Zim Independent
Ray
Matikinye
THE High Court in Harare yesterday blocked
Registrar-General Tobaiwa
Mudede's bid to withdraw publisher Trevor Ncube's
Zimbabwean citizenship
after counsel from the Attorney-General's Office
abandoned the case.
Ncube sued Mudede in the High Court late last
year after the RG
stripped him of his Zimbabwean citizenship on the grounds
that his father
was of Zambian origin.
In a landmark judgement
regarding the Citizenship Act, High Court
judge, Justice Chinembiri Bhunu
ordered Mudede to restore Ncube's Zimbabwean
citizenship immediately and to
renew his passport within seven days. He also
ordered Mudede not to
interfere with Ncube's possession and use of his
passport. Punitive costs
were awarded against Mudede.
Justice Bhunu described Mudede's
conduct as "alarming" and
contemptuous of his previous rulings.
Mudede lost a similar case against Ncube, publisher of the Zimbabwe
Independent and The Standard newspapers as well as the Mail & Guardian
in
South Africa, after he attempted to seize his passport in 2005. His
attorney, Sternford Moyo, described the latest bid as "repeating conduct
that has taken a sinister dimension".
On Wednesday Justice
Bhunu postponed the case to allow additional
submissions by Moyo, who
secured a sworn opinion on Zambian law from Lusaka
advocate Nchima Nchito.
Nchito's submission, which states that any person
entitled to Zambian
citizenship and who has acquired the citizenship of
another country
automatically loses entitlement to claim Zambian
citizenship.
"This serves to refute the contention by the RG that Ncube was
Zambian.
Zambia does not permit dual citizenship," said Nchito.
Mudede was
represented by Virginia Mabiza who appeared with Ernest
Jena, both from the
Attorney-General's office. The state lawyers abandoned
the arguments by the
Registrar-General after considering the position under
Zambian law. They
argued however that the RG and the Minister of Home
Affairs - cited as the
second respondents - should not be ordered to pay
costs saying they had made
a genuine error of law. However, Mudede's
application was dismissed with
punitive costs.
Justice Bhunu in his ruling pointed out that the
abandonment of the
case by the Attorney-General's office "was not an act of
charity but due to
compelling legal realities".
In his
submission, Moyo said a punitive order by the court was
necessary for the
abuse of office of the type that Ncube described in his
submission.
He said it was evident that Mudede had taken a
position on the matter
without seeking legal advice from the AG's office,
hence the AG's office did
not take responsibility in preparing the heads of
argument.
Moyo also submitted that Mudede had acted without
examining foreign
statutes such as the Zambian law. Neither did he take into
account
government's position which shows that cabinet was concerned with
the
requirement to file renunciations even if applicants don't hold foreign
citizenship.
"Equity demands that a party who has been
compelled to approach the
courts for assistance and is shown to have good
grounds for invoking
assistance be compensated to cover losses and costs
incurred," Moyo said.
"The applicant was subjected to an
unnecessary, unlawful and
bureaucratic attempt to denationalise him. If you
fail to do so, it might be
construed as acquiescence to abuse of office by
the applicant."
In his judgement, Justice Bhunu said Ncube had
fully complied with the
requirement by the RG's office. "Therefore it is
remiss to refuse to renew
his passport on some spurious
reasons."
He ruled that the attempted denationalisation was
unlawful, illegal,
null and void, and that it was in defiance of his
December 2005 ruling
following the seizure of Ncube's passport on arrival in
Bulawayo.
In a statement Ncube said he was delighted that the court
had ruled in
his favour, "as he had expected".
"The courts have
stopped the gross abuse of power by Tobaiwa Mudede
and all those who were
behind this act," Ncube said.
"More importantly, this decision by
the High Court makes it clear that
all those Zimbabweans by birth whose
parents were born outside Zimbabwe need
not fear further harassment and
abuse from the Registrar-General's office
regarding the legitimacy of their
citizenship."
Ncube condemned the attempt to use citizenship as a
tool "to fight
perceived political enemies and to settle personal scores"
adding that
Zimbabwe now needs to ensure that its citizenship laws are
progressive.
He said the ruling removed the fear of being
denationalised from an
estimated 1,5 million Zimbabwean citizens, whose
parents are of foreign
extraction.
Mudede has successfully
withdrawn citizenship from activist and
government critic Judith Todd among
others because both her parents were
citizens of New Zealand. He also
withdrew the citizenship of MDC computer
wizard Topper Whitehead who
was in the process of unravelling Zanu PF's
electoral rigging in the
controversial 2002 presidential election.
Mudede lost a civil
action against the Independent in 2004.
Zim Independent
Dumisani
Muleya
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe is soon expected to reshuffle
his cabinet -
possibly this weekend - before he returns to work from his
annual leave in
what could see the appointment of his last team of ministers
ahead of the
expiry of his tenure in 14 months' time.
Government sources said Mugabe would make cabinet changes probably
tomorrow,
if not next week, before he resumes duty. The sources said Mugabe
wanted to
make sweeping changes in his deeply divided and now ineffective
cabinet but
was constrained by many factors, including the revolt last month
in his
party ranks over the controversial 2010 election proposal, the
economic
crisis, factionalism, ethnic balancing and mediocrity among Zanu PF
backbenchers.
It is said Mugabe, for instance, wants to reduce
the number of
ministers from Mashonaland East province, which engineered the
internal
revolt, to dilute the province's influence but fears a potential
backlash
from retired army commander General Solomon Mujuru's faction. This
leaves
him stuck with deadwood which he can't clear for political
reasons.
The reshuffle, initially expected after the senate
election in
November 2005, has been on the cards for some time. The last
reshuffle was
after the March 2005 parliamentary election.
The
sources said Mugabe discussed the reshuffle last month with close
advisors
and has been working on it during his holiday in the Far East. The
sources
said Mugabe took the CVs of a couple of deputy ministers, Zanu PF
senators,
chairmen of parliamentary portfolio committees and Zanu PF MPs on
his
holiday to consider for his reshuffle. Currently there is only one
senator,
Samuel Mumbengegwi, who is a minister.
Some of those whose CVs were
taken by Mugabe for close consideration
include Masvingo South MP Walter
Muzembi, who also chairs the agricultural
portfolio committee, Masvingo
senator Dzikamai Mavhaire, and
non-constituency senator Sheila Chipo
Mahere.
Mavhaire, who fell out of favour with the president after
his daring
"Mugabe must go" call in 1999, was last month appointed to the
Zanu PF
politburo for the first time.
Sources said several
changes were coming in key economic ministries
after Mugabe's "development
cabinet" failed to perform. The previous "war
cabinet" and the one appointed
for economic recovery also failed. Mugabe has
of late been complaining about
his corrupt and incompetent ministers.
Government sources said
Finance minister Herbert Murerwa, Economic
Development minister Rugare
Gumbo, Agriculture minister Joseph Made and
Industry and International Trade
minister Obert Mpofu would almost certainly
be dumped.
Mugabe
has publicly shown hostility to Murerwa after the minister's
open clashes
with Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono over policy. Sources
said Murerwa
would also be removed because last month he offered to resign,
but was asked
to rethink his decision.
Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa, who
usually acts in Murerwa's
absence, could replace him. Chinamasa is also
likely to be moved because he
has been rendered ineffective due to clashes
with Attorney-General Sobusa
Gula-Ndebele.
Rural Housing
minister Emmerson Mnangagwa could return to the Justice
ministry. This would
serve Mugabe well as Mnangagwa's portfolio would then
reflect his party job
as legal affairs secretary.
Sources said Made would "almost
certainly" be removed and was "likely"
to be "frozen out" in the process. It
is said Mugabe has been infuriated to
hear that the country needs to import
900 000 tonnes of maize and that out
of the 350 000 tonnes of wheat expected
less than half would be realised.
Local Government minister
Ignatious Chombo, who has presided over the
collapse of municipalities, and
Education minister Aeneas Chigwedere, who
has bungled things in his
portfolio, could also go.
Mugabe is also likely to appoint a
substantive Minister of Information
after the death of Tichaona Jokonya last
year.
Sources said Anti-Corruption minister Paul Mangwana, the
acting
minister, is unlikely to be confirmed. Instead, Policy Implementation
minister Webster Shamu or Zanu PF deputy secretary for information and
publicity Ephraim Masawi, who is also Mashonaland Central governor, could
come in.
Stan Mudenge has maintained a low profile at Higher
Education despite
corruption charges at the ministry, while Simbarashe
Mumbengegwi has been
invisible at Foreign Affairs. Sources said while the
faces would change,
policies were likely to remain the same.
Zim Independent
Shame
Makoshori
RESERVE Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono -
apparently succumbing
to pressure from Zanu PF critics - is in the process
of setting up a
committee to advise the central bank on the appropriate
exchange rate, the
Zimbabwe Independent has heard.
Sources this
week said the office of the governor had shortlisted
professionals, business
executives and politicians for possible appointment
to the foreign currency
management committee.
The sources said possible candidates for the
committee included Media
and Information Commission chair Dr Tafataona
Mahoso who has of late
launched attacks on the central bank and other
advocates of devaluation.
Another one is former Finance minister Dr
Simba Makoni whose quest to
devalue the local currency in 2002 was resisted
by President Mugabe who
described proponents of devaluation as "economic
saboteurs".
There would also be representation from business
groupings such as the
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, the Zimbabwe
National Chamber of
Commerce and exporters and farmers. The shortlist,
sources say, will be
presented to the Office of the President for approval
prior to its
announcement.
Gono has faced criticism over his
foreign currency management system
by his principals in Zanu PF and
government.
The committee could be unveiled when Gono presents his
monetary policy
review statement later this month.
Formation of
the foreign currency management committee comes after
Zanu PF indicated at
its annual conference in Goromonzi in December that it
was slowly losing
confidence in the continued handling of foreign currency
by the RBZ
alone.
The party's economic affairs committee proposed the
establishment of a
foreign currency management committee to oversee the
allocation of hard
currency.
The Independent understands that
the committee will also play a
leading role in determining the exchange
rate.
Zanu PF economic affairs secretary Richard Hove said his
committee was
concerned with the influx of flashy cars on Zimbabwe's roads
when industry
was battling to access foreign currency for raw materials and
spares
procurement.Hundreds of companies have folded in Zimbabwe since 2000
due to
foreign currency scarcity.
Hove argued that this was a
sign of poor prioratisation that should be
corrected if other stakeholders
played a proactive role in the distribution
of the critical
resource.
"The little foreign currency coming in, how is it
managed? There
should be a committee and the RBZ should not intervene in
some issues," Hove
said.
Despite widespread protests that the
exchange rate was no longer
viable, Gono has kept the Zimbabwe dollar at
$250 to the greenback since
January 2006.
Manufacturers say the
realistic exchange rate must be around $750 to
the US dollar.
Analysts say the problem with foreign currency committees was that
they put
stringent measures on exchange rate movements.
Meanwhile, former
Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC)
president Luxton Zembe said the
committee will only add value to the economy
if experts with foreign
currency management experience are appointed to run
it.
Zembe
suggested that the experts be independent in their thinking,
objective,
truthful and capable of giving proper advice to the RBZ.
He
suggested as potential committee members former RBZ governor
Leonard Tsumba,
former Delta Beverages CEO Enoch Chiura, the ZNCC, CZI and
the Zimbabwe
Council for Tourism. He however said RBZ governor Gono must not
chair
it.
"You cannot have a person who is being advised chairing the
committee," Zembe said.
"South Africa has a similar body but
(South African central bank
governor Tito) Mboweni takes what the body says,
he listens to what the
members of the body say," said Zembe.
He
said Zimbabwe's committee must be autonomous in the allocation and
prioritisation of foreign currency. Without that it will suffer the fate of
many advisory bodies that have turned into white elephants.
Zim Independent
Augustine
Mukaro
A SERIOUS maize scam has been unearthed at the Grain
Marketing Board
(GMB) resulting in the parastatal buying maize consignments
more than once
while large quantities of grain have been channelled to the
black market
instead of the intended hammer millers.
Management
at GMB this week confirmed that millers and other
unscrupulous
businesspeople were taking advantage of price distortions in
the grain
system to siphon thousands of tonnes for resale, which explains
why grain is
always available at Mbare Msika, but at prohibitive prices.
The GMB
is buying maize for $52 350 a tonne from farmers and selling
it for a paltry
$600/tonne to millers.
GMB acting chief executive retired Colonel
Samuel Muvuti confirmed
that there were unscrupulous millers who have
diverted grain onto the black
market and that police were investigating the
allegations.
"It's true, some unscrupulous millers have diverted
grain onto illegal
markets but we are doing our best to plug the loopholes,"
Muvuti said. "We
have put some millers under 24-hour surveillance with the
assistance of the
police. There are quite a number whom we have suspended
from purchasing
grain because of their double-dealing."
Muvuti
said there were individuals who had tried to resell maize they
had obtained
from the GMB at $600 a tonne back to the parastatal for $52 350
a
tonne.
A source at the GMB said the scam involved officials in the
loss
control department responsible for issuing milling
licences.
"One such case was discovered late last year involving a
milling
company based in Chitungwiza and a senior loss control officer at
GMB
headquarters," the source said. "The company's milling licence was
withdrawn
and the officer lost his job."
Grain as a controlled
commodity can only be moved from one point to
another with the authorisation
of the GMB, and by virtue of being a licensed
miller, there is room to
easily obtain the grain and side-market it.
Milling licences used
to be confined to companies like National Foods
and Blue Ribbon Foods, but
are now freely available to anyone with a hammer
mill.
Zim Independent
Dumisani Muleya
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe will
stake his controversial legacy ahead of
the expiry of his official term of
office in 14 months' time when he makes
an expected cabinet reshuffle any
day now.
Mugabe - possibly making his last cabinet changes before
he leaves
office - will naturally expect that his last team of ministers
will save
whatever survives of his chequered legacy which now leaves him
looking like
one of the worst leaders to have emerged from post-colonial
Africa.
Whether Mugabe goes in 2008 or hangs on until 2010, as he
seems intent
upon, he will want a dramatic performance from his cabinet to
leave a
positive mark on Zimbabwe's political and, above all, economic
landscape.
This is a make or break year for Mugabe. His new cabinet
will have
only a few months before the next scheduled presidential election
to address
a series of deep-rooted problems that have blighted his rule
which started
on such a promising note.
By his own
pronouncements and yardstick, Mugabe wants his leadership
measured against
his government's record on social services delivery -
education, health and
housing - as well as land reform and international
relations.
Above all, Mugabe apparently wants to be judged by his contribution to
the
liberation struggle. The official line is Mugabe and colleagues
liberated
Zimbabwe, not that the people collectively liberated themselves.
In
Mugabe's political view, well-documented in David Martin's book The
Struggle
for Zimbabwe, the country's independence from Britain in 1980 was
not an
outcome of a national effort but an exclusive achievement of a small
coterie
of Zanu PF loyalists led by himself.
This has put him on a
collision course with his erstwhile PF Zapu
comrades who feel there is a
systematic attempt to airbrush them from the
history of the
struggle.
Vice-President Joseph Msika and Speaker of Parliament
John Nkomo
recently rebutted this account of history, saying the
Independence struggle
was not a monopoly of Zanu PF.
During
election campaigns, Mugabe always brandishes his liberation war
credentials,
which have now been put under scrutiny in Edgar Tekere's
autobiography, A
Lifetime of Struggle. Mugabe's supporters have reacted
angrily to
this.
Mugabe does not miss an opportunity to parade purported
achievements
in education, health, roads and housing. The mantra is that
government built
schools, clinics, roads and houses. Rural areas were also
connected to
electricity, they say. Those who buy into this, especially on
education,
even claim Mugabe "educated Zimbabweans" and that the country has
the
highest literacy rate in Africa.
Critics say while these
achievements were significant, their value is
now being diminished because
of the broader collapse of the economy and the
sea of poverty engulfing the
country.
Although Mugabe would want to secure his legacy around
these issues,
most of the success stories have over the years been almost
totally reversed
due to the current economic crisis wrought by his
regime.
Government's utopian socialist promises such as housing and
health for
all by the year 2000 never materialised.
Existing
schools, clinics, and roads are now in a dilapidated state.
The education
system is declining. Schools have no textbooks and tens of
thousands of
children are not able to finish their education due to poverty.
Thousands of
students now go outside the country to get a better education.
The
children of ministers are sent to school overseas or to still
better-managed
private schools at home.
Hospitals and clinics have no medicines.
Mugabe and his ministers, as
well as the rich, seek medical treatment
abroad. The ongoing doctors' and
nurses' strike bears testimony to the
failure of the health delivery system.
The road network, largely
built during the colonial era, is
collapsing. Many roads are rugged due to
potholes and cracks.
Mugabe would also want to be remembered as the
leader who delivered
land to the masses. However, the unstructured, often
violent and chaotic
land reform programme has only managed to rock the
foundation of the
economy - agriculture - and trigger a wider socio-economic
and political
crisis. It has also benefited the elite more than peasants.
Currently almost
every cabinet minister has more than one farm.
Whereas Mugabe was a statesman and darling of the Western world when
he
first came to power in 1980, today he is widely seen as a rogue leader
presiding over a failing state. And it is not just the West that has reached
that conclusion.
Mugabe's isolation was dramatised during last
year's Sadc meeting in
Lesotho where he was reportedly forced to leave in
huff after regional
leaders expressed concern over his failed policies. The
country was seen in
the same league as Swaziland in terms of democracy and
human rights - an
impediment to investment.
Zimbabwe has been
hauled before the African Commission for Human and
Peoples' Rights and the
UN equivalent for human rights abuses.
Harare - where the
Commonwealth's Harare Declaration which upholds
democracy and human rights
was adopted - now stands out isolated from the
broad international
community, except from repressive states, when it was
part and parcel of the
community of progressive nations.
Ironically, Harare has now quit
the Commonwealth over human rights
issues and with it lost important
technical services support and
scholarships.
In 1980, Zimbabwe
was widely welcomed to international organisations
such as the United
Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank, but it is now
facing expulsion.
When Mugabe came to power the Zimbabwean dollar
was stronger than the
United States currency, but now the US dollar is at
least 4 000 times (in
real terms) stronger than the local unit. Inflation
was in single digits in
1980 but now it is four-digits at over 1 200%. This
is testament of economic
failure writ large.
Mugabe's last
cabinet has to deal with all these issues in a short
time to salvage
something from a disastrous legacy, if he is to avoid
evoking negative
memories in the minds of future generations for what he
bequeathed to the
nation. It is a sad scenario, one that everyone except him
can see.
Zim Independent
Loughty Dube
MATABELELAND North governor Thokozile Mathuthu and
her husband have
taken over a property at Sikumi Tree Lodge in the Hwange
conservancy area
amid an ownership wrangle with listed counter Rainbow
Tourism Group (RTG).
Mathuthu, who was reportedly staying in a
three-star hotel for the
better part of 2005 and 2006 after arguing that she
had no accommodation, is
shuttling to and from Sikumi Tree Lodge and her
Lupane offices, a round trip
of over 120 kilometres a day.
Mathuthu, together with her husband John, some time in 2005 moved into
a
farmhouse at Sikumi Tree Lodge, which borders the Hwange National Park,
after former Information minister, Jonathan Moyo, through a company that he
had an interest in, was dislodged when he fell out of favour with the
government.
RTG chairman Ibbo Mandaza yesterday confirmed that
his company had
made representations to Environment and Tourism minister
Francis Nhema to
have the governor and her husband removed from the
property.
He said a meeting between RTG and the ministry had been
scheduled for
next week to discuss the issue. Mandaza said the farmhouse was
a property of
Sikumi Tree Lodge.
Former Lands minister John
Nkomo issued RTG with a lease agreement in
early 2005 but the lease was
subsequently revoked by another letter in
December of that year from Didymus
Mutasa who had taken over the Lands
portfolio.
Following the
revocation of the lease, the Mathuthus moved onto the
property, prompting
RTG to raise concerns with Nhema.
RTG sources said despite promises
by Mutasa that the occupation of the
property by the Mathuthus was a
mistake, there had been no progress on the
issue.
The area in
dispute was previously owned by Buck De Fries and was
designated for
resettlement in 2002.
The Zimbabwe Independent this week visited
Sikumi Lodge and discovered
that the Mathuthu family had blocked the main
road leading to the lodge,
forcing tourists and visitors to use an
alternative eight-kilometre-long
detour.
Sources said the RTG
was irked by Mathuthu's decision in December to
bar tourists from passing
through her property by locking gates to the main
road leading to the
lodge.
"Mathuthu has put padlocks at the main gates that tourists
were using
and they now have to use a rough winding stretch that is eight
kilometres
long," said a source.
When the Independent arrived
at Mathuthu's residence she was in Hwange
but policemen armed with AK-47
rifles were patrolling the grounds, where her
green official Mercedes Benz
Elegance Class E230 was parked.
The farmhouse at the centre of the
dispute has two outbuildings, a
garage, a disused swimming pool, workshops
and animal pens.
Villagers nearby said Mathuthu stayed at the
farmhouse but in some
instances stayed in Empumalanga township in
Hwange.
"The governor and her husband stay here and they have been
here for
the last eight months but in some instances they go to Hwange where
I
understand they have a house," said a villager from a nearby
farm.
Mathuthu is keeping chickens and supplies eggs to the Hwange
community.
The 30-bed Sikumi Tree Lodge is an ecotourism
facility that offers
upmarket accommodation and photographic safaris to
tourists.
Queen Elizabeth II had lunch at the lodge during the
Commonwealth
Heads of Government Meeting held in Zimbabwe in
1991.
Efforts to contact Mathuthu for comment were fruitless as her
mobile
phone was out of reach while Local Government minister Ignatious
Chombo's
phone was ringing without any response.
Mathuthu at
the beginning of the year moved her offices from Bulawayo
to
Lupane.
She does not have accommodation in Lupane as her official
residence is
still under construction. Construction of the house is now
above window
level.
Last year the governor sued The Standard
over the publication of two
stories which revealed that she was staying in a
hotel and later that
President Mugabe had ordered her to leave the
hotel.
The case is currently before the High Court.
Zim Independent
Lucia Makamure
HEALTH Services Board (HSB)
chairman Dr Lovemore Mbengeranwa has
lashed out at government for lack of
planning in dealing with the welfare of
junior doctors who have been on
strike since December.
In an interview this week, Mbengeranwa said
recurrent doctors' strikes
could be avoided with a bit more
foresight.
"As a medical practitioner, I believe that prevention is
better than
cure," he said. "These junior doctors started training six years
ago and the
government knew that one day they would be junior doctors
needing
accommodation and transport. So something should have been done
earlier
instead of waiting until a crisis developed."
He said
the Health and Child Welfare ministry was allocated 30% of
what it had bid
for from Treasury. That allocation was inadequate to cover
salaries and to
revamp public health institutions as well as fund the day to
day running of
hospitals, he said.
"The only way to deal with this is for
government to fix the economy,"
Mbengeranwa said.
The on-going
strike by junior doctors and nurses at state hospitals is
a further blow to
the country's already ailing health sector.
Information made
available to the Zimbabawe Independent this week
indicates that the sector
is operating with only half of the required staff
in most
disciplines.
"We get our funds from government and for a long time
we have not been
getting enough. This has resulted in gradual deterioration
of
infrastructures and equipment," said Mbengeranwa.
"Salaries
have lagged behind leading to a lot of nurses, doctors and
paramedics to
leave the service."
A document made available to the Independent
indicates that the
country has only 641 government doctors as of August last
year instead of
the required 1 153. A majority of those are junior doctors
who have been on
a strike for the past five weeks demanding salaries of up
to $5 million and
improved working conditions.
Public health
institutions are facing a critical shortage of nurses,
pharmacists and
radiographers. The country's public institutions only have
29 radiographers
instead of the required 170.
Mbengeranwa said there was very little
his board could do to retain
experienced staff as it has little to offer
compared to their regional and
international competitors.
"We
are losing our professionals who are leaving for greener pastures
in South
Africa, the United Kingdom and Australia - countries we cannot
compete with
because of our poor economy. These guys have marketable
skills."
He attributed the mass exodus of health professionals
to poor working
conditions and low salaries. "The board is concerned with
the poor levels of
remuneration for the health workers, lack of
institutional residential
accommodation, escalating transport costs
resulting in some professionals
having to leave the service as a sign of
protest."
Mbengeranwa said it was unfortunate that doctors have to
go on a
strike as a way of drawing the government's attention to their
grievances.
However, he said he was worried by the doctors' failure
to come up
with a representative on the health service bipartite negotiating
panel.
"The doctors' seat on the negotiation forum is vacant; they
are
communicating to us through the ministry, which is wrong. We have
however
tried our best but whatever they are going to get might not be
adequate
considering that we are living in a hyperinflationary economy,"
Mbengeranwa
said.
"Salaries and accommodation allowances have
since been adjusted to a
reasonable amount."
He said
negotiations for car loans were still underway.
The HSB is still
trying to address the issue of acquiring cars for the
doctors but it has no
access to foreign currency. It has to engage other
players like Treasury and
the CMED. "There is no guarantee that they will
get the cars because at the
moment Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries is not
operating at full capacity
and Treasury has to get the required foreign
currency."
Mbengeranwa could not disclose how much the junior doctors are going
to get
saying it was the board's policy that all staff salaries are kept
confidential.
Zimbabwe Medical Doctors Association (Zima)
secretary-general Dr
Tapuwa Bwakura said though their membership included
junior doctors his
organisation could not represent them at any negotiating
forum.
"Zima is not a statutory board. It is a voluntary membership
board
which has no mandate to discuss salaries and working conditions," said
Bwakura.
"The sooner the issues surrounding the strike are
resolved the better
for everyone. We hope the issues will be amicably
resolved and that the
concerned parties make dialogue an ongoing process
instead of only engaging
in dialogue when there is a crisis."
People interviewed in the streets said they had lost faith in the
country's
public health delivery system.
"I do not waste my time going to
Parirenyatwa or Harare hospital
because if it's not the doctors who are on
strike then there are no drugs or
the machines are down," said Togarepi
Zimuto of Highfield.
Runyararo Chiwetu of Sunningdale said: "We are
watching our relatives
die at home because sending them to government
hospitals is a waste of time
and we cannot afford the fees charged at
private hospitals."
In the meantime the Minister of Health and
Child Welfare Dr David
Parirenyatwa has gone on leave leaving Defence
minister Sydney Sekeramayi to
continue with the negotiations.
Zim Independent
Shakeman Mugari in Buhera
ABOUT half a kilometre from the
popular Murambinda growth point lies
the shell of a burnt out car which
serves as a poignant reminder to the
people of Buhera of one of the most
brutal incidents in the political
violence that swept through the area in
the run-up to the 2000 parliamentary
election.
The vehicle
shell along the main Murambinda-Chivhu highway is tangible
evidence of the
crime that claimed the young lives of two Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC) activists in horrifying circumstances.
In this burnt-out
shell Tichaona Chiminya and Talent Mabika met their
death at the hands of
Zanu PF members allegedly led by a Central
Intelligence officer, Joseph
Mwale and war veteran Kainos Kitsiyatota
Zimunya.
Such was the
horrific nature of the crime that High Court Judge
Michael Devittie
nullified the result of the poll won by Zanu PF in Buhera
North and said in
his ruling that "the killing of Chiminya and Mabika was a
wicked act".
Devittie recommended in 2001 that Mwale be tried for the murder
of the two
activists, noting that there was a strong possibility that the
secret police
agent could be convicted of the crime.
Mwale however still walks
free. Unlike other car shells that become
playthings for kids, this one is
avoided like a haunted house. It is has
become a reminder of Zanu PF's dark
history. It is a symbol of the political
intolerance and electoral violence
that has stained the party's record
Enterprising tinsmiths have cut
out metal panels and sections of the
chassis to make utensils and farm
implements. But this has not helped in the
healing process. The memories are
still fresh.
The children in nearby homesteads know the story
behind the shell or
at least their parents have told it to them. It's a
dreadful tale that will
be told for generations to come.
The
Zimbabwe Independent recently tracked survivors of the horror in
Buhera
communal lands. They say they are lucky to be alive but not a day
passes
without them reliving the pictures and sounds of the desperate
screams of
Chiminya and Mabika as they were engulfed in flames from petrol
bombs.
The day was April 14 2000 and dawn had just passed. For
the first time
in the history of Zimbabwe, Zanu PF faced a genuine election
challenge in
the form of the MDC. The opposition had spread into Buhera and
other rural
areas giving Zanu PF real fears that it could loss the
election.
As the campaign intensified, fear and boiling emotions
triggered
massive violence. "People were beaten and houses were burnt,"
recalls George
Gwena, who at the time was the deputy chairman of the MDC in
Buhera. "What I
didn't know was that someone could go as far as to kill for
his party to
win."
And so kill they did. Reconstruction of what
really happened on that
day is not easy because many of the survivors have
moved to other areas
while the few who remain are reluctant to talk for fear
of retribution.
There still remain the courageous ones like Martin
Hapanyengwi who are
prepared to talk because they say if they were "meant to
die at the hand of
Zanu PF youths, we should have died on that day". He is
prepared to talk
because he saw such terrible things on that
day.
"I saw gruesome things on that day," said Martin. "So for
someone to
instil fear in me, one has to do worse things. Maybe you have to
kill a man
and eat him while I watch to frighten me," he said.
Martin was in the same car as Chiminya and Mabika when they were
killed. In
April 2000, he was a 24-year old trying his hands in local
politics as an
MDC member and activist. On that day, Martin together with
eleven other
youths including Chiminya and Mabika, attended an MDC rally at
Murambinda.
"It was a bad day from the start," Martin recalls.
"Soon after our
rally, two of our members were severely assaulted by Zanu PF
members.
"The police were uncooperative when we tried to make a
report. The
officer in charge disappeared when he saw us and his juniors
refused to make
a report."
After visiting the victims at the
local hospital, Chiminya decided to
drop the youths at their
houses.
As they were driving home in Chiminya's truck, a twin-cab
vehicle came
out of the CIO offices at Murambinda growth point and followed
them as they
headed for the main road. Chiminya was with Mabika and another
passenger - a
student from the Harare Polytechnic College - in the front
seat. There were
nine people in the pick-up.
"When we reached
the main road, the twin-cab (truck) overtook us and
started blocking us. It
blocked us twice," Martin said.
"After 200 metres the twin-cab
vehicle stopped right in the middle of
the road blocking our
vehicle."
Martin said Mwale came out of the vehicle with a revolver
in his hand.
He was with nine other people who were carrying iron bars and
knobkerries.
Mwale said: "unofira mahara mufana" as he approached
the car. The mob
started smashing the windows, hitting Chiminya, Mabika and
the other
passengers in the process. The nine youths in the back jumped off
and ran
for their lives but not before some of them were battered with iron
bars.
The student who was in the front seat with Chiminya and
Mabika managed
to escape because he was close to the door. Chiminya and
Mabika were trapped
in the car as the mob smashed the door. They eventually
came out of the car
staggering but they were hit with petrol
bombs.
"I was close by, about 30 metres way," Martin said. "I saw
Mwale throw
a petrol bomb at Chiminya and then the car."
Another petrol bomb landed on Mabika who by this time was screaming:
"Mwale
naGwama (one of the Zanu PF members in the mob) mondiuraireyiko?"
It was a desperate plea made to the perpetrators to spare her life.
Some of
the youths who had escaped tried to help but the Zanu PF mob charged
at them
threatening to kill anyone who came closer.
"We watched helplessly
while they were screaming as the fire engulfed
them," said Martin with tears
welling in his eyes.
"We tried to come to their help but the mob
blocked us. By then, Mwale
was waving his gun in anger."
Perhaps the saddest part of it all is that the incident happened in
full
view of the police who had been called by Happison Chiremba (the MDC
candidate in Buhera at that time) who had rushed to make a report as soon
when he noticed that Chiminya's car was being followed.
"Police
just stood by watching Chiminya and Mabika burning to death,"
Martin
recalls. Their "job" done, Mwale and the mob drove off but the police
made
no move to arrest them. Martin and other youths who had gone into
hiding in
the nearby bushes rushed to put out the fire on Chiminya and
Mabika but it
was too late.
"We got to them and tried to roll them over while
others used tree
branches to put out the fire but it was too
late."
Chiminya died on the spot in the arms of one of the youths.
Mabika was
taken to Murambinda hospital alive but died the following day.
She was one
of the first female victims of the politically motivated
violence that
pervaded the country.
Some of the people who were
in the Zanu PF mob that torched Chiminya
and Mabika are still walking
scot-free in Buhera often passing by the burnt
car in which the two MDC
activists died.
"Dzimwe nguva tinonwa nawo doro pamashop
ekwaMarenga," said Martin.
The police have said they cannot locate
Mwale although there are
reports that he is often seen in Mutare. In 2004
Mwale was reportedly
dispatched to Roy Bennett's Charleswood Estate to deal
with employees who
were protesting the takeover of the farm by the army. A
farm worker was shot
dead during the episode.
According to the
MDC's Roll of Honour, from 2000 to 2004 about 102 MDC
members were killed in
politically-related violence. None of the cases have
been resolved despite
reports to the police. So long as those responsible
continue to walk free,
Zimbabwe cannot boast of observing the rule of law.
Zim Independent
Dumisani
Ndlela
GOVERNMENT has reviewed its long-term economic revival
blueprint,
Vision 2020, admitting revival efforts had been sabotaged by
"excessive
monetary expansion" which had stoked inflation to record
levels.
The document acknowledged that economic revival efforts had
been
thrown off the rail by runaway inflation, and that poor productivity
and
huge budget deficits, foreign currency shortages and speculative
tendencies
had partnered to weigh down Zimbabwe's once promising
economy.
"The high inflation has discouraged savings and
investment, distorted
resource allocation, reduced the international
competitiveness of exports
and overally reduced capacity utilisation in all
productive sectors. This
has led to an overall economic decline. As a
result, Zimbabwe's key
socio-economic indicators such as poverty and
unemployment have worsened,"
the report said.
The document
noted that the country's challenge was "to bring down
inflation, while
stimulating growth and minimising the adverse social costs
of the
dis-inflation process on the vulnerable groups of society".
Zimbabwe is currently going through its worst economic crisis in
history
that has resulted in a cumulative gross domestic product contraction
of over
30% in the past five years.
Inflation is currently at an all-time
high of 1 281,1%.
The reviewed document, which has been sent to
stakeholders for
comments and contributions, has received President Robert
Mugabe's assent.
He has written its foreword exhorting Zimbabweans to "draw
inspiration from
it in their various spheres of life".
But
concerns emerged from the business community this week that
efforts to seek
input from stakeholders were meant to deceive the nation
into believing that
the revised document had input from all stakeholders on
the basis of the
"post-review consultations".
Businessdigest saw a copy of a letter
sent to stakeholders by Andrew
Bvumbe, the permanent secretary for the
Ministry of Economic Development,
dated January 19.
The letter
suggested that the document was still "being revised and
updated within the
auspices of the National Economic Recovery Council (NERC)
as per the NERCTC
resolution of the meeting held on the 18th of January
2007".
Bvumbe said he wanted stakeholder input by the end of the day last
Wednesday.
But an introduction in the revised document, signed
by Economic
Development minister Rugare Gumbo, suggested the document had
already been
finalised.
"As Minister of Economic Development, I
am privileged to have overseen
the review and updating of the Vision 2020
Document," Gumbo noted in his
introductory note. "The review and update was
necessary in order to take
into account changes in the socio-economic
environment and the need to
strengthen the coordination and implementation
of government policies,
programmes and plans."
Gumbo said the
review and update had been done by his ministry "under
the auspices of
NERC".
He said there had been input from various government
institutions and
the private sector during the review and update, but it was
not clear when
the private sector had made this input which Bvumbe sought in
his letter to
the private sector written last Friday.
Zim Independent
Dumisani
Ndlela
RATES ran riot on the foreign currency parallel market
this week as
buyers scrambled to buy foreign currency on fears of drastic
measures by
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono that could
leave
speculators and huge cash holders in the lurch.
Parallel
market dealers said demand had escalated over the past two
weeks, as buyers
feared losing huge sums of Zimbabwe dollars should Gono
embark on the second
phase of his ambitious Project Sunrise that plunged the
market into
unprecedented chaos last August.
Gono has promised to launch the
second phase of Sunrise after the
first one in which people in possession of
large sums of Zimbabwe dollars
were arrested and their money confiscated
following the revaluation of the
local currency.
Huge cash
holders were left holding large sums of Zimbabwe dollars
after failing to
bank them due to stringent deposit regulations imposed to
punish conditions
when Gono revalued the local currency under sweeping
economic
reforms.
The local unit plunged to $600 to the South African rand,
from around
$350 to the rand when the year opened.
The Zimbabwe
dollar weakened to $4 200 and $7 000 to the greenback and
the British pound
respectively, from around $3 000 and $5 000 at the opening
of the
year.
Dealers said pressure on the currency had increased
dramatically on
January 15, and "rates have been changing everyday" ever
since, a dealer
said.
"I think it's because many companies had
opened, but we're seeing
demand from almost everyone - people no longer want
to hold the Zimbabwe
dollar," the dealer told businessdigest.
"The demand is very high but there is very little inflow on the market
and
this is pushing rates up," the dealer said.
Another dealer
indicated there was growing anxiety on the market which
was unclear over
Gono's next move after dealing with alleged speculators,
blamed for fuelling
the country's inflation which touched a high of 1 281,1%
last
month.
Gono, widely expected to present his monetary policy
statement before
month-end, has not given a date for the presentation of the
statement,
keeping the market in suspense.
Businessdigest
reported last week that the official foreign exchange
market was having
uncharacteristically low inflows as foreign currency
owners remained
tight-fisted in anticipation of devaluation by Gono.
There is a
strong market sentiment that Gono could devalue the local
unit to between
$750 and $1 000 to the greenback, from the current rate of
$250 to the US
unit.
The adjustment of rates on the parallel market has led to
market-wide
price adjustments during the week.
"I came to buy
(candle) wax only to realise the price had doubled in
just a day," a
dejected trader told businessdigest. "They tell me it's the
exchange rates
and I might find the wax with new prices tomorrow if I don't
buy
today."
There were concerns asset prices were likely to rise on
growing demand
as people sought to hedge themselves against the defenceless
currency.
While some captains of industry have predicted that 2007
is going to
be a year for the revival of Zimbabwe's fragile economy,
independent
economic forecasts indicate the year could be the gloomiest in
the history
of the country, now entering its seventh year of
contraction.
An International Monetary Fund forecast predicts
inflation to average
4 279% this year, a factor likely to push Zimbabweans
into scurrying for
foreign cash.
The hyperinflationary cycle
has made it unattractive to hold the local
currency when costs for goods and
services go up almost everyday.
This has meant that rather than
saving, people are now making sure
they spend their little incomes as fast
as they can, on goods.
Analysts have predicted a pronounced flight
from the domestic currency
as a store of value by people holding cash
shifting their wealth into hard
currency or durable goods.
Zim Independent
SUGAR producers this week said a government-sanctioned hike
in the
price of sugar fell far short of ensuring viability in the sector,
warning
that shortages of the basic commodity were likely to remain
entrenched in
the market.
Sugar producers won a 117% hike in
the price of sugar to $1 133 and $5
609 for 2kg and 10kg of white sugar
respectively, while the price for brown
sugar went up to $1 050 and $5 197
for 2kg and 10kg respectively.
Sugar producers had last week
demanded that government pegs the
wholesale price of sugar at $4 500 for a
2kg pocket.
The new sugar prices put the retail price for 2kg of
sugar at $1 247
and 10kg at $5 197.
But sources said producers
were unhappy with the level of increases,
saying viability remained under
threat and production meaningless without
guarantees of profit.
Businessdigest understands that producers were agitating for hikes of
at
least 200% to make operations viable.
Sugar had disappeared from
supermarket shelves in the past three
weeks. There were unconfirmed reports
that producers were withholding sugar
from the market until a favourable
price was agreed with authorities.
"There are a number of problems
that have remained unresolved," an
industry player told
businessdigest.
"There are a number of things that are beyond the
industry's control;
like high inflation, now at 1 281%, and access to
foreign currency from the
central bank. The sugar industry is not treated as
a priority sector by the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe," the source
said.
The source added that Zimbabwe had produced enough sugar cane
stocks
during the current season to adequately supply the domestic
market.
ZSA said in a statement on Friday that until government
approved its
proposals for viable prices, shortages would
persist.
"The Zimbabwe Sugar Association, which represents the
sugarcane
farmers, sugar millers and the sugar refineries, is conscious of
the
problems that Zimbabwe consumers are having in sourcing sugar from the
formal market," the ZSA said.
"The industry has not been
cushioned against the hyperinflationary
environment which has resulted in
significant cost increases across the
board without a corresponding
adjustment to the selling price," the
statement added.
However,
while sugar had not been available on the formal market, the
black market
had been thriving in the past three weeks with prices
skyrocketing to
between $4 000 and $4 500 for the 2kg packet of white sugar.
Government has imposed controls on prices of most basic commodities,
exposing producers to huge loses.
Bakers last year tried to
defy government controls but faced an
unprecedented police clampdown that
resulted in the arrest of several
managers. - Staff Writer.
Zim Independent
Shame Makoshori
A POWER utility executive this week warned that
efforts to turn around
Zimbabwe's ailing economy would hit a brick wall
because of government's
failure to recognise the role played by Zesa
Holdings in power generation.
Addressing journalists in Harare on
Tuesday, Zesa Holdings board
chairman, Christopher Chetsanga, denied
allegations that mismanagement was
behind the power utility's worsening
woes, saying the company's escalating
crisis was the responsibility of
government which had consistently refused
to allow Zesa to charge economic
tariffs for electricity consumption.
"Everyone is talking about
economic turnaround but without an
efficient Zesa there will be no
turnaround to talk about," Chetsanga charged
during his first public address
to the press since taking over the
chairmanship last year.
"(Government) should make sure that Zesa is given enough resources to
carry
out its operations because the sub-economic tariffs are hurting the
company," he said, adding that the power utility was "broke" and the nation
should brace for severe power outages this year.
Zesa suffered
a $105 billion loss in 2006.
"In 2006, our total revenue was $26
billion while expenditure was $66
billion. We incurred a deficit of $34
billion but if you add borrowing costs
of up to 500%, the deficits came to
$105 billion," Chetsanga said.
"This is a terrible situation, isn't
it? But the year 2007 is going to
be very bad, not better than last year,"
Chetsanga warned.
"Zesa requires 70% of its total revenue to import
electricity, leaving
only 30% to cover operational costs," he
said.
Chetsanga hit out at government, the power utility's sole
shareholder,
for failing to fund the rehabilitation of crumbling
infrastructure at a time
when southern Africa faces serious power
shortages.
Major exporters in the region had slashed exports to
Zimbabwe from 650
Megawatts (MW) to 150MW, leaving Zimbabwe in a precarious
situation.
Chetsanga said Zesa could do little to avert the crisis
because there
was an acute shortage of resources.
Zesa imports
35% of the country's power requirements at US$0,02 per
kilowatt hour (kW/hr)
and sells it at US0,2 cents per kW/hr.
Locally generated power
costs $90 per kW /hr to produce but it is sold
at $5 per kW/hr, a situation
that had contributed to huge losses.
He said the power utility's
ageing infrastructure required urgent
foreign currency injections for
equipment replacement, system upgrades,
spares and general system
maintenance.
Chetsanga said the problem at Zesa had been due to
lack of
rehabilitating and infrastructure maintenance over the past two
decades.
"One hopes to see a culture of maintenance being
restored," he said.
On Tuesday, Zesa announced the retrenchment of
600 workers to save
$240 million per month in salaries.
The
restructuring also resulted in the trimming of Zesa's subsidiaries
from five
to four.
The company said it had entered into negotiations with
foreign
investors to increase generating capacity at the Hwange Power
Company by
600MW and Kariba Power Station by 300 MW at a cost of US$800
million by
2008.
There were problems with the deal, however, as
Zesa was failing to
raise US$49 million as down payment as part of the
arrangement.
Zim Independent
Pindai Dube
The National Railways of Zimbabwe is negotiating
with the Bulawayo
Beitbrige Railway (BBR) for use of the railway line
linking Zimbabwe with
South Africa, businessdigest established this
week.
NRZ, one of the few parastatals said by Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe (RBZ)
governor Gideon Gono to have positively responded to a
turnaround programme
under which the RBZ injected billions of dollars to
save ailing state
enterprises, intends introducing a passenger train on the
route.
The negotiations are understood to have already won the
backing of
Transport minister Christopher Mushohwe.
Businessdigest has gathered that negotiations between NRZ and BBR, the
owners of the railway line, are almost complete.
The two
companies are understood to be working on an acceptable
financial package
for the deal as well as payment modalities in view of
Zimbabwe's foreign
currency crisis.
The Bulawayo-Beitbridge railway line was
constructed in 1999 and has
been used for freight purposes.
The
railway line is the only rail link between Zimbabwe and one of its
biggest
trading partners in the region, South Africa.
Fanuel Masikati, the
NRZ Public Relations Officer, confirmed that NRZ
was engaged in negotiations
with BBR to lease their railway line.
"Negotiations between us and
BBR are complete and we are currently
finalising the logistics (before we)
introduce a passenger train on the
route," said Masikati.
"Soon
we will start having trial runs as we did with other two newly
introduced
Harare-Bindura and Harare-Chinhoyi routes."
Masikati denied market
speculation that NRZ's previous attempts to
lease BBR's rail line had been
hampered by foreign currency.
"We are not seeking funds because
resources for the project are there
and all that is left are a few things,
for example, to work out timetables,"
said Masikati.
Zim Independent
Paul
Nyakazeya
GOVERNMENT'S domestic debt has declined marginally to
$175,7 billion
after reaching an all-time high of $178 billion in December
last year,
statistics from the Reserve Bank indicated this
week.
The domestic debt stock, which consists of government stocks,
treasury
bills and central bank advances, opened the year at $175, 664
billion.
The bank's advances to government amounted to $72,5
billion on January
5, with treasury bills accounting for $59,1 billion,
accruing an interest of
$114,9 billion. Outstanding government stocks
amounted to $1,6 billion.
Economic analysts said the debt decline
was unsustainable, warning
that accelerating inflation this year was likely
to push government domestic
debt level to new record levels. The budget
deficit out-turn for last year
is expected to reach over 20% of
GDP.
This excludes quasi-fiscal operations, which gave a budget
out-turn of
over 60% in 2005. The budget deficit, excluding quasi-fiscal
operations, was
3% in 2005. The absence of foreign financing was also likely
to affect
domestic debt level, the commentators said.
Last
year, government borrowed aggressively from the local market to
finance a
huge budget deficit, stoking inflation which touched a record high
of 1
281,1% year-on-year for December.
High interest rates had also
helped swell the level of government
debt, analysts said, indicating that
this had forced a major restructuring
of debt last year from short-term debt
to long-term debt.
The restructuring exercise, they said, had
little prospects of success
because of the market's lack of appetite for
long-term investments.
"High interest rates would continue to be a
burden on the fiscus. The
debt would continue to soar during the year due to
the necessity to fund
various imports such as electricity, fuel and food," a
bank economist told
businessdigest.
The country, once the
region's breadbasket, has become highly
dependent on imports due to
disruptions caused to the farming sector by a
controversial agrarian reform
as well as poor harvests caused by drought.
Zim Independent
Dumisani Ndlela
A PLANNED African visit by
Chinese President Hu Jintao provides no
clue as to Zimbabwe's vaunted close
relations with the Asian country.
Hu, making his second visit to
the continent, has again given Zimbabwe
a wide berth, instead visiting four
of the country's neighbours in a policy
initiative viewed by observers as
aimed at putting African economies on a
solid footing.
No
country required that better than Zimbabwe, currently grappling
with an
economic crisis now in its seventh year.
Besides giving a modicum
of hope to Zimbabwe, isolated by the
international community over a poor
human rights record, a visit by Hu would
have generated confidence that the
Chinese would finally provide a hefty
financial bail-out.
Hu,
whose Africa visit will start on January 30, will visit
Mozambique, whose
economy is experiencing one of the highest growth rates on
the continent;
Zambia, whose once-suffering economy is on the mend; Namibia,
whose economy
is one of the most vibrant in the region; and South Africa,
the continent's
economic powerhouse.
Trade between China and Africa has swelled in
recent years, reaching
US$42 billion in 2005.
China has become
a dominant supplier of cheap manufactured goods for
the continent, and the
Zimbabwean government has entered into several deals
with Chinese companies,
most of them state-owned, for barter arrangements in
which Zimbabwe will
receive assistance in setting up power plants and
telecommunications
infrastructure in return for minerals resources to
sustain China's expanding
economy.
Hu visited Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya in April last year,
signing a
number of trade agreements, while Chinese Foreign minister Li
Zhaoxing
visited several African countries this month, again also giving
Zimbabwe a
wide berth.
During his current mission, Hu will also
visit Cameroon, Sudan, the
Seychelles and Liberia between January 30 and
February 10, according to
information released this week by Chinese Foreign
ministry spokesman Liu
Jianchao.
Liu told a news briefing the
visits were a follow-up to last year's
China-Africa summit in Beijing and
aimed to "consolidate traditional
friendship" between China and the African
countries.
President Robert Mugabe was one of the delegates to the
China-Africa
summit held towards the end of last year.
Immediately after the visit, government suggested that China was to
provide
immense support to Zimbabwe to facilitate the country's economic
turnaround
programme, with a consignment of fertiliser, as well as other
goods reported
to have been already in shipment immediately after the
summit, demonstrating
to pessimists China's unflinching support for
President Mugabe's
regime.
The European Union and the United States have imposed
targeted
sanctions, which include travel bans, on President Robert Mugabe
and members
of his regime.
The sanctions have impeded the
country from accessing offshore finance
from international financial
institutions as well as from the international
donor community.
This has compounded the country's economic woes, with acute foreign
currency
shortages resulting in severe fuel shortages which have disrupted
economic
activities.
Mugabe's government has pushed for aggressive relations
with Asian
countries, particularly China, under a Look East policy adopted
mainly to
spite Western countries for the targeted sanctions on his
regime.
Shunned by the West and blamed by opponents for sinking the
country
into its worst crisis since Independence in 1980, Mugabe has been
forced to
scramble for aid from the East.
However, many
observers say China, rather than Zimbabwe, has been the
major beneficiary of
Zimbabwe's Look East policy, and several bids by Mugabe's
government to
source financial assistance from the Chinese have failed.
China has
been trying to gain a foothold in Zimbabwe's key mining
sector to explore
the country's vast mineral reserves.
In July 2005, Mugabe visited
China in a bid to negotiate an economic
package to rescue the country from
its crisis.
Nothing came out of that visit.
However,
Zimbabwe's ambassador to China, Chris Mutsvangwa, said the
country was on
the verge of securing a US$2 billion credit line from China.
The
claim was however denied by the Chinese government, who also
dismissed state
media reports that a Chinese firm was preparing to inject
huge amounts of
money into Ziscosteel to turn around the ailing steelmaker's
fortunes.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, Gideon Gono,
however announced in
September a US$200 million facility from China as part
of nearly half a
billion dollars worth of mainly foreign loans which he said
had been offered
after Zimbabwe had met conditions for the Chinese
loan.
This left market watchers speculating that Zimbabwe could
have
mortgaged mineral resources for the loan.
Zimbabwe has
made several offers to the Chinese firms in a bid to
persuade the Chinese
government into granting the country a financial
bail-out
package.
A Chinese company, Bunday Technical Mining, was recently
granted land
by the Chirumanzu Rural District Council to set up a chrome
processing plant
in Lalapanzi.
Although the Chinese have become
major buyers of tobacco on the local
market, plans by several Chinese firms
to finance tobacco farming appear to
have fallen through.
Although a delegation of senior officials from Air Zimbabwe, the Civil
Aviation Authority and the National Railways went to China in 2004 "to
finalise discussions with a Chinese firm" for investment in the companies,
the Chinese firm, China National Aero Technical Import and Export Technology
(Catac), has not followed through on the deals.
Catac has
signed several memorandums with the Zimbabwe Electricity
Supply Authority to
finance several power projects but these have failed to
get through because
of failure by the Zimbabwe government to provide
required
guarantees.
Catac had also been courted by Tel*One to provide
software for Tel*One
to mitigate theft of copper cables.
The
Chinese company has been given a tender to supply aviation
equipment for the
Victoria Falls Airport and Joshua Nkomo Airport in
Bulawayo, as well as to
assist with the construction of a cargo harbour and
runways.
The company was also expected to supply railway infrastructure,
especially
signal network and dualisation of the Harare-Masvingo road up to
the
Beitbridge border post.
But Chinese firms have refused to release
funds initially pledged for
the projects and until they do so there will be
no progress.
The failure of these schemes could explain why China's
leader is being
circumspect about visiting Zimbabwe in his journey to
Africa. Relations don't
appear to be as intimate as we have been led to
believe.
Zim Independent
By Gugulethu
Moyo
BEING a farmer can be a tough business in today's
Zimbabwe. More so if
you do it part-time.
For one part-time
poultry farmer, the office of a judge's clerk
proved, for a while, to be a
prime location from which to sell fresh
chickens. The meat would be marketed
in the clerk's office while the farmer
worked solemnly in his own office to
earn non-farm income from his High
Court job.
The predictable
traffic of court regulars - high-fee earning lawyers
in private practice,
government legal advisors, prosecutors, litigants,
court functionaries,
judges and sometimes witnesses - were a near-captive
market. It could have
been a profitable enterprise.
That was until lawyers started
complaining: they complained to the
Judge President until, finally, she put
a stop to the burgeoning trade in
chicken body parts.
The
intrepid part-time farmer in question was a High Court judge; his
clerk was
doubling as a salesperson; and the lawyers who complained were
concerned
that the sales activity - which sometimes employed fairly
aggressive selling
techniques - in the judge's chambers undermined the
proper administration of
justice.
Anecdotes of this nature pepper day-to-day life in
Zimbabwe's legal
community. One High Court judge, for instance, is said to
favour
supplementing his salary by doing a bit of roadside marketing: from
the
courtyard in Harare, he's often seen selling tomatoes and cabbages out
of
the boot of his official issue vehicle.
These and other true
stories are traded often among lawyers to
illustrate the extent of the
tie-in between the enormous problems besetting
the administration of justice
in the country and the ubiquitous involvement
by judges in small-scale
farming enterprises.
So when Judge President Rita Makarau decried
last week in a widely
publicised opening-of-the-legal-year speech the
parlous state of Zimbabwe's
judicial institutions, which she said was caused
by government
under-spending on the judiciary, the litany of tales started
doing rounds
again:
"Well, the government has already taken
steps to improve the pay
packages of judges," observers said.
"Gono has just approved the purchase of a fleet of 4x 4 vehicles for
judges
that will be given to judges to help them with their farming
activities.
"Those judges who have farms are expected to
supplement low salaries
with farm income," the story goes.
And
herein lies one of the central problems of the administration of
justice in
Zimbabwe today. When, in 2000, at the start of the Zanu PF
government's
instigated agrarian revolution, members of the judiciary
allowed themselves
to be co-opted into a legally murky land redistribution
scheme, the
independent viability of Zimbabwe's judicial institution was
lost.
Judges who stood their ground, in those days, and ruled
that the
executive had violated constitutional protection of property rights
and due
process were hounded out of office. Many of those who stayed on the
job
accepted government offers of farms whose legal ownership was subject to
litigation in the courts over which they presided. Other judges were
reported to have "invaded" farms and installed themselves in the place of
previous owners.
Few who witnessed this process can forget the
series of nihilistic
manoeuvres of that time. President Robert Mugabe and
several ministers,
prominent among them Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa,
took it in turns to
condemn judges who ruled against farm acquisitions as
"relics of the
Rhodesian era".
One High Court judge even joined
in the attacks, alleging that Supreme
Court justices had pre-decided in
their favour all the cases brought by
deposed white commercial farm owners.
The judge in question, Godfrey
Chidyausiku, was later appointed Chief
Justice in the fast-track judicial
reform process that accompanied the land
reform programme.
Rather than defend their turf in the
time-honoured triparte schema
which lies at the heart of most stable
democracies - the separation of
judicial, executive and legislative power -
many judges took ill-conceived
steps that made them look like willing
collaborators in unlawful executive
action. As many judges of the old bench
were pressured to leave office,
others jumped in to fill their
shoes.
In a radical philosophical shift, a majority of newly
appointed judges
in the "reconstructed" Supreme Court approved the same farm
acquisitions
that had been ruled unlawful by their forebears; at the same
time many
judges became tenants on the newly appropriated
farms.
The tenancy arrangements were fragile - defaulting tenants
could have
their lease withdrawn at any time. Later, this new breed of
farmer-judges
applied for and accepted concessionary interest rate loans for
new farmers.
Judges who refused offers of farms were overlooked in
the appointment
system and regarded by the establishment as reactionaries.
The result has
been that the value of stock of the judiciary
plummeted.
In a now infamous soundbite, Mugabe warned judges that
court decisions
that went against government policy would not be enforced.
"After all we pay
our judges very well," he ruled.
Nothing
about the judicial institution has been the same since then.
Today, lawyers
who would previously have viewed appointment to judicial
office as the high
point of a career in law would not, for one minute,
consider occupying
judicial office. And, in recognition of this, the
executive seems to have
stopped asking the most distinguished in the legal
profession to serve on
the bench.
Now, it seems that to be appointed to the bench you must
be a trusted
hand. But another tragic twist that the judicial deal-makers
failed to
predict was that they would become, as appears to be the case now,
some of
the least-valued partners in the new political order.
Gone are the days when judges were paid well. Now they "beg for
sustenance"
and their function "is not valued", as Justice Makarau confessed
last
week.
Those who took the farms have to juggle judicial and farming
roles to
try and make ends meet from operating agricultural concerns in a
hostile
economic climate. Court work is often set aside while judges manage
labour-intensive, undercapitalised farming ventures.
So serious
are the compromises made that lawyers sometimes remark
wryly that one of the
hardest legal cases of the day is to figure out
whether a judge is wearing
their farmer's hat or a judge's wig.
It may, therefore, not come as
a surprise that the Judicial Service
Act, signed into law this week, which
in theory introduces measures to
secure the financial autonomy of the
judiciary by placing the power to
determine judges' salaries and perks in
the hands of an independent
institution, is greeted with a large degree of
cynicism by many in the legal
community.
This law won't change
much, lawyers say. Having tied up their
independence with so many financial
strings, judges are still to solve the
hardest case of all: how to, with
credibility, cut the strings attached to
the agrarian revolution within the
judiciary.
* Moyo is a Zimbabwean lawyer who works for the
International Bar
Association.
Zim Independent
Comment
RESERVE Bank governor Gideon Gono's long awaited monetary
policy statement
is generating a lot of anxiety. The anxiety is not wrought
by universal
belief that the policy statement will provide relief to our
seemingly
ever-growing problems but by a quest to take positions in the new
policy
regime.
The mafia which controls the illegal foreign currency
market is waiting for
devaluation before they introduce their own rates
while fuel merchants are
withholding product in anticipation of the new
dollar rate.
Exporters are holding stock as they contemplate what the new
policy will
bring. Gold miners, bankers, farmers and big business are all
waiting for
surprises and not necessarily solutions.
There was a time
when the shock therapy induced by the element of surprise
had political
support from the Zanu PF establishment. The party on the eve
of the 2005
general election rallied behind the governor. They used him to
try and
convince reluctant voters that the economy was on the mend. He was
the face
of a reforming Zanu PF.
Not any more. He has become a hostage to feuding
Zanu PF factions and in
some instances appears to be stranded.
Any
attempt to introduce guerilla-type reforms this time around - as was the
case with the currency switch - would be a major test of strength for the
various forces working against each other in the party. He now needs
political allies to push through his policy which has unfortunately pulled
him into the murky political waters of President Mugabe's succession
battle.
We said it in 2003 when he became governor that his policies were
at the
mercy of political entrenchments which he did not have control over.
The
political culture of Zanu PF is built around a strange policy regimen
usually devoid of rational thinking. The aberrations have remained
unresolved until this day, making a mockery of Gono's feverish
activity.
One such blunder is the distortion in the pricing of
agricultural
commodities, electricity and fuel. The fiscal policy by the
Finance ministry
has embarrassingly failed to address the price distortions
which have seen
government paying huge subsidies which have not benefited
the economy in any
way. A distressing example of such irregularity is in the
price of maize and
maize-meal.
The government firstly subsidises
agricultural inputs through concessionary
financing, input support schemes
and cheap fuel. It then attempts to pay the
farmer a producer price not very
different from the international commodity
price index. In the case of
maize, the farmer is being paid $52 000 a tonne.
The GMB then shockingly
sells the same maize to millers at $600 a tonne.
This is not a subsidy. It
is obtuse thinking unimaginable of a system
supposedly run by national
leaders. For goodness sake, roadside vendors are
selling a cob of fresh
maize for $1 000!
It should be noted that a government agricultural
subsidy is paid to farmers
to supplement their income, help manage the
supply of agricultural
commodities, and bolster the supply of such
commodities on local and
international markets. Farm subsidies are aimed -
among other things - at
increasing production and thereby lowering the price
of food. In Zimbabwe,
our government spends trillions in subsidising maize
farmers and at the end
of each season spends even more - this time in
foreign currency - importing
the same commodity.
In the United States
in 1929, before agriculture subsidisation, Americans
spent 24% of their
income on food; by 1997 this had lowered to only 10,7%
largely due to
on-farm subsidies.
It is not only in agriculture that awkward pricing
systems are killing the
economy. The Zesa board this week said the power
utility was broke because
it was being forced to sell electricity to the
consumer at $5 a kilowatt
after producing the same kilowatt at $90. There
are distortions in fuel
pricing where government is selling fuel at $325 a
litre while the private
sector is charging $4 000.
These pricing
distortions are a product of a warped political philosophy and
Gono's
blitzkrieg policies have failed to make a dent on these anomalies. By
his
admission through lengthy press adverts, he has actually helped
government
to fund ridiculous subsidies.
The challenge before Gono is now more
complex. It is no longer just exchange
rate management, controlling money
supply or policing banks. He now needs to
grapple with dimwit political
entrenchments as well. We wait to see if he
can punch above his weight.
Zim Independent
Candid Comment
By Joram Nyathi
THAT land reform
was necessary in Zimbabwe and that by 2000 it was
long overdue is not in
dispute. That when it came it was badly executed is
self-evident from
reduced production and the country's reliance on food
imports during the
most propitious season of the year.
It is arguable that save for
self-serving constitutional amendments,
the land seizures were patently
illegal. To compound the whole process, a
number of former white commercial
farmers have not been compensated for the
"improvements" on the farms, the
furthest government said it was prepared to
go.
But that the
whole process should therefore be reversed because of
these three factors -
reduced production, illegality and lack of
compensation - amounts to
masochistic daydreaming. Yet there are people who
in 2007 still believe it
is possible to revert to the status quo ante when
about 4 500 white
commercial farmers owned close to 70% of the country's
most productive
farmland.
I know politicians are funny creatures who can sometimes
try to sell
you the moon but I doubt that even the MDC would promise a
return to
pre-2000 land ownership patterns without losing credibility. That
would be
the "greatest betrayal" of all time.
Two weeks ago I
travelled to Macheke area in Mashonaland East in the
company of a white
commercial farmer. (I won't say "former commercial
farmer" because he is
still committed to his enterprise). He said he was
simply told to move off
his property in 2002 and never to return.
We turned left at the
junction of the main Harare-Mutare highway and
Settlers Road, some 20km east
of Marondera. By 4pm we were at Murehwa centre
along the Harare-Nyamapanda
highway on our way back. In the course of the
tour we visited a number of
farms, including Arizona Farm which was owned by
Martin Stevens who was shot
and killed in April 2000.
The farmer took me to his farm where 25
hectares of fruit trees were
reduced to rows of charred stumps at the height
of the "revolution". He had
already secured export markets for his apples
and naartjes in Europe. All
that went up in smoke and has been replaced by a
herd of cattle and goats.
The rest of Macheke farming area is a
wasteland of small patches of
maize crops of the "wrong colour and height"
due to lack of fertiliser and
late planting, he told me. I asked him what he
thought should be done to
restore food self-sufficiency. He didn't need to
think.
He said the way forward was a return to the past. White
commercial
farmers should be given back their land, he said. Farming was a
serious
business which called for commitment and huge investment. He said no
one
would invest in a country where government had no respect for property
rights and that the 99-year leases given to "new farmers" were a sick joke.
There was no substitute for tradable title deeds, he said.
He
spoke with passion and seemed to believe his revisionist
proposition. When I
told him a return to pre-2000 land ownership was
"impossible", he said "you
can forget about economic recovery".
"But you don't honestly
believe that any government would kick out all
the people who have moved
onto commercial farms since 1999 to make way for
white commercial farmers,
do you?" I ventured.
He said it was up to government to make a
choice between starvation
and productivity. Even China and Russia were
moving towards freehold land
leases after disastrous experiments with
wholesale collectivisation, he
said.
I explained that the
difference was that in those countries it was the
"indigenous" population
that owned the land. It was the same in Britain, the
US and Europe. Was it
possible to find a "middle way" that would accommodate
the interests of both
blacks and whites?
He was evidently uncomfortable with this
position. He wanted a return
to the original farm boundaries. It was not a
question of colour but skill
and interest. Which is true, not everybody can
or wants to be a farmer.
From the bushland of Macheke, back in
Harare I attended the first of a
series of lectures launched by the MDC on
the way to economic recovery. By
the time I got to the venue John Robertson
was rounding off his presentation
on "property rights". From his response to
questions from the floor I could
tell he believed there was no alternative
to property rights.
He insisted there would be no investors coming
to Zimbabwe if there
was no security of private property. The solution to
the land problem was
straight forward. "If people are made to pay for the
land they will quickly
leave the seized farms," he said.
The
two gentlemen have a point about respect for the law. But I was
left
wondering whether such radical conservatism was the way to go. If so,
then
it means our thinking patterns have not transcended the levels that
made the
Third Chimurenga not only possible, but also necessary after the
failure of
the willing seller, willing buyer approach.
What we today describe
as a crisis are in fact the consequences of our
refusal to positively
embrace and manage a change process that was almost
inevitable. Zanu PF
today is repeating the same folly, save that this time
around the change
agents are less resolute, the forces of resistance much
more than a simple,
distinct racial minority, and are armed "tooth and
claw".
Imagine all those who lost their relatives in the mayhem following the
launch of the MDC and subsequent elections in 2000 and 2002 saying they will
not accept any compensation short of getting their loved ones back. Where
would the victims of Gukurahundi come from?
If we opt for a
wholesale reversion to former farm boundaries, what
happens to the new breed
of blacks who have the skill and passion for
farming but were deprived of
the chance by virtue of colonial land ownership
distortions, given that we
are dealing with a finite resource?
There were a number of senior
MDC officials attending the lectures,
including Morgan Tsvangirai. I don't
know if they believe a new government
would return us to pre-1999 so that
the land reform begins all over again.
That would certainly be a disaster
and there must be a less costly way to
resolve this thing. In fairness, the
MDC has proposed a comprehensive land
audit as a start.
Nevertheless, as we drove back to Harare from Murehwa, there were more
hunter-gatherers by the roadside selling mangos and mushrooms than were seen
dedicated to turning land into the economy.
Zim Independent
Muckraker
WHAT a bunch of losers! The Zanu PF Youth League is
evidently ignorant
of the ways of the world. Their statement seeking the
suspension of Edgar
Tekere tells us all we need to know that the ruling
party has been shaken to
its foundations by his revelations.
Tekere's heresy was to suggest in his autobiography, A Lifetime of
Struggle,
that he helped to elevate President Mugabe to the party's
leadership. Tekere
is unaware, the youths seem to imply, that Mugabe was the
product of an
immaculate conception where no human hand could be detected!
This is
Ceausescu-style idolatry at its worst.
But what was revealing for
us was the statement that despite media
reports suggesting Tekere was
working on a book "denigrating President
Mugabe", certain senior members of
the ruling party went ahead and attended
the launch.
"These
very same members made absolutely no attempt to defend the
office and person
of the president and first secretary of the party," the
Youth League
spluttered indignantly.
Instead the defence of the president was
subsequently left to George
Rutanhire and Patrick Kombayi.
The
youths have sought John Nkomo's assistance in disciplining the
offending
politicians who failed to leap to Mugabe's defence at the book
launch, most
notable among them deputy information secretary Ephraim Masawi,
according to
the Sunday Mirror.
It's great to have all this plastered across the
media. Where are the
titans of the party when Mugabe needs them? Who of any
importance or
significance has spoken up for him?
Instead the
first secretary, the hero of the nation, the guardian of
the struggle's
legacy, has been obliged to resort to lightweights like
Rutanhire (who?),
Augustine Chihuri of Murambatsvina fame, the Herald's
political editor
Caesar Zvayi, Nathaniel Manheru and various other
nonentities.
It's a portrait of a once-great party in terminal decline as its
youths,
ignorant of the events raised in Tekere's account, seek handy
targets for
their frustration. Our thanks go out to all concerned.
But why
did the Herald fail to mention that Masawi was in the firing
line for
attending the launch?
What a pity that the Herald was unable to
mention that salient point
for reasons of state. This is what readers get
when they rely on papers that
see loyalty to the regime as more important
than reporting inconvenient
facts. Which is partly why Nobel Laureate Wole
Soyinka spoke out on
President Mugabe in an interview with the Mail &
Guardian in Accra recently.
Zimbabwe's ruler had become intoxicated
by power, the writer said.
"He is a liberation fighter whom we all
admired and we held up as a
model. He has let us down. He is obsessed with
power, intolerant and
despotic. I consider him to be no better than Idi Amin
. . .," Soyinka told
the M&G.
"The conduct of Mugabe is a
betrayal of what we have fought for on the
African continent. The business
of playing the race card when there is
internal opposition and internal
demand for change, the cruelty involved,
the annihilation and the bulldozing
of those centres of opposition . . . How
is it different from what apartheid
South Africa used to do?"
Compare those self-evident conclusions to
the facile defence of Mugabe
by Obi Egbuna, hired by the Zanu PF regime to
abuse opposition parties and
civil society.
We would be keen to
know how much in the way of public funds have been
spent on this mercenary
propagandist to preach his sterile gospel of Mugabe
the African saviour.
What we do know is that nobody is buying it. That is
what has been so useful
about the Tekere book debate.
Egbuna used his Herald space last
Friday to call on Morgan Tsvangirai,
Arthur Mutambara and Wellington Chibebe
to explain where the MDC and ZCTU's
funding comes from.
What he
should be doing is telling the Zimbabwean public where his
funding comes
from. His is the alien voice in our midst!
You have to hand it
to him. The Sunday Mail's political editor
Munyaradzi Huni is the master of
invention.
Last weekend he wrote about the Bush administration
exerting pressure
on American companies in Zimbabwe to close shop in a bid
to create
resentment against the government.
He quoted an
"impeccable source" at the US embassy as saying that the
embassy had been
given funds by the Bush administration to persuade American
companies to
close down.
"Since the beginning of the year, we have been seeing
the management
of American-owned companies operating in the country coming
to the embassy
and when we tried to establish the reasons for their visits
no one was
forthcoming with the details," one of these "sources" told
Huni.
But then suddenly all was clear. "Only last week we saw
minutes to one
of the meetings and we established that the embassy was
persuading American
companies here to close down. The American government
has set up a fund for
these companies so that when they close they are
compensated or are assisted
to relocate to any of the neighbouring
countries."
This sounds suspiciously like somebody who is not an
embassy official
but looks at documents in the embassy's possession! Firstly
he doesn't know
why the businessmen are approaching the embassy. Then he
discovers it in the
minutes. All very revealing! But it does rather confirm
what we have always
suspected about the Sunday Mail's sources.
Does this sound like a US official? "The American government has seen
that
the people in Zimbabwe won't revolt against their government and they
are
trying to create conditions that will force the people to turn against
their
government."
Sounds more like Huni to us. And of course companies
closing down are
all part of a plot and their decisions have nothing to do
with the toxic
business climate spawned by the regime.
Purleez!
ZimOnline carried an interesting story on Monday
reporting that
teachers had fled their posts in Mashonaland East claiming
harassment by
security agents for listening to foreign broadcasts on donated
radios.
"The situation is tense in Mash East," one teacher said.
"The youths
and the police have teamed up and act on information provided by
Zanu PF
supporters in the district. People are being rounded up and given
lectures
on the dangers of listening to the radios. Those suspected of being
behind
the distribution are also beaten up."
At a meeting held
in Marondera last Tuesday, Mashonaland East governor
Ray Kaukonde is said to
have told state security agents and Zanu PF
supporters to be vigilant saying
the radios should not be allowed to
circulate in the province, ZimOnline
reported.
Contacted for comment, Kaukonde confirmed that the
government was
confiscating the radios "in the national
interest".
"It is a peaceful exercise (confiscation of radios) in
the national
interest. Villagers need food not radios or harmful
information," said
Kaukonde, according to the online news
agency.
"Those radios are propaganda tools so that villagers can
listen to
hostile stations such as Voice of America and turn against the
government.
The security agents are only confiscating the radios and
carrying out
awareness campaigns so that villagers can report anyone seen
listening to
the radios or distributing them," he said.
This is
extraordinary. A resident minister admitting that the state is
overturning
the right of Zimbabweans to listen to whatever broadcasts they
like? Please
test this in court ZLHR. And somebody should make sure the
French and
Portuguese ambassadors see this report.
When there was the
astounding report that Local Government minister
Ignatious Chombo had urged
Harare residents "to be patient" with sewerage
flowing into their homes as
this was a result of the change-over of
administration from Harare city
council to the Zimbabwe National Water
Authority.
Otherwise
they were working harmoniously to improve service delivery,
Chombo told
Newsnet on Monday night.
This is sickening arrogance. Where has
Chombo been all these years
when raw sewerage has been flowing into Lake
Chivero where it has been
blamed for the death of fish?
One can
be sure he was also involved in the bungled transfer of duties
between
Harare council and Zinwa. Is this another attempt to cover up
Sekesai
Makwavarara's failure to make an impact on Harare's water and
garbage woes
we wonder?
Incidentally, Chombo was last week warning that
"politicians" should
not interfere in council affairs. Somebody should ask
him what happened to
the elected mayors of Mutare, Chitungwiza and Harare.
What is he? A
ventriloquist?
The Financial Mail of January
19 has an interesting article on
corruption in the ruling ANC of South
Africa.
"It was a cool spring evening when an ambulance screeched
to a halt
outside the ANC's provincial office in Dutoitspan Road,
Kimberley," the
magazine reports. "Paramedics were rushing to the aid of the
city's first
citizen, mayor Patrick Lenyipi, who had been hit by flying
teacups thrown
during a brawl in the ANC offices.
"The first
cup hit him on the head. The handle of a second lodged
itself deep behind
the ear after being smashed onto his head with great
force by a senior ANC
member."
The fight took place in 2005 reportedly over a tender to
supply
coupons for prepaid electricity meters. The mayor had indicated the
tender
should go to a group of ANC women who included his mother. Instead it
was
advertised with a specific condition that his mother should be
excluded.
The report says corruption is so rife in the ANC "it has
become a
culture".
ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe
said: "This rot is across the
board. It's not confined to any level or any
area of the country. Almost
every project is conceived because it offers
opportunities for certain
people to make money."(See Page 20.)
They seem to be learning fast.Readers' comments are welcome.
Finally, is Macquarie University in Sydney aware that it is providing
a
platform for another Zanu PF propagandist, Reason Wafawarova, to insult
the
intelligence of Zimbabwe's newspaper readers with his puerile
posturing?
It certainly does Macquarie University no good having
somebody of this
limited scope advertising what little impression their
teaching has made
upon him.
But we did have a good chuckle over
his attempts to warm up interest
in Zanu PF as the party everyone wants to
join.
"Gone are the days when Zanu PF was considered an irrelevant
dying
party," Wafawarova claims. "Suddenly everyone is back in the
1980s."
Indeed, it's back to the failed policies of the past. And
why is
Wafawarova spewing his patriotic platitudes from a foreign
university? What's
wrong with our own universities?
Zim Independent
Eric Bloch
OVER the years, the government
has demonstrated its vast array of
negative characteristics.
Although there are a very few exceptions, almost all of the
innumerable ills
and problems that perennially afflict Zimbabwe have either
been occasioned
by those characteristics or have been severely exacerbated
by them. And that
is particularly so insofar as the abysmal state of
Zimbabwe's economy is
concerned.
Almost all the essential ingredients for a virile,
growth economy have
existed since Independence and yet, since 1997, the
economy has been in a
continual, accelerating decline, to levels by now
constituting Zimbabwe as
the most poverty-stricken country on the continent
of Africa.
Those ingredients which could and should be the
catalysts and
foundations for a strong and healthy, expanding economy
include, among
others:
l highly fertile land, capable of wholly
providing for the food needs
of the nation as well as much of those of
neighbouring territories, and of
generating vast production of commodities
in high international demand,
including tobacco, cotton, beef, horticultural
products, coffee and tea,
citrus and much else;
l an immense,
minimally tapped wealth under that potentially fertile
land, including gold,
diamonds, emeralds, uranium, platinum, nickel, coal,
methane gas and many
other valuable minerals;
l although ageing and deteriorating (due
to the nationwide economic
decimation), an industrial infrastructure which
is technologically the
second most-advanced and developed in sub-Saharan
Africa which, combined
with the fact that Zimbabwe is geographically located
so as to be the ideal
principal supplier to most of southern, eastern and
central Africa, having a
population of over 320 million potential
customers;
l a unique tourism resource, including the spectacular
Victoria Falls,
the splendour of the Zambezi Valley, the awe-inspiring
Matopos, the mystic
Great Zimbabwe and the Khami Ruins, the wonders of Lake
Kariba, the immense
beauty of Nyanga and Vumba, the finest viewing of
wildlife of virtually all
species on the continent and much else. All these
render Zimbabwe a
potential tourism delight of stupendous proportions, with
gargantuan
concomitant economic benefits; and
l a wonderful,
very able, hard-working and aspiring labour force (with
a few, very rare
exceptions).
Unfortunately, although Zimbabwe has had those
outstanding means to
stimulate and fuel a vigorous economy, the last 10
years have witnessed
naught but the diametric opposite of such an
economy.
While some (with the government in the forefront) will
contend that
that has been a consequence of forces beyond their control, the
reality is
that the near-total demise of the economy is almost wholly due to
government
policies, and its economic mismanagement.
However,
it is devoid of the maturity, and of the sense of duty and
responsibility,
to acknowledge that that is so, and to take appropriate
remedial action,
other than very occasionally inadequately, ineffectually,
and
reluctantly.
Instead, some of its negative characteristics come to
the fore. The
first is that of pronounced self-delusion and denial of fact
and
accountability.
The government is so imbued with conviction
of its absolute
omnipotence and associated infallibility that it is wholly
beyond its
conception that it could in any manner whatsoever be the cause of
the
Zimbabwean economic Armageddon. It cannot, and will not, accept that it
has
destroyed agriculture, negating totally the first of the five most
outstanding triggers for Zimbabwean economic wellbeing.
Blinded
by obsessive, albeit highly justified, hatred for
pre-Independence land
policies, the government has dogmatically pursued a
cataclysmically
destructive land acquisition, resettlement and
redistribution programme,
devoid of justice, equity, respect for bilateral
investment protection
agreements, and regard for human rights. That has
brought the previously
dynamic agricultural sector to its knees. Compounding
the disaster has been
prolonged state mismanagement of procurement and
distribution of
inputs.
Similarly, the government myopically fails to recognise its
continuing
hindrance of mining sector operations and development, its
creation of
endless operational constraints for the manufacturing sector,
and its
destruction of Zimbabwe's image as an investment and tourism
destination.
Instead, a second very greatly negative characteristic
repeatedly evidences
itself, being that of extreme paranoia.
As
the government is unable to admit to itself, or to others, its
near-absolute
culpability for economic disarray, it has convinced itself
that not only are
others wholly responsible for that disarray, but also that
those others are
very deliberately engaged in destroying Zimbabwe's
international image, as
one of their tools to complete the destruction of
the Zimbabwean economy,
and thereby, the ousting of the government.
Unhesitatingly,
vociferously, insultingly, with invariable disregard
for realties, the
government alleges that Britain in general, its Prime
Minister Tony Blair,
in particular, the rest of the European Union, the
United States of America
in general, and its ambassador to Zimbabwe in
particular, many Commonwealth
countries, and many others, are not only
wholly responsible for Zimbabwe's
economic misery, but also for deliberate
Zimbabwean-image destruction, and
replacement of that image with one which
enhances the programmes of economic
collapse.
The mind boggles at how it can be possible for all those
alleged
enemies of Zimbabwe, or of its government, to have brought about the
mid-1980s genocidal activities of the Zimbabwean army, and its 5th Brigade
in Matabeleland, or the near-genocidal oppressive brutality of Operation
Murambatsvina less than two years ago.
How was it Britain's
aggressive fault that it provided millions of
pounds for Zimbabwe to buy
land in the 1980s, which land had not been
resettled or redistributed by
2000? In what way did Britain, the EU, the USA
and others cause thousands of
war veterans and others to murder white
farmers, assault hundreds of others,
vandalise and steal property and abuse
the land?
Can it
credibly be argued that those countries are to blame when their
nationals
evidence a reluctance to invest in Zimbabwe, when it is the
government of
Zimbabwe which overly-regulates the economy, to an extent that
opportunities
of fair returns on investment capital are horrendously
minimised?
And are those countries to blame, when their private
sectors are
reluctant to invest in a country which repeatedly signifies that
the only
welcome investment is from the East, and from countries with
authoritarian
rulership, and when that country repeatedly, scathingly
accuses foreign
investors of denuding Zimbabwe of its resources (but does
not acknowledge
that those foreign investors send capital and technology to
Zimbabwe,
generate foreign exchange, create employment, pay taxes, and do
much else to
the benefit of Zimbabwe).
Is it is the fault of
Western countries that an overzealous police
force, responsible for ensuring
compliance with the law, determines people
to be guilty before proven
innocent, in reversal to the legal maxim of
"innocent until proven guilty",
and therefore incarcerates people without
trial, sometimes for many months,
resorts to excessive violence, destroys
equipment of arrested miners, and
all-too often, demands bribes, while in
some proven instances resort to
torture?
Is it the fault of those alleged international enemies
that a
provincial governor and resident minister, as recently as two weeks
ago, has
threatened a repeat of Operation Murambatsvina, instead of
proposing
substantive government actions to resolve Zimbabwe's housing
problems?
And is it the fault of those well-wishing countries that
they are
reluctant to provide Zimbabwe with balance of payments support,
loans, and
developmental aid, when doing so would be nothing other than
pouring the
monies into a bottomless pit, due to the manifest mismanagement
of the
Zimbabwean economy, and the undoubted extent that the world's most
pronounced levels of corruption which prevail in Zimbabwe will preclude much
of such monies being used for intended purposes?
These are but
a few of countless instances of Zimbabwe destroying its
international image,
to the catastrophic prejudice of the economy and,
therefore, of the
Zimbabwean people, but for which the government blames
others.
If the economy is ever to recover, the government must be prepared to
abandon its negative characteristics, adopt constructive ones, vigorously
strive to restore a positive image and, to that end, reconcile with the
international community as a whole, instead of fraternising primarily with
oppressive dictatorships. If it does not, the economy will never
recover.
Tekere's distortions: Shamuyarira to blame
WHILE Edgar Tekere might
have got it wrong on the rise of Robert
Mugabe in Zanu in his book A
Lifetime Of Struggle, the blame should lie
squarely with Nathan Shamuyarira
who allegedly retired from active politics
in 2000 to write a biography of
the president.
It is almost seven years later, but we still haven't
heard anything
about it.
It took Ibbo Mandaza only two years to
publish Tekere's book.
Shamuyarira is too slow for today's
political dynamics. Retirement
from active politics should mean not holding
any position either in the
party or government as a minister or MP. Yet he
still holds the position of
secretary for Information and Publicity in Zanu
PF and spends the whole day
working from Zanu PF offices where he is
salaried.
If Shamuyarira had commissioned some of the lecturers at
the UZ's
Faculty of Arts who are friendly to his party as researchers and
writers,
while he edited it, we could have got the biography finished within
a year
in 2001. Unfortunately, if he is to take this idea, he would expect
such
researchers and writers to accept financial peanuts.
G
Mpofu,
Harare.
------------
Bulawayo should resist Zinwa's sinister overtures
THE
announcement that Zinwa is to take over Bulawayo's water
reticulation and
sewerage systems makes sad reading.
It is with great
reservations that we received this piece of
news, more so coming hot on the
heels of a damning report from the Auditor-
General.
Zinwa does not have the capacity to take over and run such an
operation to
the required levels of efficiency.
Zinwa's performance track
record is hardly flattering. Look at
the fiasco in Harare. Zinwa is the main
actor in the confusion and poor
service delivery that Harare finds itself
in. What is referred to as
drinking water in Harare is a liquid not fit for
human consumption.
Harare's environs are drowning in raw
sewage emanating from
burst sewer pipes. Service delivery and accountability
are almost
non-existent. Zinwa has contributed nothing in terms of value
addition to
the city of Harare.
It has utterly failed to
carry out its mandate, a scenario which
calls its continued existence into
question. Zinwa must justify its
existence and demonstrate its usefulness to
the ratepayers.
In spite of the perennial droughts suffered
in this region of
the country, the Bulawayo City Council has had no problems
managing its
water resources and infrastructure. They have had no problems
supplying
their ratepayers with quality water to drink and had no sewer
problems on
the scale seen in Harare. The situation in Harare is
unprecedented and
should serve as an example of how not to run a city. It is
local governance
gone bad.
For an organisation associated
with such gross maladministration
and corruption that is engulfing Harare to
take over the water affairs of a
city that has been running its affairs
exceptional well under the
circumstances, is ridiculous to say the least. If
anything, the Bulawayo
City Council should take over Zinwa and show it how
things should be done.
Why should the day-to-day management
of our sewerage and water
reticulation systems be handed over to some
faceless people in Harare? Why
should Bulawayo ratepayers' money be used to
subsidise the corruption and
maladministration of Zinwa as seen in
Harare?
How are we going to be assured that money collected
from
Bulawayo water bills will be used for the benefit of its residents? How
do
we know that Bulawayo's resources won't be diverted to other areas? What
is
central government's interest in all this? How can somebody living in
Harare
possibly worry about the water quality in far away Bulawayo? To whom
will
Zinwa be accountable? Bulawayo residents or the cabinet? What does the
Water
Act say?
This cabinet directive smacks of
interference in the internal
affairs of local authorities, and by using
Zinwa to achieve its objectives,
nothing good can come out of this. Zinwa
needs a complete overhaul before it
can embark on these forays into local
governance. As things stand, Zinwa's
reputation is in
tatters.
I urge the ratepayers of Bulawayo to reject Zinwa's
overtures to
take over the water affairs of the city. The Bulawayo United
Residents'
Association should brace for a fight in defence of our right to
manage our
own water.
We do not need people from Harare
to determine the quality of
water we drink. Council should stand up to this
madness. This culture of
invading and taking over other people's
successfully-run enterprises before
running them into the ground must come
to a stop. The energy and sweat of
others must be
respected.
Wonder Museta,
Morningside,
Bulawayo.
---------------
Save Zimbabwe project not for partisan
interests
THE Save Zimbabwe campaign is a
stakeholder-driven project
co-ordinated by the Christian Alliance where
everyone is free to
participate, including political
parties.
The Save Zimbabwe campaign is what we have all
been
waiting for and it is only sincere engagement of democratic forces that
will
help us save Zimbabwe.
It is good for the MDC
anti-senate leader Morgan
Tsvangirai to pin his hopes on the Save Zimbabwe
campaign project like
everybody else, but it should be known that the
Christian Alliance or Save
Zimbabwe project is not a Tsvangirai initiative
to save him from political
demise.
Any attempt to
abuse the Save Zimbabwe project to the
advantage of an individual like
Tsvangirai at the expense of the real agenda
will be resisted left, right
and centre.
The Save Zimbabwe campaign is an
all-inclusive project
driven by ordinary Zimbabweans meant to halt further
decay of Zimbabwe's
social, political and economic
fabric.
Any partisan activities associated with the
Save Zimbabwe
campaign will derail the whole process because other
democratic forces will
take a back seat if the process becomes
dirtier.
I am convinced that a clean bill of
transparency and
approach to issues will make us achieve what has not been
achieved in many
years under President Robert Mugabe's directionless
rule.
Civic society's view of the Save Zimbabwe
initiative is
not to push Tsvangirai, Professor Arthur Mutambara, Wurayai
Zembe, Daniel
Shumba or Paul Siwela to the presidency of any united
political party
through the back door.
Kurauone
Chihwayi,
Harare.
---------------
Zimdef: feeding trough for
ministers
SINCE the inception of the Zimbabwe
Manpower
Development Fund (Zimdef) under the Manpower Development Act, No 36
of 1994,
the organisation is alleged to have bought office furniture and
top-of-the-range motor vehicles for each minister on assumption of duty in
the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary
Education.
On being deployed to another ministry,
the ministers
are said to turn such furniture and motor vehicles to personal
use. The
ministers also access Zimdef funds for fuel, hotel accomodation and
other
utilities in the name of visits to tertiary institutions around the
country,
yet it's an expense under their
ministry.
So far, Ignatious Chombo, Herbert
Murerwa, Samuel
Mumbengegwi and Stan Mudenge have benefitted since the
creation of Zimdef.
One wonders what the
ministry's capital expenditure
(Capex) is used for, if it cannot, among
other things, finance the incumbent
minister's official
requirements.
There has not been a clear
separation of what is
permissible under the Act for Zimdef to finance.
Expenses for and by Zimdef's
parent ministry fall under the Consolidated
Revenue Fund (referred to in
Section 101 of the constitution) as allocated
by the Ministry of Finance in
the budget. Zimdef has become another RBZ for
the Ministry of Higher
Education - easy access to cheap
funds.
Such looting is made possible by the
organisation,
management and structure of Zimdef. The Act does not provide
for a board of
directors like other institutions. There is only the creation
of the
National Manpower Advisory Council
(Namaco).
According to the Act, Namaco was
established to
advise the minister on the development of
manpower.
Zimdef is run by a CEO who reports to
the Trustee
(of Public Funds) who is the minister with powers to make
unilateral
decisions. The CEO can together with the minister misuse or abuse
the funds
under their care. The permanent secretary in the ministry can also
abuse his
authority by instructing Zimdef to spend money in the context of
being the
"accounting officer".
Its funds are
made out of the 1% levy on wages by
the private sector. The financiers and
consumers of manpower development
(the private sector employers) have no say
in how and where the funds are
used except for the advice on the content of
tertiary institutions' study
programmes through Namaco. Nobody knows if the
funds are not used for
farming as well.
One
wonders why the Comptroller and Auditor-General
has not raised these issues
with the ministry and Zimdef with a view to
stopping the abuse of public
funds.
Those working for Zimdef have been turned
into
"civil servants". Their conditions of service and salary reviews cannot
be
made without the approval of the minister and his permanent secretary.
The
two exercise their authority to the extent that Zimdef conditions of
service
cannot match those of similar
parastatals.
The minister and permanent secretary
determine
conditions begrudgingly because they use wrong standards of
measurement. If
Zimdef staffers have to earn like civil servants, one
wonders why they were
weaned from the civil service at
all.
L Mhaka,
Harare.
---------
What Gono should do to come
clean
THE response by the RBZ to the article
carried
by the Standard on the alleged purchase of a vehicle by the governor
raises
questions on what really is going on at the
RBZ.
Why take three full-colour page
adverts to
respond in all main papers? Why have the response in three
languages when
the papers are all published in
English?
Since it is estimated the campaign
cost the
RBZ over $34 million, and the RBZ wants to be seen as transparent,
could
they share with the public the true cost of the
campaign?
The issue at hand Mr Governor, is
neither
whether you bought a Brabus or an S600. To the average Zimbabwean
it's all
the same.
What the public
wants to know is whether the
RBZ is allocating forex in a transparent
manner.
The response shows the RBZ is
trying to
portray a clean image in the way it conducts its business. Why
then did the
governor opt for a loan instead of the RBZ owning the car? Was
it not that
the governor wanted to make a big score? Who would not have
wanted a loan of
US$138 000 at US$1:$250, which makes it $34,5
million?
Any car dealer in town will tell
you that a
car bought at US$138 000 has an open market value of over $600
million. So,
overnight the governor made a whopping paper profit of over
$550 million. No
wonder he opted for a
loan.
Is this car loan scheme not a new
baby that
the RBZ senior staff have devised in order to enrich themselves
overnight?
They get loans in local currency and buy US dollars at a rate of
US$1:$250
to import luxury cars for their personal use or resale on the open
market,
yet they buy cars for the RBZ on the open market at 15 times the
value, if
they use the same exchange
rate.
If the governor has nothing to hide
and wants
to come clean with the public, he should publish with the same
vigour a list
of his colleagues who have benefited and the amounts
involved.
He must also publish the list of
government
officials, not to mention Local Government minister Ignatious
Chombo, who
have been accessing US dollars at $250 to import personal luxury
vehicles
and other trinkets.
Is it any
wonder then that it has taken so
long to devalue the local currency when
inflation is ravaging at 1 200%
plus? Is it any wonder too, that the
governor failed to put in place a forex
rate determination committee as
promised in one of his monetary policy
statements last
year?
My heart bleeds when people die in
our
hospitals due to shortages of medication and equipment because there is
either no forex or patients cannot buy prescribed
medication.
Jobs are being lost everyday
because of forex
shortages while hotels are at pains explaining to tourists
why their charges
are completely out of sync with the rest of the world. All
this because the
governor, fellow senior staff and some government ministers
want to make
super profits overnight.
My question to Gideon Gono is: Who do you
think you are
fooling?
Tendai
Manhanga,
Harare.
-------
Agitate for withdrawal of brutal
Act
By Steven
Chashaya
MDC secretary for
Information and Publicity,
Nelson Chamisa's letter "Strikes denote rejection
of Zanu PF's sterile
agenda" (Zimbabwe Independent, January 12) deserves
comment.
Chamisa stated that the strikes
by doctors
and workers at Zesa, as well as the go-slow in schools, the
police and the
army reflect a serious national paralysis authored and
orchestrated by the
Zanu PF regime. As such, his party stood in solidarity
with the workers and
their right to strike, which is not
negotiable.
Strike action by workers is
an inalienable
right no employer or government can take
away.
While I totally agree that policies
crafted
by the Zanu PF regime have contributed much to the suffering
Zimbabweans
endure today, Chamisa must not be economical with the
truth.
Chamisa should be aware of the
ramifications
of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act enacted by
the American
Congress at the height of the land invasions. Any serious
political party
that aspires to assume the reins of power should start
seriously looking at
how to tackle this obnoxious and totally obsolescent
piece of legislation.
Lord Howell of Guildford could not have bared it all
more precisely. During
debate in the House of Lords recently Lord Howell
questioned the
effectiveness of the so-called targeted sanctions and asked
if they were
hitting the right
targets.
To quote him verbatim: "As we
renew pressure
on Zimbabwe, should we not look at the other shadow sanctions
which are
hurting the poorest people, particularly the withholding of some
loans from
international institutions and development banks and other
investments?
Should we not try to refocus the whole of our operations
vis-a-vis Zimbabwe
in ways which hit the criminals ruling the country and do
not hit the poor
people who are starving and longing for
help?"
If a foreign legislator can
acknowledge that
the Act is doing more harm than the Mugabe regime, surely
it's high time all
opposition parties took a stand and demand the withdrawal
of the Act.
It would be foolhardy to talk
about Zimbabwe's
economic meltdown and Zanu PF's misrule while at the same
time ignoring the
brutal implications of the
Act.
A cursory observation of the type of
cars
the ruling elite are driving and their residences will reveal that the
sanctions have in fact hit doctors, workers at Zesa, the police and the army
more than it has hit the intended
targets.
Both factions of the MDC, NGOs
and civic
organisations should get real and stand up to tell the
international
community that instead of promoting democracy, the Act has
turned to be the
most potent weapon slaughtering more women and children
than Mugabe's
misrule.
* Steven
Chashaya writes from
Harare.
-----------
Gono lauded for magnificent display of frugality
By RES
Cook
I AM sure that all Zimbabweans have welcomed news that
Reserve Bank
governor Gideon Gono only has a Mercedes Benz S600 V12 as his
company car,
and not the luxurious and expensive Brabus E V12 that he was
reported to
have purchased.
Costing a "mere" US$138 000, all
Zimbabweans will be glad of this
assurance that Gono would never knowingly
waste any of Zimbabwe's
hard-earned and extremely scarce foreign
exchange.
At a time when most Zimbabweans are struggling to
survive, as are most
businesses, and when there is insufficient foreign
currency to meet such
basic needs as life-preserving medicines, may I be the
first to congratulate
Gono on this magnificent display of
frugality.
Let us hope that his example of selfless denial in the
interests of
the nation will be followed by his fellow chefs.
I
have no doubt that when building his mansion, or travelling overseas
on
holiday, Gono displays the same concern for careful use of foreign
currency
as exemplified by his modest purchase of a Mercedes Benz S600 V12.
When next Gono appeals for self-sacrifice I am sure we shall all
respond
positively.
Encouraged by his selfless example, I shall undoubtedly
endeavour to
emulate his life-style, a life-style epitomised by self-denial
and
parsimony.
Thank goodness not all our chefs are as
avaricious as has sometimes
been suggested.
* RES Cook writes
from Harare.
Zimbabwejournalists.com
By a
Correspondent
POLICE in Harare yesterday fought running battles with
more than 400 members
of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) who were
protesting against
Zanu PF's intentions to extend President Robert Mugabe's
term of office by
an extra two years.
In the melee some protesters
were seriously injured after allegedly being
assaulted by the police. NCA
activist John Masva sustained serious head
injuries as a result of police
beatings during the demonstration while
others sustained bruises. He is said
to be fighting for his life. At least
11 people have been taken to a private
hospital to get treatment after
sustaining injuries from the
assaults.
An NCA spokesperson said the police had used force in trying to
disperse the
protesters.
The NCA said at least 20 activists were
arrested after marching for about 20
minutes raising their concerns at the
prospect of having next year's
presidential election moved to
2010.
"It was really bad, police were running everywhere with their baton
sticks
and I was just caught in the crossfire and had to run for dear life,"
said
Primrose Mukwedeya. "We all do not want Mugabe's term of office
extended but
the problem is that we have this small demonstrations being
organised for
this group and that. I did not even know there was an NCA
protest. I think
opposition forces need to unite so we can have one big
thing to save our
country."
The NCA, which was holding its second
demonstration against the 2010
project, says it will not be intimidated by
the assaults into throwing in
the towel. The organisation is also
campaigning for a new Constitution in
Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwejournalists.com
By Ambrose Musiyiwa
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe
has once again been named as one of the 33 leading
"predators of press
freedom" in the world.
"Whether presidents, ministers, chiefs of staff,
religious leaders or the
heads of armed groups, these predators of press
freedom have the power to
censor, imprison, kidnap, torture and, in the
worst cases, murder
journalists," Reporters Without Borders
said.
The organization pointed out that President Mugabe, who has
been in power
since 1980, uses the country's intelligence and security
agencies "to
silence all opposition voices" and to "spy on and punish
independent media
outlets."
Reporters Without Borders is not alone in
its criticism of the Zimbabwe
government's continuing assault on the media.
The World Association of
Newspapers recently ranked the country as one of
the top three most
dangerous places to be a journalist.
The
insecurity and crisis within which journalists are working in Zimbabwe
is a
direct result of how the government deals with the media.
In the recent
past, newspaper offices and printing presses have been bombed;
journalists
have been tortured in police custody and others have been
deported or forced
to flee the country. Citizens have also had their copies
of newspapers
seized and have been assaulted by military personnel and the
Zanu PF militia
if seen with copies of newspapers that are deemed to be
critical of the
government.
In addition to this, journalists and media services operators
or newspaper
publishers are required, by law, to apply for registration and
have
accreditation with the government-controlled Media and Information
Commission (MIC) before they can be allowed to operate. Even when
journalists and media organizations apply for registration and
accreditation, there are no guarantees that the MIC will grant this
accreditation.
At present a local mass media service operator or
publisher is required to
pay a registration fee of Zim$600,000
(US$2,392)while a foreign mass media
service or news agency is required to
pay US$12,000. Journalists working for
local media houses need to pay a
registration and accreditation fee of
Zim$25,000 (US$99) while foreign
journalists are required to pay US$100
registration fee before they can be
allowed to go about gathering and
disseminating news. Those Zimbabwean
journalists who are working for foreign
media organizations are expected to
pay US$1,200 in application and
accreditation fees.
These exorbitant
fees are an additional factor that is challenging the
viability of
publishing and working as a journalist in Zimbabwe.
The few community
newspapers that remain operational in the country will
also feel the pinch
because in the prevailing economic environment, they are
struggling to get
revenue and are increasingly reliant on donor funding to
remain
operational.
The fees will also act to discourage freelance journalists
from registering
with the MIC while the punitive measures that are in place
will deter them
from practicing without accreditation. For example, between
Feb. 1 and July
31, 2005 alone, 49 journalists were arrested under the
Access to Information
and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) for practicing
journalism without
accreditation. Under the Criminal Law (Codification and
Reform) Bill
journalists who are caught working without accreditation face
prison
sentences of up to two years.
Those journalists and newspapers
who manage to pay these fees and try to go
about their business of
gathering, publishing and disseminating news are
routinely arrested,
detained and harassed by the various arms of the
country's security
services.
Journalists, especially those who write for international
newspapers and
magazines, also face harassment and intimidation from
government officials
who have described them as "traitors" who are being
paid to demonize the
country and its leaders.
In January 2006, for
instance, the Minister for National Security, Didymus
Mutasa, told the
government-owned Manica Post: "It is sad to note that there
is a crop of
journalists who are selling the country to the enemy by writing
falsehoods,
with the intention of agitating violence and undermining
national security.
The net will soon close in."
In September last year, Mike Saburi, a
freelance television journalist, was
arrested and jailed after he was caught
filming the police assaulting people
who were gathering to take part in the
trade union protest march in Harare.
Saburi was accused of having gone
beyond his journalistic work while filming
the protest march.
In the
month that followed, security agents raided the Harare office of the
London-based independent newspaper, The Zimbabwean and seized its import
authorization and old copies of the newspaper.
The year before that,
three sports journalists, Robson Sharuko, Tendai
Ndemera and Rex Mphisa were
dismissed from the government-owned daily
newspaper The Herald for
contributing to U.S. public radio Voice of America
(VOA).
Since 2002,
nearly 100 Zimbabwean journalists have been forced into exile.
The
Zimbabwe government is also making renewed and concerted efforts to
silence
the remaining independent newspapers in the country. Recently, the
country
stripped Trevor Ncube of his citizenship as part of its ongoing
campaign to
close The Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard, the two
independent
newspapers that remain operational in Zimbabwe.
At the same time, the MIC
is moving to remove Nunurai Jena, who is chairman
of the Zimbabwe Union of
Journalists (ZUJ) Chinhoyi branch, from the roll of
journalists who are
allowed to practice in Zimbabwe and has accused him of
peddling
anti-government propaganda and "malicious reports" about human
rights abuses
in Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwe government has also introduced the Interception
of
Communications Bill, which allows security agents to intercept and
monitor
email, Internet access and letters in the course of their
transmission
through the telecommunications or postal service. The Bill also
makes it
possible for news materials to be intercepted during transmission
and will
hinder the operation of journalists and media houses. The Bill also
interferes with citizen's rights to access information and freedom of
expression.
In the Mashonaland East province of Zimbabwe, teachers
are reportedly being
rounded up by Zanu PF militias and assaulted as part of
their "re-education"
if they are found in possession of short wave radios
which allow them to
listen to radio stations other than the government
controlled Zimbabwe
Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) channels. According to
recent media reports,
a number of teachers have been forced to flee their
schools as a result of
these attacks. The ZBC has a monopoly on broadcasting
in Zimbabwe: there are
no private or independent radio or television
channels broadcasting within
Zimbabwe; those that have tried have been
arrested and have had their
equipment seized or have had their licenses
revoked.
These are just a few examples of the treatment journalists and
media
consumers are receiving from the Zanu PF government.
There are
no signs that the situation will improve anytime soon.
Zimbabwejournalists.com
By Gideon Hlamalani Chitanga
THE recently announced
higher and tertiary fees structure, as publicized in
the Sunday mail of 14
January is misleading. Infact, it is an attempt to
create an impression that
government is keen on making education not only
affordable to everybody,
but, also to sustain fallacy that it seeks to
maintain high standards, hence
the reference to Zimbabwe's education role
and status in the SADC.
It
is however clear that the increase of fees by 2000 percent is out of
reach
of many guardians. The majority of students come from impoverished
rural
areas, their parent's income, if any, does not automatically increase
with
the turn of the year since such parents are not in formal
employment.
They are neither formally employed as Zimbabwe's economic
crisis has
destroyed both sectors. Given that the same guardians have to pay
school
fees and levies (primary and Secondary), nearly amounting to the same
value,
the fees becomes wildly out of reach of many potential graduates and
guardians. It is equally astounding that government did not gazette food and
accommodation fees, leaving it to the discretion of individual institutions
yet these fees are the most expensive.
They are variably pegged at
over Z $500 000. Education has not only been out
rightly commercialized and
made a luxury, but the system has become bluntly
discriminatory against the
poor .where does government expect the students
to live and what will they
be eating during the course of their studies.
Food, Accommodation,
transport and books (exercises and texts) constitute
the most expensive
aspects of education. Factor in the currently
skyrocketing rate of inflation
and the subsequent rapid increase of basics
puts everything absolutely out
of reach of many students. By gazetting
tuition only, government is
abdicating its duties of protecting the poor and
vulnerable of our society
and making education realizable by all.
Incidentally it is such groups who
need education most to change their
fortunes.
The ever worsening
extent of depravity has made colleges and universities
breeding grounds for
prostitution and all sorts of corruption as students
desperately struggle
to eke out a living, while continuing with their
studies. They dangerously
expose themselves to HIV/AIDS, rape and all forms
of violence. In the
extreme most students have dropped out at a rate more
than ZINASU's modesty
31,5%.
The government's provincial mouth pierce, Masvingo star, January
19-25,
reports that Masvingo Polytechnical College is deserted. As Education
becomes too expensive against prospects of a bleak future ,students take
great risk, illegally skip the border into South Africa, Botswana and
Mozambique, to do menial jobs. Isn't this a disaster?
Can I hear any
Zanu PF and or Government official brag about Zimbabwe's
educational role
and status in the SADC. What a national loss and shame. We
have an
educational crisis which government is refusing to acknowledge. It
is
actually a national disaster.
Go to any University or College today,
students will tell you they rent
about 4 to 6 a single room, walk about 30km
to and from college everyday, on
empty bellies. They also have to be on the
scrounge like everybody else for
basics which are in short supply. This is
no fiction. Come to Masvingo and
confirm this with students who stay at
Runyararo West, Rhodene and in the
farms close to Nemamwa Growth point
crammed in ramshackle domains,
reminiscent of shanty towns, without running
water, ablutions or lighting.
Honestly, how do we study and can our
education system proudly produce a
polished global academic under these
circumstance. Clearly, these conditions
are not conJusive for any Kind or
level of study .They actually speak
volumes about how much our education
system and standards have plummet.
Zimbabweans should not be fooled.
Students and parents should brace
themselves for a fight to redeem their
birthright and dignity which this
regime has continuously failed to
guarantee but nagete. More importantly,
they should confront the regime over
issues of governence,
constitutionalism, democracy and human rights, whose
failure, compounded by
political ineptitude and greedy within Zanu PF and
government has
cryptically put the country in a political economic and
social conundrum .
Given this, the 2010 Zanu Pf presidential project
which threatens to worsen
the already unbearable suffering of the
downtrodden Zimbabweans should be
confronted head on by all and sundry. The
people have no option, but to come
out of this Zanu PFCal-de-Sac
Victorious
Gideon Hlamalani Chitanga is the ZINASU Vice President
.