The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe - may peace, truth and justice prevail. |
Statistics released
by human rights monitors this week show that, while
random violence in
Zimbabwe is down, arrests and torture of political
opponents has increased
dramatically.
According to medical officials and human rights workers, 14
people needed
hospital treatment during the weekend parliamentary bi-election
to fill a
vacant seat in the town of Kadoma, a two-hour drive southwest of
Harare.
The victims told human rights monitors they had been tortured by
an
organized group of ruling Zanu-PF supporters. The ruling party ended
up
winning the off-year election by a wide margin, taking the seat away
from
the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Human rights
workers compiling statistics from hospital records and
complaints say the
pattern of violence has changed since the presidential
elections in March of
2002.
The Human Rights Forum reported that, compared with the same period
last
year, the number of random torture cases dropped by half to 500
through
November.
But, a leading human rights activist, who asked not
to be named, said
Wednesday torture of targeted victims for political reasons
has increased
dramatically.
"These days victims are usually political
leaders within their communities,"
he said. Most of them have been tortured
frequently." He told VOA that last
year before the presidential election,
torture was often random. Now, he
said, the authorities appear to have lists
of people who they will arrest in
specifically targeted areas.
Press Release No. 03/210
December 3, 2003
International Monetary
Fund
700 19th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20431 USA
IMF
Initiates Compulsory Withdrawal Procedures for Zimbabwe
The Executive
Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today reviewed
Zimbabwe's
overdue financial obligations to the Fund and decided to initiate
the
procedure on the compulsory withdrawal of Zimbabwe from the IMF, after
having
determined that Zimbabwe had not actively cooperated with the IMF.
The IMF
regrets that the authorities have not adopted comprehensive and
consistent
policies needed to address Zimbabwe's serious economic problems.
Economic and
social conditions in Zimbabwe have continued to deteriorate
during 2003. GDP
has declined by about 40 percent during 1999-2003, and
inflation rose to 526
percent in October 2003, fueled by monetary expansion
and a depreciating
parallel market exchange rate. Poverty and unemployment
rates have continued
to rise, Zimbabweans suffer from one of the highest
HIV/AIDS infection rates
in the world, and the population faces shortages of
basic products, including
fuel and medicines. The adverse effects of the
land reform and a drought left
two-thirds of the population in need of food
aid in 2002/03, and no
significant improvement is expected in the remainder
of 2003/04. The World
Food Program has appealed for food aid for Zimbabwe,
but pledges up to this
point meet less than half of the estimated
requirements through April
2004.
Executive Directors urged the authorities to strengthen cooperation
with the
Fund and to adopt a comprehensive adjustment program that would
arrest and
reverse Zimbabwe's continuing economic decline. The IMF staff
stands ready
to continue assisting the authorities in this endeavor. The
Executive Board
will review Zimbabwe's overdue financial obligations to the
IMF again within
six months or at the time of the Executive's Board
consideration of the 2004
Article IV consultation with Zimbabwe, whichever is
earlier.
Background
Zimbabwe has been in continuous arrears to the IMF
since February 2001. As
of end-November 2003, Zimbabwe's arrears to the IMF
amounted to SDR 187.0
million (US$273 million), or about 53 percent of its
quota in the IMF. Of
the total amount of arrears, SDR 75.6 million (US$110
million) was overdue
to the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF)
Trust. Zimbabwe is the
first and only country to have protracted overdue
obligations to the PRGF
Trust. Zimbabwe has made only minor payments to the
IMF since June 2003, at
the time of the Executive Board's last review, and as
a result, its arrears
have increased further.
The initiation of the
procedure on the compulsory withdrawal from the IMF is
one in a series of
escalating measures that the IMF applies to members that
fail to meet their
obligations under its Articles of Agreement. On September
24, 2001, Zimbabwe
was declared ineligible to use the IMF's general
resources and was removed
from the list of countries eligible to use
resources under the PRGF (see
Press Release No. 01/40). On June 13, 2002,
the Executive Board adopted a
declaration of non-cooperation with respect to
Zimbabwe and suspended
technical assistance to the country (see Press
Release No. 02/28). On June 6,
2003, the Executive Board suspended the
voting and related rights of Zimbabwe
in the IMF (see Press Release No.
03/80). While today's decision has no
immediate effect on Zimbabwe's
standing in the IMF, it starts a process which
could ultimately result in
the compulsory withdrawal of the country from the
IMF. During this process,
Zimbabwe will have ample opportunity to improve its
cooperation with the IMF
with the aim of addressing the economic decline in
the country and resolving
its overdue financial obligations.
africaonline
Analysts condemn Mugabe's speech
Staff
Reporter
HARARE, 4 December 2003
Zimbabwean president’s
rhetoric wins few supporters.
HARARE: Analysts have described the
state of the nation address of
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe as the kind
of rhetoric that Zimbabweans
have become used to. Mugabe pledged to weed out
corruption, as part of
government efforts to lift the country's battered
economy out of its fifth
year of recession.
He also took the
opportunity to lash out at the Commonwealth. Last
week, Mugabe indicated that
Zimbabwe was ready to quit the international
body, after he was left out of
this week's summit in Nigeria.
Mugabe described as positive the
situation in his country and has
defended the land reform program. Mugabe
says the current food shortages are
the result of the drought and fiscal
difficulties. He has accused the
private sector and traders of taking gold
and foreign currency out of
Zimbabwe. Mugabe has also set his sights on trade
in the East and pursued
his attack on the Commonwealth.
-SABC/BBCRADIO
Mail and Guardian
Cold comfort for Mugabe's 'zombies'
Harare
04 December 2003 08:39
Right up to the last
moment, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe appeared to
be keeping up his
hopes that he might be invited to the Commonwealth Heads
of Government
Meeting in Abuja, Nigeria this weekend.
That the Commonwealth summit
would coincide with the annual conference of
his ruling Zanu-PF party did not
bother Mugabe two weeks ago.
"We look forward to participating at Abuja,"
he said brightly, a week
before.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo
announced last week that the Zimbabwean
leader would not be invited, after
finding no evidence that Mugabe had
carried out any reforms to meet the
Commonwealth's principles of democracy
and governance.
The Zanu-PF
annual conference, a three-day meeting of 3 000 rank-and-file
supporters, was
always opened by Mugabe on the Friday of the weekend on
which it was held.
This year, however, party officials had hinted he might
speak instead on
Thursday -– an arrangement which would allow him to deliver
his speech and
head off to Abuja, in case Obasanjo relented at the
last
moment.
Reports from travel agents that domestic flights from
Harare on Thursday and
Friday had been reduced without explanation added fuel
to speculation. One
of Air Zimbabwe's few remaining aircraft was on standby
for Nigeria, they
suggested.
However, no official comment was
available on what might well be a couple of
coincidences.
Nor was
there any hint from Abuja that Mugabe would be diverted from
rallying the
party faithful at the conference in the southern town of
Masvingo.
A
year since the last party conference, inflation had surged to 526%,
gross
domestic product was estimated to have shrunk nearly 20%, over
five-million
Zimbabweans were in the grip of a second year of famine and
Zimbabwe had
become number 112 in a list of 133 of the world's most corrupt
nations.
Only two weeks ago, similar conditions saw thousands of
Georgians take to
the streets of Tbilisi and drive out long-standing
president Eduard
Shevardnadze. Professor Eliphas Mukonoweshuro of the
University of
Zimbabwe's politics department said: "It's a long shot to
expect any kind of
autonomous revolt. They're like a pack of zombies.
Everything that the
'great leader' says will be cheered by all the
delegates."
In the 23 years since he came to power in 1980, he said,
Mugabe has got rid
all of the old generation of black nationalist politicians
who were his
peers in the resistance against white minority Rhodesian rule,
when the
party had a tradition of open debate and public criticism of its
leaders.
The wealthy, corrupt ruling hierarchy around Mugabe now were
all
beneficiaries of his patronage, said Mukonoweshuro. "They are
nothing
without Mugabe. If there was a revolt and they got rid of him, they
would
lose everything they have -- including his protection, and some of
them
would probably go to jail.
"How can you expect Mugabe's own
creations to stand up to him?"
This week, the chances of any important
debate neutralised in advance. On
Monday, ruling party spokesperson Nathan
Shamuyarira announced that the
conference "will not discuss the issue of
succession," local shorthand for
Mugabe's retirement and the choice of his
replacement.
Every previous conference since Mugabe approached retirement
age had been
preceded by almost identically worded bans by Shamuyarira on
such talk.
On Tuesday, Mugabe delivered his annual state-of-the-nation
address which
had television viewers wondering which country he was talking
about.
"Corruption and dishonesty will not be tolerated," he intoned, a
day after
political intervention reversed the eviction of a senior party
official from
a white-owned farm he had grabbed for himself.
There
would be "rational management" of prices of basic commodities, an echo
of the
"fine-tuning" to prices of basic commodities he promised at last
year's
annual conference. Fourteen new post offices had been opened this
year, he
said, without a word on the strike that has stopped all postal
deliveries for
the last three weeks.
"The conference is a non-event. You are not going
to get any decisions that
will have any effect on the situation. The problem
with Zimbabwe is
political, not economic," said Mukonoweshuro. - Sapa
Christian Science Monitor
from the December 04, 2003 edition
Commonwealth snub of Mugabe a good start on regime change
By Robert
I. Rotberg
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. – Robert Mugabe, the much reviled
president of
Zimbabwe, has at last been barred from this weekend's
Commonwealth summit.
Doing so strengthens the political and moral
relevance of the group of
54 nations (Britain and its former dominions and
colonies, nearly all of
which are African). Symbolically, doing so also
undercuts Mr. Mugabe's
legitimacy, and strengthens the forces favoring regime
change in
Zimbabwe.
Excluding Mugabe recognizes the great harm he has wreaked on his own They think there are from 400,000 to 660,000 elephants across the continent,
with large numbers in southern Africa.
But the scientists, from IUCN-The World Conservation Union, are interpreting
their findings with extreme caution.
They say one explanation may be that the elephants are fleeing to protected
areas to try to escape human pressure, thus giving an unduly hopeful picture.
They say habitat loss and competition between people and elephants for
resources remain among the principal challenges in elephant conservation.
The scientists are members of IUCN's African elephant specialist group, and
their study, the African Elephant Status Report, updates one produced in 1999.
More questions than answers
It is the latest in a series derived from a database on African elephants
which since 1986 has been compiling information from the 37 countries where the
animals live.
The updated version says the higher figures may be partly explained by
reported increases in savanna elephant populations in Botswana, Tanzania and
Zimbabwe.
But one of the report's authors, Julian Blanc, said the increase revealed
little about how populations were faring at the continental level.
He suspected there could be a more worrying explanation for the apparent
population growth - that the elephants were crowding together for safety.
He said: "Most elephant surveys are restricted to protected areas, and it is
precisely to protected areas that elephants flock when their range is compressed
by expanding human populations.
"A high concentration of elephants in protected areas can give a misleading
impression of increasing numbers."
Huge unknowns
This crowding under pressure, known as "hyper-aggregation", occurs in some
other species, and was identified among North Atlantic cod shortly before the
collapse of Canada's Grand Banks fishery in the early 1990s.
So much more work needs to be done in the unsurveyed areas to arrive at an
accurate picture of changes in population.
Julian Blanc said: "We now have estimates covering a much larger area than we
did five years ago - and that alone can go a long way in explaining differences
in numbers - but there are still huge gaps in our knowledge."
The update's regional estimates show a wide variation, and considerable
uncertainty:
"But even in these two regions there are countries - notably Sudan and Angola
- with large areas of possible elephant range but about which we have virtually
no information.
"This uncertainty not only applies to numbers. Although we have reported an
important contraction and increased fragmentation in elephant range in many
parts of the continent, it is impossible to say whether this is a recent
phenomenon or simply the result of the availability of better information.
"At this stage, even with better information, it remains very difficult to
disentangle real changes from perceived changes in elephant populations."
people,
on southern Africa, on human rights, and on the image and meaning
of
democracy in the Commonwealth and in Africa. The decision to
prevent
Zimbabwe's participation in the summit reflects pressure put on
President
Olusegun Obasanjo, the summit's host, by Britain and Australia. His
decision
has prevented a boycott of the meeting by Queen Elizabeth and the
heads of
government in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several
other
Pacific nations, and thus enabled the Commonwealth to continue to
function
as a critical assembly of English-speaking countries across the
globe.
The decision also delivered a rebuke to President Thabo
Mbeki,
Mugabe's most outspoken defender and his main protector in the
Commonwealth,
and could presage Zimbabwe's complete ouster from the club. Mr.
Mbeki has
tried to pit African members of the Commonwealth against
non-African
members, but that battle has now been lost. For the past 18
months,
Zimbabwe's membership has been suspended, but that suspension hardly
changed
Mugabe's methods at home.
Under Mugabe's autocratic
leadership from 1980 until the late 1990s,
Zimbabwe boasted a prosperous
economy based on agriculture and mining;
excellent race relations between the
12-million strong African majority and
100,000 whites, a handful of whom
dominated the cultivation of commercial
crops and employed 400,000 African
farm workers; domestic peace; a strong
judiciary; and a political system that
Mugabe controlled but that observed
most of the usual democratic
norms.
Since 1998, because of Mugabe's increasingly corrupt and
capricious
rule, however, his dispatch of 11,000 soldiers into the Congo, and
attacks
on the commercial farming mainstay of the country, Zimbabwe's economy
has
collapsed. About half of all Zimbabweans now go hungry, and
widespread
starvation is likely in the months to come because of the
destruction of
farming incentives and the lack of gasoline and diesel fuels.
Annual
inflation is running about 900 percent, the country has exhausted
almost all
of its foreign-exchange reserves, 80 percent of adult Zimbabweans
are out of
work, AIDS is devouring the working class and driving life
expectations to
under 35 years, hospitals and schools no longer function, and
the government
regularly issues bizarre decrees that only worsen the economic
and financial
mess.
Mugabe allegedly rigged the parliamentary
elections of 2000 (which his
party nevertheless only won narrowly) and last
year's presidential poll.He
has discharged a raft of independent and honest
judges and replaced them
with hacks. His henchmen bombed and then recently
shut down the nation's
only independent daily newspaper. There are no
independent TV or radio
stations.
Nearly 300 political opponents
have been killed this year, and their
followers deprived of internationally
donated food. The leader of the main
opposition party is being tried on a
trumped-up charge of treason, mainly
for contesting the presidential election
against Mugabe.
Regime change could be accomplished with ease -
with African and
international effort.
President Bush and
Secretary of State Colin Powell have asked Mbeki to
abandon several years of
quiet diplomacy and constructive engagement and
forthrightly to condemn
Mugabe and the harm that he has inflicted on his
people and on Africa's
image.
There are a number of things Mbeki could do besides exerting
his moral
authority. South Africa could cut off neighboring Zimbabwe's access
to
electric power and imported petroleum. Mbeki could delegitimize Mugabe
(as
has the Commonwealth) by ousting Zimbabwe from the Southern
African
Development Community, or from the African Union, and by speaking
out. He
could intervene militarily - and there are precedents for doing so
in
Africa, such as Tanzania invading Uganda in 1979 to oust Idi Amin, or
the
West African military intervention in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the
1990s
to put down insurgencies.
But Mbeki refuses to chastise
his fellow African head of state. Today,
Zimbabwe's main exports are the
hordes of people fleeing across borders to
neighboring countries. Millions
now work or try to work illegally in South
Africa or Botswana. The economic
and political prospects of South Africa
itself are thus undermined by Mbeki's
inexplicable refusal to act.
The Commonwealth has a chance to
stiffen Mbeki's resolve, and to
promise material and military support if
South Africa removes Mugabe, averts
further chaos, and thus helps to return
Zimbabwe to democratic rule. Respect
for Africa, assistance from the G-8
nations and the Commonwealth, and the
future of its peoples await positive
decisions in Abuja.
• Robert I. Rotberg is president of the World
Peace Foundation and
director of the intrastate conflict program at the
Belfer Center at
Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Reuters
Canada Floats Commonwealth Compromise on Zimbabwe
By Randall
Palmer
TENERIFE, Canary Islands (Reuters) - Faced with deep divisions in
the
Commonwealth over whether to end Zimbabwe's suspension from the
group,
Canada will propose a compromise intended to keep the country under
close
watch, a senior Canadian official said on Wednesday.
The
official, traveling in Prime Minister Jean Chretien's plane en route to
this
week's Commonwealth summit in Nigeria, said Canada favored maintaining
the
suspension for now but wanted to set up a mechanism whereby Zimbabwe
would
not have to wait until the next summit in two years to rejoin.
"No, we're
not ready to lift (the suspension). We haven't seen any real
positive
developments. But let's not wait for another two years before we
readdress
the issue at the next (summit)," the official said.
Zimbabwe was
suspended from the 54-nation grouping of mainly former British
colonies last
year after President Robert Mugabe was accused of rigging his
own
reelection.
Mugabe has not been invited to the Dec. 5-8 summit in the
Nigerian capital
Abuja, but the issue of how to deal with the southern
African country, its
collapsing economy and political domestic turmoil is
sure to dominate the
meeting. Harare has suggested it might quit the
Commonwealth.
"We cannot just go to Abuja and say, 'OK, they're suspended
for two years'.
We have to put more pressure so that there will be progress,"
the Canadian
official said.
"And for them (the Zimbabweans), if this
is what they wish, there will be
some hope of being reinstated before the
next (summit in 2005)."
The compromise would involve assigning some sort
of group to monitor
Zimbabwe carefully and report back to the Commonwealth
leaders in six months
or a year.
This could involve a troika of
Commonwealth leaders, or a committee of "wise
men" or the Commonwealth
Ministerial Action Group, which is a group of eight
foreign ministers charged
with ensuring member states uphold the Harare
Declaration, which committed
the grouping to democratic principles.
Britain said on Monday it would
urge fellow Commonwealth members to keep up
pressure on its former colony by
maintaining a punitive suspension of
Mugabe's government at the
summit.
Mugabe accused Britain, Australia and New Zealand on Tuesday of
forging an
"unholy alliance" against him, a charge that Chretien firmly
rejected.
"It's not an alliance...you respect the Harare Declaration, and
(you) will
be invited (to leaders' summits)," he told reporters on the
plane.
He also said at one stage, the idea of Zimbabwe allowing
opposition parties
into the government had been discussed.
"If it were
to occur, they could qualify again (for full Commonwealth
membership),
perhaps, I don't know," he said.
Sunday Times (SA)
Zanu-PF summit to look at
economy
Thursday December 04, 2003 07:06 -
(SA)
MASVINGO - He may not be among Commonwealth leaders meeting in
Nigeria this
week, but Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will be the centre
of attention
at his party's annual conference.
Around 3,000 delegates
of the ruling Zimbabwe African National
Union -Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) will
start gathering today for the
three-day conference in the southern town of
Masvingo, a party stronghold.
The official opening by Mugabe is scheduled for
Friday.
Issues such as Zimbabwe's deepening economic crisis - inflation
is above
500% and rising - and the controversial land reform programme are
expected
to be discussed.
Not on the agenda of the conference,
however, will be Mugabe's exit from
office. The topic of the 79-year-old
leader's possible retirement had been a
subject of hot debate ahead of the
conference.
Party secretary for information and publicity Nathan
Shamuyarira on Monday
said "succession issues" would be discussed at a
congress next year, four
years before the next presidential election due in
2008.
Mugabe is instead expected to use the conference to attack his
country's
international isolation, including its 20-month suspension from
the
Commonwealth.
The conference coincides with the December 5-8
Commonwealth Heads of
Government Meeting (CHOGM) in the Nigerian capital
Abuja, to which Mugabe
has not been invited.
The Zimbabwe leader last
week threatened to quit the 54-member grouping of
mainly former British
colonies.
Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in March last year
following
Mugabe's disputed re-election, and last week Nigerian President
Olusegun
Obasanjo said Mugabe would not be invited to this week's
summit.
At last year's conference Mugabe warned that he would respond to
alleged
Western hostility against his government by ratcheting up hostility
against
whites in the southern African country.
Relations between
Zimbabwe and former colonial power Britain have soured in
recent years after
Mugabe's government embarked on a campaign to seize
white-owned farms for
redistribution to landless blacks.
"The more they (western countries)
work against us, the more they express
their hostility against us, the more
negative we shall become to their kith
and kin here," Mugabe
said.
Mugabe said countries aligning themselves with Britain in an
international
anti-Zimbabwe drive would be recognised as "our enemies like we
recognise
Britain as our enemy".
There is nothing to suggest he will
change his tune this year.
This week Mugabe took a swipe at some unnamed
"apologetic" African leaders
whom he accused of betraying an African
brother.
"There are others who are apologetic about our nationalism.
thers who fear
to be complete Africans, hesitate to express solidarity with
us," Mugabe
said.
It was not clear if he was referring to
Obasanjo.
AFP
BBC News
Online environment correspondent
A study of African
elephants suggests they may be more numerous than they were four years ago,
scientists say.
The 1999 report
concluded there were at least 300,000 elephants in Africa, and possibly as many
as 487,000.
The authors say
there are other possible reasons for caution in interpreting the figures: one is
that they are based on data from just over half the total area where elephants
may live.
Julian Blanc told BBC News Online: "We know there are large, stable -
in places perhaps increasing - elephant populations in southern and eastern
Africa, where the amount of monitoring effort is greatest.
Business Day
MDC on diplomatic mission in
Abuja
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Harare
Correspondent
ZIMBABWE's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
yesterday sent a
high-powered delegation to the Commonwealth heads of
government meeting,
which begins in Abuja, Nigeria, tomorrow.
The MDC
delegation includes party chairman Isaac Matongo, information and
publicity
secretary Paul Themba Nyathi, foreign affairs secretary Moses
Mzila Ndlovu,
international relations secretary Sekai Holland and
representative to the
European Union Grace Kwinje.
President Robert was not invited because
Zimbabwe is still suspended from
the Commonwealth body, the sanction for
allegedly manipulating the outcome
of last year's presidential
election.
The MDC team is expected to hold talks with Commonwealth
leaders on the
sidelines of the summit on a wide range of issues concerning
Zimbabwe and
what needs to be done to end its crisis.
MDC
secretary-general Welshman Ncube said yesterday the delegation was on
a
"diplomatic mission to share information and find a solution to the
crisis".
"They are going there to lobby the Commonwealth to remain
engaged on the
Zimbabwe issue and try to find an amicable solution to the
problem."
Ncube, who has just returned from an official trip to the US,
UK, Holland,
Sweden and Norway, said the Commonwealth should move swiftly to
extend
measures against Mugabe.
He said that since Zimbabwe was
suspended from the 54-member club of mostly
former British colonies following
an election marred by vote rigging and
violence, the ruling Zanu (PF) regime
had simply refused to address issues
of pressing concern.
"They have
not promoted political dialogue, restored the rule of law, ended
political
repression and violence, dealt with democratic and electoral
reforms or
cleaned up the land reform programme," Ncube said.
"Zimbabwe has also
refused to engage the Commonwealth secretary-general (Don
McKinnon) about
these issues. The Commonwealth should act to show that there
are serious
consequences for defying it and to safeguard its credibility."
The MDC
has been travelling extensively, both regionally and
internationally, on a
campaign to find a solution to the Zimbabwe crisis.
New Zimbabwe
Zim youths leave Botswana to stage
resistance
By RYDER GABATHUSE
04/12/03
FRANCISTOWN:
Francistown might soon feel relief from the burden of thousands
of illegal
Zimbabwean immigrants as youths from that country plan to return
to their
homeland to stage “a mammoth march against the government of
President Robert
Mugabe”.
Zimbabwean youths have grouped themselves under the auspices of
Youth Arise
Zimbabwean Crisis Movement. Youths form the bulk of illegal
Zimbabweans in
the city.
They said they were readying themselves for a
“massive anti-Mugabe campaign”
planned for Plumtree on December 22 - Zimbabwe
Unity Day. The youths
expressed concern at the hard life ordinary Zimbabweans
faced and pointed
out that a loaf of bread cost Z$4,000.
They added
that most Zimbabweans could not send their children to secondary
schools
because it was too expensive.
Members of the Youth Arise Movement -
linked to the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) - also handed over a
letter in which they were seeking
assistance. “The Youth Arise movement is
seeking your help in anyway you can
in order to provide our members with
T-shirts and banners for the
anti-Mugabe campaign, which will commence on
December 22,” the letter
states.
The youths have also indicated that
anti-Mugabe marches would continue until
further notice. “We would appreciate
any form of assistance as we too are
concerned about so many illegal
immigrants in your country”.
The youths said protesting was the only way
to solve the problems of
Zimbabwe. Response to the call for the protests were
good and “the guys
willing to go”, the youths said.
The meeting place
for the aliens has been the temporary bus and taxi rank,
as well as the new
delayed bus terminal. Most of the “boys” made a quick
buck washing cars and
doing menial jobs.
The other meeting place for Zimbabwean youth is the
area around the Dumela
Industrial site where some of them sleep. They confess
to sleeping on
cardboard boxes and wearing plastics collected from dumping
sites that they
used as their beds and blankets.
The police are not
aware of Zimbabwean youths assembling in Botswana for
anti-Mugabe
demonstrations across the border. Central Police Station
Commander
Superintendent Dinah Marathe only indicated that her office has
recently
received a number of Zimbabweans fleeing from their country
claiming
political refugee status.
She further stated that her officers have been
working hard to flush out
illegal aliens from the city. She warned that most
of them were
sweet-talkers who would freely hand out wrong
information.
“We deal with illegals on a daily basis and in most cases
they simply
mislead you”, she observed.
Last Saturday, a 22-year-old
Zimbabwean student and opposition activist fled
into the country saying that
his life was in danger. Jason Zulu Chavura
claimed that he jumped the border
into Botswana because the dreaded Central
Intelligence Organisation
operatives were targeting him for his political
activities - Mmegi