Yorkshire Post
By Kate Hoey
THE Prime Minister's statement on Zimbabwe
is a breath of fresh air. He has
shown that he is serious about engagement
on Africa.
He is adamant that he will not take part in the EU-Africa
summit due in
December if it means sitting down with Zimbabwe's dictator
Robert Mugabe.
This welcome shift in Government policy has come in the
same week when the
Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, spoke out to implore
that our colonial
past should not to be used as an excuse for doing nothing.
His call was
endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu who called on the UK to
toughen its
stance on Zimbabwe.
The Prime Minister cares about
poverty in Africa and this statement shows
that he is treating African
leaders as responsible adults rather than making
patronising allowances for
their shortcomings.
The cosy solidarity of Africa's political elite, and
the scourge of
corruption, have drained countries on the continent of
economic and
political vitality since they achieved independence. If the
leaders of
African Union nations insist on inviting Mugabe to the summit in
Portugal,
they will show, yet again, that for all their fine words on
democracy and
human rights, the plight of the people of the continent count
for very
little compared to the power and privilege of the ruling
elites.
I have visited Zimbabwe undercover several times over recent
years and seen
the desperation and despair of life under Mugabe's brutal
oppression.
I helped families fleeing in terror as the regime's armed
forces moved in
with bulldozers to demolish their homes. People who live in
areas that stand
up to this oppression are deprived of food, starvation and
access to food
has been used as a means of political control.
The
call for action by the British government from Archbishop Sentamu, who
suffered in his homeland Uganda under the dictatorship of Idi Amin, and
Archbishop Desmond Tutu - a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle in South
Africa - helps dispel the myth that Zimbabwe is an African crisis that needs
an African solution.
I have said many times it would be great if
there was an African solution
but we have waited long enough for quiet
diplomacy to work, as Archbishop
Tutu says.
He said: "Africans must
hang their heads in shame for having allowed such a
desperate situation to
continue almost without anybody doing anything to try
and stop
it."
Besides, the UK and other donor nations are all stakeholders in this
crisis.
Zimbabwe is a country that under a democratic regime with an
efficient
economy could easily feed itself with surplus for exports
so
why should we be expected to foot the bill for feeding a third of the
population of Zimbabwe and yet be denied the right to engage in finding a
solution?
Save the Children reported this week that Zimbabwean
children as young as
seven are walking alone through hostile territory to
cross the South African
border in a bid to escape crushing poverty at
home.
Despite the media being banned, brave journalists continue to slip
in and
get their footage out. ITV's coverage this week has shown the
desperation of
the people and the continued abuse of human
rights.
Last March the dreaded CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation)
broke up a
peaceful meeting of Zimbabwe's opposition leaders, took
participants into
custody and brutally assaulted them. Images of the
bloodied faces and broken
limbs of Morgan Tsvangirai and his colleagues
shocked the world. President
Mbeki of South Africa promised to actively seek
a solution. So far there has
been little progress.
The Prime Minister
has also stated that he will raise the issue at the
United Nations and try
to get agreement to the appointment of a EU envoy to
help support the
transition to democracy. This will pick up on the
commitments made by
African nations following the G8 Gleneagles summit in
2005, and which so far
have not been honoured.
There is little point in a mechanism to protect
good governance and human
rights that can only engage with
countries
where good governance and human rights are already well-advanced.
I am
pleased that our Government will also consider, as Australia has done,
expelling children of Zanu PF Ministers studying at schools and universities
here. I will continue to call for a sporting boycott of Zimbabwe something
which was so successful in fighting apartheid in South Africa.
The
people of Zimbabwe feel forgotten and isolated. The news of Gordon
Brown's
stand in solidarity with them will raise their spirits -
particularly those
brave souls in the trade unions, civil society, churches
and students
organisations who risk life and limb to carry on the struggle
for
freedom.
Despite being imprisoned and beaten by Mugabe's secret police,
there are
heroic Zimbabweans who refuse to flee or remain
silent.
They are the hope for the future of Zimbabwe.
Kate
Hoey is Labour MP for Vauxhall.
Last Updated: 21 September 2007 9:01
AM
The Telegraph
By
David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent, and Natalie Paris
Last Updated: 1:10pm
BST 21/09/2007
Gordon Brown has been accused of employing
"arm-twisting" techniques
to manipulate Africa over his threat to boycott a
summit between African and
European leaders.
The Prime Minister
has said he will not attend an international
gathering in Lisbon if
Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, does.
His announcement has
drawn criticism however.
Zimbabwe's UN Ambassador, Boniface
Chidyausiku, said Brown had "no
right to dictate" who should be at the
summit.
In an interview last night, he insisted that Mugabe had a
sovereign
right to attend and that the bigger issues affecting Africa should
take
precedence.
Dr Gertrude Mongella, the Tanzanian president
of the Pan-African
Parliament, denounced Brown's decision as
unhelpful.
"We do know there are some problems (in Zimbabwe), but
if somebody
wants to arm-twist Zimbabwe, that's not the best way to solve
the problems,"
she said in an interview on the Socialist Group
website.
"I think this is again another way of manipulating Africa.
Zimbabwe is
a nation which got independence."
She added: "I
think in the developed countries there are so many
countries doing things
which not all of us subscribe to: we have seen the
Iraq war - not everyone
accepts what is being done in Iraq."
Stressing that the Zimbabwean
people should not be punished for
Mugabe's actions, she urged all government
leaders to attend and "develop a
very committed dialogue to solve problems,
rather than threatening each
other by going or not going."
"I
think if we want to move in the right direction, with the African
way of
doing things, you discuss things under a tree till you agree," she
said. "So
if somebody does not come under a tree to discuss, that is not the
African
way of doing things."
Belgian Socialist MEP Alain Hutchinson said
Zimbabwe's problems should
certainly be highlighted, "but we should not let
the question of Zimbabwe
derail this important summit".
The
European Commission also agreed that the summit must go ahead
regardless of
Gordon Brown's threat.
Louis Michel, the aid and development
commissioner, said: "We think
that a single individual case cannot take as
hostage the relations between
two continents."
Mr Mugabe was
banned from visiting EU member states in February 2002.
But Mr Michel said
this restriction, which also applies to all Zimbabwean
cabinet ministers and
senior figures in the ruling Zanu-PF party, did not
stop them from coming to
international meetings.
In principle, he said this measure would
not prevent Mr Mugabe from
joining the summit in December.
"I
expect it is possible to have a compromise, but if there is no
compromise,
what can you do? The only option I cannot accept is suppressing
the summit,"
Mr Michel said.
He denied that he was criticising Mr Brown and said
that he shared the
Prime Minister's view of "how Mugabe is leading his
country". But Mr Michel
said that Britain should attend
nonetheless.
Privately, EU officials believe that Mr Brown's stance
leaves room for
compromise.
The Zimbabwean leader could be
invited to attend the summit on the
understanding that he declines and sends
his foreign minister instead.
Mr Brown, who was thoroughly briefed
on Zimbabwe's crisis last month,
has not ruled out attending the gathering
under these circumstances.
A Foreign Office briefing note reads:
"We believe Zimbabwe should be
represented and are open to solutions that
allow for someone other than
President Mugabe to be present."
The Foreign Office pointed to the precedent of a summit held last year
with
Asian countries. Burma's regime, which is subjected to the same
restrictions
as Zimbabwe's leadership, sent its foreign minister.
But Mr
Mugabe's foreign minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, appears as
number 78 on a
list of 125 Zimbabweans subjected to restrictions. In theory,
any assets
these individuals hold in European banks should also be frozen.
A
British official contradicted Mr Michel's interpretation of the EU
travel
ban, saying that it did prevent anyone on the list from attending
international summits. It was a "bit of a stretch" to say that an exemption
could be used in these circumstances. "For us the key thing is not having
someone who is on that list," he said.
If Britain sticks to
this position, compromise will be unlikely. But
the Foreign Office briefing
suggests that London will yield and allow Mr
Mumbengegwi to
attend.
Earth Times
Posted : Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:35:10
GMT
Author : DPA
London - The British government indicated Friday that it expected
little
support for its threatened boycott of European Union- Africa summit
if
Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe attends. A spokesman for Prime Minister
Gordon Brown, who has threatened a boycott of the Lisbon meeting in December
if Mugabe is present, said the government was working on the assumption that
Mugabe would go and Brown would therefore not attend.
Asked
whether Britain had been lobbying its European allies to match
Brown's
threat, the spokesman said: "He is not dictating to anybody else who
can go
and who cannot go. He is making his position clear that, on the
assumption
that things work out as expected, he will not go."
The EU
presidency has said no invitations for the summit have yet been
issued, and
the matter would be decided over the next few weeks.
"The Prime
Minister has made his position clear," the spokesman
stressed.
Business Day
21 September 2007
Jens Laurson and George
Pieler
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
US and UK are suggesting they may ratchet up pressure against the Mugabe
regime, but it may be too little to affect the attitudes that count: those
in Africa. The recent Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit
in Lusaka, Zambia, showed the world once more the "resolve" of Zimbabwe's
neighbours to rescue a failing country. That resolve consists of nothing but
empty rhetoric, and even that rhetoric tends to bolster, not work at
removing, the source of the problem: Robert Mugabe and his regime of crooks.
"We are a democracy just as any other democracy. We don't need reform." So
says Patrick Chinamasa, the Zimbabwean minister of justice (oxymoronic or
cynical?) Such fine words too often issue from those countries furthest from
the democratic ideal.
It recalls the negative correlation very often
found between a country's
official name and the level of freedom found
therein. The more references to
democracy and republicanism and "freedom" in
the name, the greater the
chance the country is ruled by an autocratic
clique, junta or dictator.
The German Democratic Republic comes to mind,
or the Democratic Republic of
Congo, formerly Free Congo - neither place
having ever manifested any of the
characteristics splashed across their
titles.
Caveat emptor, then - truth in packaging laws do not
apply.
Zimbabwe has not renamed itself the People's Free Democratic
Republic of
Zimbabwe - not yet - but it might as well, so solidly does it
belie such a
title.
Office-holders who respond "unofficially" in
defence of rotten dictatorships
always seem to huff and puff with amazingly
similar, schoolboy-level tricks
of misrepresentation.
Simon Khaya
Moyo, Mugabe's ambassador to SA, showed these colours when he
recently
responded, in the Zimbabwean state-controlled newspaper The Herald,
to an
article by these - in Moyo's words- "thoroughly misinformed" and
"sabre-rattling" authors that had appeared in Business Day.
But the
true tragedy in Zimbabwe is not the "lived lie" of state officials.
That is
to be expected. Instead, it is the timid or
nonexistent response from other
southern African countries to the crisis -
humanitarian, social and economic
- that is Zimbabwe today.
Mugabe was greeted with generous applause in
Lusaka, while incoming SADC
chairman, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa,
called for peace and stability
in the neighbouring state. That may be
difficult in a country with 80%
unemployment, the most massive
hyperinflation since the Weimar Republic and
large-scale starvation just
around the corner. It is less difficult to look
at the source of the problem
- and it isn't the limited embargo of the west.
It is Mugabe and his
cronies.
As Mugabe is still hailed as the liberator and heroic freedom
fighter
against the British, no one seems willing to admit that the native
hero has
turned out a cruel and unaccountable egomaniac who cares infinitely
less
about the wellbeing of his own people than the British did.
The
paralysis that strikes southern African states in dealing with such a
neighbour is truly disheartening.
Before continuing with
Mugabe-bashing on "democratic grounds", though, it
might be worthwhile to
suggest that Zimbabwe strikes us as so offensive not
just because of the
state of democracy in the country, important though that
is.
Let
us imagine that Mugabe had not ruined the economy to the tune of an
official
inflation rate of 7600% and climbing (and surely higher in truth),
coupled
with shrinking gross domestic product and more than 60% of the
population
living on less than $1 a day. Suppose his party did not need to
bus people
out of the country so that they could buy basic foods (in a
formerly
food-exporting country).
If he only were a dictator, violating human
rights, freedom of expression,
freedom of movement - Zimbabwean human rights
activists headed to Lusaka
were simply denied the right to leave the country
- and freedom of political
participation ... If he only rigged polls and
awarded the land to his family
and friends that he expropriated from -
usually white - Zimbabwean farmers .
Were those his only transgressions
while reigning over a booming - not
decrepit - economy, and a well-fed - not
starving -
people, and an orderly - not corrupt and crime-riddled officialdom
- might
we forgive him, or grumble less loudly?
We hope for our sakes
that we would still speak out.
And it is the shame of southern Africa
that Zimbabwe's neighbours don't
speak out, even as the situation presents
itself.
They may one day have to answer to the Zimbabwean population
-whatever is
left
of it - once they have been freed of the Mugabean
burden. And once, with
some fortune and luck, they have found a head of
state who acknowledges
basic standards of civilisation.
Laurson
is editor-in-chief of the International Affairs Forum. Pieler is
senior
fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation.
Save the Children
Zimbabwean children as young as seven are walking alone through
hostile
territory to cross the South African border in a bid to escape
crushing
poverty at home, research by Save the Children has
revealed.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
These children, many of
whom are recently orphaned, see South Africa as a
land of opportunity where
they can find work and a place at school,
according to the aid agency's
latest report, Children Crossing Borders.
But many of these children who
arrive in South Africa unaccompanied have no
form of identification and
cannot register for help from the authorities.
Only one in three children
of the children interviewed during the research
was in school and most were
forced to work in unreliable and dangerous jobs.
They live in squatter camps
and on rubbish dumps where many must beg for
food.
The research found
that children are forced to pay bribes to unscrupulous
guides to enter the
country and many were beaten and robbed by these
'guides'. Half of the
children surveyed had paid a bribe, 80% of those to a
'guide' and 14% said
they had been assaulted while attempting to cross the
border.
South
African law obliges authorities to protect and care for these
children, but
the sheer number crossing the border from Zimbabwe and other
southern
African countries like Mozambique is overwhelming. Under-funded and
ill-equipped communities in South Africa simply cannot cope with the influx
of unaccompanied children.
"These children see South Africa as the
Promised Land," said Dominic Nutt of
Save the Children. "But the dangers
they face travelling long distances
alone and then once they reach South
Africa are horrendous. They are poor,
hungry, young and highly vulnerable
and are easy prey for criminals or
people seeking to exploit
them.
"It's hard to imagine how bad the lives of these young people must
be that
they leave home, alone, to face such terrifying risks."
Save
the Children is planning to build a series of shelters along the border
where children can be cared for, fed and schooled in safety without fear of
being forcibly returned.
-ENDS-
Notes to Editors:
a..
The findings of Children Crossing Borders is based on a survey of 130
children carried out by the University of Witwatersrand on behalf of Save
the Children in Johannesburg, Musina (on the Zimbabwe border) and Malelane
and Komatipoort (on the Mozambique border) in early 2007.
SW Radio Africa
(London)
21 September 2007
Posted to the web 21 September
2007
Tichaona Sibanda
The Tsvangirai led MDC is expected to
send an envoy to President Thabo Mbeki
with an ultimatum that they will be
forced to withdraw from the mediation
talks if there is no end to state
violence against its supporters, Newsreel
learned on
Friday.
Following the party's national executive meeting in Harare on
Friday, the
party leadership was mandated to demand an unconditional end to
violence and
intimidation against its supporters. If the arbitrary arrests,
intimidation
and killings don't end, the MDC will pull out of the
talks.
The head of foreign affairs, Professor Elphas Mukonoweshuro,
said the
meeting unanimously adopted a resolution to withdraw its team from
the talks
if the regime continues to target its members.
'It was
highlighted Zanu-PF was not negotiating in good faith. The national
executive felt the party could not continue negotiating with them whilst at
same time they are busy killing, arresting and beating up our colleagues,'
Mukonoweshuro said.
The meeting declared it was satisfied with what
has emerged from the Mbeki
led talks so far. Mukonoweshuro said they got a
blow by blow account of what
has transpired since the talks
began.
'As a way forward, the meeting decided the party should embark on
an
extensive countrywide tour to brief our members of what has been going
on.
This intensive exercise will begin in the next coming days,' he
said,
Mukonoweshuro explained also why the MDC did not oppose the
constitutional
amendment 18. He said it was simply a starting
point.
'I know people, including our civil society partners, have said a
lot about
this perceived deal, but it is their democratic right to challenge
the party
if they think its drifting away from its set goals. But I will
want to
reassure everyone that this is not the case,' he said.
He
said there was still a lot to come in the negotiations between the two
parties, including the electoral laws, the reconstitution of the Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission and the political environment. He added people should
realize amendments to Bill number 18 were only the beginning. The role of
the defence forces and the police, as well as the repealing of POSA and
AIPPA, remain to be discussed.
The Zimbabwean
(21-09-07)
By Trust Matsilele
The opposition Movement
for Democratic Change has lashed out at the
behaviour demonstrated by the
ruling ZANU PF thugs in the disruption of
developmental projects taking
place in parts of Matabeleland.
The opposition MDC, led by Aurthur
Mutambara confirmed to the Zimbabwean
that ZANU PF was working in unison
with notorious Central Intelligence
Organisation agents in the
disrupruptions of developments in the country.
"ZANU PF activists working
in cahoots with state agents, tried to disrupt
developmental projects in
Nkayi constituency last week.
"The projects had been initiated by the
local Member of Parliament for
Nkayi, Hon Abednico Bhebhe through the
Parliamentary Constituency
Information Centre", read by of the statement
from MDC.
According to information supplied to The Zimbabwean, these
problems started
on Wednesday last week at Hlangabeza High School when
elements of the CIO,
working with the police and ZANU PF activist threatened
to arrest officials
from the donor community who had funded the community
project.
The project included the building of a reservoir tank and the
construction
of the girls hostels for the school. Formal notifications to
both the school
authorities and council had been made beforehand and parents
and children
who had been invited for the occasion had turned up in full
force for the
occasion.
The situation soon changed when the Hon MP
and his entourage arrived to
grace the occasion. The Headmaster of the
school, disclosed that he had
been threatened over the project by some
overzealous ZANU PF persons and
that he feared for his life.
Bhebhe
is also reported to have hosted officials from another donor
community who
had funded some development projects at two more schools in
the constituency
in the previous week.
Bhebhe had sourced funding for the renovations and
construction of classroom
blocks at Gababi and Sembeule primary schools and
had come to officially
hand over the projects.
Reports also supplied
by the MDC office says on arrival at Gababi school,
the Hon MP and the
officials found that teachers and school officials had
been taken to some
kangaroo court for questioning by state agents over the
occasion.
The
evil acts by the ruling ZANU PF are surprising as the Minister of
Education
Sports and Culture, Eneas Chigwedere and the ministry officials
had been
notified by the Hon MP about the occasion. Parents and children who
had
gathered at the school to witness the official hand over soon dispersed.
21 September 2007
President
of Botswana Says Zim-Botswana Peace Parks "On Ice"
WASHINGTON DC -
Responding to public questions at the National Geographic
Society yesterday
the president of Botswana, Festus Mogae, said that
implementation of Peace
Parks between Zimbabwe and Botswana were 'on ice'
primarily due to concerns
about uncontrolled poaching and foot-and-mouth
disease outbreaks in
Zimbabwe.
The President said that the peace park on Botswana's southern
border with
Zimbabwe (Limpopo-Shashe Transfrontier Conservation Area) was
facing
implementation problems related to foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks
in
Zimbabwe that required the construction of a disease control fence along
the
border, while the Northern (Zambezi-Okavango Transfrontier Park) was 'on
ice' primarily due to poaching concerns in Zimbabwe.
Many
conservationists regard the peace parks concept as a visionary and
innovative approach to conservation. The peace-parks ideal acknowledges that
animal movements should not be constrained by artificial human boundaries
and aims to restore large contiguous habitats as mega parks for wildlife
conservation and to attract tourism to the region that can generate
sustainable development revenues for these often under-served rural
communities.
The President's response, however, highlighted an issue
that many
conservationists have fretted about privately. If one country
sharing a
peace-park descends into civil war or chaos that undermines of
sustainable
management practices of those areas, then it places the whole
mega-park at
risk.
SW Radio Africa
SignOnSanDiego
By Cris Chinaka
REUTERS
3:26
a.m. September 21, 2007
HARARE - Despite an economy close to
collapse, Zimbabwe President
Robert Mugabe looks stronger than ever, with
the domestic opposition in
retreat and Western nations divided over how to
deal with him
Mugabe has brushed aside years of international pressure
to step down
over charges of ruining the once-prosperous nation, violating
human rights
and rigging elections to stay in office.
And now political analysts say the divided opposition, intimidated by
security forces and weakened by tactical mistakes, presents no real
challenge, giving Mugabe space to manoeuvre and to cast calls for his exit
as a Western plot.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's threat to
boycott December's
EU-Africa summit in Lisbon if Mugabe attends appears to
have misfired,
opening a European split on the issue after Portuguese
sources said they
would push ahead without him.
Mugabe, 83,
last of the iconic African liberation heroes in power,
retains strong
support on the continent despite fears Zimbabwe's meltdown
could blight the
whole of southern Africa.
The collapse this week of a general
strike in protest against a
government wage freeze underlined how the
opposition seems have run out of
ways to confront Mugabe, regarded as a
cunning and ruthless political
player.
With six months to go
before presidential, parliamentary and local
government elections, the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is riven by
divisions over strategy,
personality clashes and leadership wrangles which
undermine its ability to
exploit Zimbabwe's economic crisis.
The MDC split into two factions
two years ago in a bitter quarrel over
participation in elections for an
upper house of parliament, and has been
struggling to find the same stature
that almost won it power in elections in
2000 and in 2002.
Although the factions - headed by main opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai
and Arthur Mutambara - have found a common platform in talks with
Mugabe's
ZANU-PF party mediated by South African President Thabo Mbeki, they
have not
agreed on a single candidate to challenge Mugabe in the 2008
polls.
NO REAL CHALLENGE
Political analyst Eldred
Masunungure said the split had left the MDC
unable to mount a meaningful
challenge in the elections.
'I'm not sure the opposition has its
house in order, the leadership
continues to wrangle, they remain indecisive
and in disarray ... their
support base is disoriented and lacks clear
direction,' he said.
'They need to demonstrate capacity not only to
win, but also to guide
the nation out of the economic
disaster.'
The opposition is further divided over a deal under
which the MDC and
the government unanimously passed an electoral bill on
Thursday effectively
giving Mugabe room to choose his successor but reducing
his powers to
appoint some legislators.
Lovemore Madhuku,
chairman of an MDC-allied political pressure group
National Constitutional
Assembly, has branded the parliamentary deal a 'act
of treachery' while
rights campaign group Crisis Zimbabwe Coalition said the
MDC had sold its
soul for no clear gains.
Although Mugabe has largely cowed the
opposition by routinely
deploying riot police to crush street protests,
analysts believe an
organised MDC could still pose a strong challenge to
Mugabe at the polls,
exploiting discontent with misery caused by the
economic meltdown.
Zimbabwe faces chronic shortages of food, fuel
and foreign currency,
as well as unemployment over 80 percent and the
highest inflation rate in
the world of 6,600 percent.
Once one
of Africa's most prosperous nations, Zimbabwe's combination
of poverty and
AIDS has brought life expectancy down from nearly 60 in 1990
to around 40
now, among the lowest rates in the world.
Mugabe, Zimbabwe's ruler
since independence from Britain in 1980,
rejects blame for the crisis,
saying domestic and Western opponents are
sabotaging the economy to oust
him.
Tsvangirai - a former trade union leader who has been at the
helm of
the MDC since its formation eight years ago - is still seen as
Mugabe's main
challenger.
But many analysts say the 55-year-old
has squandered his opportunities
and been outflanked by the veteran
Zimbabwean leader. He may lose more
ground in the Mbeki-mediated
talks.
'Mugabe is not negotiating himself out power, and, may by
conceding
ground on non-crucial issues, actually be running rings around the
MDC,' a
senior Western diplomat told Reuters.
'The MDC's
structural weaknesses and lack of experience is coming to
the fore on this,'
he said.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.1707523.0.0.php
IAN BELL September 22
2007
Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe is a joke. Not a good joke, and certainly
not a
funny joke. Yet had you set out to caricature a dictatorship and
satirise
the logic of all tyranny, tracing every disaster from hopeful
beginnings to
squalid conclusions, the man and the country he controls would
fit the bill.
Where Mugabe has ruled, everything that could go wrong has
gone wrong. Here
there is tragedy and farce in one.
He was a hero
once. To some, he still is. He seemed, better than most, to
embody a
tradition of African nationalism in the struggle with white
colonialism. To
hear him tell it, he is still fighting that good fight, and
still calling
Britain to account for its colonial past and its presumptuous
present. After
a quarter of a century and more, however, the old man is
running out of
convenient villains.
The west's post-colonial record in Africa is nothing
- at best nothing
much - to be proud of. Neglect, influence-peddling,
political interference,
debt bondage, arms sales and infinitely patronising
attitudes have featured
heavily. Talk of shared histories and
responsibilities have been cheap. When
it has mattered most - in Rwanda, in
Darfur - the contrast between reality
and rhetoric has been stark. Mugabe's
singular achievement, where Zimbabwe
is concerned, has been to erase much of
this from the memory.
British rule in the old Rhodesia did its African
people no favours. Ian
Smith's UDI state stripped away the mask of benign
colonialism for good. The
theft of land - Mugabe's justification ever since
- was wholesale and
blatant, the racism undisguised. In 1981, independence
and liberation were
held to be one and the same thing: Bob Marley even wrote
a song, a good one,
to that effect. And since? Here the joke becomes
elaborate, like a bleakly
comical guessing game. It would be easier to ask
what is right with Zimbabwe
than to count the ways in which things have gone
terribly wrong. A complete
list would fill several pages.
Democracy? In
order to ensure his own rule Mugabe has rigged elections time
and again. Not
even his friends have been able to blame that on nefarious
Britain.
Opponents have been assaulted, jailed or killed; journalists are
censored
ruthlessly; and, daily, the people flee. Some say that one-third
have gone
to South Africa and elsewhere.
The economy? In the crudest sense, that
doesn't exist. The official best
guess puts inflation at 7600%, but that is
presumed to be an underestimate.
Some 80% of the remaining population live
below the poverty line. The black
market, where £1 sterling is worth 500,000
Zimbabwean dollars, is the single
growth industry. Agriculture, once the
country's pride, has never recovered
from Mugabe's decision at the turn of
the century to reclaim land from white
farmers and redistribute it, often to
cronies. The Aids crisis has hit
Zimbabwe hard. One adult in six under the
age of 45 is thought to be
affected.
Shops have been emptied since
Mugabe decided to fix inflation with crude
price controls. One household in
five has no access to decent water. Petrol
is scarce and power cuts are
frequent. Four million depend on food aid
(Britain is the second-largest
donor) and life expectancy, having fallen
year by year, stands at
37.
Habitually, Mugabe blames British "sabotage". Some African states
such as
Angola, protective of their independence and sensitive to outside
interference, believe him. An old British promise of "reparations" for land
thefts is still invoked and is still, in some quarters, effective. It was
striking, meanwhile, that the Zimbabwean leader was met with loud applause
when he turned up at a meeting of southern African presidents earlier in the
year. For some, even 26 years on, the aura of the liberator
remains.
So what? Britain's recent experiences in the great game of
liberal
intervention have not been distinguished. We pick and choose our
battles,
often cynically. We can acknowledge our colonialist debts with aid
and fine
words, but if yet another African country is at the edge of
destruction
thanks to yet another dictator, what are we supposed to do.
Invade? Ignore
the mad accusations? Exert diplomatic pressure, whatever it
might be worth,
on South Africa's Thabo Mbeki to make some sort of progress
after years of
pretending to broker a deal between Mugabe and the (divided)
opposition
Movement for Democratic Change?
Zimbabwe is a test case.
It can tell us one of three things. Either the
western democracies mean what
they say when they fret over the condition of
Africa, or they are hypocrites
and do not truly care, or - the answer no-one
really wants to hear - there
is nothing worthwhile to be done. In the last
case we do our best to keep
the World Food Programme going, hope that Mugabe
falls from his perch soon,
and ensure that he is given no opportunity to sit
in the same room with a
British Prime Minister.
That, so he says, is to be Gordon Brown's
gesture. He wants to toughen up a
modest sanctions regime. In the meantime,
he will refuse to attend a meeting
between EU leaders and the African Union
in Portugal in December if Mugabe
is allowed to be present. The point, as
the Prime Minister wrote in a London
newspaper this week, would be to
prevent the dictator from "diverting
attention from the important issues
that need to be resolved".
Zimbabwe is important. After Darfur and
continuing havoc in the Congo
Republic, it probably counts as the most
important African issue. As he
indicated when visiting the continent shortly
before becoming Prime
Minister, Mr Brown cares deeply about Africa's fate.
But you have to ask: is
this it? His disgust at the thought of encountering
Mugabe shows principle.
What will it change, precisely?
The
International Crisis Group reports that Zimbabwe is "closer than ever to
complete collapse", yet advises Britain not to interfere. Desmond Tutu and
John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, take precisely the opposite view. Last
weekend the latter wrote: "The time has come for Mr Brown finally to slay
the ghosts of Britain's colonialist past by thoroughly revising foreign
policy towards Zimbabwe and to lead the way in co-ordinating an
international response."
The archbishop, Ugandan born, added that the
"time for African solutions'
alone is now over". Britain, he said, must
mount the kind of campaign that
was mounted against the Smith regime and
against apartheid South Africa.
Sentamu demanded "smart", targeted sanctions
against the Mugabe elite. "We
cannot look the other way on Zimbabwe," he
said.
True, I think. Certainly it would offer a more honourable cause
than
anything Iraq has provided. Yet even given Mugabe's disgusting record,
the
implicit irony of intervention is striking. Are the western powers truly
to
return to Africa in the 21st century determined to civilise the natives?
If
so, we had better ask again why our failures were quite so catastrophic
in
the first place.
Was it all our blame, as a self-serving Mugabe
would have it, or none of our
fault, as we prefer to believe? Somewhere
between the two, I suspect.
Meanwhile, the pragmatic Chinese, busy
befriending governments all over
Africa, have just deserted their client in
Zimbabwe. No more subsidies from
that source. Liberal intervention in
Mugabe's wasteland, when and if it
comes, may amount to no more than an
effort to pick up the pieces.
ekklesia, UK
By
staff writers
21 Sep 2007
A Christian aid agency reports that Zimbabwe is
in an increasingly desperate
situation, with little food due to drought and
poor harvests, and the
collapse of civil infrastructure meaning basic
services are no longer
available to the majority of
Zimbabweans.
Churches are helping to fight poverty, hunger and HIV among
Zimbabwe's
decimated communities and helping to meet the basic day to day
needs - says
UK Christian relief agency Tearfund.
The news comes as
Prime Minister Gordon Brown looks set to boycott a summit
of European and
African leaders to be attended by the Zimbabwean President,
Robert
Mugabe.
Peter Grant, Tearfund's International Director, says children are
now
suffering from very high levels of chronic malnutrition. "People are
dying.
It's the very young, the very old, and those with Aids who are the
most
vulnerable," says Peter. "We heard recently of a church leader who had
to
bury a grandmother and a baby from the same family over the same weekend.
As
the year goes on with the continuing food shortages, we can expect the
situation to get worse, and more people to die."
With inflation
exceeding 4500% - some reports put the figure nearer 8000% -
currency no
longer buys food and medical care. Even if people could afford
to go to
hospital, there are no longer medical supplies to treat them. The
wages of
hospital staff do not even cover the bus fare to work.
The crisis has
engulfed the cities, where food distributions were rarely
seen previously.
Middle income school teachers told Tearfund that they can't
even afford to
buy sugar. Pastor Promise Manceda leads a church in Bulawayo
and sees the
stark reality. "If the middle classes consider themselves poor,
then the
most marginalised people in society are hit so much harder," says
Promise.
"We have to help them - and it is only with God's strength that we
are still
able to."
HIV and Aids related illnesses have compounded the suffering -
leaving many
unable to work in fear and isolation. Unemployment is over 80%
and those
that can find casual work often do so for small amounts of food.
Others
search around for vegetables to supplement meagre amounts of maize,
getting
by on one inadequate meal a day. Because of the lack of food over
the last
five years many of Zimbabwe's children suffer from chronic
malnutrition and
an increasing number are too sick to go to
school.
Esinah is a grandmother in her 80's, caring for eight Aids
orphans. Queuing
for maize, beans and oil at a food distribution funded by
Tearfund she spoke
of the people dying in her community. "There have been
many deaths and
people are starving," says Esinah. "Without this food we
could be dead by
now. Only God knows what will happen."
Supporting
churches in wider relief response is at the heart of Tearfund's
vision. The
UK agency is funding, assisting and standing with them as they
tirelessly
work to fight poverty and social injustice. Tearfund's Peter
Grant talks of
the churches having a biblical mandate to speak out against
poverty - as
they continue to engage the public square while they can,
remaining
non-political within civil society. "To speak out requires real
courage and
they need our support in prayer," adds Peter. "They need
practical support
and continued international pressure for change."
Tearfund is currently
funding feeding programmes for some 9500 orphans and
vulnerable children.
Working through churches and church based agencies this
is relieving some of
the immediate suffering - providing essential, but very
limited, assistance.
Many more need help.
Independent, UK
Published: 21 September
2007
Robert Mugabe is a much-misunderstood man. I don't mean that he is
the
virtuous leader of his own imagination - nothing could be further from
the
truth; but he is equally far removed from the caricature African
dictator
who eats the testicles of his enemies for breakfast.
A
friend who had known him for many years once described him to me as
"urbane,
witty, sophisticated, sensitive, thoughtful - and ruthless". These,
presumably, were among the attributes which impressed the British when they
got to know him during the Lancaster House negotiations of 1979 which paved
the way for Mugabe's now 27-year-long rule in Zimbabwe.
The affection
was mutual: the same friend told me that on the death of Sir
Christopher
Soames - the British Governor during the transitional period -
Mugabe flew
to Britain with a Union Jack which he tearfully laid on Soames's
coffin.
Despite the fact that he had suffered much under the Rhodesian
regime - the
then Prime Minister, Ian Smith, had refused to let Mugabe out
of jail to
attend the funeral of his four-year-old only son - Mugabe treated
his old
adversary with a certain courtesy. He preached the idea of
reconciliation
between whites and blacks some time before Nelson Mandela
became celebrated
for espousing the same admirable doctrine.
As if to demonstrate that, for
at least the first 15 years of his rule,
Mugabe did his best to protect the
5,000 white farmers who controlled 75 per
cent of the country's farmland -
despite the fact that most of them showed
absolutely no inclination to train
up their indigenous workforce.
By contrast, Mugabe's treatment of the
minority black tribe, the Matabele,
was savage.In 1984, Mugabe's Shona
clansmen massacred an estimated 20,000 of
their ancient tribal enemy -
almost all of them civilians. The British
reaction to this was interesting.
It did not stop the Conservative
Government from awarding Mugabe an honorary
knighthood; while the British
Left, in general, took the view that it would
be a display of colonialist
arrogance to seek to interfere.
This
desperate concern not to appear "colonialist" has paralysed Britain's
policies towards Zimbabwe ever since Labour came to power 10 years ago. This
is in a way rather odd: such anxieties did not stop Tony Blair from
committing British troops to the invasion of Iraq - a country which was
invented by the civil servants of the British Empire - neither did it
prevent Blair from sending in our armed forces to try to sort out Sierra
Leone. Moreover, such oppression as Mugabe and his Zanu-PF band of brothers
endured had not been at the hands of the British state but of a rebel regime
which had declared Unilateral Independence from Britain and the
Commonwealth.
It took a black public figure, John Sentamu, to say
what no white politician
has dared to utter. Last weekend the Ugandan-born
Archbishop of York
declared that "Britain needs to escape from its
colonialist past when it
comes to Zimbabwe. Mugabe is the worst sort of
racist dictator. The time for
African solutions alone is now over ... it is
time for the sanctions and
campaigns that brought an end to apartheid in
South Africa to be applied to
the Mugabe regime." Gordon Brown has risen to
the challenge ... by refusing
to attend the forthcoming EU-African Union
summit in Lisbon unless Mugabe is
disinvited.
Like most (if not all)
sanctions, this has the effect of making us feel
slightly more virtuous
while doing nothing to end the oppression it is
notionally designed to
deter. I would imagine that Robert Mugabe would be
delighted if his presence
in Lisbon turns out to be the cause of Britain's
absence from the table; and
if Portugal should rescind its invitation, does
anyone seriously imagine
that this would do anything to put a single extra
gram of maize into the
mouths of Zimbabwe's children - or accelerate by one
second the ending of
Mugabe's rule?
The "time for sanctions", as John Sentamu puts it, is well
and truly over -
even supposing that there ever would have been a point. The
view that it was
sanctions that brought an end to white apartheid rule in
South Africa is a
common misconception. It was the end of the Cold War which
finally isolated
South Africa politically from the West: it was no longer
seen as a bastion
against communism in its own continent. The same
historical watershed had a
tremendous influence on Pretoria: it could no
longer pretend to its own
people - or to itself - that it was defending them
against the local
outreach group of the Soviet dictatorship.
Mugabe,
too, disavowed his Marxism when the Soviet regime fell - although
the
corruption of his Zanu-PF cadres is as crude a demonstration of brute
political power as any one-party state could devise. It was, in fact, the
Blair government's concerns about the allocation of spoils to Mugabe's
cronies which caused the transformation in Mugabe from faithful friend to
bitter enemy.
Under the Lancaster House agreement with the government
of Margaret Thatcher
we had pledged to finance the compensation to white
farmers as their
farmland was gradually handed over to black Zimbabweans -
who in practice
were always going to be Mugabe's mates. On 5 November 1997,
however, Claire
Short, then the Secretary of State for International
Development, wrote an
astonishingly ill-judged letter to the Zimbabwean
Minister of Agriculture
and Land, Kumbirai Kangai.
It brusquely cast
aside all previous undertakings: "We do not accept that
Britain has a
special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in
Zimbabwe. We
are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links in
former
colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were
colonised not colonisers."
It would have been hard to construct a
letter more skilfully designed to
enrage Mugabe - or even a man with a much
thicker skin than the Zimbabwean
leader. Short's amazing assertion - that
because her family was of Irish
stock there was no need to honour a
commitment to Zimbabwe entered into by a
previous British government - was
an inimitable mixture of shamelessness and
sanctimony. That friend of mine
who knows Mugabe says that Short's letter
sent him into a rage against
Britain which has scarcely abated for the
succeeding decade.
Who
knows, perhaps it was awareness of his own minister's responsibility for
the
quite unnecessary transformation of Mugabe from friend to foe which
deterred
Tony Blair from applying his doctrine of liberal imperialism to
Zimbabwe. In
any case, New Labour has learnt from its adventures in southern
Iraq that it
is relatively straightforward to kick the door in: it's quite
another matter
to clear up the mess afterwards.
Dire beyond belief as the plight of
Zimbabwe is, the only people who should
put an end to the tyranny of Robert
Mugabe are his own - and they will.
d.lawson@ independent.co.uk
The Zimbabwean
(21-09-07)
TRUST MATSILELE
The National Constitutional Assembly's
National Chairman, Dr Lovemore
Madhuku has threatened to cut ties with the
both formations of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change after they
strongly backed the
notorious legislation, 18th amendment which seeks to
anoint a ZANU PF
successor once Mugabe resigns.
Madhuku was recently
quoted in one of Zimbabwe's weekly newspapers as saying
the NCA was cutting
ties both MDC formations over their support on
constitutional amendments
without involvement of all Zimbabwean citizens.
"We are cutting our ties
with the MDC for going to bed with ZANU PF,"said
Madhuku breathing
fire.
Analysts are saying the move by the MDC might see the once vibrant
party
being seriously butchered by the ruling party, as it is likely to lose
more
supporters who are in the civic society who are worried by the newly
born
unity between MDC and ZANU PF.
Our source within the upper
echelons of ZANU PF confirmed that, his party
was now going to the elections
with more hope than before the 18th amendment
was passed as it was facing
strong threats from MDC and the civic society
groups.
"The fact that
the two 'formations' of the MDC have been able to agree on
such a
fundamental issue of principle in relation to constitution-making
makes the
NCA wonders why the party split over the senate, itself a product
of
Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 17).
"Both formations seem to be
out of touch with the aspirations of ordinary
Zimbabweans who are clamouring
for an open and genuine process of
democratization. Accordingly, the claims
by one of the MDC formations that
it is 'closer' to the people must be
dismissed as hollow.
"Only a genuine and people driven-driven process
will bring the much-needed
transformation of our society", read part of the
statement by the opposition
National Constitutional Assembly.
The NCA
also repeated that the amendment backed by the MDC was undemocratic
and
heavily ignored interests of Zimbabwean in their contribution to the
national debate and democratization process.
"The NCA wishes to
repeat here that Amendment (No. 18) does not, in any way,
advance the
interests of the people of Zimbabwe.
" For instance, it provides for the
following, that Zimbabweans will not be
able to elect a president of their
choice whenever the office of the
president falls vacant in between
parliamentary elections. Parliament will
now elect a president who can serve
a term beyond four years. In other
words, Amendment 18 now creates a
situation where a person who has not been
elected by the people can govern
Zimbabwe for four years (but less than five
years).
The MDC agrees
to this, the size of Parliament has been increased beyond
the capacity and
requirements of the country. The House of Assembly
increases from 150 to 210
members, while the Senate balloons to 93 members
from 66. The MDC agrees to
this.
It provides for a Human Rights Commission when the Bill of Rights has
not
been improved.
The MDC agrees to this, it does not provide
Zimbabweans in the Diaspora the
right to vote. The MDC agrees to this, it
does not change the manner of
appointment of the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission (ZEC), yet it entrusts ZEC
with more sensitive roles such as the
delimitation of constituencies. The
MDC agrees to this.
The NCA also
called on all Zimbabweans who believe in a people driven
democratic
constitution to strongly express their dissatisfaction over the
manner in
which the constitution has been altered for the interests of those
few in
parliament.
"Accordingly, the NCA urges all Zimbabweans to reject
piecemeal amendments
to the constitution and in the process reject the
proposed Amendment Number
18. The NCA encourages Zimbabweans to intensify
the push for a new,
democratic, people-driven constitution", said the NCA.
The Zimbabwean
MISA-Zimbabwe Alert:
(21-09-07)
Censorship and Political Interference Rife at
State Broadcaster
Henry Muradzikwa the chief executive officer of
Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Holdings (ZBH) has admitted that political
interference and censorship of
news reports is the order of the day at the
state-controlled national
broadcaster.
Appearing before the
Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and
Communications,
Muradzikwa said interference with ZBH's editorial policy and
government's
expectations of the state broadcaster undermined media freedom.
"We have
been reporting on the basis of deception. What does the
shareholder
(government) want? The shareholder must make it public." he
said.
Muradzikwa said the Ministry of Information should be clear on
how it wants
the broadcaster to report. He said provincial governors were
abusing ZBH
bureau chiefs by treating them as part of their
staff.
He also revealed that ZBH's Iran-backed digitalisation programme
had been
stalled because of an unsettled debt of US$3 million. "The
difficult is that
this is not a ZBH debt alone. It was incurred by both ZBH
and ARDA
(Agricultural Rural Development Authority). ZBH has paid its
half."
MISA-Zimbabwe insists that the long term credibility of the state
broadcaster hinges on its transformation into a truly independent public
broadcaster backed by comprehensive media law reforms that will expunge
restrictive legislations such as the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA) in
compliance with the SADC Principles and Guidelines on the Conduct of
Democratic Elections.
The SADC Guidelines espouse the full
participation of citizens in the
electoral process, press freedom and equal
access by all political parties
to state media, freedom of association and
political tolerance and
independence of the judiciary among its other 10
fundamental tenets for the
holding of free and fair elections.
The
transformation of the ZBC into a truly independent public broadcaster
among
other contributory factors will go a long way in securing a free and
fair
environment ahead of the 2008 elections. The prevailing regulatory
environment as dictated by the BSA and the ZBC's governance, ownership and
management structure chokes its editorial independence allowing the Ministry
of Information and Publicity free reign over the appointment of its board of
directors, chief executive officer and editorial
decisions.
MISA-Zimbabwe submits that for the ZBC to be respected as a
truly
independent broadcaster there is need for new legislation that
surrenders
the appointment of its board of governors through a transparent
public
nomination and selection process. This means that there should be
legal
provisions enshrined in the broadcaster's charter or constitution
guaranteeing its editorial independence, as well as ensuring that it is
accountable to the public. The overall goal of the new legislation should
not only be to fulfill the right to freedom of expression of the media, but
more importantly, to ensure that all Zimbabweans have the right to
participate freely, fully and creatively in the management and operations of
their public media.
For any questions, queries or comments, please
contact:
Nyasha Nyakunu
Research and Information Officer
Media
Institute of Southern Africa - Zimbabwe
84 McChlery Drive
Eastlea
P.O
Box HR 8113
Harare
Zimbabwe
Tel/Fax: 263 4 776165 / 746838
Cell:
263 11 02 448
Email: misa@misazim.co.zw
Website: www.misazim.co.zw
SW Radio Africa
(London)
21 September 2007
Posted to the web 21 September
2007
Henry Makiwa
Zimbabwean police arrested and held Kenneth
Matombo, the brother of labour
leader Lovemore plus one of his workers, for
two days as a ploy to exchange
their freedom for the capture of the Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Union
president.
The police have been trying to
apprehend Lovemore Matombo and his entire
leadership, including his
secretary general Wellington Chibhebhe, since
Monday for their role in
organizing a two-day job boycott on Wednesday and
Thursday. The entire
leadership has been in hiding during this week.
According to lawyer
Alec Muchadehama, the police visited the ZCTU
president's Harare home on
Monday night but were told that he was not home
by his security guard whose
name was given only as Steven. Only Matombo's
brother Kenneth was in the
house. After ransacking the entire house and
confiscating mobile phones,
they opted to seize the two as a bait to attract
Matombo to the Harare
central Police station.
Muchadehama says while in police custody, Kenneth
and Steven were assaulted,
interrogated and harassed before they were
released on Thursday night on
Z$40 000 fines.
Muchadehama said:
"Kenneth and Steven were beaten up and were forcibly made
to dance to music
while in police custody. The charge preferred on them was
of "criminal
nuisance" on the pretext that they aided Matombo to go into
hiding.
"Together with three other ZCTU activists who were held in
Harare, they were
denied legal assistance as the police threatened to hold
them for as long as
they wanted if the lawyers made any move to get
involved. Their plan was of
course to get the leadership to show up at the
police station and then
exchange them in return. It was a clear case of
ransom," Muchadehama said.
It is understood that the police are still
looking for the ZCTU leadership.
Political commentator Farai Maguhu, said
most people in the country's major
cities had ignored the stayaway because
the need to fend for their families
outweighed the need to protest against
government. He also said the heavy
handedness of the security forces, who
threatened the business community
with closure, also influenced the outcome
of the strike.
At least ten ZCTU activists and leaders were arrested
countrywide between
Monday and Thursday. Among them Reason Ngwenya, the
regional chairman of the
ZCTU in Matebeleland, who was picked up by police
in Bulawayo on Tuesday.
Police had assaulted and detained ZCTU National
Organiser Michael Kandukutu,
Tennyson Muchepfa from the National Engineering
Workers' Unions, and Justice
Mucheni from the Food Federation, the previous
day.
Maguhu said: "The presence of the security forces that visited most
business
struck fear in workers. The arrest of the labour leaders also
brought
similar effects and as a result of the fear of state terror, people
turned
up for work.
"The ZCTU in future needs to consult the workers
on the best strategy
because their attempt seemed to lack enough
consultation. People would have
wanted to participate but there is need for
the workers input before
leadership calls for action," he said.
SW Radio Africa (London)
21 September
2007
Posted to the web 21 September 2007
Henry Makiwa
An
intern at the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Memory Kadau, was arrested
and
detained overnight Thursday whilst administering the Coalition stand at
the
Non Governmental Organization Expo in the Harare Gardens.
Kadau was
arrested by three plain cloths police officers from the Harare
Central
Police Law and Order section, who accused her of distributing
material
denigrating Robert Mugabe.
According to officials from the Coalition,
police alleged that banners at
the organisation's stand, containing
statements made by liberation war hero
Josiah Tongogara, constituted
"criminal nuisance". The group had stuck up
banners with pictures of victims
of police brutality and a pre-independence
speech on free and fair
elections, by Tongogara.
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition vice chairperson,
Tabitha Khumalo, said police
have since released Kadau but threatened to
hunt down and arrest the
organisation's leadership.
Khumalo said:
"Our entire leadership has been warned that the police are
coming, so we are
supposed to be very scared right now. They are alleging
that we
misrepresented the person of Tongogara when we quoted his 1978
speech in
which he called for foreign observers for a free and fair election
before
the transition of Rhodesia to Zimbabwe.
"Our argument is that Tongogara
said these things and we did not pick them
from a dustbin, they are recorded
in the annals of our history. It is the
government that feels threatened
that we are now ridiculing Mugabe, because
his statement challenges the
state of things today when we can not exercise
our democratic rights without
government repression," she said.
Meanwhile, Crisis Coalition lawyer
Charles Kwaramba, from Zimbabwe Lawyers
for Human rights, has revealed that
Kudau was subjected to intensive
interrogation and denied food and water
before she was released Friday
afternoon. The lawyer noted that police
officers were threatening to beat
her up if she failed to disclose where
they could find the Crisis
Coalition's leadership.
FinalCall
By Angus Shaw
Associated Press
Writer
Updated Sep 21, 2007, 12:47
pm
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - President Robert
Mugabe, accusing the West of
trying to push Zimbabwe into collapse, declared
it would survive thanks to
its people's resilience and support from Africa,
state radio reported.
Mugabe said Britain, the former colonial
ruler, and his opponents
sought his ouster.
"In spite of their
heinous attempts to destroy the country and bring
down its democratically
elected government, Zimbabwe has not collapsed and
will not collapse,'" the
radio quoted him as saying at a state banquet
recently for visiting
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of the oil-rich West
African nation of
Equatorial Guinea.
Mugabe thanked Equatorial Guinea and other
African nations for their
"solidarity." He told President Obiang Zimbabwe
would always be grateful for
his support against enemies who "sought to
demonize the country's leadership
at every opportunity and deceive the world
about what is happening in my
country."
Mugabe said his nation
had not come to a standstill because of what he
called "the resilience and
revolutionary spirit of the Zimbabwean people."
Western countries
have imposed a travel ban on Mugabe and ruling party
leaders to protest
violations of democratic and human rights, following the
government ordered,
often violent seizures of thousands of White-owned
commercial farms that
began in 2000 and disrupted the agriculture-based
economy. Some U.S.
enterprises are barred from trading with Zimbabwe.
Foreign loans,
development aid and investment have dried up in seven
years of political and
economic turmoil in the former regional breadbasket.
Zimbabwe is
facing the world's highest official inflation of 7,634
percent, though
independent estimates put real inflation closer to 25,000
percent. The
International Monetary Fund has forecast inflation reaching
100,000 percent
by the end of the year, prompting some predictions of
economic collapse and
Mugabe's departure from office.
Cornmeal, bread, meat and most
staples have disappeared from the
shelves since a government edict June 26
to slash prices of all goods and
services by about half in efforts to tame
inflation.
Acute shortages of gasoline have crippled transport and
delivery
services. The food shortages have spurred illegal black market
trading in
scarce goods sold at more than four times the government's fixed
prices.
Stores were mostly left with a few canned foodstuffs.
Bathsoap,
toothpaste, biscuits and tea were among the latest goods to
disappear.
Equatorial Guinea President Obiang arrived in Harare
recently and was
scheduled to officially open the country's main agriculture
show in the
capital.
Officials at the showground said the
government allowed pricing
controls to be lifted for a single livestock
auction that was part of the
show. State media has given prominence to this
year's show, arguing farming
is reviving.
Amid Zimbabwe's
growing international isolation, the government and
distant Equatorial
Guinea have signed an extradition treaty and a series of
trade and
cooperation deals since a group of mercenaries plotting to
overthrow
President Obiang were arrested in 2004 when their plane landed in
Harare to
collect weapons from the Zimbabwe state arms maker.
Virtual Finland
21.9.2007 at
11:16
The Finnish government said Thursday it had not yet decided how it
would
react to the possible participation of Robert Mugabe, the president of
Zimbabwe, in the EU-African Union summit in Portugal in December.
"We
are monitoring the situation and hope that the EU president will find a
common solution," Riina Nevamäki, an EU aide to Prime Minister Matti
Vanhanen (centre), told the Finnish News Agency.
Further, Finland has
yet to decide whether Mr Vanhanen or Tarja Halonen, the
president, will
attend the summit.
Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, had said on
Thursday he would not
attend the summit if the Zimbabwean leader
did.
Sweden, like Finland, is following the situation and hopes for a
single EU
line to emerge.
However, Roberta Alenius, a press aide to
Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish
prime minister, was quoted as saying by
Swedish news agency Tidningarnas
Telegrambyrå that Sweden´s aim, like that
of most other EU countries, was
that President Mugabe would not attend the
summit.
The autocratic head of state and about 100 members of the
Zimbabwean ruling
elite are banned from travelling to EU member states.
The Zimbabwean
COMMENT: Local governance on the nose
dive.
This week experienced a further collapse in the local
governance situation
in Harare and the country. The water and sewer
situation continues to
deteriorate as ZINWA fails to provide competent sewer
and water
administration. CHRA received an up sage of reports on burst
sewers that
have not been attended to for ages and a new wave of disease
outbreaks
arising form these sewer bursts. The water situation has also
reached
critical levels as residents in most parts of Harare for days
without water.
In Mabvuku and Tafara the situation is even desperate as
residents are
collecting water in streams a situation that has heavily
compromised the
health of residents.
In Glen View and
Budiriro residents are also reeling under heavy water cuts.
The power
situation has not been the better. The water situation is worse in
Bulawayo
where residents go for weeks without running water. ZINWA has
maintained
that it needs heavy capital input from government in order to
undertake
maintenance work and improve its services.
The power situation
has not been the better at all. The power authority
actually predicts the
situation will not improve until at least 2010.
Zimbabwe used to receive
power supplies from South Africa , Botswana ,
Mozambique and the Democratic
republic of Congo . Only Mozambique continues
to supply a meager amount of
power as others have opted out due non payment
from Zimbabwe . The power
authority maintains that it also needs heavy
foreign currency input to
provide effective services. Zimbabwe produces and
imports a combined
capacity which is slightly above half the expected
capacity. This means that
on a daily basis half of Zimbabweans have to
without
power.
The refuse situation has also worsened. Informal and
formal dumping sites
continue to be flooded with uncollected waste as the
city of Harare claims
that it has no fuel to carry out effective waste
management services. In
Mbare this has led to disease outbreaks like Cholera
and Dysentery. The
healthy delivery system is receiving and processing
hundreds of cases
related to Cholera and Dysentery every
month.
This week CHRA has collected the stories (headlines) below
for your
consumption. These stories serve to reflect the local governance
challenges
faced by the residents in Harare and Zimbabwe . From this week we
will only
be sending you briefs so as to avoid loading your
e-mails.
Should we pay ZINWA for Mukuvisi water? The story covers
the concerns of a
disgruntled resident who is conscientising other residents
not to fund an
incompetent body that is not providing a service. The
contributor poses a
rhetorical question on why they should pay ZINWA when
the body is not
providing quality service. ( Sunday Mail 16 September
2007)
www.sundaymail.co.zw
Dumpsite fire
raises fears of ` Bhopal `. The story raises the challenges
that have come
as a result of waste incineration by the City of Harare at
the Pomona
dumpsite. ( The Standard 16 September 2007) www.thestandard.co.zw
MDC
accuses Chombo of meddling in Nkayi RDC. The story covers fears raised
by
the MDC on the meddling of the voters roll by Minister Chombo( The
Standard
16 September 2007) www.thestandard.co.zw
Bulawayo
to get water once in 11 days. The story highlights the water crisis
in
Bulawayo amid revelations that the situation will deteriorate. (Zimonline
21
September 2007) www.zimonline.co.za.
For more
information contact the Combined Harare Residents Association
(CHRA) on the
addresses below.
CHRA Information Desk
Combined Harare
Residents Association (CHRA)
145 Robert Mugabe Way
Exploration
House Third Floor
Harare
www.chra.co.zw
Mobile :
0912638401
011540240
Landline: 00263- 4- 705114
Catholic News
Sep-21-2007
By Bronwen Dachs
Catholic News
Service
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- With housing at Zimbabwe's
largest
university closed for more than two months, many students are likely
to drop
out as they struggle to find food, shelter and transportation to
their
lectures, said a church official.
Officials at the University
of Zimbabwe in the capital, Harare, are defying
a high court order to reopen
residences they closed in July and "are adamant
that they will not let the
students return," said Alouis Chaumba, head of
the Catholic Commission for
Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe.
"The situation is terribly bad," Chaumba
said in a Sept. 21 telephone
interview from Harare. He said students "are
commuting to the university
from all over the country."
After
students' failure to pay additional housing fees and incidents of
vandalism
on campus that authorities blamed on students, university
officials ordered
up to 5,000 students out of university housing July 9 just
as they were to
begin two weeks of exams. The court order to reopen the
residences came a
week later.
However, with the housing remaining closed, "the students
have to find
transport to campus," which is about three miles from central
Harare,
Chaumba said. With chronic shortages of fuel, "fares are very
expensive," he
said.
Many walk to save the fare, "but it's very hot
and they get tired walking
this distance to and from lectures every day," he
said.
The Harare-based justice and peace commission "managed to provide
them with
one meal a day during exams, and now they are trying to find their
own food
and shelter," Chaumba said.
Many students "are likely to
drop out," he said.
Parents are struggling to pay their children's
university fees in a country
crippled by the highest rate of inflation in
the world and unemployment of
more than 80 percent, Chaumba
said.
Shortages of food, foreign currency and fuel are acute in Zimbabwe,
and
large numbers of people are migrating to the neighboring countries of
South
Africa and Botswana. With elections scheduled for March, political
violence
has intensified.
Two student union leaders were arrested
Sept. 18 during a campus protest to
demand a resolution to problems
affecting students, reported the U.N. news
agency IRIN.
The report
said that some students without housing sleep in the waiting room
at
Harare's central railway station.
Catholic
Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
21 September 2007
Posted to
the web 21 September 2007
Konigstein
The international Catholic
pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN)
has called on Catholics
around the world to redouble their prayers for the
people of Zimbabwe and
especially for the Catholic Church there.
A report published Tuesday by
the International Crisis Group said "Zimbabwe
is closer than ever to
complete collapse." Inflation is between 7,600
percent (government figures)
and 13,000 percent (independent estimates).
Four out of five of the
country's twelve million people live below the
poverty line and a quarter of
them have fled, mainly to neighbouring
countries. A military-led campaign to
slash prices has produced acute food
and fuel shortages, and conducting any
business is becoming almost
impossible.
The German-based Catholic
charity ACN said more than ever, Zimbabwe needs
massive spiritual and
material support. The charity is standing by the
church in Zimbabwe, a
spokesman said, and especially by the former
Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius
Ncube, since the charity wishes to give a
"clear sign of solidarity with
those who are suffering for justice and
peace".
ACN shares the view
of the bishops of Zimbabwe, who have described the
campaign against former
Archbishop Ncube as "outrageous". Pius Ncube had
raised his voice in defense
of the oppressed, the spokesman added, and the
church had been among the few
who defend the poor and oppressed. Now the
church herself was under attacked
in such a scurrilous manner.
The Catholic Church in Zimbabwe has
increasingly become unable to materially
help the people, ACN reported,
although, despite the growing difficulties
she is striving tirelessly to do
so. There is no food, since this is being
deliberately held back by the
government and then sold off at exorbitant
prices, according to local
reports.
A local source told ACN: If someone is hungry and has the money,
then he
will pay whatever price is demanded." All vehicles are checked by
the police
and if food is found in them, it is confiscated. The owners have
no recourse
against this.
The church has neither an import nor a
transport license, ACN reported, but
she still does whatever she can for the
people. Inflation is now officially
at over 7,000 percent. It is virtually
impossible to buy food at the
official prices, and the black market prices
are usually around four times
higher. Unemployment stands at around 80
percent and most families can
barely afford even a single modest meal a
day.
ACN declared itself united with the people of Zimbabwe, in prayer
and hope
that "the good God, Who sent Jesus to proclaim freedom to prisoners
and to
set the downtrodden free" (cf Lk 4:18-19), might hear their feeble
cries
too."
China ducks question
Q: My first question
is, on China's assistance to Zimbabwe. Mr. Liu Guijin,
the special envoy of
the Chinese Government on African Affairs, said on
Tuesday that China has
halted its development assistance to Zimbabwe, but
will continue to offer
humanitarian assistance. But the Chinese Ambassador
in Zimbabwe said
yesterday that China's assistance to Zimbabwe in all forms
will continue.
Could you tell us whether China's policy towards Zimbabwe has
changed or
not?
A: China has normal and sound state-to-state relations with
Zimbabwe. We are
ready to continue to develop our relations with Zimbabwe on
the basis of the
Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. We hold that the
affairs of
Zimbabwe should be resolved by the Zimbabwean government and
people in the
end. The international community should offer constructive
assistance to the
reconciliation, stability and development in Zimbabwe.