IOL
New Zimbabwe land shocker
June 09 2004 at
01:35AM
By Tony Weaver and Basildon Peta
In what has been
described as "the end of the end" for Zimbabwe's wildlife,
President Robert
Mugabe's government has announced it is to nationalise all
wildlife
conservancies and productive farm land.
In an interview with the
state-owned Herald newspaper, the Minister of
Special Affairs in the Office
of the President in charge of lands, land
reform and resettlement, John
Nkomo, said the government wanted to abolish
all title deed
holdings.
"In the end all land will be state land and there will be no
such thing
called private land."
Title deeds are to be replaced with
99-year leases for farm land.
But, in a move that has sent shockwaves
through the community of
conservationists, who have been fairly immune to
land grabs because of their
importance to the economy, leases on nationalised
conservancies are to be
limited to 25 years.
This would open the
"lucrative" game sector to "many more people", Nkomo
said.
Eddie
Cross, finance spokesperson for the opposition Movement for
Democratic
Change, told the Cape Times by email "this will mark the end of
private
conservation in Zimbabwe".
"The majority of the conservancies
are foreign-owned and therefore protected
by investment guarantee agreements
with foreign governments. French, German,
American and British interests are
involved, as are several South African
investors. These people have bought
into these conservancies with
certificates of 'no interest' by the state (and
have) made huge investments
in infrastructure and in wildlife."
At
stake were hunting and ecotourism revenues of around $50-million
(about
R300-million) a year, investment inflows of around $6-million
(about
R36-milion) a year and the "survival of certain species that have
virtually
been wiped out in other areas".
Cross alleged that
"indigenous participation", as mentioned by Nkomo, did
not mean peasants
participating in conservation, but "selected Zanu-PF
officials and others
connected with the Mugabe regime".
Zimbabwe's government has quietly
accelerated the seizure of commercial
farms, despite assurances by Mugabe
that this had ended. At the weekend, the
government gazetted 259 more farms
for seizure, bringing to 918 the number
listed since January for compulsory
acquisition. Another 245 farms have been
acquired since January.
Of a
long list of farms gazetted since April, most are in mainly game
conservancy
areas.
Nkomo has advised private landowners to surrender their land
immediately. He
said the process of acquiring it under the Land Acquisition
Act was too
involved and no longer necessary in view of the move to
nationalise all
land.
"The state should not be made to waste time and
money on acquisitions," he
said.
The Cape Times spoke to a number of
leading Zimbabwean conservationists,
several of them involved in the
conservancy movement, which protects vast
wildlife areas outside the national
parks. None was prepared to be named
because, as one put it, "the climate of
fear here now is all-pervasive -
this is the end of the end for Zimbabwe's
wildlife".
Johnny Rodrigues, outspoken chairperson of the Zimbabwe
Conservation Task
Force, was the only conservationist prepared to speak on
the record.
"The period of 25 years is ridiculous. It will take 15 to 25
years just to
get the wildlife to recover. The wildlife situation is
terrible, it really
is disastrous."
"The army is involved in a lot of
the poaching. We are getting reports of
(soldiers) using landmines to kill
hippos for meat near Binga (on Lake
Kariba). There are trophy-hunters coming
in with no legal quotas. Three
Americans recently shot 38 trophies without
proper permits."
Rodrigues said he and others suspected wildlife areas
had not been earmarked
before because of international sensitivity about
conservation.
"Now the quickest way left to get rich is through wildlife
- everyone's
saying that's where the money is, let's go the whole hog and
take the lot.
That's the mood in Zimbabwe: get rich as fast as possible. All
the wildlife
people need to get together fast, to preserve what we have left
before it's
too late."
Another leading conservationist, a pioneer of
the conservancy movement,
said: "I don't think I can take it any
more.
"This is the end."
.. This article was originally
published on page 1 of The Cape Times on
June 09, 2004
New Zimbabwe
Mugabe spends $200m on new fighter
jets
THE OLD: THE
F-7 |
THE NEW:
The FC-1 |
|
By Clemence Manyukwe, Staff Reporter
Last updated: 06/10/2004 06:43:26 Last updated: 06/09/2004 13:42:47
ZIMBABWE has ploughed an estimated US$200m into the purchase of 12 new
fighter jets and military vehicles from China, New Zimbabwe.com has been
told.
The government's acquisition of the military hardware
is set to cause a stink with critics led by the main opposition Movement for
Democratic Change. The MDC has already queried the defence budget -- the biggest
in the current financial year -- which it says is unjustifiable in peace
time.
Due to sanctions imposed on President Robert Mugabe's
regime, Zimbabwe's current fleet of European-made fighter jets is said to be
crippled by a critical shortage of spares which has forced the government to
look to China and the Far East.
Although the government has refused to disclose the
type of aircraft being bought in the secret deal covered by the 1989 legal
provision which excludes the acquisition of key military equipment from going
through a tender board or to be advertised, sources tell New Zimbabwe.com the
aircraft include the FC-1 (Fighter China 1), developed recently to replace the
Chengdu F-7. The cost of each plane is US$20m.
The FC-1 was designed by China to replace the F-7
which has been widely criticised by military experts. Pakistan, which like
Zimbabwe was using the F-7 is China's biggest customer for the FC-1.
Apart from the 12 jets, Zimbabwe has also put an
order for 100 military vehicles. At least six of the jets are expected to be
delivered any time this week, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of
Defence, Trust Maphosa told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Defence and
Home Affairs.
It is not clear where the funding for the new
aircraft is coming from as in the current budget, announced by government in
November last year, the army was allocated $815, 49 billion (about US$154
million) with 69 percent expected to be chewed by salaries and the rest going to
operations.
Mt Darwin MP Savior Kasukuwere queried the manner in
which the purchase of military equipment had by-passed the State Procurement
Board, a move he said might result in the army buying equipment which may be
expensive, but having a short life span.
Maphosa told the parliamentary committee that the
decision to buy the military hardware from China was a political decision after
the force had encountered problems in procuring spare parts for equipment bought
in Western Europe as a result of European Union sanctions imposed against
President Mugabe's regime.
Zimbabwe has one of the most formidable
defence forces in Africa, whose highlight after the country’s independence
include assisting the Mozambican government subdue the former rebel Renamo in
the 1980s and repelling invasion forces who were threatening to overrun the DRC
capital, Kinshasa in 1998.
The Air Force of Zimbabwe has two bases in Manyame
(near Harare) and Thornhill (Gweru) with personnel estimated at about 5 000 in
1999. Currently, the Air Force has the Chengdu F-7 fighter jet, British-made
Hawker Hunters and recently demonstrated newly-acquired Russian-made MiG-23 jets
and Mi-35 helicopter gunships, armed for attacking targets on the ground,
especially with automatic gunfire, but often also with rockets and/or
missiles.
Additional reporting Daily Mirror
<9 June
2004
TALKING
POINTS FOR PRESIDENT MORGAN TSVANGIRAI AT A PRESS CONFERENCE AT HARVEST HOUSE,
HARARE
1.
Parliamentary Elections 2005
The
focus of the MDC since our national conference in December last year is on the
Parliamentary election in 2005. We are preparing for those elections. At the
centre of our campaign today is the need to raise
Zimbabwe’s
electoral standards to those of the SADC region. Our campaign is divided into
two parts: national and international.
The
national campaign involves:
o
being
part of a broad alliance of all democratic forces representing all shades of
political opinion in Zimbabwe – political parties, civil society, advocacy
groups, traditional structures and other
stakeholders;
o
mobilizing
our party structures to extend the campaign for a free and fair election –
meetings with all elected officials in the party at various levels and designing
specific campaign tasks for every individual party member
everywhere;
o
engaging
all community leaders at every level to fight violence and to allow for free
political activity in their areas;
o
publicizing
the five consolidated demands for a free and fair election.
The
demands are:
o
Restore the rule of law. All forms
of political violence must end. Disband the Zanu PF youth militias. The police
and security forces must be impartial in the conduct of their duties. In
addition, Zimbabwe needs a special court to hear and
resolve electoral disputes speedily. We challenged the election results in 37
constituencies after the 2000 Parliamentary election. Some of the petitions
remain heard in our courts to this day, a few months before the end of the life
of that Parliament.
o
Restore Basic Freedoms and Rights.
We are asking the regime to repeal those aspects of the Public Order and
Security Act and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA)
that curtail personal freedoms of the people.
o
Establish an Independent Electoral
Commission (IEC). Elections are very
crucial to any country. They are basic right. We risk perpetuating our misery if
we allow Zanu PF to play games with our electoral system. Because of our
previous experience, the management and implementation of our elections muse
cease to be the sole prerogative of the Registrar General’s office. That office
has failed the nation on numerous occasions. We need an impartial body to run
our elections.
o
Restore Public Confidence in the
Electoral Process. This is a crucial matter. Zimbabweans are fast losing faith
in elections because of mistrust. We need a clean and accurate voters roll. The
roll must be freely available to interested persons and to all political
parties. People must vote in a single day; the counting of votes must take place
at the polling stations immediately after voting
ends.
o
Restore the Secrecy of the Ballot.
We need a set of confidence-building measures to resuscitate the sanctity of
elections and the part they play in national development. Voting must take place
in atmosphere that ensures total secrecy. We must change our ballot boxes. We
need to use translucent plastic ballot boxes of secure, single piece
construction. The practice of forcing chiefs and village heads to line up with
their subjects, before voting, outside polling stations must
stop.
The
International campaign:
The
international campaign involves:
n
engaging SADC governments and
political parties. What we are telling them is that the Zimbabwean crisis will
worsen unless the region takes a firm position on the conduct of elections in
this country. What we are telling them is that our electoral standards are still
very backward and we need their assistance in upgrading
them.
n
engaging civil society in SADC and
beyond. We are saying no-one should come to monitor Zimbabwean elections until
they are conducted in accordance with the SADC norms and standards. There must
never be a repeat of the experience of the last five years where Zimbabwean
elections cause division among civil society and governments in
Africa and beyond.
n
Apart from our regular interaction
with diplomats, several missions are going into the region with this
message.
v
All we are asking Mugabe and Zanu
PF to do is to ensure that Zimbabwe has a cleaner electoral
environment by changing the management system of our elections.
v
The people seek the electoral
administrative safeguards to circumvent the violence that was unleashed since
February 2000 to this day. We need a safe, free and fair election to avoid the
subversion of democratic practices and procedures through unlawful political
directives.
v
We realise that time is short. To
put together an Independent Electoral Commission and to get to work effectively
may require more time and resources.
v
We are prepared to recommend that
the election be postponed to make way for such an important institution to set
itself up and get on with the job.
v
The idea is to have an election
process and a result that would lead to a resolution of the Zimbabwean question,
once and for all.
2. LAND & OTHER
MATTERS
Questions are being raised as to
our views on the latest confusion in Zanu PF over the land issue. Our standard response is that what is
happening today vindicates our long-held position that Zanu PF and Mugabe were
never interested in resolving the land question. Their intention was to cover up
for the crisis of governance, which they created in this country. What happened
was a response to our democratic challenge in the 2000 and 2002 elections?
They are now shifting their policy
positions almost daily because they never had a land programme in the first
place. Last year, they announced that the process was over. Zanu PF does not
have the ability to deal with the land question because of the manner in which
Mugabe treated that national asset. We shall
ensure that there is security of tenure and respect for private property rights
anywhere in this country.
We
believe the first step requires the return of the rule of law onto our land. We
shall bring Zimbabwe’s land
crisis to an end through a democratic and participatory process. Everybody, everywhere is moving away from
nationalization of land. Nationalisation turns a viable economic asset into dead
capital. No-one benefits from such an approach.
As I
have always said our corrective approach will be based on need, not greed. That
process will seek to achieve an equitable, transparent, just, lawful and
economically efficient distribution and use of land. We want to go further than
merely re-organising our land tenure and land management systems. We are
committed to the transformation of the communal lands into productive economic
units for the benefit of all.
We want
to extend property rights and titles to the communal areas. The intellectual and
creative energies of the people in the rural areas are being wasted. Our
objective is to transform the communal areas and to abolish the dual agrarian
structure in this country. We must have one land tenure system for
Zimbabwe.
Through
a Land Commission, we shall audit land tenure and distribution. On the basis of
that audit, we will rationalize land allocation. We believe a comprehensive
agrarian reform programme is necessary for us to embrace and integrate all types
of land tenure and production systems.
Farming
is a serious business. It cannot be left to chancers and speculators.
Contrary to the
state-sponsored propaganda, there are fewer people on the land now than at any
time since independence 24 years ago. We
warned Mugabe that these desperate so-called new farmers are going to be a
source of instability.
What do
you expect from a people who lie dumped and abandoned in the bush: with no
support, no schools, no medical care, no income, no seed, no skills, no inputs
and no food. Nothing! There is a looming disaster in these farms. Hunger,
disease, poverty and hopelessness are setting in fast. Many of them are already
turning to the MDC for solutions.
3.
Corruption and the Economy
Mugabe’s anti-corruption drive has
backfired. He is failing to deal with corruption in business after realising
that the net is much wider at the top of his party.
We need an independent
anti-corruption commission with sufficient powers to investigate and prosecute
everybody. Without such a body, Mugabe’s efforts won’t go anywhere. He is
scared to investigate senior military and party officials who seized farms,
stole farm machinery and scooped all the farm produce worth billions of dollars
from white farmers.
When
Gideon Gono took over as Governor of the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe, we
warned that his policies would fail to turn around the economy because the
source of our problems is political.
He has
devalued the currency to a level that is higher than the December black market
rate. Nothing has improved. If anything the economy is in a far worse position
than in December last year.
He is
overseas trying to encourage those Zimbabweans in the Diaspora to send money
home. That Zimbabweans are sending money home is nothing new. They have always
been doing it.
Mugabe
may want their money, but what about their rights? What about their vote?
Without a political solution to the crisis, we find ourselves in a situation
where Mugabe is
sounding more and more like a clown.
Food production is down this year,
our economy is still in free fall --
down this year by another 10 per cent.
Industry is down 40 per cent; tourism is down 80 per cent. Nearly 80 percent of
all the jobs we had are all gone.
The whole country has been reduced
to a flea market.
Life expectancy has
fallen a year for every year that Mugabe has been in power -- from 59 years on
average in 1980 to 36 years now.
I thank you.
Morgan Tsvangirai
Harare, Zimbabwe.