UNDP's land
plans for Zim unfolding Tawanda Majoni/Innocent Sithole
THE
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), an organ of the United Nations,
is ready to support the land reform programme in Zimbabwe as the agrarian
exercise nears completion, the Sunday Mirror has learnt.
After the
Commonwealth Troika's Abuja meeting early last week, at which South Africa
and Nigeria both resisted Australia's attempts to have Zimbabwe expelled from
the Commonwealth, a forward-looking programme, which captures the thrust of
the Troika's Marlborough House agreement to have the UNDP assist Zimbabwe on
its land programme, looks set to start soon.
The revelation comes in the
wake of calls by the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan for a fully
funded land reform programme in Zimbabwe.
"There can be no lasting
solution to the current problems unless the Government of Zimbabwe implements
a phased and fully funded land reform programme," Annan said late last
month.
He said the land reform programme was urgently needed "in order to
minimise the negative effects of the current situation on food production and
the overall economy in Zimbabwe".
The UNDP reportedly agreed in
principle to support the settlers who had been allocated land under the land
reform programme. The aid would be used to establish a solid infrastructural
base on the farms while at the same time facilitating the accessing of
financial assistance for farming activities.
According to the statement
made by the Commonwealth Troika at its Marlborough House meeting in London in
March this year, the Commonwealth Secretary-general was requested to remain
actively involved with the United Nations Development Programme in promoting
"transparent, equitable and sustainable measures for land reform in
Zimbabwe.
With the entry of the UNDP into Zimbabwe, its sister agencies
such as the Food and Agricultural Organisation, and other international
organisations would then move in to support the programme.
Sources
close to the UNDP plan hint that Britain and its EU partners might then work
out a plan, especially for compensating white commercial farmers, some of
whom have already benefited from a government compensation scheme that has
seen it paying out more than $380 million in the first quarter of this
year.
"There's a major spin-off in the offing for international
companies, who will be rushing to grab business contracts as the UN plan
takes off," said one corporate executive on condition of anonymity.
He
however added that the Zimbabwe government had to move fast to
build confidence, both at home and internationally to guarantee the success
of its land programme.
The Zimbabwe government has also been urged to
be less defensive of its land policy, and instead move to tidy up its legal
framework in order to cultivate confidence and legality for its land reforms,
which have come under severe challenge from militant commercial farmers
association, Justice for Agriculture, whose members instituted a series of
court challenges against eviction notices served upon them by
government.
Some prominent local politicians and analysts expressed the
need for Zimbabwe to embrace external and local support so as to guarantee
a successful conclusion of the agrarian reform, which started two and a
half years ago.
Nathan Shamuyarira, the ruling ZANU PF information and
publicity chief, said international organisations such as the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) could be involved in assisting Zimbabwe at the
operational level, now that the basic frame work of allocating land to the
majority had been concluded.
"As a country, we should be willing to
invite assistance for the land reform programme," said Shamuyarira. He said
he hoped the UNDP would be able to help in whatever form, adding that it was
encouraging that the United Nations body was playing a significant role in
providing drought relief to the country.
Turning to Britain,
Shamuyarira said it was commendable that Zimbabwe's former colonial master
had provided financial assistance to the food relief programme. He however
expressed reservations over Tony Blair's statement that Britain was ready to
provide compensation for the land reform programme provided the money was
channelled through the UNDP.
"Blair has been so negative. I don't see any
further funding from Britain, besides what has been provided for drought
relief," adding that since the framework of the land redistribution programme
had been established, Zimbabwe should not bother much about Britain's
politics of compensation.
He said since most of the new settlers had
taken up their plots, adding that Zimbabweans were eagerly awaiting the
coming of the rains so as to start ploughing and planting. He said the new
farmers were ready to work hard in order to ensure a good
harvest.
Shamuyarira was upbeat about the support Zimbabwe was getting
from African countries. He paid tribute to South African President Thabo
Mbeki and Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo for resisting Australian Prime John
Howard's efforts to have Zimbabwe completely suspended from the
Commonwealth.
He said since agrarian reform was near completion, Zimbabwe
should shed the tendency to be defensive. "We should move on to the offensive
with the programme Mbeki is reported to have argued that there was no reason
why the Commonwealth should rush to throw Zimbabwe out of the
club.
Speaking on the telephone from South Africa, the South African
Presidential spokesperson, Bheki Khumalo reaffirmed South Africa's objection
to the call to expel Zimbabwe.
"Our position, as spelt out in the
communique, still remains that it is not necessary to expel Zimbabwe from the
Commonwealth," said Khumalo "We need to give the country the twelve months it
was given in March when it was suspended. Therefore, there is no basis to for
Zimbabwe to be suspended and if that will happen, the situation should be
reviewed in March next year," he added.
JUSTICE for Agriculture (JAG), an
organisation representing white farmers most of whose land was designated by
the Government for the resettlement of scores of thousands of black
Zimbabweans, has invited the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, to visit
Zimbabwe in order to assess the situation in the
country.
Echoing the sentiments of
Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister, Stan Mudenge, JAG called on Howard and
other Heads of State to come to Zimbabwe and see for themselves what was
actually transpiring as the country proceeded with its land reform
programme.
"We would like to echo the
sentiments of our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Stan Mudenge, in inviting
Prime Minister Howard and any other Heads of State to visit Zimbabwe to
establish the reality of the situation," read a press statement sent out by
JAG.
The farmers' organisation urged the
invitees to visit not only Harare, but also the rural and farming areas
"where the harsh reality of an unmitigated humanitarian disaster is most
evident".
Members of JAG have fiercely
criticised the manner, in which the land reform programme has progressed,
charging that the agrarian reform was unconstitutional. It has been
networking with the affected farmers in a bid to legally challenge what it
has described as haphazard land-grabbing.
The land reform programme kicked off in earnest in 2000 when former freedom
fighters led farm occupations, accusing the government of President Robert
Mugabe of taking too long in giving land to the landless majority who were
crammed on unproductive land.
So far, more
than 300 000 families have been allocated land, which was taken from the
white commercial farmers who were accused of selfishly holding on to most of
the prime agricultural land.
The land
redistribution programme has affected more than 4000 farmers, half whom
defied an August 8 deadline to vacate their farms, arguing that eviction
notices were not properly served since bondholders were not notified of
Government's intention to acquire the
farms.
In its press statement, JAG sought
to remind Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo of South Africa and
Nigeria respectively, that the spirit of the New Partnership for Development
(NEPAD) was to remove the tendency to depend on
donors.
NEPAD, an economic blueprint meant
to kick-start Africa's economic development, was launched earlier this year
in South Africa. It also seeks to address social issues affecting the
continent.
However, JAG said, this was not
so in Zimbabwe where over six million people were in dire need of food
assistance. The organisation accused Mbeki and Obasanjo of abandoning their
responsibility to help the Zimbabweans.
The spokesperson for JAG, Jenni Williams, who is currently in South Africa,
said a group of foreign-based Zimbabwean nationals was meeting there to
discuss the way forward for the country while at the same time showcasing the
political and economic problems the country was going through. She said the
meeting was vital in that it would provide opportunities for the Zimbabweans
to network with sympathetic organisations and individuals living abroad. At
the Commonwealth troika meeting that took place recently in Abuja, Nigeria,
the two African leaders fiercely opposed Australia's attempts to have
Zimbabwe completely suspended from the Commonwealth in a move that some
analysts have described as a diplomatic coup for President Mugabe and an
embarrassment for Howard.
Australia went
on to announce that it would impose targeted sanctions against Harare, a move
that has been scoffed at by Zimbabwean
government officials.
HARARE, Zimbabwe --
Zimbabwe's main opposition party on Sunday disputed the legitimacy of rural
council elections, claiming its members were subjected to violence and
intimidation.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change, the main
challenger to the ruling ZANU-PF party for the 1,397 council posts, said
several of its workers and candidates were prevented from entering polling
booths during the two days of voting that ended Sunday, while others were
detained or had gone missing.
"Reports received from various parts of
the country, so far, indicate that ZANU-PF has stepped up violence in a bid
to prevent the people from choosing their preferred councilors," the
opposition said in a statement.
Zimbabwe has been wracked by more than
two years of political and economic turmoil, widely blamed on the ruling
party. Elections observers accused the increasingly unpopular President
Robert Mugabe of rigging March presidential elections to extend his 22 year
reign.
Results of the local council elections were expected
Monday.
Thomas Bvuma, a spokesman for the government's Electoral
Supervisory Commission, said voting Sunday was going smoothly in all
areas.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said he received reports that
two huts were set afire, but no one was hurt. One belonged to an
independent candidate and the other was owned by a ruling party
official.
Lawyers said they were still trying to get access to opposition
activist Thomas Spicer, 18, who was detained in Harare Thursday for what
authorities said was riotous behavior.
Spicer's father, Newton Spicer,
said his son had been subjected to electric shocks and beatings, but was
being denied medical treatment.
Police refused to comment on the
allegations.
Meanwhile, police arrested a ruling party lawmaker and his
wife Saturday in the Chimanimani area in southeastern Zimbabwe.
Roy
Bennett, 48, and his wife Heather were detained at a roadblock because they
had resisted government efforts to seize their farm, a friend said
on condition of anonymity.
Bvudzijena confirmed Bennett had been
arrested for defying land takeover notices that came into effect in
August.
The government had earmarked thousands of white-owned farms for
seizure, claiming they are to be redistributed to landless blacks. Mugabe
says the measure addresses the legacy of inequitable land ownership left by
colonial rule.
Critics of the program say many of the best farms have
been allocated to senior government officials and ruling party
supporters.
More than half of Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people face severe
food shortages, blamed on drought and the land reform program, which has
brought commercial farming to a standstill.
Bennett, who has won
several court orders preventing the seizure of his land, faces new charges of
defying government eviction orders.
He was being held at the Chimanimani
police station, and been denied access to lawyers, his friend
said.
A
FUNDAMENTAL problem in dealing with the Zimbabwean situation is that
key partners see the crisis in totally dissimilar ways. This reflects
different interest. But a review of mistakes made might assist in finding
future common ground.
How do key actors see the Zimbabwe
crisis?
The SA government partly views Zimbabwe, in the words of one
former Zimbabwean cabinet minister, "in its rear-view mirror" meaning that
the land issue has racial resonance down south, with President Robert
Mugabe's actions supported by a sufficiently large number of African
National Congress constituents to make Pretoria hesitant about taking tough
action against him, despite international and local business pressure to do
so.
Conversely, there is a need for Pretoria to take an active role
in supporting New Partnership for Africa's Development's (Nepad's)
principles of good governance, rule of law and democracy, and to lend
credibility to its leadership and to African abilities for self-regulation.
This suggests the need for a tougher line towards Mugabe's
actions.
But SA's role in working with Harare is further constrained by
regional perceptions of its hegemony, which worsen tensions and ensure
policy divisions within the Southern African Development Community
(SADC).
Other SADC states have supported Mugabe, if only through
inaction, partly because in some their values are more in congruence with
Harare than Pretoria, and sometimes because this has offered means to cock a
snook at SA leadership. Others, such as Malawi and Zambia, have more direct
interests in not sticking their necks out, given the potential economic
fallout from returning migrants and the flooding of the markets with cheap,
under-valued Zimbabwean goods.
SA's fears of widening regional
divisions are compounded by concerns that more radical action against Mugabe
will not only have little effect, but could stiffen the Zimbabwean
president's resolve to complete his political and economic
"revolution".
Increasingly, key international actors are disengaging from
the crisis, preferring to see the region or the Commonwealth assume
responsibility. Hence the tougher recent line from the US administration,
echoing that expressed at the outset by the UK's Minister of State for Africa
Peter Hain.
Yet a combination of hard-line rhetoric matched only by
increasing ambivalence will achieve little, apart from soothing critical
domestic audiences back in the US and Europe. And it has served to polarise
the debate, in ideological and also in racial terms.
Multinational
organisations agencies, including the United Nations, have until now
attempted to play their part in settling the land issue principally through
the good offices of the UN Development Programme. But, as with most
multilateral actions, this has been held hostage by the lack of consensus
between members.
More recently, the role of international agencies has
been dominated by those concerned with humanitarian assistance, reflecting
both the deteriorating food situation and the shifting focus of international
concern elsewhere.
Disagreement over "what to do with Harare" has had
considerable costs in terms of its corrosive effect on investor confidence,
worsening regional perceptions, and more practical direct economic
consequences from the land grab itself . The failure of past attempts to
remedy the crisis has aggravated and amplified differences, undermining both
Nepad and SA leadership. Yet a recognition of these failures and of the
constraints on all parties could offer a way out.
Dr Mills is the
National Director of the SA Institute of
International Affairs.
Sep 30 2002 12:00:00:000AM Greg Mills
Business Day 1st Edition
Apartheid government argued for
noninterference, saying it was a domestic issue IT IS popular wisdom that
"the more things change, the more they remain the same". The truth of this
adage was demonstrated again when Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and SA's
Deputy President Jacob Zuma invoked the same arguments against
noninterference in Zimbabwe's domestic affairs as did apartheid crusaders
like Hendrik Verwoerd, John Vorster and Eric Louw against interference in
SA's domestic affairs.
Although the fate of the Mugabe regime remains
uncertain, it is now history that the defenders of apartheid protested in
vain. The world community decided that apartheid was a crime against humanity
and, therefore, no longer a purely domestic issue. Apartheid's defenders
argued almost ad nauseam that apartheid was strictly a domestic matter and
that international law, particularly article 2 paragraph 7 of the United
Nations (UN) charter, proscribed any interference.
What they
overlooked was the fact that article 2(7) was qualified elsewhere in the
charter. Article 55 (c) calls for "universal respect for, and observance of,
human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race,
sex, language, or religion". In article 56, states pledge themselves to take
the necessary action to achieve the purposes set out in article
55.
This successful fight against apartheid confirmed that in
modern international law, domestic political aberrations, particularly human
rights abuses, could no longer be committed under the protection of
domestic jurisdiction.
Sovereignty has become an increasingly relative
concept and states are simply less sovereign today than they were under the
traditional Westphalian system when noninterference was an absolute rule in
international politics. This happened in response to globalisation and mass
communication and people all over the world have become more "other
oriented", while interdependence rendered states increasingly vulnerable to
universal moral interests.
But even if Mugabe and Zuma's thinking on
these matters do not go beyond the 17th century, they should know that for a
country to enjoy the advantages of membership of the civilised international
community certain universal principles should be upheld.
Nineteenth
century English social scientist Walter Bagehot defined these principles in
terms of "life", "law" and "property". This means that all societies must
seek to ensure that life will, in some measure, be secured against violence
resulting in death or bodily harm; that promises or agreements once made must
be kept; and that the possession of property will remain stable and not be
submitted to challenges that are constant and without limit. Without these
basic civilised rules, life on earth would be consumed, as 17th century
British philosopher Thomas Hobbes has stated, by "a war of all against
all".
Measured against these criteria, Mugabe is a rabid Hobbesian in his
approach to politics and society. Like the defenders of apartheid, he now
seeks refuge behind flimsy arguments on domestic jurisdiction and
national sovereignty to escape international exclusion and sanctions. Can he
get away with it?
Application of the abovementioned principles depends
of course on the consent of the majority of UN members, and action. Judging
from the support from Zuma and other African leaders, collective action by
either the UN, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) or the
African Union (AU) seems improbable. This leaves Mugabe under very little
pressure from African leaders to mend his ways. SA sticks to its feeble
policy of soft diplomacy while Mugabe scoffs at Commonwealth and European
Union action. He also need not worry about unilateral intervention by major
powers because they are more occupied with Iraq and international terrorism.
All this points to an unfortunate gap between principle and action in
international relations. Many violators of human rights simply go unpunished,
while action like that taken against apartheid in SA and the perpetrators of
ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia, is exceptional.
SA policy
makers ought to take the Zimbabwe issue in hand. Refusing to put the pressure
on Mugabe is a denial of principles of international morality, international
law, the ethos of the SA constitution, the African National Congress's
principled stand against apartheid and the objectives of the New Partnership
for Africa's Development (Nepad) and the AU.
Pandering to Mugabe is also
not in the interest of Zimbabwe, southern Africa, or Africa. While
Zimbabweans suffer from persecution, hunger and deprivation, Nepad's quest
for democracy and good governance is ridiculed, and the SADC and AU are being
reduced to impotent hostages of Mugabe's whims.
Those among us who
would like to believe in SA's future, are particularly concerned that Zuma
has now all but joined Namibian President Sam Nujoma's club of Mugabe
sycophants instead of giving diplomatic leadership. Earlier this year
President Thabo Mbeki himself said that misbehaving African countries should
no longer be allowed to hide behind the sovereignty principle. Something,
therefore, seems out of control in the domain of our foreign policy making
and diplomacy.
To end with a caveat: George Bush was crucified by almost
everybody in SA from Nelson Mandela downwards for his stance on Iraq. Perhaps
they are not all conversant with the subtleties of the diplomacy of
meaningful and continuous pressure on the enemy. US diplomacy can now smell
sweet victory after Iraq's capitulation to demands on weapon inspection.
Another case study: If Churchill had not successfully resisted Neville
Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Hitler, world history would have
turned out very differently indeed. Our diplomats could perhaps learn
something from these case studies.
Olivier is a Professor in the
Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria. Sep 30
2002 12:00:00:000AM Gerrit Olivier Business Day 1st
Edition
THE MDC has accused the
Registrar-General (RG)'s Office in Chipinge of
forwarding the names of MDC nominees and election agents in the
rural district council elections to the Central Intelligence Organisation,
the police and Zanu PF activists.
The
MDC on Wednesday filed an urgent application in the High Court seeking a
postponement of this weekend's elections citing widespread violence and
intimidation.
This comes at a time when
100 of the 153 registered MDC candidates in this weekend's election in
Manicaland have reportedly fled the province citing victimisation by Zanu PF
supporters and the police.
Pishai
Muchauraya, the MDC provincial spokesman,
said: "We have established that the RG's
office in Chipinge copied the MDC's candidates nomination forms to Zanu PF
and State security agents," Muchauraya
said. "As a result, the nominees' election
agents and candidates have been assaulted and many have fled from the
constituency."
Edmund Maingire the
provincial police spokesman refused to comment on the allegations of the
police's involvement.
Joyce Munamati, the
provincial registrar-general based in Mutare, dismissed the allegations in
their entirety. "We have not received any reports of that nature," she
said. "These politicians . . . must not
incriminate our department in their political games. No one from the MDC has
reported this to us.
"Maybe they do not
know how we work. "After we have registered
the candidates we forward the names to our headquarters in Harare and not to
anyone else."
But Muchauraya insisted the
names on the copied list were exactly the same as the one which the MDC
submitted to the RG's Office.
ON 5 SEPTEMBER, the day the
nomination court for the rural and district council elections sat, Ignatius
Chombo, the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing
lifted an earlier decision he had taken in September 2000 to dismiss Clever
Manhombo, an ineligible candidate, in the rural district council elections
for Ward 1 in Manyame, in contravention of the Rural District Councils
Act.
Manhombo, a councillor with Manyame
District Council, was dismissed in 2000 for misconduct by
Chombo.
Section 157 of the Act, states
that: "A person who has been dismissed in terms of Sub-section (3) shall be
disqualified from nomination at elections as councillor for a period of five
years."
But Chombo reversed the decision
and allowed Manhombo to be nominated for election before the expiry of his
five-year term of dismissal lapses. He, however, did not quote any part of
the Act which gave him the powers to reverse the
decision.
A B. Mpala of the
Registrar-General's office on Wednesday, wrote a letter to Jacob Mafume of
Kantor and Immerman acknowledging Manhombo's earlier dismissal. Mpala said:
"Manhombo's nomination was accepted after his dismissal was lifted by
Chombo."
On Thursday, the MDC insisted
Tobaiwa Mudede, the registrar-general, should immediately declare Darlington
Tangwara, the MDC candidate,
elected unopposed. Mafume said Manhombo
should not have been nominated and must not be allowed to contest the
elections. "As such, our client must be declared duly elected unopposed
because Manhombo is disqualified from contesting,"
Mafume said.
He gave Mudede's office
until yesterday to disqualify Manhombo or they would seek the nullification
of his nomination in court.
Mudede refused
to speak to The Daily News.
According to
his letter to Manhombo on 27 September 2000, Chombo said following the
councillor's suspension on 2 March 2000, he instituted an inquiry into the
alleged misconduct regarding the council's
affairs.
"The findings of the inquiry
confirmed the first three of the four charges initially laid against you, as
contained in my minute of suspension," Chombo said. "Indeed, you have
been found guilty of dishonesty in reneging on your contract with council
where the submission of monthly returns was required, financially prejudicing
council of $225 887,23 in unpaid royalties relating to your sand extraction
venture and mismanaging the affairs of
council."
Chombo said under the
circumstances, Manhombo had to show cause why he should not be dismissed from
holding public office within Manyame Rural District Council . After Manhombo
dismissal, a by-election was held in Ward 1 and Kuda Makosvo was elected
councillor. Despite that, Zanu PF proceeded to nominate him as its candidate
for Ward 1.
DESPITE the serious shortage of
bread in Bulawayo, the police are reportedly confiscating the scarce
commodity and dumping it into a dam
in Hillside.
The police this week
intensified their blitz against bread vendors and shops charging more than
the controlled price of $60,40 a loaf.
Workers at the Hillside dam site yesterday allegedly saw
policemen off-loading several dozen loaves of bread from a police truck on
Wednesday before dumping it into the dam.
"We don't know exactly why they are doing this," said a worker at the site,
"but one thing is certain: the fish are definitely going to
enjoy themselves."
However, a senior
officer at Hillside Police Station, denied that the police were dumping bread
into the dam. "I am not aware of that," he
said. "The policemen seen dumping the bread could be from another
station."
Several shops in Bulawayo's
high-density suburbs have been fined for selling bread above the stipulated
price.
The blitz has created a serious
shortage of bread and vendors are exploiting the situation by charging as
much as $150 for a loaf.
Residents said
although they welcomed the clampdown against the vendors, they were now
suffering its negative effects as it had become difficult to get bread on the
parallel
market.
"The only solution is for shops
and bakeries to ration bread so that vendors find it difficult to buy bread
for resale," said Marvis Sibanda
of Nkulumane.
Vendors in Harare, Mutare
and Gweru are reportedly exploiting the shortage by queueing to buy as many
loaves as they can for resell.
There have
been no reports in the three cities or elsewhere in the country of the police
confiscating the bread and destroying it - or turning it into food for
fish.
The country was hit by a shortage of
most basic goods following the farm
invasions.
Workers release boss after he agrees to pay them
$219m
9/28/02 10:48:31 AM (GMT
+2)
Staff
Reporter
PAUL Hopcroft, the chief
executive officer of Banket's Tredar Agricultural Security Company who has
been held hostage by his workers for the past six days, was released on
Thursday after agreeing to pay them the $219 million severance package they
were demanding.
The security guards at the
company, which provides security to most commercial farms in Mashonaland West
province, were alleging that Hopcroft was planning to flee the country
without paying them their
retrenchment packages.
On Thursday the
company's management held talks which involved Ignatius Chombo, the Member of
Parliament for Zvimba North and Minister of Local Government and National
Housing, Tredar Workers' Union representatives, the police and Hopcroft
agreed to provide the workers a $219 million send-off
package.
Chombo said he had been invited
to resolve the matter in his capacity as the constituency's
MP.
Said Chombo: "This is my constituency
and I would like to see my people happy, thus I am happy now that I have
resolved this issue and made my people
happy. "I want the security guards to unite
and to set up a co-operative security company if their present company folds.
"
However, Mitch Ferguson, the transport
manager at Tredar, accused Chombo of arm-twisting the company into paying the
security guards a package it cannot
afford.
Ferguson said: "Over 1 000 people
have now lost their jobs because there is no way the company can survive
after paying the workers so much money. Had it not been for Chombo we could
have worked out a better resolution to the whole
problem."
Hopcroft said after Thursday's
developments the company would be liquidated as it cannot sustain itself
after paying the retrenchment packages.
He said: "It is sad that we now have to close down the company but we have no
choice as the situation was no longer manageable. The workers had hi-jacked
the whole operation and were abusing the company's properties such as
vehicles and the watcher dogs."
A tearful
Diana, Hopcroft's wife, said she was relieved to be reunited with her husband
after his week- long house arrest.
THE BULAWAYO City Council-owned
Mthandizi Hostel, adjacent to the Vehicle Inspection Depot, which houses
about 50 tertiary students, has been without electricity for more than a
month because the council owes the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority $300
000.
This was revealed by the tenants who
complained that the council was taking long to rectify the
problem.
The students pay $248 per
month.
One tenant told The Daily News they
have had no electricity since early August.
"We have now gone for a month and a half without electricity, but the council
has not bothered to explain to us what is
happening.
"We are also informed that the
council's outstanding debt amounts to more than $300 000," he
said.
A Chartered Institute of Secretaries
student said: "This inconvenience has come at a wrong time as some people
will be sitting for their final examinations at the end of the
year."
Another tenant said: "If the city
council is not playing hide-and-seek games with us, it should explain why
there has been this blackout."
He added
that the lack of electricity had prompted cases of housebreaking resulting in
the loss of valuable property.
The city
council's senior public relations officer, Lennox Mhlanga, confirmed that the
council had an outstanding electricity bill for
the hostel.
"It is true that the
council has an unpaid electricity bill and that is the cause of the power
cut," he said.
I HAVE just
finished reading The Devil That Danced On The Water by Aminatta
Forna.
This compelling book is a
daughter's memoir of her father - Mohamed Forna, her country - Sierra Leone,
and a continent - Africa.
Mohamed Forna
left medical practice to serve his country as Finance Minister in the
government led by Siaka Stevens.
He is
described as a brilliant man of unimpeachable integrity, ability and
charisma. As dictatorship and corruption
overtook the land, he refused to join the bandwagon of evil. He fearlessly
spoke against corruption in government and openly challenged Stevens' misuse
of public funds.
Finally he resigned from
government in disgust. Mohamed Forna was loved
by the common people. Of all the candidates from his political party, he had
won the greatest number of votes in
any constituency. His continued popularity,
even after he left government, made Stevens jealous and afraid of him. He,
therefore, went on a sustained campaign to harass and frustrate the young
man.
Finally, he was arrested by a
politicised police, jailed under a cooked-up treason charge, found guilty by
a judge under the president's pay and hanged like a common
criminal. What I found to be startling about
the book is the similarity of events which led to Sierra Leone's total
collapse and events taking place in Zimbabwe
today.
The similarities are frightening,
to say the least. The underpinning ingredients to these events are the same -
greed, corruption and lust for power.
After reading the book, I am convinced that, unless God, somehow, intervenes
in our situation, we are heading the same tragic way Sierra
Leone went. In order to preserve power
Stevens recruited unemployed youths and organised them into a militia called
The Red Shirts.
These instilled fear into
the population through mutilation, torture, robbery, rape and
murder.
They were a law unto themselves
and even government ministers were afraid of
them. In Zimbabwe we have a similar
organisation in the youth militias which people refer to as Green Bombers
because of their violence and green
shirts.
They are also a law unto
themselves and have spread terror throughout the
country. In Sierra Leone, Stevens subverted
the police, the judiciary, the army and the Press to his own
use.
Parliament was there to do his
bidding and cabinet ministers became mere
puppets. Civil society was harassed and
intimidated until there was no organised protest of any kind to Stevens'
excesses.
He had absolute power - and
absolute power corrupts absolutely. As
Aminatta Forna wrote: "The country's budget surpluses and foreign exchange
reserves had been drained away. At the time of our father's resignation an
astute desk clerk at the World Bank had sent a memorandum up to his
superiors, asking whether the bank should continue to loan Sierra Leone in
the light of the minister's claims of corruption in the
government.
"The bank had gone ahead
anyway. Within a short time the treasury in Sierra Leone had begun to default
on payments of overseas loans; by the time we came home the new bank notes,
printed with Stevens' face, could not be exchanged in any bank outside Sierra
Leone.
"The country was crawling with
spies, who reported every conversation, every whisper to the president. The
newspapers had all been either brought under state control or closed down.
Summary arrests, detentions and beatings had become
commonplace.
"There was no opposition, no
voice of criticism: people had learnt to fear for their lives if they spoke
out against government. And this was what, in the West, they called 'benign
dictatorship'. Good enough for Africa, good enough for
Africans."
Need I say anything more about
how similar our own situation is to that which existed in the now devastated
state of Sierra Leone? With the total hegemony
of Zanu PF in Zimbabwe, corruption has come out into the open unashamedly
like a naked witch drunk with the blood of
her victims.
All pretences at decency
have been thrown off. One top official was overheard saying boastfully: "Tisu
tiri kutonga. Vasingazvide vangagon'eyi? Hapana." (We are the ones ruling.
What can those who oppose us do? Nothing).
Corruption in Zanu PF has recently openly manifested itself in the open
grabbing of white-owned commercial farms by the
powerful.
At the beginning of the
so-called land reform programme, the nation and some international friends
were led to believe that the land was being taken from selfish and evil white
colonists to be equitably distributed to poor, black, landless peasants who
had until now been marginalised.
We all
now know the truth. Even the landless country
peasants, who had blindly supported Zanu PF, now know the
truth.
Last but, not least, President
Mugabe also knows the truth. And the truth is
that Zanu PF, from the word go, has grabbed all the prime land for its
leaders, their relatives and party cronies at the expense of poor, landless
peasants. In their scramble for prime farms
with their immaculate homesteads some of them had actually been involved in
physical fights resulting in some of them killing each
other.
Rather belatedly our de facto
President issued a directive to the sharks in his government to give up the
multiple farms they had greedily grabbed under the fast-track
resettlement
programme.
Instead of resettling the poor,
they were busy settling themselves. But, the harm has already been
done.
Through corrupt private deals, which
are nothing less than extortion, helpless and desperate white farmers were
forced to sell their properties at give-away prices to Zanu PF political
leaders and hastily formed indigenous commercial farming
companies. It's not that our dear de facto
President was oblivious of the fact that most of his party leaders are
corrupt. Some time back he actually acknowledged that he knew that some of
his ministers accepted bribes.
The tragedy
is that he laughed at this as though it was some funny joke. Such is the
moral calibre of the man we refer to as our
President. Poor Zimbabwe, what unforgivable
sin did we commit to deserve such morally bankrupt
leadership?
Patrick Chinamasa, the
Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, who is among VIPs in
the frontline of the scramble for prime farms, had the gall to defend
his unbridled
greed.
His wife recently grabbed Rockland
Farm in Marondera despite the fact that the family is alleged to own two
farms in Manicaland.
In a lame attempt to
defend his aberrant behaviour, he said that his wife had been lawfully
allotted the farm in a transparent manner and there was nothing sinister
about it. "There is nothing irregular about
that because she was legally allocated that land," was Chinamasa's limp
response.
I would like to ask the
Honourable Minister of Whatever (certainly not Justice) to tell the nation
whether something that is legal according to Zanu PF's fast-tracked and
mostly unconstitutional laws, is also legitimate and just according to God's
law? He is the ultimate judge, you know.
"We are sick and tired of
being called people without a culture, half-caste, or even more cruel
statements, such as that we are the children of
prostitutes."
These anguished sentiments
came from Bertram Tabbett, a spokesman for the National Association for the
Advancement of Mixed Race Coloureds
(NAAC).
People of mixed blood in Zimbabwe,
known as Coloureds, have over the years found themselves on the wrong side of
the ruling class in Zimbabwe.
Under
successive Rhodesian regimes, the Coloured community was sidelined from the
mainstream political and economic
activities.
They were considered a buffer
between supremacist whites and the down-trodden black majority, to the extent
that they enjoyed better fortunes than their black mothers, cousins, aunts
and uncles.
After independence in 1980,
despite constituting a significant section of
the population, only a small number of
Coloureds, among them Amina Hughes, Joseph Culverwell and Ibbotson Joseph,
now known as Ibbo Mandaza, became actively involved in politics and achieved
some degree of social prominence.
Coloured
people allege they have always been shunned by both their black and white
relatives.
In the majority of cases, the
first generation Coloureds were products of settlers and adventurers from
Europe who had cohabited with black women as concubines, or
in some cases, developed genuine relationships
with them.
While the Zimbabwean government
has championed the policy of indigenisation in business and land reform, some
members of the Coloured community are of the opinion that only a few have
benefited from the exercise because they are
well-connected.
Rejected and spurned by
both their black and white relatives, the Coloured community formed the NAAC
to advance their interests.
Formed on 18
March, 2001 in Arcadia, the association has already established chapters in
Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare, Kwekwe and
Gweru.
"We are an urban-based minority and
that is why we set up the branches in the cities. There are, of course, some
Coloureds who live in the rural areas," said
Tabbett.
He said while Zimbabweans, both
black and white, took pleasure in making crude jokes about the "uniqueness"
of Coloureds, the practice traumatised members of their
community.
"Can you imagine how a child
feels if told that because they are Coloured, they will only grow up to be a
thug, a drunkard, prostitute and
an idler?
"As a result, people of mixed
blood are denied the right to celebrate their diversity as normal beings,"
Tabbett said.
Angus Martens, who handles
the association's human rights matters, was equally
perturbed.
"The majority of Coloured
people end up interacting among themselves. Whites do not want to know us as
their relatives while some negative attitudes among our
black relatives limit the levels of
interaction. It is very painful that our relatives are the people calling us
cultureless or people without roots."
Unnerved by the fact that some whites had been attracted to black women and
fathered children with them, the settler governments removed the Coloured
children from their black mothers and housed them in institutions like St
Joseph's home, with active participation of
various churches.
Suburbs like Nashville
in Gweru, Thorngrove in Bulawayo and Arcadia in Harare were established to
cater for that section of the population.
At the launch of the association, Tabbett's comments clearly revealed a
community yearning for recognition from the races whose sexual
unions produced them. One newspaper
positively described Coloureds as "that glorious mixture of black and
white".
"We are looking for recognition
and acceptance as Coloured people. Because we are multi-cultural, we want to
build bridges. Being ethnically mixed, who is better placed to do this than
we are?"
Luke Davies, a member of the
community, said it was puzzling that some people could not accept them as
people of mixed race.
Even more alarming
was that some sections of the media still labelled them as "so-called
Coloureds".
"The issue of identity has
been laid to rest. We are Coloured, minority Zimbabweans," Davies
said."
He said it was time the Coloured
community asserted itself in all spheres of Zimbabwean life. "In the
Zimbabwean context, the Coloured minority finds itself at a crossroads in its
development and seeks to establish its rights and its place within the
mainstream of Zimbabwean social, economic and political
life."
He implied some form of
institutionalised segregation prevented them from actively participating in
the social, economic or political scene
in Zimbabwe.
"There is a barrier to
full participation because of our colour. For a true democracy to thrive, the
inclusion of minority groups must be seen to be taking place at all
levels." Tabbett said members of the community
wanted to benefit from the land reform and indigenisation programmes because
they were native to Zimbabwe.
"We were
deprived of land and economic development, like anybody who was not white,
and we believe we are entitled to a share of the
national cake.
"There's a lot of
poverty in the community because we were never incorporated into the whole
economy. It is like being given a train ticket and not being allowed to board
the train."
He said their urban lifestyles
had created the impression that they did not want
to mingle with their black
relatives.
As a result, accusations like
"You are still with the whites" kept resurfacing from black relatives who
remained suspicious.
"Until the
association was formed, there was a leadership vacuum which resulted in the
absence of anybody who could articulate our concerns and create dialogue
with, and be received by, all stakeholders in the
country."
Even so, there have been immense
successes on other fronts by members of the Coloured
community.
On the sporting front, Carlos
Max and Henry McKop have captained the national soccer team while in
entertainment, stand-up comedian Edgar Langeveldt and, until recently, Andy
Brown, stand out as the most successful. Rosalla Millar sang her way to
international stardom from Chinhoyi.
But Brown's fortunes have plummeted following accusations that he spiced up
his concerts, meant to be family occasions, with vulgar
talk.
He attempted to revive his waning
career by siding with the government, which has lost most of its support in
towns. This resulted in his record sales and show attendances
dwindling.
Former High Court Judge, James
Devittie, Terrence Hussein and Joseph James easily come to mind as some of
the success stories in the
legal fraternity.
Arnold Payne and
Joshua Cohen and the late Elaine Raftopolous shone in the human rights and
advocacy sector. Brian Raftopolous is a well- known academic and human rights
crusader.
Guy Georgias, the Hall and Tombs
families have done well in the transport
business.
During discussions with some
Coloureds, it emerged that some members of the community did not want to be
regarded as such, with some preferring to be called black, to protect their
business interests.
Save Zimbabwe Campaign News
Release SaveZimbabwe.com
Monday September 30,
2002
FEARS FOR ZIMBABWE BRITON TAKEN BY
"TORTURER"
"Save Zimbabwe" campaigners have said they fear for
the life of Stewart Girvin, the Briton arrested yesterday with outspoken
Zimbabwean opposition MP Roy Bennett. Mr. Girvin is now missing from the
jail where he was being held. It is understood that Joseph Mwale, the
notorious regional head of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO),
implicated in several murders, has taken him away.
Mr. Girvin, a British
citizen is a friend of Roy Bennett who was visiting from England. He works
in a restaurant in Covent Garden. Mr Girvin is a diabetic. At the time of his
arrest he was travelling without his medication.
Mr. Girvin was arrested
at 3pm on Sunday September 29 along with Roy and Heather Bennett, and an
employee Mike Magwaza, were arrested in the Chimanimani area (Mr. Bennett's
constituency) for allegedly contravening section 8 of the Land Acquisition
Act and on a charge under the Electoral Act for "taking photographs within
100 m of a polling station".
Neither Mr. Girvin nor his Zimbabwean
companion Mr. Magwaza are landowners in Zimbabwe and therefore cannot be
arrested and detained under charges contravening the Land Acquisition
Act.
The British Consulate in Zimbabwe has been contacted on Mr. Girvin's
behalf.
The arrest of Roy Bennett MP comes after Robert Mugabe, on his
return from the Earth Summit in Johannesburg said of the two white
opposition leaders, Roy Bennett and David Coltart: "The Bennetts and the
Coltarts are not part of our society. They belong to Britain and let them
go there. If they want to stay here, we will say 'Stay here, but your
place is in jail'.
"Those do not deserve to be in Zimbabwe and we shall
take steps to ensure that they are not entitled to our land".
A
spokesman for the "Save Zimbabwe" campaign said:
"We are very fearful for
Stewart Girvin's safety. The man who has taken him from the prison is
renowned for acts of extreme violence against individuals.
"We call on
the British government to act to assist one if its citizens as quickly as
possible.
"However, it would be wrong to see these arrests as a black
versus white issue. These arrests are part of much wider moves by the
Mugabe regime to crush the opposition during the local elections. The
overwhelming majority of human rights abuses are against black
Zimbabweans. We should not allow the African and international community
to forget this fact."
ENDS
For more information, or to interview a
representative for the campaign, please contact:
Mark Pursey on +44
20 7939 7934 or +07796 954 105
Notes to Editors:
The "Save
Zimbabwe" campaign is a non-partisan international
initiative, with broad-based support drawn from both political parties and
community groups. It was launched during the recent African Union meeting
in Durban and is designed to restore democracy, human rights and
legitimate government to Zimbabwe. The holding of early, free and fair
elections, under full and proper international supervision, is a key
objective of the campaign.
Zimbabwe ruling party seals
victory in local polls
HARARE, Sept. 30 - President
Robert Mugabe's ruling party won the majority of seats in weekend council
elections in Zimbabwe, sealing its grip on its traditional rural power base,
state radio reported on Monday. The main
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which won 12 of the seats
announced by late on Monday, says 700 of its candidates were barred from
registering or intimidated from running in the polls, in which 1,400 seats
were up for grabs. ZANU-PF's victory was
largely expected. ''The ruling ZANU-PF
party has taken a commanding lead in the just-ended local government
elections, clinching 72 of the 86 wards announced so far,'' the state radio
said. On Sunday, the MDC said it had
received reports from various parts of the country showing ZANU-PF had
stepped up violence to prevent Zimbabweans from voting
freely. It said Roy Bennett, an
opposition legislator, and eight others, including his bodyguard, had been
detained. But Police Assistant
Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena said on Monday only three people were arrested
and that they were likely to appear in court tomorrow on Tuesday charged with
disrupting the election process at a polling
station. He said Bennett would also face
charges of defying governement orders to vacate his
farm. The MDC, which accuses Mugabe of
stealing victory in a presidential election in March, said Mugabe had
resorted to political violence in the council elections because he knew he
would lose any free and fair poll. The
ruling party dismissed the charges of intimidation as
lies. Zimbabwe has been in turmoil since
pro-government militants began invading white-owned farms in early 2000 in
support of the government's drive to redistribute the farms among landless
blacks. Mugabe, in power since
independence from Britain in 1980, says the controversial land reform
programme is aimed at correcting colonial injustice, which left 70 percent of
the country's best land in the hands of whites who form less than one percent
of Zimbabwe's population. The opposition
says the land policies have contributed to a severe food shortage which is
affecting nearly seven million people, or half the population. The government
insists the shortages are solely the result
of drought.
LUANDA, Sept. 30 - Zimbabwe said on
Monday it would complete its controversial land redistribution programme in
November and rejected complaints about the impact on the regional
economy. Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge
told Reuters in an interview that the redistribution of white-owned farms to
blacks was nearing its end after being delayed for weeks in August by court
challenges launched by farmers reluctant to give up their
farms. He also said Harare was
considering retaliating for sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe after Western
powers and the domestic opposition condemned as flawed the presidential
elections won by Robert Mugabe in March.
Mudenge, in Luanda for a meeting of the Southern African
Development Community (SADC), said Harare might impose sanctions, first
suggested by Mugabe last month, on former colonial ruler Britain very
soon. ''We're considering the
possibility of reciprocating the restrictions we have (on going)...to the
United Kingdom, sometime very soon...because Britain has put those
restrictions on us. It's a reciprocal arrangement,'' he
said. The United States and the European
Union imposed travel and financial restrictions on Mugabe and his ruling
elite after his disputed re-election. Australia has said it may follow
suit. Mudenge said the government had
resettled 310,000 families on land taken from white farmers and was
completing the handover of land to a further 54,000
individuals. ''That (redistribution) is
virtually at an end,'' he said. ''As you know...we wanted it finished at the
end of August but because of the legal actions which some of the
farmers...took, we have had to comply with the obligations of the
law.'' ''But that should be all finished
more or less at the end of October, beginning of November,'' he
added. Britain has challenged the
programme, saying redistribution has not been conducted in line with the rule
of law, that it seems to be benefiting the ruling elite rather than the
landless and that it is worsening
food shortages. Mugabe rejects the
complaints and says Britain is meddling in the internal affairs of his
country. He says the land reform will help to correct the wrongs of British
colonialism, which left 70 percent of Zimbabwe's best farmland in white
hands.
PIONEERS Mudenge said the
land reforms should be seen not as damaging investment in southern Africa,
but rather as part of the resolution of a problem affecting many of the
SADC's 14 members. SADC trade and
foreign ministers are holding two days of closed-door talks in the Angolan
capital Luanda before their leaders arrive for an annual summit on
Wednesday. Zimbabwe's land policies are
not on the summit agenda, but some ministers have said they will raise
concerns. Mauritian Foreign Minister
Anil Gayan earlier told Reuters that Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis
was of grave concern to the region and that SADC ministers would tell the
Zimbabwean delegation to resolve it.
Several countries in the region are suffering badly from a prolonged drought,
and critics say Mugabe's land reforms have further cut farm
output. Mudenge rejected criticisms of
the land reform. ''Certainly we are not
dragging down anybody. If anything, we are contributing to a solution to a
major issue within the region and that is the issue of resolving the question
of land redistribution,'' he said.
''Zimbabwe is the pioneer and pioneers don't drag people down, they pull them
forward. So we are making a very important contribution,''
he added. Mudenge said Zimbabwe hoped
the international community would give the U.N. Development Programme some
money to help fund newly settled black farmers and some 250,000 black
labourers formerly employed on white-owned farms, and to help compensate
farmers whose land had been repossessed.
''We are still committed to ensuring that they (white farmers) are fully
compensated but we need resources,'' he said.
Luanda - Southern African
ministers meeting in Angola said on Monday they would deliver a stern message
to Zimbabwe to resolve a political crisis threatening investor confidence in
the region.
Foreign and trade ministers from the 14-member Southern
African Development Community (SADC) are holding two days of closed-door
talks before their leaders arrive for an annual summit on
Wednesday.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's land policies and his
controversial re-election in March are not on the summit's official agenda,
but some ministers said they would still raise concerns over events in
Zimbabwe.
"Clearly we have to resolve the governance issues in the
region. We cannot be punished for the mistakes of one country - Zimbabwe,"
Mauritian Foreign Minister Anil Gayan told Reuters.
"We shall be
asking that they shape up," Gayan added.
The SADC has previously
criticised Mugabe's seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to
landless blacks and the election which has shattered investor confidence in
the region. But it has opposed sanctions.
"Ministers will use the closed
door session to tell the Zimbabwe delegation that it is time to end the
political and economic crisis in their country, which is having a huge
influence on investment and business in the region," another minister, who
asked not to be named, said.
"Mugabe will not be publicly reprimanded by
SADC. But there are those in the region who feel that the land crisis should
not have been a long and drawn-out process and they will make this clearly
known to the Zimbabweans," the minister added.
South African President
Thabo Mbeki and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo dashed Western hopes for
tougher action against Mugabe last week when they blocked a bid by Australian
Prime Minister John Howard to formally suspend Zimbabwe from the
Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth, which groups 54 mostly former British
colonies, had already partially suspended Zimbabwe in protest against the
alleged rigging of Mugabe's re-election.
Commonwealth observers and a
group of SADC parliamentarians said the vote was flawed, but observers from
South Africa, Namibia and Nigeria said the poll was legitimate.
Mbeki
and Obasanjo insisted on waiting until the end of the one-year suspension
already imposed before assessing Mugabe's response and deciding whether to
extend measures.
The ministers will also focus on the region's food
crisis threatening more than 14 million people with starvation due to
drought, HIV-AIDS and politics. Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland,
Lesotho and Zimbabwe are affected.
They will look at ways to speed up
the delivery of millions of tons of international food aid, and debate
gene-altered food aid rejected by some countries, officials said.
The
SADC comprises Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Seychelles,
Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa.
Five Political Opposition Members
Released in Zimbabwe Peta Thornycroft Harare 30 Sep 2002 17:26
UTC
In Zimbabwe, five members of the opposition party are out on bail
after spending several days in prison on charges of public violence. The men
say they were beaten by police while in prison.
The most severely
injured member of the opposition was 18-year-old Thomas Spicer, who had to be
helped into court by one of his co-accused.
His lawyers say he was
singled out for special punishment during his four days of
incarceration.
Lawyers for the five said that all of the defendants had
been assaulted by members of the law and order section of the Zimbabwe
Republic police.
Thomas Spicer's father said he was "incensed" that his
son has been tortured in his own country. This is not an isolated incident,
he said, thousands of youngsters in Zimbabwe have been abused this
way.
Meanwhile, in eastern Zimbabwe, opposition Member of Parliament Roy
Bennett remains in jail in the town of Chimanimani. He was arrested Sunday
and charged with failing to comply with a government eviction notice to
leave his home. Eight other members of the opposition are in police cells
with him.
Mr. Bennett's bodyguard, Mike Makwaza, and a South African
who was with Mr. Bennett are still missing. They were last seen in the
custody of the government's Central Intelligence Organization.
There
were many acts of violence and intimidation reported last week in Zimbabwe
before local government elections Saturday and Sunday in rural areas. No
independent monitors covered the elections.
While the opposition blames
government supporters for the violence, the government responds that the
opposition is behind most of the violence.
The results of the rural
elections should be available Tuesday, but because so many opposition
candidates were excluded from the elections, political analysts say the
outcome will be big win for the ruling ZANU-PF
party.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Senior
MDC members to face treason charges in
November
September 30, 2002,
21:15
Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
leader, and two other senior party members Welshman Ncube and Renson Gasela
have been indicted for trial in the High Court on November
11.
The three are facing charges of plotting to assassinate President Robert
Mugabe.
This comes as reports of widespread intimidation and violence begin to
surface in the local government council elections held over the weekend in
which the MDC failed to field more than half of its
candidates.
Zanu-PF says the elections were free and fair. Tsvangirai seems unsure what
the future holds for him; today he appeared again facing
treason charges.
If found guilty, the future of the whole opposition in Zimbabwe will be in
doubt. But as the MDC leader appeared in the courts, counting was going on in
the controversial rural council elections, that the MDC claims were not free
and fair.
CHAOS, intimidation and apathy
marred the two-day rural district council elections which ended yesterday,
with some polling stations only opening as late as in the afternoon due to
the delayed arrival of ballot papers.
Voting only started around 2pm in some parts of Masvingo Province following
the late arrival of ballot boxes and other poll
material.
Voters who had turned up at
polling stations as early as 7am were only able to cast their votes as late
as 4pm.
The situation was generally tense
at most polling stations as Zanu PF youths manned voting centres, scaring
away opposition supporters.
Ignatius
Mushangwe, the Masvingo provincial registrar, yesterday confirmed they had
experienced logistical problems which resulted in some people casting votes
late in the day.
Mushangwe, however, said
voting was going on peacefully. He said voter turnout had been very high in
Masvingo, but did not give figures.
In
Manicaland's Mutasa Ward 21, The Daily News observed one war veteran being
allowed to vote twice. Confronted by our correspondent on the anomaly, the
presiding officer, Spatiwe Kupenya, brushed aside the question and simply
retorted: "It is allowed."
Widespread
violence preceded the weekend elections with opposition candidates and
supporters either fleeing their respective wards or withdrawing their
candidature as Zanu PF youths went on the
rampage.
The elections were held in 1 397
rural districts and 27 urban wards. The MDC only fielded 646 candidates
because of the violence which resulted in 700 Zanu PF candidates being
elected unopposed.
SEVERAL filling stations in Harare
ran out of fuel over the weekend, exposing government claims that the country
had abundant supplies of the vital
commodity.
The signs of an imminent
shortage manifested themselves on Saturday through long queues at most
filling stations that still had supplies.
By yesterday several outlets had run dry with some attendants saying they had
been without supplies since Friday.
Commuter omnibus drivers said the fuel shortage would only worsen
the transport crisis, which has resulted in
long, meandering queues of people coming to work and going home after
knocking off.
Diesel was unavailable at 90
percent of the 18 service stations visited by The Daily News
yesterday.
However, government officials
have maintained that there are adequate fuel supplies in the
country.
Only a week ago, Amos Midzi, the
Minister of Energy and Power Development, assured the nation that his
ministry and the State-run National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (Noczim) were
working on other financing arrangements, which would guarantee continuous
fuel supplies.
Following the emergence of
long queues in most cities, the government dismissed fears of an imminent
fuel shortage as "panic buying" due to rumours by "enemies of the
State".
Midzi said: "I would, therefore,
like to urge the public, motorists and all stakeholders in the oil industry
not to panic and hoard fuel."
At Greenwood
Park Service Station at the Fife Avenue shopping centre they had no fuel at
all.
Myfriend Chomusora, a petrol
attendant at the filling station, said they had run
out of both diesel and petrol on
Thursday.
He said they expected deliveries
either today or tomorrow. At BP Fourth Street,
an attendant said petrol ran out on Friday around noon and they had gone
without diesel since Wednesday afternoon.
Yesterday, BP Southerton only received 25 000 litres of diesel after going
for nearly three weeks without taking any
deliveries.
Joel Chirandu, an attendant,
said the 25 000 litres would not last long given the long queue that was
slowly taking shape at the fuel station.
He said: "Our supplies only last about eight hours. Most of the time we go
without both petrol and diesel."
An
attendant at Caltex Houghton Park Service Station said they ran out of petrol
on Saturday around 10am.
He said they last
received diesel about a week ago.
"We
usually receive between 20 000 and 35 000 litres of diesel, but we only have
received 10 000 litres today," the attendant
said.
A driver with Caltex oil company
said the fuel supplies from Noczim were so erratic that they could not even
tell when the next deliveries would be
made.
"Nothing has been explained to us.
We just deliver what we get from them," said the driver, who was delivering
fuel at a service station in Waterfalls, along Simon Mazorodze
Road.
The fuel situation in the country
has remained critical despite the recent conclusion of a US$360 million
(Z$19,8 billion) deal with Libya, following President Mugabe's visit to
Tripoli.
ABOUT 23 families who invaded
former MP Albert Chamwadoro's farm near Mashava yesterday went on the rampage
driving out livestock in the face of their imminent eviction from the
property they have been
occupying illegally.
The invaders
threatened to destroy the farmhouse after they were served with a High Court
order to vacate the property.
The High
Court last week ordered Augustine Chihuri, the Commissioner of
Police, to eject the families from the
property.
But in an act that was clearly
contemptuous of the High Court order, the illegal settlers uprooted fences
and threatened to mete out instant justice to Chamwadoro if he set foot on
his property.
The drum-beating invaders,
led by Stephen Zibako, said they were settled on the farm by Masvingo
Governor, Josaya Hungwe, and would only move out if he directed them to do
so.
Zibako said: "We will make sure that
Chamwadoro is the first person to leave this property. We were settled here
by Governor Hungwe and not the High
Court."
Hungwe was not immediately
available for comment yesterday.
The
villagers have until tomorrow to move off the
farm.
Chamwadoro yesterday said the High
Court order for them to move out by tomorrow is still
valid.
Chamwadoro said: "I am a black man
with only one farm. If some people have been evicted by the police on the
instructions of the provincial land committee, I do not see how they could
fail to remove the invaders from
my property."
Police in Mashava
yesterday confirmed the incident and said they had to plead with the mob to
return the livestock they had driven from
the property.
The farm, Lot 1 of
Allavale Farm, was bought from the Shabani Mashava Mines in 1999 by the
former MP.
In a surprise move, the
Masvingo provincial land committee chaired by Hungwe, acquired the property
for resettlement despite a clear government policy that all black-owned farms
should be spared from designation.
High
Court judge, Justice Charles Hungwe, last week issued an order that all the
farm invaders be removed from Chamwadoro's property with immediate
effect.
NIKONIARI Chibvamudeve, an MDC
supporter in Hurungwe West was hacked to death by Zanu PF supporters last
Sunday ahead of the two-day by-election which ended yesterday, amid poor
voter turnout.
Faston Chipurupuru, of
Mabishori village under Chief Mujinga, who sustained head injuries after he
was attacked with an axe, said about 30 suspected Zanu PF supporters
descended on them last Sunday evening.
Chipurupuru, escaped to Chinhoyi, where he is receiving medical attention. He
has a deep cut on his head and lacerations on his back inflicted with barbed
wire.
"We were attacked by Zanu PF youths
who accused us of supporting enemies of the government," Chipurupuru
said.
Confirming the murder, Bothwell
Mugariri, the police spokesman told The Standard that 12 people had been
arrested in connection with the Hurungwe
incident.
Justine Dandawa, the MDC
candidate, who locked horns with Zanu PF's Phone Madiro in the weekend
by-election, said he failed to hold a single rally because of rampant
violence.
Dandawa said despite the
violence he would not abandon his party and supporters. He accused the police
of inaction.
A four-year-old
girl jogs spiritedly after a woman walking along the streets begging for
money.
So determined is the little one
to get something from her "donor" that she will not go away
empty-handed.
Even harsh words or a rebuff
will not put her off. At one corner, a boy of about the same age, stalks a
white tourist.These little children have literally become "begging
tools".
Having received instructions from
their guardians on who is likely to give out something, they invariably
target all females and white foreigners Theirs is not a life of luxury -
playing on the swings, jumping castles or riding a model train or tinkering
with modern gadgets. They will be busy pestering members of the public
walking or driving along the streets,
for money.
This is poverty in
modern-day Harare, the sunshine-cum-poverty city. Dirty, unkempt little boys
and girls have become part of the Harare traffic scene. One finds them either
at busy robot-controlled intersections or along the main and busy roads like
First Street.
Some of the children, who
are of school-going age, have suddenly found themselves being the eyes and
ears of their blind relatives whom they guide, dicing with death between
motor vehicles, begging for money.
Some
women who usually move around with four or five of their little children,
patronise shopping malls in The Avenues and other low
density suburbs.
"We get a little money
to buy food, but members of the public are stingy these days. It could be a
sign of the hard times and the economic hardships they face," said a woman
who declined to give her name.
The
children, the innocent "guides", are victims of poverty. They
have foregone education in lieu of family
upkeep. The children and their guardians have designated their own "begging
territories" where they will not allow other indigent and needy people to
operate from.
Poverty has reached
frightening proportions in Zimbabwe. People are resorting to different and
sometimes outrightly dangerous methods to generate income on the
streets.
In what amounts to almost
daredevil tactics, young boys move wheelchair-bound beggars from one motorist
to another in the middle of the street at a busy
intersection.
Seeing little children,
unleashed onto the streets, persistently nagging members of the public for
money or even the food they are consuming has become a common
sight.
A woman licking an ice-cream cone
was harassed until she dropped most of the cream. The young boy who had
caused her to drop it, scooped it up with his fingers and shoved it into his
mouth.
In some instances, the little
beggars make snide or rude remarks if they are not given
anything.
Harare's main streets and
intersections have become the begging places for these young children,
usually accompanied by their mothers who remain seated on the pavement or
under the shade of trees while their children get on with the job. Doreen
Mukwena, director of the Child Protection Society (CPS), says adults as
care-givers, are to blame for the children's predicament and must shoulder
all the blame. She says poverty should not be a scapegoat when adults fail to
be responsible and control their children whom they drive into
exploitation.
CPS helps prevent child
abuse, exploitation, neglect, suffering and promotes child welfare, but it
has a limited resource base which cannot be extended to children begging on
the streets at present.
"Children are
minors in the hands of care-givers. These are adults who must prevent child
exploitation in these times of economic hardships. True, poverty has driven
people to do all sorts of things, but a child is helpless and has no coping
mechanism and is totally dependent on the care-giver,"
she says.
"If the care-givers provide
begging as the only form of guidance to their children and socialise them to
this, then it creates a dependency mentality which teaches children to be on
the streets begging for money. They won't think that they ought to work for
themselves to survive, but have to beg all the
time."
Mukwena says child begging robs
children of their full potential since they are forced away from education
and leisure as they are relegated
to begging.
The cultural perspective
that children are assets, supposed to be used and benefited from by adults,
is what pushes care-givers into sending children into begging. The monetary
benefits get to the adults who manage the money collected on that particular
day, she says.
But children are exposed to
all sorts of abuses - mental, verbal and sexual - which kill their
self-esteem. They are offered money and lured by adult benefactors who
exploit them.
"We have an advocacy
programme for child rights where we promote good parenting methods by
care-givers for better children's welfare. But we have to network with other
organisations. We are strategically focused on children's homes and
community-based care for orphans to prevent them from going onto the
streets," she says.
The society works
together with the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund in the current
humanitarian crisis of famine.
"The food
crisis is an open chasm for child abuse and instances of exploitation are
likely to rise if children themselves are not made aware of their rights,"
says Mukwena.
Professor Edwin Kaseke, the
director of the School of Social Work, says society is to blame for
encouraging beggars to remain on the streets. "We give them money so they
keep on flashing out their begging bowls. We are actually reinforcing this
behaviour. Some people feel pity for some of these children who are hungry
and give them something, but this encourages the children to come back
tomorrow for more," he says.
"If poverty
is the root cause of this, let us address it, instead of using children as a
source of support. I think we are also bewildered by the level of the problem
of these begging little children at every corner in the city. We just talk
about it, but take no action to rectify
it."
He says the irony of child beggars is
that they come from homes and have parents who release them onto the streets
"for work" where they make money to take home for food. He says some pupils
go onto the streets after school and during weekends to beg for money to buy
books.
"They do this with the blessing and
encouragement of their parents. The danger is that once they get used to life
on the streets where the sub-culture flies in the face of cultural values,
these children graduate into criminals," he
says.
Primary socialisation has been
compromised as life on the streets deviates from usual patterns and new
values and norms that relate to people in the same category are
assimilated.
They share experiences and
the tricks of the streets and become different characters altogether as it
will be difficult to survive outside the street. "Such children become
fatalistic and see themselves as victims of circumstances and not players as
well. They expect things to be given to them instead of doing some work
themselves," Kaseke says.
The
rural-to-urban drift increases because of the drought as some people believe
the urban fortunes are better when it is not the case at all, Kaseke
says.
The level of poverty in the urban
areas is quite worrying. Poverty will leave its mark on some of these
children who could easily transform into delinquents and even future
criminals.
THIS is a tribute to the
people of Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans are a great people. They are a nation full of
peace and love. They do not preach hate, and they do not listen to hateful
sermons. The people of Zimbabwe are great. Their greatness should be
applauded.
If the people of Zimbabwe were
not peaceful in nature, I do not think they would be tolerating the pain that
is very evident. Wherever one goes, one is confronted by something that
disrupts one's peace of mind. There is so much to cry about, yet the great
people go about silently as if everything was in order. So much is upside
down though.
The scarcity of everything
considered basic would drive citizens of many nations into a madding trance.
For the great people of Zimbabwe, the manner in which they accept their
suffering is enough to humble even the devil. The people see the basic
hierarchy of needs breached at the lowest level, yet they accept the
situation with open arms. If Zimbabweans were as hostile as some
club-wielding Zulus of South Africa, the equation of inequality would have
been solved in a very agitated fashion.
I
am not provoking the situation, but I am only putting it on paper as it is.
The lack of basics is such that there is no need for a microscopic analysis
of the situation. Everything is in the
open.
Look at the shacks that we have
built on the farms, in the rural areas and in the
towns. Allow me to describe them as shacks
because that is indeed what they are. If our bigwigs had to spend a night in
one of the shanties, they would develop an incurable skin
rash.
The food we eat is simply not
healthy. This is the worst scenario humans could find themselves in. The hunt
for food is on. The food that people are looking for is so elusive that one
would think it had legs, with which it eludes people. We now live like our
ancient relatives who were food gatherers. When rumour floats around that
food supplies are due to be delivered at shop A or shop B, the pushing,
shoving and jostling starts in the hope of getting food. The queues that form
are potential flash points, yet the peaceful people manage to restrain their
anger from boiling over.
People speak so
eloquently and passionately about their food problems as they wait their turn
to get some food.
They articulate their
problems so well, yet they speak no evil about the causes of the shortages.
They will contemplate their difficulties, yet never will they expose their
complaints. This is a sign of people who are peace-loving. Some presumptuous
people may take that for docility and try to exploit the people for their
selfish ends.
At their homes, the people
have developed some stringent feeding habits. Starvation diets have become
routine. The quantities that are put on the table are just enough to sustain
life. The latest adage that applies to the people's feeding habits is that
they eat to live. Since they eat to live, the
minimum that can keep them alive is what they get. It is not that the people
are stingy. On the contrary, it is because the situation demands that people
enjoy what they eat in miserly quantities for survival. As if the problems of
food availability were not enough, the food prices are atrocious. The people
spend almost all their hard-earned cash buying food whose prices are normally
beyond their reach. The way the prices of the few basics that are available
on the shelves are going up is nothing short of
amazing.
The prices do not remain fixed
for more than a week. If that happens, it means that the food item is a
luxury of the highest degree. In their peacefulness, the people silently buy
the expensive goods and never complain. The silence of the people is enough
to actually kill them. The price regime is itching for war, yet the people
are holding out the white flags of peace and
capitulation.
Most of the people of this
great motherland stay in hovels. This is one other sign of people's abject
impecuniousness.
It does not matter where
one looks, there is poverty everywhere. The rural areas
stink of hardship. The newly liberated
farmlands specialise in
serious hardship.
Everything in the
ghettos in the towns say it all. A visitor from outside would think that the
people enjoy the poverty they live in. The few signs of wealth that one can
see could easily be attributed to some extra-terrestrial invaders with a
different taste for comfort. The land of our
birth has failed to provide luxury for its people. There is suffering in the
huts of despair that can be seen mushrooming all over. There are untold
hardships in the urban dwellings that house
the majority of our people. The suffering and peaceful people take their
problems in their stride. There is no documented case of complaints from the
people.
It appears the suffering people
accept their condition whole-heartedly. The debased people are too complacent
to complain. The patient people deserve respect from those who make their
lives what they are at the moment.
The
children of the people of this great country are eager to learn. They do
battle with illiteracy and innumeracy in battlefields with the odds tilted
heavily against them. The schools, which we hope would mould our children
into responsible citizens, are mostly dilapidated and unscholarly, to say the
least. During this century and time, our children learn from structures that
they come across as they are taught lessons in patriotism. It is a pity that
the citizens of this great country allow their children to acquire their
education from unsafe classrooms. The newest schools in the occupied farms
are the least safe. One wonders how they will cope in rain and in
lightning.
For their part, the people have
to be commended for being too passive in spite of their troubles. It amazes
me to discover that the people of this country would sacrifice the safety of
their children for the continued existence of the few in comfort and bliss.
The people will not complain that they are sending their children to death
traps. The people do not complain that their children deserve
better.
The people are just too submissive
to the extent that they are always taken advantage
of. In sickness and in ill-health, the people
are delivered to hospitals that resemble deserted mortuaries. In the hospital
wards, the filth assists the fiends of sickness to
prosper.
The fleas born out of filth do
not flee as the cleaners make token touches on the walls and floors. There is
sickness in the wards. There is no health in the wards. The people are silent
about the lack of care and humane facilities in the hospitals. The people
will not get better, for in their silence it is assumed that they are
content. But then the people deserve better. Someone has to speak for
them.
There is so much wrong, pain,
hatred, unapologetic arrogance and so many shortages and other iniquities
that go on in this great country, yet the people choose to remain silent. The
people's acquiescence makes the leadership assume that all is right. There is
so much that needs to be corrected. We stand to remain wronged and ignored if
we shy away in silence. Leaders need to be reminded from time to time that
they are there for the people's needs.
It is because the people do not make their sentiments heard that
the leadership finds time to spend its money and energy somewhere else.
In assuming that the silent people are comfortable in their poverty,
the government took the decision to help Kabila instead of uplifting the
living standards of its own people. If the peaceful, resigned people had
demanded the best, the State would not have ventured into the equatorial
jungle to squander State funds on a war started by war-loving people with
whom they have nothing in common.
Let
us all stand up and tell the leadership that we are suffering. If we continue
to sulk in silence, they will also continue to suck our blood simply for the
joy of it.
ZIMBABWE: Violence marks
elections JOHANNESBURG, 30 Sep 2002 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe's rural and
district elections held this weekend were marked by the arrest of an
opposition parliamentarian, reports of violence and complaints that
opposition candidates had been unable to register.
In addition, Police
Chief Augustine Chihuri warned the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) that it could not hold meetings without special clearance.
Roy
Bennet, an MDC member of parliament, was arrested on dual charges
of allegedly violating the Electoral Act by entering polling stations
without permission, and for defying a Section 8 order that he leave his farm.
He was arrested with an MDC supporter and with a photographer.
Police
spokesman Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena told IRIN that Bennet had
illegally entered about eight polling stations with the photographer before
he was arrested. Police were then informed that he was also wanted for
allegedly disobeying an order to leave his land under the government's
controversial land resettlement programme.
Bvudzijena confirmed that an
18-year-old MDC supporter, Tom Spicer, was arrested during a public
disturbance while police were investigating another person on a firearm
charge. Media reports said that Spicer's lawyer asked the court to record
that he had been physically harmed while in police custody.
Bvudzijena
said the police had received three reports of arson - one was the torching of
huts in Chiweshe which belonged to Elliot Manyika, the minister of youth,
gender and employment. Six people were arrested for the attacks which the
ruling ZANU-PF blamed on the MDC.
The bedroom of an independent candidate
in Headlands, northeast of the capital Harare, was set alight and the bedroom
of a ZANU-PF ward chairman in mid-Rusepe, south of Harare, was also torched,
he said.
"There were no reports of violence except in Chiweshe where the
MDC burned down houses of two of our members," Nathan Shamuyarira, ZANU-PF
director of information told IRIN.
He said ZANU-PF was happy with the
elections and had already won 700 uncontested seats.
Last week the MDC
alleged that ZANU-PF supporters had prevented about 700 of their candidates
from registering through "spurious bureaucracy". The party made a failed last
minute court bid to postpone the elections on those grounds.
"This
weekend's elections were not close to the democratic standards for
an election. It was simply one complete farce. We have so far won two seats
in Bulawayo and we are happy about that, but we have low expectations,"
MDC legal affairs director David Coltart told IRIN. "We totally reject all
the allegations of violence," he said.
The results of the election
were expected to be released on Monday
night.