Nation News, Barbados
Published on:
3/22/07.
EVEN FROM THIS DISTANCE, the situation in Zimbabwe is
nauseating and is an
affront to right-thinking people and to the democratic
traditions which we
in the Commonwealth and the Americas have become
accustomed.
Even anti-colonial apologists should hang their heads
in shame at this
assault by police officers on members of the Zimbabwe
opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) - headed by Morgan
Tsvangirai.
Recently, armed Zimbabwe riot police sealed off a stadium to
block an
opposition "prayer meeting" that officials had banned, calling it a
political protest against President Robert Mugabe. A brutal assault was then
inflicted on opposition members and it continues
unabated.
Authorities had declared the "prayer meeting" to be in breach
of a
three-month ban on political demonstrations. Riot and paramilitary
police
reinforcements had sealed off approaches to the stadium and fired
tear gas
to disperse the gathering.
Zimbabwe is in the grip of its
worst economic crisis in decades, with
inflation now above 1700 per cent,
unemployment
of close to 80 per cent with persistent shortages of food, fuel
and foreign
exchange.
Mugabe, 83, in power since independence in
1980, dismisses the MDC as a
puppet of Zimbabwe's former colonial master
Britain, which he says oppose
him for seizing white-owned commercial farms
to give to Blacks.
Political tensions have increased in recent months
following moves by Mugabe
to extend his tenure by two additional years to
2010, a proposal that
political analysts say has caused divisions even
within his ruling Zanu-PF
party.
Mugabe played a significant role in
the anti-colonial struggles in then
Rhodesia but his historic contribution
is in danger
of being tainted as his government turns its venom against
Blacks.
For all intents and purposes, Mugabe has outlived his usefulness
as his
government continues to trample on the rights of Zimbabweans. That
these
atrocities have met with studied silence from his former
comrade-in-arms in
Africa is very distressing.
Zambia recently broke
the regional silence over the deteriorating political
conditions in
Zimbabwe, telling its counterparts in the Southern African
Development
Community (SADC) to stop pretending "all is well in
Zimbabwe".
Zimbabweans, who are already escaping into South Africa in
droves, are now
also flowing into Zambia seeking food.
SADC states
must take the bull by the horns and persuade Mugabe that
dialogue is the
best recipe for sustainable peace and democracy.
Unfortunately, South Africa
is the only country with the clout to apply some
pressure but it has
remained silent.
We understand the need for loyalty from erstwhile
friends and
comrades-in-arms but a time comes when silence is betrayal.
Zimbabweans may
feel that time has long gone despite recent muted comments
from the United
States and European Union.
Letters
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday March 22, 2007
The
Guardian
What more do we need to witness before the African Union or
the UN tell the
Zimbabwean government "enough is enough" (South Africa under
fire for
failure to act in Mugabe crisis, March 21)? Recently we have seen
some
devastating atrocities, including the beating of the leader of the
opposition, the killing of a political activist and then his body being
snatched to prevent a public funeral.
International condemnation has
freely flowed, but little action has
followed. Although the African Union
has called for human rights "to be
respected" in Zimbabwe, this is far too
weak a response.
Accountability for human rights violations is
central to the African Union's
own Constitutive Act, and that body needs to
show that it has the political
will to hold the government of Zimbabwe to
account for these atrocities.
Otherwise, it is difficult to escape the
conclusion that the AU after all
may not be entirely different from the
defunct, state-centred Organisation
of African Unity.
Kolawole
Olaniyan
Programme director, Amnesty International Africa
The events in
Zimbabwe are only the latest in a series of tragedies that
have dogged
African peoples in Uganda, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the
DRC, Sudan
and the Ivory Coast since independence. In that time, they have
been ruled
by their presidents, who double as the supreme institution,
controlling the
army, police, parliament, the judiciary, state intelligence
organisations
and the civil service. Without independent state institutions,
not even the
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will ever
establish
sustainable good governance, the independence of the judiciary,
the rule of
law and the protection of fundamental human rights.
A classic example is
Uganda where Lieutenant General Museveni came to power
in 1986, promising
that his revolution was a fundamental change. But 21
years on, Uganda has
made 180-degree turn. In the past two years, Museveni
has amended the
constitution, virtually making him a life president;
arrested his most
credible opponent Dr Kizza Besigye three months before the
elections; and
conducted the first multi-party elections in 26 years under
one-party rule.
Sadly, British, Commonwealth and other world leaders have
been deafly silent
about the deteriorating situation in Uganda. Instead,
they have decided to
reward Museveni holding the 2007 Commonwealth heads of
government meeting in
Uganda this November.
Museveni, like Mugabe and most African leaders,
have blamed British
colonialism for their failures. Somehow, they miss the
point that Malaysia,
Singapore and South Korea were also colonies but are
now peaceful and
booming economically. The only difference is that the
latter have
independent state institutions while the former do not.
Sam
Akaki
Uganda Forum for Democratic Change
What tends to be forgotten is
that Robert Mugabe is not solely responsible
for the precarious state in
which Zimbabwe finds itself. The seeds of the
present debacle were sown more
than a quarter of a century ago, at the
pre-independence 1979 Lancaster
House agreement.
Prominent in that agreement is the fact that 20
parliamentary seats were to
be automatically reserved for the minority white
settler community. Second,
the agreement stipulated that no land reform
issues were allowed to be
discussed for the following 10 years.
This
meant that, from the very beginning, the authority of the new
government was
undermined. There was a barely disguised demonisation
campaign by the white
settlers - remnants of and supporters of the white
separatist Ian Smith
regime - of Mugabe and all he stood for. Those critics
nostalgically harking
back to the halcyon days of "benign white rule" ought
to remember that
elementary freedom was regained at independence.
There are scores of
countries with bad or worse governments than that of
Zimbabwe. We hardly
hear anything about these, as compared to the flood of
news stories from
Zimbabwe. What is at work here is a singling out of
Mugabe.
GG
Carmen-Benskin
Manchester
Business Day
22 March 2007
Thom
McLachlan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Media
Correspondent
THE African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights has
called on Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe to uphold the law and "desist
from wanton arrest and
torture of journalists".
This came after a
complaint from the Media Institute of Southern Africa that
two journalists,
Tsvangirai Mukwazhi and Tendai Musiyu, were "severely
assaulted by the
police" after their arrest while covering the heated
protests which saw
opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan
Tsvangirai arrested
last week.
"Of great concern was that Mukwazhi's whereabouts remained
unknown until his
appearance in court on March 13 as the police withheld
information about his
whereabouts to his lawyers, who were denied access to
the detained
journalists," the complaint said. "The two journalists were
subsequently
taken to hospital for treatment following the
assaults."
Rapporteur on freedom of expression at the commission,
Pansy Tlakula, sent
an urgent letter of appeal to Mugabe regarding the
deteriorating situation
of freedom of expression in Zimbabwe. "I actually
met Tsvangirai Mukwazhi
during my visit and I saw with my own eyes the
serious injuries he sustained
on his back during the beating by the police.
His car, equipment and laptop
were also confiscated," she
said.
To date, the two journalists have not been formally charged
despite having
spent 48 hours in police custody.
She called on
Mugabe to "respect the rights enshrined in the African Charter
on Human and
Peoples' Rights", to which Zimbabwe is a party state. Attacks
on media in
Africa prompted the commission to pass a resolution on freedom
of expression
in November against such acts.
She said that cases in point included
Gambia, Zimbabwe and Eritrea.
On Tuesday, the head of the Catholic church
in Zimbabwe, Archbishop Pius
Ncube, criticised the South African government
for failing to rein in
Mugabe.
"They are in the best position to put
pressure on Zimbabwe, to call for
sanctions, if necessary. They could force
Mugabe to change but they have
been watching this thing. It's now the eighth
year it has been
deteriorating," he said
Business Day
22 March 2007
Rhoda
Kadalie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUST
when you think the African National Congress (ANC) cannot get worse, it
sinks to new depths of depravity.
Two seemingly dispa-
rate,
yet connected headlines in Tuesday's Business Day signal the signs of
the
times: Echo of Burma as SA blocks UN on Mugabe, and, Red faces over
Russia's
$2bn deal with ANC arm.
One concerns SA's consistent failure to condemn
Zimbabwe for its flagrant
abuses of human rights, so soon after the Burma
debacle at the United
Nations (UN) Security Council. Support for Robert
Mugabe has more to do with
SA's solidarity with a former liberation leader
than its so-called
noninterference stance on sovereignty. No matter how
dictatorial its rule,
Zanu (PF) knows it can rely on SA for support because
its identity as a
former liberation movement seals its survival regardless
of the atrocities
it perpetrates against its own people.
Equally,
its support for communist China on Burma is in line with a foreign
policy
that has consistently supported pariah states such as Libya and Iran
against
countries that value human rights, good governance and democracy. It
finds
it so easy to condemn Israel on the grounds of human rights and
self-determination, invoking similarities with the apartheid state, but when
it comes to Zimbabwe and Burma, its forked-tongue agenda becomes
nauseatingly transparent.
And that brings me to the second
related concern: the ANC's cozying up to
Russia by using diplomatic
relations to secure deals that will benefit and
secure its future as a
political party. With their and our oligarchs in hot
pursuit of an alleged
$2bn investment in a mineral fertiliser plant that
will benefit the ruling
party via Chancellor House, alleged to be a funding
front for the
organisation, it seems that with the ANC these days, anything
goes.
Just as the ANC depended on financial support from
international donors,
including pariah states, to fund its liberation
movement, so it continues
today to depend on funding for its political
campaigns without any regard
for how dubious the sources. Too lazy and inept
to generate funding from its
dwindling membership base, it nurtures
relations with dictators who can be
relied upon in a time of
need.
With more than 10-million people not voting in the last
election, and a
succession battle threatening to destabilise the
once-almighty juggernaut,
securing millions from whomever it takes has
become central to the ANC's
plan to rule indefinitely.
That
brings me to a related issue - the ANC's growing inability to drive the
very
institutions designed by them since 1994 to promote skills training,
social
development, poverty eradication, equality and human rights.
Currently under
review by Parliament, a premature prognosis of most of the
chapter 9
institutions and other statutory bodies is that they should either
be
radically transformed or abolished.
In similar vein, the sector
education and training authorities (Setas) have
become a great source of
annoyance to employers asked to pay a monthly levy
from their meager
resources to the labour department to promote skills
development. It is
unacceptable, as has been reported in the media, that 22
out 23 Setas have
invested our money, R3,8bn of it, in various types of
accounts, when they
should be educating and training people for jobs. If, as
Democratic Alliance
spokesman, Mark Lowe said, "the Setas have degenerated
into
patronage-dispensing amateur investment vehicles rather than the
drivers of
a skills revolution", Parliament or the public protector should
review them
as a matter of urgency.
Skills development is not the preserve of
government. For that we have
technikons, colleges and universities. It
therefore comes as no surprise to
read constant reports of how the Setas
have sunk into mediocrity and
corruption. Labour Minister Membathisi
Mdladlana has acknowledged that
certain individual Setas are dysfunctional
but will not take responsibility
for the fact that the system overall has
failed.
Most recently, the transport Seta was discovered to have
invested R246m of
its funds in the Fidentia group, which was placed under
curatorship last
month and its CEO detained. The mining qualifications Seta
at the start of
2002 allocated R26,5m of its funds to establish a bursary
scheme for
university and technikon students. By this month, only 135
students had
benefited. The police, private services and correctional
services Seta has
been investigated by the Scorpions for financial
mismanagement, and has had
"significant control deficiencies" in awarding
tenders and fired its
previous CEO for unprofessional
behaviour.
In the secondary agriculture Seta the auditor-general
reported in 2003 that
he had detected a trail of irregularities, including
the awarding of a R1,3m
contract to a company in which the then CEO held
shares. Also, contracts
were awarded to other companies in which board
members had direct interests.
The construction education Seta was found by
the auditor-general to be
"technically bankrupt" in 2005-2006 and
investigations are taking place into
the probable payment of monies for
"ghost learners" and for payments for
full courses that were taught in an
abbreviated form.
The first CEO and chief financial officer of the forest
industries Seta were
tried and jailed for 20 years for corruption and fraud
amounting to more
than R3m, even though it is claimed the money was
subsequently recovered.
The manufacturing, engineering and related
services Seta was found by the
auditor-general to have violated procurement
procedures, employment
procedures and corporate governance structures, with
irregularities
involving up to R5m of its expenditure.
Employers
should consider a class action against the labour department to
terminate
the payment of levies to training authorities, which are supposed
to train
and help others but instead are racked by incompetence, mediocrity
and
corruption.
Kadalie is a human rights activist based in Cape
Town.
Business Day
22 March 2007
Siphamandla
Zondi
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
recent arrest of leaders of both factions of the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), the National Constitutional Assembly and the Zimbabwean
Congress of Trade Unions is another in a series of miscalculations on the
part of the Zimbabwean government. The violent crackdown on peaceful
protests, in the name of protecting law and order, is indicative of a panic
on the part of the government. But the sad incident is also an opportunity
for all stakeholders - internal and external - to find new ways of solving
Zimbabwe's problems. The heavy-handed response to the opposition and
disgruntled elements of civil society will further isolate the country and
government in the region and elsewhere.
Zimbabwe is sinking and is
taking with it the region, which has consistently
urged the government and
opposition forces to seek and find ways to begin an
internal political
process for the region to support. The intransigence of
the Harare
government in response to this advice and criticism from the
African Union
(AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC),
particularly in
the past four years, will ultimately hurt the Zanu (PF)'s
own cause.
Clearly, the arguments of the political opposition and organised
civil
society are vindicated by the actions of Zimbabwean police last
weekend. The
brutality makes the statement that the MDC has failed to drive
home in the
region and the international community - that the government has
turned into
a self-destructing monster that is acting against its own
people.
Until the past two years, the use of brute force has often
been left in the
hands of government's proxy forces, such as the war
veterans and youth
groups. The ruling party has also used its parliamentary
majority and
special presidential privileges to introduce laws that restrict
freedom and
rights, while harassment by secret services has been alleged
frequently.
But by populating state institutions with members of the
security forces,
the state demonstrates a growing reliance on the hard power
of security
rather than the soft power of persuasion to maintain itself. The
use of
brute police force is a dangerous phase in the creeping
securitisation of
politics and economics in Zimbabwe. Zanu (PF) was treated
with some respect
for as long as it used the soft power of the ballot to
outsmart the
opposition and remain in power. But state repression is
changing all this.
Certainly, the failure of state prosecutors to
turn up at court on Wednesday
last to lay formal charges against those
arrested cast a shadow of doubt
over the state case and, therefore, its
judgment last weekend. It says the
incident was not a matter of ordinary
police officers over-reacting, but was
part of a broad state strategy for
self-preservation. A formal indictment of
those arrested would have
demonstrated the incident was intended purely to
uphold the law. Clearly,
the government has to realise that, in many ways,
it is its own actions that
are deepening the crisis. This will give the
party a paradoxical legacy of
having won independence for the country and
then doing everything in the
book to undo the achievement 20 years later.
It is true that the
government is not the only factor in the current crisis.
The lukewarm
response by the British to law reform and the intransigent
attitude of the
commercial farmers and land owners contributed immensely to
frustration
within the ruling party, hard-pressed to deliver on its
liberation struggle
promise to return the land to the people. The
high-handed response of the
west, led by Britain, to the onset of the
crisis, primarily to secure white
minority interests in the country and
without consultation with the region,
simply complicated the situation at a
time that President Robert Mugabe was
said to be ready to retire. This
allowed Mugabe to climb on the anti-west
and anticolonial bandwagon and to
outride the embryonic opposition and push
the region, which is ruled by
former liberation movements, into an awkward
position.
The chairman of the AU, Ghanaian President John Kufuor, is
reported as
having expressed the organisation's dismay at the worsening
situation in
Zimbabwe. He suggested that the AU expected the government to
act with great
caution and prevent any further deterioration of the
situation. He went
further, making the point that many critics of the AU and
the SADC fail to
recognise, which is that the AU, SADC and African
countries' criticisms and
suggestions in private have been met with disdain
and suspicion from Harare
and seen as part of a donor agenda.
This
suggests that, like megaphone diplomacy or the naming and shaming
favoured
by the west, the constructive engagement approach by African
countries is
failing to break the siege mentality in Harare.
So what are the
alternatives?
Frankly, a combination of internal and external initiatives
is the best
concoction for ailing Zimbabwe. The South African experience
teaches us that
without a strong coalescence of internal stakeholders, with
a strong
vanguard movement to lead this internal upsurge, external
initiatives will
have a negligible effect on the need for change in Harare.
The opposition
and civil society could use the recent incident to repair
relations between
MDC factions and make bold moves to weld the more
experienced Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Unions, the National Constitutional
Assembly and other
patriotic progressive elements in Zimbabwe into a united
force.
The movement would have to expand its appeal beyond the urban
and peri-urban
constituency by mobilising in the rural areas, equally hurt
by the economic
and political crises. Its agenda will have to be about
Zimbabwe's citizens,
rather than external interests. It will need to be
about handing the state
power and economy back to the people.
Simultaneously, this movement will
have to work tirelessly and cleverly to
build international solidarity, not
just among the former colonial powers,
as has been the case with the main
MDC faction in the past, but more
importantly in Africa and the region.
This movement could take advantage
of uneasiness within the AU and SADC to
strategically turn solidarity into
real political leverage. A manifesto of
political and economic goals could
be a useful tool for indicating to
sceptics that the movement is not about
regime change per se, but
fundamental political and economic change to
advance the Chimurenga achieved
in 1980.
It is on that basis that
SADC, the AU and United Nations-led international
efforts could have the
desired effect. There would be an authentic and
united internal movement of
Zimbabwean people to support, rather than a weak
political party with
unclear political goals, too close to western powers
and too hostile to
regional powers.
The emergence of the mass democratic movement led by the
United Democratic
Front in SA emboldened the Frontline States to switch to a
robust response
to apartheid and enhance their support for the African
National Congress.
The same could happen as regional players identify
specific opportunities to
assist internally designed change. They would urge
both sides towards an
all-inclusive national dialogue and assist in
correcting the economic
problems. They would also encourage renewal within
the ruling party.
Mugabe would bow out having led the country to the
Third Chimurenga, aimed
at deepening democracy and rejuvenating the economy
with international and
regional support.
Zondi is Africa
analyst at the Institute for Global Dialogue.
Business Day
22 March 2007
Nicole
Fritz
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THERE
are those who say that SA's response to the crisis in Zimbabwe has
been
weasel-like and cowardly. That isn't correct. Time and again, SA has
shown
itself prepared to stand up and be counted. SA's first response to the
most
recent events, courtesy of foreign affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa,
was
that Zimbabweans should solve their own problems. That was certainly
hard to
understand given that leaders of Zimbabwe's political opposition and
civil
society had been savagely beaten and effectively incapacitated for
daring
only to assemble and demonstrate solidarity. But an illogical
response isn't
suggestive of cowardice.
Next, Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad urged
the Zimbabwean government to
respect the rule of law and the rights of all
Zimbabweans, but emphasised
that only dialogue among the main political
protagonists would bring about a
lasting solution to the crisis. As this was
the strongest statement yet
issued by a South African official in respect of
Zimbabwe, it seemed
churlish to observe that the Zimbabwean government had
long since abandoned
any pretence of observing the rule of law or to note
that the emphasis on
dialogue struck a slightly odd note. After all, Morgan
Tsvangirai had been
so severely beaten, he was initially able to speak only
with the greatest of
difficulty.
But what really defeats any
accusation of cowardice is the fact that SA has
repeatedly been prepared to
act. It has taken a very public stand on several
occasions in previous years
in order to defeat resolutions placed before the
United Nations (UN) Human
Rights Commission and the general assembly that
would have condemned or
expressed concern at the human rights violations
taking place in
Zimbabwe.
Now, in response to a request for a security council briefing
on the
situation in Zimbabwe, SA's ambassador to the UN and current
president of
the council, Dumisani Kumalo, opines that it isn't a matter
threatening
international peace and security and that to bring it before the
council
would be surprising.
Yet despite Kumalo's
apparent conviction, the belief that the Zimbabwean
situation is not a
threat to international peace and so cannot trigger
security council action,
is misplaced. Previous security council resolutions
repeatedly demonstrated
a willingness to intervene in circumstances of
systematic human rights
violation, even where such violations were confined
to one country. That
willingness to act is heightened in situations of
massive refugee outflows,
providing the potential for regional instability.
The
security council noted in respect of its resolution on Haiti that "the
persistence of this situation contributes to a climate of fear of
persecution and economic dislocation which could increase the number of
Haitians seeking refuge in neighbouring member states". But it would
probably make little difference to SA's representatives to observe that the
situation in Zimbabwe is comparable or to note that the regional refugee
outflow from Zimbabwe exceeds that from Liberia or Sierra Leone, both of
which were determined to be threats to international
peace.
That is because there are few forums in which
precedent and principle are
more easily trumped by politics than in the
security council and South
African representatives at the UN have already
shown themselves prepared to
disregard precedent - as evidenced by their
recent vote on a proposed
security council resolution on
Burma.
For reasons that we must suppose are politic, but
remain unarticulated, SA's
representatives chose to exhaust political
capital, to use their
international standing - quite immaterially, since
their vote made no
difference in the light of Russia's and China's veto - in
order to be seen
to be defeating the resolution on Burma. This, when held
with SA's record of
voting on Zimbabwe in the UN, must make all those
concerned for the
restoration of democracy in Zimbabwe deeply
anxious.
It places us in the absurd position where we must
hope not so much that SA
acts, but that it does not act - that it not defeat
any resolution placed
before the security council. In effect, we must hope
that the worst
criticisms of SA's stance on Zimbabwe, that it is cowardly,
prove true.
Better that SA not stand and be counted, that it adopt a
position unlikely
to create controversy, than that it act to protect the
Zimbabwean government
from censure.
Otherwise, how ironic that on
Human Rights Day yesterday, when we recalled
that "SA belongs to all who
live in it, black and white", we effectively
say: "But Zimbabwe belongs only
to its ruthless, kleptocratic government."
Fritz is the
director of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre.
Business Day
22 March 2007
Steven
Friedman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GOVERNMENT's
failure to take a clear enough stand against heightened tyranny
in Zimbabwe
is not an aberration. It illustrates a pattern in our foreign
policy: that,
whatever our goals in the world may be, supporting democracy
elsewhere is
not one of them. We have repeatedly ignored Zimbabwe's desire
for democracy
- we are, it is reported, planning to do what we can to see to
it that the
United Nations Security Council does not discuss its government's
latest
abuses. We have used our seat on the security council to oppose
criticism of
Burma's military junta, which jailed the winner of an election
and represses
all opposition. And in the Middle East, we try to "help"
Palestinian
leadership to accept the decree of the major powers that
democracy is not
something to which Palestinians are entitled. Elsewhere,
our role is far
more benign. In the rest of Africa, we work to end conflict
in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Côte d'Ivoire and promote
growth
and development. We have also tried to help end the conflict in
Britishcontrolled Ulster.
But, as important as some of these
initiatives are, none seek specifically
to promote democracy - we seek to
settle conflicts or promote growth, not to
ensure everyone has a vote of
equal value and the right to take part in
politics. At times, as in the
Congo, democracy turns out to be a byproduct
of our efforts. But it is not
their focus: supporting democracy does not
feature as one of the foreign
affairs department's "strategic objectives"
listed on its
website.
To some, this is a puzzle. Why would a government that owes
its existence to
a fight for democracy not support it energetically abroad?
The answer, some
argue, is that an idealistic post-apartheid government set
out to bring
democracy to the rest of the continent, only to find this more
difficult
than it thought as enraged autocrats fought back. And so, we are
told, it
took to passing off democracy promotion as conflict resolution and
development strategy.
But this does not explain why foreign
policy often showed little interest in
democracy in the early, supposedly
idealistic, days of our freedom - then
Indonesian dictator Suharto was, for
example, welcomed here on a state
visit. Or why, after our makers of foreign
policy were meant to have sobered
up, the government showed flashes of
democratic enthusiasm - in the late
1990s, then deputy president Thabo Mbeki
warned other African leaders that
coups and rigged elections would make
Africa seem ridiculous abroad.
The more accurate explanation is that
democracy promotion has never been a
core focus of our foreign policy; it
has been at best a by-product, to be
endorsed if it serves other goals
.
Nor is there a contradiction between this approach and the battle
against
apartheid. The anti-apartheid "struggle" was essentially a battle
against
racism. Democracy was a happy by-product, which the post-1994
government has
largely protected. But it was a means to an end - freeing
black people from
subordination - not an end in itself.
And so it
is with our foreign policy. Its prime focus is to defeat bigotry
by showing
that SA in particular, and Africa in general, can become
successful,
growing, modern societies. If democracy helps to do that, it is
an asset. If
it does not, it is not essential.
One consequence is that immediate
economic benefits are given priority over
support for democracy in Burma and
Palestine. And, while the desire to prove
bigots wrong can lead to support
for democracy, as in Congo, it can also
produce defensiveness, when an
African government is attacked by western
powers.
In Zimbabwe,
because white bigots use the Mugabe government as a stick with
which to beat
black aspirations, the response is not to try to fix the
problem but to
close ranks behind those who cause it.
Ironically, this makes it
harder for us to promote our economic interests or
win world respect for
Africa.
One of our key international assets is the respect our
journey to democracy
won us. A foreign policy that aims to maximise our
advantage would build on
that by projecting us as a consistent and
principled force for democracy -
in places where the major powers support it
and those in which they do not.
The more we appear expedient, the more we
lose that crucial advantage. The
more we are principled, the more we
gain.
Supporting democracy beyond our borders is not a luxury that
hampers our
chances of getting on in the world - it is a necessity that is
in our
national interest. The sooner we support democracy on the continent
and in
the world to the limits of our ability, the better for us as well as
for
those elsewhere who seek freedom.
Friedman is a research
associate at the Institute for Democracy in SA, and
is visiting professor of
politics at Rhodes University.
Business Day
22 March 2007
Amy
Musgrave
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plea
ratchets up pressure on SA to abandon 'quiet diplomacy'
Political
Correspondent
ZAMBIA has become the first African country to openly call
for a new
approach to be taken on Zimbabwe, with President Levy Mwanawasa
and former
president Kenneth Kaunda separately urging African leaders to
intervene in
the embattled country.
Their comments, by far the
strongest to date by African leaders on Zimbabwe's
crisis, are likely to
place SA under greater pressure to change its policy
of quiet diplomacy.
This was echoed by local political parties and trade
unions across the
spectrum yesterday during rallies to celebrate Human
Rights Day.
The
recent violence in Zimbabwe has been condemned across the globe and
countries have been calling on African states, in particular SA, to help end
the crackdown on Zim- babwe's political opposition. US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice raised the matter with South African Foreign Affairs
Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma during a telephone call last
week.
But the South African government seemed to be sticking to its guns,
with
government spokesman Themba Maseko indicating there would be no change
in
approach. Although Maseko said the recent beatings of members of
Zimbabwe's
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were
"unacceptable", he said
SA was still trying to get the Zimbabwean government
and the MDC to the
negotiating table.
Mwanawasa said yesterday the
Southern African Development Community (SADC)
had failed to make progress in
talks with Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe. "Quiet diplomacy has failed
to help solve the political chaos and
economic meltdown in Zimbabwe,"
Mwanawasa said during a five-day state visit
to Namibia.
"As I speak
right now, one SADC country has sunk into such economic
difficulties that it
may be likened to a sinking Titanic whose passengers
are jumping off in a
bid to save their lives."
Zambian government newspapers said Mwanawasa
had suggested SADC would soon
take a stand on Zimbabwe. The regional
grouping is due to meet in Tanzania
next week to discuss the
situation.
Kaunda, historically an ally of Mugabe, urged African leaders
to appoint a
committee of eminent people to mediate Zimbabwe's worsening
political
crisis.
Kaunda told state-run radio the issue needed to be
resolved urgently.
In SA, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and
the Congress of South
African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said it was a shame that
while SA was
celebrating Human Rights Day yesterday, the citizens of
neighbouring
Zimbabwe were being subjected to all kinds of human rights
abuses.
Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said SA was using
bureaucratic excuses
to shield tyrants and despots from international
scrutiny.
"It speaks volumes that the government could not even bring
itself to
condemn last week's arrest and torture of MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai," he
said.
Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder said
SA's behaviour concerning
Zimbabwe was "sad" considering all the work
President Thabo Mbeki had done
to improve the image of
Africa.
Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille said that as South
Africans
celebrated Human Rights Day, they needed to think of Zimbabweans
being
"subjected to the kind of tyranny reminiscent of the apartheid regime
and
its security apparatus".
Cosatu spokesman Patrick Craven said
the union federation's campaign for
human rights and democracy in Zimbabwe
needed to be intensified. The union
dedicated the day to members of
Zimbabwe's Congress of Trade Unions, members
of which would be risking their
lives on April 3-4 when they took part in a
stayaway.
South African
organisations were also planning events in solidarity with the
Zimbabweans,
he said. With Sapa
Business Day
22 March 2007
Xolela
Mangcu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IT
STRIKES me that one of the really tragic things about Zimbabwe is the
absence of a strong, autonomous civil, cultural and intellectual society
that could anticipate the tragicomedy of Robert Mugabe. Mugabe is proof yet
again that, left to their own devices, politic-ians often turn out to be
their people's worst enemies.
Most likely Zimbabwe's civic and
intellectual leaders could not resist
prostrating themselves to "the ruler".
One need only read Ngugi wa Thiongo'o's
novel, the Wizard of the Crow, for a
dramatisation of the tragedy that
follows when societies mortgage their
futures to one individual. However,
the oft-expressed disappointment with
Mugabe reveals more about our tendency
to put too much stock in leaders than
the failure of those leaders to live
up to our expectations.
Pity the
country that leaves its fate to politicians, because invariably
such a
country is left to clean up after the mess created by those very same
politicians. It seems important, therefore, that a country should create as
many autonomous intellectual spaces as possible in anticipation of the worst
possible political fallout.
Nothing can be more anticipatory of
such outcomes than the existence of a
critical consciousness among the
citizenry - a state of alertness that makes
it possible for people to speak
out at the slightest indication of
authoritarian megalomania. The level of
such consciousness is almost
impossible to measure, save to say that we must
instinctively speak out
against political hubris, and that instinct must
come as naturally to us as
it must to those who come after us.
I
have often wondered what gives President Thabo Mbeki special access to the
experience of racism - access those of us who lived under the apartheid
regime all those dark years somehow seem never to have had. Race has such a
privileged space in the president's thinking that no ordinary personal
experience has any autonomy. The irony of this apparent radicalism is that
black experience is always explained in terms of white experience. In this
over-racialised framework, HIV/AIDS does not have any autonomy - it is white
people who see black people as "germ carriers".
In the same way,
corruption does not have any autonomy - it is a figment of
white people's
imagination. Crime does not have any autonomy - it is white
people fixated
on black people as the "swart gevaar".
There are two ways to
interpret our president's approach to race. We can say
either he is
consistent in his articulation of the racial foundations of
every social
problem, or that he has simply run out of ideas. Having come
aground, he
finds himself imprisoned in his own framework and is thus left
only to
regurgitating the same racial mantra over and over again. If the
latter
explanation is true, then the next two years of his presidency are
going to
be pretty long indeed. But a proud and alert people ought to be
able to
generate ideas about racism outside this over-racialised
framework.
To be sure, this country is still full of racists. I meet
them every day. I
am, however, less sure if it is the role of a country's
president to issue
generalised harangues about white people on that
supposition. A president
who fights those battles for us risks
incapacitating us and, even more
ominously, leaves us entirely dependent on
his judgment. The citizens must
take the fight against racism on its own
merits to our civic, intellectual
and cultural spaces - backed always by the
force of law. We must talk about
it, we must write about it, and we must use
our constitution to fight it.
Our firmness and resolve in fighting racism
must be matched only by a
willingness to love and accept those we seek to
change.
And this is where the role of head of state needs to be
different from what
we have seen from Mbeki. Symbolically, the president
stands as the
representative of everyone, including the sections of the
population he
finds disagreeable. He must find it within his heart to love
them and even
accept their integrity. Substantively, he must use the bully
pulpit of his
presidency to point to the need to fight racism. However, that
is quite
different from a dependence on race as a political crutch for every
policy
failure.
It is all of our civic and intellectual
responsibilities to develop a
critical consciousness that enables us to
distinguish between the abstract
jargon of power and people's everyday
experiences. The president may have no
real experience of this, but race was
the farthest thing from my mind when I
was hijacked.
Dr
Mangcu is executive chairman of the Platform for Public Deliberation, and
a
visiting scholar at the Public Intellectual Life Project at Wits
University.
He is also a nonresident WEB Du Bois Fellow at Harvard
University.
Herald 22.3.07
Court
Reporter
TRUST schools have won their legal battle against the Ministry
of Education,
Sport and Culture over the baseline for fee increases and the
method of
calculating fees for the third term of last year and the first
term of this
year.
They have also had two interim orders confirmed.
These barred the ministry
from closing schools or having school authorities
arrested until all other
legal remedies are exhausted, declared void maximum
fees set by the
ministry, and barred the ministry from confiscating any fee
in excess of
what it laid down as the correct fee.
The legal
interpretation of the fees section of the Act and the confirmation
of the
interim orders were given in a ruling yesterday by Justice Samuel
Kudya in
the High Court after he heard arguments from the schools and the
ministry
last week.
The Association of Trust Schools, Arundel, Ariel and Chisipite
Junior
Schools Trusts were listed as applicants while the Minister of
Education,
Sport and Culture, Cde Aeneas Chigwedere, and the ministry's
secretary Dr
Stephen Mahere were cited as respondents in the consolidated
cases.
The amended Education Act, which came into effect during the
second term of
last year, allows for automatic approval of fee increases so
long as these
do not exceed the percentage increase in the consumer price
index for the
previous term.
But a dispute arose between the ministry
and the trust schools over several
points, the most critical being
ascertaining which term's fees were the
baseline between the fees set by the
High Court in February 2005 or the
second term fees of 2006.
The
second main point of interpretation was how the consumer price index
would
be applied, the ministry contending that day fees could only be
increased by
40 percent of the increase in the CPI while the schools said
all fees could
be increased by the full CPI percentage.
After examining the fees section
in the original Act and in the amended Act,
Justice Kudya concluded that the
arguments presented by the Association of
Trust Schools were
correct.
Fees and levies could only be set, under the old Act, by the
ministry at the
time when a school was registered or when a registered
school wanted to
impose a new fee or levy, rather than just increase the old
fee.
Increases of existing fees were legal under the unamended Act so
long as
they fell below a maximum percentage increase set by the ministry.
Since no
such percentage had been set for the first two terms of last year,
the
schools were not obliged to seek permission to raise fees and all fees
charged for these first two terms were, thus, legal.
Because these
fees, and especially the fees for the second term of last
year, were legal,
the judge ruled that the baseline for applying the CPI
percentage rise was
the second term of last year, not the February 2005 fee
set by the courts as
the ministry contended.
On the ministry's argument that day schools
should increase fees at 40
percent of the rate of boarding schools,
effectively at 40 percent of the
CPI rise, the judge noted: "This was a
fallacious suggestion which was
sensibly abandoned in
argument."
There was further argument over sub-clauses that, so the judge
ruled,
applied only to schools that offered both day places and boarding
places.
The amended Act states that day fees cannot exceed 40 percent of the
boarding fees if meals are provided or 30 percent if meals are not provided
to day pupils, although the school can make an application to the ministry's
permanent secretary to have this varied.
Justice Kudya noted that the
secretary, when considering such an
application, had to apply the four
criteria laid down and had to give the
affected schools the right of a
hearing before rejecting any applications.
The judge did refuse to grant
the trust schools' application to have this
percentage provision set aside
pending the finalisation of a court appeal on
their validity since this
would go beyond what could be granted in
confirmation proceedings.
He
also noted that there was no evidence that any school had applied for a
variation, and in the absence of an application and rejection he could not
make any order.
The legal row started in November last year when the
Government set maximum
fees and levies for private schools for this
term.
The schools were told they risked forfeiture to the State of any
extra money
charged, while school authorities would be jailed for periods
not exceeding
six months if they flouted the directive.
Justice Kudya
confirmed the interim order that declared the set fees void
since the
minister had no authority under the Act to set fees for existing
schools.
He also ordered that any fees in excess of a legal maximum,
found by
calculation, had to be credited to the parent or other fee payer
and could
not be forfeited to the State.
In his lengthy judgment,
Justice Kudya set the guidelines which should be
followed when increasing
fees in accordance with the law.
The baseline was the second term of last
year when the amendments came into
force.
The percentages that could
be applied were the percentage rises in the CPI
for the second term of last
year when calculating the third term fee, and
the then the CPI rise for that
term when working out the first term fee of
this year.
All agreed
that the CPI rose 142,65 percent in the second term last year and
159,55
percent in the third term.
The schools had applied, as required, for the
fees so the secretary had to
first calculate the third term 2006 fee before
applying that term's CPI rise
to calculate the first term 2007 fee for each
school. The percentage rises
for each term were those all agreed were the
CPI figures.
The court also prohibited the Secretary for Education from
limiting any
increase for day schools to a percentage of CPI's increase,
among others.
The secretary also had to check, where a school offered
both day and
boarding places, whether the day fees did not exceed the
laid-down
percentages.
The secretary had 10 days to process
applications and schools could collect
the decision from his
office.
If any application was rejected, the secretary had 48 hours after
notifying
the school to provide written reasons for his
rejection.
Justice Kudya said the court order would remain in force
pending any appeal
and until set aside by a competent court and would not be
suspended merely
by noting an appeal.
The ministry was ordered to pay
the costs of the Association of Trust
Schools.
Mrs Sheila Jarvis of
Atherstone and Cook represented the schools, while Mr
Clement Muchenga,
assisted by Mrs Virginia Mabhiza of the Civil Division of
the Attorney
General's Office, appeared for the minister and the secretary
Business Day
22 March 2007
Wyndham
Hartley
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Parliamentary
Editor
CAPE TOWN - In perhaps its strongest statement on Zimbabwe since
the crisis
escalated recently, chief government spokesman Themba Maseko said
the
beatings of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leaders were
"unacceptable"
but indicated that there would be no change in government's
approach.
Government has come under increasing criticism for failing
to condemn the
violence and for opposing a briefing to the United Nations
Security Council
on the Zimbabwe crisis for technical
reasons.
However, government has revealed that behind the scenes it
is trying to get
the Zimbabwean government and the opposition MDC to the
negotiating table.
It said it believed that only dialogue could solve the
crisis north of the
Limpopo and that it must involve all stakeholders in
Zimbabwe.
The statement after Tuesday's cabinet meeting was still low
key and failed
to condemn outright the violence perpetrated by government
agencies against
opposition activists in the MDC.
Government
reiterated the foreign affairs ministry's stance that it would
not condone
violence, but Maseko expressed only extreme concern after a
second round of
attacks on the MDC.
Maseko said at the conclusion of the cabinet meeting
that there had been a
great deal of condemnation of President Robert Mugabe
and his Zanu (PF)
government, but "none of it had worked".
He was
responding to a question when asked why SA's approach had not worked.
He
said "the beatings are unacceptable" but insisted that government
believed
that the best way to go was to pour all efforts into finding a
peaceful
solution through "quiet diplomacy".
"Our view is that an extensive
amount of energy and effort must be spent on
getting them all around the
table," he said.
Government had been interacting with other leaders in
the region with a view
to getting some movement in Zimbabwe.
He said
government had also been involved in attempts to get the
protagonists in
Zimbabwe around the table, "but it is important to
understand that we cannot
drag them to the table".
He said SA had used the same quiet diplomacy
successfully in other African
interventions. Therefore, government still
felt that it could work in
Zimbabwe.
"Only dialogue among the main
political protagonists can help bring about a
lasting solution to the
political and economic challenges facing Zimbabwe."
Maseko said
government was ready to provide whatever assistance was required
in bringing
about a peaceful and lasting solution to Zimbabwe.
He said that if the
requests for assistance came from either the Zimbabwe
government or the
opposition, SA would respond in the same way as it would
to any request from
the Southern African Development Community or the
African Union.
The Indian Catholic
March 22,2007
KONIGSTEIN (CNA): Father
Joaquín Alliende, the international
ecclesiastical assistant of Catholic
charity, Aid to the Church in Need
(ACN), is asking all Catholic faithful to
pray for Zimbabwe after receiving
a message from a priest in the
country.
"We recommend the Zimbabwean people to the Sacred Heart of
the Lord, so that
they will recognise the fruit of the Resurrection," Fr.
Alliende said.
ACN received a message from a Zimbabwean priest, who asked
to remain
anonymous but requested a call for prayers be issued. "The
political
situation in Zimbabwe is reaching a boiling point," the African
priest
reported.
"You may have seen the scenes of brutality against
the leader and members of
the only viable opposition party in the
international media in recent days.
For us who are on the ground, the
brutality caused by a government which
claims to be serving the interests of
the people of Zimbabwe makes us very
ashamed before the global
family."
"In this age and time," he continued, "nobody would have
expected such
barbarism in a country which claims to be a democratic nation
but this is
the true reality in our sad and beloved country,
Zimbabwe."
"Like before, I am kindly asking for your prayers," the priest
said.
"Actually, Zimbabwe needs your prayers more than ever before; for the
people
are experiencing a multitude of problems ranging from high inflation,
unemployment, food shortages, and political violence."
The priest
said that although times are extremely tough, "we are beginning
to see some
light at the end of the tunnel." He said that the recent show of
violence
against the people of Zimbabwe is actually a sign that things may
soon
change. "The bankrupt regime has run out of ideas, money, and political
credibility. Hence, the only weapon left it is to use force against its own
people."
FinGaz
Staff
Reporter
Ex-minister tipped to take over from Mutsvangwa in China
FORMER
Public Service and National Housing Minister Frederick Shava is
tipped to
take over as Zimbabwe's ambassador to China from Chris Mutsvangwa,
who had
an inglorious exit from the vast Asian state, one of the few nations
that
still back Harare's controversial policies.
Highly placed sources said
Shava, the ruling party's director, sidelined in
1987 after being caught in
what came to be known as the 'Willowgate scandal'
but whose star started
shining again in the mid-1990s, had been given the
thumbs up by influential
ZANU PF bigwigs.
"It is just a matter of time before an appropriate
announcement is made,"
said a party insider.
If appointed, Shava will
have the unenviable task of transforming
China-Zimbabwe relations from
political rhetoric into commercial ties
beneficial to both
countries.
Ranked one of the world's fastest growing economies, China has
signed a
number of MoUs (Memorandum of Understanding) with state-owned
enterprises in
Zimbabwe and has supplied Zimbabwe with buses, civilian and
military
aircraft.
But not much has come out of China's friendship
despite it being touted as
one of Zimbabwe's biggest trading
partners.
Zimbabwe's exclusion from President Hu Jintao's itinerary during
his recent
visit to eight African states including South Africa, Mozambique
and Namibia
in January this year has been taken to mean that China's
patience with
Zimbabwe could be wearing thin because of Harare's failure to
translate
political rhetoric into action.
Jintao's visit was aimed at
enhancing existing ties and expanding China's
influence across the
continent.
President Robert Mugabe has adopted a "Look East" policy after
being
ostracised by the West over alleged human rights abuses. The
Zimbabwean
leader has however scoffed at the allegations, saying his
government is
being vilified for addressing historical imbalances by
parcelling out land
from the minority whites to landless blacks.
In
contrast, while China is experiencing a major boom, Zimbabwe has been
ranked
as one of the world's fastest shrinking economies with unemployment
standing
at above 80 percent and inflation at 1 729 percent.
Shava fell from grace
after he was convicted for his involvement in the
Willowgate scandal in
which five senior government ministers were forced to
resign for using their
privileged positions to buy new cars from Willowvale
Mazda Motor Industries
at a fixed price without paying sales tax.
The vehicles were then sold well
above the maximum price allowed by the
country's laws.
In 1987, President
Mugabe pardoned Shava and after spending some years in
the political
wilderness, the former Public Service Minister bounced back at
the ZANU PF
headquarters.
Shava, who chaired Zidco Holdings from 1980 to 1998, is
currently embroiled
in a bitter legal tussle with Patrick Kombayi, a senior
Movement for
Democratic Change official. Kombayi successfully obtained writs
of execution
against Shava and Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Rural Housing
Minister, for
allegedly making false claims about the Gweru-based
businessman regarding
his role during the liberation struggle.
Shava
alleged in a book written by Midlands State University vice-chancellor
Professor Ngwabi Bhebe on the late vice-president Simon Muzenda entitled
Simon Muzenda and The Struggle for the Liberation of Zimbabwe that Kombayi
was part of a clique in 1977 and 1978 together with Henry Hamadziripi and
others that plotted to derail the liberation struggle.
FinGaz
Staff
Reporter
KEY economic partners yesterday converged in Vumba to lay the
foundation for
the proposed social contract, which was supposed to come into
effect at the
beginning of this month.
Government and business
sources said the International Labour Organisation
and the United Nations
Development Programme were facilitating the meeting
whose goal is to educate
business, government and labour on the meaning of a
social
contract.
Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche
is leading
the government delegation at the talks, which are also being
attended by the
Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe, the Confederation of
Zimbabwe
Industries and the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce,
representing
business.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions is
representing labour.
The social contract, the main thrust of Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe Governor
Gideon Gono's monetary policy statement presented in
January, is premised on
the need to attain mutual understanding on prices,
wages and productivity
among government, business and labour.
Under the
proposed social contract, Gono proposed the freezing of prices and
wages
from March.
The government hopes a freeze could help arrest soaring
inflation, the
highest in the world at about 1 730 percent.
Labour and
business leaders recently began talks with government under the
auspices of
the Tripartite Negotiating Forum.
But economic critics doubt the government's
commitment to economic and
political reform considering its recent crackdown
on the opposition and on
business.
Civil discontent is rising in the
country over the deepening economic crisis
that has triggered a series of
strikes as workers battle with rising prices
of basic commodities, which are
becoming unaffordable for many.
Political analysts warn that the aggravating
economic crisis could spark
anti-government street protests.
FinGaz
Kumbirai Mafunda Senior
Business Reporter
Police detain URL boss over cooking oil price
POLICE
this week briefly detained United Refineries Limited (URL) managing
director
Busisa Moyo for allegedly flouting price controls, in the latest
incident in
the government's ongoing blitz on industry.
Police officers from the
Licence Inspectorate and Price Control Unit
arrested Moyo on Monday morning
before setting him free later in the day,
for allegedly hiking the retail
price of cooking oil without government
approval.
Moyo confirmed his
arrest and said police interrogated him for increasing
the retail price of
cooking oil.
Earlier this year, Moyo appeared in court to answer charges of
flouting
price controls. He was, however, freed after the court ruled that
the
charges preferred against him by the police were not in order.
"They
are pressing fresh charges for increasing the price of cooking oil
without
the (Industry and Trade) Minister's approval," Moyo said.
Trade and commerce
laws compel manufacturers of selected basic commodities
to first seek
government approval before increasing prices. But most
manufacturers have
ignored the directive because of government delays in
authorising the
proposed price increases, which leave manufacturers at the
mercy of rising
production costs.
A 750 ml of cooking oil retails for $10 000, double the
controlled price of
$5 017.
Moyo joins the growing list of executives who
in recent months have found
themselves on the wrong side of the law for
flouting price control
regulations.
Last month the government arrested
Mike Manga and Ian Kind, executives of
Zimbabwe's largest milling companies,
after they circumvented government
approval to increase the retail price of
bakers' flour.
URL, 71 percent of whose production consists of edible oils
and the
remainder of detergents, is 20 percent controlled by industrial
conglomerate
TA Holdings, which has been weighing options to disinvest from
the company.
FinGaz
Kumbirai Mafunda Senior
Reporter
THE standoff between the government and the baking sector has
started taking
its toll amid indications that some of the major industry
players are
winding down their operations.
Superbake, one of the
country's largest bakers, yesterday announced that it
had closed half of its
bakeries and laid off about 1 500 workers as the
impasse over the pricing of
bread claimed its first casualty.
National Bakers Association (NBA) acting
chairman, Vincent Mangoma,
yesterday warned of a total collapse of the
industry if the government
continues to ignore submissions made by the
sector.
"Bakers are closed, they are not manufacturing bread. There is no way
we can
remain in business under these current circumstances," Mangoma
said.
The bread industry had pinned its hopes on Tuesday's Cabinet meeting
but, as
it turned out, the issue was not discussed.
Sources said the
government had chosen to seek further verification on the
various costings
submitted by the baking industry, through the Ministry of
Industry and
International Trade before it could reach a position.
A standard loaf of
bread has a gazetted retail price of $825, which equates
to nearly one-fifth
of the commuter fare to Harare's medium-density suburb
of Msasa Park.
To
stop the bleeding, bakers are pushing for a price rise under $4 000 per
standard loaf but the government is said to be putting a lid on the
suggested increase for fear of fuelling political tensions following last
week's disturbances.
Superbake, a subsidiary of Harambe Holdings,
yesterday said the
government-imposed prices had failed to offset production
costs that are
increasing on a daily basis due to underlying inflationary
pressures.
"Diesel prices have shot up: diesel now takes up 60 percent of the
cost of a
loaf, much more than the main ingredient: wheat flour with
packaging, which
used to be three percent is now taking up between 16 and 18
percent of the
cost due to foreign exchange factors," said a spokesperson
for Superbake.
"The high input costs and delays in determining the price of
bread mean that
the bread industry sinks further into debt on a daily
basis," added the
spokesperson.
Superbake, which also operates as
Mitchells and Downings, said its business
had been profitable up to the end
of 2006, as it received subsidised fuel.
But this concession was removed,
leaving the company exposed to a 1 800
percent rise in the cost of flour,
sharp fuel price increases and a static
bread price.
FinGaz
Nkululeko Sibanda Staff
Reporter
ZANU PF, desperately trying to end divisions within its ranks,
has been
further split by the police beatings of opposition leaders that
have
intensified world condemnation of the ruling party and government while
galvanising the opposition.
The clearest sign that those in ZANU PF
were no longer seeing eye-to-eye was
the disapproval voiced by the
parliamentary committee on transport and
communications over the beating
last Sunday of Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) legislator Nelson
Chamisa, a member of the committee.
Leo Mugabe, President Robert Mugabe's
nephew, chairs the committee.
Reports that a senior ZANU PF politburo member
(name supplied) had visited
Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, in hospital
have fuelled suspicion within
the party.
The committee, dominated by ZANU
PF Members of Parliament, said "a full
investigation is in order as Chamisa
was on national duty" when he was
attacked.
Chamisa was on his way to
attend a joint European Union-African Caribbean
and Pacific states
parliamentary sitting in Brussels.
Highly placed sources said despite the
public posturing by the government
that the police acted in defence of the
country's independence, divisions
had emerged within the fractious party
over the police brutality.
Said a ZANU PF politburo member: "The top brass
and the entire leadership of
the party is seriously divided over the issue.
While some are on the
President's side on this, there are some who believe
that actions such as
those evidenced in the past two months are unwarranted
and should be stopped
so as to avoid unnecessary brushes with the
international community."
At least 50 political activists who were arrested
while preparing to attend
a prayer meeting in Highfield were treated for
serious injuries sustained
while they were in police custody.
The sources
said a camp that supports President Mugabe's tough stance
maintains that the
opposition figures should be subjected to "serious
bashing" should they defy
the police ban on political rallies again.
However, another camp is
understood to insist that the beatings were
excessive and had further
isolated ZANU PF from its remaining foreign allies
and Zimbabwean
voters.
A central committee report prepared ahead of ZANU PF's people's
conference
last year called for renewed efforts to mend strained relations
with the
international community.
Some sections of the party are said to
believe that the latest beatings have
jeopardized ZANU PF's chances of
making new friends.
But State Security Minister, Didymus Mutasa who doubles
up as the ZANU PF
secretary for administration, this week denied that the
police brutality had
caused divisions, saying the ruling party was still
united against
international pressure.
Said Mutasa: "Members are of the
view that there is need to defend our
policies as we have done before, even
in the face of the rising pressure
from the international community. We will
continue to defend the party's
position because we believe it's the right
thing to do."
John Nkomo, the ZANU PF national chairman, referred all
questions to the
party's spokesperson, Nathan Shamuyarira. He said the
information and
publicity department of the party was best placed to handle
such matters.
"I cannot comment on such matters. This is Shamuyarira's
portfolio. Talk to
him, he will give you a comment," said Nkomo on
Tuesday.
Shamuyarira yesterday scoffed at suggestions that the police's
handling of
the political activists had split the party, saying the
divisions only
existed in the eyes of the media.
A defiant President
Mugabe told Western critics of his government's policies
to "go hang", in
remarks that gratified hardliners in his party, but alarmed
its less radical
members.
Sharp divisions, linked to the succession issue are ravaging the
ruling
party as aspiring ZANU PF bigwigs jostle to position themselves ahead
of
President Mugabe's retirement. The rift worsened in 2004, ahead of the
party's December congress, following intense jockeying for the vacant
vice-president's post, which was eventually filled by Joice
Mujuru.
Mujuru's husband, retired army general Solomon Mujuru, is said to
head one
of the three factions, while Emmerson Mnangagwa, the ZANU PF
secretary for
legal affairs leads another faction. The third faction is
linked to
President Mugabe's "loyalists".
President Mugabe had initially
hinted at retiring at the expiry of his
current term but the veteran
politician seems to have had a change of heart.
In a recent interview, the
Zimbabwean leader, who turned 83 last month, said
he is prepared to stand
for another term if it is the people's wish.
Meanwhile, a top official of the
African Union's rights agency has written
to President Mugabe to protest
over what she described as the deteriorating
human rights situation in
Zimbabwe.
At the same time, South Africa's ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mlungisi
Makhalima,
has become the latest high profile diplomat to hold talks with
opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai, officials said.
Pansy Tlakula, the
South African-based commissioner for the African
Commission on Human and
People's Rights (ACHPR) and Special Rapporteur on
the Freedom of Expression,
protesting the arrest of three journalists
covering recent protests, asked
President Mugabe to ensure Zimbabwe abided
by the African Charter on Human
and People's Rights, to which the country is
a party.
"I actually met
(photographer) Tsvangirai Mukwazhi during my visit and I saw
with my own
eyes the serious injuries he sustained on his back during a
beating by the
police. Not only was he in pain but he was also traumatised
by the
experience. His eyes were full of tears as he narrated to me the
incidents
of March 11. His car, equipment and laptop were confiscated by the
police,"
Tlakula said.
Tlakula, a South African, was also briefed on the torture of
Tsvangirai and
at least 49 other opposition leaders.
According to
sources, Tlakula was "shocked" by the graphic accounts given by
the
opposition leaders, and said she would brief both President Thabo Mbeki
and
ACHPR chairman Alpha Oumar Konare.
"She promised to meet President Mbeki and
then Konare," said a source that
met Tlakula. "She asked Tsvangirai to write
a personal account of what
transpired while in police custody."
She heard
from opposition leaders how suspected military officers had
brutalised them
in police cells. "She saw for herself riot police beating up
people in Glen
View at the funeral wake of the late Gift Tandare".
Tlakula later met heads
of organisations campaigning for free expression,
where she was told how
government was using tough security and media laws to
stifle citizens'
rights to free expression and assembly.
Tendai Biti, secretary general of
Tsvangirai's faction of the MDC, confirmed
that SA envoy Makhalima visited
Tsvangirai.
"He (Tsvangirai) met the South African ambassador, Professor
Makhalima, on
Monday, and they discussed a wide range of issues, including
the torture we
suffered under the police."
Visiting Tsvangirai has earned
Western diplomats a sharp rebuke from the
government.
Foreign Affairs
Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi on Monday threatened to
expel Western
diplomats for what he said was their support for the
opposition.
But
concern has been raised even by Zimbabwe's erstwhile African allies. AU
chairman John Kufuor termed the beatings "embarrassing", while Konare has
demanded a full probe into claims of torture.
Tanzania, which chairs the
Southern African Development Community (SADC)
troika on defence and security
- the other members are Namibia and Lesotho -
announced last week that a
meeting on Zimbabwe has been scheduled for this
weekend in Dar es
Salaam.
The announcement followed an urgent visit to Harare last Thursday by
Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete to express regional concern over the
treatment of the opposition leaders. After five hours of talks however, a
defiant President Mugabe emerged to tell his critics to "go hang".
FinGaz
Kumbirai Mafunda Senior
Business Reporter
ZAMBIA will not export any more grain to Zimbabwe as it
looks to avoid
shortages in its own market after floods hit parts of the
country, The
Financial Gazette can reveal.
The ban on grain exports
leaves Zimbabwe with no choice but to import from
either South Africa or
Malawi, which recently lifted a ban on the export of
maize and is projected
to record a maize surplus.
Failing that, the country would have to source
grain at very high cost from
countries as far as Brazil, which according to
the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will also have
surpluses.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, Zimbabwe
is
projected to harvest 850 000 metric tonnes of maize and will have to
close
the gap through imports or food aid.
The government has so far
imported 400 000 tonnes of maize to cover the
deficit. It needs 1,8 million
tonnes to meet national requirements.
Ben Kapita, Zambia's Agriculture
Minister, said on Tuesday his country
anticipates food shortages resulting
from the floods that hit most parts of
the country hence the decision to
rescind exports of surplus grain.
He however, said millers and grain traders
had been allowed to clear
outstanding maize contracts and no new maize
exports would be allowed
thereafter.
Zambia's Food Reserve Agency, a
statutory body with the mandate to purchase
maize and other cereals for the
national reserve, currently has 150 000
tonnes of maize.
An estimated 421
000 tonnes of maize is still with the farmers.
Zimbabwe, which is in the
throes of a decade-long economic recession, has
declared 2007 a drought year
after writing off half the country's crop.
Ever since the emotive land
reforms of 2000, the country has struggled to
feed its 13 million people
owing to a combination of the drought,
disturbances on most commercial farms
and the shortages of inputs among
other things.
FAO has already written
off Zimbabwe's crop harvest for 2007 saying the
country will once again face
a serious grain deficit as a result of
shortages of critical agricultural
inputs, which were in short supply or
were high priced during the just ended
agricultural season.
Already the United Nations has launched a US$215 million
humanitarian appeal
of which US$62 million will go towards food aid
requirements.
FinGaz
Staff Reporter
THE
government's tourism marketing body, the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority
(ZTA),
has conceded that last week's political events have cast a new shadow
over
already dim prospects of a revival in the country's tourism
industry.
ZTA chief executive officer, Karikoga Kaseke, said
government attacks on the
opposition, which have grabbed world headlines,
were a setback to the
marketing of Zimbabwe as a secure tourist
destination.
"The political events of the past week have a negative effect on
Zimbabwe as
a tourist destination. The issue of destination image is one
that we dealt
with extensively in the now much talked about National Tourism
Development
and Marketing Strategy," said Kaseke yesterday.
"We believe
we worked out a diagnosis of ourselves as a tourist destination
and the
strategies and programmes we developed were meant to redress the
negative
image that Zimbabwe has in our major source markets."
Events of the past week
have hogged major international news channels.
Pictures of bludgeoned
Movement for Democratic Change leaders accompany most
of the reports.
But
Kaseke still holds hope for a recovery. He said: "This is not a case of
one
step forward and two steps backwards, no never. It is a case of ten
steps
forward and one step backwards. We will recover the one step back we
encountered as a result of the setback when we make another ten steps
forward. Our strategic intent is to regain and increase the country's market
share in the traditional markets whilst aggressively penetrating the new
markets.
"Temporary setbacks such as the political events of last week
were factored
during the strategy formulation stage. Our focus until
December 2007 is to
redress the negative image and from January 2008 to
December 2010 we will be
concentrating on building a positive
image."
According to Kaseke, "when events such as those of the past week
occur we
should move rapidly to restore normal conditions".
FinGaz
Synodia Bhasera and Christella
Langton
ZIMBABWE will lose over US$15 million each year for the next 20
years if a
proposed ban on ivory trade succeeds, parks officials
say.
Kenya and Mali have proposed a trade ban in raw or manufactured
ivory in
Zimbabwe, arguing that allowing any further trade in ivory would
spur
elephant poaching.
According to the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife
Management Authority, if the
proposal succeeds, the lucrative trophy hunting
business would be badly
hurt.
"We have opposed the proposal considering
how much we are going to lose.
Already we have lost much through research
and travel. A single (hunted)
elephant gives us about US$30 000. Imagine how
much the authority is likely
to lose if the proposal succeeds," said Morris
Mutsambiwa, the authority's
director.
Kenya and Mali will present their
proposals on the ban at this year's
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora (CITES) meeting, which is to be
held in the Netherlands in June.
Zimbabwe is currently battling an
overpopulation of elephant, with the
estimated annual population growth rate
of 5 percent. Parks fears that the
animals would pose a further threat to
the environment and human life if
hunting is banned. A survey conducted by
the World Wide Fund for Nature
showed that Zimbabwe's elephant population
stands at more than 100 000,
against a carrying capacity of 47 000. Hwange
National Park alone has an
elephant population of 45 000.
The authority
has set up a national technical committee comprising experts
from the public
and private sector to produce a document on elephant
management and
sustainability, which would be used to counter the ban
campaign.
"We are
preparing documents that will answer issues raised as justification
for the
proposal. We will have meetings with Namibia, South Africa and
Botswana to
discuss strategies. We will then move into SADC (the Southern
African
Development Community) to form a common position," Mutsambiwa said.
CITES
banned international commercial trade in ivory in 1989 but in 1997,
after
recognising that some southern African elephant populations were
healthy and
well managed, permitted Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to make a
one-time
sale of ivory to Japan.
FinGaz
Stanley Kwenda Staff
Reporter
IT is not only opposition politicians that are nursing aches and
pains after
a week of unrest. Business, especially tourism, has taken major
knocks after
images of badly injured opposition activists were beamed to the
world over
the past week.
The Zimbabwe dollar lost a quarter of its
value in the week up to last
Friday, while the few tour operators still
getting some business reported
cancellations.
The tourism industry, which
has so far suffered the brunt of the poor
publicity because of state
repression, has reported that tourism arrivals
dropped sharply as bookings
were cancelled. One official said the intensity
of the media coverage of the
beatings of opposition leaders had created the
impression of a country at
war, scaring away any would-be tourists.
"We are receiving reports from our
prime tourist areas that business has
been reacting to the events of the
past three days. I am told by some
operators in Victoria Falls that
bookings, especially from Europe, have been
cancelled or put on hold as a
result of the events of the past week," said
an executive with a listed
hotels group.
Francis Mazani, Victoria Falls manager for Avis Car Hire, said:
"Business
has slumped. We were already being affected by fuel shortages, and
now these
events will affect our businesses even more. We are now seeing
only
businesspeople and the maintenance people from Hwange Power
Station."
The president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI),
Callisto
Jokonya, also added his voice to growing concerns from business
players over
the impact events of the past week will have on
business.
"The civil unrest of the past few weeks will add further pressure
on our
economy. We hope there will be a resolution to the problems as soon
as
possible because, certainly, it's a threat to the economy," Jokonya told
media and analysts at an earnings briefing for a bank.
Analysts said if
unrest escalated into full scale, violent street protests
as feared,
insurance companies would bear the brunt, as claims would soar.
Insurance
companies have come off a difficult year in which massive fire
claims were
brought by Zimasco, Red Star and Sable Chemicals.
Riots in January 1998 - in
which property was either looted or damaged - saw
massive insurance payouts.
This forced a number of insurance companies to
review their policies on
"political risk", and forced retailers to spend
fortunes on fortifying their
facades and increasing overall security.
Another effect of the current
standoff between opposition and government
would be to throw talks over a
possible social contract, already in doubt,
into further jeopardy. The
country's labour unions are planning a two-day
national strike next month,
which would further heighten tensions.
FinGaz
Personal
Glimpses with Mavis Makuni
ZIMBABWE'S police chiefs never have never
missed a chance to pat themselves
on the back for the alleged
professionalism of the country's law enforcers
both at home and when they
are invited to participate in international
peacekeeping
missions.
In recent months, Zimbabwean police contingents have
participated in
peacekeeping missions in East Timor, Liberia, Sudan and
Kosovo. Upon
departure for or arrival back from these assignments, the
nation has been
told of their dedication and ability to execute their duties
professionally.
When a squad of 20 police officers left to join a United
Nations
peacekeeping mission in Sudan last month, Acting Police Commissioner
Godwin
Matanga said, "Our officers have stood shoulder to shoulder with
officers
from other police organisations and have proved to be of high
professional
pedigree as they have managed to land leadership roles in
various mission
areas."
He believed it was because of their efficient and
effective contribution
that Zimbabwean police had made a significant
contribution in rebuilding
police services in various parts of the world
that had experienced
protracted wars and civil unrest.
On another
occasion when yet another team was leaving to join a UN
peacekeeping
mission, Matanga was more fulsome in his praise of the police
force saying,
"Without doubt, it is a clear indication that we are and have
always
discharged our duties professionally and in accordance with
international
police standards, for had it not been for that, the United
Nations would not
have invited us to provide personnel for peacekeeping
duties." In November
last year, when 31 officers left for a UN peacekeeping
mission in East
Timor, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri said the fact
that the world
body asked Zimbabwe to send contingents to such initiatives
was "clear
testimony" of the professionalism of the force. "Let me hasten to
remind you
that the organisation and the country is happy that our
participation has
never been through canvassing, but is through our
dedicated professionalism
that we have always exhibited locally and
globally"
Following the events
of the past week when the world has been confronted
with gruelling images of
brutalised leaders of the opposition and the
National Constitutional
Assembly, it is hard to believe that the
organisation that provides police
officers who are supposedly paragons of
professional integrity and
efficiency during international missions is the
same one accused of
perpetrating these horrors at home.
It is difficult to see how anyone can
regard the local police force as being
the "envy of many" as a
state-controlled paper once declared in a headline,
when they seem incapable
of performing the most basic and routine of
duties - effecting an arrest
without resorting to force. The much touted and
impeccable record Zimbabwean
police are supposed to have established on the
international scene presents
a dichotomy that perhaps only the father of
psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud,
could explain.
As far the ordinary person can deduce, the police seem to be
suffering from
a complex of some sort that makes them believe that their own
compatriots
are less worthy of the professional and humane treatment they
accord
citizens of other countries during international assignments. Their
double
standards are, in the words of one psychologist akin to "the hired
killer
who, after dispassionately shooting someone in a dark parking lot,
goes
home, kisses his wife and children, telephones his mother to find out
whether her arthritis is any better and then sits down with a beer to watch
the late show."
This sort of hypocrisy is not different from that
exhibited by some heads of
state who pose on the international scene as
champions of justice and fair
play for the people of Africa while subjecting
their own people to brutal
and tyrannical governance. Charity should begin
at home.
About six months ago when leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade
Unions
were assaulted while they were in police custody, the explanation
given by
the law enforcers was that this had happened because the unionists
had
resisted arrest. Following the vicious beatings perpetrated against
Movement
for Democratic Change leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, National
Constitutional
Assembly chairman Lovemore Madhuku and scores of opposition
activists, it is
being claimed once again that this occurred because these
people resisted
arrest. But the police have never told the nation exactly
what the victims
of their brutality did to "resist arrest" considering that
in both the
instances cited above, they were battered when they were already
in police
custody. But even supposing, for argument's sake, that anyone
would be
foolhardy enough to try to take to his or her heels, are we being
told that
a single detainee could elude the armies of police details
normally assigned
to arrest opposition activists.
It does not make sense
for the police to tell the nation that bashing people
repeatedly with blunt
objects until they are bloody and swollen is easier
and more professional
than simply placing handcuffs on their wrists as
required by Zimbabwean and
international law. Since this is preposterous, it
is safe to conclude that
"resisting arrest" is an encoded phrase for
something the police are hiding
from the nation although it is obvious to
all and sundry. The police are not
doing themselves any favours by
portraying themselves to the world and the
people of Zimbabwe who pay the
taxes that finance their
operations and
livelihoods as backward predators preying on the very people
they are
supposed to protect.
As American Supreme Court judge, Justice Felix
Frankfurter once observed,
"The history of liberty has largely been the
history of observance of
procedural safeguards" whose purpose is not to
"convenience the guilty but
to protect the innocent".
The police in
Zimbabwe have to consistently stick to professional ethics and
procedures so
that they can assure all Zimbabweans of their basic human
rights - freedom
of expression, association, assembly and freedom from
arbitrary
arrest.
In a chapter titled EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW the authors of a book on
government have this to say: "Certain liberties are essential to the
operation of democratic government. But these liberties are not merely means
of attaining self-government, they are ends in themselves. They do not exist
to protect the government, the government exists to protect
them."
email:
mmakuni@fingaz.co.zw
FinGaz
Mavis Makuni Own
Correspondent
After almost a decade of foot-dragging, subterfuge,
complicity and outright
refusal to confront the issue, the African Union
(AU) and the Southern
Africa Development Community (SADC) seem at last to be
sitting up and taking
notice of the problems in Zimbabwe.
Over the
past week, when tensions have escalated in Zimbabwe following the
arrest and
battering of opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur
Mutambara of
the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change and the
chairman of
the National Constitutional Assembly, Lovemore Madhuku along
with scores of
opposition activists, the AU has stirred from its slumber of
misplaced
solidarity. First to speak out was AU chairman, Ghanaian president
John
Kufuor, who was on a state visit to Britain when the story of the
police
brutality against opposition politicians hit world headlines.
Kufuor said
African leaders were "embarrassed" by the situation in Zimbabwe
and
suggested for the first time that they could do more to help. "The
African
Union is very uncomfortable. The situation in your country is very
embarrassing", Kufuor told a Zimbabwean questioner during a visit to Catham
House in London. After being heckled by Zimbabweans enraged by the failure
of African leaders to take a firm stand on the crisis in Zimbabwe, the
Ghanaian leader conceded that more could be done.
"I think we should all
assume that all these institutions, the African
Union, mean well. Perhaps we
have not exhausted the means to give us a
handle on the situation so we can
help Zimbabwe return to normality." The
Ghanaian president's statement that
the AU is serious about helping to
resolve the Zimbabwean crisis is almost
revolutionary considering that so
far African institutions have seemed to be
hamstrung by the old Organisation
of African Unity (OAU) principle of
"non-interference in the internal
affairs of members states."
Kufuor's
sentiments on the escalating crisis in Zimbabwe were echoed by the
chairman
of the AU Commission, Alpha Konare, who has called for the
observance of
human rights in Zimbabwe. In a press statement at the weekend,
Konare said
he had followed recent developments in Zimbabwe with great
concern. He
stressed "the need for the scrupulous respect for human rights
and
democratic principles in Zimbabwe."
The AU's new stance is a far cry from the
nonchalance it has been accused of
exhibiting over the years when it has
appeared to collude with President
Robert Mugabe's government to keep
discussion of the Zimbabwean issue off
the continental body's agenda.
Numerous attempts by Zimbabwean civic groups
and media representatives to
appeal to the African Commission on Human and
Peoples Rights have all been
in vain as one reason or another has always
been given for not taking up the
issues raised.
The AU has in the past been accused of letting the Zimbabwean
government off
the hook too easily when it has offered implausible reasons
for its failure
to submit reports on the human rights situation within the
country. The
regional body, SADC has similarly been accused of duplicity
although this
perception could now change following the hurried visit of
Tanzanian
President, Jakaya Kikwete to Zimbabwe last week. The Tanzanian
leader is the
chairman of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security.
His country
chairs the SADC troika on Zimbabwe whose other members are
Lesotho and
Namibia. This grouping is scheduled to meet in Dar es Salaam
this weekend to
discuss the Zimbabwean problem.
The strongest straws in
the wind to show that things were changing, however
came from the land of
"quiet diplomacy" where President Thabo Mbeki's
Cabinet issued a statement
saying it was "extremely" concerned over the
unfolding violence and "the
reported abuse of human rights" in Zimbabwe. "We
are extremely concerned
particularly about the violence that is unfolding in
Zimbabwe. The need for
dialogue is absolutely essential because we believe
that violence from any
quarter is not a viable solution to the problems that
are experienced in
Zimbabwe."
South Africa's head of government communications, Themba Maseko
said Mbeki's
government continued to work with all stakeholders through the
AU and SADC
to get all concerned parties in Zimbabwe to the negotiating
table. The South
African government did not share the view that the time for
dialogue had
passed but believed it was more imperative than ever before for
Zimbabweans
to discuss their problems now. "We need to continue extensive
interaction
between our government and the government of Zimbabwe", Maseko
said.
Until he threw in the towel towards the end of last year, Mbeki was
SADC's
troubleshooter on Zimbabwe. His "quiet diplomacy" approach however
meant
that throughout the four years he acted as peace broker, the South
African
leader remained tight- lipped and never once spoke out on the
disturbances
in Zimbabwe as his Cabinet has now done. He claimed that if he
had
confronted President Mugabe over alleged human rights abuses the
Zimbabwean
leader would have told him "to go to hell".
-email
feedback to:
mmakuni@fingaz.co.zw
FinGaz
Comment
A STITCH in time
saves nine or rather an ounce of prevention is worth a
pound of cure, so
they say.
While the application of these time-honoured English idioms
that are as old
as Methuselah (the Hebrew patriarch who was supposed to have
lived for 969
years) is as wide as the Amazon - there could not be a better
way of drawing
lessons from them than to look closely at the costly impasse
between tobacco
farmers and the state.
The flue-cured tobacco-selling
season - initially pencilled to open on March
14 - has been indefinitely
postponed after farmers dug in their heels
protesting the unviable exchange
rate and deafening silence from the
government over an eagerly awaited
support price used in the past to shield
the struggling tobacco farmer from
rampant cost escalations.
For the umpteenth time the nation, which had hoped
to harvest a bit of the
scarce foreign exchange to assuage the pandemonium
in the currency markets,
has been caught with its pants down and yet the
writing has been on the wall
long enough.
Over and over again, around
this time of the year, tobacco farmers have
voiced the same concern of poor
prices that do not correspond with the heavy
investment sunk into the
production of the golden leaf. But alas, the
agriculture ministry has been
found wanting for reasons best known to
officials at Ngungunyana Building,
the ministry's headquarters.
While some of the demands put forward by the
embattled tobacco farmers might
appear outrageous given the fact that a good
number of them got input
assistance from the state granary, the Grain
Marketing Board, and land and
tillage facilities from the government, surely
an exchange rate of $250 that
has held since July last year against the
greenback is just not viable if
the country is serious about encouraging
tobacco production.
From being one of the top four tobacco exporters in the
world, alongside
China, Brazil and the United States, the country's tobacco
crop has
plummeted from a peak of 220 million kg in 1998 to about 50 million
kg in
the last season.
If anyone doubted it, this is a monumental failure
by any standards. It is
proves that someone, somewhere is definitely
sleeping behind the wheel, to
borrow from central bank boss Gideon Gono, who
has popularised the cliché.
While it remains to be seen how the government
will deal with this one, it
is however, clear that the farmers are in two
minds. On one hand, some are
clamouring for a price of US$4 per kg at an
exchange rate of $500 to the US
dollar, up from US$1.99 last year at a rate
of $105 while others prefer a
price commensurate with parallel market rates
now in excess of $14 000 to
the greenback.
Whichever way the officials
decide to take, the outcome has to be one where
the farmer gets a decent
return to enable him/her to continue producing
while at the same time
containing the ripple effects on the tottering
economy.
It all boils down
to planning at the end of the day.
Planning is the fundamental principle of
good management, more so for public
institutions. Sun Tzu, the late Chinese
author, whose oldest military
treatise in the world, The Art of War, has had
immense influence on
corporate and political leaders alike, summed it all up
when he wrote:
"Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the
enemy, will be
fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has
to hasten to
battle will arrive exhausted." In other words, failing to plan
is planning
to fail.
What confuses the mind is that each year we have to
wait for the tobacco
selling season to begin in order to discuss the
exchange rate when it is
already too late. Plans should not be cast in
stone, they should be reviewed
constantly in line with changing market
conditions. The same goes for price
reviews, which should be an ongoing
exercise, particularly in light of the
four-digit inflationary environment
epitomising the Zimbabwean economy.
Surely, with the rate at which prices are
going up i.e. labour, water,
electricity, chemicals and transport, it would
be suicidal for the farmer to
accept the July price eight months down the
line unless there is a huge
subsidy accompanying it. And yet subsidising a
commercial enterprise like
farming would be tantamount to stretching the
taxpayer's thinning patience
beyond the limits.
Not only has the farmer
to contend with soaring production costs. Threats of
confiscation of farms
from "unproductive farmers" and concerns over security
of tenure are still
very much alive.
Without a viable price, no sane farmer is prepared to toil
for peanuts. In
the end, government's arrogance will only serve to drive the
farmer out of
production of controlled crops, migrating into more profitable
ones that may
not necessarily add value to the economy.
Farming is
serious business. It goes without saying therefore, that without
proper
planning, the country will swing at a terrific Olympic pace while
breaking
the wrong records altogether. As business mogul Warren Buffet said:
"Preparation is everything. Noah did not start building the ark when it was
raining."
FinGaz
Matters Legal with Vote
Muza
Since our 27th Independence anniversary is nigh, I believe it is
high time
we all made an honest reflection of our past, so that as a nation
we may
identify the blunders, or the pitfalls that have led to the tragedy
that
Zimbabwe is today.
In doing so, we need to first ask
ourselves whether the troubles that
Zimbabwe has been going through in the
preceding years, that have manifested
themselves in our imploding economy,
the brutalisation of opposition, civic
and general members of the public by
state security agencies is what our
true heroes sacrificed their lives for
during the struggle for independence?
I have no doubt in my mind that the
many souls who shed their blood for the
sake of our freedom, and some who
are still alive today, never envisaged a
Zimbabwe that would be pervaded by
lawlessness, impunity, violence, poverty,
corruption, and international
isolation - a result of an irresponsible and
desperate political
leadership.
So far, and against the wishes of many, who include the
international
community that had placed a lot of hope in seeing Zimbabwe
develop into a
model African democratic state, the story of our country has
been a sad one.
Our fairly long period of independence has been littered
with sad episodes
of suffering and examples that easily stand out among many
others, are the
Gukurahundi massacres, Operation Murambatsvina, and the
current economic
implosion that we are experiencing that has turned a
majority of citizens
into paupers.
In all this malaise, the state has
been fingered as responsible for people's
suffering, all this confirming
even to any doubting Thomases that the goals
that we collectively set to
achieve at Independence have eluded us and
instead, selfish, sectarian
political agendas have become the priority of
those we entrusted with power.
So far, the curse that has befallen Zimbabwe
is that of having a ruling
aristocracy that has lost the plot. A ruling
class that has shed all
semblance of democracy to embrace, perpetuate and
glorify all forms of
brutalisation of citizens as exemplified by the ongoing
orgy of state
violence against unarmed opposition leaders, civic leaders and
innocent
members of the public.
It is not difficult to acknowledge that our
independence has lately been
heavily tainted by a culture of lawlessness. A
culture that has been
initiated and abated by senior state officials whose
tomfoolery cause them
to ignore the reality that no progress can ever be
achieved in a climate of
unbridled anarchy similar to the one our leaders
are presiding over. It does
not require the Biblical wisdom of Solomon to
realise that our hopeless
economic and political failures are a result of
unwise populist policies
that have in the past caused many nations to
fail.
Since independence, lawlessness has been the key driving force of the
ruling
party and its government, and despite repeated advice from concerned
citizens and friends from the international community, the thrills of power
have caused our leaders to abandon national interests in pursuit of
dangerously selfish agendas.
Ultimately, it is easy to locate our biggest
independence letdown within
this regrettable culture of state impunity. This
is not to forget a host of
other administrative deficiencies that have
caused the myriad problems that
are presently besetting us.
Government's
contempt of the Constitution has not only been alarming, but
unprecedented
even if one were to draw comparisons with what transpired
during Rhodesia.
At least Rhodesia would arrest and try political activists
compared to the
present numerous extra-legal measures that are being adopted
by government
to deal with rising public anger. The savage attacks on
opposition members,
the contemptuous treatment of our unassertive judiciary,
and a host of other
incidences of state impunity during the Hondo Yeminda
era gives credence to
the argument that Zimbabwe is now a fully-fledged
dictatorship. The world
over, dictatorships have been known to thrive on
repression, corruption,
populism and political arrogance; factors that have
gradually and
systematically taken centre stage in our governance.
Not only as a lawyer,
but also as a human being with a sense of justice and
a great love for
peace, I experience great agony to watch helplessly my
beloved country
descending into anarchy at the hands of a few, if not a
single individual
keen to perpetuate a legacy of wholesale failure.
I believe that the time has
come for all patriotic Zimbabweans without
regard to political affiliation
to acknowledge that state orchestrated
lawlessness and violence are two
evils that need to be stopped now. As our
27th independence celebrations
approach, we need to accept that if no urgent
steps are taken to initiate
mutual national dialogue to redirect our course,
we shall owe posterity an
explanation.
We will have to tell future generations why, despite all our
apparent
wisdom, education, sophistication and religiousness, we allowed too
much
power to be concentrated in one fallible human being, knowing that
power,
being like opium can be so addictive and destructive?
The horrible
brutalisation of legitimate members of the opposition at the
hands of
Zimbabwe Republic Police, a spectacle that shocked the world, is
further
proof that the rule of law has since left the intensive care unit
and is now
six feet under. What we are witnessing presently is absolute
anarchy by any
definition. Why, despite the existence of a constitution are
extra legal
measures being taken by state security agents to dispense
'justice'? And why
are senior government officials publicly supporting this
deplorable
constitutional subversion? Is it all because of power obsession
and the
privileges of being part of the political bandwagon? What has
happened to
the principles of altruism that should guide us as human beings?
Indeed, I
am left in no doubt that power is a dangerous corruptor of the
political
actor.
It would appear that the action of government in which violence has
become a
recognised tool of suppressing the public's legitimate expression
of disgust
over its hopeless failures, is one sure way of alienating the
citizens from
those in power. It further polarises the nation at a time when
any
responsible, patriotic leader should be pursuing policies that foster
national unity for the sake of kick-starting our overdue economic revival.
Having taken this brief reflection on our past since 1980, I am left to
believe that our independence in its current form is just but a shameful
façade, an empty token that has solely benefited the politically privileged
and their cronies.
Vote Muza
C/o Gutu and Chikowero
Legal
Practitioners
Email: gutulaw@mweb.co.zw
Website: www.gutulaw.co.zw
FinGaz
National Agenda with
Bornwell Chakaodza
Will he get to 2008 given pressure that is mounting both
internally and
externally?
THE consequences may be significant.
Its conduct cannot be other than
counter-productive.
I am referring here
not only to the exceptionally brutal if not barbaric
attack on the leaders
of opposition political parties and their torture
while in detention eleven
days ago but also to the way President Robert
Mugabe shot himself in the
foot on all fronts by his over-reaction to the
international condemnation
and indignation over the brutal assault of
political activists by the
Zimbabwean police.
Yes, President Mugabe's "Go Hang" speech and his reading
the riot act to
Western ambassadors for their alleged interference in
Zimbabwe's internal
affaires are indeed tell tale signs of a regime in deep
trouble.
I hold no candle myself for some of these Western governments as
they have
in the past supported and propped up undemocratic and unsavoury
regimes in
Africa - purely for their own selfish interests. But in our
situation at the
present moment, for the government of Zimbabwe to say what
they said was, in
terms of foreign relations, an extraordinarily inept and
naïve thing to do,
even for a government not known for its delicacy of
diplomacy.
It is bravado to no purpose on the part of President Mugabe.
Moreso given
the desperate situation in which the majority of Zimbabweans
find themselves
in.
Zimbabwe is now in a state of economic collapse. The
situation is spinning
out of control and the international community cannot
rightly stand by and
watch a once proud and successful country go over the
cliff
On top of all this, a humanitarian catastrophe is looming in the light
of
2007 being declared a drought year by government, not only as a result of
poor and erratic rains across the country but also bad policies and the
unending disruptions and invasions on the farms.
There are maize
shortages in both South Africa and Zambia - our traditional
suppliers. Even
if maize was plentiful in these countries, where will the
money to import it
come from given the economic crisis that shows no signs
of abetting here? A
very gloomy prognosis indeed! Zimbabwe is indeed in a
real bind here.
It
is not only the West, which is gravely concerned about our situation
here.
President Mugabe's bedrock of support in Africa in general and SADC in
particular is turning against him now, thanks to a recent campaign of
political repression, which resulted in the injuries of MDC leaders and
activists, which were truly awful.
Opinion of African leaders across the
continent is now shifting away from
ZANU PF and in favour of the majority of
Zimbabweans. However slight, this
is a welcome development, which has long
been overdue.
Ghanaian President and African Union chairman John Kufuor is on
record as
having said last week that the situation in Zimbabwe is
embarrassing to the
continent. "We want accountable government", Kufuor
bluntly said.
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa echoed the same sentiments
when he said:
"Recent political developments in Zimbabwe are of great
concern to us" while
the South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad
said "South Africa
urges the Zimbabwean government to ensure that the rule
of law including
respect for human rights for all Zimbabweans and leaders of
various parties
is respected".
In a rare and unusual step of censuring a
fellow UN member state, the UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said the
attacks on opposition political
leaders "violate the basic democratic rights
of citizens to engage in
peaceful assembly ".
Taken together, positions
across the world are clearly hardening.
Certainly, the language is changing
as amply demonstrated by President
Kufuor and others. The emperor is now
being stripped of his clothes. More
and more leaders worldwide are
abandoning the softly-softly approach to
human rights violations in Zimbabwe
that we had become accustomed to.
Images and pictures of a battered Morgan
Tsvangirai and other opposition
leaders shown on television around the world
have clearly galvanised
international opinion. President Mugabe and the
ruling ZANU PF may want to
continually ignore international condemnations
but for how long? Is killing
and beating up legitimate opposition leaders
sustainable?
ZANU PF is clearly losing the propaganda war. We live in a world
in which
issues of good governance, rule of law, freedom of expression and
freedom of
association and assembly have become global standards by which
all
governments, and I mean all governments, are judged by the extent to
which
they adhere to these universal values. There is nothing Western or
African
about the universality of these attributes. It is in this regard
that the
Zimbabwean authorities should seriously think again on their
ham-fisted
clampdown.
Nothing will be achieved by police brutality. It is
one thing to detain for
whatever reason a legitimate opposition political
leader within the
framework of the law. It is quite another to mercilessly
beat him up for no
reason other than to want him dead - kafira mberi in
Shona. The wave of
repression that was recently unleashed by the Zimbabwean
authorities is
choking and appalling to say the least.
Men and women of
goodwill in ZANU PF must of necessity stand up and say
enough is enough. The
repression that is being carried out in their names is
frankly unacceptable.
The pictures of Nelson Chamisa bursting into tears on
his hospital bed and
Tsvangirai, Madhuku, Sekai Holland and Grace Kwinjeh
battered, dazed and
writhing in pain for merely engaging in a peaceful
protest must make anyone
pause and ask why they are so intent on inflicting
such damage on fellow
Zimbabweans.
A country grappling with a myriad of other problems does not
need these
kinds of brutal actions to muddy the already troubled
waters.
We want all of us to live in peace. Creating solutions to our
problems is
what we need from ZANU PF and President Mugabe and not the
language of war.
The mayhem that we are seeing at the moment is practically
damaging
everything in this country, be it tourism or investment - you name
it and it
is being destroyed.
I do think it is in the interest of ZANU PF
to concentrate on weapons of
mass salvation and not on weapons of mass
destruction. Surely, the sight and
sound of suffering of most people in this
country must move any ZANU PF
leader to precisely do this.
However, much
as he dislikes it, President Mugabe must face reality that is
staring him
right in the face. The reality is that the President is facing
an
increasingly hostile world, both internally and externally. There are
decided limits to his ambition of wanting to stand again in the 2008 general
elections. God forbid! And these limits are again both internal (the people
of Zimbabwe) and external (involving quite literally the whole of the
international community, Africa included).
It is not too late to go the
way of Nelson Mandela, Mr President. I mean
here the passing of the torch,
the passing of the baton well before 2008.
My final point to President Mugabe
on this very issue is that the greatest
force in life is goodwill, not a
brutal police force. You had that goodwill
once upon a time. Please show it
again for the sake of our Zimbabwe.
borncha@mweb.co.zw
FinGaz
No-Holds-Barred With Caio
Megale
Roots of economic deterioration lie in fiscal policy
UNTIL the
mid-90s, Zimbabwe exhibited some of the best economic and social
indicators
in Africa. The gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate averaged
a
remarkable four percent per year between 1980 and 1995.
However, a
combination of extreme populist policies adopted since 1996
changed the
success story. Nominal GDP fell from US$70 billion to US$3.5
billion, and
the annual inflation rate has risen to over 1700 percent.
The roots of
economic deterioration in Zimbabwe lie in fiscal policy. The
increase of
five percent GDP (or US$3.5 billion) in spending on the war
veterans in
1996, and the involvement in the Congo civil war two years later
led to an
imbalance in public funds, leading to increased money supply
growth and
inflation.
The situation took a turn for the worse in 2000, when government
implemented
its chaotic land reform that redistributed 80 percent of the
commercial
farms in the country within less than four years.
Government
argued that productive land had been stolen by the whites during
the years
of colonisation. As the land re-distribution proceeded, however,
production
on the farms fell dramatically.
Making the situation even more critical, the
government did not guarantee
ownership rights to the new land occupiers,
practically reducing investment
incentives to zero.
The decline in
agricultural output led to food shortages and a chronic
mismatch in the
balance of payments. As the government refused to decontrol
prices of
fundamental products such as fuel, fertilisers and foreign
currency exchange
rate, these products disappeared from the official
markets.
In turn,
parallel markets rose. It is estimated, for example, that 90
percent of all
currency transactions in the country are now carried out
through the black
market. The government's aggressive subsidy schemes
further increased the
budget deficit, fuelling more printing of money and
inflation.
What
lessons can Latin America draw from the Zimbabwean experience? In
general,
our macroeconomic indicators and our recent history are far removed
from the
economic reality of Zimbabwe. However, populism is still rife in
our region,
exposing the current stable situation to significant risk.
Bolivia
expropriated its gas production plants, provoking the collapse of
production
of its major source of growth. Chances of new private investments
in that
country have fallen because of the lack of property right guarantees
and
stability.
In Argentina, the government implemented an aggressive price
control policy
to manage inflation, while increasing fiscal expenditure
through subsidies.
The new leader of the continent is populist dictator Hugo
Chávez, who, not
by chance, is cut from the same cloth as Zimbabwe's
President Robert Mugabe.
Even in Brazil, where economic practices by the Lula
government are
pro-market, we must be alert to signs of populist signals,
especially where
fiscal policies are concerned. Many Brazilians still have
an aid mentality
toward government expenditure, not realising that the size
of the state
brings major distortions - to begin with a tax burden of almost
40 percent
of the GDP - which hinder growth. This is the sole reason why
Brazil's GDP
is growing at a low average rate of three percent while the
average for
other developing countries is over six percent.
Similar to
Zimbabwe, Brazil is also grappling with the issue of agrarian
reform and
respect for property rights. More equitable redistribution of
land is
justified, but it should be implemented in a way that does not
compromise
productive capacity. Effecting agrarian reform in an abrupt
manner without
guarantees for adequate compensation for the land owners and
without
offering minimal title to the new occupants brings with it
undesirable
economic and social consequences.
Where fiscal issues are concerned, Brazil
is far from the extreme situation
of Zimbabwe, but Zimbabwe's experience
should make us rethink collusion with
abuses provoked by movements such as
"Sem Terra" ("Landless") in Brazil.
The Brazilian experience has a lot to
teach Zimbabweans - they, in fact,
show keen interest in our stabilisation
programmes and in the establishment
of the Real. At the same time, however,
Zimbabwe can also provide us with a
valuable lesson on how populist and
radical actions can jeopardise an
economic success built up over
decades.
(Translated and adapted from an article that appeared in the
December 19,
2006 issue of Valor Economico)
lDr Caio Megale is a partner
at Mauá Investments and a Professor of
Economics at IBMEC in São Paulo,
Brazil. Megale visited Harare last October
and presented a paper on
"Brazil's experience in taming inflation"at the
"Just Business" forum hosted
by the American Business Association of
Zimbabwe (ABAZ).