Zim Online
Wednesday 04 October
2006
BULAWAYO - The Ministry of Industry says
Zimbabwe's key manufacturing
sector has "declined drastically" since 2004,
with 32 percent of
manufacturing firms now operating at 30 percent of
capacity, a rare
acknowledgment by Harare of an economic meltdown blamed on
its controversial
policies.
In a report presented to business
leaders at the weekend, industry
secretary Christian Katsande said another
40 percent of firms were at the
moment producing at between 50 and 70
percent of capacity, a somewhat
encouraging sign when compared to the
2004/05 period when only 13 percent of
companies were utilising upwards of
75 percent of capacity.
"The manufacturing sector has been
declining drastically, between 2004
and 2005 only 13 percent of the
manufacturing sector was operating above 75
percent of installed capacity,"
the report reads in part.
It adds: "Currently about 40 percent of
the manufacturing sector is
operating at between 50 percent and 70 percent
capacity while 32 percent of
the sector is operating below 30 percent of
capacity."
The manufacturing sector report entitled: The Report on
the Taskforce
on Import Substitution, Value Addition and Toll Manufacturing
and which
surprisingly does not blame economic failure on Western sanctions
against
Harare, says low production in the manufacturing sector was because
of a
host of problems, chiefly the shortage of foreign currency to import
raw
materials, machinery and spare parts.
President Robert
Mugabe and his government - in power since Zimbabwe's
independence in 1980 -
deny ruining what was once one of Africa's most
brilliant economies and say
the country's economic meltdown is because of
sabotage and sanctions by
Western countries out to fix Harare for seizing
white land for
redistribution to landless blacks.
The industry department said
attempts to utilise Zimbabwe's idle
factories through toll manufacturing -
outsourcing manufacturing facilities
to either local or foreign firms for a
fee - was being hampered by
antiquated machinery at most firms.
Zimbabwe's economy has contracted by more than a third over the past
seven
years, in a meltdown described by the World Bank as the worst in the
world
outside a war zone.
Mugabe's government on several occasions has
had to send armed
soldiers and police on the streets to crush protests by
Zimbabweans unhappy
over ever deteriorating economic conditions, rising
poverty and hunger. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
Wednesday 04 October
2006
HARARE - Police on Tuesday
denied heavily assaulting or
torturing Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union
(ZCTU) leaders, instead claiming
the unionists were injured after they tried
to jump out of a moving police
truck.
Several senior
leaders of the ZCTU were last month heavily
assaulted and tortured by the
police for attempting to organise protests by
workers for more pay and
better living conditions. The union leaders
suffered serious injuries
including broken ribs, arms and legs.
The labour activists,
who President Robert Mugabe last week said
deserved being beaten by the
police after defying orders to cancel
anti-government protests, are facing
charges of violating tough state
security laws by calling worker protests
without permission from the police.
Magistrate William Bhila
postponed the trial of the unionists to
October 17 at the request of their
lawyer, who said those injured were not
yet fit to stand trial, while others
were still in pain and recuperating.
But a police officer in
charge of crime prevention in Harare,
Joel Shasha Tenderere, claimed in an
affidavit to court that only minimum
force was used to subdue the ZCTU
officials who he said were resisting
arrest.
Tenderere
said in his affidavit: "The demonstrators were heavily
resisting arrest,
which resulted in police officers using minimum force to
achieve their
goal.
"Surely I observed the demonstrators some of them
limping,
bruised and dirty which resulted from skirmishes with the police at
place of
arrest and on the way to Matapi Police Station (after they jumped
from
police truck)."
The magistrate was however clearly
unimpressed by the police
officer's explanations of the injuries of the ZCTU
officials, ordering a
fresh investigation by the police's Criminal
Investigation Department (CID)
into the alleged beatings and torture of the
labour officials. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Wednesday 04 October
2006
HARARE - Zimbabwe transport operators
last weekend hiked fares by 50
percent worsening the plight of millions of
people who are already battling
a severe economic crisis in the troubled
southern African country.
A trip from the city centre to nearby
residential suburbs in Harare
now costs Z$300, up from the $200 commuters
used to pay before the fare
hike.
But commuters from
Chitungwiza, 25 kilometres south of the capital,
now pay $400 up from the
$300 they used to pay.
Transport operators who spoke to ZimOnline
yesterday blamed the fare
hike on rising fuel costs and vehicle spare
parts.
"We don't just need fuel to operate our buses but we also
need spares
and other oil products whose prices have risen dramatically,"
said one
operator who refused to be identified.
Private fuel
dealers last week defied a government crackdown and
increased the price of
fuel to between $1 000 and $1 500 a litre, way above
the gazetted price of
$335 a litre.
Commuters who spoke to ZimOnline said the latest fare
hike will worsen
their plight as they will be forced to allocate at least 80
percent of their
earnings to cover transport costs.
"It really
is very difficult especially when you consider that our
wages are static,"
said Tapera Masango, a resident of Budiriro.
Rising transport costs
is only one among a myriad of problems that
Zimbabweans have battled over
the past seven years. Zimbabwe has the world's
highest inflation rate of
over 1 200 percent.
Eighty percent of its population is unemployed
while food, fuel,
essential medicines are all in critical short
supply.
The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party
and major
Western governments blame the crisis on President Robert Mugabe's
mismanagement, a charge the veteran leader denies. - ZimOnline
Harare,
Zimbabwe
03 October 2006 05:01
A
Zimbabwean court on Tuesday ordered a probe into allegations
that labour
union leaders were tortured by police while in custody awaiting
trail for
attempting to protest against President Robert Mugabe's rule.
Harare magistrate William Bhila ordered an investigation into
claims that
leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) were
beaten up in
police custody, and postponed their trial until October 17.
"On allegations of torture it is also ordered that further
investigations be
carried out by the Criminal Investigations Department,"
he
said.
Lawyer Alec Muchadehama had asked for
postponement of the trial,
saying some of his clients were still recovering
from their injuries and
were unable to follow proceedings.
"Other people are incapacitated, some have to be carried and be
brought to
court in ambulances," he said.
Lawyers for the ZCTU members
said secretary general Wellington
Chibebe had a fractured arm while 29 others
sustained bruises and cuts after
being assaulted in police
custody.
The ZCTU leaders were forced to abandon plans for a
series of
anti-government marches over the spiralling cost of living when
police
arrested them for breaching the tough Public Order and Security Act
on
September 13.
The ZCTU had hoped to rope in thousands
to denounce fuel and
food shortages, more than 1 200% inflation and 80%
unemployment -- which
critics blame on economic mismanagement by Mugabe's
government.
Mugabe last week backed Zimbabwean police for
using brute force
to pre-empt the protest, saying: "Police were right in
dealing sternly ...
because the trade unionists want to become a law unto
themselves."
The 82-year-old leader said: "We cannot have a
situation where
people decide to sit in places not allowed and when the
police remove them,
they say no," a state-run daily quoted Mugabe as
saying.
"We can't have that, that is a revolt to the system.
When the
police say move, move. If you don't move, you invite the police to
use
force," Mugabe said.
Demonstrations by the ZCTU,
formerly headed by opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai, threatened to bring
Zimbabwe to its knees in the late
1990s as hundreds of thousands of people
took to the streets.
However, opponents of Mugabe have been
unable to take advantage
of the current economic crisis as a result of
internal divisions within the
opposition and fear of the security
services.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)
in September
expressed its at violence against Zimbabwe trade
unions.
Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said a statement
by
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe condoned the use of violence by
police
against Zimbabwean trade unions.
Craven said Mugabe
was happy with police dealing sternly with
ZCTU leaders during their
September 13 protests.
"This is nothing less than a
justification of brutality and
torture against workers who were peacefully
exercising their right to
demonstrate," said Craven. -- AFP, Sapa
Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (Hrforumzim)
Date: 03 Oct 2006
Zimbabwe Lawyers for
Human Rights (ZLHR) wishes to bring public attention to
the unfortunate
plight of residents of Harare who continue to suffer an
onslaught from the
City of Harare which can only be understood as consistent
with and pursuant
of the spirit and scope of the now infamous Operation
Murambatsvina/ Restore
Order.
On the 2nd of October 2006, residents of the settlement outside
Harare
informally known as PORTA EXTENSION, numbering some 37 households,
were
served with 24-hour eviction notices by the KUWADZANA DISTRICT OFFICE.
It is
as yet unclear what the reasons, legal or otherwise, for the evictions
are.
The notices are unprocedural, are not even presented on official
letterheads
of the City of Harare, and are signed by an unidentified
official.
Upon alerting ZLHR of their plight, enquiries have since been
made with the
KUWADZANA DISTRICT OFFICE and the following has
emerged:
- The residents are indeed due to be evicted, whilst some are
being given
'relocation notices'.
- The evictions will start today
and according to an unidentified female
official at the KUWADZANA DISTRICT
OFFICE, the evictions and relocations are
a continuation of Operation
Murambatsvina/Restore Order. She further
confirmed that properties of the
affected families will be demolished.
Of particular concern to ZLHR is
the fact that:
1. Operation Murambatsvina/Restore Order had been
officially declared over
by the Government, and Zimbabwean authorities have
alleged that they are in
the process of rebuilding under their controversial
and limited Operation
Garikai project (see Government response to the report
by UN envoy ANNA
KAJUMULO TIBAIJUKA)
2. 24-hour notice of eviction
and/or 'relocation notice' are grossly
inadequate and unprocedural, and
amount to a travesty of administrative
justice. The provisions of the
Administrative Justice Act [Chapter 10:28]
are pertinent in this
regard
3. The affected residents are being denied their right to
protection of the
law as protected under section 18(1) of the Zimbabwe
Constitution 1980
insofar as they are being evicted without due process of
law. There is no
court order for their eviction as is required under
domestic law and in
terms of international treaties to which Zimbabwe is a
State Party. There
are countless court orders and precedents prohibiting
their eviction in the
absence of suitable alternatives provided by the
State.
4. With the onset of the rainy season, these families will be
denied their
right to shelter, exposed to the elements of weather and
rendered internally
displaced persons.
ZLHR condemns such continuing
unlawful action by the authorities and calls
upon the City of Harare
to:
- Cease their unlawful actions and ensure that any administrative
process
that will have the effect of violating the fundamental rights of the
affected persons as protected under domestic and international law
-
Uphold the rule of law and afford these residents due process before
evicting them
- Guarantee suitable alternative accommodation for the
families before they
are removed from their places of settlement
-
Guarantee Harare residents that indeed Operation Murambatsvina/Restore
Order
is over
In the meantime, lawyers from the ZLHR Public Interest Litigation
Unit will
shortly be filing an Urgent Application to prevent the evictions
and
destruction of property on behalf of the affected families.
By Gerry Jackson
03 October
2006
Four Women Of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) walked free after
the State
withdrew charges following a plea of not guilty.
The
women had been arrested at Matshobana Hall on June 16 th while
they were
having a meeting about self help projects. They were charged under
the
Public Order and Security Act for failing to notify authorities.
The Magistrate, Ms Duta, found the women not guilty and said there had
been
no need for them to seek police clearance before convening the
meeting.
A statement released by Woza on Tuesday said: "Making his
submission
to the court, the prosecutor, Mr Ndebele, said it had not been
necessary for
the women to seek permission from regulatory authorities as
chapters 25 and
26 of the Public Order and Security Act stipulate that
permission should
only be sought if such a meeting has potential to cause
public disorder or
breach of peace, which had not been the case. Ndebele
also questioned the
rationale behind turning some of the women into state
witnesses when they
had attended the meeting in question and should have
been charged together
with other WOZA members. He also went on to absolve
himself by saying that
police had then not prepared witness statements
necessary to make a case.
It came to light after the trial that Law
and Order officials
interrogated and threatened with unspecified action the
state witnesses
(WOZA members) if they did not tell the "truth" just before
the trial. This
interrogation took place in a room upstairs within the
Western Commonage
Courts. The women insisted that they would only give
evidence as to the jam
making meeting and knew of no other business on the
day in question."
Various other court cases against WOZA women will
be held this month
and WOZA invites anybody who wishes to show solidarity
with the women to
attend the proceedings. Nine women arrested on 19 June
during a peaceful
demonstration, will be charged under the Miscellaneous
Offences Act on 4th
October. They will be in one of the courtrooms on the
second floor at the
Bulawayo Magistrates' Court. As well as these two trials
taking place this
week, 107 and 153 WOZA members will also be in remand
court on 5th and 10th
in Harare and Bulawayo respectively. Details of the
allegations and names of
those on trial are available on request. For more
information please contact
Jenni Williams on 263 91 300 456 or 263 91 898
110 or email
wozazimbabwe@yahoo.com
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Zimbabweans have been enraged by their president's support for
police
violence.
By Sheila Pasi in Harare (AR No.78,
02-Oct-06)
Ordinary Zimbabweans are angry with President Robert Mugabe
for what many
are describing as unforgivable and irresponsible statements he
has been
making following the bone-breaking assault last month by his
security forces
on national trades union chief Wellington Chibebe and other
top union
leaders.
Addressing a rented crowd bussed to Harare
Airport, on his recent return
from addressing the United Nations General
Assembly in New York, Mugabe said
he would continue to sanction the beating
of labour leaders who disregard
police orders.
Rejecting widespread
international condemnation of the assaults on the
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade
Unions, ZCTU, leadership, Mugabe said his
government has no apologies to
make. "There are some [foreign countries and
human rights groups] who think
we are not independent, who think they can
organise demonstrations and look
for pot-bellied people like Chibebe to
demonstrate.
"We cannot have a
revolt to the system. Some are crying 'We were beaten up'.
Yes, you were
beaten up. When the police say move, move. If you don't move,
you are
inviting police to use force."
Chibebe, the ZCTU's secretary-general,
remains in hospital with critical
injuries sustained when police attacked
him and top colleagues as they began
a small street protest in mid-September
against low wages and the
government's failure to provide anti-retroviral
drugs for Zimbabweans who
are dying from AIDS at a rate of more than 3,000 a
week.
Chibebe suffered head injuries, a broken arm and hand, and
extensive
bruising in the street assault and subsequently in a police cell.
Doctors
report that they may have to remove one of the trade union chief's
eyes. His
colleagues also sustained broken limbs and other
injuries.
Stopping in Sudan on his way back home from New York, Mugabe
dismissed the
trade unionists' demands as "nonsensical" and "stupid", and
warned the
United States, Britain and other critics to "keep you noses out
of
Zimbabwe". "Leave our politics to the people of Zimbabwe. You, Mr Bush,
you,
Mr Blair, should keep out of Zimbabwe. They [protesters] will be beaten
up,
so there is no apology for that," he said.
In interviews with
IWPR, Zimbabweans said they were deeply affronted by the
President's
remarks.
This anger was particularly strong among elderly women who said
42-year-old
Chibebe could have been one of their
sons.
Seventy-seven-year-old Mbuya Mary banged the ground furiously with
her
walking stick as she said, "I can't believe that Mugabe can be so
heartless
about a person who is lying in hospital and could die from the
beatings."
Mbuya Mary, one of about a dozen other elderly women at a
funeral wake in
the working-class district of Kambuzuma, to the west of
Harare, the national
capital, said, "What makes me so angry is that the
demonstration was not
political but was about the poverty we are all
wallowing in. We are
suffering and when our children want to ask for better
working conditions
and better wages, they get beaten up. It was not just an
ordinary beating;
to me, it looks like they wanted to kill him
[Chibebe].
"Imagine a person representing the views of many people being
beaten up like
that in an independent Zimbabwe. My friends, I grew up in the
colonial era.
The nationalists were not subjected to such beatings during
that time.
Mugabe himself was a political prisoner. Wasn't he allowed to
study while in
prison? (Mugabe obtained three University of London degrees
while imprisoned
in the former Rhodesia). Was he beaten up like what they
did Chibebe?"
Sixty nine-year-old Amai va Rose was equally angry with
Mugabe, whom she had
supported for more than three decades. "Chibebe could
have been my son," she
said. "How could they beat up someone like that? We
haven't seen this
happening before. What they did to Chibebe is what in
Shona we call 'kafira
pamberi' (meaning injuries so bad they can result in
death)."
David Chigada, a Kambuzuma schoolteacher, said the assault on
Chibebe
conjured up memories of South African nationalist and Black
Consciousness
leader Steve Biko's death in police custody in 1977 during the
apartheid
era. "The difference with Chibebe's case, and what makes it more
painful,"
said Chigada, "is that in Zimbabwe it was black-on-black violence
in an
independent country which claims to be a better democracy than
President
George Bush's United States of America.
"There are other
similarities between the beatings of Biko and Chibebe. The
security agents
in both cases were brutal, severe and savage."
Amai Grace, 65, said she
believed that Mugabe certainly has apologies to
make "not to the United
States or Britain, but to we Zimbabweans.
"Only if you could be in my
head, you could see how angry I am. And if you
could get into my heart, you
will see how sad and mournful I am for Chibebe
and his family and Zimbabwe.
To have a leader defend violence perpetrated by
people who should be
protecting the public is unbelievable and sad. Mugabe's
total disregard for
his people's suffering is shocking. He doesn't respect
his people. That
makes him dangerous."
Another elderly woman suggested that perhaps only a
demonstration of
grandmothers and mothers to protest against the assaults
and demand an
apology from Mugabe would work in the present political
climate. "We will
see what he will do to mothers and grandmothers of
Zimbabwe," she said.
"Will he tell them to beat us up as well? Seriously,
this is the time that
women's organisations should act. If Mugabe gets away
with this, we will
have created a monster."
Elsewhere, Joram Nyathi,
editor of the weekly Zimbabwe Independent, one of
the few remaining
non-government newspapers, wrote in his regular column,
"Who will protect us
from a vengeful police force so emboldened by a culture
of impunity that
they can break people's skulls in broad daylight without
any fear of
prosecution?
"We live under very trying times as a population terrorised
by what in a
democracy should be a people's police force, not a colonial
institution."
Nyathi said the attack on the trade union leaders was no
aberration. He said
that on the same day some 70 other ordinary workers
supporting the trade
union movement had also been picked up and severely
assaulted. However, they
got no publicity.
"Police brutality has
become the norm, especially among ordinary civilians
who take the beatings
for granted," wrote Nyathi. "When a president extols
the virtues of police
savagery it fills me with a sense of dread.
Zimbabweans must be afraid, very
afraid indeed. Mugabe has just opened for
us the gates of Hell."
One
prominent critic, however, said the trade unionists' attempted protest
had
been "just plain dumb". Professor George Ayittey, writing in the
Zimbabwe
Independent, said, "ZCTU leaders don't seem to have learned
anything at all
from their own experience or that of other African
countries. Just because
protest marches worked against the white
colonialists, who were 'frightened'
by a huge mass of black people, does not
mean they will work against black
neo-colonialists."
Professor Ayittey, the Ghanaian president of the
Washington-based Free
Africa Foundation, said the ZCTU leaders appeared not
to have heard about
security forces in other African countries arresting
leaders of protest
marches, beating up demonstrators and even opening fire
on them.
"Have they not followed events in Ethiopia where 45 were killed
when police
opened fire on demonstrators protesting fraudulent elections?"
wrote
Ayittey. "The bottom line is this: if opposition groups in Zimbabwe
cannot
shut down the civil service or think imaginatively of effective ways
of
instituting political change, they will be politely ignored by the
international community and the people of Zimbabwe will continue to suffer.
Protest marches, appeals and petitions don't work against a regime that is
blind and stone-deaf."
Sheila Pasi is the pseudonym of an IWPR
journalist in Zimbabwe.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Man once presented as a near-saint now at the centre of a web of
state
violence and alleged corruption.
By Trevor Grundy in London (AR
No.78, 02-Oct-06)
Fifty years ago he was a deeply Christian young man and
black nationalist
working round-the-clock on a multi-racial farm that was
famous in liberation
circles, and beyond, and hated by Rhodesia's white
minority government.
He became a living legend among liberal Christians
by helping to make Cold
Comfort Farm into a first class agricultural
training ground and a
psychological liberation centre that was an early
staging post on the long
march from colonial oppression in Rhodesia to
majority rule in Zimbabwe.
"A man of high integrity and Christian
character," said Guy Clutton-Brock,
the Welsh-born champion of black freedom
who became Zimbabwe's first and
only official white hero when President
Robert Mugabe buried his ashes at
Harare's Heroes Acre in 1996.
"He
never feared to speak his mind and he was always a sensitive leader, a
man
of vision, an optimist with a profound belief in his fellow man
regardless
of race, colour, creed."
The man of whom Clutton-Brock spoke so highly
now holds high rank in the
government of President Mugabe. As minister of
national security and head of
the secret police, Didymus Mutasa is one of
the most feared and ruthless men
in Zimbabwe, second in power only to
Mugabe.
Mutasa, praised by the devout Clutton-Brock as a Christian of
integrity,
sensitivity, vision and love for all his fellow men, achieved
international
notoriety in 2002 when he was asked how he felt about three
serious problems
confronting Zimbabwe.
The first question concerned
the fear in that year that severe drought might
result in the death of half
of Zimbabwe's 12 million population, many of
them supporters of the then
confident opposition Movement for Democratic
Change, MDC. The second
concerned the thousands of Zimbabweans who die each
week from AIDS. And the
third related to the mass exodus from the country of
skilled blacks and
whites.
Mutasa replied, "We would be better off with only six million
people, with
our own [ruling party] people who supported the liberation
struggle. We
don't want all these extra people."
Thus spoke the man
who had once been a byword as the kind face of the new
society to come and
who was described by Diana Mitchell in her book
Nationalist Leaders in
Zimbabwe as "an essentially gentle and infinitely
reasonable
man".
British overseas development minister at the time, Clare Short,
said, "To
welcome the death of nearly half the people in a country is
unforgivable. No
one should forgive him [Mutasa]." And leading Danish
academic development
expert Amanda Hammar commented, "Mutasa's infamously
stated desire to
discard surplus populations has resonance with historic
precedents such as
National Socialism in Germany and its translation into
routinised
governmental annihilation."
It is little wonder that many
Zimbabweans who ask how the man their history
presented as a near-saint is
now at the centre of a web of state violence
and alleged corruption. Who,
they wonder, is the real Didymus Noel Edwin
Mutasa?
Back in the 1960s
and 1970s, Mutasa was the close friend of the Anglican lay
missionary
Clutton-Brock, hated with his wife Molly by the white farming
community as
"communist troublemakers". They worked together at Cold Comfort
Farm, a
multi-racial cooperative where farming skills were learned and
political
ideas discussed endlessly.
A young black intellectual, Robert Mugabe,
also became a close friend of
Clutton-Brock, who was expelled from Rhodesia
in 1971 for his criticism of
the country's de facto racial apartheid.
Hundreds of Africans, including
Mutasa, wept at the airport as he
left.
Supporters said of Clutton-Brock that his only offence was to turn
"yes men
slaves" into independent human beings. When he died, Mugabe
attended the
memorial service at the Church of St Martin's in the Field in
London and was
given Clutton-Brock's ashes to be taken to Harare, Zimbabwe's
capital. With
Mutasa by his side, Mugabe supervised the burial of the ashes
at the North
Korean-built Heroes Acre. Clutton-Brock is the only white
person to have
been buried there.
Mutasa was born in the eastern
Zimbabwe town of Rusape in July 1935, the
sixth child of a devout Christian
couple.
In her 1982 book, Diana Mitchell, now living in Britain, said
Mutasa
suffered as a young man because he was appalled by the unfairness of
Rhodesia's land ownership system. "He attempted to evade the worst effects
of the Land Apportionment Act and African landlessness by starting up the
Cold Comfort Farm Society with the patronage of white landowners," she
wrote.
Mitchell, a campaigner for Rhodesia's short-lived multiracial
Centre Party,
said Mutasa was a beacon of hope half a century ago when he,
Clutton-Brock,
Michael and Eileen Haddon, white liberals who donated their
land for the
creation of Cold Comfort Farm, and two renowned blacks
nationalists, James
Chikerema and George Nyandoro, worked together to
improve African farming
methods and then form the African National Congress.
The ANC campaigned for
an extension of the franchise, but was banned within
two years of its birth.
Mitchell said that in those days Mutasa was "a
man of gentle demeanor,
distinguished and fine-chiselled in appearance" who
sank his own money into
Cold Comfort Farm after receiving a "golden
handshake" when he quit his job
as a civil servant.
While working in
partnership with Clutton-Brock to teach black people modern
agricultural
techniques on small-scale farm units around Cold Comfort Farm,
Mutasa also
became deeply involved with the World Council of Churches. His
cleverness at
fund-raising was recognised by various of the emerging
post-ANC nationalist
parties.
In 1970, as racial tension grew and as the war against white
rule began, the
Cold Comfort Farm Society was disbanded by the white
government. Mutasa was
arrested and held for two years in solitary
confinement at Chinoyi Prison
before being transferred to Salisbury Remand
Prison where he rubbed
shoulders with Mugabe and the fiery nationalist Edgar
Tekere.
After his release, Mutasa studied in the central England city of
Birmingham
on a British Council scholarship and in 1976 joined Mugabe and
Tekere as a
member of the ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) liberation
forces based
in Mozambique.
He returned home shortly before
Zimbabwe's independence in 1980 to organise
the February elections, which
saw Mugabe come to power and Mutasa's
appointment as speaker in the new
black-dominated parliament.
Though most ZANU ideologues will no longer
admit it, Zionism greatly
influenced the nationalist movement during the
1960s and 1970s and Israel
provided the exiled ZANU with some
funding.
Between 1980 and 1990, Mutasa maintained his reputation as a
fair man, full
of charm and integrity as parliamentary speaker.
A
major transformation was apparent by 2000 when Mugabe, furious that white
commercial farmers had funded the opposition MDC, incited his supporters to
invade farms and drive off their owners, triggering a catastrophic and
continuing economic collapse.
In that same year, Mutasa was appointed
anti-corruption minister. He stayed
in the job for three years watching and
doing little as a wave of alleged
corruption swept higher and higher through
government and the top reaches of
the judiciary, defence forces, police and
civil service.
Once profitable commercial farms confiscated from whites
were among the main
prizes taken by the new elite. Mutasa appropriated one
of these farms in
eastern Zimbabwe for himself and independent newspapers
documented
extensively how he and other ministers looted other farms of
billions of
Zimbabwe dollars worth of expensive equipment for resale or use
on their own
properties.
In May 2004, this once "kind and gentle" man
repeatedly kicked opposition MP
Roy Bennett as Bennett lay on the floor of
parliament after being involved
in a scuffle with Attorney General Patrick
Chinamasa. Bennett, who was loved
by his black constituents in the Eastern
Highlands town of Chimanimani in
much the same way as Clutton-Brock had been
loved half a century earlier,
had seen workers on his coffee estate killed
and raped by soldiers and by
supporters of Mugabe's ruling party.
He
therefore became incensed when Chinamasa called his forebears "thieves
and
murderers" and rushed across the floor of the house and knocked the
Attorney
General to the ground. The ZANU-dominated parliament sentenced
Bennett to 15
months imprisonment in the notorious Chikurubi Prison, where
he lost 27
kilogrammes in weight before his eventual release.
Mutasa went unpunished
for his counter-assault and less than a year later he
became the second most
powerful man in the land when Mugabe appointed him
minister of national
security and land affairs, positions that made him
chief of the much feared
Central Intelligence Organisation, CIO, and gave
him responsibility for the
country's controversial, chaotic and violent land
reform
programme.
In May 2005, in one of the earliest exercises of his new
powers, Mutasa
launched Operation Murambatsvina [Operation Drive Out the
Filth], in which
soldiers, police and government militias used extreme
violence to destroy
the homes of hundreds of thousands of poor people on the
outer edges of the
country's towns and cities. Mutasa presented
Murambatsvina as a regeneration
and renewal scheme to "clean up" urban
areas. But most people who lost their
homes were opposition supporters, and
nearly a year-and-a-half later
virtually nothing has been done to provide
new homes for the estimated
700,000 to a million people who watched their
houses being bulldozed,
sledgehammered and set ablaze.
Anna
Tibaijuka, the special envoy of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi
Annan,
lambasted Mutasa's operation as inhuman and a breach of national and
international human rights laws.
Emboldened by the "success" of
Murambatsvina, Mutasa, with the power of the
much-feared and ubiquitous CIO
as his weapon, began threatening to
"physically eliminate" government
opponents. To this end, he was accused by
the remaining independent press in
Zimbabwe of slapping a police officer in
his home constituency of Rusape and
of assaulting a man who dared to
challenge his nomination as the ZANU
candidate for Rusape.
When Walter Marwizi, a reporter for the independent
weekly Zimbabwe
Standard, investigated alleged corruption in the national
security
minister's home province, Manicaland, Mutasa threatened the
journalist, "I
will deal with you ruthlessly if you don't tell me your
source [of the
corruption story]. Make no mistake. I am sending my
operatives and they will
do a clean job."
Quietly, in recent weeks,
Mutasa has relaunched Operation Murambatsvina,
with yet more humble homes
being torn down in urban suburbs by powerful
organs of state.
Mutasa,
who had once worked with Clutton-Brock, the Haddons and other devout
white
liberal Christians, to carve out an island of tolerance in a sea of
bigotry
and small-mindedness, regularly describes the handful of remaining
white
farmers as "filth" and recently vowed, "I will rid the country of
remaining
whites."
But when venting his ire he does not discriminate racially.
Nobel Peace
Prize winner and South African national icon, Anglican
Archbishop Desmond
Tutu, accused the Zimbabwe government of "making a
mockery of African
democracy." The CIO chief spat back, "Tutu is a puppet of
the West, a vassal
of imperialism and a lost soul."
Mutasa dismissed
as another lost soul the Zimbabwean most widely tipped to
succeed Tutu as a
Nobel Peace Prize winner - Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic
Archbishop of
Bulawayo, who has said the greatest service Mugabe can perform
for his
country is to let "the Lord take him away".
When Archbishop Ncube
protested against the government for neglecting
families who were starving
to death in and around Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's
second city, Mutasa replied, "A
heathen man who lies through his teeth .The
cleric has a psychological
disease and needs to have his head examined
because he is a
liar."
Mutasa's most recent exploit was to launch his CIO and other
security
services against the country's trade union leaders as they prepared
to
demonstrate on the streets in September this year for living wages and
proper anti-retroviral drug support for the millions of Zimbabweans facing
death from AIDS. National trades union chief Wellington Chibebe and his top
lieutenants sustained broken limbs when they were assaulted, without being
charged, in a notorious police station and torture centre on the outskirts
of Harare.
Terence Ranger, Emeritus Professor of History at Oxford, a
close friend of
both Clutton-Brock and Mutasa in Rhodesia in the 1950s and
1960s, recently
appeared as an expert witness in a British appeal court
hearing by an exiled
Zimbabwean seeking not to be returned forcibly to his
country. Professor
Ranger, arguing against deportation, described Mutasa as
"a ruthless and
acquisitive politician who is notorious for using violence
against political
opponents".
Which all leaves open the question
whether the spirit of Mutasa's old friend
Guy Clutton-Brock rests easy any
longer in Heroes Acre.
Author and broadcaster Trevor Grundy lived and
worked as a foreign
correspondent in Zimbabwe for Time magazine, Deutsche
Welle Radio and The
Scotsman from 1976 to 1996.
Washington Times
By Arnold
Beichman
October 3, 2006
"We envision an Africa where peace is
known by all, where freedom is shared
by all, where opportunity is expanding
for all, and most importantly, where
responsibility is embraced by all.
Because we stand together with Africa,
America today is helping more people
across the continent to build lives of
hope and dignity than ever before in
history."
These are the words of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
speaking
Sept. 27 at a meeting of the Africa Society. What she envisions
will never
come to pass in Africa while dictators like the 82-year-old
Robert Mugabe
hold the reins of power in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe is a
country in southern Africa, in area slightly larger than
Montana. Its people
are brutalized by one of the worst dictatorships in
Africa, if not in the
world. Mr. Mugabe has been in power more than a
quarter-century, thanks to
rigged elections. In other words, there is no
rule of law in
Zimbabwe.
Because it is a small country, Zimbabwe falls below the
international
community's radar screen. And because it is small, it receives
little
attention in the media and in international forums even though it
suffers an
annual inflation rate of 1,200 percent, which spells misery for
its
population of 12.7 million. Next year will be even worse, says the
International Monetary Fund, predicting an inflation rate of 4,000 percent.
Equally telling, Canada's Fraser Institute has created an Economic Freedom
of the World Index, which measures how a country's policies support property
rights, competition and personal choice. The lowest on the list of 130
countries (Hong Kong, Singapore and Chile head the list) is -- right --
Zimbabwe.
The Human Rights Forum in Zimbabwe has bravely spoken up:
"Torture in
Zimbabwe is both widespread and systemic, demanding both a
national and
international response." Mr. Mugabe's response to these
accusations has been
to accuse the U.S. and Britain of plotting to overthrow
him.
As is inevitable in a dictatorship that has produced an economic
disaster, public protest is not tolerated. According to on-the-scene
reports, police and soldiers battered trade unionists during a protest march
Sept. 13 in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The brutal treatment got worse
when the marchers were herded into a Harare police station.
"We were
told to get into cells in pairs," said Wellington Chibebe,
secretary-general
of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Trade Unions (CZTU),
speaking from a
hospital bed, thanks to beatings by Mr. Mugabe's police.
"They started
beating us up all over the body with batons and a knobkerrie.
[A short club
with one knobbed end.]"
Mr. Mugabe has set up his own web page --
http://mugabe.netfirms.com/main.htm
-- with this opening statement deriding
democratic elections:
"Here I
am on Election Day (yawn). I mean, what's the point? Just to
keep up
pretenses for the foreign observers?
I think not. The next election is
going to be ONLY Zanu-PF. No MDC, no
foreigners and no boring
rallys.[sic]"
The Mugabe regime has paid no attention to widespread
international
protests -- the British Trades Union Congress, the
International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the Congress of South
African Unions,
among others. And why should Mr. Mugabe care what anybody
says? As in the
fable of the timorous mice, who's going to bell the
imperious cat?
Arnold Beichman, a research fellow at Stanford
University's Hoover
Institution, is a columnist for The Washington
Times.
SW Radio Africa Transcript
Broadcast on 3rd
October 2006
Violet: We continue to discuss the unfolding crisis
in Zimbabwe and joining
me on this discussion is Dr. George Ayittey, a
Ghanaian academic who teaches
at the American University in Washington DC
and Brian Kagoro an expert on
human rights in Southern Africa. Brian Kagoro
is the founding member of the
National Constitutional Assembly and a former
Chairperson of the Crisis in
Zimbabwe Coalition. Dr Ayittey is a prominent
Ghanaian economist and
President of the Free Africa Foundation in DC. The
Foundation criticises
corruption, oppression and mismanagement in African
governments and
advocates for democratic reform. Dr Ayittey has written
several books on
Africa and recently wrote an article headlined 'Protests
Marches against
Mugabe a Waste of Time'. Welcome on the programme Dr
Ayittey and Brian
Kagoro.
George: Thank you for having
me
Brian: Thank you Violet
Violet: Now, I'll
start with Dr. Ayittey. You said in your commentary that
it is extremely
difficult to criticise opposition forces in Zimbabwe because
of the
atrocious brutalities unleashed on them by the Mugabe regime. And,
you also
said criticism may sound like condoning the brutalities or rubbing
salt into
their wounds but that the opposition in Zimbabwe needs a good
talking to and
you described the aborted ZCTU protest march as 'dumb'. Now,
some may say
pretty harsh words. Why do you say this?
George: Well, you know,
the reason why I'm saying this is because first of
all let me reiterate my
position that it is exceedingly difficult to
criticise the opposition
leaders. I have met many of them and I know there
hearts are in the right
people, there is suffering in Zimbabwe as far as the
people are concerned,
there are shortages of essential commodities,
inflation has hit 1200%, we
all know about all this. But, at the same time
you know we have to fight
smart. Fight smart in the sense that you know,
those who seek to bring
freedom in to the people of Zimbabwe need not
compound the problem. Look,
we have been here before and the reason why
some people might say they are
harsh words is because we have to look at the
experiences of other African
countries.
I personally was involved in the struggle against the
Rawlings regime. It
took us something like twenty years before we could
remove Rawlings and I
could see that the same mistakes were being repeated
in Zimbabwe and I
thought that I had an obligation to help my brothers and
sisters in Zimbabwe
so that, you know, they don't repeat the same mistakes
that we made, not
just in Ghana, but also in other African countries. So it
is, I mean,
sometimes some of the mistakes that we make, if I may use the
words, are
somewhat unimaginative and also somewhat very foolish and when we
make
foolish mistakes like that it compounds the suffering and the misery of
Zimbabwean people. Now, let me put it this way, I have no political agenda
in Zimbabwe. All that I care about is the welfare of the Zimbabwean people;
it is the people that I would stress. Now, quite often you know we can
blame, you know, of course, I wouldn't waste my time in blaming Mugabe. We
all know that he's the cause; he's the major problem in Zimbabwe but
criticising Mugabe alone is not going to bring about change to the lives of
the people in Zimbabwe.
Violet: But what are the mistakes
exactly that are being repeated?
George: Well, the mistakes that
are being repeated, and this is what I
wrote in the article, the mistakes
that are being repeated is the choice of
poor tactics OK? Look, in the
opposition; opposition leaders need to have
vision. It's just not enough to
criticise you know Mugabe. It be hoofs the
opposition leaders to lay down
their vision, their plan for the future, just
not criticising Mugabe. We
all know Mugabe is the problem, so tell the
Zimbabwean people why do you
want to lead a country, OK, but you're not
hearing this. And, also, the
other mistake is the choice of poor tactics.
Poor tactics in the sense that,
look, we all know that Mugabe's is a
brutally vicious regime, so you have to
fight that regime intelligently.
You don't fight the regime on the turf on
which it is strongest. You have
to fight the regime on the turf on which it
is weakest. But you ask the
opposition leaders in Zimbabwe, what are the
weaknesses of Mugabe and you
will draw a blank. This is what I mean that we
have to fight intelligently.
We don't want to lose lives, we don't want our
opposition leaders to be
thrown in jail or killed and that's why I thought
that I had the
responsibility to speak out.
Violet. Now,
Brian Kagoro do you agree with Dr. Ayittey's observations
where he says the
ZCTU tactics and the opposition tactics, have been, to put
it mildly, have
made stupid mistakes. And, my question is can the ZCTU ask
for more than
the human issues, haven't their plans and objectives been
consistent with
the mandate that comes from their members?
Brian: Let me just
start off with reference to a historical fact which is
looking at the
repertoire of actions that have been employed to date
starting with the 1997
general strike against the three taxes: the War
Veterans Levy, the increase
on Service Tax and the result in 1998 when the
three taxes were scrapped.
And then you go to the strategy of stay-aways
that was employed in 1998/9
and by the end of 1999 you could tell it had
become exhausted, so that by
2000 there was very little success. We came to
1999 and we employed mass
rallies, and other forms; peace marches, prayer
vigils and stuff like that
around the draft Constitution, and we won that
debate around the draft
Constitution. And, clearly, when the ruling party
responded with violence,
the opposition was not prepared for the strategy of
violence. This was not
violence being meted out against marchers and
demonstrators on streets, this
was violence being visited against women in
their homes, against peasants in
their fields; it was violence being visited
against workers and factories,
and so, it was a violence that demanded a
defence
strategy.
The response by the oppositional forces was to then put
a strategy of
containment. Deal with the consequences of cadres that had
been injured,
those who were being wantonly prosecuted arrested and
tortured. So, the
weakness of the regime at the time was its international
image based on the
human rights factor, but, clearly, the
internationalisation of the advocacy
for change in Zimbabwe created a fatal
weakness. The fatal weakness that it
created was it fed into the myth that
Mugabe propounded; that the opposition
was not rooted, that the opposition
spends all its time lobbying in Western
capitals and elsewhere outside the
country other than building a
constituency base internally. And,
internally, when you are talking about
building a constituency base in a
highly polarised society, it would have
been a constituency base that would
be seen as Mugabe characterised it,
sponsored by the British trying to
unseat and effect regime change.
Clearly, the articulation of the
crisis internally as a bilateral crisis
between Britain and Zimbabwe,
between foreign agents trying to impose land
reform and internal proxies;
meaning the opposition; pandering to the
interests of the West,
problematised the thinking and even the articulation
of the oppositional
agenda because it resonated with a lot of the potential
solidarity centres
within Southern Africa and the broader Africa. So, the
first disadvantage
that the Zimbabwean opposition had which the South
African Anti-Apartheid
movement, for example, did not have, which many other
liberationary
processes did not have, is that it suffered from
mis-characterisation,
mis-perception. So, it spent a lot of time trying to
clear its name and
clear its main image within the region and clearly,
internally the
government was intensifying the strategy of violence. So,
the weakness of
the opposition is not just a failure of coherence or an
absence or lack of
coherence.
There is a much more fundamental issue to it, that
simply the whittling down
by sheer violence, and also displacement of some
of the critical thinkers
within that opposition. So can the ZCTU articulate
and ask for anything
more than its constituents? Perhaps not at this stage,
particularly because
the ZCTU went through a difficult time in the last two
years. When
significant portions of its membership or constituent units
were pulling
out, envisaging a disadvantage in being seen as aligned to the
Movement for
Democratic Change, which is what ZCTU was. So, there's an
attempt to redeem
and consolidate internally and the only way to do it would
be to base it on
what would be seen as a purely labour agenda. So, there's
an internal
politics that's being responded to, but, there would be merit in
criticising
the main opposition political party for its weaknesses which
perhaps are
largely self-authored. It has been victim of violence, yes, but
some of the
split that we see in the Movement for Democratic Change are
largely
self-authored. They arise out of selfishness; they also arise out of
sheer
lack of national perspective.
Violet: Now, what if we
go back to the issue of the ZCTU, and this is a
question for Dr. Ayittey.
What should they actually do now, because you say
the ZCTU appears to be
acting on it's own without collaborating or
consulting with other opposition
groups like the political parties, the
Churches and the student
organisation, but, is that really the objective of
the workers body, can
they really go beyond the mandate of their Unions?
George: Well,
I wasn't particularly addressing the Unions per se and I
appreciate that the
opposition in Zimbabwe has gone through a lot since the
1990's in terms of
the strikes that they have staged successfully and so
forth. But look, I
don't want this to be an academic debate. People are
suffering, ok. For the
past 10 years there hasn't been any change. The
situation has deteriorated
and it's going down, but at some point we have to
stop and take stock, OK.
Look, let me put this thing bluntly. The
international community is not
going to help, we have seen this, in fact, in
Ghana, we didn't get any help
from the international community. We did this
on our own. We should also
note the tactics of the regime. The regime will
always seek to polarise the
country, the society. Its main tactic is divide
and conquer and it will
play one group against another. We should know all
this, OK. We should also
recognise that first of all, if you want to defeat
the regime, you have to
choose the turf on which to defeat the regime. Are
we going to defeat.?
What are we telling the Zimbabwean people? That they
should go to the polls
and vote or what? Even when it goes to the polls,
the opposition is
divided. The MDC for example, some factions say 'don't go
and vote', some
factions say 'yes let's go and vote'. What is all this?
This just adds to
the confusion. People don't where they stand because the
opposition is not
giving them clear direction. Right now we don't know
where we are going;
are we going to go for it? You know, Mugabe says you
know right now there
are calls that the elections should be postponed to
give more time for
Mugabe to retire before 2010 or something, you know, what's
going on? You
see when people are confused and they don't get any
alternative clear
direction or plan from the opposition that's when they
become vote
less.
Violet: But still, I'll go back to my earlier question,
what would you
suggest or how did you do it in Ghana, because in Zimbabwe
they have tried
mass action which failed, they have tried elections; they
failed. So what
are your suggestions?
George: My
suggestions is first of all we have to bank all the opposition
forces, the
leaders of the opposition forces, and I'm talking about the
Trades Unions;
leaders of the Trades Unions, leaders of the political
parties, leaders of
the Church groups for example , leaders of the Student
groups, Teachers, if
you can get, you know, as many leaders in Civil Society
as possible so that
you can forge a strategy and the basis of the strategy
should be what the
people should - what needs to be done. Look, we need
regime change not
reform. This regime, the Mugabe regime, is not going to
implement any real
reform. The Mugabe regime is not going to hand over
power on a silver
platter to the opposition leaders; this is what needs to
be understood. You
have to plan your strategy from there and this is one of
the reasons I'm
saying this. One faction is not going to accomplish this.
Once you get all
these groups together and you have to agree, we'll form an
alliance. All
these leaders of the opposition forces need to speak with one
voice, OK?
And they have to - I'm not going to prescribe, I can only tell
you what
worked in Ghana. Maybe they might be able to learn lessons from
it. But,
they need to speak with one voice, and if they don't speak with
one voice
their people are going to get confused.
Violet: Now, in terms of
examples from Ghana what can you give us?
George: Now, we had
exactly the same. The Rawlings regime polarised the
society, and as a
matter of fact, took over a lot, in fact, intimidated the
journalists. I
can cite examples. In 1992 there was a newspaper called
'The Free Press'
when it wrote articles critical of the Rawlings regime,
security agents went
and dumped human waste in its offices. This also
happened to 'The Ghanaian
Chronicle' in 1994. It also happened to 'The
Crusading Guide' in 2000.
And, people were brutalised. The Rawlings regime
had a militia called
'Macho Men'; exactly the same type as the Green Bombers
that Mugabe has;
they go around, they intimidate and beat up people. We had
all this in
Ghana and yet, you see, we managed. What we managed to do was
to push for
the establishment of independent FM stations, the government
couldn't
control that. And the independent FM stations people could call in
and they
could say whatever they had on their minds; nobody could touch
them. And,
these independent FM stations, for example, played a very
critical role in
Ghana's independent elections, the 2000 elections. As well
as that, we
didn't wait for the international community to send election
observers to
Ghana. The independent FM stations sent their own reporters to
every
polling station, the moment they saw they any shenanigans they
reported that
right on the air and people rushed to that particular polling
station and
resolved the problem right there and then! So, it made it
impossible for
the Rawlings regime to steal the elections!
Now, I'm not saying
that the same model should be applied in Zimbabwe, but,
the point which I'm
trying to say is when the regime takes control over the
media; in Ghana,
Rawlings had control over the election machinery, he had
control over the
judges, for example. You see, when the regime has control
it's very, very
difficult so what we have to do is the leaders of the
opposition groups have
to think very hard and see how they can wrest the
control of certain key
institutions out of the grip of the tyrant in power.
And, when I talk about
key institutions you know, I'm talking about the
judiciary for example, the
media for example, the security forces for
example. In other words we have
to think imaginatively.
Mugabe is not going to co-operate with
his own downfall, he's going to put
every obstacle in the way of the
opposition. We had the same problem in
Ghana for a long, long time, the
opposition leaders were asleep; when
Rawlings hit them they wake up, they
cry foul - ohhh ye ye ye - and then
they go back to sleep. And, I said
look, if you are going to fight a boxing
match, you learn about the tactics
of your opponent. If your opponent has a
devastating left hook for example,
you practice with your left hook for
example, the moment he raises his right
arm you hit him with your left hook.
In other words, you have to strategise
and take counter measures; anticipate
what your enemy is going to unleash on
you and you take counter measures
appropriately. You don't just sit there
and wait to be hit and then cry
foul.
Violet: Now Brian,
it's said that mass action is a situational and that the
kind of national
politics in Zimbabwe is different than in other African
countries and that
this is one of the reasons why many Africans have not
understood the
situation in Zimbabwe. Do you agree with this?
Brian: Ya,
Zimbabwe is a residual settler state. Residual settler state and
in a sense
I think I would urge those that are critiquing the Zimbabwean
opposition to
do so mindful of the role that powerful regional interlocutors
play, that
the general regional mood, political mood, plays. So I'm not
even talking
about the international, I'm talking about the region. And,
the deployment
of a Pan African anti imperial rhetoric by Mugabe and its
resonance for the
majority in South Africa and elsewhere that have seen
their liberation not
deliver. That's one. But, if you look at the
Zimbabwean crisis itself, and
say what is it? It is first and foremost a
structural crisis. The economic
development model that we have kept since
1964 is unlikely to deliver for an
expanded client base. Once liberation
came, there were greater mouths to
feed, a greater degree of the population
required jobs, a greater degree of
the population required social services.
So, the failure in
integration, the failure in transition to take cognisance
of the limitations
of the, if we want to put it crudely, of the existing
capitalist structure
to deal with that particular point. And, also, the
pretentious Marxist
rhetoric that was adopted. Number two, Zimbabwe has
suffered from an
enduring constitutional crisis since 1890 and 1979 actually
mortified the
race relations and the inequity and if you think about these
things and you
ask yourself what should a democratic opposition do, and, I've
already
narrated how, throughout the 90's we were demanding a new
constitution as a
basis of articulating or re-constituting Zimbabwean
society and it's
governance. And, that agenda is still on the table, it's
still being
articulated. It's a common position between the opposition
political
parties, civil society and even the Churches. Number Three, how
do you get
to a democratic resolution, the issue of voting or not
voting?
Clearly, if you read some of the stuff that we wrote and
the advice we gave
is, if you chose not to go to elections, not to
participate in elections
because they are rigged anyway before hand, the
reality is, you must answer
the second question to the masses; what next?
Because, if their commitment
as Dr. Ayittey said, is the dislodgement of the
incumbent, then you must
proffer an alternative and I do not see an
alternative beyond this mass
action of dislodging the dictatorship. How
else would you realistically
capture the imaginations of the masses? And,
on another note, if you say to
people 'go and participate in elections', and
you build a pattern or a habit
of being beaten in pre-rigged elections
anyway, of course, you accentuate
apathy.
And, perhaps Dr.
Ayittey may not know this, but on the 5th of June, the
Crisis Coalition
convened all oppositional players in what was called 'The
Dialogue on
Transition' Conference, where we discussed the economy, we
discussed
agriculture and several other things, and there is a report which
I'm sure
the Crisis Coalition would happily share on these issues. So,
there's been
reflection on a lot of these issues beyond just the
constitutional question,
beyond even the mere removal of the Mugabe regime.
There has been discussion
on what would be the appropriate model and
policies; how would we re-engage
the international community, how would we
re-engage and re-invigorate the
agricultural sector, how would we deal with
the urban question, the factory
question, and, how would we deal with
several other
questions.
But, let me touch a little, Violet, on the issue of
the Broad Alliance,
because it is something that we worked on over several
years; trying to
bring all oppositional forces together. And, let me tell
you the point of
collapse; it is exactly on the prescription that Dr.
Ayittey makes.
Firstly, when you are talking, Civil Society would be
interested in knowing
what a prospective government would put on the table
by way of policy. They
were also interested in the ideological frame from
which the opposition was
proceeding and whether this was consistent with
their aspirations of a much
more inclusive social and political
order.
Political parties on the other hand were saying 'let's
resolve these things
in stages; let's resolve the governance issue first.
Remove the
dictatorship and then negotiate the space around the economic
model; don't
put the cart before the horse.' So, of course the collapse was
Civil
Society did not want to be led or hoodwinked, because we have previous
-
Mugabe had come in through a coalition government, the Unity government of
1987 had also been backed by Civil Society and other progressive forces in
the belief that what surfaced as a much more united front would result in
development. And so, this repeated sense of betrayal by political elites is
what has created the scepticism and why the Broad Alliance didn't take off
because, it was not quibbling over personal ambition, but it was a much more
fundamental question what is the ideological marker, what is the premise
around which we are aligning. Is it simply the removal of the Dictator, is
it consensus around a post Mugabe socio economic and political development
agenda, is it just the new constitution. So of course, those issues are
much more difficult to resolve in real politic.
And, on
independent radio stations, I'm glad that Dr. Ayittey is on Short
Wave Radio
Africa. This was part of the response of progressive forces or
oppositional
forces in the country when we realised that all radio stations
were
monopolised by ZANU PF. There's also Radio Voice of the People which
is
operating out of Zimbabwe and there's several other attempts by Civic and
other players to have alternative media. Clearly the stringent licensing
requirements and the viciousness with which the Mugabe regime has responded
even to these attempts explains why Short Wave Radio Africa is broadcasting
out of London, when it was originally based in Harare. It explains why
Capital Radio's assets were seized and even the Court Orders that were
issued could not help. It explains a whole array of reasons why the
responses, and there have been responses and thinking through these issues,
have not helped.
But, the last point, Violet is, I'm not
sure, I am familiar with the
brutality of Sony Abacha, the brutality of
Rawlings, and I am aware that the
Ghanaians spent more than ten years trying
to remove their dictator. The
significant efforts that we are describing
now to remove Mugabe from office
only began in 2000, or, you could say in
1999, because '97/'98 the agenda
was clearly simply to reform or review the
Constitution. 1999 is when the
decision was made to remove the dictator.
It's only been six years is it
not unduly harsh?
George:
Brian, I am not trying to dispute the fact that you have done
something, or
achieved something. Look, one more year for Mugabe in power
is just too
long for the Zimbabwean people, they have suffered enough,
alright. Yes,
there have been attempts in the past, the Crisis Coalition has
done
wonderfully well, but their objectives have not been achieved. What I'm
trying to relate to you was our experience; we had exactly the same
problems, so how we managed to overcome them. And so, it's something that
I'm
trying to share with you and the opposition leaders and to help. The
objective is to help end the suffering of the Zimbabwean people. So, an
academic debate really wouldn't help us. Look, we had exactly the same
thing, each time you bring together a coalition of opposition forces there
will always be arguments over who should replace the tyrant in power and
what sort of alternative economic model. All these things are not
particularly relevant at the moment.
The main thing, what we did in
Ghana, we formed a small group of people who
were above politics, and that
group was called the Alliance for Change and
it only had eight members. The
members of the Alliance for Change all swore
that they had no political
ambitions; they were not interested in the
Presidency. I was one of those
and in fact, I publicly stated that I am not
interested in the Presidency of
Ghana. And, we also swore that nobody was
going to use that Alliance for
Change to advance political interests of any
political party or any
individual. All this had to be stated so that the
people would believe in
the credibility of these members. Quite often in
country after country in
Africa what we see is that people who try to bring
these people together,
they themselves have their own particular political
ambition and it casts a
great suspicion. That's part of the reasons why I'm
saying that lessons
need to be learnt.
In the case of Zimbabwe, for example, where you have
now we don't know where
we are going and we can argue whether we should have
an alternative
political system or whether we should have a constitutional
reform; people
are somewhat confused. But, listen, the model that was
instituted in
post-colonial Africa, I agree with you, that there might be
regional
differences as far as the settler economy is concerned in
Zimbabwe. But, if
you look across Africa, most of the post-colonial leaders
adopted one same
political model, and that one same political model was
simply a
concentration of both economic and political power in the hands of
the
ruling regime. And, that power was utilised.
In other words,
what you have in Zimbabwe is some kind of a political
apartheid system. If
you don't belong to ZANU PF you are totally excluded.
Ask the blacks who
were in South Africa. This model, the one party state
model was the same one
that you had in Tanzania, the same one even in my own
country Ghana, Kwame
Nkrumah established a one party socialist state; it's
the same model. So,
even though we are in different geographical regions
you can see that it's
the same model. The real source of the problem is the
monopolisation of
power, it could be by one political party, it could be one
race like a white
in South Africa or even the Hutu's in Rwanda, for example,
it's the same.
So, yes, there are regional differences but the disease is
still the
same.
Violet: And we will pause here for this week but don't miss
the discussion
with Dr. Ayittey and Brian Kagoro next Tuesday where they
will continue to
raise pertinent and contentious
issues.
Comments and feedback can be emailed to violet@swradioafrica.com
From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 2 October
Harare - Zimbabwe's external debt fell by 2,3% after the
Southern African
country paid a total of $169-million to the International
Monetary Fund
(IMF) last year, the central bank said on Monday. "Zimbabwe's
total debt
disbursed and outstanding [including arrears] is estimated to
have declined
from $4 071-million in 2004 to $3 978-million in December
2005, representing
a decrease of 2,3%," the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)
said in its annual
report. "This mainly reflects resource payments on public
sector medium- to
long-term debt, particularly to the multilateral financial
institutions."
The government paid back a total of $176,3-million in 2005,
of which 95,6%
($169-million) reduced the external payments arrears to the
IMF to
$144-million as at December 2005, the central bank said. The
remaining
$7-million were paid to other external creditors, but the bank did
not
specify their identities. Zimbabwe's economy has contracted by more than
a
third over the past seven years with independent analysts pegging
unemployment at 80%, although Harare insists that only 9% of workers are
without jobs. The country is also battling inflation which reached a record
1 204% in August.
New Zimbabwe
By
Staff Reporter
Last updated: 10/04/2006 01:06:43
A ZIMBABWEAN
parliamentary committee Tuesday resolved to recall Industry and
International Trade Minister Obert Mpofu after discovering that there were
"inconsistencies" in his evidence on corruption at state-owned steel
manufacturer, Ziscosteel.
Mpofu initially told a committee of MPs in
parliament that a report compiled
by the National Economic Conduct
Inspectorate "contains names of my
colleagues in the ministry, MPs and
employees at Zisco."
Called a second time before the Parliamentary
Committee on Foreign Affairs
and International Trade last Wednesday, Mpofu
backtracked on his earlier
claims, now suggesting that companies connected
to the said ministers and
MPs were the ones behind the stripping of
Ziscosteel's assets.
Briefing journalists shortly after the meeting
Tuesday, committee chairman
and Chipinge South MP Enoch Porusingazi said:
"We have studied evidence
given by the minister on two previous occasions
and we have seen that there
are inconsistencies.
"We will be
recalling him next week for the third time where he would be
asked to choose
the one (position) which he wants to adopt."
Porusingazi declined further
comment.
Committee members who spoke to New Zimbabwe.com said Mpofu would
also be
tackled on his claims that he had reached an agreement with
Anti-Corruption
Minister Paul Mangwana to stall all prosecutions until
Ziscosteel finds a
buyer.
The MPs say when they consulted Mangwana,
he said he never agreed that with
Mpofu.
Mpofu and Mangwana have been
under pressure after Zanu PF's warring factions
closed ranks to thwart
publication of a report implicating senior ministers
in the looting of
Ziscosteel assets.
The National Economic Conduct Inspectorate, run by an
elite team of Central
Intelligence Organisation officers, has been recalling
the report from a
selected few officials who had copies to prevent a leak,
sources said.
And State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa, to whom the
National Economic
Conduct Inspectorate reports, twisted the knife on Mpofu
when he said: "If
Mpofu knows some corrupt ministers as he claims, why
doesn't he come out and
say ministers X or Y looted Zisco?
"I am the
minister of State Security and what I am saying is that I haven't
seen the
report."
Asked if that meant that Mpofu had misled parliament about the
existence of
the report, Mutasa replied: "Yes, I am saying it doesn't
exist."
Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono said in July the central bank
had saved
Ziscosteel from closure by providing an emergency $2 trillion (old
currency)
lifeline.
He said production at the company had plunged by
88% from 14 200 to 1 600
metric tonnes in February. The firm is saddled with
foreign debts in excess
of US$126 million. Ziscosteel is one in a chain of
major parastatals which
are technically insolvent.
Indian company
Global Steel Holdings recently withdrew from a US$400 million
contract at
Ziscosteel after it was angered by operational chaos at the
local firm and
shortages of critical inputs such as coking coal, spare
parts, fuel, as well
as plant and equipment.
From SW Radio Africa, 2 October
By Tichaona Sibanda
It has emerged that Zanu PF
strongman Emmerson Mnangagwa is the key man
being blamed for the wide
ranging corrupt activities that have brought
steel-making Ziscosteel to its
knees. A report on Ziscosteel by the National
Economic Conduct Inspectorate,
which is controlled by the Ministry of
Finance and state security agents,
has been gathering dust and has not been
released. It apparently blames a
number of high ranking government and party
officials for the looting at the
company. A Central Intelligence
Organisation operative based in KweKwe told
our Harare correspondent Simon
Muchemwa that the 'schemers' in Zanu PF
realised it was going to be a
monumental blunder to let the report out into
the open. The Zimbabwe
Independent reported in its latest edition that
government was now
scrambling to cover-up the wholesale looting of
state-owned assets at
Ziscosteel, amid fears the scandal could rock the
political establishment to
its foundations. As a former legislator for
KweKwe, Mnangagwa was well
placed to direct operations of Ziscosteel and
being the former head of the
party's finances the former security minister
has always been in a position
to 'spill all when cornered'.
The
weekly Zimbabwe Independent added that the stampede to suppress the
report -
to protect looters instead of public assets - involved hurried
manoeuvres to
withdraw the document from those who have it and tightening
security
measures to ensure those likely to raise the alarm did not lay
their hands
on it. 'Authorities are trying to bury the detailed report which
exposes one
of the biggest cases of graft by ministers and MPs,' a source
said. 'This
report is likely to suffer the fate of similar previous
investigations which
were buried to protect corrupt government officials.'
Ministers who had
spoken out publicly about the high-profile corruption are
said to have been
intimidated by the powerful culprits into retracting their
remarks, even
those recorded in parliament. Industry and International Trade
minister
Obert Mpofu, who was widely quoted last week as saying 'influential
people'
had pillaged Ziscosteel through 'underhand dealings that have left
the
company bleeding', was at pains on Wednesday to withdraw his statements.
Mpofu's new line now appears to be that ministers and MPs did not loot Zisco
but their companies benefited from contracts, while the state firm made huge
losses. Observers say this is clearly an attempt to sweep the issue under
the carpet via semantics. Anti-Corruption Minister Paul Mangwana, who last
week threatened that those implicated would be arrested soon, has also gone
quiet and Mugabe has said nothing on the issue.
Mail and Guardian
Chris Otton | Victoria Falls, Zambia
02 October 2006 06:00
For years it was regarded as a
backwater and the poor relation
to its southern neighbour, but the
spiralling crisis in Zimbabwe has led to
a massive upsurge in Zambia's
tourism industry.
A total of 650 000 foreign visitors
travelled to Zambia last
year, a rise of nearly half a million on the year
2000, bringing in vital
revenue to one of the poorest countries in
Africa.
The figures, however, contrast sharply with those for
President
Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, for so long a favourite haunt of Western
tourists,
but which recorded a 49% fall in visitor numbers last
year.
The reversal of fortunes is most starkly illustrated at
the
Victoria Falls, one of the world's great tourist attractions that
straddles
the common border.
In the nearby Zambian town
of Livingstone, named after the
British explorer David Livingstone who was
the first Westerner to set eyes
on the falls, new hotels and a first
shopping mall have sprung up in recent
months, while work to extend the
runway at the local airport is currently
ongoing.
While
the once sleepy Livingstone is bustling with activity,
cut-price deals on
the Zimbabwean side have failed to fill the vacancies in
hotels such as The
Royal, a traditional byword for luxury.
According to Gill
Staden, editor of The Livingstonian newsletter
and former deputy head of the
local tourism association, Zimbabwean
businessmen are now sniffing
investment opportunities across the border.
While Zambia has
single digit annual inflation, the level is
over 1 200% across the border
and unemployment is at about 80%.
"There's been so much
development in the last 10 years,
incredible," said
Staden.
"We have a lot of business people who have come to
invest on
this side. We were always looked at as poor cousins. They never
came over
here, thought we were awful people and felt sorry for
us."
The extension to the runway should enable direct flights
from
Europe and possibly even from the United States.
Up
to four flights a day are already operating from
Johannesburg, including by
British Airways who are widely seen as testing
the market for flights from
their base in London.
British tourist Bob Jones, on holiday
with his wife Joan from
Croydon in south London, had flown from South Africa
with a tour operator.
"Zambia appeared to be safer and we
hear a lot in the papers
about Zimbabwe and Mugabe, so we thought this
country is trying itself on
its own feet, we thought we could come and
help," said Jones as he took in
the majestic sunrise on the Zambian side of
the falls.
Another tourist from New York, who would only give
his name as
Andy after his son spent a lengthy stint in Zimbabwe recently,
also cited
the deteriorating situation under Mugabe for his decision to
stick to
Zambia.
"I read the newspapers and, if they are
to be believed, I would
not want to take whatever incremental risk in a
place where people are being
brutally oppressed and corruption appears to be
deeply rooted and benefiting
very, very few," he said.
While Zambians are by and large delighted to attract
big-spending Western
tourists, the rapid expansion is putting strains on the
environment.
The columns of The Livingstonian are stuffed
with planning
applications to change homes into guesthouses alongside heated
exchanges
over plans for a hotel and golf course complex within the national
park,
which adjoins the falls.
Developers Legacy have
been widely ridiculed for offering to
build a footpath in the middle of the
golf course to accommodate complaints
about building on the natural habitat
for the area's elephants.
A foundation stone has already been
laid despite objections from
the Wildlife and Environmental Conservation
Society of Zambia, which has
called the project an "outrageous desecration"
of an area that has been
declared a world heritage site by the United
Nations' cultural body, Unesco.
"Livingstone is booming but
we have to be careful that we do not
over-develop and destroy the
environment so people do not come here
anymore," said Staden. "We do not
want it to become like Niagara Falls." --
AFP
By Lance Guma
03 October 2006
The president of the
Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) Matthew
Takaona has disclosed that an
independent press council will be in place
before December to regulate the
media. Responding to an attack by the Media
and Information Commission (MIC)
that ZUJ was involved in anti-government
propaganda, Takaona says they are
surprised by the accusations in light of
their efforts at engaging
government. He says the MIC chief, Tafataona
Mahoso, made the allegations on
the eve of a two-day lobbying conference
organised by the media alliance of
Zimbabwe to push Members of Parliament
who are on the communications
portfolio to support the repealing of
repressive media laws.
Takaona says it's accepted worldwide that self-regulation of the media
is
the best option and that even the ministry of information had given its
endorsement of the idea to ZUJ. He says their meetings with the acting
Information Minister Paul Mangwana have been productive and that they expect
to have the council in place by December. Its not clear though whether any
of the groups involved in negotiating with government can secure a repeal of
the repressive media laws in place.
The state appointed media
commission called on government to probe the
ZUJ leadership. Mahoso revealed
in his weekly Sunday Mail article that they
have already written to the
Ministry of Information making the request.
Mahoso accused Nunurai Jena, a
provincial secretary for ZUJ in Mashonaland
West, of stringing for VOA 's
Studio 7 radio station. Mahoso went on to say
they have already asked the
police to investigate the matter. He also says
ZUJ wrote to the Netherlands
embassy and UNESCO requesting funds to advance
an anti-Zimbabwe
agenda.
Mahoso has been on the warpath attacking all the major
media
organisations in the country. At the end of September he attacked MISA
for
allegedly portraying itself as 'regime change activists' to the donor
community. He also accused the media alliance of Zimbabwe comprising the
Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ), MISA and ZUJ, of holding
clandestine meetings under the guise of working for media law reform.
Observers say Mahoso is worried a self-regulatory media council will make
the MIC redundant and that this was the motivation behind his
attacks.
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
Media Institute of Southern Africa (Windhoek)
PRESS
RELEASE
October 2, 2006
Posted to the web October 3,
2006
Zimbabwe's state-controlled Media and Information Commission
(MIC) says the
government should probe the leadership of the Zimbabwe Union
of Journalists
(ZUJ) for what it described as its "anti-government
propaganda" activities.
In an article published in the
government-controlled "Sunday Mail" on 1
October 2006, MIC Executive
Chairman Dr Tafataona Mahoso said the Commission
had written to the Ministry
of Information and Publicity requesting the
government probe the ZUJ for
joining the anti-Zimbabwe lobby.
Mahoso also singled out Nunurai Jena,
ZUJ's provincial secretary in
Mashonaland West Province, on allegations of
stringing for the Voice of
America's Studio 7 in Washington. The MIC said it
had since written to the
police to investigate Jena.
The MIC claimed
that it had documents in its possession in which the ZUJ
wrote to the Royal
Netherlands Embassy and UNESCO requesting funds allegedly
to advance its
anti-Zimbabwe lobby activities.
BACKGROUND: On 28 September, the MIC
attacked MISA-Zimbabwe for portraying
itself to the donor community as
"regime change activists" who will repeal
the country's restrictive media
laws. In a statement published in "The
Herald" on 29 September, the MIC
attacked MISA-Zimbabwe, together with the
ZUJ and the Media Monitoring
Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ), accusing the three
organisations of convening
clandestine meetings under the guise of media law
reform (see IFEX alert of
29 September 2006). The three organisations
constitute the Media Alliance of
Zimbabwe (MAZ).
Mahoso's statement was issued on the eve of a two-day
parliamentary lobbying
conference organised by MAZ to push for the repeal of
the Access to
Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), Public
Order and Security
Act (POSA) and Broadcasting Services Act (BSA), among
other repressive media
laws.
He claimed that the purpose of the
meeting, which opened in Harare on 29
September, was to create "a stilted
platform from which the activists may
engage in an orgy of anti-Zimbabwe
diatribe intended to coincide with other
recently staged events."
The
meeting proceeded as scheduled and was attended by members of the
Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Communications, chaired
by Leo Mugabe, who was also in attendance.
By referring to "recently
staged events," Mahoso was apparently alluding to
the 13 September
nationwide marches organised by the Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions
(ZCTU), which resulted in the brutal police assault of the ZCTU
leaders and
the hospitalisation of Secretary-General Wellington Chibhebhe.
Christian Today
Churches in Zimbabwe have called for a national debate as an
opposition MP
expressed his dismay at the extent to which the country's
current economic,
political and humanitarian crisis had "fallen off Europe's
radar screen".
by Maria Mackay
Posted: Tuesday, October 3, 2006, 12:08
(BST)
Font Scale:A A A
Churches in Zimbabwe have called for a national
debate in a bid to end the
worst economic and political crisis to hit the
country since it gained
independence 26 years ago.
"Our nation is
desperately in need of a physician, and that physician is
none other than us
the people of Zimbabwe," Roman Catholic, Protestant and
Evangelical leaders
stated in a document entitled The Zimbabwe We Want:
Towards A National
Vision For Zimbabwe.
The call comes as the country's Agriculture
Minister, Joseph Made, admitted
that the country did not harvest enough food
last season and that an
army-led programme to produce food had
failed.
David Coltart, a white member of Zimbabwe's divided Movement for
Democratic
Change (MDC) party, has also listed a high AIDS death rate, a
running
inflation of 1,200 per cent and widespread malnutrition as just some
of the
challenges rocking the country.
"We estimate that 3,500 people
a week are dying due to the convergence of
these three factors. Average life
expectancy of a woman has dropped to just
34 years. The cemeteries are
filled to overflowing," he told Reuters.
"I am appalled how much Zimbabwe
has fallen off Europe's radar screen," he
said. "I understand the
preoccupations with Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur,
but our people are dying
like flies and no one seems to notice."
The church leaders admitted in
the statement that they had failed to speak
out on behalf of the people
during the crisis, which they say has been
worsening over the past 11 years,
reports Ecumenical News International.
"As churches, we confess we have
failed the nation because we have not been
able to speak with one voice. We
have often not been the salt and the light
that the Gospel calls us to be.
We, therefore, confess our failure and ask
for God's
forgiveness."
The group said: "We will therefore never tire or give up
until our goal is
achieved. We are not interested in forming a political
party as some are
suggesting."
The official Herald newspaper also
reported that the country has imported
30.4 tonnes of wheat at an estimated
cost of US$10.6m to ease the bread
shortage in the crisis-hit country.
The Herald (Harare)
October
3, 2006
Posted to the web October 3, 2006
Harare
BORDER Timbers
Limited has lost 3 000 hectares of timber due to arson fires
this year
causing the company to lose a significant amount of revenue
including
foreign exchange.
The company said this had resulted in reduced
harvesting activities in its
estates while operations at its Mutare factory
had been adversely affected.
In a statement accompanying the company's
results of the year ended June 30
2006, Border Timbers Limited said it lost
9 700 hectares last year and will
not be able to sustain the timber
losses.
Arson fires in the company's plantations have become an annual
occurrence.
Last year Border Timbers Limited lost another 3 000 hectares
of timber in
the Eastern Highlands estates. The year before, it lost 706
hectares to 75
fires.
Border Timbers Limited realised a profit after
taxation of $79,4 million, up
from $10,5 million during the same period last
year.
Group turnover increased by 797 percent to $1 482,5 billion from
last year's
$165,3 million, operational profit went up by 636 percent to
$384,4 million
from $52,2 million last year.
Fixed assets for the
period under review were kept at minimum levels while
the renewal programme
that was initiated two years ago is yet to be
completed.
Looking
ahead, Border Timbers Limited says it will use every opportunity to
reduce
borrowings and the costs involved in financing the group.
However, export
demands for the group's products remained strong and efforts
would be made
to diversify products produced to take advantage of demand.
October 3,
2006
By ANDnetwork .com
Johannesburg (AND) A
delegation from the United Kingdom (UK), Hope
Centre, Harrogate, and headed
by Pastor Vernon Roosevelt of the New Life in
Christ Ministries will this
week tour Zimbabwe to identify areas that need
humanitarian assistance from
the Hope Centre organization.
The two UK based ministers, who
worship in the same ministry (names
supplied) will accompany Pastor Vernon
to Zimbabwe on Friday this week. "I
am going to minister the word and see
how best we can be of assistance to
the Zimbabwean community in Zimbabwe,"
said Pastor Roosevelt.
He said that he would be working with some
pastors from his New Life
in Christ Ministry upon arrival in Zimbabwe before
identifying the areas
that most needed help. They were also working on the
Zimbabwean mission in
conjunction with the Zimbabwe Pastors' Forum that runs
the Hope Centre in
Johannesburg, South Africa.
"We came to
realize that there is a dire need for aid in Zimbabwe. Our
mission is not
political in any way and will assist our beneficiaries within
the guidelines
set by the government of Zimbabwe. But the major thrust of
my visit is to
go and minister the word while at the same time assessing the
way of life of
the Zimbabweans," added Pastor Roosevelt.
He said that on his
arrival in Harare the delegation, with the
assistance of the pastors in
Harare, would then decide on which other towns
and cities to visit. Pastor
Roosevelt is the Director and Co-Founder of
the Hope Centre in Harrogate,
UK, and the non-governmental organization
currently helps thousands of
Zimbabwean and other refugees in South Africa.
The visit to Zimbabwe by such
a powerful foreign delegation comes at a time
another delegation from South
Africa was deported at Harare International
Airport upon
arrival.
This occured some two weeks ago. Another UK delegation was
denied
entry into Zimbabwe by the Immigration and Customs Department and the
spying
Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) at Harare International
Airport last
week..
IOL
October 03 2006 at
04:36PM
The Zimbabwean government has admitted to suffering a food
shortage,
Zim Online reported on Tuesday.
It quoted Agriculture
Minister Joseph Made as saying the country did
not harvest enough food last
season, and that an army-led programme to
produce food had
failed.
"The country has already imported maize to cater for the
deficit,"
Made said.
"We will continue to import food if the
need arises."
The government has until now insisted that Zimbabwe
harvested around
1,8 million tons of the staple maize from the 2005/06
season, enough to meet
national consumption.
Maize-meal, the
main food for more than 90 percent of the 12 million
Zimbabweans, is in
short supply in some parts of the country especially in
southern
Matabeleland.
Made said Operation Maguta, a scheme
under which soldiers were moved
onto former white farms to produce crops
such as maize and wheat, failed
because of lack of resources.
"Last agricultural season the project failed because we did not give
enough
resources to it," the minister said. - Sapa
By Tichaona Sibanda
03
October 2006
Bus fares in Harare went up on Monday by between 50
and 100 percent
while fuel remains in short supply. The increases are likely
to exacerbate
problems facing commuters and the transport industry. Recently
the
government said it would identify at least a hundred garages that would
get
fuel from the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe. But a dire shortage of
foreign exchange caused by the regime's policies has resulted in Noczim
failing to fulfil its promise.
Our correspondent in Harare
Simon Muchemwa said bus operators were now
charging up to Z$400 for a
journey that was Z$200 or Z$300 last week.
'It varies with the
distance but most notably those travelling to
Norton or Marondera are now
forking out close to Z$700 for a single journey,'
Muchemwa
said.
The instability of Zimbabwe's exchange rate has made things
worse,
forcing transport costs to rise severely in the country the last two
years.
Most people in the capital are forced to walk to work.
The rising bus fares and bread prices are the latest symptom of the
economic
crisis facing Zimbabwe. Many bakeries as well have hiked the price
of bread
by more than 50 percent, increasing the misery of ordinary
consumers.
Sources told our correspondent that government seems
to have backed
down on the new price increases for bread when a police
crackdown on
bakeries last week resulted in a severe shortage of the
commodity.
Bakeries had argued that other inputs used to produce a
loaf of bread,
such as sugar and yeast, had shot up. They said selling bread
at government's
stupulated price of Z$200 a loaf is unviable.
Muchemwa said since the Bakeries were given the green light to sell a
loaf
for Z$295 'almost every shelf in the shops and supermarkets in Harare
is
full of bread.'
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
New Zimbabwe
By Lebo
Nkatazo
Last updated: 10/04/2006 01:06:51
ZIMBABWE'S biggest state-run
newspaper was forced to make an embarassing
apology Tuesday over a headline
story claiming the commander of the Air
Force of Zimbabwe had urged voters
to back President Robert Mugabe's ruling
Zanu PF party in a
by-election.
The paper now admits that was untrue.
The Herald
claimed in its Monday edition that Air Marshall Perence Shiri
"urged people
to vote for Zanu PF, a tried and tested party."
The paper said the Air
Force chief was speaking during a prize giving
ceremony at Kwenda Mission in
Hwedza. Hwedza is in Chikomba district where a
parliamentary by-election
will be held on October 7, pitting candidates from
the ruling Zanu PF party
and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC).
The paper
splashed on the story under the headline, 'Vote wisely, Shiri
urges
electorate'.
The army chief was quoted as saying: "Let's vote wisely and
vote the party
that we know stands for development and has its people at
heart. A party
that has a history, an open agenda for all to see and above
all a party that
has
been tried and tested."
The Herald's reporter
added the reference to Zanu PF in a narrative.
Sources at the paper say a
furious Shiri phoned the editors on Monday and
demanded a retraction,
insisting that he never mentioned a political party
during his
speech.
The Herald now agrees.
In its retraction Tuesday, the
paper said Shiri had merely urged people to
vote wisely without identifying
a political party.
The paper said: "It has come to our attention that Air
Marshall Shiri did
not
make mention of any party but merely urged people
to vote wisely and
vote for a party that stood for development and had people
at its heart, a
party that had a history and was tried and
tested."
Zimbabwe's defence forces have struggled to remain neutral in
Zimbabwe's
political power game.
In 2002, Zimbabwe's Army General
Vitalis Zvinavashe, now retired, sent
chills down the spines of President
Mugabe's opponents when he said the army
would not "accept, support or
salute" any president who did not fight in the
country's war of
independence, an apparent reference to opposition leader
Morgan
Tsvangirai.
Zvinavashe also threatened foreign journalists and private
newspapers saying
they caused "insecurity, uncertainty, confusion and
tarnished the
credibility of the country's security arms."
Voice of America (VOA)
Date: 02 Oct 2006
By Patience Rusere
Washington, 02
October 2006 - Labor and Social Welfare Minister Nicholas
Goche has
authorized humanitarian aid organizations to widen their
distribution of
food aid beyond the most vulnerable populations, sources in
Zimbabwe's
humanitarian aid community said.
An official at the Harare office of the
U.S.-based organization World Vision
said that a letter from Goche told such
organizations that they could extend
assistance so long as they did not
create what Goche described as "a culture
of dependency."
Web news
site ZimOnline said provincial governors also received Goche's
September 20
letter, which instructed them to allow the unimpeded
distribution of food
aid.
But when contacted, Bulawayo Governor Cain Mathema said he had
received no
such letter. He said a bumper harvest is expected, so food aid
will not be
needed.
Spokesman Fambai Ngirande of the National
Association of Non-Governmental
Organizations told reporter Patience Rusere
of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe
that the access aid organizations can obtain
to needy populations varies by
region.
Somalinet
Tue. October 03, 2006 08:58
am.
Zainab Osman
(SomaliNet) Zimbabwe's economy is slowly
heading for distruction due to the
continous smuggling problem that has been
affecting the country for a long
time. Smuggling of goods in and out of the
country has led to the loss of
millions of dollars in revenue every year and
has cost the people jobs.
The most affected goods are; textiles, gold,
cigarettes and fuel. With the
gold, it's reported that rich barons use their
financial strength to bribe
law enforcements so that they are able to easily
transport the good out of
the country. The country's gold output and
earnings have greatly reduced due
to smuggling.
Along the
Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, hundreds of second-hand clothes that
are worth
millions of dollars are smuggled into the country. At home, the
clothes are
sold cheaply at the markets where there is a ready market
available.
Vehicles are also among the goods that are smuggled, in
this case the cars
are provided with faked registrations that help evade the
payment of duty
tax. Shortage of fuel in the country has led to smuggling of
diesel and
petrol.
Those who have been found guilty of the act were
arrested and later released
after payment of a fine. However, this has not
stopped them from continuing
with their business.
Among those
involved, it was discovered that law enforcement agents in the
police and
the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, are highly involved in this crime
syndicate.
The government has discharged those found guilty from duty.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
As a boy he was a cattle herder in Lesotho - today he steers the world
court.
By Katy Glassborow in The Hague (AR No.78,
02-Oct-06)
Phakiso Mochochoko, from the small African country of Lesotho,
is an
unassuming man with a gentle demeanour, yet exudes calm authority. The
man,
who as a boy was a cattle herder among Lesotho's towering, snow-capped
mountains, has been a key figure in shaping the launch of the four-year-old
International Criminal Court, ICC.
Mochochoko is the senior legal
advisor in the ICC's Registry, where he heads
a team advising the court on
its operation and administration, as well as
how to forge diplomatic
relationships with countries where prosecutors are
attempting to carry out
investigations.
Until four years ago, he worked at the United Nations in
New York where he
had been posted as senior legal advisor to the Lesotho
delegation. He was a
member of the African group at the UN that called for
the early
establishment of a permanent independent criminal court. He
chaired
preparatory meetings for the 1998 Statute of Rome that set the ICC
in motion
and whose 76 pages of tight legal jargon are the court's rulebook.
He was
one of the first five people sent to The Hague to set in motion the
ICC
which now employs 600 people, including eight judges from every
continent.
Mochochoko had a more modest start in life, growing up in a
village in the
Lesotho district of Quthing, where he spent half the day
looking after
cattle and the rest of the day in school.
He was
sponsored through his education by the charity Save the Children at a
time
when most of the boys from his village would leave school at fifteen to
work
in the gold mines of South Africa - the main source of employment for
the
people of deeply impoverished Lesotho. But the Mochochoko family had
loftier
ambitions for their children and explored every route possible
towards
higher education.
The future senior lawyer at the ICC was brought up by
his grandmother, as is
the custom for first-born sons in Lesotho. And while
his peers headed to the
mines, he did well in high school and studied law at
the University of
Lesotho where his fees were paid by the Christian Council
of Lesotho.
After graduating, he was articled as a clerk in private
practice in Lesotho
and qualified as a lawyer. Mark Webber, Mochochoko's
partner in the
practice, told IWPR that from the beginning he possessed a
quiet, firm, but
completely unthreatening authority. "If he says something
contrary to what
the hearer wants to be hearing, he does not come over as
aggressive, and is
therefore persuasive," said Webber.
THE STREET LAW
PROJECT
But Mochochoko's passion was human rights law, and he became
involved in the
Street Law project designed to demystify the law for young
people. He staged
mock trials to teach them how the criminal justice system
works.
He also worked with the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research
Project,
producing reports on how traditional laws affect women across the
continent.
Moving to South Africa in 1992, he collaborated with the
University of
Durban in the Natal Community Law Centre, teaching law to
community groups.
The times were troubled before South Africa's first
all-race elections in
1994, with fighting flaring regularly between the
African National Congress
and the Inkatha Freedom Party. Thousands of people
died in turf battles,
with Durban and its KwaZulu-Natal Province hinterland
in the eye of the
storm. "We tried to settle land disputes, as fighting was
triggered by the
smallest things," said Mochochoko. "Even a goat grazing on
the wrong side of
the road could spark violence." He worked in the human
rights field with
Lawyers for Human Rights in Durban, training people in
villages so that
pensioners could secure sound legal advice.
LESOTHO
MISSION
In 1994, he was approached by the Lesotho government to work for
its mission
to the UN in New York, advising the government about
international legal
issues.
"Everything is done through negotiation
at the UN, so I attended meetings
and spoke on behalf of Lesotho in
debates," he said. Through these forums,
he tried to galvanise southern
African countries to work together. "As a
small country, it is thought that
your word is not worth much. But the
southern African countries worked
together as a group, and agreed on
positions we would take so that we
carried much more weight."
Richard Dicker, international justice director
of Human Rights Watch in New
York, told IWPR that Mochochoko was one of
three legal advisors from
southern African states who played central roles
in the negotiation process
to establish the ICC. "He is a good listener and
a thoughtful person, and
this is clear to his interlocutors," said Dicker.
"They sense that they are
dealing with an intelligent person who respects
different points of view."
ROME CONFERENCE
In 1998, Mochochoko was
one of the vice chairmen of the Rome Conference,
mediating negotiations over
the statute governing the workings of the ICC,
which was finally adopted and
is known as the Rome Statute.
Back in New York, Mochochoko chaired
further working groups given the task
of ironing out practicalities for the
ICC when it finally began work. "I was
the facilitator tasked with finding
consensus, which is hard with people
from different countries, motivations
and attitudes who all wanted to shape
the court in different ways," he
said.
Dicker said that Mochochoko's greatest skill was in focusing on the
merits
of argument, not on threats or implied threats, "There may be a
connection
with coming from a small state in terms of relying on logic and
the power of
the argument. He combined these qualities with intelligence and
straightforwardness and honesty."
CALM AND UNFLAPPABLE
At this
time, China, Russia and the United States - all countries that have
refused
to ratify the Rome Statute - actively participated in negotiations
about the
ICC and contributed to the shaping of the statue. In his quiet
diplomatic
manner, Mochochoko said, "There were difficulties as some
countries tried to
put restrictions on how the court would operate."
While the US had
concerns about the statute, it nevertheless signed its
founding document.
But the Bush administration has since refused to ratify
it, a significant
setback for the fledging court. Washington went further,
threatening to
withhold trade and aid to a raft of countries unless they
agreed not to hand
over US nationals for trial at the ICC.
The Rome Statute finally came
into effect in July 2002. Mochochoko became
one of its first employees, one
of five individuals to arrive in The Hague
to work out the logistics of the
start-up operations. "We used to ask
ourselves what the court would be like
in three years' time, and really had
no idea. We had to think of where the
court would be located and how many
people would work there. We didn't
realise at the time that we were probably
making history," he
said.
From the early days, people started to send letters of complaint
alleging
crimes against humanity under the statute. "People were alleging
instances
of war crimes, but of course there was not a prosecutor here yet,
so we had
to classify them in accordance with regions and send out letters
of
acknowledgement," he said.
THE AFRICAN DYNAMIC
The first
four cases investigated by the court's first chief prosecutor,
Argentina's
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, have concerned African states - Uganda,
Sudan, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African
Republic.
"Phakiso's knowledge of the African dynamic has been a very useful
tool for
him," said his old law partner Webber. "Being 'of Africa' helps him
understand what makes people tick."
Dicker told IWPR about a
conference on the ICC in Senegal in 1998 for
African heads of state, for
which Mochochoko arrived exhausted from New York
as there had been delays to
his flights, "Although he was fighting to stay
awake, he attended the
conference because he realised the importance of
having African lawyers and
officials represented at senior levels, and that
African states were crucial
in bringing the ICC into effect."
Questionnaires at IWPR seminars in
Africa on the ICC demonstrate huge areas
of ignorance about international
justice even among professionals who should
have some kind of expertise.
Mochochoko is a regular guest at these
seminars, patiently and quietly
spelling out the possibilities and
limitations for Africa of the young
court.
He counsels countries where ICC investigations are in progress,
quietly
advising that court investigators must not be harassed or arrested,
and that
their documents are privileged and cannot be
seized.
DELICATE BALANCE
A frequent criticism of the ICC in Africa
is that it is biased towards
governments who have referred cases of gross
human rights abuses by its
citizens to The Hague. The critics allege that
those governments, on which
the ICC depends for support and protection, are
often equally guilty of war
crimes and crimes against humanity, and
sometimes of genocide.
"It is a delicate balance, as the chief prosecutor
needs to look at the
whole situation," said Mochochoko. "In the case of the
[rebel] Lord's
Resistance Army, the prosecutor is investigating the
situation in the north
of Uganda to ascertain which crimes were committed
and by whom. He will
always follow the evidence where it takes
him."
In October 2005, the top five leaders of the LRA became the first
people for
whom the fledgling ICC issued arrest warrants. LRA leader Joseph
Kony and
his top four aides are charged with 33 counts of war crimes and
crimes
against humanity. So far, Kony and his men remain at
large.
"We do not have a police force or army, and so we cannot force any
country
to cooperate. All we can do is report the government to the ICC's
Assembly
of States Parties and the UN Security Council, and it is up to them
to take
action," said Mochochoko.
He pointed out that even if the ICC
did have the muscle of its own police
force, it would still need government
cooperation before it could enter any
country.
State laxity in
implementing ICC arrest warrants once issued has been
propelled into the
international limelight following amnesty offers by
President Yoweri
Museveni's Ugandan government to the LRA - despite the fact
that Museveni
himself asked the ICC to act in the first place
Mochochoko said that the
negotiation of peace does not mean the LRA leaders
cannot later be arrested,
and that under the Rome Statute Uganda is still
obliged to arrest
them.
"Under the statute and international law there is no amnesty for these
international crimes. The warrants of arrest are still out there, and they
should be enforced," he said.
The court was not originally designed
to act in areas where war remains in
progress. In such circumstances, it is
difficult to protect investigators
and witnesses. But Mochochoko said the
ICC cannot afford to wait, "If we
did, then witnesses would be killed and we
would lose their evidence. The
conflict could go on for years, and our
mandate is to end impunity [for
gross war crimes and crimes against
humanity]."
One of the most important parts of Mochochoko's work is
securing protection
for witnesses who have been victims of or seen some of
the most horrific
crimes known to mankind. "The success of the court depends
on the evidence,
and if witnesses are afraid to come forward the ICC needs
to offer
protection," he said.
Mochochoko admits he is a bit
awestruck at having progressed from looking
after cattle in a small African
country, completely surrounded by South
Africa, to negotiating with the UN
on behalf of the ICC.
"I was sitting by a pool in Korea at a conference
and my friend, who also
grew up in southern Africa, asked me, 'Did you ever,
when you were looking
after cattle in the mountains, think that one day you
would be sitting by a
pool in Korea?'
"I said, 'Never in my dreams!'
I thought in those days I would look after
the cattle and then end up being
a mine worker."
Following his father's example, Mochochoko strongly
encourages his children
to study. He describes his wife Mary as his
"anchor", a constant support to
him throughout his life and career. The
couple have four children. A son and
daughter have continued their studies
in New York. Another daughter is
studying in the English city of Bristol,
and their youngest daughter is now
at school in The Hague. "Instead of
leaving a will, I am giving them an
education, which no-one can take away
from them," said the African lawyer
who helped form the ICC and get it
working.
Katy Glassborow is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.