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Archived News
26th November 2002
US embassy worker beaten in Zimbabwe
Maize-meal only sold to Zanu PF card holders
Government, NGOs must step up efforts ahead of another poor crop
Concern over new price controls
'Technocratic' Mbeki muddies the waters
Mugabe is 'starving his opponents to death'
Zimbabwe accused of using food as political weapon
Food distribution in Insiza still suspended
U.S. steps up war of words with Zimbabwe
Zim adopts dual interest rate policy
DRC recalls envoy
Zimbabwe and US in diplomatic spat
Church leaders back Pius Ncube
War vets divert maize-meal to Zanu PF rallies
European parliament bans two Zimbabwe ministers
Judgement reserved on Mugabe media laws
Zimbabwe government ‘summons’ UN official
US envoy denies apologising to government over assault incidents
Mbeki's plea to investors
SA wants Zim at EU-ACP meet
President's life exposed to danger
Party test for Zimbabwe civil servants
SA probes Zim role in smuggling racket
UN were asked
While Mugabe fiddles, Zim starves
Zimbabwe's new economic regulations lead businesses to bankruptcy
Troublesome priest
EU, ACP at odds over exclusion of Zimbabweans
Starvation is the price for defying ruthless Mugabe
The true cost of a by-election vote
New farmers fail to take up land
Mogae tilts at Mugabe in UK-based magazine
How a perfect English gent in a rural idyll profits from a bloody African war
EU talks cancelled over Zim
Leave with your food, chief tells donors
Zanu PF supporters abduct teacher
US embassy awaits action on staff "beatings"
Zimbabwe uneasy over ICC scrutiny
Zimbabwe's bouncer brings new concern for World Cup
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From The Guardian (UK), 20 November
US embassy worker beaten in Zimbabwe
Andrew Meldrum in Harare
The diplomatic dispute between the United States and Zimbabwe has deepened after an employee of the American embassy in Harare was beaten by war veterans loyal to President Robert Mugabe. The Zimbabwean employee was on an aid mission with a group which included another embassy employee who was an American citizen, and a United Nations official. The team was studying how to help the former farm workers displaced by Mr Mugabe's land seizures who were "subsisting on a diet of berries and termites", according to a statement from the US government. The embassy said that the UN official, the American, the Zimbabwean employee and another Zimbabwean citizen travelling with them were forcibly held and interrogated. The Zimbabweans were also beaten, it added. In an unusually strong statement, the US government said the incident was "symptomatic of the lawlessness that has affected Zimbabwe" for the last two-and-a-half years. "It is the same sort of intimidation and violence suffered by thousands of Zimbabweans since the rule of law was effectively suspended," it added. The Americans called for "swift action to identify and arrest the perpetrators". "We call once again on the government of Zimbabwe to restore the rule of law."
The incident comes a week after Zimbabwean police shot dead an American university lecturer at a roadblock in mysterious circumstances. The American was questioned about the papers on his rental car. He drove 12 miles to get his passport and then returned to the roadblock where he was shot and killed. Zimbabwe's information minister, Jonathan Moyo, said that the beating of the embassy worker was the result of "interventionist behaviour by some US embassy personnel who have been trespassing on to some farms under the guise of looking for alleged displaced farm workers". "There are no displaced farm workers in Zimbabwe and the embassy knows that," he said. Mr Moyo dismissed the charge of lawlessness as "quite preposterous". "Everyone knows that the US is the citadel of mafia conduct and racist vigilante groups. When will America restore its rule of law by controlling the mafia and the Ku Klux Klan?" he added.
The official newspaper, the Herald, said yesterday that the two embassy employees were part of a group that staged and filmed a scramble for food among farm workers. It said the embassy group was detained after allegedly throwing food from a moving vehicle to farm workers, who were then filmed as they jostled for the handouts. A loaded camera and two computer disks were reportedly confiscated from the group. Earlier this month a senior state department official warned that the United States was considering "intrusive measures" to deliver food aid to people being starved by the Mugabe government. Aid experts say the US could be considering dropping food aid by air to the southern Matabeleland region which is not receiving adequate international food aid. "The United States is taking a tougher approach," said Iden Wetherell, editor of the Zimbabwe Independent. "They are legitimately concerned that Mugabe is starving his own people. And so they must venture out to all parts of the country, and in doing so they will become targets of Mugabe's violent militias." The US does not consider Mr Mugabe as the legitimate leader of Zimbabwe because of an alleged rigged election earlier this year.
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From The Daily News, 19 November
Maize-meal only sold to Zanu PF card holders
By Sam Munyavi
Only people with Zanu PF cards were allowed to buy maize meal at the Sunningdale community centre in Harare yesterday. This was despite government denials that food is being distributed or sold on partisan lines. Baton- and whip-wielding police officers and "Green Bombers" manned the gates at the centre where hundreds of people crowded outside the perimeter fence. Many of the people went away disappointed. Some who wanted to go to the clinic in the same grounds as the community centre, were not allowed in unless they had clinic cards or looked visibly ill. This reporter was denied entry into the grounds of the community centre. One of the "Green Bombers" said: "Kuti utenge hupfu wotoona kuti wakabata chikwambo cheZanu PF", meaning that anyone without a Zanu PF card could not buy maize-meal. A number of women who said they were Zanu PF officials at the local cell and branch level complained bitterly that they were being sidelined when it came to buying the maize-meal, yet they were in the lead when it came to campaigning for their party. One said: "When it comes to campaigning those party officials in there use us but when there is maize-meal they ignore us." Last Thursday, Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, warned the Zimbabwean government against politicising food aid distribution. Annan said famine relief had to be distributed according to need and not political affiliation. On Saturday last week, Elias Mudzuri, the executive mayor of Harare, was refused entry into the Harare city council’s Hatfield hall where Zanu PF supporters were selling maize-meal from the Murehwa Milling Company. As was the case in Sunningdale yesterday, those without Zanu PF cards went away empty-handed. The sales of maize meal at council halls and community centres are being conducted without the approval of the municipalities.
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From IRIN (UN), 19 November
Government, NGOs must step up efforts ahead of another poor crop
Johannesburg - The Zimbabwe government and NGOs need to step up efforts to provide food aid to about 6.7 million people whose food security is under threat in the face of vastly reduced crop estimates for next year, the Famine and Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS-NET) said on Tuesday. While agriculture has formed the base of the Zimbabwean economy, contributing 45 percent of export earnings and providing livelihoods to over 70 percent of the population, researchers found that farmers had only secured 20 percent of the estimated Zim $160 (US $2.9 billion) needed to finance agricultural activities for the 2002 to 2003 production year. If a planned Zim $60 billion (US $1.1 billion) Agribond issue raised enough capital, the agricultural funding gap could be reduced to 42 percent, the report said. However, response to the bonds was expected to be "lukewarm" and funding from wary commercial banks was unlikely to close the deficit.
Wheat production at 212,000 mt was the lowest since 1991 and only 62 percent of last year's production. The poor yield would require imports to alleviate shortages from April to the next harvest in October 2003, FEWS-NET said. Maize imports up to March 2003 would only provide 73 percent of the country's monthly maize requirements, leaving a food gap of about 256,000 mt to meet the total 2002 to 2003 consumption requirement of 1.6 million mt. The report recommended that the maize marketing system allow more private sector participation to increase supplies and lower prices. Adding to farmers' woes, the moderate El Nino conditions were expected to expand to establish basin-wide mature El Nino conditions between December and February. Past data had shown that this could be accompanied by a drop in rainfall in the south of the country and a reduction in crop yields by between 20 to 40 percent.
Although the country had enough hybrid maize seed for a 14 percent increase in the hectares planted, last year's bad crops and the controversial land reform programme - which saw thousands of commercial farmers evicted - had left a shortage of seed for sorghum, millet, pulses, beans and groundnuts, which were traditionally held over by farmers. The price of groundnut and sunflower seeds rose by 150 percent, sugar beans by 300 percent and soyabeans by 375 percent, making it more difficult for farmers. FEWS-NET also warned of an impending shortage of fertilisers. Phosphate was scarce because rail transport was stretched by food deliveries, forcing the use of more expensive road transport. Calcium and supplementary ammonia supplies were imported, leaving companies at the mercy of foreign currency shortages and fluctuating exchange rates. However, the government had tried to alleviate the shortages by allocating foreign currency to the fertiliser companies, the report said. If these shortages were not addressed by the provision of foreign currency by the government, it would result in a further reduction of harvests in the 2002-2003 season. Significant drops were expected in the flue-cured tobacco harvest for next year, which contributes about 29 percent of the country's total export earnings as well as valuable foreign currency and 9 percent towards GDP.
While the country comes to grips with escalating food costs and shortages, the National NGO Food Security Monitoring Network reported high levels of population movement in search of work, land and food through the districts of Matabeleland and Mashonaland central provinces in August and September. There was also a prevalence of internally displaced people in Matabeleland south and Mashonaland central. World Food Programme spokesman Luis Clemens told IRIN that in response to the countrywide food crisis the organisation had distributed more than 20,000 mt of food aid to over two million people in 20 districts. "In November we hope to increase that to more than 30 districts and reach three million people depending on the availability of food," he said.
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From IRIN (UN), 18 November
Concern over new price controls
Johannesburg - The Zimbabwe government's decision to impose a new set of price freezes would create shortages and an increase in smuggling, an economist told IRIN on Monday. The state-controlled Herald newspaper reported the government-gazetted six-month price freeze on a long list of products to cushion consumers against rising prices and an inflation rate that hit 144 percent in October. The list includes fuel, all meat products, dressed chickens, salt, vegetable oils, fats and sugar. It also covers alcoholic beverages and household items like soap, candles and toilet paper. The price of building materials and blasting explosives and accessories for the mining industry as well as vehicles and their accessories would be controlled. There was also a freeze on the price of all agricultural tractors and implements as well as chemicals, veterinary products and maize, barley, soya-bean, sorghum, wheat, groundnut and sunflower seed.
But while people questioned in a subsequent snap survey by the newspaper lauded the move, economist Tony Hawkins said the government's price controls introduced in October 2001, when inflation was at 70 percent, had had no effect. "It did nothing except create shortages. Price controls meant that goods were either not being produced [because manufacturers were not recouping costs], goods were sold on the black market at higher prices, or they were being smuggled over the border," he said. "Deliveries of sugar to Mutare doubled but there was no sugar for sale in the town - it was being sold across the Mozambique border at higher prices," he added. Hawkins said that Zambia's former president Frederick Chiluba complained that his country had lost almost one-third of their cement market to smuggling or dumping from Zimbabwe. In addition, he said the announcement during Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa's budget speech last week that all bureaux de change would be closed, would make it more difficult for businesses to access the foreign currency they needed.
Zimbabwe's foreign currency shortage has seen businesses driven to the bureaux de change "parallel market" in search of the hard cash to pay for imports or raw materials. In the hopes of stopping a currency freefall, the Zimbabwe Reserve Bank (ZRB) fixed the exchange rate at US $1 to Zim $55 in October 2000, but shortages have seen the parallel rate fluctuate at over Zim $1,500 for US $1 over the last fortnight. The government's move to close the bureaux would force businesses to apply to the ZRB for currency and the bank would have to decide whose application was approved, Hawkins said. This comes alongside the government forcing companies to surrender half their foreign exchange earnings to the ZRB. "Price controls and shutting the bureaux de change will destroy businesses and it will drive the parallel market onto the street corner," Hawkins said.
The Commercial Oil, Grain and Cereal Producers Association said that while it welcomed the price fix on seed, there needed to be a corresponding price fix on production inputs. The association's general manger of commodities, George Hutchison, said shortages would still drive prices over the fixed rate and manufacturers would not sell their goods at a loss. "With agricultural chemicals, importers use foreign exchange to bring them in and they won't sell their goods at a loss and they either remove it from the market, or we have to pay the asking price. If we had a real exchange rate we wouldn't have this problem," he told IRIN. "If you're desperate you have to pay the asking price. If the government could control prices right through the [production] chain, it might work, but not in a shortage situation. The only people who benefit are the middle men," Hutchison said. In their latest situation report, the World Food Programme said farmers reported shortages of seeds, fertiliser and fuel. It warned that if fuel shortages continued, it could pose difficulties for the commuter transport system with implications for heightened food insecurity in rural as well as urban areas.
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From The Star (SA), 19 November
'Technocratic' Mbeki muddies the waters
By Peter Fabricius and John Battersby
A nine-page letter from President Thabo Mbeki trying to reassure Africa's international partners that all is well with the Nepad political peer-review process seems to have backfired. The letter was addressed to Canadian Prime Minister and G8 chairman Jean Chretien. Diplomats interviewed on Monday said the letter had mostly added to the confusion surrounding the role of the New Partnership for Africa's Development in reviewing political governance. Mbeki wrote the letter to Chretien in reply to a letter from the G8 chairman asking for clarification of earlier remarks by Mbeki. Mbeki had suggested that Nepad's peer-review mechanism would review only economic governance and not political governance. The remarks caused a huge outcry. After that statement, Nepad's heads of state implementation committee met in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 3 and announced that the Nepad peer-review mechanism would, after all, include political governance - but only while other African Union political review institutions were being set up.
Now, some diplomats of the G8 and other industrialised nations, which are Africa's main partners in Nepad, have said Mbeki's letter has thrown them back into more confusion. The letter, on the one hand, sought to reassure the G8 and other Nepad partners, whose material support Africa relies on, that nothing had changed in South Africa's and Africa's original commitment to Nepad. On the other hand, the letter goes to great lengths to spell out that the African Union is the "parent" of Nepad and therefore superior to it. This has provoked doubts among diplomats as to whether the peer review will amount to the credible and independent process that had been hoped for. Diplomats are also sceptical because they have been privately told by Nepad officials that they should be patient because South Africa has had to make compromises on Nepad's political peer review in order to maintain its leadership position in Africa. Many Nepad partner countries remain unconvinced. Some see the letter as evidence that Mbeki has lost control of the Nepad peer-review process. One G8 diplomat said: "It is one of the worst letters I have ever seen...very technocratic, and some of the explanations are absurd. We trust Nepad more than the AU because it is a home-grown African plan that is new and in which South Africa is heavily involved."
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From IOL (SA), 20 November
Mugabe is 'starving his opponents to death'
By Andrew Quinn
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has tightened control over food supplies in his beleaguered country, starving opponents and manipulating relief aid to enforce his hold on power, a Danish human rights group said on Wednesday. "If it is not possible to increase non-partisan food supplies into the country, it is our opinion that starvation and eventually death will occur along party political lines in Zimbabwe," Christian Tramsen of Physicians for Human Rights-Denmark said at a news conference in Johannesburg. The Danish report, based on extensive interviews within Zimbabwe over the last three months, is the latest to allege that Mugabe has cut off food to opponents who have challenged the power of his ruling Zanu PF party. Earlier in November the European Union accused Mugabe of using foreign food aid as a political weapon, while the United States has said it might consider measures to guarantee that food aid deliveries are free from political interference. Half of Zimbabwe's 14 million people are at risk of starvation, according to the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP). Zanu-PF, which blames the country's food crisis on drought, denies it has politicised food distribution and has accused some aid agencies of sending more relief to opposition strongholds. The Danish report alleged that the government began tightening control over food supplies ahead of the March 2002 election which saw Mugabe elected to his fifth term in office. With the country facing its worst economic crisis in 22 years of independence, the state Grain Marketing Board has used its power to permit sales to supporters of Zanu PF while turning away members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the report said.
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From VOA News, 20 November
Zimbabwe accused of using food as political weapon
Harare - A group of Danish doctors released a report Wednesday claiming that Zimbabwe's ruling party, Zanu PF, is using food as a political weapon. The group Physicians for Human Rights said Wednesday there is gross abuse of food imported by the Zimbabwe government. The doctors spent two months collecting information, and interviewing people, mainly in the dry Matabeleland province in southern Zimbabwe. The report says the government's Food For Work program is corrupt. It provides several examples of supporters of the opposition movement for Democratic Change who were hired to work on the program and then were not paid, and therefore were unable to buy food. The report also says that many suspected opposition supporters were denied access to employment in the Food For Work program. It also says the government is selling grain to chosen retailers, who are known to be ruling Zanu PF supporters. The report says they, in turn, have their own lists of people they will allow to buy food. The report gives several examples of corrupt Zanu PF officials allowed to buy grain at the low official price, who then sell it at huge profits to ruling party supporters.
The report mentions an example of an opposition supporter, a single mother of eight children, who Zanu PF officials would not include on a list of those who qualify for food aid distributed by a non-governmental organization until she cancelled her membership in the opposition party. The World Food Program, responsible for importing nearly all food aid into Zimbabwe, said Wednesday the case of the mother of eight was disturbing and would be urgently investigated. The World Food Program only has resources to feed two million people in Zimbabwe, fewer than a third of those it says are at risk of starvation. Earlier this month United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan criticized the Zimbabwe government for repeated allegations of partisan food distribution. There are no records available to the public of how much grain the Zimbabwe government is importing. Many journalists have been reporting the misuse of public food for several months. But the Physicians for Human Rights document is the first independent and systematic report on the abuse of scarce food supplies at a time of massive hunger across the country. Researchers hired by the Danish group worked in secret from August to October mainly in rural areas. Their previous reports on torture in Zimbabwe were widely respected by local human rights groups. Officials from the Zimbabwe Welfare Ministry, responsible for food relief, were not available Wednesday to respond to the report.
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From The Daily News, 20 November
Food distribution in Insiza still suspended
Political Editor
The World Food Programme (WFP) on Monday said the distribution of food aid in the Insiza district of Matabeleland South was still suspended until further notice. The WFP position puts paid to recent reports in the State media of an agreement between the government and the United Nations agency to continue with food distribution in Insiza. The programme was suspended after a rowdy group of Zanu PF supporters seized three metric tonnes of WFP maize and distributed it to their own supporters. The incident took place just before the parliamentary by-election in Insiza in September, which Zanu PF won, amid allegations of vote-buying and intimidation of opposition supporters. "The distribution of food aid remains suspended at this point and no decision has been taken to re-initiate the process," Luis Clemens, the spokesman of the WFP, said on Monday. The state media has published stories to the effect that the government and the WFP have reached an agreement to resume food aid in Insiza.
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From Reuters, 20 November
U.S. steps up war of words with Zimbabwe
Washington - The United States has accused Zimbabwe of a serious breach of the Vienna Convention on the treatment of diplomats and says it is reassessing its diplomatic and humanitarian presence there. Two Americans - a U.S. embassyand a U.N. official - were detained and interrogated last Friday when they went out of the capital Harare to investigate food shortages. The United States says Zimbabwean "war veterans" assaulted an embassy worker. Zimbabwean Information Minister Jonathan Moyo was quoted in the official Herald newspaper as saying that the two Americans were part of a group that stage-managed and filmed a scramble for food among farm workers. U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker denied that allegation on Wednesday and stepped up the war of words with the government of President Robert Mugabe. "The assertions ... are complete fabrications, utterly without foundation, and clearly, once again, betray the cynicism of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe," Reeker said. "The United States regards the unprovoked attack on our personnel as a serious breach of the Zimbabwe government's responsibility to safeguard diplomatic personnel. We continue to press Zimbabwe authorities to identify, arrest and charge those responsible in this incident and return all the stolen items, and their response will certainly be factored into our ongoing assessments of the safety of our personnel and of our diplomatic and humanitarian operations."
The Herald said a loaded camera and two computer discs were reportedly confiscated from the group. Reeker said the diplomats may have had a camera with them, but he did not know what items had been taken. Asked whether the United States might withdraw diplomats from Harare, Reeker said: "We're reflecting on the type of government Zimbabwe has in terms of how they react, how they respond, how they live up to their responsibilities under the Vienna Conventions... We've seen a serious breach of those responsibilities here." But the dispute would not affect the principle of giving humanitarian assistance to the people of Zimbabwe, who are short of food because of drought and mismanagement, he said. The United States says it does not recognise Mugabe's legitimacy because of irregularities during presidential elections in March. The United States is also seeking answers from the Zimbabwean government on the shooting death of a U.S. citizen in the eastern town of Mutare last week. Richard Gilman, 54, a lecturer, was shot dead after he tried to drive through a security checkpoint, police said. The State Department has called for a thorough investigation and a detailed police report on the incident.
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From The Financial Gazette, 21 November
Zim adopts dual interest rate policy
By Stella Mapenzauswa
Zimbabwe’s central bank said yesterday it was suspending its key banking rate with immediate effect and adopting a dual interest rate system in a bid to help shore up the country’s struggling economy. Reserve Bank governor Leonard Tsumba unveiled the new monetary policy framework against the backdrop of an acute economic crisis widely blamed on mismanagement by President Robert Mugabe’s government. A chronic shortage of foreign currency has hampered crucial fuel and food imports, crippling what was once one of Africa’s most vibrant economies and raising the spectre of starvation for half of Zimbabwe’s population of 14 million. Tsumba said in a statement that exporters and companies in the "productive" sector would be able to borrow money at low interest rates, while importers and local consumers paid market-determined interest rates. The previous bank rate was 57.2 percent in the past year. "This measure has become necessary so as to achieve the twin objectives of stimulating economic growth while at the same time bringing inflation under control," Tsumba said.
Inflation has soared by more than 100 percent since last November, climbing by a record annual rate of 140 percent in September. Unemployment is hovering at close to 70 percent and the government has predicted the economy will contract by nearly 12 percent in 2002. Analysts said the new measures would probably have limited impact as they would not address the foreign exchange shortage. "The monetary policy statement is positive . . . under the difficult circumstances that we are in as a country," said Munyaradzi Kereke, an economist with a leading commercial bank. "But for as long as there is no sufficient foreign exchange, it will take a bit of time before producers can respond positively to the monetary incentives." Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, denies that government policies — including the seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks — are responsible for the country’s political and economic crisis.
Tsumba yesterday told reporters, economists and industry executives that a revolving fund would be set up which would allow exporters to borrow money at an interest rate of five percent, and "productive" companies at 15 percent. The foreign currency shortage has forced the Zimbabwe dollar to depreciate dramatically to about 1 500 to the greenback on the unofficial parallel market in the past two years — just a fraction of its official rate of 55 to the dollar. Tsumba yesterday declined to discuss the exchange rate. In his 2003 budget speech last week, Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa said the government was tightening exchange controls further in a bid to halt "rampant abuse of the country’s scarce foreign exchange export earnings". Murerwa said exporters would have to remit 50 percent of all their foreign exchange earnings to the central bank while the remaining half would be deposited with the central bank and made available to them on the basis of a priority import list.
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From The Daily News, 21 November
DRC recalls envoy
By Luke Tamborinyoka Political Editor
The Ambassador of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to Zimbabwe, Mwanananga Mwawapanga, has been recalled. President Joseph Kabila last week launched a crackdown on senior government officials linked to the plunder of diamonds and other mineral wealth during the four-year civil war in his country. Senior government and army officials in Zimbabwe were named in a United Nations’ report for plundering the resources of the DRC. But the government of President Mugabe has dismissed the report as British-orchestrated "malicious rumours". It emerged yesterday that while the Zimbabwean government was dithering over the detailed corruption and plunder report, Kabila had suspended his Harare representative and recalled him to Kinshasa. Yesterday, the consul at the DRC embassy in Harare, Richard Biladi, confirmed Mwawapanga’s suspension. "He was recalled home about a week ago following the inclusion of his name in the report by the UN panel. The ambassador was one of the officials suspended by President Kabila," Biladi said.
Kabila’s actions are in sharp contrast to the inaction by his allies in Harare, who have said they will not investigate the officials linked to the looting of "blood diamonds" during the four years which Zimbabwe committed nearly 11 000 troops to the Congo. Speaking from Kinshasa yesterday, Kikaya bin Karubi, the DRC Minister of Information, said five officials had been suspended, including Mwawapanga, who was then Minister of Finance. "The DRC government is conducting its own investigations. Our ambassador to Harare was mentioned in the UN report and he is on suspension pending finalisation of that matter that is all I can tell you," said Bin Karubi The Speaker of Parliament, Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Minister of Defence, Sydney Sekeramayi, and some of the country’s top military brass were implicated in the scandal. The two senior Zanu PF officials allegedly received payments from the playboy son of an Omani oil minister who is chief executive officer of Oryx Natural Resources, which jointly owns a diamond mining concession in Mbuji-Mayi Mayi with Zimbabwe.
Last week, Patrick Chinamasa, the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, completely dismissed the UN report. He said the government would not investigate the senior government officials named in the report. But Kabila is reportedly not happy that the DRC’s allies connived with DRC government officials to loot the country’s resources, taking advantage of their presence in the war-torn country to ward off rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda. Last week, Kabila fired three key government officials over the UN report. The suspended officials include National Security Minister Mwenze Kongolo, the government’s key negotiator at the peace talks, Katumba Mwanke, and the head of the national security agency, Didier Kazadi Nyembwe. Mnangagwa, the alleged mastermind of the transfer of "blood diamonds" and cash through couriers who bypassed customs officials at Harare International Airport, has confirmed he once dealt with Kongolo in order to facilitate the release of an Oryx employee from a prison in the DRC but denied being involved in any shady deals.
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From the Mail & Guardian (SA), 21 November
Zimbabwe and US in diplomatic spat
Harare - The Zimbabwe government has accused the US of breaching regulations by allowing some of its diplomatic staff to travel outside the capital without permission, a newspaper said on Thursday. Last week a party of four from the US embassy that included an American diplomat, a Zimbabwean embassy worker, plus a UN worker and their Zimbabwean guide were detained in a farming district north of Harare. The two Zimbabwean members of the group were beaten by war veterans, seen here as being loyal to President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party. The US government immediately protested the incident. "How do our people know that the people are genuine diplomats if they had not been notified," an unnamed foreign affairs official in Zimbabwe was quoted as saying in Thursday's edition of the state-controlled Herald newspaper. "The fact that they did not notify the ministry shows that there was something wrong with their visit," the official charged. Under regulations circulated to embassies in Harare in July, diplomats stationed in Harare have to give the government 48 hours notice if they want to travel more than 40 kilometres outside the capital, the paper said.
The US embassy in Harare said the four were on a field trip to assess the plight of farm workers displaced by a controversial land reform programme. The US on Wednesday accused Zimbabwe of violating diplomatic conventions. "The United States regards the unprovoked attack on our personnel as a serious breach of the Zimbabwe government's responsibility to safeguard diplomatic personnel in Zimbabwe," said deputy State Department representative Philip Reeker. Reeker said the incident contravened the Vienna Conventions on diplomatic protocol and hinted Washington might withdraw some personnel from Zimbabwe unless Harare responded to two previous complaints about it. "Their response will certainly be factored into our ongoing assessments of the safety of our personnel and of our diplomatic and humanitarian operations in Zimbabwe," he said. "The breach cannot be hidden behind Zimbabwe government's fabrication of a nonsensical story to justify the lawless actions of its supporters," he said, repeating two previous US demands for full explanation of the incident.
On Tuesday, the Herald said the pair - who were travelling with a local guide and a British UN worker - had sparked the incident by throwing food at farm workers. "They allegedly threw food from a moving vehicle to farm workers whom they then filmed as they jostled for the food," the paper reported, adding that the four "are alleged to have done this on three separate occasions." Reeker said the four had been on a fact-finding trip in the farming district of Melfort about 25 kilometres southeast of Harare, assessing the impact of food shortages when they were detained by self-described veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war against white minority rule. In addition to being held against their will, searched and then robbed, Reeker said the two Zimbabweans were severely beaten by the war veterans. War veterans are generally staunch supporters of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF party. "The assertions that the Zimbabwean government has made in these press reports that embassy staff created and filmed a scramble for food among farm workers are complete fabrications, utterly without foundation, and clearly, once again, betray the cynicism of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe," he said.
Reeker noted that Harare had requested international assistance for the some 6,5-million Zimbabweans are now at risk of hunger and that the four people involved in Friday's incident were working to that end. "The visit was part of their normal work, fully consistent with the legitimate diplomatic and humanitarian activities permitted to diplomats under the Vienna Convention and in the best interests of the people of Zimbabwe," he said. The Herald quoted Zimbabwean Information Minister Jonathan Moyo as saying the incident was "rooted in intrusive and interventionist behaviour by some US embassy personnel who have been trespassing onto some farms under the guise of looking for alleged displaced farm workers." US officials have growing increasingly critical of Mugabe since he was won re-election earlier this year in a vote widely decried as flawed and have frequently blamed his government for policies that have exacerbated the food shortage. "The food crisis in Zimbabwe is primarily the result of the Zimbabwean government's political and economic policies," Reeker he said on Tuesday. He repeated allegations that Mugabe's government was channelling food assistance to its political supporters. "There's a real crisis there, and to see the Zimbabwean government acting in this manner is quite appalling," he said.
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From The Financial Gazette, 21 November
Church leaders back Pius Ncube
Staff Reporter
Bulawayo - Senior clergy in and around Matabeleland this week rallied around outspoken Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube, who has accused the government of denying food to starving opposition supporters to cynically try to win their support. Seven church leaders in and around Matabeleland said they agreed with Ncube that government food aid had been politicised to the detriment of opposition MDC followers. The one-page statement was signed by Bishop Dube of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Bishop Wilson Sitshebo of the Anglican Church Diocese, the Reverend Graham Show of the Methodist Church, the Reverend Kevin Thompson of the Presbyterian Church, the Reverend Noel Scott of the Anglican Church in Bulawayo, Kingsley Dube of the Church of Christ and Pastor Ray Motsi of the Baptist Church. "We, the church leaders, fully support Archbishop Pius Ncube's statement of the 6th November 2002 as reported on the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation). We hear the cries of the suffering, the harassed and starving people of our country for help," the statement said. "We condemn in the strongest terms the actions of (President Robert) Mugabe and his government in hijacking food supplies and distributing them in a partisan way and in hindering the work of non-governmental organisations and other concerned bodies in their efforts to feed the hungry and suffering people in our midst," it said.
Ncube, accused by the government of being an MDC supporter, told church leaders in Durban last week that about 160 villagers had starved to death in Matabeleland because the government was allegedly denying them food aid. "We face an absolutely desperate situation in Zimbabwe and the government is lying to the world about it. Our government continues to engage lies, propaganda, the twisting of facts, half-truths, downright untruths and gross misinformation because they are fascists," Ncube charged. "Mugabe is using the food crisis in Zimbabwe to force people to vote for his party," he added. Information Minister Jonathan Moyo has denied Ncube's charge and accused him of being mad. "When a bishop is mad, he is mad and I don't think it is fair to comment," Moyo told the BBC's Focus on Africa. Last month the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) suspended famine relief aid in the southwestern district of Insiza after ruling Zanu PF militants seized three tonnes of WFP maize and gave it to Zanu PF supporters ahead of a parliamentary by-election there. Zanu PF subsequently won the poll. Zimbabwe is in the throes of its worst famine after crops failed last season because of a devastating drought and the government's controversial land seizures. About half of the country's 14 million people are threatened with starvation.
In their statement, the seven church leaders said they were aware that villagers and other people suspected to be MDC supporters were being denied food. They condemned what they said was the government's orchestrated campaign of violence, intimidation and torture "that adds to the suffering of our freedom and peace-loving people". They stated: "We commit ourselves to do all we can to serve the people and to co-operate with other caring bodies in bringing urgent relief to all those who desperately need food and help. We call the government to repentance and a change of heart, to listen to the cries of the people and to return to the path of justice, peace and governance." Analysts said the statement by the clergy was certain to put them on a collision path with the government, which has repeatedly urged the church to keep out of politics.
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From The Daily News, 21 November
War vets divert maize-meal to Zanu PF rallies
Ntungamili Nkomo in Bulawayo
Incidents of MDC members being prevented from buying basic commodities by Zanu PF functionaries, which have largely been confined to rural areas, have spilled into urban centres. The Bulawayo United Residents' Association (BURA) has charged that so-called war veterans are diverting maize-meal supplies from shopping centres to places in suburbs where they conduct political rallies. The BURA information and publicity officer, J L Dube, recently said suspected MDC supporters were barred from attending meetings where some essential commodities were being sold. Dube said on Thursday last week a truckload of maize-meal, which was supposed to be delivered to the Nkulumane shopping centre, was diverted by a group of war veterans to a spot where they were holding a meeting. "The situation is just disastrous. It seems war veterans have taken over the responsibility of the distribution of maize-meal and other basic commodities to shops, and suspected MDC supporters cannot access these items," said Dube. "They cannot even attend the Zanu PF meetings so as to buy the commodities thereafter. "We need some investigations about why the maize-meal is being sold by war veterans in the streets instead of at shops. To make matters worse, these people are not licenced to sell the commodity."
Some disgruntled residents said since last month, Zanu PF has been convening a chain of meetings in the high-density suburbs at which the war veterans advise those "on the wrong side of politics" to come forward and join Zanu PF for them to be allowed to buy maize-meal. Diglotius Sibanda, a Nkulumane resident, said it has become common for Zanu PF to call meetings in the evenings where maize-meal is sold only to those who attend. He said residents, especially those suspected to be supporters of the MDC, were not allowed to buy the commodity even if they attended the meetings. However, Zanu PF has dismissed the allegations as unfounded and baseless. An official who identified himself only as Dube said: "We don't know anything like that, my friend, and, in any case, Zanu PF will never do that. Such reports are spread by people who want to gain some political mileage." There are also reports that the government wants to introduce a situation whereby maize is sold only in council recreation halls and only to Zanu PF supporters. Meanwhile, the Harare Executive Mayor, Elias Mudzuri, confronted a Zanu PF gathering at the Hatfield municipal hall where they were selling maize without the consent of the city council. He was reportedly denied entry into the hall by about 500 Zanu PF supporters who chanted anti-MDC slogans denouncing him. The weekly Zimbabwe Standard reported that those present were ordered to produce Zanu PF party membership cards in order to be allocated maize-meal.
From ZWNEWS : The Danish Physicians for Human Rights group have released their latest report following a fact-finding visit to Zimbabwe (referred to in yesterday's issue). The report contains detailed evidence of state-sponsored torture and corrupt food aid distribution. If you would like a copy of this document, please let us know. It will be sent as a Word attachment to an email message - total size 735 Kb, or approximately 15 times the size of the average daily ZWNEWS.
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From SABC News, 21 November
European parliament bans two Zimbabwe ministers
The European Parliament has banned two Zimbabwe ministers from the assembly's premises when they visit Brussels next week because their names are on an European Union (EU) visa blacklist. Christopher Kuruneri, Zimbabwe's Deputy Minister for Finance and Economic Development and Paul Mangwana, the Deputy Minister for Justice, had been due to attend a meeting at the parliament on Monday of the EU and the African, Pacific and Caribbean countries (APC). Both men are subject to a travel ban imposed by the EU earlier this year against President Robert Mugabe and many of his top officials amid allegations of human rights violations and election rigging. "Mugabe's henchmen have no place coming to Brussels and the European Parliament," said Geoffrey van Orden, a British Conservative member of the assembly. "As a body that upholds the democratic ideal and the rule of law, the European Parliament must not play host to people who use murder and intimidation to maintain their grip on power," he said. Pat Cox, European Parliament president and the heads of the assembly's political groupings took the decision to ban the two Zimbabwe ministers.
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From SABC News, 21 November
Judgement reserved on Mugabe media laws
Zimbabwe's Supreme Court has reserved judgement on a challenge by journalists against tough new media laws which critics say are aimed at muzzling dissent against President Robert Mugabe's government. The Independent Journalists' Association of Zimbabwe (IJAZ) says sections of the act, which Mugabe signed into law in March, infringe their constitutional rights. The law requires journalists to register with a government-appointed commission and bans foreigners from working in the country as correspondents for foreign media. It also punishes "abuse of journalistic privilege", such as publishing what the government deems to be falsehoods, with fines and up to two years in prison. Twelve journalists have already been charged under the act. Stenford Moyo, IJAZ's lawyer, told the Supreme Court that parts of the law "hinder the enjoyment of freedom of expression and interfere with the right to receive and impart information and ideas in contravention of the Constitution of Zimbabwe". Sections of the law were "so vicious in their attack on professional independence and autonomy as to depart significantly from the legislative philosophy of the parliament of Zimbabwe," he added.
Critics say the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act is aimed at stifling opposition in the face of the country's worst political and economic crisis since Mugabe took power at independence from Britain in 1980. "Taken as a whole, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the real purpose of the licensing system is to provide the government with a measure of control over journalists and to prevent or at least limit critical reporting," Moyo said. The government argues the law is necessary to restore ethics in the private media, which it accuses of spreading Western propaganda against Zimbabwe in retaliation for Mugabe's seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution among landless blacks. "Journalism is a profession and if it is accepted that journalism is a profession, then the practice of journalism should be prescribed by a particular legislation," said state lawyer Johannes Tomana. Tomana was grilled by the five-member Supreme Court bench, who argued that the government-appointed commission did not have room to act independently of the information minister. "Why are you averse to an independent body? Why is the minister given so much power?," asked Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku. Tomana said there was room for appeal under the law, and the minister did not have the final say on licensi ng journalists. Chidyausiku said the judges would need time to study the lawyers' submissions. He did not give a date for a ruling.
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 22 November
Zimbabwe government ‘summons’ UN official
Harare - A top UN official in Zimbabwe has been summoned to government offices to explain why a UN employee travelled outside the capital without permission, a newspaper said on Friday. Last week a group from the US embassy, which included a US national, a UN worker and two Zimbabweans were detained on a farm north of Harare where they had gone to assess the plight of displaced farm workers. The two Zimbabweans were assaulted, according to the US embassy here. The US government immediately protested the incident. The Zimbabwe government in turn said the group had breached a government order given to all diplomats to seek permission before travelling more than 40 kilometres outside Harare. The state-controlled Herald newspaper reported that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) deputy resident representative Bernard Mokam was summoned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explain why a UN employee had breached travel protocol. The US ambassador to Zimbabwe, Joseph Sullivan, was also summoned, the paper said. "Sources in the Protocol Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that Mr Mokam was summoned and told about the importance of complying with the Government order," the paper said. Rights groups here estimate that as many as 200 000 farm workers and their families have been displaced by a controversial land reform programme, and are among nearly seven million Zimbabweans currently in need of emergency food aid. The government denies that any farm workers have been displaced.
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From The Daily News, 22 November
US envoy denies apologising to government over assault incidents
Staff Reporter
The United States government has not apologised and will never apologise to the Zimbabwe government for carrying out their normal diplomatic duties. The Herald, the government mouthpiece, yesterday reported the two Americans detained by the war veterans at a Melfort farm had defied a government order requiring diplomats travelling more than 40km outside Harare to notify it in advance. Melfort is within the 40km range. The paper said Joseph Sullivan, the US ambassador to Zimbabwe, was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explain why his officers had violated the order. It reported that he had apologised to the government over the "behaviour" of his officers. But Bruce Wharton, the US embassy spokesman, said: "We have not apologised and we will not need to apologise for doing what we are supposed to be doing." Wharton said whatever the Harare authorities tried to portray of the incident in which two US embassy officials were assaulted and illegally detained by so-called war veterans in Melfort, they still insisted on the arrest of the assailants. "Our position as the American Embassy has not changed about the incident," he said. "We are still waiting for the government of Zimbabwe to respond to our request for an investigation into the 15 November incident."
Wharton said the Americans would continue to do their work as they have always done in the past. He said their embassy would not make any comments on statements in the State media concerning the incident. Immediately after their staff were assaulted, the embassy issued a statement expressing concern over the incident, urging the government to identify and arrest the perpetrators. The embassy statement read: "The United States government is deeply concerned by this incident. It is symptomatic of the lawlessness that has affected Zimbabwe for the past two years. It is the same sort of intimidation and violence suffered by thousands of Zimbabweans since the rule of law was effectively suspended." The two embassy officials, accompanied by a United Nations Development Programme official and one Zimbabwe citizen, were detained and subjected to hostile interrogation by a group of men who identified themselves as war veterans. The incident occurred at a site where displaced farm workers were subsisting on a diet of berries and termites. A Zimbabwe citizen, employed at the embassy, and another Zimbabwean were beaten up and some personal and official items were stolen.
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From News24 (SA), 22 November
Mbeki's plea to investors
Johannesburg - South African President Thabo Mbeki has said he is working hard to resolve Zimbabwe's political and economic problems, in an apparent bid to reassure investors. Mbeki made his comments during a satellite video link with a conference for South African chief executives in London late on Thursday, which was organised by financial services group Investec. "I would like to reiterate what we have said in the past, that we are unequivocally committed to do everything we can to assist the people of Zimbabwe successfully to address all their challenges," Mbeki said. "These include issues of democracy, the rule of law, human rights, social stability, the resolution of the land question, economic recovery, and the current food shortages. The volatile rand was hit hard by contagion concerns fanned by Zimbabwe's deepening crisis last year, and Mbeki has been criticised for his policy of quiet diplomacy towards President Robert Mugabe's government. Offshore investors were worried that Zimbabwe's controversial state seizure of white commercial farmland for redistribution to landless blacks could one day be repeated in South Africa, despite Pretoria's official statements that the rule of law would be upheld.
Mbeki said he was "very hopeful" that South Africa could help "take off the international agenda a contentious issue" which it had inherited because principal players found it impossible to achieve a commonly acceptable solution. South Africa would continue to work with Zimbabwe's government and its former colonial ruler Britain - along with other "interested parties" to resolve the crisis in its northern neighbour, Mbeki said. Mbeki said South Africa's efforts were part of its drive to promote peace and stability on the continent, and ensure the success of a home-grown recovery plan, the New Partnership for Africa's Development. He also highlighted domestic growth data released on Thursday, which showed that the economy expanded by 3.0% in the third quarter - slower than 3.8% in the second but still much faster than the global average. "This is an important development and shows that our economy will continue with its steady growth this year amidst the general global economic stagnation," he said. South Africa was starting to reap the rewards of eight years of tough restructuring, Mbeki added. "We are now moving into a second phase, which focuses on growth and employment creation," he said. South Africa's official jobless rate stands at about 30%.
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From Business Day (SA), 23 November
SA wants Zim at EU-ACP meet
Brussels - The South African Parliamentary delegation to an African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP)-European Union (EU) joint parliamentary assembly in Brussels have come out strongly in support of a demand that two Zimbabwean ministers be allowed to attend. Earlier, the 78-member ACP and the assembly's co-president, Adrien Houngbedji called on European parliamentarians to agree to the admission of the Zimbabwean delegation to the premises of the European Parliament for the Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA). The ACP-EU assembly is scheduled to take place from Monday to Thursday next week in Brussels. The European Parliament decided late on Thursday to bar the Zimbabweans from its Brussels premises. "The ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly is, as its name indicates, a joint body operating according to rules providing for joint decision making," the South African MPs said in a statement issued on their behalf. "This includes joint decision making on any proposal to exclude any delegation, or member of a delegation." "The JPA is also a multilateral body implying that the host of any of its meetings has to create conditions for participation by all members of the JPA. "There is thus a fundamental principle at stake and the South African delegation is strongly opposed to attempts by the European parliamentarians unilaterally to exclude certain members of the Zimbabwean Delegation." If the European parliamentarians would not receive all members of the assembly in the precinct of the European Parliament, they should provide an alternative venue, the South Africans said.
According to reports, the ACP would hold talks today with the EU before deciding whether to boycott the JPA. The EU has a visa ban in place against the leadership of Zimbabwe but Belgium allowed the ministers to enter the country, arguing the meeting was an international one and so beyond EU jurisdiction. Zimbabwe's Minister of State for State Enterprises Paul Mangwana and Deputy Minister for Finance and Economic Development Christopher Kuruneri are already in Brussels to attend the four-day session. The French news agency AFP reported earlier that the European Parliament president Pat Cox said the decision by leaders of the main political groupings "has my full backing". The 15-nation EU imposed a visa ban on President Robert Mugabe and 71 of his officials and associates in protest at a crackdown on Zimbabwe's political opposition earlier this year. Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman Patrick Herman said Brussels had no desire to give visas to the two Zimbabwean ministers but had done so "to meet legal obligations". Mugabe travelled to New York for a UN conference on children in May despite a similar US travel restriction. He was also allowed to attend the World Food Summit in Rome in June despite the EU ban because it was a UN-organised event. The Belgian spokesman said next week's Brussels meeting fell into a similar bracket. The Cotonou agreement that set up an aid and trade pact between the EU and the ACP - mostly former colonies of European countries - left nations free to choose their delegates for joint meetings, Herman said.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 22 November
President's life exposed to danger
Staff writer
Air Zimbabwe might have endangered the lives of President Mugabe and his retinue when the airline's maintenance workers refuelled a plane while the presidential party was boarding, the Zimbabwe Independent heard this week. Last week the Independent revealed that the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe (CAAZ) had written to Air Zimbabwe complaining about the slack maintenance work at the airline and the disregard of safety regulations. The report provoked a fiery response from Air Zimbabwe's public relations manager David Mwenga who issued a statement saying the airline's planes were in good working order and the Independent's story was meant to "frighten the travelling public through baseless interpretations". One of the letters from CAAZ referred to by the Independent last week complained about the refuelling of flight UMCHT 491A VVIP with passengers on board. The Independent has since established that President Mugabe had chartered the plane in question. It was not possible to confirm the destination of the plane but it is believed it took the president and other dignitaries to Bulawayo for the National University of Science and Technology graduation ceremony.
Mwenga said yesterday that no passengers were on board the plane when refuelling started. "Passengers started arriving for the flight when our engineer was about to finish refuelling," he said. "By the time most passengers boarded the aircraft refuelling had finished. Air Zimbabwe did not endanger the lives of passengers." He did not say if Mugabe was among the passengers. CAAZ chief executive Karikoga Kaseke on the phone from South Africa yesterday confirmed that the authority had made the complaint but said the issue was still being investigated. "As a matter of principle a plane should have fire cover when it is being refuelled," said Kaseke. He said he had tasked his deputy to undertake a full investigation into the incident. CAAZ is believed to be under investigation from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) following reports of the problems the national airline is facing in terms of safety. Kaseke denied this saying it was disgruntled engineers fired by Air Zimbabwe this month who had written to ICAO.
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From BBC News, 22 November
Party test for Zimbabwe civil servants
By Lewis Machipisa
BBC correspondent in Harare
Zimbabwe's government is looking at ways in which it can ensure that only "patriotic Zimbabweans" work for the civil service. According to the country's Public Service Commission, anyone working for or wanting to join the civil service will be tested on their level of loyalty to the ruling Zanu PF party. Prospective entrants who fail the test will not be employed. Those who are already employed could be dismissed. This latest move adds to criticism already levelled at the Zimbabwean government, which has recently been in the news for denying food aid to starving opposition supporters. Half the country's population is currently in need of urgent help. According to Ray Ndhlukula, Secretary of the Public Service Commission, there are too many people working in the civil service who are not committed to the ruling party and government. This, said Mr Ndhlukula, cannot continue - hence the new stringent tests beginning next year. Mr July Moyo, Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, is already said to have submitted proposals to the government to introduce measures to assess the suitability of those wanting to join the civil service. The same measures for joining are also likely to apply for promotion purposes.
Details of how the assessment will be conducted have not yet been given. But for the estimated 160,000 civil servants, including teachers and nurses, it may be prudent to buy a ruling party card and start practising the party slogans to remain employed. Recalling names of senior Zanu PF officials may be an added advantage. The new measures have not gone down well with the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), or some civil servants. Two government workers told the BBC the new measures would fail as they would simply fake support for the ruling party. According to Pauline Mpariwa, the MDC's Secretary for Labour and Social Security, the move is merely a political witch-hunt exercise, aimed at getting rid of opposition supporters. Ms Mpariwa said civil servants must be loyal to the nation and not to a political party. The government has also recently introduced a national service for youths. From next year, no student will be allowed into government tertiary colleges before undergoing a six-month training exercise which critics say is little less than military training.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 22 November
SA probes Zim role in smuggling racket
Loughty Dube
South African police are investigating the possibility that Harare is being used as a transit corridor for perlemoen that is smuggled into the country in light aircraft en-route to lucrative markets in the Far East. South African police instituted investigations into the matter after a South African pilot Tony Robinson died when the light aircraft he was flying crashed in Limpopo province near the Zimbabwe border. Investigators found that the plane was carrying 800kg of frozen perlemoen raising fears there was massive smuggling of the ocean produce from the Cape to destinations in Hong Kong and China through Zimbabwe. Police Superintendent Ronel Otto, quoted in the South African press, said Robinson was hired to transport the frozen perlemoens from Swaziland to Harare. Perlemoen, also known as abalone, is an edible mollusc with an ear-shaped shell lined with mother-of-pearl. According to South African press reports it sells for R1 000 or more per kg in the Far East market. South African police said the evidence gathered indicated that to avoid customs inspections at ports and major airports, smugglers were transporting the illegal Cape perlemoen by road to Swaziland. The smugglers then hired light aircraft to fly the cargo to Harare where it was put on flights connecting to Hong Kong.
However, Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe (CAAZ) chief executive officer Karikoga Kaseke shot down the reports and said Zimbabwe has no connecting flights to Asia. "These allegations have no substance but are meant to tarnish Harare because South Africa is the one with direct flights to Asia," said Kaseke. "It would be difficult to smuggle perlemoens to Europe and then to Asia." However, customs officials said it was easier to clear consignments in transit compared to those for a single destination. South African police have intensified the tracking down of the smugglers with the arrest last week of three Cape Town men while they were loading perlemoen into a light aircraft destined for Harare. The three appeared in court last Thursday and were denied bail. Otto said there were two other incidents that involved smuggling of perlemoen by light aircraft that was destined for Harare International airport. Press reports from South Africa said police arrested a pilot after his plane developed engine problems and made a forced landing at Hoedspruit in Mpumalanga. Ninety boxes containing 890kg of perlemoen worth R3 million were found on the aircraft. The aircraft captain Aaron Dlamini confirmed the plane was hired by a private company to deliver the cargo to Harare.
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From ZWNEWS, 24 November
UN were asked
The UN staff attacked in the Melfort area were undertaking work requested by the Zimbabwe government, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said on Friday. Contradicting government claims that the group had been engaged in activities contrary to their mandate in Zimbabwe, the UNDP said "the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare had requested the United Nations’ assistance in conducting a National Farm Workers Survey. This survey is intended to identify the country’s most vulnerable groups for assistance in commercial farming areas. The observation of Tanner Farm, 15 November 2002, was one component of such an exercise." On 15 November, a US and a UN official, and two Zimbabweans employed by them, were detained and interrogated by war veterans on Tanner Farm. Personal and official property was stolen from them, and the two Zimbabweans were seriously beaten. Jonathan Moyo, the information minister, first claimed that the group had stage-managed a scramble by throwing food from a moving vehicle and then filming displaced farm-workers jostling for it. He then went on to claim that "there are no displaced farmworkers in Zimbabwe, and the (US) embassy knows that".
An unnamed Zimbabwean foreign affairs official was later quoted in the state-controlled Herald newspaper as saying that the group had broken a recently imposed rule for diplomats which requires them to give the government 48 hours notice of intention to travel more than 40 km outside Harare. The farm in the Melfort area is within the 40 km limit. "The Government of Zimbabwe and UNDP have agreed to begin this survey in January," said the UNDP. "UN staff have therefore been carrying out a preliminary needs assessment in various farm environments, in order to formulate the most effective plan of action." The assault on the group lead to an angry response from the US government, demanding that the perpetrators be arrested and brought before the courts. "The incident is symptomatic of the lawlessness that has affected Zimbabwe for the last two-and-a-half years," said a spokesman for the US embassy. "It is the same sort of intimidation and violence suffered by thousands of Zimbabweans since the rule of law was effectively suspended." Jonathan Moyo’s claims were later dismissed by a US State Department spokesman in Washington as "complete fabrications".
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 24 November
While Mugabe fiddles, Zim starves
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government has stepped up its "political interference" with food deliveries while up to half of all Zimbabweans have run out of food, a Zimbabwean survey published on Saturday said. It was drafted by the Food Security Network (Fosenet), a local body linking 24 non-governmental organisations that monitor food availability in Zimbabwe's 52 districts. The survey said "household stocks have fallen to zero or less than one month's supply" and that in half of the 52 districts, "everyone is now in need" of food aid. At the same time, the survey said, "there was an increase in reported political interference in relief" in the last month. It singled out "procedural barriers, political bias and reduced supplies" as the most frequent obstacles to hungry people getting food. While Zimbabwe's famine - expected to threaten more than half the country's population of 13-million people - has reached its most serious stage yet, the Fosenet report indicates that the situation is rapidly to become more desperate.
The Zimbabwean government blames the country's drought for the shortage of food stocks but aid agencies, led by the United Nations, have said the famine is largely man-made. They hold Mugabe responsible for the destruction of the country's highly productive commercial farming industry because of his illegal seizures of white-owned farms and his unsound economic policies. Aid agencies say there is evidence gathering that it is Zimbabwean government policy to force Zimbabweans, through starvation, to support the 78-year-old Mugabe. The rigorous controls the government imposes on the import and distribution of maizemeal are seen by the agencies in Zimbabwe as strategies to withhold food from anyone suspected of supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Fosenet's report said the availability of maizemeal in commercial outlets had also fallen - except for a brief period before local government elections. Supplies to shops were "scarce," and accessible only by standing in long queues, or through "backdoor sales". It also said that in urban areas, even people with money had been unable to buy maizemeal. Black market prices for maizemeal had reached up to 2 000 Zimbabwe dollars per kilogram, 67% more than the September price, Fosenet said, adding that black marketeers were making "super profits." Earlier this week, a detailed report on official corruption in food relief by the Danish group Physicians for Human Rights, said figures in Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party dominate the black market. Fosenet on Saturday also expressed concern about the "latitude given to (rural) councillors in deciding beneficiaries" of relief from the official Grain Marketing Board (GMB). Most GMB councillors are Zanu-PF members and the main supply of food in Zimbabwe comes through the board, whose depots across the country are controlled by ruling party militia.
Fosenet said deliveries to GMB depots had dropped, with half of the districts not getting any deliveries last month. The GMB itself was selling at black market prices, the report said, adding that the "upper ranges of GMB sales were 120% above the controlled price." While relief supplies through the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) had increased in October, the report said, the "increase in relief does not seem to be of a scale to match this widening vulnerability" to hunger. "The collapse in supply has produced huge reported burdens for the poorest," it said. Children, the elderly, disabled and sick people were the worst hit, yet only one third of relief food was dedicated to children. The UN says Mugabe has further curtailed the availability of food by banning private companies from importing grain and severely restricting charities from importing for their own relief programmes. And despite Mugabe's September promise to WFP head James Morris that he would allow genetically modified maize into the country, only minimal amounts have entered Zimbabwe.
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From VOA News, 22 November
Zimbabwe's new economic regulations lead businesses to bankruptcy
Businesses leaders in Zimbabwe say new foreign currency regulations are crippling the export-oriented manufacturing sector. Many exporters say they are headed for bankruptcy or will be forced to shut down because of the regulations. The new foreign currency regulations were introduced last week and businesses are already feeling the impact. A few of the smaller manufacturers in Zimbabwe are already negotiating to close up shop because they say they have been bankrupted by the new regulations. Others say they are completing their Christmas orders, and do not know if they will reopen after the Christmas break. Still others say the government must have made a mistake and will correct the new measures. The new regulations severely curtail exporters access to foreign currency, a precious commodity in Zimbabwe because of the country's soaring inflation. Until now, exporters could place a percentage of their foreign currency earnings into their own bank accounts. Then, when they needed it, they could use their foreign currency to import raw materials or spare parts.
Under the new regulations, the government has virtual control of all the foreign currency the exporters earn. They now have to exchange 50 percent of it at the official exchange rate, which is $55 (Zimbabwe) to $1 (U.S). On the street, it takes $1,800 (Zimbabwe) to get a U.S. dollar. When the exporters want access to their foreign currency they have not exchanged, they have to apply to the reserve bank and justify why it is needed. Several leading exporters say they applied for their own foreign currency early this week, but by Friday had still not been given permission to use it. Several mining companies say they are in the same position, and economists are predicting marginal mines will be forced to close down early next year. Bankers in Harare say they do not know what to do about the confusion over foreign currency accounts. One banker said Friday that he was advising his clients to hold on for another week and hope that the government cancels its new regulations.
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From ZWNEWS, 24 November
Troublesome priest
By Michael Hartnack
The quiet-spoken Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, has become the leading hate-figure for Robert Mugabe's propaganda machine. Enraged by renewed charges from the archbishop and many others - that the regime is using food aid as a political weapon by blocking supplies to opposition areas, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo denounced Ncube as a "mad bishop," and called for his resignation. "He is a desperate and very troubled soul ... someone who needs help, and if you are fair you provide that help," Moyo said in remarks that appeared to many to have an ominous and sinister undertone. Leaders of the other Christian churches in Bulawayo have rallied round Ncube in his latest confrontation with Mugabe's regime. And friends in the city say measures are being taken continuously to try to ensure the archbishop's safety following a series of anonymous death threats and calls on him by the feared Central Intelligence Organisation. Agents of the CIO began questioning the archbishop about his sermons in April 2000. But public support from Ncube's fellow Catholic bishops in Zimbabwe, who include apologists for the regime, is conspicuously lacking. And the Anglican Bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, is a blatant supporter of Mugabe, and recently tried to have a group of lay Anglicans banned from the cathedral for drowning his pro-Mugabe sermons with hymn-singing. Catholic Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa of Harare, a longstanding friend of Mugabe, has been silent, having tried unsuccessfully to suppress a Catholic Justice and Peace Commission report into 1982-87 atrocities in Matabeleland. Chakaipa conducted the 1996 marriage to a divorcee of Mugabe, who himself professes to be a Catholic. In Mutare, Catholic Bishop Alexio Muchabaiwa has shrunk from denouncing the expulsion by Mugabe's "war veterans" and the CIO of a Catholic priest, Father Patrick Kelly, from his parish in the Eastern Highlands. "One has to be very careful in matters of this nature because you are putting many lives in danger," Muchabaiwa said when questioned by journalists.
Diplomats and some local analysts say Mugabe may regard Ncube as a greater threat than Morgan Tsvangirai, leader and presidential candidate of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Tsvangirai has been battered politically since Mugabe claimed victory in this year's presidential election, widely regarded as rigged, and stepped up state persecution of opponents. But Ncube, University of Zimbabwe political scientist John Makumbe commented, represents an invincible "constituency" -- the church. "What we need is four or five men like him and the regime would really be in big trouble," said Makumbe. " ... He (Ncube) is dragging the church to do its work because even within it there are some who would rather keep quiet." Ncube has been subjected to a new bout of concerted attacks from the regime since delivering the Archbishop Denis Hurley lecture in Durban on November 8. Charging that 160 people have already died of starvation in Matabeleland and thousands more were at risk, the archbishop told fellow churchmen: "We face an absolutely desperate situation in Zimbabwe and the government is lying to the world about it. Our government continues to engage in lies, propaganda, the twisting of facts, half truths, downright untruths and gross misinformation -- because they are fascists."
When Mugabe's so-called Third Chimurenga was launched in February 2000 following his defeat in a constitutional referendum, Archbishop Ncube declared: "Land is no longer the issue: it is political power. Mugabe knows he had little chance of winning elections and he is trying to use intimidation to wipe out opponents." Hymn-singing Christians wept in the streets of Bulawayo last year when the archbishop led a historic show of inter-denominational solidarity - a march from the Catholic Cathedral to the City Presbyterian Church, to protest against the abduction and murder of government opponents. The protesters were shadowed by a menacing force of the para-military riot squad, and security police tried to move into the church itself to arrest opposition figures on their wanted list. Ncube's message than was his message in Durban: "Lobby by all peaceful means possible for a peaceful solution to the Zimbabwean crisis." He warned that "arrests, arson, torture, and selective distribution of food" will not serve to keep Zimbabweans in subjection forever. Following his Durban lecture, the leaders of the Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, and Church of Christ denominations issued a joint statement of support for Ncube. "We condemn in the strongest terms the actions of Mugabe and his government in hijacking food . . the campaign of violence and intimidation. We call the government to repentance and a change of heart, to listen to the cries of the people," they said.
Ncube, 55, was born into a peasant family in the politically troubled Gweru borderland between rival tribes, Shona and Ndebele, and rival political parties, Zanu and Zapu He attended school in Gweru, a flashpoint for inter-communal violence since the birth of African nationalism in the late 1950s. He trained for the priesthood at Chishawasha Seminary, near Harare, and was ordained in 1973. In the 1980s he spent two years in Rome, studying advanced theology and social teachings. Returning home in 1985, Ncube was appointed Vicar-General, and in 1998 took over the Bulawayo diocese from an equally fearless predecessor, Bishop Henry Karlen. The archbishop says he does not support any political party but is charged with a "prophetic mission" to speak out for the downtrodden and for justice. The official response has included a calculated campaign to smear Ncube with allegations he is "soft" on homosexuals and child-abusers within the church. The archbishop has also criticized Mugabe's seizure of white-owned farms, saying he favours land redistribution, but not without compensating the owners and providing resources for people settled on the former commercial farms and ranches. "I don't think it's appropriate to grab people's properties without compensation. Some of these people only have their land as their source of livelihood -Mugabe's process is just a gimmick for his own political survival," he said. "You can't talk of land resettlement without adequate back up infrastructural resources like clinics, schools and equipment for the resettled farmers."
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From Business Day (SA), 25 November
EU, ACP at odds over exclusion of Zimbabweans
Last bid to agree on two officials from Harare Brussels - Despite protest, European Union (EU) states vowed yesterday to keep two Zimbabwean government officials out of a parliamentary meeting with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of less developed states. Weekend talks between both sides failed to settle differences and a last ditch attempt to bridge the divide was set for early today, just hours before the opening of the four-day EU-ACP parliamentary meeting. The European Parliament wants to keep State Enterprises Minister Paul Mangwana and Deputy Finance Minister Chris Kuruneri off the legislative premises because of an EU travel ban to protest against the human rights record of President Robert Mugabe. SA delegates to the conference want the Zimbabweans to attend. Last week Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said SA would seek to have international sanctions against the beleaguered state lifted. The secretariat of the 76-state ACP said it was unacceptable that the EU side could interfere in the composition of its delegation to the meeting. The ACP side held separate talks late yesterday to seek a way out. Officials said a solution could be to have the meeting without the two ministers but refuse to agree on any resolutions at the end. The ACP states could also boycott the official opening today, said an official.
EU spokesman Jesper Haglund said: "We have no room for manoeuvre because the EU parliamentary leaders decided to keep them out last week." He said security officials would watch out to ensure the Zimbabwean officials would not slip into the legislature today. In July, the EU widened a travel ban on senior Zimbabwean officials to punish Mugabe, claiming human rights abuses were getting worse and economic policies were pushing the country into famine and chaos. The two ministers were on the list of 52 people. The EU imposed targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe after Mugabe refused to let European observers monitor disputed elections in March. The sanctions cut off E128m in development aid, banned Mugabe and senior officials from travelling to EU countries, and froze their assets in Europe. Belgium said it was in a predicament over the issuing of the duo's visas, since the EU travel ban did not cover international meetings such as the EU-ACP conference, which continues until Thursday. Belgium said none of the EU states consulted opposed granting the visas, when consulted last week.
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From Times (UK), 25 November
Starvation is the price for defying ruthless Mugabe
From Michael Dynes in Binga, Matabeleland
At the age of seven months Thinkmore Mwinde could hardly be accused of harbouring dangerous opposition thoughts, even in the deranged political landscape of Zimbabwe. The same cannot be said of his mother, Regina, 39, who voted for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and is now being punished by President Mugabe: she is being denied the maize meal that she and her seven children need to survive. Mrs Mwinde, with an overwhelming majority of the impoverished Tonga people in Zimbabwe’s northwestern district of Binga, voted for Joel Gabbuza in the March presidential elections, giving the MDC its single biggest parliamentary majority. The Tonga did the same again in the rural district council elections in August, providing the MDC with its only rural constituency in the country. But the price of such persistent defiance has been high. For three months the ruling Zanu PF party has blocked food shipments into the district, in what has become the most blatant and ruthless use of food as a political weapon in the former British colony.
Cradling Thinkmore in her arms, Mrs Mwinde said that she and her children, who stood next to her holding their bloated bellies, had not eaten for two days. They had survived for months on leaves, roots and seeds from the bush. The food situation is the same in scores of villages throughout the district. Standing in the doorway of his one-room hut, Samson Munkuli, 48, said that he had not eaten for days. The muscle and flesh on his arms and legs had wasted away. He was a living skeleton, and he will not live long. In the town of Binga the manager of the state-controlled Grain Marketing Board, which has a monopoly on maize sales, admits that food is sold only to Zanu PF supporters. "We only sell to Shona-speakers," he said. Members of the Central Intelligence Organisation and the President’s Office stand near by, ensuring that he complies with Harare’s directives on food distribution.
Reports that maize is sold only to card-carrying members of Zanu PF are widespread. There are roadblocks around big cities to ensure that maize is not smuggled into the urban areas, most of which are hotbeds of opposition support. But the Government’s stranglehold on food distribution is far more sophisticated than that. Under a deal with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in February, Harare agreed to import 800,000 tonnes of maize; the WFP would import another 800,000 tonnes for distribution among the young, pregnant women and the elderly; while the private sector would import a further 800,000 tonnes for sale to adults. But the government is importing only 500,000 tonnes. International donors have failed to raise enough money for the WFP to fulfil its commitments, and the government has refused to grant licences to the private sector to import food: a flagrant breach of the February agreement. The shortfall in imports has enabled Zimbabwe’s National Food Committee, run by Nicholas Goche, the head of state security, to ensure that only Zanu PF supporters get food. The Grain Marketing Board has depots around the country controlling the distribution of maize stocks. Didymus Mutasa, the Zanu PF Administrative Secretary, the party’s senior bureaucrat, has said that he would not mind if Zimbabwe lost half its 12 million people because of the collapse in agricultural production. "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle," he said. "We don’t want all these extra people," he added.
Travel ban row
A row over the European Union’s travel ban on President Mugabe of Zimbabwe and key members of his entourage is threatening to disrupt a conference starting today between Euro MPs and their counterparts from 77 developing countries. Several countries threatened to boycott the meeting after the European Parliament refused access to its premises to two ministers in the Zimbabwean delegation.
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From The Times (UK), 25 November
The true cost of a by-election vote
From Jan Raath in Harare
The wealthy owner of a milling company linked to a blackmarket in meal is tipped to be the ruling Zanu PF party’s candidate in a by-election caused by the death in prison of a popular opposition MP. David Mutasa is likely to contest the Harare township of Kuwadzana. Its former MP, Learnmore Jongwe, of the Movement for Democratic Change, died last month. Mr Mutasa is already campaigning hard. Last week he was offering 10kg of mealiemeal, a loaf of bread and a cabbage at controlled prices. The catch is that purchase is possible only on production of a Zanu PF party card. A black market in maize meal, Zimbabweans’ staple diet, was described last week by Physicians for Human Rights, a group of independent Danish doctors: imported grain is stored by the state-controlled cereal monopoly, whose premises are controlled by secret police and youth militias; the grain is allocated to selected milling companies controlled by Zanu PF businessmen. It is then sold only to party card-holders. The strategy is being used to withhold food from urban areas in much the same way he is starving opposition supporters in the rural areas.
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From News24 (SA), 24 November
New farmers fail to take up land
Harare - Only half the black farmers allocated land in one of Zimbabwe's richest provinces under the government's controversial land programme have taken up their plots, a state-run newspaper said on Sunday. So far only 7 000 out of 14 000 farmers allocated formerly white-owned land in Mashonaland West province have moved onto the farms and are currently preparing the land for crops, according to the Sunday Mail. Provincial governor Peter Chanetsa was "concerned" by the low uptake of land under a resettlement programme meant for would-be commercial farmers, the paper said. More than two years ago, President Robert Mugabe's government began to take white-owned farms for distribution to new black farmers. Only around 600 white farmers are still on their farms, down from 4 500 at the start of the programme. Critics say the new farmers lack the financial backing and infrastructure needed to restore Zimbabwe's agricultural sector and grow food for the country, which is facing severe food shortages. Last month, the governor of another fertile province, Mashonaland East, said half the people offered land there had not taken up their plots.
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From Business Day (SA), 25 November
Mogae tilts at Mugabe in UK-based magazine
International Affairs Editor
Botswana’s President Festus Mogae, the only president in the region to criticise Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, has done so forthrightly in the latest issue of the London-based African Business magazine. In an interview with the magazine, Mogae said the Zimbabwe crisis would be difficult to solve because it amounted to a drought of good governance. He also displayed frustration about what he said was an inability to bring pressure to bear on the country. "We try to engage them. We are not the UK, we are not the US, we are not the European Union. We are just their neighbour. There are 14-million of them, there are less than 2-million of us," he told the magazine. Mogae said his country was paying a growing price because of the Zimbabwean crisis with mounting numbers of illegal immigrants. His government had put up, "security fences, enclosures to hold the illegal immigrants. Journalists came, photographed them and said there are concentration camps in Botswana," he said. He went on to say that "these are just waiting places where, while we make arrangements with the authorities on the other side, we can look after them". "What can we do? This is a humanitarian crisis. We are trying to handle it humanely as possible. But within the limits of our capacity, of our resources. We have no choice," Mogae said.
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From the Observer (UK), 24 November
How a perfect English gent in a rural idyll profits from a bloody African war
Antony Barnett and Paul Harris
To people in the peaceful Wiltshire village of Brigmerston, their new neighbour seems like a perfect English gentleman: a tall, wealthy, bespectacled former Army officer. But an Observer investigation has uncovered evidence that behind the doors of a luxury house on the edge of the village, Andrew Smith runs a business empire which has made a fortune from a bloody African civil war that has claimed millions of lives. Smith, 49, a former captain of the Royal Engineers, who runs his firm Avient from his home, faces claims that one of his companies was involved in mercenary-style operations deep in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He also faces allegations that he has been trading with a notorious arms dealer, Ukrainian-born Leonid Minin. A United Nations report has accused Smith of organising bombing raids in the DRC on behalf of President Joseph Kabila to suppress rebel forces. It is alleged that three years ago Avient received $30,000 a month for recruiting crew from Ukraine to fly in Russian-made Antonovs behind enemy lines in 1999 and 2000. One Avient contract signed by Kabila stated: 'The crew will be advised that they will be operating along and behind the enemy lines in support of ground troops and against invading forces. It is specifically agreed that the crew...will undertake airdropping missions.' The affair has clear overtones of dogs-of-war style mercenary activity. Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb has asked the British authorities to investigate the claims to see if there are grounds for a criminal prosecution. 'I want to know how a British citizen with a company operating from Wiltshire can be involved in such military activities without breaking any law,' he said.
Smith, who is contesting the UN claims, ran his African business through his Avient company registered in Zimbabwe. In this way Smith would have been able to avoid breaching the European Union arms embargo against the DRC put in place in 1993. Any investigation is likely to study closely UN claims that Smith has a relationship with Minin, a senior member of a Russian organised crime syndicate, who is under investigation in five countries for crimes from gun running to art theft. Two years ago Minin was arrested in an Italian police raid on a hotel in northern Italy where he was found with 58 grams of cocaine, four prostitutes and $500,000 worth of African diamonds. Police also discovered a green briefcase stuffed with 1,500 pages of documents detailing numerous arms deals, including illegal sales to Liberia and Sierra Leone. The Observer has obtained bank records found in Minin's briefcase which detail payments made by one of Minin's associate companies. These documents reveal that on 22 June 1999 Avient received a $100,500 payment from Engineering & Technical, a British Virgin Islands firm run by Minin's business associate Valery Cherny.
The UN also accuses Smith of brokering the sale of six attack helicopters to the DRC government in April this year. Smith strongly denies this allegation. However, he did admit in an interview with The Observer to shipping military cargo to the Congolese government on behalf of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe three years ago. Smith said: 'We have worked with the governments of Zimbabwe and the DRC who are official organised governments of countries. We certainly don't work for any rebel groups or any terrorists.' Smith played down his role in the alleged bombing raids, saying the Congo 'military hierarchy' controlled the air crews and directed operations. He denied his company was a private military company involved in any bombing raids, stressing that it was principally a cargo-carrying business dealing mainly with commodities like food and computers. But Smith has admitted to 'ferrying troops and people from place to place' and leasing Russian-made transport aircraft to the Zimbabwean government for use in Congo.
He said: 'I am not denying that we carried military equipment for the end-user governments, which is a perfectly legal operation to do. We are talking about three years ago. I did check everything with the British High Commissioner at the time. We have never been involved in the sale of goods at all, nor have we carried any military hardware out of the EC, so we have not broken any UN or EU embargoes.' Smith also denied any relationship with Minin. He said: 'I have never met the guy, spoken to him or communicated with him.' Smith's claims that he received the approval of the British High Commission could be embarrassing for the Government as there has been an arms embargo against the DRC since 1993. Lamb is to raise the matter in the House of Commons. 'If it's true that the High Commission OK'd such deals, I want to know why,' said Lamb. The disclosures that a former British soldier is helping military operations in central Africa will embarrass the Government. In the 1998 'arms for Africa' affair it emerged that Sandline International, run by former British colonel Tim Spicer, had supplied weapons to Sierra Leone despite a UN arms embargo. Spicer avoided prosecution after it was revealed the British High Commissioner to Sierra Leone had approved Sandline's plans. Smith's involvement in military operations in Congo is also likely to be a setback for government plans to license mercenary companies. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw claims such firms could be used in UN peace-keeping operations and other government-sponsored activities in trouble spots.
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From News24 (SA), 25 November
EU talks cancelled over Zim
Brussels - A meeting between the European Union (EU) and the world's poorest nations was cancelled on Monday due to a dispute over two black-listed ministers from Zimbabwe, an official said. The 78-nation African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group refused to take part after members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted to bar the Zimbabweans from entering their Brussels premises. "As things stand now, we're going into a meeting without the ACP, yes," the co-president of the Brussels meeting, British MEP Glenys Kinnock, said. "We cancelled the whole official opening this morning on the basis that if the ACP weren't going to come into the building, then we couldn't do it," she said. The meeting had not been formally called off by the Europeans, Kinnock added. "But the clear understanding is that we have now reached a deadlock and we just have to accept that the ACP won't participate unless we agree to the participation of the Zimbabwean ministers. That's clearly not what we're prepared to do." Kinnock said the 2000 Cotonou Agreement that set up an aid and trade pact between the EU and the ACP - mostly former colonies of European countries - was based on "transparency and the rule of law". "Therefore we feel, like never before, that those who do not fulfill those obligations have to be held to account," she said. The 15-nation EU has imposed a visa ban on President Robert Mugabe and 71 of his officials and associates in protest at a crackdown on Zimbabwe's political opposition. But Belgium allowed Zimbabwe's minister of state enterprises Paul Mangwana, and deputy minister for finance and economic development Christopher Kuruneri to enter the country last week. It argued that the meeting of ACP and EU parliamentarians, which was scheduled to last until Thursday, was an international one and so beyond EU jurisdiction.
Mugabe travelled to New York for a UN conference on children in May despite a similar US travel restriction. He was also allowed to attend the World Food Summit in Rome in June despite the EU ban because it was a UN-organised event. MEPs, however, insisted the visa ban must also cover the ACP-EU meeting, prompting the ACP to threaten a walk-out over the "unacceptable" European stance. Kinnock said the Zimbabwean government was to blame. "It was a very provocative thing to do to put two ministers who are on the travel ban list in their delegation," she said. The meeting would continue with curtailed discussions between EU lawmakers and officials from East Timor, the UN special representative on children and the EU's Danish presidency, Kinnock added. She expressed confidence that the two sides could overcome their differences ahead of the next EU-ACP parliamentary assembly, which is scheduled to be held in an ACP country in spring. "This is a major setback but it's certainly not the end or drawing any line under the joint parliamentary assembly's relationship with the ACP and the EU." The EU-ACP gathering was due to discuss a range of issues including aid, trade and the environment.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 24 November
Leave with your food, chief tells donors
By our own Staff
Chief Makumbe, of Makumbe communal area in Buhera district, last week barred food aid from being distributed to his starving folk charging that it was coming from friends of MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai. The highly charged chief ordered donors who included Christian Care to take back their food even though hundreds of starving villagers, some of them who had walked long distances to a business centre in the district hoping to get some handouts, pleaded with him to reverse his decision. "I don't want any food from the people who are sponsoring Tsvangirai to oust our legitimate leader, Mugabe," said a visibly angry Makumbe addressing the donors. He added: "Proceed to other districts; here in my area I do not need anything from you, I will assist my people with the Zunde Ramambo." Despite protests from hungry villagers who pointed out that the donors had nothing to do with Tsvangirai, the chief remained firm, prompting the donors to leave the township with their food. Buhera is the home area for the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Rangarirai Mhuriyadziwa, the MDC Nhedziwa Branch chairman, said the chief, who was a staunch Zanu PF supporter, sometimes forced the donors to chant the ruling party slogans. "Makumbe said he will give people maize from Zunde Ramambo, but we know there is no maize in the granaries. Iye ari kugutiswa navaMugabe isu tichidya nhoko dzezvironda. We can't starve just because Makumbe is a Zanu PF member," said Mhuriyadziwa.
Meanwhile Zanu PF on Friday rewarded chiefs across the country for the work they are doing for the party by doubling their monthly allowances and those of headmen. Chiefs will next year receive monthly allowances of $50 000, up from $18 000 while headman will be getting $20 000. Chiefs' aides have also benefited and will get $8 000 up from their current $2 000 monthly allowances. Government said the increases were made as a fulfilment of promises made by Mugabe to the traditional leaders during the run up to the March presidential elections. To date government has electrified homes of 142 chiefs and a provision has been made in the 2003 budget to have $4,5 million set aside for use by traditional leaders in each province. Apart from this, the chiefs, whose demands are increasingly getting out hand like those of war veterans, want a vehicle loan scheme similar to that of parliamentarians which could cost the nation billions of unbudgeted for dollars.
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From The Daily News, 25 November
Zanu PF supporters abduct teacher
From Sandra Mujokoro in Bulawayo
Victor Ndlovu, a teacher at St Joseph’s School in the Kezi area of Matobo District, is living in fear after he was recently allegedly abducted and assaulted by suspected Zanu PF supporters, who held him for five days. The abductors accused him of being an MDC sympathiser. Ndlovu said he was coming from school on 5 November when a white Peugeot vehicle, carrying three men, pulled over and offered him a lift. "As soon as I got into the vehicle, they blindfolded me and drove me to a bush where they demanded my MDC party membership card. I told them I did not have one, but they started assaulting me. They kept me in a house, but I don’t know exactly where it was. They occasionally gave me some water and some food," Ndlovu said. "On the fifth day, they blindfolded me again and bundled me into a car and dumped me at Shangani, along the Harare-Bulawayo highway." Ndlovu said he had never met his abductors before, but had been visited by some strange people a month earlier. They warned him about his alleged membership of the MDC. For a week after the incident, he said, he could not walk because his feet were swollen from the severe beatings. He has not been to his school since the incident occurred, and is scared the assailants might kill him. Ndlovu has, however, not reported the matter to the police because he does not believe they would be willing to help. His wife is a teacher at the same school.
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From IRIN (UN), 25 November
US embassy awaits action on staff "beatings"
Johannesburg - The United States embassy in Zimbabwe said on Monday it had no plans to reduce its presence in the country despite growing tension with the government. The latest incident came last week when US ambassador to Zimbabwe Joseph Sullivan was "summoned" to explain why embassy employees had travelled outside the capital without permission. On 15 November two US embassy employees, a UN field worker and a Zimbabwean citizen, were reportedly detained and interrogated on a farm north of Harare by a group of men who identified themselves as "war veterans". One of the US employees, a Zimbabwean, and the accompanying Zimbabwean citizen were beaten, and the assailants stole official and personal items, a US embassy statement said. The group had gone to assess the conditions of displaced farm workers. The US government immediately protested the incident and called for swift action to identify and arrest the perpetrators. But the government in turn said the group had violated a government order given to all diplomats to seek permission before travelling more than 40 km outside Harare.
"Up until the meeting between Ambassador Sullivan and officials from the department of foreign affairs on 21 November, we were unaware that such an order existed. However, we have not and need not apologise for conducting normal activities in fulfilment of our diplomatic and humanitarian mission," US embassy spokesman Bruce Wharton told IRIN. Wharton said the government had not responded to the request for an investigation into the 15 November incident. The United States is also seeking answers from the government on the shooting of a US citizen in the eastern town of Mutare last week. Asked if the embassy was reassessing its diplomatic mission in the country, Wharton said there were "no plans to reduce the US presence in Zimbabwe". "We make a clear distinction between the government and the people of Zimbabwe. We will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to all Zimbabweans who need it," Wharton said. Relations between the two countries has soured in recent weeks following comments by US State Department official Mark Bellamy last month that America might have to take "very intrusive interventionist measures" to ensure food aid was delivered. Opposition groups and aid agencies have accused Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe of only allowing government-controlled emergency food aid to reach his own supporters.
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From The Times (UK), 26 November
Zimbabwe uneasy over ICC scrutiny
From Jan Raath in Harare
An assessment of Zimbabwe’s capacity to hold its quota of six World Cup matches next year begins today with the commitment of the country’s small but zealous community of cricket supporters broken by economic collapse and outrage that President Robert Mugabe, the architect of the country’s misery, continues to be the patron of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union (ZCU). Tim Lamb, of the ECB, was the first of the 12-man delegation from the ICC to arrive here yesterday for the three-day inspection of security arrangements for the matches. At the same time, cricket fans were told in advertisements in the local press of a hitherto unheard-of range of restrictions that will ban them from taking their beloved gas barbecues, beer-filled cooler bags and binoculars into the grounds of Harare Sports Club in the capital and Queen’s Ground in Bulawayo. The loss of the World Cup matches here — with Australia, England, Holland, India, Namibia and Pakistan due to feature — would inflict a critical blow on the ZCU, which has spent about $750,000 (about £480,000) on bringing its two main grounds up to standard in the past two years. It also expects to earn about $6 million (about £3.8 million) from its share of world television rights, as well as one-thirteenth of the profits taken from the tournament by South Africa, the main hosts. "The big extra is hosting the event and exposing our public to the World Cup and it will be the most exciting thing we could possibly have in our own back yard," Vince Hogg, the ZCU’s chief executive, said. However, the present tour to Zimbabwe by Pakistan, who normally draw large crowds, has attracted a dismal response. In Bulawayo at the weekend the two one-day matches at Queen’s Ground, with a capacity of 6,000, attracted perhaps 2,500 spectators, half of them schoolchildren bussed in from the townships. Bookings in Harare for the remaining three one-day matches have been "way below normal", officials said. A ca |
