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Statement by Prime Minister Rt Hon Morgan Tsvangirai
STATEMENT BY THE PRIME
MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF ZIMBABWE AND PRESIDENT OF THE MDC RT HON MORGAN R
TSVANGIRAI
7 OCTOBER
2010
Ladies and
Gentlemen, it is with some sadness that I have to make a statement today about
the state of this transitional Government.
It relates to the Constitution and Sovereignty of Zimbabwe, and the
principles of democracy for which my Party and I stand for. The MDC utterly
rejects the notion of one-party or one-man rule.
The MDC utterly rejects any suggestion that power is an entitlement
through historical legacy, or that power is a God-given right of an individual
or individuals.
The MDC firmly believes that political leaders
should only serve and act on the basis of a mandate of the people. Lest we forget. The MDC was given that mandate
on March 29, 2008, when the people of Zimbabwe clearly rejected the notion of
one-Party and one-man rule. That mandate
was to govern on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe.
Nevertheless, in September 2008, I signed an agreement, allowing for the
formation of a joint transitional government with those Parties which the people
had rejected. I did so for several reasons that I outlined at the time. Not
least, I did so to try to help end the needless suffering of the people of
Zimbabwe which had been inflicted on them by the failed and corrupt policies and
abuses of the previous regime.
I signed this
agreement when the whole world was sceptical about the wisdom of working with Mr
Mugabe. The world questioned his sincerity. They questioned his integrity and
his ability to respect an agreement with anyone. They pointed to the abuses of
power over a great many years. They pointed to the fact that he had reappointed
himself President, in breach of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, and in defiance of
the will of the Zimbabwean people. I shared their concerns but as a leader and
for the sake of this country and the security and welfare of our citizens, I
took a leap of faith and I signed the agreement.
I was
prepared to work with Mr Mugabe to allow him to address the mistakes of the
past, and to help him to rebuild his legacy. This is why, despite the challenges
that I have faced in working with him, I have repeatedly said that whilst our
relationship was not perfect, it was workable. This was meant to encourage Mr
Mugabe to right the wrongs of the past. However, the events of the past few
months have left me sorely disappointed in Mr Mugabe, and in his betrayal of the
confidence that I and many Zimbabweans have personally invested in him.
Ladies and
Gentlemen, when the MDC formed this Government with others, we did so on the
basis of clear and public assurances that Mr Mugabe and his Party would now
respect and abide by the principles of democracy.
That they would now respect the freedoms of the individual. That they now understood that politicians should
govern for the people and not for themselves.
That they now accepted that the mandate to govern comes from a free
expression of democratic will, not from a God-given right or from a campaign of
violence and intimidation. I was prepared for the sake of our country to sit
alongside my yesteryear’s enemies and tormentors to rebuild a stable and
democratic country.
Ladies and
Gentlemen, on Monday I met Mr Mugabe and DPM Mutambara to discuss the
implications of the resolutions of the SADC Windhoek summit. The Troika’s report
to the summit stressed the importance of the freedom to express political views,
and of free and fair elections. It stressed that there was no place for violence
in any democratic process in any democratic country… and least of all
state-condoned or state-orchestrated violence.
Ladies and
Gentlemen, in this respect, ZANU PF has sorely disappointed us all in the
conduct of the constitutional outreach meetings.
The activities of rogue elements of the security agencies alongside
state actors directed by ZANU PF was clearly designed to deny citizens their
right to have their views heard. As we have seen so many times, ZANU PF is
determined to tell citizens what they should think, and to intimidate, bully and
beat up any who disagree. This goes against
the fundamental principles of democracy, and is utterly abhorrent to me.
I advised Mr Mugabe of this on Monday. As you are
aware, we have also had a dispute over the appointment of Governors, along with
a number of other unilateral and illegal appointments which the President has
made following the signature of the GPA. The dispute over the former Provincial
Governors effectively timed out when their term of office expired in July. The country needed to appoint new governors
according to the law and the Constitution.
The Constitution clearly says that such appointments must be done in
consultation with the Prime Minister.
To my utter
surprise, and shall I say disgust, Mr Mugabe advised me on Monday that he had
nichodemously reappointed the former governors in the same manner in which he
appointed the previous governors on a Sunday
when most of us where at church. I say “nichodemously” because those who
are supposed to be served by these governors
– the citizens of Zimbabwe – knew nothing about it.
They were
hoping for Governors to be appointed who would serve in the interests of the
people of Zimbabwe, not in the interests of the President and his Party, as has
been the case until now. The Prime Minister, who has to consent to their
appointments, knew nothing about it. Ladies
and Gentlemen, Mr Mugabe publicly stated to African leaders in Windhoek as
recently as August this year that he “has never and will never violate the
Constitution of Zimbabwe”. Sadly, he has
done so not once, but time and time again.
In March
2010, he appointed the Police Service Commission when the Constitution clearly
says that all Service Commissions must be appointed in consultation with the
Prime Minister. On 20 May 2010 , he unilaterally swore in five new judges to the
Supreme and High Courts without consultation. On 24 July 2010, he unilaterally
appointed six Ambassadors without consultation.
On 24 September 2009 whilst in New York on CNN, Mr Mugabe stated publicly and unequivocally that he
would swear in Deputy Minister Roy Bennett if Roy were acquitted of the absurd
charges brought against him. He said
categorically: “yes, yes, yes, if he's acquitted, he will be appointed.”
Roy was
acquitted on 10 May, but again, Mr Mugabe has gone back on his word. He confirmed to me and DPM Mutambara on Monday
that he has no intention of ever swearing in Roy. The matter of Roy Bennett has
now become a personal vendetta and part of a racist agenda.
And these are
simply the most obvious and most high-profile breaches of the Constitution and
laws of Zimbabwe. They demonstrate that Mr
Mugabe believes that the offices of the Government of Zimbabwe are there to
serve him, not the people, which is what the Constitution seeks to ensure. We are all well-aware of the other breaches
which occur all too regularly. Every
extra-judicial arrest of citizens is a clear breach of the Constitution.
Every act of
intimidation or violence by state or ZANU PF actors is a clear breach of the
Constitution. In this respect, we urge South Africa to release the Report of
the Retired Army Generals who investigated
state sponsored violence and its implications on the electoral process and
results in 2008. Every act of censoring or curtailing individuals’ or
journalists’ freedom of speech is a clear breach of the
Constitution.
Zimbabweans
will know that I have desperately tried to avoid a Constitutional crisis in
Zimbabwe. I have worked tirelessly to try
to make this transitional Government work, in the interest of all Zimbabweans. I
have worked and spoken in support of this Government. But neither I, nor the
MDC, can stand back any longer and just allow Mr Mugabe and ZANU PF to defy the
law, to flaunt the Constitution and to act as if they own this
country.
Mr Mugabe was
one of the leaders of the liberation struggle which led to our country’s
independence 30 years ago. For those
efforts, and for all the sacrifices of those who fell in that struggle,
Zimbabweans will forever be grateful. But no actions of the past translate into
a right to wield power in the present. That
right derives solely from a mandate from the people. And citizens rightly judge their leaders on
their record in office.
We are all -
citizens, politicians, soldiers, policemen, workers, mothers, fathers and
children – subject to the Constitution and laws of this country. None of us own that Constitution and none of us
own this country. None of us, whatever our
history, are above the law. We are all but
caretakers for future generations. Ladies
and Gentlemen, The MDC’s National Executive has today resolved that we must make
a stand to protect the Constitution of Zimbabwe and to return it to the
custodianship of the citizens of Zimbabwe. As a first step, we will refuse to
recognise any of the appointments which the President has made illegally and
unconstitutionally over the past 18 months.
- the
Governor of the Central Bank, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 26 November
2008
- the Attorney-General, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 17
December 2008
- the 5 judges, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 20 May
2010
- the 6 Ambassadors, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 24
July 2010
- The Police Service Commission
- the 10 Governors, appointed unilaterally and furtively by Mr
Mugabe last week
As Executive
Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe, I will today be advising the
countries to whom these Ambassadors have been posted that these appointments are
illegal and therefore null and void. I will be advising the Chief Justice of the
improper appointment of the judges concerned, and that they are therefore null
and void. I will be advising the President of the Senate of the improper
appointment of Governors, and that they should therefore not be considered
members of the Senate, which is therefore now unconstitutional. I will be advising the joint Ministers of Home
Affairs and the National Security Council of the illegal appointment of the
Police Service Commission..
We now
similarly call on the people of Zimbabwe, at whose pleasure we serve, not to
recognise these individuals as the legitimate holders of the posts to which they
have been unconstitutionally and illegally appointed. In doing so you must all
remain peaceful. I now call upon Mr Mugabe to return the country to
Constitutional rule by correcting the unlawful appointments. I invite SADC to
join me in calling on Mr Mugabe to respect the SADC Resolutions, the SADC
Charter and Protocols, the AU Charter, and the principles of democracy. I invite
SADC to deploy observers before the constitutional referendum to help protect the rights of Zimbabweans to
express their views freely and without violence or intimidation. And I invite
SADC to urgently intervene to restore Constitutionality in Zimbabwe.
Mr Mugabe has
tried to link many of these issues, including the appointment of the Governors
of this sovereign country, to the lifting of restrictive measures on him and his
political cohorts by other sovereign, independent countries. This is rank madness, and utterly
nonsensical. It is tantamount to
surrendering the sovereignty of this country.
It is an insult to all those who fought, and all those who lost their
lives, in the struggle for the independence of Zimbabwe.
All Zimbabweans know that Mr Mugabe and his
colleagues brought the restrictive measures on themselves through the flagrant
abuses of human rights and the economic disaster which they inflicted on this
country. All Zimbabweans know that these
restrictive measures are the result, not the cause of that economic
disaster. They know that these restrictive
measures affect the individuals concerned, not the country as a whole, as the
economic turnaround since my Party joined the Government has shown.
Nevertheless, I undertook to work with ZANU PF towards the lifting of
restrictive measures, and I have abided by that promise. At every turn, I have reminded Mr Mugabe and his
colleagues that my commitment to do so is part of my commitment to abide by and
to implement the GPA.
Sadly, they
have demonstrated so far that they have no similar commitment either to abide by
the GPA and to a host of other undertakings which they have made. In these
circumstances, it makes my job of arguing for the lifting or even the suspension
of the measures extremely difficult. But
because I believe in the GPA, and I believe in sticking to my word, I will
continue to work for the implementation of the GPA in its totality, including
the lifting of restrictive measures.
Mr Mugabe and his colleagues know that the keys
to them achieving this are already in their hands.
All they need to do is to abide by their promises, to abide by the laws
and Constitution of this country, to respect the rights and freedoms of
Zimbabweans, and to accept that Zimbabwe belongs not to them but to the people
of Zimbabwe and the restrictive measures will go.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not
want to understate the nature or extent of the current crisis. It is nothing short of a Constitutional crisis,
which is why I have urged SADC to intervene as a matter of urgency. But we cannot allow this crisis to derail our
efforts to change Zimbabwe but as I said when I signed the agreement to join
this Government two years ago, my Party and I remain
committed:
- To
serve you, so long as that is your will
- To ensure that your children can go to school and
learn
- To ensure that you have access to medical care
- To protect and promote your rights to free speech, movement and
political assembly
- To empower each and every citizen, economically, socially and
politically
- To end privilege, patronage, abuse and corruption
- To turn Zimbabwe into a country ruled by the law, not by
decree.
When it comes to pursuing these
principles and these goals, no amount of dishonesty, insincerity, intimidation,
or abuse will move me.
- You
can count on me to ensure that you will be able to participate in a free and
fair election to choose who should lead your country
- You can count on me to ensure that you will write your own, new,
pluralistic constitution.
- You can count on me to stand up for your rights at each and
every turn.
- You can count on me to work for the empowerment of each and
every citizen and not an elite few.
I will not
win every fight in the short-term, but I assure you that I am as committed as
you are to winning the war and win we shall.
This is a war which we must continue to fight bravely together: a war
which pits all Zimbabweans who believe in the principles of freedom and
democracy against those who seek to maintain and abuse privilege. I appeal to
all Zimbabweans, our loyal civil servants, our loyal police, and our loyal armed
forces, to work with us in this new struggle for freedom.
To ensure
that Zimbabwe becomes a Zimbabwe for everyone, not just the self-annointed and
chosen few who seek to exploit this country – as did their colonial predecessors
– for their wealth and their own ends. I therefore urge my team at every level
of government and every level of society to rededicate yourself to serving the
people of Zimbabwe. The road ahead is not going to be easy, but our collective
future will be better than our present challenge. I will not rest until I fulfil
my mandate from the people of Zimbabwe to build a new Zimbabwe to which I,
alongside so many of you, have committed our lives.
This is my promise to you for real
change.
I thank you
Tsvangirai
furious as Mugabe unilaterally appoints ZANU PF governors
http://www.swradioafrica.com/
By Tichaona
Sibanda
7 October 2010
Zimbabwe has been thrown into another
constitutional crisis after Robert
Mugabe once again unilaterally appointed
provincial governors from ZANU PF
to serve another term in violation of the
GPA.
This was revealed by the Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on
Thursday during
a media conference. Tsvangirai said he was 'utterly
surprised' and
'disgusted' when Mugabe told him on Monday that he had
reappointed former
ZANU PF governors for another term.
A visibly
angry Tsvangirai said Mugabe had 'Nicodemusly' reappointed the
governors
without his knowledge and that the whole exercise violated the
constitution
of Zimbabwe.
'Mugabe appointed these governors on a Sunday when most of
us where at
church. The Prime Minister, who has to consent to their
appointments, knew
nothing about it. Mugabe publicly stated to African
leaders in Windhoek, as
recently as August this year, that he has never and
will never violate the
Constitution of Zimbabwe. Sadly, he has done so not
once, but time and time
again,' Tsvangirai said.
Tsvangirai also
confirmed that during their Monday meeting, which was
attended by his deputy
Arthur Mutambara, Mugabe made it clear to him that he
had no intention of
ever swearing in Roy Bennett also in direct violation of
the GPA.
The
Prime Minister said, "The matter of Roy Bennett has now become a
personal
vendetta and part of a racist agenda. These are simply the most
obvious and
most high-profile breaches of the Constitution and laws of
Zimbabwe. They
demonstrate that Mugabe believes that the offices of the
Government of
Zimbabwe are there to serve him, not the people, which is what
the
Constitution seeks to ensure."
'In March 2010, he appointed the Police
Service Commission when the
Constitution clearly says that all Service
Commissions must be appointed in
consultation with the Prime Minister. On 20
May 2010, he unilaterally swore
in five new judges to the Supreme and High
Courts without consultation. On
24 July 2010, he unilaterally appointed six
Ambassadors without
consultation.
'On 24 September 2009 whilst in New
York talking to CNN, Mugabe stated
publicly that he would swear in Roy
Bennett if he were acquitted of the
charges brought against him. He said
categorically: 'Yes, yes, yes, if he's
acquitted, he will be appointed.' Roy
was acquitted on 10th May this year,
but again, Mugabe has gone back on his
word,' the Prime Minister said.
The MDC leader said they would not to
recognise any of the appointments
which Mugabe has made illegally and
unconstitutionally over the past 18
months, including the Ambassadors
appointed in July.
'As executive Prime Minister of the Republic of
Zimbabwe, I will today be
advising the countries to which these Ambassadors
have been posted that
these appointments are illegal and therefore null and
void. I will be
advising the Chief Justice of the improper appointment of
the judges
concerned, and that they are therefore null and void. I will be
advising the
President of the Senate of the improper appointment of
Governors, and that
they should therefore not be considered members of the
Senate, which is
therefore now unconstitutional.
'I will be advising
the joint Ministers of Home Affairs and the National
Security Council of the
illegal appointment of the Police Service
Commission. We now similarly call
on the people of Zimbabwe, at whose
pleasure we serve, not to recognise
these individuals as the legitimate
holders of the posts to which they have
been unconstitutionally and
illegally appointed,' Tsvangirai added.
Prime
Minister Protocol Officials Not Recognised
http://news.radiovop.com/
07/10/2010
15:14:00
Harare, October 07, 2010 - Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs
officials have been
ordered to ignore Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's
protocol officers
despite being part of the inclusive government, sources
have revealed.
Highly placed sources in the Foreign Affairs protocol
department told Radio
VOP that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's protocol
officials "were there
on paper, just like the Global Political Agreement
document whose
implementation is deliberately being ignored by President
Robert Mugabe".
They said directives coming from the "above" requires
them not to interact
with the Movement for Democratic Change officials in
the same department.
"We have never held any meeting collectively with
officials from the Prime
Minister's office because the Ministry superiors
told us that the MDC guys
were passersby.
"In fact we do not
recognise them. They do not appear on our protocol
officers' list, because
they belong to a puppet political party," said the
sources.
A senior
official from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's office confirmed
that they
rarely interacted with their Zanu (PF) protocol officers.
"When we go for
foreign trips with the Prime Minister that when we are given
one officer
from the protocol who would accompany the PM delegation, and its
not
surprising to hear that that's what is happening.
"However to us in the
Prime Minister's office we are not worried by that
development because it
does not stop us from doing our duties. In fact its
barbaric and
unreasonable for them to do that given the fact that we are all
on the
government payroll, and
being in the office of a person who won the
presidential election," said the
official.
Tsvangirai this week told
guests at a a graduation ceremony for 64 officers
employed in his office who
underwent a Diplomatic Protocol and Corporate
Etiquette
Workshop,"Bureaucracy is slow in changing and some degree of
patience is
required. The Office of the PM is new in government."
"The formation of
the inclusive government has its political challenges but
we have to fit in
and therefore have to learn how to engage in the set-up,"
he
said.
The training workshop had been organised by the Zimbabwe Institute
of
Diplomacy. Tsvangirai said the training was necessary and important in
building a strong team.
Chiefs,
army, farmers to plot Zanu victory
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Written by Jane Makoni
Thursday, 07
October 2010 06:00
HARARE - Traditional Chiefs, new farmers and senior
army commanders are
expected to meet tomorrow (Friday), at Army 2 Brigade
Headquarters in
Harare, to plan how to secure Mugabe's grip on power, The
Zimbabwean has
learnt. "Thirty traditional chiefs, senior army senior
officers and new
farmers are expected to converge at Cranborne Barracks to
find ways of
retaining Mugabe as president after the next elections expected
in 2011,"
said a highly placed source within the traditional
leadership.
Rapid land distribution to blacks and the next elections
would dominate the
Cranborne agenda, he said. The military, new farmers and
traditional
leadership were expected to provide a life-line for Mugabe and
Zanu (PF).
Top party officials would also attend the meeting.
The
source said a huge gathering was expected and as Zanu (PF) was broke,
representatives of new farmers and party faithful were going around
communities with a begging bowl to raise cash to bankroll the
indaba.
"Zanu (PF) no longer trusts civilians, hence the selection of
army barracks
as a meeting point. Security would be tight and no 'peeping
Toms' will be
accommodated. Participants would be thoroughly vetted.
Low-ranking soldiers
were expected to grace the occasion as they were
regarded instrumental in
propping up Zanu (PF)'s waning political fortunes
through terror campaigns,"
added the source.
As usual, partisan
traditional leadership remains central to Zanu (PF)'s
intimidation
machinery. Chiefs and headmen around the country continue to
threaten
suspected MDC supporters and, in some cases, evict them for
refusing to join
Zanu (PF).
People contributing at Copac meetings suggested it should be
enshrined in
the constitution that traditional leadership be apolitical and
discharge
their traditional rolls in a non-partisan manner. Others said if
traditional
leaders wanted to be politicians, then their offices should be
occupied by
elected officials.
CIO
trains ZEC officials
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Written by Jane Makoni
Thursday, 07 October 2010
06:29
HARARE - Members of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) are
undergoing
secret training at Central Intelligence Organization (CIO)
offices across
the country, allegedly in order to manipulate the running and
outcome of
future elections. An unwilling participant at the course told The
Zimbabwean
that training began on Monday at Hurudza House, the CIO
Mashonaland East
Provincial headquarters.
"Though the training was
still in its initial stages, the aim of the
exercise was obviously for us to
learn new tricks and methods of
manipulating election results without
raising public eye-brows," said the
source.
"We were told to switch
our cell phones off to avoid communication and
disruption from outsiders.
The training has been organized ahead of
elections expected next year.
Similar courses are underway around the
country," he added.
ZEC is
dominated by members of the army, police, CIO, war veterans and
die-hard
Zanu (PF) officials. Its director for public relations is Shupikai
Mashereni, a soldier with the army Public Relations Directorate and a
staunch Zanu (PF) sympathizer.
ZEC has been accused of rigging the
2008 elections in favour of President
Robert Mugabe and his Zanu (PF)
party.
Its former chairman, war veteran Judge George Chiweshe, is a
former soldier
and member of Zanu (PF).
Morgan Tsvangirai and his
MDC-T party, widely believed to have beaten Mugabe
and Zanu (PF) at several
elections held since 2000, was the most affected
victim of ZEC's vote
rigging.
Signatories to the GPA agreed to a total restructuring of ZEC,
to make it a
non- partisan organ capable of running free and fair elections.
A new board
has been appointed under the chairmanship of Judge Simpson
Mtambanengwe who
sits on the Namibian High Court bench. But the secretariat
has not been
changed and still includes serving members of the army, the
police and the
CIO.
Human Rights groups have documented a lengthy
catalogue of ZEC's
shortcomings.
Welshman
Mabhena to be buried on family plot Saturday, defying ZPF
http://www.swradioafrica.com/
By Tererai
Karimakwenda
07 October, 2010
The ongoing row over ZANU PF's sole
ownership of the right to decide who is
a National Hero and deserves burial
at the National Heroes Acre in Harare
intensified on Thursday when a ZANU PF
delegation was sent to negotiate with
the defiant family of the late veteran
politician, Welshman Mabhena.
The former governor of Matabeleland North
died on Tuesday from an
undisclosed illness. A family spokesperson told our
correspondent Lionel
Saungweme that Mabhena had requested that he be buried
alongside his wife at
the family owned plot.
ZANU PF had sent a
high-powered delegation to negotiate with family members
and have Mabhena
buried in Harare at the National Heroes Acre. The
delegation, which included
Vice President John Nkomo, was turned away and
told that the funeral would
take place on Saturday at Lady Stanley cemetery.
The family spokesperson
said that Mabhena had developed serious health
problems with high blood
pressure and diabetes, when he was tortured after
independence during his
detention at the hands of ZANU PF. "We became very
angry at what was done to
him by ZANU PF. If anyone was a hero in this
country it was Welshman
Mabhena," said the spokesperson.
Our correspondent said the Mabhenas did
not want a situation to develop,
similar to that of the late Vice President
Joshua Nkomo who was buried at
the Heroes Acre, only for the family to
reveal years later that he had
requested not to be buried
there.
Asked whether they had any fear of going against the ZANU PF
decision, the
Mabhena family spokesperson said: "Afraid of what? We know
they are
monsters. We know what they do. What is there to be afraid
of?"
86 year-old Mabhena was a veteran of Zimbabwe's independence war and was
one
of the longest serving detainees at Gonakudzingwa prison in Gweru. He
was
appointed as Matabeleland North governor but was dismissed in 2000,
reportedly for being too critical of government policies. Soon after the
dismissal Mabhena reported that his farm in Nkayi was invaded by villagers
loyal to local leaders.
Villagers
forced to fund Zanu PF conference
http://www.dailynews.co.zw
By Godfrey Mtimba
Thursday, 07 October
2010 13:59
MASVINGO - Bikita villagers have expressed outrage over
vigilant war
veterans and Zanu PF youths who are forcing them to contribute
$20 per
family to fund the former ruling party's annual conference to be
held in
December.
The struggling rural folk, already facing a
myriad of problems including
severe food shortages in the province said they
were angry with the war
veterans who are moving from door to
door.
Disgruntled villagers said the war veterans claimed they were sent
by their
party leaders in the province and threatened them with severe
punishment
should they fail to comply.
"War veterans have been moving
around the district collecting $20 from
people. They said the money would be
used to fund their conference to be
held in December so they need money for
transport and food for the
delegates. Those who failed to pay were
threatened with severe punishment
forcing us to pay for fear of our lives,"
said Garikai Gavakava from Chikuku
business centre.
Other villagers
said it was not fair to sponsor the conference where Zanu PF
bigwigs will
feast yet villagers are starving.
"It's just not fair; how can they
force us to fund their conference where
they feast out of our hard earned
cash? You know we are struggling to get
this American currency in the rural
areas because we are not employed but
these hard hearted people are forcing
us to give them money," complained
Megina Zano from
Makuvaza.
Masvingo provincial war veterans Chairman, Isaiah Muzenda
denied that their
members were forcing villagers to pay $20 per
family.
"I am not aware of that. What I know is that our organization is
fundraising for the conference from well wishers not forcing villagers. If
there are any members doing that, then we are going to investigate and take
action," Muzenda said.
But villagers insisted that the operation was
under way in the district led
by Jefter Chibaya popularly known as Cde
Speed, who was the commander of
the June 2008 violence in
Bikita.
Zano said that it pains people who were not Zanu PF supporters
especially
known opposition supporters who were victims of the June 2008
political
violence and lost their domestic animals to the same war veterans
who
operated bases in their areas.
"These are the same people who
looted our cattle, goats and chickens to feed
at their bases in 2008 after
we were labelled MDC supporters.
Now they are demanding money in the
name of Zanu PF.
We can't continue to live like this as some of us are
not ZANU PF
supporters,"she said.
MDC-T provincial chairman Wilstaff
Stemere confirmed the reports and lashed
out at Zanu PF for using the war
veterans to terrorise people in the
rural areas.
"Zanu PF should
stop its old and bad habit of terrorizing people in the
rural areas. We have
received complaints from our supporters in Bikita that
they were forced to
fund Zanu PF's conference. It is not the duty of
villagers to fund political
parties to host their conference where they will
be wining and dining while
the ordinary man
starves. If Zanu PF is broke why cant it postpone the
conference until it
is financially stable ?" asked Stemere.
Efforts
to get a comment from Zanu pf Masvingo party chairman, Lovemore
Matuke were
fruitless.
Broadcasting
Authority told to license more stations
http://www.swradioafrica.com/
By Tererai Karimakwenda
7
October, 2010
The state owned Herald newspaper reported on Thursday that
government had
urged the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) to license
more radio and
television stations, in order to provide remote areas of the
country with
access to information. The comments were made by Media and
Information
Minister Webster Shamu at a BAZ strategic planning workshop,
held in Harare
on Wednesday.
Shamu is quoted as saying: "Universal
access to broadcasting services has
remained on the government's wish list
for the past two decades, but
regrettably little progress has been made in
that direction." Shamu gave no
explanation as to why the government had not
made progress in over twenty
years, when all that is required is for them to
issue invitations for
license applications. A number of community, church
and commercial radio
stations would be ready to start broadcasting very
quickly.
The Herald is known as a mouthpiece for ZANU PF. The paper
refuses to run
MDC adverts and only promotes ZANU PF policy. So when
Minister Shamu told
delegates at the BAZ workshop that "access to
information was a right for
every citizen," he must have been referring to
government controlled
information only.
The Herald report came just a
day after several ZANU PF members of
parliament surprised their MDC
colleagues by voting through a Bill to amend
the oppressive Public Order and
Security Act (POSA), which Mugabe has used
to block freedom of speech and
movement. Known as the Public Order and
Security Amendment Bill, it went
through its second reading stage in
parliament on Tuesday.
Observers
believe that ZANU PF is trying to present the international
community with
the impression that they are willing to compromise on some of
the unresolved
issues in the Global Political Agreement, in order to pile up
evidence for
the removal of targeted sanctions imposed by the European Union
and Western
powers.
South Africa's President Jacob Zuma and Botswana's President Ian
Khama have
now both lobbied the international community to remove the
sanctions. Their
pleas on behalf of ZANU PF came just weeks after the US
government refused
to remove the sanctions.
Minister Shamu had gone
on to say that the only way to upset what he called
the pirate radio
stations was to invest in legitimate local expansion. He
also claimed that
the decline in television and radio service has
marginalised remote areas
while exposing them to 'hostile' foreign
broadcasts.
This was of
course a reference to radio stations like SW Radio Africa and
VOA, who
currently broadcast from outside Zimbabwe. The very fact that Shamu
used the
words 'pirate' and 'hostile' is testament to ZANU PF's own negative
attitude
towards independent media, despite any words to the contrary.
Zimbabwe
broadcaster warns against media bribes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
The Associated
Press
Thursday, October 7, 2010; 7:43 AM
HARARE, Zimbabwe --
Zimbabwe's state broadcaster says it has warned low-paid
journalists to stop
taking bribes from politicians or selling information to
online news
sites.
Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp. head Happison Muchetetere said the
television
and radio broadcast station uncovered "enticements" received by
staff that
led to bias and "falsehoods" being aired or transmitted online,
state radio
reported Thursday. Muchetetere said offenders would be
disciplined.
State broadcast journalists receive up to $400 a month, a
third of salaries
paid by private media. The alleged bribes are given in
cash or financing on
housing and cars.
Last month, human rights
groups reported that underpaid state nursing staff
had been distributing
scarce HIV/AIDS medication only to patients who
offered bribes.
MDC-T
Chief whip pushes through amendments to POSA
http://www.swradioafrica.com/
By Lance Guma
06 October
2010
The Public Order and Security Amendment Bill, brought to Parliament
by MDC-T
Chief Whip Innocent Gonese, went through its second reading stage
on
Tuesday. The 'private members bill' is an attempt to amend the draconian
Public Order and Security Act (POSA) which has been used countless times by
Mugabe's regime to suppress freedom of expression.
Parliament resumed
sitting on Tuesday after a 3 month break for the
constitutional outreach
exercise, which was marred by incidents of violence
and intimidation. The
POSA amendment bill was one of the three items on the
Order Paper and the
session was devoted to giving MP's from all parties a
chance to state their
views on the Bill.
There was surprising support for amendments to POSA
from several ZANU PF MP's,
given that their party has relied on political
violence and the use of
draconian laws like POSA to keep their stranglehold
on power. It is only
recently that the US and EU governments have refused to
remove targeted
sanctions on members of Mugabe's regime, and to many
observers it seems
rather convenient that ZANU PF MP's are now making the
right sort of noises.
The most appropriate warning though came from the
MDC-T's Bulawayo East MP,
Thabitha Khumalo, who said legislators should stop
the culture of preaching
peace while practicing war. Many of the ZANU PF
MP's backing the Bill won
their seats though violence and
intimidation.
Gonese, who is pushing the amendments, expressed surprise
at the 'support'
the bill was receiving from some of the ZANU PF MP's. 'I
say that there is a
new spirit in this august House and I believe this is
going to be the start
of good things to come.' If the Bill is approved at
the second reading stage
details of wording and other possible changes will
be made at the 'Committee
Stage'.
Students
languish in prison
http://www.dailynews.co.zw
By Pindai Dube
Thursday, 07 October 2010
13:35
BULAWAYO - Two former student leaders are languishing in remand
prison for
taking part in a demonstration which occurred two years
ago.
Samson Nxumalo, former National University of Science and
Technology (NUST)
students representative council secretary-general, and
Achiford Mudzengi,
former Zimbabwe School of Mines students' council
president, are detained at
Bulawayo's Grey Prison since Tuesday last
week.
Police arrested Nxumalo and Mudzengi, who are also former Zimbabwe
National
Student Union (ZINASU) executive members, last week in Bulawayo on
allegations of skipping bail. The Police had several warrants of arrest
issued against the two over a demonstration organised by the National
Constitutional Assembly in 2008.
The student leaders first appeared
in the Magistrates' Court in November
2008, facing charges of "participating
in an unlawful gathering with an
intention to cause public violence, bigotry
and breach to peace".
They were then released on bail.
However,
police re-arrested them last week in Bulawayo, accusing them of
running away
from court. Magistrate Ntombizodwa Mazhandu cancelled their
bail which was
in Zimbabwe dollars and sent them to remand prison.
Obert Masaraure, the
current ZINASU president, blasted police for the
re-arresting of Nxumalo and
Mudzengi, saying this was done to prevent them
from taking part in ZINASU's
nationwide demonstrations set for 18 October.
"Nxumalo and Mudzengi are
still our members and police arrested them on
their way to court, in an
effort to prevent them from taking part in
nationwide students'
demonstrations over fees," said Masaraure. "We condemn
this police behaviour
and we have already instructed our lawyers to deal
with this case. We hope
these comrades will be released very soon."
Police spokesperson, Oliver
Mandipaka refused to comment, saying the matter
was in the
courts.
Early this year, ZINASU called for the resignation of Police
Commissioner
Augustine Chihuri and the co-minister of Home Affairs, Kembo
Mohadi, after
police violently crashed student demonstration, resulting in
several
students throughout the country being arrested.
ZINASU had
urged its members throughout the country to stage demonstrations
to protest
the slow implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA),
which
brought about the inclusive government.
Zimbabwe
Finance Minister Biti Seeks US Help on Shortage of USD Bills &
Coin
http://www.voanews.com/
Zimbabwe adopted a mixed hard-currency monetary regime using the
U.S. dollar
and other currencies including the South African rand and
Botswana pula in
early 2009 by time the Zimbabwe dollar had lost all value
due to
hyperinflation
Blessing Zulu | Washington 06 October
2010
Zimbabwean Finance Minister Tendai Biti, in Washington this
week, will seek
U.S. assistance in securing a supply of small-denomination
American
banknotes and coins to ease everyday transactions in the
country.
Biti and Economic Planning Minister Tapiwa Mashakada will also
be holding
broader talks with U.S., International Monetary Fund and World
Bank
officials seeking further steps toward normal financial ties, Biti
said.
Zimbabwe adopted a mixed hard-currency monetary regime using the
U.S. dollar
and other currencies including the South African rand and
Botswana pula in
early 2009 by time the Zimbabwe dollar had lost all value
following years of
accelerating hyperinflation. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
had flooded the
market with Zimbabwe dollar bills of ever larger
denominations, debasing the
currency such that ordinary commodities went for
billions.
But U.S. bills and coins are in short supply and those in
circulation have
become so worn and filthy that Zimbabweans have taken to
laundering them and
hanging them out to dry before attempting to spend
them.
U.S. economist and monetary policy expert Steve Hanke said the
Zimbabwean
government could readily purchase American currency and coins on
the open
market, but may not find Washington receptive to supplying
them.
International relations expert Innocent Sithole agreed U.S.
concessions may
not be forthcoming.
The U.S. State Department
recently rebuffed a Harare ministerial delegation
asking for a review of
American travel and financial sanctions targeting
President Robert Mugabe
and more than 200 members of his inner circle. The
U.S. officials said
members of Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party have continued to
violate human
rights.
Beleaguered
Zimbabwean Businesses Snub State Survey of Economic Conditions
http://www.voanews.com
Zimbabwe
Statistical Agency Acting Director Moffat Nyoni acknowledged that
his
organization should have given struggling companies more information
ahead
of the survey to encourage their response
Gibbs Dube | Washington 06
October 2010
The head of the Zimbabwe Statistical Agency said his
agency has tried to
survey businesses about the economic environment but
many firms did not
respond to questionnaires sent in the first quarter of
this year.
ZimStats Acting Director Moffat Nyoni said more than half the
companies sent
the questionnaire didn't return it, and acknowledged the
agency should have
given companies more advance notice to encourage their
participation.
ZimStats wanted companies to provide intelligence on
business trends,
industrial production, manufacturing volumes, employment
and their use of
information and communication technology. Though some firms
responded, the
information ZimStats received was not complete enough to
provide a snapshot
of the economy.
Comprehensive survey results would
have helped businesses, government
agencies, foreign investors and
international organizations make a broad
range of economic and financial
decisions, Nyoni said.
Matabeleland Chamber of Industries Chairwoman Ruth
Labode told VOA Studio 7
reporter Gibbs Dube that most companies did not
respond to the ZimStats
survey because the questionnaires were too
complicated.
Economic commentator Rejoice Ngwenya said ZimStats should be
using the
Internet and social media to conduct its surveys. "Most businesses
prefer
using fast means of responding to questionnaires and as such ZimStats
has to
ensure that they effectively use the Internet to conduct their
surveys," he
said.
The predecessor organization to ZimStats, the
Central Statistical Office,
stopped conducting key economic surveys in 2005
and eventually even stopped
issuing data on consumer prices as
hyperinflation ran out of control.
The ZimStats survey effort is funded
by the Harare government and the
African Development Bank.
Mugabe's
ill health a threat to the MDC - Robertson
http://www.dailynews.co.zw
By Guthrie Munyuki
Thursday, 07
October 2010 08:48
PRETORIA - John Robertson, Zimbabwe's leading
economic and political
commentator has warned that President Robert Mugabe's
ill health will push
Zanu PF and the service chiefs to neutralise and
eliminate the MDC in the
coming months.
Robertson said Zanu PF
attempts to strengthen its position have produced
disappointing results and
instead, the party was disturbed by the extent to
which the MDC led by Prime
Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, has gained popularity
in its former
strongholds.
"The party's contention all along has been that it alone is
qualified to be
the ruling party and several pronouncements from senior
officials have
re-stated and re-affirmed this position, the most recent
claiming that even
if the MDC were to win the election, it would not be
allowed to take office.
"However, to remove the possibility, Zanu PF has
decided to direct all
available resources to winning a huge majority by
using the coming months to
neutralise and eliminate the
opposition.
"Robert Mugabe's health appears to have made this more urgent
objective, the
belief being that the security of Zanu PF's officials depends
upon Mugabe
being re-elected and then, before standing down, nominating his
successor
who will look after their interests," Robertson told participants
at a
seminar organised by the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria on
Wednesday.
He warned that the means by which Zanu PF was planning to
neutralise the MDC
were being discussed and debated in various circles
adding that they pointed
to the deployment of army and police throughout
the country, some to the
recruitment drive for youth militia and some to
forced attendance at
indoctrination meetings in rural
villages.
"Security issues are of concern because Zanu PF has effectively
re-affirmed
its claim that it is the one and only legitimate ruling party
and it has
done this through the silent proclamation that the primary
function of
security forces is to ensure the party's survival and success,
whatever the
cost to the civil rights and the freedoms of others," said
Robertson.
"Not all Zimbabweans will submit to such treatment but this
implies the
near-certainty to open conflict. As a sense of urgency has
gripped the
party (Zanu PF) in recent weeks because of the President's poor
health, many
Zimbabweans are bracing themselves for this unknown event, and
for the
electioneering onslaught that will follow as Zanu PF tries to stamp
its
authority on the entire nation," he warned.
Mugabe's health has
been the subject of frenzied speculation in recent weeks
with his critics
suggesting that the 86 year-old veteran leader is feeling
the strain of
advanced age whilst trying to extricate the country from the
economic and
political crisis.
Reports have repeatedly said Mugabe is suffering from
bladder and heart
related problems with some suggesting that his private
Malaysian doctor is
now resident in Harare to be on stand by for any
emergency.
But Mugabe has scoffed at rumors of ill health and insists he
is fit as a
fiddle and "can still pack a punch."
"I don't know how
many times I die, but nobody has ever talked about my
resurrection. I
suppose they don't want to, because it would mean they would
mention my
resurrection several times and that would be quite divine, an
achievement
for an individual who is not divine.
"Jesus died once, and resurrected
only once, and poor Mugabe several times.
My time will come, but for now,
'no'. I am still fit enough to fight the
sanctions and knock out (my
opponents)," Mugabe told Reuters in an
interview in Harare last
month.
Many people blame Mugabe for dithering on his successor and see
his
reluctance as a worrying sign that could implode in the eyes of
Zimbabweans
who fear a civil war by rivals within Zanu PF should its
leader, for
whatever reason, leave politics.
Vice President Joice
Mujuru, the wife of Retired Army General, Solomon
Mujuru and Defence
Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, have been repeatedly
mentioned as eyeing the
ageing leader's job.
Solomon Mujuru is said to be fighting to have his
wife at the helm although
Mnangagwa's name is often whispered in certain
corridors within Zanu PF.
"Conditions are now critical and without SADC
intervention, Zimbabwe seems
poised to become a destabilising influence for
the whole region - if the
political transition just around the corner is not
permitted to reflect the
free will of its long suffering population," said
Robertson.
"Zimbabwe's unarmed civilian population has had little
prospect of
influencing the behaviour of Zimbabwe's ruling clique who might
now be best
described as ruthless feudal overlords."
Robertson said
support from SADC peacekeeping forces in the period before
the election as
well as on polling day and throughout the counting process
would make a big
difference.
Mugabe and Tsvangirai have agreed to hold elections next year
with or
without a new constitution although business and civic society have
expressed their fears of a disputed outcome.
Villagers
call on police to act
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Written by Fungi Kwaramba
Thursday, 07 October 2010
06:27
MUREWA WEST - Traumatised villagers in Murewa West Constituency who
are
facing renewed intimidation from Zanu (PF) supporters have decided to
report
cases of intimidation en masse at Musami Police Station in order to
compel
the police to take action.
A visit to the area by The
Zimbabwean confirmed that people in the area who
bear physical and emotional
scars of the 2008 election violence are still
living in fear, but have lost
faith in the justice delivery system.
Police have been reluctant to open
dockets against Zanu (PF) perpetrators of
violence referring cases to the
ineffective Joint Operations and
Implementation Committee
(JOMIC).
"We have decided as a constituency to take the police to task.
We want to
follow up all cases and we want to be given a docket number. We
are prepared
to go to the offices of the Police Commissioner General
Augustine Chihuri so
that he notices that we are aware of our rights," said
Ward Chair, Douglas
Nhamwe.
The villagers said that they no longer
had faith in the Inclusive Government
that has failed to push for a
meaningful national healing and reconciliation
programme.
"We want
elections so that we can at least find peace. We live in fear from
Zanu (PF)
supporters who claim that they can never face trial for what they
did in the
past. We have never seen people from JOMIC where the police say
we should
take the cases," said a villager.
Despite the relative calm on the
ground, many people interviewed refused to
give their names in fear of
reprisals from marauding Zanu (PF) activists.
People named as leaders of the
intimidation are: Patrick Bhiri, Farai Gozo,
Councillor Gesham Tandayi,
Agnes Ngarande, Job Kwindima, Finate Botsadzira
and Solomon
Musakwa.
Zanu (PF) supporters in the area are misleading people into
attending
meetings by saying that donors will visit the area. When people
attend they
are made to chant party slogans.
"At the meetings we are
told that we will disappear if we continue
supporting the MDC," said one
villager.
The villagers said that if the police fail, they will seek an
audience with
the principals of the Global Political Agreement. Member of
Parliament for
the area, Ward Nezi, confirmed that the villagers had a
petition that they
intended to give to the police
SA
issues 2 000 permits to Zimbabweans
http://www.zimonline.co.za
by Tobias Manyuchi Thursday 07 October
2010
HARARE -- South Africa on Wednesday said it has so far
issued 2,126 special
permits to Zimbabweans as part of an exercise to
register hundreds of
thousands of immigrants from its northern
neighbour.
Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba said 174
applications have been
turned down.
Gigaba, who insisted that the
department has capacity to process all
applications for permits by December
when the exercise should end, said
since the exercise started on September
20 immigration officials have
handled 30,915 enquiries from Zimbabwean
immigrants seeking clarity on
whether they qualify for
permits.
Applications for work, study and business permits totaled 10,287
by the
close of business on Monday.
Gigaba said it was still too
early to tell whether all wishing to acquire
permits will be able to do so
by December. "(It is) premature for anybody to
arrive at a conclusion that
by December 31 they would not have met
deadline," he said.
More than
1.5 million Zimbabweans are believed to be living in South Africa
most of
them illegally.
Pretoria last month said it would by December 31 resume
deporting
undocumented Zimbabweans, ending an 18-month moratorium on
deportations of
illegal immigrants from its struggling northern
neighbour.
But Pretoria said Zimbabweans already working, engaged in
business or
studying in South Africa will be issued with relevant permits on
condition
they produce valid documents to show they are citizens of Zimbabwe
before
expiry of the deadline.
Zimbabweans holding fake South African
documents will not be arrested if
they surrender these documents within the
amnesty period.
But there are concerns that the process of documenting
Zimbabweans in
Johannesburg is going at a snail's pace, with some people
being forced to
sleep in queues. ??
Civil society organisations have
criticised the move to resume deportations
saying it will spark a witch-hunt
against Zimbabweans by state immigration
officials and that it could also
fuel xenophobia against foreigners.
Locals often complain that the
immigrants steal their jobs or lower working
standards by readily accepting
below market wages, while also overloading
government social
services.
An outbreak of xenophobic violence in 2008 left at least 62
foreigners dead
and thousands of others displaced, leaving foreign investors
unsettled and
South Africa's image as one of the more tolerant countries in
the world
shattered.
Similar xenophobic attacks broke out soon after
the end of the FIFA World
Cup ended last July but security forces were this
time round quick to move
in to quash the violence and protect foreigners.
Minister
wants coach deportation reversed
http://www.zimonline.co.za/
by Sebastian Nyamhangambiri Thursday 07
October 2010
HARARE -- Zimbabwean Education and Sports Minister David
Coltart has written
to the country's immigration authorities to reverse
deportation of new
national soccer coach Tom Saintfiet for working without a
permit saying the
decision to expel the Belgian coach was not in the
interests of the country.
"I have written to the co-Ministers of home
affairs to ensure that this
decision is reviewed. It was made with no
national interests and it will
definitely affect the performance of our
team," Coltart said on Wednesday.
Saintfiet was ordered to leave the
southern African country by immigration
authorities and only return after
obtaining a work permit allowing him to
work as coach of the Warriors
national side.
The co-home affairs ministers could not be reached for
comment last night.
The former Namibia coach was last month appointed by
the Zimbabwe Football
Association to lead the Warriors in their preparations
for an African
Nations Cup qualifier against Cape Verde next
weekend.
But immigration officials on Tuesday ordered Saintfiet to
abandon
preparations for the key game and leave Zimbabwe on the next flight
out of
the country and to only return upon obtaining a work
permit.
Former Zimbabwe captain Norman Mapeza is expected to lead the
team while the
status of Saintfiet is being addressed.
Mapeza, who
once played for Turkish giants Galatasaray, coached the Zimbabwe
team in its
previous assignment against Liberia last month in Monrovia where
it salvaged
a one-all draw. - ZimOnline.
Gamu mother 'did not claim credits'
X Factor hopeful Gamu Nhengu has been told she must leave
the UK voluntarily or face deportation
Published Date: 07 October 2010
The mother of X Factor reject Gamu
Nhengu did not wrongly claim tax credits, the family's solicitor said as the
budding singer faced deportation to Zimbabwe.
The 18-year-old, eliminated from the ITV
show at the weekend despite being a huge hit with fans, was told she must return
to her homeland after her mother's visa application was turned
down.
Nokuthula Ngazana was allowed to stay in the UK while she studied
at university and Gamu was told she could remain in the country as her
dependent, but Ms Ngazana's application to remain in the country was turned down
following allegations she wrongly claimed working tax credits.
This was
denied today by her solicitor Frances Farrell, who said the family "strongly
refuted" the claims.
Ms Farrell told BBC Radio Five Live: "There was a
slight error with the bank details and the Home Office led us to believe this
was no longer a problem.
"I was fully expecting the application to be
granted and then on Tuesday night the Home Office phoned my office after working
hours and their representative said that the application was being refused
because Nokuthula had claimed tax credits when she was not eligible to do so.
This is disputed and no other reason was made for the refusal.
"Our
client's position is that she was advised by the Inland Revenue she was entitled
to claim working tax credits as she was paying tax. It was all done absolutely
above board."
Ms Farrell said she had still not received the Home
Office's decision in writing and that details about the benefits claims were
leaked to the press.
The solicitor said she was now seeking a judicial
review and was told the family had a strong case.
Ms Farrell added: "It
has caused my client, Gamu and her siblings all great distress. My client has
had to take the children out of school and they have been under siege all day.
It's been horrendous for them."
Is Zimbabwe fast becoming a reclusive state?
Clifford Chitupa Mashiri,
Political Analyst, London, 07/10/10
It was so painful to see the effects
of Mugabe's seclusion policy in action
when Zimbabwe was missing not only
from the colourful opening ceremony of
the Commonwealth Games in Delhi last
Sunday but also in the daily drama that
is unfolding in the Indian capital
where monkeys have been reportedly
"employed to protect athletes" (The
Telegraph UK, 06/10/10).
According to Plato, writing in the Republic,
"the State is the individual
writ large" meaning that the state is like the
individual, but larger and
easier to examine. Plato compared a well run
state (government) to a
balanced individual. Similarly, with Zimbabwe in
mind, it could be argued
that a poorly run state or government is comparable
to an unbalanced
individual. A recluse can be defined as a person who
withdraws from the
world to live in seclusion often in solitude. The death
of Sabina, Mugabe's
sister was seen as a big blow to his brother who,
according to Edgar Tekere,
has always been a "loner," (2007:142). So the
question is: "Could Zimbabwe
becoming a reclusive state as
well?"
Mugabe has been averse to international criticism of his bad
governance and
chosen to distract attention to the emotive issue of land and
sovereignty!
Let's start by examining why Zimbabwe left or was "pushed" out
of the
Commonwealth. According to the Commonwealth, Zimbabwe was suspended
in 2002,
and the country (or to be more specific in this case Mugabe)
decided to
withdraw from the Commonwealth in December 2003 with serious
implications
for its citizens.
Looking back at what prompted
Zimbabwe's suspension, we learn that the
Commonwealth Ministerial Action
Group on the Harare Declaration (CMAG) met
in London on 30 January 2002. In
their concluding statement they stated
that: "The group reviewed the
situation in Zimbabwe in the light of
developments since its last meeting on
20 December 2001. It expressed its
deep concern over the continued violence,
political intimidation and actions
against the freedom and independence of
the media" (Commonwealth News
Release, 30/01/02). The situation is still
like that.
CMAG condemned the then "recently enacted" Public Order and
Security Act
(POSA) and the General Laws Amendment Act, as well as the
"proposed" Access
to Information and Protection of Privacy Bill, "as
further direct curbs on
the freedom of speech, of the press, and association
in Zimbabwe and
contrary to the Commonwealth Declaration." POSA and AIPPA
are some of the
most repressive laws in Zimbabwe.
On 19 March 2002,
the Commonwealth Heads of State and Government (CHOGM)
Chairpersons'
Committee on Zimbabwe decided to suspend Zimbabwe from the
councils of the
Commonwealth for one year. The issue of Zimbabwe was on the
agenda of the
Commonwealth Heads of State and Government (CHOGM) held in
December 2003 in
Abuja, Nigeria.
Before the end of the summit, the then Zanu-pf Foreign
Affairs Minister,
Stan Mudenge wrote the Secretary General Don McKinnon a
letter dated 11
December 2003 confirming that Zimbabwe had terminated its
membership of the
Commonwealth with effect from 7 December 2003
(Commonwealth News Release,
12/12/03).
In response, the Secretary
General McKinnon expressed disappointment with
the move taken by the
Government of Zimbabwe and clarified the country's new
status saying:
"Zimbabwe becomes a non-member state and is no longer
eligible to receive
Commonwealth assistance or to attend Commonwealth
meetings. Commonwealth
organisations should now treat Zimbabwe as a
non-member state."
The
implications of Zimbabwe's withdrawal are still being felt 8 years
later.
For example, Zimbabweans can no longer access Commonwealth
scholarships.One
consequence, however which was immediate, was that Zimbabwe's
High
Commissions became Embassies and our High Commissioners became
designated
Ambassadors, a rather awkward status for a country that enjoyed
so much
international respect, admiration and freedom of movement at
independence.
Just before announcing Zimbabwe's withdrawal, Mugabe
chose to distract
attention from poor governance saying: "If the choice was
made for us, one
for us to lose our sovereignty and become a member of the
Commonwealth or to
remain with our sovereignty and lose membership of the
Commonwealth, then I
would say, then let the Commonwealth go. What is it to
us? Our people are
overjoyed, the land is ours. We are now the rulers and
owners of Zimbabwe"
(Wikiquote.org, 07/10/10). Mugabe further argued that
"the Commonwealth is a
mere club, but it has become like an 'Animal Farm'
where some animals are
more equal than others. How can Blair claim to
regulate and direct events
and still say all of us are equals?" This is
unbelievable.
What Mugabe did not tell the nation was the real reason why
the country had
been suspended and that instead of jumping, Zimbabwe had
actually been
"pushed out" (by the suspension) because of its poor record on
human rights,
freedom of the media, of expression, of assembly or
association, electoral
violence and the notorious POSA and AIPPA despite
signing the Harare
Declaration on Good Governance.
Strangely these
undemocratic laws are still on the statute book to this day
even when there
is now the so-called government of national unity formed in
February 2009.
Rather than completely abolish these harsh laws, we sadly
learn that Zanu-pf
and MDC are jointly working to amend POSA! It's just
incredible. By sprucing
up POSA, somehow the coalition regime expects a
conducive environment for
free and fair elections to prevail in 2011, as if
the experience of COPAC
has not been enough testimony of the fact that
Zanu-pf is beyond
redemption.
The characterisation of Zimbabwe as a reclusive state would
be incomplete
without mention of a few more acts of seclusion. The country
is not
participating in the United Nations funded NEPAD or African Peer
Review
Mechanism which checks on good governance but Mugabe does not want to
miss
UN conferences in New York, Geneva and Rome. In August Zimbabwe
successfully
helped SADC to suspend its Tribunal for 6 months because it was
becoming
increasingly critical of Zimbabwe's treatment of white farmers. In
February
2002, Zimbabwe expelled Pierre Schori, head of EU observer team
(BBC,
18/02/02). The UN's torture expert Manfred Nowak was detained
overnight at
Harare Airport before being deported to South Africa in October
2009. In
November 2008 the Elders' delegation of prominent figures and
former
statesmen comprising former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former
United
States president Jimmy Carter and Graca Machel, an international
advocate
for women's and children's rights was refused entry into Zimbabwe
by Mugabe's
regime. The Elders were on a humanitarian mission and were
forced to assess
the situation from South Africa (Mail and Guardian,
24/11/08).Through a
well-resourced propaganda campaign thanks to ZBC's Radio
and Television as
well as Zimbabwe Newspapers, Mugabe's regime has managed
to brainwash some
people into believing that all the people he is
disagreeing with in the
world especially the West are after land or if they
are black Zimbabweans,
they are "western puppets."
Zimbabwe's
isolation has caused a lot of unnecessary hardships to ordinary
people.
Despite Zanu-pf bragging about its land reform programme, sad
reports
continue to come out of Zimbabwe about food shortages. For example
hungry
villagers in food -deficit Beitbridge, Gwanda and Mangwe districts
are said
to be exchanging goats for maize while hungry Mwenezi villagers are
surviving on baboon. In 2008, villagers in Wedza district in Mashonaland
East province were reportedly reduced to eating their own dogs and cow dung
after going for weeks without any proper food according to SW Radio Africa
(28/10/08). Then Zanu-pf Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi has the
courtesy to tell foreign diplomats who are giving aid that Zimbabwe is not a
candidate for humanitarian assistance! Please?
As Zimbabwe limps on
shielded by Zanu-pf from any international oversight of
poor governance,
it's the vulnerable who will continue to pay dearly for
Mugabe's bloated ego
until God the Almighty decides his time. Zimbabwe's
priorities are up-side
down. It is unjustified for patients to pay bribes to
access ARVs while the
regime announces that "Air Zimbabwe has paid US$400
million for new
aircraft? (Travel House UK, 21/09/10). Hopefully, it was
just mere
propaganda.
Failing
Zim
http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/
Oct 7, 2010 | Sowetan Editorial
Thu Oct 07 09:17:33 SAST
2010
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe lives to see another day with
the latest
news that his Botswana counterpart, Ian Khama, has finally seen
the light.
Concluding a two-day state visit here, Khama has joined the
southern African
chorus calling for travel sanctions against the ruling
Zanu-PF elite to be
lifted.
That Khama changed his tune while in
President Jacob Zuma's backyard will be
a feather in the cap of the South
African head of state, who has been vocal
in his condemnation of the
sanctions.
Hitherto a lone voice of reason against the human rights
abuses and
political mayhem in Zimbabwe, Khama's softening stance is
unlikely to augur
well for the peer review mechanism in the
region.
Mugabe has just been given carte blanche on his excesses in
Zimbabwe.
And that, President Khama, is a damn pity
Can Robert Mugabe ever be persuaded to give up?
A fearful stalemate looks unbreakable for the moment. But a
sensible solution may yet be found
Oct 7th 2010 | HARARE
IF YOU take President Robert Mugabe's recent declaration at face value,
Zimbabwe will have another general election by the end of next year. That will
be three-and-a-half years after his long-ruling Zanu-PF party indisputably lost
to the rival Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai
(right, above), but then refused to concede. Mr Tsvangirai, as compensation,
became a distinctly second-fiddle prime minister. Next time, despite all the
tricks Mr Mugabe and his party are sure to play, they could well lose again.
There is at least a chance that the president will step down and that, at last,
less fettered power will be handed to Mr Tsvangirai.
Many-perhaps most-perceptive Zimbabweans think such a prospect fanciful. Why,
they ask, should the thugs round Mr Mugabe behave any differently next time,
especially when their own ill-gotten gains are at stake? And yet, though the
economy is still in ruins, politics messy and human rights persistently
violated, the picture is definitely less bad than it was two years ago. It is
widely considered, with good reason, that Mr Mugabe is running rings round Mr
Tsvangirai and is preventing the MDC and its allies from enjoying their rights
as a majority in parliament. All the same, a steady momentum is growing for
change-and against Mr Mugabe.
Moreover, though recent reports of the 86-year-old leader's impending demise
were based on his occasional sleepiness at official functions and a stumble or
two on ceremonial steps, plainly he could drop dead tomorrow. Behind the scenes,
feuding within the ruling party over the succession is getting hotter.
Last electoral time round, at the end of March 2008, the playing field was so
heavily tilted against the MDC that few thought it could win-yet it did so
clearly, albeit by a narrow official margin. Mr Mugabe also decisively lost the
first round of the presidential poll, held on the same day, to Mr Tsvangirai.
Only after a bizarre five-week silence from a terrified electoral commission did
Mr Mugabe, bolstered by his security men and their lethal machinery of
repression, declare that Mr Tsvangirai had fallen just short of the required
50%. The shaken president then set about bludgeoning the challenger and his MDC
into submission-resulting, after the murder of at least 200 MDC supporters, in
Mr Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the run-off some three bloody months later.
After that, while the MDC and its allies had a slim majority in the lower
house of parliament, Zimbabwe's slide into ruin continued. Within months of Mr
Mugabe's re-election as president, inflation had reached several billion per
cent a year. Eventually, early last year, Zimbabwe's own currency was abolished
altogether, to be replaced by the American dollar.
Shortly afterwards, a government of national unity (known jokingly as the
Gnu) took office. Five months earlier the two main parties, plus a breakaway
from the MDC under Arthur Mutambara, had signed a "global political agreement"
(GPA), spelling out how power would be shared. Mr Mugabe remained president and
Mr Tsvangirai became prime minister, with Mr Mutambara as his deputy.
Since then, things have undoubtedly improved. The economy's dollarisation is
by far the biggest factor in Zimbabwe's fragile recovery. As the Zimbabwe dollar
gradually became worthless, civil servants, including teachers and doctors, saw
their pay shrivel until there was no point in working. Now, though many-perhaps
most-Zimbabweans are still on the breadline and 80% have no jobs, at least those
in work can predict their income. Inflation is officially running at 5% a year.
After years of contraction, the economy is growing-at 8.1% this year, says the
finance minister, Tendai Biti, an MDC man.
Health care and education have improved markedly, from rock-bottom. Hospitals
that had run out of the most basic medicines, as well as staff, have begun to
function again. More recently more than 13m textbooks, paid for by Western
donors, have started to be delivered under the eye of Unicef to all the
country's 5,600-odd primary schools.
Sales of beer and beverages are sharply up on a year ago. Other indicators,
such as sales of roofing material, point to busier economic activity. Traffic in
downtown Harare is a lot more clogged than a couple of years ago-and not just
because many of the traffic lights are still not working.
The decline in some types of farming may have bottomed out. Tobacco
production, for instance, which peaked at around 230m kg in 2000, just as the
mass expropriation of white farms got going, slumped to around 59m kg last year.
But this year's sales suggest that output, thanks in part to a rise in
smallholder planting, may have risen to around 120m kg (though that figure may
include smuggled imports). Some minerals are also beginning to do better again,
notably gold and platinum. And though the ruling party and its military backers
plainly hope to filch the diamonds from newly developed fields in the Marange
area, Mr Biti is determined to ensure that the Treasury also benefits.
With recovery, the proportion of Zimbabweans needing food handouts has
dropped sharply. Two years ago the UN's World Food Programme found that at least
half the country's 8m-9m people relied on them. This year probably only 15% of
rural folk will do so.
Breadbasket no more
But the economy as a whole is still in dire straits. Driving for 140km (87
miles) along the main arterial road eastwards from Harare, you pass mile after
mile of derelict and seemingly empty farmland that was once among the most
productive in Africa. Not a single pedigree cow is to be seen-nor, for that
matter, one white face. Grass along many of the verges has been burnt,
apparently because hungry people have been trying to flush out rodents for food.
Milk production, though well up on last year's figure, is seven times smaller
than it was. Beef production has fallen nearly fourfold. You see the same
desolate picture across the country, once the region's breadbasket as well as
one of the world's largest producers of top-quality tobacco.
Of the 4,500 white farmers who owned 6,800 farms, barely 150 still hold their
original tracts, according to John Worsley-Worswick, who runs Justice for
Agriculture, a lobby that stands up for commercial farmers and their employees.
Another 200 or so have stayed on at least a portion of their land, often as
managers or leaseholders. (At least 75% of the country's white farmers, he
notes, bought their land on the open market after independence in 1980, having
acquired certificates to show that neither the government nor black Zimbabweans
wished or were able to buy it.) The invasions are still going on, despite the
GPA's assurance that they would stop, with white farmers still subjected to
assault and arson as the police look on. Around 278,000 whites once lived in
Zimbabwe; now, at a guess, there are around 12,000.
A large majority of the 350,000 permanent black workers and 270,000 seasonal
ones who worked on white farms, with at least 1.5m dependants between them, have
lost their livelihoods as a result of the expropriations. Most of them were
denied land elsewhere in the communally owned rural areas (formerly known as
"tribal trust lands") because they or their forebears came from poorer
neighbouring countries, such as Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique. Fewer than 2% of
them have benefited from the confiscations. Thousands have been reduced to
living in shacks on the edge of towns. Many were among the 700,000 victims of
Operation Murambatsvina, when Zanu-PF decided to sweep away entire shanty-towns
in 2005.
The exodus of Zimbabweans abroad, especially to South Africa, has yet to be
stemmed, though nearly 420,000 people have been helped to return this year.
Figures are disputed, but economic chaos and political repression may have
caused a good 3m Zimbabweans to emigrate. The UN's refugee agency counted
149,000 of them applying for political asylum in South Africa last year alone,
quite apart from the much larger number who have slipped over the border for
work and melted into the population.
Despite the country's surge in economic activity, a drastic decline in
manufacturing will be hard to reverse, as cheap Chinese goods flood the local
market. Mr Mugabe's law on "indigenisation and economic empowerment", enacted in
2007 but due for implementation only this year, has deterred all but the boldest
firms, at home and abroad, from investing.
The aim of the law is to ensure that all businesses worth more than $500,000
should be majority-owned by black Zimbabweans. The definition of "indigenous"
rules out native-born whites-and, for that matter, rich black South Africans,
though Zanu-PF is always liable to make exceptions for people who pay enough. Mr
Mugabe and his allies are candidly racist in espousing the bill, which they
promote as complementary to the land-confiscation policy: large-scale property
as well as land should belong only to blacks, however liberal individual whites
may have been during the struggle for independence.
The human-rights picture is less horrible than it was two years ago, when
Zanu-PF conducted a reign of terror, particularly in the countryside, in
response to the MDC's election victory. And that itself came only a year after
thugs presumed to be operating under the aegis of Zanu-PF nearly killed Mr
Tsvangirai, breaking his skull, and, in a separate incident in prison, beating
him to a pulp, before he was charged with treason, a capital offence. (The
mutilated body of Edward Chikomba, the cameraman who conveyed the picture of Mr
Tsvangirai's battered head to the wider world, was found by the roadside outside
Harare, the capital, two weeks later.) Thousands of villagers who were thought
to have voted for the MDC were displaced, their houses often burned down.
Hundreds were killed.
Short sleeves, long
sleeves
But though violence on such a scale has ended for the moment, fear is growing
again, partly because Zanu-PF senses that another election may be in the offing.
In the past few months a Constitutional Parliamentary Committee, known as COPAC,
has been sending "outreach teams" around the country, in theory to discuss a new
constitution that is supposed to be drafted in parliament, then endorsed in a
referendum. More than a thousand meetings have been held. Many have been
peaceful, but Zanu-PF thugs, in an exercise known as Operation Chimumumu ("dumb
person"), have been beating up and in a few cases killing suspected MDC
supporters who disagree with a so-called Kariba draft favoured by Mr Mugabe. It
would, among other things, allow the old man in theory another ten years in
office.
"We don't have short sleeves, long sleeves any more," says an opposition
leader near Macheke, east of Harare, referring to the way the Zanu-PF thugs
treated those suspected of voting for the MDC: "short sleeves" meant that their
arms were axed above the elbow, "long sleeves" at the wrist. "But the fear is
growing." "All that our people want is food and peace," says a worried priest in
a rural area north-east of Harare. "But these [Zanu-PF] guys are starting to
come back." A queasy feeling persists that, while the violence is mostly low-key
and confined to the countryside, it could erupt in the run-up to another
election. Jabulani Sibanda, a leader of the so-called "vets", most of whom are
far too young to have been true veterans of the guerrilla war against Iain Smith
in the 1970s, has recently been terrorising villagers suspected of MDC
sympathies in parts of central Zimbabwe.
Although the terror of mid-2008 subsided once it was clear that Mr Mugabe was
still pretty much in charge, many leading human-rights campaigners have fled the
country: Jestina Mukoko, abducted in late 2008 and held in secret for several
months; Noel Kututwa, director of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, whose
band of 8,000-odd brave volunteer monitors prevented Zanu-PF from wholesale
ballot-stuffing at the polling stations; Gertrude Hambira of the farm workers'
union; and, most recently, Roy Bennett, the MDC's white treasurer and deputy
agriculture minister-designate, re-elected as an MP in a landslide in an
entirely black constituency, whom, for that very reason, Mr Mugabe still refuses
to appoint. After Mr Bennett's eventual acquittal this year on a trumped-up
charge of terrorism, for which he spent months in prison, the police say they
want to interrogate him on new unspecified charges; he is in hiding abroad.
Tsvangirai's
travails
The political picture is patchier still. Plainly, Mr Mugabe has abided only
by those parts of the GPA that suit him. A few advances can, however, be chalked
up. Commissions on the media, human rights and elections have been set up under
decent chairmen. The media has more space, with new licences approved for eight
publications, including NewsDay, which offers a far more rounded
picture than the Zanu-PF-controlled Herald. The Daily News, by
far Zimbabwe's best newspaper until its presses were blown up in 2001, may
revive soon. The very fact that Mr Tsvangirai and Mr Mugabe sit down together in
cabinet every Monday, apparently without rancour, marks a dramatic turnaround.
But on a range of issues Mr Mugabe ensures that his prime minister is often
kept out of the loop, in blatant defiance of the GPA. He has refused, among many
other things, to remove the central-bank governor, Gideon Gono, or the
attorney-general, Johannes Tomana, both leading authors of the country's
economic and human-rights disasters. Above all, he has kept his hands tightly on
the levers of hard power: the courts, still largely in the hands of Zanu-PF
judges, and in particular the army, the police and the feared Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO). By various means, including dirty tricks,
deaths and suspensions, the MDC's wafer-thin majority in the lower house has
been whittled away, though it technically still has control if the unreliable Mr
Mutambara's small slice of the party votes with the main bit.
Owing partly to the MDC's own lack of guile, the country's three most
repressive laws, the Public Order and Security Act (known as POSA), the Access
to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Criminal Law
(Codification and Reform) Act, are still in force. The sole broadcaster is still
under Mr Mugabe's thumb-and full of hate-speak. Even when some of his closest
aides and MPs have been arrested or accused on spurious charges, Mr Tsvangirai
has been unable to prevent the police or CIO from obeying Zanu-PF's orders to
hamstring his party, disperse meetings and beat up its members.
Yet he remains incorrigibly hopeful, refusing to criticise Mr Mugabe even for
his patent foot-dragging and abuse of the terms of the GPA, which states that
the security forces and courts should be politically neutral. "He's an old man
who wants to let go," he says of the president. "He's looking for an exit
strategy that restores his legacy in Zimbabwe and the world."
Mr Tsvangirai has been accused of weakness and dithering by some of his
supporters, who want him to express the people's outrage more forcibly. Even on
such core issues as the land confiscations and the indigenisation act, he sounds
emollient. "We can't reverse the land reform," he says. "But there should be a
one-family-one-farm policy" and "we must provide for compensation [for the white
farmers] as a matter of principle." "We have modified the [indigenisation] law,"
he says, without demanding its removal. New "sectoral thresholds" must be laid
down, so that in some parts of the economy, for instance in mining, maybe only
5% of the company would have to be allocated to black Zimbabweans-"on a
willing-buyer-willing-seller basis, at proper value". This is a far cry from Mr
Mugabe's ferocious insistence on 51% of all mid-sized companies and all land
going willy-nilly to blacks. But it does not signify flat-out opposition to
drastic, race-based redistribution.
The whites have lost everything-and so has she
Mr Tsvangirai's apparent aim, rather than demanding in vain that the GPA's
terms be met, is to entrench his MDC in government and prepare the road towards
a fresh round of elections by the end of next year. That involves preparing a
new voter roll and ensuring that, for a change, the election is properly
monitored. In the past, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), an
influential 15-country regional club which South Africa unofficially leads, has
whitewashed flawed polls in Mr Mugabe's favour. Now, thinks Mr Tsvangirai, SADC
and South Africa, especially its current president, Jacob Zuma, having accepted
him as a legitimate prime minister rather than an upstart or a traitor, are
likely to give him a fairer wind.
Mr Tsvangirai also calls for the lifting of the personal sanctions imposed by
the European Union, the United States and a few other countries against Mr
Mugabe and 200 or so of his closest colleagues, who blame these measures
entirely for Zimbabwe's misfortunes. But in return the president must, he says,
guarantee that the coming election will be conducted fairly.
Is this mere wishful thinking? Mr Tsvangirai, noting that against the odds
the MDC still managed to win the previous general election, evidently thinks he
can pull off the feat more decisively next time. He has also let it be known
that he would, if given the chance, form a government of all the talents,
including the less venal members of Zanu-PF. He has promised not to impose a
policy of retribution.
He even thinks he can accommodate the "securocrats", as Zimbabwe's
high-ranking military people and police are known, who have become ever more
powerful and rich (from the proceeds of diamonds, among other things) since the
sullied election of 2008, and who are now considered Zanu-PF's most important
constituency. Undoubtedly, the security people are jockeying behind the scenes
as the succession draws near. These men with guns probably think they can keep
Mr Tsvangirai out of power altogether-and for good. But the prime minister is a
survivor, and may be cannier than he looks.
Call Robert Mugabe's bluff
Lift the sanctions if Zimbabwe's venally clever leader agrees
to have a properly monitored election
Oct 7th 2010
ONE of the most disheartening things about Zimbabwe is that its repellent
leader, Robert Mugabe, though loathed by many-probably most-people in his own
country, is widely admired across Africa, including its most powerful country,
South Africa. One reason for this is that he has persuaded many Africans that
the main cause of his country's ruin is the wicked imposition of sanctions by
the West, orchestrated by Britain, the evil former colonial power, and the
United States.
This is rubbish. There are no general sanctions stopping trade or financial
dealings with Zimbabwe, as there were against its forerunner, Rhodesia, when its
white-supremacist leader, Ian Smith, refused to accept black-majority rule.
Rather, Mr Mugabe and some 200 people in his ruling set are banned from travel
to the United States, the European Union and a handful of other countries, and
their assets in those places are frozen. A congressional act also stops America
financing Zimbabwean government bodies and companies deemed close to Mr Mugabe's
ruling party through the World Bank and other institutions. But the overwhelming
reason why banks are loth to lend to Zimbabwe is that Mr Mugabe's reckless
policies, especially the confiscation of white-owned farms, have entirely
destroyed Zimbabwe's creditworthiness. The personal sanctions have little to do
with the country's economic plight and yet, as our briefing this week explains,
they hand Mr Mugabe a populist excuse for it.
Nevertheless the West (and in particular Britain, which still steers Europe's
policy on Zimbabwe) should now change course and offer to lift the sanctions in
return for a few critically important pledges by Mr Mugabe. Some 18 months ago a
unity government took shape five months after a "global political agreement" had
laid out a detailed formula under which Mr Mugabe would remain president but
share power with Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister. As leader of the Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC), Mr Tsvangirai actually won a general election,
against all odds, in March 2008. He also won the first round of a presidential
contest and would have displaced Mr Mugabe but for a campaign of terror against
the MDC that forced its candidate to withdraw. Western governments say they will
lift the sanctions only if Mr Mugabe meets the terms of the global political
agreement, which he continues brazenly to flout. It is a bargain that will not
be struck.
But Mr Mugabe's recent declaration that an election must be held next year
offers a fresh chance to break the deadlock. Britain and the West should offer
to lift sanctions if Mr Mugabe accepts unrestricted international election
monitoring. In the past South Africa and the Southern African Development
Community (SADC), a 15-country regional club, have laid out fine-sounding
electoral guidelines that Mr Mugabe has merrily ignored. This time, if sanctions
are to go, it must be agreed that a wider range of monitors, including teams
from the Commonwealth, the EU and the UN, are let in-and allowed to stay a month
before and after the poll. South Africa and SADC are still crucial. But they-and
Mr Mugabe-must be persuaded to let international bodies from outside Africa join
the fray.
The Cameron is coming
Mr Mugabe has let it be known that he wants to re-engage with the new British
government under David Cameron, whose Conservative predecessors he admires for
brokering the 1980 Lancaster House accord that first put him in power. It is
time to call his bluff. It is clearly a risk, as Mr Mugabe has broken his word
so many times. But if he does it again, the sanctions can always be reimposed.
Mr Tsvangirai agrees with this approach. And South Africa's president, Jacob
Zuma, is less prone than his misguided predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, to treat Mr
Tsvangirai like dirt. Muttering about the old colonial power throwing its weight
around may be heard. But Mr Cameron and Mr Zuma must lance this boil together.
Once they lock Mr Mugabe into publicly accepting election conditions, the
sanctions should be lifted.
Mhondiwa Brothers sentenced for Bank Fraud
Hello,
I am the Public
Information Officer for the IRS Criminal Investigation in Dallas, Texas. I
thought your readers would be interested in these sentencing's that happened on
10/5/10 in the Northern District of Texas. Brothers, Kennedy and Cloud Mhondiwa
were sentenced for Conspiracy to Commit Bank Fraud. The factual statements
explain that the brothers operated a business called Kingdom Tax Services in
Dallas. They conspired to file tax returns in the names of numerous innocent
identity theft victims and received refunds from the false tax returns. Both
plead guilty to the charges and agreed that their guilty plea would have
immigration consequences. Attached are public records for additional
information.[I have not uploaded the additional info - if anyone wants it, contact me. Barbara]
Target |
Sentence Date |
Summary |
Kennedy Mhondiwa |
10/05/2010 |
18:371
(18:1344) CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT BANK FRAUD (1s) - Disposition: BOP 21 months; S/R 2 yrs.; MSA $100;
Restitution $20,867.79. |
Cloud Mhondiwa |
10/05/2010 |
18:371 (18:1344) CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT
BANK FRAUD (1s) - Disposition: BOP 15 months; S/R 2 yrs.; MSA $100
|
As always, it is
greatly appreciated when IRS Criminal Investigation is mentioned as the
investigating agency. Please let me know if you have any
questions,
Thanks,
Elisa
Attaway
Special Agent/Public
Information Officer
IRS-CI, Dallas Field
Office
214-413-5984 office
214-724-1447 cell
Elisa
Attaway
Special Agent/Public
Information Officer
IRS-CI, Dallas Field
Office
214-413-5984 office
214-724-1447 cell
Bill Watch 40/2010 - 7th October [Report on Implementation of 24Agreed GPA Issues ]
BILL WATCH
40/2010
[7th
October 2010]
Report on Implementation of 24 Agreed GPA
Issues
Agreement
reached and Endorsed in August.
Negotiations between the three parties to the GPA [the interparty
political agreement commonly known as the Global Political Agreement],
facilitated by a team appointed by President Zuma, reached agreement on 24
issues that had been the subject of disputes and delays in the implementation of
the GPA. In early August the three party principal endorsed and formalised the
agreement. An implementation matrix was also endorsed and was presented as part
of the report to President Zuma, who took it to the SADC Troika and Summit, 15th
– 17h August. It was approved by the Zimbabwe Cabinet on 24th August. [The matrix was set out in full in Bill Watch 33 of 30th
August].
Implementation Matrix: Not Much
Movement
The implementation matrix envisaged some issues being tackled
immediately; others within a month or two months; and a few continuously or on a
periodic basis. >From the time it was approved by Cabinet progress has been
disappointing and no official announcements have been made to explain the lack
of action. The three party principals have not met for several weeks [the
President has been to the United Nations and Deputy Prime Minister Mutambara was
in China for some three weeks]. When next the principals meet it is to be hoped
that they will do something to get the implementation process moving.
Below we attempt an assessment of progress, if any, on implementation
of those issues listed for implementation immediately or within one month,
grouping the issues according to time-frame.
Items for
Immediate Implementation
Summary:
Of the ten items under this head, there has been half-hearted
implementation of only one item. The others remain
unimplemented.
[Note – the numbers follow the numbering of the items in the
implementation matrix.]
10.
Cabinet and Council of Ministers’ Rules, Guidelines and
Procedures
Cabinet
Office to circularise the Rules, Guidelines and Procedures as agreed by the
negotiators and endorsed by the leadership of the inclusive government. Not done.
12.
Transport Arrangements for Principals
Office of
the President and Cabinet, Department of National Security, to rectify
administrative arrangements for the Prime Minister’s fleet. Not done.
13.
Security Aides for the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime
Ministers
Minister
of State for National Security in the President’s Office to speed up the process
of vetting, training and engagement of security personnel for Prime Minister and
Deputy Prime Ministers. Not
completed.
17.
Constitutional Commissions
Minister
of Justice and Legal Affairs, Parliamentary Standing Rules and Orders Committee
and the party principals to expedite the regularisation of the Human Rights
Commission and ensure the appointment of a new Anti-Corruption Commission. Not done. The Parliamentary Standing Rules and Orders
Committee is expected to meet next week; its input is required regarding members
of both Commissions.
19. Role
and Position of the Permanent Secretary for Media, Information and Publicity who
is also the presidential spokesperson
Chairman
of the Public Service Commission and Chief Secretary to the President and
Cabinet to ensure that the Permanent Secretary is apolitical. Not done.
20.
Constitutional Amendment No. 19
Minister
of Justice and Legal Affairs to arrange that the full text of Constitutional
Amendment No. 19 as approved by Parliament should be gazetted and signed. Not done satisfactorily. A revised version of
Constitution Amendment No. 19 was gazetted on 3rd September 2010 by direction of
the Law Reviser. The revised version still fails to reflect everything that was
in the Bill for Constitution Amendment No. 19 which was approved by Parliament.
[See Bill Watch 35/2010 of 4th September.]
21.
Interference with the Right to Freedom of Association and
Assembly
Commissioner-General of Police and co-Ministers of Home Affairs to
reaffirm the right to freely organize political activities. Not done
22. Role
and Funding of NGOs
Government
should determine priority areas for donor assistance. To be implemented by the
Cabinet Aid Coordination Committee [CAC] and Cabinet. Not done.
23. MDTF
and Selective Funding of Ministries by Donors
Government
should improve aid coordination and achieve budget support. To be implemented
by the Cabinet Committee on Aid Coordination and Cabinet. Not done.
24.
Amendments to the Electoral Act
Minister
of Justice and Legal Affairs, Cabinet and Parliament to act to enable
legislation to be completed. The Bill to amend the
Electoral Act, although believed to have been finalised, has not yet been sent
to the Government Printer for printing prior to its presentation to Parliament.
This means that it is unlikely to be presented to Parliament this month – Bills
have to be printed and gazetted, and cannot ordinarily be introduced until at
least two weeks after gazetting.
Items for
Implementation in One Month
2. Media
Issues
Minister
of Media, Information and Publicity, Parliamentary Standing Rules and Orders
Committee and the party principals to attend to:
·
regularisation of the Broadcasting
Authority of Zimbabwe [BAZ] Board
·
reappointment of new Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corporation Board.
·
constituting the Media
Trust
Not done. The Parliamentary Standing Rules and Orders Committee is
expected to meet next week; its input is required regarding members of the BAZ
Board.
3.
External Radio Stations
JOMIC and
Cabinet Re-engagement Committee to call upon foreign governments hosting,
funding and relaying pirate radio stations to stop interference in the internal
affairs of the Republic of Zimbabwe. Not done.
7. Land
Audit
The
Minister of Lands and Rural Resettlement, the Cabinet Committee on Resettlement
and Development [CRD], the Cabinet and the Principals to appoint an inclusive
and balanced Land Audit Commission. The Land Audit
Commission has not been appointed.
11.
Ministerial Mandates: Assignment of Acts
Chief
Secretary to the President and Cabinet and Secretary in the Prime Minister’s
Office to meet and submit report on the issue to the Leadership of the Inclusive
Government. Not done.
16.
National Economic Council (NEC)
Minister
of Economic Planning and Investment Promotion, Cabinet and Leadership of
Government to expedite the establishment of the NEC. NEC has not been
established.
The other 7 agreed items in the implementation matrix are for
continuous action or for completion within 2 months.
Progress on them will be covered in a later
bulletin.
Veritas
makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot take legal
responsibility for information supplied.
Bill Watch 7th October- Legislative Reform Series 3/2010 [The Referendums Act & Regulations - Part II]
BILL WATCH
LEGISLATIVE REFORM SERIES 3/2010
[7th October
2010]
The
Referendums Act and Regulations – Part II
Part I of this discussion [Bill Watch of the 27th September]
outlined the contents of the Referendums Act and Regulations.
In this bulletin we move on to consider whether these laws should be
changed.
First a Correction
In the first part of this Bill Watch we erroneously implied that the
Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs was responsible for the administration of
the Referendums Act. In fact, it is the Minister of Constitutional and
Parliamentary Affairs.
Hence it is the Minister
of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs who must be notified of the result
of a referendum in terms of section 8 of the Referendums Act, and he is the
Minister who approves regulations made by ZEC in terms of section 11 of the
Act.
Note even though the Referendums Act is administered by the Minister
of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs, the Referendum will be funded
through ZEC and ZEC’s Funding comes through the Ministry of Justice. This would
not matter if ZEC were a truly independent commission, with control over its own
finances; in present circumstances, however, the split responsibilities may
lead to difficulties if there is a disagreement between the two Ministers over
how the forthcoming referendum should be conducted.
Should the Referendums Act and Regulations be
Amended?
The Referendums Act was passed in 1999, before there was
an Electoral Commission. At that time elections were conducted by the
Registrar-General of Elections, who was under the general administrative control
of an Election Directorate consisting mainly of ministerial appointees. It was
envisaged that referendums would be conducted in the same way.
Now there is an Electoral Commission, which is an
independent constitutional body responsible for conducting both elections and
referendums. The Referendums Act, and the regulations made under it, need to be
re-examined in the light of this new constitutional and administrative
dispensation.
There is an Electoral Amendment Bill draft which has been
finalized and approved by the party principals and needs final approval by
Cabinet before being printed for presentation to Parliament. So far as is
known, there are no amendments in this new Bill that affect the Referendums
Act.
A separate Bill will be needed to make the amendments to
the Act that are suggested below.
Amendments to the regulations can be made by the Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission [ZEC] through a statutory instrument published in the
Gazette, though because the regulations are fairly old it would be better
to replace them altogether. Whether they are amended or replaced, however, ZEC
would have to get approval for any changes from the Minister of Constitutional
and Parliamentary Affairs [not, as was erroneously stated in Part I of this Bill
Watch, the Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs].
Possible
Amendments to the Referendums Act
There are several amendments that can and should be made to the Act
and its regulations:
· The first was noted
in Part I. Section
8
of the
Act,
which deals with counting of votes, should be amended to
bring the vote-counting procedures for referendums into line with those
prescribed in the current Electoral Act for elections, i.e. to provide for votes
to be counted initially at polling stations, posted outside the polling station
and then verified and collated at constituency centres and at national
level.
·
Secondly, the
President’s power to call referendums merits reconsideration. Why should the
President, i.e. the Government, have the exclusive right to call referendums?
Could the Act not be amended to provide for a referendum to be called if a
sufficient number of voters [perhaps 10 per cent of the electorate] petition ZEC
for a referendum on a particular question? Such referendums could be held
simultaneously with general elections.
·
Thirdly, the
formulation of the question to be decided at a referendum should not be left
entirely to the President or the Cabinet, who may have a vested political
interest in securing a particular result from the referendum. [For example,
“Are you in favour of the far-sighted
and progressive Kariba Draft Constitution? Yes or No?”] Giving ZEC the task of
formulating the question might compromise ZEC’s independence and impartiality,
since the formulation of such questions is often a political matter.
Consideration should be given, therefore, to allowing anyone aggrieved by the
President’s formulation of a question to appeal against it to the Electoral
Court, and for the court to decide whether the formulation was fair or not.
Stringent time-limits would have to be laid down for any such appeal to avoid
delaying the referendum.
·
Next, the Act
impliedly allows voters to cast their votes in a referendum at any polling
station anywhere in Zimbabwe. The regulations specifically allow them to do
so. This may make it difficult for electoral officers to identify cases of
double voting or similar malpractices. If this is a real problem, the Act
should be amended to oblige voters to cast their votes in the constituencies in
which they are registered or entitled to be registered.
·
Provision should also
be made for postal voting. The Act does not prohibit this — it is completely
silent on the point — but it should give some idea of the extent to which postal
voting is allowed in referendums.
·
Next, the
accreditation of observers is currently regulated under the Electoral Act and
the Electoral Act’s provisions are unduly restrictive. It would be possible for
ZEC to make regulations under the Referendums Act relaxing or removing those
restrictions and allowing a much wider spectrum of organisations to observe
referendums.
·
If the issue to be
decided in a referendum is a political one the attitude of political parties
towards the outcome affects the electoral environment — whether it is peaceful
or violent — and their attitude will usually be a decisive factor in determining
the result. Their role should be recognised in the Act. For
example, if a political party campaigns for or against the issue in a
referendum, ZEC should be given power to declare the party to be a contestant in
the referendum and to be subject to all the obligations, and entitled to all the
rights, of a political party in a general election. The consequence of such a
declaration would be, for instance, that the party would have to participate in
multi-party liaison committees, would have to abide by a statutory code of
conduct, and would be entitled to appoint agents to witness voting procedures
and the counting of votes.
·
Should the result of
a referendum be determined solely by a majority of the votes cast in the
referendum, or should the geographical spread of votes influence the result?
The result of a referendum may affect different parts of the country in
different ways, and some allowance should be made for
this in the Act.
·
Provision should be
made for the result of a referendum to be communicated to ZEC,
not to the Minister, and for ZEC to publish the
result in the Gazette. This is what happens in elections and the same
should apply to referendums.
·
There should be an
amendment providing for the result of a referendum to be announced within a
specific number of days.
·
The right to appeal
against the result of a referendum should be extended and clarified. Under
section 167 of the Electoral Act an electoral petition [in effect, an electoral
appeal] can be made on the ground of “electoral malpractice, irregularity or any
other cause whatsoever”. The grounds of appeal under section 9 of the
Referendums Act are much narrower, and should be aligned with those in the
Electoral Act. As to who should be allowed to appeal, any voter who voted in
the referendum and any party that contested the referendum should have a right
to appeal against the result.
·
To what extent should
the result of a referendum be binding on the Executive and the Legislature? If,
for example, voters in the forthcoming constitutional referendum reject the
draft constitution, could Parliament enact it anyway? And conversely, if voters
accept the draft, could Parliament amend the draft before enacting it into law?
At present there is nothing in the GPA or the Referendums Act to prevent either
of these two outcomes. The
law should be clarified on the point. The point is
important for all referendums, of course, but it is particularly so for the
constitutional referendum. Politicians should not be allowed to ignore the
wishes of the people expressed in a referendum.
·
Section 11 of the Act
should be amended to remove the
veto power of the Minister of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs over
regulations made by ZEC. The Commission is a constitutional body which must
exercise its functions independently; the Minister’s power of veto is wholly
inconsistent with this independence.
Conclusion
Two points should be remembered with regard to the forthcoming
referendum. First, if the political environment in which a referendum takes
place is characterised by violence and intimidation, the result of the
referendum will not reflect the wishes of the electorate no matter what
provisions are contained in the Act. Secondly, even if the referendum is free
and fair its result is likely to be influenced by extraneous factors such as the
popularity of the government or the state of the economy: the electorate seldom
gives a considered answer to the question that is actually asked in a
referendum.
[Electronic versions of Referendums Act and Referendums Regulations
available on request]
Veritas makes every
effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot take legal responsibility for
information supplied.
Bill Watch 41/2010 - 7th October [Attorney-General's Office Bill]
BILL WATCH
41/2010
[7th October 2010]
Attorney-General’s
Office Bill [HB 4, 2010]
Introduction
The Attorney-General’s
Office Bill was gazetted on 10th September, 2010, and is therefore ready for
presentation. It is on the agenda for its First Reading in the House of
Assembly next week.
The purpose of the Bill is explained in its
covering memorandum: it is to take the Attorney-General’s
Office out of the Public Service and to transfer responsibility for
administering the Office to a new Attorney-General’s
Office Board. In this way, according to the Bill’s preamble, it is hoped that
the independence, effectiveness and efficiency of the Office will be
enhanced.
Will the Bill have this effect? An
examination of its provisions indicates that the Bill is unlikely to achieve
this objective.
Appointment and membership of
Attorney-General’s Office
Board
The Board will consist of the Attorney-General, a member of the Public Service Commission
and up to five other members appointed by the President [clause 8 of the
Bill]. Two of those other members will have to be former judges or persons
qualified to be judges — serving judges will not be eligible for appointment —
and one of them will be appointed by the President to chair the Board. In terms
of clause 4(2) of the Bill at least three or four of the members will have to be
women [a curious provision, this: it is not clear what the minimum number
should be; perhaps four is the maximum number of women that can be appointed to
the Board].
Under paragraph 2 of the First Schedule to
the Bill, Members of Parliament or of local authorities will not be eligible for
appointment to the Board, nor will unrehabilitated insolvents — which is just as
well because the Board will be responsible for administering State funds
allocated to the Attorney-General’s
Office. On the other hand persons with criminal records will be eligible as
long as they have not been sentenced to an effective term of imprisonment less
than five years before they are appointed.
Although the Bill states that the President
will appoint members of the Board, while the Inter-Party Political Agreement
[GPA] remains in force the appointments will have to be made with the agreement
of the Prime Minister [see article 20.1.3(p) of the GPA – the President ...
“in consultation with the Prime Minister, makes key appointments the
President is required to make under and in terms of the Constitution or any Act
of Parliament – and “in consultation” as defined in section 115 of
the Constitution means with agreement].
Members of the Board will enjoy the same
protected tenure as members of the Judicial Service Commission under section 110
of the Constitution [paragraph 5 of the First Schedule to the Bill – though it
refers to the wrong section of the Constitution and this needs to be corrected].
Functions of
Attorney-General’s Office Board
The Board’s
functions will be limited to appointing members of the Attorney-General’s Office, other than the Attorney-General and his deputies, fixing their conditions
of service, attending to their grievances, disciplining them and, where
necessary, dismissing them [clause 5 of the Bill]. Essentially the Board’s
functions will be those currently exercised by the Public Service Commission.
Clause 5 states that the Board has the
function of “administering and supervising” the Attorney-General’s Office. This is a very broad mandate
and could be interpreted as controlling the way in which prosecutions are
conducted. In the overall context of Bill, however, it seems fairly clear that
the Board will have no power to control the way in which members of the Office
carry out their professional duties.
Clause 6 of
the Bill encourages the Board to delegate its powers to its chief executive
officer, called “the Director”, who will also be the head of a Department of
Administration in the Attorney-General’s
Office [clause 9 of the Bill]. There is no limit to the powers that the
Board may delegate to the Director, though it will be able to revoke
appointments and promotions made by the Director if it considers them to be
unlawful.
The Board is supposed to be independent
[this is stated in clause 5(3) of the Bill] but under clause 8 the Minister of
Justice [not the Attorney-General,
as stated in the Bill’s memorandum – note the memorandum has no legal
significance] will have power to issue policy directives with which the Board
will have to comply. This is not such a serious infringement of the
Attorney-General’s
independence as it may seem, because the Board’s functions are essentially
administrative and the Minister will not be able to dictate the policy to be
adopted in regard to prosecutions or the nature of advice given by the
Attorney-General’s Office.
Under clause 7 the Board will have to
report annually to the Minister of Justice and provide him with whatever
information he may require as to the operation of the Attorney-General’s
Office. This is a further inroad into the Board’s
independence.
Organisation of
Attorney-General’s Office
Parts III and IV of the Bill deal generally
with the structure of the Attorney-General’s
Office and the conditions of service and discipline of its
members.
As noted above, clause 9 of the Bill
establishes a Department of Administration. It is the only department that is
established directly by the Bill; others will be established by the Board under
clause 10. This is another indication that the Bill is concerned primarily with
administrative matters, not with the way in which the Attorney-General and his staff carry out their professional
duties.
The staff of the Attorney-General’s Office will have to serve an initial
probationary period of from six months to a year [clause 12] but
otherwise their conditions of service — their salaries, pensions, discipline and
so on — will be fixed by the Board under clause 13 and through service
regulations made under clause 24. In this respect the Board’s powers will be
the same as those that Public Service Commission exercises over public servants
— indeed, the clauses of Part IV of the Bill have mostly been copied from the
Public Service Act.
Two points should be
noted:
· The Board
will be able to draw up a code of ethical and professional conduct for members
of the Attorney-General’s
Office. This is sorely needed. It has never been clear how far the ethical
rules governing legal practitioners bind prosecutors and other members of the
Office. A formal code of conduct for prosecutors will do much to clarify this.
It is not clear if such a code would bind the Attorney General and his deputies
who are constitutional appointees.
· The
provisions of the Public Service Act prohibiting public servants from standing
for election to Parliament or a local authority have not been carried over into
the Bill. Perhaps they were felt to be unnecessary, but their omission from the
Bill will allow the Board, if it is so minded, to permit members of the
Attorney-General’s staff
to engage in politics and stand for election. This needs to be corrected
The procedure to be followed in
disciplining members of the Attorney-General’s
Office is outlined in Part IV of the Bill, and is very much the same as that
applicable to members of the public service. Members who are aggrieved at
disciplinary action taken against them will have a right of appeal to the Labour
Court.
Finances of Attorney-General’s Office
Like all government departments, the
Attorney-General’s Office will be funded by the State
through parliamentary appropriations [clause 18 of the Bill]. The Board
will also be able to accept donations from foreign governments and, unlike the
Electoral Commission, will not need permission from the Minister to do
so.
Conclusion
To revert to the question posed at the
beginning of this Bill Watch: will the Bill enhance the independence,
effectiveness and efficiency of the Attorney-General’s
Office? The answer, regrettably, is that it probably
won’t.
The main effect of the Bill is to transfer
responsibility for the Attorney-General’s
Office from the Public Service Commission to a new body headed by a former or
aspirant judge and composed of various worthies [plus, perhaps, one or two
criminals] who are appointed in very much the same way as members of the
Commission. There is nothing in the Bill to suggest that they will do a better
job of administering the Office than the Commission has done. They will have no
greater powers than the Commission and they are unlikely to be given any more
money by the Treasury than the Commission was. Without additional powers and
funds, how can they succeed where the Commission, apparently, has
failed?
The Bill will not increase the independence
of the Attorney-General’s
Office. The Office will still be dependent on the government for its funding
even though it will not get its funds through the Ministry of
Justice.
As to increasing the impartiality of the
Office, the Bill will do nothing to ensure that prosecutions are instituted on
legal grounds alone, or that law officers give advice competently, impartially
and fearlessly. The Bill does not, for example, prohibit members of the
Attorney-General’s Office from participating in politics,
and this is a serious omission. The Bill does not affect the way in which the
Attorney-General and his deputies are appointed [it cannot
do so, because those matters are governed by the Constitution] and if a
politically biased Attorney-General is
appointed prosecutions will be conducted on a partisan basis whether or not the
Bill is enacted.
Lastly, is
this Bill at all necessary? If the Public Service Commission is not doing its
job of ensuring professionalism in the Attorney General’s office, a better
remedy would be to reform the Commission, rather than enact superfluous
legislation.
Veritas makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot
take legal responsibility for information supplied