HOW TO KILL A COUNTRY Turning a breadbasket into a basket case in ten easy
steps - the Robert Mugabe way BY SAMANTHA POWER
Illustration by
John Ritter ..... THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Samantha Power, a lecturer
at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University, is the
author of "A Problem From Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, which won
the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
Nearly forty years ago
Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, became the first and only white
colonial ruler to break away from the British Crown. He had tired of London's
nagging about the subjugation of Rhodesian blacks. In 1965 Smith declared
independence.
"The mantle of the pioneers has fallen on our shoulders,"
he said, calling on white Rhodesians to maintain standards in a "primitive
country." Smith saw himself as an apostle of Cecil John Rhodes, the British
magnate who gave Rhodesia its name, and who in the late nineteenth century
duped black tribal leaders into signing over the fertile land to white
pioneers. Although Rhodesia in 1965 was home to just over 200,000 whites and
four million blacks, Smith shared Rhodes's belief that black majority rule
would occur "never in a thousand years."
Smith was of course wrong. In
1980, after a civil war that cost 30,000 lives, the black majority took
charge of the country, which was renamed Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe - the
nationalist leader whom Smith had branded a "Marxist terrorist" and jailed
for more than a decade; a man who had once urged his followers to stop
wearing shoes and socks to show they were willing to reject the trappings of
European civilization - became President. Zimbabwe, one of southern Africa's
most prosperous countries, held great promise. Its Victoria Falls was one of
the seven natural wonders of the world. Its gushing Zambezi River boasted
wildlife and pulsing rapids. Its lush soil was the envy of a continent. And,
though landlocked, the country had modernized sensibly: it had a network of
paved roads, four airports, and, thanks to Mugabe's leadership, a rigorous
and inclusive education system. Mugabe knew that whites drove the economy,
and he was pragmatic. "Good old Bob," as white farmers quickly came to call
him, kept his shoes and socks on, and urged reconciliation:
"An evil
remains an evil whether practiced by white against black or black against
white," he said on the eve of independence. In a cordial meeting with Smith,
Mugabe acknowledged that he had inherited the "jewel of Africa," and he vowed
to keep it that way. "I was very pleasantly surprised," says Smith, who still
lives in Zimbabwe. "He spoke like a sophisticated Westerner. He was very
courteous: it was `Mr. Smith this' and `Mr. Smith that.' " That Ian Smith has
stayed in Zimbabwe is itself surprising. But it is even more remarkable that
the man who once ran an election campaign promising "a whiter, brighter
Rhodesia" does not live as other well-to-do Zimbabweans do - behind a bolted
gate manned by forbidding security forces. For three years, with Zimbabwe
imploding politically and economically, Mugabe has been inciting violence
against whites. Yet Smith's spacious home, next door to the Cuban embassy in
the capital, Harare, is shielded by neither a guard post nor a guard dog -
only by purple jacaranda trees. When I visited him, earlier this year,
Smith's driveway gate and his front door stood wide open, offering passersby
an inviting glimpse of his plush Victorian furnishings.
Swallowed up
by a Queen Anne armchair, Smith, a bone-thin eighty-four-year-old, told me
that all he ever wanted to do in life was manage his 4,000-acre farm, 220
miles southwest of Harare. He has run the farm since he returned from flying
Spitfires for the British in World War II. He grows oranges and seed
potatoes, and raises cattle. "I hope I don't sound arrogant," he said, "but
you won't find a better-run piece of land." Smith insists that when Mugabe
banned him from politics, in 1987, he was glad for the opportunity to return
to full-time farming. But in Zimbabwe, where whites owned the finest farmland
and most blacks remained dispossessed two decades after independence,
politics and land became inseparable. A few days before my visit Smith was
reading the morning newspaper when he came across a government notice listing
the latest batch of farms designated for seizure by the state. His farm was
among them.
For a man who had just learned that he would lose his
livelihood, his passion, and his family home, Smith was strangely
unflustered. Largely ignored since independence, he seems to have found in
the blind bungling of Robert Mugabe's regime a grim redemption for white
rule. "You can't imagine how many people come up to me and say, `We didn't
agree with you back then. We thought you were too rigid and inflexible. But
now we see you were right. You were so right: they were not fit to govern.'
"
The "they," of course, is the black majority. But Smith is drawing
the wrong lesson. Although Zimbabwe is as broken as any country on the
planet, it offers a testament not to some inherent African inability to
govern but to a minority rule as oppressive and inconsiderate of the welfare
of citizens as its ignominious white predecessor. The country's economy
in 1997 was the fastest growing in all of Africa; now it is the
fastest shrinking. A onetime net exporter of maize, cotton, beef, tobacco,
roses, and sugarcane now exports only its educated professionals, who are
fleeing by the tens of thousands.
Although Zimbabwe has some of the
richest farmland in Africa, children with distended bellies have begun
arriving at school looking like miniature pregnant women. How could the
breadbasket of Africa have deteriorated so quickly into the continent's
basket case? The answer is Robert Mugabe, now seventy-nine, who by his
actions has compiled something of a "how-to" manual for national destruction.
Although many of his methods have been applied elsewhere, taken as a whole
his ten-step approach is more radical and more comprehensive than that of
other despots. The Zimbabwe case offers some important insights.
It
illustrates the prime importance of accountability as an antidote to idiocy
and excess. It highlights the lasting effects of decolonization - limited
Western influence on the continent and a reluctance by African leaders to
criticize their own. And it offers a warning about how much damage one man
can do, very quickly. Destroy the engine of productivity The Harare Sports
Club, a Rhodesian throwback, sits kitty-corner from Mugabe's private
residence. I was told ahead of time by locals that the patrons would be
mostly white ex-farmers "crying into their beer." Inside, towering,
bull-necked men lined the bar. Most were chain-smoking, and they did seem
quite wobbly. A television hanging from the ceiling played reruns of Tim
Henman's latest Wimbledon tease. At the entrance to the club is a sports
shop, which sells squash rackets and cricket bats. The place is Old England
in a capsule, and yet the paint is chipped, the tabs are unpaid, and the
lively chatter, once about crop yields and rugby scores, now focuses on court
dates and emigration plans.
Pat Ashton, a stocky, white-haired
fifty-five-year-old farmer, stops in at least twice a month. Ashton grew up
in Cheshire, England, and moved to Rhodesia in 1971. Trusting Mugabe's
moderate rhetoric, he made a down payment on a farm the year after
independence. It took him two decades to pay back his loans, but in 2001 he
finally did so. The Ashton farm grew mangoes, tobacco, maize, and flat peas,
grossing about $800,000 annually. His workers didn't earn enough to buy their
own land ("I probably could have done more to make them self-sufficient," he
admits), but he did build them a village of some ninety houses, a social
hall, a football field, and a medical clinic. Ashton reinvested virtually all
of his surplus in the farm.
In July of 2001 about fifty people who
lived in the nearby town arrived on his land. Most were miners, and they were
led by three officials from the Mugabe government. The group began surveying
Ashton's property and marking out plots for homes. The next six months were a
constant battle. The settlers returned and erected makeshift thatch huts in
the middle of Ashton 's maize and tobacco fields. They dug up his maize
crops, beat up his farm workers, and removed and bent his irrigation pipes.
Still Ashton hung on, living in his farmhouse and planting and harvesting
what he could.
In January of 2002 four trucks arrived, containing youth
militia and men claiming they were veterans of the liberation war collecting
their reward for service. This time the invaders attacked Ashton, with steel
rods and an ax, cutting him in the forearm and badly damaging his pickup
truck as he tried to escape. They held two of his sons hostage for a day,
threatening to execute them and making them chant songs in praise of the
ruling party. As the invaders carted away all the Ashton family's
transportable belongings - from crockery to toilet seats - the police watched
with amusement and then decided to join in. Ashton is more sympathetic than
many other farmers, but the story of his eviction is fairly typical. In
2000, about 4,000 large-scale commercial farmers owned some 70 per-cent
of Zimbabwe's arable land. Nearly two thirds of these farmers had bought
their farms after independence, and thus held titles issued not by Ian Smith
or the British colonial regime but by the Mugabe government. Mugabe had
long pledged land reform as a way of redistributing farmland to black
peasants and dismantling what many saw as the country's "mini-Rhodesias." But
he had delayed action for two decades, generally taking farms only on a
"willing seller, willing buyer" basis.
Mugabe decided on what he
called "fast-track land reform" only in February of 2000, after he got
shocking results in a constitutional referendum: though he controlled the
media, the schools, the police, and the army, voters rejected a constitution
he put forth to increase his power even further. A new movement was afoot in
Zimbabwe: the Movement for Democratic Change - a coalition of civic groups,
labor unions, constitutional reformers, and here-to fore marginal opposition
parties. Mugabe blamed the whites and their farm workers (who, although they
together made up only 15 percent of the electorate, were enough to tip the
scales) for the growth of the MDC - and for his humiliating rebuff. So he
played the race card and the land card. "If white settlers just took the land
from us without paying for it," the President declared, "we can, in a similar
way, just take it from them without paying for it." In 1896 Africans had
suffered huge casualties in an eighteen-month rebellion against British
pioneers known as the chimurenga, or "liberation war."
The war that
brought Zimbabwean blacks self-rule was known as the second chimurenga. In
the immediate aftermath of his referendum defeat Mugabe announced a third
chimurenga, invoking a valiant history to animate a violent, countrywide land
grab. Initially, the farmers held their ground, but it became clear after
several white farmers were murdered that they were too few and Mugabe's
regime was too determined.
Of the 4,000 large-scale commercial farmers in
business three years ago, all but 500 have been forced off their land. Most
Zimbabweans (including white farmers) say that land reform was both necessary
and inevitable. The tragedy of Mugabe's approach is that it has harmed those
whom a well-ordered, selective redistribution program could and should
have helped. Generally the farms have not been given to black farm managers
or farm workers. Indeed, because of their association with the
opposition, more than a million farm workers and their dependents have been
displaced, and they are now at grave risk of starvation. In fact, the
beneficiaries of the land seizures are, with few exceptions, ruling-party
officials and friends of the President's. Although Mugabe's people seem to
view the possession of farms as a sign of status (the Minister of Home
Affairs has five; the Minister of Information has three; Mugabe's wife,
Grace, and scores of influential party members and their relatives have two
each), these elites don't have the experience, the equipment, or, apparently,
the desire to run them. About 130,000 formerly landless peasants helped
the ruling elites to take over the farms, but now that the dirty work is
done, many of them are them-selves being expelled.
The drop-off in
agricultural production is staggering. Maize farming, which yielded more than
1.5 million tons annually before 2000, is this year expected to generate just
500,000 tons. Wheat production, which stood at 309,000 tons in 2000, will
hover at 27,000 tons this year. Tobacco production, too, which at 265,000
tons accounted for nearly a third of the total foreign-currency earnings in
2000, has tumbled, to about 66,000 tons in 2003. Mugabe's belief that he can
strengthen his flagging popularity by destroying a resented but economically
vital minority group is one that dictators elsewhere have shared. Paranoid
about their diminishing support, Stalin wiped out the wealthy kulak farming
class, Idi Amin purged Uganda's Indian commercial class, and, of course,
Hitler went after Jewish businesses even though Germany was already reeling
from the Depression. Whatever spikes in popularity these moves generated, the
economic damage was profound, and the dictators had to exert great effort to
mask it.
Bury the truth
Zimbabweans get their news from state
television, "the first and permanent media choice for every Zimbabwean." The
station is required to play at least once every hour a social-realist
commercial accompanied by the jingle "Rambai Makashinga," or "Persevere." The
ad shows youthful, chiseled Zimbabweans, dressed in designer jeans, dancing
in maize and wheat fields as they cheerily harvest the season's crops. Many
are wearing yellow and green, the colors of the ruling party. One is wearing
a T-shirt bearing the number 23, signifying Mugabe's years in power. The
maize is shucked to the beat, and the hoes land rhythmically in the rich red
soil. The commercial reminds starving Zimbabweans what they got from their
liberation from white rule: Nike sneakers and crops aplenty. More
representative of the country's actual situation is the state of the fertile
crescent north of the capital. If Zimbabwe is Africa's breadbasket, the
Mazowe Valley is the breadbasket of the breadbasket. Yet driving through it
today is like visiting a refugee camp that has been hit by a hurricane.
Fields that should brim with knee-high, forest-green winter wheat now contain
only the crackling yellow stubble of last year's crop. The barbed wire that
once hemmed in cattle has been ripped away by squatters, who have plopped
down cheap cement houses in the middle of arable fields and killed off cows
and sheep for food. Surviving cattle wander, emaciated, onto the roads.
Untended, they are riddled with foot-and-mouth disease, dooming what was once
a thriving cattle-export business. Irrigation equipment lies derelict and
rusting; much of it has been dismantled and sold as scrap
metal.
Government food warehouses used to contain sacks of wheat and
maize piled to the sky, but the warehouses, on which the vast majority of
the population depends, now stand empty. Mugabe designated the state-run
Grain Marketing Board as the sole buyer and distributor of maize and wheat in
the country, and he fixed prices at a fraction of market value. In a
country with moderate inflation this might have kept staples at affordable
prices. But given that the prices of everything else in the country,
including seed and fertilizer, are doubling each month, farmers can grow
these vital crops only at a severe loss. As a result both commercial and
small farmers have gotten out of the maize and wheat business, shifting to
crops that are not price-controlled.
Mugabe handles the unprecedented
food shortages the totalitarian way: he hides them, guarding the size of GMB
stocks as carefully as he would military secrets. Longtime foreign
correspondents have been expelled from the country, and local journalists
dare not approach the GMB, for fear of arrest. Driving by one warehouse in
Mvurwi, I observed a typically listless group of GMB workers in blue overalls
lounging in the sunshine, smoking cigarettes, and stacking and restacking
wooden pallets that would ordinarily be used to store the harvest. Nothing
too explosive there. Yet when the GMB overseers saw they were being watched,
they dispatched a posse of young men to pursue my vehicle in a harrowing
(and, owing to their reluctance to waste scarce fuel, unsuccessful) car
chase. Zimbabweans are severely malnourished, and deaths from starvation
occur even in the cities. The country has not yet suffered nationwide famine
only because interna-tional donors have stepped in. Before Mugabe launched
his chimurenga, the UN's World Food Programme relied on Zimbabwean
agriculture to help keep the rest of Africa fed. It maintained only a small
procurement office in Harare, staffed by a dozen people. Last year, however,
the WFP had to overhaul its operation, hiring hundreds of international
and Zimbabwean aid workers to distribute food in the country.
Western governments have given the organization $300 million to feed some
5.5 million Zimbabweans, nearly 50 percent of the country's population. (At
the height of the Ethiopian famine, international donors fed just 20 percent
of Ethiopia's citizens.) Shortages are expected to be far more severe in
the coming year. But instead of disclosing the country's true needs
and requesting a helping hand, Mugabe's cabinet has delivered
a passive-aggressive screed to the international community. In
a twenty-four-page "appeal" delivered this past July, it defended the
land seizures for "economically empowering the poor," and criticized donors
for their "skepticism [toward] pro-poor policies." Everyone and everything
was responsible for food shortages except the real culprit, Mugabe himself.
By exaggerating Zimbabwe's crop yields in Potemkin fashion, the
cabinet downplayed its needs, making it impossible for the WFP to get from
donors (already stretched thin in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Liberia) the
food Zimbabwe will need to stave off widespread starvation in
2004.
Crush dissent
Zimbabweans are remarkably unshy about
criticizing Robert Mugabe's rule. Ask a taxi driver how he is doing, and he
will answer without hesitation: "I am suffering." Several months after
rejecting Mugabe's proposed constitution, voters in the major cities swept
the ruling party out of office, giving the MDC fifty-seven of the 120
contestable parliamentary seats.
In March of last year, although the
ruling party beat and tor-tured opponents, controlled media coverage of the
campaign, and posted its armed watchdogs at election booths, the voters
turned up - and by all unofficial accounts elected Morgan Tsvangirai, the
head of the Movement for Democratic Change, to replace Mugabe as President.
Mugabe rigged the results, but Tsvangirai's supporters still call the
opposition leader "Mr. President." Tsvangirai is a large man, a labor
organizer who gives a rumpled impression despite his recent turn toward
designer suits. "Mugabe underestimated the people and overestimated his
invincibility," he told me when I met with him in August. Time will tell. For
now, instead of leading protests at home, or mobilizing pressure abroad,
Tsvangirai spends his days in court - fending off charges of treason, which
carry the death penalty. On the eve of Tsvangirai's stunning showing in the
election, the government produced a grainy and unconvincing video-tape
showing him supposedly telling a shady Israeli business-man that he would
like to "eliminate" Mugabe. Stuck in= court, Tsvangirai hasn't appeared much
in public since.
The MDC's message has been circulated by the Daily News,
the country's only independent daily newspaper, which was launched in 1999
and quietly captured the highest news-paper readership in the country: it was
so popular that it sold out by lunchtime. In January of 2001
Mugabe's Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, described the paper as "a
threat to national security which has to be silenced." Hours later the Daily
News printing presses were destroyed by a bomb. This past September
the government denied the irreverent paper a license, and the police shut
it down.
Tsvangirai's international standing has thus far helped to
keep him alive (although he was once beaten unconscious), but some of his
followers have not been so lucky. About 250 Zimbabweans have died in
political killings since the competition for power heated up, in 2000.
According to Amnesty International, 70,000 incidents of torture and abuse
took place in Zimbabwe last year alone. The govern-ment's most pervasive form
of intimidation is also its most effective: the denial of food. While
international aid groups try to feed Zimbabweans in rural areas, city folk
must buy their maize and wheat from the sole distributor - the Grain
Marketing Board. In order to get food they are often forced to produce a
ruling-party membership card or to chant such slogans as "Long live Robert
Mugabe!," "Down with whites!," and "Down with Morgan Tsvangarai!" Last year
the former would be better off with only six million people, with our speaker
of the parliament, Didymus Mutasa, stated, "We own people who support the
liberation struggle. We don' t want these extra people." The Nobel
Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has famously argued that no functioning
democracy has ever suffered a famine, because democratic governments "have to
win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentive to
undertake measures to avert famines and other catastrophes." Like Pol Pot's
Cambodia and Mao's China, Mugabe's Zimbabwe shows what can happen when
political elites operate with no fear of being taken to
task.
Legislate the impossible
For all the lawlessness in
Zimbabwe, the country in fact suffers from an over-abundance of laws. Indeed,
Mugabe has introduced so many economic edicts in the past year that most
citizens have found it impossible to keep track. He fixed the price of a loaf
of bread at half the bakers' break-even price, and levied astronomical fines
on any baker who charged more. Bakers stopped making bread until somebody
noticed that sesame bread, a "luxury item," wasn't price-controlled; by
sprinkling a few sesame seeds on their standard loaves, bakers were able to
get back in business. A pair of mortuary workers were arrested recently for
running a profitable "rent-a-cadaver" business: because Mugabe had decreed
that drivers in funeral processions would get privileged access to the
trickle of fuel coming into the country, these entrepreneurs had begun
leasing bodies to Zimbabwean drivers.
"Mugonomics," as Mugabe's brand
of economic policy is known in Zimbabwe, addresses the symptoms of economic
collapse, such as food and fuel shortages, but ignores the underlying causes.
Inflation in Zimbabwe is expected to surpass 800 percent by year's end.
Unemployment is at 70 percent. Zimbabwe has its own dollar, but the highest
(and rarest) currency denomination, a $Z 1,000 note, cannot buy even a loaf
of bread. Most transactions require hundreds of $Z 50 and $Z 100
bills.
When Tsvangirai was arrested, several men were needed to carry his
bail money to the Harare high court in huge cardboard boxes.
Newspapers advertise "money rubber bands" and electronic money counters that
"count 1,500 bills per minute." Because the rate of inflation is astronomical
in comparison with the interest rates offered by banks, Zimbabweans
are desperate to withdraw their savings in order to spend the money while
it still has value. The banks say they would be happy to oblige - but
they don't have the cash. The government has so little foreign currency that
it can't pay to import the ink and the paper needed to print more bills
or bills of higher denominations. In July desperate Zimbabweans began
sleeping outside banks so as to be there maximum withdrawal to the equivalent
of $2.50, patrons were rewarded for a night's wait with just enough money
to cover their bus fare home. Mugabe has kept the official exchange rate
fixed at 824 Zimbabwean dollars to one U.S. dollar, even though the
black-market rate hovers around $Z 5,000. Businessmen thus do their best to
bypass official banks and government institutions, and the black market has
become the only market of relevance. The state requires Zimbabweans who
export goods to change 50 percent of their foreign earnings into local money
at the official exchange rate. This means that every dollar converted
loses almost all of its value - giving companies no incentive to bring money
home, and worsening the severe cash shortage. Forlorn Zimbabwean pensioners
whose savings have vanished in a matter of months are reminiscent of the
doleful Yugoslavs and Argentines who have endured similar im-plosions. The
economic dynamic in Zimbabwe is perversely robust: while ordinary people
suffer, black-market dealers and people with foreign bank accounts prosper,
making them powerful stakeholders in the perpetuation of devastating
economic policies.
Teach hate
When Mugabe took over as
President, fewer than half of Zimbabweans could read and write. He
transformed the country - producing a literacy rate higher than 85 percent.
Yet he may be remembered less for his education drive than for creating the
"Green Bombers," the youth militia that emerged from the National Youth
Service Training Program, introduced after the ruling party' s dismal showing
in the 2000 parliamentary elections. Some 50,000 Zimbabweans aged ten to
thirty have passed through the training program since it started. The youth
academies initially advertised themselves as offering training in
agriculture, construction, and other occupations, but they have morphed into
a paramilitary and indoctrination enterprise.
When dictators feel
their support slipping among adults, it is not unusual for them to alter
school textbooks in the hope of enlisting impressionable youths in their
cause. And because tyrants never stop worrying about the loyalty of their
militaries, they often establish ruling-party militias to act as personal
guarantors of their safety in the event of assassination or coup attempts. In
the service of the third chimurenga in Zimbabwe, students are taught how to
make gasoline bombs and set up roadblocks. Elliot Manyika, a hard-line
ruling-party official who now runs the program, says the training will teach
youths to "change their mind-set * and not aspire to be a servant of the
white man," especially now that "whites are going where they came
from."
Many enroll reluctantly, because they know they have no chance of
finding work otherwise: slots at university, at teacher and nurse training
schools, and in the civil service are reserved for those who can
produce certificates showing that they have graduated from a youth academy.
Clad in green fatigues and red-and-green berets, those graduates who become
Green Bombers vandalize MDC offices, harass Zimbabweans waiting for food,
seize whites' farms, confiscate newspapers, and intimidate voters and
candidates.
Scare off foreigners
The Mbare market, in Harare, is
Zimbabwe's largest bazaar. It contains more than a hundred stalls, selling
African carvings, tapestries, and sculptures. In normal times at least four
tourist buses and dozens of taxis visited the market every day. Yet when I
arrived one Sunday, the vendors looked at me as though they were seeing the
ghost of Cecil Rhodes. After a moment's pause they rushed behind their stalls
and hurriedly began polishing and propping up their wares. One of them told
me I was his first customer of the month; it was July 27. The murder of white
farmers, the attacks on the opposition, and the theft of an election have
obviously done nothing to help tourism. Nor has the disappearance of two
indispensable travel items: cash and fuel. One Air Zimbabwe flight attendant
recently explained a two-hour delay by telling passengers that the plane was
waiting for a flight arriving from London "so we can siphon from its tank."
One of the reasons tourists used to visit Zimbabwe was its game parks. But
many of the fences around the parks have been destroyed by squatters, and
amid starvation, poachers have begun hunting even rare wildlife.
Farm
invaders running out of white commercial farms to seize have begun taking
over wildlife preserves, creating safari parks for their personal viewing.
Foreign capital is disappearing faster than the wildlife. When Mugabe called
for the "indigenization of the economy," he asserted pointedly that some
Zimbabweans were "more indigenous than others." It wasn't only farmers who
were threatened by the chimurenga. In 2000 "war veterans" invaded white-owned
urban busi-nesses - everything from hotels and department stores to the
offices of foreign corporations. The remaining investors are running
scared.
Invade a neighbor
As even a democracy like the United
States has shown, waging war can benefit a leader in several ways: it can
rally citizens around the flag, it can distract them from bleak economic
times, and it can enrich a country's elites. In August of 1998 Robert Mugabe
sent 11,000 soldiers - a third of his army - into the most menacing country
in Africa: the Congo. He justified the invasion on the grounds that he was
defending the sovereignty of an African country being invaded by Rwandan,
Ugandan, and Burundian forces, which were backing a rebellion against the
Congo's President, Laurent Kabila. In reality, just as Saddam Hussein went
after the oil in Kuwait, Mugabe had his eye on the Congo's riches. "There are
fortunes to be made in the Congo," Tshinga Dube, one of Mugabe's colonels,
told a television interviewer, "so why rush to conquer the
rebels?"
Mugabe's cronies did in fact get rich off diamonds, cobalt, and
timber. But the war was extremely unpopular at home. As casualties mounted,
some army officers grew restless and began plotting a coup, which was foiled
in its planning stages. Mugabe dismissed his critics as "black white men
wearing the master's cap." But it was harder for him to ignore the outrage of
one of his key constituencies: the veterans of the 1970s liberation war,
who saw fortunes being made in the Congo and began clamoring for
the compensation Mugabe had promised them for their sacrifices.
Mugabe
thought he might placate the war veterans by offering up the white farms, but
in the end, although the vets were the ones who expelled the white farmers,
it is the country's elites who got the farms. Zimbabwe's troops are thought
to have withdrawn from the Congo in September of last year, but the
consequences of the war are more durable. In addition to unleashing the war
veterans as a powerful political force, the Congo war consumed vast sums of
money that would have been better spent on medicine for the country's dying
people.
Ignore a deadly enemy
Zimbabwe's only real surplus is HIV,
which has infected a third of the population, causing life expectancy to drop
from fifty-six years in the early seventies to a deeply distressing
thirty-five years today. In 1999 Mugabe's government actually did something
that no other African government had tried: it introduced an "AIDS levy" - a
three percent tax on every Zimbabwean's salary, which was to be used to fund
AIDS prevention and treatment. Predictably, most of the money disappeared.
AIDS and food shortages have combined to generate what is called a "new
variant famine," in which hunger weakens the immune system, speeding HIV's
progression to full-blown AIDS. AIDS illnesses and deaths, in turn, further
wreck the economy, reducing the number of communal farmers who can produce in
the countryside, and forcing factories and mines to hire almost twice as
many workers to secure the same amount of labor. Zimbabwe's neighbors have
begun to treat patients with anti-retrovirals, but Mugabe can't afford the
drugs. "Working here is pointless," says Barbara Deve, the lone nurse in
the impoverished Hatcliffe township, near Harare. "We write
prescriptions knowing very well our patients don't have the money to buy the
medicines in the pharmacy. We say `go buy' and `go buy,' but it is just cruel
theater." Some 3,800 deaths from AIDS occur in Zimbabwe each week. Ignorance
and misinformation persist. When an AIDS death occurs in a rural area, it
is still common to hear the deceased described as having been "bewitched."
A recent poll revealed that condoms were thought to harbor HIV.
Commit
genocide
Gukurahundi refers to the seasonal Zimbabwean rains that wipe
out the debris of the previous year's crop. It signifies a purging of the
old, a purification. In January of 1983 Robert Mugabe, a member of the
ethnic Shona majority, ordered his North Korea-trained Fifth Brigade to carry
out what he called a gukurahundi against the Ndebele people.
The
Ndebele account for about a fourth of the country's population, and Mugabe
felt that they threatened him be-cause his chief political rival at the time,
Joshua Nkomo, was a Ndebele. The Nazis gave us the Final Solution; the Serbs
gave us "ethnic cleansing"; the Zimbabweans have given us "wiping away."
Public discussion of the gukurahundi is forbidden in Zimbabwe. But George
Mkwananzi, thirty-three, is the self-anointed keeper of Ndebele memory.
Wearing thick spectacles that keep sliding down his nose, he doesn't fit the
image of a would-be rebel leader. But that is what he says he and others will
become if Mugabe is not punished for the murder of the Ndebele. "In the whole
history of this country nobody ever caused such a loss of life, not even
Cecil John Rhodes," Mkwananzi says. Rhodes's conquest left some 5,000 Ndebele
dead. Mugabe's forces are thought to have killed 25,000. "When liberation was
achieved, we never experienced it as a region," Mkwananzi says. "We were
merely transferred from British colonialism to Shona colonialism. If Mugabe
and his henchmen are not prosecuted, we will break away and create our own
country, and we will find a way to make revenge against Mugabe. It will
happen. It may sound like a dream, but ours is a brutalized past that has to
be revisited. Five or ten years from now they will say, `What that man was
saying was true.' "
In an era of international justice, dictators with
blood on their hands are afraid that if they relinquish power, they will end
up prosecuted, like Slobodan Milosevic, or humiliated, like Augusto Pinochet.
Mugabe knows that his massacres have been carefully documented by survivors
and human rights investigators, and he is right to be nervous. Tsvangirai,
for his part, might be willing to accept a deal in which Mugabe was given a
golden parachute to Nigeria (as Charles Taylor, of Liberia, was), but he
knows that if he does so, his many Ndebele supporters may revolt. "I cannot
stand up now and say, `We will forgive Mugabe,' because I will be
dead," Tsvangirai told me. "But neither can I say, `We are going to send you
to the Hague,' because he will say, `Let me burn down the building.'
"
Blame the imperialists
Following the lead of British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, the United States and Europe have imposed sanctions
against Mugabe and seventy-four members of his inner circle, freezing their
assets, imposing a travel ban, and forbidding arms sales. But other nations,
including Malaysia, Libya, and Venezuela, have been openly supportive of the
Mugabe regime. Mugabe swats away American and European criticism by citing
imperial sins. "How can these countries who have stolen land from the Red
Indians, the Aborigines, and the Eskimos dare to tell us what to do with our
land?" he has asked. Like Castro in Cuba, Mugabe is admired in the developing
world for flouting the Western powers.
The foreigner who could wield
the most influence in Zimbabwe is South African President Thabo Mbeki. But
Mbeki, who has insisted on a "softly, softly" approach, often seems simply to
be stalling in Mugabe's behalf. In September, with Zimbabwe in its worst
condition since Mugabe came to power, Mbeki said that things had normalized.
Although his African National Congress once benefited from sanctions in the
fight against apartheid, he has called for the termination of those against
Zimbabwe. When, in 2002, Tony Blair persuaded the Commonwealth of Nations to
suspend Zimbabwe,
Mbeki urged that Britain be the one to exit. "Those
inspired by notions of white supremacy are free to depart if they feel that
membership of the association reduces them to a repugnant position imposed by
inferior blacks," he said. President Mbeki and other African heads of state
are torn. On the one hand, they know that an "African renaissance" can't
come about while Mugabe and people like him continue to wield power. On
the other, they are power-hungry them-selves, and they are terrified that
their own liberation-era organizations will be left behind in such a
renaissance. So they close ranks on racial and anti-imperial grounds. But
although Mugabe's neighbors in Africa may applaud the President at
international conferences, they are privately taking steps to protect
themselves against the Zimbabwean catastrophe. So many Zimbabwean refugees
now flood South Africa that Mbeki grants entry only to those who can produce
a bank statement proving financial solvency or a deposit of $Z 300,000.
His government also deports several thousand illegal Zimbabwean immigrants
each week. Botswana has found itself so overrun by desperate Zimbabweans that
it is erecting an electric fence 300 miles long. Meanwhile,
Mugabe's anti-imperialist rhetoric, though an expedient balm at home, only
deepens Zimbabwe's iso-lation from potential lenders, investors, and
tourists.
Still, Mugabe will have the last word on Zimbabwe's fate. His
cronies are clearly worried that if he clings to power indefinitely, the
ruling party will sink with him. He is under pressure to choose a successor
by the end of the year. But at seventy-nine, Mugabe may well decide to stick
around, relying - though he would never admit it - on the United States and
Britain to bail out his people with food aid. If he hangs on, and if other
African leaders don't force him out, Zimbabwe may go in one of two
directions. Its destitute citizens might be so preoccupied with finding food
and staying alive that they will increasingly tune politics out. Over time
their memory of - and sense of entitlement to - a better life will give way,
and they will docilely submit to authorities whose power will only increase
as the crisis deepens. Or the country's appalling conditions might stir a
domestic revolution, a fourth chimurenga, which will bring down Mugabe and
his ruling party. The stakes are not small. Mugabe is one of the last
surviving members of a club of African big men - a club that included the
likes of Mobutu Sese Seko, of Zaire, and Daniel Arap Moi, of Kenya. These men
led necessary and bold opposition to colonial rule, but then grew addicted
to= power and its opulent trappings. They began to see them-selves less
as rulers of their lands than as owners. As their support waned, the big
men acted in ways that big men so often do, following a manual very much
like Mugabe's - profiteering, stealing elections, torturing
opponents, alienating professionals and foreigners, and ignoring the needs of
their impoverished citizens. Because Zimbabwe had so much going for it, and
be- cause the country has come apart at such a frighteningly brisk pace,
one can see the continent's worst tendencies in microcosm. The lessons
are clear. First, the contemporary skeptics of democracy - who argue that
it enables tyrannies of the majority and that it ranks lower in priority
than economic development - miss the central insight of the
Zimbabwe
experience: When a ruler operates without constraint, he can institute a
tyranny of the minority, and he can plunder his country's economy and starve
his people without any potential corrective. Democratic accountability is the
bedrock concept that no developed or developing state can live without. An
outspoken press, a healthy op-position, periodic elections, and an
independent judiciary are rightly valued for themselves, but their greatest
virtue is practical: they deter and thwart top-down demolition. Second,
however distant the days of imperial rule or Cold War interventions in
Africa, the residual resentments are a huge psychological impediment to
sensible action by African leaders. In many instances these leaders are
simply deflecting attention from their own failings. But anti-colonial rants
get a receptive hearing among ordinary citizens, because Western leaders have
rarely acknowledged their past sins and still refuse to face up to the way
the West's farm subsidies are ravaging African agriculture. Thus when things
go wrong, it remains expedient - and easy - to blame the white
man.
Third, regardless of the measure of Western responsibility for
Africa's mess, it is clear that the future of Africa lies in the hands of
African leaders. Thus far, individually and collectively, they have been more
prone to hide behind the past than to take responsibility for the present.
If Zimbabwe is a test of South Africa's capacity to lead an
African renaissance, then South Africa has flunked that test.
Finally,
Zimbabwe shows just how hard it is to destroy a place completely. Mugabe has
done virtually everything conceivable to ruin his country, but one finds
signs of a redoubtable spirit everywhere. Graffiti has sprung up at city bus
stops, reading, "Zvakwana!," or "It's enough!" Despite arrest and torture,
opposition activists remain brazen in their dissent. Displaced farm workers
now survive by growing vegetables in grass patches beside bus stops. The
destitute wait patiently in line to cast ballots in elections they know will
be stolen. White farmers spend what's left of their savings suing for the
return of their land in courts presided over by a government whose officials
occupy their farmhouses. All say the same thing: Yes, Zimbabwe has been the
continent's latest example of how not to govern. But the mounting severity of
Mugabe's crackdown is a testament to his frustration with the resilience of
civil society, which simply refuses to go away. If Mugabe were to give up
power, Zimbabweans insist, the country would quickly show how liberated
citizens can mend a shattered land. The effect, they say, could be
contagious.
For all their differences, Mugabe and Ian Smith share a basic
misconception about power: they both fail to realize that a government cannot
survive indefinitely when it advances the political and economic desires of
the few at the expense of the many. When I asked Smith whether he would
stop leaving his front door open now that starving Zimbabweans are prowling
the city, he replied, "I'm not going to change now." The same, alas, is
most likely true of Robert Mugabe. A
THE APPARITION
True to his
word, our vet comes in late afternoon and kneels in a slant of sun. A pat, a
needle stick stills the failing heart. We lower the ancient form to the
hemlock-shrouded grave and before the hole is brimmed set a layer of chicken
wire to guard against predators so that the earth we broke reforms, a mild
mound. The rock we place on top, common glacial granite, is mica-flecked and
flat. That night the old dog works his way back up and out, gasping, salted
with dirt, and barks his familiar bark at the scribble-scratched back
door. I pull on shirt and pants, a Pavlovian response, and stumble half
awake downstairs to turn the knob where something, some mortal stub I swear
I recognize, some flap of ear or fur, swims out of nothingness and
brushes past me into its rightful house.
MAXINE KUMIN Maxine
Kumin's most recent volumes of poetry are The Long Marriage (2001) and
Bringing Together: Uncollected Early Poems 1958-1988
(2003).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Justice
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A central
Nigerian state is trying revive its neglected agricultural sector by
encouraging white Zimbabwean farmers to relocate to the country. Six
white farmers have just completed a visit to Kwara state at the invitation of
its Governor, Bukola Saraki.
The farmers mainly represent those who
have lost their farms in Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's land
redistribution programme.
Nigeria's farms have been neglected since
oil was discovered 40 years ago.
One of the farmers, Alan Jack,
told the BBC's Anna Borzello that during the week-long visit they had been
offered large blocks of land on 99-year leases to resettle in
Nigeria.
He said the farms he had seen were overgrown and
neglected.
"We could resuscitate things in a matter of months and
get those places up and running again," he said.
Mr Jack said
they will return to Nigeria for further discussions, but had not made any
firm decisions.
The farmers are concerned about the lack of
infrastructure and Nigeria's reputation for corruption.
But
Kwara state is optimistic that the men will agree to the project.
"I think the few farmers that have visited will spread the good news that
there is arable land here," said Nigel Crompton, a local official.
.
Presidential approval
Nigerian President Olusegun
Obasanjo has also given his support for the project, saying Nigeria was
"anxious to benefit from their expertise and experience".
The
farmers would find their stay in Nigeria "rewarding and exciting," he added
when the group visited the capital Abuja.
But Nigeria is not the
only offer the farmers have had.
Mr Jack said they had also
received overtures from Mozambique, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda and
Tanzania.
This Day, Nigeria
Dateline: 23/03/2004 16:32:14 Benefit From
Zimbabwean Farmers' Expertise - Obasanjo From Josephine Lohor in
Abuja
President Olusegun Obas-anjo yesterday stated that in the spirit of the New
Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), Nig-eria wants the whole of
Africa to benefit from the technical know-how and expertise of Zimbabwean
farmers.
Speaking when a delegation of the farmers led by the
governor of Kwara State, Mr. Bukola Saraki, visited him at the State House in
Abuja, the President who said the Federal Government would support everything
that the Kwara State government was doing in the area of commercial
agriculture, disclosed that government is looking into the Agriculture Credit
Guaranty Scheme to make it more farmer-friendly.
Obasanjo who
said he would not delve into the politics of Zimbabwe "because politics at
times do not go together," however, noted that he had "no doubt that we have
to gradually move towards commercial and modern agriculture, but the dilemma
is, how quickly we move and what we do with the old farmers.
We
have to move steadily but firmly so that when the 65-year old farmer can no
longer farm, he will be replaced by the modern farmer."
The
president who noted that the visit of the Zimbabwean farmers was an
indication of their faith and commitment to Africa, however, added that "we
do not want to take away what is good for Zimbabwe from Zimbabwe but we also
want you not to leave Africa. I believe that it is in the best interest of
Africa that you do not
leave."
IBADAN - THE Nigerian Economic Society yesterday warned
the Federal Government against allowing the displaced white Zimbabwean
farmers to settle in the country declaring that such a move "portends great
danger to Nigeria' s future."
President of the society, Prof.
Sam Olofin at a news conference on the delegation of the white farmers
already in the country remarked that government at state and federal levels
need to backtrack and stop giving the displaced farmers a base in the
country.
His words: "It is a fact that the country needs every kobo
of investment. We may be able to attract to the productive sectors of
the economy from local and foreign sources. But it is not every form
of investment that is likely to add value to our investment
effort.
"If anything at all, the value added from this particular
category of investors is likely to be negative over the medium term and
longer term."
According to him, "if our agricultural sector is to
be reviewed therefore, all we need at the moment is a reversal of the
deliberate policy of neglect of the agricultural sector and not invitation to
foreign investors to introduce large scale farming."
The
Professor of Economics of the University of Ibadan stated emphatically that
"the country is not ripe for large-scale farming that would radically
transform the agricultural sector and displace
small-holder farmers.
Professor Olofin explained that
introducing large scale farming without corresponding growth in the nation's
industrial sector "would have little or no impact on the rest of the economy
or at best accentuate the level of unemployment as small scale farmers are
thrown out of their small holdings with nowhere to go."
The NSE
president said that Nigeria at the moment had a strong industrial base to
accommodate large-scale farming adding "such isolated large-scale farming has
resulted in enclave economics in most Southern Africa countries where they
have been trailed by complex economic, social and political problems as we
are now witnessing in Zimbabwe.
He specifically stated that the
potential for future resentment and racial conflict becomes quite enormous by
bringing in the white farmers.
adding "we have enough of
intra-ethnic tensions in the country already and we leave peacefully with the
few whites who mingle easily with the rest of society. Must we now add a
racial dimension to our national problems by creating white enclave farming
communities.
Said he, "unlike other forms of foreign investment
especially in manufacturing, this is a form of investment that would require
re-allocation of a very sensitive factor of production - land. We already
have enough communal clashes all over the country arising from claims and
counter-claims to land possession such that we do not need to exacerbate this
by bringing in foreign investors who would dispossess local communities of
their land".
Professor Olofin who said that "it is only few
individuals who will benefit from the invitation of the white Zimbabwean
farmers noted" there is need to re-examine our foreign dependence
syndrome".
"We therefore urge the federal government to stop and
halt this potentially dangerous policy on its tracks. Our agricultural sector
does not need Zimbabwean farmers to improve. It is a form of foreign
investment that would do the country more harm than good if not in short run,
certainly in the medium and longer term. It would only increase our social,
political, as well as economic problems in the near future enormously with
little to show by way of benefits".
HARARE - An independent film maker in
Zimbabwe was arrested and charged under security laws on "suspicion" he
helped to make a recent BBC documentary about the country's controversial
youth training camps, his lawyer said.
Beatrice Mtetwa said her client
Simon Bright was arrested last Friday as he tried to board an Air Zimbabwe
plane to London.
He was detained for the weekend by police and questioned
on whether he worked for "outside broadcasters", Mtetwa said.
The
lawyer said Bright was asked whether he was involved in making the
BBC's recent Panorama programme that claimed thousands of Zimbabwean youths
are being trained in special camps to torture and intimidate opponents
of President Robert Mugabe's government.
"The suspicion is that he was
involved in that" Panorama documentary, Mtetwa said, but denied any
link.
Bright was released on Monday afternoon after being charged under
the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) for communicating "a statement which
is wholly or materially false", Mtetwa added.
Mtetwa told AFP that
Bright, an established film maker who focuses on development and conservation
issues, was taking a tape to clients in London who had commissioned him to
make a documentary on a game park in southern Zimbabwe.
Mtetwa said
police were "unable to say what was offensive" about the tape, adding that
various government departments were involved in the making of the
documentary.
Under Zimbabwe's strict security laws, the communication of
false statements carries a fine or a five-year prison term on
conviction.
Preparations to evacuate Caprivi villages JOHANNESBURG, 24 Mar 2004
(IRIN) - The Caprivi Regional Emergency Management Unit (REMU) is preparing
to evacuate villagers after the Zambezi river rose above the six-metre mark
over the weekend.
Dotson Kamwi, REMU's secretary, told IRIN the water
level of the river, which flows along the eastern border of Namibia's Caprivi
Strip and then through Zimbabwe, reached 6.57 metres on Wednesday. On the
same day last year it stood at 4.15 metres.
The river is almost at
last year's peak level of 6.64 metres, when it burst its banks and displaced
about 12,000 people in the floods that followed.
The Zambezi has been
rising since October last year and seven villages had already been submerged,
Kamwi told IRIN earlier this month. The affected villages are Muzii,
Nankutwe, Namiyunu, Nsundwa, Itomba, Malindi and Schuckmannsburg, all located
in the low-lying areas along the river, in northern Caprivi.
REMU has
obtained some boats from the defence force, "but we still have yet to get an
estimate of the number of people we will have to evacuate," Kamwi said. A
REMU team was out on Wednesday visiting the affected areas to assess the
situation.
An assessment team from the Namibian capital Windhoek,
comprising government officials and representatives from the World Food
Programme, the United Nations Children's Fund and the Red Cross were expected
to arrive in Caprivi on 27 March.
The International Federation of Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said its Namibian office has been
monitoring the situation and was ready to intervene. The Namibian Red Cross
helped 8,700 flood victims last year.
"Emergency response is an essential
part of the water and sanitation programme in the region, be it in flood or
drought situation, as thousands of people are threatened yearly by waterborne
diseases such as malaria, cholera and diarrhoea," an IFRC statement
said.
A South African daily newspaper said today that suspected
mercenaries held in Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea planned to snatch Charles
Taylor, the exiled former Liberian president, for a $2million US reward.
Zimbabwe has charged 70 men in its custody with conspiracy to overthrow the
president of Equatorial Guinea. All have been held in Harare since their
plane was impounded there on March 7.
However, ThisDay newspaper said
the plan, which it said was put together by Northbridge Services Group, a
British military company, was to capture Taylor from his exile in Nigeria. It
said Taylor would have been handed to a UN war crimes tribunal in Sierra
Leone where he has been indicted. The US Congress last year approved a $2
million reward for his capture.
Bob Kovacic, Northbridge's president,
denied any links between his group and the suspected mercenaries but said his
company had once offered to capture Taylor. He said his US representative
Pasquale Dipofi "did know a couple of the guys on the plane and one or two in
the target country, but we had nothing to do with the mission". "I don't have
any contracts running now. I am still looking for our first one," he added,
speaking from Kuwait where he said he was seeking a security contract in
Iraq.
"Last June the International Court did ask us to get Taylor, but
when we said it would cost $4 million they backed off. I am a businessman. I
don't do charity work," he added.
Zimbabwean authorities have said the
70 men, 10 of them whites and mainly from South Africa, Namibia and Angola,
had stopped in Harare to procure arms for their mission. Equatorial Guinea
announced it had arrested a smaller group of 15, whose leader had confessed
to being the head of an advance party of a hit team to topple the Malabo
government.
ThisDay, quoting "sources close to the South Africans held as
mercenaries", said Equatorial Guinea was merely to be the springboard for a
sea borne expedition to Calabar, the port city in southeastern Nigeria where
Taylor found asylum. Taylor's guarded asylum home overlooks the Cross
River estuary, just under 300kms from Malabo. The men detained in
Zimbabwe appeared in court yesterday.
Mary Zimba-Dube, a chief
prosecutor, said Simon Mann, a Briton, was the ringleader and acted on
instructions from Severo Moto, the exiled Equatorial Guinea opposition
leader, who is based in Spain. Mann's lawyers rejected the charges. -
Reuters
Zimbabwe's anti-corruption crackdown
last week resulted in the closure of five key financial institutions.
President Robert Mugabe is vigorously dismantling the country's deep-rooted
economic patronage system in an effort to ensure his political survival. The
sweeping clean-up drive has sent business magnates - whose economic power was
beginning to threaten Mugabe's diminishing political influence - fleeing
abroad to escape jail. As many as 10 prominent business tycoons have fled the
country in recent weeks. Most are said to have sought refuge in London.
However, the Zimbabwean president has said the moguls will be found and
brought to justice. Financial institutions closed by the Reserve Bank this
week included Barbican Bank and Barbican Asset Management. Reports say
Barbican Asset Management South Africa, Barbican Holdings Botswana, and
Barbican Capital Partners are also in deep financial crisis. The collapse of
the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed Barbican Holdings, owned by Mthuli Ncube
and others, was preceded a few days earlier by the closure of Intermarket
Holdings, one of the local firms owned by Nicholas Vingirai. The group's
major subsidiaries, Intermarket Banking Corporation, Building Society, and
Intermarket Discount House, were shut down because of a severe liquidity
crisis. Barbican Holdings was closed for the same reason.
But
there were also allegations of corruption involving "foreign
currency externalisation" and siphoning off of investors' funds by directors
in the form of "loans". Other financial institutions and companies that have
been netted in the campaign include NMB Bank, Trust Bank, Century Bank,
Century Discount House and Metropolitan Bank. NMB Bank managing director
Julius Makoni and his deputy, James Mushore, are believed to have fled to
London. Trust Bank, Century, and Metropolitan have had to be rescued by the
central bank through its Troubled Banks Fund to protect investors and
depositors' funds, as well as preserve their assets. A number of asset
management companies, in particular ENG Capital Asset Management, whose
directors have been languishing in jail since December over a Z$60-billion
fraud case, and discount houses have sunk as the clean-up tide sweeps across
the financial sector. Many other locally owned companies are facing the risk
of going under.
When the corrosive banking crisis began affecting
the ordinary people Mugabe stepped in, masquerading as their saviour.
However, critics point out his disastrous policies helped create the
problems. Political analysts and a wide spectrum of Zimbabweans blame
Mugabe's regime for the corruption that has become an integral part of the
country's political system. They have accused Mugabe of maintaining his
tyranny through an eclectic mix of coercion, emotional propaganda, patronage
and graft. Business moguls have all along been kept within Mugabe's political
realm and at his regime's service. The business executives provided resources
to sustain his rule in exchange for security. However, since September,
Mugabe has complained of "unhelpful businessmen", especially bankers, who had
been beneficiaries of licences under his government but had shifted their
political loyalty. At the Zanu-PF conference in December Mugabe warned the
"unhelpful businessmen" and "tricksters" that their days were numbered. Later
that month the crackdown started, with the arrest of ENG
directors.
Mugabe's concentrated campaign has been likened to Russian
President Vladimir Putin's recent clampdown on the "oligarchs" in his
country. On October 25 last year Putin ordered the arrest of Russian
billionaire oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky for tax evasion and corruption
dating back to the wholesale plunder of state property during former Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost programmes in the early
1990s. Khodorkovsky was using his immense personal fortune to bankroll
opposition parties in Russia. This apparently broke an unwritten covenant
between the "oligarchs" and the Kremlin leadership committing the moguls to
keeping out of politics in return for the state's protection of their
ill-gotten wealth. Mugabe is seen as following the same formula by dealing
with Zimbabwe's "economic mafia" for breaking the cardinal rule of not
interfering in politics and funding the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change, a party deeply resented in official circles. Zimbabwe's nouveau riche
had accumulated wealth that had given them economic muscle that was beginning
to challenge Mugabe's political power and influence. The entrepreneurs,
who admittedly had gained some of their fortune through illicit means,
were building up their profiles as an alternative source of political power,
and their adventurism as MDC financiers had ruffled the feathers of the
powers that be.
Court gags media from naming politician in gold
scam
By Mduduzi Mathuthu 24/03/04 A ZIMBABWE magistrate has shocked
the legal fraternity by gagging the Press and ordering that the name of a top
Zanu PF politician implicated in a multi-million dollar gold scam be expunged
from court papers. But New Zimbabwe.com today names that politician as
Speaker of Parliament and Zanu PF secretary for administration Emmerson
Mnangagwa who was until this week tipped to succeed President
Mugabe.
Harare magistrate Virginia Sithole consented to a bizarre request
by lawyers defending Mark Mathew Burden that a paragraph which names
Mnangagwa as a beneficiary of illegal gold dealing be blackened out. The
state-owned Herald newspaper ran with the story on its front page but omitted
naming Mnangagwa. Readers of the paper were left guessing as the magistrate
also barred any reference to his position that could lead the public to
identify him. The magistrate said reference to Mnangagwa was irrelevant and
according to the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act, no irrelevant evidence
may be led. "The Press is not to publish contents of paragraph 19, or
anything from the deleted paragraph," she said. However State attorneys
argued that they could prove Mnangagwa was a beneficiary of illegal gold
dealing by Burden. "This is information which emerged from investigations.
The State can lead evidence that payment was made. Therefore, we see no basis
having the paragraph expunged," State counsel Gerald Butaumocho said. But
the defence lawyers for Burden came out fighting, saying they "took offence"
at the state outline which names Mnangagwa. "The offending paragraph is
paragraph 19," said defence lead lawyer George Chikumbirike. "It is our
submission that the evidence is inadmissible and totally irrelevant. That
evidence does not have any link at all to the 46 charges against
accused." "It was not necessary for accused to explain why he wrote a cheque
to a particular individual. It smacks of mere sensationalism. The court
should not allow that to occur," said Chikumbirike. After the magistrate
ordered the paragraph to be blanked out, questions were being asked in legal
circles why Mnangagwa wasn't being dragged to court to explain the cheques
bearing his name and signed by Burden. Said one legal expert: "It would
appear the police and the prosecutors know a crime has been committed, but
they are scared to charge Mnangagwa. It seems they wanted the accused to
implicate Mnangagwa in court before they could act. It's a
shambles." Mnangagwa was first named in illegal gold dealing late last year
by the Zimbabwe Independent. But the paper's journalists were later
threatened with death by Mnangagwa's side kicks. The paper went with
accusations brought by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change MP for
Kwekwe Blessing Chebundo who said Mnangagwa had gold gangs who recruited gold
panners from whom he bought gold. At the time, Chebundo named three men -
identified as retired army major Makombe, a Chipinda and Owen Mudha Ncube -
as fronts for the politician touted as President Mugabe's preferred
successor. "The three recruit gold panners from whom they buy the gold,"
Chebundo told the Independent in December. "It is well known that they are
fronts for Mnangagwa. Gold panning has been allowed to go on as a campaign
tool by the ruling party. The three frontmen and gold panners claim they have
protection from senior officials in the party," he said. But Mnangagwa
denied any involvement in gold dealings. "That is not true, it's political
smearing. I am not involved and I am not stupid," said an angry
Mnangagwa. "Just publish that and I will sue him. Go ahead, write that and I
will deal with him accordingly. He has been saying that for some time now,"
said Mnangagwa. Mnangagwa said the three alleged frontmen had been
arrested and police found no link with him. Burden who faces 46 counts of
illegal gold dealing pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Outlining the
prosecution case, Butaumocho said Burden, who is the owner of Ivan Hoe Mine
and eight other gold milling plants in the Midlands city of Kwekwe, has been
dealing in gold since 2000. He said Burden would buy gold at the parallel
market rate after milling gold ore from various people. In October and
November 2003, detectives from the Criminal Investigation Department at
Harare Central Police Gold Squad received information that Burden was buying
gold at a price higher than the one offered by Fidelity Printers and
Refineries. Fidelity Printers is the sole legal buyer of gold produced in
Zimbabwe. The State alleges that this meant that Burden was not going to sell
his gold to Fidelity Printers as he would incur losses and it was suspected
that he was externalising the gold. On November 11 last year, the State
alleges, a team of detectives from Harare travelled to Kwekwe to investigate
the allegations at Burden's mine and other surrounding mines and milling
plants in the town. After a search at his mine, it is alleged, it was
discovered that there was 2,416kg of gold, 863,5 grammes and 5,0 grammes of
smelted gold button in his safe. Additional reporting by the Zimbabwe
Independent, The Herald.
24 March 2004 Proposed Amendments to Electoral Act Signify
Another Step In The Wrong Direction
The Electoral Amendment Bill,
scheduled to be presented to Parliament this week for debate and approval, is
yet another step in the wrong direction by the Zanu PF government.
Substantive amendments are indeed required to the existing Electoral
Act in order to harmonise its provisions with SADC Norms and Standards for
elections, adopted by the SADC Parliamentary Forum Plenary Assembly on 25 March
2001. However, the amendments proposed in the Bill, are the very antithesis of
harmonisation; in fact they demonstrate the ‘gulf of difference’ between the
Zimbabwe government and its SADC counterparts with respect to the management and
conduct of elections.
Countries such as Botswana, South Africa, Zambia,
Malawi and Mozambique will in their turn conduct elections in strict accordance
with agreed SADC standards whilst Zimbabwe continues to swim against the tide of
progress and electoral probity.
Rather than using this opportunity to
demonstrate commitment to free and fair elections, the Zanu PF government has
opted to amend the existing Electoral Act for purposes of political expediency.
The amendments strengthen the status quo in relation to the administration and
management of the electoral process. This is illustrated by an amendment that
gives the state sole control of the voter education process through the partisan
Electoral Supervisory Commission, whose militarised personnel is appointed by
Mr. Mugabe.
Not only are Mugabe and Zanu PF reneging on a
multi-lateral commitment that they are signatory to, they have embarked on an
agenda that reverses all democratic freedoms and subordinates the sovereign
wishes of the people to the narrow interests of the ruling elite.
As
the respective electorates in South Africa, Malawi and Mozambique go to the
polls in the next few months they should think of their brothers and sisters in
Zimbabwe, who nearly 24 years after independence, are still being denied their
basic democratic right of casting their ballots in a free and fair election.
Our SADC brothers and sisters should ask themselves why their
Zimbabwean counterparts are denied the opportunity to enjoy electoral processes
that have become the norm on other SADC countries.
The MDC recently set
out 15 conditions pertaining to the SADC Protocol on elections that need to be
met so that the party can participate comfortably in next year’s parliamentary
elections. For the sake of democracy and the suffering people of Zimbabwe, we
urge our brothers and sisters in SADC countries to bring pressure to bear on
Mugabe and Zanu PF to satisfy these conditions and honour their commitment to
conducting elections in accordance with agreed norms and standards.
Paul Themba Nyathi Secretary for Information and Publicity
By
Staff Reporter 24/03/04 ZIMBABWEAN leader President Robert Mugabe's
trumpeted anti-corruption drive has netted an unlikely suspect - the Roman
Catholic Church.
The church's Hwange branch in southern Zimbabwe was
dragged before a court Monday on charges of contravening a section of the
Exchange Control Act which deals with exchanging foreign currency on the
black market.
The amount involved was not disclosed when the church's
representatives appeared in court.
But the representatives indicated
that the church would be pleading guilty to the offence which will likely
result in a fine.
The case was moved to a later date.
The
developments came barely a week after the Roman Catholic Church-run Mater Dei
Hospital in the second city of Bulawayo was also arraigned for dealing in
forex on the black market.
Several institutions have been dragged before
the courts for trading on the black market owing to a crippling shortage of
foreign currency before the central bank adopted corrective
measures.
Meanwhile Zimbabwe's central bank Tuesday declared it illegal
for people to use foreign currency to pay for goods and services within the
country.
In a statement, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said the Zimbabwe
dollar is the only legal tender in the country.
It said it is
concerned that some individuals and companies are charging their local
customers for goods in a foreign currency.
The bank says the practice has
become endemic especially for those trading with foreign embassies,
international organizations, and non-government groups.
Zimbabwe is
facing a severe shortage of cash which has caused inflation rates to soar.
The crisis has led to a black market, where foreign currency, especially the
U.S. dollar, can sell for many times more than the official exchange
rate.
Alleged mercenaries 'assaulted, refused food'
March 24, 2004
By Moshoeshoe Monare and Basildon Peta
Harare - Dressed in khaki prison shorts and shirts, their legs shackled and
handcuffed in twos, 70 suspected South African mercenaries have made their
first public appearance since being detained in Zimbabwe.
The 60
black and 10 white men yesterday appeared briefly in a makeshift court in
Chikurubi Maximum Prison, about 20km east of Harare. They were remanded in
custody until their next appearance on April 13.
Defence attorney
Jonathan Samkange told the court that some of the accused had been assaulted
and had been refused food, water and telephone access for four
days.
They were formally charged but not asked to plead. Samkange
told magistrate Mishrod Guvamobe that he would apply for bail on April
13.
Meanwhile the Zimbabwean government has deployed heavily
armed soldiers at airports around the country to thwart any attempt it
believes might be made to rescue the mercenaries.
Fear that
other "South African-based mercenaries" might try to rescue their
"counterparts" was one reason why President Robert Mugabe's
government decided to set up a makeshift courtroom at the
prison.
Sources at Harare International Airport said all air
traffic controllers had been ordered to liaise frequently with the Manyame
air base nearby.
"Any planes that might stray into our airspace
without any good reason risk being shot down," one airport official
said.
Privately, Zimbabwean officials said fears of a possible
rescue bid were ill-founded, as there was no such likelihood.
The men are facing five charges, which include conspiring to effect a coup in
Equatorial Guinea; contravening the Public Order and Security Act; trying to
buy firearms without legal certificates; and contravening civil aviation and
immigration laws.
But the primary charge is contravention of
the Public Order and Security Act, which is regarded as high treason in
Zimbabwe and carries a sentence of life imprisonment.
Simon
Mann, Lourens Jacobus Horn and Carlos Jacob Hermanus, who were arrested as an
alleged advance team in Zimbabwe, are also facing serious charges of trying
to buy firearms.
The list of firearms they allegedly ordered from a
local armaments company includes 61 AK-47 assault rifles, 45 000 rounds of
ammunition, 20 light machine- guns, 100 rocket-propelled grenade launchers,
seven anti-tank launchers and 150 handgrenades.
Reading the
charges, chief prosecutor Mary Zimba-Dube said Mann, Hermanus and Horn had
tried to buy the weapons from Zimbabwe Defence Industries.
When
ZDI realised that Mann was a notorious mercenary, Zimba-Dube said, the
company refused to continue with the deal and contacted
the authorities.
By that time, a cheque for US$180 000 (about
R1,1-million) had already been given to the armaments company in the name of
South African Nick du Toit, who is being held in custody in Equatorial
Guinea.
The accused appeared to be in high spirits. They were
escorted by more than 40 policemen, half of whom were standing outside the
makeshift court. - Independent Foreign Service
Zimbabwe's government has deployed heavily armed soldiers at
airports around the country to thwart any attempts it believes might be made
to rescue 70 suspected South African mercenaries in jail in
Harare.
Fears that "other South African-based mercenaries" might attempt
a rescue of their counterparts was one reason President Robert Mugabe's
government decided to set up a makeshift courtroom at Chikurubi Maximum
Prison for the 70 men's first court appearance on Tuesday.
It had
argued against driving the men to an open magistrate's court 30km away from
Chikurubi prison because of security concerns and fears of rescue efforts
while they were on their way there.
'My father was never involved
in mercenary activity' An official at the Bulawayo International Airport,
also known as the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Airport, said everything possible was
being done to ensure security.
Sources at Harare International Airport
said all air traffic controllers were ordered to liaise frequently with the
Manyame Air Base nearby.
"Any planes that might stray into our airspace
without any good reason risk being shot down," said one airport
official.
Heavily armed soldiers had been stationed at Manyame Base,
which is within sight of the airport, to monitor all landings and
take-offs.
Only a few airlines, mainly South African Airways and Air
Zimbabwe, now land in Harare since other carriers discontinued
flights.
'Why would he risk everything?' Meanwhile, families and
colleagues of some of the men have vehemently denied they are
mercenaries.
The owner of a Pretoria security company, Gert Nel, said
Adriano Baptista, 48, and Manuel Baka, 44, among the men held as
"mercenaries", had been tricked into going along as they had been told only
that they were going to do security work in the Democratic Republic of
Congo.
He said they had resigned from their jobs hours before boarding an
unknown aircraft destined for the DRC. This aircraft was turned back from
Ndola in Zambia after trying to enter the DRC.
According to Nel,
Baptista and Baka were recruited by a former colleague, Alberto dos Santos,
who had previously worked for Nel.
Dos Santos, also a former 32 Battalion
member, apparently lied to Baptista and Baka.
"They believed they were
going to the Democratic Republic of Congo."
"Dos Santos never told them
anything about the alleged coup plot in Equatorial Guinea," Nel
said.
Nel said that many of his employees, all former soldiers in 32
Battalion, had done legitimate security work in the Democratic Republic of
Congo and had subsequently returned to Pretoria.
"At no stage did
Baptista and Baka ever believe they were recruited
as mercenaries."
When first approached, Dos Santos denied having lied
to Baptista and Baka. When questioned further, he admitted he had
lied.
He declined to comment on the real nature of the task they were
recruited for and who he was acting for, saying only he had been instructed
to recruit soldiers for work in Africa.
According to Marius Boonzaier,
24, whose father, Marius "Bones" Boonzaier, 48, has been arrested in
Equatorial Guinea, his father was employed to oversee the logistical
management of a fishing and agricultural project there.
"My father was
never involved in mercenary activity," he said.
Boonzaier is a former
member of the South African special forces who was arrested along with his
colleague Nick du Toit.
A third South African, Mark Schmidt, was also
held. Schmidt has no military experience.
The three are imprisoned in
a facility known as "Black Beach Prison".
Boonzaier, who resigned from
the South African Defence Force in 1986, owned a dairy farm near Polokwane
until 1996. He now operates private vehicle testing stations in Tzaneen,
Giyani and Moeketsi in Limpopo province.
Boonzaier said his father was a
legitimate businessman who would not risk his life or the family's
future.
"My father does not have financial problems, so why would he
risk everything?" he asked.
Boonzaier said his father had arranged for
him to visit Equatorial Guinea in April.
"If he was involved in
alleged mercenary activities or a coup plot, he would have never risked my
safety in Equatorial Guinea," he said.
He said his father, who is ill and
need of chronic medication, received medication on Friday last
week.
"Despite getting medication, the conditions in that prison cannot
be pleasant. There appears to be no rule of law in Equatorial Guinea and
a total disregard for basic human rights," he said.
Boonzaier said he
was not aware of further developments regarding a possible release or trial
of the South Africans held there.
"I just follow my daily routine... I
try not to think about it," he said.
a.. This article was
originally published on page 3 of The Cape Times on March 24, 2004
The future is not a result of
choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is
created -- created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The
future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths
are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both
the maker and the destination. (John Schaar, futurist)
OPEN LETTER
FORUM
Letter 1: A CRUMBING WALL? - Simply Simon Thursday's Financial
Gazette (March 18-24, 2004) has an article headed "Nocolas Vingirai's
crumbling empire. Who benefited from the loans." in which it appears
that 1 Intermarket purchased 11,8 million shares in TSL in June 2003 and
a facility of $325 million was advanced by IDL 2 Closefin Investments, a
company owned by a consortium of business executives led by Anthony
Mandiwanza who acquired a stake in TSL Limited, was advanced a bridging
finance facility of $6,1 billion. This facility now stands at $36,6 billion
and the market value of the TSL shares held as security amounts to $15
billion.
Intermarket was placed under curatorship on Friday 12 March
2004.
Many tobacco farmers benefited from an arrangement made last year
after the disposal of the shares by ZTA took place and the benefit was paid
out to farmers who had sold tobacco on TSF over the past 11 years from
1992.
While many of us have not been farming for a while, but still hold
onto our title deeds in the hope that we will either be allowed to farm our
land again or receive compensation for what has been forcibly taken from us,
it is interesting, and important to us to follow the happenings of
an organisation with which we all worked so closely for so many
years.
One can only wonder what the future of TSL and its subsidiary TSF
will be during the coming months when their two biggest shareholders face
huge financial difficulties as a result of the crackdown on the
banking industry. The pressure being placed on this industry, despite
their behavior towards farmers over the past few years when the banks
were noticeably absent in their support of farmers when we were removed from
our farms forcibly and therefore the banks collateral was eroded by
the removals, is huge. The super profits made by banks, huge loans given out
at preferential rates to special clients, lack of support for the
agricultural industry when they were in turmoil, must come home to roost some
time.
It will be interesting too, to follow the tobacco auctions which
start at the end of the month where for the first time tobacco will be sold
on a dual system with both the auction and individual buyers being able
to acquire tobacco from the farmers.
How will TSL handle the coming
months with their biggest shareholder under financial pressure to repay their
loan to Intermarket and Intermarket itself holding shares in TSL. Will we see
a change in shareholders of this group? Will there be a change in policy?
Will we continue to negotiate with the Defence Force to grow tobacco to buy
military equipment?
For those of you waiting outside to come
home...there's no time to get bored as you learn a new trade but, boy,
there's no time to get bored here at home either!!
Letter 2 AgriAfrica
and Jag loss documents and Compensation Debate - Kerry Kay
It is
interesting to see that Jag is calling for open debate on this, however when
Alan York, who is with AgricAfrica, came in on a number of occasions to
discuss these very issues with a certain Jag representative, and was wanting
to work hand in hand with Jag, he was "talked at" rather than "listened to"
!!!
In the interests of everyone, it is my belief that both AgriAfrica
and Jag should work together on the loss documents. Jag has a very
comprehensive loss document including consequential losses etc. while
AgriAfrica have a loss document for land and improvements. Let it be the
farmers choice which one they want to complete. But lets not have another
open confrontation as has been the case with Jag other Agricultural unions
and associations.
Letter 3
Compensation/Restitution Debate - John
Worswick
Dear Kerry
JAG takes responsibility for disseminating
factual information over the OPEN LETTERS FORUM and your letter was devoid of
this essential and likely to cause further confusion with farmers, on a
number of points;
(i) Alan York has never been anything but welcome in
the JAG Office and we have had a number of constructive meetings with AA and
Alan in the past, many taking place in this office. The last one involved
Alan York and Wayne Parham, which culminated in our continuing the meeting
after hours at Alan's home.
The last occasion Alan came into the JAG
office he demanded an immediate audience with me when I was already involved
with a group of farmers strategising a legal way forward for them. I
politely asked Alan to wait for five minutes whilst I finished with the group
I was with. Alan paced around the secretaries desk in a very obviously
impatient and irritated fashion and after a few minutes stormed out, much to
my (and others) surprise.
(ii) I spend most of my time listening very
patiently to farmers whether with or without problems, irrespective of
whether they are members of JAG or not. Interestingly your complaint on
behalf of Alan is the very first negative feedback I have had in 22 months of
meeting with farmers daily. The facts pertaining to what actually happened,
despite your statement as to it happening on "a number of occasions" and as
to "talking at" rather than "listening to". Alan can hardly be substantiated
in this case as he didn't even extend to me the common courtesy of waiting
his turn for a discussion to take, place but rather left impatiently and in a
huff. Behaviour hardly conducive to a discussion to broker common
ground.
(iii) Yes, JAG have a very comprehensive loss claim document
project, part of which involved the brokering of a commitment by the
valuators to form the Valuation Consortium to carry out valuations on behalf
of farmers for their land and improvements under compulsory acquisition rules
and to do this on a nominal "covering costs" basis backed up by a success fee
payable later in the event of success. The Valuation Consortium is not
Agric Africa (nor JAG for that matter) but an independent group to
valuators. It is essential that their independent role is preserved. To
refer to Agric Africa as having a loss document covering land and
improvements is news to me and will further confuse farmers into the false
perception that Agric Africa and Valuation Consortium are one and the same.
That Mr. Fernandes and his two consulting valuators at GRL FARM sales are
investors with Agric Africa and that GRL Farm Sales are part of the
Valuation Consortium is established fact. So which loss document for "land
and improvements" are you referring to here? I'm not aware that AA has one.
Nor a defined strategy for achieving compensation that they are prepared
to put on the table for farmers and hence the AA comment "we won't go
into modalities now".
(iv) I'm also not aware that JAG is in "open
confrontation with other Agricultural Unions and associations" as you claim.
JAG has a very defined and holistic approach, policy and strategy for
achieving restitution/ compensation which involves; litigation,
advocacy/lobbying public relations, negotiation and comprehensive evidence
gathering and documentation.
That our policy and implementation has
been at variance with other representative organisations such as the CFU,
ZTA, and now Agric Africa is an undisputed fact. However I doesn't follow
that this puts us "in open confrontation" with other groups, especially when
we meet with those groups on a regular basis with the view to exploring
common ground and areas of reservation. With AA, so far, make no mistake,
these exist on both fronts, however the reservations by far outweigh the
common ground, hence calling for open debate.
The flood of farmers to
our office for clarification of various issues and unmuddying the waters
since AA initiated its PR launch would indicate that farmers share many of
our reservations and that various issues are being clouded and
misrepresented, resulting in farmers becoming more confused that ever
before.
I think what is pertinent at this moment in time is a response
from Agric Africa with regard to Ben Freeth's and other farmers letters on
this forum both in the interests of transparency and clarification, with
regard to their policy for achievement of compensation and whether their
strategy includes restitution of not only those farmers wanting to return to
their legally owned properties but also their farm workers and their
considerable losses. Assessment of the worthwhileness and feasibility of
AA's policy and strategy is, in the absence of anything defined being tabled,
almost impossible. Any policy that excludes comprehensive litigation
and documentation for not only commercial farmers but also their workers
is doomed to failure. Likewise focusing the spine of a legal strategy
based on bilateral treaties and agreements when only a very small percentage
of commercial farmers fall into this category and especially when the
Dutch commercial farmers are in the International Claims Court already,
raises further concerns. That the vast majority of commercial farmers do not
have automatic access to the International legal arena is indisputable as is
the fact that we have to exhaust all legal avenues here before that door
will open, AA is not being transparent and clear on this point. If they were
to clarify this with farmers, it invites the question: what do they propose
to do as part of their policy to rectify this?
JAG has a very defined
and comprehensive policy and strategy (that has evolved over the past two
years) for achieving compensation/restitution; that includes farm workers and
this policy comprises: litigation (here and in the International arena)
publicity and PR (here and abroad) lobbying and advocacy (here and abroad)
comprehensive documentation (designed under International law governing
compulsory acquisition) and negotiation on behalf of farmers. We disseminate
this policy and strategy to farmers on a daily basis through our office and
through email worldwide. This strategy and policy is clear-cut and simple
and certainly does not confuse the farmers we represent. Come on Agric Africa
a response in this debate would be fruitful and more than timeous.
John
Letter 4. SUBJECT - MARXISM
Dear Jag,
Karl Marx
pointed out that the "new worker" - the machine - was to blame for the
workers' plight in the Industrial Revolution. From there he went on to
suggest that it was not so much the machine that was to blame but
the ownership of the machine. If the workers of the world were to unite
in smashing all private ownership - they would have nothing to lose but
their chains.
It would appear that history has been re-enacting Marx's
theory over the last four years. The workers have been encouraged to destroy
all private ownership, and have pretty well complied. But man's innovative
nature always comes to the fore - is there not a new set of stronger chains
being set up in the form of a single busi-ness entity that "owns" or runs
634 farms?
To get the workers to unite to destroy ownership, and then
walk in and take over and tie the workers up in bigger chains deserves the
highest award in Communism - Full Marx.
I am not qualified to
adjudicate the award for private ownership representation that decided to
"work with" 'New Marx' to help destroy its very own private ownership
membership - a form of self mutilation in a sense - it is difficult to fully
comprehend. Was there some unseen or latent benefit?
* Also, which
"owners" will New Marx blame in four years time?
No Marx.
Letter
5
Dear JAG
I unfortunatly missed the programme on BBC about the
Green Bombers. Through your good offices, would it be possible to get BBC to
air this again, perhaps more than once, not only for the likes of myself who
missed it, but to show our local friends what is going on. This surely needs
to be exposed to them? Perhaps JAG could also advertise the times when it is
due to be presented. Kind regards Annabelle Hill
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Please send any classified
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.
Repeat Advert Received 3rd March 2004
SINCE NASHGO CEASED OPERATIONS IN
AUGUST 2003 A NUMBER OF ASSETS HAVE BEEN DISPOSED OF AND THE BOARD HAS
DECIDED TO PAY AN INTERIM DIVIDEND. IF YOU WISH TO QUALIFY FOR THIS DIVIDEND
YOU MUST REPLY IMMEDIATELY TO PO BOX EH 37 EMERALD HILL OR TO EMAIL toknlu@zol.co.zw WITH YOUR DETAILS AND
IN PARTICULAR THE NAME IN WHICH YOU HOLD SHARES IN NASHGO. ONLY THOSE
REPLYING WILL QUALIFY FOR THIS DIVIDEND. THERE COULD BE FURTHER DIVIDEND PAY
OUTS AS AND WHEN SUBSEQUENT FUNDS BECOME AVAILABLE. THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE
ALREADY REPLIED EITHER BY SNAIL MAIL OR EMAIL HAVE BEEN REGISTERED. PLEASE
ADVISE ANYONE YOU KNOW OF WHO IS STILL A SHAREHOLDER AND MAY NOT HAVE EMAIL.
ALL SHAREHOLDERS HAVE BEEN ADVISED BY MAIL AT THEIR LAST KNOWN
ADDRESSES
ANY QUERIES TO ABOVE EMAIL OR PHONE 04 333285 011 801
348.
H.P. (TOK) ARNOLD EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.
Repeat Advert Received 3rd March 2004
For Sale:
6 berth Turner
Swallow caravan complete with panoramic awning, rally awning, 220 volt, 12
volt and gas fridge, stove, sparewheel etc. Offers.
Defy slimline 600
four plate electric hob. $1 million.
Phone Lindsay 011 604 536 or
04-495430. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.
Advert Received 16th March 2004
Dear Sir /Madam,
Please be kind
enough to include the below in your classifieds :-
WANTED - Portable
Single/Double unit milking machine & milk seperator. Please contact
Martyn or Carole on Harare 721710 or angelad@zol.co.zw
GALLAGHER electric fence energiser
(nearly new) never worked outside. Model M1500 - G316. Very strong, works up
to a few kilometres. Offers to: Arnold 04 333285, 011 801 348, toknlu@zol.co.zw
Is there anyone moving to South Africa
from Bulawayo who could accommodate a piano among their goods and chattels?
Obviously we would pay all costs involved. I'm hoping for several responses
as there are actually two pianos I need to move! Please contact Carole
Johnstone at 09 - 244155 or rosslyn@gatorzw.com.
| Greetings, | Please could advertise
the following cream separator for sale:- | | ELECREM Cream separator for
sale.Made in France. | This unit I imported from UK via a friend there a few
years ago and it works | extremely well. | Output-125 litres per
hour. | 220 or 110volt electric motor. | A few spares plus instruction and
parts book. | Price-Z$3.8 million. | Contact E-mail:- faed@zol.co.zw, or phone {04}498234 or
{091}255659. | Thanks, |
S.J.Faed. | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.
Advert Received 22nd March 2004
Please be kind enough to advertise the
following for me:
Canon BJ300 printer - good condition but needs printer
head -offers invited Facit electric typewriter with spare
ribbon-offers-Also cell phone -Motarola unwanted gift from Botswana but needs
unblocking (guaranteed not stolen) - Phone Doreen -753118 (w), 743282 (h
after 5 pm) 023 692756 (depending on network) or write to dashley@skf.co.zw ONLY serious genuine
offers
please.
Please be kiond enough to advertise the
following for me:
Canon BJ300 printer - good condition but needs printer
head -offers invited Facit electric typewriter with spare
ribbon-offers-Also cell phone -Motarola unwanted gift from Botswana but needs
unblocking (guaranteed not stolen) - Phone Doreen -753118 (w), 743282 (h
after 5 pm) 023 692756 (depending on network) or write to dashley@skf.co.zw ONLY serious genuine
offers
please.
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