• MDC welcomes Bush and Mbeki’s commitment to the Zimbabwean crisis.
• Are we now putting soccer ahead of the starving millions?
• Voters’ roll inspectors still unpaid by Registrar-General’s Office
• Church sends envoys to Mbeki, Bush
• ZCTU seeks dismissal of stayaway lawsuits
• Mugabe presents test case for African Union
• JAG Counselling Communique
• JAG Open Letters Forum No. 109
• EU Says Ready to Fund African Peacekeeping Force
• Africa not for sale - Zanu-PF

      It is disgraceful that taxpayers’ money (it is NOT the government’s
money) is being used to pay sportsmen when millions of Zimbabweans are
facing destitution and starvation.

      Perhaps Peter Ndlovu, as captain, and as someone earning perhaps £10
000 (Z$13 million) a week in England, can set an example and donate his
share of this Z$100 million to some worthy charity in Zimbabwe.

      The totally irresponsible attitude of our uncaring and unconcerned
government is not unexpected, but that does not mean that our national
sportsmen have to be similarly devoid of any social conscience.

      I speak not only as someone who has played football at international
level in Africa, and whose motivation was a love for the game, but as
someone who has a social conscience and a sense of priorities. Jonathan Moyo
’s attempts to play populist politics is nothing short of disgusting.

      I have always loved soccer, and am only no longer involved in the
sport only because of the shambles that the Zimbabwe Football Association
has reduced the game to in Zimbabwe, but no genuine patriot would put a game
of soccer before starving millions.

      R E S Cook

      Harare

      On the day we were trained, we were promised that we would be paid on
the very day we returned the official stationery to the Registrar-General’s
Office.

      For a poor civil servant like myself, if you are elected for such an
exercise you thank God for that.

      Now it has been three weeks and no money or explanation has been
forthcoming.

      Election monitors were paid on a weekly basis and I understand they
got three times more than we did and no explanation was communicated to us.

      If one tries to enquire from the respective office, one does not
receive a response.

      I would be very grateful if someone could please assist us to get our
hard-earned cash while it can still buy something useful.

      I really think it’s an insult for our pay to be so inferior when we
were doing most of the work.

      We would wake up at 5 am and walk to the inspection centres (because
there was no transport at that time), finish work at 6 pm and walk back home
again.

      The monitors would be ferried to and from work if they so wished, but
all we got was a mere one-third of what the monitors got. Are we working for
the same government or not?

      Help us with our plight, please. We just want to be paid what’s due to
us!

      Raw Deal

      Mutare

      However, EFZ president Trevor Manhanga would neither confirm nor deny
that his organisation had sent the delegation.

      He said: “There are a few things that we need to do as a church to
assist in the resolution of this problem that is engulfing the nation.
Together with the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, the Zimbabwe Catholic
Bishops’ Conference and ourselves, we have a set programme to bring an
immediate resolution to the Zimbabwe crisis.

      “As individual church groups, some of us have made informal moves to
Presidents George Bush of America and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. There is
nothing as yet that is substantial that we can reveal, but a solution will
be found as a matter of urgency.”

      However, sources close to the matter told the Daily News that the
group had sent three representatives to meet American and South African
officials in Pretoria, where Bush arrives today. The delegation is said to
have left for Pretoria last week. Manhanga said he hoped Bush’s visit to
South Africa would push the Zimbabwe crisis to a mediated solution because
the nation could not continue under “unending hardships”.

      However, Zimbabwe Council of Churches president Sebastian Bakare said
local churches had not yet come up with one position on how the Zimbabwean
crisis should be resolved.

      Bakare said: “We have met and discussed our desperate situation. We
have not yet found the best way to resolve it, but we are all agreed that it
requires an immediate negotiated settlement. As churches, we are saying, the
people are suffering and we understand their feelings.

      Staff Reporter

      In answering affidavits filed in the High Court last week, ZCTU
lawyers said the lawsuits were vague and did not indicate why Zimbabwe’s
umbrella labour union and its secretary-general, Wellington Chibhebhe, were
being sued.

      “The summons and declaration is vague and embarrassing. ZCTU and
Chibhebhe as third and fourth defendants respectively pray that the
exception be upheld and that plaintiff’s claim against them be dismissed
with costs on a higher scale,” the ZCTU said in its papers.

      Alec Muchadehama, the labour union’s lawyer, is expected to file other
papers this week for the case to be heard.

      “All that plaintiff is averring is that ZCTU and Chibhebhe encouraged
and supported an illegal demonstration,” he said in papers filed in the
court.

      ZUPCO, Harare businessman David Bello and Clarisa Muchengeti, a
Kwekwe-based ruling party supporter, say the ZCTU encouraged and supported
work stayaways undertaken earlier this year.

      ZUPCO, Bello and Muchengeti are claiming $142 million in damages in
suits that were separately filed in the High Court by Harare lawyers
Muzangaza, Mandaza and Tomana. The public transport company is claiming $119
million for a bus burnt during mass action by unidentified youths in
Epworth, while Bello wants $17 million for the loss of a minibus in
Chitungwiza in April.

      Muchengeti is demanding $5.5 million for a car she says was
petrol-bombed in the Midlands city of Kwekwe.

      Court Reporter

      Officially, Zimbabwe is not on the agenda, despite declarations by the
union that it will insist on good governance in Africa through its New
Partnership for Africa’s Development, which seeks increased aid and trade
opportunities in return for monitoring.

      Zimbabwe is seen by many donors as a test case, following presidential
elections in March last year which were widely condemned as rigged, and
which followed the confiscation of commercial farms run by whites, and
widespread political violence.

      Repression of government opponents is increasing, United States
President George W Bush – touring Africa as the heads of state meet – is
calling for fresh elections, and the economy is plunging down the plug-hole.

      Inflation is running at 300 percent according to official figures –
even more according to unofficial ones – 70 percent of the workforce are
unemployed as businesses continue to close, people fill back-packs with
devalued notes to pay for minor purchases, staple foods are short,
starvation is rampant, and fuel is hard to find.

      The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), whose leader,
Morgan Tsvangirai, spent the first half of June in prison for having called
demonstrations against the government, intends to make its voice heard in
Maputo.

      Tsvangirai cannot go there, because he is facing high treason charges,
with a potential death penalty, and is forbidden to leave the country, but
he is sending a delegation to the Mozambican capital to put the MDC’s point
of view to the heads of state, observers, and international Press.

      The MDC’s position is clear: the 79-year-old Mugabe, who has led
Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, and was formerly widely
regarded as a hero of African liberation, “must quit” as head of state, with
a transition mechanism set up ahead of another presidential vote.

      The MDC’s rejection of the presidential poll in March 2002 as rigged
is shared by Britain, the United States and the Commonwealth, which has
suspended Zimbabwe from its councils as the United States and the European
Union have banned travel to their territories by Mugabe and his aides.

      In an interview in Washington with South African state television on
Friday, Bush said he would like to see South African President Thabo Mbeki
“insist that there be elections” in Zimbabwe, “ . . . insist that democracy
rule. Insist that the conditions necessary for that country to become
prosperous again are in place”.

      Bush said he agreed with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who
called last month for Zimbabwe’s neighbours to play a “stronger and more
sustained role” to resolve the crisis and said the time “has come and gone”
for Mugabe and his cronies.

      Mbeki, fearing violent implosion in Zimbabwe, which has a leaky border
with South Africa, has pursued a policy of “quiet diplomacy” in a bid to
reconcile Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

      That policy – contrasting with what South African leaders have decried
as “megaphone diplomacy” by Britain – has not yet brought any noticeable
results, and Mugabe continues to sneer at British and US pressure.

      He has, however, allowed a debate to get under way on his succession
after declaring in April that he had reached a stage – after righting
colonial misattribution of land – of envisaging retirement.

      That policy saw confiscated farmland going to so-called liberation war
veterans and political heavyweights, while thousands of black farmworkers
lost their jobs and agricultural exports plummeted as farms became fallow.

      Jonathan Moyo, Mugabe’s information minister and “spin doctor”, issued
a “clarification” of Mugabe’s pondering of retirement a few days after the
presidential statement.

      The president, he said, had no intention of retiring before 2008, when
his current term expires.

      – News24

Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's ruling party warned US President George Bush on
Wednesday that his tour of Africa should serve as a lesson to the American
leadership that Africa was "not for sale".

"No one should ever take the continent for granted. We are not for sale.
America's hegemony has neither space nor place in Africa," Zanu-PF's South
African chair Bigvai Gumede said in statement released in Johannesburg.

"Africa has come of age," he said.

Gumede's was commenting on Bush's brief official visit to South Africa which
is part of a five-nation tour.

He said Africa did not need a lecture from western leadership on how to run
its affairs.

"The destiny of Africa lies with ourselves. The African Union and New
Partnership for Africa's Development are our institutions.

"These institutions were designed by Africans to serve their needs," he
said.

Gumede hailed President Thabo Mbeki, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo
and other leaders for their "exemplary leadership" in assisting the
Zimbabweans in solving their country's problems.

Mbeki has consistently pursued a policy of "quiet diplomacy" in his dealings
with Zimbabwe while the US government has urged him to use stronger measures
to force political change there.

"As far as SA and Zimbabwe are concerned Bush and his entourage should know
we are one people. We share a common border, history, culture and destiny,"
Gumede said.