Jan Raath in Harare
President Mugabe unleashed a devastating new blow to Zimbabwe’s mortally
wounded economy yesterday, announcing a new law giving the state a controlling
stake in mines operating in the country. Under the Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill, the Government can take over 51
per cent of companies mining strategic fuels and minerals, taking 25 per cent
without paying. The balance of 26 per cent it needs for a majority shareholding will be paid
for, it said. However, the Bill brazenly asserts that payment will come from
dividends earned from the state’s shares in the companies it takes without
having to pay. It gives the state seven years in which to do it. The Bill justifies its seizure “in virtue (sic) of its original ownership of
all useful minerals in its subsoil”. Companies mining other minerals will be
taken over by indigenous Zimbabweans. The method of payment is not specified.
Much of Zimbabwe’s mining industry has been wrecked by Government
interference but the ripe plum remaining is the fast-growing multibillion-dollar
platinum industry. The largest company with such interests is Zimplats, the
local subsidiary of South Africa’s Impala Platinum, which is the world’s
second-biggest producer of the precious metal. Already producing $10 billion (£5 billion) of platinum a year, Zimplats is
carrying out a billion-dollar expansion programme to double its output and make
the mine one of the world’s biggest. It is by far the biggest foreign investment
in Zimbabwe since the country’s independence in 1980. Also in the Government’s
sights is the London-based Rio Tinto’s Murowa diamond mine, which has cost $78
million to set up and is on the verge of starting a $270 million expansion. No comment was available from either of the two companies. The Zimbabwe
Chamber of Mines said that it was studying the Bill. Doug Ver-den, a spokesman,
said: “It doesn’t look good.” The proposals are regarded by economists as the logical extension of the
lawless invasions of white-owned farms that began in 2000 and set off the
decline of one of the most prosperous countries in Africa. “The Government is invading the property rights of the mining companies,”
John Robertson, an economic commentator, said. “It's political patronage. The
dividends will go to the select few as a reward for service to the ruling party.
It is shallow and damaging in the extreme.” The Bill specifies that any company showing “wilful noncompliance” in
surrendering its shares will have its mining licence cancelled. Any future
mining investments will be required to give the controlling share to the
Government or black Zimbabweans. “It is going to put a stop to all new mining
development,” said Mr Robertson. Last month the Zimbabwe parliament passed a Bill to force foreign-owned
companies to sell 51 per cent of their shares to black Zimbabweans. Mr Mugabe
has yet to sign the Bill into law. Before the platinum company committed itself
to its investment the Government signed an agreement guaranteeing that the
venture would not be nationalised.
November 21, 2007
Zim Online
by Farisai Gonye Wednesday 21 November
2007
HARARE - Zimbabwean police on Tuesday said they have
begun retraining
officers in public control and management ahead of
elections next year but
denied hiring army instructors to help with weapons
handling exercises.
The police, headed by President Robert Mugabe
loyalists, has in the past
been accused by churches, local human rights
groups and the African
Commission on Human and People's Rights of brutality
against citizens and
targeting opposition supporters and government
opponents for arrest.
Police spokesman Oliver Mandipaka said the
refresher courses were also for
police officers to "acquaint themselves with
electoral conduct and voter
rights issues."
"There is no military
involved. All our exercises are being conducted by
police trainers," said
Mandipaka in reply to a question whether military
instructors were helping
with the training exercises.
But sources, including some police officers,
who have undergone the
refresher exercises said military and police
instructors have run the
courses since they commenced on October
29.
"The military trainers took us through rigorous and intensive
physical and
weapon handling drills," said an assistant inspector who is on
the refresher
programme.
"There were also heavy doses of propaganda
on how we should defend the
country's independence from hostile Western
countries that are using local
opposition parties as fronts," he
added.
Mugabe accuses the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC)
party of being a stooge of Britain and the West, a charge the party
denies.
Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party go into next year's joint
presidential
and parliamentary elections deeply unpopular with voters
because of acute
food shortages and skyrocketing inflation that have
characterised Zimbabwe's
eight year economic recession.
However,
analysts say Mugabe and his party, in power since 1980 are most
likely to
win chiefly because the MDC is too weakened after the opposition
party split
into two rival formations two years ago. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Thulani Munda Wednesday 21 November
2007
HARARE - Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon
Gono yesterday ruled
out an immediate intervention to avert the cash crisis
gripping the nation.
Addressing the business community and the National
Incomes and Pricing
Commission (NIPC), Gono said the monetary authorities
will "watch and see".
"We will watch and see. It's not like we can't do
anything. We can but we
need Zimbabweans to sober up," Gono said.
The
central bank chief spoke as Zimbabweans spent long hours in bank queues
due
to a crippling cash crisis being blamed on runaway inflation estimated
at
more than 14 000 percent.
The shortages have worsened in the past week,
forcing some financial
institutions to limit the amount of cash they give to
depositors.
Some banks now limit the amount of cash depositors are
allowed to withdraw
in order to accommodate more customers.
Financial
institutions blame the shortages on inadequate allocations of cash
from the
RBZ.
Some economic analysts had expected Gono to print more money to ease
the
cash shortages, a development that would have triggered further
increases in
prices of goods and services.
Yesterday's meeting sought
to allay fears triggered by speculation that the
country could be headed for
another government blitz on business activity.
The central bank chief
said the meeting was part of efforts by the bank to
reassure the business
community and the general public that all efforts "are
being taken to
speedily promote the return to normalcy in terms of the
supply of goods and
services."
He said the bank was doing its best to return the operating
environment to
normalcy following damage to business caused by the
controversial government
decision to order a 50 percent reduction in prices.
- ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Own Correspondent Wednesday 21 November
2007
JOHANNESBURG - The Commonwealth says it has not
completely shut the door on
Zimbabwe and welcomes current regional efforts
to find a permanent solution
to Harare's political and economic
crisis.
Speaking in Uganda ahead of the three-day Commonwealth Heads of
Government
Meeting (CHOGM) starting on Friday in the East African country,
Commonwealth
secretary-general Don McKinnon said the door would always
remain open for
Zimbabwe to rejoin the organisation of former British
colonies.
"The Commonwealth's door will always be open and welcoming to
Zimbabwe's
return," McKinnon told members of the Commonwealth Forum of
National Human
Rights Institutions on Tuesday.
President Robert
Mugabe pulled his country out of the Commonwealth in
December 2003 in
protest at the decision made at the organisation's Abuja
summit that year to
maintain Zimbabwe's suspension indefinitely.
Zimbabwe had been suspended
from the Commonwealth in 2002 following an
election widely seen as
flawed.
Its continued suspension caused a major split among Commonwealth
leaders at
the Abuja summit, with South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and
Zambia
extremely upset at the move.
The Commonwealth boss said the
body continued to "encourage people-to-people
links" with
Zimbabwe.
"Those links are very important. I certainly want the
Commonwealth's
people-to-people links with Zimbabwe to continue," he said,
adding that
engagement with Mugabe's government depended on the Harare
authorities.
Zimbabwe's government has insisted it does not see value in
belonging to the
Commonwealth and has rejected the counsel of many other
international
bodies, preferring to stick to a small circle of selected
friendly countries
such as China.
"I have to respect that decision
even if I don't agree with it: that's their
sovereign right. What it means
is that we leave our options open," the
Commonwealth chief said.
He
welcomed the ongoing Southern African Development Community initiated
talks
being spearheaded by South African President Thabo Mbeki.
"Commonwealth
governments in the region are involved in that process, and
they wouldn't
thank me if we did anything but support it," he said.
Meanwhile,
delegates from Zimbabwean human rights organisations have
appealed to the
Commonwealth to re-engage Zimbabwe in order to bring about
changes in the
country.
The delegates who participated at the two-day Commonwealth Forum
of National
Human Rights Institutions said the organisation should not turn
its back on
Zimbabwe as this sends the wrong signal to potential dictators
within the
grouping that withdrawal of membership grants them the liberty to
violate
fundamental human rights with impunity.
The delegates asked
the Commonwealth to lay down explicit and concise
benchmarks for the
re-admission of Zimbabwe. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Patricia Mpofu Wednesday 21 November
2007
HARARE - Lawyers for Zimbabwe's banned Daily News
newspaper have written to
the government's Media and Information Commission
seeking guidance on how to
proceed with an application for a licence to
publish.
Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu last week reconstituted
the MIC and
tasked the body to review the ban imposed on the privately owned
paper and
that was the largest circulating paper in the country when it was
stopped
from publishing four years ago.
Mordecai Mhlangu, the lawyer
for Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ)
that published the Daily News,
told ZimOnline the company last Thursday
wrote to the MIC seeking guidance
in view of the fact that the firm
submitted an application for a licence
about two years ago which the
commission was yet to consider.
Mhlangu
said: "The MIC already is in possession of a full application for a
licence
by the ANZ submitted long ago. We wrote to the MIC seeking
clarification as
to what additional requirements, if any, they need and when
exactly do they
intend dealing with the matter."
ZimOnline was on Tuesday unable to get
comment on the matter from the MIC.
The Daily News was banned in 2003
after the Supreme Court ruled it was
operating outside the law because it
was not registered with the (MIC).
A tough government media law requires
journalists and their companies to
register with the commission in order to
operate in Zimbabwe.
Ndlovu has said he wants the matter of the Daily
News resolved. But
journalists and political observers remain skeptical that
the government
would allow the mass circulating paper it often accused of
being a voice of
the opposition, months ahead of tricky presidential and
parliamentary
elections next year.
The issue of media freedom is part
of ongoing talks being mediated by South
Africa between Mugabe's ruling ZANU
PF party and the main opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.
- ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Lizwe Sebatha Wednesday 21 November
2007
BULAWAYO - Zimbabwe's political and economic
crisis has driven more
than 30 percent of prospective students out of
school, a students'
representative body claimed yesterday.
In a
belated message commemorating the International Students Day, the
Zimbabwe
National Students Union (ZINASU) said "flagrant" violations of
academic
rights by President Robert Mugabe's government have denied
prospective
students the right to education.
ZINASU co-ordinator Washington
Katema said this year's national
commemorations focused on the denial to a
right to education of prospective
students in the country.
"Today, more than 31.5 percent of prospective students in Zimbabwe are
out
of school as a direct result of Mr Robert Mugabe's misrule," said
Katema.
It was not possible to verify the number of
school-going students out
of school. No comment could be obtained from
Higher and Tertiary Education
Minister Stan Mudenge.
The
International Students Day is commemorated annually on 17 November
to mark
the 1939 student unrests against the occupation of Czechoslovakia by
Germany, which resulted in the execution of nine student
leaders.
The unrests led to the detention of over 1 200 students in
concentration camps and the closure of Czechoslovakian universities and
colleges.
Challenges facing Zimbabwean students include
ever-rising tuition
fees, shortages of learning material and an exodus of
lecturers and
teachers.
The challenges highlight an eight-year
political and economic crisis
marked by world record inflation estimated at
more than 14 000 percent and
harassment of student leaders perceived to be
anti-government.
ZINASU has on numerous occasions led street
protests against high
tuition fees that have forced many students out of
school as most parents do
not afford them.
Zimbabwe's education
system has taken a heavy battering since the late
1990s, largely due to
under-funding and neglect by the government. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Nigel Hangarume Wednesday 21 November
2007
MASVINGO - A solidarity march to back President Robert
Mugabe as ZANU PF's
candidate in next year's presidential election failed to
take place in
Masvingo at the weekend after the party's provincial
leadership refused to
be "bullied".
In what sources said was a de
facto boycott, several members of ZANU PF's
Masvingo provincial executive
did not attend a meeting called by the party's
Women's League head Oppah
Muchinguri to wring an endorsement of Mugabe's
candidature.
ZANU PF's
women's and youth wings have been drumming up support for Mugabe
by holding
meetings and marches in all of Zimbabwe's provinces ahead of the
ruling
party's extraordinary congress next month which the party's key
central
committee says is being held to endorse Mugabe as presidential
candidate.
But discontent has persisted among some top party leaders
who feel the party
and country need a leadership renewal and had secretly
pushed for Mugabe to
be replaced at the congress.
Muchinguri told
ZANU PF women and youth leaders in Harare last week that the
marches were to
quash "discord among some presidential candidates" unhappy
over Mugabe's
continued stay at the helm.
However, Muchinguri and ZANU PF youth leader
Absalom Sikhosana saw their
campaign facing a major glitch in Masvingo
despite claims last week that the
province was solidly behind
Mugabe.
Although the meeting went ahead without the senior politicians,
Muchinguri
did not have it her way and the planned march failed to
materialise, the
sources said. Muchinguri was accused of "hijacking" the
province and of
commandeering the executive to convene a meeting without
adequate notice,
they said.
"We felt Muchinguri had no right to chair
a meeting in our province when we
were there," one of the sources, who is in
the executive, said. "If she had
an issue, like organising the solidarity
march which she wanted, she should
have made the proposal and left us to
consider."
Masvingo provincial spokesman Kudzai Mbudzi confirmed the
meeting had been
hastily arranged and that he was among those who had not
attended. Mbudzi, a
former soldier, said the women and youth wings had not
properly
communicated.
"I did not attend the meeting but I hope all
went well," Mbudzi said
yesterday. "I can't say anything about what happened
because I'm in Harare.
"Maybe the lines of communication were not proper,
which is why most of us
could not make it. We don't know who in the
provincial executive Muchinguri
told about the meeting."
Muchinguri
could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Zimbabwe's liberation war
veterans have announced they will also hold a
"million man" march this
month-end to back Mugabe's candidature.
The march is pencilled in to take
place in Harare's high-density suburb of
Highfield, regarded as the bedrock
of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Hendricks Chizhanje Wednesday 21
November 2007
HARARE - A Zimbabwe women's pressure
group on Tuesday launched a
campaign to demand 50 percent representation in
decision-making positions
ahead of next year's presidential and
parliamentary elections.
The Women in Politics Support Unit
(WIPSU), a group that promotes the
participation of women in politics, said
although women constitute 52
percent of Zimbabwe's 12 million people, they
are still not fully
represented in leadership positions in
politics.
"While women constitute 52 percent of the electorate they
continue to
play the role of the voter and not the candidate . . . The
subdued voices
of women are evident in the legislature, judiciary and other
national
processes," said WIPSU in a statement.
The pressure
group said it was demanding that President Robert Mugabe's
government
allocates 50 percent of positions in the executive, the cabinet,
the
legislature, public service, the diplomatic missions, to women.
The
pressure group said out of the 10 provincial governors in
Zimbabwe, only
two, Angeline Masuku and Thokozile Mathuthu, were women.
WIPSU
director Rutendo Hadebe told ZimOnline yesterday that the group
had already
met the leadership of the various political parties in Zimbabwe
to lobby for
quotas for women ahead of next year's elections.
"We are targeting
the public offices and voters. We have already
targeted political parties.
We intend to achieve 50 percent representation
(for women) at all
decision-making levels," said Hadebe. - ZimOnline
VOA
By Patience Rusere
Washington
20 November
2007
Sources among civil society activists report that
there is growing
discontentment with the leadership provided by opposition
political leader
Morgan Tsvangirai, founder of the Movement for Democratic
Change and head of
one of its two factions.
Tsvangirai has been put
on the defensive in his own party by the extremely
negative response at the
grass roots level to last month's dismissal of
Lucia Matibenga as the
chairwoman of his opposition formation's women's
assembly and her
replacement with Theresa Makone, wife of the faction's
director of
elections, Ian Makone.
The MDC had already alienated some civic activists
by voting with the ruling
ZANU-PF party in parliament in August to pass a
constitutional amendment
that was hammered out in South African-mediated
crisis negotiations. The
bill unpalatable to many in civil society because
it made sweeping changes
in the electoral framework - among them letting
parliament select a new
president if the incumbent were to retire or
die.
In a Web article published by NewZimbabwe.com, National
Constitutional
Assembly Chairman Lovemore Madhuku, a leading civil society
voice, is quoted
as saying that Tsvangirai has "made so many mistakes" that
he is unfit to
govern the country in the eventuality that a political
transition should
take place in the country.
A source with the Crisis
In Zimbabwe Coalition told NewZimbabwe that Mr.
Tsvangirai does not seem to
understand the requirements of a democratic
society.
Civil society
sources said such statements accurately reflect current
sentiment among
civic groups, which are losing confidence in Tsvangirai.
Neither Madhuku nor
any senior official in the Crisis Coalition could be
reached for
confirmation.
But Zimbabwe National Students Union President Promise
Mkwananzi, speaking
from the Netherlands, told reporter Patience Rusere that
Madhuku's comments
mirror what many civic groups are thinking though most
are not prepared to
say it openly.
Elsewhere, five female supporters
of Matibenga said they were beaten up
Sunday outside the Tsvangirai
faction's Harare headquarters and needed
medical attention. The five women
are Staten Ndlovu - said to be four months
pregnant - Violet Tazvivinga,
Judith Hwiri, Abigail Marongweza and Violet
Sanean.
They said they
had demanded to see Tsvangirai when they were set upon by
young party
members who blocked them from entering and physically assaulted
them.
Violet Sanean gave reporter Patience Rusere an account of
events Sunday.
HARARE (AFP) -
Zimbabweans endured hours in long queues at banks on Tuesday
as a cash
shortage forced limits on withdrawals, with the country in the
midst of an
economic crisis.
"Things have gotten worse since the weekend," said an
official at a bank in
central Harare where a queue of waiting customers
snaked outside the
building.
Bankers blamed the shortages on a
drastic cut in allocations from the
central bank, but central bank governor
Gideon Gono denied the charge.
"We have pumped in a lot of money in the
form of this support and that
support ... but you find the situation where
there is no cash," Gono told a
news conference.
"So we have taken the
view that we will watch and see. It's not like we
can't do anything. We can,
but surely to what extent. We need to sober up as
Zimbabweans."
Banks
were dispensing half the daily cash limits to customers.
"We have decided
to limit withdrawals so that everybody at least gets some
money," one banker
said.
Between May and September 2003, the country experienced critical
cash
shortages that saw customers queuing for hours to withdraw their
savings.
The southern African country is in the midst of an economic
crisis,
characterised by the world's highest rate of inflation -- currently
at
nearly 8,000 percent -- shortages of basic foodstuffs like sugar and
cooking
oil, and mass unemployment.
Gono also spoke out against a
crackdown in June against businesses accused
of profiteering, saying it hurt
ordinary citizens when shops ran out of
stocks.
"We don't want a
return to the three-month period of madness between July
and September when
the real casualty was the man on the street.
"We are living in a
hyperinflationary environment and we urge stakeholders,
our politicians, to
tell consumers the truth, that things cannot remain the
same
forever."
In June, the government ordered businesses to halve the prices
of goods,
accusing them of fuelling inflation and working in conjunction
with
President Robert Mugabe's foes in the West.
VOA
By Blessing Zulu
Washington
20 November
2007
Negotiations between Zimbabwe's ruling party and its
opposition resumed in
Pretoria, South Africa, on Tuesday, and sources
informed on the talks said
the parties hoped to reach agreement in principle
on all major agenda points
by early December.
Negotiators for the
ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe and both
factions of the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change were under
pressure to wrap up the talks
because ZANU-PF and the African National
Congress party of South African
President Thabo Mbeki, talks mediator, both
have congresses in
December.
Sources close to the talks said discussions Tuesday focused on
Zimbabwe's
political climate in the approach to the elections slated for
March 2008,
looking at political violence, Western sanctions and the
politicization of
traditional leaderships.
Sources in the MDC faction
headed by Morgan Tsvangirai said that if ZANU-PF
does not implement key
agreements concerning the voters roll and reform of
the electoral
commission, they will seriously consider boycotting next year's
elections.
International Crisis Group Senior Analyst Sydney Masamvu
told reporter
Blessing Zulu of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that President
Mbeki is also
under pressure from the international community to produce a
political
solution by December so that he can go to the European-African
summit
opening in Lisbon Dec. 8 with something tangible.
VOA
By Ndimyake Mwakalyelye
Washington
20 November
2007
The European Union will send an envoy to Zimbabwe ahead of
the
European-African summit next month in Lisbon at which European ministers
have promised to deliver a "very firm and very clear" message to President
Robert Mugabe.
Portugal, which holds the EU presidency and is hosting
the summit, is under
pressure to mollify European member states which
opposed Mr. Mugabe's
participation in the summit but were overruled by the
loose consensus among
European states that all African countries should be
involved, and African
solidarity with Mr. Mugabe.
Britain was most
staunchly opposed to Mr. Mugabe's participation, though
backed by Sweden and
the Netherlands. Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared
that no senior
official of his government would attend the summit if Mr.
Mugabe were
present.
But a number of European nations nonetheless insisted Mr. Mugabe
be
confronted with his record on human rights as well as the country's
ever-steeper decline, and put pressure on Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis
Amado at a top-level meeting Monday in Brussels to send an envoy to the
country and region to assess conditions.
In a statement issued
following that meeting of the EU General Affairs and
External Relations
Council, Amado said the EU will send a "very firm and
very clear message" to
Mr. Mugabe about "the development of the situation in
his
country."
Amado explained to reporters in Brussels why an envoy needs to
be sent.
Editor Patrick Smith of the Africa Confidential newsletter in
London said it
is clear that Portugal is under pressure to ensure the summit
addresses the
Zimbabwe crisis.
VOA
By Carole Gombakomba
Washington
20
November 2007
The Zimbabwean Ministry of Health
acknowledged to parliament that it is
concerned about the poor quality of
the water that the Zimbabwe National
Water Authority is delivering to city
residents since taking over urban
systems earlier this
year.
Officials from the ministry told a meeting organized by the house
committees
on health and local government that random analyses indicated a
health risk
to the public.
ZINWA managers said the authority's
financial problems have diminished its
ability to procure water purification
chemicals. But they stopped short of
acknowledging that the water they
provide to urban residents is unfit to
drink. However, authorities in large
cities like Bulawayo have reported
widespread outbreaks of diarrheal
disease.
Members of the public attending the hearing complained about the
poor
service they say ZINWA has provided since taking over water systems in
cities including Harare, Bulawayo, Marondera and Mutare under legislation
passed in 2006. Residents of various cities have also complained of massive
increases in water rates.
Critics of the legislation say the
government of President Robert Mugabe
directed the takeover in order to take
control of cash flows from urban
water rates, which were a major source of
revenue for local authorities,
most controlled by the
opposition.
Lawmaker Blessing Chebundo, chairman of the house committee
on health, told
reporter Carole Gombakomba of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe
that parliament is
probing ZINWA operations, including questionable billing
practices.
International Herald Tribune
By Alan Cowell Published: November 20, 2007
Ian Douglas
Smith, the former prime minister of Britain's rebellious colony
of Rhodesia,
who rose to power and slipped from it, committed to an
unshakable belief
that Africa without whites would not work, died on
Tuesday. He was
88.
His death was reported by the BBC, but there were no immediate
details on
the cause.
Even when politically eclipsed, after Rhodesia
became Zimbabwe with a black
majority government, Smith clung to the view
that whites were still needed
to guide the new country's economy, help
insure "good government" and
maintain "standards." And, a full quarter
century after he relinquished
power following a guerrilla war that claimed
30,000 lives, most of them
black fighters and civilians, he showed no
remorse or repentance for the
bloodshed that many ascribed to his opposition
to black majority rule.
Indeed, as Zimbabwe slid into corruption and
decline under the despotic
President Robert Mugabe, who took power in
Zimbabwe's first elections before
independence in 1980, Smith sensed events
had vindicated his long-running
refusal to dilute white
dominance.
"I'm pleasantly surprised at the number of people who come to
me and say:
when you were in the chair we thought you were too inflexible
and unbending.
We now see that you were right," he said in an interview
during a visit to
London in May 2004, at the age of 85.
Yet, for all
he reviled Mugabe and his followers as "gangsters," after first
agreeing to
cooperate with his country's new black rulers, he stayed put in
Harare, the
capital, insisting that his descent from the first settlers who
arrived to
colonize Rhodesia in the 1890s bound him to Zimbabwe.
Even after Mugabe
ordered a massive and bloody campaign to strip the
country's white minority
farmers like Smith of their land in the early
2000s, he kept on farming two
estates in the center and south of the
country.
"There have been five
generations of my family here," he said in the
interview, recounting how his
parents and grandparents were buried on one of
the farms at Shurugwi in
central Zimbabwe. "That's our history and we are to
going to stay there. The
only thing that could make me leave would be if I
believed I no longer had
freedom of thought."
As he aged, he remained bitter that, in his view,
successive outside powers
including the United States, South Africa and most
of all Britain had broken
promises, betraying Rhodesia's white minority and
its leaders in the name of
political expediency.
And to the last, he
disparaged Mugabe and his allies for their determination
to remain in office
despite international condemnation of despotic rule and
rigged elections.
"They are not stupid, these blacks," Smith said in the
2004 interview.
"Keeping themselves in power is what they are good at."
Throughout his
life and particularly during the war years when his white-run
army fought an
increasingly bloody insurgency mounted from neighboring
Zambia and
Mozambique Smith evoked diametrically opposed responses.
To his
followers, Smith embodied what they considered the quintessential
virtues of
white Rhodesians: He was patriotic, resourceful and resilient, a
man without
pretensions who showed a defiant readiness to play rough when
circumstance
required.
"An honest Rhodesian," a political poster proclaimed in 1964.
"Trust Mr.
Smith. He will never hand over Rhodesia." The image and the
message did not
fade over the years. When peace and majority rule came to
his country in
1980, Smith was the only leading politician to oppose
acceptance of a
negotiated Constitution that buried white supremacy, and
Rhodesia, forever.
In the eyes of his opponents, his attributes were
different. The labels
attached by black nationalists and other critics were
obdurate,
intransigent, devious, racist, fascist and evil. Second only to
the
apartheid rulers of South Africa, he became black Africa's symbol of
iniquitous white rule.
Smith's father, Douglas Smith, emigrated to
the territory in 1898 from
Hamilton, Scotland, settling at a modest village
called Selukwe as Shurugwi
was known under white rule - 200 miles southwest
of Salisbury, now Harare.
The father experimented with gold-mining and
cattle-farming. Eventually, he
established a butcher shop, renowned for its
sausages.
Many of Ian Smith's followers could not lay claim to such
"pioneer" lineage,
which, though brief in the gaze of history, was a totem
of pedigree in
Rhodesia. Tens of thousands of his followers arrived in the
colony after
World War II, leaving a depressed Britain to embrace a life of
privilege,
and laying Smith open to the charge that his support lay among
settlers of a
country that was not their own.
Smith was born on April
8, 1919, in Selukwe, where he later owned a
7,500-acre cattle spread. After
his political fall in 1980, he spent much of
his time there. But, as he aged
he spent more and more time in Harare,
particularly after black squatters
occupied part of the farm in September
2001, under Mugabe's land
expropriation campaign, and refused to leave.
A little-known political
figure, who referred to himself as "a back-room
worker," Smith attained
office as deputy prime minister in 1962, the year
his party, the Rhodesian
Front, first won power. In 1964, a cabinet revolt
against his predecessor,
Winston Field, gave Smith the job of prime
minister.
On Nov. 11,
1965, Smith announced in emotionless tones that Rhodesia had
unilaterally
declared itself independent from Britain, rather than bow to
pressure from
London for concessions toward the black majority. He ended his
broadcast
proclamation of the rebellion with the words: "We have struck a
blow for the
preservation of justice, civilization and Christianity and in
this belief we
have this day assumed our sovereign independence. God bless
you
all."
His black compatriots were aghast at his display of defiance, but
their
resentments were countered by a state machinery that encompassed
detention
without trial, an efficient secret police and, later, martial law
in most of
the land. Condemnation of the rebellion heaped up. The United
Nations
applied international sanctions intended to cut off Rhodesia from
the rest
of the world in 1966. Smith was unrepentant. "No African rule in my
lifetime," he said. "The white man is master of Rhodesia. He has built it
and he intends to keep it." Later, in 1976, he declared that there would be
no majority rule, "not in a thousand years" in Rhodesia.
Smith's
relations with the West - Britain in particular - were not improved
by the
series of negotiations through which London, the lawful authority in
Rhodesia, sought to end the rebellion. Each round of discussions ended with
mutual accusations of deviousness and deceit. Each collapse of the
negotiating process bought Smith a little more time to extend minority
domination. Each time, black anger deepened.
For the black
majority, the rebellion was the worst of affronts, an
institutionalized
humiliation, and in December 1972 nationalist guerrillas
attacked a farm in
northeastern Rhodesia with rockets, to start a war that
eventually took
30,000 lives.
Only in 1976, and under pressure exerted by Henry Kissinger
through South
Africa, Smith's main ally, did the Rhodesian leader
acknowledge the need for
majority rule. And even then, it was a grudging
acceptance, which Smith was
slow to carry out.
On March 3, 1978, he
signed an agreement called "the internal settlement"
with moderate black
leaders who had pledged to eschew the violence of the
war. Under the
arrangement, Smith agreed to step down, and handed over power
to Bishop Abel
Muzorewa, who won elections in April 1979. The vote was
condemned by the
guerrillas, who took no part in the process.
Their exiled leaders, Mugabe
and Joshua Nkomo, dismissed the settlement as a
ploy, since it enabled
whites to retain control of the army, economy and
legislature. The agreement
won no international recognition, and the war
continued.
In the fall
of 1979, however, Britain presided over what was to be its final
conference
on Rhodesia. Only Smith, a member of Bishop Muzorewa's
delegation, resisted
the terms that led to British-supervised elections and
lawful independence
the next spring. Mugabe came to power. The white
Rhodesians' rebellion had
finally crumbled.
The Constitution drawn up at Lancaster House in London
contained compromises
guaranteeing that whites would have 20 of the 100
seats in Parliament. The
Rhodesian Front, Smith's party, won them all in the
first elections in 1980,
and despite wartime threats against his life, he
stayed on, asserting that
it was in the interests of his white followers and
at their behest that he
did so.
Initially, Smith and Mugabe
cooperated with one another. After labelling
Mugabe a bloodthirsty
terrorist, Smith described him in the early 1980s,
shortly after
independence from Britain, as "a very pleasant change from
what most of us
had expected."
But Smith never apologized for leading the country into
war and never came
to terms with what he depicted as inevitable decline
under black majority
rule.
"We gave Rhodesia 15 wonderful years
extra," he said in an interview on his
farm at Shurugwi in 1983. If he had
not declared unilateral independence in
1965, he said, "then this sort of
scene would have come earlier. We gave the
country 15 exhilarating years. It
was a privilege to make a stand against
Communism. We held the line
back."
The final rift with Mugabe came in 1985 at the first
post-independence
election when white voters showed a surprising degree of
support for Smith,
giving him 15 of the 20 seats reserved for whites under
the Lancaster House
Constitution.
Using language that provided a
foretaste of the virulent criticism of white
attitudes that accompanied his
land policies in the early 2000s, Mugabe said
the vote showed that "the
enemy of yesterday is still today's enemy." From
then onwards, he shunned
Smith. Two years later, Smith left Parliament,
claiming he had been forced
out illegally by Mugabe.
While he played a modest, behind-the-scenes role
in political life, Smith
never regained the prominence of his days as a
rebel against the British
crown. He did not figure prominently when an
opposition group, the Movement
for Democratic Change, began to challenge
Mugabe in 2000. And when Smith
visited Britain in 2004, meeting with British
Conservative legislators, his
stay went virtually unreported in British
newspapers that once chronicled
his every move.
To the end, Smith
insisted that his regime condemned in the outside world as
racist and
unlawful had been beneficial to most of the country's people.
"There are
millions of black people who say things were better when I was in
control,"
he said in an interview in 2004. "I have challenged Mugabe to walk
down the
street with me and see who has most support. I have much better
relations
with black people than he does."