http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009 21:31
VICE-PRESIDENT Joseph Msika is reportedly on the verge of quitting due
to
deteriorating health and resurfacing power struggles in Zanu PF involving
two rival factions and his restive former Zapu colleagues. This came as Zanu
PF finally set in motion a formal process to manage President Robert
Mugabe's
controversial succession.
Zanu PF spokesman Ephraim
Masawi last night confirmed his party's
extraordinary politburo meeting
yesterday set up a committee chaired by
party chairman John Nkomo (pictured)
to deal with the succession problem.
The committee also includes
rival faction leaders and stalwarts
Solomon Mujuru and Emmerson Mnangagwa,
Didymus Mutasa, Nicholas Goche, Oppah
Muchinguri and Sydney
Sekeremayi.
As revealed in the Independent last week, there is a fierce
debate
going on in Zanu PF over Mugabe's succession.
In 2003 a
Zanu PF succession committee headed by Nkomo was disbanded
after it fuelled
infighting over who was to take over from Mugabe. Masawi
also said the party
had set up four other committees to deal with party
issues. Mutasa will head
a research and ideology committee, Mnangagwa
constitutional reform, David
Karimanzira finance and economic development
and Angeline Masuku
mobilisation and media strategy.
The move by Msika to retire,
coupled with problems buffeting
co-vice-president Joice Mujuru in the party,
might leave Mugabe exposed in
his party's intensifying battle over his
succession. Msika particularly has
been a stabilising factor in Zanu PF
which is riddled with divisions,
factionalism and
infighting.
Sources said Msika who is not attending cabinet and
Zanu PF meetings,
including politburo ones has told close family and senior
party officials
that he wants to step down. Msika is battling with health
problems and has
been in and out of the country for
treatment.
However, Mugabe is said to be reluctant to let Msika
retire,
preferring to keep him in office for life as happened with Joshua
Nkomo and
Simon Muzenda.
Nkomo and Muzenda died in office
due to ill-heath.
"Msika wants to quit because he is not
feeling well and the situation
has of late been further deteriorating," a
source said. "Close family and
party members are aware of this and there are
moves to manage his departure
well to avoid the usual infighting over his
position."
After's Nkomo death in 1999 ahead of the party's
congress in December
that year there was a battle between Msika and former
Zanu PF Women's League
chairperson Thenjiwe Lesabe to succeed
him.
Four years later when Muzenda died in 2003, a scramble for his
position erupted between Mnangagwa and Mujuru ahead of the party's congress
in December 2004. Mujuru beat Mnangagwa, but the issue continues to fuel
power struggles in the party.
Sources said Msika's decision
to leave has triggered a new fight to
succeed him. The race is between Zanu
PF chair John Nkomo, politburo member
Obert Mpofu and Bulawayo governor Cain
Mathema. Nkomo is seen as the
frontrunner as Mpofu and Mathema are relative
lightweights.
Sources said Nkomo, Mpofu and Mathema have been
hectically lobbying
party stalwarts and ex-combatants to support them in
their succession bids.
"There is serious campaigning going on
because it is now well known in
the party that Msika wants to quit," a
senior Zanu PF official said. "A
number of people are interested in his
position."
Sources said one of the reasons Msika wants to
leave, apart from
ill-health, is the attempt by former Zanu PF politburo
member Dumiso
Dabengwa and colleagues to revive Zapu. Msika is said to be in
sympathy with
Dabengwa and has refused to castigate him in public while many
other former
Zapu leaders have been doing so to distance themselves from the
initiative
that has angered Mugabe.
"Msika supports
Dabengwa in principle because he believes he has
legitimate grievances, but
he does not agree with the approach," a source
close to Zanu PF said. "Even
when the issue came up last year he did not
confirm or deny he was part of
it."
Former Zapu leaders, a number of them who are still in the
politburo
and government, feel Mugabe has only used the merger of the
parties to
entrench himself and his regional clique, not push a national
agenda.
Mugabe has accused Dabengwa of being a tribalist
because he wants to
resuscitate Zapu, but Dabengwa's supporters have
rejected this, saying it is
Mugabe himself who is a "notorious tribalist".
Dabengwa last year said he
left because "I was never Zanu anyway", prompting
Mugabe's angry attacks.
Dabengwa's Zapu held a congress in
Bulawayo on May 17. The event was
attended by about 3 000 party members from
around Zimbabwe and South Africa,
as well as ex-combatants from the region.
Dabengwa was elected party leader
and his deputy is his former Zapu
colleague Canciwell Nziramasanga.
Dabengwa, a close friend and
ally of South African President Jacob
Zuma, is reportedly being funded by
liberation struggle comrades in South
Africa, Botswana and
Zambia.
BY DUMISANI MULEYA
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
20:38
A HARARE magistrate yesterday set June 16 as the trial date for
Zimbabwe Independent editor Vincent Kahiya and news editor Constantine
Chimakure on allegations of publishing falsehoods prejudicial to the state
and likely to undermine public confidence in the security
forces.
Magistrate Catherine Chimanda also waived reporting
conditions for the
two scribes after their lawyer Innocent Chagonda applied
for their removal
saying he needed time to prepare the defence.
The journalists were at their initial remand on May 12 granted US$200
bail
each and ordered to report every Friday at Harare Central Police
Station's
Law and Order section.
Chagonda yesterday did not pursue an
application for refusal of
further remand telling the court that the
investigations officer in the case
had failed to turn up at the court for
unknown reasons.
The lawyer said he would make the application
on June 16.
The state pledged to furnish the defence team with
relevant court
documents on June 1.
Kahiya and Chimakure
are jointly charged with the company, which is
represented by Michael
Curling.
The journalists are accused of writing, editing and
publishing two
stories entitled "Activists abductors named" and "CIO, police
role in
activists abduction revealed" in the newspaper's edition of May 8,
which the
state felt was wholly or materially false.
It is
the state case that Chimakure stated in an article on the front
page of the
Independent that the Attorney-General's office had revealed
names of the
abductors of human rights and MDC-T activists who went missing
last
year.
On page two of the same newspaper, the state alleged,
Chimakure
allegedly wrote that notices of indictment for trial served on
some of the
activists recently revealed the role the CIO and the police
played when
activists were reported missing last year.
According to the state, the AG's office compiled the list of the
officers
who were due to testify in the trials, and not the
abductors.
The arrest of Kahiya and Chimakure sparked a
barrage of criticism on
the local and international scene.
Meanwhile, lawyers representing human rights attorney Alec
Muchadehama, who
was arrested on allegations of obstruction of justice last
week, yesterday
applied for a refusal of further remand before the same
magistrate.
Beatrice Mtetwa, Muchadehama's lawyer, also
made an application asking
the Attorney-General Johannes Tomana to recuse
himself from the case because
he was the "complainant and
prosecutor".
Mtetwa said Tomana should recuse himself to ensure
a free, competent
and professional trial.
Muchadehama was
arrested last week by three officers from the Law and
Order Section of the
police at the Harare Magistrates' Courts while
processing release orders for
freelance photojournalist Shadreck Manyere,
former Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai's aide Gandhi Mudzingwa, and MDC-T
security director Kisimusi
Dhlamini who had been granted bail by the High
Court.
He
was arrested for alleged improper release of Manyere from Chikurubi
Maximum
Security Prison and Mudzingwa and Dhlamini under hospital detention
at the
Avenues Clinic on April 17.
lIn an unrelated development,
Zimbabwean broadcast journalist and
filmmaker Hopewell Chin'ono has won a
prestigious scholarship to study at
Harvard University in the United States
for a year starting from August.
The journalist won the 2009
Nieman Fellowship to read politics,
economics and journalism at Harvard
University which is rated by many as the
best university in the world
competing with Britain's Oxford for the title.
Chin'ono becomes
the second Zimbabwean to win the scholarship after
Geoff Nyarota, the former
editor of the banned Daily News newspaper.
Other famous names
to go to Harvard are the late Zimbabwean politician
and lawyer Eddison
Zvobgo and the current US president Barack Obama.
Chin'ono has
won several professional awards including the CNN African
Journalist of the
year award in 2008 and The Henry J Kaiser Family
Foundation Award for
Excellence in HIV and Aids Reporting in Africa.
He was also
awarded the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Award in
2007 for his
internationally acclaimed documentary film Pain in my Heart,
which was
broadcast in 44 countries including Britain on Sky Digital, South
Africa on
e.tv's acclaimed 3rd Degree, and CNN International. -Staff Writer.
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
20:37
THE campaign within Zanu PF to oust deputy party leader and state
vice-president Joice Mujuru has intensified amid indications that the
veteran politician has lost ground in eight provinces, leaving her clinging
to the position by her fingertips.
Informed sources said
Mujuru has become increasingly unpopular in the
party's divided Women's
League ahead of its congress on August 26-29. Among
the women tussling for
power with Mujuru are Women's League chair Oppah
Muchinguri.
The other notable mover against Mujuru has been former MP and deputy
minister Shuvai Mahofa.
"Mujuru is in serious trouble at the
moment," a source said. "She has
lost support in the Women's League and
other powerful structures of the
party."
Mujuru is said to
have lost ground in Mashonaland West, Masvingo,
Manicaland, Harare,
Bulawayo, Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and
Midlands, reflecting
the current areas of dominance and control between two
rival Zanu PF
factions led by party stalwarts Solomon Mujuru and Emmerson
Mnangagwa.
Sources said Mujuru is only hanging on in her
own backyard in
Mashonaland Central and her husband's Mashonaland East
political turf.
It is also understood Mujuru has lost the
crucial support of First
Lady Grace Mugabe who was influential in her rise
in 2004. Mujuru has fallen
out with President Robert Mugabe
himself.
Mugabe two years ago attacked Mujuru in a suppressed
ZBC TV interview
over succession, saying she had blown her chance of
succeeding him by
plotting to oust him.
Mugabe had in 2004
suggested Mujuru would take over from him. Mujuru
defeated Mnangagwa for the
post of deputy party leader and automatically
vice-president during a
cutthroat succession battle ahead of the party's
2004
congress.
The power struggle had then intensified after the
death of Zanu PF
deputy leader Simon Muzenda.
The ongoing battle to
succeed Mugabe, the Zanu PF leader for more than
30 years, erupted in the
party's stormy decision-making politburo meeting
last week.
The politburo met yesterday and set up a succession committee to
tackle the
problem. Mugabe's succession has resurfaced ahead of Zanu PF's
Youth
League's congress from July 17-19, Women's League August 26-29 and
main
congress December 8-13.
Sources said Mujuru's position has
become increasingly vulnerable
after recent clashes within the Women's
League over the election of leaders
of the Women's Parliamentary
Caucus.
Trouble in the Zanu PF Women's League started when
Mujuru formed an
alliance in parliament with MDC Vice-President Thokozani
Khupe to vote for
Zanu PF Goromonzi MP Biata Beatrice Nyamupinga against her
party colleague
Monica Mutsvangwa, senator for Chimanimani, as chairperson
of the Women's
Parliamentary Caucus.
Nyamupinga belongs to
the Mujuru faction, while Mutsvangwa is in the
Mnangagwa
camp.
Sources said during a recent Women's League meeting held
at the Zanu
PF headquarters, Mujuru came under fierce attack from her
rivals. Mahofa,
who is in the Mnangagwa faction and was one of the most
prominent casualties
of the 2004 Tsholotsho succession episode, is said to
have led the charge,
accusing Mujuru of destroying the party through fanning
factionalism and
working with the MDC.
The political
realignments involving Zanu PF and the MDC faction led
by Morgan Tsvangirai
has of late been gathering momentum, fuelling division
and infighting in
Zanu PF. Debate is raging within the Zanu PF Women's
League over Mujuru's
political links with Khupe and the Tsvangirai faction.
Sources
said Mahofa and other Women's League bigwigs are now
campaigning full
throttle for Mujuru's removal, raising the prospect of
confrontation at the
women's congress in August. The outcome of the youth
and women congresses
would have a bearing on the main congress in
December. - Staff
Writer.
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
20:01
THE Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC-T -- a key member of the inclusive
government -- will tomorrow hold its ninth national conference at a time
when the party is facing internal problems and is on a collision course with
its former allies in civic society on constitutional reforms, national
healing and how to handle fresh farm invasions.
According to
the MDC-T, 1 000 delegates to the conference will "review
and update the
party policies as well as taking stock of the hopes and
impediments" of the
unity government with President Robert Mugabe and the
leader of the smaller
formation of the MDC, Arthur Mutambara.
There have been serious
clashes between the MDC-T and civic society on
how best to drive the
constitution-making process with the latter accusing
the party of having
agreed during negotiations of the global political
agreement (GPA) to have a
parliament-led process instead of a
"people-driven" one.
Civic society, led by the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), has
vowed
to de-campaign the constitution-making process to be spearheaded by a
25-member parliamentary select committee co-chaired by the parties to the
GPA.
The NCA was also opposed to the use of the Kariba
draft constitution -
drawn up by negotiators of the two MDC formations and
Zanu PF in September
2007 - as the reference point in the current process
arguing that it lacked
constitutionalism because Zimbabweans were not
consulted on its contents.
Eric Matinenga, a member of the
MDC-T national executive and also
Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs
minister, insists that the
constitution-making process will be people-driven
and that civic
organisations and other stakeholders will be involved in the
crafting of the
supreme law in various sub-committees of the parliamentary
select committee.
He said people would be allowed to air their
views during
all-stakeholders conferences to be held during the 18-month
constitution-making process, but the NCA was adamant the process would still
be flawed.
The MDC-T also stands accused of failing to deal
effectively with
reported renewed farm invasions, with the Commercial
Farmers Union (CFU)
this week saying it was disturbed by recent statements
"made by the powers
that be stating that all is fine on the farms, yet this
is far from the
truth".
This was in apparent reference to
Tsvangirai's pronouncement in an
interview with the international press at
the weekend that: "There are
incidents in which it is reported that there
are invasions on one or two
farms but it's all blown out of
proportion."
The CFU was short of saying it had lost faith in
the inclusive
government because it was taking too long to implement
provisions of the
GPA, especially working "together for the restoration of
full productivity
on all agricultural land" and ensuring "security of tenure
to all land
holders".
"Unfortunately, none of these has
been forthcoming so many of our
farmers have been unable to produce much at
all during the summer season
just finished and very little has been planted
for the winter cereal
cropping season which has just started," the CFU
said.
The union lamented the prosecution of about 140 white
farmers, adding
this had undermined confidence and hence production in the
entire sector.
The party also stands accused by students and
teachers of failing to
influence the government on the need for educational
reforms.
Teachers returned to work in February, ending a strike
that had
persisted since September 2008. However, the state of the education
system
remains plagued by serious problems -- school fees are unaffordable
for the
vast majority; lack of equipment and teaching materials; and the
issue of
teachers' salaries all remain unresolved.
Teachers
in rural areas have also reported harassment and intimidation
by supporters
of Zanu PF, who were responsible for politically motivated
violence in the
run up to the June 2008 presidential election run-off.
Though
hospitals and clinics reopened in February, serious shortages
of equipment
and drugs remained.
On the media front, Tsvangirai and Media,
Information and Publicity
ministry permanent secretary George Charamba have
issued conflicting
statements on whether or not journalists and media houses
should get
accreditation after the outlawing of the Media and Information
Commission
(MIC) in January 2008. The MIC was replaced by the Zimbabwe Media
Commission
(ZMC) which is yet to be constituted.
Tsvangirai
said there was no need for accreditation, while Charamba
said there was no
legal vacuum on the issue as the government was still
mandated to accredit
journalists and media organisations.
Yesterday, the Media
Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) backed
Tsvangirai's interpretation of
the law.
"Although the functions of the ZMC are largely similar
to those of the
former MIC as set out in Section 39 (of Aippa), there is no
clause or
provision in the Act which presupposes that the MIC shall be
transformed
into the ZMC, nor is there any intimation that the former may
execute the
duties expressly mandated to the latter," Misa said. "In fact
the wording of
the Act clearly anticipates the formation of the ZMC and sets
out the manner
of appointment of the new office bearers. The interpretation
clause of the
same Act explicitly defines the word 'commission' as referring
to the ZMC.
Therefore legally the ZMC is deemed to exist pending its
constitution."
There is also infighting in the MDC-T after the
party leadership
ordered its MPs to return vehicles allocated to them by the
central bank a
month ago. Most of the legislators have refused to return the
cars arguing
that party leaders in cabinet were driving vehicles bought by
the same
central bank.
Apart from the cars, the MPs also
want to be allocated farms.
Three weeks ago at the party's
parliamentary caucus a row erupted over
the issue of the cars and farms,
with secretary-general Tendai Biti accusing
legislators of defying MDC-T
leaders' orders.
The party is also torn apart on how national
healing and
reconciliation should be pursued with MDC-T victims of the
bloody Zanu PF
campaign for the June 27 2008 presidential election runoff
insisting on the
establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission,
while the party
recently said it would mobilise resources to compensate
them.
The party is yet to come up with a position on whether
perpetrators of
the June 2008 violence should be prosecuted or
pardoned.
Recent reports were that some victims of the violence
had taken
matters into their own hands in an attempt to recover their
property looted
by suspected Zanu PF supporters.
Despite
Tsvangirai insisting that the principals have resolved 95% of
the issues
concerning the GPA, the party's national council about a
fortnight ago
resolved to refer the matter to Sadc.
Four days after the
resolution, Tsvangirai made an announcement that
the unity government had
struck agreement on the bulk of the outstanding
issues, but had asked
regional leaders to break a deadlock over the
appointment by Mugabe of
central bank chief Gideon Gono and attorney-general
Johannes
Tomana.
BY CONSTANTINE CHIMAKURE
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
19:57
A UNITED Nations agency has saved the Zimbabwe government from
further
embarrassment after it emerged that five of the eleven boreholes at
the
University of Zimbabwe have been contaminated with human waste prompting
authorities to delay opening the college twice in the same
semester.
Higher and Tertiary Education minister Stan Mudenge
blamed the
Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) and the City Council
for failing
to address the serious water problems at the
campus.
The university has been embroiled in the take over wrangle
of water
management between the two institutions.
Mudenge,
however, said the university would soon operate after Unicef
agreed to drill
six boreholes.
"The problem at UZ is the question of running
water. Zinwa is not able
to provide water to UZ. Harare City Council is not
able to provide water to
UZ," Mudenge told parliament recently. "The
boreholes which we dug at the
UZ, six of them are dry and five of them are
full of water but that water is
mixed with sewerage; it is contaminated
water and cannot be used for
drinking."
The drilling of the
now defunct boreholes was heralded last year when
the then Deputy Minister
of Water Resources Walter Mzembi promised to solve
the dire water situation
at the tertiary institution.
The water sources were sunk at the
height of the cholera epidemic that
killed thousands of people since last
August.
Apart from acute water woes faced at the university,
fears were rife
that the anticipated re-opening could be further postponed
due to staff
resentment over salaries. The delays could again be further
pushed by
student activist groups which have threatened to boycott lectures
in protest
at what they termed exorbitant tuition fees in hard
currency.
"We have approached Unicef and it has been kind
enough, they are now
going to drill six boreholes at the University of
Zimbabwe as I speak right
now," Mudenge said. "We have got times and
strategic places so that we have
running water at the University of Zimbabwe
and then we can unblock these
sewerage systems which are now blocking halls
of residence.
This way, I look forward in the next few weeks as
soon as the
boreholes are completed and the boreholes are working, the UZ
can open
within 2-3 weeks."
Meanwhile, government has
promised to retain 40% of university staff
currently employed outside the
borders while it also seeks to recruit 20%
during the 100-day inclusive
government action plan.
BY BERNARD MPOFU
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May
2009 19:54
THE revived Zapu which held its special congress over the
weekend has
started a legal process to recover properties that were
confiscated by the
government in the early 1980s after discovery of arms
caches at farms owned
by the then Joshua Nkomo-led party.
The
party's special congress recommended the setting up of a legal
committee
that will compile an inventory of all Zapu property.
The committee
after compiling the inventory is expected to institute a
legal process
towards the recovery of the property which includes farms and
other business
entities.
Zapu spokesperson, Smile Dube, said the legal
committee was working
flat out to complete the process as early as
possible.
"We have started the process of recovering all Zapu
properties that
was not handed back to us after it was seized by the
government and once the
process of coming up with an inventory is complete
then we will move in to
retain the property," Dube said.
He said the party expected the process to be competed in the coming
month.
Zapu properties that are still under the control of
the government are
Magnet House in Bulawayo, which houses the regional
headquarters of the
state security agency, the Central Intelligence
Organisation (CIO), and
Castle Arms Motel and Snake Park in Harare among
others.
Some of the Zapu properties are run through a company,
Nitram
Holdings, which represents the interests of Zipra
cadres.
Nitram properties were purchased through contributions
by former Zipra
fighters from their 1980 demobilisation
payouts.
After the unity accord in 1987, President Robert
Mugabe's government
refused to hand back the PF Zapu properties seized in
1982 during the height
of Gukurahundi in Matabeleland and
Midlands.
In 2004, Zanu PF claimed the properties had been
returned to PF Zapu,
but this was denied by its former leaders who said the
properties were in
the hands of third parties linked to the ruling
party.
The Zapu congress held last weekend endorsed a
resolution for an
immediate withdrawal from an accord signed by the late
veteran nationalist
and founder president, Joshua Nkomo and President Robert
Mugabe merging
PF-Zapu and Zanu PF.
Delegates to the
congress were drawn from the country's 12 provinces.
Represented also were
chapters in South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland and
Canada.
BY
LOUGHTY DUBE
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
19:46
CONFUSION surrounds the holding of by-elections to fill vacancies
in
parliament with the Ministry of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs
saying the onus to carry out polls lay with the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission (ZEC), which in turn said the role to call for the elections
rested with parliament.
The by-elections are due in seven
constituencies in the country after
the incumbents either died or took up
higher office in the House of Assembly
and Senate.
There are
four vacant seats in the House of Assembly and three in the
Senate. All the
vacancies have to be filled through by-elections.
In terms of
the Electoral Act, the by-elections are overdue. The law
states that a
presidential proclamation for a by-election should be gazetted
within 14
days after parliament notified the president of a vacancy arising
and that
the notification should be given immediately the seat became
vacant.
Eric Matinenga, the Minister of Constitutional and
Parliamentary
Affairs, told the Zimbabwe Independent all issues involving
elections were
being dealt with by ZEC under the Electoral
Act.
"The elections should be held if there are independent
candidates and
parties outside the three Global Political Agreement (GPA)
signatories who
want to contest and it is the duty of ZEC to indicate
through advertising
that there are vacancies and if other parties show an
interest then the
by-elections will go ahead," Matinenga
said.
But ZEC deputy chief elections officer Utoille Sialgwana
said it was
not the role of the commission to call for the
polls.
"The role of calling for by-elections lies with
parliament and they
have to notify us of the need to hold by-elections,"
Silaigwana said. "They
(parliament) have not yet given us a proclamation for
by-elections so far
and we will not hold any by-elections unless we have
that proclamation."
The vacant House of Assembly constituencies
are Gokwe-Gumunyu (left
vacant after the death of a Zanu PF MP), Matobo
North (vacant after
incumbent Lovemore Moyo was elected Speaker of
parliament), Guruve North
(vacant after death of Zanu PF lawmaker) and
Bindura North (resulting from
the death of the Zanu PF
legislator).
Vacant Senate seats are Chegutu (vacated by Edna
Madzongwe on election
as Senate President), Chiredzi (vacated by Titus
Maluleke on appointment as
a provincial governor for Masvingo) and Gokwe
South (vacated by Naison
Machaya on appointment as provincial governor for
Midlands).
Speaker of Parliament Moyo was not available for
comment on the
matter.
MDC-T MP Chipinge East legislator,
Mathias Mlambo, is set to lose his
seat in the House of Assembly if he loses
an appeal he filed with the High
Court after he was convicted a fortnight
ago of obstructing the course of
justice and sentenced to 10 months
imprisonment in the regional court.
More by-elections are
expected to be held if the MDC-M expels seven
legislators who are currently
on suspension from the party.
BY LOUGHTY DUBE
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
18:44
THE odours of death and decay are gone from the corridors of
Zimbabwe's
biggest hospital, replaced by the smells of medicines and food
for the
patients who are once again coming for treatment.
Nowhere is the change in Zimbabwe more evident than in the hospitals
that
just months ago failed so woefully to cope with a cholera epidemic that
killed more than 4 000 people.
Since a new power-sharing government
between President Robert Mugabe
and old rival Morgan Tsvangirai started work
in February, doctors and nurses
are being paid again and have returned to
Harare's Parirenyatwa General
Hospital.
UNICEF has been
helping to pay allowances to some doctors and nurses
while the government is
now paying them $100 a month like other state
employees. Zimbabwe's stocks
of drugs have risen from 10% of what they
should be to 42% and are set to
reach 60% in August, according to the Health
Ministry.
"Things seem a bit better compared to when I was here in January but
drugs
are still short," said Emelda Mwaera (61) and diabetic, as she was
wheeled
by a nurse from the hospital to a car. In December, she lost her
youngest
son to cholera because nobody could care for him at a clinic in
Budiriro
township.
But despite the evident improvements in the hospitals,
Zimbabwe's full
recovery from a decade of decline will take much longer and
there is no sign
yet of the big inflows of money needed from Western donors
who demand
greater reform.
Even in the health sector,
Zimbabwe is far from being able to provide
the care it once did, not least
because many doctors and nurses were among
the estimated three million
Zimbabweans -- a quarter of the population --
who have fled in search of
work. "If this was a patient you could say he has
regained consciousness
after a long coma but it will be some time before he
takes the first step,"
said one junior doctor who gave his name only as
Bright.
Teachers are also reporting for work after the government exempted
their
children from fees. Prices have stabilised after authorities allowed
use of
multiple currencies and shops have basic goods again. Councils have
started
rubbish collections. But there are less promising signs too.
The biggest university is shut because it has no water and students
cannot
afford the fees, many Zimbabweans struggle to pay for the newly
available
goods, and health experts fear disease could spread again. The
government is
trying to raise billions of dollars from Western donors and
last week
launched a 100-day plan meant to restore the economy and set
targets on
political and economic reforms. But Western donors are yet to be
convinced.
The World Bank has said it will provide $22
million, although not
through the government. The United States also
emphasised that it was not
ready to restart aid to the government for now.
"I want to be sure that any
aid that comes from an American perspective gets
through to the people," US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told South
African television.
The power-sharing government has still
fared far better than many
pundits had expected given the depth of
bitterness between Tsvangirai and
Mugabe. Tsvangirai recently said that only
two areas of disagreement
remained within the government - the posts of
central bank governor and
attorney general. While journalists, human rights
and opposition activists
are still being arrested, political tension has
eased.
"There is a melting away of the fear that had become
omnipresent in
Zimbabwe's political environment," said political analyst
Eldred
Masunungure. African institutions are making available more than US$1
billion to revive closed industries. Gold producers are re-starting shut
mines, tempted by the more conducive political environment and strong
prices. The government is targeting 6% growth in 2009 after years of
decline.
But the danger for the coalition remains that the
more it raises
expectations, the more it will be expected to deliver. State
employees are
already demanding salary hikes from their $100 monthly
allowance to $460,
saying that meets the basic needs of an average family of
five. Strikes
would not augur well for the government.
"What the masses want are tangible things like functioning schools,
hospitals, good roads and good prices for their produce and jobs. So far it
has tried and I will give it a marginal pass," Eldred Masunungure, a leading
political analyst said. "But the government will stand or fall on delivery"
-- Reuters.
BY MCDONALD DZIRUTWE
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
16:47
THE failure by the inclusive government to speak with one voice
does
not engender confidence and reveals deep confusion in the
administration on
how to move the nation forward, analysts have
said.
They said contradictory statements from senior government
officials on
issues of law, property rights, human rights and freedom of
expression in
the past week reflect a lack of oneness and cohesion; and also
suggest that
party positions were taking precedence over national
matters.
This, the analysts warned, would militate against reforms
government
intends to embark on to attract and retain capital as envisaged
in both the
Short Term Emergency Recovery Plan and the 100-day
plan.
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai last Thursday announced
that both
foreign and local journalists and media organisations did not need
accreditation to carry out their duties because the Media and Information
Commission had ceased to exist after an amendment of the Access to
Information and Protection of Privacy Act became law in January 2008. The
amendment replaced the MIC with the Zimbabwe Media Commission, which is yet
to be constituted.
Two days after Tsvangirai's
pronouncement, the Ministry of Media,
Information and Publicity said
journalists and media houses intending to
cover the 12-day Comesa summit,
which started in Victoria Falls yesterday,
should be accredited by the
MIC.
Another contradiction arose last week after Tsvangirai
told the media
that the principals to the GPA had resolved all but two of
the outstanding
issues of the unity government pact.
The
prime minister said he had met with Mugabe and Deputy Prime
Minister Arthur
Mutambara and agreed on the appointment of provincial
governors, ambassadors
and permanent secretaries.
The re-appointment of central bank
governor Gideon Gono and the hiring
of Johannes Tomana as Attorney-General,
according to Tsvangirai, remained
the sticking points and the matter was
referred to Sadc as the guarantors of
the GPA.
The MDC-T,
he said, would fill five of the 10 gubernatorial posts,
Zanu PF four and
MDC-M one.
Tsvangirai announced the line up of new governors
appointed by the
MDC. James Makore was appointed to replace Harare
metropolitan governor
David Karimanzira of Zanu PF, while Seiso Moyo will
replace Bulawayo
governor Cain Mathema.
The MDC-T national
council member and former Women's Assembly
chairperson, Lucia Matibenga, is
now the governor of Masvingo, taking over
from Titus
Maluleke.
Hwange East legislator Tose Sansole will replace Zanu
PF's Thokozile
Mathuthu as Matabeleland North governor while Julius
Magaramombe, the MDC-T's
losing candidate for Buhera North in the March 2008
elections, will replace
Christopher Mushowe in Manicaland.
Zanu PF, Tsvangirai said, would retain governors in the three
Mashonaland
provinces as well as in the Midlands, while the MDC-M would take
control of
Matabeleland South.
Incumbent permanent secretaries were
retained and the MDC-T would
appoint four ambassadors and MDC one when those
posts next became vacant.
Tsvangirai's announcement was
contradicted by the Media, Information
and Publicity ministry permanent
secretary George Charamba at the weekend
who said while there was a
tentative agreement between the principals,
Mugabe would have to table it
before Zanu PF's politburo for adoption or
rejection.
Charamba revealed that the issue of provincial governors would be
dealt with
in August after the incumbents finish a year in office and a plan
for
compensation is put in place since they were hired in August 2008 for a
two-year-term.
Political analysts said apart from these
examples, the inclusive
government has since its formation on February 13
failed to speak with one
voice on important issues affecting the country -
negatively impacting on
government's major task to raise funds from the
international community to
stabilise and revive the comatose
economy.
The analysts said the confusion and contradictions
coming out of
government reflected the power-relations between Mugabe,
Tsvangirai and
Mutambara.
They said some of Mugabe's
ministers and service chiefs' insistence
this week that Gono would remain
head of the central bank despite the MDC
formations' call for his removal
was a demonstration by Zanu PF that it has
the whip hand in
government.
University of Zimbabwe political science lecturer
John Makumbe said
there was limited coordination in the inclusive government
and that senior
government leaders were issuing statements based on party
preferences.
"The inclusive government is not working as a
team, and the
unfortunate part is that the conflicting statements are sent
in the public
domain before they are synthesised in cabinet," Makumbe said.
"The bottom
line is that Mugabe is not in charge. He is failing to run a
coordinated and
unified cabinet. He is failing to give an internally
consistent direction
for cabinet yet this should be the time to demonstrate
that the inclusive
government is coordinated."
He said that
at the rate at which the confusion and discord was
playing out, the country
would end up with a situation where there would be
a dearth of collective
responsibility.
"We might end up having two parallel
governments and ultimately
resulting in mismanagement," Makumbe
warned.
Zimbabwean-born South African businessman Mutumwa
Mawere was of the
opinion that the discord would result in the country
failing to reengage the
international community for financial aid to revive
the flagging economy.
"The three-in-one style of government
does not engender confidence,"
Mawere said. "The government has to act and
speak with one voice."
He said what was worrying was that the
worldview of key Western
countries was different from the Zimbabwean view on
the rule of law,
property rights, human rights and freedom of
expression.
Political scientist Michael Mhike said the discord
in government seems
to be deliberate.
He said government
leaders aligned to Zanu PF and known to oppose the
unity administration were
at the forefront of issuing statements contrary to
those from Tsvangirai's
office and his ministers.
"Power is at play here," Mhike said.
"So far Mugabe and his cronies
have proved that they are still in charge of
government. The stance to
retain Gono in office against all odds
demonstrates where the power is."
Tsvangirai has of late been
complaining that there were "residual
elements" in the previous government
working to undermine the inclusive
administration.
He
warned that this would be catastrophic to the government and the
revival of
the economy.
BY CONSTANTINE CHIMAKURE
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
17:47
ZIMBABWE'S domestic debt hit US$59 billion on February 26,
figures
from the Reserve Bank revealed yesterday.
The huge
domestic debt, which will result in high future taxes if the
country's major
sectors of the economy do not start performing against a
background of
inadequate foreign aid, opened the year at US$56,9 billion.
The
debt was sparked by huge interest payments which account for
US$42,7 billion
of the total debt.
According to the Reserve Bank, the amount
outstanding for government
stocks at February 26 was US$669 million, while
interest paid for the amount
amounted to US$3 billion.
The
new debt levels mean that with an estimated population of 13
million, every
citizen owes US$4 538 to local banks and financial
institutions. The average
monthly salary in Zimbabwe is US$200.
Statistics from the
Consumer Council of Zimbabwe also show that an
urban family of six in April
required US$427,11 monthly from the previous
month's figure of
US$396,22.
Analysts said government had failed to clear the
debt which has been
ballooning because of the Reserve Bank's advances to the
former, largely for
the March 29 general elections and June 27 presidential
election runoff last
year, agricultural mechanisation programmes and food
imports.
The surge in domestic debt was a result of high
interest rates on the
market which were in line with the inflation rate,
which by December last
year was estimated to be above 100 billion
percent.
The mismatch between fiscal revenues and expenditures
also opened a
significant funding gap resulting in government utilising the
overdraft
window at the Reserve Bank, while at the same time borrowing from
the
domestic market.
The debt has been ballooning because
of government's continued
reliance on borrowing from the local market.
Zimbabwe had no access to
international capital markets because of a lending
embargo imposed by the
United States.
Following the
dollarisation of the economy government is now relying
more on foreign aid
and lines of credit from international financial
institutions.
The Reserve Bank's advances to government
have over the past five
years accounted for about 80% of total debt, a
situation bank economists say
was evidence that government was broke and had
no other source of revenue
other than the domestic market.
Figures from the Reserve Bank show that the solvency of government was
already seriously compromised with the current interest rates, and
technically government finances will not be better off with even a 1% rise
in interest rates.
The increasing government debt stock
which government is failing to
clear is raising fresh fears of renewed
turbulence in an economy which is
showing signs of
improving.
Government was also forced to rely on domestic
borrowings because its
revenue base had dwindled because of company closures
which have led to
retrenchments. This means that in real terms, the
government was collecting
less revenue through corporate and income
tax.
"The figure has a huge bearing on the returns that
investors will be
getting from the money market. The money market is bound
to continue issuing
investors with negative returns in the short-term to
minimise the harmful
effects of the huge interest cost component on the debt
figure," an
economist with a commercial bank told
businessdigest.
Meanwhile the Reserve Bank said money supply
(M3) which can be used as
a yard stick to measure inflation rose was at
363,6 billion percent in
December last year.
The Reserve
Bank said contributing to the rise in money supply was
increases to private
sector which was 630 billion percent, credit to public
enterprises 32,2
billion percent and domestic credit 521,1 billion percent.
BY PAUL
NYAKAZEYA
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009 17:37
HARDLY anyone could claim ignorance over the fact that the world
economy is
currently going through a financial crisis of such proportions
that it is
often compared to the all too familiar Great Depression of the
1930s.
For most Zimbabweans, whatever the rest of the world is
going through
is child's play given this country's recent history. Perhaps
they could be
forgiven for having a "been there, done that and got the
t-shirt" attitude.
Really, how much worse could things get?
For
those fortunate enough to have access to international business
news
reports, barely a report goes by without some form of reference to how
the
global crisis has affected this bottom line and that profit margin.
It almost sounds like firms across the world could easily explain away
whatever corporate underperformance reported by simply making reference to
the crisis and getting a sympathetic ear! Despite the widespread mention of
the crisis, very few can explain how exactly this occurred.
Possibly a fable I came across expressed this in a much simpler
manner. The
tale starts with Chipo, the owner of a neighbourhood pub that
has been in
operation for as long as one could remember. Over the years,
Chipo developed
a loyal clientele; the type she knew when their
anniversaries and birthdays
were.
They would always pass through her establishment everyday on
their way
home from work. Naturally, having established such close ties, she
would
sometimes let her devoted customers enjoy the services of her pub on
account
and only settle the bill on pay day at the end of the month. After
all, the
system had been working well for years and she could easily vouch
for them.
As time goes on, Chipo requires a loan from the bank.
Her clever
banker suggests to her that since she can vouch for her debtors,
she could
use them as collateral on her loan or better still, the bank could
buy them
outright from her. In addition her clients were expected to
continue
drinking in the foreseeable future.
The banker decides
to give them a more financially appropriate name
and calls them "Beer
Bonds". This arrangement works well for a while,
however, Chipo soon
realises that the bigger her debtors' book is, the
greater capital she can
access from the bank.
As a result, she starts extending the "drink
now, pay later" facility
to clients whom she has seen once or twice before
at her bar though she didn't
know them as well as she did her usual
revellers.
Meanwhile at the bank, Chipo's bank manager looks at
how successful
this arrangement has been and offers the same to other bar
owners in the
area offering similar products but calling them Whisky bonds,
Sorghum Beer
Bonds and so forth.
He soon takes Chipo's bonds
together with all the others he has
managed to collect, sells them to his
friend at another bank and makes a
small profit.
This process
is repeated until virtually all the banks had some
exposure to these bonds.
Eventually, one bank executive looks at his
portfolio of assets and realises
that he had too many of the beer bonds.
He decides then to call in
the debt. He goes to Chipo's bar and finds
it closed with no one in sight.
Upon further enquiries he realises that
Chipo had amassed such a large
number of unworthy debtors that they
eventually ran her out of
business.
By the time the bank executive gets back to the
office to try and pass
on this worthless piece of paper, he soon finds out
that everyone else in
the market has made the same realisation.
No one wants anything to do with these bonds which he is now stuck
with.
Given the high exposure the market had in these bonds, all of a sudden
this
becomes a market wide problem and one after the other institutions
begin to
fail to meet their obligation.
Banks stop trusting each other for
fear that the other party defaults
and so the global crisis
began.
Of course this analogy is a very simplified account of
events that led
to the global crisis but it makes for a good
synopsis.
It is clear a number of mistakes were made along the way,
by assuming
more than a fair share of risk.
However, a
suggestion has been made that had there been greater
regulation and a form
of deposit insurance, the global crisis could have
been curtailed from the
onset and perhaps would not have reached the
magnitude it has
attained.
The American banking system was characterised by two
broad classes of
financial institutions: the traditional banks as we know
them and the
investment houses which were not legally recognised as banks
per se but
offered a number of similar packages.
Banks in
the traditional form are by and large not blamed as the
source of this
quagmire. Why, because for years they would have been under
some form of
regulation from the Federal Reserve and so limiting their
exposure to
non-traditional financial assets.
In addition and perhaps, more
importantly, depositors' funds would
have been shielded from decimation
owing to the deposit insurance offered by
the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC) through compliance with
reserve
requirements.
The Fed would then have acted swiftly as a lender of
last resort, in
the process averting a crisis and the associated contagion
effects. On the
other hand the non-bank financial institutions did not have
such protection.
Coming back to Zimbabwe, local banks appear to
be operating under the
same conditions as the non-traditional financial
institutions were in the
United States.
The focus is not on the
choice and quality of assets invested in but
more so on the preparedness of
the local banking system to absorb any such
shocks to it.
There
is no inter-bank market to speak of and should any institution
face a
liquidity crunch it is more than likely that it will go it alone
without any
help from anyone let alone the authorities.
Already in some
quarters it is believed that Zimbabwe is currently
over banked and through a
series of consolidations and, in the extreme case,
bank failures, the
country could end up with a well below half of the
institutions operating
currently.
Effectively any bank operating within Zimbabwe does not
have insurance
on customers' deposits. Even though statutory payments should
be made to the
Reserve Bank, one doubts the capacity of the authorities to
sustain an
ailing institution.
A well functioning banking
sector aids economic recovery and growth by
increasing transactional
capabilities.
Until players in the banking sector regain the trust
and confidence to
transact with each other, one can expect little
improvement in Zimbabwe's
credit market.
A credible belief that
no matter what happens, the Reserve Bank will
be able to support any
troubled bank, will go a long way in engendering
mutual trust, first between
banks and depositors and secondly among banks
themselves.
As is
often said, the show must go on and sooner or later the return
of a vibrant
inter-bank market will occur. However, if left unchecked and
with no
guarantees, one should not be surprised if a number of banks go
through what
the American non-banks did triggering a similar crisis albeit
on a much
less grander scale.
BY TICH PASI
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
17:28
AIR Zimbabwe has settled for a compromise arrangement with
workers'
representatives to introduce a short working hour and shift regime
in a bid
to reduce the wage bill by about 50%.
This will take
effect from June 1 and the airline has pleaded for
co-operation from
affected staff.
Air Zimbabwe is battling to meet its expenditure
and has been
operating at 40% capacity for the past five
years.
In an internal circular written on May 19 and seen by
businessdigest,
Air Zimbabwe said it has been experiencing operational
problems for a long
time and implementing a shorter working regime might
lessen its financial
burden.
Reads the circular: "The
situation has not improved quickly and Air
Zimbabwe is now unable to meet
its expenditure including salaries. In
discussions held with representative
employee bodies, it has been agreed to
reduce the salary bill by 50% in
addition to other costs reduction and
revenue generation measures already
implemented.
"In order to give effect to this arrangement,
members of staff are
advised that Air Zimbabwe will introduce shift and
short time work with
effect from June 1, 2009."
The latest
move comes after Air Zimbabwe failed to send half of its
workers on unpaid
leave at the beginning of May.
Management was left with little
choice but to reach a compromise, but
morale is at an all-time low as
workers are not certain as to who would be
affected.
The
airline pleaded for co-operation: "Given the complexity of the
exercise and
the reality of the challenges the airline requests and expects
understanding
from all employees in the interest of all staff." read the
circular.
Last Monday Air Zimbabwe chief executive officer
Peter Chikumba
confirmed the airline's poor financial position when he told
a Parliamentary
Committee on Transport and Infrastructure that Air Zimbabwe
foreign debt
stood at close to US$28 million.
The amount
excludes the US$50 million (plus interest) it owes
suppliers of Chinese made
MA60s it acquired in 2005, he told the committee.
He said a
rescue business plan has been submitted to government for
possible
funding.
Air Zimbabwe is incurring US$4 million losses every
month and
government is understood to have advised the airline to search for
a
technical partner.
Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti when
presenting his national budget
said Air Zimbabwe was making weekly appeals
of US$1 million to the treasury.
Insiders at the airline this
week said morale was low due to
uncertainty on the pending shorter working
hours.
It is unclear how many workers would be affected and the
duration of
the agreement.
BY NQOBILE BHEBHE
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
17:24
PARASTATALS, local authorities and other utility organisations
have
been advised to charge rates and tariffs that are in line with the
region to
avoid overcharging customers.
Speaking at a function
hosted by Habakkuk Trust, Deputy Prime Minister
Arthur Mutambara and the
business community said rates and tariffs being
charged by utilities and
local authorities were beyond the reach of most
Zimbabweans.
"Whatever is done with the tariffs, they must be the average or even
lower
than what is being charged in the Sadc region and not anything above,"
Mutambara said. "Sovereignty is not in ownership but in the service delivery
aspect."
Analyst Eric Bloch said while the economic
environment was improving,
the same cannot be said of public service
providers.
Consumer Council of Zimbabwe Bulawayo regional
manager Comfort
Muchekeza said service charges were not in line with the
package being
provided.
"Zimbabweans need to adopt a single
currency to avoid pricing
distortions and fluctuations," Muchekeza
said.
"Let us charge what is equivalent to what other regional
countries are
charging considering that we are using their currency," he
said.
While rates and tariffs of basic services continue to go
up, consumers
have increasingly felt the pinch in their
pockets.
Bloch said TelOne, the sole fixed telephone service
provider, was
charging three times more than what Telkom in South Africa
were charging.
An official from TelOne admitted that they had
failed to maintain
appropriate levels of services in some areas due to
constraints such as the
unavailability of foreign currency.
"It has been a problem; we do not have companies in Zimbabwe that
manufacture telecommunications equipment. Most of our equipment has to be
imported and due foreign currency shortages it has been difficult to
maintain what is already in existence let alone put up new equipment," the
official said.
TelOne has been accused of sending customers
unreasonably high bills.
Bloch said customers were getting high bills at
times unrelated to actual
calls made and being inconvenienced by peremptory
disconnections of service.
Customers have also had to face
astronomical electricity charges with
Zesa charging seven times what Eskom,
the power company of South Africa, is
charging.
"Zesa's
tariffs vastly exceed those prevailing elsewhere in the region
and for
several months it has been directed by the government to revise such
tariffs
downwards to realistic levels with retrospective effect," Bloch
said.
"Until it does so, and the revised tariffs published,
consumers cannot
even compute their liability by self reading of meters," he
said.
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union (ZCTU) regional
chairperson Reason
Ngwenya said parastatals had gone far beyond what the
general worker can
afford.
"We still have to fight
corruption because it is still in existence,
it must stop, that is our
perspective as labour," Ngwenya said.
"Those in authority
should let market forces take their course and
allow the rule of law to
prevail; they cannot charge residents astronomical
rates, where do they
expect them to get the money from looking at the
allowances that most civil
servants are getting?" he said.
Consumers have accused the new
government of not doing anything about
protecting residents from the
unrealistic rates.
The Bulawayo City Council was this week
forced to revise its budget
from $416 million to $303 million after more
than 3 000 people signed a
petition rejecting the $416 million proposed by
the city fathers.
In the latest tariffs schedule, the least
paying household in the
high-density suburbs will be paying $18, down from
$20.
According to Bloch local business property rates are five
times higher
than what was being paid in South Africa.
"Even if they cut by 50%, it will still be more than the regional
price,"
Bloch said. "In a way, this stimulates brain drain. These excessive
tariffs
are a hindrance to economic growth."
The city of Harare
recently announced a reduction in its municipal
charges by 50%, a move that
has been described as a positive step in
cushioning residents against
exorbitant charges.
However, the chief executive of Habakkuk
Trust, Dumisani Nkomo said
tariffs were still way above what local
authorities in the region were
charging.
BY JESILYN
DENDERE
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
16:56
IS the MDC really maladroit or does it just look like
that?
Recently we had the statement that the party would not pull
out of the
coalition government if President Mugabe continued to block
reforms agreed
in Pretoria in January. That included the appointment of
permanent
secretaries, provincial governors, ambassadors, and Roy
Bennett.
If Mugabe refused to honour solemn undertakings, the party
said, they
would refer their dilemma to Sadc.
That's a bit like
saying "I will set my pussy-cat on you".
But it does seem to have had
some effect. The matter of the
appointments has now been partly resolved.
Mugabe was self-evidently bound
by undertakings made in the Memorandum of
Understanding, the Global
Political Agreement, and the Pretoria communiqué.
A Sadc ruling to that
effect would have been embarrassing.
However,
be that as it may, Rule No 1 in Poker: Don't show your hand.
This is
elementary stuff which Zanu PF understands perfectly.
Morgan Tsvangirai
is learning the hard way. He sees a need to
propitiate a prickly president.
But that shouldn't mean he has to engage in
smoke-and-mirrors tactics such
as describing the farm invasions as "blown
out of all proportion".
Who benefits from that dissembling? Tsvangirai should follow in his
deputy's
footsteps and go and see for himself.
Tsvangirai also seems to be
under the impression that there had been
"significant improvements in media
freedoms" since the formation of the
inclusive government. And because of
amendments to Aippa last year there was
no legal obligation, he said, for
journalists and media houses to register
until the Zimbabwe Media Commission
is established.
Quite clearly this is a case of the wish being father
to the thought.
The government last Saturday put out a statement saying
all
journalists wishing to cover the Comesa summit should first seek
accreditation with the Media and Information Commission.
We are
sure there won't exactly be a stampede to cover this
inconsequential event.
But that's not the point. The government is using a
defunct body, the MIC,
to extract forex from journalists coming into the
country to cover the
proceedings. As Tsvangirai pointed out, there is no
legal obligation for
journalists - foreign or local - to be accredited until
the Zimbabwe Media
Commission is set up.
Media secretary George Charamba's attempt in the
Herald yesterday to
suggest that the MIC enjoyed residual authority to
accredit journalists and
media houses was clearly intended to slap
Tsvangirai down.
Charamba's remarks represent an extraordinary
manipulation of the
facts. Obviously if the MIC has been abolished as a
result of a
constitutional amendment then it should not be functioning in
any way at
all. It should certainly not be collecting money from
journalists.
Charamba cannot claim that because the MIC had authority
in the past
it therefore has authority in the present. It doesn't. It is
defunct.
This is precisely the sort of political lawlessness the MDC
must deal
with if it is to make a credible impact on government.
Correspondents
visiting Zimbabwe must be wondering exactly what is required
of them. Many
understandably won't come at all.
Meanwhile, the MDC
is probably wishing that in the recent talks
between the three principals it
hadn't blithely nodded through the
appointment of permanent secretaries who
are manifestly partisan while
claiming to be qualified
professionals.
Among those extending his condolences to the Gono
family last weekend,
we were told by the Herald, was "Media and Information
Commission chair Dr
Tafataona Mahoso".
Here is another example of
the dangers of state control of newspapers.
The staff at the Herald
know perfectly well that the MIC no longer
exists in law. But they are
required to pretend it does. They are also
obliged to put "illegal" every
time they refer to sanctions. And then they
want us to take them
seriously!
Whose funeral was Webster Shamu attending on Monday? He
spent all his
time praising President Mugabe. He described the president as
"one of the
few remaining statesmen who upheld the principle of former
Ghanaian leader
Kwame Nkrumah that political independence was meaningless
without economic
empowerment.
"That economic independence is
derived from the soil," Shamu told
Mugabe. "That is why you
spearheaded the land redistribution."
Let's hope Shamu found a few
words for Gono's brother amidst all this
praise singing!
And what
sort of political independence does Shamu think we have
achieved with the
national begging bowl being handed out to Western powers
for food aid,
medicines and even civil service salaries? What would Nkrumah
have made of
this sort of sovereignty?
Still with sanctions, we were gobsmacked
to see the usual scapegoat
being blamed for the collapse of the education
system.
Under the heading "Bad news for failing O-Level students", the
Herald
on Monday told us: "The education sector like many other sectors in
Zimbabwe
was severely affected by the sanctions imposed on the country by
the West.
As a result of the embargo government failed to pay teachers good
salaries
and no lessons took place for the greater part of last
year."
So there you have it. Nothing to do with money being spent on
other
things.
But Page 19 of Gideon Gono's supplement in the Herald
of April 18
tells us that among the Bacossi forex beneficiaries for 2007 was
Lobels
which received US$6 million.
So that's where it all went!
How many teachers could have benefited
from that largesse? Perhaps the
author of Monday's blame piece could
explain. Readers may also like to know
that it is unlikely that David
Coltart tried to blame sanctions for the
collapse of the education sector.
The Herald slipped those paragraphs in all
by itself we can safely assume.
Despite Webster Shamu's
self-satisfaction over what he thinks is
balance in the public media, old
habits evidently die hard!
Talking of which we enjoyed the
following from the Sunday Mail
regarding the appointment of permanent
secretaries.
"Cde Charamba said the
principals agreed that the
bureaucracy was independent and apolitical
and should remain that
way."
That includes being addressed as "Comrade" we can safely
assume.
But we note he had become a "Mr" yesterday!
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
16:41
I CANNOT claim to be schooled in economics apart from growing up
vending fruit and vegetables in Marondera. However, economic imperatives
affect all of us and the Zimbabwean situation is no different.
Everyone agrees that Zimbabwe's industry is at its lowest ebb ever, if
there
is any industry to talk about at all. A good example is the fact that
Zimbabwe's famous brands such as the Mazoe drink, available in supermarkets
in Windhoek, Namibia, are manufactured in South Africa.
The
only product from Zimbabwe I have encountered with a sense of
pride in a
foreign country is Tanganda's silver tea on the supermarket
shelves. Nothing
more demonstrates industrial collapse than the near
collapse of Mutare Board
and Paper Mills, where machinery that appeared on
ZBC news recently looks
like relics from the German Krupps factories of the
early 1900s. Zimbabwe's
industrial capacity of the 1980s and early 1990s is
gone.
This brings us to the current public media push on the subsidies and
duties
that captains of industry have been asking from government. For some
time
now industrialists in the food industry, especially millers, have been
pushing vigorously for a revision of government policy on food imports,
especially maize meal.
The argument goes that the imported
maize meal is too cheap hence it
is pushing them out of the business or
stopping them from coming back into
business. The argument goes further that
the millers should be protected so
that they can have the sole rights to
Zimbabwe's consumers.
And, in my thinking, also raise prices to
meet their production costs
in an environment in which almost 90% of people
are unemployed and five
million surviving on donor food and millions
surviving on less than a dollar
a day.
In this regard the
argument being advanced by Zimbabwe's millers and
food producers is very
selfish and self-serving.
This argument is not driven by the
national interest that people have
no food, no money and are poor, but the
desire by a few to resuscitate their
"industry" and make money.
Granted, industry needs to be supported to get back to reasonable
productive
capacity. The question is, whose responsibility is it to do so?
The second
question is what is the Zimbabwe government's priority under the
current
circumstances?
The priority should be to feed the people and avert
the disaster of
people starving. The majority of poor Zimbabweans have
benefited from the
decreasing food prices. At some point it became
impossible to buy anything
with US$100 in Zimbabwe.
I am,
however, sure that civil servants can now afford to buy maize
meal and
cooking oil. This is not a justification of their paltry salary but
an
acknowledgement that US$100 now makes a difference in Zimbabwe. This is
largely as a result of the reasonably priced food imports flooding the
country.
Common sense tells me that if industry in South
Africa can export
maize meal to Zimbabwe at a profit, then it should be
possible for Zimbabwe's
millers to produce the same product even cheaper.
Bread is now cheaper in
Zimbabwe compared to South Africa.
Again taking note of the dire situation in Zimbabwe - shortages of
water,
power, skills, and obsolete industrial machinery - we then have to
agree
that bringing Zimbabwe's industry back on line is not a question of
simply
banning or imposing duty on food imports alone, thereby punishing an
already
suffering and overburdened populace.
As a priority Zimbabwe needs
to save lives and not a handful of
millers. As a second priority Zimbabwe
needs to assist industry with
subsidies such as reduced costs of water and
power as well as a waiver of
duty on imported machinery in order to help
revive industry.
One gets the feeling that the millers and industry
have a sinister
motive, as always, of squeezing the little, if any, foreign
currency that
Zimbabweans have.
The argument to impose duty on
imported maize meal and hence raise the
price of locally produced maize meal
is a move that has to be rejected by
all people as it will worsen an already
bad food situation.
Government should look at other ways to support
industry than do not
punish struggling citizens.
A key
point that also comes from these debates is the primacy with
which the unity
government is giving the voice of industry and far less the
voice of
ordinary Zimbabweans with regard to economic revival.
All of a
sudden, millers and other industrialists who have since 1980
failed to
assist in reducing Zimbabwe's unemployment now seek the further
punishment
of ordinary citizens as the solution to their "problems".
The unity
government, especially the Ministry of Finance, should be
seen to be
developing people-orientated economic policies. For example
should the
millers get their desire to ban foreign maize meal from Zimbabwe,
how many
jobs are they going to create? How much in taxes are they going to
contribute to the fiscus?
These are real and developmental
questions that have to be asked
before any hasty decisions that hurt people
are made. More than 90% of
Zimbabweans, both in rural and urban areas, have
created their own economy
that has served and saved them and seen them
through this crisis.
Is it not time that the unity government looks
at how people are
surviving and boost such industries rather than operate on
the basis that
millers and other "big" industries are the deus-ex-machina
that would solve
all our economic challenges.
It has to be
accepted that something has changed in Zimbabwe, and that
rebuilding
Zimbabwe's industry has to be done from the base or the
foundation, from
what people are doing and how they are surviving.
Italy's
leading export industry of leather shoes, bags, among others,
is largely
family run businesses supported by the government.
So is France's
famous cheese industry. The unity government should be
discouraged from
taking a narrow, "big industry" determinist and absolute
narrow path as the
panacea to Zimbabwe's economic recovery.
It has to be accepted that
in any economic developmental process,
there will be casualties, be they
deliberate or collateral damage, that
might never come back. In this regard
it is possible that Zimbabwe's millers
are one of those casualties, and in
all seriousness it is not the business
of people in Budiriro, Mbare,
Makokoba and Sakubva to save Zimbabwean
millers.
Maybe
instead of imposing duty on imported maize meal, millers will be
saved
naturally by increased maize production and steady supplies of power,
water,
etc. I seriously doubt that the "reviving industry" absolutism that
is being
shoved down the throats of Zimbabweans is the only solution to our
economic
problems.
Some industries are gone and gone for good and that
should still be an
acceptable position.
The unity government
should strive to bring as many voices as possible
to its discussion on
economic revival. So far we have not had any vigorous
consultations with
labour and civil society and rural communities.
This debate is now
hijacked by big, or once big industry, bankers etc
who have their own agenda
- that of profit even as they jump over corpses of
their starved-to-death
fellow citizens.
*Rashweat Mukundu is a Programme Specialist: Media
Freedom Monitoring,
Misa Regional Secretariat.
BY RASHWEAT
MUKUNDU
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
16:32
WE were both bemused and amused to read the pontifications of
Silas
Chekera, whose article was published in the Zimbabwe Independent of
May 15,
wherein he lamented "the steady decline in the quality of legal
advocacy in
our courts".
It must be especially heart-warming
for lawyers in Zimbabwe who are
daily on the frontline of defending
fundamental rights and freedoms in one
of the most insecure and dangerous
operating environments to know that he
continues to take an interest in, and
observe, their actions and legal
proceedings "from a distance".
However, one would have expected a lawyer who purports to represent an
alleged international war criminal to have at least a basic understanding of
international criminal and human rights law, especially insofar as it
relates to an accused person.
In any situation where
powerless individuals are subjected to the
international crime of enforced
disappearance (abduction) and additionally
the universally proscribed crime
of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment and punishment by
state-sanctioned agents in order to extract
false "confessions" and
"evidence", and these are then used as the basis to
lay charges against
them, it is trite that a judicial officer who applies
his/her mind
reasonably, impartially and without fear or favour to the facts
and the law
would punish the state for such unlawful action.
This would be done
by refusing to entertain the charges against the
affected individuals - no
matter how strong the case may be - and also
insisting on an investigation
which would bring the perpetrators of such
international crimes (which are
also crimes under our own domestic law) to
justice.
Chekera
would also know that informed law officers representing the
Attorney-General
(as he once did during the onslaught against human rights
defenders) have a
professional duty to properly advise state agents that
where such offences
have been perpetrated they must and will be brought to
the attention of the
court, and therefore a legitimate prosecution will not
have any prospects of
success as the charges will be thrown out.
Chekera, if he has
reference to his case law and jurisprudence from
when he was still
practising law in Zimbabwe, further enhanced by his work
at an international
criminal tribunal, would know that such precedent exists
in our country on
the basis of provisions of our Constitution and criminal
law (and regional
and international treaties to which Zimbabwe has
voluntarily bound itself),
as well as further afield.
Indeed Chekera is correct to state
that it is the prerogative of the
Attorney-General to charge anyone on
reasonable suspicion of commission of
an offence (although not on reasonable
suspicion of "guilt", as he puts it -
this is part of the basic introduction
to criminal law).
However, in light of the above explained workings
of international law
and in accordance with general judicial precedent, even
where there is
reasonable suspicion, the Attorney-General would ethically
and
professionally be unable to proceed with such a case where such
individuals
have been victims of enforced disappearance and
torture.
Where such cases proceed regardless, the prosecution of
accused
persons cannot, as a logical conclusion, be said to have any basis
at law
but rather points to a political motive and
persecution.
Anywhere in the world, where a case has become so
politicised to the
extent that all rules of procedure have been thrown aside
by political
players, rather than lawyers, in efforts to "alleviate" the
suffering of
accused persons whilst doing nothing to address the initial
injustice which
sees them continue to face charges which are unsustainable
in terms of
domestic and international law, it is at the very least
insincere of Chekera
to blame lawyers for not following what he perceives to
be the "correct"
legal processes and prolonging the suffering of their
clients.
If anything, those who insist on politicising legal
processes rather
than complying with the law should be the ones facing his
allegations.
Chekera criticises human rights lawyers for their
legal submissions
which, he accuses, are "increasingly taking the tone of
human rights mantra".
Legal arguments seeking to uphold the
fundamental rights and freedoms
of individuals are the right of an accused
person if s/he is to have proper
protection of the law, as is provided for
in our Constitution.
Such disregard for basic rights is even more
astonishing coming from a
lawyer representing an accused person who is
appearing before an
international criminal tribunal. We will be watching
closely to see how
often Charles Taylor's defence team, including Chekera,
will resort to the
"human rights mantra" when they seek to protect the
rights of their client.
It is very easy to blame lawyers for
failures in the justice delivery
system. We are a soft target and do not
mind such attacks as they come with
the terrain, along with assaults,
surveillance, arrests, detentions and
abductions.
We will
continue to appreciate the humour such opinion pieces bring to
a few minutes
of our day. But once the chuckles have faded, we and our
colleagues will
prefer to continue carrying out our professional mandate by
focusing on the
following statistical reality: in the past six years, a
conservative
estimate of over 5 500 human rights defenders have benefited
from legal
representation by lawyers - many represented by those with whom
Chekera has
found fault.
Not one single conviction has been secured by the
state in these
cases. So Chekera will pardon us if we continue using our
"human rights
mantra" to preserve the lives, dignity and rights of our
clients.
*Irene Petras is the Executive Director and Otto Saki is
the
Programmes Coordinator of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights. They write
in
their personal capacities.
BY IRENE PETRAS AND OTTO SAKI
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009 16:20
A
FORTNIGHT ago, the CEO of Air Zimbabwe, Dr Peter Chikumba, addressed
a
parliamentary committee, unreservedly and very frankly disclosing the
extremely constrained financial circumstances of the national
airline.
With equally great transparency, he unhesitatingly made
known many of
the other major limitations confronting the airline and the
vigorous
endeavours of Chikumba and his management team to enhance its
operations and
establish ongoing viability.
His unequivocal
disclosure of the airline's parlous financial state,
and of the magnitude
of the prevailing hindrances to viable operations,
were irrefutable
evidence of the indisputable justification of the
recognition given to him
in recent months by the Zimbabwe Institute of
Management, and the Zimbabwean
Tourism Authority, as a foremost Zimbabwean
public sector
executive.
In like manner, recognition should have been
accorded him, and his
management team, by way of commendation and support,
for being so
unhesitatingly open and devoid of evasiveness in his
presentation to the
parliamentary committee.
However, a
national daily newspaper's editor clearly has a view
diametrically opposite
to that, for on Wednesday last week that newspaper's
editorial was naught
but a scathing attack upon the airline. That editorial
suggested that
"astute management would have taken Air Zimbabwe out of the
woods...", and
suggested that the recurrent changes by government of the
airline's chief
executive was in order "to find someone who can manage the
airline
properly".
This damning diatribe against Air Zimbabwe's
management, and in
particular against those presently in office, is
unfounded and unjust in the
extreme.
I do not seek to fulfill
the role of apologist for Air Zimbabwe and
its management, and have
unhesitatingly criticised the airline, in this
column and elsewhere, when I
considered such criticism justified.
However, as unhesitatingly as
one should voice criticism when due, so
should one commend when commendation
is due, and stand up against unfair,
and prejudiced and partisan
outpourings.
The condemnatory editorial contends that
"Government has battled for
years to make Air Zimbabwe a
success."
The reality is diametrically the opposite. In all
probability, no
other airline servicing national, regional and international
routes is as
under-capitalised as Air Zimbabwe has always been,
wheresoever in the
world such airlines are situate.
Air
Zimbabwe has never provided the requisite equity capital to fund
an
effective fleet of aircraft, to fund the engineering, administration,
marketing and other necessary support infrastructures, and to finance
operational working capital requirements.
Instead, one
government after another has required the airline to fund
its needs by
recourse to borrowings and access to credit. This, on the one
hand, burdened
it -- for many years -- with. excessively great,
unsustainable, finance
charges and, on the other hand, precluded its
accessing the aircraft
required for wholly effective and profitable
operations.
The condemnatory editorial in last week's daily misleadingly states
that
government has backed the airline by supplying it with appropriate
aircraft.
The mind boggles at this contention, for the
airline's entire fleet
comprises two Boeing 767 aircraft which are over 22
years old, three Boeing
737 aircraft which are more than 19 years old, and 3
MA60 aircraft,
purchased from China, the entire liability for payment for
those aircraft
being borne by the undercapitalised airline (with some of the
purchase price
yet to be paid).
Government has neither
supplied the airline with any aircraft, nor has
it provided any substantive
funding for aircraft. Five of the airline's
minimal fleet are extremely
aged, with not only recurrent maintenance needs,
and attendant costs, but
devoid of state-of-the-art fuel efficiency
developments, which are a key
requirement for airline viability in view of
the generally high cost of
fuel.
Moreover, those aircraft are facility and amenity-wise
uncompetitive
against the aircraft used by competitor airlines. It is,
therefore
hallucinatory or deceptive, in the extreme, to contend that
government has
supplied Air Zimbabwe any aircraft, let alone such as enable
the conduct of
profitable operations.
Whilst sticking his
millions of needles into his Air Zimbabwe voodoo
doll, the daily's editor
was myopically oblivious to the many positives of
which the airline can be
justly proud. In contrast, with the undoubted
exception of some of
Zimbabwe's political hierarchy, this columnist must be
one of that airline's
most frequent flyers. Some of the very real
achievements of Air Zimbabwe
include:
a.. A punctuality rating of 95%. The world-over,
passengers have a
tendency to remember whensoever a flight is delayed, but
have conveniently
defective memories of the occasions when the flights are
wholly timeous.
Unavoidably, Air Zimbabwe experiences flight delays, but
nevertheless 19 out
of 20 flights depart and arrive on time, and most
airlines of the world must
be envious of such a record.
a.. Air
Zimbabwe is one of only 14 airlines in Africa to have
attained the
world-recognised safety registration and status of IATA
Operational Safety
Standards compliance.
a.. Few airlines can justly boast having such
an attentive,
friendly and efficient personnel as has Air Zimbabwe, be it
cabin or cockpit
crew, check-in-personnel, ground staff, or others.
What Air Zimbabwe needs is adequate funding, an effective and modern
aircraft fleet, and access to state-of-the-art airline operational
technologies. To achieve that, government needs, first and foremost, to
relieve Air Zimbabwe of its very considerable accumulated debt, which it
would not have had if past governments had adequately and realistically
capitalised the airline.
Secondly, Air Zimbabwe needs to be
devoid of all too frequent
governmental interference, by civil servants and
ministers who have little,
if any, real and practical knowledge of airline
operations. The existence of
such interference has been recurrently evident
from diverse ministerial
parliamentary statements.
Knowledgeable and experienced management must be able to manage
without
hindrance, provided that they do so within the parameters of
corporate
polices prescribed by the airline's directors.
Most of all, the
airline needs to be adequately funded, to settle its
debts, to acquire
necessary aircraft, and fund operations. As government is
bankrupt (as
recently disclosed by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai), it
cannot provide
the funding, and debt financing would not address Air
Zimbabwe's needs, as
irrefutably demonstrated over many years.
Therefore, to access
the necessary capital, Air Zimbabwe should be
privatised and government
contended in its Short Term Economic Recovery
Programme (STERP) an intent to
progress partial or total parastatal
privatisation. That privatisation
should ideally encompass part ownership
being acquired by an appropriate
strategic partner, with many regional and
international airlines having
voiced interest, in the past, in such
partnership.
A
further part of the privatisation should be by facilitating share
acquisition by management and staff, which would be a considerable motivant,
and would enhance prospects of personnel retention, and shares in the
airline should be listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, as soon as the
airline has been effectively restructured for viable operations. Doing so
would also advance Zimbabwe intents of indigenisation and economic
empowerment.
Pursuing these strategies would achieve the
only thing that the daily
newspaper's editor did say correctly, and that is
that "Airzim needs to
stand on its own".
BY ERIC BLOCH
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
18:24
WHO is telling the truth? Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has
been
quoted in the media as saying the ongoing farm invasions and
disturbances
are "isolated incidents" that have been "blown out of
proportion".
"We have investigated examples of those so-called farm
invasions,"
Tsvangirai said. "We have asked the Minister of Lands to give us
a detailed
report of what has been happening over all these so-called farm
invasions
and the outcry over that."
Tsvangirai also insisted
the matter was being attended to, despite the
clear lack of evidence of
serious measures to address the issue by
government.
This
has apparently sparked anger within the beleaguered farming
community.
White farmers, reeling from arrests, assaults
and fresh farm
invasions, have reacted with outrage to Tsvangirai's
comments.
Since the inclusive government came in more than 100
farmers have been
hauled before the courts on allegations of occupying state
land illegally.
In the process, production has been further disrupted and
farm workers have
lost their jobs.
As a result agriculture is
unlikely to recover this year, and indeed
for as long as government allows
such disruptions to continue. The
Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) on Monday
said Tsvangirai's statements are a
clear attempt to "gloss over the truth to
encourage Western donors to loosen
their purse strings".
Donors have so far largely refused to give Zimbabwe meaningful money
demanding that the government must first initiate political and economic
reforms. They want Harare to stop repression, stamp out impunity, restore
the rule of law, respect property rights, uphold human rights and introduce
democratic reforms.
It is clear that without changes -
including media reforms -- Zimbabwe
won't be rehabilitated and reconstructed
any time soon.
That is why it is worrying to hear civil
servants like George Charamba
trying to block media reforms by insisting
that journalists must be
accredited with a defunct state-controlled media
commission. Charamba was
quoted in the Herald yesterday claiming that
accreditation of journalists
will continue despite the fact that the Media
and Information Commission has
ceased to exist in law.
In
trying to buttress his argument, Charamba roped in his personal
lawyer,
Mercy Chineunye-Chizodza, who made a very bad case for him.
Chineunye-Chizodza claimed that the amendments to the constitution and
the
law "didn't take away the reality of the administrative functions of the
Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity".
She alleged
the amendments "didn't take away the reality that there is
a parent ministry
in place and that it works with other relevant government
department in the
administration of the law". Further, she said what was
affected by the
amendments was the old media commission and "not the role of
the parent
ministry". What on earth is this?
The amendments precisely
removed Tafataona Mahoso's Media and
Information Commission and replaced it
with an independent
constitutionally-entrenched body, the Zimbabwe Media
Commission which is yet
to be appointed. The new commission should work
without any interference or
direction from the Information ministry or any
government department. This
is the whole point of the amendments agreed to
by Zanu PF and the MDC at the
end of 2007.
Insisting on
doing things the same old way despite changes to the
constitution, which
override the current relevant legislation to the extent
the statute is in
conflict with the fundamental law, is tantamount to
political resistance to
change.
Instead of trying to fight Tsvangirai after his remarks
that
accreditation is now unnecessary and in the process getting trapped in
legal
mumbo-jumbo, Charamba should be promoting media reforms.
There is nothing lawless about getting rid of repressive statutes.
What we
need is not to cling to discredited institutions and their
administrative
practices, but introduce new ones, in this case the Zimbabwe
Media
Commission, to deal with such issues. If anything is lawless it is
acting on
the basis of defunct laws.
This brings me back to the issue of
farms. The new battles over farms
provide the clearest evidence yet that
little has changed in Zimbabwe since
the formation of the unity government.
In that context, Tsvangirai is not
helping matters by parroting Mugabe's
line that farm invasions are "isolated
incidents" that have been "blown out
of proportion".
He must ask CFU president Trevor Gifford, director
Hendrik Olivier,
Ian Campbell-Morrison or Ben Freeth and hear what they say.
It will also
tell us who is "spinning a yarn".
CFU Vice
President Deon Theron this week said that Tsvangirai was
deliberately
playing down continued farm disruptions because the government
is desperate
to secure foreign funding. He said his comments are "absurd"
and "simply not
true", indicating that the reality on the ground was that
farm attacks have
escalated since Tsvangirai came into office.
"It is like
hoodwinking the international community into giving up
funds by making them
believe everything is fine on the agricultural front,"
Theron said. "If
agriculture does not recover, Zimbabwe will not recover."
This
is precisely the point. Instead of the prime minister pushing the
dishonest
Zanu PF line that there are no fresh land invasions or
disruptions, he
should be dealing with the problem head-on as part of a
holistic economic
recovery programme. The ministerial committee should not
be there to
airbrush the crisis, but resolve it.
What is puzzling is that
Tsvangirai has on many occasions of late
condemned these farm disruptions,
but he sometimes gives conflicting signals
about his real position. The
prime minister must remain consistent on the
need for reforms, including on
the land. Where is the land audit we were
promised?
Tsvangirai is a popular politician and should use that leverage to
push for
sweeping reforms across the board. That is the way forward.
BY
DUMISANI MULEYA
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
18:13
GIDEON Gono's self-seeking and rather pathetic efforts to deflect
the
scorn and ridicule which, he says, have been directed his way since the
advent of the inclusive government are unlikely to bring him any respite or
any comfort. And nor should they.
No amount of "explanation"'
or "justification" or public hand-wringing
can possibly absolve him of the
blame he so richly merits for the
significant role he personally played in
bringing this once-vibrant economy
to the verge of collapse.
He
boasts about his "sanctions-busting" achievements and about how he
single-handedly kept the economy afloat, using his mantra of "unorthodox
methods for unorthodox situations". This is just plain
nonsense.
During Ian Smith's UDI, prior to independence, the
country was
subjected to a full United Nations-sanctioned economic blockade,
rendered
mandatory by a Security Council resolution.
The
Reserve Bank governor at that time also had to resort to
unconventional
measures in order to circumvent the sanctions. His efforts,
together with
those of a competent Minister of Finance and other elements of
the
administration, year after year, saw the entire tobacco crop being sold
off
in Europe.
His efforts saw hundreds of thousands of tonnes of
fruit and
vegetables, beef, pork and a range of dairy products exported to
more than a
dozen countries across the African continent - all in defiance
of the
international embargo.
His efforts saw the
acquisition, by the local airline, and from right
under the noses of the
Americans, of three Boeing 707 aircraft and a DC 8
cargo
aircraft.
Now, that was sanctions-busting! Using scarce foreign
currency
resources to generate more foreign currency. Import substitution
wherever
possible. Discretion and secrecy to acquire sensitive
material.
What Gono did, instead, was the very opposite of what
sanctions-busting is all about, and, his recklessness and incompetence - as
a sanctions-buster - arguably hastened the evisceration of the national
economy.
Faced with a situation where the country was
denied access to foreign
currency loans or any form of balance of payments
support, but where exports
of minerals and horticulture were still
generating some foreign currency
inflows, it was Gono's duty to use those
scarce resources as judiciously as
possible: and, wherever possible, to use
them to generate more foreign
currency inflows and to promote domestic
manufacturing wherever possible so
as to lessen the need for imported
goods.
What Gono did was to squander those scarce resources -
at times in the
most irresponsible manner possible - on programmes and
projects from which
there could never be any hope of forex
generation.
Nothing could have been less "sanctions-busting" in nature
or more
damaging to domestic industry than his manic import programmes.
Rather than
allocate resources to the country's automotive industry - the
Quests and
Willowvales of this world - Gono chose to spend millions and
millions buying
vehicles from South Africa. The impact on the domestic
industry has bordered
on the ruinous.
Rather than allocate
resources to the country's food-manufacturers -
the millers, the bakers, the
cooking oil manufacturers, Lever Brothers etc -
Gono opted to import food
hampers, again from South Africa. Millions and
millions of dollars flowing
out of the country. Not one cent of forex
generated!
The
haphazard manner in which these import programmes were
implemented, with the
wrong seeds, defective fertilisers and unsuitable
tractors being delivered -
either too early or too late to have any
significant impact on food
production - merely emphasise the incompetence of
those in charge of the
programmes.
Have all the millions and millions of dollars
thrown into those
programmes eased the food supply situation at all? Is the
country any less
dependent now on donated food than before the RBZ
squandered all those
millions?
An apparent complete lack of
accountability, again, runs totally
contrary to every tenet of the
successful sanctions-buster's Bible. Is there
any detailed record at all of
where all that money went? As the tractors and
harvesters and Isuzu trucks
were doled out, was any record kept? Were they
loaned out? Were they just
given out? Is there any form of repayment
expected from those to whom these
vehicles and other agricultural equipment
have been handed?
We read that millions of dollars had also been "loaned" to government
departments and Zanu PF bigwigs. For what, on earth? Is there any record of
those loans - how much, to whom, for what purpose exactly, and, most
importantly, on what conditions? Are those loans going to be paid
back?
What Gono did, therefore, was literally to squander
dwindling export
revenues - scarce foreign currency - on schemes and
programmes which had no
prospect whatsoever of generating any foreign
currency income, which had no
discernible benefit in terms of import
substitution and, in so far as the
loans-to-bigwigs are concerned, little if
any real prospect of repayment.
His approach and his methods constitute the
very antithesis of
sanctions-busting competence.
*Bazely is an
independent researcher.
BY SEWLYN BAZELY
http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/
Thursday, 28 May 2009
18:11
THE fight between Zanu PF and the two MDC formations over Reserve
Bank
Governor Gideon Gono's fate will apparently be with us for a long time.
For
all practical purposes, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai indicated last
week
that Gono's position remained as one the few outstanding issues in
fulfilling the requirements of the Global Political Agreement
(GPA).
A week earlier, the MDC-T national council decided that the
issue of
Gono and Attorney-General Johannes Tomana were taking too long to
resolve
and should therefore be referred to Sadc, as the guarantor of the
GPA.
According to the GPA, a matter should be referred to the Sadc
after
the parties to the GPA declare a stalemate. Whether that was the case
regarding the issue of Gono and Tomana has not been made public. What has
however since emerged is that President Robert Mugabe has restated his
rejection of the move to unseat Gono.
He told mourners at
the burial of Gono's brother at the weekend that
Gono would not be leaving
his post. Those calling for the governor's
removal, said Mugabe, "were
wasting their time".
That means that's a closed chapter for
Zanu PF. The MDC will now weigh
its options.
Many however
will be alarmed by the dramatic entry of the military
into this political
fray.
It all started with Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa
telling the
same gathering that those calling for Gono's removal were in
effect pushing
a regime change agenda. They were calling for the removal of
Zanu PF from
power, declared Chinamasa, warning that would not happen. He
said Gono had
engaged in so-called quasi-fiscal activities with full cabinet
authority.
Air Vice-Marshal Henry Muchena, representing service
chiefs of the
army, police, Prison Service and the Central Intelligence
Organisation,
immediately weighed in, saying Zimbabwe was at war against
sanctions and
Gono was part of the fighting machine. He said politicians, in
trying to
interfere in state institutions, were provoking a reaction from
the army.
This is unsettling for Zimbabwe. We acknowledge there
are numerous
problems in the implementation of the full provisions of the
GPA. Tsvangirai
has in the past talked of "residual resistance" from certain
quarters of the
old establishment. But we did not expect the uniformed
forces to be so
brazen in their interference in political
disputes.
In fact Muchena said those calling for Gono's removal
should expect
open defiance. He said many Zimbabweans had benefited from
Gono's policies
as part of the land reform programme.
This
on its own suggests a security establishment which is less than
neutral, let
along professional, in its view of competing political
interests in the
country.
It suggests securocrats have taken a political position
that certain
changes are permissible while others are not. This must have a
chilling
effect on elected opposition leaders who might have thought they
were free
to propose changes to how things have been done in the past. How
wrong they
were!
What is most worrying about these military
pronouncements is that they
were made in the presence of President Mugabe
himself. Nothing will stop any
thinking person from speculating that
President Mugabe either directly or
tacitly supports this
position.
If that were remotely true, it would represent a huge
blot on Zimbabwe's
struggle for democracy. It is unheard of in most
democracies, even when
measured by very low African standards, for the
security forces to make
their opinions public on political
disputes.
For all the erosion of our civil and political
liberties over the past
few years, Zimbabwe is still not a military junta.
The army should be told
in no uncertain terms to confine itself to the
barracks and keep its
political opinions to itself.
That is
the least the MDC can plead for. We are not interested right
now in the
merits or lack thereof of the fight between Gono and Finance
minister Tendai
Biti. Whatever the case, it is not for the army to play
arbiter.