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Archived News
17th July 2002
Mugabe 'paid Israeli spy to frame opposition leader'
How Zimbabwe is killing the region
Police raid private radio station
Eyewitness: Zimbabwe in turmoil
Chiwenga accused of trying to take over farm by force
US tourist held after snapshot
Britain freezes Mugabe assets
Zim renegotiates Libyan fuel deal
Eyewitness: Zimbabwe in turmoil
Mzee in China for treatment
Gadafy hijacks Africa's new union with his federal fantasy
UN warns Mugabe not to meddle with food aid
U.S. accuses Zimbabwe of political use of food aid
Mugabe opponents' children 'starving'
Meldrum trial resumes
Obasanjo upbeat after talks with Mugabe
Chanetsa/war vets clash over farms
Mugabe's time has come
Gaddafi's African roadshow sets off with 400 guards, three jets and a ship
Guardian journalist awaits verdict in Harare trial over report on web
State officials blast State paper
Parents, son disappear in politically volatile Guruve
Zimbabwe threatens retaliation against British assets
NGOs to import food
Hope stirs for Zimbabwe breakthrough
War vets split from Zanu PF party
Fear and terror stalk Zimbabwe, for the worst is yet to come
Trouble brewing as beer runs out
Moyo defies superiors
Zimbabwe acquits US journalist
Political violence hits Masvingo
Departing federal official left unaware of key details
Mother of courage cares for dying as famine boosts Aids
Bankers pass the buck to government
Zimbabwe reporter is acquitted and ordered to leave
How Mugabe treated the foreign press
Comment on Meldrum judgement
Switzerland freezes Zim assets
Marange MDC supporters flee homes after Zanu PF torture
Passengers come down to earth with Mugabe
Farmer threatened
Two ways to leave Zimbabwe
Mugabe in bid to get fuel from Venezuela
Mugabe begs for aid from Castro
Mugabe meets Castro on visit to Cuba
Zimbabwe expulsion delayed
A free press is the best famine early-warning system
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From the Independent (UK), 10 July
Mugabe 'paid Israeli spy to frame opposition leader'
A former Israeli intelligence officer has earned more than US$450,000 (£290,000) from President Robert Mugabe, partly as a reward for framing the Zimbabwean leader's main political opponent, officials in the government revealed yesterday. Mr Mugabe's chief political foe, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), faces hanging or life in jail if convicted of high treason over an alleged plot to kill President Mugabe. He is to appear in court to answer the charges next month. The Zimbabwe government is using grainy video footage of a meeting Ari Ben-Menashe held with Mr Tsvangirai in Montreal as the basis of its evidence against the opposition leader. Mr Tsvangirai was shown in the video saying what sounded like incriminating statements about "eliminating" Mr Mugabe. The opposition leader denies the charges, claiming that the video footage was carefully edited and manipulated by Mr Ben-Menashe to frame him and two of his party officials who attended the meeting.
The controversial Israeli operative is being investigated by Scotland Yard for allegedly trying to sell false information on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, casting fresh doubt over the credibility of the allegations against Mr Tsvangirai. Canadian police have dropped their own investigation for lack of evidence that Mr Tsvangirai plotted in Canada to eliminate Mr Mugabe. According to well-placed Zimbabwean government officials, Mr Mugabe authorised $450,000 as payment for Mr Ben-Menashe for his work in recording the video and for agreeing to be the state's key witness in the case against Mr Tsvangirai. About $200,000 of the total was for Mr Ben-Menashe to market Zimbabwe abroad through his Canadian-based consultancy firm, Dickens and Madson. Mr Ben-Menashe was also to be paid an extra $400 000 for his marketing contract by the end of this year, they said.
Mr Ben-Menashe, called a "delusional and chronic liar" by the Jerusalem Post, has travelled to Zimbabwe twice this year and has met Mr Mugabe on both occasions. His travel expenses were paid for by the Zimbabwe government. The sources did not want to reveal details of how Mr Ben-Menashe was paid as this would "expose" and "harm" certain people. It is, however, understood that Mr Ben-Menashe's payments were all handled by Mr Mugabe's spy agency, the Central Intelligence Organisation. The officials interviewed yesterday accused Mr Ben-Menashe of "milking" the Zimbabwe government yet "doing nothing" to market the country abroad as promised. "Apart from providing the video with Morgan [Tsvangirai] he has not implemented any campaigns he promised to improve Zimbabwe's image abroad," said one source. Another source said officials were concerned about Mr Ben-Menashe continuing to earn more money for work he was not doing. There are fears that Mr Mugabe's courts could convict Mr Tsvangirai on the basis of the videotape, notwithstanding the questionable credibility of the former Mossad spy. Mr Ben-Menashe cold not be reached for comment yesterday.
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From COSATU, 9 July
How Zimbabwe is killing the region
By John Robertson
Johannesburg - While the G8 commits US$6 billion to development assistance in Africa, South Africa alone loses US$7,7 billion because of Zimbabwe's economic breakdown. Food for thought. At 2001 Zimbabwe dollar prices, Zimbabwe has seen export trade fall by Z$134 billion over just two years. This sum converts to US$600 million at an exchange rate of Z$220 to one US dollar, or to US$2.4 billion at the ridiculous official exchange rate of Z$55 to one US dollar. The $600 million is equivalent to a whole year's earnings from our most important export crop. Because it was lost, about 20,000 jobs have been lost in industry. The US$600 million would also be enough to pay for all the food imports needed now that we have failed to produce the needed crops. Instead, we have to beg for loans or grants to pay for it.
Zimbabwe's conduct has led to withdrawals of development aid from most regional countries. Zambia believes it would have had much more success attracting direct investment as well as in restoring more of its own manufacturing capacity. The amount lost cannot be estimated accurately, but it probably exceeds US$500 million. In South Africa, the lack of will to express disappointment or anxiety about Zimbabwe's conduct since 1997 has caused the rand to fall from R6.5 to one US dollar to figures that recently reached R11 to one. If the fall is measured only as the drop from R6.5 to R9.5 to one US dollar, South Africa's import bill at US$27 billion a year caused an increase in rand terms from R175 billion to R256 billion, an increase of R81 billion. This expressed in US$ terms amounts to US$7,7 billion, so South Africa's direct loss exceeds the full amount of support agreed to at the Nepad Conference in Canada for all the beneficiary countries. John Robertson is one of Zimbabwe's leading economists
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From The Daily News, 9 July
Police raid private radio station
The police last week raided the offices of the Voice of The People (VOP), a private radio station in Harare, and confiscated 133 tapes and files. According to a spokesman for Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)-Zimbabwe, the police, accompanied by officers from the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe, (BAZ) and armed with a search warrant, raided the VOP offices on Thursday around 4pm in search of a transmitter and any other broadcasting equipment. After failing to find any transmitters, the police "confiscated 133 tapes and files from the office". Bruce Mujeyi, of Gollop and Blank, the radio station's lawyers, who was present when the police searched the offices, said the police and the BAZ officers wanted the transmitter the VOP was "using" to transmit its programmes. Mujeyi said the VOP trust deed disappeared in the confusion during the search and it is suspected the police or BAZ officers took it.
Mujeyi said in terms of the law, the police must return everything they seized. "We are waiting for a decision on whether to apply to the court for a speedy return of the confiscated equipment or appeal against the harassment to which VOP staff were subjected," Mujeyi said. MISA-Zimbabwe said it was reliably informed that VOP had no transmitter in Zimbabwe or anywhere else, and was not violating any part of the Broadcasting Services Act 2001 because it is not broadcasting. The Broadcasting Services Act 2001 bars anyone from broadcasting without a valid licence. No other broadcasters have been licensed since the law was passed in 2001. Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, controlled by the Department of Information and Publicity in the President's Office, remains the only broadcaster in the country.
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From BBC News, 9 July
Eyewitness: Zimbabwe in turmoil
Despite a government ban on foreign correspondents, the BBC's Fergal Keane visited Zimbabwe, where he witnessed a country fast descending towards disaster.
After years of political chaos and violence, millions of people in Zimbabwe are now facing starvation. The government of Robert Mugabe blames the situation on drought, but the opposition and human rights groups say the country is in the throes of a man-made disaster. They accuse President Mugabe of a politically motivated policy of violence and intimidation to drive away white farmers, so their land can be given to poor black people. By 10 August, all white farmers must have vacated their land, and food production in the country has all but stopped. We drove for several hundred miles through Zimbabwe and spent time in the capital Harare. In rural areas, we saw once-thriving fields where the weeds had taken over. Many others were emptied of the herds of cattle which are being sold off by white farmers who believe they have got no future in the country. They have been given a month to get off the land. This destruction of the agricultural economy is happening in a country where millions face starvation.
In Harare, we met some of the scores of torture victims now in hiding from Robert Mugabe's supporters - men who described savage beatings at the hands of policemen and war veterans acting together. Against this background, the leader of the opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, has called for public demonstrations. But I asked him if this didn't mean confrontation on the streets was inevitable. "It's unavoidable, because it doesn't even have to be organised by anyone. The situation itself is fast deteriorating to levels of public response. There is always a stage where people will say enough is enough," he said. Perhaps the most haunting testimony of repression came from a young mother I met at a refugee camp in the bush. She told me she had been gang raped by seven members of the ruling party militia. With escalating repression, and looming starvation, there is a powerful sense of a country sliding inexorably towards disaster.
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From The Daily News, 9 July
Chiwenga accused of trying to take over farm by force
Jocelyn Chiwenga, the wife of Zimbabwe National Army Commander, Lieutenant-General Constantine Chiwenga, is at the centre of a dispute for allegedly trying to take over by force a property in the Enterprise area, Hortico Farm. She already owns a farm in Enterprise through the government's controversial land reform programme. Hortico is a horticultural concern which exports most of its produce to the United Kingdom. Contacted for comment last week, Chiwenga denied trying to take over the farm. She said sh e and the owners of Hortico had only argued over the payment for the vegetables she had supplied to them. The Daily News understands that Chiwenga, who two months ago took over Shepherd Hall Farm next to Hortico Farm, allegedly besieged Hortico for four working days from Wednesday 26 June to 2 July, claiming she was the new owner. Jacob Staunton, the owner of Shepherd Hall Farm, is reported to have been chased away by Chiwenga and has since fled to Australia.
A source associated with Hortico Farm said: "It all started with a late invoice. Chiwenga came claiming she was the new owner of Shepherd Hall Farm and that payment for the runner beans supplied to Hortico by Shepherd Hall Farm two months ago be made to her. The Hortico Farm management declined, saying they would only pay the previous farm owner, Staunton, as he had supplied the beans." After the management refused to comply with her demand, Chiwenga allegedly brought some office furniture and occupied one of the offices at Hortico Farm. The source said: "She brought a computer and office furniture and occupied one office at the farm, saying she was the new owner of Hortico with immediate effect, which was from Wednesday 26 June. She left on Tuesday 2 July when Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement authorities ordered her to leave the farm."
The source said Chiwenga had enlisted the services of the ministry to have Hortico Farm officially ceded to her after the owner had been issued with a Section 8 order of eviction. Hortico's managing director, Daniel Perlman, is said to be out of the country. The mobile telephone number of Peter Christensen, the operations director, was busy each time The Daily News phoned him. The number has been out of reach since last Friday. It is understood that Chiwenga threatened to "deal with anyone from Hortico who dares speak to the Press". Chiwenga has denied she wants to take over Hortico Farm. In a telephone interview last Friday, she said: "If you are going to publish anything about Hortico, it will be all lies. I am the new owner of Shepherd Hall Farm from May and how can I try to take over Hortico Farm when I have another one?" Chiwenga said she had since been paid for the beans supplied to Hortico by Shepherd Hall Farm. Top government and Zanu PF officials have been accused of grabbing prime land with unharvested crops and there are reports that some now own more than one farm. The Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association two weeks ago demanded an audit of the land reform programme, saying there was growing evidence that the majority of people including ex-combatants, detainees and collaborators, had been marginalised because "political heavyweights have hijacked the programme".
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From Business Day (SA), 11 July
US tourist held after snapshot
Harare A US tourist in Zimbabwe has been arrested on charges that she took photographs of President Robert Mugabe's official residence, police said yesterday. Carol Dean Howard was detained on Sunday and released early on Monday along with a Zimbabwean, Margaret Maria Carlisle. Both were freed after making formal statements to the police, said police spokesman Insp Andrew Phiri. They were charged with violating Zimbabwe's Protected Places Act, and told they might be summoned to court for trial. If convicted, they could face two years' imprisonment. "Police investigations are still in progress. Should there be need for them to be taken to court they will be summoned," Phiri said. Elsewhere, a southern Zimbabwe school was temporarily shut this week after suspected progovernment militants stormed the premises, attacking several teachers, police said yesterday. "About 11 suspected (ruling party) Zanu PF supporters went to Mapanzure Secondary School in Masvingo" said Phiri. "They accused some teachers of being MDC (opposition Movement for Democratic Change) supporters, and as a result three teachers were assaulted." He said the school had not reopened since, as other teachers had refused, in solidarity with their colleagues, to resume classes until the situation had been resolved. The MDC has condemned the attack on the school. Nine of the assailants have been arrested, and are expected to appear in court today.
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 11 July
Britain freezes Mugabe assets
Britain has frozen 76 000 pounds in assets belonging to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF Party, the government said on Wednesday. The $118 000 dollars (119 000 euros) were seized under sanctions imposed by the European Union on Mugabe and his senior allies after international outrage at rigged elections in March. Junior foreign office minister Denis MacShane said that by freezing assets, the financial markets of the EU and Switzerland had been put "off limits." It had also helped signal the "increasing isolation" of the Zanu PF elite, he told parliament. The EU imposed sanctions on the Mugabe regime in February, following the expulsion from Zimbabwe of the head of its team of observers monitoring the run-up to presidential elections a month later. All 15 member states imposed a travel ban on Mugabe and about 20 of his close political associates. It was also agreed that their assets in EU countries would be frozen. Following the poll, EU leaders agreed to pursue further "targeted" sanctions aimed at the veteran leader and his closest allies, while allowing the continued flow of humanitarian aid into Zimbabwe, which is suffering its worst food shortages in many years. The March election saw 78-year-old Mugabe - president of Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 - claim a further six-year term with 54% of the votes. But the legitimacy of his victory over Morgan Tsvangarai of the Movement for Democratic Change was widely questioned because of evidence of intimidation and violence against opposition supporters.
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From The Financial Gazette, 11 July
Zim renegotiates Libyan fuel deal
Zimbabwe is renegotiating a US$360 million Libyan fuel deal which expires at the end of this month, it was learnt this week, as reports emerged that the North Africans have intensified their claim on key Zimbabwean economic sectors. Oil industry sources said Mines and Energy Minister Edward Chindori-Chininga was in Libya two weeks ago to renegotiate the fuel deal brokered last year by President Robert Mugabe and Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi. No comment was available from Chindori-Chininga this week but the sources said the Libyans were keen on extending the facility but wanted greater participation in the key oil and tourism sectors. "We have approached the Libyans on the possibility of renewing the deal and what now remains is agreement on the terms and conditions of the renewal," a senior oil industry official said. The Zimbabwean delegation also included Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe (CBZ) managing director Gideon Gono and senior National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM) officials.
CBZ spokesman Sunsleey Chamunorwa confirmed that Gono was part of the delegation which went to Libya a fortnight ago but could not shed any light on the outcome of the negotiations. The CBZ is the financial adviser to NOCZIM which it has helped in the past two years to raise funds to import fuel. Under the deal, Libya provided fuel to Zimbabwe in exchange for local products and shareholding in state-run companies. The US$360 million was released in quarterly tranches of US$90 million and Harare agreed to finance the fuel purchases through exports to Libya of local products. Zimbabwe requires about US$40 million a month to import fuel. The sources said at least three separate delegations of Libyan businesspeople had visited Zimbabwe in the past month to explore business opportunities. "One group is expected in the country this week to assess investment opportunities in the oil industry while another one was here about three weeks ago on a mission to actualise a beef deal between the two countries," one source said. Zimbabwe is expected to export 12 000 tonnes of beef to Libya under an agreement reached last year but is still to be implemented due to logistical problems.
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From BBC News, 10 July
Eyewitness: Zimbabwe in turmoil
By Fergal Keane
We travelled into Zimbabwe posing as tourists. It isn't how the BBC would wish to operate but the restrictions imposed by the government make normal journalistic operations impossible. The BBC team travelled for hundreds of miles inside the country and we found evidence of the terror and repression imposed by the ruling party and its supporters. Since the presidential election, Zimbabwe has dropped far down the world agenda, overtaken by events in the Middle East and financial scandals in the United States. But the situation in the southern African nation has deteriorated steadily since Mr Mugabe's disputed victory. Human rights workers we met in Harare described escalating oppression and a situation where the rule of law is disappearing. At a safe location in the city we met three recent victims of torture: two were student activists and the other a farm labourer. The labourer had been asleep at home some weeks ago when youth militia from the governing Zanu PF party knocked on the door. He was told to get dressed and attend a night rally in support of the ruling party. "When I failed to come quickly enough they began to beat me," he said. "They smashed my teeth and then they dragged me outside. I was beaten on the ground and I thought my life was ending." The man suffered serious stomach and facial injuries. The gang leader also attempted to rape his wife. All of this happened in front of the couple's young children.
It is a story being repeated across the country. At a camp for displaced persons in the bush we met survivors of a militia attack in which hundreds of Zanu PF supporters had arrived on a farm and driven the workers out. With nowhere to go, they are now depending on the handouts of local aid agencies. One young mother told me that during the attack she had become separated from her husband and child. She was seized by the gang and was repeatedly raped by seven militia members. "I fainted and when I woke up I didn't know where my child was," she said. Driving across the country, we found fields in which crops withered or which lay untilled because of Mr Mugabe's onslaught against white farms. Farmers are selling off their herds of cattle believing that they risk losing them to Mr Mugabe's supporters. All of this in a country where 6 million people are facing the threat of starvation. The white farming community has been given one month to get off the land and as we drove, we became familiar with the sight of removal vans moving along the roads to South Africa. Near the town of Karoi we met farmer Chris Shepard who is resisting attempts to drive him off the land. Mr Shepard is a fourth generation Zimbabwean who is married with four young children. "I have nowhere else to go," he said. "I worked hard for everything I have and now somebody is going to take it away from me for no good reason."
The man many Zimbabweans look to for leadership in this crisis is Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change. However there is a growing sense among many activists that the MDC has failed to rally effectively after the party's defeat in the disputed presidential elections last March. We met Mr Tsvangirai at his heavily guarded Harare home, evading the security police who maintain round-the-clock surveillance. The opposition leader seemed hesitant about leading mass protests and said he worried that public anger would erupt spontaneously. "Some of us are now being regarded as conservative for urging restraint," he said. Mr Tsvangirai added that he believed real freedom would come to Zimbabwe but he did not say when. For those suffering hunger and terror, it cannot come soon enough.
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Comment from ZWNEWS, 11 July
The parrot cry
By Michael Hartnack
Robert Mugabe’s regime and the state-run media keep parroting a new, favourite phrase: ``lawfully elected government’’ as if hearing it often enough will make voters accept the legitimacy of the March 9-11 presidential elections and the June 2000 parliamentary polls. Everything bad that happens now and almost everything is bad is called an attempt to overthrow or to undermine this "lawfully elected government." Thus the state-owned Herald, acting at the behest of Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, recently sought to identify and pillory those who met Tony Leon, leader of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance party and an outspoken critic of Mugabe’s regime. The Herald - clearly fed with information from the secret police - listed (incorrectly) those who attended a private dinner with Leon during his two-day visit. (The one redeeming feature of the police state Zimbabweans live under is its sheer technical incompetence). Heads of diplomatic missions, including the German and US ambassadors, and the British High Commissioner, were outraged to receive calls from the Herald demanding confirmation they were among the 16 at the dinner, supposedly plotting some dire mischief against Mugabe's "lawfully elected government."
All of us striving to keep civil society functioning, each in our different way, are too well aware the authorities would like to keep us under constant, malevolent surveillance - our phone calls tapped, our e-mails and faxes intercepted. Reminding us of that was a calculated act of intimidation. The link between Moyo's propaganda apparatus and the security establishment was further underlined when the police issued a statement bearing hallmarks of Moyo authorship. It claimed that shortages of maize meal, sugar and cooking oil "began to worsen after the presidential election." "It is believed the underlying cause is economic sabotage maliciously intended to discredit the lawfully elected government of Zimbabwe," it added. "The artificial shortages in the minds of the detractors would ferment (sic) or agitate the masses to engage in looting and defiance of law. The unimaginable dream theory would lead to an ungovernable state or anarchy, which would lead to the overthrow of the government."
Dropping all pretence of police being outside party politics, the statement claimed Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change had "orchestrated artificial shortages,’’ and urged Mugabe to embark on a wholesale programme of nationalisation. "Police recommended that the government make concerted efforts on total control of the production and distribution systems of all basic commodities … (they) urged the government to ensure key positions in parastatals and board membership were offered to patriotic Zimbabweans who have the nation at heart." This came from a force whose commissioner, Augustine Chihuri, declared he would not recognise a victory by Tsvangirai in the presidential elections. In the past two years, police have repeatedly been shown to be in collusion with perpetrators of the worst human rights abuses.
Professor Tony Hawkins of the University of Zimbabwe said the threat to seize enterprises should be taken seriously. "It is unthinkable, but what is happening in agriculture is also unthinkable," he said. "The threat to seize companies is pregnant with disaster, in that whatever the government has taken over has never worked again." National Foods, 34 percent owned by Anglo Zimbabwe (a subsidiary of Anglo American) has scorned Mugabe's claim the company is manipulating shortages at the behest of Anglo chief Nicky Oppenheimer. Far from hoarding or hiding salt, National Foods imported fresh supplies and notified the authorities while trying to negotiate a realistic price, to cover the "parallel" rate (US1 = Z$300), naturally demanded by the Botswana suppliers. Before the salt could be put on the market, ruling Zanu PF party bully boys turned up and claimed to have "discovered" the consignment. Obviously, no more salt will now be imported and shortages will worsen.
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From The Financial Gazette, 11 July
Mzee in China for treatment
Vive President Simon Muzenda, unwell for months, has flown to China to receive specialist medical treatment for an undisclosed ailment, it was established this week. Official sources told the Financial Gazette that Muzenda, Zimbabwe’s longest-serving deputy to President Robert Mugabe, had slipped out of the country for China two weeks ago to seek medical treatment. The government is on record as saying Muzenda is not having any health problems. An official at Muzenda’s office confirmed this week that he was out of Zimbabwe but could neither disclose his destination nor the nature and purpose of his trip. The official said Muzenda, 80 in October this year and unwell in the past four months, was expected back in Harare next week. Ruling Zanu PF party insiders said Mugabe, in a bid to consolidate his stranglehold on power, had shot down a request by his ailing deputy to retire from active politics. They said Muzenda, citing ill health, had informed Mugabe of his intention to retire before the March presidential election but was told not to go during what Mugabe then described as a critical phase of his 22-year rule.
Sources close to Muzenda said the vice president had raised the issue again with Mugabe after the presidential vote, but that this had largely been ignored. "It is an open secret within the party leadership that Vice President Muzenda, because of health problems, has expressed his intention to retire but this has been turned down by President Mugabe," a member of Zanu PF’s supreme Politburo with close ties to Muzenda said this week. The sources said Muzenda wanted to retire on medical grounds and did not want to be included in a Cabinet line-up which had been expected to be formed after Mugabe won the disputed presidential election. In the past four months, the vice president has been spending most of his time convalescing at his rural home area of Zvavahera in Gutu and only attending Cabinet’s weekly meetings held on Tuesdays. Muzenda is the Member of Parliament for Gutu North constituency.
During the presidential election, he kept a low profile because of ill health and scaled down his public engagements even in the post-election period. Insiders say Mugabe wanted Muzenda to remain active to fend off pressure from within and outside Zanu PF for the President to also retire. Mugabe, controversially re-elected in a vote rejected as flawed by the international community, says he has not decided on when to quit because a successor to take over has not yet been identified and groomed. He also says he wants to retire only after completing his agrarian reforms, set to officially to end next month. Mugabe has always been reluctant to discuss the succession issue. He also refused to allow Joshua Nkomo, the late vice president, to retire after Nkomo had expressed his wish to do so. Nkomo died on the job in July 1999 after battling with prostate cancer for more than a year. Zimbabwe’s two vice presidents - the other is Joseph Msika - are on record as saying they will retire at the same time with Mugabe when they have completed the land reforms under which the government is seizing white-owned farms to resettle blacks. The sources said Muzenda had preferred to go to China, and not Europe or North America, because of the travel ban imposed earlier this year by the 15-nation European Union, the United States and Canada on Zimbabwe’s leaders, who are accused of promoting lawlessness. They deny the charge.
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From The Guardian (UK), 11 July
Gadafy hijacks Africa's new union with his federal fantasy
The continent's leaders changed their organisation's name, but left war, Aids and drought off the agenda
Johannesburg/London - The inaugural meeting of the African Union, set up to replace the ailing Organisation of African Unity, ended in disarray yesterday after being knocked off course by Libya's Muammar Gadafy. Forty heads of state went to Durban, South Africa, for the three-day summit. The new pan-African body aims to encourage economic development and political stability. But they failed to hold serious discussions about key issues, such as the war in Congo, HIV/Aids, or the widespread two-year drought. Instead Mr Gadafy hijacked the summit with a call for the creation of a single African country. He threatened to disrupt the New Partnership for African Development (Nepad) - a deal agreed between the richest western countries, including the US and Britain, and African leaders to pour millions of dollars into Africa - which he views as a continuation of imperialist designs by the west. He told the conference on Tuesday: "Africa for the Africans! The land is ours! You are the masters of your continent! You are marching to glory."
Other African leaders persuaded Mr Gadafy to set aside his objections to Nepad, and in return a special meeting of the AU will be held in six months to discuss the creation of a single African country, even though almost all the other leaders regard it as pie in the sky. This manoeuvring came as the UN warned that up to 60 million people in southern Africa are facing hunger, disease and death because of drought and political instability - and, according to the World Health Organisation, 300,000 could die prematurely in the next six months. "In some ways, it was as if they [the heads of state] were occupying a parallel universe," an observer at the summit said. The heads of state even had difficulty in reaching agreement on the date of their next meeting. They also failed to agree a new secretary general or what to do with the OAU's $25-30m of debt.
The OAU was set up in 1963 amid great optimism, to smooth the transition from colonialism to independence. But it has long been little more than a talking shop, and was formally wound up on Monday. There was hope that its replacement, the AU, would prove more successful in helping with economic development and political stability. Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, told the summit that African leaders had to "overcome the debilitating effect of inertia, which makes us act in the old ways to which we are accustomed, to do things as we have always done them because this is the way we have always done them." He spoke optimistically of the continent's prospects, talking of recent successful African elections, but made no mention of the recent much-criticised poll in Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe was in the audience.
In a declaration at the end of the summit, the leaders pledged to promote free access to the elections for state-owned media and freedom of movement for political parties during campaigning. There was no mention of independent, privately-owned media. The declaration also stipulates the holding of elections at regular intervals as provided for by national constitutions and "under a system of separation of powers and in compliance with supportive legal instruments". They also promised to end electoral bribery. There were inconclusive talks on the sidelines between the leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila, and the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, about ending the Congo war.
The South African Press Association reported yesterday that Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria had had talks with Mr Mugabe and urged him to meet the Commonwealth secretary general, Don McKinnon. But there was scepticism about whether the AU will be prove to be more than another talking shop. In Maputo, Raul Domingos, a former peace negotiator for the Mozambique National Resistance, said: "Changing a name does not necessarily mean a change of attitude unless our leaders prove the opposite". The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, welcomed the inauguration of the AU. But a British government source was more blunt: "At present, it is not a major force for anything. It is just a talking shop. It is very much a case of wait and see."
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From The Financial Times (UK), 12 July
UN warns Mugabe not to meddle with food aid
Johannesburg - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned the Zimbabwean government yesterday that it would suspend food relief in response to any political interference with its activities in the country. James Morris, the head of the WFP, said he had told Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, this week that the UN agency "would be out of the country in a second" if it encountered difficulties in delivering food to starving people. Non-governmental organisations claim that Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF is manipulating food supplies in favour of its supporters and to the disadvantage of supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). State-sponsored intimidation of the MDC and commercial farmers helped Mr Mugabe secure a disputed election victory in March. But the Rome-based WFP insists political interference in non-governmental administered emergency relief operations is not widespread.
The effects of a region-wide drought have been worsened in Zimbabwe by misguided macroeconomic policies and a controversial land reform programme to resettle landless black people. Disruptions to farming operations have led to reduced crop planting by commercial farmers and the need to import about 1.5m tonnes of maize. Almost half of the 13m people across the southern African region facing severe food shortages are in Zimbabwe. The WFP hopes to feed 4m Zimbabweans by the end of the year. Currently, its food relief is reaching about 550,000 people. The UN said this week people were turning to theft, prostitution and child labour to survive the crisis, but few people have yet died from starvation in the country. "Zimbabwe has the capacity to be a very successful food producing country. The resources are there. My concern is to get the government to understand that if there is not structural realignment from the leadership this problem [the food shortages] will not be solved," said Mr Morris.
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From Reuters, 11 July
U.S. accuses Zimbabwe of political use of food aid
Washington - The United States on Thursday accused the Zimbabwean authorities of withholding relief food from children in the Matabeleland town of Binga for the past five weeks for political reasons. "We call on the government of Zimbabwe to rectify this situation in Binga at once and to ensure that food distribution is carried out on a nonpartisan basis countrywide," said State Department spokeswoman Lynn Cassel. Self-described "war veterans," or vigilantes loyal to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, have prevented a Catholic charity, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, from distributing food in the Binga area, she said. The district commissioner, the senior local government official, supported the war veterans and the police had refused to intervene, she added. "As a result of this blockade, children have fainted from hunger during school hours. Others have become too weak to attend classes," Cassel said. "The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace at one point was even blocked from providing food to 27 children hospitalized for malnutrition."
Zimbabwe is at the center of a devastating food shortage sweeping across southern Africa. Cassel said the government of Zimbabwe bore much of the responsibility for the humanitarian crisis but the United States would continue to provide food assistance. Mugabe has disrupted Zimbabwe's agricultural system by driving mainly white commercial farmers off their land before black small farmers are ready to take over their operations. The world's biggest food agency said on Thursday it had warned Mugabe not to "politicize" food distribution in Zimbabwe, where six million people face starvation. James Morris, executive director of the U.N's World Food Programme, said he had spoken several times with Mugabe and issued a stern warning.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 12 July
Mugabe opponents' children 'starving'
Johannesburg - President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is denying food aid to starving children living in areas known to oppose his rule, America said yesterday. A State Department spokesman, Colin Furst, said a charity, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, had been prevented from giving food to malnourished children in Binga, Matabeleland, for more than a month. He said senior local officials had helped to block the aid and police had refused to intervene. "We have reports that children have fainted from hunger during school hours and that some are too weak even to attend classes," Mr Furst said. "We are calling on the government of Zimbabwe to rectify the situation in Binga at once and ensure that food is distributed on a non-partisan basis countrywide." Jim Morris, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, said he had spoken to Mr Mugabe three times in the last month to ensure that WFP food deliveries in Zimbabwe were not stolen by the ruling Zanu-PF party for distribution only to its political supporters.
The US allegation came as even Ethiopia, the African nation most commonly seen as a victim of famine, was approached to help to provide grain supplies for southern Africa. The government in Addis Ababa has made available up to 30,000 tons of surplus grain to help alleviate the worsening food situation in the south of the continent. With almost 13 million people at risk from starvation in six countries, Mr Morris said relief supplies would come from wherever surpluses were found. "Throughout the region people are walking a thin tightrope between life and death," he told a press conference in Johannesburg yesterday. "The combination of widespread hunger, chronic poverty and the HIV/Aids pandemic is devastating and may soon lead to a catastrophe. This has developed into the most serious humanitarian crisis taking place in the world today."
His warning came as the inaugural summit of the African Union, the new continent's political grouping, broke up without any apparent willingness from the participants to address the food crisis. The issue was not even discussed at the heads of state committee meeting even though the food crisis is largely created by the inefficiency and corruption of some members of the AU. Mr Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe has led his country to the brink of famine largely because of his policy of land seizures of white-owned commercial farms which used to produce enough food for the country to be a net food exporter. South of Zimbabwe's border, where the same dry weather conditions were recorded this summer, South African commercial farms have had a good year, growing a large surplus of food. Questions also hang over Malawi's decision to sell off its entire grain reserve last year. It claims it acted on the advice of the International Monetary Fund.
While there is anecdotal evidence of people dying from hunger as a result of the crisis, Mr Morris admitted that there were no definitive reports of deaths on a large scale. But he added that bureaucracy and inefficient reporting systems across the region meant a clear picture of the human suffering involved in the crisis was unlikely immediately. The estimate of victims could increase after another assessment is completed next month. Six countries are affected by the crisis: Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland. It has been created by poor rains exacerbated by other, often man-made, considerations. Official estimates used by the WFP suggest that 12.8 million people are at risk from starving in the six countries. The WFP has appealed for £300 million and so far has generated about £80 million including £60 million from America and £18 million from Britain.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 12 July
Meldrum trial resumes
In the first test of tough new media laws a court is due to rule today on whether to dismiss charges against an American journalist charged with publishing falsehoods. Andrew Meldrum (50), a correspondent for Britain's Guardian, is the first journalist to go on trial on charges of publishing falsehoods - a crime which carries a heavy fine or a two-year jail term. Meldrum is charged in connection with reproducing a story first published in the Daily News that said Mugabe's supporters had beheaded a woman in a rural area earlier this year. "Naturally our hope is that the case should be dismissed, but if it isn't we are also ready to continue with the defence case and to argue that the law is unjust and is being unfairly applied," Meldrum's lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said yesterday. The Harare regional magistrate's court adjourned the trial three weeks ago after state prosecutor Thabani Mpofu wrapped up his case.
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From the Natal Mercury (SA), 11 July
Obasanjo upbeat after talks with Mugabe
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said he had been encouraged by a meeting he had with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to discuss the faltering political reconciliation talks between the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. However, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai remains pessimistic about the chances of persuading Mugabe to back down in his clamp-down on opponents in Zimbabwe. "We are making progress. Maybe not as much as we would like," said Obasanjo about his hour-long meeting with Mugabe which took place on the fringes of the summit of the new African Union launched on Tuesday. Obasanjo said at a press briefing that the meeting had taken place in a better atmosphere than had existed since the Commonwealth troika met in London earlier this year to suspend Zimbabwe from the organisation. Obasanjo, President Thabo Mbeki and Australian Prime Minister Howard formed a troika to decide what to do with Zimbabwe after Commonwealth observers determined that the March presidential elections were not free and fair.
Obasanjo said he had reported on the outcome of his meeting to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan who was as a result eager to meet Mugabe. Mugabe's spokesperson George Charamba said later that Mugabe had been unable to meet Annan who had already left Durban for the Sudan but that the two men would probably speak later. Tsvangirai said he would wait to get the details of the substantive issues discussed between Obasanjo and Mugabe before making a firm comment. He said he was, however, pessimistic about the chances of Mugabe reforming into a reasonable leader. The best option was for African leaders to exert pressure on the ageing Zimbabwe leader to re-run the disputed March presidential election. Although they did not formally put Zimbabwe on the agenda of the launch of the AU, Tsvangirai said it was good that the leaders had "marginalised" Mugabe by not giving him any prominent role at the summit.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 12 July
Chanetsa/war vets clash over farms
The land reform exercise faces a new threat from senior Zanu PF officials bending the ground rules for personal gain, the Zimbabwe Independent has established. The Independent this week heard that Mashonaland West governor Peter Chanetsa had clashed with war veterans in the province who accused him of hoarding choice farms and enriching himself to the detriment of landless peasants. Sources told the Independent that Chanetsa had laid claim to at least 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. Efforts to get a comment from Chanetsa this week were unsuccessful as his secretary said he was not at work due to illness. The sources said at Riverside Farm in Norton, Chanetsa allegedly evicted a war veteran only identified as Mugadzaweta, raising the ire of his colleagues. The ex-combatants also claimed settlers who had been issued with letters of confirmation by the Ministry of Lands were unable to occupy their plots as the same properties had been earmarked for senior Zanu PF officials.
CFU officials in the province this week said they were getting mixed signals from the governor's office as officials were still urging farmers to retain portions of their farms and co-exist with settlers. The Independent has also heard that senior Zanu PF members and their hangers-on were harvesting crops they did not grow and marketing them after evicting the owners. Saviour Kasukuwere, the MP for Mount Darwin South, has reportedly occupied the multi-million dollar horticulture producing Insingisi Farm in Bindura. The property has not been listed for resettlement. The farm has an orchard valued at $5 million and a $25 million packhouse for oranges. The farm also has a silo owned by 50 commercial farmers for storing grain. Roses are also grown on the farm for export to Holland. Kasukuwere is allegedly harvesting the oranges and selling them.
The owner, Colin Taylor, alleged that Kasukuwere drove him off his property two months ago. "Kasukuwere came to my farm with about six youths who have virtually camped on my farm and have stopped us from carrying out any farming activities," said Taylor. "The youths gave my supervisor 24 hours to vacate his house. The youths then proceeded to the orchard where they stopped my workers from picking oranges and this has prejudiced me of millions of dollars. They also broke into the warehouse and seized equipment valued at $3 million," he said. But Kasukuwere denied the allegation. "What that farmer told you is hogwash," he said. "I do not have a farm and I am currently looking for one. I do not own any youths and the youths that are said to be on that farm do not belong to me."
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From News24 (SA), 11 July
Mugabe's time has come
Johannesburg - There can hardly be a more melodious or cheerful way to send someone to blazes than co-opting South Africa's international music star Hugh Masekela to do the job. While singing and trumpeting, Masekela sent Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe a farewell message, during the African Union (AU) concert at the Sandton conference centre. The concert, held in conjunction with the AU's official launch in Durban, was sponsored by the South African government. "Mugabe should have gone long ago. What is he still doing there? Charlie Taylor [of Liberia] must also go. Thank you Daniel Arap Moi [Kenya] for deciding it's time to go," Masekela declared in his song, Everything Must Change. Following President Thabo Mbeki's explanation of the aims of the new African organisation - without identifying problem countries by name - Masekela liberally laid on the diplomacy. And in the process unsettled a number of Zimbabweans dancing in the concert halls. A few Zimbabweans yelled, "Leave him [Mugabe] alone!" and "Why are you singing about these issues?"
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From The Independent (UK), 11 July
Gaddafi's African roadshow sets off with 400 guards, three jets and a ship
Durban - The Muammar Gaddafi roadshow has left Durban on a tortuous drive home after the Libyan leader and his heavily-armed entourage upstaged an African summit called to map out a new path for the continent. The Libyan President's security detail, several dozen strong, have taken with them a special jamming device installed in one of his vehicles. So people on his route are likely to suffer sudden interruptions of their cellphone conversations as the convoy passes by. Bemused Swaziland residents living on the South African border said yesterday they thought South Africa was invading, after being confronted by the Libyan leader's massive security apparatus. In Durban, there were some near-catastrophic encounters between South African security officers and the Libyan guards. More than once, proceedings at the summit had to be halted while the Brother Leader railed against the West, Africa's new development plan and other obsessions of the moment. One security officer said: "He works totally above the law. They came here with the attitude that Gaddafi is the Golden Leader and that they, as Libyans, are above all of us."
On Saturday, there was a stand-off between South African and Libyan security forces. "It was almost a war," the South African officer said. "There were 40 of us against almost 400 of them. We were totally outnumbered and outgunned." South African security officials had already grounded 60 armoured vehicles accompanying Colonel Gaddafi. Their ostensible purpose was to provide a safe return by road for the Libyan leader through Africa. But South African government officials feared he would use the vehicles to visit black townships in an attempt to steal the limelight from the summit host and chairman of the new African Union, President Thabo Mbeki. On Wednesday, one of Colonel Gaddafi's planes was grounded in Mozambique after rocket-propelled grenade launchers were discovered on board. The President arrived with two Boeing 707s and two more planes, including an Antonov, among the largest freight planes in the world. An initial search of some cargo turned up 27 sub-machineguns.
Along with weaponry and a fleet of vehicles, Colonel Gaddafi also brought a container ship filled with goat carcasses and two 46-seater buses. "Each vehicle was packed to capacity and we even found $6m (£3.8m) in hard cash in one car," the security officer said. "They point-blank refused for some of their baggage to be searched." With tension mounting, the South African contingent called for back-up, and within minutes, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aziz Pahad, arrived in an effort to restore calm. Shortly afterwards, he sent a fax instructing security personnel to release everything to the Libyans. Although the Libyans were issued with permits for 21 AK-47 assault rifles, when the weapons were checked in at a Durban hotel, they had multiplied to 48. Protocol allows for four firearms to be carried by a president's personal detail, although special permits are sometimes issued. Once a foreign leader is in South Africa, his security is regarded as the responsibility of the South African President.
There was another near-calamity when heads of state convened for a meeting and there was a scuffle between security forces and the Libyan bodyguards. The security officer said: "He [Colonel Gaddafi] jeopardised security here and now he's going to jeopardise the security of all the civilians all the way to Mozambique." Although Colonel Gaddafi's travel arrangements are supposed to be a closely guarded secret, insiders say his convoy will pass through Swaziland, Mozambique and Kenya on a self-promotional tour that will continue all the way to Libya. There are indications that Colonel Gaddafi will fly to each country along the route, leaving a brother to anchor the roadshow. A source close to Colonel Gaddafi's delegation said one of the 10 armoured cars in his entourage was fitted with a jamming device which disrupts all electronic and radio signals in the vicinity of the security-conscious Libyan leader. The device, which is clearly visible on the roof of one of the vehicles, is reputedly designed to ensure that any electrical remote-control to detonate a bomb in the vicinity of Colonel Gaddafi's car would be neutralised until the leader was well out of range. Libyan officials declined to comment on the jamming device. A South African police spokesperson refused to discuss "security issues" or whether South Africa had given permission for the device to be used.
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From The Guardian (UK), 13 July
Guardian journalist awaits verdict in Harare trial over report on web
The worldwide web would be unable to function if everything on it was subject to the laws of every nation, a Harare court hearing the alleged falsehood case against the Guardian's correspondent in Zimbabwe, Andrew Meldrum, was told yesterday. Applying Zimbabwe's restrictive media regulations to stories on Guardian Unlimited, the newspaper's electronic website in London, would establish a far-reaching and extraordinary precedent, the defence warned the court. Jim Holland, an Australian internet consultant, testified that the story complained about - an account, attributed to a local newspaper, that supporters of the ruling Zanu PF party had beheaded a mother of eight in front of her children - was published on the website in Britain, not Zimbabwe. The point of publication for websites was where the information was uploaded not downloaded, he said. After hearing the evidence and closing submissions from defence and prosecution, the magistrate, Godfrey Macheyo, said he would write his judgment this weekend and deliver the verdict on Monday morning. The case had been adjourned for three weeks. Mr Meldrum, 50, a US citizen who has lived in Harare since 1980, faces up to two years in jail or a fine of Z$100,000 (£1,200). It is the first trial carried out under Zimbabwe's new media laws and is being closely monitored by representatives from America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. Earlier Mr Macheyo refused a defence request that the charges be dismissed on the grounds there was no case to answer and no evidence that the article had been published in Zimbabwe. Beatrice Mtetwa, Mr Meldrum's lawyer, told the court the state had built its case on an unjust law and failed to lay a solid argument. Mr Macheyo declined to give grounds for his refusal but said he would explain his reasoning when he delivered his final judgment.
Lawyers in Britain have raised concerns that Zimbabwe's Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act sets a dangerous precedent because it effectively inflicts Zimbabwe's repressive laws on stories published anywhere on the web. Thirteen independent journalists have been charged with "abusing journalistic privilege" by publishing falsehoods, the charge which Mr Meldrum faces. Ms Mtetwa told the court yesterday: "To convict [Andrew Meldrum] would be a great miscarriage of justice." Despite the fact the defence had already closed its case, Mr Meldrum was called to answer questions but not put under oath. He told the court that he had verified the story as far as possible and the police would not confirm or deny the story about the beheading when he rang, a common response in stories about political violence. Two human rights organisations he spoke to said they were investigating the incident and that it was consistent with the pattern of post-electoral violence. The local paper, to which Mr Meldrum attributed his account, has since apologised for the story. In summing up, the prosecutor, Thabani Mpofu, alleged that Mr Meldrum did not have to intend to publish a falsehood to commit an offence; that the story was false; that Mr Meldrum was the publisher because he authored the story; and that the court had jurisdiction because the story was published on the worldwide web, "media available in Zimbabwe". For the defence, Ms Mtetwa argued that publication in Zimbabwe had not been proved; that Mr Meldrum was not "the publisher"; that the stories in both the Daily News and the Guardian had not been proved to be false; and, in order to be convicted, the prosecution must show that Mr Meldrum intended to publish a false story.
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From The Daily News, 12 July
State officials blast State paper
Mutare - Two top government officials on Wednesday questioned the authenticity of a story published by the government-owned Manica Post newspaper in Mutare, claiming the opposition MDC was smuggling arms into the country through the Forbes border post in preparation for war. Oppah Muchinguri, the Governor of Manicaland Province, and Ignatius Chombo, the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, challenged the story during a meeting with the reporters. A government source at the meeting said the two lashed out at the reporters for not checking their facts before printing the story, as it involved national security. Chombo, head of the land task force committee, was in Mutare to assess the progress made in the land reform programme. The government official at the meeting said: "Chombo said the government reporters must first ask them (ministers or other government officials) what to write and they would be told what to write." Soon after the tongue-lashing, the reporters from the State-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, Manica Post and the Zimbabwe Inter-Africa News Agency were ordered to leave the room. The reporters then shuffled out, their heads bowed, said the source.
Muchinguri and Makuwerere Bwititi, the editor of The Manica Post, refused to comment, while Chombo could not be reached. Rudo Muchemeyi, the provincial police chief in Manicaland, who claimed that a number of people had been arrested at the Forbes border post while smuggling arms of war into Zimbabwe from Mozambique, was said to have sat silently as the Zanu PF officials lashed out at the reporters, said the source. It could not be confirmed that the report of the arms smuggling may have raised official eyebrows in Maputo. Earlier, Muchinguri, through the same newspaper, blasted the British and America governments for allegedly using the MDC to wage a war against Zimbabwe. Giles Mutsekwa, the MP for Mutare North and MDC shadow minister of defence, denied the allegations and challenged the police to produce evidence of their claims, which they had not done by last night. Mutsekwa dismissed the allegations against his party as an illusion and a figment of the fertile imagination of the police and the governor, Muchinguri. To date, the police have not released the names of those arrested, nor have they disclosed the type and whereabouts of weapons they claim to have retrieved.
In the past, journalists from the private media have been prosecuted under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) for allegedly writing falsehoods. Innocent Gonese, a Mutare lawyer, said AIPPA should not be applied selectively. "A thorough investigation should be carried out into that story (of arms smuggling) and if proven to be fictitious the newspaper should be taken to task," said Gonese. "Journalists from the state-controlled media are being treated like sacred cows and that has to stop. The law must be applied across the board." Two Ministers of State, Olivia Muchena and Flora Buka, attended the meeting. Also present were senior army officials, CIO top brass and provincial district land committee members. A report-back meeting was scheduled for today.
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From The Daily News, 12 July
Parents, son disappear in politically volatile Guruve
Political violence in Guruve North in Mashonaland Central led to the disappearance of the father, his two wives and the eldest son of the Gurudhu family, in October last year, leaving their 15-year-old daughter, Vimbai, to look after her four siblings. The Gurudhus of Mapfumo village in Chief Chisunga’s area, had been threatened with death by Zanu PF supporters for being MDC activists. Biggie Chigonero, the MDC vice-chairman for Mashonaland Central, on Wednesday confirmed the incident and said his party was making arrangements to look after the children while trying to establish the whereabouts of their parents. "I sent an MDC team last week with $1 500 to assist the children. As a province we also send some food," Chigonero said. He said his executive had written to the MDC national executive notifying it of the children’s plight. "We want those children to be assisted by the MDC. We are going to send another team this weekend to give them further assistance," Chigonero said.
Vimbai, now 16, is the breadwinner for her four brothers, Mudzingwa, 11, Silent, 13, Chaka, 13, and Danhiko, 15. The five left school because they have no money and are in dire need of clothes and other basic necessities. Vimbai said the family, who moved from Chirumanzu in the Midlands province in the 1980s, have no close relatives in the area to turn to for assistance. She said her father, Daniel, elder brother Morgan, and Gurudhu’s two wives, Judith Mandizha and Tonderai Mutebvu, disappeared after persistent death threats by Zanu PF supporters led by a so-called war veteran identified only as Mudzvova. She said they left at different intervals. Mapfumo village is about 300km from Harare along the Guruve-Kanyemba road. "My father was the MDC chairman for ward 2 while Morgan was an activist. They organised MDC rallies. They were threatened with death for bringing the MDC into the area," she said.
Chigonero confirmed Gurudhu was the party’s chairman for ward 2. Vimbai said her parents disappeared in October while she was away sitting for her Grade 7 examinations at Chitima Primary School. She said she wrote the examinations while staying with someone at the school as "it was difficult to stay at home because of the political disturbances". "After completing my examinations, I returned home only to be told by my brothers that our parents had capitulated to Mudzvova’s death threats and had fled. They never told my brothers where they went. They have not written to us. We are living on our own. We will die here but I am having problems with the children because they are sometimes troublesome." Mudzingwa, the youngest, last month broke his right leg while playing football and had to be rushed to hospital by a neighbour.
Vimbai said after her parents’ disappearance, Zanu PF youths visited their home to spend the night, waiting for them to turn up. She said the youths would leave in the morning. "At times they would knock on the door, pretending to be our parents. They later took me to Mudzvova’s home where they demanded the MDC cards and receipt books but I told them I was at school and was not involved in politics," she said. She said the Zanu PF supporters did not assault herself and her brothers. Danhiko said: "We do casual work to get money to buy food. At times we pick an acre of cotton for $500." Mudzingwa said: "I want to go back to school so that I can be a policeman." Vimbai said they never reported their parents’ disappearance to the police. They were told by Zanu PF supporters the police would not help them. "Zanu PF supporters say if our parents return, they will be killed. But we hope one day our parents will come home, if they are alive."
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From SABC News, 12 July
Zimbabwe threatens retaliation against British assets
Zimbabwe's government has threatened to take action against British property in retaliation for the British government efforts to seize the ruling party's assets abroad, state media reported today. The British government said Wednesday it had frozen 76 000 pounds in assets belonging to the party under sanctions imposed by the European Union against President Robert Mugabe and his top aides. In an interview published today in the state-run Herald newspaper, Jonathan Moyo, the Information Minister, said British property in Zimbabwe could fall to a similar fate. "Somebody should remind them there are real British assets in Zimbabwe, including British donations to non-governmental organisations and other groups that are bent on causing havoc for the ordinary people," he was quoted as saying. Many of those organisations are working to alleviate the nation's food crisis, which threatens about 6 million people, but the government accuses them of channelling funds illegally to the opposition. Ruling party officials denied the party had any assets in Britain anyway. "They should not use phantom assets to dare us to take real action here," Moyo was quoted as saying. Zimbabwe and Britain, the former colonial ruler, have been in conflict since Mugabe began his plans two years ago to seize white-owned farmland. Britain has also protested politically motivated attacks against the opposition and a breakdown of law and order across the country. Despite the tensions, Britain has given tens of millions of dollars for famine relief. The British charity Oxfam announced today plans to supply 10 000 tons of food a month.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 12 July
NGOs to import food
Government has been forced to allow non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the private sector to play a greater role in the importation of food as the food crisis wreaks havoc across the country. The latest United Nations Humanitarian Re-port on Zimbabwe says two NGOs have already obtained licences to import food. "Plan International report that they have imported 2 117 tonnes of maize and are planning to import another 31 000 tonnes," the report says. "Oxfam (GB) has obtained a permit allowing a maximum of 10 000 tonnes of food per month," it says. The report also says that discussions are currently on-going between government and the UN regarding ways of engaging the private sector in humanitarian assistance efforts to alleviate the crippling food shortage. The government has been under sustained pressure since a meeting between UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and President Mugabe at the World Food Summit in Rome last month to abandon the Grain Marketing Board's monopoly on grain imports.
"Currently a working group composed of major donors, government, bank representatives, business representatives and the UN are drafting a proposed format for this programme, which will be presented to the relevant government ministries in the second week of July," the report says. Diplomatic sources said major food donors threatened to withdraw aid to Zimbabwe unless government removed constraints which prevented the private sector from grain importation to help over six million Zimbabweans facing starvation. The UN is proposing to establish a foreign exchange facility with the aid of the international community from which licensed firms could borrow to pay for grain imports. Prior to the March 9/11 presidential election government banned NGOs and other private institutions from delivering food to needy people arguing that it would be used for political purposes. Food imports to fill the 2001/2003 production years' cereal deficit of 1,86 million tonnes is still well below needs.
The report said as of June 30 total cereal imports of 270 400 tonnes had been brought into the country and that would cover less than two months of Zimbabwe's consumption requirement of 25 000 tonnes a week. "The remaining nine months' cereal needs for the country to get to the next harvest have not yet been addressed," the report said. "Government has only indicated that it was going to parliament to request a budget revision in order to secure more funds for purchase of food." Contrary to statements by Lands and Agriculture minister Joseph Made that the country did not need to import wheat, the report said the government had such plans in place. "Government has assessed the situation and plans to import 35 000 tonnes of wheat to meet the shortfall for the 2001/2 marketing season," the report said. The report said yields of up to 96 000 tonnes were expected from the current winter crop, leaving a deficit of 324 000 tonnes next year.
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From The Sunday Times (SA), 14 July
Hope stirs for Zimbabwe breakthrough
Commonwealth leaders upbeat after meeting Mugabe and minister for first time since suspension
There was renewed hope in diplomatic circles of a breakthrough in Zimbabwe's political stalemate this week as Robert Mugabe's government reopened talks with mediators. Mugabe met Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, while his foreign minister, Stan Mudenge, held discussions with Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon, when leaders gathered in Durban for the launch of the African Union this week. Obasanjo, President Thabo Mbeki and Australian Prime Minister John Howard had suspended Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth for one year after its March presidential elections were deemed to have been rigged. McKinnon told the Sunday Times that relations between himself and the Zimbabwean government had been icy since the suspension and there had been no real contact between them. "The relationship has not been a good one since the decision. Every time a country has been suspended, you go into a sort of frozen relationship for a while," McKinnon said.
He was given the task of engaging the Zimbabwean government, particularly on the land redistribution issue, while Obasanjo and Mbeki were given the responsibility of facilitating reconciliation talks between Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu PF and opposition Movement for Democratic Change. The peace talks broke down when Zanu PF withdrew on the basis of the MDC's court challenge to the elections. Mbeki and Obasanjo have so far failed to get the talks back on track. But McKinnon said his talks with Mudenge this week were a "positive development". "I had about an hour with Stan Mudenge. We put a few cards on the table and are trying to normalise dialogue between us, which, as I say, has been virtually zero since the suspension. I haven't asked for a meeting with President Mugabe. I asked him [Mudenge] to give me an update of where they were and they believe that a lot of the land issues will be settled before the end of the year," he said. McKinnon also held talks with about a dozen African leaders who were feeling the spillover effect of the Zimbabwean crisis. "They all said the same thing - that it is time to normalise things and that they believe that there is a desire for that in Zimbabwe as well," McKinnon said.
Obasanjo described his talks with Mugabe as constructive. "I met with Mugabe for almost an hour. We had the meeting in an atmosphere we hadn't had since London [where the decision to suspend Zimbabwe was taken]. It was something very good," Obasanjo said. "We are making progress. It may not be as fast as we like, but we are making progress." Obasanjo has also briefed United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan on his meeting with Mugabe. "He was so heartened that he wanted to meet Mugabe," said Obasanjo. Mbeki did not discuss the crisis with Mugabe this week. There has been a cooling of relations between the two leaders since a confidential letter Mbeki sent to Mugabe urging him back to the negotiating table was leaked to Zimbabwe's state-owned press. McKinnon said it was not clear what steps Obasanjo and Mbeki would take next. "They want to keep that very much to themselves but they want to keep up the dialogue with President Mugabe, obviously, and try and normalise things." The Commonwealth troika would have to assess the situation after at least 11 months before deciding whether to readmit Zimbabwe to the Commonwealth or to take further action, said McKinnon.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 14 July
War vets split from Zanu PF party
War veterans, disillusioned with the land seizure exercise which has seen top government officials reap huge benefits, have decided to break away from Zanu PF and form their own political party, the New People's Party (NPP), The Standard has learnt. According to sources, the NPP is to be made up of the majority of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWA) whose membership currently stands at 50 000. This move will likely deal a major blow to the beleaguered Zanu PF as the ex-freedom fighters are its last remaining loyal and trusted supporters. War veterans calling themselves the 'Vanguard of the Third Chimurenga' have in the past two years, waged a bloody campaign aimed at crushing growing support for Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition MDC, who almost relegated President Robert Mugabe to the dustbin of political history. But only three months after the presidential election, controversially won by Mugabe, the former fighters watch helplessly as land is grabbed by top government officials and their cronies.
Only last week, one of their own, Andrew Ndlovu, the secretary for projects, was jailed for three years for corruption after the state successfully argued that he deserved to spend time in jail. "There is an agreement among the war veterans that we need a new political party. We decided this after realising that some of the politburo members in Zanu PF have forgotten us," said one war veteran leader close to the new party. The Standard understands that a huge gulf exists in Zanu PF between those who fought in the liberation war and those who did not. "There are a lot of counter-revolutionaries in the party. Most of them are the mafikizolos who are causing confusion. So, we felt it in the interest of our members to have a party to serve our interests," said the source. "The reason for the armed struggle has been lost. Look at how we are being harassed and left out of the land redistribution exercise," he added. Last week war veterans demanded the dismissal of Elliot Manyika as Zanu PF political commissar, whom they said had dubious liberation war credentials.
Contacted for comment, war veterans secretary-general, Andy Mhlanga, denied that some members of his association were defecting from Zanu PF. "I don't know about that. I am hearing it for the first time, maybe it's being done behind the back of our executive. The true war veterans remain loyal to Zanu PF and President Mugabe because we fought the liberation war together. It is a marriage for life. But I know that the Zimbabwe Liberation Platform have been trying to mobilise our members to join them. Maybe it is they who are thinking of forming a party," Mhlanga said.
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Comment from The Independent (UK), 13 July
Fear and terror stalk Zimbabwe, for the worst is yet to come
Fergal Keane
Africa had a new beginning this week. At least that is what the leaders who gathered in Durban would like us to believe. A new beginning under the grand title of the African Union. I would have been tempted to treat it as something other than a bad joke were it not for the agenda and the invitation list. A simple question to start with. What is the biggest political crisis in Africa just now? The escalating hunger and violence in Zimbabwe. What wasn't on the agenda at the launch of the Africa Union? You guessed it. Zimbabwe. But who was an honoured guest at the big expensive launch? Of all people Robert Gabriel Mugabe. While Comrade Robert was in Durban I was in Zimbabwe posing as a tourist. I don't like creeping around countries pretending to be a tourist. I would much rather do my job of reporting in an open and straightforward manner. But openness is like cyanide to Mr Mugabe's government. He has employed as his Minister of Information one of the greatest enemies of the free press anywhere in the world. Jonathan Moyo is the architect of press laws which can see journalists sent to jail for up to two years; after my last secret visit to Zimbabwe he denounced me as no better than a terrorist and warned that if I came back I might not leave the country for a long time.
I travelled with Marie, a South African who'd been part of the struggle against apartheid in the old days. In a way that she had never experienced in South Africa she felt the full power of racial hostility. We'd pulled up to get petrol, unfortunately not noticing the truckload of Zanu PF activists just ahead of us in the queue. When the attendant came to serve us, the men and women on the back of the truck erupted in an angry tirade. It was bitterness of a kind I'd never experienced before anywhere in Africa. We quickly drove away to another petrol station across the road. With the car filled we prepared to drive away. But the engine wouldn't start. We tried. And tried again. Nothing but a dry asthmatic wheeze from under the bonnet. Marie conjured up a driver willing to take us towards Karoi on the main road to Lake Kariba and the Zambian border. We passed once-thriving fields in which the weeds were starting to blossom; the withered stalks of maize plants trembled in the breeze, like strips of rags. In a few fields there were cattle, but Zimbabwe's herds are being slaughtered. The farmers have no intention of leaving them to the war veterans. Chris Shepard lives at the end of a long dirt road, in a large white house surrounded by flame-trees and poplars and with a huge baobab dominating the garden. His four youngsters, three girls and a boy all under 10, raced around the garden. Chris Shepard and his wife Elle have been given until 10 August to vacate their farm. When they go, the 146 people working on the farm will lose their jobs. More than 100 have already been let go - that thanks to more than five invasions by so-called war veterans intent on stopping agricultural production. Chris Shepard told me he was determined to stay on. Yet his wife Elle admits that there are moments when the fear about what might happen is heart-stopping.
Eleven farmers have already been murdered. The police are either complicit in the terror or refuse to impose the law; more often than not it is a combination of both. I ask you to try to imagine what it is like to live on those farms, to be awake at night when your children have fallen asleep and to listen for every noise in the darkness outside. How it feels when the dogs begin to bark, when a car drives up to the gate and then turns away, the lights playing across the windows at the front of the house. And nobody to call to for help. Or try to imagine what it is like to be among the poorest of the poor and to wake in the middle of the night to find the war veterans smashing through the door. To be a woman like Christine whom I met at a camp in the bush for displaced persons: that term "displaced" - so civilised, so clean a word for the terror imposed by Robert Mugabe's thugs. She is the mother of a three-month-old baby and with her husband she lives in a tent donated by a local aid agency. There is little food or medical help; children in the rest of the camp have been sick with diarrhoea and chest infections. Christine was gang-raped by members of Robert Mugabe's militia. She lived with her husband on a farm and she was seized when the militia came shortly after the presidential elections. Seven men took turns to rape the young mother. In the course of the ordeal she fainted. When she woke the rapists had gone but she was unable to find her child. Eventually some neighbours located the baby and brought it to her; bruised and bleeding the young mother held her infant close.
An isolated case? Not at all. If you can't personally listen to the testimonies of the victims, read the reports of human rights groups. The terror is widespread and escalating. Yet the man who is ultimately responsible, Robert Mugabe, is still free to travel to international conferences. Indeed he recently spoke about children's rights at major event organised by the United Nations. He was an honoured guest at the inaugural meeting of the African Union in Durban earlier this week. There is no political will - in Africa, or Europe or America to put Zimbabwe at the top of the agenda. The western political establishment sighs and feels it has done its best. The Africans refuse every opportunity to show Mr Mugabe that his kind of government has no place in the reborn continent of which South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki, repeatedly speaks.
There is wind and waffle but Robert Mugabe, the toughest and shrewdest African leader of his generation, knows he is winning. For now at least. But there will come a point - it comes in the life of every tyranny - when the people will lose their fear. Hungry, desperate and angry, they will no longer bow down in the face of the guns and the secret policemen. It happened in South Africa when the students revolted in 1976 and began the process which would destroy apartheid. How long will it take in Zimbabwe? I really don't know. I left the country with a feeling that I knew well from the old days in South Africa. Fear for the future. Real fear. For I believe the worst is yet to come. Standing safely in South Africa, and watching the dusk creep down over the Limpopo River I felt a surge of sadness: sadness for the people I'd met on the other side - the human rights activists in Harare, for Christine and her child, for the labourers driven off the land, Chris Shepard and his family waiting to lose everything. As the Afrikaner writer Andre Brink wrote in 1976, the struggle against oppression was "not a question of imagination but of faith". For Zimbabweans - all of them, black and white - it is such a long journey ahead. Not a question of imagination, but of faith.
The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent
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Comment from The Zimbabwe Standard, 14 July
Trouble brewing as beer runs out
Life in at least one troubled central African country is set to take a turn for the worse as beer runs dry in the taps that oil the nation. It is thought that the shortages could lead to massive civil unrest and topple the precarious government of the most equal of all comrades. While western analysts dismissed the impending shortage as irrelevant, given the scarcity of other foodstuffs, experts in the troubled central African country pointed out that beer is in fact the staple diet of the entire adult male population - and even a good number of the female population. A noted dietician lamented that it was indeed true that citizens of the troubled central African nation survived, against all odds, on a diet consisting solely of alcohol. "Beer is certainly their favourite," said the dietician, one of the troubled central African country's leading health fascists, "but frankly they'll drink anything that makes them fall down and laugh a lot."
Still, sources close to the most equal of all comrades said His Socialist Holiness The Great Untouchable was not troubled by a possible shortage of beer. A teetotaller given to remarking that "beer is the opiate of the people", the most equal of all comrades is reported to have said, "Let them drink Perrier." The comment caused much excitability and agitation among the beer drinking population, estimated at about 99% of people over the age of 15. "This is just the sort of arrogance we've come to expect from the most equal of all comrades," said one drinker. "It is a scientific fact that all teetotallers are mentally unbalanced, so do not be surprised if he sits back in his palace sipping water while the rest of us die horribly of thirst."
Meanwhile analysts predict that the very social fabric of the troubled central African country could well tear apart as the effects of running on dry begin to take hold. A spokesman for an under-funded and totally obscure road safety organisation predicted carnage on the road when for the first time in history hundreds of thousands of sober drivers take to the streets. He said there would be mayhem when drivers realised that the roads were not only narrower, but also had far fewer lanes than they'd believed, something that could well lead to mass panic. Either that, he said, or there'll be no traffic at all because we'll all be drinking the petrol.
Traffic aside, citizens of the troubled central African country said that while other shortages, including maize meal, were serious enough, most people had lived through them before, largely as a result of four decades of inept government. What they had not experienced before, and had no desire to experience, was a shortage of beer. "This will be the first time in history that beer has been in short supply," said one hysterical citizen. "If this so-called government was even half responsible, it would immediately divert all maize stocks to the beer factories in order to avoid a massive crisis." Confirming the angry citizen's feelings, a poll conducted in a well-known drinking spot in the troubled central African nation's capital city confirmed that 99% of the people will resort to violent mass action if deprived of beer. "There is nothing else left open to us," they claimed. "If ever sanity is to be restored to this country, we need to take action in the name of the More Drink Coming party and put an end to the tyranny of teetotalitarianism.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 14 July
Moyo defies superiors
Junior minister of state for information and publicity, Jonathan Moyo, has rebuffed attempts by senior Zanu PF officials to have businessman, James Makamba's Joy TV brought back on air, The Standard has learnt. Despite heavy lobbying by senior ruling party officials who were asking for the licensing of Joy TV, Moyo last week shrugged off the mounting pressure from his party superiors. Although party officials told The Standard that they would continue pressurising Moyo, they agreed the junior minister had so far remained unmoved by the lobby. The lobby, understood to have already been sanctioned by the party's highest decision making organ, the politburo, included vice president, Joseph Msika, among other party members.
Ruling party officials on the forefront of the lobby to bring back the television station confirmed to The Standard last week, that their efforts were hitting a brick wall. Other senior officials named in the bid to have Joy TV brought back are Zanu PF deputy secretary for the commissariat, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, Mashonaland Central bigwigs, Elliot Manyika, who is also the party's political commissar and deputy secretary for youth, businessman Saviour Kasukuwere. "We are not getting anywhere really. We were hoping that Makamba as an indigenous businessman would be given a licence to operate his business but it appears there are some people with other agendas. The minister does appear to be very strong in his resistance," said a ruling party official lobbying for Makamba. "I don't see the station coming back. If the man (Moyo) can defy the party's supremos, who else do you think will force him to act. I also think there is little chance that Makamba will even get the licence but we are surprised because really we didn't think it would be such a serious issue. We didn't anticipate any problems for Makamba to be granted a licence. After all he is even a member of the party," said another party official.
Joy TV, which was leasing air time from ZBC-TV 2 channel, was switched off air in May. Moyo used the newly enacted Broadcasting Act which does not allow a television station to lease air time to another station. The Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe, which is empowered to licence broadcasting operations, has so far failed to licence a single operation despite a number of enterprises applying for licences. Under the Broadcasting Services Act, only one broadcaster besides ZBC would be licensed to transmit nationally and there was belief that Moyo wanted to give his New Ziana project that licence. It has however, emerged that the project might not even kick off owing to lack of funding. Treasury, it is understood, has refused to release funds for the project, which they think is extravagant.
Joy TV, broadcasting within Harare and surrounding areas, had become a favourite with viewers who saw the station as a relief from the hourly propaganda bombarded by ZBC-TV. The station also became popular through its programme, Makamba at Night, a one on one programme which brought in various political, business, sports and other personalities on television. It is believed it was this programme that precipitated the station's brush with Moyo as it gave a number of MDC officials and other government critics a chance to air their views and attack government policies. Despite the lobby getting the nod from the politburo, Moyo has remained steadfast that the calls for Joy TV to be switched on were uncalled for. If Moyo refuses to give in to pressure and refuses to grant Makamba licence, the businessman and other local investors stand to lose millions of dollars they had poured into the project. Makamba could not be reached for comment yesterday but has been referring questions pertaining to the licensing of his station to Moyo.
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From BBC News, 15 July
Zimbabwe acquits US journalist
A Zimbabwe court has acquitted Andrew Meldrum, an American journalist working for the UK's Guardian newspaper, in a test case for the country's controversial new media laws. He had been accused of publishing falsehoods. However, immigration officials on Monday ordered him to leave the country within 24 hours. He has lived in the country for 21 years and is a permanent resident. A dozen other journalists have also been charged with offences relating to the new laws, which Andrew Meldrum's lawyer described as "absurd" in a closing speech. Mr Meldrum was charged with publishing a story which later turned out to be untrue, now seen by the state as a crime punishable by up to two years in prison. The magistrate adjourned the trial for more than three weeks after the defence argued that as the story was published in Britain, in the Guardian newspaper, it was beyond the jurisdiction of Zimbabwean law and so all charges should be dropped. This was dismissed on Friday and the defence had to conclude its case. In closing statements, Mr Meldrum's lawyer said the new laws were absurd - a view shared by many journalists working in Zimbabwe. A dozen have also been charged with various offences under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 14 July
Political violence hits Masvingo
Masvingo - A wave of politically-motivated violence is sweeping across Masvingo province as marauding Zanu PF youths and war veterans continue to unleash a reign of terror on hapless teachers they accuse of having supported the opposition MDC during the run up to the March presidential election. First, Mapanzure Government School was forced to close last week after Zanu PF youths beat up the teachers there, then it was the turn of Chitsa Government Secondary in Gutu and Mutonhori Primary in Zaka as ruling party agents continued their campaign to silence perceived opposition MDC supporters in the rural areas. Chitsa teachers and groundsmen fled the school two weeks ago after being thoroughly beaten up by suspected Zanu PF youths. By Friday, some of the teachers had not yet returned to the school and officials of the ministry of education, sport and culture were investigating the reason for the unprovoked attacks on teachers.
Contacted for comment, Masvingo regional education director, Obert Mujuru, expressed dismay at the Mapanzure incident but was unable to confirm the Chitsa incident. "We don't need politics to get into schools and disturb the law abiding professionals. Teachers should be allowed to execute their professional duties without fear of rampaging youths," said Mujuru. Police have since arrested eight Zanu PF youths for the orgy of violence which occurred at Mapanzure. Some of the youths appeared in court on Thursday. Masvingo was the province where violence was most prevalent during the run up to the presidential and parliamentary elections with the majority of the perpetrators of violence being members of the ruling Zanu PF and their war veteran supporters.
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From The Globe and Mail (Canada), 15 July
Departing federal official left unaware of key details
Episode points to lack of scrutiny, follow-up in Foreign Affairs intelligence, critics say
A senior Foreign Affairs official who left the government to join a firm run by a pair of Montreal consultants says he made the switch without knowing crucial details about his new employers' controversial pasts -- despite having been part of intelligence-gathering interviews involving them over a two-year period. Just how well Foreign Affairs gathers, scrutinizes, and follows up on the information it collects are among the questions raised by Herb Fraser's 1999 decision to work for Ari Ben-Menashe and Alexandre Legault. The Montreal political consultancy run by the two men came into sharp focus early this year after Zimbabwe's Opposition Leader was charged with treason on the basis of information they supplied. They later went to work for his archrival, President Robert Mugabe. "I'll underscore that I had nothing to do with Zimbabwe," Mr. Fraser said in an interview this week, explaining that he worked for one year alongside the two men as a researcher, speechwriter and political adviser.
For a time, the presence of a retired senior Canadian official lent cachet to the consultancy that has produced a series of made-in-Canada controversies. The Zimbabwe incident is just the latest episode. Mr. Ben-Menashe and Mr. Legault separately came to Canada as immigrants after encountering legal troubles abroad. About a decade ago, they teamed up and incorporated Montreal companies called Carlington Sales Co. and Dickens & Madson. Over the years, many complaints have stemmed from Carlington Sales byzantine international business dealings, mostly involving contracts to ship millions of dollars worth of bulk food. The consultants once estimated they have done more than $50-million in business. But since 1994, government records show, people from Armenia to Zambia have complained to Canadian trade officials about getting bilked in such food deals. Several such complaints resulted in lawsuits.
In 1996, one Canadian trade commissioner abroad advised all of his colleagues to use "extreme caution with Carlington," alleging the company "did very serious damage to the commercial relationship between Estonia and Canada by what could only be termed unethical conduct." But the federal government never made such information public. By 1997, Mr. Fraser had about 30 years experience in Foreign Affairs, where he was a top intelligence official. Meanwhile, Mr. Ben-Menashe, a charismatic speaker with a knack for dropping names and asserting scintillating knowledge of top secrets, was globetrotting to places such as Britain, Southeast Asia, and Africa. The two men met through the intelligence-gathering program. Not greatly resourced for global excursions, bureaucrats in the department routinely invite Canadians who travel extensively to stop by for unpaid chats.
Following these meetings, in 1999, Mr. Fraser left government to join Carlington Sales. He was promised more pay by Mr. Ben-Menashe than he was making in the ministry. Before leaving, he was reminded by Ottawa that the Official Secrets Act prohibited him from divulging sensitive government information. "I was what you would call a political adviser," Mr. Fraser said. The work consisted of "writing speeches for ministers in certain governments," such as in Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union, he added. Asked whether he was aware of food-deal problems while working at Carlington Sales, Mr. Fraser said, "No, I was not involved in the commodities side at all." He then pointed out that the allegations made in the various complaints remain unproven.
Like several others who have worked for Mr. Legault and Mr. Ben-Menashe, Mr. Fraser had a falling out over money and left the company a year after joining. But during the time he spent at Carlington Sales he lent credibility to the firm. Mr. Ben-Menashe would introduce Mr. Fraser as a former senior Canadian government officer. Some government trade officials familiar with Carlington Sales disputes say that department does a poor job of sharing information. "The information was there, but it wasn't something everybody would necessarily be aware of," a Canadian official who encountered a trade controversy while working overseas, said in an interview. "There was very little follow-up." And this is a real problem, critics say.
"I think that shows an appalling lack of co-ordination within the department and speaks to gross inefficiencies that could be quite dangerous for the country," said Canadian Alliance MP Keith Martin. "I'd like to see the Department of Foreign Affairs take a cold, pragmatic look at the Ben Menashe-Legault scenario," he said, adding Ottawa has treated the two men with "kid gloves." The former intelligence officer, who has not rejoined government, does not consider his stint at Carlington Sales the stuff of scandal. "Quite frankly, it is really a non-story here," he said. But the government may have thought differently. Newly released public documents show bureaucrats gave each others heads-up warnings about the imminent release of the files involving Mr. Fraser, and anticipated media questions before they were asked.
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From The Times (UK), 12 July
Mother of courage cares for dying as famine boosts Aids
There is no sugar in Chishawasha any more, so Anastasia Muringayi cannot get the tough plastic bags it comes in to protect her hands from the faeces, urine, vomit and blood of her bedridden neighbours. When the sugar bags ran out, she used the soft, fragile bags in which bread is sold, but they, too, have become rare in this part of Zimbabwe, only 20 miles from Harare. Mrs Muringayi, having watched eight close members of her family die, has become an Aids carer, working with the Roman Catholic Church’s Silveira mission. Exposure to body fluids contaminated with HIV is one of the little-considered side-effects of Zimbabwe’s food shortages. On Wednesday the mission issued hygiene packs for its community-based Aids programme. They contained two pairs of disposable gloves, which can be used only once. Mrs Muringayi probably would not have to worry about looking after Roger and Everine in their little brick and thatched huts near by if food were available. They fell sick when maizemeal and cooking oil ran short two months ago.
Nearly six million people in Zimbabwe, almost half the population, now need emergency food rations, according to the United Nations Relief and Recovery Unit’s latest bulletin, issued this week. Simultaneously, UNAids’s Barcelona report on global Aids this week estimated that 34 per cent of Zimbabweans between the ages of 15 and 49 are infected with the virus. Aids and famine were made for each other. Lack of nutrition lowers the body’s resistance, and the virus is let loose to ravage the infected person. The virus’s spread is accelerated as the hungry sell themselves for a meal. When breadwinners die, their infant orphans and elderly relations have not much more to expect than starvation. On the scale of numbers affected in Zimbabwe now, the combination is apocalyptic.
"This is a nightmare scenario," said John English, emergencies officer for the British Red Cross, which is helping the Zimbabwe Red Cross to distribute food and medicines. "People are already hungry, all over the country. Most people are eating one meal a day, but some are going four days without eating. "This crisis cannot be addressed without looking at the HIV pandemic," Mr English said. "The figure is one in three adults, and that means every family in the country is affected by the disease. Add to that food shortages, lack of drugs, decrease in hygiene standards and you are looking at a massive, massive human catastrophe. It has the potential of being on a much bigger scale than East Africa and Ethiopia in the mid-Eighties."
It was only half way through her family’s deaths, starting with her husband in 1993, that Mrs Muringayi, 44, learnt the importance of the rigid hygiene needed to prevent infection. A year ago, after the last death, she suffered "burn-out", the acute depression common to the survivors of families devastated by Aids. "I was afraid, I was always asking, is it me next to die?" she said. Counselling by volunteers from Silveira’s home-based care programme, run by the Church’s Silveira mission, helped her through. Now she bustles about her spotless yard with dogged cheeriness. She has been left in charge of two orphans and three of her own children, two of whom are working. She used to earn pin money selling tie-dyed cloth, but 122 per cent inflation has taken the cost of dyes well out of reach.
Her eight cattle have gone, one slaughtered with each funeral to feed the crowd of mourners. The only source of income is her small garden of yellowing tomatoes and rape plants, which she sells in the village. Her own well has dried up and she collects water with a five-gallon bucket on her head from the nearest pump, 500 yards away. Assistance from President Mugabe ’s Government is sporadic, and predicted to disappear as the economic disaster runs out of control. The bag of government maizemeal delivered two weeks ago ran out on Tuesday night. "The load is too heavy," Mrs Muringayi said. "There is almost no one else left. At least no one else is sick." Not quite. Mrs Muringayi had not been well lately, Anselm Tapfumaneyi, Silveira’ s Aids programme officer, said. She had rashes and lesions. She is still muscular, but is not the heavily built woman she was. "She knows she is HIV-positive."
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 14 July
Bankers pass the buck to government
Bankers in Zimbabwe, shrugging off accusations that they are withholding foreign currency, have said the Zanu PF government is squarely to blame for the forex crisis plaguing the country. Trust Bank chief executive, William Nyemba, said government had thrown out suggestions from the business community into "dustbins" resulting in the current economic mess engulfing the country. "Much of business' contribution has been ignored for too long by government. We have presented our solutions as the business community but they have been ignored and government has refused to implement them," said Nyemba. He said bankers' proposals and recommendations presented to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) for the past two years were not taken seriously. Only two weeks ago, government flatly told the RBZ that there would be no devaluation in the foreseeable future and rapped the banks and bureaux de change for fuelling the black market. "We have for the past two years been telling them to devalue the currency. They have not done so and they are now trying to find a scapegoat without zeroing on the real problems. Banks and bureaux de change do not manufacture forex. What causes the push in exchange rate is not banks or bureau de changes, but the seller," said Nyemba.
Government has been closing down bureau de changes and arresting dealers who trade on the black market in a bid to restore sanity to the forex crisis in major towns. Zimbabwe's exports have nose-dived for the last two years in response to government's seizure of white owned commercial farms and the rating of the country as a risk destination for investment. Jefta Mugweni, the group chief executive officer for Century Holdings Limited, attributed the forex crisis to the deteriorating economy. "It is not the banks, but it is a distortion in the overall economic situation in the country," said Mugweni. As remedy to the mess, Mugweni said there was need to look deeper into the export incentives and to reprice the local currency. "The only solution to solving the crisis is to promote exports which will generate foreign currency into the official economy complemented with the correct pricing of Zimbabwe dollar vis-a-vis other currencies. With the correct price the forex inflows would naturally come through official channels," Mugweni said. Royal Bank chief executive, Jeffrey Mzwimbi, concurred with his colleagues saying what needs to be addressed is the supply of foreign currency. "It is easy to blame banks because they are in financial mediation. Banks don't create foreign currency. The issue that needs to be addressed is the availability of foreign currency," Mzwimbi said.
In their financial results released in December, nearly all banks rapped government's monetary and fiscal policies and pleaded for the immediate restoration of economic fundamentals. Nesbert Tinarwo, the chairman of the bureaux de change also denied government's accusations. "Bureaux de change have been soft targets. They are just caught in between. When there is little supply of foreign currency people hold on to the currency and dictate the price. They come to us on a take it or leave it basis," said Tinarwo. He laid the blame on government officials whom he said brought the foreign currency from their overseas trips. "Those who have the forex have the greater say. High officials who seem to be talking much are the ones who go out on foreign trips where they get foreign currency and they neither go to the banks nor bureaux de change. Instead they go directly to exporters, importers or other sources."
Tinarwo said his members were closing down after failing to raise the minimum deposits required by the RBZ and called on government to address the generation of exports which bring in foreign currency. "By trying to crush bureaux they are only trying to address the symptoms. The actual problem has to do with the supply side and government must address the fundamental issues." Like Nyemba, Tinarwo said his organisation's suggestions on devaluation to the ministry of finance and economic planning were not considered. "Devaluation would make the official exchange rate palatable. $55 to the US dollar is not anywhere nearer to what is realistic," he said. In sharp contrast to the official rate pegged at $55 to one US dollar, the greenback is fetching as much as $600 on the vibrant black market, down from $800 a fortnight ago.
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From The Independent (UK), 16 July
Zimbabwe reporter is acquitted and ordered to leave
Andrew Meldrum, the Guardian's Zimbabwe correspondent, was ordered to leave the country yesterday barely five minutes after being acquitted of publishing falsehoods under a |
