The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe - may peace, truth and justice prevail. |
State Summit kicks off in Nigeria
January 30, 2005, 08:00The fourth African Union heads of state summit kicks off in Abudja, Nigerian
this morning with discussions on the restructuring of the UN expected to top the
agenda. Among the leaders attending are Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general,
President Thabo Mbeki and Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean leader.
Olusegun
Obasanjo, the Nigerian president and African Union chair, will officially open
the two-day summit. African leaders are expected to review the security
situation in the continent.
The report of foreign ministers states that
there is stability in Burundi, Somalia, Liberia, DRC and the Ivory Coast. It
commended the peace process in the DRC but warned that the peace process could
be compromised if there is lack of support from the international community and
the AU. The threat of diseases such as Aids, malaria, polio will be
discussed.
Zimbabwe drops Tsvangirai appeal |
January 30 2005 at 03:25PM | |
By Peta Thornycroft
|
SHONGA, Nigeria (AP) Riding through a Nigerian forest on motorbikes, four white Zimbabwean farmers are checking out the land they'll soon settle on, hoping to start a new life here after being chased off their farms by government-backed thugs back home.
Uprooted by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's land redistribution program, scores of farmers have already been welcomed by the country's immediate neighbors for the jobs and economic growth they promise to create. But Nigeria, 2,500 miles northwest of Zimbabwe, represents a new phase of a budding exodus.
The four men visiting Shonga are an advance party for 15 farmers planning to move here next month along with families, 50 black Zimbabwean farmhands and 2,000 cattle.
``Everybody is enthusiastic for the project to get going,'' says Alan Jack, 46, whose farm was grabbed five years ago by about 50 youths armed with clubs and machetes.
Mugabe has encouraged the land seizures as a means of redressing wealth inequalities rooted in British colonial times. But the policy has been widely criticized for its brutality and has made Zimbabwe, once a food exporter, dependent on food aid to save nearly half its 12.5 million people from starvation.
Since 2000, some of the thousands of farmers forced off their land have moved to neighboring Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia. Few, if any, have moved to West Africa, but governments here Ghana and Senegal as well as Nigeria are lining up to host them, according to the farmers.
It's an endeavor that requires tact, if only because all these countries bear the legacy of white colonial rule. Zambia has publicly warned its newcomers not to form white ``cliques'' or set up ``elitist'' white country clubs, to stay out of politics and not get involved in supporting opposition groups as they did in Zimbabwe.
There are also fears in Nigeria that the farmers' arrival will raise unrealistic expectations among the low-income farmers already working in the Shonga area, 200 miles north of Nigeria's main city, Lagos.
But the Nigerian government, which initiated the white migration, remains gung-ho. Olayinka Aje, an aide to the governor of Kwara, Shonga's state, says the farmers could turn the area ``into the food basket of the West African sub-region.''
Jack said he was attracted to Shonga because of good rainfall and firm, deep soil in which ``just about any crop will grow.'' Nigeria, Africa's most populous country with 126 million inhabitants, also offers a huge domestic market.
If things go well, more white Zimbabweans could move in next year, he said.
Mugabe's government refuses to comment on the farmers' emigration, but continues to insist the land seizures are the way forward.
The farmers will hire hundreds of Nigerian workers who, along with the Zimbabwean farmhands, will clear an allotted 37,000 acres of trees and towering termite mounds to make way for maize, rice, soybeans, and dairy and poultry farms.
Nigerian farmers here tend small plots growing staples such as cassava and corn without machines or fertilizer. The Zimbabweans are offering technical know-how and advice on cost-free techniques for improving yields, such as better crop spacing. The government has promised to fund a 16th farm for training purposes, run by a Zimbabwean farmer.
But people here are wary. Huge state-run projects here usually are gutted by corrupt managers. Near Shonga, combine harvesters corrode in open fields, left over from a project that collapsed in the 1990s.
``We have a vision and I am trying to share that faith with the people,'' says Halina Yahaya, the emir of mainly Muslim Shonga, but ``people say we hope we are not being taken for a ride.''
As well as signing an agreement with the local government, legal owner of Kwara's land, the farmers also needed to negotiate with the emir, who also holds land rights under local custom.
The 7,000-plus villagers of the area, who have virtually no health care or primary education, harbor very high expectations. Jibril Muazu, the chief of Ogudu, a village bordering the Zimbabweans' future farmland, wants new roads, electricity, drinking water, hospitals and schools.
``If the commercial farmers are going to benefit from our land, these are the ways we should benefit from them,'' he says.
Aje, the governor's aide, insists all these demands will be met by a trust fund financed by a one percent levy on the newcomers' turnover.
The four Zimbabweans, constantly joking like old friends, seem undaunted by the challenge of rebuilding a social life far from home.
``In Zimbabwe, we did everything together as farmers. We'll just do the same here,'' Jack said. ``There's 15 of us. It's enough to get on in life.''
EDITOR'S NOTE: AP Correspondent Angus Shaw in Harare, Zimbabwe, contributed to this report.
Monday January 31, 10:23 AM |
Mugabe to launch election campaign
By Cris Chinaka
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe will launch his party's
election campaign this week, with the main opposition expected to lift a boycott
threat hanging over the critical poll, party officials and analysts say.
The veteran president has yet to announce a date for an election expected to
test how far his government has yielded to international pressure for a fair
vote as well as the popularity of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC).
Mugabe, who turns 81 on February 21 just weeks short of 25 years in power,
has attracted world attention in the last five years over his seizures of
white-owned farms for blacks and charges he rigged Zimbabwe's last two major
elections.
Government officials said on Monday Mugabe would officially launch his
ZANU-PF party's election campaign this week.
"The official campaign will take place on Saturday, and the expectation is
that the president will announce a date for the elections before he launches
that campaign," one official said.
While Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF prepares its campaign, the MDC is due to meet
on Wednesday and Thursday to decide whether to participate in the poll, which it
had threatened to boycott.
"The announcement is just a formality, it was decided weeks ago that although
the conditions are not conducive for a free and fair election, we have no choice
but to participate," said one senior MDC official.
Analysts say that even if the MDC contests the election, it is unlikely to
end Zimbabwe's long-running political crisis.
The MDC charges that ZANU-PF robbed it of victory in the last parliamentary
contest in June 2000, and in the presidential poll in 2002 through rigging and a
violent campaign that the MDC says killed left more than 200 opposition
supporters dead.
"ANTI-BLAIR CAMPAIGN"
Mugabe, Zimbabwe's sole ruler since the southern African country's
independence from Britain in 1980, denies the charges, and accuses his domestic
and Western foes of sabotaging the economy and wanting to oust him over his land
seizures.
The MDC says recent electoral reforms -- including the appointment of a
nominally independent electoral commission to run the March polls -- do not meet
guidelines set by the 14-nation Southern African Development Community.
Mugabe, who accuses Prime Minister Tony Blair's government of sponsoring the
MDC, says the March polls would be an anti-Blair campaign for his ZANU-PF party
to "bury" the MDC.
Western powers led by Britain and the United States have imposed some
sanctions against Mugabe's government over the election disputes and
controversial policies.
Political analysts say Zimbabwe's problems are likely to continue while
ZANU-PF remains in power although the view of the government of some sections of
the international community might improve if elections are not marred by
violence.
"I don't think anyone is naive enough to think that the crisis is going to
end with the elections ... because there some fundamental differences between
the government and the international community," said Lovemore Madhuku of the
National Constitutional Assembly, a political pressure group.
|
Financial Mail
28 January 2005 Gold mining ZIMBABWE'S NEW GOLD RUSH, 19th-CENTURY STYLE By Brendan Ryan Displaced farm workers have found a new livelihood |
In Brazil they would be known as garimpeiros but, in Zimbabwe, the hordes of gold miners wielding picks and shovels are called mkorakoza, a Shona word meaning "panner".
It's estimated there are more than 1m of them countrywide and they produce in total between 400 kg and 600 kg of gold a month.
That means the mkorakoza could account for between 25% and 37% of Zimbabwe's gold output, which was 19,5 t for 2003, according to Gold Fields Mineral Services.
Many have been driven into gold panning by Zimbabwe's land grabs, which have forced hundreds of thousands of farm workers off farms.
They can find no other way to make a living and, in inflation-racked Zimbabwe, gold mining pays a lot better than most unskilled occupations, even if there were jobs available.
A panner can recover around 2 g of gold a day, from which he will make about Z$140 000 (about R140). That's what a Zimbabwean farm labourer makes in a month.
The result is a 19th-century-style gold rush as the mkorakoza flood - legally and illegally - on to farms in Zimbabwe's various gold belts. Zimbabwe has extensive gold-bearing zones but the reefs are narrow, geologically complex and erratic in grade, making standard commercial mining operations generally unviable.
The mkorakoza live in tents and "bivvies" made of plastic sheeting or hessian sacks, right next to their mine workings. They get their supplies from - and let their hair down in - shanty towns in the bush near the workings.
Apart from the harsh working and living conditions, many risk long-term health problems because they use mercury to form the gold they recover into a crude amalgam for smelting.
They are also using technology that dates back to 1886, when gold mining first started on the Witwatersrand.
The mkorakoza get their ore crushed by stamp mills. There's still one stamp mill in Johannesburg. It's a national monument on a plinth outside the Chamber of Mines building in Hollard Street. Yet these mills are now being made to order by small engineering firms in Zimbabwe.
Stamp mills were replaced in the early 1900s by the vastly more efficient ball mills, which are, with significant enhancements, still standard technology in modern gold recovery plants.
According to the Zimbabwean operator who showed me around his property on condition of anonymity, stamp mills "are a son of a bitch to maintain because they vibrate like hell. One worker is dedicated full-time to constantly tightening every nut in sight and knocking bits of metal back into the frame that are being shaken out of it."
The mkorakoza refuse to use ball mills. They prefer stamp mills because they can watch their ore being treated. One miner says: "There's a muki wa [Shona for white man] in the ball mill stealing our gold." In a way he's right, because some gold is lost as fine particles get trapped in the cracks between the liners of a ball mill. The trapped gold is recovered through clean-up operations when the liners wear down and have to be replaced, which happens every few months.
The mkorakoza cannot afford to buy their own stamp mill. These are often owned by the holder of the mining permit for the area being exploited. Frequently, that's a white farmer who has been kicked off his land and has also turned to gold mining to survive.
The mkorakoza brings his ore, usually a ton at a time, to be crushed. He then takes the recovered gold-bearing fraction of the ore and concentrates it further through several stages of panning to isolate the heavier gold particles from the lighter waste material.
With high-grade ore it's at this stage that the gold becomes visible as a yellow "tail" in the bottom of the pan, standing out against the dark grey of the remaining dense material. The gold-bearing concentrate is then formed into an amalgam using mercury and crudely smelted to produce a form of "sponge gold", which the mkorakoza sells to Fidelity Printers & Refiners, which buys it on behalf of government.
The operator makes his money in two ways. He charges a fee for toll-milling the ore and providing basic services such as a tractor and trailer to haul ore from the workings to the stamp mill.
The stamp mill recovers only the coarse gold fraction in the ore. The fine gold fraction is carried through the process by the flow of water but is then trapped in a small slimes dam. That fraction belongs to the operator, who recovers it using the same cyanide process that most modern gold mines use.
Depending on grade and geological properties, the mkorakoza recovers 50%-80% of the gold that was contained in his ore. The cyanide tailings treatment process typically yields between 1 g/t and 2 g/t for the operator. |
Talks with Zimbabwe rebels make progress
January 31, 2005
The chances of Zimbabwe's rebel players returning to the fold are better than ever if the meeting between the players and a three-man ad hoc committee set up by Zimbabwe Cricket is anything to go by.
The meeting, the second of its kind, which lasted for about four hours, took place on Sunday in Harare and several players described it as positive - as long as Zimbabwe Cricket also remain keen. The players said they might return sooner than expected.
The players, however, refused to shed more light on what actually happened they did not want to say anything to the press as this might jeopardise the negotiations. "The meeting was really positive," one said. "It is not true that we will come back unconditionally. Our position is still the same from the beginning, there are few issues which have to be addressed before we come back and play. We are still united."
At the meeting were Heath Streak, Raymond Price, Craig Wishart, Andy Blignaut, Trevor Gripper, Grant Flower, Neil Ferreira and Stuart Carlisle, while Addington Chinake (chairman), George Makings, Jackie du Preez and ZC human resources general manager Wilfred Mukondiwa represented the board.
Realistically, it is unlikely that the discussions will be resolved in time for any of the rebels to be included on the tour of South Africa as there is no follow-up meeting planned for at least another fortnight.
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