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Minister takes over huge parts of Kondozi Estate

Zim Online

Saturday 13 January 2007

MUTARE - A senior Zimbabwe government minister Christopher Mushowe has taken
over huge swathes of Kondozi Estate, one of the country's biggest
horticultural exporting farms.

The Zimbabwe government seized Kondozi from the De Klerk family in 2004 as
part of President Robert Mugabe's chaotic and often violent land reform
programme.

Several government ministers who included Agriculture Minister Joseph Made
and Mushowe were initially said to have sought to take over the lucrative
property.

The government ministers only relented after Vice President Joseph Msika
spoke out against the take-over. Kondozi, situated about 50km west of the
eastern city of Mutare, was later allocated to the government's Agricultural
Development Authority (ARDA).

But production at Kondozi plummeted over the past two years due to
mismanagement by ARDA and also because government ministers had looted
equipment equipment from the estate.

Last year, the government began allocating small plots at Kondozi to private
individuals.

According to an offer letter dated 20 October 2006, signed by Land Reform
Minister Didymus Mutasa, Mushowe was allocated three plots at Kondozi
measuring a total of 1 163 hectares.

"The Minister of State for National Security, Lands, Land Reform and
Resettlement in the President's Office has the pleasure in informing you
that your application for land under Model A2 Scheme has been successful,"
wrote Mutasa.

"You are offered Subdivision 1 of Lorn and Haig and RE of Wallacedale in
Mutare District Manicaland Province for agricultural purposes. The farm is
approximately 1 163 hectares in extent."

War veterans who spearheaded the violent seizure of farms from whites
immediately condemned the allocation of the plots to Mushowe saying the
government minister already owned two plots at the estate.

"This is disappointing. Mushowe already has two plots at the estate and now
he is given yet another one at the expense of other deserving people," said
a war veteran who  refused to be named for fear of victimisation.

Kondozi was one of Zimbabwe's largest horticultural exporting firms with an
annual turnover of about US$15 million a month. At its peak, the estate
employed over 5 000 people.

The former owners of Kondozi have since relocated to neighbouring countries
in southern Africa such as Mozambique and Zambia while dozens of other white
farm owners have settled in Nigeria and as far as Australia and New Zealand.

Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party has in the
past accused the government of allocating land to senior ruling ZANU PF
party officials and government ministers at the expense of ordinary people.

Zimbabwe has grappled severe food shortages over the past seven years after
Mugabe's controversial farm seizure programme destabilised the mainstay
agricultural sector, knocking down food production by about 60 percent.

Once a regional bread-basket, Zimbabwe has largely survived on food handouts
from international relief agencies for the past seven years. The government
denies that its land reforms are not to blame for the crisis blaming natural
causes for the food shortages. - ZimOnline


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MDC plans to roll out mass protests in three months time

Zim Online

Saturday 13 January 2007

HARARE - The main wing of Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
party on Friday resolved to call mass protests in the next 12 weeks to force
the government to accept sweeping political reforms and that it abandons
plans to extend President Robert Mugabe's term by another two years.

The MDC party led by Morgan Tsvangirai first threatened to call mass
anti-government protests last year but had appeared hesitant to confront
state security forces in the streets.

Party insiders said an eight-hour meeting of the party's national executive
held at its Harare headquarters unanimously resolved to "mobilise the people
and deliver on last year's agenda to engage in mass action".

Nelson Chamisa, the party's spokesman refused to comment on the meeting,
saying Tsvangiari would announce decisions of the Friday meeting at a press
briefing scheduled for next Monday.

Our sources however said there was consensus at the meeting, with all
provincial representatives submitting that the people across the country
were ready to take to the streets following 12 months of an intensive rural
and urban mobilisation campaign led by Tsvangirai and other party leaders to
rally rank and file members for mass action.

Both State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa and his Home Affairs counterpart
Kembo Mohadi could not be immediately reached for comment on the opposition's
latest threat to call mass protests.

The government, which has in the past sent armed soldiers onto the streets
to crush dissent, insists it will be ruthless with protesters with Mugabe
himself openly telling the MDC and its supporters to expect to be shot at by
the army if they dare take to the streets.

According to our sources, Tsvangirai will hold one more last round of
rallies throughout the country starting next week to rally party structures
for action to stop Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party's plans to use their
absolute parliamentary majority to postpone a presidential election due in
2008 to 2010 and allow the Zimbabwean leader to remain in office.

Tsvangirai, who founded the MDC in 1999 and saw the party split into two
rival camps last year, promised to roll out nationwide mass protests before
last December, invoking intense criticism when he did not act on his
promise.

Prominent academic Arthur Mutambara heads the other wing of the MDC and has
also called for the use of "any means necessary" to force Mugabe's
government to accept democratic change.

Analysts say discontent is running too deep among long-suffering Zimbabweans
that all that was needed is good planning and visionary leadership to
organize effective mass protests that could force Mugabe and ZANU PF to the
negotiating table. - ZimOnline


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Zimbabwean farmers get temporary reprieve - report

Reuters

      Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:31 PM GMT

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's government has extended an eviction deadline
for dozens of white farmers still holding onto land listed for seizure by
the state, and for an unspecified number of blacks illegally occupying some
farms.

The farmers initially had up to February 3 to vacate all land targeted by
the government, but state media reported on Friday that the lands ministry
would now allow the white commercial farmers and the black settlers to stay
on until after the harvest in August.

Under the rules, producers of the staple maize crop have up to July 31 while
seed maize growers have an August 31 deadline.

"The outgoing farmers should be enabled to harvest their crops without any
disruptions in that process," Ngoni Masoka, permanent secretary in the lands
ministry, was quoted as saying by the official Herald newspaper.

Masoka was unavailable for comment on Friday.

Officially 500-600 white farmers still own land in Zimbabwe, down from about
4,500 before President Robert Mugabe embarked on a controversial land
seizure drive in 2000.

But the government says dozens of other whites are still hanging onto their
farms "illegally" and many blacks are also occupying some properties
unlawfully.

The government's land redistribution programme officially aims to equitably
distribute prime farmland, 75 percent of which was occupied by 4,500 white
farmers, although much of the land has ended up in the hands of government
and ruling party officials.

Zimbabwe's Gazetted Land Act, which was passed last month, gave the white
farmers and illegal black land occupiers up to 90 days to vacate land
acquired by the state.

Last week, State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa, who is also in charge of
land reform, said government would soon start issuing eviction notices to
farmers and occupiers still on gazetted farmland.

"My ministry will issue notices to vacate these and expect compliance in
terms of the law, failure of which will result in prosecution," Mutasa said
in a statement issued Saturday.

Those found guilty could face up to two years in jail.

Critics say Mugabe's land reforms have destroyed commercial agriculture in
the country, a former regional bread basket that has increasingly found it
difficult to feed itself and is in the grips of its worst economic crisis
since independence from Britain in 1980.


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Govt dismisses reports of diamond smuggling



[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

BULAWAYO, 12 Jan 2007 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe's government on Friday dismissed
reports that diamonds were being smuggled into neighbouring South Africa by
a Zimbabwean company as "politically motivated rumours" cooked up by its
enemies, who had an agenda of regime change.

"Absolute nonsense," commented Amos Midzi, Minister of Mines and Mineral
development, in reaction to reports that the European Commission, the
incoming chair of the Kimberley Process, an international governmental
certification scheme set up in 2003 to prevent trade in conflict diamonds,
had summoned executives from River Ranch Limited, a diamond mine in the
southern border town of Beitbridge, to respond to allegations of smuggling
made by the World Diamond Council (WDC).

Last month, the New York-based WDC said it had received reports that
Zimbabwean diamonds were possibly being combined with blood diamonds from
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and smuggled into neighbouring South
Africa, where they were being certified as legitimate and exported.

WDC Chairman Eli Izhakoff said he had written to Karel Kovanda, the EC
official who took over chairmanship of the Kimberley process on 1 January
2007, informing him of the reports.

According to Midzi, "We are aware that somebody - a sworn enemy of the
people of Zimbabwe - is setting an agenda to give the heavily biased
European Union reason to extend its illegal sanctions on our government when
it sits for a review in February."

The EU imposed targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe in February 2002 after Harare
expelled its election observer team. It has since renewed the sanctions,
which include a travel ban on senior ZANU-PF officials.

"The claims come as no surprise to us," Midzi told IRIN. "We know the West
wants regime change here, but lies will not bring it ... We went to the said
mine and made our own investigations, and we established that nothing of
that sort has ever happened or was happening. Our enemies also say there is
illegal smuggling of diamonds from the Marange belt [in the eastern province
of Manicaland] in Mutare [a town on the Mozambican border] into Mozambique
and South Africa, yet it is not true."

River Ranch officials have denied the allegations made by the WDC. The
company's legal advisor, George Smith, said his mine was innocent and
confirmed that they had a scheduled meeting with EC representatives.

"Since the resuscitation of River Ranch Limited in 2004, which went into
liquidation in 1998, we have not exported any diamonds, and I wonder where
reports and suspicions of diamond smuggling by our company come from - they
are simply not true," he told IRIN.

"And it is also not true that it is the EU which has sought an audience with
us. In fact, it is us who have called them to clarify issues to them, since
there are such allegations leveled against us. We have a meeting with them
later today [Friday]."

A number of ruling ZANU-PF party members are shareholders in River Ranch
Limited, notably Solomon Mujuru, husband of the country's vice-president,
Joyce Mujuru, and some of the more than 100 government officials and
associates banned from travelling to Europe by the EU.

Midzi stressed recent attempts to clean up the mining sector. The government
claimed it had tamed the illicit extraction of minerals in a crackdown on
illegal gold and diamond mining, codenamed Chikorokoza Kwete (No to illegal
mining).

Thousands of people, including foreigners from as far as Pakistan and
Israel, have been arrested for illegal panning of gold and diamonds in the
clean-up operation, while some have been intercepted at exit points as they
tried to leave the country with precious stones.

Zimbabwe has been linked to the illegal diamonds in the DRC in the past.
About five years ago, the United Nations Panel of Experts on the Illegal
Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the DRC said
Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former Speaker of Parliament and National Security
Minister, and Zimbabwe Defence Force Commander Gen Vitalis Zvinavashe had
enriched themselves from the country's mineral assets under the pretext of
arrangements set up to repay Zimbabwe for military services.

Anti-blood diamond trade campaigners do not rule out the continued existence
of links between the DRC and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe provided military support to
the Laurent Kabila government in DRC when it battled rebels backed by Uganda
and Rwanda in the late 1990s.

The British-based nongovernmental organisation (NGO) Global Witness, which
has highlighted the use of resources, such as timber, oil and diamonds, to
fund conflicts and corrupt regimes across the world, said the diamond sector
in the DRC was riddled with problems.

"DRC is a member of the Kimberley process, but quite a lot of smuggling of
diamonds in and out of DRC still goes on," said Carina Tertsakian of Global
witness, naming Angola as one of the countries allegedly linked to the
smuggling.

She pointed out that people in the DRC still spoke of the war that had
linked it with Zimbabwe, and the close relationship between Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe and late President Laurent Kabila. "They talk about
some of the links still being active."


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Zimbabwe's hospitals crippled by striking doctors

Times Online. UK January 12, 2007

      Elsa McLaren and agencies

 A pay strike by junior doctors that has crippled Zimbabwe's main hospitals
further escalated today as nurses joined the action for better pay and
working conditions.

      Scenes of chaos greeted those arriving at Parirenyatwa hospital, the
country's largest health centre, which has been hit hard by the strike. Sick
patients, some lying on stretchers on the pavement outside the hospital,
groaned in pain as they waited to be seen.

      Only three senior doctors were tending to the most critically injured
with the help of nurses, while the rest of patients were forced to wait
their turn.

      The strike by 350 junior doctors at public hospitals across Zimbabwe
has paralysed the already beleaguered health service. The country is
suffering its worst economic crisis since independence, with acute shortages
of hard currency, food, gasoline, medicines and essential imports.

      The junior doctors began their boycott three weeks ago demanding
salary increased of 8,000 per cent and hire vehicle loans. They were soon
joined by many senior doctors and today, it was reported by state radio that
nurses in the second city of Bulawayo had joined the action.

      Signs at the entrances of casualty departments warned patients that
only those with the most extreme emergencies would be treated.

      Rita Kamungeremu, waiting with her 23-year-old daughter who is
suffering from Aids, said: "She can't talk, eat or do anything, but there is
no one attending to her."

      Yesterday, Zimbabwe's health minister urged the striking doctors
return to work, saying their action was putting the lives of patients at
risk.

      "I am urging the doctors to come back to work because the patient is
suffering, the Zimbabwean patient is suffering," David Parirenyatwa, Health
Minister, said in remarks broadcast on state radio.

      "It is very, very critical that we don't allow our patients in this
country to die and that is why I am urging them to come back for their
patients' sake because that is what they trained for, the other issues we
can discuss," he added.

      However, the Hospital Doctors Association said today that no agreement
had yet been reached with the health ministry and talks were set to resume
on Monday.

      Kudakwashe Nyamutukwa, head of the association, said junior doctors
would not return to duty until they received an acceptable offer from the
authorities after nearly four weeks of negotiations over pay and conditions.

      He complained of acute shortages of surgical gloves, bandages,
medication and other basic supplies.

      "We met again as doctors today and we unanimously agreed that no
matter what we will not go back to work until our demands are met," Mr
Nyamutukwa said.

      He added that nurses at another major health centre in Harare had
joined the strike, but this could not be confirmed.

      Zimbabwe's meltdown is blamed largely on disruptions to the
agriculture-based economy after the often violent seizures of thousands of
white-owned commercial farms began in 2000. Shortages in currency have
spurred black market trading in scarce commodities, like gasoline which
sells for nearly eight times the government-pegged price.


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Zim 'a new Bantustan'

News24

12/01/2007 09:26  - (SA)

Jannie Ferreira, Die Burger

Cape Town - The South African government should never have allowed president
Robert Mugabe to destroy his economy.

It is in South Africa's national interest that neighbouring states did not
collapse. Moeletsi Mbeki, businessman and political analyst who used to work
in Zimbabwe as a journalist, said Zimbabwe became a South African homeland.

He said: "What we have here is a good example of a failed South African
foreign policy."

Mbeki said: "If Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, former prime minister of South Africa,
were to return to the country today, he would have been very sad that his
Bantustan (homeland) policy had failed. But, if he looked across the
Limpopo, he would have seen that there was at least one place where it
worked.

"I do not know whether the SA government wants a Bantustan. They have
diagnosed the problem incorrectly. They have treated the wrong ailment,
namely Zimbabwe's national sovereignty. Instead of protecting our national
interests, our government concerns itself with theories of sovereignty."

Asbestos problems develop

Mbeki explained that to understand Zimbabwe correctly, the background must
be seen in context. South Africans had never correctly understood the nature
of the problem in Zimbabwe.

The first problem was the economy. Zimbabwe had a few export products that
carried its economy for the greater part of the 20th century. These key
products were asbestos, tobacco and gold.

Problems with asbestos began to develop towards the end of the 20th century
when the use of asbestos was banned for health reasons, and gradually it was
fazed out of the basket of export products.

The same started to happen with tobacco as a result of increasing
anti-smoking sentiment. Zimbabwe tobacco was highly sought after among the
wealthy, but in the course of time had to be sold to poorer consumers in
Asia.

And while the gold price was about $800 a fine ounce in 1980, it dropped
quickly to $300 in the years that followed. Mbeki said that Zimbabwean
African National Union--Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) always aspired to running
a one-party state, and openly said so.

However, it could not entrench this in legislation, because by the time
Zimbabwe achieved majority rule the idea of one party states had already
been discredited in Africa. Although Zanu-PF strove for this, it was never
introduced.

20 000 countrymen murdered

What it did was to place Joshua Nkomo's Zapu under pressure, with, among
others, the assistance of the North Koreans. Zanu-PF committed atrocities
against Zapu while alleging they were a front for the erstwhile South
African apartheid regime.

Mbeki said there was never any evidence for this, and the allegation was
pure rubbish. Through this suppression of Zapu, the Mugabe regime murdered
an estimated 20 000 of their fellow countrymen.

However, Zanu-PF did achieve one of its objectives, namely to force Zapu to
amalgamate with them. When the economy started to decline, urban dwellers
were the hardest hit.

Income from exports dropped, inflation rose, and workers started to blame
the government for the developing crisis. The consequence was that in 1999,
the trade unions and non-government organisations established a political
party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

About the same time, the constitution was amended and tested by means of a
referendum. Mugabe's party suffered a hiding in the referendum.

The result of this was that Mugabe reverted to violent methods. He tried to
suppress the MDC and intimidate its supporters, in the way he had done with
Zapu in the 1980's.

However, he could not use the violent methods the military's Fifth Brigade
had used and turned to his secret service and police to carry out the task.

Mugabe needed a new scapegoat, because SA's National Party government was no
longer there to blame. The "new bogeymen" he discovered were the commercial
farmers.

They were blamed for Zimbabwe's economic problems, and Mugabe decided that
the solution was to hand over agricultural land to the masses.

According to Mbeki, some members of the SA government thought that this was
really a very good idea, but land reform was not really what it was about
for Mugabe. He said: "It was simply an excuse for oppression."


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Zimbabweans demonstrate at the White House



By Violet Gonda
12 January 2007

The deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe visited the seat of America's
government Friday when more than 75 MDC activists and concerned Zimbabweans
from different states demonstrated outside the White House. Some travelled
from as far as Ohio which is 8 hours away from Washington DC to express
their discontent.

One of the organisers Dr. Handel Mlilo said change was needed urgently
because people are suffering in Zimbabwe. The group wants the American
public and officials to understand what is going on and they planned to
leave the White House and head for the Zimbabwe Embassy to drop off a
petition.

Mlilo said: "We demand the restoration of freedom, democracy, human rights
and adherence to the rule of law in Zimbabwe. We have had enough."

Concerned Zimbabweans in the USA say 2007 is the year they will make a
concerted and consistent advocacy to remove the Mugabe regime. "We are far
away from home the best we can do is make sure we are supportive of the
heroic struggle that the people of Zimbabwe are waging against this
tyrannical regime," Mlilo said.

SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news


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Africa headhunts Zim farmers

Mail and Guardian

      Godwin Gandu

      12 January 2007 12:00

            Countries across the continent are headhunting the last
remaining white commercial farmers in Zimbabwe, the majority of whom are
contemplating packing their bags in search of more secure pastures.

            Five countries in the region have expressed an interest in
welcoming farmers from Zimbabwe.

            "It's regrettable," said Olivier Hendrik, director of the
Commercial Farmers Union (CFU). "We are having many farmers going to show
their skills elsewhere; leaving their own country.

            "We have had Cameroon coming on board, asking for farmers to go
up there; we have been in communication with the Democratic Republic of
Congo, they are asking for farmers there; Tanzania is asking for farmers.
Malawi, Angola are looking for opportunities, it's across Africa," Olivier
said.

            More than 400 farmers have left the country since 2004, and
numbers are likely to increase at the region's demand. Last week Minister of
State for Land Affairs, Flora Buka indicated that the government would
extend invitations for white farmers to return to farming. According to
press reports, the government is considering granting land to the 600 white
farmers left on commercial farms in the country. These reports have been
dismissed by the CFU, which said there has been no demonstrable commitment
from government that it wants them to stay.

            The farmers' union told the Mail & Guardian that the government
had not responded to requests from white farmers for 99-year leases, which
it has offered to new black farmers.

            Leases were offered to about 120 new farmers, out of more than
200 000, last November. The government believes the 99-year leases will act
as collateral for farmers to access loans from banks. The majority of new
farmers have not accessed loans and most agricultural land is lying idle as
the government battles to finance inputs.

            At the same time, evidence of new farmers owning more than one
farm is surfacing -- violating the principle of one man, one farm.
Government spokespeople are contradicting each other about whether the
remaining white farmers will ever get their old farms back.

            "Didymus Mutasa, the Minister of Land and Land Reform, said
white farmers won't get land, but President Robert Mugabe said they will,"
said economist Eric Bloch.

            The CFU said there has not been any formal communication from
the government, despite persistent reports claiming that some farmers could
get their land back. "There have been reports that one or two farmers have
been approached by district administrators, but I do not know of anybody
that has gone back to the farm yet," said Hendrik.

            Instead there have been "continued disruptions", despite the
passing of legislation last year that makes it illegal for people to occupy
land or disrupt farming without letters from the Ministry of Lands. "There
are more farm disruptions. People without offer letters are moving in and
more farmers are being told to leave," said Trevor Gifford, vice-president
of the CFU.

            Addressing clergy in October last year Mugabe said he never
wanted all farmers to leave, insisting that black farmers could even learn
from former Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith. Mugabe said Smith was an
"excellent farmer". He also told the Zanu-PF party conference last month
that he bemoaned "greediness," and "shameful" people who acquired multiple
farms.

            Day Muyambo, director of the government-controlled
fixed-telephone network, who has two farms in Manicaland province, has moved
on to Mashonaland West in search of more land. Title deeds in possession of
the M&G reveal that Muyambo owns Dunfyne farm and a coffee estate plantation
and has another offer letter from the Ministry of Lands for Dandari Farm in
Hurungwe Mashonaland West.

            Of the 4 000 white farmers forced off their farms in the past
seven years, only 19 have received 99-year leases.


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Mbeki and ANC accused of "Zanufication" of South Africa



By Tererai Karimakwenda
12 January 2007

The ruling party and president of South Africa have been accused of behaving
like ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe after they celebrated their
political party at a formal government occasion paid for by the taxpayers.
The opposition Democratic Alliance spokesman for defense Roy Jankielsohn
said president Thabo Mbeki attended a memorial service Wednesday for the
late High Commissioner to Namibia, Timothy Maseko, in a church hall full of
ANC decorations and banners. The service was covered by SABC Television
which showed uniformed members of the South Africa National Defense Forces
singing on a stage adorned with ANC banners.

Jankielsohn said the DA was concerned because this was the sort of behavior
displayed by ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe where the ruling party does not distinguish
between the role and purpose of the government and that of the political
party. He said the lines become blurred when state resources are used for
political purposes. Explaining further Jankielsohn said: "The taxpayers &
citizens of this country might become conditioned and not even notice when
these incidents take place and we will make sure that this doesn't happen
and the ZANU-fication of South Africa doesn't continue."

Asked whether this similarity in behavior might be the reason why Mbeki has
maintained his widely criticized policy of "silent diplomacy" regarding
human rights violations by ZANU-PF and Mugabe, Jankielsohn said the silence
was in fact consent to what was going on in Zimbabwe. He added: "And we are
very concerned about other aspects going on in South Africa such as
statements made by for example the minister of agriculture relating to
farmers and specifically white farmers in South Africa."

ZANU-PF initiated a chaotic land reform programme in 2000 which has been
blamed for destroying Zimbabwe's economy and creating food shortages after
commercial white farmers were evicted violently. Jankielsohn said the DA
wanted to make sure South Africa did not go the same route.

A statement released by the DA said in part:
"Once again, the ANC government has managed to blur the line between party
and state - using a formal government occasion to promote and celebrate the
ANC. In doing so the ruling party is simply emulating the example of
political parties such as ZANU PF which have long lost the ability to
distinguish any difference between party political objectives and the role
and purpose of the government."

SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news


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Pakistan has had military, defence ties with Zimbabwe for long time: envoy

pakistanlink.com

Friday, January 12, 2007

Pakistani military experts strengthen Mugabe's army

* Pakistanis will stay there for 2 years, will be paid in dollars
* Pakistan has had military, defence ties with Zimbabwe for long time: envoy

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Pakistan has sent several senior military experts to help strengthen
President Robert Mugabe's army, which has been severely weakened by mass
resignations, desertions and a Western military embargo, says a report in
The Independent.

The secondment of the Pakistanis to retrain and re-equip the Zimbabwean army
comes as Mr Mugabe is desperate to beef up his forces as he fears the
deteriorating economy may lead to social unrest, the report says.

Mr Mugabe has relied heavily on his army to crush any challenge to his rule.
The Pakistanis arrived as annual inflation surged to 1,281 percent, the
highest in the world, leaving a majority of Zimbabweans unable to afford the
basics for survival, and raising the spectre of mass strife. The Pakistani
experts will stay in Zimbabwe for at least two years and will be paid in US
dollars by the Zimbabwe government, which is struggling to raise foreign
currency to pay for essential imports such as fuel and food, the report
adds.

The first secretary at the Pakistani embassy in Harare, Safdara Hayat, said
that his country's experts were brought in under a military cooperation
agreement signed with Zimbabwe last week. He confirmed the Zimbabwe
government would pay the military experts. Although exact numbers were not
available, Mr Hayat said those already in Zimbabwe had been seconded to the
air force.

The Zimbabwe air force has played a particularly important role in quelling
mass protests by monitoring ground movements of protesters. Asked why
Pakistan, a Commonwealth country, was deploying military trainers to
Zimbabwe despite human rights abuses that had prompted the Commonwealth to
suspend the country, Mr Hayat said only: "Pakistan has been involved in
military and defence cooperation with Zimbabwe for a long time. The
agreement has only been renewed now." The last such agreement was signed in
1983.

Zimbabwe said that it had every right to pursue bilateral deals with
Commonwealth nations. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change
condemned Pakistan's decision. Party spokesman Nelson Chamisa said the deal
proved "the Mugabe regime was in perennial combat with its people," and
accused Mr Mugabe of importing "gunmen, not grain", The Independent report
said.
Courtesy DailyTimes.com.pk


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'ZRP's Biodiesel Project On Course'



The Herald (Harare)

January 12, 2007
Posted to the web January 12, 2007

Bindura Bureau
Harare

THE Zimbabwe Republic Police national biodiesel project is on course with
the force beginning to transplant Jatropha seedlings in its pilot project
which is expected to cover 100 hectares this year.

ZRP chose Mashonaland Central as the hub of its project and last year saw
the force planting one hectare of seedlings at Shamva ZRP Farm, which are
now being distributed to various centres countrywide.

Police expected to produce 1 000 litres of biodiesel a day as soon as
harvesting begins in two years' time.

Mashonaland Central and Matabeleland South are at the forefront of the ZRP
biodiesel project with the two provinces each planting 20 hectares of the
high oil-yielding plant.

Yesterday the police launched the project with Harare transplanting 2 000
seedlings of the plant at the ZRP Farm in Shamva for its 15 hectare plot.

Staff officer projects Superintendent Edmund Maingire, who was part of the
ZRP team that transplanted the seedlings in Shamva, said the pilot project
would see the police planting 100 hectares of the crop countrywide.

"If all the plants survive, in the next two-and-half to three years we will
be able to produce about 1 000 litres of biodiesel a day.

"The ZRP would be able to contribute to Government's national economic
turnaround programme through production of biodiesel," Supt Maingire said.

He said once established, the Jatropha plants would continue supplying seeds
for biodiesel production over the next 50 years.

"Our intention is to increase yields to even higher levels as our aim is to
make a difference to the national economic turnaround cause," he said.

He implored other stakeholders such as private companies to join in the
production of biodiesel saying this would contribute to ending the country's
fuel woes.

"We wish each and every organisation would grow the Jatropha plant to meet
their fuel requirements," he said.

Supt Maingire said although most Zimbabweans and other developing countries
were sceptical about the biodiesel project, other countries like India were
already enjoying the fruits of biodiesel from Jatropha.

"In India, the national railways has grown the Jatropha plant along every
railway line whose seeds they processed to meet their requirements.

"Germany has 1 500 biodiesel filling stations while Zimbabwe is the only
developing country that has taken the project seriously," he said.

Supt Maingire said the police would pursue the project until other private
and public organisations realised its advantages.


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MDC resolves to take the bull by horns



By Tichaona Sibanda
12 January 2007

The Movement for Democratic Change has resolved to raise the stakes in its
fight against the autocratic rule of Robert Mugabe, party spokesman Nelson
Chamisa said on Friday.

'We have made earth shaking resolutions and 2007 will be a defining year for
the party. We will be the first to admit that 2006 was a bad year for us
because of teething problems but we are back on our footing,' Chamisa said
from Harare.

The Morgan Tsvangirai led MDC held two crucial meetings of its national
council and executives to deliberate on the national crisis and to define
the political framework for 2007.

Chamisa said the party President will hold a press conference on Monday
where he will announce the resolutions that were adopted on Friday. Analysts
told us that most delegates felt Robert Mugabe had given the MDC a window of
opportunity to box him into a corner because of his plans to extend his
presidential term.

'This is the right time for the MDC to refocus its strategy against Mugabe.
With the way the economy is performing now every Zimbabwean would want to
see a change in the way the country is governed and not to see Zanu (PF)
appointing Mugabe a life president,' said one analyst.

A delegate who attended the meeting said one of the resolutions adopted was
to ask national council members to go back to the grassroots and start
mobilising people.

'This is one way of strengthening our structures and many council members
felt the party shouldn't make the same mistakes it made last year of giving
people a false sense of hope,' said the delegate.

One issue that was also discussed was the consolidation of the unfinished
democratic resistance agenda, a mass action plan that delegates said was a
necessary tool to force the regime to accept the need for sweeping political
reforms which include a new, people driven Constitution, free an fair
elections under international supervision, a reconstruction and
stabilization programme in a post-transitional era.

SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news


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Rescuing rhinos in Zimbabwe

WWF
 
Zimbabwe once had one of the largest populations of black rhinos, but poaching activities in the country’s parks over the years saw that number plummet to several hundred by the 1990s.
© WWF-Canon / Michel Gunther

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Government-introduced land reform in Zimbabwe in 2000 saw large-scale settlement by subsistence farmers move into rhino habitat.
© Hewitt Chizyuka / WWF SARPO

WWF team prepares to translocate a rhino from the Bubiana Conservancy to the Bubi River Conservancy, some 60km away.
© Hewitt Chizyuka / WWF SARPO

12 Jan 2007

By Hewitt Chizyuka*

When Zimbabwe achieved independence in 1980, the southern African nation had about 2,000 black rhinos — the world’s largest population at the time. But escalating poaching activities in the country’s parks over the years saw that number plummet to several hundred by the 1990s. Worried about the future of this endangered species, a plan to safeguard became desperately clear.

“The rapid decline of rhino populations in protected areas led us to develop a conservation strategy,” said Raoul Du Toit, who is in charge of WWF’s rhino conservation project in Zimbabwe.

“An important component of this strategy is the translocation of rhinos from vulnerable areas to commercial ranches where viable founder populations can be protected and bred successfully.”

Removing fences
WWF’s rhino conservancy project was established as an “insurance policy” for black rhinos in Zimbabwe. As part of this policy, some animals have been translocated from national parks to privately-owned ranches throughout the country. The aim of this relocation programme is to find suitable habitat that is large and secure enough to protect the rhinos.

Such an ambitious plan has been made possible with support from private landowners and commercial ranches, who in many cases have removed fences to join neighbouring properties, transforming their cattle operations into rhino conservancies.

“The development of these conservancies forms a unique and exciting development in wildlife conservation in Southern Africa,” said Du Toit. “We are trying to increase black rhino numbers by increasing the land available for their conservation, thus reducing pressure on existing reserves and providing new areas in which they can breed.”

“What is more,” added Du Toit, “well-managed conservancies provide opportunities for revenue generation through game viewing and other activities. This means that setting aside largely infertile land for wildlife management benefits local people as well as the wildlife – a win-win situation.”

Currently, the two largest conservancies, Save and Bubiana, cover 3,200km2 and 1,200km2 respectively.

“For genetic and demographic reasons it is important that these new founder populations be as large as possible and that they breed rapidly in areas which could eventually hold large populations,” added Du Toit.

Breeding success is already visible in some parts of the country. Conservancies in the lowveld, for example, in the arid, southern part of Zimbabwe, have seen rhino numbers rise.

According to WWF, the lowveld conservancies today are home to two-thirds of Zimbabwe’s 500-strong black rhino population — the third largest population in Africa after South Africa and Namibia.

People vs. wildlife
But just as it looked like the black rhino was finally starting to make a come back in Zimbabwe, government-introduced land reform in 2000 saw large-scale settlement by subsistence farmers move on to commercial ranching areas, including the conservancies. Today, these new settlements are competing with rhino populations for space, grazing pastures and water.

On a recent field visit to the Bubiana Conservancy, located about 600km south-east of Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, a WWF team came across some of the new settlers and asked them how they saw their future and that of their wildlife neighbours.

“I just want to see if I can increase my cattle head from 40 to at least 350,” said one farmer who declined to be named.

“I also wish I could be allocated 3,000ha within this conservancy as opposed to the 800ha in which I currently have. Given the scarcity of rainfall and grazing pasture in this area, one needs at least that size of land in order to stay viable.”

When questioned about the rhinos, the farmer claimed to have no real problems with the presence of the species on the conservancy, as long as they didn’t affect their cattle.

“Elephants are a bigger nuisance,” the farmer continued. “Perhaps you could just take both the rhinos and the elephants away from here in the interest of the welfare of our cattle.”

With more people moving on to conservancies, hunting is also starting to present a threat to the rhinos. According to WWF, the proliferation of snares in the lowveld conservancies has directly accounted for the deaths of at least 20 rhinos, especially calves.

Moving the threatened species to better protected areas is becoming one of the best options for their survival.

Rhino rescue
On one particular field visit, a WWF rhino capture team was busy translocating some rhinos from the Bubiana Conservancy, which was starting to become overcrowded, to the Bubi River Conservancy, some 60km away.

As part of the delicate operation, an 11-year-old female had just been immobilized in order to be fitted with a radio signal in its horn.

“This rhino has experienced a particularly hard life in Bubiana,” said Natasha Anderson, who has worked as a local rhino monitoring coordinator in the lowveld area for over ten years. “You can see she has very noticeable snare scars on one of her rear legs.”

To add to this rhino’s woes, one of her five calves was burnt to death when he was only three-weeks old following a bushfire that some settlers ignited to facilitate their hunting with dogs. Another calf was gored to death by an adult bull rhino.

“It is a real battle for these rhinos nowadays,” Anderson added. “I have been involved in their management and monitoring for quite sometime and I have seen how stressed they have become in recent years.”

WWF’s Du Toit concedes that land occupation will continue in the conservancies and rhinos will continue feeling the squeeze.

“Despite the challenges, we will continue to identify less occupied areas, including private land, where the rhinos can be moved to,” he said.

“Our responsibility is to increase numbers of black rhino and we recognize the value of partnerships with other sectors to help us achieve this goal.”

* Hewitt Chizyuka is a Communications Officer at WWF’s Southern Africa Regional Programme Office based in Harare, Zimbabwe.

END NOTES:

• Since its inception in 1961, WWF has been working to ensure the survival of rhinos. By establishing protected areas and rhino reserves, developing anti-poaching operations, directing translocations to ensure viable populations, and advancing innovative conservation plans, WWF hopes to provide a more secure future for the species in Africa, as well as in Asia.

• Today, almost 98 per cent of the black rhino (Diceros bicornis) population is found in just four countries: South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya. In South Africa there has been ongoing recovery of black rhino populations, and the country's population now accounts for approximately 40 per cent of the total black rhino wild population.


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China smiles at Africa with two faces

Asia Times

By Bright B Simons, Evans Lartey and Franklin Cudjoe

ACCRA, Ghana - When Chinese President Hu Jintao on November 2 threw open the
doors of the Forbidden City to 48 invited African heads of state and
governments, many people around the globe were for the first time served the
prospect of an intriguing new geopolitical alliance, between the world's
fastest expanding major economy and the most economically challenged
continent.

For those with a long-standing interest in China, however, the November 2
Sino-African summit was noteworthy only for its symbol-laden opulence: it
seemed China had had enough of

camouflaging its claim to superpower status. As regards the hard economic
and political realities, November 2 marked no watershed.

China has long been involved in Africa. Throughout the Cold War, Chinese
ideologues insisted that China was together with Africa the backbone of what
Marshal Lin Biao described as the ''world countryside'', or what Marxist
development economists call the ''periphery'', as counterpoised to the
Western ''core'' and the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance)
''semi-periphery''.

China was for most of this period motivated by two geopolitical imperatives:
rivalry with the Soviet Union and the containment of Taiwan. In the case of
the former, the tussle was over the soul of communism, though as is often
the case with these things, a spattering of nuclear-armed rocketry was also
involved. China's ideological proposition was that the USSR was a
''revisionist'' - not true communist - imperialistic superpower, while the
West, beholden to the USA, was overtly and decadently imperialistic.

The concern over Taiwan had much more to do with China's domestic pressures.
China may seem ethnically homogenous, but that is only because over the
centuries strong rulers at the center have managed to keep it so, through
force, awe or persuasion. Simmering ethnic tensions are never too far
beneath the surface in China. The Tibetans want the Han out of their
homeland and the Uighurs want an Islamic state in their part of the country.
To allow Taiwan to become independent is in the eyes of China a dangerous
policy that might prove contagious. If other ethnic groups realize that the
center can be defied, who knows what subversions they might dream up?

It was then in Africa, more so than anywhere else, that China found both the
opportunities and contexts most conducive to shaping its foreign policy
based on its "one China" principle. Countries that renounced diplomatic ties
with Taiwan were to be rewarded; those that didn't were to be punished,
ostracized or ignored, depending on their economic or political importance.

So, in the case of South Africa, China patiently waited for the
post-apartheid government to make up its mind, until eventually president
Nelson Mandela decided that, Taiwan's close commercial links with South
Africa notwithstanding, China might well prove the more lucrative ally.
Burkina Faso and The Gambia could not afford this treatment, and so were
haughtily sidelined.

In this, China had perfected its ''Griffin'' image - part graceful bird,
part bully beast, a "brother" of Africa in the face of common subjugation,
and a paternal figure dispensing discipline at the same time. Two-face
diplomacy had proved its merits.

It is interesting that despite the strength, and to a considerable extent
the tenability, of the perception that China's concerns these days have
shifted from the geopolitical to the geo-economic, remnants of these Cold
War orientations still persist.

During the recent Zambian elections, a candidate reported to have expressed
an opinion to the effect that Taiwan was ''a state'' so incensed Chinese
diplomats in the southern African country that, in an unusual breach of
protocol, China threatened to cut ties with Zambia should the offending
candidate be elected.

It is also interesting that aside from China, the strongest interest in
African natural resources in recent times has come from Russia.

The implication of these two facts appears therefore to be that China's
contemporary relationship with the continent of Africa ought not to be seen
as an abrupt transition, but rather in the light of general transformations
at the global level that have touched both China and Africa, accentuating
some pre-existing patterns of engagement while attenuating others.

A false dichotomy inspired by 'two Chinas'
It is partly from this perspective that some have expressed concerns over
China's seeming lack of moral inhibition in its pursuit of lucrative
contracts to source African natural riches. Critics recall that it was
China, through its North Korean proxies, that armed Robert Mugabe's Fifth
Brigade in an effort to gain an upper hand over the USSR, which, having
backed Mugabe's rival Joshua Nkomo during the civil war following
independence, had lost diplomatic leverage in mineral-rich Zimbabwe.

When the Fifth Brigade went on to commit what many historians of the period
consider genocide against the minority Matabele ethnic groups, those
intimate with the Chinese role began to subject China's activities on the
continent to greater scrutiny. Consequently, interest in recent Sino-African
economic cooperation in Sudan, Nigeria, Angola and elsewhere is heavily
infused with human-rights concerns.

Justified as such skepticism and suspicions may be, an unintended
consequence has been an overemphasis on the "natural resource" issue. A
crude dichotomy has been planted between opinions that hold China's
engagement as positive for injecting competition into the erstwhile
Western-dominated bidding for rights to develop Africa's mineral wealth, and
others that contend this optimistic view with clear evidence of Chinese arms
trading with the murderous Khartoum regime. In the latter pessimistic frame
of analysis, China is following the well-beaten track of neo-colonial
exploitation.

Much objective evidence exists to sustain this dichotomy. It is easy to
conclude that China is in Africa solely to leverage its new "world power"
status for commodities to fuel its massive industrial growth.

China today consumes a third of the world's steel, half of its cement, a
quarter of its fertilizers and more than a quarter of both its copper and
aluminum. Since China is far from self-sufficient in most of these
commodities, it has steadily built up foreign-exchange reserves that have
overtaken Japan's to become the world's largest. By the time you read this
tomorrow, the country will have sold almost a billion dollars' more goods
and services to the US than it will have bought from the latter, lifting
another 30,000 of its citizens from grinding poverty.

The reason China needs to consume these large amounts of commodities is
obviously that despite having raised more people from poverty than any other
economy in world history - 400 million by some accounts - it still has a
long way to go before the remaining 400 million or so are similarly
elevated.

Its leaders have to burn much midnight oil - quite literally - to develop
strategies that will keep the price of labor and other factors of production
from rising too high, because more so than anything, it is its low-cost
environment that has made it, according to many credible estimates, the
manufacturer of one-third the world's goods and poised to surpass, by 2050,
the combined production volume of the entire Western Hemisphere.

Clearly, China needs its commodities. But it also needs to keep their cost
low. If it were solely the economic cost that was at issue, the way to go
about that would simply have been to support an increasing sophistication of
the global economy so  that prices were efficiently set and goods
efficiently distributed. But China understands the input of political costs
into the final prices of commodities too well to trust in such a process.

Thus, according to the standard account, China has arrived in Africa to
safeguard its investment.

The above set of facts inevitably leads one to the track of analysis
illustrated above. But if one were to pay slightly more attention to another
set of relatively less-discussed statistics, a number of

other prospects suggest themselves. To put it simply, there is another
China.

China is the world's second-largest polluter after the United States. In
terms of per capita gross domestic product - that is, relative to the share
of each Chinese or American person's share of their country's GDP - however,
China far outstrips the US, perhaps by as much as four times. The inference
is that for every dollar of wealth China creates, it emits a huge amount of
pollution, and expends a profligate amount of resources, for the effort.
According to China's vice minister in charge of the State Environmental
Protection Administration, the country requires as much as seven times the
amount of resources as Japan to create an identical unit of GDP.

When you look at China's energy efficiency and other industrial efficiency
statistics, it immediately hits you how bad the situation is. In the
production of ethylene, an industrial chemical found in a wide range of
products, for instance, China lags behind the rest of the world by as much
as 70% in efficiency. In fact, in many areas of production, it not only lags
behind the West, it also trails behind the world average.

Furthermore, China's vaunted ''export-oriented economy'' that has achieved
near-mythical status because of the country's huge surplus in its trade with
the US shows a couple of serious creaks under serious scrutiny. For one
thing, as many as 55% or more of the goods China sells on the world market
are produced by foreign firms based predominantly in the country's coastal
provinces.

Discounting the surplus with the US, China actually currently records a
deficit with the rest of the world of about US$100 billion per annum,
showing an acute dependence on the US market. Last, as Andrew Leung of
London's International Consultants has calculated, Chinese factories operate
on less than a 5% margin of the selling price of a great many of the goods
they produce under foreign license.

One word sums up all these disparate threads: "innovation", to counter
severe inefficiency within the system.

China's innovation challenge
China needs to innovate to enable its industries to make more efficient use
of raw materials, to enable it to sell more of its indigenously developed
brands abroad and thereby create sustainable, home-grown sprawls of
excellence beyond the coast, emit far less pollution, and enhance the
quality of life for its huge population to forestall social tensions. China,
the burgeoning superpower, and China, the bungling overpopulated Third World
giant, can only be fused into China, the modernizing innovator, or the two
will be pulled apart.

The problem is: it is easier said than done. Chinese companies may try to
take on Western behemoths in Western markets or wait until the domestic
consumer becomes wealthy enough to patronize highly innovative products. The
risks with the first route are obvious, as Lenovo's faltering steps since it
purchased IBM's personal-computer division have shown. The second route is
what many economists and business consultants foresee as the likely path to
success. But it is also fraught with risk.

While foreign technology transfer to Chinese firms is accelerating at an
extraordinary pace, the weak intellectual-property environment is
interfering with absorption at one critical layer: the small-to-medium-scale
business level. Given World Trade Organization liberalization, which
prospect has driven thousands of overseas firms to enter the Chinese market,
China's middle class, when it eventually does arrive, cannot be taken for
granted in regards to tastes and shopping habits. And at any rate, Chinese
companies have only the intervening time to build their capacity until the
much-touted dramatic expansion of the middle class becomes reality.

It is against this background that some watchers of Sino-African relations
are interpreting recent trade data showing a substantial African trade shift
from the West and Japan to China. Trade in many, many goods other than those
under the spotlight - oil, copper, bauxite etc - is booming. Importers in
many African nations are turning to Chinese suppliers for a wide range of
goods they once sourced in such places as Turkey, South America and of
course the West. Already Kenya, South Africa and Ghana have begun to mutter
about their fast-expanding trade deficits with China.

It seems to us that Chinese entrepreneurs are increasingly becoming aware of
a vital role for Africa in their quest for presence in the global
marketplace. And no, it is not simply that they see a new destination for
their products. More significantly, they see an environment where less
mature innovations may be tried, tested and honed - a market that Western
companies are unwilling to engage beyond the customary hassling over raw
materials, and one in which they can quickly become benchmarkers.

The early success of South Korean firms Daewoo and Samsung in Africa will
definitely not have been lost on Chinese business strategists. Daewoo's
fuel-efficient small sedans captured cost-conscious market niches in West
Africa well before the company's brand became a global household name.

So just as during the Cold War China found in Africa an exceptional venue to
hone its geopolitical competence, it may very well be that it now perceives
the continent as an optimal environment in which to nurture its geo-economic
competence, with special regard to innovation. This is not to say, of
course, that the raw materials do not matter, but that they are not the
whole story.

In Africa, the two Chinas meet in perfect synchronicity.

Bright B Simons is an adjunct fellow at the Center for Humane Education
(Imani). Evans Lartey is director of development at Imani, which is a
think-tank based in Accra, dedicated to researching economic trends to glean
practical public-policy insights for the benefit of government, business and
civil society in Ghana. Franklin Cudjoe is the executive director of Imani.


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How the World Views Africa



Daily Champion (Lagos)

OPINION
January 12, 2007
Posted to the web January 12, 2007

A. Austin Tekpabo
Lagos

As a concerned African residing in USA, I am very outraged by the depiction
of a white man holding a monkey on a German website http://www.edeju.org
(for those of you not familiar with the website, it is website dedicated,
supposedly, to promoting youth development in Africa). It is the 21st
century and the Caucasian still has this impression of the black race and
Africans as savages...Is this ever going to end?

Unfortunately, many among us still worship the Whiteman and are very
complacent in times like this. Like the venerable Chinese proverb, "may you
(we) live in interesting times", we are living in interesting times, no
doubt, when we are still victims to the world bank, the IMF, the EU and the
economic policies of the west that perpetually keep us (African countries)
in debt. Can we blame the west for all our woes? Absolutely NOT. We, as a
people, as a continent, have to take responsibility for what is happening in
Africa. We cannot continue to blame the Whiteman for all the problems of our
people. While there may be a concerted effort to keep us in economic
slavery, we are and should be masters of our own destiny. It has been over
40 years since most countries in Africa, especially Anglophone Africa,
became independent. What do we have to show for it? Nigeria, for example is
the biggest disgrace in human history. With all her natural and human
resources, Nigeria, a country that could have been the envy of the world has
elevated Neopatrimonalism to a height that is unprecedented in human
history.

Neopatrimonalism, a term used to refer to patrons using government resources
to secure the loyalty of the masses, accurately described what our
politicians have continued to do with our national wealth - they have
exploited the trust we reposed in them and by waving a few currency before
our faces and by making empty promises, they have misruled us, thereby
supplanting the usual bureaucratic structures where only those with
connections have real power.

Nigeria is not the only country guilty of mismanagement, corruption,
nepotism, tribal and ethnic divisions. Can one forget the unending wars in
Ethiopia and Somalia, the genocide in Rwanda, the ethnic and religious wars
in the Sudan, the HIV/AIDS crisis in Uganda, Kenya and Southern Africa? Is
the White man responsible for all of these ills? Can we blame the west for
Mugabe's failed social re-engineering and economic policies in Zimbabwe? My
response is a resounding NO! What we need in Africa is leadership -
Transformational leadership.

As the world grows smaller, differences between nations, as well as
differences inside communities and organizations, seem to be deepening. The
opportunities for conflict are on the rise. And the need for intergroup
leadership has never been greater. The challenges of leading across
boundaries-geographic, organizational, ethnic, gender, and religious have
never been as great. As a continent, as a people, we not ONLY need to
develop a better conceptual understanding of intergroup leadership, we need
to identify practical ways of promoting collaboration between groups. There
is no better time to discuss and address issues of trust and distrust, the
risks associated with building bi-partisan agreement in our governments, how
to build the leadership capital needed for making progress in intergroup
relations without being viewed as betraying the interests of one's own
constituents, bridging the racial and ethnic divide in communities,
leadership across religious traditions, tactics for bridging social
divisions in organizations, and political leadership in times of elections
of new governments. As a people, we have the wrong sense and concept of
power and succession. Why is Mugabe holding onto power at the expense of his
people?

The time for conversations about trust is now. While I understand how
difficult it is for different groups to trust one another, especially in
this age of suicide bombers, ethnic and religious cleansing, some groups
seem to have literally no common ground-even the simple trust that others
will behave in ways that protect their own lives cannot always be
maintained.

We can start having discussions about defining positive intergroup
relations. As an observer, I have noticed that not even terms such as
"effective leadership" and "non-violence" have intrinsically positive
meanings apart from their context. The challenges of governance in this
century are more complex than ever. Because of this, we need a fundamental
re-thinking of the tools and organizational structures used to promote the
common good. This rethinking should take place throughout the educational,
public health, governmental, and non-profit and charitable sectors of
society, of our beloved continent.

In light of the vacuum in leadership in our continent, in our institutions,
I am calling on well meaning Africans, wherever they may be to heed this
call. Africa is in need of true leaders, just like in the days of Abraham
and Noah in biblical times. Africa is like Sodom and Gomorrah...the two
cities that God destroyed:

Quoting from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament,

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination and intention of all human thinking was only evil
continually.

And the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved
at heart.

So the Lord said, I will destroy, blot out, and wipe away mankind, whom I
have created from the face of the ground--not only man, [but] the beasts and
the creeping things and the birds of the air--for it grieves Me and makes

Me regretful that I have made them.

But Noah found grace (favour) in the eyes of the Lord.

This is the history of the generations of Noah. Noah was a just and
righteous

man, blameless in his(evil)generation; Noah walked (in habitual fellowship)
with God.

The earth was depraved and putrid in God's sight, and the land was filled
with violence (desecration, infringement, outrage, assault, and lust for
power).

And God looked upon the world and saw how degenerate, debased, and vicious
it was, for all humanity had corrupted their way upon the earth and lost
their true direction.

God said to Noah, I intend to make an end of all flesh, for through men the
land is filled with violence; and behold, I will destroy them and the land.

We are living in interesting times - A time when we need men and women with
courage and bravery to lead us. Men and women who understand public service
and public trust. Men and women who are not afraid to tell us the truth, say
what they would do and do what they say. Men and women who will stand up,
even in the face of stiff opposition and make difficult decisions. Men and
women like our leaders of old, the late Nkrumah of Ghana, the late Azikiwe
of Nigeria, the late Lumumba of Congo, Mandela of South Africa, and the list
goes on.

We live in interesting times!

Yekpabo is a management consultant and adjunct professor of management at
Eastern University in St Davids, outside of Philadelphia, USA.


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EC Dismisses Harare Claim Of Political Motive In Diamond Investigation

VOA

      By Blessing Zulu
      Washington
      12 January 2007

A spokeswoman for the European Commission, which currently chairs the
Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, has dismissed as baseless Zimbabwe's
charge that an investigation into alleged smuggling of diamonds is
politically motivated.

Mines Minister Amos Midzi told the state-controlled Herald newspaper this
week that Western countries are looking for reasons to isolate Harare and
have seized on the allegations by the New York-based World Diamond Council
that Zimbabwean gems have been smuggled out of the country bypassing
Kimberly certification.

European Commission spokeswoman Emma Udwin said Kimberly Process officials
are obliged to address concerns raised as to alleged Kimberly Process
violations.

A World Diamond Council official lodged a complaint with the Kimberly
Process saying diamonds from mines in Beitbridge, in Matebeleland South
province, and Marange in the eastern highlands, were being diverted to South
Africa and other countries.

George Smith, an advisor to the River Ranch group that controls the
Beitbridge mine, said his clients met Friday with European Union Ambassador
to Zimbabwe Xavier Marshal. He said the ambassador stressed that the probe
was not political.

Harare has expressed fears that the diamond allegations would be used to
further isolate the country, whose governing elite, including President
Robert Mugabe, is subject to targeted sanctions including travel bans and
asset freezing.

Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition Coordinator Jacob Mafume, a human rights
lawyer, told reporter Blessing Zulu of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that the
targeted  sanctions imposed since 2002 are about the defense of human
rights, not diamonds.


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It's Bad News!



Zimbabwe Independent (Harare)

OPINION
January 12, 2007
Posted to the web January 12, 2007

ZIMBABWE'S annual inflation surged to 1 281,1% in December, with a consumer
watchdog announcing this week the poverty datum line was now pegged at about
$352 000.

The 182,3 percentage-point gallop from November's 1 098,8% figure is as
calamitous as Uncle Bob's plot to stay in power until 2010.

It's a shame no matter how convinced they are about the cause of their
misery Zimbabweans can only watch things get worse.

Basics, if they are available, have become luxuries. The rate at which
prices are going up is immoral, with manufacturers, wholesalers and
retailers as well as service providers implacable in "recouping their
costs".

Yet the frightening reality is that the majority of Zimbabweans have little
or nothing in their pockets to keep pace with the ravaging inflation rate.

Very few of the estimated 20% "lucky" to be in employment gross something
near $150 000 - far less than the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe's
ridiculously modest budget for a family of six.

Under the hostile economic conditions, companies are battling to stay in
business while the government is likely to run money printers again to
pacify restive doctors, nurses, teachers, cops, soldiers and other civil
servants as the cost of living soars to astronomic levels.

On the other hand, the battle for foreign currency to import power, fuel,
drugs and food is getting hotter.

Gore rino tinoita manyoka chete!

But where does this tragedy leave sports?

The Premier Soccer League last year had to run without a sponsor and nothing
is likely to change after we had a couple of potential bankrollers snubbing
top-flight football.

Rugby has been battling for sponsorship for a couple of years now, and your
guess is as good as mine what 2007 holds for the sport.

The country's flagship golf tournament, the Zimbabwe Open, has not been held
since 2001 as sponsors continue shying away because of the crumbling
economy.

Tennis has not been spared either, with traditional sponsors pulling out in
the heat of the recession.

Even cricket will soon find its purse, for long well-fed with the precious
foreign exchange courtesy of its international engagements, stretched.

We can talk of hockey, swimming, diving, netball, athletics, triathlon,
handball, wushu, judo, boxing, badminton, polo and cycling. They are all
doomed as long as some screwy fellas keep spitting in our faces.

You can only sympathise with sport administrators as they approach with
their begging bowls companies that are already struggling to pay their
employees enough to hoodwink them from striking.

It's surely a harrowing experience for the sport administrators.

The tragedy is that sport in Zimbabwe is still largely regarded as only
recreational and not an industry -- which is why the government is not
serious about it except when an opportunity to score cheap political points
arises.

In that case, the rulers have other things to worry about -- including
remaining in power even when they have convinced themselves about their
uselessness.

Other countries, especially in Europe of course, have managed to work out
sport into big-money businesses, but Zimbabwe has lagged far behind -- if it
has moved at all.

The economic malaise has been the chief obstacle.

A football fan will have to be as considerate as Uncle Bob to buy a replica
jersey and match tickets when there is no bread on the table for one's
family.

Then we have sport administrators whose myopia and passion for failure can
only be matched by Uncle Bob and Crew's incompetence which they flaunt as if
it's a virtue.

Very few of them have realised the need to turn their clubs or sports into
companies or money-spinning ventures that would leave corporates to come in
only as partners and not total sponsors for everything from pants to their
salaries.

Fortunately, there are companies still willing to sponsor sporting
disciplines in one way or another despite the failing economy and
administrative shortcomings as well as lack of vision on the part of clubs
or associations.

The sponsors deserve respect and praise and we urge them to remain
supportive.

But even if Bakers Inn, Savanna Tobacco, Caps Holdings, Chemco, Doves,
Net*One, Old Mutual, Natbrew, Cottco, PricewaterhouseCoopers and CBZ
Holdings still poured millions into clubs and sport at large, how much is
enough?

Professor Inflation doesn't care!

Even if Dynamos or Highlanders are going to fill up Rufaro and Barbourfields
this coming season, will the gate-takings be enough to look after the clubs?

More importantly, how much will go into the pockets of the players?

Aah!

Last month I was watching a winner-takes-all challenge soccer match,
popularly known as "money game", between Zengeza Select and Seke Select when
I got curious how much these Premiership and Division One players were
clashing for.

The figure was shocking, yet enough to leave my heart bleeding. They were
playing for $35 000 aside, which meant the winners would walk away with $70
000.

If 16 players were involved in the winning team, that would mean each one of
them becoming a paltry $2 187,50 "richer".

That a Premiership footballer would be willing to risk his career for money
not enough to buy a kilogramme of beef is only a serious indictment of the
state of sport in Zimbabwe.

Football authorities ought to understand why players would never stop
participating in money games.

Probably these players last got payments from their clubs when the season
ended over a month ago. Yet they still have rentals, food and other things
to worry about.

There is still a month to go before the season starts. How then do we expect
players who get paid for winning to survive when there are no matches to
play?

Footballers and other sportspeople -- whose disciplines are their only
source of livelihood -- have been going hungry, but now they will be going
hungrier.

It's worse for those players whose earnings are dependent on their results.

If you doubt the plight of footballers, for example, is that bad, just watch
the pittance they will be signing for in contracts before the 2007 season
begins. It's a pity.

If there is anything that footballers will enjoy, it's only their hollow
celebrity status.

The rampaging inflation rate is putting pressure on clubs, who will also be
hard-pressed to see the season through.

Fuel is expensive and so are accommodation and food.

And a Premiership football club will play at least 15 away matches. The only
relief is that most of the teams are based in Harare, which will reduce
travelling and camping costs.

Pity Hwange and all the teams that will have to visit them.

Even cricketers who are believed to be the best-paid sportspeople in this
country have no way to survive the economic hail. They feel the pinch too.

Are we going to watch sport collapse too the same way we have watched
politically motivated economic policies deny us our daily bread?

Well what's sport when there's fuel, food, electricity and everything to
worry about?

If you can convince me all will be well for sport, you might as well
convince Uncle Bob that he is still the best for Zimbabwe's presidency.

It's bad news!


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Zimbabwejournalists.com



Mudenge: Hypocrite of the first pedigree.

By Trevor Murai

IT was with ululations, roars of applause and relief hearing the minister's
remarks to the effect that students of tertiary education institutions will
not be sent off on the basis of not paying fees.

The minister of Higher and tertiary education is on record for tenaciously
defending this position but reality on the ground dismisses his remarks as
pure empty rhetoric. The increase in college dropouts are screaming evidence
that students are being systematically forced out of colleges.

Mudenge is fully aware; we presume, that students at the University of
Zimbabwe could not access their 2005-2006 academic year second semester
results without full payment of tuition and accommodation fees for that
particular semester.

The minister should be advised to take a closer surveillance on tertiary
institutions as their actions and operations reduce him to a cheap political
propagandist. The 2006 February once off hikes in the history of this
country was beyond the reach of many parents and guardians.

Parents and guardians had to sacrifice their servings, beasts and properties
to pay the hiked fees. This is not sustainable; parents can not continue to
lose their accumulated wealth in vain for college students whilst the job
market is shrinking at an alarming alacrity. Unemployment levels are at 80%.
There are no jobs for college graduates. One wonders how the graduates will
replace the wealth of parents that is being depleted in pursuit of their
education.

The situation is worse off for the coming semester. We arte incensed and
anguished with the neglect by Mudenge's ministry of its responsibilities to
subsidize operations at tertiary education institutions. Total fees payable
at the University of Zimbabwe range from $590 000 to $650 000. Good heavens
only in 2004 we were given payouts and free catering services. Where did the
wheels come off Mudenge?

The Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) registers here its abhorrence
and indignation due to the government insensitive to the plight of tertiary
education students. We appeal that it is prudent and vital at this juncture
for the government to subsidize costs in the departments of catering
services. Institutions of higher learning are not miraculous, and operating
viable in this artificially created hyper inflationary environment means
that the institutions have to pass on the burden to the students. In a sense
the fees charged make an economic sense and are a glaring evidence in as far
as exposing the failure and irresponsibility of the government of the
government to contain inflation.

The rate of inflation juxtaposed with real incomes posits that the
government has no option but to subsidize its service delivery departments.
One wonders what is happening to the tax payer's money from the consolidated
revenue fund. A quick economic marathon: the average salary for the civil
servants is estimated to be at $50 000, a family of six is estimated to need
$300 000 for it to buy groceries enough for a month-the poverty datum line,
already there is a deficit of $250 00- yet tertiary fees are pegged at
around $600 000. Can someone tell us, where the fees supposed to come from?
Surely you have to be a thief or fraud star to survive in this country of
ours.

ZESA employees are on strike, junior doctors are on strike and towards
closing last year the UZ staff was on strike ZINASU takes this opportunity
to give solidarity to all Zimbabweans engaging in industrial action.
Comrades we congratulate you for the brave stance you have taken, none but
yourselves shall champion your cause towards realization of freedom from
repression. For how long shall we be used as pillars of shouldering ZANU(PF)'s
blunders and failures .Had the brains of think-tank and old folks in
ZANU(PF) gone on a decade vacation to implement policies that has led to the
stinking economic hegemony.

ZINASU castigates and denounce the use of state reactionary missionary to
wipe away symptoms of the economic sewage that ZANU (PF) has created. We
demand the right of the freedom of expression and association for all
Zimbabweans-represented by progressive bodies such as ZCTU, ZINASU, NCA,
Crisis Coalition and so on. We demand to be consulted in decision making to
do with us students. We will resist tenaciously and with savage vehemence
any attempts by the government to impose decisions, in which we have a
stake, without fully seeking our opinions.

It is foolhardy for ZANU (PF) to expect us to sit and fold our arms or to
shun us away or to expel us suspend us from colleges for seeking to attain
our destiny. This is our country, the youths, as much as it is their, the
old folks.

Destiny is not a matter of chance but of choice thus the old folks should
not be hostile to us on an endeavor to mould our own destiny. If the old
folks were to take a sober assessment, they will recon that during their
youth days they fought nail and claw against the smith regime so that they
could influence their own destiny i.e. their future. Surely is this the
Zimbabwe that the old folks fought for?

ZINASU is mandated by the students movement-derived from up to 44 colleges
to champion and shape the Zimbabwe we want as future leaders, workers and
ambassadors of our beloved country. ZINASU is duty bound to act and no
amount of force, ZANU (PF repression, strife, incarceration or frivolous
expulsions will ever curtail or barricade us.

As the leaders of the movement we follow the views of the majority of the
students as it is the basis of our authority. We have no illusions about the
barbaric, inhuman violence of the reactionary forces but us the masses will
never be de ZANU (PF) defeated. Napoleon Bonaparte won wars against many
armies but the moment he fought the masses he was defeated. No repression is
immortal-the fate of Ian Smith, Adam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Juvenal
Habyariman and Adolf Hitler may bear testimony to this.

We stubbornly demand for academic freedom. Education is our birthright we
stand resolute forever to defend our beliefs.

Trevor Murai is the treasurer general at the student's union at the UZ.


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Community Health Group Urges Action On Zimbabwe Hospital Strikes

VOA

      By Ndimyake Mwakalyelye
      Washington, DC
      12 January 2007

With a strike by Zimbabwean hospital doctors heading into its fourth week,
bolstered by the additional participation of nurses similarly demanding
increased pay, a leading health care activist said Harare must address the
grievances of such workers.

Community Working Group on Health Executive Directgor Itai Rusike the
government must tackle the issue seriously or such industrial actions will
crop up every year.

Rusike said Health Minister David Parirenyatwa and the Health Services Board
must commit to improving salaries and working conditions in the health
sector.

Though he said his group did not want to take a position on the labor
dispute, Rusike commented in an interview with reporter Ndimyake Mwakalyele
of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that it is time that authorities dealt with
the situation once and for all.


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Wave Of Labor Unrest In Zimbabwe Symptom Of Failing State - Analysts

VOA

      By Ndimyake Mwakalyelye
      Washington, DC
      11 January 2007

Zimbabwe has been experiencing almost continual labor strife since the
beginning of 2007, with a strike by junior hospital doctors, a walkout by
workers at the troubled state power company, and most recently a work
stoppage by hospital nurses.

The three-week strike by junior hospital residents, joined later by senior
residents, has defied resolution efforts by Zimbabwe Health Minister David
Parirenyatwa and left the already overburdened state hospital system in
turmoil.

Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority workers staged a strike last week and
blackouts simultaneously hit the country - though their union denied
industrial sabotage.

Rumors of impending strikes by teachers and civil servants have led the
government to put police and army units across the country on high alert,
sources say.

Labor disputes are common in Zimbabwe, where hyper-inflation has been
driving the cost of living higher at an annual rate around 1,000% for the
past half year.

But political analysts considering the latest round of labor unrest say it
is symptomatic of a prolonged political crisis, a staggering economy and a
failing state.

Reporter Ndimyake Mwakalyelye of VOA's Studio 7 For Zimbabwe sought the
views of two political analysts: Pedzisayi Ruhanya, Crisis in Zimbabwe
Coalition programs manager, and Gordon Moyo, executive direct of the
Bulawayo Agenda.

Moyo, currently pursuing studies in peace and conflict at the University of
Bradford in the United Kingdom, says it is clear that Zimbabwe is a failing
state.


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Who are Zimbabwe's enemies?

New Zimbabwe

By Terence M Mashingaidze
Last updated: 01/12/2007 11:22:05
SINCE the attainment of independence in 1980 the country's ruling elite have
systematically resorted to violence, retributive justice and racist rhetoric
to counter citizens who contest their self serving and corrupt governance.

Now, twenty seven years down the line nothing has changed, the political
road remains hazardous for those law abiding citizens who rightfully
challenge Zanu PF's bandwagon philosophies and shady administration. Due to
a penchant for political witch hunting the ruling elite define legitimate
contenders for power as enemies of the state.

What is more troubling about the ruling elite's desires for political
uniformity among citizens is that they have racialized democratic discourse
by reducing political competitors to stooges for white interests. All those
who question the ruling elite's administration have to be white and if they
are black they have white handlers, strategists and backers. According to
this thinking the Movement for Democratic Change, civil society and the
privately owned media are nothing but fronts and purveyors of white
interests.

Diaspora Africans and organisations like the USA-based Federation of Black
Trade Unions and even South Africa's COSATU and the South African Communist
Party (SACP), who condemn Zimbabwe's bad governance, are simply echoing
white imperial voices. The ruling elite is more comfortable with sycophantic
diaspora organizations such as the shadowy and populist Harlem based
December 12 Movement who unquestionably consider them torchbearers of
authentic African liberation.

The ruling elite's exclusionary nationalistic rhetoric is painful and
insulting to self-respecting black Zimbabweans, Pan Africanists and
Afrocentric thinkers and activists because it implies that blacks are not
capable of multiple definitions and interpretations of reality. They can not
read through Zanu PF's intolerant and corrupt style of national
administration. Right now, due to corruption, 80% of every Zimbabwean dollar
(Z$) paid by the tax payer can not be accounted for, and we are still
expected to support this regime's suffocating governance. We must all parrot
and sing in unison, Pambili leZanu PF, Pamberi neZanu PF, Forward with Zanu
PF. Is this the price of patriotism?

In the 1980s Zanu PF postured as a paramilitary and all embracing
revolutionary party and expected citizens to subscribe to its ill conceived
socialist orientation. Those who questioned this posturing became
anti-revolutionary saboteurs who deserved nothing less than physical
annihilation. The worst expression of this style of state management was the
Gukurahundi tragedy, whereby the state embarked on a scorched earth policy
against citizens in the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces. All those
perceived to be PF Zapu cadres and sympathisers faced either death or brutal
treatment at the hands of security forces or other state supported militias.
At least twenty thousand citizens perished and the world looked aside when
this low intensity and undeclared war against citizens was going on.

In typical anti-democratic fashion the state ignored the judicial rulings in
its quest to punish and ensure imposed political pliability and uniformity
among Zimbabweans. Several men and women were arrested on spurious
allegations of treasonous activities. The country's courts of law invariably
called for the release of these people due to lack of evidence against them.
The state on the other acted with impunity and ignored these rulings.
General Lookout Mafela Masuku and some PF Zapu cadres endured prison life in
the 1980s in spite of the courts' calls for their release.

Morgan Tsvangirai stayed in detention from October 6 to November 11, 1989,
on trumped up charges of being an agent for apartheid South Africa. However,
his real crime was that he had supported University of Zimbabwe students'
1989 democratic and anti-corruption struggles and condemned the police's
brutal treatment of the demonstrators. The Association of University
Teachers also condemned the police's violent treatment of the students and
the ultimate closure of the university. Again state functionaries accused
the AUT of being led by unrepentant and unpatriotic white Rhodesians.
Authorities came up with these cranky accusations in spite of the fact that
the government's most visible and articulate critics were the University of
Zimbabwe's black scholar-activists like the late Kempton Makamure and the
now South African based Shadreck B O Gutto.

This escapist and reductive discourse of defining all those who contest the
leadership's shoddy administration as unpatriotic and antinationalist
intensified from 2000 onwards. The MDC, civil society, the privately owned
media and the international community at large all became intruders on the
country's political space, "a coalition of evil" against revolutionary
Zimbabwe. Besides exclusionary rhetoric and crass propaganda, the government
used violence and restrictive laws such as AIPPA and POSA to curtail
citizens' rights and freedoms to assembly, association and expression. The
state forced private media alternatives such as The Daily News, The Weekly
Times and the Tribune to close shop.

The state also began to criminalize citizens calling for the broadening of
democratic space and resolutions to pertinent national questions. A few
weeks ago, in 2006, law enforcement agencies brutalized the Women of
Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) activists for demonstrating and calling for more food
on the table from their leadership. The WOZA debacle's major irony is that
the state is responding in an illegitimate and violent manner to citizens'
legitimate questions and concerns. Therefore, whose and what mandate does
our leadership now constitute and represent? Are these women who demonstrate
in broad daylight in the streets with babies strapped on their backs enemies
of the state bent on destabilizing law and order?

Most people in the country's power establishment have been associated with
or are alleged to have misappropriated public resources either on the farms,
at the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (ZISCO), the Harare City Council, and
the Reserve Bank's loan and forex allocation schemes to name but a few of
the cases. The country's leadership has elevated disorder and chaos into a
national management system, for obvious self-enrichment purposes. A few
months back people of various kinds descended on Marange district's Chiadzwa
area to scout for diamonds. Anyone with nerve and energy became either a
miner or a diamond dealer with the complicity of some government
functionaries. This happened in violation of the country's statutory mining
regulations and policies. The constituting of a cabinet initiated task force
put the chaos to some check.

However, it is everyone's guess that some powerful people had already made
good money out of the Chiadzwa "El dorado". Now we gather that tractors
recently imported under the Reserve Bank's auspices were stripped of their
parts before they had reached intended beneficiaries, the new farmers. In
typical corruption lingo commentators say "the tractors are being
cannibalised." But one is forced to ask whether it is only these few
tractors that are being "cannibalized" or it's the whole country.

It appears the territorial integrity and national sovereignty discourses
that our leadership loves so much serves to blur and disguise corruption,
brutal modes of preserving power, and shady governance. We need to remind
each other that Zimbabwe is not just some empty physical space, but a
geopolitical construct with people who deserve decent and dignified
livelihoods. There is no integrity in poverty, food shortages, the highest
inflation record in the world and the lowest life expectancy on the globe.
National sovereignty is not about threatening fellow citizens and ranting
against the nation's imagined and invented enemies but effective management
of Zimbabwean political and economic affairs.

Finally, if Zimbabwe has enemies to its integrity and sovereignty they are
some of the men and women who shout most about patriotism. They are vain,
violent, manipulative, contemptuous, and corrupt. The comrades in power
should own up to their failures, stop being defensive and get to the drawing
table to formulate and execute sober solutions for Zimbabwe, a country they
claim to have exclusive rights to defend, and even loot! Failure to do this
means that more citizens will sink deeper into deprivation and poverty.
Educated and skilled citizens will continue moving in droves out of the
country to secure decent livelihoods in well managed destinations near and
far from home. This is not what Zimbabweans want, they deserve better from
their leadership.

Terry M Mashingaidze is an historian and can be contacted at
Mashingaidze2000@yahoo.com


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The seven deadly sins of Zanu PF leaders

New Zimbabwe

By Tony Namate
Last updated: 01/12/2007 11:21:53
IN THE spiritual realm, leaders are supposed to be the earthly
representatives of a higher spiritual being, yet in our country, leaders do
their damnedest to be gods in their own right!

"That should show the people what I'm made of," they muse, as they portray
the impression that without their god-given benevolence, we wouldn't exist.

"We brought you democracy, therefore you owe us." Everyone must bow down and
not dare to criticize or oppose a political leader who stands between God
and mortal. Even churches are sheepishly whipped into line until they
actually become, according to Aristotle, ".less apprehensive of illegal
treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. believing
that he has the gods on his side".

But no matter how saintly they might feel, politicians will always be human.
And humans sin. For wasn't it written: the wages of sin is death?

A leader will not be forgiven for his sins on judgment day simply because he
was a popular politician. And there will be no lawyers on that day! They
could say they were sinning because Blair or Bush made them do it, but there's
no such thing as justified transgression.

I came across an interesting article the other day, which was talking about
the cardinal or seven deadly sins, namely ENVY, SLOTH, GLUTTONY, WRATH,
PRIDE, LUST, and GREED. These are mentioned throughout the Bible, but some
say they can be found in Matthew's Gospel: Chapters 5 - 7.

So far, these sins seem to have been used by the ruling elite to chilling
effect.

PRIDE: narcissism, unaccountability or thoughtlessness (Latin: superbia).
Wikipedia quotes Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321) describing pride as "love of
self, perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour".

Competely blinded by arrogance, government has literally made intolerance
part of its modus operandi, as we are now governed through vicious police
operations. Checks and balances are not part of their vocabulary because
they had to be "bitten by mosquitos" to be where they are today. Remember,
these are the same pig-headed people who have never declared their assets,
nor adhered to their own Leadership Code! Zimbabwe - as far as they're
concerned - is one large feeding trough.

I could be wrong, but I do believe the sin of pride is the deadliest of all
sins (pride goes before a fall). It is the sin that felled the "most
handsome being ever created by God", Lucifer. Pride has been our
holier-than-thou leaders' most consistent sin to date.

Being out of touch with reality is a deliberate way of avoiding the problems
that one creates, hoping they will go away. Our government prides itself in
having "brought" democracy to this country, then go on to suppress all forms
of democratic expression without exception. "Government cannot rationally
claim to be in favour of elections if it is unable to tolerate opposition.
Without opposition, there should be no elections." (Jonathan Moyo, Parade,
November 1989).

ENVY, resentment - (invidia). Desiring something that someone has. We have
seen how some young entrepreneurs have been haunted out of the country for
daring to refuse party leaders to partake their fingers into in their
businesses. Their assets have systematically been stripped bare and the loot
shared amongst the powerful, all in the national interest, we're told.

Government cannot envy something and then leave it at that. They have
criminalised a whole nation struggling to feed their families under trying
conditions by accusing them of breaking the law. Criminalisation is a form
of envy exhibited by a jealous government.

SLOTH, slowness, laziness - (pigritia/acedia). Probably the second deadliest
sin, it instills in people a feeling of hopelessness, or discouragement.
Mixing priorities, passing the buck or delaying/postponement of urgent
national issues by government is political sloth. Another political
definition of sloth is apathy: the indifference that has destroyed the will
of Zimbabweans to do anything about their plight. This sin has been used to
effectively deal a psychological blow to enemies of the state; where the
wheels of justice grind slowly whenever it is government in the dock, but
swiftly move into top gear if an anti-ruling party opponent is on trial.

Roy Bennett was whisked off to jail faster than he could say "Pachedu"!
Justice delayed - and justice denied: no punitive action is taken against
those who commit crimes on behalf of the party. Joseph Mwale has never been
tried for killing two MDC supporters in 2000. Then there is the
state-induced sloth being practiced by the Sekesai Makwavarara-led
Commission, where incompetence and corruption have actually been rewarded.
The les incompetents in state institutions have become agents of slowing
down the fight for change. They prevent others from doing their jobs, or
simply move them to other less effective departments.

GLUTTONY - excess (gula). This is unreasonable consumption or excessive
imbibing. Nothing can illustrate this sin more poignantly than during Zanu
PF's December 2006 "people's congress" where a ruling elite burped on 80
head of cattle (that's 10kg of meat per delegate over three days) and
imported goodies in a nation where most children go to bed hungry, not
knowing whether they willl find food on the morrow.

WRATH - spite (ira). Described as inappropriate feelings of anger, hate or
revenge towards others. The Zanu PF totem, Hatinzarwo, has spawned several
offspring in the mould of fully paid sycophants, brutal militias, partisan
police and army, whose duty is to reorient, "deal" with, or promote hate
speech against anyone who dares oppose their annointed leadership. Examples
abound of Zanu PF's wrath visited upon lesser mortals. The ruling party's
Ministry of Vindictiveness has left a trail of death, destruction, hunger,
disease, despair, apathy, uncertainty and much more in the people. If you
can't sort the problem, sort the people!

LUST - (luxuria). Is described as perverse craving for something, especially
to do with the flesh. Covetiousness for power, the inability to step down
and the proclivity to buy luxury has destroyed whole nations when leaders do
anything in their power to rule forever. The ruling mandarins are well-known
for their ability to use power to amass wealth and live in obscene luxury
like we witnessed at Town House recently or during the Pay For Your House
Scheme in 1995; or more recently during the land invasions. Once Operation
Chikorokoza Chapera has removed the poor panners from the face of the earth
(forgive the pun), who will fill the vacuum?

GREED - acquisitiveness (cupiditia/avaritia). Acquiring for personal gain
through corruption or unorthodox means. The Zanu PF cullture of bambazonke
(grab everything) has totally blinded our founding fathers from the ideals
of the liberaion struggle. Not only have they grabbed farms, businesses,
mines, tourist resorts - anything you can think of - but they have destroyed
the sources of self-reliance that the people had (Operation Murambatsvina) -
so that by becoming dependent on state handouts, Zanu PF is seen as a
benevolent party. The opposite of greed is Charity (giving). What a
difference it would have made if all 80 cattle had been distributed to
hungry villagers and for the delegates to take the three-day conference to
fast so that they would emerge spiritually rejuvenated and with new ideas
for the nation?

It is not too late for them to turn around and leave all theier sins and do
some good. Pride can be turned into humility if leaders resign when they
fail the people; Greed into generosity when they freely offer their services
to everyone without looking at party affiliation; Envy into moral support
whenever a Zimbabwean does his country proud; Wrath into compassion when
politicians realise that criticizing them is our democratic right; Lust into
self control or accountability so that power can be used effectively and
responsibly; Gluttony into sharing/self-control whenever we have amassed
more than enough; and Sloth into enthusiasm if the government shows a
commitment to help those who help themselves by providing them with the
means to achieve success.

Like any weak human, I too have committed all seven sins, but I do believe
that when elected politicians who have a heavy moral responsibility to the
public to curb their excesses commit them, then it becomes a matter for
public censure.

We must save ourselves as a nation from Zanu PF's seven deadly sins before
they completely destroy us.

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and
pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear
from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." -2
Chronicles 7:14

Namate is an award-winning Zimbabwean cartoonist. He can be contacted at:
tonynamate@yahoo.co.uk


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"We at the WSF Don't Have an Agenda"

IPS news

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Jan 11 (IPS) - As many as 150,000 delegates from more than a
hundred countries are expected to attend the upcoming World Social Forum
(WSF), to be held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, from Jan. 20-25. And,
expectations for the meeting appear as varied as the nationalities that will
pass through Jomo Kenyatta International Airport en route to the Moi
International Sports Centre.

Barbara Kalima-Phiri, a policy analyst for poverty reduction strategies, has
concerns about whether the forum will prove effective.

"We at the WSF don't have an agenda, apart from the slogans we make. The
forum has got very good networks but it's not focused," this staffer from
the Southern Africa Trust, a Johannesburg-based non-governmental
organisation (NGO), told IPS.

She said that at the WSF it is possible to "move from one session to
another, listening to all sorts of complaints, and virtually expect no
action. As things stand now, our voices are scattered."

Amongst certain Kenyans, there seems to be more optimism.

"There are a lot of expectations especially from ordinary citizens," said
Thomas Deve of the Zimbabwe-based Mwalekeo wa NGO (MWENGO), which means
"Vision for NGOs" in Kiswahili. MWENGO operates in East and Southern Africa.

"Kenyans are eager, for example, to find out how civil society organisations
attending the conference can contribute to the democracy in their country,"
he told IPS.

"We have put on the agenda issues that face Africa.On the final day we want
to come out with proposals for a plan of action," added Deve, who is already
in Nairobi for the WSF.

WSF organisers have identified 12 topics on which the Nairobi discussions
will focus: HIV/AIDS, women's issues, privatisation of common goods, the
landless, peace and conflict, migration and the diaspora, memory of people
and struggles, youth, debt, free trade agreements, labour and housing.

HIV/AIDS is perhaps the most pressing issue at hand, given that sub-Saharan
Africa is by far the region most affected by the virus. As the 'AIDS
Epidemic Update' issued last month by the Joint United Nations Programme on
HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organisation notes: "Two thirds (63%) of all
adults and children with HIV globally live in sub-Saharan Africa, with its
epicentre in southern Africa.One third (32%) of all people with HIV globally
live in southern Africa and 34% of all deaths due to AIDS in 2006 occurred
there."

African participants will also share with counterparts from other regions
their experiences of peace and conflict. While violence has been quelled in
certain parts of the continent, hotspots still exist -- notably those in
Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d'Ivoire and Sudan.

Nonetheless, perceptions that the WSF is nothing more than a talk shop are
unlikely to fade -- and have already prompted debate about whether the time
has come for the forum to adopt a political programme.

"This hotly-disputed question deserves consideration from all involved in
the WSF, given that we are now in the seventh year of the phenomenon," says
Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Civil Society, based in South
Africa's port city of Durban.

Political clout requires broad-based support, however, which may present
something of a problem.

"We haven't made the World Social Forum alive or relevant to the ordinary
people. If I talk to anyone in the street, for example, chances are that
none of them will have an idea about the WSF meeting in Nairobi," said
Kalima-Phiri.

"The World Cup (for football), which will take place in South Africa in
2010, is already on everybody's lips: people talk about it in bars, taxis
and at home. Yet we are not getting messages across to the ordinary people
about the WSF conference."

Founded in opposition to the World Economic Forum, a yearly meeting in the
Swiss resort town of Davos that gathers together the business and political
elite, the WSF was first held in the Brazilian town of Porto Alegre in 2001.
It unites groups and individuals, mainly from civil society, that -- amongst
others -- oppose global domination by capital.

The WSF remained in Brazil until 2004, when it was hosted by the Indian
coastal city of Mumbai -- then returned to Porto Alegre the following year.

Last year the meeting, dubbed a "polycentric forum", took place in several
cities: Mali's capital, Bamako; Caracas in Venezuela; and the Pakistani
financial centre, Karachi. The 2007 WSF will mark the first instance in
which an African country is serving as sole host of the event.

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