| |||||||||||
Zimbabwe Welcomes US Suspension of Sanctions Bill
October 1, 2000
Rangarirai Shoko
HARARE, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe cautiously welcomed a US decision at the weekend to temporarily shelve until the new year a Congressional Bill that would have imposed punitive economic sanctions on the southern African country for allegedly ignoring the rule of law.
The US Congress shelved the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill, which provides for a withdrawal of US economic assistance, until January after intensive joint lobbying by Southern African Development Community (SADC) foreign ministers and American black pressure groups.
The Bill, already passed by the US Senate, was in reprisal for Zimbabwe's controversial land reform programme in which it was compulsorily acquiring white-owned farms without paying full compensation to resettle landless blacks.
Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United Nations, Tichaona Jokonya said the postponement of a Congressional vote on the Bill was at the intervention of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who met a delegation of SADC foreign affairs ministers recently for consultations on the matter.
"Once it is (voting) postponed, it is just as good as saying it has collapsed," he said, adding, however, that Zimbabwe was still mobilising support from regional and US-based pressure groups to force Congress to remove the Bill altogether from the agenda.
Zimbabwean diplomats said an important contributory factor in shelving the Bill was the strong backing the country had received from Black Americans in New York, who had vowed to vote against US President Bill Clinton's wife, Hilary in her bid for a New York Senate seat.
"New York happens to be an area where there is tremendous campaign against the Bill. We have put together a broad constituency of brothers and sisters from the Diaspora who are determined to fight that Bill," said Clay Amawali, a member of the December 12 Movement black pressure group supporting Zimbabwe.
Just a handful of white farmers in Zimbabwe own more than 70 percent of its arable land, and President Robert Mugabe wants to resettle landless peasants on half of this to reduce overcrowding in communal areas.
The Zimbabwean government also wants Britain, the country's former colonial power, to pay the white farmers whose land is acquired for resettlement, as agreed in an independence deal in 1980.
London denies it had an obligation to fund land reform in its former colony, but has agreed to provide funds on condition the government first removed thousands of peasants who have seized white- owned farms since February demanding to be resettled on them.
From The Star (SA), 1 October
Zimbabwe's debt-dodging could drag SA down
Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe's government looks due to step even deeper into international disrepute on Monday when the World Bank formally classifies it with the world's worst economic pariahs. Zimbabwe will be accorded "non-accrual status" for failing to make any payment on its debt to the Bank for the last six months, said Rogier van den Brink, the bank's deputy representative in Zimbabwe. It joins 11 other nations also in arrears to the World Bank for the last six months. They are Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Republic, Liberia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzogovina and Burma. "These are the hard-case failures in every way," said a Western diplomat. "So you see what kind of neighbourhood Zimbabwe has moved into."
Van den Brink appeared also to endorse widespread local and international belief that the first step to resolve the country's desperate crisis is the end of Mugabe's 20-year dictatorship. "Decisive action is needed," he said. "A wide cross-section of economists tend to agree that a successful political transition, as illustrated by restoration of law and order and a more pluralistic political dispensation, is a key to a successful economic stabilisation and recovery."
Van den Brink's remarks, in a paper issued here at the weekend, are regarded as starkly outspoken considering the usually cautious language used by the World Bank. But it is seen as one of the most alarming illustrations yet of the enormous destruction inflicted by Mugabe on what until recently promised to be a shining exception to Africa's record of violence, poverty and economic collapse. There was worse to come, added Van den Brink, saying the country is "in turmoil". Gross domestic product in 2001 will fall by as much as a staggering 10 percent and inflation may reach 120 percent. "This fragile situation could degenerate even further, with severe economic, social and political consequences to the country itself and to the (southern African) region," said the World Bank official.
Observers say Mugabe is under unprecedented pressure to step down as with each blow to his reputation as the statesman who embraced whites after a seven-year war for black majority rule is turned to the embarrassing notoriety of a corrupt, violent and incompetent despot. At the weekend, South Africa's former president, Nelson Mandela, heaped on the scorn when he told a South African newspaper: "I would have wished someone would talk to him and say, 'look, you have been in office 20 years, it's time to step down'."
Last week, the government appeared to have escaped by the skin of its teeth the effects of economic isolation by the world's most powerful nation when the United States congress put off voting on the controversial Zimbabwe Democracy Bill. Passed by the US senate earlier this year to condemn Zimbabwe's bloody pre-election violence, the bill proposes to cut all economic aid to the Mugabe regime and to block all World Bank and IMF support. "It's just as good as saying it has collapsed," said Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United Nations, Tichaona Jokonya, about the postponement in congress. Not so, say diplomats in Harare. Congress is being dissolved before American elections next month and the bill will appear again on the new congress' order paper in January.
At the weekend, ordinary Zimbabweans' patience was put yet a further severe test when foreign currency reserves began to dry up and international oil companies shut off fuel supplies. Some of the worst queues seen in the year grew outside Harare service stations as motorists waited for a few extra litres of petrol that has more than doubled in price in the last month. But public rage against Mugabe became clear on Saturday in the deafening roar of support for Morgan Tsvangirai, president of the opposition MDC. He told 25 000 supporters at the party's first birthday rally: "Time has come for action. The country cannot afford Mugabe for one day longer. What we would like to tell Mugabe is that, please, go peacefully. If you don't go peacefully, we will remove you violently."
The former trade union leader promised that the party's previous practice of calling one-day national strikes in protest against government misrule was over. "We cannot wait until 2002," he said, referring to the next presidential elections. "This time we will not stop until he goes." But from the Mugabe camp, there came only promises of more of the same. "That man is great, we should be thankful that we have him as a leader," said Didymus Mutasa, a veteran member of the ruling Zanu-PF party's politburo, its top organ. "So far as I am concerned, Mugabe is our sole candidate for the 2002
