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Archived News
19th February 2002
Volunteer Election Monitor report
EU stands firm as Mugabe blocks election monitor
EU observers await Zimbabwe fate
Suspected war veterans vandalise MDC offices
Mugabe backlash fear over misleading report
UZ student killed by the police, court told
Zimbabwe-EU showdown looms
Sir Garfield Todd loses right to vote
MDC's Tsvangirai detained
A tale of two rallies: Peta Thornycroft, on the campaign trail, catches a glimpse of what Zimbabwe might become
The truth about my arrest. And the slurs that followed
Zimbabwe hints at compromise over EU observers
Zanu PF unleashes militia on Byo
Zimbabwe plot video 'a smear'
Fair Zimbabwe vote key to Africa's recovery plan: South Africa
Thumbs up for Tsvangirai in critical Midlands
Zimbabwe backs away from EU confrontation
'Murder plot' charges likely for Tsvangirai
War vets wreak havoc in Bulawayo
SA refutes Herald story
'Independent' reporter forced to flee Zimbabwe after smear campaign
Zimbabwe songs struggle to be heard
Regime a step closer to triggering sanctions
Cops hold 12 in Harare demo
ESC warns monitors not to talk
5 village headmen allegedly abducted
Tsvangirai statement
Is that it?
Mugabe throws out EU observer
Bulawayo clergy arrested
MDC convoy attacked
Zanu PF intensifies onslaught on MDC
UN slams Zim land reform
Thousands left starving by Mugabe land grabs
EU hits Mugabe with sanctions
Zimbabwe officials on sanctions list
SA says Zim sanctions are 'regrettable'
Battlefield Harare as Mugabe's men run riot
Bulawayo arrests
Spirit medium murdered
Share rises hint at Mugabe defeat
Zimbabwe forgotten
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From The Times (UK), 12 February
EU stands firm as Mugabe blocks election monitor
Harare - Pierre Schori, head of the European Union observer mission to Zimbabwe's already bloody election campaign, failed to get his accreditation yesterday amid new incidents of violence. "We are in contact with the Government," Stefan Amer, his spokesman, said. "However, our mission has to be accepted as it is. We won't negotiate that." The spokesman indicated that the EU may be preparing to carry out its observer mission with or without the regime's support. "We are pursuing our task," Mr Amer said. "Nearly 40 observers are coming in tomorrow. We will train them and then send them out into the field." There was no deadline to the talks, he said, which were expected to be concluded in a few days. As a Swede, Mr Schori falls foul of the Zimbabwe Foreign Ministry's insistence that observers from Sweden, Britain, Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands will not be welcome. He is understood to have told the Zimbabweans that he will accept no conditions on his mission. Observers say that Mr Schori's determination to press ahead has left President Mugabe's regime with the option of trying to stop them by force and plunging itself into even worse international isolation.
In the past month at least 19 people have been killed in political violence, all but three of them supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Early yesterday, hours before Mr Schori arrived, the offices in the western city of Bulawayo of the Daily News, the country's only independent newspaper, and a printing company that has done work for the MDC were firebombed. Little damage was done in the 3am attacks, as the flames failed to spread beyond the on-street windows of the two offices. Innocent Kurwa, acting-general manager of the newspaper, said: "It's not the damage, it's the act in itself that is frightening." The bombing came after an incident last week in which the front window of the newspaper building was plastered with campaign posters of President Mugabe brandishing his fist, his ruling Zanu (PF) party's salute. As workers were peeling off the posters, a group of youths arrived and warned the workers if they continued to clean the window "we will burn down your offices".
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From BBC News, 12 February
EU observers await Zimbabwe fate
A team of 30 election observers from the European Union is due in Zimbabwe on Tuesday, but it is still not clear if they will have a role to play. The Zimbabwean Foreign Minister, Stan Mudenge, has said there was no invitation to the EU; nine European countries had been told they could come to observe the presidential election next month, but only in an individual capacity. Mr Mudenge said they would have to join an observer mission led by developing countries. President Robert Mugabe has allowed EU officials to monitor the poll, but objected to representatives from six EU states, which have strongly criticised the seizure of white-owned farmland by his supporters.
The head of the EU delegation in Zimbabwe, Pierre Schori of Sweden, said he had not been told whether he would be given accreditation, but he intended to start training observers this week. The EU is to deploy 150 observers for the vote. Its commission has recommended that sanctions be imposed by Wednesday if Harare continues to block certain states from joining the observers' team. If implemented, the sanctions would include a travel ban on Mr Mugabe, his family and close associates, a freeze on any assets they might hold in EU member states, and a suspension of long-tem development aid. The EU members have also said they will impose those sanctions if they believe that the voting has not been free and fair, or if media coverage of it is restricted.
Human rights groups have warned of a "climate of fear and terror" in the run-up to the March elections, when President Robert Mugabe is expected to face his toughest challenge in 22 years of power. Earlier on Monday two petrol bombs were hurled into the offices of Zimbabwe's main independent daily newspaper, The Daily News, in the second city of Bulawayo. Two petrol bombs were also thrown at the offices of a nearby private printing house, Daily Print, which has been handling campaign material for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. A Daily News journalist told Reuters news agency that nobody was injured and very little equipment damaged.
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From The Daily News, 12 February
Suspected war veterans vandalise MDC offices
Mutare - About 50 suspected war veterans and 15 Zanu PF youths last Thursday raided the MDC offices in Buhera North, vandalised the premises and stole property worth more than $500 000. The stolen property includes two voters’ rolls worth $200 000, 10 000 MDC membership cards worth $100 000 and 1 000 T-shirts valued at $200 000. Pishayi Muchauraya, the MDC spokesman for Manicaland, said the incident took place at around 7am. He said: "I reported the case to Muyambo, the officer-in-charge at Murambinda Police Station, but he said he would only attend to the case after President Mugabe’s campaign rallies in Manicaland." A policeman, who declined to be named, confirmed the incident. He said: "We are under strict instructions from our bosses not to attend to MDC reports. That’s why you see we do not give them CR (crime report) numbers anymore. We have no choice but to turn a blind eye." Muchauraya said a war veteran allegedly defecated on an office typewriter, before using the human excrement to inscribe "Vote Zanu PF" on the wall. Meanwhile, Wilbert Marindire, 27, the MDC district secretary for Buhera North, has gone into hiding after alleged harassment by the police and soldiers patrolling the constituency. Muchauraya said Marindire was told to leave the area if he valued his life. "The last I heard of him was when he spoke to me over the phone from Chivhu, saying he had been dumped there by a group of soldiers. He said the soldiers told him never to return to Buhera North," said Muchauraya.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 12 February
Mugabe backlash fear over misleading report
Harare/London - Fears were raised yesterday that Zimbabwe's regime could seek to step up its curbs on the media after it emerged that the Independent's Harare correspondent wrote a misleading story about his treatment by the police. The Media Institute of Southern Africa, a journalists' lobby group, accused Basildon Peta, 30, of "giving grounds" for "further repression" after he filed a detailed account of being held overnight in police cells last week. It has emerged that he was allowed to leave custody and go home for four hours. But Mr Peta, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, said his story was carefully worded to protect his sources. Leonard Doyle, the foreign editor of the Independent, pointed out that Mr Peta was detained for 19 hours and said the paper stood by his story.
Mr Peta helped to organise a peaceful demonstration outside the Harare parliament against the passage of President Mugabe's draconian media law on Jan 30. Police subsequently raided his house, conducted an illegal search and indicated that they would charge him for organising an illegal gathering. He went voluntarily to Harare central police station last Monday, accompanied by his lawyer, and was formally charged. What followed was described by Mr Peta in the Independent last Wednesday beneath the headline "My ordeal as Mugabe's prisoner". He wrote: "I knew then I was in for a long night. The tiny cell I was being dumped in was next to a stinking blocked toilet, whose flushing system seem to have failed over a decade ago . . . the floors and walls of my cell were filthy . . . I was given a few broken planks of wood on which to spend the night."
The Independent said yesterday Mr Peta was held from 4pm until 11pm and then was allowed to return to his home in Harare in order to take medicine. He returned to the police station four hours later, at 3am last Tuesday, and was held until about noon. Charges were then dropped and he was released. He was not held in a cell, but in a spartan office, beside a blocked lavatory. A MISA statement said: "Peta did not sleep in police cells . . . In our struggle, it is of utter importance that we remain truthful and faithful so that we do not open ourselves to unnecessary criticism and give grounds and justification for further repression." Mr Peta said he was unable to write about the four-hour break without endangering sympathetic individuals who had allowed him to go home and take his medicine. He pointed out that the MISA statement, which said he was held from 2pm until 7pm, was "completely inaccurate". Mr Peta added: "They have not spoken to me to get my side of the story and they have failed to get their own facts right."
Prof Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe's information minister, has singled out Mr Peta for vilification. He has endured almost two years of harassment, more than any other journalist. Mr Doyle defended his correspondent and said the disclosure of Mr Peta's four-hour break did not call into question his story about a "long night" in the cells. "This is a persecuted journalist, whose house has been trashed and whose only crime is to be a journalist," said Mr Doyle."He was illegally detained for 19 hours. He was unable to publicise the fact that he went home for four hours at the time in order to protect his sources, which is something journalists are entitled to do.`" Mr Mugabe has accused journalists working for the British press of seeking to overthrow his regime. Prof Moyo loses no opportunity to accuse independent journalists of "unprofessional" and "unethical" conduct.
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From The Daily News, 12 February
UZ student killed by the police, court told
A University of Zimbabwe (UZ) security officer yesterday confessed he lied to his boss to protect the policeman who assaulted Batanai Hadzizi, a student killed in unclear circumstances during violent demonstrations at the Harare campus. Godfrey Macheka was testifying yesterday at the hearing of the inquest into the death of Hadzizi which opened at the Harare Magistrates Courts. Hadzizi, a first-year Bachelor of Science student, died in unclear circumstances when the riot police were deployed to the campus to quell the demonstration on 9 April last year. He was 20.
Macheka said he was present when a police officer beat up Hadzizi with a truncheon and left him for dead. Testifying before Wilbert Mandinde, the magistrate, he said: "I was asked by Mr Tarambiwa, my immediate boss, to explain what had happened to the student and my answer was that he was trampled on during a stampede. Why I said that is because I did not think that anything serious was going to happen to him, so I was trying to cover up for my fellows - the police officers." Jacob Mafume, of Kantor and Immerman, and Tonderai Bhatasara, of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, represented the UZ students. Prosecutor Alvis Chimwaradze led the witnesses’ evidence at the hearing, attended by members of the UZ Students’ Representative Council.
Macheka said he followed police officers driving a group of students into a room. "When I got into the room, I remember I saw four or five students. One of them was sitting on the floor and was being beaten by a police officer with a truncheon. I heard one of the police officers shouting: 'Mavhiza, usadaro.' (Mavhiza, don’t do that.)" Macheka showed the court a scar on his right elbow which he said was from a cut he sustained while trying to restrain the officer. He said the policemen later dragged the other students out of the room and left Hadzizi lying on the floor, panting for breath. "I heard him producing this strange sound and tried to administer first aid, but it did not help," Macheka said. Hadzizi was pronounced dead on arrival at Parirenyatwa Hospital. A post-mortem gave the cause of death as "asphyxia due to bilateral lung contusions and rib-cage soft tissue injuries caused by blunt force".
Macheka said he was called from home after students looted a supermarket at the campus but when he arrived, the disturbances had subsided. He said he gave them "specific instructions" not to beat up or fire teargas canisters as the students were already dispersing on their own. He said the riot police later arrived on the campus to augment the UZ security staff. Macheka said he had noticed that there were "overzealous" policemen in the group who were itching to beat up the students. The inquest continues today.
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From Business Day (SA), 13 February
Zimbabwe-EU showdown looms
Zimbabwe edged closer to a final showdown with the European Union (EU) over election observers yesterday as the head of the EU observer team remained stuck in a diplomatic stand-off with the government. Contacts in Harare between senior EU envoys and Zimbabwe's foreign ministry failed to break a deadlock over the leadership of the European team, whose mission is to help ensure the March 9-10 presidential polls are free and fair. SA's multi-sectoral observer mission to Zimbabwe said ahead of its departure that it would not "put any pressure" on Zimbabwe if it refused to allow the foreign media and EU representatives to observe the election. But mission leader Sam Motsuenyane promised they would "discuss" with Zimbabwean authorities all "issues needing improvement" and directly affecting the way the election could be perceived.
The dispute over the composition of the EU team reached a head on Monday when the Zimbabwe government rejected Swedish diplomat Pierre Schori as its head. "What we are trying to do is clarify the situation. We don't have an official word from the government," Schori's spokesman, Stefan Amer, said yesterday. President Robert Mugabe had already banned any citizens of former colonial power Britain from the EU team, which will eventually number about 150. This week it emerged that Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge had pointedly failed to invite representatives from five other members of the 15-nation EU Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. Most of them are known in Africa as generous aid donors but all have strongly criticised Mugabe's rule over issues such as human rights and the seizure of white-owned farmland. European Commission spokeswoman Emma Udwin said in Brussels: "We are now looking for written clarification (of Mudenge's remarks) that we hope to get today."
SA's 50-member team, now to be joined by a special two-member judicial observer mission comprising judges Dikgang Moseneke and Sisi Kampepe, was appointed by President Thabo Mbeki on the invitation of Mugabe. Most of the members are to be paid for by their respective organisations, mainly business, religious and labour organisations. Those who could not afford the cost of the trip would be paid for by government from the African Renaissance and International Co-operation Fund, a slush fund that was used during apartheid to prop up neighbouring countries loyal to the apartheid regime, but which is now used for the promotion of peace and democracy in Africa. The foreign affairs department's southern Africa chief director, Pandelani Mathoma, denied that European countries or any outside party was helping fund the mission, insisting it was "an all-SA affair". The first batch of 13 observers leaves today. Motsuenyane said their immediate task was to see whether "proper conditions exist" for Zimbabwe to hold a substantially free and fair election.
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From The Daily News, 13 February
Sir Garfield Todd loses right to vote
Bulawayo - Sir Garfield Todd, the former Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia and one of the few white people recognised by President Mugabe’s government as a champion of the black people’s fight against racism during the liberation struggle, has been denied the vote in the forthcoming presidential election. Sir Garfield, 93, yesterday vowed he would go to the polling station next month to claim his vote. He received a registered letter yesterday morning from the Ministry of Home Affairs’ provincial registry in Bulawayo, advising him that he had ceased to be a citizen of Zimbabwe. He is no longer qualified or entitled to be a registered voter in the Bulawayo South constituency. The letter, dated 5 February, gave Todd seven days in which to appeal or face being struck off the voters’ roll. Strangely, the letter arrived on the very day - 12 February - the deadline for an appeal expired.
Only last week, Sir Garfield and his late wife, Lady Grace, had three schools in Bulawayo and Matabeleland South renamed after them, as part of the government’s drive to get rid of colonial names. They were among a handful of white heroes honoured for their distinguished service to Zimbabwe. Sir Garfield was prime minister from 1953 to 1958, when he was defeated in an election largely confined to whites, because he was seen to be too sympathetic to the black people’s cause. He was detained by the Smith regime in 1965 and 1972, for his stand against the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) and the settlement proposals struck between the Smith regime and Britain in 1971, respectively. Sir Garfield later became a member of Joshua Nkomo’s PF Zapu delegation to the abortive 1976 Geneva Conference, which tried but failed to pave the way for majority rule.
Mugabe appointed him among the first senators in 1980 and he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1986. Yesterday Sir Garfield, who arrived in this country from New Zealand as a missionary in 1934, further lamented the loss of his right to travel. "As a former Senator of Zimbabwe, I travelled on a diplomatic passport which expired last April. A request to Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede to assist in its renewal has remained unanswered," he said, in a statement to The Daily News. "I am horrified by the destruction of our economy, the starving of our people, the undermining of our Constitution, the torture and humiliation of our nation by Zanu PF. Just as we stood with courage against the racism of the past, so today we must stand with courage against the terror of the present. Come what may, I will in March be going to the polling station to claim my right as a very senior citizen of Zimbabwe, to cast my ballot for good against evil."
Sir Garfield’s wife, Lady Grace, died in December last year and was buried at Dadaya Mission amid eulogies from top government officials, including the Minister of Education, Sports and Culture, Aeneas Chigwedere. Lady Grace was a renowned educationist, credited with introducing the Dadaya Education Scheme that greatly improved the quality of education for blacks during the colonial era. Their daughter, Judith Todd, was among the activists hounded by the Smith regime for their role in the liberation struggle. Yesterday, she said it was ironic that her father was the first former Prime Minister of a Commonwealth country to be detained and now he was going to be the first to be stripped of his citizenship.
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From News24 (SA), 12 February
MDC's Tsvangirai detained
Harare - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's secret police detained opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Tuesday night at Harare International Airport, searched his bags and accused him of travelling on a false passport, said officials with Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Party spokesperson Learnmore Jongwe said Tsvangirai was met by state agents after he landed on a flight from Johannesburg. The agents claimed he had left Zimbabwe without a passport and had returned with a false document. "He showed them his passport, and then they searched him," Jongwe said. He was held for about 20 minutes and allowed to return home, the spokesperson said, adding, "This is routine harassmentTop
From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 12 February
A tale of two rallies: Peta Thornycroft, on the campaign trail, catches a glimpse of what Zimbabwe might become
The choice in Zimbabwe’s presidential election is between more of the same - the old African order still wedded to the Cold War and last century’s hero, Kwame Nkrumah - or Africa’s first modern state. Among the green hills of Zimbabwe’s eastern border town of Mutare last Sunday there was a glimpse of what Zimbabwe might be. For a start, the 12 000 people at the stadium in Sakubva township for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) rally were attending of their own free will. Outside the stadium, street trade continued. No one felt pressured to stop selling their wares and listen to the MDC candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai. There were hardly any schoolchildren or people below voting age at the rally; no displays of marching youths as part of the pre-speech entertainment; and none of the women wore wraps bearing Tsvangirai’s image. There was no mud slinging. Not even against Tsvangirai’s opponent, President Robert Mugabe - seen as a relic of a bygone age who cost them their jobs and a middle-class life. Nor were there songs against the British, or imperialism - whatever that may mean in the minds of the peasants from whom Mugabe gets most of his support. Instead, the bulk of the town’s working or would-be working class sang about jobs and change.
Six policemen entered the stadium with a two-man crew from the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. They were perhaps nervous about entering what they saw as enemy territory, but they needn’t have worried. The MDC crowd was relaxed. There were no militias or police support units, and no members of the Zimbabwe National Army with cocked pistols. Whites - there were less than 10 in the crowd, including journalists - were part of the scene, unnoticed. Red-faced farmer and MDC MP Roy Bennett, who looks and sounds like a rugby player, was only slightly less popular than Tsvangirai. The liberation struggle was acknowledged by the crowd - most of whom were aged between 10 and 15 when it ended in 1979. They acknowledge it as an important part of their history. But that is what it is: history.
The MDC has proved what so many analysts had declared impossible. The party has overcome the tribalism and regionalism that has warped much of Zimbabwe’ s development, or lack of it, over the past 22 years. Tsvangirai is Shona, yet he is a hero among nearly all in Matabeleland province. He and the MDC rejected the manoeuvring for power of regional Shona groups, which has marked internal Zanu PF politics for decades. Tsvangirai is not anti-white or pro-white. The few thousand whites left in Zimbabwe are part of the scene, and they provide bakkies and petrol, the food and safe houses for the unknown number who have fled their homes in rural areas. Tsvangirai said the MDC would have an audit to find out what has happened in the chaotic land grab of the past two years, which has displaced more people than it has settled. He said troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo would be withdrawn, but that it would take time, considering the delicate peace process there. He said that neither the army nor the police would be purged, but that Zimbabwe urgently needed a new constitution.
Two days earlier at Mutawatawa, a village 160km north east of Harare, the atmosphere and the message was of a previous era. Colonialism had little impact here. It was never settled by whites and remains much as it was at the end of Rhodesia: a few dilapidated shops, a school, a clinic without drugs and masses of subsistence farmers. In 30 years the people have only heard one political message - firstly from the Zanla fighters, and then from Zanu PF. No opposition politician has ever ventured here. Mugabe’s message is the only one the people know. All the settlements within a 40km radius of the village were empty, everyone had gone to the Zanu PF rally. It was impossible to judge whether they had been forced or not.
It was an event for the people. Zimbabwe Airforce helicopters swept the skies, and Mugabe’s own craft took him to a clearing far from the crowd. There was pre-rally entertainment, a moving poem about land, a funny skit on white farmers, some awful dancing and endless hours of young men marching. A riot policeman armed with an AK-47 glared down at the children in the front, to the side an army sharpshooter cocked his pistol. The newly recruited militia in their greens and the police support unit in their blues patrolled the area. Marshalls conducted the singing - with songs about the liberation struggle, about Rhodesia and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Scores of civil servants, including officials from the Department of Information, were wearing Zanu-PF T- shirts. The air rang with the cries of imperialism and the perception of millions of former Rhodesians in Perth and beyond, packing to come home to recolonise Zimbabwe.
Mugabe repeated his mantras of the past two years. Blair and whites were responsible for the lack of development in the area, he said. He wagged his finger and warned that a vote for Tsvangirai meant a reborn Rhodesia. His wife Grace sat glumly behind, and the man in charge of the militias, Youth Minister Elliot Manyika, was dressed for the occasion in off-the-peg military fatigues. Zanu PF national chairperson John Nkomo was there, his pleasant, familiar face belying what he had been telling Parliament the week before, that the new Public Order and Security Act was a piece of legislation necessary in all democracies. The crowd was well-behaved, tolerant of four whites among the press, and dutiful. They repeatedly sang a haunting refrain about voting, and used their arms to show how to make a cross. The rally in Mutawatawa reflected the past, and if it wasn’t so menacing because so many are dying, injured or displaced by Mugabe’s various militias, it could have been written off as the most boring event since the last Zanu-PF rally.
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From The Independent (UK), 13 February
The truth about my arrest. And the slurs that followed
By Basildon Peta in Harare
The last thing I expected in my fight for press freedom in Zimbabwe was to trigger a media meltdown in London that would hand ammunition to the Harare government for its persecution of independent journalists. Page one of yesterday's Times made the astonishing assertion that I had admitted to its journalist fabricating a report in The Independent about my arrest and incarceration in Harare Central police station last week. Later editions of The Times dropped the claim that I had admitted lying and settled instead for "exaggeration". The interview I gave its journalist supports neither allegation. But by yesterday morning Zimbabwe was alive with reports that I had admitted lying to the once-venerable Times. This is simply not true.
The facts are straightforward. After my house was ransacked by the police while I was away in Johannesburg, I turned myself in at Harare Central police station last week with my lawyer. I was put under arrest at 4pm on Monday 4 February. I was dumped in a filthy room near a blocked toilet, which emitted a foul and suffocating stench. I had a few broken planks to rest on. The psychological stress I was under inflamed the severe stomach ulcers from which I have been suffering and at about 11pm, after lengthy discussion, I persuaded the detectives assigned to my case to take me home so I could fetch my ulcer medication. I did not know how long I would be in Mr Mugabe's hands and so I agreed to the request of the officers not to disclose that they accompanied me home. I felt I had to protect the detectives who had shown me kindness despite instructions to ill treat me. Now the media frenzy has brought this into the open, to my deep regret. I was back at the police station at 3am and was not ordered released until 11am. Thus my detention at the police station lasted about 15 hours.
I do not need either to exaggerate or fabricate anything about the sorry state of affairs in Zimbabwe, about the difficult circumstances within which the press in my country is operating, or indeed about my own situation. I have always been aware that the fight for press freedom in Zimbabwe would earn me many detractors and enemies, particularly in the Zimbabwean government. I never expected to be maligned and undermined by my professional colleagues - particularly those in the British press, who have shown such a keen interest in the protection of human rights in Zimbabwe. What motivated The Times to say I admitted lying is beyond me. At least I have a witness. My foreign editor, Leonard Doyle, who listened to my telephone interview with the Times reporter, knows I never made this extraordinary admission. Throughout the interview with The Times and other journalists, I responded to their specific queries about my ordeal so they could better comprehend my situation. They for instance wanted me to explain whether I had indeed been detained in a cell or in an office. My answer was detailed and factual: I used the term cell because that is what the police called the stinking room they put me in and as someone who has been in a cell before there was no other conclusion I could come to.
I also explained why I had omitted from my Independent article information concerning my temporary release from police custody near midnight on Monday and my re-detention four hours later. I had promised the detectives I would remain silent on this issue, and now I hoped journalists in London would understand the reason for the omission. I ask myself what could have motivated colleagues at the Zimbabwe chapter of the respected Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) to set the hare running by issuing a statement on Friday about my arrest without at least checking the facts with me. After meeting the senior officers of Misa on Monday, the organisation issued a statement correcting a fundamental error in its previous statement, which said I was only detained for five hours, until 7pm, on Monday. I expected this correction to get the prominence it deserved in all the newspapers that had shown interest in the story in Britain and Zimbabwe. Disappointingly this was not to be.
For the record, I suffered much humiliation at the hands of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). Their act of ransacking and searching my house days before arresting me was uncalled for. Their harassment of whomever they found at my house while I was still abroad was uncalled for. I am not a criminal. I have no criminal record. I don't even have a traffic offence in any record against me. My incarceration at the Harare Central police station was uncalled for. There is no need for me to exaggerate anything about my treatment there. People are dying in Zimbabwe, others are being injured daily because of the political problems bedevilling the country. I will not allow scurillous reporting to break my spirits.
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From The Times (UK), 14 February
Zimbabwe hints at compromise over EU observers
Harare - South Africa attempted to mediate yesterday in the three-day deadlock between the Zimbabwean Government and the European Union over official status for all of the EU’s observers to next month’s presidential elections. "Our country and other countries in the Southern African Development Community (the 14-nation regional economic bloc) are addressing that issue at the highest level," Sam Motsoenyane, a former diplomat and the head of the South African observer mission, said when he arrived in Zimbabwe yesterday. He did not give any details of the initiative, but said that he believed that "a credible election in Zimbabwe is still possible". There is growing anxiety among the opposition and human rights organisations that with 24 days left before voting starts, state-driven violence is continuing and not one international observer has been deployed.
Also yesterday, Zimbabwe’s state-controlled press hinted at a concession by President Mugabe’s Government when it said that observers who were refused official status would not be hindered in their duties, except to be excluded from polling stations on the voting days on March 9 and 10. Zimbabwe has refused to regard observers from Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden as anything more than tourists. This includes Pierre Schori, the Swedish diplomat chosen by the EU to head its 150-strong team of officials. However, nearly all of the 30 observers to have arrived in the country so far are from the other nine EU countries, which have received official invitations. "Those tourists who have a passion for watching elections are just as welcome as those who want to look at elephants," said an editorial in the state-controlled Herald newspaper, which is a sure guide to state thinking. "So any tourist who wants to see what goes on in Zimbabwe at election time can do so. The only place they cannot enter are the actual polling stations and counting halls, but if they want to stand outside a polling station, they can, just as they can stand at a game platform and watch elephants."
The EU mission is taking the suggestion seriously. Stefan Amer, the EU spokesman, said that the mission’s intention was still to have all its final tally of 160 observers accredited, although the newspaper’s statement was "a positive line". "But we need to have official clarification," Mr Amer added. "The main question is their security," Francesca Mosca, the EU’s representative in Harare, said. "Certainly, if we are able to deploy them under reasonable security conditions we are going to do so." The EU observers are undergoing training and the mission wants to deploy them on Friday. EU diplomats said privately that the mission would be prepared to compromise on the status of a proportion of its officials "however flawed the election may be". Heads of observer missions in Harare had agreed "that our presence would give people confidence to vote according to their wishes, and deter people who want to rig the results", one said.
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From the Financial Gazette, 14 February
Zanu PF unleashes militia on Byo
Bulawayo Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu PF has stationed its militia at most Bulawayo municipal halls and community clubs to conduct door-to-door campaigns on behalf of President Robert Mugabe, it was established this week. Week-long investigations by the Financial Gazette have shown that so-called re-education camps have been set up at Nketa Hall, Sizinda Hall, Entumbane Hall, Nkulumane Hall and Venture Camp, an abandoned municipal youth centre a few kilometres away from the Khami Ruins, about 20 kms southwest of here. A huge residential council property in Nkulumane 12, known as The Yellow House and earmarked for a pre-school, has also been taken over. Between 4 000 and 5 000 youths from around the country have been stationed inside and outside the property to put up Zanu PF posters in the city and to campaign for Mugabe, who is fighting for his political life in a landmark presidential ballot on March 9 and 10.
Mugabe, his political support sapped by a deepening economic crisis, faces opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the ballot which, according to opinion surveys and most analysts, will be won by the MDC chief. The ruling party has also set up a camp at Ezalukazini, an abandoned council beer hall in the high-density suburb of Njube. Tents housing about 3 000 youths have also been pitched up at Rangemore, a smallholder farming area a few kilometres from the city centre. The Zanu PF militia at Venture Camp is said to be the most notorious, with about 1 000 youths camped there. The youths are understood to be paid $500 a day to conduct the ruling party’s presidential campaign in a city which overwhelmingly voted for the MDC in the June 2000 parliamentary elections as well as in the September 2001 mayoral elections.
At the weekend, the youths from Venture Camp toyi-toyed in and around the western suburbs of Old Pumula, Magwegwe, Luveve, Gwabalanda and Pelandaba and distributed Zanu PF campaign materials. Other camps have been established in municipal community halls and government schools in the low-density suburbs such as in Sauerstown, where the militia recently staged a demonstration outside the house of Moses Mzila Ndlovu, the MDC legislator for Bulilimamangwe South. The noisy camps have angered city residents, some of whom have accused the Zanu PF militia of orchestrating an orgy of violence in and around the city, especially after 8 pm. Several residents this week alleged that they had been systematically whipped and assaulted by the youths, mostly clad in white Zanu PF T-shirts, for not chanting the party’s slogans.
Charles Mpofu, the outspoken councillor for Bulawayo’s Nketa suburb, said he had also been inundated by angry calls from residents over the presence of the militia in their usually quiet surroundings. "It is a shame that a desperate government has sunk so low as to set up terrorist camps such as those in my ward," said Mpofu, who quit the ruling party in 1999 to be an independent before joining the MDC. "The militia have invaded our council facilities in the same manner the war veterans have invaded farms. Residents are complaining and are very angry. We have launched a strong complaint with the executive mayor about these terrorist camps. We have also notified the police but nothing is being done about these thugs." Sainet Dube, Zanu PF’s political commissar for Bulawayo province, said there was nothing sinister about the camps. "We are campaigning. The boys are not terrorising anyone. People should not be afraid when they see them in our campaign T-shirts. People are not being truthful if they say they have been assaulted by the boys," Dube said. Zanu PF youths have already been accused of waging violence against opponents nationwide and of illegally setting up roadblocks on some roads, where they force motorists and bus passengers to buy costly membership cards of the party. Two senior Zanu PF officials recently ordered the youths to end the roadblocks.
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From The Guardian (UK), 14 February
Zimbabwe plot video 'a smear'
Harare/London - The man behind claims that the Zimbabwe opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, was involved in a plot to kill President Robert Mugabe has a reputation as a notorious fantasist, it emerged last night. Ari Ben-Menashe, who was once employed as a junior officer in Israeli intelligence, claimed that his Montreal-based firm, Dickens and Madson, was approached last year by someone acting on behalf of Mr Tsvangirai to help the Zimbabwe opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change. Mr Ben-Menashe described the firm as a "political consultancy" and "lobbyist" and said he had known Mr Mugabe for some time. In a statement last night, the company said its senior staff had "extensive contacts" with "intelligence agencies around the world". An Australian television network, SBS, broadcast a grainy video last night purported to be of a meeting between Mr Tsvangirai, Mr Ben-Menashe and other company officials in Montreal last December. It suggested that those present discussed how to remove Mr Mugabe from power. Last night, Mr Tsvangirai called the tape "contrived". "There is no substance to the allegations," he said. "It is a smear job. I had discussions about different scenarios that might happen in Zimbabwe. I have discussed how the transition to democracy will go if I am elected. The quotes could easily have been manipulated to be taken out of context."
Mr Ben-Menashe, said he met Mr Tsvangirai twice in London last November. He said the opposition leader did not know the Montreal meeting was being videotaped. Asked how SBS got hold of the video, he replied: "That is neither here nor there." Mr Ben-Menashe met diplomats in Harare more than two years ago, indicating that he had business with the Mugabe government long before the video was shot. The film-maker, Mark Davis, arrived in Zimbabwe in January on a tourist visa, without journalist accreditation, but then managed to get an interview with Mr Mugabe - something a journalist without accreditation could not do. Time magazine has called Mr Ben-Menashe a "veteran spinner of stunning-if-true-but yarns". He has been ruthlessly attacked in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal and New Republic. He was also the main source of allegations made in 1991 by an award-winning journalist, Seymour Hersh, about the late Robert Maxwell, Mirror Group journalists, the abduction of the Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, and assorted arms deals.
Mr Ben-Menashe first came to light when he was acquitted by a New York federal jury in 1990 of charges that he had illegally sold Israeli-owned C-130 Hercules aircraft to Iran. The sale, he said, was part of a US-sanctioned deal to win the release of American hostages. He made unproven claims about Irangate and about October Surprise a claim that Ronald Reagan's campaign team had arranged a deal with Iran and Israeli officials to delay the release of US hostages held in Tehran until after the presidential election in November 1980. Mr Tsvangirai's spokesman, Learnmore Jongwe, said in a statement yesterday that the Montreal company had been hired by the MDC, but that it now worked for the Mugabe regime. He said the "false" claim that Mr Tsvangirai had discussed assassination in the meeting "seems to arise from Dickens and Madson". "Mr Tsvangirai did take part in a meeting with Dickens and Madson in Montreal in December. He came to suspect that he was being secretly videotaped. There was no plot to assassinate Mugabe," Mr Jongwe said. The statement included other alleged examples of smear tactics against the MDC, including claims that it was planning a civil war and that it was responsible for South Africa's biggest bank robbery.
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From AFP, 14 February
Fair Zimbabwe vote key to Africa's recovery plan: South Africa
Cape Town - A free and fair presidential election in Zimbabwe in the eyes of Europe and North America will be important to the success of Africa's recovery plan, a South African cabinet minister said Wednesday, less than a month before the polls. "It is not sufficient for South Africa to satisfy itself (that elections are free and fair)," Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said, a day after a first election monitoring team left Johannesburg for Zimbabwe, pledging neutrality. "You want to hold an election that objective, non-participatory people people that are not party to the election process - must feel was ... a credible process," the minister told a parliamentary briefing on behalf of South Africa's government. "To the extent that we are seen to be sincere and firm about deepening democracy, respect for democratic institutions and a determination to eliminate conflict, that that will strengthen the resolve of the developed North to contribute to NEPAD programmes," Lekota added.
The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), spearheaded by President Thabo Mbeki and four other African heads of state, sets out targets for democracy and good governance, including sustainable economic development in exchange for aid from the developed world. Lekota acknowledged that the crisis in Zimbabwe - along with other conflicts on the continent - was impeding Africa's efforts to attract support for NEPAD. "To the extent that we are seen not to be serious, we will not be able to inspire countries of the North or our friends to contribute to what we are trying to do," Lekota said.
South Africa's Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad, however, questioned the idea that NEPAD's success or failure depended on the outcome in Zimbabwe. Repeating a statement by Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma over the weekend, Pahad told the briefing that a notion of "collective punishment" by countries to withhold aid for the continent because of one "problem area" was unacceptable. "There has been some suggestion by analysts that NEPAD will stand or fall on the basis of how we respond to the situation in certain countries, and in this case Zimbabwe," he said. "We have made it clear that events in Zimbabwe or in any other country cannot be the basis on which people support the NEPAD process," he said. "Either we agree the NEPAD programme is an African programme and we support it on that basis or we don't support it. We cannot have this constant threat of collective punishment," he said.
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From The Financial Gazette, 14 February
Thumbs up for Tsvangirai in critical Midlands
Gweru - The lasting impression, as thousands of supporters wildly cheered Morgan Tsvangirai at Gweru’s Mkoba Stadium on Saturday, was that President Robert Mugabe’s chief rival in next month’s presidential election was firmly on top in the Midlands province, considered a key barometer in measuring national opinion. Shared between the ruling Zanu PF party and Tsvangirai’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party in the June 2000 parliamentary elections, the Midlands is a microcosm of Zimbabwean society with an almost equal balance between the two main ethnical Ndebele and Shona groups. In a drive around Gweru city earlier that day, the relaxed weekend mood was unmistakable. Shops and public bars remained open for business. The unconcerned women vendors went on selling their vegetables by the roadside as nearly 10 000 people voluntarily trooped from all directions into Mkoba Stadium where Tsvangirai, the MDC candidate in the March 9 and 10 ballot, was having a campaign rally. When Zanu PF holds similar campaign meetings around the country, its militant supporters go on a rampage to force residents to abandon their businesses and whatever else they are doing to attend the party’s rallies. In most cases, thousands of people are bussed in from several areas to beef up attendance at rallies, including many who were seized from Harare’s Mbare a week ago and forced to attend a Mugabe rally far away at Kotwa in Mashonaland East.
At Mkoba on Saturday, Tsvangirai glowed with confidence emanating from opinion surveys and analysts’ views which show him ahead of Mugabe in Zimbabwe’s most crucial ballot since the country’s independence from Britain in 1980. Rather than use the opportunity to get cheap votes, as may be expected of any politician ahead of such an important election, a visibly confident Tsvangirai instead focused his energies on trying to encourage his listeners to turn out in large numbers during balloting in the two-day poll. "Do not get discouraged and do not be fooled by talk that Mugabe will rig the election," Tsvangirai said, clearly seeking to allay fears that voting would be pointless because Mugabe and Zanu PF will steal the election. Besides fears that the ballot could be rigged, political analysts say the violence that has scarred Zimbabwe in the past two years and has increased in the past three months could induce apathy among many voters, especially those in remote rural areas. Sixteen people, 13 of them MDC supporters, were killed in political violence last month alone, according to a report released last week by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, a coalition of the country’s leading human rights groups. Tsvangirai told the cheering crowd: "Come out in large numbers to vote and I can assure you that Mugabe is not going to succeed in rigging this election."
Once mocked as an ignoramus by Mugabe only three years ago, Tsvangirai - who analysts say could end Mugabe’s political career in the March poll - told the crowd he would, if elected, accord the 77-year-old leader respect as a former head of state. Mugabe’s safety would also be guaranteed under Tsvangirai’s government. Tsvangirai said his government would re-launch the search for a new constitution for the country, abandoned by Mugabe’s government after it was defeated in a national referendum two years ago. Unveiling yet another policy milestone for a future MDC government, Tsvangirai told the excited crowd that his government would launch an independent truth, justice and reconciliation commission to spearhead a national healing and forgiveness process for a country torn apart by political violence and lawlessness. But what lingered on long after the rally had ended was the sense of total peace and the relaxed mood in which the huge rally had taken place. There were no party marshals or youths clad in MDC regalia toy-toying around residential areas and coercing residents to attend the rally or even just to encourage them to do so. Watching the willing crowds as they trudged on to the rally, one could not help but recall then prime minister Mugabe’s popular rallies in the early years of Zimbabwe’s independence. Then thousands of excited Zimbabweans would pack Harare’s Rufaro Stadium to listen to Mugabe speak. Not anymore.
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From The Financial Times, 15 February
Zimbabwe backs away from EU confrontation
The prospect of confrontation between Zimbabwe and the EU over the accreditation of election observers for next month's presidential poll receded yesterday when almost all the 30 "long-term" observers were accredited. An EU spokesman, describing yesterday's developments as "a big step forward", said the mission was hopeful would accredit the team leader Pierre Schori, a Swedish diplomat, "very soon". Mr Schori said he had not yet sought accreditation because he came from one of six "hostile" countries from which Zimbabwe refuses to accept observers. They are Britain, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. None of those accredited are from the six nations, while six observers who were registered yesterday are from Norway, which is not a member of the EU.
Twelve teams will go out into the country today, including "no go areas" and "hot spots". The EU is confident that the deployment of observers will reduce violence and tension, allowing the opposition Movement for Democratic Change to campaign in places where, at present, campaigning is impossible, and build confidence among voters that their votes will be secret. This optimism is not widely shared in Zimbabwe where there were more reports of mayhem yesterday. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said one its supporters, a schoolteacher, had been murdered and five other people had been kidnapped.
Frustration in Zimbabwe at the slow deployment of observers was reflected in an editorial comment in the country's leading business weekly, the Financial Gazette, yesterday. It said: "Long suffering Zimbabweans are dismayed to see the entire EU and Schori being led down the path of madness under the guise of the diplomacy at this eleventh hour when Zimbabwe is on a knife-edge." Opposition politicians have little confidence in the observer process, noting that the international community ignored the EU mission's highly critical report on December's elections in Zambia. But they take heart from anecdotal evidence from rural areas suggesting that Mr Mugabe's campaign of intimidation is losing, rather than winning, votes. The EU said yesterday it would impose "smart" sanctions on Zimbabwe as early as Monday if its election observers on the ground were prevented from carrying out their work.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 15 February
'Murder plot' charges likely for Tsvangirai
Harare - Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, may face criminal charges after claims on Australian television that he plotted the assassination of President Mugabe. Sources in Mr Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change said charges could be used to prevent him contesting the presidential election due on March 9-10. Nicholas Goche, the Zimbabwean security minister, alleged that Mr Tsvangirai attempted to persuade Dickens and Madson, a Canadian political consultancy, to arrange the assassination of the president. Mr Tsvangirai denied the accusation and said the covertly shot footage on the programme was a "total fabrication." Mr Goche said: "We are highlighting legal and political issues which suggest a number of very serious crimes. This will exercise the minds of the police, the judiciary and the attorney-general."
But it has emerged that Mr Goche hired Dickens and Madson to represent the Mugabe regime. This agreement was reached before the meetings at which Mr Tsvangirai was allegedly drawn into discussing an assassination, raising suspicions that the opposition leader was the victim of a carefully planned "sting" operation. Ari Ben Menashe, a representative of Dickens and Madson at the filmed meeting, has denied that Mr Tsvangirai was entrapped. The tape was broadcast on Wednesday by Dateline, a current affairs programme on the SBS channel. Mark Davis, the journalist who presented the report, was given the tape by Dickens and Madson.
Mr Mugabe's regime made a partial retreat under international pressure yesterday, granting permission to 26 European Union observers to cover the election. But clearance was still denied to Pierre Schori, the proposed leader of the mission, and Stephan Amer, its official spokesman. Both are from Sweden, which is among the six EU states Mr Mugabe has barred. Observers believe he is playing for time and seeking to delay the deployment of the monitors for as long as possible, without going so far as to trigger "targeted" sanctions threatened by the EU. Mr Schori said observers would begin deploying across Zimbabwe today.
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From BBC News, 14 February
War vets wreak havoc in Bulawayo
Bulawayo - Hundreds of self-styled war veterans and supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF party went on the rampage in Zimbabwe's second largest city of Bulawayo on Wednesday evening. Dozens of people, amongst them late night shoppers, were injured in a further escalation of political violence ahead of presidential elections next month. Earlier this week, petrol bombs struck a printing press and a newspaper office in Bulawayo, following warnings from Zanu PF supporters. Trouble started when the mob left the ruling party's provincial headquarters in the south-western city and marched into the city centre beating up anyone they came across. Taxis were stoned and drivers beaten up. People fled in different directions. Those who tried to seek protection from the riot police were chased away. The riot police, according to eyewitnesses, said they were not there to protect MDC supporters. The police watched and did nothing as the war veterans beat up passers by and sang revolutionary songs glorifying president Robert Mugabe. Some wore ruling party T-shirts. The mob also forced their way into one restaurant where they beat up those having dinner. One group then went to Emakhandeni township, another group to Emganwini, where they went house to house asking people to surrender their national identity cards. Without their identity cards, people cannot vote. The elections are on 9-10 March, with President Robert Mugabe facing his strongest challenge in 22 years.
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From The Daily News, 14 February
SA refutes Herald story
The South African election observer team yesterday dealt the government’s propaganda a blow when it dismissed reports they had hailed government preparations for the presidential election due on 9-10 March. The State-controlled Herald newspaper yesterday declared that South Africa was "happy with the progress" Zimbabwe was making in preparation for the presidential poll. A former ambassador, Sam Motsuenyane, head of the 50-strong South African team, told a Press conference in Harare yesterday: "We couldn’t have said that. We haven’t said anything in that regard. Whatever the information in that story is, it is a distortion." He said it was too soon for them to have commented that everything was fine and would lead to a free and fair election. The government mouthpiece quoted a member of the team as saying South Africa was happy with the election preparations. Motsuenyane is leading a multi-sectoral observer mission of business people, trade unions, religious, women’s and youth groups, non-governmental organisations and government departments.
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From The Independent (UK), 15 February
'Independent' reporter forced to flee Zimbabwe after smear campaign
The Zimbabwe correspondent for The Independent, Basildon Peta, fled the country fearing for his life last night, after an unprecedented campaign of vilification in the state-controlled media. The attacks reached a peak when Zimbabwe's national television news led its evening bulletin with a smear based on an erroneous front-page article in The Times in London on Tuesday. That inaccurate allegation, dropped in subsequent editions, claimed Mr Peta admitted to the paper that he fabricated a report about his arrest and incarceration last week. The Times' account - seized on by Zimbabwe's state print media - led to extraordinary claims on television that Mr Peta's article caused a drop in the value of the South African rand and was responsible for a collapse in tourism bookings into Zimbabwe. The credibility of the Harare newspaper for which he worked as an award-winning journalist was also attacked.
As a result, Mr Peta quit the Financial Gazette, an independent newspaper critical of President Robert Mugabe, taking an evening flight out of the country to join his wife and two children already in exile. Mr Peta, who is secretary general of Zimbabwe's Union of Journalists, has been threatened with death. Last year, his name appeared at the top of a security service hit list of enemies of the state to be eliminated or put out of the way before the national elections in three weeks. The editor-in-chief of the Financial Gazette, Francis Mdlongwa, described Mr Peta last night as "an outstanding journalist". He said he had every confidence in him. "I will welcome [him] back when the dust has settled," he said. He added: "I advised [Mr Peta] to take the first flight out. There are too many forces that want to hurt him. The important thing is that he was arrested, but now our detractors are seizing on small aspects of the story to make mischief." Mr Mdlongwa said the erroneous account in The Times made the situation far worse.
In The Independent article, Mr Peta left out the fact that detectives accompanied him home in the night to pick up medication for his ulcers. He promised not to reveal this act of kindness to protect the detectives who had been ordered to ill-treat him. He returned to the police station at 3am and later that day all charges against him were dropped. Mr Peta's troubles began when reporters in Johannesburg and London picked up on a whispering campaign by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa). They accepted Misa's statement that he had spent less than five hours in custody, rather than the 15 hours he actually spent in the foul-smelling police cell. Although reports in the British press changed when Misa substantially corrected its original allegations, Harare clung to the Times first-edition account, written from Johannesburg and in London. Mr Peta said: "There has been a big attempt to try to destroy me completely. I will go back as soon as I feel it is safe, possibly before the election."
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From BBC News, 15 February
Zimbabwe songs struggle to be heard
Artists and cultural workers in the African republic of Zimbabwe fear that they may find themselves in trouble if their performance or artwork suggests criticism of the government. Speaking to BBC World Service's Arts In Action programme, journalist Thomas Deve spoke of the role the country's music is playing in the weeks leading up to Zimbabwe's presidential election. "We are in a situation where music is used for political opposition and certain messages are left to various audiences to interpret the music," he said. "There is self-censorship among the DJs where they feel that if they promote a certain type of music officially they will be told that this is not the line to promote at the moment."
With the March election fast approaching, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is currently campaigning to be re-elected. However, international pressure on Zimbabwe has grown as human rights groups have warned of a "climate of fear and terror" in the run-up to the elections. Although there have been reports of journalists who have been targeted for their critical judgement of the government, Deve explains that "there is no official position on banning music from radio stations". However in his view, music in Zimbabwe is currently not without its constrictions and this may explain the proliferation of gospel music in the Zimbabwe music charts. "Some gospel music is very critical of the status quo and has some serious social commentary, but because it is gospel music nobody focuses on it the way they would if it was Thomas Mapfumo." Meanwhile playwright Andrew Whaley reiterated Deve's fears for Zimbabwean artists. He said: "Imaginative theatre about people's lives and circumstances is a lot more difficult because of the risks on the lives involved in telling it like it is."
This is not the first time in the country's history that performers have used their art to express their opinion. "There is a biting in my stomach when I see what they've done to my country," Zimbabwean recording star Thomas Mapfumo once sang. Now residing in the United States, Mapfumo's songs and the songs of other artists, such as Oliver Mtukudzi, have become the focal points of political expression in Zimbabwe in recent years. The musical style, known as Chimurenga, meaning "struggle", was spawned during the fight for liberation from whites-only rule in the 1970s, but it is now being turned against President Mugabe. At a recent performance of Mtukudzi's hit song Wasakara, audiences chanted opposition slogans and waved red cards, indicating that it was time for Mugabe to go. Such a reception demonstrates why some artists now feel that it is time to leave Zimbabwe. One performer recently said: "Maybe it's time I took a holiday, let everybody cool down."
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 16 February
Regime a step closer to triggering sanctions
Harare/London - President Mugabe’s regime stepped closer to triggering the imposition of "targeted" sanctions yesterday when it revoked the visa of the leader of the European Union observers sent to cover Zimbabwe's presidential election due on March 9 and 10. The move came after Basildon Peta, the Harare correspondent of The Independent, fled the country in fear of his life. He has been subjected to vitriolic abuse in the official media following his detention under a repressive security law and the publication of reports in newspapers, including The Telegraph, questioning his account of his arrest. A story in one edition of The Times on Tuesday which said he "fabricated" an account of a night in jail was seized on by the state press. Mr Peta accused The Times of putting his life in danger.
Mr Mugabe's regime has refused to recognise Pierre Schori, Sweden's ambassador to the United Nations, as leader of the EU team. When he arrived in Zimbabwe on Sunday, he was granted a 14-day tourist visa. But he met officials from the immigration department yesterday and was told that this visa was being withdrawn and he would have to leave. He was accused of making "political statements" incompatible with his official status as a tourist. In a later meeting, the government conceded that he could stay until early next week. John Nkomo, the home affairs minister, then denied that his visa was being withdrawn. "Our immigration officers went to warn Mr Schori to comply with the conditions of his tourist visa which he got when he came into the country," he said. The Foreign Office believes that Mr Mugabe is engaged in time-wasting and brinkmanship and one source said Mr Schori could decide to leave anyway. Anna Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister, said that if he does, the entire team of 27 observers could follow. Mrs Lindh said this would "prove that Zimbabwe does not want a free and fair election". She added: "I think the most likely thing is that he [Mr Schori] will be expelled, that the observers leave and that sanctions will be imposed."
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From News24 (SA), 15 February
Cops hold 12 in Harare demo
Harare - A pro-democracy group defied a ban by Zimbabwean police and marched through downtown Harare for about 20 minutes before riot police dispersed them with batons. About a dozen protesters were arrested by riot police, who had stationed themselves throughout the city centre in anticipation of the march organized by the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA). The protesters aimed to hand a draft constitution to the government, which the NCA wants adopted before the March 9-10 presidential election. Earlier on Friday, riot police had sealed off the NCA's offices in a bid to block the march.
But the NCA, which groups local civic, church, opposition parties, students and trade unions, vowed to proceed with the demonstration. The protesters passed out copies of the constitution as they peacefully marched through the city center, carrying placards that read "People are supreme" and "A new constitution is the panacea". The draft constitution compiled by NCA last year seeks to limit the time the same person can serve as president to 10 years. President Robert Mugabe, who has already spent almost 22 years in office, is due to seek a controversial new term in next month's election. The draft constitution also provides for a separation of powers between a non-executive president elected by parliament, and an executive prime minister elected by the people.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 15 February
ESC warns monitors not to talk
The partiality of the government-sponsored Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC) is being questioned as details emerge that election monitors are being told not to disclose any information about their training, the Zimbabwe Independent has established. Monitors who spoke on condition of anonymity said a lot of personal details were being taken at the end of the training programme. "We are made to fill in a lot of forms giving personal details," one monitor said. "We were told that this was for security reasons and the trainers warned us that if we did not behave ourselves we would be tracked down and dealt with." The monitors have also been banned from talking to members of the press and the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA). "We were specifically told not to communicate with the NCA and members of the press, notably independent newspapers. The Zanu PF agenda in all this is now very apparent and is very disturbing," said the monitor.
But ESC chairman Sobuza Gula-Ndebele said there was nothing sinister in taking down the personal details of the monitors. "People who are saying that are not serious about the training. It is not a secret that we are taking down those details. We need to have personal details so that we can weed out criminal elements," Gula-Ndebele said. "This is a high integrity job and as such we cannot afford to have people with criminal records. We send those details to the police so that they can verify them. If this election is run by criminals do you think people will take us seriously?" asked Gula-Ndebele. He refuted claims that the ESC sided with one political party. "I am a private lawyer and I have a reputation to protect. Siding with any political party will not do me any good. These people are civil servants and I am not expected to know their party affiliation," he said.
The monitors are being given a two-day training in batches under the supervision of the ESC. The first day deals with the training proper and the second day is a question and answer session and this is apparently when the riot act is read to the monitors. Last July the Minister of State for Publicity and Information, Professor Jonathan Moyo, said the government would ban foreign funding to civic organisations for voter education, restrict election monitoring to civil servants, and restrict voter education to the ESC and ESC-approved bodies. This legislation was rammed through parliament after the ruling party's annual national conference in December. This effectively meant that civic organisations which had been engaged in intensive voter education campaigns and had assisted the ESC in the past were excluded.
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From The Daily News, 16 February
5 village headmen allegedly abducted
Five village headmen accused of supporting the MDC were abducted by Zanu PF supporters in the Hoyuyu resettlement area in Mutoko this week. Derick Muzira, the MDC provincial vice-chairman for Mashonaland East, yesterday said two of the headmen, Goliath Katsande and Charles Edward, were abducted from a bus at Corner Store on Wednesday. He said: "The headmen were ordered off a bus coming from Harare by a group of Zanu PF supporters." Muzira said Tafa Shekede, Mark Tafa and a headman known as Mavhunga, were abducted from their homes on Thursday by Zanu PF supporters in a white Mazda B1800 truck. He said the officer-in-charge of Mutoko police, Inspector Mbanga, had promised to investigate. Contacted for comment, Mbanga, said: "We are investigating, but they are not headmen as such. They are ordinary villagers. We will give the police spokesman, Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena, all the information when our investigations are complete and you can get it from him." Bvudzijena has not commented on any police investigations to The Daily News.
In Marondera on Thursday, a police officer who declined to give his name said a Zanu PF mob attacked the MDC offices in Birmingham Road but was dispersed with teargas, after which two Zanu PF and five MDC supporters were arrested. Didimas Munhenzva, the MDC provincial secretary for Mashonaland East, said: "The irony of it is that these people stoned our offices but the police arrested our people who were attacked while on the premises." Munhenzva said he was with two election observers when he received a telephone call about the attack. "I asked them to go and see for themselves," he said. "I have not had any feedback from them because they said they were going to Murehwa from there." Munhenzva said he himself was attacked by Zanu PF youths on Wednesday evening at a filling station in Marondera. He was bruised on the right arm and in the side. The mob smashed the windscreen and side window of his car as he sped off.
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From the MDC, 14 February
Tsvangirai statement
We reiterate that we have never taken part in any conspiracy to assassinate President Mugabe and have no desire to do so. We believe in the electoral process and the change of governments through the ballot box. As regards the allegations being levelled against us, in addition to the statement released yesterday, we comment as follows:
We confirm that the MDC was approached by Dickens and Madison, a Montreal based political consultancy, which said that it wanted to help build MDC’s image abroad but mainly in North America where Mugabe was said to be winning the propaganda war through his lobbyist group Cohen and Woods, which according to Dickens and Madison was paid the sum of US$5m for the purpose of repairing Zanu PF’s image. Dickens and Madison approached the MDC through a gentleman called Rupert Johnson who came through Renson Gasela, MDC Shadow minister for Agriculture. The two had known each other during the days when Renson Gasela was the general manager of the Zimbabwe’s Grain Marketing Board, GMB and Rupert Johnson was a commercial trader based in South Africa. We wish to make the point that the initiative to engage this political consultancy as MDC lobbyists was not an MDC initiative. It was solely at their own initiative, insistence and request that Dickens and Madison were engaged as MDC lobbyists.
Pursuant to Dickens and Madison’s approach to the MDC, a total of four meetings were held with the Consultancy. At the very first meeting Mr. Ari Ben-Menashe introduced himself and went on to say that the group wanted to help MDC on the communications front. He went on to explain that some two years ago the group had been hired by the Clinton administration to negotiate an exit package for President Mugabe who initially accepted the package but later on went on to renege on the agreement before the parliamentary elections. There were three subsequent meetings held after the first meeting. A total of four meetings were held all in all. During the first three meetings, there was no mention of elimination or assassination of President Mugabe by Dickens and Madison. The meetings centred on two main issues. The first one was the need to bridge the communications gap abroad but mainly in North America where Dickens and Madison were said to be fighting Zanu PF’s propaganda war. At no stage, during the first three meetings was the issue of elimination or assassination ever discussed.
The allegation by Dickens and Madison that the MDC conceded that it had no confidence of winning the upcoming election of the presidency of Zimbabwe because of the land issue is blatantly false. It is in fact Dickens and Madison who brought a series of poll surveys that demonstrated that MDC was going to win the upcoming presidential election with a landslide majority. At the fourth meeting, Mr Menashe kept on wandering from the issues discussed previously. He and his team and from nowhere introduced discussion around the issue of elimination and kept on asking strange questions. It was at this stage that I burst out of the meeting for the reason that Mr Menashe was introducing issues, which had nothing to do with the objectives of their engagement as communication lobbyists. Dickens and Madison do not dispute the fact that I burst out of their meeting when I became disturbed by the approach they were taking in this meeting.
After the fourth meeting I briefed my colleagues about the suspicious conduct of Dickens and Madison at the last meeting. We then carried out a research to ascertain the background and possible motive of Mr Ben-Menashe and his company in initiating dialogue with us. It was established that Mr Menashe had actually written a book on dirty political tricks and that he had been hired by the Zanu government to set up the MDC under the guise that they wanted to be engaged as MDC lobbyists. It was also established that from day one, the group had been working with Mr Nicholas Goche the Minister of National Security and Mr George Charamba, the Permanent Secretary in the department of Information and Publicity in the President’s Office. When these facts became known to the party, the MDC cut off all communication with this group as far back as December 2001.
The MDC remains committed to peaceful and constitutional change of government as evidenced by the fact that the party will contest the forthcoming presidential election, which it is confident of winning. We therefore remain focused on our campaign programme and will not be diverted by side issues.
Morgan Tsvangirai - President
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Comment from ZWNEWS, 16 February
Is that it?
Is that it? Nearly two years ago President Mugabe began guerrilla operations against his own people. When that didn’t work he launched a wider war that sought to excise every bloom of democracy, prosperity and hope from Zimbabwe. Africa didn’t like this; the wider world liked it far less. And the result of their indignation, of hundreds of meetings, thousands of briefings and article, millions of words? A thin smear of observers, selected at Mugabe’s behest, and, less than a month before the elections, yet to be spread across Zimbabwe’s 400,000 square kilometres. Is that it?
The West has had two years to take action. Beguiled by the soothing yet ultimately empty words of African leaders it has chosen to do nothing. Now the EU and the UK find themselves, through their own fault, in a hopeless position. All they can offer the suffering millions in Zimbabwe are a hundred or so EC observers, many of whom are unlikely even to be accredited. That’s one for every 4,000 square kilometres and one for every 40,000 voters. And to keep that pitifully tiny force in country the EC now has to be nice to Mugabe no sanctions, no threats, no criticisms. Implicit in this stance is the belief that the elections might yet be free and fair. That is an absurd point of view and here are 10 reasons why:
Intimidation: for 20 years there was no opposition in Zimbabwe. As soon as one arose Mugabe sought to destroy it through physical violence. Every day for the last two years someone somewhere has taken a beating, or a bullet, for being an MDC supporter. Children, schoolteachers, pregnant women none have been exempt. Even as you read this article Zanu PF thugs are touring the townships and rural areas, telling the electorate that Zanu PF will know how they vote and subjecting them to violence and humiliation to get the point across.
State prosecution: the military, the police, the intelligence services serve the interests of Zanu PF, not the interests of Zimbabwe. Not only is there no protection for the MDC against government violence, it is the police, the army and the war veterans who dish out government violence, along with their noxious new allies the youth brigades. Supporting the MDC, even reading the Daily News, have become arrestable offences. The machinery of state is geared to a Mugabe victory.
Propaganda: the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Company has spewed out a foul brew of racist, neo-Maoist, paranoid filth for years on both television and radio. It is wholly the voice of Zanu PF. Mugabe closed down and forbade other radio stations. This is all the broadcast media that most voters will ever see or hear.
Rallies: the MDC have had countless rallies disrupted, banned, cancelled or attacked by Zanu PF, by war veterans and by the police. The only threats to Zanu PF rallies are apathy and boredom.
Registration: Zanu PF has physically removed tens of thousands of farm workers from their homes. They are now refugees in their own country. This dislocation makes it impossible for them to register and vote. A new citizenship law has disenfranchised much of the remaining white population. Draconian demands for identification have disenfranchised tens of thousands of younger voters. Mugabe has done all he can to ensure that those who will not vote for him cannot vote at all.
Access: this election will be won or lost in Mashonaland. Mugabe and his thugs have made it utterly impossible for the MDC to campaign there. This is like the British Labour party being forbidden to campaign south of the Watford Gap. As in 2000 it will prove impossible ‘for technical reasons’ for observers to get far from the towns and villages in Mashonaland into the countryside beyond.
Legislation: the Public Order and Security Bill and General Laws Amendment Bill make it illegal to mount a meaningful opposition election campaign.
Supervisions: the mechanics of the election, including the distribution and management of ballot boxes and the compilation of returns will be in the hands of an Election Supervisory Commission staffed by Zanu PF supporters, war veterans, and military officers. Close supervision of ballot boxes by others is now illegal. The final count will be in the hands of this Commission.
Press accreditation: new press laws will make it almost impossible for the international press, indeed any non-Zanu PF press, to get access to the rural areas where the election will be lost and won.
Money: Mugabe has shamelessly plundered Zimbabwe’s increasingly meagre resources to fund his campaign and bribe his followers. By contrast he has made it impossible and illegal for the MDC to raise substantial sums. Mugabe travels to his rallies in a fleet of helicopters, Tsvangirai in a battered 4WD. When he is allowed to travel and hold a rally.
For two years Mugabe has twisted every institution, corrupted public servants and parliament, beaten and murdered his opponents to hang onto power. What we know, but the EU fails to grasp, is that for he and his henchmen there is no shame in this, no guilt in murder and manipulation. They have broken apart democracy like children smashing a complicated toy they have no use for. To them politics is a means to personal enrichment and personal security service, answerability, honour, all are alien concepts. They will con the EU, browbeat the SADC observers, claim victory then go on their way rejoicing through a dark and broken land.
No one can believe that elections in Zimbabwe can be free and fair. Only the likes of President Mbeki can bring themselves to make such an absurd claim. Mugabe has tilted the playing field grotesquely in his favour and if no favourable result is forthcoming despite that he will stuff and rig. But might a few weeks or relative tranquillity persuade our friends from the EU to suspend judgement? Might some local details take attention from the bigger picture? Observers will see long lines of Zimbabweans waiting in the sun to vote, they will swap jokes with affable Zanu PF officials, they will eat sandwiches and drink Castle beer alongside peaceful polling stations. Let us hope that the broader canvas that stretches into every dark corner of our country is visible to them. This is a not a normal election. The last two years have been grimly abnormal years of blood and intimidation and manipulation in which people have been killed and beaten and have lost all they have ever owned. Mugabe stole this election long ago it only remains to be seen if Morgan Tsvangirai, and the people of Zimbabwe can, through an overwhelming vote, snatch it back.
Our handful of observers (and we can all note with relief that a delegation from Iran is on the way) may make the elections a fraction cleaner. We should applaud their efforts however few they are, however late. But free and fair elections? Impossible. Having let Zimbabwe sink so far the outside world could at least acknowledge that.
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From The Observer (UK), 17 February
Mugabe throws out EU observer
Harare - A key European Union observer was kicked out of Zimbabwe last night in a move that looks set to trigger sanctions against President Robert Mugabe. Pierre Schori left on a night flight to London after being given until midnight to leave the country. He was heading a team of 30 European observers for Zimbabwe's crucial presidential elections on 9 and 10 March. Mugabe is running behind opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in opinion polls. The Harare government refused to give Schori accreditation as an observer, so he was leading the European team while on a tourist visa. Schori said before boarding his plane last night, that the government objected to press statements he made as the head of the observer team.
A senior government official said: 'Schori is in breach of his visa conditions. He is guilty of trying to impose himself on our electoral process. He is guilty of political arrogance and of insulting behaviour and this cannot continue and if that is his intention, he is not welcome. He cannot stay.' Schori said the government's decision to expel him was a 'particularly unfortunate twist in the ongoing dispute between the Zimbabwe government and the European Union over election observation'. The Mugabe government's expulsion of Schori may bring about strong measures from the EU. Sweden's Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh, said on Friday that if the Zimbabwean government forced Schori to leave, the entire EU observer mission to Zimbabwe would probably be recalled and this would prompt the EU to impose sanctions targeted against Mugabe and 20 of his top officials. These would including travel bans and a freezing of bank accounts abroad.
A report from Schori is to be presented to the EU council of ministers in Brussels tomorrow. The Mugabe government refused to accredit Schori because he is Swedish. It had said the EU mission could not include representatives from Sweden, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Holland. The Harare government accuses these countries of supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. The EU had said it would not accept the Mugabe's limitations on its observer mission, but in the group of 30 observers, Schori was the only one from a country deemed 'unfriendly' to the Harare government.
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From ZWNEWS, 16 February
Bulawayo clergy arrested
An interdenominational church service in Bulawayo on Saturday ended in the arrest of eleven people. The service, one of a regular series, was planned to take the form of a walking procession from church to church in the Bulawayo suburb of Hillside, with services held in each church. The Rev Noel Scott of the Anglican Church, who organised the service, had been sent a letter from the local police forbidding a march on the grounds that they couldn’t guarantee the walkers’ safety. Rev Scott read the letter before the first service, and suggested that since the march rather than the services themselves had been banned, the procession take place in cars rather than on foot. This was done, and at each service a police presence was observed. At the final service the police walked up to Rev Scott while he was delivering his sermon. Some words were quietly said, and the police then waited for him outside the church, where he was arrested under the new Public Order & Security Act.
The other clergy present went with him to the charge office and knelt on the floor and prayed. They were arrested for disturbing the peace. The others detained are David Maroleng, Rev. Graeme Shaw (Methodist), Father Kevin O'Doherty(Catholic), Father O'Donahue (Catholic), Pastor Palany Rajah (Bethany Fellowship), John and Joan Stakesby-Lewis, Ron Marrillier, Peter Botwright, Barry Dickinson, and Trevor Leonard. All were taken to the main police station in Bulawayo. The Anglican Bishop went to the charge office demanding to see Rev. Scott who underwent heart surgery last year. The police refused to allow his medication to be given to him, and only relented when his doctor was present to administer the medication. Rev. Scott is now believed to have been transferred to Sauerstown police station. All those arrested have been remanded in custody until Monday.
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From News24 (SA), 16 February
MDC convoy attacked
Harare - A convoy of Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was attacked on its way to a campaign rally in the remote district of Binga Saturday, an MDC spokesperson said on Saturday. Learnmore Jongwe said the five-vehicle group came under attack as it drove past a school in the area, about 400km west of the capital, on the way to a rally for the March 9-10 elections. "About 30 militias, armed with machetes and stones, attacked a team of MDC leaders on their way to Binga to campaign," Jongwe said. The assailants have not yet been identified. Jongwe said four of the five vehicles were badly damaged, but the convoy drove on. "We are not quite sure if the rally will take place or if they will be able to return," said Jongwe. In the team were the party's three legislators including its secretary general Welshman Ncube. Police were not immediately available for comment. Zimbabwe is bracing for its most hotly contested presidential election in years on March 9-10, when President Robert Mugabe seeks to hold off a stern challenge to his 22-year grip on power from the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai. The two main contenders in next month's polls have accused the other's party of perpetrating pre-election violence in which at least 19 people have died since December, according to an AFP tally.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 15 February
Zanu PF intensifies onslaught on MDC
Ruling Zanu PF supporters have intensified their terror campaign throughout the country ahead of the March presidential election. On Monday, Zanu PF militias and war veterans stormed the shop of a prominent businessman and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporter at Dema growth point in Mashonaland East. The businessman, who did not want to be named for fear of victimisation, said violence erupted after a group of MDC supporters went to Dema campaigning for their party. Zanu PF members intercepted and attacked them. "As the MDC supporters started retreating, gunshots were fired in the air and luckily no-one was injured," the businessman said. He said the Zanu PF youths' ring-leader has been identified only as Wonder, a member of the Zimbabwe National Army, but no attempts by the police have been made to apprehend him. "Wonder instructed the militias to attack the MDC youths. It was during the process that the marauding Zanu PF youths extensively shattered my shop windows and assaulted my wife. They wielded knives and iron bars. They were chanting party slogans and asked my wife about my whereabouts." I reported the matter to the officer-in-charge at Dema police post and he said they were still investigating the matter," the businessman said. "If I get killed, the people responsible are already known. I have already told my family about the issue."
In Zvimba communal lands villagers are living in fear following recent politically motivated attacks by Zanu PF youths. Most of the attacks and abductions have been targeted at suspected MDC supporters or sympathisers. Originally, the attacks were carried out in broad daylight and any visitor to Zvimba had to have a Zanu PF party card and to know the party's slogan. But of late, said the villagers, while the situation appeared to have returned to normal, abductions were now being carried out at night making it difficult to account for the victims. While the exact number could not be established, the villagers said quite a large number fell victim. In late January, at Tafira School in Zvimba, an old woman and her grandson were abducted at night by suspected Zanu PF youths. While the woman was later found, the grandson is still missing and his fate is unknown. Another villager and his wife were recently abducted and severely assaulted. They were taken to Murombedzi clinic where their condition deteriorated. They were later transferred to Chinhoyi Hospital where the husband's condition is reported to be critical. MDC supporters were said to have gone underground and are pretending to be ruling party supporters. MDC's chairman in Mashonaland West, Gift Konjana, said the whole province has been affected by political violence. In Chegutu, the ongoing voter registration is only admitting people identified as Zanu PF supporters. Aspiring voters are asked to chant Zanu PF slogans before they can register. In Chinhoyi, Konjana said, officials at the Registrar-General's office are demanding letters from Zanu PF sitting councillors as the criteria for registration.
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From Business Day (SA), 16 February
UN slams Zim land reform
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said Zimbabwe's controversial land reform programme was the cause of much of the economic, political and social instability in the country, UN news agency IRIN reported on Friday. "In the medium term, however, as greater equality takes root, there could be less political grievances over past injustices and less reason for conflict over land and economic control," a UNDP report released earlier this week said. The report, based on a UNDP mission to Zimbabwe from November 13 to December 5, was called for in the Abuja Agreement on land reform signed by the Zimbabwean government in September last year. Under the agreement, brokered by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, Zimbabwe agreed to uphold the rule of law and end violence on farms and government-backed farm occupations.
The overall assessment of the UNDP team was that the political philosophy and socio-economic rationale of the fast-track land reform and resettlement programme remained sound. But the current scope was not sustainable and represented an over-reach of the original objectives that was not the consequence of debated and clear government policy "but rather the aggregation of a series of once-off executive actions". The report mentioned that under the original land reform programme, five million hectares of land were ear-marked for resettlement. This, however, increased to about 9.2-million, under the government's accelerated reform programme. The report noted that since the inception of the fast-track programme in June 2000, up to 6,481 farms were listed for acquisition. Of these, 918 were deleted because they were counted twice and 689 were de-listed. This reduced the total number of farms to 4874.
The UNDP mission found that the scale of the land acquisition programme was "staggering, as were the difficulties that it has had to confront in the past year". It also noted that most resettled farmers were not well-prepared for farming because the infrastructure development in most cases were totally inadequate. Since social and agricultural support services were weak, it was extremely difficult for new farmers to address fundamental problems of successfully settling into a new environment. The report said the gross domestic product (GDP) was expected to achieve a negative growth of 5.3% this year, with tobacco exports falling by an estimated 10%. Tobacco is the country's largest source of foreign exchange. "The inevitable conclusion is that the land reform programme has not contributed to increasing GDP from agriculture or to an increase in the export of agricultural commodities," it said.
The team noted that the fast-track programme had created disadvantaged communities and that humanitarian interventions might be required to support those adversely affected. It said an estimated 30000 families were displaced. The report said many farm workers were suffering from "heightened levels of depression" because of the high levels of violence they were exposed to since early 2000.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 16 February
Thousands left starving by Mugabe land grabs
For the first time in more than 100 years the vast stone edifice of St Francis Xavier Catholic Church, deep in the bush of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe's most arid region, can no longer offer sanctuary to pilgrims. "We have nothing left, no food, nothing," Fr Thomas Tshabalala said from the cool of Empandeni mission station's cloistered corridors. "If people arrive we have nothing for them. Starvation is the main problem for all the people from this community and many are on the point of dying." The people of Matabeleland have often suffered food shortages but, in most years, the fertile areas of Zimbabwe have grown more than enough maize to tide them over. The country often did even better and exported food to the rest of southern Africa. The invasion of white-owned farms by militant supporters of President Mugabe and their wholesale seizure by his government has ended all this. For the first time since a devastating drought 10 years ago, Zimbabwe has been forced to seek help from the World Food Programme, which estimates that the country has a maize deficit of around 500,000 tons and more than 550,000 people need emergency supplies.
St Francis Xavier, Zimbabwe's oldest Catholic church, towers like a beacon in the bush, and can be reached only by a dusty, rutted track reaching 18 miles from the nearest tarred road. Before he began his career, Mr Mugabe taught at Empandeni mission school in the 1950s, and it still attracts 1,100 immaculately turned-out pupils, who trudge for miles through the bush to receive an education begun by the first Jesuit missionaries in 1887. But the mission's brick-built bakery, powered by rusty, riveted boilers, has been forced to cut production. The mission's farm manager said the water in the nearby reservoir was a fraction of what was needed to stop maize fields from turning into arid wastelands. "Our livestock is dying and so will we soon," the manager said. At a nearby hamlet Anton, a toothless shepherd sat outside two shops where the shelves were empty. "We are hungry, we are hungry," he lamented, seeking solace in a plastic container of strong African beer. Back at Empandeni, some of the schoolchildren, wearing green, starched uniforms, sat in puddles of shade yesterday singing harmonies to while away the scorching midday hours. Other schools in the area have had to cancel afternoon sport because children have begun fainting through lack of food. "In the surrounding area, I would say that 90 per cent of families have been left by at least one family member going to look for work or money in Botswana or South Africa," Fr Thomas said. "They have nothing to keep them here and they know that if they stay they will die."
In the run-up to next month's presidential election, Fr Thomas's beloved Church is all too aware that, under famine conditions, food has become a sensitive political issue. Catholic aid agencies have agreed to pay for food to be distributed but Mr Mugabe's regime has attacked them for being "lackeys of the white" and "agents of MI6". Despite being educated by the Jesuits and spending years as a teacher in mission schools, Mr Mugabe has fallen out with the Church. This week, the Jesuits accused the president of acting as brutally as Hitler. "We do not have enough food for everyone and in those circumstances we cannot deliver food where we would have to say 'yes' to some people and 'no' to others," Fr Thomas said. His predecessor fled for his life from Empandeni before the 2000 general election when Mr Mugabe's militant supporters stormed the church. They accused him of supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change after he pinned up posters advising local people on election procedure. "So far they have left me alone but it is only a matter of time," the priest said.
The scale of the food crisis in Zimbabwe can be seen all over the country. At the Grain Marketing Board depot in the second city, Bulawayo, where the socialist planners of Mr Mugabe's government try to control the meagre flow of maize meal, hundreds of woman have begun a daily picket. They sit hour after hour, day after day, hoping to somehow glean a bag of maize from the lorries that now deliver only a fraction of the city's daily requirement. One local black farmer said he had been advised not to send a lorry to pick up a supply of stock-feed maize from the plant because of the danger of a riot. But as millions go hungry, Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party has launched a risky political strategy, rationing maize shipments only to those villages and headmen who promise to vote for him in the election. "This a high-risk strategy because in a time of hunger do you really want to be seen to be denying food to some and giving it to others?" one observer said. At a recent campaign rally, a wizened, elderly tribal chief who had sat through a long tirade from Mr Mugabe dared to stand up and ask him where the food was coming from. "If you do not come here with food then we are not interested in anything else you have to say," the tribal chief said. Outside the Empandeni mission station there was a sign proudly recognising the community for giving more blood donations than any other in south Matabeleland in 1999. With the threat of starvation and political violence hanging over the area, there is a risk that in 2002 the area may see blood spilled less innocently.
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From The Guardian (UK), 19 February
EU hits Mugabe with sanctions
Brussels - The European Union's confrontation with Zimbabwe entered a new and volatile stage last night when it slapped "smart sanctions" on the regime of President Robert Mugabe and withdrew its entire election observer mission. Meeting in Brussels, the EU's 15 foreign ministers decided overwhelmingly that the expulsion of the head of the EU monitoring team at the weekend made retaliatory measures inevitable. "We have made many, many accommodations to the government of Zimbabwe but today is the end of the road," said Jack Straw, foreign secretary. Some 26 observers already accredited in Harare are to be ordered to leave immediately. The team was to have reached 150 in time for the March 9 presidential election. "The EU remains seriously concerned at political violence, serious violations of human rights, and restrictions on the media, which call into question the prospects for a free and fair election," a statement said. An arms embargo, a travel ban and an assets freeze, targeting Mr Mugabe and 19 of his senior ministers, army and police commanders and their families, are to be imposed at once, with the US expected to follow suit. The EU is also to cut off E128m in development aid for the 2002-2007 period. Election observer missions are still being sent in by the Commonwealth and the Southern African Development Community.
With foreign ministers acknowledging that they faced a stark choice between EU credibility and the effectiveness of the mission, the crucial voice was that of Pierre Schorri, the Swedish diplomat thrown out of Zimbabwe on Saturday. But EU governments had already been angered by the way Harare had attempted to divide them by insisting that observers from the six member states most critical of Mr Mugabe's rule would not be welcome. The six are Britain, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark. Ministers were at pains to emphasise that the punitive measures would not affect the country's impoverished population. The option of "converting" the existing monitoring mission into separate national delegations from the member states, leaving them on the ground to observe the elections as best they could, was rejected. It was not a case of EU amour-propre, argued Chris Patten, the external relations commissioner, but a question of whether the team could function effectively. Mr Mugabe, 77, is fighting for his political survival, and that of his Zanu PF party, and has imposed restrictions on journalists and opposition parties to ensure victory. Glenys Kinnock, the Labour MEP, said last night that the EU had made the right decision: "The case for sanctions has been clear for some time." But Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said before the decision in Brussels that sanctions would be "too little, too late".
Zimbabwe has barred almost the entire British press from sending correspondents to cover the presidential election. Many US news organisations will be permitted to send reporters, but Swedish, Australian and Dutch journalists are also banned. ITN is among the few British news organisations given accreditation. Last year, the information minister, Jonathan Moyo, said he would allow ITN into the country just to frustrate the BBC, which had its correspondent expelled.
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From The Times (UK), 19 February
Zimbabwe officials on sanctions list
The EU sanctions apply to the following Zimbabwean ministers and officials and their families:
Robert Mugabe, President; Charles Utete, Cabinet Secretary; Emmerson Mnangagwa, Parliamentary Speaker; John Nkomo, Home Affairs Minister; Nicholas Goche, Security Minister; Elliot Manyika, Youth Minister; Jonathan Moyo, Information Minister; George Charamba, Information Minister’s permanent secretary and spokesman; Patrick Chinamasa, Justice Minister; Joseph Made, Agriculture Minister; Ignatius Chombo, Local Government Minister; Stan Mudenge, Foreign Minister; Willard Chiwewe, senior secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Vitalis Zvinavashe, general (CDS); Constantine Chiwenga, lieutenant-general (Army); Perence Shiri, air marshal (Air Force); Augustine Chihuri, commissioner (Police); Elisha Muzonzini, brigadier (intelligence); Paradzai Zimondi, prisons chief; Sidney Sekeramayi, Defence Minister.
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From SABC News, 19 February
SA says Zim sanctions are 'regrettable'
The South African government said last night that it found it regrettable and unfortunate that the European Union chose to impose targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe. "We believe that sanctions will not achieve the intended result. On the contrary they may further compound the situation," the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. "The people of Zimbabwe need to speak through the ballot box. In this regard, the South African government calls on the international community to spare neither strength nor effort towards assisting the people of Zimbabwe towards the creation of a climate conducive to free and fair elections." The Department said more South African observers would leave the country for Zimbabwe tomorrow. "Parliamentary, SADC and OAU observers will further add to the momentum of creating a climate for free and fair elections in Zimbabwe." In terms of the sanctions Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and 19 of his closest aides are banned from travelling to the EU while their financial assets in Europe will also be frozen.
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From The Star (SA), 18 February
Battlefield Harare as Mugabe's men run riot
Harare - Supporters of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe stoned the headquarters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as they rampaged through the capital Harare on Monday. Opposition members who left the building were arrested by riot police massed in the city. The pro-Mugabe militants were seen shattering the ground floor windows of the MDC office building and the window of a nearby shop. The attack on the MDC headquarters came shortly after militants stormed the seat of city government, where MDC candidates were filing nomination papers for municipal elections, witnesses said. Police sealed off the Town House building, where several ambulances were seen leaving. Vendors at a market across the street said the attack sent throngs of people fleeing, only to be chased by pro-government militants brandishing sticks, shovels and bricks. Most vendors at the market quickly packed their wares and shut down. Crowds of others fled in various directions from baton-wielding riot police deployed on the city's main streets.
Several groups of pro-government liberation war veterans and members of the ruling Zanu PF crisscrossed the city. A witness said militants also caused panic in a posh high-rise office building and shopping mall where MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai keeps an office. Several passers-by were beaten with sticks, the witness said. Police spokesperson Tarwireyi Tirivavi said he had no details on the attacks or their cause. It was unclear what sparked the militants' attacks in downtown Harare, but on Sunday a war veterans leader, Patrick Nyaruwata, had threatened to take action if the government took too long to prosecute Tsvangirai in an alleged plot to kill Mugabe. The attacks came during the increasingly tense run-up to the presidential election set for March 9-10, when Mugabe faces his toughest-ever challenge from Tsvangirai. Zimbabwe has s |
