Yahoo News
Sun
Feb 3, 10:37 AM ET
HARARE (AFP) - A bid by Zimbabwe's opposition parties
to present a united
challenge to President Robert Mugabe in elections on
March 29 has collapsed,
leaders from two of the main factions said
Sunday.
"This thing is irretrievably broken," Arthur Mutambara told
reporters after
a series of meetings between his bloc of the Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC) and another led by former trade unionists ended in
deadlock.
"People of Zimbabwe, we apologise for failing to construct a
united front,"
Mutambara said, saying that the chances of defeating Mugabe
in elections
scheduled for March 29 were now sharply
"reduced."
"There is a disagreement," Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the
other, larger
MDC faction said at a separate news conference.
"We
can't force it (unity) down the people's throat. It's regrettable, it's
unfortunate, but that's the reality."
Both factions would participate
in next month's polls despite conditions
Tsvangirai said favoured Mugabe's
ruling Zimbabwe African National Union -
Patriotic Front
(ZANU-PF).
"We are giving the people of Zimbabwe a fighting chance
against the
dictatorship," Tsvangirai said. "We aim to focus on Robert
Mugabe and
ZANU-PF as the authors of the present national
crisis.
"The challenge we have got is that we are going into this
election fully
aware of the unfavourable conditions."
Political
analyst Augustine Timbe said the split would hand victory to
ZANU-PF.
"The votes for those who do not like the ruling party will
be scattered
between the various opposition candidates while those who have
always
supported the ruling party will stick to it," he said.
"The
opposition has always spoken about creating an alternative government
but
where making important decisions is concerned, they have been found
wanting," Timbe said.
Godfrey Chikowore, an analyst in the University
of Zimbabwe's Institute of
Development Studies, agreed the opposition's
chances looked worse than ever.
"If the opposition was serious it should
have put its house in order long
back," he told AFP.
Mutambara said
disagreement over seat allocations had been the dealbreaker.
"From
haggling over two seats last night, this morning our colleagues came
back to
us demanding 20 more seats in Matabeleland even where we have
sitting MPs,"
he said.
"At the same time they are not prepared to make such concessions
in Harare."
Matabeleland is considered a stronghold of the Mutambara
faction while the
group led by Morgan Tsvangirai is dominant in
Harare.
"In the absence of an agreement, we have no choice but to go
right ahead and
provide leadership in this country," said
Mutambara.
"This means from this place we're going out in the country to
work out our
nominations for the presidency, 210 members of parliament,
senators and
councillors. Morgan Tsvangirai is not our candidate for the
presidency of
this country."
Once a formidable force posing the
stiffest challenge to Mugabe's more than
two-decade stranglehold on power,
the MDC was riven by factionalism
following a row over senate elections in
2006.
The factions temporarily set their differences aside and vowed to
launch a
united front against Mugabe last year after Tsvangirai and other
party
members were beaten by security forces breaking up an opposition
rally.
Amid regional attempts to mediate an election framework between
the MDC and
the ruling ZANU-PF, Mugabe announced last month that
presidential and
parliamentary elections would be held on March
29.
The MDC has been pushing for the poll to be held only after a new
constitution was in place.
The 83-year-old Mugabe, who has ruled the
former British colony since
independence in 1980, is widely blamed for his
country's economic meltdown,
with annual inflation officially put at nearly
8,000 percent.
Mugabe has blamed sanctions imposed by the European Union
and United States
after he allegedly rigged his re-election in 2002.
Yahoo News
By MacDonald Dzirutwe
Sun Feb 3, 10:25 AM ET
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's splintered
opposition Movement for Democratic
Change will not boycott next month's
general elections but will field rival
candidates, badly weakening its
chances of unseating President Robert
Mugabe.
Politicians from
both wings of the movement said on Sunday that two days of
talks had failed
to reach agreement on a single candidate for the leadership
of the southern
African country, which is in the grip of severe economic
crisis.
The
movement split in 2005 and had been trying to agree on a pact to unite
behind main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to challenge Mugabe, who
turns 84 later this month.
But the smaller MDC group of academic
Arthur Mutambara said talks had broken
down and it would go it alone,
fielding candidates in the presidential,
parliamentary and council
elections.
Mutambara accused Tsvangirai's group of making unreasonable
demands and
failing to sign an agreed unity pact.
"In the absence of
an agreement, we have no choice as a political party but
to go right ahead
and provide leadership in this country," he told
reporters.
The MDC
had earlier said it could boycott the March 29 polls if Mugabe's
government
refused to adopt a new draft constitution agreed between the two
sides. The
charter has not been adopted.
Tsvangirai said talks between the two camps
had collapsed over the
differences about how many candidates to field in the
Matabeleland
province -- an MDC stronghold.
"The National Council
(MDC's main decision making body) disagreed on the
selection of candidates,
causing a delay of a single MDC taking shape,"
Tsvangirai told a
briefing.
"I need not to justify what was the cause of the dispute when
we were so
near to an agreement, save only to say we had requested that in
Matabeleland
we have a 50/50 split of
candidates."
CONSTITUTION
Tsvangirai said a new constitution was
his party's main hope of achieving a
fair election and, without one, the
result was bound to be disputed as had
happened in the past.
"What
this deadlock (over the constitution) means is that we are going into
an
election in March whose outcome is likely to be contested," he said.
"The
people know that they won the last three elections and that they will
win
the next election, but let Mugabe steal (it) and see whether he can
resolve
the national crisis."
Tsvangirai, who has accused Mugabe of rigging past
elections, would not
comment on what action the MDC might take should it
lose.
Analysts say a divided opposition stands little chance of defeating
Mugabe,
who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 and
is
accused by critics of plunging the country into crisis.
"A single
candidate philosophy would have made it easier to deliver
victory," said
Mutambara.
Mugabe has vowed to clinch a landslide victory in next month's
elections to
silence the opposition and shame Western foes he says are
sponsoring his
rivals to remove him from power.
Critics say the
veteran leader has ruined Zimbabwe through controversial
policies such as
the seizure of white-owned farms for blacks and lately
plans to localize
foreign-owned companies, including banks and mines.
Mugabe denies charges
he has wrecked a once promising economy and blames
former colonial ruler
Britain for leading a Western onslaught against his
government as punishment
for the land seizures.
(Editing by Michael Winfrey)
International Herald Tribune
The Associated PressPublished:
February 3, 2008
HARARE, Zimbabwe: Supporters of an Anglican
bishop who is a staunch
supporter of Zimbabwe's ruling party blockaded
Harare's cathedral Sunday,
preventing the swearing-in ceremony of his
elected successor. Police ignored
a court order and did not
intervene.
Gangs of supporters of Bishop Nolbert Kunonga locked the doors
and gates to
the cloisters of St. Mary's Anglican Cathedral in downtown
Harare and at
least two worshippers who tried to enter were assaulted,
witnesses said.
The High Court on Thursday ruled that the swearing-in of
Bishop Sebastian
Bakare, voted bishop of the Harare Anglican province by
local churches to
replace Kunonga, should go ahead and Bakare's followers
should be allowed to
worship in the cathedral.
But from early Sunday,
Kunonga's supporters circled the cathedral entrances
and barred entry to
churchgoers showing up for Sunday services.
A few police, watched by
witnesses and reporters, did not intervene.
Bakare was later installed in
an "investiture" ceremony as the new caretaker
Anglican bishop of Harare at
a service attended by several thousand
worshippers at a sports arena across
the city.
The standoff was the latest incident in a bitter dispute that has
racked the
Anglican Church in Zimbabwe since Kunonga last year refused to
hand over the
cathedral, its administrative offices, its check accounts and
vehicles to
church elders after losing the election for bishop.
In
January, Kunonga declared he was breaking away from the Church of the
Province of Central Africa, the regional Anglican governing body, and
declared the formation of an independent Anglican Harare diocese that
retained him as its leader.
But in his court ruling Thursday, Judge
Charles Hungwe ruled that
declaration invalid, saying church elders across
the region had not accepted
the schism and it violated longstanding
constitutional rules of the Anglican
church in central and southern
Africa.
He dismissed an appeal by Kunonga to bar Bakare from using church
property
for worship and said "men of the cloth ought to resolve their
differences in
a God-fearing manner."
In an earlier ruling last
month, the High Court permitted both Kunonga's and
Bakare's followers to
hold services in the cathedral at separate times while
the issue of the
bishop's post was resolved. Scuffles occurred at those
services, watched
over by armed police, and in one incident Kunonga snatched
Bakare's bible
from his grasp and threw it across the cathedral nave.
In 2004, Kunonga
faced a regional church court on allegations of incitement
to murder,
fostering ruling party politics, ethnic hatred and incitement
from the
pulpit during the often-violent seizures ordered by Mugabe and the
ruling
party of thousands of white-owned farms since 2000, and using
intimidation
against his opponents.
That court adjourned in confusion and rancor
before it could make a ruling
on the behavior of Kunonga, a former lecturer
in liberation theology in the
United States.
Soon after becoming
Harare bishop, Kunonga ordered the removal of memorial
plaques and insignia
honoring the country's dead before independence in
1980, including those of
black soldiers who fought alongside the forces of
Britain, the former
colonial ruler, in World War II.
Last month, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Rowan Williams, head of the
worldwide Anglican Church, said he
unequivocally condemned the use of armed
police and state machinery to
intimidate Kunonga's opponents.
"Kunonga's position has become
increasingly untenable within the Anglican
Church over the last year, as he
has consistently refused to maintain
appropriate levels of independence from
the Zimbabwean Government," Williams
said.
Zim Online
by Lizwe Sebatha Monday 04 February
2008
HARARE – Zimbabwe’s Information Minister Sikhanyiso
Ndlovu says Harare will
not accredit journalists from “hostile” Western
nations to cover next March’s
presidential and parliamentary
elections.
Speaking at the Bulawayo Press Club on Friday night, Ndlovu
said journalists
from Western media groups were continuing to violate
Zimbabwe’s media laws
by illegally sneaking into the country.
“The
government would limit the accreditation of foreign media houses to
only
those with friendly ties with the government,” said Ndlovu.
“Journalists
from the likes of BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) who
continue to
sneak into the country illegally and report illegally would not
be
accredited to cover the elections,” added Ndlovu.
Last month, the BBC’s
John Simpson defied the ban on the organization and
spent a week in Zimbabwe
covering political developments on the ground as
well as in President Robert
Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF party.
The clandestine visit riled as well as
embarrassed state security agents who
keen to maintain a tight lid on
political developments in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabweans go to the polls on 29
March with Mugabe, who has maintained a
tight grip on information flow over
the past five years, seeking a fresh
five-year presidential term that could
take his rule to 33 years.
Harare has banned international media
organisations such as the BBC and the
United States’ based Cable News
Network (CNN) from operating in Zimbabwe as
the government continued its
fierce propaganda war against critics.
Harare has also since 2003 banned
four independent newspapers, including the
biggest selling Daily News, that
were deemed critical of the government.
The government last week said it
would only invite election observers from
“friendly nations” to observe the
elections that come amid a worsening
economic crisis that has manifested
itself in rampant inflation of over 26
000 percent, shortages of food and
foreign currency.
Analysts say free and fair elections are a prerequisite
to any plans to
resuscitate the southern Africa’s once brilliant economy. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Lizwe Sebatha Monday 04 February
2008
BULAWAYO – ZANU PF party primary elections to choose the
party’s
parliamentary and council election candidates in Bulawayo for next
March’s
polls had to be postponed last weekend following violent clashes
between
party supporters over the selection process.
The police had
to be called in to quell the violent disturbances at Davies
Hall after
candidates aligned to controversial war veterans’ leader,
Jabulani Sibanda,
accused the party’s provincial leadership of attempting to
sideline them in
the selection of candidates.
Sibanda is leading a rival faction of ZANU
PF that is bitterly opposed to
the party’s ‘old guard’ of politburo member,
Dumiso Dabengwa, ZANU PF
national chairman, John Nkomo and Vice-President
Joseph Msika.
ZANU PF spokesman for Bulawayo province, Effort Nkomo,
confirmed the
disturbances yesterday adding that the party had since agreed
to move the
primary elections to a later date.
“We called off the
primary elections because of the disturbances by some
party members on
Friday. The selection of candidates would be held at a
later date which
would be announced soon,” Nkomo said.
President Robert Mugabe’s ruling
ZANU PF party is currently conducting
primary elections around the country
to choose candidates to run for the
party in the March 29
elections.
Zimbabweans go to the polls next March to choose a new
president,
parliamentarians and councilors in the elections that analysts
say are a
prerequisite to plucking the country out of an eight-year
political crisis.
Contacted for comment yesterday over the disturbances
in Bulawayo, Sibanda
said: “There is a lot of rubbish happening in that
province. I was not there
but I received reports that the elections were
postponed because of attempts
to impose candidates by sidelining other
aspiring candidates.”
Sibanda, who was fired from ZANU PF in 2004 after
he allegedly sought to
block the rise of Vice-President Joice Mujuru, has
been a constant thorn in
the flesh of the ZANU PF ‘old guard’ in
Matabeleland.
The ZANU PF old guard in Matabeleland insists that Sibanda,
who organised
controversial marches in support of Mugabe last year, should
be barred from
conducting any party business until his matter has been
comprehensively
dealt with by the party’s disciplinary committee. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Own Correspondent Monday 04 February
2008
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s Legal Resource Centre
(SLR) has expressed
serious concern at the treatment of Zimbabwean
immigrants arrested last week
by the police at a Johannesburg church where
they had sought shelter.
LRC director Janet Love told the press at the
weekend that there were delays
in ensuring immigrants held in police cells
had access to legal and medical
assistance, while some of the Zimbabweans
appear to had been physically
mistreated.
Love said: "Extensive
delays were experienced in obtaining access to the
police cells in order to
consult with the detainees.
“Initially access was refused but, after
three telephone calls and the
threat of an urgent application to the High
Court being lodged, it was
eventually agreed that we could consult with the
detainees in groups of no
more than six at a time."
The LRC is an
independent, non-profit public interest law clinic, which
provides free
legal services to the vulnerable and marginalised members of
society.
The LRC is assisting mostly illegal immigrants who were
arrested when the
police raided the Central Methodist church, which has
provided shelter and
food to thousands of Zimbabweans fleeing home because
of worsening economic
hardships and political violence.
More than 300
people were arrested and are held at the Johannesburg Central
police
station.
The South African Council of Churches and human rights groups
have
criticised the police raid, which some have likened to the worst police
excesses of the 1970s and 1980s” when the country was still under apartheid
rule.
The Zimbabwe Exiles Forum, that defends the rights of
Zimbabwean refugees in
South Africa, said the raid raised serious doubts
about South Africa’s
commitment to upholding the rights of
refugees.
The group, which accuses South African authorities of abusing
Zimbabwean
immigrants, has called on President Thabo Mbeki’s government to
accept a
request by the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights
(ACHPR) to
investigate the ill-treatment of refugees in the
country.
Police have defended the raid, which they say was in response to
complaints
from the public to eradicate criminal elements within the
district.
At least three million Zimbabweans, a quarter of the country’s
12 million
people, are living in South Africa, the majority of them as
illegal
immigrants after fleeing hunger and political persecution at home. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Mutumwa Mawere Monday 04 February
2008
JOHANNESBURG - Zimbabwe finds itself at the crossroads
and the bank created
at independence in 1980 of justice, freedom and
equality seems to be
bankrupt and it is evident that the promissory note
that was given to
citizens at independence will not be honored on March
29.
A central bank should ordinarily represent a repository of trust and
integrity but the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has been reduced to a
theatre of games and machinations while the nation is at its knees groping
for solutions and desperate for direction and answers.
At last week’s
announcement of the monetary policy statement, Dr Gideon Gono
had this to
say: "We have chosen a low-key presentation of this monetary
policy
statement for strategic reasons while we prepare for a comprehensive
post-elections policy program.’’
He also made a startling revelation
that the RBZ would come up with a
post-elections monetary policy blueprint
that will cover a 24-month recovery
programme stretching from May 2008
through to April 2010.
It appears that Gono already knows the outcome of
the general elections
otherwise he would have been cautious instead of
preempting the actions of a
new administration particularly given that this
landmark election will
involve presidential, parliamentary and local
choices.
It appears that Gono has already discounted the possibility of
any other
outcome than the victory of ZANU-PF.
In line with his
belief that ZANU-PF will win the election, Gono said that
the post election
programme will focus on, among other things, the removal
of pricing
distortions in such areas as fuel, agricultural inputs and
outputs, multiple
interest and exchange rates, electricity, water and other
municipal and
parastatal service charges.
Does this not sound familiar? Is it not the
same Gono who said failure was
not an option?
Why would citizens of
Zimbabwe place their trust on him after the elections?
If these policies
make sense now, why defer them to the post-election
period? Is it the change
that Zimbabweans should vote for on 29 March 2008?
He also said that the
government will also look at the subsidies policy with
a view to scrapping
untargeted general subsidies, amend investment laws, and
boost productivity
through incentives for key sectors — agriculture, mining,
tourism and
manufacturing.
The governor who is increasingly assuming the role of an
unelected President
had no kind words for government ministries, local
authorities, parastatals
and some sections of the business community which
he alleged have over the
years failed to take heed of policy advice and
warnings from the central
bank as if to suggest that these state
institutions are now accountable to
him.
Under what constitutional
order would a governor of the central bank make
such statements? It can only
be when a democratic order has been
irretrievably broken. It is important
for citizens to record all the words
of Gono because they help in exposing
the extent of the breakdown of the
rule of law and the collapse of the
state.
As is now characteristic of Gono, he spared no effort to lament
the impact
of the sanctions imposed on the country by the European Union,
the United
States and their allies, saying there were "considerable attempts
being made
to dismantle Zimbabwe’s economic fabric through a combination of
armory".
He was also reported to have said: "The subtle nature of some of
these
sanctions has regrettably escaped the eyes of some stakeholders here
at home
and many others in the world community who, instead, are
interpreting
Zimbabwe’s current difficulties as a product of domestic policy
imbalances.’’
With respect to the impact of sanctions, he was of the view
that the
freezing of donor-supported programmes, withdrawal of external
lines of
credit and balance of payments support and the denial of Zimbabwe’s
access
to the Global Fund for health-related programmes had combined to
create the
economic crisis.
He then attempted to justify his
questionable and possibly corrupt
quasi-fiscal activities by saying that the
RBZ had been forced to carry
extraordinary responsibilities outside its core
business to ensure that the
country was fed and had fuel, among other
things.
Gono was supposed to appear before the Budget and Finance
Committee of the
recently dissolved parliament to expose the so-called cash
barons but it was
reported that the meeting was now postponed and will only
take place after
the elections by which time there may be new players in
parliament.
Gono is firmly in control of economic actors who are reduced
to beggars for
this or that dispensation on the false premise that the RBZ
has an existence
outside the control of citizens.
While it is
universally accepted that no state can exist on its own it is
clearly
evident in the Gono construction that with or without elections,
ZANU-PF
will be in charge and by deductive logic he will be in power as well
to
continue to play tactical games with people’s resources and steal their
future through manipulative actions.
* Mutumwa Mawere is a
Zimbabwean-born South African businessman based in
Johannesburg.
Nehanda Radio
03 February 2008
By a correpondent
Police in
Bulawayo on Wednesday arrested Themba Maphenduka, the newly
elected
Treasurer General of the Zimbabwe National Students Union, and later
dumped
in Nyamandlovu, about 30 kilometers outside Zimbabwe's second largest
city
of Bulawayo.
His latest altercation with the law enforcement agents comes
barely two
months after he was brutally assaulted in Bulawayo at the railway
station by
soldiers.
Maphenduka was upended by the police
after addressing a general meeting at
Bulawayo Polytechnic, the meeting was
convened to discuss the poor education
delivery system, poor food quality at
at the institution and the lack of
teaching staff at the College.
The
college has since turned to unqualified personnel in an effort to fill
the
gap left by qualified teachers who are fleeing the country
en'masse.
After addressing the students, he was waylaid by four
plain clothes security
agents who took him to Bulawayo Central police
station where they
immediately switched cars and drove him to Nyamandlovu,
to an isolated
police base in the area. He was interrogated, being asked
about the
congress resolutions of the Zimbabwe National Students Union,
their action
plan and was forced to reveal the names of fellow members of
the National
Executive Council of ZINASU.
The police left him
stranded in Nyamandlovu, and he had to walk for at least
an hour before
accessing the main Harare-Victorial Falls road at around 2
am. There were
no reports of assaults.
The Zimbabwean
Sunday, 03 February 2008 10:29
HARARE - The lawyer of alleged coup plotter Simon Mann is appealing
in the
International Court of Justice against the illegal and clandestine
deportation of his client to Equatorial Guinea.
Mann, 55, lost an
appeal against extradition in the High Court on Wednesday,
where his legal
team argued that he would face torture and a likely death
sentence in a
nation with one of the worst human rights records in Africa.
Mann, an ex-SAS
officer was placed on a military plane and flown out in the
early hours of
Thursday after being handed over to Equatorial Guinea
officials.
Mann was
collected from Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison at 04:30am by
officers of
the notorious Law and Order Section and taken to the Zimbabwe
Air Force’s
Manyame Airbase, just south of Harare and flown to Equatorial
Guinea where
he is due to face fresh charges of treason.
Mann’s lawyer Jonathan Samkange
told The Zimbabwean Friday: “His deportation
was illegal. We are lodging an
appeal in the Supreme Court. We are
challenging this all the way, right up
to the International Court of
Justice. Deporting a person at night is not
only mischievous but unlawful.”
The High Court in August 2004 convicted Mann
of attempting to buy arms for
an alleged coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial
Guinea. He served a three year
term in the Chikurubi Maximum Prison. But at
the end of his prison term,
Equatorial Guinea President Theodora Obiang
Nguema Mbasongo insisted that he
faces trial in his own country on
allegations of plotting to overthrow his
regime. The former SAS officer was
arrested in March 2004 when his private
plane landed at the Harare
International Airport. He denied plotting a coup.
His co-accused got 12
months in jail for breaking immigration laws while his
two pilots got 16
months.
The men insisted that the weapons they had in their possession were
to be
used to provide security for a diamond mine in the Democratic Republic
of
Congo and not to stage a putsch in Equatorial Guinea.