http://www.businessday.co.za/
27
October 2008
Sapa-AFP
HARARE
- Former South African president Thabo Mbeki said he was hopeful that
power-sharing talks in Zimbabwe would produce a breakthrough as he arrived
Monday in Harare for a regional summit.
"Progress on the talks is
very good," Mbeki told reporters, adding that he
was "very optimistic" about
finalising plans for a unity government in the
talks today.
Mbeki
brokered the unity agreement signed six weeks ago, calling for
Zimbabwe's
long-time leader Robert Mugabe to remain as president while
opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai becomes prime minister.
But the deal
threatens to collapse over bitter disagreements about how to
divide control
of the most powerful ministries, particularly home affairs,
which oversees
the police.
Key regional leaders are meeting in Harare to try to
salvage the deal, seen
as the best hope for ending Zimbabwe's political
turmoil and pulling the
country from economic ruin.
President Kgalema
Motlanthe arrived earlier today for the talks, which will
also gather
Swaziland's Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini and Angolan foreign
minister
Assuncao dos Anjos.
Mozambican President Armando Emilio Guebuza was
also expected to attend the
meeting.
Yahoo News
by Godfrey Marawanyika Godfrey Marawanyika - 1 hr 11 mins
ago
HARARE (AFP) - Leaders of a Southern African bloc met Monday in
Zimbabwe to
press President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai to
break an impasse on forming a unity government.
The rivals
spent more than eight hours in talks with South African President
Kgalema
Motlanthe and other regional leaders who hope to settle their
differences
over which party should control the most powerful
ministries.
Underscoring Zimbabwe's political tensions, at least 47
people were arrested
and eight injured as police broke up a protest by 100
activists who tried to
march by the hotel where the leaders were meeting,
organisers said.
"One woman said she was struck with a rifle butt.
Another student I spoke to
said he fell to the ground and a policeman
stamped on his head," said
Blessing Vava, spokesman for the Zimbabwe
National Students Union.
"We are shocked by this brutality" during the
summit talks, he told AFP.
The security organ of the Southern African
Development Community (SADC)
organised the summit in Harare after Tsvangirai
boycotted talks a week ago
in Swaziland, to protest delays in receiving his
travel papers from Mugabe's
government.
Just six weeks ago, regional
leaders had come to Harare to celebrate the
signing of the power-sharing
deal, which calls for 84-year-old Mugabe to
remain as president while
Tsvangirai becomes prime minister.
But Mugabe and Tsvangirai have failed
to agree on which party should control
the most important ministries,
particularly home affairs, which oversees the
police force.
South
Africa's Motlanthe as well as Mozambican President Armando Emilio
Guebuza,
Swaziland Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini and Angolan Foreign
Minister
Assuncao dos Anjos hope to pressure the two sides into an agreement
Monday.
Former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who brokered the
original
agreement, said he was "very optimistic" going into the
talks.
"Progress on the talks is very good," Mbeki told reporters as he
arrived in
Harare.
Arthur Mutambara, leader of a breakaway faction of
the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC), said he expected the
regional bloc to find a
way to resolve the differences over the cabinet
posts.
"The options are limited. We must make sure the September 15
agreement
works," he told reporters.
"There is no way Mugabe will go
it alone, and Mutambara and Tsvangirai can't
walk away," he
said.
Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in a first-round presidential vote in
March, when
the MDC also forced the ZANU-PF into the minority in parliament
for the
first time since it took power on independence in 1980.
But
he failed to win enough votes for an outright victory and then pulled
out of
the run-off in June, accusing the regime of coordinating a brutal
campaign
of violence that had left more than 100 of his supporters dead.
The
protracted political feuding has dimmed the hopes of ordinary
Zimbabweans,
who had believed the unity government would lift the country's
economic
fortunes.
Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy has been in free fall for
nearly a
decade since Mugabe's government began seizing white-owned farms in
a
chaotic land reform scheme that gave land to poor blacks who often lacked
the training for large-scale commercial farming.
Once seen as an
African success story, Zimbabwe is now one of its failures
with more than 80
percent of its population plunged into poverty and
battling the world's
highest inflation rate, estimated at 231 million
percent.
http://www.swradioafrica.com
By Lance Guma
27
October 2008
Over 50 people were arrested in Harare on Monday after
students and
activists from different pressure groups marched on the venue
of a SADC
summit, meant to discuss the deadlock over cabinet allocations.
Police fired
tear gas and in some cases beat up the protesters who had come
to express
their disillusionment with the power sharing deal signed in
September.
Hundreds of activists from the Zimbabwe National Students
Union, Youth
Forum, Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe (ROHR), Women's
Coalition and
others were prevented from getting to the Rainbow Towers
Hotel. Over 300
members from the Women's Coalition of Zimbabwe, dressed in
black and white
outfits, held their own demonstration demanding that a unity
government be
formed as a matter of urgency.
According to the
coalition, 47 of their members were arrested while 11 had
to seek treatment
for injuries sustained from police beatings. The women
waved placards
written 'tafa nenzara- we are dying of hunger' and 'hatina ma
US'- we don't
have US dollars, a reference to shops in the country being
allowed to sell
goods in foreign currency.
The other demonstration featured mainly
students and youths who also had
similar demands. Students say the cabinet
impasse has affected their
schooling with lecturers and teachers on strike
while some of the colleges
remain closed. An alert from ROHR activists
alleges that senior ZANU PF
official Elliot Manyika, 'with a team of ZANU PF
youths hired from Machipisa
abducted 4 ROHR activists after the
demonstration.' The youths were still
missing at the time Newsreel went on
air.
Monday's demonstration marks the first time civil society pressure
groups
have organized a protest on the same day. In the past they have been
accused
of leading valiant but disorganized protests, instead of harnessing
their
collective energies.
23 INJURED, 7 ARRESTED AND 4
ABDUCTED AFTER A ROHR DEMONSTRATION
ROHR
23 men and women have been
hospitalised and seven arrested after ROHR Zimbabwe demonstrated in
More than 200 ROHR activists
participated in demonstrations that brought business to a standstill in
The peaceful protest was
violently crushed by the Zimbabwe Republic Police a few streets away from the
venue, along Robert Mugabe Road corner
Police
crush peaceful demonstration using tears gas at 1230hrs
today.
Around 1200hrs our members reported that
1 person was abducted by suspected Zanu PF operatives along
ROHR
protest in progress
On
Edgar Chikuvire
Information Director
Tel: +263 4 744593
Mobiles: +263 912 426638, +263 912 713410
UK Contact: Ephraim Tapa, President ROHR - 07940 793 090
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=6501
October 27, 2008
By Mxolisi
Ncube
JOHANNESBURG - More than 3 500 disgruntled junior members of the
Zimbabwean
security forces have quit their jobs over the past two months, in
protest
over low pay and poor working conditions, senior intelligence
sources have
revealed.
Serving members have absconded from the
Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA), the
Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), the
Zimbabwe Prison Services (ZPS) and the
dreaded spy agency the Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO), which have
all played a key role in
President Robert Mugabe's continued reign and
control over the country's
volatile political situation.
Although Zimbabwe's security chiefs have
continued to show their
unquestionable loyalty to Mugabe, lower ranking
officers, who are among the
lowest paid workers, have continued to leave
their respective organisations,
as they fail to make ends meet a result of
the country's blistering economic
meltdown, characterised by record
inflation of above 200 million per cent.
Sources within the security
forces, who are all senior officers, revealed to
The Zimbabwe Times on
Monday that more than 3 500 junior officers had either
resigned or deserted
the security forces since August 1.
"The biggest number came from the
army, where more than 1 500 officers
quit," said a senior officer with the
CIO. "From the police, more than 1
000 officers deserted, while the prisons
services and the CIO contributed
the remaining number.
"The officers
who quit either go to neighbouring South Africa and Botswana,
where they do
menial jobs, or just join the informal sector locally."
The sources added
that there was a feeling among the lower ranks of the
armed forces that were
being used to ensure Mugabe clings to power, yet the
84-year-old leader
neglected them in favour of their seniors.
"The junior officers are not
happy that they continue to earn peanuts from
the government, yet they do
all the dirty work, while their superiors reap
the rewards," said a source
from within the national army.
"As it is right now, they can hardly
afford to provide basics for their
families, yet the bosses drive around in
expensive motor vehicles and earn
various pecks that keep them
afloat."
He added that the lowest paid junior army officer earned a monthly
basic
salary equivalent to R30, which was not adequate even for monthly
transport
to work.
A senior police officer based at the Police
General Headquarters in Harare,
also confirmed that the law-enforcement
agency had lost close to 2 000
junior officers since August.
"We are
set to lose even more non-commissioned officers before the end of
the year,
as more than 1 000 more have submitted their resignation letters,
to be
effected on December 31," said the officer, who works in the
Discharges
Section of the ZRP.
"Our recruitment drives have failed to realise the 50
000 officers that we
had targeted for 2010 because of these resignations of
young men and women,
most of them aged below 30 years.
"Most young
people are now reluctant to join the organisation because they
know about
the poor working conditions for its members."
Non-commissioned officers
of the ZRP are those with ranks of Assistant
Inspector and below.
The
senior officer revealed that other than poor salaries, the junior
officers
were struggling to get accommodation in police camps, while the
organisation
was also failing to supply them with uniforms.
"The young officers are
now being forced to live out of camps, which means
an extra cost in rentals,
now charged in foreign currency, while transport
also becomes another
expense," said the senior officer.
He said authorities had tried but
failed to suppress the continued lack of
faith in the current
government.
"Those living in camps are crammed in small rooms, where you
find seven
officers sharing a single room meant for one person," he said.
"Uniform
shortages have also seen some officers wearing either over-sized
garments,
or those that are too small for them and this has made them a
laughing stock
to the public.
"Supplies also come once in a long
while and the junior officers have lost
their patience with the
government."
National police spokesperson, Assistant Commissioner Wayne
Bvudzijena,
refused to comment to The Zimbabwe Times.
"I do not know
what you are talking about," he said before switching off his
mobile
phone.
Zimbabwe currently has about 40 000 soldiers, 30 000 police
officers, 20 000
prison officers and 15 000 CIO officers.
Since the
formation of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
in 1999,
Mugabe has used the security forces to quash opposition efforts to
wrestle
power from him, through controversial operations in which opposition
officials, supporters and civic leaders have been brutalised.
He has
also lavished senior officers, most of them former freedom fighters,
with
expropriated farms, seized from white commercial farmers during the
government's controversial land grabs of 2000, while ignoring the
juniors.
The ministries of Defence, Justice and Home Affairs, under which
the
security forces fall, are currently at the centre of a cabinet sharing
wrangle between Mugabe and the opposition. The conflict has delayed the
formation of a unity government, whose agreement was signed on September
15.
Reporters Without Borders condemns the government’s decision to spy on the email of editors employed by the state-owned Zimpapers group from 3 to 15 August in order to gauge their loyal to President Robert Mugabe.
“As a result of this illegal decision, editor Bhekinkosi Ncube of the magazine Umthunywa has been suspended for nearly two months and could lose his job altogether,” Reporters Without Borders said. “He is alleged to have insulted President Mugabe in an email sent from his private email address. The accusation is baseless and proves only that his personal email was monitored. We call for his reinstatement, the destruction of all the gathered data and an investigation into the government’s violation of the Interception of Communications Act.”
Ncube was suspended in August for publishing a photo of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change with the caption “Walile u Tsvangirai” (Tsvangirai refuses to sign). At the time, negotiations were under way between the MDC and the ruling ZANU-PF for power sharing after ZANU-PF’s defeat in the March general elections.
During a hearing on the case on 7 October in Harare, Zimpapers CEO Justin Mutasa revealed that he had placed all of his editors under electronic surveillance to establish whether they supported ZANU-PF. He authorised the use of password-cracking software to hack into their private email accounts.
In an attempt to evade responsibility, Mutasa told the hearing that it was the information minister, not himself, who determined editorial policy for the Zimpapers group. The minutes of the hearing quote him as saying: “Every incoming minister calls all the editors and expounds to them what he expects from them. Editors must comply.”
The Zimbabwean Broadcast Corporation’s CEO, Henry Muradzikwa, and seven of its journalists were fired in May for not supporting Mugabe and ZANU-PF sufficiently during the election campaign.
Zimpapers is 51 per cent owned by the Mass Media Trust, which was set up by the government in 1980. The country’s biggest print media group, it consists of six newspapers. One of them, The Herald, has a circulation of 45,000 and is Zimbabwe’s most widely-read daily.
Adopted in August 2007, the Interception of Communication Act allows the government to tap phone calls and monitor email and fax communications in order to “guarantee national security” but does not authorise hacking into private email correspondence without a warrant.
Zimbabwe was ranked 151st out of 173 countries in the 2008 press freedom index which Reporters Without Borders released last week. Journalism continues to be a dangerous and frustrating profession in Zimbabwe and journalists are constantly harassed by the police and courts.
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Monday, 27 October
2008 09:00
No deal as long as African leaders side with
Mugabe
On Monday, October 27, African leaders will gather again
in Harare to
try and salvage the infamous government of national unity (GNU)
deal that
has all but collapsed.
The African leaders have a
simple task at hand. All they need to do is
to remind Robert Mugabe and his
ZANU-PF cronies that the GNU demands that he
share power, equally, with the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
With the benefit of
hindsight, we believe that the African leaders
will do no such thing.
Instead, they will side with Robert Mugabe on one
hand while on the other
hand they will try to force Morgan Tsvangirai and
his MDC to accept what
Mugabe wants.
Indeed even Tsvangirai knows this, why he was forced to
make his
position clear when he was in Marondera Saturday.
"We
have very high respect for SADC (Southern African Development
Community),
very high respect for every African institution," he said. "When
they (the
regional leaders) come on Monday we shall respect them," he added,
but he
was quick to remind them that he will not accept a deal that favours
Mugabe
or one that leaves him powerless.
"There is nothing wrong with the
deal, the problem is now its
implementation... the problem is that Mugabe
wants all the key ministries...
I will not enter into this government when I
know there is no sincerity...
How can I sign this deal when I am not given
the tools to perform?"
In a show of the complete distrust of the
MDC of the mediator Thabo
Mbeki, Tsvangirai went on to castigate Mbeki's
quiet diplomacy, arguing that
"quiet diplomacy has its
limits."
Tsvangirai and the MDC are right to be afraid of the
African leaders.
Over the past seven months of the crisis, the African
leaders at first
denied that there was crisis, but as the ZANU-PF militia
went of the rampage
in rural Zimbabwe, they were forced to eat their words
and eventually
accepted that the situation in Zimbabwe was a
crisis.
At every turn in this whole crisis, the African leaders
have sided
with Mugabe. In fact, over the last decade, when Mugabe and his
ZANU-PF
cronies destroyed Zimbabwe, these African leaders stood by, hands
folded.
Some of these African leaders even applauded Mugabe, urging him
on.
Mugabe and ZANU-PF are aware of this, and they are looking
forward to
capitalizing on the duplicity of the African leaders. ZANU-PF
will enter
the meeting with a strong hand, assured that the African leaders
will cover
their back.
So, today Monday, it is interesting to
ask these simple questions.
What would the African leaders do differently at
this emergency summit? What
will be different? Would they have stopped
looking at Mugabe as a hero?
Would they cast of the misdirected 'African
Solidarity' stance and do what
is right for the people of Zimbabwe? The
answer to all these questions is
no.
Therefore, we the Harare
Tribune Editorial Board accept as fact that
today and the days ahead, either
a) Tsvangirai will accept a deal that
favours Robert Mugabe and his cronies
or b) The impasse over the allocation
of cabinet posts will
continue.
We hate the cabinet deadlock. The people of Zimbabwe are
suffering.
We urge African leaders, starting with Thabo Mbeki who
presided over
the collapse of our country Zimbabwe, to do the right
thing.
Do the right thing and force Mugabe to share power equally
with the
MDC. It is time African leaders stopped siding with Mugabe.
http://www.swradioafrica.com
By Alex
Bell
27 October 2008
Zimbabwe's worsening economic crisis has seen the
country's sick, injured
and dying being refused critical treatment in
hospital - as patients are
expected to pay tens of millions Zimbabwe dollars
as down payments for
medical care and for drugs.
The country's health
system has deteriorated to drastic levels as a result
of the combined crises
crippling the once prosperous country. The economic
collapse has seen a
flood of highly skilled doctors and nurses fleeing
abroad, while even the
most basic medical supplies are out of financial
reach for hospitals and
clinics. The situation has recently meant patients
are forced to buy their
own drugs and medical supplies in order to receive
even the most basic
treatment.
At the same time, the country's economy has spiralled out of
control, to the
point where shops are now refusing to accept local currency
after the
Zimbabwe dollar depreciated at its fastest rate ever over the
weekend.
Hospital patients are now required to fork out a Z$20 million
down payment
for care, on top of buying drugs from private pharmacies - in a
country
where the daily cash withdrawal limit is Z$50,000 a day. In what is
clearly
the strangest form of genocide ever to face a country, a weekend
report by
the UK's Sunday Telegraph newspaper say patients are being left to
die
inside Harare's Parirenyatwa Hospital, because their families are unable
to
draw out the funds needed to secure critical treatment from the hospital
staff.
The report quoted a grieving husband whose wife was diagnosed
with a kidney
ailment - the treatment for which the man said he could easily
afford. But,
on top of the down payment, he was told to buy the drugs needed
to save his
wife's life at a cost of Z$30 million. He was forced to get
special
clearance from the Reserve Bank to exceed to the daily limit of
Z$50,000,
but by the time he got clearance hyperinflation had seen the cost
of
medicine almost double, and his wife was beyond saving.
"She was
not a candidate for death, I have my money in the bank, but they
have been
cruel enough to deny my access to that money," the devastated man
told the
Sunday Telegraph.
At the same time, a nurse at the hospital spoke about
the death of a three
month old girl in the hospital's waiting room. "When
she arrived her life
could have been saved but her parents had exhausted all
their savings on the
bus fare," the nurse explained. "She died while
everyone watched right here
in the waiting room because she could not be
attended to without the
required down-payment."
Tiseke Kasambala from
Human Rights Watch called the situation tragic, saying
Robert Mugabe's
government needs to be taken to task for the suffering being
endured by the
people. She warned against labelling the situation as
"genocide" but argued
that clearly things need to urgently change.
"We are seeing an
unwillingness by the government to end the crisis and the
suffering being
experience," Kasambala said. "We are therefore calling on
the government to
immediately end all restrictions on aid and for the
international community
to respond in force to the desperate humanitarian
crisis."
http://www.swradioafrica.com
By Violet Gonda
27 October
2008
Jenni Willams and Magodonga Mahlangu were arrested two weeks ago
during a
peaceful WOZA protest in Bulawayo, demanding an end to the
suffering in
Zimbabwe, but they are still being denied bail. The pair were
further
remanded in custody on Monday and the defence team has now lodged an
urgent
High Court appeal.
Last Friday a Bulawayo magistrate Charity
Maphosa, who had on Tuesday
reserved judgement on the matter, failed to
arrive because she was
'attending a workshop'. Another magistrate, Sophie
Matimba, took over the
case that Friday but delayed the ruling until Monday.
Magistrate Maphosa was
back this Monday and again denied bail to the pair,
claiming that it would
'not be in the best interest of justice'.
WOZA
believes this is a purely political ruling. The group's spokesperson
Annie
Sibanda said despite the two being removed off remand on previous
cases
involving protest marches, the State insists they still have other
cases
pending.
In denying them bail, magistrate Maphosa stated that because the
two WOZA
leaders had 'pending' cases it was likely that they would commit
similar
offences again. She made note of the volatile political climate
gripping the
country saying 'people are easily excitable' and could be moved
to violence
if they saw such demonstrations.
Annie Sibanda said: "The
latter statement (by the magistrate) is actually
the crux of the matter. It
comes down to the fact that ZANU PF does not want
people on the streets
demonstrating and claiming their constitutional
rights."
The WOZA
women have been at the forefront of peaceful protests in Zimbabwe.
WOZA says
the continued denial of bail for their leaders is an indication
that nothing
has changed in Zimbabwe, despite the political leaders signing
a power
sharing deal pledging to end the crisis and the suffering in
Zimbabwe.
Since the deal was signed last month the humanitarian
crisis in Zimbabwe has
reached alarming proportions with the Zimbabwe dollar
crashing spectacularly
and shops no longer accepting payment in local
currency.
Dozens of hungry and frustrated protestors, mostly women, were
arrested in
Harare on Monday. The arrests took place as regional leaders
converged in
Harare to try and break the political impasse.
The Herald (Harare)
Published by the government of Zimbabwe
27 October 2008
Posted to the
web 27 October 2008
Harare
SOME Zimbabweans have called on the
Government to prosecute those
individuals and bank officials implicated in
the cash scam and implored the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to phase out cash
withdrawal limits as they fuel
illicit dealings.
Some individuals are
reportedly conniving with bank employees and central
bank staff to withdraw
large sums of cash way above the $50 000 daily limit.
The money is then used
to buy foreign currency. The Bankers' Association of
Zimbabwe last week
warned those involved that they risked prosecution.
"We will
investigate the allegations to see whether they have substance or
warrant
action and then issue a statement," BAZ president Dr John Mangudya
said.
He said the difficulties in the banking sector could only come
to an end in
the event of a political settlement between Zanu-PF and the two
MDC
formations.
"Our prayer is that the political problems come to an
end. First and
foremost is the need for speedy political settlement because
the economy is
bleeding. Things are bad and what we are seeing are symptoms
of a big
problem," he said.
Dr Mangudya said hyper-inflation was also
contributing to the current
problems the sector was facing.
"You are
aware of the nature of the problems and the major cause is the
hyper-inflationary environment. The environment is not conducive for normal
business and there are bound to be temptations," he said.
Allegations
are that some individuals and bank officials were using
prescriptions from
doctors requiring millions of dollars, which they then
use to obtain
quotations from pharmacies to apply for cash at their banks
with the
assistance of bank employees.
The Herald was last week inundated with
phone calls as people aired their
views on the cash scam. Most of the
callers said the central bank should
immediately phase out cash
limits.
"Limiting access to cash fuels illegal activities. People should
be able to
access their salaries but cannot. People are then forced to
resort to
illegal activities to survive," Mr George Mazangunye of Harare
said.
Although he condemned the abuse of the emergency purpose facility,
Mr
Mazangunye said the RBZ should address the interest rate policy to
attract
money back into the banking system.
Others were of the view
that the withdrawal limit should be increased to $5
million for individuals
and up to $10 billion for companies.
People also said the country's
banking system was benefiting a few
individuals with connections at the
expense of the general public.
"The banking system in the country is
benefiting a few people who have
access to senior managers in the banking
sector while the majority who are
not connected are suffering," Mr
Kudakwashe Jodo said.
He suggested that the maximum withdrawal limit be
increased to $5 million in
line with the prices of goods and
services.
Last week a loaf of bread was selling at between $30 000 and
$50 000, a
kilogramme of beef at between $150 000 and $200 000 a kg and a
75ml bottle
of cooking oil was costing between $150 000 and $200
000.
Transport has also gone up with commuter omnibuses charging between
$15 000
and $25 000 for a trip to Chitungwiza.
Another caller who
declined to be named said many people had resorted to
walking to
work.
"Things are hard, we are appealing to the Government to make money
easily
accessible to everyone and at the same time prosecute those culprits
who
have caused this suffering. The majority of people are suffering and
it's
pathetic while others are flashing bundles of cash in the city," he
said.
He alleged one bank worker (name supplied) was boasting recently
that they
get $1,5 million cash every week.
"She told me that she was
getting $1,5 million every week and uses it to buy
foreign currency. This is
real and we have learnt to live with it," he said.
He said the central
bank should also ensure that shops and service providers
are forced to
accept cheques as a form of payment.
"Where do we get the hard cash to
settle our bills? For years we have been
using cheques to pay bills, why
cash today?" bemoaned a resident of the
Avenues who declined to be
named.
Most banks were last week reportedly called meetings with workers
over the
exposed scam.
"We have been holding meetings but I cannot
give you the details or the
nature of our meetings," a teller at a
commercial bank said.
Another official at a building society also
confirmed that they had been
summoned to a meeting over the scam in which
bank employees are also accused
of using dead relatives' and friends' ATM
cards to withdraw huge sums of
money.
Bank workers were also accused
of being the chief culprits in violating the
RTGS and inter-bank systems by
withdrawing huge sums of money and offloading
it on to the black market to
buy foreign currency.
Financial Times
By William
Wallis in London
Published: October 27 2008 18:33 | Last updated: October
27 2008 18:33
It could be many months before Zimbabwe can access donor
funds to stabilise
its imploding economy even if President Robert Mugabe and
Morgan Tsvangirai,
the prime minister designate, break the deadlock over
cabinet positions
holding up a post-election agreement.
Donor
officials say any government emerging from the power-sharing talks
that
resumed in Harare on Monday would first have to establish a clean break
from
ruinous past policies.
“We are keen that they reach a political agreement
so that they can have a
credible economic reform programme and credible
people at the Reserve Bank,”
says Donald Kaberuka, president of the African
Development Bank.
But the government would have to move quickly to
schedule repayment of $1bn
(€801m, £644m) in arrears to the AfDB, and the
World Bank, and reach
agreement on an International Monetary Fund reform
programme before direct
budgetary support would be available, he
said.
The threshold has been raised by the global financial crisis and
the
likelihood that donors will be reluctant to risk substantial sums on
rescuing an administration still headed by Mr Mugabe.
“For the
bilaterals they could begin now. For the international financial
institutions it would require agreement on arrears and an internationally
accepted reform package,” Mr Kaberuka told the Financial
Times.
Without an injection of hard currency, potentially more than $1bn,
any
government would struggle to tame hyper-inflation running officially at
an
annualised 231m per cent, and by unofficial estimates tracked by the US
Cato
institute, at 10 quadrillion per cent.
Bilateral donors
including the US and UK could raise humanitarian aid to an
estimated 5m
Zimbabweans facing starvation, donor officials say. But a
prolonged period
of waiting before any formal stabilisation package is
available would pose
serious difficulties for both Mr Tsvangirai and Mr
Mugabe.
Having
signed up to what some opposition activists criticise as a pact with
the
devil, the opposition leader once in government will be under pressure
to
prove he can quickly reverse a vertiginous decline in Zimbabwean
livelihoods. “Civil servants want real incomes. What happens if he can’t
deliver?” asks a Zimbabwean analyst connected with the Reserve
Bank.
As a bare minimum towards maintaining the peace and paying security
forces,
a new government would have to continue printing money in the near
term, an
economist with a multilateral donor organisation said. But to
accelerate the
disbursement of donor funds – in the best case scenario
within three
months – it would have to signal serious intent to
reform.
For Mr Mugabe this would pose an acute dilemma. A period of best
behaviour
could jeopardise the patronage system with which he has maintained
his grip
on power.
In the fantastical world of quadrillions that
Zimbabwe’s economy inhabits,
it has become next to impossible to measure the
real state of the country’s
finances. Donors list some minimum conditions
that a new government would
have to meet to restore confidence. These
include commissioning an external
audit of the Reserve Bank, establishing a
credible consumer price index,
willingness to seek technical assistance from
the IMF, and the appointment
of credible reformers to positions with
influence over monetary and economic
policy.
Beyond that, a new
government could move to protect private property,
reverse legislation
hindering business, and re-establish the rule of law.
Because Mr Mugabe and
his principal lieutenants have shown little
inclination to do this, many
donor officials remain sceptical that a
substantial recovery programme will
be feasible in the near term.
Financial Times
By William
Wallis
Published: October 27 2008 17:44 | Last updated: October 27 2008
17:45
The strongest card Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's opposition leader,
has held
during protracted talks with President Robert Mugabe is his ability
to draw
a financial rescue package should he gain sufficient power in a
coalition
government.
Yet Mr Mugabe and his principal allies from the
Zanu-PF party have every
reason to fear the reforms that foreign donors
would impose. "It would
require a wholesale change in attitude at the top,
and decisions that are
incompatible with the patronage system," says a
senior economist with an
international financial institution.
As
Zimbabwe's economy has collapsed, access to patronage including US
dollars
at the heavily discounted official exchange rate, has become
increasingly
centralised at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ). Should Mr
Mugabe lose
control of this, as well as finance and other key economic
ministries, he
would struggle to hold his support base together.
"Without the patronage
system, Zanu-PF would implode," argues a senior
western
diplomat.
Foreign assets at the RBZ are now so insignificant that one
analyst
describes them as "a rounding error on the balance sheet". Yet
fortunes are
being made even as the economy reaches an exponential stage of
implosion.
The effect, according to Harare-based economists, of the
monetary policies
pursued by Gideon Gono, the reserve bank governor, has
been to suck residual
value from the economy and channel it to securocrats,
politicians and
businessmen within Mr Mugabe's fold.
The process
began in 2000 with the expropriation of white-owned farms. It
continued when
the reserve bank seized control of pensions and corporate
savings by raising
statutory reserve requirements.
In its latest stage, spiralling
hyperinflation and dysfunctional exchange
rate mechanisms offer the
possibility of instant riches to what one
economist calls a "pickers' pot"
of 200 well-connected officials with access
to hard currency at official
exchange rates. Due to its control of scarce
hard currency, the bank has
gained a hand in a lengthening list of trading
activities.
"Monetary
policy is central to every business," says an analyst connected to
the
RBZ.
To circumvent rules on sending fortunes overseas, businessmen can
buy shares
in Harare of Old Mutual, the insurance and investment management
company,
and sell them in London and Johannesburg where they are co-listed.
This
process is also controlled by the RBZ.
http://www.radiovop.com
HARARE, October 27 2008 -
Representatives of the National Association
of Non Governmental
Organisations (NANGO), on Monday met with Prime Minister
designate Morgan
Tsvangirai, hours before the make or break SADC Troika
mediated dialogue, to
urge him to end the cabinet sharing talks stalemate.
The NANGO leadership had earlier on met with ZANU-PF Chief Negotiator
Patrick Chinamasa, and presented a document for onward submission to
President Robert Mugabe. The team is also scheduled to meet with the
Mutambara led MDC leadership. NANGO spokesperson, Fambai Ngirande, noted
that as the inter-party dialogue process continues to stall, humanitarian
conditions have degenerated to unprecedented levels, with food insecurity
leaving close to five million people in need of humanitarian support, amid
hyper-inflation, repression and mass unemployment. "The Masvingo declaration
holds that the "delay in the amicable conclusion of the talks is negatively
impacting on the hopes and expectations of Zimbabweans." "It also
reiterates the importance of the urgent and amicable resolution of the
Inter-Party dialogue as the first step towards national efforts to
effectively meet the humanitarian needs of the people and put in motion,
national healing, economic recovery and transitional justice processes,"
said Ngirande.
Ngirande said NANGO was in the meantime
rallying its entire membership
to show solidarity and give practical
assistance to the hundreds of
protesters who were injured during the attack
by riot police as well as the
WOZA leadership who are currently unjustly
incarcerated. "As the talks are
underway the NANGO Board condemns in the
strongest possible terms the
violent clampdown by State security officials
on hundreds of marchers from
various sections of Civil Society, conducting
non-violent protests to press
political leaders to conclude the talks," said
the NANGO spokesman. "The
clampdown is yet another illustration of the
extent of the absence of
democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe. More than
forty seven protestors
from the Women's Coalition who led the "Conclude the
Talks Now - We are
Dying of Hunger" campaign, are being held at the Harare
Central Police
Station.
"NANGO remains committed to
supporting its members in engaging non
violent social actions to agitate for
the urgent conclusion of the talks and
for democracy, constitutionalism and
human rights in Zimbabwe," he said.
Meanwhile the Parliament of
Zimbabwe has moved a motion to have the
food situation declared a National
Disaster - a move Ngirande said will
precipitate the the formation of an
inclusive Inter-sectoral Commission to
oversee the sourcing and equitable
distribution of relief efforts.
Angola Press Agency (Luanda)
26
October 2008
Posted to the web 27 October 2008
Luanda
A special
envoy of the Zimbabwean president,
Robert Mugabe, arrived Sunday morning in
Luanda,
with a message to the Angolan head of Head of
State, José Eduardo
dos Santos.
The special envoy, who is Zimbabwe's Housing and
Social
Infrastructures minister, Emmason
Munangagwa, would not speak to Angop on
arrival.
Angola will attend, Monday in Harare, the
extraordinary
summit of the organ of defence and
security of the Southern African
Development
Community (SADC) which will discuss, among other
matters, the
situation in Zimbabwe.
Angola will be represented at the meeting by
the
Foreign minister, Assunção dos Anjos, on behalf
of the head of State,
José Eduardo dos Santos.
Besides Zimbabwe, the meeting will also
discuss
the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo
and other issues
concerning the African heads of
State.
Reuters
Mon 27 Oct
2008, 16:52 GMT
GENEVA, Oct 27 (Reuters) - A rare sale of African ivory
will be held under
United Nations auspices over the next two weeks, with
proceeds to be used
for conservation purposes, officials said on
Monday.
The sales will take place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and
Zimbabwe,
with only China and Japan permitted to buy.
Africa's
elephants are protected species and cross-border trade in their
ivory tusks
is generally prohibited.
But signatories of the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered
Species (CITES) last year gave the four
southern African states special
permission to sell a combined total of 108
tonnes of raw ivory from
elephants that died of natural causes or were
killed in
population-management programmes.
CITES Secretary-General
Willem Wijnstekers will be on the spot to "supervise
closely" the
closed-door transactions.
The first sale will take place in Namibia on
Tuesday, with the second in
Botswana on Oct. 31, CITES said. Dates for the
South African and Zimbabwean
sales, not open to reporters or the public,
will be announced later.
The two Asian nations, traditional users of
ivory, were approved to buy
after showing they could fight illegal domestic
trade in the material used
mainly in jewellery and
carvings.
Wijnstekers will hold talks on the margins of the auctions with
officials
from both countries about how CITES will monitor trade controls
"to ensure
that unscrupulous traders do not take this opportunity to sell
ivory of
illegal origin".
Cash raised in the one-off auctions must be
used to fund programmes for
nature conservation and community development
projects in the areas the four
countries say rising elephant populations
have caused problems for local
farmers.
Last week the Internet
auctioneer eBay Inc. <EBAY.O> said it would institute
a global ban on
the sale of ivory products after a conservation group found
4,000 illegal
elephant ivory listings on its site. The company already
prohibits
cross-border sales of ivory and items made from other endangered
or
protected species.
(Editing by Michael Roddy)
The Herald (Harare) Published by the
government of Zimbabwe
27 October 2008
Posted to the web 27 October
2008
Harare
TOBACCO deliveries remained subdued despite a series
of clean-up sales,
which started two weeks ago. The Tobacco Industry
Marketing Board said only
about 3 million-kg of tobacco had been sold during
the mop-up sales,
bringing to about 47,6 million kg of tobacco sold this
season.
About 45 million-kg had been sold during the actual selling
season compared
to 70 million last year.
It is a far cry from
this year's target of 77 million kg an indication that
a lot of tobacco
remains unsold.
Earning to date from sales stands at US$154,5
million.
Indications are that the season could extend beyond the mop-up
as was the
case last year.
Most farmers were reportedly holding on to
their crop due to a number of
reasons including limited cash withdrawals,
high transport costs, fuel
shortages, the exchange rate, among others.
27 October 2008
Emily
Wellman
www.statesintransition.org
The
financial and humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe is now so grave that the
Southern African Development Community (SADC) mediators meeting in Harare
today must find an immediate solution to the impasse and halt the country's
headlong plunge into chaos and despair.
Independent
Zimbabwean analysts estimated last week's inflation rate at 1.4
billion, far
surpassing the hyperinflation levels of any country on
record.
They report that hyperinflation is escalating at 50
percent a day and
heading towards the trillions.
The exchange
rate is currently around Z$5-billion to US$1 and by the end of
the month is
predicted to spiral to Z$9-billion.
Devoid of solutions to the
financial fallout, the Zimbabwean government
continues to print vast amounts
of worthless bank notes.
Consequently the Zimbabwean dollar is at
the point where it is unable to
hold its value for more than two hours and
is being discarded in favour of
the US dollar or South African
Rand.
The only solution, analysts say, is to take control of the
economy out of
the hands of Mugabe.
Ironically the Ministry
of Finance is one of the disputed ministries in the
stalled
negotiations.
"If the mediation results in a stalemate, the
solution will be to
immediately set up a combined AU / UN / SADC force to
co-ordinate and
supervise a fast-tracked presidential election authorising
the use of
identity documents for verification," said a Harare-based
analyst.
However, the holding of yet another election poses
significant problems.
The voters' roll remains in shambles and
requires a complete overhaul. It
also has to be produced in an electronic
format which can be easily
accessed.
Another stumbling block
is that, according to the current constitution,
people have to vote in their
wards which means displaced people cannot vote
outside of their
constituencies..
In the run-up to the June 27 presidential
run-off election, the
government-sponsored violence was of such intensity
that thousands of people
were forced to abandon their homes and flee for
their lives.
During the attacks, hundreds of homes were burnt to
the ground by Zanu PF
militia and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
party estimated that as
many as 200 000 people had been displaced
countrywide.
Given the bloodshed during the last presidential election it
is hard to see
how elections could be undertaken without foreign troops or a
terrible loss
of life
There is also another - and as yet unquantified
- population movement taking
place.
Employees whose companies
have closed down due to the economic and political
chaos are having to leave
the cities where food is also becoming scarce and
return to their homes in
the rural areas.
The Diaspora is yet another question. Although
estimates vary widely of the
number of displaced Zimbabweans in the region -
notably in South Africa,
Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique - in excess of
three million people could be
involved.
Angered by their
disenfranchisement in previous elections, members of the
Diaspora have
expressed the desire to return home to exercise their right as
citizens of
Zimbabwe to vote for the president of their choice.
However, it
will only be feasible for those in the SADC region to return if
their
security can be assured and if there is sufficient food available to
ensure
they do not become a burden on their struggling families.
This
also raises the question of funding. The majority will require
financial
assistance to return home.
Travel documentation will also have to
be resolved since many do not have
passports having entered neighbouring
countries illegally.
A further issue is the sourcing of polling
agents. In previous elections,
teachers played a significant role but were
victimised by the regime, some
suffering extreme
brutality.
Consequently, thousands of trained polling agents fled
for their lives to
South Africa, neighbouring states and overseas where they
are now widely
scattered and attempting to rebuild their
lives.
The fallout in the educational sector is so profound that
the Professional
Teachers' Association of Zimbabwe (PUTZ) estimates only
about 7 percent of
the 3-million school-age children in the country are
being educated.
In some instances, pupils have only had 23 days
of effective teaching the
entire year.
The PUTZ therefore
anticipates a catastrophic pass rate in this year's
examinations of just 3
percent and Raymond Majongwe, the secretary-general,
has made the
unprecedented call for the 2008 academic year to be
cancelled.
The agricultural outlook is correspondingly bleak and
this year's harvest is
described as the worst in Zimbabwe's modern
history.
In many rural areas there is neither food on the ground
nor in the shops.
Mugabe's Zanu PF party has once again taken
control of the distribution of
agricultural inputs such as maize seed and
fertilizer for the 2008/09
season.
This has been organised
through the Reserve Bank, which has bought up seed
and centralised the
distribution of agricultural inputs.
General Constantine
Chiwenga, the commander of Zimbabwe's defence forces,
who was given the
responsibility of identifying the beneficiaries of
agricultural inputs, has
been handing them out at Zanu PF rallies to party
members and senior
officials.
According to IRIN, a few "A1" small scale and communal
farmers and "A2" new
black commercial farmers are known to have received
seed and fertilizer but
ordinary card carrying Zanu PF members and villagers
have been told that
inputs have run out.
The situation is now
so dire that whole villages are faced with no food and
welfare organisations
warn that entire families are dying.
UK charity Save the Children
reports that thousands of children have dropped
out of schools devoid of
learning materials to search the already heavily
plundered countryside for
edible roots and berries.
"In one district, 10 000 children out
of a population of 120 000 left school
over a period of six months," said
Rachel Pounds, the charity's country
director.
"If it wasn't
for aid organisations such as World Vision and the remittances
from family
members in the Diaspora, we would already have starvation levels
of the
proportions of Biafra during the 1960s on our hands," said a
humanitarian
worker in Matabeleland province.
Food is also becoming in
increasingly short supply in the towns and cities,
with row upon row of
empty shelves in supermarkets.
What little food is available is
so expensive that it is beyond the means of
most people.
The
chaotic situation has been compounded by the fact that the government
has
set a maximum daily withdrawal limit of Z$50 000.
To put its
value into perspective, Z$50 000 will buy the hard-pressed
consumer just one
loaf of bread - and in certain outlets only four slices.
As a
result, millions of man-hours are being wasted while people wait in the
endless queues that choke crumbling city pavements.
Since it
has become almost impossible for companies to withdraw adequate
cash - which
is in effect worthless anyway, they are resorting to paying
staff in goods
such as salt, beans and the staple maize meal - if they can
locate
supplies.
According to the financial director of a large company
in Bulawayo the
chaotic situation is further exacerbated by the fact that it
is virtually
impossible to use cheques.
"If you are given a
cheque, by the time it has been cleared it has lost 20
percent of its
value," he said. "And if a client tells you he will pay by
cheque, you have
to add on such a substantial mark up that it further fuels
inflation."
Given the worthless state of the Zimbabwean
dollar, companies and
individuals are increasingly refusing to accept it as
a currency.
When the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is no longer able
to continue its practice
of purchasing foreign currency on the black market,
some analysts predict it
could finally collapse.
They point
out that, with 50 percent of this year's budget allocated to the
armed
forces, Zanu PF has no financial reserves to feed or provide support
to the
starving population, or to keep the country running.
A
consequence of the economic and humanitarian fallout that Zimbabwe's
neighbours cannot afford is a major escalation of desperate Zimbabweans
crossing into their countries in search of jobs, food and, increasingly
medical support.
The health care sector, which has been
teetering on the brink for months,
has effectively
collapsed.
Parirenyatwa Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in
Harare, announced
last week that it had stopped hospital admissions with
immediate effect due
to a chronic shortage of staff, drugs and
food.
Even the fortunate few who have been on private medical
schemes through
their companies can no longer afford to get ill, or even to
book a doctor's
appointment.
Medical aid tariffs have
rocketed from four to seventy times the salary of
an office worker and just
one tube of antiseptic ointment costs Z$200
million which equates to more
than a year's salary.
The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for
Human Rights (ZADHR) has expressed
outrage at the worsening situation in
government hospitals.
Douglas Gwatidzo, ZADHR Chairman, says he
fears that increasing numbers of
lives will be lost and has called for
immediate intervention.
Former South African President Thabo
Mbeki has been forced to share the
responsibility of finding a solution to
the impasse with SADC leaders, who
effectively have two
choices.
Either they admit that the allocation of ministries
tabled by the Movement
for Democratic Change is fair and use this as a basis
for an equitable
solution, or they accept the deliberately skewed demands of
Mugabe and Zanu
PF who are determined to retain
power.
Realistically, and in the interests of their own
electorates, SADC cannot
afford the catastrophic consequences of a failed
member state and the
resulting fallout if they fail to act
decisively.
The time for protracted negotiations and deferring to
aging dictators is
over.
http://www.zimbabwejournalists.com
27th
Oct 2008 14:56 GMT
By Chenjerai
Chitsaru
LAST week, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) boss was accused
of what we
journalists would describe as "improper behaviour" - it involved
a woman.
The IMF called it something else.
The man was let off the
hook with a warning. At the time of writing, I had
not come across any loud
protests - or even quiet ones - from international
women's
organisations.
Not so fortunate was Paul Wolfowitz, the former head of
the World Bank,
whose case also involved a woman. They threw the book at him
and he was
forced to quit. They say his severance pay was almost
obscene.
These are not your average bank managers, in double-breasted
suits ten years
out of fashion, well-polished shoes fashionable when Clark
Gable was the
biggest film star in Hollywood.
These are men of vast
international banking experience. They are entrusted
with trillions of
dollars of every country's money.
Their salaries are in staggering
figures too. They could quote you,
verbatim, everything Adam Smith, Milton
Friedman and Alan Greenspan ever
wrote. They might even go back to the
origins of money as we know it today -
not that you couldn't find out all
that from the internet.
But the beauty for them is that they could put it
in context. Yet they were
caught - literally - with their pants down. Who
puts such people in charge
of crucial international institutions? It may not
be gracious to mention
"moral depravity" or "moral turpitude", but you could
feel justified to be
furious.
Who put them in such positions? The
politicians. It must follow that the
present world economic crisis cannot be
blamed on the bankers alone. Most of
them are placed in their jobs by
politicians - for one good reason and
probably two, three or four bad
ones.
Between the two groups, there cannot be unanimity on who is a saint
and who
a sinner. Most hard-boiled journalists would say it is highly
dubious to
speak of good and bad about politicians and bankers.
There
can only be degrees of badness. This is an extremist view, embraced by
all
who have endured the agony of lost life savings and evaporating
investments
because a banker took a chance with their money.
Traditionally, it used
to be said that if you couldn't trust your bank
manager, who else could you
trust? Well, you could trust your pastor,
surely. But as he didn't possess
the wherewithal of improving your material
status, perhaps you did not list
him as your priority.
Today, all over the world, banks have lost the
trust they used to enjoy in
the early days. Much of the trust has been
chipped away by their own lack of
integrity, their greed, their
get-rich-quick obsession and their inherent
attachment to
politicians.
Governments are run by politicians with many friends among
bankers - and
vice versa. In many cases, they have decided they will use
taxpayers' money
to bail out the bankers.
The phrase popularised by
some politicians is "whatever it takes". If it is
not your money, the sky is
the limit - it's no skin off your nose. Most
taxpayers must feel an urge to
get back at the politicians for this, at
election time.
A fresh
examination of the relationship between voters, bankers and
politicians
seems called for, particularly in African countries. For a
start, there are
few Africans who understand why the credit crunch has
brought the world to a
situation reminiscent of the crash of 1929 - 79 years
ago.
At that
time, few African countries had achieved the independence that began
in
earnest in 1957. For instance, Robert Mugabe was only five years old
then.
He too would only know of that nightmare from reading books.
There is no
doubt it was a period of extreme hardship for all, rich and
poor, but
particularly the poor. It began with the stock market crash on
Wall Street,
in New York, in the US - where the present one began as well.
But this
time, political leaders last week gathered in Beijing, China, to
debate how
to solve the world crisis. China was chosen, not because it hadn't
been
contaminated - because it had - but because it now has the third
largest
economy in the world, but doesn't seem to appreciate why it's a
collective
responsibility to keep the world economy under constant review
and under
some kind of control.
If both Russia and the United States ignore the
almost knee-jerk inclination
to dominate the proceedings leading to a united
front against the crisis, we
shall see signs of an improvement soon
enough.
The temptation might be irresistible to apportion blame, but in
Beijing,
there was little of that. There seemed to be a serious attempt to
confront
the problem without using the blinkers of old cold war
ideologies.
When the explanation offered for the crisis includes a
detailed account of
the meaning of the "subprime mortgage crisis" in the US,
which triggered the
present debacle, then there is little doubt few Africans
or even Chinese,
Mongolians or Tibetans, Eskimos or Andorrans could muster
the patience to
plough through the verbiage.
"The subprime mortgage
crisis is an ongoing financial crisis characterized
by contracted liquidity
in global credit markets and banking systems
triggered by the failure of
mortgage companies, investment firms and
government sponsored enterprises
which had invested heavily in subprime
mortages. The crisis, which has roots
in the closing years of the 20th
century but has become more apparent
throughout 2007 and 2008, has passed
through various stages exposing
pervasive weaknesses in the global financial
system and regulatory
framework."
In lay-people's language, this was a practice of lending
money to people
whose capacity to pay it back at the periods specified as
making good
business sense was almost non-existent.
The government
intervenes because it has a lot of taxpayers' money lying
around. It's
indecent to suggest this is because the government has no idea
what to do
with the money.
It's possible the government is keeping the money for the
proverbial rainy
day, although it must know there are people without jobs,
food and shelter,
while it's sitting on these billions.
What
infuriates taxpayers around the world is that their money is being used
to
pay for the greed and blunders of people apparently trained to look after
other people's money wisely - apparently.
Yes, to err is human and to
forgive divine. But if a bank fails to get its
overdraft fully paid back
from you at the time it expects to, there are few
occasions during which it
will let you off the hook.
Nobody believes banking to be an inherently
crooked business. Bank charges,
for instance, have provoked many depositors
to call for government
intervention, because they can be hefty beyond
belief...
In Zimbabwe , where a piranha-like monster, looking strangely
like your
typical politician, has ruined the economy since 2000, the world
crisis will
postpone a return to the good times for decades.
In
trying to be fair to the bankers, one must not bend over backwards too
far,
because there is much evidence of larceny.
Here is something: "Stemming
from the 'credit crunch', attention has been
drawn to recent subprime
lending practices. It has been suggested that some
lenders engaged in
predatory lending practices. More extreme allegations
included lenders
deliberately targeting borrowers who may not have fully
understood the terms
of their loan, or lending to people who were never
likely to afford the
interest payments in the long-run. Many of these loans
included exorbitant
fees and hidden terms and conditions, and they
frequently led to default,
seizure of collateral, and foreclosure."
In some cases, they might have
led to broken lives, let alone broken
marriages. Someone ought to pay for
all this terrorism of the innocent..
They must include bankers and
politicians, these birds of the same feather.
A government of the people,
in essence, must institute provisions for
ensuring the people's hard-earned
money is not frittered away in bailouts of
crooked banks.
Zimbabwe,
in particular, has an opportunity to start afresh.
24 October
2008
The Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) is disillusioned by the conduct of the police with regard to vendors. It is clear to all and sundry that the economic melt down; high levels of unemployment and the political stalemate have rapidly increased the number of Zimbabweans who earn their living out of vending as the means of survival are increasingly becoming difficult. This situation has created two inimical groups; the police (state and municipality) being “hunters” and the vendors, the “hunted” and it has seriously exposed vendors to continuous harassment by the police.
CHRA is reliably informed that a uniformed policeman and a plain-clothed detective allegedly pounced on unassuming 15 vendors in Masasa and confiscated their vegetables and fruits and told them that the goods would be forfeited to the state. The vendors are alleged to have tried to explain that they had licences but the police officers in their fashion of unprofessionalism, would not brook those explanations. The vendors, among them members of CHRA, reported the matter at Rhodesville police station. The police are said to have convened a meeting with the vendors and the municipality police. The vendors produced their vending licenses to the police during the meeting which was held on Monday the 20th of October at Rhodesville police station and the officer in charge instructed the police officers who had confiscated the goods to either return the goods to their owners or render equivalent payment in monetary form. The vendors celebrated this small victory as they were paid by the policeman and his partner.
Meanwhile the defacto Minister of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development is urged to stop interfering with the running of the city and allow the council to make progress in cleaning the mess of “his” commissions. Among other things, the council needs to designate and build necessary infrastructure in vending market places, reclaim water management and sewer reticulation from ZINWA and ensure that there is improvement in municipal service delivery. CHRA also urges the country’s political leadership to move swiftly in resolving the country’s socio-economic and political problems which have brought untold poverty among the residents (and the police).
Combined
Exploration House, Third Floor
Landline: 00263- 4-
705114
Contacts:
27 October
2008
Combined Harare Residents Association has received information that; Hatfield junior primary school authorities are contemplating closing the school due to dire water shortages. The school is entering its fourth week without water and the situation is highly unhygienic. The decision to close the school has been delayed by the Grade 7 examinations in progress. This issue is a miniature depiction of the Zimbabwean crisis.
A member of the CHRA Secretariat
interviewed some children who are in the sixth grade at the school and gathered
that the toilets at the school have blocked and they have become unusable. The
school authorities and parents at large fear for the health of their children as
there seems to be no hope that the situation will improve. This poses a serious
threat of Cholera and other disease outbreaks which have wreaked havoc in the
city. Homes, offices and other public institutions have been victims of the
ZINWA’s failure to provide clean and accessible water throughout the city of
State media has been running stories of ZINWA having acquired some equipment and chemicals from The People’s Republic of China (consistent with the current defacto government look east policy), a country where thousands have been hospitalized and dozens have died from melamine contaminated products. The parastatal (ZINWA) which was imposed by the government in 2006 has failed the nation beyond any reasonable doubt and some government authorities have chided it in the mainstream media, thus acknowledging their failure.
Reacting to the developments, the
Chairperson of CHRA, Mr
CHRA remains committed to demanding quality
and affordable service delivery and accountable, transparent and democratic
governance system in the city of
Combined
Exploration House, Third Floor
Landline: 00263- 4-
705114
Contacts:
Sunday Independent 26 October 2008
By Peta Thornycroft
Harare - Sister
Patricia Walsh says in her 35 years living in Zimbabwe she
has never seen
the level of hunger that she does today.
"It is deeply troubling,
especially in rural hospitals I have visited where
even the nurses are
hungry all the time.
"They will ask why they have to feed patients who
are going to die soon,
when they are not going to die but need food to keep
on working.
"They earn salaries, so are not eligible to be on the list of
vulnerable
people, but their salaries will not even buy one meal a
month."
A nurse earns less than R20 a month as the Zimbabwe dollar
continues its
daily plunge in value and incalculable annual inflation stands
at many
hundreds of million percent.
Irish born and raised, Walsh,
66, a Dominican nun, is one of the most
outspoken Christian leaders in
Zimbabwe. She is not only critical of the
government of President Robert
Mugabe at home but also has raised her voice
at many of the world's top
humanitarian agencies.
Walsh, who trained at Paddington and St James
Hospitals in the United
Kingdom and took her vows when she was 28, rarely
gets out of Zimbabwe for
more than a few days to return to her beloved
Athlone, County Westmeath, in
"the heart of Ireland, my roots".
She
lived through the Rhodesian war on a remote mission station at
Chilimanzi,
about 220km south of Harare, where she saw some malnutrition,
mostly, she
says, among children whose parents worked on white-owned
commercial
farms.
"We longed for the birth of Zimbabwe and in the first years it was
good. We
were so hopeful, so happy after independence. The ministry of
health gave us
whatever we needed, they bent over backwards and the health
of the
population improved a lot."
Most of Zimbabwe's population
lives in the countryside and 60 percent has
traditionally received medical
care at rural mission hospitals. After
independence, the government fully
supported mission hospitals. Now they
depend on hand-outs from external
churches and some donor funds to stay
afloat.
"I am schizophrenic
about Zimbabwe," says Walsh. "It is a love-hate
relationship. There is
despair everywhere and yet I love the country."
She is critical of those
non-governmental organisations tasked with defining
who is vulnerable and
who is not before they hand out food.
"We have no food to give out and
surely we can be trusted to do it fairly
and be accountable?"
She
said the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP), the major importer
of
food aid, recently provided statistics of those it says are in need, 2
million now, and 5 million in January, nearly half the
population.
"Sadly for some of us this information is a cause of
frustration. One of our
mission hospitals with one of the largest HIV/Aids
outreach programmes in
the country applied to the WFP and were told that
food is only being
supplied to 'vulnerable people'."
She questioned
why 4 000 orphans cared for by the church in one district,
many of whom were
hospitalised with the diseases of malnutrition were not
considered
"vulnerable".
She asked where church-run hospitals were supposed to get
food if not
through such organisations as WFP and Christian Care.
She
pointed out that many people living with HIV/Aids in Harare, for
example,
are not considered vulnerable, even though their health status is
dramatically deteriorating because of malnutrition.
"Why is there
this expensive time-wasting exercise with questionnaires to
decide who is
vulnerable when so many starving people are already on the
records of
clinics and various church groups?
"How does the head of a child-headed
household in a high-density area get
into contact with the people who have
the questionnaires? In most cases they
have no chance. We have had hundreds
of people on the point of starvation
coming to our doors pleading for
food."
She called on "whoever is responsible for all the bureaucracy to
start
getting the food out of the warehouses to the people who are hungry or
we
will have mass starvation".
Walsh said the churches were finding
money to buy coffins for people who had
died rather than using the funds to
get food to them.
"Let us stop buying coffins and distribute food," she
said.
Most members of the NGO community in Zimbabwe refuse to be
identified when
interviewed by journalists, and yet all are deeply critical
of the Zimbabwe
government.
One European medical doctor, running the
largest HIV/Aids facility in Harare
and waiting for his temporary work
permit, said this week: "I feel ashamed
not being able to give you my name
but if I am refused my TEP, I will be
kicked out immediately and I have 2
000 patients and no one to replace me,"
he said.
"There are others
from powerful organisations, earning huge salaries, who
are not vulnerable
and yet they will never put their names to their
criticism of the
government, which is responsible for this tragedy in case
they lose their
fabulous jobs."
Walsh and many other church organisations have been
pleading with the food
importers to be given food to distribute. "We would
get it out now," she
said.
Many NGOs say they cannot begin major food
distribution because the Reserve
Bank of Zimbabwe will not allow them access
to their local bank accounts to
withdraw enough to pay for people and trucks
to distribute food.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe allows NGOs to withdraw
less than R10 a day. -
Foreign Service
HARARE, 27 October 2008
(IRIN) - Rodgers Matsikidze, a human rights lawyer and resident of Budiriro, a
high-density suburb in the capital Harare, told IRIN that persistent sewer pipe
bursts had exposed the community to disease, especially cholera.
Photo:
IRIN
Children
play next to an open sewer
"Our dilemma is that we have not had running
water for close to a month. In addition we had sewer pipes bursting, resulting
in untreated effluent flooding most parts of the community. As you can obviously
tell, there is an unpleasant smell in the air.
"As to be expected, many
residents have dug shallow wells to try and access clean water. The danger is
that sewage is seeping into the shallow wells, and with the rains that have been
falling, the result could be an outbreak that could be difficult if not
impossible to control.
"Right now every home has members who are
suffering from diarrhoea. Children are also at great risk, as they are exposed
to sewage effluent while playing in the streets."
He said reporting
burst sewerage pipes to the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA), the water
parastatal, never elicited any action.
"When we reported that we had not
received water for a long time, the ZINWA people said they were surprised
because they assumed we had water. When we told them about the sewer bursts,
they said they had not been vaccinated against typhoid to enable them to attend
to the sewer bursts.
"According to the Water Act, ZINWA has exclusive
rights to sewer and water and that means we can not hire private contractors to
attend to our problem.
"When you add water shortages, sewage pipe bursts,
electricity cuts, food shortages then you realise the kind of hardships that
people are going through in the different communities."
Matsikidze said
many residents were being forced to buy clean water from suburbs with water
supplies. "Instead of money, we can barter sugar or soap for a bucket of water."
"Of course, there is a lot that can be done and we are working on a
class action against the Zimbabwe National Water Authority. To start with, ZINWA
is failing to keep its end of the bargain by not supplying clean water when
residents are paying rates," Matsikidze commented.
"By not tackling
these issues, they are threatening the existence of the community because people
have died of cholera, while others have fallen sick. We are seeking to compel
the authority to provide services which we have paid for without delivery," he
said.
"If they cannot provide the services which we require, then we
will seek to have services such as water distribution and sewer management
handed back to local authorities, which used to do a very good job."
Inflation is one of those things I just can’t keep track of any
more. Steve Hanke at the Cato Institute reckoned it
was around 52 trillion – but that was over 10 days ago. Last week our office got
a shock when the Old Mutual Implied
Rate went from around USD1 = ZWD 3 billion on Wednesday to 28 billion on
Thursday 163 billion on Friday. Granted, as they say on their website, “The Old
Mutual Implied Rate (OMIR) is a broad unofficial proxy for the value of the
Zimbabwe Dollar to the US$ based on the relative values of shares on the London
and Zimbabwe Stock Exchanges.” I don’t know anyone who’s actually doing
transfers at that rate. So on Saturday, when a friend of mine asked me what the
transfer rate to the US was, I could honestly say, “somewhere between 250
million and 163 billion.” But this short video - shown recently at the Zimbabwe International Film Festival - sums up inflation
better than any figure I’ve seen so far.
10/27/2008
by Tshepo
Matjila
Another day passes by, another batch of famine-induced deaths in
Zimbabwe.
The quiet death of Zimbabwe will haunt us all to our dying days.
This former
African bread basket country continues to wither away - way away
from the
glare of the world. Families have been torn apart, many men have
been
executed - I take it back.many men have been murdered!
This is
another day in the life of a thuggish military junta headed by its
hypocritical leader - Robert Gabriel Mugabe. 'Let them eat potatoes', the
monstrous Mugabe was once quoted. Sadly the potatoes he so bragged about to
the world has also run out. While Mugabe and his junta continue to enjoy
three course meals each day, sons and daughters of Zimbabwe succumb daily to
famine, malnutrition and disease. While the negotiated political settlement
continues to show more signs of a burlesque, relatives and friends of the
Zimbabwean people pray that someone would be bold enough to step up and act.
While most of us Down South continue to cheer, rile and contemplate the
impact of a ShiKota political party, many of the desperate Zimbabweans who
had some hope that normality was going to return to the country of their
birth, now they left with little choice but to flee in search of greener
pastures and a normal coexistence!
Why are we doing nothing bathong
(people)? Just as was noted in the Nazi
camp - soon they WOULD be coming for
us after they have decimated what
remains of Zimbabwe. Are we willing to let
the situation gravitate to that
level before we act? How long will we
continue to endorse (by doing nothing)
the illegitimate and brutal regime of
Robert Gabriel Mugabe?
With no UN peace-keeping forces and UNAid allowed,
the junta continue to
rule the day and use fatal force at night. Do we have
to continue talking to
a regime that doesn't respect the rules of
engagement? Is there a need from
our side to continue to recognise a
Presidency that shows scant regard for
the opposition?
I know what I
would like to see in Zimbabwe: I would like to see peace,
reconstruction and
prosperity in Zimbabwe - 'by any means necessary!'