Mugabe Out-Foxes Commonwealth Chief With Poll Date - May 16, 2000 HARARE, Zimbabwe (PANA)
Zimbabwe Election Date Challenged - The Associated Press May 16 2000 8:26AM ET
AIDS, Zimbabwe to dominate Mbeki's foreign trips - Reuters May 16 2000 11:09AM ET
Zimbabwe's Mugabe accepts Commonwealth monitors - Reuters May 16 2000 12:00PM ET
Mugabe Gives Commitment to Reduce Zimbabwe Violence, AFP Says - Bloomberg News May 16 2000 12:27PM
Zimbabwe Likely To Default on Loan - The Associated Press May 16 2000 7:02AM ET
Mugabe Out-Foxes Commonwealth Chief With Poll Date
May 16, 2000 Rangarirai Shoko PANA Correspondent
HARARE, Zimbabwe (PANA) - In a pre-emptive move ahead of talks with a visiting Commonwealth envoy, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe Tuesday set parliamentary polling dates whose delay in fixing had raised international disquiet.
Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon arrived in Harare Monday for talks with Mugabe on pre-election violence and his delays in setting the polling schedule.
The parliamentary polls, expected to be the first tightly fought in 20 years, were postponed in April to allow adequate electoral preparations, but the government's reluctance to announce new dates had raised international suspicion.
Opposition parties had raised fears that Mugabe would use pre-election violence, which has claimed 20 lives, to cancel the poll and declare a state of emergency.
But Mugabe pre-emptively took the steam out of the visitor by setting 24-25 June as the polling dates for the parliamentary elections.
McKinnon was dispatched to Zimbabwe by the 54-member Commonwealth, mainly comprising former British colonies, after reports suggested pre-poll politically-inspired violence was pushing Zimbabwe into anarchy.
"I attach great importance to the discussions which I will be having with President Mugabe. I am sure that the president will tell me of his concerns. For my part, I will convey the Commonwealth's concerns regarding the developments of the last two months," he said.
"In particular, as I said before I left London, I expect that the forthcoming elections will be at the centre of our discussions, and I hope that our discussions will help towards creating an environment conducive to a free and fair electoral process," McKinnon added.
Political analysts said they believe the announcement of the election schedule had out-foxed McKinnon, who was under pressure, particularly from Britain, to adopt a hard-line stance toward Zimbabwe.
"That (announcement of polling dates) strikes one item from his (McKinnon) discussion list," said the state-owned Herald newspaper in a commentary Tuesday.
Britain, Zimbabwe's former colonial power, has been pushing for a tougher international diplomatic stance against Mugabe, whom it accuses of intimidating the opposition and circumventing the rule of law.
But London, at loggerheads with Mugabe mainly over his land reform plans, appears to have failed to galvanise enough international support for its hard-line stance against Zimbabwe.
The failure has left Britain watching events in Zimbabwe helplessly, unable to influence them, analysts said.
Officials of the ruling ZANU-PF party said McKinnon, who has kept an open mind about events in Zimbabwe, would dispel international speculations that the country was sliding into anarchy.
"He has refused to be bulldozed into the blanket of denouncing the Zimbabwe government on the basis of an artificial crisis created and nurtured largely by the British media to protect minority white interests in this country," campaign manager of ZANU-PF, Jonathan Moyo, said.
"In that respect, his visit is welcome because there is a basis for mutual dialogue that can be fruitful," he added.
Zimbabwe Election Date Challenged
The Associated Press May 16 2000 8:26AM ET
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Zimbabwe's main opposition party said today that the government's decision to call parliamentary elections next month is illegal and vowed to seek a court order to have the vote postponed.
The government on Monday announced the elections would be held June 24-25 and that all candidates must be registered to run for the 150 available seats by May 29, when nominating courts will meet around the country to judge their eligibility.
However, a commission set up to redraw the boundaries of Zimbabwe's voting districts has yet to publicly issue a report on its work, so opposition candidates do not know what districts they will be running in.
``Until that has happened the election process cannot start,'' said David Coltart, legal adviser for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
The MDC will file papers with the High Court on Wednesday seeking to have the election date postponed until the commission has finished its work, Coltart told The Associated Press.
Supreme Court Justice Wilson Sandura said today that he had given the government a rough, preliminary report Monday about the voting districts' boundaries, and that a more official, interim report would not be ready for two weeks.
But the government said it expected the report within the next few days.
``There was no reason why the election date shouldn't be announced,'' said Munyaradzi Hwengere, a spokesman for President Robert Mugabe.
The constitution requires that candidates include in their applications signatures from 10 registered voters from their district.
But without knowing the country's voting districts and with the only public voter rolls badly outdated, candidates will not able to register by the May 29 deadline, said Coltart, who plans to run as a candidate from the southwestern city of Bulawayo.
Either the government has misread the constitution or ``this is another cynical ploy to make things as difficult for the opposition as possible,'' he said.
Zimbabwe has been marred by political violence in recent months with armed ruling party militants roaming the country and attacking opposition supporters. At least 19 people, mainly opposition supporters, have been killed since the violence began in February.
With the climate of fear and intimidation, it will be impossible to hold a fair election, said Nicholas Ndebele, chairman of ZimRights, a local human rights organization.
``You judge a free and fair election by the process leading to the elections. Right now the process has been littered with deaths, injuries. People are displaced. People have run away from their homes. They are refugees in their own country,'' he said.
Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon was in Harare today for meetings with the government and the opposition to prepare the ground for election observers the organization plans to send here.
AIDS, Zimbabwe to dominate Mbeki's foreign trips
Reuters May 16 2000 11:09AM ET
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Thabo Mbeki heads to Britain and the United States this week on visits likely to be overshadowed by the crisis in Zimbabwe and his controversial stand on AIDS.
Aides say the trips, to Britain from May 18 to 20 and his first state visit to the United States from May 21 to 28, will give Mbeki the opportunity to promote closer Western ties with Pretoria, Africa's political and economic powerhouse.
``These visits are meant to promote our ties with both Britain and the United States. The president will be seeking closer political and economic cooperation,'' Foreign Affairs Department Director-General Sipho Pityana told reporters.
Pityana said Mbeki would also highlight the plight of Africa, the world's poorest continent.
But analysts said the visits would be consumed by events in Zimbabwe, where former colonial power Britain wants Mbeki to take a tougher stance against President Robert Mugabe, and by Mbeki's controversial move to back ``AIDS dissidents'' who deny HIV causes the deadly disease.
Mbeki, who took over from Nelson Mandela last June, has been criticized for his failure to denounce unequivocally the state-sponsored occupation of hundreds of white-owned farms by veterans of the 1970s liberation war in the former Rhodesia.
On Wednesday, Mbeki responded partially to his critics when he acknowledged the severity of the crisis in Zimbabwe -- South Africa's biggest trading partner on the continent.
But diplomats said London would push Mbeki, in talks with officials including Prime Minister Tony Blair, to put pressure on Mugabe to end the land-driven violence that has claimed 20 lives and ensure free and fair voting in landmark parliamentary elections called for June 24 and 25.
IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID ZIMBABWE-DIPLOMAT
``President Mbeki will find it difficult if not impossible to avoid British pressure on the Zimbabwe crisis. The British would like him to do more than he has done to bring normality in Zimbabwe,'' a Pretoria-based diplomat told Reuters.
``They (British) and the rest of the world are looking to Mr. Mbeki to help resolve the situation in Zimbabwe,'' the diplomat added.
Militant government supporters, led by war veterans, are occupying more than 700 of the country's 4,500 white-owned commercial farms, demanding land they say was stolen during the British colonial era.
Britain remains one of South Africa's most important economic partners in trade, investment, financial services and tourism and is one of Pretoria's biggest export markets. Statistics show that Britain has up to $16 billion in direct investments in South Africa.
But Mbeki may use the occasion to add his own pressure on London to help fund a land compensation program in Zimbabwe. Britain has made it clear no funds would be made available for such a program unless it was conducted within the rule of law.
Aides say the South African leader will impress on the British the need to revisit the 1979 Lancaster House agreement that paved the way for Zimbabwe's independence.
In that document, Britain and the United States pledged to fund land reform in Zimbabwe, a promise Mugabe and Mbeki say has been ignored by both countries.
AIDS TO CONFRONT MBEKI IN UNITED STATES
In the United States, Mbeki is expected to run the gantlet of AIDS activists for backing ``dissidents'' who deny that HIV causes the deadly and incurable disease.
The South African leader has infuriated the scientific community and health workers by appointing dissidents such as American Peter Duesberg to a presidential AIDS panel ahead of the world's most important AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa, in July.
Duesberg says that AIDS is caused by recreational drugs, toxic anti-AIDS drugs and poverty, which destroy the immune system, and not by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Virtually all other scientists agree AIDS is caused by HIV.
Equally controversial has been Mbeki's denial of the anti-AIDS drug AZT to pregnant mothers and rape victims, arguing that AZT is too toxic and costly for South Africa.
Zimbabwe's Mugabe accepts Commonwealth monitors
Reuters May 16 2000 12:00PM ET
HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe agreed Tuesday to let Commonwealth observers monitor a parliamentary election he has called for June 24 and 25, Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon said.
Mugabe, under pressure to stop farm invasions and the intimidation of political opponents that sparked international condemnation, made McKinnon wait a day before meeting with him, and did not address reporters after their hour of talks.
But McKinnon said the Commonwealth, which groups 54 mainly former British colonies, would send a 40-person observer team, and said he expected many others to monitor the poll.
``I imagine there will be a lot of observers on the ground and that is to give confidence as much as anything that the election will be free and fair.
``That is what we are hoping for and that is what the government has told us it wants to have,'' he said.
``I believe it is possible to have free and fair elections. That's very much the reason why I came. We discussed the land issue. We fully understand each other's position on this matter,'' he added.
Ending months of speculation, Mugabe, 76, in power for all 20 years of Zimbabwe's independence, set the date for the parliamentary election after a Cabinet meeting Monday.
Opposition leaders welcomed the certainty of the election date, but said they doubted the poll would be clean.
The run-up to the vote has been marred by the murder of at least 20 opposition party supporters and white farmers, whose land has been invaded by mobs led by black liberation war veterans since February. Scores of others have been injured.
Isaac Manyemba, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Union of Democrats, said he expected the ruling ZANU-PF to win.
``They have already rigged the election through violence. The presence of international observers will not change much,'' he said.
Welshman Ncube, secretary-general of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said that despite pre-election violence and the intimidation of voters, his party was obliged to contest the election by its strong commitment to oust Mugabe democratically.
Masipula Sithole, a leading political analyst, said ZANU-PF would likely continue its campaign of violence in the countryside ahead of the elections to drown debate on its mismanagement of the economy and maintain pressure on voters.
``The strategy is -- don't leave anything to chance -- because they know they will be thrown out in any slightly free and fair contest,'' he said.
But Professor Jonathan Moyo, a consultant to ZANU-PF's election campaign directorate, said the opposition stood no chance in the coming elections.
``They know they will be beaten with their hands down, so from now on we will be hearing all sorts of excuses.''
The MDC headed a ``no'' campaign in a constitutional referendum earlier this year, handing Mugabe his first electoral defeat since independence in 1980. Mugabe does not face a presidential election until 2002.
More than 5 million people out of a population of 12.5 million have registered to vote. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party has 147 of the 150 parliamentary seats. Parliament has a five-year term.
FOREIGN EXCHANGE STILL DRY
The election date did little to ease Zimbabwe's economic woes. Reeling economically before the farm invasions, Zimbabwe has since seen problems in its important tobacco sector as instability from the land crisis has threatened the economy of all of southern Africa.
Its parched foreign exchange market remained dry Tuesday.
The World Bank was expected to halt project aid disbursements to Zimbabwe after Harare missed Monday's 60-day deadline on an overdue loan repayment, an official source said Tuesday.
The official said Zimbabwe's failure to repay the loan and other outstanding arrears meant the bank could neither disburse further aid nor replenish its special projects accounts.
He said that the country was not officially in default, saying that would only occur six months from the 60-day period.
Last week, a World Bank official in Washington said that Mugabe's government had been warned of the suspension in a letter sent when the payment was 45 days late.
Mugabe Gives Commitment to Reduce Zimbabwe Violence,
AFP Says Bloomberg News May 16 2000 12:27PM
Harare, Zimbabwe, May 16 (Bloomberg) -- Don McKinnon, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, said Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe gave him a commitment to reduce violence in the southern African country during a one-hour meeting in Harare, Agence France- Presse reported. McKinnon, who arrived in the country on Monday and was kept waiting almost 24 hours before meeting Mugabe, said the president had received the concerns of the Commonwealth ministers on the violence ``in good faith,'' while agreeing to the deployment of more than 40 Commonwealth monitors for the forthcoming elections. These will be joined by observers from the South African Development Community, the Organization of African Unity, the U.S., and the European Union, McKinnon added.
President Mugabe announced yesterday parliamentary elections will be held on June 24 and 25, although the opposition Movement for Democratic Change says attacks by government supporters, in which at least 18 people have been killed in the past three months, are preventing it from campaigning freely.
Zimbabwe Likely To Default on Loan
The Associated Press May 16 2000 7:02AM ET
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Zimbabwe's hard currency shortages were likely to force the country to default today on a loan to the World Bank, private banking officials said, deepening the southern African country's financial woes.
The World Bank was expected to make an announcement later today over whether Zimbabwe had failed to make its requirement payments by Monday's deadline, a move that would prompt the Washington-based financial institution to suspend development aid.
The bank's Harare office said it had no authority to comment. Zimbabwe's Finance Ministry has refused to say whether it defaulted on the loan, which would lead to an immediate freeze on all new loans for development projects.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund suspended fiscal aid for balance of payments support after the government last year failed to rein in excessive public spending and allegedly lied over the cost of the deployment of 11,000 troops to back President Laurent Kabila in Congo's civil war.
A new freeze on World Bank development aid would likely prompt other Western donors to take a hard line against Zimbabwe.
Hard currency shortages - and arrears on hard currency loan repayments - worsened steeply after squatters and ruling party militants began occupying more than 1,200 white-owned farms in February, said economist John Robertson.
The occupations disrupted work on export crops as well as the planting of wheat for domestic bread supplies, he said.
Manufacturers have reported shortages of imported tin plate, plastic granules and other materials used for packaging foods that could leave large gaps on supermarket shelves.
Gas stations again ran dry in Harare during the weekend, and lines of vehicles formed at those with dwindling supplies. Distributors blamed disrupted tobacco production, the largest hard-currency earner, for casting uncertainty over whether the government can afford to pay for fuel imports.
Political violence that has killed at least 20 opposition supporters has also led to a sharp downturn in tourism, another key hard currency earner accounting for 6 percent GDP.
Zimbabwe's main hotel chain estimates it is losing $1 million a month in lost bookings, with its prestigious Elephant Hills casino hotel in the northwestern resort of Victoria Falls having just 14 of its 220 rooms occupied last week.
The hotel employs more than 400 staff and is planning to shut down entire wings and send two-thirds of the workers away on paid vacation, managers said.
Economics consultant Eric Bloch said unemployment, already running at 50 percent of the formal work force, soared this year, with some 150,000 jobs under threat as more businesses faced bankruptcy. At least 30,000 farm workers have fled their jobs.