Zim Independent
Dumisani Muleya
NEWLY-ELECTED
leader of one of the rival factions of the
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC), Professor Arthur Mutambara,
strode onto the
political stage this week talking tough.
After being elected
president of the camp formerly led by
founding MDC deputy leader Gibson
Sibanda at a congress in Bulawayo on
Saturday, Mutambara addressed his first
press conference as leader the
following day promising fire and
brimstone.
"We are putting (President) Robert Mugabe and his
regime on
notice: we are going to fight you tooth, nail and claw. We will
use all
tools of the struggle at our disposal, including jambanja
(confrontation),"
Mutambara roared amidst cheers from party
members.
"Our agenda is very clear: to fight and defeat
the Zanu PF
regime and become the next government. We will work with all
other
democratic forces to achieve this."
Mutamabara
proposed what he described as a "total
de-legitimatisation strategy" to
dislodge Mugabe from power. This, he said,
included adopting measures to
ensure Mugabe's legitimacy crisis is
compounded.
This
might include withdrawing from all election-based
institutions and launching
anti-government street protests, he said.
Mutambara said
although he now leads the so-called pro-senate
faction, he was
"anti-senate".
"My position was that the MDC should have
boycotted those senate
elections. Not only that, I want total withdrawal
from parliament and all
other election-based institutions," he
said.
Asked how he would be able to coordinate his "total
de-legitimatisation strategy" when he is living in South Africa, Mutambara
said he was returning home fulltime to engage in the struggle for
democracy.
"Forget about America and South Africa, Zimbabwe
is the front.
We will fight and outflank Zanu PF in the streets," he said in
remarks
reminiscent of his days as a University of Zimbabwe student
leader.
Mutambara called for nationwide mobilisation of
various groups -
including a reunited MDC - to create a critical mass to
confront Mugabe's
regime over political repression and the economic
crisis.
Describing the founding MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai
as a "hero",
Mutambara said he was prepared to step down and contest the MDC
presidency
if the warring factions bury the hatchet.
Mutamabara said his faction was nationalistic and patriotic as
he sought to
shake-off the alleged Western "puppet" image which Zanu PF
foisted on the
original MDC. He recalled Zimbabwe's anti-colonial heroes and
rejected
claims that his faction was moderate compared to
Tsvangirai's.
"Those who think we are moderate and will be
negotiating with
Zanu PF are in for a big shock," he
said.
Mutambara tried to shift his camp's ideological
position by
coming out in strong denunciation of "any form of imperialism,
violation of
state rights and unilateralism".
Apart from
dusting off the liberation war legacy, Mutambara also
promised a "land
revolution", a strong foreign policy which does not pander
to the whims of
powerful countries, to promote democratic imperatives and
also deal with the
current economic crisis.
On questions, Mutambara gave
detailed, albeit sometimes
unconvincing, answers in an aggressive and often
humorous style.
After the press conference, Mutambara shook
hands with senior
members of his faction - including newly-elected chairman
Gift Chimanikire -
as if to camouflage the public clashes in the camp that
preceded the
congress.
While critics gave Mutambara
credit for raising key issues and
for his oratorical skills, others -
including diplomats present at the
congress - felt he did not seize the
opportunity to make much political
capital.
They felt he
failed to connect his past and present. He also
ignored a number of
important issues - like macroeconomic conditions and
food shortages - which
ring a chord with the population.
Some say Mutambara's
performance was not compelling enough to
cut an impression of a politically
bankable leader in line with a
groundswell of expectations triggered by his
return to join mainstream
politics.
Mutambara, some say,
also exposed himself to criticism by
sounding like Mugabe on other issues,
especially his anti-colonial and
anti-imperialist mantras which cut no ice
with a hungry electorate.
Zim Independent
Ray Matikinye
ENERGY and Power
Development minister Mike Nyambuya this week
blocked attempts by Zimbabwe
Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) chief
executive officer Sydney Gata to
impose his associates on the power utility's
board of
directors.
Nyambuya resisted the move arguing that the names
on Gata's list
needed to be sanctioned by the president.
President Mugabe approves board members for all parastatals.
Gata allegedly forwarded the names of Frank Sambo, Obert
Nyatanga and Cletus
Nyachowe as candidates for the new board.
Before the
announcement of the board on Wednesday, Gata was
locked in a meeting with
Nyambuya as he tried to persuade the minister to
announce additional
names.
Government on Wednesday appointed a new Zesa board.
The
operations of the power utility have been under Gata's exclusive charge
as
he doubled up as executive chairman and CEO since
2003.
Gata has run Zesa as a de facto one-man show for the
past two
years.
Professor Christopher Chetsanga, Jonathan
Kadzura, Francis
Chirimuuta, retired Brigadier General David Chiwenza and Dr
Ndabezihle Dube
were appointed to the board.
Sambo, who
Gata wanted on the board, was retrenched and then
rehired as a consultant at
a rate of $1,3 million an hour.
Zim Independent
Clemence Manyukwe
BUSINESSMAN
Phillip Chiyangwa is under police investigation on
allegations of
externalising foreign currency in violation of the Exchange
Control
Act.
Director of Public Prosecutions, Loice Matanda-Moyo,
said in an
interview on Wednesday a docket on Chiyangwa was submitted to her
office but
was referred back to the police for further investigation.
Chiyangwa is
facing charges of exporting US$200 000 to
Namibia.
"The docket has been referred back to the police
for further
investigations after we raised certain concerns. Once it has
been
re-submitted to our office we will make a decision whether to prosecute
or
not," Matanda-Moyo said.
She could not give further
details on the matter.
Contacted for comment yesterday,
police spokesman Wayne
Bvudzijena said: "As soon as we comply with
instructions from the
Attorney-General's Office, the docket will be handed
back to them."
The Zimbabwe Independent first broke the story
on the alleged
externalisation of forex in January last year. Chiyangwa was
said to have
externalised US$200 000 between 2001 and 2004 to cover the
preliminary costs
of a joint-venture business in Namibia.
Chiyangwa, a former Zanu PF MP and provincial chairman for
Mashonaland West,
was expelled from the ruling party last week for
unspecified reasons. His
fallout with the Zanu PF leadership however
appeared to have been prompted
by his arrest towards the end of 2004 on
allegations of
espionage.
Documents show that Chiyangwa was allowed by the
central bank to
move money to Namibia, but when the deal collapsed the
foreign currency was
not repatriated.
In authorising the
transfer, the RBZ is understood to have
demanded quarterly progress reports
on the envisaged joint venture.
In March last year
Chiyangwa's lawyers, Byron Venturas, wrote to
the Independent saying the
businessman had not committed any crime and that
he had repatriated the
foreign currency in question.
"After the collapse of the
joint-venture due to the Namibia
Northern Investment Company failing to
raise adequate funding our client
repatriated his investment in the Namibian
operation back to Zimbabwe under
the auspices of the Reserve Bank," the
letter said.
"For the avoidance of any doubt, the Reserve
Bank of Zimbabwe
has concurred that there was no criminal activity
perpetrated by our client,
his business or any of their affiliates during
this transaction," the
lawyers said.
At that time RBZ
governor Gideon Gono told the Independent
Chiyangwa had repatriated part of
the money.
The businessman, through his investment vehicle,
Native
Investments Africa (Pvt) Ltd, is said to have wanted to forge an
alliance
with a Namibian company, Namibia Northern Investment Group (NNIG),
which
later failed to raise enough money for the
venture.
Documents showed that Native Investments had
undertaken to
provide plant machinery and necessary technical assistance
while NNIG was to
provide buildings and working capital for the venture.
This arrangement is
understood to have given birth to a registered company
called Crittal Hope
Namibia (Pty) Ltd.
AR Project
Services (ARPS) Namibia, a wholly owned subsidiary of
ARPS Ltd, a company
incorporated in South Africa and owned by Mutumwa
Mawere, was appointed the
project consultants on behalf of NNIG.
In July 2001,
Chiyangwa opened a bank account in Namibia with
the Standard Bank at a
Windhoek branch. The businessman is said to have
operated a current account
and later opened a foreign currency account (FCA)
in which he was the sole
signatory.
It was said Chiyangwa proceeded to deposit several
US$20 000
bank drafts by three local banks namely Zimbank, Barclays Bank and
Jewel
Bank. It is understood Chiyangwa then transferred N$154 950 from the
FCA to
the current account.
The balance in the current
account as at December 24 2004 stood
at N$16 807 (US$2 800). The
Independent understands that in 2004 a total of
N$1 252 472 (US$208 745 at
that time) was transferred from the FCA to the
current
account.
While detained, the businessman is said to have
suffered a mild
stroke as a result of intense interrogation by state
security agents.
Zim Independent
Dumisani Muleya
AS President
Robert Mugabe's succession battle rages on, his
spokesman George Charamba
has been caught up in the web of political
intrigue. He is accused of
working with a faction which Mugabe accused of
plotting a palace coup
against him in 2004.
High-level Zanu PF sources said Charamba
was reeling from his
headlong plunge into the eye of the Mugabe succession
storm through the
damaging Tsholotsho episode which has claimed a number of
high-profile
political casualties.
The Tsholotsho meeting
was held on November 18 2004, apparently
to block Vice-President Joice
Mujuru's ascendancy to her current position.
Mujuru, in the camp led by her
husband, retired army commander General
Solomon Mujuru, only won after
Mugabe's intervention.
Emmerson Mnangagwa had tried to
outmanoeuvre her. Mnangagwa and
Mujuru's camps were locked in a bitter power
struggle in the run-up to Zanu
PF's congress in December
2004.
Charamba, sources said, was still floundering in the
succession
quagmire amid growing suspicion about his role in the incident
which has
left Zanu PF divided down the middle. His situation was worsened
by his
clash with ZBC workers and government officials whom he allegedly
accused of
being responsible for his failure to become information
minister.
Sources said Zanu PF propaganda chiefs want
Charamba removed
from his position for his links to Mnangagwa. This explains
the party's
deputy information and publicity secretary Ephraim Masawi's
proposal during
Zanu PF's conference at Esigodini last December to have one
spokesperson for
the presidency - Mugabe and his two deputies - and another
for government in
a new information set-up.
Information
which filtered through this week showed Charamba was
an important actor in
the Tsholotsho drama. Sources said Charamba met
Mnangagwa, then speaker of
parliament whose supporters met at Dinyane High
School, Tsholotsho, in mid
October 2004, at his offices at Parliament
Building for talks about the
succession. It is said Charamba organised the
meeting with Mnangagwa through
the clerk of parliament, Austin Zvoma. That
marked the beginning of
Charamba's role as a Mnangagwa advocate until he
defected. He hired a plane
for the Tsholotsho meeting.
Charamba's former immediate boss
in Mugabe's office, Jonathan
Moyo, who was Information minister, revealed in
an article in the Zimbabwe
Independent of December 23 2005 that the
presidential spokesman was deeply
involved in the Mnangagwa
faction.
"It is common cause among those who know what
happened that
Charamba, Mugabe's press secretary, actually drafted Emmerson
Mnangagwa's
speech that was delivered by (Justice minister Patrick)
Chinamasa at Dinyane
School on November 18, 2004," Moyo
wrote.
"I still have the original copy of Charamba's draft
speech with
his handwritten cover note attached!"
Charamba
has not denied this although he was not available for
comment this
week.
The state security agents are said to be concerned
about reports
which claimed last year Charamba might have been the one who
told New
African magazine editor, Balfour Ankomah - after his visit to
Harare and
living with him in his house - that the CIO was the architect of
the widely
condemned Operation Murambatsvina.
Zim Independent
Ray Matikinye
THE Zanu
PF succession race has taken its roadshow to Masvingo
where a recent visit
by the national political commissar, Elliot Manyika,
seems to have fanned
political rivalry in the province.
When Zanu PF thought it
had finally smothered the scourge of
divisions in its ranks in Masvingo, the
Tsholotsho contagion has spread to
revive lingering factionalism, party
insiders say.
They say the divisions have been stoked by
fears that central
committee members elected under the deposed executive
might find themselves
with no political ground to fall back on when an audit
of party membership
and structures has been completed.
A
provincial executive led by Daniel Shumba, that has since been
dissolved by
Manyika, included central committee members - Josaya Hungwe,
Stan Mudenge
and Tinos Rusere - who had become front-runners of a faction
seeking control
of the fractious province.
Shumba, who had a brief stint with
the United People's Movement,
parted ways with the fledgling opposition
party to form his own United
People's Party (UPP).
His
plans to launch the party in Masvingo has unsettled Zanu PF
in an area it
has always taken as its preserve.
But the decision to oust
Shumba's provincial executive has left
the province, known for its age-old
divisions - open to internecine fights
for supremacy under a new political
configuration brought about by the
dissolution of the
executive.
Shumba was suspended along with five other
provincial chairmen
for taking part in the Tsholotsho meeting that sought to
scuttle
Vice-President Joice Mujuru's ascendancy to the
presidium.
The new interim executive led by Samuel
Mumbengegwi has started
auditing party structures established under Shumba's
tenure and has
unearthed serious anomalies that exaggerated
party support in the volatile province.
Party insiders say
the members tainted by the Tsholotsho debacle
feel enfeebled by lack of
grassroots support now that the audit exercise has
exposed a scheme put in
place to overstate party support and enhance
Masvingo's role in the outcome
of President Robert Mugabe's succession race.
"Central
committee members are panicking. They see themselves
without grassroots
support when the audit is complete," said a source
familiar with the
political manoeuvring.
The source said central committee
members, struggling to erase
the Tsholotsho smudge on their political
careers, had solicited Manyika's
intervention, hoping
to
reverse the outcome of the audit.
"There are set rules in
terms of the composition of party
structures from the lower levels up to the
provincial executive. There
cannot be a district without the stipulated
number of branches to justify
such a structure," a source
said.
"But what has been the case is that more districts than
the
provincial population could justify were established and this is what
the
audit seeks to remedy," said a provincial member who declined to be
named.
The provincial executive said central committee
members feared
the current audit would unmask their political stratagem that
had been
fashioned to bolster Emmerson Mnangagwa's chances in the succession
race.
Central committee members view the audit as a purge to
rid party
structures of members aligned to them while the party fears Shumba
might use
the structures as a springboard to launch his UPP if existing
structures are
left untouched.
Provincial political
commissar, Dzikamayi Mavhaire, declined to
comment further than saying: "All
is well in the province. The audit is
going on smoothly."
Zim Independent
THE National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) has fired 35
workers,
who are part of a group of about 500 employees implicated in the
smuggling
of agricultural equipment and fertiliser.
The
scam, also involving Zambian nationals, was unearthed by the
Zimbabwe
Revenue Authority (Zimra) in the resort town of Victoria Falls last
month.
The smuggling is said to have prejudiced the state and the NRZ of
billions
of dollars in lost revenue.
NRZ workers, as part of their
benefits, are entitled to
privilege ticket orders that allow them to
transport personal goods at 25%
of the normal costs. The NRZ workers were
allegedly selling the tickets to
Zambian traders who used them to smuggle
goods out of the country.
NRZ public relations manager,
Fanuel Masikati, this week
confirmed the dismissal of the 35 workers and
said investigations were still
going on into the involvement of other
workers.
"We have dismissed 35 workers who were abusing the
privilege
ticket order," said Masikati. "Investigations are still going on
for the
remainder of workers involved in the scam and more will be dismissed
once
investigations into their cases are complete," Masikati
said.
However, Masikati could not be drawn to confirm the
number of
workers involved in the scam. Sources within the NRZ said about
500 workers
from various centres across the country were
involved.
The sources said the scam has been going on for the
past three
years since the privilege tickets were
introduced.
The sources said NRZ workers were selling the
tickets to the
Zambians in foreign currency while the wagons in which the
goods were
transported were marked "on NRZ business" and were therefore not
subjected
to searches by Zimra staff. - Staff Writer.
Zim Independent
NATIONAL Security, Land Reform and Land
Resettlement minister,
Didymus Mutasa, has been cleared of political
violence allegations after
state witnesses declined to testify against
him.
A Zanu PF faction is understood to have been making
behind-the-scene manoeuvres to have Mutasa prosecuted for intra-party
violence that erupted in Manicaland ahead of the March election last
year.
The case stemmed from violence which broke out between
one
faction loyal to the minister and another aligned to Makoni North
aspiring
candidate, James Kaunye.
Last week, one of the
defence lawyers in the on-going trial at
Rusape Magistrates' Court, Aston
Musunga, confirmed that no state witness
had implicated Mutasa for leading
attacks that left Kaunye unconscious.
"All the 20 state
witnesses did not implicate Minister Mutasa.
What was mentioned in the state
outline did not come up in court," said
Musunga.
The
trial of 32 Zanu PF supporters accused of violence that
involved Zanu PF's
Makoni North district chairman, Albert Nyakuedzwa,
started in January after
a botched attempt by the CIO to coerce witnesses to
withdraw their
testimonies.
The court issued an order barring the CIO from
interfering with
state witnesses, but refused an application by another
defence lawyer, Amon
Toto, for Mutasa to be indicted on the basis of the
state outline.
Toto raised concerns of selective prosecution,
saying Mutasa, as
a "significant perpetrator" judging from the state
outline, should be
brought to court.
Musunga said apart
from Mutasa, 12 accused persons were also
acquitted and discharged because
no one was able to link them to the
violence. The acquitted include
Nyakuedzwa's wife - Erica Nyaude, Zanu PF's
Makoni North secretary for
transport, Happiness Mafuratidze, and the
district's deputy secretary for
legal affairs, Everisto Bhosha, who was
represented by Toto. The trial is
expected to end today.
Zim Independent
Augustine Mukaro
SELF-PROCLAIMED commander of farm invasions Joseph Chinotimba's
business
network faces imminent collapse as an onslaught on his political
career is
being launched by Zanu PF.
The former municipal policeman who
rose to fame during the land
invasions in 2000, could see his empire, built
through patronage, crumble.
Sources in Zanu PF said
Chinotimba was one of the people
discussed at last week's politburo meeting,
which resolved to expel former
MPs Philip Chiyangwa and Kindness Paradza who
represented Chinhoyi and
Makonde respectively before their fallout with the
ruling party.
Since his involvement in the Tsholotsho
debacle, Zanu PF has
been gradually clipping Chinotimba's wings, first
through elbowing him out
of the parliamentary election before proceeding to
boot him out of the
Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions.
If Zanu PF decides to expel Chinotimba, that would mark a
serious indictment
of his business empire, especially the security company
which has secured
most of its contracts on the basis of his links to the
ruling
party.
Chinotimba owns Edlan Security, which has been
providing
security to a number of parastatals and government buildings since
2003.
Edlan Security officers are distinguished by their
green
uniforms at Zupco bus termini throughout Harare. They are also in
charge of
security at Zupco headquarters and Grain Marketing Board depots in
and
around Harare.
Zim Independent
By Farai Makumbe
I HAVE observed
with great interest the furore surrounding the
recently revised capital
requirements for banks in the country and helpless
responses by banking
executives to these new rulings.
From a purely technical
point of view, the level of capital
requirements of US$10 million is not
being highlighted as the critical
issue, but rather the problem rests with
how the issue of capital
requirements has been managed within the banking
sector by the central bank
in the past couple of years.
At the heart of this problem is the central bank's failure to
make progress
in ensuring the implementation of the core aspects of the
Basel Accord. And
as if this is not enough, Basel II will very soon become
an industry
standard and if local banks are going to compete on a regional
scale,
especially with our South African counterparts, there will be a
continued
expectation to comply with this best practice standard outside the
comfort
zone of our borders.
For the benefit of those outside the
banking sector, Basel II is
an improved framework on the Basel Accord on
capital adequacy standards
prepared by the Basel-based Bank for
International Settlements' Committee on
Banking
Supervision.
The revised framework requires banks to allocate
capital for
operational risk and adopt improved risk management systems,
apart from
capital adequacy for market risk.
While the
RBZ has shown an awareness of the obstacles in
implementing Basel in a
developing country such as Zimbabwe, it does not
appear to have set a
strategy or pathway towards compliance and revamping
the capital
requirements approach to align with this best practice
measurement.
Some of the perceived challenges
include:
* The shortage of internationally-recognised credit
rating
agencies;
* The absence of a consolidated bank
supervision approach;
* Absence of sophisticated risk
assessment techniques and
technology; and
* High
compliance costs.
While it is fair to say these are big
challenges to deal with in
the current environment, the fact remains that
local institutions will
continue to lose their competitive edge in the
region and a long-term
solution is overdue.
Firstly,
capital adequacy is vitally important to both the safe
operation of banks
and to broader financial markets. Without sufficient
capital, banks could
not do their job of providing loan liquidity or
stability to the nation's
borrowing markets. A strong capital base ensures
that should there be a
downturn in the business environment, banks would be
able to support
businesses and still withstand the downturn.
The RBZ needs to
adopt a consultative approach to setting a
viable limit in the short-term as
a stop-gap measure while striving for the
Basel II approaches in the
longer-term.
Secondly, capital requirements would be tailored
to the
particular risks of the institution. Banks' capital requirements
should be
appropriate to the specific types of assets they invest in, as
well as the
precautions they take to safely finance and manage those assets
(risk
management and corporate governance).
When a bank
takes on more risks or encounters conditions that
lessen safety and
soundness, they should be expected to hold capital
commensurate with those
higher risks. Similarly, when those risks are
well-managed and any specific
risks addressed, capital requirements should
be modified
accordingly.
Thirdly, requiring too much capital can do more
harm than good.
Requiring capital beyond levels commensurate with risk would
limit the
sectors' ability to fulfill its objectives of providing affordable
financing
and stability in an already inflationary environment.
Unnecessarily tying up
more money to satisfy excessive capital requirements
means there is less
money available for banks to distribute to
borrowers.
In addition, while it is tempting to think that
requiring
capital beyond risk-adjusted levels will make the banks and our
financial
system safer, the truth is that requiring too much capital can
actually
create incentives for an institution to become more
risky.
For example, a financial institution with excessive
capital
requirements may feel pressure to invest in higher risk assets in
order to
generate comparable investment returns on the higher capital
base.
Based on these considerations, the way forward would be
a phased
approach to implementing risk-based capital levels in the long-term
by:
* ensuring the RBZ as the regulator encourages banks to
formulate risk-based capital. The RBZ would maintain discretion to ensure
that required risk-based capital levels accurately reflect the risks banks
are undertaking;
* maintaining the current statutory
minimum capital ratios, only
for the short-term, and providing the regulator
discretion, based on a set
of statutory criteria agreed upon in consultation
with the banks; and
* requiring appropriate procedural
safeguards for any
adjustments to minimum or risk-based
capital.
The banking sector should be regarded as a partner
to the RBZ as
it pursues its vision "to become the financial cornerstone
around which
Zimbabwe's economic fortunes and developmental aspirations are
anchored".
* Farai Makumbe is a New Zealand-based financial
analyst.
Zim Independent
ZIMBABWE'S
defenseless dollar tumbled further on the parallel
market as importers
battled to raise foreign currency in a strapped market.
Dealers said there was no meaningful activity on the official
exchange
market, where rates have remained stable following a directive by
the
Reserve bank that exchange rate movements should be
volume-linked.
Dealers said there were insignificant
transactions to move the
rate on the official exchange market, prompting
exporters to hold on to
their receipts.
The US dollar,
the benchmark currency affecting the movement of
other rates on the foreign
currency market, traded at $205 000 yesterday,
from an average rate of $175
000 the previous week, while the British pound
fetched $315 000, from $280
000 the previous week.
The official rate remained fixed at
$99 000 to the US unit and
$172 700 to the British pound, and analysts said
it was unlikely to change
because of lack of volumes.
They expected the Reserve Bank to intervene once it starts
feeling the pinch
of the measures.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe re-introduced
the interbank system
in October last year after experimenting with the
auction system adopted in
January 2004.
The auction
system was meant to restore stability in the foreign
exchange market which
has been overtaken by the parallel market.
While the exchange
rate on the auction system was allowed to
adjust periodically, critics said
it had been of little benefit to exporters
because the adjustments were not
realistic and did not allow exporters to
break even.
In
re-introducing the interbank trading system, RBZ governor
Gideon Gono said
he wanted to promote the "allocative efficiencies in the
foreign exchange
market".
However, after a gradual decline of the Zimbabwe
dollar on the
interbank market to levels nearing parallel market rates, Gono
again issued
a new order banning any loss on the local unit for volumes less
that US$5
million. - Staff Writer.
Zim Independent
Shakeman Mugari
FOUR of Zimbabwe's
12 operating commercial banks are on course
to meet the central bank's US
dollar-linked new statutory reserve
requirements, amounting to $1 trillion
at current exchange rates,
businessdigest can reveal.
But
sources indicated there was serious jostling in the sector
among other
banking institutions, with fears the tab for capitalisation
could reach
$1,75 trillion for commercial banks if the Zimbabwe dollar
slides to $175
000 to the greenback by September, from the current interbank
rate of $99
000 to the US unit.
The four banks, three of them
foreign-owned and one
locally-owned, have accumulated $1 trillion apiece in
assets, enough to meet
the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) imposed statutory
reserve requirements to
become effective after September 31,
2006.
The three foreign-owned banks are Barclays, Standard
Chartered
and Stanbic.
Figures obtained from central bank
sources indicate that
Standard Chartered had about $1,6 trillion , Stanbic
$1,6 trillion and
Barclays $1,7 trillion as at December 31,
2005.
Zimbank, the only locally owned commercial bank that
had reached
the trillion dollar mark, has assets worth $1,1 trillion by the
end of last
year.
Details obtained by businessdigest
indicate that CBZ Bank was
capitalized to the tune of $448 billion by the
end of December 2005, while
the Zimbabwe Allied Banking Group was
capitalized to the tune of $464
billion, FBC Holdings $503 billion and MBCA
Bank $492 billion.
Banking sector analysts said while these
banks were well placed
to raise their capitalisation to required levels
ahead of September 31, the
exercise was likely to be an insurmountable task
for the bulk of Zimbabwe's
banking institutions.
They
said current capitalisation levels pointed to a possibility
of significant
mergers in the financial sector, which faced a serious crisis
that resulted
in the closure of at least 10 institutions in 2004.
NMBZ Bank
had $293 billion in capitalisation while Kingdom had
$200 billion. There
have been indications that NMBZ could get into a
marriage with MBCA, but
sources said the courtship would start once the two
financial institutions
release their financial results.
Kingdom has the banking of
cash-rich institutions -Meikles
Africa and Econet Wireless Holdings, and was
likely to seek a rights issue
but sources feared this was likely to dilute
minority shareholders because
of the amounts involved.
Banking sources this week said Agribank, a wholly-government
owned banking
operation which had about $146 billion by December last year,
needed
aggressive capitalisation initiatives to survive the new statutory
requirements.
Zim Independent
By Prof Eldred Masunungure
ARTHUR Mutambara's entry into Zimbabwe's politics has generated
a lot of
excitement and indeed even anxiety amongst some political
gladiators -
ruling and aspiring.
I would say both the anxiety and the
excitement are warranted. A
lot of heated discussion has followed though one
would conclude that there
has been more heat than light.
It appears his rather sudden and certainly spectacular elevation
to one of
the pinnacles of opposition politics is expected to have a
dramatic impact
on national politics. He undoubtedly adds a new dimension
and configuration
not only to opposition politics but indeed to Zanu PF
politics, with
particular regard to the fractious succession issue within
the ruling
party.
Mutambara may be a man of many faces but his two most
prominent
faces are those of a student leader and an outstanding and gifted
academic.
Even his worst detractors have failed to fault his intellectual
face. It is
the other face that appears to give some of Zimbabwe's political
gladiators
sleepless nights.
Mutambara's background is
anchored in student politics where he
was affectionately known as "AGO", the
acronym of his three first names. He
was one of the pioneers of radical
resistance politics at the University of
Zimbabwe (UZ) and indeed at the
country's tertiary institutions.
He and his colleagues in the
then Student Representative Council
(SRC) transformed the texture of student
politics for a whole political
generation. This is why his impact is likely
to be very extensive for many
graduates of UZ and other institutions of
higher learning would readily
recognise Arthur "AGO" Mutambara and look back
with considerable nostalgia
at a fearless, articulate and charismatic leader
of the student community.
Public opinion is deeply split as
to the impact that Mutambara
will have on various levels of politics: his
impact on the two rival MDC
camps, on ruling Zanu PF politic; and on
national politics generally.
For most people it came as a big
shock that Mutambara's re-entry
in politics came via one of the factions of
the Movement for Democratic
Change.
Many celebrated his
entry into politics but condemned the fact
that he did so on the side of the
Sibanda faction rather than the Tsvangirai
faction. This perspective draws
parallels with Jonathan Moyo's entry into
active Zimbabwe politics on the
side of the ruling Zanu PF rather than the
then fledgling
MDC.
The bottom line in Mutambara's case is that he joined
opposition
politics and irrespective of whichever faction he joined, it was
going to
have reverberations inside and outside that
faction.
Before Mutambara entered the fray in the Sibanda
faction, there
appeared to be a triangular fight for the presidency of that
faction. This
involved secretary-general Professor Welshman Ncube, his
deputy Gift
Chimanikire and acting president Gibson
Sibanda.
All were keen - with varying degrees of enthusiasm
and
candidness - to capture the top prize. Of the three, Ncube and Sibanda
share
the affinity of being Ndebele and as much as some people may want to
discount the ethnic variable, the brutal reality is that ethnicity is a
salient factor in Zimbabwe politics and will be so for a long time into the
future.
So, in this triad, Chimanikire was the odd man
out but he
projected the Shona face of the faction. As the Shona are the
majority group
in the country, Chimanikire saw himself as the obvious and
only viable
candidate for the presidential throne.
But
there is also the other dimension. In terms of working
experience and
backgrounds, Chimanikire and Sibanda share the same bed for
both sharpened
their political skills as trade unionists.
Professor Ncube
joined politics from an intellectual background
and appears more comfortable
among fellow academics. To this extent, Ncube
was the odd man out and
probably felt like a fish out of water. He would
obviously find common
ground with Mutambara, a professor of robotics.
To Ncube
then, Mutambara would have the gravitational pull of
the Shona tag of
Chimanikire plus the gravitational pull of his solid
intellectual
background. It was therefore unsurprising that Ncube rooted for
Mutambara
when it became clear to him that Chimanikire was handicapped by
his modest
education in the same way as Morgan Tsvangirai.
Both Ncube
and Sibanda must have realised as well that in
Zimbabwe politics, and given
the grip of ethnic consciousness, an Ndebele
leader would have only a faint
chance of making it to State House.
Both therefore deferred
to Mutambara who has Chimanikire's
strength of being Shona without the
educational handicap. Both Ncube and
Sibanda also deferred to an "outsider"
untainted by the
struggles-within-the-struggle of opposition
politics.
Predictably, Chimanikire felt slighted and waved
the mafikizolo
card against Mutambara and was not prepared to "step down for
an expatriate
who does not know the price of bread here".
The mafikizolo tag would not stick as Mutambara could easily
counter this by
pointing out that he started his struggle over 17 years ago.
Obviously Ncube and his camp had done their homework in terms of
lobbying
for the ex-student leader and all indications were that in a
straight fight
between Chimanikire and Mutambara, the former was likely to
suffer a heavy
defeat.
The entry of Mutambara in Zimbabwe politics in the
Sibanda
faction of the MDC should obviously strengthen that faction against
the
Tsvangirai camp. As things presently stand, the Tsvangirai wing seems to
have the numbers as its anti-senate stance resonated well with the
opposition forces.
The entry of Mutambara may very well
tilt the pendulum in favour
of the Sibanda camp provided the latter do their
homework with vigour. How
would such a scenario arise?
Mutambara would deliver votes from several constituencies: the
intelligentsia who are sceptical of Tsvangirai's modest education and doubt
his capacity to grasp modern and complex global issues and articulate them
to a global audience.
The youth element - and these
constitute a large bloc of
potential voters of the Zimbabwean population -
would also find common
affinity with Mutambara, so would students at
tertiary institutions.
Ex-students of the "AGO" generation
would be similarly enticed
as they reminisce on the heady days of radical
student politics. He would
also likely deliver the Manyika vote and support
base. These support bases
would be combined with the Ndebele bloc for a
concerted effort to take State
House.
Mutambara's entry
into MDC politics on the side of the
Ncube/Sibanda camp will cause ripple
effects within the rival Tsvangirai
camp.
Some observers
even fault Mutambara for joining the "wrong" camp
and even speculate that in
a straight fight between the two gladiators,
Tsvangirai would bite the dust.
It must be acknowledged that Tsvangirai is
careless and sometimes speaks
with an unguarded tongue and also leaps before
he looks.
In terms of image, stature, eloquence and charisma, Mutambara
would outwit
Tsvangirai. It is highly unlikely though that the Mutambara
factor would
prompt a leadership change in the Tsvangirai camp.
What this
dynamism would mean on the ground is that a
Mutambara-led MDC and a
Tsvangirai-led one would most likely share the
Harare vote. However, the
split allegiances of the formerly impregnable MDC
fortress could divide the
opposition vote to the obvious advantage and
delight of the ruling
party.
Mutambara could also capture much of his Manicaland
home
province, especially the southern part of the province from Mutare down
to
Chipinge. Given that the Matabeleland region is most probably going to
remain solidly behind Ncube and Sibanda, Tsvangirai would have a very hard
time penetrating this southern part of the country.
His
support is likely to be anchored in the lumpen-proletariat
in urban areas
for this class has nothing to lose but its chains.
Mutambara
factor in Zanu-PF
There is little doubt that Mutambara's
entry into the country's
politics has unsettled the ruling Zanu PF party and
its government. If there
was any doubt about this, a cursory reading of the
state media, especially
the Herald of February 22, would dispel any
lingering reservations.
The state-aligned daily came out
unequivocally in sympathy with
Chimanikire, describing him as "the long
suffering deputy secretary-general"
while literally condemning Mutambara for
daring to snatch the presidency of
the MDC.
He was dismissed
as "a rank outsider" whose story "reads like
the portrait of a
hooligan."
The newspaper article, entitled "Is Mutambara his
own man?"
attempted a character demolition of Mutambara while doing a
beautification
job on his presidential rival.
It is
patently obvious that the article was the voice of the
political
establishment and its tenor betrayed the panic in the ruling
party.
But in launching such a vitriolic and unprovoked
attack on one
of the two candidates, it by default gave Mutambara a martyr
status while
simultaneously delivering the kiss of death to Chimanikire. In
short, the
Zanu PF is taking AGO seriously. Why?
Those
who see Mutambara as a formidable presidential candidate
are already
beginning to question the capacity and intellectual stamina of
Zanu-PF's
presidential hopeful, the ruling party and state vice-president
Joice Teurai
Ropa Mujuru, to stand "toe-to-toe" against the intellectual
giant.
They are therefore beginning to "hunt" for an AGO
within the
ruling party and again Simba Makoni's name is now repeatedly
popping up. It
must be noted, however, that all these permutations will
ultimately and
decisively depend on the framework of Zimbabwe politics in
the next few
years.
There is mounting evidence that the
ruling party and the state
want to shed the jambanja image of politics
which assisted Zanu PF to
salvage political victory from the jaws of defeat
in three successive
elections, notably in the June 2000 parliamentary and
the March 2002
presidential elections.
There was visibly
less jambanjaism in the run-up to the March
2005 election and in the
post-election period. In fact, after the March 2005
election, jambanja
politics was superseded by Operation Murambatsvina.
The next
momentous development was the turbulence in the
opposition MDC culminating
in the inevitable split that will be concretised
at the forthcoming congress
of the Tsvangirai camp.
The Herald article referred to above
gave credence to the
abandonment or at least intended rejection of jambanja
politics in favour of
its more civilised and conventional forms. After
accusing Mutambara of
introducing hooliganism into student politics, the
author chided the
presidential hopeful: "Now if this is the base (ie
hooliganism) that
Mutambara hopes to build on, then he needs to be reminded
that national
politics is a world apart from student politics, and Zimbabwe
has since
moved beyond politics of confrontation ."
The
politics of confrontation referred to is the politics of
jambanja. Without
resorting to jambanja politics, Mutambara would present a
real threat to
Vice-President Mujuru in a presidential fight.
The ruling
party appears jittery at the entry of Mutambara in
national politics. He
already has solid credentials as a mobiliser and
organiser during his
student politics. He injected student politics with a
dynamism and radical
militancy that had been characteristic of black student
politics during the
illegal Ian Smith regime. He has the charisma, the
energy and stature and
indeed the struggle history behind him.
Mujuru would continue
to mobilise and deliver the women's vote
and to this extent this support
base is likely to remain intact. Another
anchor is the war vet one and of
course the Zezuru sub-ethnic group of the
Shona.
The
challenge to Zanu PF, therefore, it to think about the
unthinkable, that is
to look for a more energetic, intellectually agile and
charismatic person
who has credentials above and beyond those of the
liberation
struggle.
The jambanja ideology and way of doing things has
lost steam and
is unlikely to sell with the masses, especially when they see
that the
jambanja-led fast track land reform programme has not yet yielded
the
promised rich harvests.
So, Zanu PF needs someone who
can articulate and debate issues
toe-to-toe with Mutambara, and someone as
equally charming. The jambanja era
is most likely dead and buried and there
is need to do things differently.
Zanu PF needs an "AGO"
within its ranks and as a presidential
candidate. This is the most
challenging fallout within Zanu PF of
Mutambara's entry into
national politics.
Even more devastating a scenario for the
ruling party is the
prospect of the two rival factions re-unifying.
Unification of the two MDC
factions, though distant and improbable, is not
impossible.
Mutambara raised the prospect of this when he was
quoted in the
Herald of February 21 as saying: "As the party goes towards
two separate
congresses, the infusion of new leadership, untainted by
current
disagreements, is imperative to facilitate the reunification
process. It is
in this context that I define the framework of my entry into
Zimbabwean
politics."
The combination of Mutambara and
Tsvangirai would be an even
bigger threat than the united old MDC. The two
leaders have different but
strong and complimentary support bases. In that
combination, opposition
politics would have been rejuvenated and
re-energised. That would completely
change the political landscape of the
country.
Whatever the case and final outcome of struggles for
power
within the Ncube/Sibanda MDC faction, opposition and indeed national
politics will never be the same again with the entry of Professor Mutambara
into the ring.
* Masunungure is the chairman of the
political and
administrative studies department at the University of
Zimbabwe.
Zim Independent
Dumisani Ndlela
ZIMBABWE'S budget
deficit ran into a massive $62 trillion or 60%
of gross domestic product
(GDP) last year, way above the 2,9% or $3 trillion
announced by Finance
minister Herbert Murerwa in his 2006 national budget in
December.
The disclosure, made by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF),
is an embarrassing indictment on the government, which
has vowed to continue
keeping the central bank's printing press running to
curtail what President
Robert Mugabe describes as a threat of starvation to
Zimbabwe's poor due to
the country's economic crisis.
"This means much, much more inflation," independent economic
consultant,
John Robertson, said yesterday.
"There's no way the
government can fund the budget deficit with
low savings; they are printing
money."
Businessdigest estimates Zimbabwe's GDP to be at
$103,448
trillion based on calculations from Murerwa's budget statement for
2006.
Much of the deficit had been through the central bank's
quasi-fiscal operations, the IMF director for External Affairs, Thomas
Dawson, revealed last week.
Responding to an online
question from the Zimbabwe Independent
during his press briefing on Friday,
Dawson denied that the $21 trillion
printed by the government to raise
foreign cash for debt repayments to the
IMF had been an underlying cause to
the country's inflationary woes.
"The reality is that
inflation in Zimbabwe has been driven
mainly by quasi-fiscal activities of
the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe," Dawson
said, maintaining that the
government's own deficit projections did not
reflect the true picture of the
country's deficit problem.
"A truer picture of the public
deficit is provided by the
consolidated deficit of the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe and central government,
which is estimated to have reached nearly
60% of GDP in 2005, up from 27% of
GDP in 2004," Dawson
said.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor, Gideon Gono,
last month
made a rare admission that the central bank had printed a
whooping $21
trillion to purchase United States dollars for repayment of IMF
arrears to
starve off the imminent expulsion of the country's membership to
the Bretton
Woods institution.
On Wednesday, Gono said
grain import ha chewed up US$135
trillion or $13 trillion at the ruling
exchange rate.
The government says it last year encountered a
number of
unbudgeted expenditure requirements, part of which had to be met
through
money printing.
Zimbabwe is currently facing its
worst economic crisis since
independence in 1980, characterized by fuel,
food and foreign currency
shortages.
The RBZ expects
inflation, which reached 613,2% year-on-year for
January, to peak at between
700% and 800% this month.
But independent analysts said an
overwhelming crisis
precipitated by shortages could see inflation touching
levels beyond the 1
000% point.
Government profligacy has
over the years been blamed for stoking
inflationary pressure in the economy
through uncontrolled budget deficits.
Murerwa last year said
expenditure management for the government
had been difficult as line
ministries and government departments struggled
to contain escalating costs
of goods and services due to high levels of
inflation.
However, revenue performance had been positive, with collections
surpassing
budgeted levels.
Murerwa said a positive revenue out-turn
coupled with revised
budget expenditure targets had culminated into a
significantly reduced
budget deficit out-turn of $3 trillion in
2005.
"As a percentage of GDP, this would imply a budget
deficit of
2,9%. This compares well with the revised deficit target of $6
trillion or
8,6% of GDP (in earlier forecasts)," Murerwa
said.
But Dawson said: "The government deficit that is
reported at
some 3% of GDP in 2005 is only a small part of the
picture."
Zim Independent
By Denford Magora
WOMEN in
Zimbabwe today are no better off than they were at the
height of colonial
oppression. This is despite the noises made by President
Robert Mugabe and
his party on the appointment of Joice Mujuru as
vice-president.
To this day, women are still victims of
brutal and shocking
violence in their own homes. Rapes are being reported
almost as a daily
occurrence in the media and nothing concrete is being done
except the
mouthing of platitudes and catch-phrases.
Donor money is also being pounced on with little to show for it
on the
ground. True, we still have excellent organisations and initiatives
like the
Musasa Project but their city-centric approach - perhaps a product
of
limited funding - means that they are only scratching the surface of the
problem.
The difficulties facing our female population,
in other words,
have not and will not be made better by the appointment of a
female
vice-president or even president.
Ask any
Zimbabwean women and they will tell you about a police
force that still uses
the phrases "civil matter" and "domestic dispute".
When the
domestic dispute finally escalates and ends in murder
or rape, what do we
get? "Police have urged people to settle their disputes
amicably and not
resort to violence." It would be laughable were it not so
sad.
The truth of the matter is that this government, as
with
everything else, is paying lip service to the empowerment of women. Our
society is still one in which a chauvinist feels very much at
ease.
Take the case of the woman who was beaten to death
recently by
her male relatives. Villagers who witnessed the incident did not
bother
reporting the matter to the police. Her ordeal only came to light
when it
was too late and that is why she is dead.
There
are other silent cases in which husbands and fathers are
bludgeoning women
in their own homes. Most of the cases are settled through
"family courts"
whose only judgement is usually to tell the woman not to
give up on her
family and to "stick it out". Some of these women end up
committing suicide
as the only way out.
Presented with these facts, there is no
option but to conclude
that our society has failed. It has failed our
womenfolk and, as a result,
discredited government pronouncements on
empowering women.
For, what use is empowering a woman to
start a business when her
husband or brother or father can destroy that
business in a heartbeat? What
use is promoting a woman to a position of
authority when she is not free in
her own home? Yes, we may protect her
financial assets and material
security, but what use is that when we are
failing to protect her life in
her own home?
In countries
that are serious about gender equality, the police
are given resources to
tackle these problems. For instance, we should have
specially trained gender
police whose job it is to deal with cases of
domestic
violence.
Their training will teach them to identify powder kegs
before
they explode. They would also be linked to well-publicised help
lines. They
will work hand-in-hand with shelters and will have the power to
detain
abusive spouses and relatives overnight in order to allow women to
escape to
safety.
On the other hand, all those women
sitting in parliament should
prove their usefulness and push for legislation
that makes examples of these
abusive men. Women's organisations would also
be emboldened by the enactment
of these laws.
With enough
resources, they could, for instance, name and shame
abusive husbands and
relatives. They would be able to publish not only their
names but also even
their pictures and pin them up on every available tree
and lamppost. The
current environment does not make this possible and it is
the government
that should shoulder the blame.
It is inevitable, I suppose,
that this should be so. Our
government has been preoccupied with
consolidating power for so long that
other concerns have suffered. Even
before land reform, Zanu PF was intent on
creating a de facto one-party
state and women only featured when their
formidable voting power was needed.
Otherwise, traditional and oppressive
mentalities were allowed to run riot
in our society.
It is time that women's organisations in this
country used the
power that their base has. They have more voting power than
men or the
youths. They are better at organisation and
mobilisation.
Instead of using these powers to prop up a
system that ignores
them, they should make it impossible for any government
to look the other
way. They have the power and they should use it. They
should not be led into
believing the nonsense that their empowerment will
fall in their laps from
the government, which, as it happens, is also
dominated by men, some of whom
are known wife-beaters and
chauvinists.
Despite talk of democracy and suchlike, men, who
are the ones
holding the levers of power at the moment, will not willingly
let their
power be eroded. Women have to take their freedom inch by inch,
fighting
tooth and nail. But if, as is happening now, women allow themselves
to be
silenced with sweets like children, no one is going to ever rise up on
their
behalf. Their destiny lies only in their hands.
The
appointment of a woman vice-president will not stop spousal
abuse. It will
not make every woman feel safe in her own home.
It will not
make men gain a sudden respect for the rights of
their wives and sisters. If
anything, some of them actually go out of their
way to prove that as men
they will remain in charge, no matter how high
women rise in their
jobs.
Chauvinistic men who have to report to women at work
will go and
take their frustrations out on their wives back home. They know
they will
get away with it because of the way gender issues are handled by
the
authorities. It is time for it to stop. And it is only the women
themselves
who can stop it.
* Denford Magora is a
Harare-based marketing executive.
Zim Independent
Candid Comment with Joram Nyathi
WE have in recent months
been subjected to attacks by people who
allege biased reporting by the
Zimbabwe Independent since divisions surfaced
in the MDC. We have been
accused of favouring Gibson Sibanda's camp against
Morgan
Tsvangirai's.
All sorts of ethnic conspiracy theories have
been trotted out
regarding our staff and ownership. One crazy fellow even
claimed Independent
editor Vincent Kahiya was Ndebele!
The accusations take many forms, like saying we give more
coverage to
Sibanda's (now Arthur Mutambara's) camp or that we write as if
we think the
party's constitution is everything.
These are the so-called
democrats who want to exercise power
arbitrarily despite their accusations
against President Mugabe. Our cardinal
sin is that the company's executive
chairman Trevor Ncube last March wrote
an article critical of the MDC's
performance. It had lost momentum and
become atrophied, he said. That was
well before the split. But the vitriolic
response suggests that newspaper
publishers, like the Prince of Wales,
should not express personal views on
national issues.
Mutambara's decision to join fractious party
on Sibanda's camp
only added fuel to a simmering ethnic rage. Our lead story
on Friday read
"Mutambara unsettles Tsvangirai". One fellow, calling himself
Shumba,
substituted Welshman's name for Mutambara's and said we should move
our
offices to Bulawayo because "you support Ncube".
He said
Mutambara was "nothing" to unsettle Tsvangirai who he
claimed is supported
by a majority of the people. "Nothing" was used as an
epithet, enriched with
the spiteful resentment of one who felt insulted that
Mutambara had spurned
their overtures and opted to join the "wrong" camp.
He has
betrayed the "majority" tribe, he has lost the cause.The
bitterness is
palpable all round, from columnists to political commentators
to politicians
who still can't believe what has got into the young professor's
head. We had
writers last week trying to use moral bribery to say Mutambara
was
forgetting that Tsvangirai as ZCTU secretary-general had in 1987
supported
SRC leaders when they were detained by police.
In fact, if
Mutambara had made the "right" choice, I have no
doubt there would be no
questions asked about his NASA and MIT links. Given
his patriotic address in
Bulawayo on land reform, the liberation struggle,
imperialists and
sovereignty, he was a sure candidate for national
leadership.
But for that stain, the fatal stigma of a
wrong tribal leaning
that catapulted him to the pinnacle of the MDC from
nothingness, he may
suffer for a long time to come. There are no two fronts
in Zimbabwe's fight
for democracy and Mutambara dared the
gods.
That's how parochial and tribal the people aspiring to
national
office and their opinion-makers are. Mutambara will have to be more
than an
ordinary man to withstand the barrage of attacks and let his
decision abide.
If you ask these guys to put their views on paper they slink
away and prefer
the darkness of anonymity.
Instead of
confronting the tribal cancer eating at their heart,
they pretend that
Mutambara is being scrutinised for his suspected links to
the CIA and other
imperialist agents. We have in Zimbabwe political
amphibians who slip in and
out of Zanu PF and the MDC with astonishing
frequency using surnames and
language as convenient tunnels. Some even carry
the cards of both parties to
suit the weather. There are no guiding
principles about switching allegiance
so long as there is political or
financial capital to be
made.
Amid the chaos, spare a thought for the downtrodden
urban masses
who have been abandoned to their own devices as the political
leaders fight
for the Holy Grail that is State House. Nobody talks about
food shortages,
council rates driving the poor into ever greater poverty,
escalating water
and electricity charges, skyrocketing urban commuters fares
and prices of
basic commodities that the majority can't afford. It's all
about how we can
seize power.
What I find most
disconcerting in attacks directed at us is the
insinuation that we support a
particular camp in the MDC for ethnic reasons
against principle. This is
most unfortunate because it does not help advance
the debate on why the MDC
was formed and how it can help shape the future of
this
country.
We are instead being dragged into personality issues
of why
Welshman Ncube, and not Morgan Tsvangirai, was given a farm. Are all
those
who got farms since 2000 going to lose them then? If not, why or who
is more
Zimbabwean to deserve a farm while others can't?
My view is that it is ill-advised of either camp to commend us
for doing a
good job when we attack government and Zanu PF and then attacks
us the
moment we point out the warts in the MDC. The implication of such
comments
is that our attacks are gratuitous, not a response to real issues
of
corruption, the brutalities of Operation Murambatsvina and lack of
productivity on farms. But our mission is to report the affairs of this
country with integrity using the information at our disposal, allowing for
the normal human limitations and biases. We firmly believe in the principle
that it is our Zimbabwe "right or wrong" but reject the opportunistic
corollary that "my president can do no wrong". Zimbabwe is permanent.
Leaders come and go. And they must if they can't deliver. There are popes in
Zimbabwe.
Why should we mortgage the destiny of this
country to leaders
who are content to squander opportunities looking forward
to the past
instead of the future?
It is a paradox that
we are facing more intolerance from the
democrats than from the dictatorship
that we are all sworn to fight. It is
even more dismaying to have to
contemplate the possibility that the
draconian media laws that the Zanu PF
government has enacted may find
practical application in narrow-minded
politicians who see themselves as
instruments of divine intervention to save
Zimbabwe. Hence the postulate
that they can do no wrong, or in the event of
such an aberration, it should
not be pointed out lest we distract from the
grand mission.
We are in other words being asked to perform
for the opposition
MDC the same obsequious role that the state media does
for Zanu PF. It is my
sincere hope that those who purport to be fighting for
democracy in Zimbabwe
will allow us to perform our duty without undue
interference. We will not
allow ourselves to operate like a suborned media
institution merely to
please a few individuals fighting for political
office.
That tribe and not merit is the biggest asset to the
presidency
only shows how shameful and primitive our politics are. It's a
mockery of
the human intellect.
Zim Independent
Shakeman Mugari
THE findings of the
manufacturing sector survey released last
week illustrate that far from
turning around, the economy continues to sink.
The manufacturing
industry is likely to continue plummeting
unless there is a policy shift by
both government and the central bank to
address fundamental issues
militating against recovery in the sector.
Analysts say the
report compiled by the Confederation of
Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) mirrors
the decline of other key sectors like
agriculture, tourism and
exports.
The report said the manufacturing sector was continuing
to
collapse because of government's policy flip-flops, foreign currency
shortages, power outages and raw material shortages.
Capacity
utilisation in industry, the report said, had hit rock
bottom as the crisis
continues to push hundreds of companies out of
business, leaving millions
jobless.
It said only 13% of the companies in the sector were
operating
at above 75% capacity due to foreign currency
shortages.
The bulk of the companies are operating below capacity
while
others could close down any time soon.
"Overall, the
fact that only 13% of the responding companies are
operating at over 75%
capacity means that most companies are unable to
meaningfully cover their
costs and utilise their standing capacity," it
said.
Apart
from the foreign currency and raw materials shortages,
most companies are
reeling from the slump in demand caused by inflation
which has eroded
consumers' disposable income, it said.
At least "42,3% of
responding firms indicated that low effective
demand was a significant
negative factor on capacity utilisation".
The report noted that
the plunge in capacity utilisation had
forced 42% of the workforce out of
their jobs.
It also revealed a dip in business confidence with
most business
people indicating that they are disillusioned by the current
state of
affairs.
It said business people did not believe
that government's
turnaround would achieve any meaningful results in the
near future. Although
the report is based on a sample of companies, the
survey offers an
independent insight into the state of this key sector of
the economy.
It is a reflection of the market sentiments of the
economic
situation, economists say. The report said the majority of business
managers
in Zimbabwe did not believe that their economic fortunes would
improve any
time soon.
It said 49% thought the economy would
not recover "in the
time-scale that we had provided. The main reason was
that they did not think
there was anything currently taking place or likely
to take place in the
foreseeable future that would significantly change the
economic fortunes of
Zimbabwe by 2010."
Only 16% of the
business managers thought the turnaround would
be achieved in the next two
years, the report said.
Business confidence, it said, was at its
lowest with most
managers more pessimistic about their future than they were
in 2000.
Only 9% of the business executives remain optimistic
about the
future of their businesses in Zimbabwe.
In 2000,
when the cracks were beginning to widen in the economic
edifice, about 50%
of business managers were optimistic that the situation
would change for the
better.
The report further warns that the downward spiral will
persist
unless there is a policy shift in government.
"It is
therefore clear that we are beginning to lose the
momentum of the turnaround
process and we need to formulate and implement
policies that will inspire
our industry players to start looking forward."
Business people
also blamed the government's command policies
for their demise saying this
made the business environment unpredictable.
"There seems to be a
lack of congruency and intentions between
government policies and the
industry's perceptions. In addition, industry is
concerned as they cannot
keep pace with the rate of change of policies on
fundamental
issues.
"They will either 'sink or swim' together. The government
policies are currently viewed with scepticism and disbelief," it
said.
Like other reports on Zimbabwe's economy, the state of
manufacturing report warned that there would be no turnaround in the sector
or the economy as a whole unless the agricultural sector is
revived.
Analysts say the crumbling manufacturing sector - one of
the key
pillars of the economy - is emblematic of the broader economic
collapse.
Economist Blessing Sakupwanya said the decline in the
manufacturing sector was closely linked to the collapse of agriculture which
used to supply 40% of raw materials.
"Unless and until
agriculture is revived, there won't be any
improvement in the manufacturing
sector," Sakupwanya said.
The unfortunate reality is that
agriculture itself remains in
the doldrums due to government's botched
policies on land.
Government has allowed fresh farm invasions and
corruption to
continue to scuttle production in the sector. Agricultural
production is
likely to slump further due to input shortages.
Independent estimates are already showing that this year is
likely to be no
better than last year. Analysts say agricultural production
will be subdued
despite the good rains due to late delivery of inputs such
as fertiliser,
chemicals and seed.
"The collapse of agriculture means less
foreign currency, which
in turn affects its ability to supply manufacturing
with raw materials
resulting in low production," said
Sakupwanya.
He said low production would result in reduced
foreign currency
earnings which would impact on the whole
economy.
For its part the government regards doling out money as
the
solution to problems in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors.
Faced
with rampant company closures, the government and the central bank
launched
the Productive Sector Fund which has however failed to halt the
collapse.
The $5 trillion splashed on the manufacturing sector
has not
stopped companies from closing shop.
Sakupwanya said
the problems companies faced had nothing to do
with lack of the Zimbabwean
dollar but foreign currency which government
cannot provide at
the
moment.
"What companies need is foreign
currency and Zimbabwe does not
have that at the moment. In terms of foreign
currency, the government is
broke. Giving money to distressed companies will
not help them."
But other analysts say the problem is even bigger
than foreign
currency shortages. At the core of the crisis, analyst say, is
the inherent
lack of political will and government's obsession with command
economic
policies which are hurting all sectors.
The price
controls which government promised to abolish during
last year's budget are
still in place. It is currently involved in bitter
fight with bakers over
bread prices.
Zim Independent
Clemence Manyukwe
PARLIAMENTARY
backbenchers are getting frustrated as they wonder
at how Zimbabwean
ministers have perfected the art of dodging questions
posed by
MPs.
Ministers either choose to attend to other business or
simply
walk out of the chamber until the question on the Order Paper is
deferred to
another date without a guarantee that the query will receive
attention.
Other ministers delegate colleagues to apologise on their behalf
for the
absence.
Cuthbert Masara was among guests in the
public gallery at
Parliament House on a Wednesday - a day reserved for the
House of Assembly's
question and answer session - at the end of October
2004.
Having narrowly escaped death at the Marondera Agricultural
Show
when soldiers used live ammunition at a mock military drill, he had
come to
hear answers on what really went wrong and the action the army had
taken on
the culprits.
Questions posed by MDC MP Giles
Mutsekwa, a retired army major,
had been on the Order Paper for three weeks.
Shortly before the question was
asked Masara watched in disbelief as Defence
minister Sydney Sekeramayi left
the chamber for the dining
hall.
Because he was out of the chamber, the question was
deferred to
the following week. Conveniently, the minister emerged shortly
afterwards
when a report by the Parliamentary Privileges Committee which saw
former
Chimanimani MP Roy Bennett being sent to jail was
presented.
Since October 2005, Mutsekwa has been trying to get an
answer
from Sekeramayi on the alleged security the government is providing
to DRC
president Joseph Kabila.
Up to now, the question has
not been answered.
Mutsekwa is not the only legislator from the
opposition or
ruling party who has waited for months with his questions
going unanswered
by government ministers.
Parliament's
question-and-answer session generally reveals how a
minister is versed with
issues under his or her portfolio, judging by the
way he or she tackles the
issues raised.
In some cases, the responses reflect how
government is
accountable for its actions. But since the emergence of a
strong opposition
in 2000 many ministers have literally been caught napping
by probing
questions asked by the backbenchers.
They have
responded by adopting a casual approach to
parliamentary business to avoid
thorny issues.
Mutsekwa believes that the appointment of
non-constituency
ministers has contributed to this as ministers pay
allegiance to the person
who appoints them, not the people they are supposed
to serve.
For the past six years the problem of absentee
politicians, some
of whom show so much zeal during campaigns for polls by
turning up at every
political meeting or rally has continued
unabated.
Those who turn up for parliamentary sessions have a
generally
halfhearted approach to the business of the House as they either
skirt
questions or provide no satisfactory explanations for legitimate
concerns.
One is reminded of a hollow answer by Education
minister Aeneas
Chigwedere in May 2004 when asked if he had any powers to
close schools
during his war with private institutions over
fees.
Chigwedere said: "We did not close any schools but we
prevented
them from opening. We said you raised fees without the ministry's
authority
against the provision of the Education Act."
When
Zanu PF and the MDC were engaged in talks, Patrick
Chinamasa, then the
ruling party's secretary for legal affairs, confirmed
there was dialogue,
but refused to say what progress had been made. He told
legislators party
representatives would report to their parties.
Zimbabweans were
only told by South African President Thabo
Mbeki last month that the two
sides at one time actually came up with a
draft constitution.
This week MDC chief whip Innocent Gonese blamed the appointment
method of
the ministers for their failure to respect business of the House.
Gonese said if ministers were appointed after approval of the
legislature
like in some countries, they would take the business of the
legislature
seriously. He said ministers know that failure to do so would
see them
failing to get approval the next time.
Gonese said apart from
being censured, there is no penalty for
ministers who
abscond.
"In Zimbabwe ministers are appointed by the executive
and not by
parliament," said Gonese. "If there was a constitutional
provision that
required ministers to get two-thirds approval of all sitting
MPs, they would
take business of the House seriously knowing that their
continued tenure
depended on performance."
The Mutare Central
MP has previously expressed concern over
absenteeism by
ministers.
Zanu PF chief whip Joram Gumbo said as far as he was
concerned,
there was no problem of ministers not turning up for
parliamentary sessions.
He said the absent ministers would be attending to
important business.
Gumbo's claim is however a nullity as
ministers can submit
written answers if they are going away and must be
absent.
Gumbo said that ministries who did not have deputies were
the
most affected since the deputies could answer the questions on their
behalf.
"We are so responsible we know what to do, but we have
many
things to attend to. You attend to some things and you miss others,"
said
Gumbo.
He said MPs as well were absent from parliament
and "we never
have a full house".
Gumbo said if ministers
were continuously absent, he liaised
with Chinamasa to compel the ministers
to attend parliament.
Except for being censured he did not think
that there was any
need to penalise ministers as the rules stipulate that
any member who is
absent for 21 consecutive days is
dismissed.
Clerk of Parliament Austin Zvoma referred all
questions to
Chinamasa who said if such issues were brought to him or the
Speaker of the
House of Assembly they would talk to the individual
concerned.
He said there was no penalty for
absenteeism.
"There is no penalty. If it is brought to our
attention we talk
to the ministers. The ministers would have good reasons,"
Chinamasa said.
Zim Independent
Turning wishful thinking into paradigm
shift
WE have often commented on the requirement for all
state
journalists to insert the word "illegal" before "sanctions" in their
copy.
This is despite the fact that any sanctions in force against
Zimbabwe's
ruling junta are approved by the respective parliaments of those
countries -
or Congress in the case of the United States - and therefore
adhere to both
national and international requirements.
The new Swedish ambassador Sten Rylander was patiently and
politely trying
to explain this to a rather obtuse Caesar Zvayi on Saturday.
"As
a lawyer, I see you are a trained lawyer," Zvayi helpfully
observed. "At
international law, is it legal for a bloc like the EU to
impose sanctions on
Zimbabwe without the blessing of the UN?"
It would be difficult
to imagine Sweden sending as its
ambassador an untrained lawyer. But that
aside, Rylander replied as follows:
"I think so. I think it was done on good
grounds. We do not accept the
notion of our sanctions being illegal, we
really don't. We take these
decisions ourselves and we are free to do so.
The Cotonou Agreement makes
provision for such actions."
So in other words the very treaty between the EU and African,
Caribbean and
Pacific states which governs their collective relationship has
provision for
such measures. And as the ambassador pointed out, removal of
those sanctions
would be very easy if the Zimbabwe government improved its
behaviour.
Sanctions would "go away in due course", he said, "when you have
a normal
situation".
But armed with this hint of goodwill, Zvayi managed
to run
another story on Monday claiming that Rylander's unremarkable
comments
constituted a "policy shift" by the EU. They represented a "clear
departure"
from previous EU hard-line positions for illegal regime (change)
in
Zimbabwe."
Something happened to the word "change" in
Zvayi's copy
inadvertently rendering Zimbabwe an "illegal
regime".
We are sure Zvayi didn't mean that! But his attempt to
detect a
change of position in the EU was then linked to remarks by US
officials to
suggest a "paradigm shift" by everybody on Zimbabwe. The fact
that the EU
was providing funds for the fight against HIV and Aids was
adduced as
evidence of a softening of position. Even new Tory leader David
Cameron was
brought into the act!
As anybody following
the diplomatic scene will tell you, all
this is wishful thinking. The EU and
others have been happy to assist
Zimbabwe's fight against Aids for some
years now. It is nothing new. What
Zvayi could have said but did not was
that some EU states - not Sweden -
were openly sceptical of the efficacy of
sanctions. Ask any French diplomat.
But such is the pernicious
nature of recent laws passed by
parliament - Rylander singled out the
Constitutional Amendment 17 allowing
the government to confiscate passports
- and the persistence of a culture of
political repression and subversion of
the rule of law that even sympathetic
countries like France, always prepared
to dish the British, have had matters
taken out of their
hands.
There is simply no evidence of that change which the
Swedish
ambassador referred to. On Wednesday he issued a statement denying
the said
"paradigm shift" claimed by Zvayi. If anything there has been a
hardening of
attitudes in Europe. The US certainly won't entertain any
relenting of
pressure on this regime and nothing Jendayi Frazer said
suggests otherwise.
Now we hear even President Thabo Mbeki has given up on
us.
That Zvayi was able to find a silver lining to this
particularly
dark cloud only shows that the state media will seize on
anything to suggest
Zimbabwe under its present regime has a
future.
Arthur Mutambara's acceptance speech was by any
definition a
tour de force covering all the salient issues confronting us.
He, and fellow
ex-SRC president Gift Nyandoro, are understandably keen to
throw off the
"British-puppets" straitjacket which Zanu PF has attempted to
foist on the
party and to proclaim the MDC's nationalist
credentials.
The British government reneged on the Lancaster
House agreement,
Mutambara claimed, while white farmers were guilty of
resisting land reform.
He didn't mention the £44 million that was
disbursed from 1980
to 1996 for land redistribution or what happened to the
1998 donors'
conference plan. You would have thought that after six years in
which
commercial farmers have been attacked and forced off the land - often
with
the collaboration of law-enforcement officers - and with the handful
remaining under threat, that Mutambara would think of something more helpful
to say. He did, in fairness, propose "a democratic and participatory
framework that seeks to achieve equitable, transparent, just, and
economically efficient distribution and use of land".
This,
he said, "must have emphasis on productivity, food
security,
self-sufficiency, and collateral value of land".
But he
clearly feels the need to advertise his nationalist
credentials in an era
when such claims have little popular appeal, largely
because they have been
so badly abused by the ruling party.
"We are Zimbabweans first,
whether we call ourselves MDC or
what, and we are not puppets of the
British," Nyandoro told the Sunday Mail.
We know that. But if he
were to go on the streets of Harare or
Bulawayo and ask people if they
agreed that "ideological redefinition" was
needed, as he suggests, they
would shake their heads in disbelief.
We have moved on from
there. But not King Arthur and his Nitwits
of the SRC Round Table. Having
been away on other crusades a while, they are
locked in the mantras of
yesteryear and very soon the people will tell them
so. The Holy Grail no
longer lies in anti-imperialist rhetoric.
But Muckraker doesn't
want to appear too harsh. King Arthur has
brought a welcome fresh breeze to
the stagnant atmosphere of Zimbabwean
politics. We shall see what the other
faction's congress produces.
Government newspapers on Sunday
led with President Mugabe's
remarks to youths on the occasion of his 82nd
birthday.
"I appeal to our people to rediscover their lost
cultural values
and moral standards," he said in Mutare. "The incidence of
HIV and Aids
should constantly awaken us to the need for strict moral
behaviour."
We would add to these wise words the need for our
youths to shun
predatory elders who fool around with their
secretaries!
We don't know whether it is true or not. There
are reports that
government has withdrawn two farms from former Mashonaland
West governor
Peter Chanetsa.
The Sunday Mail reports that
Chanetsa is one of the people
alleged to own more than one farm against
government policy.
For all that gesture is supposed to signal,
one must ask why it
took so long for the government to act. Several land
audits that have been
carried out in the past have shown that there are many
chefs who are not
only multiple farm owners but are underutilising them as
well.
Why Chanetsa? The age old cliché is that his days are
numbered.
When Zanu PF has used you beyond your productive life, it spits
you out like
you were never a comrade.
Meanwhile, we were
touched to read that the flamboyant Philip
Chiyangwa has been expelled from
his beloved party. He lost the chairmanship
of Mashonaland West during his
controversial allegations of being one of a
team of senior party officials
who sold state secrets to a foreign power.
Readers will recall
Chiyangwa's famous dictum for those who want
to get rich: join Zanu PF.
Presumably he now wants to get poor. There is
consolation though, if
wallowing in poverty in multitudes is any such
consolation, we hear the
purge is going to be massive.
We enjoyed the story of the MDC
congress in Bulawayo at the
weekend. There were blunders upon blunders.
Delegates from outside Bulawayo
didn't know where the party's offices were.
So they were found loitering in
the city much on Friday and had to sleep in
the open.
Come Saturday and food quickly ran out. Gibson Sibanda
was
forced to apologise. They had underestimated the turnout, perhaps due to
lack of self-confidence about their support.
The answer came
from the third blunder by Sibanda himself. His
prepared speech had a number
of pages missing and he ended it dramatically
with ".these are the ideals
that distinguish us from opponents ." These same
people want to run the
country yet they cannot run a congress!
There was an
interesting story on Page 6 of the Sunday Mail
titled "Ministers' children
shun local varsities". The first question is
whether it is the children or
the parents who make the choice. We let the
subs blame it on the children
but the story bit the kernel.
Deputy Education minister
Sikhanyiso Ndhlovu insists we still
have the best education. He advised the
reporter to ask those who had
children overseas why. One cabinet minister
boasted that there were better
prospects outside Zimbabwe, rubbing it in by
telling us two of his children
were offered employment before they finished
their studies.
Moreover, he bragged, his position gave him the
right contacts
outside which enabled him to secure scholarships for his
children who are
currently working overseas. "I can't force them to come
back as there are no
right opportunities for them now," cried the minister
hopelessly.
These are the same fellows who miss no opportunity to
debase our
standards or to make sure tertiary education is beyond the reach
of the
ordinary man. Talk of forked-tongued patriots! So they allow their
own
offspring to become imperialist stooges while they lord it over us to be
hungry patriots.
A reader has sent the write-up below in
celebration of RBZ
governor Gideon Gono and his team:
"Permit
me sir, to express my admiration for our central bank.
It's team's
enterprise, innovation and quick thinking continue to set new
standards of
excellence. Most recently, the IMF thought they had us in a
tight corner but
with the wizardry akin to that of Thierry Henry, we are
away and laughing.
When in doubt, print! Inspired, I have become determined
to emulate their
exploits.
"Never impressed with my personal academic
achievements, I chose
to extrapolate the principles of their more recent
success to this area
first. A brief visit to the office photocopier later, I
am now the proud
owner of nine degrees. I am open to offers from any local
political parties
in search of new perspectives.
"I am next
focusing my attention on feeding the hungry within
our borders. If I can
convince the Minister of Agriculture to make not one
but three aerial
surveys with adequate photography, I am convinced that
there is a way to
treble our national agricultural output in one season. I
am nearly feverish
with excitement at the potential for success with this
and future
projects."
Gives you food for thought.
Zim Independent
Comment
PROFESSOR Arthur Mutambara, elected to head an MDC
faction last
weekend, has entered a political minefield in which he has to
be
nimble-footed to avoid the inherent hazards associated with active
politics
in this country.
Mutambara's new team spoke of
the need for an ideological
redefinition among Zimbabweans. His charm
offensive saw him attacking the
British for reneging on the Lancaster House
agreement. He also opened up on
white commercial farmers for resisting land
reform.
Not many among his peers at the high table expected
this dated
discourse from the good professor who could quickly find himself
a hostage
to fortune.
Already, he is a target of savage
attacks from foes in the
Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC which has not only
dismissed him as a non-event,
but also sees the faction he now leads as
hirelings of the Zanu PF
government.
The
government-controlled media over the weekend was quick to
draw parallels
between Mutambara's sentiments with those of President Robert
Mugabe on
land, sovereignty and relations with the West.
While the
government press this week fired their opening salvoes
at Mutambara,
portraying him as an appendage of the West, the professor
stands to suffer
more damage to his political career if he receives the
tacit blessing of the
ruling order which sees Tsvangirai as the real enemy.
Zanu PF
will obviously seek to cast doubts in the minds of those
who were beginning
to warm up to the new leader. He cannot avoid this tide
of criticism because
it comes with the territory he is now occupying, but
his survival in
politics depends on what tag sticks.
Currently, there are a
number of them. He is portrayed in some
circles as the Shona face of a
Ndebele-dominated faction. He is regarded as
an overgrown student leader
trying his hand at national politics.
There are some who like
to think that Mutambara is a Zanu PF
plant brought in to read the last rites
of a flailing opposition movement.
He is also seen as a CIA agent because of
his links to NASA.
All these tags could be dismissed as
spiteful nonsense aimed at
achieving partisan ends. But a painful fact that
Mutambara must live with is
that like Tsvangirai, he remains the leader of
an MDC faction. It is
important for him to create his own image and use that
to market his ideas.
This could be an insuperable task as long as the party
remains divided and
open to manipulation by Zanu PF government
functionaries.
Put simply, the opposition in Zimbabwe is no
stronger because of
the entry of Mutambara into the political fray as long
as there is no unity
in the MDC.
The Tsvangirai camp, by
virtue of a High Court ruling last year,
would like to regard itself as the
genuine MDC. Last weekend this faction's
spokesman Nelson Chamisa rather
sarcastically put out a statement to welcome
the Mutambara-led faction "to
the turbulent political scene in Zimbabwe as
we continue our struggle to
dislodge the Zanu PF dictatorship".
He advised the grouping
"to urgently look for a new name so that
they are not confused with the
Movement for Democratic Change founded by the
working people of this country
led by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions".
He concluded
his statement by saying: "The struggle that we have
is about removing a
dictatorship and resolving the crisis of governance in
our country in order
to usher in a new Zimbabwe and a new beginning governed
by a people-driven
democratic national constitution. The people's project is
unstoppable."
Not at the moment. The public are inclined
to say "a pox on both
your houses".
Ken Saro Wiwa's view,
from another African context, aptly
captures the state of the opposition
project at the moment: "The transition
has been described as a train, and is
said to be on course. I disagree.
The train is rusty and
stands in the station; its route is
strewn with danger, the passengers in
the train are suffering and hungry,
the majority of passengers and their
goods are not on board."
That's where we are right now. Stuck
in the station. And without
unity, Mutambara and his redundant rhetoric will
only compound the crisis.
Zim Independent
The Eric Bloch Column
By Eric Bloch
WITH inflation again surging upwards,
concurrently with ever greater numbers
in Zimbabwe becoming unemployed, the
hardships afflicting the Zimbabwean
population are intensifying
exponentially.
Whilst there are numerous causes of those hardships, the
most pronounced is
undoubtedly hyperinflation. It is so great that more
than 80% of the
populace are battling to survive on incomes below the
Poverty Datum Line
(PDL), and more than half of that populace suffers
under-nourishment and
malnutrition as their incomes are lower than the Food
Datum Line (FDL).
As the adversities increase, government and the
Consumer Council of Zimbabwe
(CCZ), and the state-controlled media, strive
vigorously to identify
appropriate scapegoats upon whom they can attribute
blame for the runaway
inflation.
Unhesitatingly, they point their
accusatory fingers at private sector
enterprise.
They repeatedly
allege that Zimbabwean industry is exploitationist and
engaged in endless
profiteering. Similarly, they attack the wholesalers and
retailers with
like allegations.
However, they demonstrate a remarkable rectitude when
parastatals and other
arms of government increase their charges. They spew
forth vitriol against
manufacturers who raise prices for their products,
and are scathing about
price reviews effected by retailers. Whensoever any
prices increase, the
CCZ demands implementation of comprehensive price
controls, disregarding
that such controls invariably result in product
shortages, unavoidable
closures of business (with consequential further
unemployment, and loss of
downstream economic activity), and fuel black
market trading, resulting
in even greater inflation. But they remain
silent when parastatals raise
their charges, and are similarly voiceless
when government raises taxes or
increases other imposts.
And yet, not
only are those parastatal charges and governmental dues major
direct
contributants to inflation, they indirectly fuel yet further
inflation as
private sector enterprises have no option but to revise prices
upwards in
order to fund the increases in their operating costs imposed by
the
parastatals and by government.
Last month, Zesa revised many of its
tariffs by as much as 73% in some
instances, and then only last week it
announced that further increases
(approved by the regulatory authority) will
be effected during the next
month, by up to a further 200%.
Tel*One
and Net*One have raised their charges during the last two months, in
many
instances by 200%, and Zimpost has done likewise. In less than a
year, the
Airport departure tax charged by the Civil Aviation Authority of
Zimbabwe
(CAAZ) has risen more than four-fold. So too have many of the
charges of
the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management, very
negatively
impacting upon Zimbabwe's greatly stressed tourism industry.
The
state-controlled press has (in common with the independent press)
increased
prices at least three times in the last six months. Almost all,
if not
all, other parastatals have done likewise.
In reality, parastatals must
as unavoidably increase prices and charges as
applies to the private sector,
for they are impacted upon by the ravages of
inflation as greatly as are the
private sector industries and businesses.
They too have to give salary
and wage increases, access foreign currency
at changing rates of
exchange, and pay more for their operational inputs.
But in an endeavour
to deflect blame for the inflationary environment from
itself, government
focuses its accusatory bile upon the private sector,
disregarding that its
enterprises are doing the same that it finds
distasteful and unacceptable in
the private sector. And government's
behaviour in regard to the unavoidable
price increases of commerce and
industry is aligned with repeated, spurious
allegations against any
business that discontinues operations. Regularly,
after such occurrences,
government contends that the sole motivation of
closure of the business will
have been to undermine the economy and disable
the government.
The mind boggles at the thought that private enterprise
can be so desirous
of destroying the economy, and of disabling government,
that it will commit
suicide, and subject owners to immense losses and
poverty. But ministers in
government recurrently claim that the closed
businesses did not need to
close, and "threaten" that it will expropriate
any such businesses.
In practice, there is only one significant
difference in the operational
modes of the private sector and the
parastatals. That is that the former,
driven by the impacts of
competition, seeks to minimise price increases by
maximising productivity
as far as it is able to do so, and by increasing
production efficiencies and
overhead controls.
In contradistinction, many of the parastatals have
very little regard for
such measures, and steadfastly resort to price
increases to cover their
rising costs.
However, that does not deter
government or the CCZ from castigating the
private sector, whilst refraining
from any comment, let alone criticism, of
the public sector enterprises.
Very evidently, they do not accept the
longstanding maxim that that which is
sauce for the goose, must also be
sauce for the gander.
The only body
to have acknowledged that the public sector enterprises are,
in the main,
ineffectually operated, and are millstones around the neck of
the economy,
is the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ).
In a supplement to the Fourth
Quarter 2005 Monetary Policy Review
Statement, the RBZ contends that "the
major challenge facing the
parastatals..has been lax corporate governance
practices, characterised by
lack of transparency and meaningful capital
investment, weak financial
controls and systems, poor policy guidance,
implementation, and business
culture, failure to produce audited financial
statements, and inadequate
staffing levels".
The supplement continues
with some very telling and damning observations,
including:
* High
staff turnover, and low staff morale; and
* Board members/councillors,
who are political appointees, have tended to
lack certain necessary
technical expertise required for prudent policy
making; and most of them
"are into entities to pursue their own political
and self-interest and may
not necessarily add any value to the running of
the
entities".
Management of debt is poor, as evidenced by huge mismatches
between
creditors and debtors.
A particularly relevant comment by the
RBZ was that "if local authorities
(and, by implication, parastatals) cover
up for their inefficiencies by
hiking tariffs, this will impact negatively
on inflation".
The RBZ emphasised the need "to underscore the
inextricable link between
parastatals and local authorities and inflation",
and stated that "a buoyant
parastatal and local authorities sector will
dampen inflationary pressure".
Instead of berating Zimbabwean industry
and the distributive sector,
government needs to assist and facilitate
attaining greater operational
efficiencies and enhanced utilisation of
productive capacity concurrently
with sorting out the morass that is the
characteristic of many of the
parastatals, and create measures to stimulate
competition.
Zim Independent
Projects Editor's Memo
Iden
Wetherell
OVER the past few weeks readers of the Zimbabwe
Independent and Standard
will have noticed a number of changes to our
editorial pages. Today sees the
introduction of a new front-page masthead
for this newspaper to be followed
by a new-look Standard on
Sunday.
We have introduced the changes over a period of time both
to determine what
works best "live", as it were, and to gauge the views of
readers.
Readers are, all over the world, customarily hostile to
changes to their
favourite newspapers, researchers say. They prefer to stick
with what they
know. Editors, on the other hand, like to change their page
formats now and
again. This is called rebranding - giving a newspaper a new
definition in
keeping with changing times.
The Independent
first appeared in May 1996, almost 10 years ago. That was
before Google,
e-Bay, Amazon or Playstations. 3G sounded like the name of a
local firm of
lawyers. Although that first production was on better quality
newsprint
because we could comfortably afford to use imported paper in those
days, all
the pictures were in black and
white.
That gradually changed
as colour was introduced and other design changes
were made on an ad hoc
basis leading to the product you are familiar with
today.
But
we felt that approaching our 10th anniversary we needed to present a
bold
fresh look to our reading public that conveys the gravitas of the news
and
views carried inside as befits our role as one of the country's few
remaining independent publications. The Standard will follow on Sunday with
a brighter profile.
We hope the new look, including the
fish-eagle banner of the Independent,
appeals to you. A good newspaper
should be eagle-eyed wth sharp talons! Our
thanks go to Big Media Ltd which
provided the consultancy role in our
transformation, although I should
quickly add that we take responsibility
for the final
product.
Anton Harber, former editor of the Mail & Guardian
and now Caxton Professor
of Media Studies at Witwatersrand University, who
is a partner in Big Media,
kindly agreed to deliver the keynote address at
our rebranding ceremony at a
local hotel last night.
The
M&G, our sister paper now owned by Trevor Ncube, provides a fine example
of how much a small weekly can achieve in facing down threats from an
overbearing regime (in the 1980s) and continues to hold new rulers to
account today.
Change brings opportunity and only by adapting
can newspapers avoid becoming
the next exhibit in the communications hall of
fame, media software
executive Briggs Kilborne has said. Editors
increasingly understand the
challenge: Change or die.
Gone
are the days when editors said "publish and be damned", World
Association of
Newspapers (WAN) First Vice-President Gavin O'Reilly told the
International
Advertising Association's 39th World Congress in Beijing just
over a year
ago.
"Today's editors are acutely commercial, inventive, creative
and
ever-responsive to new product development and
change."
Newspapers deliver reach and influence, O'Reilly pointed
out. That is true
of us at the Independent and Standard where the national
democratic deficit
means the reading public trust the word of a free
newspaper more than a
politician. This is as it should be. Politicians
dissemble; newspapers do
their best to tell it like it is.
We
face enormous obstacles in a media environment categorised by press
watchdogs as one of the least free in the world. But to survive in that
hostile climate we must not only continue to speak out and hold our rulers
to account, we must also provide added value to our products on a regular
basis.
Given the burden of escalating printing costs, that is
a formidable
challenge. But today's edition of the Independent and Sunday's
edition of
the Standard demonstrate the determination of our newspapers to
remain key
players in the Zimbabwean newspaper market. We recently acquired
Munn
Marketing which has vast experience in newspaper
distribution.
We must not forget here the role of the Internet as
a platform for our
publications.
The Independent was the
first Zimbabwean newspaper on the Net in 1996
quickly followed by the
Standard in 1997.
Our new-look website (http://www.theindependent.co.zw), I
am sure, will
continue to host the huge following already established in the
diaspora.
People like and trust our publications and we have an obligation
to work
hard to retain that trust and keep ahead on a rapidly changing media
market.
In a recent survey in Japan, WAN reports, consumers
evaluated various media
and said newspapers were more accurate, had broader,
more credible content,
more useful information for daily life, and possessed
more memorable and
lasting content.
That remains our goal
today.