http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=3625
by Own Correspondent Monday 08
September 2008
JOHANNESBURG - South African President Thabo
Mbeki is expected in Harare on
Monday to try once more to have President
Robert Mugabe and opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai conclude a
power-sharing deal.
Mbeki, the official Southern African Development
Community (SADC) mediator
in the Zimbabwe crisis, was initially scheduled to
travel to Harare last
Thursday but could not do so after reports that
opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai was away.
Zimbabwe's Deputy
Minister of Information, Bright Matonga confirmed the
South African leader
was due in Harare on Monday. He said: "We are expecting
him anytime but I
cannot tell when exactly but our chief negotiator Minister
Chinamasa will
know better."
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa was however not
available for comment as
his mobile phone continuously went
unanswered.
The spokesman for Tsvangirai's MDC party said the opposition
was ready to
meet Mbeki despite openly expressing dissatisfaction with the
mediation
process.
"We are prepared to meet him if he comes," MDC
spokesman Nelson Chamisa
said.
Mbeki has been for the past three
months shuttling between Pretoria and
Harare trying to patch up a deal that
could see Zimbabwe's two main
political rivals working together in a
government of national unity.
Mugabe and Arthur Mutambara, who heads a
breakaway faction of the MDC, have
reportedly appended their signatures to
the deal but Tsvangirai has refused
to sign the document arguing that it
leaves Mugabe with all the executive
powers.
The MDC leader on Sunday
told party members gathered in Gweru to celebrate
its ninth anniversary that
he would not put his signature on the draft deal
brokered by Mbeki and
endorsed by the SADC as long as it gave all executive
powers to
Mugabe.
Under the draft deal, Tsvangirai - who beat Mugabe in a March
poll but fell
short of enough votes to avoid a June run-off vote - would
virtually be a
ceremonial prime minister supposedly in charge of government
policy but
without power to hire or fire government ministers. He would also
not chair
Cabinet meetings.
While both Mugabe and Tsvangirai appear
unwilling to climb down on their
demands, analysts say both leaders were
under growing pressure from African
leaders and the international community
at large to hammer out a compromise
deal that could pave way for resolution
of one of Africa's worst crises.
In addition to hyperinflation, Zimbabwe
is also in the grips of severe
shortages of foreign currency, food, fuel,
water, and electricity amid
growing record unemployment that have driven
millions over borders and
strained regional economies. - ZimOnline
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=3590
September 8, 2008
By
Raymond Maingire
Gweru - MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai says he will not
bow to local or
international pressure applied on him to sign a
controversial power sharing
deal with his bitter rival, President Robert
Mugabe.
The opposition leader says the document, a culmination of intense
talks with
Zanu-PF under SADC, does not reflect the wishes of the people of
Zimbabwe.
The document only gives him the title of ceremonial Prime
Minister while
Mugabe's executive powers remain intact.
Should the
arrangement see the light of day, it would see Tsvangirai
spearheading
government's economic recovery programme while Mugabe retains
control of the
country's crucial security arms.
But Tsvangirai is demanding an executive
post as Prime Minister with Mugabe
becoming ceremonial
President.
This, he says, is underpinned by the March 29 election outcome
in which he
beat Mugabe although he failed to secure the requisite number
that would
have allowed him to automatically assume the
presidency.
"No half measures," Tsvangirai said to an estimated 10 000
crowd that
thronged the MDC's commemoration of its ninth anniversary at
Mkoba Stadium,
Gweru.
"We would rather have no deal than to have a
bad deal. If Mugabe does not
want separation between head of state and head
of government with full
authority, let him stay there."
Tsvangirai
says the MDC should instead be the one dictating terms on the
strength of
the popular vote registered during the last credible election in
March.
Not to be outdone, President Mugabe last week threatened he
would go ahead
and appoint cabinet with or without the input of
Tsvangirai.
The Zimbabwean leader last week ignominiously revoked an
"ultimatum" he had
given to his rival, which entailed either Tsvangirai
plays ball or else
Mugabe unilaterally appoints cabinet.
Tsvangirai
scoffed at the threats.
"You (Mugabe) will never find any of this one
(signature) until you start to
accept what the people want," he said, "Its
very simple, you are head of
state, and I am head of government."
The
MDC leader vows no amount of threats by the 84 year old leader will make
him
change his mind.
He says he would not be used to clean up the economic
mess brought by Mugabe's
disastrous populist policies.
"You can not
say after having messed up, you then call Tsvangirai to clean
up your mess
only to discard him thereafter," he said.
The elusive pact by the two
political protagonists is widely viewed as the
first real step in a decade
aimed at reversing Zimbabwe's economic
recession.
Tsvangirai
maintains he would have sold out if he were to blindly append his
signature
to the document at the behest of the international community and
some
Zimbabweans who are increasingly becoming agitated by his apparent
inflexibility.
"Don't force us, because we will have to live with the
agreement,"
Tsvangirai said. "And please this is not merely a Morgan
Tsvangirai
signature.
"This is the signature for food, for jobs, and
for prosperity and justice
for the people of Zimbabwe.
"The biggest
problem is that people are in fact applying pressure on the MDC
to sign
instead of directing their pressure to Mugabe. He is the one holding
the
reins of power." Tsvangirai said.
Not even South African President Thabo
Mbeki's repeated visits to Zimbabwe,
he said, would compel him into signing
the agreement.
Mbeki is the chief mediator in the talks and has since
intensified pressure
on the MDC leader to sign. He argues the agreement is
the best in the
prevailing situation.
The South African leader is
expected in Harare today ostensibly to revive
the faltering talks.
If
the situation remained unresolved, Tsvangirai proposed the matter should
be
referred back to the electorate. The MDC leader challenged his rival to
call
for fresh elections supervised by the international community and see
who
comes out tops.
Meanwhile, the MDC leader says deaths are imminent within
the next two to
three weeks if aid agencies are not allowed to operate at
full throttle.
Government last week lifted a controversial two month ban
on aids agencies
which it had accused of clandestinely campaigning for the
opposition.
VOA
By Peter Clottey
Washington, D.C.
08
September 2008
President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF
party has dismissed as frivolous
and an affront to Zimbabweans calls by the
leader of the main opposition for
fresh elections. Morgan Tsvangirai of the
opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) is challenging President
Mugabe to fresh elections under
international supervision, which he predicts
he would win. Tsvangirai added
that his MDC would rather quit the stalled
power-sharing talks than sign an
unsatisfactory deal, which he claimed would
be detrimental to the
opposition.
George Mkwananzi is the deputy
chairperson of the National Constitution
Assembly. He tells reporter Peter
Clottey from South Africa's capital,
Pretoria, that Tsvangirai's call will
meet stiff resistance from both
President Mugabe and Southern African
Development Community (SADC), a
regional body.
"Let me start by
saying that there is nothing wrong on the part of the MDC
or its president
to demand this, particularly by upping their stakes in
these negotiations.
But as far as I can see that is a demand that is likely
to meet very stiff
resistance not only from ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe, but
also from the SADC
region, which thinks that it has everything under
control. It has
recommended that negotiations under the facilitation of
Thabo Mbeki (South
Africa's President) must continue and believe that the
negotiation will
produce a settlement for Zimbabwe," Mkwananzi noted.
He said the regional
body would not be pleased with the demand of opposition
leader Morgan
Tsvangirai.
"They (SADC) would feel that they are being undermined, they
are being
bypassed and there is no confidence that is being expressed on
their
abilities and capacities to bring a solution for the crisis in
Zimbabwe. So,
that is the major stumbling block for such a call," he
said.
Mkwananzi said President Mugabe could name his cabinet this week
despite
strong opposition from the MDC, which has said such a move would
erode any
gains made at the stalled peace negotiations in South
Africa.
"Yeah, Mugabe is an old and stubborn fellow. He can go ahead and
pout
together a cabinet after all he has nothing else to lose, except to
save his
face by appearing to be brave and in charge. So, he can actually go
ahead
and do that in spite of the consequences, which he knows very well
that it
would mean a deepening of the crisis, it would mean the skyrocketing
of
prices it would mean the inflation getting worse and worse. He can still
go
ahead in spite of all these things," Mkwananzi pointed out.
He
said former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda's call for both sides in
the
Zimbabwe political crisis to bury the hatchet might fall on deaf ears.
"I
don't think it is a fresh call because that has been a call from
everybody.
I don't think Robert Mugabe respects Kaunda that much for him to
begin to
take such a call seriously because if you know they were never
really good
friends even during the time of the liberation struggle. He
(Kaunda) was
more of Nkomo ZAPU man. So, I don't think it adds any dimension
to the
current calls by other people on this issue," he said.
Mkwananzi said the
opposition could put the ruling ZANU-PF party under
pressure in order to be
taken seriously.
"I believe if the MDC can actually accompany their talks
for the demand for
fresh elections supervised by the international body, if
it can be
accompanied by very strong mass action, if they can mobilize
people in
Zimbabwe and make that country ungovernable, then they would be
able to
force Mugabe to take them seriously, and in fact would be forced to
take the
talks seriously, and they would concede," Mkwananzi noted.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=3656
September 8, 2008
By Sibangani
Sibanda
SCHOOLS opened this week for the third and final term of the
year. This is
the term in which those who are to sit public examinations
will be making
their final preparations for what is make-or-break time in
their education
history. With inflation now estimated at nearly twenty
million percent, one
can imagine how the parents struggled just to get
'tuck' for their children
in boarding schools all over the
country.
But if the plight of parents is bad, spare a thought for the
plight of our
teachers who are expected to produce future doctors, lawyers
and other
skilled (and unskilled) personnel on salaries that are a mockery
to their
profession. And then, when Zanu-PF feels like it, the teachers get
beaten up
for making the opposition party win the elections. How the
teachers, most of
whom struggle to put a decent pair of shoes on their feet,
can achieve this
against an all pervasive state media and state sponsored
terror is a mystery
that will probably only be revealed to those who will
make it to Heaven!
Anyway, it seems the teachers of one school, at least,
have had enough.
Information from those living around the school in one of
Harare's more
affluent northern suburbs is that, on opening day the teachers
came in,
opened the tuck shop, sold all the stock, shared the proceeds and
left. They
have not been seen since.
The children who, as a general
rule, are never too worried about the absence
of teachers now have the
school to themselves and have a place to which they
can legitimately visit
and get up to all sorts without the inconvenience of
parents or teachers.
What fun!
What I find disturbing about the whole episode is that it is
completely
ignored. No one in the incumbent government is the least bit
worried about
this situation, judging by the silence from that quarter. Nor
is there any
mention of it in the media, official or otherwise. It is as if
Zimbabweans
are so drunk on crises that one more just gets taken in our
collective
stride.
Or is it perhaps that we are concerned with the
more pressing matters of
getting food on the table, commuting to and from
work and drawing our ever
dwindling money from the bank before it becomes
worthless. Our children's
education, it seems, has become an unnecessary
burden. After all, even when
the children do get a reasonable education, all
they can do is leave the
country, never to be seen again. Or they spend
their days drinking
themselves silly while selling fuel, money, bread,
cigarettes and any number
of other contraband items they can find to
sell.
Meanwhile, the "on-again-off-again" talks keep cropping up. There
are not
many people that I meet these days who have any interest in the
outcome of
the talks. There is a certain resignation bordering on an
acceptance of the
inevitability of change only coming with the death of one
Robert G. Mugabe.
The said RGM who continues to insist (with croaking voice)
that he is the
duly elected President of Zimbabwe seems unable to grasp the
very basic
truth that the people of Zimbabwe are cleverer than he gives them
credit
for.
They know who the duly elected president is. They know
who is responsible
for the mess they find themselves in. But, they also know
how unrelentingly
cruel their leaders can be.
It is this cruelty, the
cruelty of physically beating and eliminating those
who even voice concern
for the leaders' misgovernance; the cruelty of not
worrying about the hunger
that currently grips the country; the cruelty of
not worrying about the
future of the country that our leaders want to
protect. They cannot give up
power and risk being "discovered" by even those
who still believe in them.
The country is melting all around them, but they
still want the power to
rule. But what are they ruling?
Our education system, which produced many
great academics and artisans is
crumbling. Our young people have no future
to look forward to. But a gang of
octogenarians, whose future is a lot
shorter than their grim past, clings
on, because they dare not let
go.
The children are going to school to play.
September 8, 2008
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip flank President Mugabe on May 17, 1994.
By Geoffrey Nyarota
THE campaign pitch of President Robert Mugabe in recent elections has been consistent.Since the electorate shocked him out of deepening complacency in the aftermath of the constitutional referendum held back in February 2000 Mugabe has sought to portray himself as a patriot, while presenting his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, as nothing more than a groveling puppet of the West.
Mugabe and the former ruling Zanu-PF have paraded themselves as paragons of post-colonial political virtue, while dismissing those who oppose them as shameless sell-outs, permanently at the beck and call of a dispossessed white farming community and a Western world seeking to re-colonise Zimbabwe.
In the world of make-believe painted by Mugabe and his surrogates at Zanu-PF campaign rallies political correctness entails having nothing or as little as possible to do with white people especially those of Zimbabwean commercial farming stock or with the representatives, even accredited diplomats, of Western nations, particularly the United Kingdom, the United States or Australia.
This essentially racist posturing was evolved and fine-tuned in the period after the 2000 referendum, when it suddenly dawned on the Zanu-PF leadership that they no longer enjoyed the fawning support and unquestioning loyalty of the Zimbabwean electorate.
Evidence abounds, however, that Mugabe’s and Zanu-PF’s racist pretensions are based on a false premise and shrouded in hypocrisy and double-speak. Zanu-PF has thus continued to delude both itself and party loyalists over the years simply because its rivals in the MDC have somehow allowed the party to get away with what essentially amounts to telling two self-serving falsehoods.
Mugabe in the early days of Zimbabwe’s independence basked in the glory of overstated Western adulation, while Zimbabwe benefited from the backing and support of a Western world anxious to support a government they somehow believed would constitute a departure from the African post-independence stereotype of corruption, economic mismanagement, lawlessness and abuse of civic rights. Aid funds poured into Africa’s newest nation while Mugabe was toasted in Western capitals. A knighthood was conferred on him by Queen Elizabeth the Second at Buckingham Palace while members of the Zanu-PF Women’s League ululated in Harare. A number of universities on both sides of the Atlantic recognised him through honorary degrees.
The first lie is that Western nations are natural enemies of Zimbabwe.
The second falsehood, more significantly, is that Zanu-PF hates while people. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, Zanu-PF has built a strategic circle of its own white friends over the years. Not only does Zanu-PF have dealings and cordial relations with its white allies; the people concerned are in most cases capitalist entrepreneurs who have prospered magnificently in Zimbabwe through their association with the ruling elite. Some prosper through exploiting the very people Zanu-PF pretends to protect.
Back in 1980 Mugabe went out of his way to prove to an anxious world that he was more than willing to abide by the non-racist tenets of his party’s first election manifesto.
Zanu-PF’s election manifesto stated categorically: “Zanu wishes to give the fullest assurance to the white community, the Asian and coloured communities that a Zanu government can never in principle or in social or government practice, discriminate against them. Racism, whether practiced by whites or blacks, is anathema to the humanitarian philosophy of Zanu. It is as primitive a dogma as tribalism or regionalism.”
The Zanu-PF of today publicly castigates and demonizes opponents such as the MDC who espouse similar non-racist policies and openly engage with members of the white community, branding them as enemies of the people and as puppets of the West.
Surprisingly, supporters both in and out of the country who hailed Mugabe for his former concern for the welfare of the ordinary man and his policy of national reconciliation, still glorify him long after he abandoned both the concern and the policy and now constantly spouts racist diatribe without the mandate of the majority of his people to do so.
But then to a considerable extent Mugabe and his acolytes depend for their survival on the existence of powerful white supporters who manipulate and strategize behind the scenes.
In the eyes of Zanu-PF and some post-colonial African political opinion the grievous error that the MDC
makes is to parade its Roy Bennetts, David Coltarts, Eddie Crosses, Ian Kayses and Trudy Stevensons in public; granting them a manifestly conspicuous frontline role in the fight for democratic change.
The MDC strategists perhaps never read George Orwell’s Animal Farm or took serious note of Squealer’s constant exhortation to “Tactics, comrades.” Squealer was the porcine equivalent of Zimbabwe’s former Minister of Information, Prof Jonathan Moyo. In the Zimbabwean context, Mugabe did not preach reconciliation until he had the keys to the office of the Prime Minister in hand. Yet Tsvangirai practices appeasement and magnanimity from a position of powerlessness. Maybe if he could persuade Bennett to withdraw from the front he would soon have real power to share with him.
Tactics, comrades!
While the MDC’s white supporters love to shout from public platforms, Zanu-PF’s whites are voiceless but powerful backroom strategists. Their rare forays onto newspaper front pages are often prompted merely by the pressing need to defend themselves in the face of allegations of corruption, outright fraud or other impropriety while making money for themselves and Zanu-PF.
Being dedicated capitalists, even when Mugabe was still an avowed socialist, their major preoccupation is to make as much financial hay as possible, while the Zanu-PF sun still shines. Over the past 28 years of Mugabe’s rule leading entrepreneurs such as the gregarious British businessman Roland “Tiny” Rowland, the somewhat eccentric Nicholas van Hoogstraten, also British, John Arnold Bredenkamp, who constantly parries accusations of arms dealing, and Conrad Muller “Billy” Rautenbach who took care of Zanu-PF financial interests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have forged strong alliances with the Zanu-PF leadership, Mugabe himself included.
So too have emergent businessmen such as Lt. Col Lionel Dyke (Retired). He quickly rose from the relative obscurity of an officer in the Zimbabwe National Army and was thrust into the limelight by the turn of the century as a political broker.
He was assigned by two men he claimed to be his allies in Zanu-PF, Emmerson Mnangagwa, then Speaker of Parliament and retired defence forces commander Gen Vitalis Zvinavashe to broker a partnership deal between the ruling party and the MDC. Dyke said the MDC was represented by the party’s secretary general, Welshman Ncube and Paul Themba Nyathi, its secretary for information and publicity.
Dyke revealed these details to me in December 2002 when I was editor of the now banned Daily News. He disclosed that he had also been assigned to secure the support of The Daily News, then the country’s largest newspaper, for the ambitious political initiative. The initiative sought to sideline both Mugabe and Tsvangirai, in favour of a new leadership. I turned Dyke’s proposal down, and blew the plot in the newspaper.
Col Dyke, one of Zanu-PF’s most trusted white allies now rakes in millions through landmine recovery operations in Zimbabwe, the Middle East, Kosovo and other trouble-spots of the world. South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki has since taken over the role of mediator in the Zimbabwean political crisis.
Dyke, who was commander of the Rhodesian African Rifles during Ian Smith’s war against the guerilla armies, was in charge of a regiment of paratroopers in 1983 to 84 during the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland. The Catholic Justice and Peace Commission’s report “Breaking the Silence: Building True Peace” says Dyke expressed support for the deployment by government of Five Brigade against civilians, saying this strategy “brought peace very, very quickly”.
While Zanu-PF publicly berates opposition politicians for associating or having links with whites, behind closed doors Mugabe and his cohorts exploit clandestine relationships with their own white partners, most of them extremely wealthy capitalists.
There was Tiny Rowland, that colourful British businessman who was the most conspicuous epitome of western capitalism in Rhodesia, in Zimbabwe and elsewhere on the continent. In Rhodesia he was a friend of Ian Smith and in Zimbabwe he cultivated the friendship of both the late Dr Joshua Nkomo and Mugabe.
Rowland was the founder and chief executive of Lonrho, one of Zimbabwe’s largest multi-national conglomerates. After independence he became one of the most generous benefactors of Zimbabwe’s ruling elite. Rowland’s Metropole Hotel in London became home away from home for the top echelons of those fighting for the liberation of Zimbabwe, with full board on the house. The friendship between the controversial British tycoon and Zimbabwe’s new rulers flourished after independence. The Lonrho end-of-year dinner party became the social event of the year in Harare. Meanwhile, the Lonrho pavilions at the Harare Agricultural Show and the National Trade Fair in Bulawayo were the favourite haunt of cabinet ministers under the patronage of the flamboyant Herbert Munangatire, now late.
So revered was Rowland by Zanu-PF that when he was ousted in a board-room coup, Dr Nathan Shamuyarira, that eminent custodian of the party’s ideological values, lamented that the controversial businessman’s ouster was likely to end the “warm relations between Lonrho and the government of Zimbabwe”.
It is only after the constitutional referendum of 2000 that Zanu-PF has become openly critical of Zimbabwe’s white citizens and representatives of Western governments, especially those who challenge Mugabe’s excesses and point at failures.
Mugabe’s personal friend Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, the British magnate whose status as the largest private owner of fertile Zimbabwean land complements is unchallenged, spoke with understandable warmth and affection when he described Mugabe as “100 percent decent and incorruptible”. Separately he said: “I don’t believe in democracy; I believe in rule by the fittest.”
Among Zanu-PF white allies van Hoogstraten is the most vocal supporter of Mugabe, whom he regards as a personal friend. More significantly he is said to be a financial backer of the President.
Van Hoogstraten holds extensive investments in Zimbabwe. The Rainbow Tourism Group’s shares register shows van Hoogstraten’s Messina Investments has a stake-hold of 2.17 percent with 35 727 640 shares. He owns 32 percent of Hwange Colliery Company and seven percent of CFI Ltd, one of Zimbabwe’s largest agro-industrial enterprises. He is the single largest shareholder in NMB at 20 percent. The founding owners of the bank were hounded into exile by Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono.
The President’s friend also owns 600 000 acres of prime farmland. Not unexpectedly, van Hoogstraten’s farms have been spared the treatment reserved for the farms of less “patriotic” white commercial farmers.
Van Hoogstraten, who is reported to have relocated from the United Kingdom to Zimbabwe, is said to manage his vast business empire of 200 residential and business properties in Zimbabwe from an office in Harare. In January they hauled him to court. The police had caught him red-handed while receiving rentals from tenants in hard currency.
The phenomenal success of van Hoogstraten is clear testimony that Zanu-PF merely pays lip-service to its anti-white and anti-western mantras.
Another strategic Zanu-PF ally, wealthy businessman, John Arnold Bredenkamp, has publicly expressed his open support for the Mugabe regime. He told the Zimbabwe Independent that because of his vast business interests and extensive travel experience he had become a friend of politicians and he had no regrets about it. He said he sincerely believed that it was in the “best interests of Zimbabwe for Zanu-PF to win the presidential elections next year”.
Mugabe narrowly missed losing the election in question to Tsvangirai in 2002.
Bredenkamp’s forlorn hope was understandable, given that at the material time he had just won a major tender to supply fuel to the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe. In any case, freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution of our once great land.
Yet when British premier Tony Blair stood in the House of Commons to pronounce that his Labour government worked hand-in-hand with Tsvangirai’s labour-backed MDC, Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, went totally ballistic in Harare.
That single statement by Blair and its opportunistic exploitation by Mugabe and Moyo may have made a considerable contribution to the recovery of Zanu-PF in 2005 of a significant number of parliamentary seats that it had lost to the MDC in the 2000 parliamentary election.
Reports in the international media have consistently referred to Bredenkamp, as an “arms broker,” “arms dealer,” “arms merchant,” “weapons dealer,” “weapons broker”.
Challenged by Bredenkamp to substantiate allegations of arms dealing against him one British publication, Executive Intelligence Review, defended itself haughtily.
“In describing the charmed life of John Arnold Bredenkamp,” the editor wrote, “it is difficult to know where to start. In fact, it is difficult to find a media reference to him that does not mention his business in arms trafficking. From the London Observer, to the Washington Times, to the Guardian of the U.K., to WorldNet Daily, to the UN Association of the United Kingdom, to a broad swath of British-based organizations and NGOs that specialize in opposing arms proliferation, Bredenkamp is repeatedly mentioned in the context of arms trafficking - selling, brokering, and violating sanctions.
Bredenkamp gained his reputation as a shrewd “sanctions buster” while supporting the racist regime of rebel Rhodesian leader Ian Smith.
“Like many of my contemporaries, I have adapted to change,” Bredenkamp says. “I was Rhodesian; I am now a Zimbabwean. I was a tobacco merchant; I am now an investor in many different sectors.”
When the George W. Bush administration imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe and Mugabe in 2001, Bredenkamp was reported to be among Zimbabwe’s businessmen included on the sanctions list. He was charged with violating international sanctions.
On February 18, 2000, Washington Times published a report that the DRC and Zimbabwe were purchasing arms from Bredenkamp, who was said to be based in Belgium.
After independence Bredenkamp, indeed, left Zimbabwe and moved his base of operations to Belgium.
A report submitted to the United Nations Security Council in October 2002 by a panel of experts investigating the exploitation of raw materials in the DRC cited Bredenkamp’s role as an arms broker:
“John Bredenkamp, who has a history of clandestine military procurement, has an investment in Aviation Consultancy Services Company (ACS). The Panel has confirmed, independently of Mr. Bredenkamp, that this company represents British Aerospace, Dornier of France and Agusta of Italy in Africa. Far from being a passive investor in ACS as Tremalt representatives claimed, Mr. Bredenkamp actively seeks business using high-level political contacts.
“Mr. Bredenkamp’s representatives claimed that his companies observed European Union sanctions on Zimbabwe, but British Aerospace spare parts for ZDF Hawk jets were supplied early in 2002 in breach of those sanctions. Mr. Bredenkamp also controls Raceview Enterprises, which supplies logistics to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. The Panel has obtained copies of Raceview invoices to ZDF dated 6 July 2001 for deliveries worth $3.5 million of camouflage cloth, batteries, fuels and lubricating oil, boots and rations. It also has copies of invoices for aircraft spares for the Air Force of Zimbabwe worth another $3 million.”
Bredenkamp protested the findings of the UN panel. The report highlighted the existence of an “elite network” comprising Congolese and Zimbabwean government officials and private businessmen. The network was reported to be exploiting the rich mineral resources of the DRC. The report identified the key strategist for the Zimbabwean branch of the network as Mnangagwa, while the former army commander, Zvinavashe was described as his key ally.
It has been alleged that before independence Bredenkamp effectively ran the finances of the Rhodesian armed forces during the later stages of the guerilla war. In this capacity he is said to have brokered export sales of Rhodesian products, mainly tobacco, and used the proceeds to fund the purchase of munitions and military equipment.
It is said that his complex “sanctions busting” deals sustained the UDI regime for far longer than would otherwise have been possible. Could Bredenkamp now be facilitating the survival of Zanu-PF as Mugabe clings to power?
On his return in Zimbabwe in 1984 after he made peace with the country’s new rulers he remained involved in commodity trading and defence procurement while making himself generally useful to government and Zanu-PF. Using Zimbabwe as his base, Bredenkamp conducted business dealings elsewhere in Africa and in the Middle East. Not only did Bredenkamp become extremely wealthy, he also helped sustain the Zimbabwean economy in a period of some turbulence.
Bredenkamp made strategic inroads into the post-independence political establishment while gaining considerable clout in the economic affairs of Zimbabwe. Mugabe is often accused of having made a single-handed decision to deploy Zimbabwean troops to the DRC. It is alleged, however, that Bredenkamp may have played a significant role in the events surrounding Zimbabwe’s costly and suicidal intervention in the West African nation between 1998 and 2003.
The Zimbabwean army and air force were deployed to shore up the Laurent Kabila government in its fight with rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. In return generous mining concessions were granted by the DRC to key figures in the Zimbabwe political and business elite. It is alleged that Bredenkamp and his Zanu-PF allies were major beneficiaries. Mnangagwa has been the key Bredenkamp ally in Zanu-PF since the businessman’s return from Belgium in 1984.
In fact, it is also alleged that Bredenkamp became something of a power behind the scenes in Zanu-PF. Sources say he overplayed his hand, however, when he sought to facilitate the early retirement of Mugabe in 2004 and his replacement by Mnangagwa.
This displeased rival politicians in the party and government and investigations were instituted into the affairs of Bredenkamp’s Breco trading company concerning tax evasion and exchange control violations.
Controversial businessman, Conrad Muller “Billy” Rautenbach, is one of the handful of white businessmen who have prospered under Mugabe. He owned Wheels Africa, which quickly grew to become Zimbabwe’s largest freight company. He also held the Volvo and Hyundai franchises. He is said to own several thousand cattle north of Harare. The herd remained unscathed as neighbouring commercial farms were violently seized during by Zanu-PF sponsored war veterans and other party militants.
Rautenbach was one of South Africa’s best known businessmen but he fell foul of the law. The police wanted him in connection with massive fraud at his Wheels of Africa Group.
The charges against Rautenbach included stealing 1,300 cars from Hyundai, bribing customs officials and fraudulently reducing the tax liability of Wheels of Africa’s subsidiaries. He fled South Africa in 1999 after justice department investigators raided his office and home. Wheels of Africa was liquidated in December1999.
In Zimbabwe Rautenbach has enjoyed the company of equally tough businessmen, including the ubiquitous
Mnangagwa. The relationship between the two men goes back to the late 1990s when they oversaw the mining interests of Zanu-PF in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
As part of a deal struck between Mugabe and then DRC President Laurent Kabila - in return for Zimbabwe’s military backing during the five-year civil war - Rautenbach was appointed chief executive of state mining company Gecamines. He was allocated several of its mining concessions, including a share in Mukondo cobalt mine in Katanga Province.
Kabila sacked Rautenbach two years later and seized his assets. Kabila accused the chief executive of under-reporting sales and exports of hundreds of millions of dollars of cobalt for the benefit of his own company, Ridgepointe Overseas Development Company.
Strangely, Kabila then invited Bredenkamp, another Zimbabwean businessman with impeccable Zanu-PF credentials, to take over some of Rautenbach’s seized assets.
Whether this was Kabila’s own decision or these appointments were manipulated from Harare is a matter of conjecture, but Zanu-PF’s interests in the DRC appear to have remained adequately protected.
Miraculously, after Bredenkamp invested in excess of US$15 million to open the Mukondo deposit, said to be the richest cobalt mine in the world, Rautenbach was back on the scene early in 2004. With the assistance of high-ranking Zimbabwean facilitators, he was awarded half of Bredenkamp’s assets in the DRC, with no compensation being paid to Bredenkamp. Rautenbach’s return coincided with the fall-out between Bredenkamp and Zanu-PF in Harare.
It was not clear how Rautenbach compensated those who engineered this windfall in a country from which he had been expelled. But it is likely that Rautenbach’s fortunes were revived following the assassination of Kabila in 2001. His son Joseph took over as president. Rautenbach was subsequently accused of fraud, theft and corruption again and ordered to leave the DRC.
In a report by the UN Panel of Experts on the DRC in July 2006, Rautenbach’s dual role as head of Gecamines and the beneficiary of this transfer of assets was described as a “blatant conflict of interests”. The report also cited Rautenbach as being among DRC “investors whose personal and professional integrity is doubtful”.
This story would be incomplete without reference to the legendary Joshi brothers, Jayant and Manharlal Chunibal, who fled from Zimbabwe within a week of Zanu-PF setting up a committee to investigate allegations of corruption and fraud within its business empire.
After establishing links with them in Mozambique during the war of liberation, Mugabe invited the Joshi brothers to Zimbabwe after independence to manage Zidco Holdings, through which Zanu-PF controls a vast business conglomerate. Mnangagwa, reputed to be one of Zimbabwe’s wealthiest citizens, was chairman of Zidco.
The Joshi’s fled from Zimbabwe in April 2004, a few says after the Zanu-PF politburo established an internal committee to investigate allegations of wide-spread corruption within the Zidco empire.
Mnangagwa, then the powerful Speaker of Parliament and the Joshis had become virtually untouchable. For two decades Mnangagwa served as Zanu-PF’s secretary for finance. In that capacity he was not only chairman of Zidco, he also sat on the board of 14 companies owned by the party. More significantly, Mnangagwa was at the time widely heralded as the man favoured by Mugabe to succeed him.
The Joshi brothers ditched a life-style of consummate luxury in Harare and fled to London, along with fellow Zidco director, Dipak Pandya. Mnangagwa never denied allegations that he personally escorted the fleeing executives to the airport.
While Mnangagwa and the Joshi brothers were repeatedly fingered for alleged corruption, they had become sacred cows, even when well-investigated and documented allegations of corruption were published in the press.
For example, they were linked to a case of corruption well documented by The Daily News which cited them as having allegedly been involved in the corruptly awarded tender for the construction of the Harare International Airport. Through the intervention of Mugabe’s nephew Leo, the contract was awarded to Airport Harbour Technologies (AHT) an international company with its headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Harare was the company’s first airport construction project.
Hani Ahmad Zaki Yamani, the company’s chief executive, subsequently revealed details of various payments corruptly made to various government officials, including President Mugabe, in the process of the controversial contract.
One of the recommendations made by the Sandura Commission to government in 1989 at the close of the Willowgate Scandal hearings was that the role played by Zidco in the scandal be thoroughly investigated. This never happened.
The Joshis fled from Zimbabwe15 years later soon after Zanu-PF finally established a high-level investigation into claims of massive corruption within a business empire which the Joshis controlled with Mnangagwa, allegedly with little or no accountability.
There are two major characteristics that distinguish whites who associate with or support Zanu-PF from those aligned with the MDC. Zanu-PF’s whites are immensely wealthy capitalist entrepreneurs. The Bennetts, Coltarts, Crosses, Kayses and Stevensons of the MDC are, by comparison, men and women of much modest means by white Zimbabwean standards.
The major differences between Zanu-PF’s whites and the white men of the MDC camp is that the former are businessmen while the latter tend to be politicians and human rights activists. In fact, the while Zanu-PF loves to portray itself as a socialist organisation, the white entrepreneurs associated with the party are the flamboyant embodiment of capitalism.
Where Zanu-PF befriends the aristocracy, as it were, the MDC’s white are plebeians, figuratively speaking. For instance, Eddie Cross has a chequered history of service to government, both before and after independence. He started off as a land resettlement officer in the Gokwe District before he attained an honors degree in Economics at the then University of Zimbabwe. He became the chief economist of the Agricultural Marketing Authority in 1976.
After independence Cross was appointed to head, first, the Dairy Marketing Board and then the Cold Storage Commission, then Africa’s largest meat-marketing organisation. He was then appointed CEO of the Beira Corridor Group, an organisation established to promote the rehabilitation of the Beira Corridor as an export outlet to the sea for land-locked Zimbabwe.
Cross then went into business in his own capacity when he started a group of companies, which he now runs with increasing difficulty. He joined the MDC at inception in 1999 and is currently the policy coordinator of the party and was elected to Parliament in March.
“I regard myself as a white African,” he says, “and am totally committed to the country of my birth and to the future of the continent.”
Zanu-PF is not entirely convinced and regards it as an inherent weakness of the MDC that the party appoints white functionaries such as Cross, Coltart and Bennett to positions of leadership.
Bennett, the MDC’s treasurer, is particularly reviled by Zanu-PF as the man who allegedly canvasses for funds abroad for the MDC.
“I believe that the decision-making process in Tsvangirai and the MDC is now firmly in the hands of the party’s fundraisers, namely Strive Masiyiwa and Roy Bennett,” said Prof Jonathan Moyo in an article published in the aftermath of the controversial June 27 presidential election re-run.
Those who had an idea of the funding-raising situation in Zanu-PF must have chuckled quietly on reading Prof Moyo’s article. President Mbeki and fellow pan-Africanists will certainly not chuckle when it eventually dawns on them what kind of animal they are dealing with in Zanu-PF.
The Times
September 8, 2008
Jan Raath in Harare
When 40 settlers were moved on to Don
Miller's 1,100 hectare (2,700 acre)
farm in Tengwe in northeast Zimbabwe,
they found an efficiently run
agricultural unit. All they had to do was to
carry on what he had been
doing.
There were 31 large flue-curing
tobacco barns that processed 120,000kg of
high quality flavour tobacco a
year, ploughed, fertilised fields that
yielded 1,200 tonnes of maize and
several tonnes of paprika, pasture for 200
cattle, six 50-metre runs for
15,000 hens that produced eggs for all the
hotels on the resort town on the
shores of Lake Kariba and a fledgling
crocodile-breeding programme. The
family were driven off in November 2000,
in the first year of President
Mugabe's lawless, violent "revolutionary land
resettlement programme" and 60
skilled farmworkers were also chased away.
Eight years later the
settlers, peasant farmers, are still in place. Two
grow perhaps 1,000 kg of
low-grade tobacco annually. Fewer than half manage
between them to produce a
subsistence maize crop of maybe ten tonnes.
Outbuildings have been
vandalised and in many cases entire buildings have
lost every brick, for the
settlers to build their own rough houses. There is
no electricity, the
high-voltage cables bringing power on to the property
having been stolen,
and no water as the borehole pumps have been pulled up
and
sold.
"They are not commercial farmers," said Mr Miller. "They don't have
the
skills for commercial agriculture, so they carried on with what they
know,
susbsistence farming. The government funding for resettled farmers was
grabbed by the cheffes [ruling party bigwigs] so they got nothing. And they
lack ambition."
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=3593
September 8, 2008
By Jane
Madembo
WAR veterans are not some phantom figures. We all know
them.
They are our brothers, sisters, fathers and grandfathers. Show me
someone
who doesn't have a family member or close relation who fought in the
liberation struggle. It is true that war veterans are the embodiment of our
community. They live with us and share in many of our struggles.
Yet,
in the past ten years, the world has been bemused by stories of war
veterans
running wild in Zimbabwe, looting property and killing people. Ever
since
the controversial land invasions, Zimbabwe's war veterans have been on
the
center stage of local and international news. They run around the
country,
invading white farms, taking over their property. Their opponents,
most
times defenseless white farmers were killed in cold blood when they
tried to
resist. Those were battles which they always won. They would be no
casualties on their side.
Houses were burnt, and farming equipment
either destroyed or looted. This
was no land reform programme. It was
murder. If you were a white farmer and
the owner of a targeted farm, you
either gave up or faced the new law, which
was dispensed by a stick-welding
group of men singing Chimurenga songs from
the more than two decades old
liberation struggle. If you were very smart,
you quickly packed your bags
and left for places such as Zambia and Nigeria
where they were openly
courting Zimbabwe's white farmers. Or you died, your
cries ignored, and
pictures of your lifeless body made the front pages of
newspapers and
websites all over the world.
The war veterans continued their reign of
terror, moving from one conquest
to another. They behaved like spoilt brats,
after getting the toy they
coveted from another child, they quickly lost
interest. They made it a full
time occupation, to invade, loot and beat up
white farmers. Today, these
farms have yielded nothing; instead, they are
like museum pieces. There is
no one to till the fields, the war veterans
have moved on. They are busy
looking for those who oppose Mugabe and have
the audacity to support the
opposition party, MDC and its leader Morgan
Tsvangirai. This is their chief
occupation now. Along the way, there are a
lot of gains.
Questions have been raised about the age of some of the
so-called war
veterans. Others, like well known impostors like Joseph
Chinotimba have
benefited from their exploits, by getting promoted from City
Council driver
to Chairman.. In Zimbabwe if you are a thief, you need not be
one anymore.
All you need to do is declare your support for Robert Mugabe
and call
yourself a war veteran, even if you are thirty years
old.
Today, Zimbabwe has degenerated into a country of lawlessness
through the
actions of these marauding war vets and ZANU PF militia. They
have become
the law. The law only works on one side. If you are an MDC
supporter, you
are on your own.
In the months between March and June
alone, more than one hundred people
have been killed and a lot more have
lost their homes.
The above is the portrait most people have about
Zimbabwe's war veterans;
that of murderers and thieves. They are law unto
themselves. They will not
accept any leader except Robert
Mugabe.
Those are the war veterans we have heard about, and the world has
heard
about. And yet, out of the many war veterans in Zimbabwe, not all of
them
participated in the bloody rampage we have seen around the
country.
Some of the war veterans I spoke to, whose names I will not
mention for
their protection, told me that they went to war to fight, out of
true love
for their country, not because Robert Mugabe was there, or to put
Mugabe in
power.
The liberation struggle will always have a place in
the history of Zimbabwe,
as will the men who fought in it, the war veterans.
When I was growing up I
was inspired by stories I read about our heroes,
Ambuya Nehanda and Sekuru
Kaguvi. I was also inspired by the fact that the
men and women who went to
fight for the liberation of Zimbabwe, were
prepared to die for it. Today, I
am disappointed that they are willing to
kill for the love of their country,
even if it means killing defenseless
people, women and small innocent
children.
These deeds will not
inspire the next generation, but will be part of the
dark cloud in our
history. And yet this is the legacy that is being formed
about the war
veterans and Robert Mugabe, their leader.
Soon after independence, when
some people tried to masquerade as war
veterans, they were quickly exposed
and jailed.
They emerged again during the controversial land reform
program. Although it
was common knowledge that some if not most of these
people were not really
war veterans, no one said anything about
it.
Why is it that the war veterans didn't denounce the violence that was
being
perpetrated under their name? Why is it that they failed to call the
impostors' bluff and tell them to fight their own war under their own name,
instead of calling themselves war vets? Why have they allowed a small group
of rouge veterans and other imposters to sabotage their legacy and tarnish
their reputation?
The ruling Zanu-PF party, which has a roster of who
is who of the liberation
struggle, did not say a word.
But, most of
us know who some of these veterans are and we wonder why they
are quiet. We
have talked to them and heard them say that they didn't go to
war to put
Robert Mugabe in power. We remember what they used to say at the
pungwes,
that they were fighting to liberate Zimbabwe. Today, we ask them,
what does
this liberation mean?
War Veterans of Zimbabwe, please stand up with us
and help liberate Zimbabwe
once again from one of our own. We fought the war
for our freedom, not to
exchange one jail for another. A jail is a jail, it
doesn't matter who is
holding the key. We fought the war so that we can be
equal among other equal
people.
Why is it that Robert Mugabe behaves
like a boxing champion who refuses to
rescind the title because he won it
last year? You either win or you lose.
And so it is in politics. Every five
years you have to go back to the
people, who have to decide who the next
title holder is.
Thirty years ago, the people chose Robert Mugabe; they
supported him so much
that had concealed the liberation fighters from Ian
Smith's soldiers. They
killed their goats, cows and chicken to feed them.
Today, the people need a
different type of hero.
The challenges
facing Zimbabwe today won't be solved by fighting, being
greedy, killing
other people, but by respecting one another.
We are at the crossroad of a
new Zimbabwe. Change is coming. The days of
Zimbabwe's liberation are long
gone, and it is time to build Zimbabwe.
Zimbabweans need a leader who has
tomorrow's vision, and not one who is
still the fighting ghosts of the
past.
Today's fight is about developing and rebuilding the country. It is
about
creating jobs, it is about forging relationships with other countries
and
exchanging ideas and empowering our people. It is about restoring
dignity to
the people of Zimbabwe. It is about creating a future for our
younger
generation, and not destroying it.
If you really love
Zimbabwe, and sacrificed your lives for our liberation, I
don't see why you
should be afraid of Mugabe. Where is that courage you
showed when you went
to fight for the liberation struggle? Where is that
courage you showed when
you heckled Mugabe at Heroes acre in 1997? You can
tell Mugabe that this is
not what you fought for, for him to cling to the
power and the presidency
long after he has ceased to be of any service to
Zimbabwe.
http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=3624
by Mutumwa Mawere
Monday 08 September 2008
OPINION: Zimbabwe is a
landlocked country located in southern Africa
with an area covering 390
757sq km and a population estimated at about 13
million.
A
British colony from the end of the 19th century to 1965 and then a
rebel
state ruled by a white minority (1965-1980), Zimbabwe became
independent in
1980 under the Lancaster House Agreement that provided a
constitutional
framework for a legally independent and democratically
governed republican
system. Zimbabwe continues to be governed under the 1979
constitution as
amended.
One of the founding principles of the new nation was the
universality
and indivisibility of human rights regardless of race, gender,
religion,
ideology and tribe whether they concerned civil and political
issues or the
right to freedom from hunger and access to social and economic
justice.
The terms such as nation, country, land, and state often
are used
interchangeably to describe a particular area or territory or for
the
government of the day.
The concepts of nation and
nationality have much in common with ethnic
and ethnicity but Zimbabwe as a
nation state expresses a legitimised
institutional decision making structure
governing the affairs of the Shona
tribe who make up about two-thirds of the
population and the Ndebele, Chewa
and people of European ancestry who make
up the balance.
Post-colonial Zimbabwe is internationally
recognised as a sovereign
state with sovereignty vested in citizens who
should ordinarily have the
ultimate say in who becomes the President to
represent their interests.
In the elections of April 1980, ZANU led
by Robert Mugabe won by a
comfortable margin, making him the country's first
black prime minister. He
took over from Lord Soames who had temporarily
assumed control of Rhodesia
as part of the transitional arrangements agreed
at the Lancaster House
conference.
Over 25 000 people had been
killed in the struggle for independence
whose main objective was to create a
unitary state. The policy of
reconciliation espoused by the post-colonial
state was the most visible
attempt to build a new nation founded on
principles of justice, liberty and
equality.
Everyone thought
that a new Zimbabwe was born with values deeply
rooted in the belief that
the future belonged to all irrespective of their
colour, tribe or religion
but a shared history and common destiny.
Zimbabwe was born out of a
protracted struggle and represented the
collective desire to build a new
civilisation of laws and a framework
governing the relationship between
citizens, citizens and the state, and
finally between the state and other
states.
The nation-state became the dominant form of post-colonial
societal
organisation and the hope was that citizens and their leaders would
invest
in the new project to build a new future less blinded by race and
prejudice.
A government of national unity was then put in place by
no other than
Prime Minister Mugabe on the firm belief that Zimbabwe
belonged to all who
believed in it.
It did not take long to
expose how fragile and perishable the founding
principles of the new nation
were.
In 1982, Mugabe removed his liberation struggle colleague,
Joshua
Nkomo, from his cabinet and using the state machinery launched a
campaign
against the so-called dissidents in the Matabeleland region, an
area in
which Nkomo's ZAPU was politically strong.
The founding
philosophy of the post-colonial state's leadership was
that a one party
state led by one leader was the most desirable political
arrangement for
nation building.
Political pluralism was frowned upon as was
popular participation in
political activities.
The state was
transformed from a people's project to a politicised
institution dominated
by one leader who was presumed to be a repository of
wisdom and
intelligence.
After the ousting of ZAPU from the post-colonial
state, the following
five years were characterised by state administered
political repression,
human-rights abuses, mass murders, and property
burnings until Nkomo whose
party was in a politically induced disarray
relented by finally agreeing to
a peace accord in 1987 that resulted in
ZAPU's merger (1988) into the ZANU
PF and Nkomo's return to the
government.
Mugabe was then elected president in 1987 and
re-elected in 1990,
1996, and 2002 and controversially in June
2008.
One of the founding principles of the new nation was the
dictatorship
of the proletariat and by framing the anti-colonial struggle as
a fight
against capitalism; the post-colonial leadership became the founding
fathers
of trade unionism and by default became the spokespersons for the
working
people as well as the majority poor.
Mugabe was and
remains committed to Marxist principles and
power-sharing has never been
applicable in any socialist/communist leaning
society.
Absolute
power in the hands of the revolutionaries is the operative
ideology and the
notion of two leaders at the top of a national democratic
revolution is
unheard of.
Mugabe reluctantly gave up his plans for a one-party
state in 1991
after skilfully co-opting ZAPU leadership in the command
centre as junior
partners.
The sustainability of the
post-colonial economic model was always
problematic not only because of the
limited revenue base available to the
new state with unlimited ambitions but
the faulty founding values and
principles that informed the construction of
a post-colonial order.
The state became the centre of gravity and
by 1987 it was obvious that
the economy could no longer afford the social
investments that the new
nation had initiated and hence the need for an
economic structural
adjustment programme in the early 1990s.
The economic and social challenges that have confronted the
post-colonial
state were predictable and the resultant nationalism and false
patriotism
was inevitable in order to explain away the failures.
Can the
post-colonial state be divisible? What are the implications of
two centres
of power on social cohesion, economic progress and nation
building?
Zimbabwe finds itself with a SADC-mediated
power-sharing arrangement
in which it will have two centres of power
occupied by individuals who have
strong personalities and whose worldview
may not be reconcilable.
The notion that a progressive nation like
any organisation requires
leadership clarity to advance its cause is a key
foundational principle and
yet as Soth African President Thabo Mbeki is due
in Harare for yet another
attempt to get opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai
to append his signature
to an arrangement that may throw the country into
confusion unless the
framework is revisited, there appears to be no change
of mind on the part of
Mugabe on the kind of power configuration that will
allow the country to
move forward.
Mugabe starts from the
premise that he is the one leader that Zimbabwe
cannot do without and,
therefore, any power-sharing arrangement must be
framed around this basic
principle.
It is already evident that Mugabe has used the
inter-party
negotiations to regain credibility among his SADC and AU
colleagues to the
extent that he is now confident that he can form a
government without the
involvement of Tsvangirai.
Notwithstanding, it cannot be denied that two centres of power now
exist in
post-colonial Zimbabwe and even Mugabe would understand the
absurdity of him
ignoring the historic decision by Zimbabweans on March 29
to change the
language of political discourse from one Zimbabwe, one nation,
one leader
(whose name is Mugabe) to one Zimbabwe, one nation, two leaders
(one with
popular support and the other with state support). - ZimOnline
FAY CHUNG: COMMENT - Sep 08 2008
00:00 |
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=3649
September 8, 2008
By Chenjerai
Hove
AT THE moment his death, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, reminds his
friend
Horatio,
"Horatio, I am dead; Thou liv'st ; report me and my
cause aright To the
unsatisfied."
Human beings are animals of memory,
especially if they happened to have
wielded so much political and economic
power. The desire to be fondly
remembered grows in intensity as the powerful
get old, sometimes eaten up by
those scars which they inflicted on
others.
Mr Robert Mugabe is one such ruler, who at some point lost the
role of a
leader and became feudal ruler. But then the brutal and powerful
do not
realize the wounds on the bodies of their victims, citizens whom
those
rulers should protect and defend.
When they say 'power corrupts
and absolute power corrupts absolutely,' they
forget to warn that one of the
victims of absolute power is memory.
Robert Mugabe will be remembered for
his rule by fear. He implanted so much
fear among the population that the
central image of his rule by fear became
Chikurubi, the maximum security
prison where many of his enemies and critics
were sent to die. He turned the
whole nation into a vast prison.
At independence in 1980, Mr Mugabe did
not dismantle the instruments of
torture inherited from Ian Smith. He kept
everything intact in order to use
it for his own power. It is the opposite
of Nelson Mandela who turned Robben
Island into a museum rather than use it
for dealing with his enemies.
By brutalizing the Zimbabwe nation, Mugabe
failed to realize that he is also
full of fear of the electorate. He
brutalized himself so much that he saw
guns pointed at him everywhere. How
else can we explain his vast
presidential motorcade which includes dozens of
limousines, soldiers armed
to the tooth, roaring motorcycles, and even a
state-of-the-art mobile
clinic?
Of course, we could remember military
outfits as an attempt to exhibit
power, the paraphernalia of power to
intimidate onlookers. 'Power is a
desolating pestilence,' wrote an Indian
scholar many years ago. Mr Mugabe
internalized this pestilence so that he
will be remembered as a man who was
so obsessed with power that he could not
imagine anything else.
Because of his obsession with power, Mugabe will
be remembered for his
hatred of views contrary to his own. His vision is
power at all costs. All
critics are, according to Mugabe, 'enemies' who have
to be crushed,
destroyed. So Mugabe will be remembered for his intolerance
of criticism.
For him, everything is him and if it is not him, it does not
work. The angel
Gabriel still alive among us, to deliver the good
news!
I can also argue that his hatred of alternative ideas was based on
his
belief in his own infallibility. At the 10th anniversary of independence
in
1990, he was asked if he had made any mistakes during his10-year rule.
His
answer, a shocking; 'None at all'. Hence his ministers entered into a
battle
of praise-singing and hero-worshipping him day and night. Some called
him
Jesus Christ, some annointed him 'The Saviour of the Nation,' and others
openly called him God. And in all this, Mr Mugabe never came publicly to
reprimand those men and women who showered him with such godly high
titles.
In other words, Mr Mugabe will be remembered for his love of
flattery. The
man loves to be worshipped, and those who erect shrines to his
personal
glory get rewarded with ministerial posts even if they are totally
incompetent.
The whole of southern Africa will remember Mr Mugabe as
a president who
created the greatest number of external and internal
refugees without a war
going on. Only apartheid South Africa had more.
Millions of Zimbabweans have
been forced to leave Zimbabwe for economic and
political reasons. But Mr
Mugabe is blind to all these disasters as long as
he is in power. Everything
else does not matter except his own personal
power.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe will surely be remembered for his violent,
brutal
rule. During all election campaigns he never persuaded the voters to
choose
him. He used the language of violence and sent his personal militias
to
implement the meaning of his violent language. 'I will crush them,'
'there
will be war if I lose the elections,' 'the pen which writes an X on
the
ballot paper cannot be more powerful than the gun', so he went on. His
political opponents and critics are 'traitors, dogs, political prostitutes,
tea-boys, puppets of the British and the Americans, sell-outs,' who, by
implication, deserve death. So his militias, the army, secret police and the
uniformed police took their cue from this language of violence and went on
the rampage, murdering, torturing and raping for the sake of Mr Mugabe'
power.
The man loves the British royal family. His proudest moments
were when he
shook hands with the British royals. One can only assume that
this love
stems from the fact that British royals do not have to suffer the
rigours of
election campaigns. They rule forever. Mugabe's dream was always
to rule
forever. 'Only God will remove me from power,' he said in the 2008
election
campaign, clearly declaring himself president for life.
As
president, Mr Mugabe will be remembered for rigging elections using even
the
crudest methods everyone can see without making much of an effort. To
carry
out the open rigging, Mugabe employs all sorts of praise-singers,
flatterers
and charlatans who are ever grateful to him for elevating them to
high
office which they know they do not deserve. They are prepared to rig
even
the most insignificant village election to show their gratitude and
loyalty
to 'His Excellency, Jongwe,' the national cockerel. The implications
for
that title is that the National Cockerel can do whatever it wants,
including
sleeping with your wife since you are not the national one and he
is! I was
nauseated every time I attended national events where, on his
entry into the
room or hall, his charlatans led chants of "Jongwe! Jongwe!
Jongwe!" as if
they themselves were mere hens waiting for the cockerel to do
whatever he
wanted to do with them.
"You are all Mugabe's wives," once shouted
Margaret Dongo, the rebel who
knew Mugabe's ways from inside the corridors
of power. She had seen how men
and women kneel in front of him as if he were
a god of some kind in order to
receive Lazarus' leftovers of power from Mr
Mugabe.
Although he never went into the battlefield to fight the
liberation war of
the 1970s, he loves the military who sustain his power. As
a result, Mr
Mugabe has deliberately militarized most state institutions to
show his
gratitude to the armed forces. The military run the country and at
the same
time give Mugabe the illusion that he is in power when in actual
fact they
run everything. All state-run companies are virtually in the hands
of the
military whom he has allowed to loot and plunder as they
please.
Mr Mugabe's lack of a national vision is shown by the fact that
he has never
created any new ideas for the country. Other African leaders
created some
kind of new idea, but not Mugabe. Let us look at what other
African leaders
created:
- Julius Nyerere of Tanzania - African
socialism - Ujamaa
- Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana - African Marxism
- Jomo
Kenyatta of Kenya - Facing Mt Kenya, his ideas of freedom inspired by
geography and landscape of the homeland.
- Leopold Senghor of Senegal -
Negritude, ideas for the pride in being black
and artistic.
- Kenneth
Kaunda of Zambia - African Humanism
- Nelson Mandela of South Africa -
Ubuntu, emphasis on recreating human
dignity
- Thabo Mbeki of South
Africa - African Rennaisance
- Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe - Degrees in
Violence
These leaders attempted to share some kind of vision no matter
how faulted
it could have been when we judge them with the benefit of
hindsight. They
had some kind of national philosophy which they tried to
implement,
sometimes with remarkable success and at times faced with many
hurdles which
were too complicated to overcome.
Mr Mugabe only
preached socialism for the sake of tightening his grip on
power as that
verbiage would make him look like a man of the people. He
never meant what
he preached. While Mugabe preached socialism, his cronies
looted and
plundered the country as they wished. And while the nation
starves, Mr
Mugabe has just completed building probably one the most
expensive personal
mansions in the whole of Africa. He tells Zimbabweans
that the building
materials are donations from his friends all over the
world. But we know
that anyone who believes that story would need to have
their head
examined.
The lack of a national and international vision in a political
leader is
usually shown by his or her incapacity to write it in some kind of
memoir or
personal journal to enable the ordinary citizen the opportunity to
sit and
study those ideas for inspiration. Mr Mugabe, in power for 28 years,
has
never written anything. No one knows what vision he has for the nation
except the vision of power at all cost.
If Zimbabweans were to shelve
a little bit of their imaginary moments of
glory, they will remember who
their president's friends were:
Eric Honnecker, former and late dictator
of former East Germany, given
freedom of the city of Harare;
Zia Al
Haq, late dictator of Pakistan, assassinated with mango bombs(he
loved
mangoes and they put together mangoes and bombs to kill him);
Dr Hastings
Kamuzu Banda, the Ngwazi of Malawi, who did not remember whether
he was in
power or not long after he was out of office, free citizen of
Zimbabwe;
Nocolai Causescue, the late Romanian president who was
sliced to death in
front of a film camera, granted Zimbabwean citizenship by
Mr Mugabe;
Muamur Gaddaffi, president of Libya, who promises Mugabe oil
but refuses to
give it without payment. The Man has been in power since I
was in primary
school in the 1960s.
Kim Il Sung, the North Korean
President who always gave on-the-spot guidance
even to things he had no idea
about;
Colonel Haile Mariam Mangistu, former dictator of Ethiopia, wanted
for mass
murder in his own country and a current special security advisor to
Mr
Mugabe.
If history judges people by the friends they played with,
Mr Mugabe has no
clean slate on that one.
At the age of 85, human
memory will judge Robert Gabriel Mugabe rather
harshly as he deserves. His
legacy is one of greed for power and wealth, as
well as economic and
political mismanagement of a once rich and hopeful
country. By killing hope
and the dreams of wealth of Zimbabweans, he will be
remembered as a ruthless
dictator who once pretended to be a liberator while
his mind and heart were
solely focused on power obtained through violence,
fear and
dishonesty.
And as his epitaph, we should prepare to write in big
letters: Here lies a
man who wanted to be chancellor of all universities in
Zimbabwe but hated
students with a passion, calling them hooligans for their
critical minds.'
Hello Concerned Folk,
RE: APPEAL FOR ECONOMICALLY TRAPPED
SENIOR CITIZENS
The senior citizens of Mutare are most fortunate
that they can turn to the
Eastern Highlands Trust for accommodation and
care, during these
unfortunate times, the highest inflation in the World,
coupled with empty
food shelves in supermarkets, currency changes that
challenge even the most
qualified accountants, limits to our cash drawings
(if you have any) due to
shortages etc etc. Who would want to be faced with
this situation, as an
able bodied, capable person, let alone a pensioner who
is TRAPPED in the
country, at this time of economic
hardship?
We have an example of a pensioner who is receiving only
30 Zim cents
(US$0.00016667current value) a month pension, in return for
their 38 years
of dedicated service in building, what was the jewel of
Africa! Compare this
to a cost of a loaf of bread which is selling for
zw$140. Difficult to
comprehend!
Due to the diligence of a
dedicated few, the Trust is struggling and limping
along, by the GRACE of
GOD, to provide the necessary for those who are
unable to fend for
themselves. Under these horrific challenges the Trust
needs to find wages for
staff, food for the kitchen, medical supplies for
the infirmed, maintenance
for the various sections and fue/vehiclel to carry
out these tasks and ferry
those who need outside medical attention. Daunting
to say the
least!
The Trust caters for the following within their three
sections:-
50 Self catering cottages - currently
housing over 60
residents
31
rooms -
Strickland Lodge - full board - housing 34
residents
20
beds - Frail
Care - full board with nursing care - 20
residents
CURRENT TOTAL
RESIDENTS + - 114
Over 65% of these people need
financial assistance in meeting their monthly
bills.
As if this were
not enough burdens for any organisation, the Trust is also
assisting senior
citizens (OVER 60'S) in the community, outside of the
Trust, with regular
imported, survival-food parcels.
We sincerely appreciate any
assistance or donations you are willing to make!
The Board & Trustees
give an assurance that any assistance received is
guaranteed to be utilised
for the direct benefit of those in need! More info
is available on the Trust
website -WWW.
Payments can be made to -
NATWEST BANK UK,
Sort
code -60-12-03,
Account 41760131,
Name: M J
Baxter
Des Becker - (des@beckandcall.info)
Board
Member/Fund Raiser