• 'Mugabe's time up'
• Chaos rocks govt-funded farming
• More arrests
• The last thing needed is a taskforce
• The frustrations of a man named Noah
• What’s hidden in the Pandora’s box?
• $150b bearer's cheques issued
• Zimbabwe's balance of payments deficit soars
• UZ history lecturers vindictive
• Open letter to director of National Parks Authority
• Call to rescue Zim's youth
• Rumour mill outpaces Mugabe's spinners
• Left's silence on Zim baffling
• Situation of Farm Workers Worsened
• Sharp Divide Over Mugabe
• MPs need a new job description
• Mugabe is not without blemish
• Botswana repatriates over 1 000 Zimbabweans every month - Mogami

"I am sure that we have hoped for a considerable period that time is running
out for Mugabe. I am bound to say to …Lord Avebury that I hope time is
running out because the people of Zimbabwe want to see the back of a truly
terrible leader, but not necessarily through any illness."

Symons was responding to a question by Lord Avebury on whether there were
"not grounds for thinking that time is at last running out for Mugabe, even
though reports of his ill-health, unfortunately, are exaggerated?"

Avebury asked if Symons thought the United Nations should develop
contingency plans to massively increase aid in the event of a transitional
government that could lead to free and fair elections in Zimbabwe.

In reply Symons said: "… we have tried to obtain a consensus in the United
Nations around the issue. As the noble Lord will concede, we have found it
very difficult to do so."

Lord Howell of Guildford asked if there was a policy shift in London towards
Harare.

Symons said there was no change of policy and there would not be any.

"Our policy towards Zimbabwe has not changed. We want a democratically
accountable government which respects human rights and the rule of law," she
said.

The report, presented during a 2004 pre-budget seminar by the portfolio
committee chairman, Daniel Mackenzie Ncube (Zanu PF, Zhombe), said there was
chaos on the land. He said even in the event of good rains, inadequate
preparations would hamper any prospects of a bumper harvest in the country.

He said the portfolio committee found that there was confusion in seed
provision and distribution by the government. It cited as impediments lack
of agricultural inputs, delays in announcing producer prices, inconsistent
fertiliser supply and the dual foreign currency regime currently in place.

The report was part of a wider report the lands and agriculture committee
compiled from fact-finding visits to resettled farms in all the country's
nine administrative districts since January this year.

Ncube told MPs in Bulawayo last week that some of the agricultural inputs
meant for A1 farmers did not reach the intended beneficiaries from Harare
where all the resources are dispatched from.

"Apart from the erratic distribution system of agricultural inputs, the
major complaint from farmers on resettled farms was that the resources were
centralised in Harare and therefore did not cascade downwards to reach the
targeted beneficiaries, A1 farmers," Ncube said.

Government allocated $12,5 billion in the 2003 budget for the supply of
agricultural inputs and a further $45 billion in the supplementary budget.

The report stated that the seed distribution programme to resettled farmers
was a disaster as it did not take into account the country's ecological make
up.

"Seed distribution did not seem to take into account the ecological
disparities of the provinces and hence in some cases seed varieties were
distributed to areas where they were not suitable," Ncube said.

THIS week we have witnessed the arrest and detention of five ANZ directors,
four here in Harare and one in Bulawayo.

The Bulawayo-based director, former High Court judge Washington Sansole, was
arrested on Sunday and only released on Monday afternoon after his lawyers
obtained a court order from Justice George Chiweshe.

Those in Harare turned themselves in on Monday and were released on bail at
the Harare Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

Journalists working at the Daily News on Sunday were picked up on Saturday
afternoon and warned against producing the Sunday edition. This followed
publication of an edition on Saturday headlined "We're back".

The return was short-lived. The pattern of arrests and detentions is clearly
designed to prevent any further appearance by the newspaper, at least until
it has been issued with a licence. That is a measure of the threat it poses
to the regime.

The state media, no doubt inspired by ministers, has been shrill in
asserting that the Daily News is in breach of an Administrative Court ruling
last Friday which instructed that the Media and Information Commission
should grant ANZ a certificate of registration on or before November 30. The
implication is that it cannot publish before that licence is issued.

That is a moot point. The court also ruled that the Media and Information
Commission was improperly constituted. It ordered the Minister of
Information to reconstitute it in accordance with provisions of the Access
to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. That requires him to consult
with media organisations, not just ZUJ president Mathew Takaona who most
certainly cannot speak for journalists in the independent media sector. As
it is, the commission's chair Tafataona Mahoso stands accused of bias in the
administration of his statutory duties.

It must therefore be asked why, if the refusal to register the Daily News
was unsound in law, it cannot resume publication while its application for
registration is considered? At no stage has a court ruled that the newspaper
cannot publish. The police have taken it upon themselves to prevent it doing
so, thus providing the obvious conclusion that the paper has been closed by
the government acting on a questionable legal presumption.

The government, for reasons to do with regional politics, has furiously
objected to the accusation that it has closed the paper. It points out that
the Supreme Court ordered that the Daily News must first obtain a licence
before it approaches the court on the matter of its constitutional challenge
to the legitimacy of Aippa.

That ruling, we have since learnt from Sir Louis Blom-Cooper and other legal
luminaries, was inconsistent with British and Zimbabwean legal precedent
that explicitly permits such an approach. The Chief Justice himself in
December 2001 said the Bickle precedent of not excluding applicants from
approaching the courts was "the modern rule". He was responding to a claim
by the CFU that the government had "dirty hands".

Whatever the case, there is no prohibition except the government's on
publication. The government has made an interpretation of the Supreme Court
ruling that suits itself and the police have acted accordingly.

But nevertheless, the Administrative Court ruling strikes an important blow
for press freedom while repudiating the pretensions of the Media Commission.
At this paper we have consistently argued that Aippa is bad law. Not only is
it almost certainly unconstitutional, it is poorly framed. That in part
explains hasty amendments designed to make it less vulnerable to a Supreme
Court challenge. We shall see whether that does the trick!

In the meantime the Media Commission has been exposed as a dubious outfit,
the instrument of a hostile regime. We await the next round with interest.
One thing is already clear. The government is not winning this fight.

The long-awaited Code of Conduct for Zimbabwean Media Practitioners drawn up
by Prof Geoff Feltoe in the UZ Faculty of Law at the invitation of
Misa-Zimbabwe has now been circulated to editors and adopted by the Zimbabwe
National Editors Forum. The next step is to get it adopted by all
stakeholders.

It has been widely canvassed by Misa in an extensive outreach exercise that
covered ZUJ branches across the country, the Independent Journalists
Association of Zimbabwe, the National Association of Freelance Journalists,
and the Federation of African Media Women-Zimbabwe.

It is an unremarkable document in that it raises nothing that is new or
objectionable in laying down professional guidelines for those of us working
in the media. What is remarkable is that it has taken us so long to get this
project off the ground. Media rivalry - a natural instinct - is partly to
blame.

And getting editors together in the same room at the same time on the same
day is a mission!

But I sincerely hope my colleagues in all sectors of the media will join us
in putting in place a system of voluntary monitoring that offers the public
some redress when they have complaints about our coverage. This is standard
procedure now in most Commonwealth countries and I hope we can put aside our
differences to make it work. I will keep readers informed of progress in
this regard.

The bank however, refused to shed light on market speculation that it had
stopped printing travellers' cheques for non-travellers and reduced
supplying notes because they were expensive to print.

Speculation is also rife that the RBZ is failing to raise sufficient foreign
currency from the market to cover the printing costs of the new $500 and $1
000 notes introduced in Zimbabwe last month.

"Both cheques and notes are printed using imported note paper and inks," the
RBZ said in response to the allegations. "Therefore, the issue of foreign
exchange does not arise."

Asked why the central bank had now developed a habit of rejecting Treasury
Bills, the RBZ said it did not have to accept bids.

"Treasury Bills are used to raise government funding and for open market
purposes," the RBZ said. "Depending on the market liquidity situation and
funding needs of government, the RBZ does not necessarily take up tenders."

The RBZ recently rejected all bids at the 90-day TB tender for $10 billion.

Bills were also thrown out on September 18 when the RBZ rejected TBs for $2
billion.

Analysts said the central bank had rejected the bids because the rates being
offered were too high at a time when the RBZ was desperate for cash to bail
government out of its financial mess.

The rejection of TBs comes at a time when government is in serious need of
cash to pay its fuel and electricity bills. It is also staring at bonuses
for its bloated civil service next month end.

Zimbabwe's domestic debt, which stood at $346 billion in December last year,
rose dramatically to $593 billion as at August 15.

Bankers say with TBs accounting for 96% (about $491 billion) of the debt,
interest costs are likely to continue to be a burden on the fiscus.

They said the increased borrowing had tied up a high percentage of the
nation's savings.

"In its efforts to keep rates low, the central bank is refusing to accept
high bids and ironically refusing to give banks overnight accommodation,
which has had the effect of raising interest rates as the banks have been
forced to seek funds from the open market," a Barnfords Securities Services
(Pvt) Ltd financial analyst said.

The money market has continued to be short and with overnight ratios firming
significantly to levels between 93% and 110%.

Economists said the TB rejection was becoming a norm at the RBZ because of
the country's prevailing hyperinflationary environment, which was leading to
a soaring domestic debt.

The country's inflation has risen from about 100% at the beginning of the
year to 455,6% for September.

The acting Minister of Finance and Economic Development Patrick Chinamasa
made the revelations when he presented the ministry's projections during a
pre-budget seminar for the 2004 fiscal year held in Bulawayo last week.

"Absence of balance of payments and project support have compromised
performance on the capital account where we now project a negative balance
of US$309 million by end of year. Given the shortage of foreign currency
government finds itself constrained in the implementation of critical
services and projects apart from incurring huge external payments,"
Chinamasa said.

He said measures set out in the National Economic Revival Plan (Nerp) on
promotion of exports, including the introduction of the export support rate,
had not achieved the goal of improving the balance of payments situation.

"It would appear measures espoused in Nerp on promotion of exports have not
achieved this noble objective and I am aware that the fact that the export
support rate has not been reviewed as envisaged in Nerp, has resulted in
distortions with other economic fundamentals such as inflation," Chinamasa
said.

He said the budget performance for the first half of the year was
satisfactory despite experiencing constraints from rising inflation,
shortages of basic goods and services such as fuel and foreign currency.

Meanwhile Members of Parliament took the minister to task over the tax
system in the country and said it was too high and was increasing poverty
levels.

The MPs called on government to increase the tax band from the current level
of $15 000, which they said, was far below the poverty datum line.

MDC MP for Mpopoma Milton Gwetu challenged government to find alternative
tax revenue bases instead of using workers as the only revenue base.

"Workers in this country are the major source of government's revenue base
accounting for 90% of its total revenue base while industry and other
sources contribute a mere 10% of the total revenue generated by the
government and we are saying government should find other means of
generating revenue,"Gwetu said.

However Chinamasa said government was considering taking into account the
minimum wage and the poverty datum line before setting tax thresholds.

Government is now going around the country gathering information about what
individuals feel needs to be included in the 2004 national budget to be
presented in parliament on November 20.

Analysts say not much is to be expected from the budget.

Since I am one of those affected, I feel the department owes us, our parents
and this country an explanation. These so-called historians, most of them
Zanu PF adherents, had problems with some of our topics because they carried
political innuendoes. Some of our topics discussed labour, student activism,
oppressive security laws and human rights and democracy issues.

I believe it is not criminal to subscribe to a certain ideology. These
professionals, who also happen to be very good cyclists because they can
neither afford transport costs nor own cars, have the following as their
dogma: how bad whites are, how they appropriated our ancestors' land, how
racist and oppressive their governments were, without appreciating how
equally bad the post-colonial black government is.

These fascist lecturers dictated topics to be written and overrode the
supervisor's opinion on our work.

Secondly, may the UZ authorities investigate corruption that has bedevilled
the department. The award of Special Honours and Masters' degrees is marred
by corruption. For example, a certain female student was enrolled for a
Special Honours degree under dubious circumstances. She was not even among
the best students in her class.

As if that was not enough, she was given the privilege to teach us even
though she did not have an honours degree. Her only qualification was her
association with a Bulawayo-based professor, a former history lecturer.

She had the cheek to tell me "that is why we failed you". My supervisor, who
is very much into Zanu PF politics, once told me: "You will never pass
because of your attitude." May UZ authorities explain to the country whether
lecturers are allowed to make such remarks to their students?

I conclude by reminding these vindictive lecturers that taking away and
stealing students' degrees through nefarious means is an injustice. It is
not a crime that some of your students belong to the opposition or don't
subscribe to your political ideologies.

You cannot stop or arrest the winds of change through silencing and
victimising your political opponents.

Victimised,

Mount Pleasant.

About 45 minutes later, one of the camp workers came around the campsites
and chalets, and told us that the "war veterans" were insisting that all
"whites" pack up camp immediately and return to Harare. Initially, the
problem appeared to be one of race. However, the camp next to us was made up
of people of all complexions, and they eventually lost a lot of their
equipment as they could not pack up fast enough.

We decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and packed up.
Whilst we were doing this, Jarvis returned, accompanied by the "team leader"
who ordered us in no uncertain terms back to Harare.

He magnanimously said we could pack all our belongings, which we continued
to do. We fortunately managed to pack everything and left, only to be
accosted on the way out by a group of youths, standing by a fire and
brandishing axes and other primitive weapons, who demanded that we "put down
all the food". We carried on driving.

I realise that we escaped lightly given what has been happening on
Zimbabwean farms. We have already had to leave a home on a farm. But my
challenge to you, sir, is what are you doing about this criminal assault on
our National Parks? Those youths were far too young to be war veterans, and
there was not a uniform in sight, "green bomber" or no. What kind of
security are you providing in our parks when any ragtag bunch of criminals
can appropriate a bus or some other means of transport, sing a song, wave an
axe around and chase away tourists?

We were not all white, and not all Zimbabwean that night. What is the plan
for improving the abysmal tourism statistics in this country when things
such as this are allowed to happen?

Should you choose to ignore this incident, you are betraying the sacred
trust put in you by the people of Zimbabwe. You are trusted to guard our
wildlife, our heritage for all of our children. You have, too, the trust of
the people of the world over, for you have in your care world heritage
sites.

You have the legal and actual power to stop this kind of criminal activity.
An armed National Parks unit could stop any such desecration. What are you
doing?

JA Van Wyk,

Harare.

Although the most brutal and barbaric acts of torture, rape and murder are
reported, this is done without passion. Yet you would have to have a heart
of stone yourself to read that report without passion - without a sense of
outrage at what is being done to the youth of the nation.

Here we have a paramilitary training programme intended for boys and girls
from 10 years of age and upwards, that is intended to brainwash them, to
fill their minds with the most vulgar Zanu PF propaganda, to fill their
hearts with race hate, to train them in violence and then to set them loose
on the community. And so they become a rag-tag army of young thugs ready to
do the dirty work of the politicians who see to their training and who
prefer to keep their own hands "clean".

The Green Bombers are answerable to no one save their political masters and
are immune from any prosecution so long as they follow instructions - which
may include attacking members of the opposition, manipulating election
results, controlling the food distribution process, or generally creating an
atmosphere of terror. A most sinister example of the principle of using -
and then abusing - those who are most vulnerable in the community.

Our Christian faith teaches us to love people and to use things. But the
ruling elite who set up this programme have reversed that order. They love
things - palatial homes, 4x4s, Mercedes, offshore accounts - and they use
people to get their hands on those things. And here in the youth militia
training programme they are using the youth in a most cold and calculating
manner.

Using - and abusing. For the report details so many documented cases of
young girls being raped, and multiple raped, by the boys in training with
them and by their military instructors. Used, abused, and then, their
purpose done, just thrown out on the scrap heap.

The words of the prophet give a thunderous warning to the rulers of this
nation: "Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves!

"Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe
yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not
take care of the flock. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they
were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered
they became food for all the wild animals."

A graphic picture of the people of Zimbabwe today, whose one-time shepherds
have become ravenous wolves devouring the flock and scattering the young to
become food for the "wild animals" - at the mercy of drink and drugs, and
through their enforced and encouraged sexual promiscuity, cut down by Aids.

Time and again those who are brave enough to speak of their ordeal mention
the strongly anti-Christian rhetoric which is part of the training - a part
of the brain-washing. The Bible is scorned and set aside for vile Zanu PF
propaganda. Part of the process of deliberately undermining the Christian
faith so that those who run the camps may have complete control of the
youths - body, mind and soul.

I don't use the word "Satanic" very often but it's the only word I know that
adequately describes the reality of the youth militia programme - a cancer
that is eating into the heart and soul of this nation.

"Therefore, O shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: This is what the
sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them
accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that
the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from
their mouths."

Praise God for that, and you can play your part in rescuing the youths of
this land from the mouths of rapacious politicians.

Graham Shaw,

Bulawayo South

"Christians

Together" prayer

service for the nation.

What is interesting is that there would seem to be so many people at home
and abroad who would wish Mugabe ill. I suppose this is yet another
widespread sentiment amongst Zimbabweans that can be explained by
"imperialist machinations" that have succeeded in confusing the people,
causing them to hate their president because of his heroic anti-imperialist
efforts!

I don't suppose the terrible state of Zimbabwe under Mugabe's violent,
ruinous tutelage would have anything to do with so many people all over the
world wanting something bad to happen to him!

Whether he collapsed last week, whether he vomited through Sunday night as
some reports suggest, and regardless of whether he was actually secretly
flown to South Africa for medical attention or not, Mugabe in recent weeks
has certainly not been his usual robust self. He has increasingly withdrawn
from the public eye as he has become more besieged over the years, but in
recent weeks his public appearances have been even fewer and far between. He
has always been in very good physical form, particularly for a man of his
advanced years, but lately he has had a tired, haggard look. The tough
rhetoric no longer matches his formerly super-confident, even arrogant
demeanour.

If he has been treated for prostate and throat cancer in various world
capitals in recent years, as is rumoured, certainly his appearance and
seeming slowing down could just be the natural toll of these treatments,
coupled with the years. There is also the unmistakable element of the stress
of witnessing the Zimbabwe he rules with such an iron fist crumble around
and increasingly turn against him. For a man who once took the adoration of
many of his fellow citizens for granted, there is no way this could not have
a heavy emotional toll, no matter how hard-hearted he may have become.

As Simon Moyo's comment unwittingly revealed, Mugabe may still rule, but in
a manner and a result that entail the heavy personal cost of being deeply
reviled the world over. Cancer, a stroke, food poisoning or not, this alone
would be enough to make even the most hardened tyrant sick from time to
time. So paranoid have many become about Mugabe, and so deep is the
sentiment for him to go that even as he was capping university graduates
last week and attending a family wedding over the weekend, many were still
alleging that he was really dead!

If this was not so sadly morbid, it would be funny. The colour picture of
the wedding that took pride of place on the front page of the Sunday Mail,
perhaps to try to subtly rebut the rumours of his death, may have succeeded
in doing so. But I was struck by the sad countenance of the four most
prominent members of the wedding party who were pictured.

While rumours of death may have been premature, the royal family does not
appear to be bursting with joy and happiness. If the emperor's physical
health is a matter of national interest and importance, then certainly so is
his emotional and spiritual state.

Interestingly, the president did not make an appearance at the crucial time
that he was rumoured to have been flown to South Africa. A staged showing,
perhaps in his office with a prominent diplomat of the few remaining
friendly countries, the state propaganda services present to dutifully
record the event, would have been the best way to put the rumours and
speculation to rest. Instead there was a suspicious silence, strangely only
belatedly broken by a Zimbabwean envoy in a foreign land!

Chief Mugabe propagandist Jonathan Moyo is often quick to issue vitriolic
statements on issues far less important than whether the ruler of the
country is hail and hearty or dead, but this time he was nowhere to be seen,
at least when it would have mattered most.

Instead it was left to his sidekick George Charamba to issue some weak
statement saying there was nothing wrong with the president, although that
president continued to mysteriously stay out of sight.

We see here not only the usual failure to manage events, but to manage even
the news of events that have already happened.

The whole state propaganda machinery that appears so formidable at spewing
vitriol under Jonathan Moyo was a mere bystander while the world speculated
on Mugabe's fate, instead of being the leading source of information on the
real state of affairs.

There certainly was no "information and publicity" at a crucial time when it
could be argued that the rumours, events or even mere perceptions of events,
would have had far-reaching national and even international implications.

Once again we see how managing information and influencing opinion
successfully involves much more than just owning or controlling newspapers,
radio and TV stations and outlawing the critical media!

Politically, economically and in terms of the overall health of Zimbabwe,
Mugabe may be a cruel disaster who should exit the stage as soon as possible
for the good of the nation and its millions of suffering people, but on a
human level I wish him good health.

Chido Makunike is a regular columnist writing from Harare.

I asked him what made him change. "When the white imperialists came back a
few years ago," he said, "I decided I had to make a stand. We cannot allow a
return to racist colonial rule." Moyo was reinforcing the demonisation of
the Movement for Democratic Change as a front for "white imperialists", and
not a genuine expression of Zimbabwean opposition to years of Zanu PF
neglect, nepotism, repression and economic mismanagement.

In 1990, I interviewed then-Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)
leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. He was no imperialist lackey. Indeed, he revealed
that he was a loyal, but critical, Zanu PF member who wanted to "make Zanu
practise what it preaches". He was referring to Zanu PF's socialist
rhetoric, at a time when it began drifting towards the IMF and World Bank's
policies of economic liberalisation and structural adjustment.

The early 1990s saw Zanu PF become more authoritarian, leaving the ZCTU with
little option but to form an opposition party, the MDC, with Tsvangirai as
leader. While the party has proceeded to attract support across the spectrum
of Zimbabwean society, including white farmers, its base remains the
Zimbabwean working class. Nevertheless, Moyo and his regime continue to
portray the situation in Zimbabwe as a battle between a genuine liberation
movement and "imperialist counter-revolutionary forces".

Of course, when trapped in a corner, unscrupulous thieves and bullies - like
our own former heroes in the arms-deal saga - will resort to whatever
tactics necessary to wriggle their way out. If it means pulling down
honourable people and institutions, then so be it. The "imperialist" card,
like the "racist" card, is inevitably played whenever corrupt officials are
exposed. The real tragedy is how many of us on the Left have become
spellbound by the "anti-imperialist" rhetoric.

In contrast to its loud condemnation of the US's invasion of Iraq,
opposition to the rape of democracy beyond our borders has been subdued, if
not equivocal. While Cosatu has for a long time criticised the repression of
opposition in Zimbabwe, its voice has been somewhat muted of late. The ANC
has preferred to maintain the fiction that, despite its shortcomings, Zanu
PF is still a "progressive" movement.

If members of the tripartite alliance can be excused for not wanting to rock
the boat, and prefer "quiet diplomacy" to resolve matters, what do we say
about others on the Left who are not shackled by diplomacy? A leading member
of the Landless Peoples' Movement told a gathering recently that the
Zimbabwean war veterans represent the true "revolutionary vanguard" in the
region. Others believe that Zanu PF is still the "best hope for socialism".

Similar bizarre statements have emanated from the ANC Youth League, the PAC
and black consciousness groupings - betraying the utter poverty of their
commitment to democracy and social justice. Zanu PF's "socialism" is more
akin to the Stalinist dictatorship of North Korea than that of the
democratic Left, which regards political, human and social rights of all
people as sacrosanct.

The Left has effectively abandoned the moral high ground to parties on the
Right, including disgruntled former Rhodesians yearning for the past. Just
because white farmers are the most visible victims of Mugabe's tyranny, we
should not be blind to the fact that the overwhelming majority of his
victims are ordinary workers and peasants.

Why is the invasion of Iraq more important than the desecration of human
rights on our doorstep? While the unilateral US invasion needs to be
condemned as an act of neo-imperialism, at least it got rid of a brutal
regime. In the case of Zimbabwe there are few ambiguities: Mugabe and his
regime are ruining the country and trampling on people before our eyes.

We need to stop being dazzled by Mugabe's "anti-imperialist" rhetoric and
mobilise support for those who are being silenced. To those who choose
silence, let me adapt the Rev Martin Niemoller's famous words: First they
came for the farmers, but I was not a farmer, so I did not speak out. Then
they came for the farm workers and the trade unionists, but I was neither,
so I did not speak out. Then they came for the journalists, but I was not a
journalist so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no
one left to speak out for me. - The Sunday Times.

Dr Devan Pillay is a senior lecturer in the sociology depart-ment at Wits
University.

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

October 31, 2003
Posted to the web October 31, 2003

Johannesburg

The situation of Zimbabwe's women farm workers, always one of the most
exploited sectors of the workforce, has been worsened by the current land
reform programme, said a study prepared by the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition.

The country's female farm workers are mostly casual labourers - only 10
percent are permanently employed in commercial farming.

Because they were seen as part of a male-headed household, their rights were
often ignored, the study found. They were not given leave or bonuses and
earned very low wages, often having to supplement their income through other
activities, such as beer brewing and prostitution. Like their male
colleagues, they were able to access only small pieces of land for their own
use.

Women who were the descendents of migrant workers from neighbouring
countries battled to get their own identity documents: precious credentials
that entitled them and their children to social services.

Before the land reform programme began in 2001, up to 350,000 farm workers
were employed on commercial farms owned by about 4,500 white farmers. Their
dependents numbered around 2 million - more than 20 percent of the national
population. By the beginning of 2003, only about 100,000 farm workers were
still employed on the farms.

According to the pro-democracy coalition, more than half the permanent
female workers and about 42 percent of the seasonal female farm workers had
lost their jobs. Of the meagre five percent of land allocated to farm
workers, women appeared to have received less than 20 percent.

The casual labour status of the women meant they were not entitled to the
few severance packages available, no longer had access to the schools and
clinics provided on the farms, and also found themselves without food.

"Most of the women would have lived on the farms as part of a household and
when the farmers were evicted, most of the workforce also had to leave,"
Lloyd Sachikonye, researcher at Zimbabwe's Institute of Development Studies
told IRIN on Friday.

"Some farm workers are staying, based on agreements with the new owners, but
their terms of employment have changed and preference is given to men."

To cope, said Sachikonye, some women have engaged in informal activities
like selling second hand clothes when they can get them, buying and selling
vegetables and joining men in illegal, and dangerous, gold panning.

"Others have moved to squatter camps and are leading a precarious kind of
existence with no access to education, health facilities and food. It's a
big problem," Sachikonye said.

There were also more households headed by women who were single, divorcees,
separated from their partners, or widowed through HIV/AIDS, he added.

"Even the Utete report [the government's audit of the land reform process]
does not devote sufficient attention to farm workers, let alone female farm
workers. Only NGOs have been interested."

The coalition warned that "malnutrition is still increasing among farm
workers' children on farms and in informal settlements and, as usual, it is
the mothers who have to find ways to cope."

Johannesburg, South Africa - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe may be
pilloried as a dictator by international media, but Nkrumah Mulmi was among
a crowd of New Yorkers who cheered him last year as he addressed the New
York City Council.

Mulmi, a prosecutor in the office of the Manhattan district attorney,
recently came to southern Africa to check conditions in Zimbabwe for
himself. After visiting Harare, the capital, and meeting Mugabe, Mulmi has
made up his mind: Mugabe is "a true African leader."

"I feel he's done a better job of empowering his people than [former South
African President] Nelson Mandela," said Mulmi. "He's given land back to his
people."

Across a picnic table from Mulmi at a brunch gathering of African-Americans
in Johannesburg on a recent weekend, Gayla Cook-Mohajane disagreed.

"I lived in Zimbabwe shortly after its liberation" from white minority rule
in 1980, said Cook-Mohajane, an Ohio native married to a South African. "We
used to ask, 'Could this turn into another banana republic?' The answer was
no. But Mugabe has turned it into one now."

Mulmi and Cook-Mohajane represent a sharp divide among African-Americans
over whom to blame for Zimbabwe's crisis. Once one of Africa's most
prosperous and promising nations, Zimbabwe has fallen into food shortages
and hunger amid civil upheavals caused by Mugabe's 3-year-old program to
give land to the poor.

In the United States, black leaders have divided over the U.S. policy of
isolating Mugabe with sanctions and pressing him to resign. While the Rev.
Walter Fauntroy, president of the National Black Leadership Roundtable,
traveled to Zimbabwe in June to publicly toast Mugabe, nine African-American
labor, church and advocacy organizations issued a statement criticizing the
country's human rights record.

After leading Zimbabwe to independence, Mugabe ruled for 20 years without a
serious challenge until 2000, when voters rejected a referendum giving him
more powers. Mugabe accused his opponents of joining with the small, white
minority to betray him and turned to the land issue in an effort to
remobilize political support.

Mugabe's most powerful weapon was the whites' domination of arable land, 70
percent of which was in the hands of 1 percent of the population. Mugabe
encouraged "war veterans" - former fighters in the militia that helped him
battle for independence years ago - to occupy white farms.

In fighting that followed, white farmers and black farm workers have been
killed. Courts have ruled that the government has overstepped laws on land
reform, but Mugabe's administration has ignored their rulings. The best
farms have been handed to Mugabe's cronies.

In fighting his critics, Mugabe has benefitted from open public support by
some prominent African-Americans, notably Andrew Young, former U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations. "Mugabe is the only one who is making any
effort to deal with poverty in Africa," Young declared in an interview last
year, one of many public defenses he has made of Zimbabwe's leader.

Mugabe uses such support as a psychological weapon against his domestic
political opposition, which he accuses of being a pawn of Western
governments and neo-colonialists.

In July, Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United States, Simbi V. Mubako, met
Fauntroy and other African-Americans to "brainstorm means and ways of
influencing U.S. policy makers to stop their anti-Zimbabwe crusade,"
according to a Zimbabwean embassy account posted on the embassy's Web site.
Mubako urged participants to build support for Zimbabwe by using "the Black
media in the U.S. since the mainstream media had already taken an
anti-Zimbabwe stance."

That Mugabe retains support in the black diaspora after his political
crackdown is proof of Zimbabwe's honored place in the annals of the
anti-colonial struggle of the last century. For Pan-Africanists, Zimbabwe
remains the icon celebrated by reggae legend Bob Marley when he sang
"Africans a-liberate Zimbabwe" in his 1970s anthem "Zimbabwe."

The fight against Rhodesia's white minority government was a prelude to the
wider anti-apartheid movement that liberated South Africa. Mugabe, as leader
of the freedom fighters who forced Rhodesia's whites to the negotiating
table, was hailed as a hero.

Bill Fletcher Jr., a former AFL-CIO official who heads the Washington-based
advocacy group TransAfrica Forum, says speaking out against Mugabe was "far
from easy" for him. "President Mugabe had been a hero of mine," Fletcher
wrote in a letter to TransAfrica's members this summer explaining why he was
speaking out. "Nevertheless ... it became clear that silence and inaction on
the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe was no longer acceptable."

As Mugabe has turned more despotic - manipulating the 2002 presidential
election, shutting down the nation's only independent daily newspaper and
charging his presidential challenger with treason - true believers such as
Mulmi have held firm, blaming Western media for distorting Zimbabwe's
crisis.

"I support Robert Mugabe's ideology," said Mulmi, who lives in Harlem. "Not
on every issue, but generally on what he stands for."

Our leaders were more ideologically clear than that. We were going to send
them to

Parliament to set up a new system, in which everyone would get fair
opportunities to develop themselves and this kind of scrambling for crumbs
would not be necessary.

We know better now. "Ideologically clear'? When ESAP came, we saw how easily
our leaders could change their party ideology to suit the IMF and the World
Bank if

that was the way to get money from them.

And how they could change it again when they were threatened with the loss
of an election in 2000! Then the socialist slogans were trotted out again,
shouted by groups of fascists in the streets and on the farms.

But that is by the way. I, for one, had hoped that we would see our busy MPs
sitting down to repeal old laws that oppressed people and pass new ones more
suitable

to the new, more equal, society we expected.

Instead, the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act stayed on the statute books,
the State of Emergency was kept so that the Leader could rule by decree,
leaving the MPs to

collect their salaries for sleeping in Parliament.

There was plenty they could have done. Co-operatives were to be our way to
socialism on the land, but the laws we inherited put a lot of obstacles in
their way.

The officials in the Ministry of Co-operatives only knew how to enforce
those laws and their permanent secretary described co-ops as 'dustbins where
we dump the unemployable'.

The minister responsible for supervising the ZANU PF farms, which originally
were

meant to be co-operatives run by ex-combatants, soon decided they didn't
have enough discipline, so he put in managers and made the co-op members
into employees.

But we could have had new laws and told the officials to enforce them. But
the MPs slept on.

Half steps were made in industrial relations. Workers' committees were
provided for. If they had become works committees, in which workers and
management discussed

management policy together, trade unions might have become unnecessary.

But no-one seemed to know what we really wanted. Again the MPs slept on. And
so it went on. In some liberated areas before independence, a new and more
effective kind of health service, starting from village health workers had
been developed, in which the people had more responsibility for their health
care.

But officialdom didn't trust the people to know what was good for
themselves. That could have been overcome, but again the MPs slept on - and
only woke to collect their salaries.

'Education with production' was a great idea, but it needed a new kind of
teacher.

A new framework for how schools work and for training teachers was needed -
some work for Parliament there - but the MPs slept on. So the workings of
government remained a mystery.

Voters didn't know how decisions were made or who by, because their MPs
didn't tell them. The MPs didn't know because they were asleep - except on
pay day.

The people were left out of the decisions about their lives. They couldn't
get near the table where the Big Men sat and discussed their fate, so they
tried to get a few crumbs from the table, hence all those letters about 'why
doesn't our MP bring us development by 'dissatisfied voter' in Muzarabani or
Chivi, just like so many other countries in Africa. The better MPs tried to
get them a bigger share of the crumbs. Gibson Munyoro was a good example.
But that was second-best. Development isn't delivered from on high. It is
something people do for themselves. The job of legislators is to create an
environment in which people can develop; remove obstacles, make laws that
help them get access to the resources they need (importing them, if
necessary, with less form-filling and low duties, for example) and to sell
what they produce more easily (selling crops to whoever pays the best price,
for example). Yes, it is the job of an MP to represent his or her
constituents, but if the MP really asked, he or she would find the voters
don't just want a bigger plate of crumbs. They don't just want a slice of
the cake. They want a say in the management of the bakery: what sort of cake
it produces and how much. They can't all go and express their wishes in
Parliament, so they elect an MP to do that for them. The details of what
they want will probably be different now from what they were in the early
1980s, though I, for one, would hope they would not be very different. An MP
needs to be in touch with what his or her constituents really want: a better
country to live in, not just a bigger share of the wealth for them in
Rushinga or wherever. He or she needs to know a lot of things about how it
might be possible to achieve that. That is hard work, and it doesn't allow
much time for running a farm, even by phone at weekends, or a string of
businesses. Whoever we put in the next Parliament, whether it is elected in
2005 or earlier, will need a new job description to guide them in how they
should serve their people - and how they should be answerable to them. State
of the Nation with Magari Mandebvu