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Archived News
13th August 2002
MDC weekly briefing note
Chefs Grab Fast Track Land For Themselves
A story from Zimbabwe
Tsvangirai answers Mugabe Heroes Day speech
Aid agencies able to provide only fraction of food needed in Zimbabwe
GMB withholds maize deliveries to National Foods
EU unveils Zimbabwe aid package
Zimbabwe farmers say goodbyes before eviction
White farmers urged to ignore order
UK seeks Libya support
Zimbabwe's man-made famine
End of an era: farmers face eviction as land seizure battle reaches bitter climax
Resettled farmers face hunger as government fails to assist
Zimbabwe white farmers choose exile or defiance
Donors wait for gov't nod on US $85 million food facility
Mystery surrounds High Court Judge's transfer
Mugabe is starving his own people
Mugabe trades white farms for oil
More arrests, continued detention
Judge rules that Cabinet is illegal
Court rejects Mugabe's order to evict white farmers
Defiant farmers wait for Mugabe's next move
Swathes of farms lie fallow as new absentee landlords refuse to take up land
Zimbabwe ends altered-corn dispute
Zimbabwe interested in Iranian "defense capabilities": FM
Swiss step up Zim sanctions
Zim formalises Congo deals before pull-out
War veterans starve on their looted land
Zimbabwe fugitive finds safety in Britain
Mugabe must face trial for his crimes
All quiet on the Zim front - for now
Zimbabwe farmers' weekend of defiance
Zimbabwe blacks left destitute by farm policy
Ailing Stamps denied UK visa
CIO boss moved
Mugabe says 'loyal' farmers can keep some land
Mugabe tells Britain 'The game is up'
Mugabe seeks to win over 'loyal' white farmers
British aid keeps children alive in Mugabe heartland
New Zealand wants more sanctions against Zimbabwe
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From VOA News, 6 August
Aid agencies able to provide only fraction of food needed in Zimbabwe
Harare - Aid agencies say almost 13 million people face the threat of starvation in southern Africa, as many as six million of them in Zimbabwe. Aid agencies are able to provide only a fraction of the food needed by Zimbabwe's hungry population. Many areas have no feeding programs at all. In Mwenezi, 130 kilometers north of the South African border, in Zimbabwe's Masvingo province, most school children receive a daily meal provided by the British government. The children look poor, but are not starving. They receive about one-third of their daily calorie needs from a sweet, highly nutritious porridge. Teachers say school attendance has increased dramatically since the feeding program began. A private aid agency which organized the feeding program, Christian Aid, says the children come from relatively wealthy rural families, but still are in desperate need of food assistance.
Such food programs operate in only some areas of Zimbabwe. For example, in four districts about an hour's drive north of Mwenezi, in the same province, there are no feeding arrangements of any kind for children or adults. No one is even sure how many children and adults might be on the edge of starvation. Christian Aid says non-governmental organizations simply do not have either the money or the logistics to extend their school feeding programs in the province. The charity says Zimbabwe's railways provide an unreliable service for delivery of food, all of which is imported. It says road transport increases the cost by $30 (U.S.) a ton.
In Mwenezi, which has a feeding program, the families are mostly supporters of President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party. But in other parts of the province, opposition supporters say they are not allowed to buy maize, which has been bought with taxpayers' money and is distributed by the government's grain marketing board. They charge that they are turned away simply because they are suspected opposition supporters. The government has not responded to the accusations that it has prevented opposition supporters from buying grain. Zimbabwe laws prohibit any organization other than the government's grain marketing board from buying or selling maize. The food shortage in Zimbabwe and throughout much of southern Africa is largely the result of drought. Also in Zimbabwe, the government had not stored grain from previous harvests. Aid agencies say the seizure of thousands of recently productive white-owned farms has contributed to Zimbabwe's food shortage.
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From The Daily News, 6 August
GMB withholds maize deliveries to National Foods
Bulawayo - Hundreds of National Foods employees in Bulawayo face unemployment if the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) does not resume maize deliveries to the company. The GMB stopped maize deliveries to the company five weeks ago putting the jobs of hundreds of the milling organisation’s employees in jeopardy. The company’s viability has been affected by this move which has seen a drop in production of maize meal and a drop in the availability of maize-meal on the market in the southern region of the country. The withdrawal by the GMB from providing maize has been viewed as punishment by government after the company was accused of hoarding maize to create artificial shortages. The same company was accused of hoarding salt, which has also been in short supply for weeks. The company denied the charges stating that it had been granted authority to import the scarce commodity by obtaining foreign currency which is also in short supply on the parallel market. The company said that they were awaiting government’s approval for a new price for salt and was not hoarding the commodity.
President Mugabe in a hard-hitting speech at his party’s headquarters threatened to nationalise National Foods following the "discovery" of the hoarded salt. There were reports carried in the State media in June alleging that 100 000 tonnes of maize had been discovered at the Bulawayo National Foods depot. "Obviously someone got their figures wrong because we only had 100 tonnes in stock which we were actually milling," said Ian Kind, the managing director of National Foods. He said after these reports, the GMB and the police visited the depot and found only 100 tonnes. However the GMB has not yet resumed delivering maize to the depot since then despite repeated attempts by National Foods to get supplies. "This has affected staff who were employed mainly for milling purposes. We have had to redeploy them in departments where they are not really needed", said Kind.
The availability of stock feeds, which are a by-product of maize milling, has also been seriously affected. Workers who spoke to The Daily News on condition of anonymity said they are not sure about their fate because of the non-availability of maize. "We fear that the company will retrench us in order for it to remain viable," said one of the workers. Retrenchment has been an on going exercise at the company since last year when some workers were relocated to Harare and others were retrenched as part of the company’s restructuring exercise. However as from March this year, the retrenchments were temporarily suspended. "What the GMB is doing will have serious repercussions on the company and on us the workers. We were now surviving on milling maize since we stopped milling flour last year due to the wheat shortage," said the workers. Efforts to get a comment from the GMB were fruitless.
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From The Guardian (UK), 7 August
EU unveils Zimbabwe aid package
Brussels - The EU unveiled a £23m emergency food aid package for Zimbabwe yesterday, despite its deep political differences with the president, Robert Mugabe. Despite the fact that the EU is deeply unhappy about Mr Mugabe's land reform programme and his government's heavy-handed treatment of the media and political opponents, Brussels said that aid could not wait. Poul Nielson, the EU's commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, said: "Direct food aid is urgently needed to improve security and prevent widespread starvation." Alluding to British allegations that Mr Mugabe's regime is doing its utmost to see that opposition supporters are denied food aid, he added: "The government also has a responsibility to help ensure that aid gets to those that need it." EU officials said that the aid was by far the largest amount given to Zimbabwe this year. Mr Mugabe's government remains subject to an EU visa ban and asset freeze, the scope of which was widened last month. The European commission said yesterday: "Zimbabwe's food shortages are due to a combination of an unresolved political and economic crisis, resulting in sharp economic decline, compounded by the undermining of commercial agriculture by the fast track land reform and the drought which has affected southern Africa more widely." The EU money will be used to purchase 90,000 tonnes of maize, but that will not be enough to make good a total shortfall estimated at 1.87m tonnes of cereals.
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From Reuters, 7 August
Zimbabwe farmers say goodbyes before eviction
Mutorashanga - White farmers have gathered for what could be final farewells across Zimbabwe as many prepare to pack their bags to comply with a government deadline to quit their land. President Robert Mugabe ordered nearly 3,000 white farmers to stop all production in June and gave them until August 9 to vacate their farms and homes to make way for landless blacks. On Tuesday 60 farmers in Mutorashanga, 100 km (60 miles) northeast of Harare, huddled for a group picture at the local social club and in some cases said their last goodbyes. A burly farmer who declined to be identified said over 70 percent of the group were leaving, and that the majority would seek a new start in neighbouring countries or overseas. "The mood around here is generally depressed. Most of us want to stay in Africa. I want to stay, but my government doesn't want me because of my colour," he told Reuters. "There are neighbouring countries around us which have been very responsive and are actually asking us to come. They are opening their door to us." Mugabe says his "fast-track" land resettlement programme is aimed at correcting imbalances in land ownership created by British colonialism, which left the bulk of Zimbabwe's prime farming land in the hands of minority whites.
Another farmer said while he had not been issued with an eviction notice, he did not see much of a future in Zimbabwe. "The economics of the whole country is collapsing. It's not viable to farm in this country and I think that is going to be basis of my decision," he said. "A lot of farmers if they do leave Zimbabwe - will never come back, and the expertise of generations that is going to be lost to the country is frightening." Rootle Braunstein said he was leaving for New Zealand within a week to take up a job as a tool-maker, leaving behind a farm that has churned out 850 tonnes of wheat, 220 tonnes of tobacco, 40 tonnes of paprika and 500 tonnes of maize a year. "The reality is I now haven't got a place to farm and my business is basically unable to function any more. I've made my applications to the government and made my objections but nobody has listened so I'm going," Braunstein told Reuters. A lone farm truck briefly pulled off the main Mutorashanga road and the driver said that he was ferrying his employer's furniture from his property. Critics say the land reforms will leave some 250,000 farmworkers unemployed. "A lot of these chaps have been with us 20, 30, 40 years and they are going to get their package but they're basically homeless," one farmer said. Farmers have been ordered to pay their workers redundancy packages. The government says farmworkers can apply for resettlement and has encouraged new resettled farmers to employ some of them. Zimbabwe, facing its worst political and economic crisis in 22 years of independence, is at the centre of a critical food shortage in the southern African region that includes Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique.
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From Associated Press, 6 August
White farmers urged to ignore order
Harare - Zimbabwe's white farmers should defy the coming deadline to leave their land because the order was issued by an illegitimate government, civil rights and agricultural groups said Tuesday. President Robert Mugabe's administration has given residents of about 2,000 white-owned farms until Friday to leave their land. Mugabe has earmarked 95 percent of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks. The group Justice for Agriculture urged farmers to resist the eviction orders peacefully. "Farmers should, wherever possible, remain in their homes and on the land among their own people, who are now so much more dependent on them at this time of crisis," group spokeswoman Jenni Williams said. She also implored farmers to establish a fund for assisting anyone arrested for defying the eviction orders.
Government officials were not available for comment Tuesday. They have said the land-seizure program rectifies a long-standing colonial injustice that left whites in control of agriculture after Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia, gained independence from Britain. The government ordered many white farmers to stop working their fields by June 24 and to leave their homes by Friday. It was unclear how the government would enforce its order or what would happen to farmers and their workers who had nowhere else to go, Williams said. About 4,000 commercial farmers and 1.5 million farm laborers and their families will be affected by the eviction orders. Justice for Agriculture was formed by a group of farmers disgruntled at the decision by the Commercial Farmers Union - Zimbabwe's main farmers' organization - to drop all litigation against the government's eviction plan. The new body met with civic groups Tuesday and they jointly resolved to shun any negotiations that could imply recognition of the legitimacy of the Mugabe government. He was declared winner of March elections that international observers condemned as seriously flawed.
Over the past two years, Zimbabwe has been torn by political violence blamed mainly on Mugabe's ruling party. The nation's economy, already weakened by expensive involvement in the Congo war, has collapsed. Zimbabwe also faces a massive hunger crisis threatening nearly half of the nation's 12.5 million people. The World Food Program blames the crisis on poor weather and the government's chaotic land reform program. Tony Reeler of the human rights group Amani Trust told the farmers the government was using the land seizures to diffuse pressure for democratic reform and as a cover for its campaign of violence against the opposition. Meanwhile, Agriculture Minister Joseph Made warned Tuesday that 54,000 black Zimbabweans who already received seized land had until Aug. 23 to give notice they intended to farm it or lose it to reallocation. Many of those receiving land say they have no idea where their farms are or how to prove they intend to farm it. Many of the largest confiscated farms have been given to top politicians and military officers.
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From BBC News, 7 August
UK seeks Libya support
The first British minister to go to Libya since 1983 is due to meet veteran leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi on Wednesday, Libyan officials have confirmed. Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien began his three-day visit with talks with a Libyan counterpart soon after touching down in the capital, Tripoli. Mr O'Brien's visit is publicly aimed at securing the support of Colonel Gaddafi's regime for the international war on terror. But the two countries also have an economic interest in boosting relations after years of animosity. The BBC's Bridget Kendall, who is accompanying the minister, reports that the visit attracted keen interest among the Arabic media. Mr O'Brien was quoted by the Libyan state news agency Jana as saying his visit was part of "strengthening relations" with Libya. After being welcomed by Libyan Ambassador to London Mohammed al-Zwai at the airport, he held talks with Deputy Foreign Minister Saad Mujber. Mr al-Zwai had said ahead of the arrival that he hoped the visit would improve relations with Britain "in every field".
Mr O'Brien will ask the Libyan leadership to help the West by providing intelligence on al-Qaeda. "A Libya which co-operates fully with the international community, including on terrorism, is very much in our interests," he said before leaving Britain. "My message for the Libyan leadership is that we want to see further progress on the outstanding issues between us on terrorism and on weapons of mass destruction." It is thought likely that the possibility of military action against Iraq will also be discussed. Our correspondent says Britain is keen to use the visit to boost ties that have been cautiously improving ever since diplomatic relations were restored three years ago. Libya is keen to re-enter the world economy and Britain does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts.
Libya's decision to hand over the officials tried for the Lockerbie bombing was seen as a major breakthrough in ties, but Mr O'Brien is due to raise issues still causing concern:
Compensation for the victims of the bombing will be on the agenda, although Mr O'Brien has stressed that it is a matter which must be resolved between Libya and lawyers for the families.
The investigation into the 1984 murder of British police officer Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in London has yet to be completed. Britain restored diplomatic relations in 1999 only after Tripoli accepted general responsibility for the shooting.
The regime's support for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is also among the topics likely to be raised by Mr O'Brien.
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Comment from The New York Times, 7 August
Zimbabwe's man-made famine
By David Coltart
Harare - In the last two years Zimbabwe has been transformed into a state that increasingly resembles Cambodia under Pol Pot. The government seems set on adding famine to the list of oppressions visited on the nation. In May, a law was passed decreeing that any commercial farmer who continued to farm 45 days after being given notice to stop would face imprisonment. On Friday, that law will be used to evict thousands of commercial farmers and their workers. Fear and desperation pervade the country. All the signs are that President Robert Mugabe is determined to hold on to power at any cost, including the destruction of the nation and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans. It has been clear for some years that the Mugabe regime is determined to shrink the democratic space to an absolute minimum. The judiciary has been all but destroyed. Independent journalists have been arrested, their presses bombed. In January the regime rammed through Parliament legislation subverting the electoral process, revoking civil liberties and restricting the press. In the same month, the military suggested that only Mr. Mugabe would be acceptable as leader. The political campaign that followed was marked by violence. The presidential election in March was a farce. Mr. Mugabe was proclaimed winner in an election that was widely condemned internationally. The overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans, who were hoping for a peaceful transition to democracy in March, have had their hopes dashed.
For its part, the Mugabe regime, while increasingly irrational and paranoid, knows it must convince the world it is legitimate if it is to survive. For this reason, the regime cloaks its suppression of democracy in what would otherwise be legitimate concerns, primarily the need to redress legacies of colonial injustice. The unresolved land-ownership issue has been exploited very effectively to cover up corruption, poor administration and human-rights abuses. The catastrophic human-rights situation is now complicated by a famine that is, in the case of Zimbabwe, mainly the result of the Mugabe regime's ruinous policies. While a drought did occur at a critical period during the summer, it only affected the dry-land corn crop. The rainy season was just below average and nearly all the irrigation reservoirs are almost full. Had experienced farmers been allowed to plant their crops, Zimbabwe would not have had to import any food at all. As it is, Zimbabwe is now facing a shortage of some 1.2 million tons of corn. The situation is compounded by the fact that only a small proportion of the winter wheat crop has been planted because of threats directed against wheat farmers. If the Mugabe regime goes ahead this weekend with its plans to evict thousands of farmers and their employees, many of their crops will not be properly harvested. The World Food Program recently predicted that as many as 6 million Zimbabweans will soon face starvation. At least 25 percent of Zimbabweans are H.I.V. positive. Experts are agreed that some 20 percent of AIDS sufferers are extremely vulnerable to drops in nutritional levels. Conservatively, one might calculate that 300,000 Zimbabweans could die within the next few months as a result of this combination of famine and AIDS.
The Mugabe regime may be counting on catastrophe for its own salvation. It has already sought to hide behind drought. There is no doubt a calculation taking place that the "CNN factor" (images of starving children) will soon dominate policy decisions in the West and that a flood of aid will pour in. That Zimbabwe and other countries in the region need vast amounts of food and medical aid is beyond doubt. But if the symptom of famine is addressed but not its cause, the international community will only have succeeded in perpetuating the problem. Ongoing food shortages will occur unless a massive irrigated corn crop is planted this November. It can still be planted if the rule of law is re-established - which will only occur with help from Zimbabwe's neighbors and through holding a fresh election that complies with accepted standards. Sadly, there are very few levers left which can be used by the West to restore sanity to Zimbabwe. The new relationship between Africa and the wealthy industrialized countries as expressed in the recent meetings between representatives of the Group of 8 and the New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development - is one such lever. While Zimbabwe should not be allowed to hold hostage democratic African states that desperately need the new partnership to work, the reality is that, like it or not, Zimbabwe is the partnership's first test. Famine in Zimbabwe is primarily caused by bad governance, which in this specific case is tolerated by many African states and supported by some. The consequences of this man-made famine will become clear in the next few months. Investors the world over will be watching closely to see whether African rulers deal with the cause of this particular famine, not merely its symptoms. If African leaders do not act in these circumstances, what investment in Africa will ever be safe in the future?
Yet there has been very little to indicate that African states have the political will to deal with the crisis in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is becoming a police state without so much as a whimper coming from the same African states who heralded a new beginning for Africa at the Group of 8 meeting and the inauguration of the African Union. If leaders in the industrialized democracies are interested in preventing what was once the jewel of Africa from becoming another Somalia - and in preventing future famines in southern Africa - then they must persuade their African colleagues to deal with the real cause of the catastrophe unfolding in Zimbabwe.
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From The Guardian (UK), 8 August
End of an era: farmers face eviction as land seizure battle reaches bitter climax
Uncertain future for whites who say they will fight on in courts
Nairobi/Mataga - Nearly 3,000 Zimbabwean white farmers face eviction at midnight tonight, the government's deadline for them to leave their properties, as a 12-year land seizure battle reaches its bitter climax. Many of the farmers affected remained on their land yesterday, despite the threat of a two-year prison sentence for defying the eviction order. "At least 70% are staying put to see what the government does," said Jenny Williams, a spokeswoman for the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU). "Some are going to take a long weekend in Harare, but not many are actually leaving." With President Robert Mugabe on business in Singapore, his ministers refused to comment on the imminent eviction orders. But Zimbabwe's state radio quoted Mr Mugabe as saying: "The fast-track resettlement programme is now over and the government is now concentrating on making the new farmers productive." The CFU held emergency talks with senior government officials yesterday, in a last-ditch effort to resolve a standoff which has halved Zimbabwe's food production this year, exacerbating already serious shortages across the country's drought-stricken south. "We're still hoping that we can find a solution, but it's very difficult to know what the government's planning. Everything's uncertain," Ms Williams said. Tonight's deadline follows an amendment in May to Zimbabwe's Land Acquisition Act, designed to resettle Mr Mugabe's supporters on white-owned land. More than 2,900 of Zimbabwe's 4,500 white, commercial farmers were then given 45 days to stop production, and another 45 days to leave their properties. Many of the remaining white farmers have been served with notices of eviction which fall due over the next three months. Despite the act's guarantee of compensation, only 100 farmers served with eviction notices have so far received derisory payments from the government.
"It's an insidious piece of legislation," said John Worswick, an arable farmer from southern Chinoi, served with an eviction order. "But almost everyone has taken it to court and we've got a pretty good case - even if we're preparing for the worst." Most of the targeted farmers have challenged the eviction order on procedural grounds, with a test case challenging its constitutionality to be heard in October. That case, brought by George Quinnell, a tobacco farmer from Chinoi, 50 miles north of Harare, seeks to quash the amendment on the grounds that it is racist. "The government says it will start arresting us on Friday, but by law it will still have to return to the courts before it can do that," said Mr Worswick. "If they want to take me away, they can, but it will only end up highlighting the illegality of this government." Local government minister Ignatius Chombo - who chairs the Mr Mugabe's land acquisition audit committee - warned that any farmer who defied the government's eviction orders would face the "full wrath of the law". Mr Worswick has not produced anything on his 400-hectare (1,000-acre) farm since about 80 landless families invaded it two years ago. Of those, all but six have since drifted away from the semi-arid land, because of the extreme difficulty of growing crops without extensive irrigation. "They've had no support from the government, no fertiliser, no irrigation," Mr Worswick said. "I used to produce 300 tonnes of peanuts and 500 tonnes of maize every year. All they can manage is a handful of beans. It's a crazy, nightmare scenario, when you look around at the suffering in the country, I should be growing wheat right now."
The UN world food programme estimates that almost half of Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people will need feeding over the next year, with more than 600,000 people already surviving on food aid in the parched south. Around a quarter of the 2m-tonne shortfall in Zimbabwe's food supply is a direct result of farm invasions, WFP says. "Nobody disputes that this country needs land reform," said Richard Miller, of the Catholic aid agency Cafod, in Harare. "But the destruction of commercial farming is contributing to hunger. The problem is, you need tools and fertilisers to be able to grow food. People don't only need land." It's not just an issue affecting white farmers. Human rights groups said yesterday that up to 100,000 farm workers were likely to be made homeless. In the dry, dusty south of Zimbabwe where the drought has hit hardest, the fields are barren. Hlau Mufemi is being denied food aid, distributed by Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party, because her son is an active member of the Movement for Democratic Change, the main opposition party. "How can I provide for my mother when I no longer have a job?" her son, Shoko, asked. "My house has been burnt by Zanu youths and I have my four children and my sister's four children to care for as well. We have nowhere to live and can't get any food. All I want is my job back so I can provide for my family." John Makumbe, chairman of the Zimbabwe Crisis Committee, said: "It is a catastrophe. These farm workers are real people and the government is taking away their livelihoods and their homes, without giving them an alternative."
On Tuesday 60 farmers in Mutorashanga, 60 miles north-east of Harare, gathered for an end-of-an-era group picture. About 40 of the group were planning to quit their farms by the week end. "The mood around here is generally depressed. Most of us want to stay in Africa. I want to stay, but my government doesn't want me because of my colour," one of the farmers said, speaking anonymously. One of the few farmers preparing yesterday to leave his 2,000-acre arable farm in Chinoi - an area particularly affected by Mr Mugabe's land seizures because of its proximity to the president's homeland in Mashonaland - said it was clear why there was hunger in Zimbabwe. "There should be 5,000 acres of wheat outside my door, but there's not a tip of wheat to be seen. Instead, there are poor people sweeping the road for the odd bit of grain that falls from trucks. It's madness," said the farmer, who did not wish to be named. The government claims that veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war are at the forefront of the land invasions. But, in reality, few of the squatters took part in the struggle. "This white land isn't for true war veterans," said Wilfred Mahanda of the Liberators' Platform, an association for former combatants. "It's for politicians and their cronies - all the prime land is for the politicians." Many white farmers in the Chinoi region did not realise that their eviction was due tonight, assuming instead that the deadline was Saturday, the day of Zimbabwe's national liberation celebrations. "Everything's very unclear but most people think we've got until Saturday," said one farmer, who asked not to be named. "Anyway, no-one's budging, we're staying exactly where we are, and if they have to lock up 4,000 farmers in one day, it's going to be a hell of a job." This farmer did not expect to be evicted imminently either, although he said there were worrying signs. "The squatters stole a load of my machinery over the weekend but the police said they couldn't arrest anyone because there's no room in the jails. I wonder if that means they're leaving room for us?"
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From The Daily News, 7 August
Resettled farmers face hunger as government fails to assist
Resettled farmers in Chief Chivero’s area in Mhondoro have lambasted the government for not fulfiling its promises to assist them to get started. The farmers, interviewed at the weekend, said they had fallen on hard times. Lydia Muzenda, 62, of Muzindaweshumba resettlement scheme, said they were near starvation. "We have nothing to eat," she said. "We are buying a bucket of maize at an unaffordable price of $1 000 or more." Muzenda said she feared the worst if they failed to secure draught power to till their newly-acquired land. The settlers said they had made several vain attempts to secure maize grain at the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), as the government had promised to help them with food relief until the next harvest. Joseph Made, the Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement, has repeatedly assured the settlers that the government would support them with farming inputs, including seed and fertiliser.
Muzenda said when she moved to Mhondoro from her original home in Gokwe, she sold five of her cattle to raise money to transport her property. "Most of us on this scheme don’t have cattle to till the land," she said. "We have waited, in vain, for a long time to get the District Development Fund tillage tractors." Muzenda said they held monthly meetings to discuss their problems and possible solutions, but there was still no positive response from the government. She said the settlers had spent a lot of money travelling to the Chegutu GMB depot to get maize grain without success. Nelson Takawira, 42, of Stokesay resettlement area, said: "The rainy season is only a few months away but we are still to prepare our fields for planting." "We haven’t received the promised maize seed from government," he said. Another settler at Zimbo, who refused to be identified, said non-governmental organisations involved in the food aid programmes should them help to avert starvation which he said was now very imminent in the area. The government has discouraged the NGOs from distributing food unless this is done through the government or Zanu PF channels.
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From The Times (UK), 8 August
Zimbabwe white farmers choose exile or defiance
It could be any country club gathering, but there is a poignancy behind the smiles. The people posing for the photographer are unlikely to meet again: they are among 3,000 white farmers ordered by President Mugabe to leave their land by tonight. One day before President Mugabe’s eviction deadline for 2,900 white farmers, the water from the sprinklers on Gwina farm arcs through the sunlight, fattening the ears of knee-high wheat and barley. The brilliant green of the 1,200 acres of irrigated cereal on Vernon Nicolle’s fields near the small northern town of Banket is a shock to the eye after the arid 60-mile drive from Harare amid miles of dry, windblown weeds. Mr Nicolle, 58, is a third-generation Zimbabwean and was born on the farm. He is not leaving without a fight. "I’m here till it’s over," he declares, referring to the farmers’ protracted legal battle against Mr Mugabe’s land seizures. Like three quarters of Zimbabwe’s white farmers, Mr Nicolle is the recipient of a "section 8" order under the Land Acquisition Act, which expires at midnight tonight.
Issued 90 days ago, the order is meant to empty 90 per cent of the country’s white-owned commercial farms at a stroke. Until two years ago these farms kept Zimbabweans well-nourished and saved millions in other parts of Africa from starvation. Mr Nicolle has been served with two section 8s. He had the first annulled by the High Court on June 25 because, like nearly every other such order, it was riddled with enough errors to render it useless. Last week an air force officer arrived to serve him with another. Mr Nicolle noticed that it was backdated to May 22, a month before his first order had been thrown out. "Are we in the same world?" he asked the officer. He refused to accept the order and the officer left mumbling: "I’m only doing my job." Mr Nicolle is one of a number of white farmers who are turning Mr Mugabe’s clumsy law against the government. "They made the law, and we can beat them," he said. "They will change the law to make it worse, and we will punch holes in it again. The only way we are going to beat the beast is by beating him in law. The day I take the law into my own hands, I become one of them."
He is one of the commercial farmers who usually produce nearly 30 per cent of Zimbabwe’s wheat. He almost bankrupted himself in 1991 building a dam that serves 16 miles of irrigation piping on the farm. Until two years ago he grew 3,500 tonnes of soya beans, 4,000 tonnes of maize and 8,000 tonnes of wheat on the 3,950 acres of irrigated soil. This year he was allowed to use less than a third of that area. The remainder was allocated illegally to a police assistant commissioner, a chief prison officer, an air force squadron leader, a flight lieutenant and two local councillors. Without permission they used his pumps to take water from his dam to irrigate wheat planted two months too late. He cut the supply, so they switched to his boreholes, relying on his residual fertiliser already in the ground from previous crops. Despite that, the plants in their field are sickly, with that fatal dull blue that indicates lack of care and water. "By stopping me from farming, they have starved 30,000 mouths," Mr Nicolle said. "Mugabe has caused this starvation and it’s what’s going to beat him."
The main road through the small town of Marondera has been filled this week with pick-up trucks laden with the possessions of white families who have abandoned their farms for a precarious future. Graham Douse joined the exodus yesterday. The 49-year-old farmer was heading with his wife and two sons to Zambia, where he plans to lease a farm near Lusaka. "I have a lot of optimism about Zambia," he said. "The Government’s been very welcoming. I like the people. They are much more politically mature than Zimbabweans." Mr Douse is leaving the rich red soil of his Nyagambi farm, about 75 miles east of Harare, to about ten "resettled" squatter families, who have already cut down the trees around their encampment of mud huts. He has sold his herd of 450 cattle for slaughter. The fields are bare. His equipment has been put into storage. The shade netting over his export flower unit blows redundant in the wind, and all but ten of his 125 workers have been laid off. The 270 million gallon irrigation dam that Mr Douse built in 1991 is now used only by the squatter women for drinking water and washing.
This farm was where he used to produce 180,000kg of tobacco a year, 80 tonnes of paprika, 240 tonnes of seed maize, 200 tonnes of maize and 70 head of fattened cattle. In the last growing season, despite the famine that is beginning to overwhelm Zimbabwe, he was allowed to grow a mere 22 acres of paprika on more than 2,500 acres of land. He was leaving with a feeling of almost relief, he said. "I have to earn a living. I have done no farming for a year and I am tired of stagnating and the stress has been huge." Terror has also driven Mr Douse off his land. Marondera has since February 2000 suffered some of the ugliest lawlessness wrought by President Mugabe and his militias. Before Zimbabwe’s presidential elections in March, the militias set up a base camp less than half a mile from the house. "People they suspected of being part of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change were brought from farms all over the place to be tortured," Mrs Douse said. "The workers were beaten over and over again. Our gardener had his feet roasted over a fire. Women and children were beaten." At the next-door farm, the militias beat a security guard to death.
All semblance of proper government has disappeared in the area. The only law is that of a former army captain called "Comrade Chiweshe", who lives on the farm over the road. The police do not respond to calls for help. "It’s warlordism," Mrs Douse said. "If there are any transgressions, people are brought before him. He sits as judge and jury and the youth militia are the enforcers. They beat them (suspects) up." The Douses hope to return one day. "This can’t go on forever."
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From The Financial Gazette, 8 August
Donors wait for gov't nod on US $85 million food facility
A US$85 million basket fund which allows the private sector to import about 400 000 tonnes of food into Zimbabwe remains on hold because the government is still to give permission for the fund to operate, it was established this week. Western aid agency sources told the Financial Gazette that international donors were on standby, waiting to support a hard cash basket fund that is coordinated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and which will allow private sector firms without foreign currency to tap into to pay for food imports. "We are still waiting for the government's reaction on the proposed foreign currency fund that would allow private sector players a bigger role in importing food," a senior aid agency official said. Both the UNDP's resident representative in Harare, Victor Angelo, and Social Welfare Minister July Moyo could not be reached for comment on the issue yesterday. Moyo's office said he was out attending meetings.
The government, which this week cancelled maize buying permits its Grain Marketing Board had issued to private companies, is opposed to the private sector buying food, especially the staple maize. The state argues that allowing profit-driven private businesses to import food would push up prices of food beyond the reach of ordinary Zimbabweans. The sources said discussions between the UNDP and the government on the setting up of the fund, which began more than three weeks ago, were still dragging on. As well as seeking the setting up of the fund, the UNDP is pushing the government to allow a greater role for private companies in importing food than is the case now. The government has so far only allowed few selected companies to import food into the country, which is in the midst of severe shortages of maize and other foodstuffs largely caused by the government's chaotic land reforms.
Under the proposed hard cash basket fund, money contributed by donors will be distributed to Zimbabwean banks which in turn will loan it to private firms wishing to import food and other non-food humanitarian assistance. Last week the government backtracked on its earlier decision not to accept genetically modified (GMO) food when it accepted 20 000 tonnes of mostly maize donated by the United States, some of it suspected to be GMO-produced, to be brought into the country. The European Union this week announced a $1.8 billion food aid package for Zimbabwe, but food experts say much more assistance is needed to save nearly eight million Zimbabweans, more than half the country's population, from possible starvation.
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From The Financial Gazette, 8 August
Mystery surrounds High Court Judge's transfer
Bulawayo - Justice Lawrence Kamocha, the most senior High Court judge in Bulawayo, was reportedly transferred to Harare this week under unclear circumstances after handling a high profile murder case involving three members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). According to legal sources, Justice Nicholas Ndou who has practised law in Zimbabwe and South Africa will replace Justice Kamocha, who is officially on leave. Justice Kamocha went on leave last week but sources said he was asked by Judge President Justice Paddington Garwe to write a report after granting a provisional order barring the state from indicting the three MDC members accused of murdering war veterans' leader Cain Nkala and Limukani Luphahla, a member of the ruling Zanu PF party. Bulawayo High Court Judge George Chiweshe, who said he would explain his reasons later, subsequently cancelled Justice Kamocha's provisional order a few days later. The MDC trio, half of the six accused of murdering Nkala and Luphahla, are Sony Nicholas Masera, MDC legislator Fletcher Dulini-Ncube and Army Zulu.
"In throwing out the provisional order granted by Kamocha, Justice George Chiweshe read a section in which Justice Kamocha indicated that he had written a report to the Judge President about the case," said one city lawyer. "He must have been under tremendous pressure from top judiciary officers when he wrote that report," he added. Justice Kamocha was not available for comment this week. When Justice Kamocha threw out the provisional order by the state to indict the trio, the state immediately applied for an arrest warrant against them. "It is true that Justice Kamocha has been transferred because the judge could have been viewed by the ruling party as a loose cannon after granting the provisional order. In Harare, he will be under direct supervision of the Judge President," said another source in the legal fraternity. In Harare, Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa could neither confirm nor deny Justice Kamocha's transfer yesterday. Instead he referred the Financial Gazette to Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku who, through his secretary, said he was not in a position to talk to the media.
Some lawyers in Bulawayo were this week adamant that Justice Kamocha's transfer was irregular and engineered by the ruling party because it was not happy with his judgment to grant the provisional order barring the state from indicting the three MDC activists for trial. In an urgent chamber application this week, Dulini-Ncube, Zulu and Masera told Justice Chiweshe, who discharged the provisional order granted by Justice Kamocha, that the state could not go ahead to indict them as they had already appealed against that decision. The judge adjourned the case to today for a possible ruling on the application. Masera is already in police custody while police have yet to arrest Zulu. Dulini-Ncube remains under police guard at Mater Dei hospital where he is recuperating from an eye operation. The three other suspects have already been indicated and are in police cells waiting trial. Nkala, a senior member of the militant war veterans association aligned to Zanu PF, was abducted from his home in Bulawayo last year and his body was later found buried in a shallow grave near Solusi University.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 9 August
Mugabe is starving his own people
People are being starved in Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe's deliberate and systematic ploy of using food shortages to cling to power. Millions of people are going hungry not, as Mr Mugabe's government claims, because of poor rains but as a direct result of its policy of denying food to opposition supporters and enriching its loyalists. Last night, the deadline passed for the mass eviction of 2,900 of Zimbabwe's white commercial farmers, for decades the mainstay of the agricultural sector. Mr Mugabe ordered them to abandon their homes, land and livelihoods by midnight. An investigation by The Telegraph found that control of the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), Zimbabwe's state-owned monopoly supplier of commercial maize, was passed this year to one of Mr Mugabe's most loyal henchmen, Air Marshal Perence Shiri, an alleged war criminal. With Zimbabwe's economy in chaos, Shiri's mission was to spend a £17 million loan provided by Libya buying just enough maize to stave off food riots, which would then be supplied through the GMB. The organisation, which is meant to supply maize at subsidised prices to all Zimbabweans, has instead been selling maize only to supporters of the ruling Zanu PF party. Backers of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change went hungry. Worse still was the country's Food For Work programme. Thousands of opposition supporters would provide 15 days' labour only to be told at the end there was no GMB food for them. The GMB is so corrupt and politicised that aid groups shipping food into Zimbabwe are being forced to set up their own expensive parallel storage and distribution facilities, rather than using those of the GMB - the traditional way of bringing food aid into Zimbabwe.
There is also evidence that the Zimbabwean government is deliberately blocking the work of these international aid groups and keeping the flow of aid down to a trickle. That trickle is enough to stave off threats of public unrest, but not enough to provide food for all of the country. "What we are seeing is nothing but humanitarian torture," an aid worker said. "It takes three months to die of starvation and this is a torture every bit as bad as beating someone with barbed wire or hanging them from handcuffs." One British Government source said: "The irony is that the food shortage is one of the reasons the people in Zimbabwe might be impelled to rise up against the government but we are morally obliged to provide food that removes that impulsion and secures the Mugabe regime." The British government has promised aid worth £32 million to Zimbabwe. A warehouse of supplies organised by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace was blockaded for three months by Zanu PF militants and an attempt to increase the flow of humanitarian supplies by the World Food Programme (WFP) has also been blocked. The WFP relies on recognised agencies to do the final distribution on the ground and aid sources said the mere presence of a British charity, Save the Children (UK), on a list of possible distributors is hindering expansion. Aid groups are routinely criticised in the state-owned media in Zimbabwe, accused of being tools of the "imperialist, colonialist West". The situation is being worsened by logistical problems in neighbouring countries such as South Africa, where management errors in the state-run railways mean
there is a drastic shortage of goods wagons to move grain. And in Mozambique a malfunction in a bagging machine at the port of Beira means six ships carrying grain remain in the approaches to the harbour, unable to offload supplies for Zimbabwe.
In effect, the regime in Zimbabwe is doing just enough to help its own supporters while blocking efforts to help the millions of needy people in the country. So far, there have been only a handful of deaths connected to food shortages. Without any basic food supplies, families have been forced to live off what they can find in the bush and some children have died from eating poisonous berries. By early November, however, before the next planting season, aid experts predict widespread malnutrition in Zimbabwe unless significant food supplies can be brought into the country. The WFP, the world's largest humanitarian aid organisation, currently estimates six million people in Zimbabwe out of a population of 13 million are suffering from food shortages. There have been intermittent rains in the region this year but observers believe most of the shortages have resulted from Mr Mugabe's policy of land invasions, which have all but destroyed the country's once thriving commercial farming sector. South of the Limpopo in South Africa the same intermittent rains have not stopped farmers producing a surplus of about 1.8 million tons of maize. For almost all of the 1990s, Zimbabwe was a net exporter of maize and so good were its supplies that the WFP had an office in Harare, not to distribute maize in Zimbabwe but to procure Zimbabwean maize for distribution elsewhere. That situation now seems a long way away.
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From The Times (UK), 9 August
Mugabe trades white farms for oil
President Mugabe may be forced to give Libya much of the prime land he is seizing from white farmers in order to pay for an oil deal with Colonel Gaddafi, diplomatic sources said yesterday. The full extent of the bizarre arrangement between the Zimbabwean and Libyan leaders was revealed hours before Mr Mugabe’s midnight deadline for 2,900 white farmers to leave their properties. The sources said that Mr Mugabe owed Libya so much for imported oil that he was preparing to give thousands of acres to his "friend", Colonel Gaddafi, to repay his debts and to stay in power. The net result would be to negate Mr Mugabe’s avowed goal of returning land to Zimbabwe’s black population. The extent to which Mr Mugabe is "in hock" to Colonel Gaddafi was not an issue apparently discussed with Mike O’Brien, the Foreign Office Minister, who returned last night from Tripoli after meeting the Libyan leader in the desert for talks about Lockerbie bomb compensation and the war on terrorism. Mr Mugabe depends on Colonel Gaddafi for supplying his country’s oil needs about 800,000 barrels a month.
Seventy per cent of that comes from the Libyan oil company Tamoil, whose ultimate owner is the Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company. Last December Mr Mugabe visited Tripoli to secure a deal with Colonel Gaddafi under which oil worth $360 million would be supplied to the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe. However, for 21 days in May, Tamoil turned off Zimbabwe’s oil because Mr Mugabe had failed to pay for the fuel supplies. According to oil industry sources, the desperate Zimbabwean leader contacted Colonel Gaddafi to plead for the oil supplies to be resumed. One diplomatic source said: "Colonel Gaddafi has always had this dream of being the leader of Africa and he has engineered it so that Mugabe is totally dependent on him. So he agreed a special discounted rate for the fuel, which was disastrous for Tamoil. It was only Colonel Gaddafi’s personal intervention that forced Tamoil to resume oil supplies."
While the oil company is now having to face the consequences of the arrangement between Mr Mugabe and Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan leader is spreading his influence and his investments in Zimbabwe. As part of the deal fixed in Tripoli, Libya agreed to provide the fuel in exchange for shareholdings in Zimbabwe’s state-run companies. Libya now has a controlling stake in the Jewel Bank, formerly the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe, as well as the state travel company, Rainbow Tourist Group. It is now believed that as part of the deal to pay back the Libyan leader for his generosity, Mr Mugabe will hand over some of the most valuable farms to Colonel Gaddafi. Sources said that Colonel Gaddafi’s "misguided support" for Mr Mugabe had brought Tamoil to the verge of bankruptcy. Tamoil’s European investors and creditors - the company has offices in Monaco, London, Milan and Geneva - had also been placed in a vulnerable position by the Libyan leader’s political manoeuvres, the sources said. Mr Mugabe’s acceptance of the special oil deal with Colonel Gaddafi, for which he could not pay, had also left Zimbabwe exposed as the Libyans tried to seize assets and recoup losses. The other 30 per cent of Zimbabwe’s oil needs are supplied by IPG of Kuwait and overland from South Africa. In the past Libya has granted Zimbabwe a 120-day moratorium after every delivery, which amounts to $30 million worth of fuel each quarter. The Libyans set three conditions: cash payment, investment in properties and businesses or bilateral trade in exchange for fuel. If the conditions were not met, the fuel was cut off. The diplomatic sources said that with Colonel Gaddafi now having such a hold on Mr Mugabe, Zimbabwe was facing the equivalent of "colonial bankruptcy".
The Libyan leader, with his ambition of becoming a pan-African leader, has been engaged in acquiring substantial assets in Zimbabwe for some time. The Times reported earlier this year that Colonel Gaddafi had acquired a significant shareholding in Noczim, Zimbabwe’s state-owned energy company. He was also given a controlling interest in the oil pipeline that runs to Zimbabwe from Beira in Mozambique and in two of the country’s biggest oil refineries. Colonel Gaddafi had also made it clear that he wanted shares in a state-owned hotel at Victoria Falls and the Sheraton Hotel in Harare, the capital, The Times reported. He was also understood to have presented a gift of £1.3 million to Mr Mugabe’s Zanu PF party, even though there was supposed to be a ban on any political party receiving foreign donations. Mr Mugabe was alleged to have given 10,000 Zimbabwean passports to Libyan citizens, making it easier for them to travel abroad. Up to 1,500 Libyans were said to have been given homes, work permits and jobs in Zimbabwe. The diplomatic sources said that the Libyan leader’s wholesale asset-grabbing in Zimbabwe was part of his dream of spreading his personal power and influence in Africa. One of the consequences of the deal with Mr Mugabe was that Tamoil now faced a serious problem in funding an upgrade of an oil pipeline which runs from Genoa, in Italy, to Collombey, in Switzerland. The Swiss authorities have said that they want the 212-mile pipeline moved deeper because at present it is only one metre below road surfaces and runs close to the St Bernard tunnel. After the recent fires in the Mont Blanc and St Gothard tunnels, the Swiss are concerned that Tamoil’s pipeline might pose a risk. The diplomatic sources said that Tamoil might not be able to afford the upgrade, because of Colonel Gaddafi’s deal with Zimbabwe. An official at Tamoil in London said he was concerned only with "business matters" and was not involved in the politics of the industry.
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From ZWNEWS, 9 August
More arrests, continued detention
The Revd Tim Neill and Andy Laing were arrested by the police yesterday in connection with plans by farmers to sue Zanu PF for property losses incurred since the invasions of farms began in February 2000. Justice for Agriculture (JAG) a splinter group of the Commercial Farmers’ Union this week announced plans to sue the ruling party for an estimated Z$14.5 billion in losses sustained by farmers. JAG had asked farmers to submit their claims for compensation to Neill in Harare and Laing in Bulawayo, and it is understood that police arrested the two in connection with receiving these claim forms. Laing was released last night. It was not clear this morning whether Neill was still in custody.
Fletcher Dulini-Ncube was still in his hospital bed at the Mater Dei hospital in Bulawayo today, pending an application for bail in the High Court next week. Dulini-Ncube is being held in leg-irons, and is being guarded around the clock by three policemen. Dulini-Ncube, 62, an opposition MP for a Bulawayo constituency, is recovering from an operation to remove one of his eyes. Dulini-Ncube suffered irreparable damage to his sight when he was denied full access to medical treatment for his severe diabetic condition during his illegal detention.late last year, on charges of being implicated in the murder of Cain Nkala, a Matabeleland war veterans’ leader.
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From The Daily News, 8 August
Judge rules that Cabinet is illegal
President Mugabe's cabinet is conducting the affairs of the State illegally, according to a provincial High Court issued by Justice Benjamin Paradza. Paradza on 4 July granted George Pretorius Quinnell a commercial farmer, a provisional order to declaring that Patrick Anthony Chinamasa, the minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and Joseph Mtakwese Made, the minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement ceased to be government ministers with effect from 1 April. Paradza said: "It is declared that Dr Joseph Mtakwese Made MP, ceased to be the Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement with effect from 1st April, 2002 and the Section 8 Acquisition Order signed by him on 29 April, 2002 concerning applicant's farm known as Nyalugwe, is invalid and of no force and effect." The Section 8 Acquisition Order served on 8 May for the seizure of Nyalugwe Farm was illegal since Made had signed it on 29 April, after he had ceased being a minister, reads the ruling.
As a result of this decision, all the Section 8 Acquisition Orders that Made signed after 1 April are also invalid. According to Section 31 E (1) (c) of the Constitution, the office of a Vice-President, Minister or Deputy Minister shall become vacant upon the assumption of office of a new President. This, by implication, means Mugabe's two Vice-Presidents, the rest of his ministers and deputy ministers ceased to be members of Cabinet on the same day as they have not been sworn in since Mugabe was re-elected for another six-year term in the presidential election in March. According to High Court case number 5263/02, Quinnell applied for the order to prevent the compulsory acquisition of his Nyalugwe Farm in Lomagundi district. Paradza also declared the Land Acquisition Amendment Act No 6 of 2002, which was introduced by Chinamasa in Parliament, was unlawfully enacted. It was, therefore, invalid and of no force and effect, he said.
The judge said Sections 8, 9 and 10 of the Act were unconstitutional because the amendment was legislated unprocedurally and not in accordance with the Constitution or with Parliament's standing orders. According to the standing orders, no Bill shall be introduced which is of the same substance as some other Bill which has been introduced during the same session and has not been withdrawn. Chinamasa brought back to Parliament the amendments providing for the compulsory acquisition of commercial land within 90 days under the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill. The amendments had already been rejected under the General Laws Amendment Bill earlier in that same parliamentary session. Chinamasa and Dr Ignatius Chombo, the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, who is the acting Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement, and Andrew Chigovera, the Attorney-General, have opposed the confirmation of the order. The High Court is yet to set a date for the hearing.
Chinamasa, in his opposing affidavit dated 5 August, said: "This is incorrect. Made and I are lawfully appointed Ministers of government and, therefore, our actions as Ministers are valid. The word 'new' as used in Section 31 E (1) (c) of the Constitution refers to the election of a different person to the office of President. This provision clearly does not apply when the same person is re-elected as President. Therefore, the interpretation given to the provision by Quinnell is legally incorrect and does not make any practical sense." Chinamasa said the Land Acquisition Amendment Act was procedurally legislated in accordance with the Constitution and parliamentary standing orders. He is arguing that the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill and the General Laws Amendment Bill were in substance materially different, and, therefore, he could introduce the Bill in the same session as that in which the General Laws Amendment Bill was rejected.
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From The Times (UK), 9 August
Court rejects Mugabe's order to evict white farmers
Harare - President Mugabe suffered another blow to the dubious legality of his mass eviction of white farmers yesterday when a High Court judge delivered a ruling that annulled most of the orders served on them. Hours before last night’s midnight deadline for 2,900 farmers to leave their land, Judge Charles Hungwe ruled invalid an eviction order issued to Andrew Kockett, a farmer from the Karoi area about 125 miles north of Harare. He said that the Government had failed to serve notice of the order on the National Merchant Bank, to which Mr Kockett’s farm was mortgaged, and which was therefore the effective owner of the land. At least 90 per cent of the 3,500 farmers fighting to keep their land had mortgaged it to financial institutions, an official of the Commercial Farmers’ Union said. The regime had completely ignored the requirement to notify those institutions of eviction orders. That meant the overwhelming majority of the eviction orders were null and void, he said. "We have to wait and see what, if anything, they decide to do." The ruling is unlikely to give the farmers more than a period of grace.
As last night’s deadline passed, there were no immediate reports of action. The Government’s plans for what to do about defiant farmers remained unclear, though police said they had no plans to use force to evict the farmers who had been ordered to leave their land. "It is obviously tense," Alan Parsons, a spokesman for farmers in the Karoi tobacco and corn district 125 miles northwest of Harare, said. "People are going to stay put and try and secure their assets. We will simply have to wait and see what happens in the next 48 hours." The farms’ legal status has proved only a minor impediment to Mr Mugabe’s occupying forces. Early this week Isak Niehaus and his wife, Willie, both in their 60s, risked being burnt to death when squatters surrounded their homestead about 60 miles west of Harare and set light to bales of hay. The couple left when told that they would be beheaded if they stayed. The farm is not even listed for seizure.
The Government has ignored Supreme Court rulings declaring its so-called land reform programme unlawful. Scores of other court orders affirming farmers’ rights to their land and to work on it peacefully remain unenforced. Mr Mugabe said two weeks ago that his Government would not heed court orders it did not consider "objective". The issue of 2,900 "section 8s" synchronised to fall due today is the single most concerted attempt by Mr Mugabe’s regime to end the fight by the country’s white farmers to hold on to their land and their livelihoods. Jenni Williams, spokesman for Justice for Agriculture, the splinter group of farmers that advocates legal confrontation with the regime, estimated that 70 per cent of farmers with section 8 orders would not be moving. Farmers knew of possible violence, she said.
President Mugabe’s cronies are being handed the pick of the confiscated properties. Recipients include two Vice-Presidents, Joseph Msika and Simon Muzenda, the Commercial Farmers Union says. President Mugabe’s sister, Sabina, gets two farms. His wife, Grace, has got one for her brother, Reward Marufu, and her nephew, Supa Mandiwanzira. Others getting land, according to an Internet posting are: Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri; army commander Constantine Chiwenga; Ambassador to the UN Boniface Chidyausiku; election supervisor Mariyawanda Nzuwa; Defence Secretary Sydney Sekeremayi; Security Minister, Nicholas Goche; "war veteran" chiefs Joseph Chinotimba and Mike Moyo and Solomon Mujuru, a businessman.
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From The Guardian (UK), 10 August
Defiant farmers wait for Mugabe's next move
President Robert Mugabe's land seizure programme was brought to an embarrassing standstill yesterday when most of the 2,900 white farmers due to be evicted refused to leave their farms and the government seemed unwilling to remove then by force. Mr Mugabe had set a deadline of midnight on Thursday for them to leave, in time for Zimbabwe's liberation war celebrations on Sunday. But with most of the farmers claiming legal protection after the high court nullified one eviction order on Wednesday on the grounds that the mortgage-lender had not been informed, only about 300 had left their properties by late yesterday. "It's very peaceful all around the country, there's been no mass exodus and no evictions," John Worswick of the Justice for Agriculture campaign said. "Though we're not being complacent: this may be only a lull before the storm." Two campaigners were arrested on Wednesday, apparently to prevent them challenging the eviction orders in the courts. "It's becoming almost impossible to operate," the Rev Tim Neil, one of the two, said shortly before his arrest in Harare. "I've had the police round and I'm sending the staff home." Mr Neil runs a refuge for 150 farm workers made destitute by the land seizures. With troops reported to be deployed around the country for the holiday, many farmers sent their families to Harare for the weekend. Last year the anniversary was marked by the looting of white farms in Chinhoyi. "We'll keep out the way for a day or two, but we're going straight back home," said Kote Van Rensburg, who arrived in the capital with her four children yesterday. "Maybe we're being overly optimistic, but there's no way I would think of leaving my farm whilst there's seed in the ground."
Senior officials would not comment yesterday, leaving Mr Mugabe to reveal how he plans to eject the farmers in his speech to the nation tomorrow. But the state media seemed to be primed for confrontation. The Herald accused "British farmers" of sabotaging government efforts to find an amicable end to the standoff. "Zimbabwe now needs people who want to see a success of this country and not saboteurs who will gloat on the failures of Africa," its editorial said. Officials accuse white farmers of wrecking their farms to prevent them being taken over successfully by landless peasants, thereby contributing to the severe food shortage. The farmers say they are struggling to protect their property from looters. The 2,900 due for eviction have been banned from farming for the past 45 days. "There are squatters burning down everything, all the farm buildings," said Mrs Van Rensburg, seven of whose eight farms have been overrun. "It's not intimidation exactly, it's just that they're doing everything they can to make us give up hope." Almost all the farmers have begun legal challenges to their eviction orders. This week's ruling that the order served on Andrew Kockett, a tobacco farmer in the north-east, was void had a parallel five weeks ago when Jean Simons of Chinhoyi won a similar ruling. She has since been chased off her farm by thugs, but Mr Kockett said his ruling, which gives him four months protection was so far being respected. Early yesterday a local hotelier and official from the ruling Zanu PF party arrived to take over Mr Kockett's farm. "He didn't look very pleased when I showed him the court order," Mr Kockett said.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 9 August
Swathes of farms lie fallow as new absentee landlords refuse to take up land
As the sun sets on the disruptive land reform programme it has emerged that thousands of resettled farmers are still to take possession of their allocated pieces of land, greatly compromising Zimbabwe's food security in the coming season. Top government officials, Zanu PF supporters and friends and relatives of the powerful allocated land under the A1 and A2 models are still sitting on the sidelines. The model A2 scheme is the worst affected. Agricultural analysts said good rains alone would not guarantee food security due to the absence of farmers to till the available land. Most allotees of the chaotic land reform exercise have snubbed the offer citing lack of government support and incentives to undertake a sustainable farming business. In the A2 model only half of the 54 000 plots are understood to have been demarcated and just 20% of the pegged plots have been taken up. The Zimbabwe Independent last weekend toured Mashonaland West province, which used to produce an estimated 40% of the country's major crops such as the staple maize, tobacco and wheat. The fields lie idle with no production or land preparation taking place despite the fact that planting is due to start next month. Not only is the land lying fallow but state-of-the-art irrigation equipment and multi-million dollar grain storage facilities are either redundant or have been pillaged. Officials at Lions Den silos said the facilities have not received any grain for storage since the beginning of the farm invasions two years ago. "Grain has instead been taken out of the silos and the facilities have become a white elephant," an official said. Commercial farmers' representative body Justice for Agriculture (JAG) estimates that equipment worth $14,5 billion has been lost in the commercial farming sector to seizures, looting and vandalism. "About $14,5 billion worth of movable assets have been illegally impounded or looted since February 2000 and JAG will be suing the ruling party Zanu PF after it has completed working out the total losses sustained by both farmers and farm workers," JAG said.
Makonde Rural District Council assistant administrator Dan Zvobgo said land uptake, particularly in the model A2 scheme, has been very disappointing. "Model A2 in general has received a bad response from the new farmers because it did not take into cognisance distances farmers had to travel to their new properties," Zvobgo said. "Applicants were allocated land anywhere in the country and that means some farmers have to travel from one end of the country to the other but those expenses are not covered." Zvobgo said land preparation in his district and the country as a whole had been greatly hampered by the unavailability of draught power. "We only have eight tractors running in the whole district and that is not enough to service all farmers in time for the planting season. That alone should reduce the intended hectarage under crop," he said. "This is a common phenomenon throughout the country, no district has enough tractors to plough for the new farmers and the virgin land they are moving onto cannot be tilled with ox-drawn ploughs." He said the situation has been worsened by the lack of spares and fuel. Commercial Farmers Union Mashonaland West/South regional executive Ben Freeth said there was hardly any land preparation by either commercial farmers still on the land or the new occupiers. "The new farmers do not have the requisite equipment for land preparation while commercial farmers are not preparing the land either because their future is not certain or they are being stopped by the occupiers," Freeth said. CFU vice-president (commodities) Doug Taylor-Freeme said most of the fast-track resettled farmers were reluctant to take up the land because of lack of incentives. "The whole of the agricultural sector has come to a standstill," Taylor-Freeme said. "Vast tracts of fields are lying idle with new farmers facing serious financial problems but failing to borrow from the banks because of lack of clarity and security." Taylor-Freeme said in the tobacco sector alone an estimated 60 million kilogrammes have been lost due to the delays in land preparation. "There is no activity on the ground," he said. "Seed beds should have been planted at the beginning of June but this could not be done because of the confusion in the sector."
Prominent farmer in the Banket area, Vernon Nicolle, said the family's farming operation had not been running at full capacity and irrigation equipment worth over $100 million was also lying idle. "Our family can produce 10 000 tonnes of wheat under irrigation and 3 000 tonnes of maize and 3 500 tonnes of soya beans," said Nicolle. "This year because of the disturbances we will produce only 3 000 tonnes of wheat. We harvested 1 200 tonnes of soya beans and 2 000 tonnes of maize." There is no land preparation on Alaska Farm, Olympus Farm, Hunyani Farm or Rukoba Farm. Only a handful of settlers have built makeshift structures on these plots but no land preparation has started. A glimmer of hope in the province was seen 11km outside Lions Den along the Mhangura Road at three properties, Emily Park, Chifundi and Gordonia, where model A1 resettled farmers have a promising wheat crop. Farmers at Emily Park said they were looking forward to harvesting close to 20 tonnes of wheat. "Our crop looks very good as you can see," Albert Chikwereti, one of the farmers, told the Independent. "We just call on government to increase the loaning of inputs and draught power so that we can put more land under crop. We have the potential of doing better but the limiting factor is that we can't borrow money since the banks want security."
Agricultural experts said the derelict condition of land in Mashonaland West was just the tip of an iceberg. "The situation is actually much worse in other provinces," one analyst said. "Many of the farmers who are moving onto the farms now are making efforts to beat the August 23 deadline at which government threatened to repossess all plots not yet taken up." At Little England a few kilometres out of Banket, only two farmers out of about 200 allocated land have moved onto their properties. One farmer, the only person seen on the property, had moved in with a caravan and built a wooden cabin. Several rickety temporary structures, which were abandoned last year, are dotted across the farm. Some model A1 farmers in the province said they were not preparing land for next season because their future was uncertain following constant threats from prominent Zanu PF figures and their cronies to remove them from the farms. Settlers from Nyabira communal lands who settled on Golden Stairs, Sortbury and Little England farms accused provincial governor Peter Chanetsa of derailing the land reform programme by wanting to remove them from farms they had occupied for the past two years. "Chanetsa brought riot police to forcibly evict farmers from Sortbury and Golden Stairs and this makes us question whether government wants to see us farming next season," one settler at the farm who requested anonymity said. The settlers said Chanetsa had laid claim to six properties in the province: Gabaro Farm in Karoi, Riverside Farm in Norton, Elwin farm in Raffingora, Sligo Farm in Zvimba North, and Deary Farm in Nyabira. Other prominent politicians embroiled in the continued farm seizures include Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo, banker Enock Kamushinda and Zimbabwe's ambassador to Washington Simbi Mubako who is currently making inroads to occupy the 1 200-hectare Between Rivers Farm.
Zimbabwe Farmers Union's president Silas Hungwe confirmed his organisation was aware that the majority of the land allocated had not been taken up because of lack of incentives and financial support. "We urge the new farmers to occupy their plots since failure to do so will put government in a dilemma on whether it has resettled genuine or cellphone farmers," Hungwe said. Chombo last week told the press that in Matabeleland South, only 117 model A2 farmers have been allocated land from a possible 2 259 who had qualified for the plots. The problems in the agricultural sector have been compounded by the stance taken by banks which last week spurned Lands and Agriculture minister Joseph Made's efforts to force them to fund the land reform programme to the tune of $160 billion for this season's crop. The money is for tillage and the purchase of agricultural inputs like fertiliser, seed and chemicals. There are less than two months to go before the onset of the rains but Zimbabwe's promised land rainbow has not appeared.
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From the Washington Post, 10 August
Zimbabwe ends altered-corn dispute
Ending a dispute over gene altered corn, the Zimbabwean government and international aid agencies have reached an accord for the quick release of thousands of tons of food aid for the hunger-stricken nation, according to sources in Africa and the United States. The agreement - in the form of a memorandum of understanding involving the government, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.N. World Food Program and Zimbabwe's Grain Marketing Board - provides for the U.N. agency to deliver U.S. corn to the Zimbabwean government, which in turn would give the agency an equal amount of domestic corn from its own reserves to be distributed to hungry Zimbabweans, sources said. The deal is expected to be finalized next week.
More than 17,000 metric tons of whole corn has been sitting in the holds of a ship docked in the South African port of Durban since late July because of a standoff between President Robert Mugabe's government and the aid agencies. At issue was whether Zimbabwe, which strictly limits importation of genetically modified seeds, would accept the load of American corn - a mixture of conventional corn and patented, high-tech kernels that bear extra genes for hardiness. About half of Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people are on the brink of famine, according to the World Food Program, because of drought and the disruption of agricultural production caused by the government's eviction of white farmers from some of Zimbabwe's most productive land as part of a land reform program. International aid groups have warned that food aid must be dispatched quickly to Zimbabwe and its similarly stricken neighbors, but Mugabe's government has balked at accepting grain donated by the United States because it was not certified as being free of genetically modified material.
Zimbabwean government officials contend that if some of the U.S.-donated seeds were planted instead of eaten, they would give rise to plants with gene-altered pollen. That pollen could contaminate surrounding fields, rendering a potentially large portion of the nation's future corn harvests unexportable to European and other nations that restrict imports of genetically engineered foods. The government has said it wants to mill the kernels and distribute the corn as meal to ensure that none of the seed is planted. But that position led to a deadlock, because USAID, which donated the corn, and the World Food Program, which is distributing it, have been unwilling to give it directly to the government - the only entity willing to absorb the cost of milling. The agencies have insisted that the food go to nongovernmental groups for distribution because of evidence that the government has diverted food aid for political purposes.
The new agreement gets around that problem by calling for an unusual trade. The U.N. agency will deliver the 17,500 metric tons of corn from the United States to the Zimbabwean government, which can do whatever it wants with it. In return, the government will give the World Food Program an equal amount of corn kernels currently stored in that country. The U.N. agency will pass that corn to nongovernmental organizations for distribution to the poorest and hungriest people in Zimbabwe people who aid officials believe might otherwise never have seen the food that was being held by the government. It was not immediately clear how the Zimbabwean government came to possess the 17,500 metric tons it is now agreeing to trade to the World Food Program, or what it had intended to do with that food as the country slipped into its worst food crisis in decades. Diplomatic sources in southern Africa said they were not aware that Zimbabwe had any such reserves. But sources said the deal would accomplish the bottom-line goal of getting the corn to the countries' neediest citizens. "The main thing is that the food gets into the country so poor people get access," said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.
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From The Tehran Times (Iran), 10 August
Zimbabwe interested in Iranian "defense capabilities": FM
Tehran - Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stanislau Gorerazvo Mudenge, in a meeting with Defense Minister Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani here Thursday, announced his country's interest in Iran's "diverse defense capabilities". He pointed to "the industrial and technical capabilities" of the Iranian Defense Ministry and called for "exchange of expert delegations in order to identify needs and exchangeable potentials" of the two countries in the defense field. Shamkhani referred to "political commonalties and common stances" of the two countries in international issues, saying there existed vast grounds for cooperation between Harare and Tehran. The Iranian defense minister further hailed the Zimbabwean leadership for heralding the popular struggle against hegemonism in the black continent as a symbol of the country's drive for a bright future. "The Islamic Republic of Iran, in line with its undeterred political will to cooperate with independent countries, is fully prepared to bolster ties with Zimbabwe in all fields," Shamkhani added.
Mudenge arrived in Tehran Monday for a three-day visit and met with several Iranian officials including President Mohammad Khatami, Parliament Speaker Mahdi Karrubi as well as his counterpart Kamal Kharrazi. He also participated at the third session of Tehran-Harare Joint Economic Commission, in which the two sides called for the implementation of agreements reached earlier in the economic and trade fields. Mudenge also announced his country's intention to open Zimbabwean Embassy in Tehran in the near future. In meeting with Kharrazi, the Iranian foreign minister called on Harare to pave the way for the participation of the Iranian private sector in Zimbabwe, said IRNA.
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From News24 (SA), 9 August
Swiss step up Zim sanctions
Bern - Switzerland said on Thursday it was extending sanctions against Zimbabwe by introducing travel restrictions and a freeze on financial assets against over 50 people, to protest March elections. The new measures, which take effect on Friday, will concern members of the ruling party of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF, the Swiss State Secretariat for the Economy said. Switzerland already has similar measures in place against Mugabe and 19 members of the government. They were put into effect on March 19 following the country's presidential elections, in which Mugabe was returned to power amid widespread allegations of fraud and state-sponsored violence. Weapons shipments to Zimbabwe were also forbidden. Switzerland is following in the footsteps of the European Union, which on July 22 also added the names of 52 associates of Mugabe to a sanctions blacklist.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 9 August
Zim formalises Congo deals before pull-out
As Zimbabwean troops prepare their final withdrawal from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the government has begun regularising its business operations in that country to transfer control of the ventures from the military to civilians. The Zimbabwe Independent has it on good authority that the government will regularise its diamond mining operations and logging concessions in the DRC in the wake of increased competition from other players as peace dawns in the vast country. The signing of the peace agreement between the DRC and Rwanda last week should open up more areas of investment, especially for South African companies. The remaining 3 000 Zimbabwean troops are expected to pull out of Zimbabwe by October this year. At the height of the conflict Zimbabwe had about 12 000 troops in the DRC to bolster the regime of the late leader Laurent Kabila. Between 1998 and 2000 Kabila gave Zimbabwe diamond mining claims and huge logging concessions in lieu of payment for the country's military support. Apart from rendering military assistance to Kabila's regime Zimbabwean troops were also strategically deployed to protect Harare's business interests.
"The war-time deals require a new impetus that takes the form of a national investment and not business for the boys," a government source said. "Proper and transparent business operations bringing foreign currency into the country would justify Zimbabwe's costly military adventure in the DRC." Senior army officers,including defence chief General Vitalis Zvinavashe, retired major-general John Dauramazi and Speaker of Parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa, have been linked to various business initiatives in the DRC. International organisations have accused Zimbabwe of plundering the DRC's resources, a charge the government has always denied. As a show of commitment to clean diamond trade, Mines and Energy minister Edward Chindori-Chininga was in Botswana last week to attend a SADC ministers' meeting on eliminating conflict diamonds. Government sources this week said mining parastatal Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation, the Forestry Company of Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe Defence Industries would assume a bigger role in the management of the business operations. The cryptic web of Zimbabwe's operations in the DRC includes Cosleg, a joint venture operation with the Congolese mining diamonds in Katanga. A Zimbabwean company Socebo is also in partnership with SAB Congo, exploiting forests in Katanga.
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From The Sunday Times (UK), 11 August
War veterans starve on their looted land
The looming tragedy of Zimbabwe is written on the hungry face of Lydia Muzenda, 62, a black settler on white-owned farmland just south of Harare. She lives in a mud shack surrounded by sickly, straggling heads of maize and the stumps of trees cut down for use in building, heating and cooking. The shade cover has gone. The scrubby grass has given way to baked mud that the rains quickly turn into a quagmire. As the topsoil washes away, the farm becomes ever less fertile. Skinny goats pick at whatever grass roots are left. Muzenda and her friend Nelson Takawira, 42, are willing to work. But in common with other settlers who had been loyal supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party, they feel betrayed. Thousands of Zimbabwe’s war veterans and settlers are on the brink of starvation caused by Mugabe’s disastrous land-seizure programme. This has reached its most critical stage after the passing of Friday’s deadline for most white farmers to leave their land so it can be redistributed to landless blacks. For the war vets who are intended to benefit, the expiry of the deadline should have been a cause for celebration. Instead many were in despair, unable to feed themselves on the farms they occupied and bitter that cabinet ministers, high-ranking civil servants, MPs, army officers and other members of Mugabe’s elite had grabbed much of the best land for themselves.
When the veterans first invaded the white farms in early 2000 they were intended to be the vanguard of "resettlement schemes" extolled on television as miracles of peasant productivity. But while the black elite has grabbed many farms, owning far more than the 400 hectares (about 990 acres) decreed by the reform programme, the countryside has been denuded. The settlers were promised seeds, fertilisers and tractors. The promises were broken, with the result that hundreds of thousands are now destitute and the land is derelict. "We are starving, there’s nothing to eat at all," Muzenda said. She sold five cattle to transport herself and her possessions to a farm at Mhondoro. Now she lacks cattle to plough with. "If we don’t get the use of a tractor soon I fear the worst." She has made fruitless trips to the nearest town, Chegutu, to ask for maize from the local Grain Marketing Board. Takawira also sees starvation ahead: "The rainy season is only a few months away but we still have to prepare our fields for planting. We haven’t the means to plough and we haven’t even got seed."
Some 1,740 white farmers were reported yesterday to have risked imprisonment by defying the deadline and refusing to relinquish land they have made productive and profitable. They believe the government eviction orders could still be overturned in the courts. "In the middle of a raging famine where the government is appealing for donor aid it would just be a bit embarrassing to be arresting farmers for trying to go on growing food," said Jenni Williams of Justice in Agriculture, which is using the courts to fight the evictions. "I guess the point is that we are fundamentally law-abiding folk," said Ben Freething, who farms in Mashonaland. "Most farmers just cannot get their heads around the idea that they might be arrested for living in their homes and trying to carry on producing sorely needed food on land they either bought or which has been in their family for generations."
Another 1,160 white farmers did move, leaving areas of once-rich farmland abandoned. Many headed for Harare. The leafy, tree-lined streets of the capital were clogged with pickup trucks and lorries transporting household goods and there was hardly a house left for rent or sale. Some went abroad. Others tried to maintain a semblance of normality by fishing on Lake Kariba. Mugabe is due to give a speech tomorrow to mark Heroes Day, which commemorates those who fought in the independence war of the 1970s against white rule in the former Rhodesia. Last year’s commemoration saw violent looting of farms around the northern town of Chinhoyi and some farmers fear a repeat. The tension increased yesterday afternoon when troops moved out of barracks in Harare and other urban centres. While it seemed possible that they were preparing for the traditional Heroes’ Day march-pasts, observers said the movements looked bigger than usual. Some suggested that Mugabe was about to use the military as well as the police to force farmers off their land.
The only violent incident to be reported since the deadline passed was the assault of Kevin Smith, a farmer, by war veterans at Karoi. However, Ignatius Chombo, the powerful local government minister, revealed the regime ’s fury at the refusal of so many farmers to comply with eviction orders. "All the excuses by the farmers show what an arrogant and racist bunch they are," he said, adding that "appropriate measures" would be taken against those breaking the law. Members of the white community were anxiously awaiting Mugabe’s speech for a sign as to whether they have any future in Zimbabwe. Mugabe has not wavered from his ideological determination to destroy the white farmers and their workers. They supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which came close to defeating him in flawed parliamentary and presidential elections.
For black Zimbabweans hunger - not politics or race - is the overwhelming issue. Zimbabwe was a land of plenty but now faces starvation caused by a combination of drought and the government’s gross mismanagement of the land issue. The settlers dumped by the Mugabe government onto poorly irrigated cattle land or game farms are among the worst-off. Having slaughtered much of the wildlife and cut down the trees for firewood, many have found the land incapable of supporting their families and have drifted away. "I try not to be a bitter man but now all my animals are dead or gone and so are the war vets and the settlers," said one white game farmer. The shock troops who blazed this trail of devastation were the war veterans. But last week they were in disarray after the imprisonment for embezzlement of Andrew Ndlovu, their leader. It takes a brave man to predict what comes next.
"The damage is done. What has happened is irreversible," said Colin Cloete, president of the Commercial Farmers’ Union. He is appalled at the cynical use of a reform programme ostensibly intended to redress colonial wrongs as a means of benefiting Mugabe’s cronies. "Some people call them cellphone farmers," he said. "They don’t really farm. They have jobs in town and treat the farms they take over as weekend retreats. We’re going to end up with a tremendous amount of derelict land." A high percentage of white farmers would still come back if the government relented. As they readily acknowledge, however, they make up less than 1% of the population and are not by any means suffering the worst. Millions of Zimbabwe’s 13m people who supported the MDC opposition have been thrown onto the scrapheap, too. Many are black farm workers who are being made homeless as the whites leave their land.
"We would be better off with only 6m people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle," said Didymus Mutasa, a Mugabe confidant and Zanu PF organisation secretary. "We don’t want all these extra people (farm workers)." Behind this thought is not just the idea that many farm workers in Zimbabwe have one Malawian or Zambian parent but also that those who do not support the Mugabe regime have put themselves "outside the nation". Such ideas have a chilling relevance now that famine threatens and the government is ensuring that food aid goes only to the party faithful. Vincent Hungwe, one of the regime’s rising young stars - formerly permanent secretary of agriculture and now of local government - said: "We may have to take this whole system back to zero before we can start it up again and make it work in a new way." Many black and white Zimbabweans who have been chased from their homes and their old lives already have a taste of what he means by zero.
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From The Times (UK), 9 August
Zimbabwe fugitive finds safety in Britain
A leading opponent of President Mugabe has been given asylum in Britain after he escaped from an execution squad working for the Zimbabwean leader. Ephraim Tapa, who led the Civil Service union and was a member of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, was kidnapped with Faith, his pregnant wife, by a gang of so-called war veterans earlier this year. They heard their captors discussing the orders to kill them, and the arguments they had over whether to disguise their deaths as an accident. Even though he managed to flee to Britain in March and was given refugee status six weeks later, his wife is still in hiding in Zimbabwe with their three-week-old daughter. Members of his family have been threatened to betray his whereabouts. "If I go back, I would be dead within hours," he said yesterday. "I feel very fortunate to have escaped. Many don’t in Zimbabwe." Mr Tapa is keen to remind people that it is not just whites in Zimbabwe that are suffering, but the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are losing their jobs on the land as well.
"Over 150,000 black farm workers have already lost everything. Many have lost their lives," he said. "Add their families to this number and you are talking about 750,000 who have no homes, no schools, but the world just stands and watches." The livelihoods of another 200,000 black farm workers and their families were also threatened as Mr Mugabe completed his land redistribution, which began two years ago. From his hiding place in Britain, Mr Tapa is campaigning for Western powers to do more to help the 1.75 million black farm workers and their families who were facing expulsion from their homes as the deadline for owners to vacate their farms expired last night. Mr Tapa argues that Whitehall and its allies could do more to get rid of Mr Mugabe. "Governments talk openly about overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Why not Mugabe?" He and other opposition figures in exile are urging an international coalition to launch an attempt to end Mr Mugabe’s rule. "There is not much more Zimbabweans can do. We need outside help now." With food supplies already dangerously short in Zimbabwe, the prospects for the thousands of refugees is perilous.
Mr Tapa, 40, and his wife, 25, were campaigning for the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, in February during the presidential elections, when they were kidnapped. They were driving to a primary school in Mashonaland, about 100 miles from Harare, where his wife worked as a teacher. Near the school the couple were ambushed by a gang wearing the colours of the ruling Zanu PF party and handed over to a group of war veterans, led by John Murwisi, a notorious local figure. The pair were dragged into a classroom, which was the veterans’ local headquarters. Mr Tapa was beaten so severely around the head that he lost consciousness. He remembers how at one point his captors, who were trying to torture him into revealing the names of fellow opposition leaders, began throttling him with a scarf. The gang bundled their hostages into a lorry and drove them to various forest hideouts where the gunmen chatted about how and where to execute the couple. "They were arguing about how soon our bodies would be found, and whether they should make it look like an accident."
Eventually they were taken to a veterans’ camp at Mushimbo, near the Mozambique border, where for much of their four weeks in captivity they were bound and blindfolded. "They were interrogating me about the MDC opposition party, their members and strategies," Mr Tapa said. "I had been beaten so hard on the face I couldn’t see." Mr Tapa said one of their captors took pity on them and agreed to smuggle out a message from the couple begging for help. When a police unit arrived at the camp, Mr Tapa was able to escape, but he knew he could not remain in Zimbabwe. Three weeks later sympathetic figures inside the regime helped him to leave the country. He will not reveal their identities to protect them from reprisals. "Not everybody in Government supports Mugabe, but they are scared of him." His wife was too unwell to risk escape with him, so she went into hiding. Three weeks ago she gave birth to their daughter. Mr Tapa does not know when he will see his wife and daughter. Mr Tapa said the President’s security forces have a vested interest in clearing properties as confiscated land is being given to Mugabe cronies. "Once the deadline passes for the farms to be evacuated it will be every man for himself. There will be looting on a scale Zimbabwe has not seen before, and I’m certain there will be killing."
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Comment from The Sunday Telegraph (UK), 11 August
Mugabe must face trial for his crimes
By David Coltart
One of my Parliamentary colleagues in the Movement for Democratic Change is Fletcher Dulini-Ncube. A veteran campaigner for human rights and a former detainee in the Rhodesian era, he is diabetic. Last November Fletcher was detained by the Mugabe regime on trumped-up charges and held in solitary confinement for over a month under atrocious conditions, including the denial of adequate medical attention. As a result he had to have his right eye surgically removed last week. The day after the operation Fletcher was dragged from his sick bed and placed under arrest by the Mugabe regime's so-called Law and Order police. This weekend he lies in a Bulawayo hospital in leg irons under prison guard after a legal application to secure his release was dismissed by a recently appointed ex-war veteran judge. The inhumane treatment of Fletcher is but a small part of the regime's crackdown on its opponents. Thousands of farmers and their employees this weekend face summary arrest and eviction from their homes. We in the leadership of the MDC, the main opposition party to Mugabe, have been warned that our passports will shortly be withdrawn to prevent us from travelling abroad. Thousands of crimes committed against the opposition, including murder and rape, have not been investigated let alone prosecuted. The judiciary has been all but destroyed; independent journalists have been arrested. Even education has not been left alone: new laws will ensure the regime's control over the appointment of headmasters in private schools. Food is being used as a political weapon against thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans who oppose the regime. In short, Zimbabwe increasingly resembles Cambodia under Pol Pot. The regime's intention seems clear: to turn Zimbabwe into a nation of 12 million peasants dependant on its small super-rich, corrupt ruling-elite.
Mugabe, however, desperately needs the support of his neighbours and other countries to survive. Unlike Pol Pot, the Mugabe regime craves international legitimacy and, after 22 years in power, the Zanu PF elite have become accustomed to the good life. Having got away with even worse atrocities in the 1980s against Joshua Nkomo's supporters they assumed before the election in March, that the world would simply look the other way. Accordingly the regime has been stung by its partial suspension from the Commonwealth and the extension of targeted sanctions by the EU and other countries. Mugabe's response has not been to address the concerns of the West. It has been to travel to Cuba, Malaysia while some of his colleagues have been to Libya and Iran. Clearly he is trying to secure an international coalition which will force the West to relent and accept his regime, warts and all. No one can seriously believe that the regime has any intention of normalising the situation (as has been suggested by some in the Commonwealth recently). Just as the regime was prepared to use any means to secure victory in the presidential election so it will use them to retain power. The tragedy is that now, given the scale of the man-made famine combined with the Aids pandemic, that determination could well result in hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans losing their lives in the coming months. The only way that catastrophe can be averted is by the restoration of the rule of law in Zimbabwe. This alone will ensure that a massive summer maize crop is planted and irrigated by experienced farmers and that the exodus of thousands of talented Zimbabweans of all races stops. However the rule of law will only be restored through holding a fresh election that complies with acceptable standards.
There appears to be much hand wringing in the West about what to do. Food aid has been increased but that will deal with the symptoms, not the cause, of famine. Pleas have been made to Zimbabwe's neighbours to act but few African states have the political will to deal with the crisis. Mugabe has shown in recent weeks that he is quite prepared to divide the African Union and the Commonwealth to remain in power. The regime has not hesitated to play the racial card both domestically and internationally and the crisis is constantly portrayed as a spat between Britain and her former colony. Mugabe's purpose is to raise the stakes in the hope of deterring the West from taking sterner measures for fear of, for example, splitting the Commonwealth. The crisis is now so grave, however, that the West must not be deterred from taking decisive action. Two distinct courses of action should be followed.
First, those in Zimbabwe guilty of torture (as defined by the International Convention) should be investigated and prosecuted. Aside from the abuses of the past two years, food is now being used as a political weapon which is already resulting in thousands suffering. Many could die unless those responsible know that they will be held accountable for their actions. The vast majority of those who may die will be MDC supporters denied food solely because of their political beliefs. That is clearly a crime against humanity.
Second, the West, in conjunction with its democratic African allies, must now seriously consider its responsibility to protect Zimbabweans. The report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty published in December 2001 points out that where a population is suffering serious harm as a result of repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling to halt the suffering, the usual principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect. The principle of state sovereignty, so readily used by the Mugabe regime to protect itself, is not absolute. With sovereignty comes a responsibility for the state to protect its people. But more than six million Zimbabweans face starvation as a direct result of the state's failure and its use of food aid as a political weapon. In these circumstances the civilised world has a responsibility to protect the Zimbabwean people and to do so it should intervene in the manner proposed by the International Commission. If future famines are to be avoided and if what was once the jewel of Africa is not to become another Somalia, governments in the West must act urgently with their African colleagues to address the root cause of the catastrophe now unfolding in Zimbabwe.
The author is Zimbabwe's shadow Minister of Justice
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From The Natal Mercury (SA), 12 August
All quiet on the Zim front - for now
Fearing that his actions might plunge the southern Africa region into further turmoil, African leaders are secretly urging President Robert Mugabe to exercise restraint in dealing with 2 900 white farmers who have defied his orders to hand over their properties for black resettlement. Mugabe has said nothing since Thursday's midnight deadline for the farmers to vacate their properties and facilitate the ageing Zimbabwe leader's land seizure drive. Mugabe, 78, is, however, expected to address the issue when he buries his former finance minister Bernard Chidzero at a shrine reserved for national heroes in the capital Harare on Monday. "There is obviously concern that any mass evictions of farmers would attract more bad publicity and stir negative sentiments about the SADC region which already has all sorts of problems," said an authoritative Zimbabwe government official. "Concerned leaders have directly or indirectly been in touch with the president. I don't know his reactions to their advice."
Malawi president Bakili Muluzi , who chairs the 14 member Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) body, is said to have spoken to Mugabe over the issue as well as South African leader Thabo Mbeki's office. Efforts to get direct confirmation from the two leaders' offices failed on Sunday. Farming leaders said at least 60 percent of the affected farmers have defied the evictions and remained on their farms with the remainder either retreating to the cities and towns to see what happens next or completely abandoning their properties. "There is a feeling that any mass evictions of the farmers would attract more negative coverage of southern Africa in the white media in Europe. Indications are that a lot of you newsmen are excited about the story," another official said. "A lot of white journalists have been smuggled into Zimbabwe without official accreditation to witness any mass evictions and it's understandable if other leaders are concerned about the negative publicity that would follow." Zimbabwe has passed new stringent regulations barring foreign correspondents from entering the country without special accreditation.
The Zimbabwe leader has repeatedly shunned advice from fellow African leaders who have tried to help resolve the Zimbabwe crisis over the past two years. Presidents Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria have so far failed to persuade Mugabe to go back into "reconciliation talks" with the Movement for Democratic Change which accuses Mugabe of stealing the March presidential election. Mugabe's officials have warned white farmers defying the ban that they would face stern action from the Zimbabwe government. The UN estimate that six million Zimbabweans need urgent food aid.
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 12 August
Zimbabwe farmers' weekend of defiance
Harare - Hundreds of white farmers were spending a nervous weekend in defiance of government eviction orders, ahead of a keynote speech in which President Robert Mugabe is expected to reiterate his hard line on land distribution. On Saturday the government warned "arrogant" white farmers to leave their land, but hundreds remained on their farms a day after the expiry of the Thursday midnight deadline to vacate. But an annual traditional address by President Robert Mugabe, due to be delivered on Monday, could give signals as to how the government intends to proceed in the light of the defiance shown by some farmers. Few were expecting the Zimbabwean leader to alter his hardline stance against the white farmers. Mugabe gives a speech every August to commemorate liberation war heroes who died during and after the 1970s war of independence from Britain. President Mugabe's two-year land reform campaign has attracted sharp international criticism because of its often violent nature. In a statement received on Saturday, the US government said that while it recognised the need for genuine land reform in Zimbabwe and would support a rational and equitable programme, "regrettably, the current campaign of forced expulsions and violent property seizures takes Zimbabwe in the opposition direction". "Credible reports of senior political and security figures assuming ownership of expropriated commercial farms further reveals the cynicism of Mugabe's so-called land reform programme," said Philip Reeker, a US State Department representative. "At a time when six million Zimbabweans are without adequate food supplies, the government of Zimbabwe's eviction of commercial farmers and thousands of farm workers is a reckless and reprehensible act," he added.
The food shortages faced by millions in the southern African country are attributed to drought and the disruption of farming operations caused by the land reform programme. Farmers who have stayed on their farms, risking ejection, have appealed to the government to be able to stay because they have crops planted in the ground. Those farmers remaining were reported by their union to be awaiting responses to individual appeals against the eviction orders instituted under Mugabe's controversial land reform scheme to take land from whites and re-distribute it to landless black Zimbabweans. Amid confusion over precisely how many farmers had been ordered to vacate their lands, the government said it had served 1 600 eviction notices, while farming officials estimated that about 2 900 farmers were under orders to vacate their property by midnight on Thursday. The state-owned Herald newspaper quoted acting Lands Minister, Ignatius Chombo, as saying he was happy that 400 farmers so far |
