10 July 2000
In today's issue:
From The Times (UK), 10 July
12 killed in panic at World Cup tie
HARARE – AT LEAST 12 people died and scores were hurt at a World Cup qualifying match as police reacted to bottle-throwing spectators by smothering the stadium with teargas. Panic ensued among the 50,000 crowd at the National Sports Stadium in Harare as people fought their way out. Witnesses said that people were trampled on the concrete terraces. The dead included three children.
On the pitch, players of the South African and Zimbabwean national teams writhed in agony with the gas in their eyes and lungs. "It was severe overreaction by police," said a Zimbabwean football official. Throughout the match, spectators waved the open-handed salute of the opposition MDC and brandished small red plastic squares, symbol of orders to President Mugabe to resign. The incident occurred in the 82nd minute when South Africa went 2-0 up, making it likely that Zimbabwe would go out of the competition. Zimbabwean fans hurled bottles at the South African players. The police fired teargas cannisters into the crowd and kept firing them as people fled. The match was abandoned. In the Parirenyatwa hospital, the casualty department was jammed. One doctor said. "The dead suffered severe internal injuries from being crushed, and suffocation."
From News24 (SA), 10 July
SA help for Zim's economic recovery
Johannesburg - South Africa will speed up assistance to help post-election Zimbabwe out of the economic doldrums, says Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad. Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said on Sunday that South Africa was committed to doing everything possible, now that the elections were over, to help Zimbabwe out of its economic crisis as the two countries' economies were closely linked. This was discussed at an inter-minsterial meeting on Thursday to review work in progress and accelerate the process of increasing aid to Zimbabwe. It was a follow-up to the visit by a team of South African ministers and Eskom officials to Harare earlier this year.
At the meeting Pahad said a special cabinet committee would urge South Arican parastatals and the private sector to become more involved in Zimbabwe while lowering trade barriers between the two countries would also be high on the agenda. Zimbabwe is one of the largest importers of South African goods and the latter's biggest trading partner in southern Africa. However Zimbabwe's economy is said to be close to collapse, which is exacerbated by a foreign currency shortage that has led to fuel shortages and electricity rationing. Mamoepa said South African ministers would had been holding crisis talks with their Zimbabwean counterparts for months, but would intensify efforts in the aftermath of last month's parliamentary election. He said it was likely that a South African government delegation would visit Zimbabwe soon.
Comment from The Nation (Kenya), 8 July
Is The Party Really Over For Comrade Mugabe?
Nairobi – Mounting frustration and anger are beginning to find a new expression in Zimbabwe, where Zanu-PF has been in power since 1980. The current economic malaise and the very high levels of unemployment inspired most young people to vote for the MDC. It is not that the people expected the MDC to reverse the decline and bring better times overnight. Most of them accept that the movement does not have the capacity to change anything on the economic front. All they needed was change.
The broad dissatisfaction with President Robert Mugabe and his government's inability to reverse the economic decline is beginning to eat into the 76-year- old leader's traditional support. In the recently-concluded parliamentary election, Dr Mugabe received votes from older folk who have sustained a long relationship with Zanu-PF since the war of liberation. Among rural people, for whom the land issue is most urgent, he also received key support. The younger generation, in contrast, regarded the liberation struggle and the land question as remote political considerations.
It is also important to note that the MDC won all the seats in Matabeleland. The Ndebele suffered atrocities perpetrated by government troops in the 1980s when President Mugabe fell out with the then opposition party, Zapu led by the late Joshua Nkomo. And though President Mugabe could count on the support of his populous Shona community, the whipping his party received at the hands of the MDC pointed to deeper dissent than one based on ethnicity. Ethnic Shonas are the majority. They make up about 75 per cent of the population. The Ndebele make up 20 per cent, while there are nearly 100,000 whites and 25,000 people of various other races. More than half of the 12.5 million population is unemployed, industry and manufacturing are dying, and the tobacco industry has been dealt a mortal blow by the invasion and burning of stocks on white-owned farms.
HIV/Aids is a major problem. One in five, and in some cases one in four, of all adult Zimbabweans are infected. Dr Ruth Logode, a Zanu-PF sympathiser, says the Aids crisis is even worse than the troubling land question. In a few years, she explains, there will be no labour for the land the blacks are clamouring for. Surprisingly, Aids was only a peripheral item on the campaign agenda.
Zimbabwe is in economic tatters. There are no balance of payment programmes running with the IMF, the World Bank or other bilateral donors. Inflation is at 58 per cent, while interest rates are running at a stunning 70 per cent. Money supply is out of control, foreign currency shortages are a way of life, and reserves barely sufficient. A costly war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has added to Zimbabwe's financial woes. The country spends some $3 million a month in a war that brings nothing in return. Officially, 330 Zimbabweans have been killed in the war, but military analysts say as many as 600 people have died. It is a war that has virtually turned Zimbabweans against their one-time hero, Comrade Mugabe.
Comment from The Weekly Trust (Nigeria), 8 July
Wake-up call for Mugabe
Kaduna - In a trip made possible by Africa International Bank (AIB), the editor-in-chief of the Weekly Trust, Malam Kabiru A. Yusuf, was in Harare to cover the recent election in Zimbabwe. He reports that although, the ruling party, ZANU PF, won 62 of the 120 seats in parliament, the bigger loser paradoxically is Mr. Mugabe himself. The biggest loser in last week’s parliamentary election in Zimbabwe was not even a candidate at the polls. Indeed Comrade Robert Mugabe, first Prime Minister, then President of Zimbabwe since 1980, has two more years to go in his current presidential term. What is more? Even though he is 76 years old, he has been in power for 20 years, the constitution does not ban him from contesting for president come 2002.
However, all that might have changed as soon as the full results of the legislative election came in on June 27. That evening, a chastened Mugabe addressed the nation on radio and television. His party, ZANU PF barely beat the opposition MDC by five seats, securing 62 to MDCs 57. That the MDC, which is just 9 months old could so effectively challenge ZANU PF, which is about the only party most Zimbabweans had known all their lives, must have been shocking to Mugabe.
This is more so after a violent and bitter election campaign in which Mugabe and other ZANU PF leaders had called the MDC a party of stooges which was funded by white interests from both within and outside the country. In one heated election rally speech in the town of Masvingo, Mugabe said this of MDC’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai: Tsvangirai licked the whiteman’s sugar and felt it was so sweet that he sold out and said the whites are our cousins. He belongs to the people overseas because they have recruited him as their stooge. They have paid him to sell out his country and his people.
Well. the results showed that if MDC is a party of stooges, then there were millions of stooges among the urban elites who largely voted for the party. So in his post election speech, a sadder but wiser Mugabe toned down this rhetoric. Despite our different skin shades, ethnic backgrounds and political affiliations, we should all be united, he said after nearly tasting defeat. We should be united by the fact that we are all Zimbabweans and as children of Zimbabwe, we should aim for one goal-national development. That’s what we expect from the MPs. I as the head of state and government, hope that I will be working together with them as we help each other to give our people a new life, he said.
Educated Zimbabweans, however, be they teachers in the villages or bankers in the city, are of the overwhelming opinion that a new life is only possible with the exit of Mugabe and his close comrades. Whether Mugabe recognises this or not and takes the appropriate steps, it is clear that the excellent showing of the opposition marks a turning point in Zimbabwe’s politics. ZANU PF has seen its overwhelming majority of 117 directly elected seats in the last parliament (with only three MPs for the opposition) whittled down by almost half to 62.
What is remarkable about the MDCs showing is not just that the party is less than one year old. Other handicaps it faced included lack of access to state resources to finance its campaign (ZANU PF received about 65 million Zimbabwean dollars or about N150 million in the 2000 budget for its campaign). The state- controlled media also restricted access to publicity by the opposition, although to be fair, the opposition press and the international media more than made up for this. The most serious problem, one which all the foreign observer groups said had some impact on the election result, was the pre-election violence that made life difficult for MDC supporters. The intimidation and setting up of no-go areas in some rural areas such as parts of Midlands and Commercial Farming areas in the Mashonaland provinces were all aimed at blocking the MDC.
Rather belatedly the end of the story(?). We had a power cut for the whole afternoon ("essential maintenance") and were out for dinner (with Jeffery who will be known to many of those on the other end of this!) so I've only now got a chance to bring you up to date.
My friends from the CIO returned this morning including Mr,.Chitewe to whom I had been summoned. We had a meeting in front of the headmaster in which they again pressed the need for a private meeting without witnesses. I demurred and was again told I had nothing to fear - the President's Office was "the servant of the people" etc. Eventually the threats began to emerge - unless I agreed to meet them on their home ground they would request the Headmaster to suspend me, etc. I had no wish to place him in a potentially very awkward situation (I don't mind creating them for myself but draw the line at involving other people for whom I have both a liking and respect!) so eventually, with certain assurances such as that I could drive to their offices in my own car, I agreed to go with them and, in their presence, confirmed with the headmaster that I would be back in his office within the hour, failing which he would alert various people. Once they had left, I also phoned Charles Lazarus.
I was dealt with perfectly courteously: all the usual details were required and I was the asked how I had voted. The opportunity was irresistible so I told them that I thought the vote was secret but I'd hate them to believe I supported ZANU PF so I was prepared to admit to voting MDC.
We had a lively discussion on current politics, especially land acquisition. I agreed that redistribution was essential but demurred at present polices. Finally they got own to business and it all came down, as I had all along suspected, to things I had said and done at Milton. As I said in yesterday's instalment, I know that I have been in breach of Public Service regulations so really hadn't got a leg to stand on in one respect. When asked whether I taught politics I said not but that some politics were inevitable when teaching history - which was no doubt why Napoleon III banned the teaching of history at one stage. I said that current politics inevitably arose and admitted that I had indeed criticised the present government.
The school assembly which I had taken immediately prior to the election weekend which was also the school half-term was raised and I was asked whether I had made overt reference to the MDC. I had, of course! The school was in a very ebullient mood, not only the prospect of a long weekend but of the election, and MDC gestures (the raised open hand) had been apparent as the boys assembled. During the assembly one of the vocal groups (the Melodious Elephants!) had sung an Ndebele song that aroused great enthusiasm and a good many open hands so, responding to the mood(!), I had wished the boys a happy weekend and waved them goodbye.... with an open hand. The response was ecstatic but there are obviously ZANU moles (after all, the vote was only six or seven to one in Bulawayo!) and I was taxed with this. (I forbore to quite the "First Lady" in my defence.)
The upshot was an open warning that, unless I reformed my ways, I would be removed from my post and, rather more implicitly, the country. I was assured that my politics were my own business and that I could associate with and support whomsoever chose but that it had no business in the classroom. In one sense it's quite hard to argue: I'd be very unhappy if we were in England and Robin submitted to very left-wing opinions from his teachers... and "sauce for the goose"!
I pointed out that any reprimand should have come from my superiors, headmaster or regional director: "Ah, but the complaint was made to us." Quite so and presumably one of my Sixth Form (out of 29!) is an unreformed ZANU loyalist - we get more like Nazi Germany every day. I've no doubt that, were I to put the word around, I could find out who quite easily and the other 28 would make his remaining time at Milton less than comfortable - but, says he sententiously, that would be to adopt the ways of the ungodly. So I shall hold my peace and, to an extent, my tongue.
So a large black mark on my file for the present - but possible brownie points in about eighteen months' time!
Michael