Zim Independent
Dumisani
Muleya/ Constantine Chimakure
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe wants to
replace State Security minister
Didymus Mutasa, with whom he has fallen out
over his succession politics and
war veterans' issues, with his Rural
Housing minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, it
has been learnt.
The
move, sources said, would have a major political bearing on Mugabe's
increasingly acrimonious succession fight and the ongoing power struggle in
the ruling Zanu PF.
Mnangagwa, a former State Security minister
from 1980 to 1988 with an
intelligence and military background, and his Zanu
PF faction, are battling
retired army commander General Solomon Mujuru's
camp over Mugabe's throne.
The two factions have intensified
campaigns behind the scenes as the
party's extraordinary congress in
December fast approaches. The Mnangagwa
camp wants Mugabe to be endorsed as
the party's presidential candidate,
while the Mujuru group is pushing for
Mugabe to quit. War veterans led by
Jabulani Sibanda are fighting in
Mugabe's corner. They are currently on a
nationwide campaign to secure
Mugabe's endorsement, now a difficult lobby
for the president's
loyalists.
Sources said Mugabe was mulling the unexpected changes -
which might
be accompanied by a mini-cabinet reshuffle in a bid to deal with
the current
economic meltdown - before next year's joint presidential and
parliamentary
elections. They said Mugabe wants to shake up his inept
cabinet to tackle
the worsening economic crisis and fine-tune the party for
the elections.
Sources said Mugabe thinks his current cabinet is
one of the worst.
Critics say the cabinet, which approved disastrous
policies like the recent
price reduction blitz and proposed company
seizures, is plainly incompetent.
For a while, the sources said, Mugabe has
been wavering on reshuffling the
cabinet because he fears it might
destabilise the party and government ahead
of elections.
Mugabe
wants to remove Mutasa for allegedly consulting a witchdoctor
on how to
become president and bungling over war veterans' issues on farms.
The sources said Mugabe summoned Mutasa to his Zanu PF HQ offices in
Harare
on September 19 and grilled him for withdrawing offer letters for
farms from
war veterans.
A livid Mugabe, the sources said, told Mutasa to stop
forthwith from
revoking the letters. "Mutasa emerged from the meeting with
Mugabe looking
exhausted," one of the sources said. "The minister said his
job was now on
the line. He said he was now going to concentrate on party
instead of
government business."
Mutasa is the Zanu PF
secretary for administration.
The sources said Sibanda and his
deputy Joseph Chinotimba complained
to Mugabe that Mutasa was frustrating
them over land issues by revoking
offer letters for farms.
The
ex-combatants were reportedly bitter that after leading farm
invasions
beginning in 2000, very few of them had benefited. Ministers, top
party
officials and senior civil servants got most prime farms, houses and
equipment.
Mutasa has in the past been left in the political
wilderness by Mugabe
before being rehabilitated.
The sources
said Mugabe has told close advisors he wants Mnangagwa to
replace Mutasa
because he no longer has confidence in the minister.
Mnangagwa is back in
favour with Mugabe after a bitter fall-out amid
allegations by the president
that his former personal assistant wanted to
stage a palace coup in 2004.
The looming appointment of Mnangagwa, who was
Justice minister for 12 years,
to the powerful State Security ministry, is
now common cause within his
camp.
"I can confirm we have it on good authority the president
wants to
appoint him (Mnangagwa) to be the Minister of State Security," a
source
said. "We do know that this has been discussed and agreed on but what
we do
not know for sure is when the appointment will be made."
While the Mnangagwa camp is delighted by the move as it will give them
a
major boost in their campaign for power, the Mujuru faction are against it
on the grounds it is tantamount to rewarding impunity and returning the
country to the dark days when the intelligence service used to operate like
the "Gestapo".
Mnangagwa's critics and rivals accuse him of
turning the state
security agency, the Central Intelligence Organisation
(CIO), into an
instrument of terror, whose operations were characterised by
arbitrary
arrests, abductions, disappearances, detention and torture. They
say the
climate of ubiquitous terror which prevailed during the 1980s and
1990s
could return if Mnangagwa bounces back as Security
minister.
Mnangagwa's appointment is also being opposed by former
PF-Zapu
luminaries, particularly those who were in the military wing, Zipra
and the
National Security Organisation, the party's intelligence officers
agency,
which was headed by Dumiso Dabengwa.
PF-Zapu leaders,
commanders and intelligence were arrested when
Mnangagwa was State Security
minister. Although they were later acquitted by
the courts on treason
charges, they are known to be very bitter about it.
However,
Mnangagwa's camp says this is a self-serving political
argument by Mujuru's
faction, driven by their fear of the resurgence of
their main rival. They
say Mnangagwa would not run the portfolio as he did
in the past because the
situation has changed.
Zim Independent
Constantine Chimakure
SHARP policy differences have emerged
between President Robert Mugabe
and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor
Gideon Gono over government's
intended move to seize private companies and
stick to price controls.
Since Independence in 1980, Mugabe has
always been a disciple of the
command economy while Gono strongly believes
in a market economy.
Mugabe and Gono publicly differed on Monday on
policies the government
should pursue to extricate Zimbabwe from the current
economic crisis.
This was the second time President Mugabe and his
chief economic
advisor have clashed within two months over price
controls.
The public fallout forced the two into a five-hour
meeting on
Wednesday in which a temporary truce is understood to have been
reached.
However, sources said, fundamental policy differences
still exist
between Mugabe and the central bank boss.
In his
mid-year monetary policy on Monday, Gono attacked the
government for trying
to take over companies through the Indigenisation and
Empowerment Bill,
arguing that the "grab all and run strategy" would be
disastrous to the
economy.
Gono warned that company seizures would result in capital
flight,
massive disinvestment and further economic recession.
The Bill, which was passed by both houses of parliament and now awaits
presidential assent, seeks to give local business people a 51% stake in
local firms including mines and banks.
Gono implored the
government not to take over foreign-owned companies,
especially mines and
banks. The RBZ boss said the banking sector, by far the
most black-owned
sector, should not be destabilised by a few "well connected
cliques, some of
whom are already making the most noise in ostensible
support of this
initiative, who would want to amass wealth to themselves in
a starkly greedy
but irresponsible manner".
"Of particular concern to us as monetary
authorities would be any
attempts to forcibly push the envelope of
indigenisation into the delicate
area of banking and finance," Gono
said.
The central bank boss said while indigenisation of
companies was
noble, legislators and the government should strike a balance
between its
objective and the need to attract foreign
investment.
Gono called for caution and suggested a gradual
approach to
indigenisation based on the capital invested.
He
said indigenisation should be done over a period of between one and
15
years.
For companies capitalised to the tune of US$500 million,
Gono
suggested that full indigenisation (of over 51% local ownership) should
happen over a maximum period of 15 years.
At least 20% of
similar companies must be transferred into black hands
in the first five
years and 45% up to 10 years.
Gono said he was against price
controls.
"The existing challenges (in the country) have been made
worse by the
breathtaking and stressful developments of the last three
months that have
left our supermarkets with empty shelves while
incapacitating the supply and
delivery chains of basic services while at the
same time creating a serious
confidence crisis and mistrust between
government and the business
community," Gono said.
He added
that the nation found itself "trapped by a proverbial winter
storm" in which
the people's fears and hopes were running neck-to-neck
"dangerously
propelled by the threat to mutually destroy each other".
In July
Gono clashed with Mugabe over the government's price slash
blitz that left
shops empty and the economy tottering on the brink of
collapse.
Gono likened the price blitzkrieg to the United States and its allies'
invasion of Iraq without an exit strategy.
While Gono was
presenting his policy, Mugabe was telling thousands of
his supporters at
Harare International Airport that his government would
stick to price
controls and would seize profiteering companies.
Mugabe was
speaking soon after arriving back from the United Nations
general assembly
in New York.
The ageing president said his government would
ruthlessly deal with
firms engaged in profiteering.
"We will
have to seize the companies, and the services. whether
transport or any
other service being rendered by a company or organisation,"
Mugabe said. "If
they don't follow our way, we will takeover the companies.
We are warning
you, be straight forward, this is our country together."
Mugabe
recently accused the business community of working with the US,
Britain and
other Western states to effect regime change in Zimbabwe.
On
Tuesday, Gono briefed Western diplomats on his latest monetary
policy.
The diplomats reportedly wanted to know whether or not
they should
heed Mugabe or Gono on economic policy matters.
They reportedly also wanted to know whether Zimbabwe would have an
economic
policy shift.
Gono repeated to diplomats that there was a link
between political
troubles and the economic crisis, a view that angers
Mugabe.
"Our economic challenges and policies cannot be read and
viewed in
isolation of the political challenges," Gono said.
Zim Independent
Lucia
Makamure
THE saga of six men accused of plotting a coup to oust
President
Robert Mugabe took a new twist this week with revelations that
police could
arrest more suspects in the next two weeks.
The
Zimbabwe Independent is also reliably informed that investigators
want the
accused men already in police custody to implicate two senior
Airforce of
Zimbabwe commanders in the coup plot.
Sources at the
Attorney-General's Office this week said the state was
following leads into
the involvement of the two airforce officers. When the
alleged conspirators
were arrested five months ago, the state alleged that
the accused wanted to
stage a coup and install Rural Housing minister
Emmerson Mnangagwa as prime
minister.
The latest twist came as Justice Tendayi Uchena this week
gave the
state two weeks to conclude investigations in the case. The judge
said he
would consider a bail application by the six - Albert Mutapo, Nyasha
Zivuku,
Oncemore Mudzurahona, Emmanuel Marara, Patson Mupfure and Shingirai
Mutemachani - after police completed their probe.
Superintendent Simon Mundondwa, the police officer commanding Law and
Order
Section in Harare, told the court to expect some action on the case in
the
next two weeks.
"There are now strong leads and some of the
outstanding accused will
be arrested soon," said Mundondwa in an affidavit
submitted to the court by
the prosecution.
The sources said
police had started interrogating the accused with a
view to linking the
senior airmen to the alleged coup
The defence counsel for the six,
Charles Warara, told the Zimbabwe
Independent in an interview this week that
the case had been heavily
politisied with no incriminating evidence against
his clients having been
produced, five months after their
arrest.
"My clients have been in custody for more than five months
and the
state is still to come up with any evidence to show that they were
planning
a coup in the physical sense," said Warara of Warara &
Associates.
Warara said no guns or elements of the execution of the
said coup had
been brought before the courts to justify the lengthy
detention of the
accused.
"Our worry is that the police are
taking time to finalise their
investigations," he added.
Warara
said the police were yet to furnish them with information on
what came of
the investigations on Mnangagwa who was also implicated in the
coup.
"Obviously, if they still want their case to stand there
have to be
some insiders in the government who were involved because these
guys on
their own without access to the state machinery could not have
dreamt of
carrying out a coup," he added.
"The reason why the
police are delaying the case on the excuse that
they are still carrying out
investigations is because they know that without
extending the plot to the
government machinery they cannot justify the
arrest of the six accused," he
said
The High Court in June dismissed a bail application by the
alleged
coup plotters on the grounds that there was a danger that they might
abscond
and that investigations were still in their infancy.
The alleged coup plotters will today be spending their 126th night
behind
bars.
The delay in the prosecution is almost similar to that of 23
Movement
for Democratic Change activists accused of terrorist bombings who
are yet to
get a trial date, eight months after they were
arrested.
Zim Independent
Constantine
Chimakure
THE Joint Operations Command (JOC) has taken over the
duties of the
cabinet taskforce on Price Monitoring and Stabilisation, the
Zimbabwe
Independent heard this week.
Impeccable sources said
JOC, a national security think-tank made up of
army, police, prisons and
Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) chiefs,
had assumed the role of the
cabinet taskforce in setting prices of goods and
services.
The
cabinet taskforce was appointed by government in June to ensure
that prices
of goods and services are justified with scientific pricing
models and to
stop the diversion of scarce goods from the formal to the
black market.
Minister of State for National Security Didymus Mutasa chairs
JOC while
Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono is sometimes invited to advise
on economic
issues.
The sources said President Robert Mugabe on September 18
summoned
cabinet taskforce chairperson Obert Mpofu and his deputy Elliot
Manyika and
grilled them on their operations.
"The taskforce
stopped operating the day Mpofu and Manyika were
summoned by Mugabe. JOC is
now responsible for price monitoring," one of the
sources said.
Apart from Mpofu and Manyika, the cabinet taskforce also included
Finance
minister Samuel Mumbengegwi, Small and Medium Enterprises minister
Sithembiso Nyoni, Minister of State for Policy Implementation Webster Shamu
and Home Affairs minister Kembo Mohadi.
Others were Minister of
State Enterprises and Anti-Monopolies Samuel
Undenge and Minister of State
for Indigenisation and Empowerment Munyaradzi
Paul Mangwana.
The sources said JOC was summoning individual companies to negotiate
new
prices for goods and services.
Gono, the sources added, was the
force behind the JOC move meant to
ensure that firms operate viably while
goods and services are made available
at affordable prices.
Efforts to get a comment from Mpofu yesterday were in vain.
The
cabinet taskforce was expected to ensure transparent and objective
pricing
mechanisms throughout the supply chain by applying scientific
pricing models
to all controlled goods and services.
The taskforce was also
supposed to ensure that the appropriate
regulations regarding the recently
promulgated National Incomes and Pricing
Commission Act were effectively
enforced.
Zim Independent
Loughty
Dube
POLICE have charged a National University of Science and
Technology
(Nust) student leader with treason after he allegedly told a
public meeting
that if President Robert Mugabe cannot be removed from power
through
elections, he will be "removed by the bullet".
Mehluli
Dube was arrested in a dramatic swoop at the Zimbabwe Trade
Fair grounds
where he was attending a Bulawayo Agenda-organised civil
society meeting to
discuss Constitutional Amendment (No 18).
He was picked up by six
detectives from the Law and Order Section from
Gwanda who were led by the
officer-in-charge of the section whose name could
not be
established.
Dube, who was shaken by the incident, was taken to the
Bulawayo
central police station where the charges against him were
read.
The police allege that Dube told the public meeting in Gwanda
that "if
President Mugabe does not want to go he will be removed by the
ballot or the
bullet".
Dube was questioned and released
following the intervention of
Dzikamai Machingura of Zimbabwe Lawyers for
Human Rights (ZLHR) who
represented him in the matter.
Police
said they would proceed with the matter by way of summons in
the coming two
weeks. ZLHR director, Arnold Tsunga, who was also among the
delegates at the
conference when Dube was picked up, said the charges being
levelled against
Dube were serious.
"Treason is a serious offence," said Tsunga.
"Although he was released
I could see that he was traumatised. Police have
said they will proceed in
the matter through summons."
Bulawayo
police spokesman, Mandlenkosi Moyo, could not immediately
comment on Dube's
arrest as he was said to be out of the office.
Treason in Zimbabwe
carries a death sentence or life in prison.
Seasoned politicians
who have faced treason charges in the past few
years include the late
opposition leader Ndabaningi Sithole, Movement for
Democratic Change leader
Morgan Tsvangirai, and former PF-Zapu leader and
nationalist Joshua
Nkomo.
Dube also joins PF-Zapu leaders Dumiso Dabengwa and former
Zipramilitary supremo Lookout Masuku in the list of those charged with
treason by President Mugabe's government.
Zim Independent
ZANU PF and the MDC have agreed to scrap the post of executive
mayor
in towns and cities in the ongoing Sadc-initiated talks, the Zimbabwe
Independent heard this week.
Sources privy to the talks said
the parties agreed to revert to the
old system of ceremonial
mayors.
Zimbabwean cities used to be run by ceremonial mayors
elected from
councillors until 1996 when the government amended the Urban
Councils Act.
The town clerks then used to enjoy sweeping
powers.
The sources said the negotiating parties agreed that local
authorities
used to function better when they were being run by town clerks
employed by
the local authorities on a professional basis.
Observers however said the MDC was duped by Zanu PF, which wanted to
win
back urban councils where it has performed dismally in past elections.
Once
they revert to ceremonial mayors, governors appointed by the president
would
take over control of local authorities, weakening the opposition's
hold in
cities. Most cities were controlled by MDC councils before
government
interfered, suspending and firing most of the mayors.
The
harassment was believed to be part of a plan orchestrated by the
ruling
party to usurp control of the urban centres, which have been the MDC's
stronghold.
The MDC seized control of Harare, Bulawayo,
Victoria Falls, Gweru,
Masvingo, Gwanda and Kariba in municipal elections
after 2000.
Zanu PF then created the posts of governors for Harare
and Bulawayo in
a bid to neutralise the powers of executive
mayors.
In Harare, elected executive mayor Elias Mudzuri was
dismissed on
allegations of incompetence and mismanagement. He was replaced
by a
political turncoat Sekesai Makwavarara.
In Mutare, the
same allegations were levelled against another elected
mayor, Misheck
Kagurabadza, who was replaced by a government-appointed
commission. In
Chitungwiza Misheck Shoko faced the same fate.
In Bulawayo, Local
Government minister Ignatious Chombo has tried on
several occasions to oust
executive mayor Japhet Ndabeni Ncube, who is often
at loggerheads with
Bulawayo Metropolitan governor, Cain Mathema. - Staff
Writer.
Zim Independent
Augustine Mukaro
RESERVE Bank governor Gideon Gono's commodity
pricing will not benefit
the country in any way as long as government
continues to dole out money
without auditing its use on the ground, the
Zimbabwe Independent heard this
week.
Gono this week unveiled
the Basic Commodities Supply-Side Intervention
Facility (Bacossi) to promote
a speedy return to normalcy in the supply of
essentials. The facility, which
will be administered in the same manner as
the Agricultural Sector
Productivity Enhancement Facility (Aspef), will see
the RBZ subsidising the
production of virtually all basic commodities in the
country. The
intervention will force government to print money, a move that
will fuel
inflation.
"Our strongest conviction is that Zimbabwe's inflation
and related
economic difficulties can be effectively resolved through the
active revival
of the supply side of the economy, even if it means we
subsidise for a while
that supply chain in order to jump-start the recovery
process," Gono said in
his monetary policy statement on Monday.
He said under Bacossi, primary, secondary and tertiary producers and
suppliers would have access to concessional, production-targets-linked
financial support for working capital requirements.
"The
facility is a 270-day or nine months window, reviewable and
renewable,
through 90-day instruments," he said.
"This window is meant to give
the targeted producers a three-by-three
month window within which they can
restore their production facility
utilisation to levels before June 1 2007
or better, at affordable but
sustainable prices."
Observers
said by introducing the new facility, Gono had reverted to
quasi-fiscal
interventions, reneging on his earlier statement to stop
unbudgeted
expenditures.
Gono justified his position by blaming government's
knee-jack policies
for causing unintended consequences.
"These
are the unintended consequences of some of our behaviours as
Zimbabweans,"
he said. "They end up imposing a recovery burden, or tax on
the whole
economy and taxpayers through quasi-fiscal interventions."
He,
however, pointed to the risk that cheap goods could lead to
unsustainable
pressure on consumption patterns, installed production
facilities, and
hoarding for resale in neighbouring countries because
Zimbabwean goods would
suddenly become too cheap.
A similar facility, Aspef,
has
been subjected to serious manipulation and has failed to
jump-start
production in the agricultural sector, with the RBZ losing
trillions of
dollars in unrecovered loans.
Since the launch of Aspef loan
facility two years ago, the RBZ has
doled out in excess of $9 trillion in
different sectors of agriculture but
has managed to recover only $1,5
trillion.
Over $5,5 trillion of the distributed funds is not likely
to be
recovered since the beneficiaries have since been evicted from their
properties and no longer have the means to produce.
Zim Independent
Dumisani
Muleya/Constantine Chimakure
THE ruling Zanu PF and the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) have resumed talks locally
and in South Africa to resolve the current
crisis after they agreed recently
to pass Constitutional Amendment (No 18)
Bill which seeks to introduce
controversial political reforms.
Sources close to the negotiations
said the parties held several
meetings between themselves and also under the
mediation of South Africans
last week at different venues in Harare and
other parts of the country. They
said the meetings were held in government
offices, parliament, and places
such as Kariba and Nyanga.
"There were many meetings held last week at different places, in
Harare, at
Parliament Building, Munhumutapa Building, Chaminuka Building, in
Kariba,
Nyanga, Masvingo and other places," one source said.
"Meetings have
been held all over. I can't give you the details of the
discussions but
issues on the agenda. There has been heated debate on
sanctions, for
instance, which is a double-edged sword for the MDC and other
issues."
The sources said yesterday Zanu PF and the MDC
negotiators, who
include Patrick Chinamasa, Nicholas Goche, Welshman Ncube
and Tendai Biti,
were in Pretoria for further negotiations. Efforts to get
comment from them
were unsuccessful as their cellphones were
unreachable.
A strict confidentiality clause has been signed by the
parties to
ensure no information leaks out about the negotiations. However,
the media
has been getting details about the talks. The Zimbabwe Independent
has been
able to get accurate details of the talks to the extent that
parties in the
dialogue have been complaining.
The Independent
has been confronted by the negotiators with complaints
and pleas not to
reveal more details of the talks. Pretoria has taken the
issue to another
level by going to the extent of making enquiries at its
embassy in Harare in
a desperate bid to detect and plug the leakages, but
the effort has largely
failed because all parties involved talk to the
Independent. South Africa
made its enquires on the issue on the basis of
false information given to
mediators by one of the MDC negotiators - who is
desperately scrambling to
gag the press - on who was leaking stories to the
Independent.
After dealing with several electoral issues, which Zanu PF says were
very
urgent, the parties were now engaging each other on outstanding agenda
items
under "Track II" in the dialogue. Track I was the amendment of the
constitution to facilitate the delimitation of constituencies.
Track II is focusing on the constitution, security legislation, media
laws
and the political climate, dealing with a range of issues such as the
militarisation of state institutions, the role of chiefs and
sanctions.
The sources say the two parties have "substantially
agreed" on a new
draft constitution guaranteed by South African president
Thabo Mbeki who was
appointed by Sadc to facilitate the talks.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said on Monday he would come to
Harare
in two weeks time to recommend multilateral mediation by African
heads of
state to try to solve the current crisis.
Wade said he wanted to
discuss with President Robert Mugabe how
African leaders, including himself
and Mbeki, could mediate between Zanu PF
and the MDC.
Mbeki
recently said he believed there should be no other initiatives,
except the
Sadc one, on the Zimbabwe crisis. Wade said Mbeki should not be
the only one
dealing with the issue.
The negotiations are expected to end by
October 30.
The MDC expects to get a new constitution, amendment of
the Electoral
Act, Public Order and Security Act, Access to Information and
Protection of
Privacy Act, Local Government Act, and Traditional Leaders Act
among others.
After getting support for the constitutional
amendment, Zanu PF
expects to get backing on the scrapping of sanctions and
the blocking of
foreign radio stations broadcasting into Zimbabwe. However,
the MDC has no
power to get the sanctions lifted and radio stations
blocked.
This has become a big sticking point, the sources say.
They said
sanctions featured prominently during last week's
meetings.
The two parties are said to meet sometimes for five hours
a day in a
bid to beat their self-imposed deadline.
Although
MDC officials said they had consulted top local lawyers who
include former
Law Society president Sternford Moyo, Selby Hwacha, Harrison
Nkomo and
Nokuthula Moyo on drafting a new constitution, the attorneys said
this week
they had not been involved. They said they were neither consulted
nor aware
of the existence of a new draft constitution.
However, their names
have been bandied about at MDC meetings over the
issue, probably without
their knowledge, the sources said.
The sources said Mbeki promised
MDC leaders that he would guarantee
the new draft constitution, which has
"substantially been agreed on" between
the two parties, although some issues
are still subject to negotiation.
The sources said if the final
draft is ultimately adopted by the two
negotiating parties by October 30, it
would then be taken to their leaders
and structures in November and to
parliament by December. After that the
draft would be kept ready for
introduction after the elections in March.
This is Zanu PF's
position, which the MDC might agree to because the
ruling party has taken a
decision it will not accept a new constitution
before the elections.
President Robert Mugabe has stated that he does not
want a new
constitution.
This position was restated and agreed at his party's
politburo meeting
on September 5. The sources said Zanu PF wants the coming
polls to be held
under the current Lancaster House constitution as modified
by Amendment No
18 and to have a new one introduced at an agreed date after
the elections.
MDC leaders have been saying that there would be a
new constitution
before the elections without clarifying whether or not it
would come into
effect ahead of the polls.
Zim Independent
Orirando Manwere
JUSTICE minister Patrick Chinamasa says there
would be no
re-registration of voters to create ward specific voters rolls
for next year's
harmonised elections as those already registered would
simply be moved into
new wards and constituencies.
This flies
in the face of expectations by the opposition MDC, that
voters would be
registered to create a new and transparent voters roll
before the election
in March next year. The MDC wants the voters roll
revamped to flash out
"ghost voters" whom it claims are used by Zanu PF for
electoral rigging
purposes.
Responding to questions by MDC legislator Nelson Chamisa
on how the
proposed ward-specific rolls would be created and the timeframe
for
delimitation, Chinamasa said already registered voters would be put
under
wards and constituencies to be determined during the delimitation
exercise.
He said delimitation, which will now be done by the
Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission (ZEC), was expected to be completed by
December after a mop-up
mobile voter registration exercise in 939 areas not
fully covered in an
earlier exercise in June to August.
Only
109 999 people countrywide were registered as voters during that
exercise.
Said Chinamasa: "There will be no re-registration of
voters to create
ward-specific voters rolls. As you may know, when you are
registered you are
registered to a particular group which is the physical
unit area and when
they do the delimitation, whether of wards or
constituencies, it is a mere
exercise of moving a whole block or part of the
block in order to create a
constituency.
"So you are registered
into a block and you either move into a
constituency, the total block,
quarter block or half block of the
constituency."
On
delimitation, Chinamasa said, the exercise would be carried out
soon after
President Mugabe assented to the recently passed Constitutional
Amendment
Bill (No 18).
Chinamasa had earlier told parliament: "The point to
note is that we
are introducing with this change a ward voters roll, a
ward-specific voters
roll. In other words, a voter can only vote in the ward
in which he or she
is resident and registered to vote."
Stakeholders last week said the proposed system would prejudice many
voters,
as the delimitation exercise was yet to start.
They had said this
would require an extended re-registration exercise
supported by a massive
awareness campaign to enlighten the electorate on the
new wards and
constituencies.
The ZEC is expected to come up with 90 new
parliamentary
constituencies, 10 senatorial constituencies and new
boundaries for urban
and rural council wards following the passing of the
Bill.
Under the Bill, parliamentary constituencies will be
increased from
the current 150 to 210 while the Senate's directly elected
members go up
from 50 to 60 with six senators per province.
ZEC
last month announced the extension of the voter registration
exercise for
three weeks to cover specific areas where there were logistical
problems
during the June 18-August 17 mobile voter registration period.
However, it has not yet set the dates, amid concerns from prospective
voters
who were left out or have moved that they might be prejudiced of
their right
to vote.
In a written response to questions by the Zimbabwe
Independent this
week, ZEC deputy chief elections officer Ultoile Silaigwana
said a mop-up
registration exercise would be carried out and the dates and
places to be
covered would be announced in due course.
"The
voters roll will definitely be ready by election time because an
inspection
of the voters roll will be conducted in due course. This
programme will also
cater for those who want to transfer and those who want
to register as
voters," he said.
Various political party officials, observers and
prospective voters
said the mop-up exercise should be nationwide as the
previous exercise was
not very effective due to logistical problems
comprising transport and
communication, especially in rural
areas.
In his response to a question by MDC chief whip Innocent
Gonese on the
outcome of the recent mobile voter registration exercise,
Chinamasa said 109
999 voters were registered nationwide compared to 120 283
in 2004.
He attributed this year's lower figure to the fact that
this year's
exercise was held barely three years after the previous one,
which was held
after five years.
"The second explanation for
the difference is that the 2004 exercise
was done over a period two weeks
longer than was the period this year. This
(year's) mobile voter
registration blitz turned out, in effect to be an
exercise in the
registration of births and issuance of national identity
cards."
Zim Independent
Shakeman
Mugari
THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has issued Premier
Finance Group
(PFG) with a corrective order following revelations that its
senior
executives could have siphoned billions from the bank and benefited
in their
individual capacities when the company acquired a majority stake in
CFX
Financial Services earlier this year.
A preliminary RBZ
report to be released within the next three weeks
will reveal how PFG former
chief executive, Exodus Makumbe and chief
operating officer, Cassius
Gambinga, could have helped themselves to the
company's commissions and
engaged in non-permissible activities that
threatened the welfare of the
whole group.
PFG is the parent company of Premier
Bank.
The report will also give details of events that led to the
unceremonious exit of Makumbe last month.
Although the official
statement from Premier Bank's holding company,
Premier Finance Group, was
that Makumbe had resigned to pursue the bank's
regional expansion programme,
businessdigest can reveal that he was actually
pushed out by the board over
allegations of fraud and serious corporate
governance issues.
The central bank also raised serious concerns about his continued
leadership
after irregularities were uncovered by the investigating team and
KPMG
auditors. KPMG was hired by the RBZ to help with forensic audits at the
bank.
Makumbe tendered his resignation eight days after he was
put on forced
leave by the board.
Sources close to the issue
said Makumbe was sent on forced leave
together with Gambinga on August
21.
Makumbe tendered his resignation to the board on August 29.
Gambinga
is still on forced leave but his fate will be clear when the final
RBZ
report is officially released.
businessdigest understands
that Premier's problems started in July
when the bank experienced liquidity
problems. Although the liquidity crunch
was a market-wide problem Premier
was the least prepared because of its
size.
Their problems were
worsened by the fact that the bank had loaned
heavily to cotton merchants
who at that time were failing to service their
debts because of the short
market. Premier was short $70 billion and
battling to settle its
depositors.
A visit by the RBZ's surveillance department on July 2
unearthed the
full scope of the crisis at the bank.
The
investigating team found that while the market deficit had
triggered
Premier's problems, the bank had other inherent irregularities
that had
combined to worsen the situation.
The probe team discovered that
PFG had heavily borrowed from Premier
Bank.
It discovered that
the hole in the bank was actually less than what
the holding company, PFG,
had borrowed from the bank.
The central bank has since 2004
discouraged inter-company borrowings
in the financial sector.
There were also insider loans which had been given to executives in
their
individual capacities and conduit companies related to them.
Inter-company borrowing and insider loans led to the collapse of Royal
Bank
and Trust Bank three years ago.
The probe also discovered that
Premier had understated statutory
reserve requirements and that its
financial position was not stable at that
time. The report, the sources
said, will also reveal how senior executives
were involved in front-running
when PFG was in the market buying CFX shares.
It is alleged that
senior executives got money from the holding
company, bought CFX shares at
low prices, held on to them before selling
them back to the company at huge
margins. PFG currently owns 26% of CFX.
businessdigest understands
that about 8% of that shareholding was
bought by Premier from its executives
who had acquired the shares with the
inside information that sometime later
the company would need the CFX
shares.
The executives also
bought Econet and Old Mutual shares with money
borrowed from the group. They
also bought houses and other properties.
"These issues are so
serious that some people will be arrested," said
a source close to the
probe.
Makumbe referred all questions to the PFG's current
management.
Contacted for comment Makumbe said: "You may recall that
sometime last month
the chairman of Premier Finance Group Ltd issued a
notice in which the
market was informed of my resignation from the group to
pursue regional and
international opportunities that benefit the business.
Subsequent to my
departure, the managing director of Premier Bank was
appointed acting chief
executive officer, and his elevation, albeit in an
acting capacity, was
widely covered by the media."
"I
therefore, find myself in a very difficult position to comment on
issues
pertaining to PFG or any of its subsidiaries
given that we have a
qualified and competent team running the group,
which should be in a
position to give you, on record, any information that
you may require
without trespassing beyond the ethics of the banking
profession.
"I kindly refer you to seek official comment from
either management at
PFG or the board chairman in the interest of fairness,
objectivity and
balance, bearing in mind that banking, by its very nature,
is sensitive. I
hope that you will understand my position."
The
report which was compiled with the help of KPMG Auditing firm will
also
touch on the competence of the officers that are in charge of Premier
bank
at the moment. RBZ governor, Gideon Gono, could not be reached for
comment
yesterday but he made some reference to the irregularities in his
monetary
policy presentation on Monday.
"As stated earlier, we note with
concern the re-emergence and increase
in incestuous relationship between
certain banking institutions, their
holding companies and other related
parties that are reminiscent of what we
saw in the pre-2003 era," Gono
said.
He said some "unscrupulous executives continue to use
convoluted group
structures as conduits for abuse of depositors' funds and
engagement in
non-permissible activities such as the purchase of stocks on
the equity
market".
Zim Independent
Shakeman Mugari
JUST after the morning tea break on Monday July
2 six officials from
the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) arrived at Premier
Finance Group (PFG)'s
offices at Sam Levy office park.
They
told management they were making a routine check on the financial
sector
following reports that some banks were experiencing liquidity
problems.
PFG's subsidiary, Premier Bank, was having problems
covering its
positions because of the money market deficit. The gap in the
bank's books
was estimated to be around $70 billion.
The RBZ
team was supposed to be at PFG's offices for no more that a
few hours for
what might otherwise have been a routine check.
Yesterday afternoon
the central bank team was still camped at the
company. They say
investigations are continuing and a report will be ready
within the next
three weeks.
What made Premier Bank's problems worse was that apart
from the normal
market shortage the bank had other serious
problems.
Unlike commercial banks which could borrow from the
central bank when
the market is short Premier had to go through a second
party by virtue of
being a merchant bank. Merchant banks cannot by banking
law access funds
from the central bank as the lender of last
resort.
They have to go through a commercial bank. Because at that
time the
whole market was short even Premier's commercial bankers were not
in a
position to help them cover their positions.
Premier's
problems were however bigger than a mere gap in its books.
The probe team
found that the major reason Premier could not cover its
position was because
of huge insider and inter-company loans which had not
been
repaid.
PFG, its parent company, had borrowed about $90 billion
from it and
had not yet repaid the bank. Some executives had also helped
themselves to
billions of dollars in loans. The probe team left the bank
that afternoon
but promised to come back later for further checks. They
however did not
come back until after the Heroes Holiday.
On
August 15 about 25 officers from the central bank came back to PFG's
offices.
They were accompanied by officers from KPMG Financial
Auditors. They
met PFG and Premier Bank management in the board room. There
they read the
riot act.
They said they were not happy with the
management's cooperation during
their initial fact finding visit in
July.
They said they suspected that there were serious
irregularities in the
bank and that they wanted a full
investigation.
That meeting took about 30 minutes and by
mid-morning investigation
teams had been deployed in the whole bank. There
were RBZ officials in
auditing, accounts, treasury, risk management and the
IT department.
The next day, the team did not return but the bank's
legal advisor,
Nick Nyamusa, got a call from the central bank at around
9:30am requesting
all managers to report to the RBZ at 10:50am.
Twelve managers attended the meeting which however did not start until
12
pm. The chief executive, Exodus Makombe and chief operating officer
Cassius
Gambinga did not attend the meeting because they were on vacation.
The head of the RBZ team, Gift Chirozva, told the managers that there
were
looking at allegations that the bank had understated its statutory
reserve
requirement and engaged in inter-company borrowings.
The financial
condition of the bank and allegations that some
executives were involved in
share-front running were also part of RBZ's
probe. There was also the issue
of missing commission which the probe team
believed had been siphoned from
the bank by some senior executives.
After his offer for people to
volunteer information found no takers,
Chirozva handed each manager an
envelope. They were told to put their mobile
phones in the
envelopes.
The central bank then started interviewing each person
separately. It
took nine hours for the interviews which finished at 9pm. On
that day the
RBZ was not so hospitable. The managers were not served
lunch.
"People talked. They implicated each other during the
interviews," a
member of the RBZ probe team said. "It was clear that there
was more rot in
the bank that we had initially anticipated. Some of the
findings are so
serious that when the investigations eventually conclude we
are going to ask
for assistance from the police," he said.
On
Friday August 17 Makumbe also went for the RBZ interviews together
with a
few other managers who were not at work the previous day.
The RBZ
then scheduled a meeting with the bank's non-executive
directors. The
meeting was supposed to be held on August 20 at 2pm. The
directors decided
that they would have a meeting with senior managers before
going to the
RBZ.
Gambinga and Makumbe did not turn up for that meeting despite
having
promised to do so. Only Raymond Chigogwana, who at that time was the
managing director of Premier Bank, attended the meeting.
Chigogwana is now the acting chief executive of the group. Makumbe is
understood to have told the board over the phone that he had left the
country because he was afraid of being arrested. It is not clear which
country he had gone to.
The RBZ must have told the directors
something serious because
immediately after the meeting the board sent
Makumbe and Gambinga on forced
leave. Makumbe who had founded the
institution first as a Discount House in
2004 tendered his resignation on
August 29.
Makumbe over the past two weeks refused to shed light on
events
leading to his unceremonious departure. He also refused to respond to
some
of the allegations that are being levelled against him. He has referred
all
questions to the PFG's management who have also refused to comment on
the
issue.
The central bank is expected to conclude its
investigation into the
crisis at Premier within the next three weeks.
Sources who have seen the
preliminary report told businessdigest that it
makes serious allegations
against Makumbe and Gambinga.
The
report details how the bank lost about $161 billion through
fraudulent
activities. Apart from
the issue of statutory reserve computation, the
missing commission and
the bank's weak financial position the report also
raised alarm over the
events surrounding PFG's acquisition of a 26% stake in
CFX Holdings. PFG
first acquired 12% CFX in 2006 when the commercial bank
did its right issue.
PFG
got the shares for just over $1
billion.
Sometime in February, the senior staff of PFG decided to
increase
their stake in CFX to about 26%. The plan was to eventually push
through a
hostile takeover and reverse listing. The RBZ preliminary report
alleges
that around the same time Makumbe, Gambinga and other senior
executives had
borrowed money from the bank to buy the CFX shares. These
shares were later
sold to PFG at huge profits.
Zim Independent
Shakeman Mugari
THE Minister of State for Indigenisation and
Empowerment, Paul
Mangwana, is angling for Hippo Valley Estates Ltd once the
Indigenisation
and Empowerment Bill which has passed through parliament
becomes law.
The controversial Bill sailed through the Senate on
Tuesday and is now
awaiting President Robert Mugabe's assent to become
law.
The law will force foreign-owned companies to sell 51% stake
to local
people. Businessdigest can however reveal that while Mangwana has
been
vigorously pushing the Bill, he has been secretly making contingent
plans to
become one of the first beneficiaries of the law.
Mangwana is understood to have been pushing to take over Zimbabwe
Stock
Exchange-listed Hippo Valley since May this year through a consortium
made
up of people mostly from Masvingo.
This could explain why Mangwana
has been so eager to fast-track the
Bill through parliament.
Sources at Hippo Valley said Mangwana recently approached senior
central
bank officials to help him find ways to put his plan into action.
Mangwana
has also approached a local commercial bank to assist with funds
and
advisory services to set up the consortium.
"He has been pushing
this project since May this year. He is now only
waiting for the Bill to
become law and make the official move," said a
source close to the
issue.
"Mangwana's reasoning has been that Hippo Valley is too big
and should
either be reduced in size or at least give a stake to
locals."
Hippo Valley's core business is growing and milling of
sugar cane.
Mangwana is also understood to have made plans to
acquire Cold Storage
Company-Masvingo using the same
consortium.
"Mangwana said he was aware that government will soon
sell part of its
stake in CSC. He said the plan was to sell some of CSC's
abattoirs.
"He wanted advice on how best his consortium could
benefit from such
developments ," the source said.
Mangwana
denied that he was making plans to take over Hippo Valley.
"Your sources are
mad. You have been publishing a lot of rubbish of late.
You can publish that
story at your own peril. If you want to make me rich go
ahead," said
Mangwana to businessdigest when contacted for comment on
Wednesday.
"I said your sources are mad. It's
rubbish!"
News of Mangwana's manoeuvres came as other ministers and
senior
government officials are understood to have started positioning
themselves
to take over companies in key sectors of the
economy.
The banking sector is already under siege from ministers
who have
already put in their bids to buy majority stakes in foreign-owned
banks like
Stanbic, Standard Chartered and MBCA as soon as the empowerment
Bill becomes
law.
Other senior government officials are angling
for stakes in the mining
sector.
"It's going to be a looting
spree like the land reform," another
source said. "As we speak guys have
already distributed some foreign-owned
mines amongst
themselves."
The pending scramble for foreign banks could have
prompted central
bank governor Gideon Gono's scathing comments in his
monetary policy this
week.
Gono said those who were interested
in the banking sector should apply
to the central bank for licences to start
their own banks. ".I urge those
who are advocating for what seems to be
unguided interference with the
ownership structures in this industry to
consult widely and take heed of the
advice of experts in this sector before
rushing to push through what could
end up being viewed as counter-productive
legislation likely to yield worse
unintended consequences than what we saw
with the recent price controls,"
Gono said.
"Some of the
careless and mostly uninformed comments we have been
hearing of late from
certain quarters risk destabilising an otherwise stable
industry which has
successfully indigenised since the early 90s and has gone
through a major
shake-up since 2004."
Gono's comments could have been targeted at
Mangwana who last week
said foreign companies including banks that were not
happy with the law can
leave the country.
"If Standard
Chartered Bank feels they cannot continue (operations in
Zimbabwe) they can
simply go and CBZ can take over. Metropolitan Bank can
take over, and FBC
can do the same," said Mangwana. "The 51% is only a
minimum; we even want
90%. "When you are carrying out a revolution you do
not do it in half steps.
Zimbabwe cannot be half independent."
Zim Independent
Paul
Nyakazeya
THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, Gideon Gono,
this week went on
an unprecedented spending spree doling out billions of
dollars to almost
every sector of the economy as he resumed his quasi-fiscal
activities.
Presenting his monetary policy on Monday, Gono seemed
to have a cheque
for almost every one.
The list of
beneficiaries included communal farmers, women and youth,
local government
authorities and the troubled Zimbabwe National Water
Authority
(Zinwa).
In the end the monetary policy sounded more like the
national budget
where each government department gets a fund
allocation.
Tobacco, cotton, maize and soya bean farmers also got a
fair share of
the largesse.
Gono gave $14,25 trillion to Zinwa
and local authorities.
He said Zinwa would use its allocation for
water reticulation and
while local authorities would use their share for
"explicit income
generation projects".
Zinwa and local
authorities will also benefit from a US$5,25 million
revolving fund. Gono
said 3 000 boreholes will be drilled in the next three
years with assistance
of a $200 billion fund.
That money will come from the central bank.
Those who show that they
are interested in "solving" the country's fuel
crisis by planting jatropha
trees will benefit from a $200 billion
fund.
So far, $3,9 trillion has been distributed under the
Agricultural
Sector Productivity Enhancement facility (Aspef), Gono
said.
But there was more in the offing for farmers. Gono announced
that the
interest rate for the Aspef funds will be reduced from 50% to 25%.
Maize
farmers while with effect from the coming season be
paid in
foreign currency for their produce.
Gono said maize farmers will
get US$200 per tonne, half of which will
be paid in foreign
currency.
"In the event import parity prices warrant higher
payments, any
further top-up, over and above the US$200 per tonne will be
payable in local
currency," said Gono.
"The Reserve Bank has
programmed itself to setting aside a total of
US$180 million for payment to
our maize farmers for the 2007/2008 harvest,
up to a maximum intake of 1,8
million tonnes of
commercial maize and 50 000 tonnes of seed maize
beginning next
season."
Wheat, barely and soya bean farmers
will get US$250 per tonne. Maize
farmers who have already delivered to the
Grain Marketing Board will get
bonuses of $5,8 million per
tonne.
That money will not come from the budget but the central
bank. The
central bank will also pay premium rates for maize that is in
bags. Dairy
processors will also get funds from the central
bank.
In industry, manufacturing and retailing companies will
access Bacossi
fund from the central bank at concessionary rates of 25%.
This fund will
also benefit small shop owners in the rural
areas.
This, Gono said, would improve production. There will also
be a US$5
million for the packaging industry.
Mining companies
will also access the funds at the same rate in
addition to the increased
gold support prices. Backdated August 1, the gold
support price was
increased from $3 million per gram to $3,5 million per
gram.
The support price was be increased to $4 million per gram with effect
from
September 1 before being pushed to $5 million with effect from October
1.
Gono also had a $1 trillion cheque for the women and youth programmes. He
said the funds will attract a concessionary interest rate of 25% and will be
coordinated through the offices of provincial governors and relevant
ministries.
Gono defended the quasi-fiscal activities saying
without balance of
payment support, it was impossible to implement liberal
policies.
"How do we implement liberal policies when at every turn,
there are
local and international economic agents whose sole role has now
been
prescribed as that of undermining anything and every attempt we make
towards
stabilising our economy as part of the political games," said
Gono.
Analysts said it was difficult to understand where Gono would
get the
money to give to all these sectors. They said the only alternative
will be
to print money, a move that will further push
inflation.
"It is clear that money will be printed to satisfy all
these needs,
what is not clear is where Gono will get the foreign currency
to pay the
farmers as he promised," said economic commentator, John
Robertson.
The effects of excessive money printing are already
apparent.
Gono said money supply (M3) had increased to 17 073,1% in
July from 1
638,4% in January reflecting government's over reliance on the
central bank
to print money to fund its operations.
"With money
supply growth and inflation closely correlated one can be
safely say the
July inflation rate was above 14 500% which blends well with
the Consumer
Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) figure of 13 000% at the time," said
Genesis bank
chief economist Brains Muchemwa. .
Gono also technically devalued
the local currency to 270 000 by
allowing the sale of foreign currency
proceeds "at the going exchange rate"
of $30 000 to the US dollar and
investing in the Reserve Bank's at a once
off overnight rate of 800%. This,
analyst said, will neither increase
foreign currency inflows nor encourage
people to use the official market.
The Zimbabwean dollar is trading at $560
000 on the parallel market.
Exporters may retain 65% in foreign
currency accounts earning interest
of 12 per year in hard currency with
balance or all of the proceeds being
liquidated at $270 000 to the US dollar
within 30 days.
Other highlights of the Monetary Policy Statement
included:
* Secured lending rates increased to 800% from
650%;
* Unsecured lending were raised to 850% from
700%;
* New currency to be introduced;
* Local
currency devalued to $270 000 from $30 000;
* Three banks issued
with corrective measures;
* Farmers to be paid in foreign
currency;
* Daily cash withdrawals for individuals raised to $20
million from
$10 million; Companies withdrawals increased to $40 million
from $20
million;
* Tobacco Foreign Currency Retention
allowance to growers increased to
25% from 20%;
* Cumulative
export shipments amounted to USS$1,059 billion between
January and August
from US$985,4 million during the same period last year;
* Shipments
of the general agricultural sector (excluding tobacco and
horticulture)
US$149 million from US$133,3 million during the same period;
*
Tobacco shipments US$155 million between January and August;
*
Mineral shipment excluding gold rose to US$550,9 million between
January and
August from US$467 million;
* Total declared CD3 forms between
January and August amounted to
US$42,6 million.
Zim Independent
Paul Nyakazeya
BEFORE he presented the
2007 mid-term monetary policy on Monday,
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor,
Gideon Gono, warned that "people should
not expect miracles" from his
prescription to the ailing economy.
Indeed, there were no miracles
in the policy to pull Zimbabwe out of
the nine-year economic recession
caused mainly by bad policies. Although
Gono's intentions were noble, his
prescriptions are highly inflationary such
that if Zimbabwe was a private
company it would suffer historical losses
with the institution becoming a
burden on its shareholders as all major
profit centres have not been
performing over the past five years.
Gono reinstated his
quasi-fiscal activities (QFAs) which he in January
said he was winding up,
hence the formation of Fiscorp to mop up such
activities. But on Monday he
announced his return to QFAs on a much larger
scale through support to
manufacturers, boosting agricultural commodity
prices, gold prices and
funding of agricultural production. The inflationary
impact of the measures,
as has been demonstrated in the past, are obvious.
The latest
addition to the broadened QFAs is the Basic Commodities
Supply-Side
Intervention Facility which is expected to promote a speedy
return to
normalcy in the supply of basic commodities. The facility is
expected to run
for nine months.
"As the central bank, our strongest conviction is
that Zimbabwe's
inflation and related economic difficulties can be
effectively resolved
through the active revival of the supply side of the
economy, even if it
means we subsidise for a while that supply chain in
order to jump-start the
recovery process," said Gono.
Ironically, in January he said he was doing away with quasi-fiscal
activities which he said caused price distortions.
"These are
the unitended consequencies of some of our behaviours as
Zimbabweans. They
end up imposing a recovery burden or tax on the whole
economy and taxpayers
through quasi-fiscal interventions," he added.
He also promised
farmers and gold producers a back pay which analyts
said was confirmation
the money printing machine will not rest in the
short-term.
The
2008 local government, parliamentary and presidential elections
related
expenditures are also going to trigger a further inflation spiral,
as more
money will be printed during the exercise.
"We call upon all
politicians and political parties of all persuasions
to always put the
interest of Zimbabwe first in their pronouncements and
activities," warned
Gono.
"Like any event on the calender, the elections will come and
go, but
the Zimbabwean economy will remain but either in a better or worse
situation
as a result of the elections depending on whether the protagonists
will take
in their hearts and minds the principle of putting Zimbabwe
first," Gono
said.
Most of the money that Gono said he would
disburse would be printed
without any corresponding production of goods and
services, at a time when
money supply was 17 073,1% for July.
With inflation at 6 952,8% for August, the local currency has become a
joke
to many Zimbabweans. Streets are littered with discarded bearer's
cheques
which nobody seems to be bothered to pick up, reflecting how the
currency
has lost value.
The monetary policy, which was presented in about
two and half hours,
was all rhetoric coloured with well-selected vocabulary
only good to the ear
but bound to hit a political brickwall as demontrated
by the reckless
mannner in which the Indeginisation and Empowerment Bill was
fast-tracked
through parliament in total disregard of concerns raised by
stakeholders.
Not that the architects do not know their arithmetic,
but rather that
the proposed measures will not succeed under the present
political
conditions where government officials have been accused of
corruption, and
generally lack the vision to extricate the economy from the
woods.
"Our situation in Zimbabwe is not only about our economic
policies,
monetary or otherwise, but also about our politics which is a
factor outside
the parameters of the central bank governors," said
Gono.
Gono also expressed fears on the possible negative impact of
politics
on economic development when he warned politicians not to disrupt
production
in the run up to the 2008 elections by making irrational
statements.
While Gono was decrying the effects of the price
crackdown launched in
July, President Robert Mugabe was telling people at
the airport that
government would not hesitate to take over companies which
were refusing to
produce.
"We will take over profiteering
businesses if they do not stick to set
pricing levels," Mugabe
said.
As politics continues to get in the way of economic logic,
Mugabe
continues his verbal assault on the West, particularly Britain and
America,
which he blames for the sanctions imposed on the
country.
The sanctions, imposed by Western powers after widespread
dispute over
the 2002 presidential polls, are mainly targeted at Mugabe and
members of
his inner circle but have also affected the rest of the
economy.
Shops and supermarkets are witnessing scenes reminiscent
of the
cartoon series Wacky Races as shoppers run to grab products which are
in
short supply but readly available on the parallel market.
The price madness that prompted the government to introduce controls
three
months ago has reared its ugly head again as products slowly return to
supermarket shelves.
Tills, cash machines and wallets struggle
to accommodate the huge
bills now needed to purchase basic
commodities.
Zim Independent
By Professor
Jonathan Moyo
NOW that the dust has settled on the rather
desperate propaganda by
Zanu PF and the two MDC factions that the 18th
constitutional amendment is a
negotiated breakthrough within the
Sadc-mandated mediation in Zimbabwe, the
one burning issue that most
Zimbabweans still want clarified is whether on
its own the amendment has any
national significance beyond offering
President Robert Mugabe a
Machiavellian opportunity to smuggle his ambition
to rule for
life.
Although this has been ignored or misunderstood, the 18th
amendment
contains an important but unintended national significance along
with its
intended personal purpose of seeking to bolster Mugabe's grip on
power. The
unintended national importance is that, by reducing the
presidential term
from six to five years to synchronise it with that of
parliament and local
government councils with effect from March 2008, the
amendment effectively
calls for an early and much needed general election to
resolve the
Zimbabwean crisis.
In a constitutional democracy,
which Zimbabwe is struggling to become,
the only way citizens can respond to
a biting national crisis is through a
general election. The fact that the
18th amendment allows for an early
general election which was otherwise due
in 2010 explains why it was
strategically wise for the opposition to vote
with Zanu PF in support of the
amendment notwithstanding the apparent limits
of its intended objectives.
Claims by some opposition elements that
the 18th amendment is a
confidence-building measure are a pipedream based on
a hopeless leap in the
dark. The same goes for expectations that Zanu PF
will agree to a new
constitution before the 2008 election.
Any
ruling party that agrees to opposition demands for a new
constitution ahead
of a general election exposes itself to assured electoral
defeat. Zanu PF
learnt this after the failed referendum on the draft
constitution in 2000.
Therefore the best that can be achieved with the
prodding of the Sadc
mediation are amendments to a range of laws that
impinge on electoral
politics.
Otherwise the good news is already with us and it is
that, because of
the adoption of the 18th constitutional amendment, battered
Zimbabweans now
have a real opportunity through a massive early general
election next March
to resolve the widening and deepening meltdown in the
country by booting out
Mugabe and his henchmen who have become incurably
clueless in the face of
crippling problems facing the country.
Of course Mugabe hopes to win that early election but his hope is
based on
his fatal presumption that the splintered opposition, which now
includes
significant elements from Zanu PF, will remain divided. Yet the
writing is
now on the wall that Mugabe's electoral chances in March 2008 are
between
slim and none, whatever the state of the opposition which is anyhow
set for
a dramatic transformation.
The powerful message from angry masses
and the dispossessed middle and
upper classes is that if the early 2008
general election should be rigged,
it would be against Mugabe whose
continued stay in office has become
irretrievably catastrophic for
Zimbabwe.
There is nobody, especially within Zanu PF, who genuinely
and
seriously believes that Mugabe should seek reelection let alone that he
should be reelected after his 27 years of controversial rule whose final
days have turned Zimbabwe into a living hell.
Mugabe's
dwindling loyalists, who are trying to turn his personality
cult into a
principle and an ideology above the national interest, actually
understand
that Mugabe is now a damaging liability to the nation despite
their public
pretences to the contrary. That is why a major intended
objective of the
18th amendment is the dissolution of parliament in which
Zanu PF has a
secure and commanding two-thirds majority along with the
dissolution of
rural and urban councils, the majority of which are
controlled by the ruling
party.
This astonishing dissolution will be done to ensure that
every ward
and constituency in the country will have an aspiring Zanu PF
councillor, a
would-be Zanu PF member of the House of Assembly and a Zanu PF
Senate
hopeful who will campaign for themselves as they will for Mugabe as a
necessary matter of self-interest against the national
interest.
Clearly Mugabe is desperate for support. In the past, it
used to be
the aspiring Zanu PF council and parliamentary candidates who
could not do
without Mugabe's support in their election campaigns. Now it's
him.
There is no single case in the history of civilised nations
where a
ruling party with a two-thirds majority in the legislature has
dissolved
that legislature only for the purpose of ensuring that its
unpopular
president does not seek reelection to face humiliation
alone.
The dissolution of the Zanu PF two-thirds majority in
parliament is
therefore unprecedented but telling. That is why the affected
Zanu PF
parliamentarians are not amused even a bit. And that is also why
there is so
much turmoil in the increasingly divided Zanu PF ranks less than
six months
before the general election.
Ironically, Mugabe's
securocrats and bureaucrats have not understood
that the dissolution of
parliament in which the ruling party has a
two-thirds majority is certain to
boomerang as it can only benefit the
opposition which now has an early
opportunity to close ranks and take full
advantage of the economic hardships
in the country to at least eliminate
that majority and even to win it
all.
A wiser strategy for Zanu PF would have been to keep the
current
two-thirds majority in parliament as political insurance in the
event of a
likely defeat in the presidential election and to use that
majority to
impeach the opposition winner. With the economy in the doldrums
and with
Mugabe and his wayward ministers unable to do anything about that
besides
making idle threats of company takeovers, Zanu PF is now inside the
jaws of
defeat waiting to be crushed.
The evidence that Mugabe
is nervous to the bones about this is not
only shown by the impending
irrational dissolution of parliament in which
Zanu PF has a two-thirds
majority but also by Mugabe's convening of a
special congress of the ruling
party in December when he does not have to.
The few securocrats and
bureaucrats behind Mugabe's doomed reelection
campaign are going around
claiming that a Zanu PF special congress in
December can only have one
agenda item which is to confirm and endorse
Mugabe as the ruling party's
presidential candidate in the general election
next March. But that is mumbo
jumbo.
In the first place, it is not true that in terms of the Zanu
PF
constitution a special congress is called only for a single issue. The
true
position is that a special Zanu PF congress is called to deal with
those
special issues, whether few or many, that are unique to the
circumstances
necessitating it. There is no requirement that there must be
only one issue.
In the second place, in terms of the Zanu PF
constitution, the
confirmation and endorsement of the party's president and
first secretary as
the candidate in a presidential election does not require
a special
congress. In fact, the annual people's conference of Zanu PF is
required to
declare, without debate, the party's president and first
secretary as its
presidential candidate. That is what happened in 2001 ahead
of the 2002
presidential election.
Because it is the highest
organ of the party, a congress, whether
special or ordinary, can raise from
the floor any issue including who should
be the Zanu PF president and first
secretary. As things stand, the
securocrats and bureaucrats who have fooled
a nervous Mugabe into calling a
special congress have actually set him up
for a real challenge to his failed
leadership.
Unless he seizes
the initiative and acts now to allow for a successor,
the possibility of a
palace coup against Mugabe at the special congress in
December has become
real.
This explains why Mugabe suddenly expects the Mnangagwa
faction, the
so-called Tsholotsho group, to support his reelection bid
against the Mujuru
faction. Yet the fact is that he is now deeply mistrusted
within both
factions. In 2004 he abused the Mnangagwa faction and in 2007 he
is abusing
the Mujuru faction.
Whereas it is true that in
politics there are only permanent interests
and no permanent friends or
permanent enemies, it is nevertheless clear that
there is no permanent
interest in Mugabe's 2008 reelection bid. The only
obvious permanent
interest is that the time for Mugabe to go peacefully has
come and he needs
to be told this without fear or favour.
So if there is one sure
thing that Zimbabwe does not need today, it is
Mugabe's presidency. Enough
is enough. Thanks to the adoption of the 18th
constitutional amendment,
Zimbabweans have a wonderful early opportunity to
show Mugabe the exit door
at the polls through a united, patriotic people's
front of nationalist
progressives from across the political divide as the
only real solution to
the Zimbabwean crisis.
Zim Independent
By Trevor
Ncube
WHILE the Zimbabwean crisis is widening and deepening in
every
respect, the continued focus on its description instead of solutions
is
disheartening. Also depressing is the fact that the main protagonists
have
dug themselves into entrenched positions from which they can't get
out.
The current crisis precipitated by President Robert Mugabe's
controversial land seizures in 2000 has seen the government embarking on
destructive policies ostensibly to punish Western governments and their
perceived sympathisers in the country. Zimbabwe is on its knees largely due
to self-inflicted wounds and yet Mugabe and his ruling party won't change
course. However, Zanu PF's ability to remain in power has not been matched
by its ability to resolve the crisis it has inflicted on
Zimbabweans.
In an attempt to deal with President Mugabe's misrule,
the West has
opted for a policy of containment and isolation aimed at
delivering regime
change. In the main, this strategy has focused on
sanctions and denouncing
Mugabe at every given opportunity. This has clearly
failed to achieve the
desired goal of regime change over the past seven
years.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), paralysed by the
suffocating
political playing field, has since abandoned its strategy of
mass action and
decided to engage in negotiations with its enemy. This
appears for the
moment to be the only tool for self-preservation for the
divided and weak
MDC. Confrontation as a strategy to dislodge Zanu PF simply
has not worked,
largely because of repressive legislation and a politically
immature
leadership.
Apart from South Africa's patient quiet
diplomacy, all that has been
tried so far to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis
has not worked and the country
continues to hurtle towards social
destitution and anarchy. The enormity of
the crisis and the human suffering
evident everywhere in Zimbabwe calls for
a fresh and urgent impetus in
resolving the crisis. As the situation
threatens to get out of hand, there
is need for all Zimbabweans, the British
and Americans to realise that it is
time to change strategy.
Indeed it is time for Zanu PF to realise
that it needs the help of the
MDC, all patriotic Zimbabweans and the
international community to untangle
itself from the mess that it has
created. For the sake of long suffering
Zimbabweans, Western governments led
by the UK and the US must acknowledge
the failure of their strategies so far
and change course. A stubborn refusal
to admit failure by Zanu PF, the MDC
and the West will prolong the crisis
and risk anarchy.
South
Africa's policy of engagement or quiet diplomacy promises to
deliver
results. Is this not the strategy all those genuinely seeking an end
to this
crisis pinned their hopes on? While not fully supportive of
President
Mbeki's strategy, I have long maintained that when we look back we
might
find that his policy of choosing to have influence on Zimbabwe by
remaining
engaged was the best option for dealing with President Mugabe.
It
is time for those concerned about the deteriorating situation in
Zimbabwe to
take a leaf from the Chinese whose language depicts the word
crisis with two
characters: one denoting danger and the other representing
opportunity.
Much as the situation in Zimbabwe is replete with
dangers arising from
the political and economic meltdown, the same meltdown
creates opportunities
for change. Sadly,while the dangers have become common
cause, the
opportunities have remained unexamined.
The
following opportunities to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis are now
in the air
and one of them is most likely if not certain to carry the day in
the next
six or nine months depending on the actions of those keen to bring
the rot
to an urgent end.
1. First opportunity
It is common
cause that since the beginning of the year, President
Mugabe has made it
clear that he will seek re-election after his current
term expires in March
2008 when he will be 84 years old. Indeed, he has thus
far been mobilising
various Zanu PF affiliated groups, especially the youth,
women and
liberation war veterans, to support his controversial candidacy.
But how is Mugabe's determination to seek reelection an opportunity
for
change? It seems to me this is also a ploy by him to find what his
supporters have defined as a "dignified exit" - short hand for an exit that
would guarantee him immunity after his departure. An election could end up
as a disaster for him should he be defeated and left without
immunity.
So far, those opposed to Mugabe have responded by merely
condemning
him as being power hungry and determined to remain in office for
life.
However, it is not enough to merely make this observation without also
critically examining the reasons behind his determination.
After 27 years of misrule, 10 of them under an extended Rhodesian
state of
emergency that institutionalised brutality and unaccountability in
Zimbabwe's governance between 1980 and 1990, Mugabe has accumulated too many
human rights skeletons in his political cupboard. This relates in the main
but not only to those skeletons arising from four tragedies that have stood
out over the years, namely Gukurahundi, violent land seizures between 2000
and 2005, murder and disappearance of opposition and civic society activists
and Operation Murambatsvina in 2005.
There is no doubt that
these Zimbabwean tragedies, among others, have
left Mugabe vulnerable and
liable to prosecution on allegations of crimes
against humanity. As such, it
should be obvious that a driving force in his
determination to remain in
office for life is his fear of losing immunity.
His fear has been made even
more real by the experiences of former Liberian
leader Charles Taylor and
former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba, both
facing various prosecutions
related to alleged abuses while in office.
Without condoning his
abuses, I believe Mugabe's immunity fears
provide us an opportunity to
structure and facilitate his exit in a creative
way that would minimise
resistance from him and his supporters in the
security forces.
One possibility in this regard would be to persuade Mugabe to drop his
reelection bid and to accept a guarantee of immunity. Informing this
proposal is the fact that, except for extremists on the fringes of the
opposition and civil society, very few Zimbabweans are interested in taking
vengeance against Mugabe. He is our founding president and many would be
happy to forgive him in exchange for political and economic freedom. And
unless Mugabe is prepared to play the role of a reformer himself, there is
no purpose served by his standing in elections next year.
2.
Second opportunity
I see a second opportunity coming in less than
three months at the
Zanu PF special congress in December. After facing
sustained opposition from
the ruling party faction led by Retired General
Solomon Mujuru, Mugabe has
over the last few months been renewing his
relationship with his former
National Security minister and now Rural
Housing minister Emmerson
Mnangagwa, who leads a competing
faction.
Although he was humiliated and sidelined ahead of the last
Zanu PF
congress in 2004 after losing the party's vice-presidency to Joice
Mujuru,
Mnangagwa has been slowly reemerging as a power base, this time by
lending
his faction's support to Mugabe's reelection bid.
On
his part, Mugabe has been encouraging Mnangagwa by once again
making
indications that he is his chosen successor. An obvious reason for
this is
the presumption that, because he was security minister during the
Gukurahundi massacres, Mnangagwa has similar prosecution fears and would
thus protect Mugabe as a matter of self-interest.
Growing talk
in the Mnangagwa camp, and also from intelligence sources
in Zimbabwe, is
that Mugabe has called for a special congress of his party
in December,
which was not due until 2009, to publicly use it to anoint
Mnangagwa as his
successor.
What remains unclear is whether Mugabe would allow
Mnangagwa to take
over the party leadership in December and move on to be
the Zanu PF
presidential candidate should elections be held in 2008 or
whether Mugabe
would still insist on running for reelection with a promise
that Mnangagwa
would take over a year or two later should Mugabe
win.
However, what is clear is that Mnangagwa's camp prefers the
former,
not least because it does not trust Mugabe to give up power after
the
elections should he win.
The fact that the Mnangagwa camp
does not trust Mugabe, who
unceremoniously ditched it in 2004 in favour of
Joice Mujuru, means that
Mugabe will go to the special congress in December
without assured political
support.
This creates an opportunity
for change through a "soft surprise" at
the special congress as happened in
December 2006 when delegates
"surprisingly" rejected Mugabe's bid to
postpone presidential elections to
2010.
What this means is
that at the December special congress, Mugabe will
be manifestly opposed by
the Mujuru faction and latently by the Mnangagwa
faction. Such a political
climate could pave way for a dark horse to emerge
as a compromise candidate.
It is hard to say who that candidate could be at
the moment although Simba
Makoni's name keeps coming up. Alternatively, the
same political scenario
engendered by opposition from the Mujuru and
Mnangagwa camps could cause
Mugabe to accept the first opportunity described
above.
But the
possibility of a "soft surprise" development at the special
Zanu PF congress
would obviously need to be socially-engineered taking
advantage of clear and
present political dynamics ahead of the congress.
Progressive forces in and
outside Zimbabwe could play a pivotal role to
encourage if not to engineer
that development by working with strategic Zanu
PF elements. That would be
far better than simply mourning about the
deteriorating situation in
Zimbabwe and denouncing Mugabe for wanting to
remain in office for
life.
3. Third opportunity
In addition to the
possibility of a "soft surprise" at the special
Zanu PF congress, there is a
third opportunity that would be in the form of
a "hard surprise" through a
palace coup led by the Mujuru camp.
In recent months, the Mujuru
camp has been making it clear that they
want Mugabe out. Earlier this year
when the Zanu PF central committee was
reported to have endorsed Mugabe's
reelection bid, the Mujuru camp started
openly calling for a special
congress to settle the leadership question in
the ruling party.
The fact that Mugabe has now called for that special congress can be
seen as
a victory for the Mujuru camp. Already, the Mujuru camp is very busy
on the
ground openly organising the 10 Zanu PF provinces and asking them to
identify individuals they think could be presidential candidates to replace
Mugabe.
It seems that the plan is to use the special congress
in December to
achieve two objectives: first to challenge and even humiliate
Mugabe by
making it clear that he is not the sole Zanu PF presidential
candidate as
several provinces would come up with competing names, and,
second to force a
nomination by secret or even open ballot which the Mujuru
camp believes
would be won by either Joice Mujuru or Makoni.
Strategists in Mujuru's camp believe that, should it become clear that
such
a nomination election is imminent, Mugabe would not want to be part of
it as
the writing would then be on the wall about his assured defeat.
The
above three opportunities are all available to the ruling party
and thus
dependent on what happens within it. Yet the Zimbabwean crisis is
national
in scope and options to its resolution are not limited to
developments
within the ruling party.
It should stand to reason that Zanu PF's
continued failure thus far to
resolve the crisis creates an opportunity for
the opposition. Unfortunately,
the Zimbabwean opposition has not been able
to exploit that opportunity due
to a range of structural and leadership
weaknesses that are now well known
and do not need to be repeated, save to
point out that as currently
constituted, the opposition does not have a
chance to move Zimbabwe forward.
In fact, now more than ever before, I am
convinced that an MDC government
would be a complete disaster for
Zimbabwe.
What is notable is that the three opportunities that are
available
within Zanu PF are potent material for a new progressive
opposition with
nationalist and democratic roots. Rather than standing by
and watching
events unfold in Zanu PF, progressive forces in Zimbabwe have
an historic
opportunity to forge a Third Way that would bring together
elements from the
ruling party, the two formations of the MDC, other
opposition groups, civic
society organisations, churches, labour unions,
student movements and the
business community to form a broad-based party to
dislodge Zanu PF. The
fallout between MDC and its civil society supporters
over the 18th
Constitutional Amendment has added impetus to the prospects of
a Third Way.
Mugabe, and indeed Zanu PF, continue to define the
opposition as the
MDC. A major if not the only reason why Mugabe is
determined to stand for
reelection against all odds is that he believes he
cannot lose to the MDC.
He has not factored the possibility of facing a
united front of progressive
forces against which he and Zanu PF cannot
win.
Based on the unfolding developments in Zimbabwe, a united
front could
emerge overnight and take off like an unstoppable
wave.
The major barriers to the actualisation of a united front so
far:
* Identifying a unifying candidate with the leadership
gravitas and
mass appeal across the political divide;
*
Continued support for factions of the MDC by sections of the
international
community that appear to be committed to particular individual
leaders;
and,
* Sweeping, indiscriminate and counterproductive application
of
sanctions against Zanu PF politburo and central committee members as well
as
parliamentarians. I will return to this issue in more detail
later.
There is another opportunity which depends on President
Mugabe's
willingness to take charge of the transitional process and manage
it to
ensure that there is no anarchy post his rule. This would require him
putting the national interest ahead of everything else and managing the
succession issue so as to allow a capable and visionary person to serve
Zimbabwe soon after he steps down.
This could necessitate a
constitutional amendment to allow him to move
to a ceremonial role and
appoint a prime minister to run the government.
This would also give him
protection from prosecution for human rights
abuses. And this could be
accommodated within the dialogue taking place
between Zanu PF and the
MDC.
To ensure the best available skills are in place to help with
the
daunting task of turning around the economy and building a new society,
the
prime minister does not have to be an active member of any party and he
should have access to skills outside the two main political parties to serve
in his government. The names that immediately come to mind are Strive
Masiyiwa, Gideon Gono, Nkosana Moyo and Makoni.
Western
sanctions unwise
The Zimbabwean government has maintained that the
targeted sanctions
imposed by some Western countries after Mugabe's disputed
victory in the
2002 elections are illegal because they do not have the
authority of the
United Nations.
While it is true that the
sanctions in question are not approved by
the UN, that alone does not mean
they are illegal. The countries which have
imposed them have done so in
accordance with their relevant laws. Besides,
there is no international law,
statute, convention or practice that has been
violated by the
sanctions.
Therefore the illegality or legality of the sanctions is
in fact a
non-issue.
The real question is whether these
sanctions are wise or whether they
are achieving any meaningful objective.
My own view is that the sanctions
are not wise and that they have not
achieved any meaningful objective given
the Zimbabwean crisis.
I believe they are not wise mainly because they have led to the
diminishing
of the capacity of the countries implementing them to influence
events in
Zimbabwe towards the much needed resolution of the crisis.
Western
countries that have imposed declared or undeclared sanctions
on Zimbabwe
have done so less to deal with the deteriorating situation in
the country
and more to appease political constituencies at home who want
some
demonstrable action being taken against Mugabe.
Virtually all of
the countries that have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe
have since 2002
experienced a dramatic erosion of their diplomatic influence
in and on
Zimbabwe. Within Zimbabwe, diplomats of these countries have lost
access to
senior ruling party and government officials who have responded by
boycotting diplomatic contact.
Outside Zimbabwe, those
countries are seen as having vested interests
and therefore not impartial
when it comes to understanding and resolving the
Zimbabwean crisis. At
worst, many on the African continent see the sanctions
as a racist response
to land reform in Zimbabwe.
This demonstrates that the sanctions
are not wise and have been
counterproductive.
Despite denials
by the countries that have imposed them, these
sanctions have in fact
affected people beyond those they claim to target.
For example, the United
States Zimbabwe Democracy and Recovery Act (Zidera)
specifically bars
American representatives to the World Bank, the IMF,
Africa Development Bank
and other multilateral institutions from supporting
any loan, grant or
concession to Zimbabwe. This has exacerbated Zimbabwe's
sovereign risk
status and negatively affected a range of bilateral lending
to Zimbabwe
including from the private sector. Zimbabwe has gone without
balance of
payments support for years. The consequences are felt by ordinary
people
across the economy.
As a result, Mugabe and the ruling party
routinely present the
sanctions as the root cause of the country's biting
economic meltdown when
in fact the ruling party's policies are largely to
blame for the current
economic implosion. The opposition and civic society
groups in Zimbabwe have
found this propaganda very difficult if not
impossible to rebut.
Outside Zimbabwe, bodies such as Sadc and the
African Union have found
it extremely difficult to publicly criticise Mugabe
and the policies of his
Zanu PF government precisely because of the fear of
being seen as either
supporting the Western sanctions that are undeniably
affecting ordinary
people or being seen as puppets of the West. These
sanctions have failed to
take advantage of reform opportunities such as
those described above,
including exploiting the growing internal divisions
in the ruling party. On
the contrary, the effect of these sanctions has been
to draw progressive
Zanu PF politicians and officials closer to Mugabe and
away from reform
politics.
An impression has been created that
the only desirable options for the
West revolve around taking tough action
against Mugabe and his cronies
through targeted sanctions, including
preventing Mugabe from attending
global summits such as the EU-Africa summit
planned for Portugal in
December.
This strategy so far appears
to be about isolating Mugabe and his
regime from the international
community.
But as the experiences of Libya, North Korea and Iran
are showing,
isolationist policies have limited if any success. Ultimately,
the best way
of dealing with rogue regimes is by confronting them through
diplomatic
engagement. I must emphasise that there is a world of
difference
between engagement and support.
I therefore believe
that the best that the West can do now is to
re-engage the Zimbabwean
government. While the content of the diplomatic
engagement I am proposing
would obviously vary from country to country, a
leaf can be taken from the
much maligned quiet diplomacy pursued by South
Africa.
I don't
think there is any discerning observer who can argue that
South Africa
uncritically supports the policies of Mugabe and his Zanu PF
government -
far from it.
In 1979 when Britain under Margaret Thatcher abandoned
its aloofness
and decided to become engaged with the frontline states, the
liberation
movements and the Rhodesian government, the result was the
Lancaster House
agreement. The current Zimbabwean crisis calls for a similar
spirit of
engagement and the five opportunities described above could be a
strategic
starting point.
Failure to influence events towards
the achievement of one of the
above options means that we are then resigned
to fate. I have two recurring
nightmares in this regard, namely a
spontaneous uprising by long suffering
Zimbabweans or anarchy that would
follow the untimely death of President
Mugabe while in office.
The first nightmare relates to the fact that the situation in Zimbabwe
right
now is fertile for a revolution except for the absence of a leadership
to
direct people's anger towards something positive.
Life is
unbearable in Zimbabwe and I have no doubt that the
groundswell of anger
could easily burst into open revolt for the smallest of
reasons. This is
undesirable and could result in unimaginable consequences
for Zimbabwe. The
danger with this is that once it starts, a spontaneous
uprising would be
difficult to contain and there is no knowing what the
underpaid and
disgruntled police and military men would do in such
circumstances.
The second nightmare relates to Mugabe's health
and age. In the
absence of a managed transition, I have nightmares about the
impact of
Mugabe's sudden death in office without a clear successor in
place. While
this might sound alarmist, it is a real possibility because
Mugabe is not
exactly a spring chicken and intelligence sources indicate
that he is not
well.
The two factions in Zanu PF would go for
each other hammer and tongs
following Mugabe's sudden death, with a high
possibility of a shooting war.
This is so because the factionalism
in Zanu PF has reproduced itself
in the police, the army and the national
intelligence. In fact these two
dangers emphasise the urgency for bold and
courageous political leadership
internally and from the international
community to help bring about a
peaceful transition.
Conclusion
Zimbabwe is indeed now pregnant with opportunities for
change. For
some of these opportunities to be realised politicians in
Zimbabwe and the
West need to reexamine their entrenched positions. There is
need to
recognise that leadership is about courage, boldness and taking
calculated
risks to achieve a breakthrough.
Instead of
megaphone diplomacy and a fixation with President Mugabe,
the international
community should seek to work with Zanu PF moderates and
all progressive
forces in Zimbabwe to influence change that is rooted in the
historical
ideals of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle.
* Trevor Ncube is
chairman of the Zimbabwe Independent and Standard.
Zim Independent
Comment
AS if to register disapproval of central bank
governor Gideon Gono's
criticism of government's indigenisation policy in
the Mid-Term Monetary
policy statement on Monday, Senate the following day
ratified the
Indigenisation and Empowerment Bill without
amendments.
Gono in his statement cautioned that there was need for
a fine balance
"between the objectives of indigenisation and the need to
attract foreign
investment".
He also revealed that there were
senior government officials who
wanted to attract wealth to themselves in
stark contrast to the spirit of
the legislation. He also said he wanted to
see government moving quickly to
finalise mining legislation to remove the
cloud of uncertainty which has
militated against investment in the
sector.
As Gono implored government to tread cautiously on the
Indigenisation
Bill, President Mugabe had a completely different view on the
issue. In
typical sabre-rattling, Mugabe waved his fist at big business and
threatened
to chase away foreign-owned companies that did not dance to
government's
discordant tune. The senate appeared to listen to Mugabe and
passed the
legislation.
For a long time in his eventful tenure
as governor, Gono has
positioned himself as government's handyman in fixing
the economy. He has
said he represents the interests of his "principals" in
the economic
turnaround exercise. This week he struck a different chord. He
said he was
an advisor and his principals "were at liberty, without offence
or
obligation, to accept in full or in part, or differ wholly or in part
with
such advice."
We have consistently said Gono's policies -
no matter how prudent -
are bound to fail as long as there are no
concomitant changes to the
politics. Of late, Gono has displayed a different
outlook from that of his
principals in charting the turnaround plan. Despite
his attempts to paper
over the cracks, the differences are now too obvious
to miss.
Gono believes in a free market economy in which foreign
direct
investment and protection of property rights are key. His chief
principal
President Mugabe does not share this notion and has made no secret
of it.
President Mugabe is a good student of control politics. He believes
that the
role of government is to superintend over all aspects of life,
notwithstanding the state's incompetence in most areas of
administration.
The differences of opinion between the two were
evident in July when
Gono openly voiced his displeasure at government's
price controls which he
likened to the US invasion of Iraq. He has tried to
downplay these
differences by stating that the rebuke was "merely to urge"
government to
exercise restraint in its dealings with business.
In his monetary statement this week, however, Gono refers to "pricing
madness", a phrase which can be attributed to the high prices which were
charged by industry prior to the July edict. It could also refer to
government's reaction to the high prices and rightly so. Gono on Monday
suggested that the way to go was the revival of the Social Contract through
the Tripartite Negotiating Forum. He set up a fund to help industry restore
production to pre-June 18 levels. This is a loud statement to Mugabe to say
"look at how you have killed this economy".
The dissonance
between Mugabe's threatening airport speech and Gono's
mollifying
pronouncements at the Conference Centre on Monday can only raise
one key
question of whether Gono still carries the brief of President Mugabe's
government in the arduous task of mending this economy. Gono has said he
should not be printing money to subsidise industrialists and farmers but is
being forced to do so because of politics.
He says he would
prefer to be cocooned in his office than stick out
his neck on key policy
issues the way he did this week. He is more visible
because there are people
in government who are sleeping on the job.
Gono this week basked in
the limelight where he gathered business
people to applaud his interventions
and at the same time rapped the knuckles
of truant government ministers.
This was a show of strength which advertised
a message to the nation that he
is a better alternative to the Zanu PF
masters of chaos. Through QFAs he has
come up with a parallel budget which
could be larger than Finance minister
Samuel Mumbengegwi's supplementary
estimates announced last month. He is
running his own sideshow.
As his intermittent interventions
continue to fail, he appears to be
developing an independence which could
make him a threat rather than an ally
of the strong and famous in the Zanu
PF government. Perhaps his statement
this week was mere bluff and he will
come out in full support of price
controls and the Indigenisation
Bill!
Zim Independent
Candid Comment
By Dumisani Muleya
LAST week's shock street
protests in Burma (also known as Myanmar)'s
largest city, Rangoon, led by
Buddhist monks, drew up to 100 000 people and
signalled mounting resistance
to the paranoid dictator, General Than Shwe's
military rule. The
demonstrations were reminiscent of last year's mass
action against Nepalese
King Gyanendra's absolute rule.
However, the protests, triggered by
fuel price increases in Burma,
were ruthlessly crushed by security forces
who raided monasteries, imposed
curfews and killed at least 10
people.
The Naypyidaw military junta created a pervasive climate of
terror in
the country to quell the protests. Its marauding shock-troops
stormed houses
and apartments in the dead of night to intimidate, arrest,
beat up and
detain protesters as Shwe - "the Bulldog" - viciously hung
tough.
This forced the United Nations to dispatch its envoy Ibrahim
Gambari
to meet Shwe and the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, in
Naypyidaw,
Burma's new jungle capital, in a bid to halt the bloody military
crackdown.
Burma and Nepal are extremely repressive societies, but
their people
are still able to stand up and confront their regimes head-on
in an attempt
to end their military and monarchical tyrannies to bring
democracy.
However, as Zimbabweans, wallowing in horrific political
and economic
conditions, and mostly living in the dark because of acute
power outages,
without water, basic essential goods, and being brutalised
for dissent, we
are not able to mount even a token challenge in the streets
to demonstrate
our disgruntlement with President Robert Mugabe's
regime.
The best we can do is shout from a distance and condemn the
government
from the comfort (or is it discomfort?) of our homes, offices and
bars.
Most people, except a few bold pressure groups largely led by
women
and student activists, are only vocal in the bars and in the media.
Their
daily moans and groans over beer and such other social hobbies are
awfully
loud, but on the ground they always choose to do nothing about their
misery.
Opposition leaders are also very vocal when addressing
rallies and
conferences, but shirk responsibility when it comes to active
resistance.
In terms of narrating and describing their crisis,
Zimbabweans are
very articulate, but in proffering viable solutions, they
are usually
incoherent or simply unconvincing.
Our pooled
energies are often consumed in pointless arguments - not
about political
parties' policies and programmes as it should be - but
personalities and
other idle pursuits. Public debates that used to be quite
enlightening are
now mostly abusive and about digging in to entrenched
positions or pursuing
partisan agendas. They are no longer informative at
all. Even the media and
intellectuals have fallen into this trap. The whole
thing has almost become
a way of life for us to a point of being somewhat
exasperating or comical,
depending on one's reaction.
Our approach to politics and political
debate as a nation is wrong;
wrong and misguided. It's generally
anachronistic. That's why some people,
including professors and political
scientists, in this day and age, still
argue with straight faces in public
that certain politicians cannot become
presidents simply because of their
ethnicity or lower education status.
This, if truth be told, is a primitive
instinct.
The biggest question confronting us now is: what is to be
done to
rescue ourselves from this misery? Unless we are able to practically
demonstrate our discontent with this regime, outsiders could be justified in
thinking that we are generally content with Mugabe's rule. After all, they
say, people get the government they deserve.
Why are
Zimbabweans unwilling or unable to face up to this despotic
regime which
they created? They either run away to other countries, duck and
dive or
suffer in silence. Is it because we are docile, cowardly, peaceful,
or none
of the above?
Is it because of our acquiescent political culture,
lack of political
and civic mobilisation or is it a legacy of de facto one
party state
politics?
Outsiders are currently watching with
dismay as we whine and grumble,
but do nothing in the end. Crucial elections
are coming next year, just see
what happens. Mugabe is likely to win again
until he is tired of ruling.
With the MDC at sixes and sevens and
inadvertently helping Zanu PF in its
self-preservation project, what can we
honestly expect?
We have repeatedly heard, especially from the MDC
and its supporters,
the now rather stale arguments about repression,
patronage and electoral
rigging. Is this the main reason why Mugabe is still
in power? Are we not
collectively responsible for that by acts of
commission, omission or both?
At least the monks in Burma are
trying under more difficult
conditions, but what are we doing?
Zim Independent
Editor's Memo
By Vincent Kahiya
ZIMBABWEANS have learnt to
derive comic relief from the crisis
besetting this nation. Idle but lively
banter around a dinner table on
Monday brought out this nugget from a senior
PR practitioner who had
listened thoughtfully to the perils of trying to
obtain a birth certificate
from the RG's office.
The graying
publicist suggested that the best form of contraception
these days is the
horror of trying to register the birth of a newly-born
child.
There was raucous laughter around the table as the men contemplated
the
impact of Tobaiwa Mudede's queues on the nation's reproductive
health.
Try to tell this to central bank governor Gideon Gono whose
crisis
children are increasing as queues get longer in
Zimbabwe.
From the long food queues, a new crisis baby arrived
safely this week
amid pomp and ceremony. The baby, christened Bacossi, was
feted by business
and commentators on Monday as a great product of the
governor's exertions.
Bacossi is third in a crisis-riven family
where siblings, Aspef and
Plarp, are already proving difficult to look after
because of their constant
demands for financial resources which the family
can scarcely afford.
The conception and birth of the third child -
done with so much ease -
is no surprise for a country that has not struggled
to produce chaos and
celebrate it as success.
Baby Bacossi is a
facet of this chaos hewn from the loins of our
governor (apologies to
George). The Italian accent to the name has nothing
to do with the child's
full name: Basic Commodities Supply-Side
Intervention.
This is
a grand project through which the governor expects to
re-finance business so
that there is food and other basket goods in the
shops.
There
are stunning similarities between Bacossi and siblings
Agricultural
Productivity Enhancement Facility, better known as Aspef and
the Parastatals
and Local Authorities Re-orientation Programme, shortened to
Plarp.
As Bacossi was introduced to his brothers this week, he
found that
like them, he was conceived in the backroom of quasi-fiscal
activities.
He was also told that the two poor brothers are fed on
a soporific
diet of worthless paper spewed from a printing press hence their
insatiability.
They were born to be agents of positive change
in the economy but they
have become harbingers of economic collapse,
inflation and, more
importantly, corruption.
One feels sorry
for the children because their creator Gono this week
said under normal
circumstances, it would be unnecessary to have these kids
around. So why
have them?
In his monetary policy statement on Monday, Gono said
"no central bank
governor likes government overspending . subsidised credit
or any form of
generalised subsidies to the economy except those targeted to
cushion the
vulnerable poor. We do not like them either."
He
said his extraordinary "interventions are never meant to be
permanent
features of our economic lives" but believes that they are
necessary.
Considering the extent of the crisis, Bacossi could be having a
young
brother soon!
This knight in shining armour strategy of running the
economy has
produced undisputed failure.
It was the government
which killed agriculture through inept policies
and an assault on property
rights.
The same government has for three years been posturing as
the saviour
of agriculture by dishing out cheap loans under
Aspef.
Despite $3,9 trillion having been disbursed to new farmers,
Zimbabwe
is still far from food self-sufficiency.
In fact the
Manica Post reported two weeks ago that the country needs
US$900 million
this year to import food.
The story is no different in local
authorities and parastatals which
despite assistance have failed to provide
basic amenities and services such
as electricity and water.
Municipalities and state enterprises are in this state because of
direct
unprofessional interference from government which believes it can run
everything - from a blair toilet at a growth point to sophisticated mining
ventures.
The government has to learn to issue birth
certificates first!
Bacossi has now come into being because
government deliberately
suffocated industry through price controls imposed
three months ago.
Gono, to great applause this week, has come up
with a facility to
restore companies' viabilities to pre-June 18
levels.
In other words, Gono is telling government that price
controls savaged
the economy so much that a special purpose vehicle is now
required to
restore it to the levels when there was no policy. It is the
policy stupid!
Sometimes I feel that the governor enjoys this
crisis baby-making
process. He missed dabbling in QFAs and with it the
pleasure of making
babies. By the way, what happened to
Fiscorp?
But QFAs have now been restored. Daddy vaBacossi is
fortunate that he
does not need to queue for hours to have the birth
registered at Market
Square because his children are temporary
beings.
Zim Independent
MuckRaker
RESERVE Bank governor Gideon Gono has
urged caution in the fevered
minds of those seeking to get rich overnight
through indigenisation. He said
there were greedy individuals who are
well-connected and want to amass
wealth in the banking sector in an
"irresponsible manner".
He said while indigenisation was a noble
idea "our well-considered
advice to legislators and government in general is
that a fine balance
should be struck between the objectives of
indigenisation and the need to
attract foreign investment".
This was a sharp rebuke to the misguided rhetorical exuberance of
people
like Indigenisation minister Paul Mangwana who only last week was
telling
companies which were not happy with government policies to leave
Zimbabwe.
With ministers like this, do we really need foreign sanctions,
declared or
otherwise?
In the same vein, Gono also complained that legislation
about local
shareholding in companies involved in mining was taking too
long, in the
process causing a lot of anxiety and uncertainty in the
sector.
"It is an unforgivable sin that as Zimbabweans we are
running short of
foreign exchange yet our economy has a vast potential to
amass mountains of
it through investment attraction and exporting," said
Gono.
Unfortunately such exhortation runs at cross purposes with
the
rantings of the likes of Mangwana who appear to think foreign currency
can
be earned by simply chasing away companies which express inconvenient
truths
about government's haphazard policies.
Finally on
Gono, a quotable quote from your governor. He said some
turnaround policies
were sabotaged by "our planners, decision-makers and
implementers" of those
policies. "Often our good intentions and programmes
are bungled at the
implementation stage, by resorting to excessive emotions
and selfishness
where soberness, brains, experience and expertise is best
needed and for
that we must shoulder part of the blame for our current state
of
affairs."
Well said. But at that same time his principal was
telling villagers
and war veterans at Harare international Airport that
government would take
over firms accused of "profiteering". It's indeed a
tough balancing act for
business.
By the way there is a whole
Minister for Policy Implementation, Cde
Gono. What does Webster Shamu spend
his time doing?
So Vice-President Joseph Msika believes he is
indispensable? Last week
he told a function hosted by Mimosa Mining Company
that he would not quit
politics until he dropped dead.
"I will
soldier on until the day I am buried in my grave," Msika told
what must have
been a bemused audience. "I will never renege on the duties
and tasks that
the people of Zimbabwe have mandated me to do and as long as
they continues
to support me, I will be there."
We found this strange given that
Msika hasn't stood in any national
election since the signing Unity Accord
between PF-Zapu and Zanu PF in 1987.
Which people gave him this life-long
mandate, we wonder? What virtues is he
teaching the youth by telling them
that dying in office is a positive thing?
Meanwhile, war
veterans are in denial about President Mugabe's
advanced age. Zimbabwe
National Liberation War Veterans Association leader
Jabulani Sibanda told
war veterans in Chinhoyi last week that there were
people being influenced
to believe that President Mugabe was now too old to
rule.
"In
Mugabe we are not looking for a runner because we already have
Samukeliso
Moyo and Tendai Chimusasa. We are also not looking for a
footballer because
we have them already," said Sibanda.
"What we need is the
revolutionary spirit in him to lead us," he said.
Sibanda said the special
congress set for the end of the year was a mere
formality to endorse Mugabe
to represent the party in next year's
presidential election.
Is
Sibanda aware that Chimusasa has since retired from the track? It
is true
that we do not need the president to don shorts, a vest and sneakers
neither
do we want him to be an obstacle on the race track.
We can only
draw two conclusions from this: that Mugabe must be a very
bad teacher if
his admirers have not mastered his art after all these years,
or that he is
dealing with very slow learners who still want an octogenarian
to provide
them with leadership.
President Mugabe clearly has not forgiven
white rulers of Rhodesia for
the years he spent in jail despite claims about
the policy of national
reconciliation.
In his address at the
United Nations General Assembly last week,
President complained bitterly
about the 11 "precious years of my life in the
jail of a white man whose
freedom and wellbeing I have assured and protected
from the first day of
Zimbabwe's Independence".
He said Ian Smith was responsible for the
death of 50 000 Zimbabweans
yet he was a free man.
"I meet his
victims every day, yet he walks free. He farms freely. He
has a farm of over
500 hectares. He talks freely, associates freely under a
black government,"
he said.
Smith might be free but we doubt that at his advanced age
he still
does any farming which Mugabe is talking about. In any case, there
is
information that Smith has been living in South Africa for at least five
years for health reasons because health delivery has all but collapsed in
this country.
And why does Mugabe think it is only Ian Smith
who should speak and
walk freely but not the rest of Zimbabweans whom he
claims to have
liberated? That is hypocrisy of the worst type. Or is it
true, as reported
in this paper last week, that the president is often
misinformed by those
around him?
Talking about free
movement, Munyaradzi Huni, who was part of press
corps accompanying Mugabe,
reported about a demonstration in support of
President Mugabe by the
December 12 Movement in New York. As expected, the
delusional Sister Viola
Plummer led the crowd which called for regime change
in Washington, not in
Harare.
Huni said the demonstrators were strutting outside the
United Nations
headquarters "to the amazement of UN police officers who were
watching from
a distance".
We have no doubt that it was Huni
himself who was amazed that police
could watch demonstrators from a distance
instead of bashing their skulls as
happens so often back home.
Let the gorgon called Sister Viola come and try to demonstrate against
Mugabe in Zimbabwe and she will have a good tale to narrate back in America
about her hero.
While Sister Viola can freely demonstrate
against President Bush and
carry the Zimbabwean flag on the streets of New
York, such a crime is
unimaginable in Zimbabwe.
Still in
New York, there was a bizarre story in the Herald in which
Information
minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu complained that CNN and the BBC had
committed an
offence by not broadcasting in full President Mugabe's address
at the
UN.
"The so-called champions of press freedom, CNN and BBC, cut the
live
broadcast when the president was hitting hard, full throttle, with a
volley
of intellectual punches left, right and centre," gushed Ndlovu in a
statement.
He said "billions of viewers" had been deprived of
the president's
speech which had sent President Bush scampering for
cover.
"Bush was given full coverage to demonise our president and
our nation
but our president was not given equal time to defend himself and
his
country," fumed Ndlovu.
Wasn't it the duty of ZBC to give
Mugabe full coverage? Why should CNN
and BBC waste their resources on Mugabe
when they are barred from operating
in Zimbabwe?
Oh! The
bumbling fellows at Pockets Hill. The other day throughout the
evening
bulletin they kept on talking about an ACP-AU meeting to take place
in
Portugal in December, blissfully unaware of the difference. So mundane,
yet
so taxing for Judith Makwanya.
An unexpected and sudden
decision by the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change to join Zanu PF in
passing Constitutional Amendment (18)
Bill seems to have thrown civic
society organisations into disarray.
They have been clamouring for
a say in the ongoing talks between Zanu
PF and the MDC, and have approached
the facilitator, South African president
Thabo Mbeki, for a space at the
negotiating table. Each time they have found
the doors bolted from
within.
The side agreement between the two main political parties
on the
amendment must have hit them like a bolt from the blue. Some of their
leaders have been inconsolable ever since, accusing their erstwhile allies
in the trenches against President Mugabe of "betrayal" and "selling out" on
the "sacrosanct" demand for a new constitution.
While Muckraker
appreciates the NGO sector's concerns about
compromising on a matter of
principle, we must confess to sensing more
self-interest than an attempt to
resolve the debilitating national crisis
which has made most of their
members fabulously rich while the poor they
claim to speak for are getting
poorer by the day.
They have also compromised their otherwise noble
advocacy role by
aligning themselves with the MDC. What role do they play
once Zanu PF loses
power and the MDC is voted in if they cannot separate
themselves from its
policies?
In any case it was always naïve
of them to imagine a political crisis
such as Zimbabwe faces could be
resolved without compromise and
accommodation, unless they have the means to
militarily get Zanu PF out of
power.
Why does Tafataona
Mahoso think that we were supposed to have
presidential elections in
2010?
In his column in The Voice this week, Mahoso claimed the
solidarity
which Zimbabwe received from recent Sadc summits in Dar es Salaam
and Lusaka
"helped to convince the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
to accept
Constitutional Amendment 18 and to bring presidential elections
forward from
2010 to 2008".
Is adding six to 2002 such a
difficult mathematical task for the Zanu
PF dinosaur or does he assume we
are all dead dumb?
The truth is that it was President Mugabe who
wanted to extend his
term of office by two years to 2010 without having to
face an angry
electorate. The proposition was rejected by his own party in
Goromonzi. It's
all in the public domain.
Zim Independent
By Eric Bloch
THE extent to
which the Zimbabwean government is bent on the absolute
destruction of the
country's economy and thereby the total annihilation of
the Zimbabwean
population, knows no boundary. For 10 years, without any let
or reason, it
has embarked on one economically cataclysmic measure after
another. In most
instances it has done so in complete disregard of the
authoritative warnings
given as to the dire consequences of those measures.
Without fail
it has cavalierly dismissed and disregarded those
warnings. So pronouncedly
has it ignored or rejected all good-faith
expressed concerns and cautions as
to the dire consequences of its actions,
actual and intended, and as
contemptuously been insensitive to the
never-ending catastrophes created by
it, that one must inevitably believe
that the utter ruination of the economy
is its determined objective.
Government's first major endeavour at
economic annihilation was 10
years ago, when it succumbed to the demands and
pressures of the war
veterans for compensation for services rendered during
the liberation
struggle.
Whether or not they were deserving of
compensation is irrelevant, the
harsh fact is that Zimbabwe could not afford
the compensation payments. This
was especially so as the amount required was
severely inflated by the
numbers of the claimants being massively swollen by
thousands who had never
been engaged in that struggle.
Numerous
pretenders were included as recipients of the compensation
packages,
including many who, when Independence was attained had not even
been
conceived!
The consequences of government surrendering to the
demands, threats
and near-blackmail of the compensation claimants included
an immediate
collapse in the value of the Zimbabwean dollar, it losing
almost 75% of its
value in a matter of hours.
That currency
devaluation immediately fueled inflation because
Zimbabwe is a very
import-dependant country. The devaluation drove the
landed costs of the
imports upwards.
Although the economic prejudice was immense, it
did not suffice to
destruct the entirety of the economy. Government
strategists cast their eyes
about the economy, and recognised that
agriculture was the foundation and
mainstay of that economy. Determined on
economic destruction, whilst seeing
opportunities for major political gains,
the government embarked upon an
ill-conceived, ill-managed, foolhardy and
apocalyptic programme of land
reform.
It is indisputable that
land reform was necessary and overdue, but not
in a manner that almost
completely destroyed agriculture, and thereby also
the economy and the
Zimbabwean people.
Government displaced the agriculturally skilled
and productive and
failed even to replace them with others with like
attributes.
Instead, most of the lands of the dispossessed farmers
were allocated
to those in high political favour, to relatives and friends
of those in
power, and most lacked either the skills, or the resources, or
the will, to
use the lands with levels of productivity commensurate to those
previously
attained.
Zimbabwe's economic foundation was rapidly
severely shaken and
cracked, but government dogmatically ignored that it,
and its actions, were
the cause thereof. Instead, it fabricated allegations
that Britain had
reneged on its Lancaster House undertakings, and so
promulgated the
allegations that the majority of the population, and much of
Africa, soon
unreservedly believed them.
Concurrently, it
blamed adverse climatic conditions to excess,
mismanaged the sourcing and
timeous availability of essential agricultural
inputs, and to all intents
and purposes facilitated the vandalisation and
destruction of much of
agriculture's infrastructure. Moreover, it failed to
honour Bilateral
Investment Protection Agreements, thereby destroying
Zimbabwe's
international repute and creditworthiness.
As the economy's decline
intensified, government continuously assured
the ongoing economic collapse
by profligate spending far beyond its means,
thereby fuelling inflation and
compounding the accelerating economic
collapse.
It reinforced
those destructive actions by forcing the central bank to
engage in
quasi-fiscal activities, by turning a blind eye to world-eclipsing
levels of
corruption, by steadfast rejection of recovery-directed advices of
the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, African Development Fund
(ADB), and many others. Instead, it adopted an intensive confrontation
campaign against them, and against all of Europe, much of the Commonwealth,
USA, and others. It flaunted a "Look East" policy which yielded little, and
it forfeited the support of the well-disposed international community which
could have enabled restoration of economic wellbeing.
Unable to
admit to its absolute culpability, it then invented the myth
of "illegal
international sanctions". To such extent as sanctions exist
there is nothing
illegal about them, for there is no law which bars
sanctions, and no law
which compels trade, investment or the rendition of
aid. For a period of
time the populace of Zimbabwe believed the sanctions
fable, but increasingly
it is recognising that government is the underlying
cause of Zimbabwe's
economic ills.
Therefore, to placate the aggrieved, oppressed,
suffering people of
Zimbabwe, whilst concurrently furthering their
unadmitted intent of total
economic destruction, and simultaneously
fulfilling their political
objectives, Zimbabwe's government is now pursuing
a policy of indigenisation
and economic empowerment.
It is
legislating that not less than a 51% controlling interest of all
businesses
operating for gain must be owned by indigenous Zimbabweans. As
with the
ill-fated, disastrous land reform programme, so too a programme to
achieve
substantial indigenous economic empowerment.
But that is not
attainable by expropriating from the rich to
redistribute to the poor,
thereby temporarily making the poor rich, and
making the rich poor. Instead,
the programmes should be targeted at a dual
facilitation of economic growth
and development of indigenous participation
therein.
Instead,
government has driven a near-final nail in the coffin of both
foreign direct
investment and of domestic investment. None are prepared to
invest when they
are threatened with investment insecurity, and to the
vulnerability of being
subject to third party control, and even more so if
there is not even
assurance of just and fair compensation, or of respect for
investment
protection agreements.
There is grave demoralisation of the
existing owners of businesses,
both foreign and domestic, exacerbated by
numerous confrontational and
racist comments by the Zimbabwean political
hierarchy, repercussing very
negatively upon business operations.
Furthermore, government's timing is
exceptionally inept, with a majority of
existing business enterprises
teetering on the precipice of collapse as a
result of the hare-brained and
thoughtless price controls of the last three
months, the non-availability of
exports, the non-availability of foreign
exchange, the collapsing
infrastructure of Zesa, Zinwa, NRZ and other
parastatals, and much else.
Circus travels to entertain New Yorkers
By Baba
vaDanai
WELCOME once again to the Zimbabwean circus featuring
His Excellency
whose UN New York Summit speech yielded nothing as usual,
apart from
boosting his ego against the Blairs and the Bushes. By the way,
his
vitriolic tentacles have spread to Gordon Brown.
As
Zimbabweans grapple with the daily challenges of life, many thought
President Mugabe would grab the chance to express to the world the crisis
that we are in, as well as rally international assistance. But no! He always
has other plans in his mind.
Through isolation and alienation
from the realities facing the common
man in the street, he instead chose to
once again spit venom at the
Westerners, so reactionary that many were left
wondering whether Zimbabwe
would ever benefit from fora of such magnitude by
throwing tantrums each
time, rather than articulate our problems to the
outside world.
That Zimbabwe needs the world and not otherwise is
beyond doubt.
People are moving around hungry, they cannot find food in
shops, let alone
afford other basics with their meagre
earnings.
A trained high school teacher is earning $120 000 a day
which is not
even enough for a return trip to town from the nearest suburb.
With
examinations around the corner, pupils find schools with no teachers
each
day. No one up there seems to bother as their children are not
affected.
We really need help pronto, and that is reality. We do
not feed on
sovereignty. We need food on our tables, good health and
education above
lots of other things we have lost along the
way.
The very day our President jetted in from his "successful"
trip, RBZ
governor Gideon Gono was presenting his monetary policy. It was
interesting
to note that the concoction propounded by Gono pulls in the
opposite
direction to that dished earlier by His Exellency at the airport as
he
addressed those "Hararians" who were there to welcome him.
I
feel pity indeed for Gono. He has brilliant ideas for a sound
turn-around
strategy in the midst of our challenges. Yet the political
landscape cannot
allow his panacea.
* Baba vaDanai writes from Waterfalls,
Harare.
---------
Forced to become drunkards
RESERVE Bank governor, Gideon Gono, recently alluded to the view that
Zimbabweans may have become a nation of drunkards.
Naturally
there is at least a bi-dimensional aspect to this perhaps
truthful
contention.
Never mind the local presently controlled price of
various forms of
liquor, Gono may have suppressed or overlooked why and
where his assertion
may actually be true, as those affected may at sometime
soberly reveal.
There are those that may sometimes engage in liquor
to temporality
escape from persecutory evil and deprivation.
Repeated history has shown that where persecution, victimisation,
asset
theft, torture, human rights violations, subjugation, imposed grand
suffering, deprivation and poverty, and where other abuses persist, victims
sometimes resort to survival escapism to further and later deal with the
realities of being consequential of imposed wickedness.
Despair
may at sometime overcome normally sane and sober persons who
have had their
aspirations, futures, assets and their lifetime endeavours
stolen or
destroyed by malicious Zanu PF rendered opposition eliminators, or
by their
fellow racist plundering louts and thieves such as seen in the now
polarised
army and police forces.
Since Gono and his "brothers" have now at
last been formally
black-listed as Zanu PF enabling and beneficial beings by
the civilised
world, it appears that he has now come out of his once
purported "sanity
facilitating closet" and now more than ever vigorously
condones the evil and
retrogressive conduct of his masters.
There are many of those in power circles who feast and enjoy the
fruits of
their criminal evils as enabled by being state-protected crooks
and
looters.
Naturally, this is a pre-conspired component of Zanu PF's
sometimes
openly declared anti-indigenous ethnic cleansing and looting
missions that
Didymus Mutasa will have severe difficulty in
denying.
To be considered is that the ever-extremely desirous
wealthy crooks
enabled by Zanu PF shamelessly banquet, booze, spend and
celebrate from
wealth and assets stolen from their purported but vulnerable
enemies and
from
their sponsors as fronted or articulated by the
many corrupt,
compliant or from their incompetent United Nations cohorts,
and/or their
mystified but envious South African ANC
collaborators.
Zanu PF comrades have no fear of being found drunk
in charge of a
road-transporter, killing a child with a vehicle whilst
inebriated (such as
a certain protected police spokesperson recently did),
or writing off
several fancy state supplied imported luxury vehicles whilst
being uncharged
for being truly substance abuse intoxicated.
The good news is that Zanu PF comrades are known to have a continuous
deficit regarding proper rational intelligence and values as measured by
proven civilised values that actually have made the substantial outside
progressive world really work and prosper.
That many of them
seem to be further handicapped by often being
overcome and further mentally
deranged by substance abuses will make it much
easier to see them off to
oblivion and due prosecution sooner rather than
later.
Globally
and locally, it has not gone unnoticed that certain Zanu PF
comrade chefs
(including Gono) have inexplicable and shameless wealth.
The time
will soon come when full disclosure and accountability will
be
required.
Tutisani,
Highlands,
Harare.
-------------
We don't need half
measures
THE recent Monetary Policy statement by the RBZ governor,
Gideon Gono
refers. Perusing through the statement, I could not help but
think that Gono
is merely describing a new set of measures designed to
bolster our misery.
What struck me as odd was his blatant and yet
ironical diatribe, that
because we are "living in extraordinary times",
therefore "extraordinary
measures are needed".
What a load of
drivel! Gono, the game is not about survival, it is
about getting the
economic fundamentals right!
For how long shall we continue to live
through these tepid, half-baked
"measures?"
We do not want
"measures", we need a comprehensive economic plan, one
that is realistic and
attainable. You cannot continue disguising knee-jerk
measures and call them
policies.
Indeed, these are extraordinary times Gono. May I suggest
that you
take off all the zeros in our currency and while you at it, license
the
"mini central banks".
At least they are putting their money
where their mouths are (no pun
intended).
It has become
abundantly clear that these monetary statements are just
a cheap ruse to
pacify an increasingly restive populace.
Joseph
Mhlanga,
Dublin, Ireland.
-------------
It is
no longer a 'white' problem
I HAVE followed Zimbabwe's political
history since you were Rhodesia
when your government was headed by (white)
PM, Ian Smith.
I would not presume to judge the relative merits and
faults of
President Robert Mugabe's government and that of
Smith.
As a matter of curiosity, would you dare to undertake an
objective
comparison between Rhodesia, then, and Zimbabwe, now? What were
the personal
risks a journalist and editors were exposed to then, by
printing the truth
compared to the risks run by journalists
today?
How, in God's name, can Mugabe justify the absence of infant
formulae
on the market shelves?
Is it "racist" for a white
journalist to call government questioning
the chaotic conditions prevailing
in Zimbabwe today? Were black children
starving in white ruled
Rhodesia?
How can President Mugabe justify his refusal to release
thousands of
metric tonnes of maize-meal, milled in the United States from
the surpluses
of harvests, and donated to Zimbabwe, through the good offices
of the United
Nations? That is the staple food of the people of
Zimbabwe.
Now, Mr Mugabe sir, it is no longer an excuse that whites
are the
causative factor of your problems.
Richard
Buchanan,
rbuchanan@neb.rr.com
-----------
Please help, we are suffering
WE are appealing to you the
authorities that in our opinion as
commuters it is better to have passenger
transport than not to have. It has
been difficult for us to commute to and
from our workplaces especially
during these days of the blitz on kombi
operators.
Most of the time we hear the kombi industry workers
confessing that
they are not accessing the cheap fuel and if that is the
case, we think it
is not fair to expect them to charge the gazzetted fares
since the transport
business operation should be
self-sustaining.
When we do not have adequate passenger transport
we the commuters
suffer and risk losing our jobs and income. Please enable
us to go to and
from our workplaces because there are not many alternatives
for some of us
in this economy.
Some of the commuters are
students and should arrive at schools on
time to avoid missing
classes.
Sometimes they are delayed to the extent of missing
classes such that
they end up with no value for their fees. Again on the way
home some of the
students are failing to get home on time such that it is
difficult to get
assignments done.
Previously it was just the
power cuts that affected the ability of the
students to do assignments but
now the problem is being compounded by
transport problems that make them
spend hours in queues. By the time
students get home they are tired from the
waiting.
The other problem is that when the kombis are few on the
road, the law
of supply and demand operates such that you find some private
motorists
taking advantage of our plight by charging fares that are above
what the
kombis are currently charging us.
So please we ask the
responsible minister to try and keep as many
kombis as possible on the road
so that the law of supply and demand will
keep the fares within sustainable
levels. We think it is better to have the
kombis charging the current fares
than not to have them at all.
Desperate commuter,
By email.
------------
Pushing us the Burma way
ZESA is slowly pushing us to go the Burma way.
I would like through
your paper to ask the Zesa public relations
department what it
does.
We are tired of all these power outages that we are not being
properly
informed about.
In Chitungwiza, especially the Seke
area, electricity is cut off at
04:30am only to be reconnected at midnight
when we are all asleep.
This has been going on for about three
weeks now so I would like to
ask whether this is load-shedding or something
else.
People are really frustrated. One of these fine days
Burma-like
protests will break out.
John
Chipanga,
Chitungwiza.
-------------
Let's have
Gono for president!
WHAT an extraordinary man we have in the Reserve
Bank governor!
Did you hear or read his latest speech on the
delayed mid-term
monetory policy?
Zimbabwe can hardly afford
not to have Gideon Gono for president.
With him at the helm, we
will not just have a one-party state, but a
one-man show! Just think of all
the precious taxpayers' money that will be
saved. We won't need any minister
of finance anymore, nor ministers of
agriculture, mines, commerce or
industry.
We probably won't need a cabinet at all, as he obviously
can run the
whole country single-handedly.
No more apologies
will be required for his quasi-fiscal policies, as
they will automatically
become the real thing - plain fiscal policies.
Gono can most likely
do without a senate, and will probably scrap
parliament too, thus saving
even more money as instead of the one hundred or
so rubber stamps that are
presently in use he will only need one - himself.
An extraordinary
man indeed!
Man-date, Bulawayo.