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| Sir Ronald Sanders is a business executive and former Caribbean diplomat who publishes widely on small states in the global community. Reponses to: ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com |
The Sunday Times, UK
July 8, 2007
Hunger and
Aids kill a generation
Christina Lamb, Plumtree, southern
Zimbabwe
GRANDMOTHER Ndlolo Dube sits on the dusty ground outside her
mud-and-pole
hut and looks out on a land that has never seemed so dry and
unforgiving.
The field that was supposed to feed her and her four orphaned
grandchildren
is littered with dead broken maize stalks.
"No rain,"
she says, as she shows the half-full 50kg bag of maize that is
all the
family has harvested this year. It is the third year running that
the
harvest has failed, but this time is by far the worst. "It's just enough
to
last two or three weeks, then I don't know what we'll do."
At every hut,
every village, it is the same story. Plumtree and Figtree
sound as if they
should be verdant places but severe drought has left the
area, like much of
southern Zimbabwe, with 95% crop failure. People sit with
dazed expressions,
fuddled with hunger. The United Nations World Food
Programme estimates that
4m people will need food aid.
Shortages are no longer new in this country
where President Robert Mugabe's
violent land seizures have seen the
destruction of commercial farms that
provided work for millions and food for
the whole region. But this year they
come amid inflation estimated to have
reached 10,000-15,000%.
By the end of June prices were doubling daily.
Last week the government sent
in police and militia youths to force
shopkeepers to lower prices. Many
responded by locking their doors and
suspending business.
Dube has no idea how she and her family will survive
for the rest of the
year. "I have no cow, no goats, nothing," she
says.
When I ask how often they eat, she replies: "Morning and evening."
Surprised, I ask what they ate that morning. "Nothing," she says. And the
previous evening? "Nothing." It turns out that they often go for days
without eating.
Sometimes the children get so hungry they chew green
fruits from a tree
known as African chewing gum, even though they know they
will end up with
stomach ache.
Two of Dube's grandchildren -
10-year-old twins Kwenza Kele and Flatter -
take me with them to collect
water. They are smaller than my seven-year-old
back home. The water-hole has
a fence of twisted logs to prevent cows
defecating but it is green and
putrid water, topped with scum.
This year's maize harvest is expected to
be 500,000 tonnes, compared with
the 1.4m tonnes needed. But Pius Ncube, the
Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo,
believes the shortages will help Mugabe in
the run-up to elections next
March.
"The government is very happy
about the food situation as they know they can
use food to make people vote
for them again," he says. "They use every
advantage."
At the next
village, Grandmother Dedi Ndlovu is complaining about pain in
her legs. She
harvested just 20kg of maize for her nine grandchildren, eight
of whom are
orphans. "Not even half a bag," she says. "In the past we would
get six or
seven bags. Sometimes I think, what if I get sick and die? What
will happen
to these children?"
It is a while before I notice something even more
eerie than the impending
famine. These are villages of grandparents and
grandchildren. There is
nobody of my age. In a whole day we meet only one
person between the ages of
20 and 50.
"All the young people have
either died or gone," explains Pastor Raymond,
the local
clergyman.
Many have fallen victim to the lethal combination of Aids and
hunger. Others
are part of an exodus of 4m Zimbabweans forced for economic
and political
reasons to leave their country.
In the towns I have
noticed fewer people on the streets, but it is only in
these villages that
the figures are brought home. This is a country that has
lost an entire
generation.
Amid the breakdown of society - 20-hour power cuts, water
shortages,
collapse of the phone system - nobody I ask, whether government
official,
diplomat or aid worker, has any idea what the population of
Zimbabwe is any
more.
"That's the $25m question," says a US diplomat,
suggesting the figure may be
as low as 8m, instead of the 12m usually
cited.
In 15 years, life expectancy has fallen to 34 years for women and
37 for
men, by far the lowest in the world. What some call a silent genocide
has
left Zimbabwe with more orphans than anywhere else in the world - 1.4m
according to Unicef.
At Bulawayo's vast West Park cemetery, it is
easy to spot the recent
arrivals - a large plot freshly dug, with row after
row of graves, barely a
plank's width between them. The gravestones tell
their own story. All were
born in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Over on
the other side in the children's section is a line of tiny earth
mounds, the
graves of babies who have died in the past week.
At the edges of the
graveyard are odd areas of tossed earth. "People come in
at night and bury
their relatives secretly at the margins because they
cannot afford proper
burials," explains Pastor Useni Sibanda, who leads a
church in Bulawayo and
speaks for the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, an umbrella
grouping of church groups
and other civic organisations.
Those who can join burial clubs - macabre
savings groups where people in a
street or a workplace join together to pay
for each other's dead. Others
register sick relatives under false names at
hospitals, knowing they cannot
afford a funeral.
Nobody knows how
many have died of hunger. But doctors in Zimbabwe say the
population's
chronic malnutrition, combined with HIV, leads to the onset of
full-blown
Aids far faster than anywhere else in Africa.
Father Oskar Wermter, a
German Jesuit priest working in Mbare, Harare's
oldest township, has spent
37 years in Zimbabwe and says he has never seen
things so bad, even during
the liberation war.
"How do people survive in this situation?" he asks.
"The answer is many just
don't but you don't see them."
He cites the
case of Chipo Kurewa, a lively teacher in her forties whose
home was
bulldozed during Operation Murambatsvina (Drive out the Filth) in
which
700,000 people saw their houses and businesses demolished.
"After that,
she was in constant trouble, struggling to find work and
accommodation and
then diagnosed HIV-positive," says Wermter.
He took Kurewa to a centre to
get anti-retroviral drugs, but then she
disappeared. "One day I got a phone
call from Botswana. It was her - she'd
gone to find work. About six weeks
later she arrived in a terrible state. A
kind lady in Gaborone had put her
on a bus. But she had meningitis. Three
days later she was dead."
I
ask after Stella, one of his parishioners, who had taken me round Mbare 18
months ago to see those who lost their homes in Murambatsvina. I remembered
her flamboyant clothes and vivacious manner, despite the horror we were
seeing and the risks we were taking.
"Dead," he replies. "This is
becoming a land of the elderly and very young,
the unqualified and
under-qualified - in other words, the most vulnerable."
There are other
effects too. All the children I speak to are much older than
their size
would suggest, and a recent study found that more than one in
three people
in Harare suffers mental disorders. The main reasons were
inability to find
food and having belongings taken away by the authorities.
Zimbabwe is not
yielding photographs of children with stick limbs and flies
on their mouths,
the images we usually associate with famine in Africa.
Something more
sinister is under way, almost as if life were just draining
out of the
country.
At a shack selling firewood in Emakhandeni township, just
outside Bulawayo,
Sibanda stops to load up and says: "If the middle classes
have been so
pauperised that teachers are forced to become prostitutes to
feed their
family and use firewood because there's no more power, imagine
what's
happening to the most marginalised."
Inside the shack, a girl
of 15 lies dying on a bed, her blankets soiled and
life fading away. Her
lips are parched and her eyes flicker weakly at us.
The family do not even
ask for help. They know it is the same in every shack
in every township.
Besides, even if we got her to hospital, there would be
no drugs.
At
Mpilo hospital in Bulawayo, the Japanese-funded paediatric unit was
opened
in 2004 and is remarkably clean and modern. Inside there are numerous
empty
beds. Few can afford the bus fare to the hospital.
The only medicines
have been donated by a foreign aid agency. On the babies'
ward, none is
connected to a monitor and only two have drips, even in the
malnutrition
room.
By one cot sit a couple whose seven-month-old daughter desperately
needs
intestinal surgery, but who have been told they must buy a drip, which
they
cannot afford. "We had to borrow to pay the bus fare to get here," says
the
father as he watches his wife cradle the sick child.
There are
only two young nurses to staff the ward of 45 seriously ill
babies,
treating, cleaning and feeding them.
"Anyone that can go has left the
country," says one of the nurses, pointing
out that her monthly salary of
Z$3.2m (£4.50) barely covers her bus fares of
Z$120,000 a day. "I eat
nothing during my shift as I can't afford it."
The only reason she and
her colleague are still here, she says, is they are
newly qualified and the
government is withholding their diplomas. "They're
doing it deliberately to
stop us going."
There is no sign of any doctors. According to a Unicef
official, 50% of all
health posts in Zimbabwe are vacant and there are more
Zimbabwean nurses in
Manchester than in Bulawayo.
It is not just
doctors who are leaving. Over the past few years, the
University of Zimbabwe
has seen its number of lecturers fall from more than
1,200 to just over 600.
According to the Progressive Teachers Union of
Zimbabwe, more than 5,000
teachers left between January and April this year.
The magnitude of the
exodus becomes starkly clear across the border in South
Africa, to which the
majority of people flee. At the Central Methodist
Church in central
Johannesburg, Zimbabwean refugees are literally spilling
out onto the
road.
More than 3,000 sleep there every night, cramming the corridors and
steps,
each with a zipped bag containing all they could carry.
Yet
every person I talk to is a professional: accountants, bankers,
headmasters.
One was the clerk of the High Court - forced to flee, he says,
because he
witnessed the secret police interfering with ballot boxes during
a legal
challenge by the opposition to presidential elections.
Most have left
because the alternative was to starve. "We just couldn't
afford to feed our
families," says a group of teachers recently arrived from
a school in
Masvingo.
They have to leave the church by 7am every day and wander the
streets hoping
to pick up work as labourers or gardeners, or just begging.
One man earns
more in a day's gardening than he did in a month of teaching
science in
Zimbabwe.
Most of the refugees are men looking for money
to send back to their
families. But on the ground floor is a room packed
with women and children.
One woman, Joyce, sits watching her two-year-old
son and four-year-old
daughter scrape leftovers from someone's pan of sadza
(grain meal).
"My husband passed away and I couldn't get work in
Bulawayo," she says. "I
thought if we came to South Africa we might still
have hope of a life."
It was a hazardous journey, crossing the
crocodile-infested Limpopo river
with the two toddlers on her back. "But I
kept thinking there is nothing
left for us in Zimbabwe," she
says.
"The numbers have been going up dramatically this year," says
Bishop Paul
Verryn, who has fought off parishioners' protests to shelter the
Zimbabweans. "We used to see five or 10 arriving a day but for the last few
months it has been 20 or more. It's a cataclysmic collapse of a
country."
The Sunday Times, UK
July 8, 2007
Christina
Lamb
IT WAS 10 minutes after the time arranged for lunch with one of
President
Robert Mugabe's ministers and I had no idea whether the next
person through
the door would be him or someone from the Central
Intelligence Organisation
(CIO), Zimbabwe's feared secret police.
Not
only was I working without a permit - punishable with two years in
jail -
but I had also once been denounced by Mugabe's spokesman as an "enemy
of the
state" for my reporting.
The meeting was a risk for the minister, too.
But our go-between said he
wanted the world to know that some in the regime
were unhappy.
It had to be a trap, I thought. Then the minister walked
in.
"I've been reading your book [about Zimbabwe]," he said, "and the CIO
are
outside." Then he laughed.
It was not funny. Mugabe's prisons are
filthy, overcrowded and rife with
tuberculosis and Aids.
We looked at
the menus. Entrées started at Z$700,000 - two weeks' wages for
most
Zimbabwean people.
"Prices are crazy," I said. "Yes, we need to knock off
some more zeros," he
replied.
"It's because of our own policies. If
this were a company and Mugabe was
chief executive, he would have been fired
long ago."
I told him I had met many Zimbabwean professionals whose
salaries were less
than the bus fares to work. Surely the situation was not
sustainable?
"The question is, will we wake one morning to the need to
change or stay
blind and let change be forced upon us?" he
replied.
"We know we will be the first victims of any forced
change.
"What's keeping us going is remittances from Zimbabweans who left
the
country.
"Without those, 50% of the people who are struggling to
survive at the
moment would die."
However, when I asked whether he or
other ministers spoke out in cabinet
against Mugabe, he laughed
again.
"You outside are very naive. You have to realise that both the
cabinet and
the politburo [the supreme policy-making body of the ruling
Zanu-PF party]
all centre round one figure: Robert Mugabe.
"Look
where the cabinet came from - 80% or 90% were nobodies before. They've
made
everything because of him, got rich, got farms . . . They don't
consider
this a failure - to them it's an incredible success."
The Zimbabwean
newspapers were full of reports of a foiled coup attempt so I
asked about
threats from the military.
"Look, if it was real it wouldn't be all over
the paper," he replied.
"I wouldn't be surprised if those officers said
to be involved suddenly
disappear."
As the bill came, totalling
almost Z$4m (£10,000 according to the official
rate, about £5.80 at the
market rate), we returned to the economy.
"It's like a dam with the wall
about to crash in on us," he said.
"If we don't create diversionary
channels. the wall will come crashing in
and wash us all
away.
"That's enough, I think," he added, consulting his Rolex and
pulling out
several large bricks of bank notes.
Two days later I
heard that the general supposedly behind the coup had died
mysteriously when
his car hit a goods train.
Reuters
Sat Jul 7,
2007 11:12AM EDT
By Nelson Banya
HARARE, July 7 (Reuters) -
Zimbabwe police arrested 17 more business
executives for defying an official
price freeze, as the ruling party
endorsed the government's tough stance on
businesses, state media reported
on Saturday.
President Robert
Mugabe's government last week ordered prices of basic goods
and services
slashed by half and deployed a crack enforcement unit, which
has arrested
more than 200 business people for breaching the price controls.
The move,
which sparked panic buying from shoppers who rapidly emptied shop
shelves,
was taken after prices of many goods tripled within a week.
Inflation,
the highest in the world, has rocketed above 4,500 percent while
four in
five adult Zimbabweans are jobless.
The official Herald newspaper
reported on Saturday that 17 more top company
executives were arrested on
Friday in Harare and Bulawayo for offences
ranging from failing to display
prices to overcharging. Those arrested
include managers at fuel stations,
who were also ordered to cut prices.
Police spokesman Oliver Mandipaka
warned of a broader crackdown on business
people and black market vendors,
enjoying roaring trade as goods become
scarce in formal shops.
"Those
people who work in cahoots with economic saboteurs will have
themselves to
blame because our crack teams will be conducting sporadic
raids on all
individuals who sell basic commodities in front of shops and in
their
backyards at exorbitant prices," he said.
"POLITICAL GIMMICK"
The
leader of the main faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change,
Morgan Tsvangirai, said Mugabe's government had run out of ideas to
resolve
the economic crisis.
Addressing a rally in the working class suburb of
Dzivarasekwa in the
capital on Saturday, Tsvangirai said the price freeze
would compound
Zimbabwe's ecnomic woes.
"This is a political gimmick
for next year's election, but it is going to
backfire because more people
are going to lose jobs and they are going
without basic goods," Tsvangirai
said.
"What we expect are policies that ensure more jobs, more food and a
better
life for all."
Industry and International Trade Minister Obert
Mpofu, who ordered the price
freeze last week, told the Herald the ZANU-PF
central committee -- the
ruling party's policy-making body -- had adopted
plans for tighter price
measures.
On Friday, the government formally
issued a legal instrument for the price
freeze, which requires businesses to
seek the industry minister's approval
before raising prices.
Most
shops have run out of basic goods such as sugar, salt, bread and beef
as
shoppers rushed to stock up, fearing shortages as the price freeze takes
effect. Now the attention of bargain-hunters has turned to clothing shops,
which have also been ordered to cut their prices.
The country's
leading clothing retailer, South African-owned Edgars Stores
Limited,
announced on Saturday it had cut all prices by 50 percent,
triggering a
stampede at its outlets.
Mugabe, facing growing pressure from the crisis,
has accused firms of
raising prices as part of a plot to unseat him. The
83-year-old leader has
threatened to seize and nationalise foreign companies
he accuses of working
to sabotage the economy.
Mugabe, Zimbabwe's
sole ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, who
says he will seek
re-election in 2008, says the economy has been sabotaged
by Western foes,
led by Britain.
International Herald Tribune
The Associated PressPublished: July 7,
2007
HARARE, Zimbabwe: Almost two weeks after ordering sweeping price
cuts, the
Zimbabwean government announced a new law Saturday enabling it to
enforce
the reductions.
Stores shelves remained empty of corn meal,
bread, meat and other basic
foods after police and government inspectors
raided shops and businesses to
force them to slash prices of basic
commodities by around 50 percent.
Industry Minister Obert Mpofu issued an
official notice known as a statutory
instrument that made it an offense to
defy the edict on prices or fail to
display new price tags on goods on
display, state radio reported Saturday.
Police also announced the arrest
of 17 business leaders Friday for flouting
the government directive to lower
their prices, the radio said.
They included company directors and sales
managers, police spokesman Oliver
Mandipaka told the radio.
At least
200 businesses have already been charged for alleged price
violations and 40
market vendors were arrested for hoarding goods.
Mandipaka said some managers
had gone into hiding or taken vacation to avoid
police action against
them.
"We want to warn them we will pursue them up until they face the
full wrath
of the law," he said.
Some businessmen thought they could
"beat the system."
"This criminal habit will not go unchecked," Mandipaka
said.
Earlier, police warned goods would be seized and offenders
arrested, but
gave no indication of maximum penalties or jail terms that
could be applied.
Under previous powers given to a state appointed prices
and incomes
commission businessmen could face up to five years in jail if
convicted of
"economic sabotage."
President Robert Mugabe warned
manufacturers Friday not to defy the
government-ordered price cuts by
cutting production or their businesses
would be seized.
Hundreds of
war veterans and ruling party militiamen and loyalists turned
out at his
party headquarters.
"We say to factories, 'You must produce,'" Mugabe
told cheering militants,
many brandishing posters supporting the crackdown
on shops and businesses.
"If you don't we certainly will seize the
factories."
Mugabe urged the militants to report to authorities what he
called "wayward
Zimbabweans" either overcharging or stopping production in
efforts to thwart
attempts to revive the economy.
Speaking in the
local Shona language he asked the militants to be "the eyes
and ears" of the
authorities.
Some businesses have shut down, saying lowered prices
stopped their
operations being viable.
The government ordered the
price cuts in a bid to curb inflation and stop
profiteering and overcharging
by businesses. The falling prices caused
stampedes, panic buying and
near-riots by impoverished Zimbabweans.
At least two store managers were
hospitalized in Harare, one with a broken
jaw, when they tried to restrain
crowds grabbing reduced items from the
shelves.
Long lines of cars
waited at gas stations still selling scarce fuel Friday
after Mpofu ordered
the gasoline price halved. Most gas stations ran out of
supplies on
Saturday.
"It looks like the country will run dry in the next few days
and everything
could come to a standstill. It doesn't make sense," said one
fuel industry
executive. He asked not to be identified for fear of
retaliation from ruling
party militants.
Official inflation is
running at 4,500 percent, the highest in the world,
though independent
financial institutions estimate real inflation is closer
to 9,000
percent.
Reuters
Sat 7 Jul 2007,
15:32 GMT
HARARE, July 7 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe
said on
Saturday there was no need to create a new constitution, resisting
opposition demands for a new charter before elections next
year.
"President Robert Mugabe says the current constitution serves the
nation
well and there is no reason to change it," state radio said, citing
the
president at a meeting of his ruling ZANU-PF party.
Critics say
Mugabe -- 83 and Zimbabwe's sole ruler since independence from
Britain in
1980 -- has manipulated the existing constitution to tighten his
grip on
power.
The opposition has demanded a new draft before next year's polls,
in which
the veteran leader says he will run.
Mugabe's government has
amended the constitution adopted at independence 17
times and last month
proposed new changes to allow joint presidential and
parliamentary polls in
2008.
Critics say the move may allow give ZANU-PF, which dominates
parliament, a
free hand to pick Mugabe's successor and hurt mediation
efforts by South
Africa to help end a political crisis.
South African
President Thabo Mbeki was tasked last March by regional heads
to mediate
between Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC).
That followed sharply rising tensions after opposition leader
Morgan
Tsvangirai and dozens of other MDC members suffered serious injuries
after
being arrested by police at an aborted prayer rally in
Harare.
Mugabe accuses the MDC of being stooges of Zimbabwe's former
colonial power
Britain in an effort to oust his government, as punishment
for seizing and
redistributing white-owned commercial farms to landless
blacks.
The president has previously rejected calls for a new
constitution. Last
year, he told a group of church leaders pushing for
political reforms that
the current national charter was "sacrosanct".
africasia
HARARE, July 7 (AFP)
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Saturday
called a
government directive to halve prices of goods and services
"crooked"
economics, while police announced arrests for alleged price freeze
violators.
"(President Robert) Mugabe's economics is crooked,"
Tsvangirai told hundreds
of supporters at a rally in the populous
Dzivaresekwa suburb of Harare.
"The price cuts will not work amid the
current shortages," he said.
Tsvangirai's statements came as police
announced on Saturday that they had
arrested 17 company managers and 54
suspected foreign currency dealers in a
crackdown on price freeze violators
and black market dealers.
On Wednesday last week, Mugabe warned that his
government would seize and
nationalise firms he said were profiteering
excessively in a bid to incite
Zimbabweans to revolt against the
state.
Mugabe, the target of a limited range of Western sanctions after
allegations
he rigged his re-election five years ago, frequently blames the
country's
plight on Western critics and in particular the former colonial
power
Britain.
Zimbabwe is in the throes of an economic crisis
characterised by four-digit
inflation, shortages of basic foodstuffs like
cooking oil and sugar, and
massive unemployment.
©2007 AFP
The Telegraph
By
Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg
Last Updated: 1:37am BST
07/07/2007
The Zimbabwean regime and the opposition
Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) begin secret negotiations today, as the
country descends into
ever-worsening chaos.
The talks,
described as "substantive" and expected to be face-to-face,
are being
mediated by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and will take
place in
Pretoria.
This represents a last-ditch effort by South Africa, with
British
support, to find a negotiated solution to Zimbabwe's
crisis.
The country is in the throes of hyperinflation - officially
put at
4,530 per cent a year but estimated to be much higher - and a
collapsing
currency, with the regime ordering price cuts only to see
entirely
predictable panic-buying emptying the shops and businesses refusing
to sell
products at a loss.
At the insistence of the hosts,
a cloak of confidentiality has been
thrown over the discussions in South
Africa, but sources have disclosed
details of the agenda to The Daily
Telegraph.
With presidential elections due in March, the MDC is
demanding the
abolition of Zimbabwe's deeply flawed electoral roll,
notorious for
excluding huge numbers of likely opposition
supporters.
Instead it wants anyone to be able to vote on
production of a valid
national identity card, and for Zimbabweans abroad to
be allowed to
participate in the election.
The MDC is also
calling for an independent election commission to
replace the existing one,
which is appointed by a parliamentary committee
stuffed with Mr Mugabe's
allies, and for international observers to be
allowed to cover the
polls.
It also wants the repeal of the Public Order and Security
Act, which
bars public gatherings of more than four people without police
permission,
and for restrictions on the media to be lifted.
British sources say that easing President Robert Mugabe, 83, into
retirement
and ensuring that he is not a candidate in the next election is
the unspoken
objective of all parties, including the South Africans.
For its
part, the delegation from Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party wants the
MDC to
recognise his re-election in 2002, in a poll condemned by
international
observers. It also wants the opposition to accept the seizure
of white-owned
land, which triggered the economic collapse.
Zimbabwe is hugely
dependent on South Africa, not least for
electricity, and Mr Mbeki has long
been criticised in the West over his
policy of engaging Mr Mugabe. South
Africa described the 2002 poll as
"legitimate and credible".
But observers say Mr Mbeki has been humiliated by Mr Mugabe's repeated
failure to honour promises, and the South African leader, who must step down
in 2009, is concerned about his legacy. Equally, he wants to avoid being
embarrassed in front of southern African presidents, who all appointed him
as a mediator.
"I'm an optimist about this particular
initiative and the commitment
that Mbeki has shown," said Ivor Jenkins,
director of the Institute for
Democracy in South Africa.
"The
economic crisis is now so severe that Mbeki realises this is the
moment, the
final chance to save it all. He realises political
reconstruction is first
required, and the sooner that project can start,
particularly in his time,
then he can lay claim to it. That's why his
commitment is quite
high."
Whether Mr Mugabe and Zanu-PF stick to any deal - and
whether the MDC,
which is split into two factions and torn by infighting,
can build on it -
remains to be seen.
But Sten Rylander,
Sweden's ambassador to Zimbabwe, added: "South
Africa is engaged. It must be
possible to lead Zimbabwe into a better
future."
The Star
July 07, 2007
Edition 1
Foster Dongozi
Sixty percent of Zimbabwe's wildlife has
been wiped out through rampant
poaching and organised plunder by newly
resettled farmers and cartels headed
by powerful politicians,
conservationists said.
Johnny Rodrigues, chairperson of the Zimbabwe
Conservation Task Force, told
The Standard newspaper that traditionally
respected hunting seasons and
quotas had been ignored, resulting in
uncontrolled hunting throughout the
year.
The task force is a
nongovernmental organisation that monitors wildlife
populations in the
country.
"In the past," said Rodrigues, "the hunting season ran from
April to October
and the breeding period would be from November to March to
give female
animals an opportunity to breed and raise their young. Now all
the hunting
ethics have been thrown out through the window as people are
hunting
throughout the year."
Hunting ethics require hunters not to
shoot female animals in order to
ensure the species continue to reproduce.
That has now been abandoned in
order to raise as much foreign currency as
possible from mainly foreign big
game hunters.
Players in the
wildlife industry were not available for comment as they were
attending the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
(Cites) in the
Netherlands. But Information and Publicity Minister
Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said
the statements from the environmental activists were
designed to influence
the decision in which Zimbabwe wants to be allowed to
trade in
ivory.
"They are just being alarmist and that is not what we want,"
Ndlovu said.
"Of course, we can never have a perfect set-up where there are
no poachers."
Concession holders were also over-hunting instead of
adhering to prescribed
quotas, Rodrigues said.
As a result of the
plundering of wildlife, many Zimbabwean animals may soon
join the list of
endangered species, among them the hippopotamus, leopard
and roan antelope.
The lion, python and the blue duiker were already on the
list of endangered
animals.
"In Hwange National Park, which used to have a good lion
population,"
Rodrigues said, "there are only 22 male lions left and 200
females. The lion
population has been decimated in part as a result of
concession holders who
allow their clients to hunt the lions in the national
park, then drag them
out and claim to have shot them inside the
concessions."
Concession holders on the borders of game parks and their
clients are only
supposed to shoot animals that stray into their areas. He
said the lions
were popular with big game hunters because of their mane. "If
the hunting is
properly controlled and ethics adhered to, we would not have
reached the
stage where we have such a dangerously low number of the big
cats."
Rodrigues said with every male lion that was killed, a new lion
would take
over the pride of females. "The negative effect of that is that
when a new
male takes over a pride of females, he kills all the cubs in
order to
establish his dominance and start producing his own cubs. And if
that
happens over several months, the lion population will be hunted into
extinction in Hwange National Park and other places where that is
happening."
In Hwange National Park, rogue concession holders were
accused of chasing
animals into their concessions, where they were massacred
by the hunters,
waiting with their guns. As a result of unethical hunting, a
lot of young
elephants whose mothers had been mowed down with guns had died,
while the
lucky ones were adopted and raised by their
families.
Rodrigues said before the land reform exercise, 60% of the
wildlife
population in Zimbabwe was found on game farms and conservancies,
while the
rest were in national parks and game reserves.
But now,
only the Save Conservancy - out of a total of 15 - had some
wildlife, while
98% of game on the other conservancies had been wiped out
through poaching
and illegal hunting. Land-hungry Zimbabweans resettled on
conservancies
teeming with wildlife resorted to poaching game for
consumption and for
resale.
Rodrigues said the already endangered rhino population was under
fresh
threat as the population was being systematically depleted through
organised
crime in which prominent members of society had been fingered.
Elephants
were also being randomly shot under the guise of providing meat
during
national gatherings, although the main aim was for the
ivory.
"In the last five years, the black rhino population at Matusadonha
Park has
been reduced from 40 to just eight, while at one conservancy in the
Midlands
the black rhino population had plummeted from 54 to 21. At Gaulays
Ranch
near Bulawayo, from an original 52, only 26 of the animals were alive
and
had been translocated to Bubi Ranch, while four rotting carcasses
without
their horns were discovered.
Rodrigues said during the recent
independence celebrations, 100 elephants
had been slaughtered, allegedly to
provide meat for merrymakers, although
their tusks could have been the prime
targets. Nothing had been said about
the whereabouts of their giant
tusks.
.. More information on the elephants from www.savetheelephants.org -
Zimbabwe Standard
|
| Sir Ronald Sanders is a business executive and former Caribbean diplomat who publishes widely on small states in the global community. Reponses to: ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com |
Business Report
July 7,
2007
Harare - Manufacturers in Zimbabwe who cease production of basic
commodities
as a result of government-imposed price controls will be
nationalised,
President Robert Mugabe warned on Friday.
Shelves in
stores throughout Zimbabwe have been bereft of basic goods in the
last few
days after producers of basics such as bread and cooking oil
reacted to the
government's order to freeze prices by simply ceasing
production.
But
in a speech to students in Harare, Mugabe denied that the price freeze
would
prove a flop and accused manufacturers who claim that production is no
longer viable of being part of a Western plot to topple his
government.
"We are saying to all factory owners you must produce,"
Mugabe, said to the
applause of supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF party in
the capital.
"If you don't produce, we certainly will seize the
factories."
On Wednesday last week, Mugabe warned that his government
would seize and
nationalise firms he said were profiteering excessively in a
bid to incite
Zimbabweans to revolt against the state.
The following
day, the government ordered a blanket freeze on the prices of
all goods and
services, previously limited to essential products, saying
prices could only
be raised with government approval.
Since then however, supermarkets
have run dry of essential products although
they remain widely available on
the black market at vastly higher prices
than that ordered by the
government.
Zimbabwe's economy is in a state of virtual collapse, with
the government
failing to reverse an upswing in inflation which is now
widely thought to be
way above the 5 000 percent, the highest in the
world.
Mugabe, the target of a limited range of Western sanctions after
allegations
he rigged his re-election five years ago, frequently blames the
country's
plight on Western critics and in particular the former colonial
power
Britain.
Domestic opponents are frequently painted as nothing
more than puppets of
Britain, a charge Mugabe renewed on
Friday.
"What we have seen is that some (manufacturers) were growing
greedy at the
expense of the majority while some had been recruited by the
British and
agreed to cause turmoil," Mugabe said.
He said the
British having realised that they failed to stop the land reform
"...they
thought if they could impoverish the masses through price increases
they
might unseat Mugabe's government.
"They planted their people and bought
some of our people here. We will not
allow people to be bought." - Sapa-AFP
Arab News, Saudi Arabia
7 July 2007
There
are clear signs that South Africa is running out of patience with
neighboring Zimbabwe as that country's currency goes into free fall and the
flow of refugees escaping to South Africa, already estimated at some three
million, threatens to grow. These exiles are fleeing not only the virtually
impossible task of surviving in a wrecked economy but also the increasing
violence with which the administration of President Robert Mugabe is
handling popular protests and those who lead it. Two respected Africans have
recently spoken out, one in support of Mugabe and one against him. Kenneth
Kaunda, the former president of Zambia launched a defense of the Zimbabwean
president saying that he should not be demonized and that his critics did
not understand the long guerrilla struggle he and his Zanu-PF party had lead
against colonial oppression. By contrast this week, a leading Zimbabwean
prelate, the Roman Catholic Bishop Pius Ncube has called for foreign powers
to intervene to overthrow Mugabe.
Both men are profoundly wrong.
Kaunda's apologist argument is specious. Many
former freedom fighters have
turned into competent peacetime politicians.
Robert Mugabe is however not
one of them. In the 27 years since independence
he has run the country and
through a mix of incompetence and corruption has
indeed run it into the
ground and had done so even before the outside world
began to apply
sanctions, in protest at fixed elections and crushing of
political
opponents. His refusal to acknowledge his failure is worsened by
his
intolerance of dissent. Bishop Ncube's call for outside intervention is
arguably more dangerous, since many will listen to him too. South Africa
could probably send in troops and bring about regime change within hours.
But it rightly rejects this option.
It is for the Zimbabweans to
solve their crisis. Since peaceful public
protest has been ruthlessly
suppressed, other methods must be used,
including strikes and
noncooperation, which may well have the effect of
sabotaging the last feeble
legs on which the economy totters. Even the mass
of Mugabe's supporters is
suffering the effects of his incompetence. It is
only the top-level cronies
with dollars to spend on the smuggled necessities
of life who are surviving
the economic melt down. Zanu-PF's once
unquestioning and largely tribal
support for the administration will not
survive when its members realize
their once privileged economic position has
collapsed.
Outsiders,
particularly South Africa, should only be intervening in two
ways. The first
is to continue to pressure the Mugabe regime to quit and
hold proper
elections for a government that can start the massive task of
economic
recovery. The second is to give whatever humanitarian support and
aid is
possible, without in any way bolstering the government in Harare.
South
Africa is clearly feeling the burden of supporting Zimbabweans who
have fled
to its soil. The rich West can ease that load by helping feed and
shelter
these unfortunate people. But this must be all. Just as there are no
excuses
for the economically illiterate Mugabe regime, so there is also no
excuse
for outside intervention to overthrow it.
From SW Radio Africa, 28 June
By Violet Gonda
It has emerged that
Joseph Mwale, the notorious CIO agent who has been on
the run from law since
2000 for his alleged role in the murder of two MDC
activists, is working at
the Zimbabwe embassy in Lusaka. According to The
Zimbabwe Times website:
"Mwale's posting in Lusaka effectively scuttles
efforts to bring the much
feared intelligence operative to book for the
alleged gruesome murder of
Talent Mabika and Tichaona Chiminya." This is
despite the Attorney General's
office ordering the immediate arrest of
Mwale, for the assassination of the
two MDC activists who were brutally
murdered while campaigning for MDC
president Morgan Tsvangirai during the
2000 Parliamentary elections. Defence
Lawyer Sheila Jarvis said: "If he is
in fact in Zambia, I would assume the
Zambians are either totally unaware of
the story and unaware of the identity
of Mwale. In other words he must have
been given a new identity." She said
the African Union Charter condemns
political assassination in any form and
impunity in any way. Jarvis added:
"I can't imagine that the Zambian
government would be happy with a situation
where they were seen to be
harbouring somebody accused of political
assassinations." Chiminya was
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's election
agent whilst Mabika was a
young opposition supporter. The two were set on
fire after being beaten with
iron bars and other weapons at Murambinda,
Buhera North on April 15
2000.
Defence lawyers say the police had been present during the
assassinations
and despite several attempts to bring the principle offender
Mwale to court
the police have made no effort and in fact allowed him to
roam free. The
facts regarding the killings were widely reported but nothing
has ever been
done to bring Mwale to book, despite the strong evidence
against him. He was
known to be an official in the President's office. Part
of a legal document
written by Jarvis to the Attorney General's Office in
2006 read: "Surely
using a state-issued AK rifle to intercept his victims
and bludgeon them
unconscious before burning them alive was aggravating? Yet
it is known he
was promoted after the killings, and reportedly put in charge
of the
President's Office for Manicaland Province." According to newspaper
reports
Levison Chikafu, a senior officer in the AG's office in Manicaland,
ordered
the police to present Mwale's docket to their offices on or before 6
October
2006 but have not received a progress report to date. It's reported
the
docket disappeared from the police station. The opposition and some
Mutare
residents say they used to see Mwale around Zanu PF offices in
Mutare, even
though there was a warrant for his arrest. Lawyers say there
cannot not be a
trial until Mwale is apprehended and is brought to court
with the other two
suspects who were granted bail. Mwale has led a very busy
life since 2000
including helping police officers and war veterans raid and
invade
Charleswood farm owned by opposition official Roy Bennett.
http://www.cathybuckle.com/thisweek.shtml
Saturday
7th July 2007
Dear Family and Friends,
Zimbabwe has been engulfed in a
macabre and tragic frenzy this week and
frankly, it beggars belief. Across
the country what has been called a
"Taskforce" has been unleashed by the
government to force shop owners and
businesses to cut their prices by 50%.
The price cut enforcers are army men
in camouflage clothes, police in
uniform and large numbers of youth
militia.They go from shop to shop and
simply pick on items they want reduced
: SLASH THAT PRICE, is the phrase we
are hearing again and again and then
products have to be sold for less than
they were purchased for. Shop owners
who refuse to cut the prices face
arrest and having their goods seized. Some
have been assaulted, others had
their premises trashed and windows smashed.
The result of it all,
inevitably, is rapid collapse and many goods and foods
have now become
completely unavailable including all the staples which were
already
difficult to find such as flour, oil, sugar, salt and maize meal.
Joining
the list now are most other normal household products in daily use
such as
soap, candles, matches, milk, eggs, margarine, rice, bread and the
list
grows longer by the hour and day. As the prices are ordered down hordes
of
people with bagfuls of money swarm behind and buy up all the stocks.
Shops
are displaying signs announcing that only one of each item may be
purchased
but entire gangs are moving around in dozens and just cleaning
everything
out.
This week in my home town, all types of meat have become completely
unavailable as butchers were ordered to sell for less than half the price
they had paid to abattoirs. One supermarket in the centre of the town was
empty of all goods by mid week, another two were not far behind - both
saying they expected to be out of business in the next few days - a week at
most. In both of these outlets there were aisle after aisle of completely
empty shelves. It was heartbreaking to see pensioners and desperately poor
people looking for bargains but finding none and then looking for basics and
finding none of those either.
Outside a major wholesaler, groups of
young men stood around waiting for the
"militia taskforce" to arrive so that
they could buy up everything as the
prices were slashed. The car park was
nearly full of luxury vehicles -
pajero's, twin cabs, SUV's. even a Lexus -
all filled with men talking
incessantly on cellphones and women in tight
jeans and artificial hair -
their vehicles already bulging with 'slashed
price' goods, many pulling
trailers also stuffed to overflowing.
I
went to one almost empty supermarket and stopped near a young policeman in
a
pick up truck without number plates that was loaded to the hilt with
'slashed price' goods. It was a bitterly cold morning and a barefoot and
slightly retarded man was sitting on the tar shaking and shivering with
cold. He stretched his hands up to the policeman and said: "Chingwa"
(Bread). The policeman ignored him and turned away, calling out cheerfully
to another young policeman, also in uniform, who was staggering out with
more booty. Again the shivering and barefoot man asked for bread but they
both ignored him. I could not stop tears filling my eyes and although I had
virtually nothing left I bent down and folded a note into his hand; he
clapped his hands in thanks and as I stood up I caught the eye of the young
policeman. There was no compassion or empathy there, just arrogance. For a
moment I remembered how it felt after the farmers and their workers had been
thrown off and someone had helped me when I was utterly desperate. He had
said to me: There but for the grace of God go I. Now there are so many more
in that place of need.
All week as the situation has deteriorated
people have been comparing what
is happening now to shops and businesses
with what happened to farms. A huge
crisis seems just a few days or perhaps
a couple of weeks away, as stocks
dwindle, warehouses empty and we simply
run out of food. As I write this
letter the government are continuing to
applaud the price cuts and say they
will take over the businesses that close
down.
Please keep the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans, particularly the
old, sick,
handicapped, frail and unemployed in your prayers in this most
shocking
situation.
Until next week, with love, cathy
East African Standard, Kenya
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By
Amos Kareithi
The Standard Group Limited has entered into negotiations
with a leading
African media company, South African Broadcasting Corporation
(SABC), for a
strategic partnership. On Friday, SABC Managing Director Dr
Snuki Zikalala
met with The Standard Group Chief Operating Officer, Mr Paul
Wanyagah at the
KTN offices in Nairobi.
The Group's Editorial
Director, Mr Kwendo Opanga and KTN's Managing Editor,
Mr Katua Nzile,
attended the discussions. Zikalala said his organisation was
in the process
of rolling out a Pan African News channel, which will reduce
over reliance
on major international news organisations that depended on
parachute
journalism.
"Africa has been portrayed as a dark continent that is
plagued by war and
disasters. We want to be an alternative voice," said
Zikalala.
He pointed out that some of the media organisations have
distorted Africa's
image and filed stories from countries where they had no
reporters.
"We are better-placed to cover Zimbabwe than CNN or BBC who
have no
journalists there. It is time Africa shed off the colonial mentality
of over
dependence on foreigners for news," he said.
The new channel,
whose testing starts today, targets four million viewers
across the
continent and will open bureaux in Africa and in the Diaspora.
Mens News Daily
I hope nobody thinks
that next week will be business as usual. This week the
private sector has
gradually wound down its operations. The retail sector -
most retailers
carry stock for a month approximately, are the last to shut
down but already
you can see empty shelves and shortages of all the fast
moving basic items
are now widespread.
Butcheries and bakeries that work on stock levels of
about a week are
already closed as their stocks ran out. The same with
filling stations.
Manufacturers must work with quite significant stock
levels - especially of
imported items and they will run these down and then
close unless there is a
U-turn on the part of the government and new
directives which are half
reasonable.
There are no signs as yet as to
what the State will do when this shutdown
occurs. But all that we are seeing
and hearing right now are threats and an
insistence that this situation is
going to be maintained for some time.
The most immediate problem is the
very basics - fuel for transport and the
essential foods, maize meal, rice,
bread, meat and milk. By Monday all of
these will be virtually unobtainable.
Farmers with pigs and poultry are
pondering what to do with their animals as
they run out of stock feed, dairy
farmers also face huge problems as they
cannot pay their feed bills and must
start winding down - how do you tell a
cow in milk, used to being milked
three times a day, that she must stop
producing?
Hundreds of thousands of workers and non-formal sector
businesspersons are
being faced with no work and are being forced to stay
home - at present on
full pay, but in a few weeks what then? There is no law
to turn to; there
are no political leaders to go to with any sort of sense
and authority. We
are in the hands of a madman who has nothing to lose but
his life and has
his back to the wall and is using the only tools that he
knows to try and
stay afloat while the country drowns.
How will the
average Zimbabwean respond? Friends of mine are doing a day
trip to
Francistown in Botswana - just 200 kilometers away, today. They will
buy
what they need for next week and return. A few will do the same. Others
are
going on holiday, unable to stand the specter of seeing all that they
have
built up over the past decades swept away. They are the lucky ones -
what
about the rest?
There is only one way out and that is across the Limpopo.
I must warn South
Africa that they will now face a huge upsurge in economic
refugees and they
had better brace themselves for that if nothing effective
is done to halt
this madness. I mean hundreds of thousands of new,
desperate, hungry
Zimbabweans flooding in and disappearing into the vast
urban slums that
surround all South African cities.
The alternative is
a military coup led by the junior officers with the
compliance of some in
the ruling Party who see that this situation is not
sustainable and that it
is creating a regional crisis of substantial
proportions. Such an event
would close the door to the SADC process under
way today in South Africa and
plunge the country and the region into a huge
political crisis that would
require military intervention. Am I being
alarmist? I do not think so. The
actions of this rogue regime in the past
week have been enough to tip us
over and into a state of crisis we have
never faced
before.
Irreparable damage is being done to the country and if this is
not stopped
in its tracks by immediate and radical measures taken by
regional
governments very serious consequences are going to
follow.
The humanitarian and economic crisis that is about to break out
in Zimbabwe
is simply staggering and certainly way beyond the capacity of
the country to
handle on its own.
Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 7th July
2007
Ekklesia
By Ecumenical News International
7 Jul 2007
An alliance of
southern African Christian organizations has called for the
African Union
and other key groupings on the continent to intervene to stop
human rights
violations allegedly being perpetrated on Zimbabweans by the
country's
government - writes Takesure Matarise from Harare (ENI).
"We note with
sadness that, since 2000, Zimbabweans have suffered gross
human rights
abuses," the alliance, known as the Regional Faith-Based Joint
Initiative,
said in a 5 July 2007 statement.
It added, "We appeal to the Southern
Africa Development Community, African
Union and Pan-African Parliament to
hear the urgent plea and cry of the
suffering Zimbabwean people and to act
accordingly and urgently."
In 2000 and 2005, President Robert Mugabe's
ruling Zanu-PF party won general
elections in which it registered huge
losses in urban areas. Human rights
organizations have since alleged
widespread reprisals against urban
dwellers.
The alliance is made up
of the Inter-Regional Meeting of Bishops in Southern
Africa, the Association
of Evangelicals in Africa - Ethics, Peace and
Justice Commission, and the
Ecumenical Documentation and Information Centre
in Southern Africa. The
alliance says it is working to promote solutions to
the deteriorating
socio-economic and political situation in Zimbabwe.
"We urge the
Zimbabwean government to ensure that the people of Zimbabwe
have access to
their basic rights of food, water, housing and education,"
the alliance said
in its statement.
More than 80 percent of Zimbabwe's 13 million people
are unemployed, and the
annual inflation rate is currently estimated at 10
000 percent and rising.
"Life expectancy has moved from 55 years to about
34 years over more than 20
years of misrule," the alliance stated. "The
health delivery system has
totally collapsed. It is also disheartening to
note that Zimbabwe has moved
from being the regional bread basket to the
region's foremost beggar," the
group added.
A United Nations special
envoy sent to Zimbabwe in 2005 estimated that more
than 700,000 urban
dwellers were left homeless in a government campaign
called "Operation
Murambatsvina", which means "Operation Drive Out Trash" in
Shona, the
language spoken by the majority of Zimbabweans.
The government said the
operation was a slum-clearance exercise intended to
rid Zimbabwe of criminal
elements. Opposition politicians, however,
described it as retribution
against the urban population for not supporting
Zanu-PF in parliamentary
elections.
[With grateful acknowledgements to ENI. Ecumenical News
International is
jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the
Lutheran World
Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the
Conference of
European Churches]