News24
24/01/2006 22:22 -
(SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe's inflation-weary citizens will soon have a
new 50
000-dollar bank note to make shopping easier, announced the central
bank
governor on Tuesday as he warned that the country's spiralling levels
of
inflation had not yet peaked.
Zimbabwe introduced a temporary form
of currency - dubbed bearer cheques -
three years ago to alleviate chronic
cash shortages brought on by inflation.
Gono said: "We are pleased to
announce that with effect from February 01
2006, a higher denomination of 50
000 bearer cheques would be added to the
denominational family of bearer
cheques so as to bring added convenience to
the transacting
public."
Monetary policy statement
But, he said his bank was still
working on a new permanent form of currency
to be unveiled later this
year.
Since their introduction in 2003, the purchasing power of bearer
cheques,
which came in 5 000 to 10 000 and 20 000-dollar denominations had
been
eroded by inflation that last month reached 586%.
Gono warned
that Zimbabweans could expect inflation to shoot up to between
700 and 800%
by March.
Gono said: "We urge the nation not to panic when we reach that
peak",
predicting that inflation would fall to about 230% by year's
end.
Zimbabweans often had to take large wads of notes into shops to make
cash
purchases, while those withdrawing large sums from commercial banks
could be
seen carrying it away in suitcases.
Business Day
Dumisani
Muleya
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN
International Monetary Fund (IMF) fact-finding mission arrived in
Zimbabwe
yesterday, in time to see central bank governor Gideon Gono give
his
first-quarter monetary policy statement. Contrary to official claims
that
this year will see changes for the better, 2006 has started just as
2005
ended: on a terrible note. Zimbabwe is still groaning under the weight
of
economic crisis and rampant authoritarianism.
The country, which
President Robert Mugabe has ruled for 25 years, is run by
a government that
has lost legitimacy. The predatory and parasitic elite at
the helm of the
Zimbabwean state are now increasingly relying on repressive
apparatuses,
rather than representative institutions, as instruments to
perpetuate their
rule.
Mugabe's centralisation of institutions and the personalisation of
power
remains a malady in local politics. Nothing has changed.
His
regime's trademarks - such as the use of the state to serve narrow,
elite
interests; transgression of human rights; the assault on the
judiciary; the
breakdown of rule of law; political arrests and detentions;
the crackdown on
private media, which saw several journalists arrested in
the past month
alone; and the deployment of the securocrats for predatory
self-serving
activities - are still evident.
Democracy, in its basic, procedural form
- which includes free and fair
elections, as well as a strengthening of
state and civil society
institutions to represent the collective will of the
people - is not taking
root in Zimbabwe. Instead, politics and the political
economy are being
monopolised by a discredited elite that is hanging on to
power by its
fingernails, and with no legitimate platform to stand
on.
While the superstructure is collapsing, the economic base has
crumbled.
A casual glance at the situation reveals that the economic
indicators are
grim and worsening. The IMF team will no doubt be alarmed by
this. The IMF
recommendations - especially on economic deregulation to
increase the role
of market forces in the economy; and reform of public
enterprises, the
fiscal sector, agriculture and governance - have largely
been ignored. Only
piecemeal reforms have been made - lifting selected price
controls, and
relaxing the exchange rate. Structural distortions and
administrative
controls are still embedded in the economy.
On the
political front, the crisis of governance spawned by misrule has
worsened.
Mugabe's Jacobinism still holds sway and, as a result, the
democratic space
is shrinking instead of opening.
But there is a further problem. The main
political parties - the ruling Zanu
(PF) and the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) - are both in
turmoil. The stalled dialogue between
Zanu (PF) and the MDC to break the
political impasse caused by disputed
elections has all but disappeared.
Zanu (PF) is reeling from a fierce
internal power struggle over who will
succeed Mugabe, while the MDC is
falling apart - also as a result of
infighting. This dire situation has left
Zimbabwe locked in a party
political crisis.
Mugabe's succession
problem has become intertwined with the dynamics of
national politics. It is
now damaging party and state institutions. What
makes matters worse is that
Mugabe - instead of accepting, for the sake of
the country that he pretends
to love so much, that his time as president is
now up - is digging in. In
the process he is dragging the whole country with
him.
Zimbabwe
illustrates the difficulties countries face when making the
transition from
a dictatorship to a democracy in societies with weak
institutions and where
personalised rule has been firmly entrenched.
The prevailing touch-and-go
political situation in Zimbabwe makes it very
difficult for the economy to
recover. Investor confidence will remain at its
low ebb until a holistic
solution - which encompasses the political and
economic spheres - can be
found to sort out the crisis.
Perhaps the expected visit to Harare by
United Nations Secretary-General
Kofi Annan in March might set in motion an
international process that may
lead to settlement of these
questions.
SA's President Thabo Mbeki might want to use that opportunity
to renew his
efforts to resolve the situation in Zimbabwe, which is a dead
weight on the
region.
?Muleya is Harare correspondent and Zimbabwe
Independent news editor.
People's Daily
Zimbabwe's exports declined by 9.04 percent from
1.58 billion U.S.
dollars in 2004 to 1.43 billion in 2005 due to persistent
drought, foreign
currency shortages and a delayed re-alignment of the
exchange rate, the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) said on
Tuesday.
Presenting his Fourth Quarter 2005 Monetary Policy Review
Statement on
Tuesday, RBZ Governor, Gideon Gono, said foreign currency
cashflows also
declined by 0.46 percent during the same period from 1.71
billion U.S.
dollars in 2004 to 1.7 billion at the end of last
year.
"Underperformance in export receipts was compensated for by
increased
short-term facilities, a position that has to be reversed in 2006,
through
greater export growth," he said.
Meanwhile, Gono said
gold deliveries remained subdued last year
despite the firming in
international gold prices and a more favorable
exchange rate.
He said gold deliveries to Fidelity Printers and Refiners fell by 37
percent
from 21,342 kilograms in 2004 to 13,453 kilograms in 2005 largely
due to
smuggling.
Large-scale producers, the governor said, delivered
9,666 kilograms
with the balance coming from small-scale
miners.
"In 2004 small scale producers delivered the bulk of gold,
suggesting
that in 2005 the precious metal was largely being smuggled out of
the
country," he said, adding the externalization of precious minerals
starved
Zimbabwe of the much-needed foreign currency.
The year
2004 saw the country lose 160 million dollar worth of gold to
smuggling,
Gono said.
He blamed chefs and those in positions of authority and
called on the
law enforcement agents to help weed out the scourge, which was
affecting the
country's economy.
Source: Xinhua
People's Daily
Zimbabwe will introduce systems and reporting
procedures for the gold
sector next month as it moves to curb smuggling of
precious minerals, the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) said on
Tuesday.
In 2004 alone, the country was prejudiced of 160 million
U.S. dollars
through smuggling activities. RBZ governor, Gideon Gono, called
on the
government to institute greater surveillance at the country's mines
to curb
growing incidences of smuggling and side marketing.
"Government surveillance instruments should be rigorous, with each
mine
submitting detailed reports to the Ministry of Mines and to the Reserve
Bank
for purposes of accounting for extraction and exports," he said.
The governor welcomed the work that was underway to finalize the
country's
mining laws, including the issue of government and indigenous
participation,
monitoring of mining activities and output which, when
completed, should
drive investments, productivity and earnings to
unprecedented
levels.
He noted the need for the Minerals Marketing Corporation of
Zimbabwe
to be realigned and reoriented to assume a much more aggressive
role in
marketing and ensuring early repatriation of mineral
exports.
Source: Xinhua
Zim Daily
Wednesday, January 25 2006 @ 12:20 AM GMT
Contributed by:
correspondent
Zanu PF national chairman John Nkomo has scoffed at
reports that
the ruling Zanu PF party was now a crumbling edifice struggling
to contain
simmering disgruntlement within its ranks currently manifesting
in the
myriad opposition political formations emerging from its top
executives.
Nkomo told Zimdaily the latest revelation that former Zanu PF
provincial
chairman Daniel Shumba had formed a new political movement United
People's
Party (UPP) came as no surprise as this was "merely a logical
extension of
the Tsholotsho debacle."
"Indeed this latest
gimmick is a futile attempt at hiding the
political links between the United
People's Movement and the UPP," Nkomo
said. "We are supposed to be so naive
as not to see that the so called new
political formations are two parties
are movers and shakers of the
Tsholotsho process." Nkomo alleged that the
objective of the two parties,
one headed by ex Zanu PF Information Tsar
Jonathan Moyo and the other by
Shumba, was to divide people along ethnic
lines and " to undermine the unity
of our people." Nkomo said Shumba and
Moyo were never committed Zanu PF
cadres but joined the ruling party to
"feed their selfish and corrupt
interests."
"Having
failed to destroy Zanu PF from within, they have now
come out of the
woodwork to pursue their narrow selfish interests in the
public domain,"
Nkomo said. "Their politics of subterfuge that thrives on
anti-unity and
anti-people strategies and tactics is doomed to fail." Both
the UPM and UPP
position papers blasts official malfeasence in the ruling
Zanu PF party, the
breakdown in the rule of law, poor economic policies and
general
mismanagement by the governing Zanu PF. But Nkomo said: "We exposed
their
Tsholotsho machinations and brought them to book and now they discover
all
these unsavoury things about Zanu PF. They have suddenly stumbled onto
the
democratic bandwagon calling for the restoration of rule of law and free
market economy."
Both Moyo and Shumba left the ruling
party unceremoniously after
being fingered in the infamous Tsholotsho
meeting that was aimed at blocking
the elevation of Joice Mujuru to the post
of Vice President in favour of
Zanu PF kingmaker Emmerson Mnangagwa. Nkomo
accused Shumba and Moyo of being
"opportunists and charlatans eager to cause
mayhem in the coutry." He
further alleged that there was no longer any
credible opposition in Zimbabwe
charging that they were all "puppets" driven
by donor largesse. "The current
squabbles in the MDC and the emerging
UPM/UPP dichotomy are an explicit
manifestation of cheque book politics and
sell-outism, " Nkomo said.
He claimed that his Zanu PF party
was fast gaining ground. "Zanu
PF continues to emerge victorious in areas
that hitherto had been labelled
MDC strongholds," Nkomo said in refence to
the senate and council election
results announced recently where the ruling
partuy garnered the majority
seats. "UPM/UPP will meet the same fate - total
rejection by the patriotic
and peace loving people of Zimbabwe," Nkomo said.
"Zanu PF is the vanguard
party of all patriots. It is the present and
future," Nkomo claimed. But
under the tutelage of Zanu PF the economy has
continued to perform dismally
with unemployment at 70%, inflation almost
600% and poverty and starvation
stalking the land.
Zim Daily
Wednesday, January 25 2006 @ 12:17 AM GMT
Contributed by: correspondent
The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority
(Zimra) was this week crowing
about a 33 percent positive variance in
revenue collection for 2005, which
is best attributed to galloping
inflation, mainly in the second half of the
year. The authority has sought
to extract credit from its ability to raise
$32.1 trillion dollars against
the budgeted $23.5 trillion, saying the
positive variance "is the fruit of
the initiatives that were undertaken to
improve revenue
collections."
In line with the latest government fad-
governance by
operations- Zimra launched no less than 4 'operations' last
year to stem
leakages from the system. However, inflation, particularly
after Finance
Minister Herbert Murerwa panicked and hiked value added tax
(VAT) from 15
percent to 17.5 between September and December, was always
going to make the
revenue target a cinch. Stunted revenue collection in a
lethargic first half
saw Zimra recording inflows amounting to $9.7 trillion,
way below the
target. However, with resurgent inflation closing the year at
585.8 percent-
giving an average rate of about 435 percent in the second
half- revenue was
always going to surge. Prices rose by an average 150
percent in the first
half of 2005.
Murerwa has since
revised the VAT rate downwards back to 15
percent as the government
announced a $105 trillion revenue target for 2006.
VAT supplanted individual
income tax to make the biggest contribution to
revenue last year, weighing
in with $10.55 trillion- a 33 percent
contribution that was 46 percent above
the target. Individual income tax's
contribution was marginally below target
and its overall contribution of $9
trillion was 28 percent of total revenue.
Company tax also registered
positive growth, partly due to the introduction,
in 2005, of a current
payment system that aims to beat the effects of
inflation due to the removal
of a time lag.
Contributions
from customs duty, which took an expected
battering from the government's
Operation Murambatsvina- which destabilised
the informal sector and cross
border flea market traders, declined
marginally from 13 percent in 2004 to
12 percent last year. The collections
from this revenue head- $3.85
trillion- were 61 percent above budget,
however.
New Zimbabwe
By Staff
Reporter
Last updated: 01/25/2006 13:26:01
THE High Court on Tuesday
reserved judgment in the case in which Chitungwiza
mayor Misheck Shoko is
seeking the nullification of his suspension.
Addressing journalists soon
after the chamber hearing, Shoko's lawyer,
Tendai Biti, said Justice Anne
Marie Gowora would pass judgment either on
Friday or
Monday.
"Judgment has been reserved. Judgment would be made either on
Friday or next
Monday," said Biti.
Local government minister,
Ignatius Chombo and Chitungwiza municipality are
the
respondents.
Shoko went to court last week seeking the reversal of
Chombo's suspension
saying it was driven by "political malice".
Shoko
added that his suspension was unlawful and was undertaken without
consultation, in violation of the law.
He also claimed the minister
had orchestrated a plan to cripple the
municipality, including cutting fuel
supplies to Chitungwiza in order to
find grounds to hound him out of
office.
"The respondents' actions were grossly unreasonable, were
motivated by
political malice and capriciousness and were done when no
reasonable grounds
existed justifying invocation of Section 54 (2) of the
Urban Councils Act
Chapter 29:15," said Shoko in his founding
affidavit.
Chombo has since appointed a commission composed of Zanu PF
apologists to
run the affairs of Chitungwiza. He has done the same in Harare
and Mutare
where elected opposition mayors have been replaced by his
appointees with an
unlimited term.
The Zimbabwean
BY WILF MBANGA LONDON - As the
consequences of Zanu (PF)'s misrule become
increasingly apparent, even to
those with their snouts still in the feeding
trough, the party itself is
beginning to fracture. Poverty, hunger,
unemployment and the collapse of
health and education are taking their toll
at every level. Ruling party
supporters were cushioned for a long time by
the Mugabe regime's highly
effective patronage system. But, together with
everyone else, they are now
feeling the pinch. Despite the almost total
control of information and the
constant spewing of pro-government
propaganda, all Zimbabweans can see the
writing on the wall. It has become
painfully apparent that Zanu (PF) can no
longer provide, even for the party
faithful. Things are falling apart.
Things will not get better. As a result,
people are resorting to desperate
measures. They are swimming across the
crocodile-infested Limpopo to South
Africa, they are walking through the
bush to Botswana and Mozambique. They
are hunting for wild fruit and digging
for roots. A return to basic survival
instincts is now apparent in politics
too, as people seek security in tribal
and family groupings. The unity
accord of 1987 put a damper on tribal
politics and Mugabe himself carefully
allocated posts across the tribal
divide to keep everybody happy. As he
enters the sunset of his life, he
doesn't seem to care any more. Family
feels safe and that's all that really
matters. Zanu (PF) itself is
splintering. In addition to Jonathan Moyo's
Tsholotsho-based United Peoples'
Movement, we now have the United Peoples'
Party (UPP) led by former Zanu
(PF) Masvingo provincial chairman and war
veteran, Daniel Shumba. Shumba and
his group are determined that the
post-Mugabe era should not be a Zezuru
dynasty. Their anxiety has stemmed
from the carefully orchestrated Zezuru
stronghold comprising the current
triumvirate - Mugabe, vice presidents
Joyce Mujuru and Joseph Msika, the
heads of the army, police, air force and
CIO and many permanent secretaries.
Implosion from within now seems a more
likely fate for Zanu (PF) than
electoral defeat by the now splintered MDC.
Political confusion is the
result. There are disturbing precedents in
Africa, notably Kenya, where
discontent with ruling autocracies has lead to
a proliferation of opposition
parties and consequent victory for the those
very autocracies. Africa's
curse, it would seem, is that there are always
too many Chiefs and not
enough Africans.
The Zimbabwean
OWN CORRESPONDENT LONDON - A meeting is
taking place this week between
agents acting for Masimba Msipa and
disgruntled Homelink customer Tendai
Mauchaza, whose beef against Msipa was
highlighted in The Zimbabwean last
week. Following that report, Msipa
contacted this newspaper to complain. He
was assured of his right of reply
and promised to give his side of the
story - which he had not done at the
time of going to press. Contacted for
comment Mauchaza said Msipa had phoned
him and accused him of
misrepresenting the facts. Meanwhile, another
Zimbabwean (name supplied) has
reported being duped through the Homelink
scheme. He bought a house in
Mufakose for -22 000, but when he realised that
he could have got something
much better for his money he cancelled the deal.
He told The Zimbabwean that
the people he dealt with had been extremely rude
and abusive and that it had
taken him three months to get his money back. "I
was impressed by the
Reserve Bank's Road show in UK two years ago and
believed it was a good
scheme. But I was totally wrong. It is a disaster,"
he said. Please contact
us about your experience with Homelink.
The Zimbabwean
WASHINGTON - Some
commentators are calling for MDC president, Morgan
Tsvangirai, to step down
because he has not won any presidential or
parliamentary elections since
2000. This type of logic is like some
passengers blaming the bus driver for
not getting to his destination when
everyone knows the bus had mechanical
problems beyond the drivers control;
unless if he could get the passengers
out to push the bus all the way to
their destinations! I would suggest the
MDCs power and influence can be
described as latent. Latent power
inherently renders the party essentially
weak unless it can mobilize its
resources and massive support to attain its
objectives through means other
than the electoral process. For the
opposition movement in Zimbabwe the
latent people power must be transformed
into real power. This means
mobilizing peoples power not so much to get
everybody to vote, but to
engage in other strategies like mass action and
civil disobedience that will
lead to desired objectives without going the
futile and frustrating
electoral route. It is therefore an
oversimplification to suggest that the
split in the MDC has weakened the
party. The partys power does not reside
in the leadership but in the
followers. There is no evidence of a
significant split among the followers.
No one has taken a scientific poll to
prove this. The big problem is none of
the MDC leadership has ever come up
with a strategy for confronting Mugabe
outside the electoral system.
Welshman Ncube is on record as saying that his
prosenate group will continue
to participate in elections no matter the
circumstances. He even said even
if the elections were to elect a janitor
they would participate. This proves
the lack of depth, lack of strategy,
lack of vision in the superficial
politics of accommodation being so
fanatically pursued by the prosenate
group. MDC leadership was essentially
weak long before the split. Had they
engaged in a systematic and deliberate
program of civil disobedience instead
of being faithful disciples of the
flawed electoral system MDC leadership
may have managed to galvanize people
into a mass protest. Historically, the
opposition movement in Zimbabwe and
Africa has never been a single-party
entity. When ZAPU and ZANU split in the
heydays of nationalist politics each
party engaged in an armed struggle
simply because of the futility of
pursuing electoral politics. This split
did not, ipso facto, weaken the
opposition politics in Zimbabwe. The same
applies to apartheid South Africa
where there were two distinct parties, the
ANC and PAC and later the MDM.
There is room for multiparty opposition
politics in Zimbabwe. If the MDC
leadership has irreconcilable differences
they should amicably part because
they will need to form a broad based
alliance or front against Mugabe. There
is a very strong case for unity in
order project a united front against
Mugabe. But as the history of African
nationalism has shown, this may not
always be possible. In some cases it may
only serve to perpetuate existing
problems that led to the disunity in the
first place.
The Zimbabwean
Ten of the 12 Provincial
Congresses have now been held - well attended in
all cases by delegates from
the Branches, Wards and Provincial structures.
New leadership has been
elected and in most cases there is a general
improvement in the quality and
character of the leadership that has been
elected. Some 15 000 people will
be eligible to attend Congress as delegates
and these together with our
guests will mean that we will have a very large
number of people at
Congress. This will be our second Congress - the first
being in late 1999
when we met at the National Aquatic Sports Centre in
Chitungwiza. This year
we go to the National Sports Centre in Harare. At
Congress, the process of
healing the wounds of the split in our leadership
will finally be dealt with
and a full contingent of national leaders
elected. Congress will be a real
celebration of the democratic spirit in
Zimbabwe. A celebration of courage
and determination to stand up to a
tyrannical dictatorship in defence of our
rights as people. A celebration of
survival; in spite of all that has been
thrown at us over the past six
years, we are still here, still in good
spirit and still determined to
finish what we started out to do in 1997. The
second aspect of the Congress
will be to cement the consensus we have
evolved together over the past six
years in respect to our philosophy and
ideology as well as the policies that
flow from those foundations. We are a
social democratic movement and as such
our policies will reflect our
commitment to the welfare of our people and
the development of our country.
To facilitate this a full policy review is
under way. The third aspect will
be to work out how we are going to achieve
our main goal - that of effecting
regime change in Zimbabwe. There are very
few in Zimbabwe today who do not
accept that Zanu (PF) has completely failed
to manage our political and
economic affairs. We have seen the most rapid
collapse of an economy in
African history - and in a country that is not at
war and has no internal
armed struggle. This has been a self-inflicted
collapse and the regime shows
no sign of either understanding what it has
done or how to fix the problem.
We have no alternative but to now seek their
removal from power and the
instillation of a new government that will tackle
our massive and urgent
problems and restore our dignity as a nation. The
question is how? We have
tried the democratic route and been frustrated at
every hurdle. The report
on the Presidential election in 2002 is now out in
draft form and being
examined by Party leaders. It is a completely damming
indictment of the
whole electoral process as developed and managed by Zanu
(PF) since 1980. It
reveals a completely manipulated and corrupted voters
roll, a sophisticated
system designed distort the roll to accommodate every
sort of electoral
fraud. It uncovers the role of the "Command Centre" a
sinister body run by
the military and security agencies that actually
administers all elections
from the headquarters of the CIO in Harare and
that has links to every
polling station in the country. It shows how this
body distorted the results
- blatantly manipulating the voting figures that
were coming out of the
polling stations themselves. It reinforces our claim
that the Registrar
General's Office is totally partisan and is actually the
main agent used for
the manipulations and distortion of voting rights,
citizenship and creating
the capacity for vote fraud on a massive scale. We
have tried the legal
route - we took 35 of the June 2000 election results to
Court, as is our
right in terms of the law and our constitution. It took the
Courts five
years to hear 12 cases - award seven to the MDC and dismiss five
and the
rest fell away when the next elections took place. In only two cases
were
the electoral challenge procedures completed, MDC won both but so late
that
our extra Members of Parliament never had a chance to attend even one
session. Then there was the legal challenge to the election of Mugabe as
State President in 2002. He purportedly won that by a significant margin but
we know that in fact a two-thirds majority defeated him. We took this to the
Courts within 30 days of the election - today, five years later, the case
has still not been heard and in desperation we have now appealed to the
Supreme Court. So no democratic means, no legal means - what next? We
ourselves rule out violence and armed struggle - we have been down that road
before and see no future for anyone there. So what way to go? Well first we
have to set our goals - that is in the process of taking shape in the MDC
but I think it is going to be a new national, peoples driven constitution.
Once that is in place then a normalization period to stabilize the situation
on the ground (food and security) and then fresh elections under
international supervision. "You will never get Zanu (PF) to agree to that" -
agreed, therefore there will have to be some use of force and here we will
use the methods refined over the past centuries by similar populations
living under tyrannies - civil disobedience, strikes, stay aways, boycotts
and pressure on all associated with the regime to concede the need for a new
beginning. At recent rallies the leadership of the MDC spoke to thousands of
its supporters and outlined to them their thinking. There is no doubt about
our need. No doubt about our determination and we have no doubt about our
eventual victory. History is on our side, the people will prevail and this
time Zanu (PF) will have no place to hide, not even in Pretoria. As Roy
Bennett said at the recent Council meeting "we have won seats in Parliament,
taken control of a majority of the Cities and Towns and what have we
achieved for our people - nothing!" He asked? "In what way can we say that
what we have been doing in the past six years has benefited the ordinary man
in the street?" He said this in support of a call for radical new strategies
to confront Zanu (PF) in all spheres and for the MDC to abandon strategies
that do not yield change. He is absolutely right.
The Zimbabwean
We knew it was too good to be true.
Recently, we were rejoicing that a body
of the African Union had finally had
the guts to issue a statement
criticising Zimbabwe's appalling human rights
record. But the resolution,
passed by the African Commission on Human and
People's Rights imploring the
African Union to condemn Zimbabwe for a range
of abuses, has been thrown out
by the organisation's Council of Ministers.
The reason? Certain procedures
were not followed. What a pathetic excuse! Of
course, we should not really
be surprised by this. The surprise was that the
resolution ever made it as
far as it did. After all, the majority of African
leaders who make up the AU
were not popularly elected. The current chairman,
Sudanese leader Omar
Hassan al-Bashir has been condemned by the
international community for his
dictatorial rule and the way in which he has
suppressed people in the Darfur
region. His fellows include leaders such as
Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the
despotic head of Equatorial Guinea, and the likes
of DRC's Joseph Kabila who
shot their way into power. These are some of the
people who decide on human
rights for Africa. They don't know the meaning of
the words. So we cannot
really expect anything from this motley bunch of
dictators. But there is
hope. A few years ago the report by the commission
would never even have
made it to the Council of Ministers. There are many
who are interested in
human rights in Africa and are working away behind the
scenes to change
things. There are also a number of African heads of state
who believe in
democracy, such as John Kufuor of Ghana, Ellen
Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia
and Botswana's Festus Mogae. They may be
outnumbered at the moment but we
beg them to continue highlighting the
tragic plight of the majority of
Africans. They need to be bold enough to
cast their lot, not with the
handful of oppressors, but with the multitudes
of decent people who deserve
a better deal. From today, Thursday, the heads
of state will meet in
Khartoum at the AU's annual summit. The delinquents
among them will no doubt
congratulate each other on how they have skilfully
managed to outwit the
democrats and stifle debate on the appalling behaviour
of the Mugabe regime
in Zimbabwe. We hope the democrats will somehow manage
to distance
themselves from the despots. Perhaps they could stand apart when
the time
comes for the happy family group photos.
The Zimbabwean
EDITOR - We announce the
creation of the Patriotic Military Forum, the Voice
of Soldiers. We are the
Command Council. We are officers from the ranks of
the Zimbabwean Defence
Forces who have held always to the worthy ideals.
Some of us are War
Veterans from the Second Chimurenga. Each one of us
serves the nation and
the Revolution. We are not an opposition party. We
spilt our blood in the
Chimurenga. We reject the imperialists and their
puppets. Comrade President
Robert Mugabe is the leader of the Chimurenga and
our father in the
Struggle. He has smitten our oppressors. We thank God for
him. But our
Zimbabwe labours under tribulation. Corruption and greed are
everywhere. We
cannot defend the Government when the government does not
defend the people.
Our children are not fed. Our patriotic forces lack fuel
and equipments.
See, Zimbabwe! The water needs to flow. It is time for the
Comrade President
to accept the gratitude of the nation. He has laboured
long in the vineyard.
He should take his rest. We demand the removal of all
selfish ministers like
Minister Chombo, they are the ones who are guilty of
corruption and
incompetence and the suffering of the people and they will
pay the price. We
have spoken. We will speak again. We call on the loyal
sons and daughters of
Zimbabwe to listen. THE COMMAND COUNCIL, Zimbabwe
The Zimbabwean
e
BY MAGUGU NYATHI
JOHANNESBURG - The place is calm and peaceful, a gentle
breeze lifts up the
curtains sending a shaft of light into the room. There
is no furniture,
water or electricity in the room, only a pile of old
blankets and a few
books in a corner. This is central Johannesburg, in one
of the dilapidated
flats typically occupied by Zimbabweans who have fled to
South Africa.
Nhlonipho Mudawu is a newly arrived teacher. "For a long time
I witnessed
the departure of my fellow country men. But I never thought I
would leave. I
thought the situation was going to improve. But it got worse
every day,
until it was my turn," he told The Zimbabwean. With
hyperinflation rising to
585.8 percent in December, the new pay for teachers
in Zimbabwe falls far
below the poverty datum line (PDL) - Z$17.2 million,
more than twice what
college-graduate teachers are earning. The country's
economic meltdown,
caused by well-documented corruption and mismanagement,
has seen Zimbabwe's
education sector, which used to be the pride of
President Mugabe's
post-independence achievements, crumble beyond
recognition. Teachers and
students are on the run. There is nothing left to
motivate teachers, and
parents are not satisfied with the quality of
education being offered in
most schools. The influx of teachers into South
Africa has reached its
highest record ever, with the progressive Teachers
Union of Zimbabwe, South
African Chapter, registering over 400 teachers in
the month of January only.
"The are an average of 20 teachers registering
with the PTUZ-SA every day
and this number is likely to increase soon as
more teachers are leaving
Zimbabwe for greener pastures. These teachers
include head masters and
college lectures with MBAs," said Bongani Nyathi,
the chairman, in a recent
interview. "It's unbelievable that a government
can spend zillions of
dollars in training teachers and lose them due to
mismanagement. I was still
hoping for Zimbabwe's revival but now I don't
think it can survive without
all these key services. First it was engineers,
doctors, nurses, defence
forces, now the teachers. I wonder who would be
next?" said Simba Manyanya
Zimbabwean economist and part-time lecturer at
Wits University. He said
there were more than 10,000 qualified Zimbabwean
teachers in South Africa,
most of whom were no longer practising teachers.
"About 3,000 are employed
by private colleges and only a small fraction of
no more than 50 are
employed by the government. It is obvious from these
figures that teachers
are the largest professional group outside the
country," he
said.
The Zimbabwean
HARARE - At least 820,000
people are suffering severe psychological trauma
as a result of Operation
Murambatsvina when their homes livelihoods were
bull-dozed, a new survey
shows. The survey, titled -Making Life
Unbearable,- was conducted by
ActionAid International, working with the
Counselling Services Unit, the
Combined Harare Residents Association, and
the Zimbabwe Peace Project. The
researchers questioned 1,195 people in 58
high density wards in Harare,
Mutare and Bulawayo _ asking them about
trauma, HIV/AIDS, legal issues and
their losses. Nearly one-fourth of the
people interviewed had at least one
person living with them with HIV/AIDS,
mostly now receiving no care,
treatment or nutritional support. -gThis
represents a conservative number of
households of about 5,407," said the
report. -gThis is an absolute minimum
of 5 000 individuals whose lives are
at risk." -gIf there was not a complex
emergency prior to May 18, 2005, the
Zimbabwe government-fs callous
implementation of Operation Murambatsvina has
now made a complex emergency a
categorical fact," said the report. -g -c
Ordinary people are now suffering
serious psychological disorder as a
consequence of their treatment, and this
will seriously impede their ability
to cope with the adversity that they now
must face." The survey results
contradict claims by the Mugabe regime that
it demolished the homes of
criminals and illegal dwellers. In many cases,
the victims were paying
rates, had other official permission to live where
they were, and suffered
huge financial losses. "Combined with the effects of
the destruction of
their homes and their livelihoods, it is even more
improbable that these
people will heal unaided," the survey said. Its
findings are in line with
those of the highly critical UN
investigation.
The Zimbabwean
BY MARTINE
STEMERICK Roy Bennett, the newly elected provincial leader for
Manicaland,
rejects the MDC power struggles as a distraction from the real
issues facing
the people of Zimbabwe. "The leadership wrangles and power
positioning . . .
have confused the grass roots: they have no understanding
of it," he said in
a recent interview. Dismissing council and other
elections as a smoke screen
that serve only to give Mugabe's regime the
appearance of democratic
authority, Bennett said bluntly: "The sentiment of
the people of Zimbabwe is
that there are no more elections. There's no time
to play games with a
dictatorial, oppressive, human-rights abusive
government. "What are we doing
by getting into elections with them, or
talking with them, or negotiating
with them? This year is a time for action.
It's a time for the MDC to
consolidate, to show its power by people power,
and show Mugabe and Zanu
(PF) that their days are numbered. We will only
ever go back into elections
when the process is free and fair, when there is
a democratic dispensation,
and when there is a proper constitution in
place." Bennett emphasised that
he could only speak for Manicaland, "where I
was personally involved. After
that Congress, there was a total air of
vibrancy in Manicaland. People are
ready to move. They are expectant. They
are waiting to get involved, they
are waiting to strategize, and they are
waiting to take this regime head on.
People are no longer worried about
being arrested. They are no longer
worried about dying. They want to move
their country forward and take
possession of their country from the grass
roots so that there is good
governance and a free market system," he said.
Asked about the weaknesses
and divisions among the MDC, Bennett attributed
the infighting among party
leaders to Zanu (PF) and CIO infiltration. "The
leadership has been lacking
because of the oppressive system Zanu (PF)
employs to run the country: the
arrests, the sums of money going in and the
buying off of people." He said
the ruling party had used a divide-and-rule
strategy for creating havoc in
the MDC, facilitated by the Political Parties
Finance Act, which allows
opposition supporters to be arrested and put into
jail. "Because finances
have been coming into the MDC which people have had
access to and not been
accountable for, the individuals who have benefited
from those funds have
forgotten about the grassroots. They have forgotten
about the people who put
them there. They have become all powerful with that
funding and formed
themselves into a kitchen cabinet, eating that money and
forgetting about
the people and the purpose of the MDC, which is to lead the
country to new
governance." Bennett agreed with the conclusion of several
other
commentators that the MDC's internecine wrangling served only Zanu
(PF). He
called for the leadership to leave the past behind and come
together in
unity and unanimity to tackle the real issues that afflict the
suffering
people of Zimbabwe. "I believe what is happening now, whether
President
Tsvangirai has erred or not, whether Welshman Ncube has erred or
not, they
were given the responsibility by the people of Zimbabwe to lead
them. And
they must be respected for their positions and they must lead the
people."
Bennett dismissed the notion of hashing and rehashing all of the
who-did-what-to-whom quandaries that have divided the party in the last few
months. "We, the people of the MDC, must rally together, forget the
individual agendas, forget who has been bad, who has said what, to unite in
a common purpose to give the leadership back to the grassroots that put us
there and lead us through this period that we are going through now." "This
is the year that it's going to happen. In 2006, Zanu (PF) is going! The
people are sick and tired. Zanu is finished. The people will restructure,
reformulate, reorganize their leadership and we will move forward." The MDC
must stop gnawing itself to pieces. While the leadership is tying itself in
ever more destructive knots, the people at grassroots are saying, "Let's
move! let's move!'" "The majority of the people in the MDC have suffered.
We've suffered and lost. We've been beaten. We've lost our homes, had family
members killed. We want to move forward." - Roy Bennett spoke to Violet
Gonda of SWRadioAfrica on "The Hot Seat" programme January 10,
2006
The Zimbabwean
BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
LONDON - The Zimbabwe Women's Network-UK (ZIWNUK)
is a non-political, non-
profit organisation set up in 2003 to create a
platform and a forum where
Zimbabwean women asylum seekers, refugees and
migrant workers could benefit
from various social, legal and economic issues
as they settled in the UK.
Our vision is to enhance the quality of life for
Zimbabwean women and their
families, especially with regard to protecting
the welfare and development
of our children. We work to foster unity among
Zimbabweans, to promote our
culture and traditions and to contribute to our
common welfare - 'Ubambano
Lwabo Mama' - 'Kubatana kwa Madzimai'. As a
self-help organisation, inspired
by the ideals of community development and
the women's movement, we espouse
personal and collective responsibility,
interdepence as well as direct local
action by the women for the women. Our
ethos is that of empowering and
enabling, rather than being protective or
prescriptive. As part of our
capacity-building programme, we are working
with strategic partners to
deliver training opportunities. Our courses are
free of charge to
Zimbabweans interested in contributing to their own
development and that of
their community. The capacity building programme,
four full days, 21 Feb,
28th Feb, 7 & 14 March, will cover the following
modules: a.
Understanding the sexual health needs of young people from
African and BME
communities b. Understanding religious and cultural issues
in promoting
sexual health among young people from BME communities c.
Working with
parents as partners in promoting sexual health among young
people from BME
communities d. Developing strategies for promoting and
delivering sexual
health services among young people from BME communities.
Other courses
include: Choosing a Database, 31 January, Women only 10-4.30;
Funding and
fundraising, 2 February, Women only 10-4:30; Consultation for
women by women
services - 16 February, Women only 1-3:30pm; Planning 6
February - Women
only 10-4.30pm; Meet the funder for small groups 8 March,
Women only
10-4.30pm; Managing your organisation 20 March, Women only 10am -
4:30pm;
Writing Better Fundraising applications - Thursday 9 February
10am-4.30pm;
Managing your community building - Tuesday 21 February
10:4.30pm; Social
Enterprise - 25 January 10am - 1pm and many more. In
keeping with the UK
government's strategy on teenage pregnancy, we are
offering a two-day
workshop 'Speak Easy' - Learning to talk to our children
about sexual
health. The dates for this workshop will be 20 and 21 March but
there will
be an information giving session on January 26 from 9.30am -
2.00pm in
Ealing. All the above workshops will take place in venues in
Ealing,
Hounslow and Hammersmith. Travel expenses will be reimbursed and
lunch will
be provided. We are also looking for volunteers to work in
various roles
within the organisation such as coordinating and writing our
newsletter,
designing publicity and promotional material, designing and
maintaining our
database, maintaining our website and community advocates to
take part in
our outreach project where you will be visiting those who are
ill in
hospital, visiting those in detention centres and providing peer and
emotional support to those affected by HIV/AIDS. - If you are interested in
any of these workshops, please contact Maureen Ndawana on 020 8847 2244 or
07960857286 or Yvonne Marimo on 07886 241 757. Or fax your details to 020
8847 0011. All bookings are to be made via the network ZIWNUK.
The Zimbabwean
BY RENSON GASELA HARARE - Rain is
life. Look at the transformation around
the country since end of November.
Rain makes grain. Because the rainy
season was delayed this year, the crops
are generally young. January is
normally a very dry month. However, this
year, it has been extremely wet. It
does appear now that we are going to
have an extremely good year as far as
rainfall and its distribution is
concerned. With such a promising season,
what prospects are there for
sufficient food? The young crop is already
suffering from fertilizer
deficiency. If ammonium nitrate was to become
available now, a lot of the
crop could be saved. But even if fertilizer was
to be found now, there would
not be enough food produced this year. For a
start, seed availability this
season was only 30% of national requirement.
Another factor is tillage. I
witnessed a very embarrassing scene in Gweru on
December 20, 2005 at the
Arex offices. For one of the few times since the
start of the season, there
was farmers' diesel available. Hundreds of
farmers went to queue for
allocations. As Arex staff was serving farmers on
a first-come-first-served
basis - senior army, police and Zanu (PF)
officials were jumping the queue,
resulting in a riotous situation where
police had to send dogs to restore
order. The point here is that government
is selling fuel to these farmers at
the end of the ploughing season. I
believe the ruling party has a deliberate
policy to keep Zimbabwe in a
semi-permanent food deficit situation and my
reasons are as follows: a) Land
Reform: While the need for land reform in
acceptable as a means of resolving
the land question, the manner in which it
was done was clearly never
intended to solve the land question. One only
needs to look at the
beneficiaries to see what its intentions ultimately
became. There is land
audit after land audit. Those who own multiple farms
are not touched. There
are millions of hectares lying fallow. b) Inputs: The
parliamentary
portfolio committee on Lands and Agriculture in 2003, made
specific
recommendations on how to deal with the inputs, having had evidence
from
stakeholders. When the report and recommendations were presented to
parliament, Minister Made specifically rejected both report and
recommendations. See Hansard of 17th December 2003 Columns 2140-2142. Last
year 2005, the same portfolio committee came up with the same findings and
made nearly similar recommendations. Again, these have not been accepted.
Can we really believe that President Mugabe does not know why there is no
fertilizer! Can we really believe that he has over the past five years
actually failed to ensure that his Ministers perform? c) Operation Taguta: -
Having recognized the failure of the land reform programme, the government
decided late last year to mount Operation Taguta. This is the army going
into the underutilized farms and literally taking them over by tilling the
land and putting in some crops. Operation Taguta is trying to plant maize
even as late as now. When did the regime discover that land was
underutilized? Is the army the right vehicle for food production? Are not
some of the military people also failing in their individual capacities to
produce food? Is this not an admission of the failure of land reform? We
understand that the army has thousands of tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate
Fertilizer for Operation Taguta. Since it is so late now to begin ploughing
and planting any crops why not release the fertilizer and save the crop on
the ground? To complete their goal, the government now wants to spend $1.5
trillion buying the shares of fertilizer companies. All the fertilizer
companies are operating at below capacity due to shortage of foreign
currency, which the government should provide if they were serious about
agriculture. It would appear that the government is deliberately sabotaging
the fertilizer companies by failing or refusing to provide them with foreign
currency. If this is not so, where are they going to get the foreign
currency after nationalization? One can only conclude that the whole idea is
the perfection of the patronage system when they are in full control. d)
Food Aid: The government was fully aware that their pipe dream of 2.4
million tonnes of maize in 2004 was not there. Last year the rains were
poor. Even as they claimed they had too much maize, they never stopped
imports, during that big surplus year! Zimbabwe has been eating secretly
imported maize over the past 24 months. However, when it was obvious to
everybody that people were starving the government refused food aid. e)
Operation Murambatsvina: The government found a formula of controlling
people in the rural areas. This is done through the system of Wadco and
Vidco. Each Wadco or Ward has a ZANU PF employee who is paid by government
through Ministry of Youth. This official works with village heads and ward
councillor. With perennial induced food shortage, this structure ensures
compliance of rural people. The patronage system has been perfected. In the
urban areas, the people are much freer and make their own decisions. The
hundreds of thousands of informal traders were self-sufficient and therefore
did not look upon the state to do anything for them. Their lack of
dependence meant that government could not control them as those in rural
areas. The time has come for the people to say enough is enough.
The Zimbabwean
BY LITANY BIRD Dear Family and
Friends, A friend recently sent an email
describing how activists manage to
cope in circumstances where fear, stress,
insecurity and unrest continue for
long periods of time. Determination,
principle and routine, seem to be about
the most important factors to
consider. As the situation in Zimbabwe
continues to deteriorate, more and
more activists seem to be falling silent
or just disappearing from sight.
The recent split of the MDC has left most
Zimbabweans feeling alone,
betrayed and desperate about how to cope and
which way to turn. It is now
very difficult to keep depression and despair
at bay and prevent "burn-out".
Our lives have been in turmoil for six years
and many days it seems as if
nothing will ever be the same again. Houses for
sale are now quoted in
billions of dollars, those for rent are in the multi
millions, a visit to a
doctor is Z$2 million and the smallest handful of
basic groceries carried in
one plastic bag easily costs a million. The
horror of this reality comes
quickly when you know that an ordinary teacher
for example, or a nurse,
takes home only Z$5 million. The men and women
entrusted with educating our
children and saving our lives cannot afford to
live in Zimbabwe any more. In
homes across the country municipal accounts
for January have just arrived
and they have left residents absolutely
staggering in disbelief. In my
hometown the municipal charges have increased
overnight by almost 600
percent. We should be saying, in disgust and outrage
that we will not pay
for services not being provided - street lights that
don't work, garbage
that is not collected, water that is filthy or roads
that are collapsing.
But we do not; without brave and strong leadership we
are a country and a
population afraid and so instead we search desperately
for ways to survive,
to find the money and to pay for almost non-existent
services. In the very
early mornings you see the real people of Zimbabwe
going out to do whatever
they can in these wet January days. Men and women,
and even children who
should be in school but can't afford to attend
anymore. They go to little
roadside gardens to dig and weed maize, beans and
pumpkins - crops which are
hungry for fertilizer and whose meagre yields
will be dramatically reduced
when the night time thieves start coming around
and helping themselves.
Other people go out into the bush to pull down tree
branches for fuel wood
or they go collecting mushrooms and wild fruits -to
eat and to sell. One day
after the other, one foot in front of the other we
carry on, struggling,
praying, hoping - we cannot afford to burn out. Until
next week, Ndini
shamwari yenyu.
The Zimbabwean
Elsewhere in this issue
we carry a story about Zimbabweans being forced to
fork out millions of
dollars that they don't have so that Zanu (PF)
supporters can once again
gorge themselves at a celebration of their aging
leader's 82nd birthday
party. In the light of the fact that millions of our
people are starving,
foraging for roots and wild fruits to feed their
emaciated children, this is
obscene. We condemn this extortion on behalf of
the government in the
strongest possible terms, and commiserate with the
still-employed civil
servants who undoubtedly will once again fall victim to
'voluntary/compulsory' deductions from their salaries at source. We
encourage them to resist this illegal practice with a lot more backbone than
they have demonstrated thus far. If Mugabe wants to throw a party to
celebrate his birthday, let him jolly well pay for it himself like everybody
else does.
The Zimbabwean
BY A
CORRESPONDENT HARARE - A vindictive personal attack by Information
Secretary
George Charamba on human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa underlined
the extent
to which the state-controlled media, particularly the press,
propagate
hatred against perceived opponents of the Mugabe regime. The media
watchdog,
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ), in its report covering
Jan. 9-16,
also noted that just a week after making ridiculous claims that
the good
rains spelled economic revival, all the media "reflected an economy
in
turmoil." Charamba's prominent column in The Sunday Mail was prompted by
an
interview Mtetwa gave to South Africa's Mail and Guardian, and which the
Zimbabwe Independent picked up, attacking Zimbabwe's repressive media laws.
Instead of addressing Mtetwa's points, Charamba tried to undermine her legal
credentials, sneering that she sought to make a name for herself in
journalism. "Such unprofessional outbursts severely undermine ethical
journalistic standards and practice, to which the government-appointed Media
and Information Commission has seemingly remained blind," said the MMPZ.
While giving Charamba a big show, the state media ignored an urgent High
Court application by Chitungwiza mayour Misheck Shoko challenging his
suspension from office. The Daily Mirror also skipped this important story,
but it was reported by SW Radio Africa, which made an error in its report,
Studio 7 and the Financial Gazette. On the economic crisis, MMPZ said that,
apart from Radio Zimbabwe, the state broadcaster reported prominently the
huge surge in inflation from 502.4% in November to 585.8% in December. Spot
FM even quoted an economist as saying inflation will worsen. But, as ever,
the state media avoided linking the country's economic misery to
mismanagement by the regime. In Bulawayo, The Chronicle excelled itself by
peddling the absurdity that that hyperinflation and the general economic
decay were a "consequence of the sabotage unleashed on our economy via Tony
Blair's machinations, with support of most European Union countries." The
Herald seized on rhetoric from the Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF) -
combining state, business and labour - as the latest panacea. However, the
monitors noted that in a rare moment of candour, The Herald reported
analysts as saying a new currency "would also develop a chain of zeroes" as
long as inflation remained high and productivity low. The independent SW
Radio Africa did not report the inflation rise, and The Daily Mirror's
coverage was along the lines of the state media. Adopting a more analytical
approach, Studio 7, the Independent and The Standard cited analysts as
predicting inflation could hit 800-1,000% by year's end. As in the previous
week, none of the media covered the cholera outbreak adequately, failing to
make independent investigations and relying on official sources for
information. "Almost all the updates on the spread of the disease in
official papers were buried in reports that narrowly fingered vendors,
particularly those in Mbare, as the source of the pestilence, while
simultaneously stressing how the authorities had taken effective action to
contain the disease," said the MMPZ. Officials were quoted as saying
Operation Murambatsvinva, which rendered hundreds of thousands homeless and
without livelihoods, had enabled the disease to be contained. The state
press also passively quoted Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo as
saying he would organise collection of refuse, fixing of potholes and
repairing of street lights in Harare - with no reference to the fact that
the state-appointed Commission which is supposed to run Harare had failed to
do this.
The Zimbabwean
BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
About 15 years ago I drove around a corner on our
farm and found a body
lying in the middle of the dirt road. I only just
managed to stop in time
and discovered that it was a teenaged girl who, when
I tried to help her up,
appeared to be confused and weak. She seemed to have
fainted so I took her
to our local clinic. Every time the clinic sisters
asked her what was wrong
she repeated the word 'nenzara.' Real hunger was so
far from my mind at that
time that at first I thought she was using it to
cover something else. Maybe
the girl was pregnant? But the sisters
questioned her more and it turned out
that she really hadn't eaten for a
couple of days. I was appalled that such
a thing could happen in the midst
of plenty. As we investigated further, we
discovered that her alcoholic
grandmother spent what little money there was
on drink. It was easy to solve
that particular hunger problem and the girl
received a basic food allowance
every month. It was the first time that I'd
heard the Shona word for hunger
used in its real sense. When I was hungry I
often used to say "Ndafa
nenzara!" But not any more. Hardest of all is
feeling so helpless when faced
with hunger on this scale. Wherever I go I
see it. It's etched in deep lines
on thin worried faces. It's in the large
round eyes of the children that
peer so hopefully into my car. It's the
oedema and bronzed skin and hair of
kwashiorkor and it's the child who says
that he is nine when I thought that
he was about five. Nenzara is now right
next door in the family of the
gardener who has five children and is paid
the minimum wage. (20 loaves of
bread a month) A friend of mine chatted to a
young man outside her bank
recently and he told her that 'hungriness is the
main problem.' As a result
of that conversation and cognisant of Audrey
Hepburn's advice that 'for a
slim figure share your food with the hungry'
she has started feeding a few
people from her home. She has an interesting
clientele. They include one
neighbour's domestic staff, street boys, the
messenger from the office down
the road and an unemployed domestic worker
and her three children who stay
across the road where her oldest son works
as a caretaker. There is one man
who comes for lunch who is known locally as
'the war vet.' He was sounding
off to the others about how it was all going
to get better when all the
whites have finally left the country. 'Then we'll
start again,' he'd said
confidently, My friend's cook is quite a fearsome
fellow and he bellowed
that there was to be no talk of a political nature if
they wanted to be fed.
But as she served the so-called war vet she heard her
cook say to him, "Kana
varungu vakaenda hapana chaunowana kana kupiwa sadza
raurikuwana hauriwani!"
(If all the whites leave then you won't get even
this sadza for lunch!) The
war vet still comes for lunch everyday and has
been heard to say with
exquisite politeness that perhaps not all the whites
should leave! I watched
a food program in operation. A thin but handsome
young man carefully picked
up the few spilt beans that were on the desk of
the interviewer and put them
in his sack. Typically the gesture of a tidy
mature woman, it was poignant
in one so young. He has one child, his wife is
dead and he's HIV positive.
It was only because of this that he's classified
as 'chronically ill' and
qualified for what is called extra food aid.
Otherwise the church would not
have been allowed to give him more than
general food aid. That is 25 kilos
of maize, a litre of oil and a couple of
kilos of beans. There's a bizarre
twist to the cruel decree that allows
extra food aid only to the chronically
ill. The stigma attached to an HIV
positive status has not only been booted
out of the closet it's become a
passport to survival. Anna is 23, her
husband is ill and her five-year-old
son has TB. The baby has kwashiorkor
and has just come out of the feeding
unit at Harare Hospital. She's been
told that the child needs milk every day
and eggs. They may as well have
said Beluga caviar and fois gras, because
her husband has no work. He fishes
with little success in the polluted, weed
choked Manyame River but is really
too weak to walk that far. The very old
and destitute don't qualify for
extra food - which amounts to some peanut
butter, mahewu, rice, kapenta and
more beans. I watched a Grandmother leave.
She'd lost her livelihood due to
the ban on vending and she looked after six
orphaned grandchildren but
didn't qualify for extra food because they were
all well. The logic is
worthy of Afghanistan under the Taliban. We don't yet
see those Biafran or
Ethiopian stick people in Harare but what we do see are
the ramifications of
hunger. A largely malnourished population, children who
die of kwashiorkor
and starvation, people who quickly succumb to diseases
such as TB and Aids
and the premature death of the elderly. I fear that
we'll not hit the
headlines until we can produce the stick people to feed
the media. Some
people seem numb. I first saw that numbness on the faces of
the North Korean
crowd who welcomed Mugabe to that country in the 1980's.
His visit was
widely covered on local TV and I watched horrified at the
expressionless
faces of the thousands who lined the streets of Pyongyang.
They chanted
'Mugabe, Mugabe, Mugabe' and waved little flags but their faces
were dead,
totally devoid of expression. They looked like wind up toys or
programmed
automatons. Is that what fear does to people? Fear combined with
hunger and
deprivation is a deadly mix.
The Zimbabwean
As the IMF visits
Zimbabwe this week, PATRICK BOND, examines the diplomatic
brokering behind
the SA loan to Mugabe and how this could affect the next
stage in Zimbabwe's
political destiny. Mugabe's alliances have generally
been maintained the
past five years, and both external and internecine
rebellions have been
crushed. Regular predictions that the ruling party will
fragment - mainly
due to ethnic factionalism - have never reach fruition.
After three decades
of control over Zanu (PF) and six years' experience
harassing a strong
opposition party, Mugabe has an even stronger grip on his
politburo.
Evidence of his dominance during this period includes the
expulsion,
demotion or jailing of figures with substantial regional or
sectoral power
bases, such as the giant old stalwarts Ndabaningi Sithole,
Joshua Nkomo and
Enos Nkala (1980s); failed party reformers Edgar Tekere,
Eddison Zvobgo and
Margaret Dongo (1990s); and tycoon Philip Chiyangwa,
finance minister Chris
Kuruneri, chief spokesperson Jonathan Moyo and
parliamentary speaker
Emmerson Mnangagwa (2000s). However, with Mugabe
apparently now unable to
raise basic hard currency for importing petrol,
food and other vital
necessities, the time is ripe for the next stage of
what might be termed
'exhausted nationalism'. When Simba Manyanya and I
began using this phrase
in 2002 (in Zimbabwe's Plunge), as shorthand for
Mugabe's incapacity to
deliver a higher standard of living, it was not clear
that the nationalist
project could be reinvigorated, at least in a manner
the masses would find
compelling. The problem of 'exhausted nationalism'
also applies to South
Africa, where SACP deputy secretary Jeremy Cronin once
famously translated
it as the 'Zanufication' of the African National
Congress (he was hurriedly
forced to apologise). In turn, this is why the
vigorous debate now underway
on lending to Mugabe is so revealing. For it
appears that Mbeki and the IMF
have, to borrow the quote above, successfully
shaped the discourse within
which policies are defined, and indeed a
proposed loan of $500 million from
South Africa to Zimbabwe may circumscribe
what can be thought and done. A
reported $160 million of that was originally
earmarked to repay the IMF,
with the rest ostensibly for importing (from
South Africa) agricultural
inputs and petroleum. According to Pretoria
spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe,
the loan could 'benefit Zimbabwean people as
a whole, within the context of
their program of economic recovery and
political normalisation.' Much of the
debate in South Africa concerns
whether Pretoria is putting sufficient - or
indeed any - pressure on Harare
to reform, as Netshitenzhe refused to
clarify speculation that both
political and economic liberalisation would be
conditions for the proposed
loan. Mugabe spokesperson George Charamba
revealed the process on August 14:
'We never asked for any money from South
Africa. It was the World Bank that
approached Mbeki and said please help
Zimbabwe. They then offered to help
us.' A Pretoria-based Bank economist,
Lollete Kritzinger-van Niekerk,
confirmed that her institution 'is not ready
to thaw relations with the
ostracised Harare'. Other reports - in the
usually unreliable but
consistently pro-government Herald - were that a top
IMF official and a US
diplomat also needed a back channel. According to the
IMF's own news service
in mid-August 2005: "The issue of the proposed loan
from South Africa to
Zimbabwe has taken a new twist amid revelations that
the US government
approached South African president Thabo Mbeki to bail out
Zimbabwe, The
Herald (Zimbabwe) reported yesterday. A highly-placed Western
diplomat in
South Africa, who is closely following the deal, told that IMF
deputy
managing director Anne O. Krueger approached President Mbeki and
asked him
to advance financial support to Zimbabwe ahead of the IMF summit
set for
next month, The Herald (Zimbabwe) reported yesterday. The diplomat
said Ms.
Krueger made her move in the run-up to the African Union summit in
Sirte,
Libya, which was held from July 4 to 6. Ms Krueger is reported to
have told
President Mbeki that a South African loan would enable Harare to
pay its
dues to the IMF and, in so doing, strengthen the case against
Zimbabwe's
expulsion from the institution. President Mbeki, the source said,
was
surprised that a high-ranking IMF official could make a case for
Zimbabwe.
However, Ms Krueger is reported to have pointed out that South
Africa would
lose more from Zimbabwe`s expulsion since no other country
would want to
assist Zimbabwe after that, and this would have a negative
effect on the
South African economy." Notwithstanding some mildly adverse
impacts on
investor confidence and refugees, whether Zimbabwe's ongoing
economic crash
is entirely negative to South Africa remains disputed. In
October 2005,
Fitch ratings director Veronica Kalema remarked to the
Financial Mail that
Zimbabwe 'is a small economy. It could collapse and
South Africa would be
fine.' The same article quoted Harare-based business
economist Tony Hawkins
on the 'upside', namely, that: "South Africa has
gained market share in
exports, tourism and services. SA's share of
investment in Zimbabwe has also
risen as there has been an element of
bargain-basement buying by some mining
and industrial groups. SA is also
taking significant skills from the
country, especially scarce black skills
in health, education, banking,
engineering and IT. 'It would be too much to
say that SA has benefited in
net terms, but there is a good deal of evidence
to suggest that it is
securing some gains from the crisis.'" - to be
continued.
Calling all women
EDITOR - I am look to
Zimbabwean women to be the bridge to the future of
human kind in our
country's crisis. It is my belief as a man of today that
the women of today
must bring unique leadership styles in Zimbabwean
communities, which are
focused on building our real values basing on
cooperation, kindness,
honesty, compassion, and more nurturing. Women have
the capability to turn
around the crisis that has been created by Zimbabwean
men for their selfish,
and self satisfaction without considering the poor
and long suffering people
of Zimbabwe. There are many selfish men who are in
leadership in our
country. They have been trying to quick fix the crisis but
at the same time
rushing to practice corruption. I am dying to see
Zimbabwean women working
hard to improve their peers who are tied up right,
left, front, back, and
center back home. Ladies, to truly make a turn around
in that country, there
is need for women's effort here to work together with
men and we need to
know deeply not lightly that we are part of, not apart
from, which is
something greater and quite enduring. Just before I go, I
have to give you
an assignment to do on your spare time. Please open your
bibles and look for
Proverbs 31 verse 10-31. It reminds me of my late number
one(1) mom. How
beautiful is it that God Himself did not limit you women?
NICHOLAS MADA,
Zimbabwean activist for democracy, USA
----------
Let's be brave
EDITOR
- I was born in Filabusi in the southern part of Zimbabwe. A country
I can
hardly remember. The only thing I still remember vividly is my
teachers and
friends when we were teasing each other about our future, to
others it
happened in a positive way. I left my country hoping that I would
make a
change for my family and neighbours, but this only led to pity and
sorrow.
My countrymen, let us show the world that we do care about Zim as we
all
know who is standing in our way. Although to others they might think
about
surrendering and turning their back on their families, I say: No,
let's be
brave. The time will come when the sun will shine forever. I am
saying to
all the outsiders: Please stand with us as we are being oppressed
by our
notorious dictactor and his compatriot. Enough is enough: We are not
scared
of him. What is he thinking about the economy and currency? I know to
him
human beings are flies. You lunatic old man who can't see the tears of
your
people. I want to reunite with my family, but under these circumstances
I
can't. It will be like making a restaurant inside a grave. Let us stand
and
fight for our freedom! A DUBE, South Africa
---------
Do they have a
conscience?
EDITOR - It is with a heavy heart that I write about Zimbabwe.
This country
used to be a pride to me with its beauty and it's friendly and
vibrant
people. Now all this has been taken over by a dark cloud of GLOOM. I
have
heard the old say it is better to go back to the Smith regime because
we had
enough to eat and roofs over our heads. I did not experience the
Smith
regime but I know for certain that it is painful to be oppressed but
it is a
killer when the oppressor is of the same colour! Your brother your
father!
Zimbabwe is to be enjoyed by the rich whilst the poor die destitute,
alone.
The Sunshine City only shines for those 'few'. Do these people have a
conscience at all? Do they sleep soundly in their lavish houses at night
knowing that the most of the people are out there in the winter cold? Do
they fill their stomachs on the comfort of knowing that thousands are
starving because their means of survival has been uprooted over-night? I am
neither politician nor saint but what I know is the government should at
least have tackled the already existing problems before giving us fresh
problems. Our attention is not diverted from the malpractice by these
turmoils. We can see and feel the blow and you know who else can......GOD!
ZVICHANAKA, Harare
-------
Disturbed by Morgan
EDITOR - I am
disturbed by the similarities in speech between Robert Mugabe
and Morgan
Tsvangirai. He insults the pro-senate group just like Mugabe
insults his
opponents. He claims that Zanu (PF) bought the pro-senate group
just like
Robert Mugabe claims that the West bought him. He talks of 'I will
do this
and do that' as if everything rests with him just like Robert
Mugabe. What
about the committee he leads? He says the pro-senate group did
not win the
seven seats but was given by Zanu (PF), therefore, the few
Parliamentary
seats the MDC won in March was also a gift, so, I look forward
to the MDC
giving back those seats to Zanu (PF) by their MPs resigning from
the upper
house. Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. That's fair. By
the way,
Robert Mugabe had very credible evidence from Ben Menashe that
Morgan
Tsvangirai wanted to eliminate him, just as he has credible evidence
that
Zanu (PF) bought Welshman Ncube! Nelson Chamisa should also guard his
tongue
lest he becomes another Jonathan Moyo before he left Zanu (PF)! Some
wise
people say resorting to insulting your opponent shows that one is
bereft of
ideas. Food for thought. M. J. SIKHOSANA, (Anti-Abusive Language),
Masvingo
-------------
A warning to SA
EDITOR - The South Africans
have embarked on a suicidal method to kill their
democracy. Boycotting
elections when they are held in a free and fair
atmosphere is fatal. If the
nation is not happy about the performances of
one party, then the best
solution to air discontent is to vote for the other
party. Everybody must be
involved in such national issues as elections. One
must never be left out
for whatever reasons. We want to warn South Africans
never to stop
participating in elections as we made the same fatal mistake
in the late
80's and the 90's. The time we realised we had made a fatal
mistake, it was
too late, because the system had fortressed itself and could
not be shaken.
We now wanted to vote but that was now a privilege rather
than a right. SA :
Go our in full force and vote. Do not let other people
decide your destiny,
you have to have a voice in your country. You are lucky
in that you are
still able to go and vote for a party of your own choice
therefore use this
opportunity to say your sentiments before it is snatched
away from you
because it will. CONCERNED ZIMBABWEANS ABROAD, (South
Africa)