iafrica.com
Mon, 05 Dec
2005
Police arrested two Zimbabwe national cricket team players and an
official
on charges of violating foreign exchange regulations, a state daily
reported
on Monday.
The Herald newspaper said long-serving
national cricket team manager
Mohammed Meman and national team players Vusi
Sibanda and Waddington
Mwayenga were arrested on Saturday.
"Sources
within Zimbabwe Cricket said last night they had been informed that
the
police were also interested in questioning at least six more players
over
their offshore foreign currency accounts and transactions," the
newspaper
said.
The paper said the arrests followed investigations by Zimbabwe's
central
bank into the cricket league's financial affairs.
Problems at
Zimbabwe Cricket led to the resignation two weeks ago of
national team
captain Tatenda Taibu.
Taibu and other national players had earlier
teamed up with the country's
seven provincial chairmen in a bid to have
national chairman Peter Chingoka
sacked and the ZC managing director Osias
Bvute suspended pending an
investigation into the financial activities of
the cricket body.
Zimbabwe cricket has been in crisis ever since and
their performances have
been so poor that both England and Australia have
refused to play Test
matches against them.
AFP
The Scotsman
Mon 5 Dec 2005
JANE FIELDS IN HARARE
THE United Nations' emergency relief
co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, was due to
hold talks today with Zimbabwe's
president, Robert Mugabe, on the country's
worsening humanitarian
crisis.
Mr Egeland will first tour a housing site in the south of the
capital,
Harare, and what is left of Hatcliffe Extension, where hundreds
lost their
homes during "Operation Drive Out Trash".
Police
started bulldozing shacks and market stalls in May, leaving at least
700,000
people homeless, according to the UN. Mr Mugabe said it was a
much-needed
"urban renewal" campaign; the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change said
it was a bid to drive its supporters into the countryside.
Mr Egeland's
trip comes days after the UN was criticised for its
"softly-softly" approach
towards Harare.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said local UN agencies
had been reluctant
to confront the government over its "blatant disregard of
the human rights
of the displaced".
The authorities in Zimbabwe claim
they are in the throes of a massive
construction programme that will see
250,000 houses built each year until
2008.
However, the total number
of houses built in the capital so far is "in the
hundreds", not the
thousands, according to the Combined Harare Residents
Association.
In
the central town of Chinhoyi, at least 20 new houses were so shoddily
built
that they were washed away by the first rains.
Recently, the government
quietly accepted the UN's offer of temporary
housing for the displaced. Last
week, it also agreed to let the World Food
Programme distribute food aid
directly to three million Zimbabweans.
USA Today
Posted 12/4/2005 5:07 PM Updated
12/4/2005 8:12 PM
MBARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - The smell of sewage and
rotting garbage wafts
into homes. Acrid smoke hangs in the air where
families have tried to burn
household waste. Dysentery, food poisoning and
diarrhea break out.
Two children pick up rotten eggs from a
heap of garbage Friday
in a township south of Harare.
AP
With no foreign currency for gas and equipment, garbage
collection is
the latest casualty as Zimbabwe's economy
crumbles.
The start of seasonal rains means the effects are
becoming unbearable
in this poor township in the capital, Harare. Trash is
piled waist-high in
the narrow streets, and reeking water stagnates in
potholes, blocked sewers
and drains.
"It is symptomatic of
general decline and the national crisis as a
whole," said Mike Davies, an
official of the Combined Harare Ratepayers
Association.
Zimbabwe is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence
from
Britain in 1980, blamed largely on the often-violent seizure of
thousands of
white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to blacks. Four
years of
erratic rainfall also have disrupted the agriculture-based economy,
leaving
up to 4 million people in need of food aid in what was once a
regional
breadbasket.
Before Zimbabwe's financial crisis began to really
bite two years ago,
garbage was collected weekly. Spiraling inflation and
shortages of hard
currency for spare parts have taken a toll on service. A
boycott by people
refusing to pay their utility bills because of poor
service has added to the
problems.
Last December, the
government fired the opposition-dominated Harare
city council for alleged
mismanagement and appointed a state commission to
run municipal
services.
Three waste management firms have since withdrawn
collection services
across half the capital, citing acute shortages of
gasoline, spare parts and
equipment, and saying they get too little in fees
from the city.
Most of the city's own garbage trucks have broken
down. The few that
are left service hospitals, shopping centers and areas
close to the city
center, Harare authorities said in a report
Wednesday.
Already, there is concern about disease spreading in the
city of 2
million people. Last month, health authorities reported outbreaks
of
dysentery and food poisoning blamed on frequent water and power outages
that
cause toilet and sewage blockages.
In Mabvuku township, in
eastern Harare, residents scooped water from
open drains during a seven-day
outage earlier this month.
Hundreds of diarrhea cases have been
reported in recent weeks,
including at least 12 children who died of
dehydration, said a Harare
physician, who asked not to be identified for
fear of retribution in the
increasingly autocratic state.
Executives at a Harare food processing factory told staff to filter
and boil
water after tests showed an increase in harmful bacteria. City
authorities
are believed to be using insufficient purifying chemicals in the
drinking
water due to shortages of hard currency needed to buy the
materials.
Plumbing firms say blockages in the ailing water
system have worsened
due to the use of sand and soil as household scourers.
The price of cleaning
materials has increased about six-fold this
year.
Faltering garbage collection is just one of the ways the
economic
crisis has hit daily life in Zimbabwe.
At public
hospitals, families of patients are asked to bring their own
drugs. In the
maternity wing at the main hospital in Harare, expectant
mothers are asked
to bring their own umbilical clips. If they cannot get
them, midwives use
string to seal the umbilical cord.
The sale of wheelchairs and
prosthetics for handicapped Zimbabweans
has come to a
standstill.
Court cases have been postponed because there is no
gasoline to take
the accused to court or money to buy food for
witnesses.
The long-lamented lines to buy fuel at Zimbabwe gas
stations have
disappeared, however. There has been no fuel at all for at
least 10 days,
even at hard currency gas stations. The only fuel on sale is
on the black
market at exorbitant rates.
Business Day
Dumisani
Muleya
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harare
Correspondent
AIRLINES flying into Zimbabwe are now carrying their own
extra fuel to avoid
being grounded in a country reeling from a long-running
fuel crisis.
The move demonstrates the regional effect of Zimbabwe's
fuel shortages as
well as the contagion of the country's economic
problems.
Airlines flying to Harare such as British Airways (operated
by Comair in SA)
and South African Airways (SAA), and also small carriers
such as SA Airlink
and kulula.com, are now relying on contingency plans to
avoid being grounded
in Zimbabwe.
Although it was not possible to
get official comment from Comair yesterday,
air hostesses told passengers
bumped off the flight to Harare yesterday
afternoon that the airline was now
being forced to place passengers on
"stand-by" to accommodate extra
fuel.
SAA general communications manager Onkgopotse JJ Tabane
confirmed the
national carrier was also carrying additional fuel, but
insisted it was "not
affecting our (SAA's) operations".
"We do carry
fuel to provide for situations where there may not be enough
fuel on the
other side (Zimbabwe), but this is not affecting our
operations," he
said.
"We usually do this under normal circumstances, so it doesn't
affect us."
Zimbabwe's national airline, Air Zimbabwe,
grounded all its planes and
cancelled flights to Johannesburg, London and
Dubai on November 22 due to
fuel shortages. Although the airline resumed
flights the following day, it
is now relying on fuel procured from
abroad.
Zimbabwe has been gripped by fuel shortages since
1999 due to lack of
foreign currency, which has in turn caused the scarcity
of other imports.
The shortage of foreign currency has been caused by poor
export performance,
lack of balance of payments support and drying up of
financial aid.
Passengers claimed yesterday they had been told Air
Zimbabwe had again
cancelled its regional flights, for the second time in
two weeks, but the
airline said its flights were on.
An Air
Zimbabwe spokesman at Johannesburg airport, Harry Senda, said the
airline
was operating. "As we speak our flight to Harare is half(way)
through the
trip, and it's about to land," he said. "It's unfortunate that
some
passengers sometimes rely on hearsay and say malicious things designed
to
tarnish our image."
Air Zimbabwe, seen widely as emblematic of the
country's national failure,
has been run down by extended periods of
mismanagement and lack of capital.
Commandeering of planes by politicians
has also contributed to its decline.
The airline, which had 18 planes 25
years ago, now has only five.
Aero-News Network
Mon, 05 Dec
'05
Basket-Case Country Has A Basket-Case Airline
Consider Air
Zimbabwe. No, not for a trip -- we value our readers. Just
*think* about Air
Zim for a minute. Some flag carriers seem to instantiate
their nation's
character, and some (like, for instance, bankrupt Swissair)
seem to
contradict it. Air Zimbabwe is one of the former: a perfect
projection of
the dysfunctional Robert Mugabe regime into the aviation
world -- it does
everything wrong and still seems to muddle through.
The latest word from
the flag carrier of the onetime "Switzerland of Africa"
is that it's flat
broke and can't buy fuel. It has long since exhausted the
good credit it
began with 25 years ago as the successor to Air Rhodesia;
even Nigerian
spammers aren't sending email to Air ZImbabwe's offices any
more.
The
seven jets of Air Zimbabwe have spent more than one day in the last few
weeks sitting on the ramp at Harare, with flights to all destinations
cancelled. The terminal is reported to be teeming with angry passengers --
or perhaps we should say, would-be passengers.
A Johannesburg, South
Africa paper quoted a statement from Air Zimbabwe
Vice-Chairman Jonathan
Kadzura: "The board would like to sincerely apologize
to all its valued
customers for the inconveniences."
Some flights have resumed, using fuel
from the Zimbabwe Air Force, but that
force does not have sufficient stocks
to sustain the airline for more than a
day or two, even at the expense of
all it holds. Other fuel is only
available for cash in advance, due to the
firm's habitual non-payment of
bills.
Air Zimbabwe pays its flight
crews in US Dollars, cash, in London, and has
burnt enough bridges with
vendors that it has to pay cash for fuel and
catering almost everywhere it
goes. Air Zimbabwe planes have gone without
cleaning, catering and even
maintenance at overseas airports as a result of
previous arrears.
Air
Zim is in even deeper trouble than the service interruption would
indicate.
It is in debt almost beyond calculation -- it owes twice as many
dollars as
bankrupt Delta, but fortunately that's in nearly-worthless
Zimbabwe dollars.
It hasn't been maintaining its Boeing 767-200ER jets, and
hasn't been able
to pay its insurance bills since 2001; the nation's civil
aviation authority
has been picking up the slack. As the degree of financial
mismanagement
became clearer, CEO Tendai Mahachi was summarily sacked, along
with
corporate secretary Tendai Mujuru.
It turns out that the
politically-connected Mahachi was hired despite coming
in fifth of five job
interviewees, and Minister of Transport Christopher
Mushohwe is now denying
he had anything to do with hiring Mahachi. he had
never met Mahachi before
the appointment. "I had nothing to do with his
appointment."
The
airline once was prosperous, bringing tourists from Europe to see the
wildlife and scenery of Zimbabwe, including breathtaking Victoria Falls. But
with the government on the outs with most of the civilized world, it now
prefers to fly to places that receive Perma-President Mugabe well -- a few
holdout communist countries, and some Arab sheikdoms.
Yet, despite
its bad reputation, and the visibly deteriorated condition of
its aircraft,
Air Zim actually has a decent safety record. They have never
had a fatal or
hull-loss accident, since becoming Air Zimbabwe; the two
losses they inherit
were forerunner Air Rhodesia's planes, brought down by
the terrorists of
Joshua Nkomo, who were purged from the Zim government by
the terrorists of
Mugabe in the 1980s.
Nobody's shooting at the Air Zim planes today.
Mugabe might be twice the
dictator Ian Smith was, but he's evidently a more
effective dictator, at
least in security terms.
The government
ministries have ordered one another to produce the fuel, but
the problem for
the Zim ministries is that the fuel comes from outside the
country via
multinational oil companies, and they learned long ago that the
only way to
deal with Zimbabwe government entities is cash-up-front.
Foreigners don't
fly Air Zimbabwe these days, but for Zimbabweans there may
be no other
choice. Every other airline flying to Harare rejects the wildly
inflated,
non-convertible Zimbabwe dollar, and foreign exchange is
unavailable to
ordinary people.
The Zimbabwe crisis goes far beyond the airline. The
state railway has also
broken down, and fuel is unavailable to ordinary
citizens. The entire
economy collapsed after President Mugabe seized
commercial farms and
distributed them to political supporters or broke them
up into small,
subsistence farms in 2000. The farms once produced all of the
nation's
foodstuffs and almost half of its foreign exchange.
Does the
FAA consider it a safe airline? They duck the issue.
"As there is no
direct commercial air service between the United States and
Zimbabwe, the
U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not assessed
Zimbabwe's Civil
Aviation Authority for compliance with ICAO international
aviation safety
standards."
Now, would we at Aero-News fly on Air Zim? Let's put it this
way. The only
reason to fly on Air Zimbabwe is if you're going to Zimbabwe.
And no one in
his right mind would leave a civilized country to go to
Zimbabwe -- the
ablest Zimbabweans are going the other way, if they
can.
It's a moot point anyway... they're on the ground until the
government, or
South Africa, which has been providing vast humanitarian aid,
kicks them
some convertible currency. Does that answer your
question?
FMI: www.airzimbabwe.com (you can book a flight
there. Don't say we didn't
warn ya).
New Zimbabwe
By Lebo Nkatazo
Last
updated: 12/05/2005 10:39:09
ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe has demoted
another top bodyguard in an
ongoing purge against his
protectors.
Moses Chihuri, who was Mugabe's second choice bodyguard by
virtue of having
been next in line to Assistant Commissioner Winston
Changara, the then head
of the Police Protection Unit (PPU), has been
demoted.
The demotion comes months after Changara, Mugabe's loyal aide de
camp for
years, suffered the same fate. His ouster was unexplained, although
there
has been claims that he had tried to hit it off with Mugabe's wife,
Grace.
Police sources said following Changara's demotion in June this
year, Chihuri
had taken over in an acting capacity as the head of PPU, and
Mugabe's chief
protector, only to be demoted without explanation.
The
police sources told New Zimbabwe.com that they believed Chihuri had been
discarded because of having been privy to Changara's alleged acts of
misconduct, but kept quite.
"Chihuri has joined Changara at the
Commissioner's Pool," said a police
source. "His position was taken over by
Assistant Commissioner Kwainona.
Mugabe just woke up and said he no longer
wanted the bodyguard.
"No reasons were given for the demotion which was
by word of mouth. But we
believe that he is being punished for having sat on
information to the
effect that Changara was trying to make a pass at the
First Lady, Grace
Mugabe.
"There are also allegations that he knew
that Changara was diverting fuel
from the PPU for his private use, but did
nothing. Some of the fuel is said
to have been recovered at his Marlborough
house," said the source.
Sources said Sunday that Mugabe first noted a
change in Changara when he
started assigning his juniors to guard him when
he was in the country,
preferring to do so only when Mugabe was going out of
Zimbabwe.
Speculation about Mugabe's wife and her affairs is rife on
Zimbabwe's rumour
mill. There are undenied claims that she dated businessman
James Makamba and
has been secretly dating a minister.
No comment was
immediately available from the President's Office last night.