Monsters and Critics
May 31, 2007, 7:59 GMT
Harare/Johannesburg -
Hundreds of residents in the impoverished Harare
suburb of Epworth invaded a
local primary school after rumours spread that
diamonds had been discovered
in the playgrounds, reports said Thursday.
The fortune seekers, armed
with picks and shovels and some carrying babies
on their backs, disrupted
classes, broke down a security wall at Chinamano
Primary School and dug up
school grounds in a frenzied search for gems, the
state-controlled Herald
newspaper said.
But all they found were pieces of quartz, according to
the report.
School authorities woke up (on Wednesday) to see hordes of
men and women
with picks and shovels combing the schoolyard to dig for
diamonds, the paper
said.
Police called in to restore order were at
one point pelted with stones by
the miners who felt it was their right to
mine for riches, it added.
The would-be diamond hunters were spurred on
by recent stories of
desperately poor villagers in the Marange district of
eastern Zimbabwe
becoming rich overnight following the discovery of real
diamonds.
But Mines Ministry officials who visited Chinamano School in
Epworth said
that the stones picked up were not diamonds, or anything of
value, the
Herald said.
The rush is reported to have started after
one of the pupils at the school
picked up two pieces of quartz-like stone
and took them to show his
headmaster.
Rumours then spread that
diamonds had been found at the school, resulting in
the invasion on Tuesday
that lasted through the night, according to the
Herald.
'I teamed up
with other women in this area and we came here to find out for
ourselves,'
Merjury Kunaka was quoted as saying.
Last year the government annulled a
claim to a diamond field in Marange
owned by a foreign mining firm and
opened the floodgates to thousands of
people, many of whom are reported to
have struck it rich at the expense of
Zimbabwe's floundering
economy.
Although the authorities say they have now restored order at the
site, the
country's central bank governor estimates 400 million US dollars
in
potential earnings was looted from Marange.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche
Presse-Agentur
VOA
By
James Butty
Washington, D.C.
31 May 2007
South
African President Thabo Mbeki's role as a mediator between Zimbabwe
president Robert Mugabe and the opposition MDC is being criticized. Mbeki
is mandated by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to mediate
between the government and the opposition. But some opposition members of
South Africa's parliament say President Mbeki has shown leniency and even
favoritism toward President Mugabe.
Wetshotsile Seremane is the
spokesman on African affairs for the opposition
Democratic Alliance. He
explained to VOA why the opposition in South Africa
is not pleased with
President Mbeki's mediation role.
"The reason is that they are putting
conditions for the opposition that they
must cease being violent; they must
accept that it is a legitimate
government. This is very wrong. When you
mediate, you don't take sides. You
try to equalize the situation. You ask
all parties that they must not be
violent against each other. But in this
case when you tell the victims that
they must not be violent, and at the
same time they must change their
opinion in terms of whether they regard the
unfair election that were not
free as fraudulent, it is being unfair," he
said.
Seremane said the South African opposition perceives President
Mbeki's
mediation strategy as favoring President Mugabe of
Zimbabwe.
"We are not passing judgment. We are saying whatever you do, do
it on an
even-handed manner. To use the old idiom, what is good for the
goose is good
for the gander. Don't try and be careless as though you have
got a certain
bias to others and not to others too," Seremane
said.
South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dllamini-Zuma had
reportedly told
critics to stop taking a war approach to President Mbeki's
mediation
efforts.
But Seremane described the minister's comments as
those of a pseudo-democrat
who does not want to use the tenets of
democracy.
"What she is doing, she's being very reckless and childish in
a sense that
people are dying there. You can report me as saying that it is
absolute
nonsense and irresponsibility to say all is well let's forget about
it. The
people are suffering in Zimbabwe, and they are transferring over
here. And
if we fold our hands, there's going to be trouble in South Africa
and the
whole southern Africa area will burn," he said.
Seremane said
President Mugabe's criticism that some MDC members had been
getting training
in South Africa to cause trouble in Zimbabwe is typical of
most
dictators.
"If you look at all dictators, that's cheap propaganda they
have been using.
Sometime I think that everywhere there is a tonic, it must
be an enemy of
Africa. As I pointed out, there is a prophetic composer. He
said our problem
that is in Africa, we keep on complaining that we are
suffering. But if we
look deep into ourselves, we are our own creator of
this suffering because
we are afraid to confront each other," Seremane
said.
He said it is a figment of President Mugabe's own imagination that
Britain
or the opposition in South Africa is seeking his
overthrow.
"The opposition in South Africa wants Zimbabwe to succeed as
it has the
potential to be some country that we can be proud of. But power
corrupts,
and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Now we can say the police
have gone
out of their minds. If you just say the government is doing this
which is
wrong, you 're dead. Our Bantustans were just like that," Seremane
said.
Aspen Daily News, Colorado
Nat Hentoff - Syndicated Columnist
Wed
05/30/2007 10:01PM MST
The United Nations is increasingly becoming a
parody of itself while
American taxpayers last year provided $439 million to
the regular U.N.
budget -- plus a headquarters in New York that the U.N.
management wants to
expand. Not only has this dysfunctional and occasionally
corrupt
organization failed to stop the genocide in Darfur, but on May 11,
the
insatiably brutal Robert Mugabe's government of Zimbabwe was elevated by
the
United Nations to chair its Commission on Sustainable Development --
dealing
with land, rural and economic development, and the
environment.
Astonished, The Economist magazine (May 19) noted that
Zimbabwe, once known
as "the breadbasket of Africa," has had its agriculture
"largely destroyed
by its government's catastrophic policies."
This
year, it was Africa's turn to lead the Commission on Sustainable
Development, and the U.N.'s African members shamefully and inexcusably
support Mugabe's government for that post.
Zimbabwe is a disaster
area. The country's own Social Welfare Commission, as
reported by The New
York Times on Dec. 19, found that 63 percent of the
rural population and 53
percent of the urban population cannot meet basic
food
requirements.
Under Mugabe's rule, Zimbabwe's inflation is the highest on
the planet --
more than 2,200 percent.
The African nations voting to
bestow "legitimacy" on Mugabe's terrorism
against his own people closed
their eyes and consciences to the fact -- as
reported by The Economist --
that "every day desperate Zimbabweans cross the
Limpopo river, braving
crocodiles and occasionally drowning, to try their
luck in neighboring South
Africa. Trapped into illegality there, many are
exploited and
abused."
Meanwhile, the liberator of Zimbabwe from white rule into its
present
wasteland is planning a 2008 campaign for an additional six-year
term and a
$4 million museum (a "shrine") of his lifetime achievements
(Washington
Times, May 2). Mugabe will surely win -- if not by acclamation
then
certainly through long-practiced intimidation. In May, for example, he
forbade Zimbabwe journalists -- those who still risk beatings and prison for
reporting the truth -- from marching in commemoration of World Press Freedom
Day (New York Times, May 7).
While the United Nations elevates Mugabe
to alert the world on vital issues
of sustainable development, Christopher
Dell, who is ending a three-year
assignment as U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe,
gave National Public Radio (May
15) his assessment of the living hell Mugabe
has created:
"The metaphor I have is that it is like a lake. And as the
waters of the
lake recede, more and more of the fish are being left to die
in the mud. At
the center, the big fish are swimming around nicely and
making huge
fortunes, huge fortunes."
Metaphor turns into reality in
this Dec. 17 dispatch by Erik German of
Newsday from Victoria Falls,
Zimbabwe:
"A few miles south from empty luxury hotels in this once
dazzling tourist
spot, dozens of gaunt young men survive by scavenging food
from the town
dump. Alan Sibanda, 23, has been coming here ... for the past
five years,
scuffling with baboons and vultures for the least-rotten scraps.
Since
midsummer, garbage has been his main source of food."
I guess
the U.N. members who voted to honor Mugabe by making Zimbabwe the
head of
the Commission on Sustainable Development didn't bother to interview
Sibanda
before the final ballot.
To cap the current (and chronic) disgrace of the
United Nations, guess who
the new officers of the U.N. Disarmament
Commission are? The chair is Syria,
home of abundantly armed warring
factions -- and the vice chair, believe it
or not, is Iran, the leading
prospect to blow up its region of the world.
Having this proud stoker of
nuclear destruction become second-in-command of
the U.N. Disarmament
Commission is like springing Jack Abramoff from prison
to fill the new
vacancy at the World Bank.
In one of its series of editorials, "Your U.N.
at Work," the May 19-20 Wall
Street Journal said: "It's a shame the U.S.
didn't respond to the outcome of
these two 'leadership' elections (including
Zimbabwe heading the Development
Commission) and walk away from both of
these useless U.N. outfits."
It makes much more sense for us to walk away
from the United Nations itself,
period. There are other organizations that
-- with more help from us and
other concerned nations -- can feed the hungry
and provide medical aid for
those in need around the world. But Eleanor
Roosevelt's dream of the United
Nations serving as an international beacon
of human rights has become a
nightmare of millions of people's betrayed
hopes.
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First
Amendment.
Distributed by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Monsters and Critics
May 31, 2007, 6:11 GMT
Johannesburg - Outgoing
British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in South
Africa Tuesday for a
two-day visit on the last leg of his farewell tour of
three African
countries before he leaves office on June 27.
Blair arrived Tuesday
morning in Johannesburg from Sierra Leone, where he
received a rapturous
welcome for his country's armed intervention in the
West African country's
civil war in 2000.
On Thursday he was scheduled to deliver a major policy
speech on Africa at
the University of South Africa before meeting with
former president Nelson
Mandela and visiting a Soweto hospital.
On
Friday he is set to hold 'intensive discussions' with President Thabo
Mbeki
on issues ranging from Zimbabwe to his reported plans for the
establishment
of a foundation for Africa after he steps down.
South Africa's Foreign
Ministry has described the visit as 'significant'
since it takes place on
the eve of the G8 summit in Germany, at which Africa
will feature
prominently. Blair made African development a cornerstone of
his tenure as
British leader.
Blair told South Africa's Sunday Times he and Mbeki would
'discuss the
desperate crisis in Zimbabwe, which is causing such misery for
its people.'
Mbeki has been appointed by the 14-nation Southern African
Development
Community to mediate between Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party of
President
Robert Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
over the
country's political standoff.
In Sierra Leone, Blair called
on Western countries to provide financing,
training and equipment for
African peacekeeping missions, such as the ones
in Darfur and
Somalia.
Blair's African tour also took him to Libya where he announced
the return by
British oil giant BP to the country after a more than 30- year
hiatus.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
FinGaz
Njabulo Ncube Chief Political
Reporter
Rival factions to meet Mbeki as united front
OPPOSITION leaders
Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara of the two
Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) factions quietly slipped out of the
country for Pretoria
yesterday to keep the fires burning vis-a-vis Thabo
Mbeki's mediation effort
in Zimbabwe as the South African leader promised
that significant progress
will have been made before the end of June.
Tsvangirai and Mutambara
travelled to Pretoria on Tuesday on the eve of a
meeting between Mbeki and
outgoing British premier Tony Blair, who is on a
farewell trip to the
African continent, spearheading European and American
pressure on the South
African president to harden his stance on Zimbabwe.
Blair, accused by Harare
of pushing a regime change agenda against President
Robert Mugabe's
embattled government, this week said he would use his
two-day visit to hold
"intensive" talks on Zimbabwe with Mbeki.
Britain and other western powers
have accused Harare of widespread human
rights abuses and turning one of
Africa's most promising states into the
world's fastest shrinking economy
with a record inflation of over 3 700
percent. The Zimbabwean government
denies running down the agro-based
economy, attributing the meltdown to
targeted sanctions imposed on the
country's ruling elite by the United
States and the European Union.
Mbeki this week claimed to have made
"significant progress" in brokering
talks between the MDC and President
Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party, saying he
would be ready to report back to
leaders of the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) by the end of
next month.
But as his June deadline approaches, the positions of the feuding
parties
appear to be hardening as shown by the arrest last weekend of 200
opposition
activists on trumped up charges.
On the one hand, the MDC is
demanding a new constitution before any further
elections are held, but
President Mugabe says the opposition does not have a
popular mandate to make
such a demand, reminding his opponents that they
rejected constitutional
reforms suggested by his government in the 2000
referendum.
"There is no
way a new constitution can be written between now and March.
The opposition
must have a mandate from the people for that kind of thing to
happen, and
currently they haven't got it," the veteran Zimbabwean leader
was quoted
saying.
Tsvangirai, a former trade unionist, was quoted last week as saying
the
cause of the Zimbabwean crisis was disputed elections, and that such
disputes would continue as long as polls were held under the current
constitution inherited from Britain, but amended 17 times since independence
in 1980.
ZANU PF, on the other hand, blames the crisis on Blair, accusing
him of
funding the opposition, claims rejected by the MDC.
A meeting of
SADC's ministerial troika of the organ on defence and politics
in
Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, last week reiterated its concern over Zimbabwe,
reaffirming Mbeki's mandate and a planned investigation into "Zimbabwe's
economic situation."
Yesterday, spokesmen for both factions of the MDC
confirmed their leaders
were in South Africa.
"President Tsvangirai is
attending a conference where he delivered a paper
(yesterday morning)," said
Tsvangirai's spokesman, William Bango.
Gabriel Chaibva, the spokesman for
Mutambara, said the former university
student leader was on a routine visit
to South Africa, where he runs a
business.
But other officials confirmed
that the two leaders will privately engage
Mbeki and other members of the
ruling African National Congress.
According to these officials, the
opposition will also press for the
inclusion of other "democratic forces" in
the proposed talks.
Yesterday, the secretaries general of the two factions,
Tendai Biti and
Welshman Ncube, also travelled to South Africa.
During
his meeting with Mbeki today, Blair is expected to press South Africa
to
take a tougher position on Zimbabwe.
South Africa, which prefers quiet
diplomacy, has already rejected such a
stance, saying western-style pressure
on President Mugabe had not yielded
any results.
South African foreign
affairs minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, indicated
this week that Mbeki's
government would not be pressured into adopting a
tougher stance on
Zimbabwe.
"You must not push the country over the brink, you must pull it
back from
the brink. That is our approach," she told the South African
parliament.
She said Zimbabweans held the key to the success of Mbeki's
mediation.
"The success of President Mbeki's facilitation largely depends on
the
political will of the Zimbabwean government and opposition political
parties
to take Zimbabwe out of this crisis," she said.
Mbeki's previous
efforts as mediator floundered, but SADC, at an
extraordinary summit in
March, appointed him to play the same role under its
auspices.
Regional
leaders fear the contagion of the Zimbabwe economic crisis, which
has seen
an estimated three million economic refugees fleeing to South
Africa, will
affect their countries.
Blair, whose government previously played host to
several opposition
leaders, including Tsvangirai, has pledged that the
Labour Party's policy on
Africa would not change after he hands the reins to
his successor, widely
expected to be finance minister Gordon Brown.
"We
will discuss the desperate crisis in Zimbabwe, which is causing such
misery
for its people and now having a damaging impact on neighbouring
countries,"
said Blair, in an interview with the South African Sunday Times.
Mbeki has
appointed Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi,
director-general in the
Presidency, Frank Chikane, deputy foreign affairs
minister Aziz Pahad, legal
advisor Mojanku Gumbi, and Ntsaluba to lead his
mediation push.
FinGaz
Staff
Reporter
HEALTH delivery services at Zimbabwe's main referral hospitals
have
virtually collapsed, with authorities shutting down key units at the
four
largest hospitals in reaction to a drastic drop in the number of staff
turning up for work.
Parirenyatwa and Harare hospitals in the capital
and Mpilo and Bulawayo
central hospitals in Bulawayo have closed most
departments, leaving only the
casualty wings, and are operating with
skeleton staff, as health
professionals and aides fail to turn up for work
due to low salaries.
Sources at the government hospitals said the situation
was worsening every
week, with no sign of a solution in sight.
Officials
said the maternity wing at Parirenyatwa Hospital was closed last
weekend,
compelling expectant mothers to turn to expensive private
hospitals. Many
more, however, have resorted to fly-by-night maternity homes
in the
high-density suburbs, where sanitary conditions are said to be
appalling.
Edwin Muguti, the deputy Health Minister, admitted the
situation at
hospitals was critical. But he insisted the government was
working to
minimise inconveniencing patients.
"There has been no
improvement since the workers stopped coming to work. But
we are trying our
best to keep the hospitals open and fully functional,"
said Muguti. "We are
doing something for the workers, including nurses and
doctors, but we fear
our efforts as far as awarding better salaries and
working conditions are
concerned are being eroded by inflation. The problem
is the economic
difficulties we are facing."
Angry stakeholders who called The Financial
Gazette yesterday reported that
staff at Parirenyatwa and Harare hospitals
were only attending to
emergencies.
The situation in Harare has been
compounded by the closure of almost all
municipal clinics due to a lack of
personnel, drugs and equipment.
In Bulawayo, the situation at Mpilo Central
Hospital was yesterday reported
to be serious. A skeleton staff consisting
entirely of trainees was said to
be attending to emergency cases. Things
were no different at Bulawayo
Central Hospital.
In February, the
government tried to mollify health workers by announcing
two salary
increments within a month after a crippling six-week strike.
Nurses were
awarded an additional $263 000 on top of their improved January
salaries of
$195 000, bringing their monthly earnings to between $458 000
and $500
000.
Wards visited by this newspaper at Parirenyatwa and Harare hospitals
yesterday were deserted, with nurse aides, administration and general staff
having stayed away. Health Minister David Parirenyatwa admitted earlier this
month that health workers could no longer afford bus fares to and from
work.
On a salary of $500 000, a nurse needs to pay an average of $840 000 in
bus
fares per month.
FinGaz
Clemence Manyukwe,
Rangarirai Mberi Staff Reporter
MINES Minister Amos Midzi and a
parliamentary portfolio committee have made
sharply contrasting assessments
of the Zimbabwe Mining Development
Corporation (ZMDC)'s capacity to mine the
controversial Marange diamond
fields.
A report by the Mines, Tourism
and Environment portfolio committee says the
ZMDC cannot viably extract
diamonds in Marange without the backing of a
foreign investor. This is
contrary to comments made by Midzi on Tuesday that
government would not
bring in foreign capital to partner ZMDC in Marange,
saying the parastatal
could "go it alone".
In a report presented to the House of Assembly last
week, the parliamentary
committee said ZMDC had failed to fund adequate
geological surveys.
"Your committee noted with concern that ZMDC does not
have the capacity or
financial resources to carry out feasibility studies,
to mine or to put a
security fence around the area."
But Midzi said the
ZMDC had secured fencing from South Africa to widen a
security cordon to
12km. And while the committee found that ZMDC had not
made any meaningful
surveys of the area, Midzi said the corporation had
already successfully
conducted a trial mining run, increasing ore processed
to 25 tonnes per day
from two tonnes in April.
Asked whether the government would seek a foreign
partner to fully exploit
the mineral deposits in the area, Midzi said he was
confident the ZMDC could
mine viably without foreign backing.
"We are
satisfied that the diamond yield is enough to enable the ZMDC to
move to the
next stage. The ZMDC has not drawn from any external source so
far, and we
are confident the project can sustain itself from the diamonds
it is mining
there," said Midzi.
However, the Members of Parliament said their
investigations established
that ZMDC did not have a long-term plan. It also
did not have the financial
capacity to survey diamond fields in the Odzi,
Chirasika and Wengezi areas.
"A number of gold companies and the diamond
project in Chiadzwa need
investors in order for the country to derive
maximum benefits from
minerals," the committee reports. "Local and foreign
investors are willing
to invest in the mining sector, but are uncertain
about the policy framework
of the government."
ZMDC's activities in
Marange have increased despite a legal challenge by
Africa Consolidated
Resources (ACR), which says it was unfairly stripped of
the Marange
claim.
Andrew Cranswick, chief executive officer of ACR, told The Financial
Gazette
in a recent interview that Marange would require an investment of
US$20
million for an eight-month initial development phase.
Midzi
insists, however, that ZMDC's funding will come from the gems it will
export
once full production begins.
The ZMDC has not exported any of the diamonds it
has extracted since April
22 when its trial run began, Midzi said.
FinGaz
Kumbirai Mafunda Senior
Business Reporter
ZIMBABWE'S tobacco growers this week swarmed the
tobacco auction floors as
they frantically sought to cash in on firming
prices before the erosion of
their Zimbabwe dollar
incentives.
Auctioneers reported that volumes had this week significantly
increased as
growers rushed to dispose of their crops early to buy assets
and inputs for
the next season before prices skyrocket further.
At the
Tobacco Sales Floor (TSF), auctioneers were battling to book bales
due to a
flood of growers.
The government granted tobacco growers a support price of
$40 000 per kg of
tobacco sold at US$1.50 and above but the farmers, who had
earlier on
boycotted auction floors because of an unviable exchange rate,
got a boost
after the central bank said it would buy their US dollars at an
effective
exchange rate of $15 000 per greenback.
The official exchange
rate is at US$1: $250.
Tobacco disposed at the country's three auctions
floors - TSF, the Zimbabwe
Industry Tobacco Auction Centre and the Barley
Marketing of Zimbabwe - since
floors opened in April amounted to 13.4
million kgs valued at US$27.7
million.
Just 7.3 million kg's was sold
during the comparative period last year.
"Everybody is trying to sell," said
Lodwin Gatsi, an operations executive
with TSF. " The support price is not
changing and on the other hand there is
inflation, so growers are selling to
utilise the funds early."
Auctioneers also reported that the average selling
price had firmed to
US$2.05, above the US$1.5o that entitles growers to the
central bank's
support price.
"Deliveries are coming in thick and fast,"
said the Zimbabwe Tobacco
Association president Andrew Ferreira. "There is
congestion at the floors.
There is quite a lot of heavy vehicle build up.
Sales are in full swing
because of the very fair package that government
announced," Ferreira said.
FinGaz
Chris Muronzi Staff Reporter
MINING
group RioZim Limited is courting unnamed foreign investors in London
to
revive its US$1,6 billion thermal generation project started in the late
1990s in the wake of disruptive power cuts that have hit the
industry.
Power outages have dimmed prospects of the long sought after
recovery in the
mining sector - a significant contributor to both the
country's depleted
foreign currency earnings and the gross domestic
product.
The power outages, cutting across domestic and industrial users,
come as the
mining industry is pressing hard for a viable exchange rate to
free itself
from the worsening operating conditions.
RioZim, which has
full control over coal-rich Sengwa Mine, had actively
pursued the thermal
generation project in the 1990s after having secured
Britain's National
Power as the lead investor, but shelved it citing
unfavourable market
conditions.
The Sengwa project, with an estimated 2.2 billion tonnes of coal
reserves,
has the capacity to boost Zimbabwe's power-generation capacity
ahead of the
expiry of the existing power import agreements this year.
Excess power could
also be exported to the rest of the region.
RioZim now
wants resuscitate the project to ensure its mines have
uninterrupted
electricity supplies, the sources say.
Contacted this week for comment,
RioZim chief executive officer Josphat
Sachikonye confirmed the gold miner
had revived the power project.
He said: "We are working on it. We are looking
for a partner, but we have
not found a partner as yet."
FinGaz
Clemence Manyukwe Staff
Reporter
BEITBRIDGE senator Tambudzani Mohadi says River Ranch mine has
not been
submitting production records to government as required by law and
that this
lack of disclosure "creates room for smuggling".
River
Ranch mine is at the centre of an ownership wrangle between Bubye
Minerals
and River Ranch Limited.
Mohadi's remarks were made ahead of
the visit to
Zimbabwe of six inspectors of the Kimberley Process, a global
watchdog
against trade in illegal gems.
The team visited River Ranch mine yesterday as
part of a nationwide probe
that will also take them to the Marange diamond
fields.
The Beitbridge senator, in whose constituency River Ranch mine is
located,
made her remarks during debate
in the senate on the fourth
report of the
parliamentary portfolio committee on Mines, Energy, Environment
and Tourism
on gold and diamond mining.
"President sir, River Ranch mine
is found in my constituency and there is a
legal wrangle on the ownership of
this mine," said Mohadi, who is the wife
of Home Affairs Minister Kembo
Mohadi.
"There is mining taking place, but there are no records of diamond
production being submitted to the Ministry of Mines. This creates room for
smuggling."
River Ranch has
previously insisted it was submitting
production statistics, although it was
not yet exporting the stones.
In a
statement last week, River Ranch Limited chairman George Kantsouris
said:
"To date, we have effected no sales and have dutifully reported our
monthly
production to the mining commissioner, as required by statute."
The Minerals
Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe has declined to export River
Ranch
diamonds until the dispute over the ownership of the mine is settled.
The
long running dispute over River Ranch led to the arrest last week of
Bubye
Minerals directors Adele and Michael Farquhar. They are due to appear
in
court next week to face charges of stripping the mine.
Their lawyer claims
the arrest is designed to silence his clients, who have
previously accused
Solomon Mujuru, a 20 percent River Ranch Limited
shareholder, of trying to
use his political clout to intimidate his rivals.
Mujuru, a retired army
general, is husband to Vice-President Joice Mujuru.
The United Nations
Development Programme says an
independent probe into allegations that its
vehicles could have been used to
smuggle diamonds out of the country is
underway.
FinGaz
Staff
Reporter
MORGAN Tsvangirai's legal challenge against President Robert
Mugabe's
victory in the 2002 presidential election has been reduced to an
academic
exercise because of delays his lawyers say have been engineered by
government.
Tsvangirai's lawyer, Selby Hwacha, said the deportation
last year of Topper
Whitehead, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)'s
legal expert, had
stalled the process.
Hwacha concedes that next year's
polls will be held before an outcome
emerges on the 2002 presidential
election challenge.
"That is what will happen. The matter has, however, not
been withdrawn."
Hwacha said it was necessary to press on with the challenge
even beyond next
year's presidential election, as the suit would serve as a
benchmark on the
conduct of future polls to choose national leaders.
"The
office of the President is expiring next year, but the principle
(behind the
challenge) defies time," said Hwacha.
Hwacha, and MDC secretary for legal
affairs Innocent Gonese, who is also the
party's Mutare Central Member of
Parliament (MP), refuted claims made last
week in the House of Assembly by
acting House leader Emmerson Mnangagwa that
Tsvangirai had withdrawn his
petition.
Responding to charges by Mutare North MDC MP Giles Mutsekwa that
ZANU PF
rigs
elections, Mnangagwa, the ruling party's secretary for legal
affairs, said:
"I would like to assist the House by informing the honourable
member who was
speaking that his party and his president took our party and
our president
to court on that issue, and they have withdrawn the charges
after inspecting
22 constituencies out of 120 and found nothing."
The
opposition claims President Mugabe has deliberately bogged down the
case,
but Terrence Hussein, the President's lawyer, said on Tuesday he was
ready
to resume the case anytime: "We have been ready since 2002."
FinGaz
Clemence Manyukwe Staff
Reporter
TWO Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) bosses in Manicaland
will stand
trial in September for allegedly intimidating witnesses into
withdrawing
violence charges against supporters of State Security Minister
Didymus
Mutasa.
Innocent Chibaya, head of the CIO in Manicaland, and
Denford Masiya, a
senior intelligence agent in Rusape, escaped detention
yesterday only
because the Attorney-General's Office did not request that
they be jailed
pending the start of their trial.
Chibaya, Masiya and
three others - Rusape District Administrator Cosmas
Chiringa, Simbarashe
Muzariri and Robson Makoni - appeared before High Court
judge Justice
Anne-Marie Gowora, but their trial was postponed until all
court documents
relating to the matter have been submitted to court.
"He (Prosecutor Andrew
Kumire) is a very understanding prosecutor. He has
not requested that your
clients be held in custody," Gowora told defence
lawyers.
Kumire is
representing the state in a case that was previously led by
Manicaland area
prosecutor Levison Chikafu, detained last month by police in
what his lawyer
claims is intimidation for the prosecutor's role in the
matter.
The group
would have been tried together with Justice Minister Patrick
Chinamasa, but
the trial was split.
Chinamasa was acquitted on charges of attempting to
defeat the course of
justice, and last month the A-G's office withdrew a
High Court appeal
against the acquittal. The A-G's office has not given
reasons for its
controversial decision.
Chibaya's trial had initially
been due to open on Monday last week, but it
was adjourned after defence
lawyers demanded a transcript of Chinamasa's
trial and judgment, among other
documents.
Defence lawyer Deepak Mehta said they had "made fairly good
progress, but
not complete progress" in getting all the required documents
to court.
Chibaya, Chinamasa and the other five allegedly intimidated war
veteran
James Kaunye into withdrawing charges against 32 Mutasa
supporters.
The group assaulted Kaunye as he mounted a challenge against
Mutasa for the
right to represent ZANU PF in Makoni North in the 2005
general election. The
other accused person died before the trial.
The
Rusape magistrate's court convicted 16 of the ruling party members, 11
of
whom have since been released from prison.
Chibaya was a member of a
commission appointed by President Robert Mugabe in
2004 to investigate
violence between rival factions of his party.
The commission's findings were
never made public. However, in December 2004,
Police Commissioner Augustine
Chihuri said Mutasa had a case to answer.
Mutasa denies any
wrongdoing.
In a recent interview with The Financial Gazette, Kaunye was
evasive on
whether he would again challenge Mutasa in ZANU PF primaries for
the 2008
poll. He said "the people" would decide.
FinGaz
Staff Reporter
THE
High Court has thrown out Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi's
certificate
opposing the granting of bail to Ian Makone, the Movement for
Democratic
Change (MDC)'s director of elections, releasing him on a $150
million
bond.
Makone, dubbed the "most dangerous man in the country" by the head
of the
Central Investigations Department Law and Order Section, Musarashana
Mabunda, has been in detention since March 28 after being arrested for
allegedly recruiting and training "insurgents, saboteurs or
terrorists".
Police claim Makone masterminded a spate of petrol bombings that
hit the
country in March and April.
The state had opposed bail, saying
Makone would abscond as he was facing
serious charges that carry a life
sentence if convicted.
"In this respect I must point out that I do not agree
with the approach
taken by the respondent, in particular by Assistant
Commissioner Mabunda,
that the applicant should be kept in custody at all
costs because he is the
most dangerous man in the country," ruled Justice
Karwi. "This attitude
would seem to suggest that the applicant is a
convicted terrorist, which
obviously is not the case. Our law presumes
people to be innocent until
proven guilty," he added.
The judge said
during the hearing, Mabunda had told the court that Makone
was a dangerous
man who had undergone military training in South Africa for
purposes of
destabilising the country.
Mabunda claimed Makone had facilitated military
training for 60 activists.
"Mr Mabunda added that he had dispatched two teams
of investigators to South
Africa to carry out some investigations. One of
the teams was back and the
other one was still there," the judge
added.
The police officer is said to have claimed that investigations were
complex
and that they would be completed by July.
Besides granting Makone
$150 million bail, the judge said he should report
daily to Harare Central
police station and should not interfere with
witnesses. Title deeds to three
houses were also surrendered as surety.
According to papers he filed with
the court, Makone estimates the value of
his assets at $22 billion.
"I
have taken into account the personal circumstances of the applicant. In
particular that he is 57 years old, that he is a married man of fixed abode.
That he is a man of substance, and that he has invested very heavily in this
country. He appears to have his roots in this country. He is a well educated
man."
FinGaz
Stanley Kwenda Staff
Reporter
WHEN Tenson Museta took four months leave from his posting as a
teacher in
the Malipati area of Chiredzi, he had high hopes of making it big
in South
Africa.
He packed his bags and headed for Johannesburg where
he had been offered a
job as a part-time teacher at a private college. His
brief was to teach
mathematics and help develop the curriculum.
On
arrival in South Africa, he planned to stay with a friend, who had
promised
him shelter. The
friend was true to his word and Museta found him waiting at
Johannesburg's
Park Station.
However, the first sign that his dream was
turning into a nightmare did not
take long to appear. Museta's friend
informed him he could no longer offer
accommodation. As a result Museta
joined scores of other Zimbabweans who
have crammed a Methodist Church
building in central Johannesburg.
Armed with his degree in statistics, Museta
had no problem in convincing his
would-be employers that he was the right
man for the job. A week after
getting the job, he was already rubbing his
hands in anticipation of his
first pay cheque in rands.
But once again,
his "city of gold" dream crumbled. He was told he would not
get his weekly
wages. He tried to protest, but all odds were against him.
The college
threatened to report him to the immigration department.
After three days
without food, Museta decided to join his friend as a
gardener in the
Fourways area of Johannesburg.
"It is not easy to get a formal job legally in
South Africa. There are
various processes you have to go through but as you
do this you have to be
doing something to keep you going, which is why I had
to forget that I am a
qualified teacher and take up this job. It is better
here because I make
more money as a garden boy than I made as a teacher in
Zimbabwe."
Museta is just one of the thousands of Zimbabwean teachers who now
roam the
streets of South Africa in search of a better life. Many teachers
are now
working as gardeners by day and waiters in bars by the night, and
none of
them regret their decision to leave the once noble profession.
It
is easy for teachers to make their way into South Africa, because all
they
need to do is to present a government pay slip at the border to get a
visa.
Although they admit that life south of the Limpopo is far from being
the bed
of roses they had hoped for, they all apparently hope that Lady Luck
will
smile on them one day.
"All I can tell you is that as long as you are in
South Africa, you will not
go wrong. It's a matter of time, eventually you
will get a job," said
Museta.
South Africa has listed English and
Mathematics teachers among a range of
critical skills it needs. Up to 36 000
skilled workers are required
urgently, according to the Home Affairs
department.
South Africa has made no secret of the fact that it is looking to
Zimbabwe
for mathematics teachers to help develop its curriculum and improve
pass
rates in Matric examinations.
According to South African press
reports, Zimbabwean teachers have inundated
the Department of Home Affairs
to lodge applications for work permits.
In the meantime, thanks to his job as
a gardener, Museta can now afford to
send his two daughters to a boarding
school. He has bought his wife a
cellphone, a gadget that he could only have
dreamt of on his teachers'
salary back in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwean teachers
are among the lowest paid civil servants in
the country, and the
majority
now spend most of their time
moonlighting, either selling
sweets
or crocheting doilies for sale in neighbouring countries.
It was
reported this
week that schools in Matabeleland South failed to open for the
second term
because most teachers had skipped the border to South
Africa.
The Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe says about
4 500
teachers left the country between January and April this year.
But the
government still plays down the magnitude of the teacher exodus.
"We have no
shortage of
teachers as a country, but we have problems with teachers who are
running
away from remote areas," insists the Minister of Education, Sport
and
Culture, Aeneas Chigwedere.
FinGaz
Staff
Reporter
THE launching of the Media Council of Zimbabwe has been
postponed
indefinitely amid sharp differences among groups involved in the
project,
which is designed to allow the local media to regulate
itself.
The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ), a major partner in the
project,
fears its members, the majority of whom are drawn from the state
media,
could be fired if the union endorsed an entity the government views
as a
threat to its Media and Information Commission chaired by Tafataona
Mahoso.
The Media Alliance of Zimbabwe (MAZ) - comprising ZUJ, the Media
Institute
of Southern Africa (MISA) Zimbabwe and the Media Monitoring
Project of
Zimbabwe - held a meeting on Wednesday last week in a desperate
bid to
salvage the project after ZUJ had expressed reservations about
proceeding
with the initiative.
The proposed voluntary regulatory body,
which has been on the cards since
the 1990s, had been scheduled to be
launched in Harare on Tuesday.
ZUJ vice president, Jacob Phiri, confirmed the
postponement, but denied the
union had developed cold feet.
"The media
council is a very sensitive issue considering that the majority
of our
members are employed in the public media," said Phiri. "We support
the
project, but what we are saying is that let us tread carefully so we
don't
compromise ourselves."
Rashweat Mukundu, director of MISA Zimbabwe, said: "We
held a meeting with
all partners involved in the project where we agreed to
postpone its launch
until all the partners are satisfied that we should
proceed."
Mukundu, however, was optimistic the voluntary media council would
eventually be launched once differences within MAZ are sorted out.
ZUJ
last week took Zimbabwe Newspapers to the Labour Court after management
at
the country's biggest publisher stopped union subscriptions for its
Harare
employees. However, on Tuesday the Labour Court ruled that the
application
by ZUJ was not an urgent matter and would be treated as a
routine
case.
Media groups say voluntary regulation, in contrast to statutory
regulation,
promotes a more professional and ethical reporting environment
while
guarding against media and freedom of expression violations.
FinGaz
Kumbirai Mafunda Senior Business
Reporter
. . . as firms cut fuel costs
Thomas Kakwindi, a messenger at a
Harare-based insurance company, now keeps
his official vehicle at the
company's parking bay.
For deliveries - mostly taking out and collecting
cheques for payments - he
now uses a motorcycle, except if the items are big
or the distance too far
to travel on a motorbike.
"The company said I
will only use the vehicle for deliveries as
far as Mutare and Bulawayo,"
Kakwindi told The Financial Gazette.
Hyperinflation has taken Zimbabwe's
motorists back to bicycles and
motorcycles as fuel prices continue to soar
due to the weakening of the
country's embattled currency.
The renewed
demand in the two-wheeled carriers has triggered a surge in bike
prices.
Prices for motorcycles and bicycles went up 882.9 percent and
136.8 percent,
respectively between March and April 2007 but leapt up
significantly
year-on-year for April by 2 755.4 percent and 3 763.6 percent,
respectively,
according to statistics from the Central Statistical
Office.
Dealers in motorcycles reported robust business, saying companies and
individuals were turning to motorcycles and bicycles to escape increasing
transport costs emanating from rising fuel prices.
In the last two weeks,
the
price of fuel jumped from just $25 000 per litre to nearly $45 000 per
litre.
"Companies are turning to bikes for delivery because it is
cheaper," a sales
representative at The Honda Centre, dealers of the Honda
brand of
motorcycles, said.
Suzuki and Honda bikes, which are imported
from Brazil, Japan and China, are
currently retailing at between US$1 500
and US$4 500 plus an additional $3
million and $4 500, respectively, to
cover duty, value added tax and other
local charges.
Dealers at the
Amalgamated Motor Corporation, which also sells motorbikes,
reported brisk
motorbike sales.
"As you can see we have run out of stock. We are getting big
orders from
companies," said a sales representative standing next to an
order of
motorbikes for Pump Aid, a local non-governmental
organisation.
Officials at The Honda Centre said they were battling to meet
demand.
Increased use of motorcycles has also ignited huge demand for
motorcycle
spares.
"Our workshop is quite busy
with people bringing in
bikes for repair," said a Honda Centre
representative.
FinGaz
Rangarirai Mberi News
Editor
WHAT do you do when you're living in some tiny mud-and-pole hut,
and you're
trying to hide a bull elephant?
Maybe our government
bureaucrats have the answer. They tried it two weeks
ago, but their elephant
- April's shock inflation data - still came out
charging, a bunch of
government securocrats and state media spin types
frantically trying to pull
it back by the tail.
On Wednesday, May 16, journalists from no less than two
private newspapers
and at least two international news agencies working in
Harare contacted the
Central Statistical Office (CSO), hoping to get the
April inflation figures.
By then, the data had already been delayed by a
week. All the journalists -
plus a good number of private economists we have
asked - were, as late as
1700hrs that Wednesday, fed the line: "Maybe
tomorrow".
So a rumour that inflation was now testing 4000 percent remained
just that,
a rumour. Until the next day.
On the Thursday, many looked
past The Herald's front-page screamer:
"President Mugabe approves Incomes
Act".
But, there were some readers who gritted their teeth and waded through
the
story - plodding through 23 paragraphs and four crammed broadsheet
columns -
only to stumble upon this absolute gob smacker: "The much awaited
(incomes)
body comes as it emerged (writer's emphasis) yesterday that the
consumer
price index rose 100.7 percent in April, meaning prices more than
doubled
last month, and this followed a 50.5 percent increase in
March."
Then to paragraph number 25.
"The corresponding annual inflation
rate at the end of April," we are
casually told, "rose to 3713.9
percent."
By all accounts, this is the first time in our country's glorious
history
that inflation data is said to have "emerged".
Until that day,
inflation
figures were said to have
been "released", sometimes "showed",
or even "reported", by the CSO.
So, disappointed that the CSO had given us
their "maybe tomorrow" only to
see the figures "emerge" the next day - under
a pile of, it must be said,
uninspiring news of a law against inflation, we
went about last week trying
to find out why the rules had changed such that
inflation numbers should now
only "emerge", and not be "released".
First,
we contacted a very senior bureaucrat in the Ministry of Economic
Development, which has taken over the CSO from Finance.
He swore he had
been told by CSO that the figures had been released to "the
press" much
earlier than the Wednesday.
But then there were other officials in the same
ministry who swear they had
seen the CSO printout as early as the previous
Thursday - May 11.
But, apparently, somebody has instructed that all CSO data
should no longer
come directly from CSO, but through Information and
Publicity. So, these
government conspiracy theorists swear, it was agreed
that the gory data be
kept in a bottle until President Robert Mugabe signed
the Incomes and
Pricing Commission Act - a law setting up a pricing
police.
So in the end, it is claimed, it was not from the CSO that the
inflation
numbers "emerged", it was at the end of a labyrinth of red tape -
each
deskbound bureaucrat taking his turn to slap a pudgy stamp over the
numbers - until they truly did "emerge" at The Herald.
Implausible
theory?
Perhaps, but hands up if
you ever seen inflation
figures
"emerging", even in Borat's sick vision of Kazakhstan, or Gerbunguly
Berdimuhammedow's Turkmenistan, where presidents are elected on 99 percent
vote majorities.
Government, like most people, has developed a phobia for
numbers.
So we must now prepare to see inflation figures going the way of
other bits
of statistics that government has, over the years, quietly
stopped supplying
the market.
Hands up if you know Zimbabwe's real
jobless rate, or if you've never had to
work out the real budget deficit on
your own, or if you've ever seen the
current account, if you really know how
much grain Sam Muvuti, the acting
boss at the national granary, has for
us.
There is a scary trend "emerging" here. Last month, March data was canned
for two weeks until central bank boss Gideon Gono let it out in
Bulawayo.
This time, April inflation only "emerged" as background to a story
on some
new law.
What's next? An official declaration banning the release
of a number that
government, quite clearly, no longer wants anybody to see?
Or, better yet,
hard-chin types - in camouflaged straightjackets and
fiddling with AK
rifles - holding a press conference at Inkomo Barracks,
telling petrified
reporters that inflation has slowed to 6 percent, "take it
or leave it"?
What is it our ancestors said about "that which has horns" not
being
possible to wrap? At 3714 percent, these are not just horns. These are
ten-foot elephant tusks.
FinGaz
Mavis Makuni Own
Correspondent
The whole of Southern Africa is agog with excitement over
the hosting of the
Soccer World Cup in South Africa in 2010.
Every
country in the region is doing its best to position itself to make as
much
mileage as possible in terms of tourist traffic and foreign currency
earnings.
More importantly, national teams are getting down to serious
business in
their 2010 preparations firstly, to qualify to represent their
countries at
the world's premier soccer event and then to bring the trophy
home. Those
who follow developments in soccer closely say some teams,
particularly in
Europe, now employ full-time psychologists to work with
players. The
psychologists' task is said to be to instill a "winning"
philosophy in the
teams and convincing the players that if they do
everything right, nothing
is impossible. It is safe to conclude that right
now even the most poorly
equipped soccer team from the most notorious banana
republic or one from a
poor country that has recently emerged from the "Iron
Curtain" believes it
can go to South Africa and after giving current World
Cup champions Italy, a
bloody nose, triumphantly take the coveted trophy
back home.
There is something magical about the World Cup. For its duration
of about a
month, the World Cup brings the world together, enabling people
from various
parts of the globe to temporarily forget about wars, famine,
floods,
disease, civil strife and other political and social upheavals.
Every
individual who follows events on radio or watches matches on
television gets
the feeling of having "been there" when a memorable moment
occurred. With
its clear rules - although some people like this writer will
never
understand the "off side" rule - soccer gives a glimpse of what this
world
could be if leaders in all spheres of life, particularly politics,
were as
rigorously held to the tenets of fair play, transparency, playing by
the
rules, accepting defeat gracefully and winning magnanimously as happens
in
soccer.
The analogy may be tenuous but while soccer teams in Africa
and the entire
world must be psyching themselves up to think positively for
2010,
opposition political parties in Africa have been bombarded with
negative
advice to make the expectation to lose elections their operating
philosophy.
At a workshop on electoral conflict management mechanisms held
in Vumba in
the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe at the beginning of this
month,
independent electoral commissions from southern Africa were reported
to have
called on opposition political parties to stop rejecting election
results
and instead accept defeat quietly. This was necessary so as to avoid
conflicts in the post-election period, said Moteka Mohale, of the Lesotho
Independent Electoral Commission at the workshop, which was organised by the
Zimbabwe Election Support Network.
"It is the nature of the opposition to
complain whenever they lose an
election . Just because they have lost, they
will say elections were rigged
and things were not done properly." Mohale,
who as the chief legal officer
of the Lesotho Independent Electoral
Commission would be equivalent to a
referee in a soccer game, neglected to
mention that in most African
countries, things are indeed not done properly
as far as the conducting of
elections is concerned. In many countries
conflicts arise because elections
are held in an atmosphere in which the
ruling party abuses its power of
incumbency. This usually takes the form of
the enactment of repressive media
and other laws that make it impossible for
opposition politicians to
communicate their ideas and sell themselves to the
electorate. Endless
impediments are placed in the path of opposition
parties.
These can include arresting leaders of opposition parties on trumped
up
treason charges so as to disable them politically and demoralise their
supporters in the run up to elections. Kizza Besigye, leader of the Forum
for Democratic Change in Uganda had such an experience in 2005 when he was
arrested in the run-up to presidential elections, which were naturally won
by 20-year incumbent, Yoweri Museveni. Besigye was released when it was
already too late to undertake any meaningful campaigning. Would Mohale say
under the circumstances, Besigye was wrong to dispute the election results
citing electoral fraud and an uneven playing field? Would he say former
Nigerian vice president,Atiku Abubakar should not have felt aggrieved when
trumped up corruption charges were levelled against him at the eleventh hour
prior to general elections in Nigeria two months ago?
Similar questions
can be asked in respect of Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of
the Movement for
Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, who has previously spent
three years with
trumped up treason charges hanging over his head. This was
in addition to
other obstacles his party had to overcome such as the
draconian Public Order
and Security Act, which makes it virtually impossible
for the opposition to
organise rallies and mobilise support. Under the
provisions of this law, the
holding of political rallies is currently banned
in MDC strongholds. The
Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act
deprives opposition
groups, as it does ordinary Zimbabweans, of the freedom
of expression. The
only "access" opposition parties are allowed in the
official media takes the
form of endless attacks and denunciations casting
them as sell-outs and
puppets of Western governments. If a snap election had
been held in Zimbabwe
over the last two months, Tsvangirai would have had to
go on the campaign
stump with a swollen face and broken body after being
battered by state
agents in March. Some of his key aides and MDC legislators
would either have
been in hospital or on crutches. No free and fair
elections can be conducted
where such horrors are allowed to happen but
electoral commissions in
southern Africa turn a blind eye on these and
continue to preach their
defeatist doctrine.
Electoral commissions in most African countries are
appointed by the
government and as a result are not autonomous. They know
where their bread
is buttered and do all they can to avoid biting the hand
that feeds them
even when the onus is on them to be fair to the electorate.
This is amply
demonstrated by the fact that most opposition parties in
Africa have never
won elections in their countries since the end of
colonialism about 50 years
ago. This phenomenon, which defies the law of
averages and is experienced
only in countries under authoritarian regimes
and one-party states, should
be investigated . The call by the electoral
commissions that gathered in
Vumba for opposition parties to accept defeat,
means these groups must be
perpetual losers for the sake of avoiding
conflict and for the convenience
of sitting governments. These commissions
seem to have lost focus with
regard to the purpose of elections, which is to
enable the people to vote
freely for leaders and representatives of their
choice.
The main responsibility of electoral commissions is to ensure that
polls are
free and fair. Instead of trying to silence opposition parties so
as to make
life easy for themselves, these bodies should investigate the
persistent
allegations of intimidation, vote buying, electoral fraud,
state-instigated
violence against opposition supporters, skewed electoral
laws, and outright
rigging that characterise elections in most African
countries. The onus is
on these bodies to insist that incumbent governments
play by the rules so
that elections are conducted in a conducive atmosphere
and on a level
playing field as happens in soccer.
FinGaz
Charles Rukuni Bureau
Chief
BULAWAYO - The indefinite postponement of ZANU PF provincial
elections in
Bulawayo marks another interesting turn in the tug-of-war for
the control of
the political turf in the volatile province.
The
Financial Gazette can reveal that the restructuring of the province had
to
be extended indefinitely after party heavyweights in the ZANU PF
politburo
failed to bulldoze their way through elections, which would have
favoured a
faction aligned to them.
It also emerged this week that the faction, which
currently leads the
interim provincial executive had suspended 50 members
belonging to the
opposing faction but the suspension was nullified by deputy
national
political commissar Richard Ndlovu who is heading the taskforce
charged with
restructuring the party in the beleaguered province.
The
restructuring is meant to pave the way for elections to choose a
provincial
executive, which were originally scheduled for the end of April.
The party
could not hold elections after it realised that there were more
people who
had been locked out of Davies Hall, the venue of the elections,
than were
inside.
Though senior party officials have denied the existence of factions
in
Bulawayo, those who were in the hall were mostly from the "petition"
faction
which supports members of the politburo from the province while
those who
were outside belong to the "godhi" faction, loyal to younger war
veterans.
This faction has swept almost all provincial elections since the
death of
vice-President Joshua Nkomo and the formation of the Movement for
Democratic
Change in 1999. But no executive has ever completed its term. The
executives
have been suspended for one reason or another.
The last
elected executive was suspended after the Dinyane meeting in
Tsholotsho at
which it is alleged that six provincial chairmen who had
gathered there
planned to stage a "smart coup" that would have scuttled the
appointment of
Joice Mujuru as vice-President and deposed John Nkomo the
ZANU PF national
chairman and vice-president Joseph Msika.
Following the aborted provincial
elections, the party was given until May 12
to make an audit of its
structures. After that it was given another two
weeks to restructure the
party.
National chairman Nkomo conceded at the weekend that there was more
work to
be done before elections could be held. He extended the mandate of
the
taskforce charged with restructuring the party indefinitely.
The
taskforce is chaired by the deputy national political commissar and
comprises senior party officials from the three Matabeleland provinces of
Matabeleland North, South and Bulawayo.
The cover on the myth that all
was well in the province was blown off on
Tuesday when it emerged that the
interim executive had suspended 50 party
members for failing to attend
meetings at which the audit exercise was to be
carried out.
FinGaz
Bureau
Chief
BULAWAYO - A leading supermarket chain is cashing in on its
reputation for
baking some of the best bread in the city as it has been
baking bread with a
sand-like substance in it but people continue to queue
for its bread.
Several people have phoned The Financial Gazette
complaining about the
quality of the bread. Consumer Council of Zimbabwe
(CCZ) regional manager
for Matabeleland Comfort Muchekeza confirmed they had
received complaints
that bread from all TM supermarkets in the city had some
sand-like substance
in it and had taken up the issue with the supermarket's
management.
The management is said to have told the consumer council that the
problem
was with the entire consignment of flour that they had received from
Harare.
The management in Bulawayo said they had no authority to talk to the
media
about the flour and referred all queries to head office in
Harare.
Graham Jacobs a director of the supermarket chain admitted on Tuesday
that
one batch of flour that was sub-standard had indeed been sent to
Bulawayo.
He said they were working with the supplier to withdraw the
substandard
flour, although some of it had "regrettably already been turned
into bread".
He said the sandy substance was derived from the harvesting
process. A sieve
in the supplier's production machinery has exceeded its
useful life and
should have been replaced. This led to the retention of
particles that
should have been filtered out.
Muchekeza said despite the
complaints he was surprised people were still
queuing for the bread, which
always sold out.
"TM has a reputation for making some of the best bread in
town and people
are just flocking to buy the bread despite the complaints,"
he said.
Muchekeza said so far he had not received any complaints from people
that
had eaten the bread on whether it was harmful or not.
"I have not
heard of any people that have thrown it away, and I do not know
whether it
is harmful or not. Because of the prevailing circumstances, if
the bread is
not harmful, I do not see any reason why it should be
withdrawn. But should
it be proved to be harmful, the flour has to be
withdrawn," he
said.
Jacobs assured consumers that though the bread produced was below the
quality of their usual product it was not dangerous to people.
"Our
policy at TM is to use ingredients of a good quality in any product
that we
make, be it bread or any other bakery, take-away or delicatessen
line," he
said.
"In the case of baker's flour, we are compelled to use a number of
different
sources, as supplies can be unpredictable. The flour supplied
varies in
quality. For this reason, we insist on obtaining a sample of each
batch to
ensure that the flour meets our minimum quality
requirements.
"Having been advised by our customers that our bread in
Bulawayo appears to
contain sand we have carried out an investigation and
found that one batch
of flour was not in accordance with the sample provided
and was, indeed,
below our acceptable quality."
FinGaz
Dumisani Ndlela Business
Editor
ZIMBABWE'S embattled mining sector has a deficit of over 3 000
professionals, a sector expert told a recent mining convention, indicating
that the country was losing the bulk of its key staff to African countries
and overseas.
Aaron Mudhuwiwa, the group human resources and external
affairs manager for
RioZim, told a gathering of miners at the Chamber of
Mines Annual General
Meeting (AGM) a fortnight ago that Zimbabwe's mining
sector employed between
30 000 and 35 000 people and needed at least 7 000
professionals.
Currently, the sector had between 3 000 and 4 000
professional, leaving a
deficit of around 3 000.
"The situation is
desperately critical especially in the technical
disciplines," said
Mudhuwiwa, adding: "When mining industry professionals
started to leave, we
said, and we continue to say, 'Pay them better, give
them a Nissan Wolf
Double Cab, sorry rather use a Toyota Vigo 3000 TDI' and
again say to them,
'You will stay, won't you?'"
"Well is it really working . . . The mining
industry is in dire straits with
regards to skills today. Do you realise
that even if all the wrongs in our
economy were righted and we had a great
site for a new mine - we now stand
the chance of failing to open it due to
the fact that we cannot man it
skills wise, effectively," Mudhuwiwa
warned.
He said Zimbabwe was losing the majority of its professionals to
better
paying countries, dismissing the myth that the mining staff exodus
was
heading south.
"There is an almost mythical belief that we are losing
our skills mainly to
South Africa. This is not really true. The fact is that
our people pass
through South Africa en-route to other parts of Africa and
the broad world,"
Mudhuwiwa said.
He indicated, however, that South
Africa had a huge skills gap in the mining
sector.
"They (South Africans)
have 15 000 vacancies in the petrochemical, mining
and power generation
industry," he said.
Mudhuwiwa said it was unlikely that Zimbabwe would
succeed in retaining
professional staff because of poor
remuneration.
"Whatever levels of salaries we choose to pay the young
professionals will
still not enable them to buy a car or work towards owning
a house. As long
as the situation remains like this we will not be able to
keep our own
people in our country," Mudhuwiwa said.
He said the
country's tertiary institutions were experiencing a serious
skills flight
because of poor remuneration and poor working conditions.
Lecturers could not
afford doing research work because of a stifling
environment, he said.
"A
case in point here is the infrastructural state of
To C8
From C2
the
University of Zimbabwe where buildings and related infrastructure is in
a
poor state of repair. With very few lecturers left, the institution can
only
churn out a small number of degreed personnel for industry. People are
also
now sending their children to "better universities" outside Zimbabwe.
Chances of such children coming back soon after qualifying are very slim,"
Mudhuwiwa said.
A serious skills haemorrhage has hit Zimbabwe due to the
seven-year economic
recession plaguing the country.
It is believed that
of the country's estimated 13 million people, four
million of them now
reside in the diaspora.
As a result, Zimbabwe has been reduced to a dual role
of being the training
ground for the world's bustling economies and a
dumpsite for the chaff
failing to meet the grade in the competitive
world.
To plug the continued loss of skills in the public sector, the
government
has introduced a bonding system where university and college
students
receiving grants and loans from the state will be compelled to join
the
civil service for specific periods before they can be allowed to find
work
elsewhere.
FinGaz
Staff
Reporter
THE central bank is mulling a possible relaxation of exchange
control
regulations to stop massive skills loss in the mining
sector.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono, who toured
RioZim's
Renco Gold Mine last week, told miners that the central bank might
have to
move in to avert a worsening skills loss across the
sector.
Skilled mining labour is leaving the country for regional countries
such as
South Africa, Namibia and Zambia where they are better
remunerated.
Gono could not give a time frame for the new measures, but this
would mean
that executives and key skilled people in the mining sector might
have to be
paid in foreign currency.
"The country's skills base is
diminishing in the sector and we should do
something. We might have to relax
the exchange regime so that those who can
pay, do so because we might
continue losing people," he said. "We will look
at whatever they are paid in
those countries and we will match that. But
again I am thinking aloud," said
Gono.
Gono's comments come a few months after the Chamber of Mines raised
concerns
with his office highlighting the problem across the sector.
The
central bank boss held a meeting on Tuesday last week with members of
the
gold working committee over problems besetting the miners, which
centered on
late payments from the central bank.
Turning to the issue of outstanding
foreign currency payments, Gono said the
central bank is working on
expunging the payments but did not give a time
frame.
RioZim is the
country's second largest gold producer after Metallon Gold.
Despite a boom in
international gold prices, Zimbabwe's gold miners are
singing the blues
owing to price distortions and an unstable economic
environment, which has
not supported mining development.
First quarter gold production output
figures dropped by 14 percent this
year, according to the Chamber of Mines..
FinGaz
Kumbirai Mafunda Senior Reporter
Police
brutality ruins tourism recovery efforts
THE weather is unfriendly - well
below zero degrees Celsius - but Thembie
Mulanga, the lady at the front
office of the four-star hotel in Nyanga,
about 80 kilometres north-east of
Mutare, beams warmly as she welcomes a
group of over 50 visitors to this
picturesque resort area.
For Thembie, having such a large group of
visitors is an exciting
experience, one she had missed over seven years due
to an economic and
political crisis that has blighted the fortunes of the
country's tourism
sector.
For the first time in a long time, the hotel
bursts into life, reminding
Thembie and fellow employees of the good old
days when Nyanga was a
destination of choice for foreign visitors eager to
catch a glimpse of the
beauty of Zimbabwe's resorts.
It also marked a
revival of the sector, they imagined, and rightly so.
Tourism industry
players had embarked on rigorous international campaigns to
regain lost
confidence among foreign visitors who had grown increasingly
averse to
visiting Zimbabwe due to reports of violence, torture and
lawlessness in the
international press.
The government, feeling the pinch from dwindling foreign
currency inflows as
a result of reduced international tourist arrivals, had
assisted in the
campaigns, splurging billions of dollars in marketing
campaigns mainly
targeted at Asian markets.
Foreign currency earnings
from the tourism industry have slumped from US$777
million in 1997 to less
than $100 million in 2005.
But a new wave of violence and state-sanctioned
brutality against members of
the opposition, lawyers, human rights activists
and journalists has once
again ruined prospects of revival in the tourism
industry.
The United States government last month issued a fresh travel
warning to its
citizens, indicating that Zimbabwe was no longer a safe
travel destination
and urging Americans to shun the country.
"The
security forces increasingly are acting with impunity. The government
publicly has defended its right to treat individuals roughly including those
in custody and has warned of more such abuses," the US, whose president
labelled Zimbabwe an outpost of tyranny, said in a statement.
With a
presidential election scheduled for next year, analysts warn that the
country could experience an escalation of political violence.
Industry
players said this could mark a new season of renewed travel
warnings by the
West, something likely to hurt the fortunes of an industry
already teetering
on the brink of collapse.
"It is very disappointing and it worries us that
there is a renewed
onslaught (from) our traditional markets," said Chipo
Mtasa, president of
the Zimbabwe Council of Tourism (ZCT). "Although we are
looking at other
markets, we still consider traditional markets to be
important to us," she
said.
But Shingi Munyeza, the industrious ZTA
chairman and chief executive officer
of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed
hotel and leisure group, Zimsun
Leisure, discounted the impact of the travel
alerts.
"It (travel warnings) will affect those (tour operators) sitting on
the
fence. But I have spoken to many tour operators who have indicated that
they
are not affected. So the travel warning doesn't affect what we are
doing at
the moment. It's more on political issues," Munyeza
said.
However, Tony Hawkins, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe's
Graduate
School of Management, said the situation was likely to make it
difficult to
attract visitors from new markets.
"They (travel warnings)
make it difficult to take new ones," Hawkins said.
Although the government
launched a "Look East" policy more than three years
ago under which it
injected huge funds for a marketing campaign in the Asian
countries,
particularly China, nothing significant has been achieved from
the
campaign.
Recently, a Chinese pop star, Chris Wong shot down claims by
government
authorities and players in the tourism sector that the country's
tourist
destinations were now popular in China.
Wong, who was in the
country for the Harare International Festival of the
Arts, said the
state-run Zimbabwe Tourism Authority still had a lot of work
to do in
marketing the country's destinations.
FinGaz
Staff
Reporter
A SECURITY industry executive this week warned of potential
risks in the
sector as firms adopted desperate stopgap measures to curtail
losses
precipitated by an escalating economic crisis.
Devine
Ndhlukula, managing director of Securico Security Services, said the
situation in the sector had worsened during the months of March and April,
prompting mass resignations as employee morale in the sector hit rock
bottom.
Ndhlukula is also chairperson of the Security Association of
Zimbabwe, the
umbrella organisation for security services
companies.
"Previously we had noted low employee moral due to the economic
hardships
leading to an increase in pilferage and organised crime. We
alerted you to
the need to review security systems and policies as a counter
measure to
this new threat," Ndhlukula said in her regular note to clients,
a copy of
which was seen by The Financial Gazette.
She said the situation
had worsened dramatically since her last update to
clients.
"Currently
the situation has deteriorated to a point where the cost of
transport and
housing alone now surpass the net salary of employees in the
low-income
groups. There have been mass resignations as a result and this is
why
security companies are now failing to deploy fully to cover all posts,"
she
said.
She warned that frustration and insecurity had crept into the market as
a
result of "serious underdeployments" by security services
firms.
"Security companies have responded in various ways to these challenges
and
we have observed that some of the initiatives are desperate stopgap
measures
that may cause further losses," Ndhlukula warned.
She said some
firms were reducing training time or not training recruits at
all "as long
as these recruits have received training or worked elsewhere".
They were also
reducing the age requirements to as low as 18 years and
disregarding vetting
procedures, which in normal cases would ensure that
undesirable elements do
not join the security profession.
"We advise you to be on your guard against
such practices as you may place
yourselves into potential risk," Ndhlukula
said.
FinGaz
Nkululeko
Sibanda Staff Reporter
THE Zimbabwean government has escaped regional
censure for its rights abuses
because of a void in the protocols signed by
African states on safeguarding
democracy on the continent, says the head of
an elections lobby group.
Rindai Chipfunde-Vava, national director of the
Zimbabwe Election Support
Network, said while on paper the protocols appear
to be binding, no real
action can be taken against a member state that
contravenes them.
Chipfunde-Vava said governments across Africa continued to
sign similar
protocols, with no improvements to include stronger peer review
mechanisms.
Rights groups said African leaders continue to be unwilling to
take stern
action against errant fellow heads of state in the name of
African
brotherhood.
In March, the Southern African Development Community
resisted western
pressure to publicly rebuke Zimbabwe over its human rights
record, saying
dialogue had a better chance of achieving a solution than the
sanctions and
threats favoured by the west.
"These protocols have been
signed on the understanding that they are binding
protocols meant to ensure
that member states instill a sense of democracy,
good governance, peace and
stability in their countries.
"But what has emerged in the past is that these
documents have, to a larger
extent, turned out to be documents of persuasion
rather than those that are
supposed to be binding on any member states. They
have not proved their
effectiveness in instilling good governance and
democracy, peace and
stability in the region", said Chipfunde-Vava.
Piles
of documents and protocols were gathering dust in the offices of
regional
bodies, she complained.
"As for the Zimbabwean situation, these are the voids
that have been
exploited by the government because it is clear that, as far
as Africa was
concerned, very little could be done by the member states to
hold Zimbabwe
accountable for its actions."
FinGaz
Personal
Glimpsses
NO one can deny that Zimbabwe was once a beacon in Africa in
the field of
education. It had one of the highest literacy rates and the
quality of its
education was second to none as demonstrated by the eagerness
with which
Zimbabwean expertise has been snapped up in various parts of the
world.
However, of late, things have deteriorated sharply and no
amount of
nostalgia or rhetoric about how things used to be can camouflage
the fact
that education has now gone to the dogs. Everything that could go
wrong has
definitely done so. The rot set in slowly, beginning with minor
infractions
of the law by school heads and teachers such as embezzlement of
modest sums
of money to real big time scandals such as the leaking of
examination papers
to the wholesale sexual abuse of pupils under the noses
of school
administrators.
These days, reading about the woes bedeviling
the educational sector in the
press is almost like watching a comedy of
errors.
The changeover from Ordinary and Advanced level certificate
examinations set
overseas to those set locally by the Schools Examinations
Council has been
an unmitigated disaster, if the truth must be told.
Examination leaks,
mix-ups, non-arrival of test papers, typographical
errors, unethical
invigilation and marking have become the order of the day.
Students are
regularly traumatised when they fail their best subjects and
get
distinctions in those that they never sat for. Something is definitely
seriously wrong and O and A level certificates are being rapidly devalued.
The examination markers, who regularly complain of receiving peanuts and
sometimes not being paid at all, must be resorting to all sorts of acts of
sabotage. These problems will not go away by themselves.
A newspaper
reported recently that a number of schools in Matabeleland had
failed to
open for the second term because there were no teachers. Some of
the
teachers who were interviewed for the story indicated that they could
not
afford the bus fares to return to their stations and saw no point in
continuing in the profession because of the poor remuneration and conditions
of service. Another manifestation of the general disgruntlement of
professionals in this sector is the large number of teachers who have left
for other countries, especially South Africa.
What kind of education can
students be getting when even those teachers who
have remained in the
country are on strike most of the time? Most are
reported to be making ends
meet by offering private tuition to students from
private colleges. When I
was growing up, which, admittedly, was zillions of
years ago, teachers were
a respected group who were held in high regard
within society. No more. Now
they have to scavenge for a living like the
rest. Reports that these once
proud professionals are now reduced to doing
menial jobs in neighbouring
countries to support their families back home is
a sad reflection of the
extent to which things have been left to slide in
this country.
The
saying that a fish rots from the head is now sadly true of the education
system, which seems to have been ruined beyond repair. Recent excruciatingly
embarrassing pictures showing unchecked dilapidation at the University of
Zimbabwe, which is supposed to be the nation's premier institution of higher
learning, proved that the education sector is now a disaster from top to
bottom. Both students and lecturers at the university are disgruntled, with
the latter regularly going on strike to demand better pay. The students
regularly clash with the police when they take to the streets to highlight
their disgruntlement over the deteriorating conditions and the curtailment
of academic freedom. Similar scenes are replicated at institutions of higher
learning throughout the country.
The powers-that-be cannot continue to
pretend that rhetoric about past glory
can make things right again. While it
is true that the government built more
schools and made education accessible
to the majority of the people after
independence, those early successes have
been cancelled by the rot that was
allowed to set in. It is
counterproductive to continue citing these past
achievements as an excuse to
avoid acknowledging what is happening now and
formulating strategies to find
long-term solutions. The government's
post-independence successes would have
been spectacular if they had been
maintained and built upon.
The problem
seems to be that at some point along the way, caution was thrown
to the wind
and eyes were taken off the ball. As a result of corruption,
inefficiency
and nepotism and political patronage under which the principle
of
appointment based on merit was tossed aside, institutions were allowed to
run on auto-pilot. As things stand now, it is difficult to imagine that the
descent into chaos in almost all ministerial portfolios occurred under the
stewardship of incumbents paid from the national fiscus.
Most of what the
government set out and pledged to do at independence has
turned out to be
half-baked. As a result of the untenable situation in
schools and
institutions of higher learning, Zimbabwe is now producing
half-baked
graduates who can only hope to join the ranks of the 80 percent
unemployed
Zimbabweans.
The planned bonding of graduates from tertiary institutions to
stem the
stampede to other countries will remain a cosmetic move unless the
authorities are prepared to address the reasons that sparked the on-going
exodus in the first place. The government needs to get its priorities right.
It cannot hope to reverse the rot by playing to the gallery rather than
being pragmatic.
Education has gone to the dogs, the health system is in
intensive care, the
legal system has been compromised, agriculture is in
ruins, the press is
gasping for air, the police force is corrupt and brutal,
the army is
starving . . . the list is endless. With things having fallen
apart so
badly, one would expect the authorities to concentrate on finding
ways to
revive the institutions that have been run to the ground. But
apparently,
government logic does not go that way. Despite failing to fund
existing
tertiary colleges and universities adequately, the authorities
continue to
moot the construction of new ones. It must be prestigious for
politicians to
boast that every urban centre in Zimbabwe has a university,
but it does not
make any sense when most of them have become
dysfunctional
A newspaper reported that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is to
provide funds
for the construction of 62 technical colleges to produce half
a million
ox-drawn carts and ploughs to enhance agricultural production.
Against a
backdrop of the prevailing chaos, it will be a tall order to get
these
institutions up and running. A question that comes to mind immediately
is
why these new colleges are needed when the nation has been told ad
nauseam
that the national youth service training programme produces
graduates armed
with those exact skills?
mmakuni@fingaz.co.zw
FinGaz
IF there is anything
Zimbabweans are now known for, it is their misdirected
zeal in prescribing
solutions for others to implement while they struggle in
their backyard to
put out fires razing their homes to the ground.
Instead of facing up to
the real issues at the crux of the country's
problems, even if it puts them
in bad light, Zimbabweans would rather bury
their heads in the sand -
ostrich style - in the hope that a Messiah will
emerge from somewhere or the
passage of time will take care of their
troubles.
Like a cancer, this
ostrich mentality now pervades social clubs,
cooperatives, churches,
institutions, communities, and has laid siege to
central government where,
despite the high-sounding blueprints churned out
time without number over
the past two decades, the devil has always been in
the
implementation.
But as the powers-that-be dither, the country's troubles have
refused to be
washed away.
With each delay comes the multiplier effect
that has compounded Zimbabwe's
woes and it is now clear that with the
intermittent electricity blackouts
further impairing capacity utilisation in
industry, which has sunk to below
20 percent, the centre cannot hold for
long. And yet those in positions of
authority continue to postpone the
inevitable.
Obert Mpofu, the Industry and International Trade Minister is
among the
coterie of government officials making a lot of hype about
nothing. The
line-up of Commissioners paraded by Mpofu to the media this
week to direct
the course of the National Incomes and Pricing Commission
saps the little
hope consumers had in the latest government project meant to
stabilise
runaway prices and put a lid on what ZANU PF's well-fed
politicians allege
to be profiteering.
How Mpofu aims to put an end to
the deeply entrenched inflation expectations
and win public confidence by
cramming the Commission with people with no
known track record in pricing,
surveillance and some with allegiances to the
very same constituencies the
state-run agency intends to rein in defies
logic.
Fatigued and dazzled by
the occasion as they appeared on the front page of
the daily Herald on
Tuesday, the line-up does not show any seriousness on
the part of government
and can only provide some comic relief were it not
for the fact that there
is nothing remotely funny about it. Is that the best
Mpofu could do?
In
our opinion, the Commission will change nothing. It will simply suffer
the
same fate as the other commissions and task forces which failed to live
up
to expectations because the very people that established them did not
want
them to succeed. It's called politics!
For starters, the Mpofu Commission is
barking up the wrong tree. For as long
as it skirts around issues at the
heart of industry, i.e. chronic foreign
currency shortages, hyperinflation,
crippling production costs and the
exchange rate, which renders exports
uncompetitive, there won't be any
respite for the suffering masses.
With
its limited scope, the Commission has no teeth to discharge its mandate
effectively and will soon be caught up in the rigmarole characterising
government operations.
As if to vindicate our suspicion, the Commission
is chaired in the interim
by the head of the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe
(CCZ), which falls directly
under Mpofu's ministry. The CCZ is known for
parroting the views of its
parent ministry and has done little to shield
consumers from unfair trade
practices.
The government, it would appear,
is now out of its depth in dealing with the
country's multi-faced political
and economic woes and all it is doing is to
buy time. Subcontracting this
responsibility to Thabo Mbeki of South Africa
will not help either.
With
the elections around the corner, political heavies will be falling over
each
other to safeguard their jobs and one sure way of doing so is to be
seen to
be delivering the votes. But shying away from the real issues and
focusing
on trivia, as they will soon discover, counts for nothing in the
grand
scheme of things.
From the time the country's economy started heating up, the
powers-that-be
have been heaping blame on soft targets. Suggesting otherwise
is seen as an
unforgivable offence met with threats and a torrent of abusive
language.
Speculators were fingered for the November 1997 crash of the local
unit even
though it was quite clear efforts to defend the currency had come
unstuck
owing to the declining foreign currency reserves. Then it was the
imperialists, particularly Britain, for their role in reversing the gains of
the liberation struggle. A number of other soft targets have also been put
on the sacrificial altar but that has not changed anything.
In other
countries, economic ministries, i.e. those in charge of industry,
finance,
agriculture and mining, are taken quite seriously and rarely do
their
guardians open their mouths unless they have SOMETHING to say. Opening
mouths for political expediency or for the sake of saying something to
assuage the Tsunami caused by their collective actions is a disease that has
not done the country any good.
It has only served to deepen scepticism
about fighting inflation as all and
sundry figure out that the authorities
have nothing new to offer. Silence
can be golden at times.
FinGaz
National Agenda with Bornwell Chakaodza
GOING by the programmes
and news bulletins currently served up by the
Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings
(ZBH), the new short-wave radio and
television station recently launched by
our only broadcasting station must
clearly carry a government health
warning: It could drive you crazy and
nuts - with deadly boredom!
My
question to the Minister of Information and Publicity, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu
and
ZBH chief executive officer Henry Muradzikwa is: Why subject Zimbabweans
at
home and in the Diaspora to yet more torture and cruelty?
There are
too
many things that Zimbabweans in the Diaspora would rather do than
listening
to the new Voice of Zimbabwe broadcasting station.
There is a
pressing need to transform the fortunes of Pockets Hill here in
Harare and
stations elsewhere in the country without adding another station
that a few
or none will listen to or watch. Who does not know that ZBH has
been in
terminal decline and is in need of urgent fixing?
Audience figures have
waned. Viewers have switched off or switched over to
Zimbabwean radio
stations based outside the country and other international
broadcast
networks such as SABC, BBC, CNN, and SkyNews.
Our local news on television
and radio here in Zimbabwe does not reflect
reality on the ground because of
lack of editorial independence on the part
of ZBH among other
reasons.
What is this "true Zimbabwean story" that Sikhanyiso Ndlovu and
Henry
Muradzikwa keep on telling us day in and day out? For me, the true
Zimbabwean story is that things are broken in this country and need urgent
fixing. This is the real story of Zimbabwe.
It is naive and rather
bizarre on the part of ZBH to think that they can
project a true Zimbabwean
story about such an unhappy country - a country,
which, to all intents and
purposes, is in a state of economic collapse.
According to the general
manager of the new station, Voice of Zimbabwe,
Happison Muchechetere,
broadcasts will be intended to reach target audiences
in South Africa,
Australia, the UK and the United States.
The question that immediately comes
to mind is: Why did those Zimbabweans
flee their homeland in the first
place? Why is there a feeling in government
and ZBH circles that history is
in the making by launching such a damp squib
of a radio station? Are the
protagonists of such a project living in cuckoo
land or what?
What is
most important at this stage is to get ZBH back on its feet. It has
been
down in the dumps for many years now. ZBH needs to face this truth. ZBH
needs to become a truly public service broadcaster and not a government
mouthpiece as it is at the present moment. It is crucial that it tries to
cater for the interests and tastes of the great variety of audiences if it
wants to be taken seriously by Zimbabweans both at home and abroad. There is
really nothing special about SABC, BBC, CNN or other outside broadcasting
stations such as SW Radio and VOA Studio 7. It is not as if they have some
special interest in our problems here. No. It is just that they report news
that is not allowed to be broadcast by ZBH.
In other words, by denying
ZBH editorial independence, fairness and
impartiality, the government of
Zimbabwe has made Zimbabweans easier targets
of domination by the Western
mass media.
Western journalists can become seemingly authoritative
interpreters of our
events here in a week's sojourn in Harare when in fact
they are far from
authorities by any stretch of imagination.
By
suppressing ZBH and Zimpapers, the government must never think that they
can
suppress news. It only makes western reporters become false authorities
on
our situation and enables them to report on our news to our own people
with
much greater impact.
In any event, the Internet has opened up a whole new
world anyway. We are
living in an information age in which information flows
instantaneously, in
which rumours and leaks are the order of the day and
they go on the
Internet, online publications and websites with no concern
for the accuracy
and fairness of it all.
By trying to project a so-called
"true Zimbabwean story," ZBH would have
shamelessly joined this
bandwagon.
The job of ZBH is to give Zimbabweans both at home and in the
Diaspora real
news. Non-stop propaganda campaigns of showing Zimbabwe in a
positive light
and broadcasting sunshine stories when the reality on the
ground is very
different will get us nowhere.
This nation is in need of
healing, as the governor of the central bank,
Gideon Gono, never tires of
saying and as the recent pastoral statement by
the Roman Catholics Bishops
in Zimbabwe made it very clear.
This may all seem self-evident to many people
but it needs to be said all
the time until our current national crisis is
over. We need to address the
root causes of our crisis, not just dealing
with the symptoms.
So to Happison and Henry, I would say that it should not
be a question of
propaganda for government and ZANU PF. It should simply be
a matter of the
new Voice of Zimbabwe radio station keeping the Zimbabwean
public as fully
and accurately informed as possible about what is happening
in our country
and the world, of analysing our crisis and of providing a
genuine platform
for a genuine public debate and finding a way out of this
quagmire that we
find ourselves in.
If the station can do that, I will be
the first to tune in to it - never
mind those in the Diaspora - and shout
"Hallelua", and sing the song
"Courage brother, do not stumble."
E-mail:
borncha@mweb.co.zw
FinGaz
IN this final part of
the presentation made to the Forum of Energy Ministers
in Maputo, Engineer
Simba Mangwengwende and contributing author Dr Njeri
Wamukonya analyse the
weaknesses in regulation and the reforms instituted so
far to avert a
seemingly inevitable power crisis in Africa.
THE challenges facing
the African power sector are a microcosm of the many
problems facing the
continent that are rooted in its economic and social
underdevelopment.
Consumption of electricity is low due to low GDP and
electricity access
levels.
Fortunately there is strong political will to
break with this life of
poverty in the midst of plenty and this is reflected
in the many national,
regional and continental institutions engaged in the
search for a lasting
solution.
This paper has highlighted the continent's
large energy resources that are
under-utilised while the people suffer from
limited access to
electricity and frequent power supply
outages.
Distribution losses are much higher than in other regions. Financial
performance of utilities is poor and characterised by negative rates of
return and poor cash collection.
Many utilities do not even bother to
provide financial reports. Power sector
reforms have only succeeded in
providing for emergency generation through
IPP's but have marginalised the
poor and the local private sector.
Regulatory agencies are weak and countries
have not managed to attract the
levels of private sector investment
anticipated.
Although some of the problems in the power sector are attributed
to such
externalities as drought and steep increases in prices
for oil
importing countries, the root causes of these problems lie in
weaknesses in
planning and regulation. There are many wish lists of
priorities that
reflect a desire for a better future but there are very few
bankable
projects to make that future a reality.
Bankable projects pay dividends,
repay loans and therefore attract
investors.
The local private sector
will be able to attract much more FDI than what
governments are able to.
Bankable electricity projects are produced from
coordinated economic and
energy planning, promotion of manufacturing
industry and regional
integration driven by demand of the regional economic
powers and
exploitation of economies of scale.
Regulation must focus on attracting local
private sector investment. The
local manufacture of distribution equipment
is an essential part of national
electrification
programmes.
Electrification programmes that have succeeded have had strong
state
direction and material support, and significant financial support has
come
from the profitable operations of the utilities.
There is a positive
correlation between regulation and financial performance
of the power
sector. Although specific roles of regulators vary from country
to country
their overriding function is to enhance the country's investment
ranking.
There is need for institutional role clarity because many
existing
institutions have overlapping responsibilities and blurred
accountabilities.
The relative roles of national, regional and continental
institutions also
need clarity.
There is need for a continental
institution to coordinate activities of
power pools. Effectiveness and
sustainability of the institutions requires
motivated and skilled staff
supported by local funding for administration
expenses so that donor money
is directed to specific projects and
programmes.
The Forum of Energy
Ministers in Africa (FEMA) is uniquely positioned to add
value to existing
institutions by coordinating their activities and
facilitating
inter-regional and international cooperation in energy
issues.
General
Policy Recommendations
Recommendations for addressing
the identified challenges facing the power
sector can be summarised as
follows:
1. Development of Bankable Projects
n Establish an easily
accessible national energy and electricity database
that has sufficient
information to facilitate research and planning; the
database should include
all relevant economic, social, technical and
financial information and data
on the energy sector in general and the power
sector in particular.
n
Establish an inventory of major planned economic and social programs and
projects together with the energy and power requirements. This will help
planners to produce bankable projects instead of wish lists.
n Establish
an inventory of national projects and development programs based
on
feasibility-level studies and explicit security and import dependency
criteria. This inventory is to facilitate the development of least-cost
regional power development programmes.
n Compile and publicise list of
bankable national projects that are part of
the least-cost regional
development programme.
2 Attracting Investment
n Establish regulatory
policies that ensure that an efficient state
enterprise or local private
sector operator can make money for providing
quality electricity products
and services. This will create a more efficient
way of attracting FDI into
the country.
n Establish local manufacturing capability for distribution
equipment as
part of a national electrification programme.
3 Implementing
Policies and Projects
n Establish institutions that make efficient and
effective use of scarce
skills e.g. multi-sector rather than single sector
regulators, using former
public sector employees as consultants to produce
bankable projects and
programs.
n Finance administrative costs of
institutions from own resources to ensure
sustainability and commitment to
institutional objectives.
Specific Recommendations
for FEMA
FEMA has
the unique opportunity to facilitate regional, continental and
international
cooperation in the African power sector by undertaking the
following support
functions:
1. Facilitate the development of an energy database to support
research and
planning
2. Coordinate the work of existing continental
institutions
3. Facilitate the creation of an African Forum of Power Pool
(AFPP)
4. Peer Review
Remove the log in your eye
first
EDITOR - The deteriorating social, economic and
political situation in our
country calls for a holistic approach in finding
a solution.
That our country is on the brink of collapse is beyond doubt. It
is very
naive for the government to blame all our problems on the western
world and
at the same time ignore the extent to which local factors such as
corruption
have led to the economic mess that we find ourself in.
Only
recently a high ranking government official (May his departed soul rest
in
peace) was arrested at the airport attempting to smuggle diamonds. This
embarassing event was met with defeaning silence from the authorities. This
can be taken to mean that the government tacitly approves of corruption
within its own circles and is not serious about tackling it.
On the other
hand, the government must accept its own role in the collapse
of the economy
as a starting point to a complete revival of the economy.
A case in point is
that of the so-called 99-year leases given to new
farmers, which the
government is trying to force down the throat of banks as
adequate security
when everyone knows that leases are not acceptable as
collateral.
The
government must swallow its pride and give the new farmers title deeds
as a
step towards reviving the agricultural sector and engaging banks as
willing
financiers.
For now the government is prepared to bury its head in the sand
and ignore
this fact yet its impact on the economy is significant.
Our
country surely needs healing in order for us to dig ourselves out of
this
mess.
Kudzayi Kadzere
Harare
--------------
Computer illiterate
MPs
EDITOR - With all the hype that has been made about ITC
and the donations of
computers and other IT equipment, it's quite scary that
none of our MPs and
Senators have email addresses that make them readily
accessible to their
constituents from wherever they are.
I think its time
that our leadership got a little serious and moved into the
21st Century
without blaming the Americans or Europeans for everything. The
time has come
to be progressive and to shape our own destiny, not to always
seek salvation
and solutions from outside our own
countries!
Disappointed
Harare
-----------
Why bond us at
all?
EDITOR - It is with dismay that I read in a local paper
that the government
is planning to bond us as they are funding us. I
personally feel the excuse
they are using is not called for because if my
memory serves me well, last
year we were paying $25 000 as fees and out of
that amount the government
was paying just $5 200.
My question is why
would you want to bond someone you are not even assisting
fully. There are
no resources at state institutions and the lecturers are
always on strike.
Am I missing something here? They can only expect us to
agree if they start
addressing civil servants' problems, otherwise we will
look for other ways
to get the certificates.
Disgruntled
Harare
---------------
No
rocket science here
EDITOR - It does not take a rocket scientist to know
Zimbabwe is in a
financial mess and the Zimbabwean population is sucking up
the mess. Please
help the ordinary men in the street.
People like us who
are living abroad would like to come home if all is well.
I do not think it
will be worth going back home to such a mess. I am worried
about my children
and my grandchildren if they have to have a future in
Zimbabwe. Please
revive the old Zimbabwe.
George K. Dombokah
United
States
-------------
Women must humble
themselves
EDITOR - Thank you for allowing me space to air my
views concerning violence
perpetrated on wives by their husbands. If women
had become the woman
created by God, obedient to the husband, not being too
proud because she
earns more than the husband, realises that he is the head
and the woman is
the helper - maybe husbands would protect and treat their
wives as queens.
If wives stopped wanting to be equal with their husbands and
accepted they
were created to be helpers, husbands would keep their wives
under their
wings, next to their hearts and not let any harm come to them.
How can the
husband protect his equal when they are the same? We're all
humans but he
still is a man. Maybe if you give your husbands the deserved
respect and be
more humble, things would be better for
all.
Tungamirai
Bindura
----------------
The people have
suffered enough
EDITOR - I find it hard to believe that ZANU
PF wants to rule the country
for another six years. The majority of people
are living in poverty, and
apart from the suffering, most people are beaten
and tortured everyday for
claiming their democratic freedom.
Let's look
at the economy. It is the worst in the world with the highest
inflation
rate. Can somebody give me a good reason why ZANU PF wants another
six years
under the circumstances? What more can they offer the country if
the people
can't enjoy the freedom to express their views?
So many Zimbabweans
sacrificed a lot to gain our independence and so many
died during that
struggle. At the moment how can we justify the deaths of
those patriots who
died for this country? I can only say that all those who
died are happy that
they do not have to see that they died in vain.
ZANU PF has made a lot of
mistakes, some from men and women who wish to fill
their own pockets instead
of helping millions of people who are in need of
help.
I just want to
urge all Zimbabweans to sit down and talk like brothers and
sisters. All
this fighting and suffering that the people are going through
is not worth
it.
Morgan Tsvangirai must start acting like a real leader and take the first
step to help the people. Demostrations will not work, since at the end of
the day it is the ordinary people who suffer.
I'm very proud to be called
Zimbabwean and all I wish for is to see all the
people working together. I
don't think it's hard for the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) to agree
on some sort of a power sharing deal with
ZANU PF to pull the country out of
the abyss.
As things stand the MDC will not win the election if they are not
united.
ZANU PF, on the other hand, needs new blood to change things - new
blood to
work with all the people regardless of which party they support or
their
veiws. Of course this is my dream, but it does help to try as the
people
have suffered enough.
Tich
Hong
Kong
------------
Byo left out again
EDITOR - I am
wondering why in Zimbabwe's SA 2010 plans you have no projects
for Bulawayo,
which of course is near South Africa just like Masvingo? It is
great news
that Masvingo will benefit from this, given its location on the
Joburg
highway from Harare. On the other hand Bulawayo, which is between Vic
Falls
and Jo'burg appears to be getting a raw deal. Why is there no stadium
being
upgraded in Bulawayo? We need answers. In the past Bulawayo has always
been
sidelined from national development and beacuse it happens all the time
people now think this is not normal. Well, it's not.
Most of the
decision-makers are not from the Matabeleland region and as a
result they
don't give a heck. We do. Call me what you want but the fact is
Bulawayo
also needs a fair share of the cake.
Robert
Rhodes
USA
---------------
Touts will give us a bad
name
EDITOR - This is an open letter to the Ministers of Home
Affairs, Transport,
Environment and Tourism and Her Highness The Mayor of
Harare.
It is a blessing for Zimbabwe to have the 2010 Soccer World Cup being
hosted
in neighbouring South Africa only if Zimbabweans work towards
attracting and
wooing both new and returning visitors to our country. To
think that because
we have the Victoria Falls, Great Zimbabwe, Hwange
National Park, and other
holiday resorts, therefore, we will benefit from
this event without sweating
falls short of the efforts that are needed for
our country to get maximum
benefits from the biggest football showcase in
the world.
First, I do not think visitors and tourists who have experienced
and
witnessed the barbaric touting that occurs at the Greencroft and
Avondale
rank located at the intersection of Mbuya Nehanda and Albion Street
would
want to visit Zimbabwe again.
I witnessed an elegantly dressed
woman losing a top-of-the-range cellphone
when it smashed to the ground
because several touts were simultaneously
pulling her, her groceries and
luggage in different directions in an effort
to lure her into their kombis.
Reporting to the police yielded no results as
the offenders all disappeared
in different directions as soon as a member of
the police force
arrived.
Why can't we have one kombi loading at a time so that commuters do
not get
harassed and confused by the touts? At the Avondale rank you will
see
commuters being asked to board one kombi and the next minute a different
person rudely orders them to get off and board a different one.
Amidst
all this mayhem, the "bullying group of kombi drivers" will be
reversing
their vehicles against the flow of traffic in both Albion Street
and across
its intersection with Mbuya Nehanda street, posing a danger both
to other
motorists and pedestrians. There is chaos at this intersection. I
thought a
one-way street sign is a regulatory sign that should be obeyed at
all times
but no one is enforcing the law at this intersection.
I have seen municipal
police and the ZRP using this intersection, but they
proceed with their
business as if nothing is happening. Can you imagine what
will happen if
foreign motorists who will be following our road traffic
signs religiously
use this intersection?
When I tried to find out why there is confusion all
the time at this rank, I
was told it's because of a few kombi drivers who
bully other kombi drivers
by not wanting to join the queue. The bullies are
the ones who jump the
queue by reversing across Mbuya Nehanda Street against
the flow of traffic
and parking in front of the kombi that is supposed to be
boarded. Logically
the next batch of commuters will board the kombi that
jumped the queue
because if they board the kombi that is behind the "queue
jumper" their
vehicle will not leave the rank since the "queue jumper" will
be
deliberately blocking the way. This is why you find at times commuters
are
endlessly transferred from one vehicle to the other.
I am surprised
that the traffic police have decided to turn a blind eye to
the mess at this
intersection. The "queue jumpers" and their touts verbally
and sometimes
physically harass any member of the public who warns them of
the dangers of
their behaviour. I ask you Honourable Ministers and the Mayor
to help the
relevant ministries and authorities in taking action so that we
clean our
city of these rude touts and drivers who work against our efforts
to attract
tourists and visitors.
2010 Campaigner
Harare