Reuters
Sun Feb
12, 2006 4:39 PM GMT
HARARE (Reuters) - A Zimbabwean cabinet minister has
warned banks to shun
the country's few remaining white farmers, saying some
of their ownership
titles remain in dispute, an official newspaper reported
on Sunday.
National State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa said
institutions seeking
business dealings with white farmers, including
Zimbabwe's central bank,
should check with his ministry first, the state-run
Sunday Mail said.
Analysts say only about 600 of Zimbabwe's 4,500 white
farmers have kept
their land after the government launched a sometimes
violent campaign six
years ago to redistribute farms to landless
blacks.
Critics have blamed the land seizures for a sharp drop in
Zimbabwe's
agricultural production, part of a wider economic crisis that has
led to
shortages of food, fuel and foreign exchange, rocketing unemployment
and
triple digit inflation.
President Robert Mugabe's government says
the agricultural crisis is due in
large part to drought, and blames its
western critics for policies it says
are aimed at undermining his rule over
the former British colony.
Mutasa, who is also responsible for lands,
land reform and resettlement,
said banks and other institutions such as
Zimbabwe's electricity monopoly,
must consult with his ministry on "the
resettlement status" of white-owned
farms they seek to do business with, the
Mail said.
Mutasa said many banks were ignoring newly-settled black
farmers -- who
possess "offer letters" but not title deeds to their land --
in favour of
their established white counterparts.
"Comrade Didymus
Mutasa said that there had been an outcry from new farmers
that financial
institutions had from the onset of the land reform programme
been despising
new farmers when giving loans, with the white farmers getting
a bulk of the
money," the newspaper said.
Mutasa said many of the remaining white
farmers were operating without
official "offer letters" to retain their
farms, while others continued to
occupy properties already given out to
black farmers.
Mutasa was not available for comment on
Sunday.
Last week, the International Monetary Fund, which has been
threatening to
expel Zimbabwe over debt arrears, demanded that Mugabe's
government honour a
pledge to stop the farm invasions, which critics say
have contributed to a
50 percent fall in farm output over the last six
years..
Local media reports say Zimbabwe central bank governor Gideon
Gono has
clashed with Mutasa over the land resettlement policy, which has
benefited
mainly supporters of Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party.
Mugabe,
82 later this month and in power since independence in 1980, says
the land
reforms were necessary to correct ownership imbalances created by
British
colonialism.
Zim Daily
Saturday, February
11 2006 @ 09:24 PM GMT
Contributed by:
Zimdaily
By Valentine Maponga
ZIMBABWEAN
government has with immediate effect cancelled the
buying of fuel using
foreign currency through its Foreign Exchange Fuel
Coupon system amid
revelations that it now was being abused. The Reserve
Bank of Zimbabwe
introduced the foreign currency fuel coupons in August last
year in order to
increase the availability of the scarce petrol and diesel.
In
a statement made public yesterday the central bank said
although the
facility performed very well during the first days, some
members of the
public started to abuse the facility and used it for
speculation and
parallel market activities. ""It is therefore on this basis
of these abuses
that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe wishes to advise the
public of the
immediate cancellation of the foreign currency fuel-coupon
system," reads
part of the statement from the bank's exchange control
department.
Members of the public who are in possession
of the fuel coupons
are to immediately contact the various Foreign Currency
Purchasing Centres
and Authorised dealers for the redemption of the coupons.
The redemption of
the coupons, according to the statement, will be in local
currency and the
conversion would be done at the interbank rate as at 13
February 2006. The
Zimbabwean dollar is trading between $95 000 and $102 000
against the
greenback using the interbank rates. One U.S. dollar fetches up
to 150 000
Zimbabwe dollars on the black market.
"All
coupons should be redeemed by no later than 28 February
2006." Zimbabwe has
been desperately short of foreign currency since being
shunned by global
donors, including the International Monetary Fund, over
policy differences
with President Robert Mugabe's government resulting in
the shortages of
essential services most of which are imported. The economy
has contracted by
more than 30 percent over the past five years. The central
bank's managed
auctions have failed to meet importer demand for foreign
currency.
Zim Online
Mon 13
February 2006
HARARE - The Zimbabwe government has ordered the
police to set up a
special desk in Harare to offer special treatment and
service to Chinese
nationals in the country, ZimOnline has
learnt.
The Chinese Desk will handle all cases involving the
Chinese and is
expected to be equipped with the latest technology and enough
resources to
ensure cases before it are dealt with
expeditiously.
A team of some of the police's best investigators,
who will man the
desk, are already being taught Mandarin by instructors
brought from China,
authoritative sources said.
Already, a
special counter to receive reports from Chinese nationals
as well as offer
them whatever assistance they may need has been set up at
the biggest police
station in the capital, Harare Central police
station.
"The Police Commissioner (Augustine
Chihuri) set up this desk under
instructions from politicians who felt that
the Chinese should be given
special treatment as they are contributing a lot
to Zimbabwe's economy.
Every case involving a Chinese national is dealt with
by this Chinese Desk,"
said a senior police officer, who did not want to be
named because he is not
allowed to disclose such information to the
Press.
Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi said the desk was being
created to
"assist our brothers" (Chinese) because they were being
specifically
targeted by thieves.
Mohadi said: "It is being
carried out in good faith, the idea being to
assist our brothers who had
complained about being targeted by some
criminals because they are known to
be investing in the country. In any
case, I am yet to meet any other
foreigner who has been denied police
protection."
President
Robert Mugabe's government is cementing ties with
increasingly rich Asian
countries but mostly with China after falling out
with the West over his
poor human rights record and failure to uphold
democracy.
As
part of its kowtowing to the Chinese, the Harare administration has
awarded
lucrative contracts in Zimbabwe's mining, energy, construction and
agricultural sectors to firms from the rising Asian giant.
But
several Chinese businesspeople, a majority of whom keep vast sums
of cash in
their homes because they do not have accounts with Zimbabwean
banks, have
fallen victim to crime which is on the rise in the country
because of
worsening economic hardships. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 13 February 2006
HARARE - Thirty-four year old Mavis
Mlambo holds her six-month old
baby tightly against her body to keep it warm
as the relentless blows from
the tempestuous winds and heavy rains threaten
to tear away her plastic
shack on the banks of Harare's Mukuvisi
River.
Her two other children, Tracy and Givemore, aged four and
six
respectively, are wrapped under a threadbare blanket as they try to
shirk
off the cold.
"I fear the children will soon fall ill
from this cold. They are too
young to endure this sort of lifestyle," says
Mlambo.
Only a short 10 months ago, Mlambo and 150 other families
squatting
here on the Mukuvisi's banks would not have had to experience the
pain of
having to watch their children endure this rain and biting
cold.
She and her husband used to rent a two-roomed brick and
asbestos
backyard cottage in the low-income suburb of Mbare until one
morning in May
last year, armed police backed by bulldozers descended on the
suburb.
The police told bemused residents that they were on an
exercise to
clean up Harare and that all backyard cottages were going to be
destroyed as
part of the exercise.
"We were given only an hour
to remove our household property and find
alternative accommodation," Mlambo
says, fighting hard to keep back the
tears swelling in her
eyes.
By July when the government agreed under pressure from the
international community to halt the urban clean-up campaign, the number of
people whose home had been demolished by police bulldozers was estimated by
the United Nations (UN) at around 700 000.
The UN, which
dispatched a special envoy to probe the home
demolitions, says another 2.5
million people were also indirectly affected
by the clean-up campaign that
President Robert Mugabe defended as necessary
to rid cities and towns of
filth and smash the illegal foreign currency
parallel market.
However, Mugabe in a bid to parry off rising international
condemnation for
the home demolition exercise announced a fresh campaign
codenamed Operation
Garikayi to build thousands of houses for people made
homeless by his
clean-up operation.
But ten months after the housing demolitions,
victims are still
staying in shacks along Mukuvisi River and at many
squatter camps dotted
across the country without ablution facilities and or
clean drinking water.
The few houses that have been built under the
government programme
have been quickly snatched up by senior ruling party
officials and the well
connected.
"The government has totally
forgotten us," says Charles Chinyepe, who
is also staying along the
river.
"They promised the whole world that they would quickly build
new
houses for us but the have not done so .. We are suffering here," adds
Chinyepe, a self confessed supporter of Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party but
who describes the government's failure to build the homes it promises as the
ultimate betrayal.
But the Combined Harare Residents
Association (CHRA) says houses are
not even top on the list of these
homeless families' needs. Instead basic
survival commodities such as
blankets, food, clean water and medicines to
treat diseases such as
diarrhoea are what the government should urgently
provide to Mlambo,
Chinyepe and their colleagues.
"We talked to the people and they
say there have been serious cases of
diarrhoea in the area which affected
nearly 50 people. The situation remains
desperate," said CHRA spokesman
Precious Shumba.
But economic experts told ZimOnline the
cash-strapped Harare
government is not able to provide even these basic
needs let alone modern
houses for the hundreds of thousands of displaced
families across the
country.
"The government is unable to do
anything because it does not have the
resources. The meagre resources
available are being channelled to other
areas perceived to be of more
immediate concern," Harare-based consultant
economist John Robertson
said.
The Harare administration, grappling its worst ever economic
crisis,
needs money to import food, fuel, electricity, essential medical
drugs,
among many key commodities in critical short supply in the
country.
It certainly will be a long while before the government is
able to, if
ever, divert its energies to providing houses for Mlambo and
other people it
made homeless. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 13 February 2006
BULAWAYO - President Robert
Mugabe's government is still to provide
offices for senators elected late
last year in a controversial poll that
critics had opposed saying it was an
unnecessary waste of money when the
country should be expending its meagre
resources on fighting hunger.
Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party scooped
most of the senate seats which
were up for grabs in the November election
that was boycotted by a faction
of the main opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) party.
But three months after the election,
the senators are still to secure
offices from the government to service
their constituencies. The President
of the Senate, Edna Madzongwe, confirmed
that the government was still to
find suitable offices for the
senators.
"We are working on the issue but we have not formalised
anything as
yet and information relating to that would come through the
standing rules
and orders committee of Parliament. They will have offices
soon," said
Madzongwe.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai fiercely
opposed the reintroduction of
the senate saying it was a waste of resources
for a country struggling to
feed a quarter of its people facing starvation.
Tsvangirai also said the
senate was a "ZANU PF project" to extend its
system of patronage and
mounted a vigorous campaign urging Zimbabweans to
boycott the poll.
But other MDC leaders, including Tsvangirai's
deputy Gibson Sibanda
and secretary general Welshman Ncube, refused to
boycott the election
arguing doing so would mean surrendering political
space to ZANU PF and
Mugabe.
The fallout from the dispute has
severely crippled the MDC which had
provided the greatest challenge to
Mugabe's 25-year grip on power. Zimbabwe
is in its sixth year of a bitter
economic crisis most critics blame on
Mugabe's policies. - ZimOnline
Zim Daily
Saturday, February 11 2006 @ 09:20 PM GMT
Contributed by:
correspondent
Dr Andrew Poc.ock, the successor to former British
Ambassador to
Zimbabwe, Rod Pullen, who left prematurely, is expected to
arrive in
Zimbabwe at the end of this month, Zimdaily can reveal. The new
Ambassador
was the British High Commissioner in Tanzania and before that, he
served in
Canberra and the United Nations. Dr Pullen, who propelled the
State
propaganda mill after leaving before the end of his tenure said in a
farewell statement obtained by Zimdaily that during his stay he visited most
parts of the country where he witnessed so many horrible
things.
"We have seen people in communal areas and in
high-density
suburbs desperately struggling to eke out a living and being
offered
ideological panaceas instead of sustainable development programmes.
"As a
result many are forced to accept food assistance from international
donors
simply in order to survive," Dr Pullen said in his farewell
remarks.
He added that he had also witnessed people who had
suffered for
standing for their rights; who have been wrongly deprived of
their land and
property, ruining, in some cases not just a lifetime's
endeavour but the
fruits of several generations. "The British Embassy, our
Department for
International Development and the British Council have each
tried in their
own ways to ameliorate some of these problems," Pullen said
in a statement
seen by Zimdaily. "I am only too conscious that these efforts
have not
addressed the fundamental problems facing this country," he
said.
The incoming ambassador, Dr Poc.ock was a former head
of
Southern African department at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The
51-year-old former Downing Street press officer, can is a career FCO
officer, having worked in the FCO's United Nations department for two years,
and been first secretary at the Washington Embassy, before taking up a
personnel management post in the FCO.
From there he became
deputy head of the South Asian department
before being loaned to the Royal
College of Defense Studies. He was deputy
high commissioner at Canberra
before taking up the High Commissioner post in
Tanzania.
Zim Daily
Saturday, February 11 2006 @ 09:16 PM GMT
Contributed by: correspondent
THE SHARP decline of the Zimbabwean
economy, which has
precipitated massive retrenchments and company closures,
has pushed Zimbabwe's
unemployment rate to an unprecedented 76.5 percent
rate, economists have
said. Official unemployment rate has always been the
subject of conjecture
in the absence of official data. Only last year,
Labour Minister Paul
Mangwana was ridiculed after he presented a
single-digit unemployment rate.
Economic analysts said the
high inflationary environment and the
government's lethargic approach to
economic recovery were negatively
impacting on companies, leading to reduced
production. Capacity utilisation
in Zimbabwean factories currently hovers
around 40 percent and could still
plummet further, amid a worsening energy
crisis. This has resulted in
companies retrenching workers or reducing
working hours in order to cut down
on production costs. The worst affected
companies have been forced to close
down, throwing millions of workers onto
the streets.
An official from the Employers Confederation of
Zimbabwe
Industries (EMCOZ) said that there were slim chances of companies
performing
to their full capacity because of the acute foreign currency
shortages and
the isolation of the country by major foreign partners.
Economic consultant,
John Robertson, said the rise in unemployment rate was
not surprising
considering, foreign currency shortages, skewed economic
policies by
government and price controls, among other things, which were
burdening
non-performing companies.
Said Robertson: " The
job market will disappear very soon. It is
vital to stimulate job creation.
There are a lot of students from colleges
and universities coming out with
flying colours, who are looking for
employment." "While we expect
unemployment to be addressed through the
promotion of opportunities to
create jobs, it is apparent there have been no
concerted efforts to address
the problem such that in the long term, we fear
the rate of unemployment
will escalate to over 80%."
According to the Confederation of
Zimbabwe Industries (CZI),
more than 650 companies closed operations over
the last five years because
of the prohibitive operational conditions
characterised by high input costs,
hard currency shortages, high levels of
interest rates, inflationary levels
as well as the uncompetitive export
market. It is against this background
that the government called for renewed
vigour in the promotion of the
informal sector. But many do not believe that
this sector can turn around
the fortunes of the economy.
The United Nations Human rights development report of 2004 cited
Zimbabwe as
the country with the highest number of labour emigrants in the
Southern
African Development Community (SADC) region.
Zim Daily
Saturday, February 11 2006 @ 09:16 PM GMT
Contributed by: correspondent
Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) Masvingo Mayor Alois
Chaimiti is locked in mortal combat with the
Masvingo Residents and
Ratepayers Association (MURRA) over the sale of the
Mayoral Mercedes Benz
for Z$60 million, Zimdaily heard yesterday. The
C-Class Merc that was bought
during the reign of former Masvingo Mayor
Alderman Francis Aphiri was
offloaded by Chaimiti ostensibly because "it was
cheaper to buy a new car
than repair an old vehicle." MURRA has now demanded
the full details of the
transaction which they allege was "controversial"
and "murky." Chaimiti has
however maintained that there was nothing
anomalous about the sale as it was
done through an "open tender
system.''
"The vehicle in question had a history of
constant breakdowns
and was beyond economic repair and we decided to sell it
through an open
tender system," Chaimiti told Zimdaiy
yesterday.
However MURRA chairman Eddison Zvobgo (Jnr) said
there was
something irregular about the sale and the burden of proof was on
Chaimiti
to show cause why the vehicle was sold on such a paltry amount. "We
have
requested that the council show us the documentation revealing that
indeed
they sold the vehicle through the tender procedure but they are
dithering,"
Zvobgo said. "We will not rest until this issue is solved. We
owe it to the
residents because that Merc was bought through ratepayers
money."
Zimdaily understands that the vehicle was sold to a
council
employee but sources suggest that the worker was a front for
Chaimiti. The
mayor however denies this allegation. Chaimiti has since
bought himself an
E-Class Merc. Chaimiti was first elected Masvingo
executive mayor in May
2001 after he defeated Cde Jacob Chademana of Zanu
PF. He won his reelection
last year unopposed after his Zanu PF opponent
Patson Muzvidziwa had his
papers rejected by the Nomination Court on the
grounds that there were
different names on his Ordinary Level certificate
and on his professional
qualification certificate.
Zim Daily
Saturday, February 11 2006 @ 09:15 PM GMT
Contributed by: correspondent
Zanu PF aligned reverend Obadiah
Musindo has been formally
charged of rape, five months after his maid raised
the allegations. Musindo
of the Destiny of Africa Network was summoned by
police yesterday morning,
an official in the Attorney General's office has
confirmed. The official
added that police had recorded a warned and caution
statement from Musindo,
a regular face on Zimbabwe
television.
The clergyman is normally invited to pray at Zanu
PF meetings
and is one of the few reverend who are openly aligned to the
ruling party.
Months after a domestic worker alleged that she had been raped
five times at
his home, police had not yet pressed charges against him,
raising the ire of
women's organisations. In a move that also raised
eyebrows, police sent an
incomplete docket to the Attorney General's office
asking for a legal
opinion only a month ago.
A police
assistant commissioner who wrote an accompanying letter
said the maid might
have cherished having the Reverend's baby. Police had
also not bothered to
even question Musindo about the allegations, raising
fears among women's
rights organisation that they may have been a deliberate
attempt to let the
well-connected Reverend go scotfree. Loice Moyo, the
Director of Public
Prosecutions, who ordered police to arrest and charge
Musindo, even queried
the way police had handled the matter three weeks ago.
"We
found that rather unusual because how could they send us an
incomplete
docket and then ask for a legal opinion? They had not even
question the
accused. The normal procedure is for the police to send us a
completed
docket and if there is no evidence, then we can decline to
prosecute," said
Moyo. Musindo faces five counts of rape. Two other
prominent 'men of cloth'
who were ruling party activists are serving jail
terms for rape.
Japan Times
By DAVID
WALL
Special to The Japan Times
LONDON -- So Google, Yahoo and
Microsoft are now working to help support the
dictatorship of the people in
China -- as managed on their behalf by the
Chinese Communist Party. So are
most of the world's multinational
companies -- as well as you (and
me).
We all support the dictatorship of the CCP by trading with China, by
investing in China, by taking holidays in China and by buying Chinese goods
and services.
By helping the Chinese economy grow we are all helping
the CCP stay in power
by helping support a growing standard of living in
China for the middle
class and a sufficiently large part of the urban
working class to ensure
that thoughts of revolution are kept at
bay.
Well, not completely, the People's Armed Police (PAP) still must
shoot, beat
up and/or ship off to labor camps those malcontents who complain
about the
theft of their property or destruction of their livelihoods. This
makes it
easier for the winners in the economic boom to go on quietly
enjoying their
gains while the majority of the people suffer.
It is
getting increasingly expensive for the CCP to maintain the extensive
and
growing reach of the ordinary police, the PAP and the People's
Liberation
Army (PLA). As the CCP is sworn to "peaceful development" and has
no
territorial ambitions other than to protect its current empire, this
massive
repressive machine is directed at maintaining social stability on
the
domestic front. So whenever we buy goods and services from China, or
sell
new technologies there (especially military and police equipment), we
are
helping maintain that "stability."
Should this worry us? A lot of people
did complain about Google, Yahoo and
Microsoft's efforts to help the CCP
maintain social stability in China. Why?
Most people find it hard to
accept that buying a Peking duck dinner for two
with a couple of bottles of
Qingdao beer, or some cheap Chinese
underclothes, or an IBM computer is
helping support the repressive communist
regime in China. For some reason
the actions of Internet companies in
restricting access of ordinary Chinese
people to information about their
country or to political ideas that
contradict or question the political
beliefs of CCP members is more
reprehensible.
It is easy to see why. You have to ask yourself why the
CCP is so frightened
about the Chinese people getting access to information
about what is going
on in their own country or in the world at large. Or why
they worry about
Chinese people having access to ideas on how the internal
affairs of nation
states are managed other than through brutal communist
dictatorship of the
minority over the majority.
Why is the CCP
leadership so insecure? Do they feel that if the Chinese
people had access
to such information then they might come to question the
legitimacy of a
political system that emerged from the barrels of guns and
has stayed there
on that basis? Does the CCP believe that it has no answers
to such questions
that would hold up to critical scrutiny?
What a sad state of affairs it
is when the CCP, and its agent the Chinese
government, believe that after
more than half a century of being brought up
in a communist society the
Chinese people might ask whether they would be
better off under a different
political system. Does the CCP really have such
contempt for the rationality
of its people after they have been schooled and
trained by communists for so
long?
Does it really think that the majority of the people of China
might, after
enjoying the privileges and benefits that the CCP has brought
to them, say
that the time has come to move on from Marxist-Leninist-Maoism
(with a touch
of Stalinism to spice things up) and want to try out some
other system they
have read about on the Internet?
Maybe they would,
maybe not, but what right does the CCP have to deny them
the option of
making up their own minds, or simply asking questions? Some
Chinese people
have had access to information about what is going on in
their country and
have been able to read and consider the ideas of
noncommunist political
thinkers. Some of them have then gone on to advocate
a different political
system, or different political leaders from those
provided by the CCP. They
don't stay free for long; they are carted off for
re-education through
labor.
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and other media companies may now be
ensuring
that more free-thinking Chinese citizens go down the road to the
Chinese
Gulag. So it is right to question their actions.
But before
you start feeling superior and start criticizing them, remember
that when
you travel on Air China to take a walk along the Great Wall, when
you buy
some shares in a Chinese initial public offering, when you go and
see a
Chinese movie or knock back a glass of Mao Tai, you are helping keep
in
power the same CCP that you object to the Internet companies
supporting.
Does this worry you? It should. But as boycotts don't work,
we need another
way forward.
The CCP wants China to play a major role
on the world stage. It is already
demonstrating the sort of role that it
wishes to play through its support
for and cooperation with tyrannical
regimes such as Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran,
North Korea, Uzbekistan and
Cuba.
Maybe we could reform the United Nations in a different way from
those
currently being considered. The CCP uses China's veto power on the
U.N.
Security Council to divert attention from its repressive domestic
policies
and from its support of tyrannical powers abroad.
Maybe
China should be removed from the Security Council until the CCP grows
up,
stops repressing the Chinese people and works only with countries that
accept and abide by the U.N. Charter.
Maybe we should also require
the CCP to apply the U.N. International Bill on
Human Rights in China,
starting by ratifying the International Covenant on
Civil and Political
Rights. This would help ensure that "the basic values of
freedom, democracy,
equality, justice and peace" are available to the
Chinese people, as called
for by China's U.N. ambassador last year.
David Wall is an associate
member of the faculty of Oriental studies at
Cambridge University and an
associate fellow of Chatham House.
The Japan Times: Feb. 12, 2006
(C) All
rights reserved
Just this past week one of the old
guard of Zanu PF, Didymus Mutasa, made a
statement about the remaining white
farmers who somehow have survived the
agricultural holocaust launched by Zanu
PF in 2000. He said far from
considering allowing white farmers to come back
and occupy their farms under
leasehold arrangements, the State was bent on
taking all land from white
farmers.
We have about 600 of the former
large scale commercial farmers still
farming - many are dairy farmers where
they still provide 90 per cent of the
output of the industry, for some reason
dairy farming is not an attractive
option for the thugs in Zanu PF. Someone
once said that to be a success in
dairy farming you have to love your cows -
that may be a problem for Zanu
PF, hate cows, that is another matter - that
comes naturally! There are 200
or so large scale tobacco farmers trying to
stay in the industry and this
year they will grow 35 000 tonnes out of the 50
000 tonnes of tobacco
expected to be grown and marketed.
The old guard
of Zanu PF - the equivalent in Zimbabwean terms of the
"survivors of the long
march" in Mau Tse Tung's China - are now a shrinking
elderly minority in the
Party - still in control because of the Presidents
position and influence and
power, but now on their way out. Mutasa is one of
those and is a particularly
nasty bit of work. Right now he runs both the
CIO and the Lands portfolio and
of late has become a euro phobic racist of
the worst kind.
This is a
strange turn of events because there is no one in Zanu PF who owes
more to
the former liberal white minority who fought Ian Smith and the
Rhodesian
Front all those years ago, than Mutasa. He was very much the
protégée of Guy
Clutton Brock who was a thorn in the side of the old
Rhodesian government and
who worked all his life for the rights of the black
majority. Now Mutasa is
probably a worse racist that the men and women who
ran the Rhodesian
government 50 years ago when he was just a young man
growing up outside the
capital city of Salisbury.
He is also not a very nice man in his personal
life - he has prospered under
Zanu PF patronage like all the others, lives a
life of comparative luxury
and knows no shortages. I traveled with the man on
a flight to Europe in the
late 80's and was disgusted at his behavior even
then. His behavior on the
plane was no advert for the government he
represented.
African governments and human rights movements must
acknowledge this aspect
of the recent activities of the Zanu PF regime in
Harare. I am one who has
spent his whole life fighting racism in this
country. I suffered for it
under the Smith government and lost many good
friends as a result amongst my
community. My family also made sacrifices for
our stand. Now I see no reason
why we should stand by and be silent when
those who have benefited from the
struggles of the 20th Century espouse the
very evils we fought against in
the 60's across the world. Black racism
against whites in Africa is no more
acceptable than white racism in Europe or
the USA against the minorities in
those communities.
Mutasa also made
a racist remark about the whites in the MDC - there are a
few of us, no more
than a couple of hundred in a membership that runs to two
million. But Zanu
PF continues to claim that we "run the MDC". Nothing could
be further from
the truth; we sometimes wished we had a little more
influence. But we are in
the MDC because we are committed to the principles
on which the Party was
founded and we find a home in the MDC as white
Africans, which was never
offered to us by Zanu PF. In his statement Mutasa
called us "Mabhunu", a
derogatory term that has come down from the days of
the Boer farmers. If I
was to use a similar term to describe him I am sure I
would find myself on
the receiving end as a "racist".
The truth of the matter is that white
Africans like myself have a right to
be accepted as just ordinary citizens in
African States. Regimes like the
one that is in power here have no right to
deny us that - it is our
birthright or our right as adopted citizens. If that
were not so then why
should we demand the reciprocal rights of black migrants
and their families
in their own adopted countries?
It is also true
that without security over assets no economic progress is
possible. The
question of title rights is not something to be protected by
special
agreements between countries on a bilateral basis but rather by the
State as
an obligation to its productive citizens. By denying white farmers
those
rights, the Zanu PF regime has undermined the rights of all farmers
-
including the 800 000 small scale peasant farmers in Communal areas and
the
25 000 black commercial farmers on freehold land. That is why output
has
collapsed not only in the sectors previously dominated by large-scale
white
farmers but across the board.
The same principles apply to
mining rights, to industrial assets and to
private homes. If you deny these
rights on a racial basis to anyone, you
deny them to all. Any attacks on
private property are an attack on all
private property and will therefore
constrain investment and savings and
encourage capital flight. Most of the
latter is no longer generated by
fleeing white and Asian minorities but by
black Zimbabweans who see no
future for themselves or their families in a
Zimbabwe governed by a self
destructive Zanu PF minority government.
I
think we can brush aside the remarks by Mutasa as the rantings of an out
of
date racist who will soon just be a bad memory. In the past month things
have
become so much worse here - shortages of food, fuel and electricity
are
crippling our ability to continue to operate. The regime simply has no
idea
as to what to do to halt and reverse the decline because anything they
do
will create the conditions they fear most.
Inflation in January
went over 1000 per cent against January 2005 and shows
no signs of
slackening. At this pace soon, no one will be able to cope and
changes will
start to come. When that does, a trickle will soon become a
flood and will
wash away all the debris we have accumulated over the past 25
years. It was
like that in South Africa, it will be no different here.
Hopefully we can
then start to rebuild our lives and our country.
Eddie Cross
Bulawayo,
12th February 2006.
The Age, Australia
The
suffering of the Zimbabwean people is likely to continue until there is
a
change of government.
What to make of the news that Zimbabwe's President
Robert Mugabe plans to
reverse his infamous policy of seizing land from
white commercial farmers?
Over the past six years or so, Mr Mugabe's
Government has taken the land,
homes and equipment of about 4000 farmers of
European heritage who were
responsible for generating almost half of his
country's foreign revenue. The
Government is now expected to admit that only
about half of the land that it
seized remains productive. Although the
admission in itself represents a
significant turnaround, economists estimate
that in reality up to 90 per
cent of Zimbabwe's seized farmland lies
fallow.
As has been well documented, the land-seizure policy has caused
heartache
for those who were evicted; many farmers and their families
relocated to
Britain, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. But, more
significantly,
the policy has also contributed to the economic hardship of
those forced to
remain. In November, Zimbabwe's Deputy Agriculture Minister,
Sylvester
Nguni, made a rare admission that the farms had been given to
"people
without the faintest idea of farming". He further conceded that this
bungle
was responsible for the massive crop failure that left more than 30
per cent
of Zimbabwe's population dependent on food aid.
The policy
reversal means the ruling Zanu-PF party is expected to offer
white farmers
the opportunity to lease back their holdings, while also
(farmers hope)
offering protection from warlords interested in seizing their
equipment or
crops. In the meantime, the Commercial Farmers Union has
advised some
members to apply for leases. The union also issued a statement,
which said
in part "we have the energy and capacity to help bring Zimbabwe
once again
to be the breadbasket of the (African) subcontinent". The boast
was a sad
comment on the decline the country has experienced in the latter
part of Mr
Mugabe's increasingly despotic 25-year reign (it is now the
world's fastest
shrinking economy).
But it would be vain to hope that the Mugabe
Government has come to its
senses. Last year the Government undertook a
two-month demolition campaign
that destroyed the informal markets and homes
of the urban poor. The
operation, which was believed to be an act of
retribution towards those who
had supported the opposition in the election,
left 700,000 homeless. In a
report, the United Nations described the action
as a disastrous venture, but
such cruel and vandalistic policies are likely
to continue while Mr Mugabe
continues to live and to hold rigged elections.
Last month, US President
George Bush made a reference in his State of the
Union speech to Zimbabwe's
status as a non-democracy. He said "the demands
of justice and peace of this
world" require the country's freedom. He is
right, but when will these
demands be met? How long must the people of
Zimbabwe wait for rhetoric to
become reality? Last year too, Mr Mugabe
turned to China for diplomatic
support and debt relief, which means the
country has an ally on the UN
Security Council (and it is believed that
China will benefit, in the form of
local tobacco, and mineral assets). The
alliance makes the international
task of helping Zimbabwe that much more
difficult.
In the Darfur region of western Sudan, the question of
international
intervention is even more urgent. An estimated 180,000 people
have died,
mainly of hunger and disease, and about 2 million have been
displaced since
the Darfur conflict started three years ago. Today, United
Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan will meet Mr Bush to request that the
US
contribute troops and equipment to a planned new UN force which, it is
hoped, will bring stability to the region. About 7000 soldiers and monitors
from the poorly financed African Union force are now all that stands between
the Sudanese rebels, government forces and allied Arab militias. Both the US
and Russia have said they support the transformation of the African Union
operation to a UN peacekeeping force. It must be hoped that this support is
meaningful and swift, and that it puts an end to a brutal and tragic
conflict.
IOL
February 12 2006 at
02:37PM
Harare - Zimbabwe's state food agency has started auditing
corn
shortages at millers to determine the reason for severe food shortages
which
affect some four million citizens.
"Some millers are
saying they are not getting enough maize although we
as the government think
we have given them enough stocks. Maybe some millers
are holding onto the
maize but we want to be sure about this," Agriculture
Minister Joseph Made
said.
"We are carrying out this audit as we want to be sure where
the maize
is," he added.
The state Grain Marketing Board is the
only company permitted by law
to buy maize and wheat from growers, or import
grain to ensure food security
in the country.
Besides the shortages of corn the southern African country is also
facing
the prospect of bread shortages due to a lack of wheat.
President
Robert Mugabe's government has attributed the food shortages
to drought,
denying that it was the result of its land refom programme which
saw
agricultural productivity almost halt after about 4 500 white farmers
were
forcibly removed from their properties.
International aid agencies
estimate that about 4,3 million people out
of Zimbabwe's 13 million require
food assistance.