more of the same in 2008 or will the
people of Zimbabwe finally tell this
utterly rotten government that 'Enough
is enough'. I hear the ZBC is playing
a jingle every fifteen minutes
promising ' the mother of all harvests' next
year. I'm sure the cruel irony
of that cheap propaganda is not lost on the
flood victims in Muzarabani and
the millions of near-starving people
throughout the country.
Ndini
shamwari yenyu. PH
zimbabwetoday.co.uk
Friday, 28 December 2007
The People's Congress gave us a wobbly vision of unity in government
- but
already the cracks are widening again
I make no apologies for
returning once more to the internicine struggle
within Zanu-PF, because the
persistent split within the governing party
grows ever more bitter, and the
tipping point, when the differences spill
out into open warfare, could come
at any time. At this moment of renewal,
let us hope it comes
soon.
Latest top party man to step out of line with President Mugabe is
ageing
vice-president Joseph Msika, who last weekend addressed a rally at
Stanely
Square in Makokoba, Bulawayo. The occasion was part of the
nationwide Unity
Day celebrations - an ironic title considering what Msika
had to say.
Perhaps as a top man in the government that has led our
country to squalid
chaos and poverty, Msika's conscience is bothering him.
Perhaps, with his
retirement promised for next year, he doesn't care what he
says any more.
But a close examination of his comments only emphasises how
much some of our
senior leaders resent the twisted and devious rule of the
President.
Msika chose to begin his attack on Mugabe by referring to
events at the
Congress when, as reported in these columns, the President
appeared angrily
to turn his back on his previous ally, the maverick war
veterans leader
Jabulani Sibanda.
Mugabe had been using Sibanda as a
front man and organiser in the campaign
for his re-adoption as President,
but when Sibanda attempted to speak at the
Congress Mugabe was one of the
first to prevent him from taking the
microphone, to the Vet leader's
considerable embarrassment.
But Msika now said that this was another
example of Mugabe's double
standards. "I know very well that Mugtabe always
holds meetings with
Jabulani at night," he told the crowds on Saturday. "We
have told him that
this boy is not disciplined, but he doesn't want to
listen. Instead he
squanders party funds buying him new cars and
accommodating him in hotels,
all at your expense."
Then Msika widened
his attack, claiming that he and others in the top
Zanu-PF ranks had
attemped to reign Mugabe in, and stop him destroying the
country. "Most of
the things we agreed upon in 1987 have been violated. The
essence of unity
has been sadly ignored."
Msika's speech then sadly meandered off into a
discussion of exactly which
tribe he is, and why, and frankly I stopped
listening. Our country will
never step forward into the broad sunlit uplands
of democracy while old men
like Msika worry about whether they are Shangani,
Shona, Ndebele, Nguni, or
indeed "Swina".
As the old year dies, let
us remember instead that we are all Zimbabweans.
We're in this together. A
happy and a liberated new year to you all.
UNICEF
By Tsitsi
Singizi
Here is one in a series of stories on successful initiatives to
promote
healthy lives, provide quality education, combat HIV and AIDS, and
protect
children against abuse, exploitation and violence – all part of a
special
edition of ‘Progress for Children’, UNICEF’s flagship publication on
advances towards the Millennium Development Goals. The report was launched
on 10 December.
ALASKA, Zimbabwe, 28 December 2007 – A bright voice
and the sound of drums
cut through the low hum of the old mill. Suddenly,
the sleepy mining town of
Alaska, a few hours north of Zimbabwe’s capital,
transforms into a carnival
of song and dance.
Dancing in pairs, a
dozen young men and women respond in chorus to the solo
singer, their feet
raising a cloud of dust as they form a ring around the
drummers. It’s a
vigorous dance, traditionally performed to mobilize troops
for war. These
days the dancers have a new enemy: AIDS.
“AIDS is here!” the singers
call. “It is in my home, neighbourhood and
community. Let us fight it with
everything we have – our bodies, our values
and our minds.” The message is
clear and the audience is riveted.
Young people at the
forefront
The performers are members of Young People We Care (YPWC), a
UNICEF-supported programme that is an integral part of Zimbabwe’s national
behaviour-change strategy, which seeks to reduce young people’s
vulnerability to HIV infection.
Offering a range of interventions,
the group encourages responsible
behaviour and HIV prevention among young
people through peer education and
life-skills training. In turn, the youths
provide care and support to the
households hardest hit by AIDS in their
communities.
“When YPWC started, young people in our community were
becoming desperate,”
says Agnela Mahomva, a feisty and energetic peer
educator. The mine had
temporarily shut down, she explains, and young men
were turning to alcohol
and having many sexual partners.
“Girls were
engaging in transactional sex just to make ends meet,” Agnela
recalls.
“However, YPWC has greatly helped young people discuss and open up
to the
dangers of risky behaviour, HIV and AIDS. As a result, young people
are more
careful.”
Changing behaviours, safer lives
And community-led
interventions such as YPWC are not limited to Alaska.
Against the backdrop
of a shrinking economy, rising unemployment, an orphan
crisis and a sharply
increasing cost of living, Zimbabwean youths are
defying bitter odds.
Through anti-AIDS clubs and girls’ empowerment
movements, they are providing
their peers with access to critical
information about preventing the spread
of HIV.
Interventions such as these are reversing the tide of the
pandemic in
Zimbabwe. A 2007 United Nations report found that Zimbabwe
presents evidence
of a strong decline in national HIV prevalence. The
decrease appears to be
partly associated with behaviour changes, including
an increase in condom
use among women with non-regular partners and a
reduction in sexual activity
with multiple partners.
Youth volunteer
Trust Ngoni Samatiya, 21, says that being involved with a
group like YPWC
has made him more aware of the dangers of the disease.
“Their messages are
real and practical,” he says. “At least they talk about
condoms, and when I
am with them I do not feel embarrassed discussing these
issues.”
“In
a community where culture and tradition dominate, open discussion of sex
and
sexuality is often confined to matrimony,” says UNICEF’s head of HIV
programming in Zimbabwe, Nicolette Moodie. “But as Trust points out,
positive peer pressure is yielding results, as more young people begin to
open up about sex and HIV.”
The Herald (Harare) Published
by the government of Zimbabwe
29 December 2007
Posted to the web 29
December 2007
Harare
THERE was chaos at the Anglican St Andrew's
parish church in Glen View 8 on
Thursday evening when rival groups
fought.
Two camps have emerged within the Anglican Church, one supporting
Bishop
Sebastian Bakare's leadership while the other is behind Bishop
Nolbert
Kunonga.
Bishop Bakare was appointed head of the Harare
Diocese to replace Bishop
Kunonga who led the church in withdrawing from the
Province of Central
Africa.
Police had to intervene to quell the
disturbances which left some church
members injured.
When The Herald
visited the parish at Stand number 6955, adjacent to
Tichagarika Shopping
Centre, police had just left the scene after restoring
peace.
However, parishioners were still grappling to come to terms
with what they
had experienced while residents living in the vicinity of the
church
expressed shock that worshippers could do such a thing.
In
interviews, residents said a parish committee believed to be aligned to
Bishop Bakare was having a meeting at the church when all hell broke
loose.
"Two vehicles, one ferrying three priests in their robes and the
other one a
group suddenly arrived. We heard some noise and we rushed to the
scene to
investigate," said one witness.
"We found them beating
parishioners who included women."
Some parishioners found wandering about
the church in disbelief of what they
had just witnessed, confirmed the
assaults.
"We held a meeting on Tuesday at the church and agreed that we
wanted the
Old Diocese. We do not want Kunonga. We want our Bishop Bakare
because he
was the one appointed to temporarily lead the diocese," said one
woman.
The woman said Thursday's meeting was a follow up to Tuesday's
meeting.
"At Thursday's meeting we intended to summon our resident priest
Martin
Zifoti, who we know belongs to the Bishop Kunonga group, to discuss
the
matter. We wanted him to hand over to us car keys, house keys and other
important things belonging to this parish," said the woman.
Midway
through the meeting, three Anglican priests from other parishes in
Harare
allegedly arrived together with some people in two vehicles.
The woman
identified all the pastors.
"They were three priests dressed in their
robes and three thugs. They
started assaulting us starting with a senior
member of the church Mr
Nyamupingidza. I used my umbrella to fight back,"
said another parishioner.
"The situation only normalised after armed
police rushed here."
The member in charge of Glen View Police Station
Chief Inspector Allen
Nyazire confirmed the incident.
He said one
person was injured in the skirmishes.
"The committee of the parish was
holding a meeting. We were made to
understand that they passed a vote of no
confidence on Kunonga. One person
was injured and we gave him a medical
report. The suspect stays in
Kuwadzana," Chief Insp Nyazire said.
He
urged the church to solve its differences amicably instead of resorting
to
violence and warned that police would not hesitate to arrest the culprits