Judges scared to hear missing rights activist's case

http://www.zimonline.co.za

by Wayne Mafaro Saturday 06 December 2008

HARARE - Zimbabwe High Court judges on Friday declined to hear the case of
kidnapped human rights activist Jestina Mukoko because it was "too hot" to
handle, a lawyer for the activist said.

The lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, who wants the court to order the police to
release Mukoko or if they are not the ones holding her to investigate her
abduction, said the case file was tossed from one judge to another who all
upon reading its contents declined to hear the matter.

The matter, which is before the court on an urgent basis, was eventually
referred back to Judge President Rita Makarau who directed it be heard
before Justice Anne-Marie Gorowa, according to Mtetwa.

Apparently Gorowa was the judge who had been initially allocated the case.

Mutetwa said: "The file was given to a judge yesterday. I went to the High
Court this morning and that judge to whom the case had been allocated had
still not come in by 1000hrs so the file had to be re-allocated.

"It was then taken to another judge who after going through the file said
that he could not hear the matter. It was then taken to another judge at
about 1100hrs who then requested time to read the file. We were then told to
check with the judge president. So until about lunchtime nobody had any news
as to what was happening."

The lawyer said she spend the rest of Friday being send from one office to
another until at 1615hrs when she was told the case file had been send back
to Makaru's office who had ordered that the matter proceed on Monday before
Gorowa.

Mtetwa, who did not disclose the names of judges who declined to handle
Mukoko's case, said she was astonished the matter was being moved to Monday
saying because it was an urgent case it should have been heard on Friday
night or over the weekend.

She said: "I am completely dumbfounded. Why cant the matter be heard
tonight, Saturday or on Sunday because this is an urgent matter. This is
frustrating. This is one case that demonstrates that the rule of law has
really broken down in this country."

Mukoko, a former staffer at the state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corporation and now head of human rights organization Zimbabwe Peace Project
(ZPP), was abducted in the early morning hours on Wednesday from her home in
Norton town, 50km west of Harare.

She has not been seen or heard from since then and Mtetwa said she and her
team had "searched everywhere but we haven't found her."

Mukoko's ZPP has played a crucial role in monitoring and documenting
politically motivated violence in Zimbabwe, building an archive of crimes
that could be crucial in prosecuting perpetrators of human rights abuses in
the future.

Political analysts and human rights groups say Mugabe's government has
increasingly resorted to repression and terror tactics to keep public
discontent in check in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis, marked
by the world's highest inflation of 231 million percent, and shortages of
foreign currency, food and fuel.

Mugabe's government routinely targets supporters of the opposition MDC party
for abuse but has in recent months stepped up repression against human
rights defenders and other representatives of civil society in Zimbabwe to
try to intimidate them from recording or publicising cases of rights
violations.

Police and secret agents have on numerous occasions in the past been accused
of holding arrested human rights activists, political activists, and other
government critics incommunicado for long periods during which they
sometimes beat or torture their captives in a bid break them.

Zimbabwean and international human rights groups as well as the United
States' ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee have called for the release of
Mukoko. - ZimOnline.

The extent of the suffering in Zimbabwe ‘has reached Auschwitz proportions’

December 6, 2008

Families in a once agriculturally rich land are living – and dying – on a diet of nuts and berries as food shortages threaten up to five million Zimbabweans. Our correspondent reports from western Zimbabwe on a gathering humanitarian crisis

The Ncube family: Kwanele, 6, and Nomagugu, 5, are suffering from kwashiorkor, caused by severe malnutrition

Martin Fletcher

Father Peter stopped his truck beside a cluster of thatched mud huts deep in the arid, baking bushland of western Zimbabwe. A stick-thin woman, barefoot and dressed in rags, approached with her two young children.

“Please. We’re desperate for food,” she told him, and lifted up her children’s filthy T-shirts. Their stomachs and belly buttons were grotesquely distended by kwashiorkor, a condition caused by severe malnutrition that just a few years ago was unheard of in this once bountiful country.

The woman said she and her family were living off nuts and berries, for which they spent hours foraging in the bush each day. She showed us where her husband had buried their eldest daughter, who had died two months ago aged 12 after eating berries that caused severe stomach pains and made her vomit. “This is madness – madness,” Father Peter, visibly upset, said.

The priest promised the family food and medical help from his church-run clinic 12 miles away, then asked them to join him in prayer. “Lord, help us during these terrible times of hunger,” he said. “Give us hope and courage. Heal these children. Bring food to our fields and homes. Show us your love!”

There is nothing exceptional about this family. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families in this region are surviving on wild berries or nuts that they grind into powder and mix with water, a weed called lude that they boil into a thin soup. They also eat insects such as locusts, if they can find them. Some even eat the moist inner fibres of bark.

Far away in Harare the Mugabe regime, and even Western nongovernment organisations, deny that Zimbabweans are actually dying of hunger, but here, more than 100 miles from any main population centre, they are starving to death.

Father Peter, a local opposition councillor, and the clinic’s chief doctor told The Times that three adults and five children had died of starvation in the past three months. Others had probably died unrecorded, while hundreds more avoided death by starvation only because they succumbed to fatal illness first.

“People are starving here. The extent of the suffering has reached Auschwitz proportions,” Father Peter declared. The doctor, an expatriate, added: “It’s a silent tsunami. They die so quietly. They don’t demonstrate or cry out or stand up. They just die.”

The one mercy is that Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic has yet to reach this area, but Father Peter is terrified that it will. So weak are the people that cholera would sweep away hundreds, he said. “It would be an absolute catastrophe.”

Father Peter is not his real name, and neither the clinic nor its precise location can be identified for fear of government reprisals, but the priest took the considerable risk of hosting an unaccredited foreign journalist for 24 hours so the world could know more of “the evil” that the regime is inflicting on its most helpless people.

The root cause was the regime’s seizure and destruction of white-owned farms, compounded by several years of drought. In 2000 Zimbabwe produced 4.5 million tonnes of maize and other cereals. This year’s harvest was barely 800,000 tonnes in a country that needs two million tonnes just to feed its own people.

The bankrupt Government pledged to import 800,000 tonnes, but has only imported 175,000 tonnes. The cash-strapped World Food Programme (WFP), which used to buy Zimbabwe’s surpluses to alleviate famines elsewhere, has to date imported only 260,000 of the 400,000 tonnes it promised.

That leaves a huge shortfall, and the WFP predicts that five million Zimbabweans – half of the population – will need emergency food aid by next month.

“What you have is a very fine line between chronic malnutrition and slipping over that line into something much worse,” one Western diplomat said.

And it is the poorest of the poor, those living far from the towns and cities – and especially in an area like this, which the regime considers an opposition stronghold – who pay the heaviest price. This area received its first relief supplies, courtesy of Worldvision and Christian Aid, last week.

When The Times visited this clinic in December 2007 it had only two young children suffering from kwashiorkor or marasmus, another potentially fatal condition caused by severe malnutrition. This time there were ten, aged between 6 months and 7 years, but Father Peter reckoned there are several times as many living out in the bush who cannot reach the clinic.

A year ago we wrote that here, and across Zimbabwe, millions were surviving on a single bowl of sadza – a cornmeal porridge – a day. Today people here have not had sadza for months, and the doctor said they arrived at the clinic having eaten nothing for a week.

People go shoeless. They are dressed in rags. They are emaciated, listless, despairing. What little money they had was long ago rendered worthless by hyperinflation. It is the planting season, but they have no seeds – let alone fertiliser – and few have bothered to plough their tiny fields.

In desperation some are selling their cows and other livestock to hucksters from the cities, destroying any future they might have, for a few kilograms of cornmeal that will sustain them just a few more weeks.

Dozens arrive at the clinic each day, begging for food. It provides what it can, but even its hungry nurses went on strike last month to demand some of the provisions set aside for patients. “They argued that the patients would die if the nurses died,” said the doctor.

Anyone who can has left. Of the 35 teachers at the nearby junior and high schools only five remain, and both institutions have ceased to function. As those who stay grow steadily weaker they increasingly succumb to Aids, tuberculosis, malaria and other illnesses.

Unable to afford proper funerals, families bury relatives in simple blankets near their huts.

The clinic receives funds and supplies from overseas, and is the only hospital or medical centre still open for more than 70 miles in any direction. What prevents it being completely overwhelmed is the almost total lack of transport. The sick who are still strong enough arrive on foot, or by donkey cart, but few buses still run and are unaffordable in any case.

The clinic’s policy is to send patients home before they die because, says the doctor, “it’s more expensive to transport a dead body than a living one”. But its mortuary, nonetheless, is full with 14 bodies, and those left unclaimed will eventually receive paupers’ burials. That the clinic keeps going is little short of a miracle, and entirely down to help from overseas. It recently survived three weeks without electricity, and intermittently runs out of water and diesel.

But the death, the suffering and the constant struggle to stay open exacts a heavy toll of those who work there.

The chief doctor had visibly aged over the past year, and looked exhausted. So did Father Peter.

“It’s very, very hard. It breaks me down. I’ve seen too much suffering,” he said. “We were never trained for this sort of priesthood. This is the priesthood of the concentration camps.”

Long, slow death throes go on in Zimbabwe

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

December 6, 2008

Catherine Philp: Analysis
Condoleezza Rice hit the nail on the head when she said that Robert Mugabe
should have gone a long time ago. But having hung on this long, there is
little sign that the "old crocodile" is ready to quit. His weary countrymen
are resigned to his seeing it out until the end.

The international clamour for him to go may be growing louder, but in
Harare, it simply sounds like one of those periodic crescendos that will
soon fade away. Dr Rice, Desmond Tutu and the Kenyan President, Raila
Odinga, may have increased their rhetoric in calling for his removal, but
these are voices that have spoken out against Mr Mugabe many times before.
The absence is of any new voices - or any that Harare has not long been deaf
to.

South Africa holds the key to the crisis. Mr Odinga is correct in saying
that Mr Mugabe could not survive Zimbabwe's isolation from its southern
neighbour. But even Jacob Zuma, leader of the African National Congress and
a strong critic of Mr Mugabe, refuses to echo the call for him to go,
insisting that any solution must be political and include power sharing with
his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Harare's decision to call for international assistance for the cholera
crisis is a calculated one, taken in the knowledge that the outside world
cannot ignore such suffering. Zimbabwe's neighbours will be mollified by
this sensible appeal, which will help to prevent the disease from spreading
across their borders. The pressure for them to act will be eased again.

The prospect of military intervention, even on a humanitarian level, looks
more distant than ever. The violence that Mr Mugabe unleashed during the
elections has receded. The pain inflicted on Zimbabweans now is the result
of the country's long, slow death and the crumbling of infrastructure and
public services. Saving Zimbabwe will take years of rebuilding that can
happen only with a cooperative government. Mr Mugabe has made clear he does
not want foreign troops, even if there was a friendly country willing to
send them. There is not.
The survival of the Mugabe Government defies logic. It provides none of the
basic functions of state - security, welfare or representation - and yet
limps on. Declaring an endgame for a regime of such tenacity is always
risky - the economic implosion that could finish it off has been much
predicted but never seen. Another waiting game is under way.

Zimbabwe cholera: A plague of Robert Mugabe's own making

Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic is a deadly symptom of the corruption of the country's rulers.

 

By Peta Thornycroft and Sebastien Berger
Last Updated: 7:42PM GMT 05 Dec 2008

On tap: a queue for clean drinking water from a Unicef truck. Almost 600 people have died of cholera Photo: AP

When cholera first began rampaging through Zimbabwe's impoverished towns and cities, Robert Mugabe's government tried to play down the epidemic. According to official figures, it has now killed almost 600 people, and this week, the authorities finally gave in and appealed for international help. Health minister David Parirenyatwa admitted: "Our central hospitals are literally not functioning."

But openness is not the norm for officials in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital. At the Budiriro Polyclinic, in the high-density western suburbs, the fence has been covered in plastic sheeting to stop people seeing in. Outside the barrier, more than 50 relatives wait anxiously for news of their loved ones.

Inside, one Zimbabwean doctor and several foreigners plunge multiple drips into cholera victims, whose bodies have been emaciated by hunger and dehydrated by the horrendous diarrhoea that is main symptom of this.

The clinic's capacity has been trebled in the past fortnight, to almost 300 patients a day. Next to the building, a green tent has been set up in which bare light bulbs hang over rows of stretchers, and Unicef have an outpost packed with drips, drugs and medical paraphernalia. But it is not enough.

"No matter how much medicine they bring, they are not going to contain this cholera, because they are treating the symptoms rather than the disease," says Tongesai, a well-educated man in his mid-30s whose younger brother was admitted earlier in the day. "The cholera is coming from the water, which is contaminated. It is not the boreholes that are bringing in the contaminated water, but the water from the city. That water is now getting to the people without being treated, and that is how people get cholera. It is tantamount to drinking raw sewage." And this is why Mugabe's government bears ultimate responsibility for the suffering of its people.

By a cruel irony, the name of the suburb – Budiriro – means "progressing" in Zimbabwe's majority Shona language. For several years after independence in 1980, it lived up to its name. Mugabe inherited a fine health service, despite the bush war that had cut off large parts of the countryside. Preventive health care expanded enormously as exiled black doctors flocked home, foreign donors gave generously and the economy grew.

That came to an end in 2000, when Mugabe started seizing white-owned farms, ostensibly on behalf of landless blacks but in reality to hand them out to cronies to shore up support within the ruling Zanu-PF party. The move destroyed commercial agriculture, the source of most of the country's export earnings, and precipitated the collapse of the economy. As the government's own income fell in tandem, it started printing ever more bank notes to meet its own needs. The result was a vicious circle of hyperinflation, and a government utterly incapable of maintaining Zimbabwe's infrastructure.

In Budiriro – now a stronghold of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change – and elsewhere there are hardly any teachers left. Health workers have left for South Africa, Britain or Australia, or simply downed syringes because of their insultingly low pay, which they cannot in any case retrieve from their bank accounts. Under many roads in the township, the clay sewage pipes have crumbled, so that even in the searing heat of an unusually dry early December, pools of stinking water fester while children play nearby.

The town of Beitbridge, on the border with South Africa, has been almost as badly hit by the epidemic as Harare – and offers another graphic demonstration of the government's culpability. There, cholera spread as a result of houses built by the authorities after Mr Mugabe's "Murambatsvina" or "Clean out the trash" campaign of 2005, in which hundreds of thousands of poor urban residents, mostly MDC supporters, lost their homes.

"The government built these [new] houses on the upper part of the town, but put in no water or sewage systems," explains a health worker. "People are using the bush, and when the rain came last month it brought their faeces into the Limpopo River and into the town's water supply. That is how it started."

The only ones who might profit from
this are the undertakers, but even they aren't seeing an upturn. "We don't get any cholera bodies," says Edward, the manager of the White Dove funeral parlour in Budiriro, "as they have to go to the City of Harare or the Ministry of Health. So there is no extra business for us." But he is still busy: yesterday there were about 10 bodies, mostly younger people, in the cold room. The cholera outbreak comes on top of
an Aids epidemic that has left Zimbabwe with one of the lowest life expectancies in the world.

Even Mr Mugabe's machinery of repression is creaking under the strain. Groups of uniformed soldiers have rioted several times in Harare in recent days, out of frustration at their inability to withdraw their wages. But the protests were quickly crushed by riot police; several soldiers have been arrested, and sources say that others have been humiliated by senior officers back in their barracks.

Still, no one expects a coup or popular revolution any time soon. The civilians have been crushed by years of brutality, and are fully occupied merely trying to survive. The disgruntled soldiers are low-ranking and disorganised, whereas the reliability of the riot police is ensured by extra pay and privileges. The upper echelons of the military are loyal members of the Zanu-PF network, with their own interests to protect – not least the risk of prosecution for gross violations of human rights under any new government.

Zanu-PF is also so factionalised that Mr Mugabe remains essential to keeping it together. By playing off different groupings, and refusing to create a succession plan, he has ensured that his chieftains would rather keep him in office than see their rivals take the presidency.

Under a power-sharing agreement, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai is due to become prime minister, but a constitutional amendment is needed that will not be in place until the early part of next year, and could still be delayed further. The deal will give Mr Tsvangirai a veto over senior government appointments, among other powers, but it is certain that Mr Mugabe, whose bad faith was demonstrated by his unilateral allocation of government ministries between the parties, will do his utmost to maintain his control.

In the meantime, the suffering of Zimbabwe's people continues – and worsens. The Infectious Diseases Hospital, about five miles south of Harare on the pockmarked highway to South Africa, is the only government hospital still open in the capital. Between five and 15 cholera fatalities arrive at its mortuary every day.

Outside the building, one of the lucky ones, Regina Chifamba, sits on a bench, crying. The 28-year-old, whose frailty belies her age, has just been released after being successfully treated for cholera. But she has no idea what has happened to her 12-year-old son, Blessing.

While in hospital she was told he too
had been admitted, but his name did not appear in the records, so she has no way of knowing whether he has been discharged, disappeared, or died.

"We don't know what our political leaders have thought of us," she says. "They are busy buying fuel and cars for the ministers, but spend nothing to treat our water. Now I can't even find my son."

Amnesty head presses SAfrica over Zimbabwe

http://www.africasia.com

 LONDON, Dec 5 (AFP)

The head of human rights group Amnesty International called on South Africa
Friday to take a lead with other African governments in putting pressure for
change in Zimbabwe.

In an interview with AFP, Irene Khan said the cholera epidemic was the
latest abuse of the Zimbabwean people.

"We would like to see African governments, in particular South Africa, take
a strong lead now and ensure first of all that people's right are protected,
and secondly that there is a solution, quick, rapid in Zimbabwe," she said.

"The cholera epidemic is the latest in a whole series of abuses and
violations that the people of Zimbabwe are suffering," she said, citing
evictions and attacks on activists and dissidents.

These also included "famine created by disruption of the distribution
system. And now we have cholera," she said.

"So how much more are these people going to suffer from the Mugabe
government? We have had a refugee exodus into South Africa."

"We are pushing governments, and in this case the South African government
plays a critical role, and African governments in general play a critical
role, (to put) pressure to change the situation in Zimbabwe."

She was speaking as South Africa said the situation across its border, where
massive food shortages were being compounded by the cholera outbreak, was at
crisis levels and "the time for political point scoring is over."

South African NGOs condemn alleged state-sanctioned violence in Zimbabwe

http://www.sowetan.co.za

Report by Lebogang Tsele
5 December 2008

The South African Council of Churches and the Open Society Initiative for
Southern Africa have bitterly condemned the recent abduction of journalist
and activist Jestina Mukoko by a gang of plain-clothed men suspected to be
police operatives.

Speaking at a press briefing in Rosebank, Johannesburg, on Friday, Open
Society chairperson Musa Hlope also criticised the mediation process for
'tolerating' the violence that has carried on in Zimbabwe.

Hlope charged: "No sound mediation would continue with the mediation while
others are being killed. And that's what the SADC mediation has done".

He said: "We cannot hold the person who got most of the votes, who actually
should be leading the government of Zimbabwe, to be the rogue, when the
actual rogue resists to give (up) power".

Mukoko, who is the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, a civil society
organisation involved in monitoring and documenting human rights abuses in
Zimbabwe, was abducted in the early hours of Wednesday morning in her home
in Norton, a suburb on the outskirts of Harare.

It is alleged that the men, who identified themselves as officers of the Law
and Order Section of the Zimbabwe Republic Police, abducted Mukoko still in
her nightdress, in front of her teenage son.

In a joint statement released on Friday, the SA Council of Churches and the
Open Society initiative have demanded from the Zimbabwean authorities "the
immediate and unconditional release of Mukoko and all other individuals who
are being illegally held by the state authorities in Zimbabwe as well as the
immediate ending of state purges, violence and organised torture by the
current establishment and its security agents".

Speaking at the press briefing, Isabella Matambanadzo, the Open Society
Initiative's programmes director - and close friend of Mukoko - said: "I'm
here to speak about a friend who has been an outstanding journalist in
Zimbabwe. My friend, my comrade and my colleague was taken from her home at
gunpoint. This happening in the context of the 16 Days of Activism Against
Violence Against Women and Children. It also happens when we know what
happens to women who are abducted in times of crises and in times of
hardships".

Matambanadzo made an impassioned plea to everyone to look out for Justina
and to do whatever they can for her safe return to her incredibly distraught
family and community who have been looking for her.

She also asked the media to let the world know that, "those with a track
record of working in the media in Zimbabwe are being violated and harassed
and abused".

"We demand her safe return," Matambanadzo said, "and also the release of all
others who have been abducted in this fashion by the repressive machinery in
Zimbabwe".

"We are not afraid to make these demands and we will continue to work hard
to advocate for our rights to be respected, to live in a free, democratic
and peaceful society."

Eddie Makue, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches,
said the council thoroughly condemns these acts and the fear that is being
meted out to the people of Zimbabwe is something that they are very
disturbed about.

He also said the national executive committee of the SA Council of Churches
has been in communication with the mediator, former president Thabo Mbeki,
with regards to the situation in Zimbabwe urging him to do something "very
urgently".

The search for Mukoko continues in Zimbabwe.

Cholera Epidemic in Zimbabwe Continues to Worsen

ZIMBABWE: Cholera timeline

Zinwa, Not Sanctions to Blame for Cholera

Financial Gazette (Harare)

Mavis Makuni

6 December 2008

YOU know things are coming to a head when even the state daily, The Herald,
the unrivaled frontrunner for any awards for sunshine journalism, populates
its entire front page with stories that drive home the point that in spite
of the desperate efforts of its propagandists and spin doctors, the
government can no longer deceive anyone about the breakdown of virtually
every thing in the country.

The paper led its December 2 issue front page with a banner headline
announcing: "Water woes persist." Two double-deck straplines below it which
said: "Business grinds to a halt" and "Lasting solution sought" served to
amplify just how shambolic things are. A trio of stories completing the page
made equally discouraging reading. "Health is everyone's responsibility",
crowed the headline of the second lead. This turned out to be a clumsy way
for the government to admit it has presided over the collapse of the health
delivery system and now needs stakeholders to bail it out by coming on board
to clean up its mess. The next headline declared: "Clients stranded as bank
charges soar", which speaks for itself. To complete the bad news-infused
front page was a brief headlined: "Suspect fatally stabbed". Private media
journalists have been routinely attacked and mocked for supposedly going out
of their way to report only on negative developments and ignoring the good
works of government but here is an official publication finding it
impossible too to ignore the ugly realities on the ground. The story about
the continuing water woes in Harare comes after it emerged that contrary to
the government's attempts to downplay the cholera crisis, almost a million
people have so far succumbed to the disease. The main cause of the epidemic
is the lack of dependable, clean water supplies in densely populated urban
centres, a fact of life since the government foisted the Zimbabwe National
Water Authority (ZINWA) on the nation to forcibly take over water management
from local authorities that were doing a better job.

That the advent of ZINWA has been an unmitigated disaster was confirmed once
more by the revelation of the reason why practically the whole of Harare did
not have water from Saturday to Monday evening this week. The authority had
stopped pumping water from the main waterworks because it had run out of
essential water treatment chemicals! Even those who take sadistic pleasure
in turning a blind eye on ZINWA's inefficiency must admit that it is the
height of ineptitude and irresponsibility for the parastatal not to keep
reserves of these vital chemicals and to put the health of an entire city at
risk when supplies run out. And all this is allowed to happen in the middle
of a cholera epidemic!

It is at times like this that it becomes clear that government officials
could not care less what happens to the people and say things only for the
sake of being seen to be in charge. Health Minister David Parirenyatwa's
response to the health disaster was to say he continued to worry about the
water situation. "I want to stress the issue of shaking hands, It's high
time people stopped shaking hands." Is this the best the steward of the
nation's health can do after all this time when ZINWA's inefficiency has
endangered the lives of residents? Is this not the same meaningless thing he
said during an outbreak in Mabvuku and Tafara last year? Advice from
President Robert Mugabe calling on Zimbabweans to observe higher hygienic
standards was even more confounding. With all due respect, Your Excellency,
how do people keep their surroundings spick-and -span without water? How do
people avoid contracting the disease when they are surrounded by raw sewage
and uncollected garbage in their residential areas? And where do they go
when struck down with the fatal illness when public health centres have no
doctors, drugs, or water?

The government cannot continue to refuse to take responsibility for these
unacceptable conditions that it has created through corruption, dereliction
of duty and pursuance of populist policies designed only to ensure
self-preservation. Claiming that the cholera outbreak has been traced to the
"effects of the illegal sanctions" is being dishonest and cruel because it
gives the authorities false justification for sitting back and doing
nothing. The powers-that-be would have the nation believe that the collapse
of agriculture, health delivery, education, public transport, the justice
system, water reticulation, the professionalism of security agents, the
collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar and virtually everything else can be
attributed to sanctions. What they never explain is what ministers are
earning their salaries for if all those men and women in the bloated
government are clueless and are unable or unwilling to apply their minds to
addressing the factors that led to the imposition of targeted sanctions.

The Deputy Minister of Water Resources and Infrastructural Development,
Walter Mzembi and the Minister of State for Policy Implementation, Webster
Shamu are reported to have met representatives from the business sector in a
bid to identify a "lasting solution". The president of the Confederation of
Zimbabwe Industries, Kumbirai Katsande had earlier told journalists how
businesses were forced to close for days on end and send workers home
because of the water problems.

The first step towards finding a lasting solution is for the government to
admit that it blundered when it dismantled a functioning management system
that had been in place for many years in order to impose ZINWA to take over.
The government may have found it politically expedient to ride roughshod
over local authorities that opposed the move but the chickens are now coming
home to roost. The imposition of ZINWA has not improved service delivery in
any way but has instead spawned a catastrophe that government is trying to
ignore. Declarations that "there is no going back" on the issue of ZINWA's
jurisdiction over water affairs would make sense only if the parastatal had
risen to the occasion. It has not. All the blame for the high death toll and
the squalid conditions the people are forced to live in should be shouldered
by ZINWA and the government. It is clear that for anything to change, the
powers-that-be need a prescription for a dose of the truth serum. The simple
act of telling the truth would be a good starting point for this government.

Zambia on high alert over cholera outbreak from Zimbabwe

http://www.apanews.net

APA-Lusaka (Zambia) Zambian Deputy Minister of Health, Mwendoi Akakandelwa,
on Friday said his country was on high alert for any possible outbreak of
cholera from neighbouring Zimbabwe.

Akakandelwa told journalists on Friday that the situation was serious but
under control, adding that one Zimbabwe national had died at a cholera
centre set up at Chirundu border post, while another was receiving treatment
at the same centre.

In addition, one Zambian woman and her baby who had travelled to Zimbabwe
had contracted the disease and were admitted at a health centre in that
country.

He said the ministry had dispatched health officials to Zimbabwe to treat
the woman and her child and return home with her.

In addition, his ministry has imposed strict measures at the country's three
shared border posts with Zimbabwe.

The measurers instituted include a ban on imports of uncertified foodstuffs
from Zimbabwe and the screening of all people entering or leaving Zambia.

Those exhibiting symptoms of cholera are being treated, while others have
been denied entry into Zambia, he said.

The minister, however, ruled out the possibility of the country closing its
borders with Zimbabwe, saying the ministry is satisfied that the measures it
has put in place are sufficient to prevent the deadly disease from breaking
out in Zambia.

  MC/nm/APA 2008-12-05

$200m note on cards

http://www.herald.co.zw

THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe will soon introduce a $200 million note in a
move expected to bring convenience to the transacting public.

The introduction of the note follows the announcement by the central bank
that it would, with effect from next Friday, raise the weekly cash
withdrawal limit to $500 million.

Depositors would also be allowed to withdraw up to $10 billion a month from
December 19 on production of a payslip, and their full take-home salary,
also on submission of a payslip, from January 12 next year.

Plans for the introduction of a $200 million note are contained in a
Statutory Instrument published in yesterday's Government Gazette by the
Minister of Finance, Cde Samuel Mumbengegwi.

Distinctive features of the $200 million note include an impression of the
Zimbabwe Parliament Building and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the
National Heroes' Acre on one side, and the RBZ logo, which comprises three
balancing rocks, on the other side.

However, the regulations do not state the date on which the note comes into
circulation.

Cde Mumbengegwi also gazetted other monetary measures recently taken by the
central bank aimed at restoring sanity in the banking sector.

These include the introduction of $10 million, $50 million and $100 million
notes which went into circulation on Thursday.

Other regulations gazetted included the raising of the cash withdrawal limit
to $100 million a week, up from $500 000 a day. - HR.

Zim army in state of anarchy

Friday, 05 December 2008

Helping themselves!!! Catch us, if you can!! Let me have the last one, others are gone.

Is Anyone Safe Anymore?

Financial Gazette (Harare)

6 December 2008

editorial

SCORES of soldiers have been causing mayhem in Harare's Central Business
District (CBD) where they were seen in the past week beating up members of
the public, dispossessing them of their property including cash, while
destroying shops and ransacking anything valuable they could lay their hands
on.

Just like ordinary citizens, the soldiers have been unable to access cash
from the banking system because of the acute shortages of banknotes which
the central bank has tried to explain to anyone who cares to listen. And in
a fit of thuggery disguised as rage, the soldiers descended on illegal money
changers, who have lost quite a fortune in the past week.

Eyewitnesses said the riotous soldiers fumed about where the illegal foreign
currency dealers were getting crisp new banknotes when everyone else was
spending long hours in bank queues only to access a measly $500,000 per day,
which cannot buy a loaf of bread.

The wild scenes of soldiers dressed in full military regalia, on the rampage
across the capital, were reminiscent of the chaos that characterises failed
states. The scenes were also a sad reminder of the food riots that hit the
country in the late 1990s when members of the public left a trail of
destruction countrywide.

What is extremely disturbing about the latest episode is that it was not the
civilians who led by mayhem in central Harare but members of the Zimbabwe
National Army (ZNA). And yet uniformed forces should be the last members of
society to lose their heads no matter how justifiable their grievances may
be.

While Defence Minister Sydney Sekeramayi has condemned the actions of the
rogue soldiers as "unacceptable, deplorable, reprehensible and criminal,"
the nation cannot believe the leisurely manner with which the government
approached this whole episode.

Whereas government is quick to ruthlessly crush demonstrations by the civic
society and the opposition, it was rather late and slow in responding to
these ugly acts, giving currency to speculation that the violence could have
been sanctioned from the top. By trying to ignore the disturbances, the
state media -- both print and electronic -- did not help matters.

Had the government moved quickly to quell the disturbances, probably the
scale of the damage caused would not have been severe.

Sekeramayi must launch a full inquiry by an independent panel of retired
judges and military experts to get to the bottom of these deplorable acts of
violence. No stone must be left unturned.

The manner with which the rogue soldiers executed their mission makes it
difficult for anyone to believe that these acts were spontaneous. There are
reports that some of the soldiers were bussed into the capital and that they
made sure they had nothing on them that could be used to link the
perpetrators of the violence to a particular battalion or barrack which
means the motive could have been predetermined.

There could be a bigger motive behind the skirmishes if these reports are
anything to go by. Who knows, it could be that there are some in the ZNA who
would want to create mayhem to justify a state of emergency and derail
efforts to form an all-inclusive government.

It could also be that the government might want to use these incidents to
crush planned demonstrations by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and
the National Constitutional Assembly.

In conducting these investigations, the government should also be honest
with itself, and admit where it would have erred. It is not a secret anymore
that the barracks have become uninhabitable because of the shortages of
food. Soldiers are going for days, if not weeks, without food and to make
matters worse, they cannot access their salaries from the banks.

Instead of moving with lightning speed to open the passage for food aid and
other forms of humanitarian assistance, government is taking its sweet time
to respond to the plight of the ordinary Zimbabweans.

Just as the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, said, the situation in Zimbabwe
is reaching catastrophic levels and yet there is inaction on the part of the
authorities.

Some 5.5 million Zimbabweans, half the population, face imminent starvation
due to the food crisis. A cholera epidemic has killed more than 500 people
countrywide, and an anthrax outbreak has claimed three lives so far. The
country's sewage and water facilities have collapsed, hospitals have closed
and garbage has gone for months uncollected.

The fact that senior government officials and politicians are living in
opulence while ordinary citizens are trapped in grinding poverty is creating
a huge divide between the masses and their leadership, which partly explains
why members of the public were seen joining the soldiers in ransacking shops
and beating up the police.

Public anger against the deteriorating situation in the country has been
bottled up for a very long time and these pent-up emotions can rupture with
consequences too ghastly to contemplate for the country.

Unfortunately, soldiers should have been the last group of people to direct
their anger in this manner. If uniformed forces start meting out instant
justice on civilians, who then will protect members of the public? What this
means is that Zimbabweans are not safe anymore.

The destruction of property at a time when businesses are failing to restock
because of the price controls means that the affected business people are
ruined. Sadly insurance companies cannot compensate for the loss of property
due to riots, which also means that those affected will have to borrow at
extortionist interest rates to fix their shops and restock.

As it is, businesses operating in the CBD are gripped with uncertainty and
fear. They don't know what tomorrow holds for them, should these misguided
elements continue to cause pandemonium.
It is government's responsibility to reassure a skeptical nation that
everything in its powers would be done to ensure peace and tranquility
prevails in Zimbabwe and that no one is above the law. What has happened
over the past few days shows that it is very easy for a peaceful country
such as Zimbabwe to slip into a banana republic.

Zimbabwe leader hints at fresh elections

http://www.nation.co.ke/

By KITSEPILE NYATHI, NATION Correspondent in HARAREPosted Friday, December 5
2008 at 18:01

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has urged his supporters to prepare for
fresh elections any time from now, in yet another sign that the faltering
power-sharing agreement between his ruling Zanu PF and the opposition is
headed for collapse.

Mr Mugabe whose 28-year-old hold on power was this week shaken by a revolt
by disgruntled soldiers, issued an upteenth ultimatum to the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change to join a unity government dominated by Zanu
PF or he would go it alone.

As Zimbabwe's economic meltdown intensifies and a cholera epidemic that has
so far claimed the lives of over 565 people spreads, Zanu PF and the MDC
continue to haggle over the distribution of cabinet posts in the unity
government.

"We agreed to give them 13 ministries while we share the Ministry of Home
Affairs but if the arrangement fails to work in the next one-and-a half to
two years, then we would go for elections," Mr Mugabe told supporters.

While, it is not the first time that the 84-year-old president has
threatened to go it alone, the hint of an early election signaled a major
climb down.

The ruling party has insisted that Mr Mugabe won a free and fair election on
June 27 and must see out his five-year term.

The main MDC whose leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, won the first round of the
March elections but was forced to pull out of the run off poll by state
sponsored violence, has demanded fresh elections if the September 15
power-sharing agreement does not work.

The opposition has won support from neighbouring Botswana, which has openly
called for fresh elections to resolve the political impasse in Zimbabwe.

Zanu PF will hold its annual conference beginning Wednesday and the
power-sharing agreement with the MDC will be one of the major items under
discussion.

Analysts say although fresh elections will be ideal to address Mr Mugabe's
problem of illegitimacy, the impoverished country might not be able to
afford another poll.

The MDC wants an election sponsored and supervised by the international
community.

Calls grow for Robert Mugabe to be removed by force

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

December 6, 2008

Martin Fletcher
Britain and America added their voices yesterday to increasing demands for
the removal of President Mugabe, by force if necessary.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said that the world was "watching
with horror the worsening situation in Zimbabwe", and assured the country's
neighbours that there would be massive support for the removal of his
 "rogue" regime.

Citing the rapidly spreading cholera epidemic, the implosion of the economy
and the collapse of public services, he said there was now "international
clamour" for change.

He added: "World leaders are debating what can be done to alleviate
suffering in the face of a Government seemingly so determined to bring
misery on its own people."

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said it was "well past time for
Robert Mugabe to leave. If this is not evident for the international
community, I don't know what would be."
Zimbabwe declared an emergency this week and appealed for international help
to battle a cholera outbreak that has killed 575 people, with 12,700
reported cases of the disease, according to the UN. Western officials
believe the true figure is far higher.

Those living in remote areas, however, face a mostly unreported scourge of
starvation. The Times visited one clinic where workers knew of eight deaths,
but added that many more had probably gone unrecorded. Those areas
considered opposition strongholds - mostly in the west and south - are
having food aid withheld.

Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel peace laureate,
said that Mr Mugabe was "destroying a wonderful country" and should be
removed by force if necessary. "I think the world must say: 'you have been
responsible with your cohorts for gross violations and you are going to face
indictment in The Hague unless you step down'," he said.

Plans are being laid for a UN summit on Zimbabwe this month, as Western
diplomats press for a meeting between the Security Council and diplomatic
"Elders" Jimmy Carter and Kofi Annan, who were denied entry to Zimbabwe on a
humanitarian mission.

The European Union is planning to expand sanctions against Mr Mugabe's
regime next week, diplomats said, but Zimbabwe's plight is also moving
rapidly up the agenda of its African neighbours, as cholera and refugees
spill across their borders.

South Africa demanded that Mr Mugabe and the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) swiftly form a power-sharing government because
Zimbabweans are "dying in the street". Mozambique put its border areas on
high alert for cholera, while Raila Odinga, the Kenyan Prime Minister, said
it was "time for decisive action to push [Mugabe] out of power". Botswana
has also pressed for sanctions on Zimbabwe.

Bottom of the abyss

http://www.mg.co.za/

Dec 05 2008 06:00

'No worse there is none," was the anguished cry of poet Gerard Manley
Hopkins -- and it is an apt description of the crisis in Zimbabwe. Time and
again since the early 2000s, that tortured country seemed to have reached
the bottom of the abyss, only to fall still further.

This week's riots by soldiers have been widely read as marking the beginning
of the end. The security forces are Robert Mugabe's only remaining source of
power. If he can't keep them on his side, surely his days must be numbered?

Alas, not necessarily. A fraction of Zimbabwe's 30 000-strong army, mainly
junior officers, rampaged through the streets of Harare this week, and there
was no evidence of an organised mutiny.

The top echelons of the military remain loyal to Mugabe, as do the dreaded
military police. The disturbances seem to have been contained for now;
significantly, soldiers did not join a protest against currency restrictions
by citizens. Observers believe their intention was to try to influence the
Zanu-PF congress next week.

As a provider of basic services and a framework for economic activity, the
Zimbabwean state has collapsed. The cholera epidemic highlights its
inability to furnish the most elementary health services; water supplies
have broken down; roads are disintegrating; schools cannot teach;
hyperinflation has destroyed the currency.

But those are problems only for the suffering masses. The ruling
kleptocracy, with its access to fuel and foreign exchange through the state,
its private boreholes and its ability to source food and health services
from South Africa, can hang on for many months yet.

This is why Mugabe has refused to concede real power to the Movement for
Democratic Change, despite losing an election. It is pointless for Thabo
Mbeki to try to strong-arm Morgan Tsvangirai into signing an agreement that
leaves the same criminals in charge and has no hope of inducing the West to
release the rescue funds essential for economic recovery.

Forget about negotiations -- they will solve nothing. The time has come for
radical measures by the region, spearheaded by South Africa. The bottom line
must be the imposition of "smart' sanctions against the ruling clique, of
the kind already applied by the EU and the US, to sever their lifeline to
South Africa.

Zimbabwe must be suspended from the SADC and excluded from its
consultations. And as Botswana's foreign minister has proposed, the final
response to continued intransigence must be comprehensive regional
sanctions, which would block Zim­babwe's exports and cut off fuel and
electricity supplies.

For the citizenry the pain would be acute, but hopefully brief. Their plight
could hardly be worse than it is at present, and the harsh fact is that
there is no possibility of it improving until the octogenarian dictator and
his key lieutenants step off the political stage. It is time for South
Africa to abandon Mbeki's failed policies of appeasement and to provide real
leadership.

Battle of the spin
The art of political communication is lost. In the past months activists and
politicians have eschewed all notion of the cerebral and have gone animal.
They have called each other snake, baboon and cockroach as ANC members, past
and present, have failed to cope with the momentous political changes in
their ranks. It's sad.

The ANC and its allied mass democratic movement was always a party of deep
and often exhaustive debate where the descent into the simian was not
tolerated. Now, it's all changed. When ideas failed and loyalties split, the
ANC president first resorted to name-calling.

He referred to former president Thabo Mbeki as a snake and then called his
party's splintered members "snakes". It's gone down the evolutionary chain
since then and arguably taken political life to sewer level.

Good then that the Congress of the People (Cope) has invested in two dynamic
spin doctors who can raise the tone of South African debate. JJ Tabane and
Sipho Ngwema are former award-winning government spokesmen.

Tabane worked at the environment and tourism department where he was a wily
communicator and, of course, Ngwema made the Scorpions as popular as Marvel
comic super-heroes when he was tasked with showing South Africa what they
were about. He did a zealous job, inviting the media along on raids and
allowing us into the sting factory.

Of course, the jury's out on whether that was a good thing for the
crime-fighters, as they have now been hung out to dry by politicians, but
there is little doubt that Ngwema knows how to promote new organisations.

Over at Luthuli House, political communication is stuck in a Nineties rut.
Neither spokesperson Jessie Duarte nor her second in command Carl Niehaus
seems to know how to sell the post-Polokwane ANC and both get stuck in
fighting a rear-guard battle with the new kid on the block.

By focusing on the name of the new party and using every platform to
lambaste the splinter group, the ANC's spokespeople show they are worried
about the impact in next year's election.

So while the two may complain that the media are fixated with Cope, that's
not quite true. By choosing a communication campaign that is defensive and
not lateral-minded, they have turned Cope into the David facing a lumbering
old Goliath. And that was before Tabane and Ngwema were hired. If the two
are to succeed, they should focus not on what's wrong with the ANC, but with
what's right about the newcomers.

Many South Africans are happy to stick with the ANC because it has delivered
on grants, houses, electricity and water to many poor communities. But there
is also a large cohort of South Africans seeking a new political home.
Political communication was never at a greater premium and on this score at
least, the ruling party is simply not coping.

Will schools reopen next year?

http://www.fingaz.co.zw

Nelson Chenga, Staff Reporter

"FINALLY we have come to the end of Grade One. It has been a great
experience for us. It's been a year full of fun, hard work and play.,"a
class of excited and neatly dressed young girls recite a prose to thunderous
applause from their parents at one of the country's elite schools.

Behind the children, the wall is brightly decorated and two posters with the
words "Merry Christmas" sum up the mood at the school, one of the few
privately-run institutions in Zimbabwe to complete a full calendar year of
learning in a country where 80 percent of the children attended a meagre 22
days of learning.
With most public schools largely now dysfunctional and paralysed by a
teachers' strike, the country's elite schools - a tiny fraction of the
country's public schools - scrapped through 2008 by demanding fees in hard
currencies or in fuel coupons to keep their institutions running.
And as the country's schools shut down this week for the annual festive
season, an atmosphere of doom and gloom hangs in the air.
Zimbabwe could be headed for its worst school calendar year yet as the slow
formation of an inclusive government further drags the economy deeper into
the woods.
Stakeholders in the beleaguered education sector have warned that if
conditions that prevailed this year, such as poor salaries for teachers and
food shortages, persist into next year there is no guarantee that schools
will be functioning normally, let alone reopen.
Although this week is the official end of the third school term, more than
three quarters of government and mission schools ground to a halt mid year
after teachers walked out of class citing the pathetic wages and poor
working conditions.
Many boarding schools were also forced to shut down due to severe food and
water shortages threatening to plunge the country into its worst
humanitarian crisis since Independence in 1980.
"To be frank with you, we cannot guarantee that the schools will open for
proper lessons under the present scenario," said Zimbabwe Teachers
Association (ZIMTA) chief executive, Sifiso Ndlovu.
"The preparations for next year must start now. The third term was not
normal after teachers failed to attend class due to poor salaries. Schools
may open without teachers again next term if the issues affecting education
in this country are not addressed," said Ndlovu.
ZIMTA, which lost 10 percent of its 58,000 members to neighbouring countries
between January and October this year, has recommended that a "national
Indaba" be convened to discuss the crisis facing the country's education
sector, which has completely lost its glamour.
The Progressive Teac-hers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) has also called on the
Zimbabwe government to engage all stakeholders before the country loses the
remaining teachers.
During the second term, 40 percent of the country's total teaching posts at
primary and secondary levels were vacant.
While it is still not clear how many more teachers left the country in the
third term, unconfirmed reports suggest that over 20,000 teachers have
joined the brain drain since January.
Figures being bandied around suggest that the sector could be running on
less than half its total requirement of ne-arly 120,000 tea-chers.
And a new th-reat loomed large last week after South Africa ann-ounced it
was scouting far and wide across its borders to fill a staggering 94,000
vacant posts for teachers over the next seven years.
South Africa's massive need to immediately fill some 62,000 teac-hing posts
has a potential of completely wiping aw-ay Zimbabwe's re-maining teachers.
"We are getting very worried as the politicians are not promising us
anything in the New Year as more and more teachers are ready to leave. Two
thousand and nine promises to be a dark year," said PTUZ president, Raymond
M-ajongwe.
"The departure of our members to other countries is shocking. We are
encouraging them to stay home, but they tell us that there is no reason to
because there is no indication from government that their plight would be
addressed. Teachers have been ignored.
"A teacher is earning the minimum withdrawal limit of $100 million announced
recently by the Reserve Bank governor (Gideon Go-no) and that's a mockery to
our profession," added Majongwe.
However, a mi-xture of a dismally performing and crumpling economy of a
country that is failing to feed itself, infrastructural breakdown, hunger
and disease, like the presently ravaging outbreak of cholera, are real push
factors that are threatening the welfare of the most vulnerable in society -
children.
Some five million people require food assistance after nearly a decade of
poor harvests due to a combination of drought, corruption, mismanagement and
misguided government policies.
Catherine Braggs, the United Nations' deputy emergency relief coordinator,
has warned that the appalling state of the country's education sector is "a
real concern for us because school is one of the safe environments for
children, including orphans, so it is both a literacy issue and a safe
environment issue".
Braggs said the plight of Zimbabwe's children is being graphically
highlighted by the number of the country's starving people, which "is going
to rise as we go into the hunger season, traditionally between January and
April" while the country breaks down across all sectors.
Briefing journalists from the UN offices in New York recently Braggs said:
"The situation is acute and is expected to worsen by the end of the year,
and probably get even worse in the beginning of the year. So, without
massive assistance, this situation is going to get much, much worse."
Although the UN has marshalled millions in donor funds to avert a possible
humanitarian crisis, without a properly functioning government in place to
quickly address the crisis in the education sector, the majority of Zimbabwe's
children may not attend school next year.
Recent UN statistics indicate that Zimbabwe's sch-ool attendance has
plu-mmeted from 90 percent to less than 20 percent to date.
And as the government, which is largely non-existent at the moment due to
the protracted political struggles in the country, the parents have found
themselves increasingly shouldering the burden of ensuing that their
children get a descent education despite the difficulties.

Fresh claims sour Botswana/Zimbabwe relationship

http://www.afriquenligne.fr

Gaborone, Botswana - Botswana reacted with shock Wednesday to fresh claims
by Zimbabwe that it was involved in clandestine manoeuvres to force a regime
change in Harare.

The allegations threaten to dent the already-strained diplomatic
relationship be tween the two countries.

The Botswana Guardian of Friday reported that Harare remained bent that
Gaborone was hatching a plot to topple Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF government
and has engineered covet tactics in a desperate attempt to convince the
Southern African Develo p ment Community (SADC) of the 'propriety' of its
claims.

Zimbabwe first made the accusations through concerns raised at the 27-28
October extra Ordinary Summit of the SADC Organ Troika in Harare that
Botswana was training MDC-Tsvangirai youth on its soil under the pretext of
a so-called 'National Youth Symposium Training Programme' in order to effect
or force regime change in Zimbabwe.

The accusations were repeated at the extra-ordinary meeting of the
Interstate Defence and Security Committee of the Organ Troika in Maputo,
Mozambique, 5 November, prompting angry reaction from Botswana, which has
since dismissed the allegations as "baseless, absurd and ridiculous".

According to the Guardian, the Zimbabwean Embassy in Gaborone was this week
back at the blame game, straining the relations further through a media
statement that claimed Gaborone turned down an invitation by Harare made at
a November meeting in Gaborone of the team set up by the Interstate Defence
and Security Committee of the Organ Troika to investigate the allegation
levelled against Botswana.

The seemingly dubious release, dated 28 November 2008, written on the
Zimbabwe Embassy letter-head and bearing the embassy's date stamp, but
without any signature, claimed that Zimbabwean authorities had invited
Botswana along with the investigating team to visit Harare to witness
predestinations on its security concerns.

It stated that the presentations were subsequently made in the absence of
Botswana authorities on 25 and 26 November, adding that apart from the
presentations, the investigating team "had an opportunity to speak to some
of the witnesses".

"The claims that the government of Zimbabwe had failed to provide evidence
on its security concerns are therefore not a true reflection of developments
regarding that issue," concluded the Zimbabwean Embassy statement.

Responding to the fresh Harare claims this week, Botswana Minister of
Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Phandu Sekelemani said the
country was not aware of an invitation extended to it by Zimbabwe to
accompany the investigating team to witness the presentations in Harare.

"What invitations? To go to Harare to do what? In the first place, the terms
of reference of the investigation team spell out clearly where the
investigations should be conducted. They ought to be conducted in Gaborone,
where in the wild dreams of Zimbabwean authorities, there are camps where
MDC-T cadres are receiving training."

Sekelemani said at the first meeting of the investigating team in Gaborone
20 November, Zimbabwe failed to provide evidence and instead tried to
persuade everybody to agree to travel to Harare.

"On the other hand, we insisted that the investigating work should start
here as Botswana is the place where we are supposed to be training MDC-T
cadres. There was never an agreement that the team should visit Zimbabwe,"
said Sekelemani.

He said the government of Botswana was surprised when the next Saturday,
President Ian Khama and his entourage returned from an official visit to
England, he received a call from his ministry officials notifying him that
the Organ Troika had been to Harare and therefore wanted to meet them.

"We were taken aback by this development, but nevertheless we went to meet
them whereupon we told them their way of doing things was wrong."

However, on the fresh developments, Sekelemani said "we will wait to see
what happens."

Gaborone - 05/12/2008

Poverty, Hunger Force Girls Into Prostitution

Financial Gazette (Harare)

Nelson Chenga

6 December 2008

Nyamapanda - As the night grew darker at Nyamapanda business centre a
jukebox could be heard at one of the night spots loudly playing one of
Yvonne Chaka Chaka's 1980s hit songs Take my love it's free.

A crowd began swelling outside the nightclub, venue of a live performance by
one of Zimbabwe's music icons, Nicholas Zacharia.

A message on the ravages of the HIV/Aids pandemic from the popular singer
affectionately known as the "Senior Lecturer" that warm night could have
done the trick in changing the immoral behavioral patterns in the border
town if only the revellers were interested in such a lecture.

But unfortunately the main reason for attending the show was purely
entertainment in an area starved of other forms of amusements outside the
consumption of alcohol and prostitution, a trade that has taken root in the
remote settlement and increasingly attracting younger members as poverty and
hunger take their toll.

A complete collapse of the country's education system that has seen teachers
emigrating or simply staying at home due to the way below poverty margin
salaries has resulted in girls being forced into prostitution to survive.

Increased traffic of Zimbabweans travelling to the border town to buy food
across in Mozambique has also attracted scores of villagers among them the
young girls whose youthfulness is an instant attraction to male prostitutes.

"Female prostitutes here are getting younger. Some of them must be in Grade
Seven," said one reveller downing a can of beer as he waited for the show to
begin.

And judging by the vulgar language in the crowd it is clear that by the time
the show starts most of the revellers would be silly drunk.

It would be folly to imagine therefore that a teenager, especially a young
girl, hanging around such a place would leave "unscathed".

The young girls, aware of the fact that under the country's laws they are
not allowed to enter nightclubs, hang about in small groups in secluded
places. The live performance will be so loud that they can hear from outside
while they solicit for clients.

With Mudzi among the country's poorest districts with no proper access to
national television or radio broadcasts the live musical show also attracted
other girls and boys who hope to hear the singer play and hopefully catch a
glimpse of the sungura icon.

But under the cover of darkness in which drunkards prowl for young blood, it
would by sheer luck for these young girls to escape some form of abuse or
molestation.

Nora Krantzler, a researcher with an international non-profit making
organisation, ETR Associates, highlighting the effects of alcohol on HIV/
AIDS spread says: "A person who has been drinking is more likely to pressure
someone to take risks or to give in to pressure to have unsafe sex..."

Krantzler cautions that because "you cannot tell by looking if someone has
HIV" and "although there are treatments for HIV, it (HIV) is still a life
threatening disease. The best was to protect yourself against HIV is to make
decisions about sex and drugs and stick to them no matter what. Drinking
alcohol can make it harder to do this."

As Zimbabwe joined the world on December 1 to commemorate World Aids Day the
plight of girls ravaged by poverty and hunger brought some sobering thoughts
to the nation.

According to the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef): "Poverty
exacerbates the effects of HIV/ AIDS.

"It entrenches social, economic and gender disparities and undermines
protective family environments... Some 300 million children go to bed hungry
every day."

Unicef also says some 13 percent of children aged between seven and 18 years
in developing countries have never attended school with 32 percent of girls
in sub-Saharan Africa out of school, yet education is perhaps a child's
strongest barrier against poverty, particularly for girls.

"Educated girls are likely to marry later and have healthier children. They
are more productive at home and better paid in the workplace, better able to
protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and more able to participate in
decision-making at all levels," says Unicef.

Although Zimbabwe maintained a fine education record ever since Independence
in 1980, achieving more than 90 percent literacy rates, an economic and
political turmoil of huge proportion is slowly wiping out all the gains made
so far.

The Zimbabwe government embarked on the education for all programme as a
tool to fight poverty in the country.

However, in an effort to further eradicate poverty by parcelling out fertile
land to the majority poor indigenous people the government's agricultural
revolution ironically partly helped trigger the country's prevailing hunger
and poverty whose ripple effects have destroyed, more critically the
education and health sectors.

Zimbabwe's health sector, like education, has virtually collapsed and the
situation has presented some complexities in the fight against HIV/Aids.
Without adequate data it has become difficult to ascertain whether the
country's 15.6 percent prevalence rate for the 15 to 49 years age group
still stands. With 2007 statistics by the United Nations Programme on
HIV/Aids indicating that 90 percent of these infected in Zimbabwe are not
aware of their HIV status, it would be a sheer miracle if the prevalence
rate has not increased given the difficulties the people of Zimbabwe are
currently experiencing.

The UNAIDS fact sheet also shows that girls in the 15-19 age group are the
most vulnerable to HIV infection and over 80 000 people are on
anti-retroviral drugs out of a possible 350 000.

Communications officer for UNAIDS in Zimbabwe, Tariro Chidamoyo said: "We
don't have documented statistics on the effect of poverty and hunger on
HIV/AIDS but there is a possibility that there has been some effect."

Chidamoyo says the organisation relies mainly on information supplied by the
Ministry of Health and Child Welfare which she says has unfortunately been
experiencing major problems in caring out its work.
The Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Information Dissemination Service executive
director, Lois Chingandu believes that: "Only through structured discussions
and debates on the policies existing around HIV, culture and gender can we
begin to redress the imbalanced environment which continues to put certain
groups at greater risk of HIV infection."

Media law reform conference underway in Harare

http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk


Friday, 05 December 2008

A two -day media law reform conference organized by the Media Alliance
of Zimbabwe (MAZ) opened in Harare on 4 December 2008 focusing on forging
common strategy of coming up with a comprehensive alternative legislative
and policy frameworks to entrench media freedom and freedom of expression in
Zimbabwe.
About 120 delegates comprising journalists and civic society activists
are attending the conference being held under the theme: The Media We Want.
Free, Fair and Open. MAZ comprises MISA-Zimbabwe, Media Monitoring Project
Zimbabwe (MMPZ), Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ), Federation of African
Media Women in Zimbabwe (FAMWZ) and Zimbabwe National Editors Forum (Zinef).

The workshop focused on the prevailing media legislative environment
and drew lessons on experiences from southern African countries that have
undergone political transition periods and the role of the media in that
regard following the signing of the Global Political Agreement (GPA).

The three political parties which signed the GPA on the 15th of
September 2008 were accorded a chance to respond to the presentations made
by various speakers. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - T, MDC-M and
Zanu PF were represented by Luke Tamborinyoka, the director of information,
Edwin Mushoriwa, the spokesperson, and Chris Mutsvangwa respectively.

Representatives of civil society outlined their perceptions and
expectations of the role of the media in a democratic society. Proposals
were also received from the floor during plenary sessions on how best to
proceed in coming up with desired policy framework.

Peace and reconciliation message spreads

http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk


Friday, 05 December 2008

MISA-Zimbabwe in partnership with Artists for Democracy Trust Zimbabwe
(ADTZ), Savanna Trust and Nhasimangwana took the national arts and
journalistic caravan to Hwange in Matabeleland North province on 29 November
2008 as the message exhorting Zimbabweans to live in peace and harmony
spreads throughout the country under the One Love arts festivals.
A line up of artists took to the stage at Lwendulu Hall belting
messages of peace and tolerance irrespective of one's political affiliation,
race, religion, ethnicity and creed. The artists included Dragline Arts, a
theatre theatre group, Jahunda Theatre group, Mambokadzi, Magesh Tornadoes,
Ammafunny Groovers, Coalminers Band, Madiz, and Sniper.

An estimated 1 000 people attended the concert as the artists exhorted
the Hwange community to value peaceful co-existence and the sanctity of
human life.  .

The Hwange concert was a sequel to a similar one held at Beit Hall in
Mutare's suburb of Sakubva which attracted an estimated 2 000 people. The
campaign's main thrust is to promote a culture of tolerance in the aftermath
of the political violence which rocked Zimbabwe in the period preceding the
27 June 2008 presidential election runoff.

In Mutare, MISA-Zimbabwe Advocacy Officer Tabani Moyo urged residents
to shun political violence. The media, he said, also had the ethical
responsibility of promoting peace and tolerance in their reportage.

The peace festivals are an integral component of MISA-Zimbabwe's
promotion of tolerance, media diversity, independence and pluralism.
MISA-Zimbabwe believes that the arts are an effective media vehicle which
plays a critical role in cascading the message of national healing among
people of different political views and backgrounds to foster sustainable
peace and economic development

Hearts of darkness hardened to Harare

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.2473306.0.Hearts_of_darkness_hardened_to_Harare.php

IAN BELL December 06 2008

Africa dies in the media darkness, in the absence of attention. Give us your
starving infants, well-photographed, and we pay mind. Give us the failed
state, the average dictatorial thug-bully, the basic banal arc for the basic
narrative, and the span of our intelligence falters. Sorry about that.

We do not - for this is the real word - care much.

I am old enough to remember Zimbabwe's liberation. It was thought passing
fair, in those days, to have Bob Marley and the Wailers play when HMG folded
the rag as a postscript to Mr Smith's racist adventure. Comrade Mugabe was a
sort of hero, back then.

This was before Mandela was released, remember. This was before the fall of
apartheid, Rwanda, Bob Geldof, and Congo. This was media light, and hope,
before an HIV pandemic and the failure of decency. "Africans," as Marley
sang, "a-liberate Zimbabwe!"

To cholera? This week, Mugabe's preposterous administration has admitted,
finally, that a holocaust is taking place. There is a "national emergency"
in a place where there is no living nation. Hundreds, probably thousands,
are dying amid the glistening, flowing sewage. Some of those are picturesque
infants.
But the bankrupt west has better uses for its diminishing borrowed capital.
Our charities are going bust, and our patience is very limited, suddenly.
Africa is resource-rich, strategically irrelevant, and a moral nuisance. But
Africa, in the western media darkness, is awake.

Kenya speaks. It says, with some circumspection, that Mugabe must go. One of
the pillars of western strategy is nudging South Africa, another pillar, and
then Comrade Zuma, towards a decision. Or towards the possible halting
answer to a troubling question.

Why does the ANC, even now, indulge Citizen Bob? Thabo Mbkei would not say.
Mandela has not spoken on the issue, not once. Comrade Joe Zuma aids the
cholera victims - all credit to that - but the question provides all the
perplexity you could use.

South Africa could halt Mugabe in an instant. Why has this benefaction
failed to materialise? Which country sees a cholera epidemic on its borders
and fails to act? Which country notes an economic catastrophe to the north
of its townships and only frowns, indulgently?

Africa's relationship with the west, meaning the former colonial powers, is
liable to become one of the big media stories in this, the 21st of Christian
centuries. Mark me on that. The brutally impoverished have a moral capacity:
they count and matter.

Did we get them into their disgusting, genocidal mess? If so, what follows?
If we did not - granting all rhetorical ingenuity - what then follows? From
Sudan to Sierra Leone to Zimbabwe, Congo to Darfur to Uganda, "mess" is
scarcely the adequate word. Who did this? "We".

Make it short: is Zimbabwe Britain's problem? Comrade Bob speaks as though
all of his state's horrors are the doings of HMG. In the matter of land
ownership, he has a point. In the business of hilarious inflation rates and
state brutality, though, let us merely say that the suave, besuited, bastard
octogenarian does a poor presentation on behalf of the funny Marx brother.
Comrade Bob could almost put you off revolutions.

None of which, while fun, does much for a poor, bleeding country. Had Africa
bothered to produce "terrorists", we would all be paying close attention
now. Instead, the continent offers dead babies, HIV and arguments over aid
policies.

The developed world that blew acres of crap from Saddam, just to prove a
point, merely deprecates the freak show in Harare while cholera, of all the
antique ills in that word, cuts loose. And kills infants. Tell me: why has
Britain failed to invade Zimbabwe?

Just in case you thought I was joking: Iraq, but not Zimbabwe? Why?

Mumbai reminded the big and rich white world, I think, that things never go
with the plan. In a week or two Zimbabwe's "crisis" - with the babies
already gone - will have climbed upwards on your news schedules.

Then you might, might possibly, think: what is this world to which I cling?
Mumbai, Harare, Glasgow: certain resemblances, perhaps? These are not the
point.

I cannot tell you, for no-one could tell you honestly, why Pretoria still
indulges Mugabe. Honours conferred on erstwhile liberation heroes do even
not begin to explain it. The ANC's corruption is not half the tale. But good
people are dying of cholera in "the richest" of poverty-stricken African
states. And no-one does anything. No WMD in Bulawayo, then, chaps?

Part of me is convinced that the former colonial states were eager to see
the uppity African types fail. On that, I agree with Mugabe. It is also
obvious - expletive-predictable - that the likes of the IMF, the World Bank
and the various WTO deals were designed and built as western plots against a
developing planet. I could produce the numbers; Africa has the dead infants.

But why Mugabe? Why another mad one in a preposterous suit? Why another thug
quoting Marx, or the Chicago Boys, merely to justify another rape of another
nation? The best answers I can glean from the news wires are these: because
he, they, and it, can. Someone foots all the bills, even when the currency
is a joke, and the inflation rate is a joke for fans of pocket calculators.
And smiling babies perish.

Africa dies in the media darkness, and it is dying still. We will not learn
much about Zimbabwe's fate if I quote you today's comical dollar rate. We do
not bother to report a half of the half. Neither Africa nor the west will
fix Zimbabwe. Africa is not ours to amend. But Africa is not allowed, even
yet, to the trust of Africans.

The empires are all turning into rust, yet again. And again. These great
schemes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries turned out to be flawed.
And African infants are dying because we paid insufficient attention to this
week's demagogue? Remind me: who are the good guys?

So, here's a plan. A South African-Kenyan-SAS force arrives in Harare,
perhaps tomorrow morning, to tell everyone that cholera, colonialism, mad
inflation, thugs, and mad Bob Mugabe have been abolished. Bob gets his last
pay cheque; press freedom will follow. Some might die. There might be snaps
in the red-tops. And any part of my daft idea would be worse than anything
contrived in Iraq?

Forget, and forgive, the old jokes. Britain, in my book, has a moral
responsibility towards lower Africa that did not ever apply towards modern
Mesopotamia. Africa was our dash, our flash, our insanity, and the
corruption we allowed Rhodes and his sleazy sort. Curse Mugabe all you will,
but the debt and the burden remains.

We are not, in fact, the mere shreds of an imperial power. We have no
colonial consequence, or currency worth the name, or even a big stick. But
all over Africa, still, there are people who wonder what Britain thought it
once stood for. We are an African power, and Mugabe is our problem.

Africa happens in ignorance, complacency, stupidity and darkness. Ours. It
is one thing to say that we do not know, another to admit that we do not
care. Any thoughts on that, Prime Minister?

Zimbabwe: From breadbasket to tragic basket case

http://www.worldtribune.com

Friday, December 5, 2008

UNITED NATIONS - The Grim Reaper is stalking Zimbabwe. Famine, disease and
economic collapse have turned this once prosperous land into a morass of
failed socialist policies, corruption, and entrenched authoritarian rule
from which the only escape remains death or exile in neighboring South
Africa. Now months following a presumed power sharing accord between
longtime dictator Robert Mugabe and his political rivals, the country seems
no closer to delivery, but much nearer to total collapse.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has voiced alarm that the fast-eroding
humanitarian situation will worsen and nearly half the country's population
would need UN food assistance! While approximately six million out of
Zimbabwe's population will need foreign food aid, this grim statistic belies
a wider point; Zimbabwe was formerly one of Africa's agricultural
breadbaskets, and a major food exporter to much of the continent. Today the
breadbasket has tragically been turned into a humanitarian basket case.

Right now the UN's World Food Program (WFP) is feeding four million people
in the beleaguered southern African land. During October WFP distributed
29,000 tons of foods to vulnerable families, now for November the agency has
doubled the number of beneficiaries but the available supplies will not
increase significantly. This WFP will be forced to feed more people with
fewer resources which naturally means a cutback in rations for the most
vulnerable people. The group concedes that just to keep the humanitarian
pipeline open, until the expected peak of the crisis in March, it shall
require $140 million in funding.

The current crisis has been caused by a disastrous harvest, caused by both
weather and indeed the catastrophically callous government policies during
recent years. Among other things, Mugabe's socialist regime has confiscated
farmlands, many held by the minority white community, and has triggered a
deepening food crisis.

Beyond shortages, hyperinflation of 231 million percent has made workers
salaries and savings totally worthless thus forcing people to live on barter
and scarce supplies of U.S. dollars. To illustrate the dizzying rates of
inflation consider this; I'm holding a Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe $50,000,000
(million) dollar bill issued in April 2008. But I also have a Reserve Bank
of Zimbabwe $50,000,000,000 (billion) dollar bill replacing it, issued on 15
May 2008 and good until the end of 2008. My $50 billion note , worth about
six U.S. cents in its prime, has since become near worthless.As they say, do
the math.

As the summer rains begin, a cholera crisis has deepened with 9,000 cases
diagnosed so far; 500 people have died according to the UN. This epidemic
which can rapidly spread, threatens the region given refugee flows. Moreover
the societal decline has impacted education too; a UN relief official states
that only 20 percent of eligible students are now attending school.

Last March disputed presidential elections saw longtime ruler Robert Mugabe
returned to power. Yet after thirty years in control, since the independence
of ex-British Rhodesia, the ruling socialist party Zimbabwe African National
Union (ZANU) grudgingly agreed in September to power sharing with the
democratic MDC opposition as to defuse an impending civil conflict. The
agreement would allow Comrade Mugabe to remain President and Morgan
Tsvangarai to become Prime Minister has yet to be implemented.

The political crisis has deepened and as Business Day newspaper of
Johannesburg concedes, "This is why we concur with SA's African National
Congress president, Jacob Zuma, that Africa and the world must take drastic
action soon to reverse Zimbabwe's slide into anarchy. Inaction will be the
continent's and Zimbabwe's greatest undoing. Africa cannot continue
tolerating rapacious, intolerant and oppressive tyrants." So true.

Neighboring countries such as Botswana have "upped the ante in its
intensifying diplomatic row with Zimbabwe by urging regional leaders to
squeeze President Robert Mugabe out of power to end the worsening political
and economic crisis," reports Business Day. Sadly for too long the South
African government has maintained a misguided "African solidarity" with the
regime in Harare. Now importantly Kenya's Prime Minister has openly called
for Mugabe's ouster.

Though the United States and the European Union

remain committed to democratic political change and humanitarian assistance
for Zimbabwe, the real force for change rests with neighboring South Africa.
Indeed with more than a million of its refugees in South Africa, and with a
spiraling humanitarian and a deepening political crisis, Zimbabwe poses a
dangerous destabilizing force for all southern Africa. While South Africa
has mediated much of the political power sharing process, the Pretoria
government could with the flick of a feather tip the scales. Given the
humanitarian stakes, it must consider doing so.

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

Contradictory Claims About Ivory Trade After CITES

http://www.ipsnews.net/

By Stanley Kwenda

HARARE, Dec 5 (IPS) - The decision by an international body to again allow
some southern African countries to conduct once-off ivory sales has been
attacked by an animal rights activist saying elephants are being threatened
by poaching because of the breakdown in the legal and social order in
Zimbabwe.

Johnny Rodrigues, chairperson of the Zimbabwe Conservation Taskforce (ZCTF),
told IPS that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of
Wild Flora and Fauna's (CITES) allowance of trade in ivory only serves to
encourage poaching, particularly in Zimbabwe.

CITES is the international body responsible for regulating trade in
endangered flora and fauna. It decided in early November to allow Zimbabwe,
Namibia, Botswana and South Africa to sell their stockpiled ivory.

Zimbabwean game farms have been invaded by people without proper knowledge
of animal conservation management, according to Rodrigues. The ZCTF was
started in 2001 in response to this problem.

The eight year long political crisis has led the ruling ZANU-PF government
to encourage farm invasions to placate Zimbabweans. The farm invaders are
only interested in lining their pockets and are helped to do so by ivory
buyers from China who have flooded Zimbabwe, claimed Rodrigues.

A survey conducted by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the African
Wildlife Foundation showed the country has an elephant population of around
110,000 against a carrying capacity of 47,000. It has a legal hunting quota
of 500 elephants a year.

The chairperson of the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, George
Pangeti, told the government-aligned Herald newspaper of March 19 2007 that
Zimbabweans should benefit from elephant and elephant products.

Banning activities which brought money, including legal ivory trade, to the
custodians of the resource was ''nothing but an injustice'', he said.

But, according to Rodrigues, ''ivory trade only serves to increase the
already high incidence of poaching in the country. There are a lot of
corrupt people in Zimbabwe who are facilitating illegal trade in ivory. In
Zimbabwe it's a big issue. There is a lack of mechanisms to monitor
violations as a result of the chaos on the game farms''.

The animal protection activist alleged that illegal trade is happening via
official channels and corrupt officials. He questioned why the auctions,
such as the one held recently under the supervision of CITES, should be held
behind closed doors.

The ZCTF says about 30 rhinos and close to 20 elephants where killed last
year in incidents linked to illicit ivory trade. It estimates that close to
a million wild animals on farms, private game ranches and in conservancies
have been killed since the beginning of farm invasions in 2000.

The animal rights group has studied 62 farms, 59 of which reported wildlife
losses totalling 42,236 animals. These include lion, elephant, python and
blue duiker (buck) that are on the list of endangered animals.

A report by the UK-based animal rights non-governmental organisation the
Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) last year alleged that there has
been an upsurge in elephant poaching in Kenya and Zimbabwe, a rise in major
illegal ivory seizures worldwide and growing consumer markets in the Far
East.

The EIA regards unregulated domestic markets as the problem, especially in
China, Japan, Myanmar and Vietnam. It alleges the involvement of the Chinese
government at all levels of the ivory trade.

However, a 2007 report prepared for CITES singled out China as the one
country which has made some progress towards stemming the illegal ivory
trade in its domestic market.

The report fingered the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Cameroon,
China and Thailand as the guilty parties when it comes to illicit ivory
trade.

Tom Milliken, one of the authors of the report and a regional programme
director at Traffic in east and southern Africa, said about the upsurge in
rhino poaching that, ''in terms of CITES, Zimbabwe is in the spotlight and
an international task force will be visiting shortly to investigate its
performance in rhino conservation''.

Traffic is a wildlife trade monitoring network partnered by the
non-governmental World Wide Fund for Nature and the International Union for
the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

He lamented that ''Traffic has sponsored initiatives to improve the
country's law enforcement capabilities (against poachers) but sadly most
investigations appear to have collapsed without successful prosecutions''.

Charles Jonga, director of Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme
for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) which supports sustainable utilisation,
told IPS, ''we do evaluation and recommend conservation action, which is why
we were even involved in the ivory sale. We do this on a continuous basis.''

Zimbabwe says the 450,000 dollars it earned a month ago selling its 3,700 kg
ivory stock piles under the supervision of CITES will be used for
conservation purposes. (END/2008)