The Sunday Times
June 17, 2007
Christina Lamb
ZIMBABWE'S ruling party and opposition were meeting
for the first time this
weekend in talks engineered by Thabo Mbeki, the
South African president, on
its escalating political and economic
crisis.
Despite the combined pressure of 4,000% inflation, international
agencies'
predictions of "total breakdown" and fears of a military rebellion
- a group
of officers have been charged with attempting a coup - there
seemed to be
little hope of a breakthrough.
The opposition went into
the talks in Pretoria claiming that President
Robert Mugabe, 83, was
undermining the process before it had even begun. Not
only is the Zanu-PF
regime continuing to round up and torture opposition
activists every day,
but it also passed a law last week allowing it to
intercept e-mails and has
introduced other legislation designed to
gerrymander elections next
year.
"The message that Zanu-PF is sending out is loud and clear," said
Morgan
Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). "It
is
simply not ready for genuine dialogue."
On the eve of the talks,
Mugabe's secret police seized the passport of
Arthur Mutambara, another
opposition leader, as one of his aides was
collecting it from the British
embassy in Harare for a trip to London.
"It's a travesty," said
Mutambara, who is now stranded in South Africa.
"While talks are supposed to
be taking place they are seizing the passport
of the president of one of the
main parties."
The talks are the result of intense international pressure
on Mbeki, whose
policy of "quiet diplomacy" has got nowhere. He heeded
fellow African
leaders' calls for mediation after worldwide outrage at the
brutal beating
of Tsvangirai at a prayer meeting in March.
Sydney
Mufamadi, South Africa's local government minister. is chairing the
talks.
Mugabe is represented by Patrick Chinamasa, his justice minister, and
Nicholas Goche, the labour minister. The Tsvangirai faction of the
opposition MDC sent Tendai Biti, its secretary-general, while the Mutambara
camp is led by Welshman Ncube.
The opposition factions have agreed to
call for free and fair elections
based on a new constitution and to demand
that the Zimbabwean diaspora -
thought to be as many as 5m people - be
allowed to vote.
Zanu-PF is expected to reject this out of hand. A
constitutional amendment
proposed by the regime last week creates 60 new
constituencies aimed at
dividing up opposition strongholds, as well as joint
presidential and
parliamentary polls. It would mean that if a president
steps down his
successor is chosen by parliament, allowing Mugabe to ensure
that it is
someone of his choosing.
Mbeki is known to distrust
Tsvangirai and to fear that the Zimbabwean
military might rebel against an
opposition government, creating further
chaos. All indications are that he
will push for a reformed Zanu-PF, at best
promoting the inclusion of some
MDC members to create a government of
national unity.
"We're under no
illusion about these talks because of Mbeki's role over the
past seven
years," said Roy Bennett, a leading MDC member who sought asylum
in South
Africa last year after spending 10 months in jail. "Mbeki is
telling
everyone if there's change in Zimbabwe there will be massive fallout
and
catastrophe and the military will rebel."
Yahoo News
Sat Jun
16, 11:37 AM ET
HARARE (AFP) - Six men, including a former Zimbabwe army
officer, will go on
trial next Friday for allegedly plotting a coup against
President Robert
Mugabe, their lawyer said.
The six -- Albert Mugove
Mutapo, 40, a retired soldier, Nyasha Zivuka, 32,
Oncemore Mudzuradhona, 41,
Emmanuel Marara, 40, Patson Mupfure, 46, and
Shingirai Matemachani, 20, --
face treason charges, which carries the death
penalty on conviction.
The
High Court, which is due to hear the case, late Friday refused to grant
the
six suspects bail at the request of state prosecutors, their lawyer
Jonathan
Samkange told AFP on Saturday.
Each suspect had offered 25 million
Zimbabwe dollars (100,000 US dollars/
80,000 euros) as bail.
"It
would not be in the interest of justice to grant the accused persons
bail
because if granted bail the accused would be tempted to abscond," the
prosecution's lawyer said, according to a court document, obtained by
AFP.
"The crime of treason is a very serious one which upon conviction
attracts a
death sentence and that is good enough reason for any person to
want to put
as much distance between the country and themselves," it
added.
"The first accused, Albert Mutapo, is very well connected outside
the
country, more specifically in the United Kingdom where he once lived for
some time," it added.
The suspects, arrested between last May 29 and
30, pleaded not guilty when
they were charged in a Harare magistrates' court
last week, he said.
The state prosecution claims that between June last
year and May 2007, the
six conspired to overthrow Mugabe's
government.
The defendants allegedly wanted to replace Mugabe, who has
been in power
since 1980, with Rural Housing and Amenities Minister,
Emmerson Mnangagwa,
according to court papers read to AFP by
Samkange.
Mutapo is alleged to have conspired with the co-accused and
recruited
members of the security forces from the army, air force and police
in
preparation for the coup, the lawyer said.
The prosecution also
said that Mutapo wanted the soldiers to take over
control of Zimbabwe, after
which he planned to invite Mnangagwa and others
to form a
government.
It alleged that the government would be headed by Mnangagwa
with Mutapo as
prime minister, the lawyer added.
Samkange said that
his clients were not planning a coup, as alleged, but
were meeting to form a
political party.
"Their discussions with prospective members were not for
criminal purposes,
but for recruiting potential supporters," he
said.
"The accused (Mutapo) was going to be the party's president," he
added.
Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu declined comment on the
matter on the
grounds that it was before a court.
"If I comment on
the issue I might be viewed as influencing the decision of
the court," he
told AFP.
Yahoo News
By ANGUS SHAW,
Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 16, 7:03 AM ET
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Six
suspects including a former army officer being held
on allegations of
plotting a coup to oust President Robert Mugabe have
denied charges of
treason, official media reported Saturday.
Lawyers for the suspects said
they were only recruiting for a new opposition
political party and asked
that they be freed on bail, according to the
state's official Herald
newspaper.
The bail hearing was postponed to an unspecified date to await
submissions
from state prosecutors, the paper reported.
Prosecutors
allege that the men, led by retired soldier Albert Mugove
Mutapo, 40,
conspired between June 2006 until their arrests last month to
overthrow
Mugabe, 83.
Mutapo supposedly planned with the others to recruit
soldiers, members of
the air force and police to topple Mugabe and replace
him with Housing
Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, according to the Herald.
Meetings were
allegedly held with some serving military
personnel.
Mutapo wanted to use servicemen to take over all military
camps and remove
Mugabe, the state alleged.
Mutapo would then
announce he was in control of the nation and invite
Mnangagwa and service
chiefs to form a government, the paper reported.
Mutapo himself would be
given a new government post of prime minister, it
was alleged.
The
Herald said the suspects were arrested last month when they were holding
a
meeting on the plot in offices at a Harare apartment building.
Defense
attorney Jonathan Samkange, according to the paper, said the men
denied
treason charges, and that they were arrested while forming a new
political
party to be called the United Democratic Front.
"Their discussions with
prospective members were not for criminal purposes
but for recruiting
potential supporters," Samkange said.
Zimbabwe is suffering its worst
economic crisis since independence in 1980,
with acute shortages of food,
hard currency, gasoline, medicines and most
other basic goods. Official
inflation is more than 3,700 percent annually,
the highest in the
world.
Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence from
Britain in
1980, has been widely criticized for mismanaging the economy.
VOA
By Peta Thornycroft
Southern Africa
16 June
2007
Hours before the first South African-mediated talks
between Zimbabwe's
ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) were
due to begin in Pretoria, police in Harare seized the
passport of Arthur
Mutambara, one of two MDC presidents. For VOA, Peta
Thornycroft reports
that Mutambara and founding MDC president Morgan
Tsvangirai were due to fly
to London later on Saturday for their first joint
mission to brief European
leaders on the crisis in Zimbabwe.
Arthur
Mutambara has been attending the World Economic Forum gathering this
week in
Cape Town.
At the forum, during a debate on Zimbabwe, he told delegates
that the future
of Zimbabwe could not remain in the hands of the ruling
ZANU-PF as the party
was responsible for creating the humanitarian and
economic crisis in
Zimbabwe.
Among the leaders and delegates at the
forum was a former ZANU-PF finance
minister, Simba Makoni, sometimes tipped
as a successor to President Robert
Mugabe.
While Mutambara was at the
forum in Cape Town, MDC officials in Harare were
working to secure visas for
him to travel to Europe for the talks with EU
leaders.
However,
Gabriel Chaibva, Mutambara's spokesman in Harare, said after the
MDC
officials had obtained the necessary travel papers from the British
Embassy,
they were arrested by members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police and
Mutambara's passport was confiscated.
The MDC leader was due to fly
out of Johannesburg late Saturday to join
Morgan Tsvangirai to brief leaders
in London and elsewhere in the European
Union.
The MDC split into two
factions in late 2005, but the factions are making
efforts to forge a
cooperation agreement to fight the next national
elections in March
2008.
Harare lawyer Harrison Nkomo is looking for a judge of the High
Court to
hear an urgent application for the return of Mutambara's passport
and the
release of the four officials who were arrested.
Mutambara,
now stuck in South Africa without travel documents, said Saturday
that
ZANU-PF knew it could never win a fully free and fair election and was
determined to try and prevent the two factions of the MDC from uniting to
fight the polls.
Meanwhile in Pretoria, Zimbabwe's justice minister,
Patrick Chinamasa, and
labor minister, Nicholas Goche, are scheduled to
begin talks Saturday with
the two secretaries general of the MDC, Tendai
Biti and Welshman Ncube.
The talks are hosted by South African president
Thabo Mbeki who is appointed
by the Southern African Development Community
(SADC) to mediate an end to
the ever-worsening political and economic
crisis.
From SW Radio Africa, 15 June
By Tererai Karimakwenda
The National
Constitutional Assembly reports that at least 50 of their
activists have not
been accounted for and six are in police custody a day
after plain-clothes
and uniformed police officers blocked a planned
demonstration in Harare.
Tapera Kapuya, a spokesperson for the group, said
police have not allowed
the detained activists access to lawyers. No charges
have been brought
against them either. Kapuya said they suspect the 50
missing activists were
taken from their homes by government agents after the
banned demo Thursday.
No information has been released by the police about
any of them. The six
detained were taken from the Central Business District
in Harare as police
violently dispersed activists who were gathering for the
demonstration.
Kapuya explained that they used excessive force and several
injuries were
reported. He said: "Police were quite vicious in their
treatment of those
who were participating in the protest. And several
innocent ordinary people
going about their business were caught in the
chaos." The NCA spokesperson
expressed concern for the welfare of the
missing activists, saying there has
been a brutal ongoing campaign by the
government against the NCA. He added:
"It seems very organised, because they
have been identifying our people,
abducting, torturing then dumping them in
remote areas." The opposition
parties have reported that their officials and
supporters are also being
kidnapped by government agents who torture and
then dump them miles away
from home.
Khaleej Times
(AFP)
16 June 2007
HARARE - A rare olive
branch proffered to Zimbabwe's opposition by President
Robert Mugabe was
designed to sow divisions and hoodwink mediators rather
than a genuine move
towards reconciliation, according to analysts.
South African
President Thabo Mbeki, who is leading efforts to bring the
government and
Movement for Democratic Change together ahead of next year's
elections, on
Tuesday seized on a speech by Mugabe as a sign of a 'positive
attitude
evinced by the protagonists.'
Mugabe's declaration to senior opposition
members on Monday that political
differences should not 'make us aliens' nor
stop them breaking bread
together, which was made at a ceremony in Harare,
marked a sharp change in
tone from a man who has usually portrayed the MDC
as puppets of his Western
critics.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa
then told state television the opposition
should 'accept the olive branch'
from Mugabe, saying the only differences
the government had with the MDC was
over its 'hobnobbing with the West'.
But University of Zimbabwe political
scientist Eldred Masunungure said
Mugabe's statement was designed to
hoodwink Mbeki who was charged by the
Southern African Development Community
(SADC) with brokering talks to
diffuse long-simmering tensions between the
ruling ZANU-PF and the MDC.
'The president may be sending a message to
Mbeki to say we are working
together, at least in the agricultural reforms,'
Masunungure said.
But in reality, Mugabe appeared more intent on sowing
divisions within
opposition ranks as evidenced by the publishing of a list
of opposition
figures who have been given land under from his controversial
land reform
programme.
'The government is trying to undermine (the
opposition) in the eyes of the
their supporters, by saying, 'look your
leaders are benefiting from the land
reform programme, yet they critise
it',' Masungure said.
The MDC has strongly insisted that none of its
members have benefitted from
the seizure of formerly white-owned farms and
hand-outs of equipment.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa dismissed Mugabe's
gesture as a gimmick, saying
reconciliation was impossible with opposition
activists and a lawmaker
languishing on remand in prison.
'It's a
political gimmick meant to mislead the world, particulary SADC, to
say we
and the government are talking yet nothing is happening,' Chamisa
said.
'We still have political prisoners, so it is a contradiction to
say they are
reaching out.'
Political commentator Bill Saidi said the
opposition needed to be wary and
detected little sign of Mugabe loosening
his grip.
'The whole idea for Mugabe's type of unity is to have a
one-party system
which he himself manages,' Saidi warned.
'The crisis
in which we find ourselves is a result of Mugabe not wanting to
listen to
other people.'
In March, Mugabe received withering criticism from the
United States and the
European Union over the arrest and assault on senior
members of the
opposition, including MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai.
The southern African country is in the seventh year of
economic recession
characterised by a hyperinflationary environment, massive
unemployment and
chronic shortages of foreign currency and basic goods like
fuel and the
staple cornmeal.
The crisis is largely blamed on Mugabe,
but the veteran leader has blamed
the woes on the imposition of targeted
sanctions on himself and members of
his inner circle.
Takura
Zhangazha, a Harare-based political commentator, said Mugabe's
gesture
lacked sincerity and the only real proof of a change of heart would
come
when he agrees to talk directly to the MDC and creates a level-playing
field
by amending the constitution.
'Sincerity starts with dialogue ... Real
dialogue starts with constitutional
amendments that must be
all-encompassing,' Zhangazha told AFP.
Monsters and Critics
Jun 16, 2007, 13:43 GMT
Harare/Johannesburg -
Zimbabwe's embattled main opposition party on Saturday
said the youth of the
country were inspired by events in South Africa on
June 16 1976, when black
school children stood up to oppression under
apartheid.
Youth in
Zimbabwe, where deteriorating political and economic conditions
prevail,
faced with 'hell on earth,' a situation made worse by repressive
laws under
President Robert Mugabe, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
party national
youth secretary Brighton Chiwola said in a statement.
'We cannot find
jobs in our own country, education has become highly
unaffordable,
meaningless wages are rewards for the few still employed in
the formal
sector, day to day battles with police as most youths have
resorted to
vending and touting at bus ranks,' he explained.
'HIV/Aids is tearing us
apart as young girls and boys resort to prostitution
and homosexuality as a
means of surviving, ill treatment from foreign
authorities as most youths
resort to illegal immigration,' Chiwola added.
South Africa on Saturday
marked the 31st anniversary of the June 16 student
uprising that marked a
turning point in the anti-apartheid struggle.
Thousands of school-going
children took to the streets of Soweto township
south of Johannesburg that
day to highlight their grievances. Police opened
fire, killing more than a
dozen children and injuring hundreds more.
Saturday was also United
Nations International Day of the African Child,
which has been marked since
1991 in memory of Soweto youth.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
http://www.cathybuckle.com/thisweek.shtml
Saturday 16th June 2007
Dear Family and Friends,
I stood for
over forty minutes in a line at the bank to withdraw my own
money this week
- its not unusual to have to queue for even longer than
this. There was no
electricity - again - so the ATM machines were not
working - again. Even if
the ATM's were working, those queues often need an
hour and a half to get to
the front. Because of the oppressive, iron-fist
regulations from Harare,
individuals are only allowed to withdraw one and a
half million dollars at a
time from the bank - even if they have just
deposited a hundred times that
amount the same day. The bank charges a
'handling fee' for the withdrawal of
amounts of one and a half million
dollars or less but you can cannot
withdraw more without applying for
permission from the Reserve Bank in
Harare. To put all these figures in
perspective, let me explain! You have to
stand in a queue in the bank for
four days in a row - each day drawing out
the maximum amount, each day
paying the 'handling fee," in order to purchase
one tank of fuel for your
car . Three days of maximum withdrawals will give
you enough for one filling
at the dentist. By the time you've got enough
money together, the prices
will have gone up again but for most of us all
these things are just dreams
anyway because now even a visit to the dentist
has become an unaffordable
luxury. Who would ever have imagined that a
dental visit would be thought of
as a luxury!
A combination of iron
fist regulations, prices going up by an estimated 10
per cent every day, and
a government which appears completely clueless about
what to do next, I
think it would be accurate to say we have reached rock
bottom. This week the
legislation enabling the government to read our
emails, listen to our phone
calls and intercept our letters sailed through
parliament and it produced
barely a ripple. Everyone is now only looking at
the day to day human
suffering and major national and international
groupings have begun issuing
the most frightening warnings.
The Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights said
recently :"It can no longer be
said that the health service is -near
collapse, It has collapsed."
The International Committee of the Red Cross
said that our health delivery
system has collapsed to such levels as to be
comparable to "a war
situation."
A Heads of Agencies Contact Group
which includes 34 major organisations such
as the U N and Oxfam said:
"economic collapse is expected before the end of
2007." They warn that by
that time our currency will have become unusable
and shops and services will
have stopped operating. The Contact Group said:
"it is inevitable, not just
a possibility."
And so how do we survive this last stretch? Frankly most
of us don't know.
This week I heard the grim news from a friend whose wife
is eight months
pregnant. She lives in a rural area and has been told at the
nearest health
clinic that in addition to the financial charge, she must
also bring a
twenty litre container of water with her when she comes to give
birth or
they will have no choice but to turn her away. This is the reality
of what
we all hope is finally rock bottom.
Thanks for reading, until
next week, love cathy.
Africa News, Netherlands
16 June 2007, PANA - Libya and Zimbabwe have es tablished a
joint
cooperation commission in accordance with the African Union objectives
as
well as friendly and solidarity relations between the two countries, it
was
revealed in the Libyan capital Thursday night.
PANA
learned that the agreement for the Libya-Zimbabwe joint cooperation
commission was signed on the sidelines of Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe's three-day working visit to Libya.
The secretary of
the Libyan People's General Committee for AU affairs at the
Libyan People's
General Committee for foreign relations and international
cooperation, Dr
Ali Triki, and Zimbabwean foreign minister Simbarashe
Mumbengegwi, signed
the agreement providing for the establishment of a joint
cooperation
commission in economic, cultural and technical
cooperation.
According to the document, the commission is in
charge of studying the means
to attain cooperation objectives in the
above-mentioned areas, while
emphasising economic development in
agriculture, mining, industry, trade
promotion, development of financial
relations. It also calls for the
improvement of transport means and basic
communication infrastructure.
The agreement also seeks the
promotion of energy sources and exchange of
technical and professional
expertise in social and cultural areas, media,
information, youth, sport,
public health and tourism.
Under the document, the agreement is
valid for five years and is renewed
automatically for a similar period. The
commission meets yearly on a
rotational basis, with the establishment of
sector committees if need be.
President Mugabe left Tripoli
Friday at the end of his working visit that
was marked by a series of
meetings with Col. Moammar Kadhafi. Their meetings
assessed preparations of
the upcoming AU summit in Accra that will
exclusively focus the AU
government project.
They also discussed strategies to consolidate
cooperation relations between
Libya and Zimbabwe in the areas of energy,
agriculture, mining, industry and
promotion of Libyan investments in
Zimbabwe.
BBC
Saturday, 16 June 2007
The
West Indies Players' Association (Wipa) says its players will not go on
the
A team tour to Zimbabwe in July.
Wipa says it has concerns over safety and
the continuing unstable political
situation in the country.
A meeting
with the West Indies board is likely in the next few days to try
to resolve
the situation.
The Australian government banned their side from touring
Zimbabwe, while the
ICC meets soon to consider the restoration of Zimbabwe's
Test status.
Comment from cricinfo, 15 June
Steven Price in London
The news that West Indies' A
team players have decided they do not want to
tour Zimbabwe, citing safety
and political reasons, is, on the face of it,
simply the latest in a long
line of problems which have overshadowed cricket
in Zimbabwe in recent
years. But it is far more than that. Until now the
Zimbabwe government, and
by association the politicised executive of
Zimbabwe Cricket, has dismissed
aborted visits by England and Australia and
a cancelled trip to New Zealand
as being racially motivated. When
Australia's prime minister blocked his
side from honouring their proposed
tour later this year, Zimbabwe's
information minister countered by saying
that it was "a racist ploy to kill
our local cricket since our cricket team
is now dominated by black players".
That argument has been blown out of the
water by today's news. Hard though
some officials inside Zimbabwe might try,
they will struggle to label the
Caribbean's players, administrators and even
politicians as
racists.
The timing is also appalling as far as Zimbabwe's executive
is concerned. In
less than a fortnight they will be in London trying to
persuade the ICC that
they are ready to be readmitted to the Test fold. Few
believe that they are
remotely good enough in terms of playing strength, the
exodus of players
continues - with more rumoured to be preparing to jump
ship - allegations of
financial mismanagement won't go away, and all the
time the political mess
in the country worsens. Despite all that, the
see-no-evil, hear-no-evil
executive board of the ICC might still have let
Zimbabwe get away with it.
But if players from outside the white nations are
saying enough is enough,
then things can no longer be swept under the carpet
in return for support in
key votes. What is more, the West Indies board is
now facing a major
problem. While there will be no financial penalty for the
A team not
touring, the senior side is due in Zimbabwe in
November.
If the WICB is forced to pull out of that, then it will
have to pay millions
of dollars to Zimbabwe, money it simply does not have.
The alternative is a
shabby ring-around until 15 willing cricketers can be
found. It would almost
be a reverse of the infamous rebel tours to South
Africa in the 1980s. The
only get-out, according to the ICC's own oft-quoted
regulations, is if the
government bans players from travelling. The problem
is that there are eight
or nine governments involved in the Caribbean, and
the chances of them all
acting in unison are remote. In short, the ICC has
no choice but to head
this shambles-in-waiting off at the pass and refuse to
readmit Zimbabwe to
Test cricket. That way, the West Indies tour problem
goes away. The net
result will be that the right decision is taken, even if
it is for all the
wrong reasons. For that, cricket owes the West Indies'
players a thank you.
And spare a thought for the ordinary players in
Zimbabwe who are the real
victims of their own board's antics.
Earth Times
Posted : Sat, 16 Jun 2007 16:36:01GMT
Author : DPA
Harare/Johannesburg - Disruptions to livelihoods
caused by President
Robert Mugabe's controversial land reform program
hastened the deaths of
thousands of Zimbabweans and led to the loss of
billions of dollars worth of
property, a new report said Saturday. The
report by the Zimbabwe Human
Rights NGO Forum said charges of crimes against
humanity could be brought
against the perpetrators.
The
dramatic claims are contained in a 41-page report on human rights
violations
inflicted during the land reform programme, which was launched by
Mugabe in
2000.
The righs forum, a coalition of rights groups carried out its
survey
on 187 white-owned farms during a 6-month period from 2006-
2007.
Of the number of farms surveyed, 94 percent have now been
taken over.
The losses of both lives and property on the surveyed
farms are
probably representative of those incurred by white farmers and
their workers
since the launch of the land reform program, the group
said.
Of the 1.3 million farm workers and their families living on
around
4,000 white-owned farms before 2000, around 70 percent are estimated
to have
lost their livelihoods.
Due to the farm seizures the
farm workers have lost their homes,
access to medical clinics and other
benefits.
The survey found that about 1 percent of displaced farm
workers and
their family members have died since losing their jobs, it
said.
Extrapolated to the entire population of 1 million farmer
workers and
their families, 10,000 people could have died after displacement
from the
farms.
Zimbabwe has one of the world's highest rates
of HIV/AIDS, with an
estimated one in five people infected. The report
claimed that 66 percent of
surveyed farmworkers used to have access to
HIV/AIDS programmes before the
farms they worked on were taken
over.
White farmers losses on the surveyed farms, including their
earnings,
property and livestock amounted to 368 million US dollars, said
the forum.
If this is then crudely extrapolated to the commercial
farm sector as
a whole the figures become astronomical, said the
group.
It gave a total estimated loss to the white-run commercial
farming
sector of more than 8 billion dollars.
The group said
many of the land grabs were carried out by senior
government officials.
Farmers and their workers were not afforded the
protection of the law, it
said.
There can be no impunity for gross human rights violations
ever and
hence there must be some process of accountability for the
violations that
occurred during the land reform exercise.
Zimbabwe used to produce bumper grain crops and prime export
commodities
such as tobacco, beef and flowers.
But production has plummeted in
the last seven years, contributing to
a humanitarian crisis.
This year the cash-strapped government will import hundreds of
thousands of
tonnes of maize from neighbouring countries. Around a third of
the
population will require food aid by early 2008, according to United
Nations
estimates.
While Mugabe's government blames the food crisis on
drought, experts
point to the devastating effect of the land reform
programme.
But the 83-year-old president this week reiterated that
his government
was morally right in taking over the farms.
The Herald
(Harare) Published by the government of Zimbabwe
16 June 2007
Posted
to the web 16 June 2007
Hatred Zenenga
Harare
MOTORISTS who
drive into Harare's Fifth Street, stretching from Roadport
International Bus
Terminus to the Holiday Inn, are routinelygreeted by
scores of whistling and
gesturing men and women lining up the street, wooing
prospective clients
wanting to buy or sell foreign currency. This stretch of
the street easily
ranks as one of Harare's busiest and most crowded areas,
teeming with all
kinds of vehicle models with local and foreign registration
number
plates.
It has been the capital city's hub of black market foreign
currency trading
where different men and women descend everyday from sunrise
to sunset. Huge
amounts of United States dollars, British pounds, South
African rands and
Botswana pulas change hands along the street's pavements
and in vehicles.
Finding little space to operate from, some of the
foreign currency traders
have moved to open new bases along Fourth Street,
Third Street and lately in
Sam Nujoma Street.
This week, I decided to
spend the day with foreign currency traders along
Fifth Street to get first
hand experience of what really transpires. My
colleagues advised me to first
inform the police and get covered so that in
the event of a raid on the
illegal moneychangers, I would be spared. But I
decided to throw caution to
the wind, as I really wanted to get the bottom
of it without the thought of
getting any protection. Just after 7am on
Tuesday I drove into Fifth Street,
off Robert Mugabe Road, and immediately
came face to face with the money
changers at Roadport, which is as busy as
ever with people going in and
coming out.
It all begins at the main entrance to the bus terminus. As I
drove past,
three young men whistled and gestured at me, rubbing their
thumbs against
their middle fingers -- body language for money.
On
slowing down, they all came running towards me. It is a question of who
is
first to arrive and talk to the customer.
"Mudhara wangu! Tokuitirai chii
nhasi? (My old man, what can we do for you
today)?" asked one of them who
had managed to outpace the other two.
"Sudurakai kani vakomana, mudhara
wangu uyu. (Guys you better give me a
chance, this is my old man)," he told
his colleagues, who quickly lost
interest and drifted away.
Speaking
as if we were long acquaintances while leaning on my window he
said: "Saka
mune chii nhasi mudhara, US dollar, pound or rand (So which
currency do you
have my old man)?"
I was neither buying nor selling. But, I told him I
wanted to buy and asked
him how much he was offering for the US dollar, the
pound and the rand. At
that point, two women approached me from the other
side of the car and
tapped on the window. When I shifted my attention to
them, they said:
"Imbonzwaiwoka marates edu baba. (Can you please get to
know our rates)?"
The young men became somewhat annoyed and told the
women his piece of mind
before they quickly retreated. He continued:
"Mudhara let's do serious
business. Ignore these women, they are
crooks."
He then turned to the exchange rates. "Today, the US dollar is .
. . pound .
. . and rand . . ." The official exchange rate at commercial
banks is US$1
to Z$250.
I promised to come back later in the day
after I had raised the money but
not before asking for my mobile phone
number, which I gladly gave him.
On driving up the street, there was more
whistling, hissing and gesturing by
scores of young men and women on both
sides of the street. I stopped after
crossing Nelson Mandela Avenue and
decided to spend some time observing.
But a group of young men came
running and immediately surrounded my car,
trying to outbid one another to
win my attention. I told them I was only
there to meet someone.
There
were more illegal foreign currency traders coming on the streets with
a good
number arriving in cars, which they simply park on the side of the
street.
In the majority of instances, business is conducted through
the phone. By
mid-morning, business gets more brisk as more vehicles arrive,
dropping off
bundles of Zimbabwean currency. Soon a 4x4 vehicle belonging to
a
non-governmental organisation arrives and stops right in the middle of the
road.
A group of young men sitting at the back of a pick-up truck
called out one
of their colleagues: "Givy, murungu auya. (Givy, the boss has
come)."
And the young man came out of another car, jumped into the NGO
vehicle,
before it drove off. Some minutes later, the vehicle re-appeared
and dropped
off the young man. The deal had been done.
This trend
continues and at lunch hour, business reaches its peak. More
vehicles
arrive, picking men and women and then returning to drop them.
A police
patrol team of three on bicycles, slowly cycled past and the
foreign
currency traders suddenly become alert. One of them greeted the
cops: "Ah,
maofficer!"
The cops just waved back at him.
I had a lot of
questions to ask and I beckoned at one of the young men to
join me in my
car. He jumped at the opportunity, obviously in the mistaken
belief that I
was a prospective customer.
I introduced myself and indicated to him that
I wanted to ask him some
questions. At first, he was reluctant suspecting
that I was an undercover
policeman.
"Baba, pano panombouya ngonjo,
saka pamwe muri mumwe wacho. (Sometimes we
get policemen coming here, maybe
you are one of them)." After some
persuasion, he agreed to talk but one
could see the uneasiness on his face.
"Just call me Nigel. Most of the
guys and women you see here are errand boys
who do the running around on
behalf of big people, the owners of the money.
"Our office is this street
and we mostly use two tools in this trade -- a
mobile phone and a
calculator," he said.
I asked him who these big people were
He
replied: "The owners of the money mudhara. They hardly come to the
streets.
We are talking of politicians and business people. These are the
people who
appear on TV all the time describing the foreign currency black
market as an
evil.
"They send some people to drop off Zimbabwe currency and foreign
currency to
us. We are in direct contact with customers. And these days it's
not just
ordinary individuals coming to buy but there are also big people
and big
companies that come to buy the foreign currency."
When
pressed further to name some of the buyers, he said:
"Ah baba, ko inga
maminister chaiwo anouya achipaka maziBenz nemazivhongoma
avo pano vachidawo
forex. (Even ministers come here with their
Mercedes-Benzes and other posh
cars looking for foreign currency)."
He said any amount could be changed
into foreign or local currency.
Nigel's colleague who had struck a deal
and wanted $10 million interrupted
our conversation.
"Pano baba
ndepekudyidzana. (We borrow and lend to each other here)," he
said handing
over the money to his colleague.
Asked who then determines the exchange
rate on the black market, which
changes everyday, he believed that it was a
cartel of foreign currency
owners.
"When we come in the morning, the
first thing is to ask about the rates from
colleagues. They usually tell you
that nhasi varungu varikuda rate yakaita
sei."
At that point my phone
rang interrupting the conversation again. It was that
foreign currency
trader I had met earlier in the morning and had insisted on
taking my mobile
number.
"How far mudhara, muchiri kuuya here? (Are you still coming?"),
he asked.
I found a polite way of dismissing him when I told him that I
was still
looking for the money to buy the foreign currency. He immediately
cut off
the conversation.
Policemen sometimes raid the streets,
spending the whole day chasing
moneychangers, trying to prevent them from
conducting their illegal
business. But they remain defiant and return later
to continue the business.
Asked if they were not afraid of getting arrested
by the police, Nigel said:
"Yes, sometimes the police are a nuisance. It's
difficult when it is the
riot policemen. With those ones there are no
negotiations.
"But when detectives in plain clothes catch you, it is easy
to buy your
freedom. They come here almost everyday but vanenge vaine
nzarawoka (they
will also be hungry.)"
Nigel spoke about incidents
where unsuspecting clients have been fleeced by
conmen posing as foreign
currency traders or detectives.
"Some unfortunate people have been left
with bundles of papers. It is better
to do the deal in a car. Make sure you
count all your money before you leave
once you have verified that it all
adds up make sure you put it away from
prying eyes.
"People must also
be aware of anyone coming up to you in the street and
giving you an
attractive exchange rate. Usually they will fleece you; they
are experts at
it. They will even count the money out to you. However,
through slight of
hand you will be ripped off," he said.
There have been cases where some
foreign currency traders have been known to
reject US dollars claiming they
are fake, after surreptitiously having
switched bills and returned
counterfeit currency to unsuspecting clients.
Changing money on the black
market has always been a dicey exercise for both
the trader and the
customer. Some have been killed after being led to
secluded places
purportedly to conclude transactions.
"These leeches are a constant
scourge and tarnish the good reputation of
many of us here. The danger comes
when prospective customers are led to a
closet for a transaction to
proceed," said Nigel.
After talking for more than 30 minutes, Nigel
excused himself, claiming he
had lost some ground and now needed to go back
to the "office".
Meanwhile, roaring illegal foreign currency trading
continued the whole
afternoon up to about sunset after which the money
changers started to
retreat to their homes.
The Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe Governor, Dr Gideon Gono, said last year that
of about Z$40
trillion of the old currency in circulation, only about Z$5
trillion, or
about 12,5 percent, was passing through the banking system. The
remainder
was in the parallel market.
The central bank introduced new bearer
cheques to replace the old
denominations, forcing people to return cash
hoarded at homes, offices and
outside the country to the formal banking
system.
Bearer cheques have been used as cash for the past four years and
are found
in large quantities in neighbourig countries such as Mozambique,
South
Africa and Zambia.
Chicago Tribune
Thanks to its
neighbor's economic disaster, South Africa grapples with one
of the largest
-- and most brutal -- illegal migrations in the world
By Paul
Salopek
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published June 12,
2007
MUSINA, South Africa -- The greasy brown river sliding past this
African
border town might seem eerily familiar to Americans.
First,
there are the concrete international bridges that span its waters,
linking a
relatively affluent community on one side -- tidy, well-paved,
replete with
American franchises such as Kentucky Fried Chicken -- with a
dustier, much
poorer town on the other.
Then there are the illegal immigrants. They
hunker by the hundreds in the
riverside brush, waiting for nightfall to crawl
under a porous border fence.
Grim-faced law-enforcement agents hunt them down
in trucks equipped with
flashing police lights. So do posses of angry
civilians, most of them white,
many of them armed, and all of them outraged
by what they see as a dangerous
lapse in border controls.
Squint, and
the scene could pass for the banks of the Rio Grande between the
United
States and Mexico -- except, that is, for the jaded baboons ambling
among the
human pedestrians on the bridges and a sign identifying this muddy
waterway
as the Limpopo River, the troubled frontier between Zimbabwe and
South
Africa, and the finish line for one of the largest illicit migrations
in the
world.
"They get robbed and raped by criminals, extorted by our cops, and
eaten by
crocodiles," Jacob Matakanye, a South African human-rights advocate,
said of
the tens of thousands of undocumented Zimbabweans who have stampeded
past
this remote port of entry. "That doesn't stop them. Nothing
does."
Illegal immigration revealed its awesome power to divide American
society
once more Thursday when the U.S. Senate, bitterly divided, shelved
the most
ambitious immigration reform bill in a generation.
But as
Americans continue to recriminate, argue and agonize over the issue,
they
might spare a kind thought for Africa's youngest democracy, where the
same
vexing problems -- flimsy borders, xenophobia and questions of
national
identity -- are roiling the public mood just 13 years after the end
of white
rule.
On the surface, the two countries couldn't be more
different in their public
stance on illegal immigration. In the United
States, even liberals who
support granting citizenship rights to undocumented
immigrants -- and
President Bush finds himself awkwardly in their camp --
must frame their
arguments in terms of national security and promise future
border
crackdowns. By contrast, in South Africa, which prides itself as a
beacon of
ethnic tolerance in the world, a grudging acceptance of illegal
immigration
is the unofficial rule.
Not that it has much
choice.
Some immigration experts here say that 10 percent or more of
South Africa's
43 million people may be in the country illegally, the
majority of them
impoverished Africans seeking a better life in the
continent's economic
powerhouse. With South Africa unable to afford more
patrols along its 2,500
miles of land border, and realizing that illegal
immigration keeps feeble
neighbor Zimbabwe from total collapse, South African
President Thabo Mbeki
conceded last month that the enormous human influx "is
something we have to
live with."
A gantlet of dangers
Yet
coexistence hardly describes life on the Limpopo River. A level of
misery and
desperation hangs over this border that south Texas can
never
know.
Hundreds of people -- some walking 3,000 miles from
Somalia with only the
clothes on their backs -- filter every day through the
backcountry around
Musina on well-beaten trails. At the approach of vehicles,
they melt into
bushes where the amagumaguma -- local slang for the gangs of
smugglers,
thieves and rapists who prey on the migrants -- also
skulk.
"If you don't have money, they will beat you and strip your
clothes," said
Bernard Sibamda, 25, a Zimbabwean toiling on a border farm.
"People walk
naked into town."
Sibamda carried a slingshot to defend
himself. He smiled bleakly at the
impotent toy. Nearby, a Somali almost lost
his hands recently when border
thugs tried to hack them off, according to the
International Organization
for Migration, a United Nations agency that helps
deported migrants return
home. And such brutality isn't limited to criminals.
In 2004 a South African
army captain and four soldiers were convicted of
systematically raping and
robbing Zimbabwean "border jumpers" -- one of many
instances of violent
abuse by South African authorities on the border,
human-rights groups claim.
Last month a soldier on patrol shot and killed an
unarmed Zimbabwean man.
Illegal immigrants interviewed in Musina also
accused the South African
police of constant shakedowns. The price of freedom
after being arrested: as
little as 100 rand, or about $14. The South African
government has
acknowledged problems with petty corruption. The agency
responsible for
immigration, the Ministry of Home Affairs, is being
overhauled.
Finally, as if the human gantlet weren't enough, there is the
random cruelty
of nature.
The crocodile-gnawed bodies of immigrants
wash up occasionally on the banks
of the Limpopo, said activist Matakanye,
who helps Zimbabwean farm workers
at the Musina Legal Advice
Center.
And every year during the rainy season, the river itself kills
scores of men
and women seeking low-paying jobs in South Africa's bustling
farms and
cities.
In February, 45 Zimbabweans drowned as they held
hands trying to cross the
river, the police reported. Another group of 60
swimmers died the same way
last year. Such tragedies are routine enough that
they barely register in
the South African media.
"If you stay in
Zimbabwe, you starve," said Kenneth Marara, 28, an
unemployed factory hand
from Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, who was sleeping
with a crowd of other
undocumented migrants at a bus stop in Musina. "It is
better to die
here."
Zimbabwe in tatters
Once an African
breadbasket, Zimbabwe has been hollowed out by years of
drought and the
ruinous economic policies of strongman Robert Mugabe. Its
inflation rate was
calculated in May at 3,700 percent -- the highest in the
world. In Musina,
immigrants said the Zimbabwean government couldn't even
afford the paper to
print its passports anymore, so almost nobody carried
one. The UN World Food
Program estimated Wednesday that more than a third of
Zimbabwe's 11.8 million
people will face food shortages this year.
Nobody knows how many
Zimbabweans have ducked into South Africa. Immigration
analysts say 2.5
million to 3.5 million -- roughly a quarter of Zimbabwe's
population. Even
the lower figure equals the number of refugees displaced by
the war in
Darfur.
"There is a real backlash taking place against Zimbabweans now,"
said Sally
Peberdy, a researcher at the Southern African Migration Project,
an
immigration think tank in Johannesburg. "Xenophobia is definitely on
the
rise."
In fact, anti-foreigner sentiment has been smoldering --
and sometimes
exploding -- in South Africa for years.
Despite the
country's reputation for cultural tolerance, decades of
isolation under
apartheid have predisposed many South Africans -- black and
white -- to
distrust immigrants, Peberdy said. One survey conducted in 1997
revealed a
degree of paranoia about strangers that was exceeded only in
Russia.
Resentful South Africans are torching Somali shops and beating
up
Zimbabweans, human-rights groups say. Increasingly, Zimbabweans are
also
blamed in the media for South Africa's notoriously high crime
rate.
The government is responding by quietly ramping up deportations.
Buses,
police vans and dusty trains ease through Musina, disgorging thousands
of
bedraggled Zimbabweans at the border bridges.
The number of
Zimbabweans expelled from South Africa has rocketed tenfold
since 1994, to
more than 127,000 last year. South Africa is also sending its
law-enforcement
agents to the U.S. for border security training. Others are
getting U.S.
Border Patrol training at an American-run law-enforcement
academy in
neighboring Botswana, officials said.
For some South Africans, though,
that still isn't enough.
"I can't even jog on my own property anymore
because of the numbers of
Zimbabweans coming through -- it's a safety risk,"
said Gideon Meiring, a
game rancher whose land sprawls over one of the main
immigrant routes south
of the Limpopo River. "There have been terrible
murders of farmers up here,
and it's 99 percent certain that it was Zim
people who did it."
Meiring heads a watchdog group of white farmers who
help patrol South
Africa's border region. Like the controversial Minutemen
sentries in the
United States, they are making a largely political point:
Illegal
immigration threatens South Africa's prosperity and stability. But
their
robust methods would raise eyebrows even among anti-immigrant groups
across
the Atlantic.
Farmers mobilize
Last month Meiring and 14
other farmers mobilized to intercept a truckload
of undocumented Zimbabweans
speeding down a local highway. With removable
police lights flashing atop
their cars, they ran the driver off the road and
detained 11 migrants. Others
scattered into the fields.
"These people use our hospitals, our schools,
our government housing,"
Meiring said, echoing familiar sentiments from the
immigration debate in the
United States. "We've somehow got to make it more
difficult for them to
cross."
Loveness Khumbula, a 25-year-old
Zimbabwean mother, has reached her private
threshold of difficulty.
On
May 28 the petite illegal immigrant was charged by a wild buffalo
while
trudging through the bush east of Musina. The beast chased her off a
small
cliff. She sprained her leg, and the 9-month-old daughter strapped to
her
back suffered a severe concussion. About the only thing extraordinary
about
her story on the raw Limpopo frontier was that she wanted to go
home.
"My mission here is finished," Khumbula said softly in the local
South
African hospital where she and her baby were recovering. "I will not
stay in
this place."
----------
psalopek@tribune.com
The Herald (Harare) Published by the
government of Zimbabwe
16 June 2007
Posted to the web 16 June
2007
Harare
PARLIAMENT has approved a new standard scale of fines,
setting $20 000 as
the minimum fine and a maximum fine of $50 million being
paid for such
offences as conditional selling of monitored or controlled
goods.
Traffic offenders will now have to fork out up to $3 million
depending on
the type of offence.
Currently, motorists are paying
between $250 and $50 000 for various traffic
offences.
Public
fighting and beer drinking now attract a fine of $40 000, up from $2
500.
The Criminal Law Code (Standard Scale of Fines) Notice (No. 2)
2007 was
approved by both the House of Assembly and the Senate on
Wednesday.
The fines range from level one, that is $20 000, to level 14
in which
offenders pay $50 million.
The level of the fines depends of
the nature of the offence.
The Minister of Justice, Legal and
Parliamentary Affairs, Cde Patrick
Chinamasa, told the House of Assembly
that the current fines had been eroded
by inflation hence the need for a
review.
"It is apparent that the fines are no longer a deterrent in view
of the
rising inflation. The fines that had been proposed have a more
deterrent
effect than the present fines," he said.
The fines were
last reviewed in February this year. However, legislators
felt that the
proposed fines were still low and would not act as deterrents
in view of the
skyrocketing inflation.
Bulawayo South legislator Mr David Coltart (MDC)
said the proposed fines
were low when compared to the cost of the
administration of justice.
"My point is we welcome this review as it was
long overdue but my question
is whether this is going to be a deterrent if
one considers the cost of the
administration of justice," he
said.
Binga legislator Mr Gabuza Joel Gabbuza (MDC), who said there was
need to
constantly review the fines in view of the hyperinflationary
environment,
echoed Mr Coltart's sentiments.
In response, Cde
Chinamasa said he had taken note of the concerns raised by
the lawmakers and
would address them in due course.
There have been concerns by various
stakeholders on the need to review fines
paid for various
offences.
The Zimbabwe Traffic Safety Council has attributed the high
rate of road
accidents to the prevailing low fines, which it described as
too lenient.
The Sunday Times
June 17, 2007
Peter
Godwin
So, Edinburgh University has finally stripped Robert Mugabe of the
honorary
degree it awarded him in 1984. It is the first time in the
university's
425-year history that it has revoked an honorary degree - and
Mugabe will be
afforded a right of appeal.
The university's sanction
came about after a sustained anti-Mugabe campaign
by its student body and
alumni, local newspapers and MPs. In order to carry
it out, the university's
senate first had to alter its rules and then
empanelled three professors to
examine whether there were grounds to
penalise Mugabe.
On June 6, the
senate duly announced that there were such grounds. Not a
difficult decision
to arrive at, I'm sure, if 23 years late. More troubling
than the time lag
is that the university has been less than honest about the
circumstances
under which it conferred the honour.
Edinburgh's recent official
announcement read: "After examining evidence
relating to the situation in
Zimbabwe in the early 1980s - evidence that was
not available to the
university at the time the degree was conferred [my
bold] - the group
recommended that the degree should be withdrawn."
One of the "three wise
men" on the investigating panel, Professor Sir Neil
MacCormick, emphasised
that the university's offer of the honorary degree
had been made "in good
faith" and that evidence of Mugabe's human rights
abuses - namely, the
massacres in Matabeleland, in which as many as 20,000
civilians are believed
to have been murdered - only came to light later, and
"was not known to the
senate when in 1984 it confirmed its decision to
proceed and award the
degree".
Indeed? Let's look at the timeline: Edinburgh University
conferred the
degree (at the initial suggestion of Lord Carrington, the
former foreign
secretary) upon Mugabe on July 20, 1984. But more than three
months
previously, on April 8, I had started reporting the massacre. The
Sunday
Times ran my first piece (to which we appended two other bylines to
protect
me) under the headline, "Mass murder in Matabeleland: the
evidence".
The first line read: "Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe
has launched a
new campaign of extraordinary brutality in Matabeleland, in
the south of the
country." I reported from inside the curfew area (from
which journalists
were banned) using my own testimony and other eyewitness
accounts of the
Balaghwe "death camp", run by the fearsome 5th Brigade, a
North
Korean-trained army unit fiercely loyal to Mugabe.
These
reports were backed up by local priests - at least one of whom was
already
openly calling the killings "genocide" - and by the Catholic Justice
and
Peace Commission.
On April 15, I followed this with a report on the front
page, headlined
"Zimbabwe massacre bodies found in mine". I interviewed
dozens of
eyewitnesses and went to the abandoned Antelope mineshaft, where
victims
from Balaghwe were being dumped. My reporting (and that of others)
continued
into mid-May, when the Catholic church had already submitted to
Mugabe a
list of 629 names of those killed by the army in
Matabeleland.
At that point I was forced to leave Zimbabwe, having been
warned that my
life was in danger. The police surrounded my family home
looking for me and
I was denounced as an enemy of the state.
For
Edinburgh University to say that information on the killings was
unavailable
in July 1984 is a travesty. Just such information was paraded
under banner
headlines in a national broadsheet Sunday paper with a large
circulation.
Yet academics proceeded to dignify the architect of genocidal
massacre,
giving him, in the words of a Foreign Office cable, "a flattering
laudation".
I find it almost impossible to believe they could
genuinely have been
unaware of these reports. In which case, what we have
here is a breathtaking
disregard for the truth back in July 1984, followed
by a shameful cover-up
now, in claiming these facts "were not available at
the time".
Subsequently, more and more information came out. More than a
decade ago,
the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission published its detailed
report on
the Matabeleland massacres. Yet still, nothing was done to strip
Mugabe of
his honour.
To make matters worse, in 1994 the Queen,
acting on the advice of the
Foreign Office and the then prime minister, John
Major, conferred an
honorary knighthood on Mugabe for his "important
contribution to relations
between Zimbabwe and Britain". When questioned
about it in parliament in
2003, Tony Blair agreed to consider stripping
Mugabe of the knighthood. He
still hasn't got round to doing so.
Such
action would not be unprecedented; a bunch of foreign royals, including
the
Emperor Franz Joseph I, had their honorary knighthoods rescinded in
1915.
Mussolini had his taken back in 1940, Emperor Hirohito had his
rescinded in
1941 and restored 30 years later, and Ceausescu had his
withdrawn in 1989,
in the nick of time - a week before his people rose up
and executed
him.
The government has no business allowing Mugabe to retain his
honorary
knighthood and the dons of Edinburgh, before basking in our
approval for
withdrawing Mugabe's honorary degree, need to come clean about
the
circumstances in which they conferred it.
- Peter Godwin's
memoir, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, is published by
Picador
The Sunday Times
June 17, 2007
Kelvin Parker's holiday at Victoria Falls turned into a
nightmare because of
a guide's lapse of judgment. He tells of the minute his
world fell apart
Ann McFerran
Today, as he does every day, Kelvin Parker
will walk for five or six hours.
In March this year his beloved wife
Veronica and daughter Charlotte were
savaged to death by an elephant in a
Zimbabwean game park. He, too, was
chased but escaped. Such is his grief
that trudging the streets has become
the only way he can keep his mind from
returning to that sunny morning in
the African bush.
"I still feel as
though I'm being chased by the elephant," he says. "Walking
is the only time
when I don't feel bad and I don't weep. If I'm not walking
or somehow
keeping busy I am hit by this terrible weight of grief and
loneliness."
Kelvin, 53, is a likable, slightly chaotic man who weeps
frequently as he
describes how Veronica and Charlotte were wiped out in less
than a minute on
what should have been a glorious holiday. For the previous
four years, the
Parkers had been living in a remote part of South Africa,
but with
10-year-old Charlotte's secondary education looming, the
British-born couple
had decided to settle in France, where they'd once
lived.
Throughout their somewhat unusual and peripatetic 18-year marriage
- they'd
also lived in Japan, Hong Kong and Portugal - the Parkers financed
themselves by renovating houses. "We were hedonists, lotus-eaters,
travellers," says Kelvin. "Making money and careers didn't matter to us.
Life was what mattered."
When they met they were both working for an
advertising agency in Hong Kong
and proved the perfect match: "I was good at
the big things; Veronica was
good on detail. She was charming and calm; I
was emotional and explosive."
Their daughter, whom they called Charlie,
after Charlie Parker, was
"exceptional - brilliant at school, an outstanding
athlete", according to
Kelvin. "I know everyone says this about their
children, but with Charlie it
was true."
In recent years they had
spent most of their waking lives together: "I might
be plumbing; Veronica
might be cooking or even holding the other end of a
pipe for me. Even our
work had a terrific intimacy."
Every evening at 6.30, the Parkers sat
down to talk about their day over
drinks and snacks. "Veronica and I would
have two glasses of dry white wine
while Charlie had Appletiser. In the
school holidays she'd have tea and
bickies in bed with us, first thing. The
three of us were completely
entwined." Kelvin pauses to blink back tears:
"At least I know that when
they died we'd done everything we could to know
and love each other."
Before they left South Africa they decided to make
a trip to Victoria Falls,
which Veronica had always wanted to see. Kelvin
found a four-day package
deal that included two days of safari in the nearby
Hwange national park.
"Quite honestly we weren't terribly interested in the
safari," Kelvin says.
"We'd seen lots of animals. But the package made sense
financially."
The family loved Victoria Falls and were delighted with the
safari lodge. On
their first evening they watched wildebeest, giraffes and
elephants at a
nearby watering hole. Charlie enthused: "This is the
prettiest place I've
ever been."
At dinner an English couple raved
about the lodge's safari guide, Andy
Privella. "He's fantastic," they said.
"He took us right up to an elephant
and we stroked it."
Early next
morning, on their first safari walk, the much-praised guide told
the Parkers
what they must do: "You walk when I say walk. You stop when I
say stop. If
something happens I will take care of you."
"He explained he had a rifle,
and I noticed he put one bullet in the
chamber, leaving the rest in his
belt," says Kelvin.
They set off, in single file, following the guide,
who pointed out
footprints, animal droppings and food. They saw giraffes and
zebra but no
elephants. After returning to the lodge for breakfast the guide
took them
for a drive.
"Maybe what we said on the drive helps to
explain what happened," says
Kelvin.
"The guide had been a hunter. We
said we didn't like hunting because it
seemed to be about people's egos. On
the other hand, we said, you have to
cull elephants where there are too
many, like in part of South Africa. We
also talked about male elephants 'in
musth', in a state of sexual arousal,
and how you have to be very careful
around them. The guide said he thought
that might be
exaggerated."
They drove near some woodland where elephants usually
gathered but there
wasn't one in sight. The Parkers didn't care but the
guide seemed bothered.
"That sucks," he said. At 10.30am, when they stopped
by a waterhole to enjoy
a beer, an elephant lumbered into view, about 600
yards away.
The guide suggested he take them to see it up close. The
Parkers felt they
couldn't refuse. "We felt the guide would be disappointed
if he didn't
deliver for us," says Kelvin. "Maybe this is the kind of people
we are.
Bloody stupid, when I think about it now. We did that walk for
him!"
The plan was to observe the elephant from an ant hill about l00
yards away.
As they walked Kelvin saw the guide look at the elephant with
his
binoculars. "He must have seen large wet patches around its ears which
meant
the elephant was in musth and potentially aggressive." But the
elephant,
too, was ambling towards the ant hill so that soon they were only
30 yards
apart. At the ant hill the guide urged Kelvin to take photographs.
Just as
the Parkers began to walk back from the ant hill, Kelvin turned to
see their
guide peering out - "and the elephant saw him", he
says.
Only that morning the Parkers had been told how elephants when
they're angry
put their heads back, flap their ears and their trunks shoot
up. And that is
exactly what this elephant did next.
The guide
shouted: "Stop!" The Parkers stopped, whereupon the guide waved
his hands in
the air and yelled loudly.
"I'll never understand why he did that as long
as I live," says Kelvin,
"because of course it really pissed off the
elephant." Then the guide raised
his rifle and fired above the elephant's
head - "So he'd used the only
bullet he had."
The elephant charged.
"Because I'm at the back the elephant goes for me,"
says Kelvin. "I run,
thinking, 'I'm dead'; the elephant is so big and so
close and so fast." In a
desperate attempt to outwit the elephant Kelvin
zigzagged. Confused, the
elephant stopped, turned and ambled back to the
forest.
At this
moment, Kelvin turned to see the guide by the ant hill blubbering:
"I'm
sorry; I'm sorry." And near him lay Charlie's white T-shirt. Kelvin ran
over
to find his daughter "completely, utterly dead. Poor little thing; her
eyes
were open but rolled back. I picked her up and her little head just
fell
back. Her life spirit had gone".
Imagining his wife was hiding, he began
to search for her. He found her, or
rather her brain, with bits of the top
of her skull lying not far from
Charlie. "So I knew I couldn't find her in
one piece," Kelvin says, tears
streaming down his cheeks.
Kelvin
carried his wife and daughter to the ant hill, sent the guide to get
help,
and sat for 45 minutes cradling them in the blistering sun. He says he
talked to them both, telling them, "I'd look after them and get them safely
home. I certainly wasn't scared. In a way I wanted to be dead too. But I
realised if I were alive then in some sense they were too".
When he
was rescued and taken back to the lodge he couldn't face seeing the
guide
but he felt no anger towards him. "He'll have to live with this for
the rest
of his life." And so will Kelvin: "The worst time is when I wake
up. So I
have to keep busy or walk."
This time last year Kelvin was in Britain for
Father's Day, so Charlie wrote
him a card at her school in South Africa.
Addressed to "a really cool dad",
and written in green and turquoise with
lots of red hearts, Charlie's card
reads: "Dads are cool. Dads really rule!
. . . I thank God for a dad like
you!"
Today Charlie's "cool" dad has
found some solace in setting up a charity
called CharChar, commemorating her
and her mother, to fund the teaching of
African children to read - reading
was one of Charlie's greatest pleasures.
"The charity seems to make more
sense than anything else," says Kelvin.
"When I look back I wouldn't change
anything about our lives together -
except for that final minute." And with
that he goes off to walk some more,
to try to obliterate the pain of his
loss.
For more information about CharChar: mail@thecharchartrust.org