The Mugabe regime has
casually announced through their mouthpiece The Herald that they will 'soon'
appoint a commission of party apparatchiks to run the affairs of our city.
Once again the regime demonstrates its complete contempt for democracy; yet
again it exposes itself as intellectually bankrupt, devoid of creativity and
unable to acknowledge the reality that the residents of Harare do not want
them to have anything to do with our city. The emphatic vote for the MDC in
mayoral and council elections in March 2002 was a clear rejection of zanupf
whose time at the helm was characterized by opaque practices, nepotism and
corruption that to this day remains unpunished. The regime cannot afford to
have democratically elected representatives at Town House as such a council
will expose the whole can of worms. Indeed it was the efforts of the
legitimate Executive Mayor of Harare Elias Mudzuri to identify the
mismanagement of the Chanakira Commission and the Tawengwa administration
that lead the regime to evict the mayor from Town House.
Chombo once
more displays his disrespect for the laws passed by his own party. The city
is not the personal possession of either Chombo or his party but belongs to
the residents of Harare who fund the city's operations through their rates
and other financial contributions. As such it is up to all residents to
reject the imposition of another zanupf commission by withdrawing all support
for the municipality until we regain the power that is ours. The law is very
clear on our rights to elect an Executive Mayor and Council.
CHRA
reiterates its call for all residents to boycott council facilities, withhold
rates payments and refuse to accept this latest ploy by the desperate regime.
We repeat that age old principle: no taxation without representation. When
democratically elected government is restored to Town House, we will press
for the creation of an investigative committee to expose not only
the nepotism, corruption and mismanagement but to examine the collusion
of senior municipal officials in the theft of our democratic rights. The
racist attack on CHRA by the so-called Public Relations officer Lesley Gwindi
last week is just one example of the desperate nature of such individuals
who know their days at Town House are numbered. The chaos in Harare is such
that only the wholesale dismissal of employees such as Gwindi will clean out
the stables and allow a democratic, transparent and accountable
administration to carry out its mandate and earn the respect and support of
residents essential for success. CHRA will continue to represent residents
to the best of its ability under these repressive conditions. The NGO bill
will not silence us. POSA will not stop us. With the support of Harare's
residents, we will continue to expose the regime's machinations.
CHRA
Promoting Transparent, Accountable and Democratic Local Government
For
further comment/clarification, please contact the Chairperson Mr. Michael
Davies on 091 249 430 or the Legal Spokesperson Mr. Dewa Mavhinga 091 300 971
or the Advocacy and Information Officer Jameson Gadzirai 011 612
860
ZANU PF has achieved
its first objective - a naked coup d'etat against the MDC-dominated Harare
city council.
We can expect the party to make its next project
the take-over of the Bulawayo city council, then Gweru and finally
Mutare.
The pattern has been established: create confusion in
the council, trump up charges of corruption or mismanagement against the
council and, finally, declare the council incapable of running the
city.
The commission reportedly to be appointed to run Harare
will not be independent - that is a foregone conclusion. It will be as Zanu
PF as Shake Shake building.
What most foreigners must find
amazing is that there has not been a sound of protest from the people of
Harare, who rejected Zanu PF in 2000 and elected MDC councillors to replace
them, except one.
If you looked at the bigger picture, you
could conclude that even if Zanu PF was trounced in a free and fair
election, the party would somehow connive to emasculate the new government -
stage a bloodless
coup d'etat.
What all this
speculation leads to is the fact that Zanu PF may never give up power
peacefully. The leaders of the party may not realise this right now, but it
is something they ought to ponder.
There will come a time when
all Zimbabweans who feel our independence has not measured up to their
expectations will conclude that there is no chance of a peaceful regime
change.
To the Zanu PF top brass, such an eventuality may be
unthinkable. But Africa is littered with the corpses of leaders who believed
they were invincible or immortal. In general, the people of Zimbabwe are
characterized as being extremely docile.
Zanu PF has
exploited this docility.
But in the political history of
Africa, such parties have made the fatal mistake of taking all the people
for granted all the time.
To save Zimbabwe from the bloody fate
that has befallen other nations in the past, Zanu PF would be well-advised
to take the counsel of some of its more moderate leaders - respect the
people.
Right now, the country is in a veritable economic mess,
but Zanu PF is preoccupied with the appointment of a woman as one of two
vice-presidents. The Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Chris
Kuruneri, has been languishing in the police cells, charged with financial
malfeasance.
The acting minister is Herbert Murerwa. His record
as substantive minister of finance a few years ago is lacklustre, to say the
least.
So the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Gideon
Gono, seems to be running the entire show.
He has his
credentials as a banker but he has shown recently that running the economy
of the country is not exactly his forte.
Many people have the
impression that Gono is allowed carte blanche because the politicians are
too busy either trying to kill the MDC-dominated councils or choosing which
woman ought to be vice-president.
The price of fiddling while
the nation burns may turn out to be a rejection of Zanu PF, if not at the
rigged polls, then in an episode to be remembered as the day the timid mouse
roared.
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of
the United Nations]
JOHANNESBURG, 22 Nov 2004 (IRIN) - In a bid to
end the crisis in the delivery of social services, a new commission will be
appointed to run Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.
The official Herald
newspaper reported on Monday that the commission would assume its duties
within 21 days, effectively replacing the embattled Harare City Council.
Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo was quoted as saying that an
immediate task for the commission would be to formulate a workable budget
for the city.
Harare-based economist Denis Nikisi said: "It is quite
important that this new outfit has adequate financial backing because the
commissioners will be expected to turn around the city's recent misfortunes.
They will have to sort out a myriad of problems, like water shortages,
potholes on the streets and the erratic electricity supply. It is also
important that they get the right people, with appropriate experience and
skills for the job."
Nikisi welcomed the establishment of the commission
but said it would only be effective if it were well resourced. One of the
long-standing complaints of the Harare City Council was that it was expected
to perform its tasks with a grossly inadequate budget.
Earlier this
year, the ruling ZANU-PF party assumed virtual control of the capital after
the council, dominated the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
resigned in protest over what they said was "undue interference" by the
government. Executive mayor Elias Mudzuri, an MDC member suspended in 2002
for alleged mismanagement, was eventually fired from his post this
year.
The council has been left with just eight officials to run the
city. "Urgent" action was necessary to prevent a further decline in social
service delivery said Mike Davies, chairman of the Combined Harare Residents
Association, but the appointment of a new body was "not the answer" to the
city's woes.
"It has been reported that nominations would be accepted
for posts within the council, but so far none of the major stakeholders,
including the residents' association, have been called on to participate in
such a process. This kind of disregard would lead to the commission lacking
legitimacy among residents," Davies told IRIN.
He claimed that the
city's current difficulties stemmed from the lack of transparency and
accountability by local councillors. "Previously, each Wednesday residents
could go to Town House and air their grievances about how the city is being
run - that has all come to and end. There is no room for dialogue," he
remarked.
Living conditions in Zimbabwe's urban centres have deteriorated
as the country faces its worst economic crisis. Over the past year service
delivery in Harare has plummeted and recurrent breaks in the water supply
have forced some residents to use river water, raising concerns over
possible outbreaks of waterborne diseases.
We have just had a team from the IMF here. Headed by the
Director for Africa they stated that their reason for coming to Zimbabwe was
a last ditch attempt to head off the compulsory expulsion of Zimbabwe from
the IMF for non-payment of our debt to the IMF. Their press release following
the visit talked of a meeting with President Mugabe and a restatement of the
Funds position on Zimbabwe and what we needed to do to pull us back from the
edge.
These multilateral institutions operate on the basis that
their members are all independent governments and that their own debt in each
country, is a first priority when it comes to debt servicing. There is scant
regard paid to the circumstances under which the debt was originally incurred
or the direct consequences of the debtor countries own actions and self
inflicted damage.
So you have the IMF and the World Bank and
their many affiliates, dealing with countries like the Congo. Even though the
Congo hardly has a government and is about as a corrupt and incompetent a
collection of people you can find anywhere. Because they describe their
activities in these terms, the multilateral institutions work on the
assumption that what they are doing in the world economic system is good,
irrespective of the mounting evidence to the contrary.
Before
Independence in Zimbabwe, the then settler regime had no relations with any
of the multilaterals. Forced to rely on their own resources and ingenuity,
they established a small, reasonably honest government, which administered
the countries resources and economy with remarkable efficiency. When we came
to independence in 1980 we had a currency which was stronger than the US
dollar and the British pound in local markets, there was virtually no black
market for anything, the country had a small export orientated economy which
delivered to its people an income per capita that was second only to South
Africa in the region. Our food was the cheapest in Africa and our small but
sophisticated medical and education system delivered services that were
unrivalled on the Continent.
We now live in a country where all
of those foundations have been swept away. We have a large, inflated
government that is corrupt from the top to the bottom, our local currency is
worthless, our export industries are in ruin and one third of our total
population has fled the country - mainly for political and economic reasons.
We are now near the bottom of the log in terms of income per capita and our
social infrastructure is in a shambles - producing school graduates that can
hardly read or write and are not functionally numerate. We have seen the
fastest collapse of life expectancy of any country in the world that is not
embroiled in conflict.
The reasons are not sanctions as the
Mugabe regime sprouts at every opportunity - the Rhodesians spent 15 years
under UN mandatory sanctions and survived, they are not colonial - we never
were a colony in the strict sense of the word, we were a self governing
dominion within the Commonwealth from virtually 1923. They were not conflict
- the Rhodesians fought a savage, no holds barred civil war for 8 years
before they succumbed to international and region
pressure.
No, this collapse in our economy, our social
infrastructure and society is totally self-inflicted. We have no one else to
blame but ourselves. We decided to live beyond our means; we decided to
undermine the rule of law and the sanctity of our own constitution. We
subverted our Courts and neglected our civil service. We wasted our scarce
resources on the senseless war in the Congo and on patronage extended to a
political minority on whom the State depends for survival.
No,
our scars are self inflicted and just for once, I would like to hear someone
- anyone, from any of the multilateral institutions say so. The UN, the UNDP,
the IMF and the World Bank, the ADB. Anyone. But there is nothing but silence
and double speak such as we heard this week from the IMF.
I would
have thought that a much higher priority for Zimbabwe than the servicing of
IMF loans would be feeding the people, treating the victims of the Aids
pandemic, providing for the million children who are Aids orphans. What about
the thousands of pensioners who have not had their pensions paid for the past
year or even longer, many of whom are starving and dependent on others for
survival. What about the billions of dollar (real dollars) of assets stolen
from their rightful owners with no prospect of compensation or legal redress?
I would have thought that the IMF should demand these priorities as
preconditions to membership, not simply the repayment of debt by a starving
nation that is on its knees.
We all know that only democratic
states that respect the rule of law have any chance of success in economic
and social terms. Where are the stated priorities of these multilaterals on
these issues? If we are going to bring delinquent governments like the Mugabe
regime into line, we all have to speak the same language and play the same
tune. Instead we have the State owned Herald with banner headlines stating
that the IMF has thrown Zimbabwe a lifeline. Giving Mugabe the slightest hope
that he will be forgiven for all that he has done will only perpetuate the
agony, not solve the problem.
Just this past week we have seen
the Zanu juggernaut at work - setting the democratic clock back another 20
years, harassing the opposition and civil society at every opportunity and
subverting the rule of law and virtually every tenet of sound democratic
practice. We are not making progress - we are going backwards, economically,
socially, politically. We are losing ground on every front and it is our
people who are paying the price. We expect the international community and
its representative organs to defend the principles of freedom and progress
whenever they are given the opportunity. So when the IMF comes to Harare and
engages the State and defends its position with double speak instead of plain
talking, we have every reason not to trust them with our
future.
RESERVE Bank of
Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono has turned down proposals for salary
increments for teachers, adding that hefty pay packets were not in line with
declining inflation.
Sources within the central bank said the
teachers' representatives had warned that a go-slow by teachers, which
coincided with public examinations which began last month, would continue
into the new year if the teachers' grievances were not
addressed.
"The governor was adamant that teachers should not
get any increments as this was not in tune with declining inflation.
Instead, he (Gono) said arrangements could be made to increase their
allowances and not their salaries," a source close to the deliberations told
The Daily News Online.
"What this means is that the crisis in
the education sector is likely to continue and this is bad for parents who
pay school fees for their children. Since last month, the government has
recalled retired teachers and civil servants to help run examinations but it
seems the governor is not taking the crisis seriously."
Teachers, the least paid professionals in the civil service, went on strike
last month, accusing the government of reneging on an earlier agreement to
award them staggered salary increments for the whole year.
Teachers earn a basic salary of $670 000 every month, far below the poverty
datum line of $1.4 million every month which the Consumer Council of
Zimbabwe (CCZ) says an average family of five needs every month to
survive.
The Zimbabwe Teachers Association secretary-general
David Sinyolo refused to comment on the latest impasse, saying negotiations
are still in progress.
But other sources involved in the
negotiations said Gono assured the representatives that he was prepared to
hike their allowances.
"Apart from the allowances, he said
other incentives such as free education on government schools should be
considered but what the teachers want is an increase in disposable income,"
the source said.
Efforts to contact Gono and the Public Service
Commission were fruitless.
November 21, 2004 Posted to the web November 22,
2004
THE Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) Holdings could
have dramatised current regional power supplies in order to justify several
energy generation agreements it concluded with the Chinese two weeks ago,
The Standard has established.
Zesa Holdings Executive Chairman, Dr
Sydney Gata, two weeks ago told the media they had signed the agreements
with the Chinese because of "massive power shortage" due to affect the
region in three years, and interruptions annually in South African power
imports during the winter months of July and August.
The South
African power utility, Eskom, told The Standard that as far as it was
concerned, "Eskom has and continues to perform (that is deliver electricity
to Zimbabwe) in line with its contract with Zesa, including emergency
support".
Fani Zulu, the spokesperson for Eskom, told The Standard the
terms and conditions of such emergency support were also covered in the
contract.
This position seems to contradict Zesa's assertion that Eskom
is unable to supply power to Zimbabwe for several hours a day during the
winter months.
Industry sources said during the past decade demand for
electricity in the region had increased at about 3% a year. In July SADC
Energy Ministers meeting in Windhoek, Namibia, reaffirmed their government's
commitments to support generation and transmission projects in the region
and that they would support the creation of an enabling environment for
investors, both private and public.
Zulu said Eskom's Integrated
Strategic Electricity Plan (IESP9) provided strategic projections of supply
- side and demand side options to be implemented in order to meet long-term
load forecasts.
"In line with this plan, Eskom is in the process of
returning to service three of its power stations that are currently in
reserve storage. The power stations have a combined capacity of
3800Megawatts - equivalent to a modern six pack power station," Zulu
said.
But for the first time, Zulu disclosed that Eskom was never
interested in taking up a stake in Zesa on the basis of a debt-for- equity
swop.
He told The Standard: "The issue of a debt to equity swop was never
discussed between Eskom and Zesa. In fact, Eskom has gone on record on a
number of occasions to say that the issue of debt to equity is not on our
agenda. Despite having set the record in this regard, the speculation in the
media continued."
Gata told the media that the power utility expected
to liquidate its Eskom debt, which he estimated at US$30 million, by March
next year.
But Zulu was unable to respond directly to the issue of how
much Zesa owed Eskom and how this was being serviced, only saying: "We are
of the view that this is confidential client information We can, however,
confirm that Zesa is performing in terms of the latest account normalisation
agreement."
The immediate beneficiaries of the US $500 million agreements
are the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) and Hwange Power
Station.
The rural electrification project is valued at US$110million and
part of the consignment of electricity transmission equipment for the REA
was handed over three weeks ago.
The equipment includes among other
things, transformers, which range from 50Kva to 300Kva, conductors,
insulators and bows, among others.
Gata described the co-operation as
particularly focused "towards comprehensive empowerment of our rural
communities". He said the rural electrification programme had transformed
electricians and artisans into rural infrastructure development
fundamentalists, "with a distinctive passion for the rapid empowerment of
our disenfranchised communities".
Under the REA, it is propose to
rehabilitate 50 000 hectares for irrigation. In turn, Zesa proposes to put 2
500ha under tobacco during next year, with another 10 000 expected the
following year. The crop will be exported to China to cover payment for the
agreements.
Zim Once Again Listed As High Risk Security Country
Zimbabwe
Standard (Harare)
November 21, 2004 Posted to the web November 22,
2004
ZIMBABWE is the only southern African economy with a hostile
business environment that will scare investors from committing funds, says a
report released in London last week.
The Control Risks Group, an
international business risk consultancy, said on Thursday in a statement
that Harare is a trouble spot that investors will continue to shun,
reinforcing earlier forecasts by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the
World Bank.
The annual study of political and security risks across the
globe entitled RiskMap 2005, says Zimbabwe has a high political risk level
together with other African countries such as Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory
Coast), Guinea, Liberia and Togo.
According to the Control Risks
Group, classification as a "high risk" country means "business execution is
possible but conditions are difficult or likely to become so in the near
future".
Risks to business include political institutions that do not
function, a poor regulatory framework and arbitrary judicial decisions among
other factors.
"There is little security for investments. Business
may be exposed to the following risks: economic and political conditions may
become rapidly unstable; international sanctions are possible; non-state
actors actively target business; or there is a risk of contract repudiation
or re-negotiation by state actors," says the report launched in London on
Thursday.
Since 2000, political activists and former liberation war
heroes loyal to President Robert Mugabe have been confiscating white-owned
commercial farms in the name of land redistribution.
Consequently
investors have punished the southern African country by rolling back
investment. Furthermore, the mining sector is in turmoil after the
government announced that it was pondering legislation that might result in
the appropriation of 50% shares in all foreign-owned mines.
The
troubled southern African country, which is enduring its worst economic
crisis since independence from Britain in 1980, is also considered a high
security risk alongside war-torn Cote d'Ivoire, troubled DRC and
Burundi.
"This means that there is a high probability that foreign
companies will face security problems where assets and personnel are at
constant risk from violence or theft by State or non-State actors," reads
part of the RiskMap 2005.
However, according to the Control Risk
Group, it is not all doom and gloom for southern Africa. Countries such as
Angola and South Africa have been viewed as good for business.
"South
Africa's business environment is positive. Businesses are set to benefit
from the continuation of the government's macro-economic programme and the
black empowerment policy should start to see better results in the
redistribution of wealth.
"However, areas such as the delivery of
basic social services for example electricity, water and housing to
impoverished communities and the roll-out of anti-retroviral drugs for
HIV/Aids sufferers remain in need of improvement."
Angola's return to
peace, coupled with the potential of large-scale donor aid, will present
businesses with ample incentive to invest in the country's fledgling
industry.
In Asia, China's operating environment will continue to
improve, with new measures to deregulate the labour market and roll out
legal system improvements. Foreign investors' enthusiasm for China will be
boosted by the build-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and related
infrastructure projects.
New Courts in Zimbabwe to Speed Up Land Seizures By Peta
Thornycroft Harare 22 November 2004
New courts
have begun operating in Zimbabwe to help the government speed the
confiscation of thousands of white-owned farms. Many lawyers say the new
process created by Zimbabwe Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa is
unconstitutional.
The special courts have a backlog of up to 5,000
properties taken by the government since 2000, but not processed through the
courts. Most white farmers were forced to leave their homes and agricultural
businesses, but have challenged the seizure of their properties in the
courts.
New laws mean that farmers will have only five working days to
prepare their legal defense, including decades of paperwork from farm
accounts and complex valuations of equipment and loss of earnings.
An
executive of Zimbabwe's Law Society, Beatrice Mtetwa, says the new law will
be challenged by the Society because, she says, it is patently
unconstitutional.
John Worsley Worswick, from the pressure group
Justice for Agriculture, said a court deadline is set for 500 farms on the
same day. He said there are not enough lawyers in all Zimbabwe to prepare
the simultaneous defense for those properties.
If farmers fail to
present a defense case to the new special courts they automatically forfeit
the properties to the state under Zimbabwe's much amended land
laws.
Most of Zimbabwe's white commercial farmers are no longer working
their land or living in their homes because they were evicted. Many say they
hope one day to receive fair compensation for the capital infrastructure on
their farms and must go through all legal processes.
The government
says the evicted farmers were blocking land reform, so it was forced to set
up the special courts to conclude the confiscation of more than 11 million
hectares of their land and businesses.
Only about 300 white commercial
farmers out of more than four-thousand remain in full operation, although a
few are violently evicted every week.
According to published statistics,
Zimbabwe's agricultural production has dropped by at least 70 percent since
President Robert Mugabe sent his supporters onto white-owned land beginning
in 2000. Zimbabwe used to earn more than 40 percent of its foreign exchange
from agricultural exports and is now critically short of cash for imports
such as fuel.
According to several farmers who have flown over the former
large scale farming sector in the past three weeks, few of the landless
peasants who were resettled there during the past four years, remain. There
are no government statistics on how many landless peasants are still on the
land.
Zimbabwe Urges Asians to Visit Nation 11.22.2004, 06:45
AM
Zimbabwe's government tried to shake off the country's crisis-ridden
image on Monday and urged Asian tourists to visit the impoverished African
nation, which has been widely criticized by human rights
groups.
Speaking at Singapore's Changi Airport as Air Zimbabwe launched a
twice-weekly service to Beijing via this wealthy city-state, Minister for
Transport and Communications Christopher Mushohwe said Zimbabwe would
welcome new arrivals.
Zimbabwe's tourist industry - like the rest of
the country's economy - has all but collapsed since 2000 due to a political
crisis.
Human rights groups allege President Robert Mugabe has exploited
agitation for the redistribution of white-owned farms to black Zimbabweans
as a smoke screen to intimidate critics of his 24-year rule.
As most
economic activity in Zimbabwe has ground to a near-halt, unemployment and
hyperinflation have soared. There is a chronic shortage of hard currency,
and reported food shortages.
Air Zimbabwe, the national airline, has
struggled to keep flying in recent years. Earlier this year it was
reportedly suspended from the International Air Transport Association over
unpaid debts.
In 2003, a Zimbabwe parliamentary inquiry concluded that
the flag-carrier was one of the world's worst international
airlines.
Wong Woon Liong, director-general of the Civil Aviation
Authority of Singapore, said Monday that the new service would "open up new
opportunities for tourism and trade."
Air Zimbabwe is the eighth new
carrier to start serving Changi this year, bringing its roster of airlines
to 74, the authority said in a statement. - AP
From The Green Left Weekly (Australia), 22 November
Behind the
Cosatu-ANC spat over Zimbabwe
Dale T McKinley
During the last
week of October, a 13-member delegation from the Congress of South African
Trade Unions (Cosatu) arrived in Zimbabwe for a brief "fact-finding mission"
that, according to Cosatu, was designed to "get a full first-hand picture of
the conditions under which our sister organisation [the Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions, ZCTU] operates". Cosatu had gone ahead with the long-delayed
visit despite the stated opposition of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
Shortly after arriving in Harare, during its first meeting with ZCTU
officials, the Cosatu delegation was detained by police. Within hours, the
Cosatu delegation was unceremoniously dumped at the Zimbabwe-South African
border post of Beitbridge. In the week that followed, a war of words broke
out between Cosatu and its ertswhile alliance partner, the ruling ANC, over
the incident. Loyalists of South African President Thabo Mbeki were quick to
call the visit "irresponsible games that do not contribute anything towards
solving the crisis in Zimbabwe".
A 3000-word official ANC statement
was published in the November 5 ANC Today, the party's online newsletter, in
which Cosatu was accused of showing "contempt for a head of state [and]
sovereign government", evidently because Cosatu had ignored Mugabe's
opposition to the visit. It went on to say that, "we fully support the
statement made by our Ministry of Foreign Affairs that 'the South African
government accepts that Zimbabwe is an independent, sovereign state that has
an inalienable right to determine and to apply its immigration legislation
as it may deem appropriate and in its own interest'." Cosatu deputy
secretary-general Bheki Ntshalintshali provided a succinct but low-key
response the next day: "The ANC and the government have their own ideas on
how the Zimbabwean crisis should be dealt with. However, we do not agree
with them." It was left up to Cosatu general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, to
give a more energetic defence of Cosatu's actions. "The only reason why the
Zimbabwean government objected to this mission", Vavi said, "was fear of
what it might uncover. The mission's short visit proved beyond doubt that
this is a society where people's human rights and civil liberties are being
crushed. We will not keep mum when freedom does not lead to respect for
workers and human rights."
Following a script that has played itself
out time and again in South Africa's press, and among most political
commentators and analysts when a tactical political disagreement has emerged
between the alliance partners, claims were soon made that the Alliance was
"in trouble". This time it was the Zimbabwe incident that showed up "serious
divisions" between the ANC and Cosatu (alongside the South African Communist
Party, which came out in support of Cosatu). Of course, what such "analysis"
failed to reveal and has always failed to reveal is that the respective
leaderships of the alliance partners have never allowed verbal spats and
tactical differences to impinge on their underlying strategic and class
consensus. In the past several years, this has been repeatedly "proven" in
the realm that matters most to South Africa's organised workers and poor -
the neoliberal macro-economic policy of the ANC government, GEAR. While the
"left" flank of the tripartite alliance - Cosatu and the SACP - have
continued to launch verbal attacks on GEAR, most often tied to very
occasional and limited strikes, these have never developed into any
sustained working class-led struggle with the potential to undermine the
pro-neoliberal ANC leadership's domination of the alliance.
The
result, not surprisingly, has been that the foundation and pillars of GEAR
have remained intact, the occasional left genuflections of the ANC
government have been welcomed by Cosatu and the SACP as evidence of the
"strength" and "relevance" of their role in the alliance and, all the while,
the social and economic plight of the vast majority of the working class has
continued to worsen. In the case of the Zimbabwe incident, the same pattern
has applied. On November 17, Vavi warned that the ANC Today statement could
foreshadow a situation in South Africa in which "trade unions could be
accused of guilt by association with imperialist forces, which would then be
the pretext for the sort of attacks on human rights we see in Zimbabwe". The
only buffer to such a scenario, according to Vavi, was a strong ANC-Cosatu
alliance.
'Breadbasket to basket case' 22/11/2004 08:48 -
(SA)
London - Zimbabwe's main opposition leader took his campaign
against President Robert Mugabe to Britain on Sunday, rallying expatriates
and declaring their destitute southern African country ready for "regime
change".
"We want regime change in Zimbabwe. But we want regime
change by through the ballot, not the bullet," said Morgan Tsvangirai, the
head of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC).
"They may beat us, they may kill us, they may burn our houses ...
(but) they can not take our independence away from us. The struggle we are
waging against the regime ... it's a justified struggle," he told a packed
audience in the British capital.
Tsvangirai kicked off a European
tour last week, the second foreign trip he has made since being acquitted of
treason charges and his passport was returned to him one month
ago.
Mugabe's regime has already warned the 52-year-old, a former weaver
turned union leader and then politician, that he should not return to
Zimbabwe if he has been calling on Western governments to keep up sanctions
against the state.
"That would make him the state's enemy number one,
and I don't think he would want to come back to the country," Justice
Minister Patrick Chinamasa said on Wednesday after Tsvangirai's stopover in
Sweden.
But in London the political rival to Mugabe sounded a defiant
note, shouting: "No apologies to Chinamasa! I will be back home. It
(Zimbabwe) is not the private property of Robert Mugabe," he added, to huge
cheers from the crowd.
He brushed aside claims from Mugabe's camp
that he was a "puppet" of former colonial power Britain, saying Zimbabwe's
crisis was the making of the 80-year-old Mugabe, who led the country to
independence in 1980 and has hung clung to power since.
"It is not a
creation of (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair, it is not a creation of (US
President George W) Bush," he said, adding that accusations of his collusion
with Western powers were signs of Mugabe's own guilt.
"They have to say
it. They have nothing to offer the people of Zimbabwe. They've destroyed all
we entrusted them with ... Zimbabwe has gone from a breadbasket to a basket
case."
Tsvangirai, who visited South Africa and several other African
states on his first foreign trip following his acquittal last month, said
regional leaders had come to a "sudden realization" that Mugabe's regime had
created the "crisis of starvation" there.
"If Africa is to regain its
credibility, they had better start solving some of the national crises we
face. Zimbabwe is certainly one of them," he said, indicating conflicts in
Ivory Coast and Sudan's Darfur region were others.
The MDC leaders are
expected to remain in Britain until Tuesday, before moving on to Germany,
France and other Western European states.