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Wednesday, 30 December 2009
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http://www.zimdiaspora.com/
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
12:20
Zimbabwe's Attorney General Johannes Tomana has defended the fresh
white
farm invasions that have since scalated during the festive
season.
In response, the president of the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers
Union (CFU)
Deon Theron, said the escalating invasions could be a signal for
the return
of violence that blighted Zimbabwe's elections last
year.
"This is a new wave of violence," said Theron.
Theron said,
last week two white farmers came under siege from the ZANU-PF
sponsored
invaders in Manicaland. He said President Mugabe's trusted ally,
Didymus
Mutasa was believed to be behind one of the invasions.
Mr Tomana said the
invaders were right to repossess their land despite an
international
condemnation of Zimbabwe's controversial land reform
programme.
"Those farmers are actually guilty of breaking the law and
they must leave.
All the land in the country belongs to the government and
as such no
individual has the right to disobey a government directive to
vacate such.
"There is nobody invading any farms, actually it's the white
farms that are
guilty of failing to vacate state property. They must have
vacated those
farms a long while ago." he said.
Mr Tomana added:
"What is happening right now is that many of those white
farmers were
ordered to leave long back, but decided to fight the government
in courts.
Now they must leave because the land belongs to Zimbabweans who
want to
utilize it to develop the country."
President Mugabe also told reporters
onTuesday that there was nothing amiss
in the fresh farm invasions as the
people in question had offer letters
dating back to 2004.
What irks
many Zimbabweans today is that farm invasions continue unabated
despite the
unity government in place.
Commenting on the same issue, MDC-T
spokesperson, Nelson Chamisa said his
party condemned the continued
harassment of white farmers.
"Our party intelligence has it on record
that the fresh farm invasions are
being perpetrated by Zanu pf leaders
mainly in Manicaland province and the
country as a whole. We condemn in
strongest terms the fresh farm invasions.
We condemn the greedy being
displayed by Zanu pf. That is one of the areas
where we are failing to agree
with Zanu-PF," said Chamisa.
http://www1.voanews.com
The 2008
power-sharing agreement between ZANU-PF and the Movement for
Democratic
Change calls land reform irreversible, but the MDC has
unsuccessfully called
for an end to farm seizures
Ntungamili Nkomo | Washington 29 December
2009
The Commercial Farmers' Union, which represents Zimbabwe's
remaining few
white farmers, said Tuesday that it is disappointed with the
unity
government which it says has not halted seizures of white-owned
properties.
The CFU said three farmers have been violently driven out of
their farms in
the past two weeks in Mashonaland East and Manicaland
provinces.
Of the estimated 300 white comercial farmers remaining in
Zimbabwe, 152 are
now under imminent threat of losing their properties to
politicians
belonging to President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, the union
says.
The 2008 Global Political Agreement for power-sharing between
ZANU-PF and
the two Movement for Democratic Change formations says land
reform is
irreversible, but the MDC has called for an end farm seizures
which it says
further damage the agricultural sector and discourage
investment.
The unity agreement also says former colonial power Britain
should take full
responsibility for compensating white commercial farmers
whose properties
have been expropriated since the land invasions began in
2000.
Commercial Farmers Union President Deon Theron told VOA Studio 7
reporter
Ntungamili Nkomo that his union wants the government to halt
disruptions of
farms and related lawlessness.
Theron said government
inaction will only worsen food shortages,
particularly of maize meal, the
national staple. The government said this
year's crop totaled 1.2 million
tonnes - but the country needs some 1.8
million annually.
VOA was
unable to reach Lands Resettlement Minister Hebert Murerwa.
http://www.zimdiaspora.com
Tuesday, 29 December 2009 21:23
Six
armed robbers yesterday stormed Stanbic Bank's Chegutu branch, shot and
injured an assistant branch manager before fleeing with US$266
000.
The gang also escaped with 150 000 South African rands and 34 690
Botswana
pula. They used two getaway cars, an Isuzu KB twin-cab truck and a
Peugeot
406, both metallic silver in colour.
The robbers also
reportedly looted cash, cellphones and other valuables from
clients who were
in the banking hall.
Zimbabwean police in Chegutu confirmed the robbery,
adding that
investigations were in progress.
"An assistant branch
manager has been shot. He has been taken to hospital
and police are on the
ground in Chegutu investigating the matter.
"No arrests have been made so
far. There were six members of the gang and
four of them went into the
banking hall while the other two remained in the
getaway cars," a senior
police officer said.
According to witnesses, the six men parked their
cars near the bank at
around 9:15 am when clients were queueing to deposit
and withdraw cash.
One of the robbers reportedly went straight to the
front and caused
commotion after some customers complained that he was
jumping the queue.
In the ensuing commotion, three more gang members, who
were armed, entered
the banking hall and ordered everyone to lie down. Other
customers who came
in later were also ordered to lie down and relieved of
their cash and
valuables.
The robbers reportedly force-marched the
assistant branch manager to the
back office before ordering him to open the
safe.
The assistant manager allegedly took his time to open the safe as
he tried
to switch on a key code, prompting one of the robbers to fire two
shots at
his legs, seriously injuring him.
The manager later opened
the safe and the gang looted US$266 000, 150 000
rand and 36 000
pula.
Vendors who sell their wares outside the bank said the robbery
happened so
quickly that people around barely saw what happened.
A
mobile phone airtime vendor, Tichafadzwa Bvute, who was coming out of Food
Chain Supermarket near the bank, said he was terrified when he heard screams
from the bank and people bolting out of the banking hall in
confusion.
He said the robbers, who were carrying cardboard boxes and
bags of cash,
jumped into their getaway cars that had their doors open and
engines
running.
"One of the robbers was covering his face with a
woollen hat and they were
speaking in a language I did not understand," he
said.
Another vendor, Mr Blessing Mazambara, said it was frightening to
see men
carrying boxes and bags of cash, rushing to their vehicles
brandishing guns.
"These people had pistols and nobody could stop them.
However, someone took
pictures of the robbers getting away in their cars
with a mobile phone
camera and I am sure it has been handed over to the
police," he said.
This is the first bank robbery in which shots have been
fired since the
introduction of the multiple-currency system earlier this
year.
In February, four armed men hit the Kingdom Bank branch at
Karigamombe and
and got away with US$120 000, R48 930 , £155, 1800 pula and
10 Australian
dollars, without firing a single shot.
The robbery was
captured on closed circuit television, which helped in
bringing the gang to
book.
In July this year, a six-member gang raided a Barclays Bank branch
in
Bulawayo and got away with US$50 000, R126 000 and £500.
Earlier
this month, three armed men stormed CBZ Chitungwiza branch and stole
phones
from bank staff, but failed to get cash.
http://www.radiovop.com
Harare, December 30, 2009 - The cash-strapped
Government of Zimbabwe will
construct a new Parliament in the Kopje area of
Harare, Theresa Makone, the
new Minister of Public Works and Housing
Construction has revealed.
Makone is from the MDC-T camp which is
part of the inclusive government of
President Robert Mugabe.
Makone said
the Chinese government had agreed to help fund the project
expected to cost
about US$10 million according to conservative estimates.
Zimbabwe's old
Parliament has become too small for its MPs and Senators.
The country
introduced the Senate just before the March 2008 harmonised
elections. More
MPs are expected after the next election expected once the
constitutional
making process has been finalised.
"We will be building a new Parliament
for Zimbabwe in the Kopje area of
Harare," Makone said.
The Parliament
project had been regularly shelved several times because
government did not
have any cash and architects haggled over the many plans.
Zimbabwe's
Parliament was built in the 1960s under the colonial regime of
the
Federation. It has never been improved or updated.
Makone said the new
Parliament building would have state-of-the-art
facilities found in other
Parliaments internationally.
http://news.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2009-12-30
21:30:42
HARARE, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese embassy in Harare on
Wednesday
issued a statement saying that the Chinese government has nothing
to do with
the business operations of a company named China International
Fund Ltd in
Zimbabwe.
"The Chinese embassy certifies that China
International Fund Ltd is an
international company registered in Hong Kong.
Its investment in Zimbabwe is
completely its own corporate behavior. The
Chinese government has nothing to
do with its business operations. The
embassy doesn't have any knowledge of
the specifics," the embassy said in
the statement.
The Chinese government is always devoted to the trade
and economic
co-operation with Zimbabwe in all sectors, the embassy said.
"We firmly
believe, with the joint efforts of both Chinese and Zimbabwean
governments
and people, the economic co-operation between the two countries
is
determined to achieve further development," it added.
Recently, China International Fund Ltd with its affiliated
China-Sonangol
and Sino-Zimbabwe Development Company has reportedly signed a
serious of
co-operation agreements involving eight-billion-U.S. dollar
investment deals
in mining, energy and transport sectors.
The Chinese embassy received
some enquiries from Zimbabwe government
officials and businesspeople
requiring the embassy to confirm the agreements
and activities of the
company, the embassy said.
http://www.businessday.co.za
SISEKO NJOBENI
Published: 2009/12/30
07:11:53 AM
ENGEN Petroleum’s bid for BP and Shell assets in Zimbabwe
could be heading
for a snag as a Zimbabwean company seeks to block the deal
over an
outstanding 20m claim from BP, the Zimbabwe-based Financial Gazette
has
reported.
This is the latest hurdle that Engen must overcome in
order to realise its
desire to get into the Zimbabwean market.
Engen
and Kenyan oil group KenolKobil’s efforts to buy refined petroleum
marketing
assets in Zimbabwe gas were met with opposition as various groups
in
Zimbabwe have alleged that the transaction was in violation of the
country’s
Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act. Engen has denied the
allegation.
In the latest development , the Financial Gazette
reported that Strausse
Logistics, a Zimbabwean indigenous refined petroleum
products marketing
company, was standing in the way of the deal. The company
has filed a 20m
claim against BP. The newspaper said the liabilities related
to fuel supply
deals, negotiated by BP Zimbabwe’s senior management with
indigenous
importers after BP International decided to stop importing fuel
into
Zimbabwe.
Engen spokeswoman Tania Landsberg said yesterday that
the company was aware
of the latest developments.
njobenis@bdfm.co.za
Source: Xinhua News Agency Date: 29 Dec 2009 Veterinary Field Services director Unesu Ushewokunze-Obatolu told Xinhua
results of the suspected case did not confirm anthrax. "We are ruling it out," she said. The suspected case had raised fears that the deadly disease could be
spreading following its outbreak in two central districts of the country last
week where it killed one person and 25 cattle. The disease killed 18 cattle in Seke, some 40 km South-East of Harare while
the person who succumbed to the disease was from Selous, 60 km North-West of the
capital. Seven cattle from one farm in the district also died of anthrax. Department deputy director Chenjerai Njagu said Juru Growth Point (a
medium-sized rural service centre) was in one of the few districts which were
left out during vaccination carried out at the beginning of the year. The growth
point is in Goromonzi district. "We left out Goromonzi and Seke districts because of shortage of vaccines,"
said Njagu. "Now these are the areas giving us problems because we had not vaccinated
them at the beginning of the year." He said the disease was dangerous as one case can kill several people who
consume meat from an infected animal, adding that the department would soon move
into the affected areas to vaccinate cattle. The department vaccinated 1, 100 cattle in Seke over the Christmas holiday
but Njagu said the turn out was very low. "The turn out was low and we are going to repeat vaccination after the
holiday," he said. Anthrax is a soil-borne disease which is endemic in Zimbabwe. It is normally
recorded during the rainy season when sprouting grass brings out the bacteria
from soil. The department has since ordered butcheries and abattoirs in the affected
areas to stop selling beef to the public to prevent transmission of the disease
to humans.
HARARE, Dec 29, 2009
(Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Zimbabwe's veterinary officials on Tuesday ruled out a
suspected anthrax case from a rural growth point about 50 kilometers East of
Harare.
http://www1.voanews.com
Industry and
Commerce Minister Welshman Ncube accused media in the West of
mounting a
campaign to pressure Nestle to stop doing business with a
Mugabe-controlled
dairy firm
Patience Rusere | Washington 29 December
2009
Zimbabwean Industry and Commerce Minister Welshman Ncube has
blasted the
international media for what he charges was a pressure campaign
against
Swiss-based multinational Nestlé over its now-ended supplier ties
with a
dairy company owned by the family of President Robert
Mugabe.
Ncube was quoted by the state-controlled Herald newspaper as
charging that
South African, British and American media outlets campaigned
to pressure
Nestlé to terminate its business relationship with Gushungo
Dairy Estate, a
company controlled by Grace Mugabe, the president's
wife.
Nestle suspended operations at its Harare processing plant last
week
charging that its managers and staff had been pressured to take milk
from
Gushungo. Two ministers of Mr. Mugabe's former ruling ZANU-PF party
were
said to have intimidated managers while leaving off a tanker truck full
of
milk.
Industry Minister Ncube organized talks among the parties
concerned and came
up with a proposal to resolve the matter with an
arrangement under which the
Mugabe-controlled dairy would supply milk to a
cooperative organization from
which Nestlé would then purchase raw
milk.
In effect, such an arrangement would keep the Mugabe firm at arm's
length -
though critics have already said such a deal would be a
travesty.
A Nestlé spokeswoman said Monday that the corporation is
examining the
conditions in Zimbabwe and had not decided whether to resume
operations at
its plant in the Zimbabwean capital, which employs some 200
people.
Supa Mandiwandzira, president of the Affirmative Action Group,
which has
taken the side of the Gushungo firm in the matter, insisted in an
interview
with VOA Studio 7 reporter Patience Rusere that the Mugabes like
any other
Zimbabweans have a right to do business in the
country.
Others have argued however that Nestlé should be free to choose
its business
partners, as it has an international reputation to defend
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
December 30, 2009
Carl Mortished, World business briefing
The
past ten years have belonged to China, an emerging superpower in both
economic dollars and political capital. It would be foolish to suggest that
China will not continue to make bigger waves, but a more interesting
question is which region might, over the next few years, catch the baton of
surprise performer, a laggard that suddenly astonishes everyone and begins
to pick up its heels and sprint.
An outside bet is sub-Saharan
Africa, a hotch-potch of states ranging from
the corrupt and conflict-torn,
such as Zimbabwe, to stable improvers, such
as Ghana, and fast developers,
such as Angola. Standard Chartered, the bank,
reckons that the region's
economic growth rate will recover from a weak 1
per cent in 2009 to 4.7 per
cent next year and 5.7 per cent in 2011.
If the region does thrive, it
would not be too unfair to say that growth
will be in spite of graft, tribal
conflict and bad government. Africa will
motor because the world's
continuing hunger for commodities - oil and metals
and, increasingly, food -
requires that it rid itself of the status of
global loser. The promoter,
driver and instigator of that transformation
will be China.
Africa
has known many resource booms. China's interest in sucking oil from
Angola
and scooping copper out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is
little
different from that of antecedent European mining and oil companies.
This
time, however, the relationship between "imperial" power and host
country is
more straightforward. China is swapping infrastructure - roads,
railroads
and ports - for oil and minerals. Whether the deals represent good
or bad
money depends on your view of oil and mineral prices. What no one can
deny
is that Africa's transport networks are improving and that represents a
huge
economic opportunity. A global financial backwater, sub-Saharan Africa
mostly escaped the financial crisis. Its banks were simply too disconnected
from the world to be contaminated by toxic debt - although, in the case of
Nigerian banks, they were able to make their own poison. However, the region
suffered almost as much from the withdrawal of funds by nervous investors,
and the sudden collapse in world trade hurt Africa's mineral
exports.
As a result, African stock markets are relatively cheap, despite
continued
economic growth throughout the recession and strong commodity
prices.
According to Stanlib, the fund management unit of Standard Bank, of
South
Africa, Chinese trade with Africa suffered only a marginal slowdown
while
its exports to the West collapsed. In terms of investment, China put
more
money into Africa in 2009 than in any previous year.
Not
surprisingly, Stanlib would like to see other foreign investors follow
China's example but, even for those with nerves of steel, it is not easy
investing in Africa. Few African countries have liquid stock markets. South
Africa is under a cloud, its mining sector suffering from the weak US
dollar, energy shortages and concerns about black empowerment
regulations.
The investment focus is farther north, where a geopolitical
struggle is
under way between the United States and China over access to oil
reserves.
Scouring the world for alternatives to Opec and Russia, the Bush
Administration identified the Gulf of Guinea as a potential oil lifeline.
Washington would like a third of America's oil imports to come from West
Africa by 2015. In its usual blundering way, it established Africa Command,
a military centre, based in Stuttgart, to oversee threats to America's
African interests and it has tried without much success to involve West
African states in security pacts.
China has been more successful.
Despite his African connection, President
Obama has largely ignored the
continent while Hu Jintao, the Chinese
President, recently completed an
eight-nation African tour. China is
offering enormous investments and loan
packages in return for access to
minerals. A $9 billion
infrastructure-for-mineral-rights deal by China in
Congo was held up after
the International Monetary fund worried that the
African state would be
overburdened with debt. In November, Wen Jiabao, the
Chinese Premier,
dangled the carrot of $10 billion in loans for Africa.
The next
competition is for food. The sub-Saharan region has huge water
resources,
cheap labour and plentiful land. Lonrho, of Britain, has acquired
25,000
hectares in Angola for food production. Asian and Middle Eastern
companies
are scouring the region.
You can hardly blame African states for
preferring railroads-for-oil swaps
to Western "aid". If you have oil to
sell, why not take payment in a road?
Who cares if it is built by Chinese
engineers, probably in half the time it
would take French or Americans with
their meddling environmental-impact
assessors. It is better than Western
"aid", with its strings and conditions.
And if the Chinese leave, the road
remains.
carl.mortished@thetimes.co.uk
http://www.theatlantic.com
Once
the most outspoken critic of Zimbabwe's government, David Coltart is
now on
the inside
by Joshua Hammer
In 1981, in Cape Town, David Coltart was a gangly
university student from
newly independent Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe had
just become prime
minister. Coltart believed that Mugabe's government was
sincere about
promoting racial reconciliation in Zimbabwe, and he tried to
recruit the
country's ministers to come to Cape Town to address white
Zimbabwean
students there. After being hassled for his efforts by South
Africa's
apartheid regime, he received a personal telegram from Mugabe. "He
wrote, 'I've
heard about the work you are doing, and I want to encourage
you,'" Coltart
told me. "'There is a place for all of you [in Zimbabwe], and
you have
nothing to fear but fear itself.'"
In recent years, however,
Coltart could not have imagined himself standing
in the same room with
Mugabe without fear. A still boyish-looking
52-year-old lawyer, Coltart
spent the past two decades as one of the most
outspoken opponents of the
Zimbabwean ruler. As Mugabe morphed from
independence hero into despot,
Coltart helped found the Movement for
Democratic Change, the country's main
opposition group; became one of a
handful of whites in the parliament; and
defended human-rights activists and
other enemies of the regime. For five
years, I've met with him repeatedly on
my clandestine visits to Zimbabwe, as
I've reported on the country's spiral
into repression, violence, and
economic ruin.
But in February of this year, after a tumultuous
concatenation of political
events that eventually saw his party join a unity
government with Mugabe,
Coltart found himself serving as minister of
education. At weekly cabinet
meetings, he now sits two seats away from
Emmerson Mnangagwa, the minister
of defense and a key member of Mugabe's
Joint Operations Command, which
orchestrated the torture and killing of
countless members of Coltart's party
last year. "It's a bizarre situation,"
Coltart told me over dinner at the
York Lodge, a leafy retreat in a suburb
of Harare, the Zimbabwean capital.
At an awkward swearing-in ceremony at the
State House, recalled Coltart, "we
were called one by one into [Mugabe's]
office, and it was a bit like naughty
schoolboys going to see the
headmaster." When his turn came, he said,
"Mugabe launched into a monologue
about how important schooling was, and he
made this strange comment, saying,
'You will appreciate that we've got some
problems in
education.'"
That was an understatement. By February 2009, when Coltart
took over,
Zimbabwe's education system had collapsed: 20,000 teachers had
abandoned
their posts and left the country because they were being paid in
worthless
currency, and nearly all of the country's 7,000 schools were
shuttered. One
of the first moves of the new unity government was to outlaw
the Zimbabwean
dollar and convert to a U.S.-dollar economy. Coltart set
salaries at $155 a
month, and he received a flood of applications from
teachers wanting their
old jobs back. (Even so, many teachers say they're
unsatisfied with the new
salaries, and one teachers union went on strike in
early September to
protest their "abject poverty and perpetual debt.") But
Coltart has learned
that fixing the system is not so easy when Mugabe-or
Mugabe's surrogates-are
looking over his shoulder. The Education Ministry's
permanent secretary, a
Mugabe loyalist who "views all the teachers as MDC
sympathists," Coltart
says, has thrown up bureaucratic roadblocks such as
mandatory police checks;
as a result, only a few hundred teachers have been
rehired. "It's not a
pleasant process, and if I wasn't a determined,
stubborn type of fellow, it
would be harrowing," he told me.
Coltart
would like to start introducing education reforms-adding
human-rights
courses to the curriculum and getting Zimbabwean schools to
address such
controversial issues as the military's massacre of thousands of
civilians in
Matabeleland in southern Zimbabwe in 1983. But Coltart knows
moving too fast
could bring everything crashing down. "It's a flawed
agreement, and anyone
who thinks that overnight it would yield dramatic
changes is simply being
unrealistic," he told me.
As logs crackled in the fireplace, and our
waiter brought in a dessert of
pears in white-wine sauce on fine English
china, Coltart told me that he was
heading to a fishing lodge in Zimbabwe's
eastern highlands, for a weekend
retreat where he would spend three days
breaking bread with members of
Mugabe's inner circle. "You meet and get to
know these people, and it
becomes less tense," he says. "But you're still
very wary." Not without
reason, it seems: at his swearing-in, Coltart
reminded Mugabe of that
long-ago telegram sent to him in Cape Town in 1981.
"I told him, 'You said
we should all come back and we should have nothing to
fear. Well, I'm back.'"
Mugabe just laughed.
Joshua Hammer is a
writer based in Berlin.
http://news.yahoo.com/
by Katherine
Haddon Katherine Haddon - Tue Dec 29, 7:19 pm ET
LONDON (AFP) -
Margaret Thatcher banned her envoy to what was then Rhodesia
from meeting
Robert Mugabe in 1979, refusing to talk "with terrorists until
they become
prime ministers," files released Wednesday showed.
At the time, Britain
was debating whether to recognise the government of
Bishop Abel Muzorewa,
the first black-led administration in what
subsequently became Zimbabwe,
previously secret documents revealed.
Muzorewa was elected in 1979 after
years of white minority rule led by Ian
Smith, against which Mugabe's party
and others waged a bloody 15-year
guerilla war.
But the election came
after an internal settlement brokered by Smith and he
remained in Muzorewa's
government, so its result was bitterly opposed by
other African nations and
elsewhere.
As Thatcher became Britain's first female prime minister in
May 1979,
officials in Britain, the former colonial power, were considering
a quick
recognition of the Muzorewa government and lifting
sanctions.
"The people of Rhodesia have the right to decide themselves
who shall be
their govt. and whether they approve the internal settlement,"
Thatcher
wrote on a letter she received from Australian premier Malcolm
Fraser that
month.
Former colonial power Britain soon sent an envoy,
Lord Harlech, to
Zimbabwe-Rhodesia to hold negotiations with African
countries like Nigeria
and Tanzania about the future, as well as developing
contacts with Muzorewa.
But Thatcher was forcefully opposed to him
meeting Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo,
leaders of the Patriotic Front
rebels.
In a letter to Downing Street on May 25, a senior Foreign Office
official
wrote that then foreign secretary Lord Peter Carrington "considers
that the
emissary should offer to meet the co-leaders of the Patriotic
Front."
Thatcher wrote on top, in a heavily underlined note: "No --
please do not
meet leaders of the 'Patriotic Front'. I have never done
business with
terrorists until they become Prime Ministers!
MT".
Meanwhile, African leaders remained convinced that Britain was about
to
recognise Muzorewa's government.
Then Nigerian vice-president
Shehu Musa Yar'Adua even suggested that his
country could leave the
Commonwealth over the affair during a conversation
with Britain's ambassador
to Lagos, according to a diplomatic telegram on
May 29.
The Muzorewa
government did not survive, in part due to lack of
international
recognition.
Britain called a conference on Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in London
later that year
and an agreement was secured, after which the country
briefly returned to
British rule before Mugabe was elected in 1980 and the
country was renamed
Zimbabwe.
Mugabe has held office ever since,
facing widespread international
condemnation in recent years amid
unemployment, food shortages and human
rights violations.
In February
2009, he formed a unity government with Morgan Tsvangirai of the
opposition
Movement for Democratic Change following disputed elections in
2008.
The 1979 documents were released by the National Archives in
London under
the 30-year rule. This allows classified government files to be
made public
after three decades.
One of Mugabe’s biggest fears must be that someone who knows
where all the bodies are hidden will break ranks and spill the
beans.
Imagine if someone did do that. They would have to do it at a
reasonable age as it would take years to get through the long list of victims
and burial places.
One thing that concerns me deeply, having spent so many years
living in Zimbabwe and knowing the depth of feeling that surrounds death in
Zimbabwe and the need for the deceased to be buried correctly and with dignity,
it actually shocks me that Mugabe should wantonly spirit away (excuse the
expression) dead bodies without any care for the family, their needs, or the
respect that the deceased require.
I should know, as I was a serving police officer in
Matabeleland during the Gukurahundi and it was a discovery of discarded bodies
that led to my departure from the ZRP.
From my book, “Without Honour”:
“The young teenager who had been showing us the way had
disappeared, and his place was taken by a young adult, nowhere near as excited,
his face screwed up in concern, his entreaties for us to follow more
urgent.
Not more than a kilometre further up a very unused track we
broke through some tree lines and immediately we could smell it…
Rotten meat. Badly rotten meat. Putrid, disgusting, horrible,
rotten meat…
As a youngster I was renowned for having a very soft stomach
and if I smelt something that turned my stomach, I puked. Great fun! But my time
in the police, and pulling smashed up bodies out of motor vehicles, or taking
down suicide hangings, or bodies that had floated in a river or dam for a few
days, had hardened me to the vile smells that life and death
brought.
But this was overpowering.
A few metres on, I was shown a track breaking off right and
heading downhill - at quite a slope. Carefully, I stepped down a few metres,
ever aware that the smell was now palpable, a real thing, not something blown in
and away by the wind.
What I was looking down was either the ventilation shaft of
an old mine, or the main shaft of an even older mine. Just a hole in the ground,
maybe two metres in diameter - and the smell obviously lived down
there.
Stepping up to the edge with great care - I didn’t want to
fall in there, did I? - I peered down into what I thought would just be
blackness - and received a not so pleasant surprise. I could see what looked
like tiny bodies!
A hand, a head and what looked like a man’s body without a
head… disgusting.
Now I was struggling to keep myself from throwing up. Quickly
I back-tracked a few paces and waved the other officers away.
“No! You don’t want to see what’s down there! It’s horrible!”
I managed to croak. As I have said before, the blacks in Zimbabwe are rather
wary of death and they believed me, probably convinced by the loss of blood in
my face, and the accompanying smell of death, moving away back up the steep path
to the level track.”
That was in late 1984 - some twenty-five years ago. And
nothing happened because no one would listen to me. The powers that be just made
my life in uniform unbearable and then applied even more pressure until I had
little option but to resign.
And that callous killing style continues.
“The remains of a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T)
party activist suspected to have been murdered by ZANU PF militia in 2007 have
been found in a mountain, police confirmed on Tuesday.
Manicaland provincial police spokesperson, Inspector Makomeke
said the bones of Paul Zimunda, who died at the age of 33, were discovered on
Monday by a hunter in Unze Mountain, in Zipeya Village, under Chief
Nyashanu.
Zimunda had his metal identification card on
him.
His whereabouts remained a mystery after he was abducted by a
gang of the notorious militia who were violently drumming up support for ageing
President Robert Mugabe while stifling any voices of dissent.”
And Mugabe goes into 2010 with no signs of him or his senior
loyalists ever being brought to book.
Welcome to the real Zimbabwe - the one that Mugabe would
prefer you don’t know about.
Robb WJ Ellis
The Bearded Man
http://mandebvhu.instablogs.com/entry/the-slaughter-continues/
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Wednesday, 30 December 2009
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History is often so cruel to the history-makers 
